XIII. PUSHING FORWARD
An hour before dawn the men stood to their arms in the trenches, but as the daylight grew and there was no sound or sight of the enemy, first one man and then another got out of the trench. These being allowed to walk about with impunity the others soon followed their example. Fires were lit for cooking, and men spread themselves on the ground behind the trench reading old copies of newspapers, or mending their clothes, or cleaning their rifles. Here and there parties could be seen carrying away corpses which had been stiff and cold behind the trench for the last forty-eight hours. Goyle, my company commander, walked across from his headquarters. The day before it had been impossible for him to get to us, and messages were brought by orderlies, who crawled up on their stomachs along a narrow ditch.
"Morning," said Goyle; "looks as though they had cleared."
"Yes, sir," I answered, "there has been no sign of anything ahead this morning."
"I reckon that was their transport we heard, sir—they was rumbling along a road there, sir, all the night," said my platoon-sergeant.
The man was probably right, for all through the night a rumbling of wagons had been plainly audible along a road behind the enemy's lines. The night before we had been attacked fiercely, but though they had come very near us they had not been able to break through. During the day the enemy had remained quiet, contenting themselves with sniping, and now evidently, under cover of darkness, they had withdrawn to another position.
"Well, I suppose we shall push on now," I said to Goyle.
"Yes, I expect so," he answered.
Our orders to advance came at four o'clock. Goyle came down to give the necessary instructions to platoon commanders. We were to push forward straight to our front, keeping under cover as much as possible. He said he believed that the ground was all clear in front of us, but that it would be as well to take precautions.
Evans and I therefore led our platoons down a ditch which led direct to the front. We eventually came out by a large farm building which a day or two ago had been in the hands of the Germans. It had been known to the British troops as "the hospital," because the Germans had hoisted a Red Cross flag on a pole on the roof. But "the hospital" had also been used by the enemy as an observing station, and our guns had been obliged to shell it on two or three occasions. We examined the building with interest. The place was evidently a dairy farm on a large scale, for three sides were cowsheds, and there was a big store of hay. At the far end was the dwelling-house, over which the Red Cross had been hoisted. The place had perhaps been used as a hospital, for in the bottom room we found a long riding boot, which had been cut off a wounded man, and a blood-soaked pair of the well-known blue-grey breeches. However, on going up on to the roof we found the facilities for seeing over our lines so remarkable that the shells from our guns were evidently justly placed.
I made the tour of the farm with the doctor of the Dorchesters, who was thinking of taking it over as a hospital himself. When we came down from the roof we found two farm girls outside. They asked us anxiously if it would be safe for them to stay there that night, and we assured them it would. They said they had gone off a mile or two for two or three days, but now they had come back to look after the cows. They were a pair of very cool young ladies, who seemed to regard the German occupation of their farm as no more than a heavy rainstorm, to be avoided while it lasted, but not to be worried about once it was over. The doctor and I went round to look at the cowsheds. The beasts were all in their stalls, some evidently suffering a good deal from want of milking. In the first shed we came to there was a most appalling stench. The doctor sniffed and said he thought it was something dead. We examined the cows that were lying down, but they were all alive. Then the doctor made an orderly rake over all the straw. He said that the Germans had a habit of hiding dead men under straw, if they were vacating a place, just by way of providing a pleasant surprise for any tired British soldiers who might make the straw their bed. However, there were no corpses in the cowshed, and we never discovered the cause of the smell, though it was strong and nasty enough to prevent my ever forgetting it.
On coming out of the farm I found the Dorchester Regiment passing by. After lying about in a trench, hardly seeing more than the men in one's own platoon, it was quite a change to see another regiment and have a talk to the officers about their experiences in the past few days. It was interesting to hear how the next-door regiment had fared in the night attack, and if they had met much opposition in gaining the village they had been told to take. One subaltern, with a scrubby ten days' growth of beard on his chin, grinned as though he thought he knew me as he went by, and said: "Who'd have thought we were being brought up to do this?"
I looked at him, and suddenly recognized a fellow who had been a cadet with me at Sandhurst. It did, indeed, seem droll to look back on the days when we had drilled in the same squad together and studied tactics in the same class, without ever, I am afraid, any serious thoughts of war. Well, anyway, now our learning was being put to the test, and as I watched the boy now become a man march by with his company, all muddy from the trenches, with his few worldly possessions slung from his belt, I thought that he, at any rate, was a good advertisement for Sandhurst.
"Where are you going—do you know?" I called.
He shrugged his shoulders and pointed away across the fields. It was growing dusk, and I began to wonder where we were going. We had been halted by the farm some time now. I turned back to my platoon, who were lying on some straw against a wall. I thought I would go and find some of the other platoon commanders and hear if there was any news. But this plan was frustrated, Evans and the others were nowhere to be found. I asked my sergeant if he knew where the rest of the company was. He said he did not. It was my business, of course, not his, to know, and he—wretched man—having been asleep, knew this perfectly well. After a search round the farm I came to the conclusion that the company had gone off somewhere and that I was left. Here was a pretty kettle of fish. Goyle would not thank me for losing a whole platoon. The company must be found again at once. The difficulty was they might have gone off in any direction. I questioned the men. Some thought they had seen the captain going back the way we had come; others had seen nothing. To go back the way we had come would probably be putting oneself too far back if wanted. I eventually decided to cut straight across a field and reach a road which would take me to the same village as the Dorchesters were going to. In this way I should have them between myself and the enemy, and so eliminate the risk of being cut off, and also should be moving along towards the enemy in the same direction as presumably my company was moving.
It was by now quite dark, and, crossing the field, we nearly fell into an empty trench which the Germans had held. The most noticeable thing about the trench was the murderous field of fire it afforded. The trench had evidently been sighted by a past master in the art of war.
On reaching the road I decided to stay there for a while until some one came along from whom I could ask questions. It was rather jumpy work to be isolated by oneself with a platoon without quite knowing where one was. To my great relief, after a few minutes a company from my regiment came along, followed by Goyle at the head of my own company, and I was able to join up. It appeared that in the interval since we had parted the company had been ordered to entrench themselves in three different places, and then moved on again, and so, as Goyle did not seem to mind once I had joined up again safely, I was very glad I had missed all the unnecessary excitement. It was characteristic of Goyle that he never found fault with anything his subalterns did unless it led to trouble. As I had got there all right somehow, and not been wanted in the meantime, he did not blame me for getting lost.
We marched along for a little way down the road, and then swung to the right down another road, which led through a straggling village. The cottages were all in darkness, but they looked very inviting, and I think each man wished heartily that he was going to sleep in one instead of marching on into the night.
After passing through the village we came out on to a straight road flanked by two deep ditches. After going a few hundred yards along this road we were told to halt, climb over the ditch, and entrench. This we did.
When all was snug and compact for the night Goyle and I went back to the village to let the Dorchesters know what we had done. We found several of the officers in the kitchen of a small wine shop. They had got a fire going, and were making coffee, and this, with a bottle of rum found in the cellar, and the remains of the day's rations, promised an excellent supper. I had some bread and cheese left in my haversack, and shared this with Goyle; we were given a mug of coffee each, and joined the others at the table. After the excitements of the evening the coffee and rum were welcome. As we were having supper I heard some groans, and suddenly noticed a huge Uhlan lying flat on his back in the corner. He was breathing with difficulty, and every now and then seemed to be trying to wriggle along the floor. One of the Dorchester officers told me that the man had been found in a ditch and brought in by our men. He was shot straight through the stomach. They had sent up for the doctor, but the latter was unable to come down that night. Supper proceeded smoothly, uninterrupted by the groans of the Uhlan, who was only half-conscious, but at times evidently in great pain.
"I say," said one of the Dorchesters' officers, "I propose sleeping here. I don't much fancy having that fellow in the room all night."
It was then decided to move the Uhlan to an empty house opposite, where he died by himself, and was found on his knees, with his head contorted between them in a last effort to rise, in the morning.