XVI. WITH THE SUPPORTS
The Support trenches lay along a road about fifty yards behind the firing-line. The trenches themselves were made partly from a ditch by the side of the road, and partly excavated from a ploughed field which ran out in the direction of the enemy. The firing-line trenches were beyond in the ploughed field itself; beyond the ploughland again came a stretch of root crop, and at the end of this the enemy.
The Westshires were holding the firing-line, and we were close up behind them in support. In spite of the narrow margin between the supports and firing-line life was a good deal easier for the supports. Indeed, we felt ourselves onlookers compared to the Westshires in front. The ground sloped gently down from their trenches to the road. They could not move without showing up against the sky-line, while we, by crouching, could move about our trenches with comparative freedom.
But the chief blessing of being in support lay in the fact that we were not directly responsible for giving the first alarm. The onus of waiting and watching for the German attack lay on the Westshires, and our men felt themselves to be more or less onlookers for the day, and lay about reading the newspapers and smoking. Evans and I found plenty to occupy ourselves during the afternoon. There was a small farm just by the side of our trench, protected from view by a row of cottages. The owners of the farm had gone the day before, when there had been an attack on the village, and left their home just as it was. We took over the farm for our own use, got a fire going in the kitchen, and set our servants to work to prepare dinner. Jenkins, my servant, had been a chauffeur valet before the war, and had great ideas how things ought to be done. These ideas had on occasion been reduced to making tea during a halt by the roadside in a small black and dirty pot, which he kept fastened to his pack, but with a kitchen stove to cook over and an unlimited supply of crockery he was in his element.
Having annexed the farm as an officers' mess and installed Jenkins in the kitchen we made a tour of the yard. Here we found several things which wanted doing. First there was the farm dog, who had been left behind chained to his kennel. The dog had had nothing to eat for two days, and was ravenous. We got him a large bone and loosed him, so that if we had to scurry he would not have to stay behind. Then we found some cows in a shed in great pain from want of milking. There was a man in my platoon who had been a dairyman, and I set him to work on them. In a barn we found a quantity of straw, which we sent down to the trenches. Finally we got soap and towels from a bedroom, and repaired to the pump for a much-needed cleaning.
After washing ourselves we went out for a stroll before dinner. We found a little group standing in the lee of the cottage across the road—the Adjutant of the Westshires, the regimental doctor, two stretcher-bearers, and an N.C.O. A man had been hit in the trench just ahead of us, and the doctor had been sent for to come up from the field-ambulance. The doctor had just sent word up to the trench to find out the nature of the man's injuries. If he was severely wounded and required immediate attention, the doctor was prepared to send up his stretcher-bearers to have him brought down, but it would be a difficult job and exposing men's lives, and the doctor wanted, if possible, to leave the man there till dark. Doctors attached to regiments have many difficult points to settle, and occasions like this often arise when it is hard for them to decide whether to risk more lives to save one. They are called upon sometimes to go up and attend to cases in all sorts of impossible places, and in the firing-line the old cry of "Send for the doctor" is not quite so easily answered as in other places.
We left the group by the cottage waiting for the reply about the nature of the wounded man's injuries. Not a head showed from the trench where he was lying. The trench itself, though only twenty yards or so away, was hardly visible in the field. Glad it was not our turn to lie like logs in it all the day, we went on down the village street. Nearly all the cottages were empty, but in one we came on a group of inhabitants who had remained. They had all collected in a kitchen and were having a last meal round their table. They had got a little bread and some coffee, which they were sharing with three private soldiers, who in exchange had contributed a tin of bully beef. It made a strange sight to see the weeping, frightened women and the tired dusty soldiers who had come to defend them. The women had given the men a place round the fire, and were waiting on them attentively. The privates could speak no French and the peasants no English, so conversation was impossible, but an interchange of thought could be read in the eyes of both parties; the women looking on the men sadly and devoutedly, realizing they had come there perhaps to give their lives for them, and across the men's faces would come a look of appreciation for the hot comforting coffee, and at other times a look of inscrutable purposefulness, which is hard to describe, but which all our men wear in France, and which is symbolic of the spirit which is carrying them through the campaign.
Seeing officers outside, one of the women came out. I said "good-morning" to her in French, and with a delighted "Ah, Monsieur, vous parlez Français," she addressed herself to me excitedly. It appeared that her husband had been missing since the day before. She was very anxious about him. Two officers had come to the cottage, asked him some questions, and then taken him away with them. She had not seen the man since. What did I think could have become of him? I asked her some questions about the officers who had taken her husband away, and from her description gathered that they were a captain and subaltern in the British Army. As the Westshire Regiment was the only regiment that I knew had been in the village since the Germans left it, I felt sure the officers the woman referred to must be from that regiment. Accordingly I went back to ask the adjutant of the Westshires if he could give any information on the subject. He told me that when the regiment had got up to the village the day before they had searched the cottages and found a man in one of the upper rooms behaving suspiciously with a lamp by a window which looked on the German lines. They had taken the man off with them and sent him back to the rear, where he would probably be tried for his life for a spy. This put me in an awkward position, as I did not know what to tell the poor woman, who, whatever her husband had done, was herself innocent of any evil intentions. I contended myself with telling her that her husband was in British hands, and that she might rest assured he would be fairly treated.
Another difficulty then presented itself. The little party of women in the cottage all wished to leave the village. They had collected their few most cherished possessions together in a cart and proposed to go off as soon as it was dark. But this could not be permitted, as the noise of the cart, which would have to go along a road that ran through our lines, would have attracted the enemy's attention and drawn their fire on our men. The women refused to leave the cart with their treasures behind and the situation seemed to have reached an impasse. Finally, after interviewing the colonel of the Westshires, I was able to get permission for them to take their cart, provided they kept it along the grassy side of the road.
I shall never forget the little procession as it moved off after dark. First the cart, drawn by an old horse with a woman leading it, followed by a sorrowful little procession of women and children with quick, frightened steps and bowed heads. They were leaving their village, their homes, nearly all their belongings, and the little plots of garden and weaving looms which were their livelihood, to go out to the country beyond—which had always appeared in the little hemisphere of their lives as a strange land dealing hardly with wandering strangers. They were going away and would, perhaps, never see their village again. (Alas, indeed, they never did.) Well may they have wondered what they had done to bring such misery about their heads—misery embodied in the Scriptural curse of old: War, rape, desolation, and famine.
However, there is little sentiment in war, and as we watched them go we had not more than a passing thought for them. We were chiefly conscious of having a farm to ourselves, and the prospect of a night of unusual comfort for the firing-line.
Jenkins had made great preparations while we were away, and had a two-course dinner ready for us—roast chickens and stewed apples. We fell to on this heartily, and then sat round the kitchen stove drinking hot rum and water. We turned in early, two of us using two beds and the other two mattresses on the floor. With the Westshires in front of us we were care-free for the night. An hour before dawn we were called, and went back to the trenches to rouse the men to stand to arms. Then we went to bed again and slept till eight.
We pulled the kitchen table out to the garden for breakfast, and made a capital meal of fried eggs and bread and marmalade. We sat over breakfast smoking cigarettes and drinking last cups of tea. It seemed odd to be living such a leisurely life 700 yards from the enemy, but the cottages in front secured us as long as they did not use artillery. However, this was to come later. An artillery observing officer came to fix up a field telephone just by our breakfast table. He expressed his opinion that the enemy had got their guns up, and that the day would be lively.
"Well," said Goyle, "perhaps we had better get back to the trench for a bit anyway." Our trench was only ten yards off, just the other side of the garden, and we stepped into it. Scarcely had we done so than—crash!—a black Maria fell fair and square on the farm where we had been sleeping. It was a matter of seconds, and what happened to the artillery observing officer, whom we had left behind adjusting his telephone, I do not know. Perhaps he lived. Artillery observing officers have a knack of living in places where any other man would be killed. However, we had no time to speculate on his fate, for a minute later another high-explosive shell burst fifty yards over the trench, followed by a second twenty-five yards over us. The enemy were shortening their range. The men stirred uneasily in their dug-outs. No rat in a trap could feel worse than an infantryman in a trench when a big gun is searching for him with high explosive. BANG! A shell burst on the other side of the road—ten yards from us. The next would undoubtedly do it.
"Here," I called to Goyle, "what about this? They are getting our range."
"We had better quit," he said. "Don't let the men run—file out slowly to the right, and lie down behind that bank there. The other platoon must stay; they are not being molested at present."
With as much dignity as possible, considering I expected a black Maria in the back at any moment, I led the men out of the trench, and we threaded our way gingerly back to the bank indicated, from which we watched the vicious demolition of our empty trench.