Farther on we passed a more forceful sight of war. It was a tiny cavalry ambulance convoy. Just one hooded Red Cross wagon, driven by a blue-coated cavalryman and followed by a cuirassier with bandaged head, riding one horse and leading another with an empty saddle. What a picture that little convoy would have made if some artist could have caught it—the pathetic little wagon with its hidden load of pain, the charger and empty saddle, and the splendid cuirassier with the bandaged head sitting his horse for all the world to see, proud as a lover who has fought for his mistress.
A mile more and our march was done. We were halted by a wayside inn and told to eat our rations. I went into the inn to see if there was any prospect of a drink, but they were sold out of everything except coffee. That day was probably the briskest day's trade the little inn ever did, and looking at it now it seems odd that the landlady and her daughter should have been bustling about intent solely on business within what proved to be actually half a mile of the firing-line. Two hours later our guns were opening fire in a field by the inn on some Germans in the next village.
As we sat there we now saw two regiments of Cuirassiers retiring over the open ground towards us. They were part of a French cavalry division which had been lent to co-operate with the British. Magnificent-looking fellows they were, too, with their breastplates and long black plumes; the officers actually had their breastplates burnished, and looked just like our Life Guards at Whitehall.
When we had eaten our rations we fell in again and moved off, and a few hundred yards down the road came on our cavalry, dismounted behind some buildings. From them we learnt that the enemy had been located about half a mile farther down the road. We were told from this point to leave the road and move in sections across country, and in this formation passed on beyond the cavalry. They had done their job and found the enemy, and it was now for us to come and take up the line.
VIII. GETTING INTO ACTION
After the cavalry had withdrawn my regiment was lined out along a road running at right angles to the road down which we had advanced. From this time onwards for the next ten days I only knew what the companies on my left and right were doing, and not always that. As a platoon commander, I was responsible for the fifty men under me, and all the information it was necessary for me to have was included in the orders which Goyle, my company commander, gave for the movements of my platoon. Therefore, for general knowledge of the battle, I had to rely on such deductions as I could make from sound of firing on my right and left and any gossip I could pick up when I went back to regimental headquarters.
Advancing to attack in these days of modern warfare is a very slow business. It is essential that platoons, companies, and regiments should move forward together in one line and not allow gaps to come between them, and what with one regiment waiting for another to advance, and each waiting for orders from their respective colonels, who in turn are waiting for the word from the Brigadier, there is often considerable delay. This delay is to a certain extent mitigated by the general policy of junior officers of pushing forward on their own initiative until they are stopped.
As a platoon commander one works with the platoon commander on one's left or right, leaving the platoon sergeant to keep in touch with the platoon on the other flank. To have a fellow subaltern to talk to as one lies in a ditch being shelled is a great comfort.
However, we were kept along the road we had first lined for about an hour before any further move was made, and most of the officers of the regiment congregated in a little group while we were waiting for orders. I was much interested in watching the doings of some gunner officers who had come up. Two of them were surveying the ground in front through field-glasses. From where we were we could see nothing, and as there had not been a shot fired that day we did not know how many of the enemy there were in front of us or where they were. However, the gunners were able to see something, for, after a bit, they conferred with the battery commander. Acting on their information he sent back a message for the guns to come up, and up they dashed, wheeled into line in the field, and unlimbered.
I happened to be standing near the battery commander, and ventured to ask him what he was going to do.