The six privates awoke from a state of inert dreaming, or lolling against the barn that flanked the gateway of battalion headquarters, to stand in two rows of three and await orders. At last the A.S.C. lorry had turned up, an hour late, and while it turned round I despatched one of the privates to our transport to get six sand-bags. By the time he returned the lorry had performed its about-wheel, and, all aboard, myself in front and the six behind, we are off for C——.
We pass through Béthune. As we approach through the suburbs, we rattle past motor despatch riders, A.S.C. lorries, Red Cross carts, columns of transport horses being exercised, officers on horse-back, officers in motor-cars, small unarmed fatigue parties, battalions on the march; then there are carts carrying bricks, French postmen on bicycles, French navvies in blue uniforms repairing the road, innumerable peasant traps, coal waggons, women with baskets, and children of course everywhere. “Business as usual”—yet, but for a line of men not so many miles away the place would be a desolate ruin like the towns and villages that chance has doomed to be in the firing-line.
So I moralise. Not so the Tommies, sprawling behind, inside the lorry, and caring not a jot for anything save that they are on a “cushy” or soft job, as the rest of the battalion are doing four hours’ digging under R.E. supervision. A good thing to be a Tommy, to be told to fall in here or there, and not to know whether it is for a bayonet-charge, or a job of carting earth!
“Bang—Bang-bang.” We are nearing the firing-line, having left Béthune, where military police stand at every corner directing the traffic with flags, one road “up,” another “down”: we are once more within the noisy but invisible chain of batteries. “Lorries 6 miles per hour.” The shell-holes in the road, roughly filled with stones, would make quicker going impossible anyhow. We are entering C——, and I keep an eagle eye open for ruined houses, and soon stop by a house with two walls and half a roof. Out come the six Tommies and proceed to fill a sand-bag each with bricks and empty it into the lorry. The supply is inexhaustible, and in half an hour the A.S.C. corporal refuses to take more, declaring we have the regulation three-ton load, so I stop work and prepare to depart.
The corporal, however, has heard of a sister-lorry near by, which has unfortunately slipped into a ditch and, so to speak, sprained its ankle. Though extraordinarily unromantic in appearance, the corporal shows himself imbued with a spirit of knight errantry, and, having obtained my permission to rescue the fair damsel, sets off for what he declares cannot take more than ten minutes. As I thought the process would take probably more like twenty minutes, I let the men repair to a house on the opposite side of the road, where was a rather more undamaged piece of roof than usual (it was now raining), and myself explored the place I happened to be in.
Occasionally, at home one comes across a deserted cottage in the country; a most desolate spirit pervades the place. Imagine, then, what it is like in these villages half a mile or a mile behind what has been the firing-line for now twelve months. A few steps off the main road brought me into what had formerly been a small garden belonging to a farm. There had been a red-brick wall all along the north side with fruit trees trained along it. Now, the wall was mostly a rubble-heap, and the fruit trees dead. One sickly pear tree struggled to exist in a crumpled sort of heap, but its wilted leaves only added to the desolation of the scene. An iron gate, between red brick pillars, was still standing, strangely enough; but the little lawn was run to waste, and had a crater in the middle of it about five feet across, inside of which was some disintegrating animal, also empty tins, and other refuse. Trees were broken, weeds were everywhere. I tried to reconstruct the place in my imagination, but it was a chaotic tangle. I came across a few belated raspberries, and picked one or two; they were tasteless and watery. Rubbish and broken glass were strewn everywhere. It was a dreary sight in the grey rain; the only sign of life a few chattering blue-tits.
The house was an utter ruin, only a ground-room wall left standing; some of the outhouses had not suffered so much, but all the roofs were gone. I saw a rusty mangle staring forlornly out of a heap of débris; and a manger and hayrack showed what had been a stable. The pond was just near, too, and gradually I could piece together the various elements of the farm. Who the owners were I vaguely wondered; perhaps they will return after the war; but I doubt if they could make much of the old ruins. These villages will most likely remain a blighted area for years, like the villages reclaimed by the jungle. Already the virginia creeper and woodbine are trying to cover the ugliness....
The Tommies meanwhile had been smoking Gold Flakes, and one or two had also been exploring; one had discovered a child’s elementary botany book, and was studying the illustrations when I came up. Our combined view now was “Where is the lorry?” and this view held the field, with increasing curiosity, annoyance, and vituperation, for one solid hour and a half. It was dinner-time, and a common bond of hunger held us, until at last in exasperation I marched half the party in quest of our errant conveyance. I was thoroughly annoyed with the gallant corporal. Three-quarters of a mile away I found the two lorries. My little corporal had rescued his lorn princess, but she, being a buxom wench, had brought her rescuer into like predicament! And so we came up just in time to see the rescue of our lorry from the treacherous ditch! I felt I could not curse, especially as the little corporal had winded himself somehow in the stomach during the last bout. It had been a feeble show; yet there was the lorry, and in it the bricks, on to which the fellows climbed deliberately as men who recover a lost prize. And so we arrived at our transport (the bricks were for a horse-stand in a muddy yard) at half-past two; after which I dismissed the party to its belated dinner.
The above incident hardly deserves a place in a chapter headed “working-parties,” being in almost every respect different from any other I have ever conducted. I think the “working-party” is realised less than anything else in this war by those who have not been at the front. It does not appeal to the imagination. Yet it is essential to realise, if one wants to know what this war is like, the amount of sheer dogged labour performed by the infantry in digging, draining, and improving trenches.
The “working-party” usually consists of seventy to a hundred men from a company, with either one or two officers. The Brigadier going round the trenches finds a communication trench falling in, and about a foot of mud at the bottom. “Get a working-party on to this at once,” he says to his Staff Captain. The Staff Captain consults one of the R.E. officers, and a note is sent to the Adjutant of one of the two battalions in billets: “Your battalion will provide a working party of ... officers ... full ranks (sergeants and corporals) and ... other ranks to-morrow. Report to Lt. ..., R.E., at ... at 5.0 p.m. to-morrow for work on ... Trench. Tools will be provided.” The Staff Captain then dismisses the matter from his head. The Adjutant then sends the same note to one or more of the four company commanders, detailing the number of men to be sent by the companies specified by him. (He is scrupulously careful to divide work equally between the companies, by the way.) The company commander on receiving the note curses volubly, declares it a “d—d shame the hardest worked battalion in the brigade can’t be allowed a moment’s rest, feels sure the men will mutiny one of these days,” etc., summons the orderly, who is frowsting in the next room with the officers’ servants, and says, “Take this to the sergeant-major,” after scribbling on the note “Parade outside Company H.Q. 3.30 p.m.,” and adding, as the orderly departs, “Might tell the quartermaster-sergeant I want to see him.” Meanwhile the three subalterns are extraordinarily engrossed in their various occupations, until the company commander boldly states that it is “rotten luck, but he supposes as So-and-so took the last, it is So-and-so’s turn, isn’t it?” and details the officers; if they are new officers he tells them the sergeants will know exactly what to do, and if they are old hands he tells them nothing whatever. The “quarter” (company quartermaster-sergeant) then arrives, and is told the party will not be back, probably, till 10.0 p.m., and will he make sure, please, that hot soup is ready for the men on return, and also dry socks if it turns out wet; he is then given a drink, and the company commander’s work is finished.