Between the Lines

by Boyd Cable

'Only when the fields and roads are sufficiently dry will the favourable moment have come for an advance.'—EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

It is Sunday, and the regiment marching out towards the firing line and its turn of duty in the trenches meets on the road every now and then a peasant woman on her way to church. Some of the women are young and pretty, some old and wrinkled and worn; they walk alone or in couples or threes, but all alike are dressed in black, and all alike tramp slowly, dully, without spring to their step. Over them the sun shines in a blue sky, round them the birds sing and the trees and fields spread green and fresh; the flush of healthy spring is on the countryside, the promise of warm, full-blooded summer pulses in the air. But there is no hint of spring or summer in the sad-eyed faces or the listless, slow movements of the women. It is a full dozen miles to the firing line, and to eye or ear, unless one knows where and how to look and listen, there is no sign of anything but peace and pleasant life in the surroundings. But these black-clad women do know—know that the cool green clump of trees over on the hill-side hides a roofless ruin with fire-blackened walls; that the church spire that for all their lives they had seen out there over the sky-line is no longer visible because it lies shell-smitten to a tumbled heap of brick and stone and mortar; that the glint of white wood and spot of scarlet yonder in the field is the rough wooden cross with a képi on top marking the grave of a soldier of France; that down in the hollow just out of sight are over a score of those cap-crowned crosses; that a broad belt of those graves runs unbroken across this sunlit face of France. They know, too, that those dull booms that travel faintly to the ear are telling plain of more graves and of more women that will wear black. It is little wonder that there are few smiles to be seen on the faces of these women by the wayside. They have seen and heard the red wrath of war, not in the pictures of the illustrated papers, not in the cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth tales of chance men who have been in it; but at first-hand, with their own eyes and ears, in the leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing white clouds of the shrapnel, the black spouting smoke of the high-explosive, in the deafening thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the crash of falling walls, the groans of wounded men, the screams of frightened children. Some of them may have seen the shattered hulks of men borne past on the sagging stretchers; all of them have seen the laden ambulance wagons and motors crawling slowly back to the hospitals.

And of these women you do not say, as you would of our women at home, that they may perhaps have friend or relation, a son, a brother, a husband, a lover, at the front. You say with certainty they have one or other of these, and may have all, that every man they know, of an age between, say, eighteen and forty, is serving his country in the field or in the workshops—and mostly in the field—if so be they are still alive to serve.

The men in the marching khaki regiment know all these things, and there are respect and sympathy in the glances and the greetings that pass from them to the women. 'They're good plucked 'uns,' they tell each other, and wonder how our women at home would shape at this game, and whether they would go on living in a house that was next door to one blown to pieces by a shell yesterday, and keep on working in fields where hardly a day passed without a shell screaming overhead, whether they'd still go about their work as best they could for six days a week and then to church on Sunday.

Two women, one young and lissom, the other bent and frail and clinging with her old arm to the erect figure beside her, stand aside close to the ditch and watch the regiment tramp by. 'Cheer up, mother,' one man calls. 'We're goin' to shift the Boshies out for you,' and 'Bong jewer,' says another, waving his hand. Another pulls a sprig of lilac from his cap and thrusts it out as he passes. 'Souvenir!' he says, lightly, and the young woman catches the blossom and draws herself up with her eyes sparkling and calls, 'Bonne chance, Messieurs. Goo-o-o-d lock.' She repeats the words over and over while the regiment passes, and the men answer, 'Bong chawnse' and 'Good luck,' and such scraps of French as they know—or think they know. The women stand in the sunshine and watch them long after they have passed, and then turn slowly and move on to their church and their prayers.

The regiment tramps on. It moves with the assured stamp and swing of men who know themselves and know their game, and have confidence in their strength and fitness. Their clothes are faded and weather-stained, their belts and straps and equipments chafed and worn, the woodwork of their rifles smooth of butt and shiny of hand-grip from much using and cleaning. Their faces bronzed and weather-beaten, and with a dew of perspiration just damping their foreheads—where men less fit would be streaming sweat—are full-cheeked and glowing with health, and cheek and chin razored clean and smooth as a guardsman's going on church parade. The whole regiment looks fresh and well set-up and clean-cut, satisfied with the day and not bothering about the morrow, magnificently strong and healthy, carelessly content and happy, not anxious to go out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to move aside from its way by the fight that does find it—all of which is to say it looks exactly what it is, a British regiment of the regular Line, war-hardened by eight or nine months' fighting, moving up from a four days' rest back into the firing line.

It is fairly early in the day, and the sun, although it is bright enough to bring out the full colour of the green grass and trees, the yellow laburnum, and the purple lilac, is not hot enough to make marching uncomfortable. The road, a main route between two towns, is paved with flat cobbles about the size of large bricks, and bordered mile after mile with tall poplars. There are farms and hamlets and villages strung close along the road, and round and about all these houses are women and children, and many men in khaki, a few dogs, some pigs perhaps, and near the farms plenty of poultry. By most of the farms, too, are orchards and fruit-trees in blossom; and in some of these lines of horses are ranked or wagons are parked, sheltered by the trees from aerial observation. For all this, it must be remembered, is far enough back from the firing line to be beyond the reach of any but the longest-range guns—guns so big that they are not likely to waste some tons of shells on the off-chance of hitting an encampment and disabling few or many horses or wagons.

Towards noon the regiment swings off the road and halts in a large orchard; rifles are stood aside, equipments and packs are thrown off, tunics unbuttoned and flung open or off, and the men drop with puffing sighs of satisfaction on the springy turf under the shade of the fruit-trees. The 'travelling cookers' rumble up and huge cauldrons of stew and potatoes are slung off, carried to the different companies, and served steaming hot to the hungry men. A boon among boons these same cookers, less so perhaps now that the warmer weather is here, but a blessing beyond price in the bitter cold and constant wet of the past winter, when a hot meal served without waiting kept heart in many men and even life itself in some. Their fires were lit before the regiment broke camp this morning, and the dinners have been jolting over the long miles since sun-up, cooking as comfortably and well as they would in the best-appointed camp or barrack cook-house.

The men eat mightily, then light their pipes and cigarettes and loll at their ease. The trees are masses of clustering pink and white blossom, the grass is carpeted thick with the white of fallen petals and splashed with sunlight and shade. A few slow-moving clouds drift lazily across the blue sky, the big, fat bees drone their sleepy song amongst the blossoms, the birds rustle and twitter amongst the leaves and flit from bough to bough. It would be hard to find a more peaceful picture in any country steeped in the most profound peace. There is not one jarring note—until the 'honk, honk' of a motor is followed by the breathless, panting whirr of the engine, and a big car flashes down the road and past, travelling at the topmost of its top speed. There is just time to glimpse the khaki hood and the thick scarlet cross blazing on a white circle, and the car is gone. Empty as it is, it is moving fast, and with luck and a clear road it will be well inside the danger zone at the back door of the trenches in less than twenty minutes. In half an hour perhaps it will have picked up its full load, and be sliding back smoothly and gently down the cobbled road, swinging carefully now to this side to avoid some scattered bricks, now to that to dodge a shell-hole patched with gravel, driven down as tenderly and gently as it was driven up fiercely and recklessly.

Presently there are a few quiet orders, a few minutes' stir and movement, a shifting to and fro of khaki against the green and pink and white . . . and the companies have fallen in and stand in straight rulered ranks. A pause, a sharp order or two, and the quick staccato of 'numbering off' ripples swiftly down the lines; another pause, another order, the long ranks blur and melt, harden and halt instantly in a new shape; and evenly and steadily the ranked fours swing off, turn out into the road, and go tramping down between the poplars. There has been no flurry, no hustle, no confusion. The whole thing has moved with the smoothness and precision and effortless ease of a properly adjusted, well-oiled machine—which, after all, is just what the regiment is. The pace is apparently leisurely, or even lazy, but it eats up the miles amazingly, and it can be kept up with the shortest of halts from dawn to dusk.