CHAPTER XVII
The Rat in the Night
Butte de Walincourt! Butte de Walincourt on the way to Bapaume! What a great and thrilling story history will have to tell of Butte de Walincourt—merely a hill of one hundred and fifty feet altitude and round as the crown of a Derby hat! The days and days when the blood of fighting men streamed down both sides of that fiercely contested ridge. The Germans never fought more furiously than they did to hold Butte de Walincourt. They protected its flanks and held on to it against magnificent assaults. But more determined was the work of the South Africans and the Durham regiments of England in the battle for the round top of the Butte. Countless times they made the summit, countless times they were driven down again. Great squads of them were slaughtered, but they would come back the more sturdily, yes, even fanatically. It was a specific, concrete test of the endurance and courage of the Boche against the British and the British handsomely won.
It was such an awful struggle, such a thrilling victory that in quick recognition the French Government has placed around historic Butte de Walincourt a high wired enclosure wherein after the war is to be built a superb memorial. Atop the round mound British commanders have already reverently erected a stone inscribed to the heroism of the South Africans and Durhams.
I had not the privilege of being in on this great fight, but the Oxfords and Bucks were brought up to the first line after the capture of Butte de Walincourt and they certainly picked out a lively job for us. It was the taking of a huge quarry behind the ridge. A dozen times in half as many days thousands of us poured into this quarry and routed the Germans only to be literally blown out of it again by the big German guns.
In the end our army was to sweep forward reclaiming many miles of wounded France, but there did not seem to be any prospect of advance in those days when we were tossed in and out of that quarry, each time paying heavily with lives. On the fifth day—it was in November, 1916—our battalion, badly battered, was relieved of this dangerous shuttle-cock existence and sent back to “Restville”—this particular “Restville” being pretty Beauval on the Albert-Amiens road, some thirty-one kilometres from Bapaume.
Most gratefully we “packed all our troubles in our old kit bags” and took our way down the friendly road. One of the joys of war is meeting the procession on the way to “Restville.” It was all in a huge cloud of dust—marching men, thundering motor trucks and lorries, the smoothly gliding motor cars of the officers of high command and the aviators, lumbering Paris ’buses. Shouts, yells and laughter, songs, French and English, and with the marching Tommies held not at all in check for their countless antics by their officers. For the officers, every one, had mighty good reason to be proud of their Tommies. Officers were constantly giving permission with a smiling nod to their soldiers to take advantage of invitations from the motor vehicles to the men on foot to “Get aboard, you bloomin’ hiker!” And the officers themselves were being picked up by comrades. One of the happiest features was the frequent reunions of intimate friends—friends who had been wondering about the fates of one another.
The gloom of war could not annihilate the wonderful esprit of the good French folks of Beauval. We were back on a holiday, we were enjoying a brief respite from grim gaming with death, and they tried to hide all signs of tragedy from us. With cabaret performances in the restaurants, baths, the cool shaves, the luxury of getting manicured, concerts, vaudeville shows, public and private dining, dancing, pretty girls, general cordiality—why, God bless Beauval! As, indeed, I can remember none other of these “Restvilles” of France without finding my heart prompting the same utterance.
This period of sunshine vanished quickly enough and November 14th found our battalion back on the front line at the Butte.
I am afraid there is nothing clairvoyant about me. I had no premonition whatsoever on leaving pleasant Beauval of the momentous episode so very nearly ahead in my life. I was all recollection then of the fine time I had had. I wanted to linger mentally with it as long as I could. Probably most delicious memory of all to the trench-worn, trench-soiled man I had been was that of the hot baths I enjoyed in Beauval. And the cold showers! I went in for about four of them the first day in and held that average pretty nearly every other day of our rest.