"Here is the Commander-in-Chief's latest dispatch," he said. "Listen to this, gentlemen!"
At no time was there anything approaching a breakdown of command or a failure of morale. Under conditions that made rest and sleep impossible for days together, officers and men remained undismayed, realising that for the time being they must play a waiting game, and determined to make the enemy pay the full price for the advantage which, for the moment, was his.
We broke into applause. We could not help it.
"Naturally," continued the General, "the strain has been awful, because we are employing tired men, fighting without reinforcements against ever fresh bodies of troops. However, more divisions are coming down from the north—you are one of the first arrivals—and Foch has taken supreme command, which means that hereafter the Allied forces will be more evenly distributed and the line stabilised. The long and short of it all is that the enemy has been frustrated, for the time being, in his amiable attempt to drive a wedge between the British and French armies."
"Still," said the voice of the C.R.A., "I suppose the situation is pretty critical?"
"Critical isn't the word! But the line is still intact, though badly bent, and we have beaten all our previous records for Boche-killing, which is saying something. And if they fail to break through—good-bye Germany! It's their last throw. A German who knows he cannot win is a German beaten. Now, gentlemen, you will understand why it is that you cannot go into retirement at present. That's all, I think! To your tents, O Israel—and breakfast! But be ready to move at an hour's notice."
Roy and I jogged wearily back across country to the field where the men were bivouacking. Roy was my senior company commander, and I had brought him to the meeting in preference to the adjutant, who was very young and already bowed down with regimental routine. Roy, a seasoned Ironside of twenty-two, with two-and-a-half years continuous active service to his record, was now my shield and buckler and right-hand man.
We had little to say to one another. We were both dog-tired, and were suffering in addition from that unpleasant form of reaction which comes from hope deferred. We were thinking, too, of the men. They had completed four months of exhausting and expensive trench duty, working by "internal reliefs," which really means no relief at all; each man staying his dour dogged heart with the only two consolations available in those days—the humdrum certainty of ultimate relief by another division, and the ever present possibility of a "Blighty" wound. And now, when they had actually packed up and removed out of the shell area, with a spell of rest and relaxation well within their grasp, they found themselves pulled back into the line. That sort of experience is a severer test of morale than an intensive bombardment. The danger was that they might go stale—just as I had once seen a highly-trained college crew go, when the races were postponed for a week owing to ice on the river.
"We will call a pow-wow when we get back," I said to Roy, "and tell the officers to explain matters to the men as well as they can. They must sing the usual song about our trusty old indispensable Division, the prop and stay of the weaker brethren, proudly filling the breach and saving the situation, and so forth."
"They'll respond all right," said Roy confidently. "They are a wonderful crowd."