XII
FIELDS OF GOLD
May 23
The beauty of these May days is so intense and wonderful after the cold, grey weather and sudden rush of spring that men are startled by it, and find it outrageously cruel that death and blood and pain should be thrust into such a setting. Once in history two fat kings met in a field of France, between silken tents and on strips of tapestry laid upon the grass, so that this scene of glitter and shimmer was called for every age of schoolboys "The Field of the Cloth of Gold." Out here in France now there is a field of honour, stretching for more than a hundred miles, held by British soldiers; and that is a true field of cloth of gold, for everywhere behind the deep belt of cratered land, so barren and blasted that no seed of life is left in the soil, there are miles of ground where gold grows, wonderfully brilliant in the warm sunshine of these days. It is the gold of densely growing dandelions and of buttercups in great battalions. They cover the wreckage of old trenches, and bloom in patches of ground between powdered fragments of brick- and stone-work which are still called by the names of old villages swept off the face of the earth by fierce bombardments.
If you wish to picture our Army out here now, the landscape in which our men are fighting—and they like to think you want to do so—you must think of them marching along roads sweet-scented with lilac and apple-blossom, and over those golden fields to the white edge of the dead land. They are hot under heavy packs all powdered with dust, so that they wear white masks like a legion of Pierrots, and on their steel helmets the sun shines brazenly. But there is a soft breeze blowing, and as they march through old French villages showers of tiny white petals are blown upon them from the wayside orchards like confetti at a wedding feast, though it is for this dance of death called war. And these hot, dusty soldiers of ours, closed about by guns and mule teams and transport columns surging ceaselessly along the highways to the Front, drink in with their eyes cool refreshing shadows of green woods set upon hill-sides where the sun plays upon the new leaves with a melody of delicate colour-music, and spreads tapestries of light and shade across sweeps of grass-land all interwoven with the flowers of France.
Our soldiers do not walk blindly through this beauty. It calls to them, these men of Surrey and Kent and Devon, these Shropshire lads and boys of the Derbyshire dales, and at night in their camps, before turning in to sleep in the tents, they watch the glow of the western sun and the fading blue of the sky, and listen to the last song of birds tired with the joy of the day, and are drugged by the scent of closing flowers and of green wheat growing so tall, so quickly tall, behind the battlefields. These tents are themselves like flowers in the darkness when candlelight gleams through their canvas, and at night the scene of war is lit up by star-shells and vivid flashes of light as great shells fall and burst beyond the zone of tents, where British soldiers crouch in holes and burrow deep into the earth. It is under the blue sky of these days, and in this splendour of spring-time, that English boys and young Scots go into the fires of hell, where quite close to them the birds still sing, as I heard the nightingale amidst the crash of gun-fire.
They were Shropshire lads of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry of the glorious 3rd Division, who helped to turn the tide of battle on one of these recent days when there was savage fighting through several days and nights. The officer in command of one of their companies found the ruined village of Tilloy-les-Mufflaines in front of him still held by the enemy when our troops assaulted it. They were working their machine-guns and raking another body of infantry.
"Come on, Shropshires," shouted the young officer, and his boys followed him. They worked round the flank of the village, cut off ninety of the enemy and captured them, and thereby enabled other troops to get forward. One of these Shropshire officers went out with only a few men 200 yards beyond the front line that night, and took twenty prisoners in a dug-out there.
Into that same village of Tilloy cleared by Shropshires an officer of the King's Own Liverpools, with a lance-corporal, dashed into a ruined house from which the enemy was sniping in a most deadly way, and brought out two officers and twenty-eight men as prisoners. It was a subaltern of the Suffolks who went out in daylight under frightful fire to reconnoitre the enemy's lines and brought back knowledge which saved many lives. On the night of May 3, when all the sky was blazing with fire, it was the Royal Scots of the 3rd Division who held part of the line against heavy counter-attacks. The men had been fighting against great odds. Many of them had fallen, and the wounded were suffering horribly. Thirst tortured them, not only the wounded but also the unwounded, and there was no chance of water coming up through the hellish barrage. No chance except for the gallantry of the adjutant of the Royal Scots away back at battle headquarters near Monchy, where heavy crumps were bursting. He guessed his men craved for water, and he risked almost certain death to take it to them, going through all the fire with a few carriers and by a miracle untouched. This same adjutant went out again across the battle-ground under heavy fire to reorganize an advanced signal-station where there were many dead and wounded, and all the lines were cut. It was a young second lieutenant of the Royal Fusiliers of the 3rd Division who took command of two companies when all the other officers had been killed or wounded, and so comforted the men that under his leadership they dug a line close to the German position east of Monchy, and all through the day and night of tragic fighting held it against strong attacks and under infernal shell-fire. Day after day, night after night, our men are fighting like that. And when for a little while they are relieved and given a rest they come back across those fields of the cloth of gold, beyond those barren fields where so many of their comrades lie, and look around and take deep breaths and say, "By Jove, what perfect weather!" and become a little drunk with the beauty of this world of life, and hate the thought of death.