When he read out the pink slip to his subordinates, they almost groaned. Late products of the at last up-to-date O.T.C.’s of England, they had only been out a few months and although they had seen shell-fire and heavy casualties, yet there had always been a retreating enemy, and fresh ground won every week. The endless-seeming years of Trench Warfare they had missed entirely. The slow attrition that left one alone, with all one’s friends wounded or killed, dispersed to distant commands or remote jobs, meant nothing to them. They had been schoolboys when Paschendaele was being contested, Cadets when the Germans burst through the Fifth Army. They wanted a victorious march to Berlin.
Dormer read the message out to the company. The men received the news with ironical silence. He had the guards changed, and the parade dismissed, but confined to billets. He heard one of his N.C.O.’s say to another: “Cease fire! We’ve got the same amount of stuff on us as we had two days ago!”
It made him thoughtful. Ought he to crime the chap? Why should he? Had the Armistice come just in time? If it hadn’t come, would he have been faced with the spectacle of two armies making peace by themselves, without orders, against orders, sections and platoons and companies simply not reloading their rifles, machine gunners and Trench Mortars not unpacking their gear, finally even the artillery keeping teams by the guns, and the inertia gradually spreading upwards, until the few at the top who really wanted to go on, would have found the dead weight of unwillingness impossible to drag? The prospect, though curious, was not alarming. In a country so denuded and starved, one could keep discipline by the simple expedient of withholding rations. He had already seen, a year before at Étaples, the leaderless plight of all those millions of armed men, once they were unofficered. He was not stampeded by panic, and his inherited, inbred honesty bade him ask himself: “Why shouldn’t they make Peace themselves?” The object that had drawn all these men together was achieved. The invasion of France was at an end, that of Belgium a matter of evacuation only. “Cease fire.” It almost began to look like an attempt to save face. Was it the same on the German side too?
In the afternoon he proposed to walk over to Battalion H.Q. and have a word with the Colonel. He knew quite well he should find the other company commanders there. Naturally every one would want to get some idea of what was to be expected under these totally unprecedented circumstances. He was met at the door of his billet by a message from the youngster he had left in charge. He had got a hundred and forty prisoners.
Dormer went at once. He could see it all before he got there. All along the opposite side of the street, faultlessly aligned and properly “at ease” were men in field grey. At either end of the line stood a guard of his own company, and not all Dormer’s pride in the men he had led with very fair success, with whose training and appearance he had taken great pains, could prevent his admitting to himself that the only point at which his lot could claim superiority was in a sort of grumpy humour. The machinery of War had conquered them less entirely than it had conquered the Germans.
In the little time-keeper’s box, turned into the company office, he found a tall, good-looking man, who immediately addressed him in perfect English, giving the rank of Feld Webel, the quantity and regiment of his party and adding: “I surrender to you, sir.” Dormer gave instructions that the party should be marched to Brigade Head-quarters. He wanted to send some report as to the capture, but his subordinate replied: “We didn’t capture ’em. They just marched up the street. The post at the bridge let ’em through.” Dormer let it go at that, and having seen the street cleared, he walked over to see his Colonel, who was billeted in a big school in a public park. His story was heard with that sort of amusement that goes with the last bottle of whisky, and the doubt as to when any more will be obtainable. The Adjutant said: “Simply gave ’emselves up, did they?”
But the Captain commanding C Company, a man of about Dormer’s own sort and service, voiced Dormer’s thought.
“I believe, in another week, we’d have had both sides simply laying down their arms.”
“Oh, nonsense, soon stop that!” The Colonel spoke without real conviction. He had to say that officially.
With regard to the object for which he had come, Dormer found every one in his own difficulty. No one knew what was to happen, except that arrangements were already on foot for enormous demobilization camps. But the immediate steps were not even known at Brigade. Every one, of course, aired some pet idea, and were interrupted by noise outside, shouts and cries, the sound of marching, and orders given in German. The room emptied in a moment. The park was at one end of the town, and abutted on the smaller streets of artisans’ dwellings that, in every town of the sort, goes by the name of Le Nouveau Monde. This quarter had apparently emptied itself into the park, to the number of some hundreds, mostly people of over military age, or children, but one and all with those thin white faces that showed the long years of insufficient and unsuitable food, and the spiritual oppression that lay on “occupied” territory. They were shouting and shaking their fists round the compact formation of Dormer’s prisoners, who had just been halted, in front of the house. The N.C.O. in charge had been ordered by Brigade to bring them back. A chit explained the matter: “Prisoners taken after 11.0 a.m. to be sent back to their own units, on the line of retreat.”