The Division left the manœuvre area and went up through Arras. Of course, the weather broke on the very eve of the “show.” That had become almost a matter of routine, like the shelling, the stupendous activities of railways and aeroplanes, the everlasting telephoning. Again Dormer saw going past him endlessly, that stream of men and mules, mules and men, sandwiched in between every conceivable vehicle, from tanks to stretchers. When, after what communiqués described as “continued progress” and “considerable artillery activity,” it had to be admitted that this offensive, like all other offensives, had come to a dead stop, Dormer was not astonished. For one thing, he knew, what no communiqué told, what had stopped it. The Germans? No, capable and determined as they were. The thing which stopped it was Mud. Nothing else. The shell-fire had been so perfect, that the equally perfect and necessarily complicated preparations for going a few hundred yards farther, could not be made. The first advance was miles. The next hundreds of yards. The next a hundred yards.
Then the Bosche got some back. Then everything had to be moved up to make quite certain of advancing miles again. And it couldn’t be done. There was no longer sufficient firm ground to bear the tons of iron that alone could help frail humanity to surmount such efforts.
For another thing, he could not be astonished. For weeks he worked eighteen hours a day, ate what he could, slept when he couldn’t help it. Astonishment was no longer in him. But one bit of his mind remained, untrammelled by the great machine of which he formed an insignificant part. It was a bit of subconsciousness that was always listening for something, just as, under long-range, heavy-calibre bombardment, one listened and listened for the next shell. But the particular detached bit of Dormer was listening and listening for something else. Watching and watching, too, all those faces under tin helmets, and just above gas-mask wallets, all so alike under those conditions that it seemed as difficult to pick out one man from another as one mule from another. Listening for one man to say “I am the one!” to be able to see him, and know that at last he had got rid of that job at Vanderlynden’s. But nothing happened. It was always just going to happen.
At length the Division moved right up into the coal-fields and sat down by a slag heap near Béthune. Then Colonel Birchin called to him one morning across the office: “I say, Dormer, I’ve got the whereabouts of that fellow Chirnside. He’s near Rheims. You’ll have to go.”
Dormer went. For two whole days he travelled across civilian France. France of the small farm, the small town, and the small villa. Far beyond the zone of the English Army, far beyond the zone of any army, he passed by Creil to Paris, and from Paris on again into a country of vine-clad hills above a river. He was in a part where he had never been as a soldier, never gone for one of those brief holidays to Switzerland he had sometimes taken. It caused him much amusement to think of the regular Calais—Bâle express of pre-War days. If they would only run that train now, how it would have to zig-zag over trenches, and lines of communication.
He entered the zone of a French Army. On all sides, in the towns and villages, in the camps and manœuvre areas, he saw blue-coated men, and stared at them, with the same fascinated interest as he now felt, in spite of himself, in spite of any habit or tradition or inclination, in his own khaki variety. These fellows carried more on their backs, had far less transport. His general impression was of something grimmer, more like purgatory, than that which English troops gave him. The physical effort of the individual was greater, his food, pay and accommodation less. And there was none of that extraordinary volunteering spirit of the Kitchener Armies, the spirit which said: “Lumme, boys, here’s a war. Let’s have a go at it!” The French had most of them been conscripted, had known that such a thing might, probably would happen to them, had been prepared for it for years. They had not the advantage of being able to say to themselves: “Well, I jolly well asked for it. Now I’ve got it!”
A saturnine fate brooded over them. He noticed it in the railway and other officials he met. They were so much more official. R.T.O.’s and A.P.M.’s—or the equivalent of them, he supposed—who surveyed his credentials, and passed him on to the place where he was going, did so with the cynical ghost of amusement, as who should say: “Aha! This is you. You’re going there, are you? You might as well go anywhere else.”
Eventually, in a stony village, beneath a pine-clad ridge, he found the familiar khaki and brass, the good nature and amateurishness of his own sort. He stepped out of the train and across a platform and with a curious pang, almost of home-sickness, found himself in England. Here was the superior corporal in slacks from the orderly room. Here were the faultless riding horses, being exercised. There was nothing like them in all the blue-coated armies through which he had passed. The Commandant to whom he reported, treated him partly as an officer reporting, partly as a nephew, asked amused questions about billets in Flanders, who was doing such-and-such a job with Corps, what were the prospects of leave, and above all, did Dormer play bridge? He did. Ah! Then the main necessities of modern warfare were satisfied.
And as he found his billet and changed his clothes, Dormer reflected how right it all was. What was the good of being officious and ill-tempered? What was the good of being energetic even? Here we all were, mixed up in this inferno. The most sensible, probably the most efficient thing to do, was to forget it every night for a couple of hours, and start fresh in the morning. Chirnside was away with his detachment, but would be back shortly. In the meantime the Commandant hoped Dormer would join his Mess. The billet was comfortable and Dormer made no objection. On the contrary, he settled down for a day or two with perfect equanimity. It was always a day or two nearer the inevitable end of the War, which must come sometime, a day or two without risk, and actually without discomfort. What more could one ask?
The Commandant, Major Bone, was a fine-looking man, past middle age, with beautiful grey hair and blue eyes with a twinkle. His height and carriage, a certain hard-wearing and inexpensive precision about his uniform, suggested an ex-guards Sergeant-major. It was obvious that he had spent all his life in the army, took little notice of anything that went on outside it, and felt no qualms as to a future which would be provided for by it. He was one of those men with whom it was impossible to quarrel, and Dormer pleased him in the matter of blankets. The Major offered some of those necessities to Dormer, who was obliged to reply that he had six and feared his valise would hold no more. He had won the old man’s heart.