And We Go On (20 page)

We reached the long duckwalk and all around us were flashes and glows of fire, the great Salient's maw, a huge death-trap, with shells whining and rushing through the air. There were red and yellow flashes, and streaking sparks of fire, and flares, ghostly, looping, falling, unreal, now and then silhouetting a straggling line of steel helmets and hunched shoulders; bewildered men in the dark, bone-weary, shell-dazed, treading on old dead and new dead, and slipping in the foulness of slimy ditches.

Somehow I kept going. Hughes had become querulous, resisting. He hung back, whispered that he wanted to sit down. I had taken his rifle and equipment, and I urged him on, knowing the fate of so many exhausted men who had stopped to rest in that ghoulish area. I took out my entrenching tool handle and menaced him with it as one would a child, making him go on and on and on, until at long last, in that blurry darkness just before dawn we reached tents that were to shelter us. The quartermaster was there to meet us. He took Hughes from me, led him away to give him hot drink and put him to bed. I staggered on, headed for the nearest tent – and pitched head foremost into a crater filled with stagnant water. Both rifles I carried were embedded in the clay and I left them and Hughes' equipment under the water. I was shaking with cold, shaking so that I could hardly speak, drenched, blinded with filth. Tommy came – he had got in ahead, and led me into a tent. There I stripped naked and lay on a pile of blankets while he heaped others over me, a dozen of them. We had plenty of room, plenty of blankets – so many did not need them – and the quartermaster came with his rum and gave me a great mug-f. When I woke it was the next afternoon.

We went in buses to Bourecq and there we were billeted in a barn. The entire company did not muster the strength of a platoon and we sat around, unshaved, unwashed, staring at nothing. At night I sat up and looked around. I was bathed in perspiration, though the night was cold,
for I had been feeling again live flesh sliding over my bayonet, seeing again Mickey's white face close to mine, while his blood seeped from him and warmed my knees.

The men were muttering in their sleep, turning, twisting, straining. Tommy lay with his hands gripped, huddled, whimpering, all the terrors that he had fought back during consciousness flooding over his soul when the barrier of his will was lowered. Courage, in the heat of battle, is an animal instinct. There's a certain gregariousness in it, the instinct of the herd, the eyes of the other fellow on you; but the courage that kept a man in his place in those terrible late November days at Passchendale was the straining of the soul, the last limit of human pluck. Twice I woke and found a man on his hands and knees, gazing about him, wakened by the horrors of his own mind, unable to comprehend that at last the Salient stench had left his nostrils.

The first few days in Bourecq were easy ones. The captain was kind to us. He came on the ground as we formed up the first time, our pitiful ranks, and gazed at us without speaking, and I saw in his eyes things of which no man speaks – the things that words would kill. We had little drill, but rested, and slept and had good food and finally were more like human beings than we had been, but every man who had endured Passchendale would never be the same again, was more or less a stranger to himself.

A draft arrived and Earle was in it. I was glad to see him, more glad than I could say, for there were few of the old boys with us, only Christensen and Tommy and Sambro and Eddie: Earle had heard in England that I had been killed, and the rumour reached Canada. Those with me the first night, when I had been knocked out with the Stokes, had reported me killed, and again when I had been buried the story had gone. We went for a feed together. When we were returning we heard high voices in an estaminet and went in. Red was there confronting one of the “originals.” “Red” had been with the 73rd, and was a good man in the line. The “original” had been on jobs back in safe areas but had got in wrong with authorities and had been sent back to the battalion. He had had a few drinks and now was declaring that Passchendale was nothing, that all the real fighting had taken place before the blasted “umpty-umps” came over. “Red” grinned at him, and said he was not trying to belittle those mighty warriors, the “originals,” and dodged a swing at his chin. Plunk! The “original”
went down for a long count, and when he recovered his friends took him outside.

There were few new men in the draft. Almost all had been wounded at Vimy or the Somme and had belonged to the 73rd or 42nd. I made friends with many of them. Sykes, a dark-haired fellow who read books whenever he could and who could make good rissoles of bully, onion and hardtack; Boland, a neat-built boy; Thornton, slightly deaf, always humming songs; Lockerbie, a tall, well-built man; Williams, another of fine physique. We had a new officer, a man new to France, and he had difficulties. We numbered in French the first morning he paraded us, and he flushed and scolded in a manner that delighted the mischievous. Battalion orders carried the information that the 42nd were now privileged to wear the red hackle; it seemed to be some sort of battle honour. Tommy snorted. “Red Hackles,” he said. “What are they to us! What about Mickey and the Professor and Melville and all the boys? Red hackles, bah!”

I said nothing to him. Everyone's nerves carried too fine an edge to permit argument. A team of the rifle grenadiers was organized and entered in the divisional shoot for the Lipsett shield, and no one seemed surprised when it came to us. Suddenly my leave came through. Leave! I had not thought of it in the last hectic weeks, though “Old Bill” and a few others had mercifully escaped the second trip to Passchendale by having theirs come due.

Leave – I could see Phyilis! I caught a lorry and went to Boulogne and saw the leave boat in the harbour. It had left five minutes before. Those with me swore furiously but I had a stroll around the streets and, after looking up the history of the place, was quite entertained. Then I ran foul of one of those creatures I had always avoided, one of the peacock variety of nincompoops in shiny Sam Browne and cream-coloured breeches.

I had been reading that Mark Twain said France had neither summer nor winter nor morals, that Napoleon's monument outside of Boulogne had been erected to celebrate his triumphant invasion of England, and was walking slowly as I read. My lordship was walking by several feet from where I stood and I never saw him until his rasping voice requested me to “Drop that damn book and salute an officer.”

The book was thrust into my tunic pocket and I gave my snappiest salute. It was not good enough. There had been an appreciative twitter from the blonde charmer at his elbow.

“As you were,” came the rasping voice. “Three paces backward, march. Now then, try again. What regiment? Oh, the Black Watch, quite a lad aren't you? As you were, three paces backward, march. Try again, cut your hand away, my man, don't let it fall beside you.”

My man! My blood boiled. Four times I had to pace backward, advance and salute that smirking monkey, a weak-chinned lieutenant, and then he dismissed me with the sharp warning to look out when I next met him. And he a Canadian, at least he wore Canadian badges!

That night I slept with the leave crowd in a big barrack-like room, and talked till midnight with men from the Second Division, lads who had been at Hill 70, who had indulged in raiding parties. The chatter was interesting. There were bitter denunciations of the folly of Passchendale, and one lad confided to me that he had a scheme he was going to work out while in Blighty. “I'm through holding bloody ditches for King George and Art Currie,” he said. “I'll be in the States in three weeks' time.”

Others talked of their officers and to my surprise I found myself telling what “good heads” we had in the 42nd. One surly-looking fellow of the Sixth Brigade said that he never set eyes on a good officer, he hated them all, and sergeants as well. His own words gave us his status. I thought of the officers with whom I had come in contact and decided that they were exactly the same as the men, good, bad and indifferent, with very little, if any, difference in the average. Their actions when we were out of the line declared their mentality, and in the line they had the advantage of the men. The weak-kneed ones used S.R.D. to fortify them in shaky hours, the soldier had not the opportunity. I had met our adjutant and found him a gentleman, emphatic in his praise of our draft. Everyone liked our colonel, and our regimental sergeant-major, McFarlane, was one of the finest men I met.

As a rule the average officer did not see more than a third as much of raw, undiluted war as did the men under him. The men stayed on post, six on, six off, and saw relays of officers, one at a time, doing two hours out of twenty-four, and that a hurried tour of the trench. The men carried rations, barbed wire and ammunition from dump to front line, in all weathers, under all conditions, and the officer that led them usually had the job once during that trip in the line; the soldier went each night. The men would stay on post and endure all kinds of strafing, dig out dead and wounded comrades from blown-in places, stick it and carry on, and their
officer would not be seen while it lasted. During the two worst days at Passchendale I never saw an officer except Grafftey. Perhaps they were in as dangerous positions as we were. I do not know. Yet, given the same chance, many of the men, probably the majority, would do just the same as they. Officers were simply men in uniforms designed to make them look better than the privates, and they had responsibilities that we did not realize. I never envied them, hated them, nor regarded them any differently than any of the other men. Some were of much finer intellect than mine, most of them had come from finer homes – at least those in the 42nd had – and still there were some I regarded as my inferiors. The general opinion seemed that none of the “brass hats” were better than pole cats with the exception of McDonnell, Lipsett and Byng.

Victoria! Leave men thronging everywhere, hungry for a change of food, for girls who spoke their own tongue, for the welcome of their homes and a clean bed. Men straight from the trenches, lousy, mud-crusted, with the echo of guns in their ears and the smell of dugouts in their nostrils. I pushed through the milling crowd and checked my Lee-Enfield and equipment, then got into the street. Two hours later I had a complete uniform, clean underwear, soft boots, Fox puttees, Bedford cord breeches, a well-cut tunic, a Glengarry and an officer's British warm. I found a fairly clean place on Vauxhall Bridge Road and there I had a hot bath, luxuriated in it, and put on all my clean clothes. Then, after the barber shop, I went to a good restaurant and ordered a meal I had long pictured, and ate it leisurely.

I went back to my room and got ready for bed. It had been so long since I slept on anything but hard boards, trench mud or chicken-wire bunks. Yet something urged me to go out into the murky streets, to walk down the Strand again, one look about before I retired. I refused to go. Clean sheets and a soft bed were mine and I was going to enjoy them. Even then I could not fall asleep and I made plans for the next day. After a good breakfast I would get a taxi and drive through that English part of England and see Phyllis. I remembered her smile as I had left, the last glimpse I had of her face.

When I did doze someone came thundering at my door and I heard sirens. “The Zepps are over,” the fellow shouted.

Zeppelins! After Passchendale! “Go away and leave me alone,” I said. “What's a zeppelin.” It seemed all a joke to me, that panic over a few air ships.
I watched a moment, long fingers of light in the sky, seeking the raiders, and listened to the rattling crashes of the anti-aircraft guns, then went to sleep again.

In the morning I had a delicious breakfast and heard that two Gothas had been brought down and that a number of civilians had been killed. It seemed a very minor affair to me. I was feeling like living again; there had been no dreams of a Boche on my bayonet, no others near to mutter in their sleep little sobs and moans and incoherent profanity.

I hired a car and went out along the same route that the officer had taken me more than a year before. It was not such pleasant weather and winter rain had made the country drab, but it looked lovely to my eyes. I lolled back in the seat, thinking how lucky I had been. It seemed only two hours since I had been trying to keep myself alive till the next day.

We rolled into the little village and when we reached the Inn I paid the driver and sent him back to London. I didn't want to have any link connecting me with sordid things that seemed so remote from “The Black Boar.” The Innkeeper recognized me, and the fact was a thrill in itself. I was given my same room and then went to the little cottage where Phyllis lived. She had only written a few times and I had not let her know I was coming.

An old man opened the door, the uncle, and his wrinkled face was grooved with grief. “Come in,” he said gently. “Her said 'ee might be too late.”

“Too late!” I exclaimed, startled. “What do you mean? Where is Phyllis?”

He shook his head. “I'll tell 'ee,” he said in his gentle way, and related how Phyllis had told him that I was coming back to England and that she would go down to London to see me. I interrupted to tell him I had not written her, but he shook his head again and said, in an almost reverent way, and said that Phyllis had “gifts,” had no need of letters, she knew by some mysterious sixth sense. I had found that out when I met her, and I grew impatient.

“Where is she at now?” I broke in. “I'll look her up in London.”

Again the slow shake of the head. “'Ee be too late,” he said, and thrust me a crumpled paper. It was a wire from London. Phyllis had been killed by a bomb dropped by the German raiders.

Killed by a bomb! I remembered the urge I had had to go out in the streets. If I had gone I would have seen her … The old man rambled on,
talking about her, her little ways that he knew so well, how she hated war, would not read the papers or listen to him talk about it. Then he startled me, chilled me. He invited me to take dinner with him – and he called me “Steve.”