Jeffery E. Jeffery

“ Does our escort (twenty armed men under a sergeant) fear a combined revolt, I wonder, or is this done merely to annoy us? I suspect the latter. A crowd of inhabitants forms round us, pressing close to say good-bye. Suddenly the German officer notices this and in one second is transformed into a raging beast. He wheels round upon the crowd, waves his stick and pours forth a torrent of abuse. The people cower back against the wall and his anger subsides. It is the first display of German temper that I have seen. To hear women reviled, even in a strange tongue—and for nothing—is horrible. ”

“ Tony drew his revolver and stood up, peering over the shield, expecting every moment to see a line of bayonets emerge.
There was a roar behind. He heard the rush of feet and the rattle of equipment. He was conscious of the smell of sweating bodies and the sight of wild, frenzied faces. Then the charge, arriving just in time, swept past him, a mad irresistible wave of humanity, driving the enemy before it and leaving the guns behind like rocks after the passage of a flood. ”

“ It amazes me to watch the sangfroid with which they go about their daily occupations regardless of the never-ceasing sound of guns and shells, regardless of the fact that the German line, as the crow flies, is less than two miles away. At 8 p.m. to the moment, whilst we are at dinner, they troop through into their own room to bed, each with a charming "Bon soir, messieurs." And on each occasion they make me personally feel that we are rather brutal to be occupying two-thirds of their house and spending our days making the most appalling havoc of their country. ”

“ Never once, from the moment when his unit left Havre till a month [131] later it arrived upon the Aisne, had its men been short of food or its horses of forage. He had replaced deficiencies from some apparently inexhaustible store of "spares"; he had provided the best billets, the safest wagon lines, the freshest bread with a consistency that was almost uncanny. In the darkest days of the retreat he had remained imperturbed, "pinching" freely when blandishments failed, distributing the comforts as well as the necessities of life with a lavish hand and an optimistic smile. ”

“ The few remaining infantry emptied their magazines and crept off down the hill. The guns fired their last few rounds as the teams came jingling up. Their arrival was the signal for a fresh outburst of fire. The few moments required for limbering up seemed a lifetime as men fell fast and horses mad with terror broke loose and dashed away. But years of stern discipline and careful training stood the battery in good stead now. The principle of "Abandon be damned: we never abandon guns," was not forgotten. ”

“ Never could a bombardment have done its work of destruction more thoroughly than here. Not figuratively, but literally; no one brick stood upon another, scarcely one brick was whole. Walked on up the sunken road that leads north from Fricourt past the Dingle and Shelter Wood. For days this road had been a death-trap. It was strewn with corpses, with stretchers on which lay wounded men awaiting removal, with broken bits of equipment, English and German—and it stank. We arrived at the headquarters of a battalion and asked if we could see the colonel. ”

“ But now it is midwinter, the second winter of the war, and the French sentries no longer wave to us, for they have seen too many train-loads of English troops to be more than mildly interested. The war to which we set out so light-heartedly sixteen months ago has proved itself to be not the "greatest of games," but the greatest of all ghastly horrors threatening the final disruption of civilised humanity. More than a year has passed and the end is not in sight. ”

“ Inside the town there are many signs of the devastation of war—buildings gutted, whole streets of small houses laid flat in ruins. The pavements are crowded and people throw chocolates and cigarettes to us. German officers, wrapped in their long grey cloaks, swagger about, brushing everyone aside in haughty insolence. From the windows of two or three hospitals French soldiers peer out and wave to us in obvious sympathy. [215] Approaching the railway station we go past the identical spot where, eight weeks ago to the day, the battery detrained. ”

“ A long low loophole carefully protected with sandbags and steel plates provided me with my first view of the front.
I was now some fifteen feet or so above ground level and could see the backs of all our lines of trenches, could see the smoke of burning fires and men walking casually up and down or engaged in digging, planking, revetting, and so on. Beyond was the front line—less distinct and with fewer signs of activity in it; beyond that again a strip of varying width, untrampled, green and utterly forsaken—No Man's Land. ”

“ Ambition, backed by his major's promise to have him as a subaltern later on, had vanquished. Suppressing the inevitable feeling of nostalgia which rose in him, he had joined the divisional ammunition column, prepared to do his best in a position wholly distasteful to him. [126]
In an army every unit depends for its efficiency upon the system of discipline inculcated by its commander, aided by the spirit of individual enthusiasm which pervades its members; the less the enthusiasm the sterner must be the discipline. ”

“ The villainies that he perpetrated for their wellbeing, if discovered, would have given him small chance before a stern commanding officer. He stole oats from the forage barn, bread and sugar from his barrack-room, and even the feeds from the next manger. Snatty's moral sense, as we have seen, was not a very high one. But pricked ears and gentle whinnies as he approached, and velvety muzzles pushed into his roughened hand, betrayed the effect of many a purloined dainty, and amply compensated for any qualms which a guilty but belated conscience may have given him. ”

“ Bringing up ammunition one dark night along a road which, though never safe, had perforce to be used for lack of any other, the teams were caught by a salvo of high explosive shell and suffered heavily. Four drivers and nine horses were killed, seven drivers and thirteen horses were wounded. Bilfred escaped unhurt, but he was the only one in his team who did. A direct hit on the limber brought instantaneous death to the wheelers and their beloved driver. A merciful revolver shot put an end to Binty's screaming agony. Bruno and Bacchus were fortunate in only getting flesh wounds from splinters. ”

“ Bilfred, either because he despised the German artillery or because he imagined that the reports were those of his own guns, to which he was quite accustomed, never even raised his head. His curly tail flapped regularly from side to side, protecting him from a swarm of flies whilst he reached out as far as his harness would allow and tore up great mouthfuls of grass. He had always been a glutton, and it was as if he knew, [116] shells or no shells, that this was to be his last chance for some time. It was; there followed four days of desperate strain for man and beast. ”

“ Whilst inclined to boast of it in a laughing way to his brother officers, he had the good sense to overlook many trivial offences and to make much of anything that he could find to praise. What pleased him most of all was Snatty's behaviour to his horses. Dirty he still was upon occasions, and scarcely as smart as most drivers of the battery; nor was he always quite devoid of drink, but to his horses from that first day onwards he became a devoted, faithful slave. They were a pair of which any man might well have been proud. ”

“ Tony is not what you'd call a professional soldier. His military interests are strictly confined to the reputation of his battery, and to his own ability to command two guns in action. Naturally he was pleased when I appointed him A.D.C. The part of the year's work which interested him, practice camp and so on, was over. In place of the tedium of manœuvres as a regimental subaltern, he foresaw a novel and more or less amusing occupation on my staff for the rest of the summer, and he knew that he would go back to his own station in the autumn in time for the hunting season. ”

“ The gunners are busy washing down the guns and wagons, the drivers sit around the courtyard scrubbing away at their harness: through the open window I can hear them singing softly. The poultry picking their way delicately about the yard, the old patron carrying armfuls of straw to his cattle, and Madame sitting sewing in the kitchen doorway almost make one feel that peace has come again into the world. But from the eastward occasionally and very faintly there comes that ominous rumbling which portends carnage, destruction—Death.... ”

“ The years went by, and Snatty soldiered on, winter and summer, drill season and leave season, content to drive the wheel of A and drink a bit too much on Saturdays. But in that time he had become a man—not a strong, determined man, certainly not a refined one, but for all that a man. To Briddlington, who had raised him from the mental slough in which he had lain to all appearances content, he at no time betrayed a sense of gratitude. ”

“ In your case the 'gunner' instinct has been obliterated by that of the staff officer. The guns have lost their fascination for you. Isn't that so?"
"In a way, yes."
"Well, in some men—and Tony happens to be one of them—that fascination lasts as long as life itself. Often enough in ordinary times it lies dormant. But as soon as war comes it shows itself at once in the mad rush made by officers to get back to batteries—that is, to go on service with the guns. It is the curse of our regiment in some ways: many potential generals abandon their ambitions because of it. ”

“ There are rumours, too, that the division is shortly going out "to rest." The infantry deserve it, for theirs is the hard part: daily I admire them more, every man of them from the humblest private who digs in the slushy trenches or stands on guard in a sap thirty yards or less from the enemy and quite possibly on top of a mine to their brigadier who conceals his V.C. and D.S.O. ribbons beneath a rubber suit and spends more of his time in the front line trenches than out of them. ”

“ And I, a novice at all this kind of work, am no longer a subaltern. I am directly responsible for the welfare and efficiency of the battery which this long train is bearing into the zone of war. How we fare when we get there, what kind of tasks are allotted to us, and how we succeed in coping with them I hope to record in due course. But this I know now—the human material with which I have to deal is good enough. We have the advantage of being a homogeneous unit, for we belong to one of the "locally raised" divisions. ”

“ But in a few days, when everybody (not excluding myself and the other officers) had discovered how much had been forgotten during our long spell in action, a great spirit of emulation began to be displayed. Subsections vied with one another to produce the smartest gun detachment, the sleekest horses, the best turned-out ride, the cleanest harness, guns, and wagons.
The colonel, after the manner of his kind, came at the end of a week or so to inspect things. He is not the sort of man upon whom one can easily impose. ”

“ And he grinned as does a man well pleased with the success of his schemes. To complete his satisfaction, Scupham appeared soon afterwards bringing up a large bundle of kit and a few luxuries in the way of food. It transpired that he had presented himself to the last-joined subaltern of the D.A.C. and had bluffed that perplexed and inexperienced officer into turning out a cart to drive him as far as the battery wagon line, whence he had come up on an ammunition wagon. ”

“ Theory after theory has been disproved by the devastating power of the high explosive and the giant gun. Horse and field batteries no longer dash into action to the music of jingling harness and thudding hoofs. They creep in by night with infinite precautions and place their guns in casemates which are often ten feet thick; they occupy the same position not for hours, but for months at a time; they fire at targets which [5] are sometimes only fifty yards or even less in front of their own infantry, with the knowledge that the smallest error may mean death to their comrades ”

“ It was a good team; some said the show one of the battery. The wheelers were Beatrice and Belinda, who knew their job as well as did their driver, whom they justly loved. Being old and dignified they never fretted, but took life calmly and contentedly. In the centre Bruno and Binty, young both of them, and rather excitable, needed watching or they lost condition, but both had looks. The riding leader was old Bacchus, tall and strong and honest, a good doer and a veteran of some standing. ”

“ He wheeled with precision exactly over the trail eye, checked his pace at the right moment, and "squared off" so as to allow the wheelers to place the limber in position. It was his job, he knew what to do and he did it perfectly. B was the first gun to get away and the only one to do so without a casualty....
More marching, more fighting, day after day, night after night; men were killed and wounded; horses, dropping from utter exhaustion, were cut loose and left where they lay—old friends, some of them, that it tore one's heart to abandon thus. ”

“ The major was justly annoyed: firstly, the man was evidently wasting his time; secondly, there was every prospect that hostile fire would be drawn to the spot. So he drew his revolver and put a round into the brickwork about six feet to one side of the man.
The effect was wonderful. The souvenir hunter, convinced that he had escaped a sniper's bullet by a mere inch, made a wild dive into a handy shell-hole and lay low. Twenty minutes later he emerged, crawling on hands and knees through deep slime and eagerly watched by a working party who had seen the incident. ”

“ Thinking things over now, in the quiet of a well-made dug-out, I realise that the predominant impressions left upon my mind, in ascending order of magnitude so to speak, are: dirt, stink, horrors, lack of sleep, funk—and the amazing endurance of the men. ”

“ Infantry officers or men who happen to halt close by are generally invited to have a look at the gun-pits. More often than not some one of them recognises a friend or a relation in the battery: it must be remembered that we are a homogeneous division. If by chance we are firing when a party of infantry (unaccompanied by an officer) is passing, it invariably halts and watches the performances with huge interest and quite often with a shout or two of encouragement. ”

“ Thus we are robbed of two of our luxuries—drink and sleep! Two new arrivals at midday, whose only news is that British troops are now in N.W. Belgium. Football started on the square. The monotonous horror of this life is just beginning to make itself felt on me. The worst part of the whole thing is the total lack of privacy. There is no room, no corner of a room even, where one can go to escape the incessant racket and babble of talk. Reading and writing are practically impossible.
This evening twelve more English arrived. ”

“ We progressed without mishap for, roughly, twenty-five yards, when there was a shout from the rear of the column. The sergeant-major took in its ominous purport before I did. He forgot himself—and swore aloud. "G.S. wagon's overturned in the ditch" was what I eventually heard. It was enough to make an angel weep tears of vexation.
A battery is provided by a munificent government with two G.S. wagons. One contains supplies (i.e. food for horse and man) , the other contains baggage and stores. To be without either is most unpleasant. ”