R. H. Mottram

“ What is our duty then?”
“Our duty is to live if we possibly can. And I mean to do it. It’s the people who keep alive who will win the War.”
“According to that, all one has got to do is to get to Blighty, or preferably the United States, and stay there?”
“Not a bit. You exaggerate so. All I said was, that it is foolish to make it a duty to become a casualty.”
“Dormer, I shall never get you to see things in the proper light. You’re like a lamb trying to leap with joy, and never able to get its hind legs off the ground.” ”

“ Here the first shell had fallen right upon one of those limbers that were to be found being driven up some obscure street at any hour of the day or night. Two dazed drivers had succeeded in cutting loose and quieting the mules. A horse lay dead in the gutter. Against the bank leaned the Corporal, his face out of sight, as if in the midst of a hearty laugh. It needed only a glance, however, to see that there was no head upon the shoulders. It was just one of those daily disagreeable scenes which to Dormer had been so utterly strange all his life, and so familiar for the last year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the corners of the field were latrines, and at one spot the cookers had blackened everything.
“Billets for the troops!” reflected Dormer, to whom the idea of lodging in the open had never ceased to be a thoroughly bad joke. “Stables for horses, stables for men!” Obviously enough the machinery of War had been here in full swing. Dormer (a man of no imagination) could almost see before him the khaki-clad figures, the sullen mules, the primitive vehicles filing into the place, tarrying ever so briefly and filing out again to be destroyed. ”

“ Dormer, sitting next to Major Stevenage, did not mind. As well Boulogne as anywhere, while this was going on. All the roads were full of transport, all the railways one long procession of troop and supply trains. It was about as possible to hide it all from the Germans, as to conceal London on a Bank Holiday. In fact it was rather like that. The population was about the same, if the area were rather larger, the effect of the crowd, the surly good humour, the air of eating one’s dinner out of one’s hand was the same. ”

“ Any deformity was welcome, not, Dormer observed, that they wanted to laugh at the helplessness of the bandy leg or the stutterer, the dwarf or the feeble-minded. On the contrary, the sentimentality of the poorer English had never stood out in brighter relief than on the edge of those devastated battlefields, where in their useless khaki, the men who had perpetuated the social system that had so blindly and wantonly used so many of them, waited patiently enough for the order of release from the servitude that few of them had chosen or any of them deserved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To stop would mean less food and sleep, mules and men knew that much, without use of the reasoning faculty. It had become an instinct. All the brilliant casuistry that had induced men to enlist was forgotten, useless, superseded. Even English soldiers were conscripts now, the War had won, had overcome any and every rival consideration, had made itself paramount, had become the end and the means as well.
A man like Dormer, accustomed to an ordered and reasoned existence, who could have explained his every act up to August, 1914, by some good and solid reason, was as helpless as any. ”

“ Amid all this clamour, Kavanagh was not silenced, but recited at the top of his voice, and Dormer had a suspicion that the real reason was that it helped to keep down the nervousness that grew on men, as the years of the War rolled on, and the probability of being hit increased. Especially as, far overhead, the planes that circled and swooped like a swarm of gleaming flies, were attracting considerable anti-aircraft fire, and all round, big jagged bits were coming to earth with a noise almost echoing that of the ambulances. ”

“ But Madeleine Vanderlynden’s departure from the farm, coming after the wording of the claim, was ominous indeed.
Travelling by motor has many disadvantages, but against all these it has one crowning advantage: to those who are weary and overspent, it provides more immediately and completely than any other physical sensation the feeling of escape. What magic lies behind that word! To get into the car and go, no matter whither, and to leave at any rate one incomprehensible muddle behind him: that was the illusion while the chauffeur was starting. ”

“ Dormer’s tidy mind was soon called into action. Some wounded who had died on the way to the dressing station, had been laid out beside the road as the ambulances had enough to do without carrying corpses ten miles. He went to make sure the M.O. had arranged for a burial party, as he had the strongest belief that casualties lying about were bad for the morale of the troops. When he got back to the dug-out, Kavanagh was “going on,” as he bent over a map of the extensions of the divisional cable lines, like a crow on a gate. ”

“ That’s you to the life, Dormer. Twenty years hence you’ll be a bronzed veteran, in a dirty uniform, with a quarter of a century’s polish on your Sam Browne. You have already had more iron whizz past your head than any regular soldier gets in a lifetime, or even the lifetime of two or three generations. You’ve had a practical experience of war that any general might envy. ”

“ He began to want to get at these Germans. It was no longer a matter of principle, a feeling that it was his duty as it had been in the days when he enlisted, took a commission, and had come to France. He was no longer worrying about the injustice of the attack on Belgium or the danger of a Germany paramount in Europe. He had now a perfectly plain and personal feeling. But being Dormer, this did not make him cry out for a sortie en masse like a Frenchman, nor evolve a complicated and highly scientific theory as to how his desire was to be realized. ”

“ Fortunately Kavanagh did not hear. He was going on with his poetry.
“The Colonel, so gaily prancing, boys,
Has a wonderful way of advancing, boys,
Sings out so large
Fix bayonets and cha-a-a-rge,
It sets all the Frenchmen a-dancing, boys!
“What days they must have been, Dormer! You ought to have been a Colonel. Can’t you see yourself on a big brown horse, gaily prancing? There ought to be a school for gaiety, just as there is for bayonet fighting and bombing. [46] Can’t you imagine yourself in a shako, like a top hat, with the brim in front only, glazed, with whacking great numerals?” ”

“ Some one’s bed and bath shoved in a corner. Outside, trampled mud, mule-lines, cinder tracks, Holland elms, flat, stodgy Flanders all desecrated with War. He got the number he wanted, told the Brigade to fetch their broken limber, gave his rank and job, and put up the telephone. The impression he had had was so strong, however, that walking back along the cinder path, he closed his eyes again. Yes, it was still there, quite plain, the details of the khaki uniform all correct and clear cut, spurred boots and bandolier, but no head, and the arms raised aloft, exhorting or threatening. ”

“ The army that had survived was an army that had been made to fight without much difficulty, while its back was to the sea, with the knowledge that trenches lost meant worse, if possible, conditions of existence, and it was moved by some rags of sentiment, as to holding what one had got; an army which displayed all the slowly aroused, almost passive pugnacity of the English working class, so docile, yet so difficult to drive out of a habit of mind, or an acquired way of living. ”

“ The Frenchman shrugged. “The devil has taken all of us, my friend. We are a sacrificed generation. You find the Mayor of Hondebecq annoying. So do I. But not more than everything else. You would not like it if French soldiers laughed at an English Mayor!”
“My dear Dendrecourt, in England a Mayor is somebody. Not an old peasant dressed up in a top hat and an apron, all stars and stripes.”
“Well, here is lunch!” (He called it lernch.) “I will not join with you, Dormer, in the game of slanging each other’s nationality.” ”

“ The French would cut off their rations and reduce them to order in no time. Thus the old soldier. But he did not prevent Dormer going to bed with a heavy heart. To him it was not so much a French offensive that had failed. It was another Allied effort, gone for nothing. His life training in apprehension made him paint the future in the gloomiest colours. Where would fresh men be obtained from? Whence would come the spirit—what they called morale in military circles—to make [119] another attempt? If neither men nor morale were forthcoming, would the War drag out to a stalemate Peace? ”

“ Both of them had to be out and about all night. They had several casualties, and the whole place reeked with gas. As the grey light of another day began to change the texture of the shadows, movement was discernible about the road. It was their chance and with a higher heart and the feeling of relief, they were able to let loose the Lewis guns, which they had managed to save intact. For more than an hour, Dormer crawled from one to the other, seeing that they did not overheat or jam, for the fact that they were killing Germans pleased him. ”

“ Of course the Bosche was ready. He was bound to be ready, couldn’t avoid it. He had immensely thickened his depth of defence, which was now composed not of the old obvious trenches full of men, all of which could be blown to pieces, but of small isolated turrets of ferro-concrete, where two or three machine gunners (and who made better machine gunners than the careful Germans) could hold an army at bay, until dislodged by a direct hit by a shell of six-inch calibre or over, or laboriously smoke-screened and bombed out, at the rate of perhaps a mile a day, on good days. ”

“ When he got out at Doullens, and scrounged a lift from a passing car, he found himself looking at the driver, at the endless transport on either side of the road, at the sentry on guard over the parked heavies in the yard of the jam factory, at the military policeman at the cross-roads. One or other of all these hundreds of thousands knew all about the beastly business that was engaging more and more of his mind. One or other of them could point to the man who was wanted. ”

“ He turned once again and surveyed that coastline, somewhere behind which he had made that pilgrimage; there it lay, newly freed Belgium on the left, on the right the chalky downs that ran from Gris-Nez far out of sight, down to Arras. Between the two, on those marshes so like any of South-Eastern England, had taken place that Crime at Vanderlynden’s, that typified the whole War. There, on those flat valleys of the Yser and the Lys, the English army had come to rest after its first few weeks of romantic march and counter-march. ”

“ Trenches had been dug and camouflage erected all round the place, but it had not suffered damage except by a few long-distance shots, the routine of trench warfare had never reached it. In the kitchen, darkened by the fact that the glass was gone from the windows, which were blinded with aeroplane fabric, stood the familiar figure of Mademoiselle Vanderlynden. He asked for the Colonel, and was civilly directed to the parlour on the other side of the door. Not a word of recognition, hardly a second glance. ”

“ There were elements of hesitation, he noticed, in all the Allies. The French felt they had done much too much, and wanted to be back at their farms and little shops. The Belgians wanted to march into their country without the tragic necessity of knocking flat all its solidly built, hard-working little towns. All three nations shared the inevitable sense that grew upon men with the passage of years, of the mechanical nature of the War. Thus the cavalry, where the greatest proportion of regular soldiers lingered, were still keen on exploiting their one chance. ”

“ Dormer was soon caught up and landed in the old familiar blackly-manured soil of the Salient. He was not disgusted or surprised. He was becoming increasingly conscious of a sensation of going round and round. Now, too, that troops were always pouring along a road before [125] him, he had again the feeling that his head was an empty chamber, round which was painted a frieze, men, men, mules, men, limbers, guns, men, lorries, ambulances, men, men, men. It might be just worry and overwork, it might be that he was again forced to share his limited accommodation with Kavanagh. ”