B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (45 page)

Hitherto the only women we had spoken to were those who wanted to save our souls and those who did their best to make us lose them. Here was a woman who, by this action, put us on the same plane as herself. I wonder if she realized how dear a thing she did.

Hugh and I had many a day’s ramble in the bills around Sidon, often striking villages where British troops hadn’t been seen before.

At one such they prepared a wonderful feast at which Hugh and I were guests of honour. The ‘grandma’ of another had been in domestic service in New York, and greeted us in strident American. After entertaining us to figs preserved in aniseed, she produced two attractive Syrian girls.

‘These are my nieces,’ she explained. ‘They are good gals.’

‘You’re married,’ she added, to me. Then turning to Hugh, she shot out:

You’re not. I want my nieces to marry Englishmen. Which one will you have?’

These were Christian, villages, and I think the hand of the Turk had been heavy.

There came orders to proceed to Beirut. Hugh and I, doing rations and orderly room work, got a comfortable room as combined office and quarters. We’d hardly settled in when a knock came at the door and two young women who spoke pleasant English made the proposition that they share room and rations with us.

We declined and they apologized. Afterwards they often called to see if there was any mending they could do for us. ‘Won’t Mamma be pleased!’ was their usual exclamation if we gave them a tin of bully or jam for darning our socks.

They never referred to their original proposal again, though once, when I asked the elder girl why they chose that livelihood, she answered, ‘It was this or starve, Mr. Harri.’

A chaste friendliness with a prostitute seems a contradiction, yet I felt a tribute in their tears when we came away. We were out of touch with our ordinary conventions, and I think fellows hammered out standards for themselves. For instance, among the drivers of our company was a Sheffield lad, a rough handful. I was in where he slept one day over something or other, and on the wall was a long string threaded with packing needles. I think there were eighty-seven of them, all sizes.

The Syrian prefers a packing needle to a whip when he’s on a donkey. It’s less trouble and more effective. This lad didn’t agree with the practice, and used to take the needle away from anyone he saw using one.

On one occasion he stopped a portly Maronite priest, who got quite angry and held the needle clenched in his fist with one end dug into the pummel of the saddle, and the other end under his thumb. This lad brought his first whack on the priest’s thumb; there was a yell of pain and the priest tumbled backwards off the donkey. Our young driver walked off with the needle.

But this is getting beyond the War, although it was the more interesting time to me because I was more drawn to the idea of learning about people than of killing them. The only thing I killed all the war was a marauding dog, and I feel sorry about that still.

Sapper H. P. Bonser, Royal Engineers (Signals), February 1916 to July 1919. Foreign service units: 74th Divisional Signal Company, Egypt, Southern Palestine; Detached Duty, Fayoum Area; U.U. Cable Section, Royal Engineers, Egypt, Palestine, Syria
.

When the 321 V.C.s sat down to dine with the Prince of Wales on November 9th, 1929, one man present, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur Drummond Borton, V.C., D.S.O., might possibly have experienced just one tinge of regret. For had the great function taken place two days earlier it would have coincided with the twelfth anniversary of his winning the coveted honour.

I know just a little about the winning of that V.C., and the man who won it, but I doubt whether the colonel would recall the fellow he swore at during that most critical moment of his career.

It happened in Palestine on November 7th, 1917. The day is Wednesday. We are hard on the heels of the Turk. Gaza has fallen, we have taken Beersheba, and are now on the way to Sheria. There are wells at Sheria, and we are very thirsty!

From dawn all Tuesday we have ploughed through sand and sun, no food to speak of – a nibble of bully and biscuit; and, though warned at the start to hang on to our water, there isn’t a man with a fly’s bath in his bottle when we come to a halt in the evening. The grit on my teeth! The mud on my tongue! Lord! I can taste it now! Trekking the best part of a month, we are tired, ragged, verminous, and itchy with septic sores. Now we have halted and know we are close to the Turk. Petulantly through the twilight half-spent bullets whine out their last breath overhead. Nobody cares; we are too fagged out to heed them. Dropping our packs, we unload the mules and feed the poor brutes a mouthful of corn.

We stretch our backs on the warm sand. Our aching backs! Oh, for a little green apple to quench this blistering thirst! Our spirits are low with fatigue and thirst and dirt. This hopeless, unending misery, this madness, this ultimate futility! Would I could sleep for ever. Would I could wake in the morning and know all this for a nightmare. Ah me, have we not dreamed thus a thousand times through twenty unthinkable months!

I sleep. The four hours seem but a minute before I am awakened with the toe of a corporal’s boot.

‘Get dressed!’ I rise and shiver, hating that corporal. I dress as a dog might shake himself. It is dark, but away to the left the sky glows red. I hear faint crackling sounds. The air is full of whistling lead.

‘What’s up?’

‘Moving off.’

I groan and drag my stiff legs over to my mule and tug and punch him into his harness. Taking his cue from me, he shows his teeth in a succession of mighty yawns.

Shadowy forms are everywhere moving to and fro in the darkness; tired and expressionless faces show palely out of the gloom, and pass.

‘Stack packs!’

Ah, we’re in for it now. Grimly I smile as I hump my clobber to the pile and pitch it with the rest. I meet Silburn on the way

‘Another stunt, Sunbeam?’

‘Dunno, Gunga. Looks like it.’

‘What’s that light over there?’

‘Johnny getting breezy. Blowing up his ammunition dumps.’

‘Best thing he can do with ’em,’ I grumble. ‘Why not let him get on with it!’

‘Fall in for rum!’

‘That’s about corpsed it!’ mutters Tich Webster, divining that not for nothing is he to get a noggin of rum in the Plain of Sharon.

But the rum’s good – dashed good it is! It stings our leathery tongues and stops our shivering. It calms my damnable nerves. I join a little group; Baker is there, the Welsh miner, our last remaining tenor, the red-headed, unquenchable ‘Scrounger.’

‘What’s doing, Scrounger?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Clearing snipers. ‘Colonel can’t sleep.’

I smile sceptically. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Harold,’ says Baker.

‘I thought as much.’

‘A knowing bird, that mule of yours, Scrounger?’ sneers Holland.

‘He is,’ replies Baker. ‘Fed on bully and four-by-two, is Harold. In return for which he tells me things.’

‘He’s a b-blatant liar,’ growls Durrant. ‘That’s w-what he is. It’s b-bullets ’e wants, not b-bully!’

Then Durrant is ashamed of himself. ‘Sorry, Baker. M-my n-nerves,’ he says, and turns away.

‘I suppose you didn’t ask him if we’re getting any water tonight?’ enquires Evans.

‘I did,’ answers Scrounger. ‘And he kicked me in the – !’

I go. Yes, as always, the officers will know all there is to be known when we start. We shall know nothing. We batten on rumours. Rumours! And are led like lambs to the slaughter. My blood boils. Are we such cowards we may not be told?

‘Fall in! No noise! No talking!’

We line up. Bombs and additional bandoliers of ammunition are served out. Ten rounds are loaded into the rifle magazines. Things look bad. Contrary to orders, I slip a cartridge ‘up the spout,’ adjusting the safety-catch.

Now we are shuffling out over the plain. Someone coughs; entrenching tools, haversacks, empty water-bottles clatter and rattle; here and there an iron-shod heel strikes a flint, igniting a shower of sparks; a man stumbles and that man surely curses.

Rob and I march side by side. We talk little. A Yorkshireman is Rob. His calmness reassures me. His sturdy bulk is a tower of strength to me.
Vive le
rum!

We trudge on in silence. I think of those at home – all warm and clean in bed. Perhaps they turn restlessly now and then and think of me. May they sleep deep and long to-night.
We
have work to do. Keep your eyes skinned, lad. Steady and cool! Don’t fumble. Strike – swift as the lightning! I feel braced up and fit. God bless the distillers of rum!

I glance at Rob. His face in the dark is bloodless and dirty; there are streaks of grime on the cheeks where sweat has dried in the night; and a four-day growth of beard gives him a strangely spiritual expression. I think: This might be the face of Christ! A distant look in his eyes, has Rob.
I
know. He’s away and playing on his old violin. ‘How feeling, Rob?’ But Rob makes no reply.

Then the silvery voice of Baker, just behind me, breaks the silence, singing:

How lovely are the Messengers

That preach us the gospel of Peace!…

‘Put a sock in it, Baker!’ says a sergeant, irritably.

The roar of the burning dumps grows louder; and flames, leaping into view, send out cascades of sparks; we hear the crack of rifles; bullets whistle shriller, filling the night with little spiteful devils. We stop to unload the mules. I strap on my chest and back two wallets of spare Lewis gun magazines. The weight of them! We are leaving the mules behind. I am the mule – a proper soldier now!

And now, suddenly, we enter a world writhing in its last agony… Deafening crashes, flames and smoke, unearthly boomings and rumblings! Above this din comes the splutter of machine guns; and, from a towering structure to the left, massive fragments of masonry are being pitchforked into the night! It is grand! The Turk is blowing up the world!

‘Shiverin’ saints!’ comes a voice.

‘Strike me pink!’ says another; and I catch a glimpse of an illuminated face uplifted for a moment in the glare.

Now we are off at the double. We zigzag about; then, swinging to the right, plunge over the edge of a deep but narrow wady, and fall into dust and darkness. We regain our feet, bewildered, shaken. Officers dart hither and thither, shouting orders. ‘Steady now, boys! Steady! Lock-up, lock-up! Keep together!… For God’s sake, don’t bunch up!’

Then out of the gloom and the confused medley of men emerges the colonel. I see him in the light of the conflagration. Like the rest, he has a steel helmet on his head; but he wears no tunic, his shirt-sleeves are rolled up past his elbows. How clean and neat and fresh he looks! His hair, sleek and parted, shines in the glare.

He is lean and tall; his face is red. He carries his head as though his neck was stiff. His gait seems a shade unsteady. He waves a cane in his hand, and, in the crook of his other arm, he hugs a football! Borton is laughing!

‘Twenty-second Queen’s!’ he bellows. ‘It’s your turn now to cover yourselves with glory! Follow me!’

‘Stone me paralytic!’ gasps Tich.

He leads us along the
wady
, every gun in creation going mad at us. In that dusty inferno we are merely shadows. We come to an opening in the wady. Borton gets across, but not so others following; they seem to stagger and wilt and crumple up and fade away into the gloom. A murderous fire from concealed machine guns sprays death along that alley…

‘Stand fast!’ cries the colonel. ‘Now quickly…in twos and threes!’

Rob and I plunge into the abyss. I hear a cry and Rob sinks into the dust. A momentary halt. I see heaving breasts all round me, and drawn, white faces. I hear curses unmentionable. I curse unmentionably too. But there’s one man as cool as a water-melon – a man with a stiff neck, and a football under his arm.

‘Fix bayonets!’ yells the colonel. And the shining things leap from the scabbards and flash in the light as they click on the standards. They seem alive and joyous; they turn us into fiends, thirsty for slaughter. We scramble out of the
wady
.

‘Charge!’ And away goes the colonel, flourishing his ludicrous cane!

The hail of lead! We greet it with a blood-curdling shout, ripping our throats; and, as surely as I have eyes, there’s Borton driving ahead, taking the hill at a bound, and kicking the football!

Breathless, we gain the, top. The Turks have bolted. Torn tents flap in the wind; pots and pans are about our feet. Away now from the flaming dumps we pick our way at a walk, peering into the dark, bayonets ready to stab. Then I go sprawling over a vessel of porridge standing among the remains of a weed fire. I rip out an oath as an ember burns me. Scrambling up, a sticky mess, I flounder over something that is warm and groans as I clutch it. Again I stagger forward, and a strand of barbed wire catches me in the leg. I tear myself out of its grip. Near me, Scrounger Baker trips over a tent rope, and, attempting to rise, is shot. A raking fire sweeps the darkness, but still we advance. The ground is rough and treacherous. Men are falling. Where’s the colonel? Has he also stopped one? I hear his voice! God save Borton! We know him. The mad major of Gallipoli! He’ll fetch us through, this man with a broken neck!

Suddenly the darkness lifts, paling to grey, and a ridge looms out ahead. ‘Down! Down! Down!’ and flat as a sack I go. Men are moving on the skyline. What use to take aim! I blaze away madly, striving to silence those swine on the ridge. I sweat. I gibber with glee when a form flings up its arms, dances a second between earth and sky, and vanishes. A little ahead of me, on rising ground, lie two pals working a Lewis gun; its bark, its spiteful rat-tat-tat, is music to me.

Spells of the tensest concentration are followed by moments of terrible fatigue. My strength ebbs away; I feel unutterably weak; I could sleep. There succeed intervals when my senses seem to stalk abroad, icily alert and alive; periods when my mind is a whirling wheel, my brain a furnace white-hot, my pulse a sledge-hammer. When my nerves seem about to snap there come instants of exquisite calm. Death! What does it matter? I am alone. Surrounded by friend and foe, I am alone in the world! But the will to live wells up – the desire to live is a torment, a torture, a devilish, damnable agony!