Love and the Loveless (30 page)

“The infantry went through Jerry’s outpost line like a dose of salts, sir. They didn’t take no prisoners.” He imagined them swearing and sweating through torn wire after fleeing distraught creatures, to bayonet them in kidneys, or when they kneeled with hands upheld in surrender by upward butt-strokes smashing jaws: acts of jack-out-of-box cowardice. Poor little Jack-in-the box toy of long ago, Christmas present from Father, too square to go in his stocking, where was it now, with its funny little painted red face?

“But I reckon Jerry sucked us in after all, sir. He’d pulled out most of his infantry, and kept them back for the counter-attack. I reckon Jerry caught the Fox with ’is trousers down, then!”

“What happened?” A matey feeling came between them, and
the sergeant-major lapsed into his pre-promotion easy way of speaking.

“S’ afternoon, without warning, swarms of Jerry battalions come over the skyline. Cockchafer Brigade, some said they was, big men. We could see where they was getting to because they was firing lights from pistols, and aeroplanes with them flying up and down low like, strafing our outposts with their machine guns. Then at 4 o’clock, didn’t it just come down cats and dogs! Cor, it might ’ave bin Bank ’Oliday at ’ome, for all the weather cared. Some of our infantry I seen wadin’ up to their knees where the Steenbeek broke over its banks into shell-’oles. Jerry got stuck, too, coming down. We got them taped all right wiv our Vickers, cor, a proper slaughter it was!
‘Cockchafers’ or July Bugs, we buzzed them old dumbledores all right! The time was just six o’clock. I looked at me watch and noted the time, for it was the time arranged for opening up of the barrage. Cor, didn’t it ’arf wallop down on Jerry! A proper ’arfa mo’ Kayser we give them. They turned and ’ooked it for ’ome very soon. But on other sectors it looks as though ’e got ’is own back. Here’s company headquarters, sir!”

They stopped beside a scattered brick heap marked by a white board with map reference. The sergeant-major pushed aside a blanket, and went down into a concrete shelter.

Major Downham came out with him. “Why are you late? Where the hell have you been? Our night-firing barrage should have been laid on by now! Come on, don’t stand there! Get a move on! My men in the line are waiting for the belt boxes!”

A shell screamed down; he hurried down the steps of a German concrete cellar-shelter, leaving the warrant officer standing there in silent sympathy, as boxes of S.A.A. containing 160,000 rounds were unloaded for the men at the belt-filling depot in one corner of the shelter.

Major Downham’s last words to Phillip were, “Tell Pinnegar I want him. Tell him to come at once. I’ve got to send in my returns to Brigade.”

“Very good, sir. Goodnight, s’ar major. Lead on, Nolan.”

*

The front line now ran north of the Steenbeek, recrossing it in front of St. Julien. The guide beside him said it had been
captured
that morning, but the boys had come back because of flanking fire from the pillboxes on the banks of the stream. They walked towards what looked like a stationary barrage. He began
to feel watery, and tried to stop himself working his jaws. He spat violently at his weakness, anger rose in him against mother-face thoughts. He set his jaw and thrust forward, to hell with
everything
as he spat at the smoky red bursts of shrapnel.

To the right, a few miles away, tremulous piano-playing fingers had changed to a flight of butterflies with wings overlapping one another, trembling and blazing in radiance above the row of lily flares. In intervals of the uproar thin cries of wounded men lying out came through the nictitating darkness. The shell-fire in front ceased, and a swarm of machine-gun bullets pitter-patted into the ground. By the slow sound he thought they had been fired from extreme range, and deduced that the Alleyman was taking no chances of a night attack.

He saw longer stalks on the flares as they moved over the edge of the rise, and then what he imagined, from a memorised picture of the contour map, to be the shallow depression of the Steenbeek at St. Julien before him. The wooden road gleamed wide enough for two lines of traffic. Was he awfully late? Where were the other convoys? A sentry stood at a fork where it branched, according to the signpost, to Kitchener Wood.

“Oo are yer?”

“Machine-gun transport.”

“Pass, machine guns. Any more coming?” Phillip saw he had a battle-police armband. Before he could reply Nolan’s voice said, “’Ow d’you like so’jering for a change, copper?”

A flash-light beam was directed upon Nolan’s box-respirator in correct position across his chest, the flap undone. The beam moved to the rolled gas-masks of the mules, correctly fastened to their brow-bands.

“Officer present!” said Nolan, sharply.

“Are we all right for Venheule Farm, corporal?”

“Just below the dip down, sir. Jerry’s bin droppin’ mustard gas. Nasty stuff, sir. You want to be careful not to get any on your hands or face. Burns badly, sir.”

“Thank you, corporal. Are we the last of the convoys?”

“No, sir, the first I’ve seen tonight.”

“Right, lead on, Nolan.”

Soon they were in full view of the line below, marked to left and right of the shallow Steenbeek valley by diminishing lines of flares. The luminous butterfly-wings still rose to the zenith above the Menin road, where ruddy splashes and sparks revealed the fall of British shells among the German batteries on the Gheluvelt
plateau. The tempest of hell! Nearly a thousand nights had passed since he had been in the woods beside the Menin road, with Cranmer and the others of the 1st Brigade; and never
for
one
moment—
except on that first Christmas Day—had the massed feeling in the Salient ceased to be the feeling of men lost in hell. Why, why,
why
was it all happening? But
why,
why,
why?
had raced through his head many times before: there must be a reason. It was like the dog trying to understand why sounds were coming out of the gramophone horn on the label of the twelve-inch record sung by George Baker in his deep bass voice:

Rain lashed down over the battlefield.

*

“Christ, we’ve had a time,” said Pinnegar, by the light of a candle, which showed the cracked grey walls. “I’ve never known anything like this on the Somme.” His grimy face was swelled, the eyes bright with contained shock. Opening one of the bottles which had been brought up, he splashed whiskey into his enamel mug, and said absently, “Have a drink.”

“You drink, Teddy, you need it.”

“Cheerio.” He gulped, spluttered, and choked. Phillip struck him on the back. He recovered, drew a deep breath. “That’s just what I wanted! Help yourself!”

They sat down on a pile of empty belt boxes; the carrying parties were taking filled boxes and rations from the limbers, under the eye of Pinnegar’s staff sergeant. The pill-box had a steel door above three steps going down below ground level. “It had a direct hit from a nine-two how. It’s cracked, as you can see. Jerry’s got it taped, you mustn’t stay long. Have you seen the bloody Sharpshooter? What did he say?”

“He wants you to go and see him at once, as he wants to send in his reports to Brigade.”

“
His
reports! That’s my job, or supposed to be. My God, he’s a swine! He sits in his cellar and sends me chits all day. He’s supposed to be here but he’s too windy. So he remains where I’m supposed to be, at the reserve dump at K4 and passes on messages from Brigade to me. He hasn’t once been round to visit
the sections! I’m virtually commanding this company. He’s the most bloody awful —— —pot I’ve ever had the —— luck to serve under!” Having cursed Downham, Pinnegar looked less shiny about the eyes.

“I hear you knocked hell out of the Pomeranian Grenadiers, the Kaiser’s Guards!”

“The Welch did that, going over! But we broke up the counter-attack. I reckon our barrels are now practically smooth bores! We fired off all our belts. I thought some of the water-jackets would burst, they boiled all their water. The rain had some use, after all.”

“‘Cockchafers’, weren’t they?”

“So I heard. How many boxes did you bring? Good, we can do with some extra ones. Did you leave eight thousand rounds per gun at K4?”

“I left ten thousand per gun.”

“Splendid! We’ll need ’em! Well, I must go round the sections. This rain’s mucked things up for the tanks, quite apart from the fact that our preliminary bombardment ruined the ground for them. I suppose Downham didn’t say anything about when we’re going to be relieved? Anyway, we’ll probably have to stay here when the Brigade goes out. It’s lost a hell of a lot—nearly two thousand men, I reckon, from what I’ve gathered.”

On the way back they passed a slow, continuous double line of limbers occupying all the board track, so Phillip turned off after cursing the leading officers responsible and managed, with the empty limbers, to get back over the craters, two hours later, to K4. A cold and wet sergeant-major was waiting for the empty belt boxes. “There’s bin a spot of bother, sir, over some of the S.A.A. boxes you brought up. The belt-fillers said the cartridge rims were marked ‘J’ and ‘T’, which ammo has been officially condemned as old and liable to be faulty, in a G.H.Q.
Memorandum
. It was repeated in Company Orders last week, sir.”

“Surely it isn’t all dud stuff?”

“No, only some boxes, sir.”

“Thank God! I’d better see the C.O.”

“Sir,” he said, before Downham could speak, “the dud boxes must be the extra ones I half-inched off the Brigade rear dump. I didn’t stop to look, wanting to get it up quickly. I drew the proper amount of ‘K.N.’, and counted the boxes myself. Eight thousand rounds per gun for belt-filling, and a further three
thousand five hundred per gun for Pinnegar. In addition, I’ve got eight thousand five hundred per gun of ‘K.N.’ at the transport lines, as well as a further four thousand five hundred rounds loaded and covered up in the spare limbers, ready for any emergency. I’ve brought back the empty belt boxes.”

“Where have you been all this time? Chin-wagging, I suppose?” The Sharpshooter looked at his watch. “It’s two and a half hours since you were here!”

“We ran into transport coming back, sir. We were first up. They were in two lines, taking all the board track. It was not easy going, over the craters.”

“Anyway, you’ve wasted the best part of the filling party’s time, bringing that dud stuff. Why the hell can’t you come into line with everyone else?”

Which line, the front line? Phillip asked voicelessly.

*

Rain, rain, rain, rain—for the first four nights and three days of the battle joined north and south of the Menin road. The German guns on the Gheluvelt plateau, with their alternative and dummy emplacements, remained master. The British gunners suffered casualties almost as severely as the infantry. Divisions which had lost half their effectives, as they were called, remained in the line, to go forward into machine-gun and field-gun barrages again and again, amidst tumbled and upheaved woods which were obstacles against tanks, like the shallow depressions made into lagoons of mud, by the attacking artillery.

Limbers could not move, except on the baulk tracks, and known roads in which rubble was continually being tipped at night, only to be flung up and away once more by the howitzers on the Gheluvelt plateau. Wreckage of horses, mules, their drivers and limbers strewed the tracks; for these winding routes, like the ribs of prehistoric snakes which had died casting their sloughs, were under automatic fire in bright moonlight all through the night until the vastness of dawn.

While he was drawing funny faces at the end of the diary Pinnegar came into his tent, gave him an O.H.M.S. envelope, and said, “I thought I’d bring this to you, and tell you that I think it’s a bloody injustice, and I’m prepared to back you up in anything you may want to say to the Colonel, if he sends for you.”