Mr. Standfast
“The prisoner has given no trouble, sirr,” Hamilton reported. “But he’s
a wee thing peevish. They’re saying that the Gairmans is gettin’ on
fine, and I was tellin’ him that he should be proud of his ain folk.
But he wasn’t verra weel pleased.”
Three days had wrought a transformation in Ivery. That face, once so
cool and capable, was now sharpened like a hunted beast’s. His
imagination was preying on him and I could picture its torture. He, who
had been always at the top directing the machine, was now only a cog in
it. He had never in his life been anything but powerful; now he was
impotent. He was in a hard, unfamiliar world, in the grip of something
which he feared and didn’t understand, in the charge of men who were in
no way amenable to his persuasiveness. It was like a proud and bullying
manager suddenly forced to labour in a squad of navvies, and worse, for
there was the gnawing physical fear of what was coming.
He made an appeal to me.
“Do the English torture their prisoners?” he asked. “You have beaten
me. I own it, and I plead for mercy. I will go on my knees if you like.
I am not afraid of death—in my own way.”
“Few people are afraid of death—in their own way.”
“Why do you degrade me? I am a gentleman.”
“Not as we define the thing,” I said.
His jaw dropped. “What are you going to do with me?” he quavered.
“You have been a soldier,” I said. “You are going to see a little
fighting—from the ranks. There will be no brutality, you will be armed
if you want to defend yourself, you will have the same chance of
survival as the men around you. You may have heard that your countrymen
are doing well. It is even possible that they may win the battle. What
was your forecast to me? Amiens in two days, Abbeville in three. Well,
you are a little behind scheduled time, but still you are prospering.
You told me that you were the chief architect of all this, and you are
going to be given the chance of seeing it, perhaps of sharing in
it—from the other side. Does it not appeal to your sense of justice?”
He groaned and turned away. I had no more pity for him than I would
have had for a black mamba that had killed my friend and was now caught
to a cleft tree. Nor, oddly enough, had Wake. If we had shot Ivery
outright at St Anton, I am certain that Wake would have called us
murderers. Now he was in complete agreement. His passionate hatred of
war made him rejoice that a chief contriver of war should be made to
share in its terrors.
“He tried to talk me over this morning,” he told me. “Claimed he was on
my side and said the kind of thing I used to say last year. It made me
rather ashamed of some of my past performances to hear that scoundrel
imitating them.... By the way, Hannay, what are you going to do with
me?”
“You’re coming on my staff. You’re a stout fellow and I can’t do
without you.”
“Remember I won’t fight.”
“You won’t be asked to. We’re trying to stem the tide which wants to
roll to the sea. You know how the Boche behaves in occupied country,
and Mary’s in Amiens.”
At that news he shut his lips.
“Still—” he began.
“Still,” I said. “I don’t ask you to forfeit one of your blessed
principles. You needn’t fire a shot. But I want a man to carry orders
for me, for we haven’t a line any more, only a lot of blobs like
quicksilver. I want a clever man for the job and a brave one, and I
know that you’re not afraid.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I am—much. Well. I’m content!”
I started Blenkiron off in a car for Corps Headquarters, and in the
afternoon took the road myself. I knew every inch of the country—the
lift of the hill east of Amiens, the Roman highway that ran straight as
an arrow to St Quentin, the marshy lagoons of the Somme, and that broad
strip of land wasted by battle between Dompierre and Peronne. I had
come to Amiens through it in January, for I had been up to the line
before I left for Paris, and then it had been a peaceful place, with
peasants tilling their fields, and new buildings going up on the old
battle-field, and carpenters busy at cottage roofs, and scarcely a
transport waggon on the road to remind one of war. Now the main route
was choked like the Albert road when the Somme battle first
began—troops going up and troops coming down, the latter in the last
stage of weariness; a ceaseless traffic of ambulances one way and
ammunition waggons the other; busy staff cars trying to worm a way
through the mass; strings of gun horses, oddments of cavalry, and here
and there blue French uniforms. All that I had seen before; but one
thing was new to me. Little country carts with sad-faced women and
mystified children in them and piles of household plenishing were
creeping westward, or stood waiting at village doors. Beside these
tramped old men and boys, mostly in their Sunday best as if they were
going to church. I had never seen the sight before, for I had never
seen the British Army falling back. The dam which held up the waters
had broken and the dwellers in the valley were trying to save their
pitiful little treasures. And over everything, horse and man, cart and
wheelbarrow, road and tillage, lay the white March dust, the sky was
blue as June, small birds were busy in the copses, and in the corners
of abandoned gardens I had a glimpse of the first violets.
Presently as we topped a rise we came within full noise of the guns.
That, too, was new to me, for it was no ordinary bombardment. There was
a special quality in the sound, something ragged, straggling,
intermittent, which I had never heard before. It was the sign of open
warfare and a moving battle.
At Peronne, from which the newly returned inhabitants had a second time
fled, the battle seemed to be at the doors. There I had news of my
division. It was farther south towards St Christ. We groped our way
among bad roads to where its headquarters were believed to be, while
the voice of the guns grew louder. They turned out to be those of
another division, which was busy getting ready to cross the river. Then
the dark fell, and while airplanes flew west into the sunset there was
a redder sunset in the east, where the unceasing flashes of gunfire
were pale against the angry glow of burning dumps. The sight of the
bonnet-badge of a Scots Fusilier made me halt, and the man turned out
to belong to my division. Half an hour later I was taking over from the
much-relieved Masterton in the ruins of what had once been a sugar-beet
factory.
There to my surprise I found Lefroy. The Boche had held him prisoner
for precisely eight hours. During that time he had been so interested
in watching the way the enemy handled an attack that he had forgotten
the miseries of his position. He described with blasphemous admiration
the endless wheel by which supplies and reserve troops move up, the
silence, the smoothness, the perfect discipline. Then he had realised
that he was a captive and unwounded, and had gone mad. Being a
heavy-weight boxer of note, he had sent his two guards spinning into a
ditch, dodged the ensuing shots, and found shelter in the lee of a
blazing ammunition dump where his pursuers hesitated to follow. Then he
had spent an anxious hour trying to get through an outpost line, which
he thought was Boche. Only by overhearing an exchange of oaths in the
accents of Dundee did he realise that it was our own.... It was a
comfort to have Lefroy back, for he was both stout-hearted and
resourceful. But I found that I had a division only on paper. It was
about the strength of a brigade, the brigades battalions, and the
battalions companies.
This is not the place to write the story of the week that followed. I
could not write it even if I wanted to, for I don’t know it. There was
a plan somewhere, which you will find in the history books, but with me
it was blank chaos. Orders came, but long before they arrived the
situation had changed, and I could no more obey them than fly to the
moon. Often I had lost touch with the divisions on both flanks.
Intelligence arrived erratically out of the void, and for the most part
we worried along without it. I heard we were under the French—first it
was said to be Foch, and then Fayolle, whom I had met in Paris. But the
higher command seemed a million miles away, and we were left to use our
mother wits. My problem was to give ground as slowly as possible and at
the same time not to delay too long, for retreat we must, with the
Boche sending in brand-new divisions each morning. It was a kind of war
worlds distant from the old trench battles, and since I had been taught
no other I had to invent rules as I went along. Looking back, it seems
a miracle that any of us came out of it. Only the grace of God and the
uncommon toughness of the British soldier bluffed the Hun and prevented
him pouring through the breach to Abbeville and the sea. We were no
better than a mosquito curtain stuck in a doorway to stop the advance
of an angry bull.
The Army Commander was right; we were hanging on with our eyelashes. We
must have been easily the weakest part of the whole front, for we were
holding a line which was never less than two miles and was often, as I
judged, nearer five, and there was nothing in reserve to us except some
oddments of cavalry who chased about the whole battle-field under vague
orders. Mercifully for us the Boche blundered. Perhaps he did not know
our condition, for our airmen were magnificent and you never saw a
Boche plane over our line by day, though they bombed us merrily by
night. If he had called our bluff we should have been done, but he put
his main strength to the north and the south of us. North he pressed
hard on the Third Army, but he got well hammered by the Guards north of
Bapaume and he could make no headway at Arras. South he drove at the
Paris railway and down the Oise valley, but there Pétain’s reserves had
arrived, and the French made a noble stand.
Not that he didn’t fight hard in the centre where we were, but he
hadn’t his best troops, and after we got west of the bend of the Somme
he was outrunning his heavy guns. Still, it was a desperate enough
business, for our flanks were all the time falling back, and we had to
conform to movements we could only guess at. After all, we were on the
direct route to Amiens, and it was up to us to yield slowly so as to
give Haig and Pétain time to get up supports. I was a miser about every
yard of ground, for every yard and every minute were precious. We alone
stood between the enemy and the city, and in the city was Mary.
If you ask me about our plans I can’t tell you. I had a new one every
hour. I got instructions from the Corps, but, as I have said, they were
usually out of date before they arrived, and most of my tactics I had
to invent myself. I had a plain task, and to fulfil it I had to use
what methods the Almighty allowed me. I hardly slept, I ate little, I
was on the move day and night, but I never felt so strong in my life.
It seemed as if I couldn’t tire, and, oddly enough, I was happy. If a
man’s whole being is focused on one aim, he has no time to worry.... I
remember we were all very gentle and soft-spoken those days. Lefroy,
whose tongue was famous for its edge, now cooed like a dove. The troops
were on their uppers, but as steady as rocks. We were against the end
of the world, and that stiffens a man....
Day after day saw the same performance. I held my wavering front with
an outpost line which delayed each new attack till I could take its
bearings. I had special companies for counter-attack at selected
points, when I wanted time to retire the rest of the division. I think
we must have fought more than a dozen of such little battles. We lost
men all the time, but the enemy made no big scoop, though he was always
on the edge of one. Looking back, it seems like a succession of