Mr. Standfast
miracles. Often I was in one end of a village when the Boche was in the
other. Our batteries were always on the move, and the work of the
gunners was past praising. Sometimes we faced east, sometimes north,
and once at a most critical moment due south, for our front waved and
blew like a flag at a masthead.... Thank God, the enemy was getting
away from his big engine, and his ordinary troops were fagged and poor
in quality. It was when his fresh shock battalions came on that I held
my breath.... He had a heathenish amount of machine-guns and he used
them beautifully. Oh, I take my hat off to the Boche performance. He
was doing what we had tried to do at the Somme and the Aisne and Arras
and Ypres, and he was more or less succeeding. And the reason was that
he was going bald-headed for victory.
The men, as I have said, were wonderfully steady and patient under the
fiercest trial that soldiers can endure. I had all kinds in the
division—old army, new army, Territorials—and you couldn’t pick and
choose between them. They fought like Trojans, and, dirty, weary, and
hungry, found still some salt of humour in their sufferings. It was a
proof of the rock-bottom sanity of human nature. But we had one man
with us who was hardly sane....
In the hustle of those days I now and then caught sight of Ivery. I had
to be everywhere at all hours, and often visited that remnant of Scots
Fusiliers into which the subtlest brain in Europe had been drafted. He
and his keepers were never on outpost duty or in any counter-attack.
They were part of the mass whose only business was to retire
discreetly. This was child’s play to Hamilton, who had been out since
Mons; and Amos, after taking a day to get used to it, wrapped himself
in his grim philosophy and rather enjoyed it. You couldn’t surprise
Amos any more than a Turk. But the man with them, whom they never
left—that was another matter.
“For the first wee bit,” Hamilton reported, “we thocht he was gaun
daft. Every shell that came near he jumped like a young horse. And the
gas! We had to tie on his mask for him, for his hands were fushionless.
There was whiles when he wadna be hindered from standin’ up and talkin’
to hisself, though the bullets was spittin’. He was what ye call
demoralised.... Syne he got as though he didna hear or see onything. He
did what we tell’t him, and when we let him be he sat down and grat.
He’s aye greetin’.... Queer thing, sirr, but the Gairmans canna hit
him. I’m aye shakin’ bullets out o’ my claes, and I’ve got a hole in my
shoulder, and Andra took a bash on his tin that wad hae felled onybody
that hadna a heid like a stot. But, sirr, the prisoner taks no scaith.
Our boys are feared of him. There was an Irishman says to me that he
had the evil eye, and ye can see for yerself that he’s no canny.”
I saw that his skin had become like parchment and that his eyes were
glassy. I don’t think he recognised me.
“Does he take his meals?” I asked.
“He doesna eat muckle. But he has an unco thirst. Ye canna keep him off
the men’s water-bottles.”
He was learning very fast the meaning of that war he had so confidently
played with. I believe I am a merciful man, but as I looked at him I
felt no vestige of pity. He was dreeing the weird he had prepared for
others. I thought of Scudder, of the thousand friends I had lost, of
the great seas of blood and the mountains of sorrow this man and his
like had made for the world. Out of the corner of my eye I could see
the long ridges above Combles and Longueval which the salt of the earth
had fallen to win, and which were again under the hoof of the Boche. I
thought of the distracted city behind us and what it meant to me, and
the weak, the pitifully weak screen which was all its defence. I
thought of the foul deeds which had made the German name to stink by
land and sea, foulness of which he was the arch-begetter. And then I
was amazed at our forbearance. He would go mad, and madness for him was
more decent than sanity.
I had another man who wasn’t what you might call normal, and that was
Wake. He was the opposite of shell-shocked, if you understand me. He
had never been properly under fire before, but he didn’t give a straw
for it. I had known the same thing with other men, and they generally
ended by crumpling up, for it isn’t natural that five or six feet of
human flesh shouldn’t be afraid of what can torture and destroy it. The
natural thing is to be always a little scared, like me, but by an
effort of the will and attention to work to contrive to forget it. But
Wake apparently never gave it a thought. He wasn’t foolhardy, only
indifferent. He used to go about with a smile on his face, a smile of
contentment. Even the horrors—and we had plenty of them—didn’t affect
him. His eyes, which used to be hot, had now a curious open innocence
like Peter’s. I would have been happier if he had been a little
rattled.
One night, after we had had a bad day of anxiety, I talked to him as we
smoked in what had once been a French dug-out. He was an extra right
arm to me, and I told him so. “This must be a queer experience for
you,” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, “it is very wonderful. I did not think a man could
go through it and keep his reason. But I know many things I did not
know before. I know that the soul can be reborn without leaving the
body.”
I stared at him, and he went on without looking at me.
“You’re not a classical scholar, Hannay? There was a strange cult in
the ancient world, the worship of _Magna Mater_—the Great Mother. To
enter into her mysteries the votary passed through a bath of blood——I
think I am passing through that bath. I think that like the initiate I
shall be _renatus in aeternum_—reborn into the eternal.”
I advised him to have a drink, for that talk frightened me. It looked
as if he were becoming what the Scots call “fey”. Lefroy noticed the
same thing and was always speaking about it. He was as brave as a bull
himself, and with very much the same kind of courage; but Wake’s
gallantry perturbed him. “I can’t make the chap out,” he told me. “He
behaves as if his mind was too full of better things to give a damn for
Boche guns. He doesn’t take foolish risks—I don’t mean that, but he
behaves as if risks didn’t signify. It’s positively eerie to see him
making notes with a steady hand when shells are dropping like
hailstones and we’re all thinking every minute’s our last. You’ve got
to be careful with him, sir. He’s a long sight too valuable for us to
spare.”
Lefroy was right about that, for I don’t know what I should have done
without him. The worst part of our job was to keep touch with our
flanks, and that was what I used Wake for. He covered country like a
moss-trooper, sometimes on a rusty bicycle, oftener on foot, and you
couldn’t tire him. I wonder what other divisions thought of the grimy
private who was our chief means of communication. He knew nothing of
military affairs before, but he got the hang of this rough-and-tumble
fighting as if he had been born for it. He never fired a shot; he
carried no arms; the only weapons he used were his brains. And they
were the best conceivable. I never met a staff officer who was so quick
at getting a point or at sizing up a situation. He had put his back
into the business, and first-class talent is not common anywhere. One
day a G. S. O. from a neighbouring division came to see me.
“Where on earth did you pick up that man Wake?” he asked.
“He’s a conscientious objector and a non-combatant,” I said.
“Then I wish to Heaven we had a few more conscientious objectors in
this show. He’s the only fellow who seems to know anything about this
blessed battle. My general’s sending you a chit about him.”
“No need,” I said, laughing. “I know his value. He’s an old friend of
mine.”
I used Wake as my link with Corps Headquarters, and especially with
Blenkiron. For about the sixth day of the show I was beginning to get
rather desperate. This kind of thing couldn’t go on for ever. We were
miles back now, behind the old line of ’17, and, as we rested one flank
on the river, the immediate situation was a little easier. But I had
lost a lot of men, and those that were left were blind with fatigue.
The big bulges of the enemy to north and south had added to the length
of the total front, and I found I had to fan out my thin ranks. The
Boche was still pressing on, though his impetus was slacker. If he knew
how little there was to stop him in my section he might make a push
which would carry him to Amiens. Only the magnificent work of our
airmen had prevented him getting that knowledge, but we couldn’t keep
the secrecy up for ever. Some day an enemy plane would get over, and it
only needed the drive of a fresh storm-battalion or two to scatter us.
I wanted a good prepared position, with sound trenches and decent
wiring. Above all I wanted reserves—reserves. The word was on my lips
all day and it haunted my dreams. I was told that the French were to
relieve us, but when—when? My reports to Corps Headquarters were one
long wail for more troops. I knew there was a position prepared behind
us, but I needed men to hold it.
Wake brought in a message from Blenkiron. “We’re waiting for you,
Dick,” he wrote, “and we’ve gotten quite a nice little home ready for
you. This old man hasn’t hustled so hard since he struck copper in
Montana in ’92. We’ve dug three lines of trenches and made a heap of
pretty redoubts, and I guess they’re well laid out, for the Army staff
has supervised them and they’re no slouches at this brand of
engineering. You would have laughed to see the labour we employed. We
had all breeds of Dago and Chinaman, and some of your own South African
blacks, and they got so busy on the job they forgot about bedtime. I
used to be reckoned a bit of a slave driver, but my special talents
weren’t needed with this push. I’m going to put a lot of money into
foreign missions henceforward.”
I wrote back: “Your trenches are no good without men. For God’s sake
get something that can hold a rifle. My lot are done to the world.”
Then I left Lefroy with the division and went down on the back of an
ambulance to see for myself. I found Blenkiron, some of the Army
engineers, and a staff officer from Corps Headquarters, and I found
Archie Roylance.
They had dug a mighty good line and wired it nobly. It ran from the
river to the wood of La Bruyere on the little hill above the Ablain
stream. It was desperately long, but I saw at once it couldn’t well be
shorter, for the division on the south of us had its hands full with
the fringe of the big thrust against the French.
“It’s no good blinking the facts,” I told them. “I haven’t a thousand
men, and what I have are at the end of their tether. If you put ’em in
these trenches they’ll go to sleep on their feet. When can the French
take over?”
I was told that it had been arranged for next morning, but that it had
now been put off twenty-four hours. It was only a temporary measure,
pending the arrival of British divisions from the north.
Archie looked grave. “The Boche is pushin’ up new troops in this
sector. We got the news before I left squadron headquarters. It looks
as if it would be a near thing, sir.”
“It won’t be a near thing. It’s an absolute black certainty. My fellows
can’t carry on as they are another day. Great God, they’ve had a
fortnight in hell! Find me more men or we buckle up at the next push.”
My temper was coming very near its limits.
“We’ve raked the country with a small-tooth comb, sir,” said one of the
staff officers. “And we’ve raised a scratch pack. Best part of two
thousand. Good men, but most of them know nothing about infantry
fighting. We’ve put them into platoons, and done our best to give them
some kind of training. There’s one thing may cheer you. We’ve plenty of