That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
prisoners. What beauties! Whining 'Kamerad!' to our chaps, and putting
their hands up for mercy. Do they suppose----"
The speaker ceased, for the brother-officer who had commanded the
bridge-company was absorbed in looking through his binoculars at a
silvery speck in the western heavens. It grew into a British R.F.C.
scouting biplane, that came droning overhead at 4,000, circled, fired a
white rocket for attention, dived nearer, circled again, and dropped a
scrawled message in a leaded clip-bag.
"_Enemy-column--infantry with motor-lorries and two guns crossing
river--bridge a mile to the West of you--hurrying hell-for-leather
North. Dropped them two bombs. Bigger column advancing from North with
more motor-lorries and howitzers. Look out for squalls that direction.
Roads to South all clear._"
"Those crossing the bridge to west of us will be the gentlemen who came
round that way to leave their cards!" said the Lieutenant-Colonel
Commanding as the biplane sang itself away. "Probably a column detached
for the surprise from the bigger force to the north. Well, we seem to
have finished top-dog. Let's hope they won't tackle us again until the
men have had their coffee. 'Phone the Brigadier at Zille! And
'wireless' the news of the scrimmage to the Divisional Commander at Baix
and Marwics thirty miles south of us, and get a message through to Sir
Kenneth"--he named the General Officer Commanding the A.C. to which the
Brigade belonged. "And give details to the G.H.Q. at St. O., don't
forget! Not that we'll get much credit over this." The Colonel
scowled, surveying from the sandbagged window of Headquarters, situate
in the Factory, the long lines of stretchers being trotted off by the
R.A.M.C. bearers to the town Hospital. He rubbed his finger under the
bristles of his close-clipped moustache with a rasping sound that
conveyed his irritation as he went on: "That's the worst of these rotten
little Advance-guard actions! They're expensive, infernally expensive.
The casualties are heavy and the credit _nil_."
"Possibly, sir, but at any rate we've wiped out a lot of these Boche
beggars," said the Battery Commander, optimistically. "Halloa! Bird
over! And it's a Boche plane!"
A two-seated Taube, shining silver in the morning sunshine, had come out
of the golden mists to northward, rolling up the landscape under its
steel belly with wonderful steady swiftness. At some 3,000 above the
town, it hovered, making a queer buzzing noise.
"I've heard that song before," said the Adjutant, his eyes glued to his
binoculars. "You remember, sir, at Fegny?"
"The spotter our fellows christened the Buzzard. At his old
smoke-signalling tactics." The Colonel snatched the Field-telephone,
spoke, and from a gaping skylight at the top of the tall, square,
many-windowed Factory an extravagantly-tilted Maxim began to pump lead
skywards in a glittering fan-shaped stream. "Queer effect, uncommonly!
Looks as if it were raining upside down.... Gad!--I believe that hit
him!" he added, as a small dark object fell from the Hunnish monoplane.
But it was only the inevitable miniature parachute with the smoke-rocket
attached to it belching gouts of black vapour. The Buzzard ceased
buzzing, banked, and climbed gracefully out of view.
And then, with a leaping of green-white tongues of flame away in the
north, beyond a long sunlit stretch of level country fringed with
poplars and streaked with canals, and patched with brown cornfields and
golden-tinted woods and apple-laden orchards, and dotted with little
towns and villages, the heavy German field-guns and 11.2-inch Krupp
howitzers began to shower shrapnel and big steel shells of High
Explosive upon the devoted little town.
The Kaisermen had got the range from their spotter. Half of the single
Field battery of 18-pounder quick-firers were put out of action in the
twinkling of an eye. The little town became a storm-centre, canopied by
soot-black smoke, stabbed by the fierce blue glares of the shell-bursts.
The houses were toppling. The ruins were blazing. The gasometer near
the station was hit and blew up with a fearful explosion. The streets
were full of shrieking, stampeding, dying townspeople and children.
"Save us! Take us with you!" they screamed to the Englishmen. For the
Divisional Commander at Baix and Marwics had telegraphed "Retire," and
the battalion was preparing to evacuate the town.
A great shell wrecked the Factory, killed the Adjutant and many of the
machine-gunners, and slightly wounded the C.O. The Romanesque
church-tower, whose bells had shrieked alarm in the little hours of the
morning, rocked, staggered, and collapsed over its famous chime.
Again, men had melted as you laid your hands on them, blown into crimson
rags as their mouths opened shouting to you. It had been Hell, Franky
remembered, sheer, absolute, unvarnished Hell. The Battalion
Surgeon-Major had been dressing his wounded arm in the open street when
the Death-blizzard had broken upon them. A lump of shrapnel hit Franky
in the ribs on the right side and some R.A.M.C. bearers carried him,
vomiting blood, into the baker's shop. Possibly they were killed--for a
shell hit and burst, and wrecked the house in the instant of their
leaving it--and they never came back again. Their charge, in his
helplessness, had escaped death by a narrow shave. The plank flooring
of the upper room, dropping from the broken joist at the fireplace end,
had formed a penthouse over him--lying on the blood-soaked stretcher on
the tiled flooring--shielding him from the avalanche of household
furniture, glass and crockery, descending from overhead.
Thus he had lain, partially unconscious, when what was left of the
battalion marched out of the town. Most of the population followed on
the blistered heels of the British soldiers, helping to carry the
stretchers of the wounded and crippled men who under that blizzard of
fiery Death had been got out of the burning Hospital. Not all had been
got out. Franky, lying bloody and smothered with plaster, and helpless
under the penthouse of planking that had saved him, had heard the
screams of these--such pitiful, heart-rending screams.
Then the bombardment had stopped, and the mere relief from that
intolerable torture of outrageous sound was Heaven. The screams from
the burning Hospital had ceased, but when the earth had shaken with the
approach of a great host, and German cavalry in green-grey uniforms with
covered helmets had ridden through the ravaged streets, and the
tottering walls had trembled at the passage of colossal motor-tractors
dragging 11.2-inch Krupps and carrying huge loads of German gunners,
engineers, and infantry--and German voices had shouted harshly up and
down the streets--and German heads were thrust from open windows--and
the work of Pillage, so dear to the German heart, was being carried out
with German thoroughness--the screaming had begun again.--Cries of women
and children, shouts of men; pleas, expostulations, prayers for mercy in
French or Flemish, brutal laughter, German oaths, threats, and orders;
subsequently, to the accompaniment of "_Deutschland, Deutschland, ueber
Alles_"--the popping of corks and the breaking of glasses--Hochs for
Kaiser and Kronprinz, fierce disputes over the divison of booty, more
shrieks of women and girls.... To the funeral adagio of picks and
mattocks upon the cobblestones of the Market Square. A volley then, and
shots and more shots.... Subsequently Private of Infantry, Max
Schlutter, made these scrawled entries in his note-book; testifying to
the Sadism prevailing among the troops of the Attila of To-day:
"_October --th, 1914. Great day of loot and plunder! We shelled the
cowardly English--a whole Army Corps with a brigade of heavy
Artillery--out of the village of H----. The Hospital, Barracks, Church,
and many houses destroyed by our guns. The Mayor, the Burgomaster, and
the Registrar shot for harbouring our enemies. The priest tied up to
his church-door, tortured, and then burnt, for ringing the bells to warn
the English of our approach. Lieutenant Rossberg had a little girl
butchered like a pigling, and pounded the feet of some lame English
soldiers we found hiding, to teach the swine how to dance. They too
were shot. Decidedly the Lieutenant is a funny fellow. All the people
who had not run away brought out of their houses and shot. They filled
the air with their lamentations. After a grand gorge and a big swill,
we now all drunk and slept on the pavements by the light of a
magnificent silvery moon. Burned more houses, and continued the march
next day with a hellishly bad head._"
"How long before they find me out?" Franky had wondered. But the
plaster-whitened brown boots sticking stiffly out under the penthouse of
broken flooring must have looked as though they clothed the rigid feet
of a dead man. "Presently they will come!" he had promised himself. But
though they had sacked the baker's shop and visited the other rooms in
the dwelling, no one had entered the ravaged little parlour, split open
from floor to ceiling by the upburst of the High Explosive, and offering
its ravaged, worthless interior to the scrutiny of every passing eye.
Worn and spent with fierce exertion, hard fighting, and loss of blood,
delirious with the rising fever of his wounds, he was conscious in
whiffs and snatches. The conscious intervals made fiery streaks across
broad belts of murky shadow, a No Man's Land wherein Franky wandered,
meeting things both beautiful and hideous, knowing nothing real except
thirst, racking cramps, and stabbing pain.
The second day passed. At sun-high a distant fury of guns broke out.
Through the terrible drum-fire of Prussian Artillery he fancied he could
hear the British field-guns, hammering out Death in return for Death.
Suffering agonies for lack of water, he sustained life with scraps of
chocolate broken from a half-cake carried in a breast-pocket. To move
one hand and carry it to his mouth was possible at cost of ugly pain.
Night fell, a night that was rainy, and windy, full of cool drippings
that wet Franky's clothes without visiting his baked lips, and still the
cannonade went on ceaselessly--so that the crazy walls that sheltered
him shuddered and the earth vibrated, and the eeriness was made more
eerie with the sliding of tiles from broken rafters, and the creaking
and banging of broken doors, slammed by ghostly, invisible hands. Pale
splashes of light,--reflected stabs of fire from the muzzles of those
unsleeping guns in the south and west, made the darkness yet more
dreary. Rats scrambled and squeaked, close to him in the obscurity,
evoking horrible suggestions of being gnawed and bitten as one lay
helpless there.... He gritted his teeth to keep back the cry that
nearly broke from him as one rodent crossed him, its hooked claws
rattling against his straps and buttons, its cold hairless tail sliding
snakily over his hand. He fancied that he saw its eyes shining in the
darkness--he was certain that it had moved and lopped round behind
him--he felt its whiskered snout cautiously approaching the throbbing
artery beneath his ear.... Then his nerve left him, and he croaked out
feebly, though it seemed to him that he shouted:
"S'cat, you brute! Get, you beggar! Halloa; Halloa! _Belges au
secours_! _Ici un Anglais, grievement blesse_! Is anybody there?"
But there came no answer save the muffled thunder of guns in the
distance, the crackle of fire in houses that were burning, the gurgling
of a broken water-main, and the distressed miaowing of a cat. It came
nearer. There was a rustling sound, and the light descent of a furry
body on padded feet; Pussy had jumped in where the window had been,