Part 23 (1/2)
The character of the fighting in this part of Flanders entered into the monotone of the winter campaign and, though the censors.h.i.+p was blamed for scarcity of news, there was really nothing to conceal in the way of heroic charges by cavalry, das.h.i.+ng bayonet attacks, or rapid counter-movements by infantry in ma.s.s. Such things for which public imagination craved were not happening.
What did happen was a howling gale shrieking across the dunes, and swirling up the sands into blinding clouds, and tearing across the flat marshlands as though all the invisible G.o.ds of the old ghost world were racing in their chariots.
In the trenches along the Yser men crouched down close to the moist mud to shelter themselves from a wind which was harder to dodge than shrapnel sh.e.l.ls. It lashed them with a fierce cruelty. In spite of all the woollen comforters and knitted vests made by women's hands at home, the wind found its way through to the bones and marrow of the soldiers so that they were numbed. At night it was an agony of cold, preventing sleep, even if men could sleep while sh.e.l.ls were searching for them with a cry of death.
The gunners dug pits for themselves, and when they ceased fire for a time crawled to shelter, smoking through little outlets in the damp blankets in which they had wrapped their heads and shoulders. They tied bundles of straw round their legs to keep out the cold and packed old newspapers inside their chests as breast-plates, and tried to keep themselves warm, at least in imagination.
There was no battlefield in the old idea of the world. How often must one say this to people at home who think that a modern army is encamped in the fields with bivouac fires and bell tents? The battle was spread over a wide area of villages and broken towns and shattered farmhouses, and neat little homesteads yet untouched by fire or sh.e.l.l. The open roads were merely highways between these points of shelter, in which great bodies of troops were huddled--the internal lines of communication connecting various parts of the fighting machine.
It was rather hot, as well as cold, at Oudecapelle and Nieucapelle, and along the line to Styvekenskerke and Lom-bardtzyde. The enemy's batteries were hard at work again belching out an inexhaustible supply of sh.e.l.ls. Over there, the darkness was stabbed by red flashes, and the sky was zigzagged by waves of vivid splendour, which shone for a moment upon the blanched faces of men who waited for death.
Through the darkness, along the roads, infantry tramped towards the lines of trenches, to relieve other regiments who had endured a spell in them. They bent their heads low, thrusting forward into the heart of the gale, which tore at the blue coats of these Frenchmen and plucked at their red trousers, and slashed in their faces with cruel whips. Their side-arms jingled against the teeth of the wind, which tried to s.n.a.t.c.h at their bayonets and to drag the rifles out of their grip.
They never raised their heads to glance at the Red Cross carts coming back.
Some of the French officers, tramping by the side of their men, shouted through the swish of the gale:
”Courage, mes pet.i.ts!”
”II fait mauvais temps pour les sales Boches!”
In cottage parlours near the fighting lines--that is to say in the zone of fire, which covered many villages and farmsteads, French doctors, b.u.t.toned up to the chin in leather coats, bent over the newest batches of wounded.
”Shut that door! Sacred name of a dog; keep the door shut! Do you want the gale to blow us up the chimney?”
But it was necessary to open the door to bring in another stretcher where a man lay still.
”Pardon, mon capitaine,” said one of the stretcher-bearers, as the door banged to, with a frightful clap.
Yesterday the enemy reoccupied Dixmude.
So said the official bulletin, with its incomparable brevity of eloquence.
26
For a time, during this last month in the first year of the war, I made my headquarters at Dunkirk, where without stirring from the town there was always a little excitement to be had. Almost every day, for instance, a German aeroplane--one of the famous Taube flock-- would come and drop bombs by the Town Hall or the harbour, killing a woman or two and a child, or breaking many panes of gla.s.s, but never destroying anything of military importance (for women and children are of no importance in time of war), although down by the docks there were rich stores of ammunition, petrol, and material of every kind. These birds of death came so regularly in the afternoon that the Dunquerquoises, who love a jest, even though it is a b.l.o.o.d.y one, instead of saying ”Trois heures et demie,” used to say, ”Taube et demie” and know the time.
There was a window in Dunkirk which looked upon the chief square.
In the centre of the square is the statue of Jean-Bart, the famous captain and pirate of the seventeenth century, standing in his sea- boots (as he once strode into the presence of the Sun-King) and with his sword raised above his great plumed hat. I stood in the balcony of the window looking down at the colour and movement of the life below, and thinking at odd moments--the thought always thrust beneath the surface of one's musings--of the unceasing slaughter of the war not very far away across the Belgian frontier. All these people here in the square were in some way busy with the business of death.
They were crossing these flagged stones on the way to the shambles, or coming back from the sh.e.l.l-stricken towns, la bas, as the place of blood is called, or taking out new loads of food for guns and men, or bringing in reports to admirals and the staff, or going to churches to pray for men who have done these jobs before, and now, perhaps, lie still, out of it.
This square in Dunkirk contained many of the elements which go to make up the actions and reactions of this war. It seemed to me that a clever stage manager desiring to present to his audience the typical characters of this military drama--leaving out the beastliness, of course--would probably select the very people and groups upon whom I was now looking down from the window. Motor-cars came whirling up with French staff officers in dandy uniforms (the stains of blood and mud would only be omitted by Mr. Willie Clarkson). In the centre, just below the statue of Jean-Bart, was an armoured-car which a Belgian soldier, with a white rag round his head, was explaining to a French cuira.s.sier whose long horse-hair queue fell almost to his waist from his linen-covered helm. Small boys mounted the step and peered into the wonder-box, into the mysteries of this neat death-machine, and poked grubby fingers into bullet-holes which had scored the armour-plates. Other soldiers--Cha.s.seurs Alpins in sky-blue coats, French artillery men in their dark-blue jackets, Belgian soldiers wearing s.h.i.+ny top-hats with eye-shades, or d.i.n.ky caps with gold or scarlet ta.s.sels, and English Tommies in mud-coloured khaki-- strolled about the car, and nodded their heads towards it as though to say, ”That has killed off a few Germans, by the look of it. Better sport than trench digging.”
The noise of men's voices and laughter--they laugh a good deal in war time, outside the range of sh.e.l.ls--came up to the open window; overpowered now and then by the gurgles and squawks of motor- horns, like beasts giving their death-cries. With a long disintegrating screech there came up a slate-grey box on wheels. It made a semicircular sweep, scattering a group of people, and two young gentlemen of the Royal Naval Air Service sprang down and shouted ”What-ho!” very cheerily to two other young gentlemen in naval uniforms who shouted back ”Cheer-o!” from the table under my balcony.
I knew all of them, especially one of the naval airmen who flies what he calls a motor-bus and drops bombs with sea curses upon the heads of any German troops he can find on a morning's reconnaissance. He rubs his hand at the thought that he has ”done in” quite a number of the ”German blighters.” With a little luck he hopes to n.o.bble a few more this afternoon. A good day's work like this bucks him up wonderfully, he says, except when he comes down an awful whop in the darned old motor-bus, which is all right while she keeps going but no bloomin' use at all when she spreads her skirts in a ploughed field and smashes her new set of stays. Oh, a bad old vixen, that seaplane of his! Wants a lot of coaxin'.
A battery of French artillery rattled over the cobblestones. The wheels were caked with clay, and the guns were covered with a grey dust.