“B/—th will detail the liaison officer for the Group for to-morrow the 5th.”

The Brigade orderly splashed in bearing the unwelcome message. I had just turned in. The never-to-be-forgotten fatal three days’ downpour which had set in on the 31st July 1917 and had upset so many calculations had just stopped and we had enjoyed an afternoon and evening of bright sunshine and cloudless skies. The water in the dug-out, which had risen steadily in spite of temporary responses to our efforts with an old trench pump and a chain of buckets, was now gradually beginning to abate and the stretcher on which I slept was once more high and dry. Also I was due to go down to waggon-lines in two days’ time, and life generally was taking on a less sombre hue.

It could afford to. Our six weeks in action in the Salient had been lived in an atmosphere of almost unrelieved gloom, an atmosphere—so we had come to believe—inalienable from the place itself.

One had come to realise what men had meant who in earlier days on the Somme—when all was said to be quiet at Ypres—had trekked south into the Valley of the Shadow of Death and remarked that “it was better than the Salient.” Now we had seen for ourselves. It had not merely been the shelling and the fact that there was not a really safe spot, except in the very ramparts of the Eastern wall themselves, between Belgian Battery Corner and the front line. It had not merely been that the German gunners conveyed the impression that they were aiming at you, that they knew exactly where you were, and that they were doing it—had been doing it all along—more as a pleasure than as an allotted task. It had not been the fact that no fatigue or waggon-line party could set great hopes on returning scatheless from a job of work; nor that here hostile aeroplane observation seemed more acute than in other parts; nor again that rarely a night passed but one saw or heard of some shambles on a main traffic road. It was none of these things. The spirit of Ypres was abroad, impregnating those new to her. From the very morning when, accompanying a harassed, jumpy acting C.R.A. on his round of battery inspections, I had first seen her, I had felt the spell upon me. It was like grey skies and a wind in the east, the quintessence of sombreness. The intervals of quiet could not be called peace; they served only to intensify the solitude. The history of the place seemed to cast its stamp on those who sojourned in it.

We had come into action at the beginning of July. Our instructions had been to get “in” and camouflaged and registered and then wait for “the day,” and that waiting had been sorely trying to the patience. It had been far worse than sitting on the Messines Ridge in June. We had been told we should be “silent,” but we had fired steadily nevertheless, and this meant, of course, more ammunition and added risk of casualties amongst horses and men. It had meant having the men out of cover to shift the shells from their depÔts to the gun-pits; and such things were considerations when we were losing men at the rate of about two a day and the stock of capable gunners and N.C.O.’s, depleted at Messines, was beginning to run dangerously low. “D” Battery on our immediate right had had an even worse time. Poor old “D.” They were always getting the rough of it since Courcelette, and this time they had got it very rough indeed. They had had no cellar to put their gun-crews in and we had been unable to spare them a share in ours, so they had left emergency crews at the guns and worked them by nucleus shifts, the remainder sleeping a long way behind.

The preparations had dragged their slow course along, and we had gone on with our daily routine, never knowing what the next minute was not going to produce, unloading and storing the ammunition, and heaving a sigh of relief when the last pack-horse had discharged his daily load and that anxiety at least was off our shoulders for the day; checking the sights and aiming-posts, strengthening so far as we could the pits, watching and shepherding the men; gassed one night and on duty all the next and then gassed again the third—the deadly mustard fellow had just made his costly dÉbut; counting the leaden hours, congratulating ourselves each time that—our duty over—we made the dug-out door afresh; and ever and anon looking hopefully through the tattered screen which still served to shield our part of the Menin Road from hostile observation to where Passchendaele Church stood prominent and quite intact on the opposite slope.

In five weeks the Corps Artillery alone had lost (I believe the figure is correct) 568 officers, killed, wounded, or gassed, and other ranks also had lost in proportion. We ourselves had lost one officer (gassed almost as soon as we had got in), five out of our six N.C.O.’s, and twelve gunners or bombardiers. “D” had had a young officer just out from England killed with a sergeant immediately behind our own guns, and a direct hit on one of their dug-outs had deprived them of three more sergeants and two gunners at one fell swoop. The toll had mounted up steadily, and though the C.-in-C. had issued a special appreciation of the bearing of the artillery in these difficult circumstances, we had day by day been feeling more the heavy strain.

Then had come the last days of July. All the conceivable practice barrages had been fired and the Huns made wise to the uttermost.

Then again—amidst rumours that the French were two days late—the storm clouds had gathered from the unfavourable quarter, and finally on the 31st July the great unwieldy barrage had unwound its complicated length in drizzling rain on the Hun lines. The infantry had gone over and reached the “black line” up to scheduled time: but on the “black line” they had lost co-ordination; when the barrage advanced again they had been late to follow up; the barrage had rolled on unheeding; our men, floundering in its wake on hopeless ground and now in a steady downpour, had had to come back and consolidate on the “black line,” while the batteries awaited in vain the longed-for order to advance.

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Well, what was one job more or less after all? One might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and I should go down to waggon-lines with all the clearer conscience on the 6th, and sleep.... How I would sleep! I would get down there for lunch if I could, have a quiet ride in the afternoon into “Pop,” and come back to waggon-lines for an early dinner and bed. How glorious to wake up once more, and to hear the birds twittering outside! It seemed ages ago since one had done so last, and it was in reality just eight days. My waggon-line billet was in a small farm-house. Madame and her man had been, for those parts, friendly enough. I remembered having tried to convey to Madame that next time I visited her, Ypres would be free. She had not understood, and perhaps it had been just as well.

Yes, a late breakfast, after a sluice-down in the open air, a leisurely toilet, and a stroll round the horses; and then perhaps a real joy-ride, an all-day affair towards Nieppe Forest....

I rang up the battery and gave my orders for signallers and an orderly on the morrow. There was only one other subaltern available for the job, and as the Major was out at the time I deputed myself. It is the unwritten rule.

I read through the standing orders for the Group liaison officers, finished my chapter of Sonia—I was to read the next in a very different setting—and went to sleep.

The Menin Road was a populous concern in those days and the varied traffic comforted our gregarious souls as we walked down at a round pace next morning after breakfast to pay our respects en route to Infantry Brigade and the senior Artillery Liaison Officer of the Group in the big labyrinth of dug-outs at the bottom of the hill. Hell Fire Corner, though still occasionally shelled “on spec,” was no longer the shunned, depressing cross-roads that it used to be. Now it even boasted a military policeman to control the traffic. Ambulance cars and heavy lorries passed and met us. The road was thick with infantry and fatigue-parties of various kinds going up and coming out.

The shattered boughs and fallen branches, which had blocked the unused road before, had now been side-tracked; only dead mules and horses here and there had created fresh obstructions. Fritz was putting most of his metal this morning on to the front line and the ridge where we were due at noon; but even back here he had guns enough to send over his one a minute, searching—now that he might no longer observe—for some of his old favourite spots. So we did not loiter.

At Infantry Brigade they were making their toilet. The senior Liaison Officer told me that battalion had shifted its headquarters during the night: “too hot to stay where it was.” He gave me what he understood were the map co-ordinates of their new abode, and I took my departure.

We crossed the old No Man’s Land, passed the working-parties at their thankless tasks of road-making in the churned morass, and picked our way warily round the crater lips across the old German front line system till we struck the railway. It did not seem to be getting shelled, and would at least afford better going than if we plunged through the crater-field direct towards the front line. My intention was to nurse the railway for a mile or so, and then, leaving it, to strike across up the ridge in order to hit off “The Rectory,” where Battalion H.Q. were reported to be.

I had not been forward myself since the show. It was worse even than I expected. The ground was just beginning to harden in the hot sunshine, but every hole was filled with water and one had to plan out one’s course with long detours, jumping precariously from island to island. The rusted wire, half buried in the loose earth, tore one’s puttees. The whole place stank. There were very few dead about; the Hun communiquÉ had probably not lied in saying that their outposts had been lightly held. But the railway embankment gave possible lodgment for the feet and we kept along it as I planned, with six paces between each man and one eye on the 4·2’s falling just to our right in the valley. The effect on that ground was only local and we had no fears of splinters.

At last, panting and thirsty, we reached the crest which our infantry were holding. We could see no movement. Over the bleak expanse of shell-holes there was no human being to be seen; one had got to cast one’s eye right back to where the working-parties were.

A line of ruined houses and pill-boxes ran along the ridge. One of them was “The Rectory.” I went into it; there was a concreted cellar facing Boche-wards, but nobody inside it. I hailed a Red Cross man who was wandering about forlornly. He hadn’t seen anyone, didn’t know anything.

It was rather annoying. I looked up my book of the rules and tried a cast back to the original map reference for Battalion Headquarters. It must be a ruined pill-box which they were shelling. I waited till there was a pause and then looked inside. No, not a sign of anyone.

Confound Brigade! That part of the programme must wait, that’s all. I had to establish connection by visual with our Brigade signallers at Hell Fire Corner and must plant my lamp.

We went down into one of the pill-boxes on the ridge and deposited the gear. The dug-out was a foot or more deep in water, but must have been a comfortable, secure home. Two wounded infantrymen were lying on the bunks on one side of the dug-out. They told me they had been there since the first day, untended save by chance arrivals. I tried to cheer them up and we offered them our water-bottles.

We stuck the lamp up just behind the pill-box on the top of a bank and flashed it full in the direction of Hell Fire Corner. There was no answer. “Nothing’s going right to-day,” I thought, and the shells were pitching just to our right and inviting retirement to the safe—if damp—recess beneath us.

But I was overdue and had not found sign or trace of the infantry. The place might be deserted for all the world, save for our little party. I had one more cast round in various ruined pill-boxes on our side of the slope, and then made up my mind to go forward—east—a little. My Major had told me yesterday that our fellows were digging in in front of the ridge. Perhaps the infantry Colonel was with them.

It did not seem very likely, on the forward side of a ridge sloping towards Hunland, but unusual things were done in those days of disorganisation and I had not seen a single infantryman since we left the working-parties behind us early in the morning. Our infantry, if they were not a myth, must be east of me, not west.

I left my signallers still flashing vainly and took my orderly with me to the forward slope of the ridge. We stalked down a hedge about 50 yards, then turned due right along another. There was another “pill-box” just half right of us.

“That might be them, sir,” said my orderly.

We swung sharp right and walked up to it. I saw an unusual helmet. “One of our Tommies decking himself out,” I thought. Then another helmet of the same sort, and the truth flashed on me just as it was too late and we were within a few paces of them, with the pill-box between us and home, covered by a couple of German rifles.

A dozen very vivid thoughts raced through my mind. “Somebody’s made the most awful howler.” “I can’t get back.” “Where in thunder were our infantry, then?” “This is the end.” “I haven’t even got a revolver on me.” “Prisoner!—what will they say?” “What the devil will they say?”

I gave the lad an order and we held up our hands. I will not labour the apology. The back verandah of the pill-box—so it looked—was bristling with amazed and animated Huns. Cut off from retreat, unarmed and utterly flabbergasted, what would you? I stammered out a few words in bad French to their officer and then asked leave to sit down. I was exhausted and quite overwhelmed. So this was the result of my fourteen months of cumulative experience. What a culmination! To walk over No Man’s Land on a bye-day in broad daylight into a German nest! Such a thing had never come into our ken that I could remember. And if it had, I should have been the first to pass uncharitable comment. What hideous irony! I looked at the boy I had led unwittingly into captivity. What sort of an officer did he think I was now? He would bless me before it was all over, if all one heard, had read of, was true. Suddenly one began to see the prisoner-of-war question in a new light. What was it like really? And all the time I racked and racked my brains to think whose fault it was, where the mistake had lain. I knew the range on the map to “The Rectory,” which I had just left, and the range of our S.O.S. barrage. Three hundred yards to play with. I had come barely a hundred. Perhaps they hadn’t known of this pill-box. To know, O Lord, if only to know—and I couldn’t^[1].

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That day seemed an eternity. In the evening I heard the shells from my own battery come whizzing over. I was to have observed them, five rounds of battery fire on the German front line at 5 p.m. Since the push this had been the only method, except by visual; no wires had lived a day up till then.

My tie alone proclaimed me as an officer. I had left my tunic and all my impedimenta, with—fortunately—my notebooks and important papers, in the pill-box on the ridge.

The orderly in his rough way was comforting. I felt sorry for the boy. It wasn’t his fault anyway.

One had an early insight into the German character. This lot were Mecklenburgers and good stuff by the look of them, but desperately dull and earnest. All day long they sat in that pill-box—three officers and about twenty men—and jabbered. There wasn’t a laugh, there wasn’t even the semblance of a smile. They smoked cigars most of the time; when food was brought, they gobbled it down like famished wolves and then turned to jabbering and smoking once more. Occasionally a British plane caused a diversion; they rushed to the verandah and craned their necks at it amidst a babel of maledictions, it would have been funny—if one had been in the heart for it—to see the way these fellows took their war. They were perfectly safe, and knew it, until such time as we should attack again. The pill-box must have been sunk a yard or more beneath the ground, and had five feet or more of concrete on every side. Only the back-blast from a shell pitching in their back verandah—short of a direct hit from a heavy gun—could have done much harm. They were wonderfully well camouflaged.

They gave me something to drink but could not spare any food, and I smoked a cigar or two. When it got dark they sent us down under an escort. We had hardly started when a “strafe” began, so we sat in another pill-box and listened to our own shells falling all round and hitting the place more than once.

Then the bombardment died away and we went on our way—across the swampy Hanebeek, past batteries and groups of infantry in open trenches or yet other pill-boxes; into Company Headquarters, a crowded cellar in a farm, where a brief examination of our guides by a pot-bellied, earnest Hun officer took place; and then away again, on over more open, firmer country, up a long slope by a narrow bridle-path, with our shells still falling at intervals round about and fresh corpses of men and horses showing where our guns had found occasional value from searching tracks whose use had been established. The warning Draht, Draht (“ware wire”) of our surly N.C.O. guide became rarer, we emerged at length on to a regular road, and after an hour or so’s walking we were taken into the roomy and laboriously built and fortified quarters of the Regimental Staff. There more depositions were taken by the bullet-headed Brigade Major, a forbidding-looking, efficient little blackguard, I thought, and a good specimen of their military machine. Cigars were provided for our guides and we were marched out again once more, items of passing interest, no doubt, but as human beings inconsiderable. We would be going towards Moorslede. I was dead tired and faint with hunger, but the cool night air blew fresh upon my forehead. We passed ammunition limbers by the score—great, clumsy things they seemed after our neat Q.F. variety—and now and again a company of infantry coming up to the line at the rapid, business-like half run, half walk, which struck one so strangely after our own infantry’s measured pace. They seemed to be in high spirits, and had a cheery word for our guides. From what I saw, the German Flanders army went up cheerfully enough in those days to take its hammering.

And then at last, in the grey dawn and after many questionings of passers-by by our somewhat uncertain guides, Moorslede, and a brief halt in a Headquarters of sorts; then on again on the last stage, beyond shell-fire now and knowing—as every German had enviously said to us who could speak English at all—that “the war was over for us.” It was their stock phrase, and I believed them with a deep-down feeling somewhere—in spite of all the bitterness—that it was so, and that I should at least, given reasonable luck, see home and friends once more.

Into Roulers we fare in a grinding, shaking motor-bus and take our first impression of black rye bread and ersatz coffee.

And here we may be left—in a Belgian occupied town, in a stifling, ill-ventilated room, amidst a motley crew of unwashed, sleepy, but not unfriendly Germans; worn with the fatigue and strain of the last long fifteen hours, and at first—for my part—probing vainly for an explanation of it all; and then, as the tyranny of the stomach grows more ensconced, settling down to the long, absorbing vigil of waiting on the next full meal.