Part 3

Langemarck, grim, windswept and desolate.

A few short weeks before it had by the flowing of British blood, by our own Division, been wrenched from the German grasp. There is everywhere about it an awesome sacredness. One hesitates to treat lightly over the soil that belongs to those whose eyes were closed in the taking, and whose warrior forms lie at rest beneath the pathetic white crosses dotted over the gruesome waste. Those sad little emblems of Supreme Sacrifice: "To the memory of a British Soldier." Simple but magnificent! A farewell to some unknown--to some mother's son.

The first shell that scatters you in all direction, secretly feeling yourself doubtfully all over, abruptly disperses any sentimentality that may cling to the mind. The two Companies found it so when they marched still further up the line and commenced work on two different sectors, shelled--but comparatively lightly--for the first day or two.

The first line over-attacked in the mud, swept over Poelcapelle and advanced on Passchendaele, pausing while the mobile artillery moved up to support over roads that were daily filled in and rebuilt by fatigue parties similar to the Guernseys. The German Headquarters concentrated their guns upon the immediate British rear, with the intention of hampering and impeding the movements of reinforcements and artillery.

The Guernseys got the cream of it. Ground was churned up for yards and bodies buried weeks before were blown from their resting places, grinning white and hideous at the sky. Work on the roads was one perpetually interrupted operation, men ducking every few minutes to the whine of a shell. Life was an unknown quantity--no man could gauge what moments were still left him. Streams of wounded ran, hobbled or limped painfully away from that sector of Hell. Artillery galloped steaming horses through, sighing with relief upon attaining the other end.

There comes a time after his first baptism of fire, after his first view of the shattered mutilated remnants of a shell-stricken body, that the infantryman turns towards where invisible German guns from comparative safety belch forth death, and shakes his impotent fist at this enemy. He picks himself up, white and shaken, from where the concussion has thrown him, and amid the cries of the dying, "Curse you," he sobs, "if ever the chance comes----!"

A battery of R.F.A. within a few hundred yards of the road opened salvoes lasting throughout every morning until the ears throbbed with each successive roar and the earth trembled violently beneath the 6-in.'s concussion. Jerry airmen endeavouring to spot the gun-positions swooped down unheard, pumping lead in heavy showers from machine-guns upon the Guernseys and scattering them broadcast.

Pike stopped a "Blighty" with his foot, and Pleton, a shrapnel bullet whistling clean through his chest, fell limply forward. Gas commenced, coming over in shells ... in response to the alarm, respirators were donned with an alacrity phenomenal in its hasty adjustment. De La Mare discovered one of the eye-pieces missing. Holding his nose with one hand, he spluttered: "Wa', wi' I do?" and instantly clapped his hand over his mouth, jumping from one foot to another in apprehensive uncertainty. From within every helmet choking bursts of laughter sounded muffled on the air. The unfortunate lad held his breath until black in the face, gasped in a frenzied intake of air, and gingerly felt himself. Ultimately instructed to change into the P.H. helmet, he did so nervously, succeeded, and sat down, inhaling deep breaths of relief.

"All Clear" was sounded, but from the moment he removed his mask and for days afterwards he was the recipient of sly solicitations from a chuckling platoon.

"I wonder why 'e was pullin' on 'is nose?" Le Page innocently inquired; "ain't it long enough?"

"Dunno," Ginger replied; "p'raps 'e 'as chronic catarrh!"

Day followed day, bringing little change in the task. Casualties were not exceptionally heavy, but the strenuous work and perpetual stress of the nerves told on them. For there is no more nerve-shattering task than to have to submit without active retaliation day after day to harassing shell-fire. It is during this early initiating into a general expectation of possible death that the young warrior has to conquer the psychological instinct impressed with fear upon his imagination from childhood that LIFE is his most valued asset, and must be safeguarded before all things. And now his conception is revolutionised. He must accept death as a daily possibility.

It is patent that dusk found them weary and worn, plodding and wading silently "homewards," shovel on shoulder, across four or five kilos of desolate mud; falling and tripping over stagnant bodies, masses of tangled wire, bricks and jagged wood-work everywhere impeding progress. And yet a consciousness of good work done reacted on their spirits. They reflected contentedly of the meal awaiting, of their pipes, their sleep.

The inscrutable ways of Chance--Destiny, call it what you will--brought about the greatest catastrophe that had so far obtained in the Guernsey ranks. Major Davey moved his party over an area--at about 11 in the morning of a warm, sunny Sunday--coming in for a spell of shelling extraordinary in intensity. A labour unit retired because of the exigencies of the precarious situation. Inflexible, the Normans carried on, then--s-i-iz-z ... kr-rupp!

The leading platoon caught it in their very midst, a ghastly heap of mangled flesh and shattered limbs were scattered to right and left. Two unhappy lads were blown to unrecognisable fragments. No words can convey the heart-rending cries of those whose bodies cringe and writhe from the hell-hot agony of searing shrapnel. There is an unmistakable appeal for pity that stirs the depth of feeling until a wild frenzy to right matters sends Berserk passion to the brain. Oh, you German gunners in your serene safety, if ever my chance comes...!

Thus the first of the Ten Hundred went over the Great Divide.

An order to retire was quietly obeyed. They marched back, some shaken, some bleeding from minor wounds: bearing the stretcher cases and dead with them. Some gazed eastwards, faces transfigured with impotent rage, a few white faced boys stared hypnotised before them; but the remainder, heads erect, looked grimly ahead ... they would not forget!

A day or so later the Normans came out. Cookie, black and grimy from head to foot--the only condition in which he really felt at home--prepared the removal of his cookers.

"I didn't 'alf 'ave the wind up," he confided me afterwards, "about that there last dinner; becos, you see, a Jerry shell wot burst close chucked a great chunk of mud into one of them cockers. Wot was I to do? Couldn't throw away the grub ... didn't 'ave no more, so I just stirred it all up. Anyhow," reflectively, "it made it thicker, and they sez it was 'tray bun.'"

And so they came away with out farewell glance across that tragic countryside, lonely and desolate as if God-forsaken in its very devastation. The eye took in the reflected light in a myriad pools, the white crosses, sinister wire treking right away to where a few solitary tree stumps stood up madly against the skyline. They thought with a pang of those who slept the long last sleep in the clinging wet soil, whose footsteps would no longer ring on the hard road in rythmic chorus with the old Ten Hundred, whose voices would ne'er again swell the Battalion's marching rallies....

Following a brief rest the 29th Division trained, from Poperinghe southwards. The same weary cooping in cattle-trucks, same monotonous crawl. And yet during a halt at Hazebrucke arose one of those moments that live long in memory, when patriotism rises high in the breast. The station was crowded with soldiers and civilians as the Guernseys' train drew up in the cool, dusky evening light. Someone played a cornet: "The long, long trail." From end to end of the train the Ten Hundred caught it up and sang low in their soft southern accent. A hush fell on the chattering onlookers, they turned and stared. The harmony enveloped them, stirred them ... and we, ah, how the blood stirs even now. But the memory saddens--for the voices of many are for ever still.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1917

HENDECOURT

The mad rattle of strife in Belgium had throbbed on the ear-drums incessantly day and night, but on the frontage beyond Hendecourt and Arras little more than an occasional "Verey" light from the Fritz line played hesitatingly on the grotesque landscape. Even the guns were silent: the crack of a rifle-shot or far-off splutters from machine-guns were the only sounds to mingle with the harsh jumbled tread of the Royal Guernseys marching over cobbles and bad roads to the encampment of iron huts.

The going from Beaumetz, through shell-shattered villages, by roads twisting up and down long hills, commenced to tell on the men long before the first halt was due. Breathing became, in many cases, long and heavy; some stumbled blindly forward with heads strained down, and others impotently cursed at the Higher Command for not calling a halt. Sweat trickled over dust-begrimed countenances, feet were aching, the tongue clove parched to the mouth, the pack ... oh, the utter hell of it. And yet on the morrow you forgot!

On territory recaptured (during March, 1917) from Fritz and within a few hundred yards of his original reserve line, still intact and heavily protected with barbed wire, was the conglomeration of huts that formed for nearly three weeks the home of the Ten Hundred.

The Infantryman sees far more of the trenches than of Rest Camps, and therefore what precious days of absence from the joys of water-logged dug-outs comes his way are seized upon and lived to the very full. The Normans had not experienced very much--but they had had quite enough. Ginger Le Ray, basking his fair unshaven features in the sun and lovingly watching Lomar pulling at a fat (and dubious) cigar, aired the Battalion's sentiments with: "This is orlright. Anything except Paschendaele or my ole woman."

A Battalion offers widely divergent contrasts in the psychology of men composing its ranks, and it is with the intention of bringing the reader into intimate and personal touch with all these types of men that this chapter is penned. Nick names are as common as daisies in the Army and by this medium a large number of characters will be portrayed and the fate awaiting each one later recorded. To those who imagine that Death has set laws for claiming this or that type there will be ample argumentative data--but this is a factor upon which no scientific grounds can be used as a base for theories. Life is chance!