A brazier fire at twilight, And glow-worm fires ashine, A searchlight sweeping heaven, Above the firing-line.
The rifle bullet whistles The message that it brings Of death and desolation To common folk and kings.
We went back from the trenches as reserves to the Keep. Broken down though the place was when we entered it there was something restful in the brown bricks, hidden in ivy, in the well-paved yard, and the glorious riot of flowers. Most of the original furniture remained--the beds, the chairs, and the pictures. All were delighted with the place, Mervin particularly. "I"ll make my country residence here after the war," he said.
On the left was a church. Contrary to orders I spent an hour in the dusk of the first evening in the ruined pile. The place had been sh.e.l.led for seven months, not a day had pa.s.sed when it was not (p. 150) struck in some part. The sacristy was a jumble of prayer books, vestments, broken rosaries, crucifixes, and pictures. An ink pot and pen lay on a broken table beside a blotting pad. A lamp which once hung from the roof was beside them, smashed to atoms. In the church the altar railing was twisted into shapeless bars of iron, bricks littered the altar steps, the altar itself even, and bricks, tiles, and beams were piled high in the body of the church.
Outside in the graveyard the graves lay open and the bones of the dead were scattered broadcast over the green gra.s.s. Crosses were smashed or wrenched out of the ground and flung to earth; near the Keep was the soldiers" cemetery, the resting place of French, English, Indian, and German soldiers. Many of the French had bottles of holy water placed on their graves under the crosses. The English epitaphs were short and concise, always the same in manner: "Private 999 J. Smith, 26th London Battalion, killed in action 1st March, 1915." And under it stamped on a bronze plate was the information, "Erected by the Mobile Unit (B.R.C.S.) to preserve the record found on the spot." Often the dead man"s regiment left a token of remembrance, a bunch of flowers, the dead man"s cap or bayonet and rifle (these two latter only if (p. 151) they had been badly damaged when the man died). Many crosses had been taken from the churchyard and placed over these men. One of them read, "A notre devote fille," and another, "To my beloved mother."
Several Indians, men of the Bengal Mountain Battery, were buried here.
A woman it was stated, had disclosed their location to the enemy, and the billet in which they were staying was struck fair by a high explosive sh.e.l.l. Thirty-one were killed. They were now at rest--Anaytullah, Lakhasingh, and other strange men with queer names under the crosses fashioned from biscuit boxes. On the back of Anaytullah"s cross was the wording in black: "Biscuits, 50 lbs."
Thus the environment of the Keep: the enemy"s trenches were about eight hundred yards away. No fighting took place here, the men"s rifles stood loaded, but no shot was fired; only when the front line was broken, if that ever took place, would the defenders of the Keep come into play and hold the enemy back as long as that were possible.
Then when they could no longer hold out, when the foe pressed in (p. 152) on all sides, there was something still to do, something vitally important which would cost the enemy many lives, and, if a miracle did not happen, something which would wipe out the defenders for ever.
This was the Keep.
The evening was very quiet; a few sh.e.l.ls flew wide overhead, and now and again stray bullets pattered against the masonry. We cooked our food in the yard, and, sitting down amidst the flowers, we drank our tea and ate our bread and jam. The first flies were busy, they flew amidst the flower-beds and settled on our jam. Mervin told a story of a country where he had been in, and where the flies were legion and ate the eyes out of horses. The natives there wore corks hung by strings from their caps, and these kept the flies away.
"How?" asked Bill.
"The corks kept swinging backwards and forwards as the men walked,"
said Mervin. "Whenever a cork struck a fly it dashed the insect"s brains out."
"Blimey!" cried Bill, then asked, "What was the most wonderful thing you ever seen, Mervin?"
"The most wonderful thing," repeated Mervin. "Oh, I"ll tell you. It was the way they buried the dead out in Klondike. The snow lies (p. 153) there for six months and it"s impossible to dig, so when a man died they sharpened his toes and drove him into the earth with a mallet."
"I saw a more wonderful thing than that, and it was when we lay in the barn at Richebourg," said Bill, who was referring to a comfortless billet and a cold night which were ours a month earlier. "I woke up about midnight "arf asleep. I "ad my boots off and I couldn"t "ardly feel them I was so cold. "Blimey!" I said, "on goes my understandin"s, and I "ad a devil of a job lacing my boots up. When I thought I "ad them on I could "ear someone stirrin" on the left. It was my cotmate.
"Wot"s yer gime?" he says. "Wot gime?" I asks. "Yer foolin" about with my tootsies," he says. Then after a minute "e shouts, "d.a.m.n it ye"ve put on my boots," So I "ad, put on his blessed boots and laced them mistaking "is feet for my own."
"We never heard of this before," I said.
"No, cos "twas ole Jersey as was lying aside me that night, next day "e was almost done in with the bomb."
"It"s jolly quiet here," said Goliath, sitting back in an armchair and lighting a cigarette. "This will be a jolly holiday."
"I heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place was (p. 154) hot," Stoner remarked. "The Irish Guards were here, and they said they preferred the trenches to the Keep."
"It will be a poor country house," said Mervin, "if it"s going to be as bad as you say."
On the following evening I was standing guard in a niche in the building. Darkness was falling and the shadows sat at the base of the walls east of the courtyard. My niche looked out on the road, along which the wounded are carried from the trenches by night and sometimes by day. The way is by no means safe. As I stood there four men came down the road carrying a limp form on a stretcher. A waterproof ground-sheet lay over the wounded soldier, his head was uncovered, and it wobbled from side to side, a streak of blood ran down his face and formed into clots on the ear and chin. There was something uncannily helpless in the soldier, his shaking head, his boots caked brown with mud, the heels close together, the toes pointing upwards and outwards and swaying a little. Every quiver of the body betokened abject helplessness. The limp, swaying figure, clinging weakly to life, was a pathetic sight.
The bearers walked slowly, carefully, stepping over every (p. 155) sh.e.l.l-hole and stone on the road. The sweat rolled down their faces and arms, their coats were off and their shirt sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders. Down the road towards the village they pursued their sober way, and my eyes followed them. Suddenly they came to a pause, lowered the stretcher to the ground, and two of them bent over the prostrate form. I could see them feel the soldier"s pulse, open his tunic, and listen for the beating of the man"s heart, when they raised the stretcher again there was something cruelly careless in the action, they brought it up with a jolt and set off hurriedly, stumbling over sh.e.l.l-hole and boulder. There was no doubt the man was dead now; it was unwise to delay on the road, and the soldiers"
cemetery was in the village.
In the evening we stood to arms in the Keep; all our men were now out in the open, and the officers were inspecting their rifles barely four yards away from me. At that moment I saw the moon, a crescent of pale smoke standing on end near the West. I felt in my pocket for money, but found I had none to turn.
"Have you a ha"penny?" I asked Mervin who was pa.s.sing.
"What for?" (p. 156)
"I want to turn it, you know the old custom."
"Oh, yes," answered Mervin, handing me a coin. "Long ago I used to turn my money, but I found the oftener I saw the moon the less I had to turn. However, I"ll try it again for luck." So saying he turned a penny.
"Do any of you fellows know Marie Redoubt?" an officer asked at that moment.
"I know the place," said Mervin, "it"s just behind the Keep."
"Will you lead me to the place?" said the officer.
"Right," said Mervin, and the two men went off.
They had just gone when a sh.e.l.l hit the building on my left barely three yards away from my head. The explosion almost deafened me, a pain shot through my ears and eyes, and a shower of fine lime and crumpled bricks whizzed by my face. My first thought was, "Why did I not put my hands over my eyes, I might have been struck blind." I had a clear view of the scene in front, my mates were rushing hither and thither in a shower of white flying lime; I could see dark forms falling, clambering to their feet and falling again. One figure detached itself from the rest and came rushing towards me, by my (p. 157) side it tripped and fell, then rose again. I could now see it was Stoner. He put his hands up as if in protest, looked at me vacantly, and rushed round the corner of the building. I followed him and found him once more on the ground.
"Much hurt?" I asked, touching him on the shoulder.
"Yes," he muttered, rising slowly, "I got it there," he raised a finger to his face which was bleeding, "and there," he put his hand across his chest.
"Well, get into the dug-out," I said, and we hurried round the front of the building. A pile of fallen masonry lay there and half a dozen rifles, all the men were gone. We found them in the dug-out, a hole under the floor heavily beamed, and strong enough to withstand a fair sized sh.e.l.l. One or two were unconscious and all were bleeding more or less severely. I found I was the only person who was not struck.
Goliath and Bill got little particles of grit in the face, and they looked black as chimney sweeps. Bill was cut across the hand, Kore"s arm was bleeding.
"Where"s Mervin?"
"He had just gone out," I said, "I was speaking to him, he went (p. 158) with Lieut. ---- to Marie Redoubt."
I suddenly recollected that I should not have left my place outside, so I went into my niche again. Had Mervin got clear, I wondered? The courtyard was deserted, and it was rapidly growing darker, a drizzle had begun, and the wet ran down my rifle.
"Any word of Mervin?" I called to Stoner when he came out from the dug-out, and moved cautiously across the yard. There was a certain unsteadiness in his gait, but he was regaining his nerve; he had really been more surprised than hurt. He disappeared without answering my question, probably he had not heard me.
"Stretcher-bearers at the double."
The cry, that call of broken life which I have so often heard, faltered across the yard. From somewhere two men rushed out carrying a stretcher, and hurried off in the direction taken by Stoner. Who had been struck? Somebody had been wounded, maybe killed! Was it Mervin?
Stoner came round the corner, a sad look in his brown eyes.
"Mervin"s copped it," he said, "in the head. It must have been (p. 159) that sh.e.l.l that done it; a splinter, perhaps."
"Where is he?"
"He"s gone away on the stretcher unconscious. The officer has been wounded as well in the leg, the neck, and the face."
"Badly?"
"No, he"s able to speak."
Fifteen minutes later I saw Mervin again. He was lying on the stretcher and the bearers were just going off to the dressing station with it. He was breathing heavily, round his head was a white bandage, and his hands stretched out stiffly by his sides. He was borne into the trench and carried round the first traverse. I never saw him again; he died two days later without regaining consciousness.
On the following day two more men went: one got hit by a concussion sh.e.l.l that ripped his stomach open, another, who was on sentry-go got messed up in a bomb explosion that blew half of his side away. The charm of the courtyard, with the flower-beds and floral designs, died away; we were now pleased to keep indoors and allow the chairs outside to stand idle. All day long the enemy sh.e.l.led us, most of the sh.e.l.ls dropped outside and played havoc with the church; but the figure (p. 160) on the crucifix still remained, a symbol of something great and tragical, overlooking the area of destruction and death. Now and again a sh.e.l.l dropped on the flower-beds and scattered splinters and showers of earth against buildings and dug-outs. In the evening an orderly came to the Keep.