An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 | Page 5

believe I do now--a little bit. Even I, from my back, looking-on position, sometimes felt the terrible fear, the longing to get away. What must they have felt? "From battle, murder and sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us."
On up the hill past the mines to Pozi��res. An Army railway was then running through Pozi��res, and the station was marked by a big wooden sign painted black and white, like you see at any country station in England, with POZI��RES in large Roman letters, but that's all there was of Pozi��res except a little red in the mud. I remember later, at the R.F.C. H.Q., Maurice Baring showed me a series of air-photographs of Pozi��res as it was in 1914, with its peaceful little streets and rows of trees. What a contrast to the Pozi��res as it was in 1917--MUD. Further on, the Butte stood out on the right, a heap of chalky mud, not a blade of grass round it then--nothing but mud, with a white cross on the top. On the left, the Crown Prince's dug-out and Gibraltar--I suppose these have gone now--and Le Sars and Gr��villers, at that time General Birdwood's H.Q., where the church had been knocked into a fine shape. I tried to draw it, but was much put off by air fighting. It seemed a favourite spot for this.
Bapaume must always have been a dismal place, like Albert, but (p.?020) P��ronne must have been lovely, looking up from the water; and the main Place must have been most imposing, but then it was very sad. The Boche had only left it about three weeks, and it had not been "cleaned up." But the real terribleness of the Somme was not in the towns or on the roads. One felt it as one wandered over the old battlefields of La Boisselle, Courcelette, Thiepval, Grandcourt, Miraumont, Beaumont-Hamel, Bazentin-le-Grand and Bazentin-le-Petit--the whole country practically untouched since the great day when the Boche was pushed back and it was left in peace once more.
A hand lying on the duckboards; a Boche and a Highlander locked in a deadly embrace at the edge of Highwood; the "Cough-drop" with the stench coming from its watery bottom; the shell-holes with the shapes of bodies faintly showing through the putrid water--all these things made one think terribly of what human beings had been through, and were going through a bit further on, and would be going through for perhaps years more--who knew how many?
I remember an officer saying to me, "Paint the Somme? I could do it from memory--just a flat horizon-line and mud-holes and water, with the stumps of a few battered trees," but one could not paint the smell.
Early one morning in Amiens I got a message from Colonel John Buchan asking me to breakfast at the "H?tel du Rhin." While we were having breakfast, there was a great noise outside--an English voice was cursing someone else hard and telling him to get on and not make an ass of himself. Then a Flying Pilot was pushed in by an Observer. The Pilot's hand and arm were temporarily bound up, but blood was (p.?021) dropping through. The Observer had his face badly scratched and one of his legs was not quite right. They sat at a table, and the waiter brought them eggs and coffee, which they took with relish, but the Pilot was constantly drooping towards his left, and the drooping always continued, till he went crack on the floor. Then the Observer would curse him soundly and put him back in his chair, where he would eat again till the next fall. When they had finished, the waiter put a cigarette in each of their mouths and lit them. After a few minutes four men walked in with two stretchers, put the two breakfasters on the stretchers, and walked out with them--not a word was spoken.
[Illustration: VI. No Man's Land.]
I found out afterwards that the Pilot had been hit in the wrist over the lines early that morning and missed the direction back to his aerodrome. Getting very weak, he landed, not very well, outside Amiens. He got his wrist bound up and had asked someone to telephone to the aerodrome to tell them that they were going to the "Rhin" for breakfast, and would they send for them there?
After I had been in Amiens for about a fortnight, going out to the Somme battlefields early in the morning and coming back when it got dark, I received a message one evening from the Press "Major" to go to his chateau and ring up the "Colonel" at Rollencourt, which I did. The following was the conversation as far as I remember:--
"Is that Orpen?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you mean by behaving this way?"
"What way, please, sir?"
"By not reporting to me."
"I'm sorry,