Now It Can Be Told | Page 9

should come "spying around," trying to "see things."
I was faintly conscious of this one day in those very early times, when
with the officer who had been a ruler in India I went to a brigade
headquarters of the 1st Division near Vermelles. It was not easy nor
pleasant to get there, though it was a summer day with fleecy clouds in
a blue sky. There was a long straight road leading to the village of
Vermelles, with a crisscross of communication trenches on one side,
and, on the other, fields where corn and grass grew rankly in
abandoned fields. Some lean sheep were browsing there as though this
were Arcady in days of peace. It was not. The red ruins of Vermelles, a
mile or so away, were sharply defined, as through stereoscopic lenses,
in the quiver of sunlight, and had the sinister look of a death-haunted
place. It was where the French had fought their way through gardens,
walls, and houses in murderous battle, before leaving it for British
troops to hold. Across it now came the whine of shells, and I saw that
shrapnel bullets were kicking up the dust of a thousand yards down the
straight road, following a small body of brown men whose tramp of
feet raised another cloud of dust, like smoke. They were the only
representatives of human life--besides ourselves--in this loneliness,

though many men must have been in hiding somewhere. Then heavy
"crumps" burst in the fields where the sheep were browsing, across the
way we had to go to the brigade headquarters.
"How about it?" asked the captain with me. "I don't like crossing that
field, in spite of the buttercups and daisies and the little frisky lambs."
"I hate the idea of it," I said.
Then we looked down the road at the little body of brown men. They
were nearer now, and I could see the face of the officer leading them--a
boy subaltern, rather pale though the sun was hot. He halted and saluted
my companion.
"The enemy seems to have sighted our dust, sir. His shrapnel is
following up pretty closely. Would you advise me to put my men under
cover, or carry on?"
The captain hesitated. This was rather outside his sphere of influence.
But the boyishness of the other officer asked for help.
"My advice is to put your men into that ditch and keep them there until
the strafe is over." Some shrapnel bullets whipped the sun-baked road
as he spoke.
"Very good, sir."
The men sat in the ditch, with their packs against the bank, and wiped
the sweat off their faces. They looked tired and dispirited, but not
alarmed.
In the fields behind them--our way--the 4.2's (four--point-twos) were
busy plugging holes in the grass and flowers, rather deep holes, from
which white smoke-clouds rose after explosive noises.
"With a little careful strategy we might get through," said the captain.
"There's a general waiting for us, and I have noticed that generals are
impatient fellows. Let's try our luck."

We walked across the wild flowers, past the sheep, who only raised
their heads in meek surprise when shells came with a shrill,
intensifying snarl and burrowed up the earth about them. I noticed how
loudly and sweetly the larks were singing up in the blue. Several horses
lay dead, newly killed, with blood oozing about them, and their entrails
smoking. We made a half-loop around them and then struck straight for
the chateau which was the brigade headquarters. Neither of us spoke
now. We were thoughtful, calculating the chance of getting to that
red-brick house between the shells. It was just dependent on the
coincidence of time and place.
Three men jumped up from a ditch below a brown wall round the
chateau garden and ran hard for the gateway. A shell had pitched quite
close to them. One man laughed as though at a grotesque joke, and fell
as he reached the courtyard. Smoke was rising from the outhouses, and
there was a clatter of tiles and timbers, after an explosive crash.
"It rather looks," said my companion, "as though the Germans knew
there is a party on in that charming house."
It was as good to go on as to go back, and it was never good to go back
before reaching one's objective. That was bad for the discipline of the
courage that is just beyond fear.
Two gunners were killed in the back yard of the chateau, and as we
went in through the gateway a sergeant made a quick jump for a barn as
a shell burst somewhere close. As visitors we hesitated between two
ways into the chateau, and chose the easier; and it was then that I
became dimly aware of hostility against me on the