Pushed and the Return Push. George Herbert Fosdike Nichols
also on the march," explained the colonel, when Headquarter carts and waggons—parked out for the night only half an hour before—had again got under way (taking the road between Villequier Aumont and Ugny) for the third time during twenty-two hours. "Division got news that the Boche was putting in two fresh divisions, and intended to attack by moonlight," he added, "and they thought our guns were too close up to be safe; so the brigade-major hurried down and told the batteries to move back at once. We turn south-west from Ugny and make for Commenchon, and come into action there as soon as we get further news from Division. I have sent out orders to all the batteries, and they are marching to Commenchon independently."
It was a radiant night. The moon rode high in a star-spangled sky; there was a glow and a sense of beauty in the air—a beauty that exalted soul and mind, and turned one's thoughts to music and loveliness and home. The dry hard roads glistened white and clean; and in the silvery light the silhouettes of men marching steadily, purposefully, took on a certain dignity that the garish sun had not allowed to be revealed.
Whether we spoke of it or not, each one of us listened expectantly for the swift-rushing scream of a high-velocity shell, or the long-drawn sough of an approaching 5·9. This main road, along which our retreating columns were winding their slow even way, was bound to be strafed.
We rode through Ugny, two days ago a Corps H.Q., deserted now save for the military police, and for odd parties of engineers, signallers, and stretcher-bearers. Then our way took us down a wide sunken road, through an undulating countryside that stretched up to remote pine-tipped hills to right and left of us. A battalion of French infantry had halted by the roadside; their voices, softer, more tuneful than those of our men, seemed in keeping with the moonlit scene; and in their long field-blue coats they somehow seemed bigger, more matured, than our foot-soldiers.
We had marched five miles when a horseman on a broad-backed black came towards us. He looked intently at every one he passed as he rode the length of our column. "Is that the adjutant, sir?" he asked when he came level with me; and then, sure of my identity, went on, "I've got our supply waggon with me, sir—halted it at the next cross-roads. I heard the Brigade was moving, sir, and came to find the best spot to pick you up. The battery supply waggons will be passing this way in about half an hour, sir."
Keeping daily touch with your supply column is one of the fine arts of moving warfare, and the resourceful M'Donald had again proved his worth. "Refilling point, to-morrow, will be at Babœuf, sir," he added, "and after to-morrow it will be only iron rations. Good forage to-day, sir."
11 P.M.: Brigade Headquarters had pulled into the right of the road behind B Battery, just outside a village that up to the 21st had been a sort of rest-village, well behind the lines. Army Ordnance, Army Service Corps, and battalions out of the line were the only units represented there, and a fair proportion of the civil population had re-established itself after the German retreat in the spring of 1917. Now all was abandoned again, furniture and cattle bundled out, and houses locked up in the hope that shortly the Boche would be thrust back and the village re-occupied by its rightful owners.
The colonel had ridden forward with young Bushman to meet the brigade-major and to settle where the Brigade would camp. More French infantry passed, going up to the Front by the way we had come back. Twice, big lasting flares illuminated the sky over there where the fighting was—stores being burnt to prevent them falling into German hands, we concluded. Presently, Bushman returned and pointed out a particular area where Brigade Headquarters could settle down.
The small village green would do for horse lines and for parking our vehicles. I sent off the sergeant-major to scout for water supply, and took possession of a newly-roofed barn in which the men might sleep. There was a roomy shed for the officers' horses and a stone outhouse for the men's kitchen. Now about a billet for the colonel!
"There's a big house at the back, sir, with an artillery mess in it," said the sergeant-major, who had finished watering and feeding the horses. "Perhaps there's a spare room there for the colonel."
I went round and came upon the officers of a 6-inch how. battery, who had reached the village two hours before, and were finishing their evening meal. They offered me dinner, which I refused, and then a whisky, which I accepted; but there were no spare rooms. They had got away from the neighbourhood of the canal with the loss of two hows., but told me of a 9.2 battery at——, that it had been absolutely impossible to get out. "I believe it is true that we've done very well up north," replied their Irish captain cheerfully. "Lots of prisoners at Ypres, they say. … Have another whisky!"
"We have one tent, haven't we?" I asked the sergeant-major when I got outside.
"Yes, sir, but there's a cottage where Meddings has put the officers' cook-house. It looks all right, and there might be something there for the colonel."
The cottage certainly looked clean and neat from the outside, but the door was locked, and it is the rule that British troops only enter French houses with the consent of the owners. However, I climbed through the window and found two empty rooms each with bed and mattress. Times were not for picking and choosing. "We'll put the tent up," I decided, "and ask the colonel if he cares to take one of these beds or have the tent. You and I, Bushman, will take what he doesn't want."
When I took a turn round to see if the men were comfortably settled for the night, I learnt that the skurried departure of the A.S.C. had provided them with unexampled opportunity of legitimate loot. There was one outbuilding crammed with blankets, shirts, socks, and underwear—and our men certainly rose to the occasion. Even the old wheeler chuckled when he discovered a brand-new saw and a drill. The sergeant-major fastened on to a gramophone; and that caused me for the first time to remember my Columbia graphophone that I had loaned to C Battery before I went home wounded from Zillebeke. Hang it, it must have been left behind at Villequier Aumont. The Germans had probably got it by now.
It was half-past twelve before the colonel returned. "I'll have my camp-bed put up there," he said promptly, indicating an airy cart-shed, and he refused altogether to look at the empty cottage. So Bushman and I had beds made up in the tent, and then the three of us sat down to a welcome and memorable al fresco supper opposite our horse lines. Our table was a door balanced on a tree stump, and Meddings provided a wonderful Lincolnshire pork-pie. He also managed hot potatoes as an extra surprise, and as it was our first set meal since 5.30 A.M. breakfast, there was a period of steady, quiet, happy munching. One cigarette, then the colonel tucked himself up in his valise, and in three minutes was deep in his first sleep for three successive nights.
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," I said to Bushman when we got in our tent. "I'm going to take my clothes off and put on pyjamas. You never know these days when you'll get another chance."
I had pulled off my jacket, when I heard a jingling sound outside and French voices. Looking out, I saw a couple of troops of French cavalry picketing their tall leggy horses on the village green. I just had time to rush out and prevent two troopers stabling their officers' chargers in the cart-shed where the colonel was resting. They seemed startled when I whispered that it was "mon colonel" who lay there, but they apologised with the politeness of their race, and I pointed out a much better stable higher up the street.
About 3 A.M. the piquet woke me to introduce an artillery officer with a Caledonian accent, who asked if I could tell him where a brigade I knew nothing at all about were quartered in the village. The next thing I remember was the colonel's servant telling me the colonel was up and wanted me immediately.
VIII. A LAST FIFTY ROUNDSToC
5.30 A.M.: "No orders have reached me from Division yet," said the colonel, shaving as he talked, his pocket mirror precariously poised on a six-inch nail stuck in one of the props that held up the roof of his cart-shed boudoir. "And I'm still waiting for reports from A and D that they've arrived at the positions I gave them on the orders sent out last night. I want you to go off and find the batteries. I will wait here for orders from Division. Have your