The General Read online

  Then there came a blessed day when the orders to continue the retreat were countermanded at the very moment when the brigade was formed up on the road. A moment later the Brigadier himself came up. He could give Curzon no reason for the change, but after half an hour’s wait he gave permission for the regiment to fall out. There were pleasant meadows there, marshy presumably in winter, but hardly damp at the moment, by the side of a little stream of black water. They had a whole day of rest in those meadows. They cleaned and polished and shaved. As many as forty stragglers came drifting in during the morning – they had not been permanently lost, but, having fallen out for a moment, they had got jammed in the column farther to the rear and had never been able to rejoin. Everybody’s spirits rose amazingly during those sunny hours. The Quartermaster-General’s department achieved its daily miracle and heaped rations upon them, so that the men drank quarts of tea, brewed over bivouac fires, and then slept in heaps all over the meadows.

  Curzon was able to find time to sit in his portable bath in a screened corner of the field, and to shave himself carefully and to cut his ragged moustache into its trim Lancer shape again – it was that afternoon that he first noticed grey hairs in it (there had been a few in his temples for some time now) and characteristically it never occurred to him to attribute their presence to the fatigues and anxieties of the last month. One servant brushed his clothes, the other groomed his horse, until by late afternoon Curzon, for the first time since he landed in France, began to feel his old efficient clear-thinking self again.

  A motor-cyclist with a blue and white brassard came tearing along the road and stopped his machine at the entrance to the field. Valentine tore his dispatch from him and came running across the grass to Curzon.

  ‘Are we going to advance, sir?’ he asked eagerly, and Curzon nodded as he read the orders.

  ‘Trumpeter!’ yelled Valentine, all on fire with excitement.

  The whole regiment seemed to have caught the infection, for as soon as the men saw that the column was headed back the way they had come they began to cheer, and went on cheering madly for several minutes as they got under way. They went back up the white road, over the little bridge with its R.E. demolition party still waiting, and forward towards where the distant low muttering of the guns was beginning to increase in volume and rise in pitch.

  And yet the advance soon became as wearisome as the retreat had been. The regiment marched and marched and marched, at first in the familiar choking white dust, and then, when the weather broke, in a chilly and depressing rain. They saw signs of the fighting they had missed – wrecked lorries in the ditches, occasional abandoned guns, and sometimes dead Englishmen, dead Frenchmen, dead Germans. It seemed as if the Twenty-second Lancers were doomed to be always too late. They had not lost a man at Mons; the Marne had been fought while they were twenty miles away; they arrived on the Aisne just as the attempt to push back the German line farther still died away.

  The Brigadier saw fit to rage in confidence to Curzon about this one evening in Curzon’s billet. He bore it as a personal grudge that his brigade should have had no casualties save stragglers during a month’s active service. But before midnight that same evening the situation changed. Curzon hurried round to brigade headquarters, his sword at his side, in response to a brief note summoning commanding officers. The Brigadier greeted his three colonels with a smile of welcome.

  ‘There’s work for us now, gentlemen,’ he said eagerly, leading them to the map spread on the table. ‘There’s more marching ahead of us, but –’

  He poured out voluble explanations. It appeared that during the retreat the Expeditionary Force’s base had been transferred from Havre to Saint Nazaire, and now would be changed again to the Channel ports. The German right flank was ‘in the air’ somewhere here, at Armentières. Clearly it would be best if it were the British Army which was dispatched to find that flank and turn the German line so as to roll it back on the Rhine and Berlin. The transfer was to begin next day, infantry and artillery by rail, cavalry by road, and he, the Brigadier, had been given a promise that the brigade would be in the advanced guard this time. It would be here, said the General, pointing to Ypres, that the attack would be delivered, up this road, he went on, pointing to Menin. The Belgian Army cavalry school was at Ypres, so that was clear proof that the country round about was suitable for mounted action. There were six men bending over that map – the General, three colonels, the brigade-major, and some unknown staff officer, and five of them were to find their graves at the point where the General’s gnarled finger was stabbing at the map. Yet with Curzon at the moment his only reaction at this, his first hearing of the dread name of Ypres, was that it should be spelt in such an odd fashion and pronounced in a still odder one.

  Chapter Five

  The weary marches were resumed, mostly in the rain. The brigade toiled along by by-roads to the rear of the French line, crossing, often only after long delays, one line of communication after the other. They saw unsoldierly French territorial divisions, French coloured divisions, French ammunition and supply columns. After the second day came the order to hasten their march, with the result that they were on the move now from dawn till dark, hurrying through the rain, while the list of absent lengthened with each day.

  For the flank of the allies was as much ‘in the air’ as was that of the Germans, and Falkenhayn was making a thrust at the weak point just as was Joffre. The units which were gathering about Ypres were being pushed forward hurriedly into action, and every reinforcement which could be scraped together was being called upon to prolong the line. At Hazebrouck the roar of battle round about Armentières was clearly to be heard; it was the sight of British ammunition columns pouring up the road from Poperinghe and the stream of English wounded down it which first told Curzon that this was to be no case of heading an advance upon an unprotected and sensitive German flank.

  It had been soon after midnight that fresh orders came to call them out of their muddy bivouac. Dawn found them plodding along the road through the rain. There were motor cars, motor-cycle dispatch riders, mounted orderlies hastening along the straight tree-lined road. An order came back to Curzon to quicken his pace; before very long Carruthers, the brigade-major, came back at the gallop to reiterate it. But the horses were very weary. It was only a spiritless trot which could be got out of them as the regiment with jingling of accoutrements and squeaking of leather pounded heavily down the road.

  The rain fell piteously, numbing the faculties. Suddenly there was a roar like an express train overhead, a shattering explosion, and a column of black smoke at the very edge of the road twenty yards behind Curzon. Somebody yelped with dismay. A horse screamed. Curzon looked back over his shoulder. There was a gap in the long column of dancing lance points.

  ‘Keep them closed up, Browning,’ he growled to the major at his side commanding the squadron, and Browning swung his horse out of the column, while Curzon rode on, Valentine at his side, jinglety-bump, jinglety-bump, over the slippery pavé.

  More shells followed. Curzon found himself riding round the edge of a gaping hole in the road. There was a horrible litter of fragments of men and horses there, but Curzon found he was able to look at it without sensation; he could even note that none of the dead men had lances, and therefore belonged to the dragoon regiment at the head of the brigade, of which two squadrons had sabres only. They were in among houses now – several houses had shell-holes in walls or roof – and a pale staff officer with his left sleeve missing and a bloodstained bandage round his bare arm suddenly appeared and guided Curzon off by a by-road.

  ‘Halt here, please, sir,’ he said. ‘You will receive orders in a minute.’

  And the regiment stood still in the narrow street, the horses steaming in the rain, while the shells burst round them and Curzon tugged at his moustache. To judge by the noise, there was half a dozen batteries in action close at hand; the regiment was in the heart of a battle greater than Mons. The rain began to fall more heavily
still, suddenly, just at the moment when the Brigadier came round the corner with his staff and the pale staff officer. Curzon moved to meet them, to be abruptly greeted.

  ‘What in hell are you doing, Curzon?’ blazed the General. ‘Get your men dismounted and horse holders told off. Quick!’

  Generals, of course, had to be allowed their fits of bad temper. It was only natural that a colonel of a cavalry regiment should keep his men ready for mounted action in the absence of express orders to the contrary. Curzon left Valentine to see to the dismounting of the men, while he got off his horse and looked at the map which the brigade-major held open.

  ‘The brigade is to prolong the line here,’ said the brigade major. ‘You will come up on the right of the Surreys here. The Dragoons will be on your right.’

  Curzon stared at the map, on which the raindrops fell with a steady pitter-patter. It was a featureless affair, with featureless names like Saint-Éloi and Kemmel and Messines – he had one like it in his leather map-case.

  ‘Major Durrant, here, will guide you,’ went on the brigade-major. ‘Site your machine-guns with a good field of fire and get your line entrenched as quick as you can.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Curzon. It seemed incredible that Carruthers could be talking to a cavalry colonel about machine-guns and entrenchments like this – Carruthers, who, that very summer in England, had argued so vehemently in favour of lance versus sabre. The words brought back that nightmare feeling of unreality again, but the General dispelled it a moment afterwards.

  ‘Curzon,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re the last troops that can arrive, and we’re going straight into the line. There’s nothing behind us. Nothing at all. If we give way, the war’s lost. So there’s nothing for you to do except to hold your position to the last man. At all costs, Curzon.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Curzon, and the mist lifted from his brain immediately. That was the kind of order he could understand.

  ‘Right,’ said the General, and then, to Carruthers: ‘Let’s get along to the Dragoons.’

  ‘Bring your regiment this way, sir,’ said the wounded staff officer, and then, seeing the regimental officers still mounted, he added: ‘They won’t want their horses. You won’t want your horse, sir, either.’

  They marched, already weary with much riding, through the streets. Curzon took notice slightly of a long building which reminded him a little of the Houses of Parliament, and then they were out of the town again in flat green fields rising before them in the faintest of elevations.

  ‘There go the Surreys,’ said the staff officer, pointing over to their left front. ‘You come up on their right.’

  As he said the words, the First Battle of Ypres engulfed the Twenty-second Lancers. For two days now each successive parcel of British troops, as it arrived, had just sufficed to patch or extend the wavering front in face of the masses which the Germans were hurrying to the same point. The arrival of the last cavalry brigade enabled the British command to close the last gap with less than a quarter of an hour to spare, for the German attack here was launched just as the Twenty-second Lancers extended into line. There was no time for Curzon to think about entrenchments or a good field of fire for his machine-guns. A sudden hail of bullets and shells fell all about the regiment, and then even as cavalry tradition evaporated and primeval instinct asserted itself in a search for cover, monstrous grey masses came looming through the rain over the slight crest half a mile in front.

  There was no time for orders or scientific fire control. It was every man’s business to seize his rifle and begin firing as rapidly as he could at the advancing lines. They wavered and hesitated, came on again, and finally shredded away. Immediately afterwards fresh masses came pouring over the crest, gathering up with them the remains of their predecessors. There were mounted officers in the front, waving swords over their heads as if this were Malplaquet or Waterloo. Curzon, standing staring through his glasses, watched them toppling down one by one as the attack died away. He stared mesmerized until he suddenly awoke to the realization that bullets were crackling all round him. The enemy were lying down firing until fresh impetus could be gathered to renew the attack.

  He looked along the line of his regiment. There was no trace of order there; half the men had established themselves in a drainage ditch which miraculously ran roughly in the desired direction and afforded cover to anyone who could bring himself to lie down in its thick black mud. That meant the centre was as solidly established as one could hope to be. Young Borthwick – Lieutenant the Honourable George Borthwick – was in an angle of a tributary ditch to the front with his machine-gun section, the men digging frantically with anything that came to hand, so as to burrow into the bank for shelter. Borthwick had been given the machine-guns, not as the most promising machine-gun officer in the regiment (a distinction the whole mess scorned), but because he had the most slovenly seat on a horse that had ever disgraced the ranks of the Twenty-second Lancers. Curzon realized with a twinge of anxiety that the reputation of the regiment suddenly had come to depend to a remarkable extent on how much efficiency young Borthwick had acquired at his job.

  He strode over to inspect Borthwick’s efforts, Valentine beside him. He leaped the muddy ditch, in which the regiment was crouching, so as not to soil his boots, and stood on the lip of the bank looking down at where Borthwick was sitting in the mud with the lock of a machine-gun on his lap.

  ‘Are you all right, Borthwick?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Borthwick, sparing him just a glance, and then to his sergeant: ‘Is that belt ready?’

  Curzon left him to his own devices; this much was certain, that however little Borthwick knew about machine-guns it was more than Curzon did. They went back to the ditch.

  ‘Better have a look at the flanks,’ said Curzon, and took his leisurely way to the right. The men stared at him. In that pelting hail of bullets they felt as if they could not get close enough to the ground, and yet here was the Colonel standing up and walking about as cool as a cucumber. It was not so much that Curzon was unafraid, but that in the heat of action and under the burden of his responsibility he had not stopped to realize that there was any cause for fear.

  The right flank was not nearly as satisfactorily posted as the centre. The little groups of men scattered along here were almost without cover. They were cowering close to the ground behind casual inequalities of level – several men were taking cover behind the dead bodies of their comrades – and only the accident that there were three shell craters close together at this point gave any semblance of solidity to the line. Moreover, there was only a pretence of touch maintained with the Dragoons on the right; there was a full hundred yards bare of defenders between the Lancers’ right and the beginning of the ditch wherein was established the Dragoons’ left.

  ‘Not so good,’ said Curzon over his shoulder to Valentine, and received no reply. He looked round. Ten yards back one of those bullets had killed Valentine, silently, instantly, as Curzon saw when he bent over the dead body.

  And as he stooped, he heard all the rifles in the line redouble their fire. Borthwick’s two machine-guns began to stammer away on his left. The Germans were renewing their advance; once more there were solid masses of grey-clad figures pouring over the fields towards them. But one man with a rifle can stop two hundred advancing in a crowd – more still if he is helped by machine-guns. Curzon saw the columns reel under the fire, and marvelled at their bravery as they strove to struggle on. They bore terrible losses before they fell back again over the crest.

  Curzon did not know – and he did not have either time or inclination at the moment to ponder over the enemy’s tactics – that the attacking troops at this point were drawn from the six German divisions of volunteers, men without any military training whatever, who were being sent forwards in these vicious formations because they simply could not manoeuvre in any other. What he did realize was that as soon as the enemy realized the hopelessness of these attacks, and turned his artillery
against the regiment, the latter would be blasted into nothingness in an hour of bombardment unless it could contrive shelter. He walked along the line, with the bullets still crackling round him.

  ‘Get your men digging,’ he said to Captain Phelps, the first officer he saw.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Phelps. ‘Er – what are they going to dig with, sir?’

  Curzon looked Phelps up and down from his cropped fair hair and pop-eyes to his sword-belt and his boots. It was a question which might reasonably have been asked on manoeuvres. Cavalry had no entrenching tools, and the Twenty-second Lancers had, from motives of pride, evaded throughout their corporate existence the annual two hours’ instruction in field fortification which the regulations prescribed for cavalry. But this was war now. A battle would be lost, England would be endangered, if the men did not entrench. Curzon boiled with contempt for Phelps at that moment. He felt he could even see trembling on Phelps’ lips a protest about the chance of the men soiling their uniforms, and he was angered because he suspected that he himself would have been stupid and obstructive if his brain had not been activated by his urgent, imminent responsibility.

  ‘God damn it, man,’ he blazed. ‘Get your men digging, and don’t ask damn-fool questions.’