Читать книгу The Test of Scarlet - Coningsby Dawson - Страница 12

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THERE’. no end of a thrill in night-marching, if one doesn’t get too much of it. One feels curiously winged when mounted in the darkness, as though the limitations to speed, space and possibility had broken down. The present merges with the past and with eternity. Doors open in the night, giving entrance to previous incarnations. The mounted men are a robber-band; the guns are wagons piled with loot. The villages, lying flattened by shell-fire, are walled towns which hide medieval palaces. The country through which we pass, takes on a hundred exquisite and grotesque shapes, the one melting into the other at the bidding of the imagination. Everything is unusual, everything is shifting, everything is distorted and capable of being changed at will. One has an extraordinary sense of timelessness and an overwhelming certainty that he has done all this before, marching to the sack of cities, and suffering weariness and death for unremembered causes. The ghosts of those forgotten tragedies and triumphs throng about him, bewildering him with a faint familiarity which he fails to associate with any land or clime.

On that first night-march we had to keep our column closed up to prevent straggling, since on a secret march to an unknown destination a straggler inevitably gets lost. If a vehicle had to halt to refit harness, to have a horse shod or for any other cause, we had to leave out-riders at every cross-road to guide it back to the main body.

The first part of our journey was through country we had fought over, every contour of which, despite the darkness, was pictured vividly in our minds. We passed the narrow valley behind the Maison Blanche, in which our battery had lain hidden up to the time when the Ridge was captured. We passed the cross-roads at the Ariane Dump, where we used to assemble midnight after midnight to build the artillery road up to the Front-line, that our guns might pass forward across No Man’s Land within four hours of the start of the offensive. Many spots were memorable to us because of men who had died. It was over there to the right that the Hun sniper got our signalling sergeant, when we were observing from behind the Five Hundred Crater. It was over there to the left that a Hun shell scored a direct hit on B. Sub’s gun-pit and sent all the gun-detachment west. Though we were to forget these homes that we have had in the mud, our horses remember and remind us; each time they pass one of their old wagon-lines, they try to turn in off the road from force of habit.

Through the mist and moonlight we can just make out the twin towers, blunted and splintered, of Mount St. Eloi. They look like the thumb and index-finger of a solemn hand, pointing heavenward.

One tower is tall and defiant: the other has been shorn by shell-fire. The Huns commenced their work of destruction during the Franco-Prussian war; since this war started, they have done their utmost to complete it, even sending over bombing-planes for that purpose. They have a good military reason, for the towers command a panoramic view of forty miles of country. But still the towers stand, exclaiming in a valiant gesture of architectural oratory that God still dwells beyond the clouds.

In the hollow, between Mount St. Eloi and the road which we travel, lies God’s Acre, with its endless forest of white crosses. It is there that very many of the pals who have served with us are taking their last rest. They are wrapped in the army blankets which made so many journeys with them. Each has a little scooped out hole, three feet beneath the ground and only just big enough to take his body. The blanket is pulled up over the face and hurriedly sewn into place for fear the sleeper should stir and be cold beneath the sod. As I gaze through the darkness towards the hollow, I can feel the wounds of the sleeping men. There’s Rennet with a bullet through the centre of his forehead: that happened when we were observing from Sap 29 in front of Ecurie. There’s Gordon, who came bark from a gay leave in Paris to have his leg shattered at the entrance to the Bentata Tunnel. How he made us laugh the night before he died with his account of “ze lady wiz ze vite furs,” who tried to make him pay for her dinner at the Cafi de la Paix! And there’s Athol, who was Brigade medical officer when we occupied the railroad in front of Farbus. Brigade headquarters were on the Ridge and the batteries were in the plain. The moment he saw that we were being strafed, he would come racing down through the shell-fire to our assistance. He got smashed to atoms when he was binding up some of our chaps in a blown-in dug-out; there was nothing but his face left undamaged. I wonder why it is that I still walk the earth while they sleep there so quietly. We all took the same risks. We all dreamt of the same adventure—the adventure on which we now are bound—of the day when trench-warfare would end and we should break the German line, and take our guns into action at the gallop. Do they strain their ears where they lie so narrowly as they catch the rumble of our departing guns? Do they push back the earth from their sunken eyes, raising themselves on their elbows to listen? Dick Dirk is there by now—he who returned ahead of time from Blighty because he wanted to “go straight for her.” His house underground is newer than the others. Does he wish us luck, or does he pay us no attention?———No, they do not stir. They lie heedless and silent. Having done their bit, they are contented, for they were very tired. As the hollow is swallowed up in the all-surrounding pool of night, I look back just once to where my dead companions rest, and again the words take shape in my mind, “Those about to die, salute thee.”

We wheel out on to the straight pavi road which runs like an arrow’s flight from Arras to St. Pol. In a long and regular line on either side stand pollarded trees, marking its direction for miles. They seem gigantic sentinels, silent and impassive. From all directions, from main-roads and bye-roads, comes the muffled roar of transport pouring along every artery of travel to the same unknown bourne to which we journey. A tremendous movement of troops is taking place—taking place under cover of darkness, anonymously, timed absolutely and without hurry. If we doubted that a big offensive was on foot, we do not doubt it now. But whose is the controlling brain? Rumour says that even our Corps Commander has had no warning as to our ultimate destination. The Sergeant-Major rides back to tell me that the Major wants me at the head of the column. I trot forward and find that he is walking, while his groom leads Fury a few paces behind. I salute, dismount and hand over my horse to a signaller.