Читать книгу Harper of Heaven - Robert William Service - Страница 11

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Although I was over military age when war broke out I felt keen to join up. I fancied the Seaforth Highlanders, so I went to the recruiting office and offered myself. To my surprise a varicose vein in my leg disqualified me. “You can’t wear puttees with that thing,” snapped a medical officer. As I had understated my age and darkened my hair I went wearily away. When he yelled after me: “Shut the door!” I did so with a bang. But it was just as well, for that battalion of the Seaforths was practically wiped out on the Somme. Had it not been for an innocent bulge in my left calf I would probably now be lying near my brother in a grave in Flanders Field. Sometimes a blemish is a blessing.

Then I took counsel of my good friend John Buchan, a man whose brilliance dazzled me. Had he not gone to my old University, gained a scholarship for Balliol, written a dozen books, become a Member of Parliament? He was also partner in a big publishing firm and head of a famous news agency. So young, with so many irons in the fire. Yet I do not think he dreamed of the high honours that would ultimately be his. At that moment he was a ranking Colonel and writing a history of the War.

I met him in the lounge of the Hotel Scribe. He had a slim figure and a sensitive face under a bulging brow. When I told him I wanted to join the ranks he shook his head. “Join the Officers’ Training Corps and get a commission. We want men like you.” I disagreed, for I knew myself better than that. Though I can obey ardently I cannot command. Always that inferiority complex. I am incapable of handling men, while responsibility unnerves me. All of which I tried to explain to John but left him unconvinced.

So we went to a Burns Banquet where he made the speech of the evening. As I sat by his side he told me his health was so delicate sometimes he had to go to bed for a month. On these occasions he would write a book. He had just finished Greenmantle, which had sold twenty thousand copies in advance. I marvelled at his facility and his success. He commented on the absence of a haggis, saying: “A Burns Banquet without the haggis is like Hamlet without the Prince.” For so fine a scholar he had a rich sense of humour, and it was a grievous pity a man of such grace and distinction should meet with an untimely death.

Having been thwarted in my effort to get into the War on the ground floor, I thought of my Balkan experiences and wondered if I could not be a correspondent. Accordingly I offered myself to my old syndicate and was accredited on the same conditions. So I went round hospitals and training centres, doing my best to grab colourful stuff. One of my articles described the arrival of a train of wounded at Rennes; but it was hard getting such gory material, so I went to Calais.

In those days war correspondents were anathema to the High Command, and to be caught near the firing line was a dire offense. The best one could do was to snoop as closely as possible. At the Station Hotel of Calais were a brilliant band of journalists, but they depended on leave men and Blighty victims for their stories. I was not very successful. The regular newspaper men got tips that left me an outsider. I did not get much help from them; but one and all said: “If you value your skin don’t go near Dunkirk.”

I reflected: “If I’m the man for my job I must get to Dunkirk....” But how? The train was running, yet I should be arrested at the station. Well, why go to the station? There was a village a few miles out of town where the train stopped. I would get off and walk the rest of the way. So I slipped on to the train which was full of soldiers and country people. I thought they looked at me queerly, but suspected no evil.

Hopping off at the little station I made my way to a café where the patron hailed me with some surprise. He spoke to me in a lingo I first thought was German so I hastened to disavow any knowledge of that language. He explained, however, that it was Flemish, and served me with beer. As I drank I was conscious of that atmosphere of suspicion. The other drinkers hushed their talk and eyed me distrustfully, till feeling a little uncomfortable I rose and went my way. As I did so I saw the landlord rush to the telephone.

I did not take the direct road to Dunkirk. If I did so I might be stopped, as I would have been at the station. So I found a by-way and entered the town by the suburbs. Soon I was in its centre, where in a big café I ordered tea, bread and butter. As I sat there I felt serenely happy. I had been smart. I had evaded the authorities. I was on the track of something that might be worth while.

And indeed the town was full of interest for a news-starved scribe. I saw numbers of Indian troops looking strangely out of place in the mud and rain. I spoke to weary poilus fresh from the Front. I could hear the cannonading and it gave me a thrill of delight. I beheld my first string of German prisoners in grey-green coats, marching methodically. Troops were being landed in the Port and supply columns congested the narrow streets. All day I dodged from one vantage point to another, seeing a hundred things I was not supposed to see. And I was innocently happy thinking how I was getting ahead of the boys back in Calais.

That evening I was arrested. I was watching ambulances load the wounded on a train when suddenly a gendarme pounced on me. He was dark and truculent. His bushy eyebrows met over his hawk-like nose and his eyes were angry. He demanded my papers; then instead of telling me they were in order he curtly ordered me to follow him. He took me to an office where sat a Major with a good humoured face that grew stern as soon as he looked at my passport. I could not blame him. That passport was a record of my travels over much of Europe. It had all kinds of outlandish visas, including German ones. It was really a sinister document. After examining it he turned me over to the gendarme whom he called Gaspard. The eyes of Gaspard gleamed with triumph. It was he who had made this arrest. As he told me gloatingly, the whole police force had been combing the town for me since morning. Only he with his superior acumen had calculated that sooner or later I would seek the station, and for hours he had lain in wait.

Now he had nabbed a dangerous spy—for it seemed that was how I was regarded. My surreptitious entry into the town, my innocent evasion of the police, my equivocal passport, all went to convince Gaspard that I was an espion de premier ordre. This he told me, fiercely, pointing a big revolver with my navel for its bull’s eye. As he accused me a crowd collected—menacing, murmuring, glaring, so that now Gaspard became my bulwark barring me from their wrath. For at that moment Dunkirk was having a wave of spy fever, and they were shooting suspects at sight. I wondered if I, too, might not be a victim; though I did not take the matter too seriously. Yet I was marched through the streets with a big pistol jabbing at my spine, for Gaspard was taking no chances. He dared me to make a break for liberty, when he would have shot me like a dog.

Then followed what I will always consider to be a doleful experience. First I was interviewed by a General. He was severe, but when he looked over my passport he became grim. He kept all my papers, congratulated Gaspard, then had me conducted to a guard room where I was locked in. It had whitewashed walls, a small barred window and was unfurnished but for two chairs. I sat on one of these and, putting my feet on the other, I tried to make myself comfortable. But I did not like the look of things. I had a feeling they might shoot first and inquire after.

That was a nasty night, I did not sleep for worrying over what the dawn would bring forth. It brought forth Gaspard. He grinned ruefully and told me he had instructions to take me before the English Captain of the Port. My hopes rose. Now I would have a chance to square myself. So again I was marched through streets and streets accompanied by a vindictive mob who hissed “Espion!” I was painfully glad when I was shown into the presence of the Port Captain. He sat behind a big desk while in a far corner, behind a small desk, sat a naval cadet. Gaspard handed him my various credentials which he examined grimly, giving me a piercing look from time to time. Finally he turned to Gaspard. “These papers seem to be in order. Why have you arrested this man?”

I heard Gaspard explain that I had entered Dunkirk by a back way and all day had evaded arrest. As he did so I saw the cadet start and gaze at me as if petrified. More than anything else that made me grasp the gravity of my situation. I was in serious danger. Then for the first time in my life I realised I had a heart. I was conscious of a steady pounding going on inside my chest. “You’re in a tough spot, laddie,” I thought.

The Captain, too, seemed amazed at my audacity. “What have you to say for yourself?” he snapped. “It’s quite correct,” I said. “I did come into Dunkirk by the back door; but in Calais the boys told me it was the only way to make it, so I took a chance. Risk is my job. I had to get a story for my paper and I did not think I was doing anything really wrong. Some of the other chaps did it.”

He grinned wryly. “But you are aware you have no right to be here, and the faster you get out the better. As for this spy business, let me tell you you’ve had a narrow escape. There’s a big scare on and they seem to have lost their heads. Only this morning they shot half a dozen poor devils off hand. I am sure some of them were innocent. If I had not been here to intervene you might have been one of them. Now take your papers and GET OUT!”

Then rising, he shook hands with me, saying to the flabbergasted Gaspard: “This man is innocent. You may release him.” I thanked the Captain fervently. As I went into the street Gaspard was there. He said: “In spite of all, I believe you’re a spy.” I wanted to thumb my nose at him but I only gave him a look of contempt. So with a sense of escape I strode to the station where I took the train for Calais. When I got to the hotel I told the boys of my adventure and they roared with laughter. To be shot as a spy seemed a “helluva joke.”

This escapade disgusted me with the correspondent game. “If I could only get a break,” I reflected, “I could put it over these newspaper guys. The only one doing decent stuff is an amateur called Philip Gibbs and the others call his work ‘sob stories.’ What they do is just common reporting, without distinction or imagination....” Yet despite my defeat I felt I must make another try to get a ringside seat at the Big Show.

Back in Paris I got two good stories. One evening in the Place Clichy I saw a crowd milling round a drunk Tommy. He was an elderly man, small and wiry, covered with mud and wearing a woollen nightcap. I rescued him from a mob of women who were affectionately mauling him, and bought him a bottle of wine. “We got it pretty ‘ot, Sir,” he told me. “I’m the only one left of our lot. Them Youlans would have speared me like a hog if I ‘adn’t shammed dead, lying under a gun carriage.... But oh, the time we ‘ad on the way to Mons! The men cheered us, the women kissed us and they gave us so much wine we was urinating red. But the coming back was bloody. How I felt ashamed to face them same people! But they gave me this tam o’ shanter because I lost me ‘elmet.”

He hung on to his rifle, however, and still was full of fight. “I want to go back to Mons,” he kept saying, “and ‘ave another go at ‘em.” But the Army thought otherwise. They gave the old chap a Victoria Cross and kept him at home as a training sergeant.

Then one night I saw crowds lining one of the Montmartre streets. They were mostly women, some of whom would break away to kiss one of the soldiers who were passing in a column. Many of these soldiers were black. Their teeth flashed ferociously as they grinned at us. All were in full fighting kit yet their spirits seemed high, for they were going forward to the Battle of the Marne. I stood there all night long and in the dim light I saw the Foreign Legion file past. Then regiment after regiment of colonial troops. Then what seemed to be every taxi in Paris crammed with cheering poilus. It was an inspiring sight and only in the dim dawn did I go home too tired to write my story.

The next few days were heavy with anxiety. We knew nothing, heard nothing as we gazed anxiously in the direction where one of the greatest battles of history was being fought. But we thought that Paris was doomed, and the following week would see the Boche marching under the Arc de Triomphe. Though most of my friends scrammed, I decided I would stick it. The weather had been brooding and sinister, but the Sunday dawned bright and clear and somehow we all sensed that a miracle had happened. Apprehensively we had been waiting to hear the guns of the enemy; now all was silent. Only later did we know that one of the most glorious pages in history had just been written.

I was eating my heart out to think I could not get into the thick of things, when I saw in the paper that an American Ambulance Unit was being formed and that drivers were needed. I applied for further information and received a letter from one of the leaders asking me to meet him at the Hotel Meurice. “It’s like this,” he told me, “a bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Ritz Bar when someone suggested that we form an Ambulance Corps. We all had cars and were willing to turn them into ambulances and drive them ourselves, so we decided to offer our services to the French Government. They accepted. Now we are attached to the army of Foch. But we need young men who are not afraid to rough it and have a taste for adventure. If you join us we will send you to the Front, only you must promise not to write a word on anything you see.”

Of course I promised, though that was the very thing I meant to do. But that was for the future to realise. In the meantime I went to London, bought a uniform and felt rather a fool in it. Being what they called a “gentleman driver” I had an officer’s standing. This embarrassed me. I was not a fighting man, yet pukka soldiers were saluting me. I got so that when I saw a Tommy coming I would dodge round a block. I did not wear my Red Cross arm-band, for I was ashamed I was not a combatant. Though I did not want to kill I was willing to take a chance of being killed. If I only could get some gore on my uniform I might feel better. Anyway, I was no longer a nosy newspaper slacker....

A week later I was driving an ambulance under fire. It was on a long stretch of Flanders road, and I had five wounded in my car. This road was raked by a German battery as I hurried over it. Suddenly I heard a shell burst. I saw a cloud of black smoke, while gravel and stones spattered the car. I hesitated to dash on or to stop; but my orders had been to do the latter, so I put on the brakes. A good job too, for ahead there was another explosion with a mushroom of evil black smoke. I had three walking wounded and two stretcher cases, so with the aid of the first, I got the stretchers into the ditch and there we waited till dusk. I had felt no fear, only a thrill that had something of pleasure in it. I had been under fire. I could go back to Chelsea now and take a salute.

Our headquarters were in a château where we slept on the floor and had food provided by the French army. But we all contributed for extras so that our fare compared favourably with the best officers’ mess. Dinner every evening was a scene of hilarity. Wine flowed freely and everyone was in high spirits. Perhaps there was something feverish in our gaiety, for we were keyed up by the events of the day. We joked, laughed, sang, told stories, anything to make us forget the roar of the cannon that sometimes seemed to rock the ground about us. It may seem a dreadful thing to say, but we were actually enjoying the war.

Taxi jobs took up our days and by work well done we earned our evening gaiety. When not on duty I would go for long walks through fields where crops were rich with promise. It was a peaceful scene, though in the distance I could hear the guns, like the flapping of a gigantic blanket, and sometimes clouds of smoke would stain the horizon. Often I gained a knoll from which I could see spires of villages that were in enemy hands, and I would wonder wistfully what was happening there. Overhead at all times were Hun planes, dodging between silver puffs of shell-burst. I watched them, hoping to see one brought down, but they seemed to enjoy a miraculous safety. In these fields of Picardy the contrast between peace and war was brought home to me, with the peasants ploughing peacefully under the very guns. I was happy, for I was in uniform and proving myself worthy to wear it. Somehow I did not think of writing any more. All I wanted was to be a good soldier, even if I were a phoney one.

Despite the usefulness of my work I began to long for something more exciting, so volunteered for outpost duty. We had several posts close to the First Aid Stations, and kept cars there day and night. There were two of us to a car and we were relieved every ten days. The life was rough, for we had to sleep in our clothes on the floor of a ruined cottage, or in a tent or dugout. We were exposed to shell-fire, at least to a direct hit, so that as we slept we felt we were in the hands of Providence. Usually we resigned ourselves on a bad night of bombing, thinking that if a shell did get us we would never be any the wiser. Soon the cannonading ceased to keep us awake; it was the rats that really annoyed us. A rat running across one’s chest can feel as heavy as a sheep, and one of my best laughs was to see a big grey one chewing the beard of an old poilu by my side.

The night driving was the worst. We could not show the faintest light and the roads were pitted with shell holes. It was nerve-racking, crawling on low speed, with a badly wounded man along those coal-black devastated roads. Once I had a soldier die in my car—but I prefer to forget that. There is so much I want to forget. Those who went through the horror of war never want to talk about it. But if there was slaughter, there was also laughter. We would laugh a lot, mostly about nothing, and we became very callous, grumbling if brains or guts soiled the car. We were sorry for the poor devils but saw so many they were like shadows.

I always begged to go forward with the stretcher men to fetch the wounded from the front line. There were two men to a stretcher and they were glad of a third to spell them off. I loved those trips to the firing trench, or even into No Man’s Land. We made them during the day when we had cover, but when we were exposed we took the wounded after dark. The danger enhanced the heartening feeling of saving life. All of us were keen on those hazards for they gave us a pride in our job. We felt a certain shame that we were not fighting men. However, most of us were of middle age, while the younger ones were American citizens and that country had not yet come in. Grand fellows all—I never expect to work with finer.

In the early stages of the war I felt no fear. I used to prowl close to the front line, and once or twice got myself into trouble. In some cases the German trenches were only a few yards away, so I got a thrill out of the nearness. To think that I was exposed to fire bolstered my self respect, and sometimes I would leap out of a trench in full sight of the enemy lines. I was a show-off and a fool. That I did not get a bullet in my hide was no fault of mine, for I loved the twang of them. But towards the end I got jumpy, hating the near-by crash of a shell and its concussion. War does not improve on acquaintance. It resolves itself into filth, confusion, boredom. Though I tried to avoid the latter by courting danger in the end I came to realise I had a yellow streak a yard wide.

After a month or so at the various advance posts it was grand to get back to the peace of the château. I had a wonderful feeling of relaxation and a sense of duty done. Oh, the goodness of the golden garden!—loafing, dreaming, forgetting that so few miles away men were murdering each other. How beautiful this world could be! Yet we must make it hell. Strolling in the radiant sweetness of those sunny alleys I thought: Why cannot it be always like this? ... And once again it seemed to me I heard my Harps of Heaven.

Of course it was not always so serene. We had times of battle, big and small, which were strenuous enough. Often for nights there would be no sleep as the stream of wounded kept us on the run. As a rule the bigger the battle the smaller the danger; for then things were organised so that we took up our loads less close to the fighting zone. But there was always the same long, straight road lined with walking wounded who threw away their rifle cartridges as they trudged to the rear; always the same metallic atmosphere, the din, the concussion, the apathy of the soldiers, the excitability of the officers; then to the rear the sweating surgeons, their bare arms gay with gore; the hospitals where one helped to carry severed limbs, unexpectedly heavy, and dump them in a ditch.

Night brought no respite. With star shells brilliant about us we scurried back and forth, clearing hundreds of cases between dark and dawn. The difficulty was to keep awake. Often we dozed over the wheel till a jolt would tell us we were running into a ditch. To fall asleep was deadly, and only when we were empty did we flirt with death. But the weariness was overwhelming and there was no rest. I remember one night in a furious electric storm; it was far from the Front but it seemed as if the thunder and lightning were trying to mimic it. How I laughed at that paltry imitation. The thunder might crash, the lightning flash, it was as nothing compared to the roar of the guns and the blast of the shells. I who had always hated thunderstorms now jeered at the puny efforts of the heavens. Man could so easily out-horror nature I would never be afraid of storms again.

But so grateful was the lull after battle we would soon forget it in happy comradeship. We would utterly ignore the War, being more interested in eating and drinking. In fact liquid refreshment played a big part in our lives. I was very proud of the Corps in these days, and felt privileged to be a member. It really did a memorable job both in the Champagne and the Verdun show. Later I was asked to be its historian and write a book about it. However, I had not the time at the moment for my real war book was in the matrix.

I was happy with the Ambulance Corps. With our gallant lads and ramshackle cars we did worthy work. We had many distinguished visitors, among them Granville Barker. I offered to take him to a danger point, but he said he would only accompany me if I would write his obituary. In our mess we did not talk shop and I never heard a word of smut. The standard of duty and devotion was high, while above all our Chief commanded our affection. Oh, it was a grand life! I would have gone on with it until the end had not a queer sickness befallen me.