Part 10

In the April of 1915, east of "that mad place called Ypres,"--a city of ruinous white towers reddened by an angry sunrise, lying ahead and to the left. A grim grey road leading from Divisional Headquarters to the battle-front, a double crescent of blown-in trenches ankle-deep in water, and bottomed with West Flanders mud. A road fanged with the stumps of trees shattered by H.E. and scarred by iron-shod wheels; pitted with shell-holes, and generally knee-deep in sludge of an adhesive character. A road along which progressed, under cover of the darkness, long columns of men, guns and Army-lorries; A.S.C. cars and motor-cycles carrying ammunition, supplies, mails and despatches for the advanced trenches; unless German star-shell or searchlights made it daylight, when traffic stopped dead, to move on when the menace passed.

Day found the road deserted as a rule, though German hate played on it regularly at intervals, with rifle and machine-guns and clouds of poison-gas. But sometimes under the leaden scowl of a rainy day, or the brassy glare of a sunny one, the road displayed a double moving line. This, when one of the myriad little wars, presently to be merged in Warfare,--demanded the attainment of some objective infinitely insignificant,--at the cost of some great sacrifice of human life.

On this particular April day, what time the British line from Ypres southwards was strengthened--in default of missing sandbags--with tins of uneatable jam of the apple-blackberry brand, and equally bad corned-beef: columns of muddy Londoners and Scotsmen with helmets and gas-respirators at the alert, were going up to Support-trenches. Afoot now,--having disembarked at a marked danger-point from the grey Army lorries--or green and yellow motor 'buses that had carried many of the Londoners to business in the days that seemed so dim and so far off. And as they went, though shrapnel burst about them, and High Explosive dug new craters beside old, and wiped out a platoon or so in doing it,--they sang to the accompaniment of mouth-organs; "_Keep the Home Fires Burning_," or "_Piccadilly_," or "_I Love a Lassie_," or excruciatingly-parodied hymns.

But the troops that were coming down from the fighting-line to rest-billets (mostly Canadians, red with rust, muddy to the eyebrows, marching raggedly in companies or jumbled up anyhow in the lorries), did not sing "_The Maple Leaf_" or "_My Little Grey Home_." Many wore First Aid bandages smeared with iodine; nine out of ten hobbled and coughed and vomited; and the mucus they wrenched from their labouring lungs was yellow and mingled not infrequently with blood. It was their first experience of a German gas-attack, and the horror of the strange and evil thing was upon them; and the reek of it was in their clothes and breath. Yet those who could--called out cheerfully to recognised friends; or grinned with their cracked and swollen mouths in answer to cheery hails. Their reddened eyes of sleeplessness stared out of haggard, unshaved faces, and their muddy shoulders humped under their muddy kit-packs, as though the muddy ground were drawing them to lie down upon it and sleep. And every now and then one would falter in his stride and smile stupidly; and heavily and soggily collapse in the gluey mush. A comrade who had energy enough left in him would kick and shake such a sleeper into temporary wakefulness; or one of the men who perched beside the drivers of the Hospital cars and ambulances,--R.A.M.C. orderlies or Red Cross bearers, would play the Samaritan thus, when the subject would stagger on, to fall again. Or room would be made for him in some omnibus or lorry where lightly-wounded or badly-gassed men were packed like bloaters in a barrel, and so the game went on.

Private John Hazel, crunching a muddy apple, trudged through the sticky mud as part of a somewhat straggling route-column representing the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Regiment. One novel sensation had that morning thrilled the Terriers, stale with the deadly boredom of life in the rear lines. Necks were yet being twisted to get the last of it, and joyous comments tossed it from tongue to tongue. A cow,--hidden away for months by an ancient peasant in some subterranean stable in No Man's Land (whence her milk had been retailed at the price of Veuve Cliquot to the Canadians in the firing-line)--was being brought down to the rear by her proprietor; her late lodgings having been discovered and thoroughly spring-cleaned by a German H.E. shell....

"Moi hoi, if it be-ant a cow!" said a voice that had the roll and twang of Berkshire. "Coosh-coosh, Snowdrop, ole beauty!"

"My Gawd, she don't 'arf look natural, do 'er?" came from a Cockney tongue....

Not a human unit of all those trudging columns but had slewed his head to stare at Crummy, and sniff the homely odours of hay and farmyard-muck that shook from her muddy flanks as she kloop-klooped by. What though she had raw patches of mange upon her withers--testifying to the poorness of her diet and the closeness of her quarters! To men who had not seen a cow, pig, cock or hen for weeks, moving upon that devastated country of once prosperous farms, productive fields, fruitful orchards, and stately rural mansions, the sight was comforting; bringing reassurance that in regions as yet unscathed by the frightfulness of War, yet were to be found quiet and order, laughter and pleasure, savoury food, sleep in one's own bed, and the humble, harmless things of everyday use, that make life sweet by their very homeliness.

Another sensation was in store that day, and though the novelty of it wore off with retrospection, John Hazel's keen enjoyment of the episode never blunted....

Down through the return-traffic on his left hand side, came a stately fleet of motor-waggon ambulances of the Red Cross, British and American; escorted by a train of Auxiliary Army Service cars of all imaginable makes, nationalities and sizes, from the aristocratic Rolls-Royce to the runabout Ford; from the Mercedes-Daimler of the Parisian boulevards to the roomy Schneider touring-car,--bringing wounded from the advanced dressing-stations down to the clearing-hospitals six miles back of the Reserve Lines.

The grey ambulances passed, in a mingled whiff of carbolic and iodoform: leaving a sense of grey paint, mystery and merciful swiftness. The cars, mostly carrying sitting-cases--flowed after them; steering neatly among the shell-holes, picking their way with practised smoothness among the various obstacles encumbering the road. And they left behind an impression of still figures wrapped in brown Army blankets: and grey-green or livid faces with closed or staring eyes, shaded by sacking-covered steel hats or bloody bandages: of an even stronger blast of carbolic and iodoform, and of Beauty, calm, alert, composed and eminently practical.

For all these auxiliary ambulance-cars were driven by women: in the black leather overcoats of Foreign Service, with D.B. Kitchener collars, and plain shoulder-straps with the button of the Red Cross Society's V.A.D. The pick and pride of the Old Country they seemed,--all young, or in the splendour of the early thirties. The best blood in Britain, John Hazel could have sworn,--raced under the sunburn of those quiet clear-cut faces, topped by peaked storm-caps of Navy blue cloth. He saw the neck of the lieutenant leading his platoon blaze red between his sweat-blackened collar and the edge of his tin hat, and the muddy glove swing up in the salute, as a clear voice rang out gaily from a driving-seat:

"He knows one of 'em. Lucky beast! I wonder--" John had reached thus far in his conjecture when a pip-squeak burst overhead with three sharp crashes; and a shell from a German howitzer dropped in an ancient neighbouring shellpit, considerably enlarging it--and producing the fantastic smoke-effect known as "Woolly Bear."

John Hazel bolted the core of his muddy apple, and mechanically made sure that "they" had not got him this time. The head under his tin hat was ringing, his eyes and lungs were full of acrid vapour: but no shrapnel was located in any portion of his frame. The cars were running by as smoothly as ever.... You could see through the thinning fumes the faces of the drivers, set like rock to confront War's risks and chances: and a blatant pride in them surged up in John Hazel and he caught his breath... They were his countrywomen.... Then Wallis, his front-file man, suddenly fell back upon him, knocking him breathless with his pack, and cutting his top lip badly with the edge of his shrapnel hat. With blood running over his long chin, blue and stubbly with bad shaving, John held up Wallis, who was making queer, clucking, farmyard noises:

"_Auch--auch--auch!_ ..."

"The bloody 'Uns," growled John's left-hand man to his neighbour, "'as copped pore Ginger!" and the lieutenant ahead looked around. Wallis had ceased clucking by now; and the hand of John's supporting arm, where it went round across his cartridge-belt under his tunic-pockets, was wet with the usual warm, sticky stuff. And a voice that was clear-cut and ringing called out something, and a car slowed down its speed, and those behind it swept round and on.... And the lieutenant was shouting through the myriad noises of traffic: "If you can, it would be topping of you.... This isn't a healthy road to stop on. Thanks frightfully! ... You, Hazel, hoist him in and catch us up after! ... Forward. March! ..."

The V.A.D. driver had never quite stopped her car, John Hazel remembered. She had checked it to a crawl and he had kept pace with it, carrying the now rapidly-buckling Wallis--whose head had dropped forward, and whose helmet had fallen off--at the full stretch of his long arms since he stripped the pack from him. A Red Cross orderly had taken it together with Wallis's rifle.

"No room behind!" came in the ringing, feminine tones. "We're four over the proper load already! ... This seat beside me ... the orderly can sit on the step. You'll be all right there, won't you, Martynside? Now please lift when I give the word; _Go!_ ... Don't worry about the blood. Lean your head against my shoulder!" She added for the cheer of Wallis, who was trying to say something apologetic: "Quite all right, if you're careful of my steering arm.... Comfortable? ... All right, Martynside! And--don't be too anxious about your friend. We shall look after him!"

Perhaps something in the comrade's gaunt brown face, a flare of wistfulness burning in his big hollow black eyes had drawn the attention of the speaker. As a matter of fact, the way in which her strong womanly shoulder had swayed to meet Wallis's limply sagging head, had given John Hazel a sensation as of plucking at the heartstrings. And--where had he heard that voice before? ... She went on, answering the hungry look in the gaunt black eyes that met hers:

"You shall hear of him, if news can possibly be got to you. I'll send a post-card if you'll give me your name. 'Private John Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London Regiment, Support Trenches, Ypres.' That's quite all right! ... Your Reserve is at St. Jean.... Hang on to this!" This being a thick, squat packet of Dundee Butterscotch. "Good-bye and good luck! ... You'll be coming down this way in a week or two."

"If I don't get gassed or wounded.... Good-bye and thanks tremendously!"

John grinned, showing his big white teeth with the effect of a sudden illumination in his gaunt brown face; and there and then,--with a snort from the now rapidly-moving car, and a nod and smile from the driver,--the little episode had ended. Leaving John Hazel with a pleasanter flavour upon his mental palate than the sour American apple had left in his mouth. Something that was sweet with the aromatic sweetness of the ripe gold-and-crimson pippin whose rich juices have been perfected by the lightest touch of frost. And She had had the frankest and most candid eyes, of the clearest cairngorm golden-brown, that John had ever seen in a woman's head, and a wide, kind, charming mouth, that had shown two rows of dazzling teeth in a

## parting smile that had crinkled the eyes deliciously at the

corners.... And so they had parted; going east and south-west, the V.A.D. to her clearing-hospital, the Londoner with a new, strange warmth about the heart, catching up his Company on the edge of a new-made crater, in time to take over the duty of Harris, now platoon-Sergeant, killed with three other men by a shell from "Silent Lizzie," the terrible 5.9 German Navy gun.

Thus the mantle of heroism had been transferred to the broad, unwilling shoulders of John Hazel, from those of the energetic young N.C.O. who had been to him as a thorn in the flesh. He had loathed Harris, with his pink and white complexion, his auburn quiff, and his appalling, crushing efficiency. And Harris, who as a Boy Scout had passed every imaginable test of ability and gained every badge obtainable,--had warmly abhorred John, as the shrieking example of everything a British soldier should not be....

"It's for your good I keep on what you call nagging at you, Hazel!" would be the introduction to every exordium: "A dirty soldier is a disgrace to his King and Country, and that's what you'd be if you couldn't afford to bribe men you consider your inferiors to wind your puttees tight, and fasten 'em properly, and keep your straps and buckles clean."

Or:

"It's for your good I follow you up, as you express it; and when you're able to make a fire out of mud and rotten beet-leaves, and an 'ot meal out of bully beef, ration-biscuit and an onion, more like an Egyptian 'All professor of ledgerdemang than a British Tommy'--which is like your nerve to use such language, so much the better it'll be for you! Don't tell me you can't keep your puttees from trailin' about your legs like snakes and the rust from disguising the metal on your 'coutrements. Don't say you can put up with 'ardships, and that you mean to stick it, ... To make Bad Better is your duty! and to 'unker like an 'og in the slush of Belgium, when you could sit on a faggot and keep reasonable dryish: and shiver when you could 'eat yourself inside and out by a bit of forethought--is your disgrace and not your praise!"

And Harris would light the fire and set the stew going, or thrust on his unwilling subordinate a portion of his own; and depart cheerfully whistling, and ostentatiously in possession of the equable temper which a Scout must never, never lose!--leaving the prodded object of his zealousness frothing with impotent rage.

Small wonder that the alert personality of Harris, his observant glance, unsparing criticism and unfailing Preparedness in every emergency were,--with his orange quiff and the trench-rings on his little fingers--by Private Hazel utterly abhorred.

After the clubbing of a certain German prisoner who had treacherously shot a comrade of John's, Harris did not hesitate to denounce Private Hazel as "a butcherly brute." Yet dying on the edge of the big new crater hollowed at the roadside by "Silent 'Lizzie," he used his last forces to faintly shout in the stooped ear of his platoon-lieutenant:

"Let Hazel carry on in my place, Sir! He's a filthy fighter--but the best man we've got!"

So, ex-Scout Harris died, true to the last to his ideals, having played the game for his side right up to the end.... And within twenty-four hours of reaching the second-line trenches, Harris's reluctant deputy, saddled with the necessity of keeping up Harris's reputation as a daredevil, had led a company to the support of the front line in the place of a lieutenant wounded--and had won the D.C.M. by a single-handed bomb-attack upon an enemy machine-gun position,--which enabled our London Terriers to charge over the parapet and clear out the wasp's nest. Had been offered and respectfully declined promotion--on the grounds that he didn't like responsibility!--and had subsequently, in the act of drinking tea at the door of the platoon dug-out--been knocked out of action by a splinter of shell.

Thus, adhering in death as in life to his policy of well-meant aggravation, Sergeant Harris came between his bugbear and the promised, longed-for post-card. For if indeed it had been sent, it had never reached John.... Damn Harris! But what good was there in damning Sergeant Harris? Hell wasn't the place you'd catch that efficient young beggar going to. Hadn't he, assiduously as he kept his body, looked after his cocky little soul! In the gusts of fever that shook his brain as he lay in his cot at the Receiving Hospital, John pictured Harris with his quiff all curled and shiny,--dressed in the spruce white clothing of the righteous--heard him with the ears of imagination, shouting hymns that went with a marching swing.

The fever subsided by and by, and, after four months of bitter fighting, Private John Benn Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, (subsequently to a brief sojourn at a French Base Hospital) found himself back in Blighty, well pleased to be alive. He ended his final period of residence as a patient at the Auxiliary Military War Hospital of Colthill in Middlesex, in the July when German South-west Africa surrendered to Smuts and Botha: and was pronounced convalescent by the C.M.O. in the first week of December, 1915; the self-same raw, bleak and nipping day that saw the Fenchurch Streets'--with other British forces transferred to the Egyptian Expeditionary--embark for Salonika.

IV

The bit of shrapnel irritating his left lung,--located there by the X-Ray, but deemed by the surgeons unreachable, had ceased to bother much; and the gas-bronchitis--another souvenir of that mad place called Ypres--had quieted down to a wheezy cough. John was lying back, rather damp and exhausted after an access of this cough, when the Ward Sister in charge that afternoon looked round the screen--there had been three; but two of them had been taken away because the patient was getting on so nicely,--to say that a visitor wished to speak to him, Number Forty--if he felt well enough?

"Tell the old girl they won't allow me to eat anything but apples or Brazil-nuts,--and that I'm not to smoke more than two cigarettes at a time!"

John's homely effort at wit evoked an approving nod and smile from the Sister. She vanished as the Hospital porter, a one-armed ex-Guardsman who previously to Mons had been a famous Regimental pugilist--came stepping lightly as a cat over the highly-polished floor, carrying a 200-weight coal-bucket. As the replenished fire began to crackle and blaze, the Ward Sister returned, ushering a little, frail, bent old man, with flowing hair and a patriarchal beard of the white that has passed into straw-colour; sharp twinkling eyes under penthouse eyebrows lighting a face of innumerable wrinkles, reddish-pink and leathery like a marmoset's. He carried a tall hat in one hand and a brown leather bag in the other, and wore a black velvet skull-cap, greasy with faithful wear. A round-collared, single-breasted overcoat of brown cloth, with yellow horn buttons, revealed the bottoms of shiny black trousers, ending in square-toed, black cloth-topped boots. The boots were clogged with Middlesex mud, as though he had walked from the station. A purple woollen comforter and mitts to match, defied the December blasts.

Firelight played bo-peep on the white ceiling, and chased dodging shadows in and out between the neat beds, ranged along the creamy walls of the long, cheerful ward, and winked in the dark polish of the boards, and was reflected in the glass-topped tables supporting pots of hyacinths and daffodils as well as big blue-glass stoppered bottles of Perox: Hydro: and Mercurial Sol:. But the unexpected appearance of his ancient visitor had cast a glamour over Number Forty. His body lay in bed in Colthill War Hospital. But in spirit he stood in his Grandfather Simonoff's Hull counting-house, a boy of three in diamond socks, strap-shoes and a blue jean round-about, straining his sharp young ears for the rustling of a paper bag.

Peppermint rock, brown or white, was John Hazel's darling weakness. His letters Home, during his sojourn in the trenches, had invariably ended with a prayer for more peppermint rock. And the sight of this queer old man evoked all sorts of pungent memories connected with the favourite sweet stuff. His big black eyes and the sharp little red-veined old eyes met, and something like an electric shock passed between them. And the shaggy penthouse eyebrows of the old man came down, and then shot up to meet his velvet skull-cap--or the cap came down to meet them,--and at the same moment his ears wagged, and John Hazel knew him again. Twenty-seven years were temporarily blotted out, and he was once more a five-year-old--and old Mendel was feeling in the pocket that bulged--and John Hazel found himself licking his lips--but nothing but a blue-spotted cotton handkerchief came out of the bulgy pocket. With this, Mendel--had he ever had another name?--loudly blew his nose, and as the Ward Sister placed a chair, and vanished with a whisk of cotton-print skirts (notably shorter in this December of 1915 than the previous uniform pattern), he uttered something in a strange, unknown and yet familiar tongue:

"_Shalôm--shalôm!_" He added as he met the astonished stare of John's gaunt black eyes. "You are like your father as pea is like pea; and yet--when I wish peace to you in the Holy Tongue, you don't understand me! A shame and a sin!--but I'm not here to reproach you for being a Meshumad! That's not my affair! You're not my grandson,--the Holy One be praised!"

"Mr. Bartoth--" John had exhumed the other name by a strenuous effort of memory: "whether you are pleased to see me or not, I'm very glad to see you! Do you object to shaking hands?"

"Behold!" Mendel blew his nose again loudly, and said as he restored the blue-spotted handkerchief to the bulgy pocket; "I am 'Mr. Bartoth' to the child I dandled.... You have not kept the good way, but there is a good heart in you.... You sit there with your medal on your breast--" a famous Divisional Commander, visiting Blighty to enjoy a brief leave, had looked in at the Hospital on the day previous, and conferred on Private Hazel--with some laudatory expressions, the Medal for Distinguished Conduct in the Field--"and you're not too proud to offer your hand to Old Mendel--nor you've not forgotten his name! Yet you were a babe of three years when your father died, peace be upon him! and but four when we lost your grandfather, peace be upon him! and too young to say Kaddish; and now that your grandfather and your uncles and your cousins are dead, peace be upon them! you, a grown man of thirty-three, are ignorant as a babe. _Shaigatz!_ But it's no use to be angry. Besides, I must get back to London in time to catch the four o'clock Express from St. Pancras. I came by the 5.48 from Hull and got in at two o'clock noon."

"Haven't you had anything to eat?--Won't you--" John was beginning when the old man, who had sunk upon the chair with a boneless limpness eloquently expressive of his weariness, silenced him with a gesture of fierce abhorrence, and he was fain to hold his tongue.