The Belgian village-town had been so sorely knocked about that the names of its faubourgs, boulevards, and thoroughfares were obliterated. Hence, one is fain to substitute others, such as the Street Where The Naked Body Of The Little Girl Hung Up On Hooks In the Butcher's Window, the Passage Of The Three Dead British Soldiers With Slit Noses And Pounded Feet,—The Square Of The Forty Blindfolded Civilian Corpses, and the Place Of The Church Of The Curé They Crucified For Warning The British By Ringing The Bells. Of this sacred edifice—Romanesque and dating from the tenth century—little remained beyond the crypt and the stump of the tower. Some calcined and twisted bones, a scorched rag of a cassock, represented M. le Curé, that faithful shepherd of souls. Of M. le Curé's flock, not one remained to tell the story of the tragic episode that had reared the grim pile of blackening corpses in the Market Square, and added seven hundred homeless refugees to the rivers of human wretchedness ceaselessly rolling South.
In the bright sunshine of the fine October morning that had followed a night of rain and thunder, the grimly-altered shadows of shell-torn buildings lay black on the ripped-up pavements and shrapnel-pocked walls. A sandy-white cat lapped gratefully at a puddle, a dishevelled fowl pecked between the cobblestones, a pigeon or two preened on the broken ridge-tiles. To the eye of a skilled observer hovering hawk-like in the hot blue heavens, raking the streets through high-powered Zeiss binoculars, nothing human remained alive in this Aceldama. Yet when the two-seated bomb-carrying Taube with the big man and the small boy in it had banked and climbed, and hummed away Southwards on its aërial mission of ruin and destruction, one British officer, sorely wounded, lay in what had been the ground-floor living-room of a well-to-do baker's shop.
A Captain of a Guards infantry battalion belonging to a Brigade of the First Division of the First Army Corps. Marching, counter-marching, digging, and fighting rearguard actions had kept the Brigade's hands full during those blazing days and drenching nights of August and September, whilst the battered Divisions that had borne the brunt of the huge German offensive, reduced to one-twentieth of their effective, had hurried Southwards, leaving a trail of blood.
"Those other beggars have had all the luck!" the Brigade had growled when it had any time for growling. But it had won shining honours at the Marne, and had been heavily engaged at the Aisne, losing many of its men and officers. In the Aisne battle, particularly, the man we are concerned with had won special mention in Dispatches for a deed of great gallantry. Three days previously, an order from General Headquarters had moved his battalion on the little village town.
Their R.F.A. Battery had been posted a quarter-mile distant, commanding the north-east and east where the Germans were known to be. Machine-guns were placed at the principal road-ends debouching on the west where the Germans might be: the main streets had been barricaded with transport-waggons and motor-lorries, all the Maxims left had been hidden behind the sand-bagged windows of a factory—a gaunt, brick sky-scraper, long a thorn to the beauty-loving eye of M. le Curé—the walls of houses ending streets leading to the country had been loopholed for musketry, and a howitzer from the battery and a machine-gun had been spared to protect the bridge south of the town, a little place resting in the elbow of a small babbling river. Watches and patrols had been set and pickets placed, and then these war-worn Britons had dispersed into billets, or gone into barracks, too weary to eat, craving only for sleep.... That big mound of blackened ruins near the railway station, left intact for strategic purposes by the enemy, now stood for the barracks—just as that calcined heap of masonry, and twisted iron girders at the town's north angle now represented the hospital. Both had blazed, two huge, unquenchable, incendiary-shell-kindled pyres, to light the retreat of the battalion south.
Secure on those points of menace, north-east, east, and west, the exhausted battalion had slept like dead men. The townspeople, relieved in mind by the presence of so many English soldiers, slept like Flemings—very nearly the same thing. The Burgomaster slept; M. le Maire followed his example. M. le Docteur and M. l'Avocat slumbered profoundly too. Only M. le Curé, being restless for some reason or other, resolved to spend the night on the church-tower in the company of his breviary, an electric reading-lamp, a bottle of strong coffee, and a battered but excellent night-glass, the property of his late maternal uncle, an Admiral of the French Navy.
Four hours they had slept, when a furious clangour from the church bells awakened the sleepers. Shrill whistles screamed, bugles were sounded, Staff officers and company commanders clattered out of their quarters—the battalion jumped like one man to its feet. Voices talked over the wires of the field-telephones. An artillery patrol-leader had ridden into the advance of a column of heavy motor-lorries approaching the bridge that crossed the river, carrying the highway that had brought the battalion from the south. Lorries heavy-laden with—French infantry!—for an outpost's flashlight on the advance had revealed the Allies' uniform. Well, what of it! French troops were in the east upon the Yser. But still the crazy church-bells jangled and clanged and pealed, shrieking:
"REVEILLEZ-VOUS, MESSIEURS LES ANGLAIS! VOUS ÊTES SURPRIT, LES ALLEMANDS SONT ICI! RÉVEILLEZ-VOUS! AUX ARMES! AUX ARMES!"
And another broad arrow of dazzling blue-white light showed motor-lorries packed with spiked helmets and green-grey tunics, behind the képis topping men in blue coats and red breeches. The gunners of the howitzer, spared for the point commanding the road south of the bridge, were picked off by German sharpshooters before they could fire. The officer with the machine-gun was bayoneted and the gun itself seized. Revolvers cracked and spat incessantly, bayonets plunged through the darkness into grunting bodies. Britons and Boches strove in a mêlée of whirling rifle-butts and pounding fists. And by the light of star-shell, shrapnel, and machine-gun-fire from the other side of the river began to play indiscriminately on the assailants and the assailed. Under cover of this fire, the Germans would have rushed the bridge, but for the Factory stuffed with machine-guns, pumping lead from its windows, and the howitzer—Oh! bully for the howitzer! thought the wounded man.
His company had been entrenched as a reserve near the bridge in the mouth of a faubourg running westwards. They had doubled out to support the bridge-party in the moment of alarm. He had been shot then in the right arm and had gone on using his revolver with the left hand. It was not until some well-timed shrapnel from the R.F.A. battery north-east of the town began to burst among the green-grey uniforms, and the Kaisermen took to their motor-lorries and went off, carrying their wounded and leaving many dead—that Franky had been sensible of any pain.
"You've been pipped, old man," had said the commander of the bridge-company, mopping a smudged and perspiring visage with a handkerchief that shrieked for the wash.
"By the Great Brass Hat! so I have, but I'd forgotten all about it," said Franky, surveying the carnage in the golden sunlight of the newly-minted day. "Look at these fellows in French uniforms. It's an insult to the Allies to bury 'em like that. Couldn't we take off the blue coats and red baggies before we stow 'em underground? And the prisoners. What beauties! Whining 'Kamerad!' to our chaps, and putting their hands up for mercy. Do they suppose——"
The speaker ceased, for the brother-officer who had commanded the bridge-company was absorbed in looking through his binoculars at a silvery speck in the western heavens. It grew into a British R.F.C. scouting biplane, that came droning overhead at 4,000, circled, fired a white rocket for attention, dived nearer, circled again, and dropped a scrawled message in a leaded clip-bag.
"Enemy-column—infantry with motor-lorries and two guns crossing river—bridge a mile to the West of you—hurrying hell-for-leather North. Dropped them two bombs. Bigger column advancing from North with more motor-lorries and howitzers. Look out for squalls that direction. Roads to South all clear."
"Those crossing the bridge to west of us will be the gentlemen who came round that way to leave their cards!" said the Lieutenant-Colonel Commanding as the biplane sang itself away. "Probably a column detached for the surprise from the bigger force to the north. Well, we seem to have finished top-dog. Let's hope they won't tackle us again until the men have had their coffee. 'Phone the Brigadier at Zille! And 'wireless' the news of the scrimmage to the Divisional Commander at Baix and Marwics thirty miles south of us, and get a message through to Sir Kenneth"—he named the General Officer Commanding the A.C. to which the Brigade belonged. "And give details to the G.H.Q. at St. O., don't forget! Not that we'll get much credit over this." The Colonel scowled, surveying from the sandbagged window of Headquarters, situate in the Factory, the long lines of stretchers being trotted off by the R.A.M.C. bearers to the town Hospital. He rubbed his finger under the bristles of his close-clipped moustache with a rasping sound that conveyed his irritation as he went on: "That's the worst of these rotten little Advance-guard actions! They're expensive, infernally expensive. The casualties are heavy and the credit nil."
"Possibly, sir, but at any rate we've wiped out a lot of these Boche beggars," said the Battery Commander, optimistically. "Halloa! Bird over! And it's a Boche plane!"
A two-seated Taube, shining silver in the morning sunshine, had come out of the golden mists to northward, rolling up the landscape under its steel belly with wonderful steady swiftness. At some 3,000 above the town, it hovered, making a queer buzzing noise.
"I've heard that song before," said the Adjutant, his eyes glued to his binoculars. "You remember, sir, at Fegny?"
"The spotter our fellows christened the Buzzard. At his old smoke-signalling tactics." The Colonel snatched the Field-telephone, spoke, and from a gaping skylight at the top of the tall, square, many-windowed Factory an extravagantly-tilted Maxim began to pump lead skywards in a glittering fan-shaped stream. "Queer effect, uncommonly! Looks as if it were raining upside down.... Gad!—I believe that hit him!" he added, as a small dark object fell from the Hunnish monoplane. But it was only the inevitable miniature parachute with the smoke-rocket attached to it belching gouts of black vapour. The Buzzard ceased buzzing, banked, and climbed gracefully out of view.
And then, with a leaping of green-white tongues of flame away in the north, beyond a long sunlit stretch of level country fringed with poplars and streaked with canals, and patched with brown cornfields and golden-tinted woods and apple-laden orchards, and dotted with little towns and villages, the heavy German field-guns and 11.2-inch Krupp howitzers began to shower shrapnel and big steel shells of High Explosive upon the devoted little town.
The Kaisermen had got the range from their spotter. Half of the single Field battery of 18-pounder quick-firers were put out of action in the twinkling of an eye. The little town became a storm-centre, canopied by soot-black smoke, stabbed by the fierce blue glares of the shell-bursts. The houses were toppling. The ruins were blazing. The gasometer near the station was hit and blew up with a fearful explosion. The streets were full of shrieking, stampeding, dying townspeople and children. "Save us! Take us with you!" they screamed to the Englishmen. For the Divisional Commander at Baix and Marwics had telegraphed "Retire," and the battalion was preparing to evacuate the town.
A great shell wrecked the Factory, killed the Adjutant and many of the machine-gunners, and slightly wounded the C.O. The Romanesque church-tower, whose bells had shrieked alarm in the little hours of the morning, rocked, staggered, and collapsed over its famous chime.
Again, men had melted as you laid your hands on them, blown into crimson rags as their mouths opened shouting to you. It had been Hell, Franky remembered, sheer, absolute, unvarnished Hell. The Battalion Surgeon-Major had been dressing his wounded arm in the open street when the Death-blizzard had broken upon them. A lump of shrapnel hit Franky in the ribs on the right side and some R.A.M.C. bearers carried him, vomiting blood, into the baker's shop. Possibly they were killed—for a shell hit and burst, and wrecked the house in the instant of their leaving it—and they never came back again. Their charge, in his helplessness, had escaped death by a narrow shave. The plank flooring of the upper room, dropping from the broken joist at the fireplace end, had formed a penthouse over him—lying on the blood-soaked stretcher on the tiled flooring—shielding him from the avalanche of household furniture, glass and crockery, descending from overhead.
Thus he had lain, partially unconscious, when what was left of the battalion marched out of the town. Most of the population followed on the blistered heels of the British soldiers, helping to carry the stretchers of the wounded and crippled men who under that blizzard of fiery Death had been got out of the burning Hospital. Not all had been got out. Franky, lying bloody and smothered with plaster, and helpless under the penthouse of planking that had saved him, had heard the screams of these—such pitiful, heart-rending screams.
Then the bombardment had stopped, and the mere relief from that intolerable torture of outrageous sound was Heaven. The screams from the burning Hospital had ceased, but when the earth had shaken with the approach of a great host, and German cavalry in green-grey uniforms with covered helmets had ridden through the ravaged streets, and the tottering walls had trembled at the passage of colossal motor-tractors dragging 11.2-inch Krupps and carrying huge loads of German gunners, engineers, and infantry—and German voices had shouted harshly up and down the streets—and German heads were thrust from open windows—and the work of Pillage, so dear to the German heart, was being carried out with German thoroughness—the screaming had begun again.—Cries of women and children, shouts of men; pleas, expostulations, prayers for mercy in French or Flemish, brutal laughter, German oaths, threats, and orders; subsequently, to the accompaniment of "Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles"—the popping of corks and the breaking of glasses—Hochs for Kaiser and Kronprinz, fierce disputes over the divison of booty, more shrieks of women and girls.... To the funeral adagio of picks and mattocks upon the cobblestones of the Market Square. A volley then, and shots and more shots.... Subsequently Private of Infantry, Max Schlutter, made these scrawled entries in his note-book; testifying to the Sadism prevailing among the troops of the Attila of To-day:
"October —th, 1914. Great day of loot and plunder! We shelled the cowardly English—a whole Army Corps with a brigade of heavy Artillery—out of the village of H——. The Hospital, Barracks, Church, and many houses destroyed by our guns. The Mayor, the Burgomaster, and the Registrar shot for harbouring our enemies. The priest tied up to his church-door, tortured, and then burnt, for ringing the bells to warn the English of our approach. Lieutenant Rossberg had a little girl butchered like a pigling, and pounded the feet of some lame English soldiers we found hiding, to teach the swine how to dance. They too were shot. Decidedly the Lieutenant is a funny fellow. All the people who had not run away brought out of their houses and shot. They filled the air with their lamentations. After a grand gorge and a big swill, we now all drunk and slept on the pavements by the light of a magnificent silvery moon. Burned more houses, and continued the march next day with a hellishly bad head."
"How long before they find me out?" Franky had wondered. But the plaster-whitened brown boots sticking stiffly out under the penthouse of broken flooring must have looked as though they clothed the rigid feet of a dead man. "Presently they will come!" he had promised himself. But though they had sacked the baker's shop and visited the other rooms in the dwelling, no one had entered the ravaged little parlour, split open from floor to ceiling by the upburst of the High Explosive, and offering its ravaged, worthless interior to the scrutiny of every passing eye.
Worn and spent with fierce exertion, hard fighting, and loss of blood, delirious with the rising fever of his wounds, he was conscious in whiffs and snatches. The conscious intervals made fiery streaks across broad belts of murky shadow, a No Man's Land wherein Franky wandered, meeting things both beautiful and hideous, knowing nothing real except thirst, racking cramps, and stabbing pain.
The second day passed. At sun-high a distant fury of guns broke out. Through the terrible drum-fire of Prussian Artillery he fancied he could hear the British field-guns, hammering out Death in return for Death. Suffering agonies for lack of water, he sustained life with scraps of chocolate broken from a half-cake carried in a breast-pocket. To move one hand and carry it to his mouth was possible at cost of ugly pain. Night fell, a night that was rainy, and windy, full of cool drippings that wet Franky's clothes without visiting his baked lips, and still the cannonade went on ceaselessly—so that the crazy walls that sheltered him shuddered and the earth vibrated, and the eeriness was made more eerie with the sliding of tiles from broken rafters, and the creaking and banging of broken doors, slammed by ghostly, invisible hands. Pale splashes of light,—reflected stabs of fire from the muzzles of those unsleeping guns in the south and west, made the darkness yet more dreary. Rats scrambled and squeaked, close to him in the obscurity, evoking horrible suggestions of being gnawed and bitten as one lay helpless there.... He gritted his teeth to keep back the cry that nearly broke from him as one rodent crossed him, its hooked claws rattling against his straps and buttons, its cold hairless tail sliding snakily over his hand. He fancied that he saw its eyes shining in the darkness—he was certain that it had moved and lopped round behind him—he felt its whiskered snout cautiously approaching the throbbing artery beneath his ear.... Then his nerve left him, and he croaked out feebly, though it seemed to him that he shouted:
"S'cat, you brute! Get, you beggar! Halloa; Halloa! Belges au secours! Ici un Anglais, grievement blessé! Is anybody there?"
But there came no answer save the muffled thunder of guns in the distance, the crackle of fire in houses that were burning, the gurgling of a broken water-main, and the distressed miaowing of a cat. It came nearer. There was a rustling sound, and the light descent of a furry body on padded feet; Pussy had jumped in where the window had been, alighting not far from Franky. He could see a pair of green eyes lamping in the darkness, and called, seductively:
"Pussy, pussy! Come here, old girl!"
The purr came near. Franky, with infinite torment reached out a hand, felt and stroked a warm, furry body. He said, cautiously feeling for the appreciative, sensitive places at the nape of a cat's neck, and under the jaws:
"Good old girl. Don't know what they call cats in Flemish, but Pussy seems to be good enough for you. Stop and scare the rats away, give 'em fits, eh, Pussy? You're agreeable? Good egg! Oh—I say!"
For Pussy had walked, loudly purring, on to the chest that heaved so painfully, and proceeded to knead the surface scientifically, preparatory to curling down. Franky set his teeth, and bore the ordeal. Thus they kept company until morning, when Pussy, who proved to be a lean white Tom with patches of sandy tortoiseshell on flanks and shoulders, withdrew by the fanged opening where the window had been. A moment later Franky heard his late companion lapping noisily from a street-puddle and knew envy, in the anguish of his own unrelieved thirst.
He wandered then for a space of hours or instants, in the days of his own lost childhood. He was in the night-nursery at Whins, suffering from some feverish ill. He felt the prickling as of innumerable ants running up his limbs and the sweat upon his forehead, and called meaningly to Nurse for drink. But it was his mother in her dinner-dress, with shining jewels crowning her dark hair, and wreathing her neck and starring her bosom, who came to the bedside and leaned over him, put the rumpled hair from his hot forehead, and held to his lips the cup of milk. Then a droning sound made the room vibrate, and he was back with his company in the hastily-dug trench across the mouth of the west-running thoroughfare, and church-bells were clanging and the telephone-buzzer was calling for the reserve to double out and reinforce the men in the trench enfilading the bridge....
Then he was awake and the sun was high. Those guns in the west were silent now, though from the south and south-east came heavy thuds and long vibrations. Through the rents in the flooring above him by which the rain had dripped upon him in the night, he was looking at the blue sky. A big white bird hovered there. Not a bird—a Taube. The Taube, and he had not dreamed the buzzing after all.
Oh, but it was queer to lie there under the keen scrutiny of that eye in the heavens! It made the prickly ants swarm up Franky's thighs and sides until the sensation grew unbearable. Hate, fierce hate of the murderous, beautiful thing droning up there in the azure sky above its curious misty circle made him see everything red, made him want to yell and shriek. For Margot was in danger, somehow—somewhere—while one lay helpless as a log....
"Steady, old child!" whispered Franky to himself, warningly. "You're going off your chump. Hold still!"
And he held still. The Buzzard ceased to buzz, and floated on, droning. He fancied that he felt its shadow darken and pass over him, moving from his head to his feet. The noise of the tractor stopped. Reflected in the area of a skewed wall-mirror he saw the machine volplane down, and alight without a falter in the Market Place—before the smoking ruins of the Town Hall.