A Fox Under My Cloak Read online

  A FOX UNDER MY CLOAK

  HENRY WILLIAMSON

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND DEDICATION

  MANY of the scenes in this novel are authentic, including those which are based on incidents recorded in the Official History of the Great War, Military Operations, compiled by Brigadier-General J. E. Edmonds, C.B., C.M.G., R.E. (retired), and Captain G. C. Wynne, The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry—to whom grateful acknowledgement is hereby made.

  Each of the characters in this novel had an existence in the 1914–18 war, though not all necessarily acted or played their parts in the times and places mentioned in the story.

  In particular, the author dedicates this volume to

  CAPTAIN DOUGLAS BELL, M.C.

  his old school-fellow and comrade-in-arms, wounded at Lone Tree during the battle of Loos, 1915.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Author’s Note and Dedication

  PART ONE

  “LEYTONSTONE LOUTS”

  1. INTO THE LINE

  2. REALITY AND APPEARANCES

  3. HEILIGE NACHT

  4. A BICYCLE RIDE

  5. THE DIEHARD T-TRENCH

  6. HOSPITAL

  7. HOMECOMING

  8. TENSION

  PART TWO

  TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN

  9. IN COVER

  10. “HELENA”

  11. LIFE IS FUN

  12. LIFE IS A SPREE

  13. LUSITANIA

  14. SPREE (continued)

  15. SPREE (continued)

  16. ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

  PART THREE

  THE BATTLE OF LOOS

  17. THE COCKEREL

  18. A CUSHY JOB

  19. Y/Z NIGHT

  20. Y/Z NIGHT (continued)

  21. LONE TREE

  22. “A BIT OF FAT”

  23. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

  24. “CRASHER” & CO.

  25. FRIENDLY FACES

  26. “TWINKLE” PROPOSES

  27. CLIMAX

  28. ANTI-CLIMAX

  29. LONDON, S.E.

  30. ZEPPELIN

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  Part One

  “LEYTONSTONE LOUTS”

  Chapter 1

  INTO THE LINE

  IN the first week of December 1914 the King Emperor George V arrived at St. Omer in Northern France, headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force. Orders were given immediately to all units, in rest and refitting after the battle of Ypres, to prepare for a Royal inspection.

  Among them was a territorial battalion, the London Highlanders. Boots and short puttees had already replaced worn-out shoes and spats in which members of the original battalion had left England nearly three months previously; but only in some cases had new rifles been issued in place of those defective Mark 1 Lee-Metfords which, in action, had been used as single-loaders with the new, pointed ammunition. That was in the past, a memory of Hallo’e’en and the fighting beside the Menin road.

  New faces, inter-company football matches, parcels and letters from home, estaminet nights, had reduced the war to a rumour beyond the eastern horizon of flat, tree-lined arable fields gleaming with wintry water in cart-rut and furrow.

  The day before the King was to arrive there was a battalion route march led by pipers along dull pavé roads leading to nowhere and back again, before dismissal by the new Commanding Officer, a regular soldier from the Coldstream, for the great clean-up.

  His Britannic Majesty in the service uniform of a Field-Marshal, brown-gloved, brown-booted with gold spurs, brown-bearded, pouches prominent under blue eyes, passed with Field-Marshal Sir John French, Aides-de-camp, and various General Staff Officers down the ranks of silent, staring-ahead, depersonalised faces of No. 1 Company, in whose ranks, one of the survivors of Messines and Ypres, stood Phillip Maddison, thinking that the gruff tones in which the King spoke to Sir John French and the Colonel were of that other world infinitely far away from what really happened.

  Behind the King walked the Prince of Wales, seeming somehow detached from the massive power of red and gold, the big moustaches and faces and belts and boots and spurs all so shining and immaculate between the open ranks of the troops in kilts of hodden grey. The slight figure of the Prince, in the uniform of the Grenadiers, appeared to be looking for something beyond the immediate scene—a small white-faced boy in the shadow of Father.

  *

  The London Highlanders were looking forward to spending Christmas in billets. The battalion was still 500 under strength, having received a draft of only 300 officers and men to replace the wastage of fourteen days of fighting. There was to be a Christmas tree, and company dinners with turkey and plum pudding. Football teams were practising daily; and a match was being played between No. 1 and No. 3 Companies in a field outside the town when a motor-cycle dispatch-rider arrived with a message for the Adjutant. Many eyes watched him open and read it, and pass it to the Colonel.

  Immediately the match was stopped. Laughing talk and banter behind the goal-posts ceased. Everyone back to billets immediately; the battalion had orders to move at once. The misty dampness of the December afternoon seemed suddenly to be hanging chill. Nobody took a last kick at the football. It was picked up, by orders of the regimental sergeant-major, and carried off the field.

  Feelings of dread—thoughts of imminent dereliction in cold and wet, and worse, of sleeplessness—possessed the survivors of the recent battles walking to their billets among the slightly excited and inexperienced men of the new draft.

  Phillip Maddison, accompanied by four of the new draft in his billet in the Rue de Calais, walked in silence among them, all in step with him, kilts swinging in unison. He was thinking what a fool he had been for not having applied, during the four weeks the battalion had been out at rest, to join the transport. What more wonderful life could there be, with just enough excitement near the front line at night to give the feeling that one was really in the war—unlike the base-wallahs of the A.S.C., the Ordnance Corps, and others too far back to see the flares over the battlefield at night? He envied the transport drivers, not so much for the safety of their jobs—the horse wagons taking up rations and ammunition stopped at least half a mile from the firing line—but because they could sleep after their work was done, in hay or straw in a barn, out of the rain and mud.

  For Phillip the terror of battle, of attacking into the loud cracking of bullets fired from a few hundred yards away, from behind uncut barbed-wire, was the same terror of having to face cane-strokes at school in the past: when it was over, it was over; but sleeplessness at night, without shelter in rain and frost, life achingly unendurable from one long hopeless moment to another in chilly darkness, was the worse thing. Oh, to be with the transport—the excitement of bringing up rations and letters at night to the battalion dump, handing over the 20 per cent over-proof rum in earthenware jars, ammunition and rolls of barbed-wire—then round went the horses’ heads, back jolted the four-wheeled wagons, faster than they had come because the horses were thinking of nose-bags of oats awaiting them in stable or on picket-line, the drivers thinking of hot tea or soup, of snuggling into dry straw under a roof.

  *

  Oh, why had he not applied, when the remnants of the battalion had first come out to rest, for a transfer? Several of the Bleak Hill chaps—including cousin Bertie, the transport sergeant—were then going back to England, to take up commissions, and there had been vacancies.

  Some had been filled from the new draft. What an idiot he had been, deciding to stay in the company, to be with the four new fellows with whom he had chummed up! They had attached themselves to him, marvelling at the horizontal bullet-rip across his greatcoat, souvenir of sentry
-go in Bellewaarde Wood in early November. One of the four, Glass, had actually asked him for tips of what to avoid doing in a battle! Phillip had pronounced the old soldier’s philosophy.

  “If your number is already scratched on a bullet, or your name painted on a shell, then it will find you. There’s nothing you can do about it.” And later, one particularly cheery evening, “Keep by me when we go in, it isn’t so bad, really.” This was after several rounds of café-rhum in the Au Rossignol, when he was thinking of the way the bearded Grenadier Guards had looked after them when they had first gone into the Brown Wood line. Cranmer! He drank a toast to Cranmer, his eyes averted from the others. Cranmer, a Boy Scout with him in the Bloodhound patrol—those faraway days of cricketing hats and linen haversacks dyed in tea to look like khaki, of twopenny broomsticks and little pewter bugle, of scrapping between rival patrols and troops, Boer War tents of rotten canvas, and black-smelling wooden water-bottles!

  *

  In the billet there were three members of the original battalion, including Phillip, and nine of the new draft, mucking-in together—sharing food-parcels and rations at one table. Now the problem was what to take, and what to abandon—cakes, pots of jam, sardines, boxes of sweet biscuits, even the best part of a tinned ham. The men of the new draft spoke quietly among themselves; but the three survivors of the old battalion were, in different ways, visibly agitated. Lance-corporal Collins, with sour face, was swearing as he threw aside one thing after another, muttering about the balls-up of Christmas; Church had a sardonic, to-hell-with-everything expression on his face; Phillip felt that his life was shattered, or on the point of being shattered, as he failed again and again to decide which of his mother’s gifts he must leave behind, and so forsake and abandon part of her gentle face regarding him. The effect was one of irritability. Why had she sent such silly things, like that bottle of linctus? And the red flannel chest-protector, gift from Gran’pa?

  Even so, he was deeply attached to, or loyal to, all thoughts from home which had prompted the sending—both had come from the old life that was now lost for ever. What about the linctus? He could see Mother buying the bottle at Leo the chemist’s in the High Road, Leo’s own special recipe. Every winter since he was little, especially when the yellow fogs had come before the frosts, Mother had given him teaspoonfuls of syrupy, sweet linctus to guard against a return of childhood croup. How could he betray her loving care? Or her cakes? Or any of the pairs of socks (not sox, as she spelled the word) she had knitted for him? Then there were the two woollen scarves, the two cholera or body belts, the woollen cardigan (worn with the chest protector, it made his tunic tight), the two pairs of woollen gloves, half a dozen tins of cocoa and café-au-lait, thick bars of chocolate, two extra shirts, a dozen boxes of matches, a pork pie, almonds and raisins——

  The door opened. The company sergeant-major, no longer “Colours” of easy Bleak Hill days, stood there. Quietly he said, “Company parade outside in twenty minutes’ time.”

  When the door was shut again, Phillip, while knowing that he was showing his own weakness, appealed to Lance-corporal Collins, despite Collins’s dislike of him.

  “I suppose you don’t know where I can get a sandbag, Corporal, by any chance, to pack my extra clobber in?”

  “If you weren’t so bloody selfish, you’d have given some of that stuff to the Brigade Fund, when you had the chance,” replied Lance-corporal Collins.

  “I saw that they already had two G.S. wagon loads of our casualties’ parcels, Corporal.”

  “Yes, and a fat lot you added to them,” said Church, a crony of Collins’s.

  “Well, I was still alive.”

  The appeal for comforts had been made by Captain Ogilby when it was thought that the Brigade would be spending Christmas out at rest. Many of their comrades in the regular battalions of the Brigade, he said, had people at home who were not always in the position to send out parcels of food and clothing. Anything that could be spared, therefore, by the men of the London Highlanders would be most welcome among the splendid fellows whom they had lately had the honour of supporting in battle.

  To the appeal Phillip had given a tin of French sardines and a large slab of Chocolat Menier, which he had bought for himself in a magasin, but found too coarse to his taste, together with a tin box of Brand’s Meat Essence tablets sent by his father. This apparent stinginess at the time had caused Collins and Church to exchange slow and scornful winks: they had not forgiven Phillip for a thoughtless or rude term applied to them when they had occupied the next tent in the company lines at Bleak Hill, in the heather of Ashdown Forest during those far-away August days which by now seemed so idyllic—“the Leytonstone Louts”.

  As the other men of the billet thrust what they could into pack and haversack, Phillip stood indecisive, the thin wire of frustration drawing his entrails.

  From almost his earliest feelings, thought of Father had been a shade, the presence of Father a wire-like fear. Entirely precious therefore in the massed shade or wire-like fear of war was every object sent by Mother; to be held as life itself.

  “Come on, get on with it,” said Lance-corporal Collins, barging into him as he passed.

  “All right, corporal.”

  In desperation he decided to give his surplus to the old woman of the billet. She was grey-haired, like his mother. To alleviate the strictures of Collins and Church, he began with an attempt at humour. Holding out two pairs of socks,

  “Pour monsieur, madame! Pour faire chaud ses petits, comment s’a appelle the word toes? Ses petits rouge ou pink toes, en dedans ses sabots, madame, you comprennez, pour ses petits cochons qui crient oui-oui-oui! tout la route chez lui.”

  The old woman was puzzled; she did not understand this mixture of realism and nursery-rhyme.

  “Lorsque vous reviendrez, m’sieu?”

  “Non, pour votre mari! Moi, peut-être je serai tué, crack!, le claque, comme ça, regardez!” He struck his hands together sharply, then pointed to the furrow torn by the bullet across his greatcoat while on sentry-go at Bellewaarde Farm.

  “Merci, m’sieur!”

  He put a scarf round her neck. “Aussi pour vous, madame!”

  “For Christ’s sake cut out that blather!” said Collins.

  “These peasants make enough out of us as it is,” grumbled Church. Then, swinging round upon Phillip, “You make me sick! You knew bloody well that half the regulars haven’t got any socks to their feet! Why the hell didn’t you give those two pairs to the Brigade Fund?”

  “I didn’t think we would be going into the line so soon.”

  “Else you’d have applied again to go on the transport, eh?” Lance-corporal Collins said shortly, as he dropped the brass cylindrical weight of the pull-through into the breech of his rifle.

  “I was keeping those socks for Cranmer, a pal of mine in the Grenadiers, in case he turned up, if you want to know!”

  “So you say. In my opinion, you’re a bloody little shyster, and I’m not the only one who thinks it,” said Church.

  “Anyway, what’s wrong with my giving them to the old boy here? After all, he did lend me his sabots when we first arrived!”

  “Oh, shove your socks where the monkey put the nuts!” cried Church.

  “Your habits are not mine,” retorted Phillip.

  “You say that again!” cried Church, turning on him.

  “Well, you said it first, remember!”

  “Oh, stuff your socks——” said Lance-corporal Collins. “We’ve got ten minutes before parade.”

  “Church started it, Corporal. I didn’t.”

  “Bloody little tick,” muttered Church. “You didn’t even give your Bill Brown pal who got those Zeiss glasses for you a five franc note. Your ‘pal’ Cranmer!”

  “Yes, he was my pal!” cried Phillip, in a rage. “And a damned sight better man than you, let me tell you!”

  “Will you fight?” retorted Church, suddenly very quiet.

  “Yes, I will!”


  “Hell’s bells, aren’t there enough Germans left to satisfy you two coves?” said Collins. “Come on now, get a move on, it’s nearly time for parade!”

  “When will you fight?” demanded Phillip, looking at Church.

  Church laughed shortly. “There’d be only two blows,” he drawled. “One when I sloshed you, and the other when you hit the floor.”

  “All right, wait till we get up the line!” Phillip hesitated; then turning to Church he said, “Any old how, let’s shake hands for now, shall we?”

  Church knocked aside the hand contemptuously.

  The men of the new draft had watched and listened to this petty wrangling between three heroes of the original battalion in silence, as though slightly puzzled.

  *

  Darkness had fallen when the battalion left behind warmth and security. A waning moon rode the sky, sad memento of estaminet nights, frost-silvered cobble-stones, colour-washed house-fronts of the Grand’ Place. The decaying orb was ringed by scudding vapour; a wet wind flapped the edges of rubber ground-sheets fastened over packs and shoulders of the marching men: a wind from the south-west bringing rain to the brown, the flat, the tree-lined plain of Flanders.

  *

  It looked as though they were going back to Ypres, by now a prospect of stoical acceptance, since marching in the rain absorbed nearly all personal energy, leaving little for thought beyond the moment. They marched along a road lined with poplars towards a distant hazy pallor thrown on the low clouds by the ringed lights around Ypres. The sky was tremulous with flashes: the night burdened by reverberation of cannon heard with the lisp of rainy wind in the bare branches above. To Phillip the way was unfamiliar, though it was the route by which the survivors of the battalion had come out of battle a little more than three weeks previously, many of them barefoot, ragged, bearded, and near-delirious.

  Sergeant Douglas said that they were passing through Westoutre, and Phillip told his new friends of the draft that they were for Ypres—the regulars’ “Ee-priss”—all right.