How Dear Is Life Page 21

  For tea, as breakfast, except that it was greasy with the old boiled mutton; and 3 Huntley and Palmers Lunch Biscuits. Rain lashed down all the first night, before the tents arrived (they were lost on the railway with our commissariat). Result—several men high temperatures, two with pneumonia. No drinkable tea the next morning, and only 3 loaves per 12 men for all day. Starvation, slow and terrible! Luckily I can stand it, and damp and hunger and hardship do not affect me. Even with tents it is pretty awful. And the life is hell itself. Now it is dry again, black dust lies on everything. We have nowhere to wash—hands, face, body, all grimy. Work all day, digging with entrenching took, marching, attacking by rushes in extended order, and nothing to do at night except to sit in dusty dark tents. A pipe is the only consolation, but baccy is low—nowhere to get more. There are just tents, and miles of heather. There are 12,000 men here in all, twelve battalions of the London Regiment; three brigades; one division. I have enquired about Willie, but he is not down here with the London Rifles.

  I believe if ever I come back I shall be changed evermore. All the chaps are already hard-bitten and slowly soured. Enough of this—I can stand these conditions.

  Don’t let Mother waste any food by sending it to me just yet as we may shift any minute night or day. Navvies at Newhaven are digging trenches and blowing up houses and trees to clear the way for mountain guns, we hear. An invasion may come if our Expeditionary Force is destroyed. The Terriers are for relieving regulars but the L.H. and a few crack regiments will fight in France. We expect to get new kit, and 2days’ leave soon, so when I send a telegram get the house full of food and tell Desmond to stand by.

  When I come home after the war (how long will it last? I hope Germany will go broke soon, it is costing her £3,000,000 a day) we will have a good time, tennis, etc., and we will spend a holiday at Lynmouth. Will you, on a Sunday, if you have time, put my Swift in preserve?

  Next quarter day you ought to receive £ 5s. and about £1 11s. 6d. overtime. Don’t write a letter of acknowledgement, I know you are very busy with your special constable work, etc. Just pay into your own account. If you have a holiday next year with Aunt Dora, take my little rod, but don’t lose it. I want something to remind me of my holiday in Glorious Devon with Aunt Dora.

  By the way, are taxes up? If you are hard up, don’t forget you can use my salary in the common pool of the family. Spend it if necessity arises, I shan’t expect it back at all, and am not really earning it. So if you are pressed at home, spend my £50 a year on Mother and yourself and the girls as a present. Please keep this letter, as it is also my will. I am afraid this war will mean the ruin (financially and otherwise) and break-up of many English families. Be sure that if I go abroad, I will fight like a devil and a Maddison against the barbarians who are doing the Fiend’s own hellish work in wrecking the peace of Europe, and causing grief and anguish in millions of homes. If ever there is a bayonet charge I will be one of the first to stab and thrust at them.

  Don’t forget to put up the new bird boxes in the elm tree by February, for my tomtits. I took the old ones down, as they were rotten.

  My face is dark mahogany. I am what is known as a hard-bitten, silent, cursing tommy! (French Foreign Legion kind.) We must send every available man to France. We shall want millions there. Perhaps more.

  When we barter for terms in Berlin, we shall be backed up by an enormous army to enforce our terms.

  We shall win in the end.

  But the cost!!

  It will nearly mean death for England.

  Please write your opinion of the war’s course, in length. I will keep it.

  Mine is this (keep this letter).

  The Germans will crush the Allied Forces abroad. We shall send all our available men across the silver streak. They will go in an unceasing stream, but each time Germany will, by force of numbers and particularly machine-guns, decimate us. This will go on for years. We shall lose the flower of our youth. But there will come a time when the Germans will have to subside.

  But meanwhile our original Expeditionary Force will be no more.

  More will go abroad—they will likewise fall, until we shall be able to take the offensive.

  Russia will be no good in the offensive. She will not reach Berlin, and be not much good to us. Germany will send a force over if she reaches the Channel ports.

  It will be swamped almost immediately. Now it will come to this. Every available man, except those needed for home defence, will be on the continent, millions and millions! We shall lose an appalling amount.

  France will never recover. She will be crippled for hundreds of years. Russia will not be much violated. Her forces will be scattered, and repulsed. Germany will gasp for breath for centuries. England will be exhausted for years, but will otherwise be intact. Our fleet will preserve our shipping but our trade will disappear for fifty years or so. That is my opinion. Please send me yours, with the baccy. Keep this letter as a curio.

  P.S. Ask Desmond to come and see me on his bike one day here. Tell Mother not to send me news like this, ‘Namur has fallen’, ‘English eating heartily of dead Germans’, etc. etc. I see newspapers here. However, I welcome local news such as the convent at Thil-donck, etc., and what is happening at home. Does the Hill seem destitute of fellows? Has slacker Ching joined up yet? Tell Mother I don’t like the photo she sent me: it is one of the worst she has ever had taken. The huge hat on her head is like a beehive with a flower garden. Tell her to send me a nice one, as for instance the one taken at Beau Brickhill. I don’t like to think that Mother only sent me a badly taken photo, even if Woods did take it in his studio. I would like one of the family group I took in the sitting-room with the old Brownie—a time exposure. It is with others in my top bedroom drawer.

  Do ask her to arrange a shoal of letters here. I should like a half-dozen every post. But tell her not to come down here, we are out training all the time and have no time to see anyone.

  Give my love to Mother and Mavie and Doris and to yourself and all.

  Love from your affectionate son,

  Phillip.

  P.S. Don’t forget to repair and to nail up the nesting boxes before Jan. or Feb.

  “Well, we’ve had our orders,” said Richard, with a laugh. “You must get another hat, that resembles neither bee-hive nor garden, and I must see about his nesting boxes with the carpentry tools of mine he ruined long ago. I wonder he did not tell me to give Timmy Rat his daily airing on the Hill! But perhaps that is to come, when he finds the field-marshal’s baton in his haversack!” He was really pleased with the new directness apparent in the letter. “He is like his grandfather in that, I fancy; my father wrote a forceful style.”

  *

  Other letters in the same strain arrived; then a week later, Hetty had one, meticulously written in ink, on Y.M.G.A. writing paper. She was relieved that it had come after Dickie had left for his train, for she felt that he ought not to see it: the tone was so different, and might disappoint his new regard for Phillip.

  9689 Pte. P. Maddison,

  ‘B’ Company,

  London Highlanders,

  Crowborough, Sussex,

  6 September 1914.

  Dear Mother,

  Today is Sunday. I have just wandered to the Beacon Hotel where the L.H. men are entertaining their visitors to luncheon. Nearly everybody has someone to see him on Sunday. I have nobody: I am as an orphan, an outcast.

  Still, the journey is long, the days are hot, the travelling irksome, so perhaps I am too unreasonable to expect a visitor.

  Even the poor boys in this camp—those who in times of peace are carters and the like—are visited by parents and relations, those who, perhaps, can ill afford the railway fare from London.

  However, it is no use my speaking, because we may go away at any minute. We may go anywhere.

  Perhaps I shall not see you again in this life—one never knows, and any opportunity there was is now gone for ever.

  Love to all,

&n
bsp; P. S. T. Maddison.

  P.S. Do you think it advisable to get rid of my suits and saleable things at home? In all probability I shall never have need of them again. So if Father wants the room, get rid of the contents.

  Hetty waved to Mrs. Neville as she went down the road, to do some shopping. Then as she turned the corner she saw the postman on his bicycle. Yes, there was one for ‘Lindenheim’. Her heart beat faster as she saw it was addressed, in scrawled pencil, to her. Then up went Mrs. Neville’s window.

  “Any news of Phillip, dear?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Neville. He is a little homesick, I think. He always asks after you, and Desmond.”

  “Yes, I asked Desmond to write to him, but you know what boys on holiday are; and these two, Eugene and Desmond, are mad on fishing, going out first thing in the morning as far as Westerham and Tonbridge, and coming back late in the evening. Do give my love to Phillip, won’t you, dear?”

  Hetty went on to see her sister Dorrie, and there read her letter. It certainly did seem that he had two distinct sides to his mind, as Dickie had said.

  Same old address.

  Dear Mother,

  I know that I asked you not to come down so don’t take any notice of my previous letter complaining. If I can’t get leave next Sunday, I will write. I shall know Sat. morning, so will wire if I get it. You can only come to the camp here by pass which I have to procure, and they are very difficult to obtain.

  Love to all,

  Yrs affected son,

  Phil.

  P.S. Send my dear old Civic pipe. I have the bulldog shape; I want the one I bought after I burnt that huge Artist’s Incinerator. How is Desmond? Tell him there are two brothers Church, here, who left soon after he went to Rodings College. Can’t he cycle down with Eugene to see me? It won’t be too far, if they start early.

  Phillip’s tent, one of twelve in ‘B’ Company lines, was third from the bottom. The next tent down was occupied by what he thought of as the Leytonstone Louts, owing to the slight cockney voices of some of the occupants, who were always wrestling for fun, and bumping the sides of their tent. Several of them came from Leytonstone, a district he knew only from the many renewal notices he had made out, and from Downham’s remark about it being a ghastly place to live in. Among them were Martin, with serious face and long clean-shaven upper lip, and Kerry and Collins, the beery comics.

  Not all were from Leytonstone, that village once of Essex, but now enclosed within rows of industrial London’s brick houses dulled by fogs of the low-lying clay-lands: two of the tent were the brothers Church, sons of the City tailor who made Mr. Howlett’s suits, and also the uniform of young Edgar. The Church brothers had been, Phillip discovered, to Desmond’s school near Chelmsford.

  In the new canteen marquee one morning after parade, Phillip asked the younger Church if he had known Desmond, saying he was his great friend.

  “What, that kid in Lower School, who blubbed and blubbed when his mater left him, and tried to run away? At least the ‘Leytonstone Louts’, as I overheard you describing us the other evening, don’t behave like that!”

  Shocked by the unexpected remark, Phillip stammered, “I d-didn’t mean y-you were one of them, Church, I meant the others.”

  He saw Lance-corporal Furrow standing near, listening.

  “What others?”

  “Oh, you know. Martin, Collins, and Kerry—they come from Leytonstone in the East End, don’t they?”

  “So that makes them louts, does it?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly mean it that way. It was a passing remark.”

  “Well, here’s another passing remark. Your name ought to be von Madigsohn.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “You ought to, being a German. It means ‘son of a maggot’.”

  “Will you fight?” cried Phillip, hotly.

  Lance-corporal Furrow put his arm between them, and swung Phillip back. “Get out of the canteen, if you can’t hold your drink!” he threatened. “Get back to your tent!”

  Nothing more was said about the fight—for the time being.

  Chapter 15

  BLEAK HILL

  TO PHILLIP in his loneliness Ashdown Forest was a wilderness; but to Norman Baldwin, who was twenty-four years old and engaged to be married, the views were what he called glorious. From the high ground of six hundred and fifty feet covered with bell heather and ling, fringed by dark clumps of pine, he saw with his lady-love the Martello towers built behind Pevensey Bay against Napoleon, and the far shining sea. The smooth grey-green South Downs lay below them, from Eastbourne in the distance to the dark beech hanger of Chanctonbury in the west beyond Shoreham Gap.

  Norman’s girl came down every Sunday. They walked for hours, holding hands, integrated by love, a feeling of eternity upon them as they looked southward towards the high beacons of Firle and Ditchling, the castle of Lewes, the skiey rampart of the Devil’s Dyke. Northwards lay the escarpment of the North Downs, the wooded Weald between; and when Norman had seen his girl off by train from the station, thither he returned with Phillip in the twilight, to stare towards the faint glow of London, whither she was returning, taking his heart with her.

  One such Sunday Phillip returned to camp before Norman. Within the tent Lance-corporal Mortimore was sitting, singing softly in his light and tender baritone voice A Broken Doll. There was a bottle of whiskey and a siphon of soda-water before him, and a large hamper. He had been on the musical comedy stage before the war, and that afternoon a party of friends had come by motor car to see him.

  “Hullo, you look depressed, dear boy. Have a peg? Help yourself. Haven’t you got a girl to visit you? You ought to have, with those eyes of yours.”

  “Oh yes,” replied Phillip. “Only at the moment her people are not very favourable.”

  “You don’t know when you are well off, dear boy.”

  “Hark, the cavalry trumpets!” said Phillip, to change the subject.

  “The Roughriders are on the next hill, dear boy. My brother’s with them. Won’t you change your mind and have a drink?”

  “No, thanks all the same.”

  He went out of the tent and stared at the ridge beyond the pines to the west. The cavalry! Thunderous charges, sabres flashing, cheering, Uhlans scattered! He thrilled at the thought of the glory of the cavalry.

  Many times Phillip had knelt by the piano in the front room, while Doris accompanied his song, The Trumpeter.

  “God-forsaken spot, isn’t it?” said Mortimore, cheerfully.

  “No wonder they call it Bleak Hill!”

  *

  Sanitation was no longer an excruciating worry for the shy youth. He had been a little chary of standing at the edge of the great round pit dug in the heather below the lines of grey conical tents, the vast urinal filled to the brim with yellow liquid; but the series of little oblong holes, called dogs’ graves, for squatting in the open, had been too much for his reserved nature. After one glance on the first day he had left, despairing of ever being able to be like the others there, talking as though it was nothing unusual. He waited until night and found a place in the heather, digging a small hole, and relaxing in privacy and peace. But one night the orderly corporal, Lance-corporal Furrow, going his rounds smartly, black cane with regimental crest on silver nob tucked under arm, surprised him. “You filthy little tyke!” His name and company were taken and reported to the orderly room.

  After breakfast the following morning the Colour-sergeant led him to Captain Forbes’ tent in the officers’ lines. While he waited outside he saw within the tent a green canvas bed and camel-hair sleeping sack, a rug, a folding table on which was a lantern and a silver-framed photograph of a lovely woman; and Fiery Forbes’ sword, belt, and revolver-holster hanging on the back of a canvas chair—symbols of another world, awesome and slightly feared, of the rich.

  While fox-haired aloof face was speaking, his own face assumed the helpless bewildered expression he had always used to conceal his mind w
hen faced with the condemning power of authority: his only defence when apprehended for leading his own life. Captain Forbes said tersely,

  “I consider that it is a damned disgraceful thing for any member of the company to have done. There can be no excuse for it. If such a thing occurs again, I shall take a most serious view of it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fiery Forbes turned away. He saluted. The Colour-sergeant told him, quietly, to go back to the lines.

  The next morning he went to the dogs’ graveyard, which now had a loose hessian screen around it. Overcoming his nervousness that the other men there would look at him, he squatted; and left with secret exultation that it had not been such an ordeal as he had dreaded. No one had spoken to him. Thereafter the morning visit was, in a slight way, something to look forward to.

  They went for route marches along the gritty lanes through the heather. In hot September sunshine they extended over the wiry, toecap-scratching stalks for attacks on distant ridges. Sometimes Colonel Findhorn and the Adjutant rode up to watch them, followed by their grooms. One morning ‘B’ Company advanced up a slope to storm an imaginary trench with fixed bayonets. Early in the advance Phillip and Baldwin were told off by Mr. Ogilby as casualties. They had to lie down in the heather, pretending to be dead.

  “A bit of luck for us,” remarked Phillip. Both were sweating. The sun blazed on their faces, on their red-lidded eyes. The bells of the heath and ling were colourless and shrivelled in summer’s decline, but bees still burred past to the yellow nuggets of the gorse.

  “This used to be part of a great forest,” said Baldwin. “In Saxon times it was called Anderida. I suppose, when William the Conqueror defeated the Saxons after the Battle of Hastings, many of them hid here, and lived on the wild deer. The Normans must have killed thousands of leading Saxons, in the years following Hastings. The Germans, if they won, would probably do the same to the English aristocracy.”