i8o
THE YPRES TIMES
risks and perhaps to die. The band is playing the draft to the little station. Improvised
lamps gleam eerily on the music scores and brasses of the band. In the darkness of the
outlandish country road comrades run alongside their departing friends who are branded
with the little white bags. They shout their farewells above the noise of the band
the marching friend takes a hand in both of his, then another, shouting out laughingly
his farewell at the face in the dark.
I was A4 thentoo young to be sent abroad. But my turn came.We march
away in an autumn evening from the little fishing town of Hornsea on the Yorkshire
coast. The band and bugles tactlessly play Home Sweet Home and Swanee
River." Now we each bear a sinister little white bag, and our friends not on the draft
run alongside us and grip our hands. On the platform the band plays while we wait
for the train. Despite being burdened with our packs, we dance with each other in
bravado, hysteria, desperation. The ranker adjutant, a terror to both officers and men,
amazes us by relenting and shaking our hands through the carriage windows and wishing
us good luck.
I remember Corbie, on the Somme.Our platoon is roused from sleep in an old
barn, late at night. Drowsy men stumble about in the straw in the light of a candle
like puppets in a shadow-show. Some are surlily silent some curse loudly some
cough and spitsome joke. A few boys on whose faces their incipient beards are
downy, express themselves in strong manly oaths and blasphemies. One lad runs out
and along the road pulling his braces over his grey-flannelled shoulders. He has gone
to a farmhouse to say farewell to Julie who has loved him since we came here three days
ago. Another lad who, the company said, ought to have had the D.C.M., still lies in his
blankets in the straw. He swears angrily when attempts are made to rouse him. He
is exhausted from his excesses of the earlier evening, when he staggered into the barn,
drunk, firing a revolver about us at random.
Later the four platoons of C Company assemble in the road to march away.
In the dark village we are joined by A," B and D Companies. We stand
burdened like pack mules. During the calling of the roll some villagers, hastily clad,
with dim lights in their rooms, come to doors and windows to watch the battalion's
departure. Words of command in various pitches of the voice are shouted. They sound
above the noise of soldiers' heavy boots forming fours, and the rattle of their equipment.
The big drum, far in front, with solemn grand assurance, booms out quicklyBoom
boom boom Boom boom boom and the band blares out into the cold inhospitable
night a march tunedefiant, desperate, heartbreaking it seems to me now. Shrill
and gruff, there are cries of Bon chance Au revoir Crash loudly band so that
we don't think of homeWe don't care Over the top and the best of luck Play
up the band We roar out our songs swaggeringly, braggingly, we have forgotten
how we scuttled out of the line and along the mule track last time when coming
out on rest. We have forgotten we were asleep an hour ago. We march through the
dark
The band ceased playing a long time ago. We trudge along in the late night,
sweating, exhausted, silent, along bleak roads unbounded by hedgesdear English
hedgeswith a dark expanse extending in front and to the right and to the left. The
weak hope which had almost left us returns when we see a small shadowy village in the
distance, slumbering. Having trudged to the limits of human endurance, we hope to
drop there our bodies of pain.
Along, along, along, through the cosy narrow slumbering street we trudge in angry
despair. When we do halt we drop down at the side of the road and sleep.
The unpitying words Fall in drag us up to our painful feet. We continue
trudging, dazed. A dark expanse extends in front and to the right and to the left.
