A Night in Loos

    "Never see good in an enemy until you have defeated him."—War Proverb.

Twilight softened the gaunt corners of the ruined houses, and sheaves of shadows cowered in unfathomable corners. A wine shop, gashed and fractured, said "hush!" to us as we passed; the shell-holed streets gaped at the indifferent, unconcerned sky.

"See the streets are yawning," I said to my mate, Bill Teake.

"That's because they're bored," he replied.

"Bill," I said, "what do you mean by bored?"

"They've holes in them," he answered. "Why d'yer arst me?"

"I wanted to know if you were trying to make a pun," I said. "That's all."

Bill grunted, and a moment's silence ensued.

"Suppose it were made known to you, Bill," I said, "that for the rest of your[124] natural life this was all you could look forward to, dull hours of waiting in the trenches, sleep in sodden dug-outs, eternal gun-firing and innumerable bayonet-charges; what would you do?"

"Wot would I do?" said Bill, coming to a halt in the middle of the street. "This is wot I'd do," he said with decision. "I'd put a round in the breech, lay my 'ead on the muzzle of my 'ipe, and reach down and pull the blurry trigger. Wot would you do?"

"I should become very brave," I replied.

"I see wot yer mean," said Bill. "Ye'd be up to the Victoria Cross caper, and run yer nose into danger every time yer got a chance."

"You may be right," I replied. "No one likes this job, but we all endure it as a means towards an end."

"Flat!" I yelled, flopping to the ground and dragging Bill with me, as a shell burst on a house up the street and flung a thousand splinters round our heads. For a few seconds we cowered in the mud, then rose to our feet again.

"There are means by which we are going to end war," I said. "Did you see the dead and wounded to-day, the men groaning and shrieking, the bombs flung down into cellars, the bloodstained bayonets, the gouging and[125] the gruelling; all those things are means towards creating peace in a disordered world."

The unrest which precedes night made itself felt in Loos. Crows made their way homeward, cleaving the air with weary wings; a tottering wall fell on the street with a melancholy clatter, and a joist creaked near at hand, yearning, as it seemed, to break free from its shattered neighbours. A lone wind rustled down the street, weeping over the fallen bricks, and crooning across barricades and machine-gun emplacements. The greyish-white evening sky cast a vivid pallor over the Twin Towers, which stood out sharply defined against the lurid glow of a fire in Lens.

All around Loos lay the world of trenches, secret streets, sepulchral towns, houses whose chimneys scarcely reached the level of the earth, crooked alleys, bayonet circled squares, and lonely graveyards where dead soldiers lay in the silent sleep that wakens to no earthly réveillé.

The night fell. The world behind the German lines was lighted up with a white glow, the clouds seemed afire, and ran with a flame that was not red and had no glare. The tint was pale, and it trailed over Lens and the spinneys near the town, and spread trembling over the levels. White as a winding[126] sheet, it looked like a fire of frost, vast and wide diffused. Every object in Loos seemed to loose its reality, a spectral glimmer hung over the ruins, and the walls were no more than outlines. The Twin Towers was a tracery of silver and enchanted fairy construction that the sun at dawn might melt away, the barbed-wire entanglements (those in front of the second German trench had not been touched by our artillery) were fancies in gossamer. The world was an enchanted poem of contrasts of shadow and shine, of nooks and corners black as ebony, and prominent objects that shone with a spiritual glow. Men coming down the street bearing stretchers or carrying rations were phantoms, the men stooping low over the earth digging holes for their dead comrades were as ghostly as that which they buried. I lived in a strange world—a world of dreams and illusions.

Where am I? I asked myself. Am I here? Do I exist? Where are the boys who marched with me from Les Brebis last night? I had looked on them during the day, seeing them as I had never seen them before, lying in silent and unquestioning peace, close to the yearning earth. Never again should I hear them sing in the musty barns near Givenchy; never again would we drink[127] red wine together in Café Pierre le Blanc, Nouex-les-Mines....

Bill Teake went back to his duties in the trench and left me.

A soldier came down the street and halted opposite.

"What's that light, soldier?" he asked me.

"I'm sure I don't know," I answered.

"I hear it's an ammunition depot afire in Lens," said the man. "Our shells hit it, and their blurry bullets have copped me now," he muttered, dropping on the roadway and crawling towards the shelter of the wall on his belly.

"Where are you hit?" I asked, helping him into the ruins of the estaminet—my dressing-station.

"In the leg," he answered, "just below the knee. It was when I was speaking to you about the ammunition depot on fire. 'Our shells hit it,' I said, and just then something went siss! through my calf. 'Their blurry bullets have copped me now,' I said, didn't I?"

"You did," I answered, laying my electric torch on the table and placing the wounded man on the floor. I ripped open his trousers and found the wound; the bullet had gone through the calf.

"Can you use your foot?" I asked, and he moved his boot up and down.

[128]

"No fracture," I told him. "You're all right for blighty, matey."

One of my mates who was sleeping in a cellar came up at that moment.

"Still dressing wounded, Pat?" he asked.

"I just got wounded a minute ago," said the man on the floor as I fumbled about with a first field dressing. "I was speaking to Pat about the fire at Lens, and I told him that our shells hit it, 'and a blurry bullet has copped me now,' I said, when I felt something go siss! through my leg."

"Lucky dog," said the man on the stair head. "I'd give fifteen pounds for your wound."

"Nothing doing," said the man on the floor with a laugh.

"When can I get down to the dressing-station?" he asked.

"Now, if you can walk," I told him. "If you're to be carried I shall need three other men; the mud is knee deep on the road to Maroc."

"I'll see if I can walk," said the man, and tried to rise to his feet. The effort was futile, he collapsed like a wet rag. Fifteen minutes later four of us left Loos bearing a stretcher on our shoulders, and trudged across the fields to the main road and into the crush of war traffic, hideously incongruous in the pale light of the quiet night.[129] The night was quiet, for sounds that might make for riot were muffled by the mud. The limbers' wheels were mud to the axles, the mules drew their legs slowly out of muck almost reaching their bellies. Motor ambulances, wheeled stretchers, ammunition w............