With Haig on the Somme Part 8

Sitting rigidly erect was the body of a staff officer, decapitated.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed Dennis, bending over with eyes of horror as he recognised the officer who less than half an hour before had shown him his own route at Divisional Headquarters. "It's Captain Thompson!"

"It was Captain Thompson, and one of the nicest gentlemen I've ever driven," said the man. "I don't know what to do. He told me he was taking a message to the French general on the other side of Hardecourt, and that it was of the very greatest importance. We were doing sixty miles an hour, even on this road, when that sh.e.l.l copped us."

There were sobs in the man's voice as he pointed to the leather dispatch-case still clutched tightly in the dead hand.

"Look here," said Dennis. "My machine's smashed up. How long would it take you to reach the French lines?"

"A quarter of an hour--twenty minutes at the outside. But what's the good of that, sir? I can't speak a word of their blooming language."

"I can," said Dennis, gently disengaging the wallet. "I'll carry the dispatch, and I'll drive if you like, if your nerve's gone."

"My nerve's all right, sir. Haven't any left after eighteen months of this job," and as Dennis climbed into the front seat, the chauffeur turned the handle over and the engine began to whir.

It was good to turn one's back on that hideous thing, and when they heard the headless trunk topple over on to the floor of the car behind them, both s.h.i.+vered, and the chauffeur's knuckles stood out white as he gripped the steering-wheel.

"I've seen two officers, one a brigadier-general, treated the same way, and their shover huddled forward against the screen dead as a door nail," said the man. "That was up near St. Julien, when Princess Pat's got wiped out; but it sort of hits you when you know the man, and this was his own car too. You'd better have your papers ready now, sir; they'll stop us at yonder white house."

The examining post at the little cabaret detained them, but did not hold them up more than a moment or so.

"A dispatch for Monsieur le General," said Dennis to the sergeant in charge, who recoiled as he saw the tragedy that had taken place.

"_Decapite, mon Dieu!_" he exclaimed. "Pa.s.s, mon lieutenant," and they proceeded, leaving a red pool on the road where the car had halted.

While Dennis was inside the farmhouse a crowd of commiserating officers surrounded the car, and they would have rid it of its grim burden and interred poor Thompson among the little harvest of rude crosses that marked where their own dead were laid, but when one of them, who spoke English, suggested so doing, the chauffeur said "No."

"Beg your pardon, sir, but he'll be better buried in our own lines, where they'll give him the Last Post and all that." He was protesting when Dennis came out again quickly.

"It's a very good thing we took the bull by the horns," he said. "That message was tremendously important, and the general has been good enough to say all kinds of nice things about our bringing it along. We've got to go back top speed to Divisional Headquarters," and he stepped in.

All the officers saluted the dead man as the motor started on its return journey, and already the darkness was giving place before a ghostly grey feeling in the east, which was not light as yet, but heralded the near approach of dawn.

The chauffeur turned up his coat collar, for it had grown very cold, and he could not get rid of the oppression of that dread something which they were carrying--that something which a short hour before had been so full of life and vigour and kindly thought for all with whom it had come in contact.

"I shall put in for a rest after this," said the man as they repa.s.sed the post at the cabaret, and he opened out the engines. "They tell me there's going to be a week of this firing, and upon my sam, I don't think I can stand it now!"

"I suppose one gets used to the guns," said Dennis. "But what an infernal row they make!"

"Been out here long, sir?" said the chauffeur, whose quick eye had detected the newness of his companion's uniform, notwithstanding the chalk stains which were the result of his adventure earlier in the evening.

"As a matter of fact, I haven't been up at the front three days yet, but, of course, I've done a lot of training at Romford with the Artists'," replied Dennis.

"Lord! you don't know you're born yet, in a manner of speaking, sir,"

said the driver with a little toss of his head. "You've got a lot to go through before you've seen as much as I have. Blow 'em! Those Boches are still at it," and he craned his head forward over his wheel. "They've got the range of this blooming road to a T. I don't funk risks, but it's madness to shove ahead through that!" And he slowed the car down as a rain of sh.e.l.ls crashed among the trees in front of them, bringing half a dozen tall poplars down on to the road itself, while the whole _terrain_ to their left hand was alive with bursts of high explosives.

"Well, what's to be done? I must reach the general at once. Isn't there another way round?"

"There's only this turning on the right, sir," replied the man. "It seems to be pretty clear, and it will run us close behind our own line.

I've been there before, and we can double back past General Dashwood's headquarters."

"Right-o!" a.s.sented Dennis eagerly, and the car swung into a narrow track between two swelling rises that had not long before been peaceful farm land under cultivation.

It was little more than a cart track, and they plunged and swayed like a boat on a choppy sea, the wheels now mounting the bank at a dangerous angle in the uncertain light of the dawn.

"It's better going a bit farther ahead," said the chauffeur. "You sit tight, and I'll bring you through somehow."

The words had scarcely left his lips when everything seemed to be suddenly swallowed up in a soul-terrifying roar. A vivid orange flame rose skyward, and as Dennis soared upward through the air and fell with a plump into a field of beetroot, the world turned black and he lost consciousness.

How long he lay he did not know, but when he opened his eyes it was almost light, and the face of his wristlet watch had been smashed to atoms.

For a few seconds he remained quite still, not daring to move from fear of what movement might tell him, but at last, sitting up, he felt himself all over and breathed a sigh of deep thankfulness to find that he had no bones broken.

He remembered that they had been running into an avenue where the trees met overhead and formed a species of tunnel, and the avenue was still there before him, one of the poplars headless like poor Captain Thompson, and showing a great white scar where the sh.e.l.l had caught it.

And then he rose to his feet, to find himself half a dozen yards from the narrow road, his heart standing still as he saw the mangled cha.s.sis of the motor, entirely stripped of its body works, reared up on one end at the edge of the crater.

The whole road seemed to have been scooped out to the depth of several feet, and how he had escaped destruction was little short of miraculous.

The skirt of his own tunic was rent to rags and ribbons, his Sam Browne belt, map-case, and gla.s.ses were gone, and the French general's message with them, and a great sob shook the lad as he walked slowly to the ruined car.

The first thing he saw was a human leg swathed to the knee in a stained puttee, and a stride farther on was the rest of his companion, so shockingly mutilated that it was only with an effort he could bring himself to examine it.

"Poor chap, poor chap!" he muttered. "An end like this after eighteen months at the wheel!"

There was no trace of the captain's body; it was probably buried deep in the sh.e.l.l hole, or else plastered far and wide over the hillside with the debris of the motor.

He stooped and opened the chauffeur's coat, which bulged suggestively, and drew out a little case containing his identification papers and driver's licence, perhaps also letters from home.

Pulling himself together, he placed the case in one of his own breast pockets which had escaped injury, with a soldier's "small book" he had picked up from one of the dead Saxons in their own trench as a memento to send home to his mother, and then he looked about him, without seeing sign or trace of living thing or human habitation.

There was a green wheatfield on his right hand, from which the mist was curling away, and in the glory of the dawn overhead the larks were trilling. A patch of scarlet poppies was almost startling in its vividness, and beyond the poppies a long ribbon of yellow mustard was backed by a thick wood.

"Where on earth am I?" was the thought that pa.s.sed through his brain.

"This poor chap said the road would bring us near to our firing line, and I may be able to borrow another motor-bike there. I must return to the French headquarters and get that message duplicated, or I'm not worth my salt."

He straightened one of his leggings which had been twisted round, and, skirting the sh.e.l.l hole, started out on his voyage of discovery, feeling rather dizzy at first, but surprised to find that his cap was still upon his head, for he had not yet been served out with a trench helmet.

The narrow way wound along the edge of the wood through a hollow, the banks of which were clothed with purple scabious, and he had gone some distance before he thought of taking his bearings by the sun, which showed him that he was heading due south.

"I'm on the right road, anyhow," he muttered, and then he suddenly stopped and crouched low.

In the mist wreath that still filled the hollow he had caught sight of a figure in uniform, which recalled the field grey of the Saxon. The man was standing motionless beside a clump of trees that tufted the skyline, and, uncertain whether he could gain the shelter of the wood behind him unseen, Dennis was looking backwards over his shoulder when the decision was taken very unexpectedly out of his hands by the appearance of another man, who suddenly covered him with a rifle from the bank top not a yard away, and challenged him in German.

"_Wer da!_" said the man, and although he recognised that his interrogator was wearing a French uniform, Dennis unthinkingly replied to the question in German also.

"I am an English officer," he said. "Perhaps you will be good enough to direct me to our nearest brigade."

The man rose slowly from the wet wheat which had concealed his coming, and, still covering Dennis with his rifle, slid down the bank until he was within arm's length, a thick-set Alsatian corporal, powerful as a bull.