Now It Can Be Told · Part II · Part 2 9 (2/2)

Early in the afternoon he decided to go out and make his own reconnaissance. The bombardment was still relentless, and it was only possible to go part of the way in an old communication trench. The ground about was littered with the dead, still being blown about by high explosives.

The soul of the colonel was heavy then with doubt and with the knowledge that most of the dead here were his own. When he told me this adventure his only comment was the soldier’s phrase, “It was not what might be called a ‘healthy’ place.” He could see no sign of a counterattack, but, straining through the smoke-clouds, his eyes could detect no sign of life where his men had been holding the captured lines. Were they all dead out there?

On Monday night the colonel was told that his battalion would be relieved, and managed to send this order to a part of it. It was sent through by various routes, but some men who carried it came back with the news that it was still impossible to get into touch with the companies holding the advanced positions above the Menin road.

In trying to do so they had had astounding escapes. Several of them had been blown as far as ten yards by the air-pressure of exploding shells and had been buried in the scatter of earth.

“When at last my men came back⁠—those of them who had received the order,” said the colonel, “I knew the price of their achievement⁠—its cost in officers and men.” He spoke as a man resentful of that bloody sacrifice.

There were other men still alive and still holding on. With some of them were four young officers, who clung to their ground all through the next night, before being relieved. They were without a drop of water and suffered the extreme miseries of the battlefield.

There was no distinction in courage between those four men, but the greater share of suffering was borne by one. Early in the day he had had his jaw broken by a piece of shell, but still led his men. Later in the day he was wounded in the shoulder and leg, but kept his command, and he was still leading the survivors of his company when he came back on the morning of Tuesday, August 10th.

Another party of men had even a longer time of trial. They were under the command of a lance-corporal, who had gained possession of the stables above the Menin road and now defended their ruins. During the previous twenty-four hours he had managed to send through several messages, but they were not to report his exposed position nor to ask for supports nor to request relief. What he said each time was, “Send us more bombs.” It was only at seven-thirty in the morning of Tuesday, after thirty hours under shellfire, that the survivors came away from their rubbish heap in the lines of death.

So it was at Hooge on that day of August. I talked with these men, touched hands with them while the mud and blood of the business still fouled them. Even now, in remembrance, I wonder how men could go through such hours without having on their faces more traces of their hell, though some of them were still shaking with a kind of ague.