Padre Warne’s Undoing; C.E. Montague and Kate Luard on the Retreat; Henry Williamson and the Master of Belhaven Come Back to the Front; Rowland Feilding Falls; Herbert Read Catches Up on His Reading

It’s a bit hard to keep count of the days going by in Charles Benstead’s The Retreat: a novel that tracks, in tandem, the struggle of one brigade in a collapsing army and the mental dissolution of one man in that brigade, has no reason to be extremely clear on the date. Each day–fighting, withdrawing, searching for billets and supplies–flows into the next, while each new misunderstanding, each micro-humiliation, pushes Reverend Warne closer to the breaking point.

But I think it’s today, a century back, that the crucial confusion–the crux, the point of no return–takes place. The “200th Brigade” have been retreating for a week, fighting all the way. The young officer, Dalgith, who generally rooms with Warne, is friendly and kind, or tries to be. He is also exhausted, and when he stumbles upon Warne, having had no food all day, and asks him if he has any biscuits, Warne–brooding on his failures as well as the unit’s failure to demonstrate any interest in having a chaplain minister to them during their retreat–pays little attention, telling him there may be some biscuits in his haversack. Dalgith roots around, finds something, and begins munching, and it is only when he comments on the funny silver box that Warne snaps out of his self-pitying reverie and realizes that Dalgith has opened his pyx and begun eating the consecrated host. Warne slaps the biscuit from Dalgith’s hand, then begins reciting the prayer that should be said, but he breaks off–Dalgith has gone out, all ignorance, wondering why the mad Padre has attacked him, and spoiled good food. Warne is left standing, inadvertently, on the body of his Lord, his fate sealed.^[1]

The retreat is a strong book, an interesting novel, a powerful study from an unusual angle of the psychological pressures of war… but, rather than continue to follow its action through the denouement, I think I’ll leave it at that…

Today’s other updates on the retreat are, if less freighted with symbolic desecration, more precise on the whens, wheres, and wherefores.

C.E. Montague went bravely to bed last night amidst the bombardment. By 6:00 this morning he–as well as the British press corps he once belonged to and now, as an intelligence officer, supervises–had evacuated Amiens.^[2]

Not far ahead of him–which is to say not far behind his position as he pulled back from Amiens–was Kate Luard.

Wednesday night, 27th.

Yesterday I was sent up to No. 2 Stationary Hospital up the hill, to do Assistant Matron for Miss M., and we’ve had a busy day to-day, admitting and evacuating. They shelled Amiens last night and it has been badly bombed. Two of my Team Sisters who remained there were wounded last night, not very badly, and were taken to the Sick Sisters’ Hospital here, to-day, by road.

I went to see the Railway Transport Officer for news of our lost kit, which may yet turn up, but it seems to matter so little now…

There are not many badly wounded coming down. In a Retreat, of course, they never do…

There are many pleasant interpretations of the present situation and many unpleasant. I cling firmly to the first lot till the other comes off. If only one could see a week or a month ahead…^[3]

While Phillip Maddison–his experiences borrowed from the Official History and the battalion diary of the 4th Bedfordshires–participates in a heroic holding action led by a scratch force under “Westy,” his author is at last coming out to join him. Henry Williamson has been waiting at Felixstowe for the order to deploy, and today, a century back, he got it. By late morning he was in London, thence to Southampton. Just before midnight–transport is efficient now, and the need desperate–he landed at Boulogne, heading for Étaples.^[4]

Williamson was only a few trains behind the Master of Belhaven, precisely the sort of propriety-minded military professional that Henry–and Phillip, all the more so–tended to antagonize during his bursts of high spirits. Hamilton had arrived home on leave on March 8th, rather annoyed that clumsy attempts at information security had delayed his telegram to his tailor. It was to have been a full month of leave, but yesterday, a century back, Hamilton left his wife, Grizel–at Victoria Station, one imagines–and by tonight, a century back, he was already in action.

Dearest G.,

Just arrived.

I was on the battle-field twenty-four hours after I left you! A dreadful journey, as I had to walk a long way. Things are not as bad as they might be. I have half my guns left; not many officer lost. I have lost everything I possessed! …Don’t send out anything yet, as I should never get anything under the present conditions. Real open warfare at last, lovely country, and undamaged houses. The Div. is still going strong and fighting with their tails up.

Yours, Ralph.^[5]

More or less our only regular writer still in the thick of the retreat is Rowland Feilding, his battalion tenuously holding yet another salient in the shifting lines.

Nobody slept that night.The battalion frontage was patrolled continuously. Parties of the enemy were observed digging some 800 yards in front of our line, and I sent an officer with a Lewis gun to hamper them. At 2.30 a.m. I was visited by one of the Staff Officers of the Division, who greeted me with the cheering news that strong French reinforcements were already at Lamote (5 1/2 miles behind us), and that they would be passing through us to the counter-attack within the next six hours.

He added: “So you have only to stick it a short time longer.”

This would have been all right if it had been true. Unfortunately it was not…

They soon withdraw in echelon as the front gives way around them:

My usual good fortune pursued me on this occasion, though, as we walked back in the face of the gusts of bullets —being pursued in addition from behind by the enemy’s shell-fire-—the chances of surviving at times seemed very
small.

Feilding–and, again, I think this is because he bears his wife and family in mind so constantly–is highly conscious of the suffering of the French civilians around him. And he has a way with striking images…

A sight that met us as we passed through Proyart has photographed itself upon my mind. An old man on a high dog-cart, drawn by a crazy-looking horse, rather like the horse Don Quixote used to ride, drove solemnly and reluctantly through the village. He was the last inhabitant to, leave. He had a long white beard and wore one of those high black Flemish caps, and the heavy shells falling upon the houses around him, sending up clouds of smoke and brick-dust, left him and his horse apparently quite unconcerned. It looked as though he had clung almost too tenaciously to his home, but I believe he got out all right. At any rate, I watched him pass safely along the first mile or so of the road towards Amiens…

Which is hardly a safe place, as we have learned. The German attack, however, is becoming very ragged, their casualties hardly fewer than the British and their lines of supply continually extended. They are susceptible, then, to what little resistance the B.E.F. can provide.

Finally, a counter-attack was delivered by some two fresh Companies which were brought up specially by motor lorry. This proved too much for the Germans who turned and fell back hastily through the now blazing villages. In doing this, some good targets were exposed and taken full advantage of by our side.

There are a number of ways to get hurt in the middle of open and confused warfare; some are extraordinary, others quite ordinary indeed.

It was in running across to the Lewis guns to direct their attention to a bunch of the enemy I had observed, that, at about 4.15 p.m., I stumbled over some overgrown trip wire, and dislocated my left elbow. The men thought I had been hit. So did I. And it cost me a good coat, which the stretcher-bearers ripped open with a knife in their usual reckless fashion, hunting for the wound.

This was the end of the battle, so far as I was concerned. I waited half an hour, feeling very sick, till General Bellingham (who had been away at the telephone) returned. Then I handed over the command to Ritchie Dickson, the senior of the only two officers now left of all we had gone into battle with on the 21st.

The last sight I saw was that of one of our aeroplanes crashing vertically to earth from a height of some 400 feet. It fell, head-first, like a stone, and sent the dust flying like a dud shell. Both pilot and observer must have been killed
instantly.

With my servant, Doyle, I made my way towards Amiens.^[6]

So Amiens–evacuated of its journalists, nearly all of its nurses, and much of its population–is now the key of the Somme front. It has become a substantial base, the loss of its center (with the cathedral) would be a major prize for the Germans and a blow to the allies. Worst of all, it is the regional rail hub.

We’ll close today with Herbert Read, far from safety but out of the battle at last. He was relieved yesterday and given a transport horse to ride to the rear. He “galloped” as far as La Neuville, on the Avre, south and barely east of Amiens. Today, a century back, he walked to Rouvrel, and made use, at last, of the book he had stuffed into his pocket as the barrage began on the morning of the 21st.

About here, the country was yet unscathed by war, and very beautiful. On a bank by a roadside, I took Walden out of my pocket… and there began to read it.^[7]