The planting of new airdromes between Albert and Amiens, the long trail down the roads of lorries packed with wings and the furniture of aircraft factories, gave the hint, to those who had eyes to see, that in this direction a merry hell was being prepared.
There were plain signs of massacre at hand all the way from the coast to the lines. At Etaples and other places near Boulogne hospital huts and tents were growing like mushrooms in the night. From casualty clearing stations near the front the wounded—the human wreckage of routine warfare—were being evacuated “in a hurry” to the base, and from the base to England. They were to be cleared out of the way so that all the wards might be empty for a new population of broken men, in enormous numbers. I went down to see this clearance, this tidying up. There was a sinister suggestion in the solitude that was being made for a multitude that was coming.
“We shall be very busy,” said the doctors.
“We must get all the rest we can now,” said the nurses.
“In a little while every bed will be filled,” said the matrons.
Outside one hut, with the sun on their faces, were four wounded Germans, Würtemburgers and Bavarians, too ill to move just then. Each of them had lost a leg under the surgeon’s knife. They were eating strawberries, and seemed at peace. I spoke to one of them.
“Wie befinden sie sich?”
“Ganz wohl; wir sind zufrieden mit unsere behandlung.”
I passed through the shell-shock wards and a yard where the “shell-shocks” sat about, dumb, or making queer, foolish noises, or staring with a look of animal fear in their eyes. From a padded room came a sound of singing. Some idiot of war was singing between bursts of laughter. It all seemed so funny to him, that war, so mad!
“We are clearing them out,” said the medical officer. “There will be many more soon.”
How soon? That was a question nobody could answer. It was the only secret, and even that was known in London, where little ladies in society were naming the date, “in confidence,” to men who were directly concerned with it—having, as they knew, only a few more weeks, or days, of certain life. But I believe there were not many officers who would have surrendered deliberately all share in “The Great Push.” In spite of all the horror which these young officers knew it would involve, they had to be “in it” and could not endure the thought that all their friends and all their men should be there while they were “out of it.” A decent excuse for the safer side of it—yes. A staff job, the Intelligence branch, any post behind the actual shambles—and thank God for the luck. But not an absolute shirk.
Tents were being pitched in many camps of the Somme, rows and rows of bell tents and pavilions stained to a reddish brown. Small cities of them were growing up on the right of the road between Amiens and Albert—at Dernancourt and Daours and Vaux-sous-Corbie. I thought they might be for troops in reserve until I saw large flags hoisted to tall staffs and men of the R.A.M.C. busy painting signs on large sheets stretched out on the grass. It was always the same sign—the Sign of the Cross that was Red.
There was a vast traffic of lorries on the roads, and trains were traveling on light railways day and night to railroads just beyond shell-range. What was all the weight they carried? No need to ask. The “dumps” were being filled, piled up, with row upon row of shells, covered by tarpaulin or brushwood when they were all stacked. Enormous shells, some of them, like gigantic pigs without legs. Those were for the fifteen-inchers, or the 9.2’s. There was enough high-explosive force littered along those roads above the Somme to blow cities off the map.
“It does one good to see,” said a cheery fellow. “The people at home have been putting their backs into it. Thousands of girls have been packing those things. Well done, Munitions!”
I could take no joy in the sight, only a grim kind of satisfaction that at least when our men attacked they would have a power of artillery behind them. It might help them to smash through to a finish, if that were the only way to end this long-drawn suicide of nations.
My friend was shocked when I said:
“Curse all munitions!”
II
The British armies as a whole were not gloomy at the approach of that new phase of war which they called “The Great Push,” as though it were to be a glorified football-match. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to know the thoughts of vast masses of men moved by some sensational adventure. But a man would be a liar if he pretended that British troops went forward to the great attack with hangdog looks or any visible sign of fear in their souls. I think most of them were uplifted by the belief that the old days of trench warfare were over forever and that they would break the enemy’s lines by means of that enormous gun-power behind them, and get him “on the run.” There would be movement, excitement, triumphant victories—and then the end of the war. In spite of all risks it would be enormously better than the routine of the trenches. They would be getting on with the job instead of standing still and being shot at by invisible earthmen.
“If we once get the Germans in the open we shall go straight through them.”
That was the opinion of many young officers at that time, and for once they agreed with their generals.
It seemed to be a question of getting them in the open, and I confess that when I studied the trench maps
