"We did not know what it was like. We will do all right next time…"
26 September 1915 Loos the second day
Private Hugh Bruce of the Cameron Highlanders took the bullet in his stomach. The blood pooled and stained his grey back shirt. The field ambulance was already picking up the wounded. Bruce would be next. He'd be taken back to an aid station near Lillers but would die of his wounds a few days later.
He was not the first to die that day….nor the last.
XX
Three weeks previous: Sept 1915
Rouen
Captain Simon Heyton, in the back seat alongside Matthew, leaned over as the driver pulled the car up to the depot station. "Thank God." The ride from their reserve trench at Artois to Rouen to pick up the new recruits had been rough. The truck bumped along the rutted, mud splattered roads and even as their soldier servants had polished and pressed uniforms and boots, both men and the driver in the open truck were windblown and sprayed with roadside muck.
Their orders were to wait for the train and greet the new officers and take them back along with the convoy of enlisted personnel back to the Artois/Loos corridor to await final orders to engage the Germans and take the city of Loos and the surrounding terrain.
"They'll be a motley lot for sure. Fresh faced and eager." He pulled his hair over his head and replaced his cap. "Were we ever like that?" His face, made more mature by the handsome mustache, Simon spoke with a sardonic mockery that made Matthew smile despite his own growing awareness that they were now veterans. Simon even more so having been through OTC at Cambridge and had seen service since Sept 1914. This made him an old-timer simply because the Regular Army, the "Old Contemptibles" had all been shot and killed.
Matthew's own experience of the past three months had aged him as well. He felt ancient, beaten down- had seen more, had done more than he had ever estimated to by the age of 26. The friendship with Heyton was unexpected but that much more appreciated. Heyton had guided the fear stricken younger man in his first days in the surreal environs of the trench line. The smells of gunpowder residue, creosol chloride, latrines, and dried sweat assaulted his senses. Simon had smiled as Matthew's lips had curled into a scowl. "You'll get used to it before you know it." Matthew already sensed the 'hail fellow well met' act was something Heyton perfected to hide his own strangulating fears, but it was much appreciated in those first few weeks.
Looking around Rouen, the magnificent Gothic Cathedral looming over the town, Matthew felt he could at least breathe without the suffocating tightness he always felt on the front lines or in the reserve trenches. He had seen the Monet's impressionist capturing of the cathedral and had hoped to at least get the chance to walk around the grounds.
The two men had happily been volunteered to go retrieve the soldiers and supplies that would fill the ranks of the platoons to the numbers requisite for the action to come. Their only responsibilities were to confirm the arrival of the supplies and men, sign the forms, and make sure they were all headed back towards the Artois corridor.
The rest of the time was their own. Heyton was even more pleased to learn that the troop train from Boulogne was delayed. So they could take some rest at a café or canteen.
He espied one such establishment 'Le Croix de Guerre.' "That seems to cater to our lot, let's try it out. I could use a drink after that ride." The creaky door, dirty windows, and general air of stale beer did not tempt Matthew's taste buds, but he could use the quiet, and the rest. And a brandy or liqueur would not go amiss.
The two men sat at down opposite each other at a half booth. Heyton took his cap off and loosened his greatcoat. Just as soon as they were seated, two women approached.
Thinking they were going to serve the drinks Matthew looked up to give his order.
He looked up and straight into the ample bosom of the woman wearing a low cut, if shabby, dress. Her face was a little too made up but she had mesmerizing green eyes.
Matthew's own pupils dilated as big as saucers at the unexpected sight. She gave what passed as a coy come hither smile to the obviously interested young man. "Il ya plus de cette étage, si vous voulez ... "
Matthew swallowed hard, his school French just understanding her meaning. "No..." He stammered. Then, as a hushed chirp, "erm…peut-etreplus tard."
She looked over at Heyton who simply shook his head. Giving a little moue of distaste, she sauntered off to see to the other potential clients.
Crawley's rather benign rebuff made Heyton give out a raucous grunt. He leaned over the table. "Does that mean I need to leave the two of you alone later?" He joked.
Matthew, startled anew that his attempt at a polite refusal might have been misconstrued, turned a beet red and slumped back in his chair. It wasn't as if he hadn't had some experiences with prostitutes plying trade at the pubs near his college.
But he must have appeared repulsed as Heyton turned serious.
"Something else you're going to have to get used to Crawley if you're going to lead your platoon correctly. The men need relief. How they get it…well …" He sighed in resignation, "We can't always judge."
"I know. I understand. … Have you ever…?" Matthew even hesitated to ask. He knew Heyton was married, but that didn't, in Matthew's experience, seem to affect some men.
"God no. The wife would kill me." He winked, then got serious again. "I have, very fortunately, no need or desire to seek attentions outside the confines of my marriage. She's in Paris with the British Embassy."
Matthew was surprised. "That's very lucky to have your wife so close." His own thoughts turned to Mary.
"You must meet Margaret one day. If we ever get leave to go to Paris, we'll all have dinner."
Their brandies arrived and he drank his in one gulp. Looked over at Matthew. "We're both lucky to have loved ones." He knew of Matthew's girl back home. The one he was still so private about. One day he'd have to draw more information out of him.
Matthew nodded, his lips tight. He missed Mary. Not just as a touchstone of home but her being, her warmth, the smell of her perfume, the sound of her laugh. Drifting back from his reverie, he returned his attention to Heyton.
"It's becoming more and more of a problem actually. One I'm afraid the BEF is handling rather poorly by simply ignoring it or allowing for maisons tolérées to exist with a wink and a nod outside the purview of our authority."
Matthew nodded already knowing that many of the men in his own company were susceptible to the escape. It had been his unpopular duty to remind them of the consequences of such liaisons, both morally as well as in the transmission of sexual diseases.
Heyton stood up. "Shall we sally forth?" He took on the imitation of their CO. Colonel Hitchcock was a good soldier, but of the old school. Something Heyton found increasingly intolerable. Afraid that in following the rules of honour, he might get all of them killed. But he kept such opinions to himself.
Matthew, finishing his drink, stood up as well. Placed his cap and turned towards the door. They still needed to find their billet and get organized to meet the new recruits.
Then back to the front and the unreality his new life had become.
One week previous: Sept 1915
Loos corridor
Matthew had orders from above to go out on patrol. Snipers were suspected of being hidden in the small clump of trees about a half mile away. It had been raining hard. "What else is new?" Matthew thought as he put on his Brodie helmet, ducked his head out the dugout, and followed Mason down the line.
He reminded his subaltern, "I want every wounded man taken down the line before it starts to get dark. We've bloody well lost enough of them for one day." He then motioned for his chosen patrol towards the duckboards leading to the edge of the trench and the ladder over the top.
There were plenty of puddles and his boots once again squished muddy and soaked. He had not shaved in two days because of such patrols. The Huns had been moving back and forth picking off soldiers in their trench line moving in the dark of night to another position.
This had to end.
Matthew led the squad of his men into a small copse. They spread out and began a methodical search. He sent Mason and another corporal Peter Riley to his right, while Matthew noticed what seemed to be a peculiar divide in what passed for a green glade among the few shade trees left on the battle scarred valley. He made a move towards it. Quietly he pulled back some leaves.
Two Germans, one with a Mauser rifle the other with binoculars in his hands, turned towards him. The sniper desperately attempted to swing his rifle in Matthew's direction while his observer struggled to pull his bayonet out of its sheath.
Without thought or hesitation Matthew pulled his sidearm out and shot them.
Dead.
The close range meant that the blood splattered on his face. His tunic. And his boots. Mason would be upset at that, Matthew's muddled mind thought. He blinked. Then the blinking stopped. He stared. At the bodies of the men, the enemy he had shot. Then stared beyond them into nothingness.
He stood, frozen to the spot, until Riley came over to him and led him to a stump of a tree so he could sit down. He motioned to Mason who came over, concerned at the pallor of Matthew's skin and the unnerving calm he seemed to present.
"Sir." Riley said, calmly seeing the glazed dead-eye stare of Matthew, "why don't you just sit down here. I'll go get Capt. Heyton and come back for you." He motioned to Mason. "Private, why don't you sit with the lieutenant." Mason sat down next to Matthew on a tree stump.
Riley stepped away from Crawley, went over to the bodies of the Germans, kicked them to see if they were really dead, grunted in satisfaction, and walked the half mile back to the dugout.
Matthew had recovered enough of his senses by the time Simon arrived. But the shaking had begun.
And it did not stop until well into the night when he finally, from sheer exhaustion, fell into a fitful sleep.
24-25 September 1915 Colonel Hitchcock's dugout
Matthew sat in the C.O.'s tent attending the weekly 'pow wow' with all the officers of the battalion. This was his first such meeting as captain. He was in the back alongside Heyton who always managed to look cool as ice no matter the situation. Matthew sat on a wood sideboard as there were no more seats in the cramped dugout. Simon passed him a cigarette pack.
The colonel was telling them the current battle was part of the larger Anglo-French attack against German lines. They were to dig in and wire all night in preparation for any counter attack. Colonel Hitchcock's final order was to "Go and tell your companies what they are up against."
The battle was to commence at 0630.
Matthew had just been promoted. The despatches a week previous went back to England, "For exemplary calm under fire" in his shooting of the German snipers. He was to be put up for a Military Cross.
Matthew actually laughed when he read that. He considered it the height of irony. He had been scared to the bone. The insomnia, the shaking were still with him. Instinct and raw fear saw him through pulling that trigger. Nothing brave or calm about it. Robert would like it, Matthew thought dryly. He'd certainly boast about it to everyone back at Downton. He wasn't quite ready to think of himself as any kind of hero.
And now he was in a dead man's shoes. He had taken over the infantry company of Captain Benson- a man far braver, than or just perhaps just as brave or foolish as any of them Matthew thought. Benson had repeated the same phrase to his men as they went forward during his last action: "Come on, my lads, show them what we are…." He was gunned down by machine gun fire that lifted him bodily off the ground and slammed him back to earth.
Matthew's rapid promotion however saw a steep learning curve as he adjusted from leading a platoon, to the gut-wrenching responsibility of commanding a 240-man Infantry Company in the worst hours of yet another seemingly poorly planned battle. He was not, however, to question authority. The consequences of that had been laid bald in more than one regiment with officers told to shoot any coward- anyone who refused to go over the top, anyone who questioned the chain of command.
Even so he was not the youngest captain in the battalion as the war had decimated so many regular army that field promotions were now quite regular among the junior officers.
He kept his own mind as to the veracity of the French general's Joffre assurances that the British would find particularly favorable ground between Loos and La Bassee. Joffre, Matthew realized, with his legal cognizance of parsing words in every despatch, never bothered to enter into explanation the reasons he considered the ground favorable.
We do what we do because we obey the orders given to us. He was never very good at that.
They were also being told that gas would work wonders as it would allow the widening of the front from a two to a six division assault. The canisters would be released hours before the battle commenced.
Of course, as Heyton leaned in to whisper half crooked mouth, "Gas also poisons us and will not destroy the miles of coiled barbed wire the Germans have strung across No Man's Land like some great snaking centipede."
Matthew grunted in utter exhaustion and backed his head against the wall of the dugout. Closed his eyes. And resigned himself to what was to come.
The road from Bethune to Lens 26 Sept 1915
The bodies were everywhere. Matthew would hear later that the total numbered over 5400 on the first day alone. Sixty percent of the division. With many battalions completely annihilated. Royal Welsh Fusilier captain Robert Graves would later tell the infamous tale of trying to rouse his soldiers to fight "you bloody cowards" he shouted until his platoon-sergeant, leg broken and on the ground, screamed back "Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they're all fucking dead."
Matthew stepped aside several wounded soldiers as the RAMC brought stretchers. He tried not to look at the men. Shot, gassed, their faces contorted in fear and pain.
It was like walking through green gauze. A shroud. Ready to take them into the West. Where death lay.
The London Territorials had charged the German trenches between "Tower Bridge" and the Double Crassier the previous day. They had to wear the horribly suffocating respirator gas masks but emerged on to the front of the German line.
According to the reports that filtered through the lines the inquisition style gas hoods took the Germans by surprise but they soon recovered. The fight ended with a German surrender of the machine gun nest.
But the battle continued.
His own platoons were to go next. The Highlanders and Territorials had done well. But the Duke of Manchester's Own would be among the ones to see the assault to the conclusion.
The gas cloud lingered, hovering above and within the trenches.
Rumoured doubts about the use of gas had breathed through the regiments for days. Even General Haig had finally expressed some doubt and wanted to call it off. But there was no time to communicate such an order to all the trenches. So the gas was released. "The accessory programme must be carried out whatever the conditions…." They were to continue forward.
And the conditions meant that the gas, their own gas, had lingered over the trenches. Suffocating. Stinking. Hissing. Greenish yellow in color and burning as it met eyes and noses and mouths. They had been first discharged on 25 September at zero hour 6:30am. 140 tons of chlorine gas from 5100 cylinders. The German forward guns chattered, firing warning shots but it had been surprisingly halfhearted.
As if they knew the wind was in their favor.
The British had gassed their own men.
The Highlander's assault had been seriously impeded by the gas cloud, hanging over the congested trenches.
The men hoped, prayed the wind would change direction. It did not.
Scottish Piper Daniel Laidlaw threw off his mask, jumped up to the trench parapet, and marched up and down the playing Scotland the Brave regardless of the green gas. No wonder, Matthew thought. the Scottish regiments were called 'the ladies from Hell' with their kilts and their mad ideas of fighting.
Eventually the Scots regiments penetrated the German lines and took on the enemy's fire. They ascended Hill 70 with a cheer and over the crest.
Matthew's platoons and the rest of his regiment would reinforce the Scots position and attempt to move the front even further. They had to cut the wire, penetrate across Grenay Ridge unobserved and continue patrolling at night while they investigated the results of the daytime assaults. But amendments to the attack plan, made at the last minute, had weakened divisional concentration along the main advance and threatened the entire operation.
"What else was new?" had become Matthew's recurrent phrase. He pushed his eyeballs into his skull with his fingers to stay awake. God he was fucking tired. Threw down his helmet and slumped down on the cot. Picked up the letter on the makeshift night table.
Mason knew what would come next. And sure enough Matthew's hand slipped into his tunic pocket. He pulled out the leather billfold. He didn't open it. Just held it. Tight.
William beamed in secret knowledge that Matthew's routine never wavered. He continued to polish the boot buckles.
Matthew patted the leather of the billfold. The leather buffed from his constant, reflexive rubbing.
The picture inside was the one Mary had sent him. She was seated wearing a gown of silk and pearl inlay. A string of beads around her neck. A wistful, enigmatic smile. She stared directly at the camera.
Directly at Matthew.
Why he had a hard time looking at the actual photograph. Like it stared into his soul.
He reserved that delight, that painful pleasure for late night imaginings. He would open it by candlelight. Touch the print. His fingertip on her cheek. His fantasies had become quite erotic of late. Everything was soft and yielding; alabaster skin, tendrils of hair, the removal of silk—gossamer, sheer, smooth as it came away from her body and into his hands.
He wasn't sure if that was a betrayal of her trust. Her innocence. But it could not be helped. The thoughts would not be kept at bay. He justified it in his mind by being sparing. Only indulged in it on nights where the terrors were particularly invasive. She was his sanity.
But this night he just held the closed billfold. Took a swig of the whisky Heyton left the previous night when they had a five hour session of the Piquet pick up and discard card game they had partially reinvented between the two of them.
Up for the last 36 hours. Fitful naps. Patrols all day. The guns had gone all night.
He attempted to close his eyes. But he knew sleep would not come. He looked over his letter at his soldier servant. So far so good in the keep Mason out of harm's way.
Mason continued his re-polishing attentions. What a wasted effort Matthew would say to him in an attempt at playful humour. They would just get muddy again the next day. Sort of like the war, Matthew concluded. An endless series making the same effort over and over and assume, somehow, miraculously, the next time it wouldn't be in all futility. Isn't that the definition of madness?
"It's the effort that counts." Mason would quietly counter. "Good effort is its own reward Mr. Carson would say, sir. And spit and polish and some elbow grease never goes amiss."
He looked askance at Matthew who had looked up at the reference to the old butler at Downton. "It's the Army way now Mason, as well you know."
Matthew returned to his reading. The letter was from Mary.
Why he was in such a good mood despite the exhaustion. Her missive was chatty, gossipy. Just the tonic, she well knew by now, to cure his darker moods. Edith's farmer had no longer any need of her tractor skills, so maybe she'll hire herself out as milk maid next. She suspected Sybil of engaging in some kind of secret rendezvous in the car shed with the chauffeur. She'd have to keep an eye on them.
Matthew learned that Cora was learning to drive and that while Granny Violet needed adjusting to the new conditions at Downton as it transitioned completely to a hospital, she, as ever, turned out to be the strongest of them all.
He'd hardly recognize Downton or its inhabitants at this rate.
So many changes. How would it affect Mary, he wondered. She was so much more independent now. No longer just resigned to parties and a waiting room for a husband, she was running Downton as efficient as ever.
Would he fit in at all anymore?
That's just hopeless talk, he reminded himself. Yet when he thought of his life at Downton it seemed like another world.
XX
Early October 1915
The German shell burst close by followed at once by two more salvos, dead on Matthew. He dived into the sunken road and immediately felt the crunch of bone as his leg came out from under him in the mud.
Matthew thought sardonically prior to passing out from the pain: "We will do alright next time…"
He arrived at the aid station in Lillers. Woke up to find his leg in traction. The nurse hovering. He looked questioning at her. "A good clean break Captain Crawley. But it will take some time to heal. We've set it temporarily but you're being shipped back to London Hospital for a proper good look."
He grunted. Blighty at last.
Woke up again to a familiar face. "Thomas isn't it?" The former footman at Downton he remembered was now a RAMC corpsman.
"Corporal Barrow as now, sir." The dark eyed man replied. "How are you feeling today? You're in the next van to Boulogne. Would you like some tea, sir? We've got condensed milk and sugar."
"I won't ask how you managed that." Matthew sat up a bit with Barrow's help.
"I have my methods. Go on, sir."
"That's nectar. You sure you can spare it?"
"Gladly. If we could talk about the old days and forget about all this for a minute or two."
"Yes." Matthew put his head back on the pillow, exhausted from just that little effort.
"Do you ever hear from anyone?"He asked as Barrow pulled up a chair.
"Oh, yes. Miss O'Brien keeps me informed. Lady Edith's driving. Lady Sybil's training as a nurse. Miss O'Brien tells me that Downton is now a hospital and is busier than ever with the wounded coming in. That true?" Barrow leaned in to talk closer.
Matthew nodded. Mary had told him the same. "Yes I believe so. They're putting on charity concerts as well."
"Will you be visiting there on your leave?" Barrow asked.
"I…." Matthew hesitated. He had just been informed that in addition to his stay in a hospital in London he had convalescent time coming to him. "Er…. We'll have to see." He wasn't completely sure his mother was at Crawley House as her job with the Red Cross often took her to France. Not that they had any chance to see each other.
But he wasn't sure he was completely ready to face Downton. To face going home. To put on that mask again and have cigars with Robert and chuff at his jokes.
But he did want to see Mary. He was desperate to see her. But would she recognize him? Not his physical injury, but his psyche. He felt like a completely different man after Loos. After the incident in the green glade.
He turned back to Barrow. "Thanks for the tea."
Thomas grinned. "What would my mother say? Me entertaining the future Earl of Grantham for tea."
Matthew tried to smile back at his amusement. "War has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and the things that don't."
And well he knew it. He would find it in himself to see Mary on this leave. To hold her once again in his arms.
The things that mattered…
XX
Please Please Please leave a review! I'm not sure at all that you like? Hate? this story. This story means a lot to me… And I would love to know your thoughts. Matthew and Mary will get together in the next chapter, no fear… I know some folks are mighty looking forward to that…
All the information about Loos can be found in numerous sources. I used Edwin Campion Vaughan's Diary Some Desperate Glory, Stephen Shea's Back to the Front, and the military classic The Donkeys by Alan Clark as my main source material for all the information provided on the battle. Hugh Bruce was my relative.
British casualties in the main attack were 48,367 and 10,880 in the subsidiary attack, a total of 59,247 losses of the 285,107 casualties on the Western Front in 1915. Edmonds, the British Official Historian, gave German losses in the period 21 September – 10 October as c. 26,000 of c. 141,000 casualties on the Western Front, during the autumn offensives in Artois and Champagne. [wikipedia]