Jim Brent Page 3

  “Dear old woman – she was splendid. After the war I shall search her out, and present her with an annuity, or a belle vache, or something dear to the Belgian heart. She never even hesitated. From that night I was her brother, though she knew it meant her death as well as mine if I was discovered.

  “‘Ah, monsieur,’ she said, when I pointed this out to her, ‘it is in the hands of le bon Dieu. At the most I have another five years, and these Allemands – pah!’ She spat with great accuracy.

  “She was good, was the old veuve Demassiet.”

  Jim puffed steadily at his pipe in silence for a few moments.

  “I soon found out that the Germans frequented the estaminet; and, what was more to the point – luck again, mark you – that the gunners who ran the battery I was out after almost lived there. When the battery was at Tournai they had mighty little to do, and they did it, with some skill, round the beer in her big room.

  “I suppose you know what my plan was. The next time that battery left Tournai I proposed to cut one of the metals on the bridge over the River Scheldt, just in front of the engine, so close that the driver couldn’t stop, and so derail the locomotive. I calculated that if I cut the outside rail – the one nearest the parapet wall – the flange on the inner wheel would prevent the engine turning inwards. That would merely cause delay, but very possibly no more. I hoped, on the contrary, to turn it outwards towards the wall, through which it would crash, dragging after it with any luck the whole train of guns.

  “That being the general idea, so to speak, I wandered off one day to see the bridge. As I expected, it was guarded, but by somewhat indifferent-looking Huns – evidently only lines of communication troops. For all that, I hadn’t an idea how I was going to do it. Still, luck, always luck; the more you buffet her the better she treats you.

  “One week after I got there I heard the battery was going out: and they were going out that night. As a matter of fact, that hadn’t occurred to me before – the fact of them moving by night, but it suited me down to the ground. It appeared they were timed to leave at midnight, which meant they’d cross the bridge about a quarter or half past. And so at nine that evening I pushed gently off and wandered bridgewards.

  “Then the fun began. I was challenged, and, having answered thickly, I pretended to be drunk. The sentry, poor devil, wasn’t a bad fellow, and I had some cold sausage and beer. And very soon a gurgling noise pronounced the fact that he found my beer good.

  “It was then I hit him on the base of his skull with a bit of gas-pipe. That sentry will never drink beer again.” Brent frowned. “A nasty blow, a dirty blow, but a necessary blow.” He shrugged his shoulders and then went on.

  “I took off his topcoat and put it on. I put on his hat and took his rifle and rolled him down the embankment into a bush. Then I resumed his beat. Discipline was a bit lax on that bridge, I’m glad to say; unless you pulled your relief out of bed no one else was likely to do it for you. As you may guess, I did not do much pulling.

  “I was using two slabs of gun-cotton to make sure – firing them electrically. I had two dry cells and two coils of fine wire for the leads. The cells would fire a No. 13 detonator through thirty yards of those leads – and that thirty yards just enabled me to stand clear of the bridge. It took me twenty minutes to fix it up, and then I had to wait.

  “By gad, old boy, you’ve called me a cool bird; you should have seen me during that wait. I was trembling like a child with excitement: everything had gone so marvellously. And for the first time in the whole show it dawned on me that not only was there a chance of getting away afterwards, but that I actually wanted to. Before that moment I’d assumed on the certainty of being killed.”

  For a moment he looked curiously in front of him, and a slight smile lurked round the corners of his mouth. Then suddenly, and apropos of nothing, he remarked, “Kathleen Goring tea’d with me yesterday. Of course it was largely due to that damned orange skin, but I – er – did not pass a sleepless night.”

  Which I took to be indicative of a state of mind induced by the rind of that nutritious fruit, rather than any reference to his broken leg. For when a man has passed unscathed through parachute descents and little things like that, only to lose badly on points to a piece of peel, his sense of humour gets a jog in a crucial place. And a sense of humour is fatal to the hopeless, undying passion. It is almost as fatal, in fact, as a hiccough at the wrong moment.

  “It was just about half past twelve that the train came along. I was standing by the end of the bridge, with my overcoat and rifle showing in the faint light of the moon. The engine-driver waved his arm and shouted something in greeting and I waved back. Then I took the one free lead and waited until the engine was past me. I could see the first of the guns, just coming abreast, and at that moment I connected up with the battery in my pocket. Two slabs of gun-cotton make a noise, as you know, and just as the engine reached the charge, a sheet of flame seemed to leap from underneath the front wheels. The driver hadn’t time to do a thing – the engine had left the rails before he knew what had happened. And then things moved. In my wildest moments I had never expected such a success. The engine crashed through the parapet wall and hung for a moment in space. Then it fell downward into the water, and by the mercy of Allah the couplings held. The first two guns followed it, through the gap it had made, and then the others overturned with the pull before they got there, smashing down the wall the whole way along. Every single gun went wallop into the Scheldt – to say nothing of two passenger carriages containing the gunners and their officers. The whole thing was over in five seconds; and you can put your shirt on it that before the last gun hit the water yours truly had cast away his regalia of office and was legging it like a two-year-old back to the veuve Demassiet and Tournai. It struck me that bridge might shortly become an unhealthy spot.”

  Jim Brent laughed. “It did. I had to stop on with the old lady for two or three days in case she might be suspected owing to my sudden departure – and things hummed. They shot the feldwebel in charge of the guard; they shot every sentry; they shot everybody they could think of; but – they never even suspected me. I went out and had a look next day, the day I think that RFC man spotted and reported the damage. Two of the guns were only fit for turning into hairpins, and the other four looked very like the morning after.

  “Then, after I’d waited a couple of days, I said goodbye to the old dear and trekked on towards the Dutch frontier, gaining immense popularity, old son, by describing the accident to all the soldiers I met.

  “That’s all, I think. I had words with a sentry at the frontier, but I put it across him with his own bundook. Then I wandered to our ambassador, and sailed for England in due course. And – er – that’s that.”

  Such is the tale of Jim Brent’s VC. There only remains for me to give the wording of his official report on the matter.

  ‘I have the honour to report,’ it ran, ‘that at midnight on the 25th ult., I successfully derailed the train conveying six guns of calibre estimated at about 9–inch, each mounted on a railway truck. The engine, followed by the guns, departed from sight in about five seconds, and fell through a drop of some sixty feet into the River Scheldt from the bridge just west of Tournai. The gunners and officers – who were in two coaches in rear – were also killed. Only one seemed aware that there was danger, and he, owing to his bulk, was unable to get out of the door of his carriage. He was, I think, in command. I investigated the damage next day when the military authorities were a little calmer, and beg to state that I do not consider the guns have been improved by their immersion. One, at least, has disappeared in the mud. A large number of Germans who had no connection with this affair have, I am glad to report, since been shot for it.

  ‘I regret that I am unable to report in person, but I am at present in hospital with a broken leg, sustained by my inadvertently stepping on a piece of orange-peel, which escaped my notice owing to its remarkable similarity to the surrounding terrain. This similarity
was doubtless due to the dirt on the orange-peel.’

  Which, I may say, should not be taken as a model for official reports by the uninitiated.

  The Fatal Second

  It was in July of 1914 – on the Saturday of Henley Week. People who were there may remember that, for once in a way, our fickle climate was pleased to smile upon us.

  Underneath the wall of Phyllis Court a punt was tied up. The prizes had been given away, and the tightly packed boats surged slowly up and down the river, freed at last from the extreme boredom of watching crews they did not know falling exhausted out of their boats. In the punt of which I speak were three men and a girl. One of the men was myself, who have no part in this episode, save the humble one of narrator. The other three were the principals; I would have you make their acquaintance. I would hurriedly say that it is not the old, old story of a woman and two men, for one of the men was her brother.

  To begin with – the girl Pat Delawnay – she was always called Pat, as she didn’t look like a Patricia – was her name, and she was – well, here I give in. I don’t know the colour of her eyes, nor can I say with any certainty the colour of her hair; all I know is that she looked as if the sun had come from heaven and kissed her, and had then gone back again satisfied with his work. She was a girl whom to know was to love – the dearest, most understanding soul in God’s whole earth. I’d loved her myself since I was out of petticoats.

  Then there was Jack Delawnay, her brother. Two years younger he was, and between the two of them there was an affection and love which is frequently conspicuous by its absence between brother and sister. He was a cheery youngster, a good-looking boy, and fellows in the regiment liked him. He rode straight, and he had the money to keep good cattle. In addition, the men loved him, and that means a lot when you size up an officer.

  And then there was the other. Older by ten years than the boy – the same age as myself – Jerry Dixon was my greatest friend. We had fought together at school, played the ass together at Sandhurst, and entered the regiment on the same day. He had ‘A’ company and I had ‘C’, and the boy was one of his subalterns. Perhaps I am biased, but to me Jerry Dixon had one of the finest characters I have ever seen in any man. He was no Galahad, no prig; he was just a man, a white man. He had that cheerily ugly face which is one of the greatest gifts a man can have, and he also had Pat as his fiancée, which was another.

  My name is immaterial, but everyone calls me Winkle, owing to – Well, some day I may tell you.

  The regiment, our regiment, was the, let us call it the Downshires.

  We had come over from Aldershot and were weekending at the Delawnays’ place – they always took one on the river for Henley. At the moment Jerry was holding forth, quite unmoved by exhortations to “Get out and get under” bawled in his ears by blackened gentlemen of doubtful voice and undoubted inebriation.

  As I write, the peculiar – the almost sinister – nature of his conversation, in the light of future events, seems nothing short of diabolical. And yet at the time we were just three white-flannelled men and a girl with a great floppy hat lazing over tea in a punt. How the gods must have laughed!

  “My dear old Winkle” – he was lighting a cigarette as he spoke – “you don’t realise the deeper side of soldiering at all. The subtle nuances (French, Pat, in case my accent is faulty) are completely lost upon you.”

  I remember smiling to myself as I heard Jerry getting warmed up to his subject, and then my attention wandered, and I dozed off. I had heard it all before so often from the dear old boy. We always used to chaff him about it in the mess. I can see him now, after dinner, standing with his back to the ante-room fire, a whisky-and-soda in his hand and a dirty old pipe between his teeth.

  “It’s all very well for you fellows to laugh,” he would say, “but I’m right for all that. It is absolutely essential to think out beforehand what one would do in certain exceptional eventualities, so that when that eventuality does arise you won’t waste any time, but will automatically do the right thing.”

  And then the adjutant recalled in a still small voice how he first realised the orderly room sergeant’s baby was going to be sick in his arms at the regiment’s Christmas tree festivities, and, instead of throwing it on the floor, he had clung to it for that fatal second of indecision. As he admitted, it was certainly not one of the things he had thought out beforehand.

  He’s gone, too, has old Bellairs the adjutant. I wonder how many fellows I’ll know when I get back to them next week? But I’m wandering.

  “Winkle, wake up!” It was Pat speaking. “Jerry is being horribly serious, and I’m not at all certain it will be safe to marry him; he’ll be experimenting on me.”

  “What’s he been saying?” I murmured sleepily.

  “He’s been thinking what he’d do,” laughed Jack, “if the stout female personage in yonder small canoe overbalanced and fell in. There’ll be no fatal second then, Jerry, my boy. It’ll be a minute even if I have to hold you. You’d never be able to look your friends in the face again if you didn’t let her drown.”

  “Ass!” grunted Jerry. “No, Winkle, I was just thinking, amongst other things, of what might very easily happen to any of us three here, and what did happen to old Grantley in South Africa.” Grantley was one of our majors. “He told me all about it one day in one of his expansive moods. It was during a bit of a scrap just before Paardeburg, and he had some crowd of irregular Johnnies. He was told off to take a position, and apparently it was a fairly warm proposition. However, it was perfectly feasible if only the men stuck it. Well, they didn’t, but they would have except for his momentary indecision. He told me that there came a moment in the advance when one man wavered. He knew it and felt it all through him. He saw the man – he almost saw the deadly contagion spreading from that one man to the others – and he hesitated and was lost. When he sprang forward and tried to hold ’em, he failed. The fear was on them, and they broke. He told me he regarded himself as every bit as much to blame as the man who first gave out.”

  “But what could he have done, Jerry?” asked Pat.

  “Shot him, dear – shot him on the spot without a second’s thought – killed the origin of the fear before it had time to spread. I venture to say that there are not many fellows in the Service who would do it – without thinking: and you can’t think – you dare not, even if there was time. It goes against the grain, especially if you know the man well, and it’s only by continually rehearsing the scene in your mind that you’d be able to do it.”

  We were all listening to him now, for this was a new development I’d never heard before.

  “Just imagine the far-reaching results one coward – no, not coward, possibly – but one man who has reached the breaking-point, may have. Think of it, Winkle. A long line stretched out, attacking. One man in the centre wavers, stops. Spreading outwards, the thing rushes like lightning, because, after all, fear is only emotion, like joy and sorrow, and one knows how quicldy they will communicate themselves to other people. Also, in such a moment as an attack, men are particularly susceptible to emotions. All that is primitive is uppermost, and their reasoning powers are more or less in abeyance.”

  “But the awful thing, Jerry,” said Pat quietly, “is that you would never know whether it had been necessary or not. It might not have spread; he might have answered to your voice – oh! a thousand things might have happened.”

  “It’s not worth the risk, dear. One man’s life is not worth the risk. It’s a risk you just dare not take. It may mean everything – it may mean failure – it may mean disgrace.” He paused and looked steadily across the shifting scene of gaiety and colour, while a long bamboo pole, with a little bag on the end, wielded by some passing vocalist, was thrust towards him unheeded. Then with a short laugh he pulled himself together, and lit a cigarette. “But enough of dull care. Let us away, and gaze upon beautiful women and brave men. What’s that little tune they’re playing?”

  “That’s that waltz – wh
at the deuce is the name, Pat?” asked Jack, untying the punt.

  “‘Destiny’,” answered Pat briefly, and we passed out into the stream.

  A month afterwards we three were again at Henley, not in flannels in a punt on the river, but in khaki, with a motor waiting at the door of the Delawnays’ house to take us back to Aldershot. I do not propose to dwell over the scene, but in the setting down of the story it cannot be left out. Europe was at war; the long-expected by those scoffed-at alarmists had actually come. England and Germany were at each other’s throats.

  Inside the house Jack was with his mother. Personally, I was standing in the garden with the grey-haired father; and Jerry was – well, where else could he have been?

  As is the way with men, we discussed the roses and the rascality of the Germans, and everything except what was in our hearts. And in one of the pauses in our spasmodic conversation we heard her voice, just over the hedge:

  “God guard and keep you, my man, and bring you back to me safe!” And the voice was steady, though one could feel those dear eyes dim with tears.

  And then Jerry’s, dear old Jerry’s voice – a little bit gruff it was, and a little bit shaky: “My love! My darling!”

  But the old man was going towards the house, blowing his nose; and I – don’t hold with love and that sort of thing at all. True, I blundered into a flower-bed, which I didn’t see clearly, as I went towards the car, for there are things which one may not hear and remain unmoved. Perhaps, if things had been different, and Jerry – dear old Jerry – hadn’t – But there? I’m wandering again.

  At last we were in the car and ready to start.