THE PEOPLE IN THE CELLAR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 120, 10 October 1941, Page 8

THE PEOPLE IN THE CELLAR

Written for "TT kee Listener" By Sydney Brookes

OR the individual no less than for the commander the very difficult thing about warfare these days is that you never know where you are. There is no dividing line between the two sides. Battles disintegrate speedily into small engagements. That was how it happened that -I found myself one night not very long ago in an area of countryside where friend might as easily shoot friend as enemy; where armies had been reduced to men prowling from cover to cover, singly or in small groups. The engagement had been a comparatively small one-only a battalion or two on either side. It had taken place in a valley between craggy hills. The enemy had appeared where he was not expected. We had cursed our reconnaissance patrols for failing to realise that action is now a matter of minutes instead of days and hours. We had cursed our rifles because they would fire only one shot to our opponent’s hundred. We had cursed our legs because they could not run as fast as tanks and armoured cars. We had cursed our few machine guns for their inadequacy against attack from the air. We had cursed everything, and the fight was over before we had repeated ourselves once. It was like that now. A quick attack. The air filled with lead and steel and splinter. Houses here one moment and gone the next. Hedgerows once quiet and pretty then crushed beneath rolling death. Noise on the ground and in the air. Machines here, machines there, Men insignificant. Trees scorched. Wire from cut fences fantastically twisted. The shock of even small wounds from high velocity bullets. The horror of blasting death from automatic arms. Tanks in flames. Trucks overturned. An hour or two and the tide has swept past leaving small islands of life and semi-sanity to cower beneath the earth mounds and broken walls, desperate, fearful. WAS like that. My section and half another had been ordered to clear some cover of troublesome crossfire. We had lain low while the tanks went past and now tried to meet the following infantry. Some of them had worked around into the cover half on a flank. We had to attack, or retire, and one was as bad as the other. Men were in front of us, and machines behind. Our section commander elected to match wits with the men. We matched wits all right. We followed all the rules. We stalked them in ones and twos. I was with Jack, We saw three or four of the other fellows running across a small break of open ground. They did not reach cover. It seemed that only one burst of fire was necessary to stop them. They behaved queerly like skittles as they were hit.

A minute or two later the enemy took the initiative, and came for us among the trees. : One minute I was crouching behind a stump with chips flying and leaves shattered by a long burst of hosepipe firing and the next I was in a grown-over ditch, not too deep, with a glimpse in my eye of light tanks coming out of the cover in front and all around us. Every time they caught us that way. We had few weapons against their first bursting attack. We would let the first tanks pass hoping to catch the infantry as they came along after. But always they had more machines, more men, wave after wave to follow; and when they were finished there were only a few like me to wait for the night and look in vain for help. Y the time night had come, it seemed to me that they had all passed on. I decided to try and make my way back in the direction of the pursuit in case an opportunity offered to regain contact with one of the groups I knew would be scattered, in the wake of the main forces. On my way I had to avoid one or two enemy patrols. One sentry must have seen me. Perhaps I had been careless enough to move against a light background. Three times a burst of fire cut through a hedge behind which I scrambled. I ran to bursting point and still imagined padding steps after me when I had to lie and gasp for breath. However, it seemed that I was clear again, and not long after I reached a farmhouse. The battle had passed it too quickly to leave much damage behind. The chimney had been hit; that I could see by its strange shape against the sky. A fence had been crushed in the passage of something heavy. I discovered that when I tried to approach the building and had to crawl carefully not to rasp one broken piece against another. After a while I was in the house, I had seen or heard no sign of life, and I hoped I could quickly find some food of sorts and leave as quickly on my way. Inside I fumbled in the darkness and felt cupboards and a table, then round the walls for windows, and found them boarded over and blanketed. Some peasant’s cottage, I thought. And the owner will be fled or murdered, or sick with fright as I have been, out in some ditch or copse of woods. NN I knew someone was nearby, I saw the stars through the door by which I had entered, and a roughness along one edge of the opening which might be the latch, or someone peering in one-eyed to see me. I waited. A long time it was. And saw. many movements that weren’t movements at all really. But heard nothing save the distant sounds of firing and rumbles along roads where traffic moved,

But my nerves were not now very good and I whispered: "Who is there?" Outside the door there was a scuffle, then silence. After a while there was again a ruggedness along the edge of the doorway. This time I could not wait. It could only be one man, or by now I should be dead. So I readied my rifle, and counted five by the drips of a tap, and said more loudly: ‘Who is there?" Then I held my rifle with my elbow, found a match, struck it, and threw it flaming towards the door, I saw the quick backward movement of a tuft of beard and hair and a voice from outside, a thin voice, as if an old voice said something in a language I did not understand. The match, burned a little on the floor and a hand pushed the door open, I tried to speak gently. "I am a friend," I said, although my rifle was ready, But now I felt more easy, because ragged sleeve pieces of plain cloth had shown when the hand pushed the door open. Bolder, I struck another match, and held it to show myself. A head peered round the door, watched me until the match burned my fingers and the tap dripped nineteen times, waited while I struck another match and then came through with its body following. T was,an old man, older in looks than in years, A man who’had worked hard, with bent back and legs, and only the eyes young. Somehow we managed to talk. He seemed to know by my uniform, probably by the shape of my helmet, which side I was on, and he quickly understood when I indicated that food would be good. He beckoned me with him, and we came to an outbuilding, entered it, and he pushed straw aside to show a large trapdoorein the wooden floor. Beneath it were steps, and we came down into a cellar with encouraging barrels and bottles in it, and a smell of oils. It was lighted by candles and in it was a wounded man from a regiment I knew, on a rough couch; and in a _ bed, strangely furnished with mattress and blankets and white linen, with a fine edged cover, was a woman with very small head, grey hair, and sick eyes. TALKED with the wounded man, and heard his story. He had been hit in the shin bone, which was splintered badly, but had crawled by night to near this place. He had been in extreme pain, and bleeding and he had called out. The man had found him and helped him in. They gave me food, and some drink, and I gathered that they were in great fear of being caught, but not so fearful that they would not help their friends, The soldier told me he had gathered they were most worried in case enemy stragglers should come looking for shelter, food, drink, or women, as the peasants had heard was usually the case. He thought they felt better now they had an able man with a rifle to protect them against such a happening.

Evidently, when I had first spoken in the house, the old man had withdrawn hastily to return to the barn for consultation. He had repeated to the soldier a garbled imitation of the words I had whispered, and the soldier had managed to recognise English speech. I slept there that night, and next day ate with these people, and struggled to understand their story when they tried to tell us various things about themselves by sign and gesture, The wife, we found, was sick, and crippled. The sons were at the war. A daughter had been in the fields on the day before and had not returned. The old man constantly looked out for her. It was during one of his trips outside that he had heard me enter the house the night before. They wanted me to look for her, and I said I would, but contrived to indicate that it would be better to wait until the locality became less busy. Enemy traffic still passed along a road not far away. I concluded that their gains of the day before must have been considerable, or they would not so easily pass by this place without in- vestigation. I guessed that they would come sooner or later, HAT night they did arrive. I was outside keeping a watch. They came across from the road. They went into the house, and stumped around inside it. I could hear noises of furniture being overturned. There were three of them. After a little while they came out carrying bundles. They went back in, laughing, then ran out with smoke and flame following them. While the house burned, they made for the barn, and it too was blazing when I turned back to look,