As she climbed onto it and stood upright, her body and costume glossy with water, wringing out her hair, I felt in my viscera a lightening, an invigorating airiness that I recognized, quite unmistakably, as lust.
5 WOCC
Two weeks after that hellish day in the Salient, Donald and I were driven in his staff car into the muddy courtyard of a small farm near the Fifth Army HQ at Elverdinghe. An old woman looked impassively at us from the door of the farmhouse and did not acknowledge Donald’s cheery wave. Another motorcar, a clean Humber, was parked by a barn. A large pigsty, unused, and a storehouse made up the other two sides of the square.
“Home,” Donald said and showed me inside the barn.
The big room had been divided into two. One half contained a table and chairs, a dresser and a stove. On a window ledge stood a gleaming walnut wind-up Gramophone. In the other room were three iron beds, a vast wardrobe and numerous trunks and suitcases.
“I’m not far away,” Donald said. He was attached to the HQ staff and lived in a disused laundry at Château la Louvie. “The other two’ll be here before dark, I should say.” He smiled and handed me a key on a key ring.
“What’s this?”
“It’s for your motor. That’s it outside. All your equipment’s in the back. I’ll pop back tomorrow to see how you’re getting on.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You look quite your old self, Johnny.”
In late 1915 Donald Verulam had been transferred from his duties in the War Office to “Wellington House,” the secret propaganda department of the Foreign Office, to aid in the establishment of a systematic filming program of the war. Strange to relate, there had been no official filming or photography of the war at all during the first two years of its duration. Some independent film companies had sent cameramen out to the front, but they worked with French or Belgian forces as there was a complete ban on photography in the British sectors, such was the suspicions of the army staff. In 1915, the film trade, in the shape of the British Topical Committee for War Films, finally received permission to film from the War Office under the guidance of Wellington House. This somewhat ad hoc arrangement was reorganized in December 1916 when the War Office Cinema Committee was created. It appointed official cameramen and it became Donald’s job to supervise their activities in the field. He had also to ensure that the completed film survived its laborious journey from France to the developing and editing labs in London, from there to the Department of Information, thence back to France and the chief censor at general headquarters. Only then could the approved film be shown as a newsreel at home and abroad.
Donald had been in France and at work on this job since June 1917. He was in close contact with his immediate superior, John Buchan, at the Department of Information in London. Still highly cautious, GHQ had decreed that there were never to be more than three film cameramen at the front at any one time. It was my good fortune that one McMurdo had come down with pneumonia and had been returned home to convalesce three days before Donald and I met in that lane behind the Ypres-Comines canal.
I spent only one more day with the bantams before my new posting as official WOCC cameraman came through. I rested for a week in Bailleul before the necessary documentation was approved and authorized. I was deloused and consigned my old uniform to the incinerator. I drew new clothes from divisional stores: a shirt and tie, a well-cut jacket, creamy khaki jodhpurs, glossy lace-up riding boots, a short, waisted overcoat, a peaked cap, an ashplant stick. I became an “honorary” officer.
And so now I strolled around my new billet, enjoying the strict click of my boots on the cool flagged floor. The stove was lit; it was warm inside. Two colored calendars hung on the wall. The old woman came in with an armful of firewood and brewed up some coffee. Without asking, she fried me four eggs and served them up with bread and margarine. I ate them, drank the coffee and smoked a cigarette. My God, this was the life! A light rain had begun to fall, so I postponed the inspection of my motor. I looked at it through the windows and wondered if I would be able to drive it properly. Donald had elucidated the principles of motoring and it seemed simple enough. As well as pretending to be able to drive, it had been necessary — for Donald’s plan to work — that I also claim to be intimate with the operations of a moving film camera. He had shown me some of the films the WOCC had produced and we had spent a couple of afternoons practicing with the standard Aeroscope camera. It was more functional and robust than the alternative, a Moy-Bastie.
The Aeroscope looked like a small wooden attaché case with a rotating handle on one side and a hole in one end for the lens. A simple latched flap revealed its innards, and it was a relatively straightforward process to load and unload. It was not particularly heavy to carry on its own, but its tripod was a real burden. Sometimes, Donald told me, film cameramen could persuade battalions or companies that were being filmed to provide an orderly to lug equipment about, but most of the time we would have to carry it ourselves.
This was the most onerous aspect of what was otherwise to be a most pleasant existence. Indeed, after the bantams it was like some paradisiacal reverie. We dressed as officers — notional second lieutenants — but we wore no rank or unit badges and carried no weapons. The old lady in the farm was paid (by the WOCC) to cook and care for us, and, twice a week, rations and fuel were delivered from the divisional QM stores. Our most important document was our pass. This allowed us access to all parts of the front and required individual commanders to facilitate us in every possible way. One would drive to a chosen area, present oneself to the adjutant, or whoever was orderly officer, inform him of what one wanted to film and set about it. According to Donald, the prospect of having a moving film made of the unit was irresistible. All doors were opened.
I had learned all this during the two days I had spent with Donald in Bailleul. There was no embarrassment between us, I am glad to report. No mention was made of that hideous walk in the countryside around Charlbury. I even managed to ask after Faye without blushing. Donald was his usual courteous, caring self. I was the one who had changed. It was only just over a year since we had last seen each other, but the experiences I had lived through had transformed me from passionate, foolish schoolboy into a numb, prematurely disillusioned adult. I did not go into details about that last day with Teague and the attack on the mythical crossroads at S—, but Donald had clearly guessed from the state I was in that I could not have taken much more.
Anyway, such is the natural resilience of my character that I found I was no longer brooding on my unpleasant experience with the bantams but was instead relishing the comforts I now found myself surrounded by. I visited the latrine (it was blissful not to be constipated, the fixture of trench life); I poured myself another cup of coffee. Then I heard a motorcar arrive.
The first of my colleagues to return was Harold Faithfull — the celebrated Harold Faithfull. He had been one of the first film photographers on the Western Front, arriving just after the Battle of the Somme in 1916. His greatest moment had come with the attack on Messines Ridge a year later. Faithfull had been there and — by sheer luck, I am sure — had managed to record the explosion of one of the massive mines beneath the ridge. The resulting fifty-minute film, The Battle of Messines (Donald had shown it to me at Bailleul), had played to packed cinemas in Britain and America for over three months. Faithfull received all the plaudits (although I now know for a fact that it was also the work of one, if not two, other cinematographers); he delivered many lectures and he had just published a book—How I Film War and Battle—which was, Donald said, selling extremely well.