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Title: Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
Author: Sassoon, Siegfried [Siegfried Loraine] (1886-1967)
Date of first publication: 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber & Faber, October 1930
   ["fourth impression"]
Date first posted: 14 April 2020
Date last updated: 14 April 2020
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1648

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net



PUBLISHER'S NOTE


Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.






MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER

by Siegfried Sassoon





TABLE OF CONTENTS

  I. At the Army School
  II. The Raid
  III. Before the Push
  IV. Battle
  V. Escape
  VI. At the Depot
  VII. Rouen in February
  VIII. The Second Battalion
  IX. Hospital and Convalescence
  X. Independent Action




PART ONE
AT THE ARMY SCHOOL


[I]

I have said that Spring arrived late in 1916, and that up in the
trenches opposite Mametz it seemed as though Winter would last for ever.
I also stated that _as for me, I had more or less made up my mind to
die_ because _in the circumstances there didn't seem anything else to be
done_. Well, we came back to Morlancourt after Easter, and on the same
evening a message from the Orderly Room instructed me to proceed to the
Fourth Army School next morning for a month's refresher-course. Perhaps
Colonel Kinjack had heard that I'd been looking for trouble. Anyhow, my
personal grievance against the Germans was interrupted for at least four
weeks, and a motor-bus carried me away from all possibility of dying a
murky death in the mine-craters.

Barton saw me off at the cross-roads in the middle of the village. It
was a fine day and he had recovered his good spirits. "Lucky
Kangaroo--to be hopping away for a holiday!" he exclaimed, as I climbed
into the elderly bus. My servant Flook hoisted up my bulging valise,
wiped his red face with his sleeve, and followed me to the roof. "Mind
and keep Mr. Sherston well polished up and punctual on parade, Flook!"
said Barton. Flook grinned; and away we went. Looking back, I saw
Barton's good-natured face, with the early sun shining on his glasses.

There were several of us on board (each Battalion in our Brigade was
sending two officers) and we must have stopped at the next village to
pick up a few more. But memory tries to misinform me that Flook and I
were alone on that omnibus, with a fresh breeze in our faces and our
minds 'making a separate peace' with the late April landscape. With
sober satisfaction I watched a train moving out of a station with rumble
and clank of wheels while we waited at the crossing gates. Children in a
village street surprised me: I saw a little one fall, to be gathered,
dusted, cuffed and cherished by its mother. Up in the line one somehow
lost touch with such humanities.

The War was abundantly visible in supply-convoys, artillery horse-lines,
in the dirty white tents of a Red Cross camp, or in troops going
placidly to their billets. But everyone seemed to be off duty; spring
had arrived and the fruit trees were in blossom; breezes ruffled the
reedy pools and creeks along the Somme, and here and there a peaceful
fisherman forgot that he was a soldier on active service. I had been in
close contact with trench warfare, and here was a demonstration of its
contrast with cosy civilian comfort. One has to find things out as one
goes along, I thought; and I was whole-heartedly grateful for the green
grass and a miller's waggon with four horses, and the spire of Amiens
Cathedral rising above the congregated roofs of an undamaged city.

                          *        *        *

The Fourth Army School was at Flixécourt, a clean little town exactly
half-way between Amiens and Abbeville. Between Flixécourt and the War
(which for my locally experienced mind meant the Fricourt trenches)
there were more than thirty English miles. Mentally, the distance became
immeasurable during my first days at the School. Parades and lectures
were all in the day's work, but they failed to convince me of their
affinity with our long days and nights in the Front Line. For instance,
although I was closely acquainted with the mine-craters in the Fricourt
sector, I would have welcomed a few practical hints on how to patrol
those God-forsaken cavities. But the Army School instructors were all in
favour of Open Warfare, which was sure to come soon, they said. They had
learnt all about it in peace-time; it was essential that we should be
taught to 'think in terms of mobility'. So we solved tactical schemes in
which the enemy was reported to have occupied some village several miles
away, and with pencil and paper made arrangements for unflurried defence
or blank-cartridged skirmishing in a land of field-day make-believe.

Sometimes a renowned big-game hunter gave us demonstrations of the art
of sniping. He was genial and enthusiastic; but I was no good at
rifle-shooting, and as far as I was concerned he would have been more
profitably employed in reducing the numerical strength of the enemy. He
was an expert on loop-holes and telescopic-sights; but telescopic-sights
were a luxury seldom enjoyed by an infantry battalion in the trenches.

The Commandant of the School was a tremendous worker and everyone liked
him. His motto was 'always do your utmost', but I dare say that if he
had been asked his private opinion he would have admitted that the
School was in reality only a holiday for officers and N.C.O.s who needed
a rest. It certainly seemed so to me when I awoke on the first morning
and became conscious of my clean little room with its tiled floor and
shuttered windows. I knew that the morning was fine; voices passed
outside; sparrows chirped and starlings whistled; the bell in the church
tower tolled and a clock struck the quarters. Flook entered with my Sam
Brown belt and a jug of hot water. He remarked that we'd come to the
right place, for once, and regretted that we weren't there for the
duration. Wiping my face after a satisfactory shave, I stared out of the
window; on the other side of the street a blossoming apple-tree leant
over an old garden wall, and I could see the friendly red roof of a
dovecot. It was a luxury to be alone, with plenty of space for my
portable property. There was a small table on which I could arrange my
few books. Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_ was one of them. Also
Lamb's _Essays_ and _Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour_. Books about England
were all that I wanted. I decided to do plenty of solid reading at the
Army School.

Near by was the Mess Room where fourteen of us had our meals. A
jolly-faced Captain from the Ulster Division had undertaken the office
of Mess President and everyone was talkative and friendly. With half an
hour to spare after breakfast, I strolled up the hill and smoked my pipe
under a quick-set hedge. Loosening my belt, I looked at a chestnut tree
in full leaf and listened to the perfect performance of a nightingale.
Such things seemed miraculous after the desolation of the trenches.
Never before had I been so intensely aware of what it meant to be young
and healthy in fine weather at the outset of summer. The untroubled
notes of the nightingale made the Army School seem like some fortunate
colony which was, for the sake of appearances, pretending to assist the
struggle from afar. It feels as if it's a place where I might get a
chance to call my soul my own, I thought, as I went down the hill to my
first parade. If only they don't chivvy us about too much, I
added.... It was not unlike the first day of a public school term,
and my form-master (we were divided into classes of twenty-eight) was a
youngish Major in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry. He was an even
tempered man, pleasant to obey and specially likeable through a certain
shyness of manner. I cannot remember that any of us caused him any
annoyance, though he more than once asked me to try and be less
absent-minded. Later in the year he was commanding a battalion, and I
don't doubt that he did it excellently.

                          *        *        *

Every afternoon at half-past five the School assembled to listen to a
lecture. Eyeing an audience of about 300 officers and N.C.O.s, I
improved my knowledge of regimental badges, which seemed somehow to
affect the personality of the wearer. A lion, a lamb, a dragon or an
antelope, a crown, a harp, a tiger or a sphinx, these devices
differentiated men in more ways than one. But the regimental names were
probably the potent factor, and my meditations while waiting for the
lecturer would lead me along pleasant associative lanes connected with
the English counties--the difference between Durham and Devon for
instance. There was food for thought also in the fact of sitting between
a Connaught Ranger and a Seaforth Highlander, though both were likely to
have been born in Middlesex. Queer, too, was the whole scene in that
school-room, containing as it did a splendid sample of the Fourth Army
which began the Somme Battle a couple of months afterwards. It was one
of those peaceful war-pictures which have vanished for ever and are
rarely recovered even in imaginative retrospect.

My woolgatherings were cut short when the lecturer cleared his throat;
the human significance of the audience was obliterated then, and its
outlook on life became restricted to destruction and defence. A gas
expert from G.H.Q. would inform us that 'gas was still in its infancy'.
(Most of us were either dead or disabled before gas had had time to grow
up.) An urbane Artillery General assured us that high explosive would be
our best friend in future battles, and his ingratiating voice made us
unmindful, for the moment, that explosives often arrived from the wrong
direction. But the star turn in the school-room was a massive
sandy-haired Highland Major whose subject was 'The Spirit of the
Bayonet'. Though at that time undecorated, he was afterwards awarded the
D.S.O. for lecturing. He took as his text a few leading points from the
_Manual of Bayonet Training_.

    To attack with the bayonet effectively requires Good Direction,
    Strength and Quickness, during a state of wild excitement and
    probably physical exhaustion. The bayonet is essentially an
    offensive weapon. In a bayonet assault all ranks go forward to
    kill or be killed, and only those who have developed skill and
    strength by constant training will be able to kill. The spirit
    of the bayonet must be inculcated into all ranks, so that they
    go forward with that aggressive determination and confidence of
    superiority born of continual practice, without which a bayonet
    assault will not be effective.

He spoke with homicidal eloquence, keeping the game alive with genial
and well-judged jokes. He had a Sergeant to assist him. The Sergeant, a
tall sinewy machine, had been trained to such a pitch of frightfulness
that at a moment's warning he could divest himself of all semblance of
humanity. With rifle and bayonet he illustrated the Major's ferocious
aphorisms, including facial expression. When told to 'put on the killing
face', he did so, combining it with an ultra-vindictive attitude. 'To
instil fear into the opponent' was one of the Major's main maxims. Man,
it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans. To hear the
Major talk, one might have thought that he did it himself every day
before breakfast. His final words were: "Remember that every Boche you
fellows kill is a point scored to our side; every Boche you kill brings
victory one minute nearer and shortens the war by one minute. Kill them!
Kill them! There's only one good Boche, and that's a dead one!"

Afterwards I went up the hill to my favourite sanctuary, a wood of
hazels and beeches. The evening air smelt of wet mould and wet leaves;
the trees were misty-green; the church bell was tolling in the town, and
smoke rose from the roofs. Peace was there in the twilight of that
prophetic foreign spring. But the lecturer's voice still battered on my
brain. "The bullet and the bayonet are brother and sister." "If you
don't kill him, he'll kill you." "Stick him between the eyes, in the
throat, in the chest." "Don't waste good steel. Six inches are enough.
What's the use of a foot of steel sticking out at the back of a man's
neck? Three inches will do for him; when he coughs, go and look for
another."


[II]

Whatever my private feelings may have been after the Major's lecture,
the next morning saw me practising bayonet-fighting. It was all in the
day's work; short points, long points, parries, jabs, plus the always to
be remembered importance of 'a quick withdrawal'. Capering over the
obstacles of the assault course and prodding sacks of straw was healthy
exercise; the admirable sergeant-instructor was polite and unformidable,
and as I didn't want him to think me a dud officer, I did my best to
become proficient. Obviously it would have been both futile and
inexpedient to moralize about bayonet-fighting at an Army School.

There is a sense of recovered happiness in the glimpse I catch of myself
coming out of my cottage door with a rifle slung on my shoulder. There
was nothing wrong with life on those fine mornings when the air smelt so
fresh and my body was young and vigorous, and I hurried down the white
road, along the empty street, and up the hill to our training ground. I
was like a boy going to early school, except that no bell was ringing,
and instead of Thucydides or Virgil, I carried a gun. Forgetting, for
the moment, that I was at the Front to be shot at, I could almost
congratulate myself on having a holiday in France without paying for it.

I also remember how I went one afternoon to have a hot bath in the Jute
Mill. The water was poured into a dyeing vat. Remembering that I had a
bath may not be of much interest to anyone, but it was a good bath, and
it is my own story that I am trying to tell, and as such it must be
received; those who expect a universalization of the Great War must look
for it elsewhere. Here they will only find an attempt to show its effect
on a somewhat solitary-minded young man.

At that time I was comfortably aware that the British Expeditionary
Force in France was a prosperous concern. I have already remarked that
the officers and N.C.O.s at the School epitomized a resolute mass of
undamaged material; equally impressive was the equine abundance which I
observed one afternoon when we were on our way to a 'demonstration' at
the Army Bombing School. Hundreds of light and heavy draft horses were
drawn up along a road for an inspection by the Commander-in-Chief (a
bodily presence which the infantry mind could not easily imagine). The
horses, attached to their appropriate vehicles and shining in their
summer coats, looked a picture of sleekness and strength. They were of
all sorts and sizes but their power and compactness was uniform. The
horsehood of England was there with every buckle of its harness
brightened. There weren't many mules among them, for mules were mostly
with the Artillery, and this was a slap-up Army Service Corps parade,
obviously the climax of several weeks' preparation. I wished that I
could have spent the afternoon inspecting them; but I was only a
second-lieutenant, and the bus carried me on to study explosions and
smoke-clouds, and to hear a lecture about the tactical employment of the
Mills Bomb.

                          *        *        *

News of the Battalion came from the Quartermaster, to whom I had sent an
account of my 'cushy' existence. Dottrell wrote that things had been
quiet up in the Line, but advised me to make the most of my rest-cure,
adding that he'd always noticed that the further you got from the
front-line the further you got from the War. In accordance with my
instructions he was making good progress with the box of kippers (which
Aunt Evelyn sent me twice a month); ditto the Devonshire cream, though
some of it hadn't stood the journey well. His letter put me in the right
frame of mind for returning to tours of trenches, though I should be
sorry to say good-bye to young Allgood, with whom I was spending most of
my spare time.

Allgood was quiet, thoughtful, and fond of watching birds. We had been
to the same public school, though there were nearly ten years between
us. He told me that he hoped to be a historian, and I listened
respectfully while he talked about the Romans in Early Britain, which
was his favourite subject. It was easy to imagine him as an
undergraduate at Cambridge; travelling in Germany during the Long
Vacation and taking a good Degree. But his Degree had been postponed
indefinitely. He said he'd always wanted to go to Germany, and there
seemed nothing incongruous in the remark; for the moment I forgot that
every German we killed was a point scored to our side. Allgood never
grumbled about the war, for he was a gentle soul, willing to take his
share in it, though obviously unsuited to homicide. But there was an
expression of veiled melancholy on his face, as if he were inwardly
warned that he would never see his home in Wiltshire again. A couple of
months afterwards I saw his name in one of the long lists of killed, and
it seemed to me that I had expected it.

                          *        *        *

Our last day at the School was hot and cloudless. In the morning English
and French Generals rolled up in their cars; there must have been about
a hundred of them; it was not unlike an army of uniformed Uncles on
Prize-giving Day. There were no prizes, naturally. But we did our best
to show them how efficient we were, by running round the assault course
in teams, stabbing the straw sacks. We also competed in putting up
screw-pickets and barbed wire with rapidity and precision. Our exertions
ended with a march past the Army Commander, and then we fell out to
witness the explosion of two small mines. Earth and chalk heaved up at
the blue sky, the ground vibrated, and there was a noise like a mad
rainstorm, caused by the whizzing descent of clods and stones and the
hiss of smaller particles. Finally, a fountain of dingy smoke arose and
drifted away from the debris, and the Generals retired to have luncheon
in the white château; and there, let us hope, they let their belts out a
hole or two and allowed themselves a little relaxation from intellectual
effort. Allgood said that he thought the French Generals looked much
brainier than the British ones; but I told him that they must be
cleverer than they looked, and anyhow they'd all got plenty of
medal-ribbons.




PART TWO
THE RAID


[I]

I came back from the Army School at the end of a hot Saturday afternoon.
The bus turned off the bumpy main road from Corbie and began to crawl
down a steep winding lane. I looked, and there was Morlancourt in the
hollow. On the whole I considered myself lucky to be returning to a
place where I knew my way about. It was no use regretting the little
room at Flixécourt where I had been able to sit alone every night,
reading a good book and calling my soul my own.... Distant hills and
hazy valleys were dazzled with sun-rays, and the glaring beams made a
fiery mist in the foreground. It was jolly fine country, I thought. I
had become quite fond of it, and the end-of-the-world along the horizon
had some obscure hold over my mind which drew my eyes to it almost
eagerly, for I could still think of trench warfare as an adventure. The
horizon was quiet just now, as if the dragons which lived there were
dozing.

The Battalion was out of the line, and I felt almost glad to be back as
I walked up to our old Company Mess with Flook carrying my valise on his
back. Flook and I were very good friends, and his vigilance for my
personal comfort was such that I could more easily imagine him using his
rifle in defence of my valise than against the Germans.

Nobody was in when I got to our billets, but the place had improved
since I last saw it; the horsechestnut in front of the house was in
flower and there were a few peonies and pink roses in the neglected
little garden at the back.

Dusk had fallen when I returned from a stroll in the fields; the candles
were lit, there was a smell of cooking, and the servants were clattering
tin plates in the sizzling kitchen. Durley, Birdie Mansfield, and young
Ormand were sitting round the table, with a new officer who was meekly
reading the newspaper which served as table-cloth. They all looked glum
but my advent caused some pumped up cheeriness, and I was introduced to
the newcomer whose name was Fewnings. (He wore spectacles and in private
life had been a schoolmaster.) Not much was said until the end of the
steak and onions; by then Mansfield had lowered the level of the whisky
bottle by a couple of inches, while the rest of us drank lime-juice.
Tinned peaches appeared, and I inquired where Barton was--with an uneasy
feeling that something might have happened to him. Ormand replied that
the old man was dining at Battalion Headquarters. "And skiting to
Kinjack about the Raid, I'll bet," added Mansfield, tipping some more
whisky into his mug. "The Raid!" I exclaimed, suddenly excited, "I
haven't heard a word about it." "Well, you're the only human being in
this Brigade who hasn't heard about it." (Mansfield's remarks were
emphasized by the usual epithets.) "But what about it? Was it a
success?" "Holy Christ! Was it a success? The Kangaroo wants to know if
it was a success!" He puffed out his plump cheeks and gazed at the
others. "This god-damned Raid's been a funny story for the last
fortnight, and we've done everything except send word over to the
Fritzes to say what time we're coming; and now it's fixed up for next
Thursday, and Barton's hoping to get a D.S.O. out of it for his
executive ability. I wish he'd arrange to go and fetch his (something)
D.S.O. for himself!" From this I deduced that poor Birdie was to be in
charge of the Raiding Party, and I soon knew all there was to be known.
Ormand, who had obviously heard more than enough lately, took himself
off, vocally announcing that he was 'Gilbert the filbert, the Nut with a
K, the pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué'.

                          *        *        *

Barton was still up at Headquarters when I went across the road to my
billet. Flook had spread my 'flea-bag' on the tiled floor, and I had
soon slipped into it and blown out my candle. Durley, on the other side
of the room, was asleep in a few minutes, for he'd been out late on a
working party the night before. I was now full of information about the
Raid, and I could think of nothing else. My month at Flixécourt was
already obliterated. While I was away I had almost forgotten about the
Raid; but it seemed now that I'd always regarded it as my private
property, for when it had begun to be a probability in April, Barton had
said that I should be sure to take charge of it. My feeling was much the
same as it would have been if I had owned a horse and then been told
that someone else was to ride it in a race.

Six years before I had been ambitious of winning races because that had
seemed a significant way of demonstrating my equality with my
contemporaries. And now I wanted to make the World War serve a similar
purpose, for if only I could get a Military Cross I should feel
comparatively safe and confident. (At that time the Doctor was the only
man in the Battalion who'd got one.) Trench warfare was mostly
monotonous drudgery, and I preferred the exciting idea of crossing the
mine-craters and getting into the German front-line. In my simple-minded
way I had identified myself with that strip of No Man's Land opposite
Bois Français; and the mine-craters had always fascinated me, though I'd
often feared that they'd be the death of me.

Mansfield had gloomily remarked that he'd something--well go on the
razzle if he got through Thursday night with his procreative powers
unimpaired. Wondering why he had been selected for the job, I wished I
could take his place. I knew that he had more commonsense ability than I
had, but he was podgily built and had never been an expert at crawling
among shell-holes in the dark. He and Ormand and Corporal O'Brien had
done two patrols last week, but the bright moonlight had prevented them
from properly inspecting the German wire. Birdie's language about
moonlight and snipers was a masterpiece, but he hadn't a ghost of an
idea whether we could get through the Boche wire. Nevertheless I felt
that if I'd been there the patrolling would have been profitable, moon
or no moon. I wouldn't mind going up there and doing it now, I thought,
for I was wideawake and full of energy after my easy life at the Army
School.... _Doing it now?_ The line was quiet to-night. Now and again
the tapping of a machine-gun. But the demented night-life was going on
all the time and the unsleeping strangeness of it struck my mind silent
for a moment, as I visualized a wiring-party standing stock-still while
a flare quivered and sank, silvering the bleached sandbags of the
redoubt.

Warm and secure, I listened to the gentle whisper of the aspens outside
the window, and the fear of death and the horror of mutilation took hold
of my heart. Durley was muttering in his sleep, something rapid and
incoherent, and then telling someone to get a move on; the war didn't
allow people many pleasant dreams. It was difficult to imagine old
Julian killing a German, even with an anonymous bullet. I didn't want to
kill any Germans myself, but one had to kill people in self-defence.
Revolver shooting wasn't so bad, and as for bombs, you just chucked them
and hoped for the best. Anyhow, I meant to ask Kinjack to let me go on
the Raid. Supposing he _ordered_ me to go on it? How should I feel about
it then? No good thinking any more about it now. With some such
ponderings as these I sighed and fell asleep.


[II]

Next morning I went to the other end of the village to have a chat with
my friend the Quartermaster. Leaning against a bit of broken wall
outside his billet, we exchanged a few observations about the larger
aspects of the war and the possibilities of peace. Joe was pessimistic
as ever, airing his customary criticisms of profiteers, politicians, and
those whose military duties compelled them to remain at the Base and in
other back areas. He said that the permanent staff at Fourth Army
Headquarters now numbered anything up to four thousand. With a ribald
metaphor he speculated on what they did with themselves all day. I said
that some of them were busy at the Army School. Joe supposed there was
no likelihood of their opening a rest-cure for Quartermasters.

When I asked his opinion about the Raid he looked serious, for he liked
Mansfield and knew his value as an officer. "From all I hear, Kangar,"
he said, "it's a baddish place for a show of that kind, but you know the
ground better than I do. My own opinion is that the Boches would have
come across themselves before now if they'd thought it worth trying. But
Brigade have got the idea of a raid hot and strong, and they've nothing
to lose by it one way or the other, except a few of our men." I asked if
these raids weren't a more or less new notion, and he told me that our
Battalion had done several small ones up in Flanders during the first
winter; Winchell, our late Colonel, had led one when he was still a
company commander. The idea had been revived early this year, when some
Canadian toughs had pulled off a fine effort, and since then such
entertainments had become popular with the Staff. Our Second Battalion
had done one, about a month ago, up at Cuinchy; their Quartermaster had
sent Joe the details; five officers and sixty men went across, but
casualties were numerous and no prisoners were brought back. He sighed
and lit a cigarette. "It's always the good lads who volunteer for these
shows. One of the Transport men wanted to send his name in for this one;
but I told him to think of his poor unfortunate wife, and we're pushing
him off on a transport-course to learn cold-shoeing."

Prodding the ground with my stick, I stared at the Transport lines below
us--a few dirty white bell-tents and the limbers and waggons and
picketed horses. I could see the horses' tails switching and the men
stooping to groom their legs. Bees hummed in the neglected little
garden; red and grey roofs clustered round the square church tower;
everything looked Sunday-like and contented with the fine weather. When
I divulged my idea of asking Kinjack to let me go on the Raid, Joe
remarked that he'd guessed as much, and advised me to keep quiet about
it as there was still a chance that it might be washed out. Kinjack
wasn't keen about it and had talked pretty straight to the Brigade
Major; he was never afraid of giving the brass-hats a bit of his mind.
So I promised to say nothing till the last moment, and old Joe ended by
reminding me that we'd all be over the top in a month or two. But I
thought, as I walked away, how silly it would be if I got laid out by a
stray bullet, or a rifle-grenade, or one of those clumsy 'canisters'
that came over in the evening dusk with a little trail of sparks behind
them.

                          *        *        *

We went into the line again on Tuesday. For the first three days
Barton's Company was in reserve at 71. North, which was an assortment of
dug-outs and earth-covered shelters about a thousand yards behind the
front-line. I never heard any one ask the origin of its name, which for
most of us had meant shivering boredom at regular intervals since
January. Some map-making expert had christened it coldly, and it had
unexpectedly failed to get itself called the Elephant and Castle or
Hampton Court. Anyhow it was a safe and busy suburb of the front-line,
for the dug-outs were hidden by sloping ground and nicely tucked away
under a steep bank. Shells dropped short or went well over; and as the
days of aeroplane aggressiveness had not yet arrived, we could move
about by daylight with moderate freedom. A little way down the road the
Quartermaster-sergeant ruled the ration-dump, and every evening Dottrell
arrived with the ration-limbers. There, too, was the dressing-station
where Dick Tiltwood had died a couple of months ago; it seemed longer
than that, I thought, as I passed it with my platoon and received a
cheery greeting from our Medical Officer, who could always make one feel
that Harley Street was still within reach.

The road which passed 71. North, had once led to Fricourt; now it
skulked along to the British Front Line, wandered evilly across No Man's
Land, and then gave itself up to the Germans. In spite of this, the road
had for me a queer daylight magic, especially in summer. Though grass
patched and derelict, something of its humanity remained. I imagined
every day rural life going along it in pre-war weather, until this
business-like open air inferno made it an impossibility for a French
farmer to jog into Fricourt in his hooded cart.

There was a single line railway on the other side of the road, but the
only idea which it suggested to Barton was that if the war lasted a few
more years we should be coming to the trenches every day by train like
city men going to the office. He was due for leave next week and his
mind was already half in England. The Raid wasn't mentioned now, and
there was little to be done about it except wait for Thursday night.
Mansfield had become loquacious about his past life, as though he were
making a general audit of his existence. I remember him talking about
the hard times he'd had in Canada, and how he used to get a meal for
twelve cents. In the meantime I made a few notes in my diary.

"_Tuesday evening, 8.30. At Bécordel cross-roads._ On a working party. A
small bushy tree against a pale yellow sky; slate roofs gleaming in the
half-light. A noise of carts coming along with rations. Occasional bang
of our guns close to the village. The church tower, gloomy; only the
front remains; more than half of it shot away and most of the church. In
the foreground two broken barns with skeleton roofs. A quiet cool
evening after a shower. Stars coming out. The R.E. stores are dumped
around French soldier-cemetery. Voices of men in the dusk. Dull rattle
of machine-guns on the left. Talking to a Northumberland Fusilier
officer who drops aitches. Too dark to write....

"_Wednesday, 6.15 p.m. On Crawley Ridge._ Ormand up here in the Redoubt
with a few men. I relieve him while he goes down to get his dinner. Very
still evening; sun rather hazy. Looking across to Fricourt; trench
mortars bursting in the cemetery; dull white smoke slowly floats away
over grey-green grass with buttercups and saffron weeds. Fricourt; a
huddle of reddish roofs; skeleton village; church tower, almost
demolished, a white patch against green of Fricourt wood (full of German
batteries). North, up the hill, white seams and heapings of trenches dug
in chalk. Sky full of lark songs. Sometimes you can count thirty slowly
and hear no sound of a shot; then the muffled pop of a rifle or a
slamming 5.9 or one of our 18 pounders. Then a burst of machine-gun
fire. Westward the yellow sky with a web of filmy cloud half across the
sun; the ridges with blurred outlines of trees. An aeroplane droning
overhead. A thistle sprouting through the chalk on the parapet; a
cock-chafer sailing through the air. Down the hill, the Bray-Fricourt
road, white and hard. A partridge flies away, calling. Lush grass and
crops of nettles; a large black slug out for his evening walk (doing
nearly a mile a month)."


[III]

At ten o'clock on Thursday night I was alone with Durley in the
sack-cloth smelling dug-out at 71. North. Rain was falling steadily.
Everything felt fateful and final. A solitary candle stood on the table
in its own grease, and by its golden glimmer I had just written a
farewell letter to Aunt Evelyn. I did not read it through, and I am glad
I cannot do so now, for it was in the 'happy warrior' style and my own
fine feelings took precedence of hers. It was not humanly possible for
me to wonder what Aunt Evelyn was doing while I wrote; to have done so
would have cramped my style. But it is possible that she was calling her
black Persian cat in from the dripping summer garden; when it scampered
in from the darkness she would dry it carefully with a towel, whistling
under her breath, while she did so, some indeterminate tune. Poor Aunt
Evelyn was still comfortingly convinced that I was transport officer,
though I had given up that job nearly three months ago. Having licked
and fastened the flimsy envelope I handed it to Durley, with a
premonition that it would be posted. Durley received it with appropriate
gravity.

In the meantime Mansfield was making a final reconnaissance of the
ground with Sergeant Miles and Corporal O'Brien, while Barton (unaware
of my intentions) was administering a drop of whisky to the raiding
party in the large dug-out just along the road. It was time to be
moving; so I took off my tunic, slipped my old raincoat on over my
leather waistcoat, dumped my tin hat on my head, and picked up my
nail-studded knobkerrie. Good old Durley wished me luck and economically
blew out the candle. As we went along the road he remarked that it was
lucky the night was dark and rainy.

Entering the other dug-out I was slightly startled, for I had forgotten
that the raiders were to have blacked faces (to avoid the danger of
their mistaking one another for Germans). Exchanging boisterous jokes,
they were putting the finishing touches to their make-up with bits of
burnt cork. Showing the whites of their eyes and pretending not to
recognize one another, those twenty-five shiny faced nigger minstrels
might almost have been getting ready for a concert. Everyone seemed to
expect the entertainment to be a roaring success. But there were no
looking-glasses or banjos, and they were brandishing knobkerries,
stuffing Mills bombs into their pockets and hatchets into their belts,
and "Who's for a Blighty one to-night?" was the stock joke (if such a
well worn wish could be called a joke).

At 10.30 there was a sudden silence, and Barton told me to take the
party up to Battalion Headquarters. It surprises me when I remember that
I set off without having had a drink, but I have always disliked the
flavour of whisky, and in those days the helpfulness of alcohol in human
affairs was a fact which had not yet been brought home to me. The
raiders had been given only a small quantity, but it was enough to
hearten them as they sploshed up the communication trench. None of us
could know how insignificant we were in the so-called 'Great Adventure'
which was sending up its uneasy flares along the Western Front. No doubt
we thought ourselves something very special. But what we thought never
mattered; nor does it matter what sort of an inflated fool I was when I
blundered into Kinjack's Headquarters at Maple Redoubt to report the
presence of the raiders and ask whether I might go across with them.
"Certainly not," said the Colonel, "your job is to stop in our trench
and count the men as they come back." He spoke with emphasis and he was
not a man who expected to have to say a thing twice. We stared at one
another for a moment; some freak of my brain made me remember that in
peace-time he had been an enthusiastic rose grower--had won prizes with
his roses, in fact; for he was a married man and had lived in a little
house near the barracks.

My thought was nipped in the bud by his peremptory voice telling Major
Robson, his second-in-command, to push off with the party. We were about
400 yards from the front-line, and Robson now led us across the open to
a point in the support trench, from which a red electric torch winked to
guide us. Then up a trench to the starting point, the men's feet
clumping and drumming on the duck-boards. This noise, plus the clinking
and drumming and creaking of weapons and equipment, suggested to my
strained expectancy that the enemy would be well warned of our arrival.
Mansfield and his two confederates now loomed squatly above us on the
parapet; they had been laying a guiding line of lime across the craters.
A gap had been cut in our wire, and it was believed that some sort of
damage had been done to the German wire which had been 'strafed' by
trench mortars during the day.

The raiders were divided into four parties of five men; operation orders
had optimistically assumed that the hostile trenches would be entered
without difficulty; 'A' party would go to the left, 'B' party to the
right, and so on and so forth. The object of the raid was to enter the
enemy loop on the edge of the crater; to enter Kiel Trench at two
points; to examine the portions of trench thus isolated, capture
prisoners, bomb dug-outs, and kill Germans. An 'evacuating party' (seven
men carrying two ten-foot ladders and a red flash lamp) followed the
others. The ladders were considered important, as the German front
trench was believed to be deep and therefore difficult to get out of in
a hurry. There were two mine-craters a few yards from our parapet; these
craters were about fifty yards in diameter and about fifty feet deep;
their sides were steep and composed of thin soft soil; there was water
at the bottom of them. Our men crossed by a narrow bridge of earth
between the craters; the distance to the German wire was about sixty
yards.

It was now midnight. The five parties had vanished into the darkness on
all fours. It was raining quietly and persistently. I sat on the parapet
waiting for something to happen. Except for two men at a sentry post
near by (they were now only spectators) there seemed to be no one about.
"They'll never keep that ---- inside the trench," muttered the sentry to
his mate and even at that tense moment I valued the compliment. Major
Robson and the stretcher-bearers had been called away by a message.
There must be some trouble further along, I thought, wondering what it
could be, for I hadn't heard a sound. Now and again I looked at my
luminous watch. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed in ominous silence. An
occasional flare, never near our craters, revealed the streaming rain,
blanched the tangles of wire that wound away into the gloom, and came to
nothing, bringing down the night. Unable to remain inactive any longer,
I crawled a little way out. As I went, a few shells began to drone
across in their leisurely way. Our communication trench was being
shelled. I joined the evacuating party; they were lying on the lip of
the left-hand crater. A flare fizzed up, and I could see the rest of the
men lying down, straight across the ridge, and was able to exchange a
grimace with one of the black-faced ladder-carriers. Then some
'whizz-bangs' rushed over to our front trench; one or two fell on the
craters; this made the obstinate silence of Kiel Trench more menacing.
Soon afterwards one of the bayonet men came crawling rapidly back. I
followed him to our trench where he whispered his message. "They can't
get through the second belt of wire; O'Brien says it's a wash-out;
they're all going to throw a bomb and retire."

I suppose I ought to have tried to get the ladder-carriers in before the
trouble started; but the idea didn't strike me as I waited with bumping
heart; and almost immediately the explosions began. A bomb burst in the
water of the left-hand crater, sending up a phosphorescent spume. Then a
concentration of angry flashes, thudding bangs, and cracking shots broke
itself up in hubbub and scurry, groans and curses, and stampeding
confusion. Stumbling figures loomed up from below, scrambling clumsily
over the parapet; black faces and whites of eyes showed grotesque in the
antagonistic shining of alarmed flares. Dodging to and fro, I counted
fourteen men in; they all blundered away down the trench. I went out,
found Mansfield badly hit, and left him with two others who soon got him
in. Other wounded men were crawling back. Among them was a grey-haired
lance-corporal, who had one of his feet almost blown off; I half carried
him in and when he was sitting on the fire-step he said, "Thank God
Almighty for this; I've been waiting eighteen months for it and now I
can go home." I told him we'd get him away on a stretcher soon, and then
he muttered "Mick O'Brien's somewhere down in the craters."

All this had been quick work and not at all what I'd expected. Things
were slowing down now. The excitement was finished, and O'Brien was
somewhere down in the craters. The bombing and rifle fire had slackened
when I started out to look for him. I went mechanically, as though I
were drowning myself in the darkness. This is no fun at all, was my only
thought as I groped my way down the soft clogging side of the left-hand
crater; no fun at all, for they were still chucking an occasional bomb
and firing circumspectly. I could hear the reloading click of rifle
bolts on the lip of the crater above me as I crawled along with mud
clogged fingers, or crouched and held my breath painfully. Bullets hit
the water and little showers of earth pattered down from the banks. I
knew that nothing in my previous experience of patrolling had ever been
so grim as this, and I lay quite still for a bit, miserably wondering
whether my number was up; then I remembered that I was wearing my
pre-war raincoat; I could feel the pipe and tobacco-pouch in my pocket
and somehow this made me less forlorn, though life seemed much further
away than the low mumble of voices in our trench. A flare would have
helped my searchings, but they had stopped sending them up; pawing the
loose earth and dragging my legs after me, I worked my way round the
crater. O'Brien wasn't there, so I got across into the other one, which
was even more precipitous and squashy. Down there I discovered him.
Another man was crouching beside him, wounded in one arm and patiently
waiting for help. O'Brien moaned when I touched him; he seemed to have
been hit in several places. His companion whispered huskily, "Get a
rope." As I clambered heavily up the bank I noticed that it had stopped
raining. Robson was peering out of the trench; he sent someone for a
rope, urging him to be quick for already there was a faint beginning of
daylight. With the rope, and a man to help, I got back to O'Brien, and
we lifted him up the side of the crater.

It was heavy work, for he was tall and powerfully built, and the soft
earth gave way under our feet as we lugged and hoisted the limp
shattered body. The Germans must have seen us in the half-light, but
they had stopped firing; perhaps they felt sorry for us.

At last we lowered him over the parapet. A stretcher-bearer bent over
him and then straightened himself, taking off his helmet with a gesture
that vaguely surprised me by its reverent simplicity. O'Brien had been
one of the best men in our Company. I looked down at him and then turned
away; the face was grotesquely terrible, smeared with last night's burnt
cork, the forehead matted with a tangle of dark hair.

I had now accounted for everyone. Two killed and ten wounded was the
only result of the raid. In the other Company sector the Germans had
blown in one of our mine-galleries, and about thirty of the tunnelling
company had been gassed or buried. Robson had been called there with the
stretcher-bearers just as the raid began.

Nothing now remained for me to do except to see Kinjack on my way back.
Entering his dug-out I looked at him with less diffidence than I'd ever
done before. He was sitting on his plank bed, wearing a brown woollen
cap with a tuft on the top. His blonde face was haggard; the last few
hours had been no fun for him either. This was a Kinjack I'd never met
before, and it was the first time I had ever shared any human equality
with him. He spoke kindly to me in his rough way, and in doing so made
me very thankful that I had done what I could to tidy up the mess in No
Man's Land.

Larks were shrilling in the drizzling sky as I went down to 71. North. I
felt a wild exultation. Behind me were the horror and the darkness.
Kinjack had thanked me. It was splendid to be still alive, I thought, as
I strode down the hill, skirting shell-holes and jumping over
communication trenches, for I wasn't in a mood to bother about going
along wet ditches. The landscape loomed around me, and the landscape was
life, stretching away and away into freedom. Even the dreary little
warren at 71. North seemed to await me with a welcome, and Flook was
ready with some hot tea. Soon I was jabbering excitedly to Durley and
old man Barton, who told me that the Doctor said Mansfield was a touch
and go case, but already rejoicing at the prospect of getting across to
Blighty, and cursing the bad wire-cutters which had been served out for
the raid. I prided myself on having pulled off something rather heroic;
but when all was said and done it was only the sort of thing which
people often did during a fire or a railway accident.

                          *        *        *

Nothing important had happened on the British Front that night, so we
were rewarded by a mention in the G.H.Q. _communiqué_. "_At Mametz we
raided hostile trenches. Our party entered without difficulty and
maintained a spirited bombing fight, and finally withdrew at the end of
twenty-five minutes._" This was their way of telling England. Aunt
Evelyn probably read it automatically in her _Morning Post_, unaware
that this minor event had almost caused her to receive a farewell letter
from me. The next night our Company was in the front-line and I
recovered three hatchets and a knobkerrie from No Man's Land. Curiously
enough, I hadn't yet seen a German. I had seen dim figures on my dark
patrols; but no human faces.




PART THREE
BEFORE THE PUSH


[I]

One evening about a fortnight later I was down in that too familiar
front-line dug-out with Barton, who had just returned from leave and was
unable to disguise his depression. I wasn't feeling over bright myself
after tramping to and fro in the gluey trenches all day. A little rain
made a big difference to life up there, and the weather had been wet
enough to make the duck-boards wobble when one stepped on them. I'd got
sore feet and a trench-mouth and food tasted filthy. And the Boche
trench-mortars had been strafing us more than usual that evening.
Probably I've been smoking too much lately, I thought, knocking my pipe
out against one of the wooden props which held up the cramped little
den, and staring irritably at my mud-encumbered boots, for I was always
trying to keep squalor at bay and the discomfort of feeling dirty and
tickly all over was almost as bad as a bombardment. It certainly wasn't
much of a place to be low-spirited in, so I tried reading the paper
which the Company-Sergeant-Major had just delivered when he came down
for the rum ration. The rum-jar lived under Barton's bed; having been
poured into some tin receptacle, the rum was carried cautiously upstairs
to be tipped into the men's tea-dixies.

"Fancy Kitchener being drowned in the North Sea!" I remarked, looking up
from the _Daily Mail_ which was making the most of that historic event.
(It seemed a long time since I rode past his park wall in Kent when I
was with the Yeomanry; it would be two years next September, though it
wasn't much use looking as far ahead as that, with all these
preparations going on for the 'Big Push'.) Barton was scribbling away
with his indelible pencil--filling in all that bosh which made Brigade
think they were busy. "If you want my opinion," he grumbled, "I believe
those damned Irish had a hand in Kitchener being drowned. I'd like to
see that fatuous island of theirs sunk under the sea." Barton had an
irrational dislike of the Irish, and he always blamed anything on them
if he could. He wouldn't even admit that Ireland was an agricultural
country, and since the Easter Rebellion in Dublin it wasn't safe to show
him a bottle of Irish whisky. "I've never met an Irishman with any more
sense than that mouse!" he exclaimed. A mouse was standing on its head
in the sugar-basin, which was made of metal and contained soft sugar. He
eyed the mouse morosely, as though accusing it of Irish ancestry. "This
time three nights ago my wife and I were having dinner at the Café
Royal. Upstairs at the Café Royal--best food in London, and as good as
ever even now. I tell you, Kangar, it's too much of a bloody contrast,
coming back to all this." There was a muffled 'Wump' and both candles
went out. Something heavy had burst outside our door. Lighting the
candles, I thought I'd just as soon be upstairs as down in this musty
limbo. In about an hour I should be out with the wiring-party, dumping
concertina wire in the shell-holes along the edge of the craters. I
wondered if I should ever get a Blighty wound. One of our best officers
had been hit last night while out with the wirers. This was Bill Eaves,
who had been a Classical Scholar at Cambridge and had won medals there
for writing Greek and Latin epigrams. Now he'd got a nice bullet wound
in the shoulder, with the muscles damaged enough to keep him in England
several months. And two nights ago Ormand and a Sandhurst boy named
Harris had been hit while on a working party. Ormand's was a 'cushy'
shell splinter; but Harris had got his knee smashed up, and the doctor
said he would probably be out of the war for good. It was funny to think
of young Harris being hit in the first twenty-four hours of his first
tour of trenches.

Anyhow we were due for Divisional Rest, which would take us to the back
area for three weeks, and the clogging monotony of life in the line
would be cleaned out of our minds. And you never knew--perhaps the war
would end in those three weeks. The troops were beginning to need a rest
badly, for most of them had been doing tours of trenches ever since the
end of January, and even when we were at Morlancourt there was a working
party every second night, which meant being out from seven o'clock till
after midnight. And Miles, my platoon sergeant, hadn't been quite his
usual self since the raid; but he'd been in France nearly a year, which
was longer than most men could stick such a life. The chances are, I
thought, that if Sergeant Miles is still here a few months hence, and
I'm not, some fresh young officer from England will be accusing him of
being windy. Sooner or later I should get windy myself. It was only a
question of time. But could this sort of thing be measured by ordinary
time, I wondered (as I lay on a bunk wishing to God Barton would stop
blowing on his spectacles, which surely didn't need all that polishing).
No; one couldn't reckon the effect of the war on people by weeks and
months. I'd noticed that boys under twenty stood it worst, especially
when the weather was bad. Mud and boredom and discomfort seemed to take
all the guts out of them. If an officer crumpled up Kinjack sent him
home as useless, with a confidential report. Several such officers were
usually drifting about at the Depot, and most of them ended up with safe
jobs in England. But if a man became a dud in the ranks, he just
remained where he was until he was killed or wounded. Delicate
discrimination about private soldiers wasn't possible. A 'number nine
pill' was all they could hope for if they went sick. Barton sometimes
told me that I was too easy-going with the men when we were out of the
Line, but it often seemed to me that I was asking them to do more than
could be fairly expected of them. It's queer, I thought, how little one
really knows about the men. In the Line one finds out which are the
duds, and one builds up a sort of comradeship with the tough and willing
ones. But back in billets the gap widens and one can't do much to cheer
them up. I could never understand how they managed to keep as cheery as
they did through such drudgery and discomfort, with nothing to look
forward to but going over the top or being moved up to Flanders again.

                          *        *        *

Next evening, just before stand-to, I was watching a smouldering sunset
and thinking that the sky was one of the redeeming features of the war.
Behind the support line where I stood, the shell-pitted ground sloped
sombrely into the dusk; the distances were blue and solemn, with a few
trees grouped on a ridge, dark against the deep-glowing embers of
another day endured. I was looking westward, away from the war, and the
evening star twinkled serenely. Guns were grumbling miles away.
Cart-wheels could be heard on the roads behind Fricourt; it still made
me feel strange when I remembered that they were German cart-wheels.

Moments like those are unreproduceable when I look back and try to
recover their living texture. One's mind eliminates boredom and physical
discomfort, retaining an incomplete impression of a strange, intense,
and unique experience. If there be such a thing as ghostly revisitation
of this earth, and if ghosts can traverse time and choose their ground,
I would return to the Bois Français sector as it was then. But since I
always assume that spectral presences have lost their sense of smell
(and I am equally uncertain about their auditory equipment) such
hauntings might be as inadequate as those which now absorb my mental
energy. For trench life was an existence saturated by the external
senses; and although our actions were domineered over by military
discipline, our animal instincts were always uppermost. While I stood
there then, I had no desire to diagnose my environment. Freedom from its
oppressiveness was what I longed for. Listening to the German
cart-wheels rumbling remotely, I thought of an old German governess I
had known, and how she used to talk about 'dear old Moltke and Bismarck'
and her quiet home in Westphalia where her father had been a Protestant
pastor. I wondered what sort of a place Westphalia was, and wished I'd
seen more of the world before it became so busy with bloodshed. For
until I came out to the war I had only the haziest notion of anything
outside England.

Well, here I was, and my incomplete life might end any minute; for
although the evening air was as quiet as a cathedral, a canister soon
came over quite near enough to shatter my meditations with its unholy
crash and cloud of black smoke. A rat scampered across the tin cans and
burst sandbags, and trench atmosphere reasserted itself in a smell of
chloride of lime. On my way to the dug-out, to fetch my revolver and
attend the twilight ceremony of stand-to and rifle inspection, I heard
the voice of Flook; just round a bend of the support trench he was
asking one of the company bombers if he'd seen his officer-bloke go
along that way. Flook was in a hurry to tell me that I was to go on
leave. I didn't wait to inspect my platoon's rifles, and not many
minutes later I was on my way down the Old Kent Road trench. Maple
Redoubt was getting its usual evening bombardment, and as a man had been
killed by a whizz-bang in the Old Kent Road a few minutes earlier, I was
glad when I was riding back to Morlancourt with Dottrell; glad, too, to
be driving to Mericourt station behind the sluggish pony next morning;
to hear the mellow bells of Rouen on the evening air while the leave
train stood still for half an hour before making up its mind to lumber
on to Havre. And thus the gradations of thankfulness continued, until I
found myself in a quiet house in Kensington where I was staying the
night with an old friend of Aunt Evelyn's.

To be there, on a fine Sunday evening in June, with the drawing-room
windows open and someone playing the piano next door, was an experience
which now seemed as queer as the unnatural conditions I had returned
from. Books, pictures, furniture, all seemed kind and permanent and
unrelated to the present time and its troubles. I felt detached from my
surroundings--rather as if I were in a doctor's waiting-room, expecting
to be informed that I had some incurable disease. The sound of the piano
suggested that the specialist had a happy home life of his own, but it
had no connection with my coming and going. A sense of gentle security
pervaded the room; but I could no longer call my life my own. The
pensive music had caught me off my guard; I was only an intruder from
the Western Front. But the room contained one object which unexpectedly
reminded me of the trenches--a silent canary in a cage. I had seen
canaries in cages being carried by the men of the tunnelling company
when they emerged from their mine-galleries.


[II]

Correspondingly queer (though I didn't consciously observe it at the
time) was the experience of returning to France after sleeping seven
nights in a proper bed and wearing civilian clothes. The personal
implications were obvious, since everybody at home seemed to know that
the long-planned offensive was due to 'kick off' at the end of June.
Officers going on leave had been cautioned to say nothing about it, but
even Aunt Evelyn was aware of the impending onslaught. I was disinclined
to talk about the trenches; nevertheless I permitted myself to drop a
few heavy hints. No one had any notion what the Big Push would be like,
except that it would be much bigger than anything which had happened
before. And somehow those previous battles hadn't divulged themselves
very distinctly to anyone except the actual participators, who had so
far proved inarticulate reporters.

As regards my own adventures, I had decided to say nothing to my aunt
about the raid. Nevertheless it all slipped out on the second evening,
probably after she had been telling me how splendidly Mrs. Ampney's
nephew had done out in Mesopotamia. Also I didn't omit to mention that I
had been recommended for a Military Cross. "But I thought you were only
looking after the horses," she expostulated, clutching my hand; her
anxious face made me wish I'd held my tongue about it. Of course, Aunt
Evelyn wanted me to do well in the war, but she couldn't enjoy being
reminded that 'do be careful to wear your warm overcoat, dearie,' was no
precaution against German bombs and bullets. Afterwards I excused myself
by thinking that she was bound to find out sooner or later, especially
if I got killed.

Next day I walked across the fields to Butley and had tea with my old
friend Captain Huxtable. I found him chubby-cheeked as ever, and keeping
up what might be called a Justice of the Peace attitude towards the war.
Any able-bodied man not serving in H.M. Forces should be required to
show a thundering good reason for it, and the sooner conscription came
in the better. That was his opinion; in the meantime he was working his
farm with two elderly men and a boy; "and that's about all an old crock
like me can do for his country." I gave him to understand that it was a
jolly fine life out at the Front, and, for the moment, I probably
believed what I was saying. I wasn't going to wreck my leave with facing
facts, and I'd succeeded in convincing myself that I really wanted to go
back. Captain Huxtable and I decided, between us, that the Push would
finish the war by Christmas. While we talked, pacing to and fro in the
garden, with his surly black retriever at our heels, the rooks cawed
applaudingly in the clump of elms near by as though all were well with
England on that June afternoon. I knew that the Captain would have asked
nothing better than to go over the top with his old regiment, if only
he'd been thirty years younger, and I wished I could have told him so,
when we were standing at his gate. But English reticence prohibited all
that sort of thing, and I merely remarked that Aunt Evelyn's
lightning-conductor had been blown off the chimney in the spring and she
said it wasn't worth while having it put up again. He laughed and said
she must be getting war-weary; she had always been so particular about
the lightning-conductor. "We old 'uns can't expect to be feeling very
cock-a-hoop in these days," he added, wrinkling up his shrewd and kindly
little eyes and giving my hand a farewell squeeze which meant more than
he could say aloud.

                          *        *        *

When Aunt Evelyn wondered whether I'd like anyone to come to dinner on
my last evening (she called it Friday night) I replied that I'd rather
we were alone. There were very few to ask, and, as she said, people were
difficult to get hold of nowadays. So, after a dinner which included two
of my favourite puddings, we made the best of a bad job by playing
cribbage (a game we had been addicted to when I was at home for my
school holidays) while the black Persian cat washed his face with his
paw and blinked contentedly at the fire which had been lit though there
was no need for it, the night being warm and still. We also had the grey
parrot brought up from the kitchen. Clinging sideways to the bars of his
cage, Popsy seemed less aware of the war than anyone I'd met. But
perhaps he sensed the pang I felt when saying good-bye to him next
morning; parrots understand more than they pretend to, and this one had
always liked me. He wasn't much of a talker, though he could imitate
Aunt Evelyn calling the cats.

Next morning she contrived to be stoically chatty until I had seen her
turn back to the house door and the village taxi was rattling me down
the hill. She had sensibly refrained from coming up to London to see me
off. But at Waterloo Station I was visibly reminded that going back for
the Push was rather rough on one's relations, however incapable they
might be of sharing the experience. There were two leave trains and I
watched the people coming away after the first one had gone out. Some
sauntered away with assumed unconcern; they chatted and smiled. Others
hurried past me with a crucified look; I noticed a well-dressed woman
biting her gloved fingers; her eyes stared fixedly; she was returning
alone to a silent house on a fine Sunday afternoon.

But I had nobody to see me off, so I could settle myself in the corner
of a carriage, light my pipe and open a Sunday paper (though goodness
knows what it contained, apart from _communiqués_, casualty lists, and
reassuring news from Galicia, Bukovina, and other opaque arenas of war).
It would have been nice to read the first-class cricket averages for a
change, and their absence was an apt epitome of the life we were
condemned to. While the train hurried out of London I watched the
flitting gardens of suburban houses. In my fox-hunting days I had
scorned the suburbs, but now there was something positively alluring in
the spectacle of a City man taking it easy on his little lawn at
Surbiton. Woking Cemetery was a less attractive scene, and my eyes
recoiled from it to reassure themselves that my parcels were still safe
on the rack, for those parcels were the important outcome of my previous
day's shopping.

Armed with Aunt Evelyn's membership ticket (posted back to her
afterwards) I had invaded the Army and Navy Stores and procured a superb
salmon, two bottles of old brandy, an automatic pistol, and two pairs of
wire-cutters with rubber-covered handles. The salmon was now my chief
concern. I was concerned about its future freshness, for I had
overstayed my leave by twenty-four hours. A rich restaurant dinner
followed by a mechanical drawing-room comedy hadn't made the risk of
Kinjack's displeasure seem worth while; but I felt that the salmon spelt
safety at Battalion Headquarters. Probably the word _smelt_ also entered
my apprehensive mind. The brandy claimed that it had been born in 1838,
so one day more or less couldn't affect its condition, as long as I kept
an eye on it (for such bottles were liable to lose themselves on a leave
boat). The wire-cutters were my private contribution to the Great
Offensive. I had often cursed the savage bluntness of our Company's
wire-cutters, and it occurred to me, in the Army and Navy Stores, that
if we were going over the top we might want to cut our own wire first,
to say nothing of the German wire (although our artillery would have
made holes in that, I hoped). So I bought these very civilized ones,
which looked almost too good for the Front Line. The man in the Weapon
Department at the Stores had been persuasive about a periscope (probably
prismatic) but I came to the conclusion that a periscope was a back
number in my case. I shouldn't be in the trench long enough to need it.
Apart from the wire-cutters and the pistol, all other 'trench
requisites' appeared redundant. I couldn't see myself leading my platoon
with _Mortleman's Patent Sound Absorbers_ plugged in my ears, and a
combined Compass-Barometer also failed to attract me. The automatic
pistol wasn't 'warranted to stop a man', but it could be slipped into
the pocket. It was only a plaything, but I was weary of my Colt
revolver, with which I knew I couldn't hit anything, although I had
blazed it off a few times in the dark when I was pretending to be
important in No Man's Land. The only object I could be sure of hitting
was myself, and I decided (in the Army and Navy Stores) that I might
conceivably find it necessary to put myself out of my misery, if the
worst came to the worst and I was lying out in a shell-hole with
something more serious than a Blighty wound. To blow one's brains out
with that clumsy Colt was unthinkable. The automatic pistol, on the
other hand, was quite a charming little weapon. Not that I'd ever been
fond of fire-arms. I had never shot at a bird or an animal in my life,
though I'd often felt that my position as a sportsman would be stronger
if I were 'a good man with a gun'.

The truth was that the only explosive weapon I owned before the war was
a toy pistol which made a noise but discharged nothing. Sitting in the
wrong-way leave train I remembered how, when about nine years old, I
used to go up to the little sweet-shop in the village and buy 'three
penn'orth of percussion caps' for my pistol; and how the buxom old woman
used to ask briskly, "Anything else to-day, Master George?" Whereupon I
would be compelled to decide between clove and peppermint bulls' eyes,
with a bar of chocolate-cream to make it up to sixpence. Twenty years
was a long time ago; but already the village green as I saw it last week
was beginning to seem almost as remote.... However, it was no use
dreaming about all that now; Kinjack's salmon was my immediate problem,
and as soon as I was on board the crowded boat, I consulted an obliging
steward and my fishy insurance policy was providentially accommodated in
the cold-storage cupboard. Consequently my mind was unperturbed when we
steamed out of Southampton Water. I watched the woods on the Isle of
Wight, hazily receding in the heat. And when the Isle of Wight was out
of sight--well, there was nothing to be done about it.

                          *        *        *

At Havre I was instructed, by the all-knowing authority responsible for
my return, to get out of the train at Corbie. Havre was a glitter of
lights winking on dark slabbing water. Soon the glumly-laden train was
groaning away from the wharves, and we nodded and snored through the
night. Daylight came, and we crawled past green landscapes blurred with
drizzling rain. Of my compartment companions I remember nothing except
that one of them talked irrepressibly about his father's farm in
Suffolk. His father, he said, owned a bull who had produced sixty black
and white calves. This information was received with apathy. The
Battalion was at Bussy, a three mile walk in late afternoon sunshine. I
kept to the shady side of the road, for the salmon in its hamper was
still my constant care. Bussy came in sight as a pleasant little place
on a tributary of the Ancre. A few of our men were bathing, and I
thought how young and light-hearted they looked, splashing one another
and shouting as they rocked a crazy boat under some lofty poplars that
shivered in a sunset breeze. How different to the trudging figures in
full marching order; and how difficult to embody them in the crouching
imprisonment of trench warfare!

With an unsoldierly sigh I picked up my packages and plodded on in
search of C Company, who were billeted in some buildings round a
friendly farm-house. There I found Flook and despatched him to Kinjack's
Headquarters with the hamper and a bottle of brandy. Barton, to whom I
entrusted the second bottle, told me that I was a cunning old Kangaroo,
and then regaled me with all the rumours about next week's operations.
"The bombardment begins on Saturday," he said, "so we're having
Battalion Sports to-morrow, in case we get moved back to Morlancourt."
Then Durley came in with Jenkins, one of the new officers who had been
posted to the Battalion while I was away. Fewnings, the gentle
ex-schoolmaster, had been appointed Lewis Gun officer, but he still
messed with us; he now entered with the air of a man who had been
teaching Euclid and Algebra all day. The Brigadier, he remarked, had
ticked him off that afternoon, because he was wearing a light-coloured
shirt; but no fault had been found with his Lewis Gun team organization,
and, as he remarked, it wouldn't make much odds what sort of shirt he
was wearing in a week or two. Neither Durley nor I had ever been
favoured with a word from our Brigadier, perhaps because our shirts were
the orthodox colour. It was odd, how seldom those graduated autocrats
found time to realize that a few kind words could make a platoon
commander consider them jolly good Generals.

But there was harmony in our Company Mess, as if our certainty of a
volcanic future had put an end to the occasional squabblings which
occurred when we were on one another's nerves. A rank animal healthiness
pervaded our existence during those days of busy living and inward
foreboding The behaviour of our servants expressed it; they were
competing for the favours of a handsome young woman in the farm-house,
and a comedy of primitive courtship was being enacted in the kitchen.
Death would be lying in wait for the troops next week, and now the
flavour of life was doubly strong. As I went to my room across the road,
the cool night smelt of mown grass and leafy gardens. Away toward Corbie
there was the sound of a train, and bull-frogs croaked continuously in
the marshes along the river. I wasn't sorry to be back; I was sure of
that; we'd all got to go through it, and I was trying to convert the
idea of death in battle into an emotional experience. Courage, I argued,
is a beautiful thing, and next week's attack is what I have been waiting
for since I first joined the army. I am happy to-night, and I don't
suppose I'll be dead in a month's time. Going into my billet I almost
fell over a goat which was tethered among some currant bushes in the
garden.

                          *        *        *

Five days passed us by. We did easy field-training; the Battalion Sports
were a great success, and we were defeated, in an officers' tug-of-war,
by our 9th Battalion who were resting a few miles away. Saturday evening
brought a feeling of finality, for we were moving up to Morlancourt on
Monday and the intense bombardment had begun that morning. Barton and I
(and our bottle of '38 brandy) dined at Battalion Headquarters. Kinjack
was full of confidence; he told us that the French were holding on well
at Verdun, which would make all the difference. But the doctor looked
thoughtful, and even the brandy couldn't make Barton optimistic about
his ability to command a company in open warfare.




PART FOUR
BATTLE


[I]

On the morning of a Battalion move I made it my business to keep out of
the way until the last moment. At the end of a march I had my definite
duties, but before we started Barton was always in such a stew that my
absence was a positive advantage to him. So on Monday, after bolting my
breakfast while Flook waited to pack the mugs and plates in the
mess-box, I left Barton shouting irritably for the Sergeant-Major and
wandered away to sit by the river until the whistles began to blow.
Durley and Jenkins had gone to make sure that the billets were being
left clean and tidy. In the green orchard behind the farm buildings the
men were putting their kits together, their voices sounding as jolly as
though they were off for a summer holiday. For me, it was a luxury to be
alone for a few minutes, watching the yellow irises, and the ribbon
weeds that swayed like fishes in the dimpling stream. I was sorry to be
saying good-bye to the Marais and its grey-green pools and creeks and
the congregation of poplar stems that upheld a cool whispering roof.
Water-haunting birds whistled and piped, swinging on the bullrushes and
tufted reeds, and a tribe of little green and gold frogs hopped about in
the grass without caring whether they arrived anywhere. All this was
obviously preferable to a battle, and it was a perfect morning to be
reading a book beside the river.

But on the horizon the bombardment bumped and thudded in a continuous
bubbling grumble. After a long stare at sun-flecked foliage and idly
reflective alleys I bustled back to the farmyard to find my platoon all
present and correct. Before I'd finished my formal inspection Barton
emerged from the house with bulging pockets, his burly figure hung like
a Christmas tree with haversack, water-bottle, revolver, field-glasses,
gas-mask, map-case, and other oddments. The Battalion moved off at eight
o'clock; by twelve-thirty it was at Morlancourt, which was now congested
with infantry and supply columns, and 'lousy with guns' as the saying
was. A colony of camouflage-daubed tents had sprung up close to the
village; this was the New Main Dressing Station. We were in our usual
billets--Durley and I in the room containing a representation of the
Eiffel Tower and a ludicrous oleograph of our Saviour preaching from a
boat, which we always referred to as jocular Jesus. After a sultry
dinner, the day ended with torrents of rain. While I lay on the floor in
my flea-bag the blackness of the night framed in the window was lit with
incessant glare and flash of guns. But I fell asleep to the sound of
full gutters and rainwater gurgling and trickling into a well, and those
were comfortable noises, for they signified that I had a roof over my
head. As for my flea-bag, it was no hardship; I have never slept more
soundly in any bed.

                          *        *        *

Operation Orders were circulated next morning. They notified us that
Thursday was 'Z' (or zero) day. The Seventh Division Battle Plan didn't
look aggressively unpleasant on paper as I transcribed it into my
note-book. Rose Trench, Orchard Alley, Apple Alley, and Willow Avenue,
were among the first objectives in our sector, and my mind very properly
insisted on their gentler associations. Nevertheless this topographical
Arcadia was to be seized, cleared, and occupied when the historic moment
arrived and in conjunction with the French the Fourth Army took the
offensive, establishing as a primary objective a line
Montauban-Pozières, passing to the south of Mametz Wood. There wasn't
going to be any mistake about it this time. We decided, with quite a
glow of excitement, that the Fourth Army was going to fairly wipe the
floor with the Bodies. In the meantime our Corps Intelligence Summary
(known as _Comic Cuts_) reported on June 27th that three enemy balloons
had been set on fire and destroyed on the previous afternoon; also that
a large number of enemy batteries had been silenced by our artillery.
The anonymous humorist who compiled _Comic Cuts_ was also able to
announce that the Russians had captured a redoubt and some heavy guns at
Czartovijsk, which, he explained, was forty-four miles north-east of
Luck. At Martinpuich a large yellowish explosion had been observed. On
Tuesday afternoon I went up to the Line with Durley, on some preliminary
errand, for we were to relieve a battalion of the Border Regiment next
day, in the sector in front of Fricourt Cemetery. Our Batteries were
firing strenuously all along the countryside, with very little
retaliation.

As we passed the gun-pits where some Heavies were hidden in a hollow
called Gibraltar, I remarked on a sickly sweet smell which I attributed
to the yellow weeds which were abundant there, but Durley explained that
it was the lingering aroma of gas-shells. When we rode down the slope to
71. North that familiar resort appeared much the same as usual, except
for the impressive accumulations of war material which were dumped along
the road. Durley remarked that he supposed the old spot would never be
the same again after this week; and already it seemed to us as if the
old days when Mansfield and Ormand were with our company had become an
experience to be looked back on with regret. The Bois Français sector
had been a sort of village, but we should soon be leaving it behind us
in our vindictive explorations of Rose Trench, Apple Alley, and Willow
Avenue.

On our way up to the front-line we met a staff-officer who was wearing
well-cut riding boots and evidently in a hurry to rejoin his horse.
Larks were rejoicing aloft, and the usual symbolic scarlet poppies
lolled over the sides of the communication trench; but he squeezed past
us without so much as a nod, for the afternoon was too noisy to be
idyllic, in spite of the larks and poppies which were so popular with
war-correspondents. "I suppose those brass-hats do know a hell of a lot
about it all, don't they, Julian?" I queried. Durley replied that he
hoped they'd learnt something since last autumn when they'd allowed the
infantry to educate themselves at Loos, regardless of expense. "They've
got to learn their job as they go along, like the rest of us," he added
sagely. Five sausage balloons were visible beyond the sky-line,
peacefully tethered to their mother earth. It was our duty to desire
their destruction, and to believe that Corps Intelligence had the matter
well in hand. What we did up in the Front Line I don't remember; but
while we were remounting our horses at 71. North two privates were
engaged in a good-humoured scuffle; one had the other's head under his
arm. Why should I remember that and forget so much else?

                          *        *        *

Wednesday morning was miserably wet. Junior officers, being at a loss to
know where to put themselves, were continually meeting one another along
the muddy street, and gathering in groups to exchange cheerful remarks;
there was little else to be done, and solitude produced the sinking
sensation appropriate to the circumstances. The men were in their
billets, and they too were keeping their spirits up as vocally as they
could. At noon Barton came back from the Colonel's final conference of
company commanders. A couple of hours later the anti-climax arrived. We
were told that all arrangements for the show were in temporary abeyance.
A popular song, _All dressed up and nowhere to go_, provided the obvious
comment, and our confidence in Operation Orders oozed away. Was it the
wet weather, we wondered, or had the artillery preparation been
inadequate? Uncertainty ended with an inanimate message; we were to go
up to the line that evening. The attack was postponed forty-eight hours.
No one knew why.

At five o'clock C Company fell in, about eighty strong. The men were
without packs; they carried extra ammunition, two Mills bombs, two smoke
helmets, and a waterproof sheet with jersey rolled inside; their
emergency rations consisted of two tins of bully beef, eight hard
biscuits, and canteen packed with grocery ration. In spite of the
anti-climax (which had made us feel that perhaps this was only going to
be a second edition of the Battle of Loos) my personal impression was
that we were setting out for the other end of nowhere. I had slipped a
book into my haversack and it was a comfort to be carrying it, for
Thomas Hardy's England was between its covers. But if any familiar
quotation was in my mind during the bustle of departure, it may well
have been 'we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can
carry nothing out of it.' We had trudged that way up to the Citadel and
71. North many times before; but never in such a blood-red light as now,
when we halted with the sunset behind us and the whole sky mountainous
with the magnificence of retreating rainclouds. Tours of trenches had
been routine, with an ordinary chance of casualties. But this time we
seemed to have left Morlancourt behind us for ever, and even a single
company of Flintshire Fusiliers (with a ten minute interval between it
and B and D Companies) was justified in feeling that the eyes of Europe
were upon it. As for myself, I felt nothing worth recording--merely a
sense of being irrevocably involved in something bigger than had ever
happened before. And the symbolism of the sunset was wasted on the rank
and file, who were concerned with the not infrequent badness of their
boots, the discomfort caused by perspiration, and the toils and troubles
of keeping pace with what was required of them till further notice. By
nine o'clock we had relieved the Border Regiment. The mud was bad, but
the sky was clear. The bombardment went on steadily, with periods of
intensity; but that infernal shindy was taken for granted and was an aid
to optimism. I felt rather lonely without Durley, who had been left
behind with the dozen officers who were in reserve.

New Trench, which we took over, had been a good deal knocked about, but
we passed an unharassed night. We were opposite Sunken Road Trench,
which was 300 yards away up a slope. Gaps had been cut in our wire for
the attacking battalion to pass through. Early on the next afternoon
Kinjack came up to inspect the gaps. With the assistance of his big
periscope he soon discovered that the wire wasn't properly cut. It must
be done that night, he said. Barton brought me the news. I was huddled
up in a little dog-kennel of a dug-out, reading _Tess of the
D'Urbervilles_ and trying to forget about the shells which were hurrying
and hurrooshing overhead. I was meditating about England, visualizing a
grey day down in Sussex; dark green woodlands with pigeons circling
above the tree-tops; dogs barking, cocks crowing, and all the casual
tappings and twinklings of the countryside. I thought of the huntsman
walking out in his long white coat with the hounds; of Parson Colwood
pulling up weeds in his garden till tea-time; of Captain Huxtable
helping his men get in the last load of hay while a shower of rain moved
along the blurred Weald below his meadows. It was for all that, I
supposed, that I was in the front-line with soaked feet, trench-mouth,
and feeling short of sleep, for the previous night had been vigilant
though uneventful. Barton's head and shoulders butting past the
gas-blanket in the dug-out doorway wrecked my reverie; he wanted me to
come out and have a squint at the uncut wire, which was no day-dream
since it was going to affect the fortunes of a still undiminished New
Army Battalion. Putting _Tess_ in my pocket, I followed him to the
fire-trench, which was cumbered with gas-cylinders and boxes of
smoke-bombs. A smoke-cloud was to be let off later in the afternoon, for
no special reason (except, perhaps, to make us cough and wipe our eyes,
since what wind there was blew the smoke along our trench). Shells were
banging away on the rising ground behind Fricourt and the low ridge of
Contalmaison. A young yellow-hammer was fluttering about in the trench,
and I wondered how it had got there: it seemed out of place, perching on
a body which lay trussed in a waterproof sheet. As for the gaps in the
wire, they looked too bad for words and only one night remained for
widening them.

When I was back in the dug-out I found myself fingering with pardonable
pride my two pairs of wire-cutters from the Army and Navy Stores. It is
possible that I over-estimated their usefulness, but their presence did
seem providential. Any fool could foresee what happened when troops got
bunched up as they left their trench for a daylight attack; and I knew
that, in spite of obstinate indentations to the source of supplies, we
hadn't got a decent pair of wire-cutters in the Battalion.

The big bugs back at Brigade and Divisional H.Q. were studying
trench-maps with corrugated brows, for the 'greatest battle in history'
was timed to explode on Saturday morning. They were too busy to concern
themselves with the ant-like activities of individual platoon
commanders, and if they sent a sympathetic Staff Captain up to have a
look round he couldn't produce wire-cutters like a conjurer. But the
fact remained that insistence on small (and often irrelevant) details
was a proverbial characteristic of Staff organization, and on the eve of
battle poor old Barton would probably be filling in a 'return' stating
how many men in his company had got varicose veins or married their
deceased wife's sister. In the meantime my casual purchase at 'the
Stores' had, perhaps, lessened the likelihood of the Manchesters getting
bunched up and mown down by machine-guns when they went over the top to
attack Sunken Road Trench. And what would the Manchesters say about the
Flintshire Fusiliers if the wire wasn't properly cut? So it seemed to me
that our prestige as a Regular Battalion had been entrusted to my care
on a front of several hundred yards.

Anyhow I was ready with my party as soon as it began to be dark. There
were only eight of them (mostly from the other companies) and we were
unable to do anything before midnight owing to rather lively shelling. I
remember waiting there in the gloom and watching an unearthly little
conflagration caused by some phosphorus bombs up the hill on our right.
When we did get started I soon discovered that cutting tangles of barbed
wire in the dark in a desperate hurry is a job that needs ingenuity,
even when your wire-cutters have rubber-covered handles and are fresh
from the Army and Navy Stores. More than once we were driven in by
shells which landed in front of our trench (some of them were our own
dropping short); two men were wounded and some of the others were
reluctant to resume work. In the first greying of dawn only three of us
were still at it. Kendle (a nineteen year old lance-corporal from my
platoon) and Worgan (one of the tough characters of our company) were
slicing away for all they were worth; but as the light increased I began
to realize the unimpressive effect of the snippings and snatchings which
had made such a mess of our leather gloves. We had been working three
and a half hours but the hedge hadn't suffered much damage, it seemed.
Kendle disappeared into the trench and sauntered back to me, puffing a
surreptitious Woodbine. I was making a last onslaught on a clawing
thicket which couldn't have been more hostile if it had been put there
by the Germans. "We can't do any more in this daylight," said Kendle. I
straightened my stiff and weary back and looked at him. His jaunty
fag-smoking demeanour and freckled boyish face seemed to defy the
darkness we had emerged from. That moment has impressed itself strongly
on my memory; young Kendle was remarkable for his cheerfulness and
courage, and his cheeky jokes. Many a company had its Kendle, until the
war broke his spirit.... The large solicitous countenance of old man
Barton now appeared above the parapet; with almost aunt-like anxiety he
urged us to come in before we got sniped. But there had been no sniping
that night, and the machine-gun at Wing Corner had been silent. Wing
Corner was at the edge of the skeleton village of Fricourt, whose
ruinous church tower was now distinctly visible against the dark green
wood. The Germans, coming up from their foundering dug-outs, would soon
be staring grimly across at us while they waited for the relentless
bombardment to begin again. As we got down into the trench young Kendle
remarked that my new wire-cutters were a fair treat.

                          *        *        *

Next day, in warm and breezy weather, we moved to our battle-assembly
position. For C Company 'battle-assembly position' meant being broken up
into ammunition-carrying parties, while Barton, Jenkins, and myself
occupied an inglorious dug-out in the support line. The Manchesters were
due to relieve us at 9 a.m., but there was still no sign of them at
10.30, so Barton, who was in a free and easy mood (caused by our
immunity from to-morrow's attack) led the company away and left New
Trench to look after itself. I had made up my mind to have another cut
at the wire, which I now regarded with personal enmity, enjoying at the
same time a self-admiring belief that much depended on my efforts.
Worgan stayed behind with me. Kendle was unwilling to be left out of the
adventure, but two of us would be less conspicuous than three, and my
feeling for Kendle was somewhat protective. It was queer to be in an
empty front-line trench on a fine morning, with everything quite
peaceful after a violent early bombardment. Queerer still to be creeping
about in the long grass (which might well have been longer, I thought),
and shearing savagely at the tangles which had bewildered us in the dark
but were now at our mercy. As Worgan said, we were giving it a proper
hair-cut this journey.

Lying on my stomach I glanced now and again at the hostile slope which
overlooked us, wondering whether anyone would take a pot-shot at us, or
speculating on a possible visitation of machine-gun bullets from Wing
Corner. Barton's ignorance of what we were doing made it seem like an
escapade, and the excitement was by no means disagreeable. It was rather
like going out to weed a neglected garden after being warned that there
might be a tiger among the gooseberry bushes. I should have been
astonished if someone could have told me that I was an interesting
example of human egotism. Yet such was the truth. I was cutting the wire
by daylight because commonsense warned me that the lives of several
hundred soldiers might depend on it being done properly. I was excited
and pleased with myself while I was doing it. And I had entirely
forgotten that to-morrow Six Army Corps would attack, and whatever else
happened, a tragic slaughter was inevitable. But if I had been
intelligent enough to realize all that, my talents would have been
serving in some more exalted place, probably Corps Intelligence
Headquarters. Anyhow, at the end of an hour and a half the gaps were
real good ones, and Barton's red face and glittering pince-nez were
bobbing up and down beyond the parapet with _sotto-voce_ incitements to
prudence. Soon afterwards we dropped into the trench and the Manchesters
began to arrive. It had been great fun, I said, flourishing my
wire-cutters.

                          *        *        *

Early in the afternoon the Doctor bustled up from Battalion Headquarters
to tell me that my M.C. had come through. This gratifying little event
increased my blindness to the blood-stained future. Homeliness and
humanity beamed in Barton's congratulations; and the little doctor, who
would soon be dressing the wounds of moaning men, unpicked his own faded
medal-ribbon, produced a needle and thread, and sewed the white and
purple portent on to my tunic. For the rest of the day and, indeed, for
the remainder of my military career, the left side of my chest was more
often in my mind than the right--a habit which was common to a multitude
of wearers of Military Cross ribbons. Books about war psychology ought
to contain a chapter on 'medal-reflexes' and 'decoration complexes'.
Much might be written, even here, about medals and their stimulating
effect on those who really risked their lives for them. But the safest
thing to be said is that nobody knew how much a decoration was worth
except the man who received it. Outwardly the distribution of them
became more and more fortuitous and debased as the War went on; and no
one knew it better than the infantry, who rightly insisted that
medal-ribbons earned at the Base ought to be a different colour.

But I must return to June 30th, which ended with a sullen bombardment
from the British guns and a congestion of troops in the support trench
outside our dug-out. They had lost their way, and I remember how the
exhausted men propped themselves against the sides of the trench while
their exasperated Adjutant and a confused civilian Colonel grumbled to
Barton about the ambiguity of their operation orders. They were to
attack on our left, and they vanished in that direction, leaving me with
my Military Cross and a foreboding that disaster awaited them. Since
they came within the limited zone of my observations I can record the
fact that they left their trench early next morning at a wrong zero hour
and got badly cut up by the artillery support which ought to have made
things easy for them.


[II]

On July the first the weather, after an early morning mist, was of the
kind commonly called heavenly. Down in our frowsty cellar we breakfasted
at six, unwashed and apprehensive. Our table, appropriately enough, was
an empty ammunition-box. At six-forty-five the final bombardment began,
and there was nothing for us to do except sit round our candle until the
tornado ended. For more than forty minutes the air vibrated and the
earth rocked and shuddered. Through the sustained uproar the tap and
rattle of machine-guns could be identified; but except for the whistle
of bullets no retaliation came our way until a few 5.9 shells shook the
roof of our dug-out. Barton and I sat speechless, deafened and stupefied
by the seismic state of affairs, and when he lit a cigarette the match
flame staggered crazily. Afterwards I asked him what he had been
thinking about. His reply was "Carpet slippers and Kettle-holders". My
own mind had been working in much the same style, for during that
cannonading cataclysm the following refrain was running in my head:

    _They come as a boon and a blessing to men,_
    _The Something, the Owl, and the Waverley Pen._

For the life of me I couldn't remember what the first one was called.
Was it the Shakespeare? Was it the Dickens? Anyhow it was an
advertisement which I'd often seen in smoky railway stations. Then the
bombardment lifted and lessened, our vertigo abated, and we looked at
one another in dazed relief. Two Brigades of our Division were now going
over the top on our right. Our Brigade was to attack 'when the main
assault had reached its final objective'. In our fortunate rôle of
privileged spectators Barton and I went up the stairs to see what we
could from Kingston Road Trench. We left Jenkins crouching in a corner,
where he remained most of the day. His haggard blinking face haunts my
memory. He was an example of the paralysing effect which such an
experience could produce on a nervous system sensitive to noise, for he
was a good officer both before and afterwards. I felt no sympathy for
him at the time, but I do now. From the support trench, which Barton
called 'our opera box', I observed as much of the battle as the
formation of the country allowed, the rising ground on the right making
it impossible to see anything of the attack towards Mametz. A small
shiny black note-book contains my pencilled particulars, and nothing
will be gained by embroidering them with afterthoughts. I cannot turn my
field-glasses on to the past.

                          *        *        *

7.45. The barrage is now working to the right of Fricourt and beyond. I
can see the 21st Division advancing about three-quarters of a mile away
on the left and a few Germans coming to meet them, apparently
surrendering. Our men in small parties (not extended in line) go
steadily on to the German front-line. Brilliant sunshine and a haze of
smoke drifting along the landscape. Some Yorkshires a little way below
on the left, watching the show and cheering as if at a football match.
The noise almost as bad as ever.

9.30. Came back to dug-out and had a shave. 21st Division still going
across the open, apparently without casualties. The sunlight flashes on
bayonets as the tiny figures move quietly forward and disappear beyond
mounds of trench debris. A few runners come back and ammunition parties
go across. Trench-mortars are knocking hell out of Sunken Road trench
and the ground where the Manchester will attack soon. Noise not so bad
now and very little retaliation.

9.50. Fricourt half-hidden by clouds of drifting smoke, blue, pinkish
and grey. Shrapnel bursting in small bluish-white puffs with tiny
flashes. The birds seem bewildered; a lark begins to go up and then
flies feebly along, thinking better of it. Others flutter above the
trench with querulous cries, weak on the wing. I can see seven of our
balloons, on the right. On the left our men still filing across in
twenties and thirties. Another huge explosion in Fricourt and a cloud of
brown-pink smoke. Some bursts are yellowish.

10.5. I can see the Manchesters down in New Trench, getting ready to go
over. Figures filing down the trench. Two of them have gone out to look
at our wire gaps! Have just eaten my last orange.... I am staring at
a sunlit picture of Hell, and still the breeze shakes the yellow weeds,
and the poppies glow under Crawley Ridge where some shells fell a few
minutes ago. Manchesters are sending forward some scouts. A bayonet
glitters. A runner comes back across the open to their Battalion
Headquarters, close here on the right, 21st Division still trotting
along the sky-line toward La Boisselle. Barrage going strong to the
right of Contalmaison Ridge. Heavy shelling toward Mametz.

12.15. Quieter the last two hours. Manchesters still waiting. Germans
putting over a few shrapnel shells. Silly if I got hit! Weather
cloudless and hot. A lark singing confidently overhead.

1.30. Manchesters attack at 2.30. Mametz and Montauban reported taken.
Mametz consolidated.

2.30. Manchesters left New Trench and apparently took Sunken Road
Trench, bearing rather to the right. Could see about 400. Many walked
casually across with sloped arms. There were about forty casualties on
the left (from machine-gun in Fricourt). Through my glasses I could see
one man moving his left arm up and down as he lay on his side; his face
was a crimson patch. Others lay still in the sunlight while the swarm of
figures disappeared over the hill. Fricourt was a cloud of pinkish
smoke. Lively machine-gun fire on the far side of the hill. At 2.50 no
one to be seen in No Man's Land except the casualties (about half-way
across). Our dug-out shelled again since 2.30.

5.0. I saw about thirty of our A Company crawl across to Sunken Road
from New Trench. Germans put a few big shells on the Cemetery and
traversed Kingston Road with machine-gun. Manchester wounded still out
there. Remainder of A Company went across--about 100 altogether.
Manchesters reported held up in Bois Français Support. Their Colonel
went across and was killed.

8.0. Staff Captain of our Brigade has been along. Told Barton that
Seventh Division has reached its objectives with some difficulty, except
on this Brigade front. Manchesters are in trouble, and Fricourt attack
has failed. Several hundred prisoners brought in on our sector.

9.30. Our A Company holds Rectangle and Sunken Road. Jenkins gone off in
charge of a carrying-party. Seemed all right again. C Company now
reduced to six runners, two stretcher-bearers, Company-Sergeant-Major,
signallers, and Barton's servant. Flook away on carrying-party. Sky
cloudy westward. Red sunset. Heavy gun-fire on the left.

2.30. (Next afternoon.) Adjutant has just been up here, excited,
optimistic, and unshaven. He went across last night to ginger up A
Company who did very well, thanks to the bombers. About 40 casualties;
only 4 killed. Fricourt and Rose Trench occupied this morning without
resistance. I am now lying out in front of our trench in the long grass,
basking in sunshine where yesterday there were bullets. Our new
front-line on the hill is being shelled. Fricourt is full of troops
wandering about in search of souvenirs. The village was a ruin and is
now a dust heap. A gunner (Forward Observation Officer) has just been
along here with a German helmet in his hand. Said Fricourt is full of
dead; he saw one officer lying across a smashed machine-gun with his
head bashed in--"a fine looking chap," he said, with some emotion, which
rather surprised me.

8.15. Queer feeling, seeing people moving about freely between here and
Fricourt. Dumps being made. Shacks and shelters being put up under
skeleton trees and all sorts of transport arriving at Cemetery Cross
Roads. We stay here till to-morrow morning. Feel a bit of a fraud.


[III]

Early next morning we took leave of our subterranean sanctuary in
Kingston Road, joined the Battalion at 71. North, and marched a couple
of miles to a concentration point between Mametz and Carnoy. There, in a
wide hollow, the four units of our Brigade piled arms, lay down on the
grass, and took their boots off. Most of them had been without sleep for
two nights and the immediate forecast was 'murky'. But every man had a
waterproof sheet to sit on, helmets were exchanged for woollen caps,
unshaven faces felt gratitude for generous sunshine, and bare feet
stretched contented toes. Our Division having done well, there was a
confident feeling in the air. But we had heard of partial and complete
failures in other parts of the line, and the name of Gommecourt had
already reached us with ugly implications. It was obvious that some of
us would soon be lacing up our boots for the last time, and the current
rumour, "They say we've got to attack some Wood or other," could not
fail to cause an uneasy visceral sensation. However one felt that big
things were happening, and my Military Cross was a comfort to me. It was
a definite personal possession to be lived up to, I thought. I watched
the men dozing in odd ungainly attitudes, half listened to their talk
about the souvenirs they'd picked up in the German trenches, or stared
at some captured guns being brought down the lane which led to Mametz.

A few of the men were wandering about, and my meditations were disturbed
by Kinjack, who had given orders that everyone was to rest all day.
"Tell those men to lie down," he shouted, adding--as he returned to his
bivouac on the slope--"The bastards'll be glad to before they're much
older." It was believed that his brusque manners had prevented him
getting promotion, but everyone knew that it would be a bad day for the
Battalion when Kinjack got his Brigade.

Evening fell calm and overcast, with a blurred orange sunset. Sitting
among rank grass and thistles I stared pensively down at the four
Battalions grouped in the hollow. Thin smoke rose from the little
bivouac fires which had been used for tea making; among the gruff
murmuring which came up with the smoke, the nasal chant of a mouth organ
did its best to 'keep the home fires burning'. In front of the hollow
the open ground sloped treeless to Bazentin Ridge, dull green and
striped with seams of trenches cut in the chalky soil. Field-guns were
firing on the right and some aeroplanes hummed overhead. Beyond that
hill our future awaited us. There could be no turning back from
it.... I would have liked Flook to bring me an orange, but he was
away with Jenkins and the carrying-party, and oranges were almost as
remote as the sunset. Poor Flook will be awfully worried about not being
with his officer-bloke, I thought, imagining his stolid red face puffing
along under a box of ammunition.... I went down the hill just in time
to hear that we'd got orders to go up and dig a trench somewhere in
front of Mametz.

For a few minutes the hollow was full of the subdued hubbub and
commotion of troops getting into their equipment. Two battalions had
been called out; the Royal Irish moved off ahead of us. As we went up
the lane toward Mametz I felt that I was leaving all my previous war
experience behind me. For the first time I was among the debris of an
attack. After going a very short distance we made the first of many
halts, and I saw, arranged by the roadside, about fifty of the British
dead. Many of them were Gordon Highlanders. There were Devons and South
Staffordshires among them, but they were beyond regimental rivalry
now--their fingers mingled in blood-stained bunches, as though
acknowledging the companionship of death. There was much battle gear
lying about, and some dead horses. There were rags and shreds of
clothing, boots riddled and torn, and when we came to the old German
front-line, a sour pervasive stench which differed from anything my
nostrils had known before. Meanwhile we made our continually retarded
progress up the hill, and I scrutinized these battle effects with
partially complacent curiosity. I wanted to be able to say that I had
seen 'the horrors of war'; and here they were, nearly three days old.

No one in the glumly halted column knew what was delaying us. After four
hours we had only progressed 1,500 yards and were among some ruined
buildings on the outskirts of the village. I have dim remembrance of the
strangeness of the place and our uneasy dawdling in its midnight
desolation. Kinjack was somewhere ahead of us with a guide. The guide,
having presumably lost his way, was having a much hotter time than we
were. So far we had done nothing except file past a tool-dump, where the
men had collected picks, shovels, coils of wire, and corkscrew stakes.
At 2 a.m. we really began to move, passing through Mametz and along a
communication trench. There were some badly mangled bodies about.
Although I'd been with the Battalion nearly eight months, these were the
first newly dead Germans I had seen. It gave me a bit of a shock when I
saw, in the glimmer of daybreak, a dumpy, baggy-trousered man lying half
sideways with one elbow up as if defending his lolling head; the face
was grey and waxen, with a stiff little moustache; he looked like a
ghastly doll, grotesque and undignified. Beside him was a scorched and
mutilated figure whose contorted attitude revealed bristly cheeks, a
grinning blood-smeared mouth and clenched teeth. These dead were unlike
our own; perhaps it was the strange uniform, perhaps their look of
butchered hostility. Anyhow they were one with the little trench
direction boards whose unfamiliar lettering seemed to epitomize that
queer feeling I used to have when I stared across No Man's Land,
ignorant of the humanity which was on the other side.

Leaving the trench we filed across the open hillside with Mametz Wood
looming on the opposite slope. It was a dense wood of old trees and
undergrowth. The Staff of our Division had assumed that the near side
was now unoccupied. But as soon as we had halted in a sunken road an
uproar broke out at the edge of the wood, which demonstrated with
machine-guns and bombs that the Staff had guessed wrong.

Kinjack promptly ordered A Company forward to get in touch with the
Royal Irish, whose covering parties were having a bombing fight in the
Wood. Our men were fired on as they went along the road and forced to
take cover in a quarry. I remember feeling nervous and incompetent while
I wondered what on earth I should do if called on to lead a party out
'into the blue'. But the clouds were now reddening, and we were fed-up
with the whole performance. Messages went back and our guns chucked a
lot of shrapnel which burst over the near side of the Wood and enabled
the Irish to withdraw. We then, as Kinjack described it afterwards, 'did
a guy'; but it was a slow one for we weren't back at our camping ground
until 8.30 a.m. The expedition had lasted nearly eleven hours and we had
walked less than three miles, which was about all we could congratulate
ourselves on. The Royal Irish had had sixty casualties; we had one
killed and four wounded. From a military point of view the operations
had enabled the Staff to discover that Mametz Wood was still full of
Germans, so that it was impossible to dig a trench on the bluff within
fifty yards of it, as had been suggested. It was obvious now that a few
strong patrols could have clarified the situation more economically than
1,000 men with picks and shovels. The necessary information had been
obtained, however, and the Staff could hardly be expected to go up and
investigate such enigmas for themselves. But this sort of warfare was a
new experience for all of us, and the difficulties of extempore
organization must have been considerable.

                          *        *        *

During the morning we were a silent battalion, except for snoring. Some
eight-inch guns were firing about 200 yards from the hollow, but our
slumbers were inured to noises which would have kept us wide awake in
civilian life. We were lucky to be dry, for the sky was overcast. At one
o'clock our old enemy the rain arrived in full force. Four hours' deluge
left the troops drenched and disconsolate, and then Dottrell made one of
his providential appearances with the rations. Dixies of hot tea, and
the rum issue, made all the difference to our outlook. It seemed to me
that the Quartermaster symbolized that region of temporary security
which awaited us when our present adversities were ended. He had a
cheery word for everyone, and his jocularity was judicious. What were
the jokes he made, I wonder? Their helpfulness must be taken for
granted. I can only remember his chaffing an officer named Woolman,
whose dumpy figure had bulged abnormally since we came up to the battle
area. Woolman's young lady in England had sent him a bullet-proof
waistcoat; so far it had only caused its wearer to perspire profusely;
and although reputed to be extremely vulnerable, it had inspired a
humorist in his company to refer to him as 'Asbestos Bill'.

Time seems to have obliterated the laughter of the war. I cannot hear it
in my head. How strange such laughter would sound, could I but recover
it as it was on such an evening as I am describing, when we all knew
that we'd got to do an attack that night; for short-sighted Barton and
the other company commanders had just returned from a reconnaissance of
the ground which had left them little wiser than when they started. In
the meantime we'd got some rum inside us and could find something to
laugh about. Our laughter leapt up, like the flames of camp fires in the
dusk, soon to be stamped out, or extinguished by our impartial opponent
the rain. The consoling apparition of Dottrell departed, and I don't
suppose he did much laughing once he was alone with his homeward
rattling limbers.

Zero hour was forty-five minutes after midnight. Two companies were to
attack on a 600 yard front and the Royal Irish were to do the same on
our right. Barton's company was to be in reserve; owing to the absence
of the carrying-party it could only muster about thirty men.

At nine o'clock we started up the sunken road to Mametz. As a result of
the rain, yesterday's dry going had been trodden to a quagmire. Progress
was slow owing to the congestion of troops in front. We had only a
couple of thousand yards to go, but at one time it seemed unlikely that
the assaulting companies would be in position by zero hour. It was pitch
dark as we struggled through the mud, and we got there with fifteen
minutes to spare, having taken three and a half hours to go a mile and a
quarter.

Barton arranged his men along a shallow support trench on the edge of
Bottom Wood, which was a copse just to the left of the ground we'd
visited the night before. Almost at once the short preliminary
bombardment began and the darkness became diabolic with the din and
flash of the old old story. Not for the first time--I wondered whether
shells ever collided in the air. Silence and suspense came after. Barton
and I talked in undertones; he thought I'd better borrow his electric
torch and find out the nearest way to Battalion Headquarters.

Everyone was anonymous in the dark, but "It's me, Kendle, Sir," from a
looming figure beside me implied an intention to share my explorations.
We groped our way into the wood, and very soon I muttered that unless we
were careful we'd get lost, which was true enough, for my sense of
direction had already become uncertain. While we hesitated, some shells
exploded all round us in the undergrowth with an effect of crashing
stupidity. But we laughed, encouraging each other with mutual bravado,
until we found a path. Along this path came someone in a hurry. He
bumped into me and I flashed the torch on his face. He was an officer
who had joined us the week before. He had now lost all control of
himself and I gathered from his incoherent utterances that he was on his
way to Headquarters to tell Kinjack that his Company hadn't moved yet
because they didn't know which way to go to find the Germans. This
wasn't surprising; but I felt alarmed about his reception at
Headquarters, for Kinjack had already got an idea that this poor devil
was 'cold-footed'. So, with an assumption of ferocity, I pulled out my
automatic pistol, gripped him by the shoulder, and told him that if he
didn't go straight back to 'Asbestos Bill' I'd shoot him, adding that
Kinjack would certainly shoot him if he rolled up at Headquarters with
such a story and in such a state of 'wind-up'. This sobered him and he
took my advice, though I doubt whether he did any damage to the Germans.
(Ten days later he was killed in what I can only call a _bona fide_
manner.) So far, I thought, my contribution to this attack is a queer
one; I have saved one of our officers from being court-martialled for
cowardice. I then remarked to Kendle that this seemed to be the shortest
way to Battalion Headquarters and we found our own way back to Barton
without further incident. I told Barton that 'Asbestos Bill' seemed to
be marking time, in spite of his bullet-proof waistcoat.

The men were sitting on the rough-hewn fire-step, and soon we were all
dozing. Barton's bulky figure nodded beside me, and Kendle fell fast
asleep with his head against my shoulder. We remained like this until my
luminous watch indicated twenty past two. Then a runner arrived with a
verbal message. "C Company bombers to go up at once." With a dozen men
behind me I followed him through Bottom Wood. Darkness was giving way to
unrevealing twilight as we emerged from the trees and went up a
shell-pitted slope. It was about 500 yards across the open to the newly
captured Quadrangle Trench. Just before we got there a second runner
overtook us to say that my bombers were to go back again. I sent them
back. I cannot say why I went on myself; but I did, and Kendle stayed
with me.

                          *        *        *

There wasn't much wire in front of Quadrangle Trench. I entered it at a
strong-point on the extreme left and found three officers sitting on the
fire-step with hunched shoulders and glum unenterprising faces. Two
others had gone away wounded. I was told that Edmunds, the Battalion
Observation Officer, had gone down to explain the situation to Kinjack;
we were in touch with the Northumberland Fusiliers on our left.
Nevertheless I felt that there must be something to be done. Exploring
to the right I found young Fernby, whose demeanour was a contrast to the
apathetic trio in the sand-bagged strong-point. Fernby had only been out
from England a few weeks but he appeared quite at home in his new
surroundings. His face showed that he was exulting in the fact that he
didn't feel afraid. He told me that no one knew what had happened on our
right; the Royal Irish were believed to have failed. We went along the
trench which was less than waist deep. The Germans had evidently been
digging when we attacked, and had left their packs and other equipment
ranged along the reverse edge of the trench. I stared about me; the
smoke-drifted twilight was alive with intense movement, and there was a
wild strangeness in the scene which somehow excited me. Our men seemed a
bit out of hand and I couldn't see any of the responsible N.C.O.s; some
of the troops were firing excitedly at the Wood; others were rummaging
in the German packs. Fernby said that we were being sniped from the
trees on both sides. Mametz Wood was a menacing wall of gloom, and now
an outburst of rapid thudding explosions began from that direction.
There was a sap from the Quadrangle to the Wood, and along this the
Germans were bombing. In all this confusion I formed the obvious notion
that we ought to be deepening the trench. Daylight would be on us at
once, and we were along a slope exposed to enfilade fire from the Wood.
I told Fernby to make the men dig for all they were worth, and went to
the right with Kendle. The Germans had left a lot of shovels, but we
were making no use of them. Two tough-looking privates were disputing
the ownership of a pair of field-glasses, so I pulled out my pistol and
urged them, with ferocious objurgations, to chuck all that fooling and
dig. I seem to be getting pretty handy with my pistol, I thought, for
the conditions in Quadrangle Trench were giving me a sort of angry
impetus. In some places it was only a foot deep, and already men were
lying wounded and killed by sniping. There were high-booted German
bodies, too, and in the blear beginning of daylight they seemed as much
the victims of a catastrophe as the men who had attacked them. As I
stepped over one of the Germans an impulse made me lift him up from the
miserable ditch. Propped against the bank, his blond face was
undisfigured, except by the mud which I wiped from his eyes and mouth
with my coat sleeve. He'd evidently been killed while digging, for his
tunic was knotted loosely about his shoulders. He didn't look to be more
than eighteen. Hoisting him a little higher, I thought what a gentle
face he had, and remembered that this was the first time I'd ever
touched one of our enemies with my hands. Perhaps I had some dim sense
of the futility which had put an end to this good-looking youth. Anyhow
I hadn't expected the Battle of the Somme to be quite like this....
Kendle, who had been trying to do something for a badly wounded man, now
rejoined me, and we continued, mostly on all fours, along the dwindling
trench. We passed no one until we came to a bombing post--three
serious-minded men who said that no one had been further than that yet.
Being in an exploring frame of mind, I took a bag of bombs and crawled
another sixty or seventy yards with Kendle close behind me. The trench
became a shallow groove and ended where the ground overlooked a little
valley along which there was a light railway line. We stared across at
the Wood. From the other side of the valley came an occasional
rifle-shot, and a helmet bobbed up for a moment. Kendle remarked that
from that point anyone could see into the whole of our trench on the
slope behind us. I said we must have our strong-post here and told him
to go back for the bombers and a Lewis gun. I felt adventurous and it
seemed as if Kendle and I were having great fun together. Kendle thought
so too. The helmet bobbed up again. "I'll just have a shot at him," he
said, wriggling away from the crumbling bank which gave us cover. At
this moment Fernby appeared with two men and a Lewis gun. Kendle was
half kneeling against some broken ground; I remember seeing him push his
tin hat back from his forehead and then raise himself a few inches to
take aim. After firing once he looked at us with a lively smile; a
second later he fell sideways. A blotchy mark showed where the bullet
had hit him just above the eyes.

The circumstances being what they were, I had no justification for
feeling either shocked or astonished by the sudden extinction of
Lance-Corporal Kendle. But after blank awareness that he was killed, all
feelings tightened and contracted to a single intention--to 'settle that
sniper' on the other side of the valley. If I had stopped to think, I
shouldn't have gone at all. As it was, I discarded my tin hat and
equipment, slung a bag of bombs across my shoulder, abruptly informed
Fernby that I was going to find out who _was_ there, and set off at a
downhill double. While I was running I pulled the safety-pin out of a
Mills bomb; my right hand being loaded, I did the same for my left. I
mention this because I was obliged to extract the second safety-pin with
my teeth, and the grating sensation reminded me that I was half-way
across and not so reckless as I had been when I started. I was even a
little out of breath as I trotted up the opposite slope. Just before I
arrived at the top I slowed up and threw my two bombs. Then I rushed at
the bank, vaguely expecting some sort of scuffle with my imagined enemy.
I had lost my temper with the man who had shot Kendle; quite
unexpectedly, I found myself looking down into a well-conducted trench
with a great many Germans in it. Fortunately for me, they were already
retreating. It had not occurred to them that they were being attacked by
a single fool; and Fernby, with presence of mind which probably saved
me, had covered my advance by traversing the top of the trench with his
Lewis gun. I slung a few more bombs, but they fell short of the clumsy
field-grey figures, some of whom half turned to fire their rifles over
the left shoulder as they ran across the open toward the wood, while a
crowd of jostling helmets vanished along the trench. Idiotically elated,
I stood there with my finger in my right ear and emitted a series of
'view-holloas' (a gesture which ought to win the approval of people who
still regard war as a form of outdoor sport). Having thus failed to
commit suicide, I proceeded to occupy the trench--that is to say I sat
down on the fire-step, very much out of breath, and hoped to God the
Germans wouldn't come back again.

The trench was deep and roomy, with a fine view of our men in the
Quadrangle, but I had no idea what to do now I had got possession of it.
The word 'consolidation' passed through my mind; but I couldn't
consolidate by myself. Naturally, I didn't underestimate the magnitude
of my achievement in capturing the trench on which the Royal Irish had
made a frontal attack in the dark. Nevertheless, although still unable
to see that my success was only a lucky accident, I felt a bit queer in
my solitude, so I reinforced my courage by counting the sets of
equipment which had been left behind. There were between forty and fifty
packs, tidily arranged in a row--a fact which I often mentioned (quite
casually) when describing my exploit afterwards. There was the doorway
of a dug-out, but I only peered in at it, feeling safer above ground.
Then, with apprehensive caution, I explored about half-way to the Wood
without finding any dead bodies. Apparently no one was any the worse for
my little bombing demonstration. Perhaps I was disappointed by this,
though the discovery of a dead or wounded enemy might have caused a
revival of humane emotion. Returning to the sniping post at the end of
the trench I meditated for a few minutes, somewhat like a boy who has
caught a fish too big to carry home (if such an improbable event has
ever happened). Finally I took a deep breath and ran headlong back by
the way I'd come.

Little Fernby's anxious face awaited me, and I flopped down beside him
with an outburst of hysterical laughter. When he'd heard my story he
asked whether we oughtn't to send a party across to occupy the trench,
but I said that the Germans would be bound to come back quite soon.
Moreover my rapid return had attracted the attention of a machine-gun
which was now firing angrily along the valley from a position in front
of the Wood. In my excitement I had forgotten about Kendle. The sight of
his body gave me a bit of a shock. His face had gone a bluish colour; I
told one of the bombers to cover it with something. Then I put on my
web-equipment and its attachments, took a pull at my water-bottle, for
my mouth had suddenly become intolerably dry, and set off on my return
journey, leaving Fernby to look after the bombing post. It was now six
o'clock in the morning, and a weary business it is, to be remembering
and writing it down. There was nothing likeable about the Quadrangle,
though it was comfortable, from what I have heard, compared with the
hell which it became a few days afterwards. Alternately crouching and
crawling, I worked my way back. I passed the young German whose body I
had rescued from disfigurement a couple of hours before. He was down in
the mud again, and someone had trodden on his face. It disheartened me
to see him, though his body had now lost all touch with life and was
part of the wastage of the war. He and Kendle had cancelled one another
out in the process called 'attrition of man-power'. Further along I
found one of our men dying slowly with a hole in his forehead. His eyes
were open and he breathed with a horrible snoring sound. Close by him
knelt two of his former mates; one of them was hacking at the ground
with an entrenching tool while the other scooped the earth out of the
trench with his hands. They weren't worrying about souvenirs now.

Disregarding a written order from Barton, telling me to return, I
remained up in Quadrangle Trench all the morning. The enemy made a few
attempts to bomb their way up the sap from the Wood and in that
restricted area I continued to expend energy which was a result of
strained nerves. I mention this because, as the day went on, I
definitely wanted to kill someone at close quarters. If this meant that
I was really becoming a good 'fighting man', I can only suggest that, as
a human being, I was both exhausted and exasperated. My courage was of
the cock-fighting kind. Cock-fighting is illegal in England, but in July
1916 the man who could boast that he'd killed a German in the Battle of
the Somme would have been patted on the back by a bishop in a hospital
ward.

German stick-bombs were easy to avoid; they took eight seconds to
explode, and the throwers didn't hang on to them many seconds after
pulling the string. Anyhow, my feverish performances were concluded by a
peremptory message from Battalion H.Q. and I went down to Bottom Wood by
a half-dug communication trench whose existence I have only this moment
remembered (which shows how difficult it is to recover the details of
war experience).

It was nearly two o'clock, and the daylight was devoid of mystery when I
arrived at Kinjack's headquarters. The circumstances now made it
permissible for me to feel tired and hungry, but for the moment I rather
expected congratulations. My expectation was an error. Kinjack sat
glowering in a surface dug-out in a sand-pit at the edge of Bottom Wood.
I went in from the sunlight. The overworked Adjutant eyed me sadly from
a corner of an ammunition-box table covered with a grey blanket, and the
Colonel's face caused me to feel like a newly captured prisoner. Angrily
he asked why I hadn't come back with my company bombers in the early
morning. I said I'd stayed up there to see what was happening. Why
hadn't I consolidated Wood Trench? Why the hell hadn't I sent back a
message to let him know that it had been occupied? I made no attempt to
answer these conundrums. Obviously I'd made a mess of the whole affair.
The Corps Artillery bombardment had been held up for three hours because
Kinjack couldn't report that 'my patrol' had returned to Quadrangle
Trench, and altogether he couldn't be blamed for feeling annoyed with
me, especially as he'd been ticked off over the telephone by the
Brigadier (in Morse Code dots and dashes, I suppose). I looked at him
with a sulky grin, and went along to Barton with a splitting headache
and a notion that I ought to be thankful that I was back at all.

                          *        *        *

In the evening we were relieved. The incoming Battalion numbered more
than double our own strength (we were less than 400) and they were
unseasoned New Army troops. Our little trench under the trees was
inundated by a jostling company of exclamatory Welshmen. Kinjack would
have called them a panicky rabble. They were mostly undersized men, and
as I watched them arriving at the first stage of their battle experience
I had a sense of their victimization. A little platoon officer was
settling his men down with a valiant show of self-assurance. For the
sake of appearances, orders of some kind had to be given, though in
reality there was nothing to do except sit down and hope it wouldn't
rain. He spoke sharply to some of them, and I felt that they were like a
lot of children. It was going to be a bad look-out for two such
bewildered companies, huddled up in the Quadrangle, which had been
over-garrisoned by our own comparatively small contingent. Visualizing
that forlorn crowd of khaki figures under the twilight of the trees, I
can believe that I saw then, for the first time, how blindly War
destroys its victims. The sun had gone down on my own reckless
brandishings, and I understood the doomed condition of these half
trained civilians who had been sent up to attack the Wood. As we moved
out, Barton exclaimed, "By God, Kangar, I'm sorry for those poor
devils!" Dimly he pitied them, as well he might. Two days later the
Welsh Division, of which they were a unit, was involved in massacre and
confusion. Our own occupation of Quadrangle Trench was only a prelude to
that pandemonium which converted the green thickets of Mametz Wood to a
desolation of skeleton trees and blackening bodies.

In the meantime we willingly left them to their troubles and marched
back twelve miles to peace and safety. Mametz was being heavily shelled
when we stumbled wearily through its ruins, but we got off lightly,
though the first four miles took us four hours, owing to congestion of
transport and artillery on the roads round Fricourt. On the hill about
Bécordel we dozed for an hour in long wet grass, with stars overhead and
guns booming and flashing in the valleys below. Then, in the first
glimmer of a cold misty dawn, we trudged on to Heilly. We were there by
eight o'clock, in hot sunshine. Our camp was on a marsh by the river
Ancre--not a good camp when it rained (as it did before long) but a much
pleasanter place than the Somme battlefield.... After three hours'
sleep I was roused by Flook. All officers were required to attend the
Brigadier's conference. At this function there was no need for me to
open my mouth, except for an occasional yawn. Kinjack favoured me with a
good-humoured grin. He only made one further comment on my
non-consolidation of that fortuitously captured trench. He would
probably leave me out of the 'next show' as a punishment, he said. Some
people asserted that he had no sense of humour, but I venture to
disagree with them.


[IV]

Nobody had any illusions about the duration of our holiday at Heilly.
Our Division had been congratulated by the Commander-in-Chief, and our
Brigadier had made it clear that further efforts would be required of us
in the near future. In the meantime the troops contrived to be cheerful;
to be away from the battle and in a good village was all that mattered,
for the moment. Our casualties had not been heavy (we had lost about 100
men but only a dozen of them had been killed). There was some grumbling
on the second day, which was a wet one and reduced our camp to its
natural condition--a swamp; but the Army Commander paid us a brief (and
mercifully informal) visit, and this glimpse of his geniality made the
men feel that they had done creditably. Nevertheless, as he squelched
among the brown tents in his boots and spurs, more than one voice might
have been heard muttering, "Why couldn't the old ---- have dumped us in
a drier spot?" But the Fourth Army figure-head may well have been
absent-minded that afternoon, since the Welsh Division had attacked
Mametz Wood earlier in the day, and he must already have been digesting
the first reports, which reached us in wild rumours next morning.

Basking in the sunshine after breakfast with Barton and Durley, I felt
that to-day was all that concerned us. If there had been a disastrous
muddle, with troops stampeding under machine-gun fire, it was twelve
miles away and no business of ours until we were called upon to carry on
the good work. There were no parades to-day, and we were going into
Amiens for lunch--Dottrell and the Adjutant with us. Barton, with a
brown field-service note-book on his knee, was writing a letter to his
wife. "Do you always light your pipe with your left hand, Kangar?" he
asked, looking up as he tore another leaf out. I replied that I supposed
so, though I'd never noticed it before. Then I rambled on for a bit
about how unobservant one could be. I said (knowing that old man Barton
liked hearing about such things) "We've got a grandfather clock in the
hall at home and for years and years I thought the maker's name was
_Thos. Verney. London._ Then one day I decided to give the old brass
face a polish up and I found that it was _Thos. Vernon. Ludlow!_" Barton
thought this a pleasing coincidence because he lived in Shropshire and
had been to Ludlow Races. A square mile of Shropshire, he asserted, was
worth the whole of France. Durley (who was reading _Great Expectations_
with a face that expressed release from reality) put in a mild plea for
Stoke Newington, which was where he lived; it contained several quaint
old corners if you knew where to look for them, and must, he said, have
been quite a sleepy sort of place in Dickens's days. Reverting to my
original topic, I remarked, "We've got an old barometer, too, but it
never works. Ever since I can remember, it's pointed to _Expect Wet from
N.E._ Last time I was on leave I noticed that it's not _Expect_ but
_Except_--though goodness knows what that means!" My companions, who
were disinclined to be talkative, assured me that with such a brain I
ought to be on the Staff.

Strolling under the aspens that shivered and twinkled by the river, I
allowed myself a little day-dream, based on the leisurely ticking of the
old Ludlow clock.... Was it only three weeks ago that I had been
standing there at the foot of the staircase, between the barometer and
the clock, on just such a fine summer morning as this? Upstairs in the
bath-room Aunt Evelyn was putting sweet peas and roses in water, humming
to herself while she arranged them to her liking. Visualizing the
bath-room with its copper bath and basin (which 'took such a lot of
cleaning'), its lead floor, and the blue and white Dutch tiles along the
walls, and the elder tree outside the window, I found these familiar
objects almost as dear to me as Aunt Evelyn herself, since they were one
with her in my mind (though for years she'd been talking about doing
away with the copper bath and basin).

Even now, perhaps, she was once again carrying a bowl of roses down to
the drawing-room while the clock ticked slow, and the parrot whistled,
and the cook chopped something on the kitchen table. There might also be
the short-winded snorting of a traction-engine labouring up the hill
outside the house.... Meeting a traction-engine had been quite an
event in my childhood, when I was out for rides on my first pony. And
the thought of the cook suggested the gardener clumping in with a trug
of vegetables, and the gardener suggested birds in the strawberry nets,
and altogether there was no definite end to that sort of day-dream of an
England where there was no war on and the village cricket ground was
still being mown by a man who didn't know that he would some day join
'the Buffs', migrate to Mesopotamia, and march to Bagdad.

                          *        *        *

Amiens was eleven miles away and the horses none too sound; but Dottrell
had arranged for us to motor the last seven of the miles--the former
Quartermaster of our battalion (who had been Quartermaster at Fourth
Army Headquarters ever since the Fourth Army had existed)--having
promised to lend us his car. So there was nothing wrong with the world
as the five of us jogged along, and I allowed myself a momentary
illusion that we were riding clean away from the War. Looking across a
spacious and untroubled landscape chequered with ripening corn and
blood-red clover, I wondered how that calm and beneficent light could be
spreading as far as the battle zone. But a Staff car overtook us, and as
it whirled importantly past in a cloud of dust I caught sight of a
handcuffed German prisoner--soon to provide material for an optimistic
paragraph in Corps Intelligence Summary, and to add his story to the
omniscience of the powers who now issued operation orders with the
assertion that we were 'pursuing a beaten enemy'. Soon we were at
Querrieux, a big village cosily over-populated by the Fourth Army Staff.
As we passed the General's white château Dottrell speculated ironically
on the average income of his personal staff, adding that they must
suffer terribly from insomnia with so many guns firing fifteen miles
away. Leaving our horses to make the most of a Fourth Army feed, we went
indoors to pay our respects to the opulent Quartermaster, who had
retired from Battalion duties after the First Battle of Ypres. He
assured us that he could easily spare his car for a few hours since he
had the use of two; whereupon Dottrell said he'd been wondering how he
managed to get on with only one car.

In Amiens, at the well-known Godbert Restaurant, we lunched like dukes
in a green-shuttered private room. "God only knows when we'll see a
clean table-cloth again," remarked Barton, as he ordered langoustes,
roast duck, and two bottles of their best 'bubbly'. Heaven knows what
else the meal contained; but I remember talking with a loosened tongue
about sport, and old Joe telling us how he narrowly escaped being
reduced to the ranks for 'making a book' when the Battalion was
stationed in Ireland before the war. "There were some fine riders in the
regiment then; they talked and thought about nothing but hunting,
racing, and polo," he said; adding that it was lucky for some of us that
horsemanship wasn't needed for winning the war, since most mounted
officers now looked as if they were either rowing a boat or riding a
bicycle uphill. Finally, when with flushed faces we sauntered out into
the sunshine, he remarked that he'd half a mind to go and look for a
young lady to make his wife jealous. I said that there was always the
cathedral to look at, and discovered that I'd unintentionally made a
very good joke.


[V]

Two days later we vacated the camp at Heilly. The aspens by the river
were shivering and showing the whites of their leaves, and it was
good-bye to their cool showery sound when we marched away in our own
dust at four o'clock on a glaring bright afternoon. The aspens waited,
with their indifferent welcome, for some other dead beat and diminished
battalion. Such was their habit, and so the war went on. It must be
difficult, for those who did not experience it, to imagine the sensation
of returning to a battle area, particularly when one started from a safe
place like Heilly. Replenished by an unpromising draft from a home
service battalion, our unit was well rested and, supposedly, as keen as
mustard. Anyhow it suited everyone, including the troops themselves, to
believe that victory was somewhere within sight. Retrospectively,
however, I find it difficult to conceive them as an optimistic body of
men, and it is certain that if the men of the new draft had any
illusions about modern warfare, they would shortly lose them.

My exiguous diary has preserved a few details of that nine mile march.
Field-Marshal Haig passed us in his motor; and I saw a doctor in a long
white coat standing in the church door at Morlancourt. Passing through
the village, we went on by a track, known as 'the Red Road', arrived at
the Citadel 'in rich yellow evening light', and bivouacked on the hill
behind the Fricourt road. Two hours later we 'stood to', and then
started for Mametz, only to be brought back again after going half a
mile. I fell asleep to the sound of heavy firing toward La Boisselle,
rattling limbers on the Citadel road, and men shouting and looking for
their kits in the dark. There are worse things than falling asleep under
a summer sky. One awoke stiff and cold, but with a head miraculously
clear.

Next day I moved to the Transport Lines, a couple of miles back, for I
was one of eight officers kept in reserve. There I existed monotonously
while the Battalion was engaged in the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. My
boredom was combined with suspense, for after the first attack I might
be sent for at any moment, so I could never wander far from the
Transport Lines.

The battle didn't begin till Friday at dawn, so on Thursday Durley and I
were free and we went up to look at the old front-line. We agreed that
it felt queer to be walking along No Man's Land and inspecting the old
German trenches in a half-holiday mood. The ground was littered with
unused ammunition, and a spirit of mischievous destruction possessed us.
Pitching Stokes mortar shells down the dark and forbidding stairs of
German dug-outs, we revelled in the boom of subterranean explosions. For
a few minutes we felt as if we were getting a bit of our own back for
what we'd endured opposite those trenches, and we chanced to be near the
mine-craters where the raid had failed. But soon we were being shouted
at by an indignant Salvage Corps Officer, and we decamped before he
could identify us. Thus we 'put the lid on' our days and nights in the
Bois Français sector, which was now nothing but a few hundred yards of
waste ground--a jumble of derelict wire, meaningless ditches, and
craters no longer formidable. There seemed no sense in the toil that had
heaped those mounds of bleaching sandbags, and even the 1st of July had
become an improbable memory, now that the dead bodies had been cleared
away. Rank thistles were already thriving among the rusty rifles, torn
clothing, and abandoned equipment of those who had fallen a couple of
weeks ago.

                          *        *        *

That evening we heard that our Second Battalion had bivouacked about
half a mile from the camp. Their Division had been brought down from
Flanders and was on its way up to Bazentin. Returning from an
after-dinner stroll I found that several Second Battalion officers had
come to visit us. It was almost dark; these officers were standing
outside our tent with Durley and the others, and it sounded as if they
were keeping up their courage with the volubility usual among soldiers
who knew that they would soon be in an attack. Among them, big and
impulsive, was David Cromlech, who had been with our Battalion for three
months of the previous winter. As I approached the group I recognized
his voice with a shock of delighted surprise. He and I had never been in
the same Company, but we were close friends, although somehow or other I
have hitherto left him out of my story. On this occasion his face was
only dimly discernible, so I will not describe it, though it was a
remarkable one. An instinct for aloofness which is part of my character
caused me to remain in the background for a minute or two, and I now
overheard his desperately cheerful ejaculations with that indefinite
pang of affection often felt by a detached observer of such spontaneous
behaviour. When I joined the group we had so much to tell one another
that I very soon went back with him to his tentless hillside. On the way
I gave him a breathless account of my adventures up at Mametz Wood, but
neither of us really wanted to talk about the Somme Battle. We should
probably get more than enough of it before we'd finished. He had only
just joined the Second Battalion, and I was eager to hear about England.
The men of his platoon were lying down a little way off; but soon their
recumbent mutterings had ceased, and all around us in the gloom were
sleeping soldiers and the pyramids of piled rifles. We knew that this
might be our last meeting, and gradually an ultimate strangeness and
simplicity overshadowed and contained our low-voiced colloquies. We
talked of the wonderful things we'd do after the war; for to me David
had often seemed to belong less to my war experience than to the freedom
which would come after it. He had dropped his defensive exuberance now,
and I felt that he was rather luckless and lonely--too young to be
killed up on Bazentin Ridge. It was midnight when I left him. First
thing in the morning I hurried up the hill in hope of seeing him again.
Scarcely a trace remained of the battalion which had bivouacked there,
and I couldn't so much as identify the spot where we'd sat on his
ground-sheet, until I discovered a scrap of silver paper which might
possibly have belonged to the packet of chocolate which we had munched
while he was telling me about the month's holiday he'd had in Wales
after he came out of hospital.

When I got back to our tent in the Transport Lines I found everyone in a
state of excitement. Dottrell and the ration-party had returned from
their all-night pilgrimage with information about yesterday's attack.
The Brigade had reached its first objectives. Two of our officers had
been killed and several wounded. Old man Barton had got a nice
comfortable one in the shoulder. Hawkes (a reliable and efficient chap
who belonged to one of the other Companies) had been sent for to take
command of C Company, and was even now completing his rapid but
methodical preparations for departure.

                          *        *        *

The reserve Echelon was an arid and irksome place to be loafing about
in. Time hung heavy on our hands and we spent a lot of it lying in the
tent on our outspread valises. During the sluggish mid-afternoon of that
same Saturday I was thus occupied in economizing my energies. Durley had
nicknamed our party 'the eight little nigger boys', and there were now
only seven of us. Most of them were feeling more talkative than I was,
and it happened that I emerged from a snooze to hear them discussing
'that queer bird Cromlech'. Their comments reminded me, not for the
first time, of the diversified impressions which David made upon his
fellow Fusiliers.

At his best I'd always found him an ideal companion, although his
opinions were often disconcerting. But no one was worse than he was at
hitting it off with officers who distrusted cleverness and disliked
unreserved utterances. In fact he was a positive expert at putting
people's backs up unintentionally. He was with our Second Battalion for
a few months before they transferred him to 'the First', and during that
period the Colonel was heard to remark that young Cromlech threw his
tongue a hell of a lot too much, and that it was about time he gave up
reading Shakespeare and took to using soap and water. He had, however,
added, "I'm agreeably surprised to find that he isn't windy in
trenches."

David certainly was deplorably untidy, and his absent-mindedness when
off duty was another propensity which made him unpopular. Also, as I
have already hinted, he wasn't good at being 'seen but not heard'. "Far
too fond of butting in with his opinion before he's been asked for it,"
was often his only reward for an intelligent suggestion. Even Birdie
Mansfield (who had knocked about the world too much to be intolerant)
was once heard to exclaim, "Unless you watch it, my son, you'll grow up
into the most bumptious young prig God ever invented!"--this protest
being a result of David's assertion that all sports except boxing,
football, and rock climbing were snobbish and silly.

From the floor of the tent, Holman (a spick and span boy who had been to
Sandhurst and hadn't yet discovered that it was unwise to look down on
temporary officers who 'wouldn't have been wanted in the Regiment in
peace-time') was now saying, "Anyhow I was at Clitherland with him last
month, and he fairly got on people's nerves with his hot air about the
Battle of Loos, and his brain-waves about who really wrote the Bible."
Durley then philosophically observed, "Old Longneck certainly isn't the
sort of man you meet every day. I can't always follow his theories
myself, but I don't mind betting that he'll go a long way--provided he
isn't pushing up daisies when Peace breaks out." Holman (who had only
been with us a few days and soon became more democratic) brushed
Durley's defence aside with "The blighter's never satisfied unless he's
turning something upside down. I actually heard him say that Homer was a
woman. Can you beat that? And if you'll believe me he had the darned
sauce to give me a sort of pi-jaw about going out with girls in
Liverpool. If you ask me, I think he's a rotten outsider, and the sooner
he's pushing up daisies the better." Whereupon Perrin (a quiet man of
thirty-five who was sitting in a corner writing to his wife) stopped the
discussion by saying, "Oh, dry up, Holman! For all we know the poor
devil may be dead by now."

                          *        *        *

Late that night I was lying in the tent with _The Return of the Native_
on my knee. The others were asleep, but my candle still guttered on the
shell box at my elbow. No one had mumbled 'For Christ's sake put that
light out'; which was lucky, for I felt very wideawake. How were things
going at Bazentin, I wondered. And should I be sent for to-morrow? A
sort of numb funkiness invaded me. I didn't want to die--not before I'd
finished reading _The Return of the Native_ anyhow. 'The quick-silvery
glaze on the rivers and pools vanished; from broad mirrors of light they
changed to lustreless sheets of lead.' The words fitted my mood; but
there was more in them than that. I wanted to explore the book slowly.
It made me long for England, and it made the War seem waste of time.
Ever since my existence became precarious I had realized how little I'd
used my brain in peace-time, and now I was always trying to keep my mind
from stagnation. But it wasn't easy to think one's own thoughts while on
active service, and the outlook of my companions was mostly mechanical;
they dulled everything with commonplace chatter and made even the
vividness of the War ordinary. My encounter with David Cromlech--after
three months' separation--had reawakened my relish for liveliness and
originality. But I had no assurance of ever seeing him again, or of
meeting anyone who could stir up my dormant apprehensions as he did. Was
it a mistake, I wondered, to try and keep intelligence alive when I
could no longer call my life my own? In the brown twilight of the tent I
sat pondering with my one golden candle flame beside me. Last night's
talk with David now assumed a somewhat ghostlike character. The sky had
been starless and clouded and the air so still that a lighted match
needed no hand to shield it. Ghosts don't strike matches, of course; and
I knew that I'd smoked my pipe, and watched David's face--sallow,
crooked, and whimsical--when he lit a cigarette. There must have been
the usual noises going on; but they were as much a part of our
surroundings as the weather, and it was easy to imagine that the silence
had been unbroken by the banging of field batteries and the remote
tack-tack of rifles and machine-guns. Had that sombre episode been some
premonition of our both getting killed? For the country had loomed
limitless and strange and sullenly imbued with the Stygian significance
of the War. And the soldiers who slept around us in their hundreds--were
they not like the dead, among whom in some dim region where time
survived in ghostly remembrances, we two could still cheat ourselves
with hopes and forecasts of a future exempt from antagonisms and
perplexities?... On some such sonorous cadence as this my thoughts
halted. Well, poor old David was up in the battle; perhaps my mind was
somehow in touch with his (though he would have disparaged my 'fine
style', I thought). More rationally reflective, I looked at my
companions, rolled in their blankets, their faces turned to the earth or
hidden by the folds. I thought of the doom that was always near them
now, and how I might see them lying dead, with all their jollity
silenced, and their talk, which had made me impatient, ended for ever. I
looked at gallant young Fernby; and Durley, that kind and sensitive
soul; and my own despondency and discontent released me. I couldn't save
them, but at least I could share the dangers and discomforts they
endured. 'Outside in the gloom the guns are shaking the hills and making
lurid flashes along the valleys. Inevitably, the War blunders on; but
among the snoring sleepers I have had my little moment of magnanimity.
What I feel is no more than the candle which makes tottering shadows in
the tent. Yet it is something, perhaps, that one man can be awake there,
though he can find no meaning in the immense destruction which he
blindly accepts as part of some hidden purpose.'... Thus (rather
portentously, perhaps) I recorded in my diary the outcome of my
ruminations.

                          *        *        *

For another five days my war experience continued to mark time in that
curious camp. I call the camp curious, for it seemed so, even then.
There was a makeshift effect of men coming and going, loading and
unloading limbers and waggons, carrying fodder, shouting at horses and
mules, attending to fires, and causing a smell of cooking. A whiff from
a certain sort of wood fire could make me see that camp clearly now,
since it was strewn and piled with empty shell-boxes which were used for
fuel, as well as for building bivouacs. Along the road from Fricourt to
Méaulte, infantry columns continually came and went, processions of
prisoners were brought down, and small parties of 'walking wounded'
straggled thankfully toward the Casualty Clearing Station. The worn
landscape looked parched and shabby; only the poppies made harsh spots
of red, matching the head caps of the Indian cavalry who were camped
near by.

Among all this activity, time passed sluggishly for me. Inside our tent
I used to stare at the camouflage paint smears which showed through the
canvas, formulating patterns and pictures among which the whiteness of
the sky showed in gaps and rents. The paint smears were like ungainly
birds with wide spread wings, fishes floating, monkeys in scarecrow
trees, or anything else my idle brain cared to contrive. In one corner a
fight was going on (in a Futuristic style) and a figure brandished a
club while his adversary took a side-leap, losing an arm and a leg from
a bomb explosion. Then someone would darken the doorway with a rumour
that the Battalion had been moved up to attack High Wood--a new name,
and soon afterwards an ugly one. Night would fall, with the others
playing 'Nap' and talking stale war stuff out of the _Daily Mail_, and
the servants singing by a bright shell box fire in the gusty twilight.
And I would think about driving home from cricket matches before the
War, wondering whether I'd ever go back to that sort of thing again.

I remember another evening (it was the last one I spent in that place)
when the weather seemed awaiting some spectacular event in this world of
blundering warfare. Or was it as though the desolation of numberless
deaths had halted the clouded sky to an attitude of brooding inertia? I
looked across at Albert; its tall trees were flat grey-blue outlines,
and the broken tower of the Basilica might have been a gigantic clump of
foliage. Above this landscape of massed stillness and smoky silhouettes
the observation balloons were swaying slowly, their noses pointing
toward the line of battle. Only the distant thud of gun-fire disturbed
the silence--like someone kicking footballs--a soft bumping, miles away.
Walking along by the river I passed the horse-lines of the Indian
cavalry; the barley field above couldn't raise a rustle, so still was
the air. Low in the west, pale orange beams were streaming down on the
country that receded with a sort of rich regretful beauty, like the
background of a painted masterpiece. For me that evening expressed the
indeterminate tragedy which was moving, with agony on agony, toward the
autumn.

I leant on a wooden bridge, gazing down into the dark green glooms of
the weedy little river, but my thoughts were powerless against
unhappiness so huge. I couldn't alter European history, or order the
artillery to stop firing. I could stare at the War as I stared at the
sultry sky, longing for life and freedom and vaguely altruistic about my
fellow-victims. But a second-lieutenant could attempt nothing--except to
satisfy his superior officers; and altogether, I concluded, Armageddon
was too immense for my solitary understanding. Then the sun came out for
a last reddening look at the War, and I turned back to the camp with its
clustering tents and crackling fires. I finished the day jawing to young
Fernby about fox-hunting.

                          *        *        *

The Division had now been in action for a week. Next day they were to be
relieved. Late in the afternoon Dottrell moved the Transport back about
three miles, to a hill above Dernancourt. Thankful for something to do
at last, I busied myself with the putting up of tents. When that was
done I watched the sun going down in glory beyond the main road to
Amiens. The horizon trees were dark blue against the glare, and the dust
of the road floated in wreaths; motor-lorries crept continuously by,
while the long shadows of trees made a sort of mirage on the golden haze
of the dust. The country along the river swarmed with camps, but the low
sun made it all seem pleasant and peaceful. After nightfall the
landscape glowed and glinted with camp fires, and a red half-moon
appeared to bless the combatant armies with neutral beams. Then we were
told to shift the tents higher up the hill and I became active again;
for the Battalion was expected about midnight. After this little
emergency scramble I went down to the cross-roads with Dottrell, and
there we waited hour after hour. The Quartermaster was in a state of
subdued anxiety, for he'd been unable to get up to Battalion
Headquarters for the last two days. We sat among some barley on the bank
above the road, and as time passed we conversed companionably, keeping
ourselves awake with an occasional drop of rum from his flask. I always
enjoyed being with Dottrell, and that night the husky-voiced old
campaigner was more eloquent than he realized. In the simplicity of his
talk there was a universal tone which seemed to be summing up all the
enduring experience of an Infantry Division. For him it was a big thing
for the Battalion to be coming back from a battle, though, as he said,
it was a new Battalion every few months now.

An hour before dawn the road was still an empty picture of moonlight.
The distant gun-fire had crashed and rumbled all night, muffled and
terrific with immense flashes, like waves of some tumult of water
rolling along the horizon. Now there came an interval of silence in
which I heard a horse neigh, shrill and scared and lonely. Then the
procession of the returning troops began. The camp fires were burning
low when the grinding jolting column lumbered back. The field-guns came
first, with nodding men sitting stiffly on weary horses, followed by
waggons and limbers and field-kitchens. After this rumble of wheels came
the infantry, shambling, limping, straggling and out of step. If anyone
spoke it was only a muttered word, and the mounted officers rode as if
asleep. The men had carried their emergency water in petrol-cans,
against which bayonets made a hollow clink; except for the shuffling of
feet, this was the only sound. Thus, with an almost spectral appearance,
the lurching brown figures flitted past with slung rifles and heads bent
forward under basin-helmets. Moonlight and dawn began to mingle, and I
could see the barley swaying indolently against the sky. A train groaned
along the riverside, sending up a cloud of whitish fiery smoke against
the gloom of the trees. The Flintshire Fusiliers were a long time
arriving. On the hill behind us the kite balloon swayed slowly upward
with straining ropes, its looming bulbous body reflecting the first
pallor of daybreak. Then, as if answering our expectancy, a remote
skirling of bagpipes began, and the Gordon Highlanders hobbled in. But
we had been sitting at the cross-roads nearly six hours, and faces were
recognizable, when Dottrell hailed our leading Company.

Soon they had dispersed and settled down on the hillside, and were
asleep in the daylight which made everything seem ordinary. None the
less I had seen something that night which overawed me. It was all in
the day's work--an exhausted Division returning from the Somme
Offensive--but for me it was as though I had watched an army of ghosts.
It was as though I had seen the War as it might be envisioned by the
mind of some epic poet a hundred years hence.




PART FIVE
ESCAPE


[I]

On Saturday afternoon we made a short train journey and then marched
four easy miles to a village called La Chaussée. Twenty-four hours' rest
and a shave had worked the usual miracle with the troops (psychological
recovery was a problem which no one had time to recognize as existent)
and now we were away from the Line for at least a fortnight. It was a
dusty golden evening, and the road led us through quiet green country.
Delusively harmonious, perhaps, is that retrospective picture of the
Battalion marching at case along an unfrequented road, at the end of a
July afternoon, with Colonel Kinjack riding rather absent-mindedly in
front, or pulling up to watch us go past him--his face thoughtful and
indulgent and expressing something of the pride and satisfaction which
he felt.

So it will go on, I thought; in and out, in and out, till something
happens to me. We had come along the same road last January. Only five
officers of that lot were with us now: not many of them had been killed,
but they had 'faded away' somehow or other, and my awareness of this
created a deceptive sense of 'the good old days'. Yesterday afternoon
I'd heard that Cromlech had been killed up at High Wood. This piece of
news had stupefied me, but the pain hadn't begun to make itself felt
yet, and there was no spare time for personal grief when the Battalion
was getting ready to move back to Divisional Rest. To have thought about
Cromlech would have been calamitous. "Rotten business about poor old
'Longneck'," was the only comment that Durley, Dottrell and the others
allowed themselves. And after all he wasn't the only one who'd gone west
lately. It was queer how the men seemed to take their victimization for
granted. In and out; in and out; singing and whistling, the column
swayed in front of me, much the same length as usual, for we'd had less
than a hundred casualties up at Bazentin. But it was a case of every man
for himself, and the corporate effect was optimistic and untroubled. A
London editor driving along the road in a Staff car would have remarked
that the spirit of the troops was amazing. And so it was. But somehow
the newspaper men always kept the horrifying realities of the War out of
their articles, for it was unpatriotic to be bitter, and the dead were
assumed to be gloriously happy. However, it was no use worrying about
all that; I was part of the Battalion, and now I'd got to see about
getting the men settled into billets.

Some Australians had been in the billets at La Chaussée, and (if they
will pardon me for saying so) had left them in a very bad state.
Sanitation had been neglected, and the inhabitants were complaining
furiously that their furniture had been used for firewood. Did the
Australians leave anything else behind them, I wonder? For some of them
had been in Gallipoli, and it is possible that dysentery germs were part
of the legacy they left us.

The fact remains that I awoke on Monday morning feeling far from well
and, after a mechanical effort to go on parade in a glare of sunlight,
took refuge in the cavernous bedroom which I occupied alone. Feeling
worse and worse, in the evening I remembered that I possessed a
thermometer, which had been handed over to me when I was Transport
Officer. I had never taken the temperatures of any of the horses, but I
now experimented shakily on myself. When I saw that it indicated 105° I
decided that the thing was out of order; but next morning I was
confusedly aware that Flook had fetched the doctor, and by the afternoon
I was unbelievably at the New Zealand Hospital, which was in a
substantial old building in the middle of Amiens.

                          *        *        *

The advantages of being ill were only too obvious. Lying awake in the
large lofty ward on my fourth night, I was aware that I was feeling
rather run down, but much better--almost too well, in fact. That evening
my temperature had been normal, which reminded me that this change from
active service to invalidism was an acute psychological experience. The
door to safety was half open, and though an impartial New Zealand doctor
decided one's destiny, there was a not unnatural impulse to fight for
one's own life instead of against the Germans. Less than two weeks ago
I'd been sitting in a tent thinking noble thoughts about sharing the
adversities of my fellow Fusiliers. But that emotional defence wouldn't
work now, and the unutterable words 'wangle my way home' forced their
way obstinately to the foreground, supported by a crowd of smug-faced
excuses.

Durley and the Adjutant had visited me that afternoon; they'd joked with
me about how well I was looking. While they were with me I had talked
about coming back in a few days, and I'd genuinely felt as if I wanted
to. But they took my fortitude away with them, and now I was foreseeing
that another night's rest would make me look indecently healthy for a
man in a hospital. "I suppose they'll all think I'm swinging the lead,"
I thought. Turning the last few months over in my mind, I argued with
myself that I had done all that was expected of me. "Oh God," I prayed,
"do get me sent down to the Base!" (How often was that petition
whispered during the War?) To-day I had seen young Allgood's name in the
Roll of Honour--a bit of news which had slammed the door on my four
weeks at the Army School and provided me with a secondary sorrow, for I
was already feeling sufficiently miserable about my friend Cromlech. I
sympathized with myself about Allgood, for I had been fond of him. But
he was only one among thousands of promising young men who had gone west
since the 1st of July. Sooner or later I should probably get killed too.
A breath of wind stirred the curtains, blowing them inward from the tall
windows with a rustling sigh. The wind came from the direction of the
Somme, and I could hear the remote thudding of the guns. Everyone in the
ward seemed to be asleep except the boy whose bed had screens round it.
The screens were red and a light glowed through them. Ever since he was
brought in he'd been continually calling to the nurse on duty.
Throughout the day this had gradually got on everyone's nerves, for the
ward was already full of uncontrollable gasps and groans. Once I had
caught a glimpse of his white face and miserable eyes. Whatever sort of
wound he'd got, he was making the most of it, had been the opinion of
the man next to me (who had himself got more than he wanted, in both
legs). But he must be jolly bad, I thought now, as the Sister came from
behind the screen again. His voice went on, in the low, rapid, even tone
of delirium. Sometimes I could catch what he said, troubled and unhappy
and complaining. Someone called Dicky was on his mind, and he kept on
crying out to Dicky. "Don't go out, Dicky; they snipe like hell!" And
then, "Curse the Wood.... Dicky, you fool, don't go out!"... All
the horror of the Somme attacks was in that raving; all the darkness and
the dreadful daylight.... I watched the Sister come back with a
white-coated doctor; the screen glowed comfortingly; soon the
disquieting voice became inaudible and I fell asleep. Next morning the
screens had vanished; the bed was empty, and ready for someone else.

                          *        *        *

Not that day, but the next one, my supplication to the Almighty was put
to the test. The doctor came along the ward on his cheerful morning
inspection. Arriving at my bed he asked how I was feeling. I stared up
at him, incapable of asserting that I felt ill and unwilling to admit
that I felt well. Fortunately he didn't expect a reply. "Well, we'll
have to be moving you on," he said with a smile; and before my heart had
time to beat again he turned to the nurse with, "Put him down for the
afternoon train." The nurse made a note of it, and my mind uttered a
spontaneous Magnificat. Now, with any luck, I thought, I'll get a couple
of weeks at one of those hospitals on the coast, at Etretat or Le
Tréport, probably. The idea of reading a book by the seaside was
blissful. No one could blame me for that, and I should be back with the
Battalion by the end of August, if not earlier.

In my hurried exodus from my billet at La Chaussée, some of my
belongings had been left behind, and good old Flook had brought them to
the hospital next day. He had come treading in with clumsy embarrassment
to deposit the packful of oddments by my bed, announcing in a hoarse
undertone, "Ah've brought the stoof," and telling me that the lads in C
Company were hoping to see me back soon. Somehow Flook, with his rough
and ready devotion, had seemed my strongest link with the Battalion.
When I shook his hand and said good-bye, he winked and advised me,
confidentially, not to be in too much of a hurry about getting back. A
good rest would do me no harm, he said; but as he tiptoed away I
wondered when he himself would get a holiday, and whether he would ever
return to his signal-box on the railway.

The details of my journey to the Base were as follows. First of all I
was carried carefully down the stairs on a stretcher (though I could
easily have walked to the ambulance, or even to the railway station, if
such an effort had been demanded of me). Then the ambulance took me to
Corbie, and from there the train (with 450 casualties on board) rumbled
sedately to Rouen; we did the sixty miles in ten hours, and at two
o'clock in the morning I was carried into No. 2 Red Cross Hospital. I
remember that particular hospital with affection. During the morning a
genial doctor came along and had a look at me. "Well, my lad, what's
wrong with you?" he asked. "They call it enteritis," I replied, with an
indefinite grin. He had a newspaper in his hand as he glanced at the
descriptive chart behind my bed. My name caused him to consult _The
Times_. "Is this you?" he asked. Sure enough, my name was there, in a
list of Military Crosses which chanced to have appeared that day. The
doctor patted me on the shoulder and informed me that I should be going
across to England next day. Good luck had 'wangled me home'. Even now I
cannot think of that moment without believing that I was involved in one
of the lesser miracles of the Great War. For I am certain that I should
have remained at Rouen if that observant and kind-hearted doctor hadn't
noticed my name among the decorations. And in that case I should have
been back with the Battalion in nice time for their operations at
Delville Wood, which might quite conceivably have qualified my name for
a place on the Butley village War Memorial.

                          *        *        *

The Hospital Ship left Rouen about midday. While we steamed down the
Seine in fine weather I lay watching the landscape through a porthole
with a sense of thankfulness which differed from any I had ever known
before. A label was attached to me; I have kept that label, and it is in
my left hand as I write these words. It is marked _Army Form W 3083_,
though in shape and substance it is an ordinary civilian luggage label.
It is stamped _Lying Train and Ship_ in blue letters, with _Sick P.U.O._
on the other side. On the boat, my idle brain wondered what _P.U.O._
meant. There must, I thought, be a disease beginning with P. Perhaps it
was 'Polypipsis unknown origin'. Between Rouen and Havre I devised
several feebly funny solutions, such as 'Perfectly undamaged officer'.
But my final choice was 'Poorly until October'.

At noon next day we reached Southampton. Nothing could be better than
this, I thought, while being carried undeservedly from the ship to the
train; and I could find no fault with Hampshire's quiet cornfields and
unwarlike woods in the drowsy August afternoon. At first I guessed that
we were on our way to London; but when the journey showed signs of
cross-countryhood I preferred not to be told where we were going.
Recumbent, I gazed gloatingly at England. Peaceable stay-at-homes waved
to the Red Cross Train, standing still to watch it pass. It was nice to
think that I'd been fighting for them, though exactly what I'd done to
help them was difficult to define. An elderly man, cycling along a dusty
road in a dark blue suit and a straw hat, removed one hand from the
handle-bars to wave comprehensive gratitude. Everything seemed happy and
homely. I was delivered from the idea of death, and that other thing
which had haunted me, the dread of being blinded. I closed contented
eyes, became sleepy, and awoke to find myself at Oxford. By five o'clock
I was in a small white room on the ground-floor of Somerville College.
Listening to the tranquil tolling of Oxford bells and someone strumming
melodiously on a piano across the lawn, with a glimpse of tall chestnut
trees swaying against the blue sky, I whispered the word Paradise. Had I
earned it? I was too grateful to care.


[II]

In Oxford lived Mr. Farrell, an old friend of Aunt Evelyn's. Some years
before the War he had lived near Butley, and he now came to pay me an
afternoon visit at the Hospital, where I was reclining under a tree on
the lawn, still keeping up appearances as an invalid officer. He sat
beside me and we conversed rather laboriously about Aunt Evelyn and her
neighbourhood. He was Irish and a voluble talker, but he seemed to have
lost much of his former vivacity. I noticed that he was careful to keep
the conversation safely on this side of the Channel, probably out of
consideration for my feelings, although I wouldn't have minded telling
him a thing or two about the Somme. Mr. Farrell was a retired Civil
Servant and an authority on Military Records. He had written the lives
of several famous Generals and an official History of the Indian Mutiny.
But he showed no curiosity about the military operations of the moment.
He was over seventy, and his face was unlit and fatigued as he talked
about food restrictions in England. "Sugar is getting scarce," he
remarked, "but that doesn't affect me; my doctor knocked me off sugar
several years ago." I looked at his noticeably brown teeth, and then
averted my eyes as if he could read my thoughts, for I was remembering
how Aunt Evelyn used to scold me for calling him 'sugar-teeth'; his
untidy teeth did look like lumps of sugar soaked in tea....

Dear old Mr. Farrell, with his red tie and the cameo ring round it, and
his silver hair and ragged tobacco-stained moustache! As his large form
lumbered away across the lawn, I thought that his clothes had got too
big for him, though he'd always worn them rather baggy. Could it be
possible that scrupulous people at home were getting thin while the
soldiers got fat on their good rations at the Front? I began to suspect
that England wasn't quite what it used to be. But my mind soon wandered
indolently into the past which the veteran military historian had
brought with him into the college garden. I remembered summer evenings
when I was a little boy overhearing, from in bed upstairs, the mumble of
voices down in the drawing-room, where Aunt Evelyn was having an
after-dinner chat with Mr. Farrell and Captain Huxtable, who had walked
across the fields from Butley in the twilight. Sometimes I tiptoed down
the stairs and listened at the door (rather hoping to hear them saying
something complimentary about myself) but they were nearly always
gassing about politics, or India. Mr. Farrell had been in India for
ages, and Captain Huxtable had been out there too; and Aunt Evelyn loved
to hear about it. When we went to see Mr. Farrell he used to show us
delightful old books with coloured plates of Indian scenes. What queer
old codgers they were, sipping tea and puffing their cigars (which smelt
quite nice) and talking all that rot about Lord Salisbury and his
Government. "Her-her-her," laughed Mr. Farrell whenever he finished
another of his funny stories which always ended with what someone had
said to someone else or how he'd scored off someone at his club. They'd
go on talking just the same, whatever happened; even if a Death's Head
Hawk Moth flew into the room they wouldn't be a bit excited about it. It
would be rather fun, I thought, if I were to fire my percussion-cap
pistol outside the drawing-room door, just to give them a surprise. As I
crept upstairs again in my night-gown, I wondered if I should ever be
like that myself.... Mr. Farrell was fond of playing tennis; he used
to serve underhand, holding the ball a few inches above the ground as he
struck it....

Emerging from my retrospective reverie, I felt that this war had made
the past seem very peculiar. People weren't the same as they used to be,
or else I had changed. Was it because I had experienced something that
they couldn't share or imagine? Mr. Farrell had seemed diffident that
afternoon, almost as if he were talking to a survivor from an
incomprehensible disaster. Looking round me I began to feel that I
wanted to be in some place where I needn't be reminded of the War all
the time. For instance, there was that tall well-preserved man pushing
his son very slowly across the lawn in a long wheeled bed. The son was
sallow and sulky, as he well might be, having lost one of his legs. The
father was all solicitude, but somehow I inferred that the pair of them
hadn't hit it off too well before the War. More than once I had seen the
son look at his father as though he disliked him. But the father was
proud of his disabled son, and I heard him telling one of the nurses how
splendidly the boy had done in the Gommecourt attack, showing her a
letter, too, probably from the boy's colonel. I wondered whether he had
ever allowed himself to find out that the Gommecourt show had been
nothing but a massacre of good troops. Probably he kept a war map with
little flags on it; when Mametz Wood was reported as captured he moved a
little flag an inch forward after breakfast. For him the Wood was a
small green patch on a piece of paper. For the Welsh Division it had
been a bloody nightmare.... "Is the sun too strong for you here,
Arthur?" Arthur shakes his head and frowns up at the sky. Then the
father, with his neatly-trimmed beard and elegant buff linen waistcoat,
begins to read him Haig's latest despatch. "There is strong evidence
that the enemy forces engaged on the battle-front have been severely
shaken by the repeated successes gained by ourselves and our
Allies...." The level cultivated voice palavers on until the nurse
approaches brightly with a spouted feeding-cup. "Time for some more
beef-tea!" Nourishment is administered under approving parental eyes.


[III]

During my last week I was allowed out of the hospital in the afternoons,
and I used to go up the Cherwell in a canoe. I found this recreation
rather heavy work, for the water was a jungle of weeds and on the higher
reaches progress had become almost impossible. Certainly the Great War
had made a difference to the charming River Cherwell. But I had been
feeling much more cheerful lately, for my friend Cromlech had risen
again from the dead. I had seen his name in the newspaper list of
killed, but soon afterwards someone telegraphed to tell me that he was
in a London hospital and going on well. For fully a fortnight I had
accustomed myself to the idea that his dead body was somewhere among the
Somme shell-holes, and it was a queer experience, to be disentangling
myself from the mental obituary notices which I had evolved out of my
luminous memories of our companionship in the First Battalion. "Silly
old devil," I thought affectionately; "he always manages to do things
differently from other people."

By the end of August I was back at Butley with a month's sick-leave and
the possibility of an extension. So for the first week or two I forgot
the future and enjoyed being made a fuss of by Aunt Evelyn. My outlook
on the War was limited to the Battalion I had served with. After being
kept out of the Line for nearly five weeks, they were expecting to be
moved up at any moment. This news came in a letter from Durley.
Suppressing such disquietude as it caused me, I put the letter in my
pocket and went out to potter round the garden. It was a fine early
September morning--almost my favourite sort of weather, I thought. The
garden was getting wild and overgrown, for there was only one old man
working in it now. The day before I had begun an attempt to recivilize
the tangled tennis-lawn, but it had been too much like canoeing on the
Cherwell, and to-day I decided to cut dead wood out of the cedar. While
I climbed about in the tree with a bill-hook in my hand I could hear old
Huckett trundling the water-tank along the kitchen garden. Then Aunt
Evelyn came along with her flower-basket full of dahlias; while she was
gazing up at me another brittle bough cracked and fell, scaring one of
the cats who followed her about. She begged me to be careful, adding
that it would be no joke to tumble out of such a big tree.

Later in the morning I visited the stables. Stagnation had settled
there; nettles were thick under the apple-trees and the old
mowing-machine pony grazed in shaggy solitude. In Dixon's little
harness-room, saddles were getting mouldy and there were rust-spots on
the bits and stirrup-irons which he had kept so bright. A tin of
_Harvey's Hoof Ointment_ had obviously been there since 1914. It would
take Dixon a long time to get the place straightened up, I thought,
forgetting for a moment that he'd been dead six months.... It wasn't
much fun, mooning about the stables. But a robin trilled his little
autumn song from an apple-tree; beyond the fruit-laden branches I could
see the sunlit untroubled Weald, and I looked lovingly at the cowls of
hop-kilns which twinkled across those miles that were the country of my
childhood. I could smell autumn in the air, too, and I thought I must
try to get a few days clubbing before I go back to the Depot. Down in
Sussex there were a few people who would willingly lend me a horse, and
I decided to write to old Colonel Hesmon about it. I went up to the
school-room to do this; rummaging in a drawer for some note-paper, I
discovered a little pocket mirror--a relic of my days in the ranks of
the Yeomanry. Handling it absent-mindedly, I found myself using it to
decipher the blotting-paper, which had evidently been on the table some
time, for the handwriting was Stephen Colwood's. "_P.S. The Old Guvnor
is squaring up my annual indebtedness. Isn't he a brick?_" Stephen must
have scribbled that when he was staying with us in the summer of 1914.
Probably he had been writing to his soldier brother in Ireland. I
imagined him adding the postscript and blotting it quickly. Queer how
the past crops up, I thought, sadly, for my experience of such poignant
associations was 'still in its infancy', as someone had said of Poison
Gas when lecturing to cannon-fodder at the Army School.

Remembering myself at that particular moment, I realize the difficulty
of recapturing war-time atmosphere as it was in England then. A war
historian would inform us that 'the earlier excitement and suspense had
now abated, and the nation had settled down to its organization of
man-power and munition-making'. I want to recover something more
ultimate than that, but I can't swear to anything unusual at Butley
except a derelict cricket field, the absence of most of the younger
inhabitants, and a certain amount of talk about food prospects for the
winter. Two of our nearest neighbours had lost their only sons, and with
them their main interest in life; but such tragedies as those remained
intimate and unobtrusive. Ladies worked at the Local Hospital and
elderly gentlemen superintended Recruiting Centres and Tribunals; but
there was little outward change and no military training-camp within a
radius of ten miles. So I think I am accurate when I say that Aunt
Evelyn was jogging along much as usual (now that her mind was
temporarily at rest about my own active service career). She was, of
course, a bit intolerant about the Germans, having swallowed all the
stories about atrocities in Belgium. It was her duty, as a patriotic
Englishwoman, to agree with a certain prelate when he preached the axiom
that 'every man who killed a German was performing a Christian act'.
Nevertheless, if Aunt Evelyn had found a wounded Prussian when she was
on her way to the post office, she would undoubtedly have behaved with
her natural humanity (combined with enthusiasm for administering first
aid). In the meantime we avoided controversial topics (such as that all
Germans were fiends in human form) and while I was writing my letter to
Colonel Hesmon she entered the school-room with her arms full of
lavender which she strewed along the floor under the window. The sun
would dry it nicely there, she said, adding that I must find her a very
dull old party nowadays, since she had no conversation and seemed to
spend all her time trying to catch a new housemaid. I assured her that
it was a great relief, after being incessantly ordered about in the
Army, to be with someone who had no conversation.

But after dinner that evening I did find myself a bit dull, so I walked
across the fields for a chat with Protheroe, a middle-aged bachelor who
lived in a modest old house with his quiet sister. Before I started my
aunt implored me to be careful about extinguishing the oil lamp in the
drawing-room when I got back. Oil lamps were far from safe--downright
dangerous, in fact!

The night was very still; as I went along the field path I was almost
sure I could hear the guns. Not that I wanted to; but the newspapers
reported that a new offensive had been started at Guillemont, and I
couldn't help feeling that our Division was in it. (I still thought of
it as 'our Division'.) Our village was quiet enough, anyhow, and so was
Protheroe's white-faced house, with its creaking gate and red-blinded
windows. I rapped with the knocker and Miss Protheroe came to the door,
quite surprised to see me, though I'd seen her a few hours before when
she called to return last month's _Blackwood's Magazine_. Protheroe was
in the middle of a game of chess with the village doctor, a reticent
little man whose smallest actions were always extremely deliberate. The
doctor would make up his mind to move one of his men, grasp it
resolutely, become hesitative, release it, and then begin his cogitative
chin-rubbing and eye-puckering all over again, while Protheroe drummed
his fingers on the table and stared at a moth which was bumping softly
against the ceiling of the snug little parlour, and his sister, with
gentle careworn face, knitted something woollen for the brother who,
though past forty, was serving as a corporal in the infantry in France.
My arrival put a stop to the doctor's perplexities; and since I was
welcomed rather as a returned hero, I was inclined to be hearty. I
slapped Protheroe on the back, told him he'd got the best dug-out in
Butley, and allowed myself to be encouraged to discuss the War. I
admitted that it was pretty bad out there, with an inward feeling that
such horrors as I had been obliged to witness were now something to be
proud of. I even went so far as to assert that I wouldn't have missed
this War for anything. It brought things home to one somehow, I
remarked, frowning portentously as I lit my pipe, and forgetting for the
moment what a mercy it had been when it brought me home myself. Oh yes,
I knew all about the Battle of the Somme, and could assure them that we
should be in Bapaume by October. Replying to their tributary questions,
I felt that they envied me my experience.

While I was on my way home, I felt elated at having outgrown the parish
boundaries of Butley. After all, it was a big thing, to have been in the
thick of a European War, and my peace-time existence had been idle and
purposeless. It was bad luck on Protheroe and the doctor; they must hate
being left out of it.... I suppose one must give this damned War its
due, I thought, as I sat in the school-room with one candle burning. I
felt comfortable, for Miss Protheroe had made me a cup of cocoa. I took
Durley's letter out of my pocket and had another look at it; but it
wasn't easy to speculate on its implications. The War's all right as
long as one doesn't get killed or smashed up, I decided, blowing out the
candle so that I could watch the moonlight which latticed the floor with
shadows of the leaded windows. Where the moonbeams lay thickest they
touched the litter of drying lavender. I opened the window and sniffed
the autumn-smelling air. An owl hooted in the garden, and I could hear a
train going along the Weald. Probably a hospital-train from Dover, I
thought, as I closed the window and creaked upstairs on tiptoe so as not
to disturb Aunt Evelyn.

                          *        *        *

About a week afterwards I received two letters from Dottrell, written on
consecutive days, but delivered by the same post. The first one began:
"The old Batt. is having a rough time. We were up in the front a week
ago and lost 200 men in three days. The aid-post, a bit of a dug-out
hastily made, was blown in. At the time it contained 5 wounded men, 5
stretcher-bearers, and the doctor. All were killed except the Doc. who
was buried in the debris. He was so badly shaken when dug out that he
had to be sent down, and will probably be in England by now. It is a
hell of a place up there. The Batt. is attacking to-day. I hope they
have better luck. The outlook is not rosy. Very glad to hear you are
sitting up and taking nourishment. A lot of our best men have been
knocked out recently. We shall soon want another Batt. All the boys send
their love and best wishes in which your humble heartily joins."

The second letter, which I chanced to open and read first, was the worst
of the two.

"Dear Kangaroo.... Just a line to let you know what rotten bad luck
we had yesterday. We attacked Ginchy with a very weak Batt. (about 300)
and captured the place but were forced out of half of it--due to the
usual thing. Poor Edmunds was killed leading his Coy. Also Perrin.
Durley was badly wounded, in neck and chest, I think. It is terrible to
think of these two splendid chaps being cut off, but I hope Durley pulls
through. Asbestos Bill died of wounds. Fernby, who was O.C. Bombers,
very badly hit and not expected to live. Several others you don't know
also killed. Only two officers got back without being hit. C.S.M. Miles
and Danby both killed. The Batt. is _not now_ over strength for rations!
The rest of the Brigade suffered in proportion. Will write later. Very
busy."...

I walked about the room, whistling and putting the pictures straight.
Then the gong rang for luncheon. Aunt Evelyn drew my attention to the
figs, which were the best we'd had off the old tree that autumn.


[IV]

October brought an extension of my sick-leave and some mornings with the
hounds. By the time I received another letter from Dottrell, Delville
Wood had more or less buried its dead, in my mind if not altogether in
reality. The old Quartermaster let off steam in a good grumble from
which I quote a specimen.

    "Well, we have been out at rest about 10 kilos from the place we
    were at last Xmas. We expected to be there three weeks but after
    8 days have had sudden orders to move to the old old spot with a
    _Why_. Kinjack left us to take command of a Brigade; a great
    loss to the Batt. They all come and go; stay in the Batt. long
    enough to get something out of it, and then disappear and will
    hardly give a thought to the men and officers who were the means
    of getting them higher rank. It's a selfish world, my friend.
    All successive C.O.s beg me to stay with the old Battalion they
    love so well. I do. So do they, till they get a better job. They
    neither know nor care what happens to me (who at their special
    request have stuck to 'the dear old Corps') when I leave the
    Service on a pension of 30_s._ a week."

I am afraid I wasn't worrying overmuch about 'the dear old Corps'
myself, while out with the Ringwell Hounds on Colonel Hesmon's horses.
In spite of the War, hunting was being carried on comfortably, though
few people came out. 'The game was being kept alive for the sake of the
boys at the Front,' who certainly enjoyed the idea (if they happened to
be keen fox-hunters and were still alive to appreciate the effort made
on their behalf). As for me, I was armed with my uniform and the
protective colouring of my Military Cross, and no one could do enough
for me. I stayed as long as I liked with Moffat, the genial man who now
combined the offices of Master and Secretary, and for a few weeks the
pre-war past appeared to have been conjured up for my special benefit.
It was difficult to believe that the misty autumn mornings, which made
me free of those well-known woods and farms and downs, were
simultaneously shedding an irrelevant brightness on the Ypres Salient
and on Joe Dottrell riding wearily back with the ration-party somewhere
near Plug Street Wood. I don't think I could see it quite like that at
the time. What I am writing now is the result of a bird's-eye view of
the past, and the cub-hunting subaltern I see there is part of the
'selfish world' to which his attention had been drawn. He is listening
to Colonel Hesmon while the hounds are being blown out of a big
wood--hearing how well young Winchell has done with his Brigade (without
wondering how many of them have been 'blown out' of their trenches) and
being assured by the loquacious old Colonel that the German Count who
used to live at Puxford Park was undoubtedly a spy and only hunted with
the Ringwell for that reason; the Colonel now regretted that he didn't
ride over to Puxford Park and break all the windows before war was
declared. He also declared that any man under forty who wasn't wearing
the King's uniform was nothing but a damned shirker. I remarked to
Moffat afterwards that the Colonel seemed to be overdoing it a bit about
the War. Moffat told me that the old boy was known to have practised
revolver-shooting in his garden, addressing insults to individual tree
trunks and thus ventilating his opinion of Germany as a whole. He had
been much the same about vulpicides and socialists in peace-time. "It's
very odd; for Hesmon's an extraordinarily kind-hearted man," said
Moffat, who himself regarded the War as an unmitigated nuisance, but
didn't waste his energy abusing it or anybody else. He had enough to do
already, for he found it far from easy to keep the Hunt on its legs, and
what the hounds would get to eat next year he really didn't know. He
added that 'the Missus's dachshunds only just escaped being interned as
enemy aliens'.

                          *        *        *

Sport in Sussex was only a makeshift exhilaration, and early in November
I went to London for a final Medical Board. At the Caxton Hall in
Westminster I spent a few minutes gazing funereally round an empty
waiting-room. Above the fire-place (there was no fire) hung a
neatly-framed notice for the benefit of all whom it might concern. It
stated the scale of prices for artificial limbs, with instructions as to
how officers could obtain them free of cost. The room contained no other
ornament. While I was adjusting my mind to what a journalist might have
called 'the grim humour' of this foot-note to Army life, a Girl Guide
stepped in to say that Colonel Crossbones (or whatever his cognomen was)
would see me now. A few formalities 'put paid to' my period of freedom,
and I pretended to be feeling pleased as I walked away from Westminster,
though wondering whether the politicians had any expectation that
hostilities would be concluded by Christmas, and eyeing the Admiralty
with a notion that it must be rather nice to be in the Navy.

Good-byes began all over again. A last day with the Ringwell ended at
the cross-roads by the old Harcombe point-to-point course. I went one
way and the hounds went another. Jogging down the lane, they disappeared
in the drizzling dusk. Moffat's "Best of luck, old boy!" left me to ride
on, alone with the creak of the saddle. I was due back at the Depot next
day, but we'd had a good woodland hunt with one quite nice bit in the
open, and I'd jumped a lot of timber and thoroughly enjoyed my day.
Staring at the dim brown landscape I decided that the War was worth
while if it was being carried on to safeguard this sort of thing. Was
it? I wondered; and if a doubt arose it was dismissed before it had been
formulated. Riding into Downfield where I was leaving the horse which
had been lent me, I remembered how I'd slept on the floor of the Town
Hall on the day war was declared. Two years and three months ago I had
enlisted for 'three years or the duration'. It was beginning to look as
if I had enlisted for a lifetime (though the word was one which had seen
better days). Under the looming shadow of the hills the lights of the
town twinkled cosily. But a distant bugle-call from some camp seemed to
be summoning the last reluctant farm labourer. "You'll all have to go in
the end," it seemed to say, and the comfortless call was being sounded
far across Europe....

On my way home in the train I read about Roumania in the paper.
Everyone, Aunt Evelyn included, had been delighted when Roumania came in
on our side in August. But the results had not been reassuring. I
couldn't help feeling annoyed with the Roumanian Army for allowing their
country to be over-run by the Germans. They really might have put up a
better show than that!




PART SIX: AT THE DEPOT


[I]

Clitherland Camp had acquired a look of coercive stability; but this was
only natural, since for more than eighteen months it had been
manufacturing Flintshire Fusiliers, many of whom it was now sending back
to the Front for the second and third time. The Camp was as much an
essential co-operator in the national effort as Brotherhood & Co.'s
explosive factory, which flared and seethed and reeked with poisonous
vapours a few hundred yards away. The third winter of the war had
settled down on the lines of huts with calamitous drabness; fog-bleared
sunsets were succeeded by cavernous and dispiriting nights when there
was nothing to do and nowhere to do it.

Crouching as close as I could to the smoky stove in my hut I heard the
wind moaning around the roof, feet clumping cheerlessly along the boards
of the passage, and all the systematized noises and clatterings and
bugle-blowings of the Camp. Factory-hooters and ships' fog-horns out on
the Mersey sometimes combined in huge unhappy dissonances; their sound
seemed one with the smoke-drifted munition-works, the rubble of
industrial suburbs, and the canal that crawled squalidly out into
blighted and forbidding farmlands which were only waiting to be built
over.

Except for the permanent staff, there weren't many officers I had known
before this winter. But I shared my hut with David Cromlech, who was
well enough to be able to play an energetic game of football, in spite
of having had a bit of shell through his right lung. Bill Eaves, the
Cambridge scholar, had also returned and was quietly making the most of
his few remaining months. (He was killed in February while leading a
little local attack.) And there was young Ormand, too, pulling wry faces
about his next Medical Board, which would be sure to pass him for
General Service. I could talk to these three about 'old times with the
First Battalion', and those times had already acquired a delusive
unobnoxiousness, compared with what was in store for us; for the 'Big
Push' of last summer and autumn had now found a successor in 'the Spring
Offensive' (which was, of course, going to 'get the Boches on the run').

Mess, at eight o'clock, was a function which could be used for filling
up an hour and a half. While Ormand was making his periodic remark--that
his only reason for wanting to go out again was that it would enable him
to pay off his overdraft at Cox's Bank--my eyes would wander up to the
top table where the Colonel sat among those good-natured easy-going
Majors who might well have adopted as their motto the ditty sung by the
troops: 'We're here because we're here because we're here because we're
here'. At nine-thirty the Colonel went to the ante-room for his game of
Bridge. But the second-in-command, Major Macartney, would sit on long
afterwards, listening to one or two of his cronies and slowly imbibing
port with a hand that trembled nervously. Probably his mind was often
back in Ireland, snipe-shooting and salmon-fishing. There was nothing
grim about the Major, though his features had a certain severity,
slightly reminiscent of the late Lord Kitchener. He was a reserved and
dignified man, much more so than the other Majors. These convivial
characters were ostensibly directing the interior economy of the Camp,
and as the troops were well fed and looked after they must be given
credit for it. The training of recruits was left mainly to
sergeant-instructors, most of whom were Regular N.C.O.s of the best
pattern, hard-worked men who were on their legs from morning to night,
and strict because they had to be strict. The raw material to be trained
was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the
Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military
service tolerable. The war had become undisguisedly mechanical and
inhuman. What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now
droves of victims. I was just beginning to be aware of this.

                          *        *        *

But Clitherland had accessible compensations. One of them was the Golf
Course at Formby. The electric train took only twenty minutes to get
there, and Formby was famous for its bracing air, comfortable Club
House, and superlatively good war-time food. I went there at least one
afternoon a week; usually I played alone, and often I had the links to
myself, which was no disadvantage, since I have always been considerably
addicted to my own company.

My main purpose, however, was a day with the hounds. For this I was
readily given leave off Saturday morning duties, since an officer who
wanted to go out hunting was rightly regarded as an upholder of pre-war
regimental traditions. The Saturday Meets of the Cheshire Hounds were a
long way off, but nothing short of impossibility deterred me, and the
working out of my plans was an effective antidote to war-weariness. It
was, in fact, very like achieving the impossible, when I sat in my hut
of an evening, cogitating with luxurious deliberation, consulting a map
and calculating how my hireling could meet me at such and such a
station, measuring the distance from there to the meet, and so on in the
manner known to enthusiastic young sportsmen. On such Saturdays I would
get up in the dark with joyful alacrity. Leaving Liverpool by an early
train, I would eagerly observe the disconsolate beginnings of a dull
December day, encouraging as far as I could the illusion that I was
escaping from everything associated with the uniform which I wore, and
eyeing my brown Craxwell field-boots affectionately.

Under such conditions no day could be a bad one, and although more than
one Saturday's hunting was stopped by frost, I derived singular
consolation from the few hunts I had. My consolations included a heavy
fall over some high timber which I ought to have had more sense than to
tackle, since my hireling was a moderate though willing performer.
Anyhow, the contrast between Clitherland Camp and the Cheshire Saturday
country was like the difference between War and Peace--especially
when--at the end of a good day--I jogged a few miles homeward with the
hounds, conversing with the cheery huntsman in my best pre-war style.

Apart from these compensations I had the companionship of David who was
now quite the 'old soldier' and as argumentative as ever. In fact, while
I pored over my one-inch-to-the-mile map of Cheshire after dinner, he
was usually sitting on in the Mess and taking an active part in the
wordy warfare of other 'old soldiers', among whom he was now listened to
as one having authority. It was something to have been in the Battle of
the Somme; but to have been at the Battle of Loos as well made him feel
quite a big gun. In our hut, however, we sought fresher subjects than
bygone battles and obliterated trenches. I enjoyed talking about English
literature, and listened to him as to an oracle which I could, now and
then, venture to contradict. Although he was nine years younger than I
was, I often found myself reversing our ages, since he knew so much more
than I did about almost everything except fox-hunting. He made short
work of most books which I had hitherto venerated, for David was a
person who consumed his enthusiasms quickly, and he once fairly took my
breath away by pooh-poohing _Paradise Lost_ as 'that moribund academic
concoction'. I hadn't realized that it was possible to speak
disrespectfully about Milton. Anyhow, John Milton was consigned to
perdition, and John Skelton was put forward as 'one of the few really
good poets'. But somehow I could never quite accept his supremacy over
Milton as an established fact. At that period Samuel Butler was the
source of much of David's ingenuity at knocking highly-respected names
and notions off their perches.

Anyhow, I was always ready to lose another literary illusion, for many
of my friend's quiddities were as nicely rounded, and as evanescent, as
the double smoke rings he was so adroit at blowing. He was full of such
entertaining little tricks, and I never tired of hearing him imitate the
talk of excitable Welshmen. He was fond of music, too; but it was a
failure when we went to an orchestral concert in Liverpool. David said
that it 'upset him psychologically'. It was no good as music either. No
music was really any good except the Northern Folk-Ballad tunes which he
was fond of singing at odd moments. 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' was one
of his favourites, and he sang it in agreeably melancholy style. But
much though I admired these plaintive ditties I could not believe that
they abolished Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which we'd heard at the
Concert. I realize now that what I ought to have said was 'Oh rats,
David!' Instead of which I clumsily tried to explain the merits of
various composers other than the inventors of _The Minstrelsy of the
Border_, which was exactly what he wanted me to do. Sometimes he made me
quite angry. I remember one morning when he was shaving with one hand
and reading _Robinson Crusoe_ in the other. Crusoe was a real man, he
remarked; fox-hunting was the sport of snobs and half-wits. Since it was
too early in the day for having one's leg pulled, I answered huffily
that I supposed Crusoe was all right, but a lot of people who hunted
were jolly good sorts, and even great men in their own way. I tried to
think of someone to support my argument, and after a moment exclaimed;
"Anthony Trollope, for instance! He used to hunt a lot, and you can't
say he was a half-wit." "No, but he was probably a snob!" I nearly lost
my temper while refuting the slur on Trollope's character, and David
made things worse by saying that I had no idea how funny I was when I
reverted to my peace-time self. "I had an overdose of the hunting dope
when I was with the Second Battalion in '15," he added. "If I'd been
able to gas about Jorrocks and say I'd hunted with the Bedfordshire
Hounds all my life, the Colonel and the Adjutant would have behaved
quite decently to me." "You can't be certain of that," I replied, "and
anyway, there's no such thing as 'the Bedfordshire Hounds'.
Bedfordshire's mostly the Oakley, and that isn't a first-class country
either. You might as well get the names right when you're talking
through your hat about things you don't understand." What did it matter
to David whether the Oakley was bordered by the Grafton, Fitzwilliam,
and Whaddon Chase--none of which I'd ever hunted with, but I knew they
were good countries and I didn't pretend that I wasn't interested in
them, and I strongly objected to them being sneered at by a crank--yes,
a fad-ridden crank--like David. "You're a fad-ridden crank," I remarked
aloud. But as he always took my admonitions for what they were worth,
the matter ended amicably, and a minute later I was able to remind him
that he was going on parade without a tie.

I have already said that, as a rule, we avoided war-talk. Outwardly our
opinions did not noticeably differ, though his sense of 'the regimental
tradition' was stronger than mine, and he 'had no use for anti-war
idealism'. But each of us had his own attitude toward the War. My
attitude (which had not always been easy to sustain) was that I wanted
to have fine feelings about it. I wanted the War to be an impressive
experience--terrible, but not Horrible enough to interfere with my
heroic emotions. David, on the other hand, distrusted sublimation and
seemed to want the War to be even uglier than it really was. His mind
loathed and yet attached itself to rank smells and squalid details. Like
his face (which had a twist to it, as though seen in a slightly
distorting mirror) his mental war-pictures were a little uncouth and out
of focus. Though in some ways more easily shocked than I was, he had, as
I once informed him, 'a first-rate nose for anything nasty'. It is only
fair to add that this was when he'd been discoursing about the ubiquity
of certain establishments in France. His information was all
second-hand; but to hear him talk--round-eyed but quite the man of
experience--one might have imagined that Amiens, Abbeville, Bethune, and
Armentières were mainly illuminated by 'Blue Lamps' and 'Red Lamps', and
that for a good young man to go through Havre or Rouen was a sort of
Puritan's Progress from this world to the next.


[II]

Going into Liverpool was, for most of us, the only antidote to the daily
tedium of the Depot. Liverpool usually meant the Olympic Hotel. This
palatial contrast to the Camp was the chief cause of the overdrafts of
Ormand and other young officers. Never having crossed the Atlantic, I
did not realize that the Hotel was an American importation, but I know
now that the whole thing might have been brought over from New York in
the mind of a first-class passenger. Once inside the Olympic, one trod
on black and white squares of synthetic rubber, and the warm interior
smelt of this pseudo-luxurious flooring. Everything was white and gilt
and smooth; it was, so to speak, an air-tight Paradise made of imitation
marble. Its loftiness made resonance languid; one of its attractions was
a swimming-bath, and the whole place seemed to have the acoustics of a
swimming-bath; noise was muffled and diluted to an aqueous undertone,
and even the languishing intermezzos of the string band throbbed and
dilated as though a degree removed from ordinary audibility. Or so it
seemed to the Clitherland subaltern who lounged in an ultra-padded chair
eating rich cakes with his tea, after drifting from swimming-bath to
hairdresser, buying a few fiction-magazines on his way. Later on the
cocktail bar would claim him; and after that he would compensate himself
for Clitherland with a dinner that defied digestion.

'Fivers' melted rapidly at the Olympic, and many of them were being
melted by people whose share in the national effort was difficult to
diagnose. In the dining-room I began to observe that some non-combatants
were doing themselves pretty well out of the War. They were people whose
faces lacked nobility, as they ordered lobsters and selected colossal
cigars. I remember drawing Durley's attention to some such group when he
dined with me among the mirrors and mock magnificence. They had
concluded their spectacular feed with an ice-cream concoction, and now
they were indulging in an afterthought--stout and oysters. I said that I
supposed they must be profiteers. For a moment Durley regarded them with
unspeculative eyes, but he made no comment; if he found them incredible,
it wasn't surprising; both his brothers had been killed in action and
his sense of humour had suffered in proportion. I remarked that we
weren't doing so badly ourselves and replenished his champagne-glass.
Durley was on sick-leave and had come to Liverpool for a night so as to
see me and one or two others at the Depot. The War was very much on his
mind, but we avoided discussing it during dinner. Afterwards, when we
were sitting in a quiet corner, he gave me an account of the show at
Delville Wood on September 3rd. Owing to his having been wounded in the
throat, he spoke in a strained whisper. His narrative was something like
this:

    "After our first time up there--digging a trench in front of
    Delville Wood--we came back to Bonté Redoubt and got there soon
    after daylight on the 30th. That day and the next we were being
    shelled by long-range guns. About ten o'clock on the night of
    the 31st, Kinjack decided to shift camp. That took us two hours,
    though it was only 1,500 yards away, but it was pitch dark and
    pouring with rain. I'd got into 'slacks' and was just settling
    down in a bell-tent when we got the order to move up to
    Montauban in double-quick time. Kinjack went on ahead. You can
    imagine the sort of mix-up it was--the men going as fast as they
    could, getting strung out and losing touch in the dark, and the
    Adjutant galloping up and down cursing everyone; I never saw him
    in such a state before--you know what a quiet chap he usually
    is. We'd started in such a hurry that I'd got my puttees on over
    my 'slacks'! It must have been nearly five miles, but we did it
    in just over the hour. When we got there no one could say what
    all the 'wind-up' was about; we were in reserve all next day and
    didn't move up to the Wood till the evening after that. We were
    to attack from the right-hand corner of the Wood, with the East
    Surreys covering our left and the Manchester attacking Ginchy on
    our right. Our objective was Pint Trench, taking Bitter and Beer
    and clearing Ale and Vat, and also Pilsen Lane in which the
    Brigade thought there were some big dug-outs. When I showed the
    battle-plan to the Sergeant-Major, all he said was 'We'll have a
    rough house from Ale Alley'. But no one had any idea it was
    going to be such a schimozzle as it was!... Anyhow by 8.30 on
    the night of September 2nd I got C Company inside the Wood, with
    Perrin and his Company just in front of us. A lot of the trees
    were knocked to splinters and most of the undergrowth had gone,
    so it wasn't difficult to get about. But while we were getting
    into position in shell-holes and a trench through the Wood there
    were shells coming from every direction and Very lights going up
    all round the Wood, and more than once I had to get down and use
    my luminous compass before I could say which side was which.
    Young Fernby and the Battalion bombers were on my right, and I
    saw more of him than of Perrin during the night; he was quite
    cheerful; we'd been told it was going to be a decent show. The
    only trouble we struck that night was when a shell landed among
    some men in a shell-hole; two of the stretcher-bearers were
    crying and saying it was bloody murder.

    "Next day began grey and cheerless; shells screeching overhead,
    the earth going up in front of the Wood, and twigs falling on my
    tin hat. When it got near zero, the earth was going up
    continuously. Boughs were coming down. You couldn't hear the
    shells coming--simply felt the earth quake when they arrived.
    There was some sort of smoke-screen but it only let the Boches
    know we were coming. No one seems to be able to explain exactly
    what happened, but the Companies on the left never had a hope.
    They got enfiladed from Ale Alley, so the Sergeant-Major was
    right about the 'rough house'. Edmunds was killed almost at once
    and his Company and B were knocked to bits as soon as they came
    out of the Wood. I took C along just behind Perrin and his
    crowd. We advanced in three rushes. It was nothing but
    scrambling in and out of shell-holes, with the ground all soft
    like potting-mould. The broken ground and the slope of the hill
    saved us a bit from their fire. Bitter Trench was simply like a
    filled-in ditch where we crossed it. The contact-aeroplane was
    just over our heads all the time, firing down at the Boches.
    After the second rush I looked round and saw that a few of the
    men were hanging back a bit, and no wonder, for a lot of them
    were only just out from England! I wondered if I ought to go
    back to them, but the only thing I'd got in my head was a tag
    from what some instructor had told me when I was a private in
    the Artists' Rifles before the War. _In an attack always keep
    going forward!_ Except for that, I couldn't think much; the
    noise was appalling and I've never had such a dry tongue in my
    life. I knew one thing, that we must keep up with the barrage.
    We had over 500 yards to go before the first lift and had been
    specially told we must follow the barrage close up. It was a
    sort of cinema effect; all noise and no noise. One of my runners
    was shot through the face from Ale Alley; I remember something
    like a half-brick flying over my head, and the bullets from the
    enfilade fire sort of smashing the air in front of my face. I
    saw a man just ahead topple over slowly, almost gracefully, and
    thought 'poor little chap, that's his last Cup Tie'. Anyhow, the
    two companies were all mixed up by the time we made the third
    rush, and we suddenly found ourselves looking down into Beer
    Trench with the Boches kneeling below us. Just on my left,
    Perrin, on top, and a big Boche, standing in the trench, fired
    at one another; down went the Boche. Then they cleared off along
    Vat Alley, and we blundered after them. I saw one of our chaps
    crumpled up, with a lot of blood on the back of his neck, and I
    took his rifle and bandolier and went on with Johnson, my
    runner. The trench had fallen in in a lot of places. They kept
    turning round and firing back at us. Once, when Johnson was just
    behind me, he fired (a cool careful shot--both elbows rested)
    and hit one of them slick in the face; the red jumped out of his
    face and up went his arms. After that they disappeared. Soon
    afterwards we were held up by a machine-gun firing dead on the
    trench where it was badly damaged, and took refuge in a big
    shell-hole that had broken into it. Johnson went to fetch Lewis
    guns and bombers. I could see four or five heads bobbing up and
    down a little way off so I fired at them and never hit one. The
    rifle I'd got was one of those 'wirer's rifles' which hadn't
    been properly looked after, and very soon nothing happened when
    I pressed the trigger which had come loose somehow and wouldn't
    fire the charge. I reloaded and tried again, then threw the
    thing away and got back into the trench. There was a man
    kneeling with his rifle sticking up, so I thought I'd use that;
    but as I was turning to take it another peace-time tag came into
    my head--_Never deprive a man of his weapon in a post of
    danger!_

    "The next thing I knew was when I came to and found myself
    remembering a tremendous blow in the throat and right shoulder,
    and feeling speechless and paralysed. Men were moving to and fro
    above me. Then there was a wild yell--'They're coming back!' and
    I was alone. I thought 'I shall be bombed to bits lying here'
    and just managed to get along to where a Lewis gun was firing. I
    fell down and Johnson came along and cut my equipment off and
    tied up my throat. Someone put my pistol in my side pocket, but
    when Johnson got me on to my legs it was too heavy and pulled me
    over so he threw it away. I remember him saying, 'Make way; let
    him come,' and men saying 'Good luck, sir'--pretty decent of
    them under such conditions! Got along the trench and out at the
    back somehow--everything very hazy--drifting smoke and
    shell-holes--down the hill--thinking 'I must get back to
    Mother'--kept falling down and getting up--Johnson always
    helping. Got to Battalion headquarters; R.S.M. outside; he took
    me very gently by the left hand and led me along, looking
    terribly concerned. Out in the open again at the back of the
    hill I knew I was safe. Fell down and couldn't get up any more.
    Johnson disappeared. I felt it was all over with me till I heard
    his voice saying, 'Here he is,' and the stretcher-bearers picked
    me up.... When I was at the dressing-station they took a
    scrap of paper out of my pocket and read it to me. 'I saved your
    life under heavy fire'; signed and dated. The stretcher-bearers
    do that sometimes, I'm told!"

He laughed huskily, his face lighting up with a gleam of his old
humour....

I asked whether the attack had been considered successful. He thought
not. The Manchesters had failed, and Ginchy wasn't properly taken till
about a week later. "When I was in hospital in London," he went on, "I
talked to a son of a gun from the Brigade Staff; he'd been slightly
gassed. He told me we'd done all that was expected of us; it was only a
holding attack in our sector, so as to stop the Boches from firing down
the hill into the backs of our men who were attacking Guillemont. They
knew we hadn't a hope of getting Ale Alley."

He had told it in a simple unemphatic way, illustrating the story with
unconscious gestures--taking aim with a rifle, and so on. But the
nightmare of smoke and sunlight had been in his eyes, with a sense of
confusion and calamity of which I could only guess at the reality. He
was the shattered survivor of a broken battalion which had 'done all
that was expected of it'.

I asked about young Fernby. Durley had been in the same hospital with
him at Rouen and had seen him once. "They were trying to rouse him up a
bit, as he didn't seem to recognize anybody. They knew we'd been in the
same Battalion, so I was taken into his ward one night. His head was all
over shrapnel wounds. I spoke to him and tried to get him to recognize
me, but he didn't know who I was; he died a few hours later."

Silence was the only comment possible; but I saw the red screens round
the bed, and Durley whispering to Fernby's bandaged head and irrevocable
eyes, while the nurse stood by with folded hands.


[III]

At the beginning of January David got himself passed for General Service
abroad. I was completely taken by surprise when he came back and told
me. Apparently the doctor asked him whether he wanted some more home
service, but a sudden angry pride made him ask to be given G.S. A couple
of weeks later he'd had his final leave and I was seeing him off at
Liverpool Station.

A glum twenty-one-year-old veteran (unofficially in charge of a batch of
young officers going out for the first time) he butted his way along the
crowded platform with shoulders hunched, collar turned up to his ears,
and hands plunged in pockets. A certain philosophic finality was
combined with the fidgety out-of-luck look which was not unusual with
him. "I've reduced my kit to a minimum this time. No revolver. I've
worked it out that the chances are about five to one against my ever
using it," he remarked, as he stood shuffling his feet to try and keep
them warm. He hadn't explained how he'd worked the chances out, but he
was always fond of a formula. Then the train began to move and he
climbed awkwardly into his compartment. "Give my love to old Joe when
you get to the First Battalion," was my final effort at heartiness. He
nodded with a crooked smile. Going out for the third time was a rotten
business and his face showed it.

'I ought to be going with him,' I thought, knowing that I could have got
G.S. at my last Board if I'd had the guts to ask for it. But how could
one ask for it when there was a hope of getting a few more days with the
Cheshire and the weather was so perishing cold out in France? 'What a
queer mixture he is,' I thought, as I wandered absent-mindedly away from
the station. Nothing could have been more cheerless than the rumbling
cobbled street by the Docks, with dingy warehouses shutting out the
dregs of daylight and an ash-coloured sky which foretold some more snow.
I remember going back to the hut that night after Mess. There was snow
on the ground, and the shuttered glare and muffled din of the explosive
works seemed more than usually grim. Sitting by the stove I began to
read a magazine which David had left behind. It was a propagandist
weekly containing translations from the Foreign Press. A Copenhagen
paper said: 'The sons of Europe are being crucified on the barbed wire
because the misguided masses are shouting for it. They do not know what
they do, and the statesmen wash their hands. They dare not deliver them
from their martyr's death....' Was this really the truth, I wondered;
wild talk like that was new to me. I thought of Dick Tiltwood, and how
he used to come into this hut with such shining evidences of youth in
his face; and of dark-haired little Fernby, who was just such another;
and of Lance-Corporal Kendle, and all those others whose violent deaths
had saddened my experience. David was now returning to be a candidate
for this military martyrdom, and so (I remembered it with a sick
assurance) was I.

Lying awake while the stove-light died redly in the corner of the room,
I remembered the wine-faced Army Commander with his rows of
medal-ribbons, and how young Allgood and I had marched past him at the
Army School last May, with the sun shining and the band playing. He had
taken the salute from four hundred officers and N.C.O.s of his Army. How
many of them had been killed since then, and how deeply was he
responsible for their deaths? Did he know what he was doing, or was he
merely a successful old cavalryman whose peace-time popularity had
pushed him up on to his present perch?

It was natural that I should remember Flixécourt. Those four weeks had
kept their hold on my mind, and they now seemed like the First Act of a
play--a light-hearted First Act which was unwilling to look ahead from
its background of sunlight and the glorying beauty of beech forests.
Life at the Army School, with its superb physical health, had been like
a prelude to some really conclusive sacrifice of high-spirited youth.
Act II had carried me along to the fateful First of July. Act III had
sent me home to think things over. The autumn attacks had been a
sprawling muddle of attrition and inconclusiveness. In the early summer
the Fourth Army had been ready to advance with a new impetus. Now it was
stuck in the frozen mud in front of Bapaume, like a derelict tank. And
the story was the same all the way up to Ypres. Bellicose politicians
and journalists were fond of using the word 'crusade'. But the
'chivalry' (which I'd seen in epitome at the Army School) had been mown
down and blown up in July, August, and September, and its remnant had
finished the year's 'crusade' in a morass of torment and frustration.
Yet I was haunted by the memory of those Flixécourt weeks--almost as
though I were remembering a time when I'd been in love. Was it with life
that I'd been in love then?--for the days had seemed saturated with the
fecundity of physical health and fine weather, and it had been almost as
if my own germinant aliveness were interfused with some sacrificial rite
which was to celebrate the harvest. 'Germinating and German-hating', I
thought, recovering my sense of reality with a feeble joke. After that I
fell asleep.

                          *        *        *

I had an uncomfortable habit of remembering, when I woke up in the
morning, that the War was still going on and waiting for me to go back
to it; but apart from that and the times when my inmost thoughts got the
upper hand of me, life at the Camp was comparatively cheerful, and I
allowed myself to be carried along by its noisy current of good-humoured
life. At the end of each day I found consolation in the fact that I had
shortened the winter, for the new year had begun with a spell of
perishing cold weather. Our First Battalion, which had been up to its
neck in mud in front of Beaumont-Hamel, was now experiencing fifteen
degrees of frost while carrying on minor operations connected with
straightening the line. Dottrell wrote that they 'weren't thinking
beyond the mail and the rum ration', and advised me to stay away until
the weather improved. It wasn't difficult to feel like following his
advice; but soon afterwards I went into Liverpool for what I knew to be
my final Medical Board. It was a dark freezing day, and all the officers
in the waiting-room looked as if they wanted to feel their worst for the
occasion. A sallow youth confided in me that he'd been out on the razzle
the night before and was hoping to get away with another four weeks'
home service.

There were two silver-haired Army doctors sitting at a table, poring
over blue and white documents. One, with a waxed moustache, eyed me
wearily when I came into the office. With a jerk of the head he
indicated a chair by the table. "Feel fit to go out again?" "Yes; quite
well, thank you." His pen began to move across the blue paper. "Has been
passed fit for General Ser...." He looked up irritably. "Don't shake
the table!" (I was tapping it with my fingers.) The other Colonel gazed
mildly at me over his pince-nez. Waxed moustache grunted and went on
writing. Shaking the table wouldn't stop that pen of his!




PART SEVEN
ROUEN IN FEBRUARY


[I]

Sometime in the second week of February I crossed to Havre on a
detestable boat named _Archangel_. As soon as the boat began to move I
was aware of a sense of relief. It was no use worrying about the War
now; I was in the Machine again, and all responsibility for my future
was in the haphazard control of whatever powers manipulated the British
Expeditionary Force. Most of us felt like that, I imagine, and the
experience was known as 'being for it again'. Apart from that, my only
recollection of the crossing is that someone relieved me of my new
trench-coat while I was asleep.

At nine o'clock in the evening of the next day I reported myself at the
5th Infantry Base Depot at Rouen. The journey from London had lasted
thirty-three hours (a detail which I record for the benefit of those who
like slow-motion war-time details). The Base Camp was a couple of miles
from the town, on the edge of a pine forest. In the office where I
reported I was informed that I'd been posted to our Second Battalion;
this gave me something definite to grumble about, for I wanted to go
where I was already known, and the prospect of joining a strange
battalion made me feel more homeless than ever. The 5th I.B.D. Adjutant
advised me to draw some blankets; the store-room was just round the
corner, he said. After groping about in the dark and tripping over tent
ropes I was beginning to lose my temper when I opened a door and found
myself in a Guard Room. A man, naked to the waist, was kneeling in the
middle of the floor, clutching at his chest and weeping uncontrollably.
The Guard were standing around with embarrassed looks, and the Sergeant
was beside him, patient and unpitying. While he was leading me to the
blanket store I asked him what was wrong. "Why, sir, the man's been
under detention for assaulting the military police, and now 'e's just
'ad news of his brother being killed. Seems to take it to 'eart more
than most would. 'Arf crazy, 'e's been, tearing 'is clothes off and
cursing the war and the Fritzes. Almost like a shell-shock case, 'e
seems. It's his third time out. A Blighty one don't last a man long
nowadays, sir." As I went off into the gloom I could still hear the
uncouth howlings.

"Well, well; this is a damned depressing spot to arrive at!" I thought,
while I lay awake trying to keep warm and munching a bit of chocolate,
in a narrow segment of a canvas shed about four feet high. Beyond the
army-blanket which served as a partition, two officers were chattering
interminably in rapid Welsh voices. They were comparing their
experiences at some squalid pleasure house in Rouen, and their
disclosures didn't make the War seem any jollier. It was, in fact, the
most disgusting little conversation I'd ever listened to. But what right
had I to blame the poor devils for trying to have a good time before
they went up to the Line?... Nevertheless, the War seemed to be doing
its best to make me feel unheroic.

Next day I found the 5th I.B.D. Mess dispiriting. I knew nobody, and it
wasn't a place where people felt inclined to be interested in one
another, since none of them were there for more than a few days. They
agreed in grumbling about the alcoholic R.C. padre who managed the mess;
the food was bad, and four and threepence a day was considered an
exorbitant charge. When they weren't on the training ground (known as
'the Bull Ring') officers sat about in the Mess Room playing cards,
cursing the cold weather, and talking tediously about the War with an
admixture of ineffective cynicism which hadn't existed twelve months
before. I watched them crowding round the notice board after a paper had
been pinned to it. They were looking to see if their names were on the
list of those going up to the Line next day. Those who were on the list
laughed harshly and sat down, with simulated unconcern, to read a stale
picture paper. On the same notice board were the names of three private
soldiers who had been shot for cowardice since the end of January. 'The
sentence was duly carried out....' In the meantime we could just hear
the grumbling of the guns, and there was the Spring Offensive to look
forward to.

I was feeling as if I'd got a touch of fever, and next morning the
doctor told me I'd got German measles. So I transferred myself
ingloriously to No. 25 Stationary Hospital, which was a compound of
tents with a barbed wire fence round it, about 300 yards from the Camp.
There were six in the tent already and my arrival wasn't popular. An
extra bed had to be brought in, and the four card-players huddled
against a smoky stove were interrupted by a gust of Arctic wind. There
was snow on the ground and the tent was none too warm at the best of
times. "Now, Mr. Parkins, I'm afraid you must shift round a bit to make
room for the new patient," said the nurse. While my bed was being lugged
into position by an orderly, Mr. Parkins made it plain that six had been
company in that tent and seven was an inconvenience. One of his
opponents told him to stop chewing the rag and deal again. The cards had
been blown off the table and Parkins had lost what, he said, was the
first decent hand he'd held that morning. But the additional
overcrowding soon ceased to be a grievance, and I didn't spoil their
well established circle by offering to cut in at bridge, for I was
content to read a book and observe my fellow-invalids.

The quietest of them was Strangford, a specimen of adolescent
simplicity, lanky and overgrown and credulous. He wore a kilt, but came
of good North Irish stock. Though barely nineteen, he had done several
months in the trenches. His father kept a pack of harriers in County
Down, and his face would light up when I encouraged him to tell me about
them. But unless he was talking or had some little job to keep him busy,
his brain appeared to cease working altogether. He would sit on the edge
of his bed, slowly rubbing his knee which had a bad sore on it; a mop of
untidy brown hair hung over his forehead, and his huge clumsy hands and
red wrists had outgrown his tunic. After rubbing his knee, he takes a
letter from his breast pocket, bending his gawky, unformed face over it;
once he smiles secretly, but when he has read it through he is
solemn--wondering, perhaps, when he will see his home and the harriers
again.

Parkins was an obvious contrast to this modest youth. Pent up in the
accidental intimacy of army life, men were usually anxious to exhibit
themselves to the best advantage, particularly as regards their civilian
antecedents. 'I'll bet he was jolly well-dressed before the war,' was a
type of remark frequently made by young platoon commanders. Parkins was
about thirty, and often reminded us that he had been to Cambridge; in
private life he had been a schoolmaster. Plausible at first, he soon
revealed his defects, for the slovenly tedium of that tent brought greed
and selfishness to the surface. With his muddy eyes and small dark
moustache, he wasn't a man one took to. But he was self-satisfied, and
did his best to amuse us with indecent rhymes and anecdotes. He was also
fond of using certain stilted expressions, such as 'for the nonce' and
'anent'. "I've no complaints to make anent this hand," he would say when
playing cards. He posed as a gay dog, chaffing the nurses when they
brought in the food, and quoting Omar Khayyám at them--'a jug of wine, a
loaf of bread and thou beside me, singing in the Wilderness'--and
referring to the tent as 'this battered Caravanserai whose portals are
alternate Night and Day'. Parkins did not conceal his dislike of the
Front Line, and was now in hopes of getting a job as Railway Transport
Officer. But he was the sort of man who would get killed in some
unutterably wretched attack after doing his best to dodge it.

Young Holt was another second-rate character, plump, smooth-faced and
spuriously smart. He had escaped from the Infantry into the Balloon
Section, and now fancied himself in a leather overcoat with a fur
collar--playing at 'being in the Royal Flying Corps'. He felt that
R.F.C. officers had a social superiority to the Infantry. Being up in a
balloon elevated a man in more ways than one, and he often aired his
discrimination in such matters. Speaking of the Artillery, he would say,
"Yes, there's more _tone_ in the R.F.A.--much more tone than you find in
the Garrison Gunners!" Holt was a harmless easy-going creature, but we
got very tired of his incessant repetition of a stale joke which
consisted in saying in a loud voice, _I will arise and will go unto my
father and will say unto him: Father, stand-at-ease_!

Then there was White, a sensible Territorial Captain who had been in
charge of Heavy Trench Mortars. Short and thick set, with a deep,
humorous voice, he talked in a muddled way about the War--sardonic about
English methods, but easily impressed by notable 'public names' of
politicians and generals. He liked discussing Trench Mortar
technicalities, and from the way he spoke about his men I knew that he
had earned their gratitude.

There was another youngish man who had been a clerk in the Colonial
Office and had gone to Egypt as a Yeomanry Sergeant before getting his
Infantry commission. He talked to me, in a cockney accent, about his
young wife, and was evidently kindly and reliable, though incapable of
understanding an original idea. Two days after I'd seen the last of him,
I couldn't remember either his face or his name.

The last of my six companions was Patterson, aged nineteen and fresh
from Edinburgh University with a commission in the Field Artillery. His
home was in Perth and he admitted that he loved porridge, when asking
the nurse to try and wangle him a second helping of it. He talked broad
Scots and made simple-minded war jokes, and then surprised me by quoting
Milton and Keats. Self-reliant with a sort of pleasant truculence, he
was thorough and careful in everything he did. With his crisp fair hair,
grey eyes, and fresh complexion, he was a pattern of charming
youthfulness. If he lived, he would be a shrewd, kindly man. Did he
live, I wonder?...

After the first few days I used to slip through the wire fence and walk
in the clean-smelling pine-woods. The surf-like sighing of the lofty
colonnades could tranquillize my thoughts after the boredom of the tent
and the chatter of the card-players crouching by the stove. The
pine-trees are patiently waiting for the guns to stop, I thought, and I
felt less resentment against the War than I had done since I left
England.... One afternoon I followed an alley which led downhill to a
big shuttered house. Blackbirds were scolding among the bushes as I
trespassed in the untidy garden, and someone was chopping timber in a
brown copse below the house. A dog barked from the stable-yard; hens
clucked, and a cow lowed. Such homely sounds were comforting when one
was in the exile of army life. I thought of the lengthening spring
twilights and the lovely wakening of the year, forgetful of the 'Spring
Offensive'. But it was only for a short while, and the bitter reality
returned to me as I squeezed myself through the hospital's barbed wire
fence. I was losing my belief in the War, and I longed for mental
acquiescence--to be like young Patterson, who had come out to fight for
his country undoubting, who could still kneel by his bed and say his
simple prayers, steadfastly believing that he was in the Field Artillery
to make the world a better place. I had believed like that, once upon a
time, but now the only prayer which seemed worth uttering was Omar
Khayyám's:

    _For all the Sin wherewith the face of Man_
    _Is blackened--Man's forgiveness give--and take._


[II]

Back at the Infantry Base Depot after my ten days of German measles, I
stared at the notice board on nine successive mornings before my own
name (typewritten and slightly misspelt Sharston) caused me to saunter
away with the correct air of unconcern. At that moment the Medical
Officer came in, shaking some snow off his coat. Sturdy, pink-faced and
chubby, he looked a typical optimist. He had been two years with a
fighting battalion and was now down at the Base for good, with a well
earned D.S.O. He and I got on well together, but his appearance was
deceptive, for he was a profound pessimist. He now exclaimed, rather
crustily, that he supposed there'd only be one more winter out here, if
we were lucky. I'd heard this remark from him before, and the first time
had made me feel gloomy, for I had been hoping that the War would be
over by next autumn. When the Mess waiter had brought him a whisky I
ventured to ask his opinion about the German withdrawal on the Ancre;
for at that time they were retiring to the Hindenburg Line, and sanguine
subalterns were rejoicing over this proof that we'd 'got them on the
run'. The Doctor assured me that the Germans were 'pulling our legs
properly'. The idea seemed to please him; he always looked his brightest
when he was announcing that we were certain to lose the War. We were now
joined by a Rifle Brigade Major with an Irish brogue, who had been a
cavalryman in the South African War. He had got his skull fractured by a
bit of shell at the first battle of Ypres, but in spite of this he was a
resolute optimist and was delighted to be back in France as
second-in-command of a New Army Battalion. England, he said, was no
place for an honest man; the sight of all those dirty dogs swindling the
Government made him sick. When the Doctor grumbled about the rotten
outlook, the Major would say: "Yes, things couldn't be much worse, but
another two or three years ought to see the job finished." I found him
surly and contradictory at first, but he softened when he got to know
me, though he wasn't an easy man to discuss anything with, for he simply
stated his opinions in a loud voice and only listened to one's replies
in a detached one-eared way (which was literally true, since he was
stone deaf on one side of his head, and had only got himself passed for
active service after a tussle with the War Office). His rough and ready
philosophy was refreshing, and he was a wholesome example of human
inconsistency. He was a good-hearted man, I felt; but his attitude
toward Conscientious Objectors was frankly brutal. He described, with
evident relish, his methods of dealing with two of them who had turned
up at the Rifle Brigade Depot. One had been a tough nut to crack, for he
was a well-educated man, and the authorities were afraid of him. But the
Major had got him run in for two years' hard labour. He'd have knocked
him about a bit if he'd been allowed to, he said. The other one was some
humble inarticulate wretch who refused to march. So the Major had him
tied to the back of a waggon and dragged along a road until he was badly
cut about. "After a few hundred yards he cried enough, and afterwards
turned out to be quite a decent soldier. Made good, and was killed in
the trenches." He smiled grimly. Discipline had to be enforced by
brutality, said the Major; and, as I have already remarked, he wasn't
amenable to argument.

I hadn't formed any opinion about Conscientious Objectors, but I
couldn't help thinking that they must be braver men than some I'd seen
wearing uniforms in safe places and taking salutes from genuine
soldiers.

                          *        *        *

Resolved to make the most of my last day at the Base, I went down to
Rouen early in the afternoon without having wasted any time in applying
for leave from the Adjutant. A tram took me most of the way; the city
looked fine as we crossed the river. There wasn't so very much to be
done when I got there, but the first thing was to have a hair-cut. I'd
had one a week ago, but this one might have to last me a longish while,
for I wasn't keen on Battalion barbers. So I told the man to cut off as
much as he could, and while he clipped and snipped I gazed gloomily at
myself in the glass, speculating prosaically on the probabilities of my
head of hair ever needing another trim up. A captain in the next chair
had been through the whole repertoire--hair-cut, shave, shampoo,
face-massage, and friction. "Now I feel a quid better," he remarked when
he got up to go. He was wearing trench-boots and was evidently on his
way to the Line. I had heard him treating the barber, who spoke English,
to a panegyric on the prospects of an Allied success in the Spring.
"We're going to give them the knock all right this journey!" The barber
asked him about a long scar which seamed his head. He smiled, "A
souvenir of Devil's Wood." I wondered how much longer he would retain
his enthusiasm for the Western Front. Personally I preferred rambling
around Rouen and pretending that I was an ordinary peace-time tourist.
In the old quarters of the town one could stroll about without meeting
many English soldiers.

Later on I was going to the Hôtel de la Poste for a valedictory bath and
dinner. In the meantime I was content to stare at shop-windows and
explore side streets. It was a Saturday afternoon and the people were
busy marketing. At the end of my wanderings I went into the Cathedral,
leaving behind me the bustling Square and the sallow gusty sunset which
flared above the roofs. In the Cathedral, perhaps, I could escape from
the War for a while, although the Christian Religion had apparently no
claim to be regarded as a Benevolent Neutral Power.

It was some Saint's Day, and the nave was crowded with drifting figures,
their footfalls echoing in the dusk. Sometimes a chair scrooped when a
worshipper moved away. Candles burned in clear clusters, like flickering
gold flowers, in the shrines where kneeling women gazed and whispered
and moved their hands devoutly. In the pulpit a priest was urging the
Lenten significance of 'Jésu', tilting his pallid square face from side
to side and gesticulating mechanically. A congregation sat or stood to
hear him; among them, at my elbow, a small child stared up at the priest
with stupid innocent eyes. That child couldn't understand the sermon any
more than it understood the War. It saw a man, high up and alone,
clenching his hands and speaking vehemently; it also saw the figures of
people called soldiers who belonged to something that made a much bigger
noise than the preacher, who now stopped suddenly, and the monotonous
chanting began again in front of the altar (sounding, I thought, rather
harsh and hopeless).

The preacher, I inferred, had been reminding us that we ought to love
one another and be like little children. 'Jésu' had said so, and He had
died to save us (but not to save the Germans or the Austrians or any of
that lot). It was no good trying to feel uplifted, when such thoughts
grimaced at me; but there was a certain consolation in the solemnity of
the Cathedral, and I remained there after the service had ended.
Gradually, the glory faded from the rose-window above the organ. I
looked at all the windows, until their lights were only blurs and
patches, and the prophets and martyrs robed in blue and crimson and
green were merged in outer darkness.

                          *        *        *

The Hôtel de la Poste hadn't altogether modernized its interior, but it
contained much solid comfort and supplied the richest meals in Rouen.
Consequently it was frequented by every British officer employed in the
district, and had become a sort of club for those indispensable
residents--so much so that strong suggestions had been advanced by
senior officers to the effect that the _Poste_ should be put out of
bounds for all Infantry subalterns on their way to the Line. The place,
they felt, was becoming too crowded, and the deportment of a 'temporary
gentleman' enjoying his last decent dinner was apt to be more suitable
to a dug-out than a military club.

Leaning back in a wicker chair, I enjoyed the after-effects of a hot
bath and wondered what I'd have for dinner. The lift came sliding down
from nowhere to stop with a dull bump. A bulky grey-haired Colonel, with
green tabs and a Coronation Medal, stepped heavily out, leaning on a
stick and glaring around him from under a green and gold cap and
aggressive eyebrows. His disapproval focused itself on a group of
infantry subalterns whose ungainly legs were cumbered with high
trench-boots; trench-coats and haversacks were slung untidily across
their chairs; to-night, or to-morrow, or 'some old time or other',
they'd be crawling up to the War in an over-ventilated reinforcement
train, gazing enviously at the Red Cross trains which passed them--going
the other way--and disparaging the French landscape, 'so different to
good old Blighty'. Compared with 'the troops', who travelled in vans
designed for horses and cattle, they were in clover. The Colonel, on the
other hand, probably supervised an office full of clerks who made lists
of killed, wounded, and reinforcements. I had visited such a place
myself in an attempt to get my name transferred to the First Battalion,
and had been received with no civility at all. They were all much too
busy to rearrange the private affairs of a dissatisfied
second-lieutenant, as might have been expected. But the contrast between
the Front Line and the Base was an old story, and at any rate the Base
Details were at a disadvantage as regards the honour and glory which
made the War such an uplifting experience for those in close contact
with it. I smiled sardonically at the green and gold Colonel's back
view. The lift ascended again, leaving a confused murmur of male voices
and a clatter effect on the polished wood floor. Officers pushed through
the swing-doors in twos and threes, paused to buy an English paper from
the concierge, vanished to hang up their overcoats, and straddled in
again, pulling down their tunics and smoothing their hair, conscious of
gaiters, neatly-fitting or otherwise. Young cavalrymen were numerous,
their superior social connections demonstrated by well-cut riding boots
and predominantly small heads. Nice-looking young chaps with nice
manners, they sipped cocktails and stood up respectfully when a Cavalry
Brigadier strode past them. The Cavalry were still waiting for their
chance on the Western Front.... Would they ever get it, I wondered.
Personally, I thought it would be a pity if they did, for I disliked the
idea of a lot of good horses being killed and wounded, and I had always
been soft-hearted about horses. By the time I'd finished my dinner and a
bottle of Burgundy, I felt soft-hearted about almost everything. The
large dining-room was full of London Clubmen dressed as Colonels,
Majors, and Captains with a conscientious objection to physical
discomfort. But, after all, somebody had to be at the Base; modern
warfare offered a niche for everyone, and many of them looked better
qualified for a card-table than a military campaign. They were as much
the victims of circumstances as the unfortunate troops in the trenches.
Puffing a cigar, I decided that there was a tolerant view to be taken
about almost everybody, especially after a good dinner at the Hôtel de
la Poste.




PART EIGHT
THE SECOND BATTALION


[I]

Although the War has been described as the greatest event in history, it
could be tedious and repetitional for an ordinary Infantry Officer like
myself.

From Corbie Station the War had started me on my home journey in a
Hospital Train. Rather more than seven months later, at midnight, it
again deposited me at Corbie Station after eight hours in an unlit and
overcrowded carriage which had no glass in its windows. My valise was on
a truck and though I made a scrambling attempt to get it unloaded the
train clanked away into the gloom with all my belongings on board. We
slept on the floor of the Field Ambulance Hut outside the station; my
companions grumbled a good deal, for several of them were out again
after being wounded last year, and one of them claimed to have been hit
in both lungs. Two cadet-officers were going with me to the Second
Battalion, but I had little in common with them except our lost valises,
which were returned to us a week later (with one sample of everything
subtracted by someone at the Army Service Corps Dump). Next morning,
after glumly congratulating myself that I'd packed my safety razor in my
haversack, I walked to my new unit, which was seven miles away. I was
wearing my best friends, a pair of greased marching boots whose supple
strength had never failed to keep the water out; how much those boots
meant to me can only be understood by persons who have shared my type of
experience; I can only say that they never gave me sore feet; and if
this sounds irrelevant, I must remind the reader that a platoon
commander's feet were his fortune.

The Second Battalion of the Flintshire Fusiliers had recently returned
from two months in the Cléry sector of the Somme Front, where they had
endured some of the severest weather of the War. Battalion records
relate that there were no braziers in the trenches, fuel was so scarce
that wooden crosses were taken from casual graves, and except for the
tepid tea that came up in tins wrapped in straw, food was mostly cold.
Major-General Whincop, who commanded the Division, had made himself
obnoxiously conspicuous by forbidding the Rum Ration. He was, of course,
over anxious to demonstrate his elasticity of mind, but the 'No Rum
Division' failed to appreciate their uniqueness in the Expeditionary
Force. He also thought that smoking impaired the efficiency of the
troops and would have liked to restrict their consumption of cigarettes.
General Whincop had likewise demonstrated his independence of mind
earlier in the War by forbidding the issue of steel helmets to his
Division. His conservative objection (which was based on a belief that
this new War Office luxury would weaken the men's fighting spirit--'make
them soft', in fact) was, of course, only a flash in the pan (or
brain-pan) and Whincop's reputation as an innovator was mainly kept
alive by his veto on the Rum Ration. G.O.C.s, like platoon commanders,
were obliged to devise 'stunts' to show their keenness, and
opportunities for originality were infrequent. But since 1918 Generals
have received their full share of ridicule and abuse, and it would not
surprise me if someone were to start a Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Great War Generals. If such a Society were formed, I, for
one, would gladly contribute my modest half-guinea per annum; for it
must be remembered that many an unsuccessful General had previously been
the competent Colonel of an Infantry Battalion, thereby earning the
gratitude and admiration of his men.

Anyhow the frost had been intense, and owing to the rationing of coal in
England the issue to the Army had been limited and coke-issues had
caused many cases of coke-fume poisoning where the men slept in
unventilated dug-outs. After this miserable experience (which had ended
with a thaw and a hundred cases of trench-feet) the Second Battalion was
now resting at Camp 13, about two miles from Morlancourt. The huts of
Camp 13 had been erected since last summer; they disfigured what I had
formerly known as an inoffensive hollow about half a mile from the reedy
windings of the Somme. No one had a good word for the place. The
Battalion was in low spirits because the Colonel had been wounded a few
weeks before, and he had been so popular that everyone regarded him as
irreplaceable. His successor was indulgent and conciliatory, but it
seemed that greater aggressiveness would have been preferable.
Contrasting him with the rough-tongued efficiency of Kinjack, I began to
realize that, in a Commanding Officer, amiability is not enough.

Meanwhile we were in what was called 'Corps Reserve', and Colonel Easby
had issued the order, 'carry on with platoon training' (a pronouncement
which left us free to kill time as best we could). No. 8 Platoon, which
was my own compact little command, was not impressive on parade. Of its
thirty-four N.C.O.s and men, eight were Lewis gunners and paraded
elsewhere. Eight was likewise the number of Private Joneses in my
platoon, and my first difficulty was to differentiate between them. The
depleted Battalion had been strengthened by a draft from England, and
these men were mostly undersized, dull-witted, and barely capable of
carrying the heavy weight of their equipment. As an example of their
proficiency, I can say that in one case platoon training began with the
man being taught how to load his rifle. Afterwards I felt that he would
have been less dangerous in his pre-existing ignorance.

It was difficult to know what to do with my bored and apathetic platoon.
I wasn't a competent instructor, and my sergeant was conscientious but
unenterprising. _Infantry Training_, which was the only manual
available, had been written years before trench warfare 'came into its
own' as a factor in world affairs, and the condensed and practical
_Handbook for the Training of Platoons_ was not issued until nearly
twelve months afterwards. One grey afternoon, when we had gone through
all our monotonous exercises and the men's eyes were more than usually
mindless, I had a bright unmilitary idea and ordered them to play
hide-and-seek among some trees. After a self-conscious beginning they
livened up and actually enjoyed themselves. When I watched them falling
in again with flushed and jolly faces I was aware that a sense of
humanity had been restored to them, and realized how intolerable the
ordinary exercises were unless the instructor was an expert. Even
football matches were impossible, since there was no suitable ground.

The main characteristics of Camp 13 were mud and smoke. Mud was
everywhere. All the Company officers lived in one long gloomy draughty
hut with an earth floor. Smoke was always drifting in from the braziers
of the adjoining kitchen. After dark we sat and shivered in our 'British
Warm' coats, reading, playing cards, and writing letters with watering
eyes by the feeble glimmer of guttering candles. Orderlies brought in a
clutter of tin mugs and plates, and Maconachie stew was consumed in
morose discomfort. It was an existence which suffocated all pleasant
thoughts; nothing survived except animal cravings for warmth, food, and
something to break the monotony of Corps Rest routine.

The only compensation for me was that my body became healthy, in spite
of lesser discomforts such as a continuous cold in the head. The
landscape was a compensation too, for I liked its heaving grey and brown
billows, dotted with corn-stacks, patched and striped by plough and
stubble and green crops, and crossed by bridle tracks and lonely
wandering roads. Hares and partridges hurried away as I watched them.
Along the horizon the guns still boomed and thudded, and bursting shells
made tiny puffs of smoke above ridges topped by processions of trees,
with here and there the dark line of woods. But from some windy upland I
looked down on villages, scattered in the folds of hill and valley like
handfuls of pebbles, grey and dull red, and from such things I got what
consolation I could.

One Sunday afternoon I walked across to Heilly. I'd been there for a few
days with the First Battalion last July, before we marched back to the
Line in dust and glare. The water still sang its undertones by the
bridge and went twinkling to the bend, passing the garden by the house
where the Field Cashier used to hand us our money. I remembered going
there with Dick Tiltwood, just a year ago. Ormand was with me this time,
for he had joined the Second Battalion soon after I did. He had still
got his little gramophone, and we reminded ourselves how Mansfield and
Barton used to be for ever 'chipping' him about it. "I must say I used
to get jolly fed-up with them sometimes; they overdid it, especially
about that record _Lots of Loving_." He laughed, rolling his
good-humoured eyes round at me under the strongly marked black eyebrows
which indicated that he had a strong temper when roused. The joke about
_Lots of Loving_ had consisted in the others pretending that it
contained an unprintable epithet. On one occasion they conspired with
the Adjutant, who asked Ormand to play _Lots of Loving_ and then
simulated astonishment at a certain adjective which was indistinct owing
to the worn condition of the disc. Whereupon Ormand exclaimed angrily,
"I ask you, is it bloody likely that 'His Master's Voice' would send out
a record with the word ---- in it?"

As we trudged back from Heilly the sun was sinking red beyond the hazy
valleys, a shrewd wind blowing, and plough teams turning a last furrow
along the ridges. We'd had quite a good afternoon, but Ormand's
cheerfulness diminished as we neared the Camp. He didn't fancy his
chance in the Spring Offensive and he wanted to be back with the 'good
old First Battalion', though he wouldn't find many of the good old faces
when he got there. He spoke gloomily about his longing for an ordinary
civilian career and his hatred of 'this silly stunt which the blasted
Bishops call the Great Adventure'. He had been on a Court Martial the
day before, and though nothing had been required of him except to make
up the quorum of officers trying the case, he had been upset by it. Some
poor wretch had been condemned to be shot for cowardice. The court had
recommended the prisoner to mercy, but the proceedings had been bad for
young Ormand. However, he relieved the situation by exclaiming, "And
to-morrow I've got to have my... anti-typhoid injection!" and I
reminded him that he was reducing his overdraft at Cox's by being at the
Front. So our walk ended; we passed the looming aerodrome, and the lines
of lorries under the trees along the main road, and the sentry who stood
by a glowing brazier at the cross-roads. Down in the hollow crouched the
Camp; a disgusting dinner in the smoky hut and then early to bed, was
all it could offer us. 'Summer time' began at midnight, which meant one
hour less sleep and absolutely nothing else.


[II]

Palm Sunday was on April 1st that year. On April 2nd we left Camp 13. No
one wanted to see it again, and as we went up hill to the Corbie road
the smoke from the incinerators made the place look as if we had set
fire to it.

I had a feeling that we were marching away to a better land. Camp 13 had
clogged our minds, but the troops were in better spirits to-day and the
Battalion seemed to have recovered its consciousness as a unit. The wind
was blowing cold enough for snow, but the sun shone and wintry weather
couldn't last much longer. Where were we walking to, I wondered; for
this was known to be the first stage of a longish migration northward.
Arras, perhaps; rumours of an impending battle there had been active
lately. As second-in-command of the Company I went along behind it,
rather at my ease. Watching the men as they plodded patiently on under
their packs, I felt as if my own identity was becoming merged in the
Battalion. We were on the move and the same future awaited all of us
(though most of the men had bad boots and mine were quite comfortable).

More light-hearted than I'd been for some time, I contemplated my
Company Commander, who was in undisputed occupation of a horse which
looked scarcely up to his weight. Captain Leake had begun by being rude
to me. I never discovered the reason. But he had been a Special Reserve
officer before the War, and he couldn't get certain regimental
traditions out of his head. In the good old days, all second-lieutenants
had been called 'warts', and for their first six months a senior officer
never spoke to them, except on parade. Leake evidently liked the idea,
for he was a man who enjoyed standing on his dignity; but such behaviour
was inappropriate to active service, and six months at the Front usually
sufficed to finish the career of a second-lieutenant. On my second
morning at Camp 13 Leake had remarked (for my special benefit) that
'these newly-joined warts were getting too big for their boots'. This
was incorrect, for I was bemoaning the loss of my valise, and the M.O.
had just given me my anti-typhoid injection. Leake also resented the
fact that I had served with the First Battalion, which he appeared to
regard as a hated rival. He thawed gradually after my first week, and
was now verging on cordiality, which I did my best to encourage. The
other Company Commanders had been friendly from the first, for I had
known them at Clitherland in 1915.

Then there was the Doctor, who was now away on leave but would certainly
be back before things became lively. Captain Munro had been with the
Second Battalion about eighteen months. The first time I saw him was
when he gave me my anti-typhoid injection. I looked at him with
interest, for he was already known to me by reputation. "Hullo, here's
Sherston, the man who did stunts with the First Battalion," he remarked,
as I unbuttoned my shirt for the perforation process. He was giving
double injections, so as to save us the trouble of feeling unwell twice.
"That'll keep you quiet for forty-eight hours," he observed; and I
retired, with a sickly grin. The M.O. was a famous character in the
Battalion, and I was hoping to get to know him better. (At the time of
writing I can indeed claim to have achieved my hope. But the Doctor is a
man averse to the idea of being applauded in print, and he would regard
any reference to his local renown as irrelevant to this narrative.)

Equally popular was Bates, the Quartermaster, who was a burlier
prototype of Joe Dottrell, with fewer political prejudices. When, at
Camp 13, there had been rumours of a Divisional Race Meeting, Bates had
asked me to ride his mare. The Races had been cancelled, but the notion
had delighted me for a day or two. This mare could gallop quite well and
was the apple of the Quartermaster's eye. It was said that on one
occasion, when the Transport was having a rough time, Bates had rigged
up a tarpaulin shelter for his mare and slept out in the open himself. I
was mentally comparing Bates and Dottrell, to their mutual credit, when
we came to the end of our first fifty minutes and the men fell out at
the side of the road and slipped their packs off. A gang of red and blue
capped German prisoners was at work on the road close by, and their
sullen under-nourished faces made our own troops look as if they were
lucky in some sort of liberty. But whistles blew, pack straps were
adjusted, and on we went. By half-past one the Battalion was in its
billets in Corbie.

                          *        *        *

Before dinner Ralph Wilmot came round to our Company Mess to suggest
that Leake and myself should join 'a bit of a jolly' which he'd arranged
for that evening. Wilmot was a dark, monocled young man, mature for his
years. His war experience had begun with despatch riding on a
motor-bicycle in 1914. Afterwards he had gone to Gallipoli, where he had
survived until the historic Evacuation. He had now done a long spell of
service in France, and was a popular character in the Second Battalion.
He had the whimsical smile which illuminates a half-melancholy
temperament, and could give an amusing twist to the sorriest situation,
since he liked to see life as a tragi-comedy and himself as a debonair
philosopher, a man with a gay past who had learned to look at the world
more in sorrow than in anger. His unobtrusive jests were enunciated with
a stammer which somehow increased their effect. With some difficulty he
now told us that he had discovered a place where we could 'buy some
bubbly and tickle the ivories'. The ivory-tickling would be his own
contribution, for he had a passion for playing the piano. So we spent
the evening in a sparsely furnished little parlour on the ground-floor
of a wine-merchant's house. The wine-merchant's wife, a sallow silent
woman, brought in bottle after bottle of 'bubbly' which, whatever its
quality, produced conviviality. We drank farewell to civilization with
an air of finality, while Wilmot performed on an upright piano, the tone
of which was meretriciously agreeable, like the flavour of the
champagne. He played, mostly by ear, familiar passages from _Tosca_ and
_Bohème_, musical comedy extracts, and sentimental ballads. We all
became confidential and almost emotional. I felt that at last I was
really getting on good terms with Leake; every glass of wine made us
dislike one another a little less. Thus the proceedings continued until
after midnight, while Wilmot became more and more attached to a certain
popular song. We sang the chorus over and over again:

    _Moon, moon, see-reen-ly shy-ning,_
    _Don't go home too soo-oon;_
    _You've such a--charm about you_
    _That we--can't get--on with-out you._
    _Da-da-da, de-dum_... etc.

The atmosphere of the room had become tropical, for we had all been
smoking like chimneys. But Wilmot couldn't tear himself away from that
piano, and while he caressed the keys with lingering affection, the
wine-merchant's wife received I don't know how many francs and we all
wrote our names in her album. From the number of shaky signatures in it
I judged that she must have made a handsome profit out of the War.

Out in the white moonlight, Leake and I meandered along an empty street,
accompanied by our tipsy shadows. At the door of my billet we shook
hands 'sholemnly', and I assured him that he could always rely on me to
'blurry well do my damndest for him'. He vanished heavily, and I spent
several minutes prodding at the key-hole of the greengrocer's shop. Once
inside the door, my difficulties were almost ended. I remember balancing
myself in the dark little shop, which was full of strong-smelling
vegetables, and remarking aloud, "Well, old boy, here you are, and now
you gotter get up the stairs". My room was an unventilated cupboard
which reeked of onions; the stairs were steep, but my flea-bag was on
the floor and I fell asleep fully dressed. What with the smell of onions
and the bad champagne, I awoke feeling like nothing on earth, and to say
that Leake was grumpy at breakfast would be to put it mildly. But we
were on the march by nine, in cold bright weather, and by the first halt
I was feeling surprisingly clear-headed and alert.

We had halted on some high ground above Pont Noyelles: I can remember
the invigorating freshness of the air and the delicate outlines of the
landscape towards Amiens, and how I gazed at a line of tall trees by the
river beyond which, not two miles away, was the village of Bussy where
I'd been last June before the Somme battle began. At such a moment as
that the War felt quite a friendly affair and I could assure myself that
being in the Infantry was much better than loafing about at home. And at
the second halt I was able to observe what a pleasant picture the men
made, for some of them were resting in warm sunlight under a crucifix
and an old apple-tree. But by midday the march had become tedious; the
road was dusty, the sun glared down on us, and I was occupied in
preventing exhausted men from falling out. It was difficult to keep some
of them in the ranks, and by the time we reached Villers-Bocage (nearly
fourteen miles from Corbie) I was pushing two undersized men along in
front of me, another one staggered behind hanging on to my belt, and the
Company-Sergeant-Major was carrying three rifles as well as his own. By
two o'clock they were all sitting on dirty straw in a sun-chinked barn,
with their boots and socks off. Their feet were the most important part
of them, I thought, as I made my sympathetic inspection of sores and
blisters. The old soldiers grinned at me philosophically, puffing their
Woodbines. It was all in the day's work, and the War was the War. The
newly-joined men were different; white and jaded, they stared up at me
with stupid trusting eyes. I wished I could make things easier for them,
but I could do nothing beyond sending a big batch of excruciating boots
to the Battalion boot-menders, knowing that they'd come back roughly
botched, if anything were done to them at all. But one Company's
blisters were a small event in the procession of sore feet that was
passing through Villers-Bocage. The woman in my billet told me in broken
English that troops had been going through for fifteen days, never
stopping more than one night and always marching toward Doullens and
Arras. My only other recollection of Villers-Bocage is the room in which
our Company's officers dined and slept. It contained an assortment of
stuffed and mouldy birds with outspread wings. There was a stork, a jay,
and a sparrow-hawk; also a pair of squirrels. Lying awake on the tiled
floor I could watch a seagull suspended by a string from the ceiling;
very slowly it revolved in the draughty air; and while it revolved I
fell asleep for the day had been a long one.

                          *        *        *

Next day's march took us to Beauval, along a monotonous eight-mile
stretch of the main road from Amiens to St. Pol. Wet snow was falling
all the way. We passed into another 'Army Area'; the realm of Rawlinson
was left behind us and our self-sacrificing exertions were now to be
directed by Allenby. Soon after entering the Allenby Area we sighted a
group of mounted officers who had stationed themselves under the trees
by the roadside. Word was passed back that it was the Corps Commander.
Since there were only three Corps Commanders in each Army they were
seldom seen, so it was with quite a lively interest that we put
ourselves on the alert to eyes-left this one. While we were trudging
stolidly nearer to the great man, Colonel Easby detached himself from
the head of the column, rode up to the General, and saluted hopefully.
The Corps Commander (who was nothing much to look at, for his
interesting accumulation of medal-ribbons was concealed by a waterproof
coat) ignored our eyes-lefting of him; he was too busy bellowing at poor
Colonel Easby, whom he welcomed thus. _C.C._ "Are you stuck to that
bloody horse?" _Col. E._ "No, sir." (Dismounts hastily and salutes
again.) As Leake's Company went by, the General was yelling something
about why the hell hadn't the men got the muzzles of their rifles
covered (this being one of his 'special ideas'). "Pity he don't keep his
own muzzle covered," remarked someone in the ranks, thereby voicing a
prevalent feeling. The Corps Commander was equally abusive because the
'Cookers' were carrying brooms and other utilitarian objects. Also the
Companies were marching with fifty yard intervals between them (by a
special order of the late Rawlinson). In Allenby's Army the intervals
between Companies had to be considerably less, as our Colonel was now
finding out. However, the episode was soon behind us and the 'Cookers'
rumbled peacefully on their way, brooms and all, emitting smoke and
stewing away at the men's dinners. Very few of us ever saw the Corps
Commander again. It was a comfort to know that Allenby, at any rate,
could be rude to him if he wanted to.

                          *        *        *

We started from Beauval at four o'clock on a sunny afternoon and went
another eight miles to a place called Lucheux.... There is nothing in
all this, the reader will expostulate. But there was a lot in it, for
us. We were moving steadily nearer to the Spring Offensive; for those
who thought about it the days had an ever intensifying significance. For
me, the idea of death made everything seem vivid and valuable. The War
could be like that to a man, until it drove him to drink and suffocated
his finer apprehensions.

Among the troops I observed a growing and almost eager expectancy; their
cheerfulness increased; something was going to happen to them; perhaps
they believed that the Arras Battle would end the War. It was the same
spirit which had animated the Army before the Battle of the Somme. And
now, once again, we could hear along the horizon that blundering doom
which bludgeoned armies into material for military histories. "That way
to the Sausage Machine!" some old soldier exclaimed as we passed a
signpost marked _Arras, 32 k._ We were entering Doullens with the
brightness of the setting sun on our faces. As we came down the hill our
second-in-command (a gentle middle-aged country solicitor) was walking
beside me, consoling himself with reminiscences of cricket and hunting.

Thus the Battalion slogged on into an ominous Easter, and every man
carried his own hazardous hope of survival. Overshadowed by the
knowledge of what was ahead of us, I became increasingly convinced that
a humble soldier holding up a blistered foot could have greater dignity
than a blustering Corps Commander.

That night we were in huts among some wooded hills. I can remember how
we had supper out in the moonlight, sitting round a brazier with plates
of ration stew on our knees. The wind was from the east and we could
hear the huge bombardment up at Arras. Brown and leafless, the sombre
woods hemmed us in. Soon the beeches would be swaying and quivering with
the lovely miracle of spring. How many of us will return to that, I
wondered, forgetting my hatred of the War in a memory of all that April
had ever meant for me....

On Good Friday morning I woke with sunshine streaming in at the door and
broad Scots being shouted by some Cameronians in the next hut. Someone
was practising the bagpipes at the edge of the wood, and a mule
contributed a short solo from the Transport Lines.

                          *        *        *

On Saturday afternoon we came to Saulty, which was only ten miles from
Arras and contained copious indications of the Offensive, in the form of
ammunition and food dumps and the tents of a Casualty Clearing Station.
A large Y.M.C.A. canteen gladdened the rank and file, and I sent my
servant there to buy a pack full of Woodbines for an emergency which was
a certainty. Canteens and _estaminets_ would be remote fantasies when we
were in the devastated area. Twelve dozen packets of Woodbines in a pale
green cardboard box were all that I could store up for the future
consolation of B Company; but they were better than nothing and the box
was no weight for my servant to carry.

Having seen the men settled into their chilly barns and sheds, I stuffed
myself with coffee and eggs and betook myself to a tree-stump in the
peaceful park of a white château close to the village. Next day we were
moving to our concentration area, so I was in a meditative mood and
disposed to ask myself a few introspective questions. The sun was just
above the tree-tops; a few small deer were grazing; a rook flapped
overhead; and some thrushes and blackbirds were singing in the brown
undergrowth. Nothing was near to remind me of the War; only the enormous
thudding on the horizon and an aeroplane humming across the clear sky.
For some obscure reason I felt confident and serene. My thoughts assured
me that I wouldn't go back to England to-morrow if I were offered an
improbable choice between that and the battle. Why should I feel elated
at the prospect of the battle, I wondered. It couldn't be only the
coffee and eggs which had caused me to feel so acquiescent. Last year,
before the Somme, I hadn't known what I was in for. I knew now, and the
idea was giving me emotional satisfaction! I had often read those
farewell letters from second-lieutenants to their relatives which the
newspapers were so fond of printing. 'Never has life brought me such an
abundance of noble feelings,' and so on. I had always found it difficult
to believe that these young men had really felt happy with death staring
them in the face, and I resented any sentimentalizing of infantry
attacks. But here was I, working myself up into a similar mental
condition, as though going over the top were a species of religious
experience. Was it some suicidal self-deceiving escape from the
limitless malevolence of the Front Line?... Well, whatever it was, it
was some compensation for the loss of last year's day-dreams about
England (which I could no longer indulge in, owing to an indefinite
hostility to 'people at home who couldn't understand'). I was beginning
to feel rather arrogant toward 'people at home'. But my mind was in a
muddle; the War was too big an event for one man to stand alone in. All
I knew was that I'd lost my faith in it, and there was nothing left to
believe in except 'the Battalion spirit'. The Battalion spirit meant
living oneself into comfortable companionship with the officers and
N.C.O.s around one; it meant winning the respect, or even the affection,
of platoon and company. But while exploring my way into the War I had
discovered the impermanence of its humanities. One evening we could be
all together in a cosy room in Corbie, with Wilmot playing the piano and
Dunning telling me about the eccentric old ladies who lived in his
mother's boarding-house in Bloomsbury. A single machine-gun or a few
shells might wipe out the whole picture within a week. Last summer the
First Battalion had been part of my life; by the middle of September it
had been almost obliterated. I knew that a soldier signed away his
independence; we were at the front to fight, not to think. But it became
a bit awkward when one couldn't look even a week ahead. And now there
was a steel curtain down between April and May. On the other side of the
curtain, if I was lucky, I should meet the survivors, and we should
begin to build up our little humanities all over again.

That was the bleak truth, and there was only one method of evading it;
to make a little drama out of my own experience--that was the way out. I
must play at being a hero in shining armour, as I'd done last year; if I
didn't, I might crumple up altogether. (Self-inflicted wounds weren't
uncommon on the Western Front, and brave men had put bullets through
their own heads before now, especially when winter made trench warfare
unendurable.) Having thus decided on death or glory, I knocked my pipe
out and got up from the tree-stump with a sense of having solved my
problems. The deer were still grazing peacefully in the park; but the
sun was a glint of scarlet beyond the strip of woodland and the air was
turning chilly. Along the edge of the world that infernal banging was
going on for all it was worth. Three Army Corps were to attack on Easter
Monday.

                          *        *        *

On a sunny Easter morning we moved another seven miles, to Basseux, a
village which had been quite close to the trenches before the Germans
withdrew to the Hindenburg Line. The Sausage Machine was now only eight
miles away from us, and the preliminary bombardment was, as someone in
the ranks remarked, 'a fair bloody treat to listen to'. We insisted on
being optimistic. The Tanks were going to put the fear of God into the
Boches, and the Cavalry would get their opportunity at last. We passed a
squadron of Lancers on the road. Oh yes, they were massing for a
break-through. Allenby knew what he was up to all right. And our
Divisional General had told someone that it would be a walk-over for the
infantry this time.

That afternoon I strolled out to inspect our old front-line trenches. As
usual they gave me a queer feeling; it would be almost accurate to say
that they fascinated me. Derelict ditches as they now were, battalion
after battalion had endured intensities of experience in that
intensified strip of territory. Night after night the tea-dixies had
been carried up that twisting communication trench. Night after night
sentries had stared over sodden parapets until the sky reddened and the
hostile territory emerged, familiar and yet foreign. Not a very good
sector to hold, I thought, observing how our cramped trench system had
been overlooked by the Germans. That mile-and-a-bit back to Basseux
hadn't been so easy a couple of months ago.

In peace-time the village must have been quite a pretty little place,
and even now it wasn't very badly damaged. All our officers were
billeted in a dilapidated white château, which I now explored until I
was sitting with my feet out of the window of an attic. Down in the
courtyard Ormand and Dunning and one or two others were playing cricket
with a stump and a wooden ball, using an old brazier as a wicket. Wilmot
had found a ramshackle piano from which he was extracting his favourite
melodies. Pigeons fluttered around the red tiled roofs and cooed in the
warm evening sunshine. Three yellow balloons were visible. Then the
little Adjutant bustled across the courtyard with a bunch of papers in
his hand. There was no time for relaxation in the orderly room, for
after to-day we were under orders to move at the shortest notice....
Young Ormand shouted up at me, "Come down and have a knock at the nets."

                          *        *        *

The Battle of Arras began at 5.30 next morning. For two days we hung
about the château, listening to the noise (of Military History being
manufactured regardless of expense) and waiting for the latest rumours.
With forced uneasy gaiety we talked loudly about the successes reported
from the Line. 'Our objectives gained at Neuville-Vitasse', 'five
thousand prisoners taken', and so on. But every one of us had something
in his mind which he couldn't utter, even to his best friend.

Meanwhile the weather was misbehaving itself badly. Snow showers passed
by on a bitterly cold wind, and I began an intimate battle in which a
chill on the intestines got the better of me. It wasn't so easy to feel
like a happy warrior turning his necessities to glorious gain, when
doomed to go in company with gastritis, a sore throat, and several
festering scratches on each hand. No more clean socks or handkerchiefs
either. A big mail came in on Tuesday--the first we'd had for a
week--and this kept us quiet for an interval of flimsy consolation. My
only letter was from Aunt Evelyn, who apologized as usual for having so
little to say. She had been reading _The Life of Disraeli_--"such a
relief to get away from all these present-day horrors. What a wonderful
man he was. Are you still in the Rest Camp? I do hope so." She added
that spring-cleaning had been going on vigorously, with the usual floods
of conversation from the maids.... This didn't help my gastritis,
which was getting beyond a joke. The M.O. wasn't back from leave yet,
but one of his orderlies handed me an opium pill of such constipating
omnipotence that my intestines were soon stabilized to a condition
suitable for open warfare.

In the middle of Wednesday afternoon we were having an eleven-a-side
single-brazier cricket match on a flat piece of ground in the château
garden. The sun was shining between snow showers, and most of the men
were watching from the grassy bank above. One of the
Company-Sergeant-Majors was playing a lively innings, though the ball
was beginning to split badly. Then a whistle blew and the match ended
abruptly. Less than an hour later the Battalion marched away from
Basseux.


[III]

A heavy snowstorm set in soon after we started. A snowstorm on April
11th was the sort of thing that one expected in the War, and it couldn't
be classed as a major misfortune. Nevertheless we could have done
without it, since we were marching away from all comfort and safety;
greatcoats had been left behind and we had nothing but what we stood up
in. As we slogged along narrow winding lanes the snow melted on the
shiny waterproof sheets which kept the men uncomfortably warm. We were
now in the devastated area; villages had been levelled to heaps of
bricks; fruit trees, and even pollard-willows, had been hacked down, and
there was still a chance that we might be the victims of a booby trap in
the shape of a dynamite charge under a causeway. A signpost pointed to
Blairville; but a couple of inches of snow was enough to blot out
Blairville. The next village was Ficheux (the men called it 'Fish
Hooks'--any joke being better than none in that snowstorm); but Ficheux
wasn't there at all; it had vanished from the landscape.

The snow had stopped when, after marching eight miles, we bivouacked in
the dregs of daylight by a sunken road near Mercatel, a place which
offered no shelter except the humanity of its name. After dark I found
my way into a small dug-out occupied by a Trench Mortar Sergeant-Major
and two signallers who were working a field telephone. With Shirley (one
of our Company officers) I considered myself lucky to be there,
crouching by a brazier, while the Sergeant-Major regaled us, in
omniscient tones, with rumours about the desperate fighting at Wancourt
and Heninel, names which meant nothing to me. I dozed through the night
without ever being unaware of the coke fumes from the brazier and the
tick-tack of the telephone.

Daylight discovered us blear-eyed and (to abbreviate a contemporary
phrase) 'fed-up and far from home'. We got through the morning somehow
and I issued some of my 'emergency Woodbines'. Rifle-cleaning and
inspection was the only occupation possible. Early in the afternoon the
Battalion moved on four miles to St. Martin-Cojeul. The snow had melted,
leaving much mud which rain made worse. St. Martin was a demolished
village about a mile behind the battle-line. As we entered it I noticed
an English soldier lying by the road with a horribly smashed head; soon
such sights would be too frequent to attract attention, but this first
one was perceptibly unpleasant. At the risk of being thought squeamish
or even unsoldierly, I still maintain that an ordinary human being has a
right to be momentarily horrified by a mangled body seen on an afternoon
walk, although people with sound commonsense can always refute me by
saying that life is full of gruesome sights and violent catastrophes.
But I am no believer in wild denunciations of the War; I am merely
describing my own experiences of it; and in 1917 I was only beginning to
learn that life, for the majority of the population, is an unlovely
struggle against unfair odds, culminating in a cheap funeral. Anyhow the
man with his head bashed in had achieved theoretical glory by dying for
his country in the Battle of Arras, and we who marched past him had an
excellent chance of following his example.

We took over an old German reserve trench (captured on Easter Monday).
Company Headquarters was a sort of rabbit-hole, just wide enough to
accommodate Leake, a tiny stove, and myself. Leake occupied himself in
enlarging it with a rusty entrenching tool. When dusk was falling I went
out to the underground dressing-station to get my festering fingers
attended to. I felt an interloper, for the place was crowded with
groaning wounded. As I made my way back to our trench a few shells
exploded among the ruinous remains of brickwork. All this, I thought, is
disgustingly unpleasant, but it doesn't really count as war experience.
I knew that if I could get the better of my physical discomforts I
should find the War intensely interesting. B Company hadn't arrived at
the groaning stage yet; in fact, they were grimly cheerful, though
they'd only had one meal that day and the next was to-morrow morning.
Leake and I had one small slice of ration bacon between us; I was
frizzling my fragment when it fell off the fork and disappeared into the
stove. Regardless of my unfortunate fingers I retrieved and ate it with
great relish.

The night was cold and sleep impossible, since there was no space to lie
down in. Leake, however, had a talent for falling asleep in any
position. Chiselling away at the walls by candlelight, I kept myself
warm, and in a couple of hours I had scooped out sufficient space for
the other two officers. They were a well contrasted couple. Rees was a
garrulous and excitable little Welshman; it would be flattery to call
him anything except uncouth, and he made no pretensions to being 'a
gentleman'. But he was good-natured and moderately efficient. Shirley,
on the other hand, had been educated at Winchester and the War had
interrupted his first year at Oxford. He was a delicate-featured and
fastidious young man, an only child, and heir to a comfortable estate in
Flintshire. Rees rather got on our nerves with his table manners, and
Shirley deprecated the way he licked his thumb when dealing the cards
for their games of nap. But social incompatibilities were now merged in
communal discomfort. Both of them were new to the line, so I felt that I
ought to look after them, if possible. I noticed that Rees kept his
courage up by talking incessantly and making jokes about the battle;
while Shirley, true to the traditions of his class, simulated
nonchalance, discussing with Leake (also an Oxford man) the comparative
merits of Magdalen and Christ Church, or Balliol and New College. But he
couldn't get the nonchalance into his eyes.... Both Shirley and Rees
were killed before the autumn.

                          *        *        *

From our obsolete trench we looked toward the naked ground which rose to
the ridge. Along that ridge ran the Hindenburg Line (a mile and a half
away) from which new attacks were now being attempted. There was another
attack next morning. Rees was detailed for an ammunition carrying-party,
and he returned noisier than ever. It had been his first experience of
shell-fire. Narrating his numerous escapes from hostile explosives, he
continually invoked the name of the founder of his religion; now that it
was all over he enjoyed the retrospective excitement, roaring with
laughter while he told us how he and his men had flung themselves on
their faces in the mud. Rees never minded making himself look
ridiculous, and I began to feel that he was capable of taking care of
himself. Shirley raised his eyebrows during the recital, evidently
disapproving of such volubility and not at all sure that officers ought
to throw themselves flat on their faces when shells burst. Later in the
day I took him for a walk up the hill; I wanted to educate him in
unpleasant sights. The wind had dropped and the sunset sky was
mountainous with calm clouds. We inspected a tank which had got stuck in
the mud while crossing a wide trench. We succeeded in finding this
ungainly monster interesting. Higher up the hill the open ground was
dotted with British dead. It was an unexpectedly tidy scene, since most
of them had been killed by machine-gun fire. Stretcher-bearers had been
identifying the bodies and had arranged them in happy warrior attitudes,
hands crossed and heads pillowed on haversacks. Often the contents of a
man's haversack were scattered around him. There were letters lying
about; the pathos of those last letters from home was obvious enough. It
was a queer thing, I thought, that I should be taking a young Oxford man
for this conducted tour of a battlefield on a fine April evening. Here
we were, walking about in a sort of visible fraction of the Roll of
Honour, and my pupil was doing his best to behave as if it were all
quite ordinary and part of the public school tradition. He was being
politely introduced to the horrors of war, and he made no comment on
them. Earlier in the day an attack on Fontaine-les-Croiselles had
fizzled out in failure. Except for the intermittent chatter of
machine-guns, the country ahead of us was quiet. Then, somewhere beyond
the ridge, a huge explosion sent up a shapeless tower of yellow vapour.
I remarked sagely that a German dump had probably been blown up. Shirley
watched it intently as though the experience would be of use to him
during future operations.

                          *        *        *

At five-thirty next morning our Brigade renewed the attack on
Fontaine-les-Croiselles, but we remained in reserve. Enveloped by the
din of the bombardment I leaned my elbows on the parapet and looked at
the ridge. A glowering red sun was rising; the low undulant hills were
grey-blue and deeply shadowed; the landscape was full of gun flashes and
drifting smoke. It was a genuine battle picture, and I was aware of its
angry beauty. Not much more than a mile away, on the further side of
that menacing slope, lines of muttering men were waiting, strained to an
intolerable expectancy, until the whistles blew and the barrage crept
forward, and they stumbled across the open with the good wishes of
General Allenby and the bad wishes of the machine-guns in the German
strong-posts. Perhaps I tried to visualize their grim adventure. In my
pocket I had a copy of a recent _communiqué_ (circulated for instructive
purposes) and I may as well quote it now. "That night three unsuccessful
bombing attacks were made on the Tower at Wancourt. During the Battalion
relief the next night, the enemy opened a heavy bombardment on the Tower
and its immediate vicinity, following it up with an attack which
succeeded, mainly owing to the relief being in progress. A local
counter-attack delivered by the incoming battalion failed owing to the
darkness, pouring rain, and lack of knowledge of the ground. It was then
decided that nothing could be done till daylight." The lesson to be
drawn from this episode was, I think, that lack of Artillery preparation
is a mistake.... The Wancourt Tower was only a couple of miles away
on our left, so I felt vaguely impressed by being so close to events
which were, undoubtedly, of historic importance in the annals of the
War. And anyone who has been in the front-line can amplify that
_communiqué_ for himself.


[IV]

On Saturday afternoon the order to move up took us by surprise. Two days
of stagnation in the cramped little trench had relaxed expectancy, which
now renewed itself in our compact preparations for departure. As usual
on such occasions, the Company-Sergeant-Major was busier than anybody
else. I have probably said so before, but it cannot be too often
repeated that C.S.M.s were the hardest worked men in the infantry;
everything depended on them, and if anyone deserved a K.C.B. it was a
good C.S.M.

At 9 p.m. the Company fell in at the top of the ruined street of St.
Martin. Two guides from the out-going battalion awaited us. We were to
relieve some Northumberland Fusiliers in the Hindenburg Trench--the
companies going up independently.

It was a grey evening, dry and windless. The village of St. Martin was a
shattered relic; but even in the devastated area one could be conscious
of the arrival of spring, and as I took up my position in the rear of
the moving column there was something in the sober twilight which could
remind me of April evenings in England and the Butley cricket field
where a few of us had been having our first knock at the nets. The
cricket season had begun.... But the Company had left the
shell-pitted road and was going uphill across open ground. Already the
guides were making the pace too hot for the rear platoon; like most
guides they were inconveniently nimble owing to their freedom from
accoutrement, and insecurely confident that they knew the way. The
muttered message 'pass it along--steady the pace in front' was
accompanied by the usual muffled clinkings and rattlings of arms and
equipment. Unwillingly retarded, the guides led us into the deepening
dusk. We hadn't more than two miles to go, but gradually the guides grew
less authoritative. Several times they stopped to get their bearings.
Leake fussed and fumed and they became more and more flurried. I began
to suspect that our progress was circular.

At a midnight halt the hill still loomed in front of us; the guides
confessed that they had lost their way, and Leake decided to sit down
and wait for daylight. (There were few things more uncomfortable in the
life of an officer than to be walking in front of a party of men all of
whom knew that he was leading them in the wrong direction.) With Leake's
permission I blundered experimentally into the gloom, fully expecting to
lose both myself and the Company. By a lucky accident, I soon fell
headlong into a sunken road and found myself among a small party of
Sappers who could tell me where I was. It was a case of "Please, can you
tell me the way to the Hindenburg Trench?" Congratulating myself on my
cleverness, I took one of the Sappers back to poor benighted B Company,
and we were led to our Battalion rendezvous.

The rendezvous took some finding, since wrong map-references had been
issued by the Brigade Staff; but at last, after many delays, the
Companies filed along to their ordained (and otherwise anathematized)
positions.

We were at the end of a journey which had begun twelve days before, when
we started from Camp 13. Stage by stage, we had marched to the
life-denying region which from far away had threatened us with the blink
and growl of its bombardments. Now we were groping and stumbling along a
deep ditch to the place appointed for us in that zone of inhuman havoc.
There must have been some hazy moonlight, for I remember the figures of
men huddled against the sides of communication trenches; seeing them in
some sort of ghastly glimmer--(was it, perhaps, the diffused whiteness
of a sinking flare beyond the ridge?) I was doubtful whether they were
asleep or dead, for the attitudes of many were like death, grotesque and
distorted. But this is nothing new to write about, you will say; just a
weary company, squeezing past dead or drowsing men while it sloshes and
stumbles to a front-line trench. Nevertheless that night relief had its
significance for me, though in human experience it had been multiplied a
millionfold. I, a single human being with my little stock of earthly
experience in my head, was entering once again the veritable gloom and
disaster of the thing called Armageddon. And I saw it then, as I see it
now--a dreadful place, a place of horror and desolation which no
imagination could have invented. Also it was a place where a man of
strong spirit might know himself utterly powerless against death and
destruction, and yet stand up and defy gross darkness and stupefying
shell-fire, discovering in himself the invincible resistance of an
animal or an insect, and an endurance which he might, in after days,
forget or disbelieve.

Anyhow, there I was, leading that little procession of Flintshire
Fusiliers many of whom had never seen a front-line trench before. At
that juncture they asked no compensation for their efforts except a mug
of hot tea. The tea would have been a miracle, and we didn't get it till
next morning, but there was some comfort in the fact that it wasn't
raining.

It was nearly four o'clock when we found ourselves in the Hindenburg
Main Trench. After telling me to post the sentries, Leake disappeared
down some stairs to the Tunnel (which will be described later on). The
Company we were relieving had already departed, so there was no one to
give me any information. At first I didn't even know for certain that we
were in the front-line. The trench was a sort of gully, deep, wide, and
unfinished looking. The sentries had to clamber up a bank of loose earth
before they could see over the top. Our Company was only about eighty
strong and its sector was fully 600 yards. The distance between the
sentry-posts made me aware of our inadequacy in that wilderness. I had
no right to feel homeless, but I did; and if I had needed to be reminded
of my forlorn situation as a living creature I could have done it merely
by thinking of a Field Cashier. Fifty franc notes were comfortable
things, but they were no earthly use up here, and the words 'Field
Cashier' would have epitomized my remoteness from snugness and security
and from all assurance that I should be alive and kicking the week after
next. But it would soon be Sunday morning; such ideas weren't wholesome,
and there was a certain haggard curiosity attached to the proceedings;
combined with the self-dramatizing desperation which enabled a good many
of us to worry our way through much worse emergencies than mine.

When I had posted the exhausted sentries, with as much cheeriness as I
could muster, I went along to look for the Company on our left. Rather
expecting to find one of our own companies, I came round a corner to a
place where the trench was unusually wide. There I found myself among a
sort of panic party which I was able to identify as a platoon (thirty or
forty strong). They were jostling one another in their haste to get
through a cavernous doorway, and as I stood astonished one of them
breathlessly told me that 'the Germans were coming over'. Two officers
were shepherding them downstairs and before I'd had time to think the
whole lot had vanished. The Battalion they belonged to was one of those
amateur ones which were at such a disadvantage owing to lack of
discipline and the absence of trained N.C.O.s. Anyhow their behaviour
seemed to indicate that the Tunnel in the Hindenburg Trench was having a
lowering effect on their _morale_.

Out in No Man's Land there was no sign of any German activity. The only
remarkable thing was the unbroken silence. I was in a sort of twilight,
for there was a moony glimmer in the low-clouded sky; but the unknown
territory in front was dark, and I stared out at it like a man looking
from the side of a ship. Returning to my own sector I met a runner with
a verbal message from Battalion H.Q. B Company's front was to be
thoroughly patrolled at once. Realizing the futility of sending any of
my few spare men out on patrol (they'd been walking about for seven
hours and were dead beat), I lost my temper, quietly and inwardly.
Shirley and Rees were nowhere to be seen and it wouldn't have been fair
to send them out, inexperienced as they were. So I stumped along to our
right-flank post, told them to pass it along that a patrol was going out
from right to left, and then started sulkily out for a solitary stroll
in No Man's Land. I felt more annoyed with Battalion Headquarters than
with the enemy. There was no wire in front of the trench, which was, of
course, constructed for people facing the other way. I counted my steps;
200 steps straight ahead; then I began to walk the presumptive 600 steps
to the left. But it isn't easy to count your steps in the dark among
shell-holes, and after a problematic 400 I lost confidence in my
automatic pistol, which I was grasping in my right-hand breeches pocket.
Here I am, I thought, alone out in this godforsaken bit of ground, with
quite a good chance of bumping into a Boche strong-post. Apparently
there was only one reassuring action which I could perform; so I
expressed my opinion of the War by relieving myself (for it must be
remembered that there are other reliefs beside Battalion reliefs). I
insured my sense of direction by placing my pistol on the ground with
its muzzle pointing the way I was going. Feeling less lonely and afraid,
I finished my patrol without having met so much as a dead body, and
regained the trench exactly opposite our left-hand post, after being
huskily challenged by an irresolute sentry, who, as I realized at the
time, was the greatest danger I had encountered. It was now just
beginning to be more daylight than darkness, and when I stumbled down a
shaft to the underground trench I left the sentries shivering under a
red and rainy-looking sky.

There were fifty steps down the shaft; the earthy smell of that triumph
of Teutonic military engineering was strongly suggestive of appearing in
the Roll of Honour and being buried until the Day of Judgment.
Dry-mouthed and chilled to the bone, I lay in a wire-netting bunk and
listened to the dismal snorings of my companions. Along the Tunnel the
air blew deathly cold and seasoned with mephitic odours. In vain I
envied the snorers; but I was getting accustomed to lack of sleep, and
three hours later I was gulping some peculiar tea with morose enjoyment.
Owing to the scarcity of water (which had to be brought up by the
Transport who were eight miles back, at Blairville) washing wasn't
possible; but I contrived a refreshing shave, utilizing the dregs of my
tea.

By ten o'clock I was above ground again, in charge of a fatigue-party.
We went half-way back to St. Martin, to an ammunition dump, whence we
carried up boxes of trench mortar bombs. I carried a box myself, as the
conditions were vile and it seemed the only method of convincing the men
that it had to be done. We were out nearly seven hours; it rained all
day and the trenches were a morass of glue-like mud. The unmitigated
misery of that carrying-party was a typical infantry experience of
discomfort without actual danger. Even if the ground had been dry the
boxes would have been too heavy for most of the men; but we were lucky
in one way; the wet weather was causing the artillery to spend an
inactive Sunday. It was a yellow corpse-like day, more like November
than April, and the landscape was desolate and treeless. What we were
doing was quite unexceptional; millions of soldiers endured the same
sort of thing and got badly shelled into the bargain. Nevertheless I can
believe that my party, staggering and floundering under its loads, would
have made an impressive picture of 'Despair'. The background, too, was
appropriate. We were among the debris of the intense bombardment of ten
days before, for we were passing along and across the Hindenburg Outpost
Trench, with its belt of wire (fifty yards deep in places); here and
there these rusty jungles had been flattened by tanks. The Outpost
Trench was about 200 yards from the Main Trench, which was now our
front-line. It had been solidly made, ten feet deep, with timbered
fire-steps, splayed sides, and timbered steps at intervals to front and
rear and to machine-gun emplacements. Now it was wrecked as though by
earthquake and eruption. Concrete strong-posts were smashed and tilted
sideways; everywhere the chalky soil was pocked and pitted with huge
shell-holes; and wherever we looked the mangled effigies of the dead
were our _memento mori_. Shell-twisted and dismembered, the Germans
maintained the violent attitudes in which they had died. The British had
mostly been killed by bullets or bombs, so they looked more resigned.
But I can remember a pair of hands (nationality unknown) which protruded
from the soaked ashen soil like the roots of a tree turned upside down;
one hand seemed to be pointing at the sky with an accusing gesture. Each
time I passed that place the protest of those fingers became more
expressive of an appeal to God in defiance of those who made the War.
Who made the War? I laughed hysterically as the thought passed through
my mud-stained mind. But I only laughed mentally, for my box of
Stokes-gun ammunition left me no breath to spare for an angry guffaw.
And the dead were the dead; this was no time to be pitying them or
asking silly questions about their outraged lives. Such sights must be
taken for granted, I thought, as I gasped and slithered and stumbled
with my disconsolate crew. Floating on the surface of the flooded trench
was the mask of a human face which had detached itself from the skull.


[V]

Plastered with mud and soaked to the skin, the fatigue-party clumped
down the steps to the Tunnel. The carrying job was finished; but a
stimulating surprise awaited me, for Leake was just back from Battalion
H.Q. (somewhere along the Tunnel) and he breezily informed me that I'd
been detailed to take command of a hundred bombers in the attack which
had been arranged for next morning. "Twenty-five bombers from each
Company; you're to act as reserve for the Cameronians," he remarked. I
stared at him over my mug of reviving but trench-flavoured tea (made
with chlorinated water), and asked him to tell me some more. He said,
"Well, they're a bit hazy about it at Headquarters, but the General is
frightfully keen on our doing an underground attack along the Tunnel, as
well as along the main trench up above. You've got to go and discuss the
tactical situation with one of the Company commanders up in the front
line on our right." All that I knew about the tactical situation was
that if one went along the Tunnel one arrived at a point where a block
had been made by blowing it in. On the other side one bumped into the
Germans. Above ground there was a barrier and the situation was similar.
Bombing along a Tunnel in the dark.... Had the War Office issued a
text book on the subject?... I lit my pipe, but failed to enjoy it,
probably because the stewed tea had left such a queer taste in my mouth.

Ruminating on the comfortless responsibility imposed on me by this
enterprise, I waited until nightfall. Then a superbly cheerful little
guide bustled me along a maze of waterlogged ditches until I found
myself in a small dug-out with some friendly Scotch officers and a
couple of flame-wagging candles. The dug-out felt more like old times
than the Hindenburg Tunnel, but the officers made me feel incompetent
and uninformed, for they were loquacious about local trench topography
which meant nothing to my newly-arrived mind. So I puffed out my
Military Cross ribbon (the dug-out contained two others), nodded my head
knowingly, and took an acquiescent share in the discussion of the
strategic situation. Details of organization were offered me and I made
a few smudgy notes. The Cams, didn't think that there was much chance of
my party being called on to support them, and they were hoping that the
underground attack would be eliminated from operation orders.

I emerged from the desperation jollity of their little den with only a
blurred notion of what it was all about. The objective was to clear the
trench for 500 yards while other battalions went over the top on our
left to attack Fontaine-les-Croiselles. But I was, at the best of times,
only an opportunist officer; technical talk in the Army always made me
feel mutely inefficient. And now I was floundering home in the dark to
organize my command, put something plausible on paper, and take it along
to the Adjutant. If only I could consult the Doctor, I thought; for he
was back from leave, though I hadn't seen him yet. It seemed to me, in
my confused and exhausted condition, that I was at a crisis in my
military career; and, as usual, my main fear was that I should make a
fool of myself. The idea of making a fool of oneself in that murderous
mix-up now appears to me rather a ludicrous one; for I see myself merely
as a blundering flustered little beetle; and if someone happens to put
his foot on a beetle, it is unjust to accuse the unlucky insect of
having made a fool of itself. When I got back to Leake and Rees and
Shirley I felt so lost and perplexed that I went straight on to
Battalion H.Q.

The Tunnel was a few inches higher than a tall man walking upright; it
was fitted with bunks and recessed rooms; in places it was crowded with
men of various units, but there were long intervals of
unwholesome-smelling solitude. Prying my way along with an electric
torch, I glimpsed an assortment of vague shapes, boxes, tins, fragments
of broken furniture and frowsy mattresses. It seemed a long way to
Headquarters, and the Tunnel was memorable but not fortifying to a
fatigued explorer who hadn't slept for more than an hour at a stretch or
taken his clothes off since last Tuesday. Once, when I tripped and
recovered myself by grabbing the wall, my tentative patch of brightness
revealed somebody half-hidden under a blanket. Not a very clever spot to
be taking a nap, I thought, as I stooped to shake him by the shoulder.
He refused to wake up, so I gave him a kick. "God blast you, where's
Battalion Headquarters?" My nerves were on edge; and what right had he
to be having a good sleep, when I never seemed to get five minutes'
rest?... Then my beam settled on the livid face of a dead German
whose fingers still clutched the blackened gash on his neck....
Stumbling on, I could only mutter to myself that this was really a bit
too thick. (That, however, was an exaggeration; there is nothing
remarkable about a dead body in a European War, or a squashed beetle in
a cellar.) At Headquarters I found the Adjutant alone, worried and
preoccupied with clerical work. He had worked in an office, at
accountancy, I believe, before the War; and now most of his fighting was
done in writing, though he had served his apprenticeship as a brave and
indefatigable platoon commander. He told me that the underground attack
had been washed out by a providential counter-order from Division, and
asked me to send my organization scheme along as soon as possible.
"Right-O!" I replied, and groped my way back again feeling the reverse
of my reply. By a stroke of luck I discovered Ralph Wilmot, sitting by
himself in a small recessed room--his dark hair smoothly brushed and his
countenance pensive but unperturbed. He might conceivably have been
twiddling a liqueur glass in a Piccadilly restaurant. Unfortunately he
had no liquid refreshment to offer, but his philosophic way of greeting
me was a consolation and in him I confided my dilemma. With an
understanding air he assumed his monocle, deliberated for a while,
snuffed the candle wick, and wrote out an authoritative looking document
headed 'Organization of F.F. Parties'. The gist of it was "15 Bombers
(each carrying 10 bombs) and Rifle Grenadiers (each carrying 5
grenades). 5 Carriers (also act as bayonet men), 1 Full Rank." There
wasn't much in it, he remarked, as he appended 'a little bit of skite
about consolidation and defensive flanks'. It certainly looked simple
enough when it was done, though I had been at my wits' end about it.

While he was fixing up my future for me I gazed around and thought what
a queer refuge I'd found for what might possibly be my final night on
earth. Dug-out though it was, the narrow chamber contained a foggy
mirror and a clock. The clock wasn't ticking, but its dumb face stared
at me, an idiot reminder of real rooms and desirable domesticity.
Outside the doorless doorway people were continually passing in both
directions with a sound of shuffling feet and mumbling voices. I caught
sight of a red-capped Staff Officer, and a party of sappers carrying
picks and shovels. The Tunnel was a sort of highway and the night had
brought a considerable congestion of traffic. When we'd sent my document
along to the Adjutant there was nothing more to be done except sit and
wait for operation orders. It was now about ten o'clock.

As evidence of my own soldierly qualities I would like to be able to
declare that we eagerly discussed every aspect of the situation as
regards next morning's attack. But the truth is that we said nothing at
all about it. The thing had to be attempted and there was an end of it
(until zero hour). The Brigadier and his Staff (none too bright at
map-references) were hoping to satisfy (vicariously) General Whincop
(who'd got an unpopular bee in his bonnet about the rum ration, and had
ordered an impossible raid, two months ago, which had been prevented by
a providential thaw and caused numerous deaths in a subsequently
sacrificed battalion).

Whincop was hoping to satisfy the Corps Commander, of whom we knew
nothing at all, except that he had insulted our Colonel on the Doullens
road. The Corps Commander hoped to satisfy the Army Commander, who had
as usual informed us that we were 'pursuing a beaten enemy', and who had
brought the Cavalry up for a 'break-through'. (It is worth mentioning
that the village which was now our Division's objective was still held
by the Germans eight months afterwards.) And the Army Commander, I
suppose, was in telephonic communication with the Commander-in-Chief,
who with one eye on Marshal Foch, was hoping to satisfy his King and
Country. Such being the case, Wilmot and myself were fully justified in
leaving the situation to the care of the military caste who were making
the most of their Great Opportunity for obtaining medal-ribbons and
reputations for leadership; and if I am being caustic and captious about
them I can only plead the need for a few minutes' post-war retaliation.
Let the Staff write their own books about the Great War say I. The
Infantry were biased against them, and their authentic story will be
read with interest.

As for our conversation between ten o'clock and midnight (when my
operation orders arrived from the Adjutant) I suppose it was a form of
drug, since it was confined to pleasant retrospections of peace. Wilmot
was well acquainted with my part of the world and he'd come across many
of our local worthies. So we were able to make a little tour of the
Kentish Weald and the Sussex border, as though on a couple of mental
bicycles. In imagination we cycled along on a fine summer afternoon,
passing certain milestones which will always be inseparable from my life
history. Outside Squire Maundle's park gate we shared a distinct picture
of his angular attitudes while he addressed his golf-ball among the
bell-tinklings and baa-ings of sheep on the sunny slopes above
Amblehurst (always followed by a taciturn black retriever). Much has
been asserted about the brutalized condition of mind to which soldiers
were reduced by life in the front-line; I do not deny this, but I am
inclined to suggest that there was a proportionate amount of
simple-minded sentimentality. As far as I was concerned, no topic could
be too homely for the trenches.

Thus, while working-parties and machine-gunners filed past the door with
hollow grumbling voices, our private recess in the Hindenburg Tunnel was
precariously infused with evocations of rural England and we challenged
our surroundings with remembrances of parish names and farm-houses with
friendly faces. A cottage garden was not an easy idea to recover
convincingly.... Bees among yellow wall-flowers on a warm afternoon.
The smell of an apple orchard in autumn.... Such details were beyond
our evocation. But they were implied when I mentioned Squire Maundle in
his four-wheeled dog-cart, rumbling along the Dumbridge Road to attend a
County Council Meeting.

                          *        *        *

"_Secret._ The Bombing Parties of 25 men will rendezvous at 2.30 a.m.
to-morrow morning, 16th inst. in shafts near C Coy. H.Q. The greatest
care will be taken that each separate Company Party keeps to one side of
the Shaft and that the Dump of Bombs be in the trench at the head of
these shafts, suitably split. The necessity of keeping absolute silence
must be impressed on all men. These parties (under 2nd Lt. Sherston)
will come under the orders of O.C. Cameronians at ZERO minus 10. Lt.
Dunning and 2 orderlies will act liaison and report to O.C. Cameronians
at ZERO minus 5. While the parties are in the shaft they must keep a
free passage way clear for runners, etc."

Such was the document which (had I been less fortunate) would have been
my passport to the Stygian shore. In the meantime, with another two
hours to sit through, we carried on with our world without end
conversation. We were, I think, on the subject of Canterbury Cricket
Week when my watch warned me that I must be moving on. As I got up from
the table on which we'd been leaning our elbows, a blurred version of my
face looked at me from the foggy mirror with an effect of clairvoyance.
Hoping that this was an omen of survival, I went along to the
rendezvous-shaft and satisfied myself that the Bombing Parties were
sitting on the stairs in a bone-chilling draught, with my two
subordinate officers in attendance.

Zero hour was at 3 a.m. and the prefatory uproar was already rumbling
overhead. Having tightened my mud-caked puttees and put my tie straight
(there was no rule against wearing a tie in an attack), diffidently I
entered the Cameronian H.Q. dug-out, which was up against the foot of
the stairs. I was among strangers, and Zero minus 10 wasn't a time for
conversational amenities, so I sat self-consciously while the drumming
din upstairs was doing its utmost to achieve a reassuring climax. Three
o'clock arrived. The tick-tacking telephone-orderly in a corner received
a message that the attack had started. They were over the barrier now,
and bombing up the trench. The Cameronian Colonel and his Adjutant
conversed in the constrained undertones of men who expect disagreeable
news. The Colonel was a fine looking man, but his well-disciplined face
was haggard with anxiety. Dunning sat in another corner, serious and
respectful, with his natural jollity ready to come to the surface
whenever it was called for.

At the end of twenty minutes' tension the Colonel exclaimed abruptly,
"Good God, I wish I knew how they're doing!"... And then, as if
regretting his manifestation of feeling, "No harm in having a bit of
cake, anyhow." There was a large home-made cake on the table. I was
offered a slice, which I munched with embarrassment. I felt that I had
no business to be there at all, let alone helping to make a hole in the
Colonel's cake, which was a jolly good one. I couldn't believe that
these competent officers were counting on me to be of any use to them if
I were required to take an active part in the proceedings upstairs. Then
the telephone-orderly announced that communication with Captain
Macnair's headquarters had broken down; after that the suspense
continued monotonously. I had been sitting there about two and a half
hours when it became evident that somebody was descending the steps in a
hurry. H.Q. must have kept its cooking utensils on the stairs, for the
visitor arrived outside the doorway in a clattering cascade of pots and
pans. He was a breathless and dishevelled sergeant, who blurted out an
incoherent statement about their having been driven back after advancing
a short distance. While the Colonel questioned him in a quiet and
controlled voice I rose stiffly to my feet. I don't remember saying
anything or receiving any orders; but I felt that the Cameronian
officers were sensitive to the delicacy of my situation. There was no
question of another slice of home-made cake. Their unuttered comment
was, "Well, old chap, I suppose you're for it now."

Leaving them to get what satisfaction they could from the sergeant's
story, I grinned stupidly at Dunning, popped my helmet on my head, and
made for the stairway. It must have been a relief to be doing something
definite at last, for without pausing to think I started off with the
section of twenty-five who were at the top of the stairs. Sergeant
Baldock got them on the move at once, although they were chilled and
drowsy after sitting there for over three hours. None of them would have
been any the worse for a mouthful of rum at that particular moment. In
contrast to the wearisome candlelight of the lower regions, the outdoor
world was bright and breezy; animated also by enough noise to remind me
that some sort of battle was going on. As we bustled along, the
flustered little contingent at my heels revived its numbness. I had no
idea what I was going to do; our destination was in the brain of the
stooping Cameronian guide who trotted ahead of me. On the way we picked
up a derelict Lewis gun, which, I thought, might come in handy, though
there was no ammunition with it. At the risk of being accused of 'taking
the wrong half of the conversation' (a favourite phrase of Aunt
Evelyn's) I must say that I felt quite confident. (Looking back on that
emergency from my arm-chair, I find some difficulty in believing that I
was there at all.) For about ten minutes we dodged and stumbled up a
narrow winding trench. The sun was shining; large neutral clouds voyaged
willingly with the wind; I felt intensely alive and rather out of
breath. Suddenly we came into the main trench, and where it was widest
we met the Cameronians. I must have picked up a bomb on the way, for I
had one in my hand when I started my conversation with young Captain
Macnair. Our encounter was more absurd than impressive. Macnair and his
exhausted men were obviously going in the wrong direction, and I was an
incautious newcomer. Consequently I had the advantage of him while he
told me that the Germans were all round them and they'd run out of
bombs. Feeling myself to be, for the moment, an epitome of Flintshire
infallibility, I assumed an air of jaunty unconcern; tossing my bomb
carelessly from left hand to right and back again, I inquired, "But
where _are_ the Germans?"--adding "I can't see any of them." This
effrontery had its effect (though for some reason I find it difficult to
describe this scene without disliking my own behaviour). The Cameronian
officers looked around them and recovered their composure. Resolved to
show them what intrepid reinforcements we were, I assured Macnair that
he needn't worry any more and we'd soon put things straight. I then led
my party past his, halted them, and went up the trench with Sergeant
Baldock--an admirably impassive little man who never ceased to behave
like a perfectly trained and confidential man-servant. After climbing
over some sort of barricade, we went about fifty yards without meeting
anyone. Observing a good many Mills bombs lying about in little heaps, I
sent Baldock back to have them collected and carried further up the
trench. Then, with an accelerated heart beat, I went round the corner by
myself. Unexpectedly, a small man was there, standing with his back to
me, stock-still and watchful, a haversack of bombs slung over his left
shoulder. I saw that he was a Cameronian corporal; we did not speak. I
also carried a bag of bombs; we went round the next bay. There my
adventurous ardour experienced a sobering shock. A fair-haired Scotch
private was lying at the side of the trench in a pool of his own blood.
His face was grey and serene, and his eyes stared emptily at the sky. A
few yards further on the body of a German officer lay crumpled up and
still. The wounded Cameronian made me feel angry, and I slung a couple
of bombs at our invisible enemies, receiving in reply an egg-bomb, which
exploded harmlessly behind me. After that I went bombing busily along,
while the corporal (more artful and efficient than I was) dodged in and
out of the saps--a precaution which I should have forgotten. Between us
we created quite a demonstration of offensiveness, and in this manner
arrived at our objective without getting more than a few glimpses of
retreating field-grey figures. I had no idea where our objective was,
but the corporal informed me that we had reached it, and he seemed to
know his business. This, curiously enough, was the first time either of
us had spoken since we met.

The whole affair had been so easy that I felt like pushing forward until
we bumped into something more definite. But the corporal had a cooler
head and he advised discretion. I told him to remain where he was and
started to explore a narrow sap on the left side of the trench. (Not
that it matters whether it was on the left side or the right, but it
appears to be the only detail I can remember; and when all is said and
done, the War was mainly a matter of holes and ditches.) What I expected
to find along that sap, I can't say. Finding nothing, I stopped to
listen. There seemed to be a lull in the noise of the attack along the
line. A few machine-guns tapped, spiteful and spasmodic. High up in the
fresh blue sky an aeroplane droned and glinted. I thought what a queer
state of things it all was, and then decided to take a peep at the
surrounding country. This was a mistake which ought to have put an end
to my terrestrial adventures, for no sooner had I popped my silly head
out of the sap than I felt a stupendous blow in the back between my
shoulders. My first notion was that a bomb had hit me from behind, but
what had really happened was that I had been sniped from in front.
Anyhow my foolhardy attitude toward the Second Battle of the Scarpe had
been instantaneously altered for the worse. I leant against the side of
the sap and shut my eyes.... When I reopened them Sergeant Baldock
was beside me, discreet and sympathetic, and to my surprise I discovered
that I wasn't dead. He helped me back to the trench, gently investigated
my wound, put a field-dressing on it, and left me sitting there while he
went to bring up some men.

After a short spell of being deflated and sorry for myself, I began to
feel rabidly heroical again, but in a slightly different style, since I
was now a wounded hero, with my arm in a superfluous sling. All my
seventy-five men were now on the scene (minus a few who had been knocked
out by our own shells, which were dropping short). I can remember myself
talking volubly to a laconic Stokes-gun officer, who had appeared from
nowhere with his weapon and a couple of assistants. I felt that I must
make one more onslaught before I turned my back on the War, and my only
idea was to collect all available ammunition and then renew the attack
while the Stokes-gun officer put up an enthusiastic barrage. It did not
occur to me that anything else was happening on Allenby's Army Front
except my own little show. My overstrained nerves had wrought me up to
such a pitch of excitement that I was ready for any suicidal exploit.
This convulsive energy might have been of some immediate value had there
been any objective for it. But there was none; and before I had time to
inaugurate anything rash and irrelevant Dunning arrived to relieve me.
His air of competent unconcern sobered me down, but I was still inflamed
with the offensive spirit and my impetuosity was only snuffed out by a
written order from the Cameronian Colonel, who forbade any further
advance owing to the attack having failed elsewhere. My ferocity fizzled
out then, and I realized that I had a raging thirst. As I was starting
my return journey (I must have known then that nothing could stop me
till I got to England) the M.O. came sauntering up the trench with the
detached demeanour of a gentle botanist. "Trust him to be up there
having a look round," I thought. Within four hours of leaving it I was
back in the Tunnel.

                          *        *        *

Back at Battalion Headquarters in the Tunnel I received from our Colonel
and Adjutant generous congratulations on my supposedly dashing display.
In the emergency candlelight of that draughty cellar-recess I bade them
good-bye with voluble assurances that I should be back in a few weeks;
but I was so overstrained and excited that my assurances were noises
rather than notions. Probably I should have been equally elated without
my wound; but if unwounded, I'd have been still up at the Block with the
bombing parties. In the meantime, nothing that happened to me could
relieve Battalion H.Q. of its burdens. The Adjutant would go on till he
dropped, for he had an inexhaustible sense of duty. I never saw him
again; he was killed in the autumn up at Ypres.... I would like to be
able to remember that I smiled grimly and departed reticently. But the
'bombing show' had increased my self-importance, and my exodus from the
front-line was a garrulous one. A German bullet had passed through me
leaving a neat hole near my right shoulder-blade and this patriotic
perforation had made a different man of me. I now looked at the War,
which had been a monstrous tyrant, with liberated eyes. For the time
being I had regained my right to call myself a private individual.

The first stage of my return journey took me to the Advanced Dressing
Station at Henin. My servant went with me, carrying my haversack. He was
a quiet clumsy middle-aged man who always did his best and never
complained. While we picked our way along the broken ground of Henin
Hill I continued talkative, halting now and again to recover breath and
take a last stare at the blighted slope where yesterday I had stumbled
to and fro with my working party.

The sky was now overcast and the landscape grey and derelict. The
activities of the attack had subsided, and we seemed to be walking in a
waste land where dead men had been left out in the rain after being
killed for no apparent purpose. Here and there, figures could be seen
moving toward the Dressing Station, some of them carrying stretchers.

It was the midday stagnation which usually followed an early morning
attack. The Dressing Station was a small underground place crowded with
groaning wounded. Two doctors were doing what they could for men who had
paid a heavy price for their freedom. My egocentricity diminished among
all that agony. I remember listening to an emotional padre who was
painfully aware that he could do nothing except stand about and feel
sympathetic. The consolations of the Church of England weren't much in
demand at an Advance Dressing Station. I was there myself merely to go
through the formality of being labelled 'walking wounded'. I was told to
go on to a place called 'B. Echelon', which meant another three miles of
muddy walking. Beat to the world, I reached B. Echelon, and found our
Quartermaster in a tent with several officers newly arrived from the
Base and one or two back from leave. Stimulated by a few gulps of whisky
and water, I renewed my volubility and talked nineteen to the dozen
until the kind Quartermaster put me into the mess-cart which carried me
to a cross-road where I waited for a motor-bus. There, after a long
wait, I shook hands with my servant, and the handshake seemed to
epitomize my good-bye to the Second Battalion. I thanked him for looking
after me so well; but one couldn't wish a man luck when he was going
back to the Hindenburg Trench. It may be objected that my attitude
towards the Western Front was too intimate; but this was a question of
two human beings, one of whom was getting out of it comfortably while
the other went back to take his chance in the world's worst war....
In the 'bus, wedged among 'walking wounded', I was aware that I had
talked quite enough. For an hour and a half we bumped and swayed along
ruined roads till we came to the Casualty Clearing Station at
Warlencourt. It was seven o'clock and all I got that night was a cup of
Bovril and an anti-tetanus injection.

The place was overcrowded with bad cases and I had to wait until after
midnight for a bed. I remember sitting in a chair listening to the rain
pelting on the roof of the tent and the wailing of a wintry wind. I was
too exhausted to sleep; my head had lost control of its thoughts, which
continued to re-echo my good-bye garrulities; the injection had made me
feel chilly and queer, and my wound began to be painful. But I was able
to feel sorry for 'the poor old Battalion' (which was being relieved
that night) and to be thankful for my own lucky escape.

What I'd been through was nothing compared with the sort of thing that
many soldiers endured over and over again; nevertheless I condoled with
myself on having had no end of a bad time.

Next afternoon a train (with 500 men and 35 officers on board) conveyed
me to a Base Hospital. My memories of that train are strange and rather
terrible, for it carried a cargo of men in whose minds the horrors they
had escaped from were still vitalized and violent. Many of us still had
the caked mud of the war zone on our boots and clothes, and every
bandaged man was accompanied by his battle experience. Although many of
them talked lightly and even facetiously about it, there was an
aggregation of enormities in the atmosphere of that train. I overheard
some slightly wounded officers who were excitedly remembering their
adventures up at Wancourt, where they'd been bombed out of a trench in
the dark. Their jargoning voices mingled with the rumble and throb of
the train as it journeyed--so safely and sedately--through the
environing gloom. The Front Line was behind us; but it could lay its
hand on our hearts, though its bludgeoning reality diminished with every
mile. It was as if we were pursued by the Arras Battle which had now
become a huge and horrible idea. We might be boastful or sagely
reconstructive about our experience, in accordance with our different
characters. But our minds were still out of breath and our inmost
thoughts in disorderly retreat from bellowing darkness and men dying out
in shell-holes under the desolation of returning daylight. We were the
survivors; few among us would ever tell the truth to our friends and
relations in England. We were carrying something in our heads which
belonged to us alone, and to those we had left behind us in the battle.
There were dying men, too, on board that Red Cross train, men dying for
their country in comparative comfort.

We reached our destination after midnight, and the next day I was able
to write in my diary, "I am still feeling warlike and quite prepared to
go back to the Battalion in a few weeks; I am told that my wound will be
healed in a fortnight. The doctor here says I am a lucky man as the
bullet missed my jugular vein and spine by a fraction of an inch. I know
it would be better for me not to go back to England, where I should
probably be landed for at least three months and then have all the hell
of returning again in July or August." But in spite of my self-defensive
scribble I was in London on Friday evening, and by no means sorry to be
carried through the crowd of patriotic spectators at Charing Cross
Station. My stretcher was popped into an ambulance which took me to a
big hospital at Denmark Hill. At Charing Cross a woman handed me a bunch
of flowers and a leaflet by the Bishop of London who earnestly advised
me to lead a clean life and attend Holy Communion.




PART NINE
HOSPITAL AND CONVALESCENCE


[I]

The first few days were like lying in a boat. Drifting, drifting, I
watched the high sunlit windows or the firelight that flickered and
glowed on the ceiling when the ward was falling asleep. Outside the
hospital a late spring was invading the home service world. Trees were
misty-green and sometimes I could hear a blackbird singing. Even the
screech and rumble of electric trams was a friendly sound; trams meant
safety; the troops in the trenches thought about trams with affection.
With an exquisite sense of languor and release I lifted my hand to touch
the narcissuses by my bed. They were symbols of an immaculate
spirit--creatures whose faces knew nothing of War's demented language.

For a week, perhaps, I could dream that for me the War was over, because
I'd got a neat hole through me and the nurse with her spongings forbade
me to have a bath. But I soon emerged from my mental immunity; I began
to think; and my thoughts warned me that my second time out in France
had altered my outlook (if such a confused condition of mind could be
called an outlook). I began to feel that it was my privilege to be
bitter about my war experiences; and my attitude toward civilians
implied that they couldn't understand and that it was no earthly use
trying to explain things to them. Visitors were, of course, benevolent
and respectful; my wound was adequate evidence that I'd 'been in the
thick of it', and I allowed myself to hint at heroism and its attendant
horrors. But as might have been expected my behaviour varied with my
various visitors; or rather it would have done so had my visitors been
more various. My inconsistencies might become tedious if tabulated
collectively, so I will confine myself to the following imaginary
instances.

_Some Senior Officer under whom I'd served_: Modest, politely
subordinate, strongly imbued with the 'spirit of the Regiment' and quite
ready to go out again. 'Awfully nice of you to come and see me, sir.'
Feeling that I ought to jump out of bed and salute, and that it would be
appropriate and pleasant to introduce him to 'some of my people'
(preferably of impeccable social status). Willingness to discuss active
service technicalities and revive memories of shared front-line
experience.

_Middle-aged or elderly Male Civilian_: Tendency (in response to
sympathetic gratitude for services rendered to King and Country) to
assume haggard facial aspect of one who had 'been through hell'.
Inclination to wish that my wound was a bit worse than it actually was,
and have nurses hovering round with discreet reminders that my strength
mustn't be overtaxed. Inability to reveal anything crudely horrifying to
civilian sensibilities. 'Oh yes, I'll be out there again by the autumn.'
(Grimly wan reply to suggestions that I was now honourably qualified for
a home service job.) Secret antagonism to all uncomplimentary references
to the German Army.

_Charming Sister of Brother Officer_: Jocular, talkative, debonair, and
diffidently heroic. Wishful to be wearing all possible medal-ribbons on
pyjama jacket. Able to furnish a bright account of her brother (if still
at the front) and suppressing all unpalatable facts about the War.
'Jolly decent of you to blow in and see me.'

_Hunting Friend (a few years above Military Service Age)_: Deprecatory
about sufferings endured at the front. Tersely desirous of hearing all
about last season's sport. 'By Jingo, that must have been a nailing good
gallop!' Jokes about the Germans, as if throwing bombs at them was a
tolerable substitute for fox-hunting. A good deal of guffawing
(mitigated by remembrance that I'd got a bullet hole through my lung).
Optimistic anticipations of next season's Opening Meet and an early
termination of hostilities on all fronts.

Nevertheless my supposed reactions to any one of these hypothetical
visitors could only be temporary. When alone with my fellow patients I
was mainly disposed toward a self-pitying estrangement from everyone
except the troops in the front-line. (Casualties didn't count as tragic
unless dead or badly maimed.)

When Aunt Evelyn came up to London to see me I felt properly touched by
her reticent emotion; embitterment against civilians couldn't be applied
to her. But after she had gone I resented her gentle assumption that I
had done enough and could now accept a safe job. I wasn't going to be
messed about like that, I told myself. Yet I knew that the War was
unescapable. Sooner or later I should be sent back to the front-line,
which was the only place where I could be any use. A cushy wound wasn't
enough to keep me out of it.

I couldn't be free from the War; even this hospital ward was full of it,
and every day the oppression increased. Outwardly it was a pleasant
place to be lazy in. Morning sunshine slanted through the tall windows,
brightening the grey-green walls and the forty beds. Daffodils and
tulips made spots of colour under three red-draped lamps which hung from
the ceiling. Some officers lay humped in bed, smoking and reading
newspapers; others loafed about in dressing-gowns, going to and from the
washing room where they scraped the bristles from their contented faces.
A raucous gramophone continually ground out popular tunes. In the
morning it was rag-time--_Everybody's Doing It_ and _At the Fox-Trot
Ball_. (_Somewhere a Voice is calling, God send you back to me_, and
such-like sentimental songs were reserved for the evening hours.) Before
midday no one had enough energy to begin talking war shop, but after
that I could always hear scraps of conversation from around the two
fireplaces. My eyes were reading one of Lamb's Essays, but my mind was
continually distracted by such phrases as 'Barrage lifted at the first
objective', 'shelled us with heavy stuff', 'couldn't raise enough decent
N.C.O.s', 'first wave got held up by machine-guns', and 'bombed them out
of a sap'.

There were no serious cases in the ward, only flesh wounds and sick.
These were the lucky ones, already washed clean of squalor and misery
and strain. They were lifting their faces to the sunlight, warming their
legs by the fire; but there wasn't much to talk about except the War.

In the evenings they played cards at a table opposite my bed; the blinds
were drawn, the electric light was on, and a huge fire glowed on walls
and ceiling. Glancing irritably up from my book I criticized the faces
of the card-players and those who stood watching the game. There was a
lean airman in a grey dressing-gown, his narrow whimsical face puffing a
cigarette below a turban-like bandage; he'd been brought down by the
Germans behind Arras and had spent three days in a bombarded dug-out
with Prussians, until our men drove them back and rescued him. The
Prussians hadn't treated him badly, he said. His partner was a swarthy
Canadian with a low beetling forehead, sneering wide-set eyes, fleshy
cheeks, and a loose heavy mouth. I couldn't like that man, especially
when he was boasting how he 'did in some prisoners'. Along the ward they
were still talking about 'counter-attacked from the redoubt', 'permanent
rank of captain', 'never drew any allowances for six weeks', 'failed to
get through their wire'... I was beginning to feel the need for
escape from such reminders. My brain was screwed up tight, and when
people came to see me I answered their questions excitedly and said
things I hadn't intended to say.

From the munition factory across the road, machinery throbbed and droned
and crashed like the treading of giants; the noise got on my nerves. I
was being worried by bad dreams. More than once I wasn't sure whether I
was awake or asleep; the ward was half shadow and half sinking
firelight, and the beds were quiet with huddled sleepers. Shapes of
mutilated soldiers came crawling across the floor; the floor seemed to
be littered with fragments of mangled flesh. Faces glared upward; hands
clutched at neck or belly; a livid grinning face with bristly moustache
peered at me above the edge of my bed; his hands clawed at the sheets.
Some were like the dummy figures used to deceive snipers; others were
alive and looked at me reproachfully, as though envying me the warm
safety of life which they'd longed for when they shivered in the gloomy
dawn, waiting for the whistles to blow and the bombardment to
lift.... A young English private in battle equipment pulled himself
painfully toward me and fumbled in his tunic for a letter; as he reached
forward to give it to me his head polled sideways and he collapsed;
there was a hole in his jaw and the blood spread across his white face
like ink spilt on blotting-paper.

Violently awake, I saw the ward without its phantoms. The sleepers were
snoring and a nurse in grey and scarlet was coming silently along to
make up the fire.


[II]

Although I have stated that after my first few days in hospital I 'began
to think', I cannot claim that my thoughts were clear or consistent. I
did, however, become definitely critical and inquiring about the War.
While feeling that my infantry experience justified this, it did not
occur to me that I was by no means fully informed on the subject. In
fact I generalized intuitively, and was not unlike a young man who
suddenly loses his belief in religion and stands up to tell the
Universal Being that He doesn't exist, adding that if He does, He treats
the world very unjustly. I shall have more to say later on about my
antagonism to the World War; in the meantime it queered my criticisms of
it by continually reminding me that the Adjutant had written to tell me
that my name had been 'sent in for another decoration'. I could find no
fault with this hopeful notion, and when I was allowed out of hospital
for the first time my vanity did not forget how nice its tunic would
look with one of those (still uncommon) little silver rosettes on the
M.C. ribbon, which signified a Bar; or, better still, a red and blue
D.S.O.

It was May 2nd and warm weather; no one appeared to be annoyed about the
War, so why should I worry? Sitting on the top of a 'bus, I glanced at
the editorial paragraphs of the _Unconservative Weekly_. The omniscience
of this ably written journal had become the basis of my provocative
views on world affairs. I agreed with every word in it and was thus
comfortably enabled to disagree with the bellicose patriotism of the
_Morning Post_. The only trouble was that an article in the
_Unconservative Weekly_ was for me a sort of divine revelation. It told
me what I'd never known but now needed to believe, and its
ratiocinations and political pronouncements passed out of my head as
quickly as they entered it. While I read I concurred; but if I'd been
asked to restate the arguments I should have contented myself with
saying "It's what I've always felt myself, though I couldn't exactly put
it into words".

The Archbishop of Canterbury was easier to deal with. Smiling
sardonically, I imbibed his 'Message to the Nation about the War and the
Gospel'. "Occasions may arise," he wrote, "when exceptional obligations
are laid upon us. Such an emergency having now arisen, the security of
the nation's food supply may largely depend upon the labour which can be
devoted to the land. This being so, we are, I think, following the
guidance given in the Gospel if in such a case we make a temporary
departure from our rule. I have no hesitation in saying that in the need
which these weeks present, men and women may with a clear conscience do
field-work on Sundays." Remembering the intense bombardment in front of
Arras on Easter Sunday, I wondered whether the Archbishop had given the
sanction of the Gospel for that little bit of Sabbath field-work.
Unconscious that he was, presumably, pained by the War and its
barbarities, I glared morosely in the direction of Lambeth Palace and
muttered, "Silly old fossil!" Soon afterwards I got off the 'bus at
Piccadilly Circus and went into the restaurant where I had arranged to
meet Julian Durley.

With Durley I reverted automatically to my active service self. The war
which we discussed was restricted to the doings of the Flintshire
Fusiliers. Old So-and-so had been wounded; poor old Somebody had been
killed in the Bullecourt show; old Somebody Else was still commanding B
Company. Old jokes and grotesquely amusing trench incidents were
re-enacted. The Western Front was the same treacherous blundering
tragi-comedy which the mentality of the Army had agreed to regard as
something between a crude bit of fun and an excuse for a good grumble. I
suppose that the truth of the matter was that we were remaining loyal to
the realities of our war experience, keeping our separate psychological
secrets to ourselves, and avoiding what Durley called 'his dangerous
tendency to become serious'. His face, however, retained the haunted
unhappy look which it had acquired since the Delville Wood attack last
autumn, and his speaking voice was still a hoarse whisper.

When I was ordering a bottle of hock we laughed because the waiter told
us that the price had been reduced since 1914, as it was now an
unpopular wine. The hock had its happy effect, and soon we were agreeing
that the front-line was the only place where one could get away from the
War. Durley had been making a forlorn attempt to enter the Flying Corps,
and had succeeded in being re-examined medically. The examination had
started hopefully, as Durley had confined himself to nods and
headshakings in reply to questions. But when conversation became
inevitable the doctor had very soon asked angrily, "Why the hell don't
you stop that whispering?" The verdict had been against his fractured
thyroid cartilage; though, as Durley remarked, it didn't seem to him to
make much difference whether you shouted or whispered when you were up
in an aeroplane. "You'll have to take some sort of office job," I said.
But he replied that he hated the idea, and then illogically advised me
to stay in England as long as I could. I asserted that I was going out
again as soon as I could get passed for General Service, and called for
the bill as though I were thereby settling my destiny conclusively. I
emerged from the restaurant without having uttered a single anti-war
sentiment.

When Durley had disappeared into his aimless unattached existence, I sat
in Hyde Park for an hour before going back to the hospital. What with
the sunshine and the effect of the hock, I felt rather drowsy, and the
columns of the _Unconservative Weekly_ seemed less stimulating than
usual.

On the way back to Denmark Hill I diverted my mind by observing the
names on shops and business premises. I was rewarded by Pledge
(pawnbroker), Money (solicitor), and Stone (builder). There was also an
undertaker named Bernard Shaw. But perhaps the most significant name was
Fudge (printing works). What use, I thought, were printed words against
a war like this? Durley represented the only reality which I could
visualize with any conviction. People who told the truth were likely to
be imprisoned, and lies were at a premium.... All my energy had
evaporated and it was a relief to be back in bed. After all, I thought,
it's only sixteen days since I left the Second Battalion, so I've still
got a right to feel moderately unwell. How luxurious it felt, to be
lying there, after a cup of strong tea, with daylight diminishing, and a
vague gratitude for being alive at the end of a fine day in late spring.
Anyhow the War had taught me to be thankful for a roof over my head at
night....

Lying awake after the lights were out in the ward, it is possible that I
also thought about the Second Battalion. Someone (it must have been
Dunning) had sent me some details of the show they'd been in on April
23rd. The attack had been at the place where I'd left them. A little
ground had been gained and lost, and then the Germans had retreated a
few hundred yards. Four officers had been killed and nine wounded. About
forty other ranks killed, including several of the best N.C.O.s. It had
been an episode typical of uncountable others, some of which now fill
their few pages in Regimental Histories. Such stories look
straightforward enough in print, twelve years later; but their reality
remains hidden; even in the minds of old soldiers the harsh horror
mellows and recedes.

Of this particular local attack the Second Battalion Doctor afterwards
wrote, "The occasion was but one of many when a Company or Battalion was
sacrificed on a limited objective to a plan of attack ordered by
Division or some higher Command with no more knowledge of the ground
than might be got from a map of moderate scale." But for me (as I lay
awake and wondered whether I'd have been killed if I'd been there) April
23rd, was a blurred picture of people bombing one another up and down
ditches; of a Company stumbling across open ground and getting mown down
by machine-guns; of the doctor out in the dark with his
stretcher-bearers, getting in the wounded; and of an exhausted Battalion
staggering back to rest-billets to be congratulated by a genial
exculpatory Major-General, who explained that the attack had been
ordered by the Corps Commander. I could visualize the Major-General all
right, though I wasn't aware that he was 'blaming it on the Corps
Commander'. And I knew for certain that Ralph Wilmot was now minus one
of his arms, so my anti-war bitterness was enabled to concentrate itself
on the fact that he wouldn't be able to play the piano again. Finally,
it can safely be assumed that my entire human organism felt
ultra-thankful to be falling asleep in an English hospital. Altruism is
an episodic and debatable quality; the instinct for self-preservation
always got the last word when an infantryman was lying awake with his
thoughts.

                          *        *        *

With an apology for my persistent specifyings of chronology, I must
relate that on May 9th I was moved on to a Railway Terminus Hotel which
had been commandeered for the accommodation of convalescent officers. My
longing to get away from London made me intolerant of the Great Central
Hotel, which was being directed by a mind more military than
therapeutic. The Commandant was a non-combatant Brigadier-General, and
the convalescents grumbled a good deal about his methods, although they
could usually get leave to go out in the evenings. Many of them were
waiting to be invalided out of the Army, and the daily routine-orders
contained incongruous elements. We were required to attend lectures on,
among other things, Trench Warfare. At my first lecture I was astonished
to see several officers on crutches, with legs amputated, and at least
one man had lost that necessary faculty for trench warfare, his
eyesight. They appeared to be accepting the absurd situation stoically;
they were allowed to smoke. The Staff Officer who was drawing diagrams
on a blackboard was obviously desirous of imparting information about
the lesson which had been learnt from the Battle of Neuve Chapelle or
some equally obsolete engagement. But I noticed several faces in the
audience which showed signs of tortured nerves, and it was unlikely that
their efficiency was improved by the lecturer, who concluded by
reminding us of the paramount importance of obtaining offensive
ascendancy in No Man's Land.

In the afternoon I had an interview with the doctor who was empowered to
decide how soon I went to the country. One of the men with whom I shared
a room had warned me that this uniformed doctor was a queer customer.
"The blighter seems to take a positive pleasure in tormenting people,"
he remarked, adding, "He'll probably tell you that you'll have to stay
here till you're passed fit for duty." But I had contrived to obtain a
letter from the Countess of Somewhere, recommending me for one of the
country houses in her Organization; so I felt fairly secure. (At that
period of the War people with large houses received convalescent
officers as guests.)

The doctor, a youngish man dressed as a temporary Captain, began by
behaving quite pleasantly. After he'd examined me and the document which
outlined my insignificant medical history, he asked what I proposed to
do now. I said that I was hoping to get sent to some place in the
country for a few weeks. He replied that I was totally mistaken if I
thought any such thing. An expression, which I can only call cruel,
overspread his face. "You'll stay here; and when you leave here, you'll
find yourself back at the front in double-quick time. How d'you like
that idea?" In order to encourage him, I pretended to be upset by his
severity; but he seemed to recognize that I wasn't satisfactory material
for his peculiar methods, and I departed without having contested the
question of going to the country. I was told afterwards that officers
had been known to leave this doctor's room in tears. But it must not be
supposed that I regard his behaviour as an example of Army brutality. I
prefer to think of him as a man who craved for power over his fellow
men. And though his power over the visiting patients was brief and
episodic, he must have derived extraordinary (and perhaps sadistic)
satisfaction from the spectacle of young officers sobbing and begging
not to be sent back to the front.

I never saw the supposedly sadistic doctor again; but I hope that
someone gave him a black eye, and that he afterwards satisfied his
desire for power over his fellow men in a more public-spirited manner.

Next morning I handed the letter of the Countess to a slightly higher
authority, with the result that I only spent three nights in the Great
Central Hotel, and late on a fine Saturday afternoon I travelled down to
Sussex to stay with Lord and Lady Asterisk.


[III]

Nutwood Manor was everything that a wounded officer could wish for. From
the first I was conscious of a kindly welcome. It was the most perfect
house I'd ever stayed in. Also, to put the matter plainly, it was the
first time I'd ever stayed with an Earl. "Gosh! This is a slice of
luck," I thought. A reassuring man-servant conducted me upstairs. My
room was called 'The Clematis Room'; I noticed the name on the door.
Leaning my elbows on the window-sill, I gazed down at the yew hedges of
a formal garden; woods and meadows lay beyond and below, glorious with
green and luminous in evening light; far away stood the Sussex Downs,
and it did my heart good to see them. Everything in the pretty room was
an antithesis to ugliness and discomfort. Beside the bed there was a
bowl of white lilac and a Bible. Opening it at random to try my luck, I
put my finger on the following verse from the Psalms: 'The words of his
mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.' Rather an
odd coincidence, I thought, that the word 'war' should turn up like
that; but the Old Testament's full of fighting.... While I was
changing into my best khaki uniform I could hear quiet feet and
murmurous voices moving about the house; doors closed discreetly on
people about to dress for dinner. Still almost incredulous at my good
fortune I went downstairs, to be greeted by a silver-haired and gracious
hostess, and introduced to three other officers, all outwardly healthy
and gentlemanly-looking. I was presented to Lord Asterisk, over eighty
and crippled with rheumatism, but resolutely holding on to a life which
had been devoted to useful public service. Respectfully silent, I
listened to his urbane eloquence and felt sufficiently at my ease to do
justice to a very good dinner. The port wine went its round; and
afterwards, in the drawing-room, I watched Lady Asterisk working at some
embroidery while one of the officers played Gluck and Handel on the
piano. Nothing could have been more tranquil and harmonious than my
first evening at Nutwood Manor. Nevertheless I failed to fall asleep in
the Clematis Room. Lying awake didn't matter much at first; there was
plenty to ruminate about; the view across the Weald at sunset had
revived my memories of 'the good old days when I hunted with the
Ringwell'. I had escaped from the exasperating boredom of hospital life,
and now for a few weeks I could forget about the War.... But the War
insisted on being remembered, and by 3 a.m. it had become so peremptory
that I could almost believe that some of my friends out in France must
be waiting to go over the top. One by one, I thought of as many of them
as I could remember....

I'd overheard Lady Asterisk talking about spiritualism to one of the
officers; evidently she was a strong believer in the 'unseen world'.
Perhaps it was this which set me wondering whether, by concentrating my
mind on, say, young Ormand (who was still with the Second Battalion) I
might be able to receive some reciprocal communication. At three o'clock
in the morning a sleepless mind can welcome inprobabilities and renounce
its daylight scepticism. Neither voice nor vision rewarded my
expectancy.

But I was rewarded by an intense memory of men whose courage had shown
me the power of the human spirit--that spirit which could withstand the
utmost assault. Such men had inspired me to be at my best when things
were very bad, and they outweighed all the failures. Against the
background of the War and its brutal stupidity those men had stood
glorified by the thing which sought to destroy them....

I went to the window and leant out. The gables of the house began to
loom distinct against a clear sky. An owl hooted from the woods; cocks
were crowing from distant farms; on the mantelpiece a little clock
ticked busily. Oppressed by the comfort of my surroundings, I felt an
impulse to dress and go out for a walk. But Arras and the Somme were a
long way off; I couldn't walk there and I didn't want to; but they
beckoned me with their bombardments and the reality of the men who
endured them. I wanted to be there again for a few hours, because the
trenches really were more interesting than Lady Asterisk's rose-garden.
Seen from a distance, the War had a sombre and unforgettable fascination
for its bondsmen. I would have liked to go and see what was happening,
and perhaps take part in some exciting little exploit. I couldn't
gainsay certain intense emotional experiences which I'd lived through in
France. But I also wanted to be back at Nutwood Manor for breakfast...
Returning to my bed I switched on the yellow shaded light. Yes; this was
the Clematis Room, and nothing could be less like the dug-out where I'd
sat a month ago talking about Sussex with Ralph Wilmot. Through the
discurtained window the sky was deep nocturnal blue. I turned out the
lamp, and the window became a patch of greyish white, with tree-tops
dark and still in the strange quietude before dawn. I heard the cuckoo a
long way off. Then a blackbird went scolding along the garden.

                          *        *        *

I awoke to a cloudless Sabbath morning. After breakfast Lady Asterisk
led me into the garden and talked very kindly for a few minutes.

"I am sure you have had a very trying time at the front," she said, "but
you must not allow yourself to be worried by unpleasant memories. We
want our soldier-guests to forget the War while they are with us."

I replied, mumbling, that in such surroundings it wouldn't be easy to
worry about anything; and then the old Earl came out on to the terrace,
pushing the wheeled apparatus which enabled him to walk.

Often during the next three weeks I was able to forget about the War;
often I took refuge in the assuasive human happiness which Nutwood
Manor's hospitality offered me. But there were times when my mental
mechanism was refractory, and I reverted to my resolution to keep the
smoke-drifted battle memories true and intense, unmodified by the
comforts of convalescence. I wasn't going to be bluffed back into an
easy-going tolerant state of mind, I decided, as I opened a daily paper
one morning and very deliberately read a despatch from 'War
Correspondents' Headquarters'.

"I have sat with some of our lads, fighting battles over again, and
discussing battles to be," wrote some amiable man who had apparently
mistaken the War for a football match between England and Germany. "One
officer--a mere boy--told me how he'd run up against eleven Huns in an
advanced post. He killed two with a Mills bomb ('Grand weapon, the
Mills!' he laughed, his clear eyes gleaming with excitement), wounded
another with his revolver, and marched the remainder back to our own
lines...." I opened one of the illustrated weeklies and soon found an
article on 'War Pictures at the Royal Academy'. After a panegyric about
'Forward the Guns!' (a patriotic masterpiece by a lady who had been to
the Military Tournament in pre-War days) the following sentence
occurred: "I think I like Mr. Blank's 'Contalmaison' picture best. He
almost makes one feel that he must have been there. The Nth Division are
going over the second line, I expect--the tips of their bayonets give
one this impression--and it is a picture which makes one's pulse beat a
lot faster...."

"The tips of their bayonets give one that impression."... Obviously
the woman journalist who wrote those words was deriving enjoyment from
the War, though she may not have been aware of the fact. I wondered why
it was necessary for the Western Front to be 'attractively advertised'
by such intolerable twaddle. What _was_ this camouflage War which was
manufactured by the press to aid the imaginations of people who had
never seen the real thing? Many of them probably said that the papers
gave them a sane and vigorous view of the overwhelming tragedy.
'Naturally,' they would remark, 'the lads from the front are inclined to
be a little morbid about it; one expects that, after all they've been
through. Their close contact with the War has diminished their
realization of its spiritual aspects.' Then they would add something
about 'the healing of Nations'. Such people needed to have their noses
rubbed in a few rank physical facts, such as what a company of men smelt
like after they'd been in action for a week.... The gong rang for
luncheon, and Lady Asterisk left off reading a book by Tagore (whose
mystical philosophies had hitherto seemed to me nebulous and
unsatisfying).

                          *        *        *

It must not be supposed that I was ungrateful for my good luck. For
several days on end I could feel obliviously contented, and in weaker
moments there was an absurd hope that the War might be over before next
autumn. Rambling among woods and meadows, I could 'take sweet counsel'
with the countryside; sitting on a grassy bank and lifting my face to
the sun, I could feel an intensity of thankfulness such as I'd never
known before the War; listening to the little brook that bubbled out of
a copse and across a rushy field, I could discard my personal
relationship with the military machine and its ant-like armies. On my
way home I would pass old Mr. Jukes leaning on his garden gate, or an
ancient labourer mending gaps in a hedge. I would stop to gaze at the
loveliness of apple-blossom when the sun came out after a shower. And
the protective hospitality of Nutwood Manor was almost bewildering when
compared with an average twenty-four hours in a front-line trench.

All this was well enough; but there was a limit to my season of
sauntering; the future was a main road where I must fall into step and
do something to earn my 'pay and allowances'. Lady Asterisk liked to
have serious helpful little talks with her officers, and one evening she
encouraged me to discuss my immediate horizon. I spoke somewhat
emotionally, with self-indulgence in making a fine effect rather than an
impartial resolve to face facts. I suggested that I'd been trying to
make up my mind about taking a job in England, admitting my longing for
life and setting against it the idea of sacrifice and disregard of
death. I said that most of my friends were assuring me that there was no
necessity for me to go out for the third time. While I talked I saw
myself as a noble suffering character whose death in action would be
deeply deplored. I saw myself as an afflicted traveller who had entered
Lady Asterisk's gates to sit by the fire and rest his weary limbs. I did
not complain about the War; it would have been bad form to be bitter
about it at Nutwood Manor; my own 'personal problem' was what I was
concerned with....

We were alone in the library. She listened to me, her silver hair and
handsome face bent slightly forward above a piece of fine embroidery.
Outwardly emotionless, she symbolized the patrician privileges for whose
preservation I had chucked bombs at Germans and carelessly offered
myself as a target for a sniper. When I had blurted out my opinion that
life was preferable to the Roll of Honour she put aside her reticence
like a rich cloak. "But death is nothing," she said. "Life, after all,
is only the beginning. And those who are killed in the War--they help us
from up there. They are helping us to win." I couldn't answer that; this
'other world', of which she was so certain, was something I had
forgotten about since I was wounded. Expecting no answer, she went on
with a sort of inflexible sympathy (almost 'as if my number was already
up', as I would have expressed it), "It isn't as though you were heir to
a great name. No; I can't see any definite reason for your keeping out
of danger. But, of course, you can only decide a thing like that for
yourself."

I went up to the Clematis Room feeling caddishly estranged and cynical;
wondering whether the Germans 'up there' were doing anything definite to
impede the offensive operations of the Allied Powers. But Lady Asterisk
wasn't hard-hearted. She only wanted me 'to do the right thing'.... I
began to wish that I could talk candidly to someone. There was too much
well-behaved acquiescence at Nutwood Manor; and whatever the other
officers there thought about the War, they kept it to themselves; they
had done their bit for the time being and were conventional and correct,
as if the eye of their Colonel was upon them.

                          *        *        *

Social experience at Nutwood was varied by an occasional visitor. One
evening I sat next to the new arrival, a fashionable young woman whose
husband (as I afterwards ascertained) was campaigning in the Cameroons.
Her manner implied that she was ready to take me into her confidence,
intellectually; but my responses were cumbersome and uneasy, for her
conversation struck me as containing a good deal of trumped-up
intensity. A fine pair of pearls dangled from her ears, and her dark
blue eyes goggled emptily while she informed me that she was taking
lessons in Italian. She was 'dying to read Dante', and had already
started the Canto about Paolo and Francesca; adored D'Annunzio, too, and
had been reading _his_ Paolo and Francesca (in French). "Life is so
wonderful--so great--and yet we waste it all in this dreadful War!" she
exclaimed. Rather incongruously, she then regaled me with some typical
gossip from high quarters in the Army. Lunching at the Ritz recently,
she had talked to Colonel Repington, who had told her--I really forget
what, but it was excessively significant, politically, and showed that
there was no need for people to worry about Allenby's failure to advance
very far at Arras. Unsusceptible to her outward attractions, I came to
the conclusion that she wasn't the stamp of woman for whom I was willing
to make the supreme sacrifice....

Lord Asterisk had returned that evening from London, where he'd attended
a dinner at the House of Lords. The dinner had been in honour of General
Smuts (for whom I must parenthetically testify my admiration). This name
made me think of Joe Dottrell, who was fond of relating how, in the Boer
War, he had been with a raiding party which had nocturnally surprised
and almost captured the Headquarters of General Smuts. I wondered
whether the anecdote would interest Lord Asterisk; but (the ladies
having left the table) he was embarking on his customary after-dinner
oratory, while the young officer guests sipped their port and coffee and
occasionally put in a respectful remark. The old fellow was getting very
feeble, I thought, as I watched the wreckage of his fine and benevolent
face. He sat with his chin on his chest; his brow and nose were still
firm and authoritative. Sometimes his voice became weak and querulous,
but he appeared to enjoy rolling out his deliberate parliamentary
periods. Talking about the War, he surprised me by asserting the
futility of waiting for a definite military decision. Although he had
been a Colonial Governor, he was "profoundly convinced of the
uselessness of some of our Colonies", which, he said, might just as well
be handed over to the Germans. He turned to the most articulate officer
at the table. "I declare to you, my dear fellow" (voice sinking to a
mumble), "I declare to you" (louder), "have you any predominating
awareness" (pause) "of--_Sierra Leone_?"

As for Belgium, he invoked the evidence of history to support him in his
assertion that its 'redemption' by the Allies was merely a manifestation
of patriotic obliquity. The inhabitants of Belgium would be just as
happy as a German Subject-State. To the vast majority of them their
national autonomy meant nothing. While I was trying to remember the
exact meaning of the word autonomy, he ended the discussion by
remarking, "But I'm only an old dotard!" and we pretended to laugh
naturally, as if it were quite a good joke. Then he reverted to a
favourite subject of his, viz., the ineffectiveness of ecclesiastical
administrative bodies. "Oh what worlds of dreary (mumble) are hidden by
the hats of our episcopal dignitaries! I declare to you, my dear fellow,
that it is my profound conviction that the preponderance of mankind is
entirely--yes, most grievously indifferent to the deliberations of that
well-intentioned but obtuse body of men, the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners!" Slightly sententious, perhaps; but no one could doubt
that he was a dear old chap who had done his level best to leave the
world in better order than he'd found it.

                          *        *        *

There were times when I felt perversely indignant at the 'cushiness' of
my convalescent existence. These reactions were mostly caused by the few
letters which came to me from the front. One of Joe Dottrell's hastily
pencilled notes could make me unreasonably hostile to the cheerful
voices of croquet players and inarticulately unfriendly to the elegant
student of Italian when she was putting her pearl necklace out in the
sun, "because pearls do adore the sun so!"

It wasn't easy to feel animosity against the pleasant-mannered
neighbours who dropped in to tea. Nibbling cucumber sandwiches, they
conceded full military honours to any officer who had been wounded. They
discussed gardening and joked about domestic difficulties; they talked
about war-work and public affairs; but they appeared to be refusing to
recognize the realities which were implied by a letter from an
indomitable Quartermaster in France. "The Battalion has been hard at it
again and had a rough time, but as usual kept their end up well--much to
the joy of the Staff, who have been round here to-day like flies round a
jam-pot, congratulating the Colonel and all others concerned. I am sorry
to say that the Padre got killed.... He was up with the lads in the
very front and got sniped in the stomach and died immediately. I haven't
much room for his crowd as a rule, but he was the finest parson I've
ever known, absolutely indifferent to danger. Young Brock (bombing
officer--he said he knew you at Clitherland) was engaging the Boche
single-handed when he was badly hit in the arm, side, and leg. They
amputated his left leg, but he was too far gone and we buried him
to-day. Two other officers killed and three wounded. Poor Sergeant
Blaxton was killed. All the best get knocked over.... The boys are
now trying to get to Amiens to do a bit of courting." Morosely I
regarded the Clematis Room. What earthly use was it, ordering boxes of
kippers to be sent to people who were all getting done in, while
everyone at home humbugged about with polite platitudes?... Birdie
Mansfield wrote from Yorkshire; he had been invalided out of the Army.
"I'm fed to the teeth with wandering around in mufti and getting black
looks from people who pass remarks to the effect that it's about time I
joined up. Meanwhile I exist on my provisional pension (_3s._ a day). A
few days' touring round these munition areas would give you food for
thought. The average conversation is about the high cost of beer and the
ability to evade military service by bluffing the Tribunals."

I looked at another letter. It was from my servant (to whom I'd sent a
photograph of myself and a small gramophone). "Thank you very much for
the photo, which is like life itself, and the men in the Company say it
is just like him. The gramophone is much enjoyed by all. I hope you will
pardon my neglect in not packing the ground-sheet with your kit." What
could one do about it? Nothing short of stopping the War could alter the
inadequacy of kippers and gramophones or sustain my sense of unity with
those to whom I sent them.

                          *        *        *

On the day before I departed from Nutwood Manor I received another
letter from Dottrell. It contained bad news about the Second Battalion.
Viewed broadmindedly, the attack had been quite a commonplace fragment
of the War. It had been a hopeless failure, and with a single exception
all officers in action had become casualties. None of the bodies had
been brought in. The First and Second Battalions had been quite near one
another, and Dottrell had seen Ormand a day or two before the show. "He
looked pretty depressed, though outwardly as jolly as ever." Dunning had
been the first to leave our trench; had shouted 'Cheerio' and been
killed at once. Dottrell thanked me for a box of kippers....

Lady Asterisk happened to be in the room when I opened the letter. With
a sense of self-pitying indignation I blurted out my unpleasant
information. Her tired eyes showed that the shock had brought the War
close to her, but while I was adding a few details her face became
self-defensively serene. "But they are safe and happy now," she said. I
did not doubt her sincerity, and perhaps they _were_ happy now. All the
same, I was incapable of accepting the deaths of Ormand and Dunning and
the others in that spirit. I wasn't a theosophist. Nevertheless I left
Nutwood with gratitude for the kindness I had received there. I had now
four weeks in which to formulate my plans for the future.




PART TEN
INDEPENDENT ACTION


[I]

At daybreak on June 7th the British began the Battle of Messines by
exploding nineteen full-sized mines. For me the day was made memorable
by the fact that I lunched with the editor of the _Unconservative
Weekly_ at his club. By the time I entered that imposing edifice our
troops had advanced more than two miles on a ten-mile front and a great
many Germans had been blown sky-high. To-morrow this news would pervade
clubland on a wave of optimism and elderly men would glow with
satisfaction.

In the meantime prospects on the Russian Front were none too bright
since the Revolution; but a politician called Kerensky ("Waiter, bring
me a large glass of light port") appeared to be doing his best for his
country and one could only hope that the Russian Army
would--humph--stick to its guns and remember its obligations to the
Allies and their War Aims.

My luncheon with Mr. Markington was the result of a letter impulsively
written from Nutwood Manor. The letter contained a brief outline of my
War service and a suggestion that he ought to publish something
outspoken so as to let people at home know what the War was really like.
I offered to provide such details as I knew from personal experience.
The style of my letter was stilted, except for a postscript: "I'm fed-up
with all the hanky-panky in the daily papers." His reply was reticent
but friendly, and I went to his club feeling that I was a mouthpiece for
the troops in the trenches. However, when the opportunity for altruistic
eloquence arrived, I discovered, with relief, that none was expected of
me. The editor took most of my horrifying information on trust, and I
was quite content to listen to his own acrimonious comments on
contemporary affairs. Markington was a sallow spectacled man with
earnest uncompromising eyes and a stretched sort of mouth which looked
as if it had ceased to find human follies funny. The panorama of public
affairs had always offered him copious occasions for dissent; the Boer
War had been bad enough, but this one had provided almost too much
provocation for his embitterment. In spite of all this he wasn't an
alarming man to have lunch with; relaxing into ordinary humanity, he
could enjoy broad humour, and our conversation took an unexpected turn
when he encouraged me to tell him a few army anecdotes which might be
censored if I were to print them. I felt quite fond of Markington when
he threw himself back in his chair in a paroxysm of amusement. Most of
his talk, however, dealt with more serious subjects, and he made me feel
that the world was in an even worse condition than my simple mind had
suspected. When I questioned him about the probable duration of the War
he shrugged his shoulders. The most likely conclusion that he could
foresee was a gradual disintegration and collapse of all the armies.
After the War, he said, conditions in all countries would be appalling,
and Europe would take fifty years to recover. With regard to what I'd
suggested in my letter, he explained that if he were to print veracious
accounts of infantry experience his paper would be suppressed as
prejudicial to recruiting. The censorship officials were always watching
for a plausible excuse for banning it, and they had already prohibited
its foreign circulation. "The soldiers are not allowed to express their
point of view. In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of
truth," he remarked, eyeing a small chunk of Stilton cheese on his plate
as if it were incapable of agreeing with any but ultra-Conservative
opinions. "Quite a number of middle-aged members of this club have been
to the front," he continued. "After a dinner at G.H.Q. and a motor drive
in the direction of the trenches, they can talk and write in support of
the War with complete confidence in themselves. Five years ago they were
probably saying that modern civilization had made a European War
unthinkable. But their principles are purchasable. Once they've been
invited to visit G.H.Q. they never look back. Their own self-importance
is all that matters to them. And any lie is a good lie as long as it
stimulates unreasoning hatred of the enemy."

He listened with gloomy satisfaction to my rather vague remarks about
incompetent Staff work. I told him that our Second Battalion had been
almost wiped out ten days ago because the Divisional General had ordered
an impossible attack on a local objective. The phrase 'local objective'
sounded good, and made me feel that I knew a hell of a lot about
it....

On our way to the smoking-room we passed a blandly Victorian bust of
Richard Cobden, which caused Markington to regret that the man himself
wasn't above ground to give the present Government a bit of his mind.
Ignorant about Cobden's career, I gazed fixedly at his marble whiskers,
nodded gravely, and inwardly resolved to look up a few facts about him.
"If Cobden were alive now," said Markington, "the _Morning Post_ would
be anathematizing him as a white-livered defeatist! You ought to read
his speeches on International Arbitration--not a very popular subject in
these days!"

I was comfortably impressed by my surroundings, for the club was the
Mecca of the Liberal Party. From a corner of the smoking-room I observed
various eminent-looking individuals who were sipping coffee and puffing
cigars, and I felt that I was practically in the purlieus of public
life. Markington pointed out a few Liberal politicians whose names I
knew, and one conspicuous group included a couple of novelists whose
reputations were so colossal that I could scarcely believe that I was
treading the same carpet as they were. I gazed at them with gratitude;
apart from their eminence, they had provided me with a great deal of
enjoyment, and I would have liked to tell them so. For Markington,
however, such celebrities were an everyday occurrence, and he was more
interested in my own sensations while on active service. A single
specimen of my eloquence will be enough. "As a matter of fact I'm almost
sure that the War doesn't seem nearly such a bloody rotten show when
one's out there as it does when one's back in England. You see as soon
as one gets across the Channel one sort of feels as if it's no good
worrying any more--you know what I mean--like being part of the Machine
again, with nothing to be done except take one's chance. After that one
can't bother about anything except the Battalion one's with. Of course,
there's a hell of a lot of physical discomfort to be put up with, and
the unpleasant sights seem to get worse every year; but apart from being
shelled and so on, I must say I've often felt extraordinarily happy even
in the trenches. Out there it's just one thing after another, and one
soon forgets the bad times; it's probably something to do with being in
the open air so much and getting such a lot of exercise.... It's only
when one gets away from it that one begins to realize how stupid and
wasteful it all is. What I feel now is that if it's got to go on there
ought to be a jolly sound reason for it, and I can't help thinking that
the troops are being done in the eye by the people in control." I
qualified these temperate remarks by explaining that I was only telling
him how it had affected me personally; I had been comparatively lucky,
and could now see the War as it affected infantry soldiers who were
having an infinitely worse time than I'd ever had--particularly the
privates.

When I enquired whether any peace negotiations were being attempted,
Markington said that England had been asked by the new Russian
Government, in April, to state definitely her War Aims and to publish
the secret treaties made between England and Russia early in the War. We
had refused to state our terms or publish the treaties. "How damned
rotten of us!" I exclaimed, and I am afraid that my instinctive reaction
was a savage desire to hit (was it Mr. Lloyd George?) very hard on the
nose. Markington was bitter against the military caste in all countries.
He said that all the administrative Departments in Whitehall were trying
to get the better of one another, which resulted in muddle and waste on
an unprecedented scale. He told me that I should find the same sort of
things described in Tolstoi's _War and Peace_, adding that if once the
common soldier became articulate the War couldn't last a month. Soon
afterwards he sighed and said he must be getting back to the office; he
had his article to write and the paper went to press that evening. When
we parted in Pall Mall he told me to keep in touch with him and not
worry about the War more than I could help, and I mumbled something
about it having been frightfully interesting to meet him.

As I walked away from Markington my mind was clamorous with confused
ideas and phrases. It seemed as if, until to-day, I had been viewing the
War through the loop-hole in a trench parapet. Now I felt so much 'in
the know' that I wanted to stop strangers in the street and ask them
whether they realized that we ought to state our War Aims. People ought
to be warned that there was (as I would have expressed it) some dirty
work going on behind their backs. I remembered how sceptical old Lord
Asterisk had been about the redemption of 'gallant little Belgium' by
the Allies. And now Markington had gloomily informed me that our Aims
were essentially acquisitive; what we were fighting for was the
Mesopotamian Oil Wells. A jolly fine swindle it would have been for me,
if I'd been killed in April for an Oil Well! But I soon forgot that I'd
been unaware of the existence of the Oil Wells before Markington
mentioned them, and I conveniently assimilated them as part of my
evidential repertoire.

                          *        *        *

Readers of my pedestrian tale are perhaps wondering how soon I shall be
returning to the temperate influence of Aunt Evelyn. In her latest
letter she announced that a Zeppelin had dropped a bomb on an orchard
about six miles away; there had also been an explosion at the Powder
Mills at Dumbridge, but no one had been hurt. Nevertheless Butley was
too buzzing and leisurely a background for my mercurial state of mind;
so I stayed in London for another fortnight, and during that period my
mental inquietude achieved some sort of climax. In fact I can safely say
that my aggregated exasperations came to a head; and, naturally enough,
the head was my own. The prime cause of this psychological thunderstorm
was my talk with Markington, who was unaware of his ignitionary effect
until I called on him in his editorial room on the Monday after our
first meeting. Ostensibly I went to ask his advice; in reality, to
release the indignant emotions which his editorial utterances had
unwittingly brought to the surface of my consciousness. It was a case of
direct inspiration; I had, so to speak, received the call, and the
editor of the _Unconservative Weekly_ seemed the most likely man to put
me on the shortest road to martyrdom. It really felt very fine, and as
long as I was alone my feelings carried me along on a torrent of
prophetic phrases. But when I was inside Markington's office (he sitting
with fingers pressed together and regarding me with alertly mournful
curiosity) my internal eloquence dried up and I began abruptly. "I say,
I've been thinking it all over, and I've made up my mind that I ought to
do something about it." He pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead
and leant back in his chair. "You want to do something?" "About the War,
I mean. I can't just sit still and do nothing. You said the other day
that you couldn't print anything really outspoken, but I don't see why I
shouldn't make some sort of statement--about how we ought to publish our
War Aims, and all that, and the troops not knowing what they're fighting
about. It might do quite a lot of good, mightn't it?" He got up and went
to the window. A secretarial type-writer tick-tacked in the next room.
While he stood with his back to me I could see the tiny traffic creeping
to and fro on Charing Cross Bridge and a barge going down the river in
the sunshine. My heart was beating violently. I knew that I couldn't
turn back now. Those few moments seemed to last a long time; I was
conscious of the stream of life going on its way, happy and untroubled,
while I had just blurted out something which alienated me from its
acceptance of a fine day in the third June of the Great War. Returning
to his chair, he said, "I suppose you've realized what the results of
such an action would be, as regards yourself?" I replied that I didn't
care two damns what they did to me as long as I got the thing off my
chest. He laughed, looking at me with a gleam of his essential kindness.
"As far as I am aware, you'd be the first soldier to take such a step,
which would, of course, be welcomed by the extreme pacifists. Your
service at the front would differentiate you from the Conscientious
Objectors. But you must on no account make this gesture--a very fine one
if you are really in earnest about it--unless you can carry it through
effectively. Such an action would require to be carefully thought out,
and for the present I advise you to be extremely cautious in what you
say and do." His words caused me an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I
was only making a fool of myself; but this was soon mitigated by a
glowing sense of martyrdom. I saw myself 'attired with sudden
brightness, like a man inspired', and while Markington continued his
counsels of prudence my resolve strengthened toward its ultimate
obstinacy. After further reflection he said that the best man for me to
consult was Thornton Tyrrell. "You know him by name, I suppose?" I was
compelled to admit that I didn't. Markington handed me _Who's Who_ and
began to write a letter while I made myself acquainted with the details
of Tyrrell's biographical abridgment, which indicated that he was a
pretty tough proposition. To put it plainly he was an eminent
mathematician, philosopher, and physicist. As a mathematician I'd never
advanced much beyond 'six from four you can't, six from fourteen leaves
eight'; and I knew no more about the functions of a physicist than a cat
in a kitchen. "What sort of a man is he to meet?" I asked dubiously.
Markington licked and closed the envelope of his rapidly written letter.
"Tyrrell is the most uncompromising character I know. An extraordinary
brain, of course. But you needn't be alarmed by that; you'll find him
perfectly easy to get on with. A talk with him ought to clarify your
ideas. I've explained your position quite briefly. But, as I said
before, I hope you won't be too impetuous."

I put the letter in my pocket, thanked him warmly, and went soberly down
the stairs and along the quiet side-street into the Strand. While I was
debating whether I ought to buy and try to read one of Tyrrell's books
before going to see him, I almost bumped into a beefy Major-General. It
was lunch time and he was turning in at the Savoy Hotel entrance. Rather
grudgingly, I saluted. As I went on my way, I wondered what the War
Office would say if it knew what I was up to.


[II]

Early in the afternoon I left the letter at Tyrrell's address in
Bloomsbury. He telegraphed that he could see me in the evening, and
punctually at the appointed hour I returned to the quiet square. My
memory is not equal to the effort of reconstructing my exact sensations,
but it can safely be assumed that I felt excited, important, and rather
nervous. I was shown into an austere-looking room where Tyrrell was
sitting with a reading lamp at his elbow. My first impression was that
he looked exactly like a philosopher. He was small, clean-shaven, with
longish grey hair brushed neatly above a fine forehead. He had a long
upper lip, a powerful ironic mouth, and large earnest eyes. I observed
that the book which he put aside was called _The Conquest of Bread_ by
Kropotkin, and I wondered what on earth it could be about. He put me at
my ease by lighting a large pipe, saying as he did so, "Well, I gather
from Markington's letter that you've been experiencing a change of heart
about the War." He asked for details of my career in the Army, and soon
I was rambling on in my naturally inconsequent style. Tyrrell said very
little, his object being to size me up. Having got my mind warmed up, I
began to give him a few of my notions about the larger aspects of the
War. But he interrupted my "and after what Markington told me the other
day, I must say", with, "Never mind about what Markington told you. It
amounts to this, doesn't it--that you have ceased to believe what you
are told about the objects for which you supposed yourself to be
fighting?" I replied that it did boil down to something like that, and
it seemed to me a bloody shame, the troops getting killed all the time
while people at home humbugged themselves into believing that everyone
in the trenches enjoyed it. Tyrrell poured me out a second cup of tea
and suggested that I should write out a short personal statement based
on my conviction that the War was being unnecessarily prolonged by the
refusal of the Allies to publish their war aims. When I had done this we
could discuss the next step to be taken. "Naturally I should help you in
every way possible," he said. "I have always regarded all wars as acts
of criminal folly, and my hatred of this one has often made life seem
almost unendurable. But hatred makes one vital, and without it one loses
energy. 'Keep vital' is a more important axiom than 'love your
neighbour'. This act of yours, if you stick to it, will probably land
you in prison. Don't let that discourage you. You will be more alive in
prison than you would be in the trenches." Mistaking this last remark
for a joke, I laughed, rather half-heartedly. "No; I mean that
seriously," he said. "By thinking independently and acting fearlessly on
your moral convictions you are serving the world better than you would
do by marching with the unthinking majority who are suffering and dying
at the front because they believe what they have been told to believe.
Now that you have lost your faith in what you enlisted for, I am certain
that you should go on and let the consequences take care of themselves.
Of course your action would be welcomed by people like myself who are
violently opposed to the War. We should print and circulate as many
copies of your statement as possible.... But I hadn't intended to
speak as definitely as this. You must decide by your own feeling and not
by what anyone else says." I promised to send him my statement when it
was written and walked home with my head full of exalted and disorderly
thoughts. I had taken a strong liking for Tyrrell, who probably smiled
rather grimly while he was reading a few more pages of Kropotkin's
_Conquest of Bread_ before going upstairs to his philosophic slumbers.

                          *        *        *

Although Tyrrell had told me that my statement needn't be more than 200
words long, it took me several days to formulate. At first I felt that I
had so much to say that I didn't know where to begin. But after several
verbose failures it seemed as though the essence of my manifesto could
be stated in a single sentence: "I say this War ought to stop." During
the struggle to put my unfusilierish opinions into some sort of shape,
my confidence often diminished. But there was no relaxation of my inmost
resolve, since I was in the throes of a species of conversion which made
the prospect of persecution stimulating and almost enjoyable. No; my
loss of confidence was in the same category as my diffidence when first
confronted by a Vickers Machine-Gun and its Instructor. While he reeled
off the names of its numerous component parts, I used to despair of ever
being able to remember them or understand their workings. "And unless I
know all about the Vickers Gun I'll never get sent out to the front," I
used to think. Now, sitting late at night in an expensive but dismal
bedroom in Jermyn Street, I internally exclaimed, "I'll never be able to
write out a decent statement and the whole blasted protest will be a
wash-out! Tyrrell thinks I'm quite brainy, but when he reads this stuff
he'll realize what a dud I am."

What could I do if Tyrrell decided to discourage my candidature for a
court martial? Chuck up the whole idea and go out again and get myself
killed as quick as possible? 'Yes,' I thought, working myself up into a
tantrum, 'I'd get killed just to show them all I don't care a damn.' (I
didn't stop to specify the identity of 'them all'; such details could be
dispensed with when one had lost one's temper with the Great War.) But
commonsense warned me that getting sent back was a slow business, and
getting killed on purpose an irrelevant gesture for a platoon commander.
One couldn't choose one's own conditions out in France.... Tyrrell
had talked about 'serving the world by thinking independently'. I must
hang on to that idea and remember the men for whom I believed myself to
be interceding. I tried to think internationally; the poor old Boches
must be hating it just as much as we did; but I couldn't propel my
sympathy as far as the Balkan States, Turks, Italians, and all the rest
of them; and somehow or other the French were just the French and too
busy fighting and selling things to the troops to need my intervention.
So I got back to thinking about 'all the good chaps who'd been killed
with the First and Second Battalions since I left them'... Ormand,
dying miserably out in a shell-hole.... I remembered his exact tone
of voice when saying that if his children ever asked what he did in the
Great War, his answer would be, "No bullet ever went quick enough to
catch me"; and how he used to sing 'Rock of ages cleft for me, let me
hide myself in thee,' when we were being badly shelled. I thought of the
typical Flintshire Fusilier at his best, and the vast anonymity of
courage and cheerfulness which he represented as he sat in a front-line
trench cleaning his mess-tin. How could one connect him with the gross
profiteer whom I'd overheard in a railway carriage remarking to an
equally repulsive companion that if the War lasted another eighteen
months he'd be able to retire from business?... How could I
co-ordinate such diversities of human behaviour, or believe that heroism
was its own reward? Something must be put on paper, however, and I
rescrutinized the rough notes I'd been making. _Fighting men are victims
of conspiracy among (a) politicians; (b) military caste; (c) people who
are making money out of the War._ Under this I had scribbled, _Also
personal effort to dissociate myself from intolerant prejudice and
conventional complacence of those willing to watch sacrifices of others
while they sit safely at home._ This was followed by an indignant
afterthought. _I believe that by taking this action I am helping to
destroy the system of deception, etc., which prevents people from facing
the truth and demanding some guarantee that the torture of humanity
shall not be prolonged unnecessarily through the arrogance and
incompetence of_... Here it broke off, and I wondered how many c's
there were in 'unnecessarily'. _I am not a conscientious objector. I am
a soldier who believes he is acting on behalf of soldiers._ How inflated
and unconvincing it all looked! If I wasn't careful I should be yelling
like some crank on a barrel in Hyde Park. Well, there was nothing for it
but to begin all over again. I couldn't ask Tyrrell to give me a few
hints. He'd insisted that I must be independent-minded, and had since
written to remind me that I must decide my course of action for myself
and not be prompted by anything he'd said to me.

Sitting there with my elbows on the table I stared at the dingy red
wall-paper in an unseeing effort at mental concentration. If I stared
hard enough and straight enough, it seemed, I should see through the
wall. Truth would be revealed, and my brain would become articulate. _I
am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military
authority because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged
by those who have the power to end it._ That would be all right as a
kick-off, anyhow. So I continued my superhuman cogitations. Around me
was London with its darkened streets; and far away was the War, going on
with wave on wave of gun-fire, devouring its victims, and unable to
blunder forward either to Paris or the Rhine. The air-raids were
becoming serious, too. Looking out of the window at the searchlights, I
thought how ridiculous it would be if a bomb dropped on me while I was
writing out my statement.


[III]

Exactly a week after our first conversation I showed the statement to
Tyrrell. He was satisfied with it as a whole and helped me to clarify a
few minor crudities of expression. Nothing now remained but to wait
until my leave had expired and then hurl the explosive document at the
Commanding Officer at Clitherland (an event which I didn't permit myself
to contemplate clearly). For the present the poor man only knew that I'd
applied for an instructorship with a Cadet Battalion at Cambridge. He
wrote that he would be sorry to lose me and congratulated me on what he
was generous enough to describe as my splendid work at the front. In the
meantime Tyrrell was considering the question of obtaining publicity for
my protest. He introduced me to some of his colleagues on the 'Stop the
War Committee' and the 'No Conscription Fellowship'. Among them was an
intellectual conscientious objector (lately released after a successful
hunger-strike). Also a genial veteran Socialist (recognizable by his red
tie and soft grey hat) who grasped my hand with rugged good wishes. One
and all, they welcomed me to the Anti-War Movement, but I couldn't quite
believe that I had been assimilated. The reason for this feeling was
their antipathy to everyone in a uniform. I was still wearing mine, and
somehow I was unable to dislike being a Flintshire Fusilier. This little
psychological dilemma now seems almost too delicate to be divulged. In
their eyes, I suppose, there was no credit attached to the fact of
having been at the front, but for me it had been a supremely important
experience. I am obliged to admit that if these anti-war enthusiasts
hadn't happened to be likeable I might have secretly despised them. Any
man who had been on active service had an unfair advantage over those
who hadn't. And the man who had really endured the War at its worst was
everlastingly differentiated from everyone except his fellow soldiers.

Tyrrell (a great man and to be thought of as 'in a class by himself')
took me up to Hampstead one hot afternoon to interview a member of
Parliament who was 'interested in my case'. Walking alongside of the
philosopher I felt as if we were a pair of conspirators. His austere
scientific intellect was far beyond my reach, but he helped me by his
sense of humour, which he had contrived, rather grimly, to retain, in
spite of the exasperating spectacle of European civilization trying to
commit suicide. The M.P. promised to raise the question of my statement
in the House of Commons as soon as I had sent it to the Colonel at
Clitherland, so I began to feel that I was getting on grandly. But
except for the few occasions when I saw Tyrrell, I was existing in a
world of my own (in which I tried to keep my courage up to
protest-pitch). From the visible world I sought evidence which could
aggravate my quarrel with acquiescent patriotism. Evidences of civilian
callousness and complacency were plentiful, for the thriftless licence
of war-time behaviour was an unavoidable spectacle, especially in the
Savoy Hotel Grill Room which I visited more than once in my anxiety to
reassure myself of the existence of bloated profiteers and uniformed
jacks in office. Watching the guzzlers in the Savoy (and conveniently
overlooking the fact that some of them were officers on leave) I
nourished my righteous hatred of them, anathematizing their appetites
with the intolerance of youth which made me unable to realize that
comfort-loving people are obliged to avoid self-knowledge--especially
when there is a war on. But I still believe that in 1917 the idle,
empty-headed, and frivolous ingredients of Society were having a
tolerably good time, while the officious were being made self-important
by nicely graded degrees of uniformed or un-uniformed war-emergency
authority. For middle-aged persons who faced the War bleakly, life had
become unbearable unless they persuaded themselves that the slaughter
was worth while. Tyrrell was comprehensively severe on everyone except
inflexible pacifists. He said that the people who tried to resolve the
discords of the War into what they called 'a higher harmony' were merely
enabling themselves to contemplate the massacre of the young men with an
easy conscience. "By Jingo, I suppose you're right!" I exclaimed,
wishing that I were able to express my ideas with such comprehensive
clarity.

                          *        *        *

Supervising a platoon of Cadet Officers at Cambridge would have been a
snug alternative to 'general service abroad' (provided that I could have
bluffed the cadets into believing that I knew something about
soldiering). I was going there to be interviewed by the Colonel and
clinch my illusory appointment; but I was only doing this because I
considered it needful for what I called 'strengthening my position'. I
hadn't looked ahead much, but when I did so it was with an eye to
safeguarding myself against 'what people would say'.

When I remarked to Tyrrell that 'people couldn't say I did it so as to
avoid going back to France if I had been given a job in England', he
pulled me up short.

"What people say doesn't matter. Your own belief in what you are doing
is the only thing that counts." Knowing that he was right, I felt
abashed; but I couldn't help regretting that my second decoration had
failed to materialize. It did not occur to me that a Bar to one's
Military Cross was a somewhat inadequate accretion to one's
qualifications for affirming that the War was being deliberately
prolonged by those who had the power to end it. Except for a bullet hole
in my second best tunic, all that I'd got for my little adventure in
April consisted in a gilt-edged card on which the Divisional General had
inscribed his congratulations and thanks. This document was locally
referred to as 'one of the Whincop's Bread Cards', and since it couldn't
be sewn on to my tunic I did my best to feel that it was better than
nothing.

Anyhow, on a glaring hot morning I started to catch a train to
Cambridge. I was intending to stay a night there, for it would be nice
to have a quiet look round and perhaps go up to Grantchester in a canoe.
Admittedly, next month was bound to be ghastly; but it was no good
worrying about that.... Had I enough money on me? Probably not; so I
decided to stop and change a cheque at my bank in Old Broad Street.
Changing a cheque was always a comforting performance. "Queer thing,
having private means," I thought. "They just hand you out the money as
if it was a present from the Bank Manager." It was funny, too, to think
that I was still drawing my Army pay. But it was the wrong moment for
such humdrum cogitations, for when my taxi stopped in that narrow
thoroughfare, Old Broad Street, the people on the pavement were standing
still, staring up at the hot white sky. Loud bangings had begun in the
near neighbourhood, and it was obvious that an air-raid was in full
swing. This event could not be ignored; but I needed money and wished to
catch my train, so I decided to disregard it. The crashings continued,
and while I was handing my cheque to the cashier a crowd of women clerks
came wildly down a winding stairway with vociferations of not unnatural
alarm. Despite this commotion the cashier handed me five one-pound notes
with the stoical politeness of a man who had made up his mind to go down
with the ship. Probably he felt as I did--more indignant than afraid;
there seemed no sense in the idea of being blown to bits in one's own
bank. I emerged from the building with an air of soldierly unconcern; my
taxi-driver, like the cashier, was commendably calm, although another
stupendous crash sounded as though very near Old Broad Street (as indeed
it was). "I suppose we may as well go on to the station," I remarked,
adding, "it seems a bit steep that one can't even cash a cheque in
comfort!" The man grinned and drove on. It was impossible to deny that
the War was being brought home to me. At Liverpool Street there had
occurred what, under normal conditions, would be described as an
appalling catastrophe. Bombs had been dropped on the station and one of
them had hit the front carriage of the noon express to Cambridge.
Horrified travellers were hurrying away. The hands of the clock
indicated 11.50; but railway-time had been interrupted; for once in its
career, the imperative clock was a passive spectator. While I stood
wondering what to do, a luggage trolley was trundled past me; on it lay
an elderly man, shabbily dressed, and apparently dead. The sight of
blood caused me to feel quite queer. This sort of danger seemed to
demand a quality of courage dissimilar to front-line fortitude. In a
trench one was acclimatized to the notion of being exterminated and
there was a sense of organized retaliation. But here one was helpless;
an invisible enemy sent destruction spinning down from a fine weather
sky; poor old men bought a railway ticket and were trundled away again
dead on a barrow; wounded women lay about in the station groaning. And
one's train didn't start.... Nobody could say for certain when it
_would_ start, a phlegmatic porter informed me; so I migrated to St.
Pancras and made the journey to Cambridge in a train which halted
good-naturedly at every station. Gazing at sleepy green landscapes, I
found difficulty in connecting them (by the railway line) with the
air-raid which (I was afterwards told) had played hell with Paternoster
Avenue. "It wouldn't be such a bad life," I thought, "if one were a
station-master on a branch line in Bedfordshire." There was something
attractive, too, in the idea of being a commercial traveller, creeping
about the country and doing business in drowsy market towns and snug
cathedral cities.

If only I could wake up and find myself living among the parsons and
squires of Trollope's Barsetshire, jogging easily from Christmas to
Christmas, and hunting three days a week with the Duke of Omnium's
Hounds....

The elms were so leafy and the lanes invited me to such rural remoteness
that every time the train slowed up I longed to get out and start on an
indefinite walking tour--away into the delusive Sabbath of summer--away
from air-raids and inexorable moral responsibilities and the
ever-increasing output of munitions.

But here was Cambridge, looking contented enough in the afternoon
sunshine, as though the Long Vacation were on. The Colleges appeared to
have forgotten their copious contributions to the Roll of Honour. The
streets were empty, for the Cadets were out on their afternoon
parades--probably learning how to take compass-bearings, or pretending
to shoot at an enemy who was supposedly advancing from a wood nine
hundred yards away. I knew all about that type of training. "Half-right;
haystack; three fingers left of haystack; copse; nine hundred; AT THE
COPSE, ten rounds rapid, FIRE!" There wasn't going to be any
musketry-exercise instructing for me, however. I was only 'going through
the motions' of applying for a job with the Cadet Battalion. The orderly
room was on the ground-floor of a college. In happier times it had been
a library (the books were still there) and the Colonel had been a
History Don with a keen interest in the Territorials. Playing the part
of respectful young applicant for instructorship in the Arts of War, I
found myself doing it so convincingly that the existence of my
'statement' became, for the moment, an improbability. "Have you any
specialist knowledge?" inquired the Colonel. I told him that I'd been
Battalion Intelligence Officer for a time (suppressing the fact that I'd
voluntarily relinquished that status after three days of inability to
supply the necessary eye-wash reports). "Ah, that's excellent. We find
the majority of the men very weak in map-reading," he replied, adding,
"our main object, of course, is to instil first-rate morale. It isn't
always easy to impress on these new army men what we mean by the
tradition of the pre-War regimental officer.... Well, I'm sure you'll
do very good work. You'll be joining us in two or three weeks, I think?
Good-bye till then." He shook my hand rather as if I'd won a History
Scholarship, and I walked out of the college feeling that it was a poor
sort of joke on him. But my absence as an instructor was all to the good
as far as he was concerned, and I was inclined to think that I was
better at saying the War ought to stop than at teaching cadets how to
carry it on. Sitting in King's Chapel I tried to recover my conviction
of the nobility of my enterprise and to believe that the pen which wrote
my statement had 'dropped from an angel's wing'. I also reminded myself
that Cambridge had dismissed Tyrrell from his lectureship because he
disbelieved in the War. "Intolerant old blighters!" I inwardly
exclaimed. "One can't possibly side with people like that. All they care
about is keeping up with the other colleges in the casualty lists." Thus
refortified, I went down to the river and hired a canoe.


[IV]

Back at Butley, I had fully a fortnight in which to take life easily
before tackling 'wilful defiance of military authority'. I was, of
course, compelled to lead a double life, and the longer it lasted the
less I liked it. I am unable to say for certain how far I was successful
in making Aunt Evelyn believe that my mind was free from anxiety. But I
know that it wasn't easy to sustain the evangelistic individuality which
I'd worked myself up to in London. Outwardly those last days of June
progressed with nostalgic serenity. I say nostalgic, because in my
weaker moods I longed for the peace of mind which could have allowed me
to enjoy having tea out in the garden on fine afternoons. But it was no
use trying to dope my disquiet with Trollope's novels or any of my
favourite books. The purgatory I'd let myself in for always came between
me and the pages; there was no escape for me now. Walking restlessly
about the garden at night I was oppressed by the midsummer silence and
found no comfort in the twinkling lights along the Weald. At one end of
the garden three poplars tapered against the stars; they seemed like
sentries guarding a prisoner. Across the uncut orchard grass, Aunt
Evelyn's white bee-hives glimmered in the moonlight like bones. The
hives were empty, for the bees had been wiped out by the Isle of Wight
disease. But it was no good moping about the garden. I ought to be
indoors improving my mind, I thought, for I had returned to Butley
resolved to read for dear life--circumstances having made it imperative
that I should accumulate as much solid information as I could. But
sedulous study only served to open up the limitless prairies of my
ignorance, and my attention was apt to wander away from what I was
reading. If I could have been candid with myself I should have confessed
that a fortnight was inadequate for the completion of my education as an
intellectual pacifist. Reading the last few numbers of Markington's
weekly was all very well as a tonic for disagreeing with organized
public opinion, but even if I learnt a whole article off by heart I
should only have built a little hut on the edge of the prairie. 'I must
have all the arguments at my fingers' ends,' I had thought when I left
London. The arguments, perhaps, were epitomized in Tyrrell's volume of
lectures ('given to me by the author', as I had written on the
fly-leaf). Nevertheless those lectures on political philosophy, though
clear and vigorous in style, were too advanced for my elementary
requirements. They were, I read on the first page, "inspired by a view
of the springs of action which has been suggested by the War. And all of
them are informed by the hope of seeing such political institutions
established in Europe as shall make men averse from war--a hope which I
firmly believe to be realizable, though not without a great and
fundamental reconstruction of economic and social life." From the first
I realized that this was a book whose meanings could only be mastered by
dint of copious underlining. _What integrates an individual life is a
consistent creative purpose or unconscious direction._ I underlined
that, and then looked up 'integrate' in the dictionary. Of course it
meant the opposite of _disintegrate_, which was what the optimists of
the press said would soon happen to the Central Powers of Europe. Soon
afterwards I came to the conclusion that much time would be saved if I
underlined the sentences which _didn't_ need underlining. The truth was
that there were too many ideas in the book. I was forced to admit that
nothing in Tyrrell's lectures could be used for backing up my point of
view when I was being interrogated by the Colonel at Clitherland....
The thought of Clitherland was unspeakably painful. I had a vague hope
that I could get myself arrested without going there. It would be so
much easier if I could get my case dealt with by strangers.

                          *        *        *

Aunt Evelyn did her best to brighten the part of my double life which
included her, but at meal times I was often morose and monosyllabic.
Humanly speaking, it would have been a relief to confide in her. As a
practical proposition, however, it was impossible. I couldn't allow my
protest to become a domestic controversy, and it was obviously kinder to
keep my aunt in the dark about it until she received the inevitable
shock. I remember one particular evening when the suspense was growing
acute. At dinner Aunt Evelyn, in her efforts to create cheerful
conversation, began by asking me to tell her more about Nutwood Manor.
It was, she surmised, a very well-arranged house, and the garden must
have been almost perfection. "Did azaleas grow well there?" Undeterred
by my gloomily affirmative answer, she urged me to supply further
information about the Asterisks and their friends. She had always heard
that old Lord Asterisk was such a fine man, and must have had a most
interesting life, although, now she came to think of it, he'd been a bit
of a Radical and had supported Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. She then
interrupted herself by exclaiming: "Naughty, naughty, naughty!" But this
rebuke was aimed at one of the cats who was sharpening his claw on the
leather seat of one of the Chippendale chairs. Having thrown my napkin
at the cat, I admitted that Lord Asterisk was a dear old chap, though
unlikely to live much longer. Aunt Evelyn expressed concern about his
infirmity, supplementing it with her perennial "Don't eat so fast, dear;
you're simply bolting it down. You'll ruin your digestion." She pressed
me to have some more chicken, thereby causing me to refuse, although I
should have had some more if she'd kept quiet about it. She now tried
the topic of my job at Cambridge. What sort of rooms should I live in?
Perhaps I should have rooms in one of the colleges which would be very
nice for me--much nicer than those horrid huts at Clitherland. Grumpily
I agreed that Cambridge was preferable to Clitherland. A bowl of
strawberries, perhaps the best ones we'd had that summer, created a
diversion. Aunt Evelyn regretted the unavoidable absence of cream, which
enabled me to assure her that some of the blighters I'd seen in London
restaurants weren't denying themselves much; and I went off into a
diatribe against profiteers and officials who gorged at the Ritz and the
Savoy while the poorer classes stood for hours in queues outside food
shops. Much relieved at being able to agree with me about something,
Aunt Evelyn almost overdid her indignant ejaculations, adding that it
was a positive scandal--the disgracefully immoral way most of the young
women were behaving while doing war-work. This animation subsided when
we got up from the table. In the drawing-room she lit the fire, 'as the
night felt a bit chilly and a fire would make the room more cheerful'.
Probably she was hoping to spend a cosy evening with me; but I made a
bad beginning, for the lid fell off the coffee-pot and cracked one of
the little blue and yellow cups, and when Aunt Evelyn suggested that we
might play one of our old games of cribbage or halma, I said I didn't
feel like that sort of thing. Somehow I couldn't get myself to behave
affectionately towards her, and she had irritated me by making
uncomplimentary remarks about Markington's paper, a copy of which was
lying on the table. (She said it was written by people who were mad with
their own self-importance and she couldn't understand how I could read
such a paper.) Picking it up I went grumpily upstairs and spent the next
ten minutes trying to teach Popsy the parrot how to say 'Stop the War'.
But he only put his head down to be scratched, and afterwards obliged me
with his well-known rendering of Aunt Evelyn calling the cats. On her
way up to bed she came in (with a glass of milk) and told me that she
was sure I wasn't feeling well. Wouldn't it be a good thing if I were to
go to the seaside for a few days' golf? But this suggestion only
provided me with further evidence that it was no earthly use expecting
her to share my views about the War. Games of golf indeed! I glowered at
the glass of milk and had half a mind to throw it out of the window.
Afterwards I decided that I might as well drink it, and did so.

                          *        *        *

Late on a sultry afternoon, when returning from a mutinous-minded walk,
I stopped to sit in Butley Churchyard. From Butley Hill one looks across
a narrow winding valley, and that afternoon the woods and orchards
suddenly made me feel almost as fond of them as I'd been when I was in
France. While I was resting on a flat-topped old tomb-stone I recovered
something approximate to peace of mind. Gazing at my immediate
surroundings, I felt that 'joining the great majority' was a
homely--almost a comforting--idea. Here death differed from extinction
in modern warfare. I ascertained from the nearest headstone that _Thomas
Welfare, of this Parish, had died on October 20th, 1843, aged 72.
'Respected by all who knew him.' Also Sarah, wife of the above. 'Not
changed but glorified.'_ Such facts were resignedly acceptable. They
were in harmony with the simple annals of this quiet corner of Kent. One
could speculate serenely upon the homespun mortality of such worthies,
whose lives had 'taken place' with the orderly and inevitable
progression of a Sunday service. They made the past seem pleasantly
prosy in contrast with the monstrous emergencies of to-day. And Butley
Church, with its big-buttressed square tower, was protectively
permanent. One could visualize it there for the last 500 years,
measuring out the unambitious local chronology with its bells, while
English history unrolled itself along the horizon with coronations and
rebellions and stubbornly disputed charters and covenants. Beyond all
that, the 'foreign parts' of the world widened incredibly toward regions
reported by travellers' tales. And so outward to the windy universe of
astronomers and theologians. Looking up at the battlemented tower, I
improvised a clear picture of some morning--was it in the seventeenth
century? Men in steeple-crowned hats were surveying a
rudimentary-looking landscape with anxious faces, for trouble was afoot
and there was talk of the King's enemies. But the insurgence always
passed by. It had never been more than a rumour for Butley, whether it
was Richard of Gloucester or Charles the First who happened to be losing
his kingdom. It was difficult to imagine that Butley had contributed
many soldiers for the Civil Wars, or even for Marlborough and
Wellington, or that the village carpenter of those days had lost both
his sons in Flanders. Between the church door and the lych gate the
plump yews were catching the rays of evening. Along that path the
coffined generations had paced with sober church-going faces. There they
had stood in circumspect groups to exchange local gossip and discuss the
uncertainly reported events of the outside world. They were a long way
off now, I thought--their names undecipherable on tilted headstones or
humbly oblivioned beneath green mounds. For the few who could afford a
permanent memorial, their remoteness from posterity became less as the
names became more legible, until one arrived at those who had watched
the old timbered inn by the churchyard being burnt to the ground--was it
forty years ago? I remembered Captain Huxtable telling me that the
catastrophe was supposed to have been started by the flaring up of a pot
of glue which a journeyman joiner had left on a fire while he went to
the tap-room for a mug of beer. The burning of the old Bull Inn had been
quite a big event for the neighbourhood; but it wouldn't be thought much
of in these days; and my mind reverted to the demolished churches along
the Western Front, and the sunlit inferno of the first day of the Somme
Battle. There wouldn't be much Gray's Elegy atmosphere if Butley were in
the Fourth Army area!

Gazing across at the old rifle butts--now a grassy indentation on the
hillside half a mile away--I remembered the Volunteers whose torch-light
march-past had made such a glowing impression on my nursery-window mind,
in the good old days before the Boer War. Twenty years ago there had
been an almost national significance in the fact of a few Butley men
doing target practice on summer evenings.

Meanwhile my meditations had dispelled my heavy-heartedness, and as I
went home I recovered something of the exultation I'd felt when first
forming my resolution. I knew that no right-minded Butley man could take
it upon himself to affirm that a European war was being needlessly
prolonged by those who had the power to end it. They would tap their
foreheads and sympathetically assume that I'd seen more of the fighting
than was good for me. But I felt the desire to suffer, and once again I
had a glimpse of something beyond and above my present troubles--as
though I could, by cutting myself off from my previous existence, gain
some new spiritual freedom and live as I had never lived before.

'They can all go to blazes,' I thought, as I went home by the field
path. 'I know I'm right and I'm going to do it,' was the rhythm of my
mental monologue. If all that senseless slaughter had got to go on, it
shouldn't be through any fault of mine. 'It won't be any fault of mine,'
I muttered.

A shaggy farm horse was sitting in the corner of a field with his front
legs tucked under him; munching placidly, he watched me climb the stile
into the old green lane with its high thorn hedges.


[V]

Sunshade in one hand and prayer-book in the other, Aunt Evelyn was just
starting for morning service at Butley. "I really must ask Captain
Huxtable to tea before you go away. He looked a little hurt when he
inquired after you last Sunday," she remarked. So it was settled that
she would ask him to tea when they came out of church. "I really can't
think why you haven't been over to see him," she added, dropping her
gloves and then deciding not to wear them after all, for the weather was
hot and since she had given up the pony cart she always walked to
church. She put up her pink sunshade and I walked with her to the front
gate. The two cats accompanied us, and were even willing to follow her
up the road, though they'd been warned over and over again that the road
was dangerous. Aunt Evelyn was still inclined to regard all motorists as
reckless and obnoxious intruders. The roads were barely safe for human
beings, let alone cats, she exclaimed as she hurried away. The church
bells could already be heard across the fields, and very peaceful they
sounded.

July was now a week old. I had overstayed my leave several days and was
waiting until I heard from the Depot. My mental condition was a mixture
of procrastination and suspense, but the suspense was beginning to get
the upper hand of the procrastination, since it was just possible that
the Adjutant at Clitherland was assuming that I'd gone straight to
Cambridge.

Next morning the conundrum was solved by a telegram, _Report how
situated_. There was nothing for it but to obey the terse instructions,
so I composed a letter (brief, courteous, and regretful) to the Colonel,
enclosing a typewritten copy of my statement, apologizing for the
trouble I was causing him, and promising to return as soon as I heard
from him. I also sent a copy to Dottrell, with a letter in which I hoped
that my action would not be entirely disapproved of by the First
Battalion. Who else was there, I wondered, feeling rather rattled and
confused. There was Durley, of course; and Cromlech also--fancy my
forgetting him! I could rely on Durley to be sensible and sympathetic;
and David was in a convalescent hospital in the Isle of Wight, so there
was no likelihood of his exerting himself with efforts to dissuade me. I
didn't want anyone to begin interfering on my behalf. At least I hoped
that I didn't; though there were weak moments later on when I wished
they would. I read my statement through once more (though I could have
recited it only too easily) in a desperate effort to calculate its
effect on the Colonel. "_I am making this statement as an act of wilful
defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being
deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a
soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe
that this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation,
has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the
purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this War should
have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change
them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would
now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings
of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these
sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not
protesting against the conduct of the War, but against the political
errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being
sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest
against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe
that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the
majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they
do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to
realize._" It certainly sounds a bit pompous, I thought, and God only
knows what the Colonel will think of it.

Thus ended a most miserable morning's work. After lunch I walked down
the hill to the pillar-box and posted my letters with a feeling of
stupefied finality. I then realized that I had a headache and Captain
Huxtable was coming to tea. Lying on my bed with the window curtains
drawn, I compared the prospect of being in a prison cell with the prosy
serenity of this buzzing summer afternoon. I could hear the cooing of
the white pigeons and the soft clatter of their wings as they fluttered
down to the little bird-bath on the lawn. My sense of the life-learned
house and garden enveloped me as though all the summers I had ever known
were returning in a single thought. I had felt the same a year ago, but
going back to the War next day hadn't been as bad as this.

Theoretically, to-day's tea-party would have made excellent material for
a domestic day-dream when I was at the front. I was safely wounded after
doing well enough to be congratulated by Captain Huxtable. The fact that
the fighting men were still being sacrificed needn't affect the
contentment of the tea-party. But everything was blighted by those
letters which were reposing in the local pillar-box, and it was with
some difficulty that I pulled myself together when I heard a vigorous
ring of the front-door bell, followed by the firm tread of the Captain
on the polished wood floor of the drawing-room, and the volubility of
Aunt Evelyn's conversational opening alternating with the crisp and
cheery baritone of her visitor. Captain Huxtable was an essentially
cheerful character ('waggish' was Aunt Evelyn's favourite word for him)
and that afternoon he was in his most jovial mood. He greeted me with a
reference to Mahomet and the Mountain, though I felt more like a funeral
than a mountain, and the little man himself looked by no means like
Mahomet, for he was wearing brown corduroy breeches and a white linen
jacket, and his face was red and jolly after the exertion of bicycling.
His subsequent conversation was, for me, strongly flavoured with
unconscious irony. Ever since I had joined the Flintshire Fusiliers our
meetings always set his mind alight with memories of his 'old corps', as
he called it; I made him, he said, feel half his age. Naturally, he was
enthusiastic about anything connected with the fine record of the
Flintshires in this particular war, and when Aunt Evelyn said, "Do show
Captain Huxtable the card you got from your General," he screwed his
monocle into his eye and inspected the gilt-edged trophy with intense
and deliberate satisfaction. I asked him to keep it as a souvenir of his
having got me into the Regiment--(bitterly aware that I should soon be
getting myself out of it pretty effectively!). After saying that I
couldn't have given him anything which he'd value more highly, he
suggested that I might do worse than adopt the Army as a permanent
career (forgetting that I was nearly ten years too old for such an idea
to be feasible). But no doubt I was glad to be going to the Depot for a
few days, so as to have a good crack with some of my old comrades, and
when I got to Cambridge I must make myself known to a promising young
chap (a grandson of his cousin, Archdeacon Crocket) who was training
with the Cadet Battalion. After a digression around this year's fruit
crop, conversation turned to the Archbishop of Canterbury's message to
the nation about Air Raid Reprisals. In Captain Huxtable's opinion the
Church couldn't be too militant, and Aunt Evelyn thoroughly agreed with
him. With forced facetiousness I described my own air-raid experience.
"The cashier in the bank was as cool as a cucumber," I remarked. There
were cucumber sandwiches on the table, but the implications of the word
'cashier' were stronger, since for me it was part of the price of
martyrdom, while for the Captain it epitomized an outer darkness of
dishonour. But the word went past him, innocent of its military meaning,
and he referred to the increasing severity of the German air-raids as
'all that one can expect from that gang of ruffians'. But there it was,
and we'd got to go through with it; nothing could be worse than a
patched-up peace; and Aunt Evelyn 'could see no sign of a change of
heart in the German nation'.

The Captain was delighted to see in to-day's _Times_ that another of
those cranky Pacifist meetings had been broken up by some Colonial
troops; and he added that he'd like to have the job of dealing with a
'Stop the War' meeting in Butley. To him a Conscientious Objector was
the antithesis of an officer and a gentleman, and no other point of view
would have been possible for him. The Army was the framework of his
family tradition; his maternal grandfather had been a Scotch baronet
with a distinguished military career in India--a fact which was piously
embodied in the Memorial Tablet to his mother in Butley Church. As for
his father--'old Captain Huxtable'--(whom I could hazily remember,
white-whiskered and formidable) he had been a regular roaring martinet
of the gouty old school of retired officers, and his irascibilities were
still legendary in our neighbourhood. He used to knock his coachman's
hat off and stamp on it. 'The young Captain', as he was called in former
days, had profited by these paroxysms, and where the parent would have
bellowed 'God damn and blast it all' at his bailiff, the son permitted
himself nothing more sulphurous than 'con-found', and would have thought
twice before telling even the most red-hot Socialist to go to the devil.

Walking round the garden after tea--Aunt Evelyn drawing his attention to
her delphiniums and he waggishly affirming their inferiority to his
own--I wondered whether I had exaggerated the 'callous complacency' of
those at home. What could elderly people do except try and make the best
of their inability to sit in a trench and be bombarded? How could they
be blamed for refusing to recognize any ignoble elements in the War
except those which they attributed to our enemies?

Aunt Evelyn's delphinium spires were blue against the distant blue of
the Weald and the shadows of the Irish yews were lengthening across the
lawn.... Out in France the convoys of wounded and gassed were being
carried into the Field Hospitals, and up in the Line the slaughter went
on because no one knew how to stop it. "Men are beginning to ask for
what they are fighting," Dottrell had written in his last letter. Could
I be blamed for being one of those at home who were also asking that
question? Must the War go on in order that colonels might become
brigadiers and brigadiers get divisions, while contractors and
manufacturers enriched themselves, and people in high places ate and
drank well and bandied official information and organized entertainments
for the wounded? Some such questions I may have asked myself, but I was
unable to include Captain Huxtable and Aunt Evelyn in the indictment.


[VI]

I had to wait until Thursday before a second Clitherland telegram put me
out of my misery. Delivered early in the afternoon and containing only
two words, _Report immediately_, it was obviously a telegram which did
not need to be read twice. But the new variety of suspense which it
created was an improvement on what I'd been enduring, because I could
end it for certain by reporting at Clitherland within twenty-four hours.
All considerations connected with my protest were now knocked on the
head. It no longer mattered whether I was right or whether I was wrong,
whether my action was public-spirited or whether it was preposterous. My
mind was insensible to everything but the abhorrent fact that I was in
for an appalling show, with zero hour fixed for to-morrow when I arrived
at the depot.

In the meantime I must pack my bag and catch the five-something train to
town. Automatically I began to pack in my usual vacillating but orderly
manner; then I remembered that it would make no difference if I forgot
all the things I needed most. By this time to-morrow I shall be under
arrest, I thought, gloomily rejecting my automatic pistol, water-bottle,
and whistle, and rummaging in a drawer for some khaki socks and
handkerchiefs. A glimpse of my rather distracted-looking face in the
glass warned me that I must pull myself together by to-morrow. I must
walk into the Orderly Room neat and self-possessed and normal. Anyhow
the parlourmaid had given my tunic buttons and belt a good rub up, and
now Aunt Evelyn was rapping on the door to say that tea was ready and
the taxi would be here in half an hour. She took my abrupt departure
quite as a matter of course, but it was only at the last moment that she
remembered to give me the bundle of white pigeons' feathers which she
had collected from the lawn, knowing how I always liked some for
pipe-cleaners. She also reminded me that I was forgetting to take my
golf clubs; but I shouldn't get any time for golf, I said, plumping
myself into the taxi, for there wasn't too much time to catch the train.

The five-something train from Baldock Wood was a slow affair; one had to
change at Dumbridge and wait forty minutes. I remember this because I
have seldom felt more dejected than I did when I walked out of Dumbridge
Station and looked over the fence of the County Cricket Ground. The
afternoon was desolately fine and the ground, with its pavilion and
enclosures, looked blighted and forsaken. Here, in pre-eminently happier
times, I had played in many a club match and had attentively watched the
varying fortunes of the Kent Eleven; but now no one had even troubled to
wind up the pavilion clock.

Back in the station I searched the bookstall for something to distract
my thoughts. The result was a small red volume which is still in my
possession. It is called _The Morals of Rousseau_, and contains,
naturally enough, extracts from that celebrated author. Rousseau was new
to me and I cannot claim that his morals were any help to me on that
particular journey or during the ensuing days when I carried him about
in my pocket. But while pacing the station platform I remembered a
certain couplet, and I mention this couplet because, for the next ten
days or so, I couldn't get it out of my head. There was no apparent
relevancy in the quotation (which I afterwards found to be from Cowper).
It merely persisted in saying:

  _I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau_
  _If birds confabulate or no._

London enveloped my loneliness. I spent what was presumably my last
night of liberty in the bustling dreariness of one of those huge hotels
where no one ever seems to be staying more than a single night. I had
hoped for a talk with Tyrrell, but he was out of town. My situation was,
I felt, far too serious for theatre going--in fact I regarded myself as
already more or less under arrest; I was going to Clitherland under my
own escort, so to speak. So it may be assumed that I spent that evening
alone with J. J. Rousseau.

                          *        *        *

Next morning--but it will suffice if I say that next morning (although
papers announced _Great Russian Success in Galicia_) I had no reason to
feel any happier than I had done the night before. I am beginning to
feel that a man can write too much about his own feelings, even when
'what he felt like' is the nucleus of his narrative. Nevertheless I
cannot avoid a short summary of my sensations while on the way to
Liverpool. I began by shutting my eyes and refusing to think at all; but
this effort didn't last long. I tried looking out of the window; but the
sunlit fields only made me long to be a munching cow. I remembered my
first journey to Clitherland in May 1915. I had been nervous
then--diffident about my ability to learn how to be an officer. Getting
out to the Front had been an ambition rather than an obligation, and I
had aimed at nothing more than to become a passably efficient
second-lieutenant. Pleasantly conscious of my new uniform and anxious to
do it credit, I had felt (as most of us did in those days) as if I were
beginning a fresh and untarnished existence. Probably I had travelled by
this very train. My instant mental transition from that moment to this
(all intervening experience excluded) caused me a sort of vertigo. Alone
in that first-class compartment, I shut my eyes and asked myself out
loud what this thing was which I was doing; and my mutinous act suddenly
seemed outrageous and incredible. For a few minutes I completely lost my
nerve. But the express train was carrying me along; I couldn't stop it,
any more than I could cancel my statement. And when the train pulled up
at Liverpool I was merely a harassed automaton whose movements were
being manipulated by a typewritten manifesto. To put it plainly, I felt
'like nothing on earth' while I was being bumped and jolted out to the
Camp in a ramshackle taxi.

It was about three o'clock when the taxi passed the gates of
Brotherhood's Explosive Works and drew up outside the officers' quarters
at Clitherland. The sky was cloudless and the lines of huts had an air
of ominous inactivity. Nobody seemed to be about, for at that hour the
troops were out on the training field. A bored sentry was the only
witness of my arrival, and for him there was nothing remarkable in a
second-lieutenant telling a taximan to dump his luggage down outside the
officers' mess. For me however there now seemed something almost
surreptitious about my return. It was as though I'd come skulking back
to see how much damage had been caused by that egregious projectile, my
protest. But the Camp was exactly as it would have been if I'd returned
as a dutiful young officer. It was I who was desolate and distracted;
and it would have been no consolation to me if I could have realized
that, in my mind, the familiar scene was having a momentary and ghastly
existence which would never be repeated.

For a few moments I stared wildly at the huts, conscious (though my
brain was blank) that there was some sort of climax in my stupefied
recognition of reality. One final wrench, and all my obedient
associations with Clitherland would be shattered.

It is probable that I put my tie straight and adjusted my belt-buckle to
its central position between the tunic buttons. There was only one thing
to be done after that. I walked into the orderly room, halted in front
of a table, and saluted dizzily.

After the glaring sunlight, the room seemed almost dark. When I raised
my eyes it was not the Colonel who was sitting at the table, but Major
Macartney. At another table, ostensibly busy with Army forms and papers,
was the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant (a good friend of mine who had lost a
leg in Gallipoli). I stood there, incapable of expectation. Then, to my
astonishment, the Major rose, leant across the table, and shook hands
with me.

"How are you, Sherston? I'm glad to see you back again." His deep voice
had its usual kindly tone, but his manner betrayed acute embarrassment.
No one could have been less glad to see me back again than he was. But
he at once picked up his cap and asked me to come with him to his room,
which was only a few steps away. Silently we entered the hut, our feet
clumping along the boards of the passage. Speechless and respectful, I
accepted the chair which he offered me. There we were, in the
comfortless little room which had been his local habitation for the past
twenty-seven months. There we were; and the unfortunate Major hadn't a
ghost of an idea what to say.

He was a man of great delicacy of feeling. I have seldom known as fine a
gentleman. For him the interview must have been as agonizing as it was
for me. I wanted to make things easier for him; but what could I say?
And what could he do for me, except, perhaps, offer me a cigar? He did
so. I can honestly say that I have never refused a cigar with anything
like so much regret. To have accepted it would have been a sign of
surrender. It would have meant that the Major and myself could have
puffed our cigars and debated--with all requisite seriousness, of
course--the best way of extricating me from my dilemma. How blissful
that would have been! For my indiscretion might positively have been
'laughed off' (as a temporary aberration brought on, perhaps, by an
overdose of solitude after coming out of hospital). No such agreeable
solution being possible, the Major began by explaining that the Colonel
was away on leave. "He is deeply concerned about you, and fully prepared
to overlook the--" here he hesitated--"the paper which you sent him. He
has asked me to urge you most earnestly to--er--dismiss the whole matter
from your mind." Nothing could have been more earnest than the way he
looked at me when he stopped speaking. I replied that I was deeply
grateful but I couldn't change my mind. In the ensuing silence I felt
that I was committing a breach, not so much of discipline as of decorum.

The disappointed Major made a renewed effort. "But Sherston, isn't it
_possible_ for you to reconsider your--er--ultimatum?" This was the
first time I'd heard it called an ultimatum, and the locution epitomized
the Major's inability to find words to fit the situation. I embarked on
a floundering explanation of my mental attitude with regard to the War;
but I couldn't make it sound convincing, and at the back of my mind was
a misgiving that I must seem to him rather crazy. To be telling the
acting-Colonel of my regimental Training Depot that I had come to the
conclusion that England ought to make peace with Germany--was this
altogether in focus with right-mindedness? No; it was useless to expect
him to take me seriously as an ultimatumist. So I gazed fixedly at the
floor and said, "Hadn't you better have me put under arrest at
once?"--thereby causing poor Major Macartney additional discomfort. My
remark recoiled on me, almost as if I'd uttered something unmentionable.
"I'd rather die than do such a thing!" he exclaimed. He was a reticent
man, and that was his way of expressing his feeling about those whom he
had watched, month after month, going out to the trenches, as he would
have gone himself had he been a younger man.

At this point it was obviously his duty to remonstrate with me severely
and to assert his authority. But what fulminations could be effective
against one whose only object was to be put under arrest?... "As long
as he doesn't really think I'm dotty!" I thought. But he showed no
symptom of that, as far as I was aware; and he was a man who made one
feel that he trusted one's integrity, however much he might disagree
with one's opinions.

No solution having been arrived at for the present, he now suggested--in
confidential tones which somehow implied sympathetic understanding of my
predicament--that I should go to the Exchange Hotel in Liverpool and
there await further instructions. I gladly acquiesced, and we emerged
from the hut a little less funereally than we had entered it. My taxi
man was still waiting, for in my bewilderment I had forgotten to pay
him. Once more the Major grasped my hand, and if I did not thank him for
his kindness it was because my gratitude was too great. So I trundled
unexpectedly back to Liverpool; and although, in all likelihood, my
troubles were only just starting, an immense load had been lifted from
my mind. At the Exchange Hotel (which was quiet and rarely frequented by
the Clitherland officers) I thoroughly enjoyed my tea, for I'd eaten
nothing since breakfast. After that I lit my pipe and thought how nice
it was not to be under arrest. I had got over the worst part of the
show, and now there was nothing to be done except stick to my statement
and wait for the M.P. to read it out in the House of Commons.


[VII]

For the next three days I hung about the Exchange Hotel in a state of
mind which need not be described. I saw no one I knew except a couple of
Clitherland subalterns who happened to be dining in the Hotel. They
cheerily enquired when I was coming out to the Camp. Evidently they were
inquisitive about me, without suspecting anything extraordinary, so I
inferred that Orderly Room had been keeping my strange behaviour secret.
On Tuesday my one-legged friend, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant, came to
see me. We managed to avoid mentioning everything connected with my
'present situation', and he regaled me with the gossip of the Camp as
though nothing were wrong. But when he was departing he handed me an
official document which instructed me to proceed to Crewe next day for a
Special Medical Board. A railway warrant was enclosed with it.

Here was a chance of turning aside from the road to Court-Martialdom,
and it would be inaccurate were I to say that I never gave the question
two thoughts. Roughly speaking, two thoughts were exactly what I did
give to it. One thought urged that I might just as well chuck the whole
business and admit that my gesture had been futile. The other one
reminded me that this was an inevitable conjuncture in my progress, and
that such temptations must be resisted inflexibly. Not that I ever
admitted the possibility of my accepting the invitation to Crewe; but I
did become conscious that acceptance would be much pleasanter than
refusal. Submission being impossible, I called in pride and obstinacy to
aid me, throttled my warm feelings toward my well-wishers at Clitherland
Camp, and burnt my boats by tearing up both railway warrant and Medical
Board instructions.

On Wednesday I tried to feel glad that I was cutting the Medical Board,
and applied my mind to Palgrave's _Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics_.
I was learning by heart as many poems as possible, my idea being that
they would be a help to me in prison, where, I imagined, no books would
be allowed. I suppose I ought to try and get used to giving up tobacco,
I thought, but I went on smoking just the same (the alternative being to
smoke as many pipes as I could while I'd got the chance).

On Thursday morning I received an encouraging letter from the M.P. who
urged me to keep my spirits up and was hoping to raise the question of
my statement in the House next week. Early in the afternoon the Colonel
called to see me. He found me learning Keats' _Ode to a Nightingale_. "I
cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft...." What soft
was it, I wondered, re-opening the book. But here was the Colonel,
apparently unincensed, shaking my hand, and sitting down opposite me,
though already looking fussed and perplexed. He wasn't a lively-minded
man at the best of times, and he didn't pretend to understand the
motives which had actuated me. But with patient commonsense arguments,
he did his best to persuade me to stop wanting to stop the War.
Fortified by the M.P.'s letter in my pocket, I managed to remain
respectfully obdurate, while expressing my real regret for the trouble I
was causing him. What appeared to worry him most was the fact that I'd
cut the Medical Board. "Do you realize, Sherston, that it had been
specially arranged for you and that an R.A.M.C. Colonel came all the way
from London for it?" he ejaculated ruefully, wiping the perspiration
from his forehead. The poor man--whose existence was dominated by
documentary instructions from 'higher quarters', had probably been
blamed for my non-appearance; and to disregard such an order was, to one
with his habit of mind, like a reversal of the order of nature. As the
interview dragged itself along, I began to feel quite optimistic about
the progress I was making. The Colonel's stuttering arguments in support
of 'crushing Prussian militarism' were those of a middle-aged civilian;
and as the overworked superintendent of a reinforcement manufactory, he
had never had time to ask himself why North Welshmen were being shipped
across to France to be gassed, machine-gunned, and high explosived by
Germans. It was absolutely impossible, he asserted, for the War to end
until it ended--well, until it ended as it ought to end. Did I think it
right that so many men should have been sacrificed for no purpose? "And
surely it stands to reason, Sherston, that you must be wrong when you
set your own opinion against the practically unanimous feeling of the
whole British Empire." There was no answer I could make to that, so I
remained silent and waited for the British Empire idea to blow over. In
conclusion he said, "Well, I've done all I can for you. I told Mersey
Defences that you missed your Board through a misunderstanding of the
instructions, but I'm afraid the affair will soon go beyond my control.
I beg you to try and reconsider your refusal by to-morrow, and to let us
know at once if you do."

He looked at me, almost irately, and departed without another word. When
his bulky figure had vanished I felt that my isolation was perceptibly
increasing. All I needed to do was to wait until the affair had got
beyond his control. I wished I could have a talk with Tyrrell. But even
he wasn't infallible, for in all our discussions about my plan of
campaign he had never foreseen that my senior officers would treat me
with this kindly tolerance which was so difficult to endure.

During the next two days my mind groped and worried around the same
purgatorial limbo so incessantly that the whole business began to seem
unreal and distorted. Sometimes the wording of my thoughts became
incoherent and even nonsensical. At other times I saw everything with
the haggard clarity of insomnia.

So on Saturday afternoon I decided that I really must go and get some
fresh air, and I took the electric train to Formby. How much longer
would this ghastly show go on, I wondered, as the train pulled up at
Clitherland Station. All I wanted now was that the thing should be taken
out of my own control, as well as the Colonel's. I didn't care how they
treated me as long as I wasn't forced to argue about it any more. At
Formby I avoided the Golf Course (remembering, with a gleam of haggard
humour, how Aunt Evelyn had urged me to bring my 'golf sticks', as she
called them). Wandering along the sand dunes I felt outlawed, bitter,
and baited. I wanted something to smash and trample on, and in a
paroxysm of exasperation I performed the time-honoured gesture of
shaking my clenched fists at the sky. Feeling no better for that, I
ripped the M.C. ribbon off my tunic and threw it into the mouth of the
Mersey. Weighted with significance though this action was, it would have
felt more conclusive had the ribbon been heavier. As it was, the poor
little thing fell weakly onto the water and floated away as though aware
of its own futility. One of my point-to-point cups would have served my
purpose more satisfyingly, and they'd meant much the same to me as my
Military Cross.

Watching a big boat which was steaming along the horizon, I realized
that protesting against the prolongation of the War was about as much
use as shouting at the people on board that ship.

                          *        *        *

Next morning I was sitting in the hotel smoking-room in a state of
stubborn apathy. I had got just about to the end of my tether. Since it
was Sunday and my eighth day in Liverpool I might have chosen this
moment for reviewing the past week, though I had nothing to congratulate
myself on except the fact that I'd survived seven days without hauling
down my flag. It is possible that I meditated some desperate
counter-attack which might compel the authorities to treat me harshly,
but I had no idea how to do it. "Damn it all, I've half a mind to go to
church," I thought, although as far as I could see there was more real
religion to be found in the _Golden Treasury_ than in a church which
only approved of military-aged men when they were in khaki. Sitting in a
sacred edifice wouldn't help me, I decided. And then I was taken
completely by surprise; for there was David Cromlech, knobby-faced and
gawky as ever, advancing across the room. His arrival brought
instantaneous relief, which I expressed by exclaiming: "Thank God you've
come!"

He sat down without saying anything. He too was pleased to see me, but
retained that air of anxious concern with which his eyes had first
encountered mine. As usual he looked as if he'd slept in his uniform.
Something had snapped inside me and I felt rather silly and hysterical.
"David, you've got an enormous black smudge on your forehead," I
remarked. Obediently he moistened his handkerchief with his tongue and
proceeded to rub the smudge off, tentatively following my instructions
as to its whereabouts. During this operation his face was vacant and
childish, suggesting an earlier time when his nurse had performed a
similar service for him. "How on earth did you manage to roll up from
the Isle of Wight like this?" I enquired. He smiled in a knowing way.
Already he was beginning to look less as though he were visiting an
invalid; but I'd been so much locked up with my own thoughts lately that
for the next few minutes I talked nineteen to the dozen, telling him
what a hellish time I'd had, how terribly kind the depot officers had
been to me, and so on. "When I started this anti-war stunt I never
dreamt it would be such a long job, getting myself run in for a court
martial," I concluded, laughing with somewhat hollow gaiety.

In the meantime David sat moody and silent, his face twitching nervously
and his fingers twiddling one of his tunic buttons. "Look here, George,"
he said, abruptly, scrutinizing the button as though he'd never seen
such a thing before, "I've come to tell you that you've got to drop this
anti-war business." This was a new idea, for I wasn't yet beyond my
sense of relief at seeing him. "But I can't drop it," I exclaimed.
"Don't you realize that I'm a man with a message? I thought you'd come
to see me through the court martial as 'prisoner's friend'." We then
settled down to an earnest discussion about the 'political errors and
insincerities for which the fighting men were being sacrificed'. He did
most of the talking, while I disagreed defensively. But even if our
conversation could be reported in full, I am afraid that the verdict of
posterity would be against us. We agreed that the world had gone mad;
but neither of us could see beyond his own experience, and we weren't
life-learned enough to share the patient selfless stoicism through which
men of maturer age were acquiring anonymous glory. Neither of us had the
haziest idea of what the politicians were really up to (though it is
possible that the politicians were only feeling their way and trusting
in providence and the output of munitions to solve their problems).
Nevertheless we argued as though the secret confabulations of Cabinet
Ministers in various countries were as clear as daylight to us, and our
assumption was that they were all wrong, while we, who had been in the
trenches, were far-seeing and infallible. But when I said that the War
ought to be stopped and it was my duty to do my little bit to stop it,
David replied that the War was bound to go on till one side or the other
collapsed, and the Pacifists were only meddling with what they didn't
understand. "At any rate Thornton Tyrrell's a jolly fine man and knows a
bloody sight more about everything than you do," I exclaimed. "Tyrrell's
only a doctrinaire," replied David, "though I grant you he's a
courageous one." Before I had time to ask what the hell he knew about
doctrinaires, he continued, "No one except people who've been in the
real fighting have any right to interfere about the War; and even they
can't get anything done about it. All they can do is to remain loyal to
one another. And you know perfectly well that most of the conscientious
objectors are nothing but skrimshankers." I retorted that I knew nothing
of the sort, and mentioned a young doctor who'd played Rugby Football
for Scotland and was now in prison although he could have been doing
hospital work if he'd wanted to. David then announced that he'd been
doing a bit of wire-pulling on my behalf and that I should soon find
that my Pacifist M.P. wouldn't do me as much good as I expected. This
put my back up. David had no right to come butting in about my private
affairs. "If you've really been trying to persuade the authorities not
to do anything nasty to me," I remarked, "that's about the hopefullest
thing I've heard. Go on doing it and exercise your usual tact, and
you'll get me two years' hard labour for certain, and with any luck
they'll decide to shoot me as a sort of deserter." He looked so
aggrieved at this that I relented and suggested that we'd better have
some lunch. But David was always an absent-minded eater, and on this
occasion he prodded disapprovingly at his food and then bolted it down
as if it were medicine.

A couple of hours later we were wandering aimlessly along the shore at
Formby, and still jabbering for all we were worth. I refused to accept
his well-meaning assertion that no one at the Front would understand my
point of view and that they would only say that I'd got cold feet. "And
even if they do say that," I argued, "the main point is that by backing
out of my statement I shall be betraying my real convictions and the
people who are supporting me. Isn't that worse cowardice than being
thought cold-footed by officers who refuse to think about anything
except the gentlemanly traditions of the Regiment? I'm not doing it for
fun, am I? Can't you understand that this is the most difficult thing
I've ever done in my life? I'm not going to be talked out of it just
when I'm forcing them to make a martyr of me." "They won't make a martyr
of you," he replied. "How do you know that?" I asked. He said that the
Colonel at Clitherland had told him to tell me that if I continued to
refuse to be 'medically-boarded' they would shut me up in a lunatic
asylum for the rest of the War. Nothing would induce them to court
martial me. It had all been arranged with some big bug at the War Office
in the last day or two. "Why didn't you tell me before?" I asked. "I
kept it as a last resort because I was afraid it might upset you," he
replied, tracing a pattern on the sand with his stick. "I wouldn't
believe this from anyone but you. Will you swear on the Bible that
you're telling the truth?" He swore on an imaginary Bible that nothing
would induce them to court martial me and that I should be treated as
insane. "All right then, I'll give way." As soon as the words were out
of my mouth I sat down on an old wooden breakwater.

So that was the end of my grand gesture. I ought to have known that the
blighters would do me down somehow, I thought, scowling heavily at the
sea. It was appropriate that I should behave in a glumly dignified
manner, but already I was aware that an enormous load had been lifted
from my mind. In the train David was discreetly silent. He got out at
Clitherland. "Then I'll tell Orderly Room they can fix up a Board for
you to-morrow," he remarked, unable to conceal his elation. "You can
tell them anything you bloody well please!" I answered ungratefully. But
as soon as I was alone I sat back and closed my eyes with a sense of
exquisite relief. I was unaware that David had, probably, saved me from
being sent to prison by telling me a very successful lie. No doubt I
should have done the same for him if our positions had been reversed.

                          *        *        *

It was obvious that the less I said to the Medical Board the better. All
the necessary explanations of my mental condition were contributed by
David, who had been detailed to give evidence on my behalf. He had a
long interview with the doctors while I waited in an ante-room.
Listening to their muffled mumblings, I felt several years younger than
I'd done two days before. I was now an irresponsible person again,
absolved from any obligation to intervene in world affairs. In fact the
present performance seemed rather ludicrous, and when David emerged,
solemn and concerned, to usher me in, I entered the 'Bird Room' assuring
myself that I should not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau if birds confabulated
or no. The Medical Board consisted of a Colonel, a Major, and a Captain.
The Captain was a civilian in uniform, and a professional neurologist.
The others were elderly Regular Army doctors, and I am inclined to think
that their acquaintance with Army Forms exceeded their knowledge of
neurology.

While David fidgeted about in the ante-room, I was replying respectfully
to the stereotyped questions of the Colonel, who seemed slightly
suspicious and much mystified by my attitude to the War. Was it on
religious grounds that I objected to fighting, he inquired. "No, sir;
not particularly," I replied. 'Fighting on religious grounds' sounded
like some sort of a joke about the Crusades. "Do you consider yourself
qualified to decide when the War should stop?" was his next question.
Realizing that he was only trying to make me talk rubbish, I evaded him
by admitting that I hadn't thought about my qualifications, which wasn't
true. "But your friend tells us that you were very good at bombing.
Don't you still dislike the Germans?" I have forgotten how I answered
that conundrum. It didn't matter what I said to him, as long as I
behaved politely. While the interrogations continued, I felt that sooner
or later I simply must repeat that couplet out loud... 'if birds
confabulate or no'. Probably it would be the best thing I could do, for
it would prove conclusively and comfortably that I was a harmless
lunatic. Once I caught the neurologist's eye, which signalled
sympathetic understanding, I thought. Anyhow, the Colonel (having
demonstrated his senior rank by asking me an adequate number of
questions) willingly allowed the Captain to suggest that they couldn't
do better than send me to Slateford Hospital. So it was decided that I
was suffering from shell-shock. The Colonel then remarked to the Major
that he supposed there was nothing more to be done now. I repeated the
couplet under my breath. "Did you say anything?" asked the Colonel,
frowning slightly. I disclaimed having said anything and was permitted
to rejoin David.

When we were walking back to my hotel I overheard myself whistling
cheerfully, and commented on the fact. "Honestly, David, I don't believe
I've whistled for about six weeks!" I gazed up at the blue sky, grateful
because, at that moment, it seemed as though I had finished with the
War.

Next morning I went to Edinburgh. David, who had been detailed to act as
my escort, missed the train and arrived at Slateford War Hospital
several hours later than I did. And with my arrival at Slateford War
Hospital this volume can conveniently be concluded.






[End of Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, by Siegfried Sassoon]