I. Morning
“Two hours’ pack drill, and pay for a new handle,” I said.
“Right—Turn!” said the sergeant-major. “Right—Wheel—Quick—March! Get your equipment on and join your platoon at once.”
This last sentence was spoken in a quick undertone, as the prisoner stepped out of the door into the road. I was filling up the column headed “Punishment awarded” on a buff-coloured Army Form, to which I appended my signature. The case just dealt with was a very dull and commonplace one, a man having “lost” his entrenching tool handle. Most of these “losses” occurred in trenches, and were dealt with the first morning in billets at company orderly-room. This man had been engaged on special fatigue work the last few days; hence the reason why the loss had not been checked before, and came up on this last morning in billets.
“No more prisoners?” I asked the company sergeant-major.
“No more prisoners, sir,” he answered. I then rather hurriedly signed several returns made out by Sergeant Roberts, the company quartermaster-sergeant, and promised to come in later and sign the acquittance rolls. These are the pay-lists, made out in triplicate, which are signed by each man as he draws his pay. The original goes to the Paymaster in England, one carbon copy to the adjutant, and one is retained by the company-commander. We had paid out the first day in billets. This time “working-parties” had been tolerable. We had arrived back in billets about half-past three in the afternoon; the next morning had been spent in a march to the divisional baths at Treux (two miles away), in cleaning up, kit-inspection, and a little arm-drill and musketry practice; in the afternoon we paid out. Then followed three days of working-parties, up on the support line at Crawley Ridge; and now, we had this last day in which to do a little company work. There had been running parade at seven-thirty. Owen had taken this, and I confess that I had not yet breakfasted. So I hurried off now at 9.10 to gulp something down and be at battalion orderly-room at 9.30 sharp.
The company office was a house of two rooms; one was the “office” itself, with a blanket-clad table and a couple of chairs in the middle, and all around were strewn strange boxes, and bundles of papers and equipment. On the walls were pictures from illustrated English papers; one of Nurse Cavell, another of howitzers firing; and several graphic bayonet-charges at Verdun, pictured by an artist who must have “glowed” as he drew them in his room in Chelsea. In the other room slept the C.S.M. and C.Q.M.S. (more familiar as the “sergeant-major” and the “quartermaster”).
From this house, then, I stepped out into the glaring street. It was the end of May, and the day promised to be really quite hot. I have already explained how completely shut off from the trenches one felt in Morlancourt, sheltered as it was in a cup of the hills and immune from shelling. Now as I walked quickly along the street, past our battalion “orderly-room,” and returned the immaculate salute of Sergeant-Major Shandon, the regimental sergeant-major, who was already marshalling the prisoners ready for the Colonel at half-past nine, I felt a lightness and freshness of body that almost made me think I was free of the war at last. My Sam Browne belt, my best tunic with its polished buttons, and most of all, I suppose, the effect of a good sleep and a cold bath, all contributed to this feeling, as well as the scent from the laburnum and lilac that looked over the garden wall opposite the billet that was our “Mess.”
I found Edwards just going off to inspect “B” Company Lewis gunners, whom he was taking on the range the first part of the morning.
“Hullo!” he said, “you’ve not got much time.”
“No,” said I. “My own fault for getting up late. Got a case for the C.O. too. Is my watch right? I make it seventeen minutes past.”
“Nineteen, I make it.”
“Wish I hadn’t asked you,” I laughed. “No porridge, Lewis. Bring the eggs and bacon in at once. This tea’ll do. There’s no milk, though. What?”
Edwards had asked something. He repeated his question, which was whether I wanted Jim, the company horse, this afternoon. I thought rapidly, and the scent of the lilac decided me.
“Yes,” I answered. “Sorry, but I do.”
“Oh, all right; I expect I can get old Muskett to let me have one.”
Muskett was the transport officer.
“Righto,” said I. “Go teach thy Lewis gunners how to drill little holes in the chalk-bank.”
He clattered off over the cobbles of the garden path, and in a few minutes I followed suit, running until I rounded a corner and came into view of the orderly-room, when I altered my gait to a dignified walk and arrived just as the Colonel appeared from the opposite direction.
“Parade! Tchern!!” shouted Sergeant-Major Shandon; and a moment later the four company commanders came to attention and saluted as the Colonel passed in, sprinkling “Good mornings” to right and left.
I had one very uninteresting case of drunkenness; “A” had a couple of men who had overstayed their pass in England; “C” had a case held over from the day before for further evidence, and was now dismissed as not proven; while “D” had an unsatisfactory sergeant who was “severely reprimanded.” All these cases were quickly and unerringly disposed of, and we company commanders saluted again and clattered down the winding staircase out into the sunshine.
I had to pass from one end of the village to the other. The orderly-room was not far from our company “Mess” and was at a cross-roads. Opposite, in one of the angles made by the junction of the four roads, was a deep and usually muddy horse-pond. But even here the mud was getting hard under this spell of warm May weather, and the innumerable ruts and hoof-marks were crystallising into a permanent pattern. As I walked along the streets I passed sundry Tommies acting as road-scavengers; “permanent road fatigue” they were called, although they were anything but permanent, being changed every day. Formerly they had seemed to be engaged in a Herculean, though unromantic, task of scraping great rolling puddings of mud to the side of the road, in the vain hope that the mud would find an automatic exit into neighbouring gardens and ponds; for Morlancourt did not boast such modern things as gutters. To-day there were large pats of mud lining the street, but these were now caked and hard, and even crumbling into dust, that whisked about among the sparrows. The permanent road fatigue was gathering waste-paper and tins in large quantities, but otherwise was having a holiday.
Women were working, or gossiping at the doorsteps. The estaminet doors were flung wide open, and the floors were being scrubbed and sprinkled with sawdust. A little bare-legged girl, in a black cotton dress, was hugging a great wide loaf; an old man sat blinking in the sunshine; cats were basking, dogs nosing about lazily. A party of about thirty bombers passed me, the sergeant giving “eyes right” and waking me from meditations on the eternal calm of cats. Then I reached the headquarter guard, and the sentry saluted with a rattling clap upon his butt, and I did my best to emulate his smartness. So I passed along all the length of the shuttered houses of Morlancourt.
“A great day, this,” I thought, as I came to the small field where “B” Company was paraded; not two hundred and fifty men, as you will doubtless assume from the text-books, but some thirty or forty men only; one was lucky if one mustered forty. Where were the rest, you ask? Well, bombers bombing; Lewis gunners under Edwards; some on “permanent mining fatigue,” that is, carrying the sand-bags from the mine-shafts to the dumps; transport, pioneers, stretcher-bearers, men under bombing instruction, officers’ servants, headquarter orderlies, men on leave, etc. etc. The company sergeant-major will make out a parade slate for you if you want it, showing exactly where every man is. But here are forty men. Let’s drill them.
Half were engaged in arm-drill under my best drill-sergeant; the other half were doing musketry in gas-helmets, an unpleasant practice which nothing would induce me to do on a sunny May morning. They lay on their fronts, legs well apart, and were working the bolts of their rifles fifteen times a minute. After a while they changed over and did arm-drill, while the other half took over the gas-helmets, the mouthpieces having first been dipped in a solution of carbolic brought by one of the stretcher-bearers in a canteen. These gas-helmets were marked D.P. (drill purposes), and each company had so many with which to practise.
When both parties were duly exercised, I gave a short lecture on the measures to be adopted against the use of Flammenwerfer, which is the “Liquid Fire” of the official communiqués. I had just been to a demonstration of this atrocity in the form of a captured German apparatus, and my chief object in lecturing the men about it was to make it quite clear that the flaming jets of burning gas cannot sink into a trench, but, as a matter of fact, only keep level so long as they are propelled by the driving power of the hose apparatus; as water from a hose goes straight, and then curves down to the ground, so gas, even though it be incandescent, goes straight and then rises. In the trench you are unscathed, as we proved in the demonstration, when they sprayed the flaming gas over a trench full of men. Indeed, the chief effect of this flammenwerfer is one of frightfulness, as the Germans cannot come over until the flames have ceased. The men were rather inclined to gape at all this, but I found the words had sunk in when I asked what should be done if the enemy used this diabolical stuff against us. “Get down at the bottom of the trench, sir, and as soon as they stop it, give the ——’s ’ell!”
The rest of the morning we spent “on the range,” which meant firing into a steep chalk bank at a hundred yards. Targets and paste-pot had been procured from the pioneers’ shop, and after posting a couple of “look-out” men on either side, we started range practice. The men are always keen about firing on the range, and it is really the most interesting and pleasant part of the infantryman’s training. I watched these fellows, hugging their rifle-butt into their shoulder, and feeling the smooth wood against their cheeks; they wriggled their bodies about to get a comfortable position; sometimes they flinched as they fired and jerked the rifle; sometimes they pressed the trigger as softly, as softly.... And gradually, carefully, we tried to detect and eliminate the faults. Then we ended up with fifteen rounds rapid in a minute. The “mad minute” it used to be called at home. After which we fell the men in, and Paul marched them back to the company “alarm post” outside the company office, where “B” Company always fell in; while Owen, Nicolson, and I walked back together.
II. Afternoon
“I still maintain,” said I, an hour later, as we finished lunch, “that bully-beef, some sort of sauce or pickle, and salad, followed by cheese, and ending with a cup of tea, is the proper lunch for an officer. I don’t mind other officers having tinned fruit, though, if they like it,” I added with a laugh.
Owen and Syme were newly joined officers for whom the sight of tinned pears or apricots had not yet lost a certain glamour that disappeared after months and months. They were just finishing the pear course. Hence my last remark.
“I bet if we allowed you to have bully every day,” came from Edwards, our Mess president, “you’d soon get sick of it.”
“Try,” said I, knowing that he never would. I always used to eat of the hot things that would appear at lunch, to the detriment of a proper appreciation of dinner; but I always maintained the position laid down in the first sentence of this section.
I lit a pipe and strolled out into the garden. This was undoubtedly an ideal billet, and a great improvement on the butcher’s shop, where they used always to be killing pigs in the yard and letting the blood run all over the place. It was a long, one-storied house, set back about fifty yards from the road; this fifty yards was all garden, and, at the end, completely shutting off the road, was a high brick wall. On each side of the garden were also high walls formed by the sides of stables and outhouses; the garden was thus completely walled round, and the seclusion and peace thus entrapped were a very priceless possession to us.
The garden itself was full of life. There were box-bordered paths up both sides and down the centre, and on the inner side of the paths was an herbaceous border smelling very sweet of wallflowers and primulas of every variety. Although it was still May, there were already one or two pink cabbage-roses out; later, the house itself would be covered with them; already the buds were showing yellow streaks as they tried to burst open their tight green sheaths. In the centre of the garden ran a cross path with a summer-house of bamboo canes completely covered with honeysuckle; that, too, was budding already. The rest of the garden was filled with rows of young green things, peas, and cabbages, and I know not what, suitably protected against the ravages of sparrows and finches by the usual miniature telegraph system of sticks connected by cotton decorated with feathers and bits of rag. Every bit of digging, hoeing, weeding and sowing were performed by Madame and her two black-dressed daughters in whose house we were now living, and who were themselves putting up in the adjoining farmhouse, which belonged to them.
I said that they had done all the digging in the garden. I should make one reservation. All the potato-patch had been dug by our servants, with the assistance of Gray, the cook. Nor did they do it in gratitude to Madame, as, doubtless, ideal Tommies would have done. A quarter of it was done by Lewis, for carelessness in losing my valise; nearly half by the joint effort of the whole crew for a thoroughly dirty turn-out on commanding officer’s inspection; and the rest for various other defalcations! We never told Madame the reasons for their welcome help; and I am quite sure they never did!
“The worst of this war,” said I to Edwards, puffing contentedly at a pipeful of Chairman, “is this: it’s too comfortable. You could carry on like this for years, and years, and years.”
“Wasn’t so jolly last time in,” muttered the wise Edwards.
“That’s exactly the point,” I answered; “life in the trenches we all loathe, and no one makes any bones about it or pretends to like it—except for a few rare exciting minutes, which are very few and far between. But you come out into billets, and recover; and so you can carry on. It’s not concentrated enough.”
“It’s more concentrated for the men than for us.”
“Well, yes, very often; but they haven’t the strain of responsibility. Yes, you are right though; and it’s less concentrated for the C.O., still less for the Brigadier, and so on back to the Commander-in-Chief; and still further to men who have never seen a trench at all.”
“I dare say,” said Edwards; “but, as the phrase goes, ‘What are you going to do abaht it?’ Here’s Jim. Old Muskett’s going to send me a nag at five, so I’m going out after tea. Will you be in to tea?”
“Don’t know.”
As I tightened my puttees preparatory to mounting the great Jim, Edwards started his gramophone; so leaving them to the strains of Tannhäuser, I bestrode my charger and steered him gracefully down the garden path, under the brick archway, and out into the street.
Myself on a horse always amused me, especially when it was called an “officer’s charger.” Jim was not fiery, yet he was not by any means sluggish, and he went fast at a gallop. He suited me very well indeed when I wanted to go for an afternoon’s ride; for he was quite content to walk when I wanted to muse, and to gallop hard when I wanted exhilaration. I hate a horse that will always be trotting. I know it is best style to trot; but my rides were not for style, but for pleasure, exercise, and solitude. And Jim fell in admirably with my requirements. But, as I say, the idea that I was a company-commander on his charger always amused me.
I rode, as I generally did, in a south-easterly direction, climbing at a walk one of the many roads that led out of Morlancourt towards the Bois des Tailles. When I reached the high ground I made Jim gallop along the grass-border right up to the edge of the woods. There is nothing like the exhilaration of flying along, you cannot imagine how, with the great brown animal lengthening out under you for all he is worth! I pulled him up and turned his head to the right, leaving the road, and skirting the edge of the wood. At last I was alone.
In the clearings of the wood the ground was a sheet of blue hyacinths, whose sweet scent came along on the breeze; their fragrance lifted my spirit, and I drank in deep breaths of the early summer air. I took off my cap to feel the sun full on my face. On the ground outside the wood were still a few late primroses interspersed with cowslips, stubborn and jolly; and as I rounded a bend in the wood-edge, I found myself looking across a tiny valley, the opposite face of which was a wooded slope, with all the trees banked up on it as gardeners bank geraniums in tiers to give a good massed effect. So, climbing the hill-side, were all these shimmering patches of green, yellow-green, pea-green, yellow, massed together in delightful variety; and dotted about in the middle of them were solitary patches of white cherry-blossom, like white foam breaking over a reef, in the midst of a great green sea. And across this perfect softness from time to time the bold black and white of magpies cut with that vivid contrast with which Nature loves to baffle the poor artist.
“Come on, old boy,” I said, as I reached the bottom of this little valley; and trotting up the other side, and through a ride in the wood, I came out on the edge of the Valley of the Somme. I then skirted the south side of the wood until I reached a secluded corner with a view across the valley: here I dismounted, fastened Jim to a tree, loosened his girths, and left him pulling greedily at the grass at his feet. Then I threw myself down on the grass to dream.
My thoughts ran back to my conversation with Edwards. Perhaps it was best not to think too hard, but I could no more stifle my thoughts than can a man his appetite. Responsibility. Responsibility. And those with the greatest responsibility endure and see the least; no one has more to endure than the private soldier in the infantry, and no one has less responsibility or power of choice. I thought of our last six days in the trenches. When “A” Company were in the line, the first three days, we had been bombarded heavily at “stand-to” in the evening. In Maple Redoubt it had been bad enough. There was one sentry-post a little way up Old Kent Road; by some mistake a bomber had been put on duty there, whereas it was a bayonet-man’s post, the bombers having a special rôle in case of the enemy attacking. I found this mistake had been made, but did not think it was worth altering. And that man was killed outright by a shell.
In the front line “A” Company had had several killed and wounded, and I had had to lend them half my bombers; as I had placed two men on one post, a canister had burst quite a long way off, but the men cowered down into the trench. I cursed them as hard as I could, and then I saw that in the post were the two former occupants lying dead, killed half an hour ago where they lay, and where I was placing my two men. I stopped my curses, and inwardly directed them against myself. And there I had to leave these fellows, looking after me and thinking, “He’s going back to his dug-out.” Ah! no, they knew me better than to think like that. Yet I had to go back, leaving them there. I should never forget that awful weight of responsibility that suddenly seemed visualised before me. Could I not see their scared faces peering at me, even as now I seemed to smell the scent of pear-drops with which the trench was permeated, the Germans having sent over a few lachrymatory shells along with the others that night?
Ah! Why was I living all this over again, just when I had come away to get free of all this awhile, and dream? I had come out to enjoy the sunshine and the peace, just as Jim was enjoying the grass behind me. I listened. There was a slight jingle of the bit now and again, and a creaking of leather, and always that drawing sound, with an occasional purr, as the grass was torn up. I could not help looking round at last. “You pig,” I said; but my tone did not altogether disapprove of complacent piggishness.
In front of me lay the blue water of the Somme Canal, and the pools between it and the river; long parallel rows of pale green poplars stretched along either bank of the canal; and at my feet, half hidden by the slope of the ground, lay the sleepy little village of Etinehem. There was a Sunday afternoon slumber over everything. Was it Sunday? I thought for a moment. No, it was Thursday, and to-morrow we went “in” again. I deliberately switched my thoughts away from the trenches, and they flew to the events of the morning. I could see my fellows lying, so keen—I might almost say so happy—blazing away on the range. One I remembered especially. Private Benjamin, a boy with a delicate eager face, who came out with the last draft: he came from a village close up to Snowdon; he was shooting badly, and very concerned about it. I lay down beside him and showed him how to squeeze the trigger, gradually, ever so gradually. Oh! these boys! Responsibility. Responsibility.
“This is no good,” I said to myself at last, and untied Jim and rode again. I went down into the valley, and along the green track between an avenue of poplars south of the canal until at last I came to Sailly-Laurette, and so back and in to Morlancourt from the south-west. It was six o’clock by the time I stooped my head under the gateway into our garden, and for the last hour or so I had almost forgotten war at last.
“Hullo,” was the greeting I received from Owen. “There’s no tea left.”
“I don’t want any tea,” I answered. “Has the post come?”
There were three letters for me. As I slept at a house a little distance away, I took the letters along with me.
“I’m going over to my room to clean up,” I shouted to Owen, who was reading inside the Mess-room. “What time’s old Jim coming in?”
“Seven o’clock!”
“All right,” I answered. “I’ll be over by seven.”
III. Evening
As I walked up the garden path a few minutes before seven, I had to pass the kitchen door, where the servants slept, lived, and cooked our meals. I had a vision of Private Watson, the cook, busy at the oven; he was in his shirt-sleeves, hair untidy, trousers very grimy, and altogether a very unmartial figure. There seemed to be a dispute in progress, to judge from the high pitch to which the voices had attained. On these occasions Lewis’ piping voice reached an incredible falsetto, while his face flushed redder than ever.
Watson, Owen’s servant, had superseded Gray as officers’ mess cook; the latter had, unfortunately, drunk one or two glasses of beer last time in billets, and, to give his own version, he “somehow felt very sleepy, and went down and lay under a bank,” and could remember nothing more until about ten o’clock, when he humbly reported his return to me. Meanwhile Watson had cooked the dinner, which was, of course, very late; and as he did it very well, and as Gray’s explanation seemed somewhat vague, we decided to make Watson cook, let Gray try a little work in the company for a change, and get the sergeant-major to send Owen another man for servant. Watson had signalised the entry to his new appointment by a quarrel with Madame (the Warwicks had managed to “bag” this ideal billet of ours temporarily, and we were in a much less comfortable one the last two occasions out of trenches); eventually Madame had hurled the frying-pan at him, amid a torrent of unintelligible French; neither could understand a word the other was saying, of course. Gray had been wont, I believe, to “lie low and say nuffin,” like Brer Fox, when Madame, who was old and half-crazed, came up and threw water on the fire in a fit of unknown anger. But Watson’s blood boiled at such insults from a Frenchwoman, and hence had followed a sharp contention ending in the projection of the frying-pan. Luckily, we were unmolested here: Watson could manage the dinner, anyway.
I entered our mess-room, which was large, light, and boasted a boarded floor; it was a splendid summer-room, though it would have been very cold in winter. There I found a pile of literature awaiting me; operation orders for to-morrow, giving the hour at which each company was to leave Morlancourt, and which company of the Manchesters it was to relieve, and when, and where, and the route to be taken; there were two typed documents “for your information and retention, please,” one relating to prevention of fly-trouble in billets, the other giving a new code of signals and marked “Secret” on the top, and lastly there was Comic Cuts. Leaving the rest, I hastily skimmed through the latter, which contained detailed information of operations carried out, and intelligence gathered on the corps front during the last few days. At first these were intensely interesting, but after seven months they began to pall, and I grew expert at skimming through them rapidly.
Then Jim Potter came in, and Comic Cuts faded into insignificance.
“Here, Owen,” said I, and threw them over to him.
Captain and Quartermaster Jim Potter was the Father of the battalion. He had been in the battalion sixteen years, and had come out with them in 1914; twice the battalion had been decimated, new officers had come and disappeared, commanding officers had become brigadiers and new ones taken their place, but “Old Jim” remained, calm, unaltered, steady as a rock, good-natured, and an utter pessimist. I first introduced him in Chapter I, when I spent the night in his billet prior to my first advent into the trenches. I was a little perturbed then by his pessimism. Now I should have been very alarmed if he had suddenly burst into a fit of optimism.
“Well, Jim,” we said, “how are things going? When’s the war going to end?”
“Oh! not so very long now.” We gaped at this unexpected reply. “Because,” he added, “you know, Bill, it’s the unexpected that always happens in this war. Hullo! You’ve got some pretty pictures, I see.”
We had been decorating the walls with the few unwarlike pictures that were still to be found in the illustrated papers.
“Not a bad place, Blighty,” he resumed, gazing at a picture entitled “Home, Sweet Home!” There had been a little dispute as to whether it should go up, owing to its sentimental nature. At last “The Warwicks will like it,” we had said, and up it had gone. The Warwicks had our billet, when we were “in.”
“Tell us about your leave,” we said, and Jim began a series of delightful sarcastic jerks about the way people in England seemed to be getting now a faint glimmering conception that somewhere there was a war on.
The joint was not quite ready, Edwards explained to me, drawing me aside a minute; would old Jim mind? The idea of old Jim minding being quite absurd, we decided on having a cooked joint a quarter of an hour hence, rather than a semi-raw one now; and we told Jim our decision. It seemed to suit him exactly, as he had had tea late. There never was such an unruffled fellow as he; had we wanted to begin before the time appointed, he would have been ravenous. So he continued the description of his adventures on leave. Meanwhile I rescued Comic Cuts from the hands of Paul, and despatched them, duly initialled, by the trusty Davies to “C” Company. Just as I had done so the sergeant-major appeared at the door.
“You know the time we move off to-morrow?” I said.
Yes, he had known that long before I did, by means of the regimental sergeant-major and the orderly sergeant.
“Fall in at 8.15,” I said. “Everything the same as usual. All the officers’ servants, and Watson, are to fall in with the company; this straggling in independently, before or after the company, will stop once and for all.” Lewis’ face, as he laid the soup-plates, turned half a degree redder than usual.
“There’s nothing more?” I said.
“No, that’s all, sir.”
The sergeant-major drained off his whiskey with a dash of Perrier, and prepared to go. Now was the psychological moment when one learnt any news there was to learn about the battalion.
“No news, I suppose?” I asked.
“The fellows are still talking about this ‘rest,’ sir. No news about that, I suppose?” said the sergeant-major.
“Only that it’s slightly overdue,” I answered, with a laugh. “What do you think, Jim? Any likelihood of this three weeks’ rest coming off?”
“Oh, yes; I should think so,” said the quartermaster. “Any time next year.”
“Good night, sir,” said Sergeant-Major Brown, with a grin.
“Good night, Sergeant-Major,” came in a chorus as he disappeared into the garden.
“Soup’s ready, sir,” said Lewis. And we sat down to dine.
The extraordinary thing about having Jim Potter in to dinner was that an extra elaborate menu was always provided, and yet old Jim himself always ate less than anyone else; still, he did his share nobly with the whiskey, so that made up for it, I suppose. To-night Edwards planned “sausages and mash” as an entrée; but, whether through superior knowledge or a mere misunderstanding, the sausages arrived seated carefully on the top of the round of beef, like marrons-glacés stuck on an iced cake. As the dish was placed, amid howls of execration, on the table, one of the unsteadier sausages staggered and fell with a splash into the gravy, much to everyone’s delight; Edwards, wiping the gravy spots off his best tunic, seemed the only member of the party who did not greet with approbation this novel dish.
After soup, sausages and beef, and rice-pudding and tinned fruit, came Watson’s special dish—cheese au gratin on toast. This was a glutinous concoction, and a little went a long way. Then followed café au lait made in the teapot, which was the signal for cigarettes to be lit up, and chairs to be moved a little to allow of a comfortable expansion of legs. Owen proposed sitting out in the summer-house, but on going outside reported that it was a little too chilly. So we remained where we were.
Edwards was talking of Amiens: he had been there for the day yesterday, and incidentally discovered that there was a cathedral there.
“I know it,” said I. “I used to go there every Saturday when I was at the Army School.”
“You had a good time at the Army School, didn’t you?” asked Jim.
“Tip-top time,” said I. “It’s a really good show. The Commandant was the most wonderful man we ever met. By the way, that concert Tuesday night was a really good show.”
Jim Potter and Edwards had got it up; it had been an al fresco affair, and the night had been ideally warm for it. Edwards had trained a Welsh choir with some success. Several outsiders had contributed, the star of the evening being Basil Hallam, the well-known music-hall artist, whose dainty manner, reminding one of the art of Vesta Tilley, and impeccable evening clothes had produced an unforgettably bizarre effect in the middle of such an audience and within sound of the guns. He was well known to most of the men as “the bloke that sits up in the sausage.” For any fine day, coming out of trenches or going in, you could see high suspended the “sausage,” whose home and “base” was between Treux and Mericourt, and whose occupant and eye was Basil Hallam. And so the “sausage bloke” was received enthusiastically at our concert.
As we talked about the concert, Owen began singing “Now Florrie was a Flapper,” which had been Basil Hallam’s most popular song, and as he sang he rose from his chair and walked about the room; he was evidently enjoying himself, though his imitation of Basil Hallam was very bad indeed. As he sang, we went on talking.
“A good entry in Comic Cuts to-night,” I remarked. “‘A dog was heard barking in Fricourt at 11 p.m.’ Someone must have been hard up for intelligence to put that in.”
“A dog barking in Fricourt,” said old Jim, warming up. “‘A dog barking in Fricourt.’ What’s that—Corps stuff? I never read the thing; good Lord, no! That’s what it is to have a Staff—‘A dog barking in Fricourt!’”
“The Corps officer didn’t hear it,” said I. “It was some battalion intelligence officer that was such a fool as to report it.”
“Fool?” said old Jim. “I’d like to meet the fellow. He’s the first fellow I’ve ever met yet who has a just appreciation of the brain capacity of the Staff. You or I might have thought of reporting a dog’s mew, or roar, or bellow; but a dog’s bark we should have thought of no interest whatever to the—er—fellows up there, you know, who plan our destinies.” And he gave an obsequious flick of his hand to an imaginary person too high up to see him at all.
“He’s a good fellow,” he repeated, “that intelligence officer. Ought to get a D.S.O.”
Old Jim had two South African medals, a D.C.M. and a D.S.O.
“The Staff,” he went on, with the greatest contempt he could put into his voice. “I saw three of them in a car to-day. I stood to attention: saluted. A young fellow waved his hand, you know; graciously accepted my salute, you know, and passed on leaning back in his limousin. The ‘Brains of the British Army,’ I thought. Pah!”
We waited. Jim on the Staff was the greatest entertainment the battalion could offer. We tried to draw him out further, but he would not be drawn. We tried cunningly, by indirect methods, enquiring his views on whether there would be a push this year.
“Push!” he said. “Of course there will be a push. The Staff must have something to show for themselves. ‘Shove ’em in,’ they say; ‘rather a bigger front than last time.’ Strategy? Oh, no! That’s out of date, you know. Five-mile front—frontal attack. Get a few hundred thousand mown down, and then discover the Boche has got a second line. The Staff. Pah!!” And no more would he say.
Then Clark came in, and the Manchester Stokes gun officer. Clark immediately joined Owen in a duet on “Florrie.” Then we went through the whole gamut of popular songs, with appropriate actions and stamping of feet upon the floor. Meanwhile the table was cleared, only the whiskey and Perrier remaining. Soon there were cries of “Napoleon—Napoleon,” and Owen, who bears a remarkable resemblance to that great personage, posed tragically again and again amid great applause. And then, in natural sequence, I, as “Bill, the man wot won the Battle of Waterloo,” attacked him with every species of trench-mortar I could lay hands on, my head swathed in a remarkable turban of Daily Mail. At last I drove him into a corner behind a table, and bombarded him relentlessly with oranges until he capitulated! All the time Edwards had been in fear and trembling for the safety of his gramophone.
At length peace was signed, and we grew quiet again beneath the soothing strains of the gramophone, until at last Jim Potter said he must really go. Everyone reminding everyone else that breakfast was at seven, we broke up the party, and Owen, Paul, Jim Potter and I departed together. But anyone who knows the psychology of conviviality will understand that we had first to pay a visit to a neighbouring Mess for one last whiskey-and-soda before turning in.
As I opened the door of my billet, I heard a “strafe” getting up. There was a lively cannonade up in the line; for several minutes I listened, until it diminished a little, and began to die away. “In” to-morrow, I thought. My valise was laid out on the floor, and my trench kit all ready for packing first thing next morning. I lost no time in getting into bed. And yet I could not sleep.
I could not help thinking of the jollity of the last few hours, the humour, the apparently spontaneous outburst of good spirits; and most of all I thought of old Jim, the mainspring somehow of it all. And again I saw the picture of the concert a few nights ago, the bright lights of the stage, the crowds of our fellows, all their bodies and spirits for the moment relaxed, good-natured, happy, as they stood laughing in the warm night air. And lastly I thought again of Private Benjamin, that refined eager face, that rather delicate body, and that warm hand as I placed mine over his, squeezing the trigger. He was no more than a child really, a simple-minded child of Wales. Somehow it was more terrible that these young boys should see this war, than for the older men. Yet were we not all children wondering, wondering, wondering?... Yes, we were like children faced by a wild beast. “Sometimes I dislike you almost,” I thought; “your dulness, your coarseness, your lack of romance, your unattractiveness. Yet that is only physical. You, I love really. Oh, the dear, dear world!”
And in the darkness I buried my face in the pillow, and sobbed.
CHAPTER XV
“A CERTAIN MAN DREW A BOW AT A VENTURE”
It was ten o’clock as I came in from the wiring-party in front of Rue Albert, and at that moment our guns began. We were in Maple Redoubt. The moon had just set, and it was a still summer night in early June.
“Come and have a look,” I called to Owen, who had just entered the dug-out. I could see him standing with his back to the candlelight reading a letter or something.
He came out, and together we looked across the valley at the shoulder of down that was silhouetted by the continuous light of gun-flickers. Our guns had commenced a two hours’ bombardment.
“No answer from the Boche yet,” I said.
“They’re firing on C 2, down by the cemetery.”
“Yes, I hardly noticed it; our guns make such a row. By Jove, it’s magnificent.”
We gazed fascinated for a long time, and then went into the dug-out where Edwards and Paul were snoring rhythmically. I read for half an hour, but the dug-out was stuffy, and the smell of sand-bags and the flickering of the candle annoyed me for some reason or other. Somehow “Derelicts” by W. J. Locke failed to grip my attention. Owing to our bombardment, there were no working-parties, in case the Germans should take it into their head to retaliate vigorously. But at present there was no sign of that.
I went outside again, and walked along Park Lane until I came to the Lewis-gun position just this side of the corner of Watling Street. The sentry was standing up, with his elbows on the ground level (there was no parapet) gazing alert and interested at the continuous flicker of our shells bursting along the enemy’s trenches. Lance-Corporal Allan looked out of the dug-out, and, seeing me, came out and stood by us. And together we watched, all three of us, in silence. Overhead was the continual griding, screeching, whistling of the shells as they passed over, without pause or cessation; behind was a chain of gun-flickers the other side of the ridge; and in front was another chain of flashes, and a succession of bump, bump, bumps, as the shells burst relentlessly in the German trenches. And where we stood, under the noisy arch, was a steady calm.
“This is all right, sir,” said Lance-Corporal Allan. He was the N.C.O. in charge of this Lewis-gun team.
“Yes,” said I. “The artillery are not on short rations to-night.”
For always, through the last four months, the artillery had been more or less confined to so many shells a day. The officers used to tell us they had any amount of ammunition, yet no sooner were they given a free hand to retaliate as much as we wanted, than an order came cancelling this privilege. To-night at any rate there was no curtailment.
“I believe this is the beginning of a new order of things,” I said, half musing, to myself; “that is, I believe the Boche is going to get lots and lots of this now.”
“About time, sir,” said the sentry.
“Is there a push coming off?” said Lance-Corporal Allan.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I expect we shall be doing something soon. It’s quite certain we’re going to get our three weeks’ rest after this turn in. The Brigade Major told me so.”
Corporal Allan smiled, and as he did so the flashes lit up his face. He was quite a boy, only eighteen, I believe, but an excellent N.C.O. He had a very beautiful though sensuous face that used to remind me sometimes of the “Satyr” of Praxiteles. His only fault was an inclination to sulkiness at times, which was perhaps due to a little streak of vanity. It was no wonder the maidens of Morlancourt made eyes at him, and a little girl who lived next door to the Lewis-gunner’s billet was said to have lost her heart long ago. To-night I felt a pang as I saw him smile.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Anyway it’s going to be a good show giving the Boche these sort of pleasant dreams. Better than those one-minute stunts.”
I was referring to a one-minute bombardment of Fricourt Wood, that had taken place last time we were in the line. It was a good spectacle to see the wood alive with flames, hear our Vickers’ guns rattling hard behind us from the supports, and see the Germans firing excited green and red rockets into the air. But the retaliation had been unpleasant, and the whole business seemed not worth while. This continuous pounding was quite different.
I went back and visited the other gun position, and spent a few minutes there also. At last I turned in reluctantly. I went out again at half-past eleven, and still the shells were screaming over. It seemed the token of an irresistible power. And there was no reply at all now from the German lines.
The short summer nights made life easier in some respects. We “stood to” earlier, and it was quite light by three. As I turned in again, I paused for a moment to take in the scene. Davies had retired to a small dug-out, that looked exactly like a dog-kennel, and was not much larger. As Davies himself frequently reminded me of a very intelligent sheepdog, the dog-kennel seemed most suitable. I heard him turning about inside, as I stood at the door of our own dug-out.
The scene was one of the most perfect peace. The sun was not up, but by now the light was firm and strong; night had melted away. I went back and walked a little way along Park Lane until I came to a gap in the newly erected sand-bag parados. I went through the gap and into a little graveyard that had not been used now for several months. And there I stood in the open, completely hidden from the enemy, on the reverse slope of the hill. Below me were the dug-outs of 71 North, and away to the left those of the Citadel. Already I could see smoke curling up from the cookers. There was a faint mist still hanging about over the road there, that the strong light would soon dispel. On the hill-side opposite lay the familiar tracery of Redoubt A, and the white zigzag mark of Maidstone Avenue climbing up well to the left of it, until it disappeared over the ridge. Close to my feet the meadow was full of buttercups and blue veronica, with occasional daisies starring the grass. And below, above, everywhere, it seemed, was the tremulous song of countless larks, rising, growing, swelling, till the air seemed full to breaking-point.
And there was not a sound of war. Who could desecrate such a perfect June morning? I felt a mad impulse to run up and across into No Man’s Land and cry out that such a day was made for lovers; that we were all enmeshed in a mad nightmare, that needed but a bold man’s laugh to free us from its clutches! Surely this most exquisite morning could not be the birth of another day of pain? Yet I felt how vain and hopeless was the longing, as I turned at last and saw the first slant rays of sunlight touch the white sand-bags into life.
“What time’s this working-party?” asked Paul at four o’clock that afternoon.
“I told the sergeant-major to get the men out as soon as they’d finished tea,” I replied. “About a quarter to five they ought to be ready. He will let you know all right.”
“Hullo!” said Paul.
“What are you ‘hulloing’ about?” I asked.
Paul did not answer. Faintly I heard a “wheeoo, wheeoo, wheeoo,” that grew louder and louder and ended in a swishing roar like a big wave breaking against an esplanade—and then “wump—wump—wump—wump” four 4·2’s exploded beyond the parados of Park Lane.
“Well over,” said Edwards.
“I expected this,” I answered. “They’ve been too d—d quiet all day—especially after the pounding we gave them last night.”
“There they are again,” I added. This time I had heard the four distant thuds, and we all waited.
“Wump, wump—Crump.” There was a colossal din, the two candles went out, and there was a shaking and jarring in the blackness. Then followed the sound of falling stuff, and I felt a few patters of earth all over me. Gradually it got lighter, and through the smoke-filled doorway the square of daylight reappeared.
“Je ne l’aime pas,” said I, as we all waited, without speaking. Then Edwards struck a match and lit the candles; all the table, floor, and beds were sprinkled with dust and earth. Then Davies burst in.
“Are you all right?” we asked.
“Yessir. Are you?”
“Oh, we’re all right, Davies,” said I. “But there’s a job for Lewis cleaning this butter up.”
At length we went outside, stepping over a heap of loose yielding earth, mixed up with lumps of chalk and bits of frayed sand-bags. Outside, the trench was blocked with débris of a similar kind. Already two men had crossed it, and several men were about to do so. It was old already. There was still a smell of gunpowder in the air, and a lot of chalk dust that irritated your nose.
“I think I’ll tell the sergeant-major not to get the working-party out just yet,” I said to Paul. “They often start like that and then put lots more over about a quarter of an hour later.” And I sped along Park Lane quickly.
As I returned I heard footsteps behind me. I looked round, but the men were hidden by a traverse. And then came tragedy, sudden, and terrible. I have seen many bad sights—every man killed is a tragedy—but one avoids and hides away the hideousness as soon as possible. But never, save once perhaps, have I seen the thing so vile as now.
“Look out!” I heard a voice from behind. And as I heard the shell screaming down, I tumbled into the nearest dug-out. The shell burst with a huge “crump,” but not so close as the one that had darkened our dug-out ten minutes before. Then again another four shells burst together, but some forty or fifty yards away. I waited one, two minutes. And then I heard men running in the trench.
As I sprang up the dug-out steps, I saw two stretcher-bearers standing looking round the traverse. And then there was the faint whistling overhead and they pushed me back as they almost fell down the dug-out steps.
“Is there a man hurt?” I asked. “We can’t leave him.”
“He’s dead,” said one. And as he spoke there were three more explosions a little to the left.
“Are you sure?”
“Aye,” said the stretcher-bearer and closed his eyes tight.
“He’s past our help,” said the other man.
At last, after a minute’s calm, we stepped out into the sunshine. I went round the traverse, following the two stretcher-bearers. And looking between them, as they stood gazing, this is what I saw.
In the trench, half buried in rags of sand-bag and loose chalk, lay what had been a man. His head was nearest to me, and at that I gazed fascinated; for the shell had cut it clean in half, and the face lay like a mask, its features unmarred at all, a full foot away from the rest of the head. The flesh was grey, that was all; the open eyes, the nose, the mouth were not even twisted awry. It was like the fragment of a sculpture. All the rest of the body was a mangled mass of flesh and khaki.
“Who is it?” whispered a stretcher-bearer, bending his head down to look sideways at that mask.
“Find his identity-disc,” said the other.
“It is Lance-Corporal Allan,” said I.
Then up came the regimental sergeant-major, and Owen followed him. They too gazed in horror for a moment. The sergeant-major was the first to recover.
“Hi! you fellows,” he called to two men. “Get a waterproof sheet.”
“Come away, old man,” said I to Owen.
In silence we walked back to the dug-out. But my brain was whirling. “A certain man drew a bow at a venture,” I thought again. That was how it was possible. No man could keep on killing, if he could see the men he killed. Who had fired that howitzer shell? A German gunner somewhere right away in Mametz Wood probably. He would never see his handiwork, never know what he had done to-day. He would never see; that was the point. Had he known, he would have rejoiced that there was one Englishman less in the world. It was not his fault. We were just the same. What of last night’s bombardment? (The memory of Lance-Corporal Allan up by his gun-position gave me a quick sharp pang.) Had we not watched with glittering eyes the magnificent shooting of our own gunners? This afternoon’s strafe was but a puny retaliation.
Slowly it came back to me, the half-formed picture that had arisen in my mind the night of Davidson’s death. “A certain man drew a bow at a venture,” expressed it perfectly. It was splendid twanging the bow, feeling the fingers grip the polished wood, watching the bow-string stretch and strain, and then letting the arrow fly. That was the fascinating, the deadly fascinating side of war. That was what made it possible to “carry on.” I remembered my joy in calling up the artillery in revenge for Thompson’s death. And then again, whenever we put a mine up, how exhilarating was the spectacle! Throwing a bomb, firing a Lewis gun, all these things were pleasant. It was like the joy of throwing stones over a barn and hearing them splash into a pond; like driving a cricket ball out of the field.
But the arrows fell somewhere. That was the other side of war. The dying king leant on his chariot, propped up until the sun went down. The man who had fired the bolt never knew he had killed a king. That was the other side of war; that was the side that counted. What I had just seen was war.
I leaned my face on my arm against the parados. Oh, this unutterable tragedy! Had there ever been such a thing before? Why was this thing so terrible? Why did I have this feeling of battering against some relentless power? Death. There were worse things than death. There were sights, such as I had just come from, as terrible in everyday life, in any factory explosion or railway accident. There was nothing new in death. Vaguely my mind felt out for something to express this thing so far more terrible than mere death. And then I saw it. Vividly I saw the secret of war.
What made war so cruel, was the force that compelled you to go on. After a factory explosion you cleared up things and then took every precaution to prevent its recurrence; but in war you did the opposite, you used all your energies to make more explosions. You killed and went on killing; you saw men die around you, and you deliberately went on with the thing that would cause more of your friends to die. You were placed in an arena, and made to fight the beasts; and if you killed one beast, there were more waiting, and more and more. And above the arena, out of it, secure, looked down the glittering eyes of the men who had placed you there; cruel, relentless eyes, that went on glittering while the mouths expressed admiration for your impossible struggles, and pity for your fate!
“Oh God! I shall go mad!” I thought, in the agony of my mind. I saw into that strange empty chamber which is called madness: I knew what it would be like to go mad. And even as I saw, came the thought again of those glittering eyes, and the ruthless answer to my soul’s cry: “The war is utterly indifferent whether you go mad or not.”
Owen was standing waiting for me. I grew calm again, and turned and put my hand on his shoulder. Together we reached the door of the dug-out.
“Oh, Bill,” he said, “have you ever seen anything more awful?”
“Only once. No, not more awful: more beastly. Nothing could be more awful.”
We told the others.
“Not Allan?” said Edwards. He was Lewis-gun officer, and Allan was his best man.
“Not Allan?” he repeated. “Oh, how will they tell his little girl in Morlancourt? What will she say when she learns she will never see him again?”
“Thank God she never saw him as we saw him just now,” I said, “and thank God his mother never saw him.”
“If women were in this war, there would be no war,” said Edwards.
“I wonder,” said I.
CHAPTER XVI
WOUNDED
Lance-Corporal Allan was killed on Tuesday the 6th of June. For the rest of that day I was all “on edge.” I wondered sometimes how I could go on: even in billets I dreamed of rifle-grenades; and though I had only returned from leave a fortnight ago, I felt as tired out in body and mind as I did before I went. And this last horror did not add to my peace of mind. I very nearly quarrelled with Captain Wetherell, the battalion Lewis-gun officer, over the position of a Lewis gun. There had been a change of company front, and some readjustments had to be made. I believe I told him he had not got the remotest idea of our defence scheme, or something of the sort! My nerves were all jangled, and my brain would not rest a second. We were nearly all like that at times.
I decided therefore to go out again to-night with our wires. I had been out last night, and Owen was going to-night, but I wanted to be doing something to occupy my thoughts. I knew I should not sleep. At a quarter to ten I sent word to Corporal Dyson, the wiring-corporal, to take his men up at eleven instead of ten, as the moon had not quite set. At eleven o’clock Owen and I were out in No Man’s Land putting out concertina wire between 80A and 81A bombing posts, which had recently been connected up by a deep narrow trench. There was what might be called a concertina craze on: innumerable coils of barbed wire were converted into concertinas by the simple process of winding them round and round seven upright stakes in the ground; every new lap of wire was fastened to the one below it at every other stake by a twist of plain wire; the result, when you came to the end of a coil and lifted the whole up off the stakes was a heavy ring of barbed wire that concertina’d out into ten-yard lengths. They were easily made up in the trench, quickly put up, and when put out in two parallel rows, about a yard apart, and joined together with plenty of barbed wire tangled in loosely, were as good an obstacle as could be made. We had some thirty of these to put out to-night.
When you are out wiring you forget all about being in No Man’s Land, unless the Germans are sniping across. The work is one that absorbs all your interest, and your one concern is to get the job done quickly and well. I really cannot remember whether the enemy had been sniping or not (I use the word “sniping” to denote firing occasional shots across with fixed rifles sited by day). I remember that I forgot all about Captain Wetherell and his Lewis-gun positions, as soon as I was outside the bombing post at 80A. There were about fifteen yards between this post and the crater-edge, where I had a couple of “A” Company bombers out as a covering party. But in this fifteen yards were several huge shell-holes, and we were concealing the wire in these as much as possible. It was fascinating work, and I felt we could not get on fast enough with it. After a time I went along to Owen, whose party was working on my left. Here Corporal Dyson and four men were doing well also. All this strip of land between the trench and the crater edge was an extraordinary tangle of shell-holes, old beams and planks, and scraps of old wire. Every square yard of it had been churned and pounded to bits at different times by canisters and “sausages” and such-like. Months ago there had been a trench along the crater edges; but new mines had altered these, and until we had dug the deep, narrow trench between 80A and 81A about a fortnight ago, there had been no trench there for at least five months. The result was a chaotic jumble, and this jumble we were converting into an obstacle by judiciously placed concertina wiring.
I repeat that I cannot remember if there had been much sniping across. I had just looked at my luminous watch, which reported ten past one, when I noticed that the sky in the east began to show up a little paler than the German parapet across the crater. “Dawn,” I thought, “already. There is no night at all, really. We must knock off in a quarter of an hour. The light will not be behind us, but half-past one will be time to stop.” I was lying out by the bombers, gazing into the black of the crater. It was a warm night, and jolly lying out like this, though a bit damp and muddy round the shell-holes. Then I got up, told Corporal Evans to come in after fixing the coil he was putting up, and was walking towards 80A post, when “Bang” I heard from across the crater, and I felt a big sting in my left elbow, and a jar that numbed my whole arm.
“Ow,” I cried out involuntarily, and doubled the remaining few yards, and scrambled down into the trench.
Corporal Dyson was there.
“Are you hit, sir?”
“Yes. Nothing much—here in the arm. Get the wirers in. It’ll be light soon.”
Then somehow I found my equipment and tunic off; there seemed a lot of men round me; and I tried to realise that I was really hit. My arm hung numb and stiff, with the after-taste of a sting in it. I felt this could not be a proper wound, as there was no real throbbing pain such as I expected. I was surprised when I saw a lot of blood in the half light. Corporal Dyson asked me if I had a field-dressing, and I said he would find one in the bottom right-hand corner of my tunic. To my annoyance he did not seem to hear, and used one of the men’s. Then Owen appeared, with a serious peering face.
“Are all the wirers in?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “How are you feeling?”
His serious tone amused me. I wanted to say, “Good heavens, man, I’m as fit as anything. I shall be back to-morrow, I expect.” But I felt very tired and rather out of breath as I answered “Oh! all right.”
By this time my arm was bandaged and I started walking back to Maple Redoubt, leaning on Corporal Dyson. I wanted to joke, but felt too tired. It seemed an interminable way down, especially along Watling Street.
I had only once looked into the dressing-station, although I must have passed it several hundred times. I was surprised at its size: there were two compartments. As I stepped down inside, I wondered if it were shell-proof. In the inner chamber I could hear the doctor’s quick low voice, telling a man to move the lamp: and it seemed to flash across me for the first time that there ought to be some kind of guarantee against dressing-stations being blown in like any ordinary dug-out. And yet I knew there was no possibility of any such guarantee.
“Hullo, Bill, old man,” said the little doctor, coming out quickly. “Where’s this thing of yours? In the arm, isn’t it? Let’s have a look. Oh yes, I see. (He examined the bandage, and the arm above it.) Well, I won’t be long. You won’t mind waiting a few minutes, will you? I’ve got a bad case in here. Hall, get him to sit down, and give him some Bovril.”
And he was gone. No man could move or make men move quicker than the doctor.
I felt apologetic: I had chosen a bad time to come, just when the doctor was busy with this other man. I asked who the fellow was, and learned he was a private from “D” Company. I was very grateful for the Bovril. A good idea, this, I thought, having Bovril ready for you.
I waited about ten minutes, sitting on a chair. I listened to the movements and low voices inside. “Turn him over. Here. No, those longer ones. Good heavens, didn’t I tell you to get this changed yesterday? Now. That’ll do,” and so on. I turned my head round in silence, observing acutely every detail in this antechamber, as one does in a dentist’s waiting-room. All the time in my arm I felt this numb wasp-sting; I wondered when the real pain would start; there was no motion in this still smart.
“Now then, Bill,” said the doctor. “So sorry to keep you. Let’s have a look at it. Oh, that’s nothing very bad.”
It smarted as he undid the bandage. I don’t know what he did. I never looked at it.
“What sort of a one is it?” I asked.
“I could just do with one like this myself,” said the doctor.
“Is it a Blighty one?”
“I’d give you a fiver for it any minute,” answered the doctor. “I’m not certain whether the bone’s broken or not, but I rather think it is touched. I can’t say, though. A bullet, did you say? Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” I laughed.
“Well, it must be one of these explosive bullets, an ordinary bullet doesn’t make a wound like yours. That’s it. That’ll do.”
“I can’t make out why there’s not more pain,” said I.
“Oh, that’ll come later. You see the shock paralyses you at first. Here, take one of these.” And he gave me a morphia tabloid.
“Cheero, Bill,” he said, and I went out of the dug-out leaning on a stretcher-bearer. Round my neck hung a label, the first of a long series. “Gun-shot wound in left forearm” it contained. I found later “? fracture. 1.15 a.m., 7.6.16.”
Outside Lewis was waiting with my trench kit. He had appeared a quarter of an hour back at the door of the dressing-station, and had been told by the doctor so rapidly and forcibly that he ought to know that he would go with me to the clearing station, and that he had five minutes in which to get my kit together, that he had fairly sprinted away. Poor fellow! How should he know, seeing that he had been my servant over six months, and I had never got wounded before? But the doctor always made men double.
As I passed our dug-out, Edwards, Owen, Paul, and Nicholson were all standing outside.
“Cheero,” I shouted. “Good luck. The doctor says it’s nothing much. I’ll be back soon.”
“What about that Lewis-gun position?” asked Edwards.
“Oh,” I said, “I want to keep that position on the left.” Then I felt my decision waver. “Still, if Wetherell wants the other ... I don’t know.”
“All right. I’ll fix up with Wetherell. Good luck. Hope you get to Blighty.”
I wanted to say such a lot. I wanted to say that I was sure to be back in a week or so. I wanted to think hard, and decide about that Lewis gun. I wanted to send a message to Wetherell apologising for what I had said.... I wanted to talk to Sergeant Andrews, who was standing there too. But the stretcher-bearer was walking on, and I must go as he pleased.
“Good-bye, Sergeant Andrews,” I shouted.
Last of all I saw Davies, standing solemn and dumb.
“Good-bye, Davies. Off to Blighty.”
I could not see if he answered. The relentless stretcher-bearer led me on. Was I O.C. stretcher-bearers or was I not? Why didn’t I stop him? I had not decided about that Lewis gun. At the corner of Old Kent Road, I was told I might as well sit on the ration trolley and go down on that. And in the full light of dawn, about half-past two, I was rolled serenely down the hill to the Citadel.
“Don’t let go,” I said to the stretcher-bearer, who was holding the trolley back. I still thought of sending up a message about that Lewis-gun position. Why could not I make up my mind? I looked back and saw Maple Redoubt receding further and further in the distance.
“By Jove,” I thought, “I may not see it again for weeks.” And suddenly I realised that whether I made up my mind about the Lewis-gun position or not, would not make the slightest difference!
“Where do I go to now?” said I.
“There’s an ambulance at the Citadel,” said the stretcher-bearer. “You’re quite right. You’ll be in Heilly in a little over an hour.”
Heilly? Why, this would be interesting, I thought. And I should just go, and have nothing to decide. I should be passive. I was going right out of the arena!
And the events of yesterday seemed a dream already.
Wednesday
I lay in bed, at the clearing station at Heilly. It was just after nine o’clock the same morning, and the orderlies were out of sight, but not out of hearing, washing up the breakfast things. Half the dark blue blinds were drawn, as the June sun was blazing outside. I could see the glare of it on the cobbles in the courtyard, as the door opened and a cool, tall nurse entered. I closed my eyes, and pretended to be asleep. I felt she might come and talk, and one thing I did not want to do, I did not want to talk.
My body was most extraordinarily comfortable. I moved my feet toes-up for the sheer joy of feeling the smooth sheets fall cool on my feet when I turned them sideways again. The pillow was comfortable; the whole bed was comfortable; even my arm, that was throbbing violently now, and felt boiling hot, was very comfortably rested on another pillow. I just wanted to lie, and lie: only my mind was working so fast and hard that it seemed to make the skin tight over my forehead. And all the time there was that buzz, buzzing. If I left off thinking, the buzzing took complete mastery of my brain. That was intolerable: so I had to keep on thinking.
At the Citadel an R.A.M.C. doctor had given me tea and a second label. He had also given me an injection against tetanus. This he did in the chest. Why didn’t he do it in my right arm, I had thought: I would have rather had it there. Again, I had had to wait quite a quarter of an hour, while he attended to the “D” Company private. I had learned from an orderly that this poor fellow was bound to lose a leg, and again I had felt that I was in the way here, that I was a bother. I had then watched the poor fellow carried out on a stretcher, and the stretcher slid into the ambulance. There was a seat inside, into which I was helped. Lewis had gone in front, very red-faced and awkward. And an R.A.M.C. orderly had got in behind with me. Sitting, I had felt that he must think I was shamming! Then I remembered the first ambulance I had seen, when I first walked from Chocques to Béthune in early October! Was there really any connection between me then and me now?
Then there had been a rather pleasant journey through unknown country, it seemed. After a few miles, we halted and changed into another ambulance. As I had stood in the sunshine a moment, I had tried to make out where we were. But I could not recognise anything, and felt very tired. There was a white chalk road, a grass bank, and a house close by: that is all I could remember. And then there was another long ride, in which my one paramount idea was to rest my arm (which was in a white sling) and prevent it shaking and jarring.
Then at last we had reached a village and pulled up in a big sunlit courtyard. Again as I walked into a big room I felt that people must think I was shamming. A matron had come in, and a doctor. Did I mind sitting and waiting a minute or so? Would I like some tea? I had refused tea. Then the doctor and an orderly came in, and the doctor asked some questions and took off my label. The orderly was taking off my boots, and the doctor had started helping! I had apologised profusely, for they were trench boots thick with mud. And then the doctor had asked me whether I could wait until about eleven before they looked at my arm: meanwhile it would be better, as I should be more rested after a few hours in bed. Bed! I had never thought of going to bed for an arm at all! What a delicious idea! I felt so tired, too. I had not been to bed all night. Then I had been helped into this delightful bed, and after scrawling a letter home to go away by the eight o’clock post (I was glad I had remembered that), I had been left in peace at about half-past four. And here I was! I had had a cup of tea for breakfast, but did not want to eat anything.
I wished I could go to sleep. Yet it was not much good now, if they were going to look at my arm at eleven. I opened my eyes whenever I was sure there was no one near me. Then I thought I might as well keep them open, otherwise they would think I had slept, and not know how tired out I felt. There was a man in the next bed with his head all bandaged; and round the bed in the corner was a screen. Opposite was an R.A.M.C. doctor, as far as I could gather; he was talking to the nurse, and looked perfectly well. I thought perhaps he might be the sort who would talk late when I wanted to sleep—he looked so well and lively; suppose he had a gramophone and wanted to play it this afternoon. I should really have to complain, if he did. Yet perhaps they would understand, and make him give it up because of us who were not so well. On my right, up at the other end of the room (was it a “ward”? yes, I suppose it was) were several voices, but I could not turn over and look at their owners, with my arm like this. How it throbbed and pulsed! Or was it aching? Supposing I got pins and needles in it....
A khaki-clad padre came in. He just came over and asked me if I wanted anything, and did not worry me with talking. He had a very quiet voice and bald head. I liked both. I felt I ought to have wanted something: had I been discourteous?
The door opened, and the doctor entered, with another nurse and another doctor. Somehow this last person electrified everyone and everything. Who was he? His very walk was somehow different from the ordinary. My attention was riveted on him; somehow I felt that he knew I was there, and yet he did not look at me. They wheeled a little table up from the other end of the room, laden with glasses and bottles and glittering little silver forks and things. I could not see clearly. An orderly was reprimanded by the nurse for something, in a subdued voice. There was a hush and a tenseness in this man’s presence. Yet he was calmly looking at a newspaper, and sitting on an empty bed as he did so! Apparently Kitchener was reported drowned in the North Sea: he spoke in a rich, almost drawling voice. He was immensely casual! And yet one did not mind. He walked over and washed his hands, and put on some yellowy-brown india-rubber gloves that scrooped and squelched in the basins. And then he turned round, and the other doctor (whom I had seen at four o’clock and who already seemed a sort of confidential friend of mine in the presence of this master-man) asked him, which case he wanted to see first. And as he jerked his hand casually to one of the beds, I was filled with a strange elation. This was a surgeon, I felt; and one in whom I had immense confidence. He would do the best for my arm: he would make no mistakes. I almost laughed for sheer joy!
He came at last to my bed and glanced at me. He never smiled. He asked me one or two questions. I said I was “? fracture,” that my arm was throbbing but felt numb more than anything.
“I suppose we may presume there is a fracture,” said he; “at any rate there is no point in looking at it here. I’ll look at it under an anæsthetic,” he said to me, not unkindly, but still without a smile. And a little later, as he went out, he half looked back at my bed.
“Eleven o’clock,” he said to the nurse as he went out.
The tension relaxed. An orderly spoke in a bold ordinary voice. The spell was gone out with the man.
“Who is that?” I asked the nurse.
“Oh! that’s Mr. Bevan; he’s a very good surgeon indeed.”
“I know,” said I, “I can feel that.”
About an hour later, two orderlies whom I had not seen before came in with a stretcher, and laid it on the floor by the bed. The tall nurse asked me if I had any false teeth, and said I had better put socks on, as my feet might get cold. The orderly did this, and then they helped me on to the stretcher. My head went back, and I felt a strain on my neck. The next second my head was lifted and a pillow put under it. And they had moved me without altering the position of my arm. I was surprised and pleased at that. Then a blanket was put over me, and one of the orderlies said “Ready?”
“Yes,” I said, but suddenly realised he was talking to the other orderly. I was lifted up, and carried across the room out into the courtyard. What a blazing sun! I closed my eyes.
“Dump, dump, dump.” The stretcher seemed to bob along, with a regular rhythmic swaying. Then they turned a corner, and I felt a slight nausea. I opened my eyes. The stretcher was put on a table. I felt very high up.
The matron-person appeared. She was older than the nurses, and had a chain with scissors dangling on the end of it. She smiled, and asked what kind of a wound it was. Then the orderlies looked at each other, at some signal that I could not see, and lifted me up and into the next room. They held the stretcher up level with the operating table, and helped me on to it. I did some good right elbow-work and got on easily. As I did so, I saw Mr. Bevan sitting on a chair in his white overall, his gloved hands quietly folded in his lap. He said and did nothing. Again I felt immensely impressed by his competence, reserving every ounce of energy, waiting, until these less masterful beings had got everything ready.
They took off the blanket, and moved things behind. Then they put the rubber cup over my mouth and nose.
“Just breathe quite naturally,” said the doctor. I shut my eyes.
“Just ordinary breaths. That is very good,” said the voice, quietly and reassuringly.
I felt a sort of sweet shudder all down my body. I wanted to laugh. Then I let my body go a little. It was no good bracing myself.... I opened my right hand and shut it, just to show them I was not “off” yet ...
The process of “coming to” was unpleasant and uninteresting. I do not think I distinguished myself by any originality, so will not attempt to describe it. That was a long interminable day, and my arm hurt a good deal. In the afternoon I was told that I should be pleased to hear that there was no bone broken. I was anything but pleased. I wanted the bone to be broken, as I wanted to go to “Blighty.” This worried me all day. I wondered if I should get to England or not. Then in the evening the sister (I found that the nurses should be called sisters) dressed the wound. That was distinctly unpleasant. It took hours and hours and hours before it began to get even twilight. I have never known so long a day. And then I could not sleep. They injected morphia at last, but I awoke after three or four hours feeling more tired than ever.
Thursday
I can hardly disentangle these days; night and day ran into one another. I can remember little about Thursday. I could not sleep however much I wanted to; and all the time my brain was working so hard, thinking. I worried about the company: they must be in the line now. Would Edwards remember this, and that? Had I left him the map, or was it among those maps in my valise which Lewis had gone to Morlancourt to fetch?
And all the time there were rifle-grenades about; I daren’t let the buzzing come, because it was all rifle-grenades really; and always I kept seeing Lance-Corporal Allan lying there. Why could I not get rid of the picture of him? Yet I was afraid I might forget; and it was important that I should remember....
I remember the waiting to have my arm dressed. It was like waiting before the dentist takes up the drill again. I watched the man next to me out of the corner of my eye, and felt it intensely if he seemed to wince, or drew in his breath. And I remember in the morning Mr. Bevan dressed my wound. I looked the other way. For a week I thought the wound was above instead of just below the elbow. “This will hurt,” he said once.
Some time in the day the man behind the screen died. I had heard him groaning all day; and there was the rhythmic sound of pumping—oxygen, I suppose.... I heard a lot of moving behind the screen, and at last it was taken away and I saw the corner for the first time and in it an empty bed with clean sheets.
The man next to me, with the bandaged head, kept talking deliriously to the orderly about his being on a submarine. Once the orderly smiled at me as he answered the absurd questions.
There was one good incident I remember. After the surgeon had dressed my arm, I said, “Is there any chance of this getting me to Blighty?” And I thought he did not hear; he was looking the other way. But suddenly I heard that calm deliberate voice:
“Yes, that is a Blighty one. There is enough damage to those muscles to keep you in Blighty several months.” And this made all the rest bearable somehow.
Friday
Again the only sleep I could get was by morphia. In the morning they told me I should go by a hospital train leaving at three o’clock. I scrawled a note or two and gave them to Lewis, and instructed him about my kit. I believe they made an inventory of it. I gave him some maps for Edwards. And then he said good-bye. And I thought of him going back, and I going to England. And I felt ashamed of myself again. I wondered if the Colonel was annoyed with me.
They gave me gas in the morning. It seemed such a bother going through all that again: it was not worth trying to get better. Still I was glad, it was one dressing less! Then in the afternoon I was carried on a stretcher to the train. I hardly saw anyone to say good-bye to. I thought of writing later.
It seemed an interminable journey. By some mistake I had been put in with the Tommies. There was no difference in the structure or comfort of the officers’ or Tommies’ quarters; but I knew they were taking me wrong. However, I was entirely passive, and did not mind what they did. The carriage had a corridor all the way down the centre, and on each side was a succession of berths in three tiers. On the top tier you must have felt very high and close up to the roof; on the centre one you got a good view out of the windows; on the third and lowest tier (which was my lot) you felt that if there were an accident, you would not have far to roll; on the other hand, you were out of view of orderlies passing along the corridor.
A great thirst consumed me as I lay waiting. I could see two orderlies in the space by the door cutting up large pieces of bread and butter. This made my mouth still drier. Then they brought in cans of hot tea, and gave it out in white enamel bowls. I longed for the sting of the tea on my dry palate, but the orderly was startled when I said, “I suppose this is all right; I am an officer.” He said he would tell them, and gave the bowl to the next man. The bowls were taken away and washed up, before a cup of tea was at last brought me. A corporal brought it; he poured it out of a little teapot; but I could not drink it out of a cup. My left arm lay like a log beside me, and I could not hold my right arm steady and raise my head. So the corporal went off for a feeding cup. I felt rather nervy and like a man with a grievance! And when I got the tea it was nearly cold.
I say it seemed an interminable journey, and my arm was so frightfully uncomfortable. I had it across my body, and felt I could not breathe for the weight of it. At last I felt I must get its position altered. I called “orderly” every time an orderly went past: sometimes they paused and looked round; but they could not see me, and went on. Sometimes they did not hear anything. I felt as self-conscious and irritated as a man who calls “waiter” and the waiter does not hear. At last one heard, and a sister came and fixed me up with a small pillow under the elbow. I immediately felt apologetic, and I wondered if she thought me fussy.
The train made a long, slow grind over the rails; and it kept stopping with a griding sound and a jolt. Why did it go so slowly? At ten o’clock I begged and obtained another morphia dose, and got four hours’ sleep from it again.
Saturday
I suppose it was about 7.0 a.m. when we arrived at Étretat. I was taken and laid in the middle of rows and rows of Tommies in a big sunny courtyard. I thought how well the bearers carried the stretchers: I did not at all feel that I was likely to be dropped or tilted off on to my arm. There were a lot of men in blue hospital dress on the steps of a big house. I wondered where I was: in Havre probably. It was a queer sensation lying on my back gazing up at the sun; we were tightly packed in together, like cards laid in order, face upwards. How high everyone looked standing up. Then they discovered one or two officers, and I said that I too was an officer. I felt that they rather dared me to repeat this statement. Then a man looked at my label, and said: “Yes, he is an officer.” And I was taken up and carried off.
I found myself put to bed in a spacious room in which were only two beds. The house had only recently been finished, and was in use as a hospital. As soon as I was in bed, I felt a great relief again. No more motion for a time, I thought. There was a man in the other bed, threatened with consumption. We were talking, when a pretty V.A.D. nurse came in and asked what we wanted for breakfast. I felt quite hungry, and enjoyed tea and fish. I began to think that life was going to be good. I saw Cecil Todd, who had been slightly wounded a fortnight ago. I condoled with him on not getting to England. He asked me if I wanted to read. No, I did not feel like reading. I wrote a letter. Then two V.A.D. nurses came and dressed my wound. They seemed surprised to find so big a one, and sent for the doctor to see it. They dressed it very well, and gave me no unnecessary pain.
In the afternoon, I was again moved to a motor ambulance, which took me to Havre. It jolted and shook horribly. “This man does not know what it is like up here,” I thought. All the time I was straining my body to keep the left arm from touching the jolting stretcher. (The stretchers slide in the ambulance.) I was a top-berth passenger; I could touch the white roof with my right hand; and there was a stuffy smell of white paint.
At last it stopped, and after a wait I was carried amid a sea of heads, along a quay. I could smell sea and the stale oily smell of a steamer. Then I was taken over the gangway with that firm, steady, nodding motion with which I was getting so familiar, along the deck, through doorways, and into a big room, all green and white. All round the edge were beds, into one of which I was helped. In the centre of the room were beds that somehow reminded me of cots. I dare say there was a low railing round the beds that gave me this impression. A Scotch nurse looked after me. These nurses were all in grey and red; the others had been in blue. I wondered what was the difference. I asked the name of the ship and they said it was the Asturias.
Later on a steward brought a menu, and I chose my own dinner. Apparently I could eat what I liked. The doctor looked at my wound, and said it could wait until morning before being dressed; he pleased me. I was more comfortable than I had been yet. The boat was not due out till about 1.0 a.m. At eleven o’clock I again asked for morphia, and so got sleep for another four hours or so.
Sunday
“I represent Messrs. Cox and Co. Is there anything I can do for any of you gentlemen this morning?”
A short, squarely built man, with a black suit, a bowler hat, and a small brown bag, stepped briskly into the room. He gave me intense pleasure: as he talked to a Scotch officer who wanted some ready cash, I felt that I was indeed back in England. It was a hot sunny day; and a bowler hat on such a day made me feel sure that this was really Southampton, and not all a dream. Sir, whoever you are, I thank you for your most appropriate appearance.
The hospital ship had been alongside nearly an hour, I believe. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Breakfast, the dressing of my wound again, lunch; all had followed in an uneventful succession. The throbbing of the engines as the boat steamed quietly along had been hardly noticeable at all. At last there was a bustle, and we were carried out of the room, out into the sunshine again, and along the quay to the train. Here I was given a berth in the middle tier this time, for which I was very thankful. I felt so utterly tired; and the weight of my arm across my body was intolerable.
That seemed a long, long journey too; but I got tea without delay this time, and it was hot. At Farnborough the train stopped and a few men were taken out. The rest came on to London.
“Is there any special hospital in London you want to go to?” said a brisk R.A.M.C. official, when we reached Waterloo.
“No,” I answered.
He wrote on a label, and put that round my neck also.
“Lady Carnarvon’s,” he said.
I lay for some time on the platform of Waterloo station, gazing up at the vault in the roof. Porters and stretcher-bearers stood about, and gazed down at one in silence. Then I was moved into a motor ambulance, and a Red Cross lady took her seat in the back. My head was in the front, so that I could see nothing. Just before the car went off, a policeman put his head in.
“Any milk or anything?”
“Would you like any milk or beef tea?” the lady said.
“Milk, please.”
“He says he would like a little milk,” said the lady.
And then we drove off.