A MONTH'S REFLECTIONS
Timothy and I are on detachment. We are billeted with M. le Curé, and we mess at the schoolmaster's. Hence we are on good terms with all parties, for of course a good schoolmaster shrugs his shoulders at a priest, and a good priest returns the compliment. In war time, however, the hatchet seems to be buried pretty deep. We have not seen it sticking out anywhere.
M. le Curé has a beautiful rose garden, a cask of excellent cider, a passable Sauterne, and a charming pony. He is a good fellow, I should think, though without much education. His house—or what I have seen of it—is the exact opposite of what an English country vicar's would be. The only sitting-room that I have seen is as neat as an old maid's. There is a polished floor, an oval polished table on which repose four large albums at regular intervals, each on its own little mat. There is a mantelpiece with gilt candlesticks and an ornate clock under a glass dome. Round the walls are photographs of brother clergy, the place of honour being assigned to a stout Chanoine. The chairs are stiff and uncomfortable. One of them, which is more imposing and uncomfortable than the rest, is obviously for the Bishop when he comes. There are no papers, no books, no ash-trays, no confusion. I have never seen M. le Curé sit there. I fancy he lives in the kitchen and in his garden.
Timothy sleeps in the bed which the Bishop uses, and is told he ought to feel très saint.
The wife of the schoolmaster cooks for us. She is an excellent soul. We give her full marks. She has a smile and an omelette for every emergency, and waves aside all Timothy's vagaries with "Ah, monsieur, la jeunesse!" I am not sure that Timothy quite likes it!
Timothy is immense. He is that rarest of birds, a wholly delightful egotist. He is the sun, but we all bask and shine with reflected glory. The men are splendid, because they are his men. I am a great success because I am his subaltern. Fortunately we all have a sense of humour and so are highly pleased with ourselves and each other. After all, if one is a Captain at twenty-two ...! But he's a good soldier, too, and we all believe in him. Timothy's all right, in spite of la jeunesse!
Rain! The men are fifteen in a tent in a sea of mud. Poor beggars! They are having a thin time. Working parties in the trenches day and night; every one soaked to the skin; and then a return to a damp, crowded, muddy tent. No pay, no smokes, and yet they are wonderfully cheery, and all think that the "Push" is going to end the war. I wish I thought so!
These rats are the limit! The dugout swarms with them. Last night they ate half my biscuits and a good part of Timothy's clean socks, and whenever I began to get to sleep one of them would run across my face, or some other sensitive part of my anatomy, and wake me up. I shall leave the candle alight to-night, to see if that keeps them away.
Last night the rats tried to eat the candle, and very nearly set me on fire. If it were not for the rain I would try the firestep.
The men are having a rotten time again—no proper shelter from the rain, and short rations, to say nothing of remarkably good practice by the Boche artillery. C——, just out from England, got scuppered this afternoon. A good boy—made his communion just before we came in. I suppose he didn't know much about it, and that he is really better off now; but at the same time it makes one angry.
The rain has lifted, so last night I tried the firestep, and got a good sleep. The absurd thing was that I couldn't wake up properly. I came on duty at midnight, was roused, got to my feet, and started to walk along the trench. And then the Nameless Terror, that lurks in dark corners when one is a small boy, gripped me. I was frightened of the dark, filled with a sense of impending disaster! It took about ten minutes to wake properly and shake it off. I must try to get more sleep somehow; but it is jolly difficult.
The great bombardment has begun, the long-promised strafing of the Boche. According to the gunners they will all be dead, buried, or dazed when the time comes for us to go over the top. I doubt it! If they have enough deep dug-outs I don't fancy that the bombardment will worry them very much.
Now we are at rest for a day or two before the Push. I am to be left out—in charge of carriers. Damn! I might as well be A.S.C. I see myself counting ration bags while the battalion is charging with fixed bayonets; and in the evening sending up parties of weary laden carriers over shell-swept areas, while I myself stay behind at the Dump. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!! Then I shall receive ironical congratulations on my "cushy" job.
Have just seen the battalion off. I don't start for another five hours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be out of the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phantasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to please a creature of our imagination. We are no better than South Sea Islanders.
Just here the attack was a failure. When I got to the Dump I found the battalion still there. By an irony of fate I was the only officer of my company to set foot in the German lines. After a day of idleness and depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed to some relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to the extremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left. Being fed up with inaction, I took the party myself. It was a long way. The trenches were choked with wounded and stragglers and troops who had never been ordered to advance. In many places they were broken down by shell-fire, in others they were waist-deep in water. By dint of much shouting and shoving and cursing I managed to get through with about ten of my men, but had to leave the others to follow with a sergeant.
At last we sighted our objective, a cluster of chalk mounds surrounded with broken wire, shell craters, corpses, wreathed in smoke, dotted with men. I think we all ran across the ground between our front line and our objective, though it must have been more or less dead ground. Anyhow, only one man was hit. When we got close the scene was absurdly like a conventional battle picture—the sort of picture that one never believes in for a minute. There was a wild mixture of regiments—Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, etc., etc. There was no proper trench left. There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis rifle, and bombs all going at the same time. There were wounded men sitting in a kind of helpless stupor; there were wounded trying to drag themselves back to our own lines; there were the dead of whom no one took any notice. But the prevailing note was one of utter weariness coupled with dogged tenacity.
Here and there were men who were self-conscious, wondering what would become of themselves. I was one of them, and we were none the better for it. Most of the fellows, though, had forgotten themselves. They no longer flinched, or feared. They had got beyond that. They were just set on clinging to that mound and keeping the Huns at bay until their officer gave the word to retire. Their spirit was the spirit of the oarsman, the runner, or the footballer, who has strained himself to the utmost, who if he stopped to wonder whether he could go on or not would collapse; but who, because he does not stop to wonder, goes on miraculously long after he should, by all the laws of nature, have succumbed to sheer exhaustion.
Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officer who seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I must frankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay. He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and how for lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men, he had been forced back; and how for eight hours he had disputed every inch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds with the dumb mechanical tenacity of utter exhaustion. "You might go to H.Q.," he said at last, "and tell them where I am, and that I can't hold on without ammunition and a barrage."
I am afraid that I went with joy on that errand. I did not want to stay on those chalk mounds.
I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank God it has gone well elsewhere; but here we are where we started. Day and night we have done nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees the dead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted and blackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk of glory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softened the gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated and tortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war. Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and lust of power. Maybe through all this evil and pain we shall be purged of many sins. God grant it! If ever there were martyrs, some of these were martyrs, facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confronted the saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fierce fanatical exaltation of faith that the early Christians had to help them.
For these were mostly quiet souls, loving their wives and children and the little comforts of home life most of all, little stirred by great emotions or passions. Yet they had some love for liberty, some faith in God,—not a high and flaming passion, but a quiet insistent conviction. It was enough to send them out to face martyrdom, though their lack of imagination left them mercifully ignorant of the extremity of its terrors. It was enough, when they saw their danger in its true perspective, to keep them steadfast and tenacious.
For them "it is finished." R.I.P.