The Secret Battle

by A. P. Herbert

It is largely a matter of locality and circumstance. In Gallipoli, where the Turks' rapid musketry fire was almost incredibly intense and their snipers uncannily accurate, men would say that they hated bullets, but shell-fire left them unmoved. The same men travelled to France and found rifle fire practically extinct but gun-power increasingly terrible, and rapidly reversed their opinions.

More often, however, there has been some particular experience which, out of a multitude of shocks, has been able to make a lasting impression, and leave behind it the favourite fear.

One man remembers the death of a friend caught by the gas without his gas mask, and is possessed with the fear that he may one day forget his own and perish in the same agony. And such is the effect on conduct of these obsessions that this man will neglect the most ordinary precautions against other dangers, will be reckless under heavy shell-fire, but will not move an inch without his respirator.

With others it is the fear of being left to die between the lines, caught on the wire and riddled by both sides, the fear of snipers, of 5-9's, even of whizz-bangs. One man feels safe in the open, but in the strongest dug-out has a horror that it may be blown in upon him. There is the fear of the empty trench, where, like a child on the dark staircase, another man is convinced that there are enemies lying behind the parapet ready to leap upon him; and there is the horror of being killed on the way down from the line after a relief.

But most to be pitied of all the men I have known, was one who had served at Gallipoli in the early days; few men then could have an orderly burial in a recognized ground, but often the stretcher-bearers buried them hastily where they could in and about the lines. This man's fear was that one day a sniper would get him in the head; that unskilled companions would pronounce his death sentence, and that he would wake up, perhaps within a few yards of his own trench, and know that he was buried but not dead.

That was how it was with Harry. The one thing he could not face at present was crawling lonely in the dark with the thought of that tornado of bullets in his head. Nothing else frightened him—now—more than it frightened the rest of us, though, God knows, that was enough.

So that he did quite well in this battle in a sound, undistinguished way. He commanded a platoon for the occasion, and took them through the worst part of the show without exceptional losses; and he got as far as any of the regiment got. He held out there for two days under very heavy shell-fire, with a mixed lot of men from several battalions, and a couple of strange officers. In the evening of the second day we were to be relieved, and being now in command I sent him down with a runner to Brigade Headquarters to fix up a few points about our position and the relief. There was a terrific barrage to pass, but both of them got through. When his business was done he started back to rejoin the battalion. By that time it was about eleven o'clock at night, and the relief was just beginning; there was no reason why he should have come back at all; indeed, the Brigade Major told him he had better not, had better wait there in the warm dug-out, and join us as we passed down. Now when a man has been through a two days' battle of this kind, has had no sleep and hardly any food for two days, and finished up with a two-mile trudge over a stony wilderness of shell-holes, through a vicious barrage of heavy shells; when after all this he finds himself, worn and exhausted so that he can hardly stand, but safe and comfortable in a deep dug-out where there are friendly lights and the soothing voices of calm men; and when he has the choice of staying there, the right side of the barrage, till it is time to go out to rest, or of going back through that same barrage, staggering into the same shell-holes, with the immediate prospect of doing it all over again with men to look after as well as himself—well, the temptation is almost irresistible. But Harry did resist it—I can't tell you how—and he started back. The barrage was worse than ever, all down the valley road, and, apparently, when they came near the most dangerous part, Harry's runner was hit by a big splinter and blown twenty yards. There were no stretchers unoccupied for five miles, and it was evident that the boy—he was only a kid—would die in a little time. He knew it himself, but he was very frightened in that hideous valley where the shells still fell, and he begged Harry not to leave him. And so we came upon them as we stumbled down, thanking our stars we were through the worst of it, Harry and the runner crouched together in a shell-hole, with the heart of the barrage blazing and roaring sixty yards off, and stray shells all round.

From a military or, indeed, a common-sense point of view, it was a futile performance—the needless risk of a valuable officer's life.

They do not give decorations for that kind of thing. But I was glad he had stayed with that young runner.

And I only tell you this to show you how wrong I was, and how much stuff he had in him still.