It was very unfortunate.
III
When we went back to the line, Harry was detailed for many working-parties; and some of them, particularly the first, were very nasty. The days of comfortable walking in communication trenches were over. We were in captured ground churned up by our own fire, and all communication with the front was over the open, over the shell-holes. Harry was told off to take a ration-party, carrying rations up to the battalion in the line, a hundred men. These were bad jobs to do. It meant three-quarters of a mile along an uphill road, heavily shelled; then there was a mile over the shell-hole country, where there were no landmarks or duckboards, or anything to guide you. For a single man in daylight, with a map, navigation was difficult enough in this uniform wilderness until you had been over it a time or two; to go over it for the first time, in the dark, with a hundred men carrying heavy loads, was the kind of thing that makes men transfer to the Flying Corps. Harry got past the road with the loss of three men only; there, at any rate, you went straight ahead, however slowly. But when he left the road, his real troubles began. It was pitch dark and drizzling, and the way was still uphill. With those unhappy carrying-parties, where three-fourths of the men carried two heavy sacks of bread and tinned meat and other food, and the rest two petrol tins of water, or a jar of rum, or rifle oil, or whale oil, besides a rifle, and a bandolier, and two respirators, and a great-coat—you must move with exquisite slowness, or you will lose your whole party in a hundred yards. And even when you are just putting one foot in front of another, moving so slowly that it maddens you, there are halts and hitches every few yards: a man misses his footing and slides down into a crater with his awful load; the hole is full of foul green water, and he must be hauled out quickly lest he drown. Half-way down the line a man halts to ease his load, or shift his rifle, or scratch his nose; when he goes on he can see no one ahead of him, and the cry 'Not in touch' comes sullenly up to the front. Or you cross the path of another party, burdened as yours. In the dark, or against the flaring skyline, they look like yours, bent, murky shapes with bumps upon them, and some of your men trail off with the other party. And though you pity your men more than yourself, it is difficult sometimes to be gentle with them, difficult not to yield to the intense exasperation of it all, and curse foolishly....
But Harry was good with his men, and they stumbled on, slipping, muttering, with a dull ache at the shoulders and a dogged rage in their hearts. He was trying to steer by the compass, and he was aiming for a point given him on the map, the rendezvous for the party he was to meet. This point was the junction of three trenches, but as all trenches thereabouts had been so blotted out as to be almost indistinguishable from casual shell-holes, it was not so good a rendezvous as it had seemed to the Brigade. However, Harry managed to find it, or believed that he had found it—for in that murk and blackness nothing was certain; if he had found it, the other party had not, for there was no one there. They might be late, they might be lost, they might be waiting elsewhere. So Harry sent out a scout or two and waited, while the men lay down in the muddy ruins of the trench and dozed unhappily. And while they waited, the Boche, who had been flinging big shells about at random since dusk, took it into his head to plaster these old trenches with 5-9's. Harry ran, or floundered along the line, telling the men to lie close where they were. There was indeed nothing else to do, but it gave the men confidence, and none of them melted away. As he ran, a big one burst very near and knocked him flat, but he was untouched; it is marvellous how local the effect of H.E. can be. For about ten minutes they had a bad time, and then it ceased, suddenly.
And now was one of those crucial moments which distinguish a good officer from a bad, or even an ordinary officer. It was easy to say, 'Here I am at the rendezvous' (by this time Harry had got his bearings a little by the lights, and knew he was in the right spot) 'with these something rations; the men are done and a bit shaken; so am I; the other people haven't turned up; if they want their rations they can damned well come here and get them; I've done my part, and I'm going home.' But a real good officer, with a conscience and an imagination, would say: 'Yes—but I've been sent up here to get these rations to the men in the line; my men will have a rest to-morrow, and some sleep, and some good food; the men in the line now will still be in the line, with no sleep, and little rest, and if these rations are left here in the mud and not found before dawn, they'll have no food either; and whatever other people may do or not do, it's up to me to get these rations up there somehow, if we have to walk all night and carry them right up to the Front Line ourselves, and I'm not going home till I've done it.' I don't know, but I think that that's the sort of thing Harry said to himself; and anyhow after the row with Philpott he was particularly anxious to make good. So he got his men out and told them about it all, and they floundered on. It was raining hard now, with a bitter wind when they passed the crest of the hill. Harry had a vague idea of the direction of the line so long as they were on the slope; but on the flat, when they had dodged round a few hundred shell-holes, halting and going on and halting again, all sense of direction departed, and very soon they were hopelessly lost. The flares were no good, for the line curved, and there seemed to be lights all around, going up mistily through the rain in a wide circle. Once you were properly lost the compass was useless, for you might be in the Boche lines, you might be anywhere.... At such moments a kind of mad, desperate self-pity, born of misery and weariness and rage, takes hold of the infantryman, and if he carries a load, he is truly ready to fall down and sleep where he is—or die. And in the wretched youth in charge there is a sense of impotence and responsibility that makes his stomach sink within him. Some of the men began to growl a little, but Harry held on despairingly. And then by God's grace they ran into another party, a N.C.O. and a few men; these were the party—or some of them—that should have met them at the rendezvous; they too had been lost and were now wandering back to the line. Well, Harry handed over the rations and turned home, well pleased with himself. He was too sick of the whole affair, and it was too dark and beastly to think of getting a receipt. It was a pity; for while he trudged home, the N.C.O., as we afterwards heard, was making a mess of the whole business. Whether he had not enough men, or perhaps lost them, or miscalculated the amount of rations or what, is not clear, but half of all that precious food was found lying in the mud at noon the next day when it was too late, and half the battalion in the line went very short. Then the Colonel rang up Philpott, and complained bitterly about the conduct of the officer in charge of our ration-party. Philpott sent for Harry and accused him hotly of dumping the rations carelessly anywhere, of not finishing his job.
Harry gave his account of the affair quite simply, without enlarging on the bad time he had had, though that was clear enough to a man with any knowledge. But he could not show a receipt. Philpott was the kind of man who valued receipts more than righteousness. He refused to believe Harry's straightforward tale, cursed him for a lazy swine, and sent him to apologize to the Colonel of the Blanks. That officer did listen to Harry's story, believed it, and apologized to him. Harry was a little soothed, but from that day I know there was a great bitterness in his heart. For he had done a difficult job very well, and had come back justly proud of himself and his men. And to have the work wasted by a bungling N.C.O., and his word doubted by a Philpott....
And that I may call the beginning of the second stage.
IX
For after that Harry began to be in a bad way again. That shelling in the night and the near concussion of the shell that knocked him over had been one of those capital shocks of which I have spoken. From that time on, shell-fire in the open became a special terror, a new favourite fear; afterwards he told me so. And all that winter we had shell-fire in the open—even the 'lines' were not trenches, only a string of scattered shell-holes garrisoned by a few men. Everywhere, night and day, you had that naked feeling.