The Secret Battle

by A. P. Herbert

III

Then I got leave to go and see Harry. He was in his billet, in a small bedroom on the ground floor. There was a sentry standing at the window, fixed bayonet and all, so that he should neither escape nor make away with himself.

He was surprised and, I think, really pleased to see me, for before me, as he said, or any one who knew his history, he was not ashamed.... It was only when the ignorant, the Wallaces, were near that he was filled with humiliation, because of the things he knew they were thinking. 'That sentry out there,' he told me, 'was in my platoon at Gallipoli—one of my old men; just before you came in he tapped on the window and wished me luck; he said that all the "old lads" did the same.... It bucked me up no end.'

Not that he needed much 'bucking up.' For he was strangely quiet and resigned—more nearly at peace with everything than I had seen him for many months. 'Only,' he said, 'I wish to God that I was a single man, and I wish to God they would get on with it....' He had been under arrest for six weeks, six solid weeks ... carted about from place to place like some animal waiting for slaughter; while the Summaries of Evidence and the Memos and the Secret Envelopes went backwards and forwards through 'Units' and through 'Formations,' from mandarin to mandarin, from big-wig to big-wig; while generals, and legal advisers, and judge advocates, and twopenny-halfpenny clerks wrote their miserable initials on the dirty forms, and wondered what the devil they should decide—and decided—nothing at all. All this terrible time Harry had been writing to his wife, pretending that all was well with him, describing route marches and scenery, and all the usual stuff about weather and clothes and food.... Now at least somebody had decided, and Harry was almost happy. For it was an end of suspense.... 'Once they settled on a court-martial,' he said, 'I knew I was done ... and except for Peggy, I don't care.... I don't know what they've told you, but I'd like you to know what really happened. I found the battalion at Monval (the same old part), and got there feeling pretty rotten. Old Philpott, of course, sent me off with a working-party like a shot out of a gun—before I'd been there an hour. I picked up some wiring stuff at the Brigade Dump—it was a long way up the road then, not far from Hellfire Corner. Fritz was shelling the road like hell, going up and down, dropping them in pairs, fifty yards further every time, you know the game.... I had the wind-up pretty badly, and so had the men, poor devils ... but what was worse, they seemed to know that I had.... We had a lot of shells very close to us, and some of the men kept rushing towards the bank when they heard one coming.... Well, you don't get on very fast at that rate, and it's damned hard to keep hold of them when they're like that.... And knowing they were like that made me even worse. When we got to Dead Mule Tree about ten of them were missing ... just stayed under the bank in the holes.... I don't say this to excuse myself ... I just tell you what happened. Then we got to that high bit where the bank stops and the valley goes up on the left.... You know the awful exposed feeling one has there, and they had a regular barrage just at the corner.... I got the men under the bank, and waited till a shell burst ... and then tried to dash them past before the next. But the next one came too fast, and fell plunk into the middle of the column—behind me.... Three men were killed outright, and those of us who hadn't flung themselves down were knocked over. I fell in a kind of narrow ditch by the road. When I put my head up and looked back I saw some of the men vanishing back under the bank. Then another one came—8-inch I should think they were—and I grovelled in the ditch again.... It was just like my awful dreams.... I must have been there about ten minutes. After every one I started to get up and go back to the men under the bank, meaning to get them together again. Every time the next one came too quick, and I was pinned, simply pinned in that ditch. Then Fritz stopped for a minute or two—altering the programme, I suppose—and I got up and ran like hell for the bank. The four or five men lying near me got up and ran too.

'When we got under the bank we lay down and I looked round ... there was not a man to be seen. I shouted, but at first nothing happened. And, I tell you, I was glad.... Some of the men who had gone back, not seeing me anywhere, had melted away home.... I don't blame them.... Then a few drifted along from further down the bank.... By degrees most of the party turned up ... there must have been between thirty and forty of them in the end....

'And then, you see, I knew I should have to go on again ... get past the corner somehow.... And——

'And I couldn't.... I simply couldn't face it.... Peters (the N.C.O.) said something about "Going to have another shot, sir?" He was pretty shaken himself—they all were ... but he'd have gone.... We ought to have gone on.... I know that.... But.... Anyhow, I told him I didn't think we should ever get by at present, and said we'd better go back a bit and wait under cover ... some yarn or other.... So we started back down the road.... The Boche was still doing the up and down game on the road, only about twice as much.... By this time I can tell you there was no shame between those men and me ... we understood each other ... every time we heard that damned shriek we fell into shell-holes and prayed.... They were following us down the road, getting nearer and nearer.... You know that dug-out in the bank where Headquarters used to be. Well, just when it looked as if the next lot must come right on top of us, I saw a light coming from the dug-out, and most of us ran hell for leather for the door. Some one was standing at the entrance as we dashed in ... just in time ... we nearly knocked him over.... And guess who it was,' said Harry, with a horrible kind of hysterical laugh, 'guess who it was ... it was Burnett—Burnett of all people.... He had been sent up to find out what had happened. Well, he asked what the hell I was doing, and said I was to go on at once.... I said I was going to wait a bit, there was too much of a barrage.... Then he said, very offensively, he couldn't help that ... my orders were to go on at once.... That annoyed me, and I said I'd see him damned first, and told him if it was so urgent he could take the party up himself if he liked.... But he didn't, naturally ... no reason why he should.... Then he rang up Philpott and told him that he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party running down the road—demoralized. So he had, of course,—he saw me running for the dug-out ... though the joke of it is—the joke of it is ... he was sheltering there himself!' And at the enormity of that joke Harry went off into that hideous laughter again. 'He said I refused to obey orders, and asked for instructions. Philpott said it was too late now, the stuff had been wanted by midnight.... He told Burnett to put me under arrest ... and come back.

'That's what happened,' he went on, 'and I don't care—only I wish it had been anybody but Burnett—though I suppose he was quite right; but it makes no odds ... I had got the wind-up, and I had failed with the party, and I don't deny it ... even if I wasn't really running when he saw me.... One thing I can say—if I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet—till that night.... I'm glad I came out this time if I did fail at the pinch.... Burnett wouldn't have.... I knew I was done when I came ... and I know I'm done now.

'But I wish you'd just explain it all to Peggy and the people who don't know.'

And that is what I am trying to do.