The war changed him entirely, He became extremely quiet and seemed to be borne down with the sense of the terrible things which he saw. He never lost the good-fellowship which was inherent in him, and was always ready to do anything to oblige one, but he formed the habit of sitting alone and silent, for hours at a time, just thinking. It seemed as if he had a premonition about himself, though he never showed fear and never spoke of the dangers we were going into, as the other fellows did. He was killed in the Somme action in which I was wounded.
I’m not much on metaphysics and it is difficult for me to express the thought I would convey here. I can just say, as I would if I were talking to a pal, that I have often wondered what the intangible mental or moral quality is that makes men think and act so differently to one another when confronted by the imminent prospect of sudden death. Is it a question of will power—of imagination, or the lack of it—of something that you can call merely physical courage—or what? Take the case of Macfarlane: In action he was as brave as they make them, but, as I have said before, the prospect of sudden death and the presence of death and suffering around him changed him utterly. From a cheerful, happy lad he was transformed into an old man, silent, gloomy and absent-minded except for momentary flashes of his old spirit which became less and less frequent as the time for his own end drew nearer.
There was another chap with us from a little town in Northern Ontario. While in Canada and England he was utterly worthless; always in trouble for being absent without leave, drunk, late on parade, or something else. I think he must, at one time or another, have been charged with every offense possible under the K. R. & O. (King’s Regulations and Orders). On route marches he was constantly “falling out.” I told him, one day when I was in command of a platoon, that he ought to join the Royal Flying Corps. Then he would only have to fall out once. He said that he considered this a very good joke and asked me if I could think of anything funny in connection with being absent without leave—which he was, that night. In France, this chap was worth ten ordinary men. He was always cheerful, always willing and prompt in obeying orders, ready to tackle unhesitatingly the most unpleasant or the most risky duty, and the hotter it was the better he liked it. He came out laughing and unscathed from a dozen tight places where it didn’t seem possible for him to escape. To use a much-worn phrase, he seemed to bear a charmed life. I’ll wager my last cent that he never gets an “R. I. P.”—which they put on the cross above a soldier’s grave, and which the Tommies call “Rise If Possible.” Then there was a certain sergeant who was the best instructor in physical training and bayonet fighting in our brigade and who was as fine and dashing a soldier in physique and carriage as you ever could see. When he got under fire he simply went to pieces. On our first bombing raid he turned and ran back into our own barbed wire, and when he was caught there acted like a madman. He was given another chance but flunked worse than ever. I don’t think he was a plain coward. There was merely something wrong with his nervous system. He just didn’t have the “viscera.” Now he is back of the lines, instructing, and will never be sent to the trenches again. We had an officer, also, who was a man of the greatest courage, so far as sticking where he belonged and keeping his men going ahead might be concerned, but every time he heard a big shell coming over he was seized with a violent fit of vomiting. I don’t know what makes men brave or cowardly in action, and I wouldn’t undertake to say which quality a man might show until I saw him in action, but I do know this: If a man isn’t frightened when he goes under fire, it’s because he lacks intelligence. He simply must be frightened if he has the ordinary human attributes. But if he has what we call physical courage he goes on with the rest of them. Then if he has extraordinary courage he may go on where the rest of them won’t go. I should say that the greatest fear the ordinary man has in going into action is the fear that he will show that he is afraid—not to his officers, or to the Germans, or to the folks back home, but to his mates; to the men with whom he has laughed and scoffed at danger.
It’s the elbow-to-elbow influence that carries men up to face machine guns and gas. A heroic battalion may be made up of units of potential cowards.
At the time when Macfarlane was given his stripes, I also was made a sergeant on account of the fact that I had been at school in the Virginia Military Institute. That is, I was an acting sergeant. It was explained to me that my appointment would have to be confirmed in England, and then reconfirmed after three months’ service in France. Under the regulations of the Canadian forces, a non-commissioned officer, after final confirmation in his grade, can be reduced to the ranks only by a general court-martial, though he can escape a court-martial, when confronted with charges, by reverting to the ranks at his own request.
Forty-two hundred of us sailed for England on the Empress of Britain, sister ship to the Empress of Ireland, which was sunk in the St. Lawrence River. The steamer was, of course, very crowded and uncomfortable, and the eight-day trip across was most unpleasant. We had tripe to eat until we were sick of the sight of it. A sergeant reported one morning, “eight men and twenty-two breakfasts, absent.” There were two other troop ships in our convoy, the Baltic and the Metagama. A British cruiser escorted us until we were four hundred miles off the coast of Ireland; then each ship picked up a destroyer which had come out to meet her. At that time, a notice was posted in the purser’s office informing us that we were in the war zone, and that the ship would not stop for anything, even for a man overboard. That day a soldier fell off the Metagama with seven hundred dollars in his pocket, and the ship never even hesitated. They left him where he had no chance in the world to spend his money.
Through my training in the V. M. I., I was able to read semaphore signals, and I caught the message from the destroyer which escorted us. It read:
“Each ship for herself now. Make a break!”
We beat the other steamers of our convoy eight hours in getting to the dock in Liverpool, and, according to what seemed to be the regular system of our operations at that time, we were the last to disembark.
The majority of our fellows had never been in England before, and they looked on our travels at that time as a fine lark. Everybody cheered and laughed when they dusted off one of those little toy trains and brought it up to take us away in it. After we were aboard of it, we proceeded at the dizzy rate of about four miles an hour, and our regular company humorist—no company is complete without one—suggested that they were afraid, if they went any faster, they might run off of the island before they could stop. We were taken to Bramshott camp, in Hampshire, twelve miles from the Aldershott School of Command. The next day we were given “King’s leave”—eight days with free transportation anywhere in the British Isles. It is the invariable custom to give this sort of leave to all colonial troops immediately upon their arrival in England. However, in our case, Ireland was barred. Just at that time, Ireland was no place for a newly arrived Canadian looking for sport.