“Dead. Dead,” said a voice within me. And still I did not move. Still that numbness, that dulness, that tightening across the brain and senses. This, too, was something new. Then I looked around me, across the moorland. I walked along until I could see down over Maple Redoubt and across the valley, where there seemed a slight white mist; or was it only moonshine?
Suddenly, “Strength.” I answered the voice. “Strong. I am strong.” Every muscle in my body was tingling at my bidding. I felt an iron strength. All this tautness, this numbness, was strength. I remembered last night, the feeling of irresistible will-power, and my eyes glowed. I thought of Davidson, and my eyes glistened: the very pain was the birth of new strength.
Then, even as the strength came, I heard a thud, and away on the left a canister blazed into the air, climbed, swooped, and rushed. And the vulgar din of its bursting rent all the stillness of the night. A second followed suit. And as it, too, burst, it seemed a clumsy mocking at me, a mocking that ran in echoes all along the still valley.
“Strength,” it sneered. “Strength.”
And all my iron will seemed beating against a wall of steel, that must in the end wear me down in a useless battering.
“War,” I cried. “How can my will batter against war?” I thought of Davidson’s smiling face; and then I thought of the blind clumsy canister. And I felt unutterably weak and powerless. What did it matter what I thought or did, whether I was weak or strong? What power had I against this irresistible impersonal machine; this war? And I remembered how an hour or so ago the trench-mortar officer had asked me whether I wanted him to fire or not, and I had answered, “Good God! Do as you d—d well like.” What did it matter what he did? Yet, last night it had seemed to matter everything.
Slowly there came into my mind that picture that later has come to mean to me the true expression of war. Only slowly it came now, a half-formed image of what my spirit alone understood.
“A certain man drew a bow at a venture,” I thought. What of those shells that I had called down last night at my bidding, standing like a god, intoxicated with power, and crying “Retaliate. More retaliation.” Where did they fall? Were other men lying as Davidson lay to-night? Had I called down death? Had I stricken families? Probably. Nay, more than probably. Certainly. Death. Blind death. That was it. Blind death.
And all the time above me was the white moon. I looked at the shadows of my arms as I held them out. Such shadows belonged to summer nights in England ... in Kent.... Oh! why was everything so silent? Could nothing stop this utter folly, this cruel madness, this clumsy death?
And then, at last, the strain gave a little, and my muscles relaxed. I went back and took up my helmet.