Our job to-night will be the heaviest we have tackled. We set out on foot as soon as the day begins to fail, taking with us the gun-crews, the signallers and a fatigue-party with sand-bags, picks and shovels. The work before us consists of digging gun-platforms and throwing up some kind of protection for the gunners, of man-handling the guns into position and getting them on for line, and of sorting out the shells and carrying them to immediately in the rear of the gun-platforms. We have not yet been told the exact hour at which the show opens, but we know that all our preparations for opening fire must be completed by 4 a. m.
The consideration which we have to show for our men fills me with shame. We have to work them as if they were in bondage. If we have to treat them remorselessly, we get no better treatment ourselves. In the army every man in authority is a slave-driver and himself, in turn, a slave. The more one does, the more he may do; in the ranks, where the greatest sacrifices are made, there are few rewards and precious little thanks. One smiles out here when he reads of strikes at home for shorter hours and higher rates of pay. Our pay is a mere pittance, which dees not pretend to be approximately equivalent to the service rendered. Our hours are as long as the authorities who control our destinies like. For the last five nights our men have marched and worked incessantly; during the day they have been able to get no proper rest, what with the constant interruptions caused by stable-parades, guard-mountings, fatigues and pickets. To-night will be the sixth night that they have gone without sleep; at dawn they have to face up to the strain of battle, showing coolness, courage and steadiness of nerve. The standard we demand of ordinary men is too heroic, especially when we treat their sufferings as of no consequence. And yet these perfectly ordinary men, bully-ragged by discipline, disrespected in their persons, handicapped by hardship and abused in their strength, rise unfailingly to heights of nobility whenever the occasion presents itself. What is more, they do it utterly unconsciously, with the careless untheatric grandeur of original men. The army and its steam-roller methods have done much to degrade their external appearance, but they have not been able to destroy the secret glory which made them willing to submit to the rigors and indignities of the scarlet test. They are out here to prove their manhood. They came here to die that the world might be better. The army chooses to regard such courage as natural—so natural that it is almost to be despised; but it cannot make them lose their elation and quiet gladness in their sacrifice.
Suzette———! My thoughts are forever turning to her—she impersonates the fineness for which we die. She moves among us with her patient serving hands and her quiet self-forgetting kindness. After all, our test—the test which we are called upon to face to-morrow—is the test which women have been facing without complaining throughout the ages, giving up their bodies to be smashed, that by the birth of a new life the world may start afresh The battle-fields on which her sisters have fallen lie far and wide, wherever men have trodden and still tread. For her and her sisters the test of scarlet is never ended. Perhaps it is because of this that she follows us and understands.
It’s time for evening-stables; the men are waking up and crawling out from the underbrush with blinking eyes. The chaps who are to go forward with us to fight the guns are already at the cookhouse, getting their supper. They’re laughing and joking as if they hadn’t a care. In about an hour we ought to make a start. The tanks have already commenced to move up; from miles back one can hear the rumble of their progress.
Where shall we be tomorrow? What new march shall we have undertaken? Shall we have broken the line and have sailed off into the blue, pursuing the Hun? Or shall we have finished our last march and be lying very quietly? So long as we break the enemy’s line, what happens to anyone of us does not matter. To lie very quietly would be pleasant; we shall have earned a long, unbroken rest.