“And Bully Beef,” he answered. “He can always be left behind with the transport when we’re in action. Old Dan Turpin will look after him. He considers him his own kid already.”
I’ve been sitting here thinking over this conversation, and especially over one sentence, “Death’s not the final tragedy; very often it’s the new start.” Those words really explain our indifference in the face of shell-fire and torture. We no longer fear the separation of the spirit from the body. We don’t regard the reparation as extinction; we view it with quiet curiosity and suspect that it may only mean beginning afresh. Perhaps we’re exceptional in our battery, inasmuch as there are so many who would welcome the opportunity to begin afresh. Tubby certainly must be glad of it; going on the way he was, the noble part of him would never have had a chance. This war has made so many of us aware of a nobility which we never knew we possessed. We’re a little afraid that we shall lose it, if we live through to the corpulent days of peace. We would rather go west at the moment when we are acting up to our most decent standards. It’s odd, but when threatened by death, it’s the fear of life that assails us. The dread of old age grips us by the throat; the terror of old temptations, which of late we have been too athletic in soul to gratify, confronts us. The gray, unheroic monotony of unmerited failures and unworthy successes daunts us. We dread lest when war ends, the old grasping selfishnesses may re-assert themselves. To-day we have the opportunity to go out like vikings, perishing in a storm. To live a few years longer only to shuffle off, will not be rewarding.
At this point I have to leave off. A runner has just come in bringing us word that we are to be prepared to push forward at dawn.
VII
THE Major’s opportunity to prove his girl “a rotten bad guesser” came sooner than we expected. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see Charlie Wraith with a V. C. ribbon on his breast before many days are out. He hardly fills the bill for the popular conception of a hero, with his little bandy-legs and his deathly pallor; but it’s what a chap is that counts. This is how his opportunity occurred.
It was 6 A. M. when we moved off. We had been harnessed up and ready, awaiting our final orders for two hours. When they did arrive, they came with a rush, as per usual; we were scarcely given sufficient time to complete our march before we were required to be in action. Measuring off the distance on the maps which accompanied the orders, we discovered that to be in time for the attack it would be necessary for us to travel all the way at the hard trot. The Major went on ahead of us to reconnoitre the position, leaving Heming to lead the battery. Our direction lay across the plateau from which we had been turned back by enemy fire on the day we lost Tubby. The enemy had been pushed far back now; the roads were so thronged by our own transport that we had to forsake beaten tracks and take our chances across country. There was always the danger that we might mistake landmarks which we believed we had recognised from our maps, and so lose time; there was also the risk that in the open we might be held up by uncut wire-entanglements.
It was a gorgeous morning, blue and golden, with a touch of ice in the air. Over turf and woodlands, as far as eye could search, the dew had flung a silver mesh.
The sky was almost without a cloud; tumbling through its depths, like eels in a tank, aeroplanes looped and wriggled. The landscape was one continuous chain of island-woods, each one of which had been a machine-gun fortress of the enemy. We were told that in some of them the enemy were still fighting, though they knew that they were hopelessly marooned and that our advance had swept on many miles ahead. Under the shadow of trees villages were dotted about, most of them possessing a tall spired church. From what we could see in the hurry of our passage, every human habitation had been laid level with the ground. It was impossible to believe that this destruction was the result of British shells, since our artillery had been too far behind to do the damage. It must have been the deliberate demolition of the Hun when he knew that he had to retire. In his retreat he had stolen everything that he had not destroyed. No food, furniture or live-stock were left; all the inhabitants had been carried off captive.