The Dark Forest

by Hugh Walpole

There comes now a difficult matter. During the later months when I was to reflect on the whole affair I saw quite clearly that that hour between our leaving the wooden house and arriving in the trenches bridged quite clearly for me the division in this business between imagination and reality: that is, I was never after this to speak of war as I would have spoken of it an hour before. I was never again to regard the paraphernalia of it with the curiosity of a stranger—I had become part of it. This hour then may be regarded as in some ways the most important of all my experiences. It is certainly the occasion to which if I were using my invention I should make the most. Here then is my difficulty.

I have nothing to say about it. There's nothing at all to be made of it....

I may say at once that there was no atom of drama in it. At one moment I was standing with Marie Ivanovna under the sunrise, at another I was standing behind a trench in the heart of the forest with a battery to my left and a battery to my right, a cuckoo somewhere not very far away, and a dead man with his feet sticking out from under the cloth that covered him peacefully beneath a tree at my side. There had, of course, been that drive in the wagons, bumping over the uneven road whilst the sun rose gallantly in the heavens and the clanging of the iron door grew, with every roll of our wheels, louder and louder. But it was rather as though I had been lifted in a sheet from one life—a life of speculation, of viewing war from a superior and safe distance, of viewing indeed all catastrophe and reality from that same distance—into the other. I had been caught up, had hung for a moment in midair, had been "planted" in this new experience. For us all there must have been at this moment something of this passing from an old life into a new one, and yet I dare swear that not for any one of us was there any drama, any thrill, any excitement. We stood, a rather lonely little group, in the forest clearing whilst the soldiers in the trench flung us a careless glance, then turned back to their business of the day with an indifference that showed how ordinary and drab a thing custom had made it.

Yes, we made a desolate little group. Semyonov had gone to a house on the farther side of the road up which we had come, a house that flew the Red Cross flag. We had only the right to care for the wounded of certain Divisions and our presence had to be reported. We were left then, Marie Ivanovna, Anna Petrovna, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and I, all rather close together, uncomfortable, desolate and shy, as boys feel on their first day at school. The battery on our left was very near to us and we could see the sharp flash of its flame behind the trees. The noise that it made was terrific, a sharp, angry, clumsy noise, as though some huge giant clad in mail armour was flinging his body, in a violent rage, against an iron door that echoed through an empty house—my same iron door that I had heard all night. The rage of the giant spread beyond his immediate little circle of trees and one wondered at the men in the trenches because they were indifferent to his temper.

The noise of the more distant batteries was still, as it had been before, like the clanging of many iron doors very mild and gentle against the clamour of our own enraged fury. The Austrian reply seemed like the sleepy echo of this confusion, so sleepy and pleasant that one felt almost friendly to the enemy.

Our own battery was inconsistent in his raging. Had he only chosen to fling himself at his door every three minutes, say, or even every minute, we could have prepared ourselves, but he was moved by nothing, apparently, but his own irrational impulse. There would be a pause of two minutes, then three furious explosions, then a pause of five minutes, then another explosion.... I mastered quickly my impulse to leap into the air at every report, by a kind of prolonged extension in my mind of one report into another. Little Andrey Vassilievitch was not so successful. At each explosion his body jerked as though it had been worked by wires; then he glanced round to see whether any one had noticed his agitation, then drew himself up, brushed off imaginary dust from his uniform, coughed and frowned. Trenchard stood close to Marie Ivanovna and looked at her anxiously once or twice as though he would like to speak to her, but she, holding herself very stiffly, watched with sternness the whole world as though she personally had arranged the spectacle and was responsible for its success.

Soon Semyonov came back and said that he must go on to some further trenches to discover the best position for us. To my intense surprise Andrey Vassilievitch asked whether he might accompany him. I fancy that he felt that he would venture anything to escape our adjacency to the battery.

So they departed, leaving us more forlorn than before We sat down on the stretchers: Anna Petrovna, fat, heavy, phlegmatic, silent; Marie Ivanovna silent too but with a look now of expectation in her eyes as though she knew that something was coming for her very shortly; Trenchard near her, trying to be cheerful, but conscious of the dead soldier under the tree from whom he seemed unable to remove his eyes. There was, in the open space near us, a kipiatilnik, that is, a large boiler on wheels in which tea is made. To this the soldiers were crowding with their tin cans; the cuckoo, far away now, continued his cry....

At long intervals, out of the forest, a wounded soldier would appear. He seemed to be always the same figure, sometimes wounded in the head, sometimes in the leg, sometimes in the stomach, sometimes in the hand—but always the same, with a look in his eyes of mild protest because this had happened to him, also a look of dumb confidence that some one somewhere would make things right for him. He came either to us or to the Red Cross building across the road, according to his company. One soldier with a torn thumb cried bitterly, looking at his thumb and shaking his head at it, but he alone showed any emotion. The others suffered the sting of the iodine without a word, walking off when they were bandaged, or carried by our sanitars on the stretchers, still with that look of wonder and trust in their eyes.

And how glad we were when there was any work to do! The sun rose high in the sky, the morning advanced, Semyonov and Andrey Vassilievitch did not return. For the greater part of the time we did not speak, nor move. I was conscious of an increasing rage against the battery. I felt that if it was to cease I might observe, be interested, feel excitement—as it was, it kept everything from me. It kept everything from me because it insistently demanded my attention, like a vulgar garrulous neighbour who persists in his tiresome story. Its perpetual hammering had soon its physical effect. A sick headache crept upon me, seized me, held me. I might look at the soldiers, sleeping now like dead men in the trench, I might look at the Red Cross flag lazily flapping in the breeze across the road, I might look at the corpse with the soiled marble feet under the tree, I might look at Trenchard and Marie Ivanovna silent and unhappy on the stretchers, on Anna Petrovna comfortably slumbering with an open mouth, I might listen to the distant batteries, to the sudden quick impatient chatter of the machine guns, to the rattling give-and-take of the musketry somewhere far away where the river was, I might watch the cool green hollows of the forest glades, the dark sleepy shadows, the bright patches of burning sky between the branches, I might say to myself that all these things together made the impression of my first battle ... and then would know, in my heart, that there was no impression at all, no thrill, no drama, no personality—only a sick throb in my head and a cold hand upon my chest and a desire to fling myself into any horror, any danger, if I could but escape this indigestible monotony....