Guns boomed now and then from the distance. Along the blurred line of the horizon fitful bursts of light blazed up and died, like lightning in a summer sky. Sometimes the blaze was orange, sometimes yellow, and the air throbbed to the ear.
So the night dragged on towards the lemon dawn, with star-shells and distant shell-bursts and the throb of musketry in the plain. With the coming of the light the flares were seen no more, but the angry drumming of rifles never ceased. Daybreak showed the crumbling towers of Ypres, with the smoke of shell-bursts encircling them like a funeral wreath, but the morning mists enshrouded the trenches in the plain.
CHAPTER X
THE COMRADESHIP OF THE TRENCHES
“All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-Star and the Sisters Seven,
Orion’s Belt and sworded hip ...
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor shell shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.”
(“Into Battle,” by Captain Julian Grenfell, killed in action, Ypres, May, 1915.)
The firing-line is the touchstone of character. It is the final instance. There is no appeal beyond it. A man may have shown himself at home to be the best of officers, self-possessed, self-reliant, conscientious, thoughtful for his men; but half an hour’s “frightfulness” at the front can undo the good impression made in months of home training. A good sergeant will relieve an officer of a great deal of routine in ordinary circumstances, but when the company comes under fire the sergeant will, like the men, lean unconsciously on the moral strength of the officer.
No man can hope to be eternally master of his nerves. Modern shell-fire wears the nerves away. A man who would lead his platoon fearlessly into the jaws of hell may feel himself inwardly cringing when he hears the long high whistle of a shell, mingling with the ominous hiss that means it is nearing the end of its journey. But if a man is what the army calls “a good officer,” the first thought that will rise to the surface in him when he comes under fire is, “The men.”
He will know that, almost automatically, the men are watching him to see what he will do. Be they the toughest of veterans, and he the greenest of “subs.,” there is always a subconscious disposition in the soldier under fire to mould himself on the example given by an officer. An officer who is always exhorting his men to be careful (and by this I do not mean the officer who takes sensible measures to check the irrepressible foolhardiness of the British soldier under fire), who indulges in exaggerated demonstrations of horror when a shell shatters a man to fragments at his very elbow, will “rot” the finest company. The men will begin to think before they act, and in consequence lose that singleness of purpose that takes the soldier straight to his appointed goal, that makes just the difference between good and bad troops.
The firing-line is a strange place. There are few situations in life where a man is called upon to hold himself permanently in check. There are emergencies in civil life where a man must subordinate his feelings to a higher interest, but only in war is he compelled to make the perpetual sacrifice of his feelings, to face again and again an ordeal which perhaps never loses its terrors for him.
Do you realize the weight of responsibility resting on the shoulders of the Regimental Officer in war? Here is a situation he is frequently called upon to face. A shell falls right into the midst of his platoon as he is leading his men to or from the trenches. Maybe the men are fresh from home, and this sudden horror that cleaves its bloody path through their ranks is their first taste of war.
There is one man in that platoon who must not lose his head. That is the officer, boy though he be. Those raw and mangled corpses, those groaning, whimpering men that strew the ground, may affright the rank and file; they may make no visible impression on him. In his hands repose the lives of a couple of hundred men. He owes them not only to those men themselves, but to the State. He must maintain his calm, so that the men shall come to see with him that this is but a common incident of war; he must decide whether to put the men under cover or to march straight on; he must collect the survivors, and form them up again; he must, in short, take command for the moment, not only of his own feelings, but of those of his men as well. Though a senseless terror, which highly strung men who come under shell-fire for the first time know all too well, creep over him, he must not show it. He must play the veteran, though the heavens fall in.