But I digress. And yet—no. For I want you to keep this idea of the diversity of war conditions before you, and how a man may be in a fighting unit for many months and yet go unscathed even in spirit. Or in the most Arcadian parts of the battle area he may come alone against some peculiar shock from which he never recovers. It is all chance.
We made Harry scout officer again, and he was very keen. Between us and the German lines was a honeycomb of old disused trenches where French and Germans had fought for many months before they sat down to watch each other across this maze. They were all overgrown now with flowers and thick grasses, but for the purposes of future operations it was important to know all about them, and every night Harry wriggled out and dropped into one of these to creep and explore, and afterwards put them on the map. Sometimes I went a little way with him, and I did not like it. It was very creepy in those forgotten alleys, worse than crawling outside in the open, I think, because of the intense blackness and the infinite possibilities of ambush.
The Boches, we knew, were playing the same game as ourselves, and might always be round the next traverse, so that every ten yards one went through a new ordeal of expectancy and stealthy, strained investigation. One stood breathless at the corner, listening, peering, quivering with the strain of it, and then a rat dropped into the next 'bay,' or behind us one of our Lewis guns blazed off a few bursts, shattering the silence. Surely there was some one near moving hurriedly under cover of the noise! Then you stood again, stiff and cramped with the stillness, and you wanted insanely to cough, or shift your weight on to the other foot, or your nose itched and the grasses tickled your ear—but you must not stir, must hardly breathe. For now all the lines have become mysteriously hushed, and no man fires; far away one can hear the rumble of the German limbers coming up with rations to the dump, and the quiet becomes unbearable, so that you long for some Titanic explosion to break it and set you free from waiting. Then a machine-gun opens again, and you slip round the corner to find—nothing at all, only more blackness and the rats scuttling away into the grass, and perhaps the bones of a Frenchman. And then you begin all over again.... When he has done this sort of thing many times without any happening, an imperfect scout becomes careless through sheer weariness, and begins to blunder noisily ahead. And sooner or later he goes under. But Harry was a natural scout, well trained, and from first to last kept the same care, the same admirable patience, and this means a great strain on body and mind.... In those old trenches you could go right up to the German line, two hundred yards away, and this Harry often did. The Germans had small posts at these points, waiting, and were very ready with bombs and rifle grenades. It was a poor look-out if you were heard about there, and perhaps badly wounded, so that you could not move, two hundred yards away from friends and all those happy soldiers who spent their nights comfortably in trenches when you were out there on your stomach. Perhaps your companion would get away and bring help. Or he too might be hit or killed, and then you would lie there for days and nights, alone in a dark hole, with the rats scampering and smelling about you, till you died of starvation or loss of blood. You would lie there listening to your own men chattering in the distance at their wiring, and neither they nor any one would find you or know where you were, till months hence some other venturesome scout stumbled on your revolver in the dark. Or maybe the line would advance at last, and some salvage party come upon your uniform rotting in the ditch, and they would take off your identity disk and send it in to Headquarters, and shovel a little earth above your bones. It might be many years....
I am not an imaginative man, but that was the kind of thought I had while I prowled round with Harry (and I never went so far as he). He even had an occasional jest at the Germans, and once planted an old dummy close up to their lines. There was stony ground there, and, as they took it there, he told me, it clattered. The next night he went there again in case the Germans came out to capture 'Reggie.' They did not, but every evening for many months they put a barrage of rifle-grenades all about that dummy.
Then there was much talk of 'raids,' and all the opposite wire had to be patrolled and examined for gaps and weak places. This meant crawling in the open close up to the enemy, naked under the white flares; and sometimes they fell to earth within a few feet of a scout and sizzled brilliantly for interminable seconds; there was a sniper somewhere near, and perhaps a machine-gun section, and surely they could see him, so large, so illuminated, so monstrously visible he felt. It was easy when there was not too much quiet, but many echoes of scattered shots and the noise of bullets rocketing into space, or long bursts of machine-gun fire, to cover your movements. But when that terrible silence fell it was very difficult. For then how loud was the rustle of your stealthiest wriggle, how sinister the tiny sounds of insects in the grass. Everywhere there were stray strands of old barbed wire which caught in your clothes and needed infinite patience to disentangle; when you got rid of one barb another clung to you as the wire sprang back, or, if you were not skilful, it clashed on a post or a rifle, or a tin can, with a noise like cymbals. You came across strange things as you crawled out there—dead bodies, and bits of equipment, and huge unexploded shells. Or you touched a rat or a grass-snake that made you shiver as it moved; the rats and the field-mice ran over you if you lay still for long, and once Harry saw a German patrol-dog sniffing busily in front of him. Sometimes as you went up wind you put your hand suddenly on a dead man, and had to lie close beside him for cover. Or you scented him far off like a dog nosing through the grass, and made him a landmark, whispering to your companion, 'Keep fifty yards from the dead 'un,' or 'Make for the dead Boche.'
When the lights went up you lay very close, peering ahead under your cap; and as they fell away to the ground all your vision became full of moving things and fugitive shadows. The thick rows of wiring posts looked like men working, and that cluster of stones like the head of a man in a shell-hole, watching ... watching you ... gone in an instant.... Then you waited tensely for the next light. There is the murmur of voices somewhere, very difficult to locate. For a long while you stalk it, ready to attack some patrol, some working-party. Then you hear a familiar Tyneside curse ... it is A Company wiring, with much noise.
All this, as I have said, is a heavy strain on mind and body and nerve. It requires a peculiar kind of courage, a lonely, cold-blooded kind of courage. Many men who would do well in a slap-dash fight in the light of day are useless as scouts. Not only are they noisy and impatient, but they cannot stand it.
And yet it is no job for a very imaginative man. There are too many things you can imagine, if you once begin. The more you know about it, the more there is to imagine, and the greater the strain becomes. Now Harry had a very vivid imagination, and he knew all about it—and yet he played this game nearly every night we were in the line for three months ... nothing theatrical, you understand, nor even heroic by popular standards, no stabbing affrays, no medals ... but by my standards itwasvery nearly heroic, and I don't know how he did it.
But this was forgotten later on.
Then Harry had a shock. There was a large sap running out from our line along the crown of a steep ridge. This sap was not held during the day, but at night was peopled with bombers and snipers, and it was a great starting-place for the patrols. One night Harry went out from this sap and crawled down the face of the ridge. It was a dark night, and the Boches were throwing up many flares. One of these came to earth ten yards from Harry. At that moment he was halfway down the slope, crouched on one knee. However, when flares are about, to keep still in any posture is better than to move, so Harry remained rigid. But one of the new scouts behind was just leaving the sap, and hovered uncertainly on the skyline as the light flared and sizzled below. Possibly he was seen, possibly what followed was a chance freak of the Germans. Anyhow, a moment later they opened with every machine-gun in the line, with rifles, rifle-grenades, and high-velocity shells. So venomous was the fire that every man in the line believed—and afterwards hotly asserted—that the whole fury of it was concentrated on his particular yard of trench. Few of us thought of the unhappy scouts lying naked outside. Harry, of course, flattened himself to the ground, and tried to wriggle into a hollow; on level ground you may with luck be safe under wild fire of this kind for a long time. Being on a slope, Harry was hopelessly exposed. 'I lay there,' he told me, 'and simply sweated with funk; you won't believe me, but at one time I could literallyfeela stream of machine-gun bullets ruffling my hair, and thudding into the bank just above my back ... and they dropped half a dozen whizz-bangs just in front of me. While it was going on I couldn't have moved for a thousand pounds.... I feltpinnedto the ground ... then there was a lull, and I leapt up ... so did old Smith ... bolted for the sap, and simply dived in head first ... they were still blazing off sixteen to the dozen, and it was the mercy of God we weren't hit ... talk about wind-up.... And when we got in two bombers thought it was an attack, and took us for Boches.... Rather funny, while the strafe was going on I kept thinking, "Poor old Smith, he's a married man" (he was a few yards from me) ... and Smith tells mehewas thinking, "Mr. Penrose ... a married man ... married man...." What about some more whisky?'
Well, he made a joke of it, as one tries to do as long as possible, and that night was almost happily exhilarated, as a man sometimes is after escaping narrowly from an adventure. But I could see that it had been a severe shock. The next night he had a cold and a bad cough, and said he would not go out for fear of 'making a noise and giving the show away.' The following night he went out, but came in very soon, and sat rather glum in the dug-out, thinking of something. (I always waited up till he came in to report, and we used to 'discuss the situation' over some whisky or a little white wine.)
The following day the Colonel gave him a special job to do. There was the usual talk of a 'raid' on a certain section of the enemy lines; but there was a theory that this particular section had been evacuated. Flares were sent up from all parts of it, but this was supposed to be the work of one man, a hard worker, who walked steadily up and down, pretending to be a company. Harry was told off to test the truth of this myth—to get right up to that trench, to look in, and see what was in it. It was a thing he had done twice before, at least, though myself I should not have cared to do it at all. It meant the usual breathless, toilsome wriggle across No Man's Land, avoiding the flares and the two snipers who covered that bit of ground, finding a gap in the wire, getting through without being seen, without noise, without catching his clothes on a wandering barb, or banging his revolver against a multitude of tin cans. Then you had to listen and wait, and, if possible, get a look into the trench. When (and if) you had done that you had to get back, turn round in a tiny space, pass the same obstacles, the same snipers.... If at any stage you were spotted the odds against your getting back at all were extremely large....
However, Harry was a scout, and it was his job. In the afternoon of that day I met him somewhere in the line and made some would-be jocular remark about his night's work. He seemed to me a little worried, preoccupied, and answered shortly. Hewett was sitting near, shaving in the sun, and said to him: 'You're a nasty, cold-blooded fellow, Harry, crawling about like a young snake every night. But I suppose you like it.'
Harry said slowly, with a casual air: 'Well, so I did, but I must say that strafe the other night put the wind up me properly—and when I went out last night I found I was thinking all the time, "Suppose they did that again?" ... and when I got on the top of a ridge or anywhere a bit exposed, I kept imagining what it would be like if all those machine-guns started just then ... simply dashed into a shell-hole ... and I found myself working for safe spots where one would be all right in case of accidents.... Sort of lost confidence, you know.'
It was all said in a matter-of-fact manner, as if he was saying, 'I don't like marmalade so much as I used to do,' and there was no suggestion that he was not ready to go and look in the Boche Front Line or the Unter den Linden, if necessary. But I was sorry about this. I told him that he must not imagine; that that strafe was an unique affair, never likely to be repeated. But when I went back to the dug-out I spoke to the Colonel.
That night I went up with Harry to Foster Alley, and watched him writhing away into the grey gloom. There were many stars, and you could follow him for thirty yards. And as I watched I wondered, 'Is he thinking, "Supposing they do that again?" and when he gets over near the wire, will he be thinking, "What would happen if they saw me now?" If so,' I said, 'God help him,' and went back to Headquarters.
Three hours later he came into the dug-out, where I sat with the Colonel making out an Intelligence Report. He was very white and tired, and while he spoke to the Colonel he stood at the bottom of the muddy steps with his head just out of the candlelight. All the front of his tunic was muddy, and there were two rents in his breeches.
He said, 'Very sorry, sir, but I couldn't get through. I got pretty close to the wire, but couldn't find a gap.' 'Was there much firing?' said the Colonel. 'The usual two snipers and a machine-gun on the left; from what I heard I should say there were a good many men in that part of the trench—but I couldn't swear.' Now what the Colonel had wanted was somebody whocouldswear; that was what the Brigade wanted; so he was not pleased. But he was a kind, understanding fellow, and all he said was, 'Well, I'm sorry, too, Penrose, but no doubt you did your best.' And he went to bed.
Then I opened some Perrier (we still had Perrier then), and gave Harry a strong whisky, and waited. For I knew that there was more. He talked for a little, as usual, about the mud, and the Boche line, and so on, and then he said: 'What I told the Colonel was perfectly true—I did get pretty close to the wire, and there wasn't a gap to be seen—but that wasn't the whole of it ... I couldn't face it.... The truth is, that show the other night was too much for me.... I found myself lying in a shell-hole pretending to myself that I was listening, and watching, and so on, but really absolutely stuck, trying tomakemyself go on ... and I couldn't.... I'm finished as a scout ... that's all.'
Well, it was all for the present. No thinking, human C.O. is going to run a man in for being beaten by a job like that. It is a specialist's affair, like firing a gun. It is his business to put the right man on the job, and if he doesn't, he can't complain.
So we made Harry Lewis gun officer. And that was the first stage.
Soon after that we went down to the Somme. It was autumn then, and all that desolate area of stark brown earth was wet and heavy and stinking. Down the Ancre valley there were still some leaves in Thiepval Wood, and the tall trees along the river were green and beautiful in the thin October sun. But the centre of battle was coming up to that valley; in a month the green was all gone, and there was nothing to see but the endless uniform landscape of tumbled earth and splintered trunks, and only the big shells raising vain waterspouts in the wide pools of the Ancre gave any brightness to the tired eye.
But you know about all this. Every Englishman has a picture of the Somme in his mind, and I will not try to enlarge it. We were glad, in a way, to go there, not in the expectation of liking it, but on the principle of Henry V.'s speech on the eve of St. Crispin. We saw ourselves in hospitals, or drawing-rooms, or bars, saying, 'Yes, we were six months on the Somme' (as indeed we were); we were going to be 'in the swing.' But it was very vile. After Souchez it was real war again, and many Souchez reputations wilted there and died. Yet with all its horror and discomfort and fear that winter was more bearable than the Gallipoli summer. For, at the worst, there was a little respite, spasms of repose. You came back sometimes to billets, cold, bare, broken houses, but still houses, where you might make a brave blaze of a wood fire and huddle round it in a cheery circle with warm drinks and a song or two. And sometimes there were estaminets and kind French women; or you went far back to an old château, perched over the village, and there was bridge and a piano and guests at Headquarters. Civilization was within reach, and sometimes you had a glimpse of it—and made the most of it.
But we had a bad time, as every one did. After a stiff three weeks of holding a nasty bit of the line, much digging of assembly trenches, and carrying in the mud, we took our part in a great battle. I shall not tell you about it (it is in the histories); but it was a black day for the battalion. We lost 400 men and 20 officers, more than twice the total British casualties at Omdurman. Hewett was killed and six other officers, the Colonel and twelve more were wounded. Eustace showed superb courage with a hideous wound. Harry and myself survived. Now I had made a mistake about Harry. After that scouting episode at Souchez I told myself that his 'nerve' was gone, that for a little anyhow he would be no good in action. But soon after we got to the Somme he had surprised me by doing a very good piece of work under fire. We were digging a new 'jumping-off' line in No Man's Land, two hundred men at work at once. They were spotted, the Boches dropped some Minnies about, and there was the beginnings of a slight stampede—you know the sort of thing—mythical orders to 'Retire' came along. All Harry did was to get the men back and keep them together, and keep them digging: the officer's job—but he did very well, and to me, as I say, surprisingly well. The truth was, as I afterwards perceived, that only what I may call his 'scouting' nerve was gone. It is a peculiar kind of super-nerve, as I have tried to show, and losing it he had lost a very valuable quality, but that was all at present.
Or I may put it another way. There is a theory held among soldiers, which I will call the theory of the favourite fear. Every civilian has his favourite fear, death by burning or by drowning, the fear of falling from a great height, or being mangled in a machine—something which it makes us shiver to think about. Among soldiers such special fears are even more acute, though less openly confessed, but in the evenings men will sometimes lie on the straw in the smoky barns and whisper the things of which they are most afraid.
It is largely a matter of locality and circumstance. In Gallipoli, where the Turks' rapid musketry fire was almost incredibly intense and their snipers uncannily accurate, men would say that they hated bullets, but shell-fire left them unmoved. The same men travelled to France and found rifle fire practically extinct but gun-power increasingly terrible, and rapidly reversed their opinions.
More often, however, there has been some particular experience which, out of a multitude of shocks, has been able to make a lasting impression, and leave behind it the favourite fear.
One man remembers the death of a friend caught by the gas without his gas mask, and is possessed with the fear that he may one day forget his own and perish in the same agony. And such is the effect on conduct of these obsessions that this man will neglect the most ordinary precautions against other dangers, will be reckless under heavy shell-fire, but will not move an inch without his respirator.
With others it is the fear of being left to die between the lines, caught on the wire and riddled by both sides, the fear of snipers, of 5-9's, even of whizz-bangs. One man feels safe in the open, but in the strongest dug-out has a horror that it may be blown in upon him. There is the fear of the empty trench, where, like a child on the dark staircase, another man is convinced that there are enemies lying behind the parapet ready to leap upon him; and there is the horror of being killed on the way down from the line after a relief.
But most to be pitied of all the men I have known, was one who had served at Gallipoli in the early days; few men then could have an orderly burial in a recognized ground, but often the stretcher-bearers buried them hastily where they could in and about the lines. This man's fear was that one day a sniper would get him in the head; that unskilled companions would pronounce his death sentence, and that he would wake up, perhaps within a few yards of his own trench, and know that he was buried but not dead.
That was how it was with Harry. The one thing he could not face at present was crawling lonely in the dark with the thought of that tornado of bullets in his head. Nothing else frightened him—now—more than it frightened the rest of us, though, God knows, that was enough.
So that he did quite well in this battle in a sound, undistinguished way. He commanded a platoon for the occasion, and took them through the worst part of the show without exceptional losses; and he got as far as any of the regiment got. He held out there for two days under very heavy shell-fire, with a mixed lot of men from several battalions, and a couple of strange officers. In the evening of the second day we were to be relieved, and being now in command I sent him down with a runner to Brigade Headquarters to fix up a few points about our position and the relief. There was a terrific barrage to pass, but both of them got through. When his business was done he started back to rejoin the battalion. By that time it was about eleven o'clock at night, and the relief was just beginning; there was no reason why he should have come back at all; indeed, the Brigade Major told him he had better not, had better wait there in the warm dug-out, and join us as we passed down. Now when a man has been through a two days' battle of this kind, has had no sleep and hardly any food for two days, and finished up with a two-mile trudge over a stony wilderness of shell-holes, through a vicious barrage of heavy shells; when after all this he finds himself, worn and exhausted so that he can hardly stand, but safe and comfortable in a deep dug-out where there are friendly lights and the soothing voices of calm men; and when he has the choice of staying there, the right side of the barrage, till it is time to go out to rest, or of going back through that same barrage, staggering into the same shell-holes, with the immediate prospectof doing it all over again with men to look after as well as himself—well, the temptation is almost irresistible. But Harry did resist it—I can't tell you how—and he started back. The barrage was worse than ever, all down the valley road, and, apparently, when they came near the most dangerous part, Harry's runner was hit by a big splinter and blown twenty yards. There were no stretchers unoccupied for five miles, and it was evident that the boy—he was only a kid—would die in a little time. He knew it himself, but he was very frightened in that hideous valley where the shells still fell, and he begged Harry not to leave him. And so we came upon them as we stumbled down, thanking our stars we were through the worst of it, Harry and the runner crouched together in a shell-hole, with the heart of the barrage blazing and roaring sixty yards off, and stray shells all round.
From a military or, indeed, a common-sense point of view, it was a futile performance—the needless risk of a valuable officer's life.
They do not give decorations for that kind of thing. But I was glad he had stayed with that young runner.
And I only tell you this to show you how wrong I was, and how much stuff he had in him still.
And now Colonel Philpott comes into the story. I wish to God he had kept out of it altogether. He was one of a class of officer with which our division was specially afflicted—at least we believed so, if only for the credit of the British Army; for if they were typical of the Old Army I do not know how we came out of 1914 with as much honour as we did. But I am happy to think they were not. We called them the Old Duds, and we believed that for some forgotten sin of ours, or because of a certain strong 'Temporary' spirit we had, they were dumped upon us by way of penalty. We had peculiarly few Regular officers, and so perhaps were inclined to be extra critical of these gentlemen. Anyhow, at one time they came in swarms, lazy, stupid, ignorant men, with many years of service—retired, reserve, or what not—but no discoverable distinction either in intellect, or character, or action. And when they had told us about Simla and all the injustices they had suffered in the matter of promotion or pay, they ousted some young and vigorous Temporary fellow who at least knew something of fighting, if there were stray passages in the King's Regulations which he did not know by heart; and in about a week their commands were discontented and slack. In about two months they were evacuated sick (for they had no 'guts,' most of them), and that was the finest moment of their careers—for them and for us.
Lt.-Col. (Tem'y) W. K. Philpott (Substantive Captain after God knows how many years) out-dudded them all, though, to give him his due, he had more staying power than most of them. He took over the battalion when Colonel Roberts was wounded, and the contrast was painfully acute. I was his adjutant for twelve months in all, and an adjutant knows most things about his C.O. He was a short, stoutish fellow, with beady eyes and an unsuccessful moustache, slightly grey, like a stubble-field at dawn. He had all the exaggerated respect for authority and his superiors of the old-school Regular, with none of its sincerity; for while he said things about the Brigadier which no colonel should say before a junior officer, he positively cringed when they met. And though he bullied defaulters, and blustered about his independence before juniors, there was no superior military goose to whom he would have said the most diffident 'Bo.' He was lazy beyond words, physically and mentally, but to see him double out of the mess when a general visited the village was an education. It made one want to vomit....
Then, of course, he believed very strongly in 'The Book,' not Holy Writ, but all that mass of small red publications which expound the whole art of being a soldier in a style calculated to invest with mystery the most obvious truths. 'It says it in The Book' was his great gambit—and a good one too. Yet he betrayed the most astonishing ignorance of The Book. Any second lieutenant could have turned him inside out in two minutes on Field Service Regulations, and just where you expected him to be really efficient and knowledgeable, the conduct of trials, and Military Law, and so on, he made the most hideous elementary howlers.
But ignorance is easily forgivable if a man will work, if a man will learn. But he would neither. He left everything to somebody else, the second-in-command, the adjutant, the orderly-room. He would not say what he wanted (he very seldom knew), and when in despair you made out his orders for him he invariably disagreed; when he disagreed he was as obstinate as a mule, without being so clever. When he did agree it took half an hour to explain the simplest arrangement. If you asked him to sign some correspondence for the Brigade, he was too lazy and told you to sign it yourself; and when you did that he apologized to the Brigade for the irregularities of his adjutant—'a Temporary fellow, you know.' For he had an ill-concealed contempt for all Temporaries; and that was perhaps one reason why we disliked him so much. He would not believe that a young officer, who had not spent twenty years drinking in mess-rooms, could have any military value whatever. Moreover, it annoyed him intensely (and here he had my sympathy) to see such men enjoying the same pay or rank as he had enjoyed during the almost apocryphal period of his captaincy. And having himself learned practically nothing during that long lotus-time, it was inconceivable to him that any man, however vigorous or intelligent, could have learned anything in two years of war.
Now let me repeat that I do not believe him to be typical of the Old Army, I know he was not (thank God); but this is a history of what happened to Harry, and Colonel Philpott was one of the things which happened—very forcibly. So I give him to you as we found him, and since he may be alive I may say that his name is fictitious, though there are, unhappily, so many of him alive that I have no fears that he will recognize himself. He would not be the same man if he did.
We went out for a fortnight's rest after that battle, and Harry had trouble with him almost at once. He had amused and irritated Harry from the first—the Old Duds always did—for his respect for authority was very civilian and youthful in character; he took a man for what he was, and if he decided he was good stood by him loyally for ever after; if he did not he was severe, not to say intolerant, and regrettably lacking in that veneration for the old and incapable which is the soul of military discipline.
Philpott's arrogance on the subject of Temporaries annoyed him intensely; it annoyed us all, and this I think it was that made him say a very unfortunate thing. He was up before the C.O. with some trifling request or other (I forget what), and somehow the question of his seniority and service came up. Incidentally, Harry remarked, quite mildly, that he believed he was nearly due for promotion. Colonel Philpott gave as close an imitation of a lively man as I ever saw him achieve; he nearly had a fit. I forget all he said—he thundered for a long time, banging his fist on the King's Regulations, and knocking everything off the rickety table—but this was the climax:
'Promotion, by God! and how old are you, young man? and how much service have you seen? Let me tell you this, Master Penrose, when I was your age I hadn't begun tothinkabout promotion, and I did fifteen years as a captain—fifteen solid years!'
'And I don't wonder,' said Harry.
It was very unfortunate.
When we went back to the line, Harry was detailed for many working-parties; and some of them, particularly the first, were very nasty. The days of comfortable walking in communication trenches were over. We were in captured ground churned up by our own fire, and all communication with the front was over the open, over the shell-holes. Harry was told off to take a ration-party, carrying rations up to the battalion in the line, a hundred men. These were bad jobs to do. It meant three-quarters of a mile along an uphill road, heavily shelled; then there was a mile over the shell-hole country, where there were no landmarks or duckboards, or anything to guide you. For a single man in daylight, with a map, navigation was difficult enough in this uniform wilderness until you had been over it a time or two; to go over it for the first time, in the dark, with a hundred men carrying heavy loads, was the kind of thing that makes men transfer to the Flying Corps. Harry got past the road with the loss of three men only; there, at any rate, you went straight ahead, however slowly. But when he left the road, his real troubles began. It was pitch dark and drizzling, and the way was still uphill. With those unhappy carrying-parties, where three-fourths of the men carried two heavy sacks of bread and tinned meat and other food, and the rest two petrol tins of water, or a jar of rum, or rifle oil, or whale oil, besides a rifle, and a bandolier, and two respirators, and a great-coat—you must move with exquisite slowness, or you will lose your whole party in a hundred yards. And even when you are just putting one foot in front of another, moving so slowly that it maddens you, there are halts and hitches every few yards: a man misses his footing and slides down into a crater with his awful load; the hole is full of foul green water, and he must be hauled out quickly lest he drown. Half-way down the line a man halts to ease his load, or shift his rifle, or scratch his nose; when he goes on he can see no one ahead of him, and the cry 'Not in touch' comes sullenly up to the front. Or you cross the path of another party, burdened as yours. In the dark, or against the flaring skyline, they look like yours, bent, murky shapes with bumps upon them, and some of your men trail off with the other party. And though you pity your men more than yourself, it is difficult sometimes to be gentle with them, difficult not to yield to the intense exasperation of it all, and curse foolishly....
But Harry was good with his men, and they stumbled on, slipping, muttering, with a dull ache at the shoulders and a dogged rage in their hearts. He was trying to steer by the compass, and he was aiming for a point given him on the map, the rendezvous for the party he was to meet. This point was the junction of three trenches, but as all trenches thereabouts had been so blotted out as to be almost indistinguishable from casual shell-holes, it was not so good a rendezvous as it had seemed to the Brigade. However, Harry managed to find it, or believed that he had found it—for in that murk and blackness nothing was certain; if he had found it, the other party had not, for there was no one there. They might be late, they might be lost, they might be waiting elsewhere. So Harry sent out a scout or two and waited, while the men lay down in the muddy ruins of the trench and dozed unhappily. And while they waited, the Boche, who had been flinging big shells about at random since dusk, took it into his head to plaster these old trenches with 5-9's. Harry ran, or floundered along the line, telling the men to lie close where they were. There was indeed nothing else to do, but it gave the men confidence, and none of them melted away. As he ran, a big one burst very near and knocked him flat, but he was untouched; it is marvellous how local the effect of H.E. can be. For about ten minutes they had a bad time, and then it ceased, suddenly.
And now was one of those crucial moments which distinguish a good officer from a bad, or even an ordinary officer. It was easy to say, 'Here I am at the rendezvous' (by this time Harry had got his bearings a little by the lights, and knew he was in the right spot) 'with these something rations; the men are done and a bit shaken; so am I; the other people haven't turned up; if they want their rations they can damned well come here and get them; I've done my part, and I'm going home.' But a real good officer, with a conscience and an imagination, would say: 'Yes—but I've been sent up here to get these rations to the men in the line; my men will have a rest to-morrow, and some sleep, and some good food; the men in the line now will still be in the line, with no sleep, and little rest, and if these rations are left here in the mud and not found before dawn, they'll have no food either; and whatever other people may do or not do, it's up to me to get these rations up there somehow, if we have to walk all night and carry them right up to the Front Line ourselves, and I'm not going home till I've done it.' I don't know, but I think that that's the sort of thing Harry said to himself; and anyhow after the row with Philpott he was particularly anxious to make good. So he got his men out and told them about it all, and they floundered on. It was raining hard now, with a bitter wind when they passed the crest of the hill. Harry had a vague idea of the direction of the line so long as they were on the slope; but on the flat, when they had dodged round a few hundred shell-holes, halting and going on and halting again, all sense of direction departed, and very soon they were hopelessly lost. The flares were no good, for the line curved, and there seemed to be lights all around, going up mistily through the rain in a wide circle. Once you were properly lost the compass was useless, for you might be in the Boche lines, you might be anywhere.... At such moments a kind of mad, desperate self-pity, born of misery and weariness and rage, takes hold of the infantryman, and if he carries a load, he is truly ready to fall down and sleep where he is—or die. And in the wretched youth in charge there is a sense of impotence and responsibility that makes his stomach sink within him. Some of the men began to growl a little, but Harry held on despairingly. And then by God's grace they ran into another party, a N.C.O. and a few men; these were the party—or some of them—that should have met them at the rendezvous; they too had been lost and were now wandering back to the line. Well, Harry handed over the rations and turned home, well pleased with himself. He was too sick of the whole affair, and it was too dark and beastly to think of getting a receipt. It was a pity; for while he trudged home, the N.C.O., as we afterwards heard, was making a mess of the whole business. Whether he had not enough men, or perhaps lost them, or miscalculated the amount of rations or what, is not clear, but half of all that precious food was found lying in the mud at noon the next day when it was too late, and half the battalion in the line went very short. Then the Colonel rang up Philpott, and complained bitterly about the conduct of the officer in charge of our ration-party. Philpott sent for Harry and accused him hotly of dumping the rations carelessly anywhere, of not finishing his job.
Harry gave his account of the affair quite simply, without enlarging on the bad time he had had, though that was clear enough to a man with any knowledge.But he could not show a receipt.Philpott was the kind of man who valued receipts more than righteousness. He refused to believe Harry's straightforward tale, cursed him for a lazy swine, and sent him to apologize to the Colonel of the Blanks. That officer did listen to Harry's story, believed it, and apologized tohim. Harry was a little soothed, but from that day I know there was a great bitterness in his heart. For he had done a difficult job very well, and had come back justly proud of himself and his men. And to have the work wasted by a bungling N.C.O., and his word doubted by a Philpott....
And that I may call the beginning of the second stage.
For after that Harry began to be in a bad way again. That shelling in the night and the near concussion of the shell that knocked him over had been one of those capital shocks of which I have spoken. From that time on, shell-fire in the open became a special terror, a new favourite fear; afterwards he told me so. And all that winter we had shell-fire in the open—even the 'lines' were not trenches, only a string of scattered shell-holes garrisoned by a few men. Everywhere, night and day, you had that naked feeling.
Yet in France, at the worst, given proper rest and variety, with a chance to nurse his courage and soothe his nerves, a resolute man could struggle on a long time after he began to crack. But Harry had no rest, no chance. Theaffaire Philpottwas having a rich harvest. For about three weeks in the February of that awful winter the battalion was employed solely on working-parties, all sorts of them, digging, carrying, behind the line, in the line, soft jobs, terrible jobs. Now as adjutant I used to take particular care that the safe jobs in the rear should be fairly shared among the companies in a rough rotation, and that no officers or men should have too many of the bad ones—the night carrying-parties to the front line. But about now Colonel Philpott began to exert himself about these parties; he actually issued orders about the arrangements, and whether by accident or design, his orders had this particular effect, that Harry took about three times as many of the dangerous parties as anybody else. We were in a country of rolling down with long trough-like valleys or ravines between. To get to the front line you had to cross two of these valleys, and in each of them the Boche put a terrific barrage all night, and every night. The second one—the Valley of Death—was about as near to Inferno as I wish to see, for it was enfiladed from both ends, and you had shell-fire from three directions. Well, for three weeks Harry took a party through this valley four or five nights a week.... Each party meant a double passage through two corners of hell, with a string of weary men to keep together, and encourage and command, with all that maddening accumulation of difficulties I have tried already to describe ... and at the end of that winter, after all he had done, it was too much. I protested to the Colonel, but it was no good. 'Master Penrose can go on with these parties,' he said, 'till he learns how to do them properly.'
After ten days of this Harry began to be afraid of himself; or, as he put it, 'I don't know if I can stand much more of this.' All his old distrust of himself, which lately I think he had very successfully kept away, came creeping back. But he made no complaint; he did not ask me to intercede with Philpott. The more he hated and feared these parties, the worse he felt, the keener became his determination to stick it out, to beat Philpott at his own game. Or so I imagine. For by the third week there was no doubt; what is called his 'nerve' was clean gone; or, as he put it to me in the soldier's tongue, 'I've got complete wind-up.' He would have given anything—except his pride—to have escaped one of those parties; he thought about them all day. I did manage, in sheer defiance of Philpott, to take him off one of them; but it was only sheer dogged will-power, and perhaps the knowledge that we were to be relieved the following week, which carried him through to the end of it....
If we had not gone out I don't know what would have happened. But I can guess.
And so Philpott finally broke his nerve. But he was still keen and resolute to go on, in spite of the bitterness in his heart. Philpott—and other things—had still to break his spirit. And the 'other things' were many that winter. It was a long, cold, comfortless winter. Billets became more and more broken and windowless and lousy; firewood vanished, and there was little coal. On the high slopes there was a bitter wind, and men went sick in hundreds—pneumonia, fever, frost-bite. All dug-outs were damp and chilling and greasy with mud, or full of the acrid wood-smoke that tortured the eyes. There were night advances in the snow, where lightly wounded men perished of exposure before dawn. For a fortnight we lived in tents on a hill-top covered with snow.
And one day Harry discovered he was lousy....
Then, socially, though it seems a strange thing to say, these were dull days for Harry. Few people realize how much an infantryman's life is lightened if he has companions of his own kind—not necessarily of the same class, though it usually comes to that—but of the same tastes and education and experience—men who make the same kind of jokes. In the line it matters little, a man is a man, as the Press will tell you. But in the evenings, out at rest, it was good and cheering to sit with the Old Crowd and exchange old stories of Gallipoli and Oxford and London; even to argue with Eustace about the Public Schools; to be with men who liked the same songs, the same tunes on the gramophone, who did not always ask for 'My Dixie Bird' or 'The Green Woman' waltz.... And now there was none of the Old Crowd left, only Harry and myself, Harry with a company now, and myself very busy at Headquarters. And Harry's company were very dull men, promoted N.C.O.'s mostly, good fellows all—very good in the line—but they were not the Old Crowd. Now, instead of those great evenings we used to have, with the white wine, and the music, and old George dancing, evenings that have come down in the history of the battalion as our battles have done, evenings that kept the spirit strong in the blackest times—there were morose men with wooden faces sitting silently over some whisky and Battalion Orders....
And Hewett was dead, the laughing, lovable Hewett. That was the black heart of it. When a man becomes part of the great machine, he is generally supposed—I know not why—to surrender with his body his soul and his affections and all his human tendernesses. But it is not so.
We never talked of Hewett very much. Only there was for ever a great gap. And sometimes, when we tried to be cheerful in the evenings, as in the old times, and were not, we said to each other—Harry and I—'I wish to God that he was here.' Yet for long periods I forgot Hewett. Harry never forgot him.
Then there was something about which I may be wrong, for Harry never mentioned it, and I am only guessing from my own opinion. In two years of war he had won no kind of medal or distinction—except a 'mention' in despatches, which is about as satisfying as a caraway-seed to a starving man. In Gallipoli he had done things which in France in modern times would have earned an easy decoration. But they were scarce in those days; and in France he had done much dogged and difficult work, and a few very courageous, but in a military sense perfectly useless things, nothing dramatic, nothing to catch the eye of the Brigade. I don't know whether he minded much, but I felt it myself very keenly; for I knew that he had started with ambitions; and here were fellows with not half his service, or courage, or capacity, just ordinary men with luck, ablaze with ribbon.... Any one who says he cares nothing about medals is a hypocrite, though most of us care very little. But if you believe you have done well, and not only is there nothing to show for it, but nothing to show that other people believe it ... you can't help caring.
And then, on top of it, when you have a genuine sense of bitter injustice, when you know that your own most modest estimate of yourself is exalted compared with the estimate of the man who commands you—you begin to have black moods....
Harry had black moods. All these torments accumulated and broke his spirit. He lost his keenness, his cheerfulness, and his health. Once a man starts on that path, his past history finds him out, like an old wound. Some men take to drink and are disgraced. In Harry's case it was Gallipoli. No man who had a bad time in that place ever 'got over' it in body or soul. And when France or some other campaign began to work upon them, it was seen that there was something missing in their resisting power; they broke out with old diseases and old fears ... the legacies of Gallipoli.
Harry grew pale, and nervous, and hunted to look at; and he had a touch of dysentery. But the worst of the poison was in his mind and heart. For a long time, as I have said, since he felt the beginning of those old doubts, and saw himself starting downhill, he had striven anxiously to keep his name high in men's opinion; for all liked him and believed in him. He had been ready for anything, and done his work with a conscientious pride. But now this bitterness was on him, he seemed to have ceased to care what happened or what men thought of him. He had unreasonable fits of temper; he became distrustful and cynical. I thought then, sometimes, of the day when he had looked at Troy and wanted to be like Achilles. It was painful to me to hear him talking as Eustace used to talk, suspicious, intolerant, incredulous.... I thought how Harry had once hated that kind of talk, and it was most significant of the change that had come over the good companion I had known. Yet sometimes, when the sun shone, and once when we rode back into Albert and dined quietly alone, that mask of bitterness fell away; there were flashes of the old cheerful Harry, and I had hopes. I hoped Philpott would be killed....
But he survived, for he was very careful. And though, as I have said, he stuck it for a long time, he was by no means the gallant fire-eater you would have imagined from his treatment of defaulters. Once round the line just before dawn was enough for him in that sort of country. 'Things are quiet then, and you can see what's going on.' He liked it best when 'things were quiet.' So did all of us, and I don't blame him for that.
But that winter there was a thick crop of S.I.W.'s. S.I.W. is the short title for a man who has been evacuated with self-inflicted wounds—shot himself in the foot, or held a finger over the muzzle of his rifle, or dropped a great boulder on his foot—done himself any reckless injury to escape from the misery of it all. It was always a marvel to me that any man who could find courage to do such things could not find courage to go on; I suppose they felt it would bring them the certainty of a little respite, and beyond that they did not care, for it was the uncertainty of their life that had broken them. You could not help being sorry for these men, even though you despised them. It made you sick to think that any man who had come voluntarily to fight for his country could be brought so low, that humanity could be so degraded exactly where it was being so ennobled.
But Philpott had no such qualms. He was ruthless, and necessarily so; but, beyond that, he was brutal, he bullied. When they came before him, healed of their wounds, haggard, miserable wisps of men, he kept them standing there while he told them at length exactly how low they had sunk (they knew that well enough, poor devils), and flung at them a rich vocabulary of abuse—words of cowardice and dishonour, which were strictly accurate but highly unnecessary. For these men were going back to duty now; they had done their punishment—though the worst of it was still to come; all they needed was a few quiet words of encouragement from a strong man to a weaker, a little human sympathy, and that appeal to a man's honour which so seldom fails if it is rightly made.
Well, this did not surprise me in Philpott; he had no surprises for me by now. What did surprise me was Harry's intolerant, even cruel, comments on the cases of the S.I.W.'s. He had always had a real sympathy with the men, he knew the strange workings of their minds, and all the wretchedness of their lives; he understood them. And yet here he was, as scornful, as Prussian, on the subject of S.I.W.'s as even Philpott. It was long before I understood this—I don't know that I ever did. But I thought it was this: that in these wrecks of men he recognized something of his own sufferings; and recognizing the disease he was the more appalled by the remedy they took. The kind of thing that had led them to it was the kind of thing he had been through, was going through. There the connection ceased. There was no such way out for him. But though it ceased, the connection was so close that it was degrading. And this scorn and anger was a kind of instinctive self-defence—put on to assure himself, to assure the world, that there was no connection—none at all.... But I don't know.
At the end of February I was wounded and went home. Without any conceit, without exaggerating our friendship, I may say that this was the final blow for Harry. I was the last of the Old Crowd; I was the one man who knew the truth of things as between him and Philpott.... And I went.
I was hit by a big shell at Whizz-Bang Corner, and Harry saw me on the stretcher as we came past D Company on the Bapaume Road. He walked with me as far as the cookers, and was full of concern for my wound, which was pretty painful just then. But he bucked me up and talked gaily of the good things I was going to. And he said nothing of himself. But when he left me there was a look about him—what is the word?—wistful—it is the only one, like a dog left behind.
While I was still in hospital I had two letters from the battalion. The first was from Harry, a long wail about Philpott and the dullness of everybody now that the Old Crowd were extinct, though he seemed to have made good friends of some of the dull ones. At the end of that endless winter, when it seemed as if the spring would never come, they had pulled out of the line and 'trekked' up north, so that there had been little fighting. They were now in shell-holes across the high ridge in front of Arras, preparing for an advance.
The other letter was from old Knight, the Quartermaster, dated two months after I left.
I will give you an extract:
'Probably by now you will have seen or heard from young Penrose. He was hit on the 16th, a nasty wound in the chest from a splinter.... It was rather funny—not funny, but you know what I mean—how he got it. I was there myself though I didn't see it. I had been up to H.Q. to see about the rations, and there were a lot of us, Johnson (he is now Adj. in your place) and Fellowes, and so on, standing outside H.Q. (which is on a hill—what you people call a forward slope, I believe), and watching our guns bombarding the village. It was a remarkable sight, etc. etc.(a long digression)....Then the Boche started shelling our hill; he dropped them in pairs, first of all at the other end of the hill, about 500 yards off, and then nearer and nearer, about 20 yards at a time ... the line they were on was pretty near to us, so we thought the dug-out would be a good place to go to.... Penrose was just starting to go back to his company when this began, and as we went down somebody told him he'd better wait a bit. But he said "No, he wanted to get back." I was the last down, and as I disappeared (pretty hurriedly) I told him not to be a fool. But all he said was, "This is nothing, old bird—you wait till you live up here; I'm going on." The next thing we heard was the hell of an explosion on top. We ran up afterwards, and there he was, about thirty yards off.... The funny thing is that I understood he rather had the wind-up just now, and was anything but reckless ... in fact, some one said he had the Dug-out Disease.... Otherwise, you'd have said he wanted to be killed. I don't know why he wasn't, asking for it like that.... Well, thank God I'm a Q.M., etc. etc.'
'Probably by now you will have seen or heard from young Penrose. He was hit on the 16th, a nasty wound in the chest from a splinter.... It was rather funny—not funny, but you know what I mean—how he got it. I was there myself though I didn't see it. I had been up to H.Q. to see about the rations, and there were a lot of us, Johnson (he is now Adj. in your place) and Fellowes, and so on, standing outside H.Q. (which is on a hill—what you people call a forward slope, I believe), and watching our guns bombarding the village. It was a remarkable sight, etc. etc.(a long digression)....Then the Boche started shelling our hill; he dropped them in pairs, first of all at the other end of the hill, about 500 yards off, and then nearer and nearer, about 20 yards at a time ... the line they were on was pretty near to us, so we thought the dug-out would be a good place to go to.... Penrose was just starting to go back to his company when this began, and as we went down somebody told him he'd better wait a bit. But he said "No, he wanted to get back." I was the last down, and as I disappeared (pretty hurriedly) I told him not to be a fool. But all he said was, "This is nothing, old bird—you wait till you live up here; I'm going on." The next thing we heard was the hell of an explosion on top. We ran up afterwards, and there he was, about thirty yards off.... The funny thing is that I understood he rather had the wind-up just now, and was anything but reckless ... in fact, some one said he had the Dug-out Disease.... Otherwise, you'd have said he wanted to be killed. I don't know why he wasn't, asking for it like that.... Well, thank God I'm a Q.M., etc. etc.'
I read it all very carefully, and wondered. 'You'd have said he wanted to be killed.' I wondered about that very much.
And there was a postscript which interested me:
'By the way, I hear Burnett's got the M.C.—for Salvage, I believe!'
'By the way, I hear Burnett's got the M.C.—for Salvage, I believe!'
I was six months in that hospital, and I did not see Harry for seven. For I was at Blackpool, and he at Lady Radmore's in Kensington. His was a quicker business than mine; and when I had finished with the hospitals and the homes and came to London for a three weeks' laze, he was back at the Depot. Then he got seven days' leave for some mysterious reason (I think there was a draft leaving shortly, and everybody had some leave), and I dined twice with him at home. They had a little house in Chelsea, very tastefully furnished by Mrs. Penrose, whom I now saw for the first time. But I saw more of her that evening than I did of Harry, who was hopelessly entangled with two or three 'in-laws.' She was a dark, gentle little person, with brown, and rather sorrowful, eyes. When I first saw her I thought, 'She was never meant to be a soldier's wife,' but after we had talked a little, I added, 'But she is a good one.' She was clearly very much in love with Harry, and delighted to meet some one who had been with him in France, and was fond of him—for, like all wives, she soon discovered that. But all the time I felt that there were questions she wanted to ask me, and could not. I will not pretend to tell you how she was dressed, because I don't know; I seldom notice, and then I never remember. But she appealed to me very much, and I made up my mind to look afterherinterests if I ever had the chance, if there was ever a question between Harry and a single man. I had no chance of a talk with Harry, and noticed only that he seemed pretty fit again but sleepless-looking.
The second night I went there was the last night of Harry's leave. If I had known that when I was asked I think I should not have gone; for while it showed I was a privileged person, it is a painful privilege to break in on the 'last evening' of husband and wife; I know those last evenings. And though Harry was only going back to the Depot in the morning, it was known there had been heavy losses in the regiment; there was talk of a draft ... it might well be the last evening of all.
I got there early, at Harry's request, about half-past five, on a miserable gusty evening in early November. Harry was sitting in a kind of study, library, or den, writing; he looked less well, and very sleepless about the eyes.
It was the anniversary of one of the great battles of the regiment; and we talked a little of that day, as soldiers will, with a sort of gloomy satisfaction. Then Harry said, slowly:
'I've been offered a job at the War Office—by Major Mackenzie—Intelligence.'
'Oh,' I said, 'that's very good.' (But I was thinking more of Mrs. Harry than Harry.)
Harry went on, as if he had not heard. 'I was writing to him when you came in. And I don't know what to say.'
'Why not?'
'Well,' he said, 'youknow as well as any one what sort of time I've had, and how I've been treated—by Philpott and others. And I've had about enough of it. I remember telling you once on the Peninsula that I thought myself fairly brave when I first went out ... and, my God, so I was compared with what I am now.... I suppose every one has his breaking-point, and I've certainly had mine.... I simply feel I can't face it again.'
'Very well,' I said, 'take the job and have done with it. You've done as much as you can, and you can't do more. What's the trouble?'
But he went on, seemingly to convince himself rather than me. 'I've never got over those awful working-parties in that —— valley; I had two or three 5-9's burst right on top of me, you know ... the Lord knows how I escaped ... and now I simply dream of them. I dream of them every night ... usually it's an enormous endless plain, full of shell-holes, of course, and raining like hell, and I walk for miles (usually with you) looking over my shoulder, waiting for the shells to come ... and then I hear that savage kind of high-velocity shriek, and I run like hell ... only I can't run, of course, that's the worst part ... and I get into a ditch and lie there ... and then one comes that I know by the sound is going to burst on top of me ... and I wake up simply sweating with funk. I've never told anybody but you about this, not even Peggy, but she says I wake her up sometimes, making an awful noise.'
He was silent for a little, and I had nothing to say.
'And then it's all so different now, so damnably ... dull.... I wouldn't mind if we could all go out together again ... just the Old Crowd ... so that we could have good evenings, and not care what happened. But now there's nobody left (I don't expect they'll letyougo out again), only poor old Egerton—he's back again ... and I can't stand all those boot-faced N.C.O. officers and people like Philpott, and all the Old Duds.... You can't get away from it—the boot-facesaren'tofficers, and nothing will make them so ... even the men can't stand them. And they get on my nerves....
'It all gets on my nerves, the mud, and the cold, and the futile Brigadiers, and all the damned eyewash we have nowadays ... never having a decent wash, and being cramped up in a dug-out the size of a chest-of-drawers with four boot-faces ... where you can't move without upsetting the candle and the food, or banging your head ... and getting lousy. And all those endless ridiculous details you have to look after day after day ... working-parties ... haversack rations ... has every man got his box-respirator?... why haven't you cleaned your rifle?... as if I cared a damn!... No, I won't say that ... but there you are, you see, it's on my nerves.... But sometimes' (and though I sympathized I was glad there was a 'but') 'when I think of some of the bogus people who've been out, perhaps once, and come home after three months with a nice blighty in the shoulder, and got a job, and stayed in it ever since ... I feel I can't do that either, and run the risk of being taken for one of them....'
'I don't think there's any danger of that,' I remarked.
'I don't know—one "officeer" is the same as another to most people.... And then, you know, although you hate it, it does get hold of you somehow—out there ... and after a bit, when you've got used to being at home you get restless.... I know I did last time, and sometimes I do now.... I don't say I hunger for the battle, I never want to be in a "stunt" again ... but you feel kind of "out of it" when you read the papers, or meet somebody on leave ... you think of the amusing evenings we used to have.... And I rather enjoyed "trekking" about in the back areas ... especially when I had a horse ... wandering along on a good frosty day, and never sure what village you were going to sleep in ... marching through Doullens with the band ... estaminets, and talking French, and all the rest of it....
'And then I think of a 5-9—and I know I'm done for.... I've got too much imagination, that's the trouble (I hope you're not fed up with all this, but I want your advice).... It's funny, one never used to think about getting killed, even in the war ... it seemed impossible somehow thatyou yourselfcould be killed (did you ever have that feeling?) ... though one was ready enough in those days ... but now—even in the train the other day, going down to Bristol by the express, I found I was imagining what would happen if there was a smash ... things one reads of, you know ... carriages catching fire, and so on ... just "wind-up." And the question is—is it anygoodgoing out, if you've got into that state?... And if one says "No," is one just making it an excuse?... It's no good telling a military doctor all this ... they'd just say, "Haw, skrim-shanker! what you want is some fresh air and exercise, my son!..." And for all I know they may be right.... As a matter of fact, I don't think I'm physically fit, really ... my own doctor says not ... but you're never examined properly before you go out, as you know.... You all troop in by the dozen at the last moment ... and the fellow says, "Feeling quite fit?..." And if you've just had a good breakfast and feel buckish, you say, "Yes, thank you," and there you are.... Unless youaskthem to examine you you might have galloping consumption for all they know, and I'm damned if I'd ask them.... After all, I suppose the system's right.... If a man can stick it for a month or two in the line, he's worth sending there if he's an officer ... and it doesn't matter to the country if he dies of consumption afterwards.... But my trouble is—canI stick it for a month or two ... or shall I go and do some awful thing, and let a lot of fellows down?... Putting aside my own inclinations, which are probably pretty selfish, what is it my duty to do?... After friend Philpott I don't know that I'm so keen on duty as I was ... but I do want to stick this —— war out on the right line, if I can.... What doyouthink?'
'Before I answer that,' I said, 'there's one consideration you seem to have overlooked—and that is Mrs. Penrose.... After all, you're a married man, and that makes a difference, doesn't it?'
'Well, does it? I don't really see why itshouldmake any difference about going out, or not going out ... otherwise every shirker could run off and marry a wife, and live happily ever after.... But it certainly makes it a damned sight harder to decide ... and it makes the hell of a difference when you're out there.... You can make up your mind not to think of it when you're at home ... like this ... but out there, when you're cold and fed up, and just starting up the line with a working-party ... you can't help thinking of it, and it makes things about ten times more difficult ... and as you know, it's jolly hard not to let it make a difference to what you do.... But, damn it, why did you remind me of that? I didn't want to think about it.'
And then Mrs. Penrose came in, and we went down to dinner.
I did not enjoy that dinner. To begin with, I felt like a vulgar intruder on something that was almost sacred, and certainly very precious. For all the signs of the 'last evening' were there. The dishes we had were Harry's favourites, procured at I know what trouble and expense by Mrs. Harry; and she watched tremulously to see that he liked them. She had gone out and bought him a bottle of well-loved Moselle, for a special surprise, and some port; which was a huge extravagance. But that was nothing, if these things could only give a special something to this meal which would make him remember it; for the flowers he never saw, and the new dress went unnoticed for a long time. But I felt that it would all have gone much better, perhaps, if I had not been there, and I hoped she did not hate me.
And Harry was not at his best. The question he asked me I had had no time to answer, and he had not answered it himself. Through most of that dinner, which by all the rules should have been, superficially at least, cheerful and careless, as if there were no such thing as separation ahead, Harry was thoughtful and preoccupied. And I knew that he was still arguing with himself, 'What shall I say to Mackenzie? Yes or No?'—wandering up and down among the old doubts and resolutions and fears.... Mrs. Harry saw this as well as I ... and, no doubt, she cursed me for being there because in my presence she could not ask him what worried him.
But the Moselle began to do its work: Harry talked a little and noticed the new dress, and we all laughed a lot at the pudding, which came up in such a curious shape.... We were very glad to laugh at something.
Then Mrs. Harry spoke of some people in the regiment of whom she had heard a good deal—George Dawson, and Egerton, and old Colonel Roberts. I knew that in a minute we should stumble into talking about the trenches or shells, or some such folly, and have Harry gloomy and brooding again. I could not stand that, and I did not think Mrs. Harry could, so I plunged recklessly into the smoother waters of life in France. I told them the old story about General Jackson and the billet-guard; and then we came on to the famous night at Forceville, and other historic battalion orgies—the dinner at Monchy Breton, when we put a row of candles on the floor of the tent for footlights, and George and a few subs made a perfect beauty chorus. Those are the things one likes to remember about active service, and I was very glad to remember them then. The special port came in and was a great success; Harry warmed up, and laughed over those old gaieties, and was in great form. At that moment I think his answer to Major Mackenzie would have been definitely 'No.'
Mrs. Harry laughed very much too, and said she envied us the amusing times we had together 'out there.' 'You men have all the fun.' And that made me feel a heartless ass for having started on that topic. For I knew that when Harry was away there was little 'fun' for her; and whether he was lying on his stomach in a shell-hole, or singing songs in an estaminet, not thinking much of his wife, perhaps, except when they drank 'Sweethearts and Wives'—it was all one uniform, hideous wait for her. So I think it was hollow laughter for Mrs. P....
Moreover, though I did not know how much she knew about Harry's difficulties, the 'job' and so one, I felt sure that with the extraordinary instinct of a wife she scented something of the conflict that was going on; and she knew vaguely that this exaggerated laudation of the amenities of France meant somehow danger to her.... So that just as I was beginning to congratulate myself on the bucking up of Harry, I tardily perceived that between us we were wounding the wife. And I more than ever wished myself anywhere than sitting at that pretty table with the shaded lights.
Well, we nearly finished the port—Harry still in excellent form—and went upstairs. Harry went off to look for smokes or something, and I knew at once that Mrs. Harry was going to ask me questions about him. You know how a woman stands in front of the fire, and looks down, and kind of paws the fender with one foot when she is going to say something confidential. Then she looks up suddenly, and you're done. Mrs. Harry did that, and I was done. At any other time I should have loved to talk to her about Harry, but that night I felt it was dangerous ground.
'How do you think Harry is looking?' she said. 'You probably know better than I do, nowadays.'
I said I thought he seemed pretty fit, considering all things.
'Do you think he'll have to go out again?' she asked. 'I don't think he ought to—but they seem so short of men still. He's not really strong, you know.'
So she knew nothing about the 'job'; and this put me in a hole. For if I told her about it, and he did not take it, but went out again, the knowledge would be a standing torture to her. On the other hand, Iwantedhim to take it, I thought he ought to—and if she knew about it she might be able to make him. Wives can do a great deal in that way. But that would be disloyal to Harry....
Well, I temporized with vague answers while I wrestled with this problem, and she told me more about Harry. 'You know, he has the mostterribledreams ... wakes up screaming at night, and quite frightens me. And I don't think they ought to beallowedto go out again when they're like that.... I don'twanthim to go out again.... At least,' she added half-heartedly (as a kind of concession to convention), 'if it's his duty, of course....' Then, defiantly, 'No, Idon'twant him to go ... anyhow ... I think he's done his bit ... hasn't he, Mr. Benson?'
'He has, indeed,' I said, with sincerity at last.
'Well, you have some influence with him. Can't you——'
But then Harry came in, and I had lost my chance. I have noticed that while on the stage, conversations which must necessarily be private are invariably concluded without interruption, in private life, and especially private houses, are always interrupted long before the end.
Mrs. Harry went to the piano, and Harry and I sat down to smoke; and since it was the last night Harry was allowed to smoke his pipe. The way Mrs. Harry said that nearly made me weep.
So I sat there and watched Harry, and his wife played and played—soft, melancholy, homesick things (Chopin, I think), that leagued with the wine and the warm fire and the deep chairs in an exquisite conspiracy of repose. She played for a long time, but I saw that she too was watching. And the fancy came to me that she was fighting for Harry, fighting, perhaps unconsciously, that vague danger she had seen at dinner, when it had beaten her ... fighting it with this music that made war seem so distant and home so lovable....
And soon I began to see that she was winning. For when she began playing Harry had sat down, a little restless again, and fidgeted, as if the music reminded him of good things too much ... and his eyes wandered round the room and took in all the familiar things, like a man saying good-bye—the old chair with the new chintz, and the yellow curtains, and the bookcase his father left him—and the little bookcase where his history books were (he looked a long time at them) ... and the firelight shining on the piano ... and his wife playing and playing.... And when he had looked at her, quickly, he sat up and poked the fire fiercely, and sat back, frowning. He was wondering again. This music was being too much for him. Then she stopped, and looked across at Harry—and smiled.
When she played again it was, I think, a nocturne of Chopin's (God knows which—but it was very peaceful and homesick), and as I watched, I made sure that she had won. For there came over Harry a wonderful repose. He no longer frowned or fidgeted, or raised his eyebrows in the nervous way he had, but lay back in a kind of abandonment of content.... And I said to myself, 'He has decided—he will say "Yes" to Mackenzie.'
Mrs. Harry, perhaps, also perceived it. For after a little she stopped and came over to us. And then I did a fateful thing. There was a copy ofThe Timeslying by my chair, and because of the silence that was on us, I picked it up and looked aimlessly at it.
The first thing I saw was the Casualty List, buried in small type among some vast advertisements of patent foods. I glanced down the list in that casual manner which came to us when we knew that all our best friends were already dead or disposed of. Then my eye caught the name of the regiment and the name of a man I knew.Captain Egerton, V.R.Killed. There was another near it, and another, and many more; the list was thick with them. And the other battalions in the Brigade had many names there—fellows one had relieved in the line, or seen in billets, or talked with in the Cocktail Café at Nœux-les-Mines. There must have been a massacre in the Brigade ... ten officers killed and ten wounded in our lot alone.
I suppose I made that vague murmur of rage and regret which slips out of you when you read these things, for Harry looked up and asked, 'What's that?' I gave him the paper, and he too looked down that list.... Only two of those names were names of the Old Crowd, and many of them were the dull men; but we knew them very well for all that, and we knew they were good men ... Egerton, Gordon, young Matthews, Spenser, Smith, the bombing fellow, Tompkinson—all gone....
So we were silent for a long minute, remembering those men, and Mrs. Harry stared into the fire. I wondered what she was thinking of, and I was sorry for her. For when Harry got up there was a look about him which I had seen before, though not for many months—not since the first days on the Somme....
While I was groping after my coat in the hall, Harry came out of his den with a letter which he asked me to 'drop in the box.' I looked at it without shame; it was addressed to Major Mackenzie, D.S.O., etc.