A Student in Arms Part 4

Now we are at rest for a day or two before the Push. I am to be left out--in charge of carriers. d.a.m.n! I might as well be A.S.C. I see myself counting ration bags while the battalion is charging with fixed bayonets; and in the evening sending up parties of weary laden carriers over sh.e.l.l-swept areas, while I myself stay behind at the Dump. d.a.m.n! d.a.m.n!! d.a.m.n!!! Then I shall receive ironical congratulations on my "cushy" job.

Have just seen the battalion off. I don't start for another five hours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be out of the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phantasy, religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to please a creature of our imagination. We are no better than South Sea Islanders.

Just here the attack was a failure. When I got to the Dump I found the battalion still there. By an irony of fate I was the only officer of my company to set foot in the German lines. After a day of idleness and depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed to some relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to the extremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left.

Being fed up with inaction, I took the party myself. It was a long way. The trenches were choked with wounded and stragglers and troops who had never been ordered to advance. In many places they were broken down by sh.e.l.l-fire, in others they were waist-deep in water. By dint of much shouting and shoving and cursing I managed to get through with about ten of my men, but had to leave the others to follow with a sergeant.

At last we sighted our objective, a cl.u.s.ter of chalk mounds surrounded with broken wire, sh.e.l.l craters, corpses, wreathed in smoke, dotted with men. I think we all ran across the ground between our front line and our objective, though it must have been more or less dead ground. Anyhow, only one man was. .h.i.t. When we got close the scene was absurdly like a conventional battle picture--the sort of picture that one never believes in for a minute. There was a wild mixture of regiments--Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, etc., etc. There was no proper trench left. There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis rifle, and bombs all going at the same time. There were wounded men sitting in a kind of helpless stupor; there were wounded trying to drag themselves back to our own lines; there were the dead of whom no one took any notice. But the prevailing note was one of utter weariness coupled with dogged tenacity.

Here and there were men who were self-conscious, wondering what would become of themselves. I was one of them, and we were none the better for it. Most of the fellows, though, had forgotten themselves. They no longer flinched, or feared. They had got beyond that. They were just set on clinging to that mound and keeping the Huns at bay until their officer gave the word to retire. Their spirit was the spirit of the oarsman, the runner, or the footballer, who has strained himself to the utmost, who if he stopped to wonder whether he could go on or not would collapse; but who, because he does not stop to wonder, goes on miraculously long after he should, by all the laws of nature, have succ.u.mbed to sheer exhaustion.

Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officer who seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I must frankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay.

He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and how for lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men, he had been forced back; and how for eight hours he had disputed every inch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds with the dumb mechanical tenacity of utter exhaustion. "You might go to H.Q.," he said at last, "and tell them where I am, and that I can't hold on without ammunition and a barrage."

I am afraid that I went with joy on that errand. I did not want to stay on those chalk mounds.

I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank G.o.d it has gone well elsewhere; but here we are where we started. Day and night we have done nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees the dead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted and blackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk of glory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softened the gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated and tortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war.

Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and l.u.s.t of power. Maybe through all this evil and pain we shall be purged of many sins. G.o.d grant it! If ever there were martyrs, some of these were martyrs, facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confronted the saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fierce fanatical exaltation of faith that the early Christians had to help them.

For these were mostly quiet souls, loving their wives and children and the little comforts of home life most of all, little stirred by great emotions or pa.s.sions. Yet they had some love for liberty, some faith in G.o.d,--not a high and flaming pa.s.sion, but a quiet insistent conviction. It was enough to send them out to face martyrdom, though their lack of imagination left them mercifully ignorant of the extremity of its terrors. It was enough, when they saw their danger in its true perspective, to keep them steadfast and tenacious.

For them "it is finished." _R.I.P._

V

ROMANCE

I suppose that there are very few officers or men who have been at the front for any length of time who would not be secretly, if not openly, relieved and delighted if they "got a cushy one" and found themselves _en route_ for "Blighty"; yet in many ways soldiering at the front is infinitely preferable to soldiering at home. One of the factors which count most heavily in favour of the front, is the extraordinary affection of officers for their men.

In England, officers hardly know their men. They live apart, only meet on parade, and their intercourse is carried on through the prescribed channels. Even if you do get keen on a particular squad of recruits, or a particular cla.s.s of would-be bombers, you lose them so soon that your enthusiasm never ripens into anything like intimacy. But at the front you have your own platoon; and week after week, month after month, you are living in the closest proximity; you see them all day, you get to know the character of each individual man and boy, and the result in nearly every case is this extraordinary affection of which I have spoken.

You will find it in the most unlikely subjects. I have heard a Major, a Regular with, as I thought, a good deal of regimental stiffness, talk about his men with a voice almost choked with emotion. "When you see what they have to put up with, and how amazingly cheery they are through it all, you feel that you can't do enough for them. They make you feel that you're not fit to black their boots." And then he went on to tell how it was often the fellows whom in England you had despaired of, fellows who were always "up at orders," who out at the front became your right-hand men, the men on whom you found yourself relying.

I had a letter not long ago from a gunner Captain, also a Regular, who has been out almost since the beginning of the war. He wrote: "One of my best friends has just been killed"; and the "best friend" was not the fellow he had known at "the shop," or played polo with in India, or hunted with in Ireland, but a scamp of a telephonist, who had stolen his whisky and owned up; who had risked his life for him, who had been a fellow-sportsman who could be relied on in a tight corner in the most risky of all games.

There is indeed a glamour and a pathos about the private soldier, especially when, as so often happens, he is really only a boy. When you meet him in the trenches, wet, covered with mud, with tired eyes speaking of long watches and hours of risky work, he never fails to greet you with a smile, and you love him for it, and feel that nothing you can do can make up to him for it. For you have slept in a much more comfortable place than he has. You have had unlimited tobacco and cigarettes. You have had a servant to cook for you. You have fared sumptuously compared with him. You don't feel his superior. You don't want to be "gracious without undue familiarity." Exactly what you want to do is a bit doubtful--the Major said he wanted to black his boots for him, and that is perhaps the best way of expressing it.

When he goes over the top and works away in front of the parapet with the moon shining full and the machine guns busy all along; when he gets back to billets, and throws off his cares and bathes and plays games like any irresponsible schoolboy; even when he breaks bounds and is found by the M.P. skylarking in ----, you can't help loving him.

Most of all, when he lies still and white with a red stream trickling from where the sniper's bullet has made a hole through his head, there comes a lump in your throat that you can't swallow; and you turn away so that you shan't have to wipe the tears from your eyes.

Gallant souls, those boys, and all the more gallant because they hate war so much. Their nerves quiver when a sh.e.l.l or a "Minnie" falls into the trench near them, and then they smile to hide their weakness. They hate going over the parapet when the machine guns are playing; so they don't hesitate, but plunge over with a smile to hide their fears.

Their cure for every mental worry is a smile, their answer to every prompting of fear is a plunge. They have no philosophy or fanaticism to help them--only the sporting instinct which is in every healthy British boy.

Then there are "the old men," less attractive, less stirring to the imagination, less sensitive, but who grow upon you more and more as you get to know them. Any one over twenty-three or so is an "old man." They have lost the grace, the irresponsibility, the sensibility of youth. Their eyes and mouths are steadier, their movements more deliberate. But they are the fellows whom you would choose for a patrol, or a raid, where a cool head and a stout heart are what is wanted. It takes you longer to know these. They are less responsive to your advances. But when you have tested them and they have tested you, you know that you have that which is stronger than any terror of night or day, a loyalty which nothing can shake.

And then when he thinks how little he deserves all this love and loyalty, the subaltern's heart aches with a feeling that can find no expression either in word or deed.

This is a tale that has often been told, and that people in England know by heart. It cannot be told too often. It cannot be learnt too well. For the time will come when we shall need to remember it, and when it will be easy to forget. Will you remember it, O ye people, when the boy has become a man, and the soldier has become a workman?

But there are other tales to tell. There are the tales of the sergeant-major and the sergeants, the corporals and the "lance-jacks."

Sergeant-majors, sergeants, and corporals are not romantic figures. If you think of them at all, you probably think of rumjars and profanity.

Yet they are the very backbone of the Army. I have been a sergeant and I have been a private soldier, and I know that the latter has much the better time of the two. He at least has the kind of liberty which belongs to utter irresponsibility. If he breaks bounds in the exuberance of his spirits, no one thinks much worse of him as long as he does not make a song about paying the penalty!

Of course he has to be punished. So many days of sleeping in the guard tent, extra fatigues, pack-drill, and perhaps a couple of hours tied up, as an example to evil-doers. But if he has counted the cost, and pays the price with a grin, we just say "Young scamp!" and dismiss the matter. But if a sergeant or a corporal does the same, that's a very different matter. He has shown himself unfit for his job. He has betrayed a trust. We cannot forgive him. Responsibility has its disadvantages. The senior N.C.O. gets no relaxation from discipline.

In the line and out of it he must always be watchful, self-controlled, orderly. He must never wink. These men have not the glamour of the boy private; but their high sense of duty and discipline, their keenness and efficiency, merit all the honour that we can give them.

Finally--for it would not do for a subaltern to discuss his superiors--we come to the junior officer. Somehow I fancy that in the public eye he too is a less romantic figure than the private. One does not a.s.sociate him with privations and hardships, but with parcels from home. Well, it is quite right. He has such a much less uncomfortable time than his men that he does not deserve or want sympathy on that score. He is better off in every way. He has better quarters, better food, more kit, a servant, and in billets far greater liberty. And yet there is many a man who is now an officer who looks back on his days as a private with regret. Could he have his time over again ... yes, he would take a commission; but he would do so, not with any thought for the less hardship of it, but from a stern sense of duty--the sense of duty which does not allow a man with any self-respect to refuse to shoulder a heavier burden when called upon to do so.

Those apparently irresponsible subalterns whom you see entertaining their lady friends at the Canton or Ciro's do, when they are at the front, have very heavy responsibilities. Even in the ordinary routine of trench life, so many decisions have to be made, with the chance of a "telling off" whichever way you choose, and the lives of other men hanging in the balance. Suppose you are detailed for a wiring party, and you arrive to find a full moon beaming sardonically down at you.

What are you to do? If you go out you may be seen. Half a dozen of your men may be mown down by a machine gun. You will be blamed and will blame yourself for not having decided to remain behind the parapet. If you do not go out you may set a precedent, and night after night the work will be postponed, till at last it is too late, and the Hun has got through, and raided the trench. If you hesitate or ask advice you are lost. You have to make up your mind in an instant, and to stand by it. If you waver your men will never have confidence in you again.

Still more in a push; a junior subaltern is quite likely to find himself at any time in command of a company, while he may for a day even have to command the relics of a battalion. I have seen boys almost fresh from a Public School in whose faces there were two personalities expressed: the one full of the lighthearted, reckless, irresponsible vitality of boyhood, and the other scarred with the anxious lines of one to whom a couple of hundred exhausted and nerve-shattered men have looked, and not looked in vain, for leadership and strength in their grim extremity. From a boy in such a position is required something far more difficult than personal courage. If we praise the boy soldier for his smile in the face of sh.e.l.ls and machine guns, don't let us forget to praise still more the boy officer who, in addition to facing death on his own account, has to bear the responsibility of the lives of a hundred other men. There is many a man of undoubted courage whose nerve would fail to bear that strain.

A day or two ago I was reading _Romance_, by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Hueffer. It is a glorious tale of piracy and adventure in the West Indies; but for the moment I wondered how it came about that Conrad, the master of psychology, should have helped to write such a book. And then I understood. For these boys who hate the war, and suffer and endure with the smile that is sometimes so difficult, and long with a great longing for home and peace--some day some of them will look back on these days and will tell themselves that after all it was Romance, the adventure, which made their lives worth while. And they will long to feel once again the stirring of the old comradeship and love and loyalty, to dip their clasp-knives into the same pot of jam, and lie in the same dug-out, and work on the same bit of wire with the same machine gun striking secret terror into their hearts, and look into each other's eyes for the same courageous smile. For Romance, after all, is woven of the emotions, especially the elemental ones of love and loyalty and fear and pain.

We men are never content! In the dull routine of normal life we sigh for Romance, and sometimes seek to create it artificially, stimulating spurious pa.s.sions, plunging into muddy depths in search of it. Now we have got it we sigh for a quiet life. But some day those who have not died will say: "Thank G.o.d I have lived! I have loved, and endured, and trembled, and trembling, dared. I have had my Romance."

VI

IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

I

SCENE. _A field in Flanders. All round the edge are bivouacs, built of sticks and waterproof sheets. Three men are squatting round a small fire, waiting for a couple of mess-tins of water to boil_.

BILL (_gloomily_). The last three of the old lot! Oo's turn next?

FRED. Wot's the bleedin' good of bein' dahn in the mahf abaht it? Give me the bleedin' 'ump, you do.

JIM. Are we dahn-'earted? Not 'alf, we ain't!

BILL. I don't know as I cares. Git it over, I sez. 'Ave done wiv it!

I dessay as them wot's gone West is better off nor wot we are, arter all.

JIM. Orlright, old sport, you go an' look for the V.C., and we'll pick up the bits an' bury 'em nice an' deep!

BILL. If this 'ere bleedin' war don't finish soon that's wot I bleedin' well will go an' do. Wish they'd get a move on an' finish it.