Combed Out Part 14

And all at once, without any warning, the thunder was loosened upon us.

There was an ear-splitting roar and in a moment candles were swept away, benches and tables overturned, and the whole crowd of men was down on the floor, trembling and panic-stricken. Another detonation, and then another, shaking the ground and reverberating, and sending up showers of stones and loose earth that came rattling down on to the canteen-roof, while the huddled, sprawling ma.s.s of human bodies shook and squirmed with terror. The droning of propellers could be plainly heard, then it grew weaker and weaker, until it pa.s.sed away. One by one the men got up.

Someone lit a candle. Tables, benches, and prostrate bodies had been thrown into confusion. Cards and coins and overturned beer-mugs littered the floor. The smell of spilt beer mingled with the smell of stale tobacco. A few of us stepped out into the open air. We inhaled a pungent, sulphurous stench. We were sure our camp had been bombed this time and were fearful lest any of our friends had been hit. We walked past the Church tent--it was full of rents and holes. And just beyond it was a huge pit with fresh soil heaped up in a ring around it. Loose earth and stones and sods were scattered everywhere. Then we saw something move in the darkness--it was a man on all fours, dragging himself painfully along and uttering a groan with every breath. Two bearers arrived with a stretcher. They put it down by his side and helped him on to it. Then they picked it up and disappeared in the gloom. We had hardly walked a few yards further when we saw a light approaching us. We went towards it. A man was staggering slowly along and leaning on the shoulder of a comrade who was carrying a lantern. He supported his right elbow with his left hand, down the back of which two thin streams of blood were winding. His left sleeve was darkly stained and the blood was dripping from it. His face was very pale and the corners of his mouth were slightly turned down.

Suddenly the broad white beam of a searchlight swung across the darkness. For a time it seemed to paw the sky in a hesitating fashion and then it remained fixed on one spot.

"There 'e is! There 'e is!" someone shouted in an excited voice.

In the white track was a brilliant silver object travelling along at a great speed. A number of anti-aircraft guns opened fire simultaneously, and all around the shining fugitive innumerable stars of pale, liquid gold flashed out and melted away again.

"I bet they're puttin' 'is b.l.o.o.d.y wind up! Rotten b.a.s.t.a.r.d, bombin' a lot o' wounded! If I get 'old of a Fritz up the line, I'll murder 'im. Yer won't catch me takin' no more pris'ners, I tell yer."

A flashing star suddenly seemed to envelop the aeroplane.

"Got 'im that time--b.l.o.o.d.y good shot--'e's comin' down, look, look, 'e's comin' down! Look, 'e's all in flames!"

But the aeroplane sped on, growing smaller and smaller. Then the white beam swung back and was extinguished, while the guns ceased firing.

"Fine lot o' gunners we got--couldn't 'it a Zep 'alf a yard orf! They ain't worth the grub they get!"

We returned to our marquee and sat down on our kits. My friend Private Black came in after us, smiling ruefully. I asked him what was the matter.

"I was playing the piano in the Sergeants' Mess when the first one dropped. We all jumped up together and rushed out. Then the second one burst and I lost my head and didn't know where I was going. I darted to and fro, tripping over tent-ropes and dashing up against revetments. I never had the wind up so much in all my life. I couldn't get my breath, there was a kind of weight on my stomach and a tightness round my chest and throat, and my knees kept on giving way all the time. The third one burst and I fell down and crawled under some ropes and lay flat against some sand-bags, trembling all over and feeling as though I was going to choke. I waited for a long time, but nothing happened, so I got up and looked round. Lucky escape for us! There's a terrific hole by the Red Cross and another one behind the bath-house. The third's in the next field. Only two men hit. O'Neil's got it in the elbow--he's all right for Blighty. Poor old Hartog's badly hurt--a frightful gash in the thigh with the piece still in it. I hope he won't have to lose his leg.

Christ, I'm glad it's all over--I wouldn't like to go through that again."

There was silence for a while, but soon the silence was broken by the distant muttering of anti-aircraft fire.

"Jesus Christ Almighty--'e's comin' again--O G.o.d, why can't 'e leave us alone."

We stood outside the marquee and anxiously watched the horizon. We heard a faint humming noise. It grew louder and louder until it became a deep, droning buzz that rose and fell in regular pulsation. Then boom--boom--boom--three times the sullen roar of distant explosions sounded. Then there came the familiar rushing, whistling noise of a descending bomb. We flung ourselves down in the wet gra.s.s. I felt every muscle in my body contract as though I were trying to make myself as small as a pin point in expectation of the terrible moment. There was a dull thud close by and I felt the earth vibrate. The bomb had fallen a few yards away, but had merely buried itself in the earth without exploding.

There was no anti-aircraft fire, but the droning noise continued loudly, rising and falling. Private Trotter, who was lying beside me, was drawing his breath in sharply between his lips. Our fear of impending disaster was prolonged intolerably. The droning propeller seemed to be directly above us. I tried to a.n.a.lyse my feelings. If one finger is held close to the middle of the forehead a curious sensation of strain seems to gather in that spot. That was precisely the sensation I had at the back of my head and neck, only with far greater intensity. It was the concentrated, agonizing consciousness of the swift descent of a huge iron ma.s.s that will strike the base of the head and blow the whole body to pieces. In the region of the solar-plexus I had a feeling of oppression such as one often has before an examination, before jumping into an icy river, before opening a letter that may contain bad news. I also breathed more heavily than usual. I made no attempt to master these sensations. It occurred to me that fear is merely a physical reaction that cannot be avoided. If a man reacts so violently that he is overcome and rushes about as though he were demented, it is no more his fault than if he shivers with cold. A man can stop shivering by an effort of the will, but only to a certain extent. And no effort of the will can prevent him from feeling cold. In the same way, no effort of the will can prevent him from feeling fear, and only to a limited extent can the will control the outward manifestations of fear. Nevertheless, some distraction may enable a man to forget his fear for a while, just as it may enable him to forget the cold. I was so intent upon self-a.n.a.lysis that I lost consciousness of everything except my mental concentration, even of those sensations I was trying to a.n.a.lyse, for the very act of a.n.a.lysis was destroying them. As they grew weaker, the effort of my will increased. It became so great that I grew conscious of great mental tension and at the same time I realized that my fear had vanished altogether. For a brief s.p.a.ce I had a sensation of vacuity as though I could neither think nor feel. Then my mental effort suddenly collapsed, I once more became aware of the droning overhead, and with a rush my former fears were upon me again. I pressed myself flat to earth. I heard the descent of a bomb. I trembled and tried to shrink to nothing. There was a deafening thunder-clap and the ground shook. A quant.i.ty of loose earth came down upon us. Another bomb descended--every muscle in my body tightened and I stopped breathing altogether. But the explosion that followed was fainter than the last. Then there was another, still further off. All my muscles gradually relaxed and a delicious feeling of relief pervaded my whole being. The buzzing noise became more and more feeble. I got up and walked back to the marquee, trembling and weak at the knees. The others followed.

Most of us went to bed, but a few continued to pace up and down in great agitation. One man picked up his blankets in a bundle and went off in order to sleep in the open fields, far away from the camp.

An hour had hardly pa.s.sed before distant anti-aircraft fire broke out again. Anxiety began to renew its tortures. We heard the dull, sullen roar of bombs exploding at intervals. Then fourteen burst in rapid succession as though a gigantic ball of solid iron had bounced fourteen times with thundering reverberations on a resonant surface. But the sound of firing died down and soon all was quiet. And then sleep came upon us and our troubles were over for a time.

The next morning was windless and clear. All day we kept looking at the sky, but not a cloud was to be seen.

The evening approached, darkness fell, and the stars shone. "Lights Out"

was sounded and we extinguished our candles. None of us said a word, but everybody knew what everybody else was thinking of. And soon we heard the familiar buzz. At first it only came from one propeller, but others arrived and the sound multiplied and increased in volume, and at the same time it rose and fell in irregular gusts and regular pulsations.

Anti-aircraft firing burst out suddenly and for a few minutes there was a blending of whining, whistling, rushing sounds overhead punctuated by faint reports. The firing ceased, but the droning noises continued louder than ever. The German aeroplanes seemed to be above us like a swarm of angry wasps, and above us they seemed to remain, hovering and circling. We awaited the downward rush and the deafening thunder-clap that would destroy us all. One man was groaning loudly. Another shivered. I could hear the chattering of many teeth. My neighbour trembled violently and cowered beneath his blankets. But his fear grew so strong that he could not bear it any longer. He got up and said in a strained voice, trying to appear calm, "I'm goin' to 'ave a look at 'em." He ran out of the marquee and disappeared. I found my powers of resistance ebbing. I was unable to control my imagination. I saw my comrades and myself blown to pieces. I saw the clerk in the office of the C.C.S. write out the death-intimations on a buff slip and filling in a form. I saw a telegraph boy taking the telegram to my home. He stopped on the way in order to talk to a friend. Then he whistled and threw a stone at a dog. He sauntered through the garden gate and knocked at the front door. The door opened ... but I could not face the rest, and with a tremendous mental impulse I turned my mind away to other things. But my terrible thoughts lay in wait for me like tigers ready to rush upon me as soon as my will relaxed its efforts. I tried to compromise, and I imagined myself killed and invented all the details of a post-mortem examination and burial. I found some relief in these imaginings, but soon that implacable telegram claimed my attention once more and drew me on to what I dared not face. I sought distraction by muttering some verses of poetry to myself. They had no meaning to me, they were just empty sound and their rhythm had a hideous pulsation like that other pulsation overhead:

"He above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent Stood like a tower...."

and so on, line after line. The dreariness of the verses grew so intense as to be almost intolerable. At the same time I was dimly conscious of the fact that at one time I thought this pa.s.sage beautiful. But the beat of the blank verse carried me on. Sometimes it seemed to blend with the buzzing of those angry wasps above and sometimes the two rhythms would vie with each other for speed, so that they hurried along each alternately ahead of the other. I came to a line where my memory failed me. I faltered for a moment, but the droning sound seemed to grow into an enormous roar, and I leapt back to the beginning:

"He above the rest...."

and then on and on a second time until my head throbbed with the double pulsation.

Suddenly a man who had been lying on the far side of the marquee got up and said:

"I've had enough of this, I'm going to sleep in a ditch."

He went off. The wasps were still buzzing, but the interruption had broken the spell. I felt a sense of relief. I became conscious of intense weariness and felt ashamed of my fears. I cursed the German aeroplanes and thought, "Let them do their worst, I don't care." I made up my mind to go to sleep and resolutely buried my face in my pillow.

Then it occurred to me that I would never be able to enjoy _Paradise Lost_ again, and I was half-amused and agreeably distracted by the trivial thought.

But the wasps were still buzzing. Another man began to groan loudly:

"Gawd--this is b.l.o.o.d.y awful--why the b.l.o.o.d.y 'ell can't they leave us alone!"

Thereupon his neighbour tried to create an impression by appearing calm and philosophical. He said in a strained, breaking voice:

"Think of all the waste in life and treasure this frightful war involves. Think of the moral degradation. Think of the widows and orphans. Think of the...." He was unequal to the effort and his voice trailed away and then seemed to catch in his throat. But he recovered and with a kind of gasp he squeezed out a few more words: "Bill, forgive me for insulting you to-day--I didn't mean it, Bill. Forget it, Bill, forget it! If you get killed without forgiving me, my conscience will always torture...."

"For Christ's sake shut up, yer bleed'n' 'ypocrite," interrupted the gruff voice of "Bill" somewhere out of the darkness. "Yer always bleed'n' well preachin'--it's bad enough 'avin' Fritz over us without you b.l.o.o.d.y well rubbin' it in. If yer don't shut yer mouth, I'll come over an' shut it for yer, 'struth I will."

The philosopher said no more, but another voice made itself heard, that of a good-natured, elderly bachelor, who said with melancholy resignation:

"It's jolly hard, all the same, to be knocked out like this. You're so helpless--no dug-outs, no shelters anywhere...."

"It's doubly hard when you're married," said another. "I haven't got the wind up about myself at all, but I can't help thinking about my wife....

They're going away now, thank the Lord. You never know when they won't be coming back though--that's just the worst of it."

The noise of the propellers was indeed dying away.

Several voices muttered "Thank G.o.d," but one man's teeth were still chattering as though he was so absorbed by his own fear that he had not noticed the disappearance of its cause. Soon there was complete silence and one by one we fell asleep.

Another clear day and another clear night. We lay awake listening anxiously to the bursting of bombs and the muttering of anti-aircraft fire. But we went to sleep in the end and felt drowsy all the following day--a clear day. Casualties came in from a camp that had been bombed overnight, and we saw shattered limbs, smashed heads, and lacerated flesh. Several of our men were looking pale through lack of sleep and had dark rings round their eyes.

Another clear night. The agonizing vigil began again, but I was so weary that I went to sleep a few minutes after lights out. Sullen thunders mingled with my dreams and did not wake me up.

Another clear day. Would the fine weather never end? Late in the afternoon, however, a few clouds collected on the horizon. In the evening the entire sky was overcast and not a star was to be seen. And as we went to bed we heard the rain swishing down upon the canvas roof.

The unspeakable joy we all felt at the prospect of an untroubled night!

"b.l.o.o.d.y fine, this rain: we'll get some proper sleep now, thank G.o.d. I never had the wind up so much in all my life, and I've been out here since '15 and in some pretty hot places too."

"I reckon the longer yer out 'ere the windier yer get. I joined up in '14 like a b.l.o.o.d.y fool. At first I didn't care a d.a.m.n for anything. Then I was wounded on the Somme an' sent across to Blighty. I dreaded comin'

back agin. I only 'ad a little wound in me 'and, an' I used ter plug it wi' dubbin' an' boot-polish ter keep it raw. It didn't 'alf 'urt, but it gave me a extra week or two in 'orspittle. I 'ad to go in the end though--the M.O. didn't 'alf give me a tellin' orf. Jesus Christ, didn't I 'ave the wind up when we went up the line! An' now I'm scared at the slightest sound, an' I sometimes wake up out o' me sleep shiverin' all over. When I was on leave a motor-car backfired in the street--it didn't 'alf make me jump; me mate 'oo was with me said I looked as white as a sheet. The longer yer out 'ere the worse yer get--it's yer nerves, yer know, they can't stand it. In the line it's always the new men what's the most reliable...."

"That's a b.l.o.o.d.y fact. When we first come out, I thought all the Belgian civvies a lot o' b.l.o.o.d.y cowards takin' cover whenever Fritz came over.

_We_ used to stand an' look at 'im. They wasn't cowards, it was us who was b.l.o.o.d.y fools. They knew summat about it, we didn't. All the same, I know one or two old reg'lars 'oo was in it from the first an' never 'ad the wind up any time--there's not many like that though, generally it's the old soldiers what's the worst o' the lot for w.a.n.glin' out o' risky jobs."

"Napoleon was right," observed a small, red-haired lance-corporal, whose remarks generally had a sardonic touch, "when he said the worse the man the better the soldier. It's only people who have no imagination and no intelligence who are courageous in modern war. n.o.body with any sense would expose himself unnecessarily and rush a machine-gun position or do the sort of thing they give you a V.C. for. Of course, there are a few cases where it's deserved, and it isn't always the one who deserves it that gets it. I'm quite certain the refined, sensitive, imaginative kind of man is no good as a soldier. He may be able to control himself better than the others at first--educated people are used to self-control--but in the long run his nerves will give way sooner. Moral courage is a thing I admire more than anything, but there's no use for it in the army, in fact it's worse than useless in the army. The man who's too servile to be capable of feeling humiliation and too stupid to understand what danger is--that's the man who makes a good, steady soldier. We've seen men so horribly smashed up by bombs that it makes you sick to look at them, and then people expect us not to be afraid of air-raids. The civvies haven't seen that sort of thing, so they may well show plenty of pluck, although I believe there are a good many with enough imagination to have the wind up when there's an air-raid on."

"b.l.o.o.d.y true. You know, if there was a lot o' civvies an' a lot of Tommies in a Blighty air-raid, I reckon the civvies'd show more pluck than the Tommies. My mate who's workin' on munitions told me 'e saw 'underds o' soldiers rushin' to take shelter in the last raid on London.

O' course there was crowds o' civvies doin' the same, but 'e says there was a lot what didn't seem to care a d.a.m.n. The other day we 'ad a b.l.o.o.d.y parson spoutin' to us--'e said war brings out a man's pluck an' makes an 'ero of 'im. I reckon that's all b.l.o.o.d.y tosh! War makes cowards of yer, that's the 'ole truth o' the matter, I don't care what yer say. I didn't know what fear was afore I joined the army. I know now, you bet! I'm a b.l.o.o.d.y coward now--I don't mind admittin' it. There's things I used ter do what I wouldn't dare do now. When we go up the line I'm in a blue funk from the time I 'ears the first sh.e.l.l burst to the time we goes over the top. An' when we goes over I forgets everythink an' don't know what I'm doin'. P'raps I'll get a V.C. some day wi'out knowin' what I done ter get it. And I'm not the only one like that. Anyone 'oo's bin out 'ere a few months an' says 'e ain't windy up the line's a b.l.o.o.d.y liar, there now...."

"By the way," I interrupted, "how did that orderly who works in the theatre get his Military Medal--he had the wind up more than any of us the other night?"