Combed Out Part 17

The eastern sky flickered with vivid gun-flashes and scintillated with brilliant sh.e.l.l-bursts. The night was full of rustling noises and sullen thunder-claps, while a more distant roaring and rumbling seemed to break against some invisible sh.o.r.e like the breakers of a stormy sea.

We retired to our huts and tents. Soon after lights-out the Police Corporal came round and shouted:

"Parade at 4.45 to-morrow morning in marching order."

The tumult increased as though the surge were coming nearer and nearer.

Sh.e.l.ls of small calibre pa.s.sed overhead with a prolonged whistle and burst with a hardly audible report. The thunder of bigger explosions shook the huts and caused the ground to tremble.

As I woke the next morning the din of the cannonade broke in upon my senses with a sudden impact. Rumbling, thundering, bellowing, rushing, whistling, and whining, the tumult seemed all around and above us.

Sudden flashes lit up the whole camp so that for fractions of seconds every hut and tent was brilliantly illuminated. Mult.i.tudes of dazzling stars appeared and disappeared.

We drew our breakfast and packed up our belongings. All was confusion in the hut.

We paraded, the roll was called, and as the day began to dawn we marched off.

We pa.s.sed down the main road in long, swaying columns of fours. We left the woodyard behind us and hoped it would be destroyed--how we hated the place for the dreary months we had spent there! The westward stream of refugees had ceased, but an eastward stream of French infantry and field artillery thronged the roads. The artillerymen were mostly tall and powerfully built. The infantry were nearly all elderly men of poor physique. They looked desperately miserable. We exchanged greetings:

"It's a good war!"

"C'est une bonne guerre!"

And then we broke into song:

"Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, _Oh_ it's a lovely war!"

The French did not sing, but we, who were escaping destruction, pa.s.sed from one song to another:

"I don't want to fight the Germans, I don't want to go to war, I'd sooner be in London, Dear old dirty London."

And

"Far, far from Ypers, I'd like to be, Where German snipers Can't get at me."

And

"When this b.l.o.o.d.y war is over, O how happy I shall be, When I get my civvy clothes on, No more soldiering for me."

and all the other songs familiar to every soldier in the British army.

We marched all day along straight roads running in between flat fields and past ugly little villages. As we grew tired and footsore our rollicking spirit abated and the singing died down.

Towards nightfall we halted in a large meadow with a pond in one corner.

Several lorries loaded with tents were waiting for us. We unloaded them, pitched the tents, crept into them, and went to bed.

The rumble of the cannonade sounded faintly in the far distance.

"I reckon it's a b.l.o.o.d.y shame to let the other Tommies and the Frenchies...."

The voice seemed to die away into a drawl as weariness overcame me. I continued to hear the sound of words for a little while, but they conveyed no meaning. And then sleep descended and brought entire oblivion.

VIII

HOME ON LEAVE

"I have several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feeling should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men."

(TOLSTOY.)

A change had come over us all. Instead of long spells of dreary silence interrupted by outbursts of irritability, by grumbling and by violent quarrels over nothing, there was animated conversations and sometimes even gaiety. Our talk was all about one subject--not about peace, for we had abandoned all hope of peace and hardly ever thought of it--but about leave. We had been waiting for seventeen months when, without warning, a leave allotment was a.s.signed to our unit. About half a dozen men were going every day and no one knew whose turn would come next. We were full of intense excitement and glad expectation, but also of anxiety in case something should happen to stop our leave altogether.

I made up my mind to enjoy myself thoroughly. I would see parents and friends and forget all about the army and the war. I would be gay and frivolous and go to theatres, music-halls and cafes. And one day I would spend in the British Museum and lose myself in books--that would be just like old times! Of course, our leave would not last for ever and the return journey would be terrible. No doubt the fortnight would pa.s.s very quickly, but I determined to enjoy every single hour with deliberation and understanding, and to squeeze every drop of pleasure out of it. How many hours were there in a fortnight? More than three hundred! Many would be wasted in sleep, but still, there would be many left and by dwelling upon each one, the fortnight would seem an age.

An afternoon and an evening in a train that travelled all too slowly. A night and half a day at Calais Rest Camp. How terrible was the rankling impatience that gnawed our hearts as the hours dragged on.

But at last we were on the leave boat. There was another long delay, and then, with a feeling of immense relief, we heard the engines throb and the paddle-wheels begin to turn. I looked overboard and saw white foam hissing along the surface of water rapidly widening between us and the quay.

Seventeen months of exile and slavery had come to an end and before us lay a wonderful fortnight of freedom and happiness. And at the end of the fortnight? There was no need to think of that now.

The sea was blue and smooth and a cool breeze was blowing. We saw the cliffs of England grow larger and larger. Soon we were able to distinguish the town of Dover, the houses cl.u.s.tered round the harbour, and the Castle up on the cliff. It was there that I had begun my career as a soldier more than two years before. How much had happened since then! I felt that I had become a different being altogether.

The boat entered the harbour and ran alongside the quay. A train was waiting for us. We poured out of the ship in two streams that spread out fan-wise and flowed into the carriages.

It was good to sit by the window in a comfortable compartment and lean back against soft cushions.

Glad antic.i.p.ation and barely suppressed excitement were visible on everybody's face.

The train sped through familiar country: meadows, pastures, cornfields, orchards and woodlands. People waved their handkerchiefs at us from cottage windows.

It was growing dark as the first rows of drab suburban houses began to glide past.

So this was London. I stared out of the window and tried to grasp the tremendous, wonderful fact with all the power of my mind. Somehow or other it did not seem real, but I felt I could make it real by an effort of the will.

Streets and houses and moving people soon crowded the whole view. The people filled me with intense curiosity. I longed to talk to them and find out what they felt and thought about the war.

We entered Victoria Station. I opened the door of the compartment with hasty, trembling hands. I did not wait to change my French money, but hurried out into a street and got on to a 'bus.

London, with its subdued lights, lay all around me. It had not changed since I saw it last, and yet I felt it ought to have changed. The reason was that I had changed. And then I began to fear that I had changed beyond the power of recovery. The oppressive sensation that I was in a dream forced itself upon me. I felt that there was only one reality in the whole world--the war. Would I ever escape from the war? It would come to an end some day, and I would leave the army, but would not the war obsess me until the end of my life? Would I ever be myself again?

But this was not the way to enjoy my leave! I began to feel disappointed at not being so happy as I had expected to be. Why was I not full of rapture? Why did not every object fill me with delight? But I ought to have known that habitual discontent and bitterness and revolt are not shaken off in a few hours or a few days, and that they persist even after their immediate cause has been removed.

I looked round at the other people sitting on the 'bus. I had visited foreign countries in former years, but never before had I felt that I was amongst complete strangers. There are moments when a dog, a horse, or a bird fills us with a sense of the uncanny--its mind is an insoluble mystery, with depths so dark and inscrutable that one feels something that approaches fear and horror. And so it was as I sat on the 'bus. The civilians around me seemed like animals of a different species. They were not human at all--or was it I who was not human?

I went to another seat in order to listen to a man and woman who were talking together. I felt that if they were to talk about the war, the uncanny spell would be broken, the dream would dissolve and I would be restored to my own fellow creatures. But they spoke about trivial domestic matters and about a flower show. If they had only mentioned the word "war" I would have felt relieved by its familiarity, but they did not mention it once.