Combed Out Part 19

Our enlightened twentieth century has no use for prophets. Christ Himself would have been arrested as a pacifist or a lunatic if He had spoken His mind in the streets of London. And the clergy would have applauded the imprisonment of a dangerous "pro-German." The scribes and Pharisees were more numerous and more powerful than ever before.

Particularly the scribes.

There never was in all the world an infamy as great as the infamy of our war-time Press. A horde of unscrupulous liars and hirelings spat hatred and malice from safe and comfortable positions. They played the hero when no danger threatened. They defied an enemy who could not reach them. They boasted of the deeds they had not done. They gloried in the victories they did not win. They mouthed frantic protestations of injured innocence when they should have felt the burden of guilty shame.

They were mawkishly sentimental when they should have felt keen grief and horror. They denounced murder and they urged others to commit murder. They spewed their venomous slime into every spring of healing water. At a time when clear thinking and balanced judgments were needed more desperately than ever before, they squirted into the air thick clouds of lies, and half-truths, and misleading phrases, and judgments distorted by hatred and warped by malice. And as for those who were either lured on to perpetrate the great iniquity by grandiose and seductive falsehoods or were dragged from their homes and families and sent unwilling to the slaughter, these miserable slaves the Press of all countries urged on, one against the other, brutally deaf to their misery, representing them as glad and cheerful when they had reached the extreme of human suffering, magnifying them into heroes of epic proportions (before they donned their dingy garb of war they were "lice"

that had to be "combed out"), endowing them with absurdly impossible virtues--when they were just ordinary human beings in misfortune with no ambition except to live in peace and comfort--and at the same time bestowing lofty patronage upon them and calling them "Tommies" and sending them cigarettes, chocolates and advice, as though they were children to be petted, with no will or intelligence of their own.

The Press, the cinema, the atrocity placards, and propagandist leaflets, they all practised the same deliberate and colossal deceit and kindled hatred against the enemy. And so successful was this diabolical conspiracy that hatred became second nature to vast ma.s.ses of people. To think evil of the enemy was an article of national faith, and to question this faith, or still more to repudiate it, that was heresy of the most heinous kind. Religion died long ago, but the cult of nationalism that replaced it was infinitely more pernicious in its intolerance and cruelty than religion at its very worst.

Individually men are often good, but collectively men are always bad.

The national mob had never been so powerful, nor had it ever been so servile, and that was why its pa.s.sions were those of the coward and not of the brave man; that was why chivalry and generosity and fair-mindedness were execrated, and only hatred and boastfulness and vindictive malice were allowed to live.

The rapidity with which the time pa.s.sed was terrifying. Although my leave had produced so much disillusionment, I yet dreaded its termination. Just as my life at the front had made me unfit for life at home, so my short spell of life at home had rendered me unfit for further life at the front. Moreover, I knew that my concrete experiences had done a little towards strengthening and confirming the att.i.tude of my few friends, a consideration that gave me some satisfaction. I thought that in time I might get into touch with other people who shared our att.i.tude and then take part in some anti-war movement and fight against the war instead of in it. That would have been the only activity to which I could have devoted myself with energy and enthusiasm. But I would soon have to go back and be muzzled once more by a ruthless discipline and an all-embracing censorship. Moreover, as my leave approached its end I began to regret that I had not striven harder to enjoy the comforts and freedom of civilian life. The dread of the coming return to slavery and dreary routine began to outweigh every other consideration. The prospect of living in a tent crowded with foul-mouthed, noisy soldiers filled me with dismay. I made a feeble attempt at securing an extension of my leave, but failed, and then I resigned myself to my fate.

One afternoon, towards the end of the fortnight, I went to Kew Gardens with my friend.

The softness of the warm September day, the calm trees, and the flowers that were pure untroubled beauty (how I envied them their dispa.s.sionate lives, their tranquil growth, their effortless attainment of perfection, and their unconscious dying!)--all these had a strangely harmonizing influence upon my discordant spirit. We spoke little, and of the war not at all. Indeed, the war suddenly seemed curiously remote and I could hardly hear the throbbing of the guns. I knew that this afternoon would never be lost, that I would often think of it when back at the front. It would remain a dream of tranquil beauty that would haunt me at unexpected moments. I felt that for this alone my leave had been worth while.

The last morning came. I made a successful effort to control myself. I said good-bye. It was all over.

When I got back to camp all the men were out at work. I sat down alone in my tent. I felt slightly dazed, but not as miserable as I had expected to feel. I did not know how to occupy my time. I had brought several books with me, but I felt no inclination to read. Life seemed empty and purposeless. I waited impatiently for the return of the others.

They arrived and the evening pa.s.sed quickly in talk. My friend, whose place was next to mine, remarked that I was far more cheerful than men returning from leave usually are.

The next day and many days after I was unable to shake off the feeling of mental torpor and a vague regret for what had been and what had gone for ever. My leave seemed like a thing I had dreamt of long ago.

Sometimes I asked myself in a puzzled manner: "Have I really been home on leave?"

The end of the war, no one could tell when that would be. But the next leave--it might come in eight or nine months--that was something to look forward to and I began to think of all the things I would do when it actually did come.

IX

ACROSS THE RIDGES

"And Cuchullain ... deemed it no honour nor deemed he it fair to take horses or garments or arms from corpses, or from the dead."

(TAIN BO CUAILGNE, 5th Century).

There were only a few stars visible above, but the whole eastern horizon was flashing and scintillating. Down in the valley, where several British batteries were in action, long thin jets of flame darted forth incessantly.

As the day dawned we could see that the distant ridges were enveloped in drifts of dense, white fog. From time to time patches of the fog would glow redly and then become brilliantly incandescent and throw up sheets of lurid flame. German sh.e.l.ls came whistling over and burst with angry, reverberating roars. Black fountains of earth and smoke spurted up from the fields and left slowly thinning clouds that hung suspended for a while and then dissolved in air. Sepia-coloured puffs appearing in the sky above were followed by sharp explosions and the rattle of descending shrapnel.

For several hours the tumult continued unabated and then the whistle of German sh.e.l.ls became less frequent until at last it died down altogether.

Towards noon about a hundred German prisoners pa.s.sed by under armed escort.

The ridges had been taken.

Our new camp lay at the foot of a gloomy hill. A disused trench ran right across it. Rifles, bayonets, bandoliers, grenades, water-bottles, packs, articles of clothing and bits of equipment lay scattered everywhere. Barbed wire rusted in coils or straggling lengths. Rusty tins and twisted, rusty sheets of shrapnel-riddled corrugated iron littered the sodden mud. Water, rust-stained or black and fetid, stagnated in pools and sh.e.l.l-holes. The sides of the trench were moist with iridescent slime. Dead soldiers lay everywhere with grey faces, grey hands and mouldering uniforms. Their pockets were turned inside out and mud-stained letters and postcards, and sometimes a mildewed pocket-book or a broken mirror, were dispersed round every rotting corpse. In front of my tent the white ribs of a horse projected from a heap of loose earth. Near by a boot with a human foot inside emerged from the black sc.u.mmy water at the bottom of a sh.e.l.l-hole. An evil stench hovered in the air.

We buried all the dead that lay within the camp-lines. Then darkness descended and we crept into our tents.

We were lying on wet, oozy clay, thinly covered with wisps of soaked gra.s.s and decaying straw--there had been a cornfield here a year ago.

There were thirteen of us in one tent. We were wedged in tightly, shoulder to shoulder, our feet all in one bunch.

Candles were lit and some of the men sat up and searched their clothes.

I was conscious of a slight irritation, but was so tired and depressed that I resolved to ignore it and postpone my usual search to the following day.

But as I lay still, trying hard to fall asleep, the irritation increased. At last it became so maddening that I started up in bitter rage. I lit my candle and pulled off my shirt.

"Chatty [lousy] are yer?" said someone in an amused tone.

"I've got a big one crawling about somewhere," I answered. None of us ever admitted that we had more than one or two, even when we knew we had a great many. It was also considered less disreputable to have one "big one" than two small ones.

"It's the Gink's fault--'e swarms with 'em. I was standin' be'ind 'im in the ranks the other day an' I saw three of 'em crorlin' out of 'is collar up 'is neck. 'E never washes and never changes 'is clothes, so what can yer expect?"

The "Gink" flared up at once:

"Yer G.o.d-d.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h--it's youss guys that never washes. I bet yer me borram dollar I ant got a G.o.d-d.a.m.n chat on me...."

A long wrangle ensued. Wild threats and foul insults were flung about.

But the quarrel, like nearly all our quarrels, did not go beyond violent words.

I began to search and soon found a big swollen louse. I crushed it with my thumb-nail so that the blood spurted out. I heard several faint cracks coming from the opposite side of the tent and knew that others were also hunting for vermin.

I examined the seams of my shirt and found two or three more. Then, to my dismay, I discovered several eggs. They are so minute that some are sure to escape the most careful scrutiny. The presence of eggs is always a warning that many nights of irritation will have to pa.s.s by before the young grow sufficiently big to be discovered easily.

I thought I had looked at every square inch of my shirt, but I looked at it a second time in order to make sure. I soon found a whitish elongated body clinging tightly to the cloth. Then I found another wedged into the seam.

Meanwhile, my neighbour, who had been tossing about restlessly and scratching himself and sighing with desperate vexation, lit his candle and began to search busily. The sound of an occasional crack showed how successful he was.

The night was warm and sultry. A storm threatened and it was necessary to close the tent flap. I blew out my candle and wrapped myself in my blankets. I was unable to stretch my legs because others were in the way. I was hemmed and pressed in on all sides. I felt an impulse to kick out savagely, but was able to control myself.

The stifling heat became unbearable, and at the same time the cold, clammy moisture from the soft sodden mud underneath began to penetrate ground-sheet and blankets.

The irritation recommenced. A louse so big that I could feel it crawling along stopped and drew blood. I tried in vain to go to sleep. I heard my neighbour scratching himself steadily. Nor could he find a comfortable position to lie in and kept twisting and turning and moaning. The other men were snoring or fidgeting restlessly.

At length a fitful slumber came upon me and a confusion of rotting bodies swarming with monstrous lice pa.s.sed before my closed eyes. I was fully awake long before reveille, sleepy and unrefreshed, and when reveille came we received orders to move within two hours.

Four of us and one N.C.O. were left behind to load a lorry. And then we, too, packed up and set out to follow the unit.