No Man's Land Part 23

Now I do not wish to appear over-bloodthirsty, or to pretend for one moment that war is a gigantic and continuous shambles. It is not. But the essence of war is man power, and the points are scored by putting men out of action, without being put out of action yourself. The idea may not be nice--but war is not nice: one may not approve of the sea being salt, but disapproval does not alter hard truth. And having once granted that fact--and surely none can deny it--it is the different methods of scoring points which must be discussed. Some are impersonal--some are not: some are done in cold blood--some in hot.

The whole thing is just a question of human nature; and in war, above every other known thing in this world, it is human nature that tells: it is human nature that is the great deciding factor. A man throws a bomb into a saphead full of Huns. He lies there covered by the darkness, crouching, waiting---- One, two, three--and the sharp roar of the explosion shatters the peace of the night. Guttural cursings and a dreadful agonised moaning follow in the silence that seems the more intense through the contrast. And with a smile of great content wreathing his face, the bomber creeps stealthily away to avoid intrusive flares. The matter was impersonal, the groaning Hun was a Hun, not an individuality. . . .

A couple of men, mud-caked and weary, with a Lewis gun between them, are peering over the top in an early light of dawn. Beside them there are others: tense, with every nerve alert, looking fixedly into the grey shadows, wondering, a little jumpy.

"Wot is it, Bill?" A man at the bottom of the trench is fixing a rifle grenade in his rifle. "Shall I put this one over?"

"Gawd knows." Bill is craning his head from side to side, standing on the fire-step. "Lumme! there they are. Let 'em 'ave it, Joe. It's a ruddy working party." Drawing a steady hand he fires, only to eject his spent cartridge at once and fire again. With a sudden phlop the rifle grenade goes drunkenly up into the mist; with a grunt of joy the Lewis gun and its warrior discharge a magazine at the dim-seen figures.

And later, with intense eagerness, the ground in front will be searched with periscopes for the discovering and counting of the bag. The matter is impersonal; the dead are Huns, not individuals. . . .

But with a bayonet the matter is different. No longer is the man you fight an unknown impersonality. He stands before you, an individual whose face you can see, whose eyes you can read. He has taken unto himself the guise of a man; he has dropped the disguise of an automaton. In those eyes you may read the redness of fury or the greyness of terror; in either case it is you or him. And a soldier's job is to kill. . . .

In nine cases out of ten he has forfeited the right to surrender, for as Jimmy used to say, "There's only one method of surrendering, and that's by long-distance running. When the blackguards come out of their trenches fifty yards away and walk towards you bleating, 'Yes, sare; coming at once, sare, thick or clear, sare;' you may take 'em prisoners, boys."

Thus the doctrine in brief of Jimmy O'Shea, sergeant and cowpuncher, scallywag and sahib, devil and tender-hearted gentleman. I lifted my gla.s.s in a silent toast. The music was sobbing gently; the voices of women came stealing into my reverie; the smell of the brandy in my gla.s.s brought back a memory of other women, other brandy. . . .

The square in the old French town was alive with market carts, which lumbered noisily over the cobble stones, while around the pavements, stalls and barrows did a roaring trade. It was market-day, and the hot summer sun shone down on the busy crowds. Soldiers and civilians, women and small children bargained and laughed and squabbled over the prices of "oofs" and other delicacies for the inner man. Except for the khaki and the ever present ambulance which threaded its way through the creaking country carts, it might have been peace time again in Northern France. Yet eight or nine miles away were the trenches.

Facing the square was an open-air cafe, where a procession of large light beers was pursuing its way down various dry throats, belonging to officers both French and British: beer that was iced, and beautiful to behold. Away down a little farther on sat Jimmy O'Shea; not admitted into the sacred portals marked "Officers only," but none the less happy for that. In front of him was a small gla.s.s of cognac. . . .

It was just as a stout and somewhat heated Frenchman in civilian clothes got up from the little table next to mine that it happened.

There was no sound of warning--it just occurred. The house by the clock was there one moment; the next moment it was not. A roar filled the air, drowning the clattering carts; bricks, tables, beds went hurtling up into s.p.a.ce; walls collapsed and crashed on to the cobbles.

A great cloud of stifling dust rose swiftly and blotted out the scene.

Then silence--the silence of stupefaction settled for a while on the watching hundreds, while bricks and stones rained down on them from the sky.

It was the little Frenchman who spoke first. "Mon Dieu! une bombe. Et moi je suis le Maire." He walked unsteadily towards the cloud of dust, and with his going pandemonium broke loose. Mechanically the beer went down our throats, while in all directions carts b.u.mped and jolted, wheels got locked, barrows overturned. Still the same blue sky; still the same serene sun; but in the place of a quiet grey house--wreckage, dust, death. And around us the first frenzy of panic.

"Do you put that down to an aeroplane?" I looked up to see Jimmy O'Shea beside me. "All right, mother." He was patting an excited woman on her back. "I'll help you." He started to pick up the contents of her barrow, which reposed princ.i.p.ally in the gutter, having been knocked off by a bolting horse. "No need to get your wind up.

You're cutting no ice in this show; you're only on as a super."

The woman somewhat naturally did not understand a word; but O'Shea had a way with women and children, wherein lay the charm of his strange mixture of character.

"Now these eggs, mother dear, these eggs. Bedad! they've gone to their last long rest. We can't even scramble them. Oofs, dear heart, oofs; napoo--finis."

"_C'est tout napoo._" She even laughed as she looked at the concentrated essence of yellow and white flowing slowly down the gutter. "_Mon Dieu! voila une autre._" Another thunderous roar; another belching, choking cloud of dust and death, and a house on the other side of the square collapsed.

"It's no aeroplane, sir," said Jimmy, with his eyes on the sky. "It's a long-range gun, or I'm a Dutchman." He looked down to find a little girl clasping his knee and whimpering. "And phwat is it, me angel?"

He caught her up in his arms and laughed. "Shure! and I've forgotten me little gla.s.s of stuff. Come along with me and find it."

He strode away, only to return with her in a second or two, laughing all over her face. Yes--he had a way with him, had Jimmy O'Shea.

But it was in the final tableau of that morning's work that I remember him best. It was a long-range gun as he said; and they put in fifteen twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls in an hour, round about the square. Two got the hospital, and one hit a barber's shop where an officer was being shaved. I remember we saw him with half his face lathered, and later on we found his hand still gripping the arm of the chair. As for the barber--G.o.d knows----

We sorted out the remnants of some children from the debris of one house; and I left O'Shea after a while with a little kid of eight or nine in his arms. She was booked for G.o.d's nursery, and the pa.s.sing was not going to be easy, for she was. .h.i.t--nastily. And it was while Jimmy was nursing the poor torn atom with the tenderness of a woman that another sergeant of his battalion came on the scene to see if he could help.

"G.o.d! Jimmy," I heard him say, "this makes one sick."

"Sick!" O'Shea's voice was quiet. "Sick! I've stuck many of them, thank the powers, but never again--never again, my bucko--will it be anywhere save in the stomach. Anything else is too quick."

I looked at his face; and I understood. . . .

Yes--I understood because I had seen: otherwise, I should not. He would have been talking another language--one to which I was a stranger: even as were those around me, in that London restaurant, strangers--even as the men, when they first come to France, are strangers. That is the point which is in danger at times of being overlooked, especially by those who remain behind. The men are not changed in nature because they don a khaki coat, or even because they go into the trenches. They have gone to a new school, that is all; and if they would do well they must learn all the lessons--the many and very divergent lessons--they are taught. For in the hotch-potch of war there is a strange mixture of the material and the spiritual; and though at present I am concerned with the former, the latter is just as important. It is the material side of which the men such as Jimmy O'Shea are the teachers. Unless the pupils learn from the O'Sheas, they will have to do so from the Hun. And the process may not be pleasant. . . .

There are many branches of the main lesson: the counters in the game may be sh.e.l.ls or bombs or rifle bullets or bayonets. But the method of scoring is the same in each case--one down or one up. And of them all the bayonet is the counter which is at once the most deadly and the most intolerant of mistakes. A good friend, a hard taskmaster is the bayonet, and O'Shea was the greatest of all its prophets. . . . The main object of his life was to imbue his men, and any one else he could persuade to listen, with its song. His practical teaching was sound, very sound; his verbal lashings were wonderful, unique. He'd talk and talk, and one's joy was to watch his audience. A sudden twitch, a snap of the jaw, and a bovine face would light up with unholy joy. The squad drawn up ready for practice, with the straw-filled sacks in front of them, would mutter ominously, and teeth would show in a snarl.

Absurd, you say; not a bit; just a magnetic personality, and men of the right stuff. Dash it! I've seen even the Quartermaster, whose ways do not lie near such matters, hopping about from one leg to the other when Jimmy's peroration rose to its height.

"Have you a child, MacNab, a little wee kid?" he would begin.

"I have, sargint," MacNab would answer.

"Then can you imagine that wee kid with his little hands cut off? Is it a boy, MacNab?"

"It is, sargint."

"It is. That's good. But they preferred doing it to boys, MacNab.

Listen to me, the lot of you. Don't mind the aeroplane. Number Two in the rear rank. They're like gooseberries out here." Number Two's eyes would abruptly come to earth again and focus themselves on the man in front. "I want you to think," Jimmy would go on quietly, "of the dirty, lousy crowd of German waiters you remember at home in the days before the war. Do you remember their greasy-looking clothes, and their greasy-looking faces, and the way you used to treat 'em as the sc.u.m of the world? Would you have one of them, MacNab, cut the hands off your kid; would you, me bucko?"

"I would not, sargint." MacNab's slow brain was working; his eyes were beginning to glint.

"Then come out here." Jimmy's voice rose to a shout. "Come out and move. Do you see that sack? do you see that white disc? Run at it, you blighter; run, snarl, spit. That's the German who has killed your kid. The white paper is his heart; run, man, run. Stab him, kill him; stuff your bayonet in him, and scream with rage."

The bewildered MacNab, on the conclusion of this tirade, would amble up to the sack, push his gun feebly in its direction, completely miss it--and look sheepishly into s.p.a.ce.

"Mother of heaven! The first compet.i.tor in Nuts and May. Did you hear me tell you to hit the sack, MacNab? For G.o.d's sake, man, stick your bayonet in; hit it with your b.u.t.t; kick it; tear it in pieces with your teeth; worry it; do anything--but don't stand there looking like a Scotchman on Sunday. The dam thing's laughing at you."

And so at last MacNab would begin. Bits of sacking would fly in all directions, streams of straw and sawdust would exude. He's kicked it twice, and hit it an appalling welt with the b.u.t.t of his gun. The sweat pours from his face; but his eyes are gleaming, as he stops at last from sheer exhaustion.

"Splendid, MacNab; you're a credit to Glasgow, me boy. Are you beginning to feel what it's like to stick your point into something, even though it's only a sack?"

But MacNab is already more than half ashamed of his little outburst; he is unable to understand what made him see red--and somewhat uncomfortably he returns to his place in the squad. Only, if you look at Jimmy, you will see the glint of a smile in his eyes: the squad is new--the beginning has not been bad. He knows what made MacNab see red; by the time he has finished with him, the pride of Glasgow will never see anything else. . . .

And yet what do they know of seeing red, these diners of London? It is just as well, I grant, that they should know nothing; but sometimes one wonders, when they talk so glibly of the trenches, when they dismiss with a casual word the many months of hideous boredom, the few moments of blood-red pa.s.sion of the overseas life, what would they think--how would they look--if they did know.

Would they look as did O'Neil's bride, when the robber chief's head arrived at the breakfast table? Lest there be any unfortunates who know not Kipling let me quote:

As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride, Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year, When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.

As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water, In his eye lit the pa.s.sionless pa.s.sion of slaughter, And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife. . . .

Perhaps--who knows? It is difficult to imagine the results of an impossibility--and knowledge in this case is an impossibility. Still at times the grim cynicism of the whole thing comes over one with a rush, and one--laughs. It is the only solution--laughter. Let us blot it out, all this strange performance in France: let us eat, drink and be merry. But some quotations are better not finished. . . .

"Come and join us at our table." A girl was speaking, an awfully dear girl, one to whom I had been among the many "also rans." Her husband--an officer in the infantry--grinned affably from another table.

"In a moment," I answered her, "I will come, and you won't like me at all when I do." Then I remembered something. "Why do you dine with that scoundrel?"

"Who?--My funny old d.i.c.k? A dreadful sight, isn't he, but quite harmless."