The Glory of the Trenches Part 5

THE GLORY OF THE TRENCHES

We were too proud to live for years When our poor death could dry the tears Of little children yet unborn.

It scarcely mattered that at morn, When manhood's hope was at its height, We stopped a bullet in mid-flight.

It did not trouble us to lie Forgotten 'neath the forgetting sky.

So long Sleep was our only cure That when Death piped of rest made sure, We cast our fleshly crutches down, Laughing like boys in Hamelin Town.

And this we did while loving life, Yet loving more than home or wife The kindness of a world set free For countless children yet to be.

III

G.o.d AS WE SEE HIM

For some time before I was wounded, we had been in very hot places. We could scarcely expect them to be otherwise, for we had put on show after show. A "show" in our language, I should explain, has nothing in common with a theatrical performance, though it does not lack drama. We make the term apply to any method of irritating the Hun, from a trench-raid to a big offensive. The Hun was decidedly annoyed.

He had very good reason. We were occupying the dug-outs which he had spent two years in building with French civilian labour. His U-boat threats had failed. He had offered us the olive-branch, and his peace terms had been rejected with a peal of guns all along the Western Front. He had shown his disapproval of us by paying particular attention to our batteries; as a consequence our sh.e.l.l-dressings were all used up, having gone out with the gentlemen on stretchers who were contemplating a vacation in Blighty. We couldn't get enough to re-place them. There was a hitch somewhere. The demand for sh.e.l.l-dressings exceeded the supply. So I got on my horse one Sunday and, with my groom accompanying me, rode into the back-country to see if I couldn't pick some up at various Field Dressing Stations and Collecting Points.

In the course of my wanderings I came to a cathedral city. It was a city which was and still is beautiful, despite the constant bombardments. The Huns had just finished hurling a few more tons of explosives into it as I and my groom entered. The streets were deserted; it might have been a city of the dead. There was no sound, except the ringing iron of our horses' shoes on the cobble pavement.

Here and there we came to what looked like a barricade which barred our progress; actually it was the piled-up walls and rubbish of buildings which had collapsed. From cellars, now and then, faces of women, children and ancient men peered out--they were sharp and pointed like rats. One's imagination went back five hundred years--everything seemed mediaeval, short-lived and brutal. This might have been Limoges after the Black Prince had finished ma.s.sacring its citizens; or it might have been Paris, when the wolves came down and Francois Villon tried to find a lodging for the night.

I turned up through narrow alleys where gra.s.s was growing and found myself, almost by accident, in a garden. It was a green and s.p.a.cious garden, with fifteen-foot walls about it and flowers which scattered themselves broadcast in neglected riot. We dismounted and tied our horses. Wandering along its paths, we came across little summer-houses, statues, fountains and then, without any hindrance, found ourselves in the nave of a fine cathedral which was roofed only by the sky. Two years of the Huns had made it as much a ruin as Tintern Abbey. Here, too, the flowers had intruded. They grew between graves in the pavement and scrambled up the walls, wherever they could find a foothold. At the far end of this stretch of destruction stood the high altar, totally untouched by the hurricane of sh.e.l.l-fire. The saints were perched in their niches, composed and stately. The Christ looked down from His cross, as he had done for centuries, sweeping the length of splendid architecture with sad eyes. It seemed a miracle that the altar had been spared, when everything else had fallen. A reason is given for its escape. Every Sabbath since the start of the war, no matter how severe the bombardment, service has been held there. The thin-faced women, rat-faced children and ancient men have crept out from their cellars and gathered about the priest; the lamp has been lit, the Host uplifted. The Hun is aware of this; with malice aforethought he lands sh.e.l.ls into the cathedral every Sunday in an effort to smash the altar. So far he has failed. One finds in this a symbol--that in the heart of the maelstrom of horror, which this war has created, there is a quiet place where the lamp of gentleness and honour is kept burning. The Hun will have to do a lot more sh.e.l.ling before he puts the lamp of kindness out. From the polluted trenches of Vimy the poppies spring up, blazoning abroad in vivid scarlet the heroism of our lads' willing sacrifice. All this April, high above the shouting of our guns, the larks sang joyously. The scarlet of the poppies, the song of the larks, the lamp shining on the altar are only external signs of the unconquerable, happy religion which lies hidden in the hearts of our men. Their religion is the religion of heroism, which they have learnt in the glory of the trenches.

There was a line from William Morris's _Earthly Paradise_ which used to haunt me, especially in the early days when I was first experiencing what war really meant. Since returning for a brief s.p.a.ce to where books are accessible, I have looked up the quotation. It reads as follows:--

"Of Heaven or h.e.l.l I have no power to sing, I cannot ease the burden of your fears Or make quick-coming death a little thing."

It is the last line that makes me smile rather quietly, "Or make quick-coming death a little thing." I smile because the souls who wear khaki have learnt to do just that. Morris goes on to say that all he can do to make people happy is to tell them deathless stories about heroes who have pa.s.sed into the world of the imagination, and, because of that, are immune from death. He calls himself "the idle singer of an empty day." How typical he is of the days before the war when people had only pin-p.r.i.c.ks to endure, and, consequently, didn't exert themselves to be brave! A big sacrifice, which bankrupts one's life, is always more bearable than the little inevitable annoyances of sickness, disappointment and dying in a bed. It's easier for Christ to go to Calvary than for an on-looker to lose a night's sleep in the garden. When the world went well with us before the war, we were doubters. Nearly all the fiction of the past fifteen years is a proof of that--it records our fear of failure, s.e.x, old age and particularly of a G.o.d who refuses to explain Himself. Now, when we have thrust the world, affections, life itself behind us and gaze hourly into the eyes of Death, belief comes as simply and clearly as it did when we were children. Curious and extraordinary! The burden of our fears has slipped from our shoulders in our attempt to do something for others; the unbelievable and long coveted miracle has happened--at last to every soul who has grasped his chance of heroism quick-coming death has become a fifth-rate calamity.

In saying this I do not mean to glorify war; war can never be anything but beastly and d.a.m.nable. It dates back to the jungle. But there are two kinds of war. There's the kind that a highwayman wages, when he pounces from the bushes and a.s.saults a defenceless woman; there's the kind you wage when you go to her rescue. The highwayman can't expect to come out of the fight with a loftier morality--you can. Our chaps never wanted to fight. They hate fighting; it's that hatred of the thing they are compelled to do that makes them so terrible. The last thought to enter their heads four years ago was that to-day they would be in khaki. They had never been trained to the use of arms; a good many of them conceived of themselves as cowards. They entered the war to defend rather than to destroy. They literally put behind them houses, brethren, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, lands for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake, though they would be the last to express themselves in that fashion.

At a cross-road at the bottom of a hill, on the way to a gun-position we once had, stood a Calvary--one of those wayside altars, so frequently met in France, with pollarded trees surrounding it and an image of Christ in His agony. Pious peasants on their journey to market or as they worked in the fields, had been accustomed to raise their eyes to it and cross themselves. It had comforted them with the knowledge of protection. The road leading back from it and up the hill was gleaming white--a direct enfilade for the Hun, and always under observation. He kept guns trained on it; at odd intervals, any hour during the day or night, he would sweep it with sh.e.l.l-fire. The woods in the vicinity were blasted and blackened. It was the season for leaves and flowers, but there was no greenness. Whatever of vegetation had not been uprooted and buried, had been poisoned by gas. The atmosphere was vile with the odour of decaying flesh. In the early morning, if you pa.s.sed by the Calvary, there was always some fresh tragedy. The newly dead lay sprawled out against its steps, as though they had dragged themselves there in their last moments. If you looked along the road, all the glazed eyes seemed to stare towards it. "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdom," they seemed to say. The wooden Christ gazed down on them from His cross, with a suffering which two thousand years ago he had shared. The terrible pity of His silence seemed to be telling them that they had become one with Him in their final sacrifice. They hadn't lived His life--far from it; unknowingly they had died His death. That's a part of the glory of the trenches, that a man who has not been good, can crucify himself and hang beside Christ in the end. One wonders in what pleasant places those weary souls find rest.

There was a second Calvary--a heap of ruins. Nothing of the altar or trees, by which it had been surrounded, was left. The first time I pa.s.sed it, I saw a foot protruding. The man might be wounded; I climbed up to examine and pulled aside the debris. Beneath it I found, like that of one three weeks dead, the naked body of the Christ. The exploding sh.e.l.l had wrenched it from its cross. Aslant the face, with gratuitous blasphemy, the crown of thorns was tilted.

These two Calvaries picture for me the part that Christ is playing in the present war. He survives in the n.o.ble self-effacement of the men.

He is re-crucified in the defilements that are wrought upon their bodies.

G.o.d as we see Him! And do we see Him? I think so, but not always consciously. He moves among us in the forms of our brother men. We see him most evidently when danger is most threatening and courage is at its highest. We don't often recognise Him out loud. Our chaps don't a.s.sert that they're His fellow-campaigners. They're too humble-minded and inarticulate for that. They're where they are because they want to do their "bit"--their duty. A carefully disguised instinct of honour brought them there. "Doing their bit" in Bible language means, laying down their lives for their friends. After all they're not so far from Nazareth.

"_Doing their bit_!" That covers everything. Here's an example of how G.o.d walks among us. In one of our attacks on the Somme, all the observers up forward were uncertain as to what had happened. We didn't know whether our infantry had captured their objective, failed, or gone beyond it. The battlefield, as far as eye could reach, was a bath of mud. It is extremely easy in the excitement of an offensive, when all landmarks are blotted out, for our storming parties to lose their direction. If this happens, a number of dangers may result. A battalion may find itself "up in the air," which means that it has failed to connect with the battalions on its right and left; its flanks are then exposed to the enemy. It may advance too far, and start digging itself in at a point where it was previously arranged that our artillery should place their protective wall of fire. We, being up forward as artillery observers, are the eyes of the army. It is our business to watch for such contingencies, to keep in touch with the situation as it progresses and to send our information back as quickly as possible. We were peering through our gla.s.ses from our point of vantage when, far away in the thickest of the battle-smoke, we saw a white flag wagging, sending back messages. The flag-wagging was repeated desperately; it was evident that no one had replied, and probable that no one had picked up the messages. A signaller who was with us, read the language for us. A company of infantry had advanced too far; they were most of them wounded, very many of them dead, and they were in danger of being surrounded. They asked for our artillery to place a curtain of fire in front of them, and for reinforcements to be sent up.

We at once 'phoned the orders through to our artillery and notified the infantry headquarters of the division that was holding that front. But it was necessary to let those chaps know that we were aware of their predicament. They'd hang on if they knew that; otherwise----.

Without orders our signaller was getting his flags ready. If he hopped out of the trench onto the parapet, he didn't stand a fifty-fifty chance. The Hun was familiar with our observation station and strafed it with persistent regularity.

The signaller turned to the senior officer present, "What will I send them, sir?"

"Tell them their messages have been received and that help is coming."

Out the chap scrambled, a flag in either hand--he was nothing but a boy. He ran crouching like a rabbit to a hump of mud where his figure would show up against the sky. His flags commenced wagging, "Messages received. Help coming." They didn't see him at first. He had to repeat the words. We watched him breathlessly. We knew what would happen; at last it happened. A Hun observer had spotted him and flashed the target back to his guns. All about him the mud commenced to leap and bubble. He went on signalling the good word to those stranded men up front, "Messages received. Help coming." At last they'd seen him. They were signaling, "O. K." It was at that moment that a whizz-bang lifted him off his feet and landed him all of a huddle. _His "bit!"_ It was what he'd volunteered to do, when he came from Canada. The signalled "O. K." in the battlesmoke was like a testimony to his character.

That's the kind of peep at G.o.d we get on the Western Front. It isn't a sad peep, either. When men die for something worth while death loses all its terror. It's petering out in bed from sickness or old age that's so horrifying. Many a man, whose cowardice is at loggerheads with his sense of duty, comes to the Front as a non-combatant; he compromises with his conscience and takes a bomb-proof job in some service whose place is well behind the lines. He doesn't stop there long, if he's a decent sort. Having learnt more than ever he guessed before about the brutal things that sh.e.l.l-fire can do to you, he transfers into a fighting unit. Why? Because danger doesn't appal; it allures. It holds a challenge. It stings one's pride. It urges one to seek out ascending scales of risk, just to prove to himself that he isn't flabby. The safe job is the only job for which there's no compet.i.tion in fighting units. You have to persuade men to be grooms, or cooks, or batmen. If you're seeking volunteers for a chance at annihilation, you have to cast lots to avoid the offence of rejecting. All of this is inexplicable to civilians. I've heard them call the men at the Front "spiritual geniuses"--which sounds splendid, but means nothing.

If civilian philosophers fail to explain us, we can explain them. In their world they are the centre of their universe. They look inward, instead of outward. The sun rises and sets to minister to their particular happiness. If they should die, the stars would vanish. We understand; a few months ago we, too, were like that. What makes us reckless of death is our intense grat.i.tude that we have altered. We want to prove to ourselves in excess how utterly we are changed from what we were. In his secret heart the egotist is a self-despiser. Can you imagine what a difference it works in a man after years of self-contempt, at least for one brief moment to approve of himself?

Ever since we can remember, we were chained to the prison-house of our bodies; we lived to feed our bodies, to clothe our bodies, to preserve our bodies, to minister to their pa.s.sions. Now we know that our bodies are mere flimsy sh.e.l.ls, in which our souls are paramount. We can fling them aside any minute; they become ign.o.ble the moment the soul has departed. We have proof. Often at zero hour we have seen whole populations of cities go over the top and vanish, leaving behind them their b.l.o.o.d.y rags. We should go mad if we did not believe in immortality. We know that the physical is not the essential part. How better can a man shake off his flesh than at the hour when his spirit is most shining? The exact day when he dies does not matter--to-morrow or fifty years hence. The vital concern is not _when_, but _how_. The civilian philosopher considers what we've lost. He forgets that it could never have been ours for long. In many cases it was misused and scarcely worth having while it lasted. Some of us were too weak to use it well. We might use it better now. We turn from such thoughts and reckon up our gains. On the debit side we place ourselves as we were.

We probably caught a train every morning--the same train, we went to a business where we sat at a desk. Neither the business nor the desk ever altered. We received the same strafing from the same employer; or, if we were the employer, we administered the same strafing. We only did these things that we might eat bread; our dreams were all selfish--of more clothes, more respect, more food, bigger houses. The least part of the day we devoted to the people and the things we really cared for. And the people we loved--we weren't always nice to them. On the credit side we place ourselves as we are--doing a man's job, doing it for some one else, and unafraid to meet G.o.d.

Before the war the word "ideals" had grown out-of-date and priggish--we had subst.i.tuted for it the more robust word "ambitions."

Today ideals have come back to their place in our vocabulary. We have forgotten that we ever had ambitions, but at this moment men are drowning for ideals in the mud of Flanders.

Nevertheless, it is true; it isn't natural to be brave. How, then, have mult.i.tudes of men acquired this sudden knack of courage? They have been educated by the greatness of the occasion; when big sacrifices have been demanded, men have never been found lacking. And they have acquired it through discipline and training.

When you have subjected yourself to discipline, you cease to think of yourself; _you_ are not _you_, but a part of a company of men. If you don't do your duty, you throw the whole machine out. You soon learn the hard lesson that every man's life and every man's service belong to other people. Of this the organisation of an army is a vivid ill.u.s.tration. Take the infantry, for instance. They can't fight by themselves; they're dependent on the support of the artillery. The artillery, in their turn, would be terribly crippled, were it not for the gallantry of the air service. If the infantry collapse, the guns have to go back; if the infantry advance, the guns have to be pulled forward. This close interdependence of service on service, division on division, battalion on battery, follows right down through the army till it reaches the individual, so that each man feels that the day will be lost if he fails. His imagination becomes intrigued by the immensity of the stakes for which he plays. Any physical calamity which may happen to himself becomes trifling when compared with the disgrace he would bring upon his regiment if he were not courageous.

A few months ago I was handing over a battery-position in a fairly warm place. The major, who came up to take over from me, brought with him a subaltern and just enough men to run the guns. Within half-an-hour of their arrival, a stray sh.e.l.l came over and caught the subaltern and five of the gun-detachment. It was plain at once that the subaltern was dying--his name must have been written on the sh.e.l.l, as we say in France. We got a stretcher and made all haste to rush him out to a dressing-station. Just as he was leaving, he asked to speak with his major. "I'm so sorry, sir; I didn't mean to get wounded," he whispered. The last word he sent back from the dressing-station where he died, was, "Tell the major, I didn't mean to do it." That's discipline. He didn't think of himself; all he thought of was that his major would be left short-handed.

Here's another story, ill.u.s.trating how mercilessly discipline can restore a man to his higher self. Last spring, the night before an attack, a man was brought into a battalion headquarters dug-out, under arrest. The adjutant and Colonel were busy attending to the last details of their preparations. The adjutant looked up irritably,

"What is it?"

The N. C. O. of the guard answered, "We found this man, sir, in a communication trench. His company has been in the front-line two hours. He was sitting down, with his equipment thrown away, and evidently had no intention of going up."

The adjutant glanced coldly at the prisoner. "What have you to say for yourself?"

The man was ghastly white and shaking like an aspen. "Sir, I'm not the man I was since I saw my best friend, Jimmie, with his head blown off and lying in his hands. It's kind of got me. I can't face up to it."

The adjutant was silent for a few seconds; then he said, "You know you have a double choice. You can either be shot up there, doing your duty, or behind the lines as a coward. It's for you to choose. I don't care."

The interview was ended. He turned again to the Colonel. The man slowly straightened himself, saluted like a soldier and marched out alone to the Front. That's what discipline does for a man who's going back on himself.

One of the big influences that helps to keep a soldier's soul sanitary is what is known in the British Army as "spit and polish." Directly we pull out for a rest, we start to work burnishing and washing. The chaps may have shown the most brilliant courage and self-sacrificing endurance, it counts for nothing if they're untidy. The first morning, no matter what are the weather conditions, we hold an inspection; every man has to show up with his chin shaved, hair cut, leather polished and b.u.t.tons shining. If he doesn't he gets h.e.l.l.

There's a lot in it. You bring a man out from a tight corner where he's been in hourly contact with death; he's apt to think, "What's the use of taking pride in myself. I'm likely to be 'done in' any day. It'll be all the same when I'm dead." But if he doesn't keep clean in his body, he won't keep clean in his mind. The man who has his b.u.t.tons shining brightly and his leather polished, is usually the man who is brightly polished inside. Spit and polish teaches a man to come out of the trenches from seeing his pals killed, and to carry on as though nothing abnormal had happened. It educates him in an impersonal att.i.tude towards calamity which makes it bearable. It forces him not to regard anything too tragically. If you can stand aside from yourself and poke fun at your own tragedy--and tragedy always has its humorous aspect--that helps. The songs which have been inspired by the trenches are examples of this tendency.

The last thing you find anybody singing "out there" is something patriotic; the last thing you find anybody reading is Rupert Brooke's poems. When men sing among the sh.e.l.l-holes they prefer a song which belittles their own heroism. Please picture to yourself a company of mud-stained scarecrows in steel-helmets, plodding their way under intermittent sh.e.l.ling through a battered trench, whistling and humming the following splendid sentiments from _The Plea of The Conscientious Objector_:--

"Send us the Army and the Navy. Send us the rank and file.

Send us the grand old Territorials--they'll face the danger with a smile.

Where are the boys of the Old Brigade who made old England free?

You may send my mother, my sister or my brother, But for Gawd's sake don't send me."

They leave off whistling and humming to shout the last line. A sh.e.l.l falls near them--then another, then another. They crouch for a minute against the sticky walls to escape the flying spray of death. Then they plod onward again through the mud whistling and humming, "But for Gawd's sake don't send me." They're probably a carrying party, taking up the rations to their pals. It's quite likely they'll have a bad time to-night--there's the smell of gas in the air. Good luck to them. They disappear round the next traverse.

Our men sing many mad burlesques on their own splendour--parodies on their daily fineness. Here's a last example--a take-off on _"A Little Bit of Heaven_:"

"Oh a little bit of shrapnel fell from out the sky one day And it landed on a soldier in a field not far away; But when they went to find him he was bust beyond repair, So they pulled his legs and arms off and they left him lying there.