The Secret Battle Part 10

That was the end of it. They were kind enough, those grey men; they did not like the job, and they wanted only to do their duty. But they conceived that their duty was 'laid down in The Book,' to look at the 'hard facts,' and no further. And the 'hard facts' were very hard....

The Court was closed while they considered their verdict; it was closed for forty minutes, and when it reopened they asked for evidence of character. And that meant that the verdict was 'Guilty.' On the only facts they had succeeded in discovering it could hardly have been anything else.

The Adjutant put in formal evidence of Harry's service, age, record, and so on; and I was allowed to give evidence of character.

I told them simply the sort of fighting record he had, about Gallipoli, and the scouting, and the job he had refused in England.

I am glad to believe that I did him a little good; for that evening it got about somehow that he was recommended to mercy.

And perhaps they remembered that he was twenty-three.

XIII

That evening I sat in C Company mess for an hour and talked with them about the trial. They were very sad and upset at this thing happening in the regiment, but they were reasonable and generous, not like those D Company pups, Wallace and the other. For they were older men, and had nearly all been out a long time. Only one of them annoyed me, a fellow in the thirties, making a good income in the City, who had only joined up just before he had to under the Derby scheme, and had been out a month. This fellow was very strong on 'the honour of the regiment'; and seemed to think it desirable for that 'honour' that Harry should be shot. Though how the honour of the regiment would be thereby advanced, or what right he had to speak for it, I could not discover.

But the others were sensible, balanced men, and as perplexed and troubled as I. I had been thinking over a thing that Harry had said in his talk with me--'If I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet.'

It is a pity one cannot avoid these horrible terms, but one cannot. I take it that 'wind-up'--whatever the origin of that extraordinary expression may be--signifies simply 'fear.' 'Cold feet' also signifies fear, but, as I understand it, has an added implication in it of _base yielding_ to that fear. I told them about this distinction of Harry's, and asked them what they thought.

'That's it,' said Smith, 'that's just the d.a.m.ned shame of the whole thing. There are lots of men who are simply terrified the whole time they're out, but just go on sticking it by sheer guts--will-power, or whatever you like--that's having the wind-up, and you can't prevent it.

It just depends how you're made. I suppose there really are some people who don't feel fear at all--that fellow Drake, for example--though I'm not sure that there are many. Anyhow, if there are any they don't deserve much credit though they do get the V.C.'s. Then there are the people who feel fear like the rest of us and don't make any effort to resist it, don't join up or come out, and when they have to, go back after three months with a blighty one, and get a job, and stay there----'

'And when they are here w.a.n.gle out of all the dirty jobs,' put in Foster.

'Well, they're the people with "cold feet" if you like,' Smith went on, 'and as you say, Penrose has never been like that. Fellows like him keep on coming out time after time, getting worse wind-up every time, but simply kicking themselves out until they come out once too often, and stop one, or break up suddenly like Penrose, and----'

'And the question is--ought any man like that to be shot?' asked Foster.

'Ought any one who _volunteers_ to fight for his----country be shot?'

said another.

'd.a.m.n it, yes,' said Constable; he was a square, hard-looking old boy, a promoted N.C.O., and a very useful officer. 'You must have some sort of standard--or where would the army be?'

'I don't know,' said Foster, 'look at the Australians--they don't have a death-penalty, and I reckon they're as good as us.'

'Yes, my son, perhaps that's the reason'--this was old Constable again--'the average Australian is naturally a sight stouter-hearted than the average Englishman--they don't need it.'

'Then why the h.e.l.l do they punish Englishmen worse than Australians, if they can't even be _expected_ to do so well?' retorted Foster; but this piece of dialectics was lost on Constable.

'Anyhow, I don't see that it need be such an absolute standard,' Smith began again, thoughtfully; he was a thoughtful young fellow. 'They don't expect everybody to have equally strong arms or equally good brains; and if a chap's legs or arms aren't strong enough for him to go on living in the trenches they take him out of it (if he's lucky). But every man's expected to have equally strong nerves in all circ.u.mstances, and to _go on having them_ till he goes under; and when he goes under they don't consider how far his nerves, or guts, or whatever you call it, were as good as other people's. Even if he had nerves like a chicken to begin with he's expected to behave as a man with nerves like a lion or a Drake would do....'

'A man with nerves like a chicken is a d.a.m.ned fool to go into the infantry at all,' put in Williams--'the honour of the regiment' person.

'Yes, but he may have had a will-power like a lion, and simply made himself do it.'

'You'd be all right, Smith,' somebody said, 'if you didn't use such long words; what the h.e.l.l do you mean by an absolute standard?'

'Sorry, George, I forgot you were so ignorant. What I mean is this. Take a case like Penrose's: All they ask is, was he seen running the wrong way, or not going the right way? If the answer is Yes--the punishment is death, _et cetera, et cetera_. To begin with, as I said, they don't consider whether he was _capable_ physically or mentally--I don't know which it is--of doing the right thing. And then there are lots of other things which _we_ know make one man more "windy" than another, or windier to-day than he was yesterday--things like being a married man, or having boils, or a bad cold, or being just physically weak, so that you get so exhausted you haven't got any strength left to resist your fears (I've had that feeling myself)--none of those things are considered _at all_ at a court-martial--and I think they ought to be.'

'No,' said Foster, 'they ought to be considered _before_ they decide to have a court-martial at all. A case like Penrose's never ought to have got so far.'

'You're right--I don't know why the devil it did.'

'After all,' said Williams, 'you've got to consider the name of the regiment. What would happen----'

But I could not stand any more of that. 'I think Smith's on the right line,' I said, 'though I don't know if it would ever be workable. There are, of course, lots of fellows who _feel_ things far more than most of us, sensitive, imaginative fellows, like poor Penrose--and it must be h.e.l.l for them. Of course there are some men like that with enormously strong wills who manage to stick it out as well as anybody, and do awfully well--I should think young Aston, for instance--and those I call the _really_ brave men. Anyhow, if a man like that really does stick it as long as he can, I think something ought to be done for him, though I'm d.a.m.ned if I know what. He oughtn't....'

'He oughtn't to be _allowed_ to go on too long--that's what it comes to,' said Smith.

'Well, what do you want,' Foster asked, 'a kind of periodical Wind-up Examination?'

'That's the kind of thing, I suppose. It _is_ a medical question, really. Only the doctors don't seem to recognize--or else they aren't allowed to--any stage between absolute sh.e.l.l-shock, with your legs flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.'

'But d.a.m.n it, man,' Constable exploded, 'look at the skrim-shanking you'll get if you have that sort of thing. You'd have all the mothers'

darlings in the kingdom saying they'd had enough when they got to the Base.'

'Perhaps--no, I think that's silly. I don't know what it is that gives you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test when a man's really had enough; just as they tell whether a man's knee or a man's heart are really bad or not. You'd have to take his record into account, of course....'

'And you'd have to make it a compulsory test,' said Smith, 'because nowadays no one's going to go into a Board and say, "Look here, doctor, I've been out so long and I can't stand any more." They'd send you out in the next draft!'

'Compulsory both ways,' added Foster: 'when they'd decided he'd done enough, and wasn't _safe_ any longer, he oughtn't to be _allowed_ to do any more--because he's dangerous to himself and everybody else.'[1]

[Footnote 1: It is only fair to say that, long after the supposed date of this conversation, a system of sending 'war-weary' soldiers home for six months at a time was inst.i.tuted, though I doubt if Foster would have been satisfied with that.]

'As a matter of fact,' said Williams, 'that's what usually does happen, doesn't it? When a chap gets down and out like that after a decent spell of it, he usually gets a job at home--instructor at the Depot, or something.'

'Yes, and then you get a fellow with the devil of a conscience like Penrose--and you have a nasty mess like this.'

'And what about the men?' asked Constable. 'Are you going to have the same thing for them?'

'Certainly--only, thank G.o.d, there are not so many of them who need it.

All that chat you read about the "wonderful fatalism" of the British soldier is so much bunk.u.m. It simply means that most of them are not cursed with an imagination, and so don't worry about what's coming.'

'That's true; you don't see many fatalists in the middle of a big strafe.'

'Of course there _are_ lots of them who _are_ made like Penrose, and with a record like his, something----'

'And it's d.a.m.ned lucky for the British Army there are not more of them,'

put in Constable.

'Certainly, but it's d.a.m.ned unlucky for them to be in the British Army--in the infantry, anyhow.'

'And what does that matter?'

'Oh, well, you can take that line if you like--but it's a bit Prussian, isn't it?'