The Secret Battle Part 4

But they were cold now, and hungry, and suddenly very tired; and they had no real fire of battle in them; they had waited too long for this crowning experience of an attack, braced themselves for it too often to be disappointed; and I knew that they were glad. But they did not mind being glad; they pondered no doubts about themselves, only curled up like animals in corners to sleep....

Harry, too, no doubt, had braced himself like the rest of us, and he, too, must have been glad, glad to lie down and look forward after all to seeing another sunrise. But I thought of his doubts about himself, and I felt that this business was far from easing his burden. For me and for the men it was a simple thing--the postponement of a battle with the Turks; for Harry it was the postponement of a personal test: the battle inside him still went on; only it went on more bitterly.

II

There was a great muddle in front. Troops of two different brigades were hopelessly entangled in the shallow trenches they had taken from the Turks. They had few officers left, and their staffs had the most imperfect impressions of the whereabouts of their mangled commands. So the sun was well up when we finally took over the line; this was in defiance of all tradition, but the Turk was shaken and did not molest us. The men who pa.s.sed us on their way down grimly wished us joy of what they had left; their faces were pale and drawn, full of loathing and weariness, but they said little; and the impression grew that there was something up there which they could not even begin to describe. It was a still, scorching morning, and as we moved on the air became heavy with a sickening stench, the most awful of all smells that man can be called to endure, because it preyed on the imagination as well as the senses. For we knew now what it was. We came into a Turkish trench, broad and shallow. In the first bay lay two bodies--a Lowlander and a Turk. They lay where they had killed each other, and they were very foul and loathsome in the sun. A man looked up at them and pa.s.sed on, thinking, 'Glad I haven't got to stay here.' In the next bay there were three dead, all Englishmen; and in the next there were more--and he thought, 'It was a hot fight just here.' But as he moved on, and in each succeeding bay beheld the same corrupt aftermath of yesterday's battle, the suspicion came to him that this was no local horror. Over the whole front of the attack, along two lines of trenches, these regiments of dead were everywhere found, strung in unnatural heaps along the parapets, or sprawling horribly half into the trench so that he touched them as he pa.s.sed. Yet still he could not believe, and at each corner thought, 'Surely there will be none in this bay.'

But always there were more; until, if he were not careful or very callous, it began to get on his nerves, so that at the traverses he almost prayed that there might be no more beyond. Yet many did not realize what was before them till they were finally posted in the bays they were to garrison--three or four in a bay. Then they looked up at the sprawling horrors on the parapet and behind them--just above their heads, and knew that these were to be their close companions all that sweltering day, and perhaps beyond. The regiment we had relieved had been too exhausted by the attack, or too short-handed, to bury more than a few, and the Turkish snipers made it impossible to do anything during the day. And so we sat all the scorching hours of the sun, or moved listlessly up and down, trying not to look upwards.... But there was a hideous fascination about the things, so that after a few hours a man came to know the bodies in his bay with a sickening intimacy, and could have told you many details about each of them--their regiment, and how they lay, and how they had died, and little things about their uniforms, a missing b.u.t.ton, or some papers, or an old photograph sticking out of a pocket.... All of them were alive with flies, and at noon when we took out our bread and began to eat, the flies rose in a great black swarm and fell upon the food in our hands. After that no one could eat. All day men were being sent away by the doctor, stricken with sheer nausea by the flies and the stench and the things they saw, and went retching down the trench. To keep away the awful reek we went about for a little in the old gas-helmets, but the heat and burden of them in the hot, airless trench was intolerable. The officers had no dug-outs, but sat under the parapets, like the men. No officer went sick; no officer could be spared; and indeed we seemed to have a greater power of resistance to this ordeal of disgust than the men. But I don't know how Harry survived it. Being already in a very bad way physically, it affected him more than the rest of us, and it was the first day I had seen his cheerfulness defeated. At the worst he had always been ready to laugh a little at our misfortunes, the great safety-valve of a soldier, and make ironical remarks about Burnett or the Staff. This day he had no laugh left in him, and I thought sadly of that first morning when he jumped over the parapet to look at a dead Turk. He had seen enough now.

In the evening the Turk was still a little chastened, and all night we laboured at the burying of the bodies. It was bad work, but so strong was the horror upon us that every man who could be spared took his part, careless of sleep or rest, so long as he should not sit for another day with those things. But we could only bury half of them that night, and all the next day we went again through that lingering torment. And in the afternoon when we had orders to go up to the front line after dusk for an attack, we were glad. It was one of the very few moments in my experience when the war-correspondent's legend of a regiment's pleasure at the prospect of battle came true. For anything was welcome if only we could get out of that trench, away from the smell and the flies, away from those bodies....

III

I am not going to tell you all about that attack, only so much of it as affects this history, which is the history of a man and not of the war.

It was a one-battalion affair, and eventually a failure. D Company was in reserve, and our only immediate task was to provide a small digging-party, forty men under an officer, to dig some sort of communication ditch to the new line when taken. Burnett was told off for this job; we took these things more or less in turn, and it was his turn. And Burnett did not like it. We sat round a single candle under a waterproof sheet in a sort of open recess at the back of the front line, while Egerton gave him his orders. And there ran in my head the old bit about 'they all began with one accord to make excuse.' Burnett made no actual excuse; he could not. But he asked aggressive questions about the arrangements which plainly said that he considered this task too dangerous and too difficult for Burnett. He wanted more men, he wanted another officer--but no more could be spared from an already small reserve. He was full of 'the high ground on the right' from which his party would 'obviously' be enfiladed and shot down to a man. However, he went. And we sat listening to the rapid fire or the dull thud of bombs, until in front a strange quiet fell, but to right and left were the sounds of many machine-guns. As usual, no one knew what had happened, but we expected a summons at any moment. We were all restless and jumpy, particularly Harry. For a man who has doubts of himself or too much imagination, to be in reserve is the worst thing possible. Harry was talkative again, and held forth about the absurdity of the whole attack, as to which he was perfectly right. But I felt that all the time he was thinking, 'Shall I do the right thing? shall I do the right thing? shall I make a mess of it?'

I went out and looked over the parapet, but could make nothing out. Then I saw two figures loom through the dark and scramble into the trench.

And after them came others all along the line, coming in anyhow, in disorder. Then Burnett came along the trench, and crawled in under the waterproof sheet. I followed. 'It's no good,' he was saying, 'the men won't stick it. It's just what I told you ... enfiladed from that high ground over there--two machine-guns....'

'How many casualties have you had?' said Egerton.

'One killed, and two wounded.'

There was silence, but it was charged with eloquent thoughts. It was clear what had happened. The machine-guns were firing blindly from the right, probably over the heads of the party. The small casualties showed that. Casualties are the test. No doubt the men had not liked the stream of bullets overhead; at any moment the gun might lower. But there was nothing to prevent the digging being done, given an officer who would a.s.sert himself and keep the men together. That was what an officer was for. And Burnett had failed. He had let the company down.

Egerton, I knew, was considering what to do. The job had to be done. But should he send Burnett again, with orders not to return until he had finished, as he deserved, or should he send a more reliable officer and make sure?

Then Harry burst in: 'Let me take my platoon,' he said, 'they'll stick it all right.' And his tone was full of contempt for Burnett, full of determination. No doubts about him now.

Well, we sent him out with his platoon. And all night they dug and sweated in the dark. The machine-gun did lower at times, and there were many casualties, but Harry moved up and down in the open, cheerful and encouraging, getting away the wounded, and there were no signs of the men not sticking it. I went out and stayed with him for an hour or so, and thought him wonderful. Curious from what strange springs inspiration comes. For Harry, for the second time, had been genuinely inspired by the evil example of his enemy. Probably, in the first place, he had welcomed the chance of doing something at last, of putting his doubts to the test, but I am sure that what chiefly carried him through that night, weak and exhausted as he was, was the thought, 'Burnett let them down; Burnett let them down; I'm not going to let them down.' Anyhow he did very well.

But in the morning he was carried down to the beach in a high fever. And perhaps it was just as well, for I think Burnett would have done him a mischief.

VII

So Harry stayed till he was 'pushed' off, as he had promised. And I was glad he had gone like that. I had long wanted him to leave the Peninsula somehow, for I felt he should be spared for greater things, but, knowing something of his peculiar temperament, I did not want his career there to end on a note of simple failure--a dull surrender to sickness in the rest-camp. As it turned out, the accident of the digging-party, and the way in which Harry had seized his chance, sent him off with a renewed confidence in himself and, with regard to Burnett, even a sense of triumph. So I was not surprised when his letters began to reveal something of the old enthusiastic Harry, chafing at the dreary routine of the Depot, and looking for adventure again.... But I am antic.i.p.ating.

They sent him home, of course. It was no good keeping any one in his condition at Egypt or Malta, for the prolonged dysentery had produced the usual complications. I had a letter from Malta, and one from the Mediterranean Club at Gibraltar, where he had a sultry week looking over the bay, seeing the ships steam out for England, he told me, and longing to be in one. For it took many months to wash away the taste of the Peninsula, and much more than the austere comforts of the hospital at Gibraltar. Even the hot August sun in the Alameda was hatefully reminiscent. Then six weeks' milk diet at a hospital in Devonshire, convalescence, and a month's leave.

Then Harry married a wife. I did not know the lady--a Miss Thickness--and she does not come into the story very much, though she probably affected it a good deal. Wives usually do affect a soldier's story, though they are one of the many things which by the absolute official standard of military duty are necessarily not reckoned with at all. Not being the president of a court-martial I did reckon with it; and when I had read Harry's letter about his wedding I said: 'We shan't see _him_ again.' For in those early years it was generally a.s.sumed that a man returned from service at the front need not go out again (unless he wished) for a period almost incalculably remote. And being a newly married man myself, I had no reason to suppose that Harry would want to rush into the breach just yet.

But about May--that would be 1916; we had done with Gallipoli and come to France, after four months' idling in the Aegean Islands--I had another letter, much delayed, from which I will give you an extract:

_'I never thought I should want to go out again (you remember we all swore we never should) but I do. I'm fed to the teeth with this place_ (the Depot, in Dorsetshire); _nothing but company drill and lectures on march discipline, and all the old stuff. We still attack Hill 219 twice weekly in exactly the same way, and still no one but a few of the officers knows exactly which hill it is, since we always stop halfway for lunch-time, or because there's hopeless confusion.... There's n.o.body amusing here. Williams has got a company and sw.a.n.ks like blazes about 'the front,' but I think most people see through him.... My wife's got rooms in a cottage near here, but they won't let me sleep out, and I don't get there till pretty late most days.... Can't you get the Colonel to apply for me? I don't believe it's allowed, but he's sure to be able to w.a.n.gle it. Otherwise I shall be here for the rest of the war, because the more you've been out the less likely you are to get out again, if you want to, while there are lots who don't want to go, and wouldn't be any earthly good, and stand in hourly danger of being sent.... I want to see France....'_

I answered on a single sheet:

_'All very well, but what about Mrs. P.? Does she concur?'_ (I told you I was a married man.)

His answer was equally brief:

_'She doesn't know, but she would.'_

Well, it wasn't my business, so we 'w.a.n.gled' it (I was adjutant then), and Harry came out to France. But I was sorry for Mrs. Penrose.

II

I do not know if all this seems tedious and unnecessary; I hope not, for it is very relevant to the end of the story, and if this record had been in the hands of certain persons the end of the story might have been different. I do not know. Certainly it ought to have been different.

Anyhow, Harry came to France and found us in the line at Souchez. The recuperative power of the young soldier is very marvellous. No one but myself would have said that this was not the same Harry of a year ago; for he was fit and fresh and bubbling over with keenness. Only myself, who had sat over the Dardanelles with him and talked about Troy, knew what was missing. There were no more romantic illusions about war, and, I think, no more military ambitions. Only he was sufficiently rested to be very keen again, and had not yet seen enough of it to be ordinarily bored.

And in that summer of 1916 there was much to be said for life in the Souchez sector. It was a 'peace-time' sector, where divisions stayed for months at a time, and one went in and out like clockwork at ritual intervals, each time into the same trenches, the same deep dug-outs, each time back to the same billets, or the same huts in the same wood.

All the deserted fields about the line were a ma.s.s of poppies and cornflowers, and they hung over one in extravagant ma.s.ses as one walked up the communication trench. In the thick woods round Bouvigny and Noulette there were cl.u.s.ters of huts where the resting time was very warm and lazy and companionable, with much white wine and singing in the evenings. Or one took a horse and rode into Coupigny or Barlin where there had not been too much war, but one could dine happily at the best estaminet, and then ride back contentedly under the stars.

In the line also there was not too much war. Few of the infantry on either side ever fired their rifles; and only a few bombers with rifle grenades tried to injure the enemy. There were short sectors of the line on either side which became spasmodically dangerous because of these things, and at a fixed hour each day the Germans blew the same portions of the line to dust with minenwerfers, our men having departed elsewhere half an hour previously, according to the established routine from which neither side ever diverged. Our guns were very busy by spasms, and every day destroyed small sections of the thick red ma.s.ses of the German wire, which were every night religiously repaired. The German guns were very few, for the Somme battle was raging, but at times they flung whizz-bangs vaguely about the line or dropped big sh.e.l.ls on the great brows of the Lorette Heights behind us. From the high ground we held there was a good view, with woods and red and white villages on the far hills beyond the Germans; and away to the left one looked over the battered pit country towards Lens, with everywhere the tall pit-towers all crumpled and bent into uncouth shapes, and grey slag-heaps rising like the Pyramids out of a wilderness of broken red cottages. To the south-east began the Vimy Ridge, where the red Pimple frowned over the lines at the Lorette Heights, and all day there was the foam and blackness of bursting sh.e.l.ls.

In the night there was much patrolling and bursts of machine-gun fire, and a few snipers, and enormous labours at the 'improvement of the line,' wiring and revetting, and exquisite work with sand-bags.

It was all very gentle and friendly and artificial, and we were happy together.

Burnett had left us, on some detached duty or other, and in that gentler atmosphere Eustace was a good companion again.

Men grew l.u.s.ty and well, and one could have continued there indefinitely without much injury to body or mind. But sometimes on a clear night we saw all the southern sky afire from some new madness on the Somme, and knew that somewhere in France there was real war. The correspondents wrote home that the regiments 'condemned so long to the deadening inactivity of trench warfare were longing only for their turn at the Great Battle.' No doubt they had authority: though I never met one of those regiments. For our part we were happy where we were. We had had enough for the present.

III

But I digress. And yet--no. For I want you to keep this idea of the diversity of war conditions before you, and how a man may be in a fighting unit for many months and yet go unscathed even in spirit. Or in the most Arcadian parts of the battle area he may come alone against some peculiar shock from which he never recovers. It is all chance.

We made Harry scout officer again, and he was very keen. Between us and the German lines was a honeycomb of old disused trenches where French and Germans had fought for many months before they sat down to watch each other across this maze. They were all overgrown now with flowers and thick gra.s.ses, but for the purposes of future operations it was important to know all about them, and every night Harry wriggled out and dropped into one of these to creep and explore, and afterwards put them on the map. Sometimes I went a little way with him, and I did not like it. It was very creepy in those forgotten alleys, worse than crawling outside in the open, I think, because of the intense blackness and the infinite possibilities of ambush.

The Boches, we knew, were playing the same game as ourselves, and might always be round the next traverse, so that every ten yards one went through a new ordeal of expectancy and stealthy, strained investigation.

One stood breathless at the corner, listening, peering, quivering with the strain of it, and then a rat dropped into the next 'bay,' or behind us one of our Lewis guns blazed off a few bursts, shattering the silence. Surely there was some one near moving hurriedly under cover of the noise! Then you stood again, stiff and cramped with the stillness, and you wanted insanely to cough, or shift your weight on to the other foot, or your nose itched and the gra.s.ses tickled your ear--but you must not stir, must hardly breathe. For now all the lines have become mysteriously hushed, and no man fires; far away one can hear the rumble of the German limbers coming up with rations to the dump, and the quiet becomes unbearable, so that you long for some t.i.tanic explosion to break it and set you free from waiting. Then a machine-gun opens again, and you slip round the corner to find--nothing at all, only more blackness and the rats scuttling away into the gra.s.s, and perhaps the bones of a Frenchman. And then you begin all over again.... When he has done this sort of thing many times without any happening, an imperfect scout becomes careless through sheer weariness, and begins to blunder noisily ahead. And sooner or later he goes under. But Harry was a natural scout, well trained, and from first to last kept the same care, the same admirable patience, and this means a great strain on body and mind....

In those old trenches you could go right up to the German line, two hundred yards away, and this Harry often did. The Germans had small posts at these points, waiting, and were very ready with bombs and rifle grenades. It was a poor look-out if you were heard about there, and perhaps badly wounded, so that you could not move, two hundred yards away from friends and all those happy soldiers who spent their nights comfortably in trenches when you were out there on your stomach. Perhaps your companion would get away and bring help. Or he too might be hit or killed, and then you would lie there for days and nights, alone in a dark hole, with the rats scampering and smelling about you, till you died of starvation or loss of blood. You would lie there listening to your own men chattering in the distance at their wiring, and neither they nor any one would find you or know where you were, till months hence some other venturesome scout stumbled on your revolver in the dark. Or maybe the line would advance at last, and some salvage party come upon your uniform rotting in the ditch, and they would take off your ident.i.ty disk and send it in to Headquarters, and shovel a little earth above your bones. It might be many years....

I am not an imaginative man, but that was the kind of thought I had while I prowled round with Harry (and I never went so far as he). He even had an occasional jest at the Germans, and once planted an old dummy close up to their lines. There was stony ground there, and, as they took it there, he told me, it clattered. The next night he went there again in case the Germans came out to capture 'Reggie.' They did not, but every evening for many months they put a barrage of rifle-grenades all about that dummy.

Then there was much talk of 'raids,' and all the opposite wire had to be patrolled and examined for gaps and weak places. This meant crawling in the open close up to the enemy, naked under the white flares; and sometimes they fell to earth within a few feet of a scout and sizzled brilliantly for interminable seconds; there was a sniper somewhere near, and perhaps a machine-gun section, and surely they could see him, so large, so illuminated, so monstrously visible he felt. It was easy when there was not too much quiet, but many echoes of scattered shots and the noise of bullets rocketing into s.p.a.ce, or long bursts of machine-gun fire, to cover your movements. But when that terrible silence fell it was very difficult. For then how loud was the rustle of your stealthiest wriggle, how sinister the tiny sounds of insects in the gra.s.s.

Everywhere there were stray strands of old barbed wire which caught in your clothes and needed infinite patience to disentangle; when you got rid of one barb another clung to you as the wire sprang back, or, if you were not skilful, it clashed on a post or a rifle, or a tin can, with a noise like cymbals. You came across strange things as you crawled out there--dead bodies, and bits of equipment, and huge unexploded sh.e.l.ls.

Or you touched a rat or a gra.s.s-snake that made you shiver as it moved; the rats and the field-mice ran over you if you lay still for long, and once Harry saw a German patrol-dog sniffing busily in front of him.