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 passed 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-pricks 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, sex, old age and particularly
of a God 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 damnable. 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 assaults 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 shell-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 passed 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
passed 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 shell 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 noble self-effacement of the men.
He is re-crucified in the defilements that are wrought upon their
bodies.
God 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
assert 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
God 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 glasses 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 God 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 shell-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
competition 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 gratitude 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 passions. Now we know that our bodies
are mere flimsy shells, in which our souls are paramount. We can fling
them aside any minute; they become ignoble 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 bloody 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 God.
Before the war the word “ideals” had grown out-of-date and
priggish--we had substituted 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 multitudes 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
illustration. 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 shell 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 shell,
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, illustrating 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 buttons shining. If he doesn't he gets hell.
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 buttons 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 attitude 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 shell-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 shelling 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 shell
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.
Then they buried him in Flanders just to make the new crops grow.
He'll make the best manure, they say, and sure they ought to know.
And they put a little cross up which bore his name so grand,
On the day he took his farewell for a better Promised Land.”
One learns to laugh--one has to--just as he has to learn to believe in
immortality. The Front affords plenty of occasions for humour if a man
has only learnt to laugh at himself. I had been sent forward to report
at a battalion headquarters as liaison officer for an attack. The
headquarters were in a captured dug-out somewhere under a ruined
house. Just as I got there and was searching among the fallen walls
for an entrance, the Hun barrage came down. It was like the
Yellowstone Park when all the geysers are angry at the same
time. Roofs, beams, chips of stone commenced to fly in every
direction. In the middle of the hubbub a small dump of bombs was
struck by a shell and started to explode behind me. The blast of the
explosion caught me up and hurled me down fifteen stairs of the
dug-out I had been trying to discover. I landed on all fours in a
place full of darkness; a door banged behind me. I don't know how long
I lay there. Something was squirming under me. A voice said
plaintively, “I don't know who you are, but I wish you'd get off. I'm
the adjutant.”
It's a queer country, that place we call “out there.” You approach our
front-line, as it is to-day, across anywhere from five to twenty miles
of battlefields. Nothing in the way of habitation is left. Everything
has been beaten into pulp by hurricanes of shell-fire. First you come
to a metropolis of horse-lines, which makes you think that a mammoth
circus has arrived. Then you come to plank roads and little light
railways, running out like veins across the mud. Far away there's a
ridge and a row of charred trees, which stand out gloomily etched
against the sky. The sky is grey and damp and sickly; fleecy balls of
smoke burst against it--shrapnel. You wonder whether they've caught
anybody. Overhead you hear the purr of engines--a flight of aeroplanes
breasting the clouds. Behind you observation balloons hang stationary,
like gigantic tethered sausages.
If you're riding, you dismount before you reach the ridge and send
your horse back; the Hun country is in sight on the other side. You
creep up cautiously, taking careful note of where the shells are
falling. There's nothing to be gained by walking into a barrage; you
make up your mind to wait. The rate of fire has slackened; you make a
dash for it. From the ridge there's a pathway which runs down through
the blackened wood; two men going alone are not likely to be
spotted. Not likely, but--. There's an old cement Hun gun-pit to the
right; you take cover in it. “Pretty wide awake,” you say to your
companion, “to have picked us out as quickly as that.”
From this sheltered hiding you have time to gaze about you. The roof
of the gun-pit is smashed in at one corner. Our heavies did that when
the Hun held the ridge. It was good shooting. A perfect warren of
tunnels and dug-outs leads off in every direction. They were built by
the forced labour of captive French civilians. We have found requests
from them scrawled in pencil on the boards: “I, Jean Ribeau, was alive
and well on May 12th, 1915. If this meets the eye of a friend, I beg
that he will inform my wife,” etc.; after which follows the wife's
address. These underground fortifications proved as much a snare as a
protection to our enemies. I smile to remember how after our infantry
had advanced three miles, they captured a Hun major busily shaving
himself in his dug-out, quite unaware that anything unusual was
happening. He was very angry because he had been calling in vain for
his man to bring his hot water. When he heard the footsteps of our
infantry on the stairs, he thought it was his servant and started
strafing. He got the surprise of his venerable life when he saw the
khaki.
From the gun-pit the hill slants steeply to the plain. It was once
finely wooded. Now the trees lie thick as corpses where an attack has
failed, scythed down by bursting shells. From the foot of the hill the
plain spreads out, a sea of furrowed slime and craters. It's difficult
to pick out trenches. Nothing is moving. It's hard to believe that
anything can live down there. Suddenly, as though a gigantic
egg-beater were at work, the mud is thrashed and tormented. Smoke
drifts across the area that is being strafed; through the smoke the
stakes and wire hurtle. If you hadn't been in flurries of that sort
yourself, you'd think that no one could exist through it. It's ended
now; once again the country lies dead and breathless in a kind of
horrible suspense. Suspense! Yes, that's the word.