"THE REGIMENT"
On the Tuesday a board of doctors passed Jim Denver fit for General
Service, having first given him the option of a month's home service if
he liked. Two days after he turned up at the depot of his regiment,
where he found men in various stages of convalescence--light duty,
ordinary duty at home, and fit to go out like himself. One or two he
knew, and most of them he didn't. There were a few old regular officers
and a large number of very new ones--who were being led in the way they
should go.
But there is little to tell of the time he spent waiting to go out. This
is not a diary of his life--not even an account of it; it is merely an
attempt to portray a state of mind--an outlook on life engendered by
war, in a man whom war had caused to think for the first time.
And so the only incidents which I propose to give of his time at the
depot is a short account of a smoking concert he attended and a
conversation he had the following day with one Vane, a stockbroker. The
two things taken individually meant but little: taken together--well,
the humour was the humour of the Land of Topsy Turvy. A delicate humour,
not to be appreciated by all: with subtle shades and delicate strands
and bloody brutality woven together....
* * * * *
A sudden silence settled on the gymnasium; the man at the piano turned
round so as to hear better; the soldiers sitting astride the horse
ceased laughing and playing the fool.
At a table at the end of the big room, seen dimly through the
smoke-clouded atmosphere, sat a group of officers, while the regimental
sergeant-major, supported by other great ones of the non-commissioned
rank near by, presided over the proceedings.
Occasionally a soldier-waiter passed behind the officers' chairs, armed
with a business-like bottle and a box of dangerous-looking cigars; and
unless he was watched carefully he was apt to replenish the liquid
refreshment in a manner which suggested that he regarded soda as harmful
in the extreme to the human system. Had he not received his instructions
from that great man the regimental himself?
For an hour and a half the smoking concert had been in progress; the
Brothers Bimbo, those masterly knock-about comedians, had given their
performance amid rapturous applause. In life the famous pair were a
machine-gun sergeant and a cook's mate; but on such gala occasions they
became the buffoons of the regiment. They were the star comics: a
position of great responsibility and not to be lightly thought of. An
officer had given a couple of rag-time efforts; the melancholy corporal
in C Company had obliged with a maundering tune of revolting
sentimentality, and one of A Company scouts had given a so-called comic
which caused the padre to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the floor,
though at times his mouth twitched suspiciously, and made the colonel
exclaim to his second in command in tones of heartfelt relief: "Thank
Heavens, my wife couldn't come!" Knowing his commanding officer's wife
the second in command agreed in no less heartfelt voice.
But now a silence had settled on the great room: and all eyes were
turned on the regimental sergeant-major, who was standing up behind the
table on which the programme lay, and behind which he had risen every
time a new performer had appeared during the evening, in order to
introduce him to the assembly. There are many little rites and
ceremonies in smoking concerts....
This time, however, he did not inform the audience that Private
MacPherson would now oblige--that is the mystic formula. He stood there,
waiting for silence.
"Non-commissioned officers and men"--his voice carried to every corner
of the building--"I think you will all agree with me that we are very
pleased to see Colonel Johnson and all our officers here with us
to-night. It is our farewell concert in England: in a few days we shall
all be going--somewhere; and it gives us all great pleasure to welcome
the officers who are going to lead us when we get to that somewhere.
Therefore I ask you all to fill up your glasses and drink to the health
of Colonel Johnson and all our officers."
A shuffling of feet; an abortive attempt on the part of the pianist to
strike up "For he's a jolly good fellow" before his cue, an attempt
which died horribly in its infancy under the baleful eye of the
sergeant-major; a general creaking and grunting and then--muttered,
shouted, whispered from a thousand throats--"Our Officers." The pianist
started--right this time--and in a second the room was ringing with the
well-known words. Cheers, thunderous cheers succeeded it, and through it
all the officers sat silent and quiet. Most were new to the game; to
them it was just an interesting evening; a few were old at it; a few,
like Jim, had been across, and it was they who had a slight lump in
their throats. It brought back memories--memories of other men, memories
of similar scenes....
At last the cheering died away, only to burst out again with renewed
vigour. The colonel was standing up, a slight smile playing round his
lips, the glint of many things in his quiet grey eyes. To the second in
command, a sterling soldier but one of little imagination, there came
for the first time in his life the meaning of the phrase, "the windows
of the soul." For in the eyes of the man who stood beside him he saw
those things of which no man speaks; the things which words may kill.
He saw understanding, affection, humour, pain; he saw the pride of
possession struggling with the sorrow of future loss; he saw the desire
to test his creation struggling with the fear that a first test always
brings; he saw visions of glorious possibilities, and for a fleeting
instant he saw the dreadful abyss of a hideous failure. Aye, for a few
moments the second in command looked not through a glass darkly, but saw
into the unplumbed depths of a man who had been weighed in the balance
and not found wanting; a man who had faced responsibility and would face
it again; a man of honour, a man of humour, a man who knew.
"My lads," he began--and the quiet, well-modulated voice reached every
man in the room just as clearly as the harsher voice of the previous
speaker--"as the sergeant-major has just said, in a few days we shall be
sailing for--somewhere. The bustle and fulness of your training life
will be over; you will be confronted with the real thing. And though I
do not want to mar the pleasure of this evening in any way or to
introduce a serious tone to the proceedings, I do want to say just one
or two things which may stick in your minds and, perhaps, on some
occasion may help you. This war is not a joke; it is one of the most
hideous and ghastly tragedies that have ever been foisted on the world;
I have been there and I know. You are going to be called on to stand all
sorts of discomfort and all sorts of boredom; there will be times when
you'd give everything you possess to know that there was a
picture-palace round the corner. You may not think so now, but remember
my words when the time comes--remember, and stick it.
"There will be times when there's a sinking in your stomach and a
singing in your head; when men beside you are staring upwards with the
stare that does not see; when the sergeant has taken it through the
forehead and the nearest officer is choking up his life in the corner of
the traverse. But--there's still your rifle; perhaps there's a
machine-gun standing idle; anyway, remember my words then, and stick it.
"Stick it, my lads, as those others have done before you. Stick it, for
the credit of the regiment, for the glory of our name. Remember always
that that glory lies in your hands, each one of you individually. And
just as it is in the power of each one of you to tarnish it irreparably,
so is it in the power of each one of you to keep it going undimmed. Each
one of us counts, men"--his voice sank a little--"each one of us has to
play the game. Not because we're afraid of being punished if we're found
out, but because it _is_ the game."
He looked round the room slowly, almost searchingly, while the arc light
spluttered and then burnt up again with a hiss.
"The Regiment, my lads--the Regiment." His voice was tense with feeling.
"It is only the Regiment that counts."
He raised his glass, and the men stood up:
"The Regiment."
A woman sobbed somewhere in the body of the gym., and for a moment, so
it seemed to Denver, the wings of Death flapped softly against the
windows. For a moment only--and then:
"Private Mulvaney will now oblige."
Jim walked slowly home. He remembered just such another evening before
his own battalion went out. Would those words of the Colonel have their
effect: would some white-faced man stick it the better for the
remembrance of that moment: would some machine-gun fired with trembling
dying hands take its toll? Perhaps--who knows? The ideal of the soldier
is there--the ideal towards which the New Armies are led. Thus the first
incident....