II

And by this time we had found each other out. We had discovered a true

standard of right and wrong; we knew quite clearly now, some of us for

the first time, what sort of action was 'dirty,' and we were fairly

clear how likely each of us was to do such an action. We knew all our

little weaknesses and most of our serious flaws; under that olive-tree

they could not long be hid. In the pleasant life of London or Oxford we

had had no occasion to do anything dishonourable or underhand; in our

relations with other men we had not even wished to be guilty of anything

worse than mild unkindnesses or consistent unpunctuality. But behind the

footlights of Gallipoli we had found real burning temptations; and we

had found our characters. D Company on the whole was lucky, and had

stood the test well. We knew that Burnett was 'bogus'; but we knew that

Williams of A Company was incalculably more 'bogus'; we had stood in the

dark sap at night and reluctantly overheard the men of his company speak

of him and his officers.

But little weaknesses beget great irritations in that life, and the

intimate problems of communal feeding were enough to search out all our

weaknesses. We knew that some of us, though courageous, were greedy;

that others, though not greedy, were querulous about their food and had

a nasty habit of 'sticking out for their rights': indeed, I think I

developed this habit myself. We had had trouble about parcels. Parcels

in theory were thrown into the common stock of the mess: but Egerton and

Burnett never had parcels, and were by no means the most delicate eaters

of other people's dainties. Harry and Hewett reserved some portion of

each parcel, a cake or a slab of chocolate, which they ate furtively in

their dug-outs, or shared with each other in the dusk; Burnett

ostentatiously endowed the mess with his entire stock, but afterwards at

every meal hinted sombrely at the rapacity of those who had devoured it.

Harry and Hewett each made contributions to the mess; but Harry objected

to the excessive consumption of this food by Burnett, and Hewett, who

gave ungrudgingly to the rest of us, had a similar reservation--never

expressed--as against Egerton. So all this matter of food set in motion

a number of antagonisms seldom or never articulate, but painfully

perceptible at every meal.

The parcel question, I think, was one of the things which embittered the

quarrel between Harry and Burnett. A parcel from home to schoolboys and

soldiers and prisoners and sailors, and all homesick exiles, is the most

powerful emblem of sentiment and affection. A man would willingly

preserve its treasures for himself to gloat over alone, in no mere

fleshly indulgence, but as a concrete expression of affection from the

home for which he longs. This is not nonsense. He likes to undo the

strings in the grubby hole which is his present home, and secretly

become sentimental over the little fond packages and queer, loving

thoughts which have composed it. And though in a generous impulse he may

say to his companions, 'Come, and eat this cake,' and see it in a moment

disappear, it is hard for him not to think, 'My sister (or wife, or

mother) made this _for me_; they thought it would give _me_ pleasure for

many days. Already it is gone--would they not be hurt if they knew?' He

feels that he has betrayed the tenderness of his home; and though the

giving of pleasure to companions he likes may overcome this feeling, the

compulsory squandering of such precious pleasure on a man he despises

calls up the worst bitterness of his heart. So was it between Harry and

Burnett.

If, by the way, it be suggested that Burnett was entitled to feel the

same sentimental jealousy about _his_ parcels, I answer that Burnett's

parcels came on his own order from the soulless hand of Fortnum and

Mason.

All of us were very touchy, very raw and irritable in that fevered

atmosphere. Men who were always late in relieving another on watch, or

unreasonably resented a minute's postponement of their relief, or never

had any article of their own but for ever borrowed mess-tins and

electric torches and note-books from more methodical people, or were

overbearing to batmen, or shifted jobs on to other officers, or slunk

off to bathe alone when they should have taken their sultry

platoon--such men made enemies quickly. Between Eustace and Hewett, who

had been good friends before and were to be good friends again, there

grew up a slow animosity. Hewett was one of the methodical class of

officer, Eustace was one of the persistent borrowers. Moreover, as I

have said, he was a cynic, and he _would_ argue. He had a contentious

remark for every moment of the day; and though this tormented us all

beyond bearing, Hewett was the only one with both the energy and the

intellectual equipment to accept his challenges. So these two argued

quietly and fiercely in the hot noon, or the blue dusk, till the rest of

us were weary of them both, and the sound of Eustace's harsh tones was

an agony to the nerves. They were both too consciously refined to lose

their tempers healthily, and when they reached danger-point, Hewett

would slink away like an injured animal to his burrow. In this conflict

Harry took no speaking part, for while in spirit and affection he was on

Hewett's side, he paid intellectual tribute to Eustace's conduct of the

argument, and listened as a rule in puzzled silence. Eustace again was

his cordial ally against Burnett, while Hewett had merely the

indifference of contempt for that officer.

So it was all a strange tangle of friendship and animosity and

good-nature and bitterness. Yet on the surface, you understand, we lived

on terms of toleration and vague geniality; except for the disputations

of Hewett and Eustace there was little open disagreement. In the

confined space of a company mess permanent hostilities would make life

impossible; it is only generals who are allowed to find that they can no

longer 'act with' each other, and resign: platoon commanders may come to

the same conclusion, but they have to go on acting. And so openly we

laughed and endured and bore with each other. Only there was always this

undertone of irritations and animosities which, in the maddening

conditions of our life, could never be altogether silenced, and might at

any moment rise to a strangled scream.

Harry's appointment as Scout Officer was the first thing to set Burnett

against Harry, though already many things had set Harry against Burnett.

It had been commonly assumed, in view of Burnett's 'backwoods'

reputation, that he would succeed Martin as Scout Officer. The Colonel's

selection of Harry took us a little by surprise, though it only showed

that the Colonel was a keener judge of character and ability than the

rest of us. No one, I think, was more genuinely pleased that Burnett was

not to be Scout Officer than Burnett himself; but in the interests of

his 'dare-devil' pretensions he had to affect an air of disappointment,

and let it be known by grunts and shrugs and sour looks that he

considered the choice of Harry to be an injury to himself and the

regiment. As far as Harry was concerned this resentment of Burnett's was

more or less genuine, for his reluctance to take on the job did not

prevent him being jealous of the man who did.

Then Burnett was one of the people who had nothing of his own, and

seemed to regard Harry, as the youngest of us all, as the proper person

to provide him with all the necessaries of life. In those days we had no

plates or crockery, but ate and drank out of our scratched and greasy

mess-tins. Harry's mess-tin disappeared, and for three days he was

compelled to borrow from Hewett or myself--a tedious and, to him,

hateful business. One day Burnett had finished his meal a long way ahead

of any of us, and Harry, in the desperation of hungry waiting, asked him

for the loan of his mess-tin. Automatically he looked at the bottom of

the tin, and there found his initials inscribed. It was his own tin.

Further, some one had tried to scratch the initials out. Harry kept his

temper with obvious difficulty. Burnett knew well that he had lost his

mess-tin (we were all sick of hearing it), but he said he was quite

ignorant of having it in his possession. When Harry argued with him,

Burnett sent for his batman and cursed him for taking another officer's

property. The wretched man mumbled that he had 'found' it, and withdrew;

and we all sat in silence teeming with distrustful thoughts. We were

sorry for the batman; we were sorry for Harry. Burnett may not have

taken the mess-tin with his own hands, but morally he stood convicted of

an action which was 'dirty.'

Then Burnett and Harry took a working-party together to dig in the

gully. Burnett was the senior officer, but left Harry to work all night

in the whispering rain of stray bullets, while he sat in an Engineers'

dug-out and drank whisky. Harry did not object to this, the absence of

Burnett being always congenial to him. But next day there came a

complimentary message from the Brigadier about the work of that

working-party. Burnett was sent for and warmly praised by the Colonel.

Burnett stood smugly and said nothing. Harry, when he heard of it, was

furious, and wanted, he said, to 'have a row' with him. What he expected

Burnett to say, I don't know; the man could hardly stand before his

Colonel and say, 'Sir, Penrose did all the work, I was in the Engineers'

dug-out nearly all the time with my friends, and had several drinks.' A

row, in any case, would be intolerable in that cramped, intimate

existence, and I dissuaded Harry, though I made Egerton have a few words

with Burnett on the subject. Harry contented himself with ironic

comments on Burnett's 'gallantry' and 'industry,' asking him blandly at

meals if he expected to get his promotion over that working-party, and

suggesting to Egerton that Burnett should take Harry's next turn of duty

'because he is so good at it.' This made Burnett beautifully angry. But

it was bitter badinage, and did not improve the social atmosphere.

There were a number of such incidents between the two; they were very

petty in themselves, some of them, like a fly, but in their cumulative

effect very large and distressing. In many cases there was no verbal

engagement, or only an angry, inarticulate mutter. Public, unfettered

angers were necessarily avoided. But this pent-up, suppressed condition

of the quarrel made it more malignant, like a disease. And it got on

Harry's nerves; indeed, it got on mine. It became an active element in

that vast complex of irritation and decay which was eating into his

young system; it was leagued with the flies, and the dust, and the

smells, and the bad food, and the wind, and the harassing shells of the

Turks, and the disgustful torment of disease.