When we went back to the line, Harry was detailed for many
working-parties; and some of them, particularly the first, were very
nasty. The days of comfortable walking in communication trenches were
over. We were in captured ground churned up by our own fire, and all
communication with the front was over the open, over the shell-holes.
Harry was told off to take a ration-party, carrying rations up to the
battalion in the line, a hundred men. These were bad jobs to do. It
meant three-quarters of a mile along an uphill road, heavily shelled;
then there was a mile over the shell-hole country, where there were no
landmarks or duckboards, or anything to guide you. For a single man in
daylight, with a map, navigation was difficult enough in this uniform
wilderness until you had been over it a time or two; to go over it for
the first time, in the dark, with a hundred men carrying heavy loads,
was the kind of thing that makes men transfer to the Flying Corps. Harry
got past the road with the loss of three men only; there, at any rate,
you went straight ahead, however slowly. But when he left the road, his
real troubles began. It was pitch dark and drizzling, and the way was
still uphill. With those unhappy carrying-parties, where three-fourths
of the men carried two heavy sacks of bread and tinned meat and other
food, and the rest two petrol tins of water, or a jar of rum, or rifle
oil, or whale oil, besides a rifle, and a bandolier, and two
respirators, and a great-coat--you must move with exquisite slowness, or
you will lose your whole party in a hundred yards. And even when you are
just putting one foot in front of another, moving so slowly that it
maddens you, there are halts and hitches every few yards: a man misses
his footing and slides down into a crater with his awful load; the hole
is full of foul green water, and he must be hauled out quickly lest he
drown. Half-way down the line a man halts to ease his load, or shift his
rifle, or scratch his nose; when he goes on he can see no one ahead of
him, and the cry 'Not in touch' comes sullenly up to the front. Or you
cross the path of another party, burdened as yours. In the dark, or
against the flaring skyline, they look like yours, bent, murky shapes
with bumps upon them, and some of your men trail off with the other
party. And though you pity your men more than yourself, it is difficult
sometimes to be gentle with them, difficult not to yield to the intense
exasperation of it all, and curse foolishly....
But Harry was good with his men, and they stumbled on, slipping,
muttering, with a dull ache at the shoulders and a dogged rage in their
hearts. He was trying to steer by the compass, and he was aiming for a
point given him on the map, the rendezvous for the party he was to meet.
This point was the junction of three trenches, but as all trenches
thereabouts had been so blotted out as to be almost indistinguishable
from casual shell-holes, it was not so good a rendezvous as it had
seemed to the Brigade. However, Harry managed to find it, or believed
that he had found it--for in that murk and blackness nothing was
certain; if he had found it, the other party had not, for there was no
one there. They might be late, they might be lost, they might be waiting
elsewhere. So Harry sent out a scout or two and waited, while the men
lay down in the muddy ruins of the trench and dozed unhappily. And while
they waited, the Boche, who had been flinging big shells about at random
since dusk, took it into his head to plaster these old trenches with
5-9's. Harry ran, or floundered along the line, telling the men to lie
close where they were. There was indeed nothing else to do, but it gave
the men confidence, and none of them melted away. As he ran, a big one
burst very near and knocked him flat, but he was untouched; it is
marvellous how local the effect of H.E. can be. For about ten minutes
they had a bad time, and then it ceased, suddenly.
And now was one of those crucial moments which distinguish a good
officer from a bad, or even an ordinary officer. It was easy to say,
'Here I am at the rendezvous' (by this time Harry had got his bearings a
little by the lights, and knew he was in the right spot) 'with these
something rations; the men are done and a bit shaken; so am I; the other
people haven't turned up; if they want their rations they can damned
well come here and get them; I've done my part, and I'm going home.' But
a real good officer, with a conscience and an imagination, would say:
'Yes--but I've been sent up here to get these rations to the men in the
line; my men will have a rest to-morrow, and some sleep, and some good
food; the men in the line now will still be in the line, with no sleep,
and little rest, and if these rations are left here in the mud and not
found before dawn, they'll have no food either; and whatever other
people may do or not do, it's up to me to get these rations up there
somehow, if we have to walk all night and carry them right up to the
Front Line ourselves, and I'm not going home till I've done it.' I don't
know, but I think that that's the sort of thing Harry said to himself;
and anyhow after the row with Philpott he was particularly anxious to
make good. So he got his men out and told them about it all, and they
floundered on. It was raining hard now, with a bitter wind when they
passed the crest of the hill. Harry had a vague idea of the direction of
the line so long as they were on the slope; but on the flat, when they
had dodged round a few hundred shell-holes, halting and going on and
halting again, all sense of direction departed, and very soon they were
hopelessly lost. The flares were no good, for the line curved, and there
seemed to be lights all around, going up mistily through the rain in a
wide circle. Once you were properly lost the compass was useless, for
you might be in the Boche lines, you might be anywhere.... At such
moments a kind of mad, desperate self-pity, born of misery and weariness
and rage, takes hold of the infantryman, and if he carries a load, he is
truly ready to fall down and sleep where he is--or die. And in the
wretched youth in charge there is a sense of impotence and
responsibility that makes his stomach sink within him. Some of the men
began to growl a little, but Harry held on despairingly. And then by
God's grace they ran into another party, a N.C.O. and a few men; these
were the party--or some of them--that should have met them at the
rendezvous; they too had been lost and were now wandering back to the
line. Well, Harry handed over the rations and turned home, well pleased
with himself. He was too sick of the whole affair, and it was too dark
and beastly to think of getting a receipt. It was a pity; for while he
trudged home, the N.C.O., as we afterwards heard, was making a mess of
the whole business. Whether he had not enough men, or perhaps lost them,
or miscalculated the amount of rations or what, is not clear, but half
of all that precious food was found lying in the mud at noon the next
day when it was too late, and half the battalion in the line went very
short. Then the Colonel rang up Philpott, and complained bitterly about
the conduct of the officer in charge of our ration-party. Philpott sent
for Harry and accused him hotly of dumping the rations carelessly
anywhere, of not finishing his job.
Harry gave his account of the affair quite simply, without enlarging on
the bad time he had had, though that was clear enough to a man with any
knowledge. _But he could not show a receipt._ Philpott was the kind of
man who valued receipts more than righteousness. He refused to believe
Harry's straightforward tale, cursed him for a lazy swine, and sent him
to apologize to the Colonel of the Blanks. That officer did listen to
Harry's story, believed it, and apologized to _him_. Harry was a little
soothed, but from that day I know there was a great bitterness in his
heart. For he had done a difficult job very well, and had come back
justly proud of himself and his men. And to have the work wasted by a
bungling N.C.O., and his word doubted by a Philpott....
And that I may call the beginning of the second stage.