But he survived, for he was very careful. And though, as I have said, he
stuck it for a long time, he was by no means the gallant fire-eater you
would have imagined from his treatment of defaulters. Once round the
line just before dawn was enough for him in that sort of country.
'Things are quiet then, and you can see what's going on.' He liked it
best when 'things were quiet.' So did all of us, and I don't blame him
for that.
But that winter there was a thick crop of S.I.W.'s. S.I.W. is the short
title for a man who has been evacuated with self-inflicted wounds--shot
himself in the foot, or held a finger over the muzzle of his rifle, or
dropped a great boulder on his foot--done himself any reckless injury to
escape from the misery of it all. It was always a marvel to me that any
man who could find courage to do such things could not find courage to
go on; I suppose they felt it would bring them the certainty of a little
respite, and beyond that they did not care, for it was the uncertainty
of their life that had broken them. You could not help being sorry for
these men, even though you despised them. It made you sick to think that
any man who had come voluntarily to fight for his country could be
brought so low, that humanity could be so degraded exactly where it was
being so ennobled.
But Philpott had no such qualms. He was ruthless, and necessarily so;
but, beyond that, he was brutal, he bullied. When they came before him,
healed of their wounds, haggard, miserable wisps of men, he kept them
standing there while he told them at length exactly how low they had
sunk (they knew that well enough, poor devils), and flung at them a rich
vocabulary of abuse--words of cowardice and dishonour, which were
strictly accurate but highly unnecessary. For these men were going back
to duty now; they had done their punishment--though the worst of it was
still to come; all they needed was a few quiet words of encouragement
from a strong man to a weaker, a little human sympathy, and that appeal
to a man's honour which so seldom fails if it is rightly made.
Well, this did not surprise me in Philpott; he had no surprises for me
by now. What did surprise me was Harry's intolerant, even cruel,
comments on the cases of the S.I.W.'s. He had always had a real sympathy
with the men, he knew the strange workings of their minds, and all the
wretchedness of their lives; he understood them. And yet here he was, as
scornful, as Prussian, on the subject of S.I.W.'s as even Philpott. It
was long before I understood this--I don't know that I ever did. But I
thought it was this: that in these wrecks of men he recognized something
of his own sufferings; and recognizing the disease he was the more
appalled by the remedy they took. The kind of thing that had led them to
it was the kind of thing he had been through, was going through. There
the connection ceased. There was no such way out for him. But though it
ceased, the connection was so close that it was degrading. And this
scorn and anger was a kind of instinctive self-defence--put on to assure
himself, to assure the world, that there was no connection--none at
all.... But I don't know.
V
At the end of February I was wounded and went home. Without any conceit,
without exaggerating our friendship, I may say that this was the final
blow for Harry. I was the last of the Old Crowd; I was the one man who
knew the truth of things as between him and Philpott.... And I went.
I was hit by a big shell at Whizz-Bang Corner, and Harry saw me on the
stretcher as we came past D Company on the Bapaume Road. He walked with
me as far as the cookers, and was full of concern for my wound, which
was pretty painful just then. But he bucked me up and talked gaily of
the good things I was going to. And he said nothing of himself. But when
he left me there was a look about him--what is the word?--_wistful_--it
is the only one, like a dog left behind.
* * * * *
While I was still in hospital I had two letters from the battalion. The
first was from Harry, a long wail about Philpott and the dullness of
everybody now that the Old Crowd were extinct, though he seemed to have
made good friends of some of the dull ones. At the end of that endless
winter, when it seemed as if the spring would never come, they had
pulled out of the line and 'trekked' up north, so that there had been
little fighting. They were now in shell-holes across the high ridge in
front of Arras, preparing for an advance.
The other letter was from old Knight, the Quartermaster, dated two
months after I left.