XIII

That evening I sat in C Company mess for an hour and talked with them

about the trial. They were very sad and upset at this thing happening in

the regiment, but they were reasonable and generous, not like those D

Company pups, Wallace and the other. For they were older men, and had

nearly all been out a long time. Only one of them annoyed me, a fellow

in the thirties, making a good income in the City, who had only joined

up just before he had to under the Derby scheme, and had been out a

month. This fellow was very strong on 'the honour of the regiment'; and

seemed to think it desirable for that 'honour' that Harry should be

shot. Though how the honour of the regiment would be thereby advanced,

or what right he had to speak for it, I could not discover.

But the others were sensible, balanced men, and as perplexed and

troubled as I. I had been thinking over a thing that Harry had said in

his talk with me--'If I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet.'

It is a pity one cannot avoid these horrible terms, but one cannot. I

take it that 'wind-up'--whatever the origin of that extraordinary

expression may be--signifies simply 'fear.' 'Cold feet' also signifies

fear, but, as I understand it, has an added implication in it of _base

yielding_ to that fear. I told them about this distinction of Harry's,

and asked them what they thought.

'That's it,' said Smith, 'that's just the damned shame of the whole

thing. There are lots of men who are simply terrified the whole time

they're out, but just go on sticking it by sheer guts--will-power, or

whatever you like--that's having the wind-up, and you can't prevent it.

It just depends how you're made. I suppose there really are some people

who don't feel fear at all--that fellow Drake, for example--though I'm

not sure that there are many. Anyhow, if there are any they don't

deserve much credit though they do get the V.C.'s. Then there are the

people who feel fear like the rest of us and don't make any effort to

resist it, don't join up or come out, and when they have to, go back

after three months with a blighty one, and get a job, and stay

there----'

'And when they are here wangle out of all the dirty jobs,' put in

Foster.

'Well, they're the people with "cold feet" if you like,' Smith went on,

'and as you say, Penrose has never been like that. Fellows like him keep

on coming out time after time, getting worse wind-up every time, but

simply kicking themselves out until they come out once too often, and

stop one, or break up suddenly like Penrose, and----'

'And the question is--ought any man like that to be shot?' asked Foster.

'Ought any one who _volunteers_ to fight for his ---- country be shot?'

said another.

'Damn it, yes,' said Constable; he was a square, hard-looking old boy, a

promoted N.C.O., and a very useful officer. 'You must have some sort of

standard--or where would the army be?'

'I don't know,' said Foster, 'look at the Australians--they don't have a

death-penalty, and I reckon they're as good as us.'

'Yes, my son, perhaps that's the reason'--this was old Constable

again--'the average Australian is naturally a sight stouter-hearted than

the average Englishman--they don't need it.'

'Then why the hell do they punish Englishmen worse than Australians, if

they can't even be _expected_ to do so well?' retorted Foster; but this

piece of dialectics was lost on Constable.

'Anyhow, I don't see that it need be such an absolute standard,' Smith

began again, thoughtfully; he was a thoughtful young fellow. 'They don't

expect everybody to have equally strong arms or equally good brains; and

if a chap's legs or arms aren't strong enough for him to go on living in

the trenches they take him out of it (if he's lucky). But every man's

expected to have equally strong nerves in all circumstances, and to _go

on having them_ till he goes under; and when he goes under they don't

consider how far his nerves, or guts, or whatever you call it, were as

good as other people's. Even if he had nerves like a chicken to begin

with he's expected to behave as a man with nerves like a lion or a Drake

would do....'

'A man with nerves like a chicken is a damned fool to go into the

infantry at all,' put in Williams--'the honour of the regiment' person.

'Yes, but he may have had a will-power like a lion, and simply made

himself do it.'

'You'd be all right, Smith,' somebody said, 'if you didn't use such long

words; what the hell do you mean by an absolute standard?'

'Sorry, George, I forgot you were so ignorant. What I mean is this. Take

a case like Penrose's: All they ask is, was he seen running the wrong

way, or not going the right way? If the answer is Yes--the punishment is

death, _et cetera, et cetera_. To begin with, as I said, they don't

consider whether he was _capable_ physically or mentally--I don't know

which it is--of doing the right thing. And then there are lots of other

things which _we_ know make one man more "windy" than another, or

windier to-day than he was yesterday--things like being a married man,

or having boils, or a bad cold, or being just physically weak, so that

you get so exhausted you haven't got any strength left to resist your

fears (I've had that feeling myself)--none of those things are

considered _at all_ at a court-martial--and I think they ought to be.'

'No,' said Foster, 'they ought to be considered _before_ they decide to

have a court-martial at all. A case like Penrose's never ought to have

got so far.'

'You're right--I don't know why the devil it did.'

'After all,' said Williams, 'you've got to consider the name of the

regiment. What would happen----'

But I could not stand any more of that. 'I think Smith's on the right

line,' I said, 'though I don't know if it would ever be workable. There

are, of course, lots of fellows who _feel_ things far more than most of

us, sensitive, imaginative fellows, like poor Penrose--and it must be

hell for them. Of course there are some men like that with enormously

strong wills who manage to stick it out as well as anybody, and do

awfully well--I should think young Aston, for instance--and those I call

the _really_ brave men. Anyhow, if a man like that really does stick it

as long as he can, I think something ought to be done for him, though

I'm damned if I know what. He oughtn't....'

'He oughtn't to be _allowed_ to go on too long--that's what it comes

to,' said Smith.

'Well, what do you want,' Foster asked, 'a kind of periodical Wind-up

Examination?'

'That's the kind of thing, I suppose. It _is_ a medical question,

really. Only the doctors don't seem to recognize--or else they aren't

allowed to--any stage between absolute shell-shock, with your legs

flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.'

'But damn it, man,' Constable exploded, 'look at the skrim-shanking

you'll get if you have that sort of thing. You'd have all the mothers'

darlings in the kingdom saying they'd had enough when they got to the

Base.'

'Perhaps--no, I think that's silly. I don't know what it is that gives

you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or

emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test

when a man's really had enough; just as they tell whether a man's knee

or a man's heart are really bad or not. You'd have to take his record

into account, of course....'

'And you'd have to make it a compulsory test,' said Smith, 'because

nowadays no one's going to go into a Board and say, "Look here, doctor,

I've been out so long and I can't stand any more." They'd send you out

in the next draft!'

'Compulsory both ways,' added Foster: 'when they'd decided he'd done

enough, and wasn't _safe_ any longer, he oughtn't to be _allowed_ to do

any more--because he's dangerous to himself and everybody else.'[1]

[Footnote 1: It is only fair to say that, long after the supposed date

of this conversation, a system of sending 'war-weary' soldiers home for

six months at a time was instituted, though I doubt if Foster would have

been satisfied with that.]

'As a matter of fact,' said Williams, 'that's what usually does happen,

doesn't it? When a chap gets down and out like that after a decent spell

of it, he usually gets a job at home--instructor at the Depot, or

something.'

'Yes, and then you get a fellow with the devil of a conscience like

Penrose--and you have a nasty mess like this.'

'And what about the men?' asked Constable. 'Are you going to have the

same thing for them?'

'Certainly--only, thank God, there are not so many of them who need it.

All that chat you read about the "wonderful fatalism" of the British

soldier is so much bunkum. It simply means that most of them are not

cursed with an imagination, and so don't worry about what's coming.'

'That's true; you don't see many fatalists in the middle of a big

strafe.'

'Of course there _are_ lots of them who _are_ made like Penrose, and

with a record like his, something----'

'And it's damned lucky for the British Army there are not more of them,'

put in Constable.

'Certainly, but it's damned unlucky for them to be in the British

Army--in the infantry, anyhow.'

'And what does that matter?'

'Oh, well, you can take that line if you like--but it's a bit Prussian,

isn't it?'

'Prussia's winning this dirty war, anyhow, at present.'

So the talk rambled on, and we got no further, only most of us were in

troubled agreement that something--perhaps many things--were wrong about

the System, if this young volunteer, after long fighting and suffering,

was indeed to be shot like a traitor in the cold dawn.

Nine times out of ten, as Williams had said, we knew that it would not

have happened, simply because nine men out of ten surrender in time. But

ought the tenth case to be even remotely possible? That was our doubt.

What exactly was wrong we could not pretend to say. It was not our

business. But if this was the best the old men could do, we felt that we

could help them a little. I give you this scrap of conversation only to

show the kind of feeling there was in the regiment--because that is the

surest test of the rightness of these things.

They were still at it when I left. And as I went out wearily into the

cold drizzle I heard Foster summing up his views with: 'Well, the whole

thing's damned awful. They've recommended him to mercy, haven't they?

and I hope to God he gets it.'