Can the die fall which side up it will? Nay, not if it be
honest.--EASTERN PROVERB.
Many a league our infantry advanced that night, the guns following,
getting the new range by a miracle each time they took new ground.
We went forward, too, at the cost of many casualties--too many in
proportion to the work we did. We were fired on in the darkness more
than once by our own infantry. We, who had lost but seventy-two men
killed and wounded in the charge, were short another hundred when
the day broke and nothing to the good by it.
Getting lost in the dark--falling into shell-holes--swooping down on
rear-guards that generally proved to have machine guns with them--weary
men on hungrier, wearier horses--the wonder is that a man rode
back to tell of it at dawn.
One-hundred-and-two-and-seventy were our casualties, and some two
hundred horses--some of the men so lightly wounded that they were
back in the ranks within the week. At dawn they sent us to the rear
to rest, we being too good a target for the enemy by daylight. Some
of us rode two to a horse. On our way to the camp the French had
pitched for us we passed through reenforcements coming from another
section of the front, who gave us the right of way, and we took the
salute of two divisions of French infantry who, I suppose, had been
told of the service we had rendered. Said I to Gooja Singh, who sat
on my horse's rump, his own beast being disemboweled, "Who speaks
now of a poor beginning?" said I.
"I would rather see the end!" said he. But he never saw the end.
Gooja Singh was ever too impatient of beginnings, and too sure what
the end ought to be, to make certain of the middle part. I have
known men on outpost duty so far-seeing that an enemy had them at
his mercy if only he could creep close enough. And such men are
always grumblers.
Gooja Singh led the grumbling now--he who had been first to prophesy
how we should be turned into infantry. They kept us at the rear, and
took away our horses--took even our spurs, making us drill with
unaccustomed weapons. And I think that the beginning of the new
distrust of Ranjoor Singh was in resentment at his patience with the
bayonet drill. We soldiers are like women, sahib, ever resentful of
the new--aye, like women in more ways than one; for whom we have
loved best we hate most when the change comes.
Once, at least a squadron of us had loved Ranjoor Singh to the
death. He was a Sikh of Sikhs. It had been our boast that fire could
not burn his courage nor love corrupt him, and I was still of that
mind; but not so the others. They began to remember how he had
stayed behind when we left India. We had all seen him in disguise,
in conversation with that German by the Delhi Gate. We knew how busy
he had been in the bazaars while the rumors flew. And the trooper
who had stayed behind with him, who had joined us with him at the
very instant of the charge that night, died in the charge; so that
there was none to give explanation of his conduct. Ranjoor Singh
himself was a very rock for silence. Our British officers said
nothing, doubtless not suspecting the distrust; for it was a byword
that Ranjoor Singh held the honor of the squadron in his hand. Yet
of all the squadron only the officers and I now trusted him--the
Sikh officers because they imitated the British; the British because
faith is a habit with them, once pledged, and I--God knows. There
were hours when I did distrust him--black hours, best forgotten.
The war settled down into a siege of trenches, and soon we were
given a section of a trench to hold. Little by little we grew wise
at the business of tossing explosives over blind banks--we, who
would rather have been at it with the lance and saber. Yet, can a
die fall which side up it will? Nay, not if it be honest! We were
there to help. We who had carried coal could shovel mud, and as time
went on we grumbled less.
But time hung heavy, and curiosity regarding Ranjoor Singh led from
one conjecture to another. At last Gooja Singh asked Captain
Fellowes, and he said that Ranjoor Singh had stayed behind to expose
a German plot--that having done so, he had hurried after us. That
explanation ought to have satisfied every one, and I think it did
for a time. But who could hide from such a man as Ranjoor Singh that
the squadron's faith in him was gone? That knowledge made him
savage. How should we know that he had been forbidden to tell us
what had kept him? When he set aside his pride and made us
overtures, there was no response; so his heart hardened in him.
Secrecy is good. Secrecy is better than all the lame explanations in
the world. But in this war there has been too much secrecy in the
wrong place. They should have let him line us up and tell us his
whole story. But later, when perhaps he might have done it, either
his pride was too great or his sense of obedience too tightly spun.
To this day he has never told us. Not that it matters.
The subtlest fool is the worst, and Gooja Singh's tongue did not
lack subtlety on occasion. He made it his business to remind the
squadron daily of its doubts, and I, who should have known better,
laughed at some of the things he said and agreed with others. One is
the fool who speaks with him who listens. I have never been rebuked
for it by Ranjoor Singh, and more than once since that day he has
seen fit to praise me; but in that hour when most he needed friends
I became his half-friend, which is worse than enemy. I never raised
my voice once in defense of him in those days.
Meanwhile Ranjoor Singh grew very wise at this trench warfare,
Colonel Kirby and the other British officers taking great comfort in
his cunning. It was he who led us to tie strings to the German wire
entanglements, which we then jerked from our trench, causing them to
lie awake and waste much ammunition. It was he who thought of
dressing turbans on the end of poles and thrusting them forward at
the hour before dawn when fear and chill and darkness have done
their worst work. That started a panic that cost the Germans eighty
men.
I think his leadership would have won the squadron back to love him.
I know it saved his life. We had all heard tales of how the British
soldiers in South Africa made short work of the officers they did
not love, and it would have been easy to make an end of Ranjoor
Singh on any dark night. But he led too well; men were afraid to
take the responsibility lest the others turn on them. One night I
overheard two troopers considering the thought, and they suspected I
had overheard. I said nothing, but they were afraid, as I knew they
would be. Has the sahib ever heard of "left-hand casualties"? I will
explain.
We Sikhs have a saying that in fear there is no wisdom. None can be
wise and afraid. None can be afraid and wise. The men at the front,
both Indian and British-French, too, for aught I know--who feared to
fight longer in the trenches were seized in those early days with
the foolish thought of inflicting some injury on themselves--not
very severe, but enough to cause a spell of absence at the base and
a rest in hospital. Folly being the substance of that idea, and most
men being right-handed, such self-inflicted wounds were practically
always in the hand or foot and always on the left side. The
ambulance men knew them, on the instant.
Those two fools of my squadron wounded themselves with bullets in
the left hand, forgetting that their palms would be burned by the
discharge. I was sent to the rear to give evidence against them (for
I saw them commit the foolishness). The cross-examination we all
three underwent was clever--at the hands of a young British captain,
who, I dare swear, was suckled by a Sikh nurse in the Punjab. In
less than thirty minutes he had the whole story out of us; and the
two troopers were shot that evening for an example.
That young captain was greatly impressed with the story we had told
about Ranjoor Singh, and he called me back afterward and asked me a
hundred questions more--until he must have known the very color of
my entrails and I knew not which way I faced. To all of this a
senior officer of the Intelligence Department listened with both
ears, and presently he and the captain talked together.
The long and short of that was that Ranjoor Singh was sent for; and
when he returned to the trench after two days' absence it was to
work independently of us--from our trench, but irrespective of our
doings. Even Colonel Kirby now had no orders to give him, although
they two talked long and at frequent intervals in the place Colonel
Kirby called his funk-hole. It was now that the squadron's
reawakening love for Ranjoor Singh received the worst check of any.
We had almost forgotten he knew German. Henceforward he conversed in
German each day with the enemy.
It is a strange thing, sahib,--not easy to explain--but I, who have
achieved some fluency in English and might therefore have admired
his gift of tongues, now began to doubt him in earnest--hating
myself the while, but doubting him. And Gooja Singh, who had talked
the most and dropped the blackest hints against him, now began to
take his side.
And Ranjoor Singh said nothing. Night after night he went to lie at
the point where our trench and the enemy's lay closest. There he
would talk with some one whom we never saw, while we sat shivering
in the mud. Cold we can endure, sahib, as readily as any; it is
colder in winter where I come from than anything I felt in Flanders;
but the rain and the mud depressed our spirits, until with these two
eyes I have seen grown men weeping.
They kept us at work to encourage us. Our spells in the trench were
shortened and our rests at the rear increased to the utmost
possible. Only Ranjoor Singh took no vacation, remaining ever on the
watch, passing from one trench to another, conversing ever with the
enemy.
We dug and they dug, each side laboring everlastingly to find the
other's listening places and to blow them up by means of mining, so
that the earth became a very rat-run. Above-ground, where were only
ruin and barbed wire, there was no sign of activity, but only a
great stench that came from bodies none dared bury. We were thankful
that the wind blew oftenest from us to them; but whichever way the
wind blew Ranjoor Singh knew no rest. He was ever to be found where
the lines lay closest at the moment, either listening or talking. We
understood very well that he was carrying out orders given him at
the rear, but that did not make the squadron or the regiment like
him any better, and as far as that went I was one with them; I hated
to see a squadron leader stoop to such intrigues.
It was plain enough that some sort of intrigue was making headway,
for the Germans soon began to toss over into our trench bundles of
printed pamphlets, explaining in our tongue why they were our best
friends and why therefore we should refuse to wage war on them. They
threw printed bulletins that said, in good Punjabi, there was
revolution from end to end of India, rioting in England, utter
disaster to the British fleet, and that our way home again to India
had been cut by the German war-ships. They must have been ignorant
of the fact that we received our mail from India regularly. I have
noticed this about the Germans: they are unable to convince
themselves that any other people can appreciate the same things they
appreciate, think as swiftly as they, or despise the terrors they
despise. That is one reason why they must lose this war. But there
are others also.
One afternoon, when I was pretending to doze in a niche near the
entrance to Colonel Kirby's funk-hole, I became possessed of the key
to it all; for Colonel Kirby's voice was raised more than once in
anger. I understood at last how Ranjoor Singh had orders to deceive
the Germans as to our state of mind. He was to make them believe we
were growing mutinous and that the leaven only needed time in which
to work; this of course for the purpose of throwing them off their
guard.
My heart stopped beating while I listened, for what man hears his
honor smirched without wincing? Even so I think I would have held my
tongue, only that Gooja Singh, who dozed in a niche on the other
side of the funk-hole entrance, heard the same as I.
Said Gooja Singh that evening to the troopers round about: "They
chose well," said he. "They picked a brave man--a clever man, for a
desperate venture!" And when the troopers asked what that might
mean, he asked how many of them in the Punjab had seen a goat tied
to a stake to lure a panther. The suggestion made them think. Then,
pretending to praise him, letting fall no word that could be thrown
back in his teeth, he condemned Ranjoor Singh for a worse traitor
than any had yet believed him. Gooja Singh was a man with a certain
subtlety. A man with two tongues, very dangerous.
"Ranjoor Singh is brave," said he, "for he is not afraid to
sacrifice us all. Many officers are afraid to lose too many men in
the gaining of an end, but not so he. He is clever, for who else
would have thought of making us seem despicable to the Germans in
order to tempt them to attack in force at this point? Have ye not
noticed how to our rear all is being made ready for the defense and
for a counter-attack to follow? We are the bait. The battle is to be
waged over our dead bodies."
I corrected him. I said I had heard as well as he, and that Colonel
Kirby was utterly angry at the defamation of those whom he was ever
pleased to call "his Sikhs." But that convinced nobody, although it
did the colonel sahib no harm in the regiment's opinion--not that he
needed advocates. We were all ready to die around Colonel Kirby at
any minute. Even Gooja Singh was ready to do that.
"Does the colonel sahib accept the situation?" one of the troopers
asked.
"Aye, for he must," said Gooja Singh; and I could not deny it.
"Ranjoor Singh went over his head and orders have come from the
rear." I could not deny that either, although I did not believe it.
How should I, or any one, know what passed after Ranjoor Singh had
been sent for by the Intelligence officers? I was his half-friend in
those days, sahib. Worse than his enemy--unwilling to take part
against him, yet unready to speak up in his defense. Doubtless my
silence went for consent among the troopers.
The end of the discussion found men unafraid. "If the colonel sahib
is willing to be bait," said they, "then so be we, but let us see to
it that none hang back." And so the whole regiment made up its mind
to die desperately, yet with many a sidewise glance at Ranjoor
Singh, who was watched more carefully than I think he guessed in
those days. If he had tried to slip back to the rear it would have
been the end of him. But he continued with us.
And all this while a great force gathered at our rear--gathered and
grew--Indian and British infantry. Guns by the fifty were brought
forward under cover of the night and placed in line behind us.
Ranjoor Singh continued talking with the enemy, lying belly downward
in the mud, and they kept throwing printed stuff to us that we
turned in to our officers. But the Germans did not attack. And the
force behind us grew.
Then one evening, just after dusk, we were all amazed by the news
that the assault was to come from our side. And almost before that
news had reached us the guns at our rear began their overture,
making preparation beyond the compass of a man's mind to grasp or
convey. They hurled such a torrent of shells that the Germans could
neither move away the troops in front of us nor bring up others to
their aid. It did not seem possible that one German could be left
alive, and I even felt jealous because, thought I, no work would be
left for us to do! Yet men did live--as we discovered. For a night
and a day our ordnance kept up that preparation, and then word went
around.
Who shall tell of a night attack, from a trench against trenches?
Suddenly the guns ceased pounding the earth in front of us and
lifted to make a screen of fire almost a mile beyond. There was
instant pitch darkness on every hand, and out of that a hundred
trumpets sounded. Instantly, each squadron leader leaped the
earthwork, shouting to his men. Ranjoor Singh leaped up in front of
us, and we followed him, all forgetting their distrust of him in the
fierce excitement--remembering only how he had led us in the charge
on that first night. The air was thick with din, and fumes, and
flying metal--for the Germans were not forgetting to use artillery.
I ceased to think of anything but going forward. Who shall describe
it?
Once in Bombay I heard a Christian preacher tell of the Judgment Day
to come, when graves shall give up their dead. That is not our Sikh
idea of judgment, but his words brought before my mind a picture
riot so much unlike a night attack in Flanders. He spoke of the
whole earth trembling and consumed by fire--of thunder and lightning
and a great long trumpet call--of the dead leaping alive again from
the graves where they lay buried. Not a poor picture, sahib, of a
night attack in Flanders!
The first line of German trenches, and the second had been pounded
out of being by our guns. The barbed wire had been cut into
fragments by our shrapnel. Here and there an arm or a leg protruded
from the ground--here and there a head. For two hundred yards and
perhaps more there was nothing to oppose us, except the enemy shells
bursting so constantly that we seemed to breathe splintered metal.
Yet very few were hit. The din was so great that it seemed to be
silence. We were phantom men, going forward without sound of
footfall. I could neither feel nor think for the first two hundred
yards, but ran with my bayonet out in front of me. And then I did
feel. A German bayonet barked my knuckles. After that there was
fighting such as I hope never to know again.
The Germans did not seem to have been taken by surprise at all. They
had made ample preparation. And as for holding us in contempt, they
gave no evidence of that. Their wounded were unwilling to surrender
because their officers had given out we would torture prisoners. We
had to pounce on them, and cut their buttons off and slit their
boots, so that they must use both hands to hold their trousers up
and could not run. And that took time so that we lagged behind a
little, for we took more prisoners than the regiments to right and
left of us. The Dogra regiment to our left and the Gurkha regiment
to our right gained on us fast, and we became, as it were, the
center of a new moon.
But then in the light of bursting shells we saw Colonel Kirby and
Ranjoor Singh and Captain Fellowes and some other officers far out
in front of us beckoning--calling on us for our greatest effort. We
answered. We swept forward after them into the teeth of all the
inventions in the world. Mine after mine exploded under our very
feet. Shrapnel burst among us. There began to be uncut wire, and men
rushed out at us from trenches that we thought obliterated, but that
proved only to have been hidden under debris by our gun-fire.
Shadows resolved into trenches defended by machine guns.
But we went forward--cavalry, without a spur among us--cavalry with
rifles--cavalry on foot--infantry with the fire and the drill and
the thoughts of cavalry--still cavalry at heart, for all the weapons
they had given us and the trench life we had lived. We remembered,
sahib, that the Germans had been educated lately to despise us, and
we were out that night to convert them to a different opinion! It
seemed good to D Squadron that Ranjoor Singh, who had done the
defamation, should lead us to the clearing of our name. Nothing
could stop us that night.
Whereas we had been last in the advance, we charged into the lead
and held it. We swept on I know not how far, but very far beyond the
wings. No means had been devised that I know of for checking the
distance covered, and I suppose Headquarters timed the attack and
tried to judge how far the advance had carried, with the aid of
messengers sent running back. No easy task!
At all events we lost touch with the regiments to right and left,
but kept touch with the enemy, pressing forward until suddenly our
own shell-fire ceased to fall in front of us but resumed pounding
toward our rear. They call such a fire a barrage, sahib. Its purpose
is to prevent the enemy from making a counter-attack until the
infantry can dig themselves in and secure the new ground won. That
meant we were isolated. It needed no staff officer to tell, us that,
or to bring us to our senses. We were like men who wake from a
nightmare, to find the truth more dreadful than the dream.
Colonel Kirby was wounded a little, and sat while a risaldar bound
his arm. Ranjoor Singh found a short trench half full of water, and
ordered us into it. Although we had not realized it until then, it
was raining torrents, and the Germans we drove out of that trench
(there were but a few of them) were wetter than water rats; but we
had to scramble down into it, and the cold bath finished what the
sense of isolation had begun. We were sober men when Kirby sahib
scrambled in last and ordered us to begin on the trench at once with
picks and shovels that the Germans had left behind. We altered the
trench so that it faced both ways, and waited shivering for the
dawn.
Let it not be supposed, however, sahib, that we waited unmolested.
The Germans are not that kind of warrior. I hold no brief for them,
but I tell no lies about them, either. They fight with persistence,
bravery, and what they consider to be cunning. We were under rifle-fire
at once from before and behind and the flanks, and our own
artillery began pounding the ground so close to us that fragments of
shell and shrapnel flew over our heads incessantly, and great clods
of earth came thumping and splashing into our trench, compelling us
to keep busy with the shovels. Nor did the German artillery omit to
make a target of us, though with poor success. More than the half of
us lived; and to prove that there had been thought as well as
bravery that night we had plenty of ammunition with us. We were
troubled to stow the ammunition out of the wet, yet where it would
be safe from the German fire.
We made no reply to the shell-fire, for that would have been
foolishness; so, doubtless thinking they had the range not quite
right, or perhaps supposing that we had been annihilated, the enemy
discontinued shelling us and devoted their attention to our friends
beyond. But at the same time a battalion of infantry began to feel
its way toward us and we grew very busy with our rifles, the wounded
crawling through the wet to pass the cartridges. Once there was a
bayonet charge, which we repelled.
Those who had not thrown away their knapsacks to lighten themselves
had their emergency rations, but about half of us had nothing to eat
whatever. It was perfectly evident to all of us from the very first
that unless we should receive prompt aid at dawn our case was as
hopeless as death itself. So much the more reason for stout hearts,
said we, and our bearing put new heart into our officers.
When dawn came the sight was not inspiriting. Dawn amid a waste of
Flanders mud, seen through a rain-storm, is not a joyous spectacle
in any case. Consider, sahib, what a sunny land we came from, and
pass no hasty judgment on us if our spirits sank. It was the
weather, not the danger that depressed us. I, who was near the
center of the trench, could see to right and left over the ends, and
I made a hasty count of heads, discovering that we, who had been a
regiment, were now about three hundred men, forty of whom were
wounded.
I saw that we were many a hundred yards away from the nearest
British trench. The Germans had crept under cover of the darkness
and dug themselves in anew between us and our friends. Before us was
a trench full of infantry, and there were others to right and left.
We were completely surrounded; and it was not an hour after dawn
when the enemy began to shout to us to show our hands and surrender.
Colonel Kirby forbade us to answer them, and we lay still as dead
men until they threw bombs--which we answered with bullets.
After that we were left alone for an hour or two, and Colonel Kirby,
whose wound was not serious, began passing along the trench, knee-deep
in the muddy water, to inspect us and count us and give each
man encouragement. It was just as he passed close to me that a
hand-grenade struck him in the thigh and exploded. He fell forward on me,
and I took him across my knee lest he fall into the water and be
smothered. That is how it happened that only I overheard what he
said to Ranjoor Singh before he died. Several others tried to hear,
for we loved Colonel Kirby as sons love their father; but, since he
lay with his head on my shoulder, my ear was as close to his lips as
Ranjoor Singh's, to whom he spoke, so that Ranjoor Singh and I heard
and the rest did not. Later I told the others, but they chose to
disbelieve me.
Ranjoor Singh came wading along the trench, stumbling over men's
feet in his hurry and nearly falling just as he reached us, so that
for the moment I thought he too had been shot. Besides Colonel
Kirby, who was dying in my arms, he, and Captain Fellowes, and one
other risaldar were our only remaining officers. Colonel Kirby was
in great pain, so that his words were not in his usual voice but
forced through clenched teeth, and Ranjoor Singh had to stoop to
listen.
"Shepherd 'em!" said Colonel Kirby. "Shepherd 'em, Ranjoor Singh!"
My ear was close and I heard each word. "A bad business. They did
not know enough to listen to you at Headquarters. Don't waste time
blaming anybody. Pray for wisdom, and fear nothing! You're in
command now. Take over. Shepherd 'em! Good-by, old friend!"
"Good-by, Colonel sahib," said Ranjoor Singh, and Kirby sahib died
in that moment, having shed the half of his blood over me. Ranjoor
Singh and I laid him along a ledge above the water and it was not
very long before a chance shell dropped near and buried him under a
ton of earth. Yes, sahib, a British shell.
Presently Ranjoor Singh waded along the trench to have word with
Captain Fellowes, who was wounded rather badly. I made busy with the
men about me, making them stand where they could see best with least
risk of exposure and ordering spade work here and there. It is a
strange thing, sahib, but I have never seen it otherwise, that spade
work--which is surely the most important thing--is the last thing
troopers will attend to unless compelled. They will comb their
beards, and decorate the trench with colored stones and draw names
in the mud, but the all-important digging waits. Sikh and Gurkha and
British and French are all alike in that respect.
When Ranjoor Singh came back from his talk with Captain Fellowes he
sent me to the right wing under our other risaldar, and after he was
killed by a grenade I was in command of the right wing of our
trench.
The three days that followed have mostly gone from memory, that
being the way of evil. If men could remember pain and misery they
would refuse to live because of the risk of more of it; but hope
springs ever anew out of wretchedness like sprouts on the burned
land, and the ashes are forgotten. I do not remember much of those
three days.
There was nothing to eat. There began to be a smell. There was worse
than nothing to drink, for thirst took hold of us, yet the water in
the trench was all pollution. The smell made us wish to vomit, yet
what could the empty do but desire? Corpses lay all around us. No,
sahib, not the dead of the night before's fighting. Have I not said
that the weather was cold? The bombardment by our own guns preceding
our attack had torn up graves that were I know not how old. When we
essayed to re-bury some bodies the Germans drove us back under
cover.
That night, and the next, several attempts were made to rush us, but
under Ranjoor Singh's command we beat them off. He was wakeful as
the stars and as unexcited. Obedience to him was so comforting that
men forgot for the time their suspicion and distrust. When dawn came
there were more dead bodies round about, and some wounded who called
piteously for help. The Germans crawled out to help their wounded,
but Ranjoor Singh bade us drive them back and we obeyed.
Then the Germans began shouting to us, and Ranjoor Singh answered
them. If he had answered in English, so that most of us could have
understood, all would surely have been well; I am certain that in
that case the affection, returning because of his fine leadership,
would have destroyed the memory of suspicion. But I suppose it had
become habit with him to talk to the enemy in German by that time,
and as the words we could not understand passed back and forth even
I began to hate him. Yet he drove a good bargain for us.
Instead of hand-grenades the Germans began to throw bread to us--great,
flat, army loaves, Ranjoor Singh not showing himself, but
counting aloud as each loaf came over, we catching with great
anxiety lest they fall into the water and be polluted. It took a
long time, but when there was a good dry loaf for each man, Ranjoor
Singh gave the Germans leave to come and carry in their wounded, and
bade us hold our fire. Gooja Singh was for playing a trick but the
troopers near him murmured and Ranjoor Singh threatened him with
death if he dared. He never forgot that.
The Germans who came to fetch the wounded laughed at us, but Ranjoor
Singh forbade us to answer, and Captain Fellowes backed him up.
"There will be another attack from our side presently," said Captain
Fellowes, "and our friends will answer for us."
I shuddered at that. I remembered the bombardment that preceded our
first advance. Better die at the hands of the enemy, thought I. But
I said nothing. Presently, however, a new thought came to me, and I
called to Ranjoor Singh along the trench.
"You should have made a better bargain," said I. "You should have
compelled them to care for our wounded before they were allowed to
take their own!"
"I demanded, but they refused," he answered, and then I wished I had
bitten out my tongue rather than speak, for although I believed his
answer, the rest of the men did not. There began to be new murmuring
against him, led by Gooja Singh; but Gooja Singh was too subtle to
be convicted of the responsibility.
Captain Fellowes grew aware of the murmuring and made much show
thenceforward of his faith in Ranjoor Singh. He was weak from his
wound and was attended constantly by two men, so that although he
kept command of the left wing and did ably he could not shout loud
enough to be heard very far, and he had to send messages to Ranjoor
Singh from mouth to mouth. His evident approval had somewhat the
effect of subduing the men's resentment, although not much, and when
he died that night there was none left, save I, to lend our leader
countenance. And I was only his half-friend, without enough merit in
my heart truly to be the right-hand man I was by right of seniority.
I was willing enough to die at his back, but not to share contempt
with him.
The day passed and there came another day, when the bread was done,
and there were no more German wounded straddled in the mud over whom
to strike new bargains. It had ceased raining, so we could catch no
rain to drink. We were growing weak from weariness and want of
sleep, and we demanded of Ranjoor Singh that he lead us back toward
the British lines.
"We should perish on the way," said he.
"What of it?" we answered, I with the rest. "Better that than this
vulture's death in a graveyard!"
But he shook his head and ordered us to try to think like men. "The
life of a Sikh," said he, "and the oath of a Sikh are one. We swore
to serve our friends. To try to cut our way back would be but to die
for our own comfort."
"You should have led us back that first night, when the attack was
spent," said Gooja Singh.
"I was not in command that first night," Ranjoor Singh answered him,
and who could gainsay that?
At irregular intervals British shells began bursting near us, and we
all knew what they were. The batteries were feeling for the range.
They would begin a new bombardment. Now, therefore, is the end, said
we. But Ranjoor Singh stood up with his head above the trench and
began shouting to the Germans. They answered him. Then, to our utter
astonishment, he tore the shirt from a dead man, tied it to a rifle,
and held it up.
The Germans cheered and laughed, but we made never a sound. We were
bewildered--sick from the stink and weariness and thirst and lack of
food. Yet I swear to you, sahib, on my honor that it had not entered
into the heart of one of us to surrender. That we who had been first
of the Indian contingent to board a ship, first to land in France,
first to engage the enemy, should now be first to surrender in a
body seemed to us very much worse than death. Yet Ranjoor Singh bade
us leave our rifles and climb out of the trench, and we obeyed him.
God knows why we obeyed him. I, who had been half-hearted hitherto,
hated him in that minute as a trapped wolf hates the hunter; yet I,
too, obeyed.
We left our dead for the Germans to bury, but we dragged the wounded
out and some of them died as we lifted them. When we reached the
German trench and they counted us, including Ranjoor Singh and
three-and-forty wounded there were two-hundred-and-three-and-fifty
of us left alive.
They led Ranjoor Singh apart. He had neither rifle nor saber in his
hand, and he walked to their trench alone because we avoided him. He
was more muddy than we, and as ragged and tired. He had stood in the
same foul water, and smelt the same stench. He was hungry as we. He
had been willing to surrender, and we had not. Yet he walked like an
officer, and looked like one, and we looked like animals. And we
knew it, and he knew it. And the Germans recognized the facts.
He acted like a crowned king when he reached the trench. A German
officer spoke with him earnestly, but he shook his head and then
they led him away. When he was gone the same officer came and spoke
to us in English, and I understanding him at once, he bade me tell
the others that the British must have witnessed our surrender.
"See," said he, "what a bombardment they have begun again. That is
in the hope of slaying you. That is out of revenge because you dared
surrender instead of dying like rats in a ditch to feed their
pride!" It was true that a bombardment had begun again. It had begun
that minute. Those truly had been ranging shells. If we had stayed
five minutes longer before surrendering we should have been blown to
pieces; but we were in no mood to care on that account.
The Germans are a simple folk, sahib, although they themselves think
otherwise. When they think they are the subtlest they are easiest to
understand. Understanding was reborn in my heart on account of that
German's words. Thought I, if Ranjoor Singh were in truth a traitor
then he would have leaped at a chance to justify himself to us. He
would have repeated what that German had urged him to tell us. Yet I
saw him refuse.
As they hurried him away alone, pity for him came over me like warm
rain on the parched earth, and when a man can pity he can reason, I
spoke in Punjabi to the others and the German officer thought I was
translating what he told me to say, yet in truth I reminded them
that man can find no place where God is not, and where God is is
courage. I was senior now, and my business was to encourage them.
They took new heart from my words, all except Gooja Singh, who wept
noisily, and the German officer was pleased with what he mistook for
the effect of his speech.
"Tell them they shall be excellently treated," said he, seizing my
elbow. "When we shall have won this war the British will no longer
be able to force natives of India to fight their battles for them."
I judged it well to repeat that word for word. There are over ten
applicants for every vacancy in such a regiment as ours, and until
Ranjoor Singh ordered our surrender, we were all free men--free
givers of our best; whereas the Germans about us were all
conscripts. The comparison did no harm.
We saw no more of our wounded until some of them were returned to us
healed, weeks later; but from them we learned that their treatment
had been good. With us, however, it was not so, in spite of the
promise the German officer had made. We were hustled along a wide
trench, and taken over by another guard, not very numerous but
brutal, who kicked us without excuse. As we went the trenches were
under fire all the time from the British artillery. The guards swore
it was our surrender that had drawn the fire, and belabored us the
more on that account.
At the rear of the German lines we were herded in a quarry lest we
observe too much, and it was not until after dark that we were given
half a loaf of bread apiece. Then, without time to eat that which
had been given to us, we were driven off into the darkness. First,
however, they took our goatskin overcoats away, saying they were too
good to be worn by savages. A non-commissioned officer, who could
speak good English, was sent for to explain that point to us.
After an hour's march through the dark we were herded into some
cattle trucks that stood on a siding behind some trees. The trucks
did not smell of cattle, but of foul garments and unwashed men. Two
armed German infantrymen were locked into each truck with us, and
the pair in the truck in which I was drove us in a crowd to the
farther end, claiming an entire half for themselves. It was true
that we stank, for we had been many days and nights without
opportunity to get clean; yet they offered us no means of washing--only
abuse. I have seen German prisoners allowed to wash before they
had been ten minutes behind the British lines.
We were five days in that train, sahib--five days and nights. Our
guards were fed at regular intervals, but not we. Once or twice a
day they brought us a bucket of water from which we were bidden
drink in a great hurry while the train waited; yet often the train
waited hours on sidings and no water at all was brought us. For food
we were chiefly dependent on the charity of people at the wayside
stations who came with gifts intended for German wounded; some of
those took pity on us.
At last, sahib, when we were cold and stiff and miserable to the
very verge of death, we came to a little place called Oeschersleben,
and there the cruelty came to an unexpected end. We were ordered out
of the trucks and met on the platform by a German, not in uniform,
who showed distress at our predicament and who hastened to assure us
in our own tongue that henceforward there would be amends made.
If that man had taken charge of us in the beginning we might not
have been suspicious of him, for he seemed gentle and his words were
fair; but now his kindness came too late to have effect. Animals can
sometimes be rendered tame by starvation and brutality followed by
plenty and kindness, but not men, and particularly not Sikhs--it
being no part of our Guru's teaching that either full belly or
tutored intellect can compensate for lack of goodness. Neither is it
his teaching, on the other hand, that a man must wear thoughts on
his face; so we did not reject this man's advances.
"There have been mistakes made," said he, "by ignorant common
soldiers who knew no better. You shall recuperate on good food, and
then we shall see what we shall see."
I asked him where Ranjoor Singh was, but he did not answer me.
We were not compelled to walk. Few of us could have walked. We were
stiff from confinement and sick from neglect. Carts drawn by oxen
stood near the station, and into those we were crowded and driven to
a camp on the outskirts of the town. There comfortable wooden huts
were ready, well warmed and clean--and a hot meal--and much hot
water in which we were allowed to bathe.
Then, when we had eaten, doctors came and examined us. New clothes
were given us--German uniforms of khaki, and khaki cotton cloth from
which to bind new turbans. Nothing was left undone to make us feel
well received, except that a barbed-wire fence was all about the
camp and armed guards marched up and down outside.
Being senior surviving non-commissioned officer, I was put in charge
of the camp in a certain manner, with many restrictions to my
authority, and for about a week we did nothing but rest and eat and
keep the camp tidy. All day long Germans, mostly women and children
but some men, came to stare at us through the barbed-wire fence as
if we were caged animals, but no insults were offered us. Rather,
the women showed us kindness and passed us sweetmeats and strange
food through the fence until an officer came and stopped them with
overbearing words. Then, presently, there was a new change.
A week had gone and we were feeling better, standing about and
looking at the freshly fallen snow, marking the straight tracks made
by the sentries outside the fence, and thinking of home maybe, when
new developments commenced.
Telegrams translated into Punjabi were nailed to the door of a hut,
telling of India in rebellion and of men, women and children
butchered by the British in cold blood. Other telegrams stated that
the Sikhs of India in particular had risen, and that Pertab Singh,
our prince, had been hanged in public. Many other lies they posted
up. It would be waste of time to tell them all. They were
foolishness--such foolishness as might deceive the German public,
but not us who had lived in India all our lives and who had received
our mail from home within a day or two of our surrender.
There came plausible men who knew our tongue and the argument was
bluntly put to us that we ought to let expediency be our guide in
all things. Yet we were expected to trust the men who gave us such
advice!
Our sense of justice was not courted once. They made appeal to our
bellies--to our purses--to our lust--to our fear--but to our
righteousness not at all. They made for us great pictures of what
German rule of the world would be, and at last I asked whether it
was true that the kaiser had turned Muhammadan. I was given no
answer until I had asked repeatedly, and then it was explained how
that had been a rumor sent abroad to stir Islam; to us, on the other
hand, nothing but truth was told. So I asked, was it true that our
Prince Pertab Singh had been hanged, and they told me yes. I asked
them where, and they said in Delhi. Yet I knew that Pertab Singh was
all the while in London. I asked them where was Ranjoor Singh all
this while, and for a time they made no answer, so I asked again and
again. Then one day they began to talk of Ranjoor Singh.
They told us he was being very useful to them, in Berlin, in daily
conference with the German General Staff, explaining matters that
pertained to the intended invasion of India. Doubtless they thought
that news would please us greatly. But, having heard so many lies
already, I set that down for another one, and the others became all
the more determined in their loyalty from sheer disgust at Ranjoor
Singh's unfaithfulness. They believed and I disbelieved, yet the
result was one.
At night Gooja Singh held forth in the hut where he slept with
twenty-five others. He explained--although he did not say how he
knew--that the Germans have kept for many years in Berlin an office
for the purpose of intrigue in India--an office manned by Sikh
traitors. "That is where Ranjoor Singh will be," said he. "He will
be managing that bureau." In those days Gooja Singh was Ranjoor
Singh's bitterest enemy, although later he changed sides again.
The night-time was the worst. By day there was the camp to keep
clean and the German officers to talk to; but at night we lay awake
thinking of India, and of our dead officer sahibs, and of all that
had been told us that we knew was lies. Ever the conversation turned
to Ranjoor Singh at last, and night after night the anger grew
against him. I myself admitted very often that his duty had been to
lead us to our death. I was ashamed as the rest of our surrender.
After a time, as our wounded began to be drafted back to us from
hospital, we were made to listen to accounts of alleged great German
victories. They told us the German army was outside Paris and that
the whole of the British North Sea Fleet was either sunk or
captured. They also said that the Turks in Gallipoli had won great
victories against the Allies. We began to wonder why such conquerors
should seek so earnestly the friendship of a handful of us Sikhs.
Our wounded began to be drafted back to us well primed, and their
stories made us think, but not as the Germans would have had us
think.
Week after week until the spring came we listened to their tales by
day and talked them over among ourselves at night; and the more they
assured us Ranjoor Singh was working with them in Berlin, the more
we prayed for opportunity to prove our hearts. Spring dragged along
into summer and there began to be prayers for vengeance on him. I
said less than any. Understanding had not come to me fully yet, but
it seemed to me that if Ranjoor Singh was really playing traitor,
then he was going a tedious way about it. Yet it was equally clear
that if I should dare to say one word in his behalf that would be to
pass sentence on myself. I kept silence when I could, and was
evasive when they pressed me, cowardice struggling with new
conviction in my heart.
There came one night at last, when men's hearts burned in them too
terribly for sleep, that some one proposed a resolution and sent the
word whispering from hut to hut, that we should ask for Ranjoor
Singh to be brought to us. Let the excuse be that he was our
rightful leader, and that therefore he ought to advise us what we
should do. Let us promise to do faithfully whatever Ranjoor Singh
should order. Then, when he should have been brought to us, should
he talk treason we would tear him in pieces with our hands. That
resolution was agreed to. I also agreed. It was I who asked the next
day that Ranjoor Singh be brought. The German officer laughed; yet I
asked again, and he went away smiling.
We talked of our plan at night. We repeated it at dawn. We whispered
it above the bread at breakfast. After breakfast we stood in groups,
confirming our decision with great oaths and binding one another to
fulfillment--I no less than all the others. Like the others I was
blinded now by the sense of our high purpose and I forgot to
consider what might happen should Ranjoor Singh take any other line
than that expected of him.
I think it was eleven in the morning of the fourth day after our
decision, when we had all grown weary of threats of vengeance and of
argument as to what each individual man should do to our major's
body, that there was some small commotion at the entrance gate and a
man walked through alone. The gate slammed shut again behind him.
He strode forward to the middle of our compound, stood still, and
confronted us. We stared at him. We gathered round him. We said
nothing.
"Fall in, two deep!" commanded he. And we fell in, two deep, just as
he ordered.
"'Ten-shun!" commanded he. And we stood to attention.
Sahib, he was Ranjoor Singh!
He stood within easy reach of the nearest man, clothed in a new
khaki German uniform. He wore a German saber at his side. Yet I
swear to you the saber was not the reason why no man struck at him.
Nor were there Germans near enough to have rescued him. We, whose
oath to murder him still trembled on our lips, stood and faced him
with trembling knees now that he had come at last.
We stood before him like two rows of dumb men, gazing at his face. I
have heard the English say that our eastern faces are impossible to
read, but that can only be because western eyes are blind. We can
read them readily enough. Yet we could not read Ranjoor Singh's that
day. It dawned on us as we stared that we did not understand, but
that he did; and there is no murder in that mood.
Before we could gather our wits he began to speak to us, and we
listened as in the old days when at least a squadron of us had loved
him to the very death. A very unexpected word was the first he used.
"Simpletons!" said he.
Sahib, our jaws dropped. Simpletons was the last thing we had
thought ourselves. On the contrary, we thought ourselves astute to
have judged his character and to have kept our minds uncorrupted by
the German efforts. Yet we were no longer so sure of ourselves that
any man was ready with an answer.
He glanced over his shoulder to left and right. There were no
Germans inside the fence; none near enough to overhear him, even if
he raised his voice. So he did raise it, and we all heard.
"I come from Berlin!"
"Ah!" said we--as one man. For another minute he stood eying us,
waiting to see whether any man would speak.
"We be honest men!" said a trooper who stood not far from me, and
several others murmured, so I spoke up.
"He has not come for nothing," said I. "Let us listen first and pass
judgment afterward."
"We have heard enough treachery!" said the trooper who had spoken
first, but the others growled him down and presently there was
silence.
"You have eyes," said Ranjoor Singh, "and ears, and nose, and lips
for nothing at all but treachery!" He spoke very slowly, sahib. "You
have listened, and smelled for it, and have spoken of nothing else,
and what you have sought you think you have found! To argue with men
in the dark is like gathering wind into baskets. My business is to
lead, and I will lead. Your business is to follow, and you shall
follow." Then, "Simpletons!" said he again; and having said that he
was silent, as if to judge what effect his words were having.
No man answered him. I can not speak for the others, although there
was a wondrous maze of lies put forth that night by way of
explanation that I might repeat. All I know is that through my mind
kept running against my will self-accusation, self-condemnation,
self-contempt! I had permitted my love for Ranjoor Singh to be
corrupted by most meager evidence. If I had not been his enemy, I
had not been true to him, and who is not true is false. I fought
with a sense of shame as I have since then fought with thirst and
hunger. All the teachings of our Holy One accused me. Above all,
Ranjoor Singh's face accused me. I remembered that for more than
twenty years he had stood to all of us for an example of what Sikh
honor truly is, and that he had been aware of it.
"I know the thoughts ye think!" said he, beginning again when he had
given us time to answer and none had dared. "I will give you a real
thought to put in the place of all that foolishness. This is a
regiment. I am its last surviving officer. Any regiment can kill its
officers. If ye are weary of being a regiment, behold--I am as near
you as a man's throat to his hand! Have no fear"--(that was a bitter
thrust, sahib!)--"this is a German saber; I will use no German steel
on any of you. I will not strike back if any seek to kill me."
There was no movement and no answer, sahib. We did not think; we
waited. If he had coaxed us with specious arguments, as surely a
liar would have done, that would probably have been his last speech
in the world. But there was not one word he said that did not ring
true.
"I have been made a certain offer in Berlin," said he, after another
long pause. "First it was made to me alone, and I would not accept
it. I and my regiment, said I, are one. So the offer was repeated to
me as the leader of this regiment. Thus they admitted I am the
rightful leader of it, and the outcome of that shall be on their
heads. As major of this regiment, I accepted the offer, and as its
major I now command your obedience."
"Obedience to whom?" asked I, speaking again as it were against my
will, and frightened by my own voice.
"To me," said he.
"Not to the Germans?" I asked. He wore a German uniform, and so for
that matter did we all.
"To me," he said again, and he took one step aside that he might see
my face better. "You, Hira Singh, you heard Colonel Kirby make over
the command!"
Every man in the regiment knew that Colonel Kirby had died across my
knees. They looked from Ranjoor Singh to me, and from me to Ranjoor
Singh, and I felt my heart grow first faint from dread of their
suspicion, and then bold, then proud that I should be judged fit to
stand beside him. Then came shame again, for I knew I was not fit.
My loyalty to him had not stood the test. All this time I thought I
felt his eyes on me like coals that burned; yet when I dared look up
he was not regarding me at all, but scanning the two lines of faces,
perhaps to see if any other had anything to say.
"If I told you my plan," said he presently, when he had cleared his
throat, "you would tear it in little pieces. The Germans have
another plan, and they will tell you as much of it as they think it
good for you to know. Mark what my orders are! Listen to this plan
of theirs. Pretend to agree. Then you shall be given weapons. Then
you shall leave this camp within a week."
That, sahib, was like a shell bursting in the midst of men asleep.
What did it mean? Eyes glanced to left and right, looking for
understanding and finding none, and no man spoke because none could
think of anything to say. It was on my tongue to ask him to explain
when he gave us his final word on the matter--and little enough it
was, yet sufficient if we obeyed.
"Remember the oath of a Sikh!" said he. "Remember that he who is
true in his heart to his oath has Truth to fight for him! Treachery
begets treason, treason begets confusion; and who are ye to stay the
course of things? Faith begets faith; courage gives birth to
opportunity!"
He paused, but we knew he had not finished yet, and he kept us
waiting full three minutes wondering what would come. Then:
"As for your doubts," said he. "If the head aches, shall the body
cut it off that it may think more clearly? Consider that!" said he.
"Dismiss!"
We fell out and he marched away like a king with thoughts of state
in mind. I thought his beard was grayer than it had been, but oh,
sahib, he strode as an arrow goes, swift and straight, and splendid.
Lonely as an arrow that has left the sheaf!
I had to run to catch up with him, and I was out of breath when I
touched his sleeve. He turned and waited while I thought of things
to say, and then struggled to find words with which to say them.
"Sahib!" said I. "Oh, Major sahib!" And then my throat became full
of words each struggling to be first, and I was silent.
"Well?" said he, standing with both arms folded, looking very grave,
but not angry nor contemptuous.
"Sahib," I said, "I am a true man. As I stand here, I am a true man.
I have been a fool--I have been half-hearted--I was like a man in
the dark; I listened and heard voices that deceived me!"
"And am I to listen and hear voices, too?" he asked.
"Nay, sahib!" I said. "Not such voices, but true words!"
"Words?" he said. "Words! Words! There have already been too many
words. Truth needs no words to prove it true, Hira Singh. Words are
the voice of nothingness!"
"Then, sahib--" said I, stammering.
"Hira Singh," said he, "each man's heart is his own. Let each man
keep his own. When the time comes we shall see no true men eating
shame," said he.
And with that he acknowledged my salute, turned on his heel, and
marched away. And the great gate slammed behind him. And German
officers pressing close on either side talked with him earnestly,
asking, as plainly as if I heard the words, what he had said, and
what we had said, and what the outcome was to be. I could see his
lips move as he answered, but no man living could have guessed what
he told them. I never did know what he told them. But I have lived
to see the fruit of what he did, and of what he made us do; and from
that minute I have never faltered for a second in my faithfulness to
Ranjoor Singh.
Be attentive, sahib, and learn what a man of men is Risaldar-major
Ranjoor Singh bahadur.