PART THREE

_ADAGIO_

_ADAGIO_

[ I ]

The draft, under orders to proceed overseas on Active Service, without

delay, paraded again, in full marching order, at three-thirty.

Number two in the front rank was 31819, Private Winterbourne, G.

They had been “sized” that morning, so each man knew his number and

place. They fell in rapidly, without talking, and stood easy, waiting

for the officers, on the bleak gravelled parade ground inside the bleak

isolated citadel. Their view was rectangularly cut short either by the

damp grey masonry of the fortress walls or by the dirty yellow brick

frontals of the barracks built in under the ramparts.

They numbered one hundred and twenty, and had been under orders to

proceed overseas for more than a week, during which period they had

been forbidden to leave the citadel under threat of Court Martial.

All sentry duties were performed by troops not in the draft, and five

rounds of ball ammunition were issued to each sentry. These exceptional

measures were the result of nervousness on the part of the Colonel, who

had been censured for what was not his fault—two men had deserted on

the eve of the departure of the last draft, and two others had to be

substituted at the last moment. “Does the old mucker think we’re going

to run away?” was the comment of the draft, wounded in their pride,

when they accidentally found this out.

A stiff coldish wind was blowing soiled-looking ragged clouds and

occasional gusts of chilly rain over a greyish winter sky. The men

fidgeted in the ranks, some bending forward to ease the strain of

straps, some throwing their packs a fraction higher with a jerk of

their shoulders and loins; one or two had taken the regulation step

forward and were adjusting their puttees or the fold in their trouser

legs. Winterbourne stood with his weight on his right leg, holding the

projecting barrel of his obsolete drill rifle loosely in his right

hand; his head was bent slightly forward as he gazed at the gravel

expressionlessly.

The draft had been parading for various purposes all through the

day, when they thought they would be free to idle and write letters.

The canteen had been put out of bounds to prevent a possible drunken

departure. The parades had included two kit inspections and several

visits to the Quartermaster’s Stores to draw new winter clothing

and other objects for use overseas. Consequently, in their mood of

restrained excitement, they had become rather irritated and impatient.

The fidgeting increased under the reproving gaze of the N.C.O.’s, and

the rather boiled-looking glare of the Regimental Sergeant-Major, a

military pedant of exacting standards; nothing, however, was said,

since movement is permitted at the “stand easy.”

The mood of the draft was not improved by a sudden flurry of cold rain,

which swept across the parade-ground in a long moaning gust, at the

moment when three or four officers came out of their Mess.

“Draft!” came the R.S.M.’s warning bellow.

The hundred and twenty hands slipped automatically down the rifles, and

the men stood silent and motionless, looking to the front, and trying

not to sway when the pressure of the rising gale suddenly increased or

suddenly relaxed.

“Stand still there! Stand _Steady!_”

There was a slight bulge in the front of each of the short

service-jackets, where two field dressings in a waterproof case and

a phial of iodine had been thrust into the pocket provided for them,

inside the right-hand flap.

“Draft!—Draft! ’Ten’shun!”

Two hundred and forty heels met smartly in one collective snap at

the same time that the rifles were sharply brought to the sides.

The draft stood to attention, gazing fixedly to the front. A man

unconsciously turned his head slightly in trying to catch a glimpse of

the approaching officers out of the corner of his eye.

“Stand still that man! Look to your front, can’t you?”

Silence, except for the moaning wind and the crunch of gravel under the

officers’ boots. The Colonel and the Adjutant wore spurs, which jingled

very slightly. The Colonel acknowledged the R.S.M.’s salute and his

“All present and c’rect, Sir.”

“Rear rank—one pace step back—March!”

One—two. The hundred and twenty legs moved mechanically like one man’s.

“Rear rank—stand—at—ease!”

The Colonel inspected the front rank, and took a long time, fussing

over various details. A man with cold fingers dropped his rifle.

“Ser’ant ’Icks, take that man’s name and number, and forward the charge

with his Crime Sheet!”

“Very good, Sir.”

The front rank stood at ease while the Colonel inspected the rear

rank less minutely. It was beginning to get dark, and he had to make

a speech. He stood about thirty yards in front of the draft with the

other officers behind him. The youthful Adjutant held his riding crop

against his right thigh like a field-marshal’s baton. The Colonel, an

eccentric but harmless half-wit who had been returned with thanks from

France early in his first campaign, was speaking:

“N.C.O.’s and Men of the 8th Upshires! Er—you are—er—proceeding

overseas on Active Service. Er. Er. I—er—trust you will do

your—er—duty. We have wasted—er—spared no pains to make you

efficient. Remember to keep yourselves smart and clean and—er—walk

about in a soldierly way. You must always—er—maintain the honour of

the Regiment which—er—er—which stands high in the records of the

British Army. I—...”

A very faint murmur of “muckin’ old fool,” “silly old mucker,”

“struth!” came from the draft, too faint to reach the officer’s ears,

but the alert R.S.M. caught it, though without distinguishing the

words; and cut short the Colonel’s peroration with his stentorian:

“Stand still there! Stand _Steady!_ Take their names, Ser’ant ’Icks!”

A short pause, and the R.S.M. shouted:

“P’rade again at four-fifteen outside the Armoury, in clean fatigue, to

hand in rifles. Mind they’re properly clean and pulled-through. An’ no

talking as you walk off p’rade.”

The Adjutant had been talking to the Colonel, and saluted as his

superior departed. He walked over to the R.S.M.

“All right, Sergeant-Major, you and the other N.C.O.’s not in the draft

may fall out. I’ll dismiss the men.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The Adjutant walked over to the draft, and stood with his right hand on

his hip. He spoke slowly but without hesitation:

“Stand at ease. Stand easy. You can wash out what the R.S.M. just said.

Leave your rifles in the racks, but try to leave ’em clean or I shall

get strafed.... I’m afraid we’ve chased you about a bit under the new

intensive scheme of training, but it’s all in the day’s work, you know.

I’m sorry we’re not going out as a unit, but battalions are being

broken up everywhere for drafts. When you get out, don’t forget to look

after your feet—you get court-martialled for trench feet nowadays—and

don’t be in a hurry to shove your heads over the top! I’m due to follow

you myself soon, so I expect we’ll all be in the next push. Good-bye.

And the very best of luck to you all.”

“Good-bye, Sir. Thank you, Sir. Same to you, Sir. Good-bye, Sir.”

“Good-bye. Draft, ’shun. Slope arms. Dis-miss.”

Simultaneously their hands tapped the rifle-butts in salute, as they

turned right.

The draft confusedly moved over the darkened ground to the barrack

room, chattering excitedly:

“What’s the next thing?”

“P’rade at eight-thirty to move off at nine.”

“Who said so?”

“It’s in B’tallion orders.”

“Silly ole mucker old Brandon is, give me the fair pip he did with ’is

‘walk about soldierly’—yes! up to yer arse in mud.”

“Bloody old _c_——”

“Yes, but the Adjutant was all right.”

“Oh, ’e’s a gentleman, ’e is.”

“Makes all the difference when they’ve bin in the ranks theirselves.”

“Wonder what it’ll be like in the line?”

“Wait till y’get there and see.”

“I reckon we’ll be there this time to-morrow night.” “Shut up, Larkin,

and don’t get the wind up.”

“I ain’t got the wind up.”

“I say, Corporal, Corp’ral! What time do we p’rade to-night?”

“Ask the Ord’ly Sergeant.”

“Tea’s up, boys. Come on!”

* * * * *

They fell in again at eight-thirty. The night was very dark, with a

cold damp gusty wind from the west. All the N.C.O.’s were on parade,

carrying lighted hurricane lanterns which moved and flitted and stood

still in the darkness like will-o’-the-wisps. The draft were in full

marching order, without rifles and side-arms, wearing their greatcoats.

Their excitement occasionally broke through the military restraint and

rose from a whisper to a loud hum, which would cringe abruptly under

the R.S.M.’s “Stop talking there!” It took a long time to read the

roll-call by the flicker of the lantern. At the sound of his name each

man clicked his heels, “Here, Sir.”

“31819, Winterbourne, G.”

“Here, Sir.”

“That’s the lot, Ser’ant-Major, isn’t it?”

“That’s the lot, Sir.”

“Move off in five minutes.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The draft stirred restlessly in the darkness. Winterbourne looked

to his left and noticed how the line of shadowy figures disappeared

into the night—he might have been at one end of a line stretching to

infinity for all he could see.

“Draft! Draft! ’Ten’shun! Slope arms! Move to the right in column

of fours—form fours! Form two deep! Form fours! Right! By the

right—Quick March!”

They found themselves immediately behind the regimental band, which

struck up one of the Mark III marches supplied to Army musicians. The

draft knew it well—“How can I draw rations—if I’m not the ord’ly

man?” They marched over the familiar parade ground, out through the

postern, over the swaying draw-bridge, where the sentry presented arms.

“By the left. March at—ease. March easy.”

The band had ceased playing. They were descending the long winding

hill road to the village and the station. As they went along they were

joined by civilians, mostly girls, who were waiting in ones and twos.

The girls called to their men in the ranks, and they, emboldened by

excitement and this momentous change in their lives, dared to answer

back. March discipline relaxed, and the draft was already marching

raggedly as it passed the first houses of the village. After the

dense blackness of the hillside, the light from the few gas-lamps was

dazzling.

The band struck up again. Although it was past ten, the whole village

was awake and in the street to watch them go by. The loud brass music

reverberated from the house fronts. The draft were amazed to find

themselves for a moment the centre of public interest; for so long

they had learned to consider themselves fatally insignificant and

subordinate. Voices came from all sides: “’Ullo, Bert! Good-bye, ’Arry!

Hullo, Tom! Good-bye, Jack!” Winterbourne in the front rank, looked

behind; he noticed that some of the girls had broken into the ranks and

were marching with their men, clinging to their arms. They appeared to

be enjoying themselves greatly. An exceedingly ragged company surged

excitedly through the village, intoxicated by the sounding brass and

the cheers and other attentions of the inhabitants.

The civilians were not allowed on the station platform. As the draft

marched through the open gate, with a picket of military Police on

either hand, there was another chorus of “Good-bye, Bert! Good-bye,

’Arry! Good-bye, Tom. Good-bye, Jack! Good luck. Come ’ome soon.

Good-bye. Good luck. Good-bye.”

They piled into the waiting troop-train, which was to pick up other

drafts on the way. Twelve to a carriage. Winterbourne managed to get

the window-seat next the platform. The Adjutant came up.

“Winterbourne. Winterbourne.”

“Sir?”

“Oh, there you are. Looking for you. The R.T.O. says you go to

Waterloo, and then proceed to Folkestone, he thinks.”

“Thanks very much, Sir. It’s so much less tedious when you know what

you’re doing and why and where you’re going.”

“You ought to have a commission. You’ll easily get one in France.”

“Yes, but you know why I wanted to stay in the ranks, Sir.”

“Yes, I know, but men like you are needed as officers. The casualties

among officers are terrifically high.”

“All right, I’ll think about it, Sir.”

“Well, good-bye, old man, the very best of luck to you.” “Thank you.

And to you.”

They shook hands, to the impressed horror of the N.C.O.’s.

The crowd had gathered outside the railings by the forepart of the

train, where they were not masked by the station buildings. The band

was drawn up in front of them, on the platform. The train gave a

warning whistle. The band struck up the Regimental March, and then

Auld Lang Syne, as the train slowly steamed out of the station; they

played their instruments with one hand, and ludicrously waved the

other hand to the draft crowded in the moving windows. A long wavering

cheer went up. The red faces of the soldiers on the platform were all

turned slightly upwards, and their mouths were open. Their right arms

were raised above their heads. In a blare of band music, cheering and

shouting, the cheering draft drew out of the station.

Good-bye, Bert. Good-bye, Harry. Good-bye, Tom. Good-bye, Jack.

Good-bye.

The last person Winterbourne saw was the little Colonel, standing at

the extreme end of the platform under a gas-lamp, standing very erect,

standing rather tense and emotional, standing with his right hand

raised to his cap, standing to salute his men proceeding on Active

Service.

He wasn’t a bad little man; he believed intensely in his Army.

[ II ]

In fifteen minutes the excited chatter over fags dwindled to the

monotony of an ordinary railway journey. The men were tired, for it

was already long after Last Post. They began to drowse. One man in the

far corner from Winterbourne was already asleep. The racks were full

of overcoats and equipment. Under the Anti-Aircraft Regulations the

curtains of the train windows were closely drawn.

Winterbourne felt entirely unsleepy. He ceased talking to the man

beside him, and drifted into a reverie. His mind slid backwards and

forwards from one theme of thought to another. Already he found it

difficult to read or to think consecutively. He had reached the first

expressionless stage of the war soldier, which is followed by the

period of acute strain; and that in turn gives place to the second

expressionless stage—which is pretty hopeless.

The real test was beginning. Like everybody who had not been there,

he was almost entirely ignorant of life in the trenches. Newspapers,

illustrated periodicals, almost useless. He had heard a lot of tales

from returned wounded soldiers. But many of them either blathered or

were quite inarticulate. Here and there a revealing detail or memory.

“And all the time I was delirious after I was wounded, I kep’ seein’

them aeryplanes goin’ round and round and then makin’ a dive at me.”

And the little Cockney: “Struth! I got me tunic and me trowses all

’ung up in Fritz’s wire, an’ I couldn’t get orf. Got me pockets full

o’ bombs, I ’ad, as well as them stick-bombs in paniers. One of the

paniers was ’ung up too, an’ I ses to myself I ses: ‘If you drop them

muckin’ bombs, Bert, you’ll blow yer muckin’ ’ead orf.’ And there was

old Fritz’s machine gun bullets whizzin’ by, _zip_, _zip_. I could see

’em cuttin’ the wire—and me cursin’ and blindin’. Blimey! I wasn’t arf

afraid. But I got me muckin’ blighty, anyway.”

Where did he meet that amusing little Cockney? Ah, yes, in the depot

the day after he joined. There had been several soldiers just out of

the hospital in the barrack room, all swopping yarns. Winterbourne’s

mind reverted to himself, and the past dreary months. He had been

unfortunate in the N.C.O.’s of his training battalion—old regulars,

who had been bullied and driven in their time, and thought they’d

escape being sent out to France by zealously bullying and driving the

new drafts. No doubt they were paying off some of the old army grudge

against civilian contempt for the mercenary soldier. They particularly

hated any educated or well-bred man in the ranks, and delighted to

impose painful or humiliating tasks on him. George remembered the man

who “took particulars” of his religion.

“What are yer? C. of E., Methodist, R. C.?”

“I haven’t any official religion. You’d better put me down as a

rationalist.”

“Garn! What’s a muckin’ rationalist? Yer in the Army now.”

“Well, I haven’t got one.”

“Bloody well find one then. Yer’ll want suthin’ over yer muckin’ grave

in France, won’t yer? An’ yer’ll bloody well be in it in six months. No

religion! Strike me muckin’ pink!”

An amiable hero. In his zeal for religion he got Winterbourne sent on

all the dirtiest and longest Sunday fatigues, until in self-defence

he had to put himself down Church of England. There was, of course,

no religious compulsion in the Army; that was why Church Parade was a

parade.

Winterbourne smiled as he thought of the ludicrous scene. It had been

none the less painful. His gorge rose at the memory of the filth he had

tried to remove from the Officers’ Mess Kitchen—filth which had been

left there untouched by fifty less scrupulous “fatigues.” The kitchen

was inspected every day.

He looked at his hands in the concentrated light of the railway

carriage. They were coarsened and chapped, ingrained with dirt

impossible to remove with ice-cold water. He thought of the delicate

hands of Fanny and Elizabeth’s slender fingers.

On parade the officers never swore at the men, the N.C.O.’s rarely,

whatever they might do off parade. It was an offence under King’s Regs.

The Physical Training Instructors were, however, an exception. They

sometimes displayed an uncouth humour in their objurgations. There were

time-honoured pleasantries, such as “Yer may break yer muckin’ mother’s

’eart, but yer won’t break mine!” There was the Bayonet Instructor,

a singularly rough diamond from Whitechapel, who in mimic bayonet

fighting at the stuffed bags, loved to give the command:

“At ’is stummick an’ goolies, Point!”

This gentleman, offended at the awkward posture of a rather plump

recruit doing the “double knee bend,” had apostrophized the unfortunate

man:

“’Ere, you, Frost. Can’t yer get down like a muckin’ soldier, and not

like a bloody great pross what’s bein’ blocked?”

Winterbourne smiled again to himself. The road to glory was undoubtedly

devious in our fair island story.

From Reveille at five-thirty until Lights Out they had been driven and

harassed and bullied for weeks to the strain of: “Look to yer front

there!” “’Old yer ’eads _up_, can’t yer, all them tanners was picked

up on first p’rade.” “Smith, yer got them straps crossed wrong—if

yer do it again, I’ll crime yer.” And over the voices of the various

sergeant-instructors shouting to their squads, boomed the R.S.M.’s

inevitable: “Stand still, there! Stand _Steady_.” Just like the South

Foreland light-ship in a fog. The fatigue of continual over-exercise

and of the physical and mental strain was severe to men fresh from

sedentary lives, or stiff from the plough and the workshop. For the

first weeks especially they were sore all over, and sank into heavy

unrefreshing sleep at night. Winterbourne bore it better than most.

His long walks and love for swimming had kept him supple. He could not

raise weights like the draymen or dig like the navvies, but he could

out-march and out-run them all, learn every new movement in half the

time, dismount a Lewis gun while they were wondering which way the

handle came off, score four bulls out of five, and saw immediately

why you made head-cover first when digging in. But he too felt the

fatigue. He remembered one perfectly awful day. They had been drilled

and marched and drilled and inspected from dawn to evening of a

baking autumn day; then at seven there had been three hours of night

operations. At twelve, they were all awakened by a false Fire Alarm,

and had to turn out in trousers and boots. Winterbourne had taken over

his shoulder the arm of a man who was too exhausted to run unassisted

on the parade grounds. The N.C.O.’s yelped them on like sheep dogs.

It was not the physical fatigue Winterbourne minded, though he hated

the inevitable physical degradation—the coarse, heavy clothes, too

thick for summer; the hob-nailed boots; the plank bed; horribly cooked

food. But he accepted and got used to them. He suffered mentally,

suffered from the shock of the abrupt change from surroundings where

the things of the mind chiefly were valued to surroundings where they

were ignorantly despised. He had nobody to talk to. He suffered from

the communal life of thirty men in one large hut, which meant that

there was never a moment’s solitude. He suffered because he brooded

over Elizabeth and Fanny, over the widening gulf he knew was dividing

him from them, and suffered abominably as month after month of the

war dragged on with its interminable holocausts and immeasurable

degradation of mankind. The world of men seemed dropping to pieces,

madly cast down by men in a delirium of homicide and destructiveness.

The very apparatus of killing revolted him, took on a sort of

sinister deadness. There was something in the very look of his rifle

and equipment which filled him with depression. And then, in the

imagination, he was already facing the existence for which this was but

a preparation, already confronting the agony of his own death. Horrific

tales—alas, only too true—were told of companies and battalions

wiped out in a few instances. N.C.O. after N.C.O., as Winterbourne

got to know them better, assured him that they were the only men—or

almost the only men—left alive from their platoons or companies. And

it was the truth. The proportion of casualties was undoubtedly high

in infantry units. It was, perhaps, selfish of Winterbourne to worry

about his own extinction when so many better men had already been

obliterated. He felt rather ashamed and apologetic about it himself.

But it is human to recoil from a violent death, even at twenty-two or

-three....

The train began to slow down at a large junction, and he returned to

his present surroundings with a start. The other men were asleep. Well,

all the training and presenting arms and saluting by numbers were over

and in the past. They were on Active Service. It was an immense relief.

Now, henceforth, he would be facing dread realities, not Regular Army

pedants and bullies. As Winterbourne once remarked, one of the horrors

of the war was not fighting the Germans but living under the British.

* * * * *

After picking up more drafts, the train went on, grinding its way

heavily through the silent darkness. The men were all asleep. He

noticed the carriage was getting stuffy and headachey with foul

air. Some one had shut the windows and ventilators while he was

day-dreaming. That was the old bother—whether in huts or barracks they

_would_ try to sleep in foul air. He softly slipped the window open a

couple of inches—better already. Wonder why they like a fug? Mental

and moral fug, too. Poor devils. All brought up to touch their hats to

the gentry, do what they’re told, and work. Sort of helots. Yet they’re

decent enough, got character, but no intelligence. That’s the real war,

the only war worth fighting, the battle of the intelligence against

inertia and stupidity and... Still, the intelligence is not always

defeated, we’ve got here somehow. Yes! and look where we are!

His mind half-sleepily ran off along a familiar track. What’s really

the cause of wars, of this War? Oh, you can’t say one cause, there

are many. The Socialists are silly fanatics when they say it’s the

wicked capitalists. I don’t believe the capitalists wanted a war—they

stand to lose too much in the disturbance. And I don’t believe the

wretched governments really wanted it—they were shoved on by great

forces they’re too timid and too unintelligent to control. It’s the

superstition of more babies and more bread, more bread and more

babies. Of course, all wars haven’t been mere population wars. ’Course

not—Greek city states, mediæval Italian republics, wars of petty

jealousy; naval wars for commercial advantages—Pisa, Genoa, Venice,

Holland, England; the sport of Kings, eighteenth-century diversion of

the aristocracy; wars of fanaticism, Moslems, the Crusades; emigration

wars like the irruption of the barbarians.... There may be commercial

motives behind this war, jolly short-sighted ones—they’ve already

lost more than they can possibly gain. No, this is fundamentally a

population war—bread and babies, babies and bread. It’s all oddly

mixed up with the sexual problem we were battling with so brightly

when this little packet of trouble was dumped on us by our virtuous

forebears. It’s the babies and bread superstition. You encourage, you

force people to have babies, lots of babies, millions of babies. As

they grow up, you’ve got to feed ’em. You need bread. We all live from

the land. England, and the rest of the world after it, went crazy with

the Industrial Revolution—thought you could eat steel and railways.

You can’t. The world of men is an inverted pyramid based on the bowed

shoulders of the ploughman—or the steel-tractor—on the land. It’s

the hunger and death business again. “Increase and multiply.” Damned

imbecility of applying to over-populated and huge nations the sexual

taboos forced on a little crowd of unhygienic Semitic nomads by sheer

force of circumstance. Think of their infantile death rate! Breed

like rabbits or vanish. Doesn’t apply to us. We’re a sacrifice to

over-breeding. Too many people in Europe. A damn sight too many babies.

The people could be made to see, are beginning to see it—but the

hurray-for-our-dear-Fatherland people, and the priests and the fanatics

and the timid and the conservative, won’t see it. Go on, breed, you

beauties—breed in column of fours, in battalions, brigades, divisions,

army corps. Wait till the population of England is five hundred million

and we’re all packed like herrings in a tub. Lovely. Wonderful. England

über alles. But there comes a time when there isn’t enough bread for

the growing babies. Colonize. Why? Either grow more food or produce

more things to exchange for food. England’s got huge colonies. Germany

very small ones. The Germans breed like tadpoles. The British breed

like rather slower tadpoles. What are you going to do with them?

Kill ’em off in a war? Kind. Humane. Kill ’em off, and grab land and

commercial advantages from the defeated nation? Right. And what next?

Oh, go on breeding. Must be a great and populous nation. And the

defeated nation? Suppose they start breeding harder than ever? Oh, have

another war, go on having ’em, get the habit. Europe’s decennial picnic

of corpses....

Yes, but why so sentimental? Why all this fuss over a few million

men killed and maimed? Thousands of people die weekly and somebody’s

run over in London every day. Does that argument take you in? Well,

the answer is that they’re not _murdered_. And your “thousands who

die weekly” are the old and the diseased; here it’s the young and the

strong and the healthy, the physical pick of the race. All men, too,

and no women. That’ll set up a pretty nice resentment between the

sexes—more sodomy and lesbianism. Loud cheers, we’re winning. Yes,

but going back to murder—people are murdered all the time, look at

Chicago. Look at Chicago! We’re always patting ourselves on the back

and looking smugly at wicked Chicago. When there’s a shoot-up between

gangs, do you approve of it, do you give the winning side medals for

their gallantry, do you tell ’em to go to it and you’ll kiss them when

they come back, do you march ’em by with a brass band and tell ’em what

fine fellows they are? Do you take the gunman as the high ideal of

humanity? I know all about military grandeur and devotion to duty—I’m

a soljer meself, marm. Thanks for all you’ve done for us, marm. If

violence and butchery are the natural state of man, then let’s have no

more of your humbug. Violence and butchery beget violence and butchery.

Isn’t that the theme of the great Greek tragedies of blood? Blood will

have blood. All right, now we know. It doesn’t matter whether murder

is individual or collective, whether committed on behalf of one man or

a gang or a state. It’s murder. When you approve of murder you violate

the right instincts of every human being. And a million murders egged

on, lauded, exulted over, will raise a legion of Eumenides about your

ears. The survivors will pay bitterly for it all their lives. Never

mind, you’ll go on? More babies, soon make up the losses? Have another

merry old war soon, sooner the better....

O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Thank God I have no son, O

Absalom, my son, my son!

* * * * *

Winterbourne nodded uneasily asleep. He started awake as the train

slowed down at London Bridge, and not at Waterloo. Where am I? Railway

station. Oh, of course, on a draft going out to France....

The draft were turned out at London Bridge, and collected in two ranks

on the platform, yawning, stretching and adjusting their equipment. The

draft conducting officer, a mild, brown-eyed young man on home service

after being wounded, explained that they had nearly three hours to

wait. Would they like to go to a Soldiers’ Canteen and get some food?

“Yes, Sir!”

They marched through the empty muddy streets. It was about midnight.

Some one began to sing one of the inevitable marching songs. The

officer turned round:

“Whistle, but don’t sing. People asleep.”

They began to whistle “Where are the lads of the village to-night?”

Winterbourne found himself crossing the Thames and looked once more

at the familiar townscape. He noticed that the street-lamps had

been dimmed further since he had left London, and that the once

brilliantly-lighted capital now lay cowering in darkness. The dome of

St. Paul’s was just faintly visible to an eye which knew exactly where

to look for it. The man next to Winterbourne was a Worcestershire

ploughman who had never been to London and was most anxious to see St.

Paul’s. Winterbourne tried hard to show him where it was, but failed.

The ploughman never did see St. Paul’s—he was killed two months later.

Curious to march through this unfamiliar London—everything the same,

but everything so different. The dimmed street lights, the carefully

blinded windows, the rather neglected streets, the comparative absence

of traffic, the air of being closed down indefinitely, all gave him an

uneasy feeling. It was as if a doom hung over the great city, as if it

had passed its meridian of power and splendour, and was sinking back,

back into the darkened past, back into the clay hills and marshes on

which it stands. That New Zealander sketching the ruins from a broken

pile of London Bridge seemed several centuries nearer.

_“Where are the lads of the village to-night?

Where are the lads we knew?

In Piccadilly or Leicester Square?

No, not there! No, not there!

They’re taking a trip on the Continong....”_

The foolish words ran in Winterbourne’s brain as the men whistled the

tune with exasperating pertinacity. It was curious to be so near to

Fanny and Elizabeth. He wondered vaguely what they were doing.

_“No, not there! No, not there!”_

He had sent Elizabeth a telegram from a station on the way up, but

probably it had not reached her.

They crowded into the Canteen, and ate sandwiches and eggs and bacon,

and drank ginger-beer. It was too late for beer. Our temperate troops

didn’t need beer at that hour of the night.

* * * * *

About 2 A.M. they marched back to the station. To Winterbourne’s

surprise and delight Elizabeth and Fanny were there. Elizabeth had

received his telegram, although it was after hours. She had rung up

Fanny, and they had gone to Waterloo together, only to find that the

train with the Upshires draft was not there. Fanny had used her charms

upon a susceptible R.T.O. and he had told them where to go, so there

they were. All this Elizabeth poured out in a rapid, nervous, jerky

way. While Fanny just clutched Winterbourne’s left hand and pressed it

hard, saying nothing. They had about ten minutes before the train left.

The draft-conducting officer noticed that Winterbourne was speaking to

two women, “obviously ladies,” and came up:

“Get in anywhere you like, Winterbourne, only don’t miss the train.”

“Very good, Sir, thank you,” and saluted smartly.

“D’you always have to do that?” asked Elizabeth with a little giggle.

“Yes, it’s the custom. They seem to attach great importance to it.”

“How absurd.”

“Why absurd?” said Fanny, feeling that Winterbourne was somehow hurt

by the contempt in her voice. “It’s only a convention.”

The whole train was filled with different drafts of soldiers who had

been ordered into the carriages. Only Winterbourne and the two girls

were left on the platform, except for the R.T.O. and one or two other

officers. As often happens in railway partings they seemed embarrassed,

with nothing to say to each other. Winterbourne simply felt dull and

uneasy, tongue-tied. He was saying farewell perhaps for the last time

to the only two human beings he had really loved, and found he had

nothing to say. He just felt dull and uneasy, dully remote from them.

He noticed they were both wearing new hats he hadn’t seen, and that

skirts were being worn much shorter. He wished the train would go.

Interminable waiting. What was Elizabeth saying? He interrupted her:

“Is that the new fashion?”

“What?”

“Shorter skirts?”

“Why, yes, of course, and not so very new. Where have your eyes been?”

“Oh, there were only village women where I’ve been. I haven’t seen a

properly dressed woman since my firing leave.”

Tactless! He had spent those few days with Fanny. Dear Fanny. A good

sort. She had thought it an awful lark to go on a week-end with a

Tommy. She was dreadfully sick of the Staff. Only it was inconvenient

that the only decent hotels and restaurants were out of bounds to

Tommies. Fanny felt quite democratic about it. Elizabeth hadn’t cared.

She lived with a kind of inner intensity which kept her from noticing

such things.

They were silent for seconds which dragged like minutes. Then they all

began to say something together, interrupted themselves, “Sorry, I

didn’t mean to interrupt.” “What were you going to say?” “Oh, nothing,

I forget.” And then relapsed into silence again.

Winterbourne found he was slightly intimidated by the presence of

these two well-dressed ladies. What on earth were they doing at two

o’clock in the morning, talking to a Tommy? He tried to hide his dirty

hands.

Damn the train! Won’t it ever go? He felt uncomfortably hot in his

great-coat and began to unbutton it. The engine whistled.

“All aboard!” shouted the R.T.O.

Winterbourne hastily kissed Fanny and then Elizabeth.

“Good-bye, good-bye, don’t forget to write. We’ll send you parcels.”

“Thanks, ever so. Good-bye.”

He made for the compartment where a door had been left open for him,

but found it full. The luggage van piled with the men’s rations was

next door. Winterbourne jumped in.

“You’ll have to stand!” exclaimed Fanny.

“Why, no. There’s plenty of room on the floor.”

The train moved.

“Good-bye.”

Winterbourne waved his hand. He felt no particular emotion, merely an

intensifying of the general depressingness of things. He watched them

receding, as they waved their hands. Beautiful girls both of them, and

so smartly dressed.

“Be happy!” he shouted, as a valediction, in a sudden gust of

disinterested affection for them. And then lost sight of them.

Fanny and Elizabeth were both crying.

“What did he shout?” asked Elizabeth through her sobs.

“‘Be happy!’”

“How curious of him! And how like him! Oh, I know I shall never see him

again.”

Fanny tried to comfort her. But Elizabeth somehow felt it was all

Fanny’s fault.

* * * * *

Winterbourne sat on his pack in the joggling van for about ten

minutes. It was almost dark. The guard was trying to read a newspaper

by the light of a dim oil lamp. The soldiers who had to see that the

rations weren’t stolen were already lying on the floor. Winterbourne

buttoned up his coat, turned up the collar, arranged a woollen scarf on

his pack to make a pillow, and lay down on the dirty floor beside them.

In five minutes he was asleep.

[ III ]

It was not nearly dawn when they reached Folkestone. The drafts from

various units were now amalgamated, but still remained under their own

officers. They were marched through the dull little town and bivouacked

in a row of large empty houses, probably evacuated boarding-houses,

fitted up with the usual inconveniences of small English hotels. They

washed and had some breakfast. All rather dismal.

At seven they were marched to the quay, and then marched back. The

officer had mistaken the word “eleven” for “seven.” So they had to wait

again. It was their first introduction to the curious fact that much of

the War consisted in waiting about and in undoing things which somebody

had ordered in error or through mistaken zeal. The men, sitting on

their packs in the empty room, were eagerly and vainly discussing

their immediate future—which Base Camp would they go to, which unit

would they be drafted to, what part of the line. Winterbourne went

over to the uncurtained window and looked out. Drifting heavy clouds,

a moderately rough, dirty-looking sea. The Esplanade was practically

deserted. The shelters looked dilapidated; most of the glass in them

was smashed. The unused gas lamps looked somehow desolate on their

rusting standards. Another wounded town, dying perhaps. Depression,

monotony, boredom. He looked at his wrist-watch. Still more than two

hours to wait. Now that the inevitable had occurred, he was very

impatient to get into the front line. The only interest he had left was

a consuming curiosity to see what the War was really like.

Curse this hanging about! He drummed his fingers on the window-pane.

The men in the room went on talking, aimlessly, foolishly, talking to

no purpose. Winterbourne wondered at his own lack of emotion. All his

past life seemed a dream, all his vital interests had become utterly

indifferent, his ambitions were dissolved, his old friends seemed

incredibly remote and unimportant, even Fanny and Elizabeth were

unsubstantial, graceful ghosts. Depression, monotony, boredom—but a

peculiar sort, a strained, worried exasperated sort. For God’s sake get

a move on. It’ll never end, so for the love of Mike let’s get it over.

Let’s catch our little packet. We know our numbers are up, so let’s get

them quickly.

One of the men was whistling:

_“What’s the use of worry-ing?”_

What indeed? But can you help it? You, cheery idiot, are worrying just

as much as any one else. Villiers’ torture by hope. If you were _quite_

certain that your number was up, you’d have at least the tranquillity

of resignation. But you’re not quite certain. Even in the infantry men

come back. With a really healthy wound you might be out of the line

for six or nine months. That was called “getting a blighty one,” if

you were lucky enough to get sent back to England—“Blighty.” The men

were discussing blighties. Which was the most convenient blighty? Arm

or leg? Most agreed that if you lost your left hand or a foot, you were

damned lucky—you were out of the bloody War for good and you got a

pension and a wound-gratuity. Winterbourne stood with his back to them,

looking out of the window; the ghosts of past summer visitors thronged

the Esplanade. Left hand or a foot. Live a cripple. No, not that, not

that, my God. Come back whole, or not at all. But how those men love

life, how blindly they cling to their poor existences! You wouldn’t

think they’d much to live for. No beautiful and smartly dressed Fannies

and Elizabeths. Oh, they have their “tarts,” they’ve all got a girl’s

“photo” in their pay books—and what girls! Tarts for Tommies. Cream

tarts for Tommies.

He turned away abruptly from the window and sat down to clean his

buttons. Always keep yourself clean and smart, and walk about in a

soldierly way....

* * * * *

His mood changed and his spirits rose as they marched down to the

docks. Only twelve hours had passed since they left and yet it seemed

a tremendously long time. Winterbourne realized that the monotony, the

imbecile restrictions, the incredible nagging of military pedants, had

been crushing him into a condition of utter stupidity. He regretted

deeply that he had been kept in England so long. At least you were

doing something real in France, and there was movement....

Troops were pouring along the quay, and mounting the gangways on to

three black-painted troopships. Winterbourne recognized the ships as

old friends—they were pre-war Channel packet-boats transformed. Huge

notices were displayed on the quays: “No. 1 Ship, 33rd Div., 19th Div.,

42nd Div., 118th Brigade.” An officer with a megaphone shouted: “Leave

Men to the Right, Drafts to the Left.” Another megaphone shouted:

“First Army Men, Number 1 Ship.” “Third and Fourth Armies, Number 3

Ship.” “Captain Swanson, 11th Seaforth Highlanders, report to R.T.O.’s

office immediately.” It was rather stirring—animated and efficient as

well as bustling.

The draft went on board, and were shepherded to one end of the

upper deck. The whole ship was swarming with leave men returning

to France. Winterbourne gazed at them fascinatedly—these were the

real war soldiers, fragments of the first half million volunteers,

the men who had believed in the War and wanted to fight. They made

a kind of epitome of the whole army. Every arm of the service was

represented—Field Artillery, Heavies, dismounted cavalry, gunners,

sappers, R.E. Sigs, Army Service Corps, Army Medical Corps, and

infantry everywhere. He recognized some of the infantry badges, the

bursting grenade of the Northumberland Fusileers, the Tiger of the

Leicesters, the Middlesex, the Bedfords, Seaforth Highlanders, Notts

and Jocks, the Buffs. He was immediately struck by their motley and

picturesque appearance. He and the other draft troops were all spick

and span, buttons bright, puttees minutely adjusted, boots polished,

peaked caps stiffened with wire, pack mathematically squared, overcoat

buttoned up to the throat. The leave men were dressed anyhow. Some had

leather equipment, some webbing. They put their equipment together

as it suited them, and none of it had been shined or polished for

months. Some wore overcoats, some shaggy goatskin or rough sheepskin

jackets. The skirts of some overcoats had been roughly hacked off

with jack-knives—not to trail in the deep mud, Winterbourne guessed.

The equipment which still weighed so heavily on the shoulders of the

draft seemed to give the real soldiers no concern at all—they either

wore it unconcernedly or chucked it carelessly on the deck with their

rifles. Winterbourne was charmed. He noticed with amused scandal that

the bolts and muzzles of their rifles were generally tightly bound with

oiled rags. Winterbourne looked more carefully at their faces. They

were lean and still curiously drawn, although the men had been out of

the line for a fortnight; the eyes had a peculiar look. They seemed

strangely worn and mature, but filled with energy, a kind of slow

enduring energy. In comparison the fresh faces of the new drafts seemed

babyish—rounded and rather feminine.

For the first time since the declaration of War, Winterbourne felt

almost happy. These men were men. There was something intensely

masculine about them, something very pure and immensely friendly and

stimulating. They had been where no woman and no half-man had ever

been, could endure to be. There was something timeless and remote about

them as if (so Winterbourne thought) they had been Roman legionaries

or the men of Austerlitz or even the invaders of the Empire. They

looked barbaric, but not brutal; determined, but not cruel. Under their

grotesque wrappings their bodies looked lean and hard and tireless.

They were Men. With a start Winterbourne realized that in two or three

months, if he were not hit, he would be one of them, indistinguishable

from them, whereas now in the ridiculous jackanapes get-up of the

peace-time soldier he felt humiliated and ashamed beside them.

“By God!” he said to himself, “you’re men, not boudoir rabbits and

lounge lizards. I don’t care a damn what your cause is—it’s almost

certainly a foully rotten one. But I do know you’re the first real

men I’ve looked upon. I swear you’re better than the women and the

half-men, and by God, I swear I’ll die with you rather than live in a

world without you.”

* * * * *

Winterbourne moved a short distance away from the draft and watched a

small group of leave men. One, a Scotchman in the uniform of an English

line regiment, was still wearing his full equipment. He was leaning on

his rifle, talking to two other infantrymen, who were sitting on their

packs. One of them, a Corporal with scandalously untrimmed hair and a

dirty sheepskin jacket, was lighting a pipe.

“An’ wha’ y’ think?” said the Scot in his sharp-clipped speech, “when

ah got hame, they wan’ed me ta gae and tak’ tea wi’ th’ Meenister and

then gie a speech at a Bazaar for Warr Worrkers.”

“Ah!” said the Corporal, “did you tell ’em—puff—all about the wicked

Huns—puff—and say that what we want in the line is more tiled

bath-rooms and girls and not so many woollen mufflers and whizz-bangs?”

“Ah did not; ah said ‘gie me over that bottle o’ whiskey, wumman, and

hauld y’ whist.’”

“What Division are you, Jock?” said the other man.

“Thirrty-thirrd. We’ve bin spendin’ a pleasant summer on th’ Somme, and

we’re now winterrin’ at the Health-resorrts o’ Ypres.”

“We’re forty-first Division. Just on your left in the Salient. We came

up there a month ago from Bullycourt.”

“Bullycourt’s a verry guid place to get away from....”

Winterbourne could not listen any further—a zealous N.C.O. herded him

back to the draft. He went unwillingly. He had been waiting eagerly

for the men to get away from their time-honoured jests and speak of

their real experiences. He was disappointed that these men talked in

such a trivial and uninteresting way. He felt they ought to be saying

important things in Shakespearian blank verse. Something adequate to

their experience, to the intensity of manhood he instinctively felt

in them and admired so humbly. But, of course, that was ridiculous of

him. He felt that at once. Part of their impressiveness was this very

triviality, their complete unconsciousness that there was anything

extraordinary or striking about them. They would have been offended

at the suggestion. They were ignorant of their own qualities. As

Winterbourne himself rapidly merged with these men and became one

of them, he lost entirely this first sharp impression of meeting a

new, curious race of men, the masculine men. It was then the other

people who became curious to him. He found that the real soldiers, the

front-line troops, had no more delusions about the War than he had.

They hadn’t his feeling of protest and agony over it all, they hadn’t

tried to think it out. They went on with the business, hating it,

because they had been told it had to be done and believed what they

had been told. They wanted the War to end, they wanted to get away

from it, and they had no feeling of hatred for their enemies on the

other side of No Man’s Land. In fact, they were almost sympathetic to

them. They also were soldiers, men segregated from the world in this

immense barbaric tumult. The fighting was so impersonal as a rule that

it seemed rather a conflict with dreadful hostile forces of Nature than

with other men. You did not see the men who fired the ceaseless hail

of shells on you, nor the machine gunners who swept away twenty men

to death in one zip of their murderous bullets, nor the hands which

projected trench-mortars that shook the earth with awful detonations,

nor even the invisible sniper who picked you off mysteriously with

the sudden impersonal “ping!” of his bullet. Even in the perpetual

trench raids you only caught a glimpse of a few differently shaped

steel helmets a couple of traverses away; and either their bombs got

you, or yours got them. Actual hand-to-hand fighting occurred, but

it was comparatively rare. It was a war of missiles, murderous and

soul-shaking explosives, not a war of hand-weapons. The sentry gazed at

dawn over a desolate flat landscape, seamed with irregular trenches,

and infinitely pitted and scarred with shell-holes, thorny with wire,

littered with débris. Five to ten thousand enemies were within range

of his vision, and not one would be visible. For days on end he might

strain his eyes, and not see one of them. He would hear them at

night—clink of shovels and picks, the scream of a wounded man, even

their coughing if there happened to be a cessation of artillery and

machine-gun fire—but not see them. In the two hours following dawn in

“quiet” sectors there was sometimes a kind of truce after the feverish

work and perpetual firing during the night. After morning Stand-down

the front-line troops snatched a little sleep. At such a time the

silence was eerie. Twenty thousand men within a mile, and not a sound.

Or so it seemed. But that was by contrast. In fact, there was always

some shelling going on—heavies firing on back areas—and generally in

the distance the long rumble which meant a general engagement....

The soldiers, then, were not vindictive. Nor, in general, were they

long duped by the war talk. They laughed at the newspapers. Any

new-comer who tried to be a bit high-falutin’ was at once snubbed with

“Fer Christ’s sake don’t talk patriotic!” They went on with a sort of

stubborn despair, why they didn’t quite know. The authorities obviously

mistrusted them, and forbade them to read the pacific “Nation” while

allowing them to read the infamies of “John Bull.” The mistrust was

unnecessary. They went on in their stubborn despair, with their

sentimental songs and cynical talk and perpetual grousing; and it’s my

belief that if they’d been asked to do so, they’d still be carrying

on, now. They weren’t crushed by defeat or elated by victory—their

stubborn despair had taken them far beyond that point. They carried

on. People sneer at the war slang. I, myself, have heard intellectual

“objectors” very witty at the expense of “carry on.” So like carrion,

you know. All right, let them sneer.

* * * * *

The troopships crossing the Channel were escorted by four plunging

little black torpedo-boats. Submarines in the Channel. A merchant

ship had been sunk that morning. Winterbourne had thought he would

be apprehensive—on the contrary, he found that he scarcely thought

about it. Nobody bothered about a little risk like that. They made for

Boulogne, and the soldiers cheered the torpedo boats as they turned

back from the harbour entrance.

In his inexperience Winterbourne had assumed that they would at once

entrain for the front, and that he would spend that night in the

trenches. He had forgotten the element of waiting, the deliberation

necessary in moving vast masses of men about, which made the slow

ruthless movement of the huge War machine so inexorable. You hung

about, but inevitably you moved, your tiny little cog was brought into

action. And this, too, was strangely impersonal, confirmed the feeling

of fatalism. It seemed insane to think that you had any individual

importance.

The docks at Boulogne were crowded with materials of war, and the

whole place seemed English. Notices all in English, the Union Jack,

British officers and troops everywhere, even British engines for the

trains. The leave men were roughly formed into columns and marched

off to entrain. Every one wanted to know where his Division was. The

R.T.O.’s dealt with them swiftly and efficiently. The drafts were also

formed into a column and marched up the hill to the rest camp. They

were in good spirits, and the inevitable Cockney humourist was in

action. As they went up the hill, a poor old French woman came out of

her cottage and began rheumatically and wearily to pump water. She did

not even look at the passing troops—much too accustomed to them. The

Cockney shouted to her:

“’Ere we are! War’ll soon be over now; keep yer pecker up, Ma!”

* * * * *

They spent the night under canvas at the Boulogne rest camp. From his

tent Winterbourne had an excellent view of the Channel and the camp

incinerator. His first duty on active service was picking up dirty

paper and other rubbish, and dumping it in the incinerator. They were

told nothing about their future, the Army theory being that your

business is to obey orders, not to ask questions. Winterbourne fumed

and fretted at the inaction. The other men speculated interminably as

to where they were going.

The tents had wooden floors. The men drew a blanket and waterproof

ground-sheet each, and slept twelve to a tent. It was a bit hard,

but not impossible to sleep. Winterbourne lay awake for a long time,

trying to get some order into his reflections. His attitude was plainly

modified by that day’s experience. Was there a contradiction in it?

Did it imply that he now supported the War and the War partisans? On

the contrary, he hated the War as much as ever, hated all the blather

about it, profoundly distrusted the motives of the War partisans, and

hated the Army. But he liked the soldiers, the War soldiers, not as

soldiers but as men. He respected them. If the German soldiers were

like the men he had seen on the boat that morning, then he liked and

respected them too. He was with them. With them, yes, but against whom

and what? He reflected. With them, because they were men with fine

qualities, because they had endured great hardships and dangers with

simplicity, because they had parried those hardships and dangers not by

hating the men who were supposed to be their enemies, but by developing

a comradeship among themselves. They had every excuse for turning

into brutes, and they hadn’t done it. True, they were degenerating in

certain ways, they were getting coarse and rough and a bit animal, but

with amazing simplicity and unpretentiousness they had retained and

developed a certain essential humanity and manhood. With them then to

the end, because of their manhood and humanity. With them, too, because

that manhood and humanity existed in spite of the War and not because

of it. They had saved something from a gigantic wreck, and what they

had saved was immensely important—manhood and comradeship, their

essential integrity as men, their essential brotherhood as men.

But what were they really against, who were their real enemies? He saw

the answer with a flood of bitterness and clarity. Their enemies—the

enemies of German and English alike—were the fools who had sent them

to kill each other instead of help each other. Their enemies were

the sneaks and the unscrupulous; the false ideals, the unintelligent

ideas imposed on them, the humbug, the hypocrisy, the stupidity. If

those men were typical, then there was nothing essentially wrong with

common humanity, at least so far as the men were concerned. It was

the leadership that was wrong—not the war leadership, but the peace

leadership. The nations were governed by bunk and sacrificed to false

ideals and stupid ideas. It was assumed that they had to be governed by

bunk—but if they were never given anything else, how could you tell?

De-bunk the World. Hopeless, hopeless....

He sighed deeply, and turned in his blanket wrapping. One man was

snoring. Another moaned in his sleep. Like corpses they lay there,

human rejects chucked into a bell tent on the hill above Boulogne. The

pack made a hard pillow. Maybe he was all wrong, maybe it was “right”

for men to be begotten only to murder each other in huge senseless

combats. He wondered if he were not getting a little insane through

this persistent brooding over the murders, by striving so desperately

and earnestly to find out why it had happened, by agonizing over it

all, by trying to think how it could be prevented from occurring again.

After all, did it matter so much? Yes, did it matter? What were a few

million human animals more or less? Why agonize about it? The most he

could do was die. Well, die then. But O God, O God, is that all? To be

born against your will, to feel that life might in its brief passing

be so lovely and so divine, and yet to have nothing but opposition

and betrayal and hatred and death forced upon you! To be born for

the slaughter like a calf or a pig! To be violently cast back into

nothing—for what? My God, for what? Is there nothing but despair and

death? Is life vain, beauty vain, love vain, hope vain, happiness vain?

“The war to end wars!” Is any one so asinine as to believe that? A war

to breed wars, rather....

He sighed and turned again. It’s all useless, useless to flog one’s

brain and nerves over it all, useless to waste the night hours in

silent agonies when he might lie in the oblivion of sleep. Or the

better oblivion of death. After all, there were plenty of children,

plenty of war babies—why should one agonize for their future, any

more than the Victorians thought about ours? The children will grow

up, the war babies will grow up. Maybe they’ll have their war, maybe

they won’t. In any case they won’t care a hang about us. Why should

they? What do we care about the men of Albuera, except that the charge

of the fusileers decorates a page of rhetorical prose? Four thousand

dead—and the only permanent result a page of Napier’s prose. We have

Bairnsfather....

He gave it up. Time after time he reverted to the whole gigantic

tragedy, and time after time he gave it up. Two solutions. Just drift

and let come what come may; or get yourself killed in the line. And

much anyone would care whichever he did.

[ IV ]

They paraded at nine next morning, were casually inspected by an

officer they did not know, and told to stand by. At eleven they drew

bully beef and biscuits, and were ordered to parade again in half an

hour, ready to move off. Winterbourne’s spirits rose. At last they were

getting somewhere. He would be in the trenches that night and take his

chance with the rest. No more fiddle-faddle.

He was mistaken. They entrained at Boulogne in a train which crawled

interminably, and they de-trained at Calais. They were simply

transferred to another Base.

The Base Camp at Calais was desperately over-crowded. It was filled

with new drafts sent over to make up the losses on the Somme, and new

columns of men kept pouring in daily from England, faster than the

over-worked Staff could allot them to units. They were crowded into

hastily erected bell-tents, twenty-two to a tent, which is closer than

you can squeeze animals, and about as close as you can squeeze men.

There was just room to lie down, and no more. Nothing to do after

parade, except to moon about in the frosty darkness or lie down in

one’s little slice of space, or play crown-and-anchor and drink coffee

and rum while the estaminets were open. The town of Calais was out of

bounds, except to men with passes. And not many passes were granted.

The weather grew daily colder. The misery of the interminable waiting

and the over-crowded tents and the lack of anything to do, was not

thereby alleviated. Every morning huge greyish columns of men undulated

over the sandy soil, and were drawn up in long lines. An officer on

horseback shouted orders through a megaphone. Nothing much happened,

and they raggedly undulated back again. Yet they drew nearer to the

mysterious “line.” They were given large jack-knives on lanyards. They

were given gas masks and steel helmets. They were given service rifles

and bayonets.

The gas masks were still the old flannel diving bell variety soaked

in chemicals. They had a sharp, acrid, inhuman taste, and if worn too

long had been known to produce skin eruptions. The drafts were given

constant gas drill, and had to pass five minutes in a gas chamber,

containing a concentration of the old chlorine gas sufficient to kill

in five seconds. One man in Winterbourne’s lot lost his head and tried

to tear off his mask. The instructor leapt at him, shouting curses

through his own mask, and with the help of two of the men held him

until the doors were opened. Winterbourne noticed that the gas had

tarnished his bright brass buttons and the metal on his equipment.

Their clothes reeked of the gas for a couple of hours.

They carefully cleaned the long steel bayonets, and examined the short

wood-enclosed rifles. Winterbourne’s had a long groove cut by a bullet

on the butt, and the bolt showed signs of considerable rust—obviously

a rifle picked up on the battle-field and re-conditioned. Winterbourne

wondered who was the man from whom he inherited it, and who would

inherit it from him.

The days and nights grew colder and colder. Morning and evening rose

and sank in blood-red mists, and at noon the sun was a cold bloody

smear in a misty sky. Ice formed on the dykes, and the water taps

froze. It became more and more difficult to wash, and shaving and

washing in the ice-cold water became an agony. Their skins chapped as

the light north wind breathed sharper and sharper cold. There appeared

to be no baths, and they could not remove their clothes at night. To

sleep, they took off their boots, wrapped themselves in an overcoat

and blanket and shivered asleep, huddling together like sheep in a

snowstorm. Most of them caught colds and began to cough; one man of the

draft was taken to hospital with pleurisy.

And still day after day passed, and they were not sent to their units.

Monotony, depression, boredom. By four it was dark, and there was

nothing to do until dawn. The canteens and estaminets were thronged.

Winterbourne luckily discovered that the pickets could be bribed, and

several evenings went into Calais to dine. He bought a couple of French

books and tried to read—in vain. He found he was unable to concentrate

his mind, and fell into a deeper depression. There were few parades,

and he had plenty of time for brooding.

They passed Christmas Day at the Base. The English newspapers, which

they easily obtained a day or two late, were filled with glowing

accounts of the efforts and expense made to give the troops a real

hearty Christmas dinner. The men had looked forward to this. They ate

their meals in huts which were decorated with holly for the occasion.

The Christmas dinner turned out to be stewed bully beef and about two

square inches of cold Christmas pudding per man. The other men in

Winterbourne’s tent were furious. Their perpetual grumbling annoyed

him, and he attacked them:

“Why fuss so much over a little charity? Why let them salve their

consciences so easily? In any case, they probably meant well. Can’t you

see that drafts at the Base are nobody’s children? The stuff’s gone to

the men in the line, who deserve it far more than we do. We haven’t

done anything yet. Or it’s been embezzled. Anyway what does it matter?

You didn’t join the army for a bit of pudding and a Christmas cracker,

did you?”

They were silent, unable to understand his contempt. Of course, he was

unjust. They were simply grown children, angry at being defrauded of

a promised treat. They could not understand his deeper rage. Any more

than they could have understood his emotion each night when “Last Post”

was blown. The bugler was an artist and produced the most wonderful

effect of melancholy as he blew the call, which in the Army serves for

sleep and death, over the immense silent camp. Forty thousand men lying

down to sleep—and in six months how many would be alive? The bugler

seemed to know it, and prolonged the shrill melancholy notes—“Last

post! Last post!”—with an extraordinary effect of pathos. “Last

post! Last post!” Winterbourne listened for it each night. Sometimes

the melancholy was almost soothing, sometimes it was intolerable. He

wrote to Elizabeth and Fanny about the bugler, as well as about the

leave men he had seen on the boat. They felt he was getting hopelessly

sentimental:

“Un peu gaga?” Elizabeth suggested.

Fanny shrugged her shoulders.

* * * * *

Two days after Christmas their orders came. They were taking off their

equipment after morning parade when the Orderly Corporal pushed his

head through the tent flap:

“You’ve clicked!”

“What? How? What y’ mean?” said several voices.

“Goin’ up the line. Parade at one-thirty ready to move off immediate.

Over you go, an’ the best of luck!”

“What part of the line?”

“Dunno, you’ll find that when y’ get there.”

“What unit?”

“Dunno. Some o’ you’s clicked for a Pioneer Batt.”

“What’s that?”

“Muckin well find out. Don’t f’get I warned yer for p’rade.”

And he was off to the next tent. The men began talking excitedly,

“wondering” this and “wondering” that futilely as usual. Winterbourne

walked away from the tent lines, and stood looking over the desolate

winter landscape. Half a mile away the tent lines of another huge

camp began. Army lorries lumbered along a flat straight road in the

distance. It was beginning to snow from a hard grey sky. He wondered

vaguely how you slept in the line when there was snow. His breath

formed little clouds of vapour in the freezing air. He pulled his

muffler closer round his neck, and stamped on the ground to warm his

icy feet. He felt as if his faculties were slowly running down, as if

his whole mental power were concentrated upon mere physical endurance,

a dull keeping alive. Time, like a torture, seemed infinitely

prolonged. It seemed years since he left England, years of discomfort

and depression and boredom. If the mere “cushy” beginning were like

that, how endure the months, perhaps years of war to come?

He experienced a rapid fall of spirits to a depth of depression he had

never before experienced. Hitherto, mere young vitality had buoyed him

up, the _élan_ of his former life had carried him along through the

days. In spite of his rages and his worryings and the complications

and boredoms, he had really remained hopeful. He had wanted to go on

living, because he had always unconsciously believed that life was

good. Now something within him was just beginning to give way, now

for the first time the last faint hues of the lovely iris of youth

faded, and in horror he faced the grey realities. He was surprised and

a little alarmed at his own listlessness and despair. He felt like a

sheet of paper, dropping in jerks and waverings through grey air into

an abyss.

The dinner bugle call sounded. He turned mechanically and joined the

men thronging towards the eating huts. The snow was falling faster,

and the men stamped their feet as they waited for the doors to open,

cursing the cooks’ delay. There was the usual animal stampede for the

best platefuls when the door opened. Winterbourne stood aside and let

them struggle. The expressions on their faces were not pretty. He was

practically the last in, and did not fare well. He ate the stewed

bully, hunk of bread and soap-like cheese, with a sort of dog gratitude

for the warmth, which was humiliating. He scarcely even resented the

humiliation.

* * * * *

The train taking them to rail-head crawled interminably through a

frozen landscape thinly sprinkled with snow. The light was beginning

to wane. The skeleton outlines of dwarf trees, twisted by the wind,

loomed faintly past the window. It was bitterly cold in the unwarmed

third-class French carriage; one of the windows was smashed, and the

bitter air and snow swept in. The men sat in silence, wrapped in their

great-coats and stamping their feet rhythmically on the floor in vain

efforts to keep warm. Winterbourne was cold to the knees, and yet

felt feverish. His cough had grown worse, and he realized he had a

temperature. He felt dirtily uncomfortable, because he had not taken

his clothes off for days. The water at the camp had all frozen, and it

had been impossible to get a bath.

Darkness slowly intensified. Slowly, more slowly the train crawled

along. Winterbourne was in that section of the draft going to the

Pioneer Battalion. He had asked the Sergeant what that meant:

“Oh, it’s cushy, much better than the ordinary infantry.”

“What do they do?”

“Workin’ parties in no man’s land,” said the Sergeant with a grin, “an’

go over the top when there’s a show.”

The train slightly increased its speed as they passed through a large

junction. Somebody said it was St. Omer, somebody else said St. Pol,

some one else suggested Béthune. They did not know where they were, or

where they were going. About two miles outside the junction the train

came to a stop. Winterbourne peered into the thick darkness. Nothing.

He leaned out the glassless window and heard only the hissing steam

from the stationary train, saw only the faint glow of the furnace.

Suddenly, far away in front and to the left, a quick flash of light

pierced the blackness and Winterbourne heard a faint boom. The guns!

He waited, straining eyes and ears, in the freezing darkness. Silence.

Then again—flash. Boom. Flash. Boom. Very distant, very faint, but

unmistakable. The guns. They must be getting near the line.

Once again the train started and crawled interminably once more. For

about half an hour they passed through a series of deep cuttings.

Then, from the right this time, came a much nearer and brighter flash,

followed almost at once by a deep boom audible above the noise of the

train. The other men heard it this time:

“The guns!”

The train crept on stealthily for another couple of minutes through the

gloom. The men were all crowded round the window. Flash. Boom. Another

two minutes. Flash. Boom.

Three-quarters of an hour later they detrained at rail-head in

complete darkness.

[ V ]

Winterbourne had an easy initiation into trench warfare. The cold was

so intense that the troops on both sides were chiefly occupied in

having pneumonia and trying to keep warm. He found himself in a quiet

sector which had been fought over by the French in 1914 and had been

the scene of a fierce and prolonged battle in 1915 after the British

took over the sector. During 1916, when the main fighting shifted to

the Somme, the sector had settled down to ordinary trench warfare.

Trench raids had not then been much developed, but constant local

attacks were made on battalion or brigade fronts. A little later the

sector afterwards atoned for this calm.

To Winterbourne, as to so many others, the time element was of extreme

importance during the war years. The hour goddesses who had danced

along so gaily before and have fled from us since with such mocking

swiftness, then paced by in a slow monotonous file as if intolerably

burdened. People at a distance thought of the fighting as heroic

and exciting, in terms of cheering bayonet charges or little knots

of determined men holding out to the last Lewis Gun. That is rather

like counting life by its champagne suppers, and forgetting all the

rest. The qualities needed were determination and endurance, inhuman

endurance. It would be much more practical to fight modern wars with

mechanical robots than with men. But then, men are cheaper, although in

a long war the initial outlay on the robots might be compensated by the

fact that the quality of the men deteriorates, while they cost more in

upkeep. But that is a question for the war departments. From the point

of view of efficiency in war, the trouble is that men have feelings; to

attain the perfect soldier, we must eliminate feelings. To the human

robots of the last war, time seemed indefinitely and most unpleasantly

prolonged. The dimension then measured as a “day” in its apparent

duration approached what we now call a “month.” And the long series

of violent stale-mates on the western front made any decision seem

impossible. In 1916 it looked as if no line could be broken, because

so long as enough new troops were hurried to threatened points the

attacker was bound to be held up; and the supplies of hew troops seemed

endless. It became a matter of which side could wear down the other’s

man power and moral endurance. So there also was the interminable. The

only alternatives seemed an indefinite prolongation of misery, or death

or mutilation, or collapse of some sort. Even a wound was a doubtful

blessing, a mere holiday, for wounded men had to be returned again and

again to the line.

* * * * *

For the first six or eight “weeks,” Winterbourne, like all his

companions, was occupied in fighting the cold. The Pioneer Company to

which he was attached were digging a sap out into No Man’s Land and

making trench mortar emplacements just behind the front line. They

worked on these most of the night, and slept during the day. But the

ground was frozen so hard that progress was tediously slow.

The Company was billeted in the ruins of a village behind the Reserve

trenches, over a mile from the front line. The landscape was flat,

almost treeless except for a few shell-blasted stumps, and covered

with snow frozen hard. Every building in sight had been smashed, in

many cases almost level with the ground. It was a mining country with

great queer hills of slag and strange pit-head machinery of steel,

reduced by shell-fire to huge masses of twisted rusting metal. They

were in a salient, with the half-destroyed, evacuated town of M——

in the elbow-crook on the extreme right. The village churchyard was

filled with graves of French soldiers; there were graves inside any

of the houses which had no cellars, and graves flourished over the

bare landscape. In all directions were crosses, little wooden crosses,

in ones and twos and threes, emerging blackly from the frozen snow.

Some were already askew; one just outside the ruined village had been

snapped short by a shell-burst. The dead men’s caps, mouldering and

falling to pieces, were hooked on to the tops of the crosses—the grey

German round cap, the French blue and red kepi, the English khaki.

There were also two large British cemeteries in sight—rectangular

plantations of wooden crosses. It was like living in the graveyard of

the world—dead trees, dead houses, dead mines, dead villages, dead

men. Only the long steel guns and the transport wagons seemed alive.

There were no civilians, but one of the mines was still worked about a

mile and a half further from the line.

Behind Winterbourne’s billet were hidden two large howitzers. They

fired with a reverberating crash which shook the ruined houses, and the

diminishing scream of the departing shells was strangely melancholy in

the frost-silent air. The Germans rarely returned the fire—they were

saving their ammunition. Occasionally a shell screamed over and crashed

sharply among the ruins; the huge detonation spouted up black earth or

rattling bricks and tiles. Fragments of the burst shell case hummed

through the air.

But it was the cold that mattered. In his efforts to defend himself

against it, Winterbourne, like the other men, was strangely and

wonderfully garbed. Round his belly, next the skin, he wore a flannel

belt. Over that a thick woollen vest, grey flannel shirt, knitted

cardigan jacket, long woollen under-pants and thick socks. Over that,

service jacket, trousers, puttees and boots; then a sheepskin coat,

two mufflers round his neck, two pairs of woollen gloves and over them

trench gloves. In addition came equipment, box respirator on the chest,

steel helmet, rifle and bayonet. The only clothes he took off at night

were his boots. With his legs wrapped in a great-coat, his body in a

grey blanket, a groundsheet underneath, pack for pillow, and a dixie of

hot tea and rum inside him, he just got warm enough to fall asleep when

very tired.

Through the broken roof of his billet, Winterbourne could see the

frosty glitter of the stars and the white rime. In the morning when

he awoke, he found his breath frozen on the pillow. In the line his

short moustache formed icicles. The boots beside him froze hard, and

it was agony to struggle into them. The bread in his haversack froze

greyly; and the taste of frozen bread is horrid. Little spikes of

ice formed in the cheese. The tins of jam froze and had to be thawed

before they could be eaten. The bully beef froze in the tins and came

out like chunks of reddish ice. Washing was a torment. They had three

tubs of water between about forty of them each day. With this they

shaved and washed—about ten or fifteen to a tub. Since Winterbourne

was a late-comer to the battalion, he had to wait until the others had

finished. The water was cold and utterly filthy. He plunged his dirty

hands into it with disgust, and shut his eyes when he washed his face.

This humiliation, too, he accepted.

* * * * *

He always remembered his first night in the line. They paraded in the

ruined village street about four o’clock. The air seemed crackling

with frost, and the now familiar bloody smear of red sunset was dying

away in the southwest. The men were muffled up to the ears, and looked

grotesquely bulky in their sheep- or goat-skin coats, with the hump of

box respirators on their chests. Most of them had sacking covers on

their steel helmets to prevent reflection, and sacks tied round their

legs for warmth. The muffled officer came shivering from his billet,

as the men stamped their feet on the hard frost-bound road. They drew

picks and shovels from a dump, and filed silently through the ruined

street behind the officer. Their bayonets were silhouetted against the

cold sky. The man in front of Winterbourne turned abruptly left into

a ruined house. Winterbourne followed, descended four rough steps and

found himself in a trench. A notice said:

HINTON ALLEY

☞ To the Front Line

To be out of the piercing cold wind in the shelter of walls of earth

was an immediate relief. Overhead shone the beautiful ironic stars.

A field gun behind them started to crash out shells. Winterbourne

listened to the long-drawn wail as they sped away and finally crashed

faintly in the distance. He followed the man ahead of him blindly.

Word kept coming down: “Hole here, look out.” “Wire overhead.” “Mind

your head—bridge.” He passed the messages on, after tripping in the

holes, catching his bayonet in the field telephone wires, and knocking

his helmet on the low bridge. They passed the Reserve line, then

the Support, with the motionless sentries on the fire-step, and the

peculiar smell of burnt wood and foul air coming from the dug-outs.

A minute later came the sharp message: “Stop talking—don’t clink

your shovels.” They were now only a few hundred yards from the German

Front line. A few guns were firing in a desultory way. A shell crashed

outside the parapet about five yards from Winterbourne’s head. It was

only a whizz-bang, but to his unpractised ears it sounded like a heavy.

The shells came in fours—crump, Crump, _crump_, CRRUMP—the Boche was

bracketing. Every minute or so came a sharp “ping”—fixed rifles firing

at a latrine or an unprotected piece of trench. The duck-boards were

more broken. Winterbourne stumbled over an unexploded shell, then had

to clamber over a heap of earth where the side of the trench had been

smashed in, a few minutes earlier. The trench made another sharp turn,

and he saw the bayonet and helmet of a sentry silhouetted against the

sky. They were in the front line.

They turned sharp left. To their right were the fire-steps, with a

sentry about every fifty yards. In between came traverses and dug-out

entrances, with their rolled-up blanket gas-curtains. Winterbourne

peered down them—there was a faint glow of light, a distant mutter of

talk, and a heavy stench of wood smoke and foul air. The man in front

stopped and turned to Winterbourne:

“Halt—password to-night’s ‘Lantern.’” Winterbourne halted, and passed

the message on. They waited. He was standing almost immediately behind

a sentry, and got on the fire-step beside the man to take his first

look at No Man’s Land.

“’Oo are you?” asked the sentry in low tones.

“Pioneers.”

“Got a bit o’ candle to give us, chum?”

“Awfully, sorry, chum, I haven’t.”

“Them muckin R.E.’s gets ’em all.”

“I’ve got a packet of chocolate, if you’d like it.”

“Ah. Thanks, chum.”

The sentry broke a bit of chocolate and began to munch.

“Muckin cold up here, it is. Me feet’s fair froze. Muckin dreary, too.

I can ’ear ole Fritz coughin’ over there in ’is listenin’ post—don’t

’arf sound ’ollow. Listen.”

Winterbourne listened, and heard a dull hollow sound of coughing.

“Fritz’s sentry,” whispered the men. “Pore ole bugger—needs some

liquorice.”

“Move on,” came the word from the man in front. Winterbourne jumped

down from the fire-step and passed on the word.

“Good-night, chum,” said the sentry.

“Good-night, chum.”

* * * * *

Winterbourne was put on the party digging the sap out into No Man’s

Land. The officer stopped him as he was entering the sap.

“You’re one of the new draft, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The other men filed into the sap. The officer spoke in low tones:

“You can take sentry for the first hour. Come along, and don’t stand

up.”

The young crescent moon had risen and poured down cold faint light.

Every now and then a Verey light was fired from the German or English

lines, brilliantly illuminating the desolate landscape of torn

irregular wire and jagged shell-holes. They climbed over the parapet

and crawled over the broken ground past the end of the sap. The officer

made for a shell-hole just inside the English wire, and Winterbourne

followed him.

“Lie here,” whispered the officer, “and keep a sharp lookout for German

patrols. Fire if you see them and give the alarm. There’s a patrol

of our own out on the right, so make sure before you fire. There’s a

couple of bombs somewhere in the shell-hole. You’ll be relieved in an

hour.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The officer crawled away, and Winterbourne remained alone in No Man’s

Land, about twenty-five yards in front of the British line. He could

hear the soft dull thuds of picks and shovels from the men working

the sap and a very faint murmur as they talked in whispers. A Verey

light hissed up from the English lines, and he strained his eyes for

the possible enemy patrol. In the brief light he saw nothing but the

irregular masses of German wire, the broken line of their parapet,

shell-holes and débris, and the large stump of a dead tree. Just as the

bright magnesium turned in its luminous parabola, a hidden machine-gun,

not thirty yards from Winterbourne, went off with a loud crackle of

bullets like the engine of a motor-bicycle. He started, and nearly

pulled the trigger of his rifle. Then silence. A British sentry coughed

with a deep hacking sound; then from the distance came the hollow

coughing of a German sentry. Eerie sounds in the pallid moonlight.

“Ping” went a sniper’s rifle. It was horribly cold. Winterbourne was

shivering, partly from cold, partly from excitement.

Interminable minutes passed. He grew colder and colder. Occasionally a

few shells from one side or the other went wailing overhead and crashed

somewhere in the back areas. About four hundred yards away to his left

began a series of loud shattering detonations. He strained his eyes,

and could just see the flash of the explosion and the dark column

of smoke and débris. These were German trench mortars, the dreaded

“minnies,” although he did not know it.

Nothing different happened until about three-quarters of an hour had

passed. Winterbourne got colder and colder, felt he had been out there

at least three hours, and thought he must have been forgotten. He

shivered with cold. Suddenly, he thought he saw something move to his

right, just outside the wire. He gazed intently, all tense and alert.

Yes, a dark something was moving. It stopped, and seemed to vanish.

Then near it another dark figure moved and then a third. It was a

patrol, making for the gap in the wire in front of Winterbourne. Were

they Germans or British? He pointed his rifle towards them, got the

bombs ready, and waited. They came nearer and nearer. Just before they

got to the wire, Winterbourne challenged in a loud whisper:

“Halt, who are you?”

All three figures instantly disappeared.

“Halt, who are you?”

“Friend,” came a low answer.

“Give the word or I fire.”

“Lantern.”

“All right.”

One of the men crawled through the wire to Winterbourne, followed by

the other two. They wore balaclava helmets, and carried revolvers.

“Are you the patrol?” whispered Winterbourne.

“Who the muckin hell d’you think we are? Father Christmas? What are you

doin’ out here?”

“Pioneers digging a sap about fifteen yards behind.”

“Are you Pioneers?”

“Yes.”

“Got a bit o’ candle, chum?”

“Sorry, I haven’t, we don’t get them issued.”

The patrol crawled off, and Winterbourne heard an alarmed challenge

from the men working in the sap, and the word “Lantern.” A Verey light

went up from the German lines just as the patrol were crawling over the

parapet. A German sentry fired his rifle and a machine-gun started up.

The patrol dropped hastily into the trench. The machine-gun bullets

whistled cruelly past Winterbourne’s head—Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss. He

crouched down in the hole. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss. Then silence. He lifted

his head, and continued to watch. For two or three minutes there was

complete silence. The men in the sap seemed to have knocked off work,

and made no sound. Winterbourne listened intently. No sound. It was

the most ghostly, desolate, deathly silence he had ever experienced.

He had never imagined that death could be so deathly. The feeling of

annihilation, of the end of existence, of a dead planet of the dead

arrested in a dead time and space, penetrated his flesh along with the

cold. He shuddered. So frozen, so desolate, so dead a world—everything

smashed and lying inertly broken. Then “crack-ping” went a sniper’s

rifle, and a battery of field-guns opened out with salvos about half a

mile to his right. The machine-guns began again. The noise was a relief

after that ghastly dead silence.

At last the N.C.O. came crawling out from the sap with another man

to relieve him. A Verey light shot up from the German line in their

direction, just as the two men reached him. All three crouched

motionless, as the accurate German machine-gun fire swept the British

trench parapet—zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, the flights of bullets went over

them. Winterbourne saw a strand of wire just in front of him suddenly

flip up in the air where a low bullet had struck it. Quite near

enough—not six inches above his head.

They crawled back to the sap, and Winterbourne tumbled in. He found

himself face to face with the platoon officer, Lieutenant Evans.

Winterbourne was shivering uncontrollably; he felt utterly chilled. His

whole body was numb, his hands stiff, his legs one ache of cold from

the knees down. He realized the cogency of the Adjutant’s farewell hint

about looking after feet, and decided to drop his indifference to goose

grease and neat’s-foot oil.

“Cold?” asked the officer.

“It’s bitterly cold out there, Sir,” said Winterbourne through

chattering teeth.

“Here, take a drink of this,” and Evans held out a small flask.

Winterbourne took the flask in his cold-shaken hand. It chinked roughly

against his teeth as he took a gulp of the terrifically potent Army

rum. The strong liquor half choked him, burned his throat, and made his

eyes water. Almost immediately, he felt the deadly chill beginning to

lessen. But he still shivered.

“Good Lord, man, you’re frozen,” said Evans. “I thought it was colder

than ever to-night. It’s no weather for lying in No Man’s Land.

Corporal, you’ll have to change that sentry every half hour—an hour’s

too long in this frost.”

“Very good, Sir.”

“Have some more rum?” asked Evans.

“No, thanks, Sir,” replied Winterbourne, “I’m quite all right now. I

can warm up with some digging.”

“No, get your rifle and come with me.”

Evans started off briskly down the trench to visit the other working

parties. About a hundred yards from the sap he climbed out of the

trench over the parados; Winterbourne scrambled after, more impeded

by his chilled limbs, his rifle and heavier equipment. Evans gave him

a hand up. They walked about another hundred yards over the top, and

then reached the place where several parties were digging trench mortar

emplacements. The N.C.O. saw them coming and climbed out of one of the

holes to meet them.

“Getting on all right, Sergeant?”

“Ground’s very hard, Sir.”

“I know, but—”

Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, zwiss came a rush of bullets, following the

rapid tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of a machine-gun. The Sergeant

ducked double. Evans remained calmly standing. Seeing his unconcern,

Winterbourne also remained upright.

“I know the ground’s hard,” said Evans, “but those emplacements are

urgently needed. Headquarters were at us again to-day about them. I’ll

see how you’re getting on.”

The Sergeant hastily scuttled into one of the deep emplacements,

followed in a more leisurely way by the officer. Winterbourne remained

standing on top, and listened to Evans as he urged the men to get a

move on. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, very close this

time. Winterbourne felt a slight creep in his spine, but since Evans

had not moved before, he decided that the right thing was to stand

still. Evans visited each of the four emplacements, and then made

straight for the front line. He paused at the parados.

“We’re pretty close to the Boche front line here. He’s got a

machine-gun post about a hundred and fifty yards over there.”

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss.

“Look! Over there.”

Winterbourne just caught a glimpse of the quick flashes.

“Damn!” said Evans, “I forgot to bring my prismatic compass to-night.

We might have taken a bearing on them, and got the artillery to turf

them out.”

He jumped carelessly into the trench, and Winterbourne dutifully

followed. About fifty yards farther on, he stopped.

“I see from your pay-book that you’re an artist in civil life.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Paint pictures, and draw?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Why don’t you apply for a draughtsman’s job at Division? They need

them.”

“Well, Sir, I don’t particularly covet a hero’s grave, but I feel very

strongly I ought to take my chance in the line along with the rest.”

“Ah. Of course. Are you a pretty good walker?”

“I used to go on walking tours in peace time, Sir.”

“Well, there’s an order that every officer is to have a runner. Would

you like the job of Platoon Runner? You’d have to accompany me, and

you’re supposed to take my last dying orders! You’d have to learn the

lie of the trenches, so as to act as guide; take my orders to N.C.O.’s;

know enough about what’s going on to help them if I’m knocked out, and

carry messages. It’s perhaps a bit more dangerous than the ordinary

work, and you may have to turn out at odd hours, but it’ll get you off

a certain amount of digging.”

“I’d like it very much, Sir.”

“All right, I’ll speak to the Major about it.”

“It’s very good of you, Sir.”

“Can you find your way back to the sap? It’s about two hundred yards

along this trench.”

“I’m sure I can, Sir.”

“All right. Go back and report to the Corporal, and carry on.”

“Very good, Sir.”

“You haven’t forgotten the pass-word?”

“No, Sir, ‘Lantern.’”

* * * * *

About thirty yards along the trench, there was a rattle of equipment,

and Winterbourne found a bayonet about two feet from his chest. It was

a gas-sentry outside Company H.Q. Dugout.

“Halt! Who are yer?”

“Lantern.”

The sentry languidly lowered his rifle.

“Muckin cold to-night, mate.”

“Bloody cold.”

“What are you, Bedfords or Essex?”

“No, Pioneers.”

“Got a bit of candle to give us, mate, it’s muckin dark in them

dugouts.”

“Very sorry, chum, I haven’t.”

Rather trying this constant demand for candle-ends from the Pioneers,

who were popularly supposed by the infantry to receive immense “issues”

of candles. But without candles the dugouts were merely black holes,

even in the daytime, if they were any depth. They were deep on this

front, since the line was a captured German trench reorganized. Hence

the dugouts faced the enemy, instead of being turned away from them.

“Oh, all right, good-night.”

“Good-night.”