Winterbourne returned to the sap, and did two more half-hour turns as

sentry, and for the rest of the time picked, or shovelled the hard

clods of earth into sandbags. The sandbags were then carried back

to the front line and piled there to raise the parapet. It was a

slow business. The sap itself was camouflaged to avoid observation.

Winterbourne hadn’t the slightest idea what its object was. He was

very weary and sleepy when they finally knocked off work about one in

the morning. An eight-hour shift, exclusive of time taken in getting

to and from the work. The men filed wearily along the trench, rifles

slung on the left shoulder, picks and shovels carried on the right.

Winterbourne stumbled along half-asleep with the cold and the fatigue

of unaccustomed labour. He felt he didn’t mind how dangerous it was—if

it was dangerous—to be a runner, provided he got some change from the

dreariness of digging, and filling and carrying sandbags.

After they passed the Support Line, the hitherto silent men began

to talk occasionally. At Reserve they got permission to smoke. Each

grabbed in his pockets for a fag, and lighted it as he stumbled

along the uneven duckboards. After what seemed an endless journey to

Winterbourne they reached the four steps, climbed up, and emerged into

the now familiar ruined street. It was silent and rather ghostly in the

very pale light of the new moon. They dumped their picks and shovels,

went to the cook to draw their ration of hot tea, which was served from

a large black dixie and tasted unpleasantly of stew. They filed past

the officer who gave each of them a rum ration.

Winterbourne drank some of the tea in his billet, then took off his

boots, wrapped himself up, and drank the rest. Some real warmth flushed

into his chilled body. He was angry with himself for being so tired,

after a cushy night on a cushy front. He wondered what Elizabeth and

Fanny would say if they saw his animal gratitude for tea and rum.

Fanny? Elizabeth? They had receded far from him, not so far as all

the other people he knew, who had receded to several light years, but

very far. “Elizabeth” and “Fanny” were now memories and names at the

foot of sympathetic but rather remote letters. Drowsiness came rapidly

upon him, and he fell asleep as he was thinking of the curious “zwiss,

zwiss,” made by machine-gun bullets passing overhead. He did not hear

the two howitzers when they fired a dozen rounds before dawn.

[ VI ]

Except for the episode with the officer, this specimen night may stand

as a type of Winterbourne’s life in the next eight or ten days. They

went up the line at dusk; they were shot at, worked, and shivered with

cold: went down the line, slept, tried to clean themselves, and paraded

again. Four or five times they passed corpses being carried down the

trenches as they went up. There was, of course, nothing to report on

the western front.

Then, just as the monotony was becoming almost as intolerable as

drilling to the home-service R.S.M.’s “Stand still there, stand

_steady!_” they had a night off, and were transferred to the day shift.

But this was even more tedious. They paraded soon after dawn, and

worked in Hinton Alley, about two hundred yards from the Front Line.

Their job was to hack up the frozen mud—which was about as malleable

as marble—extricate the worn duck-boards, dig “sump-holes,” and relay

new duck boards. A job which in moist weather might have occupied two

men for half an hour, in that frost occupied four men all day.

A Lieutenant-General came along while Winterbourne was laboriously

jarring his wrists, trying to hack up the marble-like mud.

“Well, and what are you doing, my man?”

“Replacing duck-boards, Sir,” said Winterbourne, bringing his pick

smartly to his side, and standing to attention, toes at an angle of

forty-five degrees.

“Well, get on with it, my man, get on with it.”

Vive L’Empereur.

* * * * *

Diversions were few, but existed. There were, for instance, the rats.

Winterbourne had been too much absorbed by other new experiences to pay

much attention to them at first. And during the day they kept rather

out of sight. One evening, just about sunset, as they were returning

down Hinton Alley, there was a block in the trench. Winterbourne

happened to be just at the corner of the Support line, with its

damaged, revetted traverses, and piles of sandbags on the parapet. The

Germans were sending up some rather fancy signal rockets from their

Front line, and he was vaguely wondering what they meant, when a huge

rat darted or rather scrambled impudently just past his head. Then he

noticed that a legion of the fattest and longest rats he had ever seen

were popping in and out the crevices between the sand-bags. As far

as he could see down the trench in the dusk they were swarming over

parapet and parados. Such well-fed rats! He shuddered, thinking of what

they had probably fed upon.

In a very short time he had become perfectly accustomed to the very

mild artillery fire, sniping and machine-gunning. No casualties had

occurred in his own company, and he began to think that the dangers

of the war had been exaggerated, while its physical discomforts and

tedium had been greatly underestimated. The intense frost prevented his

shaking off the heavy cold he had caught at Calais, and at the same

time had given him a chill on the liver. The same thing had happened

to half the men in the company, whether new-comers or old stagers; and

all suffered from diarrhœa due to the cold. There was thus the added

diversion of frequent visits to the latrine. Those in the line were

primitive affairs of a couple of biscuit boxes and buckets, interesting

from the fact that the Germans had fixed rifles trained on most of

them and might get you if you happened to stand up inopportunely. If

you had any sense you waited until the bullet ping-ed over, and then

calmly walked out: for lack of which elementary precaution somebody

occasionally was popped off. The Pioneers’ latrine, just behind their

billet, was a more elaborate six-seater (without separate compartments)

built over a deep trench and surrounded with sacking on posts. One of

the posts had been damaged by a shell, and there were numerous rents in

the sacking from shell splinters. Here Winterbourne was forced to spend

a larger portion of his spare time than was pleasant in cold weather.

One day when he entered he found another occupant, an artilleryman.

This person was carefully examining his grey flannel shirt: and such

portions of his body as were exposed to view were covered with small

bloody blotches. Some horrid skin disease, Winterbourne surmised. He

attended to his own urgent private affairs.

“Still terribly cold,” he ventured.

“Muckin cold,” said the artilleryman, continuing absorbedly the

mysterious search in his shirt.

“Those are nasty skin eruptions you have.”

“It’s them muckin chats. Billet’s fair lousy with ’em.”

Chats? Lousy? Ah, of course, the artilleryman was lousy. So lousy

that he had been bitten all over, and had scratched himself raw.

Winterbourne felt uncomfortable. He detested the idea of vermin.

“How d’you get them? Can’t you get rid of them?”

“Get ’em? Everybody gets ’em. Ain’t you chatty? And there ain’t no

gettin’ rid of ’em. The clothes they gives you at the baths is as

chatty as those you ’ands in. Where there’s dug-outs and billets

there’s chats, and where there’s chats, they cops yer.”

Winterbourne departed from the lousy artilleryman with a new

pre-occupation in life—to remain one of the chatless as long as

possible. It was not many weeks, however, before he too became resigned

to the louse as an inevitable war comrade.

* * * * *

Like a good many recruits when first in the line he was rather

inclined to be foolhardy than timorous. When a shell exploded near the

trench, he popped his head up to have a look at it; and listened to the

machine-gun bullets swishing past with great interest. The older hands

reproved him:

“Don’t be so muckin anxious to look at whizz-bangs. You’ll get a damn

sight too many pretty soon. And don’t keep shovin’ yer ’ead over the

top. _We_ don’t care a muck if ole Fritz gets yer, but if he sees yer

he might put his artillery on _us_.”

Winterbourne rather haughtily decided they were timorous, an impression

confirmed by the manner in which they instantly ducked and crouched

when a shell came whistling towards them. So many shells exploded

harmlessly that he wondered at their inefficiency. Late one afternoon

the Germans began firing on Hinton Alley—little salvos of four

whizz-bangs at a time. The men went on with their work, but a little

apprehensively. Winterbourne clambered partly up the side of the trench

and watched the shells bursting—crump, Crump, _Crump_, CRRUMP. The

splinters hummed harmoniously through the air. Suddenly he heard a loud

whizz, and zip-phut, a large piece of metal hurtled just past his head

and half-buried itself in the hard chalk of the trench. More surprised

than scared he jumped down and levered the metal up with his pick. It

was a brass nose-cap, still warm from the heat of the explosion. He

held it in his hand, gazing with curiosity at the German lettering.

The other men jeered and scolded him in a friendly way. He felt they

exaggerated—his nerves were still so much fresher than theirs.

That night, just after he had got down into kip, the night silence

was abruptly broken by a discharge of artillery. Gun after gun,

whose existence he had never suspected, opened out all round, and in

half a minute fifty or sixty were in action. From the line came the

long rattle of a dozen or more machine-guns, with the funny little

pops of distant hand grenades. He got up and went to the door. Ruins

interrupted a direct view, but he saw the flashes of the guns, a sort

of glow over a short part of the front line, and Verey lights and

rockets flying up continually. A Corporal came unconcernedly into the

billet.

“What is it?” asked Winterbourne, “an attack?”

“Attack be jiggered. Identification raid, I reckon.”

The German artillery had now opened up, and a shell dropped in the

village street. Winterbourne retired to his earth-floor. In about

three-quarters of an hour the firing quieted down; only one German

battery of five-nines kept dropping shells in and about the village.

Winterbourne began to reflect that shell-fire in gross might be more

deadly than the few odd retail discharges he had hitherto experienced.

Next morning, the Corporal’s diagnosis proved correct. As they went up

Hinton Alley soon after dawn, they met a British Tommy escorting six

lugubrious personages in field grey, whose faces were almost concealed

in large white bandages swathed all round their heads.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Fritzes. Prisoners.”

“I wonder why they are all wounded in the head.”

“Koshed on the napper with trench clubs. I reckon they’ve got narsty

’eadaches, pore old barstards.”

* * * * *

About a week after that, they had a day off, and were warned to parade

at five P.M. to begin another night shift. (Each platoon in turn did a

week’s day shift and three weeks’ night-work.) The Sergeant turned to

Winterbourne:

“And you’re to report at the Officer’s Mess fifteen minutes before

p’rade.”

Winterbourne duly reported, wondering uneasily what breach of military

discipline he had committed. He was met on the door-step by Evans, who

was just coming out, all muffled up.

“Ah, there you are, Winterbourne. Major Thorpe says you may act as my

runner, so hereafter you’ll parade here fifteen minutes earlier than

the rest each night.”

“Very good, Sir.”

* * * * *

All this time Winterbourne was rather wretchedly ill, and remained

so for weeks. He had a permanent cough and cold, and was weakened by

the prolonged diarrhœa. Every night he felt feverish, passing rapidly

from a cold shivering to a high temperature. On the day after his

arrival in the line, he had “gone sick” to get something to relieve his

hard cough. Major Thorpe had chosen to consider this as an attempt to

evade duty, and had promptly insulted him. Whereupon Winterbourne had

decided that so long as he could stand he would never “go sick” again.

So he carried on. The stretcher-bearer in his platoon had a clinical

thermometer. One night just before going up the line Winterbourne got

the man to take his temperature. It was 102.

“You didn’t ought to go up the line like that, mate,” said the man,

with a sort of coarse kindness Winterbourne liked, “I’ll tell the

orfficer you ain’t fit for service, an’ make it all right with the M.O.

to-morrer.”

Winterbourne laughed:

“That’s decent of you, but I shan’t go sick. I only wanted to see if I

were imagining things.”

“You’re a bloody fool. You c’d get a cushy night in kip.”

It was a relief therefore to act as Evans’s runner. On the nights when

Evans was on duty Winterbourne did not carry a pick and shovel, and did

no manual labour. He simply followed Evans about on his rounds, and

carried messages to the N.C.O.’s for him. It was undoubtedly cushy.

Almost an officer’s job.

* * * * *

Winterbourne was brought into much closer intimacy with Evans, and had

some opportunity to observe him. The officer was distinctly friendly,

and they talked a good deal in the long hours of hanging about in the

Front line. Evans brought sandwiches and a flask of rum with him,

and invariably shared them with his runner; a kindness which touched

Winterbourne profoundly. Usually about ten o’clock they sat on a

fire-step under the frosty stars, and ate and talked. Occasionally a

few shells would go whining overhead, or a burst of machine-gun fire

would interrupt them. Their low voices sounded strangely muffled in the

cold dead silence.

Evans was the usual English public school boy, amazingly ignorant,

amazingly inhibited, and yet “decent” and good-humoured. He had a

strength of character which enabled him to carry out what he had

been taught was his duty to do. He accepted and obeyed every English

middle-class prejudice and taboo. What the English middle classes

thought and did was right, and what anybody else thought and did was

wrong. He was contemptuous of all foreigners. He appeared to have

read nothing but Kipling, Geoffrey Farnol, Elinor Glynn, and the

daily newspapers. He disapproved of Elinor Glynn, as too “advanced.”

He didn’t care about Shakespeare, had never heard of the Russian

Ballets, but liked to “see a good show.” He thought “Chu Chin Chow”

was the greatest play ever produced, and the Indian Love Lyrics the

most beautiful songs in the world. He thought that Parisians lived by

keeping brothels and spent most of their time in them. He thought that

all Chinamen took opium, then got drunk, and ravished white slaves

abducted from England. He thought Americans were a sort of inferior

Colonials, regrettably divorced from that finest of all institutions,

the British Empire. He rather disapproved of “Society,” which he

considered “fast,” but he held that Englishmen should never mention the

fastness of Society, since it might “lower our prestige” in the eyes

of “all these messy foreigners.” He was ineradicably convinced of his

superiority to the “lower classes,” but where that superiority lay,

Winterbourne failed to discover. Evans was an “educated” pre-war Public

Schoolboy, which means that he remembered half a dozen Latin tags,

could mumble a few ungrammatical phrases in French, knew a little of

the history of England, and had a “correct” accent. He had been taught

to respect all women as if they were his mother, would therefore have

fallen an easy prey to the first tart who came along and probably have

married her. He was a good runner, had played at stand-off half for

his school and won his colours at cricket. He could play fives, squash

rackets, golf, tennis, water-polo, bridge, and vingt-et-un, which he

called “pontoon.” He disapproved of baccarat, roulette and_petits

chevaux_, but always went in for the Derby sweepstake. He could ride a

horse, drive a motor-car, and regretted that he had been rejected by

the Flying Corps.

He had no doubts whatever about the War. What England did must be

right, and England had declared war on Germany. Therefore, Germany

must be wrong. Evans propounded this somewhat primitive argument to

Winterbourne with a condescending air, as if he were imparting some

irrefutable piece of knowledge to a regrettably ignorant inferior.

Of course, after ten minutes’ conversation with Evans, Winterbourne

saw the kind of man he was and realized that he must continue to

dissimulate with him as with every one else in the Army. However, he

could not resist the temptation to bewilder him a little sometimes.

It was quite impossible to do anything more. Evans possessed that

British rhinoceros equipment of mingled ignorance, self-confidence

and complacency which is triple-armed against all the shafts of the

mind. And yet Winterbourne could not help liking the man. He was

exasperatingly stupid, but he was honest, he was kindly, he was

conscientious, he could obey orders and command obedience in others, he

took pains to look after his men. He could be implicitly relied upon to

lead a hopeless attack and to maintain a desperate defence to the very

end. There were thousands and tens of thousands like him.

* * * * *

Winterbourne noticed that when they were in the line at night, Evans

made a point of walking over the top, instead of in the trenches, even

when it was plainly far more inconvenient and slower to do so, on

account of the wire and shell-holes and other obstacles. At the time,

he paid little attention to this, thinking either that it was expected

of an officer, or that Evans did it to encourage the men. Evans rather

deliberately exposed himself, and always maintained complete calm. If

the two men were exposed to shells or machine-gun fire, Evans walked

more slowly, spoke more deliberately, seemed intentionally to linger.

It was not until months afterward that Winterbourne suddenly realized

from his own experience that Evans had been reassuring, not his men,

but himself. He had been deliberately trying to prove to himself that

he did not mind being under fire.

Any man who spent six months in the line (which almost inevitably

meant taking part in a big battle) and then claimed that he had never

felt fear, never received any shock to his nerves, never had his heart

thumping and his throat dry with apprehension, was either super-human,

subnormal or a liar. The newest troops were nearly always the least

affected. They were not braver, they were merely fresher. There were

very few—were there any?—who could resist week after week, month

after month of the physical and mental strain. It is absurd to talk

about men being brave or cowards. There were greater or less degrees

of sensibility, more or less self-control. The longer the strain on

the finer sensibility the greater the self-control needed. But this

continual neurosis steadily became worse and required a greater effort

of repression.

Winterbourne at this time was in the state when danger—and that was

slight in these first weeks—was almost entirely a matter of curiosity,

rather stimulating than otherwise. Evans, on the other hand, had been

in two big battles, had spent eleven months in the line, and had

reached the stage when conscious self-control was needed. When a shell

exploded near them, both men appeared equally unmoved. Winterbourne

was really so, because he was fresh, and had no months of war neurosis

to control. Evans only appeared so, because he was awkwardly and with

shame struggling to control a completely subconscious reflex action of

terror. He thought it was his “fault,” that he was “getting windy,”

and was desperately ashamed in consequence. And that, of course,

made him worse. Winterbourne, on the other hand, was obviously a man

who would develop the neurosis rapidly. He had a far more delicate

sensibility. He had already reached a state of acute “worry” over Fanny

and Elizabeth and the War and his own relation to it. And yet his pride

would compel him to urge himself far beyond the point where another

man would merely have collapsed. He endured a triple strain—that of

his personal life, that of exasperation with Army routine, and that of

battle.

* * * * *

Perhaps it was through the implicit if unexpressed attitude of

the women that Winterbourne also endured the strain of feeling a

degradation to mind and body in the hardships he endured in common,

after all, with millions of other men. It was a fact that his mind

degenerated; slowly at first, then more and more rapidly. This could

scarcely have been otherwise. Long hours of manual labour under strict

discipline must inevitably degrade a man’s intelligence. Winterbourne

found that he was less and less able to enjoy subtleties of beauty and

anything intellectually abstruse. He came to want common amusements in

place of the intense joy he had felt in beauty and thought. He watched

his mind degenerating with horror, wondering if one day it would

suddenly crumble away like the body of Mr. Valdemar. He was bitterly

humiliated to find that he could neither concentrate nor achieve as he

had done in the past. The _élan_ of his former life had carried him

through a good many months of the Army, but after about two months in

the line, he saw that intellectually he was slowly slipping backwards.

Slipping backwards, too, in the years which should have been the most

energetic and formative and creative of his whole life. He saw that

even if he escaped the War he would be hopelessly handicapped in

comparison with those who had not served and the new generation which

would be on his heels. It was rather bitter. He had been forced to

smash through obstacles and to triumph over handicaps enough already.

These lost War months, now mounting to years, were a knock-out blow

from which he could not possibly recover.

And he felt a degradation, a humiliation, in the dirt, the lice, the

communal life in holes and ruins, the innumerable deprivations and

hardships. He suffered at feeling that his body had become worthless,

condemned to a sort of kept tramp’s standard of living, and ruthlessly

treated as cannon-fodder. He suffered for other men too, that they

should be condemned to this; but since it was the common fate of the

men of his generation he determined he must endure it. His face lost

its fineness and took on the mask of “a red-faced Tommy,” as he was

politely told later by a genial American friend. His hands seemed

permanently coarsened, his feet deformed by heavy army boots. His body,

which had been unblemished when he joined, was already infested with

lice, and his back began to break out in little boils—a thing which

had never happened to him—either from impure drinking water or because

the clothes issued from the baths were infected.

No doubt, it was the painter’s sense of plastic beauty which made

him feel this as something so humiliating and degrading. How else

account for the feelings of shame and horror he felt at an occurrence

which most men would have promptly forgotten? He had been in the line

about a month, and his diarrhœa had got steadily worse. One night,

when accompanying Evans on his rounds, Winterbourne felt a physical

necessity, and asked permission to go to a latrine. They were about

two hundred yards away, and before Winterbourne got there the contents

of his bowels were irresistibly evacuated in spite of his desperate

efforts to control them. It was one of the coldest nights of that long

bitter winter—the thermometer was below zero Fahrenheit. Winterbourne

halted in horror and disgust with himself. What on earth was he to do?

How return to Evans? He listened. It was one of the quietest nights he

ever experienced in the line, hardly a shot fired. Nobody was coming

along the trench. He rapidly undressed, shivering with cold, stripped

off his under-pants, cleaned himself as well as he could, and hurled

the soiled clothes into No Man’s Land. He dressed again, and rushed

back to meet Evans, who asked him a little sharply why he had been so

long about it. The discomfort passed; but the humiliation remained.

* * * * *

January slowly disappeared; they were halfway through February,

and still the frost held. It was a dreary experience. Each day was

practically the replica of that before and after—up the line, down the

line, sleep, attempt to get a little clean in the morning, inspection

parade, dinner, an hour or two to write letters, then parade again

for the line. Towards the end of February, the welcome news came that

they were going out of the line for four days’ rest. On the last

night before they went out, Evans and Winterbourne were watching the

men working when they heard a series of rapid sharp explosions. They

looked over and could see the dull red flashes of bombs or small trench

mortars bursting about three hundred yards away. Simultaneously they

exclaimed:

“It’s on our sap!”

Evans jumped into the trench and rushed towards the sap, followed by

Winterbourne, who tore the bolt-cover from his rifle and stuffed it in

his pocket as he ran. They could hear the crash, crash, crash-crash,

crash of the small mortars, which abruptly ceased when they were about

forty yards short. Verey lights were shooting up in all directions,

and the British machine-guns were rattling away. Evans dashed round a

traverse and went plump into two of his own men who were staggering

away from the sap, half-dazed and silly with the shock of explosions.

“What’s happened?”

They were incoherent, and Evans and Winterbourne rushed on to the

sap. Dimming down his torch with his left hand, Evans peered in; and

Winterbourne behind him saw two bodies splashed with blood. The head

of one man was smashed into his steel helmet and lay a sticky mess of

blood and hair half-severed from his body. The other man, the Corporal,

was badly wounded but still groaning. Obviously, one of the mortars had

dropped plump in the sap. Another discharge came crashing on either

side. Evans shoved his haversack under the Corporal’s head, and shouted

to make himself heard over the explosions:

“Get the stretcher-bearer, and send those windy buggers back here.”

“What about the sentry?” bawled Winterbourne.

“I’ll get him in. Off with you.”

Evans began to unbutton the Corporal’s tunic, to bind his wounds, as

Winterbourne left. The man was bleeding badly. Three hundred yards to

the stretcher-bearer and three hundred yards back. Winterbourne raced,

knowing that a matter of seconds may save the life of a man with a

severed artery. He was too late, however. The Corporal was dead when he

and the stretcher-bearer rushed panting into the sap.

They got the sentry’s body later.

[ VII ]

Next day they marched back about four miles to another village,

half-destroyed but still partly inhabited. For the first time in two

months Winterbourne sheathed his bayonet. It seemed symbolical of the

four days’ rest they were promised. Four days! An immense respite. The

men were cheery, and sang all the war songs as they marched off in

platoons—“Where are the boys of the village to-night?” “It’s a long,

long trail a-winding,” “I’m so happy, oh, so happy, don’t you envy me?”

“Pack all your troubles in your old kit-bag,” “If you’re going back to

Blighty,” “I want to go home,” “Rolling home.” But not “Tipperary.”

So far as Winterbourne knew, none of the troops in France ever sang

“Tipperary.”

He had not slept well, haunted by the vision of the dead man’s smashed,

bloody head, and the groaning Corporal. Evans looked a little pale.

But they said nothing to each other. And after all, they were going on

rest, four days’ rest. Winterbourne tried to join in the singing. Major

Thorpe trotted past them on his horse. They marched to attention, and

ceremonially saluted. That also seemed peaceful.

In the village they were billeted in large barns. A thaw had set

in, so rapid that they started out on frozen ground and arrived in a

village street deep in slushy mud. The nights were still cold, and old

broken-down barns and earthen floors made chilly bedrooms. There seemed

to be no water supply in the village, and they had to wash in thawing

flood-pools, breaking the new thin ice with tingling fingers. But they

went to the baths and changed their underclothes. The baths were in a

shell-smashed brewery. Thirty or forty men stripped in one room and

then went into another which had rows of iron pipes running across it,

about eight feet from the ground. Small holes were punched in the pipes

at intervals of about six feet. A man stood under each hole, and then a

little trickle of warm water began to fall on his head and body. They

had about five minutes to soap themselves and get clean. Winterbourne

went back there alone the next day. By judicious bribing he managed to

get an officer’s bath and a new set of underclothes. It was delicious

to be clean and deloused again.

The four days passed very quickly. They paraded in the morning, did a

little drill, played football or ran in the afternoons, and went to

the estaminets in the evening. Winterbourne treated his section to

beer, and drank half a bottle of Barsac himself. The men, all beer and

spirit drinkers, despised the finer flavour of French wines and called

them “vinegar.” After dark, they sneaked out and stole sandbags of

“boulets”—coal-dust made into large pellets with tar—and burned them

in a brazier to warm the chilly barn. Winterbourne protested against

this thievery. But since the others went anyhow and he benefited by the

theft, he thought he might as well share the crime too. True, it was

French government property; and nobody minds stealing from governments.

But still, he hated to be a thief. The men called it “scrounging.”

Under pressure of necessity, every man in the line became a more or

less unscrupulous scrounger.

On the third night Winterbourne “clicked unlucky.” He was on Gas and

Fire Picket. They sat all night round the Company Field Kitchen and

drank tea, while one man was always on guard. The tin hat and the fixed

bayonet were unwelcome reminders that they were soon returning to the

line. The men talked of their homes in England, wished the war would

end, hoped anyway they’d get leave or a blighty soon, and envied the

officers sleeping in beds. One man grumbled because there was no “red

lamp” in the village. Winterbourne felt glad there wasn’t. Not that he

would have been tempted, for he was quite fiercely chaste unless in

love, but he hated the thought of these men giving their lean, sinewy

bodies to the miserable French whores in the war-area bawdy houses.

“It’s all right in Béthune,” said the grumbler. “You can see ’em lining

up outside the red lamps after dark under a Sergeant. Soon’s the old

woman gives the signal, the Ser’ant says: ‘Next two files, right turn,

quick march,’ and in yer go. The ole woman ’as a short-arm inspection

and gives yer Condy’s Fluid, and the tart ’as Condy’s Fluid too. She

was a nice tart, she was, but she was in a ’ell of a ’urry. She kep’

sayin’ ‘’Urry, daypaychez.’ I ’adn’t got meself buttoned up afore I

’eard the Ser’ant shoutin’: ‘Next two files, right turn, quick march.’

But she was a nice tart, she was.”

Winterbourne got up and walked out to the muddy road. The stars were

faint and dim and lovely in the soft misty night sky; there seemed to

be a first quiver of Spring in the scentless pure air. O Andromeda, O

Paphian!

At dawn the birds twittered and sang, a little hesitantly in the cold

morning mist. The sun rose in a golden haze, behind rows of poplars,

over the flat dark earth.

* * * * *

They went into the line again, three miles to the right of their

former positions. Their billets were about a mile and a quarter behind

the town of M——, right in the crook of the salient. They lived

in cellars in a small mining village, badly smashed, and entirely

evacuated of civilians. A long treeless road led straight up to M——

and Hill 91, one of the most fought-over places in the line, seamed

with trenches, pitted with shell-holes, honeycombed with galleries,

eviscerated with huge mine craters, blasted bare of all vegetation.

At Hill 91, the German line turned sharply left and linked up with a

long slag-hill, about five hundred yards from the Pioneers’ billets.

Consequently, although they were a long way from Hill 91, their billets

were under observation and within machine-gun range, while the road to

M—— was constantly shelled, and enfiladed by machine-guns. It was a

rotten position, and would have been evacuated but for the “prestige”

of keeping M——. A costly bit of prestige. It was estimated that

venereal disease held continually a division of troops immobilized at

Base Hospitals, to keep up the prestige of British purity; and another

Division must have been obliterated to retain that barren prestige of

holding M——.

They arrived about eleven, and almost immediately Evans’s servant

came and told Winterbourne to report at the Officers’ Mess cellar, in

fighting order. Evans was waiting for him.

Hitherto the Company had been under strength, and officered by Major

Thorpe and the two subalterns, Evans and Pemberton, who took duty

alternately. While on rest, they had been made up to full strength, and

were joined by three other subalterns, Franklin, Hume and Thompson.

They thus went up the line one hundred and twenty strong, with six

officers, one of whom was supernumerary. Evans had been made a sort

of unofficial second-in-command, while continuing to act as Platoon

officer. Since he was the most experienced of the subalterns, he was to

overlook the new officers until they knew their jobs. He explained all

this to Winterbourne as they went along.

“You must give me your word not to mention it to the other men, but

there is almost certainly a show coming off on this front. Probably in

about four weeks. You mustn’t let the men know.”

“Of course not, Sir.”

“We shall have twelve-hour shifts up here, I’m afraid. I’ve got to

take three platoons up to Hill 91, over there, at five to-night;

and I want to reconnoitre. We’ve got to repair and revet the front

communication trenches, clear away some of our wire, and fill the gaps

with knife-rests. We’ve also got to repair Southampton Row, the main

communication trench to your left. Every time we go up, we’ve got to

take Mills bombs or trench mortars or S.A.A. I think we’re going to

have a lively time. I rode out about ten miles yesterday, and saw

fifteen batteries of heavies and a lot of tanks camouflaged by the

road. The officers said they were booked for this sector or a little

south.”

They were walking up the narrow straight road to M——. About every

minute a heavy shell—or a salvo of heavy shells—plonked into M——.

There was a sudden spout of black smoke and débris, a heavy sullen

reverberating CLAANG as the loud detonation shook the twisted steel

mining machinery, and re-echoed from the chalky slopes of Hill 91.

To their right was a long slag-hill, mangled with shell-holes. Evans

pointed to it.

“The Boche Front line runs just in front of that, about four hundred

yards away. At some points our own Front line is only twenty yards from

theirs. It’s a rummy and awkward position. Most of the transport for

M—— has to come up this road, and the poor devils are shelled and

machine-gunned wickedly every night. All troops on foot have to use

Southampton Row, the communication trench to your left. You see it’s

got fire-steps and a parapet—it’s also a Reserve line which we have to

man in case of necessity.”

They got into the ruined streets of M——, and were promptly lost.

The town was blasted to about three feet of indistinguishable ruins.

A wooden notice-board over a mass of broken stones, said: “CHURCH.”

Another further on said: “POST OFFICE.” Evans got out his map, and they

stood together trying to make out the direct way to the section of

trench they wanted. ZwiiiNG, CRASH, CLAANG!—four heavy shells screamed

towards them and detonated with awful force within a hundred yards. The

nearest swished over their heads and exploded twenty yards away. Four

great columns of black smoke leaped up like miniature volcanoes; broken

bricks and fragments of shell case clattered in the empty street. The

reverberating echoes seemed like a groan from the agonizing town. The

explosions seemed to hit Winterbourne in the chest.

“Heavies,” said Evans very calmly, “eight inch, probably.”

ZwiiiNG, Crash, CRASH! CLAANG! Four more.

“Seems a bit unhealthy here. We’d better push on.”

Winterbourne was silent. For the first time he began to realize the

terrific inhuman strength of heavy artillery. Whizz-bangs and even

five-nines were one thing, but these eight or ten inch high explosive

monsters were a very different matter.

ZwiiiNG, CRASH! CLAANG!

Minute after minute, hour after hour, day and night, week after week,

those merciless heavies pounded the groaning town.

ZwiiiNG, CRASH! CRAAASH! CLAAANG!

It was too violent a thing to get accustomed to. The mere physical

shock, the slap in the chest, of the great shells exploding close

at hand, forbade that. They became a torment, an obsession, an

exasperation, a nervous nightmare. Unintentionally, as a man walked

through M——, he found himself tense and strained, waiting for that

warning “zwiing” of the approaching shell, trying to determine by the

sound whether it was coming straight at him or not. Winterbourne’s

duties during the next two and a half months necessitated his walking

through M——, often alone, twice or four times every twenty-four

hours.

* * * * *

The real nightmare was only just beginning. There had been the torment

of frost and cold; now came the torments of mud, of gas, of incessant

artillery, of fatigue and lack of sleep.

Under the swift thaw the whole battered countryside seemed to turn

from ice to mud. It was deep on the _pavé_ roads, deeper round the

billets, deeper still on the unpaved tracks, and deepest of all in

the trenches. In Winterbourne’s hallucinated memories, where images

and episodes met and collided like superimposed films, that Spring

was mud. He seemed to spend his time pledging through interminable

muddy trenches, up to the ankles, up to the calves, up to the knees;

shovelling mud frantically out of trenches on to the berm, and then by

night from the berm over the parapets, while the shells crashed and

the machine-gun bullets struck gold sparks from the road stones. When

he was not doing that, he was scraping mud with a knife from his boots

and clothes, trying to dry socks and puttees and to rub some warmth

into his livid aching feet. He had not known that wet cold could keep

one’s legs so achingly dead for so long. He had not known how wearisome

it could be to drag tired legs and carry burdens through deep sticky

chalk mud, where each step was an effort, where each leg stuck deep as

the other was laboriously pulled from the sucking mud. He had not known

that one could hate an inert thing so much. Overhead it might be sunny,

with innumerable little fleecy puffs of exploded shrapnel pursuing a

darting white airplane high in the misty blue March sky. Underfoot, it

was mud. They had no time to look at the sky, as they dragged along,

toiling their bent way along those muddy ditches.

* * * * *

He remembered a week of blessed respite which he spent in an

underground gallery, squatting twelve hours a day by a winch and

interminably winding sandbags of chalk to men in the trench. These

galleries—which were never used—were being dug to conceal two or

three divisions before a surprise attack. They seemed to extend for

miles. The cutting and picking at the advancing end was done by R.E.’s,

skilled miners who cut with astonishing rapidity and accuracy. The

Pioneers filled the chalk into sacks, and dragged them along the

galleries, where Winterbourne incessantly wound them to the top. The

Engineers had better rations than the infantry and the Pioneers, whose

lunch was bread and cheese. They had huge cold beefsteaks and bottles

of strong tea and rum for their lunch. Winterbourne during his half

hour’s midday rest one day wandered up to their end of the gallery,

just as they were eating. He could not help glancing rather wolfishly

at their meal. One of them noticed it, and pointing to his steak, said

with his mouth full:

“Ah reckon tha doesn’t get groob the likes o’ this in thy lot, lad.”

“No, but the stew’s very good—only you get a bit tired of it every

day.”

“Aye, that tha does. But we’re skilled men, we are, traade union.

They’re got to feed oos well, they ’ave.”

Half kindly, half contemptuously, the miner cut off a hunk of his steak

and held it out to Winterbourne in his large dirty hand.

“Here tha art, lad, take a bite at that.”

“Oh no, thanks, it’s very kind of you, but...”

“Nay lad, tha’s welcome; tak it, tak it. Tha looks fair famelled and

wore out. Tha’s na workin’ chap, ah knows.”

Torn between his feeling of humiliation, his desire not to reject

the man’s kindly-meant offer and his hungry belly, Winterbourne

hesitated. He finally took it, with a rather ghastly feeling of animal

humiliation. The cold tender meat tasted delicious. It was the first

unsodden meat he had eaten for weeks. He gave them his last cigarettes,

and returned to his winch.

* * * * *

Winterbourne detested “berming.” Hour after hour standing in wet

chilly mud, shovelling the stuff away to prevent its sliding back into

the trench from which it had been laboriously thrown, and widening the

space between the top of the trench and the parapet. The machine-guns

from the slag-hill constantly rattled away at them. One night

Winterbourne and the man next him dug up the bones, tunic, equipment

and rifle of a French soldier, who had been hastily buried in the

parapet many months before. His cartridges fell from the mouldering

pouches and still looked bright in the dim star-dusk. Winterbourne dug

up the skull; it was large and dome-shaped, a typical Frenchman’s head.

They tried to find his identity disc, but failed. Pemberton, who was on

duty that night, made them rebury what was left in a shell-hole. They

stuck a cross over it next day, marked UNKNOWN FRENCH SOLDIER.

The best nights were those when Evans was on duty, but often the

urgency was so great that the officers’ runners and the officers

themselves worked and carried burdens. The most awkward burdens were

the long sheets of corrugated iron used for revetting. They had to

carry these along the road, since they were too large to get round the

traverses. It was impossible to keep the metal sheets from clanking

against rifles or the sheet of the man in front in the darkness. The

machine guns from the slag-hill opened out, and they could see the

spurts of gold sparks on the road come towards them. Winterbourne felt

his piece of corrugated iron violently hit and half wrenched from

his hand; the man in front went down with a clatter. Somebody yelled

“Stretcher-bearer!” The men dumped their burdens and cowered on the

ground. It was an awful confusion. Only Evans and Winterbourne were

left standing on the road. Evans cursed the N.C.O.’s, and made the men

form up again behind Winterbourne. It took a long time to find all the

sheets of metal in the darkness, and the machine-guns went on rattling

pitilessly. They were hours late in getting back to billets.

* * * * *

As March dragged on, more and more heavy guns arrived, clattering up

behind their tractors in the darkness. A Tank and its crew were hidden

not far from the Pioneers’ billets, and there were others farther from

the line. A new infantry Division was pushed in to the line on their

right. Other Divisions were said to be in readiness close behind.

The sector became more and more lively, but no big attack was made.

Winterbourne questioned Evans, who said it had been postponed to give

the mud a chance to dry. What hopes!

The Germans had excellent observation posts on Hill 91, and their

aircraft were constantly over the British lines and back areas. They

were perfectly aware that an attack was being prepared. Every night

they shelled M——, shelled the cross-roads leading to M——,

shelled any artillery positions they had spotted, shelled the wrecked

village where the Pioneers were billeted. The cellars were good enough

protection against shell splinters, but far too flimsy to resist

a direct hit. Every day or night huge crumps were flung at them,

exploding with concussions which shook the ground and made sleep

impossible. In the day-time, Winterbourne sometimes crouched at his

cellar-entrance and watched the explosions within his view. If one

of these big shells hit a half-ruined house, almost every vestige

disappeared in a cloud of black smoke and rosy brick dust.

And there was gas, a good deal of gas. It was the beginning of the

intensive use of gas projectiles, which later became so greatly

perfected. Their experience of it began one March night on Hill 91.

A smart local attack had driven the Germans out of their advance

positions and carried the British line forward—at a cost—about two

hundred and fifty yards on a front of eight hundred. Evans explained

to Winterbourne that these local attacks were being made all along the

line to deceive the Germans as to the exact position of the coming

offensive. Since the Germans would have needed to be blind or lunatic

not to see where the guns and troops were being massed, Winterbourne

thought this an over-subtle and over-costly bit of policy. However, his

not to reason why.

The Pioneers—three platoons of them—under Evans, Pemberton and Hume,

were to dig a new communication trench from the former British front

line to their present Outpost line of hastily interlinked shell-holes.

Evans told Winterbourne not to carry any tools:

“I expect it’ll be rather a sticky do. The old Boche is pooping off

whizz-bangs all day and night up there. And I’m hanged if I can find

out exactly where our new front line is supposed to be. It’s a network

of Boche trenches up there, and we don’t want to go barging into their

line.”

They struggled up Southampton Row and skirted M——, which was being

shelled heavily and reverberantly. They got into another trench on the

fringe of Hill 91. Whizz-bangs kept cracking all round them, in little

masses of about a dozen—several batteries firing together. Evans and

Winterbourne were leading. Winterbourne paused:

“There’s a curious smell about here, Sir” (sniff, sniff) “like

pineapple or pear-drops.”

Evans sniffed the air.

“So there is.”

The smell rapidly became stronger after another salvo of whizz-bangs.

“By Jove, it’s tear-gas!” said Evans. “Pass the word along to put on

gas goggles.”

The line halted, while the men fumbled in the darkness for their

goggles; and then slowly stumbled on. Winterbourne found he was

practically blinded by his goggles in the darkness; they kept going dim

with perspiration. He took them off.

“We shall be here all night at this rate, Sir. May as well be blinded

with tear-gas as goggles. I’ll keep mine off and reconnoitre.”

Evans pulled off his goggles, and the two went on ahead, telling the

Sergeant to follow straight on until he came up with them. Tears poured

from the two men’s eyes as they toiled up the muddy trench. They kept

dabbing their eyes with pocket handkerchiefs, like a couple of mutes at

their own funerals.

Crash, crash-crash, crash, crash-crash-crash-crash, came the

whizz-bangs; and the pineapple smell became stronger than ever.

“It’ll be a jolly look-out for us,” said Evans, “if they poop over

poison-gas too. We shan’t be able to smell it with all this stink of

pear-drops. Peuh! It’s like being in a sweet factory.”

They laughed. And then dabbed their streaming eyes again.

In ten minutes they came up to the largest of the mine craters. The

wind was fresh on the hill-crest and there was no gas. Their smarting

eyes began to recover.

“Here we are,” said Evans, “and there’s the old No Man’s Land,

but where in hell our Front line is, I don’t know. You stay here,

Winterbourne, and tell Sergeant Perkins to halt until I come back. I’ll

go and reconnoitre.”

“I’ll go back and fetch them, Sir, and bring them up.”

“All right,” and Evans vanished in the darkness. Winterbourne returned

to the line of men, dismally groping their way through the gassy

trench. They waited for Evans, who led them over the old No Man’s Land

to a very deep trench. They turned to the left. Evans whispered to

Winterbourne:

“There’s nothing here but a net-work of Boche trenches; look how

deep they are. I couldn’t see a soul, and there are still Boche

trench-notices up. I’m hanged if I know where we are. For all I know

we’re in the Boche lines.”

Winterbourne unslung his rifle and bayonet, and walked in front of

Evans. Verey lights went up occasionally, but most mysteriously

seemed to come from all sides, behind them as well as in front and

to the flanks. The trenches were immensely deep and dark, except

when lit dimly by the glow of Verey lights, or the abrupt flashes of

whizz-bangs. They went on and on, constantly passing cross-trenches,

completely lost, probably returning on their footsteps. They could hear

the men muttering and cursing behind them. At another cross-trench they

halted in despair. Winterbourne stood on a large hummock in the middle

of the wide trench, peering ahead through the gloom. Evans looked at

his luminous wrist-watch.

“Good Lord! We’ve been wandering in these blasted trenches for nearly

three hours. It’ll be too late to do any work unless we get there at

once.”

Winterbourne grabbed his arm:

“Look!”

Several shadowy figures were silhouetted against the skyline, coming

along the trench towards them. Too dark to distinguish the helmets.

English or German?

“Challenge them,” whispered Evans. Winterbourne threw his rifle

forward:

“Halt! Who are you!”

“Frontshires,” said a weary voice.

“Ask which company.”

“Which company?”

“A, B, C, D,—what’s left of ’em.”

They were now close enough for Evans and Winterbourne to see they were

in British uniform. Evans passed down word to his men to stand to the

left and let the out-going party pass. The Frontshires staggered rather

than walked down the bumpy trench.

“We ’ung on until nearly all of us was killed, Sir,” said one man

huskily to Evans, as if apologizing.

“When the Springshires was wiped out, we got enfiladed, Sir,” said

another, “there’s on’y one of our officers left.”

About fifty men, the flotsam of the wrecked battalion, stumbled past

them. Then came the Sergeant-Major and a young subaltern. Evans stopped

him, and asked the way to the front line, explaining briefly their

job. The subaltern seemed dazed with weariness. He kept swaying in the

darkness.

“It’s up there... up there... somewhere....”

“But how far?”

“I don’t know... not far... I can’t stop... mustn’t leave the men.”

And he stumbled on again. Evans turned to Winterbourne.

“Well, Winterbourne, you might as well get off the body of that dead

Boche you’re standing on, and we’ll push along.”

Winterbourne sprang away with a sensation of horror, and saw that he

had indeed unconsciously been standing on a dead German.

They wandered about until nearly dawn, without finding the Front

line. They came on a couple of wounded Germans, whom Evans put into

stretchers. Just about dawn they found themselves back at the point

where they had entered the old German trenches, and recrossed to

familiar ground. The wounded Germans groaned as the stretcher-bearers

stumbled and bumped them on the ground.

* * * * *

The remnant of the battalion of the Frontshires very slowly made their

way into M——. Zwiing, CRASH! CLAANG! went the great crumps, but

they hardly heard them. They were too tired. They went through the

town in single file. On the straight road, the subaltern halted them,

formed them roughly into fours, and took his place at their head. They

shambled heavily along, not keeping step or attempting to, bent wearily

forward under the weight of their equipment, their unseeing eyes

turned to the muddy ground. They stumbled over inequalities; several

times one or other of them fell, and had to be dragged laboriously to

his feet. Others lagged hopelessly behind. Time and again the young

subaltern and the R.S.M. paused to allow the little group to re-form.

Hardly a word was spoken. They went very slowly, past the slag-hill,

past the ruined village, past the Pioneers’ billets, past the soldiers’

cemetery, past the ruined château, past the closed Y.M.C.A. canteen;

and just as the fresh clear Spring dawn lightened the sky, they came to

the village where they had their rest billets. The firing had quieted

down, and the larks were singing overhead in the pure exquisite sky. In

the pale light the men’s unshaven faces looked grim and strangely old,

grey-green, haggard, inexpressibly weary. They shambled on.

Outside of Divisional Headquarters a smart sentry was on duty. He saw

the little party wearily stumbling down the village street, and thought

they were walking wounded. The young subaltern stopped about thirty

yards from the sentry, and once more re-formed his men. The sentry

heard him say “Stick it, Frontshires.”

Already the news had reached the back areas that the Frontshires had

been nearly wiped out in a desperate defence—fifty of them and one

officer left, out of twenty officers and seven hundred and fifty men.

The sentry sprang to attention and took one pace forward. Sloped

arms—one, two, three, as if on parade—and remained rigid. As the

little group drew level, he sharply brought his rifle and fixed bayonet

to the “Present Arms.”

The young officer wearily touched the brim of his steel helmet. The men

scarcely saw, and did not comprehend, the gesture. The sentry watched

them pass, with a lump in his throat.

There was still nothing to report on the western front.

[ VIII ]

After a few hours sleep and a hasty meal, Evans and Winterbourne

started for the Front line again. Evans was very much ashamed at having

lost his way the night before, and the Major had strafed him for

incompetence. Evans had not replied, as he might have done, that since

the Major knew so well where they ought to have gone, he might have

taken the trouble to lead them there.

It was about two on a sunny cold afternoon. They skirted M—— with

its everlasting, maddening Zwiiing, CRASH! CLAAAANG! In the trenches on

the edge of Hill 91, they met two walking wounded, unshaved, muddy to

the waist. One had his head bandaged and was carrying his steel helmet,

the other had his tunic half off, and his left hand and arm were

bandaged in several places. They were talking with great gravity and

earnestness, and hardly saw Evans and his runner. Winterbourne heard

one of them say:

“I told that muckin new orfficer twice that some mucker’d get hit if he

muckin well took us up that muckin trench.”

“Ah,” said the other, “moock ’im.”

Evans and Winterbourne paused at the old Front line on the crest of

the hill to take breath, and looked back. The blue sky was speckled

all over with the little fleecy shrapnel bursts from Archies, pursuing

three different enemy planes. The heavy shells fell reverberantly into

M—— at their feet. They looked over a broad flat, grey-green plain,

dotted with ruined villages, seamed with the long irregular lines

of trenches. The wavering broad ribbon of No Man’s Land was clearly

visible, blasted to the white chalk. They could see the flash of the

heavies, and enemy shells bursting on cross-roads and round artillery

emplacements. A Red Cross car of wounded bumping its way from the

Advanced Dressing Station in M—— was shelled all down the road by

field artillery. They watched it eagerly, hoping it would escape. Once

or twice it disappeared in the smoke of the shell-burst and they felt

certain it was done for; but the car bumpingly reappeared and finally

vanished from sight in the direction of Rail Head.

“God! What a dirty trick! I’m glad they didn’t get it,” said

Winterbourne, as they scrambled out of the trench.

“Ah, well,” said Evans, “Red Cross cars have been used as camouflage

before now.”

* * * * *

They easily found the new Front Line in the daylight. Directions in

English had been hastily scrawled on the old German trench notices, and

they wondered how on earth they could have missed the way the night

before. The Front line was full of infantry, some on sentry-duty, some

sitting hunched up on the fire-steps, many lying in long narrow holes

like graves, scooped in the side of the trench. They found an officer,

who took them along to show them where the new communication trench was

wanted. Winterbourne, turning to answer a question from Evans, struck

the butt of his rifle sharply against a sleeping man in one of the

holes. The man did not stir.

“Your fellows are sleeping soundly,” said Evans.

“Yes,” said the officer tonelessly, “but he may be dead for all I know.

Stretcher-bearers too tired to take down all the bodies. Some of ’em

are dead, and some asleep. We have to go round and kick ’em to find

which is which.”

The new trench they were to dig had been roughly marked out, and ran

from the old German Front line to the lip of Congreve’s Mine Crater,

now used as an ammunition dump. A salvo of whizz-bangs greeted them as

they went out to look at it.

“I don’t altogether envy you this job,” said the Infantry officer;

“this is about the most unhealthy spot on Hill 91. The Boche shells

it day and night. Your Colonel had a hell of a row about it with the

Brigadier, but our fellows are too whacked to do any more digging.”

Over came another little bunch of whizz-bangs, in corroboration—crash,

crash-crash, crash. The grey-green acrid smoke smelt foul.

“They’re going to call it Nero Trench,” he added, as they left him,

“because the ground’s so black with coal dust and slag. Well, good-bye,

best of luck. And, by the bye, look out for gas.”

* * * * *

The Nero Trench job was an intensified nightmare. The Germans had it

“taped” with exactitude, and shelled it ruthlessly. Five minutes was

the longest period that ever passed without salvos of whizz-bangs.

Evans and Winterbourne, Hume and his runner, walked continually up and

down the line of men, who toiled hastily and nervously in the darkness

to make themselves a little cover. When the shells came crashing

near them, they crouched down on the ground. It was found after the

first night that each man had simply dug a hole for himself instead

of regularly excavating his three yards of trench. On some nights the

shelling was so intense that Evans withdrew the men for a time to the

shelter of a trench. They had several casualties.

And then the Germans began a steady, systematic gas bombardment of all

the ruined villages in the advanced area. It began on the second night

of the Nero Trench job. They had noticed on Hill 91 that a pretty heavy

bombardment was proceeding from the German lines, and all the way down

from M——, they heard the shells continuously shrilling overhead. It

puzzled them that they could not hear them exploding.

“Must be bombarding the back areas,” said Evans. “Let’s hope it gives

’em something to think about besides sending us up tons of silly

papers.”

But as they came nearer their village they could tell by the sound

in the air that the shells must be falling close ahead of them. Soon

they heard them falling with the customary zwiiING, followed by a very

unaccustomed soft PHUT.

“They can’t all be duds,” said Winterbourne.

A shell dropped short, just outside the parapet, with the same curious

PHUT. Immediately a strange smell, rather like new-mown hay gone acrid,

filled the air. They sniffed, and both men exclaimed simultaneously:

“Phosgene! Gas!”

They all fumblingly and hastily put on their gas masks, and stumbled

on blindly down the trench. Winterbourne and Evans scrambled out on to

the road, and got into the edge of the village. A rain of gas shells

was falling on it and all around their billets—zwiing, zwiing, zwiing,

zwiing, PHUT PHUT PHUT PHUT. Each took off his mask a second and gave

one sniff—the air reeked with phosgene.

Evans and Winterbourne stood at the end of the trench to help out

the groping half-blinded men. As they filed by, grotesques with

india-rubber faces, great dead-looking goggles, and long tubes from

their mouths to the box respirators, Winterbourne thought they looked

like lost souls, expiating some horrible sin in a new Inferno. The

rolled gas blankets were pulled down tightly over the cellar entrances,

but the gas leaked through. Two men were gassed and taken off in

stretchers, foaming rather horribly at the mouth.

* * * * *

The gas bombardment went on until dawn, and then ceased. Winterbourne

fell asleep, with his gas mask just off his face. Hitherto they had

slept with the box respirator slung on a nail or piled with the other

equipment; after the experience of this and the subsequent nights they

always slept with the respirator on their chests and the mask ready to

slip on immediately.

The heavies began again soon after it was light. Winterbourne was

awakened by one which crashed just outside his cellar. He lay on the

floor for a long time listening to the zwiiiING, CRASH, of the shells.

He heard two ruined houses clatter to the ground under direct hits, and

wondered if the cellars had held firm. They hadn’t. But fortunately,

they happened to be unoccupied. Presently, the German batteries

switched off and began bombarding some artillery about five hundred

yards to the left. Winterbourne profited by the lull to wash. He ran

out of the cellar in his shirtsleeves and gas mask, with the canvas

bucket in which he washed; and found that a shell had smashed the pump

outside his billet. He knew there was another about three hundred yards

to the right, although he had never been there.

It was another cold but sunny morning, with the inevitable white

shrapnel bursts all over the sky. He was now so accustomed to them that

he scarcely noticed their existence. Occasionally a very faint rattle

of machine-gun fire came from the war in the air, of which he was

nearly as ignorant as people in England of the war on land.

He took off his mask and sniffed. A fresh wind was blowing, and

although there was plenty of phosgene in the air, it was not in any

deadly concentration. He decided to risk leaving the mask off. The

ground was deeply delved with the conical holes made by the big

shells thrown over, and pitted everywhere by the smaller holes of

the gas shells. He found a dud, and examined it with interest. A

brownish-looking shell, about the size of a five-nine.

The cottages were rather scattered, and unused as cellar-billets

in this direction. The top storeys had gone from nearly all, but in

several the ground floor was fairly intact. He looked into each as he

passed. The wall-paper had long ago fallen and lay in mouldering heaps.

The floors were covered with broken bricks, tiles, smashed beams, laths

and disintegrating plaster. Odd pieces of broken furniture, twisted

iron beds, large rags which had once been clothes and sheets, protruded

from the mass. He poked about and found photographs, letters in faded

ink on damp paper, broken toys, bits of smashed vases, a soiled satin

wedding-gown with its veil and wreath of artificial orange blossom. He

stood, with his head bent, looking at this pathetic débris of ruined

lives, and absent-mindedly lit a cigarette which he immediately threw

away—it tasted of phosgene. “La Gloire,” he murmured, “Deutschland

über alles, God save the King.”

The next cottage was less damaged than the others, and its rough wooden

shutters were still on their hinges. Winterbourne peered through and

saw that the whole of the inside had been cleared of débris, and

was stacked with quantities of wooden objects. He shaded his eyes

more carefully, and saw they were ranks and ranks of wooden crosses.

Those he could see had painted on them R.I.P.; then underneath was a

blank space for the name; then came the name of one or other of the

battalions in his Division, and then the present month and year, with

a blank space for the day. Excellent forethought, he reflected as he

filled his bucket and water-bottle; how well this War is organized!

* * * * *

About nine, Evans’s servant told him to report immediately in fighting

order. Wearily and sleepily he threw on his equipment, re-tied the

string of his box respirator, and slung his rifle and bayonet over his

left shoulder. He waited with the officers’ servants, who gave him a

piece of bread dipped in bacon grease to eat. Presently Evans came out

and they started off.

“I’ve got to see an R.E. officer,” said Evans, “about a new job on Hill

91. It’s a bit farther to the left of where we’ve been working, and

it’ll take us half an hour longer to get there.”

Winterbourne seized the opportunity to put forward one or two ideas he

had been thinking over:

“I hope you won’t mind, Sir, if I say something—it’s not an official

complaint at all, you understand, only what I’ve been personally

thinking.”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, Sir, I assume that the reason we are kept in billets instead of

in the line is to give us more rest so that we come fresh to work. But

here it doesn’t work out that way, especially in the past fortnight;

and it’s likely to get worse instead of better. It seems to me that we

should be much better off if we were in dug-outs in the Reserve line.

We have that long walk through the mud twice a day; we get all the

shells meant for the transport and ration parties; we get an all night

strafing in the line; we’re shelled all the way down; we come back

to gassy billets, which are shelled with heavies twenty hours out of

twenty-four. The cellars are no real protection against a direct hit.

They’re damper than dug-outs, and just as dark and ratty. There are far

more whizz-bangs and light stuff in the line, but far fewer heavies;

and if we had even fifteen-foot dug-outs, we’d get some sleep, instead

of starting awake every ten minutes with a crump outside the cellar

entrance. We’re getting a lot of useless casualties, Sir. I passed the

cook house as I came along, and the cook told me one of his mates had

just gone down with gas from last night. And the S.M. looks as green as

grass. Can’t you get us put in the line, Sir?”

Evans cogitated a moment or two:

“Yes, I think you’re right. No, I can’t get us moved. I haven’t the

authority. I wish I had. I’ll ask the Major to put it before the

Colonel. It’s quite true what you say. In the past week we’ve had eight

casualties in the line, and twelve here or going up and down. But with

this show coming off I expect every trench and dug-out will be packed.”

Winterbourne felt enormously proud that Evans had not snubbed his

suggestion. Evans went on, after a pause:

“By the way, Winterbourne, have you ever thought of taking a

commission?”

“Why, yes, Sir, it was suggested by the Adjutant of my battalion in

England. I believe my father wrote to him about it. He, my father, was

very keen about it.”

“Well, why don’t you apply?”

It was now Winterbourne’s turn to cogitate:

“I find it rather hard to explain, Sir. For many reasons, which you

might think far-fetched, I had and still have a feeling that I ought to

spend the War in the ranks and in the line. I should prefer to be in

the Infantry, but I think the Pioneers are quite near enough.”

“They often come round for volunteers, you know. If you like, I’ll put

you down next time, and the Major will recommend you to the Colonel.”

“It’s kind of you, Sir. I’ll think about it.”

* * * * *

One night, two nights, three nights, four nights passed, and still

there was no big battle. And they were not moved. Every night they were

shelled up the line, shelled in the line, shelled on the way back,

and arrived in a hail storm of gas shells. They had to wear their gas

masks for hours every day. And sleep became more and more difficult and

precarious.

Winterbourne’s intimacy with Evans and his own “education” put him

in rather an ambiguous position. Evans trusted him more and more

to do things which would normally have been done by an N.C.O. And

Winterbourne’s feeling of responsibility led him to take on and

conscientiously carry out everything of the kind. One night there was

supposed to be a gas discharger attack by the British in retaliation

for the heavy German gas bombardments. All the officers wanted to see

it; and since it was staged for an hour before dawn, that meant either

that one officer had to take the company down or that the men had to

be kept up two hours longer, exposed to artillery retaliation. Evans

solved the problem. He sent for Winterbourne:

“Winterbourne, we want to stop and see the fun up here. Now, you can

take the company down, can’t you? I’ll tell Sergeant Perkins that

you’re in charge; but of course you’ll give orders through him. Come

back here and report after you get them back.”

“Very good, Sir.”

There was no British gas attack, but the Germans put up what was

then a considerable gas bombardment. They sent over approximately

thirty thousand gas shells that night, most of them in and around the

village where the Pioneers were billeted. The Company had to wear gas

masks over the last half mile, and Winterbourne had a very anxious

time getting them along. He had discovered a disused but quite deep

trench running through the village almost to their billets, and he took

the men along there instead of through the village street. It was a

little longer, but far safer. The shells were hailing all round them,

and Winterbourne didn’t want any casualties. Sergeant Perkins and he

managed to get the men safely into billets. Winterbourne turned and

said:

“Well, good-night, Sergeant, I must go up the line again, and report to

Mr. Evans.”

“You ain’t going up agen, are you?”

“Yes, Mr. Evans told me to.”

“Struth! Well, I’d rather it was you than me.”

Winterbourne fitted on his gas mask, and groped his way out of the

Sergeant’s cellar. The night was muggy, a bit drizzly, windless and

very dark—the ideal conditions for a gas bombardment. What little wind

there was came from the German lines. He hesitated between taking the

long muddy trench or the more open road, but since he was practically

blinded in the darkness with his goggles, he decided to take the

trench, for fear of losing his way. It was rather eerie, groping his

way alone up the trench, with the legions of gas shells shrilling and

phutting all round him. They fell with a terrific “flop” when they came

within a few yards. He stumbled badly two or three times in holes they

had made in the trench since he had come down. For nearly half a mile

he had to go through the gas barrage, and it was slow work indeed,

with the mud and the darkness and the groping and the stumbling.

Interminable. He thought of nothing in the darkness but keeping his

left hand on the side of the trench to guide him and holding his right

hand raised in front to prevent his bumping into something.

At last he got clear of the falling gas shells, and ventured a

peep outside his mask. One sniff showed him the air was deadly with

phosgene. He groped on another two hundred yards and tried again. There

was still a lot of gas, but he decided to risk it, and took off his

mask. With the mask off he could see comparatively well, and traveled

quite rapidly. About an hour before dawn he reported to Evans.

“There’s a devil of a gas bombardment going on round the billets and

for half a mile round, Sir,” said Winterbourne; “that’s why I’m so

late. The whole country reeks of gas.”

Evans whistled:

“Whew! As a matter of fact, we’ve been drinking a bit in the dug-out

with some Infantry officers, and one or two are a bit groggy in

consequence.”

“Better wait till dawn then, Sir. If you’ll come up into the trench

you’ll hear the shells going over.”

“Oh, I’ll take your word for it. But the Major insists on going down

at once. We’ve just heard that there isn’t going to be a gas attack.

You’ll have to help me get them down.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The Major was entirely sober; Evans was perfectly self-controlled; but

the other four were all a little too merry. It was a perfect nightmare

getting them through the gas barrage. They would insist there was no

danger, that the gas was all a wash-out; and kept taking off their

masks. They disregarded the Major’s peremptory orders, and Evans and

Winterbourne had constantly to take off their own masks to argue with

the subalterns, and make them put on theirs. Winterbourne could feel

the deadly phosgene at his lungs.

Just after dawn they reached the Officers’ Mess cellar, fortunately

without a casualty. Winterbourne felt horribly sick with the gas he had

swallowed. The Major took off his gas mask, and picked up a water jug.

“Those confounded servants have forgotten to leave any water,”

exclaimed the Major angrily. “Winterbourne, take that tin jug and go

and get some water from the cook-house.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The shells were still pitilessly hailing down through the dawn. It was

a hundred yards to the cook-house, and Winterbourne three times just

escaped being directly hit by one of the ceaselessly falling shells. He

returned to the Mess, and left the water.

“Thanks very much,” said Evans; “you may go now, Winterbourne.

Good-night.”

“Good-night, Sir.”

“Good-night,” said the Major, “thank you for getting that water,

Winterbourne, I oughtn’t to have sent you.”

“Thank you, Sir; good-night, Sir.”

Outside the Major’s and Evans’s part of the cellar, the other officers

were sitting round a deal table by the light of a candle stuck in

a bottle, which looked dim and ghastly. The place was practically

gas-proof, with tightly drawn blankets over every crevice.

“Win’erbourne,” said one of them.

“Sir?”

“Run along to the Quar’master-Sergeant and bring us a bottle of

whiskey.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Winterbourne climbed the cellar steps, lifted the outer gas curtain

rapidly, and stepped out. There was such a stench of phosgene that

he snapped his mask on at once. The shells were falling thicker than

ever. One hit the wall of the house, and Winterbourne felt bricks and

dust drop on his steel helmet and shoulders. He shrank against what

was left of the wall. Two hundred yards to the Q.M.S.’s billet. That

meant nearly a quarter of a mile through that deadly storm—for a

half-drunken man to get a few more whiskies. Winterbourne hesitated. It

was disobeying orders if he didn’t go. He turned resolutely and went

to his own billet; nothing was ever said of this refusal to obey an

officer’s orders in the face of the enemy.

* * * * *

Winterbourne stood outside the entrance to his cellar, took off his

steel helmet and folded down the top part of his gas mask so that he

could see, while still keeping the nose clip on and the large rubber

mouthpiece in his teeth. The whitish morning light looked cold and

misty, and the PHUT PHUT PHUT PHUT of the bursting gas shells continued

with ruthless iteration. He watched them exploding; a little curling

cloud of yellow gas rose from each shell-hole. The ground was pitted

with these new shell-holes, and newly broken bricks and débris lay

about everywhere. A dead rat lay in a gas shell-hole just outside the

entrance—so the War caught even the rats! There had been a young

slender ash-tree in what had once been the cottage garden. A heavy

explosive had fallen just at its roots, splintered the slim stem, and

dashed it prone with broken branches. The young leaves were still

green, except on one side where they were curled and withered by gas.

The grass, so tender a spring green a week before, was yellow, sickly

and withered. As he turned to lift the gas-blanket he heard the whizz

and crash of the first heavy of the day bombardment. But the gas shells

continued.

Inside the cellar was complete darkness. He took off his mask and

fumbled his way down the broken stairs, trying not to wake the other

runners. It was important only to use one match, because matches were

scarce and precious. The air inside was foul and heavy, but only

slightly tainted with phosgene. Winterbourne half-smiled as he thought

how furiously he had contended for “fresh air” in huts and barrack

rooms, and how gladly he now welcomed any foul air which was not full

of poison gas. He lighted his stub of candle, and slowly took off his

equipment, replacing the box respirator immediately. His boots were

thick with mud, his puttees and trousers torn with wire and stained

with mud and grease. A bullet had torn a hole in his leather jerkin,

and his steel helmet was marked by a long deep dint, where it had

been struck by a flying splinter of shell. He felt amazingly weary,

and rather sick. He had known the fatigue of long walks and strenuous

Rugby football matches and cross-country runs, but nothing like

this continual cumulative weariness. He moved with the slow, almost

pottering movements of agricultural labourers and old men. The feeling

of sickness became worse and he wanted to vomit out the smell of gas

which seemed to permeate him. He heaved over his empty canvas bucket

until the water started to his eyes, but vomited nothing. He noticed

how filthy his hands were.

He was just going to sit down on his blanket and pack, covered by the

neatly-folded groundsheet, when he saw a parcel and some letters for

him lying on them. The other runners had brought them over for him.

Decent of them. The parcel was from Elizabeth—how sweet of her to

remember! And yes, she had sent all the things he had asked for and

left out all the useless things people would send to the troops. He

mustn’t touch anything except the candles, though, until to-morrow,

when the parcel would be carefully divided among everybody in the

cellar. It was one of the good unwritten rules—all parcels strictly

divided between each section, so that every one got something, even and

especially the men who were too poor or too lonely to receive anything

from England. Dear Elizabeth—how sweet of her to remember!

He opened her envelope with hands which shook slightly with fatigue

and the shock of explosions. Then he stopped, lighted a new candle from

the stub of the old one, blew out the stub, and carefully put it away

to give to one of the infantry. The letter was unexpectedly tender and

charming. She had just been to Hampton Court to look at the flowers.

The gardens were rather neglected, she said, and no flowers in the

long border—the gardeners were at the war, and there was no money in

England now for flowers. Did he remember how they had walked there in

April five years ago? Yes, he remembered, and thought too with a pang

of surprise that this was the first spring he had ever spent without

seeing a flower, not even a primrose. The little yellow colts-foot he

had liked so much were all dead with phosgene. Elizabeth went on:

“I saw Fanny last week. She looked more charming and delicate than

ever—and such a marvelous hat! I hear she is _much_ attached to a

brilliant young scientist, a chemist, who does the most _peculiar_

things. He mixes up all sorts of chemicals and then experiments with

the fumes and kills dozens of poor little monkeys with them. Isn’t it

wicked? But Fanny says it’s most _important_ war work.”

The sickness came on him again. He turned sideways and heaved silently,

but could not vomit. He felt thirsty, and drank a little stale-tasting

water from his water-bottle. Dear Elizabeth, how sweet of her to

remember!

Fanny’s letter was very rattling and gay. She had been there, she had

done this, she had seen so-and-so. How was darling George getting

along? She was so glad to see that there had been no fighting yet on

the western front. She added:

“I saw Elizabeth recently. She looked a little worried, but _very_

sweet. She was with such a charming young man—a young American who ran

away from Yale to join our Flying Corps.”

The heavy shells outside were falling nearer and nearer. They came

over in fours, each shell a little in front of the others—bracketing.

Through the gas curtain he heard the remains of a ruined house collapse

across the street under a direct hit. Each crash made the cellar

tremble slightly, and the candle flame jumped.

Well, it was nice of Fanny to write. Very nice. She was a thoroughly

decent sort. He picked up the other envelopes. One came from Paris and

contained the _Bulletin des Ecrivains_—names of French writers and

artists killed or wounded, and news of those in the armies. He was

horrified to see how many of his friends in Paris had been killed.

A passage had been marked in blue pencil—it contained the somewhat

belated news that M. Georges Winterbourne, _le jeune peintre anglais_,

was in camp in England.

Another letter, forwarded by Elizabeth, came from a London art dealer.

It said that an American had bought one of Winterbourne’s sketches for

£5, and that when he heard that Winterbourne was in the trenches he had

insisted upon making it £25. The dealer therefore enclosed a cheque for

£22.10.0, being £25 less commission at ten per centum. Winterbourne

thought it rather cheek to take commission on the money which was a

gift, but still, Business as Usual. But how generous of the American!

How amazingly kind! His pay was five francs a week, so the money was

most welcome. He must write and thank....

The last letter was from Mr. Upjohn, from whom Winterbourne had not

heard for over a year. Elizabeth, it appeared, had asked him to write

and send news. Mr. Upjohn wrote a chatty letter. He himself had a job

in Whitehall, “of national importance.” Winterbourne rejoiced to think

that Mr. Upjohn’s importance was now recognized by the nation. Mr.

Shobbe had been in France, had stayed in the line three weeks, and was

now permanently at the base. Comrade Bobbe had come out very strong

as a conscientious objector. He had been put in prison for six weeks.

His friends had “got at” somebody influential, who had “got at” the

secretary of somebody in authority, and Mr. Bobbe had been released

as an agricultural worker. He was now “working” on a farm, run by a

philanthropic lady for conscientious objectors of the intellectual

class. Mr. Waldo Tubbe had found his vocation in the Post Office

Censorship Bureau, where he was very happy—if he could not force

people to say what he wanted, he could at least prevent them from

writing anything derogatory to his Adopted Empire....

George laughed silently to himself. Amusing chap Upjohn. He got out his

jack-knife and scraped away the mud so that he could unlace his boots.

Outside the shells crashed. One burst just behind the cellar. The roof

seemed to give a jump, something seemed to smack Winterbourne on the

top of the head, and the candle went out. He laboriously re-lit it. The

other runners woke up.

“Anything up?”

“No, only a crump outside. I’m just getting into kip.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Up the line again, for the officers.”

“Get back all right?”

“Yes, nobody hit. But there’s a hell of a lot of gas about. Don’t go

out without putting on your gas-bag.”

“Good-night, old man.”

“Good-night, old boy.”

[ IX ]

Three more nights passed rather more tranquilly. There was

comparatively little gas, but the German heavies were persistent. They,

too, quieted down on the third night, and Winterbourne got to bed

fairly early and fell into a deep sleep.

* * * * *

Suddenly he was wide awake and sitting up. What on earth or hell was

happening? From outside came a terrific rumble and roaring, as if three

volcanoes and ten thunderstorms were in action simultaneously. The

whole earth was shaking as if beaten by a multitude of flying hoofs,

and the cellar walls vibrated. He seized his helmet, dashed past the

other runners who were starting up and exclaiming, rushed through the

gas curtain; and recoiled. It was still night, but the whole sky was

brilliant with hundreds of flashing lights. Two thousand British guns

were in action, and heaven and earth were filled with the roar and

flame. From about half a mile to the north, southwards as far as he

could see, the whole front was a dazzling flicker of gun-flashes. It

was as if giant hands covered with huge rings set with search-lights

were being shaken in the darkness, as if innumerable brilliant diamonds

were flashing great rays of light. There was not a fraction of a

second without its flash and roar. Only the great boom of a twelve-

or fourteen-inch naval gun just behind them punctured the general

pandemonium at regular intervals.

Winterbourne ran stumbling forwards to get a view clear of the ruins.

He crouched by a piece of broken house and looked towards the German

lines. They were a long irregular wall of smoke, torn everywhere with

the dull red flashes of bursting shells. Behind their lines their

artillery was flickering brighter and brighter as battery after battery

came into action, making a crescendo of noise and flame when the limits

of both seemed to have been reached. Winterbourne saw but could not

hear the first of their shells as it exploded short of the village. The

great clouds of smoke over the German trenches were darkly visible in

the first very pallid light of dawn. It was the preliminary bombardment

of the long-expected battle. Winterbourne felt his heart shake with the

shaking earth and vibrating air.

The whole thing was indescribable—a terrific spectacle, a stupendous

symphony of sound. The devil-artist who had staged it was a master,

in comparison with whom all other artists of the sublime and terrible

were babies. The roar of the guns was beyond clamour, it was an immense

rhythmic harmony, a super-jazz of tremendous drums, a ride of the

Walkyrie played by three thousand cannon. The intense rattle of the

machine-guns played a minor motif of terror. It was too dark to see

the attacking troops, but Winterbourne thought with agony how every

one of those dreadful vibrations of sound meant death or mutilation.

He thought of the ragged lines of British troops stumbling forward in

smoke and flame and a chaos of sound, crumbling away before the German

protective barrage and the reserve line machine-guns. He thought of the

German Front lines, already obliterated under that ruthless tempest of

explosions and flying metal. Nothing could live within the area of that

storm except by a miraculous hazard. Already in this first half hour

of bombardment hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently

slain, smashed, torn, gouged, crushed, mutilated. The colossal harmony

seemed to roar louder as the drum-fire barrage lifted from the Front

line to the Reserve. The battle was begun. They would be mopping-up

soon—throwing bombs and explosives down the dug-out entrances on the

men cowering inside.

The German heavies were pounding M—— with their shells, smashing

at the communication trenches and cross-roads, hurling masses of metal

at their own ruined village. Winterbourne saw the half-ruined factory

chimney totter and crash to the ground. Two shells pitched on either

side of him, and flung earth, stones and broken bricks all round him.

He turned and ran back to his cellar, stumbling over shell-holes. He

saw an isolated house disappear in the united explosion of two huge

shells.

He clutched his hands together as he ran, with tears in his eyes.

[ X ]

Winterbourne found the other runners buckling up their packs and

fastening their equipment with that febrile haste which comes with

great excitement. Even in the cellar the roar of the artillery made it

necessary for them almost to shout to each other.

“What are the orders?”

“Stand by in fighting order, ready to move off at once. Dump packs

outside billets.”

Winterbourne in his turn feverishly put on his equipment, buckled his

pack, and cleaned his rifle. They stood, rifles and bayonets ready,

in the low cellar, ready to spring up the broken stairs as soon as

they were warned. In a moment such as this, a kind of paroxysm of

humanity, the most difficult thing is to wait. They dreaded the awful

storm thundering above them, but they were irresistibly hallucinated

by it, eager to plunge in and be done with it. The German shells

thudded continuously all round them, muted by the vaster clamour of

the attacking artillery. No orders came. They fidgeted, exclaimed, and

finally one by one sat silent on their packs, listening. A large rat

ran down the cellar stairs and began to nibble something. The beast

was exactly level with Winterbourne’s head. He shoved a cartridge into

the breech of his rifle, murmuring “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat

have life, and they no breath at all?” He aimed very carefully and

pulled the trigger; there was a terrific bang in the confined cellar,

and the rat was smashed dead in the air. Not ten seconds later a red,

perspiring face under a steel helmet was anxiously poked through the

cellar entrance. It was the Orderly Sergeant.

“What the muckin hell are you doing down there?”

“Having a spree—didn’t you hear the champagne cork?”

“Spree be mucked—one of you buggers fired his rifle and muckin near

copped me. Mucked if I don’t report the muckin lot of yer.”

“Wow I Put a sock in it!”

“Muck off!”

“Ord’ly sergeants are cheap to-day!”

“Well, you muckers got to report to yer orfficers at once. ’Op it.”

They ran up the broken stairs, pretending to poke their bayonets at

him, and laughing, perhaps a little hysterically. The fat good-natured

little Sergeant went off, shaking his fist at them, shouting awful

threats about the punishment awaiting them with a broad affectionate

grin on his face.

* * * * *

For Winterbourne the battle was a timeless confusion, a chaos of noise,

fatigue, anxiety, and horror. He did not know how many days and nights

it lasted, lost completely the sequence of events, found great gaps

in his conscious memory. He did know that he was profoundly affected

by it, that it made a cut in his life and personality. You couldn’t

say there was anything melodramatically startling, no hair going grey

in a night, or never smiling again. He looked unaltered; he behaved

in exactly the same way. But, in fact, he was a little mad. We talk

of shell-shock, but who wasn’t shell-shocked more or less? The change

in him was psychological, and showed itself in two ways. He was left

with an anxiety complex, a sense of fear he had never experienced,

the necessity to use great and greater efforts to force himself to

face artillery, anything explosive. Curiously enough, he scarcely

minded machine-gun fire, which was really more deadly, and completely

disregarded rifle-fire. And he was also left with a profound and

cynical discouragement, a shrinking horror of the human race....

* * * * *

A timeless confusion. The Runners scattered outside their billet and

made for the Officers’ cellar through the falling shells, dodging

from one broken house or shell-hole to another. Winterbourne, not yet

unnerved, calmly walked straight across and arrived first. Evans took

him aside:

“We’re going up as a Company, with orders to support and co-operate

with the infantry. Try to nab me a rifle and bayonet before we go over.”

“Very good, Sir.”

Outside was an open box of S.A.A. and they each drew two extra

bandoliers of cartridges, which they slung round their necks.

They moved off in sections, filing along the village street which was

filled with fresh débris and ruins re-ruined. It was snowing. They came

on two freshly killed horses. Their close-cropped necks were bent under

them, with great glassy eyeballs starting with agony. A little farther

on was a smashed limber with the driver dead beside it.

In the trench they passed a batch of about forty German prisoners,

unarmed, in steel helmets. They looked green-pale, and were trembling.

They shrank against the side of the trench as the English soldiers

passed, but not a word was said to them.

The snowstorm and the smoke drifting back from the barrage made the air

as murky as a November fog in London. They saw little, did not know

where they were going, what they were doing or why. They lined a trench

and waited. Nothing happened. They saw nothing but wire and snowflakes

and drifting smoke, heard only the roar of the guns and the now sharper

rattle of machine-guns. Shells dropped around them. Evans was looking

through his glasses, and cursing the lack of visibility. Winterbourne

stood beside him, with his rifle still slung on his left shoulder.

They waited. Then Major Thorpe’s Runner came with a message.

Apparently, he had mistaken a map reference and brought them to the

wrong place.

They plodged off through the mud, and lined another trench. They waited.

Winterbourne found himself following Evans across what had been No

Man’s Land for months. He noticed a skeleton in British uniform, caught

sprawling in the German wire. The skull still wore a sodden cap and not

a steel helmet. They passed the bodies of British soldiers killed that

morning. Their faces were strangely pale, their limbs oddly bulging

with strange fractures. One had vomited blood.

They were in the German trenches, with many dead bodies in field grey.

Winterbourne and Evans went down into a German dugout. Nobody was

there, but it was littered with straw, torn paper, portable cookers,

oddments of forgotten equipment and cigars. There were French tables

and chairs with human excrement on them.

They went on. A little knot of Germans came towards them holding up

their shaking hands. They took no notice of them, but let them pass

through.

The barrage continued. Their first casualty was caused by their own

shells dropping short.

* * * * *

Major Thorpe sent Winterbourne and another man with a written duplicate

message to Battalion Headquarters. They went back over the top, trying

to run. It was impossible. Their hearts beat too fast, and their

throats were parched. They went blindly at a jog-trot, slower in fact

than a brisk walk. They seemed to be tossed violently by the bursting

shells. The acrid smoke was choking. A heavy roared down beside

Winterbourne and made him stagger with its concussion. He could not

control the resultant shaking of his flesh. His teeth chattered very

slightly as he clenched them desperately. They got back to familiar

land and finally to Southampton Row. It was a long way to Battalion

Headquarters. The men in the orderly room eagerly questioned them about

the battle but they knew less than they did.

Winterbourne asked for water and drank thirstily. He and the other

Runner were dazed and incoherent. They were given another written

message, and elaborate directions which they promptly forgot.

The drum-fire had died down to an ordinary heavy bombardment as they

started back. Already it was late afternoon. They wandered for hours in

unfamiliar trenches before they found the company.

* * * * *

They slept that night in a large German dug-out, swarming with rats.

Winterbourne in his sleep felt them jump on his chest and face.

* * * * *

The drum-fire began again next morning. Again they lined a trench and

advanced through smoke over torn wire and shell-tormented ground.

Prisoners passed through. At night they struggled for hours, carrying

down wounded men in stretchers through the mud and clamour. Major

Thorpe was mortally wounded and his runner killed; Hume and his runner

were killed; Franklin was wounded; Pemberton was killed; Sergeant

Perkins was killed; the stretcher-bearers were killed. Men seemed to

drop away continually.

* * * * *

Three days later Evans and Thompson led back forty-five men to the old

billets in the ruined village. The attack on their part of the front

had failed. Farther south a considerable advance had been made and

several thousand prisoners taken, but the German line was unbroken and

stronger than ever in its new positions. Therefore that also was a

failure.