Winterbourne and Henderson were the only two Runners left, and since

Evans was in command Winterbourne was now Company Runner. The two

men sat on their packs in the cellar without a word. Both shook very

slightly but continuously with fatigue and shock. Outside the vicious

heavies crashed eternally. They started wildly to their feet as a

terrific smash overhead brought down what was left of the house above

them and crashed into the duplicate cellar next door. A moment later

there was another enormous crash and one end of the cellar broke in

with falling bricks and a cloud of dust. They rushed out by the steps

at the other end and were sent reeling and choking by another huge

black explosion.

They stumbled across to another cellar occupied by what was left of a

section, and asked to sleep there since their own cellar was wrecked.

Six of them and a corporal sat in silence by the light of a candle,

dully listening to the crash of shells.

* * * * *

In a lull they heard a strange noise outside the cellar, first like

wheels and then like a human voice calling for help. No one moved. The

voice called again. The Corporal spoke:

“Who’s going up?”

“Mucked if I am,” said somebody, “I’ve ’ad enough.”

Winterbourne and Henderson simultaneously struggled to their feet. The

change from candle-light to darkness blinded them as they peered out

from the ruined doorway. They could just see a confused dark mass. The

voice came again:

“Help, for Christ’s sake, come and help!”

A transport limber had been smashed by a shell. The wounded horses had

dragged it along and fallen outside the cellar entrance. One man had

both legs cut short at the knees. He was still alive, but evidently

dying. They left him, lifted down the other man and carried him into

the cellar. A large shell splinter had smashed his right knee. He was

conscious, but weak. They got out his field-dressing and iodine and

dripped iodine on the wound. At the pain of burning disinfectant the

man turned deadly pale and nearly fainted. Winterbourne found that his

hands and clothes were smeared with blood.

Then came the problem of getting the man away to a dressing station.

The Corporal and the four men refused to budge. The shells were

crashing continuously outside. Winterbourne started out to get a

stretcher and the new stretcher-bearer, groping his way through the

darkness. Outside their billet he tripped and fell into a deep shell

hole, just as a heavy exploded with terrific force at his side. But

for the fall he must have been blown to pieces. He scrambled to his

feet, breathless and shaken, and tumbled down the cellar stairs. He

noticed scared faces looking at him in the candle-light. He explained

what had happened. The stretcher-bearer jumped up, got his stretcher

and satchel of dressings, and they started back. Every shell which

exploded near seemed to shake Winterbourne’s flesh from his bones. He

was dazed and half-frantic with the physical shock of concussion after

concussion. When he got back in the cellar he collapsed into a kind of

stupor. The stretcher-bearer dressed the man’s wound, and then looked

at Winterbourne, felt his pulse, gave him a sip of rum and told him to

lie still. He tried to explain that he must help carry the wounded man,

and struggled to get to his feet. The stretcher-bearer pushed him back:

“You lie still, mate, you’ve done enough for to-day.”

[ XI ]

The battle on their part of the Front died down into long snarling

artillery duels, gas bombardments, fierce local attacks and

counter-attacks. Farther south it flamed up again with intense

preludes of drum-fire. What was left of the Pioneer Company returned

to more normal occupations. So far as they were concerned, one great

advantage of the battle was that the Germans had been driven from

the long slag-hill, and from a large portion of Hill 91. By fierce

counter-attacks the Germans regained much of the lost ground on Hill

91, but they never came anywhere near recovering the slag-hill. The

ground they had lost farther south made that impossible. Consequently,

some of the worst features of the salient were at last obliterated,

and they were no longer under such close observation or enfiladed by

machine-guns.

They had a day’s rest, and were then put on the cushy job of building

a new track up to the southern fringe of Hill 91 across the old Front

Lines and No Man’s Land. They were outside the range of vision of

the German observation posts, and it was two days before the German

airplanes discovered them—two days of comparative quiet. Then, of

course, they got it hot and strong.

In clearing away the wire they made a number of gruesome discoveries,

and examined with great interest the primitive hand grenades and other

weapons of 1914-15 which were lying rusting there in great quantities.

Winterbourne took an immense interest in building this track, an

interest which puzzled and amused Evans, especially since this was the

first time he had ever seen Winterbourne show any enthusiasm for their

labours.

“I can’t see why you’re so keen on this bally old track, Winterbourne.

It’s one of the dullest jobs we’ve ever had.”

“But surely you can see, Sir. We’re making something, not destroying

things. We’re taking down wire, not putting it up; filling in

shell-holes, not desecrating the earth.”

Evans frowned at the phrase “desecrating the earth.” He thought

it pretentious, and with all his obtuseness he had an instinctive

resentment against Winterbourne’s unspoken but unwavering and profound

condemnation of War. Evans had a superstitious reverence for War. He

believed in the Empire; the Empire was symbolized by the King-Emperor;

and the King—poor man—is always having to dress up as an Admiral

or a Field Marshal or a brass hat of some kind. Navydom and Armydom

thereby acquired a mystic importance, and since armies and navies are

obviously meant for War, it was plain that War was an integral part of

Empire-Worship. More than once he clumsily tried to trap Winterbourne

into expressing unorthodox opinions. But, of course, Winterbourne saw

him coming miles away, and easily evaded his awkward bobby traps.

“I suppose you’re a _republican_,” he said to Winterbourne, who was

innocently humming the Marseillaise. “I don’t believe in Republics.

Why, Presidents wear evening dress in the middle of the morning.”

Winterbourne nearly burst into a cackle of laughter but managed to

restrain himself. He denied that he was a republican, and admitted

with mock gravity that Evans had put his finger on a serious flaw in

Republican institutions.

But his joy in constructing the track was short-lived. As they were

finishing their second day’s work he saw a battery of Field Artillery

cross the old No Man’s Land by the road they had built, and then bump

its way over shell-holes to a new position. So even this little bit of

construction was only for further destruction.

* * * * *

They went on to night work again, and Winterbourne distinguished

himself by pulling out of the ground a dud shell which the other men

refused to touch, in case it went off. They crouched on the ground

while Winterbourne tugged and strained to get it out, and Evans stood

beside urging him to go easy. Suddenly Winterbourne went into a series

of gasping chuckles, and in answer to Evans’ questions managed to jerk

out that the alleged shell was a stump of wood with an iron ring round

it. The men returned sheepishly to their work. In reward for his heroic

conduct Winterbourne was allowed to join a gang who were pulling up

real duds embedded in the _pavé_ of the main road, which had become

available through the German retirement. They levered and tugged the

shells up very gingerly, since the oldest duds are liable to explode if

treated roughly. Winterbourne was glad when that little job was done.

The nightly gas bombardments became worse than ever, and Winterbourne

sometimes spent twelve hours a day in his gas mask. They used their

respirators so frequently that a new set had to be issued.

Since Evans was now temporarily in command and had only Thompson to

help him and about forty men available for work, they did only one

shift, which Evans and Thompson took on alternate nights. As Company

Runner, Winterbourne carried all messages between the Company and

Battalion H.Q. On the other hand, Evans always let him rest on the

nights when he himself was not on duty. Winterbourne was profoundly

thankful for these nights off. His winter cough, aided perhaps by

microbes communicated by lice, had evolved into a sort of tertian ague.

Every third night he had alternate fits of sweating and shivering. It

was much pleasanter to lie down even in a damp cellar than to go up the

line feeling utterly weak and feverish.

He was sleeping soundly alone in the Runner’s cellar, oblivious to

the Zwiing, PHUT, of the gas shells outside when he was awakened by

Henderson, the other surviving Runner, who came stumbling down the

cellar stairs in the darkness. Winterbourne lit a candle for him.

Henderson had just taken off his gas mask, and stood with rumpled hair

and a pale scared look.

“What’s up?” said Winterbourne, “what’s the matter?”

“Thompson’s killed.”

“Good Lord! The only other officer! How?”

“Whizz-bang.”

“How did it happen?”

“The Boche put up an attack to-night. Thompson took us off work, and

told us to line a trench. He was standing on top, and told me to get

into the trench. A whizz-bang burst just beside him. He died in five

minutes.”

“O God! Did he say anything?”

“Yes, he was perfectly conscious and calm. He told me how to get the

men home. He sent best of luck to Evans and you and the S.M. And he

made me take a couple of letters from his pocket to send to his wife

and mother. He was horribly mangled—right arm and right leg smashed,

ribs broken and a great tear in the side of his face. He made me

promise to make Evans write home that he was shot through the heart and

died instantaneously and painlessly.”

“Damn. He was a nice chap. One of the best officers we had.”

The inner gas curtain was lifted, and Evans’ servant stumbled in,

taking off his mask.

“Report at once, fighting order, Winterbourne.”

Winterbourne hurriedly put on his boots and puttees, struggled into his

equipment, snapped on his mask, and jog-trotted over to the officer’s

cellar through the now familiar hail of gas-shells. He was amazed

and distressed and ashamed to find how much his flesh instinctively

shrank when a shell dropped close at hand, how great an effort he now

needed to refrain from ducking or cowering. He raged at himself, called

himself coward, poltroon, sissy, anything abusive he could think of.

But still his body instinctively shrank. He had passed into the final

period of War strain, when even an air-raid became a terror.

Evans was laboriously writing. The large cellar looked very

cellar-like and empty, with one man in place of the six who had lived

there less than a fortnight before.

“You know Mr. Thompson’s killed?”

“Yes, Sir. Henderson told me.”

“I can’t carry on as a Company by myself with less than forty available

men.” Evans spoke bitterly. “There’s a chit from Division complaining

that we are doing far less work than a month ago. They don’t seem to

know there’s been a battle, and that we’re worn out and reduced to a

third our strength.”

He was silent, re-read his despatch, folded it, and handed it to

Winterbourne.

“Take this down to Battalion H.Q. I’ve marked it Special Urgency. Make

them get the Colonel up if he’s asleep. If he questions you, tell him

our position. I haven’t seen him for three weeks. And refuse to leave

without an answer.”

“Very good, Sir.”

“And Winterbourne.”

“Sir?”

“There’s another chit here somewhere urging us to get two volunteers

for Infantry commissions in each Company. Henderson’s going—he’s a

stout little tyke. The other volunteers are that filthy cook’s mate and

the sanitary man. Idiotic. I won’t recommend them. But I want you to

volunteer. Will you?”

Winterbourne hesitated. He didn’t want the responsibility, it was

contrary to his notion that he ought to stay in the ranks and in the

line, take the worst and humblest jobs, share in the common fate of

common men. But then he had consented to be a Runner. And then, he was

sorely tempted. It meant several months in England, it meant seeing

Fanny and Elizabeth again, it meant a respite. He was amazed to find

that he didn’t want to leave Evans, and suddenly saw that what he had

done in the past months had been chiefly done from personal attachment

to a rather common and ignorant man of the kind he most despised, the

grown-up Public Schoolboy.

“What are you hesitating about?”

“Well, Sir,” said Winterbourne whimsically, “I was wondering how you’d

get on without me.”

“*****!” said Evans. “Besides at this rate, I shan’t last much longer.

Now, shall I put your name down?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He afterwards regretted that “Yes.”

* * * * *

Evans’s sharp note brought an abrupt change in their lives. They

exchanged places with one of the other Pioneer companies in a quieter

section of the line. Evans marched his forty men down as one Platoon,

and they passed successively the four Platoons of the relieving

Company. The men exchanged ironical jibes as they passed.

Their new quarters were a great improvement. They were joined by a

Captain, who took nominal command, and two subalterns. But no men.

There appeared to be no men available. They lived in shelters and

dug-outs in the Reserve Line. Winterbourne, Henderson and two other

Runners lived in a two-foot shelter just outside the officers’ dug-out.

Winterbourne was now officially Company Runner. He lived one fortnight

in the line, and one at Battalion H.Q. The sacking bed at H.Q., the

comparative absence of shelling, the better food, the rest, made

it seem like paradise. He did not know that his application for a

commission had been passed at once, and that he was being looked after.

Two days after they got to their new quarters, in the line, Evans’s

servant poked his head excitedly into the Runners’ shelter.

“Winterbourne!”

“Yes.”

“You’re to come at once. Mr. Evans is sick.”

“Sick!”

Winterbourne found Evans leaning against the side of the trench, a

ghastly green pallor on his face.

“Whatever’s the matter, Sir?”

“Gas. I’ve swallowed too much of the beastly stuff. I can’t stand it

any longer. I’m going to the Dressing Station.”

“Shall I get a stretcher, Sir?”

“No, damn it, I’ll walk down. I can still stand. Take my pack and come

along.”

Every few yards Evans had to stop and lean against the trench wall.

He heaved, but did not vomit. Winterbourne offered his arm, but he

wouldn’t take it. They passed two corpses, rather horribly mutilated,

lying on stretchers at the end of the communication trench. Neither

said anything, but Evans was thinking, “Well, gas is better than that,”

and Winterbourne thought, “How long will it be before some one puts me

there?”

He finally got Evans to the Dressing Station, supporting him with his

right arm. They shook hands outside.

“You’ll get your commission, Winterbourne.”

“Thanks. Are you all right, Sir? Shall I come down with you farther?”

“No, go back and report that you left me here.”

“Very good, Sir.”

They shook hands again.

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

“Good-bye, Sir, good-bye.”

He never saw Evans again.

* * * * *

When Evans had gone, Winterbourne’s interest in the Company suddenly

evaporated. He did not know the new officers, rather disliked the

Captain, and, of course, was not on the same footing with them as he

had been with Evans. Henderson left for England to be trained as an

officer. Winterbourne felt lonelier than ever. And he realized with

disgust and horror that his nerve was gone. His daily trips were really

very easy—about a mile and a half, a few gusts of machine-gun bullets,

and about thirty or forty crumps on the road each way. The Germans had

discovered some tanks hidden behind a slag-hill round which he had to

pass. They shelled it with heavies. Winterbourne now found that he had

to force himself to walk forward to them and through the area where

they were bursting. It was worse at night. One night he did what he had

never done before when carrying a message—waited ten minutes for the

shelling to quiet down.

That ten minutes, curiously enough, saved his life. He heard several

shells fall in and around Company H.Q. just as he came along the

trench. One of them had fallen plump on their fragile shelter and blown

it to pieces, instantly killing the Runner, Jenkins, a boy of nineteen,

who was lying there. If Winterbourne had not lingered that ten minutes

on the road, he would inevitably have been killed, too. He felt very

guilty about it. Perhaps if he had come back, the boy would have been

sent back with a return message. But, no, if there had been a return

message, it would have been his job.

He lost his blanket, groundsheet and pack. The Runners were transferred

to a similar shelter twenty yards farther on. Winterbourne hated to

pass the smashed shelter. He always thought of Jenkins, and his absurd

boyish grin. Jenkins had been errand-boy and then assistant to a grocer

in a small provincial town. A most undistinguished person. He had a

solemn respect for “John Bull” and its opinions. Otherwise he wasn’t

solemn at all, always cracking rather pointless jests, and grinning his

boyish grin, and hardly ever grousing. Winterbourne regretted him.

* * * * *

At Battalion Headquarters, Winterbourne tried to read, and found it

impossible. He discovered an old number of “The Spectator” with an

article on Porson, written by a man he had known. He had to read the

article before he remembered who Porson was, and found himself puzzling

over quite ordinary sentences like a ploughman. He threw the paper down

in despair, and got permission to go to an estaminet. They had no wine,

and spirits were forbidden. He sat there drinking the infamous and

harmless French beer, and droning out sentimental songs with the other

Tommies. He got into the habit of bribing the Q.M.S.’s clerk to give

him extra rum. Anything to forget.

* * * * *

At the end of one of his fortnightly periods at Battalion H.Q.

Winterbourne went as usual to the R.S.M.:

“Winterbourne, D Company Runner, returning for service in the line,

Sir.”

The R.S.M. turned over some papers, pursing up his lips:

“Let me see, let me _seeee_. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Here we are, 31819,

Private Winterbourne, G. Yes. You’re returning to England on Friday

for the purpose of proceeding to an Officer Cadet Corps. Report to the

Orderly Room at four (pip emma) on Thursday for your papers, and draw

iron rations from the Q.M.S. Will report to R.T.O. at Rail Head before

eight (ack emma) on Friday, and will be struck off the strength. Got

that?”

“Yes, Sir. Will you give me a chit to show them in the line, please.”

“No. To-day’s Wednesday. You’d better stay here, and I’ll send up the

Runner who is taking your place.”

“Very good, Sir.”

The boy who was taking Winterbourne’s place was delighted to get the

job. He was a quick-witted youth who had been trained as an Elementary

School Teacher, and thanked Winterbourne as if the new job had been his

gift. He was killed by a bullet as he climbed out of the communication

trench with his first message. Winterbourne began to feel as if he had

made a pact with the Devil, so that other men were always being killed

in his stead.

For the remaining two days he was virtually excused duty. He was

allowed to go to the baths each day, and got himself clean and free

from lice. He received absolutely new underclothes, not the worn,

soiled garments full of dead lice usually issued at the baths, was

given new puttees and trousers in place of his soiled torn ones, and

handed in his rent leather jerkin. He had a sacking bed, and slept

twelve hours a night. Already he was a different being from the dazed

and haggard man of the Hill 91 days.

He wanted very much to go to England, and yet his chief feeling was

that of apathy. Now that his orders had come, he felt he would just as

soon have stopped where he was. Why prolong the agony? If he stayed,

he would either be hit sooner or later, or become a Battalion Runner,

a much better and less anxious job than that of an Infantry subaltern.

Still, it might be worth while, just to see Elizabeth and Fanny

again....

It was hot midsummer weather. He wandered out along the straight

French road, with its ceaseless up and down of mechanical transport and

military traffic. The Military Police and armed pickets suspiciously

turned him back. He found a little hedgeless field of poppies and

yellow daisies, and sat down there. The heavies were firing with

regular deliberation; overhead the white shrapnel bursts pursued an

enemy plane; from the far distance came a very faint “claaang!” as a

shell smashed into M——. It was so strange to have unmuddy boots, to

sit on grass in the sun and look at wild flowers, to see one or two

undamaged houses, not to be continually on the alert. He sat with his

elbows on his knees, and his doubled fists under his chin, staring

in front of him. His body was rested, but he felt such an apathetic

weariness of mind that he would have been glad to die painlessly there

and then, without ever going back to England, without ever seeing

Elizabeth and Fanny again. His mind no longer wandered off in long

coherent reveries, but was either vaguely empty or thronged with too

vivid memories. It seemed incredible that only seven months or so had

passed since he had left England—more like seven years. He felt, not

so much self-contempt, as self-indifference. He did not despise George

Winterbourne, he merely wasn’t interested in him. Once he had been

extremely interested in himself and the things he wanted to do; now,

he didn’t care, he didn’t want to do anything in particular. Directly

the military yoke was lightened and he was left to himself for a few

hours, he was aimless, apathetic, listless. If he had been told there

and then that he was discharged from the Army and could go, he wouldn’t

have known what to do except to stay there and stare at the poppies and

daisies.

The night before he left, the Runners and officers’ servants got rum,

and beer and champagne, and made him drink with them. They exhorted

him not to forget his old pals, and not to be a swine to his men when

he was an officer. He promised, regretting all the time the subtle

difference which was already dividing him from them. “Fancy ’avin’ to

salute old George,” said one of them. Fancy indeed! He wished so much

he had stayed with them. He drank a good deal, and for the first time

in his life went to bed tight.

* * * * *

He got to Rail Head just before eight, hot and perspiring from a rapid

walk in full kit under a July sun. An immense drum-fire was thundering

from the north. The Division was under orders to proceed there in two

days. There was to be another great offensive at Ypres. He shuddered,

thinking of the showers of bursting metal, flogging and churning the

ground, shearing and rending human flesh, the immense concourse of

detonations hammering on human nerves.

The R.T.O. gave him directions and he got into a waiting train. It was

empty, except for a small group of leave men at the other end. He did

not join them, glad of a little solitude.

The German heavies gave him a last amiable farewell. They began

dropping shells on Rail Head. That sickening apprehension of the

explosion came on him, and he felt sure that a shell would fall on his

carriage before the train left. He fought the apprehension savagely,

as if the only thing he wanted to do in life was to repress his fear

reflex. The shells came over one at a time of regular intervals of a

minute. He listened for them, sweating, and gripping his rifle. Either

let the train start or get it over. The train waited interminably.

ZwiiING, CRASH! to the right. ZwiiING, CRASH! to the left; ZwiiING,

CRASH! to the right; ZwiiING, CRASH! to the left. He sat there alone

for thirty-five minutes—thirty-five ZwiiING, CRASH! It was somehow

more awful than drum-fire, a more penetrating torture.

At last the train started and puffed slowly out of the station.

Winterbourne sat quite still, listening to the Crashes growing fainter

and fainter as the train gathered speed. At last they disappeared

altogether in the rattle of wheels. In place of the long slow crawl

coming up, the train clattered along at great speed. He passed

undamaged stations, thronged with French peasants, French soldiers on

leave and British troops; he saw the lovely Corot poplars and willows

shimmering in the sun as they wavered in the light breeze; there were

cows in the fields, and he noticed yellow iris in the wet ditches and

tall white hog’s parsley. A field of red clover and white daisies made

him think of the old days at Martin’s Point. An immense effort of

imagination was needed to link himself now with himself then. He looked

almost with curiosity at his familiar khaki and rifle—so strange that

ten years later that boy should be a soldier. Then he noticed that he

had forgotten to sheath his bayonet. It had been fixed so long that he

had to wrench it off. There was a little ring of rust round the bayonet

boss. He got out his oily rag and anxiously cleaned it. The bayonet

sheath was so full of dried mud that he had to clean that too.

At Boulogne he sent a telegram to Elizabeth. The R.T.O. told him

to leave all his kit on the quay, and to take only his personal

belongings. He slipped off his equipment and laid his rifle beside

his dinted helmet, feeling as if he were carrying out some strange

valedictory rite. He went on board ship, holding his razor, soap,

tooth-brush, comb, and some letters, wrapped in a clean khaki

handkerchief. He managed to scrounge a haversack and strap on board.

The troop train from Folkestone to London was filled with leave

men and others returned from France. As the train puffed up to the

Junction, the men crowded to the windows. Girls and women walking in

the parallel street, standing in the doorways, leaning out the window,

waved pocket handkerchiefs, cheered shrilly and threw them kisses. The

excited men waved and shouted to them. Winterbourne was amazed at the

beauty, the almost angelic beauty of women. He had not seen a woman for

seven months.

It was dark when they got to Victoria, but the Station was brilliantly

lighted. A long barrier separated a crowd from the soldiers, who

thronged out at one end. Here and there a woman threw her arms about

the neck of a soldier in a close embrace which at least at that moment

was sincere. The women’s shoulders trembled with their sobs; the men

stood very still, holding them close a moment, and then drew them away.

At once the women made an effort, and seemed gay and unconcerned.

Many of the men were proceeding elsewhere, and were not met.

Winterbourne saw Elizabeth standing, in a wide-brimmed hat, at the end

of the barrier. Again he was amazed at the beauty of women. Could it

be that he knew, that he had dared to touch, so beautiful a creature?

She looked so slender, so young, so exquisite. And so elegant. He was

intimidated, and hung back in the crowd of passing soldiers, watching

her. She was scanning the faces as they passed; twice she looked at

him, and looked away. He made his way through the throng towards her.

She looked at him again carefully, and once more began scanning the

passing faces. He walked straight up to her and held out his hands:

“Elizabeth!”

She started violently, stared at him, and then kissed him with the

barrier between them:

“Why, George! How you’ve altered! I didn’t recognize you!”

[ XII ]

Winterbourne had a fortnight’s leave before reporting to his Regimental

Depot. He came in for two or three air raids, and lay awake listening

to the familiar bark of Archies. The bombs crashed heavily. It was

very mild—all over in half an hour. Still, the raids affected him

unpleasantly; he had not expected them.

He spent his first morning wandering about London by himself. He

was still amazed at the beauty of women, and was afraid they would

be offended by his staring at them. Prostitutes twice spoke to him,

offering him “Oriental attractions.” He saluted them, and passed on.

The second girl muttered insults, which he scarcely heard. There seemed

to be a great many more prostitutes in London.

The street paving was badly worn, but looked marvelously smooth and

kempt to Winterbourne, accustomed to roads worn into deep ruts and reft

with shell-holes. He was charmed to see so many houses—all unbroken.

And busses going up and down. And people carrying umbrellas—of course,

people had umbrellas. There was Khaki everywhere. Every third man

was a soldier. He passed some American marines, the advance guard of

the great armies being prepared across the Atlantic. They had wide

shoulders and narrow hips, strong-looking men; each of them had picked

up a girl. They walked in London with the same proprietory swagger that

the English used in France.

A military policeman stopped and roughly asked him what he was doing.

Winterbourne produced his pass.

“Sorry, thought you was a deserter, old man. Don’t go out without yer

pass.”

The second night after his arrival Elizabeth took him to a Soho

restaurant to dine with some of her friends. Fanny was not there, but

the party included Mr. Upjohn, Mr. Waldo Tubbe and Reggie Burnside.

There were several people Winterbourne had never met, including a man

who had made a great hit by translating Armenian poetry from the French

versions of Archag Tchobanian. He was extremely intellectual and weary

in manner, and took Winterbourne’s hand in a very limp way, turning his

head aside with an air of elegant contempt as he did so.

Winterbourne sat very silent through the meal, nervously rolling bread

pills. He was amazed to find how remote he felt, how completely he

had nothing to say. They talked about various topics he didn’t quite

follow, and titteringly gossiped about people he didn’t know. Elizabeth

got on wonderfully, chattered with every one, laughed and was a great

success. He felt very uncomfortable, like a death’s head at a feast.

He caught a glimpse of himself in one of the restaurant mirrors, and

thought he looked ludicrously solemn and distressed.

Over coffee they shifted seats, and one or two people came and talked

to him. Mr. Upjohn dropped clumsily into the next chair, thrust out his

chin, and coughed.

“Are you back in London for good now?”

“No. I’ve a fortnight’s leave, and then go to an Officer’s Training

Corps.”

“And then will you be in London?”

“No, I shall have to go back to France again.”

Mr. Upjohn irritably clucked his tongue—tch, tch!

“I mildly supposed you’d finished soldiering. You look most grotesque

in those clothes.”

“Yes, but they’re practical, you know.”

“What I mean to say is that the most important thing is that the

processes of civilization shouldn’t be interrupted by all this war

business.”

“I quite agree. I—...”

“What I mean to say is, if you get time come round to my studio and

have a look at my new pictures. Are you still writing for periodicals?”

Winterbourne smiled.

“No. I’ve been rather busy, you know, and in the trenches one—”

“What I mean to say is, I’d like you to do an article on my Latest

Development.”

“Suprematism?”

“Good Lord, NO! I finished with _that_ long ago. How extraordinarily

ignorant you are, Winterbourne! No, no. I’m working at Concavism

now. It’s by far the greatest contribution that’s been made to

twentieth-century civilization. What I means is....”

Winterbourne ceased to listen and drank off a full glass of wine. Why

hadn’t Evans written to him? Died of the effects of gas probably. He

beckoned to the waiter.

“Bring me another bottle of wine.”

“Yessir.”

“George!” came Elizabeth’s voice, warning and slightly reproving.

“Don’t drink too much!”

He made no answer, but sat looking heavily at his coffee cup. Blast

her. Blast Upjohn. Blast the lot of them. He drank off another glass

of wine, and felt the singing dazzle of intoxication, its comforting

oblivion, stealing into him. Blast them.

Mr. Upjohn grew tired of improving the mind of a cretin who hadn’t even

the wits to listen to him, and slid away. Presently Mr. Waldo Tubbe

took his place.

“Well, my dear Winterbourne, I am very happy to see you again looking

so well. The military life has set you up splendidly. And Mrs.

Winterbourne tells me that at last you have received a commission. I

congratulate you—better late than never.”

“Thanks. But I may not get it, you know. I’ve got to pass the training

school.”

“Oh, that’ll do you a world of good, a world of good.”

“I hope so.”

“And how did you spend your leisure in France—still reading and

painting?”

Winterbourne gave a little hard laugh.

“No, mostly lying about sleeping.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But, you know, if you will forgive my saying

so, I always doubted whether your vocation were really towards the

arts. I felt you were more fitted for an open-air life. Of course,

you’re doing splendid work now, splendid. The Empire needs every man.

When you come back after the victory, as I trust you will return safe

and sound, why don’t you take up life in one of our colonies, Australia

or Canada? There’s a great opening for men there.”

Winterbourne laughed again.

“Wait till I get back, and then we’ll see. Have a glass of wine?”

“No-oeh, thank you, no-oeh. By the way, what is that red ribbon on your

arm? Vaccination?”

“No, Company Runner.”

“A Company Runner? What is that? Not runner away, I hope?”

And Mr. Tubbe laughed silently, nodding his head up and down in

appreciation of his jest. Winterbourne did not smile.

“Well, it might be under some circumstances, if you knew which way to

run.”

“Oh, but our men are so splendid, so splendid, so unlike the Germans,

you know. Haven’t you found the Germans mean-spirited? They have to be

chained to their machine-guns, you know.”

“I hadn’t observed it. In fact, they’re fighting with wonderful courage

and persistence. It’s not much of a compliment to our men to suggest

otherwise, is it? We haven’t managed to shift ’em far yet.”

“Ah, but you must not allow your own labours to distort your

perspective. The Navy is the important arm in the War, that and the

marvelous home organization, of which you, of course, can know nothing.”

“Of course, but still....”

Mr. Tubbe rose to move away:

“Delighted to have seen you, my dear Winterbourne. And thank you for

all your interesting news from the Front. _Most_ stimulating. _Most_

stimulating.”

Winterbourne signed to his wife to go, but she ignored the signal,

and went on talking earnestly and attentively with Reggie Burnside.

He drank another glass of wine, and stretched his legs. His heavy

hobnailed boots came in contact with the shins of the man opposite.

“Sorry. Hope I didn’t hurt you. Sorry to be so clumsy.”

“Oh, not at all, nothing, nothing,” said the man, rubbing his bruised

shin with a look of furious anguish. Elizabeth frowned at Winterbourne,

and leaned across to get the bottle. He grabbed it first, poured

himself another glass, and then gave it to her. She looked angry at his

rudeness. He felt pleasantly drunk, and cared not a damn for any one.

Coming home in the taxi she reproved him with gentle dignity for

drinking too much.

“Remember, dear, you’re not with a lot of rough soldiers now. And,

please forgive me for mentioning it, but your hands and fingers are

terribly dirty—did you forget to wash them? And you were rather rude

to everybody.”

He was silent, staring listlessly out the taxi-cab window. She sighed,

and slightly shrugged her shoulders. They did not sleep together that

night.

* * * * *

Next morning at breakfast they were both pre-occupied and silent.

Suddenly George emerged from his reverie:

“I say, what’s happened to Fanny? She’s not out of town, is she?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why wasn’t she at dinner with us last night?”

“I didn’t ask her.”

“You didn’t ask her! Why ever not?”

Elizabeth looked annoyed at the question, but tried to pass it off

lightly.

“I don’t see much of her now—Fanny’s so popular, you know.”

“But why don’t you see her?” Winterbourne pursued clumsily. “Is

anything wrong?”

“I don’t see her because I don’t choose to,” replied Elizabeth tartly

and decisively.

He made no reply. So, owing to him there was fixed enmity between Fanny

and Elizabeth! His mood of depression deepened, and he went to his

room. He picked a book from the shelves at random and opened it—De

Quincey’s “Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” He had entirely

forgotten the existence of that piece of macabre irony, and gazed

stupidly at the large-type title. Murder Considered as One of the Fine

Arts. How damned appropriate. He put it down and began to look over

his painting materials. Elizabeth had taken his sketching blocks and

paper and all his unused canvases except one. The tubes of paint had

gone hard and dry, and his palette was covered with shrunken hard blobs

of paint just as he had left it fifteen months before. He carefully

cleaned it, as if he might be sent before his Company officer under the

charge of having a dirty palette.

He turned up some of his old sketches and looked through them. Could

it be that he had composed them? They were undoubtedly signed “G.

Winterbourne.” He looked at them critically, and then slowly tore them

up, threw them in the empty fire-grate, struck a match and set fire

to them. He watched the paper curl up under the creeping flame, glow

dull red, and shrink to black fragile ash. Numbers of his canvases were

stacked in little neat piles against the wall. He ran through them

rapidly, letting them fall back into place as if they had been cards.

He paused when he came upon a forgotten portrait of himself. Had he

painted that? Yes, it was signed with his name. Now, when and where had

he done it? He held the small canvas in his hands, gazing intently at

it with a prodigious effort of memory, but simply could not remember

anything about it. The picture was undated, and he could not even

remember in which year he had done it. He deliberately put his foot

through it, tore away the strips of canvas from the frame and burned

them. It was the only portrait of him in existence, since he had always

refused to be photographed.

In the line they had been forbidden to keep diaries or to make

sketches, since either might be of use to the enemy if they got

possession of them. He shut his eyes. In a flash he saw vividly the

ruined village, the road leading to M——, the broken desecrated

ground, the long slag-hill, and heard the “claaang” of the heavies

dropping reverberantly into M——. He went to Elizabeth’s room to get

a sheet of paper and a soft pencil to make a sketch of the scene. She

had gone out. As he rummaged at her table, he turned over and could

not help seeing the first lines of a letter in a handwriting unknown

to him. The date was that of the day on which he had returned to

England, and the words he could not help seeing were: “Darling, What a

bore, as you say! Never mind, the visitation can’t last long and....”

Winterbourne hastily covered the letter up to avoid reading any more.

He went back to his room with paper and pencil, and began to sketch.

He was astonished to find that his hand, once as steady as the table

itself, shook very slightly but perceptibly. The drink last night, or

shell-shock? He persisted with his sketch, but the whole thing went

wrong. He got tired of blocking lines in, and irritatedly rubbing them

out. And yet that scene existed so vividly in his memory and he could

see exactly how it could be formalized into an effective pattern.

But his hand and brain failed him—he had even forgotten how to draw

rapidly and accurately.

He dropped the pencil and rubber on the half-erased sketch and

went back to Elizabeth’s room. She was still out. The room was very

quiet and sunny. The old orange-striped curtains had gone and were

replaced by long ample curtains of thick green serge, to comply with

the regulations about lights. There were summer flowers in the large

blue bowl, and fruit on the beautiful Spanish plate. He remembered how

the wasp had come through the window like a tiny Fokker plane, almost

exactly three years ago. To his surprise he felt a lump in his throat

and tears coming to his eyes.

A church clock outside chimed three quarters. He looked at his wrist

watch—a quarter to one. Better go somewhere and have lunch. He dropped

into the first Lyons Restaurant he came to. The waitress asked if he

would like cold corned beef—thanks, he’d had enough bully beef for the

time being. After lunch, he rang up Fanny’s flat, but got no reply. He

walked in her direction, strolling, to give her time to return home.

She was not in. He scribbled a note, asking her to meet him as soon as

she could, and then took a bus back to Chelsea, lay down on his bed and

fell asleep. Elizabeth came into the room about six and tip-toed out.

At seven she woke him. He started up, fully awake at once, mechanically

grabbing for his rifle.

“What’s up?”

Elizabeth was startled by this sudden leap awake, and he had

unconsciously jostled her roughly as she bent over him.

“I’m so sorry. How you started! I didn’t mean to _frighten_ you.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I wasn’t frightened—used to jumping up in a

hurry, you know. What time is it?”

“Seven.”

“Good Lord, I wonder what made me sleep that long!”

“I came to know if you’d dine with me and Reggie to-night.”

“Is he coming here afterwards?”

“Of course not.”

“I think I’ll have dinner with Fanny.”

“All right, just as you please.”

“Can I have the other key to the flat?”

Elizabeth lied:

“I’m afraid it’s lost. But I’ll leave the door unlocked as I did

to-day.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Au revoir.”

“Au revoir.”

* * * * *

Winterbourne washed, and worked desperately hard with a nail brush to

get out the dirt deeply and apparently ineradicably engrained in his

roughened hands. He got a little more off, but his fingers were still

striated with lines of dirt which made them look coarse and horrible.

He rang Fanny up from a call-box.

“Hullo. That you, Fanny? George speaking.”

“_Darling!_ How are you? When did you get back?”

“Two or three days ago. Didn’t you get my letter?”

Fanny lied:

“I’ve been away, and only found it when I got back just now.”

“It doesn’t matter. Listen, will you dine with me to-night?”

“Darling, I’m _so_ sorry, but I simply can’t. I’ve an appointment I

simply must keep. _Such_ a bore!”

Such a bore, as you say! Never mind, the visitation can’t last long,

and....

“It doesn’t matter, darling. When can we meet?”

“Just a moment, let me look at my memorandum book.”

A brief silence. He could hear a faint voice from another line crossing

his: “My God, you say he’s killed! And he only went back last week!”

Fanny’s voice again.

“Hullo? Are you there, George.”

“Yes.”

“To-day’s Wednesday. I’m awfully busy for some reason this week. Can

you see me on Saturday for dinner?”

“Must it be as late as Saturday? I’ve only a fortnight, you know.”

“Well, you can make it lunch on Friday, if you prefer. I’m lunching

with somebody, but you can come along. It’d be nicer to dine alone

together, though, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. Saturday then. What time?”

“Seven-thirty, the usual place.”

“All right.”

“Good-bye, darling.”

“Good-bye, Fanny dear.”

* * * * *

He dined alone and then went to a Circassian Café, which he had been

told was the new haunt of the intelligentsia. It was very crowded, but

he knew nobody there. He found a seat, and sat by himself. Opposite

him at a couple of tables was a brilliant bevy of elegant young

homosexuals, two of them in Staff Officers’ uniforms. They paid no

attention to him, after a first supercilious stare, followed by a

sneer. He felt uneasy, and wondered if he ought to be there in his

Tommy’s uniform. Perhaps the Café was out of bounds. He paid for his

coffee and left. After wandering about the streets for a time, he

dropped into a pub in the Charing Cross road, and stood beside a couple

of Tommies drinking beer. They were home-service N.C.O.’s, instructors

he gathered from their conversation, which was all about some petty way

in which they had scored off an officer who did not know his drill.

Winterbourne thought he would stand them a drink and get into talk with

them, but his eye fell on a notice which forbade “Treating.” He paid

and left.

He dropped into a music-hall. There were numbers of war songs, very

patriotic, and patriotic war scenes with the women dressed in the

flags of the Allied nations. All references to the superiority of the

Allies and the inferiority of the Germans were heartily applauded. A

particularly witty scene showed a Tommy capturing several Germans by

attracting them with a sausage tied to the end of his bayonet. A chorus

of girls in red pre-war military tunics sang a song about how all

the girls love Tommy, kicking up their trousered legs in unison, and

saluting very much out of unison. There was a Grand Finale of Victory

to the tune of:

“When we’ve wound up the watch on the Rhine,

Everything will be Potsdamn fine.”

At the end of the performance the orchestra played “God Save the King.”

Winterbourne stood rigidly to attention with the other soldiers in the

audience.

* * * * *

Eleven o’clock. He thought he would go and sleep at his Club. The

place was dimly lighted and empty, except for three or four elderly

men, who were earnestly discussing what ought to have been done in the

hand of Bridge they had just played. There were notices everywhere

urging Members to be economical with light. The servants were women

except the Head Waiter, a pale little spectacled man of forty-five, who

informed Winterbourne that no Club bedrooms were available. They had

all been commandeered for War purposes. Winterbourne found it odd to be

addressed as “Sir” again.

“I’ve got me papers too, Sir,” said the Waiter, “expect to be called up

any day, Sir.”

“What category are you?”

“B1, Sir.”

“Oh, you’ll be all right. Keep telling ’em you’re a skilled Club

Steward and you’ll get an Officers’ Mess job.”

“Do you really think so, Sir? My wife worries about me something

dreadful, Sir. She says she’s sure I’ll catch my death of cold in the

trenches. I’ve a very weak chest, Sir, if you’ll pardon me mentionin’

it, Sir.”

“I’m sure they won’t send you out.”

The little Waiter died of double pneumonia in a Base Hospital early in

1918. The Club Committee made a grant of ten pounds to his widow, and

agreed that his name should appear on the Club War Memorial.

Winterbourne felt sleepless. He was so much accustomed to being alert

and awake at night and sleeping by day, that he found a difficulty

in breaking the habit. He spent the night aimlessly wandering about

the streets and sitting on Embankment benches. He noticed that there

were very few occupants of the benches—the War found work for every

one. Odd, he reflected, that in War-time the country could spend five

million pounds sterling a day in trying to kill Germans, and that in

peace-time it couldn’t afford five million a year to attack its own

destitution. Policemen spoke to him twice, quite decently, under the

impression that he was a leave-man without a bed. He tried to explain.

One of them was very fatherly:

“You take my advice, my boy, and go to the Y.M.C.A. They’ll give yer a

bed cheap. I’ve got a boy your age in the trenches meself. Now, say you

was my boy. I wouldn’t ’ave ’im goin’ with none of these London street

women. ’E’s a good boy, ’e is. An’ they’ve treated ’im cruel, they

’ave. ’E’s been in France nearly two year, and never ’ad any leave.”

“No leave in nearly two years! How extraordinary!”

“No, not even after ’e was in Orspital.”

“What was he in Hospital with?”

“’E wrote us it was pneumonia, but we believe ’e was wounded and didn’t

want to fret us, because he wrote afterwards it was pleurisy.”

“Do you happen to know the number of his Base Hospital?”

“Yes, Number XP.”

Winterbourne smiled sadly and cynically; he knew that was a Venereal

Disease Hospital. Pay was stopped while a man was under treatment, and

he lost his right to Leave for a year. Winterbourne determined not to

undeceive the policeman.

“How long is it since he came out of hospital?”

“Ten months or more.”

“Oh, well, he’ll certainly get leave before Christmas.”

“D’you think so? Reely? ’E’s such a good boy, good-lookin’ and well

set-up. P’raps you’ll see ’im when you go back. Tom Jones. Gunner Tom

Jones.”

Winterbourne smiled again at the thought of looking for Tom Jones in

the swarming and scattered thousands of the Artillery. But he said:

“If I meet him, I’ll tell him how much you’re looking forward to seeing

him.”

He pressed half-a-crown in the policeman’s hand, to drink the health of

Tom and himself. The policeman touched his helmet and called him “Sir.”

* * * * *

He had breakfast at a Lockhart’s—kippers and tea—and washed in an

underground lavatory. He got back to the flat about ten. Unthinkingly

he went into Elizabeth’s room. She and Reggie were having breakfast in

dressing gowns. Winterbourne apologized almost abjectly, and went to

his own room. He threw off the boots from his aching feet and lay down

clothed. In ten minutes he was fast asleep.

* * * * *

The meeting with Fanny was somehow a failure. She was extremely gay

and pretty and well-dressed and charming, and talked cheerily at first,

and then valiantly against his awkward silences. Winterbourne did not

know why he felt so awkward and silent. He seemed to have nothing

to say to Fanny, and his mind appeared to have become sluggish—he

missed half her witty sayings and clever allusions. It was like being

up for oral examination, and continually making silly mistakes. Yet

he was very fond of Fanny, very fond of her, just as he was very fond

of Elizabeth. And yet he seemed to have so little to say to them, and

found it so hard to follow their careless intellectual chatter. He had

tried to tell Elizabeth some of his War experiences. Just as he was

describing the gas bombardments and the awful look on the faces of men

gassed, he noticed her delicate mouth was wried by a suppressed yawn.

He stopped abruptly, and tried to talk of something else. Fanny was

sympathetic, but he could see he was boring her, too. Of course, he was

boring her. She and other people got more than enough of the war from

the newspapers and everything about them; they wanted to forget it, of

course, they wanted to forget it. And there was he, dumb and dreary and

khakied, only awaking to any appearance of animation when he talked of

the line after drinking a good deal.

He took Fanny home in a taxi, and held her hand, gazing silently in

front of him. At the door of her flat, he kissed her:

“Good-night, Fanny dearest. Thank you so much for having dinner with

me.”

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“Not to-night, dear. I’m dreadfully sleepy—bit tired, you know.”

“Oh, all right. Good-night.”

“Good-night, darl—”

The last syllable was cut off by the sharp closing of the flat door.

Winterbourne walked back to Chelsea. The street lamps were very

dim. For the first time in his life he saw the stars plainly above

Piccadilly. In the King’s Road he heard the warning bugles for an air

raid. He got into bed, extinguished the light, and lay there listening,

wide awake. To his shame he found the shell-fear came back as the

Archies opened up, and he started each time he heard the thud of a

bomb. They came closer and one crashed in the next street. He found he

was sweating.

Elizabeth did not get back until three. Reggie and she had taken

shelter in the Piccadilly Hotel. Winterbourne was still awake when she

came in, but did not call to her.

* * * * *

His leave came to an end, and he spent five weeks of vague routine at

his Depot. He hated coming back to barrack-room life, and did not like

the men he was with. They were all Expeditionary men, but strangely

different from what they were in the line. Most of the comradeship had

gone; they were selfish, rather malicious to each other, and servilely

flattered the N.C.O.’s who could get them passes. They seemed to think

about nothing except getting passes out, so that they could meet girls

or go to pubs. They grumbled ceaselessly. Some of them occasionally

told hair-raising War stories, which Winterbourne thought quite

probable, though he refused to accept their evidence as conclusive. He

always remembered one story, or rather episode, related by a Sergeant

in the Light Infantry:

“We ’ad a bloody awful time on the Somme. I shan’t forget some of the

things I saw there.”

“What things?” asked Winterbourne.

“Well, one of our orfficers laid out there wounded, and we see a German

run up with one of those stick bombs, pull the string and stick it

under the orfficer’s head. ’E was wounded in both arms, and couldn’t

move. So ’e ’ad five seconds waitin’ for his ’ead to be blowed off by

that bomb sizzlin’ under ’is ear. We ’adn’t time to get to ’im. Some

one shot the German and then some o’ our chaps picked up a wounded

German orfficer and threw ’im alive into a burning ammunition dump. ’E

screamed something ’orrible.”

* * * * *

From the depot he was sent to the Officers’ Training Camp with two

days’ leave. He managed to get Fanny and Elizabeth to meet, and

had lunch with them on the day he left. They both saw him off from

Waterloo, and then parted outside the station.

The months of dreary Training in the cold dreary camp dragged by. He

had two days’ Leave in the middle of the course, then “passed out” as

an officer, and was sent on Leave again, with orders to wait until he

received official notice of his appointment.

* * * * *

Elizabeth and Fanny both admired the cut and material of his cadet’s

uniform, which was exactly like an officer’s except that it bore no

badges of rank and that he did not wear the shoulder-strap of his

Sam Browne belt. He looked ever so much smarter in his new officer’s

clothes, with the little blue chevron, marking service over seas, sewed

on his left sleeve. They both quite took to him again, and during

his month’s Leave gave him a good time. Fanny thought him still an

excellent lover. Only, instead of gay and amusing talk “in between,” he

sat heavily silent, or drank and talked about that boring awful War. It

was such a pity—he used to be such a charming companion.

This Leave came to an end too. He was gazetted, and went to his new

regimental Depot, situated in wooden huts on a desolate heath in the

North of England, a place swept by rain and wind and deadeningly chill

in the wet winter days. The other officers were sharply divided into

two sections or sects. Wounded survivors from the early days of the

War, now on Permanent Home Service; and the newly gazetted officers,

with a sprinkling of wounded on Temporary Home Service. They ate in one

large mess room, but had two common rooms, which seemed to be tacitly

reserved for each of the two groups, who scarcely ever mingled. Only

the cadets from Sandhurst were admitted into the more exclusive room.

There was very little to do—parading with the Company, inspection,

a little drill, Orderly Officer occasionally. There were so many new

officers waiting to go overseas that the quarters were uncomfortably

crowded, and there seemed to be almost as many officers as men on

parade. He got the impression that Infantry subalterns were cheap as

stinking fish.

At last he got his orders to proceed overseas—France again, though

he had hoped for Egypt or Salonika. He had two more days of Leave and

a quarrel with Elizabeth, who found him writing a loving note to Fanny

on the morning he arrived. He went off in dudgeon and spent the time

with Fanny. He saw Elizabeth again on the afternoon of the day before

he left and patched matters up with her. She was now furiously jealous

of his spending nights with Fanny, but “forgave” him. She said that

the War had affected his mind so much that he did not know what he was

doing, and anyway as he was going out again at once, they might as well

be friends. They kissed, and he went off to keep a dinner engagement

with Fanny.

His train left at seven the next morning. He got up at five-thirty,

and kissed Fanny, who woke up and sleepily offered to get him coffee.

But he made her lie still, dressed hastily, made himself some coffee,

found he could not eat anything, and went back to the bedroom. Fanny

had fallen asleep again. He kissed her very tenderly and gently, not

to wake her; and softly let himself out of the flat. He had difficulty

in finding a taxi, and was horribly worried lest he should miss his

train and be suspected of over-staying Leave. He got to the platform

one minute before the train started. There was no porter to carry his

large valise, but he managed to get into a carriage just as the train

started. It was a Pullman, so crowded with officers that he hadn’t room

to sit down, and had to stand all the way to Dover. Most of them had

newspapers. The news of the crushing defeat of the Fifth Army was just

coming through. They were being sent out to replace losses. He thought

of something which had happened the night before....

* * * * *

Fanny had insisted on his coming with her for a couple of hours to a

party of the intelligentsia given by some one with chambers near the

Temple. As they passed Charing Cross station, Winterbourne bumped into

a man from his own Company who had just arrived by the Leave train.

“Go on with the others, Fanny dear. I’ll catch you up. Anyway, I’ve got

the address.”

He turned to Corporal Hobbs, and said:

“Are you still with the old lot?”

“No, I left ’em in November. Got trench feet at Ypres. I was supposed

to be court-martialled, but that was washed out. I’ve got a job at the

Base now.”

“You’re lucky.”

“You’ve heard the news, I s’pose?”

“No, what?”

“Well, we heard there’s a big surprise attack on the Somme. We’re

retiring, and our old Division is s’posed to have copped it badly,

smashed to pieces, the R.T.O. said.”

“Good God!”

“I think it must be true. All Leaves stopped. I just managed to get

away before the order came. There were only about ten men on the boat.

Lucky for me I went down early.”

“Well, so long, old man.”

“I see you’re an officer now.”

“Yes, I’m just going out again.”

“Best of luck to you.”

“Best of luck.”

He found the man’s chambers. There were about ten people present.

Winterbourne knew some of them. They had also heard the news of the

battle through a man in Whitehall and were discussing it.

“It’s a bad defeat,” he said. “I’m told that the highest authorities

think it adds another year to the war and will cost at least three

hundred thousand men.”

He said it carelessly, as if it were a matter of casual importance.

Winterbourne heard them constantly using the phrase “three hundred

thousand men,” as if they were cows or pence or radishes. He walked

up and down the large room apart from the others, thinking, no longer

listening to their chatter. The phrase “Division smashed to pieces”

rang in his brain. He wanted to seize the people in the room, the

people in authority, every one not directly in the war, and shout to

them: “Division smashed to pieces! Do you know what that means? You

must stop it, you’ve got to stop it! Division smashed to pieces!...”

[ XIII ]

Winterbourne listened intently. Yes, it was! He turned to his Runner:

“Did you hear that, Baker?”

“Hear what, Sir?”

“Listen.”

A plane droned gently and distantly in the still air, and then very

faintly but distinctly:

_Claaang!_

“There! Did you hear it?”

“No, Sir.”

“It was one of the heavies falling into M——. You’ll hear them soon

enough. But come on, we must hurry. We’ve a long way to go if we’re to

get back before dark.”

* * * * *

A year, almost to the day, after he had gone into M—— for the first

time, Winterbourne was returning to it as an officer in command of a

Company.

From London he had proceeded direct to Etaples, where he remained for

several days under canvas on the sandy slopes among the pines. Large

numbers of officers were being sent out, and they had to sleep four

to a tent. Winterbourne thought this a luxurious allotment of space,

but the other three subalterns, who had never been to France before,

complained that there was not enough room for their camp-beds and that

they had to sleep in their flea-bags. Winterbourne had not troubled to

bring a camp-bed, knowing how few opportunities there would be to use

it.

There was very little to do in Etaples, even with the more extended

opportunities of an officer. They messed in a large draughty marquee,

but there was a camp cinema where he spent part of each evening. There

were numbers of Waacs at the Base, and he noticed many of them were

pregnant. Apparently there was no attempt at concealment; but then the

birth-rate was declining rapidly in England, and babies were urgently

needed for the Next War. He observed that the cemetery had doubled in

size since he had last seen it from the train a few months before.

That Ypres offensive must have been very costly. Such acres of wooden

crosses, the old ones already battered and weather-stained, the new

ones steadily gaining on the dunes. And now there was this smashing

defeat on the Somme. Haig had issued his back to the wall Order,

there was unity of Allied Command under Foch, and America had been

frantically petitioned to send reinforcements immediately. And still

the front daily yielded under the pressure of repeated German attacks.

It looked like being a longer War than ever.

At Etaples he was allotted to the 2/9 Battalion of the Foddershires,

and left to join them with about fifteen other subalterns, most of

whom had never been in the line. He found the Battalion on rest in a

small village about twenty miles behind M——. They belonged to one

of the Divisions which had been smashed to pieces, and the battalion

had suffered severely, losing most of its officers (including the

Colonel) and the greater part of its effectives. The new Colonel was

an ex-Regular Corporal who had obtained a commission early in the

War, and by dexterity and martinet methods had risen to the rank of

acting Lieutenant-Colonel. He was not a fighting soldier, but an

expert trainer. He had the bullying manner of the barrack-square drill

instructor, and his method of “training” was to harass every officer

and man under his command from morning to night. After a week’s “rest”

under this commander, Winterbourne felt nearly as tired as if he had

been in the line. The subalterns who had never been under fire were

exhausted and dismayed.

However, it must in justice be admitted that Colonel Straker was faced

with appalling difficulties, and Winterbourne would have sympathized

with the man if he had not so obviously been trying to push his

own professional career in the Army at the expense of every one he

commanded. The old battalion was a wreck. It had four of its officers

left, one of whom was the Adjutant; a few of its old N.C.O.’s and a

sprinkling of men were there; mostly signallers and headquarters men.

Not a single one of the Lewis Gunners remained. Two Companies had been

captured, and the remainder had fought a way out with terrific losses.

The gaps had been filled chiefly by raw half-trained boys of eighteen

and a half, many of whom were scared stiff by the mere thought of

going into the trenches. To secure an adequate number of N.C.O.’s, the

Colonel had to promote nearly every man who had any experience of the

War, even transport drivers who could scarcely write their names.

Winterbourne had expected to go into the line at first as a

supernumerary officer under instruction, and to pick up his duties by

watching others and always going about with them. To his dismay, but

also a certain amount of flattered vanity, he found himself immediately

appointed as acting commander of B Company. But it was inevitable.

Several of the new officers were mere boys, others volunteers from

the Army Service Corps—perfectly competent at their own job but

quite ignorant of trench warfare—and others again were “keymen” from

business houses, reluctantly yielded to the “combings out” of 1917.

Winterbourne had four subalterns under him, Hutchinson, Cobbold, Paine,

and Rushton. They were all good fellows, but three of them had seen no

service whatever and the fourth had been in Egypt only.

When Winterbourne inspected his company on the first day, his heart

sank within him. He felt it was monstrous to send these scared-looking

boys into the line without a proper stiffening of more experienced men.

It would have been far better to spread them out. They cleaned their

buttons perfectly, drilled very neatly, turned right or left with an

imitation Guards stamp, and trembled when an officer spoke to them.

But they were mighty raw stuff for the job ahead of them. Winterbourne

thought of his own greenness when he had first gone into the line, and

his heart sank lower as he thought of his own utter inexperience as an

officer. He had a very sketchy idea of how a Company was run in the

line. Of course, he had heard and carried orders, and had been roughly

schooled in Company organization—on paper—at the Cadet School. But

that was very different from assuming the responsibility for a hundred

and more men, most of them frightened boys who had never seen any but

practice trenches and never heard a shell burst. Well, the only thing

was to carry on, and do his best....

* * * * *

The Division was to take over part of the M—— sector, from the

Canadian Army. Winterbourne had to occupy part of the Reserve line

just to the left of M——. The four Company commanders with their

Runners were sent on ahead in a lorry to reconnoitre the positions and

arrange details of “taking over.” The Colonel particularly impressed

upon Winterbourne the necessity for obtaining and carefully reading the

written instructions for defence which would be with the Officer he was

relieving.

They were to have met Canadian guides at a given rendezvous, but the

guides were not there. Winterbourne, who could have found his way to

M—— in the blackest darkness, and who had twenty times passed up

and down the trench he was to occupy, decided to push on. The other

three, mistrusting him, stayed. He set out with Baker, his servant and

runner. Owing to the shortage of men, the officers’ servants had to act

as runners, with the result that they performed both jobs abominably.

Baker had been allotted to Winterbourne by the despotic Colonel, who

interfered in the minutest details and then held the Company commander

responsible for everything which went wrong. Thus, he was in a position

to take credit for every success and push off the responsibility for

failure on some one else.

Winterbourne would certainly not have chosen Baker for himself, and

wondered what possible caprice of the Colonel had forced the boy on

him. He was a decent enough lad—a milliner’s delivery boy—but timid,

unintelligent and lazy. Baker seemed to think that he had performed all

his duties as a Runner if he followed Winterbourne so closely that he

continually trod on his officer’s heels.

They passed many places familiar to Winterbourne—the cemetery (now

much enlarged), the ruined village (now still more ruined), the long

slag-hill, Southampton Row. Nothing had changed, except to become

a little more desolate and smashed. He noticed that several large

shells had fallen in the cemetery that morning or the night before,

digging up the graves violently, scattering bones and torn blankets and

broken crosses over the other graves. He turned in for five minutes,

and walked down the long row containing the graves of his Pioneer

companions. He stood a couple of minutes at Thompson’s grave. A shell

splinter had knocked the cross crooked. He set it straight.

* * * * *

Winterbourne found the trench easily enough, and asked the first

Canadian sentry for Company Headquarters. The man was leaning very

negligently on the parapet, chewing gum. Winterbourne, accustomed

to perpetual “Sirring” and heel-clicking and general servility, was

almost shocked when the man very casually jerked his thumb over his

left shoulder without saying a word, and returned thoughtfully to his

gum-chewing. He found the Company commander, a Major, democratically

sitting in the trench on a double-seated latrine, talking humorously to

one of his men. The British always had separate latrines for officers.

Winterbourne enjoyed this hugely, and liked the Canadians. They at once

invited him to whiskey high-balls and bridge. He managed to evade this,

and then explained his own situation, asked for the written orders of

defence and to see all the positions. The Canadian officer stared and

said they had no written instructions.

“Well, what do you do if you’re attacked?”

“I guess you’d form a defensive flank—if they ever got past the

machine-gunners in M——.”

The Canadian officer walked Winterbourne round the positions. He was

bare-headed—strictly against orders—and his men greeted him as he

passed with friendly nods and an occasional brief remark. Winterbourne

noticed that they did not wait for him to speak first and did not call

him “Sir.” He reflected with amusement that the Canadians were easily

the crack troops of the British armies, and were sent into all the

hardest fighting. And yet they didn’t even say “Sir” to an officer!

* * * * *

This meeting with the Canadians was probably the last piece of

enjoyment or tranquillity that Winterbourne ever had. From the moment

he went back to his own Battalion his life became one long harassed

nightmare. He was deluged with all sorts of documents requiring

information and statistics he was totally unable to furnish. The

blunders, the mistakes, the negligences of his inexperienced men were

legion, and all were visited upon him by the martinet Colonel. For

days and weeks he got scarcely any sleep and never once even took his

boots off. He had continually to be up and down the trench, especially

during the periodic six days in the Front line, and even in Support. He

spent hours a day answering idiotic written questions brought by weary

Runners and trying to puzzle out minute and unnecessary orders. He was

always being told to report to Battalion Headquarters, where he was

savagely attacked and reprimanded for the most piffling and unimportant

errors. He went on patrol himself, contrary to orders, to make sure

that at least one patrol a night was properly done—and was severely

reprimanded for that. The boys, suddenly released from button-polishing

and saluting and drill (which they had been taught to consider all

important) became deplorably slack in important matters. They lost

portions of their equipment, dropped their ammunition, never knew their

orders as sentries, went to sleep on sentry duty, shivered when ordered

to go on patrol, cried when put in listening posts in No Man’s Land,

littered up the trench with paper, bully beef tins and fragments of

food, urinated in the trenches, and “forgot” perpetually everything

they were told. While Winterbourne was at one end of his section of

trench, desperately and sweatingly trying to get some sort of order

and sense into them, others were committing all sorts of military

abominations at the other end. It was useless to “take their names”

for punishment, especially as there aren’t many punishments as bad as

being in the line. One day he did exasperatedly make the Sergeant-Major

“Take their names” and by nightfall found he had collected forty-two.

Ludicrous. The N.C.O.’s gave the job up in despair and let things drift.

He found most of the recruits were hopelessly slow in getting on their

gas masks, and appeared to be in such a state of hebetude that they

did not realize that gas was dangerous. They did preposterous things.

They would, for instance, entirely abandon a Lewis Gun post to get

their dinners. It was ten days before Winterbourne discovered this. The

subalterns had seen it, of course, but had not known that they ought to

report it. Winterbourne “ran” the responsible N.C.O. as an example. He

“ran” a boy for sleeping on sentry duty, and then washed out the charge

when he reflected that the poor wretch might be shot for so serious a

military crime. His Front line positions were an exhausting nightmare,

too. His front was over five hundred yards. He had an outpost line of

four listening and observation posts with a section in each. Three

hundred yards farther back he had his main defence line and his own

headquarters. Behind that he had various isolated Lewis Gun positions.

All these were imposed upon him in spite of his protests. The defence

scheme might be all very well on paper, and might have worked out

with experienced troops, but it was hopeless under these peculiar

circumstances. He realized after a couple of nights in the Front line

that under any determined attack it would be impossible for him to

hold his positions for ten minutes. He urged this on the Colonel,

begging that the dispositions might be temporarily revised and the men

brought more closely together under his own eyes. He was told that

he was incompetent and not fit to be a Lance-Corporal. Winterbourne

sarcastically replied that some people are born Corporals and some are

not. He offered to resign his command, and was ordered to continue

it under threat of immediate arrest and court-martial for negligence

and disobeying orders in the face of the enemy. Knowing how easily a

court-martial can be “cooked,” Winterbourne unwillingly carried on.

Most fortunately, he was not at first attacked, but he lost several

men. Two were wounded on a ration party, having lost contact and

wandered about half the night. One was shot through the neck by a

fixed rifle, although Winterbourne had thrice ordered every N.C.O. to

warn the men about it. At Stand-to one morning, the Germans bombarded

them with mustard gas shells. Winterbourne had warned them of the gas

until he was sick of doing so. Two mustard shells fell just outside

the parapet of a fire-step with six men on it. They ducked down when

the shells burst and then stood stupidly looking at the bright yellow

shell-hole, wondering what the funny smell was. Three of them were

gassed, and two died.

Winterbourne spent most of each night plodding up and down his immense

area of trenches to see that every one was at his post. After dawn one

morning, instead of trying to snatch an hour’s sleep, he went up to

inspect his listening posts, feeling an uneasy intuition about them.

There were four, about a hundred yards apart, isolated in what had

once been the Front line. At the third listening post, he found six

rifles leaning against the trench and no men. They had been captured

by a silent raiding party in broad daylight! Probably all asleep.

Winterbourne was furious, sent his Runner back for another section,

and remained on guard himself. The Runner came back timidly after an

interminable time, and said the Sergeant wouldn’t come. Winterbourne

didn’t want the other posts to know that one had been captured, fearing

a panic. It was useless to leave the Runner on guard; he would simply

have waited until Winterbourne’s back was turned and have run to the

other posts and spread an alarmist report. Winterbourne hurried back,

and found that the Runner had delivered such a garbled and incoherent

message that the Sergeant had been utterly unable to understand, and

had sent him back for precise orders. Of course, the Colonel put all

the responsibility upon Winterbourne, and threatened him again with

a court-martial. Winterbourne protested and they had a furious row;

after which the Colonel re-doubled his persecutions. When they went

out for four days’ “rest” after their first three weeks in the line

Winterbourne felt more exhausted and depressed than he would have

believed possible. He saw that the men got into their billets, after

infinite tramplings and shoutings in the darkness, and fell on to a

sacking bed. He slept for fourteen hours.

* * * * *

Of course, Winterbourne had taken all this far too tragically and

responsibly. The situation happened to be one which most disastrously

fed his “worry” neurosis. A bitterly humorous destiny seemed

intentionally to involve him in circumstances which rent his mind to

pieces and exhausted his body—unnecessarily. It was a misfortune,

due possibly to the fact that the initial of his name made him come

towards the end of a list, that he was sent to a battalion so raggedly

composed and so naggingly commanded. We passed out almost together at

the Cadet School, but where everything ran comparatively easily and

smoothly for me, all went wrong with him. He brooded incessantly and

saw all things in terms of the bleakest despair—the collapse of his

own life, his present situation, the continued retirement of the Allied

Armies which seemed to promise an indefinite continuation of the War,

his feeling that even if he came out alive he would never be able to

re-build his life. It was unlucky to go straight back to M——, which

had such tragic associations for him and made it doubly hard to repress

shell-shocked nerves. His state of mind, what with sleeplessness and

worry and shock and ague, which came back as soon as he was in the

line again, and physical exhaustion and inhibited fear, almost fringed

dementia, and he would have collapsed but for his strength of will and

pride. But he was a wrecked man, swept along in the swirling cataracts

of the War.

* * * * *

The days passed into weeks, the weeks into months. He moved through

impressions like a man hallucinated. And every incident seemed to

beat on his brain, Death, Death, Death. All the decay and death of

battle fields entered his blood and seemed to poison him. He lived

among smashed bodies and human remains in an infernal cemetery. If

he scratched his stick idly and nervously in the side of a trench he

pulled out human ribs. He ordered a new latrine to be dug out from the

trench, and thrice the digging had to be abandoned because they came

upon terrible black masses of decomposing bodies. At dawn one morning

when it was misty he walked over the top of Hill 91, where probably

nobody had been by day since its capture. The heavy mist brooded about

him in a strange stillness. Scarcely a sound on their immediate front,

though from north and south came the vibration of furious drum-fire.

The ground was a desert of shell-holes and torn rusty wire, and

everywhere lay skeletons in steel helmets still clothed in the rags

of sodden khaki or field grey. Here a fleshless hand still clutched a

broken rusty rifle, there a gaping decaying boot showed the thin knotty

foot-bones. He came on a skeleton violently dismembered by a shell

explosion; the skull was split open and the teeth lay scattered on the

bare chalk; the force of the explosion had driven coins and a metal

pencil right into the hip-bones and femurs. In a concrete pill-box

three German skeletons lay across their machine-gun with its silent

nozzle still pointing at the loop hole. They had been attacked from the

rear with phosphorous grenades, which burn their way into the flesh and

for which there is no possible remedy. A shrunken leather strap still

held a battered wrist-watch on a fleshless wrist-bone. Alone in the

white curling mist, drifting slowly past like wraiths of the slain,

with the far-off thunder of drum-fire beating the air, Winterbourne

stood in frozen silence and contemplated the last achievements of

civilized man.

* * * * *

A raiding party was sent out from his front. He watched the box barrage

from the front line. The Germans filled the night with Verey lights and

coloured rockets. Their artillery and trench-mortars and machine-guns

retaliated fiercely. Smoke and gas drifted across. After interminable

waiting the officer and three of the men staggered back, bleeding,

blackened with smoke, their clothes torn to pieces on the wire. The

raid had failed.

* * * * *

A Company of Gas Experts came up from the Base, and sent over some

thousands of Stokes mortars loaded with a heavy concentration of poison

gas. As soon as the last mortar was fired they were in a fearful hurry

to get away. The German artillery retaliation smashed their trenches.

Next morning, Winterbourne watched through glasses the Germans carrying

out their dead on stretchers.

* * * * *

A British airplane fell in No Man’s Land. Winterbourne saw the pilot,

who was still alive, struggle to get out from the wreckage. An enemy

machine-gun was turned on him, and he fell limp across the side of the

cock-pit. The plane was smashed to pieces by British heavies to prevent

the Germans from obtaining the model.

* * * * *

They shifted to another part of the line. The Company was out in No

Man’s Land in the darkness strengthening their shattered wire against

a threatened attack. Suddenly from half a mile of German front leaped

a line of flame. There was a whistling roar of projectiles, and a

thousand gas containers crashed to the ground all about them. Men were

killed outright by direct hits, and wounded by pieces of flying metal.

Every man who took more than two breaths of the deadly concentration

was doomed. All that night and far into the misty dawn the stretchers

went down the communication trench carrying inert figures with horrible

foam on their mouths.

* * * * *

The German attacks spent their force, and the huge Allied

counter-attacks began. The starving German armies were hurled back

to the Hindenburg Line, their impregnable defence. The Canadians

miraculously stormed the Drocourt-Quéant switch line.

Winterbourne was back on the Somme, that incredible desert, pursuing

the retreating enemy. They came up the Bapaume-Cambrai road by night,

and bivouacked in holes scratched with entrenching tools in the side

of a sandy bank. The wrecked country-side in the pale moonlight was a

frigid and motionless image of Death. They spoke in whispers, awed by

the immensity of desolation. By day the whole landscape was covered

with the débris left by the broken German armies. Smashed tanks, guns

with their wheels broken, stood out like fixed wrecks in the unmoving

ocean of shell-holes. The whole earth seemed a litter of overcoats,

shaggy leather packs, rifles, water-bottles, gas masks, steel helmets,

bombs, entrenching tools, cast away in the panic of flight. By night,

the sky glowed with the flames of burning Cambrai, with the black hump

of Bourlon Hill silhouetted against them.

They drove the Germans from Cambrai, and pressed on from village to

village, constantly shelled and harassed by machine-gun fire from their

rear-guard. The German machine-gunners, fragments of the magnificent

armies of the early War years, died at their posts. The demoralized

German Infantry surrendered wholesale.

For three days in succession Winterbourne’s Company formed the advance

guard, and he led it in the darkness over unknown ground by compass

bearing in a kind of dazed delirium. Pressing on through falling

shells in the blank night, with the ever present dread of falling into

a machine-gun ambush, became an agony. They fought their way into

inhabited villages which had been held by the Germans for over four

years. The terrified people crouched in cellars or ran distractedly

into the fields. They took the village of F——, after a brief but

fierce bombardment, an hour after dawn. The roads leading in and out

were encumbered with dead Germans, smashed transport, the contorted

bodies of dead horses. Dead German soldiers lay about the village

street, which was cluttered with fallen tiles and bricks. In a garden

a war-demented peasant was digging a grave to bury his wife, who had

been killed by a shell-burst. In the ruined village school Winterbourne

picked up a book—it was Pascal’s “Thoughts on Christianity.”

* * * * *

Part of Cambrai had been levelled to the ground in 1914, and stood a

melancholy monument of neatly-piled wreckage. Part of the remainder

was burned. In the undestroyed streets many houses had been looted.

The furniture had been smashed, pictures and photographs torn from

the walls, cushions ripped open with bayonets, curtains slashed down,

carpets gashed into rags. The whole mass of desecrated objects had

been flung into the centre of the floor, after which the Germans had

urinated and dropped their excrement upon it. Winterbourne gazed into

a dozen houses which had been treated in this way. The villages beyond

Cambrai had not been sacked, but were utterly filthy and swarming

with buzzing legions of flies. Isolated cottages had sometimes been

completely gutted of their contents. In one place Winterbourne found

an emaciated French woman and two starved children living in a cottage

with nothing but straw—literally nothing but straw in the place. He

gave them his iron rations and twenty francs. The woman took them with

a dull hopelessness.

* * * * *

They were approaching the Belgian border. On the evening of the 3rd

of November Winterbourne with about twenty men rushed into the village

of K——, just as the Germans hastily retreated from the other end.

He had been ordered to occupy the place if possible, and to arrange

billets. He lodged his Company, placed guards and pickets and then went

through the cellars. The Germans were experts in placing booby-traps

which would explode if carelessly moved, and Winterbourne did not know

whether there might not be men concealed in the cellars to take them

unawares. He went down into cellar after cellar with his electric

torch, and was soon re-assured. The Germans had fled in such haste that

they had left their rifles and equipment in several cellars. The floors

were strewn with straw. On a table he found a half-finished letter,

abandoned in the middle of a sentence. In another a large black dog lay

dead—its owner had killed it with a bullet rather than leave it to

possible ill-treatment.

* * * * *

The Colonel explained the dispositions for the coming battle over a

map. The conference of officers took notes of the orders which were

very elaborate, but precise and clear. It was nearly half-past three

when they had finished, and zero hour was six-thirty. Winterbourne had

been on foot since five the morning before. His eyes smarted with lack

of sleep, and his mind was so dulled that he could scarcely comprehend

and write down his orders. He misspelled words as he scrawled down

notes in shaking deformed handwriting. He puzzled a long time over

map-references, and irritated the Colonel by repeatedly asking

questions.

They had an hour before they moved out to their battle positions. The

other officers hurried away to snatch an hour’s sleep. Winterbourne

felt utterly sleepy, but quite unable to sleep. The thought of another

battle, even with the dispirited and defeated German rear-guard, filled

him with shrinking dread. How face another barrage? He tried to write

letters to Fanny and Elizabeth, but his mind kept wandering away and he

could not collect his thoughts sufficiently to string together a few

banal sentences. He sat on a chair brought him by his servant, with his

head in his hands, staring at the straw and the dead black dog. He had

only one thought—peace. He must at least have peace. He was at the

very end of his endurance, had used up the last fraction of his energy

and strength. He wished he was one of the skeletons lying on Hill 91,

an anonymous body among the corpses lying outside in the street. He had

not even the courage to shoot himself with his revolver; and added that

last grain of self-contempt to his despair.

* * * * *

They assembled by platoons in the village street, and each officer

marched off in silence to his allotted position. Winterbourne followed

with his little knot of Company Headquarters, and saw that each platoon

was in its proper place. He shook hands with each officer.

“Quite sure about your orders and objective?”

“Yes.”

“Good-bye.”

“Oh, make it au revoir.”

“Good-bye.”

Winterbourne returned to his own position and waited. He looked at his

luminous wrist-watch. Six twenty-five. Five minutes to zero hour. The

cold November night was utterly silent. Thousands of men and hundreds

of guns were facing each other on the verge of battle, and there seemed

not a sound. He listened. Nothing. His Runner whispered something to a

signaller, who whispered a reply. Three more minutes. Silence. He could

feel the beating of his heart, more rapid than the tick of seconds as

he held his watch to his ear.

CRASH! Like an orchestra at the signal of a baton the thousands

of guns north and south opened up. The night sprang to flickering

day-light with the gun-flashes, the earth trembled with the shock, the

air roared and screamed with shells. Lights rushed up from the German

line, and their artillery in turn flamed into action. Winterbourne

could just see a couple of his sections advancing as he started off

himself, and then everything was blotted out in a confusion of smoke

and bursting shells. He saw his Runner stagger and fall as a shell

burst between them; then his Corporal disappeared, blown to pieces by a

direct hit. He came to a sunken road, and lay on the verge, trying to

see what was happening in the faint light of dawn. He saw only smoke;

and pushed on. Suddenly German helmets were all round him. He clutched

at his revolver. Then he saw they were unarmed, holding shaking hands

above their heads.

The German machine-guns were tat-tat-tatting at them, and there was a

ceaseless swish of bullets. He passed the bodies of several of his men.

One section wiped out by a single heavy shell. Other men lay singly.

There was Jameson dead; Halliwell dead; Sergeant Morton, Taylor and

Fish, dead in a little group. He came to the main road, which was

three hundred yards short of his objective. A deadly machine-gun fire

was holding up his Company. The officers and men were lying down, the

men firing rifles, and the Lewis Guns ripping off drums of bullets.

Winterbourne’s second Runner was hit, and lay groaning: “O for God’s

sake kill me, _kill_ me. I can’t stand it. The agony. _Kill_ me.”

Something seemed to break in Winterbourne’s head. He felt he was going

mad, and sprang to his feet. The line of bullets smashed across his

chest like a savage steel whip. The universe exploded darkly into

oblivion.