“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:
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.