Part 9

I have spoken several times to you about the test of war; how it acknowledges one chief virtue—courage. A man may be a poet, painter, may speak with the tongue of angels; but, if he has not courage, he is as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The other day I was accidentally the witness to the promulgation of a court-martial. The man was an officer; he had been sentenced to be shot, but the order had been changed to cashiering. There, in the sunlight, all his brother officers were drawn up at attention. Across the fields the men whom he had commanded were playing baseball. He was led out bareheaded. The sentence and the crime for which he had been sentenced were read aloud to him in an unsteady voice. When that was ended, an officer stepped forward and stripped the buttons and the badges of rank from his uniform. It was like a funeral at which his honour was buried. Under an escort, he was given “Right turn,” and marched away to meet the balance of life that remained. In peace times he’d have been reckoned a decent-looking chap, a little smart, but handsome—the kind of fellow of whom some mother must have been proud and whom probably at least one girl loved. A tall chap, too—six foot at least. I see him standing in the strong sunlight, white-faced and dumb—better dead—despised. His fate was the fate which many of us feared before we put on khaki when the call first came. We had feared that we might not be able to stand the test and might be shot behind the lines. How and why we can stand it we ourselves cannot say. It was all a gamble at the start. Here was one man who had failed. The arithmetic of his spiritual values was at fault: he had chosen bitter life when death would have been splendid.

This must all sound very strange to you in your environment, where your honour and life are safe. Perhaps I should not intrude such scenes upon you.

LX

France July 15, 1918

The mail has just come up to us. The runner stuck his head into the hole in the trench where I live and shoved in a pile of letters. “How many for me?” I asked. “All of them,” he said.

I’m all alone at the battery, the major having gone forward to reconnoitre a position and all the other subalterns being away on duties—so I’ve had a quiet time browsing through my correspondence. A Hun cat sits at the top of the dug-out across the trench and blinks at me. We found him on the position. He’s fat and sleek and plausible-looking. I can’t get it out of my mind that he’s kept up his strength by battening on the corpses of his former owners. Between the guns there are two graves; one to an unknown British and the other to an unknown German soldier.

The battlefield itself stretches away all billowy with hay for miles and miles. When a puff of wind blows across it, it rustles like fire. The sides of the trenches are gay with poppies and cornflowers. The larks sing industriously overhead, and above them, like the hum of a swarm of bees, pass the fighting planes. Miles to the rear I can hear the strife of bands, playing their battalions up to the fine. A brave, queer, battling world! If one lives to be old, he will talk about these days and persuade himself that he longs to be back, if the time ever comes when life has lost its challenge.

The Hun doesn’t seem to be so frisky as he was in March and April. Now that he’s quieting down, we begin to lose our hatred and to speak of him more tolerantly again. But whatever may be said in his defence, he’s a nasty fellow.

Since I started this letter I’ve dined, done a lot of work, watched a marvellous sunset, and received orders to push up forward very early in the morning. I shall probably send you a line from the O.P. The mystery of night has settled down. Round the western rim of the horizon there is still a stain of red. Under the dusk, limbers and pack horses crawl along mud trails and sunken roads. We become populous when night has fallen.

LXI

France July 17, 1918

To-night brought a great wad of American papers. What a time America is having—all shouting and anticipation of glory without any suspicion of the cost. War’s fine when it’s khaki and drums on Fifth Avenue—if it wasn’t tortured bodies, broken hearts, and blinded eyes. Where I am the dead lie thick beneath the sod; poppies pour like blood across the landscape, and cornflowers stand tall in sockets empty of eyes. The inscription “Unknown Soldier” is written on many crosses that grow like weeds from the shell-holes. All the feet that marched away with shouting now lie silent; their owners have even lost their names. Could death do more? Where I live at present everything is blasted, stagnant, decayed, morose. War’s a fine spectacle for those who only cheer from the pavement.

It isn’t that I’m angry with people for seizing life and being gay. We’re gay out here—but we’ve earned the right. Many of us are happier than we ever were in our lives. Why not? For the first time we’re quite sure every minute of the day that we’re doing right. And that certainty is the only excuse for being happy while the Front line is suffering the tortures of the damned.

I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and to-morrow I go forward again. It’s really great fun forward when it’s fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his intentions and plans. War’s the greatest game of the intellect yet invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength.

It’s night now. I’m sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of “armed men falling downstairs,” to borrow Stevenson’s phrase. It’s really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings, He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser’s “Me und Gott.”

My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won’t be ended until all the world is under arms. He’s an optimist.

LXII

France July 18, 1918

I’m up forward, sitting on a bank, looking at the Hun country through a hedge. I know you’d give anything to be with me. In front there’s a big curtain of sea-grey sky, against which planes crawl like flies. A beautiful half-moon looks down at me with the tragic face of Harlequin. Far away across a plain furrowed by shell-fire the spires and domes of cities in the captured territory shine. Like all forbidden lands, there are times when the Hun country looks exquisitely and unreally beautiful, as though it were tempting us to cross the line.

I’ve just left off to watch a squadron of enemy planes which have been attempting to get across to our side. Everything has opened up on them; machine guns are spouting their luminous trails of tracer bullets; archies are bursting little cotton-wool clouds of death between them and their desire. They evidently belong to a circus, for they’re slipping and tumbling and looping like great gulls to whom the air is native. Ah, now they’ve given it up and are going home thwarted. I wonder what the poor old moon thinks of all these antics and turmoils in the domain which has been hers absolutely for so many æons of nights.

The horrible and the beautiful blending in an ecstasy, that is what war is to-day. All one’s senses are unnaturally sharpened for the appreciation of both happiness and pain. You walk down a road where a shell fell a minute ago; the question always in your mind is, “Why wasn’t I there?” You shrug your shoulders and smile, “I may be there next time”—and bend all your energies towards being merry to-day. The threat of the end is very provocative of intensity.

It’s nearly dark now and I’m writing by the moonlight. One might imagine that the angels were having pillow-fights in their bedrooms by the row that’s going on in the sky. And there was a time when the occasional trolley beneath my windows used to keep me awake at night!

5 a.m. The letters came last night. You may imagine the place in which I read them—lying on a kind of coffin-shelf in a Hun dug-out with the usual buzzing of battened flies and the usual smell and snoring of an unwashed B.C. party. How good it is to receive letters; they’re the only future we have. After I’d sent the runner down to the battery I had to go forward to a Gomorrha of fallen roofs, which stands almost on the edge of No Man’s Land. Stagnant shell-holes, rank weeds, the silence of death, lay all about me, and along the horizon the Hun flares and rockets danced an impish jig of joy. When the war is ended we shall miss these nights. Strange as it sounds, we shall look back on them with wistfulness and regret. Our souls will never again bristle with the same panic of terror and daring. We shall become calm fellows, filling out our waistcoats to a contented rotundity; no one will believe that we were once the first fighting troops of the European cock-pit. We shall argue then, where to-day we strike. We shall have to preach to make men good, whereas to-day we club vice into stupor. We shall miss these nights.

I glance up from my page and gaze out through the narrow slit from which I observe. I see the dear scarlet poppies shining dewy amid the yellow dandelions and wild ox-eyed daisies. I am very happy this morning. The world seems a good place. For the moment I have even given over detesting the Hun. With luck, I tell myself, I shall sit in old gardens again and read the old volumes, and laugh with the same dear people that I used to love. With luck—but when?

LXIII

France |July 19|, 1918

We’re all sitting round the table studying maps of the entire Western Front and prophesying the rapid downfall of the Hun. It’s too early to be optimistic, but things are going excellently and the American weight is already beginning to be felt. It may take two years to reach the Rhine, but we shall get there. Until we do get there, I don’t think we shall be content to stop. We may not all be above ground for the end, but people who are like us will be there.

My batman has just returned to the guns from the wagon-lines, bringing me two letters and a post-card. They were most welcome. After reading them I went out into the moonlight to walk over to the guns, and, such is the nature of this country, though the journey was only 200 yards, I lost myself. Everything that was once a landmark is levelled flat—there’s nothing but shell-holes covered with tangled grass, barbed wire, exploded shell-cases, and graves. I can quite understand how men have wandered clean across No Man’s Land and found themselves the guests of the Hun.

I think I once mentioned the man we have cooking for our mess at present—how he was no good as a cook until he got word that his wife had been drowned in Canada; his grief seemed to give him a new pride in himself and since his disaster our meals have been excellent. This morning I found a curious document on my table, which ran as follows: “Sir, I kan’t cock without stuf to cock with.” I was at a loss to discover its meaning for some time. Why couldn’t he cock? Why should he want to cock? How does one cock? And whether he could or couldn’t cock, why should he worry me about it?

Then the widower presented himself, standing sooty and forlorn in the trench outside the mess. The mystery was cleared up.

The mess-cart is just up, and I’m going to send this off, that it may reach you a day earlier.

LXIV

France July 23, 1918

I’m sitting in my “summer-house” in the trench. One side is unwalled and exposed to the weather; a curtain of camouflage stretches over the front and disguises the fact that I am “in residence.” For the last twenty-four hours it’s been raining like mad, blowing a hurricane and thundering as though all the clouds had a sneezing fit at once. You can imagine the state of the trenches and my own drowned condition when I returned to the battery this morning from my tour of duty up front. It seems hardly credible that in so short a time mud could become so muddy. However, I usually manage to enjoy myself. Yesterday while at the O.P. I read a ripping book by “Q.” with almost—not quite—the Thomas Hardy touch. It was called The Ship of Stars, and was published in 1899. Where it fails, when compared with Hardy, is in the thinness of its story and unreality of its plot. It has all the characters for a titanic drama, but having created them, “Q.” is afraid to let them be the brutes they would have been. How many novelists have failed through their determination to be quite gentlemanly, when merely to have been men would have made them famous! If ever I have a chance again I shall depict men as I have seen them out here—animals, capable of animal lusts, who have angels living in their hearts.

To-day has the complete autumn touch; we begin to think of the coming winter with its drenched and sullen melancholy—its days and nights of chill and damp, telescoping one into another in a grey monotony of grimness. Each summer the troops have told themselves, “We have spent our last winter in France,” but always and always there has been another.

Yet rain and mud and melancholy have their romance—they lend a blurred appearance of timelessness to a landscape and to life itself. A few nights ago I was forward observing for a raid which we put on. The usual panic of flares went up as the enemy became aware that our chaps were through his wire. Then machine guns started ticking like ten thousand lunatic clocks and of a sudden the S.O.S. barrage came down. One watched and waited, sending back orders and messages, trying to judge by signs how affairs were going. Gradually the clamour died away, and night became as silent and dark as ever. One waited anxiously for definite word; had our chaps gained what they were after, or had they walked into a baited trap?

Two hours elapsed; then through the loneliness one heard the lagging tramp of tired men, which came nearer and drew level. You saw them snowed on by the waning moon as they passed. You saw their rounded shoulders and the fatness of their heads—you knew that they were German prisoners. Limping in the rear, one arm flung about a comrade’s neck, came our wounded. Just towards dawn the dead went by, lying with an air of complete rest upon their stretchers. It was like a Greek procession, frescoed on the mournful streak of vagueness which divides eternal darkness from the land of living men. Just so, patiently and uncomplainingly has all the world since Adam followed its appointed fate into the fold of unknowingness. We climb the hill and are lost to sight in the dawn. There’s majesty in our departure after so much puny violence.

And God—He says nothing, though we all pray to Him. He alone among monarchs has taken no sides in this war. I like to think that the Union Jack waves above His palace and that His angels are dressed in khaki—which is quite absurd. I think of the irresistible British Tommies who have “gone west,” as whistling “Tipperary” in the streets of the New Jerusalem. They have haloes round their steel helmets and they’ve thrown away their gas-masks. But God gives me no licence for such imaginings, for He hasn’t said a word since the first cannon boomed. In some moods one gets the idea that He’s contemptuous; in others, that He takes no sides because His children are on both sides of No Man’s Land. But in the darkest moments we know beyond dispute that it is His hands that make our hands strong and His heart that makes our hearts compassionate to endure. I have tried to inflame my heart with hatred, but I cannot. Hunnishness I would give my life to exterminate, but for the individual German I am sorry—sorry as for a murderer who has to be executed. I am determined, however, that he shall be executed. They are all apologists for the crimes that have been committed; the civilians, who have not actually murdered, are guilty of thieving life to the extent of having received and applauded the stolen goods.

We had a heated discussion to-day as to when the war would be ended; we were all of the opinion, “Not soon. Not in less than two years, anyway. After that it will take another twelve months to ship us home.” I believe that, and yet I hope. Along all the roads of France, in all the trenches, in every gun-pit you can hear one song being sung by poilus and Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully-beef and hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from gramophones in hidden dug-outs:

“Over there. Over there. Send the word, send the word over there, That the Yanks are coming——”

Men repeat that rag-time promise as though it were a prayer, “The Yanks are coming.” We could have won without the Yanks—we’re sure of that. Still, we’re glad they’re coming and we walk jauntily. We may die before the promise is sufficiently fulfilled to tell. What does that matter? The Yanks are coming. We shall not have died in vain. They will reap the peace for the world which our blood has sown.

To-night you are in that high mountain place. It’s three in the afternoon with you. I wish I could project myself across the world and stand beside you. Life’s running away and there is so much to do besides killing people. But all those things, however splendid they were in achievement, would be shameful in the attempting until the war is ended.

Between writing this I’ve been making out the lines for the guns and running out to fire them—so forgive anything that is disjointed.

LXV

France July 29, 1918

I have just had a very large batch of letters to read. I feel simply overwhelmed with people’s affection. I have to spend every moment of my leisure keeping up with my mighty correspondence. The mail very rarely brings me a bag which is totally empty. The American Red Cross in Paris keeps me in mind continually. I had thirty gramophone records and twelve razors from them the other day, together with a pressing invitation to get a French leave and spend it in Paris. But your letters bulk much larger in numbers than any that I receive from anywhere else. I always leave home-letters to the last—bread and butter first, cake last, is my rule.

I must apologize for the slackness of my correspondence for the past few days, but two of them were spent forward while taking part in a raid, and the third at the observing post. It rained pretty nearly all the time and sleep was not plentiful. Yesterday I spent in “pounding my ear” for hours; to-day I’m as fresh as a daisy and writing reams to you to make up for lost time.

You’ll be sorry to hear that a favourite little chap of mine has been seriously wounded and may be dead by now. A year ago, at the Vimy show, he did yeoman service, and I got him recommended for the Military Medal. He was my runner on the famous day. He’s been in all sorts of attacks for over three years, and at last a stray shell got him. It burst about ten feet away, wounding him in the head, arm, and knee, besides nearly cutting off a great toe. His name was Joy. He lived up to his name, and was carried out on the stretcher grim, but bravely smiling. You can’t dodge your fate; it searches you out. You wonder—not fearfully, but curiously—whose turn it will be next. For yourself you don’t much care; your regrets are for the others who are left. Still, don’t you think that I’m going west, I have an instinct that I shall last to the end.

I think I mentioned the pathetic note of the mess cook, which I found awaiting me one morning on the breakfast table: “I kan’t cock without stuf to cock with.” The history of our experiments in cooks would make a novel in itself. The man before the pathetic beggar was a miner in peace times; as a cook his meals were like charges of dynamite—they blasted our insides. The worst of them was that they were so deceptive, they looked innocent enough till it was too late to refuse them. You may lay it down as final that all cooks are the dirtiest men in any unit. The gentleman who couldn’t “cock” earned for himself the title of the “World’s Champion Long Distance Dirt Accumulator.” I was present when the O.C. discharged him. He sent for the man, and was stooping forward, doing up his boot, when he entered. The man looked like the wrath of God—as though he had been embracing all the denizens of Hell. Without looking up the O.C. commenced, “Where did you learn to prepare all these tasty meals you’ve been serving us?”

“I kan’t cock without——”

“I know you can’t cock,” said the O.C. tartly; “you can’t even keep yourself clean. All you know how to do is to waste good food. I’m sending you down to the wagon-lines, and if you’re not washed by guard-mounting, I’ve given orders to have you thrown into the horse-trough.”

Exit the “cock.”

Your letters mean so much to me. I feel that my returns are totally inadequate. Good-bye; some great news has come in and the major wants to discuss it.

LXVI

France July 30,1918

I’m writing to you to-day, because I may be out of touch for a few days, as it looks as though I was going to get my desire—the thing I came back for. Any time if my letters stop temporarily, don’t get nervous. Such things happen when one is on active service.

It’s about two years to-day since I landed in England for the first time in khaki; since then how one has changed! I can scarcely recognise myself at all. It’s difficult to believe that I’m the same person. Without exaggeration, the world has become to me a much jollier place because of this martial experience. I don’t know how it is with you, but my heart has grown wings. One has changed in so many ways—the things that once caused panic, he now welcomes. Nothing gives us more joy than the news that we’re to be shoved into a great offensive. It’s for each of us as though we had been invited to our own wedding. Danger, which we used to dodge, now allures us.

I read a very true article the other day on the things which we have lost through the war. We have lost our youth, many of us. We have foregone so many glorious springs—all the seasons have sunk their tones into the sombre brown-grey mud of the past four years. We have lost all our festivals of affection and emotion. Sundays, Christmases, Easters—they are all the same as other days—so many hours useful only for the further killing of men. “You will say,” writes my author, “that the war, after all, will not last for ever, and that the man and woman of average longevity will live through threescore-and-ten years of God’s wonderful springs. That to a very minor extent is true. The war will not last for ever; but the memory of it, the suffering of it, the incalculable waste of it, will last for all that remains of our lives—which is 'for ever,’ after all, so far as you and I are concerned.” He goes on to say that there are years and years—but the years in which a man and woman may know that they are alive are few—the years of love and of beauty.

I agree with all this writer says; his words voice an ache that is always in our hearts. But he forgets—life, love, youth and even beauty are not everything. The animals have them. What we have gained is a new standard of worth, which we have won at the expense of our bodies. To me that outweighs all that we have lost. I spoke to you in a previous letter of the divine discontent which goads us on, so that when we have attained a standard of which we never thought ourselves capable, we envy a new and nobler goal, and commence to race towards it. In one of Q.’. books I came across a verse which expresses this exactly:

“Oh that I were where I would be! Then would I be where I am not. But where I am there I must be; And where I would be, I can not.”