Chapter 2
You wouldn't think that men would go to war to learn how to be kind--but they do. There's no kinder creature in the whole wide world than the average Tommy. He makes a friend of any stray animal he can find. He shares his last franc with a chap who isn't his pal. He risks his life quite inconsequently to rescue any one who's wounded. When he's gone over the top with bomb and bayonet for the express purpose of “doing in” the Hun, he makes a comrade of the Fritzie he captures. You'll see him coming down the battered trenches with some scared lad of a German at his side. He's gabbling away making throat-noises and signs, smiling and doing his inarticulate best to be intelligible. He pats the Hun on the back, hands him chocolate and cigarettes, exchanges souvenirs and shares with him his last luxury. If any one interferes with his Fritzie he's willing to fight. When they come to the cage where the prisoner has to be handed over, the farewells of these companions whose acquaintance has been made at the bayonet-point are often as absurd as they are affecting. I suppose one only learns the value of kindness when he feels the need of it himself. The men out there have said “Good-bye” to everything they loved, but they've got to love some one--so they give their affections to captured Fritzies, stray dogs, fellows who've collected a piece of a shell--in fact to any one who's a little worse off than themselves. My ambulance-driver was like that with his “Sure, Mike.” He was like it during the entire drive. When he came to the white road which climbs the ridge with all the enemy country staring at it, it would have been excusable in him to have hurried. The Hun barrage might descend at any minute. All the way, in the ditches on either side, dead pack animals lay; in the dug-outs there were other unseen dead making the air foul. But he drove slowly and gently, skirting the shell-holes with diligent care so as to spare us every unnecessary jolting. I don't know his name, shouldn't recognise his face, but I shall always remember the almost womanly tenderness of his driving.
After two changes into other ambulances at different distributing points, I arrived about nine on a summer's evening at the Casualty Clearing Station. In something less than an hour I was undressed and on the operating table.
You might suppose that when for three interminable years such a stream of tragedy has flowed through a hospital, it would be easy for surgeons and nurses to treat mutilation and death perfunctorily. They don't. They show no emotion. They are even cheerful; but their strained faces tell the story and their hands have an immense compassion.
Two faces especially loom out. I can always see them by lamp-light, when the rest of the ward is hushed and shrouded, stooping over some silent bed. One face is that of the Colonel of the hospital, grey, concerned, pitiful, stern. His eyes seem to have photographed all the suffering which in three years they have witnessed. He's a tall man, but he moves softly. Over his uniform he wears a long white operating smock--he never seems to remove it. And he never seems to sleep, for he comes wandering through his Gethsemane all hours of the night to bend over the more serious cases. He seems haunted by a vision of the wives, mothers, sweethearts, whose happiness is in his hands. I think of him as a Christ in khaki.
The other face is of a girl--a sister I ought to call her. She's the nearest approach to a sculptured Greek goddess I've seen in a living woman. She's very tall, very pale and golden, with wide brows and big grey eyes like Trilby. I wonder what she did before she went to war--for she's gone to war just as truly as any soldier. I'm sure in the peaceful years she must have spent a lot of time in being loved. Perhaps her man was killed out here. Now she's ivory-white with over-service and spends all her days in loving. Her eyes have the old frank, innocent look, but they're ringed with being weary. Only her lips hold a touch of colour; they have a childish trick of trembling when any one's wound is hurting too much. She's the first touch of home that the stretcher-cases see when they've said good-bye to the trenches. She moves down the ward; eyes follow her. When she is absent, though others take her place, she leaves a loneliness. If she meant much to men in days gone by, to-day she means more than ever. Over many dying boys she stoops as the incarnation of the woman whom, had they lived, they would have loved. To all of us, with the blasphemy of destroying still upon us, she stands for the divinity of womanhood.
What sights she sees and what words she hears; yet the pity she brings to her work preserves her sweetness. In the silence of the night those who are delirious re-fight their recent battles. You're half-asleep, when in the darkened ward some one jumps up in bed, shouting, “Hold your bloody hands up.” He thinks he's capturing a Hun trench, taking prisoners in a bombed in dug-out. In an instant, like a mother with a frightened child, she's bending over him; soon she has coaxed his head back on the pillow. Men do not die in vain when they evoke such women. And the men--the chaps in the cots! As a patient the first sight you have of them is a muddy stretcher. The care with which the bearers advance is only equalled by the waiters in old-established London Clubs when they bring in one of their choicest wines. The thing on the stretcher looks horribly like some of the forever silent people you have seen in No Man's Land. A pair of boots you see, a British Warm flung across the body and an arm dragging. A screen is put round a bed; the next sight you have of him is a weary face lying on a white pillow. Soon the chap in the bed next to him is questioning.
“What's yours?”
“Machine-gun caught me in both legs.”
“Going to lose 'em?”
“Don't know. Can't feel much at present. Hope not.”
Then the questioner raises himself on his elbow. “How's it going?”
_It_ is the attack. The conversation that follows is always how we're hanging on to such and such an objective and have pushed forward three hundred yards here or have been bent back there. One thing you notice: every man forgets his own catastrophe in his keenness for the success of the offensive. Never in all my fortnight's journey to Blighty did I hear a word of self-pity or complaining. On the contrary, the most severely wounded men would profess themselves grateful that they had got off so lightly. Since the war started the term “lightly” has become exceedingly comparative. I suppose a man is justified in saying he's got off lightly when what he expected was death.
I remember a big Highland officer who had been shot in the knee-cap. He had been operated on and the knee-cap had been found to be so splintered that it had had to be removed; of this he was unaware. For the first day as he lay in bed he kept wondering aloud how long it would be before he could re-join his battalion. Perhaps he suspected his condition and was trying to find out. All his heart seemed set on once again getting into the fighting. Next morning he plucked up courage to ask the doctor, and received the answer he had dreaded.
“Never. You won't be going back, old chap.”
Next time he spoke his voice was a bit throaty. “Will it stiffen?”
“You've lost the knee-joint,” the doctor said, “but with luck we'll save the leg.”
His voice sank to a whisper. “If you do, it won't be much good, will it?”
“Not much.”
He lay for a couple of hours silent, readjusting his mind to meet the new conditions. Then he commenced talking with cheerfulness about returning to his family. The habit of courage had conquered--the habit of courage which grows out of the knowledge that you let your pals down by showing cowardice.
The next step on the road to Blighty is from the Casualty Station to a Base Hospital in France. You go on a hospital train and are only allowed to go when you are safe to travel. There is always great excitement as to when this event will happen; its precise date usually depends on what's going on up front and the number of fresh casualties which are expected. One morning you awake to find that a tag has been prepared, containing the entire medical history of your injury. The stretcher-bearers come in with grins on their faces, your tag is tied to the top button of your pyjamas, jocular appointments are made by the fellows you leave behind--many of whom you know are dying--to meet you in London, and you are carried out. The train is thoroughly equipped with doctors and nurses; the lying cases travel in little white bunks. No one who has not seen it can have any idea of the high good spirits which prevail. You're going off to Blighty, to Piccadilly, to dry boots and clean beds. The revolving wheels underneath you seem to sing the words, “Off to Blighty--to Blighty.” It begins to dawn on you what it will be like to be again your own master and to sleep as long as you like.
Kindness again--always kindness! The sisters on the train can't do enough; they seem to be trying to exceed the self-sacrifice of the sisters you have left behind. You twist yourself so that you can get a glimpse of the flying country. It's green, undisturbed, unmarred by shells--there are even cows!
At the Base Hospital to which I went there was a man who performed miracles. He was a naturalised American citizen, but an Armenian by birth. He gave people new faces.
The first morning an officer came in to visit a friend; his face was entirely swathed in bandages, with gaps left for his breathing and his eyes. He had been like that for two years, and looked like a leper. When he spoke he made hollow noises. His nose and lower jaw had been torn away by an exploding shell. Little by little, with infinite skill, by the grafting of bone and flesh, his face was being built up. Could any surgery be more merciful?
In the days that followed I saw several of these masked men. The worst cases were not allowed to walk about. The ones I saw were invariably dressed with the most scrupulous care in the smartest uniforms, Sam Browns polished and buttons shining. They had hope, and took a pride in themselves--a splendid sign! Perhaps you ask why the face-cases should be kept in France. I was not told, but I can guess--because they dread going back to England to their girls until they've got rid of their disfigurements. So for two years through their bandages they watch the train pull out for Blighty, while the damage which was done them in the fragment of a second is repaired.
At a Base Hospital you see something which you don't see at a Casualty Station--sisters, mothers, sweethearts and wives sitting beside the beds. They're allowed to come over from England when their man is dying. One of the wonderful things to me was to observe how these women in the hour of their tragedy catch the soldier spirit. They're very quiet, very cheerful, very helpful. With passing through the ward they get to know some of the other patients and remember them when they bring their own man flowers. Sometimes when their own man is asleep, they slip over to other bedsides and do something kind for the solitary fellows. That's the army all over; military discipline is based on unselfishness. These women who have been sent for to see their men die, catch from them the spirit of undistressed sacrifice and enrol themselves as soldiers.
Next to my bed there was a Colonel of a north country regiment, a gallant gentleman who positively refused to die. His wife had been with him for two weeks, a little toy woman with nerves worn to a frazzle, who masked her terror with a brave, set smile. The Colonel had had his leg smashed by a whizz-bang when leading his troops into action. Septic poisoning had set in and the leg had been amputated. It had been found necessary to operate several times owing to the poison spreading, with the result that, being far from a young man, his strength was exhausted. Men forgot their own wounds in watching this one man's fight for life. He became symbolic of what, in varying degrees, we were all doing. When he was passing through a crisis the whole ward waited breathless. There was the finest kind of rivalry between the night and day sisters to hand him over at the end of each twelve hours with his pulse stronger and temperature lower than when they received him. Each was sure she had the secret of keeping him alive.
You discovered the spirit of the man when you heard him wandering in delirium. All night in the shadowy ward with its hooded lamps, he would be giving orders for the comfort of his men. Sometimes he'd be proposing to go forward himself to a place where a company was having a hot time; apparently one of his officers was trying to dissuade him. “Danger be damned,” he'd exclaim in a wonderfully strong voice. “It'll buck 'em up to see me. Splendid chaps--splendid chaps!”
About dawn he was usually supposed to be sinking, but he'd rallied again by the time the day-sister arrived. “Still here,” he'd smile in a triumphant kind of whisper, as though bluffing death was a pastime.
One afternoon a padre came to visit him. As he was leaving he bent above the pillow. We learnt afterwards that this was what he had said, “If the good Lord lets you, I hope you'll get better.”
We saw the Colonel raise himself up on his elbow. His weak voice shook with anger. “Neither God nor the Devil has anything to do with it. I'm going to get well.” Then, as the nurse came hurrying to him, he sank back.
When I left the Base Hospital for Blighty he was still holding his own. I have never heard what happened to him, but should not be at all surprised to meet him one day in the trenches with a wooden leg, still leading his splendid chaps. Death can't kill men of such heroic courage.
At the Base Hospital they talk a good deal of “the Blighty Smile.” It's supposed to be the kind of look a chap wears when he's been told that within twenty-four hours he'll be in England. When this information has been imparted to him, he's served out with warm socks, woollen cap and a little linen bag into which to put his valuables. Hours and hours before there's any chance of starting you'll see the lucky ones lying very still, with a happy vacant look in their eyes and their absurd woollen caps stuck ready on their heads. Sometime, perhaps in the small hours of the morning, the stretcher-bearers, arrive--the stretcher-bearers who all down the lines of communication are forever carrying others towards blessedness and never going themselves. “At last,” you whisper to yourself. You feel a glorious anticipation that you have not known since childhood when, after three hundred and sixty-four days of waiting, it was truly going to be Christmas.
On the train and on the passage there is the same skillful attention--the same ungrudging kindness. You see new faces in the bunks beside you. After the tedium of the narrow confines of a ward that in itself is exciting. You fall into talk.
“What's yours?”
“Nothing much--just a hand off and a splinter or two in the shoulder.”
You laugh. “That's not so dusty. How much did you expect for your money?”
Probably you meet some one from the part of the line where you were wounded--with luck even from your own brigade, battery or battalion. Then the talk becomes all about how things are going, whether we're still holding on to our objectives, who's got a blighty and who's gone west. One discussion you don't often hear--as to when the war will end. To these civilians in khaki it seems that the war has always been and that they will never cease to be soldiers. For them both past and future are utterly obliterated. They would not have it otherwise. Because they are doing their duty they are contented. The only time the subject is ever touched on is when some one expresses the hope that it'll last long enough for him to recover from his wounds and get back into the line. That usually starts another man, who will never be any more good for the trenches, wondering whether he can get into the flying corps. The one ultimate hope of all these shattered wrecks who are being hurried to the Blighty they have dreamt of, is that they may again see service.
The tang of salt in the air, the beat of waves and then, incredible even when it has been realised, England. I think they ought to make the hospital trains which run to London all of glass, then instead of watching little triangles of flying country by leaning uncomfortably far out of their bunks, the wounded would be able to drink their full of the greenness which they have longed for so many months. The trees aren't charred and blackened stumps; they're harps between the knees of the hills, played on by the wind and sun. The villages have their roofs on and children romping in their streets. The church spires haven't been knocked down; they stand up tall and stately. The roadsides aren't littered with empty shell-cases and dead horses. The fields are absolutely fields, with green crops, all wavy, like hair growing. After the tonsured filth we've been accustomed to call a world, all this strikes one as unnatural and extraordinary. There's a sweet fragrance over everything and one's throat feels lumpy. Perhaps it isn't good for people's health to have lumpy throats, and that's why they don't run glass trains to London.
Then, after such excited waiting, you feel that the engine is slowing down. There's a hollow rumbling; you're crossing the dear old wrinkled Thames. If you looked out you'd see the dome of St. Paul's like a bubble on the sky-line and smoking chimneys sticking up like thumbs--things quite ugly and things of surpassing beauty, all of which you have never hoped to see again and which in dreams you have loved. But if you could look out, you wouldn't have the time. You're getting your things together, so you won't waste a moment when they come to carry you out. Very probably you're secreting a souvenir or two about your person: something you've smuggled down from the front which will really prove to your people that you've made the acquaintance of the Hun. As though your wounds didn't prove that sufficiently. Men are childish.
The engine comes to a halt. You can smell the cab-stands. You're really there. An officer comes through the train enquiring whether you have any preference as to hospitals. Your girl lives in Liverpool or Glasgow or Birmingham. Good heavens, the fellow holds your destiny in his hands! He can send you to Whitechapel if he likes. So, even though he has the same rank as yourself, you address him as, “Sir.”
Perhaps it's because I've practised this diplomacy--I don't know. Anyway, he's granted my request. I'm to stay in London. I was particularly anxious to stay in London, because one of my young brothers from the Navy is there on leave at present. In fact he wired me to France that the Admiralty had allowed him a three-days' special extension of leave in order that he might see me. It was on the strength of this message that the doctors at the Base Hospital permitted me to take the journey several days before I was really in a condition to travel.
I'm wondering whether he's gained admission to the platform. I lie there in my bunk all eyes, expecting any minute to see him enter. Time and again I mistake the blue serge uniform of the St. John's Ambulance for that of a naval lieutenant. They come to carry me out. What an extraordinarily funny way to enter London--on a stretcher! I've arrived on boat-trains from America, troop trains from Canada, and come back from romantic romps in Italy, but never in my wildest imaginings did I picture myself arriving as a wounded soldier on a Red Cross train.
Still clutching my absurd linen bag, which contains my valuables, I lift my head from the pillow gazing round for any glimpse of that much-desired brother. Now they've popped me onto the upper-shelf of a waiting ambulance; I can see nothing except what lies out at the back. I at once start explaining to the nurse who accompanies us that I've lost a very valuable brother--that he's probably looking for me somewhere on the station. She's extremely sympathetic and asks the chauffeur to drive very slowly so that we may watch for him as we go through the station gates into the Strand.
We're delayed for some minutes while particulars are checked up of our injuries and destinations. The lying cases are placed four in an ambulance, with the flap raised at the back so we can see out. The sitting cases travel in automobiles, buses and various kinds of vehicles. In my ambulance there are two leg-cases with most theatrical bandages, and one case of trench-fever. We're immensely merry--all except the trench-fever case who has conceived an immense sorrow for himself. We get impatient with waiting. There's an awful lot of cheering going on somewhere; we suppose troops are marching and can't make it out.
Ah, we've started! At a slow crawl to prevent jarring we pass through the gates. We discover the meaning of the cheering. On either side the people are lined in dense crowds, waving and shouting. It's Saturday evening when they should be in the country. It's jolly decent of them to come here to give us such a welcome. Flower-girls are here with their baskets full of flowers--just poor girls with a living to earn. They run after us as we pass and strew us with roses. Roses! We stretch out our hands, pressing them to our lips. How long is it since we held roses in our hands? How did these girls of the London streets know that above all things we longed for flowers? It was worth it all, the mud and stench and beastliness, when it was to this that the road led back. And the girls--they're even better than the flowers; so many pretty faces made kind by compassion. Somewhere inside ourselves we're laughing; we're so happy. We don't need any one's pity; time enough for that when we start to pity ourselves. We feel mean, as though we were part of a big deception. We aren't half so ill as we look; if you put sufficient bandages on a wound you can make the healthiest man appear tragic. We're laughing--and then all of a sudden we're crying. We press our faces against the pillow ashamed of ourselves. We won't see the crowds; we're angry with them for having unmanned us. And then we can't help looking; their love reaches us almost as though it were the touch of hands. We won't hide ourselves if we mean so much to them. We're not angry any more, but grateful.
Suddenly the ambulance-nurse shouts to the driver. The ambulance stops. She's quite excited. Clutching me with one hand, she points with the other, “There he is.”
“Who?”
I raise myself. A naval lieutenant is standing against the pavement, gazing anxiously at the passing traffic.
“Your brother, isn't it?”
I shook my head. “Not half handsome enough.”
For the rest of the journey she's convinced I have a headache. It's no good telling her that I haven't; much to my annoyance and amusement she swabs my forehead with eau-de-Cologne, telling me that I shall soon feel better.
The streets through which we pass are on the south side of the Thames. It's Saturday evening. Hawkers' barrows line the kerb; women with draggled skirts and once gay hats are doing their Sunday shopping. We're having a kind of triumphant procession; with these people to feel is to express. We catch some of their remarks: “'Oo! Look at 'is poor leg!” “My, but ain't 'e done in shockin'!”