Part 9

For after that Harry began to be in a bad way again. That shelling in the night and the near concussion of the shell that knocked him over had been one of those capital shocks of which I have spoken. From that time on, shell-fire in the open became a special terror, a new favourite fear; afterwards he told me so. And all that winter we had shell-fire in the open--even the 'lines' were not trenches, only a string of scattered shell-holes garrisoned by a few men. Everywhere, night and day, you had that naked feeling.

Yet in France, at the worst, given proper rest and variety, with a chance to nurse his courage and soothe his nerves, a resolute man could struggle on a long time after he began to crack. But Harry had no rest, no chance. The _affaire Philpott_ was having a rich harvest. For about three weeks in the February of that awful winter the battalion was employed solely on working-parties, all sorts of them, digging, carrying, behind the line, in the line, soft jobs, terrible jobs. Now as adjutant I used to take particular care that the safe jobs in the rear should be fairly shared among the companies in a rough rotation, and that no officers or men should have too many of the bad ones--the night carrying-parties to the front line. But about now Colonel Philpott began to exert himself about these parties; he actually issued orders about the arrangements, and whether by accident or design, his orders had this particular effect, that Harry took about three times as many of the dangerous parties as anybody else. We were in a country of rolling down with long trough-like valleys or ravines between. To get to the front line you had to cross two of these valleys, and in each of them the Boche put a terrific barrage all night, and every night. The second one--the Valley of Death--was about as near to Inferno as I wish to see, for it was enfiladed from both ends, and you had shell-fire from three directions. Well, for three weeks Harry took a party through this valley four or five nights a week.... Each party meant a double passage through two corners of hell, with a string of weary men to keep together, and encourage and command, with all that maddening accumulation of difficulties I have tried already to describe ... and at the end of that winter, after all he had done, it was too much. I protested to the Colonel, but it was no good. 'Master Penrose can go on with these parties,' he said, 'till he learns how to do them properly.'

After ten days of this Harry began to be afraid of himself; or, as he put it, 'I don't know if I can stand much more of this.' All his old distrust of himself, which lately I think he had very successfully kept away, came creeping back. But he made no complaint; he did not ask me to intercede with Philpott. The more he hated and feared these parties, the worse he felt, the keener became his determination to stick it out, to beat Philpott at his own game. Or so I imagine. For by the third week there was no doubt; what is called his 'nerve' was clean gone; or, as he put it to me in the soldier's tongue, 'I've got complete wind-up.' He would have given anything--except his pride--to have escaped one of those parties; he thought about them all day. I did manage, in sheer defiance of Philpott, to take him off one of them; but it was only sheer dogged will-power, and perhaps the knowledge that we were to be relieved the following week, which carried him through to the end of it....

If we had not gone out I don't know what would have happened. But I can guess.

II

And so Philpott finally broke his nerve. But he was still keen and resolute to go on, in spite of the bitterness in his heart. Philpott--and other things--had still to break his spirit. And the 'other things' were many that winter. It was a long, cold, comfortless winter. Billets became more and more broken and windowless and lousy; firewood vanished, and there was little coal. On the high slopes there was a bitter wind, and men went sick in hundreds--pneumonia, fever, frost-bite. All dug-outs were damp and chilling and greasy with mud, or full of the acrid wood-smoke that tortured the eyes. There were night advances in the snow, where lightly wounded men perished of exposure before dawn. For a fortnight we lived in tents on a hill-top covered with snow.

And one day Harry discovered he was lousy....

Then, socially, though it seems a strange thing to say, these were dull days for Harry. Few people realize how much an infantryman's life is lightened if he has companions of his own kind--not necessarily of the same class, though it usually comes to that--but of the same tastes and education and experience--men who make the same kind of jokes. In the line it matters little, a man is a man, as the Press will tell you. But in the evenings, out at rest, it was good and cheering to sit with the Old Crowd and exchange old stories of Gallipoli and Oxford and London; even to argue with Eustace about the Public Schools; to be with men who liked the same songs, the same tunes on the gramophone, who did not always ask for 'My Dixie Bird' or 'The Green Woman' waltz.... And now there was none of the Old Crowd left, only Harry and myself, Harry with a company now, and myself very busy at Headquarters. And Harry's company were very dull men, promoted N.C.O.'s mostly, good fellows all--very good in the line--but they were not the Old Crowd. Now, instead of those great evenings we used to have, with the white wine, and the music, and old George dancing, evenings that have come down in the history of the battalion as our battles have done, evenings that kept the spirit strong in the blackest times--there were morose men with wooden faces sitting silently over some whisky and Battalion Orders....

And Hewett was dead, the laughing, lovable Hewett. That was the black heart of it. When a man becomes part of the great machine, he is generally supposed--I know not why--to surrender with his body his soul and his affections and all his human tendernesses. But it is not so.

We never talked of Hewett very much. Only there was for ever a great gap. And sometimes, when we tried to be cheerful in the evenings, as in the old times, and were not, we said to each other--Harry and I--'I wish to God that he was here.' Yet for long periods I forgot Hewett. Harry never forgot him.

Then there was something about which I may be wrong, for Harry never mentioned it, and I am only guessing from my own opinion. In two years of war he had won no kind of medal or distinction--except a 'mention' in despatches, which is about as satisfying as a caraway-seed to a starving man. In Gallipoli he had done things which in France in modern times would have earned an easy decoration. But they were scarce in those days; and in France he had done much dogged and difficult work, and a few very courageous, but in a military sense perfectly useless things, nothing dramatic, nothing to catch the eye of the Brigade. I don't know whether he minded much, but I felt it myself very keenly; for I knew that he had started with ambitions; and here were fellows with not half his service, or courage, or capacity, just ordinary men with luck, ablaze with ribbon.... Any one who says he cares nothing about medals is a hypocrite, though most of us care very little. But if you believe you have done well, and not only is there nothing to show for it, but nothing to show that other people believe it ... you can't help caring.

And then, on top of it, when you have a genuine sense of bitter injustice, when you know that your own most modest estimate of yourself is exalted compared with the estimate of the man who commands you--you begin to have black moods....

III

Harry had black moods. All these torments accumulated and broke his spirit. He lost his keenness, his cheerfulness, and his health. Once a man starts on that path, his past history finds him out, like an old wound. Some men take to drink and are disgraced. In Harry's case it was Gallipoli. No man who had a bad time in that place ever 'got over' it in body or soul. And when France or some other campaign began to work upon them, it was seen that there was something missing in their resisting power; they broke out with old diseases and old fears ... the legacies of Gallipoli.

Harry grew pale, and nervous, and hunted to look at; and he had a touch of dysentery. But the worst of the poison was in his mind and heart. For a long time, as I have said, since he felt the beginning of those old doubts, and saw himself starting downhill, he had striven anxiously to keep his name high in men's opinion; for all liked him and believed in him. He had been ready for anything, and done his work with a conscientious pride. But now this bitterness was on him, he seemed to have ceased to care what happened or what men thought of him. He had unreasonable fits of temper; he became distrustful and cynical. I thought then, sometimes, of the day when he had looked at Troy and wanted to be like Achilles. It was painful to me to hear him talking as Eustace used to talk, suspicious, intolerant, incredulous.... I thought how Harry had once hated that kind of talk, and it was most significant of the change that had come over the good companion I had known. Yet sometimes, when the sun shone, and once when we rode back into Albert and dined quietly alone, that mask of bitterness fell away; there were flashes of the old cheerful Harry, and I had hopes. I hoped Philpott would be killed....

IV

But he survived, for he was very careful. And though, as I have said, he stuck it for a long time, he was by no means the gallant fire-eater you would have imagined from his treatment of defaulters. Once round the line just before dawn was enough for him in that sort of country. 'Things are quiet then, and you can see what's going on.' He liked it best when 'things were quiet.' So did all of us, and I don't blame him for that.

But that winter there was a thick crop of S.I.W.'s. S.I.W. is the short title for a man who has been evacuated with self-inflicted wounds--shot himself in the foot, or held a finger over the muzzle of his rifle, or dropped a great boulder on his foot--done himself any reckless injury to escape from the misery of it all. It was always a marvel to me that any man who could find courage to do such things could not find courage to go on; I suppose they felt it would bring them the certainty of a little respite, and beyond that they did not care, for it was the uncertainty of their life that had broken them. You could not help being sorry for these men, even though you despised them. It made you sick to think that any man who had come voluntarily to fight for his country could be brought so low, that humanity could be so degraded exactly where it was being so ennobled.

But Philpott had no such qualms. He was ruthless, and necessarily so; but, beyond that, he was brutal, he bullied. When they came before him, healed of their wounds, haggard, miserable wisps of men, he kept them standing there while he told them at length exactly how low they had sunk (they knew that well enough, poor devils), and flung at them a rich vocabulary of abuse--words of cowardice and dishonour, which were strictly accurate but highly unnecessary. For these men were going back to duty now; they had done their punishment--though the worst of it was still to come; all they needed was a few quiet words of encouragement from a strong man to a weaker, a little human sympathy, and that appeal to a man's honour which so seldom fails if it is rightly made.

Well, this did not surprise me in Philpott; he had no surprises for me by now. What did surprise me was Harry's intolerant, even cruel, comments on the cases of the S.I.W.'s. He had always had a real sympathy with the men, he knew the strange workings of their minds, and all the wretchedness of their lives; he understood them. And yet here he was, as scornful, as Prussian, on the subject of S.I.W.'s as even Philpott. It was long before I understood this--I don't know that I ever did. But I thought it was this: that in these wrecks of men he recognized something of his own sufferings; and recognizing the disease he was the more appalled by the remedy they took. The kind of thing that had led them to it was the kind of thing he had been through, was going through. There the connection ceased. There was no such way out for him. But though it ceased, the connection was so close that it was degrading. And this scorn and anger was a kind of instinctive self-defence--put on to assure himself, to assure the world, that there was no connection--none at all.... But I don't know.

V

At the end of February I was wounded and went home. Without any conceit, without exaggerating our friendship, I may say that this was the final blow for Harry. I was the last of the Old Crowd; I was the one man who knew the truth of things as between him and Philpott.... And I went.

I was hit by a big shell at Whizz-Bang Corner, and Harry saw me on the stretcher as we came past D Company on the Bapaume Road. He walked with me as far as the cookers, and was full of concern for my wound, which was pretty painful just then. But he bucked me up and talked gaily of the good things I was going to. And he said nothing of himself. But when he left me there was a look about him--what is the word?--_wistful_--it is the only one, like a dog left behind.

* * * * *

While I was still in hospital I had two letters from the battalion. The first was from Harry, a long wail about Philpott and the dullness of everybody now that the Old Crowd were extinct, though he seemed to have made good friends of some of the dull ones. At the end of that endless winter, when it seemed as if the spring would never come, they had pulled out of the line and 'trekked' up north, so that there had been little fighting. They were now in shell-holes across the high ridge in front of Arras, preparing for an advance.

The other letter was from old Knight, the Quartermaster, dated two months after I left.

I will give you an extract:

_'Probably by now you will have seen or heard from young Penrose. He was hit on the 16th, a nasty wound in the chest from a splinter.... It was rather funny--not funny, but you know what I mean--how he got it. I was there myself though I didn't see it. I had been up to H.Q. to see about the rations, and there were a lot of us, Johnson (he is now Adj. in your place) and Fellowes, and so on, standing outside H.Q. (which is on a hill--what you people call a forward slope, I believe), and watching our guns bombarding the village. It was a remarkable sight, etc. etc._ (a long digression).... _Then the Boche started shelling our hill; he dropped them in pairs, first of all at the other end of the hill, about 500 yards off, and then nearer and nearer, about 20 yards at a time ... the line they were on was pretty near to us, so we thought the dug-out would be a good place to go to.... Penrose was just starting to go back to his company when this began, and as we went down somebody told him he'd better wait a bit. But he said "No, he wanted to get back." I was the last down, and as I disappeared (pretty hurriedly) I told him not to be a fool. But all he said was, "This is nothing, old bird--you wait till you live up here; I'm going on." The next thing we heard was the hell of an explosion on top. We ran up afterwards, and there he was, about thirty yards off.... The funny thing is that I understood he rather had the wind-up just now, and was anything but reckless ... in fact, some one said he had the Dug-out Disease.... Otherwise, you'd have said he wanted to be killed. I don't know why he wasn't, asking for it like that.... Well, thank God I'm a Q.M., etc. etc.'_

I read it all very carefully, and wondered. '_You'd have said he wanted to be killed._' I wondered about that very much.

And there was a postscript which interested me:

'_By the way, I hear Burnett's got the M.C.--for Salvage, I believe!_'

X

I was six months in that hospital, and I did not see Harry for seven. For I was at Blackpool, and he at Lady Radmore's in Kensington. His was a quicker business than mine; and when I had finished with the hospitals and the homes and came to London for a three weeks' laze, he was back at the Depot. Then he got seven days' leave for some mysterious reason (I think there was a draft leaving shortly, and everybody had some leave), and I dined twice with him at home. They had a little house in Chelsea, very tastefully furnished by Mrs. Penrose, whom I now saw for the first time. But I saw more of her that evening than I did of Harry, who was hopelessly entangled with two or three 'in-laws.' She was a dark, gentle little person, with brown, and rather sorrowful, eyes. When I first saw her I thought, 'She was never meant to be a soldier's wife,' but after we had talked a little, I added, 'But she is a good one.' She was clearly very much in love with Harry, and delighted to meet some one who had been with him in France, and was fond of him--for, like all wives, she soon discovered that. But all the time I felt that there were questions she wanted to ask me, and could not. I will not pretend to tell you how she was dressed, because I don't know; I seldom notice, and then I never remember. But she appealed to me very much, and I made up my mind to look after _her_ interests if I ever had the chance, if there was ever a question between Harry and a single man. I had no chance of a talk with Harry, and noticed only that he seemed pretty fit again but sleepless-looking.

The second night I went there was the last night of Harry's leave. If I had known that when I was asked I think I should not have gone; for while it showed I was a privileged person, it is a painful privilege to break in on the 'last evening' of husband and wife; I know those last evenings. And though Harry was only going back to the Depot in the morning, it was known there had been heavy losses in the regiment; there was talk of a draft ... it might well be the last evening of all.

I got there early, at Harry's request, about half-past five, on a miserable gusty evening in early November. Harry was sitting in a kind of study, library, or den, writing; he looked less well, and very sleepless about the eyes.

It was the anniversary of one of the great battles of the regiment; and we talked a little of that day, as soldiers will, with a sort of gloomy satisfaction. Then Harry said, slowly:

'I've been offered a job at the War Office--by Major Mackenzie--Intelligence.'

'Oh,' I said, 'that's very good.' (But I was thinking more of Mrs. Harry than Harry.)

Harry went on, as if he had not heard. 'I was writing to him when you came in. And I don't know what to say.'

'Why not?'

'Well,' he said, '_you_ know as well as any one what sort of time I've had, and how I've been treated--by Philpott and others. And I've had about enough of it. I remember telling you once on the Peninsula that I thought myself fairly brave when I first went out ... and, my God, so I was compared with what I am now.... I suppose every one has his breaking-point, and I've certainly had mine.... I simply feel I can't face it again.'

'Very well,' I said, 'take the job and have done with it. You've done as much as you can, and you can't do more. What's the trouble?'

But he went on, seemingly to convince himself rather than me. 'I've never got over those awful working-parties in that ---- valley; I had two or three 5-9's burst right on top of me, you know ... the Lord knows how I escaped ... and now I simply dream of them. I dream of them every night ... usually it's an enormous endless plain, full of shell-holes, of course, and raining like hell, and I walk for miles (usually with you) looking over my shoulder, waiting for the shells to come ... and then I hear that savage kind of high-velocity shriek, and I run like hell ... only I can't run, of course, that's the worst part ... and I get into a ditch and lie there ... and then one comes that I know by the sound is going to burst on top of me ... and I wake up simply sweating with funk. I've never told anybody but you about this, not even Peggy, but she says I wake her up sometimes, making an awful noise.'

He was silent for a little, and I had nothing to say.

'And then it's all so different now, so damnably ... dull.... I wouldn't mind if we could all go out together again ... just the Old Crowd ... so that we could have good evenings, and not care what happened. But now there's nobody left (I don't expect they'll let _you_ go out again), only poor old Egerton--he's back again ... and I can't stand all those boot-faced N.C.O. officers and people like Philpott, and all the Old Duds.... You can't get away from it--the boot-faces _aren't_ officers, and nothing will make them so ... even the men can't stand them. And they get on my nerves....

'It all gets on my nerves, the mud, and the cold, and the futile Brigadiers, and all the damned eyewash we have nowadays ... never having a decent wash, and being cramped up in a dug-out the size of a chest-of-drawers with four boot-faces ... where you can't move without upsetting the candle and the food, or banging your head ... and getting lousy. And all those endless ridiculous details you have to look after day after day ... working-parties ... haversack rations ... has every man got his box-respirator?... why haven't you cleaned your rifle?... as if I cared a damn!... No, I won't say that ... but there you are, you see, it's on my nerves.... But sometimes' (and though I sympathized I was glad there was a 'but') 'when I think of some of the bogus people who've been out, perhaps once, and come home after three months with a nice blighty in the shoulder, and got a job, and stayed in it ever since ... I feel I can't do that either, and run the risk of being taken for one of them....'

'I don't think there's any danger of that,' I remarked.

'I don't know--one "officeer" is the same as another to most people.... And then, you know, although you hate it, it does get hold of you somehow--out there ... and after a bit, when you've got used to being at home you get restless.... I know I did last time, and sometimes I do now.... I don't say I hunger for the battle, I never want to be in a "stunt" again ... but you feel kind of "out of it" when you read the papers, or meet somebody on leave ... you think of the amusing evenings we used to have.... And I rather enjoyed "trekking" about in the back areas ... especially when I had a horse ... wandering along on a good frosty day, and never sure what village you were going to sleep in ... marching through Doullens with the band ... estaminets, and talking French, and all the rest of it....