PART TWO 9 page

On the other hand, our people might be sending over the planes, whose immense droning was then making your very bones vibrate, in order to tell the Huns that we were ready to be surprised: that the time had now come round when we might be expecting the Hun brain to think out a surprise. So we sent out those deathly, dreadful things to run along just over the tops of the hedgerows, in spite of all the guns! For there was nothing more terrifying in the whole war than that span of lightness, swaying, approaching a few feet above the heads of your column of men: instinct with wrath: dispensing the dreadful rain! So we had sent them. In a moment they would be tearing down…

Of course if this were merely a demonstration: if, say, there were no reinforcements moving, no troops detraining at the distant railhead, the correct Hun answer would be to hammer some of our trenches to hell with all the heavy stuff they could put on to them. That was like saying sardonically:

“God, if you interfere with our peace and quiet on a fine day we'll interfere with yours!” And… Kerumph… the wagons of coal would fly over until we recalled our planes and all went to sleep again over the chess-board… You would probably be just as well off if you refrained from either demonstration or counter-demonstration. But Great General Staff liked to exchange these wittiscisms in iron. And a little blood!

A Sergeant of sorts approached him from Bn H.Q. way, shepherding a man with a head wound. His tin hat, that is to say, was perched jauntily forward over a bandage. He was Jewish-nosed, appeared not to have shaved, though he had, and appeared as if he ought to have worn pince-nez to complete his style of Oriental manhood. Private Smith. Tietjens said:

“Look here, what was your confounded occupation before the war?”

The man replied with an agreeable, cultured throaty intonation:

“I was a journalist, sir. On a Socialist paper. Extreme Left!”

“And what,” Tietjens asked, “was your agreeable name?… I'm obliged to ask you that question. I don't want to insult you.”

In the old regular army it was an insult to ask a private if he was not going under his real name. Most men enlisted under false names.

The man said:

“Eisenstein, sir!”

Tietjens asked if the man were a Derby recruit or compulsorily enlisted. He said he had enlisted voluntarily. Tietjens said: “Why?” If the fellow was a capable journalist and on the right side he would be more useful outside the army. The man said he had been foreign correspondent of a Left paper. Being correspondent of a Left paper with a name like Eisenstein deprived one of one's chance of usefulness. Besides he wanted to have a whack at the Prussians. He was of Polish extraction. Tietjens asked the Sergeant if the man had a good record. The Sergeant said: “First-class man. First-class soldier.” He had been recommended for the D.C.M. Tietjens said:

“I shall apply to have you transferred to the Jewish regiment. In the meantime you can go back to the First Line Transport. You shouldn't have been a Left journalist and have a name like Eisenstein. One or the other. Not both.” The man said the name had been inflicted on his ancestry in the Middle Ages. He would prefer to be called Esau, as a son of that tribe. He pleaded not to be sent to the Jewish regiment, which was believed to be in Mesopotamia, just when the fighting there was at its most interesting.

“You're probably thinking of writing a book,” Tietjens said. “Well, there are all Abana and Pharpar to write about. I'm sorry. But you're intelligent enough to see that I can't take…” He stopped, fearing that if the Sergeant heard any more the men might make it hot for the fellow as a suspect… He was annoyed at having asked his name before the Sergeant. He appeared to be a good man. Jews could fight… And hunt!… But he wasn't going to take any risks. The man, dark-eyed and erect, flinched a little, gazing into Tietjens' eyes.

“I suppose you can't, sir,” he said. “It's a disappointment. I'm not writing anything. I want to go on in the Army. I like the life.”

Tietjens said:

“I'm sorry, Smith. I can't help it. Fall out!” He was sorry. He believed the fellow. But responsibility hardens the heart. It must. A very short time ago he would have taken trouble over that fellow. A great deal of trouble, very likely. Now he wasn't going to…

A large capital “A” in whitewash decorated the piece of corrugated iron that was derelictly propped against a channel at right angles to the trench. To Tietjens' astonishment a strong impulse like a wave of passion influenced his being towards the left—up that channel. It wasn't funk: it wasn't any sort of funk. He had been rather irritatedly wrapped up in the case of Private Smith-Eisenstein. It had undeniably irritated him to have to break the chances of a Jew and Red Socialist. It was the sort of thing one did not do if one were omnipotent—as he was. Then… this strong impulse?… It was a passionate desire to go where you could find exact intellect: rest.

He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincolnshire Sergeant-Major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.

V

The Colonel said:

“Look here, Tietjens, lend me two hundred and fifty quid. They say you're a damn beastly rich fellow. My accounts are all out. I've got a loathsome complaint. My friends have all gone back on me. I shall have to face a Court of Enquiry if I go home. But my nerve's gone. I've got to go home.”

He added:

“I daresay you knew all that.”

From the sudden fierce hatred that he felt at the thought of giving money to this man, Tietjens knew that his inner mind based all his calculations on the idea of living with Valentine Wannop… when men could stand up on hills.

He had found the Colonel in his cellar—it really, actually was a cellar, the remains of a farm—sitting on the edge of his camp-bed, in his shorts, his khaki shirt very open at the neck. His eyes were a little bloodshot, but his cropped, silver-grey hair was accurately waved, his grey moustache beautifully pointed. His silver-backed hair-brushes and a small mirror were indeed on the table in front of him. By the rays of the lamp that, hung overhead, rendered that damp stone place faintly nauseating, he looked keen, clean and resolute. Tietjens wondered how he would look by daylight. He had remarkably seldom seen the fellow by daylight. Beside the mirror and the brushes lay, limply, an unfilled pipe, a red pencil and the white buff papers from Whitehall that Tietjens had already read.

He had begun by looking at Tietjens with a keen, hard, bloodshot glance. He had said:

“You think you can command this battalion? Have you any experience? It appears you suggest that I take two months' leave.”

Tietjens had expected a violent outbreak. Threats even. None had come. The Colonel had continued to regard him with intentness, nothing more. He sat motionless, his long arms, bare to the elbow, dependent over each of his knees which were far apart. He said that if he decided to go he didn't want to leave his battalion to a man that would knock it about. He continued staring hard at Tietjens. The phrase was singular in that place and at that hour, but Tietjens understood it to mean that he did not want his battalion discipline to go to pieces.

Tietjens answered that he did not think he would let the discipline go to pieces. The Colonel bad said:

“How do you know? You're no sddier, are you?”

Tietjens said he had commanded in the line a Company at full strength—nearly as large as the battalion and, out of it, a unit of exactly eight times its present strength. He did not think any complaints had been made of him. The Colonel said, frostily:

“Well! I know nothing about you.” He had added:

“You seem to have moved the battalion all right the night before last. I wasn't in a condition to do it myself. I'm not well. I'm obliged to you. The men appear to like you. They're tired of me.”

Tietjens felt himself on tenterhooks. He had, now, a passionate desire to command that battalion. It was the last thing he would have expected of himself. He said:

“If it becomes a question of a war of motion, sir, I don't know that I should have much experience.”

The Colonel answered:

“It won't become a war of motion before I come back. If I ever do come back.”

Tietjens said:

“Isn't it rather like a war of motion now, sir?” It was perhaps the first time in his life he had ever asked for information from a superior in rank—with an implicit belief that he would get an exact answer. The Colonel said:

“No. This is only falling back on prepared positions. There will be positions prepared for us right back to the sea. If the Staff has done its work properly. If it hasn't, the war's over. We're done, finished, smashed, annihilated, non-existent.”

Tietjens said:

“But if the great strafe that, according to Division, is due now…”

The Colonel said: “What?” Tietjens repeated his words and added:

“We might get pushed beyond the next prepared position.”

The Colonel appeared to withdraw his thoughts from a great distance.

“There isn't going to be any great strafe,” he said. He was beginning to add: “Division has got…” A considerable thump shook the hill behind their backs. The Colonel sat listening without much attention. His eyes gloomily rested on the papers before him. He said, without looking up:

“Yes: I don't want my battalion knocked about!” He went on reading again—the communication from Whitehall. He said: “You've read this?” and then:

“Falling back on prepared positions isn't the same as moving in the open. You don't have to do more than you do in a trench-to-trench attack. I suppose you can get your direction by compass all right. Or get someone to, for you.”

Another considerable crump of sound shook the earth but from a little further away. The Colonel turned the sheet of paper over. Pinned to the back of it was the private note of the Brigadier. He perused this also with gloomy and unsurprised eyes.

“Pretty stiff, all this,” he said. “You've read it? I shall have to go back and see about this.”

He exclaimed:

“It's rough luck. I should have liked to leave my battalion to someone that knew it. I don't suppose you do. Perhaps you do, though.”

An immense collection of fire-irons: all the fire-irons in the world fell just above their heads. The sound seemed to prolong itself in echoes, though of course it could not have. It was repeated.

The Colonel looked upwards negligently. Tietjens proposed to go to see. The Colonel said:

“No, don't. Notting will tell us if anything's wanted… Though nothing can be wanted!” Notting was the beady-eyed Adjutant in the adjoining cellar. “How could they expect us to keep accounts straight in August 1914? How can they expect me to remember what happened? At the Depot. Then!” He appeared listless, but without resentment. “Rotten luck…” he said. “In the battalion and… with this!” He rapped the back of his hand on the papers. He looked up at Tietjens.

“I suppose I could get rid of you; with a bad report,” he said. “Or perhaps I couldn't… General Campion put you here. You're said to be his bastard.”

“He's my godfather,” Tietjens said. “If you put in a bad report of me I should not protest. That is, if it were on the grounds of lack of experience. I should go to the Brigadier over anything else.”

“It's the same thing,” the Colonel said, “I mean a godson. If I had thought you were General Campion's bastard, I should not have said it… No; I don't want to put in a bad report of you. It's my own fault if you don't know the battalion. I've kept you out of it. I didn't want you to see what a rotten state the papers are in. They say you're the devil of a paper soldier. You used to be in a Government office, didn't you?”

Heavy blows were being delivered to the earth with some regularity on each side of the cellar. It was as if a boxer of the size of a mountain were delivering rights and lefts in heavy alternation. And it made hearing rather difficult.

“Rotten luck,” the Colonel said. “And McKechnie's dotty. Clean dotty.” Tietjens missed some words. He said that he would probably be able to get the paper work of the battalion straight before the Colonel came back.

The noise rolled down hill like a heavy cloud. The Colonel continued talking and Tietjens, not being very accustomed to his voice, lost a good deal of what he said but, as if in a rift, he did hear:

“I'm not going to burn my fingers with a bad report on you that may bring a General on my back—to get back McKechnie who's dotty… Not fit to…”

The noise rolled in again. Once the Colonel listened to it, turning his head on one side and looking upwards. But he appeared satisfied with what he heard and recommenced his perusal of the Horse Guards letter. He took the pencil, underlined words and then sat idly stabbing the paper with the point.

With every minute Tietjens' respect for him increased. This man at least knew his job—as an engine-dresser does, or the captain of a steam tramp. His nerves might have gone to pieces. They probably had; probably he could not go very far without stimulants: he was probably under bromides now.

And, all things considered, his treatment of Tietjens had been admirable and Tietjens had to revise his view of it. He realized that it was McKechnie who had given him the idea that the Colonel hated him: but he would not have said anything. He was too old a hand in the Army to give Tietjens a handle by saying anything definite… And he had always treated Tietjens with a sort of monumental deference that, in a Mess, the Colonel should bestow on his chief assistant. Going through a door at meal-times, for instance, if they happened to be side by side, he would motion with his hand for Tietjens to go first, naturally though, taking his proper precedence when Tietjens halted. And here he was, perfectly calm. And quite ready to be instructive.

Tietjens was not calm: he was too much bothered by Valentine Wannop and by the thought that, if the strafe was on, he ought to be seeing about his battalion. And of course by the bombardment. But the Colonel said, when Tietjens with the aid of signs again made proposals to take a look around:

“No. Stop where you are. This isn't the strafe. There is not going to be a strafe. This is only a little extra Morning Hate. You can tell by the noise. That's only four point two's. There's nothing really heavy. The really heavies don't come so fast. They'll be turning on to the Worcesters now and only giving us one every half minute… That's their game. If you don't know that, what are you doing here?” He added: “You hear?” pointing his forefinger to the roof. The noise shifted. It went away to the right as a slow coal-wagon might. He went on:

“This is your place. Not doing things up above. They'll come and tell you if they want things. And you've got a first-rate Adjutant in Notting and Dunne's a good man… The men are all under cover: that's an advantage in having your strength down to three hundred. There's dugouts for all and to spare… All the same, this is no place for you. Nor for me. This is a young man's war. We're old uns. Three and a half years of it have done for me. Three and a half months will do for you.”

He looked gloomily at his reflection in the mirror that stood before him.

“You're a gone coon!” he said to it. Then he took it and holding it for a moment poised at the end of a bare white arm, flung it violently at the rough stones of the wall behind Tietjens. The fragments tinkled to the ground.

“There's seven years' bad luck,” he said. “God take 'em, if they can give me seven years worse than this last I'd find it instructive!”

He looked at Tietjens with infuriated eyes.

“Look here you!” he said, “you're an educated man… What's the worst thing about this war? What's the worst thing? Tell me that!” His chest began to heave. “It's that they won't let us alone. Never! Not one of us! If they'd let us alone we could fight. But never… No one! It's not only the beastly papers of the battalion, though I'm no good with papers. Never was and never shall be… But it's the people at home. One's own people. God help us, you'd think that when a poor devil was in the trenches they'd let him alone… Damn it: I've had solicitors' letters about family quarrels when I was in hospital. Imagine that!… Imagine it! I don't mean tradesmen's dunnings. But one's own people. I haven't even got a bad wife as McKechnie has and they say you have. My wife's a bit extravagant and the children are expensive. That's worry enough… But my father died eighteen months ago. He was in partnership with my uncle. A builder. And they tried to do his estate out of his share of the business and leave my old mother with nothing. And my brother and sister threw the estate into Chancery in order to get back the little bit my father spent on my wife and children. My wife and children lived with my father whilst I was in India… And out here… My solicitor says they can get it out of my share: the cost of their keep. He calls it the doctrine of ademption. Ademption… Doctrine of… I was better off as a Sergeant,” he added gloomily. “But Sergeants don't get let alone. They've always got women after them. Or their wives take up with Belgians and they get written to about it. Sergeant Cutts of 'D' Company gets an anonymous letter every week about his wife. How's he to do his duty! But he does. So have I till now…” He added with renewed violence:

“Look here. You're an educated man, aren't you? The sort of man that could write a book. You write a book about that. You write to the papers about it. You'd be more use to the Army doing that than being here. I daresay you're a good enough officer. Old Campion is too keen a commander to stick a rotten officer into this job, godson or no godson… Besides, I don't believe the whole story about you. If a General wanted to give a soft godson's job to a fellow, it would be a soft job and a fat one. He wouldn't send him here. So take the battalion with my blessing. You won't worry over it more than I have: the poor bloody Glamorgans.”

So he had his battalion! He drew an immense breath. The bumps began to come back along the line. He figured those shells as being like sparrow-hawks beating along a hedge. They were probably pretty accurate. The Germans were pretty accurate. The trenches were probably being knocked about a good deal, the pretty, pinkish gravel falling about in heaps as it would lie in a park, ready to be spread on paths. He remembered how he had been up on the Montagne Noire, still, thank God, behind where they were now. Why did he thank God? Did he really care where the Army was. Probably! But enough to say “thank God” about? Probably too… But as long as they kept on at the job did anything matter? Anything else? It was keeping on that mattered. From the Montagne Noire he had seen our shells bursting on a thinnish line in the distance, in shining weather. Each shell existing in a white puff, beautifully. Forward and backward along the line… Under Messines village. He had felt exhilaration to think that our gunners were making such good practice. Now some Hun on a hill was feeling exhilaration over puffs of smoke in our line!… But he, Tietjens, was… Damn it, he was going to make two hundred and fifty quid towards living with Valentine Wannop—when you really could stand up on a hill… anywhere!

The Adjutant, Notting, looked in and said:

“Brigade wants to know if we're suffering any, sir?” The Colonel surveyed Tietjens with irony:

“Well, what are you going to report?” he asked… “This officer is taking over from me,” he said to Notting. Notting's beady eyes and red-varnished cheeks expressed no emotions.

“Oh, tell Brigade,” the Colonel said, “that we're all as happy as sand-boys. We could stand this till Kingdom come.” He asked: “We aren't suffering any, are we?”

Notting said: no, not in particular. “C” Company was grumbling that all its beautiful revetments had been knocked to pieces. The sentry near their own dugout complained that the pebbles in the gravel were nearly as bad as shrapnel.

“Well, tell Brigade what I said. With Major Tietjens' compliments, not mine. He's in command.”

“…You may as well make a cheerful impression to begin with,” he added to Tietjens.

It was then that, suddenly, he burst out with:

“Look here! Lend me two hundred and fifty quid!”

He remained staring fixedly at Tietjens with an odd air of a man who has just asked a teasing, jocular conundrum…

Tietjens had recoiled—really half an inch. The man said he was suffering from a loathsome disease: it was being near something dirty. You don't contract loathsome diseases except from the cheapest kind of women or through being untidy-minded… The man's pals had gone back on him. That sort of man's pals do go back on him His accounts were all out… He was in short the sort of swindling, unclean scoundrel to whom one lent money… Irresistibly!

A crash of the sort you couldn't ignore, as is the case with certain claps in thunderstorms, sent a good deal of gravel down their cellar steps. It crashed against their shaky door. They heard Notting come out of his cellar and tell someone to shovel the beastly stuff back again where it had come from.

The Colonel looked up at the roof. He said that had knocked their parapet about a bit. Then he resumed his fixed gaze at Tietjens.

Tietjens said to himself.

“I'm losing my nerve… It's the damned news that Campion is coming… I'm becoming a wretched, irresolute Johnny.”

The Colonel said:

“I'm not a beastly sponger. I never borrowed before!” His chest heaved… It really expanded and then got smaller again, the orifice in the khaki at his throat contracting… Perhaps he had never borrowed before…

After all, it didn't matter what kind of man this was, it was a question of what sort of a man Tietjens was becoming. He said:

“I can't lend you the money. I'll guarantee an overdraft to your agents. For two hundred and fifty.”

Well, then, he remained the sort of man who automatically lent money. He was glad.

The Colonel's face fell. His martially erect shoulders indeed collapsed. He exclaimed ruefully:

“Oh, I say, I thought you were the sort one could go to.” Tietjens said:

“It's the same thing. You can draw a cheque on your bank exactly as if I paid the money in.”

The Colonel said:

“I can? It's the same thing? You're sure?” His questions were like the pleas of a young woman asking you not to murder her.

…He obviously was not a sponger. He was a financial virgin. There could not be a subaltern of eighteen in the whole army who did not know what it meant to have an overdraft guaranteed after a fortnight's leave… Tietjens only wished they didn't. He said:

“You've practically got the money in your hand as you sit there. I've only to write the letter. It's impossible your agents should refuse my guarantee. If they do, I'll raise the money and send it to you.”

He wondered why he didn't do that last in any case. A year or so ago he would have had no hesitation about overdrawing his account to any extent. Now he had an insupportable objection. Like a hatred!

He said:

“You'd better let me have your address,” he added, for his mind was really wandering a little. There was too much talk! “I suppose you'll go to No. IX Red Cross at Rouen for a bit.”

The Colonel sprang to his feet:

“My God, what's that?” he cried out. “Me… to No. IX.”

Tietjens exclaimed:

“I don't know the procedure. You said you had…”

The other cried out:

“I've got cancer. A big swelling under the armpit.” He passed his hand over his bare flesh through the opening of his shirt, the long arm disappearing to the elbow. “Good God… I suppose when I said my pals had gone back on me you thought I'd asked them for help and been refused. I haven't… They're all killed. That's the worst way you can go back on a pal, isn't it? Don't you understand men's language?”

He sat down heavily on his bed again.

He said:

“By Jove: if you hadn't promised to let me have the money there would have been nothing for me but to make a hole in the water.”

Tietjens said:

“Well, don't contemplate it now. Get yourself well looked after. What does Derry say?”

The Colonel again started violently:

“Derry! The M.O… Do you think I'd tell him! Or little squits of subalterns? Or any man! You understand now why I wouldn't take Derry's beastly pill. How do I know what it mightn't do to…”

Again he passed his hand under his armpit, his eyes taking on a yearning and calculating expression. He added:

“I thought it a duty to tell you as I was asking you for a loan. You might not get repaid. I suppose your offer still holds good?”

Drops of moisture had hitherto made beads on his forehead; it now shone, uniformly wet.

“If you haven't consulted anybody,” Tietjens said, “you mayn't have got it. I should have yourself seen to right away. My offer still holds good!”

“Oh, I've got it, all right,” the Colonel answered with an air of infinite sapience. “My old man—my governor—had it. Just like that. And he never told a soul till three days before his death. Neither shall I.”

“I should get it seen to,” Tietjens maintained. “It's a duty to your children. And the King. You're too damn good a soldier for the Army to lose.”

“Nice of you to say so,” the Colonel said. “But I've stood too much. I couldn't face waiting for the verdict.”

…It was no good saying he had faced worse things. He very likely hadn't, being the man he was.

The Colonel said:

“Now if I could be any good!”

Tietjens said:

“I suppose I may go along the trenches now. There's a wet place…”

He was determined to go along the trenches. He had to… what was it… “find a place to be alone with Heaven.” He maintained also his conviction that he must show the men his mealsack of a body, mooning along; but attentive.

A problem worried him. He did not like putting it since it might seem to question the Colonel's military efficiency. He wrapped it up: had the Colonel any special advice as to keeping in touch with units on the right and left? And as to passing messages.

…That was a mania with Tietjens. If he had had his way he would keep the battalion day and night at communication drill. He had not been able to discover that any precautions of that sort were taken in that unit at all. Or in the others alongside…

He had hit on the Colonel's heel of Achilles.

In the open it became evident: more and more and more and always more evident! The news that General Campion was taking over that command had changed Tietjens' whole view of the world.

The trenches were much as he had expected. They conformed indeed exactly to the image he had had in the cellar. They resembled heaps of reddish gravel laid out ready to distribute over the roads of parks. Getting out of the dugout had been like climbing into a trolley that had just been inverted for the purposes of discharging its load. It was a nasty job for the men, cleaving a passage and keeping under cover. Naturally the German sharpshooters were on the lookout. Our problem was to get as much of the trench as you could set up by daylight. The German problem was to get as many of our men as possible. Tietjens would see that our men stayed under cover until nightfall; the commander of the unit opposite would attend to the sniping of as many men as he could. Tietjens himself had three first-class snipers left: they would attempt to get as many of the German snipers as they could. That was self-defence.

In addition a great many Enemy attentions would direct themselves to Tietjens' stretch of the line. The artillery would continue to plunk in a shell or so from time to time. They would not do this very often because it would invite the attention of our artillery and that might prove too costly. More or less heavy masses of High Explosives would be thrown on to the line: what the Germans called Minenwerfer might project what our people called sausages. These being visible coming through the air you posted lookouts who gave you warning in time to get under cover. So the Germans had rather abandoned the use of these, probably as being costly in explosives and not so very effective. They made, that is to say, good holes but accounted for few men.

Airplanes with their beastly bullet-distributing hoppers—that is what they seemed like—would now and then duck along the trench, but not very often. The proceeding was, again, too costly: they would limit themselves as a rule to circling leisurely overhead and dropping things whilst the shrapnel burst round them—and spattered bullets over the trench. Flying pigs, aerial torpedoes, and other floating missiles, pretty, shining, silvery things with fins, would come through the air and would explode on striking the ground or after burying themselves. There was practically no end to their devices and the Huns had a new one every other week or so. They perhaps wasted themselves on new devices. A good many of them turned out to be duds. And a good many of their usually successful missiles turned out to be duds. They were undoubtedly beginning to feel the strain—mental and in their materials. So that if you had to be in these beastly places it was probably better to be in our trenches than theirs. Our war material was pretty good!

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 734