A Test to Destruction (5 page)

The last train left Landguard station at 9.15 p.m. He decided not to go home, but to spend the evening in the mess, as it was Guest Night; he would catch the early morning train from Ipswich.

After dinner there was a binge in the ante-room when the Colonel and his guest, Commodore Sir Reginald Tyrrwhitt of
the Harwich Forces, a tall man with gaunt face and immense bushy eyebrows, had left. Tray after tray, loaded with glasses of hot Irish whiskey, sugar, and lemon, were brought in by the waiters. Songs were roared out around the piano, including one from a new London revue.

Lie-a-beds in cubicles were ragged, wrestling matches became rugger scrums for waste-paper baskets, which were torn to withies. Docherty, the Ulsterman, used his stump-arm like a blunted rhino-horn, keeping all others at a distance. One captain, who had never been overseas since being gazetted early in 1915, an unpopular man with chocolate-brown eyes, was rolled in the carpet and carried half-way to the incinerator by bloodshot-eyed subalterns howling like red Indians. While resting with the carpet load—Captain Despard had accepted it all without struggle—someone suggested the sea, so the carpet went over the shingle and Despard was thrown into the waves. Phillip, who had liked Despard’s conversation about music and poetry until something in his ingratiating manner had put him off, suddenly realized that it was the almost naked cowardice in the dark eyes, affecting others, which was responsible for Despard’s unpopularity. His own sympathy had been alienated because of his own hidden fear; this, as he realized it, changed to sympathy, so when the poor devil was swung out of the carpet into the sea, Phillip plunged in after him, pretending that it was all a rag. Afterwards he took him into his billet, where Despard, teeth chattering behind fixed smile, got out of his wet uniform, while Phillip made a telescope of the rest of the old magazines up the chimney and set fire to the base. The room flickered, the chimney roared, caught fire, a final blast of lilac and yellow flames rose six feet above the chimney-pot which exploded and a shrapnel-rattling of fragments came down on the roof.

Meanwhile Captain Despard’s servant had brought him a change of uniform, and when both had gone away Phillip was sick.

The next morning, with half-dried tunic and slacks wrapped in a groundsheet within his valise, and wearing a tommy’s tunic with stars on the shoulder straps, he caught the early train to Ipswich. From Liverpool Street station he sent off two telegrams, one to Lt.-Col. West, 2nd Gaultshire Regt., B.E.F., saying he was on his way; the other to his father at Head Office, telling him that he was going overseas, and love to all at home.

*

At the beginning of March the old men on the Hill usually met of a morning in the wood-framed brick shelter near the crest, with its view of the Crystal Palace. Spring was on the way, and the talk about food was more hopeful. The new rationing system allowed 15 oz. of meat, 5 of bacon, 4 of butter or margarine per person per week. And, with rationing, prices were now controlled.

“You know,” said Thomas Turney. “Just as many firms before this war made their profit out of waste, so a lot of these rascals have made their fortunes out of farthings, which they don’t produce, blaming the shortage of coin—11¾
d
. for a sheep’s head, 1
s.
11¾
d
. for unspecified scraps of meat per pound, ‘three and eleven three’ for steak—now thank the powers that be, all that is a thing of the past.”

The fixed prices for mutton, lamb, and beef were 1
s.
10
d.
the pound, steak 2
s.
2
d.

Another of the regulars in the shelter was a Mr. Warbeck, understood to be something to do with Admiralty. Thomas Turney did not think much of the fellow, a man about ten years his junior, a mere sixty-nine or so. He was a bit of a fop, dressed invariably in grey frock coat and trousers, grey spats, grey cravat held by pearl pin, starched wing collar, and white slip to his waistcoat. Grey eyes, bushy eyebrows, a precise manner of speech and the sweeping grey moustaches went with the rig-out of fine Edwardian gentlemen—but he crowned it all with a black bowler hat, not exactly
de
rigeur,
even allowing for the war. But it was the fellow’s know-all manner, with which he made pronouncements of odd facts he had read in
The
Daily
Telegraph,
and gave out as his own, that riled Thomas Turney, who had to listen with an appearance of attention to what he himself had already read in that paper after breakfast.

What would it be this morning? For Warbeck had taken a piece of folded paper from one pocket, steel-rimmed spectacles from another, and after rubbing the lenses on his grey silk pocket handkerchief, was about to hold forth. Clearing his throat for attention, he said, looking along the three sides of the shelter,

“It may interest you, Mr. Turney, to know that approximately fifteen million farthings were issued by the Royal Mint last year—thrice the number issued in the year immediately preceding the outbreak of war.”

“Extraordinary,” said Thomas Turney. “Now can you tell us, from your experience gained at the Admiralty, how the Food Minister arrived at his total of 9,380 tons of weekly bread waste we see on all the hoardings just now?”

Mr. Warbeck was ready with a reply to this attempt to turn his flank. “I know nothing about the so-called Ministry of Food, Mr. Turney, since my work concerns the compilation of Tables of Logarithms for the use of navigators, published by Mr. Potter, for the Admiralty; but, to reply to your particular question, the jumped-up bigwigs and jacks-in-office in Whitehall have to justify themselves as bureaucrats, and also they have to fill up their days somehow. But my goodness, have you considered the utter idiocy of issuing forty-two tons of farthings in the past eleven months, merely to accommodate the petty profiteers who no longer trouble to offer a packet of pins or a box of safety matches in change—and this at a time, mark you, when there is a serious shortage of copper for the driving bands of shells! Winston Churchill at the Ministry of Munitions would, one can hardly doubt, be most gratified to lay his hands on that copper!”

Then, before Mr. Turney could make a frontal attack on the tedious subject of waste bread, Mr. Warbeck turned to someone across the shelter, who had been sitting quietly attentive, and went on, “Tell me, Mr. McDonagh, you are in Fleet Street, is there any connexion between the sacking of ‘Wullie’ Robertson, our late worthy Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and a ranker to boot—or perhaps one should say to be booted, in the sense of his having been hoofed out—and the fact that Lord Derby has been kicked out of the War Office?”

There was modesty in the eyes behind the gold-rimmed spectacles of the reporter as he spoke, in a voice pleasant with Irish
brogue. “I am not on the political side of my paper, so I can hardly speak with authority, Mr. Warbeck, but perhaps it is giving away no secrets when I say that it is generally known in the Street that the considerable friction—which has long existed between the Prime Minister and the Generals—has come to a head. In fact, Sir William Robertson’s removal as C.I.G.S. was considered to be only a preliminary to greater changes—had the P.M. got his way.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Warbeck. “Do I understand that remark to include the possibility that Haig himself may go?”

“That I cannot say, sir. But it is, I think, no exaggeration to say that Lloyd George did consider the replacement of Haig by Plumer—after Haig had refused to take orders from an Extra-ordinary Committee the P.M. wanted to set up to direct the war in France. The Field Marshal is said to have replied—and quite rightly in my opinion—that the man on the spot must decide—not a round-table conference—particularly at a time when the German troops have been set free from the Russian front, and are now known to be arriving in great numbers in France.”

This information had a quietening effect. Then the discreet Mr. McDonagh turned to Thomas Turney and said, “How is your grandson, Mr. Turney? When last you spoke of him, he had just returned from the battle of Cambrai.”

“Oh Phillip, yes, he has now gone back to France—for the fifth time.”

“For the fifth time! He must be possessed of unusual moral fibre, Mr. Turney! Oddly enough, it has often been shown in this war that it is the sensitive type of civilian soldier who has shown himself to possess the greater staying power.”

“Yes, yes,” breathed Mr. Bigge, a near neighbour of Thomas Turney, a quiet inoffensive man. “Pray proceed, Mr. McDonagh.”

“Recently I had to report an Investiture at Buckingham Palace, for my paper. I made it my purpose to take a position near to those who were to receive the Victoria Cross. What, I wondered, was the common denominator in the expressions of these proved heroes? I could determine nothing! There was no characteristic expression, that I could discover. Indeed, I could not help wondering—as I saw the diffidence on some faces, the introspection in the eyes of others—what
was
the secret of
courage. One asks oneself—How far was any one man responsible for the quality of moral fibre, or the lack of it, in his make-up? Abraham Lincoln—you may recall—was reluctant to sanction the execution of soldiers for so-called cowardice in the American Civil War. He used to say that a man could not always control his legs. ‘How do I know that I should not run away myself?’ he once asked.”

“Now I come to think of it,” said Mr. Warbeck, “did not your grandson, Mr. Turney, once tell us, in this very place, that he had run away at the battle of Messines?”

Thomas Turney felt this remark to be offensive. He decided to ignore it. Mr. McDonagh said, “Yes, I remember that occasion, Mr. Warbeck. I thought then, and I think now, that the remark derived from an unformed sense of courage. And—incidentally—from a condition of self-awareness not usually present in one so young!”

“That’s a point of view that I feel Shakespeare would have approved,” replied Thomas Turney, leaning the weight of his shoulders on hands clasping the lemon stick. “The boy’s mother is a brave woman, generous to a fault where others are concerned. I think that when such people have learned to stand up for themselves——” He checked his words; while the hands, their veined backs delicately wrinkled like cooling wax, clasped more tightly the handle of the stick he had brought back from Greece half a lifetime before. “I wonder——,” and he fell into reverie. From thinking of Dickie, and of the voice heard so often in complaint of Hetty next door, his memory led him to scenes of his own behaviour towards his dead wife, and inevitably to the awful occasion when he had knocked her down, and poor young Hetty as well. How then could one judge others?

Voices about him were no longer heard. His breathing seemed to struggle with the congestion of so many broken pictures within his mind. When he came out of the chaos of reverie Mr. McDonagh’s voice was saying gently, “Perhaps bravery lies in the blood, and courage is of the mind. Then again, there is the tempering of bravery by courage, which is what we call valour.” The voice held a note of diffidence, for this modest man had been quoting from his second leader written after the Investiture. “But after all is said and done, who can judge of such things? We are as Nature made us. No man can escape from himself all the time. He can, of course,
raise the best of himself to the forefront, by the aid of prayer, as many in this war have discovered.” “The mother is the maker of the child’s mind, I fancy,” soliloquised Thomas Turney. “Yet there comes a stage when the young man develops traits apparent in his father, which may conflict with the other side of his nature——.” The ragged voice was knotted tight by the congestion of breathing. Again his thoughts were devastating. Scenes arose of his eldest son Charley, of the sad quarrels of that summer of seven years ago, Charley opposing him in defence of his mother, so violently that Sarah, God rest her soul, had had a stroke and died. Charley had inherited his own hot temper, how then might Charley be blamed? He sighed, and heard McDonagh saying, “It seems to me, that it is the courage of the mind which produces the great soldier—the man who rises to all occasions under ordeal. But in the last resort, all is fortuitous, it would seem. Without proper food, without sufficient sleep, where would the hero be?” “Ah,” said Thomas Turney. “There is little between a man’s best and worst but a platter of food!”

“Thank you, thank you, gentlemen,” murmured Mr. Bigge, rising with thoughts of his noonday cup of hot Bovril. “It has all been most interesting.” He inclined his head in a series of little bobs. “Now I wish you all a very good day, gentlemen!” The sun had gone behind clouds. Thomas Turney felt chilled; and thinking with weariness of the New Will he must make to include Charley, he followed Mr. Bigge down the gully to his fireside in Hillside Road, where, confound it, he would find only his sister Marian, whose silences were almost as unnerving as her pointless remarks.

From both sides of the carriage were to be seen, for mile after mile, the wastes of the old battlefield of the Somme. Tens of thousands of wooden crosses stood out of flattened grasses which scarcely concealed shell-holes, edge to edge, extending to all horizons. Not even the brick rubble heaps of villages remained; all had been cleared for road mending. At last the train, running
very slowly beside an empty canal bed which, Phillip informed his two companions, must be the Canal du Nord, stopped with a hiss of steam as though it were expiring, followed by a shudder of groans and jolts. They were in the middle of depleted rectangles of every kind of material—iron screw-pickets, rolls of barbed wire, wood, coal, picks, shovels, and vast dumps of salvage. The R.T.O. said that a waggon from their battalion was waiting for them. How far was it? About three miles. Was there a Y.M.C.A. or Expeditionary Force Canteen anywhere? To an E.F.C. marquee they promptly went, Phillip ordering a 5-franc bottle of champagne.

“It’s the best way, to get merry and bright on coming to a new crush. One doesn’t want to arrive blotto, of course, but just enough to warm the cockles of the old heart,” he remarked, as they went out. “How far to camp, driver?”

“The White City, sir? Three mile, as makes no odds.”

“But the R.T.O. said it was Corunna Camp.”

“Everyone round here calls it the White City, sir. There’s ten thousand Toe-rags—Chinks, Sugar Babies, Macaronies, every sort of dago, as well as old Frogs and Jerry prisoners.”

“What are they all doing?”

“Making roads, and diggin’ ’Aig’s ’Indenburg Line, sir.”

The braying of mules succeeded the varied human tongues of the White City as the waggon left behind the rows of hutments, and came to acres of horse lines. They pushed through to whitewashed flints bordering the road, and arrived at a yellow board on which the regimental badge, a horned wild ox within a star, was painted in black.

Having reported to the battalion orderly room, Phillip was told by the sergeant in charge that only the Quartermaster was in camp. “Major Marsden, Second-in-command, has gone up the line to see the Commanding Officer, sir.”

“Is Major Marsden short and thick, with dark hair? I met a Lieutenant Marsden at Loos in ’15 with the first battalion.”

“That’s correct, sir. I was lance-corporal in Captain West’s company in the first battalion at Loos, and remember when you took command and led us round the flank past Bois Carré.”

“Oh, that little joy ride … Weren’t you Lance-corporal Tonks?”

“That’s right, sir!” The sergeant’s face showed pleasure.
Phillip was shaking hands with him, when brassy noises came from an adjoining hut.

“Jerry instruments, sir. We scrounged them out of a dugout at Masnieres last November. Colonel Moggerhanger is trainin’ new bandsmen.”

“
Colonel
Moggerhanger?” For a moment he felt devastated. Could it be that ‘Spectre’ West had left the battalion? Sergeant Tonks was reassuring.

“The Quartermaster, sir, has served forty years with the R’g’mint, ’listed in ’seventy-seven as a band-boy, sir. The storeman is sewing on his stars over there. Promotion come through last night, sir.”

Phillip went to speak to the storeman, who held up a jacket coloured by many ribands, headed by those of D.S.O. and D.C.M. “I think we’d better find Colonel Moggerhanger, just to let him know we’ve arrived,” he said to Tonks.

“You’ll find him in the next hut, sir. The bandsmen are trying out those Jerry instruments. Jerry pinched ours in the counter-attack, sir, at Graincourt.”

“Just like this war! We get Jerry’s band, and he pinches ours! Come on, chaps, let’s go next door!”

“Well, sir, if you’ll excuse me a moment——” the sergeant paused. “You see, sir, the Quartermaster can be a bit of a caution, sir. His discharge was due from the 1st battalion when they were ordered to Italy just before Christmas, and he was on the way to Blighty when orders come through cancelling all time-served ranks going home. The Quartermaster is liable to be a little uncertain in temper as a consequence.”

Outside the adjoining semicircular shelter of rust and tarred wood Phillip hesitated. “All the same, I think we ought to make our arrival known to him, as a matter of courtesy,” he said to the two junior officers with him. His hand was on the handle when the door opened and a big man came out. Phillip stepped back; his salute was ignored as the Quartermaster strode away, muttering curses.

“That’s that!” said Phillip.

It was five o’clock. The three had had little food since dinner the night before at Boulogne. “He’s the only officer here, apparently, so let’s ask him where we can get some grub.”

They came upon the Quartermaster talking to what looked
like the transport sergeant. The three saluted again, and Phillip, as senior, went forward. The Quartermaster continued to ignore him. So he saluted once more before turning away to find the cookhouse. “Char will probably be going.”

When at length they found the cookhouse, there was Mogger-hanger before them. Again Phillip’s salute was ignored. They walked on. “This is all rot, you chaps! He may be an honorary lieutenant-colonel, but dammit, we should be treated as guests! Lord Satchville wouldn’t behave like this! Leave it to me. You two wait here.”

He went back to the cookhouse, and standing at attention, cried out “Sir!” before presenting the Quartermaster with a salute delivered with elbow parallel with the ground, lower arm stiff and rigid and hand vibrating level with right ear in the Guards’ manner. The Quartermaster responded with a bellowing cough, followed by hoicking to clear his throat.

“Lieutenant Maddison, reporting for duty, sir!”

The Quartermaster spat into a lime-washed dustbin by the cookhouse door. “Pick the bones out of that,” he said.

Phillip took this to mean that they could help themselves, as he led the way into the cookhouse. There they drank sweet tea and wolfed hunks of bread, butter and jam; and feeling optimistic left to look round the camp. On their way they passed the hut in which the band was apparently playing rag-time. Round the corner came the Quartermaster. They walked on pretending not to see him, and had gone a few yards when a voice roared out behind, “Come ’ere, you!”

Phillip turned and went back. “You want me, sir?”

“Yes, you, you long streak of piss on a lamp-post! Don’t you know you salute a superior officer when you pass one?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why didn’t you salute me?”

“Well, sir, I’ve saluted you six times already, but as you didn’t take any notice——”

“How the hell d’you know I didn’t take any notice? Anyway, what were you in civvy street, a Boy Scout?”

“Yes, sir!”

“All right, you saluted me six times, did you?” He saluted Phillip seven times. “Now you owe me one, you b——r!”

Phillip gave him the Boy Scout’s salute.

“So you’re a bloody joker, are yer? What’s your name?”

“Lieutenant Maddison, reporting for duty from Landguard Camp, sir,” as he saluted once more.

“God’s teeth, ’ow many more times you goin’ to flip about like a Bill Brown? This ain’t Caterham,” said the Quartermaster, in a voice suddenly mild. “You lot want some tiffin, eh? Well, come with me to the mess. D’you play bridge? Not very well? I don’t play very well neither, so that makes us all square. Ker-ist, listen to that bloody din! Like a f——g cattle-yard on market day.” Muttering something about showing the little cuthberts where they got off, the Quartermaster kicked open the door and at his appearance there was silence. Coming out again, he grumbled, “They can’t even blow, let alone they got no bleedun kissers. I told ’em there’d be some fat lips flyin’ about if they didn’t get on with it. Would you believe what the little bleeders was playin’ at? Seein’ ’oo could first blow out the stickin’ plaster and soap stuck in the ’oles made by shrapnel!”

*

About eight o’clock that evening, just as the four had finished dinner of fried steak and potatoes, followed by tasteless gritty prunes, the occasional booming of howitzers became a thundering that rattled the knives on the enamelled plates. Phillip opened the door and stared into a sky flashing with light. Away in the east arose red and green rockets above the calcium flares that told of some desperate endeavour between the opposing armies.

“Close that bloody door!” yelled Moggerhanger. “We don’t want no eggs dropped on this f——g camp!”

Phillip shut the door; he was yet to realise that the old man’s nerve had gone, that he had had too much war, having served continuously with the B.E.F. since the retreat from Le Cateau; that he had seen too many faces, hundreds of faces, pass before his eyes; and of all the many dead faces, some were now returning at odd moments, as though waiting for him to join them.

“Can you tell me what the British S.O.S. colours are for tonight, sir?”

“Ask my arse.” The Quartermaster put bottle and sparklet syphon on the table. “’Ow about a rubber?” He jerked a thumb backwards. “’Elp yourselves. We don’t stand on ceremony ’ere. We’re the Royal Staybacks, and don’t you forgit it!” They sat down. Cards were shuffled and dealt. “Your call, young feller.”

Phillip passed. Allen passed. “Well, to test the feeling of the meat, one no trump,” said Colonel Moggerhanger, dropping his
cards face down on the blanket-covered table to light thick twist in his clay cutty.

“No bid.”

Phillip was wondering what Westy was doing. “Your call, Lamp-post.” From across the table acrid smoke of thick twist stung his eyes, “Oh, two clubs.” Red and green, red and green, was it the British S.O.S.? Had the German attack begun?

“Two diamonds.”

“Three no trumps,” said Moggerhanger, leaving his cards on the table.

“No bid,” said Allen.

“Four no trumps,” said Phillip, and spread his hand: ace, king of hearts; king to two of diamonds; queen to four of spades; ace, king, knave, ten, eight of clubs.

“Bon, partner. Quite useful. ’Elp yourself to a spot of old man Johnny Walker.”

“No thank you, sir.” He left the table, and moved across to the sandbag-covered window in the east wall of the hut. Why hadn’t he gone up the line to report to Westy, instead of footling about playing bridge.

“What, you on the waggon?”

“For the moment, sir.”

“Got a dose?” asked Moggerhanger, as he scooped in the tricks.

A stream of fresh air was faintly whining through the cracked talc pane behind the sandbag covering. From afar came the crackle of rifle and machine-gun fire. Probably a German raid: he could hear the fast stutter of Lewis guns.

“Ah ha, you went to bed with that arse-piece!” said the Quartermaster, to Allen. “Little slam, partner!” Moggerhanger threw down his last three cards. “’Oo’s shuffle? Come on, get a move on.”

The third rubber had just finished, nine hundred down, when the door opened and Major Marsden came in. His trench coat was dripping, it was now raining hard. He brought the news that a German raiding party of considerable strength, following on a bombardment with h.e. and mustard gas, had got into the battalion outpost line, and bombed its way up to the main defence line.

“Three of our men were taken prisoner, and I’m afraid our casualties are pretty heavy, mainly from yellow-cross, but there
was some blue-cross, too. Eighty odd, all of Bill Kidd’s company. The Boche left behind a wounded man, who confirmed that the country for fifty miles behind their lines was stiff with troops marching up at night, and lying doggo in villages by day.”

“Wind!” snarled Moggerhanger. “They’ve been told to say it! Every bloody Hun pinched so far gives us the same ol’ tale! It’s a bluff! The Germans aren’t bloody fools! They know they couldn’t get far, with practically no roads over the old Somme battlefield! They’ll push up north, the shortest way to the Channel ports! I’ll lay you fifty francs to twenty it’s all a bluff down ’ere! And what’s more, it’s stoppin’ me from ’oppin’ it for ’ome!”

He downed his whiskey, and banged the empty mug on the table.

Phillip looked with concealed scorn at the Quartermaster’s face. What did any quartermaster know of the
real
war, when he had slept every night in a bed for years? His fancy played satirically with the red-purple of the old man’s face, ruinous and arrogant: the eyebrows, or lack of them, were the Passchendaele ridge of the north-eastern slopes of the Salient, coloured by ten thousand tins of bully beef. Here was the embodiment of the bad old soldier-philosophy—“F—k you Jack, I’m all right.”

At midnight, having lost three thousand points by consistent over-calling, and paid out thirty francs, Phillip asked if he might go up the line to see Colonel West.

“What’s up, you’re so bloody restless, you the Old Man’s bum boy?” asked Moggerhanger.

Phillip pushed back his chair and, standing up, said, “You may be my senior officer, Colonel, but that does not give you the right to make such remarks!”

“Come come,” said Marsden, gently, as he continued to inspect one of his twin ‘Captain’ pipes in their case. “We’re all friends here. You don’t know our old Moggers, Maddison. If he really thought that there was anything like that, he would be the last to mention it.”

“That’s right, old cock. Don’t take no notice of me, I never mean what I say. Isn’t that right, Pluggy? You’ll soon get used to my ways. I mean no ’arm. ’Elp yerself to a spot of old man whiskey, Lampers. Never let it be said that the talkin’ stopped the drinkin’.”

“Thank you, Colonel–

“Cut out the ‘colonel’. I’m Moggers.” The Quartermaster gave him a prolonged wink. “You’ll do, Lampo.”

“I’m sorry I lost my temper—Moggers.”

The two younger subalterns went to bed, while the three continued to sit by the dull red stove. Outside the wind was blowing strongly, causing little fringes of flame to issue from the bottom of the grate. Two empty whiskey bottles lay on the floor. As Moggers talked on—about his early days as a crowstarver, and then in the Army, Phillip began to feel his underlying steadiness. He had thought him to be dense and dull, like the heavy soil of the farmlands upon which he had been raised; now he saw him as part of the strength and solidity of gault clay, which had made bricks enduring since Tudor times. He felt ashamed of his former attitude towards the old fellow, and thought that such were Mother’s people; that he was more Turney than Maddison, the cold-grey-eyed Viking Maddisons. Yet was he really like the Turneys? Was his nature like Father’s, or Mother’s? What was the difference between mind and nature? Did he have a mixed nature? There was something about both Mother and Father which made him feel only part of himself in their presence. Perhaps he was, as Father had often said in anger, a throw-back.