My Father and Myself (8 page)

The stage was therefore fatefully set, and my brother bungled his entrance. My company headquarters was a dugout in a large, deep, straggling gully, a natural formation which afforded us, in this generally flat terrain, a ready-made covered approach to the trenches. Yet it was a notorious death-trap from artillery fire. The Germans knew all about it and its uses, for the simple reason that they had once made use of it themselves; it had formed part of their own line until they had been prized out of it; they had, in fact, built my dugout, which was therefore much safer than a British dugout, for they always delved deeper than we did. So they kept the gully constantly and accurately shelled in all its length; it had earned its name of the Boom Ravine, and there were strict orders against troops bunching, smoking, talking, or loitering in it. My brother omitted to take these precautions. He was also late in arriving. A careful timetable had been worked out to fit in with the trenchmortar fire which was to precede his assault; his departure from Regina Trench, his point of assembly, had been phoned up to us; he was ten minutes late. Unknown to him, the poor boy's watch had stopped. When, therefore, he arrived and came sauntering cheerfully down the dugout steps to salute and report, and, additional irritation, his troops could be heard chatting, coughing, grousing, and clattering their equipment in the ravine above, all the welcome he got was a rough ticking off from Major Wightman who sent him flying back upstairs to deploy and silence his men.

I remember my brother when he returned standing before me in the candlelight, bunched up in his Burberry and equipment, loaded with hand-grenades and stuck about with a revolver, wire-cutters and Very pistol, his cap set jauntily at an angle. His visit, now that he was late, was of the briefest, it would never have been much more than to report arrival and to pick up the runner I had detailed to guide him through the darkness to my duty officer in the front line. I offered him a quick drink, I remember; he said, “No thanks, I'll take my rum with the men.” Then, could we swap watches, his own being unreliable? He would return mine afterwards, he said. A heroic remark, and as I helped him strap on my watch, probably we both saw it unbuckled from his dead wrist. But then it was impossible to speak the most commonplace word or make the most ordinary gesture without its at once acquiring the heavy over-emphasis of melodrama. Even the tactful detachment of the Major, as I picture him, squatting on the edge of the lowest wire bunk against the wall, his chin cupped in his hand, fingering his short bristly mustache, his face averted, was overdone. Then my brother's hand thrust out to shake my own, his twisty smile, my “Good luck,” his jocular salute. “Don't worry, sir,” said he to the Major as he left. It was his only piece of self-indulgence. His thin putteed legs retreated up the dugout steps and the sack curtain swung to behind him. I never saw him again.

The time? I don't remember. Early hours of the morning at any rate. The whole odious episode must have unrolled itself in some five or six hours between midnight and daybreak. And what exactly was Major Wightman doing, planted in my dugout? It is a question that teased me thirty years ago. This was, after all, my command; all arrangements for the stunt had long ago been completed, there never had been much for me to do, chiefly to see that my sentries and those in the flanking battalions understood that they must withhold fire now and until further instructions; there was nothing left for anyone to do, except this officer who would soon be creeping over my parapet, and who, at the appointed time, taken from my own watch upon his wrist, when the Stokes guns had done their job, would whistle the signal for assault—this officer who happened to be my brother.

Was it perhaps largely for this reason that the Major had been sent up, as much to look after me in an embarrassing situation as to look after the operation, to take the whole thing completely off my hands? He was my senior officer; I would of course be under his orders, even within my own jurisdiction, if he chose to issue any. What passed between us? Not much, I fancy. He was a calm, serious, reserved man, not given to conversation, who seldom smiled. He was quite young, perhaps thirty, ten years older than myself at most, dark, smallish and powerfully built. Without exerting authority he somehow conveyed it, as he conveyed confidence. He had risen from the ranks, a man of simple education with a slightly affected note in his voice. He had the
MC
and a reputation for great courage and ability. One knew at a glance that he possessed both. It was difficult to imagine him ruffled or rattled; such reprimands as he bestowed were short, sharp, and cold; imperturbability, that was the note he struck. An inscrutable man.

I remember going out to watch the beginning of my brother's stunt. My thirty-year-old manuscript, of which then I was uncertain and to which now, of course, I can supply nothing new, gives me the following brief dialogue:

Truth or fiction? It sounds plausible enough, sets a likely tone. Some interchange with this brooding man must have taken place, and I was always one of life's natural vassals, a voluntary subordinate to minds or personalities stronger than my own. My salute was famous in the battalion; no Teuton or sergeant-major ever clicked his heels more smartly, my swivelling hand vibrated at the peak of my cap (“For Christ's sake don't do that, Joe! It startles me out of my wits!” exclaimed my first company commander once when I saluted his back as he was taking a hip-bath). So the dialogue suggests me and, as I recall the Major's personality, him; on my side a diffident assertion of my own dignity and rights, together with willing acknowledgment of his authority over me; on his, the slack grasp that accepted my recognition of its power to tighten: a dialogue which would have been very agreeable to me, I think, as I see my character now.

I have some recollection still of the place from which I watched my brother's start. It was a shattered and abandoned gun-emplacement in the ravine, which I had used for observation purposes before. It offered an extensive view of the German lines and of Point 85. My manuscript says that my orderly went with me; maybe he did, orderlies were almost permanent attachments, but I remember nothing about him; I expect that I myself, my feelings and sensations, occupied the forefront of my thought. I dimly recall scrambling up the steep earthy slope of this advanced post and lying there beneath the broken beams of its roof, my head cautiously raised above the level of the ground. Time no longer exists; how long I remained there I haven't a notion. But I recollect, as in a dream, an inferno scene suddenly opening, whistlings, shouts, rifle and machinegun fire, advancing figures momentarily illuminated by the flash of bursting shells and the firework flares of Very lights against a background of drifting smoke, and a bunch of three or four men, curiously attitudinized, near the German trenches—then bullets struck the ground around me and one sent up a spurt of earth against my cheek. That I remember well, that little spurt of earth against my cheek. Soon afterwards shells began to whizz over and crump in the ravine behind. Retaliation had begun and I made my way back to the dugout.

Then nothing but the slow dragging of time, the racket, the flames of the candles dipping and blinking as the Boom Ravine began to boom, the occasional cascades of earth and stones that came rattling down the dugout steps from the exploding world above. The field telephone rang from time to time, the Colonel wanted news, the Brigadier was getting impatient; if the Major was resting, as he mostly was, lying on his back on a wire bunk, his hands clasped behind his head, I took the calls for him. Then—how much later?—a stumbling on the steps and one of my brother's men appeared, a smear of blood upon his face, to say he had got lost, was wounded in the hand; and the Major sitting up in bed and suddenly taking charge, his cold, cutting questions, his demand for the fellow's name and number, his orders to him to return instantly to his unit or he would have him court-martialed and shot for desertion. No soldier might fall out, said he, unless he was dead or too crippled to walk. Did I remember then my own performance on July 1 or had it not yet reached the cold, clear light of objective self-criticism?

And again the dragging of time, the candle-flames dipping and blinking, cascades of rubble down the steps, the sack curtain on the door blowing in and out with the blasts, and again a clatter upon the steps and the appearance of my brother's sergeant-major, caked in dirt, almost in tears, to report total failure, the trench-mortars had not done their job, the place was well defended, the wire largely intact, and most of the men (“The buggers, the bastards!”) had got cold feet, had stayed in their shell-holes or run back, only my brother, himself and one or two others had reached the wire, and my brother had been hit, the sergeant-major had seen him fall, had seen him move, had tried to reach him, but the fire was too intense and he had made his own way back as best he could, from shell-hole to shell-hole, to report. He had rounded up most of his platoon—there had been few casualties— and reassembled it in the front trench.

Then the telephone clicking and buzzing, the signallers in their cap-comforters tapping away, the Major's calm voice reporting failure to the Colonel, more clickings and buzzings and then the Brigadier himself on the line, his furious orders to launch another attack at once, the Major's toneless stubborn resistance, retaliation was too heavy, dawn was close at hand, the Brigadier's insistence, the Major's quiet soothing voice resisting, volunteering to lead another attack himself the following night.... Then the Major thoughtfully sitting over the silent phone, smoking a cigarette and rubbing his bristly mustache. Then the Major retiring again to bed and turning his back upon me and the whole affair.

And my brother was lying out wounded in no man's land, and might have been the merest litter left about after a riotous party, for all the interest the Brigadier, the Colonel, or the Major evinced in his fate. And I did nothing either. Officially, of course, there was nothing to be done, casualties lay where they fell, as I had lain for some hours on July 1, and was to lie again throughout the greater part of the day in two months' time, unless they could crawl back or until it was safe enough for stretcher-bearers to reach them. If their life's blood drained out of them meanwhile that was hard luck; one did not risk other lives to seek them out and bring them in. Or one's own.... Officially again, the matter had nothing to do with me; such exalted persons as myself did not crawl out into no man's land to bring in the wounded, and if this particular officer had been the comparative stranger he should have been I would probably have had a nap like the Major. But he was not a stranger, and though my conscience managed in the ensuing years to blot out the details of the event, it remained for so long in my mind as an uneasiness that it must have seemed to me at the time that life was once again making upon me one of those monstrous and unfair demands with which I could not cope, that I was being put to another unwelcome test.

How long did this disgusting situation continue? It certainly worsened. My manuscript says that retaliation slackened and ceased and that a message came from my duty officer, Dyson, to say that my brother had managed to crawl back to within fifty yards of the front line and should he send out men to bring him in? It says I went out and climbed on to the roof of the dugout—a courageous act?—to look about. Dawn was breaking, the enemy lines were clearly visible. It says I returned to the dugout, where the Major was now sitting at a table writing his report, and said to him, “I don't think it's safe to send out men to bring my brother in, do you? It's rather light,” and the brute replied, “You have seen how light it is. Do as you think fit.” A painfully convincing piece of dialogue and not at all what I wanted. But it seems I got that in the end, for my manuscript adds that I then said, “I think I'll go along and see Dyson myself,” and the Major replied, “I want you here.” My answer to Dyson's message is not noted and lies beyond recall; it may have been that no one should go out to bring my brother in until further orders.

I sometimes wondered in after years about the Major, that strange enigmatic man, what he meant, what he felt, what he guessed or knew. Had he turned his back upon me on purpose, to leave me free to deal with my personal problems as I wished and in spite of his directives? It seems to me the kind of thing he might have done. And there were precedents for disobedience. Since the brothers Thorne have remained in my memory always—I can see their faces still—they may have been present in it then. Two subalterns, they had been in my battalion a year earlier, and the younger Thorne was one of the most beautiful boys I ever saw. He too was detailed for a raid; he too failed to return, and his brother, who adored him, went out alone to find him, in defiance of orders, and brought his dead body in slung over his shoulder, walking heavily back in the early dawn. This signal act of careless courage must have impressed the Germans, for they did not fire a shot.... But perhaps the Major found me as enigmatic as I found him, for I discovered in course of time that I too wear a defensive mask, a dead-pan look; when I think I have betrayed, under strain, the sickening anxieties and nervous fears from which I often suffer, I am praised for my coolness and self-possession, the rabbit within is not suspected. So the Major may have believed that I was exercising, in a rending situation, an admirable fortitude and restraint, courage of another kind. It would have been interesting to have had, perhaps at a post-war reunion dinner over a bottle of wine, his version of it all, but he was killed soon afterwards in the Schwaben Redoubt, a colonel then, defending an indefensible position, covering with the exhausted remnant of his command his brigade's retreat, fighting hand to hand with a bayonet against overwhelming odds, encouraging his men with his personal example to the last.