No Man's Land (69 page)

‘Yes, my son, perhaps that's the reason' – this was old Constable again – ‘the average Australian is naturally a sight stouter-hearted than the average Englishman – they don't need it.'

‘Then why the hell do they punish Englishmen worse than Australians, if they can't even be
expected
to do so well?' retorted Foster; but this piece of dialectics was lost on Constable.

‘Anyhow, I don't see that it need be such an absolute standard,' Smith began again, thoughtfully; he was a thoughtful young fellow. ‘They don't expect everybody to have equally strong arms or equally good brains; and if a chap's legs or arms aren't strong enough for him to go on living in the trenches they take him out of it (if he's lucky). But every man's expected to have equally strong nerves in all circumstances, and to
go on having them
till he goes under; and when he goes under they don't consider how far his nerves, or guts, or whatever you call it, were as good as other people's. Even if he had nerves like a chicken to begin with he's expected to behave as a man with nerves like a lion or a Drake would do…'

‘A man with nerves like a chicken is a damned fool to go into the infantry at all,' put in Williams – ‘the honour of the regiment' person.

‘Yes, but he may have had a will-power like a lion, and simply made himself do it.'

‘You'd be all right, Smith,'somebody said, ‘if you didn't use such long words; what the hell do you mean by an absolute standard?'

‘Sorry, George, I forgot you were so ignorant. What I mean is this. Take a case like Penrose's:All they ask is, was he seen running the wrong way, or not going the right way? If the answer is Yes – the punishment is death,
et cetera, et cetera
. To begin with, as I said, they don't consider whether he was
capable
physically or mentally – I don't know which it is – of doing the right thing. And then there are lots of other things which
we
know make one man more “windy” than another, or windier to-day than he was yesterday – things like being a married man, or having boils, or a bad cold, or being just physically weak, so that you get so exhausted you haven't got any strength left to resist your fears (I've had that feeling myself) – none of those things are considered
at all
at a court-martial – and I think they ought to be.'

‘Well, what do you want,'Foster asked, ‘a kind of periodical Wind-up Examination?'

‘That's the kind of thing, I suppose. It
is
a medical question, really. Only the doctors don't seem to recognize – or else they aren't allowed to – any stage between absolute shell-shock, with your legs flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.'

‘But damn it, man,' Constable exploded, ‘look at the skrim-shanking you'll get if you have that sort of thing. You'd have all the mothers' darlings in the kingdom saying they'd had enough when they got to the Base.'

‘Perhaps – no, I think that's silly. I don't know what it is that gives you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test when a man's really had enough; just as they tell whether a man's knee or a man's heart are really bad or not. You'd have to take his record into account, of course…'

‘And you'd have to make it a compulsory test,' said Smith, ‘because nowadays no one's going to go into a Board and say, “Look here, doctor, I've been out so long and I can't stand any more.” They'd send you out in the next draft!'

‘Compulsory both ways,' added Foster: ‘when they'd decided he'd done enough, and wasn't
safe
any longer, he oughtn't to be
allowed
to do any more – because he's dangerous to himself and everybody else.'
^*

‘As a matter of fact,' said Williams, ‘that's what usually does happen, doesn't it? When a chap gets down and out like that after a decent spell of it, he usually gets a job at home – instructor at the Depot, or something.'

‘Yes, and then you get a fellow with the devil of a conscience like Penrose – and you have a nasty mess like this.'

‘And what about the men?' asked Constable. ‘Are you going to have the same thing for them?'

‘Certainly – only, thank God, there are not so many of them who need it. All that chat you read about the “wonderful fatalism” of the British soldier is so much bunkum. It simply means that most of them are not cursed with an imagination, and so don't worry about what's coming.'

‘That's true; you don't see many fatalists in the middle of a big strafe.'

‘Of course there
are
lots of them who
are
made like Penrose, and with a record like his, something—'

‘And it's damned lucky for the British Army there are not more of them,' put in Constable.

‘Certainly, but it's damned unlucky for them to be in the British Army – in the infantry, anyhow.'

‘And what does that matter?'

‘Oh, well, you can take that line if you like – but it's a bit Prussian, isn't it?'

‘Prussia's winning this dirty war, anyhow, at present.'

So the talk rambled on, and we got no further, only most of us were in troubled agreement that something – perhaps many things – were wrong about the System, if this young volunteer, after long fighting and suffering, was indeed to be shot like a traitor in the cold dawn.

Nine times out of ten, as Williams had said, we knew that it would not have happened, simply because nine men out of ten surrender in time. But ought the tenth case to be even remotely possible? That was our doubt.

What exactly was wrong we could not pretend to say. It was not our business. But if this was the best the old men could do, we felt that we could help them a little. I give you this scrap of conversation only to show the kind of feeling there was in the regiment – because that is the surest test of the rightness of these things.

They were still at it when I left. And as I went out wearily into the cold drizzle I heard Foster summing up his views with: ‘Well, the whole thing's damned awful. They've recommended him to mercy, haven't they? and I hope to God he gets it.'

*

But he got no mercy. The sentence was confirmed by the higher authorities.

I cannot pretend to
know
what happened, but from some experience of the military hierarchy I can imagine. I can see those papers, wrapped up in the blue form, with all the right information beautifully inscribed in the right spaces, very neat and precise, carefully sealed in the long envelopes, and sent wandering up through the rarefied atmosphere of the Higher Formations. Very early they halt, at the Brigadier, or perhaps the Divisional General, some one who thinks of himself as a man of ‘blood and iron'. He looks upon the papers. He reads the evidence – very carefully. At the end he sees ‘Recommended to Mercy.' – ‘All very well, but we must make an example sometimes. Where's that confidential memo we had the other day? That's it, yes. “Officer who fails in his duty must be treated with the same severity as would be awarded to private in the same circumstances.” Quite right too. Shan't approve recommendation to mercy. Just write on it, “See no reason why sentence should not be carried out” and I'll sign it. – Or, more simply perhaps: “Mercy! mercy be damned! must make an example. I won't have any cold feet in my Command”.' And so the Blue Form goes climbing on, burdened now with that fatal endorsement, labouring over ridge after ridge, and on each successive height the atmosphere becomes more rarefied (though the population is more numerous). And at long last it comes to some Olympian peak – I know not where – beyond which it may not go, where the air is so chill and the population so dense, that it is almost impossible to breathe. Yet here, I make no doubt, they look at the Blue Form very carefully and gravely, as becomes the High Gods. But in the end they shake their heads, a little sadly, maybe, and say, ‘Ah, General B—— does not approve recommendation to mercy. He's the man on the spot, he ought to know.
Must
support
him
. Sentence confirmed.'

Then the Blue Form climbs sadly down to the depths again, to the low regions where men feel fear…

The thing was done seven mornings later, in a little orchard behind the Casquettes' farm.

The Padre told me he stood up to them very bravely and quietly. Only he whispered to him, ‘For God's sake make them be quick.'That is the worst torment of the soldier from beginning to end – the waiting…

*

After three months I had some leave and visited Mrs. Harry. I had to. But I shall not distress you with an account of that interview. I will not even pretend that she was ‘brave.' How could she be? Only, when I had explained things to her, as Harry had asked, she said: ‘Somehow, that does make it easier for me – and I only wish – I wish you could tell everybody – what you have told me.'

And again I say, that is all I have tried to do. This book is not an attack on any person, on the death penalty, or on anything else, though if it makes people think about these things, so much the better. I think I believe in the death penalty – I don't know. But I did not believe in Harry being shot.

That is the gist of it; that my friend Harry was shot for cowardice – and he was one of the bravest men I ever knew.

A. P. Herbert
was born in Surrey in 1890 and went to Oxford in 1910. At the outbreak of the war, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was sent to Gallipoli in 1915. Injured in Gallipoli, he rejoined his division in France which served in the last phases of the Battle of the Somme. Again wounded, Herbert returned home and started writing
The Secret Battle
. The novel, in part autobiographical, tells the story of Henry Penrose, a sensitive officer who buckles under the pressure of repeated front-line campaigns and is executed after a court-martial. Based on the true story of Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett's trial for desertion, the book was praised by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, who wrote that it was ‘one of those cries of pain wrung from the fighting troops… like the poems of Siegfried Sassoon it should be read in each generation, so that men and women may rest under no illusions about what war means.' First published in 1919, it was not a commercial success and turned Herbert away from writing serious literature. He is best known for his
Misleading Cases in the Common Law
, satirical pieces on various aspects of the legal and judicial system that first appeared in
Punch
. Extremely funny, the pieces also expressed his desire for law reform. Herbert died in London in 1971.

*
It is only fair to say that, long after the supposed date of this conversation, a system of sending ‘war-weary' soldiers home for six months at a time was instituted, though I doubt if Foster would have been satisfied with that.

VAHAN TOTOVENTS

INFIDELS AND CURS

from
Scenes from an Armenian Childhood

translated by Mischa Kudian

W
E HAD TURKISH NEIGHBOURS
, too.

Shemsy was the son of this Turkish family. We were about the same age and had grown up together. We had done so like two brothers: we would give each other small knuckle-bones with which we used to play games; we would offer each other sweetmeats from our homes; we would go swimming together; together, we would tease his sister, who was two years older than him; and we would cry together. Sanié, his sister, was like a fairy: she was so light she seemed to be made of air; her colouring was white and golden, in spite of her brother's dark skin, black hair and eyebrows, and inky eyes.

There was a big acacia-tree in their garden. I used to liken her so much to the whiteness of that tree.

Sanié used to speak through her nose a little – having fallen as a child and hurt herself – but I was very fond of the twang in her voice; so much so that I wished all girls would speak that way.