Parade's End (91 page)

‘I’m commanding here. You’ve not consulted me.’

It appeared to him queer that they should be behaving like that when you could hear … oh, say, the wings of the angel of death… . You can ‘almost hear the very rustling of his wings’ was the quotation. Good enough rhetoric. But of course that was how armed men would behave… . At all times!

He had been trying the old trick of the military, clipped voice on the half-dotty subject. It had before then reduced McKechnie to some sort of military behaviour.

It reduced him in this case to a maudlin state. He exclaimed with a sort of lachrymose agony:

‘This is what it has come to with the old battalion … the b—y, b—y, b—y old battalion of b—rs!’ Each imprecation was a sob. ‘How we worked at it… . And now …
you’ve
got it!’

Tietjens said:

‘Well, you were Vice-Chancellor’s Latin Prize-man once. It’s what we get reduced to.’ He added: ‘
Vos mellificatis apes
!’

McKechnie said with gloomy contempt:

‘You… . You’re no Latinist!’

By now Tietjens had counted two hundred and eighty since the big cannon had said ‘Phooooh’. Perhaps then it was not the signal for the barrage to begin… . Had it been it would have begun before now; it would have come thumping along on the heels of the ‘Phoooh’. His hands and the nape of his neck were preparing to become normal.

Perhaps the
strafe
would not come at all that day.

There was the wind. If anything it was strengthening. Yesterday he had suspected that the Germans hadn’t got any tanks handy. Perhaps the ugly, senseless armadillos – and incapable at that! under-engined! – had all got stuck in the marshes in front of ‘G’ section. Perhaps the heavy artillery fire of ours that had gone on most of yesterday had been meant to pound the beastly things to pieces. Moving, they looked like slow rats, their noses to the ground, snouting crumbs of garbage. When they were still they looked merely pensive!

Perhaps the
strafe
would not come. He hoped it would not. He did not want a
strafe
with himself in command of the battalion. He did not know what to do, what he ought to do by the book. He knew what he would do. He would stroll about along those deep trenches. Stroll. With his hands in his pockets. Like General Gordon in pictures. He would say contemplative things as the time dragged on… . A rather abominable sort of Time, really… . But that would introduce into the Battalion a spirit of calm that it had lately lacked… . The night before last the C.O. with a bottle in each hand had hurled them both at Huns who did not materialise for an hour and a half. Even the Pals had omitted to laugh. After that he, Tietjens, had taken command. With lots of the Orderly Room papers under both arms. They had had to be in a hurry, at night; with men suggesting pale grey Canadian trappers coming out of holes!

He did not want to command in a
strafe
, or at any other time! He hoped the unfortunate C.O. would get over his trouble by the evening… . But he supposed that he, Tietjens, would get through it all right if he had to. Like the man who had never tried playing the violin!

McKechnie had suddenly become lachrymosely feminine; like a woman pleading, large-eyed, for her lover, his eyes explored Tietjens’ face for signs of treachery, for signs that what he said was not what he meant in his heart. He said:

‘What are you going to do about Bill? Poor old Bill that has sweated for his Battalion as you never …’ He began again:

‘Think of poor old Bill! You can’t be
thinking
of doing the dirty on him… .
No
man could be such a swine!’

It was curious how those circumstances brought out the feminine that was in man. What was that ass of a German Professor’s theory … formula? M
^y
plus
W
^x
equals Man? … Well, if God hadn’t invented woman men would have had to do so. In that sort of place. You grew sentimental. He, Tietjens, was growing sentimental. He said:

‘What does Terence say about him this morning?’

The nice thing to have said would have been:

‘Of course, old man, I’ll do all I can to keep it dark!’ Terence was the M.O. – the man who had chucked his cap at the Hun orderly.

McKechnie said:

‘That’s the damnable thing! Terence is ratty with him. He won’t take a pill!’

Tietjens said:

‘What’s that? What’s that?’

McKechnie wavered; his desire for comfort became overpowering.

He said:

‘Look here!
Do
the decent thing! You know how poor Bill has worked for us! Get Terence not to report him to Brigade!’

This was wearisome, but it had to be faced.

A very minute subaltern – Aranjuez – in a perfectly impossible tin hat peered round the side of the bank. Tietjens sent him away for a moment… . These tin hats were probably all right, but they were the curse of the army. They bred distrust! How could you trust a man whose incapable hat tumbled forward on his nose? Or another, with his hat on the back of his head, giving him the air of a ruined gambler? Or a fellow who had put on a soap-dish, to amuse the children – not a serious proceeding… . The Germans’ things were better – coming down over the nape of the neck and rising over the brows. When you saw a Hun sideways he looked something: a serious proposition. Full of ferocity. A Hun up against a Tommy looked like a Holbein
Landsknecht
fighting a music-hall turn. It made you feel that you were indeed a rag-time army. Rubbed it in!

McKechnie was reporting that the C.O. had refused to take a pill ordered him by the M.O. Unfortunately the M.O. was ratty that morning – too much hooch overnight! So he said he should report the C.O. to Brigade. Not as
being
unfit for further service, for he wasn’t. But for refusing to take the pill. It was damnable. Because if Bill wouldn’t take a pill he wouldn’t… . The M.O. said that if he took a pill, and stayed in bed that day – without hooch of course! – he would be perfectly fit on the morrow. He had been like that often enough before. The C.O. had always been given the dose before as a drench. He swore he would not take it as a ball. Sheer contrariety!

Tietjens was accustomed to think of the C.O. as a lad – a good lad, but young. They were, all the same, much of an age, and, for the matter of that, because of his deeply-lined forehead the Colonel looked the older often enough. But when he was fit he was fine. He had a hooked nose, a forcible, grey moustache, like two badger-haired paintbrushes joined beneath the nose, pink skin as polished as the surface of a billiard ball, a noticeably narrow but high forehead, an extremely piercing glance from rather colourless eyes; his hair was black and most polished in slight waves. He was a soldier.

He was, that is to say, the ranker. Of soldiering in the English sense – the real soldiering of peace-time, parades, social events, spit and polish, hard-worked summers, leisurely winters, India, the Bahamas, Cairo seasons, and the rest he only knew the outside, having looked at it from the barrack windows, the parade ground and, luckily for him, from his Colonel’s house. He had been a most admirable batman to that Colonel, had – in Simla – married the Colonel’s memsahib’s lady’s maid, had been promoted to the orderly-room, to the corporals’ and sergeants’ messes, had become a Musketry-colour sergeant and, two months before the war had been given a commission. He would have gained this before but for a slight – a very slight – tendency to overdrinking, which had given on occasion a similarly slight tone of insolence to his answers to field-officers. Elderly field-officers on parade are apt to make slight mistakes in their drill, giving the command to move to the right when technically, though troops are moving to the right, the command should be: ‘Move to the left!’; and the officer’s left being the troops’ right, on a field-day, after lunch, field-officers of a little rustiness are apt to grow confused. It then becomes the duty of warrant-officers present if possible to rectify, or if not, to accept the responsibility for the
resultant
commotion. On two occasions during his brilliant career, being slightly elated, this war-time C.O. had neglected this military duty, the result being subsequent Orderly Room
strafes
which remained as black patches when he looked back on his past life and which constantly embittered his remembrances. Professional soldiers are like that.

In spite of an exceptionally fine service record he remained bitter, and upon occasion he became unreasonable. Being what the men – and for the matter of that the officers of the battalion, too – called a b—y h—ll of a pusher, he had brought his battalion up to a great state of efficiency; he had earned a double string of ribbons and by pushing his battalion into extremely tight places, by volunteering it for difficult services which, even during trench warfare did present themselves, and by extricating what remained of it with singular skill during the first battle of the Somme on an occasion – perhaps the most lamentable of the whole war – when an entire division commanded by a political rather than a military general had been wiped out, he had earned for his battalion a French decoration called a
Fourragère
which is seldom given to other than French regiments. These exploits and the spirit which dictated them were perhaps less appreciated by the men under his command than was imagined by the C.O. and his bosom friend Captain McKechnie who had loyally aided him, but they
did
justify the two in attaching to the battalion the sort of almost maudlin sentimentality that certain parents will bestow upon their children.

In spite, however, of the appreciation that his services had received, the C.O. remained embittered. He considered that, by this time, he ought at least to have been given a brigade, if not a division, and he considered that, if that was not the case, it was largely due to the two black marks against him as well as to the fact of his low social origin. And, when he had taken a little liquor these obsessions exaggerated themselves very quickly to a degree that very nearly endangered his career. It was not that he soaked – but there were occasions during that period of warfare when the consumption of a certain amount of alcohol was a necessity if the human being were to keep on carrying on and through rough places. Then, happy was the man who carried his liquor well.

Unfortunately the C.O. was not one of these. Worn out by continual attention to papers – at which he was no great hand – and by fighting that would continue for days on end, he would fortify himself with whisky and immediately his bitternesses would overwhelm his mentality, the aspect of the world would change and he would rail at his superiors in the army and sometimes would completely refuse to obey orders, as had been the occasion a few nights before, when he had refused to let his battalion take part in the concerted retreat of the Army Corps. Tietjens had had to see to this.

Now, exasperated by the after-effects of several days’ great anxieties and alcoholisms, he was refusing to take a pill. This was a token of his contempt for his superiors, the outcome of his obsession of bitterness.

III

AN ARMY – ESPECIALLY
in peace time – is a very complex and nicely adjusted affair, and though active operations against an enemy force are apt to blunt nicenesses and upset compensations – as they might for a chronometer – and although this of ours, according to its own computation was only a rag-time aggregation, certain customs of times when this force was also Regular had an enormous power of survival.

It may seem a comic affair that a Colonel commanding a regiment in the midst of the most breathless period of hostilities, should refuse to take a pill. But the refusal, precisely like a grain of sand in the works of a chronometer, may cause the most singular perturbations. It was so in this case.

A sick officer of the very highest rank is the subordinate of his doctor the moment he puts himself into the M.O.’s hands: he must obey orders as if he were a Tommy. A Colonel whole and in his senses may obviously order his M.O. to go here and there and to perform this or that duty; the moment he becomes sick the fact that his body is the property of His Majesty the King, comes forcibly into operation, and the M.O. is the representative of the sovereign in so far as bodies are concerned. This is very reasonable and proper, because sick bodies are not only
of
no use to the King, but are enormously detrimental to the army that has to cart them about.

In the case that Tietjens had perforce to worry over, the matter was very much complicated in the first place by the fact of the great personal dislike that the C.O. had manifested – though always with a sort of field-officer’s monumental courtesy – towards himself, and then because Tietjens had a very great respect for the abilities of the Commanding Officer as Commanding Officer. His rag-time battalion of a rag-time army was as nearly on the level of an impeccable regular battalion as such a unit with its constantly changing personnel could possibly be. Nothing had much more impressed Tietjens in the course of even the whole war, than the demeanour of the soldier whom the other night he had seen firing engrossedly into invisibility. The man had fired with care, had come down to re-load with exact drill movements – which are the quickest possible. He had muttered some words which showed that his mind was entirely on his job like a mathematician engrossed in an abstruse calculation. He had climbed back on to the parapet; continued to fire engrossedly into invisibility; had returned and re-loaded and had again climbed back. He might have been firing off a tie at the butts!

It was a very great achievement to have got men to fire at moments of such stress with such complete tranquillity. For discipline works in two ways: in the first place it enables the soldier in action to get through his movements in the shortest possible time; and then the engrossment in the exact performance begets a great indifference to danger. When, with various-sized pieces of metal flying all round you, you go composedly through efficient bodily movements, you are not only wrapped up in your task, but you have the knowledge that that exact performance is every minute decreasing your personal danger. In addition you have the feeling that Providence ought to – and very frequently does – specially protect you. It would not be right that a man exactly and scrupulously performing his duty to his sovereign, his native land and those it holds dear, should not be protected by a special Providence. And he is!