The Balliols (51 page)

In the mess he was conscious of it. An unworded feeling: “Let's not commit ourselves. Let's not do anything definite; not now; not till this thing is over. Then we can discover where we stand.” In particular was he aware of this in the relations between Tallent and Roy Rickman. Sooner or later it was certain things must reach a head. Ever since Tallent had rewritten Rickman's poems in proof, they had grown more and more nervously aware of one another. Sooner or later their irritation with one another would find expression. But each was desperately anxious to postpone the issue. They adopted an elaborate tact towards each other. They steered clear of dangerous subjects. When they discussed literature, it was always in the past; as something dead. They never discussed a living writer. There was a tacit, unframed agreement to let things wait, to get
this
settled first.

Among the men and among the other officers there was the same, though less taut atmosphere of suspense.

“It's a difficult time,” Rickman said to Hugh. “The company's never been in a battle before: as a single unit. A great many of the men have; but that's another thing. No unit's really united till it has been in a show. There's a comradeship that nothing can ever really break between the men who've been through the same show together. You'll see the change afterwards. There'll be an entirely different atmosphere. There'll be a unity, that there isn't now.
And yet oddly enough, a show like this destroys a company. It isn't just the men who are going to be killed. It's those that are left. They don't know what's ahead of them now. They're fearless because they don't know what there is for them to be afraid of. But when they do know, when they've seen, and learnt, they're not going to be the same. They'll need new blood, recruits who've yet to learn. That's what's tragic: the knowledge that this company we've worked so hard at it will never be as good as it is now, till we've brought strangers in.”

Of all that Hugh thought as he lay there on his elbows, hardly aware of the sermon swelling now to its peroration, to the last exhortation to courage, the last assurance that “no peace was possible that was not a complete and utter victory, till the perfidious foe was left without the power to do harm,” the final promise that for all those who fell awaited a reward not of this earth's giving “not as the world gives, gives He unto you.” In forty-eight hours he too would have seen and learnt. He would know what there was to see and know.

Forty-eight hours later he was leaning against the parapet of a shallow trench while a hail of shells burst round him. He knew now. For the last twenty hours he had known, what war was really like. Leaning there while the shells crashed round him, flinging up their fountains of mud and steel, while the men cowered behind their traverse; while the whine of the English shells mingled with the whine of the German shells above his head, he tried to find, in a desperate attempt to occupy his mind, a simile that would explain the contrast between that and war as he had seen it during the trench routine of the winter months.

He found a simile.

He thought of sickness as the ordinary healthy man pictures it. There are headaches, there are bilious attacks. There are colds, there are epidemics of influenza, with ricochetting temperatures and a night or two of anxiety. There are the stock ailments: measles, whooping cough, chicken-pox; there were accidents like sprained ankles, broken collar-bones, dislocated wrists. It was in such terms that the average healthy man saw sickness.

And then one day he is taken round a hospital. He sees what sickness is for those that are really ill. The operating tables, the rubber gloves, the knives, the chloroform, the antiseptic bandages, the suppurating wounds, the injections of morphia and strychnine; he thinks, “Is this what sickness really is?”

The simile held true. Trench routine bore the same relation to
the warfare of the battlefield that the casual sickness of the healthy man bore to the ill health of the permanent invalid; that headaches and feverish colds bore to diseases, to organic ailment. In trench routine there were the discomforts of cold, exposure, lack of sleep; there was the unending friction of exhausted nerves; there was at night the sharp ping of bullets, the occasional direct hit with a shell, when a dug-out would be blown to pieces, and casualties rushed to a field dressing station. It was this that the eminent visitors to the line were shown: the publicists, politicians, priests, who went home imagining they had been shown war.

But
this
; the desolate carnage of the battlefield; this was an altogether other thing, the long unending plain of mud holes, water-filled, precariously lined by duckboard tracks; the bombardments through which it was impossible to make one's voice carry beyond a traverse; when the shells hailed down so fast that you could not distinguish individual trajectories when there would be a roar at one side or another; and a fountain of earth and iron tossed in a high cascade; when the stretcher bearers were fewer than their tasks, when not only No Man's Land but the long stretch of reclaimed land over which the tide of field-grey uniforms had receded slowly was littered with the bodies of distorted and unburied men.

During the days of trench routine Hugh had often wondered when he had marched his section up the line alone along a lonely road what he would do if a stray shell were to burst among his men; what would he do with the wounded? Would he detail men to take them back to a dressing station, or would he just leave one man to look after them, having sent a runner in search of stretcher bearers? His job was to take four gun-teams into the line to relieve a section. Was his first duty to the section he was detailed to relieve or to the wounded? It was a point that he had pondered more than once as he had marched his men up the line along a lonely road. The occasion to settle it had never come. Not during the days of trench routine.

Last night it had come, however. With shell fire sweeping every road; with every dump, every cross-road the target for artillery. It had come. There had been no question then about what to do. The guns had to be got into their place, the half-wounded could care for the badly wounded. There were stretcher bearers and dressing stations. When a man fell sick at home there was laid a responsibility on amateur capacity. In hospitals the professionals took charge.

Leaning now against the parapet, in the late afternoon while the brazen frenzy of the evening hate broke round them, he could not
assemble detail by detail the disorder of that relief; the shells bursting among the limbers, the screaming of the mules; the effort to make his voice heard above the din, the hurried conferences with the officer he was relieving, the perfunctory checking of the stores, the examination of the dug-out shelter, the scrawled signature, the roll call of his men, the reappointing of the gun teams with one gun damaged beyond repair, and half its team on the way back to details. The attempt to restore confidence and good humour; to make jokes about the increased rum ration that would be due that evening; the drear-eyed waiting for the dawn.

It was an experience that he had not suspected life to hold or himself to possess the resilience to sustain. And yet to these new conditions he could adjust himself within a day in just the same way that from his experience of training in England he had adjusted himself to ordinary trench life. Different though it was, different though that had been, each in its separate way was a branch of soldiering, with the same main duties; inspection of men and kit, care for the comfort of the men, the maintenance of his prestige; the responsibility to his senior officers, the orders to be carried out, the reports to be sent in; with the same feeling that he was carrying out those orders not because there were Germans three-quarters of a mile away, but because there was a company commander at headquarters, whose visit of inspection might surprise him. Even here, it was only in external detail that his world had altered.

An advance was fixed for the following morning. The guns of the 305th company were set for a barrage of indirect fire that was to lift as the infantry advanced. Hugh's section and Tallent's section were in the same trench. Of their eight guns only five remained; with about two thirds of their gun teams left. They shared a small funk-hole dug-out, most of which was taken up by a table made out of empty S.A.A. boxes that was hardly large enough to hold a full-spread map. A couple of stretchers served as beds. They had decided to run their five guns as a single section for purposes of supervision and control, taking it in turns to rest: on duty together whenever there was a likelihood of danger. Tallent had been asleep when the evening barrage opened. Hugh tapped his shoulder.

“It's started,” he said.

They both knew what they had to do. There was no likelihood of attack, anyhow of an attack that would reach as far back as their position. The trench had not been selected with a view to direct fire.
There would be no targets for them. The men had instructions to take such shelter as they could, crouched under the lip of the parapet. There was nothing for them to do but wait. All that could be done lay in the hand of Hugh and Tallent. By walking up and down the trench, by joking together, by appearing unconcerned, by exchanging a cigarette with a sergeant, by swopping an anecdote with a sentry, they could do something to keep the men's spirits up.

It was while they were strolling together up the trench, talking, creating within themselves a kind of exhilaration out of their attempts to persuade themselves that they were not frightened, that Hugh turning, saw coming across the open, alone, along a road that was little more than a path zigzagging its way through the maze of shell holes, a figure that seemed familiar.

“Heavens, but it can't be him!”

They turned and looked. It was an officer. He was coming towards them, as straight as the deviations of the path allowed. Shells were breaking on all sides of him. He did not appear to notice them. The roll of his walk was very much like Rickman's.

“But what on earth would he be doing here at a time like this?”

“And without a runner.”

The absence of a runner was as extraordinary as Rickman's presence. You would never expect a visit till after dark. It was unheard of for a company commander to go round the guns alone. But it was Rickman right enough. He swung himself down into the trench.

“Well, how are you all? Sorry I couldn't get up before. The Brigadier's been very trying. We've got him to sleep at last, thank heaven. What sort of a dug-out have you? Doesn't look as though it would do much more than keep the rain out. We'll get you out of it as soon as possible. The show's to-morrow, then the relief the instant it can be arranged. How are the men? I'll just stroll down and see how they're getting on.”

The barrage was breaking about the trench in unlessened frenzy, but Rickman sauntered past the gun teams as though he were making the most casual of kit inspections. He had a joke or so for every gun team.

“Ah, there's Walker. I'm afraid you won't find much telephone wire up here when you want to tie your pack on.”

The laugh that went up from Walker's team was as light-hearted as if they were camping in bell tents in Grantham. Rickman
made no attempt at an inspection. Just exchanged a word or two with each gun team, then turned back to Tallent.

“Now let's go and have a look at your barrage charts.”

But he did not want to look at any barrage charts.

“Give me a whisky. No, no water.”

He poured it out himself: a long steady splash into the enamel mug. He swallowed it as though it were a glass of beer. He blinked, shook his head.

“There's no need to bother about those charts. If we didn't get them right in rest billets, we won't get them right in reserve line dug-outs. I only wanted to see how you all were. The worst's over. You've done grandly getting here. The show won't be anything, not for us. The next thing that'll really matter will be the relief, and the celebration dinner back in billets. I must push on and see Symes now. You're doing splendidly, you two. Keep going.”

He scrambled out of the trench, into the open, on to the zigzagging shell-pocked road. Hugh and Tallent looked in silence at one another.

“There was no need for him to come.”

“No need at all. Just because he wanted to show the troops that he wasn't frightened.”

“And he was frightened. Who wouldn't be? Look at the whisky he needed to pull his nerves round.”

“He didn't bring a runner because he wasn't going to have another man expose himself to a risk like that on his account.”

“It's made a big difference to the men. It put new heart into them. In a way we couldn't do.”

“He's a man all right.” Tallent paused. “And a crazy one at that,” he added. “His life's too valuable to be risked like that. And walking up to the trench, in daylight, right across the open, so that every observation post behind the German lines that's interested will know there's something here, will be able to send our map reference to their artillery. That visit's going to cost us more than one casualty. And yet … oh yes, it is worth it. It's meant something to these men, they'll not forget. It's a grand gesture. That's always justified.” He paused again. “Why the devil should a man who can live real poetry want to write bad verse?”

Rickman had said: “The show won't be anything; not for us.” It shouldn't have been. But he had counted without the Brigadier. On the last morning of the show he was summoned to Brigade Headquarters.
The Brigadier was seated at a long table, on which a large-scale map was spread. It was pin-pricked with innumerable flags, pencilled in green and blue and orange. On the wall in front below the invariable dug-out decorations by Kirchner and his imitators were arranged in a row of pointed hooks, the successive reports from battalion and company commanders. He beckoned Rickman to his side. With the point of a paper knife he pointed out the line of the Brigade front.