THE SHILLING 
 S OLDIE RS 
 
 DENIS OARSTIN 
 
 
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 The Shilling Soldiers
 
 THE SHILLING 
 SOLDIERS 
 
 BY 
 
 DENIS GARSTIN 
 
 WITH A PREFACE 
 BY 
 
 HUGH WALPOLE 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
 
 Preface 
 
 ■p\ENIS NORMAN GARSTIN was bom 
 ■*-^ on the 22nd July, 1890. He won a 
 scholarship at Blundell's School, Tiverton, 
 in 1904, and was afterwards a scholar at 
 Sydne}^ Sussex College, Cambridge. In 
 1912 he took up a tutorship in the Crimea, 
 and from that time until the outbreak of 
 war contributed many articles to the 
 London Press. He was in Russia in July, 
 191 J-, reached England in the middle of 
 August, and was given a commission in 
 the 18th Hussars. He crossed to France 
 in the spring of 1915, and was transferred 
 to the 10th Hussars, served with the 
 machine-gun squadron at the battles of 
 Ypres, Thiepval, Albert and Loos. Li 
 September, 1916, he was summoned to
 
 vi Preface 
 
 Russia, and attached to the British Em- 
 bassy at Petrograd on special propaganda 
 work. When the British Embassy left 
 Petrograd on February 18th of this year 
 he continued in diplomatic work at 
 jMoscow. He was summoned to the North 
 of Russia in July, and reached Kem at the 
 end of that month after many perilous 
 escapes and adventures. He was then 
 sent on the Onega expedition, in which he 
 greatly distinguished himself, and after 
 that, on August 11th, started off on 
 what he held to be " A nice quiet little 
 expedition." It was on this expedition 
 that he lost his life, after capturing one 
 armoured car by his own efforts and 
 exposing himself in an endeavour to 
 secure another. He was buried with full 
 military honours on August 21st, 1918, 
 in the cemetery at Archangel.
 
 Preface vii 
 
 I have given this Httle chronicle of 
 Denis Garstin's life in some detail, because 
 it shows, as nothing else can, the various 
 adventures and experiences that he crowd- 
 ed into his twenty-eight years. To many 
 men it has happened that the last four 
 years have brought romance and ad- 
 venture to an extent that would, a short 
 while back, have seemed incredible. Denis 
 Garstin, I believe, would have crammed 
 romance into his life with eager hands, 
 whatever the external world might have 
 seen fit to do ; and that, not because he 
 was restless or ambitious or self-seeking, 
 but simply for the reason that he was an 
 artist. 
 
 I have met many artists in my time, 
 some artists by deliberate adoption, some 
 artists by curiosity, some artists by ambi- 
 tion ; but the born artist, who cannot 
 help himself, who transmutes by his own 
 spirit everything that he touches, however
 
 riii Preface 
 
 common and unclean, into gold, is a rare 
 creature. Of such a select company was 
 Denis Garstin. Whatever the world might 
 be into which destiny drew him, he assimil- 
 ated its colour and texture until he became 
 so thoroughly a part of it that it seemed 
 to be his only possible condition. And 
 yet, in spite of that assimilation, he never 
 lost his own adventurous personality. 
 That book, Friendly Russia, the one book 
 published during his lifetime, was amongst 
 the first of the English views of Russia. 
 Since its publication there have been 
 many volumes in England about Russia, 
 and still that little collection of sketches 
 seems to me to have a fragrance and atmo- 
 sphere that nearly all the later pictures 
 have lacked. It was a book that had 
 faults of inexperience, and I think his 
 Shilli7ig Soldiers a far riper and more 
 effective work ; but that freshness re- 
 mains, and gives those pages more than
 
 Preface ix 
 
 an ephemeral life. I like to think of that 
 day when he first came to see me about 
 his proposed work in Russia. He had just 
 been recalled from France, and was highly 
 indignant. I can see him now, looking 
 about nineteen, flushed and angry, protest- 
 ing that it was quite impossible for him to 
 leave his men, and that it was preposterous 
 of the authorities to ask him to do this. 
 When he saw he was under definite orders 
 he gave way ; but I remember how un- 
 comfortable I felt, exactly as though I had 
 taken away, for no reason at all, one of his 
 most cherished possessions. Then, as 
 time passed, and he gradually assimilated 
 his Russian project, it was delightful to 
 see the* zest and eagerness with which he 
 entered into the new world, giving it at 
 once a colour i:'nd symmetry of his own. 
 It would be impossible to speak too highly 
 of the work that he did during that 
 difficult year of 1917 in Russia. To no
 
 X Preface 
 
 one can it have been more difficult 
 than to him, because his love of free- 
 dom, his belief in the magnificent 
 potentialities of men and his eager 
 visions of an Utopia that seemed to his 
 young spirit no difficult realization led him 
 to claim the opening phases of the Russian 
 Revolution with eagerness and happy 
 confidence. None of us who shared in it 
 will forget the spirit of that first week of 
 the Revolution ; it did seem possible for 
 a moment that the Kingdom of God was 
 come upon earth. Then, as the clouds 
 gathered, and it became once more ap- 
 parent that that Kingdom can never be 
 realized by desire alone, but demands for 
 its stability discipline and self-sacrifice, 
 one man after another lost hope. This, 
 I think, Denis Garstin never did ; to the 
 day of his death, as his last letters show, 
 he believed that that first impulse would 
 find its right channel at last, and that all
 
 Preface xi 
 
 the terrors of Bolshevism and the horrors 
 that accompanied it, were mere spate and 
 turmoil on the surface of the current that 
 flowed strong and certain to its appointed 
 destiny. He was chaffed, I remember, a 
 great deal for this idealism of his ; he had 
 again and again to acknowledge that facts 
 were against him, and he never refused to 
 admit the dishonour and shame of the 
 anarchy into which that revolution devel- 
 oped. But his confidence remained, and 
 it is one of the tragic ironies of life that he 
 should have been killed by the people 
 whom he loved, believing in the future of 
 that land as many of its own citizens did 
 not. 
 
 I have spoken here mainly about Russia 
 because it was in Russia that I knew him ; 
 but this book, Shilling Soldiers, although 
 it was written round his French ex- 
 periences, illustrates to the full that same 
 idealism and humorous confidence in life
 
 xii Preface 
 
 of which I have spoken. The books about 
 the British soldier in this war are now 
 legion, and it is strange to me how few of 
 them carry with them an atmosphere of 
 individual personality. There occurs to 
 my mind as I write Miss Bagnold's 
 A Diary witJiout Dates, John Masefield's 
 Gallipoli, Captain Brett Young's Marching 
 on Tanga and The Crescent Moon ; with 
 these, I think, Denis Garstin's Shilling 
 Soldiers may definitely rank. The Diary 
 of a Timid Man is exactly that mixture of 
 imagination and hard definite realism that 
 seems to me to be art ; he had the way of 
 giving detail a colour and form that made 
 it his own detail without forcing it to be 
 untrue. That he had the dramatic gift 
 none who read The Runaway can doubt, 
 and Trooper Kinnaird and Love o' Woman 
 have humour of a very remarkable kind 
 As to his poetic vision, Wind in the Trenches 
 and The Pigeon are proof enough. These
 
 Preface xiii 
 
 were fine gifts. It is useless now to 
 prophesy of wliat he might liave done, 
 but I am glad to think that there are 
 evidences enough here of as fine and noble 
 a spirit as the English soil has ever created. 
 
 Hugh Walpole.
 
 Contents 
 
 Ikto Actios 
 
 WlXD IX THE TrEXCHES 
 
 Mada^ie Defarge 
 
 The RrxAWAY 
 
 The Epic of Troopek Kikxaird 
 
 As Seex from Frederick 
 
 The Diary of a Tniin Max 
 
 Love o' Womax 
 
 A Tat.ismax for Courage 
 
 Ix Skylixf Trexch . 
 
 The Returx of the Warrior 
 
 The Pigf.ox 
 
 The Widow's Boxxet 
 
 Fragments . 
 
 Vale 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 25 
 41 
 . 51 
 61 
 71 
 N9 
 167 
 185 
 197 
 211 
 223 
 . 239 
 . 257 
 . 273
 
 Into Action
 
 Into Action 
 
 " npHERE'S France." 
 
 -'~ The morning mist was drawn 
 aside like a delicate curtain, and in the 
 early sunlight we saw France, waking 
 freslily to another day. The sea played 
 around her coast, as if teasing her into 
 wakefulness, and we soldiers, going to 
 battle for the first time, felt with un- 
 reasoned wonder how strange it was that 
 the smiling land should bear so little trace 
 of the havoc that was being wrought 
 within hfer, 
 
 Havre greeted us with the smell of 
 roasted coffee and the staccato bustle of 
 morning. Black- jowled men, their hands 
 deep in baggy trousers, wearing the 
 familiar blue blouses, watched us go past, 
 with the disdain of their kind for those 
 
 3
 
 Into Action 
 
 who carry their own luggage. The httle 
 tables in front of cafes, as the day wore 
 on, were soon occupied by serious bour- 
 geois, who scowled at their papers, and 
 drank pHits verves in moments of 
 abstraction. Around market booths and 
 down all the streets their women were 
 shopping as vigorously as ever. 
 
 " Gad, but they're different to us, aren't 
 they ? " said a subaltern. " You'd have 
 thought with a war on like this they 
 wouldn't be so — so French." 
 
 To us that morning Havre stood for an 
 epitome of France. Leaving England, as 
 yet unchanged, we expected to find this 
 land convulsed with the war. But Havre 
 was the Havre of old days ; the habits 
 and the mannerisms of its people 
 triumphing over all emergencies. English 
 soldiers, mingling good-humouredly in the 
 traffic, the " Bailee Mail " shouted as 
 shrilly as " Le P'tit Parisien " were the
 
 Into Action 
 
 only differences at first sight. But soon 
 we noticed a new habit in the people, a 
 habit, an impulse, perhaps, of smiling, 
 whenever they caught sight of us, friend- 
 lily and with gratitude. 
 
 It was a long journey to the Front, 
 broken for a while at Rouen. Rouen, we 
 felt, was our jumping-off place into war, 
 and we made the utmost of our last chance 
 to live keenly and treasure jealously every 
 impression of the place. 
 
 The vitality of Rouen was intoxicating. 
 One had but to sit at a cafe on the quay 
 and everything went past one in a jumble, 
 like a m^odern picture of " Movement " or 
 " Human Energy." There was the river 
 packed with shipping, the Grand Pont 
 crowded with workers, huge cranes on the 
 banks unloading stores, trams clanging 
 by, and motors, and trains puffing heavily 
 along, and miles of goods wagons, and 
 French soldiers of all kinds, and Turcos,
 
 Into Action 
 
 and English Tommies, and Indians, and 
 midincttes with their pohshed black hair 
 and bold eyes and insistent figures, and 
 obese yeres and meres de famille, dragging 
 little children along, who looked romid 
 anxiously at the gaiety and movement, 
 taking stock of it all for future use. There 
 it went past, all in one coup d'oeil — ^the 
 trains, the traffic and the passers-by in 
 their thousands — a kaleidoscope of colour 
 and noise and vitality, but dominating it 
 all were the women, laughing, insolent, 
 stern, rigid, forceful, curious, whatever 
 they were, they seemed, among the 
 machinery and clamour around them, 
 themselves to be the life-force. 
 
 And then, as counterpart, the English 
 Tommy, the good-natured spectator 
 watching it all. " Comment ces Anglais 
 ont le sourire serieux," said a woman 
 taking her coffee with her husband. " lis 
 se moquent de tous, et cependant, ils ne
 
 Into Action 
 
 sont pas des cyniques." But " ces Anglais " 
 were going to the war. 
 
 We went one evening, some two thou- 
 sand of us on each train, and the men 
 sang and cheered and threw food to the 
 children, who crowded the railway, shout- 
 ing, " Souvenirs — biscuits." We left Rouen 
 silhouetted against the sunset, a flaring 
 red sunset, that reflected itself in the 
 Seine as we crossed it, so that the black 
 houses and spires seemed in a world of 
 flame. 
 
 And so to battle. 
 
 The men, all along the train, cheered 
 and sang and dropped off eventually to 
 sleep. In our coupe we sat up most of the 
 night and talked. 
 
 E said, breaking into our conversa- 
 tion, after a long silence on his part : " Oh, 
 you chaps, you're talking rot. The war 
 will go on for years, but it won't matter 
 to me. I'll run away the first time I hear
 
 8 Into Action 
 
 a shot fired. I know I shall. I'm in the 
 most awful fmik already." 
 
 We had all heard this from E 
 
 before. Moreover, we all felt exactly as 
 he did, but we were less frank about it. 
 Only on the duration of the war did we 
 all differ from him. He laughed. 
 
 " I know Germany, you fellows. I've 
 lived for years with Hermann the Hun. 
 He's got us cooked. Who's the cleverest 
 man in the world ? Von Falkenhayn. You 
 and I are pitted against Von Falkenhayn. 
 It's ludicrous. It's very beautiful, but it's 
 ludicrous. Like mice against a cat. And 
 our papers talk about pushes — pushes — 
 and victory. Ye gods, I shall just run 
 away. Come on, say something." 
 
 We all barked round him like a lot of 
 terriers. But he laughed at us and turn- 
 ing over went quietly to sleep. After 
 eight months of war we believed utterly 
 in victory, and that an immediate one.
 
 Into Action 9 
 
 We believed our Government had made 
 every preparation, that we had the men 
 and the munitions and that now we were 
 just going in to finish up the whole busi- 
 ness. Most of us, I know, felt angry that 
 we had been kept back in England all 
 these months and were only now going in, 
 after our friends had borne the brunt, to 
 " gallop 'em over the Rhine." 
 
 And so we talked, and blamed our luck, 
 and confident of victory, tried to ignore 
 the terror that lurked even in success. 
 
 When we woke up it was Sunday. It 
 was hot and sunny, and very peaceful. 
 Along the white roads we saw little groups 
 of villagers going to Mass. They noticed 
 the troop train and waved to us, and the 
 men waved and shouted back. In vain we 
 looked for signs of war, for lorries, or 
 troops moving up, or depots, or " parks," 
 or anything that showed our business 
 there. It was just a warm Sunday.
 
 10 Into Action 
 
 Swallows darted along the canals, boys 
 splashed in little rivers or raced around 
 naked in the sun, carts trailed lazily along 
 the dusty lanes, and until we reached Haze- 
 brouck, nothing but a hospital train saved 
 us from feeling that some mistake had 
 been made and we were in a land of peace. 
 
 Even at Hazebrouck, there was little 
 sign, except for a few grey-green motors 
 that buzzed to and fro. Only it sounded 
 as if the sea were not very far away. One 
 could hear breakers, it seemed. Booming 
 on the shore. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said a subaltern, who had 
 come to meet us, noticing that we listened. 
 " You can hear the guns all right." 
 
 He said it with a carelessness that 
 shocked us. It was impossible for us, 
 haunted by the knowledge since the first 
 days of the war that we must face these 
 guns, to believe that we could ever speak 
 of them with a like carelessness. And we
 
 Into Action 11 
 
 envied him enormously. He knew how he 
 would behave in a bombardment, while 
 not one of us for eight months had lived a 
 day free from the dread of our cowardice. 
 
 " But are those our guns ? " asked 
 
 Billy S , who never minded what 
 
 questions he asked. 
 
 The subaltern snorted. " My dear old 
 thing," he said, " didn't you know we 
 haven't any ? " 
 
 Then he told us that the regiment had 
 been badly smashed a few days earlier, 
 and that directly we'd re-formed, we'd 
 probably go up again, and be smashed 
 again. And so on. " We haven't got a 
 damned thing," he said, " not even men." 
 
 He whistled and rode out to join our 
 regiment. 
 
 " He's one of those pessimists," said 
 Billy. " I heard it for a fact in London 
 that everything's going splendidly." 
 
 The regiment, however, bore out the
 
 12 Into Action 
 
 subaltern. Though cavahy, it had been 
 filHng gaps in the trenches all the winter 
 and now again it was terribly shattered, 
 and very silent about everything. But, 
 when a few days later we had found our 
 feet, and were ordered up to the line, to 
 hold it at all costs, I heard something near 
 a complaint from my immediate O.C. 
 
 " I wish to God they'd stop carrying on 
 ' as usual ' and get to business," he said. 
 
 " Who ? " I asked. 
 
 He looked at me and raised his eye- 
 brows, crinkling his moustache up against 
 his nose. " Oh, the people at home," he 
 said. " I don't know. They know their 
 job. But they seem to be taking this 
 pretty easily." 
 
 The buses, all blacked over, came for 
 us, snorting and jolting as though they 
 were still resentful of their new job. The 
 men clambered on board and pretended 
 they were back in London. Our bus had
 
 Into Action 13 
 
 " Willesden " on it and a man called 
 Piggott, who knew its old route, wandered 
 up and down, giving all the roads we were 
 supposed to pass, and punching imaginary 
 tickets with a Verey Pistol. 
 
 " 'Ello, mates," shouted some passing 
 A.S.C. men. " 'Oo are you ? " 
 
 " 'Aven't you ever seen a cavalry charge 
 before ? " yelled Piggott. " 'Ere we come, 
 the — cavalry, bussing off to battle." 
 
 " Oh, gawd." 
 
 The country was still as peaceful as it 
 had been on our journey up. Peasants 
 worked in the fields, lazy cattle chewed the 
 cud, taking no notice of us. Except for 
 occasional soldiers in villages, or lorries 
 on the road, there was not a sign of war. 
 At last we came to a town — Poperinghe — 
 and passed down a long street. At each 
 doorway women sat, clicking their bobbins, 
 and so intent on their lace making, or 
 else so little interested in us, that none
 
 14 Into Action 
 
 looked up to notice us as we passed. In 
 the centre of the town we turned a corner, 
 into a ruined street, with never a sign of 
 Hfe. Its silence almost took our breath 
 away. 
 
 " Gor, it begins sudden, don't it ? " said 
 a man. 
 
 Thenceforth the land was quiet still, 
 but dreary, disfigured with old camping- 
 grounds, and cart tracks running any- 
 where across the fields. There was scarcely 
 a sign of life anywhere. From Valmer- 
 tingue we went on foot, pestered at first 
 by a rag-tag mob, selling biscuits and 
 chocolates at huge prices, like the pedlars 
 outside a race-course. 
 
 It was already dark when we reached 
 Ypres. I did not recognize the town at 
 first. I had expected to pass through 
 camps and troops and artillery parks and 
 all the paraphernalia of war. It shocked 
 me to march through a waste land and
 
 Into Action 15 
 
 find a rubbish heap of masonry and hear 
 a soldier say : " Poor old Yeeps." 
 
 " Where is everyone ? " I asked my CO. 
 
 Again he crinkled up his moustache, 
 which was a trick he had, I soon learnt, 
 whenever any call was put on his imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," he said, " Dead, 
 I suppose." 
 
 In all the Ypres I saw that night not a 
 
 house was intact. From time to time a 
 
 shell would come wailing over and burst 
 
 If 
 somewhere in the town and we heard the 
 
 rumble of a wall collapsing. Ypres was 
 still burning. On either side the houses 
 roared and crackled and fell crashing down, 
 as a great tide of flame surged through the 
 shattered buildings, now sending out deep 
 waves of fire, now a foam of sparks. 
 Against the dark sky the city was in- 
 credibly bright, for every ruined facade 
 that was itself not burning, reflected the
 
 16 Inio Aclion 
 
 glare of its blazing vis-a-vis ; and the 
 long column of troops, marching, it seemed 
 into the very flames, looked strange and 
 fantastic among the leaping blaze. It .was, 
 at last, the entry into war. 
 
 Beyond the city was desolation, a wide 
 dark plain, cut with shallow trenches and 
 shell-holes, encumbered with endless wires 
 and littered with broken carts, dead 
 horses, rifles, kit, and odd remnants of 
 cottages long since destroyed — the usual 
 back-wash of modern fighting. 
 
 It was a bleak, grim country, very dark, 
 but surrounded on all sides, so it seemed, 
 by a ring of fire. Behind us, when we 
 halted, we saw the town and the tower, 
 broken, but somehow, full of dignity, 
 silhouetted against the blaze. And around 
 us, north, east and south was the Front, 
 " lit up all gala-like " with flares that 
 swooped and plotted out the salient in a 
 wave of dancing lights. And here, in this
 
 Into Action 17 
 
 narrow area behind the Hnes, was move- 
 ment, fatigue parties wandering about 
 disconsolately, rations carted along the 
 decaying roads, limbers carrying shells to 
 some field-guns, signallers mending wires 
 that everyone tripped over and broke 
 again, sappers going grumblingly to the 
 trenches to do " what the bluddy infantry 
 ought to be able to do for themselves, if 
 only they'd an ounce of intelligence," and 
 then once, as we sat resting in a ditch, a 
 remnant of the " bluddy infantry " them- 
 selves, filthy, ragged, tottering, went 
 stumbling past us in the dark. Every 
 now and then we marched through waves 
 of smell from rotting horses, or passed 
 haphazard graves, and as we got nearer to 
 our lines, bullets from all around came 
 whining, whistling in about us. 
 
 Some limbered wagons rattled past, 
 drawing a wave of fire. A soldier shouted 
 to them to go slowly and quietly. The
 
 18 Into Action 
 
 driver's answer was terse and withering, 
 " but after all," as someone said, " the 
 poor perishers 'ave got to do it every 
 blinking night, and you wouldn't catch 
 me walking." 
 
 Some shells came over, too, and burst 
 near us. They were our first shells, and 
 those of us who were new to war felt, I 
 think, enormous relief. For eight months 
 they had been our nightmare, and when 
 they came, were less dreadful than our 
 imaginings. 
 
 And then, at last, we reached Sanctuary 
 Wood, and, scrambling up through the 
 trees, almost before we realized where we 
 were, dropped into a trench. 
 
 " 'Ere you arc, sir," said a sergeant. 
 
 "Where's the front?" I asked, be- 
 wildered. 
 
 An officer of the relieved regiment put 
 a paper in my hand. 
 
 "^That'll show you all the positions and
 
 Into Action 19 
 
 ranges," he said. " I'm off. Good luck, 
 and mind the sniper in the sap." 
 
 Still very bewildered, I tried to take my 
 bearings, and standing up on a step, 
 looked out. Just then a flare swooped up 
 near by and not very far away I saw a row 
 of black and white sandbags. There was 
 plenty to look at, for the wood stopped 
 with our trench, and I saw tangled masses 
 of wire stretched across the field, and some 
 dark figures lying about and — suddenly 
 some shots rang out and I ducked. 
 
 " God," I said, " I'm here at last." 
 
 The next few days were quiet and I had 
 time to realize what " being here " really 
 meant. 
 
 I had left London only ten days before, 
 all agog with the certainty of victory. 
 Nothing had been told us to mar our full 
 complacency. We thouglit we had every-
 
 20 Into Action 
 
 thing. People, saying Good-bye, had 
 cheerfully spoken of my being back for 
 dances and hunting in the winter, and had 
 believed it, even as I had believed it. The 
 long journey through France, bare of 
 camps and troops and supplies, had hardly 
 touched my confidence. Nothing touched 
 it until I found myself there — there at last 
 — ^pushed in as the very last reserves in 
 France, with no troops and only one 
 battery of field-guns behind us, and 
 twelve shells a day, to hold on, to hold the 
 line at all costs. 
 
 *' The moral," said Napoleon, " is to the 
 physical as three to one," but the Germans 
 pounding away, north and south, seemed 
 to outnumber us by scores. And what 
 was our morale ? I knew nothing of our 
 army in France, except from what I had 
 read in the papers, and that now I began 
 violently to disbelieve. The men I had 
 heard grousing back in the salient seemed
 
 Into Action 21 
 
 very different creatures from the gay, sar- 
 castic heroes of the press. 
 
 " O God," I said one day, " how long 
 shall we hold out, when the time comes ? " 
 
 The time soon came. We were out of it, 
 out of it by so little, that the blasts of air 
 from the bombardment blew about the 
 papers in our trench. The Germans, we 
 knew, were smashing a way through our 
 lines, and when that was smashed, they 
 would pour in and cut us off and break 
 our line. 
 
 " The 3rd D.G.'s are sticking it," came 
 our only news. " But they're nearly 
 wiped out. And then " 
 
 The bombardment rose to a roar. Thou- 
 sands of shells screamed over, as though 
 they, too, were mad for blood. The trees, 
 even the ground rocked, where we were. 
 
 I began to get pcl»icky, searched franti- 
 cally for some new place to put a gun 
 against the time, not far distant, it
 
 22 Into Action 
 
 seemed, when the Germans should be 
 through and attacking us from all sides. 
 And then the roar stopped, and as I 
 rounded a traverse in the silence, I heard 
 a man say : 
 
 " You know, if the war ended to- 
 morrer, I'd go and shake 'ands with 
 Fritz." 
 
 " What the 'ell for ? " said his mate. 
 
 " Oh, be fair," said the first. " You 
 know he's not putting up such a bad 
 fight." 
 
 And then, thank God, I laughed.
 
 Wind in the Trenches
 
 Wi7id in the Trenches 
 
 A SUBALTERN stumbled out of his 
 ■^-^ shelter, stretched himself and 
 glanced around him. 
 
 The night was quiet, and men lay 
 about the trench, sleeping like children 
 after the rigours of the day. Here and 
 there sentries standing on the fire-step 
 looked out over No-Man's-Land, dark, 
 watchful figures against the summer sky, 
 but nothing moved except a gentle wind, 
 that brought a scent of flowers into the 
 trench. 
 
 There was a moon that night, a half- 
 moon, that hung above the stripped trees, 
 and showed them up in the delicate 
 silhouette. It was scarcely a night of war. 
 You almost expected something whimsical 
 to happen. 
 
 -25
 
 26 H'ind in the Trenches 
 
 Here and there a point of light gUnted, 
 reflected from a bayonet ; star-shells 
 swooped fantastically across the sky, and 
 stray blades of grass drooped under the 
 heavy dew, that gleamed in the moonshine, 
 against dark shadows. 
 
 The subaltern, his mind growing imagin- 
 ative under the quick process of battle, 
 found himself repeating Herrick's " Night 
 Piece to Julia " : 
 
 " Her eyes the glow worm lend thee^ 
 The shooting stars attend thee. 
 
 And the elves also, 
 
 Whose little eyes glow 
 Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee." 
 
 For a few moments he paused, trans- 
 forming the war into such pleasant terms, 
 with a Julia, the visionary Julia of many 
 subalterns, thus protected. Then he went 
 down the trench towards the scene of the 
 day's battle. 
 
 It had been hard fighting — hopeless
 
 Wind in the Trenches 27 
 
 fighting it had seemed at the outset. The 
 enemy had everything, and our men 
 nothing, except the will to hold on until 
 the end. And at the critical moment the 
 end had not come. 
 
 He reached the edge of the wood and 
 looked down a slope. The ground was a 
 waste heap. The orderly line of 
 trenches^ disappeared among piles of 
 debris — ^the debris of earth and bodies 
 and shattered kit. There were the 
 piles of German dead, cut down by the 
 handful of English, who had fallen at the 
 posts. rTead, they all looked very much 
 alike, tumbled, futile things, exasperating- 
 ly useless. It was hard to imagine person- 
 alities, much less the flame of heroism in 
 these mangled wrecks ; impossible to 
 think that these things had drunk their 
 tea, and spat out dregs, only that morning, 
 and had laughed. 
 
 Their few remaining comrades were
 
 28 Wind in the Trenches ' 
 
 wearily digging a new trench. The regi- 
 ments on either side had closed in a little, 
 but relief was impossible. There was no 
 relief. 
 
 " Oh God ! " said the subaltern, and he 
 looked up at the serene moon. 
 
 He went back along his trench into the 
 wood. A moth droned into his face, and 
 startled him. He imagined for a' moment 
 he had been hit. He went up a sap, and 
 looked through a rough periscope a man 
 had made. It was very still among the 
 trees. There the dead seemed to be rest- 
 ing, they were less shattered and dis- 
 jointed. Suddenly, as he shifted the peri- 
 scope, he saw something moving. It was 
 no substance, just a lightness, gliding in 
 and out of the trees. He felt chill, and 
 looked out over the parapet, but there was 
 nothing to be seen. 
 
 The owner of the periscope noticed his 
 anxiety.
 
 Wind in the Trenches 29 
 
 " Did you see anything white moving, 
 sir ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes, but there's nothing in it," said 
 the subaltern hurriedly, although he felt 
 at once alarmed and relieved that others 
 had seen it too. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the soldier, " but it 
 puzzled me a bit at first, too, till I found 
 it was a flaw of glass in the periscope. 
 Some of the boys thought it was a spook, 
 you know." 
 
 The officer laughed quickly : " Since 
 ghost there's none to affright thee, eh ? " 
 and passed on. 
 
 When he arrived back at his shelter, he 
 found there was half an hour before 
 " stand-to," so he crawled out of the 
 trench to see a position he had marked 
 for a machine-gun. It covered no part of 
 the front line, but swept back into the 
 salient, in case the enemy broke through 
 on their flank. From it he could see the
 
 30 Wind in the Trenches 
 
 glare of Ypres burning, and the line of the 
 front marked out by the star-shells. It 
 seemed to him, that the Germans were 
 almost all round him. There was only a 
 gap due west in the horizon of swooping 
 flares. 
 
 Somewhere to the south, in contrast to 
 the quiet salient, came the noise of firing. 
 It was far off — down Plug Street way, 
 thought the subaltern, and the sound 
 moved him. He had a feeling of com- 
 panionship with those fellows there. " All 
 in the same game," he said to himself. 
 
 Suddenly he heard a sharp rattle of 
 musketry. It crackled out some two 
 miles to the north-west, angrily, viciously. 
 Once it paused, then burst out again and 
 blazed along the front. 
 
 He watched and listened, for a moment. 
 The affair had broken out too far away 
 for him to feel involved. To his over- 
 wrought mind it was just like a fire,
 
 Wind in the Trenches 31 
 
 crackling in the distance, and from where 
 it sprang up a blaze of star-shells swept 
 the land. 
 
 In a few moments it had spread and 
 raced down the line, tracing out the 
 saiient in a hurricane of light and 
 clamour, " just as if someone had 
 switched it on." It disappeared — ended, 
 he thought — in Hooze Wood — then sud- 
 denly he realized it was racing towards 
 him. 
 
 " Gad, it's coming here," he gasped. 
 "What the devil's the matter? An 
 attack ? " 
 
 He scrambled towards his trench, and 
 reached it, just in time to see his men 
 jump up, more asleep than awake, and, 
 grabbing their rifles, fire wildly over the 
 parapet. 
 
 He caught a man by the arm. " What 
 are you firing at ? " he asked. 
 
 " Dunno," said the man, reloading.
 
 32 Wind in the Trenches 
 
 " Then stop it," he shouted, and the 
 man obeyed. 
 
 The trench was full of men, firing as fast 
 as they could snap their bolts. His 
 sergeant came stumbling along, cursing. 
 
 " What's up, sergeant ? " he called. 
 
 " Wind, sir. Got the wind up, the 
 fools," and together they began pulling 
 men off the fire-step. 
 
 Suddenly a machine-gun began blazing 
 away from the sap he had lately visited. 
 
 " Stop that gun, sergeant. I'll deal with 
 these fellows." 
 
 He sent a corporal one way, and him- 
 self went the other, and in a few minutes 
 all was quiet, except for occasional snaps 
 from men in isolated posts, and star-shells 
 that swept up to reassure the enemy. 
 
 He ran into a captain, who was more 
 contemptuous than angry. 
 
 " Silly windy fools," he said. " Who 
 started it ? "
 
 Wind in the Trenches 33 
 
 " Some regiment up Pilken way," sai5 
 the subaltern, " and it swept down in a 
 minute. Poor devils," he added, " they're 
 dead beat and didn't wait to think. But 
 what worries me is that a machine-gun 
 gave its position away." 
 
 " Go and shift it then," said the captain. 
 "Damn their wind, it pulls people to 
 bits." 
 
 The subaltern moved off, but the 
 Germans forestalled him. They had 
 evidently marked the place, for before he 
 reached the sap half a dozen shells had 
 burst in it. He met his sergeant lurching 
 out of the entrance. 
 
 " Get the gun out, damme," he shouted, 
 catching the other by his shoulder. 
 
 The sergeant winced. " There ain't no 
 gun, sir," he said quietly. " It's gone 
 West. Look out, sir." 
 
 A shell came screaming over and burst 
 a few yards beyond them. As they
 
 34 Wind in the Trenches 
 
 crouched, the subaltern felt his hand was 
 sticky. 
 
 " Sorry, sergeant," he said. " Are you 
 badly hit ? " 
 
 " Nothing to speak of, sir," he answered, 
 though his shoulder was all mangled. 
 
 He sent the sergeant back, and went up 
 the sap. 
 
 There was little left of the gun, and 
 around it lay two men. One was only 
 stunned, and in a little he " came to," and 
 carried back his fellow, whose leg was gone. 
 Some few yards further on he found the 
 private through whose periscope he had 
 looked half an hour earlier. The man was 
 quite dead, and lay huddled at the bottom 
 of the trench. 
 
 The subaltern felt suddenly sick, and 
 went back. All Avas quiet again, but he 
 felt he could not stay among his men, 
 so, following some unaccountable desire, 
 crawled out to where he had lain and
 
 Wind in the Trenches 35 
 
 watched the salient spring into the blaze 
 of war. 
 
 He lay there, dizzy and miserable, 
 waiting for the new day. A wave of 
 hopelessness swept over him, centred 
 somehow on the figure lying prone in the 
 bottom of the trench. Darkness still held 
 the land, hiding all the destruction of war, 
 but in his mind's eye he saw mile upon 
 mile of trenches, and men lying inert and 
 heavy against the hard earth, mile upon 
 mile of them, to be buried haphazardly 
 and replaced by men who in their turn 
 would lie even so, and be buried and 
 replaced — men who now were in England 
 perhaps, sleeping quietly, useful, kindly 
 men. Gradually his mind, numbed with 
 the bitterness of it all, grew dull, and he 
 found himself looking curiously at the 
 blades of grass, and then the trees, and the 
 sweep of the ground . A tiredness of every- 
 thing crept over him, and he wished to be
 
 30 Wind in the Trenches 
 
 laid away, in the earth, and finish with the 
 whole rotten business. . . . 
 
 And then —something broke the quiet. 
 He hardly listened to it at first, but he 
 became conscious of an extraordinary 
 beauty somewhere. A sound, veiy sweet 
 and clear, rippled out through the night. 
 He looked towards the wood and saw only 
 the torn, dying trees, but it was from 
 there that the sound cam.e, glorious and 
 triumphant. 
 
 " Gad," he said, " a nightingale." 
 The sound stopped, but the subaltern 
 sat on. He sat until dawn broke, behind 
 the trees, and watched the light spring, it 
 seemed, out of the shattered earth and the 
 grey mists. First the clouds were tinted 
 and glowed with a fresh radiance, and then 
 morning swept over the whole land. A 
 little breeze blew faint scents and fresh- 
 ness round the subaltern and he looked up 
 into the liquid sky and smiled.
 
 Wind in the Trenches 37 
 
 " There is no death," he said aloud. 
 
 Tlien he remembered. " Damn ! I 
 missed the ' Stand-to,' " but he laughed 
 at his misdoing, and laughed again when a 
 little covey of bullets went whizzing over 
 his head, as he crawled back towards the 
 trench to another day of war.
 
 Madame Defarge
 
 Madame, Defarge 
 
 rilHE men called her " Auntie," but 
 -"- the name we knew her by suited her 
 equally well. 
 
 Every day she used to sit— and, for all 
 I know, still sits — in her little vegetable 
 shop, knitting resolutely and muttering 
 beneath her breath. Her muttering is an 
 accompaniment to her busy needles, and 
 she repeats the same refrain from every 
 row of stitches, much as the devout 
 repeat a prayer for every bead upon their 
 rosaries. But with her it is always the 
 same prayer — or curse. " Les Bodies . . . 
 sales Bodies . . . sacres Bodies . . ." ; and 
 then, as climax — " . . . ce Guillaume." No 
 word, no epithet, just " ce Guillaume." 
 
 However much in a hurry you may be, 
 you must always wait for the grim old 
 
 41
 
 42 Madame Defarge 
 
 lady to finish her row and her refrain 
 before she will attend to you, and even 
 then, though her talk is of the merits of 
 her cabbages, her mind, you feel, still 
 heaps maledictions on the enemy. Whence 
 it is not surprising that some less illiterate 
 subaltern called her " Madame Defarge," 
 and that the name, once given, remained. 
 Her little shop lies in a town some few 
 miles behind the British line. Signs of war 
 lie everywhere — houses ruined or deserted, 
 the big square empty of all save passing 
 troops, the English khaki wherever one may 
 look, and not a roof or wall but is pock- 
 marked with shrapnel bullets. At night, 
 when the traffic has ceased to clatter over 
 the cobbles, the sharp rattle of rifles and 
 machine-guns echoes round the sleeping 
 town, and every day there is some new 
 tale of houses shelled. Time after time 
 the inhabitants have been warned to leave, 
 but Madame Defarge still sits in her shop.
 
 Madame Defarge 43 
 
 knitting and muttering and selling vege- 
 tables. 
 
 I waited one morning until " ce 
 Guillaume " told me that Madame was 
 free to attend me. She heard my tale of 
 wants in silence, but at the word " melons " 
 she lifted her eyebrows and sniffed. 
 
 "It is war-time," she observed. 
 
 " I have been noticing that for several 
 days in the trenches," I answered ; " but 
 I suppose you mean I must pay exorbi- 
 tantly for my melon." 
 
 " Mon Dieu," said Madame. " You 
 English, you think you can buy every- 
 thing. But you cannot buy me that 
 Wilham." 
 
 " Then you don't like the Enghsh ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " Like ? It's not the time to like. Kill 
 me those Boches and I will honour you. 
 But you English, I do not understand 
 you. Your soldiers they come into my
 
 44 Madame Defarge 
 
 shop and they buy all that it amuses them 
 to buy. They are good children — but 
 children to a degree. They laugh, they 
 
 sing, they make love, but " She 
 
 shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 " At any rate, you cannot call us the 
 ' cold ' English any more," I said. 
 
 " Cold ? But to a degree — ^to such a 
 point — ah ! Me, I have more passion in 
 me than in all your Army. Me. I know 
 how to suffer, to love, to hate. Whom do 
 you hate ? Ces sales Bodies. Never of 
 the life. Whom do you love ? No one. 
 One thing. Pleasure. To amuse oneself, 
 that is all. S'amuser c'est tout . . . tout 
 . . . tout." How she spat the word out 
 at me. " And you arrive at it. Certes. 
 You amuse yourself while fighting these 
 sacres Boches. Comment ? Est-ce-que- 
 je sais moi ? You fight gaily. You fight 
 courageously, but you amuse yourselves 
 always. It is for me a thing incompre-
 
 Madame Defarge 45 
 
 hensible. La guerre pour moi, c'est une 
 
 chose " She hugged herself together, 
 
 straining for the word. Twice I thought 
 she would throw out her arms and declaim 
 the fitting epithet, bvit it baffled her. 
 
 While waiting for the word I heard the 
 low hissing of a shell, and I ducked from 
 force of habit. The explosion shook the 
 house a little, and I glanced at Madame 
 Defarge. But she, good lady, having 
 failed to find her word, had taken up her 
 knitting again and was expressing herself 
 in her own accustomed fashion. Then 
 another and another shell burst, and 
 Madame, having finished her line, thought 
 fit to reassure me. 
 
 " Ceux ne sont que des obus," she 
 said. 
 
 " You don't mind them ? " I asked. 
 
 " Those are not my shells," she answered. 
 " When my obus comes for me I shall not 
 have time to mind. Meanwhile " she
 
 46 Madame Defarge 
 
 shrugged her shoulders and continued her 
 knitting. 
 
 " So we amuse ourselves even while 
 fighting, and we are cold and we throw 
 our money about, and yet the men call 
 you ' Auntie.' " 
 
 Madame Defarge's head jerked up, and 
 her little black eyes took me sharply to 
 task. " What does that mean ? " she 
 demanded. 
 
 " ' Auntie ' means ' ma tante,' and is a 
 word of affection. I shouldn't be sur- 
 prised if you spoiled our men," I said. 
 
 " Moi ? Jamais de la vie. They have 
 no sense. Is it that I know why they call 
 me that word ? It is a betise. Is it that 
 you will taste everything in my shop ? " — 
 this by way of counter-attack. 
 
 " Everything," I answered, and as I 
 proceeded to the plums the door burst 
 open. 
 
 " 'Ello, Auntie, old girl, 'ows yerself ?
 
 Madame Defarge 47 
 
 Portez bon ? Bon affair ? Hey ? Got 
 any of those pommes left ? Pomme. 
 Pomme. Yes, that's the ticket," they 
 said, as Madame drew a bagful of apples 
 from beneath the counter and gave them 
 to the men. " She's kept them for us. 
 Vous etes un angel, madame — compree ? 
 Flap flap wings up there in 'eaven. You're 
 looking beaucoup swank, to-day. Jolie. 
 Merci beaucoup. Oh revoir," and they 
 departed suddenly, having caught sight 
 of me tasting the plums, but Madame 
 Defarge was blushing. 
 
 " But they are such children," she said, 
 shrugging one shoulder, as she does when 
 she excuses her own actions. In dealing 
 with the ways of this world she shrugs 
 them both. 
 
 I finished my plum and began collecting 
 my purchases, while Madame watched me, 
 fingering her knitting nervously, the very 
 image of guilt.
 
 48 Madame Defarge 
 
 " But they are such children," she said 
 again, " and if they have no passions they 
 have good hearts. They- " 
 
 " But I never accused them," I said. 
 "You accuse them, and — spoil them. 
 Answer me that." 
 
 But Madame had no answer, and only 
 looked miserably at her knitting. 
 
 " I only wonder," I continued, " that 
 you permit yourself to be defended by — 
 children." 
 
 " Mon ami," said Auntie, laying her 
 hand on my arm, " we do not under- 
 stand you, but we have full — imm^ense 
 confidence in you. God bless the English." 
 Then " Bodies . . . sales Boches . . . 
 sacres Boches . . . ce Guillaume," mut- 
 tered Madame Defarge in a frenzy of 
 knitting.
 
 The Runaway
 
 The Runmvay 
 
 rilHE sky was blue and hot. The 
 -■- ground, dappled with sunlight 
 where the leaves let through little chinks 
 of the outside glare, was warm and 
 comfortable. Altogether the wood was 
 a good place that afternoon. It screened 
 us from too much sun and from too much 
 German ; so we lay in it, and sniffed the 
 warm scents, and smoked and happily 
 discussed the hunting prospects of next 
 winter, when the war would be won and 
 over. 
 
 The birds sang on. The sun, working 
 round to a gap on our flank, streamed 
 through and overpowered us with laziness. 
 The Hun was good and quiet. One by one 
 wisps of smoke faded away from pipes 
 that one by one fell unheeded to the 
 
 51
 
 52 The Runaway 
 
 ground. Hunting prospects waned, the 
 world grew vaguer and lazier, and then — 
 we woke and found ourselves already 
 scrambling on instinct for our trench. 
 
 " Wump-wump-wump-wump-wump " — 
 in the distance the German guns at work. 
 
 " Ee-ee-ee-ee " — the shells screaming 
 over in their thousands, crackling and 
 whistling. From the noise you expect to 
 see the sky a maze of wires, with shells 
 hurtling along them, like trams, for the sky 
 is in tumult, and you look and see nothing. 
 Then— chaos and pandemonium when the 
 shells burst. 
 
 I sat in my dug - out while the bombard- 
 ment lasted, and tried to read a book. 
 There was nothing else to do. The 
 trenches that were being shelled lay 
 behind us to our right, for we were at the 
 apex of a salient. We could do nothing, 
 and we could see nothing. We could only 
 feel the quick tremors of the earth and the
 
 The Runaway 53 
 
 sharp blasts of air. The book dealt with 
 fashionable London, and every now and 
 then I found my thoughts wandering up 
 and down those old familiar streets, 
 thronged and vivacious as they would be 
 then on that sunny afternoon, but the 
 guns, thundering madly in bursts that 
 seemed almost hysterical, had a way of 
 bringing my thoughts in a fluster to the 
 front again. 
 
 Suddenly there was a crash on the roof 
 of my dug-out, and I waited for the 
 explosion. 
 
 When none came I scrambled out to 
 see by what miracle the shell had failed to 
 blow us all to bits. But there was no 
 shell, only a soldier, bleeding and torn and 
 bathed in sweat, staring at me over the 
 parados. 
 
 For a moment we stared at each other — 
 I too astonished, and he too breathless, 
 to speak.
 
 54 Tlie Runaway 
 
 " What are you doing there ? " I said 
 at last. 
 
 " Doing ? " he gasped. " Doing ? Gawd 
 knows — I don't ! " 
 
 " 'Spect 'e's an angel they're telling 
 about," said one of my men, " dropped 
 from 'eaving." 
 
 '"Ell," said the man. "It's 'ell I've 
 come from," and he jerked his thumb 
 towards the bombarded line. 
 
 Meanwhile he lay on the roof of my 
 dug-out, and while he panted for lost 
 breath glared at us as though we were his 
 enemies. He looked as I should imagine 
 an animal at bay looks — his jaw was 
 set and a sort of savage terror in his 
 eyes. 
 
 He was short and plump, and looked as 
 if he had lived too long on a chair, 
 possibly behind the counter in a London 
 back street. Even the latter months of 
 training had not quite eradicated that
 
 The Runaway 55 
 
 look, and the effort of his long run had 
 made his cheeks blotchy. 
 
 " 'Ow did yer come, matey ? " asked 
 a man. 
 
 " Rmmed," said the stranger. 
 
 " Then this ain't no place for you," 
 remarked Private Piggott. " They'll be 
 'aving a shot at us byembye, then you'll 
 catch it again. What d'yer come 'ere for ? " 
 
 " 'Cos I 'ad the wind up, proper," said 
 the stranger. 
 
 There was silence at this, until one man 
 said, " Don't wonder at it." 
 
 The fellow was looking at us now with 
 less hostility, but with a greater anxiety. 
 The men's flippancy was beginning to act* 
 on his panic like a douche. I believe his 
 anxiety was to discover what had made 
 him so unlike the rest. 
 
 " They killed my mates," he said 
 presently ; " blew 'em ter bits, right by 
 me, same as I'm talking ter you now. Alf
 
 56 The Runaway 
 
 Strange and Dungy Cox. 'Tisn't right. 
 Might 'ave blown me, too, all ter bits. Me. 
 Me." He paused, suddenly amazed at his 
 being in such a place. " Wot am I doing 
 in this 'ere show ? They're killing 'em by 
 the 'undreds, as though we was a lot of 
 animals." 
 
 " Oh, cork it up, matey," said a man, 
 not unkindly. 
 
 The stranger looked at him a moment 
 and continued, not by way of excuse 
 but as fact : "I was all right, I was, till 
 they did in my pals. Then suddenly, I 
 found myself running. Jest ran, I did, 
 and ran. Tore myself all over with them 
 branches and bushes. Didn't look where 
 I was going — jest ran. Gawd, they're 
 shelling us to blazes there ! Couldn't 
 stand it. 'Ad blooming well enough. 
 'Opped it." 
 
 " Well, what are you going to do about 
 it ? " they asked.
 
 The Runaway 57 
 
 " Dunno," said the man, and he stood 
 up on the parados. A hail of bullets 
 whizzed past him, but he seemed too 
 dazed to notice them. 
 
 " Get down," I said, " or you'll be 
 shot." 
 
 " Oh, this ain't nothing to that," and 
 again he jerked his thumb. " Getting 'ell 
 pushed into 'em, they are." But he got 
 down. 
 
 " Wliy 'aven't you chucked away yer 
 blooming foosil ? " asked Piggott. " You'll 
 be able to run better without it next time." 
 
 The stranger looked down and found he 
 was still clutching his rifle. 
 
 " No," he said, " never noticed it. 
 Should 'ave chucked it away if I 'ad. 
 Jest shows." He shut the cut-out and 
 worked the bolt. " No 'arm done," he 
 said. " Must be going." 
 
 " Where to ? " asked my sergeant. He 
 is a fat little man with round black eyes,
 
 58 The Runaway 
 
 and he knows his job — mine, too, on 
 occasions. 
 
 " They'll be giving my mates double 
 'ell, presently," said the stranger, more to 
 himself than to us. " And then they'll 
 attack." He stood up, and the bullets 
 again pinged about him, but he seemed 
 unconscious of them. "I'm off," and he 
 turned away. 
 
 " Where to ? " repeated my sergeant. 
 He had his revolver ready. 
 
 The man turned and gave us, what the 
 old regulations called, " a look of con- 
 tempt " — a very punishable offence. 
 
 " Why, back to my pals, of course. 
 Cheero, mates ! " and v/ith his rifle at the 
 trail, he trotted through the sunny wood 
 towards the hell awaiting him.
 
 The Epic of Troojjer Kinnaird
 
 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 
 
 " Trooper Kinnaird returned from war. 
 With the Flanders mud on his boots and breeches. . . ." 
 
 rjlHAT was the beginning of the epic, 
 -*- and it went on for weeks ; maybe it 
 still persists, handed down from draft to 
 draft, until now its origin is forgotten, 
 and Trooper Kinnaird has become a 
 legendary hero. Even in those days his 
 adventures were enough to fill several 
 Odysseys. 
 
 I was attached to a battalion and heard 
 the beginning of it. On our way to the 
 front line the communication trench was 
 blocked, and while we waited, a private 
 said to his mate : 
 
 " D'ye remember Jock Kinnaird ? " 
 " Aye, yon chatty fellow to V saw- 
 mills." 
 
 61
 
 62 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 
 
 " He was 'ome on pass, and telling 'em 
 all manner of tales." 
 
 " What's 'e in ? " 
 
 " Oh, naething, joost Cavalry. Tripper 
 Kinnaird, he calls 'isself. Ye shuild joost 
 'ear the tales he's telling. He doesn't 
 seem to mind war. Happen he likes it. 
 And the noomber of Alleymons he's killed, 
 though 'e always calls 'em 'Uns. Oh, he's 
 a devil." 
 
 By the time we moved on the epic had 
 started. It became a stock - pot for 
 humour, into which nameless poets threw 
 their inspiration, and Private Gracey 
 blended them all together in one great 
 song. 
 
 He was the battalion's Homer. At 
 night or during quiet portions of the 
 afternoon, there would be a sudden 
 murmur along the trench and "Tripper " 
 Kinnaird would return from war, with the 
 Flanders mud on his boots and breeches.
 
 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 63 
 
 and more wondrous tales to tell. We got 
 sight of him at times : 
 
 "Tripper Kinnaird were'nt much to look at : 
 A little, bunchy fellow, all ears and nose, 
 And a mouth several sizes too small. 
 Which didn't prevent 'im talking all t!.e same. 
 To look at he wasn't very likely. 
 Must 'ave joined when they were hard up for men. 
 Joined the cushee cavah-y, because of 'is reputation ; 
 Always was a 'orsy kind of fellow in publics. 
 And 'ad to live up." 
 
 There were, however, only tAVO or three 
 men in the battalion who had ever seen 
 Kinnaird, so the description of him must 
 not be taken as exact. At first he was a 
 target for their sarcasm, a figure on which 
 they hung all the mock-heroics of war, a 
 fantastic parody of the newspapers. 
 
 "Setting 'is spurs to 'is milk-white steed. 
 He jumped over the trenches and the barbed wire. 
 Laughing and shouting : ' Are we downhearted .'' 
 
 No!' 
 And took the German Army in the rear ; 
 The 'ole German Army, von Kluck, the Kaiser, and 
 
 Little Will-e, 
 As they were sitting down to tJieir breakfast.
 
 64 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 
 
 But jest as 'e was finishing the whole bluggy war, 
 Up comes Sergeant-Major, and asks 'im what the 'ell 
 
 'e's doing, 
 Who gave 'im orders, who does 'e think 'e is ? 
 Gives 'im a right turn, and sends 'im 'ome under 
 
 escort. 
 So Tripper Kinnaird wrote to ' John Bull ' about it. 
 But 'is letter got pinched by the censor." 
 
 At another time he saves the British line : 
 
 " The whole place was being bombarded cruel. 
 
 And bits of men were flying about like sparks ; 
 
 But Tripper Kinnaird was just as light-'earted as 
 ever — 
 
 A regular chip of the old block. 
 
 When Fritz attacked he just ran down the trench, 
 
 Firing rapid with all the foosils 'e found lying 
 about. 
 
 Killing hundreds, and letting on that 'e was a Avhole 
 Army Corps. 
 
 Most 'e frightened off, but a couple of 'undred 
 
 Rushed into the trench just as 'e got to the end. 
 
 There wasn't no traverses left owing to bombard- 
 ment. 
 
 So 'e loosed off a machine-gun and killed the lot, 
 
 Enfiladed 'em proper. The General put 'im down 
 for a V.C, 
 
 But the recommendation got mixed up with an 
 indent for a new cap. 
 
 Which 'e couldn't wear, as 'is head 'ad got too big."
 
 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 63 
 
 But after a while, the strain of inventing 
 dramatic deeds for the trooper became 
 wearisome, and they made him hve their 
 own trench-Hfe, put him on fatigues, 
 worried him with flies, scared him with 
 rats, pictured him sitting, stripped to the 
 waist, bending over his " grey-back," 
 
 " A littlcj bunchy fellowj all ears and nose " 
 
 (for Hues recurred with true Homeric apt- 
 ness), waging the eternal campaign against 
 what have been called " the minor horrors 
 of war." The poet, however, was quite 
 frank and damned them for what they 
 were — " lice " : 
 
 " Bluggy beastSj taking the edge off everything. 
 Never let you be. Not like good old Fritz. 
 'E 'as 'is bit of sleep, and a smoke^ and strafes us 
 
 regular. 
 But them bluggy beasts never seem to 'ave 'eard of 
 
 Trade Unions, 
 Or eight-hour bills ; just Avorry you all day long, 
 And all night. 
 
 That's what war is, bluggy little things like that. 
 And as for 'ate, why, they carry on worse than my 
 
 old missus, 
 The way she manages to 'ate the AUeymon." 
 
 F
 
 66 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 
 
 This, I felt, was bathos for the hero, but 
 worse was to come. Trooper Kinnaird, 
 their gay desperado, still achieved the 
 marvellous at times, when his chroniclers 
 were in an extravagant mood, but often 
 he was just one of themselves, a lay figure, 
 to whom they could impute those feelings 
 which they were shy of admitting in 
 themselves. 
 
 " Tripper Kinnaird 'ad to go over the top one nighty 
 And 'e went over with 'is eyes 'alf out of 'is 'ead. 
 'Adn't been over the top like that before^ all by 
 
 'isselfj 
 To tell the listening posts to come in. 
 'E crawled on 'is belly, like an old snake, 
 Feeling as though Fritz couldn't 'elp spotting 'im 
 Up there in the open, with nothing pi'otecting 'im. 
 Every now and then a flai*e 'ud go up 
 And 'e'd lie there, sweating for the dark. 
 Once 'e put 'is hand on something, that went all 
 
 pulpy. 
 A flare went up and 'e lay down flat as flat, 
 And looked to see what 'e was lying on, so pally. 
 Some old Alleymon, what 'ad been killed months 
 
 back. 
 Tripper Kinnaird felt sort of funny all over. 
 Wished to God 'e 'adn't come to the war.
 
 The Epic of Trooper Kinnaird G7 
 
 Couldn't see what call 'e 'ad to leave the saw-mills 
 And lie on a stinking German, out in the open^ 
 With a lot of Alleymons waiting to do 'im in. 
 Tripper Kinnaird didn't like being alone, and wished 
 
 'e was back to th' trench. 
 Felt all goosey and wondered where the listening 
 
 post was. 
 Didn't care what 'appened to 'im, 'oped they'd kill 
 
 'im straight, 
 So got up and walked^ and didn't feel scared any 
 
 more." 
 
 After this episode there was a recrudes- 
 cence of the heroic, and it was while he 
 was bombing whole regiments to bits, that 
 I left the battalion to rejoin my own unit. 
 And as it happened, I never saw it again. 
 
 I did, however, meet Private Gracey. 
 He was sitting in the Park, in hospital 
 blue, and I was home on leave. I asked 
 him about everybody, and he told me 
 that most were dead. 
 
 " And Trooper Kinnaird ? " I asked. 
 
 He laughed. " Don't know, sir," he 
 said. " Likely they've found something 
 else now to amuse 'em. The lad 'isself, sir.
 
 CS TJie Epic of Trooper Kinnaird 
 
 got killed when you was up to trenches 
 last winter." 
 
 " How ? " I asked. 
 
 " Just a stray bullet, sir. . . . He was 
 a chap like the rest of us."
 
 As Seen from Frederick (Aug. 1915)
 
 As Seen from Frederick (Aug. 1915) 
 
 "OEYOND the parapet the world is, 
 -^-^ more or less, unknown. You have 
 the feeling that your trench is the limit 
 of your nation and its power — an outpost 
 of empire. There is a little strip of No- 
 Man's-Land, and then the enemy in his 
 outpost of empire. If you shovv^ yourself, 
 he kills you ; so you don't show yourself. 
 You live most of your days seeing only 
 the two walls of the trench and the sky, 
 and when you do look over, or go out at 
 nights to see your little world, your 
 horizon even then is only some hundred 
 yards away. 
 
 You see by day a ragged field, pitted 
 with shell-holes, in each of which there is 
 always a bully-beef tin. The grass is lank 
 and untidy, where it has been allowed to 
 
 71
 
 72 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 grow. There are some bodies lying stiffly 
 about, the skin dark brown from exposure, 
 and the clothes rotten. There is a look of 
 a refuse heap about the field. Even the 
 barbed wire, mended and strengthened in 
 the darkness, helps the impression of 
 disuse. Beyond this No-Man's-Land you 
 see a low line of sand-bags — coloured 
 sand-bags. And that is all. What is 
 happening behind those sand-bags you 
 can only guess. If all is quiet, you feel 
 that " old Fritz is getting something ready 
 up his sleeve." If things are " unhealthy " 
 in your trench, you know that it is always 
 Fritz, smug, grinning Fritz, behind those 
 sand-bags, indulging in a fit of hate. 
 
 In after years we will remember the 
 dramatic moments, but at the best of 
 times it is the boredom of war that is its 
 chief quality. At the worst of times it is 
 sickening. But it is the German who is 
 killing one's friends, and there he lurks, an
 
 As Seen from Frederick 73 
 
 invisible enemy, plotting, scheming, in- 
 venting somewhere across No-Man's-Land. 
 Beyond that horizon of low coloured 
 sand-bags is the miknown, the land of 
 menace, and the land not of people, but 
 of the Enemy, the destroyers of the world. 
 
 But to break the monotony of our view, 
 there was once something that we could 
 see behind our lines, a tall chimney stand- 
 ing gaunt against the sky. From the 
 trenches we used to watch the Bodies' 
 attempts to knock if down with much the 
 same air of amused detachment that one 
 watches a yokel having shies at an Aunt 
 Sally. Somehow it was impossible for us 
 to treat it to any grave concern. Like the 
 British Army itself in those days, its very 
 existence was a piece of impertinence. 
 It should have been utterly destroyed 
 long ago. 
 
 We knew that it annoyed the Boche 
 exceedingly. Whenever our guns did any
 
 74 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 particularly useful bit of work, the 
 Germans would promptly retaliate by 
 bombarding Frederick, which was the 
 name by which, for some unconsidered 
 reason, we called it. Officially, I believe, 
 he was known as Number 6, but then 
 officially we had no relations with him. 
 He was merely a distraction for us, a 
 subject for small bets, small jokes, and a 
 considerable source of pride. The German 
 shells blustered and crashed around, 
 stormed and bit the dust, but had no effect 
 at all on Frederick, except that something 
 once chipped a few bricks out of his very 
 top, which gave an amusing touch of 
 rakishness to his appearance. But 
 Frederick the essential, Frederick the 
 Observation Post, remained as debonair 
 as ever. 
 
 There were times, I admit, when he 
 annoyed us. If you bestow pet names on 
 an inanimate object, as people do in the
 
 As Seen from Frederick 75 
 
 trenches so as to create a kind of pleasant 
 homeliness — by way of reaction, I sup- 
 pose — and if you invest it also with a 
 certain personality, there must be times 
 when that fixed personality strikes a 
 jarring note. Our trenches in those days 
 were called Peace Trenches, for our daily 
 casualty list was small compared with 
 regiments in other parts of the line. But 
 though the Germans restrained them- 
 selves from any extreme expressions of 
 hate, they used us as tasters for any new 
 diet they might concoct. Their favourite 
 dish at that time was the plum-pudding, 
 and they fed us with it ad nauseam. 
 
 We had not, in those days, learnt how 
 to dig. Our dug-outs were merely shelters 
 covered with corrugated iron and sand- 
 bags, and although we could generally see 
 the plum-pudding in time to dodge it 
 during the day, there was no security at 
 night. It annoyed one, too, at any time.
 
 76 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 to dash wildly round a traverse and see 
 the fruit of care and anxious theft blown 
 to little atoms, so that though one was 
 alive oneself, one's little earthy home had 
 gone to glory — if indeed there is a Valhalla 
 for dug-outs. It certainly exasperated 
 one, emerging sadly from the wide-cast 
 debris, to see Frederick, cock-a-hoop 
 Frederick, standing there, insolently quiz- 
 zing the w hole catastrophe. For Frederick 
 was never sympathetic, his attitude was 
 always one of mockery. I can imagine 
 how the Germans must have loathed him. 
 
 I climbed up Frederick one day. I had 
 gone, in the matter of a bet, to see how 
 near the last bombardment had been 
 to him. The earth all around was pitted 
 with holes, and in one a middle-aged 
 subaltern was sitting, sketching a moody 
 cow, whom no one thought fit to take away. 
 
 " Difficult things — cows," said the sub- 
 altern, looking up. " Special anatomy of
 
 As Seen from Frederick 77 
 
 their own. Like goats. Great fun — 
 sketching. Ever tried it ? Splendid thing 
 out here. I'm an architect, you know, 
 but they haven't left many houses for me 
 to draw — ^the brutes. Funny thing. Built 
 houses all my life — I'm forty-two, you 
 know, but I told 'em thirty-nine — and 
 now I'm engaged in knocking 'em down. 
 Like to see me knock down a house ? 
 We're strafing a farm in twenty minutes. 
 Come up jolly old Frederick and watch." 
 
 He led me down into a little tunnel 
 which ran to the chimney's base. Inside 
 Frederick were iron rungs about two and 
 a half feet apart, by means of which we 
 had to pull ourselves up. It was a stiff 
 pull, but the middle-aged subaltern ran 
 up them like a monkey. I followed 
 slowly, panting and very fearful. 
 
 " Come on, old bird," said my companion 
 from the top, " or you'll miss the show." 
 
 I struggled up, hit my head against a
 
 78 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 trap-door, through which I eventually 
 squeezed, and found myself in a small 
 signal station. The subaltern had gone 
 still higher, whither I followed him 
 through another trap-door. 
 
 " Now, cocky, let me show you the best 
 view of trench life in the whole of France," 
 and he pulled away a brick to make room 
 for his telescope. 
 
 It was a hot, peaceful day in August, 
 and the country below us shimmered in 
 the heat, a pleasant land, well wooded and 
 with gentle undulations of ground to 
 break the monotony of sky-line. For the 
 most part there was no sign of war. In the 
 distance I could see farm carts moving 
 about with hay, or reapers cutting the 
 corn, while immediately below me a pedlar 
 was trudging along a dusty lane, while a 
 dog followed dragging wares in a little 
 cart. To the east, as far as I could see, 
 ran a lazy river and here and there men
 
 As Seen from Frederick 79 
 
 were bathing, tlieir clean white bodies 
 glowing freshly in the sunlight. But 
 straight across the land, from north to 
 south, as though some gigantic engine 
 had passed, cutting deep, narrow ruts 
 with its wheels and laying waste all 
 beneath and around it, lay the track of 
 war. The track itself was narrow, some 
 hundred yards or so, but it ran as plain as 
 any road from one horizon to the other, 
 utterly shorn of every living thing. 
 
 On either side of this track, or No-Man's- 
 Land, lay the trenches, and in them we 
 could plainly see men moving. On one 
 side there were men in khaki, on the other 
 — in grey uniforms. But whatever the 
 colour of their clothes, they were all doing 
 the same things. The grey men, perhaps, 
 were busier. I could see little groups of 
 men digging, resting, carrying loads, cook- 
 ing meals, filling sand-bags, or washing 
 their shirts in the river which curved con-
 
 80 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 veniently at the point where it broke the 
 line. In the front-hne trenches it was 
 harder to observe, they seemed more 
 furtive there. Still, I could guess. Some- 
 body was singing Tipperary or the Weser- 
 lied, others were sucking pencils over 
 polite letters to Gretchens or Mary Anns, 
 while on the fire-step some Bert or 'Enery 
 was keeping half an eye open in case Fritz 
 should start any games, and on his side 
 Fritz was returning the compliment, only 
 a little more punctiliously. 
 
 It was a new aspect of war and I re- 
 member my surprise. The country beyond 
 the sand-bags had suddenly changed its 
 personality. I could see into that land of 
 menace at last, and I found this threaten- 
 ing enemy calmly sitting behind his barrier 
 of Empire — darning socks. But the 
 allegory was quickly broken. 
 
 " Plum-pudding," exclaimed my com- 
 panion.
 
 As Seen from Frederick 81 
 
 We saw our men in one place suddenly 
 bob wildly along a trench. Then I saw a 
 dark round object fall heavily. In a 
 moment there was a burst of debris, like 
 a sudden dust-storm. Then the summer 
 quiet reigned again. 
 
 " Ha — ha," laughed my companion. 
 " Funny fellow, Fritz. You can see well 
 from here, can't you ? There's another," 
 and he laughed again. He was the very 
 essence of Frederick. 
 
 " They're going to fire now, sir," a voice 
 called up from the signal station. 
 
 The subaltern's keenness suddenly 
 changed from boyish enjoyment to intense 
 efficiency. He gave me his glasses, took 
 the telescope, and became deeply ab- 
 sorbed. 
 
 " Ready," he shouted, and we heard the 
 message passed down the telephone. 
 
 A gun cracked behind us, a shell 
 whistled past and suddenly a little round
 
 82 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 white cloud sprang into being near the 
 farm — merely shrapnel for ranging. 
 
 " Twenty minutes right," said the sub- 
 altern. " Add twenty-five." 
 
 The next cloud — like a sudden ball of 
 cotton-wool — appeared to me to be too 
 far over, but the subaltern reported 
 " O.K." Then the guns opened out in 
 earnest. 
 
 The first seemed to burst right on the 
 farm, but did no damage except send a 
 German scuttling out. He did not go far, 
 for a second shell, missing the farm, swept 
 him away in a cloud of dust. The two 
 following made gaps in a little bunch of 
 trees, that already looked very barren for 
 the time of year, and then suddenly the 
 house exploded. To me there seemed no 
 reality about it. I heard no shell. The 
 farm, at one moment so quiet among its 
 bare trees, just exploded. An immense 
 volume of smoke carried away the roof.
 
 As Seen fro7n Frederick 83 
 
 Then the walls, hesitating a little, collapsed 
 inwards. After a little the dust cleared 
 and only a sturdy chimney-stack could be 
 seen, to mark the spot among the dying 
 trees. 
 
 " That's riled them," said my com- 
 panion. " Good work, what ? " 
 
 I chuckled, for the farm had been a 
 nuisance to us— a malignant fortress for 
 machine-guns from which we could never 
 get away. In fact, I had never even 
 thought of it before as a farm. 
 
 " Now it's our turn," said the sub- 
 altern. 
 
 He had hardly spoken before a German 
 shell came whistling towards us — also a 
 shrapnel to get our range. It burst high 
 and very wide. 
 
 " Rotten," said the subaltern. He was 
 just like a bo}^ on a pier waiting for a 
 wave to splash up and wet him. For 
 myself, I felt intense fright, especially as
 
 84 As Seen from Frederick 
 
 the next came much nearer. I was used 
 to being shelled on the ground, but this 
 paralysed me. I don't know why, but the 
 feeling of being thrown to the ground terri- 
 fied me even more than the usual prospect 
 of being blown off it. I felt that I was 
 being held up high in the air as a target 
 for all the German guns. 
 
 Then suddenly it struck me that the 
 fellows in the trenches were watching the 
 bombardment of Frederick and Avere 
 betting . . . and I lost my temper. 
 
 Between the bursts of shell the sub- 
 altern talked gaily. 
 
 " Must be good fun knocking down 
 chimneys. When I lived in town there 
 was a chimney across the river that 
 annoyed me, covered with electric 
 advertisements that worried me all 
 night." 
 
 # " Oh, shut up." I said, and as I spoke 
 a shell burst close — very close — ^to the
 
 As Seen from Frederick 85 
 
 chimney's base, so close that Frederick 
 shivered and seemed to bend. 
 
 We waited a moment, clutching the 
 narrow walls, which still trembled a little. 
 
 " Six," said the subaltern. " That's all 
 for the day. They never fire more, thank 
 God." 
 
 He said the last two words in a changed 
 voice, and I glanced at him. He looked 
 very old, very tired — but only for a 
 second. 
 
 " Come on, old sport," he said with a 
 laugh, "let's go and see where it fell." 
 
 We clambered down slowly, and found 
 a hole a yard or two from the chimney. 
 
 The subaltern whistled, and glanced up 
 to the height from which we had climbed. 
 Then he patted the walls of " jolly old 
 Frederick " and laughed again. 
 
 " They haven't got us yet, have they, 
 old son of a gun ? "
 
 l^he Diary of a Timid Man
 
 The Diary of a Tiimd Man 
 
 Friday, September 2Mh, 1915. 
 XT was very hot that afternoon and we 
 -■- sat in the shadow of a wood, watching 
 the slow traffic of the valley, and thinking 
 quietly, man by man. 
 
 Before going into action one runs 
 through the whole gamut of emotions. 
 That afternoon we knew them all. Below 
 us lay the valley, warm and quiet and 
 dusty, with the peasants going to the 
 river for water, and girls standing at 
 doorways laughing, and carts creaking, 
 and everywhere, over all, the hot sun 
 drenching the world with carelessness, so 
 that even the dogs could do little else but 
 snap at passers-by, and then sink back 
 into the pleasant dust. To look at it the 
 world was good and comfoi-table. It was 
 
 89
 
 90 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 the bombardment roaring eternally in the 
 east that brought us to reality. 
 
 It is as well that one cannot remain 
 long in the power of any emotion. I 
 remember now how quickly one followed 
 another. Sometimes I felt sick at the 
 thought of leaving all the sunniness to be 
 swept away perhaps in a shell-burst, and 
 I envied the dirty monotonous lives of 
 those peasants there. And then, almost 
 in the same train of thought, it seemed a 
 fine end to "go out " cleanly, charging 
 perhaps, one moment a man, splendid with 
 the joy of riding, young, enjoying life to 
 the full, without the broken hopes of those 
 poor peasant folk, and the next moment — 
 a shock and all ended. Sometimes the 
 little valley woke memories of England, 
 longings for the old familiar roads and 
 hills, and, with them, people and little 
 scenes long since forgotten, and then at 
 the same time, or following it so closely
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 91 
 
 that I scarcely realized the reaction, I 
 found myself glad to be doing this much 
 for those hills and people. All these 
 feelings, I remember, came running 
 through my head in a kind of poetry, 
 which I never even tried to make to 
 rhyme — incoherent bits of emotion, that 
 written down would certainly have been 
 doggerel, but coming spontaneously they 
 acted as a drug and so I let them " carry 
 on." And I suppose we all were thinking 
 much the same, for everyone was very 
 silent that afternoon. I only knoAv that 
 all the time I was at heart afraid, and 
 sometimes my fear was uppermost and 
 sometimes a kind of thankfulness. 
 
 The men were different, they always 
 are, and the whole wood rang with 
 " jiggety - jig," " K.R.R.'s," " Top of 
 the House " and all the hundred mysti- 
 fying names of Soldiers' Loto. Some 
 played on mouth organs, others told in-
 
 92 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 credible reminiscences of India, or argued, 
 and one man I saw, sitting at the edge of 
 the wood, playing serenades to the world 
 on a penny whistle. 
 
 The Brigadier came to see us, and called 
 up all the officers. He was a big man with 
 steady eyes and a determined jaw. When 
 he finished a sentence his jaw came up 
 and closed tight on it. He looked at us 
 hard some time before he spoke that after- 
 noon, while the bombardment thundered 
 like a hurricane in the distance. 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " I just want to 
 say a few words about to-morrow. Most 
 of you have had a rotten bad time since 
 last November. You've had to forget 
 that you're cavalry men, and play at 
 infantry work in the trenches. Well, to- 
 morrow's going to be the day of your 
 lives. You're going to smash through." 
 His jaw clinched that matter very 
 thoroughly. " Right through. And the
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 93 
 
 25th of September will be a day you'll all 
 look back on with pride for the rest of 
 your lives. At least," he said, looking at 
 us very steadily, " many of you will not. 
 And that brings me to what I want to say. 
 If you see 3^ our best pal wounded — carry 
 on. If you see your best pal killed — carry 
 on. And I think, gentlemen, the cavalry 
 spirit, the spirit of dash and gallantrj^ is 
 as strong in you as it ever was. No matter 
 what losses there may be, and you'll have 
 pretty bad ones, I want you to feel that 
 the glory of to-morrovr will be one of the 
 finest in the pages of history. Huh ! " 
 And he set his jaw and looked hard at us. 
 The Brigadier was one of the few men 
 who could make such a speech ring true. 
 Consciously or unconsciously we all stood 
 stiff, threw out our chests, and set our 
 jaws ; and I watched his eyes pass down 
 us with approval. And then suddenly his 
 expression changed, and I looked to see
 
 94 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 the cause. It was Scton Richards, a 
 dapper little man who was standing apart. 
 His air was somewhat detached, and he 
 was watching, pensively, the smoke from 
 his cigarette curl up among the branches. 
 
 " Well, Seton Richards, don't you agree 
 with me," asked the Brigadier. 
 
 Seton Richards started from his reverie. 
 " Oh, yes, General," he said in his squeaky 
 little voice, " there's a great deal in 
 what you say. But, all the same, I can't 
 help feeling — there's —only — one — Seton — 
 Richards." 
 
 But the Brigadier is the hero of this 
 story, for he laughed, knowing his man. 
 
 Saturday, September 25th. 
 
 We saddled up and " stood to " some 
 hours before dawn. Yesterday's heat 
 had broken in a thunderstorm, and now 
 the wood was cool and fresh and there was 
 a comforting smell of wet undergrowth.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 95 
 
 The doubts of the day before had passed 
 with the heat, and everyone was excited. 
 We had heard the infantry go singing up 
 the road all night, and now we waited for 
 a lull in the firing to know when their 
 attack should begin. Dawn came slowly, 
 to the roll of the bombardment. We 
 looked round our horses, slackened girths 
 and fell out to make breakfast.. Then 
 suddenly we heard the shelling stop, and 
 everyone said, " Now they've gone over," 
 and became very silent. 
 
 At about nine o'clock the order came to 
 move, and in a few minutes we were 
 clattering down a little lane towards the 
 line. We moved^ quickly and all the 
 inhabitants came running out to see us 
 go by, and wave to us and shout encourage- 
 ment. Everyone was in high spirits, and 
 one of the men shouted, " Finee Alley- 
 mon " to the peasants, and they laughed 
 and cried, " Bonne chance,"
 
 96 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 We halted in a park and started water- 
 ing, but were off again before a quarter of 
 the horses had had a drink. At Noeux- 
 les-Mines we halted again, and the towns- 
 folk came rushing out with buckets filled, 
 so that within ten minutes we were able 
 to move on. Everyone was full of stories. 
 The German line, they said, was utterly 
 broken, we had captured thousands of 
 prisoners, only the cavalry was needed 
 now to go in and finish the rout. And 
 here we were, the cavalry, going in. 
 
 " Les voila," cried the peasantry, as 
 though we were the final proof of victory. 
 " Hourra." 
 
 Soldiers, waiting in reserve, grunted 
 their blessing. " Good ole 'airies. Give 
 'em socks." 
 
 There were wounded, too, coming back 
 in ambulances and they sat up to cheer us 
 on. But it was the sight of a long line 
 of German prisoners marching sullenly
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 97 
 
 down the road that put most heart 
 into us. 
 
 Our two brigades separated and in long 
 columns jingled across the little plain. 
 The sun was shining, and the world still 
 smelt fresh after the storm. The horses, 
 feeling our excitement, tossed their heads, 
 danced and sprayed us with foam. The 
 men rode easily, laughing and prophesying 
 about Christmas in Blighty. Here and 
 there one could hear them cursing their 
 horses — happily. 
 
 " Won't be so much ginger about you, 
 when we've finished with Fritz," said a 
 man, tugging against a pack-horse. 
 
 Billy S came cantering up in high 
 
 fettle, and pulled in beside me. Like his 
 horse, he was foaming at the mouth. 
 
 " We've got 'em absolutely beat," he 
 said. " Official. Just seen Haig." 
 
 " Then you will die happy. And how 
 is Haig ? "
 
 98 The Diary of a Timid Alan 
 
 " Oh, awfully bucked. So am I." 
 Billy was just nineteen. " I'm doing 
 galloper. This is my third horse already. 
 I'll tell you some more sometime," and he 
 cantered on. 
 
 A staff officer galloped up to know if we 
 were the end of the column. 
 
 " What news ? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, great," he said. " You lucky 
 devils, you're for it. Cavalry in action. 
 What a dream." 
 
 " Bluddy nightmare for the Alleymon," 
 came from behind. 
 
 " How far on are the trenches ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh, about a mile. That's Vermelles, 
 there," and he pointed to a shattered 
 village on our left. " Cheery ho. Good 
 hunting." 
 
 A few minutes later it was passed down 
 that we had captured Loos, then Hulluch, 
 then that the Germans were in full
 
 The Diary of a Timid Mmi 99 
 
 retreat. There was a crest of hill separ- 
 ating us from the fighting, but we could 
 almost hear how it was going by the firing. 
 There came a time when no guns spoke at 
 all, and we felt in the words of the inevitable 
 humorist, that " Fritz had remembered 'is 
 sausidges at 'ome." "* 
 
 Below the crest we halted and looked 
 round our horses. News came in from the 
 French. They, too, were doing wonders a 
 few miles to the south. It was a great day. 
 Some prisoners went down the road, and 
 we pulled out our glasses to look at them. 
 We were rather disappointed to find they 
 were fine fellows in their prime. We had 
 thought that after a year of war they had 
 lost all their best men. 
 
 " However," said someone, " it only 
 makes our beating them all the better. 
 But what are we waiting for ? " 
 
 Gradually we heard the shelling begin 
 again, and still we waited, tantalized by
 
 100 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 all that was happening over the crest. 
 The sky clouded over, it began to drizzle, 
 and still we waited. A stream of woupded 
 came over the hill, a long stream that 
 never stopped. They trudged by, as best 
 they could, miserable in the wet. Rumours 
 became more and more extravagant, until 
 nobody heeded them. The rain soaked us 
 to the skin, and the horses stood hunched 
 up with their tails tucked in between 
 their legs. 
 
 Night came and we cooked some food 
 in a ruined house. Two wounded High- 
 landers had crawled there and were lying 
 on the floor fast asleep. We sat between 
 them and ate, then went out and slept 
 beside our horses inr the rain. 
 
 It was the end of the day. 
 
 Sunday, September 26th, 
 
 The sky cleared during the night and 
 with the sun our spirits rose again. We
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 101 
 
 did nothing all day except listen to 
 rumours and watch a battery to our left 
 being shelled. In the evening we were 
 formed up on foot, as if for a parade. To 
 our surprise we were marched off towards 
 the firing and were told we were to attack 
 Fosse 8, which had already cost us several 
 thousand men. As we marched through 
 the ruins of Vermelles the Germans shelled 
 us and we lost some men. At last we 
 passed over the crest of the hill and could 
 see the whole front, a line of little twinkly, 
 cracking lights. In the distance someone 
 spotted Fosse 8 — a long low slag-heap, 
 which the enemy had fortified. I think 
 we were all too disappointed to care what 
 happened to us, and the Fosse seemed as 
 good a place to go to as any other. And 
 then suddenly the order came for us to 
 return. 
 
 We were thoroughly tired when we got 
 back, and rolled into our blanket* for a
 
 102 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 good rest. When my orderly woke mc, I 
 thought I had probably slept for hours 
 and this was the five-o'clock " stand to." 
 Instead we were formed up and I looked 
 at my watch. It was half-past one. 
 
 " What's the trouble ? " I asked. 
 
 " We're gomg to Loos," said m.y O.C. 
 
 Monday, September 27lh. 
 
 We marched over the hill towards the 
 captured village in silence. I say we 
 marched, though for the most part we 
 stood or sat in the ditch beside the road, 
 waiting for the traffic in front to move on, 
 or for broken carts to be cleared av/ay. 
 
 Onv/ards from the crest of the hill the 
 country lay, in the moonlight, like the 
 creature of a grim nightmare. The earth 
 was cracked and split out of all semblance 
 of itself, while all about it lay the debris 
 of battle. Carts, horses, limbered wagons, 
 rifles, boxes, long strands of wire and their
 
 The Diary of a Timid. Man 103 
 
 _ 
 
 broken posts lay shattered and tousled 
 beside the road, and everywhere were 
 bodies. Some were too hopelessly dis- 
 torted to remind us that yesterday they 
 were as alive as we ourselves ; but others 
 — a boy lying, as a sleeping child, with his 
 hand beneath his cheek, or a High- 
 lander hanging doubled up on some uncut 
 wire, like a rag-doll — these gave one 
 terribly to feel. 
 
 We halted once near a man sitting in a 
 ditch, as we all sat from time to time, 
 waiting. 
 
 " Ello," said one of my men. " Cheero, 
 matey. Bokoo fatigay ? " 
 
 The man did not answer. The back of 
 his head was shot away, but from the 
 front nothing was noticeable. He was 
 just a sandy-haired man, with a stump of 
 a nose, and a rather despondent face, 
 sitting beside the road — a man, one felt, 
 who might have been a bricklayer in
 
 104 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 England with a sandy-haired family, and 
 a wife who kept him tidy. 
 
 Fragments of bodies appeared out of 
 fissures in the ground, others had been 
 swept into the ditch to allow for free 
 passage for succeeding troops ; for the 
 road was clear, its debris heaped on either 
 side in ungainly piles, like muddy snow 
 when the sweepers have passed. 
 
 It was very desolate and quiet ; but it 
 was, I think, the silence of that desola- 
 tion that was most oppressive. Except 
 for the distant fighting and occasional 
 shells that wailed over and burst about 
 the road, it was still, beyond all earthly 
 quiet. The world had been convulsed, 
 and, in the midst of its shattering, suddenly 
 petrified. So it seemed to us, marching 
 down the hill, with the moon shining 
 coldly on the broken ground and the little 
 piles of dead. 
 
 We came into Loos at dawn and were
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 105 
 
 immediately shelled. They had been clear- 
 ing away the dead there, but a number of 
 bodies still lay about the silent streets. 
 We were halted in the main street, and 
 told to find cellars for ourselves in the 
 ruined houses. In the first house a shell 
 had entered where some dozen Germans 
 had been seated. Fragments of their 
 bodies were littering every cranny of the 
 room. In the courtyard were stretched 
 two Highlanders, whom later we buried 
 where they lay. 
 
 In the corner of the yard was a door 
 leading to the cellars, by the side of which 
 on a small black board was painted : 
 
 II. Komp. 
 
 The cellar was large and arched and 
 into it we packed the men. They were 
 delighted to find a large quantity of 
 German kit and food. The food they 
 tasted and condemned, the kit pleased
 
 106 The Diary of a Timid 31 an 
 
 them enormously, even those items which 
 they could not understand. There were 
 several numbers of " Simplicissimus " and 
 '' Die Jugend " lying about, the jokes of 
 which I translated for the benefit of 
 
 G . The men listened and were very 
 
 much amused. " Why, I've seen that 
 joke in one of our papers," said a man ; 
 " just like their sauce to pretend they're 
 winning." We had some German tinned 
 meat for breakfast — a kind of Wiener 
 Schnitzel, and some coffee, too, which we 
 found. The latter was very good, but the 
 men preferred their own black tea. On 
 the walls the enemy had written their 
 names, and one had added a verse, probably 
 of his own composition : 
 
 " Gebt uns Lohnung, 
 Gebt uns Essen, 
 Dann ist der Krieg 
 Bald vergessen." 
 
 The men were delighted with this. 
 
 " Bet we've given 'em something now
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 107 
 
 to fresh up their memories with," said 
 Private Piggott. 
 
 A mile to the east of us the battle was 
 still thundering, and still more shells were 
 falling in the village. However, we were 
 in reserve and managed to snatch a few 
 hours' sleep. 
 
 A man came downstairs and said a 
 Frenchman wanted something or other. 
 I went up and found an old peasant 
 watching the tiles come slithering off the 
 roof where a shrapnel had just hit it. 
 
 He turned to me with a courteous bow 
 and said : " Monsieur I'officier ..." 
 
 I motioned him towards the shelter of 
 a barn which was being used as a dressing 
 station. 
 
 He looked up at the sky quizzingly, and 
 shook his head. " Ceux ne sont que des 
 obus," he said, as though he spoke of a 
 passing shower, but followed, to humour 
 me.
 
 108 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 He had come, he said, in the matter of 
 a mare, her foal and a mule. Because of 
 the battle he had not fed them for two 
 days. He made a gesture towards the 
 havoc and smiled. He gave me the im- 
 pression that he had been unwilling to 
 interfere with the battle — par complais- 
 ance. He then asked for my permission 
 to feed his animals now% which, naturally, 
 I gave. He thanked me very politely and 
 departed. 
 
 The dressing station was very quiet. 
 No one spoke except the doctors. 
 
 " Just hold up your arm a little. That's 
 right. Hurting ? Pain you to breathe ? No ? 
 Excellent. Hullo, just hold up this fellow's 
 arm a minute. Gently." This to me. 
 
 He cut all the clothes away around the 
 shoulder and chest. The man had fainted. 
 His side seemed to me to have been all 
 blown away, but the doctor saw nothing 
 in it.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 109 
 
 "Lungs all right — by a miracle. He'll 
 do. Looks worse than it is." 
 
 For the next man he did not need my 
 help. The man was dying. 
 
 " Can't think why the stretcher-bearers 
 didn't take this fellow's leg off up there," 
 he said, as he passed to a third. " There's 
 only a thread or two holding it," and these 
 he cut with a small knife. 
 
 The patient opened his eyes and smiled. 
 "Told 'em they ought to. But they 
 didn't take no notice of me. Offered 'em 
 my own knife, too. Stretcher-bearers think 
 too much of themselves ; always 'ave said." 
 
 When I went out I found a cart rumbling 
 across the yard. A mare was harnessed 
 to it, and a foal and a mule tied to it 
 behind. My friend the peasant was driv- 
 ing. I stopped him and asked where he 
 was going. 
 
 " To Carvin, monsieur I'officier, to get 
 fodder."
 
 110 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 Now Carvin was well behind the German 
 lines, moreover, the road there, before 
 ever it left the village, was swept by a 
 German machine-gun. 
 
 " You're mad," I said. " Why do you 
 think our battle doesn't affect you ? " 
 
 " Mais si, monsieur I'ofhcier," said the 
 old man, deprecating my rudeness. " As 
 a good patriot it affects me to the heart. 
 But always I go to Carvin, and the Bodies 
 always say, ' Oh, it is only Jean Bartel,' 
 they know me and my mare and her foal 
 and the mule. They have never inter- 
 fered." 
 
 A light shell came whizzing down the 
 street and burst on the cobbles just out- 
 side the gateway, sending a vicious spray 
 of atoms all about. The mare shied. 
 
 " Mais dis done, ma petite," said Mon- 
 sieur Bartel in gentle reproof; as she 
 quieted at his voice he said to me : 
 
 " If Monsieur I'offieier will permit."
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 111 
 
 But I would not permit. 
 
 He put back his " chariot " and came 
 again, insistent in his courtesy, to ask me 
 where he might get some fodder. Orders 
 had just come in and anyhow it was not 
 my business. 
 
 " Oh, where you Hke," I said, " if you 
 get permission." 
 
 He thanked me most pohtely and went 
 out. 
 
 A shell burst in the street a moment 
 later and I looked to see if Jean Bartel was 
 hit. He was walking up the pavement, 
 quite unmoved. Presently he came to a 
 body. He stooped to look at it, then 
 taking off his hat, he crossed himself, and 
 walked quietly on. 
 
 The cellars of Loos were well built and 
 had hitherto resisted the bombardment. 
 In them was a great quantity of German 
 stores and kit, besides about a hundred
 
 112 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 of the civil population. In some there 
 were also some Germans. Parties were 
 sent out to search various streets, to 
 collect documents and stores of value, to 
 mark the depots and to round up the 
 enemxy. Above ground the houses con- 
 tained little except bodies, although in 
 the estaminet at the corner some women 
 were still carrying on business w^ith thirsty 
 hungry soldiers. The streets were empty 
 except for men on duty and the cure, who 
 went about making a list of his surviving 
 parishioners. 
 
 It was a warm sunny day, and the 
 bursts of shrapnel above the village looked 
 like small white clouds in the sunshine. 
 Going into the dark cellars after the glare 
 above made it very difficult to see if any- 
 one was hidden there. Silhouetted against 
 the light stairs, a man was quite at the 
 mercy of the Germans below. 
 
 The men, however, had no thoughts of
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 113 
 
 this. They went down gaily and brought 
 out numbers of the terrified enemy. One 
 man unarmed found a party of fifteen. 
 He formed them up in fours and marched 
 proudly at their head down the street, 
 " Ello, 'Erb," shouted a soldier. " Enjoy- 
 ing yerself?" "Would be," said the 
 other, " if I could only make the perishers 
 do the Goose Step." 
 
 It interested every one to see how the 
 Germans had lived. On the whole, the 
 inhabitants said, they were orderly, but 
 very dirty. They always preferred to live 
 in the cellars, even during the heat of 
 summer, before Loos was shelled. The 
 cellars were certainly crammed with kit, 
 neatly ranged along the walls. They had 
 gone leaving everything behind, the com- 
 mandant, it is presumed, in his pyjamas, 
 for his clothes were carefully folded on a 
 chair beside his bed. 
 
 But there Avere objections to staying
 
 114 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 long in those cellars. The men soon found 
 a trophy, which appealed to them beyond 
 all else except, of course, a helmet. It was 
 always referred to as " one of those 
 Geggens." I discovered the nature of the 
 trophy and the need for it at much the 
 same time, when, in looking for docu- 
 ments, I came across a small packet, 
 labelled " Gegen die Lause." I was itching 
 already. 
 
 We none of us quite knew which streets 
 were safe from machine-gun fire. The 
 Germans had been driven on to the slopes 
 of the hill covering Loos, and at many 
 unexpected corners we ran into the sharp 
 zip-zip-zip of their bullets, while at no 
 place was one safe from the shelling, 
 which increased as the day wore on. 
 
 In the afternoon we heard that attacks 
 were going to be made on the hill, and 
 received orders to go there in support, 
 leaving some men to guard the prisoners.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 115 
 
 We marched up the long street towards 
 Hill 70 in shrapnel formation. The shells 
 were bursting fairly frequently all along 
 the road, and the houses which screened 
 our advance were being constantly hit. 
 
 On the way I met a figure walking 
 quietly down from the field of battle. 
 Over his shoulder in a large string bag 
 hung a bundle of grass, and he carried a 
 truss of hay, looted from some stable, in 
 his arms. He turned, saluted me with 
 pleasant dignity, then fell in by my side 
 for a few words. " I must warn you, 
 Monsieur I'ofiicier, that there is a great 
 deal of gas about. It is very incon- 
 venient," he said in his slow, careful way. 
 " Gas shells," he added. " Mais la bataille 
 — ca marche toujours. Bon chance, mon 
 lieutenant. Que le bon Dieu vous garde," 
 and Jean Bartel lifted his hat, and walked 
 quietly back to feed his mare and her foal 
 and the mule.
 
 116 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 For myself I was very grateful to the 
 little old man. Marching into action is a 
 nervy business at the best of times, and 
 Jean Bartel's indifference was a tonic. 
 
 A subaltern, wearing a glengarry, came 
 out of a house, playing with the nose of a 
 shell. He walked a little way with me. 
 
 " Going into the show ? " 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " I like seeing you fellows strolling into 
 action. Your gang looks as if they were 
 a lot of poor R.E.'s wandering along. 
 Ever go behind the scenes ? Sappers 
 always remind me of stage hands, scene 
 shifters and those beavers. Wander about 
 doing the messy jobs, kind of detached and 
 slightly superior, no truck with the actor 
 fellows. What are you ? Machine-guns ? " 
 
 A shell plonked a few yards in front of 
 us, but did no damage except to the road. 
 
 " Always used to think people went 
 into action looking like a lot of devil-may-
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 117 
 
 cares. Jolly heroic and tough and all 
 that. Real death or glory boys as per the 
 actor fellows at home. I don't know how 
 it is, but the sight of our chaps always 
 makes me laugh. Look at their noses. 
 I always think of people's noses. Just 
 before we went over the top the other day, 
 I looked at my beavers, and somehow 
 their noses made me howl. They looked 
 so damned comic. All sorts of noses, snub 
 ones, fat, bulgy ones, all sorts of stupid 
 shapes. I'm going off here. Cheery ho. 
 Look out for gas." 
 
 We passed close by the Tower Bridge — 
 the huge ironwork structure that domi- 
 nated every corner of the battlefield. 
 There was a rumour very current in the 
 village, that a Landsturm Colonel was 
 still up it, observing for the enemy. 
 Various men were told off to search it, 
 but even if they had tried to climb it, at 
 the best they could only have found
 
 118 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 fragments of a body, for before the smoke 
 of one shell had drifted away, another 
 always burst against the steel girders. 
 
 Looking back on that march there is 
 little that stands out. I remember my 
 own very real fear — fear more of the 
 unknown towards which we were going, 
 rather than of the shells that burst and 
 missed us. There was also a feeling of the 
 whimsical, caused chiefly by Jean Bart el 
 and the subaltern, Avith their ways of 
 looking at war. And a feeling of nausea 
 too, at all the havoc, and the bodies 
 beside the road and the ruined houses and 
 the wounded, who came trailing by, and 
 the patient fellows who were carried 
 down on stretchers. There was a tre- 
 mendous noise going on, but I have an 
 impression of quietness, the quietness of 
 men overwhelming the roar of battle. 
 Nobody seemed at all put out. 
 
 A number of gas-shells burst over us.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 119 
 
 We stopped to put on our helmets. We 
 had just been given a new issue and the 
 men did not know how to put them on. 
 I had to go round, tucking the ends in 
 under their tunic collars. 
 
 " Feel as if I were being dressed up for 
 a Sunday-school treat," came a grumbling 
 voice from under a mask. 
 
 Their chief concern was to know what 
 to do with their caps. I told them to put 
 them on over their gas helmets. The result 
 made the men feel ridiculous, but we 
 marched on, puffing and blowing through 
 the tubes. 
 
 " If this is what they call war," said 
 someone, " give me a dog-fight." 
 
 Up the hill a little beyond the village we 
 could see a barricade across the road, 
 behind which men were standing, while 
 away on either side ran a shallow trench. 
 In this were a large number of soldiers,
 
 120 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 working or keeping guard. They did not 
 look in the least coneerned about any- 
 thing, nor did they seem to bear any 
 relation to the piles of dead that lay about 
 the field. The hill curved round to our 
 left, and, as I could tell by our shelling, 
 we were in full view of the German 
 trenches there. 
 
 We were just preparing for a dash 
 
 across the open, when I saw G come 
 
 strolling casually down to meet us. 
 
 As I saluted I thought : " How funny 
 to salute in the middle of a battle," and 
 then : " What a funny sort of battle 
 
 this is." G rather gave me the 
 
 impression that he disapproved of the 
 whole show. It was rather a stupid 
 affair, but since we were there, I'd better 
 take a gun — here he crinkled his upper lip 
 and made his moustache bristle— to a 
 place by the barricade. He would go 
 more to the left with the rest.
 
 The Diary of A Timid Man 121 
 
 " Some fellows are going to attack up 
 there," he said, waving his stick slowly 
 towards the hill-top. " And they want us 
 to help. Covering fire. Warm, isn't it ? " 
 but this last referred to the weather. " I'll 
 take this team up now. You follow, at a 
 decent interval, you know. Come along." 
 
 There really was nothing more to say, 
 so he did not say it, but turned, as slowly 
 as he spoke, and wandered up towards 
 the trench. His gun-team nodded and 
 followed smiling. They were delighted 
 to see the hero of many anecdotes tally- 
 ing with their descriptions of him. " Why, 
 even when 'is Johnson blows 'im end- 
 ways, 'e'll travel slow and collected," a 
 man remarked, jerking his head towards 
 the figure in front. 
 
 We walked straight across the open, but 
 the Germans made no attempt to hit us. 
 After a little, the road became sunken, and 
 there we had cover to re-form, as two or
 
 122 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 three of my men had been touched with 
 the gas, and I had left them in one of the 
 houses, choking. Then we went on to the 
 barrier and posted a gun near by. There 
 was a regiment of the brigade ah-eady 
 there and from them I tried to find out 
 what had happened, and where the Germans 
 were. 
 
 We were on the side of the hill — Hill 70 
 — and the German trenches were just over 
 the crest a hundred yards or so away. 
 Our men had been attacking up the hill 
 for the last two days, and another attack 
 was expected soon. No one quite knew 
 what had happened. It was certain that 
 we had routed the Germans at the outset, 
 but the present inaction puzzled every- 
 one. There had been plenty of little 
 attacks, but nothing on a large scale since 
 the first offensive. The Germans had been 
 equally inactive, but no doubt they were 
 preparing to make a big counter-attack.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 123 
 
 The ground was littered with our dead 
 and we began to feel something was 
 wrong. 
 
 Suddenly everyone cheered up. Over 
 the hill we had come during the night, we 
 saAv troops advancing in open order, and 
 everybody said : " Here they come. Now 
 we'll get a move on." 
 
 Unfortunately, the enemy could see 
 them as well, if not better than we could, 
 and began shelling them. They lost 
 freely, but the lines came on without 
 faltering. The scene, on the whole, did 
 not encourage us. " They're just chuck- 
 ing us away," said a man, " sending good 
 fellows over the sky-line like that." 
 
 It was good, however, to know that there 
 were troops behind us, for the inaction of 
 the enemy made us uneasy. Our trench, 
 cut in the hard chalk, was scarcely waist 
 deep. Moreover, it only ran a little way 
 to the left, then there came a big gap of
 
 124 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 half a mile, and although troops were 
 holding the village behind us to cover 
 that gap, the Germans on the hill where 
 it curved round to the north were able to 
 enfilade us in case of an attack. It was 
 a bad position, but we felt sure that our 
 Higher Command had something up its 
 sleeve to clinch the victory. In that case 
 nothing mattered. If, on the other hand, 
 it was just a big fiasco, the future was full 
 of possibilities, and all of them un- 
 pleasant. I began to wonder what our 
 position really was, and the sight of the 
 dead in hundreds all about — they some- 
 how reminded me of the heaps of manure 
 you see in a field, ready for scattering — 
 did not encourage me. They looked as 
 though they had been wasted in the 
 moment of victory. Then I heard some- 
 One say : 
 
 " Did you ever hear the story of the 
 man who was dying ? " " My sons," he
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 125 
 
 said, " I've had a great many troubles in 
 my life and most of them never hap- 
 pened." 
 
 The anecdote struck me as singularly 
 apt, and I went off to tell it to my men. 
 But they were in no need of any phil- 
 osophy. They were arguing vehemently 
 about Sheffield United and tlie Wan- 
 derers. 
 
 " I was there, meself — I saw them win 
 t' cup," said Private Gazely, his red 
 head appearing over a traverse, as he 
 knelt to dig with his entrenching tools. 
 
 "You liar," said another, "you toW 
 me yerself. — Oh, anything 'appening, sir ? 
 Do you think there's much chance of their 
 attacking, sir ? " 
 
 " One never knows," I said, and then 
 the fatuousness of my remark struck me. 
 I remember standing there, looking back 
 away from the enemy, into Loos, and 
 cursing myself for making foolish remarks
 
 126 llie Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 and for imagining all kinds of vague 
 menaces. I can see the picture still : 
 the village, broken and dishevelled, break- 
 ing every here and there into eruptions 
 of smoke and fragments ; the Tower 
 Bridge, gaunt and erect against the 
 western sky, with shells bursting and 
 crashing on its girders, till the whole air 
 was filled with the ring of steel. It 
 sounded like a Titanic smithy — ^the anvil 
 we could see, a hundred feet high, we 
 could hear the swish of the blows and 
 their crash as they hurtled against the 
 framework, see the sparks fly outwards, 
 whole tongues of flame — only the Titan 
 was invisible and I wondered . . . and 
 wondering, cursed myself for being such 
 a fool. One shouldn't wonder, one shouldn't 
 make fatuous remarks, one shouldn't lose 
 confidence, one shouldn't . . . 
 
 " There they go," said someone. 
 
 Loos is in a hollow, with the hills
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 127 
 
 running all round it ; I looked and saw 
 some men advancing from a little wood 
 against the hill east of the village ; our 
 guns had been bombarding that sector 
 for some time, and this then was the 
 attack. It was hard to see what happened. 
 Men ran about unconcernedly, on the 
 whole most ran uphill, but which were 
 fugitive Germans and which the attacking 
 English it was hard to say. They all 
 had a tired, mechanical pace, like cross- 
 country runners, going over a heavy, 
 ploughed field. Those who ran downhill 
 we took for prisoners, at first. But after 
 a while everyone seemed to be coming 
 back down the hill — and we guessed the 
 attack had failed. We were never very 
 excited during the action, for we never 
 were sure as to what was happening. But 
 we were very disappointed over the result. 
 After a while, we saw some troops come 
 marching up the street towards us. The
 
 128 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 Germans shelled them, and once or twice 
 the column seemed to us to be com- 
 pletely overwhelmed by bursts. The 
 Germans had that street marked to an 
 inch, and their shells came over like 
 waves. The similarity was extraordinary. 
 There was the forceful shish of a wave 
 before it breaks, then the burst and the 
 spray of smoke and atoms. Tlie line of 
 the street gave them their watermark, 
 and, above all, there is the same sound of 
 relentlessness about shells and waves. 
 And yet, when the smoke cleared, I 
 realized that man is even more indomit- 
 able. The column was still marching up 
 the street. 
 
 A battalion came up on our left for the 
 attack. Our artillery shelled the enemy 
 trenches very intermittently, and, as it 
 seemed to us, without conviction. Then 
 our men strode up the hill and disappeared 
 over the crest.
 
 The Dianj of a Timid Man 129 
 
 There was a lance-corporal of mine, 
 called Grimthorpe, who had been pro- 
 moted in England and only jnst sent out 
 to us. I noticed him standing by the gun, 
 looking very nervous. He was^ a mere 
 boy, a tall, thin, ugly fellow, who had 
 been, in the words of his vicar, " an 
 earnest and willing helper in ourTChurch 
 Lads' Brigade." A sensitive soul, this first 
 battle of his was troubling him greatly. 
 
 "You'd better take Number One," I 
 said to him, just before the attack started, 
 and I gave him the range and an aiming 
 mark. 
 
 He looked at me in terror. I suppose he 
 felt that this was his final plunge into 
 actual fighting. 
 
 " Are there any Germans there, sir ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 I explained it was our duty to prevent 
 there being any in that place, or they 
 might do a mischief to our attack.
 
 130 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 He fumbled the loading motions, and 
 jammed the breech. 
 
 " Nmiiber Three stoppage," he said to 
 me hurriedly, as though he were going 
 through a course of mechanism. " Fault 
 in feed, sir." 
 
 " Give the crank handle a sharp glancing 
 blow," which he did to no avail. " Pull 
 belt left front and strike again." 
 
 He did this and the gun was loaded. 
 Then among the titters of the men, he 
 blushed furiously and worked his sights 
 on to the target. 
 
 A few minutes later the battalion 
 attacked, and I gave the order to fire. 
 Grimthorpe hesitated a minute, then 
 pressed the trigger. I was too busy 
 correcting his bursts to notice the boy, 
 and gazed only where a tiny dust storm 
 was dancing along the crest. When at 
 last I gave the " Cease fire," I saw the 
 fellow was smiling.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 131 
 
 " How many have I hit, sir ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 Then the men laughed outright. *' 'E's 
 been studying the picture papers," said 
 the inevitable Piggott. But Lance-Corporal 
 Grimthorpe smiled on. He had fired his 
 first shot. 
 
 It was too dark to sec what had hap- 
 pened to the attack and we never exactly 
 knew. We learnt that they were the 
 Welsh Guards in their first action, and 
 that they had gone forward magnificently. 
 But our certainty of success had dis- 
 appeared, and we grew tired of discussing 
 probabilities. I remember my relief, when 
 I met a subaltern who knew certain 
 decadent folk that I knew, and how we 
 sat in a minute bit of trench and laughed 
 at their foibles for nearly an hour, until 
 an order came recalling me to Loos.
 
 132 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 We marched back light-heartedly. True, 
 we had done little, but that did not weigh 
 heavily with us. We were all unfeignedly 
 glad to get away. The village had been 
 badly shelled in our absence and the road 
 was full of holes. Shells were still coming 
 over, and I fancy we had a hotter time 
 returning than going up, but we did not 
 notice it. The men chattered happily and 
 I felt like singing. 
 
 When we reached our cellar, we found 
 it full of men, and that a mistake had 
 been made. We were to return at once 
 and remain on the outskirts of the village 
 in reserve. I myself felt very angry, but 
 the men laughed. 
 
 We reached our position at about ten 
 o'clock, and very soon the moon rose. 
 The edge of the village was full of troops, 
 some waiting to go into action, others just 
 come out. The road was full of w^oundcd 
 being carried down, camp cookers, and
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 133 
 
 little groups of men collecting under 
 subalterns and sergeants. 
 
 Everyone spoke in loud undertones. 
 One heard confusedly, " Make room ; 
 stretcher-bearers." 
 
 " Fall in, No. 6 Platoon." 
 
 " Where's the Welsh Guards' dressing 
 station ? " 
 
 " Hello, sergeant, seen my men ? " 
 
 " Stretcher-bearers, quick." 
 
 " Where's A Company's cookers ? " 
 
 " Only eight men left, sir." 
 
 " Stretcher-bearers. For God's sake, 
 send stretcher-bearers." 
 
 It was this last insistently all the night, 
 or else inquiries as to the whereabouts of 
 each battalion's dressing stations. For 
 these the ruined houses were used and 
 outside each door was a queue of soldiers 
 waiting with their burdens laid down 
 between them. 
 
 To wile away the time, I found each
 
 134 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 dressing station and felt like a policeman, 
 directing this sorry traffic. 
 
 They brought a young subaltern down, 
 and while I was telling his bearers where 
 to go, a captain passed, and seeing the 
 wounded boy, cried : " Hullo, Tony. 
 Badly knocked ? " 
 
 The subaltern opened his eyes and 
 smiled. 
 
 " Got a bit of a whack. Did you see 
 our show ? " 
 
 " No," said the captain, " only just 
 come up." 
 
 " It wasn't bad," said the boy. " Do 
 
 you remember Jim D , at Impey's ? 
 
 He did damned well before they hit him. 
 Took his men along in line, and wheeled 
 'em like a lot of —like a lot of . . . damned 
 fine . . ." then he fainted. 
 
 " Thought 'e'd do that," said a bearer. 
 " E's got great chunks torn right out of 
 'im. And never made a sound."
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 135 
 
 The captain stood by me, watching 
 them carry the boy down the road. When 
 they disappeared, he tm-ned and shook my 
 hand, and walked away. It was an 
 unusual thing to do, but at the time it 
 seemed very natural — a tribute, somehow, 
 to the boy. 
 
 It was a night that seems to me, and I 
 think will always seem, extraordinarily 
 magnificent. I felt again, what I had felt 
 that afternoon, only now far more in- 
 tensely, how indomitable a creature man 
 is. All around lay the wreckage of men 
 and of the homes of men. Bodies lay 
 haphazardly in the gutter, one arm thrown 
 out, maybe, across the pavement, or else 
 they protruded from under fallen masonry. 
 In the brilliant moonlight nothing was hid. 
 Destruction was hideously stark. " You 
 know," said someone to me that night, 
 " it ail seems to me so bloody indecent." 
 
 It was, there is no other word, " bloody
 
 X 
 
 136 The Diary of a Thnid Man 
 
 indecent." As a scene it was the foulest 
 that the ingenuity of man could create. 
 But upon that scene the actors seemed to 
 me, beyond all words, majestic. These 
 were ugly men, no doubt, and crude, un- 
 washed, uncultured, filthy, bloodstained 
 creatures. They cursed and jostled each 
 other round the cookers, and groused 
 perpetually against the time when they 
 should have to fall in and go on again, 
 but was there a wounded man to help, a 
 hungry man to feed or a tired man to 
 relieve, they gave, without a thought, of 
 all they had. It was, perhaps, because 
 of their gaunt appearance and the grim 
 surroundings, that their spirit shone out, 
 in contrast, so indomitably. For besides 
 the perpetual inquiries upon the road that 
 I have written, there was a ceaseless 
 chatter among the man. Shells every 
 now and then burst among or above us, 
 taking their toll, but the chatter continued,
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 137 
 
 naively personal, and, in its detachment, 
 unexpectedly human. 
 
 A little party were sitting on a pile of 
 masonry, drinking their tea. The dead 
 lay all around, and among them some 
 Highlanders. 
 
 " They Jocks are queer fellows," said 
 one, jerking his head towards the fallen. 
 " D'ye remember that night in Auchey, 
 Bob ? " 
 
 Bob spat his dregs to show he remem- 
 bered. "Aye, the night t' Jock coomed in." 
 
 " Yes," said his friend. " 'E came in 
 to the estaminay and arsked Madam for 
 beaucoup vin rouge ? So for a lark we 
 thought we'd fill 'im up, sort of to teach 
 'im. So 'e swiped fourteen tots, and then 
 arsked Madam for beaucoup vin rouge 
 again. So 'Erb went round and got 
 Madam to put some rum into the vin. 
 And 'e swiped that. And never turned 
 a 'air. Not a 'air."
 
 138 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 " A wonder wha's 'appened to un, now," 
 said Bob. 
 
 " And then as we was feeling a bit 
 narked," continued the story-teller, " we 
 thought as 'ow we'd do 'im in proper. So 
 we got every bit of odd liquor we could 
 collect and put it into 'is mug and " 
 
 " Fall in, B Company," came a sharp 
 order. 
 
 The men gulped down their tea, and 
 strode off to the front line, taking the 
 story with them. 
 
 It looked as if the enemy were growing 
 active a little after midnight, so I crept 
 out beyond the houses to watch. A few 
 volleys came across the open as I lay low 
 and peered between the long grasses. It 
 was very cold and desolate. Suddenly I 
 felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice 
 said : 
 
 " You're all right, sonny, I'll take 
 you in."
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 139 
 
 A man had seen me lying there, and 
 thinking me wounded, had crept out to 
 rescue me. I explained what I was doing 
 and, seeing his mistake, or that I was an 
 officer, he apologized. I cut him short at 
 that, for somehow his kindness among 
 that desolation touched me more than 
 anything else I can ever remember. His 
 tone, too, was so extraordinarily gentle. 
 
 He went away, but after a little re- 
 turned with a pannikin of tea and rum, 
 and while I drank it, told me first how his 
 mates had been cut up, then of his wife 
 and children at home. His little girl, 
 whom he'd never seen, was called Maud, 
 which he thought a very pretty name, and 
 her grandfather had taken a great fancy 
 to her. 
 
 " Funny how old people," he said, 
 " seem to go daft on children." And with 
 this reflection he left me.
 
 140 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 It quieted down shortly afterwards, 
 and, as the moon sank, I went back to get 
 some sleep. One walked in and out of 
 houses through breaches in the wall. In 
 one I discovered a large room where a 
 number of men were lying, huddled up in 
 all manner of strange poses, as men do lie 
 when utterly exhausted. I found a clear 
 space, rolled up my coat for a pillow and 
 lay down. 
 
 I was in that half-unconscious state 
 that comes just before sleep, when 
 I heard something tear through the roof 
 of the house and burst just beyond. I sat 
 up and blinked, then cursed myself for 
 being the only one who had moved. I was 
 settling down again when another shell 
 hit the corner of the house and sent one 
 or two bricks crashing into the room. 
 Again I sat up. " Anyone hurt ? " I 
 asked, but no one answered. 
 
 " God, how they sleep," I said. Then
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 141 
 
 fancying I smelt gas, I shook myself alert, 
 and sniffed again. 
 
 Then it struck me as strange, that no 
 one in all that company moved or snored, 
 not even those who lay cheek by jowl 
 with me, so I lit a match . . . and 
 snatching up my coat, stumbled out of 
 the room, where they had lain their dead. 
 
 Tuesday, September 28th. 
 
 Morning broke in triumph. There was 
 a chill vigorousness about the air, that 
 compelled one's attention to something or 
 other. As there was nothing else on 
 which to bestow it, we noticed the sun- 
 shine, the way it swelled out over the hill, 
 spread glory through the pale sky, caught 
 up its reflection in a million dewdrops and 
 made our whole world smile its admiration. 
 
 It was a wonderful morning, and then 
 a little incident spoiled it all. 
 
 I had just got into the front line and was
 
 142 The Dianj of a Timid Man 
 
 looking round, when we saw some figures 
 come creeping down the hill towards us. 
 
 When they were some fifty yards from 
 our wire they jumped up and ran on. 
 Suddenly the Germans saw them and 
 opened fire. Not one was hit, but they 
 stopped, and threw up their hands, and 
 stood there, undecided as to what they 
 should do. They were in English uniforms, 
 that was all we could see, as they were 
 silhouetted against the sun. After a 
 moment or two, they turned to go back 
 to the German lines. 
 
 Somebody shouted " Fire." A volley 
 of shots rang out, and the men dropped. 
 
 " Probably Germans, dressed up," said 
 a captain, " come over to see how many 
 we're holding the trench with." 
 
 It seemed a probable solution, until we 
 discovered that two men had not thrown 
 up their hands, but had crawled on and 
 reached our line.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 143 
 
 They were our men, left behind from an 
 attack that had failed, young men, new 
 to action. They had been hiding from the 
 Germans all night, and in the morning, 
 finding that they were alone, had crept 
 back. Their companions had seen our 
 trench, and afraid we should fire, had 
 jumped up to show themselves and run 
 for it. The German fire had startled them 
 into throwing up their hands. Then, 
 realizing they had surrendered, had turned 
 to go back, and so paid the penalty of 
 nerves — and honour. 
 
 It was a grim little incident, ended in a 
 few seconds, but the effect lasted for hours. 
 It got about, by some trick of rumour, 
 that this regiment had run away. The 
 myth flared up and down the line. Men, 
 chilled, hungry and tired out, listened to 
 no arguments. A regiment had run. If 
 anyone showed any signs of running they 
 would shoot.
 
 144 The Diary of a Timid Mem 
 
 A party of men were told off from the 
 front line to dig a small communication 
 trench back towards the village. As soon 
 as they were seen to clamber out, a 
 murmur went down the line, and rifles 
 were swung from the parapet towards 
 them. The party was recalled for a while, 
 until the men had had their breakfast. 
 Their nerves were quieter after that. 
 
 We were an odd crew in that front line. 
 As I pushed my guns out along the slope 
 of the hill, I found every sort of unit : 
 cavalry, guards, a few riflemen, terri- 
 torials, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, English 
 regiments, three here, lialf a dozen there, 
 lost nearly all of them, or strayed, but hold- 
 ing on from instinct of duty. Each detach- 
 ment had dug its own little bit of trench, 
 for the most part only waist deep, as the 
 soil was hard chalk, and being divided off 
 by traverses, gave to the happy mind of 
 Private Keppey the impression of exhibits.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 145 
 
 " 'Ere we 'ave," he announced, "the 
 'Orse Guards. Known famihar Hke as the 
 Blues, because of their complexions." The 
 trench was too small to let us pass, and 
 we were crawling along in the open. 
 "Further on we fmd 'andsome specimens 
 of the Scots Guards. Don't go too near 
 'em, 'Erbert, they're a 'orrid savage lot. 
 Looks is misleading." A Scot was evidently 
 throwing lumps of chalk at Keppey, and a 
 missile must have hit him, for he swore 
 suddenly and thereafter was quieter. 
 
 We reached our position and dug in. 
 The digging was spasmodic. Every one 
 was thoroughly tired, although the men 
 had had a few hours' disturbed sleep 
 during the night. My own trouble was 
 that I could not lose consciousness. 
 
 Firstly, there were the German guns to 
 distract me. At right angles to our 
 " young " trench was the double crassier 
 running back to the Tower Bridge, which
 
 146 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 the Germans used to get the range. Time 
 after time we saw the shells burst along 
 the slag-heap, at first far down, then 
 nearer and nearer. When they had got 
 our range we could wait, and everyone 
 said to himself, or aloud, " Now we're 
 for it," and expect the enemy artillery to 
 traverse along our line. And then, when 
 we were all keyed up, the shelling would 
 stop. Even then there was no feeling of 
 relief, but only of postponement. 
 
 And when I was beyond caring, and, 
 longing only for sleep, closed my eyes, the 
 picture of " that fellow," at first vaguely, 
 and then more clearly, began to obsess my 
 mind. " That fellow " was an officer, a 
 nice-looking man, who lay on liis back a 
 few yards from me, one arm raised from 
 the elbow, as though he had died snapping 
 his fingers, a careless, half-defiant smile 
 on his lips. 
 
 I do not know why he in especial
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 147 
 
 worried me, for there were thousands Hke 
 him lying all over the ground. We had 
 had to haul them out of the way to dig 
 our trench. But worry me he did. I was 
 always looking, against my will, to see if 
 the arm had dropped, or the smile had 
 relaxed. 
 
 " Funny kind of battle this," I heard 
 Corporal Grimthorpe say. " Don't seem 
 to be my notion of fighting. Look at 
 them poor blighters getting chawed 
 up. When are we going to get a move 
 on ? " 
 
 " Dinna ye fash yerseP for a move, 
 laddie," said a Scotsman. "A've moved 
 here, and here A bide." 
 
 " 'Ello, Jockm', 'oo did you come with ? " 
 
 " A came wi' ma battalyon twa days 
 since, and here A bide — wi' ma battalyon," 
 and he glanced down the littered hill. 
 " We canna move till we've taken these 
 bit hills."
 
 148 The Diary of a Timid IS I an 
 
 " Seems as 'ow there won't be nothing 
 left of that old 'ill to take before long," 
 said Blake. 
 
 Our guns were at work, and the wood 
 that crested the slope above the La Bassee 
 road shook and spluttered with explo- 
 sions. There was an enemy trench that 
 ran along in front of the wood, and as the 
 guns travelled up and down, I could see 
 dark objects tossed high above the smoke, 
 and fall, toppling over and over, to the 
 ground again. The men decided these 
 were bodies. 
 
 " Gawd, but that's something like," 
 they said. 
 
 I went down the hill to see G and 
 
 find out what was happening. He was 
 sitting in a half-dug communication trench, 
 that ran back to Loos, screwing up his 
 moustache, as he does in moments of 
 great thought, and watching the bombard- 
 ment. I asked him innumerable questions,
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 149 
 
 but he sat stolidly watching the shell- 
 bursts. To my questions he made no 
 answer, yet replied to them all in the best 
 possible way. 
 
 " I'm going to dig," he said, and turn- 
 ing his back, began to hack away at the 
 chalk. 
 
 By the time I returned, the bombard- 
 ment was reaching its zenith. 
 
 " 'Ow they do take on," said Keppey, 
 as the scream and bursting of the shells 
 merged into one tumult. " Seem quite 
 nasty about it." '' 
 
 Then suddenly — absolute quiet. 
 
 " Now for the attack," said Keppey, 
 who seemed to have taken upon himself 
 the role of compere. 
 
 The attack they made that afternoon 
 has gone down already into historj^ It 
 failed, for there were gallant fighters on 
 both sides, and none but very gallant men 
 would have withstood that bombard-
 
 150 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 ment. But I only saw the British side, 
 and it was unHke all that I expected. 
 
 We saw advancing slowly from another 
 wood, that ran up the hill towards the 
 Germans, a long line of soldiers. Their 
 pace was a slow jog-trot, and they had the 
 air of wonderfully disciplined, but slightly 
 bored men upon manoeuvres. It was all 
 very quiet, very perfect, very unreal. 
 I could not help wondering whether they 
 had troubled to drop their cigarettes, and 
 if they would stop to light up, and why 
 some men were falling. It was hard for 
 us to believe there were any Germans 
 facing them, until we saw men in grey 
 uniforms scrambling out of the trench and 
 running back. 
 
 The attackers hardly paused at the 
 captured trench, but always at the same 
 steady trot went on towards the wood. 
 They lost few men, and soon the last of 
 them had disappeared in the trees.
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 151 
 
 " Glorious vict'ry," said the corny ere. 
 
 " That ain't vict'iy," said Corporal 
 Grimthorpe. " Why, men go mad in a 
 charge. Act same as devils. See blood. 
 They go raving." 
 
 " Dinna ye believe all ye read, laddie. 
 A dinna ken onything about horsemen ; 
 they're strange folk, but that's a rale fine 
 infanteriy charge. A very fine charge, 
 and mony's the one A've been in." 
 
 " But I've seen picters," began Grim- 
 thorpe, " and the blokes Gor, they're 
 
 coming back." • 
 
 " Run into machine-guns," said Keppey, 
 the compere. 
 
 From the wood they had entered a few 
 minutes before, men were retiring, just as 
 slowly, just as methodically — but only a 
 handful. Then it was the Germans' turn 
 to sweep the open space between the 
 woods, and our men, retiring, lost heavily, 
 but still they did not quicken their pace.
 
 152 The Diary of a Timid 'Man 
 
 " I wish they'd run," said I to a strange 
 officer who had come my way. 
 
 " Thank Heaven they don't," said the 
 other, " or we'd all be getting the wind up. 
 Those men are saving our morale. Dying 
 to save it. That show this morning had a 
 rotten effect. God, look there." 
 
 Out of the wood far behind the others 
 came two men. After a little, one fell, and 
 the other went on. He turned twice to 
 look at his pal, and went on, but the third 
 time he stopped, then faced about and 
 went back. We watched him pick up his 
 friend, and with one arm about him, help 
 the wounded man to hobble down the hill. 
 The German fire was intense, but the two 
 trudged slowly on. 
 
 " They'll get hit— they'll get hit," we all 
 whispered. " They must get hit " ; but 
 the two still moved slowly towards their 
 trench. Then the German big guns opened 
 fire, sweeping the hill where none but
 
 The Diary of a Ti7nid Man 153 
 
 wounded lay, yet the two survived and 
 crept at last into safety. 
 
 The wounded were not so lucky, and the 
 shelling butchered them as they lay. One 
 Highlander, his legs shattered, pulled him- 
 self to within twenty yards of shelter, and 
 then a shell whipped him and the earth 
 about him into a spray of fragments. 
 
 Suddenly the strange captain turned to 
 me, although I had said nothing. 
 
 *' Do you mean to say you think they're 
 dead\ " he asked almost savagely. " I 
 don't. There's something about those 
 fellows that'll live for ever. No, not 
 glory. Damn glory. Something greater — 
 themselves." 
 
 And at that he went off, as though I 
 were beneath contempt. Whether it was 
 his conviction that influenced me or some 
 other private feeling, I cannot tell, but I 
 do not remember worrying about " that 
 fellow " any more after this.
 
 154 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 The day quickly turned to darkness, 
 and with the changing hght came mist, 
 and then drizzle and then a pouring rain. 
 We stood in our little trench, dumbly, 
 like animals, waiting for something beyond 
 our control to happen to us. Shells still 
 hurtled over us and crashed into the 
 village, but even so it seemed better to be 
 there and dry. We were tired, hungry and 
 miserable with wet. The trench slowly 
 filled with water, so that there was no 
 question of lying or sitting down. 
 
 In front of us dark shapes moved about 
 hammering in stakes for wire entangle- 
 ments, while others scavenged round feel- 
 ing for life in the prostrate bodies, and 
 bringing in men whose wounds were 
 already rotting. 
 
 We took turns at sentry, two by two. 
 I shared a waterproof sheet with Private 
 Livesey, a plain, pasty-faced man, whose 
 sole care in life, as far as I had known, was
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 155 
 
 the cultivation of an extravagant love- 
 lock, which he plastered over his forehead. 
 Hunched up under the sheet we watched 
 for signs of the enemy. 
 
 " They've fair fooled us this time, sir," 
 he remarked, " 'aven't they ? " 
 
 I grunted. 
 
 " Thought we was for it, this time, all 
 right. Cavalry going through, and all 
 that. Not that I like seeing 'orses killed. 
 Doesn^ seem right, somc'ow. Do it, 
 sir ? " 
 
 " No," I answered, which was not much 
 of a reply, but an improvement on my 
 previous grunt . Sociability under a ground- 
 sheet is liable to be infectious. 
 
 " Still it would 'ave finished this 'ere 
 war sooner, if we'd given 'em a taste. 
 Saturday, sir, riding up made me all over. 
 Fancy, sir, going through with the regi- 
 ment. Makes you think, don't it ? In 
 sight of everybody. That's what beats
 
 156 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 me, sir. The pore old infantry go into 
 the trenches and stay there and never see 
 each other, or anyone else. Must sort of 
 forget they're a regiment, all poked away 
 in trenches. Fighting in the old days 
 must 'ave been much easier than this, sir. 
 I don't know 'ow the infantry do it, whole 
 months so long at a time, hidden away and 
 being killed." 
 
 He was silent awhile, wondering, as we 
 all do, at the "feet's" endurance. Star- 
 shells shot up into the sky, and lit the dark 
 hill, down which ran rivulets that caught 
 the momentary blaze and shone like 
 streams of fire. The bodies grew sodden 
 and draggled. And guns boomed dully 
 through the rain. The picture took on a 
 new meaning. 
 
 A crack, a boom and the quick glare of 
 a rocket crystallized the illusion. It was 
 all a tremendous thunderstorm, that 
 drowned the noise of waves and only the
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 157 
 
 deep rumble of the sea could be heard as 
 an undertone against the claps of thunder. 
 And these men were drowned, washed up 
 upon the shore. Then darkness fell ; the 
 rain, finding a hole in the sheet, trickled 
 down my neck, and I was reasonable 
 again. 
 
 We plugged the hole with wet chalk, and 
 stood very still, so as not to divert any 
 more streams dow^n our bodies. The other 
 men, wedged against the trench, were 
 sleeping. Private Livesey continued the 
 story of his thoughts. 
 
 " It's all this jolly-making what does it, 
 sir, like what the papers talk about. But 
 they make us carry on as though we were 
 enjoying ourselves like on 'Am.pstead 
 'Eath. You know every one thinks as 'ow 
 'e's the only bloke wot feels things. All the 
 others take 'im in. And 'e takes in the 
 others. Fair 'oax all round. Good job, 
 too. You know Keppey, sir ? 'E's scared
 
 158 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 'alf the time for all 'is talk. I only found 
 out 'cos next day I called 'im to mind of 
 something 'e'd said when we was getting 
 it hot in the salient. And 'e didn't know 
 'e'd ever said it. All 'e remembered was 
 'aving the wind up. Funny, sir, isn't it ? " 
 
 To this I think I made no answer, 
 although at the moment I felt a liking 
 for Livesey I had never felt before. He 
 is still, and always will be, concentrated 
 chiefly on his love-lock, and on the inane 
 remarks which seem to be as necessary 
 adjuncts to that ornament as hair-grease. 
 That night, however, he gave me enormous 
 hope. It was quite possible, though I 
 could scarcely believe it, that all my own 
 fears and panics had passed unnoticed ; 
 that perhaps even I had joked ; for my 
 internal performances had sickened me 
 considerably. 
 
 " Thank God," I said to myself, "there's 
 still a chance."
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 159 
 
 And so we stood, knee-deep in water, 
 peering into the darkness. 
 
 Wednesday, Septe^nher 2^ih. 
 
 It was just after midnight and we were 
 hammering the men awake to take our 
 place under the ground-sheet, when some 
 figures came sUthering up the hill, asking 
 for us. They splashed into the trench, 
 and said they were the relief. 
 
 The only trench stores we could hand 
 over was the sheet, and we left it gladly, 
 as being something less to carry. Then we 
 climbed out of our watery shelter, and 
 slipped and stumbled our way back to 
 Loos. 
 
 The streets all the way were deserted. 
 The road was full of shell-holes, which had 
 now filled with water, so that, tired out, 
 and with occasional H.E.'s still coming 
 over to distract my attention as I led the
 
 160 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 way, I seem to have spent most of that 
 march falhng gallantly into several feet of 
 water and crawling out like a half-drowned 
 rat. 
 
 From the last hole, near our cellar, I 
 was rescued by a nimble, courteous old 
 man, who explained to me that I had 
 " tombe dans I'eau." 
 
 Despite the dark he recognized me. He 
 was very glad to see me and thanked the 
 bon Dieu that I was safe, because, he said, 
 following me towards the cellar, of my 
 parent's feelings and also because of a 
 certain difficulty he was having with the 
 authorities. 
 
 Had I parents, he asked, and to my nod, 
 added that they would understand his 
 feelings. He had, as I would perhaps 
 remember, a mule and a mare and her 
 foal. The authorities said he must leave 
 Loos, " a cause de cette bataille " and 
 here he shrugged his shoulders. The
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 161 
 
 authorities, military men, were doubtless 
 right, and he, good ally, would help them 
 as best he could, but — but, being occu- 
 pied with the battle, they could not 
 understand his feelings with regard to his 
 beasts, although he had explained often, 
 and they said that not only the cart, but 
 the mule and the mare and her foal must 
 remain behind. And their fate ? 
 
 Just then a staff officer came rushing in. 
 
 " Where's that bl " then he saw 
 
 Monsieur Bart el. *' Oh, come along. You're 
 keeping everyone." 
 
 Monsieur Bart el bowed coldly, then 
 standing stiff among the litter of the yard 
 and the ruined houses, he folded his arms 
 and said : 
 
 " Messieurs, vous connaissez mes 
 termes." 
 
 For sympathy the Brass Hat turned to 
 me and so did Monsieur Bart el. But I 
 fled. The situation was beyond me.
 
 162 The Diary of a Timid Man 
 
 In the cellar I found my guard, playing 
 cards with their prisoners. 
 
 A shell fell somewhere, as I entered, 
 and a German looked up, his face glowing 
 with the satisfaction of an intelligent 
 schoolboy. 
 
 " Crump," he said, holding up one 
 finger by his ear. 
 
 And then a tired Cockney voice drawled 
 intones of deep disappointment : " Wrong 
 agine, Fritz, it's a whiz-bang. You'll 
 never learn." 
 
 " Guar-r-r-d 'Shunnn." 
 
 " Kits on. Fall in the prisoners out- 
 side. We're clearing out," I said. 
 
 As we marched back over the hill, 
 across which Monsieur Bartel was wisely 
 prevented from taking his mule and his 
 mare and her foal, the men chattered to 
 Fritz, and Fritz waxed eloquent and 
 talked too. 
 
 There was one German with whom I
 
 The Diary of a Timid Man 163 
 
 agreed. He said, lifting up his voice in 
 the freedom of captivity : 
 
 " Tis is dam foohshness, tis war is. 
 Especially when we have so much else to 
 tink about. And for happiness, many, 
 many little tings." 
 
 But I agreed more with Private Livesey, 
 who said : " Yer silly fathead, wotcher 
 begin it for ? '* 
 
 y
 
 Love o' Wo7nan
 
 Love o' Woinan 
 
 T>RIVATE GAZELY stood on the 
 -*- kerb, a straw in his mouth, and with 
 a small switch tapped the side of his leg, 
 for all the world as if he were in his market 
 town. 
 
 The occupation amused Private Gazely. 
 In Yorkshire something always happened 
 when he stood thus on the kerb. He met 
 a friend, and they went off for a drink 
 together, or he saw someone's new cattle 
 or horses* go past, or he heard the news. 
 And in France he still felt that if he stood 
 long enough he always found some change 
 ^besides drills and fatigues —from the 
 boredom of billets. 
 
 He got the time of day from limber 
 drivers, as they splashed through the mud, 
 and occasional news from passing orderlies ; 
 
 167
 
 168 Love o' Woman 
 
 and when the road was empty he closed his 
 eyes and tapped his leg and imagined him- 
 self back in Yorkshire. 
 
 Fransoy, however, a row of sad houses, 
 sitting precariously in the midst of a mud 
 ocean, promised nothing. The road 
 stretched from horizon to horizon and was 
 always bare, even of trees by the side. 
 Gazely shut his eyes and tapped and 
 tapped, but the smell of the mud and the 
 dreary air infected all his thoughts. 
 
 He was going away, back to the barn 
 and the muddy straw, and the lice and the 
 guttering candles, where his mates were, 
 when a girl passed him, carrying a pail of 
 water. She was strongly made and young, 
 and the sight of her body straining with her 
 load, her breasts taut against her rough 
 blouse, and her lips parted, showing white 
 teeth, roused many feelings in Private 
 Gazely. She was not such a slut as were 
 most village girls.
 
 Love o' Woman 169 
 
 " 'Ere," he said, " I'll portay that." 
 
 The girl, still carrying the pail, glanced 
 up at him. He was a big, pleasant-looking 
 fellow, with an open freckled face and a 
 open happy smile. He was smiling then, 
 confident of friendship, without malice. 
 
 " Mon Dieu," thought the girl for the 
 hundredth time. " Comme ils sont des 
 enfant s, ces Anglais." But she smiled, 
 too, for there was something infectious 
 about Private Gazely's bonJiomie. 
 
 " I'll portay that for you," he said 
 again. 
 
 " Eh bien," said the girl, " prenez-le." 
 
 Private Gazely, without vanity, often 
 said that he found no difficulty in speaking 
 French. The main part of his sentences 
 was colloquial English, into which he 
 threw French words much as a cook puts 
 plums into a pudding. 
 
 " I doan't like seeing a femme portay 
 trop beaucoup. No bon, ma sherrie, no
 
 170 Love o' Woman 
 
 bon. Homme a tranchee. Femme tra- 
 vail. No bon." 
 
 " C'est la guerre," said the girl. 
 
 " Guerre no bon," said Gazely. " An' 
 yon Fritz is the lad who brought us to it." 
 
 " Ah Freetz," the girl blazed. " Le 
 crapaud." 
 
 Private Gazely did not approve of hate, 
 except in the comic papers, so he tried his 
 best to change the subject. 
 
 " Fiance a la guerre ? " he challenged, 
 laughingly. 
 
 " II est mort," said the girl, then, lest 
 there be any doubt, " Pour la patrie, 
 bien entendu." 
 
 Gazely whistled. "Put ma foot in — 
 up to the 'ocks," he muttered. 
 
 " Et mon pere, aussi, et mon frere — 
 tous." 
 
 " Pauvre sherrie," murmured Gazely, 
 genuinely troubled, and he put his arm 
 round the girl's shoulders and patted her
 
 Love o' Woman 171 
 
 soothingly. " Pauvre sherrie. Oh, dam 
 the guerre." 
 
 They turned into a Httle red brick 
 house, that vainly resisted the great sea of 
 mud. The outside walls were spattered 
 above the windows, and even indoors 
 mud had found its way about the floors 
 and on the legs of tables and chairs. A 
 thin, weary woman was sitting beside the 
 stove, her hands folded over her stomach, 
 and, as the two entered, she exclaimed : 
 
 " Mon Dieu, en voila un autre qui porta 
 de la boue." 
 
 Gazely felt he was bringing nothing but 
 misery on the household. It was his busi- 
 ness to make reparation. Besides, he 
 liked the girl. 
 
 " Sorry, Madame," he said cheerfully, 
 " but there's beaucoup boue in these 
 parts. Ah'll tell ye. Ah'll lavay the floor 
 for ye." 
 
 " A quoi bon ? " said Madame. Then
 
 172 Love o' Woman 
 
 she explained there were two officers 
 billeted on her, always, and they were 
 always in or out. Besides, what could she 
 do. It would always be like that, always 
 mud. 
 
 " C'est la guerre," said Gazely. " Boue, 
 boue, boue all the time. Ah'm fair sick 
 of it." 
 
 He looked round the room. It was 
 meagrely furnished. Three china orna- 
 ments on the mantelshelf, a picture of an 
 angel guarding two children from a preci- 
 pice, a lithograph of the Sacred Heart of 
 Jesus, a certificate of education, framed, 
 a hanging brass lamp, four huge enlarged 
 photographs of Madame, Monsieur, and 
 his grand-parents, all in their Sunday 
 best, a table and four chairs were all the 
 furniture. 
 
 " Beaucoup triste," said Gazely, looking 
 round. Then he pulled out of his pay- 
 book an embroidered post card, on which
 
 Love o' Woman 173 
 
 a swallow, surrounded by forget-me-nots, 
 was carrying a letter that bore the word 
 " Souvenir." He propped it against a 
 china figure on the mantelshelf. 
 
 " Pour vous," he said to Madame. 
 Then stepped back to see the transforma- 
 tion. " Ha, ha," he exclaimed. " Tres 
 gai." 
 
 It was the pay-book, however, and the 
 glimpse of the blue notes in it, that most 
 encouraged the old woman. She pulled 
 up a chair to the stove for him, and dusted 
 it in ceremony of welcome rather than for 
 cleanliness. The girl came back into the 
 room and they sat and talked awhile, 
 awaiting the time, which soon occurred, 
 when the soldier should suggest a meal. 
 
 The room was bare and uncomfortable, 
 but Gazely had a feeling of homeliness, 
 especially when the girl, reaching over to 
 put the eggs on the table, laid her hand on 
 his shoulder. It was familiar and caress-
 
 174 Love o' Woman 
 
 ing. He chatted to them both throughout 
 the meal, but it was the girl who fascin- 
 ated his eyes. And she, not a bit abashed, 
 watched him with a like eagerness. 
 
 The meal ended, and the mother went 
 out to wash the plates. Gazely, clumsy 
 at love-making, sat down by the stove and, 
 as the girl passed, pulled her on to his 
 knee. She smacked his face, and he 
 laughed. 
 
 " Ami ? " he said. 
 
 She sat rigid for a moment, then, sud- 
 denly drawing his face to her warm breast, 
 bent and kissed his head. " Ma sherrie," 
 murmured Private Gazely. 
 
 Sleet was driving into every corner of 
 the trenches on a wind that numbed each 
 bit of one's body. Even in the dug-out, 
 round a charcoal fire, men lay miserably 
 chilled ; while outside Gazely and Piggott,
 
 Love o' Woman 175 
 
 hunched up in their coats, peered into the 
 darkness through eyes half-closed against 
 the sleet, longing only for the tot of rum 
 that would give them heart again. 
 
 A shell, whining in the wind, came over 
 and burst just beyond them. Neither man 
 ducked. They were beyond caring. 
 
 " What's the use o' thet," said Gazely. 
 " Gordomme, is'n ut enough wi'out sma- 
 ashing us to bla-azes. Uts a' moock." 
 
 But Piggott would never be sympa- 
 thetic. " O, chuck it," he said. " You'd 
 better go back to Fransoy, Ern, that's 
 what you'd better do, and get your little 
 bit of goods there to hold yer 'and. 
 Dunno what's come over yer." 
 
 " Happen you weren't 'aving the 'oomp 
 five minutes since," muttered Gazely. 
 
 " Well, I 'as my grouse and gets over 
 it," said Piggott. Then a whirl of sleet 
 drove on to them, in their faces, down 
 their necks, stopping all recriminations.
 
 176 Love o' Woman 
 
 For a while they were silent, then at 
 last Gazely said : " That lass to Fransoy 
 you mentioned ..." 
 
 " Well, what about 'er ? Like the rest 
 of 'em." 
 
 " People is lonesome folk," said Gazely, 
 as if in explanation of the girl — or of 
 himself. 
 
 An officer, dragging himself through 
 the mud on his rounds, heard this remark, 
 and, looking for the speaker, saw two 
 figures standing huddled up on the fire- 
 step, their backs towards him, peering 
 out across a world of desolation . . . 
 two homely creatures, in the dark and 
 the cold, and the wet and the mud, 
 seeing nothing, not even the desolate 
 rain-swept field out of which their heads 
 just appeared, nor yet the bodies, lying 
 clumsily like sandbags there. . . . Piggott 
 and Gazely, he knew them, two very 
 homely creatures.
 
 Love o' Woman 177 
 
 And he heard Gazely add : 
 
 " Folk must 'ave folk o' times to fuss 
 them about." 
 
 Just then another shell wailed over and 
 burst. But this time the two men ducked. 
 
 " I don't say women don't make a 
 difference," admitted Piggott. " Can do 
 with a bit of cuddling myself. My 
 missus — but what's the use of talking 
 'ere?" 
 
 " That maid " began Gazely. Then 
 
 he, too, stopped. Suddenly he nudged 
 Piggoth and pointed. They pulled up 
 their rifles on to the parapet, and despite 
 numbed fingers managed to sight on a 
 dark shape they fancied crawling in the 
 mud. The shots cracked out together. 
 They heard a yelp, and then silence. 
 
 " No more women for 'im," said Piggott, 
 '' 'ooever 'e is."
 
 178 Love o' Woman 
 
 When the regiment went back to billets 
 again at Fransoy, Gazely cleaned himself 
 up and went that very night to see Louise. 
 
 He opened the door, smiling. He had 
 smiled like that all the way from the 
 trenches. His mates had chaffed him 
 freely, but that only intensified his ex- 
 pectation. 
 
 His smile at the door was the supreme 
 expression of his feelings. Good fellow- 
 ship was in it, for without bonhomie 
 Gazely could not have smiled at all ; and 
 delight, and desire, too, that was almost 
 a hunger in the man. And, after opening 
 the door, he still smiled on, though amaze- 
 m^ent fumbled in his brain. 
 
 The girl was sitting on another man's 
 lap, a men who had not cleaned up. She 
 had drawn his face to her breast, and 
 bending over, was kissing his head. 
 
 She looked up and saw Gazely. Saw, 
 too, his smile change with stupefaction.
 
 Love o' Woman 179 
 
 She expected him to go away, and was 
 annoyed, yet somehow flattered, when he 
 stayed. 
 
 " 'Ere," said Gazely. " 'Ere." 
 
 The other man looked up. " 'Ullo," he 
 said. " What's your trouble ? " 
 
 Gazely mumbled incoherently. 
 
 " Vous etes fou ? " demanded Louise. 
 Gazely stared at her. Then, not trusting 
 himself to speak, turned and left the room. 
 
 The next day he was standing on the 
 kerb, straw in mouth, tapping his leg with 
 a switch, and wondering at the blankness 
 that had fallen on everything, when 
 Louise passed, carrying a bucket. He let 
 her pass. 
 
 " Domn women," he said, spitting out 
 the straw, and hittincr liis lew viciously 
 with the little switch. " They can't leave 
 a chap be." 
 
 He hated her for having held the other 
 fellow just as she had held him, and,
 
 180 Love o' Woman 
 
 hating her, longed again to be clutched 
 even so. Other things were not so neces- 
 sary to him. They just followed. It was 
 the grasp of her, and the tenderness, the 
 need of her as a woman, that tormented 
 him. 
 
 He stood irresolute, trying to go away, 
 yet stayed, pretending that he would just 
 let her gc^by to flaunt her. 
 
 Soon she returned, and as she passed 
 he noticed again her young body straining 
 with the load. 
 
 " 'Ere," he said, " I'll portay that." 
 The girl glanced up. He was more like 
 a child than ever, only now there was no 
 smile, but a look of puzzled weariness on 
 his face. 
 
 " Eh bien," she said, " prenez-le." 
 They walked in silence, but when they 
 reached the door Gazely turned to her, 
 and putting down the pail, caught her 
 hand and said :
 
 Love o' Woman 181 
 
 " Pourquoi — le soldat — lui bon — moi no 
 bon ? " 
 
 The girl snatched her hand away. 
 
 " Qu'est-ce-que vous me demandez ? " 
 she snapped. "Vous — ah, vous hommes. 
 Vous vous imaginez que nous ne sommes 
 que vos joujoux — nous femmes. Vous 
 n'etes pas mon maitre. Personne ne Test. 
 Personne ne s'occupe pas de moi. Per- 
 sonne — tant pis pour eux. Et comment 
 est-ce-que 5a vous regarde tout ce que je 
 fais? Fou — 9a m'est bien egale — moi. Une 
 femme est toujours seule, vous savez." 
 
 Private Gazely understood none of this, 
 but nevertheless he caught her and drew 
 her to him. 
 
 " Happen we're both in the same boat, 
 ma sherrie," he said, and kissed her, for- 
 getting everything.
 
 A Talisman for Coverage
 
 A Talisman for Courage 
 
 XN days to come there will probably 
 -^ appear in some well - favoured review 
 a series of war reminiscences, written in 
 the purest English and in a delightful 
 style. This alone would ear-mark it for 
 distinction ; but its attitude towards the 
 war and those who wage it will be its claim 
 to greatness. And yet as I write I see its 
 future author shovelling manure, while a 
 sergeant shouts, " Come on, you cross- 
 eyed scallywag. Get a move on," and Mr. 
 Briggs bends to his unhallowed task and 
 gets a move on. 
 
 But Mr. Briggs is not a cross-eyed scally- 
 wag. He is a diffident, anxious little man 
 of quite forty years, and though he wears 
 khaki and rides a troop-horse he is a don 
 and always will be, despite all the sergeants 
 
 185
 
 186 A Talisman for Courage 
 
 in the world. If ever man joined for a 
 sublime motive it was he. If ever man 
 tried hard to forget a past life of combina- 
 tion rooms, old port and the mellowing 
 atmosphere of culture it was Mr. Briggs. 
 And yet I quite sympathize with his ser- 
 geant, who shouts : " Good 'eavens, you 
 Briggs, where 'ave yer been brought up ? " 
 I first remember seeing him at stables, 
 in those restless days when we were all 
 training, conspiring, and longing for 
 nothing else but to "go out there." 
 Though each at the beginning had his own 
 technique for grooming his horse, Mr. 
 Briggs was exceptional even then. He 
 had a way of putting in dabs of cleaning, 
 and then standing back, like a painter, to 
 admire the result. When his horse grew 
 restive he always dropped his body-brush 
 and went to cajole the animal with honeyed 
 phrases. Grooming was a lengthy busi- 
 ness with Mr. Briggs.
 
 A Talisman for Courage 187 
 
 And then came the day when some 
 hundreds of us were hurried out to the 
 front of fronts, and Mr. Briggs, left behind, 
 passed out of our memories. 
 
 There is a certain portion of the Hne 
 where the dead of last summer's fighting 
 still lie in little mournful heaps between 
 the trenches. Here mines go up as a 
 matter of almost daily habit, burying some, 
 exhuming others of our dead, and it was 
 there, standing on the fire-step within 
 sixty yards of the Germans, that I next 
 met Mr. Briggs. 
 
 He saw me first and wished me " Good 
 evening." It was the courteous salutation 
 of a don to a friendly undergraduate. 
 
 " Hullo, Briggs," I said, " I didn't know 
 you were out. Pretty rotten place this, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," he answered, and his diffi-' 
 dent little stammer came back to him.
 
 188 A Talisman for Courage 
 
 "I — er~well, sir, I can hardly say — er — 
 I enjoy it." 
 
 " Oh," I answered, " but then no one 
 does." 
 
 " No, sir ? " He speaks more in gasps 
 than with a real stammer. I think it 
 comes from his desire always to use the 
 apt word. " But some er — convey the 
 impression of — er enjoyment." 
 
 "Pose," said I. "We all hate it— or 
 bluff, if you like it better." 
 
 " The — er — subaltern spirit, perhaps ? " 
 he suggested. 
 
 " Well, it serves its purpose," I replied. 
 
 " Quite, quite, sir, quite," he agreed 
 hurriedly. " I didn't know, and — er, you 
 see, I never have understood young 
 fellows. Then this heartiness — ^this Harry 
 Tate-iness, if I may call it so, the inevit- 
 able ' How's your Father ' joke is merely 
 -er " 
 
 " Swank ! " I said.
 
 A Talisman for Courage 189 
 
 " Shall we call it a modus vivendi, 
 sir ? " he said. " It's wonderful how man 
 does go on living and searching for talis- 
 mans to inspirit him for further life — in 
 this." He glanced over the parapet, and 
 said, perhaps to the bodies there, " Of 
 course, we must live — to carry on. Some 
 of us, anyhow." He turned again to me 
 and, with his hand, patted a lump that 
 stuck out from the side of the trencli. 
 " Perhaps, sir, you think me — morbid." 
 
 " No," I answered. " I never analyse 
 anything now." 
 
 " No, sir ? " He patted the lump again, 
 then looked down and saw it was the foot 
 of some man protruding from his grave. 
 " Perhaps — perhaps, another poor Yorick. 
 Who knows ? But I shall not play Hamlet, 
 sir. I lost a friend to-day, sir. He under- 
 stood . . . and his death breaks down 
 much of my religion, sir, whatever people 
 may say— trite religion, I mean. I must
 
 190 A Talisman for Courage 
 
 evolve something personal. In the mean- 
 time " he shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " Then what is your modus vivendi, 
 Briggs ? " I asked. 
 
 " My form of swank, sir, is less ex- 
 uberant. Horace. Did you ever read 
 him ? " 
 
 " I suffered more canings from Horace 
 than from any other man," I replied. 
 
 " No, sir, please. To me Horace is a 
 wizard. I sit in the rain, and I read about 
 sunny days in his Sabine valley, and 
 somehow I feel the sunshine and the white 
 marble and the niiidce puellce, white 
 against the dark cypress. Of course, sir, 
 this is nonsense to you. But, then, the 
 conversation of some officers is unin- 
 telligible to a layman. You will forgive 
 me, sir, I mean, we all have, our methods. 
 A shell bursts near you, and you say, ' It 
 is a bomb, pa-pah.' Tlie same thing 
 happens to me and I say, ' Integer vitae
 
 A Talisjnan for Courage 191 
 
 scelerisque piirus . . .' We both lull our 
 anxieties by a trick of humour." 
 
 I laughed and said, " And does Horace 
 turn your tea into Csecuban wine for 
 you ? " 
 
 " No, sir," he replied ; " trench tea is 
 proof against all alchemy, even Horace's. 
 But over this place of— of desolation he 
 casts a — a mirage. And the mirage, I 
 feel, is the reality, and this is mere phase. 
 Sometimes when they are shelling us, sir, 
 I think of all the delicious places and 
 debonair people of his odes. They seem 
 so real, sir, so living, and I feel almost 
 young and forget this. Youth, sir, is so 
 invincible. Sir Philip Sidney, sir, is 
 eternal, and Horace brings me to the due 
 youthfulness, so that I become almost a 
 soldier. He almost persuades me to ignore 
 death. I become pagan, I fear, sir." 
 
 A star-shell swooped up, illuminating 
 all that tragic region, and Mr. Briggs
 
 192 A Talisman for Courage 
 
 ducked his head. The haggard httle 
 fellow, the lines and angles of his face 
 exaggerated by the quick light, looked a 
 strange disciple of the doctrine he ex- 
 pounded. 
 
 " I'm afraid, sir, you think me ridicu- 
 lous," said Mr. Briggs. " My method of — 
 manufacturing courage must seem fan- 
 tastic to you." 
 
 " Don't be an ass, Briggs," I said. " We 
 all have our methods. I must go. Good 
 night." 
 
 As I rounded the traverse I looked back, 
 and a star-shell showed me a little 
 crumpled face gazing out over No-Man's- 
 Land. He was smiling already, seeing not 
 the dead, but the laughing boys and girls 
 of a bygone age. A Maecenas, perhaps, 
 was talking rank pedantry to him over 
 their goblets of Chian. Below, in a flood 
 of lapis-lazuli, twinkled the Bay of Baise, 
 and the smell of roses came to them on a
 
 A Talisman for Courage 193 
 
 lazy wind. Maybe some sweet-smiling, 
 sweetly speaking Lalage was waiting for 
 the litteratem'S to attend to her. . . . 
 
 Yet it was lucky for Mr. Briggs that the 
 Hun over the way was also dreaming. 
 Perhaps he, too, read Horace.
 
 In Skyline Trench
 
 In Skyline Trench 
 
 '' XF j^ou show so much as the rim of 
 -^ a thought they'll blow you to hell 
 at once," said a complacent fellow, 
 " They're queer ones to see," he added, 
 thoughtfully regarding a piece of bully 
 before he swallowed it. " There was a 
 lad fell to cursing the Germans, and he 
 made the air so thick with curses that they 
 saw it." 
 
 " Did they hit him ? " 
 " They did not. Do you see those feet 
 there ? That's the man they mistook for 
 him." The complacent fellow laughed. 
 " Oh, I have no respect for the Germans 
 at all. If I had a little machine-gun here 
 I would kill them by the hundreds and 
 thousands. I would be a great slayer 
 here," and he laughed again. 
 
 197
 
 198 In Skyline Trench 
 
 The two officers who had crawled into 
 his shell-hole peered cautiously over the 
 top. The ground sloped down towards 
 the German lines, then up again to 
 Thiepval, and the hill behind, where the 
 enemy guns were. For the moment there 
 was a lull in the firing and they could see 
 over all the wasted land. It was like a 
 piece of putrid brown cloth held together 
 by white seams, that ran in every direction, 
 untidily, and, it seemed, without care. 
 In some places there were big patches of 
 dirty white, where the shells had con- 
 centrated and laid bare the chalk sub- 
 soil. But for the most part the ground was 
 pitted with innumerable small holes, so 
 innumerable, that they, more than all 
 else, gave to the earth its appearance of 
 coarse texture, loosely woven, w^iereof the 
 deep trenches were the seams. 
 
 In all the panorama there was no sign 
 of life. The ground bore no likeness to
 
 In Skyline Trench 199 
 
 any living earth. It was horrible and 
 rotten, bearing nothing, not even a blade 
 of grass, nor any colourful thing to break 
 the monotony of the dead place. And 
 upon it no living thing could be seen to 
 move. 
 
 " Must be four or five thousand Boches 
 there somewhere," said one of the officers. 
 " Where's your map ? Let's have a 
 look." 
 
 For a few minutes they tried to recog- 
 nize various positions, but suddenly the 
 lull passed and the guns on both sides 
 roared out. 
 
 " They're hke the dogs in the village 
 who take to barking all at once," observed 
 the soldier. " They'll be ' strafing ' us in 
 a minute's time. They are terrible chaps 
 to fire their guns." 
 
 There was no question of seeing any- 
 thing now. On both sides the guns were 
 thundering away. Overhead the shells
 
 200 In Skyline Trench 
 
 wailed, screamed and groaned. The sky 
 had suddenly become alive with all 
 manner of savage noise that burst here and 
 there and thrashed the earth into a storm 
 of dust and fragments. Then out of all 
 the clamour came the sound that one 
 learns to recognize so soon. 
 
 They threw themselves flat against the 
 side of the hole, just as a shell burst a few 
 yards in front of them. 
 
 " Wasn't I saying . . . ? " began the 
 soldier, lifting his head, only to shudder 
 into the earth again, as another shell gave 
 its quick warning of approach. 
 
 " They've spotted us," said an officer, 
 then crouched quickly. 
 
 " Sure this is only their habit," said the 
 soldier. 
 
 For ten minutes they lay there, pressed 
 hard against the soil while shells burst all 
 about them, casting up great spouts of 
 earth and stones and smoke.
 
 In Skyline Trench 201 
 
 " Better get a move on," said one at 
 last, but the other, a mere boy, did not 
 move. He was white and shaking, and 
 was staring dully at the head of a man 
 that had been blown against him. 
 
 " Come on, old son," said his com- 
 panion, " or we'll be late for tea." 
 
 The boy started, looked at his friend 
 and then at the hurricane of war around 
 him. The older man smiled. " They get 
 so bored if we're late," he said. 
 
 " All right," said the boy. 
 
 They scrambled out of their shelter and 
 ran a short distance dodging from hole to 
 hole, while fragments of shell whipped 
 past them with sharp thuds into the 
 ground, and at last found a piece of 
 trench. It was full of men, mostly 
 wounded, who had lain there for days. 
 Some had died, and these they threw out 
 to give more room for the living. 
 
 " Been here five days," said a scare-
 
 202 In Skyline Trench 
 
 crow of a man. His face was black with 
 hair, dirt and dry blood, and his clothes 
 were filthy and ragged. It was hard to 
 see he was an officer. " Getting rather 
 tired of it. Lost nearly all my men. Good 
 fellows, too. And I'm damned sorry, but 
 I haven't a drink to offer you. Every- 
 thing's gone west. What's the news ? " 
 
 They talked for a while, discussing the 
 situation. " Yes, it's real good," said the 
 scarecrow. " We're putting it across the 
 Hun now all right. But I shouldn't mind 
 letting my fellows have a bit of a rest. 
 They've had a bad time. What are you 
 doing here ? " 
 
 '' Staff," said the older man, *' recon- 
 noitring positions. We must push on. 
 Good luck." 
 
 " Good luck," said the scarecrow, '' and 
 think of me when you climb into bed to- 
 night. Good-bye." 
 
 They clambered over holes and mounds,
 
 In Skyline Trench 203 
 
 pausing every now and then for the wind 
 to blow away the smoke and dust, and 
 show them their whereabouts. They 
 found a wounded man half buried in the 
 ground. After much labour they dug him 
 out and carried him into the nearest bit 
 of trench. He had lain there for a day, he 
 told them, and twice when his comrades 
 had found him, they had been killed 
 before they could get him out. It was 
 terrible, he said, waiting for death when 
 the shells came, unable to move. Frag- 
 ments of shell were always hitting his 
 helmet. 
 
 The trench was being badly bombarded 
 when they reached it, climbing over the 
 dead soldiers to find shelter. They took 
 him into an old German dug-out, where 
 they found an officer lying. He was mad, 
 and raved about his home in Australia. 
 There was a soldier looking after him, 
 soothing him as though he were a baby,
 
 204 In Skyline Trench 
 
 and who resented the new-comers, glaring 
 defiantly at them. Suddenly his master 
 began to whine. 
 
 " It's murder," he cried, " sheer murder. 
 They're killing us like rabbits." 
 
 The two officers had made the wounded 
 man comfortable and were leaving the 
 dug-out, when the servant barred their 
 way. 
 
 " That officer there," he cried, " is the 
 finest man in the whole damned army. 
 Brave as a lion. Better than the whole 
 lot of you put together." 
 
 " We know," said the older officer. 
 *' Look after him and he'll be as good 
 again." 
 
 " He's the finest officer in the world," 
 said the servant, but less defiantly. " A 
 shell came and buried him and now he's 
 wandering a bit. Don't heed what* he's 
 saying." 
 
 " Well, get him away to-night," said the
 
 In Skyline Trench 205 
 
 officer, " and lend a hand to this fellow we 
 brought in. Tilings will quieten down 
 soon. Don't worry." 
 
 They continued their way down the 
 trench, running from hole to hole, laugh- 
 ing with the scattered troops they met, 
 helping wounded into better shelter, and 
 in quiet moments taking stock of the 
 position. The dead lay in tousled heaps 
 on every side, some dead but yesterday, 
 others stinking and rotten, and black 
 with flies, that buzzed up in a noisy swarm 
 as the officers approached, disclosing the 
 half-consumed features of some poor man 
 or boy. 
 
 Gradually the trench became better, 
 the shelling less. They reached a com- 
 munication trench and found it blocked 
 with wounded, who had dragged them- 
 selves so far and could get no further. 
 Several times they found stretcher-bearers 
 dead together with the man they had
 
 206 In Skyline Trench 
 
 tried to save. The few who were left 
 were bandaging the worst cases, using 
 every dug-out as a dressing station. Some 
 of the men were moaning, but most were 
 either lying deathly still, or were already 
 laughing about the time they would have 
 when they got back to England. 
 
 " Whew," said the younger officer at 
 last. " I believe we're out of it. You 
 know, I feel rather a rotter coming away 
 like this." 
 
 " I think that's enough for one day, my 
 son," said the other. " God, but the 
 world's a good place to come back to." 
 
 Before them lay the valley of the 
 Ancre, with its woods and broad fields and 
 swelling hillsides. It was already even- 
 ing, but the light had that luminous 
 clearness that comes between storms. 
 The ground still glittered with the recent 
 rain, so that in that pearly radiance the 
 earth seemed far less dark than the lower-
 
 In Skyline Trench 207 
 
 ing sky. And the wet soil smelt clean and 
 sweet and very comforting. For a moment 
 the sun shone out behind the great clouds, 
 and all the quiet land became brilliant 
 in the evening light. 
 
 Instinctively they turned to the hill 
 they had just left. They could see nothing 
 of it. A great cloud of smoke and debris 
 was drifting across the land, hiding its 
 desolation and the weary men who lived 
 and^died|there.
 
 The Return of the Warrior
 
 The Return of the Warrior 
 
 TACQUES VIROT'S home-coming was 
 simple, but it satisfied him. He 
 opened the door and entered in a stream 
 of sunhght. 
 
 " Me voila," he said. 
 
 " Me voila," said his mother, her face 
 all puckered up with the effort of accept- 
 ing a new situation. Her mind worked 
 slowly, but the man in the sky-blue 
 uniform smiled and said " Maman." 
 
 " Maman," repeated Madame Virot ; 
 then she gasped, swam out of her chair, and 
 went towards the new-comer. " Jacquot, 
 mon petit Jacquot, t'es bien ? " 
 
 " Bien, et toi ? " 
 
 " Oh ! le bon Dicu ! " said Madame 
 Virot, clutching her boy's arm. 
 
 211
 
 212 The Belnrn of the Warrior 
 
 He bore it for a little, then released his 
 arm. 
 
 " Bless6," he said. " Blesse," repeated 
 his mother. In a moment her large face 
 was puckered again, her mind slowly 
 grasping his meaning, and her blue eyes 
 full of anxiety. " Toi, t'es blesse ? " 
 
 '' Oui, mais ce n'est rien. Pas la mort." 
 
 '* Pas la mort," agreed his mother. . . . 
 
 When I returned his father had come 
 in, and with a neighbour they were dis- 
 cussing crops and village chatter. The 
 son had already changed his uniform for 
 corduroys and, except for the way his 
 mother's eyes followed every movement 
 that he made, there was nothing to 
 suggest that he had ever been away. 
 
 They agreed that in the mornings 
 Jacques should drive the farm cart with 
 milk for the English hospital. That was 
 all his arm allowed him to do. In the 
 afternoons he should help cut the clover.
 
 The Return of the Warrior 213 
 
 " Et la guerre ? " asked the neighbour. 
 
 " Ca marche, mais tout doucement," 
 answered the boy. 
 
 " Tout doucement," whispered Madame 
 Virot. 
 
 I was not the only one surprised at the 
 quietness of Jacques Virot's return. Private 
 Durkins expressed himself " knocked 
 bukri." 
 
 " 'E's 'ome from Verdun, 'e is. One of 
 them blokes what put little Willie in the 
 barrer, and they treat him as if 'e'd been 
 'aving a Saterday binge. Don't seem 
 natural. Never thought Fronsays was 
 like that. Did you ? " His companion 
 expressed picturesque wonder. 
 
 " Feel sorry for the feller," said Durkins, 
 " 'is 'ome must seem strange with all of us 
 about." There was a pause, then, "Let's 
 cheer the bloke up." 
 
 They invaded the kitchen with gusto. 
 
 " 'Ello," said Durkins to the boy.
 
 214 The Return of the Warrior 
 
 " Nous camarades. Content vous voir. 
 Sante." 
 
 " Sante," whispered Madame Virot, then 
 she rose slowly and fetched two more 
 glasses. 
 
 The boy held out his hand to the two 
 new-comers and smiled. He saw there 
 was no need for him to talk. Private 
 Durkins was quite at his ease and full of 
 conversation. They drank each other's 
 health several times in feeble cider and 
 exchanged opinions of the war. Jacques 
 was reserved. He spoke of it as a great 
 cruelty to be endured, gladly, for France. 
 He had none of Durkins' air of careless 
 adventure. Only when he spoke of the 
 Germans did he show any emotion. 
 
 " Ceux sont des crapauds, ces sales 
 Boches," he said. 
 
 " Dirty 'Uns," agreed Private Dur- 
 kins. 
 
 It was the only time I have heard a
 
 The Return of the Warrior 215 
 
 British soldier use the word " Hun," but 
 Durkins evidently realized that the melo- 
 dramatic was expected of him. 
 
 What were the succeeding stages of the 
 intimacy I do not know. I only know 
 that Private Durkins was constantly to be 
 found in the kitchen of my billet, while 
 Jacquot, or Jacko, as his new friends 
 called him, seemed to be elected an 
 honorary member of the local canteen. 
 The conversation was rather limited, but 
 that was no obstacle to Durkins' firm 
 resolve to fraternise. They went for long 
 walks together, or sat by the side of the 
 little stream, exchanging few remarks but 
 many cigarettes. In the distance the 
 battle of the Somme thundered through 
 the long summer days. 
 
 One evening Private Durkins grew senti- 
 mental. 
 
 " I like trees and things," he said. They 
 were sitting at the edge of the camp,
 
 216 The Return of the Warrior 
 
 watching all the little tricks of light and 
 colour that the sunlight played with the 
 river and with the wood that fringed its 
 banks. Above them, very high and tiny, 
 a fleet of aeroplanes came droning home- 
 wards through the cloudless sky. Durkins 
 watched them for a little, then, smoking 
 stolidly, turned to the big hills that were 
 glowing red in the evening light. 
 
 " Remind me of my 'ills at 'ome," he 
 said. " Chilterns we call them." 
 
 *' Vous dites ? " asked Jacques. 
 
 "Ah," said Durkins, " je dis que j'aime 
 
 " he knew no more, and spread his 
 
 hand out towards the countryside. 
 
 " La France ? " asked Jacko. 
 
 " Oui, la France," said Durkins has- 
 tily. 
 
 Their friendship blossomed apace from 
 this date. 
 
 But most interesting was it to note that 
 the Englishman did what little talking
 
 The Return of the Warrior 217 
 
 there was. Durkins was the gay, whim- 
 sical spirit, while the Frenchman remained 
 cold, enigmatic, and very silent. 
 
 The end came suddenly. I entered my 
 billet one night to find "all a history," 
 as Madame Virot said. But Jacquot had 
 lost his usual phlegm. " Fair spitting 
 out words like a blooming machine-gun, 
 aren't you ? " said Durkins calmly. Their 
 speeches were lost on each other, but their 
 purport was obvious. A certain Celine 
 Didelet had come between them, or, 
 rather, I suspect, that Durkins, irre- 
 sponsible English Durkins, had come 
 between the faithful French lovers. 
 
 It was a tragic scene, but I felt most 
 sorry for Madame Virot, who was staring 
 at the pair, repeating odd words from 
 her Jacquot's tirades, utterly miserable 
 and bewildered by the volte-face. When 
 she saw me she looked still more aghast, 
 then she smiled, and spreading out her fat
 
 218 The Return of the Warrior 
 
 hands in explanation, said, " Monsieur 
 I'officier. . . ." 
 
 " We're for the trenches to-morrow, 
 Durkins," I said. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said Durkins imperturbably ; 
 but the others caught the word. Madame 
 Virot threw up her hands, and gasped. 
 " Tranchees," was all she said. The 
 animosity left Jacquot's face. He stared 
 at Durkins, and in his gaze there was no 
 anger, only recognition. Quickly he 
 sprang forward and clasped his rival's 
 hand ; but, he, too, could find little to 
 say. And then I noticed, whom I had not 
 seen before, Celine, a buxom girl of about 
 twenty, with sallow cheeks and dun hair 
 drawn tightly back. 
 
 She, too, came forward intently ; and I 
 regretted my denouement. 
 
 For a moment she stood with her hands 
 to her throat, murmuring, "Tranchees, 
 tranchees," and staring at me, as though
 
 The Return of the Warrior 219 
 
 I had caused this new comphcation. I 
 felt her impeachment and wished myself 
 away. It was a tense moment for us all, 
 and even Durkins had the grace to look 
 abashed. Celine was dominating the stage 
 and we had to wait her time. Then 
 suddenly she cried, " Oh, cette triste 
 guerre," and threw herself into the arms 
 of — Jacquot. 
 
 " Quand meme, Durkin, les femmes 
 passent. C'est la France qui doit vivre 
 a toujours." It was the only speech that 
 Madame Virot ever made, but it was a 
 good one. 
 
 And Durkins answered, " Vive la 
 France ! "
 
 The Pigeon
 
 The Pigeon 
 
 ''"TIKE catching a blurry bus," said 
 
 -■-^ some one. 
 
 Which was true, except that they did 
 not catch up with that barrage, but saw 
 it, a mass of smoke and debris over the 
 German trench to the left, some two 
 hundred yards away, then watched it 
 swoop up the hillside like a cloud-burst. 
 
 The dispositions for the attack had 
 come through, before Head-quarters had 
 realized the position. The Germans had 
 bombarded them for days, and now the 
 regiment was scarcely a hundred men, 
 holding nearly a thousand yards of trench. 
 Where the other nine hundred were no 
 man knew for certain. But there were 
 bits of bodies lying all over that ground, 
 whole stretches of trench had disappeared, 
 
 823
 
 224 The Pigeon 
 
 some men with them, while others, sent 
 on errands of a hundred yards or so, lost 
 their way completely in the wrack of 
 battle. 
 
 They assembled in the second line, 
 received orders and were moving up, 
 when they found that the bombardment 
 had destroyed the communication trenches. 
 If they had gone across the open, not 
 a man would have reached the front line. 
 On the right was a trench that still gave 
 a little shelter, so they tried to move 
 up that, and it was then they heard the 
 barrage that should have covered their 
 attack, scream over and burst upon the 
 German lines. 
 
 They ran, crouching, up the trench and 
 tried to follow the barrage, but it was 
 useless. Some men, by mistake, did go 
 over, too far to the right, and disappeared. 
 The Germans were shelling pretty heavily, 
 and no one knew what to do. The whole
 
 The Pigeon 225 
 
 world to them was just noise and frag- 
 ments : one could see nothing, hear noth- 
 ing, feel nothing. It was beyond the scope 
 of man's emotions. 
 
 Suddenly one of the men who had 
 followed the barrage came back, threw 
 himself into the trench and gasped, " Ger- 
 mans." 
 
 An officer asked him what was the 
 matter, and after a little he became 
 coherent. 
 
 " Masses of them, sir. We went over 
 and saw their bayonets. , Scores of them, 
 packed tight. There to the right. Three 
 deep in the trench." 
 
 The officer went forward to reconnoitre, 
 and came back with the same story. 
 
 The three officers who were left held a 
 short consultation, but the situation was 
 plain. 
 
 " They're going to attack all right. It 
 looks as if they'll sweep us off the map
 
 226 The Pigeon 
 
 and take back all we've captured. Any 
 machine-guns left ? " 
 
 " No, sir," said the M.G. officer, " they're 
 all buried." 
 
 " Can we phone back ? Any wires left ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Then we're for it." 
 
 There was a pause for a minute. Three 
 shells burst almost on the trench and 
 sent them all reeling to the ground. They 
 lay there and looked at each other, then 
 one, a boy, laughed. 
 
 " Isn't it annoying, pa-pah." 
 
 They all laughed. Then the captain said : 
 
 " Look here, one of you take a runner 
 and try and get back to the CO. Tell him 
 what's up, and try and phone through to 
 the guns." 
 
 " I'll go," said one, and picking a 
 runner, he went. 
 
 The story is best told in his own words.
 
 The Pigeon 227 
 
 Run, I've never run so hard in 
 my life. I didn't think I'd get through, 
 as they were barraging every bit of 
 the ground. Like going into the sea in 
 a storm. But it put the wind up me all 
 right and I ran like a hare. Funny, how 
 things strike you. I couldn't help thinking 
 of a picture I'd seen as a kid, supposed to 
 represent a school of whales spouting up 
 water and bits of boats and men. All 
 those shells bursting about reminded me, 
 I suppose. I never realized how much I 
 wanted to run away, till I got the chance 
 and was properly started. The shells sent . 
 me spinning about half a dozen times, but 
 that only made me run the faster. And 
 then I got a most unholy whack and came 
 to with my tin hat biffed in, and the poor 
 runner fellow all splayed out beside me. 
 I grabbed his helmet and pushed on. 
 There was a quarry place, where I got 
 absolutely lost. You couldn't see more
 
 228 The Pigeon 
 
 than about fifty yards at a time for dust 
 and smoke, and I ran round and round like 
 a mouse in a wheel, trying to find my bear- 
 ings and get out. 
 
 Absolutely lost, and as lonely as a man 
 in the moon. God, I was scared. If I 
 hadn't got the running idea so fixed in my 
 head, I'd just have chucked myself down 
 and waited for a shell to pick me off. The 
 whole world seemed just a mass of bangs, 
 and then suddenly the wind blew an alley 
 in the smoke, and I saw right down across 
 the valley, and damme, it was a sunny 
 day, and I could see the corn-fields on the 
 far hill, and people getting in the harvest. 
 It made me mad to see 'em so uncon- 
 cerned. However, it gave me my bearings, 
 and I bolted again. 
 
 And then suddenly I found myself 
 scooting down a hole, like a rabbit, and 
 the CO. saying : 
 
 " Hullo, Johnny, have a drink."
 
 The Pigeon 229 
 
 I had a drink, a stiff 'un, and then I 
 sort of woke up. I must have been most 
 damnably rattled, for he began soothing 
 me. 
 
 " Now," he said, " just pour yourself 
 another, and take a fag, and sit down and 
 tell me all about it." 
 
 I told him that, thank God, we'd been 
 too late to attack, and now the Huns were 
 on our left, waiting for their bombard- 
 ment to stop, when they'd attack us, that 
 we were only a hundred left, and all the 
 machine-guns were either smashed in the 
 open, or buried in the dug-outs. You 
 know, I was sick with myself for being so 
 windy, but I somehow wanted to make 
 the CO. look a bit upset. 
 
 Instead he just turned and said to an 
 orderly : 
 
 " Have you got those wires mended yet ? " 
 
 The orderly said, " No, sir." It was 
 Jenkins. You know the way he talks,
 
 230 The Pigeon 
 
 very butlerish. " No, sir, they've all had 
 a try, sir, but they've all been hit, sir, 
 fatally, for the most part." 
 
 He made me laugh, although I must 
 say his news was pretty rotten. 
 
 "Runners all dead, too, I supposed" 
 said the CO. 
 
 " All dead, sir." He was like a chap 
 making an inventory. 
 
 " Well, Johnny," said the CO., " we'd 
 better get our guns, and fire our six shots. 
 Who's up in the line ? " 
 
 " Brown, Scatters and the Child." 
 
 " The Child still imitating Harry Tate, 
 I bet. When the Boche puts a revolver 
 to his chest, he'll look idiotic, and ask if 
 the muzzle velocity is coincident with the 
 bursting charge, pa-pah. And, I suppose 
 Scatters is having brilliant inspirations 
 about thwarting the Teuton, inventing 
 hard. And Brown is sitting there, smoking 
 his foul old pipe. Oh, the good fellows ! "
 
 The Pigeon 231 
 
 To hear the CO. talk Hke that made me 
 choke. Sort of epitaph business. 
 
 And then, just as we'd got our revolvers 
 ready, old Jenkins came up. 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir, but I've found this 
 here," and he lifted a cage at arm's length, 
 as though he were a butler again, removing 
 an indelicate puppy. In the cage was a 
 pigeon. 
 
 The CO. asked where that came from, 
 but no one knew. 
 
 " We'll try it," he said. 
 
 He wrote to the CF.A. and said : 
 
 " Artillery fire futile. Hun bombarding 
 heavily, preparation to attack. Massed in 
 Turk's trench. S.O.S." We tied the 
 message round the pigeon's neck and sent 
 it off. 
 
 You couldn't see the sky or anything for 
 shell-bursts. It was about all we could 
 do to stand against the percussion. The 
 poor old pigeon fluttered up like a straw in
 
 232 The Pigeon 
 
 a whirlwind. The CO. watched it dis- 
 appear in the smoke. 
 
 " You know," he said, " I feel remark- 
 ably hke Noah." 
 
 And then we waited. A shell pitched at 
 the mouth of the dug-out and blew it in. 
 A couple of men worked digging the earth 
 away, while we watched and yarned. 
 I often wonder what we talked about, 
 sitting there, buried under the ground, 
 with the earth being sent to glory all 
 above us, and every chance of being either 
 suffocated or bombed to bits, when the 
 Hun got us. I know we laughed a lot, and 
 I fancy our yarns were merely indecent. 
 At least, I know they were, for the CO. 
 said : " It's a funny way to go out, 
 telhng these yarns. All the same, it's the 
 only way — laughing." 
 
 We weren't buried for long, only it 
 seemed an age with the shells going smash, 
 thump, crash on the gromid above us.
 
 The Pigeon 233 
 
 Just as we got the entrance clear, we 
 heard the shelHng stop. That silence is 
 just hell. It knocks you to bits. I re- 
 member once, after we'd strafed the 
 Bodies pretty badly, and our guns stopped, 
 they came over and surrendered, because 
 they couldn't stand the quiet and were 
 afraid the bombardment would begin 
 again. I know I felt like that then. 
 
 We scrambled out and looked round. 
 The wind blew the dust away, and you 
 could see the ground all smashed to blazes 
 — just like a plate of porridge. Not a 
 sign of anyone. And I knew that any 
 moment the Bodies would come stumbling 
 out of their trench and do us in. I felt 
 damnable. I remember wondering why 
 the devil I was there, and why on earth a 
 lot of utter strangers would come running 
 across the beastly broken ground and 
 bayonet me. It seemed so stupid. All 
 the same, it never occurred to me, that
 
 234 The Pigeon 
 
 I might surrender. I suppose it was 
 because we'd fought for that ground, and 
 there were bits of my men lying all over it. 
 And then I had a wild desire to get to 
 those few men there in front and go west 
 with them. 
 
 The Colonel had his glasses out and was 
 looking through them. Suddenly he cried : 
 " There they come," and I looked and saw 
 a lot of bayonets jabbing about in the air. 
 Masses of bayonets and men, tumbling 
 unevenly over the ground. 
 
 I got my revolver ready and felt 
 furiously angry. 
 
 The CO. was as calm as ever. He just 
 called down to the few men in the dug-out 
 and told 'em to come up. We could hear 
 our men in the front line firing. Just a 
 few stupid little shots they seemed after 
 the shelling. 
 
 " Now we're for it," said the CO. 
 
 And then the miracle happened. It was
 
 The Pigeon 235 
 
 all over in a flash. There was the most 
 unearthly crash belched out in a huge 
 circle behind us. The whole sky screamed 
 and whistled. You can't describe it. The 
 sky just screamed — Ee-ee-ee — like a fellow 
 gone mad, getting his own back. And then 
 the ground in front of our fellows burst 
 like a volcano. We didn't see any more. 
 That was the end. 
 
 The CO. got hit the next day, and I 
 went to see him in hospital, when I was on 
 leave. 
 
 His wife was looking out of the window 
 and suddenly she said : " What a dirty 
 bird." We looked, and saw a London 
 pigeon, pecking at crumbs on the window- 
 sill. 
 
 " And that remark of yours," said the 
 CO., " would be sufficient cause for a 
 divorce, my dear," and he gave me a bun 
 to render as thanks-offering.
 
 The Widow's Bonnet
 
 The Widows Bonnet 
 
 "Y world - famous turn," an- 
 nounced Private Piggott, " en- 
 titled ' Celebrities at the Front.' 'Ere 
 we 'ave Private Piggott visiting a Ruined 
 Farm. The Farm is marked with a 
 cross." 
 
 The men were tired, and this did not 
 amuse them very much. Some even said : 
 " Oh, dry up, Snowdrop. Chuck it." 
 
 Private Piggott, alias Snowdrop, looked 
 regretfully at his mates. He was just as 
 tired as they, but he had an absurd idea 
 under his thatch of coal-black hair, that 
 it was his duty to keep up the British 
 Army's reputation for humour. He 
 worked, as he said, with Ginger Blake, and 
 they called themselves the 'Eavenly 
 Twins : Comedy duo. They felt, I be- 
 
 239
 
 240 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 lieve, that they had a call, and that it was 
 as much their duty to amuse as it was the 
 Padre's to preach. 
 
 Piggott looked for Blake to help him 
 through the crisis, but Ginger was attend- 
 ing to his foot, swearing continuously. 
 We gathered that a nail had worked 
 through and had caused bleeding. Blake 
 was almost monotonous on this point. 
 Piggott realized that his mate in such a 
 mood was of no use for conscious humour. 
 So he shrugged his shoulders and turned 
 to the farm. 
 
 There was almost nothing of it left, 
 except one corner where two fragments 
 of wall joined. In this corner was a 
 recess, that before had been a cupboard, 
 for its door still dangled on one hinge, and 
 there, hanging forlornly by its strings, 
 was a black widow's bonnet. Somehow 
 it looked very like a ruined shrine, with 
 the central figure alone untouched.
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 241 
 
 Snowdrop was quick to seize upon the 
 allegory. 
 
 " Comrides," he said. " Being engaged 
 in the 'oly task of upholding respecta- 
 bility and upsetting pore old Fritz, and 
 being totally unprovided with any flag 
 or banner like as they used to 'ave 
 (for fear we should go and lose it), I 
 'ave took upon myself to present j'-ou, 
 my 'oly comrides, with an emblem of 
 that sacred respectability for which we 
 shed our blood." 
 
 Here he produced the bonnet and 
 among loud laughter was going to put it 
 on, when the sight of his mate's brilliant 
 hair appealed to him. He clapped it on 
 to Ginger's head. 
 
 " Purged by fi-er," he said, " tliis ban- 
 ner must never file to ennoble us. My 
 young friend, Private Blake, shall have 
 the honour of bearing it." 
 
 Thus by right— to them the sacred
 
 242 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 right — of the incongruous, the bonnet 
 belonged to Ginger. Besides being a 
 humorist, this latter was also a sniper 
 to be feared, and, henceforth, whether 
 he crawled out o' nights among the bodies 
 of No-Man's-Land, or climbed to a con- 
 venient branch in Hooge Wood, you 
 could always see the tremulous sprays of 
 black jet dancing above his blazing poll. 
 
 They were an incongruous pair, yet 
 they had something — some nucleus of 
 themselves in common. Blake was a big 
 ruddy man from, I think, a Midland farm, 
 a genial, easy-going fellow, at times 
 roused to sudden furies, but as a rule in- 
 tensely anxious to please. 
 
 Piggott, known in irony as Snowdrop, 
 was a black-haired little Cockney, quick 
 in thought and in action, very sensitive, 
 and a past-master in the use of sarcasm. 
 
 His very cheerfulness was a triumph of 
 the sarcastic.
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 243 
 
 Ginger's humour was poor. Until he 
 wore the bonnet, the men suffered him 
 only as a foil for Snowdrop. The bonnet, 
 however, stamped him as a comedian. 
 For variety once he purloined a Glengarry, 
 but the absurdity of being a Scotsman 
 soon palled and he reverted to his widowed 
 state. 
 
 When the order cam.e that all ranks 
 must wear steel helmets, the comedy duo 
 was very nearly dissolved. Piggott with 
 good grace accepted the strange decree 
 of the higher au^thorities and one day 
 came strolling uneasily down the trench 
 clad in complete armour, made from 
 biscuit tins. Unfortunately, the first per- 
 son he addressed was Ginger. 
 
 " By my halidom," he said, " where is 
 thy helmet, steel, one, mark one ? Dost 
 think, knive, to do battle in thy nightcap ? '* 
 
 Ginger blazed into words unprintable. 
 " If you think," he ended, " I came out
 
 244 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 'ere to make a bluddy fool of myself, you're 
 mistook." 
 
 "What about yer usual behaviour?" 
 said a melancholy corporal. " Gawd 
 knows, I don't see no use in giving myself 
 a stiff neck and making myself look like a 
 trussed chicken, sticking wrong ways out 
 of a pie-dish, no matter what the officers 
 say. If yer gets 'it, yer gets 'it, and a bit 
 of tin won't make any odds. But I don't 
 see you've got any call to fret yerself 
 about making a fool of yerself, Ginger." 
 
 The corporal meant well, but he wounded 
 Blake in his tenderest spot. Even so, if 
 the men had not laughed. Ginger might 
 have vented his anger on the corporal 
 only. But they laughed, and Piggott, 
 waving to them to be silent, clashed his 
 tin arms against his breastplate. Ginger 
 turned at the noise, and saw his mate 
 making gestures. 
 
 " You bluddy little son of a " Then
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 245 
 
 anger and wounded pride were too much 
 for him, and, snatching the bonnet off his 
 head, threw it far over the parapet and 
 strode away. 
 
 For two days they saw it hanging on 
 the barbed wire, whither the wind had 
 carried it, but nobody mentioned either it, 
 or the new feehng, of bitterness almost, 
 that began in those days to be felt. 
 
 On the second night, as Ginger was 
 standing on guard, he saw a figure moving 
 near the wire. There were no listening 
 posts there, as it was too close to the Ger- 
 man trench, and for a moment he thought 
 of firing. Then he wondered, and wonder- 
 ing, let the figure come close to the para- 
 pet. 
 
 " That you, Snowdrop ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yus." 
 
 " What the 'ell did you do it for ? I 
 don't want the — — bonnet." 
 
 " Well, ycr'vc gotter 'ave it no^\ , Gin-
 
 246 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 ger," and Piggott tossed it over to his 
 mate. He was going to follow, when some 
 shots came thudding into the sandbags. 
 He threw himself down and lay still. 
 
 Again Ginger nearly destroyed his mate. 
 This time by speaking, but luckily stopped 
 in time. He did not know if Snowdrop 
 was hit, or lying doggo, and the suspense 
 hurt him. At last the German fire stopped, 
 and he heard a scramble on the parapet. 
 In a moment Piggott was back in the 
 trench. 
 
 " Gawd, I thought they'd 'it you," said 
 Blake. 
 
 Piggott said nothing, but examined his 
 helmet. 
 
 " Thought so," he said, pointing to 
 where it was dented. 
 
 Thereafter Blake always wore his bon- 
 net above his helmet, the use of which 
 latter he staunchly advocated, and Piggott 
 never told him that that evening he had
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 247 
 
 narrowly escaped severe punishment for 
 " damaging Government property " with 
 a hammer. 
 
 " And sausidges," said Private Piggott. 
 
 " We'll cook 'em proper when we get 
 back to billets," said Ginger. 
 
 " Noaw, we won't, we'll 'ave 'em to- 
 night ? We mayn't never get back to 
 billets, and I shouldn't like to think I 
 'adn't eaten them sausidges. What do 
 you say, boys ? " 
 
 The boys all agreed that the " eat and 
 be merry " principle was correct. Then, 
 as the mail was in, fell to reading their 
 letters. 
 
 " Just like my missus to send us sau- 
 sidges," said Piggott. " She never for- 
 gets, she don't. She knows I've got a 
 fancy for 'em. Must 'ave seen me put 
 down hundreds." 
 
 Ginger grunted. " Often think I
 
 248 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 shouldn't have done so badly if I'd got 
 married myself. There isn't nobody sends 
 me things." 
 
 " What about what you got when we 
 was back to Bouzincourt ? " 
 
 " Oh, but there weren't no sausidges," 
 said Ginger, wistfully. 
 
 " And, besides," said Piggott, " a wife's 
 a toss up. May be bad or good. Mine's 
 all right. She's sensible. Wants a bit of 
 cuddling every now and then, like all 
 women. Funny 'ow they like just little 
 things you'd hardly think of. I gave my 
 missus a bunch of flowers once. Struck 
 me as funny at the time. Don't know 
 why I did it, but I saw 'em and gave 'em 
 to 'er, and it seemed to chinge 'er all over. 
 They're funny sort of " 
 
 And then the whole world seemed to 
 explode. 
 
 When Ginger Blake recovered his senses 
 enough to look for his mate, he saw, lying
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 249 
 
 face down on the rim of a shell-hole, a 
 little tousled figure, its legs so twisted that 
 its toes were touching and the heels spread 
 flat out. Ginger noticed that the clothes 
 were all ripped, and the flesh too, yet 
 bloodlessly, as though of a body long dead. 
 "Wonder 'oo it is. . . . Can't be . . ." 
 He didn't finish his question, but crept up 
 to the figure and peered over to see the 
 face. The face he saw was surprisingly 
 like Snowdrop's, yet somehow quite dif- 
 ferent. Snowdrop's face was always crink- 
 ling into new shapes. " Funny face 'e 'ad " 
 (the men heard him muttering), " never 
 stopped, hke 'is eyes. Black eyes, always 
 on the go, like a bird's. Not like these 
 eyes, stiff and solemn and starey. All the 
 same . . . fellows do change a bit, and 
 there ain't another anything like Snow- 
 drop. . . . Same badges, too. . . . Same 
 mess on 'is serge where 'e spilt the candle 
 grease."
 
 250 The Shilling Soldiers 
 
 When he noticed the candle grease he 
 stopped talking and, picking up the body, 
 carried it a little way back and buried it 
 in a deep shell-hole, putting up a rough 
 cross of his own making, on which he hung 
 the dead man's helmet. 
 
 While he was so working, a man came 
 up and begged him to let him help. Blake 
 never answered a word, but the man, 
 watching for a few moments, saw the 
 other pull out of his pocket a draggled 
 black object, that might once have been 
 a bonnet, and bury it with his dead chum. 
 
 " And that shows as how Ginger has 
 given over being a comic for the duration, 
 anyhow," the watcher assured his mates. 
 
 When Blake had finished he went to 
 his officer and reported, handing over his 
 friend's identity disc, pay-book and private 
 belongings. 
 
 The subaltern made a note of where the 
 grave Vvas, detaining Blake while he
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 251 
 
 thought of something to say. The fellow 
 seemed so thoroughly changed. 
 
 " Look here," he said at last. " You 
 two, you know, you have always done a 
 lot to buck up everybody. Kept 'em 
 amused. You — you owe it to Piggott to — 
 to do his share as well now — you know." 
 
 " War isn't a game, sir," said Blake. 
 
 " I know," said the other, " but we can 
 try and make it one." 
 
 '' I've cut that out, sir," said Blake. 
 
 The subaltern did not know what to say. 
 '' Well, don't go and get killed or any- 
 thing," he said at last. 
 
 " No, sir. Not if I can help it. I'm 
 going to get my own back first." 
 
 We asked the subaltern afterwards if 
 he had noticed anything strange about 
 Blake when he said this. 
 
 " Not a thing," said the subaltern. 
 " He was perfectly natural, except that 
 he didn't smile, as he usually did. He was
 
 252 The Widow's Bonnet 
 
 too busy hating the Hun to smile. He 
 just had two ideas in his head. His pal 
 and the fellow he was going to kill. And 
 then I suppose they got muddled up. 
 
 For two hours Blake lay absolutely 
 rigid, his sights covering a gap in the Ger- 
 man trenches some eighty yards away 
 where a shell had blown in the parapet, 
 and his finger crooked upon the trigger. 
 His mind was set on one thing only — ^to 
 kill. He had shot a good few Germans in 
 the past two years, but that was just part 
 of the game. Now he was out to kill. 
 
 The subaltern found him lying there, 
 and watched for a while through a peri- 
 scope. 
 
 " Poor old Snowdrop," he heard Blake 
 mutter. 
 
 Suddenly a face appeared in the gap 
 and for a second a German came into full
 
 The Widow's Bonnet 253 
 
 view — a little dark man. The rifle cracked, 
 and the German sprang up, twisted, and 
 fell sprawling, face downwards, to the 
 ground. 
 
 " Hit him," said the subaltern, but 
 Private Blake was staring across No- 
 Man's-Land, and gradually the rifle slipped 
 from his hands. 
 
 " Good shot, you hit him all right," 
 said the subaltern. He wondered at the 
 sniper's silence, and turned to see if any- 
 thing was the matter. 
 
 Private Blake, his eyes still staring at 
 the enemy lines, was groping back into 
 the trench. He began to mutter. 
 
 " Why, my boy, what's wrong ? " asked 
 the officer. 
 
 " I've killed him," said Blake, veiy 
 slowly. " Killed Snowdrop. Killed my 
 mate. Whew, now I've done it." 
 
 Then the subaltern looked at his eyes, 
 and saw that the man was mad.
 
 Fragments
 
 Fragments 
 
 " AND Graves ? '" asked tlie CO. 
 
 -^ " Still at point 58, I think, sir. 
 He sent a message last night. He's hold- 
 ing on with five men. Tried to send 
 him a Lewis gun this morning, but they 
 got wipeci. out half-way there. Pretty 
 hopeless." 
 
 " And we've damn all to send him." 
 said the CO. 
 
 A subaltern eame down the dug-out. 
 " We've salved two maehine-guns, sir. 
 One I^ewis and a Viekers, and I've got 
 half a dozen men to work 'em. I've put 
 the Viekers in Sap B, and I thought of 
 taking the other out to Graves." 
 
 " How will you go ? " 
 
 s 257
 
 258 Fragments 
 
 " Round by the quarry and up O.G.I. 
 There's bits of the trench left. You can't 
 get through from this side." 
 
 " Right. Try it. But if it's hopeless, 
 don't go further than the Gap. We want 
 every man we can get, I'm afraid we'll 
 have to leave Graves if he's not already 
 scuppered. Anyhow, try it." 
 
 The subaltern took his party round the 
 fringe of the bombardment till he came 
 to the Gap, and there he reconnoitred. 
 O.G.I. —the old German 1st line— was by 
 now completely obliterated. It was only 
 a hundred yards or so to where Graves 
 was supposed to be holding on, but a thick 
 screen of bvu'sting shells lay between him 
 and his goal. It looked quite hopeless and 
 he decided to post his gun where he was. 
 
 Suddenly the shelling stopped for a 
 moment and the smoke cleared away. The 
 subaltern looked across and could see 
 nothing. The ground was pitted and
 
 Fragments 259 
 
 piled up like sand dunes, littered with 
 bodies and the wreckage of trenches. He 
 realized that by some chance the shelling 
 had cast up a line of these dunes that would 
 screen him from the enemy, but the first 
 fifty yards were open. He wondered if it 
 was worth the dash across. Then he 
 looked at his goal and for an instant saw a 
 figure move, a figure in khaki, crawling up 
 a dune to look out, and then bob down 
 again. 
 
 " Poor devils," he said. " Come on, 
 boys, make a dash for it." 
 
 Their luck was in. They got to the 
 shelter, just as the shelling swooped down 
 again. They crawled on, and one man was 
 hit in the groin and was left behind. The 
 subaltern, looking back to sec how his 
 men were following, found that shelling 
 had shifted a dune they had passed, and 
 thrown up a huge barrier behind them. 
 
 " A minute later and we'd all have been
 
 2G0 Fragments 
 
 Imried," he tliouglit. " Graves imist liave 
 been having a bloody time.'" 
 
 He eame to the plaee where he'd seen the 
 khaki figure. There were bodies lying 
 everywhere, German and Enghsh, in a 
 fearful litter and most of them ripped to 
 pieces by bombs, and some with their 
 skulls smashed in by rifle butts. 
 
 " God, but he's been fighting," thought 
 the subaltern. 
 
 Then Graves eame up from a dug-out. 
 fdthy, haggard and imwashed. 
 
 " Hullo, Johnny," he said. " I'm glad to 
 sre you. Got any baeey on you ? I've 
 run out." 
 
 II 
 
 I had no wish to overhear, but I was 
 lying above the treneh. watehing for 
 movements in the German rear, and I 
 could not move. I heard him talking and 
 thought it was someone else in the captured 
 treneh.
 
 Fragments 261 
 
 " You see," he said, " I didn't want to 
 do it, but what could I do ? There were 
 only four of us, and once we'd got the 
 trench we had to hold it at all costs. My 
 own side comes first, you know. There 
 ^vere six of them down in that dug-out, 
 but there might have been any number, 
 for all I could tell. I couldn't even spare 
 a man to guard them. And if I'd let them 
 come up, and sent them back to our lines, 
 well, there are such crowds of rifles lying 
 about, they could have done us in. And 
 you know you really can't trust the Hun. 
 At least, I can't, can you ? It must have 
 looked awfully rotten and unsporting, 
 I'm afraid, but I just had to bomb them. 
 
 " So, God. You'll understand, won't 
 You ? " 
 
 III 
 
 Privates Keppey, Vealc and Swainton 
 were sitting in the trench, oiling thrir 
 machine-gun.
 
 262 Fragments 
 
 As I passed them, Veale was telling of 
 his girl and the others were listening with 
 heavy respect. 
 
 At each fresh instance of her charm, 
 Private Keppey sucked his teeth audibly 
 and said, "Yes, they're like that." Veale 
 was a dark, sullen-looking boy, a smart 
 soldier, but always on the defensive with 
 everyone. In the sunshine that afternoon, 
 however, his neck bare and shapely, his 
 teeth as white as his hair was black, 
 smiling, he struck me for the first time as 
 being a charmingly handsome boy. " She's 
 just all right," he said. 
 
 Suddenly there was an explosion. I 
 thought it was a mine at first, but it 
 continued and I realized a bombardment 
 had started. 
 
 " Get the gun under cover," I shouted, 
 " and rush out directty the Strafe stops." 
 I raced down to the next gun. 
 
 The bombardment traversed along our
 
 Fragments 263 
 
 trench like a waterspout. At the next gun 
 position I ran to earth, and the barrage 
 thundered overhead. It passed and we 
 swarmed up. The trench had gone. I 
 went to see how Keppey's gun had fared. 
 I found the gun tossed on to the side of a 
 shell-hole. Strangely enough, only the 
 tripod was injured. I hauled it into 
 position and looked for the men. Where 
 they had been was onty battered eai*th. 
 
 Out of the earth I ^aw a hand clutching 
 at the air. I had to get the gun into 
 action. Soon the hand was still. 
 
 Next day it was already clay-brown. 
 
 IV 
 
 I was busy on a map, showing machine- 
 gun positions, and he — my host in the 
 dug-out — was sitting on a packing-case 
 smoking and thinking. 
 
 '' A man of mine went mad to-day," he 
 said. " Funny. He was as hard as nails.
 
 264 Fragments 
 
 No nonsense about him, and he went mad. 
 Wliat's the reason ? " 
 
 " Don't know," I answered. 
 
 " I thought you'd understand," he said. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Oh, you're the kind of chap that 
 might." 
 
 " Might what ?— Go mad ? Or under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 Raikes laughed. "Well," he said, 
 " you're one of those imaginative cards, 
 aren't you ? " 
 
 " Anyhow you're not," I snapped. 
 " You're safe enough," and I went on 
 with my map. I think he imagined he had 
 hurt my feelings, for he said that it took 
 every kind to make a world and he sup- 
 posed the same applied to the Army. He 
 was a good fellow, with a laugh like a 
 roar, that bellowed out long after all 
 cause for amusement had passed. Between 
 the joke and the laugh he looked at the
 
 Fragments 265 
 
 world with a heavy puzzled air, and then 
 the roar came. His men worshipped him. 
 He was so intensely human and yet the 
 only man I met who seemed utterly 
 without fear. 
 
 I often thought about madness in the 
 next few days, for we had several eases of 
 " nerves " in various forms that puzzled 
 me. Generally, they were the men I least 
 expected to be shattered. 
 
 I was on the point of mentioning it to 
 Raikes one day as we sat watching a sap, 
 but the Boy came along full of some 
 excitement. I was a stranger in that 
 battalion, but one could never be a 
 stranger with the Boy. He bubbled music- 
 halls and games during any " Strafe," and 
 was a friend of all the world, from the 
 Gaiety chorus to the Brigadier, to say 
 nothing of all the dogs in the neighl^our- 
 hood. He came up the trench that day 
 with a fluffy mongrel pupp> snapping
 
 266 Fragments 
 
 round his heels. The dog had come from 
 goodness knows where. Enough that the 
 Boy was within reach, and the dog found 
 him. 
 
 " Hullo, young linseed, what's your 
 trouble ? " said Raikes. 
 
 " Morning, papah," answered the Boy. 
 " I've just put it across Sergeant -Major. 
 Betted him my new boots I'd get a bomb 
 into that sap before he did. And I won 
 my bet and put the wind up the Hun 
 
 and " And in a second the Boy was 
 
 dead, blown to fragments by a trench- 
 mortar shell. 
 
 I, too, was blown off my feet and w^ien 
 1 looked up, the puppy was creeping back 
 along the trench. It sniffed the fragments 
 and began whining. 1 glanced at Raikes. 
 
 Raikes wore just that look— that heavy 
 puzzled look, which foreshadowed a bellow^ 
 Then something seemed to snap in him. 
 His whole face was suddenly convulsed
 
 Fragments 267 
 
 and — he roared. It was the devil of a 
 laugh. Meanwhile the puppy was licking 
 the Boy's hand. It was all that could be 
 recognized of him. Raikes laughed again. 
 I saw him get on to the fire-step and tried 
 to stop him. He smashed down my effort 
 and jumped over the top, sobbing now, 
 and crying, "Bloody murderers." In a 
 minute he was dead. 
 
 V 
 
 There will come a time, I suppose, when 
 all this war will be merely a memory for 
 us. When, of all that I see now, this 
 warm, candle-lit dug-out, the clumsy mud- 
 covered bodies, sleeping all around, the' 
 wreaths of smoke from those of us who 
 sit, as I, and think and puff, and send, as 
 though they are the expression of our 
 deep thinking, great clouds circling around 
 the narrow room, the dark stairway, the 
 crest of parados silhouetted sharply against
 
 268 Fragments 
 
 the twinkling night sky, of all these only 
 the sky and the stars will remain — and, 
 most important of all, our pipes. 
 
 For the stars have always been too aloof 
 to remind me particularly of the war. 
 They are so utterly detached, and seem at 
 times to regard our little campaign with 
 mockery. " Alone with the stars " is a 
 phrase I have never understood, I only 
 feel at times, alone, because of them. But 
 
 my pipes 
 
 If they live and if I live, they shall have 
 a rack apart, a resting-place not of glory, 
 but of old friendship. They know me 
 through and through. They know when 
 I am afraid, not afraid, but terrified, when 
 my nerves have got so shaken, that every 
 new thing, even a slackening in the shell- 
 ing, makes me dread what is coming, and 
 I puff and puff enough to give away the 
 whole position. They know how to bring 
 me to that feeling that everything is worth
 
 Fragment.'^ 2G9 
 
 while ; they can soothe with the feehng of 
 fellowship, with the jollity of ideals. And 
 in those moments when the world seems 
 coming to an end for ns, when onr men, 
 answering ns one moment, are swept away 
 the next in a storm of fragments, when 
 one goes still abont one's Inisiness, feeling 
 that since one must die, one should die 
 well, in those moments a pipe brings a 
 feeling almost of contentment, that we 
 like the smoke shall rise, and disappear, 
 but rise for all that.
 
 Vale
 
 Vale 
 
 "/^VER the top to-morrow, boys," 
 ^ said the CO. 
 
 " Please, sir, there ain't no top," said 
 Four Eyes, wearing spectacles and a 
 second lieutenant's star, although he was 
 acting captain. 
 
 The CO. turned to me. " Four Eyes is 
 always so damned correct in his state- 
 ments. You've hardly noticed it yet, 
 perhaps. Anyhow, we're for it to-morrow. 
 Here arc your details. Any news ? " 
 
 Four Eyes returned to the paper he was 
 reading and replied gravely : " Yes, sir. 
 Our gallant boys again have punished the 
 Hun. Another brilliant victory is re- 
 corded to our score at Contalmaison. 
 This morning, just as the mist was rising 
 above the shell-scarred field of battle, I 
 
 T 278
 
 274 Vale 
 
 stood among what so lately were German 
 trenches and watched our fine lads sweep 
 up in an irresistible line across the pitted 
 No-Man's-Land, and plunge merrily ..." 
 
 " Shut up," said a voice from the corner 
 of the dug-out, "that bilge makes me 
 tired." 
 
 Four Eyes turned on him reproachfully : 
 " It's a most stirring dispatch. The 
 editor says so." 
 
 " I quite thought w^e were in that show, 
 till I read the account," said the voice in 
 the corner. " It makes me tired." 
 
 " Hello, Tony," said the CO. " What's 
 your trouble ? Tummy ? Well, what I 
 really wanted to say is that to-morrow's 
 our last show and then we're going out." 
 
 " Thank God," came in universal chorus. 
 
 " Hush," said Four Eyes. " England 
 is ashamed of you. What ? Glad to 
 leave this glorious victory ? Tut, Tut. 
 What will the old men think, who only
 
 Vale 275 
 
 wish they were young enough to come out 
 with us. More tuts. And how about the 
 war correspondents ? You would shock 
 them. You would, indeed. You aren't a 
 correspondent in disguise, are you ? " he 
 said, looking at me with serious eyes 
 through large, round spectacles. " You 
 don't thrill daily with the deathless glory 
 of our doings, what ? Or are you just a 
 simple, lion-hearted subaltern, cheery and 
 irrepressible and all that ? " 
 
 " Don't mind Four Eyes, he's always 
 like that," said the man called Tony. 
 " One of the horrors of war. When you've 
 scoffed your tea, come and have a look at 
 the gun positions." 
 
 We clambered out of the dug-out into 
 the afternoon sun, wormed our way up a 
 battered trench and reached the front line. 
 
 " Four Eyes is right," said Tony Wills. 
 " There's not much top to get over." 
 
 No doubt once it had been a trench, but
 
 276 Vale 
 
 now was merely a chain of shell-holes, 
 with odd bits of the original line here and 
 there, that only showed how complete had 
 been the devastation. Odd shells came 
 blustering from time to time, and burst 
 near the trench, but the Germans were too 
 busy on our flanks to worry much about 
 that frail section of the front, and so, 
 curled up in holes and smelly dug-outs, 
 the men slept carelessly. 
 
 We found a machine-gun sergeant and 
 with him crawled round looking for posi- 
 tions. We knew exactly where we had 
 to fire, the only difficulty lay in re- 
 cognizing these places from the map, 
 and in finding fire positions which would 
 not interfere with the infantry's attack. 
 To our left lay Pozieres, on the crest of a 
 hill, looking for all the world like a volcano, 
 that eveiy moment belched out great 
 spurts of smoke and dust. On our right, 
 as though a reaper had passed over it,
 
 Vale 277 
 
 leaving nothing but the stubble of trees, 
 was Mametz Wood. A cloud of smoke 
 rose from its northern end and slowly 
 covered all the hillside. These were our 
 only landmarks, except for occasional 
 bits of trenches, that showed here and 
 there towards the skyline. Otherwise 
 there was nothing to be seen, but the bare, 
 mangled ground, and the warm sky, 
 dotted everyvY'here with bursting shrapnel. 
 We fixed our positions at last, posted the 
 guns and began to crawl back. On our 
 way, we found a good portion of the 
 trench had been blown in. In the crater 
 lay the rem^ains of three or four men. 
 
 " Those are men I've known since they 
 fii-st joined up," said Wills, " and now — 
 toute une marmelade." 
 
 He took all that was necessary, gave 
 orders for them to be buried and we passed 
 on. Then, in a little culvert, he sat down 
 and pulled out his pipe. 
 
 T 2
 
 278 Vale 
 
 " Four Eyes is right in his funny old 
 way," he said. " They make war such a 
 vulgar thing at home. It's bloody, but it's 
 not vulgar. Four Eyes is a gallant little 
 fellow, and when all is said and done, he's 
 the type of fellow that's doing the fighting 
 now. 
 
 " You'd think he'd swallow the clap- 
 trap that represents war opinion, but he 
 hates it worse than any of us. He's really 
 fighting for an ideal, I do believe." 
 
 Wills sucked for a little, then turned to 
 me and said : 
 
 *' Do you think you're going to get 
 through this war ? " 
 
 " I do, thank God," I said. 
 
 " I'm not," he said. " I've known it 
 for some time and now I'm sure. That's 
 why I'm talking like this. It's rather a 
 relief in a way to be able to talk. No one 
 can say I'm trying to back out. I'm quite 
 happy about it, because I know that it's all
 
 Vale 270 
 
 right. This war, I mean. I know why I 
 came out to fight and it still holds good. 
 But then we don't count. 
 
 " That's the solemn truth. We don'b 
 count. Ask anyone at home what we're 
 fighting for, and he'll look frightened and 
 talk about the destruction of various 
 things : Germany, Prussian militarism, 
 anything, but always destruction, Toutc 
 une marmelade, like my poor men there. 
 They're all frightened of something, terri- 
 fied, especially of thinking. But as we're 
 all fighting for peace, why don't people 
 discuss it ? Why the devil don't we say 
 in so many terms what we're fighting for 
 and stick to it ? 
 
 " These damned politicians running the 
 show. They just expect us to carry on till 
 someone crashes, or there's a dead-lock, 
 and then they'll begin to think about 
 peace. Now it's too difficult for them. 
 They can't see our ideals because of their
 
 280 Vale 
 
 details. And you've got to go on fighting . 
 I'm out of it. A looker-on. I'd laugh, if it 
 weren't for my men. Four Eyes and the 
 rest are my pals, and I'm fond of them^ 
 However, they can look after themselves. 
 But my men. . . . They've got to go on 
 trusting us, our class at home, until they 
 die. More marmelade. 
 
 " They've got to go on fighting, while 
 men at home — fat, stupid, old men — urge 
 them on. You'd think they needed urging. 
 Ye gods ! And even if they did the inso- 
 lence of one man urging another to go and 
 fight for him. I wonder if people who 
 pride themselves on having induced fellows 
 to join sometimes feel funny when they 
 read the casualty lists ? People aren't 
 bad, they're just damnably vulgar. They 
 don't think. 
 
 " At home, of course, they'd call me a 
 Peace Crank. Well, we're an army of 
 Peace Cranks — only we want a lasting
 
 Vale 281 
 
 peace — one based on ideals, 'cos they arc 
 the only things that are lasting." 
 
 It was this remark that made me think. 
 The certainty he had of his own death, and 
 the freedom of thought this certainly gave 
 him, rather shocked me at first. But then 
 it was his very detachment that made his 
 point of view so unassailable. In his own 
 mind he was dead already, and he wanted 
 to know in whose hands, as it were, he was 
 leaving his men. 
 
 However, I said in a foolish way : 
 " But this is all rather socialistic, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 Wills looked at me quickly. " Lord, I 
 didn't know you were that kind of fool, or 
 I'd have kept mum." 
 
 " What kind of fool ? " I asked. 
 
 "The fellow who screams 'socialist' 
 directly he's asked to think. Good Lord, 
 don't you see I'm begging you, you as one 
 of the hide-bound old officer class, to get
 
 282 - Vale 
 
 some sort of responsibility into your fat 
 head ? You look after your men, don't 
 you ? Give 'em cigarettes, and see their 
 feet are clean, and get 'em the best billets, 
 and look after 'em in action, and play sort 
 of father, mother and maiden aunt to 'em. 
 And it pays, doesn't it ? You're fond of 
 them and they of you. You do the best 
 you can for them and they return the 
 compliment. That's not Socialism, is it ? 
 Oh no, 'cos it's something that's regula- 
 tion. It's done by all the best regiments. 
 But, my God, man, don't you see that it's 
 an ideal ? Sound practical common sense. 
 Why can't it be done in business ? — and 
 all through our social system ? I believe 
 in the officer class. If only I thought you'd 
 stick together afterwards as you do now, 
 I'd die happy. And you could, so jolly 
 easily, if only you thought. But you'll 
 lose confidence when you get home, and 
 start class wars again.
 
 Vale 283 
 
 *' Oh, damn it all, man, do make an 
 effort." 
 
 I was moved to another part of the 
 line that night and two months later went 
 home on my way to " somewhere else." 
 
 In London I went to a shop in the 
 Strand to get photographed for my pass- 
 port, and there, staring solemnly through 
 his spectacles at the camera, was Four 
 Eyes. He recognized me and we shook 
 hands with ceremony. 
 
 " By the by," he told me, " we took 
 that trench all right. Tony Wills — do you 
 remember him ? — did all the dirty work. 
 A nasty- minded machine-gun opened out 
 just as we were getting up, and Wills 
 settled it with a bomb, first shot. We 
 were taken out of the Somme that night 
 and sent up North." 
 
 " And Wills ? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, didn't you hear ? He was killed
 
 284 Vale 
 
 just before we came out. Hit by a ' rico ' 
 half-way down a Hun dug-out. I was 
 close behind him and he just dropped and 
 said ' poor lads ' and died. 
 
 " He was the bravest fellow I ever 
 knew." < 
 
 " And something more than that," I 
 answered. 
 
 Four Eyes stared up at me, then shook 
 my hand with far less ceremony. 
 
 " It's up to us now," he said. 
 
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