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Title: The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916
Author: Frederic Manning (1882-1935)
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Language:   English
Date first posted: April 2002
Date most recently updated: April 2002

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Title: The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916
Author: Frederic Manning (1882-1935)




VOLUME I

On fortune's cap we are not the very button ...Then you live
about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?...'Faith, her
privates we.   ----   SHAKESPEARE


Prefatory Note


While the following pages are a record of experience on the Somme
and Ancre fronts, with an interval behind the lines, during the
latter half of the year 1916; and the events described in it
actually happened; the characters are fictitious.  It is true
that in recording the conversations of the men I seemed at times
to hear the voices of ghosts.  Their judgments were necessarily
partial and prejudiced; but prejudices and partialities provide
most of the driving power of life.  It is better to allow them to
cancel each other, than attempt to strike an average between them.
Averages are too colourless, indeed too abstract in every way, to
represent concrete experience.  I have drawn no portraits; and my
concern has been mainly with the anonymous ranks, whose opinion,
often mere surmise and ill-informed, but real and true for them,
I have tried to represent faithfully.

War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods.  It is a peculiarly
human activity.  To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at
least half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime.
That raises a moral question, the kind of problem with which the
present age is disinclined to deal.  Perhaps some future attempt
to provide a solution for it may prove to be even more astonishing
than the last.



To
Peter Davies who made me write it




Chapter I


By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a
death ...  and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year
is quit for the next.   --- SHAKESPEARE


The darkness was increasing rapidly, as the whole sky had clouded,
and threatened thunder.  There was still some desultory shelling.
When the relief had taken over from them, they set off to return
to their original line as best they could.  Bourne, who was beaten
to the wide, gradually dropped behind, and in trying to keep the
others in sight missed his footing and fell into a shellhole.

By the time he had picked himself up again the rest of the party
had vanished and, uncertain of his direction, he stumbled on alone.
He neither hurried nor slackened his pace; he was light-headed,
almost exalted, and driven only by the desire to find an end.
Somewhere, eventually, he would sleep.  He almost fell into the
wrecked trench, and after a moment's hesitation turned left, caring
little where it led him.

The world seemed extraordinarily empty of men, though he knew the
ground was alive with them.  He was breathing with difficulty, his
mouth and throat seemed to be cracking with dryness, and his water
bottle was empty.  Coming to a dugout, he groped his way down,
feeling for the steps with his feet; a piece of Wilson canvas,
hung across the passage but twisted aside, rasped his cheek;
and a few steps lower his face was enveloped suddenly in the
musty folds of a blanket.  The dugout was empty.  For the moment
he collapsed there, indifferent to everything.  Then with shaking
hands he felt for his cigarettes, and putting one between his lips
struck a match.  The light revealed a candle-end stuck by its own
grease to the oval lid of a tobacco-tin, and he lit it; it was
scarcely thicker than a shilling, but it would last his time.  He
would finish his cigarette, and then move on to find his company.

There was a kind of bank or seat excavated in the wall of the
dugout, and he noticed first the tattered remains of a blanket
lying on it, and then, gleaming faintly in its folds a small metal
disc reflect ing the light.  It was the cap on the cork of a water
bottle.  Sprawling sideways he reached it, the feel of the bottle
told him it was full, and uncorking it he put it to his lips and
took a great gulp before discovering that he was swallowing neat
whisky.  The fiery spirit almost choked him for the moment, in his
surprise he even spat some of it out; then recovering, he drank
again, discreetly but sufficiently, and was meditating a more
prolonged appreciation when he heard men groping their way down
the steps.  He recorked the bottle, hid it quickly under the
blanket, and removed himself to what might seem an innocent
distance from temptation.

Three Scotsmen came in; they were almost as spent and broken as
he was, that he knew by their uneven voices; but they put up a
show of indifference, and were able to tell him that some of his
mob were on the left, in a dugout about fifty yards away.  They,
too, had lost their way, and asked him questions in their turn;
but he could not help them, and they developed among themselves an
incoherent debate, on the question of what was the best thing for
them to do in the circumstances.  Their dialect only allowed him
to follow their arguments imperfectly, but under the talk it was
easy enough to see the irresolution of weary men seeking in their
difficulties some reasonable pretext for doing nothing.  It touched
his own conscience, and throwing away the butt of his cigarette he
decided to go.  The candle was flickering feebly on the verge of
extinction, and presently the dugout would be in darkness again.
Prudence stifled in him an impulse to tell them of the whisky;
perhaps they would find it for themselves; it was a matter which
might be left for providence or chance to decide.  He was moving
towards the stairs, when a voice, muffled by the blanket, came
from outside.

"Who are down there?"

There was no mistaking the note of authority and Bourne answered
promptly.  There was a pause, and then the blanket was waved aside,
and an officer entered.  He was Mr Clinton, with whom Bourne had
fired his course at Tregelly.

"Hullo, Bourne," he began, and then seeing the other men he turned
and questioned them in his soft kindly voice.  His face had the
greenish pallor of crude beeswax, his eyes were red and tired, his
hands were as nervous as theirs, and his voice had the same note of
overexcitement, but he listened to them without a sign of
impatience.  "Well, I don't want to hurry you men off," he said
at last, "but your battalion will be moving out before we do.  The
best thing you can do is to cut along to it.  They're only about a
hundred yards further down the trench.  You don't want to straggle
back to camp by yourselves; it doesn't look well either.  So you
had better get moving right away.  What you really want is twelve
hours solid sleep, and I am only telling you the shortest road to
it."

They accepted his view of the matter quietly, they were willing
enough; but, like all tired men in similar conditions, they were
glad to have their action determined for them; so they thanked
him and wished him goodnight, if not cheerfully, at least with the
air of being reasonable men, who appreciated his kindliness.
Bourne made as though to follow them out, but Mr Clinton stopped
him.

"Wait a minute, Bourne, and we shall go together," he said as the
last Scotsman groped his way up the steeply pitched stairs.  "It
is indecent to follow a kilted Highlander too closely out of a
dugout.  Besides I left something here."

He looked about him, went straight to the blanket, and took up the
water bottle.  It must have seemed lighter than he expected, for he
shook it a little suspiciously before uncorking it.  He took a
long steady drink and paused.

"I left this bottle full of whisky," he said, "but those bloody
Jocks must have smelt it.  You know, Bourne, I don't go over with
a skinful, as some of them do; but, by God, when I come back I want
it.  Here, take a pull yourself; you look as though you could do
with one."

Bourne took the bottle without any hesitation; his case was much
the same.  One had lived instantaneously during that timeless
interval, for in the shock and violence of the attack, the perilous
instant, on which he stood perched so precariously, was all that
the half-stunned consciousness of man could grasp; and, if he lost
his grip on it, he fell back among the grotesque terrors and
nightmare creatures of his own mind.  Afterwards, when the strain
had been finally released, in the physical exhaustion which
followed, there was a collapse, in which one's emotional nature was
no longer under control.

"We're in the next dugout, those who are left of us," Mr Clinton
continued.  "I am glad you came through all right, Bourne.  You
were in the last show, weren't you?  It seems to me the old Hun has
brought up a lot more stuff, and doesn't mean to shift, if he can
help it.  Anyway we should get a spell out of the line now.  I
don't believe there are more than a hundred of us left."

A quickening in his speech showed that the whisky was beginning to
play on frayed nerves: it had steadied Bourne for the time being.
The flame of the candle gave one leap and went out.  Mr Clinton
switched on his torch, and shoved the water bottle into the pocket
of his raincoat.

"Come on," he said, making for the steps, "you and I are two of
the lucky ones, Bourne; we've come through without a scratch;
and if our luck holds we'll keep moving out of one bloody misery
into another, until we break, see, until we break."

Bourne felt a kind of suffocation in his throat: there was nothing
weak or complaining in Mr Clinton's voice, it was full of angry
soreness.  He switched off the light as he came to the Wilson
canvas.

"Don't talk so bloody wet," Bourne said to him through the
darkness.  "You'll never break."

The officer gave no sign of having heard the sympathetic but
indecorous rebuke.  They moved along the battered trench silently.
The sky flickered with the flash of guns, and an occasional
star-shell flooded their path with light.  As one fell slowly,
Bourne saw a dead man in field grey propped up in a corner of a
traverse; probably he had surrendered, wounded, and reached the
trench only to die there.  He looked indifferently at this piece
of wreckage.  The grey face was senseless and empty.  As they
turned the corner they were challenged by a sentry over the dugout.

"Goodnight, Bourne," said Mr Clinton quietly.

"Goodnight, sir," said Bourne, saluting; and he exchanged a few
words with the sentry.

"Wish to Christ they'd get a move on," said the sentry, as Bourne
turned to go down.

The dugout was full of men, and all the drawn, pitiless faces
turned to see who it was as he entered, and after that flicker of
interest relapsed into apathy and stupor again.  The air was thick
with smoke and the reek of guttering candles.  He saw Shem lift a
hand to attract his attention, and he managed to squeeze in beside
him.  They didn't speak after each had asked the other if he were
all right; some kind of oppression weighed on them all, they sat
like men condemned to death.

"Wonder if they'll keep us up in support?" whispered Shem.
Probably that was the question they were all asking, as they sat
there in their bitter resignation, with brooding enigmatic faces,
hopeless, but undefeated; even the faces of boys seeming curiously
old; and then it changed suddenly: there were quick hurried
movements, belts were buckled, rifles taken up, and stooping, they
crawled up into the air.  Shem and Bourne were among the first out.
They moved off at once.

Shells travelled overhead; they heard one or two bump fairly
close, but they saw nothing except the sides of the trench,
whitish with chalk in places, and the steel helmet and lifting
swaying shoulders of the man in front, or the frantic uplifted
arms of shattered trees, and the sky with the clouds broken in
places, through which opened the inaccessible peace of the stars.
They seemed to hurry, as though the sense of escape filled them.
The walls of the communication trench became gradually lower, the
track sloping upward to the surface of the ground, and at last they
emerged, the officer standing aside, to watch what was left of his
men file out, and form up in two ranks before him.  There was
little light, but under the brims of the helmets one could see
living eyes moving restlessly in blank faces.  His face, too, was
a blank from weariness, but he stood erect, an ash-stick under his
arm, as the dun-coloured shadows shuffled into some sort of order.
The words of command that came from him were no more than whispers,
his voice was cracked and not quite under control, though there was
still some harshness in it.  Then they moved off in fours, away from
the crest of the ridge, towards the place they called Happy Valley.

They had not far to go.  As they were approaching the tents a
crump dropped by the mule-lines, and that set them swaying a
little, but not much.  Captain Malet called them to attention a
little later; and from the tents, camp-details, cooks, snobs, and
a few unfit men, gathered in groups to watch them, with a sympathy
genuine enough, but tactfully aloof; for there is a gulf between
men just returned from action, and those who have not been in the
show, as unbridgeable as that between the sober and the drunk.
Captain Malet halted his men by the orderly-room tent.  There was
even a pretence to dress ranks.  Then he looked at them, and they
at him for a few seconds which seemed long.  They were only
shadows in the darkness.

"Dismiss!"

His voice was still pitched low, but they turned almost with the
precision of troops on the square, each rifle was struck smartly,
the officer saluting; and then the will which bound them together
dissolved, the enervated muscles relaxed, and they lurched off to
their tents as silent and as dispirited as beaten men.  One of the
tailors took his pipe out of his mouth and spat on the ground.

"They can say what they bloody well like," he said appreciatively,
"but we're a fuckin' fine mob."

Once during the night Bourne started up in an access of inexplicable
horror, and after a moment of bewildered recollection, turned over
and tried to sleep again.  He remembered nothing of the nightmare
which had roused him, if it were a nightmare, but gradually his
awakened sense felt a vague restlessness troubling equally the
other men.  He noticed it first in Shem, whose body, almost touching
his own, gave a quick, convulsive jump, and continued twitching for
a moment, while he muttered unintelligibly, and worked his lips as
though he were trying to moisten them.  The obscure disquiet passed
fitfully from one to another, lips parted with the sound of a
bubble bursting, teeth met grinding as the jaws worked, there were
little whimperings which quickened into sobs, passed into long
shuddering moans, or culminated in angry, half-articulate obscenities
and then relapsed, with fretful, uneasy movements and heavy breathing,
into a more profound sleep.

Even though Bourne tried to persuade himself that these convulsive
agonies were merely reflex actions, part of an unconscious physical
process, through which the disordered nerves sought to readjust
themselves, or to perform belatedly some instinctive movement which
an over-riding will had thwarted at its original inception, his own
conscious mind now filled itself with the passions, of which the
mutterings and twitchings heard in the darkness were only the
unconscious mimicry.  The senses certainly have, in some measure,
an independent activity of their own, and remain vigilant even in
the mind's eclipse.  The darkness seemed to him to be filled with
the shudderings of tormented flesh, as though something diabolically
evil probed curiously to find a quick sensitive nerve and wring from
it a reluctant cry of pain.

At last, unable to ignore the sense of misery which filled him, he
sat up and lit the inevitable cigarette.  The formless terrors
haunting their sleep took shape for him.  His mind reached back into
past day, groping among obscure and broken memories, for it seemed
to him now that for the greater part of the time he had been stunned
and blinded, and that what he had seen, he had seen in sudden, vivid
flashes, instantaneously: he felt again the tension of waiting, that
became impatience, and then the immense effort to move, and the
momentary relief which came with movement, the sense of unreality
and dread which descended on one, and some restoration of balance
as one saw other men moving forward in a way that seemed commonplace,
mechanical, as though at some moment of ordinary routine; the
restraint, and the haste that fought against it with every voice
in one's being crying out to hurry.  Hurry?  One cannot hurry, alone,
into nowhere, into nothing.  Every impulse created immediately its
own violent contradiction.  The confusion and tumult in his own mind
was inseparable from the senseless fury about him, each reinforcing
the other.

He saw great chunks of the German line blown up, as the artillery
blasted a way for them; clouds of dust and smoke screened their
advance, but the Hun searched for them scrupulously; the air was
alive with the rush and flutter of wings; it was ripped by
screaming shells, hissing like tons of molten metal plunging
suddenly into water, there was the blast and concussion of their
explosion, men smashed, obliterated in sudden eruptions of earth,
rent and strewn in bloody fragments, shells that were like
hellcats humped and spitting, little sounds, unpleasantly close,
like the plucking of tense strings, and something tangling his
feet, tearing at his trousers and puttees as he stumbled over it,
and then a face suddenly, an inconceivably distorted face, which
raved and sobbed at him as he fell with it into a shellhole.

He saw with astonishment the bare arse of a Scotsman who had gone
into action wearing only a kilt-apron; and then they righted
themselves and looked at each other, bewildered and humiliated.
There followed a moment of perfect lucidity, while they took a
breather; and he found himself, though unwounded, wondering with
an insane prudence where the nearest dressing-station was.

Other men came up; two more Gordons joined them, and then Mr
Halliday, who flung himself on top of them and, keeping his head
well down, called them a lot of bloody skulkers.  He had a slight
wound in the forearm.  They made a rush forward again, the dust
and smoke clearing a little, and they heard the elastic twang of
Mills bombs as they reached an empty trench, very narrow where
shelling had not wrecked or levelled it.  Mr Halliday was hit
again, in the knee, before they reached the trench, and Bourne
felt something pluck the front of his tunic at the same time.
They pulled Mr Halliday into the trench, and left him with one
of the Gordons who had also been hit.  Men were converging there,
and he went forward with some of his own company again.

From the moment he had thrown himself into the shellhole with the
Scotsman something had changed in him; the conflict of tumult of
his mind had gone, his mind itself seemed to have gone, to have
contracted and hardened within him; fear remained, an implacable
and restless fear, but that, too, seemed to have been beaten and
forged into a point of exquisite sensibility and to have become
indistinguishable from hate.  Only the instincts of the beast
survived in him, every sense was alert and in that tension was
some poignancy.  He neither knew where he was, nor whither he was
going, he could have no plan because he could foresee nothing,
everything happening was inevitable and unexpected, he was an act
in a whole chain of acts; and, though his movements had to conform
to those of others, spontaneously, as part of some infinitely
flexible plan, which he could not comprehend very clearly even
in regard to its immediate object, he could rely on no one but
himself.

They worked round a point still held by machine-guns, through a
rather intricate system of trenches linking up shell-craters.  The
trenches were little more than boltholes, through which the machine
gunners, after they had held up the advancing infantry as long as
possible, might hope to escape to some other appointed position
further back, and resume their work, thus gaining time for the
troops behind to recover from the effect of the bombardment, and
emerge from their hiding places.  They were singularly brave men,
these Prussian machine-gunners, but the extreme of heroism, alike
in foe or friend, is indistinguishable from despair.

Bourne found himself playing again a game of his childhood, though
not now among rocks from which reverberated heat quivered in wavy
films, but in made fissures too chalky and unweathered for
adequate concealment.  One has not, perhaps, at thirty years the
same zest in the game as one had at thirteen, but the sense of
danger brought into play a latent experience which had become a
kind of instinct with him, and he moved in those tortuous ways
with the furtive cunning of a stoat or weasel.  Stooping low at
an angle in the trench he saw the next comparatively straight
length empty, and when the man behind was close to him, ran
forward still stooping.  The advancing line, hung up at one point,
inevitably tended to surround it, and it was suddenly abandoned
by the few men holding it.

Bourne, running, checked as a running Hun rounded the further angle
precipitately, saw him prop, shrink back into a defensive posture,
and fired without lifting the butt of his rifle quite level with
his right breast.  The man fell shot in the face, and someone
screamed at Bourne to go on; the body choked the narrow angle,
and when he put his foot on it squirmed or moved, making him check
again, fortunately, as a bomb exploded a couple of yards round the
corner.  He turned, dismayed, on the man behind him, but behind the
bomber he saw the grim bulk of Captain Malet, and his strangely
exultant face; and Bourne, incapable of articulate speech, could
only wave a hand to indicate the way he divined the Huns to have
gone.

Captain Malet swung himself above ground, and the men, following,
overflowed the narrow channel of the trench; but the two waves,
which had swept round the machine-gun post, were now on the point
of meeting; men bunched together, and there were some casualties
among them before they went to ground again.  Captain Malet gave
him a word in passing, and Bourne, looking at him with dull
uncomprehending eyes, lagged a little to let others intervene
between them.  He had found himself immediately afterwards next
to Company-Sergeant-Major Glasspool, who nodded to him swiftly
and appreciatively; and then Bourne understood.  He was doing the
right thing.  In that last rush he had gone on and got into the
lead, somehow, for a brief moment; but he realised himself that
he had only gone on because he had been unable to stand still.
The sense of being one in a crowd did not give him the same
confidence as at the start, the present stage seemed to call for
a little more personal freedom.  Presently, just because they were
together, they would rush something in a hurry instead of stalking
it.  Two men of another regiment, who had presumably got lost, broke
back momentarily demoralised, and Sergeant-Major Glasspool confronted
them.

"Where the bloody hell do you reckon you're going?"

He rapped out the question with the staccato of a machine-gun;
facing their hysterical disorder, he was the living embodiment of
a threat.

"We were ordered back," one said, shamefaced and fearful.  "Yes.
You take your fuckin' orders from Fritz," Glasspool, white-lipped
and with heaving chest, shot sneeringly at them.  They came to
heel quietly enough, but all the rage and hatred in their hearts
found an object in him, now.  He forgot them as soon as he found
them in hand.

"You're all right, chum," whispered Bourne, to the one who had
spoken.  "Get among your own mob again as soon as there's a
chance."  The man only looked at him stonily.  In the next rush
forward something struck Bourne's helmet, knocking it back over the
nape of his neck so that the chinstrap tore his ears.  For the
moment he thought he had been knocked out, he had bitten his
tongue, too, and his mouth was salt with blood.  The blow had left
a deep dent in the helmet, just fracturing the steel.  He was still
dazed and shaken when they reached some building ruins, which he
seemed to remember.  They were near the railway station.

He wished he could sleep, he was heavy with it; but his restless
memory made sleep seem something to be resisted as too like death.
He closed his eyes and had a vision of men advancing under a rain
of shells.  They had seemed so toy-like, so trivial and
ineffective when opposed to that overwhelming wrath, and yet they
had moved forward mechanically as though they were hypnotised or
fascinated by some superior will.  That had been one of Bourne's
most vivid impressions in action, a man close to him moving forward
with the jerky motion a clockwork toy has when it is running
down; and it had been vivid to him because of the relief with
which he had turned to it and away from the confusion and tumult
of his own mind.  It had seemed impossible to relate that petty,
commonplace, unheroic figure, in ill-fitting khaki and a helmet
like the barber's basin with which Don Quixote made shift on his
adventures, to the moral and spiritual conflict, almost superhuman
in its agony, within him.

Power is measured by the amount of resistance which it overcomes,
and, in the last resort, the moral power of men was greater than
any purely material force which could be brought to bear on it.
It took the chance of death, as one of the chances it was bound
to take; though, paradoxically enough, the function of our moral
nature consists solely in the assertion of one's own individual
will against anything which may be opposed to it, and death,
therefore, would imply its extinction in the particular and
individual case.  The true inwardness of tragedy lies in the fact
that its failure is only apparent, and as in the case of the
martyr also, the moral conscience of man has made its own
deliberate choice, and asserted the freedom of its being.  The
sense of wasted effort is only true for meaner and more material
natures.  It took the more horrible chance of mutilation.  But as
far as Bourne himself, and probably also, since the moral impulse
is not necessarily an intellectual act, as far as the majority of
his comrades were concerned, its strength and its weakness were
inseparably entangled in each other.

Whether a man be killed by a rifle bullet through the brain, or
blown into fragments by a high-explosive shell, may seem a matter
of indifference to the conscientious objector, or to any other
equally well-placed observer, who in point of fact is probably
right; but to the poor fool who is a candidate for posthumous
honours, and necessarily takes a more directly interested view,
it is a question of importance.  He is, perhaps, the victim of
an illusion, like all who, in the words of Paul, are fools for
Christ's sake; but he has seen one man shot cleanly in his tracks
and left face downwards, dead, and he has seen another torn into
bloody tatters as by some invisible beast, and these experiences
had nothing illusory about them: they were actual facts.  Death,
of course, like chastity, admits of no degree; a man is dead or
not dead, and a man is just as dead by one means as by another;
but it is infinitely more horrible and revolting to see a man
shattered and eviscerated, than to see him shot.  And one sees
such things; and one suffers vicariously, with the inalienable
sympathy of man for man.  One forgets quickly.  The mind is
averted as well as the eyes.  It reassures itself after that
first despairing cry: "It is I!"

"No, it is not I.  I shall not be like that."

And one moves on, leaving the mauled and bloody thing behind:
gambling, in fact, on that implicit assurance each one of us has
of his own immortality.  One forgets, but he will remember again
later, if only in his sleep.

After all, the dead are quiet.  Nothing in the world is more still
than a dead man.  One sees men living, living, as it were, desperately,
and then suddenly emptied of life.  A man dies and stiffens into
something like a wooden dummy, at which one glances for a second
with a furtive curiosity.  Suddenly he remembered the dead in Trones
Wood, the unburied dead with whom one lived, he might say, cheek by
jowl, Briton and Hun impartially confounded, festering, fly-blown
corruption, the pasture of rats, blackening in the heat, swollen
with distended bellies, or shrivelling away within their mouldering
rags; and even when night covered them, one vented in the wind the
stench of death.  Out of one bloody misery into another, until we
break.  One must not break.  He took in his breath suddenly in a
shaken sob, and the mind relinquished its hopeless business.
The warm smelly darkness of the tent seemed almost luxurious ease.
He drowsed heavily; dreaming of womanly softness, sweetness; but
their faces slipped away from him like the reflections in water
when the wind shakes it, and his soul sank deeply and more deeply
into the healing of oblivion.



Chapter II



But I had not so much of man in me
And all my mother came into mine eyes
And gave me up to tears.  --- SHAKESPEARE


It was late when they woke, but they were reluctant to move.
Their tent gave them the only privacy they knew, and they wanted
to lie hidden until they had recovered their nerve.  Among
themselves they were unselfish, even gentle; instinctively
helping each other, for, having shared the same experience,
there was a tacit understanding between them.  They knew each other,
and their rival egoisms had already established among them a balance
and discipline of their own.  They kept their feelings very much
to themselves.  No one troubled them, and they might have lain
there for hours, preoccupied with their own formless and intangible
reveries, or merely brooding vacantly; but whatever remote and
inaccessible world the mind may elect to inhabit, the body has
its own inexorable routine.  It drove them out in the end to the
open, unscreened trench which served as a latrine.  This is
furnished with a pole, closer to one side than to the other, and
resting at either end on piled-up sods, and on this insecure perch
they sat, and while they sat there they hunted and killed the
lice on their bodies.

There was something insolent even in the way they tightened their
belts, hawked, and spat in the dust.  They had been through it,
and having been through it, they had lapsed a little lower than
savages, into the mere brute.  Life for them held nothing new in
the matter of humiliation.  Men of the new drafts wondered
foolishly at their haggard and filthy appearance.  Even the
details kept a little aloof from them, as from men with whom it
might be dangerous to meddle, and perhaps there was something in
their sad, pitiless faces to evoke in others a kind of primitive
awe.  They for their part went silently about the camp, carrying
themselves, in their stained and tattered uniforms, with scornful
indifference.  They may have glanced casually at the newcomers,
still trim and neat from the bullring at Rouen, who were to fill
the place of the dead now lying out in all weathers on the down-
land between Delville Wood, Trones and Guillemont; but if one of
the new men spoke to them he was met with unrecognising eyes and
curt monosyllables.

Outside the tents two or three men would come together and ask
after their friends.

"Where's Dixon?"

"Gone west.  Blown to fuckin' bits as soon as we got out of the
trench, poor bugger.  Young Williams was 'it same time, 'ad most
of an arm blown off, but 'e got back into the trench.  Same shell,
I think.  Anyway, it were the first thing I see."

They spoke with anxious, low voices, still unsteady and inclined
to break; but control was gradually returning; and all that pity
carried with it a sense of relief that the speaker, somehow, but
quite incredibly, had himself managed to survive.

When breakfast came they seemed at first to have no appetite, but
once they had started, they ate like famishing wolves, mopping up
the last smear of bacon fat and charred fragments from the bottom
of the pan with their bread.  When they returned to camp on the
previous night, there had been tea waiting for them, a rum issue
left very largely to the indiscretion of the storekeeper, and
sandwiches of cold boiled bacon.  Bourne had drunk all he could
get; but on biting into a sandwich it had seemed to chew up into
so much dry putty in his mouth, and he had stuffed the rest of
his ration away in his haversack.  The other men had been much the
same, none of them had had any stomach for food then, though the
sandwiches were freshly cut with liberal mustard on them; now,
though they had turned dry and hard, and the bread had soured,
they were disinterred from dirty haversacks and eaten ravenously.

Gradually their apathy cleared and lifted, as first their bodily
functions, and then their habits of life asserted themselves.
One after another they started shaving.  Bourne and Shem had an
arrangement by which they fetched and carried for each other
alternately, and it was Bourne's job today.  There was a shortage
of water, and rather stringent regulations concerning its use.
Bourne had long ago come to the conclusion that there was too
much bloody discipline in the British Army, and he managed to
procure, on loan, a large tin, which had been converted into a
bucket by the addition of a wire handle.  He got this more than
half full of water, as well as a mess-tin full of hot water from
one of the cooks, and going and coming he worked round behind the
officers' tents, so as to avoid other companies' lines, and sergeants
or sergeant-majors, who, zealous in the matter of discipline, might
have hypothecated both the bucket and water for their own personal
use.  Then, out of sight behind their own tent, he and Shem washed
and shaved.  They had not had a bath for five weeks, but curiously
enough, their skins, under their shirts, were like satin, supple
and lustrous; the sweat washed out the dirt, and was absorbed with
it into their clothing which had a sour, stale, and rather saline
smell.  They were not very lousy.

They had achieved more of the semblance than the reality of
cleanliness, and were drying themselves when Corporal Tozer, who
knew their value, came round to the back of the tent and looked
at the water, already grey and curdled with dirt and soap.

"You two are the champion bloody scroungers in the battalion," he
said; and it was impossible to know whether he were more moved by
admiration or by disgust.  Shem, whose eyes were like the fish
pools of Heshbon, turned on him an expression of mingled innocence
and apprehension; but Bourne only looked on indifferently as the
corporal, making a cup of his hand, skimmed off the curdled scum
before dashing the dirty water over his own head and neck.  Bourne
had no modesty in the demands he made on his friends, and he had
got the water from Abbot, the company cook, by asking for it
casually, while discussing the possibility of procuring,
illegally, a grilled steak for his dinner, preferably with fried
onions, which for the time being proved unobtainable.

"Tell me when you've finished with the bucket, will you, corporal?"
he said quietly, as he turned to go back to the tent with Shem.
Before putting on his tunic, after taking it outside to brush
rather perfunctorily, he looked at the pockets which the machinegun
bullet had torn.  The pull of his belt had caused them to project a
little, and the bullet had entered one pocket and passed out
through the other, after denting the metal case of his
shaving-stick, which he had forgotten to put into his pack, but
had pocketed at the last moment.  His haversack had been hit too,
probably by a spent fragment of a shell; but the most impressive
damage was the dent, with a ragged fissure in it, in his tin hat.
His pulse quickened slightly as he considered it, for it had been
a pretty near thing for him.  Then he heard Pritchard talking to
little Martlow on the other side of the tent.

"...both 'is legs 'ad bin blown off, pore bugger; an' 'e were dyin'
so quick you could see it.  But 'e tried to stand up on 'is feet.
`'elp me up,' 'e sez, `'elp me up.'--`You lie still, chum,' I sez
to 'im, `you'll be all right presently.'  An 'e jes give me one look,
like 'e were puzzled, an' 'e died."

Bourne felt all his muscles tighten.  Tears were running down
Pritchard's inflexible face, like raindrops down a window pane;
but there was not a quaver in his voice, only that high unnatural
note which a boy's has when it is breaking; and then for the first
time Bourne noticed that Swale, Pritchard's bed-chum, was not
there; he had not missed him before.  He could only stare at
Pritchard, while his own sight blurred in sympathy.

"Well, anyway," said Martlow, desperately comforting; ''e
couldn't 'ave felt much, could 'e, if 'e said that?"

"I don't know what 'e felt," said Pritchard, with slowly filling
bitterness, "I know what I felt."

"Bourne, you can take that bloody bucket back to where you pinched
it from," said Corporal Tozer, as he came into the tent, wiping
the soap out of his ears with a wet and dirty towel, and Bourne
slipped out as inconspicuously as a cat.  Still rubbing his neck
and ears, Corporal Tozer caught sight of Pritchard's face, and
noticed the constraint of the others.  Then he remembered Swale.

"Get those blankets folded and put the tent to rights," he said
quietly.  "You'd better open it up all round and let some air in;
it stinks a bit in here."

He picked up his tunic, put it on, and buttoned it slowly.  "Swale
was a townie of yours, wasn't he, Pritchard?" he said suddenly.
"A bloody plucky chap, an' only a kid, too.  I'm damned sorry
about him."

"That's all right, corporal," answered Pritchard evenly.  "Bein'
sorry ain't goin' to do us'ns no manner o' good.  We've all the
sorrow we can bear on our own, wi'out troublin' ourselves wi'
that o' other folk.  We 'elp each other all we can, an' when we
can't 'elp the other man no more, we must jes 'elp ourselves.  But
I tell thee, corporal, if I thought life was never goin' to be no
different, I'd as lief be bloody well dead myself."

He folded up his blanket neatly, as though he were folding up
something he had finished with and would never use again.  Then
he looked up.

"I took 'is pay book an' some letters out o' 'is tunic pocket,
but I left 'is identity disc for them as finds 'im.  If our chaps
hang onto what we got, there'll be some buryin' parties out.
There's 'is pack, next mine.  I suppose I'd better 'and them
letters in at th' orderly-room.  There were a couple o' smutty
French photographs, which I tore up.  'E were a decent enough lad,
but boys are curious about such things; don't mean no 'arm, but
think 'em funny.  'Tis all in human nature.  An' I'll write a
letter to 'is mother.  Swales is decent folk, farmin' a bit o'
land, an' I'm only a labourin' man, but they always treated me
fair when I worked for 'em."

"I suppose Captain Malet will write to her," said Corporal Tozer.
"Cap'n 'll write, surely," said Pritchard.  "E's a gentleman is
Cap'n Malet an' not one to neglect any little duties.  We all
knew Cap'n Malet before the war started, an' before 'e were a
cap'n.  But I'll write Mrs Swale a letter myself.  Cap'n Malet,
'e mus' write 'undreds o' them letters, all the same way; 'cause
there ain't no difference really, 'cept tha' know'st the mother,
same as I do."

"Have you a wife and children of your own?" Corporal Tozer
inquired, breaking away a little.

"Ad a little girl.  She died when she were four, th' year before
th' war.  The wife can look after 'erself," he added
vindictively.  "I'm not worryin' about 'er.  Th' bugger were
never any bloody good to me."

He lapsed into a resentful silence, and the corporal was satisfied
that his emotion had been diverted into other channels.  The other
men grinned a little as they shook the dried grass-stems and dust
off the groundsheets.  When they had finished tidying the tent,
they sat about smoking, without their tunics, for the day was hot
and airless.  The corporal stood outside with his eye on the
officers' tents watching for the appearance of Captain Malet.
Then by chance he saw Bourne talking to Evans, who had been the
colonel's servant, and had been taken over in that capacity by
the officer commanding them temporarily, who was a major from
another regiment.  Evans, who never in private referred to his
new master otherwise than as "that Scotch bastard', though he
had nothing Scots about him but a kilt, was now idly swinging
the bucket, into which Bourne, Shem and the corporal himself,
had washed more than the dust of battle.

"E 'as some bloody 'ide, pinchin' the commandin' officer's
bucket," was the corporal's only comment, turning his gaze
towards the officers' tents again.  Presently Bourne stood
beside him.

"We're on the move, corporal," he announced.

"Who says we're on the move?  Evans?" He added the name as an
afterthought so that Bourne might guess he knew where the bucket
came from, and not underrate either his powers of observation and
inference, or his more valuable quality of discretion.

"Evans!" explained Bourne indifferently; "Oh, no!  I was only
giving him back his bucket.  Evans never hears anything except the
dirty stories the doctor tells the major in the mess.  Abbot told
me.  He said the cookers were to be ready to move on to Sand-pits
at two o'clock.  We're on the move all right."

"Them bloody cooks know what we're doing before the orderly-room
does," said Corporal Tozer drily.  "Well, if it's goodbye to the
fuckin' Somme, I won't 'arf' ave a time puttin' the wind up some
o' these bloody conscripts.  Seen 'em yet?  Buggered-up by a
joy-ride in the train from Rouen to Mericourt, so they kept 'em
fuckin' about the camp, while they sent us over the bloody top;
you an' I, old son; in it up to the fuckin' neck, we was!  When
they've 'ad me at 'em for a fortnight, they'll be anxious to meet
Fritz, they will.  They'll be just about ready to kiss 'im."

Suddenly he shed his confidence, as Captain Malet emerged from one
of the tents, on the other side of the extemporised road, looking
up at the sky, as though he were chiefly concerned in estimating
the weather prospects for the day.  Then, rapidly surveying his
company lines, he saw Sergeant Robinson and Corporal Tozer, and
waved them to him with a lift of his stick.  Bourne turned, and
going into the tent sat down beside Shem.  When he told them what
he had heard from Abbot there was a flicker of interest; though
they were not surprised, for the fighting strength of the whole
battalion was by now little more than that of a single company.
They were to be taken out of the line, fed with new drafts, and
then thrown in again, that was all, except that whenever the new
drafts were mentioned, a certain amount of feeling was shown
against them.

Bourne began to be a little sorry for the new men, though some
malicious imp in his mind was amused by the resentment they
aroused.  A draft had arrived the night before the attack,
consisting of men enlisted under the Derby scheme, the first of
that class to join the battalion; and there was some uncertainty
concerning their temper and quality.  The question had been,
whether it were better to distribute the men among the different
companies immediately on the eve of the attack; or to leave them
out, and absorb them more slowly afterwards.  Probably the
commanding officer had preferred to rely entirely on men already
experienced in battle, even though their numbers were rather
depleted, and it might be argued very reasonably that his
decision was right.  At the same time, the new men
suffered by it.  They were friendless among strangers, without
having been long enough together to form a coherent unit to
themselves; being rather soft, thirty hours in a troop train,
tightly packed in sweltering heat, and then a longish march from
Mericourt, the railhead, had left them dead-beat; not being borne
on the ration strength, they had at first to make shift for their
provisions as best they could; and because there was nothing for
them to do, all sorts of futile and unnecessary fatigues were
invented by those in authority for their especial benefit.  They
were bullied even by the details, and stood at the beck of any
storekeeper.  All this, of course, was in the best tradition of
the British Army; but after swanking in a service company at
some training camp in Blighty, cheek by jowl with some of the
slightly obsolete heroes from Mons, it was a little disheartening
to find themselves suddenly precipitated again to the level of a
recruit.  After all, Bourne reflected, when he had come as one of
a draft, he had been made to suffer similarly: but he had gone
immediately into a show and that had made some difference.
Presently these men would be indistinguishable from the others,
and share their common experience.

Corporal Tozer reappeared in the tent.

"Parade for rollcall at eleven o'clock: fatigue order."

There was just a trace more importance than usual in his manner,
and though it was barely discernible Bourne noticed it, and looked
up with his incorrigible smile.

"Got an extra stripe, corporal?" he inquired.

"Don't you worry about what I've got," said the corporal.  "You
be bloody careful what you get."



Chapter III


Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?

Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk; he sweats
not to overthrow your Almain; he gives your Hollander a vomit ere
the next pottle can be filled.  ---  SHAKESPEARE


After dinner, they moved back about two miles to another camp at
Sand-pits.  The invaluable and long-suffering draft had preceded
them there, to make straight the ways; but the men who composed it
were ill-regarded, as there was not enough tent-room for their own
shelter, and they paired off, each pair trying to make a bivvy
out of a couple of groundsheets fastened together by string passed
through the eyelets, and then slung on a horizontal pole suspended
between two uprights.  Their efforts might have been more
successful if it had not been for a shortage of string and wood.
There was more bustle and life in the new camp, and the men who had
been in action moved about more freely.  After rollcall a change
had worked in them, the parade had brought them together again;
and, somehow, in talking of their common experience they had
mastered it; it ceased to be an obsession, it was something they
realised as past and irrevocable; and the move to Sand-pits marked
a new beginning.

They were still on a shoulder of the downs; and beneath them they
could see Albert, and the gilt Virgin, head downwards, poised
imminent above the shattered city, like an avenging wrath.  Clouds,
apparently of hewn marble, piled up for a storm, and already, over
the distant flats, there were skirts of rain drifting across the
sunlight.  An observation balloon, sausage-shaped and thickened
at one end by small subsidiary ballonets, lifted itself, almost
as though it were being hoisted by a series of pulls, out of one
of the hollows beneath them: and then hung swaying in the air,
much as a buoy heaves in a tide-way.  High above it some silvery
gleams circled, seen fugitively and lost again, and occasionally
one of these gleams would detach itself from the group and make off,
leaving a little trail of vapour behind it.  The men watched the
balloon idly, since there were interesting possibilities in that
direction: it might be shelled, or attacked by hostile aircraft
and set alight, in which case the occupants would have to jump for
it; and then perhaps their parachutes would not open.  They were
rather disappointed as it continued to swing there undisturbed.
Now and again, however, an aeroplane would become too inquisitive
concerning other people's business, and then, suddenly, miraculously
it seemed, puff after puff of white smoke appeared in its immediate
neighbourhood; it would ignore these attentions contemptuously for
a time, and then turn away, apparently satisfied with the result of
its inquiries.  There was very little excitement to be found in that
quarter either, unless it were by the pilot and his observer.

"Them bloody chaps 'ave a cushy job," said little Martlow with
resentful envy.  "Just fly over the line, take a peek at ol' Fritz,
and as soon as a bit o' shrapnel comes their way, fuck off 'ome
jildy, toot sweet."

He was sprawling beside Shem and Bourne, to whom he had attached
himself for the moment.  Having no particular chum, he was
everybody's friend; and being full of pluck, cheekiness and
gaiety, he made his way very cheerfully in a somewhat hazardous
world.  Shem was talking to him; but Bourne was occupied with
other matters, and seemed to be interested in the movements of
Regimental-Sergeant-Major Hope, who was at the other end of the
camp.

He was interested for many reasons.  At rollcall it was found that
there were thirty-three men left in the company, but probably
many of those absent were not severely wounded.  Bourne only
knew a few of the men outside his own section by name; and the
only two men belonging to it whom he had actually seen wounded
were Caswell and Orgee, during the last stage of the attack near
the station, when they had been brought down by a machine-gun.
They had crawled into shelter, and eventually a stretcher-bearer
had helped them.  Caswell had been hit in the upper part of the
chest; and Orgee in the cheek, the bullet knocking out some teeth
and breaking part of the lower jaw.  Some men by him had been hurt
by splinters before they went over the top.  One of them, Bridgenorth,
had only been slightly hurt, and had subsequently gone over the top
with them, but later in the day, having been hit again, went back
with some walking wounded.

It was a long business.  They had gauged the extent of the losses
suffered by the company as soon as they went on parade.  Name
after name was called, and in many cases no particulars were
available.  Then for a moment the general sense of loss would become
focused on one individual name, while some meagre details would be
given by witnesses of the man's fate; and after that he, too, faded
into the past.  Behind Bourne was a big stevedore from Liverpool,
though he was of Cockney origin; a man called Pike, a rough, hard-
bitten character, with a good heart.

"Redmain" was the name called out; and as at first there was no
reply, it was repeated.  "Has anyone seen anything of Redmain?"
"Yes, sir," cried Pike, with sullen anger in his voice.  "The poor
bastard's dead, sir."

"Are you sure of that, Pike?" Captain Malet asked him quietly,
ignoring everything but the question of fact.  "I mean are you sure
the man you saw was Redmain?"

"I saw 'im, sir; 'e were just blown to buggery," said Pike, with
a feeling that was almost brutal in its directness.  "E were a chum
o' mine, sir, an' I seen 'im blown into fuckin' bits.  'E got
it; just before we got to their first line, sir."

After a few more questions, Sergeant Robinson, calling the roll in
place of Sergeant-Major Glasspool, who had been rather seriously
wounded soon after Bourne had seen him in the German front line,
passed to another name.

"Rideout."

Even though they could not always hear what he said, the other men
would crane their heads out to watch any man giving information,
and the officers questioning him.  Officers and men alike seemed
anxious to restrain their feelings.  The bare details in themselves
were impressive enough.  But under that restraint one could feel
the emotional stress, as when Pritchard told of Swale's end.  It
was only after the roll of the men had been called, that the men
were asked if they could give any information about Mr Watkins,
or Mr Halliday.

Of those on parade Bourne, apparently, was the only one to have
seen Mr Halliday after he had been wounded, and Captain Malet had
questioned him very closely.  Bourne, like every man who came in
touch with Captain Malet, had a great admiration for him.  He was
about twenty-four years of age, with a sanguine complexion, blue
eyes, and fair, rather curly hair.  He stood about six feet four,
and was proportionately bulky, so that his mere physical presence
was remarkable; at the same time, the impression he left on the
mind was not one of mass, but of force, and speed.

It was his expression, his manner, something in the way he moved
and spoke, which made one feel that only an enormous effort
enabled him to bridle the insubordinate and destructive energy
within him.  Perhaps in battle it broke loose and gratified its
indomitable appetites.  This is not to say that he was fearless:
no man is fearless, fear is one of the necessary springs of human
action; but he took pleasure in daring, and the pleasures of men
are probably incomplete, unless some poignancy accompanies them.
Just before the attack was launched, he had climbed out of the
trench and walked along the parapet, less as though he were
encouraging the men, than as though he were taunting them; and
after they were back in their original position that night, he had
found that he had forgotten his ash-stick, and had returned to the
captured trenches to get it.  There was nothing deliberate in
either of these actions, they were purely spontaneous.  He would
not have gone into an attack with a hunting-horn, or dribbled a
football across no-man's-land: probably he would have thought
anything of the kind a piece of sentimental levity.  All that he
did was improvised, and perhaps he had more than his fair share
of luck.

Evidently he was very much troubled about Mr Halliday; and
whenever he was troubled, he became impatient and angry, not with
any particular individual, but with the nature of things, and the
order of the universe.  Mr Watkins had been killed outright, and
there was no more to be said on that point, except that he was one
of many good fellows.  There was nothing perfunctory in that
summary regret; it was keen and deep, but one could not pause on
it.  The case of Mr Halliday was different.  Bourne had seen him
first with a slight wound in the arm, and had then seen him wounded
again in the knee.  Probably the bone was broken.  That was in the
German outpost line, and he had been left there in comparative
shelter with other wounded who were helping each other.  After that
moment, nothing further was known of him, as they had no
information of him having passed through any dressing-station.
Moreover, the medical officer, after working all day, had taken
the first opportunity to explore a great part of the ground, and
to make sure, as far as that were possible, that no wounded had been
left uncollected.  Of course night and the shellholes may not have
yielded up all their secrets.  The problem of Mr Halliday's fate
seemed insoluble.  At last Captain Malet ceased to probe the
mystery.  He dropped it abruptly, and asked Bourne about himself,
with a half humorous kindliness; then, the men having been
dismissed, he walked off towards the orderly-room looking
preoccupied and tired.

Shortly afterwards Captain Malet saw Corporal Tozer and asked him
a good many questions about Bourne; and then a little later the
corporal met the regimental, who also asked about Bourne, and added
that he wished to see him when they had moved to Sand-pits.
Corporal Tozer, finding that two separate lines of inquiry were
converging on Bourne's somewhat insignificant person, concluded
that he was to be given a stripe, and he told him so, as they sat
smoking together after dinner, giving him besides a full account of
everything that had been said.  Bourne had no ambition to become an
acting lance-corporal, unpaid.  He preferred the anonymity of the
ranks.  He wished that he had not taken down his crossed guns on
coming overseas, for if Mr Manson had seen them on his sleeve, he
would have been put in the snipers' section, and whatever the trials
and perils of a sniper's life might be, it was solitary and, up to
a point, inconspicuous.  Bourne's preferences were irrelevant to
Corporal Tozer, who gave him good advice, which Bourne hoped was
premature.

The conversation flagged for a moment, and then Corporal Tozer took
it up again.

"Captain Malet's not in a very good skin today," he said; "'e 'as
to take over as adjutant, temp'ry; and there ain't no bloody love
lost between 'im an' the O. C., I can tell you.  An' then, there's
another thing: that bloody old colour-sergeant in the orderly-room,
if 'e got 'arf a chance o' puttin' a knife into the regimental 'e'd
take it, dam' quick, see?  Well, you know what Captain Malet's like.
Oh, I'm not sayin' anything against 'im; 'e knows a good man from a
bad un, an' you couldn't wish for a better officer.  But 'e doesn't
know 'ow bloody bad some o' the bad uns can be.  When you come to
think of it in that way, Captain Malet ain't got no more sense than
a kid at school."

"He's all right," said Bourne dispassionately; "anyway, he will
always take his own line."

"Would 'e take 'is own line wi' the O. C.?  Yes, 'e would too;
an' a nice bloody mess 'e'd make of it.  The major's only
temp'ry 'imself.  An' what's a man like who's only temp'ry, an'
wants 'is job pukka?  Why a bloody guardsman couldn't please the
bugger.  You take a corp'ral comin' from the first battalion, or
from the second, same as I did, an' what's 'e think o' this
fuckin' mob, eh?  Well, it's a dam' sight worse when you get an
officer from another regiment takin' command o' the battalion.
'E's been cribbin' everything.  'E's asked Brigade already to
send 'im an officer competent to take over the duties of adjutant.
Captain Malet don't want the adjutant's job; but 'e don't want
Brigade to think he'll never make anything better'n a good company
officer, does 'e?  The colour-sergeant's just goin' to sit back,
an' let 'im get on with it.  'E's due for 'is pension, an' 'e's
tryin' to work 'is ticket.  Then there's the regimental.'

"Well, nobody can teach the regimental his job," said Bourne,
decisively.

"I'm not sayin' anything against 'im," said the corporal.  "E's a
friend o' yours, though I can't say I'm sweet on 'im myself.  I
don't mind a man bein' regimental, but 'e gives 'imself too many
bloody airs, thinks 'imself more class than most of us, an' tries
to talk familiar to officers as don't know enough to keep 'im in
'is place.  I'm not worryin' about 'im.  But what's goin' to
'appen if 'e an' the colour-sergeant start scrappin' in the
orderly-room?"

The thought of a scrap in the orderly-room gladdened Bourne's jaded
soul, and he had laughed softly to himself.  The corporal got up,
dusted bits of dead grass from his trousers, and they put their
kit together for the move.

Now, listening a little distractedly to Shem and Martlow, while
watching the approach of the regimental-sergeant-major, Bourne
turned over these matters in his mind.  He did not doubt for a
moment that Tozer had told him all this so that he could drop a
hint to the regimental if he thought fit; and Tozer was a decent
man, who wasn't trying to work off a grudge, or make mischief.  The
position of affairs was very much as the corporal had described
it, but Bourne saw it from a slightly different angle.  He had had
it on the tip of his tongue, more than once in the course of the
conversation, to tell the corporal that Major Blessington was a
gentleman, and, whatever his private feelings for Captain Malet
might be, would do nothing that was not honourable; but he had
wisely refrained, for fear of seeming to imply that the
corporal's standard of conduct in these matters was necessarily
inferior because it was different.  After all, honour, in that
connection, is only an elaborate refinement of what are the decent
instincts of the average man, and in the process of its refinement,
perhaps there is a corresponding finesse thrown into the other
scale as an off-set.

War, which tested and had wrecked already so many conventions,
tested not so much the general truth of a proposition, as its truth
in relation to each and every individual case; and Bourne thought
of many men, even men of rank, with military antecedents, whose
honour, as the war increased its scope, had become a fugitive and
cloistered virtue, though it would probably renew its lustre again
in more costermonger times.

He did not blame them; only after considering all possible
grounds for their absence, it left him perplexed.  What he did
blame in them was their readiness to judge others who had at least
submitted to the test.  It was rather as though they wished to
make some vicarious atonement for their own lapse; but a man who
has forgotten the obligations of loyalty should not set up as a
judge.  If this conventional notion of honour would not fit into
the corporal's scheme of things, he himself could safely discard
it.  It may have been very well so long as it had been possible
to consider the army as a class or a profession, but the war had
made it a world.  It was full of a diversity of God's creatures:
honour, with some, might be a grace, and with others duty an
obligation, but self-interest, perhaps in varying measure, was
common to them all.  Even in the actual ecstasy of battle, when a
man's soul might be torn suddenly from its scabbard to flash in an
instant's brightness, it was absent not for long.  When one
returned to the routine of camp and billets, one had to take the
practical and more selfish view; and if a nice sense of honour
were unable to restrain the antipathy which the major and Captain
Malet felt for each other, their own interests might be expected to
provide an efficient check.  It operated equally, where there were
none of these niceties, with the regimental and the colour-sergeant,
but here the interests did not follow the same direction.

As the colour-sergeant was quite openly working his ticket,
incompetence, if calculated, might even help to procure his end,
and would be charitably condoned as only another symptom of his
pensionable years.  If he were out to satisfy some old grudge, he
had his opportunity in the present condition of affairs, and the
corporal was right; but after all it was none of Bourne's
business, apart from the fact that the regimental, when a
sergeant-instructor at a training camp, had been decent to him.
Anyway, he had to go and see him now; and telling Shem he would be
back in a minute, he moved off to intercept his man before he
should reach the sergeant-majors' tent.

"Corporal Tozer told me you wished to see me, sir."

"Hullo, Bourne, your bloody luck has brought you through again,
has it?  Captain Malet has been talking to me about you.  I think
he means to tackle you about going in for a commission when we get
behind the line.  We are going back for a rest.  It won't be any
bloody rest for me, though.  I have to do the work of the whole
battalion.  I thought you might come along to my tent tonight,
though as a matter of fact I haven't a tent to myself, in this
bloody camp.  Have to muck in with the company-sergeant-majors.
However, you come along about nine o'clock.  There's some buckshee
rum.  There'll be a rum ration in any case at nine o'clock, so
perhaps you had better come a bit later."

"I rather wanted to see you alone, sir.  I don't like butting in,
where there are a lot of sergeant-majors.  They probably won't
like it either, and to tell you the truth I don't much care about
leaving Corporal Tozer sitting in the tent.  After all I shall have
to tell him where I'm going."

"Oh, that's all rot.  I'll make it right with the sergeant-majors,
after all I'm running this show, and I don't see why I shouldn't
please myself once in a bloody while.  You weren't so particular
at Tregelly, when you pinched a sergeant's greatcoat and came into
the sergeant's mess of the fifth-sixth with us that Sunday.
Where's the difference?  Bring Tozer along with you, he's in orders
for an extra stripe, and we can make the excuse that he has only
come along to wet it.  Sergeant Robinson is to be company-sergeant-
major.  Poor Glasspool was pretty badly damaged, I hear.  Tell
Sergeant Tozer I told you to bring him."

"You tell him, sir, and tell him to bring me.  It will look much
better that way; and he's an awfully decent chap.  I don't want a
commission.  But I wanted to give you a tip on the quiet.  I don't
know yet whether it is worth bothering about, but has that old
colour-sergeant in the orderly-room got any grudge against you?'

"My good bloody man, every incompetent ass in the battalion has
got a grudge against me.  What's his trouble?"

"Oh. I don't know enough to say; I have just put one or two
things together.  Probably I hear a good many things you don't;
but if he hasn't any motive, then it is not worthwhile giving a
thought to the matter."

"You leave the motive to me.  What's the game?"

"Well, they say that with the colonel and the adjutant both gone,
and with the Major not entirely pleased with Captain Malet as
adjutant, he may be able to find or make an opportunity.  If I
were in your place..."

"Well, I don't mind hearing your advice, even if I shouldn't take
it."

"Don't anticipate him, and don't try to get in first.  Let the
orderly-room do its own work, instead of trying to run the whole
show yourself.  And if you must quarrel with him quarrel on a point
of your own choosing, not on one of his.  He's pretty cunning, and
he has got you weighed up."

"So have you, apparently.  I thought the bugger was being a little
more oily than usual.  Anyway, thanks for the tip.  I shall tell
Sergeant Tozer to bring you along with him."

He walked off, and Bourne went back to Shem and Martlow.  Several
of the company-sergeant-majors and quartermaster-sergeants were
with the regimental when Sergeant Tozer, whose new rank sat a
little stiffly on him as yet, came up on some routine duty;
and the regimental used the opportunity to make them consenting
parties to his invitation.

"I'm damned glad your promotion has gone through, sergeant.
Come along to us after the rum issue tonight and wet the stripe
for luck.  Bring Bourne with you, if you like.  None of you fellows
mind if Sergeant Tozer brings Bourne along, do you?  He's quite a
decent chap.  Plays the game you know, so it won't matter for once
in a way.  That's all right, then; bring him along, sergeant.
Bourne and I became rather pally at Tregelly; of course at a
musketry camp you all muck in together more or less.  I was his
instructor, and when he came out here and found I was regimental,
you might have thought he'd never seen me before in his life.
You may tell him privately, if you like, sergeant, that Captain
Malet wants him to go for a commission.  Said he was a damned
useful man."

A little to his surprise, Sergeant-Major Robinson indirectly
supported him.

"I was goin' to ask you about Bourne, major," he said.  "Thought
there might be a chance to shift 'im into the signals section,
where 'e'd find things a bit easier.  'E's pretty well
buggered-up, an' it's not as though 'e were a slacker.  'Owever,
if 'e's goin' for a commission..."

"That's just the bloody difficulty,' said the regimental.  "I'd
bet a level dollar that, when the captain asks him, Bourne will
say he would rather stay as he is.  Of course if he did, one could
shove him into sigs whether he liked it or not; that's if we don't
get enough trained signallers in the new drafts.  You can't put an
untrained man in, if there are trained men waiting.  After all, we
don't get much chance of training men ourselves."

"Well, if I'd my way," said Sergeant-Major Robinson obstinately,
"I'd let them bloody conscripts sweat a bit first."

"It's no damned good talking," answered the regimental.  "We've
got to make the best of 'em.  Once they're here you can't make any
difference between them and the older men.  They've got to shake
down together, and you know it as well as I do.  A good many of
them are boys, too, who couldn't have come sooner."

Considering little Martlow and Evans, neither of whom were
seventeen, the sergeant-major remained unconvinced; but he
recognised the expediency of the argument, and no more was said.
Sergeant Tozer walked off, surprised and flattered, both by the
invitation and the manner of it.  His importance showed a definite
increase.

"I don't want to go and butt in among a lot of sergeant-majors,"
said Bourne petulantly; and his manner by no means implied that
he considered sergeant-majors to be the salt of the earth.  Then,
with apparent reluctance, he allowed himself to be persuaded, Shem
intervening effectively.

"Take your cooker," said that astute counsellor.  "It'll do as a
mug; and then if you can scrounge any buckshee rum for tea in the
morning, the cover will keep it good.  See, it fits quite tight."

Army rum is potent stuff, especially when the supplies of tea and
water have run out, and one drinks it neat out of a dixie.  They
had just settled down comfortably, and the regimental was telling
them some of his experiences with Bourne at Tregelly, when Major
Blessington returned from visiting friends in the neighbourhood,
and was heard shouting outside the tent.  The regimental buttoned
himself into his tunic hurriedly, shoved on a cap, and went out.
The others in the tent heard the commanding officer say:

"Sergeant-major, don't you think there's rather a lot of light
showing from the camp?  Oh, I don't mean from your tent."

Then they heard the regimental, full of zeal, and bursting with
suppressed blasphemy.

"Put that light out!  Put that light out!" His voice showed he was
moving about the camp.  "Put that bloody light out!"

"Put two o' them fuckin' candles out, Thompson, and please the
bugger," said Hales, quartermaster-sergeant of B Company, who
was one of the party in the sergeant-majors' tent, to the
storekeeper.  "E's as fussy as five folks, now 'e's out o' the
bloody line again.  'E don't stir up there no more'n a mouse.
It don't make no differ to us; we can find the way to our mouths
in the dark.  'Ave you got a bit o' cheese there 'andy?  I could
fancy a bit o' cheese."

Major Blessington had retired to his tent, determined in his mind
that now they were going behind the line he would lick this sloppy
mob into something like shape.

"That bugger takes me for a bloody lance-jack," said the
regimental, hot and indignant, on his return.  "Who put out those
candles?"  "I told Thompson to put two of 'em out," said Hales;
"just to please the bastard.  'E can light 'em again now, if you
like."

"He expects me to go to kip in the fuckin' dark, I suppose?  Give
me some more of that bloody rum, Thompson.  I've been shouting
myself hoarse.  What was I saying?  Oh, yes!  About how Bourne and
I palled up at Tregelly.  Well, there were these two bloody great
Lancashire laddies firing their course there, and they were so
thick you could never separate the buggers; but on the Saturday
they went into Sandby for a spree, and got properly pissed-up
there.  They picked up with some woman or other, and she walked
part of the way back with them over the golf links.

"I don't know exactly what happened, but when they came back into
camp they started out to call each other everything they could
get their bloody tongues round, and things went from bad to worse
until one of 'em fetched the other an almighty clout on the jaw,
which toppled the bugger over.  When he got on his feet again, he
went absobloody-lutely fanti; picked up a bayonet, and wounded
his best pal in the arse.  Of course he bled all over the fuckin'
hut, and that sobered him up a bit, but by that time every bugger
there was trying to get the bayonet away from the other artist.
Old Teddy Coombes got it.  Do you remember old Teddy?  Well, when
the wounded man saw his best pal in the centre of what looked like
a Rugby scrum--you know how all Lancashire men fight with their
feet, it comes o' wearing clogs, I suppose--he sailed in again from
behind shouting out: "I'm comin' Bill; give the buggers hell."
Bill was biting one of the recruits in the calf of the leg
at that particular moment, so he didn't really need any bloody
encouragement.

"Just at that moment I got back from the sergeants' mess, so I
began to take a lively interest in the proceedings myself, and the
next minute there were two bloody scrums where there'd only been
one before.  However, at the end of the discussion, and it was a
first-class scrap I can tell you, there was Teddy Coombes with
about ten recruits sitting on one of the fuckin' heroes, and there
was I with another ten sitting on the other; and when you couldn't
hear anything else but loud breathing, two of the military police
came in and wanted to know in a superior way what the fuckin'
hell all the noise was about.  Would you credit it?  Those two
buggers had been at the door the whole time, and had been in too
big a bloody funk to come in, until it was all over and they knew
they weren't wanted.  Of course it was all up then; but it took
a small army to march those two Lancashire laddies down to the
clink all the same.  They were a bonny pair all right.  When I'd
wiped the sweat from my face, and was taking stock of the situation,
the first thing I noticed was Bourne, sitting up in his bed quite
quietly, smoking a fag; and looking as though he thought the whole
thing in very poor taste.'

"I wasn't taking any fortresses that night," said Bourne contentedly.
He was drinking rum out of an enamelled mug; and the cooker with
cover complete had passed, quite openly, so as to escape remark,
into the hands of the storekeeper.

"It made me bloody wild to see him sitting there like that.
It didn't seem to me that there was any esprit de corps about it.
All right, you bugger, I said to myself, meaning him of course,
I'll get you yet. I didn't know him then.  Do you know Sergeant
Trent?  A first battalion man.  I had been up at the mess with him,
but he didn't know anything about the scrap, as he'd gone straight
down to the big barrack-room.  He was going to put in for a pass
until midnight on Monday, and make an excuse that he wanted to see
his wife.  Well, our two sportsmen from Lancashire, one of whom
was suffering from what the M. O. described as a superficial flesh
wound, though it would have been a damned sight more serious if
he'd had it himself; they spent all Sunday recovering in the clink,
and on Monday, after we got back from the range, they were up before
the camp commandant.

"Bourne was escort; and you never, in all your life, saw anything
so bloody funny as Bourne leading in my two Lancashire lads,
either of whom could have put him in one of their pockets and kept
him there.  They'd nothing to say, very wisely, except that they
really loved each other like brothers, and that the whole episode
had been a pure accident.  The commandant was unsympathetic, and
asked them whether they would take his punishment or go before a
court-martial; and again very wisely they left it to him.  You
couldn't have met a nicer pair of lads on the whole, except for
their bad habits.  He gave them all he could give them, which was
a hundred and sixty-eight hours' cells.

"Well, they had to have an escort to Milharbour, and I arranged
with the officer that Bourne and I should be the escort, the
general idea being, of course, that if there were any more bloody
trouble lying about he could help himself to all he wanted and a
bit more as well; or if the lambs went quietly, then Bourne and
Sergeant Trent and myself could have a merry party in Milharbour
after we had handed them over, Bourne to be in the chair.  We
tried to put wind up him by telling him they were pretty hard-bitten
offenders, and he seemed to mop it up.  We got to the station, and
then Sergeant Trent and I saw two pushers we knew from Sandby on
the train, and Trent was pretty keen on one of them..."

"Thought you said 'e 'ad a wife in Milharbour?' interrupted
Company-Quartermaster-Sergeant Hales, with the solemnity of a man
who is a little drunk but still unsatisfied.

"Well, she was no fuckin' use to him when he was at Tregelly, was
she?  She didn't live at Milharbour, either; and he wasn't going
to see her anyway.  He was very fond of her really, and wouldn't
have done anything to hurt her feelings for a lot.  Would he,
Bourne?"

"They were a most devoted couple, sir," said Bourne tersely.

"Well, Sergeant Trent and I got in with the two pushers, and left
Bourne with the two prisoners.  How did you get on with them,
Bourne?"

"Oh, we hit it off all right, sir,' said Bourne indifferently.
"Of course, you had given me orders to treat them strictly.
They were two able-bodied six-footers, accustomed to chucking
tons of coal about, and I stood a pretty poor chance if they
chose to make a rough house of it.  Besides they had their
kitbags with them, as well as their rifles: and they could have
brained me with either.  Of course I may have looked very pretty
in belt and bayonet, but I was not exactly filled with confidence.
My business was to establish a moral superiority over two members
of the criminal classes.  One of them turned to me as soon as the
train started, and said: "Can we smoke, chum?" I said no, like a
fool; and they turned away quietly and looked out of the
windows at the sea.  Well, I was sorry for them and I wanted to
smoke myself; and if they couldn't smoke because they were
prisoners, I couldn't either, because I was on duty.  You had told
me I was to treat them strictly, but after all, sir, you had
deserted from duty..."

"I like your blasted cheek," exclaimed the regimental, surprised;
but there was a general appreciation of the point, and Bourne
continued tranquilly:


"...so I had to take such practical measures as I thought best,
and I took out my cigarette case, and handed it to them.  The man
who had been wounded was not too well.  I expect his behind was
sore. I carried his kitbag for him when we changed trains at Pembroke;
and then again up the hill to the gate.  You and Sergeant Trent
didn't come on the scene again until I had landed my prisoners
in the guardroom, and the sergeant wouldn't take them over from
me because you had the ticket.  In the interval the prisoners and
I had all become quite friendly."

"I wonder you didn't tell them to cut and run for it," said the
regimental ironically.  "After I handed over the prisoners,
Sergeant Trent and I went into the mess and had a bottle of Bass
each, and gave Bourne one at the back door.  Then the three of us
went up to Sergeant Willis's bunk; we had some tea there, and
passed the time until the boozers had opened.  We thought we had
got Bourne weighed up, and he was only a bloody fool.  He was a
bloody masterpiece.

"As soon was we got into a boozer we started mopping up the beer,
and he had drink for drink with us, beer or stout; but then he
said he was tired of long drinks, and suggested that we had better
have some gin and bitters.  We improved quite a lot on that, but it
didn't seem to make any difference to Bourne, who said we ought to
have a meal.  We were down in the Hare and Hounds then, in the back
parlour.  He ordered some steak and onions, but we couldn't eat
much, though he seemed pretty hungry; and when we sat down to the
table he said we had better make a party of it, and he ordered
some champagne.  Oh, he took charge all right, and did the thing
properly; said he wanted a sweet, and as they didn't have
anything but tinned peaches, ordered those, and told us liqueur
brandy was the proper stuff to drink with tinned peaches.  There
were two girls there, Sergeant Trent was a bit sweet on..."

"Sergeant Trent be blowed, sir," interrupted Bourne.  "I don't
know anything about the two girls in the train, but the girl at the
pub was your affair; only you didn't want it known because your
affections were ostensibly engaged in another part of the town.
After all, Sergeant Trent was a good friend of mine, and I
can't..."

"Have it your own way, then; it didn't matter a damn anyway;
because as soon as they heard Bourne had been standing us gin and
bitters, and champagne, and liqueur brandy, they were all over
him.  One sat on one arm of his chair, and one on the other, and he
fed them bits of peaches stuck on the end of a fork, treating them
just as though they were a pair of pet dogs or two bloody
parrots; and then he said in an absent-minded way that he didn't
want to break up the party, but the last train went at
eight-thirty, and it was a quarter past already, so that there was
just time for a stirrup-cup, as he called it, before we left.

"If any of you chaps go on the piss with Bourne, and he offers you
a stirrup-cup, you can take it from me he has got you beat.  He
ordered brandy and soda for five, and that made the girls lively
too, as they had had a few before they came in.  And now, he
says, we really must say goodbye.  It was bloody easy to say
goodbye, but Sergeant Trent tried to get up, and then he sat down
again, laughing in a silly way: we were both just silly drunk,
and there was Bourne as smart and quick as Sergeant Chorley on
parade, except that his cap was off and one of the girls had
ruffled his hair a bit.  We heard the bloody engine whistle and
the train go, and there we were, with ten or eleven bloody miles
to walk back to Tregelly before rouse parade.  Bourne was quite
philosophic about it; said it would sober us all up, there was
nothing like a good long walk to sweat it out of you, only we
ought to allow plenty of time.  Whenever I thought of it I got
wind up, and then I'd pretend it was a joke and laugh like hell.
Sergeant Trent was the same: we were both just silly drunk.

"Well, Bourne said he must get a little air, he would go out for
ten minutes, and in the meantime we were not to have anything to
drink.  Those two bitches didn't pay any attention to us, said
we'd insulted them, and were no gentlemen; but Bourne could do
anything he liked with them, and he was just as polite as he could
be.  Well, he went out after whispering something to the two girls,
who stayed with us, and in about ten minutes or a quarter of an
hour he was back again.

"We had a few more drinks, but he didn't press us; only he drank
drink for drink with us, that I'll swear.  I seemed to see him
sitting there, looking as though he doubted our ability to walk,
and the next thing I knew was that I woke up, in bed with my boots
on, in the big a barrack-room at Tregelly; and there was Sergeant
Trent looking bloody awful in the next bed.  We had moved down out
of the hut on Monday morning before leaving for Milharbour, as
another party left the camp that day.  I didn't know how we had
got back; but Corporal Burns told me that at about half-past
twelve Bourne had come in, and asked him to come down to the
wall and help carry us up.  When the corporal came down he saw,
on the other side of the wall, a car, and the driver, and the two
girls.  They had butted us over the wall, because one of the other
regiments furnished the guard that night, so Bourne had stopped the
car and made the driver switch off the lights some way back.
Corporal Burns told me that he sat by the fire talking to him a
bit, and then got into kip much as usual."

"Corporal Burns was an odd chap," said Bourne in a disinterested
way.  "Sometimes he would sit up most of the night, looking into
the fire and brooding.  I never knew why, but somebody said that
he had deserted from another regiment because of some trouble, and
that the authorities knew about it, but sympathised with him, and
wouldn't take action.  He had a proper guardsman's word of command.
He was a nice chap.  I remember he was sitting over the fire when
I came in; and after we had put you on your bed I said to him that
he looked as though he could do with a drink.  He had some sugar,
so we boiled some water and had a glass of hot rum before we turned
in.' "Yes," said the regimental; "there was this bugger recommending
plenty of hot tea in the morning, to flush out our kidneys, and he
had the greater part of a bottle of rum hidden in his kit.
Sergeant Trent and I both drank tea, and we were both bloody sick;
but about ten minutes before rouse parade he gave us each a bottle
of beer, which he had brought back from Milharbour, and that just
got us through.  He told us sweetly he was orderly-man, and was
not going on rouse parade.  Mr Clinton took us out for a run, and
when we came back we were sick again.  Bourne always knew someone
likely to be useful in emergencies, and we asked him to go up to
the canteen manager and try and scrounge some more beer; but he
said we must eat something first; he would see what could be done
after breakfast.  Well, we went across to the cookhouse, and tried
to ram food down, but it didn't do; and then Bourne, he always
came into the cookhouse instead of the mess-room too, appeared
behind us suddenly, with a medicine bottle, and poured a good
double tot of rum into our tea.  I couldn't speak; but Trent
looked up at him with tears of gratitude and said under his breath:
'You're a bloody miracle.'  He didn't have any himself."

"I was firing at four hundred, five hundred, and six hundred yards
that morning," Bourne explained.  "I took the same bottle down to
the range with me, and when the detail before mine was firing I got
behind a sandhill to take a small swig to steady myself.  Just as
I got the bottle out, Mr Clinton came round, and saw it; he was
firing too, you remember.  'Bourne, what have you got in that
bottle?' he said.  'Oil, sir,' I replied.  'That's the very thing
I want,' he said.  'Well, sir," I said, 'here's a piece of four by
two ready, and, wait a bit, sir, here's a clean piece, as
well.'  'Thanks awfully, Bourne," he said; and when he had sauntered
off I drank that rum so quickly I nearly swallowed the bottle
with it.  I fired quite well: got seventeen at four hundred,
eighteen at five hundred, and seventeen at six: top scores at each
range, and I got my crossed guns with a couple of points to spare.
Well, sir, I think I had better go to kip."

"We had all better go to kip, but you can have another tot of rum
before you go.  Now you all know what I think about Bourne.  He has
never asked a favour of me, and when Sergeant Trent and I took him
out meaning to get him canned up and generally make a fool of him,
he drank us both to a standstill.  You didn't leave us there,
Bourne, to get out of the mess we had made for ourselves as best
we could, while you went back by train.  You got us back with
considerable difficulty, and you put us safely into kip, and you
had the laugh on us, and you forgot it.  Well, I think you are a
bloody good sport.  Goodnight, Bourne; goodnight, sergeant."

"Thanks awfully, sir," said the embarrassed Bourne.  "Goodnight,
Sir.  Goodnight, all."

As he was going, the storekeeper handed him his cooker casually.
"Thanks, goodnight, Thompson; see you tomorrow at Meaulte.  Mind
that tent rope, sergeant.  Here, give me your arm."

"You know, Bourne, of chap," said the sergeant, who was a little
unsteady in speech as well as in gait, but very solemn.  "That
wash a lie you tol' that offisher."

"I'm afraid it was, sergeant.  It touches my conscience sometimes;
and I pinched some of his whisky, too, up the line the other
night."

"I wouldn't 'a' believed it of you, Bourne.  I really wouldn't 'a'
believed it o' you if you 'adn't tol' me yo'sel'."

Bourne managed to deposit the sergeant in his place without making
any undue disturbance in the tent.  Then he undressed, pulled up
his blanket, and smoked another cigarette.  It was a lie, he admitted
cynically to himself; but not being exactly a free agent in the
army, he wondered how far the moral problem was involved.
Every man had a minimum of self-will, and when an external
discipline encroached on it, there was no saying what might happen
as a result.  When he had finished his cigarette he turned over and
slept without a dream.



Chapter  IV


And now their pride and mettle is asleep.  --- SHAKESPEARE


The next day they moved back to the sordid squalor of Meaulte,
where they spent two nights housed in stables, and the draft
ceased to have a separate existence, being absorbed by the various
companies.  There was a kit inspection, at which Bourne's tin hat
was condemned, the fact being entered in a notebook by Sergeant-
Major Robinson; and that piece of ritual concluded the matter for
the time being, the company-quartermaster-sergeant having no surplus
tin hats at his disposal.  At Meaulte they were still within the
battle area, and there was nothing for them to do.  Shem, Bourne
and Martlow idled about, looking at the interminable train of motor
lorries, which passed through, day and night, without ceasing,
and so densely packed that it was difficult to cross the narrow
street between them.  Little Martlow had a grievance.  In the
attack he had annexed the field glasses of two German officers,
who being dead had no further use for them.  At Happy Valley,
seeing him needlessly decorated with the loot of battle, the
commanding officer had said to him peremptorily: "Hand
over those glasses to me, my boy.  I shall see that they are
forwarded to the proper quarter."  His action may have been
correct, from the official point of view, but to little Martlow
it was an unjustifiable interference with the rights of private
ownership.

"And now the bastard's wearin' the bes' pair slung round 'is own
bloody neck.  Wouldn't you've thought the cunt would 'a' give me
vingt frong for 'em anyway?"

"Your language is deplorable, Martlow," said Bourne in ironical
reproof; "quite apart from the fact that you are speaking of your
commanding officer.  Did you learn all these choice phrases in the
army?"

"Not much," said little Martlow derisively; "all I learnt in the
army was me drill an' care o' bloody arms.  I knew all the
fuckin' patter before I joined."

Shem grinned maliciously at Bourne, who could never offer any
serious resistance to Martlow's rosy-cheeked impudence.  Bourne
had seen the boy blubbering like the child he really was, as they
went over the top a couple of days earlier, but unaware that he was
blubbering, and possessed at the same time by a more primitive
fury than filled the souls of grown men.  It was unsafe to give
oneself the airs of riper experience with a boy of Martlow's
breed.  Probably life to a him had always been a kind of warfare;
and his precocity at times could be disconcerting.

"Voulez-vous m'embrasser, mademoiselle?" he cried provocatively to
a bovine female who replied only with a look of virtuous indignation.
"Well, thank Gawd we're going back to decent billets where there'll
be some chance of a bon time."

They marched from Meaulte to Mericourt, and on the way an enemy
plane swooped out of the blue and dropped two bombs, which
exploding on the hard macadam sent gravel and road metal flying
in all directions.  In spite of their casualties the men were very
steady, and though there was no cover, they moved quietly off the
unenclosed road on to soft wet turf, which would stifle to some
extent the effect of any more bombs.  Some of our own planes at
once attacked the Hun, and drove him off; a running fight ensued,
but it was apparently indecisive.  Evidently the enemy was
challenging our temporary supremacy in the air with a new type of
machine, for in the earlier stages of the battle he had not been
very troublesome.

Bourne had been set to pulling a Lewis-gun cart, a job which he
liked because it enabled him to get rid of his pack, which was
carried on the cart itself.  There were a couple of men behind,
to hold the cart back with a length of rope when going downhill.
Passing through Ville the men behind, in fooling with the rope,
let the cart run forward, and one of the iron rests in front tore
open the back of Bourne's left boot, and the flesh of his heel
as well.  It was a trivial thing, but painful, though he did not
trouble about it.  They had dinner just outside Mericourt, and
then entrained; but the van in which Bourne found himself had
nearer fifty than the forty men it was supposed to hold, packed
into it.  He contrived to keep by the door, sitting there with
his feet on the footboard outside, so that he got the air,
though he had no shade and the sun was fierce.  The men at the
back suffered considerably: they were both stifled and cramped:
and, unable to sit, in standing with nothing to steady them,
when the train swayed and jolted they fell and jostled against
each other.  A kind of impersonal bad temper, which could not
find any very definite object, developed among them; there was
some abuse, there were even threats and counter-threats, but
no actual quarrelling.  The general effect was one of a
recalcitrant acquiescence in the dispensations of an inscrutable
providence.

In the last couple of days their whole psychological condition
had changed: they had behind them no longer the moral impetus
which thrust them into action, which carried them forward on a wave
of emotional excitement, transfiguring all the circumstances of their
life so that these could only be expressed in the terms of heroic
tragedy, of some superhuman or even divine conflict with the powers
of evil; all that tempest of excitement was spent, and they were
now mere derelicts in a wrecked and dilapidated world, with sore
and angry nerves sharpening their tempers, or shutting them up in
a morose and sullen humour from which it was difficult to move
them.

Bourne often found himself looking at his companions as it were
from a remote distance, and then it sometimes seemed to him that
they had very little reason or sense of responsibility, apart
from that which the business imposed on them.  He was not
supercilious in this; he was merely wondering how far what he
felt himself was similar or equivalent to what they felt.  It
is a little curious to reflect that while each man is a mystery
to himself, he is an open book to others; the reason being, perhaps,
that he sees in himself the perplexities and torment of the mental
processes out of which action issues, and they see in him only the
simple and indivisible act itself.  While he imagined that the other
men were probably a little less reflective and less reasonable than
he was himself, he frankly envied them the wanton and violent
instincts, which seemed to guide them, or at least carry them,
so successfully through this hazardous adventure.  It was a
piece of naivety on his part.  They  had accepted him, and he
had mucked in with them quite satisfactorily.  But there was a
question which every man put to another at their first
acquaintance: What did you do in civil life?

It was a question full of significance, not only because it
recognised implicitly the endless variety of types to which
military discipline had given an apparent uniformity; but because
it implied also that, for the time being, civil life had been
obliterated, at least as far as they, were concerned: it existed
only precariously, and in a very attenuated form, somewhere in
the rear of the embattled armies, but for all practical
purposes it was not worth a moment's consideration.  Men had
reverted to a more primitive stage in their development, and had
become nocturnal beasts of prey, hunting each other in packs: this
was the uniformity, quite distinct from the effect of military
discipline, which their own nature had imposed on them.

There is an extraordinary veracity in war, which strips man of
every conventional covering he has, and leaves him to face a fact
as naked and as inexorable as himself.  But when a battalion has
been so thinned that it becomes negligible as a fighting unit, and
it is withdrawn from the line to refit, there is a tendency for
individual characteristics to reassert themselves; the pressure of
the opposed force is removed, and discipline, until the establishment
has been reorganised, is necessarily relaxed.  The bad temper which
steamed or exploded ineffectively among this van-load of angry men,
childish as it was, was symptomatic.  Bourne, who had scored in so
far as he had air and could sit on the floor, nursed his sore heel
and was as hot and as angry, as the rest of them.

It was already dusk when they detrained, and Bourne did not
notice the name of the station, though he imagined they were
somewhere in the neighbourhood of St Pol.  They had a march of
nine or ten miles in front of them; and another man having taken
his place with the Lewis-gun cart, Bourne fell in between Shem and
Martlow, and marched with his company again; but he was now quite
lame, and tired easily.  He was pretty well dead-beat before they
came to the end, otherwise the march through the cool dusk was
pleasant; a few scurrying rainstorms crossed their line, and
evidently, from the state of the road, it had rained heavily
there; but now the sky was mainly clear, with stars and a
half-moon, which looked up at them again from the puddles, and
there were long, straight lines of poplars which stood on either
side of them, erect, like notes of exclamation.  Bourne was a
little indignant when Shem, a tough, sturdy and generous person,
seeing him limping, offered to take his rifle.  It was after eleven
o'clock when they came to Beaumetz.  As soon as they entered the
village the battalion split itself up into several detachments, and
Mr Sothern, in charge of the party in which Bourne was included,
was not quite sure whether he had found the right billets; but he
told the men to fall out while he went in search of information,
and they sat in the kennel of the muddy street.  Except for
lights in one or two windows there was not a sign of life.  The men
sat there quietly, tired enough, but with not a trace of bad temper
left in them; a kind of contentment seemed to soak into them from
the stillness of the place.

When they had found their stables for the night, Bourne took
his boot off and examined his heel; his sock was hard with dried
blood, and the wound itself looked dirty, so as there was a light
showing in the house, he thought he would try for some hot water
to bathe it, and he knocked persuasively at the door.  It was
opened by an old man with a patient, inquiring expression on his
face.  When Bourne, speaking lamentable French, explained his need,
he was invited to enter, and then made to sit on a chair, while his
host brought some hot water in a basin and insisted on bathing the
wound himself.  When it was clean he went to a sideboard--the room
was a kind of kitchen-parlour-and brought out a bottle of brandy,
pouring some into a cup so that Bourne's heart rejoiced in him;
but the old man only took a strip of clean linen, which he folded
into a pad, and after saturating it with brandy, he once again
took up Bourne's foot in his capable hand, and squeezed the linen,
so that the brandy fell drop by drop onto the broken flesh.  It
stung a little, and Bourne, rather sceptical of its healing power,
would have preferred to take it internally; but against the old
man's voluble assurances that it was bon, tres bon pour les plaies,
he could find nothing to say.  Finally, his host took up what was
left on the linen pad and placed it on the wound, and Bourne drew
a clean sock over it.  He always carried an extra pair in his kit,
but it was a mere chance that they were clean.  Like most of the
men he had dumped everything that was not necessary, even his spare
shirt and underpants; for when a man has to carry nearly three
stone of kit and equipment on the march, he becomes disinclined to
take much heed for the morrow, and prefers to rely on the clean
change provided at the divisional baths, in spite of the uncertain
interval.

By the time the treatment was complete, Bourne's gratitude had
almost left him bankrupt in the French language; but the old man
increased his obligations by giving him a cup of steaming coffee,
well laced with that sovran remedy for a torn and swollen heel,
and they talked a little while.  He could not persuade his host to
take any payment, but he accepted a few cigarettes, which he broke
up and smoked in his pipe.  He was alone in the house, Bourne
gathered, and he had a son who was at the front.  His only other
relation was a brother who was a professor of English at a
provincial university.  These two facts seemed to establish a
degree of kindred and affinity between them, and when Bourne left
to sleep in his stable he was invited to come in again in the
morning.

He woke early, and not knowing where the cookers were, he took
advantage of the invitation, so that he could beg some hot water
for shaving.  He was surprised by the effect of the brandy on his
heel, as all the swelling had disappeared and the pain was no more
than a slight discomfort when he flexed his foot.  He found the old
man ill, and brewing himself some tea, which he took only as a kind
of physic, somewhat reluctantly.  Bourne looked at his newspaper,
in the hope of learning something about the war, but apart from a
few colourless details from the French front there was nothing;
no one knew anything about it; it was like one of the blind forces
of nature; one could not control it, one could not comprehend it,
and one could not predict its course from hour to hour.  The spirit
of the troops was excellent, the possibility of defeat was
incredible; but to calculate the duration of the conflict was
quite beyond the resources of the human mind: it was necessary
to look at these matters from a scientific standpoint, and the
scientific method was that of trial and error.  Bourne only
glanced hastily at all the solemn empty phrases, and was
wondering whether he could get a new pair of boots from the
shoemakers, unofficially to save time, before they paraded; and
when the old man had at last brewed his tea, he got a little hot
water and departed to shave.  The snobs were also kind to him, and
gave him a pair of boots which they assured him were of a type and
quality reserved entirely for officers, being of the best Indian
roan, a kind of leather of which Bourne had never heard.

"Strictly speakin'," said his friend Snobby Hines, "it's an officer's
boot, but it's a very small size, so you may  'ave that pair,
as they fit you.  'Ope we stay 'ere a bit.  It's quite a
bon place, two decent estaminets an' some mad'moiselles, not that
I see anything much in these French girls, you know: my ol'
curiosity at 'ome would make most of 'em look silly.  Well, you
can't 'ave everythink, so you've got to be content with what you
git."

Bourne did not trouble about the cryptic significance of these
words, he agreed with everything unreservedly, this being one of
the secrets of a happy life.  He liked his new boots because the
leather was strong but soft and pliable, and if they were a bit
oily, well, that would keep the wet out, and one did not have to
polish boots on active service.  They paraded at ten o'clock, for
a little extended order drill; but when they had fallen in
Sergeant Tozer asked if there was any man capable of working a
typewriter.  There was no reply from the ranks, though Bourne
had played about a little with a Blick.  They moved out into
the fields to drill.  But at eleven o'clock the regimental
appeared on the scene; and once again a typist was demanded,
and as there was no reply, the regimental singled out Bourne,
and crossquestioned him.  He knew very well that Bourne
was the most likely man, and when the latter admitted under
pressure that he could use the machine, he was told to report
at the orderly-room at one o'clock.  He was very unwilling to
take the job.  He was by no means an expert with a typewriter,
but that did not trouble him; what he disliked was the fact that
he would be sitting, for the greater part of the day, under the
eyes of authority.  He had no personal experience of the
orderly-room staff but, from hearsay alone, he had a very definite
prejudice against the men composing it, and it was almost a
relief to him to find from the very first moment that there were
good grounds for it, because he was spared the trouble of attempting
to adjust himself to these new conditions.  His job was a
temporary one, and it was his object to see that it didn't
become permanent; with which end in view, obedience, and a certain
amount of innocent stupidity, seemed the proper tactics to adopt.
He had made his own place in the company, and he was quite willing
to go back to it, that very night if they should think fit; and
to find an ample compensation for the apparent setback in the rowdy
good humour of his comrades.

The lance-corporal received him, with a suspicious air, and passed
him on to the corporal, who wore a more truculent expression, and
presented him to the colour-sergeant.  He was a cat-like individual,
who showed all his false teeth in a deprecating smile, and seemed
to consider Bourne as only the latest of those many tribulations
with which God, in his inscrutable wisdom, had chosen to afflict
a faithful servant.  While this little ceremony was in progress,
Captain Malet, upon whom the adjutant's duties had temporarily
devolved, entered the orderly-room; and as they stood to attention,
he acknowledged their existence coldly with a brusque salute; but
when he sat at his table and turned over some papers, Bourne caught
his eye, and a quick ripple of impish schoolboy humour flickered
for an instant on the officer's face.  He seemed always to find in
Bourne some stimulus to mirth.  Of course the others noticed it,
with the air of not noticing it, with an almost ostentatious
indifference, and wondered what this indecorous recognition might
imply.

"Show Bourne what he is supposed to do," said the colour-sergeant
to the lance-corporal with an almost ingratiating benevolence, but
with a slight stress on the word "supposed" that gave a sub-acid
flavour to his oiliness; and Bourne sat down before a small Corona
to learn his way about on it.  It did not occupy his whole
attention; he was aware that the others were scrutinising him
carefully, and his own rather delicate sensibility put out little
groping feelers in an attempt to apprehend some of the realities
of the situation.  The colour-sergeant was of course the dominating
factor, and the other two did not count, though in the rude phrase
of better men, they should have chalked their bloody boots.

When Captain Malet, who spent as little time as possible in that
uncongenial atmosphere, went out again, they talked among
themselves; and if the matter of their conversation was difficult
for an outsider to follow, its manner was sufficiently illuminating.
Bourne saw at once that his own particular job was a myth: even
the lance-corporal, Johnson, was not overburdened with work,
and all the typing done in the course of a day would not have taken
up twenty minutes of his time.  What these luxurious creatures
really wanted was a man to skivvy for them; and, though Bourne as
a rule avoided the use of coarse language, he knew precisely what
he would be before he acted as a kind of general batman to the
orderly-room; so when teatime came, he did not enter into any
unseemly competition with the lance-corporal for the honour of
fetching the colour-sergeant's; but, taking his mess-tin, went
off and sat with his own friends for half an hour.

"Ow do you like it?"  inquired Sergeant Tozer.

"Oh, it's cushy enough," Bourne answered indifferently.  "I don't
mind it for a week or so; but it is not a job I want for keeps.
I would rather be with the company."

"Some people don't know their bloody luck," said the sergeant
tersely.

"I don't know.  Your section were always fairly contented, except
when Fritz strafed them unnecessarily."

"Sergeant-Major Robinson wanted to know whether you would pinch 'im
some notebooks from the orderly-room, an' a few pencils?  'e an'
the quarter-bloke can't get anything out o' them buggers."

"I'll pinch anything the sergeant-major wants," said Bourne
recklessly; "only he will have to give me time to learn my way
about."  He went back to the orderly-room, and was released from
his arduous labours a little after half-past five; then, picking
up Shem and Martlow, he went off to an estaminet, determined to
have as bon a time as the place and their purses afforded.  The
battalion had been paid out at twelve o'clock, and the place was
crowded with uproarious men, stamping time with their feet on the
floor as they sang at the top of their voices:

Mademoiselle, she bought a cow, Parley-voo,
To milk the brute, she didn't know how, Parley-voo,
She pulled the tail instead of the tit,
And covered herself all over with--MILK...

A storm of loud cheers and laughter at the unwonted delicacy of
phrase drowned the concluding gibberish of the chorus.  Bourne
ordered a bottle of some poison concocted out of apples and
potatoes labelled champagne, which had a little more kick in it
than the vin rouge or French beer.  Then the three of them crowded
in among the men playing "crown and anchor", with Snobby Hines
rattling the dice-box.

"Oo's goin' to 'ave somethin' on the old mud'ook?  Come on, me
lucky lads, if yer don't speckyerlate yer can't accumyerlate.
Somethin' on the of mud'ook jest to try yer luck.  Y'all
finished, then?  Right!  There y'are.  It's the sergeant-major.
I tol' yer so.  An' off we go again, an' off we go again."

Bourne struck a vein of luck, and as he had crushed in next to
Thompson, the storekeeper, he gave him ten francs for services
rendered at Sand-pits.  He lost that in a few minutes, and Bourne
gave him another ten, which went the same way.  As Bourne's
generosity seemed to dry up, Thompson asked him for the loan of
five, and that vanished with an equal rapidity.  Shem won a little,
and Martlow lost, but lost cannily, buttoning up his purse when he
found the dice running against him.  But Bourne had a bit more than
his share of luck, and as the disconsolate Thompson still hung
about the altars of fortune, on which he had sacrificed already
more than double his pay, Bourne gave him five francs, and told him
to go and try his luck with wine or women, as he might do better
at another game.  Thompson took his advice, and turned away
disillusioned from an unsympathetic world; and then, oddly
enough, for a little while Bourne lost; but he played on, and his
luck turned again.  He got up having won about seventy-five francs,
and they had another bottle of champagne before setting off
through the darkness to their billets.

The old man still had a light in his kitchen, and Bourne decided to
pay him a visit and inquire after his health.  Bourne had a briar
pipe in a leather purse, which a friend in England had sent him,
though he never smoked a pipe; and he took it with him, and
presented it to his host as a tribute of gratitude.  The old man
was surprised and delighted.  He was quite well again, and offered
Bourne some cafe-cognac; but Bourne refused, explaining that they
would march away in the morning; though, if monsieur were agreeable,
he would come in early and have some coffee.  Monsieur professed
himself enchanted.



Chapter V



I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged
tyranny, who sways not as it hath power but as it is
suffered. -- SHAKESPEARE


For the next few days they were continually on the move, and
Bourne did nothing for the orderly-room but help to stow and
unstow a few tin deed-boxes, eating, marching and sleeping with
his company.  Captain NMalet had gone on leave unexpectedly,
and Captain Havelock became adjutant in his place.  The roads
were dusty, a lot of the route pave, hot and unyielding to the feet,
and the flat stones worn or shifted to an uneven surface; while the
sycamores or poplars bordering the sides were not close enough to
give much shelter from a pitiless sun.

At the end of the second day's march after leaving Beaumetz, they
halted under a stone wall which must have been about fifteen feet
high, with a single arched gateway opening in it.  On the other
side of the road pollarded willows leaned away from them to
overhang a quick-flowing little river, full of bright water.
Several of the new men had fallen out, and would be on the mat
for it in the morning, and they were all tired enough, the sweat
having soaked through their shirts and tunics to show in dark
patches on the khaki where the equipment pressed on it.

On the other side of the archway was a wide courtyard, with the
usual midden in the centre of it; at the back, a large house,
half-farm, half-chateau, with a huge stone-built barn on one side,
flanking the yard, and on the other almost equally substantial
stables and outbuildings.  It was conventual in appearance, with
a prosperous air.  When they pushed open the great doors of the
barn, and entered into that cool empty space, which would have
held two companies at a pinch, it had seemed to offer them the
pleasantest lodging they a had known for months: it was as lofty
as a church, the roof upheld by unwrought beams and rafters, the
walls pierced with narrow slits for light and air, and the floor
thick-littered with fine, dry straw.  Some panicky fowls flew up
into their faces, and then fled precipitately as they took possession.
They slipped off their equipment and wet tunics, and unrolled their
puttees before sprawling at ease.

"Cushy place, this," said Shem contentedly.  "Wonder what the
village is like, it would be all right if we were billeted here
for a week; that is, unless we're going on to some decent town."

"Some bloody thing's bitin' my legs," said Martlow after a few
minutes.

"Mine, too," said Bourne.  "What the hell...?"

"I'm alive with the buggers," said Pritchard angrily.

Men were scratching and cursing furiously, for the straw swarmed
with hen-fleas, which seemed to bite them in a hundred different
places at one and the same time.  Compared with these minute black
insects of a lively and vindictive disposition, lice were merely
caressing in their attentions; and the amount of profane blasphemy
which broke from the surprised and discomfited men was of an unusual
fervour.  For the moment they were routed, scratching themselves
savagely with dirty fingernails; and then gradually the bites
decreased, and they seemed, with the exception of an occasional nip,
to have become immune, hen-fleas apparently preferring a more
delicate pasture.  They caught one or two with considerable
difficulty, and examined them curiously: after all, they were not
so repulsive as the crawling, white, crab-like lice, which lived
and bred, hatching in swarms, on the hairy parts of one's body.
These were mere raiding, pleasure-seekers, and when the first
onset had spent its force, the fitful skirmishes which succeeded
it were endurable.

Old soldiers say that one should never take off boots and socks,
after a march, until one has cooled down, and the swelling in legs
and feet has vanished; bathing hot swollen feet only makes them
tender.  They rested until tea was ready, and in the distribution
of rations they were lucky; a loaf of bread among four, and a tin
of butter and a pot of jam among six.  Shem, Bourne and Martlow ate,
smoked and then, taking towels and soap, followed the river until
they found some seclusion, and there they stripped and bathed.
They did not know that bathing had been forbidden, and even after
they had dressed themselves partly again they sat on the bank
with their feet on the gravel bottom, letting the water ripple over
them.  One of the regimental police found them there, and rapped
out an adjectival comment on their personal characters, antecedents
and future prospects, which left nothing for the imagination to
complete.  As they showed an admirable restraint under the point
and emphasis of his remarks, he contented himself with heading them
back to billets, with a warning that the village was out of bounds,
and then took his own way along the forbidden road in search of
pleasure, like a man privileged above his kind.

"They don't care a fuck 'ow us'ns live," said little Martlow
bitterly.  "We're just 'umped an' bumped an' buggered about all
over fuckin' France, while them as made the war sit at 'ome
waggin' their bloody chins, an' sayin' what they'd 'ave done if
they was twenty years younger.  Wish to Christ they was, an'
us'ns might get some leaf an' go 'ome an' see our own folk once
in a while.'

"Too bloody true," Shem agreed.  "Five bloody weeks on the Somme
without a bath, and thirteen men to a loaf; and when they take
you back for a rest you can't wash your feet in a river, or go
into a village to buy bread.  They like rubbing it in all right.'

"What are you chewing the fat about?" asked Bourne.  "You've had a
bathe, and you're not paying for it.  Can't you take an ordinary
telling-off without starting to grouse about it?  You don't want to
drink someone else's bathwater in your morning tea, do you?  I'm
going over to the house to inspect the inhabitants.  There's a
mad'moiselle there, Martlow; just about your mark."

"You please yourself," said Martlow.  "I'm not goin'; I don't
like the look of the fam'ly."

Bourne found the womenfolk hospitable enough, and pleased himself
enormously.  He bought a couple of glasses of wine from madame,
who asked him not to tell the other men, as there were too many
of them.  Snatches of soldiers' choruses came from the barn
across the yard, and madame was full of praise of the English,
their courage, their contentment.  She asked Bourne if he sang,
and he laughed, lifting up his voice:

Dans le jardin de mon pere, lilas sont fleuris....

She seemed astonished by that, and beamed at him, her red face
bright with sweat.


Aupres de ma blonde, qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Aupres de ma blonde, qu'il fait bon dormir....


but he knew no more than a few lines of it.  She knew it well
enough, and told him it was not proper, at which he cocked his head
aside and looked at her knowingly; and then, satisfied that he had
turned that flank, gave his attention to the girl, who ignored it
discreetly.  She was not really pretty, but she had all the bloom
and venusty of youth, with those hazel eyes which seem almost
golden when they take the light under dark lashes.  Two oldish men
came in, and looked at Bourne with grave suspicion, while madame
and the girl bustled to get their evening meal.  Every time either
of these ladies approached him, Bourne, with an excessive politeness,
rose from his chair, and this seemed to increase the suspicion of
the younger man.

"Asseyez-vous, monsieur," he said with a tranquil sarcasm.  "Elles
ne sont pas immortelles."

"C'est dommage, monsieur," Bourne replied, apt enough for all his
clumsy French, and madame beamed at him again; but the discouragement
the men offered to his presence there was too strong for him, and
he took up his cap, thanking her for her kindness, bowing respectfully
to mademoiselle, and finally saluting the two hobereaux so
punctiliously that they were constrained to rise and acknowledge
his elaborate courtesy.  As he crossed the courtyard in the half-dark
he laughed softly to himself, and then whistled the air of "Aupres de
Ma Blonde" loudly enough for them to hear in the lighted room.

No one could tell what luck tomorrow might bring.

The girl had moved him a little.  She had awakened in him that
sense of privation, which affected more or less consciously all
these segregated males, so that they swung between the extremes of
a sticky sentimentalism and a rank obscenity, the same mind warping
as it were both ways in the attempt to throw off the obsession,
which was less desire than a sheer physical hunger, and could not
feed itself on dreams.

In the shuddering revulsion from death one turns instinctively to
love as an act which seems to affirm the completeness of being.  In
the trenches, the sense of this privation vanished; but it pressed
on men whenever they moved back again to the borders of civilised
life, which is after all only the organisation of man's appetites,
for food or for women, the two fundamental necessities of his
nature.  In the trenches his efforts were directed to securing an
end, which perhaps has a poor claim on his attention, for in
comparison with the business of keeping himself alive, the pursuit
of women, or even of food, may seem to rank only as the rather
trivial diversion of a man's leisure moments; and in the actual
agony of battle, these lesser cupidities have no place at all,
and women cease to exist so completely that they are not even
irrelevant.  Afterwards, yes.  Afterwards all the insubordinate
passions released by battle, and that assertion of the supremacy
of one's own particular and individual will, though these may be
momentarily quiescent from exhaustion, renew themselves and find
no adequate object, unless in the physical ecstasy of love, which
is less poignant.

Unfortunately they moved off again next morning, and the girl,
standing with her own people in the yard, watched them go, as
though she regretted vaguely the waste of good men.  About the
middle of the day something in the character of the countryside
seemed familiar, and the reminiscence teased their memory to make
it more definite, until they came upon a signpost which told them
they were marching in the direction of Noeux-les-Mines, and
reminiscence became anticipation.  The thought of a town where
decent conditions still prevailed, and where they might have a bon
time, put new heart into them, and the marching column broke into
cheerful song.  They had put, at least partially, their own words
to the air of song sufficiently sentimental:

Oh, they've called them up from Weschurch,
And they've called them up from Wen,
And they'll call up all the women,
When they've fucked up all the men.

After which the adjuration to keep the home fires burning seemed
rather banal.  Entering Noeux-les-Mines they were exuberant; but
after they had passed the lane leading from the main street to
the camp, the chorus of song became less confident.  When the
great slagheap and the level crossing had been left behind them,
they reconciled themselves to the less joyful, but still tolerable
prospect of Mazingarbe.  Then Mazingarbe, with its brick-built
brewery, fell behind them too.

"We're goin' into the bloody line again," shouted Minton, whop
was marching just ahead of Bourne.

"Well, it's cushy enough up this part o' the line now," said
Pritchard resignedly.

"Cushy be buggered," said Minton angrily.

They continued a little way along the road to Vermelles, and
halted finally in Philosophe, a mining village, brick-built and
grimy, from which the inhabitants had been evacuated.  There they
fell out and went to billets in sullen silence.  Almost immediately
Shem and Martlow were posted with field glasses and whistles to give
warning of the approach of enemy aircraft.  The troops were ordered
to keep close in to the houses when moving about the village, and to
take cover when the whistles were blown.

Bourne went off to the orderly-room.  The main street of Philosophe
was at right angles to the road from Mazingarbe to Vermelles, and
at the end of it was another street, roughly parallel to the road,
the orderly-room being in the third house down on the left.  The
village was practically undamaged by shellfire, but it was a dour,
unlovely place.  One or two families remained there, and children
either belonging to them, or to Mazingarbe, which was not far away,
passed up and down the street with large baskets on their arms at
intervals through the day, shouting, 'Engleesh pancakes, Engleesh
pancakes', with a curious note of melancholy or boredom in their
high-pitched voices.

Bourne, quite inadvertently, had improved his position in the
orderly-room.  The colour-sergeant, with his usual irony, had
referred to the possibility of making him a permanent member of
the orderly room staff, and Bourne had replied with great firmness
that he would prefer to go back to his company.  As they saw at
once that he really meant it, they became more friendly.  While
he and the lance-corporal unpacked the boxes, he asked for the
notebooks and pencils which Sergeant-Major Robinson wanted, and got
them without any difficulty.  When he and the lance-corporal went
for their dinners, he took them to the sergeant-major, with whom
were Sergeant Tozer and the quarter-bloke.

"You're bloody lucky to be in the orderly-room for a spell," the
sergeant-major told him.  "The C. O. thinks the men have got slack,
and says that all time available must be spent in drill.  Company
guards as well as headquarter guard are to parade outside the
orderly-room for inspection at eleven o'clock every morning; an'
I suppose there'll be working parties up the line every bloody
night.  How do you like Captain Havelock in th' orderly-room?  The
men call him Janey.  Saw him walking over to Brigade with the C. O.
a few minutes ago.  Brigade's at Le Brebis.  Captain Malet's coming
back to the company in a few days.  We're going to spend most of
our time carrying bloody gas cylinders up Potsdam Alley: that's
what I heard anyway."

The prospect of carrying gas cylinders, which weighed about a
hundred and eighty pounds apiece, and were slung on a pole carried
on the shoulders of two men, proved conclusively to Bourne that
the orderly-room had its uses.  The work was made more difficult
by the fact that the men had to wear their P. H. gas helmets, which
were hot and suffocating.  He went back to the orderly-room in a
somewhat chastened frame of mind.

The next day each company in turn marched back to the brewery
in Mazingarbe for baths.  They stripped to the buff in one room,
handing over towel, socks, shirt and underpants to the men in
charge, who gave them clean things in exchange: these were rolled
up in a bundle, ready, and a man took what he was given without
question, except in the case of an impossible misfit or a garment
utterly useless, in which case he might ask his sergeant-major to
intervene, though even his intervention was not always effective.
It was invariably the same at casualty-clearing-stations or
divisional baths, the leadswingers in charge and their chums took
the best of the stuff they handled, and the fighting men had to
make shift as best they could with their leavings.  The men left
their clean change with their boots and khaki, and passed naked
into one large room in which casks, sawn in two and standing in
rows, did duty for baths.  There were a few improvised showers.
Here they splashed and soaped themselves, with a riotous noisiness
and a good deal of indecent horseplay.

"Dost turn thysen to t' wall, lad, so's us'ns sha'n't see t