The Secret Battle

Harry went to France again a month later, after the futile kind of medical examination he had foretold. I had a letter from him from the Base, and after that there was silence. I even began to hunt about in the casualty lists, but he was never there. And seven weeks later they let me go out again myself, to the astonishment of all but the military doctors.

At the Base I heard of Harry. Some one had been wanted for some kind of job down there, an officer to instruct the Details in the mysteries of Iron Rations, or something of the sort. Harry, happening to be there at the time, and pleasing the eye of the aldermanic officer in command of our Base Depot, had been graciously appointed to the post. But he had caused a considerable flutter in the tents of the mighty by flatly declining it, and stating insanely that he preferred to go up to the line. This being still the one topic of conversation in the camp, I did not linger there longer than was absolutely necessary. Infantry Base Depots are bad places, and that one was very bad; you had worse food, worse treatment, and worse company than you ever had in the line—much discomfort, and no dignity. I never understood why officers should be treated with such contempt whenever there were a number of them together. If you went about by yourself, or with another officer or two, you had a certain amount of politeness and consideration from military officials; but as soon as you got with a 'herd' of officers you were doomed—you were dirt. If the intention at the Base was to make the line seem a haven of refuge and civility, it was highly successful as far as I was concerned....

I got back to the battalion under the usual conditions ... a long jog in the mess-cart under the interminable dripping poplars, with a vile wind lashing the usual rain over the usual flat fields, where the old women laboured and stooped as usual, and took no notice of anything. The heart sinks a little as you look at the shivering dreariness of it all. And if it is near the line you hope secretly that the battalion is 'out' for at least a few days more, that you may have just two days to get used to this beastliness again, and not be met by some cheery acclimatized ass with a 'Glad to see you, old son—just in time—going up to-night, doing a "stunt" on Tuesday!' Yet, as you come to the village, there is a strange sense of home-coming that comes with the recognition of familiar things—limbers clattering and splashing along, and the regimental postman trudging back with the mail, and C Company cooker steaming pleasantly under an outhouse, and odd men with waterproof sheets draped over the shoulders, wet and glistening.... To-day I was lucky, for the battalion was a long way back, resting, so that this home-coming sense was strong upon me. And I wanted to see Harry.

When I came near to the usual main street I saw the battalion marching in by a side road, coming back from a route march. I sent my gear ahead, and got down to see them pass. It was strangely pleasant. The drums of the little band were covered because of the wet, and only the bugles brayed harshly, but very cheerfully. Old Philpott was ahead of them, riding fatly on his mild black mare, and returned my salute quite pleasantly. You could see a lot of young recruits among the men, and there were many officers I had never seen, but the welcoming grins of the old men we had had from the beginning, mostly N.C.O.'s now, made up for that. Young Smith I saw, in command of C Company now, and Tarrant, our late Transport Officer, was squelching at the head of a platoon, obviously not liking it much. Then came D Company, and I looked eagerly for Harry. Stephenson I knew, in command (how young the company commanders were!), but there were only two other officers, and they both strange. The last of them tramped past, and I was left silent in the rain, foolishly disturbed.... Where was Harry? Ass—no doubt he is orderly officer, or away on a course. But I was disturbed; and the thought came to me that if anything had happened to him I, too, should be lonely here, with none of the Old Crowd left.

I walked on then, and came to the little flag of D Company headquarters flapping damply outside an estaminet. In the mess they greeted me very kindly and gave me tea—but there was still no Harry. But they all talked very fast, and the tea was good.

'And where's Penrose?' I asked at last. 'I haven't seen him yet?'

I had spoken to Stephenson. He did not answer immediately; but he picked up his cup and drank, assiduously; then he kind of mumbled, very low and apologetic:

'He's in his billet—under close arrest.'

'Under arrest! My God, what for?'

Stephenson began to drink again; he was a good fellow, who knew that Harry and I were friends; also he had known Harry in the Souchez days, and he did not like having to tell me this.

But one of his young subalterns, a young pup just out, was less sensitive, and told me, brutally:

'Running away—cowardice in the face of—et cetera—have some more tea?'

II

Bit by bit I heard the whole miserable story—or rather that naked kernel of it which passed publicly for the whole story. I had to make my own footnotes, my own queries.

The first night Harry was with the battalion Philpott had sent him up with a carrying-party to the Front Line, or thereabouts, fifty men and some engineering stuff of sorts, wiring trestles, barbed wire, or something. It was shell-hole country, no communication trenches or anything, and since there had been an attack recently, the Boche artillery was very active on the roads and back areas. Also there was the usual rotten valley to cross, with the hell of a barrage in it. So much these young braves conceded. Harry had started off with his party, had called at the Brigade Dump, and picked up the stuff. Later on some one rang up Brigade from the line and said no party had arrived. Brigade rang up Philpott, and he sent up the Assistant Adjutant to investigate. Somewhere in the Arras Road he had come upon Harry, with most of the party, running down the road—towards the Dump—away from the line. The stores were urgently needed at the front; they never got there. That was all. The court-martial was to-morrow.

Well, it was a black story, but I made one or two footnotes at once.

The very first night he was back. The awful luck—the cruelty of it! Just back, in the condition of nerves I knew him to be in, with that first miserable feeling upon him, wondering probably why the hell he had driven himself out there, and praying to be let down easy for one night at least—and then to be sent straight up on a job like that, the job that had broken him before.

And by Philpott! I seemed to see Philpott arranging that, with a kind of savage glee: 'Oh, here's Master Penrose again—well, he'd better take that party to-night—instead of Mr. Gibson....'

And who was the Assistant Adjutant? God knows, if every working-party that went wrong meant a court-martial, there would be no officers left in the army; and if some busy-body had been at work....

'Who's the Assistant Adjutant?' I asked.

'Fellow who was attached to Division—used to be in this battalion in your time, I believe—what's-his-name?—Burnett—Burnett—he rang up the Colonel and told him about it.'

Burnett! I groaned. The gods were against Harry indeed. Burnett had been away from the battalion for eighteen months, drifting about from odd job to odd job—Town Major here, Dump Officer there, never in the line.... Why the devil had he come back now to put his foot in it—and, perhaps——But I could not believe that.

Stephenson's two young officers—Wallace and Brown—made no footnote, naturally. They had come out by the same draft as Harry, one from Sandhurst, the other from a cadet school; they were fresh, as Harry had been, and they had no mercy. And while I resented their tone, I tried to remember that they knew not Harry, and said nothing.

But when young Wallace summed up the subject with 'Well, all I can say is he's a cold-footed swine, and deserves all he gets,' I exploded. 'You ---- young pup,' I said, 'just out, and hardly seen a shot fired—you dare to say anything about Penrose. I tell you you're not fit to lick his boots. Do you know that he joined up in the ranks in August '14, and went through Gallipoli, and had done two years' active service before you even had a uniform? Do you know he's just refused a job at home in order to come out here, and another job at the Base? Does that look like cold feet? You wait till you've been out a year, my son, before you talk about cold feet. You——' But I couldn't control myself any further. I went out, cursing.

III

Then I got leave to go and see Harry. He was in his billet, in a small bedroom on the ground floor. There was a sentry standing at the window, fixed bayonet and all, so that he should neither escape nor make away with himself.

He was surprised and, I think, really pleased to see me, for before me, as he said, or any one who knew his history, he was not ashamed.... It was only when the ignorant, the Wallaces, were near that he was filled with humiliation, because of the things he knew they were thinking. 'That sentry out there,' he told me, 'was in my platoon at Gallipoli—one of my old men; just before you came in he tapped on the window and wished me luck; he said that all the "old lads" did the same.... It bucked me up no end.'

Not that he needed much 'bucking up.' For he was strangely quiet and resigned—more nearly at peace with everything than I had seen him for many months. 'Only,' he said, 'I wish to God that I was a single man, and I wish to God they would get on with it....' He had been under arrest for six weeks, six solid weeks ... carted about from place to place like some animal waiting for slaughter; while the Summaries of Evidence and the Memos and the Secret Envelopes went backwards and forwards through 'Units' and through 'Formations,' from mandarin to mandarin, from big-wig to big-wig; while generals, and legal advisers, and judge advocates, and twopenny-halfpenny clerks wrote their miserable initials on the dirty forms, and wondered what the devil they should decide—and decided—nothing at all. All this terrible time Harry had been writing to his wife, pretending that all was well with him, describing route marches and scenery, and all the usual stuff about weather and clothes and food.... Now at least somebody had decided, and Harry was almost happy. For it was an end of suspense.... 'Once they settled on a court-martial,' he said, 'I knew I was done ... and except for Peggy, I don't care.... I don't know what they've told you, but I'd like you to know what really happened. I found the battalion at Monval (the same old part), and got there feeling pretty rotten. Old Philpott, of course, sent me off with a working-party like a shot out of a gun—before I'd been there an hour. I picked up some wiring stuff at the Brigade Dump—it was a long way up the road then, not far from Hellfire Corner. Fritz was shelling the road like hell, going up and down, dropping them in pairs, fifty yards further every time, you know the game.... I had the wind-up pretty badly, and so had the men, poor devils ... but what was worse, they seemed to know that I had.... We had a lot of shells very close to us, and some of the men kept rushing towards the bank when they heard one coming.... Well, you don't get on very fast at that rate, and it's damned hard to keep hold of them when they're like that.... And knowing they were like that made me even worse. When we got to Dead Mule Tree about ten of them were missing ... just stayed under the bank in the holes.... I don't say this to excuse myself ... I just tell you what happened. Then we got to that high bit where the bank stops and the valley goes up on the left.... You know the awful exposed feeling one has there, and they had a regular barrage just at the corner.... I got the men under the bank, and waited till a shell burst ... and then tried to dash them past before the next. But the next one came too fast, and fell plunk into the middle of the column—behind me.... Three men were killed outright, and those of us who hadn't flung themselves down were knocked over. I fell in a kind of narrow ditch by the road. When I put my head up and looked back I saw some of the men vanishing back under the bank. Then another one came—8-inch I should think they were—and I grovelled in the ditch again.... It was just like my awful dreams.... I must have been there about ten minutes. After every one I started to get up and go back to the men under the bank, meaning to get them together again. Every time the next one came too quick, and I was pinned, simply pinned in that ditch. Then Fritz stopped for a minute or two—altering the programme, I suppose—and I got up and ran like hell for the bank. The four or five men lying near me got up and ran too.

'When we got under the bank we lay down and I looked round ... there was not a man to be seen. I shouted, but at first nothing happened. And, I tell you, I was glad.... Some of the men who had gone back, not seeing me anywhere, had melted away home.... I don't blame them.... Then a few drifted along from further down the bank.... By degrees most of the party turned up ... there must have been between thirty and forty of them in the end....

'And then, you see, I knew I should have to go on again ... get past the corner somehow.... And——

'And I couldn't.... I simply couldn't face it.... Peters (the N.C.O.) said something about "Going to have another shot, sir?" He was pretty shaken himself—they all were ... but he'd have gone.... We ought to have gone on.... I know that.... But.... Anyhow, I told him I didn't think we should ever get by at present, and said we'd better go back a bit and wait under cover ... some yarn or other.... So we started back down the road.... The Boche was still doing the up and down game on the road, only about twice as much.... By this time I can tell you there was no shame between those men and me ... we understood each other ... every time we heard that damned shriek we fell into shell-holes and prayed.... They were following us down the road, getting nearer and nearer.... You know that dug-out in the bank where Headquarters used to be. Well, just when it looked as if the next lot must come right on top of us, I saw a light coming from the dug-out, and most of us ran hell for leather for the door. Some one was standing at the entrance as we dashed in ... just in time ... we nearly knocked him over.... And guess who it was,' said Harry, with a horrible kind of hysterical laugh, 'guess who it was ... it was Burnett—Burnett of all people.... He had been sent up to find out what had happened. Well, he asked what the hell I was doing, and said I was to go on at once.... I said I was going to wait a bit, there was too much of a barrage.... Then he said, very offensively, he couldn't help that ... my orders were to go on at once.... That annoyed me, and I said I'd see him damned first, and told him if it was so urgent he could take the party up himself if he liked.... But he didn't, naturally ... no reason why he should.... Then he rang up Philpott and told him that he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party running down the road—demoralized. So he had, of course,—he saw me running for the dug-out ... though the joke of it is—the joke of it is ... he was sheltering there himself!' And at the enormity of that joke Harry went off into that hideous laughter again. 'He said I refused to obey orders, and asked for instructions. Philpott said it was too late now, the stuff had been wanted by midnight.... He told Burnett to put me under arrest ... and come back.

'That's what happened,' he went on, 'and I don't care—only I wish it had been anybody but Burnett—though I suppose he was quite right; but it makes no odds ... I had got the wind-up, and I had failed with the party, and I don't deny it ... even if I wasn't really running when he saw me.... One thing I can say—if I did have the wind-up I've never had cold feet—till that night.... I'm glad I came out this time if I did fail at the pinch.... Burnett wouldn't have.... I knew I was done when I came ... and I know I'm done now.

'But I wish you'd just explain it all to Peggy and the people who don't know.'

And that is what I am trying to do.

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