A percussion shrapnel was another matter; and my poor partner got that. We were a good deal together. As officers, we moved about; and it was not only our habit to go forward (to O.Pips) we also went back, to back areas, long distances sometimes. For instance, if a part of one of our guns wanted mending, we would take it in the battery-car to the artillery workshops near Cassel.
Cassel was a very fashionable little health-resort, delightfully placed on a small hill. The more retiring and timid of the 'fighting' men from the Salient would have been a little shy of it, because of the red-tabs everywhere. My partner quivered at the sight of so much scarlet and gold. But I led him by the hand into the thick of the brass-hats, and once or twice we had dinner or lunch at the best hotel, with a beautiful view over the country.
We went still farther back, even, to St. Omer. This was not lousy with brasshats but a nice human spot. The town closed about eight o'clock at night. All the lights were put out, and the last of the inhabitants, with their mattresses on their backs, disappeared into the municipal cellars. The first bomb would drop as we left it. At this period the bombing of St. Omer was a nightly occurrence.
Cassel was not bombed. I may be wrong, but I do not believe it is considered good form for high-commands to bomb each other. Probably the Salamanca Junta and the Valencia Junta bomb each other because they are only 'Juntas', and neither admits the other is a 'high command'. Both are peculiarly low commands, in the view of their vis-a-vis.
One night I was dining and wining my gun-partner there still very nervous at the spectacle of so many 'high' officers—when I caught sight of a familiar face, under a brass-hat. This was no less an academic celebrity than the late Sir William Orpen. He came to our table and produced from his pocket a flask of whisky. 'Will y'have some?' he croaked in his quavering Dublin patter, which he had taken good care never to get rid of. 'It's good stuff—I know ut's good. It's from Haig's Mess I got-tut there this morning!'
I drank to the health of the High Command. I learnt that Orpen was doing watercolours and things of the War (I saw them afterwards—they were pallid and sentimental) attached to the G.H.Q. for the purpose. Upon hearing that I was with a battery in the Salient, he gazed in a half-mocking stare, twisting his eyebrows and smiling his wry Irish mockery at me.
'It's hell isn't it? It must be hell!' quickly he chattered under his breath.
I said it was Goya, it was Delacroix—all scooped out and very El Greco. But hell, no.
But he would have it hell. He'd doubtless called it 'hell' so often he wasn't going to drop the infernal cliche. Besides you couldn't say, in the ordinary way, 'It's Goya!'
'Ah yes, it must be hell!' he said. He pronounced hell, 'hail'.
'Hell sometimes for the infantry. But it's merely a stupid nightmare—it's not real.'
'Same thing!' said he.
I always wanted to be on the Staff. The glimpse frankly, that I got of this posh portraitist living on the fat of the land at Cassel made my mouth water. When with my first battery, the O.C. having learned a little bit the kind of customer that he had got into the Mess, said to me: 'I don't know, you know, what you're doing sitting on your bo-hind in this bloody battery. If I knew the parlez-vous as you do and was a first-rate sketcher, I should be on the Staff. That's where I should be!' And what's more he would, I'd have laid odds on that. He was the fellow who was hot-foot after the Military Cross. Nothing would have kept him off the Staff if he'd had half my excuses for being there. He'd have had all their D.S.O.'s and M.C.'s on him, a Croix-de-Guerre too, and anything else that was going.
But I never found my way about properly in that war, not in the way some people did. My natural modesty was one obstacle. If you don't ask, no one offers. I was a bad asker.
Of course, I read in the newspapers, of how our highbrow enemies—the Central Powers—'saved' their artists and important people like that. But it was, I suppose, a sort of compliment to me that no step was taken to 'save' me. Just as if I hadn't been an artist! I took it as a compliment, at all events. Eventually I 'saved' myself.
CHAPTER XI
The King of the Trenches
Why was the lieutenant pale? Why did he gaze so fixedly from beneath his new Gor'-Blimy? Because his mother came from Lima. That was also why his face was serious, and his nerves removed to a plane of reasonableness seldom reached by heat and shock. He had a certain gentle lisping breathlessness. Sandhurst had not curtailed his charm, which reached back to civilised Savannas.
He was astonished on the 4th May to see an unusual figure standing near him in the Trench. It was staring at his Flying Pig, and twirling a stick. It twirled and twirled the stick and looked at the Flying Pig. Then it gave the fascinating siege ordnance before it a blow and exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!'
That Ha! Ha! was a new note in Menzies' life of war. Lieutenant Donald Menzies (Lima, London and Linlithgow) absorbed the new sound that he recognized at once as belonging to this outlandish life, and temporarily placed it in what he supposed must be its proper position among the ejaculatory and explosive noises by which he was surrounded. That trench where they were had never heard of it as far as he knew. Perhaps it came from another trench? Or it might be that, except when uttered by that figure, it never occurred at all anywhere. He had never heard it before in any case. He noted and placed it with military tidinesss.
A breath of bald absurdity, a new comic gas, had entered Menzies' trench with that figure, however. Menzies looked at him again. Then with a delicate smile of recognition, he took in the situation. This figure must be his newly-posted commanding officer.
With politely sarcastic calinerie he approached the new biped, with the new noise, dropped from some strange Christ-mas-tree into his trench.
'Good morning, sir.'
'Good morning. Good morning!'
The gentleman was whistling. —'How-do-you-doodle oodle-oo. Oh fancy meeting you!' was what he whistled. Meantime he lazily struck the gun with his stick.
'Captain Polderdick?'
'Polderdick! How did you know my name?' Polderdick's mouth grew round and slushy: the military moustache over it was a fierce camouflage hiding 'Ha! Hafs!' The ribbon of the D.C.M., the Military Medal, the usual South African medal and many others jostled each other, two deep, upon his advancing chest. A drawling, extremely circumspect and ponderous delivery, suggested that language was not without its pitfalls for him. The old ranker swelled with the officialdom and diaphragmatic pomp of all those promoted across that portentous gulf which separates officers from men when the change of worlds comes after a life-time of habit.
'How did you know my name?' he screwed his eyes up cunningly, his name, like his rank, was for him an object, a thing secured, perhaps by means of some stratagem, by this stranger.
'I supposed it was you, sir, who had been posted to us.'
'You were quite right my lad, quite right. It was me! Here I am! And there you are. And here we are! What next, my lad? Ha! Ha!' He twirled his stick round, imparting supple movements to it till it appeared to flex and waggle like a fencing sword. He prodded the Flying Pig, repeating his war-cry 'Ha! Ha!'
Then fiercely and quizzingly he wheeled round on Menzies, like a ruffled dog. With a fresh flourish of the stick, and a gutteral 'Ha! Ha!' he lunged, prodding Menzies in the stomach.
'Oh sir!' exclaimed the lieutenant, carrying his gloved hand to the region affected. After this initiation Polderdick wandered off, followed by his new subaltern, to inspect the rest of his stock.
'Handsome pieces of ordnance, my lad!' he exclaimed as they came upon one. 'Fine handsome pieces!' Then sinking his chin down into his historic chest, with the object of fixing his roaring mouth like a funnel over the lung where the deep sound comes from, he began chanting, one hand over his ear in the orthodox fashion.
'Won't you buy, oh won't you buy My sweet lavend-er-er, Fifteen branches one penny-y-y.'
'Burney' was known for leagues, all over the Line. Polderdick was known as 'Burney'. He had a great name for intrepidi
ty, and as an able gunner. Menzies grew accustomed to the spectacle of his O.G. (arriving on the scene generally a little late) coming down the trench whistling a few bars of 'Won't you buy my sweet Lavender' or 'Goosie—Goosie—Gander', making facetious passes with his stick. When he met an infantry soldier, he would, to this Tommy's dismay, if it were his first meeting with Polderdick, twirl his stick, with his 'Ha! Ha! my lad— How's that? If you never get anything worse than that, my lad, you can thank your stars. Nickwar? Pass on! To your post!'
It was also his habit to poke his stick into all shelters and dug-outs that he passed, blessing them or banning them with his 'Ha! Ha!' He stirred up many a figure in some damp black hole, who thought it was a visiting general being funny, and cursed under his breath.
When Polderdick arrived the Line was quiet. A few days afterwards the Trench was constantly shelled. Polderdick was there. They began shelling with shrapnel. At the first patter of the shrapnel Polderdick dived headlong into a dug-out, but his tin-hat crashed with great force against the tin-hat of an infantry captain who was darting out at the moment. They both disappeared, Polderdick's buttocks revolving as he fell inside. Menzies crouched against the side of the Trench, which was spouting earth a few yards higher up, from the last burst, and was full of the momentary wasp-music of hurrying splinters.
'No, sir, I'm a flying pig!' Menzies heard his commanding officer exclaiming. 'You got in the way, sir!'
'You silly bastard, you nearly broke my neck. Let me get out. What are you doing? Get off my leg!'
'Stop here, my lad, and keep me company. Outside all is war. Don't go looking for trouble, my lad. Gently does it.'
Two shells swooped and buried themselves like furies in the earth above Menzies' head, and a moment later two red fountains of earth poured down deluging him from head to foot. The infantry captain appeared and hurried past him down the trench. Polderdick's head peered out, looking to left and right. There was a considerable noise coming from every direction, and Polderdick shouted to Menzies:
'Keep those pigs barking. Give Fritz hell! Give him hell! Where's all this stuff coming from do you suppose?'
There were two cracks overhead, Menzies flattened himself against the side of the Trench, and the shrapnel spattered everywhere for a moment. Polderdick's head appeared again.
'My head's rotten!' he exclaimed. 'Did you hear just how I knocked it? It's rotten. I shall go to the rear. You "carry on, sergeant!" I'm off.'
'Have you hurt yourself?' asked Menzies.
'Rotten!' said Polderdick. He scrambled out, shook himself and stumbled quickly away, watched by the gunner corporal.
' "Burney's" got the wind up,' said the corporal.
'He banged his head,' said Menzies.
'Ah! so I saw!' said the corporal.
A stunt had been announced. It was the morning of the attack. There had been a good deal of shelling. Menzies, in coming up with the relief, met in the support lines a figure being borne upon a stretcher. It's eye, as he passed, appeared aware of him; the head remained facing the sky. A solemn eye swept over him, as they passed, in placid recognition, nothing , more. Menzies felt it was his O.C., though he had not noticed ] the face as he passed him. He ran back. <
'Are you hurt, sir?'
Polderdick's eye settled down in the corner of his head to observe his subaltern.
'My rheumatism's something cruel this morning. It's laid me out something proper. They're taking me back. —You carry on, my lad. Pass on! It's downed me this time properly.'
He spoke in the quiet voice of one in pain. Menzies got used, likewise, to this. Whenever a stunt was coming off, Polderdick disappeared, on a stretcher, if he could get one, to the rear, or he kept away till the worst was over.
Menzies and Marshall, the other subaltern of his section, talked over the situation. Marshall was resentful. He had been sent to Trench Mortars with death in his soul. A month of them had developed in him a hatred of everything in this inferno. Menzies did not entertain a severe view of Polderdick, however. He explained to the sullen Marshall the advantages, as he saw it, of the case. Also he excused him. He pointed out that Polderdick had been wounded in the temple. Before that— who could doubt, who had glanced casually at his left breast?— he had certainly been a very brave man. But also, of course (it was to be supposed) he had not then exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' He had not prodded people in the stomach with his stick.—For Menzies there were two lives, where Polderdick was concerned. There had been one in which he had been a madly-brave soldier in the ranks (look at his ribbons, consider his record!). There he got his crosses, his nickname, his prestige. Then there was the other one in which he was just mad, without however being brave. He was charming, but no longer brave.
Much of his madness, Menzies proceeded to argue—as they sat at the tin-table of the cafe in Bailleul where they had gone in a lorry for the afternoon to get tobacco and condensed milk for the officer's mess—much of his peculiar wildness, had gone into, had been absorbed by, his physical daring, about that there was littie doubt. It had had to go somewhere. It had gone into that. Then the wound in the temple stopped that up, brusquely. You see ? (Marshall did not see : he cursed the metaphysical Scot, he yawned, he stamped, he lit cigarettes, he glared). The wound, for whatever reason, prevented his madness from any longer flowing into the moulds of physical heroism. It found other outlets. He became a different man. He did not forget his past bravery, however. His new incarnation was its distorted child. The 'Ha! Ha!' itself drew the gusto of its note from the cold, cruel, almost intellectual courage of the former Polderdick.
Physical strength remained with him. Could he not take one of the heaviest and least willing of his men in his arms, lift him kicking and howling until head and shoulders stuck up over the parapet? 'Ha! Ha! Look over there, my lad!' he would cry. (Menzies and Marshall had both witnessed this episode.) He still liked, in a sort of prolongation of himself, to look over the top through the eyes of a reluctant subordinate.— So Menzies discoursed, with his mild persuasive southern eyes wandering about the busy square. Marshall transferred all the feelings one by one that he had about Polderdick to Menzies. Menzies was mad! Menzies was balmy! He was madder than Polderdick. He had always disliked Menzies. He had been right. No one could help disliking a man who could talk such cock as that! Also he was evidently inclined to suck up to the O.C. He said nothing. He stood up and stretched.
'Well, shall we beat it? Come on, you bloody philosopher! There's a lorry, let's get that.' He started running.
Polderdick was not popular with his-men. Like most ranker-officers, he was extremely exacting; it was his tendency to make them work if anything harder than he had worked so long himself.
At the point of the English Line where his battery was placed, a stream had once flowed and still took a little water across No Man's Land, bisecting the German front-line and the English. In the English Line (as in the German) a foot-bridge had been built inside the trench where this happened, with a parapet of sand-bags continuing the face of the Trench across the little gully. —On two occasions his men pushed 'Burney' off this bridge into the water, alleging accident, assuming dismay. The first time he clambered out. As a clown, his indignation was circumscribed. He protested and swore. But it happened again shortly afterwards. The second time he said nothing. But the men responsible for it had a good deal of work in the ensuing week. When in future he had occasion to approach the bridge he looked carefully round before crossing. If he was with men of his own he allowed them to pass first. He even would not cross when an infantryman was behind him.—His chief objection of falling into the water was that he believed a German sniper had his rifle trained on this spot. Menzies gathered this from his guarded inquiry: 'Many Tommies fall in there, my lad? It's a dangerous spot.' As the water did not make it dangerous, it must be that. And once, when a man was missing, he asserted that the man had fallen into the stream, been sniped, and had subsequently been borne down its waters to the rear. The corpse would turn up in the
end, it seemed, beneath the windows of Corps Headquarters, which he appeared to conceive as situated on the brink of a pool, by this time practically full of men who had lost their lives in that manner.
He was not always beneath the shadow of this dream. Probably, as an outcome of his aquatic experiences, he one day said to Menzies :
'The British Army when I first joined was some Army! It was small, but it was a pukka army, second to none, my lad! There was initiative. Initiative is what you want. This is a ragtime army. Look at it!—It's a ragtime war, my lad, from what I can see of it. I should like to be in civvies again. No! straight I would, that's right!'—Menzies had a puzzled look. 'Burney' stared at him a moment: then he became more normal. 'A soldier should be on the lookout for opportunities. That's what a soldier should be. It breaks my heart to see chances lost, as I do every day.' He turned suddenly upon Menzies. 'Now, why don't you jump into the stream; swim up it, swim up it!'—He fixed Menzies violently with his left eye— 'and bomb Fritz from the water? He wouldn't see where it came from.—You can swim, my lad, can't you?'
'Yes, sir. But there's not enough water to swim in. And the Boche has it under observation all the time.'
'Rot! That's rot what you're saying there, my lad! Don't tell me you couldn't.—No! But you're like me. You've lost interest in this ragtime war, is that it? No? Well you must be a B.F., if you haven't, that's all I can say!'
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