'I never have been interested, like you sir. You are a soldier.'
'Me! A soldier!? Get along with it! I'm not a soldier! I
wasV
Menzies smiled affectionately at his chief.
But Polderdick, soldier or no soldier, grew depressed. This was really a necessary exploit, that the stream had been placed there to make possible. The consciousness of the things he no longer did weighed heavily on him. It was stupid to have to ask another man. He had never refused such occasions. How could they? Yet he understood how they could, that was the most depressing part of it. A world in which he was a major, surrounded by nothing but soldiers who were not soldiers, wholly given over to war that was not a war, was a ragtime world.
This restless spirit of haunting adventure would sometimes make him mischievous. He would come up from the billet into a quiet world, a local truce reigning throughout the stagey ditches and melodramatic crypts and holes of the landscape, of which he was a notable faun. A few lonely shells sang or creaked along overhead, bursting in the remote distance, like the noisy closing of very far-off doors. Butterflies drifted here and there. German and English, Fritz and Tom, read the newspaper, slept, wrote to Gretchen or the lovely Minnie.—Polderdick would gaze round at this idyllic scene with a dissatisfied and restless eye.
On one of these occasions Marshall was on duty. He was sunning himself on a stretch of wet mud. One gunner was asleep, another writing a letter. Polderdick appeared and fixed his eye upon Marshall. Blankly with sudden unction he declared.
'Ha! Hal Mr. Marshall! An excellent opportunity for Trench Mortars! What do you think? Is that right?' He put up his periscope and peered into it. 'I see a Hun's back in what is evidently a post, an advanced post. They've got the cheek of the devil some of those Huns. The Fritzes in that sap to the left seem to have got it into their heads that this part of the line is a branch of the Millennium ! Swelt my bob if I don't see two having a shave, the bastards, as large as life!'
As fast as they could be loaded, he sent his Flying Pig hurtling in all directions. All the peaceable warriors in the trenches were filled with amazement, which rapidly turned to fury when they realised what was happening. A raucous murmur, a tenuous hubbub of alarm and inquiry, floated across No Man's Land. This was quickly succeeded by a fusillade of every description of missile and projectile on which the enemy could lay his hands quickly. A black cloud of anger surged along our trench. Infantry officers rushed up to Polderdick, shaking their fists in his face. But flourishing his stick mysteriously, he hastily retired down the communication trench, and was seen no more till the next day.
Meantime the riposte had come and a furious bombardment had fallen on the trench. In the rear the Field started, the Heavies joined in, layer behind layer, until the enormous guns right back on the old ramparts of Ypres were shattering the air with their discharge, and for a short time all was confusion. On both sides everyone stood by, expecting an attack. Marshall was wounded in the lung, two gunners were killed. Menzies was telephoned for from the trench by the breathless telephonist, and as he was hurrying up he met his O.G. retiring hastily along the duckboard track.
'Is it an attack?' he asked.
'An attack? No-o, attack be buggered! It's as quiet as Heaven up there!'
'Marshall's wounded. Didn't you know?'
'Marshall wounded? Who said so?'
'The telephonist. They're probably attacking. Look at all this coming over!'
There was a line of black stumps on a low ridge to their left, and every few seconds an immense impressive chocolate black burst rose up and spent splinters flapped in the mud on either side of the duckboard track.
'Yes, it's not over healthy here, I agree,' Polderdick said, starting anxiously forward, his eye on a line of burst on the road ahead, that he would soon have to cross. 'I'm going to get back. My rheumatism's something awful today. But it's quiet enough up in the Line. I came away because there was nothing doing. You can go up there if you want a nap.'
Menzies left him: by the time he reached the trench all again was as Polderdick had described it, very quiet, except for a few restless guns that still continued slamming on both sides. But there had been a number of casualties.
'Where's that son-of-a-bitch of an O.C. of yours? If he comes back here I'll put him under arrest! He ought to be shot! Is the man mad? Where is he?'
Informed at Battalion Headquarters of what had happened the O.C. Infantry was on the spot. Stretcher bearers were passing along the trench. The bodies of three gunners lay near the Flying Pig, the leg of one two yards away, and another beheaded. Marshall had been taken to the dressing-station.
'Burney' Polderdick prepared his story of this event. So well did he know his way about in the professional military mind, and so high was his military reputation, that his bluff soldierly view of what had occurred was accepted at Headquarters.— Shortly after this, his four Flying Pigs were moved to a neighbouring divisional front.
For anything below a General, as things stood, Polderdick had a sovereign contempt. In the new world in which Polder-dicks were majors, this perhaps must of necessity ensue. His obsequiousness in the presence of a General-Officer was no doubt the complement of his wounding attitude to those below that rank. Lieut-Colonels, for instance, he looked upon frankly as so much dirt.
A feud instantly sprang up in the new position between a Company-Commander and himself (a company-commander under the Derby Scheme-justescieux!). It was to do with the site he had decided upon for the operations of his Flying Pigs. Secretly Polderdick obtained a written order from Brigade Headquarters to say that 'Captain H. H. Polderdick has permission to dispose his 9.45 Battery wherever he considers it will be most useful.' That morning he set about the installation of his guns in the position in the trench to which the Company-Commander particularly objected. A sergeant hurried up to say respectfully that 'Captain Nixon had given strict orders that Trench Mortar Battery was not to use that spot,' Polderdick came up and drove off the sergeant. Then Captain Nixon, cold leisureliness of an officer and gentleman, arrived. 'Burney' Polderdick stuck the written order under his nose. With the usual 'Ha Ha!' he followed up with the regulation lunge towards the belly with his circling stick. Nixon concertinaed, avoiding the exultant prod.
'Ha Ha! my lad! Pass on!'
Nixon passed on hurriedly, going for help. But now Polder-dick's enemies gathered against him.
An unfortunate thing occurred in the rear, at his billet. His landlady or rest-billet-lady became restless and anxious. On one of those mornings when he woke up very much his new self, Polderdick asked her to come up to his room. When he had got her there, he locked the door behind them, and taking up his stick, twirling it, stamping his foot, he began prodding her in the stomach, with delighted 'Ha! Ha's/'—The woman escaped and complained to the A.P.M. She refused any longer to billet him.
The crowning peculiarity of the ex-sergeant was that he very rarely drank anything more than lime juice. A vine seemed to grow within his skull. No one would have believed that he was not intoxicated when, issuing from the Mess one dark night, and finding a Sunbeam not far from the door of the billet, he sprang in and expected it to go. Some A.S.G. men loitering there, who knew him, got behind and pushed it. When it was in the middle of the road, they peered round at him, and in the voice of Harry Tate's Eton-collared assistant, whined and bawled 'It will not go, Pa-paa! There is something wrong, Papa! It really will not go, Pa-paa!' He sat there snorting fiercely. It was the owner of the car, just then arriving, who refused to believe that he was not tight. He disarmed and confused this official by a deft stroke with his stick (which never left him) just below the region of the wind.
But his guns, although in position, and firmly cemented by written authority, were not so secure as they seemed. The infantry gathered for the attack. On a fine afternoon, when, in fact, Polderdick was on the point of exclaiming 'Ha! Ha! an excellent opportunity for Trench Mortars!' a suave, hirsute and old Colonel arrived on the scene, a
nd made straight for the Flying Pigs. Polderdick, with a dramatic leap, intercepted him, stick in hand, twirling and feinting. He appeared to take it for granted that this interloper had designs upon his fat little ordnance.
'Are these your guns?' The intercepted Colonel fixed him severely with his veteran eye, that noted the Ranker's ribbons, and sought to quell the life-long 'common soldier' beneath the new Sam Browne. Polderdick, on his side, saw nothing but a Lieut-Colonel in this hostile person.
'Yes.—Yes: Yes. My guns. My pigs. My little pigs, sir.'
'I don't think that is a very good position for them.'
'No? No!'
'You must see that dug-out—'
'I see the dug-out. I've had my eye on it from the first. And if you know of a better hole, sir—well, you know what to do!'
'Yes, but that dug-out—'
'Yes sir, that dug-out—But you can't attack Fritz with a dug-out, sir. You fire nothing out of a dug-out, sir. You might fire Captain Nixon a hundred yards or so, with a big charge. But I'm accredited to these 9.45's, these "flying pigs" as they call them. I have no order, sir, as regards Captain Nixon—'
'Stop this torn-foolery please. Your guns are in the way where you have placed them. And they are not well-placed either—'
'I beg your pardon, sir?' Polderdick grew suddenly one harsh blotch of red, as though he had been slapped. 'Are you aware to whom you are speaking?' He drew himself up, and flung his chest out, the mad-soldier entering into him again for a moment following this direct affront to his professional pride. His voice too got its wild and shouting note. 'Do you know my name, sir? Captain Polderdick is my name, Polderdick. Burney Polderdick.'
He continued to glare at the Colonel for a moment; but his eye gradually filled with the peculiar light of the transformed 'Burney', though more wild even than usual.
7 am the King of the Trenches!' he shouted. 'Didn't you know who I was? Yes! I am Burney Polderdick, the King of the Trenches!—Ha! Ha!' He flourished his stick, twirled it lightly, lunged forward, and dug the Colonel in the middle of the stomach.
'Ha! Ha! The King of the Trenches!' he shouted in triumph, as the Colonel hastened away, his fingers convulsively grasping his stick, not venturing to give further utterance to his thoughts.
That afternoon Polderdick decided it was an 'excellent afternoon for trench mortars', and inaugurated this phase of his reign by a few unexpected salvoes. But the divisional commander in this new section was not the man for him. He took a disobliging view of the events reported to him.
Polderdick a few days after this was removed from the command. He was sent back to the Training Depot in England.
'I think, yes, we will have a bottle of wine!'
Burney Polderdick's last lunch with his subalterns was enlivened by this sudden decision. A bottle of Ordinary Wine was obtained. Menzies, who was Mess-secretary, was curious to see if Burney would pay for it. He supposed that he would not. But at the last moment the now exiled King of the terrible narrow Kingdom his madness had caused him to be expelled from, that he would probably now never see again, fumbled in his pocket, and produced the necessary ninepence. He had evidently meant to pay all along.
When the twirling stick receded, and passed the bend in the smashed and dilapidated street, although still, like a perfume, he could faintly hear the whistling of Won't you buy my sweet lavender-er-er, Menzies returned to the Mess with a regret at this personal loss.
CHAPTER XII
Political Education under Fire
I don't think artists are any more important than bricklayers or stockbrokers. But I dislike the 'hearty' artist (who pretends he isn't one but a stockbroker) more than the little aesthete. I felt less inclined to immolate myself in defence of Mayfair and the 'stately homes of Old England', the more I pondered over it. I was only concerned at the idea of deserting my companions in misfortune.
When I had first attested, I was talking to Ford Madox Hueffer about Gaudier's death. I'd said it was too bad. Why should Gaudier die, and a 'Bloomsbury' live? I meant that fate ought to have seen to it that that didn't happen. It was absurd.
It was absurd, Ford agreed. But there it was, he seemed to think. He seemed to think fate was absurd. I am not sure he did not think Gaudier was absurd.
The 'Bloomsburies' were all doing war-work of 'National importance', down in some downy English county, under the wings of powerful pacifist friends; pruning trees, planting gooseberry bushes, and haymaking, doubtless in large sunbonnets. One at least of them, I will not name him, was disgustingly robust. All were of military age. All would have looked well in uniform.
One of course 'exempted' himself, and made history by his witty handling of the tribunals. That was Lytton Strachey. He went round to the tribunal with an aircushion, which, upon arrival, he blew up, and sat down on, amid the scandalized silence of the queue of palpitating petitioners. His spidery stature was reared up bravely, but his dank beard drooped, when his name was called; and he made his famous retort. 'What,' sternly asked one of the judges, 'would you do Mr.
Strachey, if you discovered a German preparing to outrage your sister?' and Strachey without hesitation replied: 'I— would—place—myself—between—them!'
But the 'bloomsburies' all exempted themselves, in one way or another. Yet they had money and we hadn't; ultimately it was to keep them fat and prosperous—or thin and prosperous, which is even worse—that other people were to risk their skins. Then there were the tales of how a certain famous artist, of military age and militant bearing, would sit in the Cafe Royal and addressing an admiring group back from the Front, would exclaim : 'We are the civilization for which you are fighting!'
But Ford Madox Hueffer looked at me with his watery-wise old elephant eyes—a little too crystal-gazing and claptrap, but he knew his stuff—and instructed me upon the very temporary nature of this hysteria. I was too credulous! I believe that he tipped me the wink. He was imparting to me I believe a counsel of commonsense.
'When this War's over,' he said, 'nobody is going to worry, six months afterwards, what you did or didn't do in the course of it. One month after it's ended, it will be forgotten. Everybody will want to forget it—it will be bad form to mention it. Within a year disbanded 'heroes' will be selling matches in the gutter. No one likes the ex-soldier—if you've lost a leg, more fool you!'
'Do you think that?' I said, for he almost made my leg feel sorry for itself.
'Of course,' he answered. 'It's always been the Ime. After all the wars that's what's happened.'
This worldly forecast was verified to the letter. There is no better propaganda against war, I think, than to broadcast such information as this (though that was not Ford's intention: he was very keen on the War). The callousness of men and women, once the fit of hysteria is over, has to be seen to be believed— if you are prone to give humanity the benefit of the doubt, and expect some 'decency' where you won't find it. They regard as positive enemies those whom a war has left broken and penniless. The 'saviours' and 'heroes' get short shrift, upon the Peace Front. No prisoners are taken there! Why, in such a 'patriot' country as France, men have, since the War, been promoted to the highest offices of State, who had been convicted of treason and 'traffic with the enemy'. Sir Roger Casement would be an O.B.E. if not a Knight of the Garter, had he not been of a romantic and suicidal turn and got himself shot.
It has been my firm intention to talk no politics in this book. I will not refer to what went on in my own mind as a result of these experiences, more than an indication, just here and there. I have spoken nowhere of the men, while I was in France. It is impossible to say anything about that. If one is not to talk politics, one has to keep one's mouth shut. All the fancy-dress nonsense of 'officers' and 'men', under the snobbish English system, is a subject distinct from war, and yet very much involved with it.
As an officer it was my unwelcome task to read great numbers of private letters. Naturally the officers would among themselves discuss with smiles the burning endea
rments, or the secrets of his poor little domestic economy, revealed by his letters, of this man or that. These rough and halting communings, of the most private sort, were passsing through our hands every day. Yet most of the censors were as literary artists, of not a very different clay to those who had to submit to this humiliating censorship.
My own thoughts I kept strictly to myself. I preserved my anonymity, in the sense in which I have already explained that principle. When I am dressed up in a military uniform I look like other f>eople, though at other times I very easily depart from the canon, I find. One or two of my mess-mates sniffed at me suspiciously. But on the whole I was a masterpiece of conformity.—I am physically very robust. It is easy for me to go to sleep. And conformity is of course a sleep.
I started the war a different man to what I ended it. More than anything, it was a political education. I am slow to learn but quick to understand. As day by day I sidestepped and dodged the missiles that were hurled at me, and watched other people doing so, I became a politician. I was not then the accomplished politician I am to-day. But the seeds were there.
I had no sentimental aversion to war. A violent person, who likes the taste of blood, as another does the taste of wine, likes war. I was indifferent. But this organized breakdown in our civilized manners must have a rationale, in a civilized age. You must supply the civilized man with a reason, much as he has to have his cocktail, flytox, and ice-water.
I, along with millions of others, was standing up to be killed. Very well: but who in fact was it, who was proposing to kill or maim me? I developed a certain inquisitiveness upon that point. I saw clearly that it was not my German opposite number. He, like myself, was an instrument. That we were all on a fool's errand had become plain to many of us, for, beyond a certain point, victory becomes at the best a Pyrrhic victory, and that point had been reached before Passchendaele started. *
The scapegoat-on-the-spot did not appeal to me. So I had not even the consolation of 'blaming the Staff', after the manner of Mr. Sassoon—of cursing the poor little general-officers.
Blasting and Bomardiering Page 18
