No Man's Land: Writings From a World at War

by Pete Ayrton

  They went on. A little knot of Germans came toward them holding up their shaking hands. They took no notice of them, but let them pass through.

  The barrage continued. Their first casualty was caused by their own shells dropping short.

  *

  Major Thorpe sent Winterbourne and another man with a written duplicate message to Battalion Headquarters. They went back over the top, trying to run. It was impossible. Their hearts beat too fast, and their throats were parched. They went blindly at a jog-trot, slower in fact than a brisk walk. They seemed to be tossed violently by the bursting shells. The acrid smoke was choking. A heavy roared down beside Winterbourne and made him stagger with its concussion. He could not control the resultant shaking of his flesh. His teeth chattered very slightly as he clenched them desperately. They got back to familiar land and finally to Southampton Row. It was a long way to Battalion Headquarters. The men in the orderly-room eagerly questioned them about the battle, but they knew less than they did.

  Winterbourne asked for water and drank thirstily. He and the other runner were dazed and incoherent. They were given another written message, and elaborate directions which they promptly forgot.

  The drum-fire had died down to an ordinary heavy bombardment as they started back. Already it was late afternoon. They wandered for hours in unfamiliar trenches before they found the Company.

  *

  They slept that night in a large German dug-out, swarming with rats. Winterbourne in his sleep felt them jump on his chest and face.

  *

  The drum-fire began again next morning. Again they lined a trench and advanced through smoke over torn wire and shell-tormented ground. Prisoners passed through. At night they struggled for hours, carrying down wounded men in stretchers through the mud and clamour. Major Thorpe was mortally wounded and his runner killed; Hume and his runner were killed; Franklin was wounded; Pemberton was killed; Sergeant Perkins was killed; the stretcher-bearers were killed. Men seemed to drop away continually.

  *

  Three days later Evans and Thompson led back forty-five men to the old billets in the ruined village. The attack on their part of the front had failed. Further south a considerable advance had been made and several thousand prisoners taken, but the German line was unbroken and stronger than ever in its new positions. Therefore that also was a failure.

  Winterbourne and Henderson were the only two runners left; and since Evans was in command, Winterbourne was now company runner. The two men sat on their packs in the cellar without a word. Both shook very slightly but continuously with fatigue and shock. Outside the vicious heavies crashed eternally. They started wildly to their feet as a terrific smash overhead brought down what was left of the house above them and crashed into the duplicate cellar next door. A moment later there was another enormous crash and one end of the cellar broke in with falling bricks and a cloud of dust. They rushed out by the steps at the other end, and were sent reeling and choking by another huge black explosion.

  They stumbled across to another cellar occupied by what was left of a section, and asked to sleep there since their own cellar was wrecked. Six of them and a corporal sat in silence by the light of a candle, dully listening to the crash of shells.

  *

  In a lull they heard a strange noise outside the cellar, first like wheels and then like a human voice calling for help. No one moved. The voice called again. The Corporal spoke:

  ‘Who’s going up?’

  ‘Mucked if I am,’ said somebody; ‘I’ve ’ad enough.’

  Winterbourne and Henderson simultaneously struggled to their feet. The change from candle-light to darkness blinded them as they peered out from the ruined doorway. They could just see a confused dark mass. The voice came again:

  ‘Help! for Christ’s sake come and help!’

  A transport limber had been smashed by a shell. The wounded horses had dragged it along and fallen outside the cellar entrance. One man had both legs cut short at the knees. He was still alive, but evidently dying. They left him, lifted down the other man and carried him into the cellar. A large shell splinter had smashed his right knee. He was conscious, but weak. They got out his field-dressing and iodine and dripped iodine on the wound. At the pain of burning disinfectant the man turned deadly pale and nearly fainted. Winterbourne found that his hands and clothes were smeared with blood.

  Then came the problem of getting the man away to a dressing-station. The Corporal and the four men refused to budge. The shells were crashing continuously outside. Winterbourne started out to get a stretcher and the new stretcher-bearer, groping his way through the darkness. Outside their billet he tripped and fell into a deep shell-hole, just as a heavy exploded with terrific force at his side. But for the fall he must have been blown to pieces. He scrambled to his feet, breathless and shaken, and tumbled down the cellar stairs. He noticed scared faces looking at him in the candle-light. He explained what had happened. The stretcher-bearer jumped up, got his stretcher and satchel of dressings, and they started back. Every shell which exploded near seemed to shake Winterbourne’s flesh from his bones.

  He was dazed and half-frantic with the physical shock of concussion after concussion. When he got back in the cellar he collapsed into a kind of stupor. The stretcher-bearer dressed the man’s wound, and then looked at Winterbourne, felt his pulse, gave him a sip of rum and told him to lie still. He tried to explain that he must help carry the wounded man, and struggled to get to his feet. The stretcher-bearer pushed him back:

  ‘You lie still, mate; you’ve done enough for to-day.’

  To my astonishment, my publisher informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even passages, are at present taboo in England. I have recorded nothing which I have not observed in human life, said nothing I do not believe to be true… At my request the publishers are removing what they believe would be considered objectionable, and are placing asterisks to show where omissions have been made… In my opinion it is better for the book to appear mutilated than for me to say what I don’t believe.

  This disclaimer appeared in the first edition of Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero, which was published in 1929. An autobiographical novel, it describes the life and death of George Winterbourne, a young artist. The book’s descriptions of London life are brilliantly acerbic, but it is the descriptions of the fighting on the Front which make the book so memorable. Not surprisingly, writing that so caustically depicts the indifference and cant of those in charge of the war back home was received with great hostility and convinced Aldington that he had made the right decision to go into self-imposed exile in France the year before publication. Lawrence of Arabia: a Biographical Inquiry, his controversial biography of T. E. Lawrence published in 1955, brought Aldington further animosity. He died in France in 1962, at the age of 70. His obituary in the London Times described him as ‘an angry young man of the generation before they became fashionable’ and who ‘remained something of an angry old man to the end’.

  A. T. FITZROY

  BEETHOVEN AND BACH

  from Despised and Rejected

  DENNIS AND ANTOINETTE exchanged a look of amusement and again, as previously in the crowd, she felt conscious of a delicious feeling of security. It was good to be with him, and to be enjoying these people with him. Outside, the strange bodiless legs passed and passed; the cries of the newspaper boys echoed down the stone passage; and inside, the atmosphere became smokier and smokier, and bits of risqué stories became mingled with political arguments, theatrical jargon with the orders for meals; and the mournful lilt of the Irish voices was a queer contrast to the high-pitched shrieks and giggles of the flappers. And it was all very delightful and unconventional and unlike Cadogan Gardens. And Dennis was being nice to her. And she was very happy.

  The door to the street banged, and quick footsteps came down the stairs. A voice, youthful and eager, was heard asking: ‘Is Mr. Barnaby in there?’

  Dennis started. Was it hallucination again that made h
im believe it was Alan’s voice, the same hallucination that only a few days ago had made him believe that it was Alan’s figure he had seen in the crowd? He had suffered from so much of this kind of hallucination at one time…

  ‘Yes, we’re all here, Rutherford, come in,’ cried Barnaby. Antoinette glanced at Dennis’s face. And had no need to be told that already her precarious hold on happiness was threatened.

  ‘This is the man I was telling you about, Dennis, I wanted you to meet—’

  Alan cut him short. ‘We met ages ago. I’ve still got one of his handkerchiefs in my possession. Do you remember tying up my gory wound for me, Dennis?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Dennis, and Alan grinned at Conn and Pegeen, flung off his hat, and seated himself between Everard and Barnaby.

  ‘What about your tribunal?’ asked the journalist.

  ‘The local tribunal has already passed me for Combatant Service,’ replied Alan, ‘but I’m appealing again at the House of Commons next week. And then – good-bye to freedom for me, I suppose! But I’ll tell ’em a few home-truths before I’m locked up. Beefy, sanctimonious old men, sitting there to tell me it’s my duty to go out and take my share in murdering peasant-boys and students and labourers… And the same sort of old men on their side, egging them on to fight us, with just the same platitudes about duty and honour and self-defence, saying that we declared war first, just as we say they sprung the war on us! And the capitalists of all countries coining money out of bloodshed… Do they want the war to stop, those government contractors, making their millions by supplying munitions or boots or food for the armies?’

  Dennis watched him through narrowed eyes. He had not altered much. He was eighteen months older, that was all. But there was the same quick impatience in phrase and gesture, the same vivid look.

  He went on: ‘The only way to stop the war – not only this war, but all future wars, is by opposing conscription. You’re all for the good cause here, I suppose?’

  Barnaby answered for the company in general: ‘Yes, they’re all appealing on different grounds. Everard, I forget what yours are?’

  ‘I’ve not had the honour of being called up yet,’ the actor replied evasively.

  ‘And yours, Crispin?’

  By a series of grunts, Crispin made it known that he did not intend to fight against the nation that had produced Beethoven and Bach.

  ‘I’d like to appeal on every ground there is!’ Oswald cried excitably, ‘one can’t do enough to keep the horror from going on.’

  ‘I’m appealing on racial and personal grounds,’ declared Benny, ‘I won’t be made to fight the Jews of other countries, even to avenge Brave Little Belgium, or prove myself a true patriot!’

  Oswald began:

  ‘“Breathes there a man with soul so dead

  Who never to himself has said—”’

  ‘I’ve said “This is my own, my native land” at least half a dozen times in half a dozen different lands,’ Benny interrupted, ‘I have relatives scattered about in allied, enemy and neutral countries alike. And how can a man fight for any particular country, when he’s got an aunt in every port?’

  ‘And England talks of defending the honour of small nations,’ murmured Conn, ‘has she forgotten Ireland at her very door, Ireland that she’s oppressed and ground under her heel these many years? Let her recognise Ireland as an equal and raise her up from the thraldom of a vassal before she takes Belgium’s name in vain to hide her desire for gain.’

  ‘Well, at least you’re free from the necessity of appealing,’ said Barnaby, ‘they’ll never dare introduce conscription into Ireland. It’ll mean revolution if they do.’

  ‘And may I be the first to fly the Sinn Féin flag in the streets of Dublin that day!’

  ‘What about you, Dennis?’ said Alan.

  ‘Humanitarian grounds.’

  ‘Good!’ For a second their eyes met, and then parted again. There was chaos in Dennis’s mind. Alan’s personality had lost none of its potent spell… and there was Antoinette beside him… and he longing and longing to have the boy all to himself… And he knew that all his energies must go to the concealment of that desire. He leant back in his chair and listened to Alan’s voice – and was aware that Antoinette’s gaze rested always on himself.

  ‘Conscription has got to be fought,’Alan repeated, ‘without conscription, Germany could never have gone to war. And the people have got to be made to see reason, those who say that we must go on with the war “for the sake of the men who have fallen.” What sense is there in that? Because we have wasted a million good lives already, why should we throw another million on to the same refuse-heap? “To make their sacrifice worth while!” As if anything could make their sacrifice in such an iniquitous cause worth while! “They died gladly for their country” – it’s all cant, cruel sickening cant to make the people at home see the war through rose-coloured spectacles. If they saw it without the spectacles, they wouldn’t be so willing to go on paying for the continuation of it. “We must fight until the whole of Germany is crushed” – is the whole of Germany to blame for this war, any more than the whole of England? Blame it on the German High Command, if you like, and on the Prussian Junkers and their kind, but not on the people – people as straight and decent as ours, only maddened by this artificially worked-up hatred, this dizzy vision of world-power and world-empire. But in Germany, just as in every other country, there are people who don’t let themselves be dazzled by that vision, and who are ready to work for the overthrow of governments that can organise wholesale butchery as a means by which to extend dominion.’

  ‘The pity of it is, that we’re so few,’ said Benny, ‘such a small and unpopular minority.’

  Alan returned impatiently: ‘We’re not out for laurels.’

  ‘No, it’s more likely to be the broad arrow,’ said Oswald.

  ‘Let it be the broad arrow, then! It’ll be the badge of freedom of the future, badge of honour for those who have struggled against the tide of public opinion. The militarists’ hatred of us is much more bloodthirsty than their hatred of the Germans; we are the cowards and the traitors who are deliberately delaying victory. “If we don’t give Germany a knock-out blow now, the war will start all over again for the next generation” – you hear the ignorant and the thoughtless reiterating that catch-phrase like a lot of parrots. The war all over again – that’s exactly what they will have if they do win their complete military victory. When the “knockout blow” has been dealt, they’ll have to go on keeping big armies and building big ships, to consolidate their position as top-dog. And as long as we have big armies and navies, we shall always have wars. The pretty toys have to be used – they can’t be kept for show… People call us “Pro-Germans” – it’s laughable. If I’d been in Germany or anywhere else, I’d have fought just as hard against being turned into a cog in the infernal machinery of war. It’s the whole system of militarism I’m up against, not the individual wrongs of one country or another. No civilised industrial population of any country wants war. Miners in Cornwall and Lancashire or Galicia and Siberia; poor devils sweating in our factories and in their factories; railwaymen, schoolmasters, farmers – what do they want with war? Nothing… until the idea is drilled into them by those in power. The people who want war and believe that war is good, should be allowed to make a private picnic of it. The government officials and cabinet ministers and war profiteers on both sides; the people who say they’d rather lose all their sons, than that they shouldn’t go out and fight—’

  ‘The khaki-clad females who say they wish they were men, so that they could kill a few Huns themselves,’ Dennis put in.

  ‘Yes, if only that small handful who started the war, and are continuing it, could finish it up amongst themselves, without implicating the masses!’

  ‘Without the masses, there would be no war,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘Exactly!’ cried Alan, ‘without the masses, there could be no war, and that is the solution of it all, and the e
nd and the aim of socialism – to free the masses from the tyranny of governments that can drive them like cattle to be slaughtered in this crazy campaign of greed and hatred. Look at the wonderfully organised man-power of all the nations, with all the woman-power behind it; look at the scientific miracles and the ceaseless labour and energy that go to the production of big guns, submarines, aeroplanes, poison-gas; think of all this employed in the cause of destruction… And think of the heroism and self-sacrifice of those who really “die gladly” for a mistaken ideal; and the tremendous flame of patriotism that’s burning in the hearts of all the peoples alike: if all these tangible and intangible splendours could have been used in the furtherance, instead of in the destruction of civilisation!

  ‘And you’re expected to take your share in the destruction, without asking if it’s right or wrong. All honour to the men who, when war broke out, almost as a matter of course left their homes and their loves and their careers, because they thought it was the only decent thing to do… And all blame to the old men at home, and to the narrow-minded women and unimaginative girls who made it appear the only decent thing! We’re convinced that it isn’t, and we must stand firm, cost what it may! We’re few: that doesn’t matter. We shall be pilloried: that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we shall have striven against what our brains and our hearts recognised as evil – Oh, not only evil, but stupid and petty and beastly – and that we shall have done our bit towards bringing nearer the day when militarism will be supplanted by industry, and we may hope to have an international system of legislation that’ll knock out the possibility of disputes having to be settled by the barbarous and unintelligent means of bloodshed.’

  ‘Unintelligent, good Lord, yes!’ cried Barnaby, ‘the whole thing is unintelligent, even from the militarist point of view. There are thousands of men being forced to fight, who are physically and mentally unfit to be of the least use in battle, but whose brains might have given us scientific inventions that would have benefited humanity, works of art, books, music… No, they won’t let them stop at home and do what they can do, but must send them out to do incompetently things against which their whole nature rises in revolt. From the general utility standpoint: in which capacity is the artist of more value to the nation? As a creator of a work that may live, or as a mass of shattered nerves, totally incapable either of fulfilling the requirements of the army or of carrying out his own ideas?’