by Will R Bird
We knew he was a “Blue-blood,” that his letters bore a family crest, that he was wealthy, and in France solely on adventure, but we did not think he would have his aims so gratified. He was a good soldier, courageous and willing, but had not the experience nor half the ability of men like Waterbottle, Earle or Williams. The men of his own platoon seemed most surprised. Tommy grinned at everyone and said the war was keeping its reputation.
The next day we reached the fringe of the Raismes Forest and entered it in close pursuit of Huns we had twice sighted. It was cold and damp, a late October night, and the Student and I talked a long time in a brush shelter.
CHAPTER XI
Raismes Forest
The Student talked about an officer. “He’s a decent chap,” he said. “He’s clean and intelligent, and probably has applied himself conscientiously to his business of killing the Hun, but I felt sorry for him when we were lined up out at billets and he was examining our iron rations and field dressings. Gregory, that tall, blonde, easy-moving fellow smiled at him when he came along. He was inches taller than the officer, so much more man beside him, and when the officer tried to make some pleasantry Gregory made such a swift rejoinder that he was nonplussed. He flushed and stammered and took refuge behind sharp orders. Every man in the platoon could see that Gregory should have been wearing the Sam Browne. I believe he could handle a company without effort.”
The Student had made correct observation. Gregory was a graduate of Edinburgh University, and of good birth, yet he stayed in the ranks, easy-going, quizzical, observing, as if he really enjoyed seeing the futility of assumed rank. He had a splendid carriage, the confidence of the men, and would have made an ideal leader, yet I never heard him speak either scathingly or pityingly of those who ordered his existence and were, usually, much his inferior.
“What does it matter anyway?” said the Student, as we huddled together. “This whole ghastly business is futile in the extreme, and that’s what makes it so illimitably cruel. It doesn’t matter who wins, the underdogs will remain in their places, the top ones will be at the top, and after a few years there’ll be more wars, just as senseless. Our leaders know it, all history is full of lessons on its futility, yet we go on.”
“… and – we – go – on.”
I remembered poor little Mickey gasping, with his last breath, his protest of such a rule. So I told the Student about him, of the white tunic that had meant purity, the red one as a token of the spilling of blood, and how Mickey cried out that he had never worn them, never wanted to, so why should he be drawn in the maw of the insatiable, monstrous machine of war.
Two figures came out of the dripping darkness and crouched beside us, Tommy, shivering, bitter-voiced, and Giger, who was again with the company.
“Not a drop of rum for us on a night like this,” said Tommy, “and yesterday a bunch of transport drivers were so drunk they couldn’t keep on the road. They have all they want all the time, and so much bread that they peddle it to the estaminets for beer.” He was in his usual mood and the Student seemed to sympathize with him. They talked of the cycles in history that seemed to chain mankind. Every period had its wars, now one nation, now another, getting its life blood drained without hope of betterment. Why did our statesmen, other statesmen, allow such things? Why was there war?
“If they’d only take them that made it, and wanted it, and give them bayonets and put them in trenches, in mud and rain, and say, ‘There you are, have your fill. Kill the other chap, and we’ll get rations to you day after to-morrow,’ how much war would there be?” rasped Tommy. “It’s not them that fight, the ones who start it, they’re always safe and have plenty, it’s the poor devils who never know what it’s all about and can’t see for flags waving or hear anything but drums and patriotic speeches. They join up, or the big boys in the safe places make laws and force them out in front of the guns and see them blown to shambles. I wish that every person responsible, on both sides, could be dragged by the heels around Passchendale and then shelled by high velocity guns till they died of sheer fright.”
Giger got so excited that he could not stay quiet. He had filled out, grown stout, and was a walking testimony to the nutritive value of bully, bacon and army biscuits. “I’d like to smash the Kaiser,” he grunted. “I’d like to stick him with my bayonet, and listen, I’m not going to take no prisoners. Every Fritz I get near is going to get his.”
No one checked him and he grew more confident. “I got back to the platoon,” he boasted. “Binks, him that went down sick, give me a charm. He took it off a Heinie, it’s a wrist ring of hair, and Binks said it was sure good luck. The Heinie was killed by a shell after Binks took it from him, but Binks put it on and went all through the scrap at Parvillers and at Jigsaw Wood and was never touched. We got the Germans runnin’ now and I got this charm, so I come back to get a crack at some of them. I ain’t never killed one yet and I’d hate to go back to Canada and have to say that.”
There was a sincerity in his speech that made me shiver. It was Tommy who stopped his tongue. “Shut up,” he ordered. “You’re no better than the Heinies yourself. Who wants to kill people?”
Then he turned to us and raved about the unfairness of the way the army was handled. “They sent two more guys to the rest camp,” he grated. “Both of them come to us last spring, after we’d been with the battalion more than a year. Yet we stayed in for everything and that pair goes to the seashore.”
“But they’re no good in the line, Tommy,” I said, “and you know it.”
“Which doesn’t alter things one iota. It’s the rotten injustice that gets me.” Tommy was wound up. “They can send a certain number of men out on rest, so they pick out chaps that need officers over them all the time, and they keep the men who’ve been two years in this mess, never mind how much they need to relax. They know that when a bunch of us old fellows are in front it doesn’t make any odds where the officers are. And look at the whole blasted game – about five men back of every one that’s up front, five men who don’t know what it is to face machine guns, getting the same pay as us and ten times the privileges, and all the glory. Hell …”
“It used to be,” said the Student, “that the fighters did the fighting and the rest stayed on the land. Now it‘s the amateurs that fight, and the professional soldiers are in the rear at headquarters or Base jobs.”
“I’d like a job tendin’ them squareheads in the cages,” said Giger. “I’d make them step. They wouldn’t go round with their heads up if I was over them.”
“Will you shut up,” snapped Tommy. “You make me sick.”
“Where’s the padre?” asked the Student. “Before I came over I fancied that they were always with the soldiers, helping the wounded ones and having little services every chance they got.”
“Don’t,” said Tommy, “start that argument. I was a member of the Methodist Church when I enlisted. Now I don’t know or care about anything connected with it. Preachers and padres are not any better than brass hats. They’re out of touch with the men, and they’ve lost their hold.”
“Don’t you believe in God?” asked the Student.
“I do” said Tommy gravely and reverently. “If I didn’t I’d quit everything. But I’m going to have my own belief in my own way. It’s all going to be between Him and me, and no preacher is going to have anything to do with it. They tell you it’s wrong to hate another man, wrong to kill a man, and that’s a commandment, and yet they get up in pulpits and out on church parades and tell you that we’re fighting for the Lord and talk as if the Germans were devils and that it’s all right to kill them. Bah – padres, I’m sick of them. They say just what the brass hats want them to say, there’s not a sincere man among them. If there was he’d be out between the lines trying to stop both sides from killing each other.”
“He’d get killed himself,” said Giger. “Them Heinies’d shoot anybody.”
We pushed Giger outside and he went, muttering to himself, to shiver elsewh
ere.
“I don’t believe,” said Tommy, “that God is on either side of this war, but I believe that He’s with the poor chaps like little Mickey – on both sides. If there’s a hell the big bugs will surely get there.”
I got tired of hearing his bitterness and gradually he quieted. At dawn we were stiff with cold and ate cold rations, then started down a road in the forest. It had once been a grand old Wood where French nobles had great bear hunts, but now it was a place where sudden death lurked among the bushes. We saw Germans about ten o’clock, two of them near the road. The captain had just come up to speak to us when they rose and fired down the clearing. He moved as rapidly as we did. For the next hour we tried our best stalking methods but did not glimpse our quarry.
All that day we went through the wet Wood and watched on every side. It was an experience we would not forget. Not a sound could be heard, save low voices when two men came together. We had a long extended line that kept well in advance of the main party, and we had to work forward as if every thicket held an enemy. The Germans were retreating and had plenty of time to shoot and get away, all the advantages being with them. Night found us at a wood-cutter’s cabin and there we bivouacked, a few sentries remaining on duty some distance in front so as to prevent a surprise attack.
The Student and I slept together again and I told him about the 7th Battalion man’s theory that we are greater than we realize and Spike’s belief that we take our memories and affections with us when we go on. “I don’t like to think that,” said the Student. “If that’s so we’ll always have visions with us that we abhor. Do you want to keep your memory of this war?”
His question startled me. I had not thought of it before, and I could not answer. I told him of the German wriggling, sliding, on my bayonet at Passchendale, of the sniping I had done at Vimy, the three Germans I had killed with a bomb from behind; I didn’t want to remember such things. Then I told him of the officer asking for a drink, and how I had got it for him, of Siddall wanting me to stay while he went “to sleep,” of the German I had surprised in the old sap in front of Avion, and had let go; there were so many things I wanted to remember.
“I’ll never know,” I said. “This chaos has wrecked all my senses of value. Do you?”
“No,” he said quickly, sharply. “I hate it all, it’s so utterly insane.”
He made me think of the Professor and I told him of the talks we had on our way to the Salient, and of Freddy’s premonitions.
“If I thought,” he said, “that it’s true we can’t escape a cyclometry form of existence I’d find some quiet brookside or nook among the hills and live there on berries and nuts and simply watch the clouds and sunrise and sunset. What’s the use of building or learning new things if we are carried mercilessly into another era of destruction. Far better to just sit and watch the birds and squirrels.”
The conversation was too melancholy for me, and so I switched to a lighter vein and told him there was humour even in the trenches. He looked at me despairingly, and I told him of little Joe, our Cockney runner, who had been shot through both legs at Passchendale and had lain two days beside a group of dead Germans. When we found him he pointed at the nearest corpse, a bloated figure, and whispered. “Turn ’im over, will yer mytes? ’E as an ’orrible fice.”
The Student did not relax his glumness and I told him of the new officer that came to us at Lieven. He was taking two of his draft to a post in some ruined buildings on the outskirts of Lens, and got mixed in his turnings. No one was in sight. All the wreckage looked alike, and there were no trenches, yet he knew that the post must be nearby, perhaps in one of the ruins. So he led the way around one of them and called in at openings on each side to know if there were any of “D” Company there. As he got no response his voice grew bolder. After a complete circuit of the building, a rather long one, he got more mixed and made the same circle, calling as before. His heroes plodded around him without comment, until he started the third round. Then the man in the rear complained.
“Shut up, Bill,” said his mate. “This here’s Joshua and we’re on a seven-day tramp around Jericho.”
The sun shone the next afternoon and our spirits grew lighter. I walked with Sambro in the morning, finding him always the same. In the afternoon the Student came with me again and as we prowled through the underbrush, or halted at some point to wait for the line to grow even, he told me that he had a girl in Canada whom he was going to marry as soon as he returned. “I’d never have enlisted if it wasn’t for her,” he said. “She never said anything outright but I knew she thought I ought to go – women will never understand what a futile mess this is.”
“I think they do,” I said. “Perhaps better than we.”
“Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind if I knew for sure I’d get back all right, but if this war’s going to last another winter I’ll go crazy.”
“You won’t,” I said, “You’ll just carry on like the rest of us. One never knows how much he can stand until he has to. After you’ve been here a year you’ll get so you just go on and on and on, as if you were on a great long slide and couldn’t stop if you wanted to. We all get that way.”
Ahead of us we saw a clearing and a small farm. A little cottage stood on a knoll with a shed close by. There was a fence about the place and a few apple trees near the house. We hurried toward them when I saw Steve step from the cottage door and hold up his hand. I stood, spell-bound, a moment, unable to move. It was clear and bright and I could see the very buttons on his tunic, the way his belt was loosely hooked. Never had I had such a clear picture of him and I was sure he would speak.
The Student walked by me right towards him. I watched to see if he would notice the soldier that wore trues instead of kilts, and then – too late – I realized the danger.
“Come back,” I shouted, in such a voice that the Student turned, but even as he did it seemed as if Steve had simply changed into a tall German who aimed a rifle.
Crack! A sharp report and the Student fell without speaking, crumbling in a heap. I fired from the hip without raising my rifle but the sniper had ducked back into the cottage. Jones and Mills and Tommy and I ran back into the trees and started to surround the place so that he could not escape but he got through a window at the rear and ran for cover. It was useless. The range was not sixty yards and he went down under our first fire.
I hurried back to the Student. He was plucking feebly at one of his tunic pockets and I unfastened it for him. In it, protected by his paybook, was a photo of a lovely girl. I held it so he could look at it and saw his lips move in thanks. He gazed at the picture until his eyes dimmed, then smiled as though he thought the face so near his would understand, and the smile stayed when we left him.
Tommy looked at the dead German, and at the house. “What earthly use was it for that Heinie to pull such a stunt?” he demanded. “He hadn’t any chance to get away afterwards and what good did it do him to kill poor Linder?”
“There’s one more dead on each side,” answered Jones, who was looking at the two still forms, “and that means we’re so much nearer the end of the war.”
I looked at him. Jones was a big, placid-appearing man, but there was a tinge of bitterness in his tone. “When there has been enough of us killed the folks at home will begin to protest and this whole business will collapse,” he said as we moved on. “Then each side will blame the other and them that’s left will go back and carry on.”
A short distance ahead we saw a road that curved among the trees. On the left there was a pile of short logs that had been recently cut. Seated on them was a German soldier, a rather slight man, his grotesque steel helmet looking like a shell. We were treading on moss and old leaves, and the dampness had softened everything so that we made no sound. The German never heard us. Someone pushed by me, breathing with short, eager intakes. It was Giger. He was creeping up behind the unsuspecting Hun like a great, blood-thirsty tiger.
The fellow never saw him until he was at
the end of the logs, and then he surrendered at once, shooting his arms into the air and whining “Kamerad.”
Giger walked up to him softly, easily, watching, until he was around the heap, then he tensed and thrust with all his strength, driving his bayonet with all the brutal savagery of a killer. It was a ghastly, merciless thing, and I shuddered. Tommy stood, white-faced, and looked around for an officer. Giger grinned back at us. How’s that?” he called. “I …”
A second German shot up from some hiding place at the far end of the logs. He had not his bayonet but the woodman’s axe that had been left there, and before Giger could jump from danger or withdraw his bayonet he was cut down by a fearful blow on the neck and shoulder. Then the German ran like a deer – and no one fired a shot at him.
There was nothing we could do for Giger. Everything had happened so quickly, so strangely, that we had simply been inert witnesses. His eyes sought his wrist and I saw the hair ring on it, the “charm” Blinks had given him. He died with startled incredulity in his gaze.
When we reached the end of the forest it was night, just dusk, and Tommy and I were in the lead. A new officer was with us, and was another good one, a very silent man, but without frills or foolishness. I had my binoculars with me and scanned the village at the top of a slope leading from the Wood edge. Only French people were in sight. I looked along the trees to the left and saw two Germans standing beside lone trees. At first glance I had thought them labourers, as they were talking and not watching the Forest.
