War Stories

by Sebastian Faulks

  The whole affair had been so easy that I felt like pushing forward until we bumped into something more definite. But the corporal had a cooler head and he advised discretion. I told him to remain where he was and started to explore a narrow sap on the left side of the trench. (Not that it matters whether it was on the left side or the right, but it appears to be the only detail I can remember; and when all is said and done, the war was mainly a matter of holes and ditches.) What I expected to find along that sap, I can’t say. Finding nothing, I stopped to listen. There seemed to be a lull in the noise of the attack along the line. A few machine-guns tapped, spiteful and spasmodic. High up in the fresh blue sky an aeroplane droned and glinted. I thought what a queer state of things it all was, and then decided to take a peep at the surrounding country. This was a mistake which ought to have put an end to my terrestrial adventures, for no sooner had I popped my silly head out of the sap than I felt a stupendous blow in the back between my shoulders. My first notion was that a bomb had hit me from behind, but what had really happened was that I had been sniped from in front. Anyhow my foolhardy attitude toward the Second Battle of the Scarpe had been instantaneously altered for the worse. I leant against the side of the sap and shut my eyes . . . When I reopened them Sergeant Baldock was beside me, discreet and sympathetic, and to my surprise I discovered that I wasn’t dead. He helped me back to the trench, gently investigated my wound, put a field-dressing on it, and left me sitting there while he went to bring up some men.

  After a short spell of being deflated and sorry for myself, I began to feel rapidly heroical again, but in a slightly different style, since I was now a wounded hero, with my arm in a superfluous sling. All my seventy-five men were now on the scene (minus a few who had been knocked out by our own shells, which were dropping short). I can remember myself talking volubly to a laconic Stokes-gun officer, who had appeared from nowhere with his weapon and a couple of assistants. I felt that I must make one more onslaught before I turned my back on the war and my only idea was to collect all available ammunition and then renew the attack while the Stokes-gun officer put up an enthusiastic barrage. It did not occur to me that anything else was happening on Allenby’s Army Front except my own little show. My overstrained nerves had wrought me up to such a pitch of excitement that I was ready for any suicidal exploit. This convulsive energy might have been of some immediate value had there been any objective for it. But there was none; and before I had time to inaugurate anything rash and irrelevant Dunning arrived to relieve me. His air of competent unconcern sobered me down, but I was still inflamed with the offensive spirit and my impetuosity was only snuffed out by a written order from the Cameronian Colonel, who forbade any further advance owing to the attack having failed elsewhere. My ferocity fizzled out then, and I realized that I had a raging thirst. As I was starting my return journey (I must have known then that nothing could stop me till I got to England) the MO came sauntering up the trench with the detached demeanour of a gentle botanist. ‘Trust him to be up there having a look round,’ I thought. Within four hours of leaving it I was back in the Tunnel.

  Back at Battalion Headquarters in the Tunnel I received from our Colonel and Adjutant generous congratulations on my supposedly dashing display. In the emergency candlelight of that draughty cellar recess I bade them good-bye with voluble assurances that I should be back in a few weeks; but I was so overstrained and excited that my assurances were noises rather than notions. Probably I should have been equally elated without my wound; but if unwounded, I’d have been still up at the Block with the bombing parties. In the meantime, nothing that happened to me could relieve Battalion HQ of its burdens. The Adjutant would go on till he dropped, for he had an inexhaustible sense of duty. I never saw him again; he was killed in the autumn up at Ypres . . . I would like to be able to remember that I smiled grimly and departed reticently. But the ‘bombing show’ had increased my self-importance, and my exodus from the front line was a garrulous one. A German bullet had passed through me leaving a neat hole near my right shoulder-blade and this patriotic perforation had made a different man of me. I now looked at the war, which had been a monstrous tyrant, with liberated eyes. For the time being I had regained my right to call myself a private individual.

  Pat Barker

  FINISHED WITH THE WAR

  While on convalescence in England, Siegfried Sassoon decided not to go back to France and publicized his reasons in a declaration which was printed in The Times in July 1917. Sassoon expected to be court-martialled; instead he was found to be in need of psychiatric treatment and sent to Craiglockart War Hospital, a hospital for shell-shocked officers. These events lie at the centre of Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration (1991), the first in a trilogy about the distinguished psychologist W.H.R. Rivers.

  Finished with the War

  A Soldier’s Declaration

  I AM MAKING this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

  I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

  I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

  I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

  On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

  S. Sassoon

  July 1917

  BRYCE WAITED FOR Rivers to finish reading before he spoke again. ‘The “S” stands for “Siegfried”. Apparently, he thought that was better left out.’

  ‘And I’m sure he was right.’ Rivers folded the paper and ran his fingertips along the edge. ‘So they’re sending him here?’

  Bryce smiled. ‘Oh, I think it’s rather more specific than that. They’re sending him to you.’

  Rivers got up and walked across to the window. It was a fine day, and many of the patients were in the hospital grounds, watching a game of tennis. He heard the pok-pok of rackets, and a cry of frustration as a ball smashed into the net. ‘I suppose he is – “shell-shocked”?’

  ‘According to the Board, yes.’

  ‘It just occurs to me that a diagnosis of neurasthenia might not be inconvenient confronted with this.’ He held up the Declaration.

  ‘Colonel Langdon chaired the Board. He certainly seems to think he is.’

  ‘Langdon doesn’t believe in shell-shock.’

  Bryce shrugged. ‘Perhaps Sassoon was gibbering all over the floor.’

  ‘“Funk, old boy.” I know Langdon.’ Rivers came back to his chair and sat down. ‘He doesn’t sound as if he’s gibbering, does he?’

  Bryce said carefully, ‘Does it matter what his mental state is? Surely it’s better for him to be here than in prison?’

  ‘Better for him, perhaps. What about the hospital? Can you imagine what our dear Director of Medical Services is going to say, when he finds out we’re sheltering “conchies” as well as cowards, shirkers, scrimshankers and degenerates? We’ll just have to hope there’s no publicity.’

  ‘There’s going to be, I’m afraid. The Declaration’s going to be read out in the House of Commons next week.’

  ‘By?’

  ‘Lees-Smith.’

  Rivers made a dismissive gest
ure.

  ‘Yes, well, I know. But it still means the press.’

  ‘And the minister will say that no disciplinary action has been taken, because Mr Sassoon is suffering from a severe mental breakdown, and therefore not responsible for his actions. I’m not sure I’d prefer that to prison.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he was offered the choice. Will you take him?’

  ‘You mean I am being offered a choice?’

  ‘In view of your case load, yes.’

  Rivers took off his glasses and swept his hand down across his eyes. ‘I suppose they have remembered to send the file?’

  Light from the window behind Rivers’s desk fell directly on to Sassoon’s face. Pale skin, purple shadows under the eyes. Apart from that, no obvious signs of nervous disorder. No twitches, jerks, blinks, no repeated ducking to avoid a long-exploded shell. His hands, doing complicated things with cup, saucer, plate, sandwiches, cake, sugar tongs and spoon, were perfectly steady. Rivers raised his own cup to his lips and smiled. One of the nice things about serving afternoon tea to newly arrived patients was that it made so many neurological tests redundant.

  So far he hadn’t looked at Rivers. He sat with his head slightly averted, a posture that could easily have been taken for arrogance, though Rivers was more inclined to suspect shyness. The voice was slightly slurred, the flow of words sometimes hesitant, sometimes rushed. A disguised stammer, perhaps, but a life-long stammer, Rivers thought, not the recent, self-conscious stammer of the neurasthenic.

  ‘While I remember, Captain Graves rang to say he’ll be along some time after dinner. He sent his apologies for missing the train.’

  ‘He is still coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sassoon looked relieved. ‘Do you know, I don’t think Graves’s caught a train in his life? Unless somebody was there to put him on it.’

  ‘We were rather concerned about you.’

  ‘In case the lunatic went missing?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

  ‘I was all right. I wasn’t even surprised, I thought he’d slept in. He’s been doing a . . . a lot of rushing round on my behalf recently. You’ve no idea how much work goes into rigging a Medical Board.’

  Rivers pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead and massaged the inner corners of his eyes. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have. You know this may sound naïve but . . . to me . . . the accusation that a Medical Board has been rigged is quite a serious one.’

  ‘I’ve no complaints. I was dealt with in a perfectly fair and reasonable way. Probably better than I deserved.’

  ‘What kind of questions did they ask?’

  Sassoon smiled. ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘I’ve read the report, if that’s what you mean. I’d still like to hear your version.’

  ‘Oh: “Did I object to fighting on religious grounds?” I said I didn’t. It was rather amusing, actually. For a moment I thought they were asking me whether I objected to going on a crusade. “Did I think I was qualified to decide when the war should end?” I said I hadn’t thought about my qualifications.’ He glanced at Rivers. ‘Not true. And then . . . then Colonel Langdon asked said “Your friend tells us you’re very good at bombing. Don’t you still dislike the Germans?”’

  A long silence. The net curtain behind Rivers’s head billowed out in a glimmering arc, and a gust of cool air passed over their faces.

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘It didn’t matter what I said.’

  ‘It matters now.’

  ‘All right.’ A faint smile. ‘Yes, I am quite good at bombing. No, I do not still dislike the Germans.’

  ‘Does that mean you once did?’

  Sassoon looked surprised. For the first time something had been said that contradicted his assumptions. ‘Briefly. April and May of last year, to be precise.’

  A pause. Rivers waited. After a while Sassoon went on, almost reluctantly. ‘A friend of mine had been killed. For a while I used to go out on patrol every night, looking for Germans to kill. Or rather I told myself that’s what I was doing. In the end I didn’t know whether I was trying to kill them, or just giving them plenty of opportunities to kill me.’

  ‘“Mad Jack.”’

  Sassoon looked taken aback. ‘Graves really has talked, hasn’t he?’

  ‘It’s the kind of thing the Medical Board would need to know.’ Rivers hesitated. ‘Taking unnecessary risks is one of the first signs of a war neurosis.’

  ‘Is it?’ Sassoon looked down at his hands. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Nightmares and hallucinations come later.’

  ‘What’s an “unnecessary risk” anyway? The maddest thing I ever did was done under orders.’ He looked up, to see if he should continue. ‘We were told to go and get the regimental badges off a German corpse. They reckoned he’d been dead two days, so obviously if we got the badges they’d know which battalion was opposite. Full moon, not a cloud in sight, absolutely mad, but off we went. Well, we got there – eventually – and what do we find? He’s been dead a helluva lot longer than two days, and he’s French anyway.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘Pulled one of his boots off and sent it back to battalion HQ. With quite a bit of his leg left inside.’

  Rivers allowed another silence to open up. ‘I gather we’re not going to talk about nightmares?’

  ‘You’re in charge.’

  ‘Ye-es. But then one of the paradoxes of being an army psychiatrist is that you don’t actually get very far by ordering your patients to be frank.’

  ‘I’ll be as frank as you like. I did have nightmares when I first got back from France. I don’t have them now.’

  ‘And the hallucinations?’

  He found this more difficult. ‘It was just that when I woke up, the nightmares didn’t always stop. So I used to see . . .’ A deep breath. ‘Corpses. Men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor.’

  ‘And you were awake when this happened?’