by Philip Child
It was twenty minutes to five o’clock on the morning of the twenty-first of March, 1918, zero hour of the German army’s Kaiserschlacht, their final and greatest bid for victory in the World War.
II
At zero hour minus one minute, twenty-one minutes to five on March the twenty-first , Jiffy Tripp stood in the trenches beside an infantry officer, looking over no man’s land. It was still dark. At zero hour plus five seconds the shell bursts actually threw a sort of witch’s kaleidoscope onto no man’s land, and he was reaching for the SOS rockets. Red — green — red. Three hours later, as Jiffy was crawling through a thin stream of blood at the bottom of a saucer-shaped muck heap which had been a trench, a shell splinter knocked him scuttling. An infantry subaltern said to him: “Take it easy, old man, you’ll be all right. Just lie low and keep your head down.” But Jiffy was in great pain, and the pain made him angry. He said: “Goddamn it to hell, do you think I want to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair! Just prop me up. I’d like to have a crack at the bitches.” He tried to get up and collapsed. Then, with an air of pulling himself together, he began to make a joke about drawing his full rations. Then he began to cough, and after that, it was a serious business. He lay still. At zero plus five hours, the German infantry came over with “hurrahs” and found not a single soldier on his feet in that trench. At zero plus five hours and two minutes, a German private stepped on Jiffy Tripp. Jiffy raised himself on his elbow and saying, “Take that, anyway, you bastard,” fired his revolver. Then sank back with a bayonet point in his throat and, presently, lay still for good.
At zero plus twelve hours, at an advanced dressing station, Captain Murdo Burnet of the Royal Army Medical Corps was busier than he had ever been before. Even after the hours of cutting and patching, the priest was not entirely submerged in the surgeon; behind the mangled bodies with which he had to deal lay mangled souls; with them, too, he was professionally concerned. “This man,” ordered Murdo, “I’ll take him next. Gunshot wound in the head. Ventricles traversed by the bullet. Fatal nine cases out of ten.” … The things I should have liked to tell these poor fellows.… No use telling all ranks that God loves them and will care for them even as he does for every sparrow. True, of course, but they don’t believe it nowadays, and you can’t blame them. They know that a shell can kill a lot of sparrows. It is the old theme of the debate between the body and the soul. Body tells us we are machines — and badly out of gear, too. Soul denies it desperately. That’s the real problem of the war for human beings: “Is a spiritual view of life possible?” …
“The things I could say,” thought Murdo, “if only they would listen. Thoughts boiling in me, if only I could preach.… Mustard gas in the eye. Conjunctivitis with corneal complications. Can’t open his eyes and, of course, he thinks he is blind .… I would say to them something like this: ‘Hardly one of you but must in his heart have faced despair. Not one of you but has seen the body so mangled and tortured with pain that it seems to eclipse the spirit with all the spirit’s better hopes, so that a man seems little but a raw wound crying out to God for mercy against his agony.’ … Perforating wound in the abdomen. I’ve hot tea for him and only a quarter grain of morphine. Keep him warm! … ‘Then it is the body’s hour and the soul is hidden for a while and we seem to die not differently from the beasts of the field.’ … This man is dead, Sergeant. Take him off the table. … Then I’d say: ‘But can we not believe that a loving God will disinter the spirit from the debris of the body even as we, we men, in anxious and loving fear, would dig clear the body of some comrade buried under the earth of a shell burst?’ But they wouldn’t believe me. Christianity is a faith ; one must have faith.… Say to them: ‘It is my faith — perhaps it is yours, too — that when we are in great need, if we will but forget ourselves and look to others, God will give us help through them.’ … Multiple gunshot wounds in the face. Eyes, nose, mandible. Shock and profound pain. Morphia one half grain, 1,500 units of anti-tetanus .… ‘What comes after death? Life, I believe; my faith tells me so. But I cannot be certain; nor can anyone of us. That is in God’s hands who made us; he will not be less just than the least of us made in his image would be in his place.…’”
At zero plus twelve hours Lieutenant Dolughoff, sundered from his unit by forces beyond his control, namely, the retreat of two armies on a seventy-mile front, found himself among infantry holding a trench dug to the depth of a foot. At zero plus eleven hours and thirty minutes, he was still fighting. A soldier next to him was hit and fell to the bottom of the trench, holding in his intestines with his hands. Dolughoff looked down at the soldier and something snapped inside his mind. He threw down his rifle, climbed up on the parapet, shouting at the top of his voice, and put up the palms of his hands, one toward the Germans, one toward the British; the gesture was exactly that of a policeman halting traffic. He shouted: “Stop! In God’s name, I tell you to stop.” It never occurred to him that he would be hit. Nor did it seem to him that he was committing a folly. God, he thought, had at last revealed to him something that had to be done, and he was doing it. In that din no one could hear what he was shouting, but the infantry cheered at the sight of a brave man standing unarmed on the parapet. At zero plus eleven hours and thirty-two point five minutes, the British infantry swarmed out of the trench, past Dolughoff, to give Jerry a taste of cold steel. Dolughoff stared unbelievingly at the khaki backs, tense, bowed forward, cat-footing it step by step toward the uncertain enemy, hoping to stay alive, braced to kill.… “God gave me a message. He gave it to me, to me, Dolughoff! I have spoken and they would not listen. Stop! I have a message. I have a message. I …” His voice ran down and he peered about him like a cornered rat. Mud. Shell holes. Dead men hanging with dangling arms over the rusty barbed wire. He looked up at the sky. It seemed indifferent and empty.
Quick Quick! Before I see what it means. Before I see —
Dolughoff snatched his revolver and put a bullet through his brains.
III
For hours under intermittent shell fire, the forward section of the Wellington Battery had fired on SOS lines. About nine o’clock there was a lull in the shelling, and Charles Burnet sauntered into the gun pit where Dan was standing.
“Any news, Skipper?”
“Only rumours. All the lines are cut, of course, and I’ve seen no runners from the front.”
They were still firing on SOS lines, and behind them, and to their left and right, they could hear the sound of British artillery. But in front of them in the trenches, where a few moments ago there had been infernal noise as if from the crumpling of mountains, there was now a desolating stillness. Not even a rifle or a machine gun. What did that mean? Charles put Dan’s thoughts into words. “If the Germans are through, we shall see them coming over the crest.”
The battle rolled toward them, first in rumours, then in visible form. A battery of field guns came powdering down the road and over the road bridge, guns jouncing from side to side; some ambulances passed and a trickle of walking wounded grinning because they were out of it. Charles asked:
“Are they through?”
“I think so, sir. A man told us they were coming down Noreuil valley. We got our blighty at battalion headquarters.” They hobbled on.
“I’m going to have a look at those bridges,” said Charles. Dan watched him go down the slope in front of the guns to the stream. He stood talking to the two sappers for a moment, then he came back. “Are they ready to fire the fuses?” asked Dan.
“Yes. I was afraid of the charges being blown prematurely by an exploding shell, but there’s no chance of that. The charge is well protected. The only way it could be blown would be by a straight shot fired from on top, directly downward.”
“Supposing the fuse gets blown away?”
“It would be a pity!” said Charles dryly.
They went on firing.
“Look over there,” exclaimed Charles suddenly. Th
e lone figure of an exhausted man was staggering across the road bridge.
“It’s Lynch,” said Charles.
When Lynch got to the gun pit, he slumped down and lay on his back, staring dully up at the sky.
“You all right, Lynch?”
“Yes,” said Lynch in a queer, flat tone.
“The signallers?”
“All done in.”
Dan’s eyes wandered down to his legs. “Man! You’re hit! Quick, Skipper, give me your field dressing.” From the shins down, Lynch’s puttees and boots were oozing blood, saturated with it. With an effort he sat up and stared at them, an expression of horror in his eyes. “I’m not hit,” he muttered. “It’s not my blood.” He began to gasp.
“Easy on,” said Charles soothingly, and Lynch fell back again with his head pillowed on his arm. “You’ve no idea of it, Burnet. Never saw anything like it even in the salient. It’s a shambles.”
“Did you see anything of Tripp?”
“No. Brigade OP was in the support lines. Jiffy’s was in the front line. You won’t see him again.”
“Have they broken through?”
Lynch nodded. “Clean through on the flanks. There’s a strong point at Arlette OP and they left us alone, at first; pounded out the trenches each side of us and filtered past. Then they came for us.”
“What about ours?”
“Mostly gone. About half a battalion left up in front. I came back to give you warning.… Well, there goes your blasted war. They’ll take Bapaume today, Amiens tomorrow. Nothing to stop them.”
“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Dan.
Lynch gave Dan a strange look, envious and ironic: “You’re a silly young fellow. We are beaten to the wide. Napoo fini!” He hunched his shoulders and looked with a frown across the thousand yards of valley to the crest of the next hill.
Charles said curtly: “Rot, Lynch. What you need is a drink. Here.… Now, old man, get along to the rear section and warn them. Then go back to the billets.… Don’t forget all of you that we rendezvous at the reserve section at Villers-le-Château .”
But Lynch was rebellious. “No, you don’t, Captain Burnet! I’ll go back no farther.”
“Lynch!”
“All right.… I’ll go.… But I’ve been under a barrage for four hours and I haven’t even seen a German to pot at yet.”
He went off down the road with his head stooped. He seemed not to notice the shells that were still falling intermittently along the valley.
Dan started to say something, but Charles interrupted him. “Want some excitement?”
“What do you mean?”
“There they are. Look at the crest.”
Sure enough, Germans were dribbling over the crest of the hill; at that distance they looked like slugs. In a minute machine gun bullets came zipping by somewhere in their neighbourhood. Charles said quite cheerfully, “We’ll pop off one more round with reduced charge — just for the gesture of the thing. Then we’ll take the breech blocks out.” They did so.
“Time to go?”
“No, wait. We’ve got the Lewis guns, eh? If they would only blow those bridges, we could hold ’em up a bit.”
Even as he spoke, the road bridge went up with a great roar. But the trestle bridge stirred not — nor did the sapper lying beside the switch. Shot. The other sapper started to run toward the switch in order to blow up the bridge — a little fellow, bent double like a gnome, running for dear life. Suddenly, he tumbled head over heels like a shot rabbit and lay twitching.
“Thatcher!” shouted Charles, “bury the breech blocks and work your Lewis guns. So long, Dan, old man.” And Charles Burnet started to run toward the railway trestle, dragging his revolver from the holster.
“For God’s sake, come back!” Dan yelled after him. “The fuse is shot away.”
But Charles kept on running.
By a miracle he got there without being hit, took one look at the fuse and shook his head. Coolly, he drew his revolver and walked out on to the bridge. About halfway he stopped and sat down with his legs astride a tie. Then he started shooting at the charge.
“Christ!” breathed Dan, and it was a prayer.
The bridge went up in a cloud of dust and smoke from which fragments of ties went spinning in all directions. And Charles Burnet went up with it.
Chapter XIV
I
Alastair and Tessa were dining together at a restaurant in Toronto. When he was worried, it was a temperamental impossibility for Alastair not to feel that other people, particularly Tessa, ought to be making a special effort to be cheerful.
“I’m not feeling ’specially gay tonight, Alastair.… I was awfully fond of Charles.”
He said at once, with the ready sympathy that was one of the most charming things about him, “I know you were. So was I.” His face clouded again. “Tessa, you know how desperately in love with you I am.… What are we going to do?”
She avoided his look and gazed moodily at the couples lingering at other tables over coffee and cigarettes. Everyone seemed, somehow, to be managing happiness — at least they looked happy. She said gently: “I know, Alastair. Let’s not think of it tonight, though. I do feel blue.”
Alastair said defiantly: “Perhaps we did wrong to fall in love, but the mischief’s done now.”
She shivered. “I suppose it is.”
“Look here, I can get a fortnight’s leave from the camp. We’ll go away together, now — tonight — we’ll let divorce and that sort of thing take care of itself.… This is our chance, Tessa,” he pleaded earnestly, “if we don’t do it now, the whole thing — circumstances will be too much for us.”
“You’re afraid to face Cynthia tomorrow and tell her that you no longer love her. Is that it?” asked Tessa remorselessly.
He twisted uneasily. “Yes, dammit all, I would be,” he admitted.
“It’s so beastly. Cynthia’s my friend, you know. I can’t bear to think of her coming home to you, not knowing —”
“Cynthia never cared for me — as she should have cared. She really loved Dan, I think. But we won’t talk of that.… There’s a right time for love. If we don’t take it —”
Tessa looked at Alastair a little askance. How young he was! He understood her expression and it made him resentful. “If you really loved me, Alastair, if you loved me so much that nothing else mattered, then you would be brave enough to meet Cynthia and tell her yourself.”
“What good would it do!” He crunched his cigarette savagely into the ashtray. “My idea of hell on earth would be to meet Cynthia and find she was in love with me, and explain in a nice, cool, reasonable, friendly way that I had to desert her because I loved someone else better. In fact, I don’t think I could.”
“We ought to have thought of that before, Alastair.”
“Well, we didn’t! At least I didn’t.… Oh, Lord, I’m not in love with myself. I just happen to love you like the very devil, that’s all. And if you ask me, I think you’re pretty cold, Tessa!”
Anger flashed into Tessa’s eyes. “You’ve no right to say that! For one thing it is only three days since we heard about Charles being killed. He was a sort of brother to me. It makes me want not to be selfish.”
“Yes, I know. But we need each other. That’s something we can’t argue away.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to my husband.”
Alastair exclaimed irritably: “He doesn’t need you. He is really glad to be by himself in Washington. He just wants to be let alone. He’s old , Tessa.”
“Or to Cynthia.”
“I know that.… Tessa, all I can think of is that I love you and life simply isn’t worth looking forward to without you.”
These words wrung her heart, as he knew they could. She closed her eyes and her lips trembled. �
�I wish you and I.… I wish we’d never.… It’s all so sordid!”
“You can’t really love me or you wouldn’t say that. You’re cold, Tessa,” said Alastair gloomily. But she exclaimed passionately:
“Can’t you see. … We’re gentlefolk, Alastair. That ought to mean something.… Anyway, we can’t just be cads about this.… I must think.… You must meet Cynthia, dear. Then, if you still want me — No, I won’t promise, even then. And do not come again for a week, Alastair. Please. I must think of this by myself.”
II
The train from New York got in early in the morning. Alastair drove down to meet it feeling very unhappy and more of a cad than he could remember ever before having felt. He was a young man who had always to think well of himself. Explaining to Cynthia was bound to be a miserable business; to think of it brought him face to face with a picture of himself that he did not want to see. It would have been much better, he reflected, and in fact kinder, when one looked at it realistically, for Tessa and he to have avoided all this by simply going off together. “When Cynthia and I meet it will seem as though we are almost strangers.” An unpalatable thought!
The train came slowly to a stop. Alastair walked down the long line of Pullman cars, trying to steel his mind. The usual nondescript throng of civilians, one or two returning soldiers … and there she was.
She, too, had caught sight of him at the same moment, and she flew toward him with hands outstretched and face alight with joy. He had forgotten how pretty Cynthia was; and when a pretty woman, whom you have not seen for months and who happens to be your wife, looks at you like that —
