God's Sparrows

by Philip Child

  Number One gun, fire! A gunner pulled the lanyard and the gun leapt forward and spat, sending outraged air buffeting against their eardrums, then slid coyly back against its buffer. You could follow the flight of the shell through part of its trajectory, a hurtling speck in the clear sky going to do its job, whatever that job might be, at the crossroads.

  “That’s the stuff to give Old Jerry. Take that you old bastard!” said the sergeant.

  Dan touched the splinter of steel lying beside the gun; it was as hot as a flatiron.

  If only he did not feel so tired … the tiredness was less in the evenings and he slept fairly well. “The trouble with me,” he decided, “is that I have begun to think too much about myself. I can stick it.”

  II

  Letter from Murdo Burnet to Dan Thatcher:

  My dear Dan,

  You ask me, “ as a medical man — not a priest, ” to tell you what I make of this officer, Dolughoff. I confess it is difficult for me to separate the two professions — they are more closely connected than you think. You tell me of a man who has no home but the inside of his own mind, who has none of the ordinary curbs to his desires, and who has delusions about a message he is divinely inspired to deliver — from what you say of him, I venture to think him insane. What sort of insanity? How can I tell when I have never met him? Paranoia, perhaps. Think of a very prideful man who cannot cope with his shortcomings, and yet one who in his soul cannot bear the burden of them. Such a man may erect some delusion which will account for his sins or, perhaps, merely his failures, which will account for them and relieve him of the responsibility for them. A systematic delusion and a very logical one, if you grant the premise on which it is built, and yet a kind of madness, Dan. A very real madness, poor chap.

  To answer your second question: No, I do not think the war made him insane. War does not create insanity, it simply brings out what was there before, so physicians believe. A terrible force, the human soul, Dan. Great and terrible. Sometimes it is like a broken shutter banging in the wind. One cannot say that the soul exists only in the conscious mind. The devil, “ evil ” if you like, works deep down in us where it cannot be seen or heard. Happily, so does God, call him what you will.

  Was Dolughoff a close friend of yours? Why are you so passionately concerned about him? After all, the poor fellow is dead. Are you all right, my dear boy? The tone of your letter worries me.

  Your cousin, Quentin Thatcher, has written to me anxiously for news of you. He says he has not heard from you for many months. He seems extremely fond of you.…

  “I’m not like poor Dolly,” thought Dan. “At any rate, I’ve never had delusions.”

  At this time there was a shortage of officers in the battery and the major decided to detail Dan to do all the forward observing over a period of several weeks. This meant that every other day Dan had a tour of duty lasting twenty-four hours as brigade forward observing officer. The Germans, fearing an attack, were jumpy; they pummelled the front line with repeated bursts of hurricane fire, and raided them frequently.

  Dan was disgusted and alarmed to find how much he loathed the idea of going up; and each time he had to go to the OP, it became more difficult, as his feeling of tenseness increased. His condition became rapidly worse. His irritability increased and added to the formless anxiety from which he suffered constantly: the fear of revealing his state of mind to other people. This increased his fatigue. Heavy bombardment was rapidly becoming intolerable. “No man can stick it forever,” he thought.

  Once during a German strafe, he was buried up to the shoulders by a caving trench, and though he suffered no apparent ill effects from this, he noticed that afterwards, any sudden noise, as of a shell bursting made him jump, though without uncontrollable fear. He noticed, too, that the faculty of telling where a shell was going to fall had deserted him: it seemed as if all shells were coming straight upon him. He began to drink in order to keep control of himself. Night was now worse than day; for during the day he still held the whip hand over his thoughts, but at night when he lay down to sleep, processions of images trooped before him in the darkness — scenes of horror he had witnessed during the day: Sergeant Watt lying beheaded at Passchendaele, the infantry officer who liked fishing disembowelled before his eyes. He turned from side to side; the images followed.

  Something had short-circuited his imagination, that faculty by which men are brave or cowardly. The war, which for a year and a half had treated him with the inscrutable aloofness of a croupier watching a beginner rake in his winnings, had at last taken notice of him. It had come too close, and he was waging a last ditch struggle from day to day to keep on terms with his self-respect .… Just as disease seems often to attack the strongest bodies, so a malady of the soul, a kind of spiritual exhaustion will often strike at the staunchest spirits, perhaps because they ride themselves hardest. Men with less self-respect will give a little at times and spring back the better for it.

  Toward the end of Dan’s tour of duty, the front quieted. He got a little normal sleep and felt better. “Not beaten yet,” he thought. “When I get back to the battery, I shall be able to take things easy for a bit; then I shall be all right.”

  But when he got back in the early afternoon, Major D’Arcy met him apologetically. “Sorry, Thatcher, but you will have to go up with Imbrie and me tomorrow. We are to do an observed shoot on a strong point and I shall need you. Better turn in at once and get a good sleep.” … That, Dan felt, was the last straw. If he went up with the major and Imbrie, they would notice the funk he was in. Then it would be all up. The thought of going nauseated him and made him breathe fast. For the last week he had tried to believe that if only he could once conquer himself and endure the bout of duty at the OP, all would be well. Now, lest the horrors should return, he watched himself as a warder watches a prisoner who might kill himself. The horror was always lying in wait for him. Still there. Still to be fought everyday, every hour, every minute.

  That afternoon Quentin Thatcher came into the battery and went to Dan’s bivvy. He found Dan lying on his bunk with his hands behind his head. By the bed was a little heap of half-consumed cigarette butts, and the air was thick with smoke.

  Quentin saluted and said, “Sir —” Dan jumped up and took him by the arm and made him sit on the bunk. “Quentin, how in blazes did you get here?”

  “We are out of the line. I knew where you were.… Murdo told me you were blown up.”

  At the words “blown up,” Dan blinked and made a grimace with a quick drawing back of the head (a tic which suggested starting back from something unpleasant). “Don’t talk of that, Quentin. It makes me sweat.”

  Quentin’s look bored into him. “Your man, Loversedge — he seems very fond of you — thinks you’re in a bad way. You look damned ill to me. Why don’t you —”

  “If you’re going to tell me to see the MO,” interrupted Dan furiously, “you can damned well go to hell, Quentin!”

  “All right, old man, take it easy.”

  “Need some sleep, that’s all. I can’t stand people staring at me!” His mind pounced on something to occupy it. “I’ve got to go up to the OP, but I have two or three hours first. Don’t feel like sleeping.… Let’s go for a walk, Quentin.”

  “I’m a private, you’re an officer —” began Quentin.

  “I don’t give a damn what they think! You’re my cousin and my best friend. Come on!”

  They walked into the ravaged skeleton of a green copse which had been fought over that spring. A railway terminated suddenly; the ends of the rails had been tossed up and twisted. They picked their way over shell holes full of weeds and scummy water, and passed a cross marking the grave of an unknown British soldier with a steel helmet hanging by the chin strap from the arm of the cross. Dan was so absorbed in his thoughts that he seemed to have forgotten the friend he was walking beside. “Must get him to talk,” tho
ught Quentin. He spoke about trivial things: musical comedies in London, the place to go for a good meal in Abbeville, the chances of getting leave. Between fits of taciturnity, Dan talked rapidly, as though to outpace his thoughts.… Quentin stole a furtive glance at his friend. Dan’s face was drawn, his forehead wrinkled as though from some chronic mental pain. All at once he knew that Dan was desperate. “I can’t stick it!” was as plainly to be discerned in his expression as if he had spoken the words aloud. A phrase from the New Testament flashed into Quentin’s mind: Agony and bloody sweat. The trivial talk with that undertone of strain became suddenly ghastly.

  “Thank God I came,” Quentin thought, “I’ve got to make him see the medical officer. But he’s obstinate. A proud devil. Always shies off when you want to help him.” But I, Quentin Thatcher, am here beside the only friend in this world I care about, at the moment he most needs a friend. Call it by God’s providence. I must help him through, somehow. I’ve got to!

  They had reached one of the small copses that abound in Picardy, and they pushed into the thick undergrowth clustering about the shattered holes. Presently, they stumbled upon a German soldier who had fallen and been forgotten, perhaps a month or two earlier, during the last counterattack. It was not a pretty sight. The face was swollen and discoloured and vandals had cut off a finger, perhaps in order to steal a ring. Quentin said musingly: “He is all right. I don’t mind the thought of that. Going back to the earth from which we came. That’s nature — simple and natural. No beastliness about it, really.” One of Housman’s verses came into his mind and he quoted it,

  When shall this slough of sense be cast,

  This dust of thoughts be laid at last,

  The man of flesh and soul be slain

  And the man of bone remain?

  That’s it!

  “When we have lived too long and seen too much, we won’t want the immortality of the soul, which can only mean struggle world, without end. We want peace for the soul.” … If he could get Dan to talk of the things that lie deep in the mind. But he would have to bring him round to it obliquely.

  Quentin realized suddenly that Dan had not heard a single word. He stopped abruptly, and Dan, feeling the silence, smiled apologetically.

  “Sorry, Quentin. I’m afraid I was wool gathering. Must be tired.… What did you say?”

  “I was thinking of what poor old Flint used to say. That a man for all his pretensions is merely a machine. No more, no less. Sometimes I think so.”

  Dan grunted impatiently.

  “The sort of half-baked idea a second year medical student would have! Just words! Just theories they get from cutting up frogs in laboratories. A man has a will. He can make himself do things. I mean.… A man might be … a coward, but there is something in him that doesn’t acquiesce in his cowardice.”

  “Yes,” said Quentin, not daring to look at Dan, “but the will is human, isn’t it? There comes a time when a man can’t go further without help from something outside himself.” Quentin hesitated. “From a friend, perhaps.… For instance, a man’s body may trick him into — cowardice … as you say. Only way out for such a man is to forget himself. He can only escape through being needed desperately by some friend.” Dear God, if he would only boil over and tell me. If he’d only talk! Can’t he see I understand?

  Dan stiffened resentfully. He thinks I’ve gone to pieces .… It was like Quentin to want a friend to come crawling for help. “You can’t put your fear in another’s hands,” he thought. “A man’s alone. Has to be. Quentin would be tender and womanish, weaken me.” … He said with sudden brusqueness:

  “We’re talking a lot of silly rot! Who started it?”

  Never in his life had Quentin felt more baffled, more helpless, more futile. During the rest of their walk, they had little to say to each other.

  That night at one o’clock, an hour when churchyards are supposed to yawn and a man is least himself, he set off for the front line OP, “all passion spent” for the moment.

  The three officers got into the battery light car and drove toward the flares, down a road built first by Julius Caesar. The night was peaceful; not even a machine gun chattered. Dan watched his mind warily.

  “If a shell comes.… Mustn’t let him see. Damn him! Not that he would notice.” A single shell addressed to a village far behind, boosted itself through the air above them. Dan, sitting beside the major, hunched himself involuntarily. Major D’Arcy gave him a sharp look. “Coming out of a peaceful night like this, eh? … Drink?” He proffered his flask.

  “No!” cried Dan furiously.… “No, sir. Thanks.”

  Presently, when they had reached the splintered remains of a small wood, they left the car to enter a communication trench.

  “Quite a cheerful place, this,” remarked Imbrie. “Trees, I mean to say — some of them still alive, too. I mean to say —”

  This was the last sentence that Imbrie ever meant to say in this world.

  They heard the boom of howitzers firing and the swelling roar of an express train rushing upon them, and they threw themselves flat at the moment of the shell’s arrival. Three shells — crack, crack, crack. Spouts of earth rimmed them round and fell over them.

  The major got up shakily.

  Dazed, Dan saw, as at a long distance, Imbrie, unspeakably mutilated, scrabbling with his hands and trying to scream.

  The light car driver came running from the car. Can’t do nothing for him, sir. Mr. Imbrie has drawn his full rations.”

  “Mr. Thatcher! Get him out! For God’s sake, man, be quick!”

  A shell had disintegrated the earth under the pawn called Daniel Thatcher, and taking him in its blast, had tossed him into a shell hole and hurled dirt on top of him. Incapable of voluntary movement, he lay with dilated pupils, trembling and breathing shallowly. Frantically, they scooped away the dirt with their hands till they got him clear. His face was the colour of dirty paper, and his mouth was open and full of mud. Presently, he came to and began to retch. Still stuporous, he met their looks with frozen panic, unable to separate them from malignant nature.

  They went to Imbrie.… But the light car driver was right. There was nothing they could do for him. In his eyes there was a look all soldiers know and remember: despair and dumb revolt. The spirit flickered out of them nakedly, then sank inward and went out.

  The major’s voice: “Hold up his head while I give him a drink.… How do you feel, lad?”

  Dan opened his lips to speak, then gestured instead. At last he managed to speak; each word was a painful achievement. “I-am-all-right .… Am-I-hit ?”

  “No, no. Not a scratch! Just shaken up. A good rest — a week or two at Paris-Plage and you will be as good as ever.”

  Some uttermost power of endurance in him, some final resource of the mind foundered at these words and sank into the chaos of fear that pressed upon him from all directions. Did I want to be wounded?

  “Must get on with the shoot,” muttered the major.

  Dan gasped for breath. Must act.… Mustn’t think. He said, though he knew that the words mocked him: “All-right … in-minute .” To prove that he was, he stood up and tried his legs — he staggered a little but he walked. Then he was sick again.

  “No, you don’t, my lad!” exclaimed the major harshly. “You will go back to the battery in the car, I shall carry on. And in the morning you’ll see the MO. No nonsense! That’s an order, my boy. And if he says you are all right, you will go to Paris-Plage officers’ rest camp for a bit.”

  With the driver’s help, the major lifted the mortal remains of Imbrie into the backseat of the car.

  “Get along as quickly as you can,” said the major crisply. “Take Mr. Thatcher to his billet. Then telephone the MO to look him over.”

  “Very good, sir,” said the driver, saluting smartly.

  The car went b
ack over the Roman road carrying one living driver, one dead subaltern, and one who, for the moment, was neither one nor the other.… But he was to have a rest, and after a time, he began to feel a little better.

  But when he undressed in his billet alone, and lay down, he fainted: the delayed action of the subterranean machinery of terror. Whether he actually lost consciousness or not he could not be certain, but for a few moments the mind stream flowed so madly that he could remember nothing of what he had thought.

  Next morning the MO stepped into his billet.

  The MO had been friendly with Dan. He was friendly now, too, professionally so.… First he gave Dan a physical examination.

  “Now my dear chap, let’s have a drink. Take a cigarette and answer some questions. It’s necessary for you to be frank.”