Valour

by Warwick Deeping

Hammersly was feeling cynical.

  “One of us had better stay and watch the baggage. I have had my valise plundered already.”

  “No!”

  “It’s a fact. They took my burberry.”

  It was growing hot when some ten innocents, two Indian carts full of baggage, and a guide set out for Divisional Headquarters. The flies were growing attentive, and guns boomed fitfully in the distance. They followed the road from the beach, up hill, and along the plateau above, with the Asiatic coast melting into blue-grey haze, and the island of Imbros purple against the north. The ground that had been bare and baked and brown changed to a great stretch of heather and resinous plants. Here and there were bits of old trenches and shell-holes. Achi Baba swelled in the distance, and Krithia lay grey white on the plain below.

  Hammersly’s eyes had a dull, tired look. He was sweating, and he wanted a meal, and this new country, with its devilish beauty, made him feel homesick; nor was he thrilled by the adventurous activity of it all. One or two of his fellow officers were chatting with the guide, a lad with the dusty face of a miller.

  “Better scatter a bit here, sirs, and let the carts go on.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh, they pick up a target like this. What ’o! I thought as much!”

  They were just above X Beach, when there came a sudden whining in the air. The sound seemed to rush on them from nowhere with a kind of spiteful ferocity.

  “Look out—she’s for us!”

  The Indian carts went trundling on, but the guide threw himself flat, and the new-comers imitated him. Pierce felt a sort of grip at the pit of his stomach, and a coldness down his spine. Bang! The shell had burst beyond them, and he heard the fuse go wailing into the sea.

  He scrambled up and saw the Indians driving on as though nothing had happened.

  “Look out, sir!”

  A second shell announced its coming with a queer, thin screech. Pierce Hammersly went flat again, and this time the burst was nearer; he heard shrapnel strike the ground within a yard or two of where he was lying.

  The guide shouted.

  “Get over the cliff edge; there’s a road there; better lie low till the fools chuck it.”

  He led the rush to cover, and they had just gained it when a third shell burst over the place where they had been bunched in the open.

  “What about the baggage?”

  “You’ll find it at headquarters, sir. Those Indian chaps don’t worry.”

  Then peace reigned. Ten minutes later the guide led on, and his flock followed him in single file, with a fifty yards interval between each man. No more shells arrived, but Hammersly felt that eyes were watching them, and that any moment that whirring death might come sailing out of the blue; a sense of utter insecurity dominated him; he walked stiffly, with restless eyes on the look-out for a possible hole in which to hide himself. His ear drums were strained tight, listening to the sound of a shell driving towards them. He hated that open ground, and wished that the heather stood six feet high.

  Then the road dived suddenly over the edge of the cliff. The guide was waiting for them under cover of a seven-foot slope of solid soil, and Hammersly felt that he had never properly appreciated the virtues of brown earth. The road zig-zagged down to a great open space at the mouth of a huge gully; cliffs towered above; those infernal gunners on Achi could no longer see them.

  The man next to Pierce lit a cigarette. His face was white and beaded with sweat.

  “New sort of experience. Get used to it in a day or two.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Dare say shell-dodging is quite a fine sport.”

  They arrived at Divisional Headquarters, a series of sandbagged huts strung along the steep sides of a ravine. A sun-browned Staff officer in shorts, a shirt, and a sun helmet, came out to interview them; more brown men appeared; there was some desultory conversation and a production of papers. The Indians with their mule-carts were waiting down below.

  “Lieutenant Hammersly?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You are to be attached to the 74th Footshires. They are up in the front line at The Bluff. I’ll send a man up with you. Colonel Barnack is the C.O.; you will report to him.”

  “At once, sir?”

  “Yes, at once.”

  Pierce wondered when that breakfast would materialise.

  Lieutenant Hammersly left his baggage at headquarters and tramped on up the great gully, cursing Fate for having bundled him out to Gallipoli, unattached and friendless. He had left the last of the “innocents” behind him; he was alone, very much alone, a “tender-foot,” hot, nervous and hungry. That tramp up the gully and through the stuffy heat of a communication trench completed his exhaustion, and in Hammersly exhaustion showed itself in the form of intense irritability and a vile headache. His tongue was dry, his shirt sticking to his skin.

  “How much farther?”

  “Them’s the support trenches,” said his guide laconically.

  Hammersly was not interested in trenches. He wanted food, a drink, to be down in the shade and be alone. His appreciation of life was utterly jaundiced.

  “Regimental Headquarters, sir.”

  He saw an expanse of yellow dirt in front of him shut in by banks of yellow earth. Built into one of these banks was a row of sandbagged dug-outs of varying sizes and shapes; farther on stood the kitchen, swarmed over by many flies; to the left a short trench led to the regimental aid post, where stretchers were piled against a bank. A row of familiar green petrol tins made him think of England and the open road.

  His guide saluted and left him, and Pierce asked a red-faced man in shirt and shorts to show him the orderly room.

  “That’s it, sir.”

  Hammersly made for it, and found a sweating sergeant sitting in the dug-out and filling in “returns.”

  “Is this the orderly room of the 74th Footshires?”

  “It is, sir.”

  The sergeant rose to his feet.

  “I am to report to Colonel Barnack.”

  “The Colonel is in the mess, sir.”

  “Very well, show me the mess.”

  Hammersly was growing mad. The sergeant stared at him, came out from behind his improvised table, and led the way to a big dug-out farther down the street. He pulled aside a strip of mosquito curtain, and thrust his head inside.

  “An officer here to report, sir.”

  “What?”

  “A new officer, sir.”

  The thick voice said: “All right; show him in.”

  Hammersly stepped into the shade of the big dug-out and saluted. The half light puzzled him for a moment after the glare outside, but he was aware of four men seated round a rough table, playing cards.

  “Roper——”

  “Sir?”

  “Fix that curtain; we don’t want more damned flies in here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Barnack threw one glance at Pierce, and then went on playing cards.

  “Three, no trumps, wasn’t it? Whose lead?”

  “Goss’s, sir.”

  “Lunt goes down.”

  Hammersly was rocking on his heels, wondering whether he was going to faint or to break out into a mad burst of cursing. The officer who was “dummy” looked up at him queerly, even sympathetically, but Colonel Barnack had concentrated on his cards. He was a shortish, heavy-faced man, with high cheek bones and a broad nose; his hair was cropped like a German’s; his eyes were a cold, muddy blue and slightly protuberant. His shirt lay open, showing an edge of black hair. He frowned over his cards, sitting squarely at the table. In age he might have been five-and-fifty, and he was going bald.

  The Colonel’s opponents made their three tricks, and were apologetic about it. There was much explaining and re-explaining, but Barnack looked sulky.

  Hammersly’s eyes blazed.

  “Do you mind if I sit down, sir?”

  His anger gave an edge to his voice, and Barnack’s eyebrows lifted.

&
nbsp; “I have had no food since last night, and I have been on my feet since five.”

  There was a hush in the mess-room. Lunt began shuffling the cards; Goss gave a kind of cracked smile. But Barnack looked at his new officer with muddy and sinister eyes.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Hammersly. I have come to report to you.”

  “Just landed? A little fresh to hardships, I think. Attached to us?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Lunt.”

  “Sir.”

  “Take this officer and show him into one of the empty dug-outs. I will interview you later, Mr. Hammersly.”

  Hammersly saluted and went out into the sun-glare, white to the lips. Lunt, a thin, sensitive boy with bright eyes, followed him.

  “This way, Hammersly.”

  Pierce’s nostrils were twitching.

  “To come hundreds of miles to meet—that!”

  Lunt glanced nervously over his shoulder.

  “I’m awfully sorry. It’s his way of showing his authority; he must always be showing his authority. It’s damnable, but you’ll understand presently.”

  Pierce was to understand it bitterly in the course of a few days.

  “Come into my dug-out. I’ll get you some grub.”

  “I think I’m too done up to eat.”

  “Well, have a nap; you can lie down on my bed. And where’s your baggage?”

  “Down at headquarters.”

  “I’ll have it sent for. Here you are. Use anything you like.”

  “Thanks, indeed.”

  Pierce threw off his equipment and tunic, lay down and slept in spite of the flies.

  CHAPTER XII

  Hammersly woke about six o’clock that evening, and found young Lunt sitting beside him, reading a novel.

  “Hallo, I seem to have taken possession of your dug-out.”

  He sat up, refreshed and cool-headed.

  “My man has got your bed fitted up. You are next door to me. Come and have a look.”

  “Do you dine here?”

  “At seven. It’s just six now.”

  “I shall be ready.”

  Lunt showed Hammersly his new home—a sand-bagged cell, seven feet long and three feet wide, and roofed with ground sheets lashed together. Lunt’s servant had put up the camp bed, unpacked Hammersly’s valise, and stood his kit-bag on end in one corner.

  “A pretty tight fit.”

  “Yes, most of your baggage ought to be down at our dump, but I had it brought here so that you could take out what you wanted. Have a cigarette?”

  “Thanks.”

  They sat on the bed and chatted.

  Then Pierce Hammersly made a discovery—one of those inevitable discoveries that are ordered by higher authority. An English officer is always a gentleman, always a hero. Hammersly had been labouring under the misconception that his commanding officer was a cad—a very regrettable error on his part. Let us apologise immediately, and reflect that Lieutenant Hammersly had not been in a fit state to appreciate his Colonel’s character. A man who is jaded and irritable and exhausted cannot be trusted to register correct impressions; one can only appreciate the significance of facts when one studies them at a distance of three thousand miles.

  Colonel Barnack was very much the father of his regiment. The 74th Footshires were so short of officers—they numbered nine—that the Colonel had decided that all the officers should mess with him at headquarters, excepting those who happened to be on duty. He preferred such an arrangement; it enabled him to keep in personal touch with his juniors; he believed it to be his duty to instil his own personal ideals into the men under him.

  As they strolled down to the mess about seven o’clock, Hammersly was struck by the comparative peacefulness of the evening. There was no cracking of rifles, no shelling, not a sound to suggest that the Turks were two or three hundred yards away.

  “Is it always as quiet as this?”

  Lunt’s eyes gave a sudden scared gleam.

  “Good Lord—no! We have had a few slack days. Anyway, the flies are always busy.”

  They found Colonel Barnack and several other officers in the mess, and the table, made of boxes, laid for dinner. Flies crawled over it in hundreds; the jam pot, protected by a piece of gauze, seemed black with them. Barnack was sitting very stiff and straight on a campstool at the head of the table, wiping out his enamelled cup with the corner of the tablecloth.

  He stared hard and disconcertingly at Pierce.

  “Your brother officers, Mr. Hammersly. Captain Goss, Raikes, our doctor, Captain Beasely, Captain Shott, Mr. Sanderstead, Mr. Hope, and Lunt you know.”

  There was a lack of cordiality in the mess, a sense of constraint and uneasiness. Hammersly was received with casual nods and faint smiles. Lunt fidgeted, and Hammersly noticed that the youngster kept glancing nervously at Colonel Barnack. Barnack’s was the only imperturbable figure present; he dominated the situation, sitting there squarely on his stool.

  Dinner was brought in by two mess orderlies—stewed bully beef in a big tin basin. Flies swarmed in after it and shared in the meal.

  Barnack was helped first. His neighbours passed him mustard, biscuits, tinned milk with eager politeness; one of the mess orderlies filled his cup with tea, he was the great presence, and Hammersly, sitting at the other end of the table, felt that these other men were afraid.

  There was no conversation until Barnack had finished his meat. Then he raised his eyes from his plate, looked round the table and made a remark.

  “I hear that the French are going to make a move.”

  The whole mess turned to him with instant interest.

  “Is that so, sir?”

  “Indeed, sir?”

  “Towards Achi, sir?”

  Colonel Barnack stated his views, speaking with a leisurely sententiousness, and eyeing each officer in turn. There was absolute silence in the mess; even eating was carried on surreptitiously while the great man talked.

  He turned his eyes suddenly on Hammersly.

  “Well, Mr. Hammersly, how are things in England?”

  Pierce smiled across at him.

  “England is still very garrulous; a sort of clucking hen.”

  He became aware of a kind of stiffening of Colonel Barnack’s face. The mess glanced at the new-comer as though he had spoken lightly of sacred things in a temple of the gods.

  “I do not like your simile, Mr. Hammersly. An officer ought not to speak lightly of his country.”

  Hammersly felt himself heavily reproved. The mess murmured consentingly; the great man had given judgment.

  When dinner was over, and Barnack had arranged his four for cards, Hammersly and young Lunt strolled out into the cool of the evening. Lunt led the way along a trench that wound down behind what had once been a thicket of pines, and ended in a rough ramp of loose soil. Lunt scrambled out.

  “I made this myself,” he said; “you see, this bank gives you a bit of dead ground, and the view is rather fine.”

  It was. Hammersly saw a land of purple breaking by golden cliffs into the blue of the sea; the colours were extraordinarily vivid; the island of Imbros loomed a deep blue against a gorgeous west. Lunt and Hammersly threw themselves down in the heather and lit their pipes. The flies were ceasing to be troublesome, and a strange sense of peace descended upon the earth.

  “The trenches seem extraordinarily quiet.”

  “The row begins as soon as it gets dark. There is rifle fire going on all night; it sounds the most silly thing in the world—men popping off their rifles hour after hour just to show the other side that it is not safe to come out.”

  “But the men seem so mute.”

  Lunt laughed nervously.

  “Poor devils. It is not just heaven here; there is nothing to shout about.”

  “They don’t sing?”

  “Sing! I’ve never heard a man sing or whistle. Oh, you’ll understand in time.”

  “Well, things aren’t exactly blithe in the
mess.”

  Lunt glanced over his shoulder and frowned.

  “You’ll understand that too—in time. The real business is so different; there are dozens of things that you’d never think of at home; you couldn’t imagine them.”

  “The Colonel takes himself seriously.”

  “My God, man, he’s the most serious thing that was ever made! It’s having to live up to him! You’ll find all that out pretty soon.”

  Pierce Hammersly never suspected that his career as a soldier was to be most fatally compromised by the character of the man who was in authority over him. It is possible for two sincere and honourable men to hate each other savagely, and Barnack was a sincere and honourable man. He called himself a Puritan, prided himself on being able to trace his descent from Cromwellian stock, and made an idol of the Captain of the Ironsides. The man was a fanatic, fiercely religious and absolutely unafraid; like all fanatics he took life and himself with immense seriousness; he was pompous, melodramatic, great and ridiculous by turns. He worshipped discipline. Even a game of cards had its uses, though it was the only relaxation he allowed himself.

  Yet the pity of it was that he knew nothing about men. His own religious egoism, his mind-picture of himself, prevented him from seeing and understanding anything but his own idol. His officers were afraid of him. A sensitive boy like Lunt lived in absolute terror of the man. For Barnack had no sympathy, no pity, no imagination. He had Prussian ideas. He did not spare himself, and he spared no one else; he sent men to death with an imperturbable and grim face; he worshipped duty; he believed in hardening men, making them face death for the sake of hardening them. He was obeyed, but he was hated; no one could understand why he had not been shot.

  This was the man to whom Pierce Hammersly had to answer for his courage and his keenness. Their temperaments clashed from the very beginning; Barnack stirred up all that was worst in the younger man, and within a week Pierce Hammersly hated his Colonel as he had never hated any living soul before.

  And to a very proud and a very sensitive man the atmosphere of the mess was loathsome. Barnack had immense power, the power of sending men to their death, and nothing softened his fanatical cult of duty. His juniors were afraid of him. There was a horrible suggestion of obsequiousness, of a haste to propitiate the great man. Hammersly noticed that no one ever disagreed with him; his sentiments were applauded, his prejudices admired. The whole business reminded Hammersly of an Oriental tyranny, and a crowd of courtiers fawning upon the power that held them at its mercy.