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Secret Battle, The

<h2>VII</h2> So Harry stayed till he was 'pushed' off, as he had promised. And I was glad he had gone like that. I had long wanted him to leave the Peninsula somehow, for I felt he should be spared for greater things, but, knowing something of his peculiar temperament, I did not want his career there to end on a note of simple failure—a dull surrender to sickness in the rest-camp. As it turned out, the accident of the digging-party, and the way in which Harry had seized his chance, sent him off with a renewed confidence in himself and, with regard to Burnett, even a sense of triumph. So I was not surprised when his letters began to reveal something of the old enthusiastic Harry, chafing at the dreary routine of the Depot, and looking for adventure again.... But I am anticipating. They sent him home, of course. It was no good keeping any one in his condition at Egypt or Malta, for the prolonged dysentery had produced the usual complications. I had a letter from Malta, and one from the Mediterranean Club at Gibraltar, where he had a sultry week looking over the bay, seeing the ships steam out for England, he told me, and longing to be in one. For it took many months to wash away the taste of the Peninsula, and much more than the austere comforts of the hospital at Gibraltar. Even the hot August sun in the Alameda was hatefully reminiscent. Then six weeks' milk diet at a hospital in Devonshire, convalescence, and a month's leave. Then Harry married a wife. I did not know the lady—a Miss Thickness—and she does not come into the story very much, though she probably affected it a good deal. Wives usually do affect a soldier's story, though they are one of the many things which by the absolute official standard of military duty are necessarily not reckoned with at all. Not being the president of a court-martial I did reckon with it; and when I had read Harry's letter about his wedding I said: 'We shan't see him again.' For in those early years it was generally assumed that a man returned from service at the front need not go out again (unless he wished) for a period almost incalculably remote. And being a newly married man myself, I had no reason to suppose that Harry would want to rush into the breach just yet. But about May—that would be 1916; we had done with Gallipoli and come to France, after four months' idling in the Aegean Islands—I had another letter, much delayed, from which I will give you an extract: 'I never thought I should want to go out again (you remember we all swore we never should) but I do. I'm fed to the teeth with this place (the Depot, in Dorsetshire); nothing but company drill and lectures on march discipline, and all the old stuff. We still attack Hill 219 twice weekly in exactly the same way, and still no one but a few of the officers knows exactly which hill it is, since we always stop halfway for lunch-time, or because there's hopeless confusion.... There's nobody amusing here. Williams has got a company and swanks like blazes about 'the front,' but I think most people see through him.... My wife's got rooms in a cottage near here, but they won't let me sleep out, and I don't get there till pretty late most days.... Can't you get the Colonel to apply for me? I don't believe it's allowed, but he's sure to be able to wangle it. Otherwise I shall be here for the rest of the war, because the more you've been out the less likely you are to get out again, if you want to, while there are lots who don't want to go, and wouldn't be any earthly good, and stand in hourly danger of being sent.... I want to see France....' I answered on a single sheet: 'All very well, but what about Mrs. P.? Does she concur?' (I told you I was a married man.) His answer was equally brief: 'She doesn't know, but she would.' Well, it wasn't my business, so we 'wangled' it (I was adjutant then), and Harry came out to France. But I was sorry for Mrs. Penrose. <h3>II</h3> I do not know if all this seems tedious and unnecessary; I hope not, for it is very relevant to the end of the story, and if this record had been in the hands of certain persons the end of the story might have been different. I do not know. Certainly it ought to have been different. Anyhow, Harry came to France and found us in the line at Souchez. The recuperative power of the young soldier is very marvellous. No one but myself would have said that this was not the same Harry of a year ago; for he was fit and fresh and bubbling over with keenness. Only myself, who had sat over the Dardanelles with him and talked about Troy, knew what was missing. There were no more romantic illusions about war, and, I think, no more military ambitions. Only he was sufficiently rested to be very keen again, and had not yet seen enough of it to be ordinarily bored. And in that summer of 1916 there was much to be said for life in the Souchez sector. It was a 'peace-time' sector, where divisions stayed for months at a time, and one went in and out like clockwork at ritual intervals, each time into the same trenches, the same deep dug-outs, each time back to the same billets, or the same huts in the same wood. All the deserted fields about the line were a mass of poppies and cornflowers, and they hung over one in extravagant masses as one walked up the communication trench. In the thick woods round Bouvigny and Noulette there were clusters of huts where the resting time was very warm and lazy and companionable, with much white wine and singing in the evenings. Or one took a horse and rode into Coupigny or Barlin where there had not been too much war, but one could dine happily at the best estaminet, and then ride back contentedly under the stars. In the line also there was not too much war. Few of the infantry on either side ever fired their rifles; and only a few bombers with rifle grenades tried to injure the enemy. There were short sectors of the line on either side which became spasmodically dangerous because of these things, and at a fixed hour each day the Germans blew the same portions of the line to dust with minenwerfers, our men having departed elsewhere half an hour previously, according to the established routine from which neither side ever diverged. Our guns were very busy by spasms, and every day destroyed small sections of the thick red masses of the German wire, which were every night religiously repaired. The German guns were very few, for the Somme battle was raging, but at times they flung whizz-bangs vaguely about the line or dropped big shells on the great brows of the Lorette Heights behind us. From the high ground we held there was a good view, with woods and red and white villages on the far hills beyond the Germans; and away to the left one looked over the battered pit country towards Lens, with everywhere the tall pit-towers all crumpled and bent into uncouth shapes, and grey slag-heaps rising like the Pyramids out of a wilderness of broken red cottages. To the south-east began the Vimy Ridge, where the red Pimple frowned over the lines at the Lorette Heights, and all day there was the foam and blackness of bursting shells. In the night there was much patrolling and bursts of machine-gun fire, and a few snipers, and enormous labours at the 'improvement of the line,' wiring and revetting, and exquisite work with sand-bags. It was all very gentle and friendly and artificial, and we were happy together. Burnett had left us, on some detached duty or other, and in that gentler atmosphere Eustace was a good companion again. Men grew lusty and well, and one could have continued there indefinitely without much injury to body or mind. But sometimes on a clear night we saw all the southern sky afire from some new madness on the Somme, and knew that somewhere in France there was real war. The correspondents wrote home that the regiments 'condemned so long to the deadening inactivity of trench warfare were longing only for their turn at the Great Battle.' No doubt they had authority: though I never met one of those regiments. For our part we were happy where we were. We had had enough for the present. <h3>III</h3> But I digress. And yet—no. For I want you to keep this idea of the diversity of war conditions before you, and how a man may be in a fighting unit for many months and yet go unscathed even in spirit. Or in the most Arcadian parts of the battle area he may come alone against some peculiar shock from which he never recovers. It is all chance. We made Harry scout officer again, and he was very keen. Between us and the German lines was a honeycomb of old disused trenches where French and Germans had fought for many months before they sat down to watch each other across this maze. They were all overgrown now with flowers and thick grasses, but for the purposes of future operations it was important to know all about them, and every night Harry wriggled out and dropped into one of these to creep and explore, and afterwards put them on the map. Sometimes I went a little way with him, and I did not like it. It was very creepy in those forgotten alleys, worse than crawling outside in the open, I think, because of the intense blackness and the infinite possibilities of ambush. The Boches, we knew, were playing the same game as ourselves, and might always be round the next traverse, so that every ten yards one went through a new ordeal of expectancy and stealthy, strained investigation. One stood breathless at the corner, listening, peering, quivering with the strain of it, and then a rat dropped into the next 'bay,' or behind us one of our Lewis guns blazed off a few bursts, shattering the silence. Surely there was some one near moving hurriedly under cover of the noise! Then you stood again, stiff and cramped with the stillness, and you wanted insanely to cough, or shift your weight on to the other foot, or your nose itched and the grasses tickled your ear—but you must not stir, must hardly breathe. For now all the lines have become mysteriously hushed, and no man fires; far away one can hear the rumble of the German limbers coming up with rations to the dump, and the quiet becomes unbearable, so that you long for some Titanic explosion to break it and set you free from waiting. Then a machine-gun opens again, and you slip round the corner to find—nothing at all, only more blackness and the rats scuttling away into the grass, and perhaps the bones of a Frenchman. And then you begin all over again.... When he has done this sort of thing many times without any happening, an imperfect scout becomes careless through sheer weariness, and begins to blunder noisily ahead. And sooner or later he goes under. But Harry was a natural scout, well trained, and from first to last kept the same care, the same admirable patience, and this means a great strain on body and mind.... In those old trenches you could go right up to the German line, two hundred yards away, and this Harry often did. The Germans had small posts at these points, waiting, and were very ready with bombs and rifle grenades. It was a poor look-out if you were heard about there, and perhaps badly wounded, so that you could not move, two hundred yards away from friends and all those happy soldiers who spent their nights comfortably in trenches when you were out there on your stomach. Perhaps your companion would get away and bring help. Or he too might be hit or killed, and then you would lie there for days and nights, alone in a dark hole, with the rats scampering and smelling about you, till you died of starvation or loss of blood. You would lie there listening to your own men chattering in the distance at their wiring, and neither they nor any one would find you or know where you were, till months hence some other venturesome scout stumbled on your revolver in the dark. Or maybe the line would advance at last, and some salvage party come upon your uniform rotting in the ditch, and they would take off your identity disk and send it in to Headquarters, and shovel a little earth above your bones. It might be many years.... I am not an imaginative man, but that was the kind of thought I had while I prowled round with Harry (and I never went so far as he). He even had an occasional jest at the Germans, and once planted an old dummy close up to their lines. There was stony ground there, and, as they took it there, he told me, it clattered. The next night he went there again in case the Germans came out to capture 'Reggie.' They did not, but every evening for many months they put a barrage of rifle-grenades all about that dummy. Then there was much talk of 'raids,' and all the opposite wire had to be patrolled and examined for gaps and weak places. This meant crawling in the open close up to the enemy, naked under the white flares; and sometimes they fell to earth within a few feet of a scout and sizzled brilliantly for interminable seconds; there was a sniper somewhere near, and perhaps a machine-gun section, and surely they could see him, so large, so illuminated, so monstrously visible he felt. It was easy when there was not too much quiet, but many echoes of scattered shots and the noise of bullets rocketing into space, or long bursts of machine-gun fire, to cover your movements. But when that terrible silence fell it was very difficult. For then how loud was the rustle of your stealthiest wriggle, how sinister the tiny sounds of insects in the grass. Everywhere there were stray strands of old barbed wire which caught in your clothes and needed infinite patience to disentangle; when you got rid of one barb another clung to you as the wire sprang back, or, if you were not skilful, it clashed on a post or a rifle, or a tin can, with a noise like cymbals. You came across strange things as you crawled out there—dead bodies, and bits of equipment, and huge unexploded shells. Or you touched a rat or a grass-snake that made you shiver as it moved; the rats and the field-mice ran over you if you lay still for long, and once Harry saw a German patrol-dog sniffing busily in front of him. Sometimes as you went up wind you put your hand suddenly on a dead man, and had to lie close beside him for cover. Or you scented him far off like a dog nosing through the grass, and made him a landmark, whispering to your companion, 'Keep fifty yards from the dead 'un,' or 'Make for the dead Boche.' When the lights went up you lay very close, peering ahead under your cap; and as they fell away to the ground all your vision became full of moving things and fugitive shadows. The thick rows of wiring posts looked like men working, and that cluster of stones like the head of a man in a shell-hole, watching ... watching you ... gone in an instant.... Then you waited tensely for the next light. There is the murmur of voices somewhere, very difficult to locate. For a long while you stalk it, ready to attack some patrol, some working-party. Then you hear a familiar Tyneside curse ... it is A Company wiring, with much noise. All this, as I have said, is a heavy strain on mind and body and nerve. It requires a peculiar kind of courage, a lonely, cold-blooded kind of courage. Many men who would do well in a slap-dash fight in the light of day are useless as scouts. Not only are they noisy and impatient, but they cannot stand it. And yet it is no job for a very imaginative man. There are too many things you can imagine, if you once begin. The more you know about it, the more there is to imagine, and the greater the strain becomes. Now Harry had a very vivid imagination, and he knew all about it—and yet he played this game nearly every night we were in the line for three months ... nothing theatrical, you understand, nor even heroic by popular standards, no stabbing affrays, no medals ... but by my standards it was very nearly heroic, and I don't know how he did it. But this was forgotten later on. <h3>IV</h3> Then Harry had a shock. There was a large sap running out from our line along the crown of a steep ridge. This sap was not held during the day, but at night was peopled with bombers and snipers, and it was a great starting-place for the patrols. One night Harry went out from this sap and crawled down the face of the ridge. It was a dark night, and the Boches were throwing up many flares. One of these came to earth ten yards from Harry. At that moment he was halfway down the slope, crouched on one knee. However, when flares are about, to keep still in any posture is better than to move, so Harry remained rigid. But one of the new scouts behind was just leaving the sap, and hovered uncertainly on the skyline as the light flared and sizzled below. Possibly he was seen, possibly what followed was a chance freak of the Germans. Anyhow, a moment later they opened with every machine-gun in the line, with rifles, rifle-grenades, and high-velocity shells. So venomous was the fire that every man in the line believed—and afterwards hotly asserted—that the whole fury of it was concentrated on his particular yard of trench. Few of us thought of the unhappy scouts lying naked outside. Harry, of course, flattened himself to the ground, and tried to wriggle into a hollow; on level ground you may with luck be safe under wild fire of this kind for a long time. Being on a slope, Harry was hopelessly exposed. 'I lay there,' he told me, 'and simply sweated with funk; you won't believe me, but at one time I could literally feel a stream of machine-gun bullets ruffling my hair, and thudding into the bank just above my back ... and they dropped half a dozen whizz-bangs just in front of me. While it was going on I couldn't have moved for a thousand pounds.... I felt pinned to the ground ... then there was a lull, and I leapt up ... so did old Smith ... bolted for the sap, and simply dived in head first ... they were still blazing off sixteen to the dozen, and it was the mercy of God we weren't hit ... talk about wind-up.... And when we got in two bombers thought it was an attack, and took us for Boches.... Rather funny, while the strafe was going on I kept thinking, "Poor old Smith, he's a married man" (he was a few yards from me) ... and Smith tells me he was thinking, "Mr. Penrose ... a married man ... married man...." What about some more whisky?' Well, he made a joke of it, as one tries to do as long as possible, and that night was almost happily exhilarated, as a man sometimes is after escaping narrowly from an adventure. But I could see that it had been a severe shock. The next night he had a cold and a bad cough, and said he would not go out for fear of 'making a noise and giving the show away.' The following night he went out, but came in very soon, and sat rather glum in the dug-out, thinking of something. (I always waited up till he came in to report, and we used to 'discuss the situation' over some whisky or a little white wine.) The following day the Colonel gave him a special job to do. There was the usual talk of a 'raid' on a certain section of the enemy lines; but there was a theory that this particular section had been evacuated. Flares were sent up from all parts of it, but this was supposed to be the work of one man, a hard worker, who walked steadily up and down, pretending to be a company. Harry was told off to test the truth of this myth—to get right up to that trench, to look in, and see what was in it. It was a thing he had done twice before, at least, though myself I should not have cared to do it at all. It meant the usual breathless, toilsome wriggle across No Man's Land, avoiding the flares and the two snipers who covered that bit of ground, finding a gap in the wire, getting through without being seen, without noise, without catching his clothes on a wandering barb, or banging his revolver against a multitude of tin cans. Then you had to listen and wait, and, if possible, get a look into the trench. When (and if) you had done that you had to get back, turn round in a tiny space, pass the same obstacles, the same snipers.... If at any stage you were spotted the odds against your getting back at all were extremely large.... However, Harry was a scout, and it was his job. In the afternoon of that day I met him somewhere in the line and made some would-be jocular remark about his night's work. He seemed to me a little worried, preoccupied, and answered shortly. Hewett was sitting near, shaving in the sun, and said to him: 'You're a nasty, cold-blooded fellow, Harry, crawling about like a young snake every night. But I suppose you like it.' Harry said slowly, with a casual air: 'Well, so I did, but I must say that strafe the other night put the wind up me properly—and when I went out last night I found I was thinking all the time, "Suppose they did that again?" ... and when I got on the top of a ridge or anywhere a bit exposed, I kept imagining what it would be like if all those machine-guns started just then ... simply dashed into a shell-hole ... and I found myself working for safe spots where one would be all right in case of accidents.... Sort of lost confidence, you know.' It was all said in a matter-of-fact manner, as if he was saying, 'I don't like marmalade so much as I used to do,' and there was no suggestion that he was not ready to go and look in the Boche Front Line or the Unter den Linden, if necessary. But I was sorry about this. I told him that he must not imagine; that that strafe was an unique affair, never likely to be repeated. But when I went back to the dug-out I spoke to the Colonel. That night I went up with Harry to Foster Alley, and watched him writhing away into the grey gloom. There were many stars, and you could follow him for thirty yards. And as I watched I wondered, 'Is he thinking, "Supposing they do that again?" and when he gets over near the wire, will he be thinking, "What would happen if they saw me now?" If so,' I said, 'God help him,' and went back to Headquarters. <hr style="width: 45%;" /> Three hours later he came into the dug-out, where I sat with the Colonel making out an Intelligence Report. He was very white and tired, and while he spoke to the Colonel he stood at the bottom of the muddy steps with his head just out of the candlelight. All the front of his tunic was muddy, and there were two rents in his breeches. He said, 'Very sorry, sir, but I couldn't get through. I got pretty close to the wire, but couldn't find a gap.' 'Was there much firing?' said the Colonel. 'The usual two snipers and a machine-gun on the left; from what I heard I should say there were a good many men in that part of the trench—but I couldn't swear.' Now what the Colonel had wanted was somebody who could swear; that was what the Brigade wanted; so he was not pleased. But he was a kind, understanding fellow, and all he said was, 'Well, I'm sorry, too, Penrose, but no doubt you did your best.' And he went to bed. Then I opened some Perrier (we still had Perrier then), and gave Harry a strong whisky, and waited. For I knew that there was more. He talked for a little, as usual, about the mud, and the Boche line, and so on, and then he said: 'What I told the Colonel was perfectly true—I did get pretty close to the wire, and there wasn't a gap to be seen—but that wasn't the whole of it ... I couldn't face it.... The truth is, that show the other night was too much for me.... I found myself lying in a shell-hole pretending to myself that I was listening, and watching, and so on, but really absolutely stuck, trying to make myself go on ... and I couldn't.... I'm finished as a scout ... that's all.' Well, it was all for the present. No thinking, human C.O. is going to run a man in for being beaten by a job like that. It is a specialist's affair, like firing a gun. It is his business to put the right man on the job, and if he doesn't, he can't complain. So we made Harry Lewis gun officer. And that was the first stage. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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