A War Romance

by F. W. Harvey

  ‘You chaps ain’t reg’lars are you?’ enquired one.

  ‘No,’ said Willie. Then came a fire of questions as to regiments now on the western front, casualties, movements, the general position, and the prospect (if any) of peace that year. These answered, Willie asked them questions. What was the work like?

  ‘Easy.’

  ‘What were the chances of escape?’

  ‘Easy also, as far as getting away went. But you needed civilian clothes, and the lingo to help you. Holland was a long way off. It meant a week’s travelling, or more. Harvest was past and that meant little concealment and little to live upon unless you carried your food. Three men had tried it and one was shot.

  ‘Did the others manage it?’ asked Willie.

  ‘No, they got recaptured, and sent down the salt mines,’ was the grim reply. ‘You’d best let it alone, mates.’

  ‘Humph!’ grunted Willie. He had heard about those salt mines. The tales were not sweet to recall.

  ‘I should think that the chap who got shot was the luckiest of those three,’ he said.

  ‘That’s likely,’ agreed the rest.

  ‘Do – do they give you a medical examination?’

  ‘Why, you ain’t wounded, mate, are you?’ said the man addressed, answering Private Gain.

  ‘No. I just wondered, that’s all. I was afraid … I mean, I thought that when you came first you might have to ‘pass through,’ or something.

  ‘No, nothin’ o’ that. A doc’ comes round if anybody’s sick, and you get stuff pumped into yer arm or chest fer inoculation once now and then – that’s all.

  ‘Oh!’

  Willie wondered by what means his companion had evaded that fatal test on enlisting. It was but one of a series of questions his curiosity was determined to solve. Circumstances compelled him to put it aside with the rest.

  ‘I’d like to write home,’ he said. ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Yes. Letters are censored, of course. They take about three weeks to get to England,’ was the answer.

  ‘That’s not bad.’

  ‘No. You and your mate’ll want some paper and ink. Here’s some …’

  But just then a German soldier shouted ‘lichts ans!’ and passing down the hut, left its occupants to find their beds in darkness. Then someone noticed the little ghost of a new moon. One man went so far as to take a sovereign from the heel of his boot to turn it for good luck. Paddy blessed himself with the Cross. How typical, thought Willie, of the nation to which they belonged.

  CHAPTER II

  Next morning they were roused by a bugle-call, and after lining up with the rest of the prisoners, detailed for duty on a small farm about two miles off.

  A German sentry escorted them to the place, gave them into charge of the farmer, and departed saying that he would call for them at the end of the day, and that they would be punished if the report of their day’s work was not satisfactory.

  Will had anticipated that he and his companion would be set to work together in the fields, but he was disappointed. The old farmer and himself went off to make a swede-pile. His comrade was kept to cart manure from the farm yard in company with the farmer’s daughter – a fair muscular girl of about nineteen.

  The four sons had been called away upon military service, and three were at the front. Already the work of the country was being done by women and old men, but this was the more natural because upon the continent women have never ceased to participate in labour of the fields.

  Willie’s curiosity must wait: his questions remain unanswered. He set himself whole-heartedly to appreciate the old man’s design for the swede pile, finding it similar in most respects to that he had seen constructed by his father’s workmen – Bill Trigg and the rest – in fields of home. Agriculture knows little of nationality.

  Yet to have seen a thing done, is far different from doing it, and he must concentrate all his wits upon the work in order to avoid mistakes. He asked, and the farmer showed him by signs what was required, and since he was a willing worker, though not a skilled artist, he reached the end of the day with a good character. No one, at any rate, suspected that he was not what he pretended to be – a farm labourer.

  In the meantime his fellow soldier had, though a stroke of fortune, made a good impression, which was later to stand them both in good stead. It happened that in leading the horse to stable after the carting was done an old hen that had been pecking about in the manger became startled at their entry and uprose with a great henish fluster into the animal’s face, causing him to turn and knock down the German girl who was leading him in. Undoubtedly he would also have trampled over her in his attempted flight from the stable had not the English soldier struck him heavily on the nose with a fork-handle, and dragged the girl to one side, before the blow-arrested animal, persisting in his course, left the bewildered fowl in possession.

  All this was related in excited German to the farmer upon his return, and he (having beaten the horse and cursed the hen) related it to the sentry. They marched back without opportunities of conversion that was not essentially casual, picking up other parties on the way.

  That night Willie wrote home.

  ‘Dearest, By the time you receive this you will have heard of poor Eric’s death – or, possibly both of us will have been reported as ‘missing’. But certitide is better than the suspense of that word. He was shot painlessly and suddenly on the morning of my capture. For me, do not worry! I am a prisoner, but well treated, and working on a farm in Westphalia. Parcels are permitted, and, as you see, letters. This camp holds about fifty prisoners – dear men of all sorts. We work in the fields by day and come back at night to sleep, so it is quite different from solitary confinement, or even prison life unbroken by activity that is craved by all men whether in or out of company. The same sun shines upon us both and the same stars. If Eric does not enjoy them (as I believe he does) it is because he has better things. He died as he lived, and as he wished to die, in a crusade; and has found the fruit of his steady growing. My heart is sad for you – there alone – but not for him, though at first I could not remember his sweet fruition, feeling only our loss and wishing to revenge him. Queer things have happened, of which I hope to tell you sometime in England. I do not understand them – yet. But of all that has befallen, nothing I feel now, is less tragical than Eric’s end. So do not grieve for either of us, dearest. He is near you now, and I shall return – sometime. May it be soon! Ever your loving son. WILL.’

  Mrs Harvey sitting quietly by the fire (as were at that hour almost every one of the mothers of England whose only sons had been posted ‘missing’) received this news in less dramatic circumstances than novelists have any right to impose upon their characters. Her circumstances, in common with those of the majority of farm owners during the war, had improved. Rents, which are based on profits, had risen. In her case, the farmers had offered to increase them. It must therefore be taken that the increase was no more than they could afford to pay. Her other investments being gone, she was naturally glad.

  Yet how little luxury (which was not hers) or even comfort (which was) can direct happiness is plain when we consider that she sat there that evening no more or less disconsolate than thousands of other women who had lost their sons.

  ‘Missing’ was equivalent to ‘lost’. Yet life is seldom so good or so bad as our dreams – even the outer husk of it! And that night she received Willie’s letter.

  It is fortunate for common people that life is not designed by even the best novelists. Take the present case:– Eric would have been kept to see the frustration of all his hopes in the treaty of Versailles. Willie would have returned home having been nursed to physical health and spiritual decay by Mrs. Bramsbury-Stuart:– kept alive for the purpose. This letter of his would have miscarried or reached Mrs. Harvey to be read in dramatic circumstances of financial disaster – the undertone to her son’s adventures. In short, the story would be vastly improved by simultaneous tragedies trotting like b
lack horses in tandem, with the guiding author astride.

  Providence is very unkind to novelists. But He is kinder to them than they are to Him. As for common folks it is, as we have noted, fortunate that He, and not they, are life’s designers. Reality may be less readable, but it is a lot more livable, and a lot more romantic to all but short-sighted people.

  This is not a criticism, but an apology. It is an apology from life to art that it is unable to be so symmetrical in design! so perfect in tragedy.

  It is an apology which will not be accepted by those myopic persons who put the tale above the Truth. But at the cost of remaining unread: acknowledging ‘artistic’ sins, yet persisting in them: this writer will abide in company with life as he has seen it: fearing more to be false to that, than to offend the great critics upon whom his bread depends.

  More, he will say this, that though ‘art as the criticism of life’ is a maxim so famous that its converse seems to-day no other than heresay; yet first to last the converse is true. Life is finally the only criticism of art.

  Which necessary digression having been set down to be read, or skipped, by the reader; we leave this old mother to her cry over Willie’s letter, and return through space and time to Germany.

  There came a day when Will and his gypsy companion found themselves working together in the fields and at bait hour stood together alone under the hedge wet with dew-drops which never dissolved that time of year in the wintry sun.

  ‘Gypsy, you made my brother to go un-revenged, but you saved my life, and I want to ask pardon for hitting you so brutally,’ said Willie.

  ‘It was given long ago,’ said she, standing a strange sight in her soldier’s clothes; that is to anyone who knew her for a maiden.

  ‘There are a lot of other things I want to ask,’ said Will, ‘but you need not answer them.’

  ‘I will answer anything you ask me as well as I can,’ was the reply.’

  ‘How did yo get round the medical examination in England?’

  ‘I took the place of another on the same night as he had passed through.’

  ‘Whom?’

  ‘A soldier I met. He joined the Warwicks a few days later, I believe.’

  ‘Why did he consent to this’

  ‘Because he didn’t like his sergeant, and because I asked him. He wasn’t a Gloucestershire man. I told him I was anxious to join his regiment but had been rejected by the doctors – I was in man’s clothes.’

  ‘Why so?’

  Because I wanted to join up. I changed into his uniform and became Private Gain in the Gloucesters.

  Willie laughed.

  ‘Were you like the real Private Gain?’

  ‘Not much, except that we were both dark, and about the same size; but they had only seen him a few times, and couldn’t tell the difference.’

  ‘How did you manage the changing business?’

  ‘Behind a hedge, in the dark.’

  ‘The Warwicks are in our division. Have you ever seen him since?’

  ‘I think so, once, on a divisional field day.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He wouldn’t talk, would he?’

  ‘I should think not. He’d get himself into trouble, you see.’

  ‘Well, he’s not likely to see you now anyway.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did you wish to join the Gloucesters?’ asked Willie.

  ‘Because I wanted to.’

  Willie roared. ‘Well, there’s no need to say anything about your sex, after all,’ he chuckled.

  ‘Something drove me to it,’ she added.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, it’s changed you, miraculously,’ mused Willie.

  ‘Has it? How?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it hasn’t. Perhaps it is life that has changed. Then you were in a lovely setting, and suited it. Now – I can’t think of you as the same girl, however, I try.’

  ‘But, I am, I am!’ Private Gain burst into tears.

  ‘Yes, of course you are. There, don’t cry,’ pleaded the embarassed Willie.

  The farmer was approaching with ‘Prinz’ and the cart. Prinz was a white ox embodying Germany at her best:– the tireless industry ‘ohne hast ohne rast’ which yet remained to her, though it had turned feverish; the good nature that had departed, and been replaced by blood-lust; the Mozart innocence and contentment of soul that had given way to bellowing and blare:– not that Mozart is like an ox, but that an ox may be like Mozart. And this ox was. He took you by his very look back to childhood and good fairies.

  Viewing him you bethought all those gentle princes transformed by evil witches in the tales of Grimm. You recalled ‘Beauty and the Beast’:– at least Willie did, as his strange companion having brushed the tears aside with the sleeve of her tunic, stood for an instant or two fondling his brass-tipped horns, and curly poll.

  The farmer himself (though he was not particularly kind to animals) regarded the beast with a reverence little less than that with which he regarded the Kaiser – and very much more affection.

  Prinz was the only animal he ever spoke to – though he might shout at others. Others included his daughter, and these two soldiers.

  Yet the bark of this old man was worse than his bite, and occasionally he kindled to a grim gaiety of reminiscence. Being sixty years of age he had seen Germany made. He had seen it grow like a monstrous mushroom or toadstool to poison all who ate of it. His pride in the growth was mixed with fear, but he was no politician. His reminiscences were personal rather than general; and grimness was their dominant note. He found his gaiety in recalling such things.

  How, for instance, he – a schoolboy then – had played truant to witness in a crowd the last public execution that had taken place in that part of Deutchland.

  It took place in a forest. The condemned man was taken in a cart to the spot. It was a queer cart and acted both as vehicle and scaffold. there were ladders down each side. The man was dressed fittingly. He wore no coat nor collar (a collar would have been unsuitable to the occasion), but a white shirt with black bows down the front. He was drawn backwards, his face to the tail of the cart. Some priests stood round him praying all the time. Guarding the prisoner, soldiers marched on either side. There were an unusual number of drummers. (Their presence will be appreciated by all who have ever taken note of the brass band which accompanies quack dentists when they perform their ‘painless extractions’ in public. An agonised expression upon the face of the patient may be accounted for by nervous apprehension – besides fewer people see it than would notice a shriek. Also, a brass band attracts attention and invests the central figure with a certain pomp). This man had done to death a girl, and flung her body into the river. He was a married man.

  At the appointed spot the cart stopped and became a scaffold. The crowd peered down from fir trees which they had climbed; or up, from the bare space nearer the prisoner, pressing upon the ring of soldiers. The prayers of the priests were drowned in a great drumming. Catching hold of the hair, grown conveniently long, someone ‘stretched up his neck,’ and the executioner severed it. All this the old farmer saw with his eyes from a tree. And he saw one other execution – the last in the whole of Germany. Then one of the condemned had danced upon the scaffold. She was ‘an Austrian lady’, and her fellow victim, the man who had assisted her to kill her husband. Having pushed him into a river, they had beaten him with driftwood till he drowned. The man’s face was whiter than his white shirt with the black bows. There was snow of the ground, and his face was as white as that …

  The reason why such stories should be related in this book is that they show up more vividly than three or four pages of description, the character of the man whose pleasure was in relating them. Yet, lest too sinister an expression seem to be given him thereby, it is necessary to remember how many beside neurotic sensation-seeking females throng ‘The Old Bailey’ to hear men condemned to d
eath. The author himself was one time acquainted with an London bus-driver old-fashioned enough to scorn petrol, who spent all his leisure in such a way. He could tell you the salient features of every important murder for forty years back. And this man was British to the backbone. His repartee was worthy of the best (and slowest days) of London traffic. He was a good husband and a kind father.

  This German – Willie’s master – was a less lovable man, but he was no monster. Both, had they been less industrious, would have been readers of the best ‘shockers.’ Being illiterate they went to life, instead of to art, for their entertainment. No man who has enjoyed Stevenson or Wilkie Collins can claim a right to sneer at them. He takes his enjoyment differently – that is all. And he probably constitutes a deal less sheer brain work then they, since he finds his dome of pleasure complete, and the scaffolding (except for one essential piece) removed; but they build it stone by stone: timber by timber, in the mind, even as the authors were compelled to build their books.

  As for the girl – the blue-eyed health-coloured daughter of this old man – she possessed in a feminine way the same power of turning life into story. The romance (pseudo romance perhaps) to which she youthfully devoted her soul was naturally different, less grim; more subjective. But like that of her father, it took as material the queer accidents of life and like his, it fitted into that larger pattern of romance which is woven of life’s common incidents.

  It began from a moment when the young English soldier had pulled her from under the hoofs of a horse. How it developed may be glimpsed in the lunch-hour conversation between Willie and his companion upon a later day.

  ‘I have heard from my mother.’

  She sighed, having no mother perhaps: then –

  ‘That is a sweet thing!’ she said.

  ‘It is. Both sweet and bitter.’

  ‘Bitter?’

  ‘Aye – It was a sweet letter but it left a bitter taste. It was full of kind English thoughts and county gossip, and it has made me homesick for something I had almost forgotten – forgotten as a reality.’