Sherston's Progress

by Siegfried Sassoon

  In weaker moments, as I said before, ‘our poor friend’ somewhat bleakly realized what he had let himself in for, and, without actually wishing he hadn’t done it, felt an irrepressible hankering for some sort of reprieve. Since mid-October mental detachment had been made easier by my having been given a small room to myself – an insidious privilege which allowed me to ruminate without interruption. Bad weather prevented me from playing golf all day and every day, and my brain became more active in the evenings. I spent ambrosial hours with favourite authors, and a self-contained, ‘dug-in’ state of mind ensued.

  My temperamental tendency to day-dreaming asserted itself and I realized how much I craved for solitude and mental escape from my surroundings.

  When cold weather came I was allowed a scuttle of coal and could lie in bed watching the firelight flickering on the walls and the embers glowing in the grate. On such nights I remembered untroubled days and idealized my childhood, returning to the times when I was recovering from some illness and could dwell in realms of reverie, as when one surrenders to the spell of a book which evokes summers long ago and people transmuted by the author’s mind to happy phantoms. Imagination recreated Aunt Evelyn reading aloud to me – her voice going lullingly on and on with one of R. L. Stevenson’s stories, until she decided that it was time for some more medicine, for she was fond of amateur doctoring, and soon she would be busy with the medicine dropper, preparing one of her homeopathic remedies. Now I come to think of it, Aunt Evelyn’s world was divided into ‘Homeopats’ and ‘Allopats’, who were much the same as Conservatives and Liberals; and the ‘Allopats’ were in the same category as Radicals in whom no virtue resided. In other words, my reveries went back to the beginning of these memoirs, living them over again until August 1914 pulled me up short.

  This was a permissible self-indulgence, for the past was still there to be used as a sedative in discreet doses – three drops in half a wine glass of water, so to speak. Looking at the future was quite a different matter.

  There had been times since I came to Slateford when I had, rather guardedly, given myself a glimpse of an après la guerre existence, but I hadn’t done any cosy day-dreaming about it. My talks with Rivers had increased my awareness of the limitations of my pre-war life. He had shown that he believed me to be capable of achieving something useful. He had set me on the right road and made me feel that if the War were to end to-morrow I should be starting on a new life’s journey in which point-to-point races and cricket matches would no longer be supremely important and a strenuous effort must be made to take some small share in the real work of the world.

  If the War were to end to-morrow!…That was where I remembered that my future was unlikely to happen at all. The fireproof curtain was still lowered in front of the stage on which post-war events would be enacted; and life, with an ironic gesture, had contrived that the man who had lit up my future with a new eagerness to do well in it should now be instrumental in sending me back to an even-money chance of being killed.

  Here was I, in my little room, with a fire burning brightly and a dozen of the world’s literary masterpieces tidily arranged on my table. Where should I be by the end of November? I wondered; for I was expecting that, since I was such a ‘special case’, I should be sent back without much delay. The contrast, as regards comfort, between where I was now and where I might be in a few weeks’ time needed no stressing. Realizing how much I wanted not to lose that chance of a ‘new life’, I experienced a sort of ordeal by self-immolation. Immolation for what? I asked myself. I should be returning to the War with no belief in what I was doing; I should go through with it in a spirit of loneliness and detachment because there was no alternative. Going back was the only way out of an impossible situation. At the front I should at least find forgetfulness. And I would rather be killed than survive as one who had ‘wangled’ his way through by saying that the War ought to stop. Better to be in the trenches with those whose experience I had shared and understood than with this medley of civilians who, when one generalized about them intolerantly, seemed either being broken by the War or enriched and made important by it. Whatever the soldiers might be as individuals, they seemed a more impressive spectacle as a whole in their endurance of what was imposed on them. But then there was my freedom to be considered. After all I had been under no one’s orders lately, and at the best of times a platoon commander’s life was just one damned thing after another. It’s got to be done, I thought. That was about all I’d got to keep me up to scratch, and I went through some fairly murky moments in that little room of mine. It was, in fact, not at all unlike a renunciation of life and all that it had to offer me. As regards being dead, however, one of my main consolations has always been that I have the strongest intention of being an extremely active ghost. Let nobody make any mistake about that.

  It must have been just before my medical board was due to take place that the great administrative crisis occurred at Slateford. The details of this event were as follows. The commandant (or head doctor) who had won the gratitude and affection of everyone whose opinion was worth anything, was duly notified, several weeks in advance, that the chief medical mandarin from the War Office would inspect the hospital. This, of course, signified automatically that elaborate efforts must be made to ensure that he should see Slateford as it had never been before and never would be again. The spit and polish process should, I suppose, have been applied even to the patients, on whom it was incumbent that they should be looking their best. ‘Always remember that you belong to the smartest shell-shock hospital in the British Army’ should have been the order of the day.

  But the commandant had his own ideas about eyewash, and he decided that the general should, just for once, see a war hospital as it really was.

  He did this as a matter of principle, since in his opinion a shell-shock hospital was not the same thing as a parade ground. But administrative inspectorship failed to see the point of that sort of thing, and the mandarin was genuinely shocked by what he inspected. He went into the kitchen and found that he couldn’t see his face reflected in a single frying-pan. You couldn’t eat your dinner off the bathroom floors, and Sam Browne belts were conspicuous by their absence. Worst of all, most of the medical staff were occupied with their patients, instead of standing about and wasting their time for an hour or two while awaiting the arrival of their supreme therapeutic warlord. Profoundly displeased, he departed. The place was a disgrace, and only showed what happened when civilians in uniform were allowed to run a war hospital in their own way. The commandant was notified that someone else would take over his commandancy, and the rest of the staff sent in their resignations as a demonstration of loyalty to him. These after-effects, as far as I can remember, were as yet unknown to the patients. Had I been aware that Rivers would soon be leaving the hospital I am sure I should not have done the very stupid thing which I am about to describe.

  There are two ways of telling a good story well – the quick way and the slow way. Personally I prefer a good story to be told slowly. What I am about to tell is not a good story. It is merely an episode which cannot be left out. A certain abruptness is therefore appropriate.

  On the appointed afternoon I smartened myself up and waited to be called before the medical board. I was also going to tea with the astronomer, who had promised to let me have a look at the moon through his telescope. But I was feeling moody and irritable, and I had to wait my turn, which was a long time in coming. Gradually I became petulant and impatient. After an hour and a half I looked at my watch for the last time, said to myself that the medical board could go to blazes, and then (I record it with regret) went off to have tea with the astronomer. It was one of those self-destructive impulses which cause people, in sheer cussedness, to do things which are to their own disadvantage. I suddenly felt ‘fed up with being mucked about by the War’ – as I should have expressed it – and forgot all about Rivers and everything that I owed him.

  Seeking some explanation of my behaviour I ha
ve wondered whether I was feeling ill without being aware of it. But I don’t remember developing an influenza-cold afterwards; and if I did it would have been a poorish excuse.

  In these days of incalculable dictators, by the way, (and in my humble opinion the proper place for a dictator is a parenthesis) one cannot help wondering whether an acute Continental crisis could not quite conceivably be caused by an oncoming chill. May I therefore be allowed to suggest that before hurling explosive ultimatums, all dictators should be persuaded to have their temperatures taken. One pictures the totalitarian tyrant with fountain-pen poised above some imperious edict, when the human touch intervenes in the form of a trained nurse-secretary (also a dead shot with a revolver) who slips a thermometer into that ever-open mouth. One figures him, with eyes dynamically dilated, breathing stertorously through the nose during this test of his sense of supreme responsibility for the well-being of the world…. ‘Just half a minute more, to make quite sure’…. With a bright smile she hands the tiny talisman to a gravely-expectant medicine man, who, it may be, shakes his head and murmurs, ‘Nine-nine point nine. Your Supremacy should sign no documents till tomorrow morning.’ Poof! What a relief for Europe!…

  To return to my insignificant self: before I was half-way to Edinburgh on the top of a tram I realized that I had done something unthinkably foolish. But it was too late now. The stars looked down on me, and soon I should be making the most of them through the largest telescope in Scotland. But the document which might have a conclusive effect on my earthly career was still unsigned.

  Of my tea with the astronomer, I only remember that he couldn’t get the telescope to work properly. He pushed and pulled, swivelled it and swore at it, and finally gave it up as a bad job. So even the moon was a washout. Downstairs he took me into a darkened room and showed me a delicate instrument which I can only describe by saying that it contained a small blob of luminosity, which was, I rather think, radium. What was the instrument for? I asked. He told me that it was used for measuring infinitesimal fractions of a second. He then explained how it did it.

  Rivers, as I have already attempted to indicate, was a wonderful man. He certainly made me aware of it after I’d offered him my wretched explanation. It was, thank heaven, the only time I ever saw him seriously annoyed with me. As might be expected, he looked not only annoyed, but stern. The worst part was that he looked thoroughly miserable. With averted eyes I mumbled out my story; how I’d lost my temper because I was kept waiting; how I really didn’t know why I’d done it; and how it was nothing to do with backing out of my decision to give up being a pacifist. When he heard this his face changed. He looked relieved. My eyes met his; and when I dolefully exclaimed ‘And now I suppose I’ve dished the whole thing, just through having said I’d go to tea with the astronomer!’ he threw his head back and laughed in that delightful way of his. For me it was about the best laugh he ever indulged in, for it meant that he’d put the whole board-cutting business behind him and was ready to repair the damage without delay. Not a word of reproach did he utter. I was causing him a lot of extra trouble, but he merely remarked that he might find some difficulty in getting my papers past the new commandant, whose arrival was imminent. This officer was believed to be ultra-conventional in his ideas about the mental deportment of young officers, and it was feared that his attitude toward the psychoses would be somewhat adamantine. Whether it really was adamantine I am unable to say, for I don’t seem to remember much about those three weeks which concluded my career at Slateford.

  Oddly enough, the agitation created by board-cutting produced an ableptical effect on my introspectiveness. The episode provided a sort of bridge between psychological disquietude and a calm acceptance of ‘the inevitable’. In other words, I ceased to worry.

  When – at the end of that period of which I can only remember that I wanted it to be over quickly – I was actually waiting to go in and ‘be boarded’, I felt self-confident but a little nervous about the result. My cranium, however, contained nothing definite except the first two lines of ‘Locksley Hall’. (Something similar had happened when I was being ‘boarded’ at Liverpool the previous July.) ‘Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet ’tis early morn’ (it was after lunch, and I was reclining on a dingy red plush sofa in the lofty but depressing saloon). ‘Leave me here, and when you want me blow upon the bugle-horn’…. What was the connection? Was it because they’d talked about Tennyson up at the observatory, or was ‘Locksley Hall’ something to do with being under lock and key, or was it merely because the bugle-horn was about to blow me back to the army? One thing was obvious, at any rate. I must not ask the medical board to solve this enigma for me. When the moment arrived for me to take a deep breath and step discreetly in, I found Rivers looking as solemn as a judge, sitting at a table where he’d been telling the other two as much of my case as he deemed good for them. In a manner which was, I hoped, a nice blend of deference and self-assurance, I replied to a few perfunctory questions about my health. There was a fearsome moment when the commandant picked up my ‘dossier’; but Rivers diverted his attention with some remark or other and he put the papers down again. The commandant looked rather as if he wanted his tea. I was then duly passed for general service abroad – an event which seldom happened from Slateford. But that was not all. Without knowing it, two-thirds of the medical board had restored me to my former status. I was now ‘an officer and a gentleman’, again.

  Next morning I had my last look at the hydro before departing to entrain for Liverpool. Feeling no inclination to request my comrades to leave me there a little, I became quite certain that I never wanted to see the place again.

  I had said good-bye to Rivers. Shutting the door of his room for the last time, I left behind me someone who had helped and understood me more than anyone I had ever known. Much as he disliked speeding me back to the trenches, he realized that it was my only way out. And the longer I live the more right I know him to have been.

  And now, before conveying myself away from Slateford, I must add a few final impressions. The analysis and interpretation of dreams was an important part of the work which Rivers did; and, as everyone ought to know, his contributions to that insubstantial field of investigation were extremely valuable.

  About my own dreams he hadn’t bothered much, but as there may be someone who needs to be convinced that I wasn’t suffering from shell-shock, I am offering a scrap of dream evidence, which for all I know may prove that I was!

  Since the War I have experienced two distinct and recurrent specimens of war-dream. Neither of them expressed any dislike of high-explosive. I have never had nightmares about being shelled, though I must confess to a few recent ones about being bombed from the air, but that was probably caused by reading the newspapers.

  The two recurrent dreams were, (I): I was with my battalion in some slough of despond, from which it seemed there was no way back. We were all doomed to perish in the worst possible of all most hopeless ‘dud shows’. Our only enemy was mud. This was caused by hearing about the Ypres salient, and by the haunting fear that sooner or later I should find myself in some such ‘immortal morass’, as it might be designated by one of those lofty-minded persons who prefer to let bygones be bygones – one might call them ‘the Unknown Warrior School of Unrealists’ – ‘these men perished miserably, but the spirit in which they did it lives for ever’, and so on. Measured in terms of unmitigated horror, this dream was, I think, quite good peace propaganda. But the queer thing about it was that while in the thick of my dream-despair, I sometimes thought ‘Anyhow I am adding a very complete piece of war experience to my collection’. This dream did not recur after I had written my account of military service.

  The second dream still recurs, every two or three months. It varies in context and background, but always amounts to the same thing. The War is still going on and I have got to return to the front. I complain bitterly to myself because it hasn’t stopped yet. I am worried because I can’t find my active-service
kit. I am worried because I have forgotten how to be an officer. I feel that I can’t face it again, and sometimes I burst into tears and say ‘It’s no good. I can’t do it.’ But I know that I can’t escape going back, and search frantically for my lost equipment.

  Sometimes I actually find myself ‘out there’ (though the background is always in England – the Germans have usually invaded half Kent). And, as in the first dream, I am vaguely gratified at ‘adding to my war experience’. I take out a patrol and am quite keen about it.

  This dream obviously dates from the autumn of 1917, when I made the choice which seemed like a ‘potential death-sentence’. If it proves anything it is this; the fact that it was everybody’s business to be prepared to die for his country did not alter the inward and entirely personal grievance one had against being obliged to do it. The instinct of self-preservation automatically sank below all arguments put forward by one’s ‘higher self’. ‘I don’t want to die,’ it insisted. ‘I want to be a middle-aged man writing memoirs, and not a “glorious name” living for evermore on a block of stone subject to the inevitable attritions and obfuscations caused by climate.’ ‘But your deathless name will be invisibly inscribed in the annals of your imperishable race’ argued some celestial leader-writer. ‘I prefer to peruse to-morrow’s Times in normal decrepitude’ replied ignoble self-preservation.

  It would be an exaggeration if I were to describe Slateford as a depressing place by daylight. The doctors did everything possible to counteract gloom, and the wrecked faces were outnumbered by those who were emerging from their nervous disorders. But the War Office had wasted no money on interior decoration; consequently the place had the melancholy atmosphere of a decayed hydro, redeemed only by its healthy situation and pleasant view of the Pentland Hills. By daylight the doctors dealt successfully with these disadvantages, and Slateford, so to speak, ‘made cheerful conversation’.