No Man's Land: Writings From a World at War

by Pete Ayrton

  A. P. HERBERT

  ONE OF THE BRAVEST MEN I EVER KNEW

  from The Secret Battle

  THAT EVENING I SAT IN C COMPANY MESS for an hour and talked with them about the trial. They were very sad and upset at this thing happening in the regiment, but they were reasonable and generous, not like those D Company pups, Wallace and the other. For they were older men, and had nearly all been out a long time. Only one of them annoyed me, a fellow in the thirties, making a good income in the City, who had only joined up just before he had to under the Derby scheme, and had been out a month. This fellow was very strong on ‘the honour of the regiment’; and seemed to think it desirable for that ‘honour’ that Harry should be shot. Though how the honour of the regiment would be thereby advanced, or what right he had to speak for it, I could not discover.

  But the others were sensible, balanced men, and as perplexed and troubled as I. I had been thinking over a thing that Harry had said in his talk with me – ‘If I did have the wind-up I’ve never had cold feet.’ It is a pity one cannot avoid these horrible terms, but one cannot. I take it that ‘wind-up’ – whatever the origin of that extraordinary expression may be – signifies simply ‘fear.’ ‘Cold feet’ also signifies fear, but, as I understand it, has an added implication in it of base yielding to that fear. I told them about this distinction of Harry’s, and asked them what they thought.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Smith, ‘that’s just the damned shame of the whole thing. There are lots of men who are simply terrified the whole time they’re out, but just go on sticking it by sheer guts – will-power, or whatever you like – that’s having the wind-up, and you can’t prevent it. It just depends how you’re made. I suppose there really are some people who don’t feel fear at all – that fellow Drake, for example – though I’m not sure that there are many. Anyhow, if there are any they don’t deserve much credit though they do get the V. C.’s. Then there are the people who feel fear like the rest of us and don’t make any effort to resist it, don’t join up or come out, and when they have to, go back after three months with a blighty one, and get a job, and stay there.’

  ‘And when they are here wangle out of all the dirty jobs,’ put in Foster.

  ‘Well, they’re the people with “cold feet” if you like,’Smith went on, ‘and as you say, Penrose has never been like that. Fellows like him keep on coming out time after time, getting worse wind-up every time, but simply kicking themselves out until they come out once too often, and stop one, or break up suddenly like Penrose, and—’

  ‘And the question is – ought any man like that to be shot?’ asked Foster.

  ‘Ought any one who volunteers to fight for his country be shot?’ said another.

  ‘Damn it, yes,’ said Constable; he was a square, hard-looking old boy, a promoted N. C. O., and a very useful officer. ‘You must have some sort of standard – or where would the army be?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Foster, ‘look at the Australians – they don’t have a death-penalty, and I reckon they’re as good as us.’

  ‘Yes, my son, perhaps that’s the reason’ – this was old Constable again – ‘the average Australian is naturally a sight stouter-hearted than the average Englishman – they don’t need it.’

  ‘Then why the hell do they punish Englishmen worse than Australians, if they can’t even be expected to do so well?’ retorted Foster; but this piece of dialectics was lost on Constable.

  ‘Anyhow, I don’t see that it need be such an absolute standard,’ Smith began again, thoughtfully; he was a thoughtful young fellow. ‘They don’t expect everybody to have equally strong arms or equally good brains; and if a chap’s legs or arms aren’t strong enough for him to go on living in the trenches they take him out of it (if he’s lucky). But every man’s expected to have equally strong nerves in all circumstances, and to go on having them till he goes under; and when he goes under they don’t consider how far his nerves, or guts, or whatever you call it, were as good as other people’s. Even if he had nerves like a chicken to begin with he’s expected to behave as a man with nerves like a lion or a Drake would do…’

  ‘A man with nerves like a chicken is a damned fool to go into the infantry at all,’ put in Williams – ‘the honour of the regiment’ person.

  ‘Yes, but he may have had a will-power like a lion, and simply made himself do it.’

  ‘You’d be all right, Smith,’somebody said, ‘if you didn’t use such long words; what the hell do you mean by an absolute standard?’

  ‘Sorry, George, I forgot you were so ignorant. What I mean is this. Take a case like Penrose’s:All they ask is, was he seen running the wrong way, or not going the right way? If the answer is Yes – the punishment is death, et cetera, et cetera. To begin with, as I said, they don’t consider whether he was capable physically or mentally – I don’t know which it is – of doing the right thing. And then there are lots of other things which we know make one man more “windy” than another, or windier to-day than he was yesterday – things like being a married man, or having boils, or a bad cold, or being just physically weak, so that you get so exhausted you haven’t got any strength left to resist your fears (I’ve had that feeling myself) – none of those things are considered at all at a court-martial – and I think they ought to be.’

  ‘Well, what do you want,’Foster asked, ‘a kind of periodical Wind-up Examination?’

  ‘That’s the kind of thing, I suppose. It is a medical question, really. Only the doctors don’t seem to recognize – or else they aren’t allowed to – any stage between absolute shell-shock, with your legs flying in all directions, and just ordinary skrim-shanking.’

  ‘But damn it, man,’ Constable exploded, ‘look at the skrim-shanking you’ll get if you have that sort of thing. You’d have all the mothers’ darlings in the kingdom saying they’d had enough when they got to the Base.’

  ‘Perhaps – no, I think that’s silly. I don’t know what it is that gives you bad wind-up after a long time out here, nerves or imagination or emotion or what, but it seems to me the doctors ought to be able to test when a man’s really had enough; just as they tell whether a man’s knee or a man’s heart are really bad or not. You’d have to take his record into account, of course…’

  ‘And you’d have to make it a compulsory test,’ said Smith, ‘because nowadays no one’s going to go into a Board and say, “Look here, doctor, I’ve been out so long and I can’t stand any more.” They’d send you out in the next draft!’

  ‘Compulsory both ways,’ added Foster: ‘when they’d decided he’d done enough, and wasn’t safe any longer, he oughtn’t to be allowed to do any more – because he’s dangerous to himself and everybody else.’*

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Williams, ‘that’s what usually does happen, doesn’t it? When a chap gets down and out like that after a decent spell of it, he usually gets a job at home – instructor at the Depot, or something.’

  ‘Yes, and then you get a fellow with the devil of a conscience like Penrose – and you have a nasty mess like this.’

  ‘And what about the men?’ asked Constable. ‘Are you going to have the same thing for them?’

  ‘Certainly – only, thank God, there are not so many of them who need it. All that chat you read about the “wonderful fatalism” of the British soldier is so much bunkum. It simply means that most of them are not cursed with an imagination, and so don’t worry about what’s coming.’

  ‘That’s true; you don’t see many fatalists in the middle of a big strafe.’

  ‘Of course there are lots of them who are made like Penrose, and with a record like his, something—’

  ‘And it’s damned lucky for the British Army there are not more of them,’ put in Constable.

  ‘Certainly, but it’s damned unlucky for them to be in the British Army – in the infantry, anyhow.’

  ‘And what does that matter?’

  ‘Oh, well, you can take that line if you like – but it’s a bit Prussi
an, isn’t it?’

  ‘Prussia’s winning this dirty war, anyhow, at present.’

  So the talk rambled on, and we got no further, only most of us were in troubled agreement that something – perhaps many things – were wrong about the System, if this young volunteer, after long fighting and suffering, was indeed to be shot like a traitor in the cold dawn.

  Nine times out of ten, as Williams had said, we knew that it would not have happened, simply because nine men out of ten surrender in time. But ought the tenth case to be even remotely possible? That was our doubt.

  What exactly was wrong we could not pretend to say. It was not our business. But if this was the best the old men could do, we felt that we could help them a little. I give you this scrap of conversation only to show the kind of feeling there was in the regiment – because that is the surest test of the rightness of these things.

  They were still at it when I left. And as I went out wearily into the cold drizzle I heard Foster summing up his views with: ‘Well, the whole thing’s damned awful. They’ve recommended him to mercy, haven’t they? and I hope to God he gets it.’

  *

  But he got no mercy. The sentence was confirmed by the higher authorities.

  I cannot pretend to know what happened, but from some experience of the military hierarchy I can imagine. I can see those papers, wrapped up in the blue form, with all the right information beautifully inscribed in the right spaces, very neat and precise, carefully sealed in the long envelopes, and sent wandering up through the rarefied atmosphere of the Higher Formations. Very early they halt, at the Brigadier, or perhaps the Divisional General, some one who thinks of himself as a man of ‘blood and iron’. He looks upon the papers. He reads the evidence – very carefully. At the end he sees ‘Recommended to Mercy.’ – ‘All very well, but we must make an example sometimes. Where’s that confidential memo we had the other day? That’s it, yes. “Officer who fails in his duty must be treated with the same severity as would be awarded to private in the same circumstances.” Quite right too. Shan’t approve recommendation to mercy. Just write on it, “See no reason why sentence should not be carried out” and I’ll sign it. – Or, more simply perhaps: “Mercy! mercy be damned! must make an example. I won’t have any cold feet in my Command”.’ And so the Blue Form goes climbing on, burdened now with that fatal endorsement, labouring over ridge after ridge, and on each successive height the atmosphere becomes more rarefied (though the population is more numerous). And at long last it comes to some Olympian peak – I know not where – beyond which it may not go, where the air is so chill and the population so dense, that it is almost impossible to breathe. Yet here, I make no doubt, they look at the Blue Form very carefully and gravely, as becomes the High Gods. But in the end they shake their heads, a little sadly, maybe, and say, ‘Ah, General B—— does not approve recommendation to mercy. He’s the man on the spot, he ought to know. Must support him. Sentence confirmed.’

  Then the Blue Form climbs sadly down to the depths again, to the low regions where men feel fear…

  The thing was done seven mornings later, in a little orchard behind the Casquettes’ farm.

  The Padre told me he stood up to them very bravely and quietly. Only he whispered to him, ‘For God’s sake make them be quick.’That is the worst torment of the soldier from beginning to end – the waiting…

  *

  After three months I had some leave and visited Mrs. Harry. I had to. But I shall not distress you with an account of that interview. I will not even pretend that she was ‘brave.’ How could she be? Only, when I had explained things to her, as Harry had asked, she said: ‘Somehow, that does make it easier for me – and I only wish – I wish you could tell everybody – what you have told me.’

  And again I say, that is all I have tried to do. This book is not an attack on any person, on the death penalty, or on anything else, though if it makes people think about these things, so much the better. I think I believe in the death penalty – I don’t know. But I did not believe in Harry being shot.

  That is the gist of it; that my friend Harry was shot for cowardice – and he was one of the bravest men I ever knew.

  A. P. Herbert was born in Surrey in 1890 and went to Oxford in 1910. At the outbreak of the war, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was sent to Gallipoli in 1915. Injured in Gallipoli, he rejoined his division in France which served in the last phases of the Battle of the Somme. Again wounded, Herbert returned home and started writing The Secret Battle. The novel, in part autobiographical, tells the story of Henry Penrose, a sensitive officer who buckles under the pressure of repeated front-line campaigns and is executed after a court-martial. Based on the true story of Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett’s trial for desertion, the book was praised by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, who wrote that it was ‘one of those cries of pain wrung from the fighting troops… like the poems of Siegfried Sassoon it should be read in each generation, so that men and women may rest under no illusions about what war means.’ First published in 1919, it was not a commercial success and turned Herbert away from writing serious literature. He is best known for his Misleading Cases in the Common Law, satirical pieces on various aspects of the legal and judicial system that first appeared in Punch. Extremely funny, the pieces also expressed his desire for law reform. Herbert died in London in 1971.

  *It is only fair to say that, long after the supposed date of this conversation, a system of sending ‘war-weary’ soldiers home for six months at a time was instituted, though I doubt if Foster would have been satisfied with that.

  VAHAN TOTOVENTS

  INFIDELS AND CURS

  from Scenes from an Armenian Childhood

  translated by Mischa Kudian

  WE HAD TURKISH NEIGHBOURS, too.

  Shemsy was the son of this Turkish family. We were about the same age and had grown up together. We had done so like two brothers: we would give each other small knuckle-bones with which we used to play games; we would offer each other sweetmeats from our homes; we would go swimming together; together, we would tease his sister, who was two years older than him; and we would cry together. Sanié, his sister, was like a fairy: she was so light she seemed to be made of air; her colouring was white and golden, in spite of her brother’s dark skin, black hair and eyebrows, and inky eyes.

  There was a big acacia-tree in their garden. I used to liken her so much to the whiteness of that tree.

  Sanié used to speak through her nose a little – having fallen as a child and hurt herself – but I was very fond of the twang in her voice; so much so that I wished all girls would speak that way.

  But it was not the same with Shemsy. He would constantly make fun of the nasal tone in her speech; and she would approach me with great warmth, sensing that the defect which was the cause of his mockery used to please me, and she would let me touch her freely all over with my hands.

  And she would laugh.

  And the blue stream which flowed from heaven would babble away…

  *

  Sometimes Shemsy and I would fight together. We would do so without any particular cause.

  He would suddenly call me: ‘Infidel!’ And I would immediately retaliate with: ‘Cur!’

  We had learnt these words from our homes and schools. All Turks used to call Armenians ‘infidels’, and all Armenians used to call Turks ‘curs’.

  When Turks visited my father, he would receive them with hospitality. But after they had gone, parting with friendly and respectful greetings, my father would grunt: ‘Curs!’

  And, of course, when my father had received similar hospitality from them, the Turks would grunt: ‘Infidel!’ after he had left.

  The ‘giavour’ and the ‘eet’ – Turkish for ‘infidel’ and ‘cur’ – could not live together.

  If any Turk called me an ‘infidel’, I would automatically retaliate with ‘cur’, except for Sanié.

  Sanié was the acacia-blossom which scented the cool air of the nights in spr
ingtime.

  When an Armenian or a group of them were taken to prison in chains, they would hang down their heads as they went by, whilst the Turks would stand in the streets and laugh at them with delight.

  And when a Turkish coffin was taken by, the Armenians would look skywards and murmur: ‘Thank Thee, O Lord!’They would be pleased that there was one Turk less.

  I did not understand why this should have been so, but, without questioning it, my hatred for the ‘curs’ grew more intense inside me, as it did with Shemsy towards the ‘infidels’.

  Sanié disappeared behind latticed windows: a grim cloud had covered the silvery moon, and I was not able to unravel the mysteries of the scented, the intoxicating, the blossoming stranger; the deep hidden folds, the lines, the velvety expanses remained concealed from me; I was not able to dominate that field of marble in its entirety…