The Long Week-End 1897-1919

by Wilfred R. Bion

  Quainton said, and Robinson agreed with alacrity, that these figures were miraculous.

  “But”, said Cartwright, “how did you have so many casualties?”

  The conversation languished. Had we been unlucky? It hadn’t occurred to any of us. How many casualties amount to ‘unlucky’?

  Our company had lost almost two thirds of our officers and men, killed, in the one and a half hours from zero. Certainly that sounded unlucky. Or perhaps it was just bad luck that the German gunner major had not run away with his men? The rest of the battalion had not lost any men that day. On the other hand, at the end of ten days they also had lost all but three tanks and a corresponding number of killed. Come to think of it, we had never been in action, according to Battalion HQ, without losing at least one third of the fighting crews.

  Who had been killed? This reminded Quainton—”I see that we are not to have a battalion mess. It’s company messes from now on, Gull says. It’s jolly awkward because you can never get any news.” It was most peculiar; there was no news.

  Green: killed in action. Despard: killed in action. Bayliss: died of wounds. Cohen: wounded. Crankleton: missing, believed killed—very likely indeed when you consider that one of his men was there when he was blown to bits. Ball: very much alive, but… He was such a nice fellow, good company, witty, the perfect foil to his friend Green—till that day he got under the tank.

  ‘Their name liveth for evermore.’ In the hearts and minds of the survivors it did, till they also died. But what had happened to the 5th Battalion, that fine-looking crowd who sang ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’ that beautiful morning at Wool Station? The illusion that there was a 5th Battalion was more powerful than fact; we were swallowed up amongst so many new boys that we hardly existed. The future, the traditions of the battalion, lay in our hands—Hauser, Quainton, Broome, Green, Cartwright, Robinson and myself. And Homfray—representing the Greater Public Schools. And Clifford?

  A few days after November 30th Hauser and I, with about a dozen men, had been collected together hastily with our Lewis guns and put in to hold a piece of trench under the command of Clifford. Nothing happened, but it was uncomfortable because it was very cold. We knew nothing about infantry work and we lived on iron rations. These consisted of one tin of bully and two captain biscuits each every day. We were not allowed fires so we could not have tea. The water tasted of petrol because it came up in cans from which the petrol could not be eliminated. When Quainton joined us a day late he made great play of imitating the Major, rolling the drink round his palate, pronoucing on its bouquet and assessing the year of its vintage. He did it well; there was no difficulty in recognizing the character portrayed.

  Clifford’s contribution to the spirit of his troops was to arrive in the small hours of one morning, shouting ‘They’re coming! The Boche are attacking! Stand to arms! Pass it on!” We did.

  It was peculiar; there was not a sound. “They must be coming on tip-toe.” After some tense moments I said I thought I could hear them taking off their boots. “Better not stand down though—they might start throwing them at us”, said Hauser.

  Eventually we did make them stand down. Clifford, who had gone off blubbing and shouting his ‘orders’, never explained. He was shame-faced but in no way apologetic, and soon recovered what, for want of a better word, one must call his equanimity.

  The incident was trivial, but Clifford and Homfray were not an impressive pair on whom to pin our hopes for the future. Nor could I honestly feel superior—only different. That accursed VC still dangling over my head felt more like a sentence of death than an authoritative guarantee that I was a one hundred percent brave man. I knew I was not and I hated feeling I knew nothing of infantry fighting either.

  The lack of knowledge of the basic elements of war became more oppressive with the rumours, always active, now louder and more insistent, that Tanks were to be abolished. Haig was said to have turned against them since Cambrai. “Good God, why?” we asked. “What have we done wrong?”

  The story was that a tank had crashed through a bridge and fallen into the water below. The whole advance had therefore been held up for two or three vital hours.

  “Where were the RE’s? Where were the Guards with their bloody pontoons they always cart around?” (It was popularly supposed that the Guards kept them for crossing the Rhine if they could only get rid of the rest of the British Army hanging around interfering with their progress.) We were very indignant; the rumours had a brassy insistence which we were not able to dismiss. Less personal, deeper and more sinister was what was going to happen when the German army, free from the Russian entanglement, turned to the Western Front.

  Homfray, who was alleged to leave the running of his section to his batman, was as disturbing as Clifford. The armour of irresponsibility was proof against any contact with reality. Broome and Clifford indulged their trembling forebodings.

  “Mark my words…”, and “I wouldn’t be in the Staff’s shoes…”

  “No danger of that—yet”, said Quainton.

  Combined with Homfray’s studied fatuity the whole made an orchestra of monstrous background anxiety. It formed a counterpart to our ignorance of the past. Perhaps this had something to do with Quainton’s asking, and my agreeing, that I should go with him to religious service.

  The evening found the two of us trudging through rain and mud to the chapel hut at the bottom of the camp. Our battalion padre was away or we would not have gone. He was cheerful and smooth, not a muscular Christian; it took time to savour the brand of his Church, We did not know the substitute but Quainton with easy optimism insisted that he couldn’t be worse than ours.

  The hut was so badly lit that it seemed rather to accentuate than modify the darkness outside. It could have held perhaps two hundred men; there were three men and ourselves. Despite the encircling gloom we could see that the padre was of spare build, his features being cadaverous rather than ascetic.

  The dark and cold seemed to become more penetrating as if directly related to the progress of the service. My mind wandered. I remembered that our parson at home had told a sentimentally disposed congregation that the communion service to which they had subscribed for use at the Front was in regular demand just behind the front line and within range of the guns. My parents were present when he read the letter from the priest. Had I come across it? It might remind me of home. They realized, of course, that over such an enormous front line it was unlikely, but I might keep a look out for it. It was always there—a place called Etaples. I promised to do so, but did not mention that we would be very unlikely ever to be so far from the front line as Etaples.

  The padre had started on his homily. It was hard to believe that he was advising us that it was important to look on the bright side of things. He spoke of a soldier who remained undismayed when his leg had been shot off by a shell. “After all”, he had said philosophically, “I only have one boot to clean now.” Perhaps the other three members of the congregation were permanent office staff, I thought, but even so it was a hoary chestnut to choose as an anecdote of personal experience for inspiring us that day.

  We drifted out. It was still cold and raining, but at least the air was fresh. When we got back Clifford and Homfray were in the mess; Clifford gave us a would-be insolent stare. He did not bother to lower his voice too much when he muttered, “Here comes the pious brigade.”

  19

  THE disappearance of the Colonel and Gull was unemphatic. In England the splendour of the Battalion Headquarters was such that the two persons of the Colonel and the Adjutant seemed of themselves to be the source of an effulgence, a fountain of uncreated light. Shorn of battalion parades, an orderly room, any discernible function, they ceased to emit enough glow to be distinguishable from ordinary worms. Lacking any evidence whatever I must fall back on my imagination to supply the deficiency. I suppose, accordingly, that Gull and the Colonel without their orderly room, with a battalion mess to act as a suitable setting for th
eir brightest jewel, the Prince of Wales, with the threat—the very vulgar threat—of a horse-whipping and no horse to share it, had to look round for some means of filling time to prevent its being filled by something worse. In this quandary I imagine they fell back on precedent, and in their search they discovered efficiency, ruthlessness, unpardonable failure. All that was required then was to find a failure. What could be a more glaring example of failure than the disaster to B Company? It was, my imagination tells me, only the work of a moment to draw up a convincing and suitably damning report requesting the immediate recall and dismissal of B Company commander.

  They could hardly have been more unfortunate in their choice of a scapegoat. Dear, kindly old sweetheart that he was, our Major was formidably well-connected. He also had a most unforgiving disposition and a keen and aristocratic dislike for bounders; what is more, he was liable to regard people who boasted of their princely friends as bounders.

  Of course, it was all a most unfortunate misunderstanding, but… well, ‘Gully’ and the Colonel went—without even a farewell address to their troops.

  Quainton went on leave just after this and wrote me the letter from which I learnt of his meeting with the cycling captain who was all that was left of staff car and colonel and adjutant of happier days. He had more news.

  ‘When you go on leave don’t go to see Cohen. I went—it was dreadful. He has lost both eyes, his right arm and both legs. He didn’t know who I was though the nurse told him. He’s simply—just has a silly grin. The nurse told me afterwards that every now and then he becomes terrified, cowers down in a corner of the room and sucks his thumb. Once he told his doctor that at these times he could see a patch of lawn open up, his mother rise out of her grave and walk slowly towards him. Otherwise he told no one—just went into a corner, scuttling on his stumps with astonishing speed, stuffed his left thumb into his mouth and waited trembling. When the fit was over he would go back to his silly giggling.’

  ‘For though the body dies the soul shall live for ever’. I hope not; with all my heart I hope not.

  Two days later there was another letter from Quainton, but this time it was to Clifford of all people.

  “Look”, he shouted to us, “look at this! Can you believe it?”

  I read it and I could certainly understand his astonishment. ‘Such a lark!’ it said, ‘You’ll hardly believe it! I was just driving the car along the road when suddenly, there I was—in the ditch! Nothing whatever the matter of course, but the next thing I knew I was shoved into this looney bin and labelled ‘shell-shock’!’ That was all but for the usual opening and closing greetings.

  He did not like Clifford; he knew Clifford liked none of us. Why then Clifford? As I read I could feel his eyes fixed on me. I read it slowly and carefully, wondering what to say, determined not to give anything away.

  I handed it back. He was jubilant. “What do you make of that? He’s working his ticket. Why, he admits it himself! He’s just fooling them. He’s got wind-up! He knows very well what’s coming to us as soon as the fine days come—the whole of the bloody German army from the Russian front. He’s shrewd, he is.”

  I knew Quainton was not a fraud—he was worth two dozen Cliffords. As soon as I could I tackled Hauser. He sniggered and snuffled. He certainly did not believe Clifford, but he had nothing to suggest. He clearly did not regard it as an advertisement for the ‘pious brigade’. Nor did I.

  Why, oh why, write to Clifford? When I spoke to Carter he had nothing to say, but his attitude suggested, without words, “Well, what else do you expect? Why get mixed up with that snivelling crowd?”

  The dark and gloomy days were made worse by the realization that the 5th Battalion had gone. Stokes, Bayliss, Cohen, Despard, our Major, the Adjutant, the Colonel—where were they? Now Quainton, snuffed out with a snigger. Hauser, Carter and I were the only ones left. Hauser I did now know; Carter was too old. Homfray, Clifford and Broome: what confidence could one place in them—or in us? However mystified I felt I could not stifle the feeling that Quainton was a damned fool. And if Quainton was a fool, what kind of fool was I?

  The winter was horrible. Without the glitter, the veneer to disguise the sordidness of our winter predicament, depression grew. No talk of the advantages of losing a limb—twice as ‘lucky’ in Cohen’s case—quite covered the growing menace of the Russian defection. Something, however bogus, had been lost and there was nothing to replace it. Carter spoke of the merits of the Bhagavad-Gita. I could not have understood even if Carter had been the man to explain.

  Time crawled by. January—nothing. February… nothing. March… a move to a forward position, that is, to within seven miles of the front—nothing. It began to be said, as our spirits rose with the lengthening days, that the enemy had ‘missed the boat’. This immortal phrase, to which Neville Chamberlain was to add fresh lustre when Hitler missed it on his way to Norway, did not seem out of place when glorious campaigning weather, day after day of warm sunshine, went by. We would not have missed it like that! We would have caught the boat as we had done at Ypres in August. Unfortunately there had been no boat to catch—and we needed boats, not tanks. At Cambrai there had not even been a pontoon to catch.

  Someone marked out trench positions, sited on reverse slopes with white tape, and told us that our men must dig them and revet them properly. It was not serious of course, but in war—you never knew—we might have to fall back and then it would be a good thing if the infantry had prepared positions to fall back on.

  Rumours grew; they became weighty; even Comic Cuts seemed to know the date of the German offensive, and the date of the postponement, as if the writer at least believed.

  Just before we were going to start digging I was ordered home on leave to attend at Buckingham Palace for the investiture, for I had been awarded the DSO. The first intimation was a letter which had been forwarded to me on which some wag had pencilled ‘DSO’ and an exclamation mark.

  I was pleased; proud and pleased. I could hardly believe it. For a while I didn’t give a damn whether I deserved it or not; I knew 1 didn’t anyway. But ‘2nd Lieut. W. R. Bion, DSO’ looked good and it felt good. Second Lieutenants with DSO’s were rare birds anyway.

  But by March the glow had begun to fade in the more ominous light of the threatening offensive. If only ‘they’ had supplied me with a dollop of courage to go with the medal—how nice it would have been!

  At Le Havre I was made OC Boat; this particular position was not coveted. It was imposed on the most junior officer on the boat and necessitated certain tiresome but important chores. It led, however, to a moment of glory when at the end of the trip the major responsible for landing me with the duty caught sight of my ribbon and made a most handsome apology for imposing such a job on someone so distinguished.

  20

  THERE were about sixty officers and men present in a large room which turned out to be an ante-room to the Hall in which the investiture was to take place. A private, who had been awarded a DCM, and I were the youngest there. I was by far the youngest officer to be up for the DSO so a large, fierce and extremely important.colonel addressed me personally.

  “Now, mind what you are at. March up to him and stand to attention facing him. You’ve got your ribbon on? Well that’s something at any rate”, he said with the tone of one who must be thankful for any mercy however small. He continued, “His Majesty will put the medal on you so keep your hands out of it. For God’s sake don’t try to help; just stand to attention. Don’t move and above all do not try to engage in chat with His Majesty. When he’s done, step back and march out. Remember—no chat!”

  I couldn’t possibly have engaged in chat with anyone, let alone ‘His Majesty’. The only thing I could have thought of saying was, “For God’s sake get me out of this hole.”

  At last the ghastly moment came. There were few DSO’s and before I could tell how, I was in front of the King with what looked like a picture hook stuck into my ribbon. On this he hung the DSO. As I was ab
out to back out he started to chat.

  “You were at Cambrai? That was a very fine action. You lost your tank I believe? Did you get it back?”

  “No sir, but the infantry did.”

  “Ah! Excellent.”

  I could almost feel the colonel breathing fire down my neck; why had he not told His Majesty “and above all—don’t chat!” Why pick on mel

  As I was going out a large hand whipped off my DSO and slapped it into a box. Before I could defend it or myself he was handing me the box. I didn’t dare to see if the medal was there or if he had just substituted the box and stuck to the medal.

  Outside the Palace gates was a small knot of press photographers and civilians. Through the lane they formed I escaped to the end of the queue where my mother waited for me. It seemed a shame that she had not been allowed in to see and share the glorious moment which was in fact so much hers and so little mine.

  I could not have explained to anyone why it weighed so heavily upon me. But at least I could understand why a VC was virtually a sentence of death; why men said that winners of the VC either broke down and found a soft job in England, or were killed subsequently trying to deserve the honour they had won.

  I have little memory of that leave other than fierce unhappiness. Seared into my mind was one silly, trivial occasion, and one stupendous and numbing.

  My mother, defeated and helpless in the face of my taciturn moroseness, asked if I knew the riddle of the miser’s most hated flower. “It’s the anemone”, she said, “because it reminds him of someone asking ‘Any money? Any money7’” My response was a stony silence which was so hostile that it frightened me. After a moment I felt stealing over me such pity for what I was sure was her utter misery that I looked at her, caught her eye and the fleeting trembling of her lips. The tension was released. “Damn silly things, medals”, I said, “but very nice to look at don’t you think?” She wiped away her tears, relieved at being able to weep openly.