The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 3 - Sherston's Progress

by Siegfried Sassoon

  As far as I was concerned the only visible result was a batch of letters from people who either agreed or disagreed with my views. But I needed a holiday from that sort of thing. The intensity of my individual effort to influence the Allied Governments had abated.

  At intervals I reminded myself that my enormous gesture was still, so to speak, ‘on show’, but I unconsciously allowed myself to relax the mental effort required to sustain it. My ‘attitude’ was, indeed, unchanged; it had merely ceased to be aggressive. I didn’t even feel annoyed when a celebrated novelist (for whose opinion I had asked) wrote: ‘Your position cannot be argumentatively defended. What is the matter with you is spiritual pride. The overwhelming majority of your fellow-citizens are against you.’ Anyhow a fellow-citizen (who was an equally famous novelist) wrote that it was a ‘very striking act’, and I was grateful for the phrase. (How tantalizing of me to omit their names! But somehow I feel that if I were to put them on the page my neatly contrived little narrative would come sprawling out of its frame.) Grateful I was, and not annoyed; nevertheless it was obvious that I couldn’t perform that sort of striking act more than once and in the meantime I acted on the advice of Rivers and wired to Aunt Evelyn for my golf clubs, which arrived next day, maybe accelerated by three very fully addressed labels, all inscribed ‘urgent’. Simultaneously arrived a postcard from one of the overwhelming majority of my fellow-citizens who kept his name dark, but expressed his opinion that ‘Men like you who are willing to shake the bloody hand of the Kaiser are not worthy to call themselves Britons’. This struck me as unjust; I’d never offered to shake the old Kaiser’s hand, though I should probably have been considerably impressed if he’d offered to shake mine, for an emperor is an emperor all the world over even if he has done his best to wipe you off the face of the earth with high-explosive shells. As regards Aunt Evelyn, (who had a pretty poor opinion of the Kaiser) the Morning Post had now put her in full possession of the facts about my peace-propagating manifesto. No doubt she was delighted to know that I was well out of harm’s way. The Under-Secretary of State had informed the House of Commons that I was suffering from a nervous breakdown and not responsible for my actions, which was good enough for Aunt Evelyn, and, as Rivers remarked, very much what I might have expected. Very soon I was slicing my tee-shots into the long grass on the nearest golf course. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ I exclaimed (referring to my swing and not to my recent political activity).

  For me, the War felt as if it were a long way off while the summer of 1917 was coming to an end. Except for keeping an eye on the casualty lists, I did my best to turn my back on the entire business. Once, when I saw that one of my best friends had been killed, I lapsed into angry self-pity, and told myself that the War was ‘a sham and a stinking lie’, and succeeded in feeling bitter against the unspecific crowd of non-combatants who believed that to go through with it to the end was the only way out. But on the whole I was psychologically passive – content to mark time on the golf links and do some steady reading after dinner. The fact remained that, when I awoke in the morning, my first conscious thought was no longer an un-reprieved awareness that the War would go on indefinitely and that sooner or later I should be killed or mutilated. The prospect of being imprisoned as a war-resister had also evaporated. To wake up knowing that I was going to bicycle off to play two rounds of golf was not a penance. It was a reward. Three evenings a week I went along to Rivers’ room to give my antiwar complex an airing. We talked a lot about European politicians and what they were saying. Most of our information was derived from a weekly periodical which contained translations from the foreign Press. What the politicians said no longer matters, as far as these memoirs of mine are concerned, though I would give a lot for a few gramophone records of my talks with Rivers. All that matters is my remembrance of the great and good man who gave me his friendship and guidance. I can visualize him, sitting at his table in the late summer twilight, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead and his hands clasped in front of one knee; always communicating his integrity of mind; never revealing that he was weary as he must often have been after long days of exceptionally tiring work on those war neuroses which demanded such an exercise of sympathy and detachment combined. Remembering all that, and my egotistic unawareness of the possibility that I was often wasting his time and energy, I am consoled by the certainty that he did, on the whole, find me a refreshing companion. He liked me and he believed in me.

  As an R.A.M.C. officer, he was bound to oppose my ‘pacifist tendency’, but his arguments were always indirect. Sometimes he gently indicated inconsistencies in my impulsively expressed opinions, but he never contradicted me. Of course the weak point about my ‘protest’ had been that it was evoked by personal feeling. It was an emotional idea based on my war experience and stimulated by the acquisition of points of view which I accepted uncritically. My intellect was not an ice-cold one. It was, so to speak, suffering from trench fever. I could only see the situation from the point of view of the troops I had served with; and the existence of supposedly iniquitous war aims among the Allies was for that reason well worth believing in – and inveighing against. Rivers suggested that peace at that time would constitute a victory for Pan-Germanism and nullify all the sacrifices we had made. He could see no evidence that militarism was yet discredited in Germany. On one occasion, when the pros and cons had got me well out of my depth as a debater, I exclaimed, ‘It doesn’t seem to me to matter much what one does so long as one believes it is right!’ In the silence that ensued I was aware that I had said something particularly fatuous, and hurriedly remarked that the people in Germany must be getting jolly short of food. I was really very ignorant, picking up my ideas as I went along, and rather like the man who said that he couldn’t think unless he was wearing his spectacles. But Rivers always led me quietly past my blunders (though he looked a bit pained when I inadvertently revealed that I did not know the difference between ‘intuition’ and ‘instinct’ – which was, I suppose, one of the worst mistakes I could have made when talking to an eminent psychologist).

  Among the wholesome activities of the hospital was a monthly magazine, aptly named The Hydra. In the September number, of which I have preserved a copy, the editorial begins as follows: ‘Many of us who came to the hydro slightly ill are now getting dangerously well. In this excellent concentration camp we are fast recovering from the shock of coming to England.’

  Outwardly, Slateford War Hospital was rather like that – elaborately cheerful. Brisk amusements were encouraged, entertainments were got up, and serious cases were seldom seen downstairs. The patients were of course unaware of the difficulties with which the medical staff had to contend. A handful of highly-qualified civilians in uniform were up against the usual red-tape ideas. War hospitals for nervous disorders were few, and the military authorities regarded them as experiments which needed careful watching and firm handling. After the War Rivers told me that the local Director of Medical Services nourished a deep-rooted prejudice against Slateford, and actually asserted that he ‘never had and never would recognize the existence of such a thing as shell-shock’. When inspecting the hospital he ‘took strong exception’ to the fact that officers were going about in slippers. I mention this to show how fortunate I was to have escaped contact with less enlightened army doctors, some of whom might well have aggravated me into extreme cussedness.

  It was perhaps excusable that the War Office looked on Slateford with a somewhat fishy eye. The delicate problem of ‘lead-swingers’ was involved; and in the eyes of the War Office a man was either wounded or well unless he had some officially authorized disease. Damage inflicted on the mind did not count as illness. If ‘war neuroses’ were indiscriminately encouraged, half the expeditionary force might go sick with a touch of neurasthenia. Apparently it did not occur to the Director of Medical Services that Rivers and his colleagues were capable of diagnosing a ‘lead-swinger’. In any case I don’t think there were many of them at Slateford, and
the doubtful ones were mostly men who had failed to stay the course through lack of stamina. Too much had been asked of them.

  And there was I, a healthy young officer, dumped down among nurses and nervous wrecks. During my second month at the hydro I think I began to feel a sense of humiliation. (Was it ‘spiritual pride’, I wonder, or merely the remains of esprit de corps?)

  With my ‘fellow-breakdowns’ I avoided war talk as far as was possible. Most of them had excellent reasons for disliking that theme; others talked about it because they couldn’t get it off their minds, or else spoke of it facetiously in an effort to suppress their real feelings. Sometimes I had an uncomfortable notion that none of them respected one another; it was as though there were a tacit understanding that we were all failures, and this made me want to reassure myself that I wasn’t the same as the others. ‘After all, I haven’t broken down; I’ve only broken out,’ I thought, one evening at the end of September, as I watched the faces opposite me at the dinner table. Most of them were average types who appeared to be getting ‘dangerously well’. But there were some who looked as if they wouldn’t have had much success in life at the best of times. I was sitting between two bad stammerers – victims of ‘anxiety neurosis’ as the saying went (one could easily imagine ‘anxiety neurosis’ as a staple front-line witticism). Conversation being thus impeded, I could devote my mind to wondering why I’d been playing my mashie shots so atrociously that afternoon. Up at the top table I could see Rivers sitting among the staff. He never seemed to be giving more than half his attention to what he was eating. He looked rather as though he needed a rest and I wondered how I should get on while he was away on his two weeks’ leave which was due to begin next day. I supposed it would give me a chance to think out my position, which was becoming a definite problem. So far my ten weeks’ respite had been mainly a pilgrimage in pursuit of a ball, and I had familiarized myself with the ups and downs of nearly all the golf courses around Edinburgh. The man I played with most days was an expert. He had been submarined on a hospital ship, but this didn’t prevent him playing a good scratch game. His temper wasn’t quite normal when things went wrong and he looked like losing his half-crown, but that may have been a peace-time failing also. Anyhow he was exercising a greatly improving influence on my iron shots, which had always been a weak point, and I take this opportunity of thanking him for many most enjoyable games. The way in which he laid his short approach shots stone-dead was positively fiendish.

  As a purely public character I was now a complete back-number. Letters no longer arrived from utter strangers who also wanted the War to stop. The only one I’d had lately was from someone whose dottiness couldn’t be wholeheartedly denied. ‘My dear Boy, or Man,’ it began, ‘on August 4th, 1914, I received a message from Heaven in broad daylight, which told me that Germany must go down for ever and Russia will become rich. I have thirty relations fighting and my business is ruined.’ He didn’t tell me what his business was. I wondered how he’d got hold of my address….

  The man opposite me, an habitual humorist, remarked to the orderly who was handing him a plate of steamed pudding, ‘Third time this week! I shall write to the War Office and complain.’ I felt a sudden sense of the unreality of my surroundings. Reality was on the other side of the Channel, surely.

  After dinner I went straight up to my room as usual, intending to go on with Barbusse’s book which I was reading in the English translation. I will not describe the effect it was creating in my mind; I need only say that it was a deeply stimulating one. Someone was really revealing the truth about the Front Line. But that evening I failed to settle down to Under Fire. The room felt cheerless and uncomfortable; the unshaded light from the ceiling annoyed my eyes; very soon I found myself becoming internally exasperated with everything, myself included. It was one of those occasions when one positively enjoys hating something. So I sat there indulging in acute antagonism toward anyone whose attitude to the War was what I called ‘complacent’ – people who just accepted it as inevitable and then proceeded to do well out of it, or who smugly performed the patriotic jobs which enabled them to congratulate themselves on being part of the National Effort.

  At this point the nurse on duty whisked into the room to make sure that everything was all right and that I was keeping cheerful. She too was part of the national effort to remain bright and not give way to war neuroses. Continuing my disgruntled ruminations, I decided that I didn’t dislike violent Jingos as much as acquiescent moderates, though my pacifism was strong enough to make me willing to punch the nose of anyone who disagreed with me. (Was that steamed pudding disagreeing with the boiled beef, by the way?) I thought, with ill-humoured gratitude, of the people who were contending against the cant which was current about the War, comparing their unconformity with the aggravating omniscience of the novelist whose letter had assured me that ‘for various reasons we civilians are better able to judge the War as a whole than you soldiers. There is no sort of callousness in this.’ ‘Business as usual’ was his motto. The War had stimulated rather than discouraged his output of journalism and fiction. They all knew how to win the War – in their highly paid articles! Damn them, I thought; and then painfully remembered how much I had liked that particular novelist when I met him in London. And here I was, doing my best to hate him! (Rivers would probably say that hate was a ‘definitely physiological condition’.)

  But my unprofitable meditations were now conclusively interrupted by the arrival of my room companion – not the cheerful young Scot in tartan breeches, but an older man who had replaced him a few weeks before. I will call him the Theosophist, since he was of that way of thinking (and overdid it a bit in conversation). The Theosophist was a tall fine-looking man with iron-grey hair and rather handsome eyes. His attitude toward me was avuncular, tolerant, and at times slightly tutorial. In peace time he had been to some extent a man about town. He had, I assumed, come back from the front suffering from not being quite young enough to stand the strain, which doesn’t surprise me now that I am old enough to compare his time of life with my own.

  Anyhow he sauntered amiably in, wearing his monocle and evidently feeling all the better for his rubber or two of bridge. Unfortunately he ‘came in for’ the aftermath of my rather morose ruminations, for I was fool enough to begin grumbling about the War and the state of society in general.

  The Theosophist responded by assuring me that we were all only on the great stairway which conducts us to higher planes of existence, and when I petulantly enquired what he thought about conscripted populations slaughtering one another, on the great stairway, in order to safeguard democracy and liberty, he merely replied: ‘Ah, Sherston, that is the Celestial Surgeon at work upon humanity.’ ‘Look here,’ I answered with unusual brilliance, ‘you say that you won a lot of prizes with your Labradors. Did the president of Cruft’s Dog Show encourage all the exhibits to bite one another to death?’

  This irreverent repartee reduced him to a dignified silence, after which he made a prolonged scrutiny of his front teeth in the shaving glass. Next day, no doubt, I made (and he accepted with old-world courtesy) what he would have called the ‘amende honorable’.

  Autumn was asserting itself, and a gale got up that night. I lay awake listening to its melancholy surgings and rumblings as it buffeted the big building. The longer I lay awake the more I was reminded of the troops in the line. There they were, stoically enduring their roofless discomfort while I was safe and warm. The storm sounded like a vast lament and the rain was coming down in torrents. I thought of the Ypres salient, that morass of misery and doom. I’d never been there, but I almost wished I was there now. It was, of course, only an emotional idea induced by the equinoctial gale; it was, however, an idea that had its origins in significant experience. One didn’t feel like that for nothing.

  It meant that the reality of the War had still got its grip on me. Those men, so strangely isolated from ordinary comforts in the dark desolation of murderously-disputed trench-sectors, wer
e more to me than all the despairing and war-weary civilians.

  Just as it was beginning to get light I awoke from an uneasy slumber. The storm had ceased and an uncertain glimmer filtered faintly into the room through the tall thinly-curtained window. In this semi-twilight I saw a figure standing near the door.

  I stared intently, wondering who on earth it could be at that hour, and possibly surmising that one of the patients was walking in his sleep. The face and head were undiscernible, but I identified a pale buff-coloured ‘British Warm’ coat. Young Ormand always wore a coat like that up in the line, and I found myself believing that Ormand was standing by the door. But Ormand was killed six months ago, I thought. Then the Theosophist, who was always a bad sleeper, turned over in his bed on the other side of the room. I was sitting up, and I could see him looking across at me. While I waited a long minute I could hear his watch ticking on the table. The figure by the door had vanished. ‘Did you see anyone come into the room?’ I asked. He hadn’t seen anyone. Perhaps I hadn’t either. But it was an odd experience.