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

by Siegfried Sassoon

  ‘Who the hell’s O’Halloran?’ he enquired. His intonation implied hostility. There was, naturally enough, a ghastly pause in the proceedings. Then Mrs. O’Donnell arose and ushered her guests out of the room in good order.

  There I sat, and for a long time neither of my companions moved. Closing my eyes, I thought about that dinner-party, and came to the conclusion that it had been funny.

  When I opened them again I ascertained that both The Mister and Kegworthy were fast asleep. Nothing more remains to be told, except that soon afterwards I took Kegworthy home and put him to bed.

  On my last day in Ireland I went out in soft sunshiny weather for a final half-day with the hounds. The meet was twelve miles off and I’d got to catch the 4.30 train to Dublin, so I had to keep a sharp eye on my watch. The Mister was mournful about my departure, and anathematized the Egyptians wholeheartedly, for he couldn’t get rid of his notion that it was they who were requiring my services as a soldier. I felt a bit mournful myself as my eyes took in the country with its distant villages and gleams of water, its green fields and white cottages, and the hazy transparent hills on the horizon – sometimes silver-grey and sometimes that deep azure which I’d seen nowhere but in Ireland.

  We had a scrambling hunt over a rough country, and I had all the fun I could find, but every stone wall I jumped felt like good-bye for ever to ‘this happy breed of men, this little world’, in other words the Limerick Hunt, which had restored my faith in my capacity to be heedlessly happy. How kind they were, those friendly fox-hunters, and how I hated leaving them.

  At half-past two The Mister and I began to look for Clancy’s car, which contained his groom and was to take us home. But the car was on the wrong side of a big covert, and while we were following it, it was following us. Much flustered, we at last succeeded in encountering it, and Clancy drove us back to Mrs. O’Donnell’s in a wild enthusiastic spurt.

  Mrs. O’Donnell had a woodcock ready for my tea, and I consumed it in record time. Then there was a mad rush to the station, where my baggage was awaiting me, plus a group of Fusilier friends. The Assistant-Adjutant was at his post, assuring the engine driver that he must on no account start without me, mail-train or no mail-train. With thirty seconds to spare I achieved my undesirable object, and the next thing I knew was that I was leaning out of the carriage window and waving good-bye to them all – waving good-bye to warm-hearted Mrs. O’Donnell – waving good-bye to the dear old Mister.

  PART THREE

  SHERSTON’S DIARY:

  FOUR MONTHS

  1

  Wednesday, February 13th. Left Southampton on Monday evening and got to Cherbourg by 2 a.m. Stayed last night at Rest Camp about three miles out, close to large château, used as Red Cross hospital. It is a mild grey morning, with thrushes singing like spring. I am a little way from the camp, sitting on a bundle of brushwood under a hedge. The country round, with its woods of pine, oak, and beech, and its thorn and hazel hedges, might be anywhere in the home counties – Surrey for preference.

  I came up on deck on the Antrim on Tuesday morning at 6.30, and found we were in Cherbourg harbour.

  It was just before dawn – everything asleep and strange, with lights burning round the harbour and on shore. Slowly the dark water became steel-grey and the clouded sky whitened, and the foreign hills and houses emerged from obscurity. All the while the ship hissed and steamed and the wind hummed in the rigging. This is the third time in three years that I’ve been in France on February 13th. A magpie is scolding among the beeches, and the wind (south-west) bustles among the bare twigs. I have just recaptured that rather pleasant feeling of detachment from all worldly business which comes when one is ‘back at the War’. Nothing much to worry and distract one except the usual boredoms and irritations of ‘being mucked about’ by the army.

  To-day we start our 1446-mile train journey to Taranto. It takes more than a week. My companions are Hooper, Howell, and Marshall. Camp-commandant (promoted from sergeant-major to major?) asked us: ‘Anythink else you officers may wish to partake of?…’

  Have just picked a primrose. Wonder when I shall see another.

  February 14th. 6.30 p.m. Have been twenty-seven hours in the train. Not much room to move in our compartment, what with kit and boxes for provisions, which we use as tables and put our candles on. Marshall, very good at finding out things beforehand, bought primus stoves, café-au-lait, and all sorts of useful things at Cherbourg. M. is the best of the three. About 21: big and capable; pockets usually bulging; hopes to be a doctor. Sort of chap who never grumbles – always willing to be helpful. I read most of the time, and they play cards continuously…. ‘Twist; stick’, etc…. Halt at Bourges to draw rations. Have been reading Pater on Leonardo da Vinci! Funny mixture of crude reality and inward experience. Feel much more free to study other people than last time I was doing this sort of thing. More detached and selfless, somehow. But perhaps it’s only because I don’t play ‘Nap’ and have been reading Pater – ‘this sense of the splendour of our experience and its awful brevity’.

  February 15th. Awoke to find a bright frosty morning and the train in a station for an hour’s halt. Crawled on to St. Germain (15 kilos from Lyons). Got there at 12.30 after going through fine country, fir-wooded hills and charming little valleys threaded by shallow rivers. Saw some oxen hauling a tree and a boy standing looking down at the train. The sun shone gloriously and warmed my face as I craned from the window to take in as much of this new part of France as I could. We stay at a rest camp near the station. Bath and lunch and then I went marketing with Marshall. The blue Saône or Rhône – don’t know which it is – flowing nobly along. We leave again to-night. Am writing this in Y.M.C.A. hut after dinner. Entertainment going on. Jock sergeant reciting poem by R. W. Service; nervous lance-corporal sang ‘The truth or a lie, which shall it be?’ in a weak voice without any emphasis.

  February 17th. 1.30 p.m. Train crawling toward Italian frontier. Bright sun and cold wind. Hard frost last two nights. Feeling ill with fever and chill on insides. Left St. Germain 2 a.m. yesterday. Bitterly cold in the train. Went through Avignon, Cannes, Nice, etc., and along by the sea in late afternoon. A gaudy parched-looking tourist region. Flowers thrown to the troops and general atmosphere of Cook’s tour. Groups of black soldiers in red fez and blue uniform seen at street-ends in brassy sunshine. Beyond Nice the sea looked less ‘popular’, softly crashing on the brimming rocks in the dusk, and I heard it at times during the night, half-sleeping on the seat with my feet somewhere near Marshall’s face. Daylight, red and frosty, found us beyond Genoa after much rumbling and clanking through short tunnels in the dark.

  February 18th. (Monday morning.) Through Novi and Vochera, where we halt for lunch. Funny way of seeing Italy for the first time, but better than nothing, and inexpensive. Glaring sunlight and cold wind. All the afternoon we crawl through vinelands, with low, blue, delicate-edged hills a few miles away till the sun goes down and leaves an amethyst glow on the horizon, and at 7.30 we reach Bologna.

  Jolly companionship of the journey, in spite of animal squalor and so on. Hooper rather hipped and fussy – bad campaigner I fear. Youthful charm and good looks but absence of guts. Howell sensible and philosophic. Was a schoolmaster and played football for Wales. Marshall an absolute marvel, with his jolly face and simple jokes. Tells Hooper to come off his perch and put the kettle on, which isn’t well received by the golden-haired one.

  February 19th. After a night journey of freezing gloom, the train stopping occasionally at cavernous stations and my insides still behaving atrociously, we reached Faenza about 3 a.m. Turned out at 8 to a sunlit morning and soon found ourselves washing and drinking coffee in a hotel, moderately comfortable. Tall clean narrow streets; market place full of gossip and babble of cloaked and hooded unshaven middle-aged men, with a sprinkling of soldiers in grey with yellow collars. The fountain was festooned with ice, like melted lead.

  February 20th. Left Faenza 9 p.m. and began the journey along
the Adriatic coast. Cold morning; snow lying thin and half-melting; grey sky. On our right the low hills streaked with white. On the left (how accurate I am) the flat lavender sea, flecked and broken with foam, and the slate-coloured horizon. Breakfast at Castellamarie.

  Foggia about 11 p.m. Still very cold.

  February 21st. Awoke in twilight to find we were going through olive orchards (hoary ancients bent and twisted), with rough stone walls. First time I’ve seen olive trees. Then the sun came up and dazzled me through almond blossom, with delicate glimpses of the Adriatic a mile or two away. Quite idyllic.

  About noon, we come to Brindisi (about which I know nothing except Edward Lear’s limerick), and I take a shower bath and dry myself in the sun and a bracing breeze, in a garden near the railway where ‘ablution-sheds’, etc. are put up among fig trees, vine-pergola, and almond trees, with a group of umbrella pines at one end shadowing an old stone seat for summer afternoons. Felt like staying there.

  On again about 3 – the final stage to Taranto – crossing a flat cultivated plain fringed and dotted with tufts and cloudy haze of pink and white blossom, with green of prickly pears(?) and young corn, the wind swaying the dull silver of tossing olive trees – all in the glare of spring sunshine. Bare fig trees are the most naked trees I’ve ever seen.

  At sunset we passed Grottaglie, a town on a hill; flat-roofed white houses, one above another, and an old brown castle with a tower and sheer wall at the top of it all. Orchards in bloom below, already invaded by shadow. The town faced west, and seemed lit from within, smouldering and transparent and luminous like a fire-opal. It looked like a dream city. (Probably a damned smelly place for all that.) Arrived Taranto about 9, in moonlight.

  Friday, February 22nd, 6 p.m. In a tent; rest camp. Walked along the harbour after lunch in glaring sunshine and shrewd wind. Blue water; rusty parched hills away on the other side. Towns far away like heaps of white stones. Glad of my good field-glasses, I sat on a rock and listened to the slapping gurgle of the water (clear as glass), while the other three straddled along the path, swinging their sticks and looking rather out of place without a pier. This journey will always come back to me when I think of an absurd song which everyone sings, hums, whistles, and shouts incessantly. ‘Good-bye-ee; don’t cry-ee; wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee,’ etc. There is something a bit grown-up-babyish about Marshall’s good-humoured face; the song suits him somehow!

  Slept in the train again last night – alongside the station platform – and had my watch stolen. (I’d put it on my box-table near the window, so the thief had only to put his hand in.) Luckily my fire-opal was round my neck, but losing one’s watch is pretty serious. All sorts of officers here – many on their way home on leave. Not many intelligent sensitive faces. (The doctors look different from the others, mostly with wise, kind faces.) The usual crowd playing poker in the mess all the time. Staff-officers, colonels, majors, Australians, flying-men – all sorts – their eyes meet one’s own for a moment and then slide down to look for a medal-ribbon.

  After dinner I came out into the chilly moonlight; the moonlight-coloured bell-tents had tracery of shadows on them from the poor old olive trees that are left high and dry in this upstart camp, like wise old men being mobbed. Someone was strumming on a piano in the concert marquee behind our tent-lines. I lifted a flap and peered into fantastic dimness where a few lights made a zany-show of leaping shadows and swaying whiteness. On the stage (looked at from behind) a group was rehearsing. A big man was doing a bit of gag before stepping back two paces to begin his song. ‘Give ’em a bit of Fred Emney!’ someone shouted. Then a small man jumped into the light and did some posturing – chin out and curved Hebrew beak coming down to a thin-lipped mouth.

  Another little Jew whispered to me (I was now inside the tent) ‘That’s Sid Whelan – the other’s his brother Albert’ – evidently expecting me to be thrilled. They must have been well-known comedians. (All of them belong to the Jewish Battalion, which is awaiting embarkation here.)

  Rumour in the mess to-night that ‘Jericho has fallen’.

  February 24th. Am now on board the P. and O. boat Kashgar. Lying in my bunk alone with Conrad’s Chance and feeling all the better for being comfortable. Across the cabin steals a patch of dusty evening sunshine. Feet pace the deck above; cabin doors slam down below. The swish of the sea and the drone of a gusty breeze; and me in the middle of the longest journey of my life. Boat still in harbour.

  February 26th. 7 a.m. Feeling much better this morning after headache and feverishness since Sunday night. Boat got under way yesterday afternoon and has since been ploughing the smooth Mediterranean – very well-behaved voyage so far. When going on deck for boat-drill, officers sing ‘Nearer my God to Thee’. Can’t say I’ve observed anything interesting so far. The sea is rather like a Royal Academy picture and the officer-conversations dull beyond description. I don’t feel much sympathy for them. (I’ve felt pretty rotten, though, since Sunday.) But they seem so self-satisfied, with their card-playing and singing ‘Chu-Chin-Chow’, etc. Outside the saloon door one passes from cheap cigarette smoke to what Conrad calls ‘the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering soulless universe’. (A bit over-written surely! Must avoid that sort of thing myself.)

  The Gulf of Taranto was a level steel-blue plain. Low on the horizon, the mountainous coast was like a soft raincloud on the sea – a ragged receding line of hills extending to dim capes and shoals which merged themselves in the hazy romance of sunset. This was the last I saw of Italy. On the other side of the ship it was already night, with a full moon dancing on the waves.

  That was written by me (not Conrad) on Monday evening. But I really must try not to be so bloody serious.

  February 27. Weather fine. Brain refuses to work. Still feeling rather seedy.

  February 28. Arrived Alexandria after exactly three days’ voyage.

  A clear, gentle-coloured afternoon; blue sea; creamy, brick-red, terra-cotta, and grey city; wharves and docks with drifting smoke and thickets of masts and funnels. Sunshine, not glaring. Everything breezy, cheerful, and busy.

  British officers watch it all for a while, nonchalantly – then go below for tea. I also; no more excited than the rest of them….

  Shall I find anything tremendous and heroic out here, I wonder? Troops in a warm-climate sideshow. Urbane, compared with France. Rather the same sort of thing as this dock with its glassy dark water and mild night air; stars, gold moon, dark ships, quiet lights, and sound of soldiers singing – safe in port once more.

  March 2. Left Alexandria 10.30 last night. Arrived Base Camp, Kantara, 10 this morning. Bought a watch in Alexandria. It is hexagonal and was very expensive. If anything like the face of the dago who sold it to me, it will let me down badly as regards time-keeping.

  Same day. (No. 1 Base Depot.) Lying in tent. Valise spread on sand. Glare of sunshine outside. Splitting headache (inside).

  Sounds. Thrumming of piano in officers’ mess – not quite out of earshot.

  Lorries rumbling along road fifty yards away. Troops marching and whistling. Bagpipes – a long way off. (So is Scotland.) Egyptian labourers go past, singing a monotonous chorus, which seems to go up into the light, somehow.

  Officers’ Mess; analysis. Drinks; drinks. Writing some letters. Someone says ‘Only one mail in the last three weeks.’ Bored men reading stale Bystanders and other illustrated papers. Amy Woodforde Finden’s oriental popularities being pot-pourri’d on the tin-kettle piano. Otherwise ante-room quite cool and pleasant. Slim grey birds chirping in the roof. Onions for lunch. Why put that down, I wonder?…Wounded officer back from hospital said to me ‘They bring you back quick enough nowadays. I can hardly walk!’

  This morning. Suez Canal from train. Garden at Ismalia – a bit of blossom and greenery among sandy wastes. Waiting at Canal bridge for two big ships to go by. Talked to two Irish officers in the train.
One knew Ledwidge the poet, and said ‘he could imitate birds and call them to him’ – a tiny glimpse of ‘real life’ in this desert of officer mentality. Am feeling ill and keep on coughing.

  March 4. Marshall and I posted to 25th Battalion to-day. Moved across to Yeomanry Base Camp (half a minute’s walk!). Another day of arid sunshine and utter blankness. The sand and the tents and the faces – all seem meaningless. Just a crowd of people killing time. Time wasted in waste places. People go up to the Line almost gladly, feeling that there’s some purpose in life after all. Those who remain here scheme to get leave; and having got it, go aimlessly off to Cairo, Port Said or Ismalia, to spend their money on eating and drinking and being bored. One hears a certain amount of ‘war-shop’ being talked, but it hasn’t the haggard intensity of Western Front war-shop. The whole place has the empty clearness of a moving-picture. Movements of men and munitions against a background of soulless drought. The scene is drawn with unlovely distinctness. Every living soul is here against his will. And when the War ends the whole thing will vanish and the sand will blot out all traces of the men who came here.

  Along the main road that runs through the camp, parties of Turkish prisoners march, straggling and hopeless – slaves of war, guarded by a few British soldiers with fixed bayonets. They too are killing time. One of them was shot last week, for striking an officer.

  March 8. Went to Port Said for the day with Marshall. A dreary place; but it takes more than Port Said to depress M. Bought Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Scott’s Antiquary. (‘Everyman’ editions were all they had.) Funny books to buy at Port Said of all places in the world. Seems funny to me, anyhow. Sort of thing that would amuse Rivers.