No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

  “We get about three a day. Scores come down with dysentery and epidemic jaundice, and trench sores.”

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Since May. I was off for six weeks. A shrapnel bullet through the thigh.”

  I look at him with increased respect, and perhaps I begin to understand why he appears so thin and strained, but I have more to learn of the why and the wherefore. As to any illusions I may have had with regard to a last and splendid offensive that will carry us to Constantinople, they too can be considered as food for the flies. Makins tells me that this is a dead show, a tragic and muddled adventure that has become sick and stagnant. He says, “We had our chances, and we chucked them away. We just squat here and wait for dysentery and jaundice. You may as well know.”

  I see Colonel Frost and Sanders below in a little space under the cliff where three tents are pitched. Sanders’s kit is being carried into one of the tents, and I wonder why he has not been given one of these dug-outs. Makins, too, is watching Frost with a queer look in his eyes.

  “See that?”

  “You mean the C.O. and Sanders?”

  “Quite so. Well, never mind. One of those tents means a trial trip. I expect Sanders is being taken for a walk.”

  The significance of the suggestion eludes me, but wisdom comes to me later. Meanwhile, a curious and dreamy expression has settled on the face of my new friend; he is looking out across the sea with a smile that one might see on the face of a woman.

  “That’s Imbros over there. Rather lovely. You should see her when she is flushed with the dawn.”

  I divine in this other man a poignant craving for beauty, and the things that are not soiled by blood and dust and flies.

  We start on our walk, meeting a crowd of men carrying towels, two companies of infantry on a bathing parade. Some of the men look cheerful, others sullen and sick. Makins eyes them with hostility. “That means we shall not be able to sit on our beach for a day.” I ask him why, and he answers curtly, “Lice.” Near the derelict pier a stone incinerator is consuming rubbish, empty tins and the like, and its sour reek is to become associated in my mind with this accursed country. We turn into the Great Gully which cuts its way like a canyon into the yellow-brown plateau. Its walls are earth cliffs or steep slopes covered with scrub. Men live in and upon these cliffs, and the gully itself is packed with horses and mules, transport, and stores, tents, rude shelters and huts, latrines, cookhouses. Its sandy bottom, which forms the road, is in wet weather a watercourse. The great cleft wriggles like a snake. Sometimes we are in the sunlight sometimes in deep shadow. It is very hot and stuffy in this gully and flies swarm.

  A sudden rushing menacing sound overhead, and something bursts on the right-hand cliff. I am aware of Makins ducking with a kind of cringing movement. I glance at him quickly, and he looks pinched and angry. I gather that his shrinking from the sound of the shell was involuntary, a kind of reflex action. My first shell, and I have not flinched. I feel a little pleased with myself, but am moved to wonder whether I shall flinch like Makins when I have had more experience of shells. Also, I suppose that when a man has been wounded he may become more jumpy. Is the veteran idea another illusion?

  Makins quickens his pace.

  “Searching for our howitzers up there.”

  His long lean brown legs are like wires, and I find it difficult to keep up with him in this sand and the heat. I am flabby and out of condition. His face has a fierce and hunted look. Why, if he feels like this, are we taking this absurd walk? I ask him, and he answers me almost rudely.

  “O, for the good of one’s soul. One can’t cringe under a cliff. Besides, it’s an order. Someone has to visit the A.D.S. each day.”

  Another shell comes over, and there is a strange sneer on my new friend’s face.

  “Doesn’t seem to worry you.”

  “Not exactly. I’m innocent perhaps.”

  “Well, it’s only Abdul’s bloody shrapnel. Wait till you’ve been near an eight-inch H.E.”

  He seems to be walking faster than ever, and suddenly he whips a question at me.

  “What do you think of Frost?”

  How am I to answer such a question? but there is no need for me to answer it, for words come seething from Makins’s mouth.

  “He’s a devil, a devil with no fear. The one man I’ve never seen afraid. But that’s not fair. He’s a great man in his way, the best ambulance officer in this show. But, my God, to serve under a man who is never afraid! It whips one, it scorches one. It’s hell.”

  I am shocked by his vehemence.

  “No fear?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Does it make a man cruel?”

  But Makins is breathing in little gasps, the breathing, not of mere exhaustion, but of fierce emotion.

  “O, what a mean swine I am! War can make one so filthily mean. No, Frost’s not cruel. He’s never afraid. He’s damnably efficient. He insists and quite rightly on us being full of guts and efficiency. He’s right, utterly right. But, my God, it does tear one to tatters having to live up to such a standard. I’m sorry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said this to you, but perhaps it’s as well.”

  I am sweating and out of breath.

  “Thanks. I’m glad to know.”

  “O, you’ll soon know many things. The humiliations, the self-shame, the hatreds, the wretched little funk in you that wants to cringe. Sometimes I wish I could shoot my own damned pride. Well, we’re here.”

  A crumpled edge of earth projects into the gully. We climb a zig-zagging path, and suddenly find ourselves in a minor gully that ends most queerly in an almost circular cutting in the cliff. It is as though a torrent had cut a huge pot-hole out of the rock, and left it dry. A tent is pitched in this cool corner. I see a sandbagged dressing-station and men’s quarters farther to the right. The sandy soil muffles our footsteps, and we surprise the two occupants of the tent. Both of them are lying on their camp-beds, one reading, the other asleep.

  “Hallo, Mac!”

  The officer who is asleep wakes up with a kind of groan.

  “Hell! O, damn you, Mac; I was dreaming. Such a dream about a girl.”

  I am introduced to Milsom and Sturges. Milsom is a pleasant-faced, thin, brown lad, Sturges, spectacled and stocky. I hear a sound of water dripping, and the place is exquisitely cool. I take off my cap; I am sweating, but Makins, in spite of the tearing pace he has set, looks dry as parchment.

  “Have a drink?”

  “Better stay for tea. How’s Brighton by the Sea?”

  But Makins, though sitting on an ammunition box, is still restless, and I feel that I have nothing to say to these young veterans in their drill knickers and bleached shirts.

  “No, thanks, got to get back. If there isn’t a Bridge four after tea, the war will stop.”

  Milsom laughs. He has fine white teeth.

  “How much did he lose last night?”

  “About a thousand.”

  “I know I got sent up here became I’m such a bloody fool at cards. Play Bridge, Brent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cultivate it and you’ll be popular.”

  Makins asks them if there is anything they want in the way of medical stores. Milsom laughs again and tells Makins that he would like a supply of romantic love. I like Milsom; he is debonair and comely. Sturges looks too dour and professional. Makins gets up, and standing in the doorway of the tent, seems to be listening. There are no flies in this cool, dim place. Again I am aware of the drip of water.

  “You will be washed out of here one night.”

  Milsom laughs.

  “Who cares! Abdul can’t get a shell into this sweet spot.”

  Makins walks less furiously on the way back to headquarters, and I ask him to explain the daily routine of a field ambulance and the method of evacuating the sick and wounded. He gives me a lecture, and the lecture lasts until we reach Gully Beach. I see Colonel Frost sitting in a deck-chair close to the sea, and the deck-chair
surprises me. This might be Bournemouth beach, but whence the deck-chair? Makins shows me the main dressing-station, the sandbagged and tarpaulined shelter fitted with stretchers. The place is empty at the moment. It occurs to me to go and look up Sanders, and I find him in his tent under the cliff, sitting on his camp-bed and stripped to the waist. I am to see many men who have been badly frightened, but I am never to forget Sanders’s face, fat and blanched and sweating, and the scared indignation in his eyes.

  “My God, Brent, I’ve had a doing.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “That fellow took me to a football match.”

  “A football match!”

  “Yes, we English are strange people. There is a divisional league or something. They play the game on a piece of ground close to a howitzer battery. That fellow took me.”

  “Colonel Frost?”

  “Yes. And half-way through the game the Turks started shelling the battery. We had one shell within thirty yards of where we were squatting, and we just went on sitting. Yes, they went on playing and finished the game. That fellow’s got the nerve of—— Well, I came back here in a muck sweat. I believe he did it on purpose.”

  * * *

  Tea in the mess. The tea tastes of chlorine, and the flies are interested in our jam. After tea an army blanket is spread on the table by Smart and cards are produced. Makins has disappeared to write letters, and Frost, Roberts, Sanders and I cut for partners. I am to partner Frost, and I find myself hoping that I shall hold good hands and be able to please him. Good God, how humiliating is this desire to please a man who holds one’s fate in his hands! I am lucky in my cards. Frost is an aggressive player, and I am able to back him and we win. I see him smile.

  “Let’s give them their revenge, Brent.”

  We are in the middle of the next rubber, and still winning when an orderly calls Roberts.

  “Case in, sir.”

  I had seen something bloody carried by on a stretcher, and Roberts gets up, and I ask if I may go with him. Frost smiles at me and nods. It is a rather ghastly case, high explosive, the left arm in shreds and the thorax crushed. The poor devil is conscious, and worried about his false teeth. He keeps asking for them. Roberts gets busy, though the case is hopeless, and I help. The cocky young sergeant on duty says something about a tally.

  I have never seen a tally, and I say so. The young sergeant calls to an orderly, “Smith, bring a tally book. There’s an officer here who hasn’t seen a tally.”

  The wounded man is left lying there with a piece of gauze over his face to keep off the flies. It is useless to evacuate him, as he is dying. Roberts and I go back to the mess. He squats quickly and picks up his hand. “What are trumps? Anybody called?” I am shocked by the seeming callousness of the thing, though I am to learn that men grow hard. Also, that poor bloody mess which is gasping out its last breaths so near to us, has filled me with pity, nausea and fear. What if I should be smashed and torn like that? I play the next hand badly and we lose. Frost sniffs, and enters up the score against us, and I realize that I have let him down. But my next hand is prodigious. I go no trumps; Roberts pushes me up to three and doubles. I bring it off, and I see a little pleased smirk on Frost’s face.

  “We seem to be a good combination, Brent.”

  I smile at him, but I am still thinking of that poor bloody mess on the stretcher.

  Sunset. The darkness seems to come very suddenly here. There was a wonderful light over Imbros and the tawny cliffs of the peninsula seemed to turn pink. I walk along the road by the sea, and marvel at what has been crowded into this one day, and at the strangeness of it all. My self seems to have shed a skin and to shiver in these unfamiliar and sinister surroundings. I feel acutely homesick, and wonder when I shall get a letter from Mary.

  The sea is very black and calm and making a monologue of its own along the beach. Lights are pricking the darkness; the incinerator near the pier still glows and spreads its sour reek around. I hear men’s voices. Someone is singing in a dug-out on the cliff to the accompaniment of a tin whistle, a thin, melancholy piping. Dim figures pass me. I hear one man say to another, “Yes, lad, but one gets fed oop with being fed oop.” There is philosophy in that saying. I come to the mouth of the Great Gully; there are lights in its crumpled and cavernous gloom, and as I watch these lights I become aware of a strange sound. I realize that it is rifle fire, crashing and continuous. I stand and listen in vague alarm.

  Are the Turks attacking? I hurry back to the mess and find Roberts alone censoring the men’s letters by candlelight. I tell him what I have heard, and ask if it means an attack. He chucks me a wad of letters to censor.

  “O, that’s nothing. Goes on every night. Both sides loosing off and making sure. Besides, it’s always worse when the windy brigade is in.”

  I sit down with my share of the letters.

  “The windy brigade?”

  “Yes, the thousand and something. We’ll get to that in time if the war lasts. Two of our brigades are good, the other rotten. I expect Milsom and Sturges will have to do a bunk one night from the A.D.S. They keep their loins girded when the Windies are holding the line.”

  He seems extraordinarily casual about it, and I ask him what would happen if the Turks attacked and our people ran.

  “O, just a bit of a bloody mix up in the Gully. The rest of the Div. would have to pitchfork Abdul back, or we might have a free trip to Constantinople.”

  I am reading one of the letters. The man is writing home to his wife, and I am touched by the magnanimity and courage of this very simple letter. There is no grousing; its message is full of cheer. His wife is not to worry; he is in the pink, and all the lads are champion. May I attain to the courage and restraint of this simple man.

  * * *

  Since the darkness has veiled that too public niche upon the cliff I go and sit there and struggle with my inert interior. A sudden wind has sprung up, and the sky is brittle with stars, and the voice of the sea is rising. I sit and sit, but nature will not be relieved. I am aware of someone moving along the narrow terrace; the figure descends the path; a torch is flashed upon me.

  “Oh, it is you, Brent. No hurry.”

  I recognize Frost’s voice.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t get up, man.”

  “Nothing doing, sir.”

  I make way for him, go to my dug-out, and light a candle and sit down on the camp-bed. Presently I hear footsteps and Frost’s figure appears framed in the oblong opening. He leans forward and looks in, and the candlelight illumines his face and seems to soften it.

  “Got everything you want?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you.”

  He hesitates, sniffs, and then comes in and sits down on the box beside my bed. His eyes have a hungry look. I have a feeling that he wants to talk, and that he is not a man to whom words come easily.

  “Married, Brent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any children?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Feeling homesick?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Is it the effect of the candlelight, or has an extraordinary change come over his face? And suddenly I seem to divine in this hard man who has the reputation of being so ruthlessly efficient and without fear a desolating loneliness.

  “It’s more than a year since I saw my wife and kid.”

  “Then it is harder for you, perhaps.”

  “Now, yes. One can put such things behind one for a time, and then it all comes back and is worse. You see, none of these youngsters understand. They have nothing but themselves.”

  “I think I understand.”

  He looks at me intently for a moment, and I begin to wonder how it was that I had thought his face hard. This man has been repressing things in himself, and his hardness is the shell of authority. I can suppose that he has prides and ideals of his own, and that their very bleakness and strength put him apart from all these other men. His grip on himself has become so tense th
at it makes him something of an autocrat to others.

  I say, “It seems so much more hard to give up the whole of yourself when you have left other people behind.”

  He gets up, stands for a moment in the doorway of my dug-out, and almost I can feel his unbearable emotion.

  “Care to look at photos?”

  “Yes.”

  I am not the hypocrite or Agag, for the idea of making contact with this other man’s emotional life is somehow consoling and real.

  “Come to my dug-out, Brent.”

  I go with him, and he lights two candles and makes me sit down on his bed. He takes a despatch case from under it, and raising the lid reveals to me a mass of letters, obviously letters from home. He has preserved them all. His strong hands pick out some photos. He passes them to me. I see a woman and a child, a woman with a pleasant, gentle face.

  “That’s my wife.”

  I grope about for something to say, but my sympathy in its silence seems to be sufficient. He is watching my face. He begins to talk and I let him talk about all the silly simple things that the very clever people do not seem to understand. But I do, and my fear of this man grows less. Even his passion for card-playing may be a kind of drug that helps him to forget his human cravings.

  But, before the other men he maintains his air of hard aloofness. Does he suspect that he is hated because he neither spares himself nor others? But is hatred the right word?

  At breakfast, over our porridge, he gives me an order.

  “Mr. Brent, you will report to me in the orderly tent at nine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I catch Sanders silently chortling over his porridge plate. I am not drawn to Sanders; he is too eagerly and brightly servile, and I have begun to suspect the inspiration of it. Makins has warned me that our sojourn with the ambulance may be brief, and that after a little experience we shall be sent to relieve other ambulance officers who are doing temporary duty as battalion medical officers. Has Sanders summed up the situation and set his pawky soul to the task of ingratiating himself with Frost, so that if an officer is called for, I shall be the first to go?