This gives me furiously to think. One of the duties of a Field Ambulance is to supply medical officers, temporary or otherwise, to replace casualties, and as this casualty has occurred in our Brigade, I suppose our ambulance will have to find a substitute.
We are at tea when an orderly appears with a chit from Divisional Headquarters. Frost reads it, sniffs, and glances at Sanders.
“You are to report to the O.C. of the 7th North Lancs.”
Sanders looks sick.
“Me, sir?”
“Yes. Get your kit packed. The 7th are out in rest. You’ll find them in the Gully.”
“How shall I manage about my kit?”
“I’ll detail a couple of men to carry it for you.”
Sanders finishes his tea, but I can feel that he is seething with resentment against me, and God forgive me, but I am glad that I am to be left in this more comfortable and secure place a little longer.
* * *
The new mess is finished. It has two windows and a fireplace and we move into it like house-proud women. I am told that it inspires bitterness in some of the infantry who pass to their so-called rest billets along the cliff. But, after all, why should we not exercise forethought and make ourselves comfortable? Exposure to the weather does not make for efficiency.
* * *
The A.D.M.S. has come down to dine and play Bridge. We are in the middle of the first rubber when something arrives with a terrifying crash on the iron roof of the mess. We all duck, and then look at each other and feel foolish. Frost gets up with a fierce face, rushes out, but I realize that he has no chance of discovering the objector who had hurled that missile from the cliff above. Frost finds fragments of it lying in the road. Some jealous soul had lobbed an empty rum-jar on to our offending roof.
The war as it concerns us grows more and more stagnant. Both officers and men feel exiled and forgotten here, and there is much bitterness and criticism. As Roberts says: “We are just a ruddy lot of amateurs,” but from what I hear and see these amateurs would have made good had the staff work been more intelligent and active. This Territorial Division has a record to be proud of and, judging by Frost’s ambulance, these Territorials are the first people who have impressed me with their efficiency.
We are receiving very few wounded, many sick, and hardly any shells. An enemy ’plane comes over early most mornings, surveys our scene, is shot at and returns safely home. We are afflicted most strangely by a peculiar phenomenon, dropping bullets at night. It would appear that the Turk has so many rounds to dispose of, and he fires his rifle into the air, and the bullets descend on us. One can hear them plopping into the sea. Frost has a spent bullet through the roof of his dug-out and it bounces on the table beside his bed. A man in the 2nd Ambulance is killed in his sleep. Hardly a night passes without a casualty coming in as a result of these bullets dropping out of the air.
The A.D.M.S. orders us to spread a layer of shingle on the roofs of our quarters, and we are reinforcing the men’s dug-outs with wire netting and earth.
Whenever I go out at night I wonder whether I shall receive one of these Turkish offerings through the crown of my cap!
* * *
Our world has a social life of its own. We have guests to dine with us, and we go out to dine and play cards. The Football League flourishes. We pay and receive calls. The bright lads from Divisional Headquarters go out in a boat and bomb fish for dinner.
We are full of rumours. Tipson, or Tippie as he is called, is our arch rumour-monger. He comes along to us most days from the 2nd Ambulance, bringing with him his characteristic enthusiasm for the latest news. He is the first person to assure us that the Peninsula is to be evacuated, and that we are all going to Jerusalem. Tippie’s imaginative interludes are welcome to us in this sick and stagnant world. We wish to believe what we want to believe.
Bulgaria has joined the Central Powers.
For us this denotes the prospect of more shells, and an absence of eggs. I hear that our breakfast egg has been Bulgarian.
Our breakfasts are gargantuan, porridge, eggs and bacon, masses of toast, tinned butter and marmalade. I marvel at the way the A.S.C. feeds us. I am beginning to believe that they are the most efficient people on our side, and with full bellies we may yet win the war.
* * *
I have had a strange experience. Frost and I walked over to call on the officers of the new Stationary Hospital that has been erected on the plateau. It presents itself against the dun-coloured earth and the blue sky as an acre of white canvas. Its site has been wired in, and the Red Cross flag is flying. This hospital is in full view of the Turks, but when one passes within the wire fence one has the feeling of being in a sacred acre, serene and secure.
We look over the hospital and have tea in the officers’ mess. They tell us that one solitary shell has fallen in the hospital bounds since the tents were put up, and that the Turks had apologized for the discourtesy. The shell had been intended for a battery farther back.
The Turk is a gentleman.
When Frost and I leave this sanctuary he pauses outside the fence and looks at Achi Baba.
“Did you get that extraordinary feeling of peace, Brent?”
“Yes.”
He goes on to say that after this war the world will have to found some educative centre like this hospital, a core of sanity and peace in the apple of international mistrusts and discords.
Yes, such a conception should be inevitable.
I am glad of my friendship with Frost. He is merciful to me, and I do not find his almost fanatical thoroughness too heavy for my courage. Moreover, I gather that our life under the cliff is calm and mild compared with what it was in the more strenuous days of the offensive. I suppose the human element enters into the relationship of senior to junior as in everything else, and that it is easier to be efficient and somewhat courageous in the service of a man whom one likes and respects. In wanting Frost to think well of me I am helped into thinking well of myself.
The younger officers do not understand him, or the loneliness of a man in authority. I think the rank and file understand him better, and that his authority presses less heavily on the humbler individual. An officer’s responsibilities are tuned to a higher note, and the strain may be more exacting.
I like these Lancashire men. I fancy that they are apt to regard a southerner with suspicion, and to expect from him airs and graces, but if they decide that you are not smeared with snobbery, they become your friends. Spencer, my batman, is quite paternal in his attitude. He brings me early morning tea, and is quite fussy about my underclothing. I even suspect him of airing it before the cookhouse fire. His favourite adjective is champion. He applies it to all things and situations. The morning is champion, and so is his small boy at home.
The N.C.O.s are a very intelligent crowd. I fell into talking economics in the dressing-station with Sergeant Simpson, and he soon had me out of my depth. We have one corporal who produces poetry. He presented me with a copy of one of his poems, typed on the orderly-room typewriter by some sympathetic and accommodating clerk.
* * *
The weather has broken. There is more rain than wind, but the rain is a deluge. We watch our sea-wall and are relieved to find that it curbs the wash of the sea. Frost and I sit in the mess and write letters home and listen to the rattle of rain upon the roof. It seems to be a world of running water; we can hear it gurgling down the cliffs.
Frost says that the tame stream in the Great Gully will become a torrent, and that people who have not taken precautions will be washed out.
About ten o’clock the deluge ceases and we go out on a tour of inspection. There are puddles in the dressing-station, but no falls of earth. We visit the terraces where the men are housed and find that, thanks to the drainage trenches that have been cut, the men’s dug-outs have not been flooded. Our own quarters are lower down the cliff, and Frost flashes his torch into his dug-out; but for a puddle or two it is dry and clean. We go to look at my cell. Fro
st turns his torch on my bed, and I see that it is a smother of yellow slime. A hole in the sandbags is still spouting this foul mess over my bed. It has run down over Mary’s photo. The floor is a yellow bog.
I stand in silent disgust and sorrow, but Frost is moved to strange anger.
“What a damned dirty trick of Nature to play.”
It is as though the inward tension and repression that he has suffered for months breaks out against the impartial and callous beastliness of this world.
“You had better shift into one of the other dug-outs. There is a wire bed in No. 2.”
He turns back the flap of my valise and finds that the yellow muck has oozed into the flea-bag.
“You’ll want some blankets.”
But I am looking at the slimed and obscured picture of my wife.
Is this an omen?
VIII
I suppose I shall never forget this particular incident and its setting, and the significance it has had in casting a shadow. The sun is setting beyond Imbros in a whorl of fire. The sea is calm, and there is a feeling of frost in the air. I am on duty, and sitting alone in the mess, and watching through the open doorway that Homeric sea, and the black island aflame and the splendour of the sky. Figures pass, and they are like silhouettes against the sea and sky, or the shades or ghosts of men crossing the stage of a Greek tragedy. Some water-fowl go winging across the sea, flying fast and low, birds migrating to happier lands.
I see a stretcher carried by four bearers go by against the sunset. Its horizontal blackness is humped by something under a blanket. I see it only for a moment, but the glimpse is so vivid and sinister and sad that it seems to have some dark and personal message for me.
It has.
I hear an orderly coming.
“Case, sir.”
I go out into the quick twilight, and under the black canopies of the dressing-station I see that the lanterns have been lit. A sergeant meets me; it is Sergeant Simpson, and his kind fresh face has a shocked look.
“It’s Captain Hibbert, sir, of the 15th North Lancs.”
I echo the name—“Hibbert.” He is, or was, the M.O. of the 15th North Lancs, and only yesterday he came down to have tea with us.
“Pretty bad, sir, shrapnel in the head. A shell burst over the roof of his dug-out.”
I too am conscious of shock. I stand and look at the thing on the stretcher. Hibbert is unrecognizable. Yesterday he was laughing in his quiet way, a fair man with one of those very English faces, rather downy and boyish, but with a calm maturity in its blue eyes. Now, he is pulp. He has been hit in the face and head; his lips blubber blood, and his breathing is stertorous and harsh. His fair hair is a mat of blood, and as I bend over him I see brain substance protruding.
Someone joins me, but on the other side of the stretcher. It is Frost. His face has a kind of fierceness. He grasps Hibbert’s wrist, stares, and looks suddenly at me.
“Pretty hopeless.”
I nod.
“Is there a chance?”
“We’ll rush him to the Stationary. They may operate. He shall have his chance.”
But it is not to be. Something seems to happen to Hibbert’s breathing even while we are standing beside him. It becomes irregular, a kind of shallow gasping.
We look at each other.
“Hopeless. He wouldn’t stand the journey. I don’t like the idea of him dying on the way.”
We go out and walk up and down by the sea in silence. There is nothing to be said, and the dying light beyond Imbros seems symbolical, a torch that is being quenched. This thing has moved Frost as I have not seen him moved before, and I, God forgive me, am thinking of Hibbert’s empty dug-out up the line, and whether it will be my fate to fill it.
A figure approaches us as we walk back towards the ambulance. It is Sergeant Simpson. He salutes and says, “Captain Hibbert has gone, sir.”
* * *
My mood is one of profound depression. I have been shocked by Hibbert’s death, but for me it has a personal and selfish significance. I go up to my dug-out possessed by a presentiment that my sojourn under the cliff is at an end, and that very shortly I shall be among strange faces and in a strange, new world. The real horror of this war business is one’s feeling of helplessness and insecurity; one has no hold over one’s own fate. I have heard one Tommy describe the army as “The Sausage Machine.” Live men are fed into the hopper and corpses are extruded at the other end. It is a long time before I can go to sleep, and my sleep is shallow and restless, and overlaid with dreams.
Spencer has a solemn face when he brings me my early cup of tea from the cookhouse. His air of depression also seems ominous.
We are at breakfast when a chit is brought to Frost from the orderly tent. He opens the envelope, reads the order, sniffs, and lays it aside. I have a feeling that my fate is recorded on that piece of paper. Roberts, who is orderly officer for the day, finishes his breakfast, lights a cigarette, and hurries off to be first at the latrine.
Frost helps himself to marmalade.
“I am sorry, Brent, but this order concerns you.”
I try to keep a bright face.
“I rather expected it, sir.”
“You are to replace Hibbert. You are detailed by name, and I have no choice in the matter. The order is for you to report at once to the O.C. 15th North Lancs.”
“Then I had better go and get my kit together.”
“You can leave some of it here. We can store it. I am sorry, Brent.”
“So am I, sir. You have been very good to me.”
There is silence for a moment, and I hurry through my breakfast with a feeling of inward tension. Frost seems to be reflecting upon some problem.
“I want to tell you something, Brent. It isn’t very encouraging, but I think it is kinder to warn you. And this is in confidence.”
I wait while he lights a cigarette.
“Your new O.C., Colonel Skinders, is a rather difficult man to serve under. Poor Hibbert had a good deal of trouble with him. I happen to know.”
“What exactly is the trouble?”
“Do you know his nickname, Brent?”
“I know nothing about him, sir.”
“Fuss and Fury. It is rather brutally descriptive. Take my advice, Brent, and stand up to the little swine. I’m sorry you have to go to this particular unit.”
“It’s just the way the wheel happens to turn.”
“If we receive any more officer reinforcements, I will try to get you replaced and ask for you back.”
“That’s good of you, sir, but wouldn’t it be rather hard on the other man?”
Frost gives me a look which I do not forget.
“When any chance comes to you in the army, Brent, snap it up, or some other fellow who is less sensitive than you are will chouse you out of it. When the gods are kind, be thankful. This hero business does not last long with us.”
* * *
I go up to my dug-out to pack my kit. Poor Mary’s soiled photograph looks at me sadly. I am sorry to leave this little place which in a few weeks has somehow become mine, but it is no use being sentimental about a photograph and a few bookshelves, and the individual touches one has added to a temporary home. I suppose I shall grow hard in time, but at the moment my tail is down, and I am obsessed by the feeling that trouble lies ahead of me. What is this man Skinders like? Skinders!
Frost gives me a couple of men to carry my kit. One of them knows the particular part of the line that the 15th North Lancs are holding. Frost walks with me as far as the mouth of the Gully.
“Good luck, Brent. Don’t forget.”
I manage to smile at him, salute, and go upon my way.
* * *
I am standing in the doorway of a dug-out cut in the earth wall of a sap. It is the 15th Headquarters Mess. Its interior is dark, but I can distinguish a man sitting at a table with a glass and bottle beside him. Another and younger man is standing behind him.
I salute and ask, “Colonel Sk
inders?”
He is a little, sallow man whose face reminds me of the head of a bad-tempered terrier. He has a hungry, irritable look, and teeth that project under a rat-tailed moustache. They are discoloured teeth. His eyes are very near together and pin-bright under a mean forehead. His face is vellum-coloured save for a patch of redness over each cheekbone, and these patches meet on the bridge of his nose.
He snarls at me, “Who the hell are you?”
My ears grow hot. I feel that I should like to address him by his nickname, Colonel Fuss and Fury. So, this is the man under whom I am to serve.
“I’m the new medical officer, sir.”
He stares at me insolently.
“O, the new pill-merchant. What’s your name?”
“Brent, sir.”
“Had any experience?”
“I have been with the Field Ambulance for some weeks.”
“That doesn’t mean much. I asked them not to send me a pup.”
The almost incredible rudeness of the man astonishes me. I happen to look at the officer who is standing behind him, Carfax the Adjutant, and there is something in his eyes that makes me realize that he despises this snarling little beast as much as I dislike him. I stand silently waiting.
Skinders reaches irritably for the glass beside him. All his movements are jerky and restless, and I wonder whether his flaring rudeness is the result of strain. If so it will not be a very consoling or helpful savagery to live with.
“Better see to it, Carfax. Show him in. Has there been any sick parade yet?”
“No, sir.”
Skinders glances up truculently at me.
“One word, doctor, there has been too much skrim-shanking in this battalion. No slush, mind you. You have got to keep a tight hold on the men. You understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I don’t want you to sit about on your bum in some corner. I want every latrine inspected twice a day. You understand?”
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