No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

  “I think we know that, and that’s why we are not worrying.”

  Fairfax asks me to check all the equipment. I spend days going through it with Bond and the Sergeant-Major.

  Everything is O.K.

  * * *

  Hallard comes back looking rather grim, as though something in him was gnawing at stifled emotion.

  Fairfax and I go on leave.

  I don’t think I can write anything about my last few days at home. I am not sure but that I am coming to agree with Mary about emotion and its fallacious effects. Some sorts of emotion can be insanitary. Moreover, Mary is nursing our small daughter, and emotion is disturbing to the mysteries of milk and to infant metabolism, and I behave like a grandfather. In fact I feel restless and bored, not with my wife, but with this interlude, for I am like an athlete in training for a race. Actually, I take out my car and help Randall on the winter rounds; he needs help, for there is much ’flu about.

  Sussex is looking all black and grey in this February weather, and I cannot believe it is nearly a year since I came back from Gallipoli and Egypt, and with secret gloating put off my khaki. I would not do it now even if the honourable chance were offered me. I am one of a community, a little brotherhood, and it is of profound importance to me that these other men should think well of me, especially Fairfax.

  I go up and see Norah. She is still in black for Roger, and looking so much older. She can talk quite calmly now about Roger’s death and the future. Apparently, Roger could not have suffered. He was shot through the head almost before he had cleared our parapet, and was killed instantly.

  Norah speaks of going out when the war is over to see his grave. They buried him in what had been an orchard, just behind our old front line.

  * * *

  My leave is at an end. I go off quite casually as though I were starting on a country round. I leave Mary on the sofa with Joan Phyllis in her lap. That’s as it should be, perhaps. Just as one trains one’s body to endure, so one should harden one’s soul to bear these stresses without whimpering.

  XIV

  We entrain at seven o’clock in the evening in a drizzle, a somewhat dismal hour, but the men are extraordinarily cheerful. It is a great adventure to them, and though some of the realism of war may have come to them in gossip, they have yet to experience the reality. It is so very different from the stuff that appears in the papers, and the first time your precious self is involved the reactions can be so stark and surprising. Elemental fear is a humiliating and a shameful thing, and the first shock of it brings self-revelations.

  Fairfax himself has supervised the entraining of the transport. He and Hallard and Margetson and I occupy one first-class compartment, Gibbs, the two new men, and Bond are in another. We take off boots, collars and ties, and doze in our corners. The night seems interminable. I keep waking up and listening to the turning of the wheels. I think of Mary in bed, with Joan Phyllis in a cot beside her.

  We reach the docks at Southampton about dawn. It is grey and raw, and I am furiously hungry. We detrain, and having seen the men disposed of in a shed where hot tea is served, we think of breakfast. Gibbs has discovered a little café-restaurant on the quay, and we storm in.

  My recollections of the morning centre round the huge breakfast I put away, two helpings of bacon and eggs, three cups of tea and etceteras. Gibbs looks like an overfed baby. Our morale is excellent.

  Embarkation is a lengthy business. We are sharing our transport with one of the battalions of the Brigade, and the whole day seems to be spent in loafing and shouting and slinging horses and wagons and limbers on board. We do not sail till after dark. My recollections of the day are somewhat dim and hazy like the sky over these dreary docks. I am afraid the sea and its ships have no fascination for me, and such Englishmen as I am would have achieved no Trafalgar.

  Chiffinch has a cold in the head, and his poky little face has a wet and depressed futility. We are all rather bored with Chiffinch, for even between his sneezings he maintains a peevish grousing. He attaches himself to me, perhaps because we belong to the same section, and yet I am also the recipient of his complainings.

  “I’m senior to you, Brent, really. I don’t know why I should be treated like a junior.”

  I am fed up with Chiffinch, and I tell him to go and ask the colonel.

  But I do not want to spend the night in a cabin with Chiffinch and his cold. I get hold of Hallard, and we rout around and find a two-berth cabin. There are no mattresses on the wire beds, but our batmen lug in our valises and open them up. My batman, Finch, is a cheerful, bandy-legged little fellow with a face like a Dutch cheese. He does not seem to suffer from any sort of complex, and he will be the kind of man to bless God for under primitive conditions. He has an amusingly frank way of passing on to me the opinions of the rank and file. I gather from him that I am regarded as a posh officer.

  I am pleased.

  Our transport oils her way out in the dusk, and we are picked up by our escort. None of us trouble to hang about and see the last of England. It is going to be rough, as the wind is getting up, and Hallard confesses that he is a rotten sailor.

  “Same here,” say I.

  We decide to turn in and cheat the sea from giving us queasy tummies.

  “You and I seem much of a muchness, Steevie.”

  “I’m quite content.”

  “Same here. Who’s got that little catarrhal creature Chiffinch?”

  “I believe he’s gone in with Carless.”

  “I wonder if Carless will take off his superfine breeks?”

  “For Chiffinch?”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Steevie.”

  “I’m not feeling vulgar, but completely solemn.”

  “I say, old man, ever had wind up?”

  “I should say so.”

  “Is it very bad?”

  “In bits.”

  “I’m glad you have felt like that. It consoles me.”

  “You’ll be all right, my dear man.”

  “Shall I? I wonder. I suppose one’s interior can be a bit of a surprise packet. I don’t want to dirty my breeches.”

  “You won’t.”

  Another grey sad morning, a French morning in French docks. Havre is a replica of Southampton, pavé, railway lines, trucks, dumps of coal, but the blessing of being the member of a definite unit is that one has less time and inclination to be highbrow and morbid. Self-analysis is not à la mode; one is responsible to other men both for the temper of one’s soul and the cheerfulness of one’s face. Besides, we are a cheerful crowd, and Tommy’s attitude is good philosophy, to turn ugly things into laughter, and only to grouse when there is nothing serious to grouse about. We are kept busy disembarking our gear. Our goal is to be a base-camp on the hills above Havre. I see Carless swaggering about in his cream-coloured breeches, and doing nothing with an air of debonair grace. Chiffinch is wetter than ever and hinting that he has a temperature. I should not be sorry to see Chiffinch left behind. I wish someone would say to him, “Blow your nose, man, and have faith in God.”

  We march through Havre and up the hill to our camp. I feel that the men are swinging along with a self-conscious swagger, but nobody pays any attention to us. No flowers, no waving hands. Havre has had a surfeit of khaki, and I suppose the French are somewhat weary of this double occupation, ours and the Boches. How would Sussex like a French occupation, with thousands of strange and alien men behaving as though the place was theirs?

  The rank and file are in huts, the officers in private billets. I find myself in a terrace house occupied by a delicate, black-bearded Frenchman and his wife and child. They are quiet, kind, melancholy people; I suppose the man is a clerk and unfit for the army, but a more sad and gently disillusioned creature I have never seen. We all mess at a house run by a bustling, kinky-haired young woman with a very full bosom and hard, brown eyes. She is the obvious commercialist, and her attitude to the male is as severely practical as her collecting of our cash. Carless tries to flirt with
her, and has a door banged in his face, which makes us laugh.

  Says Fairfax, “It is not the cut or the colour of your breeches, my lad, but the cash value of the case. Take it to heart.”

  I divine that Carless is to be our sex play-boy. I have a small daughter, and somehow I am not interested in promiscuous adventure.

  We remain three days at Havre and then entrain for the area where the Division is to assemble before being put in the line. It is cold and the carriages are draughty and unheated. Margetson, as mess president, has laid in a supply of Fortnum and Mason extras, and we picnic in our carriages. I discover that there is a tendency to leave Chiffinch and his cold tucked up in a greatcoat in a solitary corner. But we must feed the little creature, and I take him in hot tea and tongue, but he is peevish and self-sorry.

  “I can’t eat anything, Brent.”

  “Don’t be an ass. Catch hold.”

  “I suppose you are trying to be sympathetic.”

  “Not a bit. Just practical.”

  I do not remember much about the journey save the rather beautiful name of one place we pass through—Yvetot. I have a recollection of little, low white houses, and secret orchards, and a girl in a blue apron feeding chickens in one of the orchards. It is all rather green and dim and transient, like a picture that one passes and glances at in a quiet gallery before returning to the roar and turmoil of a street.

  We play Bridge, uproarious low-brow Bridge, slapping the cards down on the army blanket that is spread over our knees. No one would think that we are on our way to that other game of blood and wounds. Do we think? I am sure that Hallard is thinking behind the sardonic face he shows to the world.

  Our approach to the war is strangely gradual and indirect, as though those in authority were playing a game of hide-and-seek with all the various units of the Division. It is a mysterious business, pontifical and arbitrary, and never to be questioned, but now I feel myself one of a community to be messed about and not a lone individual. We can grouse in chorus, or be sarcastic by numbers, and if the whole Field Ambulance is lost, as it is for two days, my soul is not vexed. Bond, our quartermaster, a little florid cock of a man, is the one to be worried, for he has had somehow and somewhere to draw our rations since we detrained at a dirty little French station in a colliery district.

  We discuss the brains of the army in mess when Clapp, the mess orderly, is not present.

  Gibbs puts it succinctly, “Are they really cleverer than we know, or bloodier fools than we fear?”

  Already I notice that the communal language is becoming more colourful and descriptive, especially so Bond’s, who is eternally chasing food and forage in obscure French villages.

  We are moving by road now, and at last our maps advise us that we are approaching our destination. A queer black church tower with eyes like an owl’s stares at us over the flat country with its willows and poplars. We are coming to Béthune, and our pleasant period of innocence is over. We run into authority, or rather it runs into us, in the shape of a Ford ambulance, from which emerges the long, lean, jejune form of Colonel Cleek. We happen to be marching at ease, and Hallard and Gibbs and I are riding in a bunch with Fairfax, and Cleek has his opportunity.

  “Send your officers to their proper places, please.”

  We go, leaving Fairfax and Cleek together by the Ford. I have never seen Cleek on a horse. I hear him say to Fairfax, “You really must maintain better marching discipline. A Fred Karno’s unit. Understand that you are now in the divisional area.”

  Obviously so! Cleek is here on the tee, polished and pragmatical. Fairfax rejoins us. He halts the unit and orders the men to fall out.

  “Gentlemen, we seem to have been getting a little slack. I realize that it must not happen again.”

  We have arrived. We find ourselves crowded into a tawdry little colliery village called Rougeville with one of the Field Ambulances of the outgoing Division. They are staying on for a couple of days to show us in. We find our motor-ambulances waiting for us here, four Daimlers and two Fords. The people who are to hand over to us are a laconic, hard-bitten lot. They tell us that their particular sector is a rest-cure, very little shelling, but plenty of mud. They encourage us by saying that Fritz, knowing that a new and innocent division is being put in for experience, may play up and provide us with a firework show.

  Rougeville is a hideous little place, industrialism at its ugliest, acres of poisonous red brick. It is newish and clean, which somehow makes it appear worse, like civilization’s abdominal organs neatly dissected and exposed to view. There is hardly a tree in the place, or any green thing, and Rougeville’s only recommendation is that it is never shelled. The Boche big guns pay their compliments to Béthune.

  Our headquarters are situated in a barrack of a building that was originally a Jesuit school. We mess in an inflamed red brick villa in a room paved with blue and yellow tiles. Our chairs make a melancholy squeaking on this ceramic floor, and grotesque family photographs decorate the walls. Lower middle-class æsthetics seem to be as dastardly here as in England. It is a sort of fungoid growth, not like the old country cottages that seem to grow out of the soil.

  But we are kept very busy, settling in and taking over from our predecessors. Our brigade is going into the line on the La Bassée sector, and we are to take over the Advanced Dressing Station at Semelles. The 203 F.A. is to function on the other and quiet side of the Canal. The 201 F.A. are to be in still more placid quarters and in charge of the Divisional Rest Station at La Bouche. We have been given the most septic job, and I wonder whether it is a compliment to us on Cleek’s part, or whether he is exercising secret spite against Fairfax.

  Fairfax is sleeping at the villa. He calls me up to his bedroom before dinner and tells me that he wants me to take charge of the Dressing Station at Semelles. I shall have one of the other Ambulance’s officers with me for two days to act as foster-parent, and when he departs Margetson will join me. Fairfax’s way of putting it is like asking a friend to do him a favour.

  “I warned you, Stephen, that I should be glad to use your experience.”

  “I’m glad to be of use, sir, to you.”

  “I believe you really mean that, my dear man.”

  “Absolutely and completely.”

  He is sitting on his bed, unlacing his field-boots.

  “Fact is, Stephen, I think we are regarded by Cleek as his bad boy. We shall have to be on our toes. Prejudice is a queer and poisonous thing.”

  I smile at him.

  “Yes, and under these circumstances. Has Colonel Cleek had any active experience?”

  “None at all.”

  “Well, if there is any bluffing to be done I ought to be able to do it.”

  I and details of C Section, plus Sergeant Simpson and Corporal Block, depart in two motor-ambulances for Semelles. I sit beside the driver of the leading ambulance. It is a grey day, and there is a kind of squalor everywhere that merges into the more sinister squalor of a country that has been shelled. We come to a straight road that is bannered with strips of camouflage and I see before me a long low dismal horizon rising to a dirty sky, and in the valley the hotch-potch of ruins that was once Semelles. There comes to us one of those sudden splurges of noise that break out in such places, like the baying and yapping of scores of brazen-mouthed dogs. Our guns are loosing off, and my tummy suddenly grows tense, and seems to vibrate with those detonations. We turn left into a kind of courtyard that is surrounded by broken walls and debris. This is the A.D.S. and its site a brewery where the cellars are good. The noise rises abruptly to a crescendo. Some anti-aircraft guns near us have become active, and their beastly, abrupt slammings seem to hit one’s ear-drums. I get the feeling of universal turbulence and horror and unrest, though all this noise is being made by the British army.

  As I get down I see an officer standing in a hole in the wall, bare-headed, hands in breeches pockets, a cigarette pendent from the corner of his mouth. I detect on his face an expression of amused and quiz
zical interest. No doubt he thinks us very raw meat, and is feeling full of patronage.

  I cross the yard towards him, wondering whether all this noise will not provoke our friend Fritz to retaliation. I have a horrid desire to get under cover, but I will myself to appear casual.

  “Good morning. I hope we’re not late for lunch?”

  His face seems to button up. He gives me a less quizzical look.

  “We’re being rather noisy this morning. Damn those Archies. One can’t hear oneself speak.”

  “Quite a good orchestra.”

  He takes out a cigarette-case and offers me one.

  “Come inside. Get your men in. We had a 5.9 in the middle of the yard yesterday. Yes, the ambulances had better blow off. I’ve nothing to send back.”

  I stroll across the yard, and tell Simpson to get the men and equipment into the dressing-station, and I dismiss the ambulances. I wait outside until all the men are in, smoking the cigarette my predecessor has given me. I hear a shell arrive and burst somewhere among the remnants of the village. Another and a more menacing one follows it.

  I walk slowly towards the hole in the wall, and find Simpson waiting for me. He is looking a little pinched. My host has disappeared below. He is old and war-wise.

  “Better come in, sir, hadn’t you?”

  “I am coming. Those damned Archies are going to be a bit of a nuisance to us, Simpson.”

  “Draw fire, sir?”

  “No, the noise. There is one blessing, they won’t bark at night.”

  I see Simpson’s stiff face loosen into a smile.

  “That’s a consolation, sir. If they were cats!”

  “Yes, but there don’t seem to be any tiles left in this sweet place.”

  I find Carson, the captain in charge, waiting at the top of a flight of brick steps. It is very dark here, and I see the end of his cigarette glowing. He reaches up and touches something.