No Hero-This

by Warwick Deeping

  We have all crowded into a big house in the main street. It happens to be the local doctor’s house. He appears to be a collector of old glass, and possesses a big cabinet full of it. We use some of his glass for our drinks at lunch.

  I explore upstairs. The house has been left in perfect and pathetic order. I enter a bedroom in which the bed has been made as though for an occupant, and behind this room I discover a bathroom. I open the door of a cupboard and find that it is the domestic linen cupboard. On one shelf rows and rows of clean socks are laid out.

  The very thing. Surely, I can be allowed to help myself to a pair of socks? I am in the act of extracting a pair when the door opens and a French interpreter in uniform blows in. He is a sallow, supercilious person, and he looks at me with angry hauteur.

  “What are you doing in my billet?”

  “Sorry. I thought the house was empty.”

  “It is not empty. Do English officers loot?”

  His insolent air piques me. It is obvious that he is regarding anything English with bitterness and scorn.

  “Well, you had better lock your door.”

  “Most certainly, under the circumstances, I shall lock my door.”

  “Isn’t it rather a pity to leave everything to the Boches?”

  He glares at me.

  “Get out, please. If our troops had been in the line it might not have been necessary to leave our homes to the Boche.”

  I go out feeling hot about the ears. Assuredly, the French are not loving us.

  * * *

  Our ordeal is over, and it has begun to rain.

  We are on a road leading towards Amiens, and I have been making every sort of effort to post a field-card to my wife, but everybody is trying to send news home, and in the confusion the army postal service seems to have ceased.

  Our march is only a short one, and poor Potter, who can scarcely hobble, has to ride in an ambulance. We arrive in a little village on a hill, and in the centre of it stands a biggish schoolhouse in the middle of a courtyard. All the houses are locked up and shuttered.

  Fairfax chooses the schoolhouse for our unit. Its locked door seems to arouse a kind of northern rage in him. He sends his batman for an axe from one of the wagons, and we stand and watch our C.O. burst in the door.

  Within we find a little paradise for tired troops, a little salon, a little kitchen, and three bedrooms above all with their beds neatly made, and exquisitely clean. I hope these good French will forgive us for storming their house, and wallowing in those dream-beds. For the moment the war seems far away.

  Before dinner I go for a ramble. The rain has passed, and the sky is piled with great clouds, and the distances are very blue. I find a mobile anti-aircraft battery on a hill behind a wood, and I ask a corporal if I can slip a field-postcard in their post-bag. I scribble my wife’s address in pencil, and leave those happy words undeleted:

  “I am well.”

  In the far blue distance I can see columns of smoke rising and the black smudges of shell-bursts.

  So, we are still fighting.

  But how will it end?

  XXIII

  Grey, green weather, a dim sky, the wind in the north-east. We are billeted in a village not far from Abbeville. In fact during the last two weeks we have been pushed from village to village, so that I can say that I have slept in ten different beds in a fortnight. We are part of the wreckage of a fighting force; no one needs us, and no one seems to know what to do with us, and being superfluous and an encumbrance we are kicked like stray dogs from door to door.

  The 81st Division has ceased to exist as a division. We hear that it ended the retreat a few hundred rifles strong, and that most of these were men returned from leave or from courses or from hospital. The remnants have been incorporated with reinforcements into a composite brigade, and been sent to patch up the new front. We are cut off from everybody. We receive mysterious orders from mysterious sources to move here or to move there.

  The reaction is upon us.

  This bleak April mood is ours. We know nothing of what is happening, but are windy with rumours. We hear that the Division is to be scrapped, and this suggests that the three ambulances will become superfluous. Our happy family will be broken up, and all of us sent hither and thither like anonymous sheep.

  This prospect depresses me.

  Am I to begin the war all over again as a casual cypher, to be pushed in among strangers, to lose Fairfax and my friends, and the men who trust me? I have been something of a man in this community. I shall feel rather like a lost, frightened and rebellious child in some new slave-state.

  We read Haig’s message to the troops, and instead of inspiring us, it fills us with bitterness. But for years of bloody botching we should not have been brought to this pass. They may say what they like, and insist that it is an army’s business to fight and to sustain losses, but it is the brainless fashion of fighting that has been our undoing.

  * * *

  A letter has come in warning Fairfax that the ambulance will be disbanded, and the personnel used as reinforcements.

  This makes me sick and miserable. After ten days of hell is this to be our reward? I go out into a little wood behind this village, and wander about in it, and find a few primroses in flower. The sky is grey, and a north-east wind is blowing. Tragedy, tragedy! And yesterday I had such a happy letter from my wife.

  * * *

  Yes, I suppose I am a selfish beast, but the war has taught me one thing. He who rushes impetuously to sacrifice himself will most certainly be sacrificed on the altar of official cynicism and indifference. Who will care if I am killed? Will it cause authority to suffer one single qualm? Why should it? And this, I think is the ultimate beastliness of war as waged by masses of humanity. We become no better than slaves, numbered and ticketed, to be sold to the next offensive. We cease to be individual men, or in any way master of our little fate. We are just meat for the machine.

  * * *

  We have been moved suddenly to the Lumbres area between St. Omer and the sea, and we suspect that this means that we are to hand over all our equipment at St. Omer, and be disbanded.

  It is raining.

  The purlieus of this village are swarming with Chinks. They are like yellow lice.

  I am called down to a camp to attend one of these Mongols. He is a huge man, and in the full sweat of acute influenza, and lice are crawling over the warm wet soil of him. He stinks incredibly. The fug and the smell in the tent make me feel sick.

  * * *

  Another order to move, and in the reverse direction. We find ourselves returned to the area from which we have come. This must help amazingly towards winning the war!

  But this is a pleasant village and the sun is shining, and a letter has arrived in the orderly room warning us that we shall not be disbanded yet, but used for other purposes. What purposes?

  Rumour has it that the Americans are being rushed across in thousands. Well, thank God for that. They may help to extract us from this mess.

  There is a pretty servant in my billet, and the apple blossom is in flower. Finch is making love to the wench.

  I have just had a photo of my small daughter.

  * * *

  More good news. Two officers in all Field Ambulances are to be entitled to the rank and pay of Temporary Major. Gibbs and I are to be the recipients of this favour. Moreover, Colonel Rankin appears out of the blue in a staff-car, and has lunch with us. The Divisional cadres are to be retained and used for the training of Americans. Two American Divisions are to disembark very shortly, and will be distributed in this part of Picardy.

  Rankin hints that not only Gough, but several of our divisions are in disgrace. We were one of them, but not so seriously as two or three others, so we are to be reprieved.

  I suppose the country or the politicians are shouting for victims. Or are the French responsible? It is damned unfair. What more could Gough have done with the troops at his disposal? We were the victims of years of human wa
stage and bloody offensives.

  Rankin tells us we can put up our crowns.

  There must be a binge.

  * * *

  Sergeant Simpson and three other N.C.O.s waylay me outside their mess.

  “We’d like to congratulate you, sir. Every man in the unit will be glad.”

  Do I blush? It is one of the war’s happy moments.

  * * *

  We prepare a mighty binge. Bond has produced champagne, and I have warned Finch to be on duty in case I may need helping to my billet. There is a piano in the house in which we mess, and Carless is incessantly strumming and singing “Roses in Picardy.” The thing haunts me. I feel as though a blackbird were singing just outside the windows of my soul.

  We have a vast binge, and in the middle of it we hear an improvised glee-party singing in the garden.

  “Good luck to our two tough majors.

   Good luck to our two ruddy majors.

   May they swear and they curse

   And not be the worse——”

  I cannot remember how the last line went, or what they found to rhyme with majors. We have to appear at the window, and there are cheers. But the evening is full of surprises. The decorous Potter drapes himself with a rug, and crawls around the room asserting that he is a cow, and imploring someone to milk him. He loses his pince-nez, and Gibbs treads on them. Luckily Potter has a reserve pair. Carless borrows a skirt from the concierge’s wife, and gives us a skirt dance, accompanied by the gramophone.

  I suppose I am drunk, but it is a lovely intoxication. I have a recollection of Finch assisting me to my billet and up the stairs. I believe he puts me to bed with fatherly firmness.

  He tells me next morning that I would persist in trying to go to bed with my feet on the pillow, and that I kept asking him for the nether portions of my pyjamas.

  “Can’t go on parade like this, Finch.”

  But I still seem to be something of a hero, and more so, to this very human animal.

  * * *

  We move once more, and crossing the Somme near St. Valery, find ourselves in sweet, unspoilt country full of beech woods and young wheat. Our goal is a little place called Le Mesnil.

  I shall never forget my first glimpse of Le Mesnil. We cross a plateau, come to a wood where the road turns south in a sharp spiral, and I see below me a green valley which seems to be one flowery mass of apple blossom. The valley is splendid with tall trees, and the sunlight is shining through the young foliage upon the very green grass. There is an old red brick château like an island in a sea of flower. A stream runs through the village, and we look down upon the chimneys of the little white houses of this most sweet place.

  I am conscious of a feeling of almost childish wonder. It seems almost unbelievable that we are to sojourn here for weeks, after the things we have suffered. The peace and the beauty of the place almost frighten me. What if the mercy of the gods should be ironical?

  * * *

  The French family who own the château are in residence. The men are to be billeted in the farm buildings of the château, and we officers are to be allowed a room to mess in, but only Monsieur le Colonel can be permitted to occupy a bedroom. This does not worry me, as I prefer to be able to retreat to some corner of my own. The mayor of Le Mesnil has left with the concierge a list of houses where officers can find billets. We choose them at random, and I select the name of Malaunay, perhaps because it has a pleasant sound. Victoire Malaunay, No. 6, rue de Bois l’Abbaye.

  These beech trees are superb, and the apple blossom is ravishing. I walk up the street of Le Mesnil—with the little stream sharing the road with me—and I wonder what happens here in wet weather. There is a funny little church, and a Place surrounded with pollarded limes, some shops, and a small hotel—the Toison d’Or—also two or three estaminets and a schoolhouse. Some of Le Mesnil is red brick, but most of it white plaster, brown tiles and green shutters.

  Finch plods along beside me with my valise on his back. He has sighted the estaminets.

  “Posh place, this, sir.”

  I suspect that he is on the look out for attractive things in petticoats.

  The rue de Bois l’Abbaye turns south just beyond the Place. It seems to consist of farmhouses with big gates opening into yards. We come to No. 6. It, too, is a farmhouse, but smaller and different from the others, a little white place set back behind a patch of garden in which polyanthus, tulips and white narcissi are in flower. It has an air of being a little less logical and pratique than most French places. I open a gate in a green iron railing, and walk up the path to the door.

  I knock. I expect to see a middle-aged Frenchwoman, perhaps moustached and bearded, and in black, but the person who opens the door to me is a girl, a curiously petite little person with a solemn face, and oat-coloured hair. She has a pretty pallor, and eyes that make one think of blue windflowers on a sunny day. I salute her, and she regards me with a gravity that is not wholly welcoming.

  “Pardon, mademoiselle, but is this Madame Malaunay’s?”

  She nods, and I explain that I am to be billeted in the house.

  “Bien, monsieur.”

  She lets me in, and goes to fetch her mother.

  * * *

  Madame is a grey-haired, jocund old lady, but her eyes are shrewd, and her mouth capable of making a bargain. We are very polite to each other. She conducts me through a kind of parlour-kitchen complete with stove and a picture of the Sacré Cœur. Another girl is sitting sewing at the window, a dark and rather fierce young woman who glances at me consideringly over her shoulder. La Petite has returned to another chair by the window, and I see her pale head bent to the sunlight like the head of a flower. Are these two girls sisters? Finch has carried in my valise and I tell him to wait, and I follow madame along a tiled passage and up some white wooden stairs. There is a big landing above, and she opens a door on the right, and smiles at me.

  “Entrez, monsieur.”

  It is a very plain little room, but it pleases me, for its window does not face towards the street, but looks out upon fruit trees and a garden. I thank madame and tell her that the room will suit me admirably, and that I hope to be no bother to her.

  As we descend the stairs, I am aware of Finch’s voice airing its estaminet French, and its tones strike me as too gaudy and jocund. I find him sitting on my valise, smoking a cigarette, and looking in a rather puzzled way at two young women whose aloofness suggests that they do not appreciate Finch’s free-and-easy canteen courtesies. The idiot! I am rather sharp with Finch, and tell him to put his cigarette out and carry my valise upstairs. I follow him and show him the room.

  “A word to the wise, Finch. This isn’t an estaminet.”

  He grins at me.

  “The m’amselles seem a bit sticky, sir.”

  I warn him that this house is different from anything we have inhabited hitherto.

  I walk back to the château for tea, and find that we are to mess in a charming salon panelled in cream and gold. It looks out upon a forecourt and a gravelled drive, and stretches of grass planted with fruit trees, all shut in by a high, old stone wall. Iron gates end the vista. I know that this war has coarsened and hardened one, but here one seems to shed a shabby toughened skin, and to become sensitive to sweet, peaceful things. I say in my heart, “God bless America, and may this interlude last out the Spring.”

  After tea and half an hour in the orderly-room with Fairfax I wander back to my billet. It appears to be the custom in Le Mesnil for its people to bring their chairs out of doors and to sit in the evening sunlight chatting and sewing. It is a feminine population, sprinkled with a few old men. I meet the village curé, who looks a plump, pink humanist, and I salute him. I turn into the rue Bois l’Abbaye, and find that the Malaunay family follows the prevailing custom. Mother and daughters are sitting on hard chairs in the front garden. La Petite is wearing a black apron powdered with purple pansies. I smile and salute them as I go in. The elder daughter gives me a farouche look, and
her black eyes are not friendly.

  Finch has brought along my kit-bag. I unpack, arrange the family photos on a shelf, hang my spare tunic and trench coat in a corner cupboard that has a curtain, and transfer shirts, etc., to a chest of drawers. This little room has a homely feeling. I am the possessor of a small table, and I place it by the window, and arrange books and papers on it. I shall be able to write up my journal here.

  Afterwards I go out to explore. These three women make me feel rather shy, and something of an interloper. I meet La Petite’s eyes for a moment, but they seem to close up like windflowers. The road takes me to the Bois l’Abbaye, and before reaching it I pass a great crucifix set in a horseshoe of pollarded limes. Le Mesnil seems to be religieuse. The Bois l’Abbaye is a splendid wood of beeches, not grown like ours in England, but soaring straight and high, profoundly peaceful and mysterious. The great trees are just coming into leaf, and the evening sunlight shining through them is sacramental.

  On my way back I pass No. 6. Mother and daughters are still sitting in the garden, but I am shy and pretend not to see them. These Frenchwomen make me feel a barbarian.

  * * *

  At dinner Carless complains of his billet.

  “Too ruddy austere. A dear old skeleton in crape. What’s yours like, daddy?”

  I suddenly realize that Carless would be more than superfluous in my billet. He is the sort of Englishman who seems to think that every Frenchwoman is a cocotte. I confess that it is quiet and comfortable, but that the people do not appear very friendly.

  “Any girls, daddy?”

  I snub him with irony.

  “Five, and all supremely austere.”