With Durley I reverted automatically to my active-service self. The war which we discussed was restricted to the doings of the Flintshire Fusiliers. Old So-and-so had been wounded; poor old Somebody had been killed in the Bullecourt show; old Somebody Else was still commanding B Company. Old jokes and grotesquely amusing trench incidents were re-enacted. The Western Front was the same treacherous blundering tragi-comedy which the mentality of the Army had agreed to regard as something between a crude bit of fun and an excuse for a good grumble. I suppose that the truth of the matter was that we were remaining loyal to the realities of our war experience, keeping our separate psychological secrets to ourselves, and avoiding what Durley called ‘his dangerous tendency to become serious’. His face, however, retained the haunted unhappy look which it had acquired since the Delville Wood attack last autumn, and his speaking voice was still a hoarse whisper.
When I was ordering a bottle of hock we laughed because the waiter told us that the price had been reduced since 1914, as it was now an unpopular wine. The hock had its happy effect, and soon we were agreeing that the Front Line was the only place where one could get away from the War. Durley had been making a forlorn attempt to enter the Flying Corps, and had succeeded in being re-examined medically. The examination had started hopefully, as Durley had confined himself to nods and headshakings in reply to questions. But when conversation became inevitable the doctor had very soon asked angrily, ‘Why the hell don’t you stop that whispering?’ The verdict had been against his fractured thyroid cartilage; though, as Durley remarked, it didn’t seem to him to make much difference whether you shouted or whispered when you were up in an aeroplane. ‘You’ll have to take some sort of office job,’ I said. But he replied that he hated the idea, and then illogically advised me to stay in England as long as I could. I asserted that I was going out again as soon as I could get passed for General Service, and called for the bill as though I were thereby settling my destiny conclusively. I emerged from the restaurant without having uttered a single antiwar sentiment.
When Durley had disappeared into his aimless unattached existence, I sat in Hyde Park for an hour before going back to the hospital. What with the sunshine and the effect of the hock, I felt rather drowsy, and the columns of the Unconservative Weekly seemed less stimulating than usual.
On the way back to Denmark Hill I diverted my mind by observing the names on shops and business premises. I was rewarded by Pledge (pawnbroker), Money (solicitor), and Stone (builder). There was also an undertaker named Bernard Shaw. But perhaps the most significant name was Fudge (printing works). What use, I thought, were printed words against a war like this? Durley represented the only reality which I could visualize with any conviction. People who told the truth were likely to be imprisoned, and lies were at a premium…. All my energy had evaporated and it was a relief to be back in bed. After all, I thought, it’s only sixteen days since I left the Second Battalion, so I’ve still got a right to feel moderately unwell. How luxurious it felt, to be lying there, after a cup of strong tea, with daylight diminishing, and a vague gratitude for being alive at the end of a fine day in late spring. Anyhow the War had taught me to be thankful for a roof over my head at night….
Lying awake after the lights were out in the ward, it is possible that I also thought about the Second Battalion. Someone (it must have been Dunning) had sent me some details of the show they’d been in on April 23rd. The attack had been at the place where I’d left them. A little ground had been gained and lost, and then the Germans had retreated a few hundred yards. Four officers had been killed and nine wounded. About forty other ranks killed, including several of the best N.C.O.s. It had been an episode typical of uncountable others, some of which now fill their few pages in Regimental Histories. Such stories look straightforward enough in print, twelve years later; but their reality remains hidden; even in the minds of old soldiers the harsh horror mellows and recedes.
Of this particular local attack the Second Battalion Doctor afterwards wrote, ‘The occasion was but one of many when a Company or Battalion was sacrificed on a limited objective to a plan of attack ordered by Division or some higher Command with no more knowledge of the ground than might be got from a map of moderate scale.’ But for me (as I lay awake and wondered whether I’d have been killed if I’d been there) April 23rd was a blurred picture of people bombing one another up and down ditches; of a Company stumbling across open ground and getting mown down by machine-guns; of the Doctor out in the dark with his stretcher-bearers, getting in the wounded; and of an exhausted Battalion staggering back to rest-billets to be congratulated by a genial exculpatory Major-General, who explained that the attack had been ordered by the Corps Commander. I could visualize the Major-General all right, though I wasn’t aware that he was ‘blaming it on the Corps Commander’. And I knew for certain that Ralph Wilmot was now minus one of his arms, so my anti-war bitterness was enabled to concentrate itself on the fact that he wouldn’t be able to play the piano again. Finally, it can safely be assumed that my entire human organism felt ultra-thankful to be falling asleep in an English hospital. Altruism is an episodic and debatable quality; the instinct for self-preservation always got the last word when an infantryman was lying awake with his thoughts.
With an apology for my persistent specifyings of chronology, I must relate that on May 9th I was moved on to a Railway Terminus Hotel which had been commandeered for the accommodation of convalescent officers. My longing to get away from London made me intolerant of the Great Central Hotel, which was being directed by a mind more military than therapeutic. The Commandant was a non-combatant Brigadier-General, and the convalescents grumbled a good deal about his methods, although they could usually get leave to go out in the evenings. Many of them were waiting to be invalided out of the Army, and the daily routine orders contained incongruous elements. We were required to attend lectures on, among other things, Trench Warfare. At my first lecture I was astonished to see several officers on crutches, with legs amputated, and at least one man had lost that necessary faculty for trench warfare, his eyesight. They appeared to be accepting the absurd situation stoically; they were allowed to smoke. The Staff Officer who was drawing diagrams on a black-board was obviously desirous of imparting information about the lesson which had been learnt from the Battle of Neuve Chapelle or some equally obsolete engagement. But I noticed several faces in the audience which showed signs of tortured nerves, and it was unlikely that their efficiency was improved by the lecturer who concluded by reminding us of the paramount importance of obtaining offensive ascendancy in no-man’s-land.
In the afternoon I had an interview with the doctor who was empowered to decide how soon I went to the country. One of the men with whom I shared a room had warned me that this uniformed doctor was a queer customer. ‘The blighter seems to take a positive pleasure in tormenting people,’ he remarked, adding, ‘He’ll probably tell you that you’ll have to stay here till you’re passed fit for duty.’ But I had contrived to obtain a letter from the Countess of Somewhere, recommending me for one of the country houses in her Organization; so I felt fairly secure. (At that period of the War people with large houses received convalescent officers as guests.)
The doctor, a youngish man dressed as a temporary Captain, began by behaving quite pleasantly. After he’d examined me and the document which outlined my insignificant medical history, he asked what I proposed to do now. I said that I was hoping to get sent to some place in the country for a few weeks. He replied that I was totally mistaken if I thought any such thing. An expression, which I can only call cruel, overspread his face. ‘You’ll stay here; and when you leave here, you’ll find yourself back at the front in double-quick time. How d’you like that idea?’ In order to encourage him, I pretended to be upset by his severity; but he seemed to recognize that I wasn’t satisfactory material for his peculiar methods, and I departed without having contested the question of going to the country. I was told afterwards that officers had been known to
leave this doctor’s room in tears. But it must not be supposed that I regard his behaviour as an example of Army brutality. I prefer to think of him as a man who craved for power over his fellow men. And though his power over the visiting patients was brief and episodic, he must have derived extraordinary (and perhaps sadistic) satisfaction from the spectacle of young officers sobbing and begging not to be sent back to the front.
I never saw the supposedly sadistic doctor again; but I hope that someone gave him a black eye, and that he afterwards satisfied his desire for power over his fellow men in a more public-spirited manner.
Next morning I handed the letter of the Countess to a slightly higher authority, with the result that I only spent three nights in the Great Central Hotel, and late on a fine Saturday afternoon I travelled down to Sussex to stay with Lord and Lady Asterisk.
3
Nutwood Manor was everything that a wounded officer could wish for. From the first I was conscious of a kindly welcome. It was the most perfect house I’d ever stayed in. Also, to put the matter plainly, it was the first time I’d ever stayed with an Earl. ‘Gosh! This is a slice of luck,’ I thought. A reassuring man-servant conducted me upstairs. My room was called ‘The Clematis Room’; I noticed the name on the door. Leaning my elbows on the window-sill, I gazed down at the yew hedges of a formal garden; woods and meadows lay beyond and below, glorious with green and luminous in evening light; far away stood the Sussex Downs, and it did my heart good to see them. Everything in the pretty room was an antithesis to ugliness and discomfort. Beside the bed there was a bowl of white lilac and a Bible. Opening it at random to try my luck, I put my finger on the following verse from the Psalms: ‘The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.’ Rather an odd coincidence, I thought, that the word ‘war’ should turn up like that; but the Old Testament’s full of fighting…. While I was changing into my best khaki uniform I could hear quiet feet and murmurous voices moving about the house; doors closed discreetly on people about to dress for dinner. Still almost incredulous at my good fortune I went downstairs, to be greeted by a silver-haired and gracious hostess, and introduced to three other officers, all outwardly healthy and gentlemanly-looking. I was presented to Lord Asterisk, over eighty and crippled with rheumatism, but resolutely holding on to a life which had been devoted to useful public service. Respectfully silent, I listened to his urbane eloquence and felt sufficiently at my ease to do justice to a very good dinner. The port wine went its round; and afterwards in the drawing-room, I watched Lady Asterisk working at some embroidery while one of the officers played Gluck and Handel on the piano. Nothing could have been more tranquil and harmonious than my first evening at Nutwood Manor. Nevertheless I failed to fall asleep in the Clematis Room. Lying awake didn’t matter much at first; there was plenty to ruminate about; the view across the Weald at sunset had revived my memories of ‘the good old days when I hunted with the Ringwell’. I had escaped from the exasperating boredom of hospital life, and now for a few weeks I could forget about the War…. But the War insisted on being remembered, and by 3 a.m. it had become so peremptory that I could almost believe that some of my friends out in France must be waiting to go over the top. One by one, I thought of as many of them as I could remember….
I’d overheard Lady Asterisk talking about spiritualism to one of the officers; evidently she was a strong believer in the ‘unseen world’. Perhaps it was this which set me wondering whether, by concentrating my mind on, say, young Ormand (who was still with the Second Battalion), I might be able to receive some reciprocal communication. At three o’clock in the morning a sleepless mind can welcome improbabilities and renounce its daylight scepticism. Neither voice nor vision rewarded my expectancy.
But I was rewarded by an intense memory of men whose courage had shown me the power of the human spirit – that spirit which could withstand the utmost assault. Such men had inspired me to be at my best when things were very bad, and they outweighed all the failures. Against the background of the War and its brutal stupidity those men had stood glorified by the thing which sought to destroy them….
I went to the window and leant out. The gables of the house began to loom distinct against a clear sky. An owl hooted from the woods; cocks were crowing from distant farms; on the mantelpiece a little clock ticked busily. Oppressed by the comfort of my surroundings, I felt an impulse to dress and go out for a walk. But Arras and the Somme were a long way off; I couldn’t walk there and didn’t want to; but they beckoned me with their bombardments and the reality of the men who endured them. I wanted to be there again for a few hours, because the trenches really were more interesting than Lady Asterisk’s rose-garden. Seen from a distance, the War had a sombre and unforgettable fascination for its bondsmen. I would have liked to go and see what was happening, and perhaps take part in some exciting little exploit. I couldn’t gainsay certain intense emotional experiences which I’d lived through in France. But I also wanted to be back at Nutwood Manor for breakfast…. Returning to my bed I switched on the yellow shaded light. Yes; this was the Clematis Room, and nothing could be less like the dug-out where I’d sat a month ago talking about Sussex with Ralph Wilmot. Through the discurtained window the sky was deep nocturnal blue. I turned out the lamp, and the window became a patch of greyish white, with tree-tops dark and still in the strange quietude before dawn. I heard the cuckoo a long way off. Then a blackbird went scolding along the garden.
I awoke to a cloudless Sabbath morning. After breakfast Lady Asterisk led me into the garden and talked very kindly for a few minutes.
‘I am sure you have had a very trying time at the front’, she said, ‘but you must not allow yourself to be worried by unpleasant memories. We want our soldier-guests to forget the War while they are with us.’
I replied, mumbling, that in such surroundings it wouldn’t be easy to worry about anything; and then the old Earl came out on to the terrace, pushing the wheeled apparatus which enabled him to walk.
Often during the next three weeks I was able to forget about the War; often I took refuge in the assuasive human happiness which Nutwood Manor’s hospitality offered me. But there were times when my mental mechanism was refractory, and I reverted to my resolution to keep the smoke-drifted battle memories true and intense, unmodified by the comforts of convalescence. I wasn’t going to be bluffed back into an easy-going tolerant state of mind, I decided, as I opened a daily paper one morning and very deliberately read a despatch from ‘War Correspondents’ Headquarters’.
‘I have sat with some of our lads, fighting battles over again, and discussing battles to be,’ wrote some amiable man who had apparently mistaken the War for a football match between England and Germany. ‘One officer – a mere boy – told me how he’d run up against eleven Huns in an advanced post. He killed two with a Mills’ bomb (“Grand weapon, the Mills’!” he laughed, his clear eyes gleaming with excitement), wounded another with his revolver, and marched the remainder back to our own lines…. ’ I opened one of the illustrated weeklies and soon found an article on ‘War Pictures at the Royal Academy’. After a panegyric about ‘Forward the Guns!’ (a patriotic masterpiece by a lady who had been to the Military Tournament in pre-War days) the following sentence occurred: ‘I think I like Mr Blank’s “Contalmaison” picture best. He almost makes one feel that he must have been there. The Nth Division are going over the second line I expect – the tips of their bayonets give one this impression – and it is a picture which makes one’s pulse beat a lot faster…. ’
‘The tips of their bayonets give one that impression.’… Obviously the woman journalist who wrote those words was deriving enjoyment from the War, though she may not have been aware of the fact. I wondered why it was necessary for the Western Front to be ‘attractively advertised’ by such intolerable twaddle. What was this camouflage War which was manufactured by the press to aid the imaginations of people who had never seen the real thing? Many of them probably said that the papers gave them a sa
ne and vigorous view of the overwhelming tragedy. ‘Naturally’, they would remark, ‘the lads from the front are inclined to be a little morbid about it; one expects that, after all they’ve been through. Their close contact with the War has diminished their realization of its spiritual aspects.’ Then they would add something about ‘the healing of Nations’. Such people needed to have their noses rubbed in a few rank physical facts, such as what a company of men smelt like after they’d been in action for a week…. The gong rang for luncheon, and Lady Asterisk left off reading a book by Tagore (whose mystical philosophies had hitherto seemed to me nebulous and unsatisfying).
It must not be supposed that I was ungrateful for my good luck. For several days on end I could feel obliviously contented, and in weaker moments there was an absurd hope that the War might be over before next autumn. Rambling among woods and meadows, I could ‘take sweet counsel’ with the country-side; sitting on a grassy bank and lifting my face to the sun, I could feel an intensity of thankfulness such as I’d never known before the War; listening to the little brook that bubbled out of a copse and across a rushy field, I could discard my personal relationship with the military machine and its ant-like armies. On my way home I would pass old Mr Jukes leaning on his garden gate, or an ancient labourer mending gaps in a hedge. I would stop to gaze at the loveliness of apple-blossom when the sun came out after a shower. And the protective hospitality of Nutwood Manor was almost bewildering when compared with an average twenty-four hours in a front-line trench.
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 2 - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer Page 21