The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston 2 - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

by Siegfried Sassoon

  It was about three o’clock when the taxi passed the gates of Brotherhood’s Explosive Works and drew up outside the officers’ quarters at Clitherland. The sky was cloudless and the lines of huts had an air of ominous inactivity. Nobody seemed to be about, for at that hour the troops were out on the training field. A bored sentry was the only witness of my arrival, and for him there was nothing remarkable in a second-lieutenant telling a taxi-man to dump his luggage down outside the officers’ mess. For me, however, there now seemed something almost surreptitious about my return. It was as though I’d come skulking back to see how much damage had been caused by that egregious projectile, my protest. But the camp was exactly as it would have been if I’d returned as a dutiful young officer. It was I who was desolate and distracted; and it would have been no consolation to me if I could have realized that, in my mind, the familiar scene was having a momentary and ghastly existence which would never be repeated.

  For a few moments I stared wildly at the huts, conscious (though my brain was blank) that there was some sort of climax in my stupefied recognition of reality. One final wrench, and all my obedient associations with Clitherland would be shattered.

  It is probable that I put my tie straight and adjusted my belt-buckle to its central position between the tunic buttons. There was only one thing to be done after that. I walked into the Orderly Room, halted in front of a table, and saluted dizzily.

  After the glaring sunlight, the room seemed almost dark. When I raised my eyes it was not the Colonel who was sitting at the table, but Major Macartney. At another table, ostensibly busy with Army forms and papers, was the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant (a good friend of mine who had lost a leg in Gallipoli). I stood there, incapable of expectation. Then, to my astonishment, the Major rose, leant across the table, and shook hands with me.

  ‘How are you, Sherston? I’m glad to see you back again.’ His deep voice had its usual kindly tone, but his manner betrayed acute embarrassment. No one could have been less glad to see me back again than he was. But he at once picked up his cap and asked me to come with him to his room, which was only a few steps away. Silently we entered the hut, our feet clumping along the boards of the passage. Speechless and respectful, I accepted the chair which he offered me. There we were, in the comfortless little room which had been his local habitation for the past twenty-seven months. There we were; and the unfortunate Major hadn’t a ghost of an idea what to say.

  He was a man of great delicacy of feeling. I have seldom known as fine a gentleman. For him the interview must have been as agonizing as it was for me. I wanted to make things easier for him; but what could I say? And what could he do for me, except, perhaps, offer me a cigar? He did so. I can honestly say that I have never refused a cigar with anything like so much regret. To have accepted it would have been a sign of surrender. It would have meant that the Major and myself could have puffed our cigars and debated – with all requisite seriousness, of course – the best way of extricating me from my dilemma. How blissful that would have been! For my indiscretion might positively have been ‘laughed off’ (as a temporary aberration brought on, perhaps, by an overdose of solitude after coming out of hospital). No such agreeable solution being possible, the Major began by explaining that the Colonel was away on leave. ‘He is deeply concerned about you, and fully prepared to overlook the’ – here he hesitated – ‘the paper which you sent him. He has asked me to urge you most earnestly to – er – dismiss the whole matter from your mind.’ Nothing could have been more earnest than the way he looked at me when he stopped speaking. I replied that I was deeply grateful but I couldn’t change my mind. In the ensuing silence I felt that I was committing a breach, not so much of discipline as of decorum.

  The disappointed Major made a renewed effort. ‘But, Sherston, isn’t it possible for you to reconsider your – er – ultimatum?’ This was the first time I’d heard it called an ultimatum, and the locution epitomized the Major’s inability to find words to fit the situation. I embarked on a floundering explanation of my mental attitude with regard to the War; but I couldn’t make it sound convincing, and at the back of my mind was a misgiving that I must seem to him rather crazy. To be telling the acting-Colonel of my regimental Training Depot that I had come to the conclusion that England ought to make peace with Germany – was this altogether in focus with right-mindedness? No; it was useless to expect him to take me seriously as an ultimatumist. So I gazed fixedly at the floor and said, ‘Hadn’t you better have me put under arrest at once?’ – thereby causing poor Major Macartney additional discomfort. My remark recoiled on me, almost as if I’d uttered something unmentionable. ‘I’d rather die than do such a thing!’ he exclaimed. He was a reticent man, and that was his way of expressing his feeling about those whom he had watched, month after month, going out to the trenches, as he would have gone himself had he been a younger man.

  At this point it was obviously his duty to remonstrate with me severely and to assert his authority. But what fulminations could be effective against one whose only object was to be put under arrest?… ‘As long as he doesn’t really think I’m dotty!’ I thought. But he showed no symptom of that, as far as I was aware; and he was a man who made one feel that he trusted one’s integrity, however much he might disagree with one’s opinions.

  No solution having been arrived at for the present, he now suggested – in confidential tones which somehow implied sympathetic understanding of my predicament – that I should go to the Exchange Hotel in Liverpool and there await further instructions. I gladly acquiesced, and we emerged from the hut a little less funereally than we had entered it. My taxi-man was still waiting, for in my bewilderment I had forgotten to pay him. Once more the Major grasped my hand, and if I did not thank him for his kindness it was because my gratitude was too great. So I trundled unexpectedly back to Liverpool; and although, in all likelihood, my troubles were only just starting, an immense load had been lifted from my mind. At the Exchange Hotel (which was quiet and rarely frequented by the Clitherland officers) I thoroughly enjoyed my tea, for I’d eaten nothing since breakfast. After that I lit my pipe and thought how nice it was not to be under arrest. I had got over the worst part of the show, and now there was nothing to be done except stick to my statement and wait for the M.P. to read it out in the House of Commons.

  7

  For the next three days I hung about the Exchange Hotel in a state of mind which need not be described. I saw no one I knew except a couple of Clitherland subalterns who happened to be dining in the Hotel. They cheerily enquired when I was coming out to the Camp. Evidently they were inquisitive about me, without suspecting anything extraordinary, so I inferred that Orderly Room had been keeping my strange behaviour secret. On Tuesday my one-legged friend, the Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant, came to see me. We managed to avoid mentioning everything connected with my ‘present situation’, and he regaled me with the gossip of the Camp as though nothing were wrong. But when he was departing he handed me an official document which instructed me to proceed to Crewe next day for a Special Medical Board. A railway warrant was enclosed with it.

  Here was a chance of turning aside from the road to court-martialdom, and it would be inaccurate were I to say that I never gave the question two thoughts. Roughly speaking, two thoughts were exactly what I did give to it. One thought urged that I might just as well chuck the whole business and admit that my gesture had been futile. The other one reminded me that this was an inevitable conjuncture in my progress, and that such temptations must be resisted inflexibly. Not that I ever admitted the possibility of my accepting the invitation to Crewe; but I did become conscious that acceptance would be much pleasanter than refusal. Submission being impossible, I called in pride and obstinacy to aid me, throttled my warm feelings toward my well-wishers at Clitherland Camp and burnt my boats by tearing up both railway warrant and Medical Board instructions.

  On Wednesday I tried to feel glad that I was cutting the Medical Board, and applied my mind to Palgrave’s
Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics. I was learning by heart as many poems as possible, my idea being that they would be a help to me in prison, where, I imagined, no books would be allowed. I suppose I ought to try and get used to giving up tobacco, I thought, but I went on smoking just the same (the alternative being to smoke as many pipes as I could while I’d got the chance).

  On Thursday morning I received an encouraging letter from the M.P. who urged me to keep my spirits up and was hoping to raise the question of my statement in the House next week. Early in the afternoon the Colonel called to see me. He found me learning Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale. ‘I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft…. ’ What soft was it, I wondered, re-opening the book. But here was the Colonel, apparently unincensed, shaking my hand, and sitting down opposite me, though already looking fussed and perplexed. He wasn’t a lively-minded man at the best of times, and he didn’t pretend to understand the motives which had actuated me. But with patient common-sense arguments, he did his best to persuade me to stop wanting to stop the War. Fortified by the M.P.’s letter in my pocket, I managed to remain respectfully obdurate, while expressing my real regret for the trouble I was causing him. What appeared to worry him most was the fact that I’d cut the Medical Board. ‘Do you realize, Sherston, that it had been specially arranged for you and that an R.A.M.C. Colonel came all the way from London for it?’ he ejaculated ruefully, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. The poor man – whose existence was dominated by documentary instructions from ‘higher quarters’ – had probably been blamed for my non-appearance; and to disregard such an order was, to one with his habit of mind, like a reversal of the order of nature. As the interview dragged itself along, I began to feel quite optimistic about the progress I was making. The Colonel’s stuttering arguments in support of ‘crushing Prussian militarism’ were those of a middle-aged civilian; and as the overworked superintendent of a reinforcement manufactory, he had never had time to ask himself why North Welshmen were being shipped across to France to be gassed, machine-gunned, and high explosived by Germans. It was absolutely impossible, he asserted, for the War to end until it ended – well, until it ended as it ought to end. Did I think it right that so many men should have been sacrificed for no purpose? ‘And surely it stands to reason, Sherston, that you must be wrong when you set your own opinion against the practically unanimous feeling of the whole British Empire.’ There was no answer I could make to that, so I remained silent, and waited for the British Empire idea to blow over. In conclusion he said, ‘Well, I’ve done all I can for you. I told Mersey Defences that you missed your Board through a misunderstanding of the instructions, but I’m afraid the affair will soon go beyond my control. I beg you to try and reconsider your refusal by to-morrow, and to let us know at once if you do.’

  He looked at me almost irately, and departed without another word. When his bulky figure had vanished I felt that my isolation was perceptibly increasing. All I needed to do was to wait until the affair had got beyond his control. I wished I could have a talk with Tyrrell. But even he wasn’t infallible, for in all our discussions about my plan of campaign he had never foreseen that my senior officers would treat me with this kindly tolerance which was so difficult to endure.

  During the next two days my mind groped and worried around the same purgatorial limbo so incessantly that the whole business began to seem unreal and distorted. Sometimes the wording of my thoughts became incoherent and even nonsensical. At other times I saw everything with the haggard clarity of insomnia.

  So on Saturday afternoon I decided that I really must go and get some fresh air, and I took the electric train to Formby. How much longer would this ghastly show go on, I wondered, as the train pulled up at Clitherland Station. All I wanted now was that the thing should be taken out of my own control, as well as the Colonel’s. I didn’t care how they treated me as long as I wasn’t forced to argue about it any more. At Formby I avoided the Golf Course (remembering, with a gleam of woeful humour, how Aunt Evelyn had urged me to bring my ‘golf sticks’, as she called them). Wandering along the sand dunes I felt outlawed, bitter, and baited. I wanted something to smash and trample on, and in a paroxysm of exasperation I performed the time-honoured gesture of shaking my clenched fists at the sky. Feeling no better for that, I ripped the M.C. ribbon off my tunic and threw it into the mouth of the Mersey. Weighted with significance though this action was, it would have felt more conclusive had the ribbon been heavier. As it was, the poor little thing fell weakly on to the water and floated away as though aware of its own futility. One of my point-to-point cups would have served my purpose more satisfyingly, and they’d meant much the same to me as my Military Cross.

  Watching a big boat which was steaming along the horizon, I realized that protesting against the prolongation of the War was about as much use as shouting at the people on board that ship.

  Next morning I was sitting in the hotel smoking-room in a state of stubborn apathy. I had got just about to the end of my tether. Since it was Sunday and my eighth day in Liverpool I might have chosen this moment for reviewing the past week, though I had nothing to congratulate myself on except the fact that I’d survived seven days without hauling down my flag. It is possible that I meditated some desperate counter-attack which might compel the authorities to treat me harshly, but I had no idea how to do it. ‘Damn it all, I’ve half a mind to go to church,’ I thought, although as far as I could see there was more real religion to be found in the Golden Treasury than in a church which only approved of military-aged men when they were in khaki. Sitting in a sacred edifice wouldn’t help me, I decided. And then I was taken completely by surprise; for there was David Cromlech, knobby-faced and gawky as ever, advancing across the room. His arrival brought instantaneous relief, which I expressed by exclaiming: ‘Thank God you’ve come!’

  He sat down without saying anything. He, too, was pleased to see me, but retained that air of anxious concern with which his eyes had first encountered mine. As usual he looked as if he’d slept in his uniform. Something had snapped inside me and I felt rather silly and hysterical. ‘David, you’ve got an enormous black smudge on your forehead,’ I remarked. Obediently he moistened his handkerchief with his tongue and proceeded to rub the smudge off, tentatively following my instructions as to its whereabouts. During this operation his face was vacant and childish, suggesting an earlier time when his nurse had performed a similar service for him. ‘How on earth did you manage to roll up from the Isle of Wight like this?’ I inquired. He smiled in a knowing way. Already he was beginning to look less as though he were visiting an invalid; but I’d been so much locked up with my own thoughts lately that for the next few minutes I talked nineteen to the dozen, telling him what a hellish time I’d had, how terribly kind the depot officers had been to me, and so on. ‘When I started this anti-war stunt I never dreamt it would be such a long job, getting myself run in for a court martial,’ I concluded, laughing with somewhat hollow gaiety.

  In the meantime David sat moody and silent, his face twitching nervously and his fingers twiddling one of his tunic buttons. ‘Look here, George,’ he said, abruptly, scrutinizing the button as though he’d never seen such a thing before, ‘I’ve come to tell you that you’ve got to drop this anti-war business.’ This was a new idea, for I wasn’t yet beyond my sense of relief at seeing him. ‘But I can’t drop it,’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t you realize that I’m a man with a message? I thought you’d come to see me through the court martial as “prisoner’s friend”.’ We then settled down to an earnest discussion about the ‘political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men were being sacrificed’. He did most of the talking, while I disagreed defensively. But even if our conversation could be reported in full, I am afraid that the verdict of posterity would be against us. We agreed that the world had gone mad; but neither of us could see beyond his own experience, and we weren’t life-learned enough to share the patient selfless stoicism through which men of maturer age wer
e acquiring anonymous glory. Neither of us had the haziest idea of what the politicians were really up to (though it is possible that the politicians were only feeling their way and trusting in providence and the output of munitions to solve their problems). Nevertheless we argued as though the secret confabulations of Cabinet Ministers in various countries were as clear as daylight to us, and our assumption was that they were all wrong, while we, who had been in the trenches, were far-seeing and infallible. But when I said that the War ought to be stopped and it was my duty to do my little bit to stop it, David replied that the War was bound to go on till one side or the other collapsed, and the Pacifists were only meddling with what they didn’t understand. ‘At any rate Thornton Tyrrell’s a jolly fine man and knows a bloody sight more about everything than you do,’ I exclaimed. ‘Tyrrell’s only a doctrinaire,’ replied David, ‘though I grant you he’s a courageous one.’ Before I had time to ask what the hell he knew about doctrinaires, he continued, ‘No one except people who’ve been in the real fighting have any right to interfere about the War; and even they can’t get anything done about it. All they can do is to remain loyal to one another. And you know perfectly well that most of the conscientious objectors are nothing but skrimshankers.’ I retorted that I knew nothing of the sort, and mentioned a young doctor who’d played Rugby Football for Scotland and was now in prison although he could have been doing hospital work if he’d wanted to. David then announced that he’d been doing a bit of wire-pulling on my behalf and that I should soon find that my Pacifist M.P. wouldn’t do me as much good as I expected. This put my back up. David had no right to come butting in about my private affairs. ‘If you’ve really been trying to persuade the authorities not to do anything nasty to me,’ I remarked, ‘that’s about the hopefullest thing I’ve heard. Go on doing it and exercise your usual tact, and you’ll get me two years’ hard labour for certain, and with any luck they’ll decide to shoot me as a sort of deserter.’ He looked so aggrieved at this that I relented and suggested that we’d better have some lunch. But David was always an absent-minded eater, and on this occasion he prodded disapprovingly at his food and then bolted it down as if it were medicine.