Yet this need not have been so. Barnack was a splendid soldier, and had he possessed a little more kindness, shown a little more sympathy, these men would have adored him. Sentiment counts even in war, and the ordinary Englishman is a sentimental creature. A smile and a pat on the shoulder would have sent many a young officer over the parapet with proud eyes and a full heart.
Hammersly’s fiery individualism began to chafe and fret. He had just too much pride to let himself be servile, for servility was what he called it. He was no braver than the other men; he had just as much to fear from his Colonel’s peculiar grimness.
His first flash of revolt showed itself one day at dinner. Barnack had been laying down the law on some shred of classical history. He was wrong, and Hammersly contradicted him.
Barnack refused to be corrected.
“You are wrong, Mr. Hammersly. You may have been at school more recently, but I remember a passage in Cæsar——”
He misquoted the passage, and mispronounced the Latin. Hammersly refused to give way.
“I happen to remember the passage, sir; we used to render it rather differently.”
“And when was that, Mr. Hammersly?”
“I took a first in Classics at Cambridge.”
Somebody changed the subject, and Hammersly felt that he had played the prig, but Barnack’s assumption of autocracy in everything exasperated him. The man posed as a scholar, and his Latin was the Latin of a hedge-priest.
Two days later he was lectured for some slight slackness in discipline. Barnack was right, and he did not spare a man when he was teaching him his duty.
“If this happens again, Mr. Hammersly——”
Pierce stood with head up, nostrils dilated.
“It shall not happen again, sir. I have no intention of putting myself in a position to be humiliated.”
A wiser man would have told him not to be a touchy fool, but Barnack lectured him grimly for five minutes.
Then Hammersly discovered that he was unpopular in the mess. He reasoned it out, and the result of his reflections filled him with bitter scorn. He believed that his fellow officers were afraid to approve of him, that they preferred to stand well with Barnack. He was right, and he was wrong, but there was some truth in his suspicions.
He flared up over it to Lunt.
“Well,” said that sensitive youth, colouring, “it does make a difference, you know. The C.O. is pretty stiff on everybody.”
“But, good God, I think I would rather be shot!”
Lunt looked at him queerly.
“Oh, a bullet’s all right, clean and nice. But there are other things.”
“What things?”
“Well, you haven’t seen any bombing yet—or high explosives bursting in your trench. The life happens to have been rather quiet.”
Hammersly looked grave.
“I see,” he said, “one is so—green—at first.”
Lunt’s words proved prophetic, for Colonel Barnack sent for Pierce after breakfast next morning.
“Lieutenant Hammersly!”
“Sir.”
“I make a point of making my junior officers gain all the experience that is possible. Captain Stradling, our bombing officer, has been sapping towards the Turkish trenches, and has made a bombing station. He expects to do some work to-day, and I wish you to be with him for the sake of the experience.”
“Shall I report to Captain Stradling, sir?”
“At once.”
Pierce saluted and went in search of knowledge.
He found Captain Stradling in a sort of sandbagged hole at the end of a track leading out towards the Turkish lines. The pit had its forepart roofed in with balks of timber and earth. Bolt-holes into shallow dug-outs opened from the trench. In the centre of the pit they had rigged up a catapult for throwing bombs, a weird arrangement of wood and elastic perched on a pile of sandbags. A corporal with a periscope was acting as observer.
Pierce reported to Captain Stradling.
“I have been detailed for experience.”
Stradling was a laconic but irritable officer. He led a sort of wasp’s life, and no one loved him.
“I dare say you’ll get it,” he said.
They started loosing off bombs from the catapult, while the observer watched where they dropped and reported to his officer.
“Still a yard short, sir. Bit too much that time; she went over. That’s got ’em, fair in the trench.”
But the other side could play the same game, and the luck was with the Turks that morning. The corporal observer was so intent on watching the range of his own bombs, that he failed to notice one that was lobbed up by the Turks. It scored what might be called a direct hit, bursting right on Captain Stradling’s catapult.
Hammersly happened to be standing in the mouth of one of the dug-outs, and he was not touched, but the bombing pit was full of blood and groans. There had been five men in it with Stradling, and all but one were hit.
The untouched man ran screaming down the trench:
“Stretcher bearers, stretcher bearers!”
Hammersly, sick with horror and disgust, seized one of the wounded men, and dragged him out of the bombing pit. He knew now what Lunt had meant when he had spoken of those “other things.”
CHAPTER XIII
The 74th Footshires were relieved next day, and went back for seven days to a rest camp in the big gully.
It was a wonderful place, this gully; a huge canon cutting its way through the plateau to the sea, unsuspected till you tumbled into it, a world in itself when once you began to explore it. The place had a devilish beauty, a wild mystery of its own, with its winding ways, its masses of scrub and young trees, its rocky walls and little secret clefts and crannies. After heavy rains its floor became the bed of a torrent that washed all sorts of casual equipment down to the sea.
The great gully gave concealment, shade; but the stuffy heat and the flies almost negatived its virtues. Moreover, there had been bloody fighting in it not many weeks ago, and the Turkish dead still lay undiscovered and unburied in odd corners. The Footshires had their camping ground on a low, scrub-covered hill, where a small gully entered the main one; but to call it a “rest camp” was a piece of flattery. The flies and “fatigues” saw to it that the men got no rest; there were trenches to be dug, roads made, ground cleared, and men were scarce. In fact, the troops who were down from the firing-line were far harder worked than they were in the trenches, and Colonel Barnack never relaxed; discipline was even stricter and more irksome.
As for Pierce Hammersly, he was passing through a period of bitter disillusionment and active disgust. The scene in that bombing pit haunted him, and he could not get the horror of it out of his head. Moreover, the life itself was intensely trying to a man with a sensitive temperament, and Hammersly was feeling the strain of it both in body and mind. Some men stood no more than a week of it, and then went sick. Hammersly found the heat and the flies and the food almost unbearable; he felt limp and moody and absurdly irritable. The glare gave him a chronic headache; the various smells sickened him; he slept badly and lost his appetite.
Also, his loneliness was against him, and the mess, hostile, critical; and Hammersly’s pride did not help him to make good. No one seemed to care. He felt that Barnack distrusted him, and that there were bitter days ahead.
One afternoon, when he was off duty, he wandered out alone, weighed down by a most damnable sense of loneliness, for some of the other men had gone bathing and they had not asked him to join them.
The day seemed uneventful; the Turks were doing no shelling; the sun shone, and the sea lay like glass. He loafed along the cliff, soul-sick and rebellious, thinking of the glory that might have been and was not.
“This damned humiliation!”
A shady cleft in the cliff attracted him, and he scrambled down and lay flat on his back upon a bed of heather. What wild tosh the journalists talked about the romance of war! There were times when he had dreamed of heroism,
and now he had discovered the realities beneath the glamour—such things as mean fear, servility, bombs, flies on jam, corpses over the parapet, stenches, yellow soul-sick faces, men covered with sores.
He tried to lose the horror of it for an hour by thinking of Janet and home, but love proved to be a new anguish. He wanted to see her again; he wanted to know that he would see her again. But would he? Supposing Barnack sent him over the parapet—made him bombing officer!
Oh, hell!
What was the use of it all; what was the use of his yearning for home? Eight weeks had passed since he had left England, and he had not received a single letter. Damn those who were responsible! Did they think that a man in the trenches was too busy to read letters from the woman he loved? What good were they doing out here, anyway? The new push at Suvla appeared to have fizzled out; things always did fizzle out; someone had muddled.
If only he could see Janet, even for three minutes; touch her, speak to her, make her feel what his love meant! He wondered whether she had received his letters; was she worrying, was she sad? Loving Janet did not help him; it made him more rebellious, more passionately eager to live.
Hammersly lay there a long while, staring up at the blue sky. Down there they would be eating biscuits and jam, with flies in maddening rivalry, and drinking stewed tea. No, he would not go back yet; he was off duty, there were few precious moments that he could call his own.
About six o’clock he picked himself up, and started on his way back to the gully, and suddenly the Turkish guns opened fire, spoiling the peace of a summer evening. Hammersly could see their shells bursting on the front line trenches along The Bluff—the trenches that the Footshires had been holding a few days ago. Then English field-pieces began to yap back, and an artillery duel appeared probable.
The noise fretted Hammersly’s nerves. Why all this pother; what was the use of it; why didn’t the fools let well alone? It struck him as being so senseless, so ghastly, so futile. The big howitzers in the gully began clanging as he made his way down into it, and Hammersly had learnt to hate those howitzers. They were always stirring up trouble; bringing back shells on other people’s heads.
When he reached the Footshires’ lines, a corporal met him.
“Mr. Hammersly, you’re wanted, sir.”
“Where?”
“At Regimental Headquarters.”
Several officers were standing outside the improvised shelter of boxes and blankets that served as a mess, and Hammersly caught a fleeting grin on the face of one or two of them. He could hear Colonel Barnack’s voice inside the mess, hard, sententious, and dogmatic.
“You will take B Company up to Dirty Dick’s, Captain Goss, and report to Colonel Fullerton. Isn’t Mr. Hammersly here yet?”
Pierce stood in the doorway and saluted.
“Here, sir.”
Barnack was sitting at the table, and he had been writing a letter. He stared at Hammersly for a moment with hard blue eyes.
“You are late, Mr. Hammersly.”
“I was off duty, sir.”
“An officer who has been here so short a time should never consider himself off duty.”
“I asked you, sir.”
“That will do, Mr. Hammersly. Captain Goss, get your men up as quickly as possible; Colonel Fullerton seems to expect an attack.”
“Yes, sir.”
Captain Goss was a sandy-haired, hard-bitten cynic with an unpleasant temper. He swept Hammersly off with him.
“For God’s sake get a move on, Hammersly; those two platoons of yours are damned slack. This does us out of our dinner.”
Hammersly’s eyes gave an angry gleam.
“Shall I leave a fatigue party behind to bring up your dinner, Goss?”
His senior turned on him like a fierce dog.
“None of that, or I’ll report you. I don’t stand any insolence from my juniors.”
There was a scare on, and Colonel Fullerton, whose men held the front line up at The Bluff, had reported that he expected an attack and that he needed reinforcements. The front line trench that the Footshires were bound for had been christened “Dirty Dick’s,” and it was particularly dirty that August evening. The Turks had been pounding the parapet and in going up the communication trench B Company found itself blocking the way of the regimental stretcher-bearers, who were coming down with their ghastly bundles of blood and khaki. There was some cursing and disorder, with an occasional high explosive flinging dirt down into the trench, but the infantry flattened themselves against the walls and let the stretcher-bearers through.
“Dirty Dick’s” proved to be a most unsavoury place, a jumble of sandbags, earth, live and dead men, barbed wire, dirt and blood. The Turkish shells had knocked breaches in the parapet, and the men were crouching ready to meet the expected attack. An excited subaltern was storming up and down, shouting all sorts of encouraging nonsense. Shrapnel was bursting overhead, and as the Footshires streamed up a high explosive landed in the trench, and made a tragic mess of the men in the vicinity.
Hammersly’s face was the colour of chalk. This was his second real glimpse of the filthy horrors of modern war, and they shocked the deeps of his soul. He felt most damnably afraid. He had seen those fragments of human flesh littered about, and it was not so much the fear of death that gripped him, as a fear of being loathsomely mangled, torn, rent open. Nothing but a desperate pride kept him from playing the coward, for his mouth was as dry as a brick, and his loins felt broken.
He posted his two platoons along the section allotted to him, and stood by to await developments. An unused periscope lay on the fire-platform, and Hammersly picked it up, and, leaning against the parapet, set himself to watch the Turkish trenches. He could see nothing but a stretch of bare ground, some barbed wire and a ridge of yellowish dirt topped with sandbags; but even peering into the mirror of that periscope seemed better than doing nothing.
A shell burst close overhead, and shrapnel spattered into the trench, but no one was hit. Hammersly had flattened himself instinctively against the parapet, and at the same moment Captain Goss came round the traverse with a sulky look in his eyes.
He spotted Hammersly and frowned.
“Mr. Hammersly!”
“Hallo!”
“I want to speak to you.”
He drew Pierce aside.
“Look here, Hammersly, this won’t do at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“You must set the men a better example. Keep moving about. You can’t go flattening yourself against the parapet like that.”
Hammersly went scarlet.
“Do you mean to suggest——?”
“Rot; I’m not suggesting anything.”
“I was keeping an eye on the Turkish trenches.”
“Leave that to someone else, and get a move on. It’s up to you to set the men an example.”
Hammersly flung his hand up in a salute, faced about and began walking up and down the trench with fury in his eyes. He was afraid no longer, but he had ceased to care what happened to his unit, to the Brigade, to the Division, to any damned thing that was English. The devil of revolt stormed in him. His pride had been grossly humiliated, and a man of Hammersly’s temperament fights on his pride and his nerves.
The shelling ceased about sunset, but there was no rush of sturdy Anatolian peasants over the parapet. B Company stood to their arms in the front line trench all through the night, giving the opposing parapet an occasional burst of rapid fire just to discourage the Turks from coming out into the open. Working parties toiled at repairing the damage done by the shell fire. The scare died a natural death soon after dawn, and the Footshires marched back to their rest camp in the gully, and breakfasted on tea and bully beef.
Captain Goss reported to Colonel Barnack, and his report included a confidential character sketch of Pierce Hammersly.
“The chap has cold feet, sir. I had to tell him off.”
“Didn’t he behave well?”
“I caugh
t him making himself as small as possible, and setting the men a bad example. He’s too nervy, and inclined to be insolent.”
Barnack bit hard at the stem of his pipe and frowned.
“I have been watching this officer, Captain Goss, and I have formed much the same opinion of him. He wants hardening, disciplining.”
“That’s just it, sir.”
So the battle went on, this clashing of temperaments, this struggle between passionate pride and obdurate fanaticism. Colonel Barnack believed himself to be a maker of men, and he set himself to “make” Pierce Hammersly, to discipline him, to teach him that resigned fatalism that is obedience. Barnack acted with the highest motives, and from a sense of duty. His Prussianism was admirable in its way, but Hammersly was the one man upon whom it was doomed to fail. It was ice against fire, granite against water. These two men never could have harmonised, and Barnack’s grim ideals thrust the younger man towards an inevitable disaster.
CHAPTER XIV
In the library at Orchards Gerard Hammersly looked down out of his gilt frame, with those proud eyes of his, and that restive lifting of his head. This picture had come to have a peculiar fascination for Janet Yorke. She never entered the house of the Hammerslys without making some attempt to slip into the library and gaze at the man in his blue uniform, this ancestor of the Hammerslys whose mutinous pride had brought him notoriety and disgrace. He had Pierce’s eyes, Pierce’s sensitive nostrils, the same mobile mouth, the same curves of chin and forehead.
Janet would sit on the library table and stare at Uncle Gerard. Sometimes he seemed to smile at her with sardonic shrewdness, as though he could have given substance to her vague, intuitive dreads. Sometimes—when the light was poor—he looked scornful, mysterious, a mere haughty rebel. The portrait haunted her with prophetic suggestions. It made her understand the man she loved, and understanding taught her to fear for him.
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