Valour

by Warwick Deeping

  “Here, sir.”

  “Feeling all right, Sykes?”

  “A1, sir.”

  “That’s good.”

  A long line of motor lorries ground their way along the road, with no lights showing, and there were more lorries coming back, with an occasional ambulance-car working its way towards some clearing-hospital. Then an R.F.A. battery went by, visible only as a series of dim shapes, drifting out of the darkness and disappearing almost at once. The 53rd were using their water-bottles, and munching odd scraps of biscuit.

  “Fall in.”

  On they went again, sighting on a dim, dark hill far ahead of them things that looked like bluish falling stars.

  “What’s that?”

  “Flares.”

  “And there’s a bullet, my boy, reg’lar lost spirit.”

  “Then that’s the firing line over there?”

  “It is. You’ve hit it!”

  Two minutes later they were halted, having left their transport some miles back. The officers were called together, and stood grouped round the Colonel, the Adjutant, a staff captain, and a subaltern from some other battalion who was to act as guide. Shells were passing high overhead from the howitzers and big guns in the rear.

  Then they were moving once more, and within five minutes they had left the open country and were filing along a communication trench, with a narrow strip of sky studded with stars above them.

  A grey June dawn found the 53rd in occupation of a certain length of the firing line, with the battalion that they had relieved in a system of support trenches in the rear, and for the 53rd the day proved a busy one. The sector was new to them; all its winding ways and redoubts, and danger points, its machine-gun emplacements and dug-outs had to be “mapped out” in the brains of those who were responsible. Trench-life has a complex system of its own; it is a life of specialisation, and every man has his place in it, from the M.O. to the gas expert, and from the C.O. to some poor devil in a listening-post, who is always fancying that he hears the enemy’s miners at work under his lair. D Company was given so many yards of front-line trench, with the care and use of a rather important observation post. As a matter of fact there was not much to observe for the moment, save the innumerable spurts of smoke and earth that the British shells were knocking up along the German lines.

  Aeroplanes swarmed overhead. As for the noise, it was indescribable, monstrous, with howitzers, long-range guns, field-pieces and trench-mortars all thudding and booming and clanging in one vast chorus. It had a peculiar and varying effect upon the men; some had a dazed, stunned look; others grew irritable; a few had the air of being a little bit drunk. And this noise went on and on without cessation, and with such a rush and crash of shells that men felt dizzy and sick.

  Pierce, with his steel helmet on, and his gas helmet slung ready in its satchel, was standing with his back against the trench wall when Corporal Palk came round a traverse with a set grin on his face.

  “’Allo, Prince, we’re in it, by Gawd!”

  His words were lost in the din, and Hammersly shook his head to show that he had not heard. Palk came close and shouted.

  “Bit noisy, those guns. But ain’t Fritz catchin’ it! ’Allo, old cock, ’ow’s yerself?”

  This to an imperturbable child who lounged up with his steel helmet on the back of his head, and an air of serene boredom. He had seen a year’s trench warfare, and had been wounded at Loos, and he knew all that was to be known about anything and everything connected with the war.

  “Damn fine ditches these,” roared Palk.

  “So-so,” said the imperturbable one, “but we shan’t be in ’em long; just a week-end visit.”

  Palk’s grin broadened.

  “The band’s playin’ the music of: ‘We’re goin’ over the Top.’”

  It was no rumour, no mere piece of trench gossip; the great drama was complete in all its gigantic details, and moving towards its inevitable climax. The men of the 53rd understood the meaning of that month at St. Just, with its physical drill and route marching, bayonet fighting and extended order drill, and all the snap and dash and ardour of young men trained to the last muscle. They were to be part of the great striking force; a bit of steel in the spearhead of Britain. And the guns were clearing a way for them, tearing up barbed wire, smashing parapets, machine-gun emplacements and dug-outs, plastering the ground for miles behind the German lines with a hurricane of steel. The war-hawks sailed and swooped overhead, plucking out the eyes of the German army. The “Great Push” was at hand.

  And Hammersly sat in the corner of a dug-out writing home. He was surprised at his own calmness, and at the absence of all self-pity. He was conscious of an intense curiosity, an excited feeling of lightness somewhere about the pit of the stomach. He had no illusions as to what might happen on the morrow; he was nearer death than he had ever been in his life before, and yet he was not afraid. Nor did he allow himself to be inspired by any hope. The unknown lay in front of him like a black fog, and he was going to leap into it with thousands of other good men and true; men who were strangely calm, strangely resigned, strangely contented. There was no future so far as the individual was concerned, and Hammersly was so much the lord of his own ego, that had he been offered the choice of some safe billet behind the lines, he would have refused it, and chosen to stay with the 53rd. It is the spirit of comradeship that counts at such a crisis.

  He scribbled his last letters to Janet and his father, and they were brave letters in which no sentimental self-pity could be detected.

  “Dearest,” he wrote to Janet, “I cannot tell you much, but we hope that great things will happen. I am in good heart, and proud to be here, and I do not mean you to be ashamed of me. The men are fine, and we are in splendid form. I am out for that badge of honour, and your letter lies over my heart.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  One hour more; forty-five minutes; half an hour!

  The men lay stretched on the sloping bank of the “trench of departure,” as the French call it, with a shrieking arch of shells flying over them and bursting in such numbers that the explosions merged into one long crash. Hammersly lay between McVittie and Lambourne. Both these good comrades looked rather white about the mouth, and he wondered if his face had the same colour. McVittie appeared to be whistling, judging by the puckering of his lips, but no sound of whistling was audible. Lambourne was picking up bits of soil, and with great gravity rolling them between finger and thumb, his eyes set in a blind stare. Hammersly guessed that Lambourne’s thoughts were far away in that Dorsetshire village, where the soft country was still full of the mystery and the ripe greenness of early summer. There were poppies in flower up above the trenches where the soil had not been disturbed of late; poppies that were the colour of blood.

  Fifteen minutes! Lambourne turned suddenly and held out a hand to Pierce. His mouth opened and he said something that sounded like “good luck,” but the grip of their hands was eloquent enough. Then “The Boy” appeared, very excited and a little pale, but smiling at the men, and keeping an eye on his wrist-watch. McVittie had drawn a photo out of his pocket, the photo of a girl; he looked at it for fully a minute with extraordinary intentness, and then slipped it back into his pocket, solemn and self-satisfied.

  Captain Guest kept passing up and down, and his face shone as though a white light blazed behind it. He paused and spoke to Hammersly, and for a moment these two men stood and looked into each other’s eyes.

  “This is a great day; I would not have missed it.”

  “Nor I, sir.”

  Guest smiled at him, and Hammersly felt that a badge of courage had been pinned upon his tunic.

  Five minutes!

  The men dug their toes into the steep slope, and crouched like sprinters getting ready for a race. “The Boy” was there, with his steel helmet on a level with the parapet, a revolver in one hand, a trench dagger in the other. He kept his eyes on his watch. And Hammersly found himself thinking of Janet—thinking of her with
such vivid intensity that she seemed with him there in that trench, a passionate and proudly inspiring presence, more eloquent than death.

  One minute!

  A sudden, miraculous silence, as all those smoking guns stopped firing, and the shells ceased rushing overhead. Then a strange, far-spreading cheer.

  Hammersly saw “The Boy” rise up and go over the parapet with a wave of the hand. The 53rd went out like one man after those devoted leaders who had trained with them for the great ordeal.

  Ask any man to give you a connected account of all that happened on such a day, and he will look at you with half-contemptuous and half-wondering eyes. As the youngsters put it in their letters: “Imagine an earthquake, a dust-storm, and two or three thunderstorms going on all at once, with us getting killed and killing other people, losing ourselves, falling into shell-holes, cursing, sweating, finding your boots red after treading in something. Then—I stopped to blow my nose!” The business is too huge, too terrible. All that Hammersly knew was that they went forward across No-Man’s Land, took a smashed trench that was full of corpses, went forward again into a hell of machine-gun and shell-fire, got mixed up in a wilderness of death and destruction, blundered against more Germans, killed them, got still more mixed up, and he had no ideas as to time or place. The battalion seemed to have melted away, and a moment came when he found himself utterly alone, staring at a dead German whose head had been blown off.

  Then a shell burst near him. He dodged, and fell into a shell-crater, and in the crater he found Corporal Palk. He had a smashed leg, and was swearing at it.

  “’Allo, old man, come in out of the rain.”

  He recognised Hammersly.

  “What-o’, old Prince! Got it in the back—somewhere?”

  Hammersly explained that he had not been hit, and that his sudden disorderly descent into the crater had been unstudied and unintentional. He knelt down and set to work on Palk’s leg, cutting off the puttee with his clasp knife, and slitting the trouser-leg up the seam, while the Corporal unearthed a rather tired-looking cigarette from his breast-pocket and asked Hammersly for a match.

  “Blimy, but you’ve ’ad a bosh on yer tin ’at!”

  “I remember something making a row.”

  Palk called the heavens to witness.

  “’E remembers somethin’ makin’ a row! That tin ’at should ’ave bin yer christenin’ mug, bloke. Gawd, but I was forgettin’!”

  “Forgetting what? Hold on a moment till I have got this first field dressing fixed.”

  But Palk tapped him on the shoulder, and stared into his face.

  “The Captain’s out there.”

  “What, Captain Guest?”

  “‘Just you stay ’ere, Corp’ral,’ ’e says to me; ‘I’m goin’ on. I can see one or two of the boys lyin’ out over there.’ And on ’e went. Then a —— machine-gun started spittin’. You can ’ear the blighter at it now. And I’ve a sort of feelin’, Prince, that the Captain’s lyin’ out there, for ’e’s never come back.”

  Pierce said very quietly: “I’ll go and see.”

  He went, and in going he discovered the spontaneity of certain kinds of courage, and the way a man behaves when his heart is touched. That particular machine-gun was firing from some hole or other in a spiteful and panicky fashion, but Hammersly was not thinking of machine-guns; he was thinking of finding Guest.

  He came quite suddenly upon him, lying in a little hollow, one leg crooked out at an absurd angle, his chin resting on his crossed arms. He raised his head when he saw Hammersly, and a queer look came into his eyes.

  “What the devil are you doing out here? Get back!”

  “I heard you were lying out here, sir.”

  “Well, get back, get down. Can’t you hear that damned machine-gun?”

  “I can’t help the machine-gun.”

  “We have been cut up, and my right thigh is smashed. Get back under cover.”

  “There is a goodish crater fifty yards away.”

  Guest stared at him intently.

  “Look here, Hammersly, it’s damned plucky of you, but your life is as good as mine, and I order you to crawl back to the nearest trench.”

  Hammersly crouched down.

  “Sorry, sir; this is the second time I have refused to obey orders. I came out to find you, and you are going to let me get you into that shell-crater.”

  Guest’s eyes held his.

  “All right. Somehow, I think you mean it.”

  Hammersly crawled close to Guest, and sitting down, unwound his own puttees to serve as bandages.

  “Afraid I may hurt you a bit, sir.”

  “Carry on.”

  Hammersly splinted the broken thigh with his rifle and the scabbard of his bayonet, and lashed Guest’s feet together. It was quite a creditable piece of “first aid” work, though it made Guest grit his teeth.

  “The best way will be for me to drag you.”

  “I think I can crawl now. It was that wobbly leg that made it hurt so damnably.”

  “Are you sure, sir?”

  “Let’s try. I am going to do a little land-swimming.”

  It proved a slow and rather agonising business, but they reached the shell crater in safety, where Corporal Palk welcomed them with an absurd and exuberant bray.

  “Blimy, if that ain’t a bit of all right, sir. Good man, ol’ Prince.”

  The adventure had sharpened Hammersly’s appetite. That German machine-gun was hiccoughing as though its inwards were out of order, and but for an occasional shell the neighbourhood seemed comparatively quiet. Then the machine-gun jammed and stopped firing, and Hammersly slunk out of the shell-crater and betrayed an extraordinary business capacity. He collected three more wounded men, several water-bottles, a box of bombs, and a supply of emergency rations.

  Corporal Palk grew ecstatic.

  “Blimy, sir, if this ’ere ’ole don’t begin to look like ’ome!”

  They settled down to wait for the dusk, or for the coming of some of their own men. Hammersly had offered to try and make his way back, and to send up stretcher-bearers, but Captain Guest ordered him to stay.

  “I would rather you stuck here, Hammersly.”

  It was said in an undertone, and Pierce stayed.

  The luck had been with him that day, and his luck still held, even when Corporal Palk poked his nose over the edge of the shell crater and sighted that German patrol.

  “Lumme—Boches!”

  The patrol was about a hundred yards away, and advancing in the direction of the crater. There appeared to be about twenty Germans, grey, clumsy figures in their badly-fitting uniforms and flat caps. Their bayonets glittered as they spread out and began searching the ground.

  “’Ell!”

  Corporal Palk’s eyes glared in a white face.

  “Bayonetin’ our wounded! Saw two of ’em ’jabbin’ at a chap over there. ’Ere, gimme a rifle.”

  But Hammersly was bending over the box of bombs. He was a trained bomber, and like most players of games, a pretty expert thrower. Captain Guest’s voice rapped out like a machine-gun.

  “Put your head down, Palk, and leave that rifle alone for a moment.”

  He glanced meaningly at Hammersly.

  “We shall have to make a fight. Will you take it on? Let them come fairly close, and catch them in a bunch if you can. How many are there, Corporal?”

  “’Bout twenty, sir.”

  “Give me your rifle, and you other men—do what you can. We must back up Hammersly.”

  The Boches came on towards the crater, and Pierce watched them from behind a twisted tuft of grass. They were on the alert, but did not appear to expect immediate trouble ahead of them; in fact, they bunched together when they were about twenty yards from the crater, and Hammersly saw his chance.

  He withdrew the catch, waited a second, and then stood up and threw the bomb. He was out of the crater and ready with a second just as the first exploded. He had timed the thing and pitched it perfectly, fo
r it burst in the middle of the group and made a useful mess. Hammersly pitched the second a trifle short, and before he could throw his third the Germans were ready to retaliate.

  He had scrambled clear of the crater so as to draw the Germans away from it, and in such a fight quick wits and quick feet serve. The Boches had scattered and were using both bombs and rifles, but luckily they were flurried and a little scared, and the irrepressible Palk was cracking away at them like mad.

  Then Hammersly fell into a shell-hole, and the fall saved him. A bomb burst a yard away, and his left foot was put out of action forever. He remembered hearing Palk shouting:

  “What price the boys! ’I, ’i, this way for the Clapham ’bus! Blast me, they’ve got a Lewis gun! Oh——!”

  The remnant of the German patrol turned and bolted as a wave of brown figures hunted them homewards with the bayonet.

  A wonderful sense of contentment possessed Pierce Hammersly as they carried him back to the nearest dressing-station. His foot and his leg felt like so much red-hot iron, but somehow the pain did not seem to matter. He knew that he had done well, that he had recovered his self-respect, that he had saved Guest’s life. And he was out of this hell for a while, with a pretty sure chance of seeing the people at home.

  The dressing-station was a big dug-out tunnelled in the side of a hill. It had a sort of sunk courtyard in front of it, protected by high sandbag walls. The space was packed with stretchers; so were the approaches and the winding ways that led down to it. Slightly wounded men squatted by scores in every alley and corner, even on the banks and open ground above. As for the stretchers—they carried every sort of anguish, every sort of wound. There were figures that lay very still, figures that made a soft moaning, figures that laughed and smoked, figures that twisted with pain. Hammersly found himself lying in the shade of a bank, wondering how long it would be before his turn came to be dressed. Someone gave him a cigarette, and lit it for him. In turning slightly on his side, his eyes met the eyes of the occupant of the next stretcher. It was Captain Guest.

  “I hope you are not badly hit, old man.”