The Balliols (46 page)

It was a story that had been told many times.

“The leopard doesn't change his spots,” thought Hugh. “I think I'll take him as a runner. He's the kind of man to keep me in a good humour in a place like this.”

Walker's gun team was posted in a sunken road that ran about a quarter of a mile behind No Man's Land and joined the main communication trenches of a battalion front. The high banks of the road were scarred with the bare earth of funk-holes and lined with the stumps of trees whose latticed branches had once formed a green canopy over the green grasses, where weeds and wild fruit and flowers had rioted in confusion.

At four o'clock on the following afternoon the greater part of the gun team was seated round the dug-out's mouth, cleaning themselves, their rifles, the spare parts of the gun. One or two crouched, huddled in great-coats, their shirts across their knees, searching the seams for lice. With steady deliberation Walker announced his captures.

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Damme if I don't believe I'll get my fifty.”

“You'd better chuck it,” an old soldier counselled him. “You'll never get rid of them things. Why, I was once seven weeks.…”

The Corporal interrupted the discussion.

“You let Walker alone, ‘e's doin' no harm by that, which is more than ‘e can usually say for himself. Did you ‘ear about wot ‘e did last relief?”

Every man in the section had heard the story at least six times, but it was a good yarn, so they murmured “No.” They let the Corporal carry on.

“Well, ‘e was carryin' some belt boxes down to the dump and as they kept on slippin' off his rifle, Walker ‘e looks round for a bit of rope to tie ‘em on with. Well, o' course ‘e didn't find any. So wot do you think ‘e does? 'E whips out 'is wire-cutters and goes up to a bit of telephone wire that was running alongside of the trench, and damme if ‘e doesn't shear off a bit two yards long. 'E ties up 'is belt boxes and trots along to the dump perfectly happy and then next morning the Colonel's telephone's out of order, and Walker wonders why.”

The story was greeted with the usual good-humoured laugh. From the main communication trench came the sound of a fatigue man singing:

“There's a good time coming for the ladies

There's a good time coming for the girls.…”

The gun team caught up the refrain. For Walker it had associations.

“I guess this lane's seen a bit of cuddling in its time.”

“Just like 'Ampstead on a Sunday.”

“That's where I used to go when I was walking out. There was always a nice shady spot somewhere round the Leg o' Mutton pond. Could do with a little of it now.”

The singing from the communication trench grew louder and nearer.

“‘Ullo, ‘ere's the water party back.”

Two men with petrol cans slung round their shoulders, slithered down the track.

“Any news?” they were asked, eagerly.

“Sergeant Major's gone on leaf.”

“Good. Anythink else?”

“Dunno for certain, but a gunner told me as 'ow 'e'd over'eard one of 'is orficers sayin' as 'ow we were going out of the line for a three weeks' rest soon.”

“Good again.”

Walker grunted ominously.

“Don't trust rumours like that. The army don't do you a good turn unless it knows it can get its own back later on. A rest now only means the bloody salient a fortnight later.”

“You're a cheerful blighter!”

“I'm an old soldier. I know their games.”

“There's no need to grumble even if you are.”

“I don't grumble.”

“Don't you! You grumble more than the rest of the ‘ole gun team put together.”

“That's because I'm tireder of the war than they are. What are we doing to-night, any'ow?”

“What we allus do: deepen the emplacement, sandbag the dugout.”

“As usual.”

“As usual.”

“As per bloody usual.”

“And it's time we was gettin' busy on it,” the Corporal said.

It was beginning to grow dark. The lilac of a winter sunset was fading into grey. The outline of an occasional lonely gable stood black against the sky. From behind the line came the rumble of heavy guns. The business of war resumed its suspended life. It was time to post sentries; to arrange the screens that would hide the gun flash, to send a party to the dump for rations.

The arrival of the limbers provided the one excitement of trench life. It was the one thing in the daily routine that really mattered. Attacks might fail, a gun team might be wiped out, dug-outs might be wrecked. That was part of the inevitable machinery of war. One was prepared for that, but if anything went wrong with rations.…

With the rations arrived the mail, the rum issue, rumours. The limber corporal was never without some sensation. Leave had been stopped; there was a big push up north; the Company was to be relieved next week. The men lived for rations. When it was over there was nothing left but to wait patiently till another twenty-four hours had passed.

“Rations up!” cried someone.

There was a surge forward; the men clustered round the bulging sandbag.

The Corporal got hold of the mail and began to read the names out.

“Parker—Griffiths—Parker —Parker—Evans—Parker —the man must write letters to himself—Jones—Fitzgerald. No parcels. That's the lot.”

Parker retired to read his letters; the remainder of the men stood round while the Corporal unpacked the sandbag.

“Bacon—good bit of bacon; two tins of jam; no butter; sugar, tea.
Now 'ow many loaves are there? Let's see—six—'arf a loaf a man; that's good. Meat—oh, bloody hell, it's bully!”

The men, quite forgetting the generosity of the bread ration, cursed the ration as “bloody awful” and went back to their several jobs.

The night's work started; as it had for the last ten nights, in the same routine. Sometimes there was a traverse to be widened, sometimes a gun position to be dug, sometimes, as to-night, a dug-out that had fallen in to be repaired. But it amounted invariably to the same thing; digging and filling sandbags.

Slowly the hours passed. It was a very quiet part of the line. An occasional machine-gun bullet fizzed over the men's heads, to bury itself in the bank behind them. But it was safe, as far as any spot could be called safe that was within range of German guns. So far the section had been in the line ten days and had not had a single casualty.

For the first hour or two the men worked cheerily enough, talking and laughing together. Their conversation ran along the usual lines. There were anecdotes of past battles, of hazards that had been shared together. They talked about their chances of leave; what they would do when they got home …
après la guerre
.

For the first hour or so they worked and gossiped happily. But as the night passed their jokes lost their flavour, conversation flagged; for the most part they worked in silence. They were tired now, unutterably tired; of their work, of their surroundings, of a war which was sapping their years of youth, which seemed unending. They remembered the comforts of ordinary life: sheets, pillows, tablecloths, the routine of an office that once had seemed so irksome, the intimacies of love; all the things that they had once had and might never enjoy again.

Only Walker talked. He was the gun team's grouser and on the whole they were grateful to him for saying what they felt and were too lazy, too tired to say; or that they thought they shouldn't say; or that they were glad he had said so that they could tell him to shut up, could argue against him and by adducing arguments to disprove contentions that they knew were justified, might actually succeed in persuading themselves that things were not as bad as they believed them, and indeed knew them to be. They cursed at Walker, his incompetence, his laziness, his complaints; but they knew very well that they would miss him desperately if he were to go.

As there are those who conduct their entire lives eating, reading, talking, making love, to the sound of music—that is to say, with the Radio turned on—so the gun teams worked through the long night with the river of Walker's vituperation flowing round them. He cursed the war, the army, the general staff, the machine gun corps, the 131st Division, the 305th Machine Gun Company, its third section and, in particular, the second gun team. He cursed the life he had to lead, and the men he led it with. He was bored, bored sick, with the whole business. There was nothing he wouldn't do to get away from it. Anything for a change. The salient was better. The infantry was better. He was going to be an air mechanic. No, he was going to train as a groom for the R.G.A. Anything for a change, any bloody thing, any per bloody thing. His voice flowed on in an even, unhastened flow. It had a singularly soothing effect upon the minds and spirits of Corporal Player's gun team.

Towards one o'clock the sentry's suddenly rapped-out challenge announced the nightly visit of the section officers. A minute later Tallent's voice was enquiring for Walker.

“No, Walker, don't be alarmed,” he said. “It isn't trouble this time. Mr. Balliol was wondering if you would care to be his runner.”

Walker drew himself up. The post of runner was a very envied one. You were with an officer all the time. You shared his dugout with his servant. You got good food. You had variety. You were always being sent with messages to details. It was interesting work. It was safer than most jobs. It was a considerable tribute to be singled out for it. Walker savoured to the full the superiority that it gave him over his astonished fellows. He looked down on them with a supercilious contempt. Then he shook his head.

“It's very good of you, sir. But … well, I dunno … I've sort of got used to things ‘ere with the boys.”

He spoke as though he were being asked to leave a party he was enjoying.

But the moment the officers were out of earshot he resumed his litany of wrath. One by one he enumerated the articles of his hate. The war: the army: the general staff, the machine gun corps: the 131st Division, the 305th Machine Gun Company: the third section and its second gun team: the corporal, the members; that a man should have to endure such company.

Further down the trench Hugh was turning to Tallent with some surprise.

“Doesn't that rather surprise you?” he asked.

“Not particularly.”

“I should have thought he would have jumped at a softish and certainly quite pleasant job.”

“You've got a lot to learn about the old soldier if you think that.”

In England Hugh had imagined that he would find trench life utterly different from the parade ground atmosphere. He was surprised to find how alike it was. There was a difference of atmosphere that made soldiering in France infinitely preferable. In England everyone in authority from a Lance-Corporal upwards behaved as though his immediate junior in rank was trying to shirk his job. In France it was assumed that he was trying. There was an atmosphere of trust, as opposed to distrust; a soldier in the line had two concerns: to get on with his job, the one job that in war-time mattered; and to help the other man to get on with his. In the fighting areas every soldier, from a private to a divisional general, did his best to make things easy for anyone accepted as “a member of the show.” In England everything had been done to make things difficult. Before he had been a week in the line he was to contrast this atmosphere of friendliness and co-operation with the bullying non-commissioned officers of the Inns of Court; the War Office bureaucrats, the depot adjutants; all the people with soft jobs who meant to keep them, who enveloped their activities with a threat: “There'll be trouble for you if you don't do this;” as though the soldiers and officers under their command had not enlisted of their own free will. In France there was a freemasonry of friendship and co-operation between all “fighting area” soldiers.

There was that big difference between soldiering in England and in France. There was a difference also of routine. Night became day, day night. You lived in a dug-out instead of in a tent; in Nissen huts instead of barracks; the days of the week had no significance. You did not know whether it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You judged time by the number of days you had been in the line. For nights on end you would never wear pyjamas. There were all those and innumerable other surface differences. But such differences were of kind, but not of order. The routine of the line and rest billets was another branch of military life.

Hugh in a very little while adapted himself to the changed atmosphere. It boiled down to the same things. There were
inspections of the men and their equipment; seeing that they did not lose discipline in the line. There was his care for their comfort. There was the maintenance of his prestige in the men's eyes by personal smartness, by occasional proof that he not only knew his job but theirs as well; the slow forging of a bond of sympathy by little remarks and questions, proving that each one of them had a separate and personal significance for him; so that they would not merely respect his uniform; but recognize in him a friend and leader. All that was exactly as it had been in the barrack-room atmosphere of Grantham.

There was his relationship with his senior officers. As a subsection, and later as a section officer, he was far more on his own than he had ever been in barracks. For three or four days on end he would not see his immediate superior. Yet there was a constant feeling of supervision. There were the daily reports to be sent down to Company headquarters. There was the knowledge that at any moment a visit might be expected; that everything must be in order for that visit. The Germans were less than half a mile away; from the artillery observation post he could see their curved helmets moving along an exposed trench. Every evening and every morning there was a half-hour of spasmodic shelling. Every few minutes of the night there would be the sharp pop-pop-pop of a traversing machine gun, the whistle of bullets against the parapet. But it was not of the Germans that he thought when he made sure that screens were set to mask the flash of his gun's fire; when he satisfied himself that the sentries knew their orders; that the guns and their spare parts were in working order. He was under the orders of his own command. He saw that those orders were carried out, not so that his men would be equipped to combat hostile tactics and conceal their own, but that the Company Commander, when he came round the guns, should find everything in the condition that he had ordered. He no more took the Germans into account in the trenches than he had in the Inns of Court operations in Ash ridge Park.