The Germans immediately north and south of the Bapaume road ceased firing when the local attack was over. The commander of the 180th Regiment not only allowed stretcher-bearers to take away the British wounded, but sent some of his own medical men to help them. By the morning of July 3 the last of the wounded were got away.

Phillip, between periods of semi-consciousness following bouts of pain from the burns of phosphorus, and a greater drag of thirst, managed to crawl back on the afternoon of the first day, obsessed by one idea: he must get back for the sake of his mother. He could not walk, because another bullet had gone through his left boot, penetrating the metatarsal arch. On his way back through no-man’s-land he passed Pimm, lying dead among others whose lips and eyelids and wounds were already yellow-edged with blowfly eggs. He saw many rats, too. After a rest, brow on earth, he released the pigeons fluttering in the basket. Whether or no they flew back to their loft, he never knew.

At one period on the crawl back he seemed to be hearing the bell-like colours of wildflowers with startling clearness—field scabious, poppies, marigolds, small pansies, and others he did not remember having seen before; and about these flowers were wild bees and grasshoppers, scarlet soldier flies, and bronze beetles among the grasses. They glowed and shimmered with varying sounds and colours. This period of hopeful beauty did not last long. The sunlight became harsh, frazzling all things with the return of pain. He tried to pick out bits of embedded phosphorus with his nails, and found that he was gibbering a sort of plea to himself, a beholder. Thereafter at times it seemed that he was three people; one feeble and struggling, the other a critic of his feeble self, the third a beholder watching in the air, above the back of his mind on a sort of invisible gossamer.

The critical self knew that the feeble self had gibbered for effect. He could bear the pain if he did not pretend to himself that he could not bear it. Very well, he would show himself that he could. The beholder, without feeling, watched the body crawling on: while he mocked at the feeble self humming a fragment of tune in a minor key, the sort of song he had made up, when alone, in childhood, to show himself how sorry he was.

Why did he have to think like that? Why in the name of Christ should he bloody well have to? His head was heavy and the untidiness of everything made him feel like screaming all of his bickering little two selves away. That feeling, too, passed, leaving his mind fixed with desire to take his shadow from the battlefield, while he had a shadow. He would lose his life if his shadow sank into the ground. It will not wait for ever, his mind told his champing jaws.

When the top of the leaning gilt figure on the church in the valley came into view, another feeling, of shame for his abject condition, came upon him as he saw hundreds of curious faces of soldiers waiting on their way up the line. Why did they have to stare like that? Why must they look at him, had they no manners?

Progress now became extremely painful. He resented the many curious faces. Their staring made him press back against the groans that alone could help him escape part of the pain. Every time he rested, his thigh felt heavier, as though his leg were nearly dragged off. When, when, when could he reach the small red-cross flag of the First Aid Post.

The sunlight was vibrating in corrugated waves when he got there, to rest on an elbow, to sink into himself, one of hundreds of waiting figures. Some were smoking, and talking. Their words jarred about the wavy bars of sunlight. Orderlies were kneeling among them. At last a face looked at him, and told him to lie back on his elbows. Then with a knife that had a point of terror lest it touch the purple hole in his buttock, the bloody-handed orderly started to rip his trousers. The awful noise ground through his nerves.

“I put Zam-buk in my wound, orderly.”

“You’ve got several other blighty ones, sir,” said the orderly, as he painted iodine on the blue puncture in front of the thigh. “Now over on your right side, sir. It may sting a bit—that’s right. We’ll soon have you away.” As he was tying a bandage, Phillip said, “Not too tight! I don’t want to get gas-gangrene.”

“I’ll watch it. Now will you be able to walk, sir, if I get someone for you to hold on to? Stretchers are somewhat at a premium.”

Phillip pointed to his ankle.

He felt as the puttee was being ripped that the woollen cloth was in his mouth and he was chewing it with his back teeth. He tried not to be sick. “Steady, steady!” he quavered, as his boot seemed to be wrenched off. To keep hold of himself he tried to think of “Spectre” West not complaining after he had been hit in front of Le Rutoire Farm during the battle of Loos ten months ago; but Westy had been doped with morphine.

“Went clean through, this one,” said the orderly, holding the heel in one hand and working the toes with the other. “No bones gone.”

Phillip showed his burned hand.

“I’ll put some iodine on them.”

Phillip shook his head. “No good,” he said through rigid jaws. The pain had throbbed back.

“I think in that case you’d better wait till you get to the Dressing Station in Albert, sir.”

As he lay there, covered by a blanket, a chaplain came and gave him a cigarette. “Are you badly hit?”

“No, padre.”

“Good man! Keep smiling. You’ll be pleased to hear that things are going well down south. The news has just come through that Mametz is taken, and also Montauban, with thousands of prisoners. The French, too, have got all their objectives.”

“Water, padre.”

“You must wait, I’m afraid,” said the chaplain, seeing the bandage, “until the doctor has seen you.”

*

Later in the afternoon he was taken down a track on a wheeled stretcher which passed under the campanile of the church. With a sort of mild wonder he saw a bearded man in uniform sitting at an easel beside the road. He was painting a tree growing near a broken wall. It was so strange a sight that Phillip asked the orderly to stop. Then he saw that it was the same man he had seen in the Café Royal. He wanted to let the painter know he was there, but could not make himself speak. The painter went on with the picture, as though nothing eke in the world was happening.

While the wheeled stretcher remained there, six feet away from the easel, two red-cross orderlies came down the road, holding between them a man who could not walk properly. He was being held under each arm, his head hung down, he was blowing and slavering, froth on his lips. Deep, rasping shudders came from his throat. His spirit had obviously been broken into pieces within him. Somehow this was more terrible a sight than that of a wounded man, or rather one whose body had been blown to tangles and mangles, for this one’s body was apparently unhurt. All the nerves seemed to have come unhooked from the sinews. Would he be an idiot for life? Better to be that than to lie in the sun, waxen before swelling black, and turning into green and pink pudge.

The painter glanced at the man, and went on painting; and as he was wheeled away, Phillip thought it strange that anyone could sit calmly painting while over the brow of the hill hell was going on.

*

The Advanced Dressing Station was a red-bricked house of gables and little turrets, as he saw when the stretcher stopped before an archway leading into a courtyard. The lower walls and entrance were protected by solid-looking sandbags. He had a glimpse of wounded men inside the courtyard, sitting about. Many more were coming down the road, among the wheeled stretchers. A padre in the road was in charge of traffic.

“Wounded officer? Buttocks and foot? Wheel him through the archway and take the stretcher carefully off the carrier. Then pick up a spare stretcher and return to the Aid Post you came from, there’s a good fellow.”

Another padre in the courtyard came forward, with an orderly, to supervise the lifting of the stretcher from the carrier. Phillip recognised, with a flush of happiness, Father Aloysius. Somehow he had felt he would not be killed. He was recognised as the priest came forward to examine his bandage; and felt resolute when he heard him draw in his breath before saying, “Is the pain very bad, Phillip?”

“No, Father,” he heard his voice croak. His tongue felt like a wooden clapper.

“Is there anything you want, Phillip? Shall I send off a field postcard for you?” The padre knelt beside the stretcher.

“Water—please, Father, if there’s any to spare.”

“You know, I think you’d better wait, until the doctor has seen you. I’ll come back—I must see to the poor fellow over there.”

A German with a large black beard lay upon a stretcher, groaning. His brow and cheeks were grey-green. When Father Aloysius lifted the blanket, Phillip saw that both legs were blown off at the knee. Father Aloysius pointed to a room, beyond a sand-bagged door, hung with white sheets.

“German prisoners go down the road, sir,” said the orderly.

“Never mind that, take this poor fellow in next, will you?” said the priest. Then he knelt by the Bavarian, and finding a crucifix on a chain round his neck, gave him absolution. Later the stretcher went into the operation room.

When Father Aloysius came back, he said, “Are you sure your wound is clear of your intestines?”

“I don’t know, Father.”

“You must be patient, Phillip.”

“Yes, Father.”

He became aware of the moans and groans all around him in the courtyard, of the stretchers that were continually being brought in through the archway. He watched for awhile, trying to make himself not think of his own pain, but of those worse-off than himself. Heads in bandages like turbans of white and red cloth held in bloody hands. Slit-trouser’d legs big with white cotton and soaked through and through with crimson splotches. Boots and puttees and tunics all mud; had they come from the valley below Thiepval wood? They were Inniskillings. He listened to them talking to other lightly wounded men of the Ulster division, who had gone over before the Schwaben redoubt on the high ground above the valley. They had climbed out of their trenches before the guns lifted and got up close to Jerry’s front line. At Zero bugles had sounded the advance. They got into the German front line just in time to catch Jerry coming up from the dugouts, and having scuppered them, went on to the Hansa Line, where they sent back hundreds of prisoners. Carrying on, they reached the final objective, beyond all the shell holes and barbed wire, where the grass was tall and green, giving plenty of cover. They were so far in advance of the others that their own shells were dropping behind them. They had looked down into the valley and seen the steam of the train bringing up Jerry reserves into Grandcourt station.

So ‘Spectre’ West had been right. He felt suddenly very cold, and cried silently. The tears loosened dust in the eye-sockets.

*

Working among the British orderlies was a German in a green tunic with a red-cross band on his sleeve. He went from stretcher to stretcher, bandaging quickly. There were occasional screams. He heard a cry of “O my God” made in a voice twisted with despair. He noticed a young, clean-shaven clay-yellow face beside him. The lips were quivering, the face began to contort. With an anguished cry of “Mother” the young soldier rolled off his stretcher. When he saw Phillip looking at him he said in an imploring, weak voice, “I think I’m going to die. Please ask them to send for my mother.”

He elbowed himself off his side, meaning to give the frightened youth his right hand. Before he could do so, his left hand was seized, and he fell back. As the nails of the youth dug into the ulcerous burns, he had to press his lips and eyelids tight to stop himself from crying out. An orderly came, and opened the grip of the fingers; then looking at the staring eyes and open mouth, said to Phillip, “A stomach wound. I’ll get the M.O. to give an anti-tetanic serum injection.” He went away, but no doctor came. Flies settled upon the open mouth, drinking the bloody froth on the lips. Later, Father Aloysius came, and knelt by the stretcher, and prayed. Later still two bearers carried the stretcher to the cemetery.

*

When Phillip’s turn came for treatment he was carried into a room opposite to that hung with white sheets. It had electric light. After an anti-tetanic injection, his dressing, caked with blood and dust, was pulled off, the wounds examined: “Flavine,” said the doctor. While an orderly sprayed the wound the doctor looked down at his face.

“Is the pain bad?”

Phillip shook his head: he would hold out against himself.

“You were in luck. Another inch higher, and the colon would have been perforated by that bullet. You’ve got shell splinters in your leg, too. Now we’ll put on a fresh dressing, and give you an air-ring for your backside. That will make you more comfortable. Let me look at your burns.” He sniffed them. “H’m, still oxidising. We’ll soak your hand in a solution of sodium bicarbonate, then put it on as a powder until the burns cease to fizz. Finally, a pack of the same stuff, and down you go to Field Ambulance.”

The doctor gave him a cigarette, and said, “Now it will hurt a bit. I’ve got to dig out those bits of phosphorus.”

He thought steadily of Joan of Arc burning at the stake: his pain was nothing to what others had to go through. When the doctor had finished bandaging he apologised for having taken up so much of his time. The doctor laughed, and said, “I suppose I could say the same thing to you. Anyway, you’ve got plenty of guts.”

He was carried back into the courtyard. There, while his hand lay in soak, Father Aloysius brought him an enamel mug of tea. There were bloodstains on it, but he took it gratefully. The sweet taste of condensed milk brought instantly to mind an afternoon on Reynard’s Common in the early days of the Bloodhound patrol. The vision was so clear that afterwards he felt distress that he could not find himself back there. Another picture floated before him, of himself during a summer in the Backfield, cooking bacon and tomatoes over a fire in a deep crevice of the clay. He saw the grass-fringed sky above, and felt a blissful happiness that he was in his hiding place, away from all the world, as he ate his “biltong” and read a green-covered Gem Library.

This contentment, like the period when the flowers and butterflies in the grass had suddenly seemed so beautiful, was brief. The nagging dullness of pain returned, with unhappy mind-pictures of his home. The orderly brought more tea, which he drank so eagerly that some of it ran down his neck and chest. The thought of his clumsiness worried him; and the further thought that he had messed himself added to his own disgrace. He began to think of his platoon, and cried silently.

The injection made his head throb, throb, throb. The corrugated rays of the sun solidified into hot brass. Time was suspended; he floated; he slept, and saw with delightful clearness when he awoke; and was almost crying-dull when his turn came to leave. Never again, he thought, would he see the doctor or the priest or the orderly, whose care had taken away the burning pains. But life was like that. Nothing ever was the same again. Friends were lost by misunderstanding and death. Goodbye courtyard, goodbye you blokes. Thank you, Mother of Jesus, for helping my spirit.

The stretcher was lifted and taken through the archway, and slidden into a Ford ambulance.

The ambulance held only one other stretcher, the space opposite being occupied by four sitting cases. One of them was swathed in many bandages, crossing and recrossing his shoulder and chest. He sat in the care of a sergeant with a bullet through his jaw. The other two sitting men were lively, and talked a lot together at first. Seeing Phillip looking at the listless, swathed man, the sergeant explained with painful slowness, pointing to the mass of bandages.

“Hickinglung, hir, ussenk igh gown,” he said. Then the two slightly wounded men explained together, what the sergeant with the bullet in his jaw had tried to say. “Hit in the lungs, sir, mustn’t lie down,” while the other said, “’E may drown in ’is own blood if ’e lies down, see?”

The ambulance buzzed along the straight road under the poplars, climbing and running easy as the contours rose and fell. The Amiens road was empty of troops, as he could see by looking out of the back. But soon the fast pace slowed down; for they had come to the head of a new division marching up. There were halts. Helmeted faces peered in the back.

“What’s it like up there, chums?”

“Not so bad, mate,” replied the two lightly wounded cases with shrapnel-balls in calf of leg and arm—not good enough to be Blighty ones, they had agreed.

The sun-burned faces looked cheerful. “Good luck, boys! Have a pint for us in Blighty!”

The lung-case groaned wearily. The sergeant with the swelled iodine-brown jaw said something which was meant for encouragement. Phillip felt sorry for the fresh brown faces. Still, everyone was in it now.

The ambulance left the long straight road and bumped and swayed over a dusty track to some hutments. Red crosses in white squares were painted on black felt roofs. Here it was easier than in the courtyard at Albert. Bandaged men talked cheerily to one another, smoking and laughing. Their spirits were already on the way home. He watched the sergeant with the smashed lower jaw helping the lung case, now spewing a froth of blood, to walk to a hut. They went inside; he saw them no more. The two lightly wounded men talked hilariously with some pals they had met. Then he recognised Captain Bason’s servant, and learned that he was there. He had been hit in the arm, not badly. The servant went away, to return with Bason.

“How goes it, old sport?”

“Oh, not so bad, Skipper.”

“Where did you get it?”

“In the thigh.”

“Jasper Kingsman and Milman both copped it. So did Tommy Thompson, and ‘Brassy’ Cusack. And Paul.”

“Killed? All of them?”

“All gone west, so has the Brigadier, and his brigade-major. In fact, the whole brigade’s copped it.”

There was nothing to say about that.

“How far did you get before you were hit?”

“About halfway across no-man’s-land.”

“How did your chaps get on?”

“It was so difficult to see, skipper, in the smoke. I think all of them must have been hit.”

“Tommy Thompson got into their first trench, along a hundred yards of it, just north of the Bapaume road, and held on for about two hours. He was killed on the way back. You know, I reckon your pal ‘Spectre’ was right after all. But one man can’t fight a system, old sport.”

“Who’s in command of the battalion now?”

“Cox!” laughed Bason. “I expect what remains of the brigade will be withdrawn tonight. Anyway, write out a report as soon as you can, and send it to the C.O., for the battalion diary, will you? They’ll want to know what happened.”

His wounds were inspected, a label tied to the second button-hole of his tunic with the letters G.S.W. back, left foot. Phosphorus burns hand and arm. Thus, after more tea, he was sent down to the Casualty Clearing Station at Heilly.

*

There he was carried into a hut for officers, with beds, into one of which he was put, on a rubber sheet, and covered with a blanket. Flowers in a jar on the table and wide open windows: how strange to think of the battle raging not many miles away, and here nobody seeming to care.

More tea, with bread and butter and jam, brought round on a tray by a nurse, changed his mournful feeling. He began to feel happy; his left hand no longer throbbed. After tea, face and right hand washed; nurse bringing him the latest number of The Bystander; time began to flow almost sweetly, as he thought of going back to England—of the months of rest before him, with accumulations of pay at eight and six a day—for his promotion was to be ante-dated to June—and also his salary from the office.

Voices were talking happily outside the windows. They were discussing the attack, seeming to regard it as a bit of sport. Had it been sport at the time for them? It was so easy to forget, in the relief of afterwards.

A padre came up the hut, holding by the arm an officer who dragged his feet and clung to him, while darting dark eyes about in a sallow face, and talking wildly, as though he were still in the attack, and expecting enemies. He was put into a bed opposite, and constantly beat his hands on the blanket. He had a moustache, not clipped like most regimental officers wore, but long; and seemingly in imitation of the Kaiser’s. He was constantly smoothing out the ends, and pushing them upwards, with his fingers. Once Phillip caught his eye; immediately a hand went over the eyes, the cries broke out. Phillip had an idea that he was putting it on.

Soon afterwards the padre was back again, holding the arm of a very young officer, who was weeping, and had to be restrained from beating his own head with his fists. He looked really shattered. He cried, “Don’t let me go back, I can’t go back! Why did it happen? I can’t bear any more!”

The padre spoke to him, soothing him. The man with the darting eyes and rat-whisker moustaches was watching. Phillip saw his face contort before he sprang out of bed and rushed across the hut, screaming, “Shoot! Shoot! They’re coming! Where’s my rifle?” Whirling his arms, he smashed himself into the wall, punching with his fists. Then he sank down, moaning.

“Don’t worry, old fellow, you’ll soon be better after some rest and sleep, probably in England. You’re quite safe here.”

The officer stared and gave a mad laugh, then started to do P.T. exercises. The padre led him back to his bed. The officer held out his hands, with fingers spread, showing his broken knuckles.

Later on an R.A.M.C. sergeant asked his name.

“I don’t give information to Huns!”

“This man is your friend,” said the padre. “He is in the R.A.M.C. He wants to know your name.”

“I don’t talk to Huns! I claim the Berne Convention!”

The sergeant moved to look at his identity disc. The officer clung to it.

“Oh no, you don’t! I need give you only my name and regiment! I’ll give you no information about code names!”

“Very well then, give me your name.”

“I refuse!”

“What does it say on your identity disc? Come on, sir, let me see.”

“I put you under arrest!”

“Very good, sir. Meanwhile the senior medical officer wants to know all the names here in this ward. Won’t you let me see your identity disc?”

“What’s wrong with my name?”

“I only want to write it down here. Come along, I’ve got other officers to see.”

The man now appeared to be dazed. Phillip felt sure that he was pretending to be mad. As the sergeant looked at the disc a terrific flash-report shook the hut. Whimpering cries broke out from the very young officer; the man in the bed opposite gave a scream, threw off his blanket, and crawled under his bed, to curl up and lie still.

“What is it, the twelve-inch railway gun?” Phillip asked the man next to him.

“Fifteen-inch, I believe,” he replied, in a voice that appeared to be in shreds. Phillip wondered if he had been gassed, for his face was the colour of rotten eggs, which was also what phosgene tasted like if one smoked when it hung about.

“Were you gassed?”

“Hit in the stomach,” the voice said, with extreme weariness. Then he began to groan, and twist under his blanket.

“You’ll be all right,” said Phillip. “Try and keep still, old chap. Sergeant! Please come!” for the officer had fallen out of bed. An R.A.M.C. lieutenant came to join the sergeant. They kneeled beside the man on the floor. He was so near that Phillip could see a small brown hole in his stomach beside the navel. “Bring him to the operating table,” said the doctor, getting up. The man, his eyes staring, was carried away to the end of the hut on a stretcher, to some screens. A nurse with flurried ginger hair ran past.

More and more stretchers were being carried in. When the spaces between the beds were filled up they were placed at right angles to the beds, leaving only a narrow foot-way. An R.A.M.C. colonel appeared, with a major, who looked worried. “We can’t take any more,” the colonel said.

“There’s a queue outside, two hundred yards long, and three Dressing Stations have telephoned urgently for ambulances,” replied the major.

The R.A.M.C. lieutenant came down the hut from the screens with the nurse and said to the sergeant, “Get two orderlies to remove the case on the table to the mortuary line.”

“What happened?” Phillip asked the ginger-haired nurse, later on.

“Must you ask questions? Can’t you see we’re more than busy?”

“I’m sorry, nurse.”

“That’s all right. I didn’t mean to be sharp with you. Was he your friend? I’m afraid he died under the mask. Now before you ask me what the mask is, I’ll tell you that it holds the A-C-E mixture which is sprinkled on it before we put it on a patient’s face, to give him a whiff. Don’t look so alarmed, you’re not to be operated on! You’re far too well!”

“Thank you for telling me, nurse.”

“Now lie still, like a good boy, and don’t ask any more questions. We all realise what you have to put up with in the line, but you aren’t the only one carrying a burden, you know.”

*

That morning, of the first day of the battle of the Somme which was to continue during one hundred and forty-one days and a hundred and forty nights, the total of the British Forces in France was 1,489,215. Of this number, 1,206,704 were in the battle areas of Flanders, Artois, and Picardy, and by the afternoon many were coming sick and wounded into the aid posts of battalion areas, thence to dressing stations of brigade, field ambulances of division, and casualty clearing stations of corps areas.

When the battles of the year were over, 643,921 men had been admitted to hospital sick, together with 500,576 wounded, a total of 1,144,497: a number nearly equal to that of all the British combatant soldiers in the B.E.F. on July the First.

Such was the metal of the British pastures, and slums.

Meanwhile, on the late afternoon of the first day, with its 57,470 British casualties among the assault troops, Phillip was lying between rough brown blankets in the C.C.S. at Heilly.

The ginger-haired nurse came back, looking more composed; her hair was brushed, she felt renewed desire to be of service as she carried round a tray of bread and jam and mugs of tea. Phillip found that he was both hungry and thirsty; the unchlorinated tea tasted wonderful. He began to enjoy the adventure of being wounded, with months of ease in the sunlit sweetness of England before him. He was one of the lucky ones, he told himself: he was alive. For the moment, pain was gone. He lay back happily; but pain returned, so throbbingly and twistingly heavy that he was given an injection of morphine sulphate. Some time hazily later his stretcher was slidden, with eight others, in the open body of a lorry, and driven to the station. The jolting made the stretchers jump, causing cries from those badly wounded, whose bone-fractures grated together; but he was able to hang on in silence against crying-out until they came to the siding beside a long hospital train.

There, he felt better, and interest in the scene about him came back. Where were they going? Rouen, said the train orderly, his appearance nearly as strange a sight as that of the bearded man painting in Albert, for the orderly was not only shaved, washed, and hair brushed flat with oil, but his khaki trousers actually had a crease.

*

No. 9 General Hospital at Rouen, used by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian war, was so quiet at night that he could not sleep until he was given an injection of morphia, when the rough waves of excreta zigzagging awfully became smooth waves drowning him with spike-haired-Streuelpeter-terror until he rose slowly above their smooth and awful horridness and floated smilingly in silk-hanky pink-petal breast bliss, on the edge of sleep, but not over it because it was all so silent.

In the next bed lay a mass of bandages which moaned and whimpered through the darkness, heedless of cries of Shut up, for Christ’s sake pipe down, and more violent curses from the length of the ward. The bandaged man had belonged to a party which had tried to storm the redoubt on the Bapaume Road and been burned to death by flamethrowers as it reached the parapet, with the one exception. When Phillip looked in the morning, the bed was empty; the man had died, and been wheeled away.

Later, Phillip was lifted upon a rubber-tyred trolly and wheeled along a passage, to stop outside the operating theatre door. Before he could ask what was to happen a mask was put over his face, with pipes attached to cylinders. So he was to have a whiff. His hands were held when the cocks were turned on. He wanted to say to the nurse that he would not struggle, he would lie perfectly still, so would she please trust him and not hold his hands; but she held his hands, and as he lay immobile he felt distress that he could not say with the mask on what he wanted to say. Down down down he sank into a deep dug-out shaft, seeing the sky above turn green with sparkles and spangling flashes, the pollen of the lilies of the dead, far far far above him—

Then a face in a tilting room was very large, speaking foggy words, while waves washed in sounds somewhere and the angles of the room were acute, then right-angles, then obtuse, always trying to steady themselves while his hands were held and the voice of the face spoke his name and tried to draw him out of a wide open ragged space like a shell-hole under the sky which was white-washed like the ceiling of the room. He was sea-sick with the waves, and with a roar vomited froth into a basin which was part of the white shell-hole. He was sick again and again, and was only half of himself, the other half burning and held down by the grey-starched bosom of the nurse whose voice boomed as she spoke his name and said, “Come on! Come on! Wake up!” as she pulled him to her in a horrid froth-making way. He tried to push her away, uselessly, and saw her face clearly, as it shrunk; she said, “Lie still, I’ll fetch you a drink”, and the thought made him feel swelled and sick, and why did she have to bang the door with a fearful noise that hurt like thunder when she left the room. Why was he alone in the room, why was he not in the long rather dark ward, why was he isolated, what had happened. He sank away under nausea.

*

Two days later he was gliding in a hospital ship down the Seine. All base hospitals were being cleared to take the wounded coming down from the battlefield, many of them by barges on the canals.

He read a newspaper, The Daily Trident, which spoke of the continued British advance along the road to Bapaume, of the fall of La Boisselle and the imminent capture of Contalmaison, two miles beyond the old British front line. He wondered if “Spectre” West, who had gone back to the Gaultshires in that sector, had had anything to do with the success there.

Trees on the tall wooded river banks glided past the portholes, green and pleasant as he lay canted on his side, easy with milk and sugar in his belly.

He took up an old copy of Nash’s and Pall Mall Magazine, one of a bundle left on his cot by an orderly. He told himself that he must read carefully, so that when pain began again he might be able to hold his mind above matter. He began with the advertisements.

On the first page there was a picture of an officer in the trenches stropping a safety razor. The loop of the strap was held by a tommy with rifle slung, while another looked on, grinning.

Opening his fountain pen, he gave the officer a beard; then the written comment, If it strops itself, then what is the officer doing in the picture?

The next advertisement was of a tommy holding an immense tin of Fry’s Pure Breakfast Cocoa, while a shell burst behind him, and underneath the words, WHAT I HAVE I’LL HOLD.

Then one of a small boy, finger to mouth, saying I’se found out where Mummy keeps Ficolax.

Ugh, castor oil and licorice powder, given while Father stood by; for Mother alone could not get him to swallow such filthy stuff.

Phillip took his pen and shook blots all over the advertisement, then smeared the blots, and wrote across the advertisement, PROOF!

Including Phosgene, Chlorine, and all Hot Air from Behind the Lines, he added.

There was the picture of a man holding the waist of a girl in a nightdress who was lathering his chin.

Two jobs in one, as Freddy would say.

Then came the familiar picture of a man enclosed in a wooden box, his head sticking out.

Now that Gallipoli is no longer available, he wrote, as he gave the man dundreary whiskers.

A man in morning coat, with sahib-glance, stiff upper lip, jutting chin, stared out of the next photograph.

If, wrote Phillip, beside the photograph, you don’t ask your shillings where they come from, what sort of a business man are you? Better get into khaki, and be really sure where your bob a day comes from.

The heavy down-dragging weight was coming back, the nausea of pain, turning the mind from clear glass to frosty glass, to sooted frosty glass above London Bridge station, all the engine safety-valves blowing off in one great screeching tearing from which away he could not drag his feet. It was too much, it was happening all the time, it was going on night and day, never-ceasing, flesh splattering and bone splintering, shell splottering, bullet bizz-buzzing, bombwompering mortar crackrending. Rough awful waves of corrugating glass embedding him silent-screaming into smooth thick thickening thickest stifling excreta of licorice powder bubbled with castor oil breaking into smoke and flame and white flossy caterpillars of silent-screaming fire-terror Mavis.

“You must try not to cry out.”

“It was Mavis. She——”

“Drink this.”

“But my sister——”

“Now try and go to sleep again.”

“Was I asleep?”

“You have been, for the past hour.”

“Thank God, O, thank God!”

“Be a good boy, and I’ll bring you some tea.”

He took up the magazine, rejoicing secretly with it, as with an old and trusted friend.

There was a man with revolver in hand gazing calmly into a looking-glass on an expanding stick, while beside him stood another man with rifle, fear on his face as he had not got a Lifeguard Patent Collapsible Pocket Periscope. Perhaps he was also thinking that his wife could not afford 20/-.

Every one Guaranteed: what, never to stop—running? He began to laugh. Hero-proof watches, wear one and never stop running.

“Don’t cry, ducks,” said the nurse, bringing the tea, “you’re going to get well very soon. Now drink your tea, it’s nice and sugary, good for little boys.” Little London Cockney boys, he thought, no longer slightly sunburnt.

O love, my love, did you but love me. There she was, his golden girl, in five poses by Harrison Fisher. He ached with longing.

He would write to them when he got home, and send an account of the attack of July the First.

He looked through the pages. There was a story called The Fear, by Charles G. D. Roberts, about prehistoric cave-men and women (one woman was naked, leaping forward, big toes spread, wild hair flying, with smoothed-out breasts) and mammoths; The Wonderful Year, a serial by W. J. Locke, to which he would return, as the woman looked luscious and sunny, with golden hair; “Mr. Dooley,” a fat Irishman with a funny face apparently cheating at cards; an essay by Dr. Frank Crane, called Bunglers, with a buxom angel visiting a girl in Greek robes, sewing beside a basket of pears, in a Mediterranean setting.

Phillip thought of Grandpa, of Father, of Desmond, of Mavis: in future he would be to them like Col. Kingsman, putting himself out to understand others.

He turned over the pages, and settled to read Billet Notes, being Casual pencillings from a Fighting Man to his Mother.

Dearest,—I have just emerged from a dug-out that would make you stare. Now there are dug-outs and dug-outs. They all aim at being a home from home, but this one was fairly It. It hadn’t a carpet, but it was fashioned with old oak (loot from a German trench whose previous occupants had obviously looted it from somewhere else). In it we ate our dinner off delicate Sèvres plates and drank out of rare old cut glasses. A dug-out de luxe! But even the common or garden dug-out shows some attempt at cosiness.

We always have a desire to make the best of circumstances. We collect (or steal) planks, bricks, doors, and windows to help give a semblance of civilisation to our funk-holes. The men keep the trenches neat and make gardens behind the parados. A sense of humour gives spice to the task. It shows in the names bestowed upon our residences—“The Keep”, “Minnewerfer Villa”, “The Gasworks”. “Myholme” is also very popular. But there’s something beside humour that incites Tommy to put up a board marked “Trespassers will be prosecuted” over his kitchen garden. He means it. His impotent rage when a German shell ignores the prohibition is comic to a degree.

After one of these annoyances some of the men of my company in desperation stalked a German sentry, brought him in alive, and made him write in huge German characters the words KARTOFFELN GARTEN—VERBOTEN, which they hoisted on a board facing the enemies lines. I believe that sentry is secretly being kept as a hostage against further damage!

Your loving                      

CHOTA.      

The notes continued with a long description of Chota’s dog, Little Kim, being sniped by the Germans, for daring to bark at them from the parapet. The “Boches” had thrown over written messages, “more than once informing us that they meant to get him if they could. We hoped, unconvincingly, that Little Kim had gone rabbiting.”

Little Kim eventually was traced by “a thin blood-stained trail to the bunk in my dug-out”. He had “a nasty hole in his chest”.

Phillip felt fretful. How could troops, apparently in the front line, since snipers were watching it, make and tend an allotment just behind the parados? Seeds took weeks and weeks to grow; and a battalion was not likely to remain in the line for months. Well, perhaps some had. But this battalion seemed rather strange; why was no stretcher bearer, or first-aid man, in the trench? And who ever heard of a “medico” in the line?

He read on, feeling twisted.

Kim was only a puppy, and as guileless a one as ever I’d known, yet he was made to suffer for something without purpose and for something beyond his comprehension. Is it fair? Tommy and I know we play with chance if we show our heads over the parapet and jeer at the Germans; but Kim had no knowledge of the risks he ran when he barked at them out of sheer joie de vivre. Poor little chap! Best of four-footed pals! I wished the Little Mother had been at hand. She would have made him understand that I was not angry with him. He got colder and colder, and I drew the blanket over him, but it moved tremulously with his shivers. And all the while his sad eyes were on mine.

At last, when the medico was brought in—one of the Vet.-corps—I saw there was no hope. “His number’s up, I’m afraid,” he said, and offered to shoot him for me. I told him I would rather do it myself. I think Kim knew and understood my reason. At least, I hope so. He lay still, very patient …

I had no idea the men would take it so badly. One or two fairly blubbered. They asked, as a favour, to be allowed to bury the little body … It went hard with them that they were not able to do it with full military honours …

Thank goodness we’ve been told to hold ourselves in readiness to move off first thing in the morning. There’s a rumour that we’re in for the Big Push at last. If it’s true this time, it’s enough to key the men up to concert pitch; but there’s something more in it to them than crumpling up the Germans (if we can do it): they mean to avenge Kim’s murder. They’re getting ready grimly, tidying themselves.

If Tommy has sufficient notice, he likes to fight trim, dressed for the part. He shaves, brushes his hair, mends his kit. Also he sees carefully to the action of his rifle, and he finds something wherewith to put a fierce edge on his bayonet.

They’ll be difficult to hold back this time. I don’t feel like holding them back, either. Goodbye, dearest; I must tidy up too. I want to get a bit of my own back as well.

CHOTA.        

He lay back, exhausted. The whole account was a fraud. How could they have fetched a Veterinary Officer, from Division, miles behind the front line, so quickly? And anyway a wounded dog would feel like a wounded man, and cling to life, in a world of its own terror, the more terribly the worse it was hit, at least while it remained conscious. Howells had screamed when he had pointed the Lewis gun at him; he had known his intention, and had been almost out of his head with fright. Perhaps his so-called bullet-proof vest had saved him; more likely it would have roasted him. He felt distress as he thought of it; his body was hot, his leg aching, and a new pain grew in it, like the gnaw of phosphorus. He pushed Nash’s through the bars of his cot. The author of that piece had not been anywhere near the line. It was all of it untrue. Why were such pieces printed? Father took Nash’s. He would hate the Germans more than ever when he read about the dog’s death, and so help to make the war last longer.

The war began to ache in his wounds, as he thought of going home to hear again the same old talk. Then the ache spread to his head, and the glazed-glassy world came back, which was before the rough-and-smooth nightmare feeling. His temperature was taken. The nurse went away, and returned with the doctor. He was given something to drink, then an injection in his leg, and his pillow turned over, so that it was cool. Soon he was sinking down into calmness and bliss, while the sun shone with a mellow light which bore him along a lane across a heath, with shadowy forms around him. He could hear voices, but not what they were saying. He could see the whirr of wheels, and heat was shimmering from gravel spread upon tar which had come up in black bubbles. The tar clung to the bicycle tyres. They dragged and made pedalling hard. Phew, the day was a scorcher! The last day of July, 1914.

They were sitting outside the little brick Greyhound Inn on the left of the road. His bike and the three others’ bikes were leaning against the dingy yellow brick wall. There was a wooden trestle table outside the inn, and two wooden forms, unpainted and grey with exposure to rain and sun.

Pink china pots of cider were on the table. They were sitting on a bench by the wooden table, while gorse-seeds popped on the common. Willie, Desmond, Eugene, himself—all viewless.

They were all at the beginning of a great new friendship. He was taking them to the secret Lake Woods, and their rods were tied on their bicycles. Then with running leaps they got on their bikes and were racing up the slope towards the windmill, and he followed, but his heart was thumping black, his eyes were sparky, as he tried to catch up with them; then they were gone, and he saw the oak paling fence of Knollyswood Park, and turning north, was swooping downhill past the Fish Ponds, gleam of water under pine-trees, ratchet-click of free-wheel past the lodge, he was at the end of the cleft-oak fencing. At the boundary the footpath led under trees into the unknown. On the upper side was a tall taut barbed-wire fence, on steel angle-iron posts seven feet high. How could he get over it, and where were the others? He could not see them, although he could hear them talking but without any sound. He saw them, far below him, scraping a hole in the leaf-mould under the lowest strand. Then he was floating under pigeon-clattering tall hollies and oaks. He came to the Lake Woods, one terraced above the other. They were surrounded by rhododendrons and towering firs. He heard dry patterings, sudden startling wing-drumming kock-karrs! of upbursting cock pheasants, flying away with tails rippling.

There was a peacock in full blue-and-green display on the grassy dam between two ponds. Its maniac cry rang through the woods. Then from an upper lake flapped a grey heron, its legs trailing. It dropped a thin white thread, which fell across the leaf-reflecting surface. He watched it dissolve palely in the water.

The bailiff, in grey whip-cord, was walking to the higher iron gate. They all hid. They watched him go away up the woodland ride. Cole-tits in the fir-tree tops talked to one another as they flitted in and out of the sun. The ring-doves cooed serenely. A figure was now quite near him. It was fitting together a long bamboo roach-pole. He tried to speak, but was unable even to move. There were four lengths, fitted together without brass ferrules. It was a Thames roach-fisher’s pole. It was being taken apart and the figure was pushing the sections, now tied together with string, into a rhododendron bush, where it would be hidden until they came again.

When they had all gone away and left him he felt desperately ill because he could not recall their faces. Then he saw Mavis. She wanted to follow him, but he tried to escape from her. She was very small, she had left Mother’s arms, she was trying to walk after him, round the sitting-room table, and the guard was not up before the fire. He said go away and she still followed him, and because he wanted to be alone to stand still and grieve by himself he pushed her backwards and she fell into the fire, and she was screaming until Mrs. Feeney ran in and pulled her out, her clothes burning. O Master Phil whatever made you do such a thing he heard Mrs. Feeney’s voice saying, but he could not see her, or find the room again. He was alone, suspended in a void. He searched but could not move, called but could not see, looked but could not hear. Everything became rough, and then sickeningly smooth.

When he woke out of this torture he was wet with sweat, and tried to steady the swaying ship by holding his eyes upon a trolley with tea being wheeled round the ward. He told the orderly he was feeling sea-sick, but the orderly said they had docked at Southampton. The orderly did not bring him a bowl, so to his shame and degradation he was sick on his pillow.

On the hospital train, gleaming white in the long ward-like coach, a lady came round with telegraph forms and pencils. Would he like her to send a telegram to his next of kin? No thank you, he said, unable to bear the thought of what Father or Mother or Mavis or anyone belonging to the old life might say, their shame and their criticism, and now probably saying how proud they were of him, when he had failed utterly.