Parade's End (97 page)

‘Look here. You’re an educated man, aren’t you? The sort of man that could write a book. You write a book about that. You write to the papers about it. You’d be more use to the Army doing that than being here. I daresay you’re a good enough officer. Old Campion is too keen a commander to stick a rotten officer into this job, god-son or no god-son… . Besides, I don’t believe the whole story about you. If a General wanted to give a soft god-son’s job to a fellow, it would be a soft job and a fat one. He wouldn’t send him here. So take the battalion
with
my blessing. You won’t worry over it more than I have: the poor bloody Glamorgans.’

So he had his battalion! He drew an immense breath. The bumps began to come back along the line. He figured those shells as being like sparrow-hawks beating along a hedge. They were probably pretty accurate. The Germans were pretty accurate. The trenches were probably being knocked about a good deal, the pretty, pinkish gravel falling about in heaps as it would lie in a park, ready to be spread on paths. He remembered how he had been up on the Montagne Noire, still, thank God, behind where they were now. Why did he thank God? Did he really care where the Army was. Probably! But enough to say ‘thank God’ about? Probably too… . But as long as they kept on at the job did anything matter? Anything else? It was keeping on that mattered. From the Montagne Noire he had seen our shells bursting on a thinnish line in the distance, in shining weather. Each shell existing in a white puff, beautifully. Forward and backward along the line… . Under Messines village. He had felt exhilaration to think that our gunners were making such good practice. Now some Hun on a hill was feeling exhilaration over puffs of smoke in our line. But he, Tietjens, was … Damn it, he was going to make two hundred and fifty quid towards living with Valentine Wannop – when you really
could
stand up on a hill … anywhere!

The Adjutant, Notting, looked in and said:

‘Brigade wants to know if we’re suffering any, sir?’

The Colonel surveyed Tietjens with irony:

‘Well, what are you going to report?’ he asked… . ‘This officer is taking over from me,’ he said to Notting. Notting’s beady eyes and red-varnished cheeks expressed no emotions.

‘Oh, tell Brigade,’ the Colonel said, ‘that we’re all as happy as sand-boys. We could stand this till Kingdom Come.’ He asked: ‘We
aren’t
suffering any, are we?’

Notting said: ‘No, not in particular. “C” Company was grumbling that all its beautiful revetments had been knocked to pieces. The sentry near their own dug-out complained that the pebbles in the gravel were nearly as bad as shrapnel.’

‘Well, tell Brigade what I said. With Major Tietjens’ compliments, not mine. He’s in command.’

‘… You may as well make a cheerful impression to begin with,’ he added to Tietjens.

It was then that, suddenly, he burst out with:

‘Look here! Lend me two hundred and fifty quid!’

He remained staring fixedly at Tietjens with an odd air of a man who has just asked a teasing, jocular conundrum… .

Tietjens had recoiled – really half an inch. The man said he was suffering from a loathsome disease: it was being near something dirty. You don’t contract loathsome diseases except from the cheapest kind of women or through being untidy-minded… . The man’s pals had gone back on him. That sort of man’s pals do go back on him! His accounts were all out… . He was in short the sort of swindling, unclean scoundrel to whom one lent money… . Irresistibly!

A crash of the sort that you couldn’t ignore, as is the case with certain claps in thunderstorms, sent a good deal of gravel down their cellar steps. It crashed against their shaky door. They heard Notting come out of his cellar and tell someone to shovel the beastly stuff back again where it had come from.

The Colonel looked up at the roof. He said that had knocked their parapet about a bit. Then he resumed his fixed glaze at Tietjens.

Tietjens said to himself:

‘I’m losing my nerve… . It’s the damned news that Campion is coming… . I’m becoming a wretched, irresolute Johnny.’

The Colonel said:

‘I’m not a beastly sponger. I never borrowed before!’ His chest heaved… . It really expanded and then got smaller again, the orifice in the khaki at his throat contracting. Perhaps he never had borrowed before… .

After all, it didn’t matter what kind of man this was, it was a question of what sort of a man Tietjens was becoming. He said:

‘I can’t lend you the money. I’ll guarantee an overdraft to your agents. For two hundred and fifty.’

Well, then, he remained the sort of man who automatically lent money. He was glad.

The Colonel’s face fell. His martially erect shoulders indeed collapsed. He exclaimed ruefully:

‘Oh, I say, I thought you were the sort one could go to.’

Tietjens said:

‘It’s the same thing. You can draw a cheque on your bank exactly as if I paid the money in.’

The Colonel said:

‘I
can
? It’s the same thing? You’re
sure
?’ His questions were like the pleas of a young woman asking you not to murder her.

… He obviously was not a sponger. He was a financial virgin. There could not be a subaltern of eighteen in the whole army who did not know what it meant to have an overdraft guaranteed after a fortnight’s leave… . Tietjens only wished they didn’t. He said:

‘You’ve practically got the money in your hand as you sit there. I’ve only to write the letter. It’s impossible your agents should refuse my guarantee. If they do, I’ll raise the money and send it you.’

He wondered why he didn’t do that last in any case. A year or so ago he would have had no hesitation about overdrawing his account to any extent. Now he had an insupportable objection. Like a hatred!

He said:

‘You’d better let me have your address.’ He added, for his mind was really wandering a little. There was too much talk! ‘I suppose you’ll go to No. IX Red Cross at Rouen for a bit.’

The Colonel sprang to his feet:

‘My God, what’s that?’ he cried out. ‘Me … to No. IX.’

Tietjens exclaimed:

‘I don’t know the procedure. You said you had …’

The other cried out:

‘I’ve got cancer. A big swelling under the armpit.’ He passed his hand over his bare flesh through the opening of his shirt, the long arm disappearing to the elbow. ‘Good God … I suppose when I said my pals had gone back on me you thought I’d asked them for help and been refused. I haven’t… . They’re all killed. That’s the worst way you can go back on a pal, isn’t it! Don’t you understand men’s language?’

He sat heavily down on his bed again.

He said:

‘By Jove, if you hadn’t promised to let me have the money there would have been nothing for me but to make a hole in the water.’

Tietjens said:

‘Well, don’t contemplate it now. Get yourself well looked after. What does Derry say?’

The Colonel again started violently:

‘Derry! The M.O… . Do you think I’d tell him! Or little squits of subalterns? Or any man! You understand now why I wouldn’t take Derry’s beastly pill. How do I know what it mightn’t do to …’

Again he passed his hand under his armpit, his eyes taking on a yearning and calculating expression. He added:

‘I thought it a duty to tell you as I was asking you for a loan. You might not get repaid. I suppose your offer still holds good?’

Drops of moisture had hitherto made beads on his forehead; it now shone, uniformly wet.

‘If you haven’t consulted anybody,’ Tietjens said, ‘you mayn’t have got it. I should have myself seen to right away. My offer still holds good!’

‘Oh, I’ve got it, all right,’ the Colonel answered with an air of infinite sapience. ‘My old man – my governor – had it. Just like that. And he never told a soul till three days before his death. Neither shall I.’

‘I should get it seen to,’ Tietjens maintained. ‘It’s a duty to your children. And the King. You’re too damn good a soldier for the Army to lose.’

‘Nice of you to say so,’ the Colonel said. ‘But I’ve stood too much. I couldn’t face waiting for the verdict.’

… It was no good saying he had faced worse things. He very likely hadn’t, being the man he was.

The Colonel said:

‘Now if I could be any good!’

Tietjens said:

‘I suppose I may go along the trenches now. There’s a wet place …’

He was determined to go along the trenches. He had to … what was it … ‘find a place to be alone with Heaven’. He maintained also his conviction that he must show the men his mealsack of a body, mooning along; but attentive.

A problem worried him. He did not like putting it since it might seem to question the Colonel’s military efficiency. He wrapped it up: Had the Colonel any special advice as to keeping in touch with units on the right and left? And as to passing messages?

That was a mania with Tietjens. If he had had his way he would keep the battalion day and night at communication drill. He had not been able to discover that any precautions of that sort were taken in that unit at all. Or in the others alongside… .

He had hit on the Colonel’s heel of Achilles.

In the open it became evident: more and more and more and always more evident! The news that General Campion was taking over that command had changed Tietjens’ whole view of the world.

The trenches were much as he had expected. They conformed indeed exactly to the image he had had in the cellar. They resembled heaps of reddish gravel laid out ready to distribute over the roads of parks. Getting out of the dug-out had been like climbing into a trolley that had just been inverted for the purpose of discharging its load. It was a nasty job for the men, cleaving a passage and keeping under cover. Naturally the German sharp-shooters were on the lookout. Our problem was to get as much of the trench as you could set up by daylight. The German problem was to get as many of our men as possible. Tietjens would see that our men stayed under cover until nightfall; the commander of the unit opposite would attend to the sniping of as many men as he could. Tietjens himself had three first-class snipers left; they would attempt to get as many of the German snipers as they could. That was self-defence.

In addition a great many Enemy attentions would direct themselves to Tietjens’ stretch of the line. The artillery would continue to plunk in a shell or so from time to time. They would not do this very often because it would invite the attention of our artillery and that might prove too costly. More or less heavy masses of high explosives would be thrown on to the line; what the Germans called
Minenwerfer
might project what our people called ‘sausages’. These being visible coming through the air, you posted lookouts who gave you warning in time to get under cover. So the Germans had rather abandoned the use of these, probably as being costly in explosives and not so very effective. They made, that is to say, good holes, but accounted for few men.

Aeroplanes with their beastly bullet-distributing hoppers – that is what they seemed like – would now and then duck along the trench, but not very often. The proceeding was, again, too costly: they would limit themselves as a rule to circling leisurely overhead and dropping things whilst the shrapnel burst round them – and spattered bullets over the trench. Flying pigs, aerial torpedoes, and other floating missiles, pretty, shining, silvery things with fins, would come through the air and would explode on striking the ground or after burying themselves. There was practically no end to their devices and the Huns had a new one every other week or so. They perhaps wasted themselves on new devices. A good many of them turned out to be duds. And a good many of their usually successful missiles turned out to be duds. They were undoubtedly beginning to feel the strain – mental and in their materials. So that if you had to be in these beastly places it was probably better to be in our trenches than theirs. Our war material was pretty good!

This was the war of attrition… . A mug’s game! A mug’s game as far as killing men was concerned, but not an uninteresting occupation if you considered it as a struggle of various minds spread all over the broad landscape in the sunlight. They did not kill many men and they expended an infinite number of missiles and a vast amount of thought. If you took six million men armed with loaded canes and stockings containing bricks or knives and set them against another six million men similarly armed, at the end of three hours four million on the one side and the entire six million on the other would be dead. So, as far as killing went, it really was a mug’s game. That was what happened if you let yourself get into the hands of the applied scientist. For all these things were the products not of the soldier but of hirsute, bespectacled creatures who peered through magnifying glasses. Or of course, on our side, they would be shaven-cheeked and less abstracted. They were efficient as slaughterers in that they enabled the millions of men to be moved. When you had only knives you could not move very fast. On the other hand, your knife killed at every stroke: you would set a million men firing at each other with rifles from eighteen hundred yards. But few rifles ever registered a hit. So the
invention
was relatively inefficient. And it dragged things out!

And suddenly it had become boring.

They were probably going to spend a whole day during which the Germans would strain themselves, their intelligences flickering across the world, to kill a couple of Tietjens’ men, and Tietjens would exercise all his care in the effort not to have even one casualty. And at the end of the day they would all be very tired and the poor b—y men would have to set to work to repair the trenches in earnest. That was the ordinary day’s work.

He was going about it… . He had got ‘A’ Company Commander to come up and talk to him about his fatigues. To the right of Headquarters the trenches appeared to have suffered less than to the left and it was possible to move quite a number of men without risk. ‘A’ Company Commander was an astonishingly thin, bald man of fifty. He was so bald that his tin hat slid about all over his skull. He had been a small shipowner and must have married very late in life, for he spoke of having two children, one of five, one of seven. A pigeon pair. His business was now making fifty thousand a year for him. It pleased Tietjens to think that his children would be well provided for if he were killed. A nice, silent, capable man who usually looked into the distance rather abstractedly when he talked. He was killed two months later, cleanly, by a bullet.