The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (4 page)

‘Blimey, I dunno what's come over the bloke. You know that there Meyrick…'

‘Who, the Slug?' interpolated the other.

‘Yes. Well, 'e come shambling on to parade this morning with 'is puttees flapping round his ankles – late as usual; and 'e told me to run 'im up to office.' A thumb indicated the Major next door. ‘When I gets 'im there, instead of giving 'im three days' CB and being done with it, 'e starts a lot of jaw about motives and discipline. 'E hadn't got no ruddy excuse; said 'e was a-reading Kipling, or some such rot – when 'e ought to have been 'elping the cook's mate.'

‘What did he give him?' asked the Pay Corporal, interested.

‘Nothing. His blessing and dismissed the case. As if I had nothing better to do than listen to 'im talking 'ot air to a perisher like that there Meyrick. 'Ere, pass over them musketry returns.'
⁵

Which conversation, had Seymour overheard it, he would have understood and fully sympathized with. For CSM Hayton, though a prince of sergeant-majors, was no student of psychology. To him a spade was a spade only as long as it shovelled earth.

John Meyrick, before he began to train for the great adventure, had been something in a warehouse down near Tilbury. And ‘something' is about the best description of what he was that you could give. Moreover there wasn't a dog's chance of his ever being ‘anything'. He used to help the young man – I should say young gentleman – who checked weigh-bills at one of the dock entrances. More than that I cannot say, and incidentally the subject is not of surpassing importance. His chief interests in life were contemplating the young gentleman, listening open-mouthed to his views on life, and dreaming. Especially the latter. Sometimes he would go after the day's work, and, sitting down on a bollard, his eyes would wander over the lines of some dirty tramp, with her dark-skinned crew. Visions of wonderful seas and tropic islands, of leafy palms with the blue-green surf thundering in towards them, of coral reefs and glorious-coloured flowers, would run riot in his brain. Not that he particularly wanted to go and see these figments of his imagination for himself; it was enough for him to dream of them – to conjure them up for a space in his mind by the help
of an actual concrete ship – and then to go back to his work of assisting his loquacious companion. He did not find the work uncongenial; he had no hankerings after other modes of life – in fact the thought of any change never even entered into his calculations. What the future might hold he neither knew nor cared; the expressions of his companion on the rottenness of life in general and their firm in particular awoke no answering chord in his breast. He had enough to live on in his little room at the top of a tenement house – he had enough over for an occasional picture show – and he had his dreams. He was content.

Then came the war. For a long while it passed him by; it was no concern of his, and it didn't enter his head that it was ever likely to be until one night, as he was going in to see
Jumping Jess, or the Champion Girl Cowpuncher
at the local movies, a recruiting sergeant touched him on the arm.

He was not a promising specimen for a would-be soldier, but that recruiting sergeant was not new to the game, and he'd seen worse.

‘Why aren't you in khaki, young fellow me lad?' he remarked genially.

The idea, as I say, was quite new to our friend. Even though that very morning his colleague in the weigh-bill pastime had chucked it and joined, even though he'd heard a foreman discussing who they were to put in his place as ‘that young Meyrick was habsolutely 'opeless', it still hadn't dawned on him that he might go too. But the recruiting sergeant was a man of some knowledge; in his daily round he encountered many and varied types. In two minutes he had fired the boy's imagination with a glowing and partially true description of the glories of war and the army, and supplied him with another set of dreams to fill his brain. Wasting no time, he struck while the iron was hot, and in a few minutes John Meyrick, sometime checker of weigh-bills, died, and No. 8469, Private John Meyrick came into being.

But though you change a man's vocation with the stroke of a pen, you do not change his character. A dreamer he was in the beginning, and a dreamer he remained to the end. And
dreaming, as I have already pointed out, was not a thing which commended itself to Company-Sergeant-Major Hayton, who in due course became one of the chief arbiters of our friend's destinies. True it was no longer coral islands – but such details availed not with cook's mates and other busy movers in the regimental hive. Where he'd got them from, Heaven knows, those tattered volumes of Kipling; but their matchless spirit had caught his brain and fired his soul, with the result – well, the first of them has been given.

There were more results to follow. Not three days after he was again upon the mat for the same offence, only to say much the same as before.

‘I do try, sir – I do try; but some'ow —'

And though in the bottom of his heart the officer believed him, though in a very strange way he felt interested in him, there are limits and there are rules. There comes a time, as he had said, when one can't judge by motives, when one can only judge by results.

‘You mustn't only try; you must succeed. Three days to barracks.'

And as Major Seymour poured himself out a glass of port, a face came into his mind – the face of a stumpy, uncouth man with deep-set eyes. ‘I wonder,' he murmured –‘I wonder.'

For five weeks they had lived untroubled by anything except flies – all of them, that is, save various NCOs in A company.
⁶
To them flies were quite a secondary consideration when compared to their other worry. And that, it is perhaps superfluous to add, was Private Meyrick himself.

Every day the same scene would be enacted; every day some sergeant or corporal would dance with rage as he contemplated the Company Idiot – the title by which he was now known to all and sundry.

‘Wake up! Wake up! Lumme, didn't I warn you–didn'tI warn yer 'arf an 'our ago over by that there tree, when you was a-staring into the branches looking for nuts or something – didn't I warn yer that the company was parading at ten fifteen for 'ot baths?'

‘I didn't 'ear you, Corporal – I didn't really.'

‘Didn't 'ear me! Wot yer mean, didn't 'ear me? My voice ain't like the twitter of a grass'opper, is it? It's my belief you're barmy, my boy, B-A-R-M-Y.
Savez
?
⁷
Get a move on yer, for Gawd's sake! You ought to 'ave a nurse. And when you gets to the bath-'ouse, for 'Eaven's sake pull yerself together! Don't forget to take off yer clothes before yer gets in; and when they lets the water out, don't go stopping in the bath because you forgot to get out. I wouldn't like another regiment to see you lying about when they come. They might say things.'

And so with slight variations the daily strafe went on. Going up to the trenches it was always Meyrick who got lost; Meyrick who fell into shell holes and lost his rifle or the jam for his section; Meyrick who forgot to lie down when a flare went up, but stood vacantly gazing at it until partially stunned by his next-door neighbour. Periodically messages would come through from the next regiment asking if they'd lost the regimental pet, and that he was being returned. It was always Meyrick…

‘I can't do nothing with 'im, sir.' It was the Company-Sergeant-Major speaking to Seymour. ‘'E seems soft like in the 'ead. Whenever 'e does do anything and doesn't forget, 'e does it wrong. 'E's always dreaming and 'alf barmy.'

‘He's not a flier, I know, Sergeant-Major, but we've got to put up with all sorts nowadays,' returned the officer diplomatically. ‘Send him to me, and let me have a talk to him.'

‘Very good, sir; but 'e'll let us down badly one of these days.'

And so once again Meyrick stood in front of his company officer, and was encouraged to speak of his difficulties. To an amazing degree he had remembered the discourse he had listened to many months previously; to do something for the regiment was what he desired more than anything – to do something big, really big. He floundered and stopped; he could find no words…

‘But don't you understand that it's just as important to do the little things? If you can't do them, you'll never do the big ones.'

‘Yes, sir – I sees that; I do try, sir, and then I gets thinking, and some'ow – oh! I dunno – but everything goes out of my head like. I wants the regiment to be proud of me – and then they calls me the Company Idiot.' There was something in the man's face that touched Seymour.

‘But how can the regiment be proud of you, my lad,' he asked gently, ‘if you're always late on parade, and forgetting to do what you're told? If I wasn't certain in my own mind that it wasn't slackness and disobedience on your part, I should ask the Colonel to send you back to England as useless.'

An appealing look came into the man's eyes. ‘Oh! don't do that, sir. I will try 'ard – straight I will.'

‘Yes, but as I told you once before, there comes a time when one must judge by results. Now, Meyrick, you must understand this finally. Unless you do improve, I shall do what I said. I shall tell the Colonel that you're not fitted to be a soldier, and I shall get him to send you away. I can't go on much longer; you're more trouble than you're worth. We're going up to the trenches again to-night, and I shall watch you. That will do; you may go.'

And so it came about that the Company Idiot entered on what was destined to prove the big scene in his uneventful life under the eyes of a critical audience. To the Sergeant-Major, who was a gross materialist, failure was a foregone conclusion;
to the company officer, who went a little nearer to the heart of things, the issue was doubtful. Possibly his threat would succeed; possibly he'd struck the right note. And the peculiar thing is that both proved right according to their own lights…

It started about six o'clock in the morning on the second day of their arrival – a really pleasant little intensive bombardment. A succession of shells came streaming in, shattering every yard of the front line with tearing explosions. Then the Huns turned on the gas and attacked behind it. A few reached the trenches – the majority did not; and the ground outside was covered with grey-green figures, some of which were writhing and twitching and some of which were still. The attack had failed…

But that sort of thing leaves its mark on the defenders, and this was their first baptism of real fire. Seymour had passed rapidly down the trench when he realized that for the moment it was over; and though men's faces were covered with the hideous gas masks, he saw by the twitching of their hands and by the ugly high-pitched laughter he heard that it would be well to get into touch with those behind. Moreover, in every piece of trench there lay motionless figures in khaki…

It was as he entered his dugout that the bombardment started again. Quickly he went to the telephone, and started to get on to Brigade Headquarters. It took him twenty seconds to realize that the line had been cut, and then he cursed dreadfully. The roar of the bursting shells was deafening; his cursing was inaudible; but in a fit of almost childish rage – he kicked the machine. Men's nerves are jangled at times…

It was merely coincidence doubtless, but a motionless figure in a gas helmet crouching outside the dugout saw that kick, and slowly in his bemused brain there started a train of thought. Why should his company officer do such a thing; why should
they all be cowering in the trench waiting for death to come to them; why…? For a space his brain refused to act; then it started again.

Why was that man lying full length at the bottom of the trench, with the great hole torn out of his back, and the red stream spreading slowly round him; why didn't it stop instead of filling up the little holes at the bottom of the trench and then overflowing into the next one? He was the corporal who'd called him barmy; but why should he be dead? He was dead – at least the motionless watcher thought he must be. He lay so still, and his body seemed twisted and unnatural. But why should one of the regiment be dead; it was all so unexpected, so sudden? And why did his Major kick the telephone?…

For a space he lay still, thinking; trying to figure things out. He suddenly remembered tripping over a wire coming up to the trench, and being cursed by his sergeant for lurching against him. ‘You would,' he had been told –‘you would. If it ain't a wire you'd fall over yer own perishing feet.'

‘What's the wire for, Sergint?' he had asked.

‘What d'you think, softie? Drying the washing on? It's the telephone wire to Headquarters.'

It all came back to him, and it had been over by the stunted pollard that he'd tripped up. Then he looked back at the silent, motionless figure – the red stream had almost reached him – and the Idea came. It came suddenly – like a blow. The wire must be broken, otherwise the officer wouldn't have kicked the telephone, he'd have spoken through it.

‘I wants the regiment to be proud of me – and then they calls me the Company Idiot.' He couldn't do the little things – he was always forgetting, but…! What was that about ‘lifting 'em through the charge that won the day'?
⁸
There was no charge, but there was the regiment. And the regiment was wanting him at last. Something wet touched his fingers, and when he looked at them, they were red. ‘B-A-R-M-Y. You ought to 'ave a nurse…'

Then once again coherent thought failed him – utter physical weakness gripped him – he lay comatose, shuddering, and crying softly over he knew not what. The sweat was pouring down
his face from the heat of the gas helmet, but still he held the valve between his teeth, breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth as he had been told. It was automatic, involuntary; he couldn't think, he only remembered certain things by instinct.

Suddenly a high explosive shell burst near him – quite close: and a mass of earth crashed down on his legs and back, half burying him. He whimpered feebly, and after a while dragged himself free. But the action brought him close to that silent figure, with the ripped-up back…

‘You ought to 'ave a nurse…' Why? Gawd above – why? Wasn't he as good a man as that there dead corporal? Wasn't he one of the regiment too? And now the Corporal couldn't do anything; but he – well, he hadn't got no hole torn out of his back. It wasn't his blood that lay stagnant, filling the little holes at the bottom of the trench…

Kipling came back to him – feebly, from another world. The dreamer was dreaming once again.