No Man's Land Part 30

"Twenty seconds," he gasped, "an' me out of training. Lumme! wot a life."

The next instant the ground quivered as if an earthquake had occurred; a thunderous roar shook the air, while the blast of the explosion nearly knocked them down.

"Nothin' wrong with that there ammonal," remarked the Sapper professionally. "'Andy stuff it is too. Let's go and see what's 'appened."

But that they will never know. From the dug-out shaft a volume of smoke and dust was belching out, while from inside there came a medley of noises and grunts indicative of annoyance and pain.

"Sounds like one of them there gramophone records, don't it?" murmured Samuel. "A summer morning, or the departure of a troop s.h.i.+p. Ain't it lovely? 'Ullo, wot's that?"

Clear above the din and the moaning, and the spasmodic fighting which they could still hear going on up the trench, there sounded the officers' dinner call. Twice it blared forth from the British lines, and every man knew what it meant: "Come back, at once." The raid was over. . . .

And so by ones and two and threes D Company returned to the fold, where hot tea and a noggin of rum awaited them, giving their names to Reginald on the way. To the casual observer it might have seemed that D Company were drunk--one and all. They were--but not with wine. They were drunk with excitement, and with the knowledge just acquired that they could beat the Germans, man-to-man. They were blooded.

The lies they told--those cheery lads! Not a man had done in less than forty Boches, which rose to eighty when they wrote their girls. What matter? D Company of the Stick'em and be d.a.m.ned was made for life.

The men walked three inches higher; the men, as men, had come into their own. Every new draft that came heard the story; every new draft realised it had got something to live up to. No longer sand bags and smells their horizon, but the memory of one glorious half-hour.

And when he thought over it afterwards, there was only one small thing that struck Samuel Pipston as peculiar. He was just retailing to Reginald Simpkins--with some wealth of detail--his experiences in the German dug-out, when he became aware of the Honourable James beside him, who listened for a while until he had finished.

"So you had a good time did you, Pipston?" he remarked. "Splendid!"

Then he turned to Simpkins. "The Company Commander tells me you were a great help to him, checking the men as they came back. Well done."

It struck Samuel that he might have had a "Well done."

But then, he didn't know the Honourable Jimmy's methods; nor did he know that while he and those with him had merely learned the first and easiest lesson that night, Reginald Simpkins had learned the second.

VII

THE THIRD LESSON, AND A DIGRESSION

And so, with two of the lessons learned, we come to the third and greatest. The first was basely material, and was taught by Shorty Bill; the second was a little nearer the heart of things, and was taught by the Honourable James; the third is the heart of things, and can be taught by no one. The rules--vague rules--may be given by men who have learned it to those who have not; but its true meaning, its real significance, can only be reached by the pupil for himself. And there are many who fall by the way. . . .

It arises out of the second: it must be preceded by subordination of self. For until a man can subordinate himself, he cannot take on his shoulders the cares of others; he cannot put those others first, And until he can put others before him, he cannot be put in a position of responsibility: he is not fitted to fill it. And it is the principle of responsibility on which the British Army is built up: another thing about which I am very doubtful as to the knowledge of those whose paths have not led them near things military. . . .

I have touched on things material; let me hold forth awhile on things spiritual.

What think you, my masters, is the driving force of a regiment in the field? The answer is in one word--Leaders.h.i.+p. Quite so, you say; the remark seems to have been made before. It has, which makes it all the stranger that it is so little understood.

What does the word mean to you? Prancing in front of the men with a drawn sword, shouting, "For King and Country"? They'd laugh at you, and follow a--leader: one of their own. Ruling by fear, ruthlessly without thought of human weakness, without tinge of mercy? They'd hate you, and you would have to drive them like the Prussians do. Ruling by pusillanimous kindness, by currying favour, by seeking to be a popularity Jack? They'd despise you--and rightly.

The quality of leaders.h.i.+p is none of these things: it is something much more simple, much more homely, if I may use the word. To lead men a man must first of all understand men, understand human nature; he must know his job, and know it better than his men; he must possess intensity of purpose.

Human nature! What the men like and what they dislike; the little fetishes they put up, the little G.o.ds; the few words of praise when they have done well, of disappointment when they have not; consideration for them, giving them beer and concerts; being with them in the trenches when the weather is bad, and not in a dug-out. Little points perhaps, but it's the little points that are so important.

Human sympathy--the appealing to the spark of better things that lies in the worst; the inculcation of an ideal to live up to--the ideal of the regiment. All the hundred and one things that go to make up a man's life and not an automaton's; all the things that make for the affection and love of those under you. It is a very great thing for an officer to be loved by his men. . . .

Knowledge! The capability of doing yourself anything you call on those under you to do; of showing them when they are right and when they are wrong; of making them trust your ability. It is a very great thing for an officer to be trusted by his men.

Intensity of purpose! The driving force that gives enthusiasm, that causes the hand on the plough to remain there until the job is done; the quality that abhors vacillation, that prevents a man taking a thing up one moment with red-hot eagerness and dropping it the next because he's tired of it. The men despise vacillation and chopping and changing. Being "messed about," they call it; only the word is not messed. And it is a terrible thing for an officer to be despised by his men. . . .

From good leaders.h.i.+p there springs good discipline, that other word so little understood by those who have not met it in the flesh. Not, believe me, the rigorous punishment for breaking certain arbitrary rules, enforced by an autocrat on men placed temporarily under him by a whim of fate; far from it. Discipline is merely the doctrine which teaches of the subordination of self for the whole; it teaches the doctrine of playing the game; it teaches the all-important fact that the fear of being found out and punished should _not be_ the chief force in a man's life, but rather that the realisation of his responsibility should be the guiding factor.

Such is the ideal aimed at in a good regiment. That there are some who miss that aim none but a fool would deny; the same may be said of most professions, even, I suppose, of bishops. That there are some officers who go the wrong way to work, who nag and bully and generally turn themselves into something even worse than nature intended is an undoubted fact. That there are some men who are wasters; who were born wasters and will die as such is also quite true. But I maintain that the training, the ideals, the traditions, the morale of the good British regiment does produce, and has produced, a growth of character and a condition of mind in the men who belong to it which was largely conspicuous by its absence in civil life.

Why, I do not profess to say. Why the great thinkers and the vaporising burblers between them should not have hit on some method of training character which would have produced equally good results to those produced by what they are still pleased to call "militarism," I do not know. All that I do know is that they did not. Let us leave it at that.

I have digressed; our Reginald is calling. For weeks his battalion was destined to remain in peace trenches, to live that dreary life of monotony which tests the capabilities of the leader as no big push can do. The excitement is absent, there is plenty of time--too much time--for thought. And boredom is of all things one of the hardest to combat. It calls for leaders.h.i.+p of the highest type. There is many a man capable of supreme devotion in a crisis who is incapable of the steady, unseen strain, day in, day out, of keeping up his men's spirits--in fact, of appreciating human nature in one of its many phases.

The men feel that dull routine on which the lime-light does not s.h.i.+ne, and only the leader can help them. It claims its victims, just as do the big offensive, that trench life, when the flares lob up ceaselessly and the bursts of machine-gun fire come swis.h.i.+ng over the ground. Here men are wiring; there is a party digging a new bit of trench; and out beyond--in No Man's Land--an officer and three scouts are creeping about examining the enemy's wire. So it goes on throughout the night, until as the first streaks of dawn show faintly in the east it ceases.

The men come in, back to the dreary mud holes; and next night there is the same d.a.m.ned thing to be done all over again somewhere else. . . .

Only, Ginger won't be there any more; he has put up his last bit of wire. He started on the last journey unnoticed save by the man standing next him; and--Gawd above!--what's the use? They'd been together for two years, share and share alike; and now the end.

Putting up a bit of rusty wire round a sap. . . .

"Easy, boy, easy. 'Ere, cut them ruddy braces away. 'Orl rite, old son, you've copped a Blighty. Thro' yer stummik--Gor luv yer--no. Get that dressing on, Bill; turn over, mate--we'll give yer a drink in a minute; but one thing at a time, old pal, that's my motto. Always merry and bright, as the perisher said in the play." Back in the trench, pulled in from the wire where the work goes on, an officer's electric torch s.h.i.+nes on the stretcher bearers working with clumsy gentleness on the quivering body. "Now, then, mate, we can't get the blinking stretcher along this 'ere trench, so we'll 'ave to carry you."

"Copped it?" asks an N.C.O. in a whisper.

"Gawd! a fair crumpler," mutters the other. "Come on, Ginger, let's get off on the first stage for Blighty. On me back, we does it--on me back. 'Ere, boy--lumme! turn 'im over, Bill." The torch s.h.i.+nes down on the face upturned to the stars; the stretcher bearers bend down and suddenly straighten up again. For Ginger is even now pa.s.sing along the last great road: he has copped it. The group disperse; the officer goes back to his job; the stretcher bearers do their work; and soon nothing remains save the stain on the dirty sandbags. Just another letter to a woman at home; just war.

Only to his pal, it's Ginger: Ginger whom he'd joined up with; Ginger--killed putting up a bit of rusty wire. Not doing anything brilliant, not in a charge or going over the top, but putting up a bit of ruddy wire. What is the use of it all, what? . . .

Come on, my leader; come on, you platoon commander; the soul of Ginger's pal is in the melting-pot, though he doesn't know it, and would curse in your face if you told him so. A quiet hand on the back, a laugh perhaps, just a word to show him that you feel with him. His outlook on life is not as big as yours; help him--for Heaven's sake, help him. Thus is it done if the leader of the regiment is a man of understanding; for each of his a.s.sistants, right down the long chain to the junior lance-corporal, have been imbued with their responsibility to those under them. They are there to help them, to lighten their burdens, to sink self for the men they lead. The strong must help the weak--that is the principle; and every one must pull his weight for the good of the team.

But I have got off the rails again; I apologise.

During those weeks of boredom, Reginald, though he knew it not, was being watched, still watched, by the Honourable James. And it seemed to that judge of character that the soil was good.

"The Adjutant asked me if I'd like to take the stripe this morning, Shorty." Reginald and his pal were watching an inter-company football match on the ground by the Lens main road, near the little village of Noyelles-les-Vermelles. It is on the borders of the coal country--that village, and all around it rise the great pyramidical slag heaps of the pits.

"Did 'e now?" Shorty contemplated with interest a sh.e.l.l bursting on the derelict fosse in the next village of Annequin, and turned thoughtfully to the speaker. "An' what did you say to him?"

"I said I didn't want to. Why the devil should I? I don't want a stripe, Bill--I'm happier as I am. It means a lot of extra work an'

trouble, an'----"

"Did you tell him that, son?" Shorty Bill hooked himself over on his arm and proceeded to fill his pipe.

"Yes, I told him that: and he----"

He did not finish his sentence for a moment or two; he seemed to be turning something over in his mind. Then he burst out: "He talked a lot of rot about responsibility."

"Cut it out. It's you that is coughing up the rot. Listen here a moment, an' I'll tell you what the Honourable James said. Got a match?" He took the proffered box and carefully lit up. "He first-ways told you that he'd had his eye on you for some time, an' he was pleased with 'ow you was doing. That may have been a lie or it may not, but the Honourable Jimmy knows more'n one cottons to. Then he told you what a gran' thing it was to be in this regiment, and that to be in a position of responsibility was grander still. Then he told you that no man worthy of the name of a man ought to be afraid of shouldering responsibility. An' lastly he said: 'Will you take the stripe?'"

Reggie was staring at the speaker amazed. "Lumme! you might have been there, Shorty. How did you know?"