Action Front Part 11

"In a charge," said the Sergeant, "the 'Hot.w.a.ter Guards' don't think about going back till there's none of them left to go back; and you can always remember this: if you go forward you _may_ die, if you go back you _will_ die."

The memory of that phrase came back to Private Everton, tramping down the dark road to the firing-line. Just because he had no knowledge of how he himself would behave in this his baptism of fire, just because he was in deadly fear that he would feel fear, or, still worse, show it, he strove to fix that phrase firmly in front of his mind. "If I can remember that," he thought, "it will stop me going back, anyway," and he repeated: "If you go back you _will_ die, if you go back you _will_ die," over and over.

It is true that, for all his repet.i.tion, when a field battery, hidden close by the side of the road on which they marched, roared in a sudden and ear-splitting salvo of six guns, for the instant he thought he was under fire and that a huge sh.e.l.l had burst somewhere desperately close to them. He had jumped, his comrades a.s.sured him afterwards, a clear foot and a half off the ground, and he himself remembered that his first involuntary glance and thought flashed to the deep ditch that ran alongside the road.

When he came to the trenches, at last, and filed down the narrow communication-trench and into his Company's appointed position in the deep ditch with a narrow platform along its front that was the forward fire-trench, he remembered with unpleasant clearness that instinctive start and thought of taking cover. By that time he had actually been under fire, had heard the sh.e.l.ls rush over him and the shattering noise of their burst; had heard the bullets piping and humming and hissing over the communication- and firing-trenches. He took a little comfort from the fact that he had not felt any great fear then, but he had to temper that by the admission that there was little to be afraid of there in the shelter of the deep trench. It was what he would do and feel when he climbed out of cover on to the exposed and bullet-swept flat before the trench that he was in doubt about; for the Hot.w.a.ters had been told that at nine o'clock there was to be a brief but intense bombardment on a section of trench in front of them which had been captured from us the day before, and which, after several counter-attacks had failed, was to be taken that morning by this battalion of Hot.w.a.ters.

At half-past eight, n.o.body entering their trench would have dreamed that the Hot.w.a.ters were going into a serious action in half an hour.

The men were lounging about, squatting on the firing-step, chaffing and talking--laughing even--quite easily and naturally; some were smoking, and others had produced biscuits and bully beef from their haversacks and were calmly eating their breakfast.

Everton felt a glow of pride as he looked at them. These men were his friends, his fellows, his comrades: they were of the Hot.w.a.ter Guards--his regiment, and his battalion. He had heard often enough that the Guards Brigades were the finest brigades in the Army, that this particular brigade was the best of all the Guards, that his battalion was the best of the Brigade. Hitherto he had rather deprecated these remarks as savoring of pride and self-conceit, but now he began to believe that they must be true; and so believing, if he had but known it, he had taken another long step on the way to becoming the perfect soldier, who firmly believes his regiment the finest in the world and is ready to die in proof of the belief.

"Dusty Miller," the next file on his left, who was eating bread and cheese, spoke to him.

"Why don't you eat some grab, Toffee?" he mumbled cheerfully, with his mouth full. "In a game like this you never know when you'll get the next chance of a bite."

"Don't feel particularly hungry," answered Toffee with an attempt to appear as off-handed and casual and at ease as his questioner. "So I think I'd better save my ration until I'm hungry."

Dusty Miller sliced off a wedge of bread with the knife edge against his thumb, popped it in his mouth, and followed it with a corner of cheese.

"A-ah!" he said profoundly, and still munching; "there's no sense in saving rations when you're going into action. I'd a chum once that always did that; said he got more satisfaction out of a meal when the job was over and he was real hungry, and had a chance to eat in comfort--more or less comfort. And one day we was for it he saved a tin o' sardines and a big chunk of cake and a bottle of pickled onions that had just come to him from home the day before; said he was looking forward to a good feed that night after the show was over. And--and he was killed that day!"

Dusty Miller halted there with the inborn artistry that left his climax to speak for itself.

"Hard luck!" said Toffee sympathetically. "So his feed was wasted!"

"Not to say wasted exactly," said Dusty, resuming bread and cheese.

"Because I remembers to this day how good them onions was. Still it was wasted, far as he was concerned--and he was particular fond o' pickled onions."

But even the prospect of wasting his rations did nothing to induce Toffee to eat a meal. The man on Toffee's right was crouched back on the firing-step apparently asleep or near it. Dusty Miller had turned and opened a low-toned conversation with the next man, the frequent repet.i.tion of "I says" and "she says" affording some clew to the thread of his story and inclining Toffee to believe it not meant for him to hear. He felt he must speak to some one, and it was with relief that he saw Halliday, the man on his other side, rouse himself and look up.

Something about Toffee's face caught his attention.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, leaning forward and speaking quietly.

"This is your first charge, isn't it!"

"Yes," said Toffee, "I'm all right. I--I think I'm all right."

The other moved slightly on the firing-step, leaving a little room, and Toffee took this as an invitation to sit down. Halliday continued to speak in low tones that were not likely to pa.s.s beyond his listener's ear.

"Don't you get scared," he said. "You've nothing much to be scared about."

He threw a little emphasis, and Toffee fancied a little envy, into the "you."

"I'm not scared exactly," said Toffee. "I'm sort of wondering what it will be like."

"I know," said Halliday, "I know; and who should, if I didn't? But I can tell you this--you don't need to be afraid of sh.e.l.ls, you don't need to be afraid of bullets, and least of all is there any need to be afraid of the cold iron when the Hot.w.a.ters get into the trench. You don't need to be afraid of being wounded, because that only means home and a hospital and a warm dry bed; you don't need to be afraid of dying, because you've got to die some day, anyhow. There's only one thing in this game to be afraid of, and there isn't many finds that in their first engagement. It's the ones like me that get it."

Toffee glanced at him curiously and in some amazement. Now that he looked closely, he could see that, despite his easy loungeful att.i.tude and steady voice, and apparently indifferent look, there was something odd and unexplainable about Halliday: some faintest twitching of his lips, a shade of pallor on his cheek, a hunted look deep at the back of his eyes. Everton tried to speak lightly.

"And what is it, then, that the likes o' you get?"

Halliday's voice sank to little more than a whisper. "It's the fear o'

fear," he said steadily. "Maybe, you think you know what that is, that you feel it yourself. You know what I mean, I suppose?"

Toffee nodded. "I think so," he said. "What I fear myself is that I'll be afraid and show that I'm afraid, that I'll do something rotten when we get out up there."

He jerked his head up and back towards the open where the rifles sputtered and the bullets whistled querulously.

"There's plenty fear that," admitted Halliday, "before their first action; but mostly it pa.s.ses the second they leave cover and can't protect themselves and have to trust to whatever there is outside, themselves to bring them through. You don't know the beginning of how bad the fear o' fear can be till you have seen dozens of your mates killed, till you've had death no more than touch you scores of times, like I have."

"But you don't mean to tell me," said Toffee incredulously, "that you are afraid of yourself, that you can't trust yourself now? Why, I've heard said often that you're one of the coolest under fire, and that you don't know what fear is!"

"It's a good reputation to have if you can keep it," said Halliday.

"But it makes it worse if you can't."

"I wish," said Toffee enviously, "I was as sure of keeping it as you are to-day."

Halliday pulled his hand from his pocket and held it beside him where only Toffee could see it. It was quivering like a flag-halliard in a stiff breeze. He thrust it back in his pocket.

"Doesn't look too sure, does it?" he said grimly. "And my heart is shaking a sight worse than my hand."

He was interrupted by the arrival of a group of German sh.e.l.ls on and about the section of trench they were in. One burst on the rear lip of the trench, spattering earth and bullets about them and leaving a choking reek swirling and eddying along the trench. There was silence for an instant, and then an officer's voice called from the near traverse. "Is anybody hit there!" A sergeant shouted back "No, sir,"

and was immediately remonstrated with by an indignant private busily engaged in sc.r.a.ping the remains of a mud clod from his eye.

"You might wait a minute, Sergeant," he said, "afore you reports no casualties, just to give us time to look round and count if all our limbs is left on. And I've serious doubts at this minute whether my eye is in its right place or bulging out the back o' my head; anyway, it feels as if an eight-inch Krupp had b.u.mped fair into it."

When the explosion came, Toffee Everton had instinctively ducked and crouched, but he noticed that Halliday never moved or gave a sign of the nearness of any danger. Toffee remarked this to him.

"And I don't see," he confessed, "where that fits in with this hand- and heart-shaking o' yours."

Halliday looked at him curiously.

"If that was the worst," he said, "I could stand it. It isn't. It isn't the beginning of the least of the worst. If it had fell in the trench, now, and mucked up half a dozen men, there'd have been something to squeal about. That's the sort o' thing that breaks a man up--your own mates that was talking to you a minute afore, ripped to bits and torn to ribbons. I've seen nothing left of a whole live man but a pair o'

burnt boots. I've seen--" He stopped abruptly and s.h.i.+vered a little.

"I'm not going to talk about it," he said. "I think about it and see it too often in my dreams as it is. And, besides," he went on, "I didn't duck that time, because I've learnt enough to know it's too late to duck when the sh.e.l.l bursts a dozen yards from you. I'm not so much afraid of dying, either. I've got to die, I've little doubt, before this war is out; I don't think there's a dozen men in this battalion that came out with it in the beginning and haven't been home sick or wounded since. I've seen one-half the battalion wiped out in one engagement and built up with drafts, and the other half wiped out in the next sc.r.a.p. We've lost fifty and sixty and seventy per cent. of our strength at different times, and I've come through it all without a scratch. Do you suppose I don't know it's against reason for me to last out much longer? But I'm not afraid o' that. I'm not afraid of the worst death I've seen a man die--and that's something pretty bad, believe me. What I'm afraid of is myself, of my nerve cracking, of my doing something that will disgrace the Regiment."

The man's nerves were working now; there was a quiver of excitement in his voice, a grayer shade on his cheek, a narrowing and a restless movement of his eyes, a stronger twitching of his lips. More sh.e.l.ls crashed sharply; a little along the line a gust of rifle-bullets swept over and into the parapet; a Maxim rap-rap-rapped and its bullets spat hailing along the parapet above their heads.

Halliday caught his breath and s.h.i.+vered again.

"That," he said--"that is one of the devils we've got to face presently." His eyes glanced furtively about him. "G.o.d!" he muttered, "if I could only get out of this! 'Tisn't fair, I tell ye, it isn't fair to ask a man that's been through what I have to take it on again, knowing that if I do come through, 'twill be the same thing to go through over and over until they get me; or until my own sergeant shoots me for refusing to face it."

Everton had listened in amazed silence--an understanding utterly beyond him. He knew the name that Halliday bore in the regiment, knew that he was seeing and hearing more than Halliday perhaps had ever shown or told to anyone. Shamefacedly and self-consciously, he tried to say something to console and hearten the other man, but Halliday interrupted him roughly.

"That's it!" he said bitterly. "Go on! Pat me on the back and tell me to be a good boy and not to be frightened. I'm coming to it at last: old Bob Halliday that's been through it from the beginning, one o' the Old Contemptibles, come down to be mothered and hushaby-baby'd by a blanky recruit, with the first polish hardly off his new b.u.t.tons."

He broke off and into bitter cursing, reviling the Germans, the war, himself and Everton, his sergeant and platoon commander, the O.C., and at last the regiment itself. But at that the torrent of his oaths broke off, and he sat silent and shaking for a minute. He glanced sideways at last at the embarra.s.sed Everton.

"Don't take no notice o' me, chum," he said. "I wasn't speaking too loud, was I? The others haven't noticed, do you think? I don't want to look round for a minute."