Trechos de Nothing Of Importance (1917), de Bernard Adams.
"Life in this war is a series of events so utterly different and disconnected, that the effect upon the actor in the midst of them is like receiving a hand of cards from an invisible dealer. There are four suits in the pack. Spades represent the dullness, mud, weariness, and sordidness. Clubs stand for another side, the humour, the cheerfulness, the jollity, and good-fellowship. In diamonds I see the glitter of excitement and adventure. Hearts are a tragic suit of agony, horror, and death. And to each man the invisible dealer gives a succession of cards; sometimes they seem all black; sometimes they are red and black alternately; and at times they come red, red, red; and at the end is the ace of hearts."
- - -
"There was one phrase," I resumed, "in the daily communiqués that used to strike us rather out there; it was, 'Nothing of importance to record on the rest of the front.' I believe that a hundred years hence this phrase will be repeated in the history books. There will be a passage like this: 'Save for the gigantic effort of Germany to break through the French lines at Verdun, nothing of importance occurred on the western front between September, 1915, and the opening of the Somme offensive on the 1st of July, 1916.' And this will be believed, unless men have learnt to read history aright by then. For the river of history is full of waterfalls that attract the day excursionist - such as battles, and laws, and the deaths of kings; whereas the spirit of the river is not in the waterfalls. [...] I have learned something of the spirit of the deep river in eight months of 'nothing of importance.'"
- - -
"Good-bye! Don't forget to send me that Hun helmet!"
"All right! Good-bye!"
Six of us sat in a first-class carriage on the morning of the 5th of October, 1915.
- - -
Revolvers leapt from brand new holsters; feet were held up to show the ideal trench-nails; flash lamps and torches, compasses, map-cases, pocket medicine-cases, all were shown with an easy confidence of manner that screened a sinking dread of disapprobation. The prismatic compass was regarded rather as a joke by some of us; its use in trench warfare was a doubtful quantity; yet there were some of us who in the depths of our martial wisdom were half expecting that the Battle of Loos was the prelude of an autumn campaign of open-country warfare.
- - -
Some of our party were excited at their first visit to a foreign soil; but their enthusiasm abated when at the buffet they were charged exorbitant prices and their English money was rejected as "dam fool money."
- - -
We obtained breakfast at an estaminet by the station; omelettes, rolls and butter, and cafe noir. I bought a French newspaper, and thought how finely my French would improve under this daily necessity; but I soon found that one could get the Paris edition of the Daily Mail, and my French is still as sketchy as ever! I remember watching the French children and the French women at the doors of the houses, and wondering what they thought of this war on their own soil; I knew that the wild enthusiasms of a year ago had died down; I did not expect the shouting and singing, the souvenir-hunting, and the generous impulses that greeted our troops a year ago; but I felt so vividly myself the fact that between me and the Germans lay only a living wall of my own countrymen, that I could not help thinking these urchins and women must feel it too! The very way in which they swept the doorsteps seemed to me worth noting at the moment.
- - -
Sitting in his tent after Mass, I was amazed at the apparent permanence of his abode; shelves, made out of boxes; novels, an army list, magazines, maps; bed, washstand, candlesticks, a chair; baccy, and whisky and soda! It was all so snug and comfortable. I was soon to find myself accumulating a very similar collection in billets six miles behind the firing-line, and taking most of it into the trenches!
- - -
How well I remember the thrill of excitement when I found the name Chocques on my map, quite close to the firing-line! And as we got nearer, and saw R.A.M.C. and cavalry camps, and talked to Tommies guarding the line, saw aeroplanes, and yes! a captive balloon, excitement grew still greater! At last we reached Chocques, and the railway transport officer calmly informed us that we had another four miles to go. He brilliantly suggested walking. But an A.S.C. lorry was there, and in we climbed, only to be ejected by the corporal! Eventually we tramped to Béthune with very full packs in a hot sun.
Walking gave us opportunity for observation; and that road was worth seeing to those who had not seen it before. There were convoys of A.S.C. lorries, drawn up (or "parked") in twenties or thirties alongside the road, each with its mystical marking, a scarlet shell, a green shamrock, etc. painted on its side; Red Cross ambulances passed, impelling one to turn back and look in them, sometimes containing stretcher-cases (feet only visible), or sitting cases with bandaged head or arm in sling. Then there were motor-cars with Staff officers; motor-cars with youthful officers in immaculate Sam Brownes and "slacks"; [...] and in the distance loomed the square tower of the cathedral, which I thought then to be a decapitated spire.
The shops were doing a roaring trade, and I was amazed to see chemists flaunting auto-strop razors, stationers offering "Tommy's writing-pad," and tailors showing English officers' uniforms in their windows, besides all the goods of a large and populous town. We were very hungry and tired, and fate directed us to the famous tea-shop, where, at dainty tables, amid crowds of officers, we obtained an English tea! I was astounded; so were we all. To think that I had treasured a toothbrush as a thing that I might not be able to replace for months! Here was everything to hand. Were we really within six miles of the Germans! Yet officers were discussing "the hot time we had yesterday"; while "we only came out this morning," or "they whizz-banged us pretty badly last night," were remarks from officers redolent of bath and the hairdresser! Buttons brilliantly polished, boots shining like advertisements, swagger-canes, and immaculate collars, gave the strangest first impression of "active service" to us, with our leather equipment, packs, leather buttons, and trench boots!
- - -
We went rattling along till within a short distance of our front trenches. There was a lot of cannonading going on around and behind us, and star-shells bursting continuously, with Crystal-Palace-firework pops; we could hear rifles cracking, too. At length we got to where the lorry could go no further, and we halted for a long time at a place where the houses were all ruins and the roofs like spiders' webs, with the white glare of the shells silhouetting them against the sky. The houses had been shelled yesterday, but last night no shells were coming our way at all. My feelings were exactly like they are in a storm - the nearer and bigger the flashes and bangs the more I hoped the next would be really big and really near. Of course, all this cannonade was our artillery; at the time we were quite muddled up as to what it all was! The snarling bangs were the 18-pounders quite close to us, about one thousand yards behind our front line; the cracking bullets were spent bullets, though it sounded to us as if they were from a trench about twenty yards in front of us! Nothing is more confusing at first than the different sounds of the different guns. I think several of us would have been ready to say we had been under shell-fire that night!
- - -
Now we are sitting in a big old château awaiting a telephone message; we are in a dining-room, walls peeling, and arm-chairs reduced to legless deformities! It is a jolly day: sun, and the smell of autumn.
- - -
It was too uncomfortable to rest, cramped up among all sorts of bulky valises and sprawling limbs! Once, at about four o'clock, we halted at a house with a light in the window, and found a miner just going off to work. An old woman brewed some very black coffee, and we hungrily devoured bits of bread and butter, coffee, and cognac; while the old woman, fat and smiling, gabbled incessantly at us! A strange, weird picture we must have made, some of us in kilts and bonnets, standing half-awake in the flickering candle-light.
- - -
"[I] was told that an orderly would take me to my battalion transport. In half an hour the orderly arrived on a bicycle, and by 6 P.M. I was only half a mile from our transport. We were walking along, when suddenly there was a scream like a rocket, followed by a big bang, and the sound of splinters falling all about. I expected to see people jump into ditches; but they stood calmly in the street, women and all, and watched, while several shells (whizz-bangs, I believe)" - No, dear innocence, High-Explosive Shrapnel - "burst just near the road about a hundred yards ahead. We were four miles back from the firing-line. It was just the 'evening hate,' I expect. It didn't last long. Just near us was one of our own batteries firing intermittently."
This was my first experience of being under fire.
- - -
A free issue of "Glory Boys" cigarettes has just arrived: two packets for each officer and man. Please don't forget to send my Sam Browne belt.
- - -
For three days and nights I was in command of this redoubt, isolated, and ready with stores, ammunition, water, barbed wire and pickets, bombs, and tools, to hold out a little siege for several days if necessary. I used to leave it to get meals at Company H.Q. in the support line; otherwise, I had always to be there, ready for instant action. No one used to get more than two or three hours' consecutive sleep, and I could never take off boots, equipment, or revolver.
- - -
Long pause, during which machine-guns pop, and snipers snipe merrily, and flares light up the sky. Trench-mortars begin, behind us "whizz-sh-sh-sh-h-h" - silence - "THUD." Then the Germans reply, sending two or three over which thud harmlessly behind.
"Ping-g-g-g" goes a stray bullet singing by - a ricochet by its sound.
- - -
At 5:30 "Stand down and clean rifles" is the order given, and the cleaning commences - a process as oft-repeated as "washing up" in civilized lands, and as monotonous and unsatisfactory, for a few hours later the rifles are a bit rusty and muddy again, and need another inspection.
- - -
There are an amazing lot of mice about the trenches, and they fall in and can't get out. Most of them get squashed. Frogs too, which make a green and worse mess than the mice. Our C.O. always stops and throws a frog out if he meets one. Tommy, needless to say, is not so sentimental.
- - -
The entente of last Christmas is not to be repeated! One of the officers in our battalion has shown me several German signatures on his paybook (he was in the ranks then), given in friendly exchange in the middle of No Man's Land last Christmas Day.
- - -
Getting near the place I came on a man standing half-dazed in the trench. "Oh, sirrh," he cried, in the barring speech of a true Welshman. "A terench-mohrterh hass fall-en ericht in-ter me duck-out." For the moment I felt like laughing at the man's curious speech and look, but I saw that he was greatly scared: and no wonder. A trench mortar had dropped right into the mouth of his dug-out, and had half buried two of his comrades. We were soon engaged in extricating them. Both had bad head wounds, and how he escaped is a miracle. I helped carry the two men out and over the debris of flattened trenches to Company Headquarters. So, for the first time I looked upon two dying men, and some of their blood was on my clothes.
- - -
Another death that came into my close experience was that of a lance-corporal in my platoon. I had only spoken to him a quarter of an hour before, and on returning found him lying dead on the fire-platform. He had been killed instantaneously by a rifle grenade.
- - -
So it was with great joy that we would return to billets, to get dry and clean, to eat, sleep, and write letters; to drill, and carry out inspections. Company drill, bayonet-fighting, gas-helmet drill, musketry, and lectures were usually confined to the morning and early afternoon.
- - -
That is a working-party: interesting as a first experience to an officer; but when multiplied exceedingly, by day, by night, in rain, mud, sleet, and snow, carrying trench boards, filling sand-bags, digging clay, bailing out liquid mud, and returning cold and drenched, without soup - then, working-parties became a monotonous succession of discomforts that wore out the spirit as well as the body.
- - -
You can defend the road without blocking it to traffic; at the same time it cannot be rushed by motor-cycles or armoured cars; [...] and all around tombstones leaning in every direction, rooted up, shattered, split. There was one of the crucifixes standing untouched in the middle of it all, about which so much has been written; whether it had fallen and been erected again I cannot say.
- - -
Another disadvantage about these water-logged trenches was that the bad rains had made the water rise in several places even over the raised trench-board platform; others were fastened on top; but even these were often not enough. And when the frost came and froze the water on top of the boards, the procession became a veritable cake-walk.
- - -
It [singing during march] was but a sorry thin sort of singing though, like a winter sunshine; there was no power behind it, no joy, no spontaneity.
- - -
Maps are like anatomy: to some people it is of absorbing interest to know where our bones, muscles, arteries and all the rest of our interior lie; to others these things are of no account whatever.
- - -
10 P.M. Great starlight. Jupiter and Venus both up, and the Great Bear and Orion glittering hard and clean in the steely sky. I wish I had a Homer. I am sure he has just one perfect epithet for Orion on a night like this. I shall read Homer in a new light after these times. I begin to understand the spirit of the Homeric heroes; it was all words, words, words before. Now I see. Billet life - where is that in the Iliad? In the tents, of course. And the eating and drinking, the "word that puts heart into men," the cool stolid facing of death, all those gruesome details of wounds and weapons, all is being enacted here every day exactly as in the Homeric age. Human nature has not altered.
[...] And on them, too, the stars looked down, winking alike at Greeks and Trojans; just as to-night thousands of German and British faces, dull-witted or sharp, sour-faced or smiling, sad or happy, are gazing up and wondering if there is any wisdom in the world yet.
Four thousand years ago! And all the time the stars in the Great Bear have been hurtling apart at thousands of miles an hour, and the human eye sees no difference. No wonder they wink at us.
And our mothers, and wives - the women-folk - Euripides understood their views on war. Ten years they waited...
- - -
Then somehow I found my equipment and tunic off; there seemed a lot of men round me; and I tried to realize that I was really hit. My arm hung numb and stiff, with the after-taste of a sting in it I felt this could not be a proper wound, as there was no real throbbing pain such as I expected. I was surprised when I saw a lot of blood in the half light. [...]
By this time my arm was bandaged and I started walking back to Maple Redoubt, leaning on Corporal Dyson. I wanted to joke, but felt too tired.
I turned my head round in silence, observing acutely every detail in this antechamber, as one does in a dentist's waiting-room. All the time in my arm I felt this numb wasp-sting; I wondered when the real pain would start; there was no motion in this still smart.
"Well, it must be one of these explosive bullets, an ordinary bullet doesn't make a wound like yours. That's it. That'll do."
- - -
At the Citadel an R.A.M.C. doctor had given me tea and a second label. He had also given me an injection against tetanus. This he did in the chest. Why didn't he do it in my right arm, I had thought.
- - -
In the afternoon I was told that I should be pleased to hear that there was no bone broken. I was anything but pleased. I wanted the bone to be broken, as I wanted to go to Blighty. [...]
I could not sleep. They injected morphia at last, but I awoke after three or four hours feeling more tired than ever.
- - -
The man next to me, with the bandaged head, kept talking deliriously to the orderly about his being on a submarine. Once the orderly smiled at me as he answered the absurd questions.
- - -
Did it need a war to tell you that a man can be heroic, resolute, courageous, cheerful, and capable of sacrifice? There were those who could have told you that before this war.
- - -
For I have seen the real face of war: I have seen men killed, mutilated, blown to little pieces; I have seen men crippled for life; I have looked in the face of madness, and I know that many have gone mad under its grip. I have seen fine natures break and crumble under the strain. I have seen men grow brutalized, and coarsened in this war.
- - -
This war is not as past wars; this is every man's war, a war of civilians, a war of men who hate war, of men who fight for a cause, who are compelled to kill and hate it. That is another thing that people will not face. Men whisper that Tommy does not hate Fritz.
- - -
* He [Bernard Adams] only went out to the front again on January 31st, 1917. In the afternoon of February 26th he was wounded while leading his men in an attack and died the following day in the field hospital.
- - -
"There was one phrase," I resumed, "in the daily communiqués that used to strike us rather out there; it was, 'Nothing of importance to record on the rest of the front.' I believe that a hundred years hence this phrase will be repeated in the history books. There will be a passage like this: 'Save for the gigantic effort of Germany to break through the French lines at Verdun, nothing of importance occurred on the western front between September, 1915, and the opening of the Somme offensive on the 1st of July, 1916.' And this will be believed, unless men have learnt to read history aright by then. For the river of history is full of waterfalls that attract the day excursionist - such as battles, and laws, and the deaths of kings; whereas the spirit of the river is not in the waterfalls. [...] I have learned something of the spirit of the deep river in eight months of 'nothing of importance.'"
- - -
"Good-bye! Don't forget to send me that Hun helmet!"
"All right! Good-bye!"
Six of us sat in a first-class carriage on the morning of the 5th of October, 1915.
- - -
Revolvers leapt from brand new holsters; feet were held up to show the ideal trench-nails; flash lamps and torches, compasses, map-cases, pocket medicine-cases, all were shown with an easy confidence of manner that screened a sinking dread of disapprobation. The prismatic compass was regarded rather as a joke by some of us; its use in trench warfare was a doubtful quantity; yet there were some of us who in the depths of our martial wisdom were half expecting that the Battle of Loos was the prelude of an autumn campaign of open-country warfare.
- - -
Some of our party were excited at their first visit to a foreign soil; but their enthusiasm abated when at the buffet they were charged exorbitant prices and their English money was rejected as "dam fool money."
- - -
We obtained breakfast at an estaminet by the station; omelettes, rolls and butter, and cafe noir. I bought a French newspaper, and thought how finely my French would improve under this daily necessity; but I soon found that one could get the Paris edition of the Daily Mail, and my French is still as sketchy as ever! I remember watching the French children and the French women at the doors of the houses, and wondering what they thought of this war on their own soil; I knew that the wild enthusiasms of a year ago had died down; I did not expect the shouting and singing, the souvenir-hunting, and the generous impulses that greeted our troops a year ago; but I felt so vividly myself the fact that between me and the Germans lay only a living wall of my own countrymen, that I could not help thinking these urchins and women must feel it too! The very way in which they swept the doorsteps seemed to me worth noting at the moment.
- - -
Sitting in his tent after Mass, I was amazed at the apparent permanence of his abode; shelves, made out of boxes; novels, an army list, magazines, maps; bed, washstand, candlesticks, a chair; baccy, and whisky and soda! It was all so snug and comfortable. I was soon to find myself accumulating a very similar collection in billets six miles behind the firing-line, and taking most of it into the trenches!
- - -
How well I remember the thrill of excitement when I found the name Chocques on my map, quite close to the firing-line! And as we got nearer, and saw R.A.M.C. and cavalry camps, and talked to Tommies guarding the line, saw aeroplanes, and yes! a captive balloon, excitement grew still greater! At last we reached Chocques, and the railway transport officer calmly informed us that we had another four miles to go. He brilliantly suggested walking. But an A.S.C. lorry was there, and in we climbed, only to be ejected by the corporal! Eventually we tramped to Béthune with very full packs in a hot sun.
Walking gave us opportunity for observation; and that road was worth seeing to those who had not seen it before. There were convoys of A.S.C. lorries, drawn up (or "parked") in twenties or thirties alongside the road, each with its mystical marking, a scarlet shell, a green shamrock, etc. painted on its side; Red Cross ambulances passed, impelling one to turn back and look in them, sometimes containing stretcher-cases (feet only visible), or sitting cases with bandaged head or arm in sling. Then there were motor-cars with Staff officers; motor-cars with youthful officers in immaculate Sam Brownes and "slacks"; [...] and in the distance loomed the square tower of the cathedral, which I thought then to be a decapitated spire.
The shops were doing a roaring trade, and I was amazed to see chemists flaunting auto-strop razors, stationers offering "Tommy's writing-pad," and tailors showing English officers' uniforms in their windows, besides all the goods of a large and populous town. We were very hungry and tired, and fate directed us to the famous tea-shop, where, at dainty tables, amid crowds of officers, we obtained an English tea! I was astounded; so were we all. To think that I had treasured a toothbrush as a thing that I might not be able to replace for months! Here was everything to hand. Were we really within six miles of the Germans! Yet officers were discussing "the hot time we had yesterday"; while "we only came out this morning," or "they whizz-banged us pretty badly last night," were remarks from officers redolent of bath and the hairdresser! Buttons brilliantly polished, boots shining like advertisements, swagger-canes, and immaculate collars, gave the strangest first impression of "active service" to us, with our leather equipment, packs, leather buttons, and trench boots!
- - -
We went rattling along till within a short distance of our front trenches. There was a lot of cannonading going on around and behind us, and star-shells bursting continuously, with Crystal-Palace-firework pops; we could hear rifles cracking, too. At length we got to where the lorry could go no further, and we halted for a long time at a place where the houses were all ruins and the roofs like spiders' webs, with the white glare of the shells silhouetting them against the sky. The houses had been shelled yesterday, but last night no shells were coming our way at all. My feelings were exactly like they are in a storm - the nearer and bigger the flashes and bangs the more I hoped the next would be really big and really near. Of course, all this cannonade was our artillery; at the time we were quite muddled up as to what it all was! The snarling bangs were the 18-pounders quite close to us, about one thousand yards behind our front line; the cracking bullets were spent bullets, though it sounded to us as if they were from a trench about twenty yards in front of us! Nothing is more confusing at first than the different sounds of the different guns. I think several of us would have been ready to say we had been under shell-fire that night!
- - -
Now we are sitting in a big old château awaiting a telephone message; we are in a dining-room, walls peeling, and arm-chairs reduced to legless deformities! It is a jolly day: sun, and the smell of autumn.
- - -
It was too uncomfortable to rest, cramped up among all sorts of bulky valises and sprawling limbs! Once, at about four o'clock, we halted at a house with a light in the window, and found a miner just going off to work. An old woman brewed some very black coffee, and we hungrily devoured bits of bread and butter, coffee, and cognac; while the old woman, fat and smiling, gabbled incessantly at us! A strange, weird picture we must have made, some of us in kilts and bonnets, standing half-awake in the flickering candle-light.
- - -
"[I] was told that an orderly would take me to my battalion transport. In half an hour the orderly arrived on a bicycle, and by 6 P.M. I was only half a mile from our transport. We were walking along, when suddenly there was a scream like a rocket, followed by a big bang, and the sound of splinters falling all about. I expected to see people jump into ditches; but they stood calmly in the street, women and all, and watched, while several shells (whizz-bangs, I believe)" - No, dear innocence, High-Explosive Shrapnel - "burst just near the road about a hundred yards ahead. We were four miles back from the firing-line. It was just the 'evening hate,' I expect. It didn't last long. Just near us was one of our own batteries firing intermittently."
This was my first experience of being under fire.
- - -
A free issue of "Glory Boys" cigarettes has just arrived: two packets for each officer and man. Please don't forget to send my Sam Browne belt.
- - -
For three days and nights I was in command of this redoubt, isolated, and ready with stores, ammunition, water, barbed wire and pickets, bombs, and tools, to hold out a little siege for several days if necessary. I used to leave it to get meals at Company H.Q. in the support line; otherwise, I had always to be there, ready for instant action. No one used to get more than two or three hours' consecutive sleep, and I could never take off boots, equipment, or revolver.
- - -
Long pause, during which machine-guns pop, and snipers snipe merrily, and flares light up the sky. Trench-mortars begin, behind us "whizz-sh-sh-sh-h-h" - silence - "THUD." Then the Germans reply, sending two or three over which thud harmlessly behind.
"Ping-g-g-g" goes a stray bullet singing by - a ricochet by its sound.
- - -
At 5:30 "Stand down and clean rifles" is the order given, and the cleaning commences - a process as oft-repeated as "washing up" in civilized lands, and as monotonous and unsatisfactory, for a few hours later the rifles are a bit rusty and muddy again, and need another inspection.
- - -
There are an amazing lot of mice about the trenches, and they fall in and can't get out. Most of them get squashed. Frogs too, which make a green and worse mess than the mice. Our C.O. always stops and throws a frog out if he meets one. Tommy, needless to say, is not so sentimental.
- - -
The entente of last Christmas is not to be repeated! One of the officers in our battalion has shown me several German signatures on his paybook (he was in the ranks then), given in friendly exchange in the middle of No Man's Land last Christmas Day.
- - -
Getting near the place I came on a man standing half-dazed in the trench. "Oh, sirrh," he cried, in the barring speech of a true Welshman. "A terench-mohrterh hass fall-en ericht in-ter me duck-out." For the moment I felt like laughing at the man's curious speech and look, but I saw that he was greatly scared: and no wonder. A trench mortar had dropped right into the mouth of his dug-out, and had half buried two of his comrades. We were soon engaged in extricating them. Both had bad head wounds, and how he escaped is a miracle. I helped carry the two men out and over the debris of flattened trenches to Company Headquarters. So, for the first time I looked upon two dying men, and some of their blood was on my clothes.
- - -
Another death that came into my close experience was that of a lance-corporal in my platoon. I had only spoken to him a quarter of an hour before, and on returning found him lying dead on the fire-platform. He had been killed instantaneously by a rifle grenade.
- - -
So it was with great joy that we would return to billets, to get dry and clean, to eat, sleep, and write letters; to drill, and carry out inspections. Company drill, bayonet-fighting, gas-helmet drill, musketry, and lectures were usually confined to the morning and early afternoon.
- - -
That is a working-party: interesting as a first experience to an officer; but when multiplied exceedingly, by day, by night, in rain, mud, sleet, and snow, carrying trench boards, filling sand-bags, digging clay, bailing out liquid mud, and returning cold and drenched, without soup - then, working-parties became a monotonous succession of discomforts that wore out the spirit as well as the body.
- - -
You can defend the road without blocking it to traffic; at the same time it cannot be rushed by motor-cycles or armoured cars; [...] and all around tombstones leaning in every direction, rooted up, shattered, split. There was one of the crucifixes standing untouched in the middle of it all, about which so much has been written; whether it had fallen and been erected again I cannot say.
- - -
Another disadvantage about these water-logged trenches was that the bad rains had made the water rise in several places even over the raised trench-board platform; others were fastened on top; but even these were often not enough. And when the frost came and froze the water on top of the boards, the procession became a veritable cake-walk.
- - -
It [singing during march] was but a sorry thin sort of singing though, like a winter sunshine; there was no power behind it, no joy, no spontaneity.
- - -
Maps are like anatomy: to some people it is of absorbing interest to know where our bones, muscles, arteries and all the rest of our interior lie; to others these things are of no account whatever.
- - -
10 P.M. Great starlight. Jupiter and Venus both up, and the Great Bear and Orion glittering hard and clean in the steely sky. I wish I had a Homer. I am sure he has just one perfect epithet for Orion on a night like this. I shall read Homer in a new light after these times. I begin to understand the spirit of the Homeric heroes; it was all words, words, words before. Now I see. Billet life - where is that in the Iliad? In the tents, of course. And the eating and drinking, the "word that puts heart into men," the cool stolid facing of death, all those gruesome details of wounds and weapons, all is being enacted here every day exactly as in the Homeric age. Human nature has not altered.
[...] And on them, too, the stars looked down, winking alike at Greeks and Trojans; just as to-night thousands of German and British faces, dull-witted or sharp, sour-faced or smiling, sad or happy, are gazing up and wondering if there is any wisdom in the world yet.
Four thousand years ago! And all the time the stars in the Great Bear have been hurtling apart at thousands of miles an hour, and the human eye sees no difference. No wonder they wink at us.
And our mothers, and wives - the women-folk - Euripides understood their views on war. Ten years they waited...
- - -
Then somehow I found my equipment and tunic off; there seemed a lot of men round me; and I tried to realize that I was really hit. My arm hung numb and stiff, with the after-taste of a sting in it I felt this could not be a proper wound, as there was no real throbbing pain such as I expected. I was surprised when I saw a lot of blood in the half light. [...]
By this time my arm was bandaged and I started walking back to Maple Redoubt, leaning on Corporal Dyson. I wanted to joke, but felt too tired.
I turned my head round in silence, observing acutely every detail in this antechamber, as one does in a dentist's waiting-room. All the time in my arm I felt this numb wasp-sting; I wondered when the real pain would start; there was no motion in this still smart.
"Well, it must be one of these explosive bullets, an ordinary bullet doesn't make a wound like yours. That's it. That'll do."
- - -
At the Citadel an R.A.M.C. doctor had given me tea and a second label. He had also given me an injection against tetanus. This he did in the chest. Why didn't he do it in my right arm, I had thought.
- - -
In the afternoon I was told that I should be pleased to hear that there was no bone broken. I was anything but pleased. I wanted the bone to be broken, as I wanted to go to Blighty. [...]
I could not sleep. They injected morphia at last, but I awoke after three or four hours feeling more tired than ever.
- - -
The man next to me, with the bandaged head, kept talking deliriously to the orderly about his being on a submarine. Once the orderly smiled at me as he answered the absurd questions.
- - -
Did it need a war to tell you that a man can be heroic, resolute, courageous, cheerful, and capable of sacrifice? There were those who could have told you that before this war.
- - -
For I have seen the real face of war: I have seen men killed, mutilated, blown to little pieces; I have seen men crippled for life; I have looked in the face of madness, and I know that many have gone mad under its grip. I have seen fine natures break and crumble under the strain. I have seen men grow brutalized, and coarsened in this war.
- - -
This war is not as past wars; this is every man's war, a war of civilians, a war of men who hate war, of men who fight for a cause, who are compelled to kill and hate it. That is another thing that people will not face. Men whisper that Tommy does not hate Fritz.
- - -
* He [Bernard Adams] only went out to the front again on January 31st, 1917. In the afternoon of February 26th he was wounded while leading his men in an attack and died the following day in the field hospital.
