or not stretched out, lying face downwards, half buried. Or at the thought of dead that you have never seen dead at all…. Suddenly the light goes out…. In this case it was because of one fellow, a dirty enough man, not even very willing, not in the least endearing, certainly contemplating desertion…. But your dead…
In the darkness outside, the brushing, swift, rhythmic pacing of an immense number of men went past, as if they had been phantoms. A great number of men in fours, carried forward, irresistibly, by the overwhelming will of mankind in ruled motion. The sides of the hut were so thin that it was peopled by an in innumerable throng. A sodden voice, just at Tietjens’ head, chuckled: “For God’s sake, sergeant-major, stop these —. I’m too — drunk to halt them….”
It made for the moment no impression on Tietjens’ conscious mind. Men were going past. Cries went up in the camp. Not orders, the men were still marching. Cries.
Tietjens’ lips — his mind was still with the dead — said:
“That obscene Pitkins!… I’ll have him cashiered for this….” He saw an obscene subaltern, small, with one eyelid that drooped.
He came awake at that. Pitkins was the subaltern he had detailed to march the draft to the station and go on to Bailleul under a boozy field officer of sorts.
McKechnie said from the other bed:
“That’s the draft back.”
Tietjens said:
“Good God!…”
McKechnie said to the batman:
“For God’s sake go and see if it is. Come back at once….”
The intolerable vision of the line, starving beneath the moon, of grey crowds murderously elbowing back a thin crowd in brown, zigzagged across the bronze light in the hut. The intolerable depression that, in those days, we felt — that all those millions were the playthings of ants busy in the miles of corridors beneath the domes and spires that rise up over the central heart of our comity, that intolerable weight upon the brain and the limbs, descended once more on those two men lying upon their elbows. As they listened their jaws fell open. The long, polyphonic babble, rushing in from an extended line of men stood easy, alone rewarded their ears.
Tietjens said:
“That fellow won’t come back…. He can never do an errand and come back….” He thrust one of his legs cumbrously out of the top of his flea-bag. He said:
“By God, the Germans will be all over here in a week’s time!”
He said to himself:
“If they so betray us from Whitehall that fellow Levin has no right to pry into my matrimonial affairs. It is proper that one’s individual feelings should be sacrificed to the necessities of a collective entity. But not if that entity is to be betrayed from above. Not if it hasn’t the ten-millionth of a chance….” He regarded Levin’s late incursion on his privacy as enquiries set afoot by the general…. Incredibly painful to him, like a medical examination into nudities, but perfectly proper. Old Campion had to assure himself that the other ranks were not demoralized by the spectacle of officers’ matrimonial infidelities…. But such enquiries were not to be submitted to if the whole show were one gigantic demoralization!
McKechnie said, in reference to Tietjens’ protruded foot:
“There’s no good your going out…. Cowley will get the men into their lines. He was prepared.” He added: “If the fellows in Whitehall are determined to do old Puffles in, why don’t they recall him?”
The legend was that an eminent personage in the Government had a great personal dislike for the general in command of one army — the general being nicknamed Puffles. The Government, therefore, were said to be starving his command of men so that disaster should fall upon his command.
“They can recall generals easy enough,” McKechnie went on, “or anyone else!”
A heavy dislike that this member of the lower middle classes should have opinions on public affairs overcame Tietjens. He exclaimed: “Oh, that’s all tripe!”
He was himself outside all contact with affairs by now. But the other rumour in that troubled host had it that, as a political man?uvre, the heads round Whitehall — the civilian heads — were starving the army of troops in order to hold over the allies of Great Britain the threat of abandoning altogether the Western Front. They were credited with threatening a strategic man?uvre on an immense scale in the Near East, perhaps really intending it, or perhaps to force the hands of their allies over some political intrigue. These atrocious rumours reverberated backwards and forwards in the ears of all those millions under the black vault of heaven. All their comrades in the line were to be sacrificed as a rear-guard to their departing host. That whole land was to be annihilated as a sacrifice to one vanity. Now the draft had been called back. That seemed proof that the Government meant to starve the line! McKechnie groaned:
“Poor — old Bird!… He’s booked. Eleven months in the front line, he’s been…. Eleven
He added:
“Get back into bed, old bean…. I’ll go and look after the men if it’s necessary….”
Tietjens said:
“You don’t so much as know where their lines are….” And sat listening. Nothing but the long roll of tongues came to him. He said:
“Damn it! The men ought not to be kept standing in the cold like that…” Fury filled him beneath despair. His eyes filled with tears. “God,” he said to himself, “the fellow Levin presumes to interfere in my private affairs…. Damn it,” he said again, “it’s like doing a little impertinence in a world that’s foundering….”
The world was foundering.
“I’d go out,” he said, “but I don’t want to have to put that filthy little Pitkins under arrest. He only drinks because he’s shell-shocked. He’s not man enough else, the unclean little Nonconformist….”
McKechnie said:
“Hold on!… I’m a Presbyterian myself…”
Tietjens answered:
“You would be!…” He said: “I beg your pardon…. There will be no more parades…. The British Army is dishonoured for ever….”
McKechnie said:
“That’s all right, old bean….”
Tietjens exclaimed with sudden violence:
“What the hell are you doing in the officers’ lines?… Don’t you know it’s a court-martial offence?”
He was confronted with the broad, mealy face of his regimental quartermaster-sergeant, the sort of fellow who wore an officer’s cap against the regulations, with a Tommie’s silver-plated badge. A man determined to get Sergeant-Major Cowley’s job. The man had come in unheard under the role of voices outside. He said:
“Excuse me, sir, I took the liberty of knocking…. The sergeant-major is in an epileptic fit. I wanted your directions before putting the draft into the tents with the other men….” Having said that tentatively he hazarded cautiously: “The sergeant-major throws these fits, sir, if he is suddenly woke up…. And Second-Lieutenant Pitkins woke him very suddenly….”
Tietjens said:
“So you took on you the job of a beastly informer against both of them…. I shan’t forget it.” He said to himself:
“I’ll get this fellow one day…” and he seemed to hear with pleasure the clicking and tearing of the scissors as, inside three parts of a hollow square, they cut off his stripes and badges.
McKechnie exclaimed:
“Good God, man, you aren’t going out in nothing but your pyjamas. Put your slacks on under your British warm….”
Tietjens said:
“Send the Canadian sergeant-major to me at the double….” to the quarter. “My slacks arc at the tailor’s, being pressed.” His slacks were being pressed for the ceremony of the signing of the marriage contract of Levin, the fellow who had interfered in his private affairs. He continued into the mealy broad face and vague eyes of the
