Parade's End

Once, in a cattle-truck under a bridge, near a Red-Cross Clearing Station, by a miserable fellow called Perowne. In the presence of the troublesome lunatic called McKechnie. You would have thought that even a Movement Order Officer would have managed to send up the line that triangle differently arranged. Perowne was known to have been his wife’s lover; he, Tietjens, against his will, had been given the job, as second-in-command of the battalion, that McKechnie wanted madly. And indeed he had a right to it. They ought not to have been sent up together.

But there they had been — Perowne broken down, principally at the thought that he was not going to see his, Tietjens’, wife ever again in a golden gown…. Unless, perhaps, with a golden harp on a cloud, for he looked at things like that…. And, positively, as soon as that baggage-car — it had been a baggage-car, not a cattle-truck! — had discharged the deserter with escort and the three wounded Cochin-Chinese platelayers whom the French authorities had palmed off on them… And where the devil had they all been going? Obviously up into the line, and already pretty near it: near Division Headquarters. But where?…. God knew? Or when? God knew too!… A fine-ish day with a scanty remains of not quite melted snow in the cutting and the robins singing in the coppice above. Say February…. Say St. Valentine’s Day, which, of course, would agitate Perowne some more…. Well, positively as soon as the baggage-car had discharged the wounded who had groaned, and the sheepish escort who did not know whether they ought to be civil to the deserter in the presence of the orfcers, and the deserter who kept on defiantly — or if you like broken-heartedly, for there was no telling the difference — asking the escort questions as to the nature of their girls, or volunteering information as to the intimate behaviour of his…. The deserter a gipsyfied, black-eyed fellow with an immense jeering mouth; the escort a corporal and two Tommies, blond and blushing East Kents, remarkably polished about the buttons and brass numerals, with beautifully neatly- put-on puttees: obviously Regulars, coming from behind the lines; the Cochin-Chinese, with indistinguishable broad yellow faces, brown poetic eyes, furred topboots and blue furred hoods over their bandaged heads and swathed faces. Seated, leaning back against the side of the box-truck and groaning now and then and shivering all the time…

Well, the moment they had been cleared out at the Deputy Sub. R.T.O.’s tin shed by the railway bridge, the fellow Perowne with his well-padded presence and his dark babu-Hindooish aspect had bubbled out with questions as to the hereafter according to Tietjens and as to the nature of Death; the immediate process of dissolution: dying…. And in between Perowne’s questions McKechnie, with his unspeakable intonation and his dark eyes as mad as a cat’s, had asked Tietjens how he dared get himself appointed second-in-command of his, McKechnie’s, own battalion…. “You’re no soldier,” he would burst out. “Do you think you are a b——y infantryman? You’re a mealsack, and what the devil’s to become of my battalion…. Mine…. My battalion! Our battalion of pals!”

That had been in, presumably, February, and, presumably, it was now April. The way the dawn came up looked like April…. What did it matter?… That damned truck had stayed under that bridge for two hours and a half… in the process of the eternal waiting that is War. You hung about and you hung about, and you kicked your heels and you kicked your heels: waiting for Mills bombs to come, or for jam, or for generals, or for the tanks, or transport, or the clearance of the road ahead. You waited in offices under the eyes of somnolent orderlies, under fire on the banks of canals, you waited in hotels, dug-outs, tin sheds, ruined houses. There will be no man who survives of His Majesty’s Armed Forces that shall not remember those eternal hours when Time itself stayed still as the true image of bloody War!…

Well, in that case Providence seemed to have decreed a waiting just long enough to allow Tietjens to persuade the unhappy mortal called Perowne that death was not a very dreadful affair…. He had enough intellectual authority to persuade the fellow with his glued-down black hair that Death supplied His own anaesthetics. That was the argument. On the approach of Death all the faculties are so numbed that you feel neither pain nor apprehension…. He could still hear the heavy, authoritative words that, on that occasion, he had used.

The Providence of Perowne! For, when he was dug out after, next night having been buried in going up into the trenches, they said, he had a smile like a young baby’s on his face. He didn’t have long to wait and died with a smile on his face… nothing having so much become him during the life as… well, a becoming smile! During life he had seemed a worried, fussing sort of chap.

Bully for Perowne…. But what about him, Tietjens? Was that the sort of thing that Providence ought to do to one?… That’s Tempting God!

The sergeant beside him said:

“Then a man could stand hup on an ’ill…. You really mean to say, sir, that you think a man will be able to stand up on a bleedin’ ’ill….”

Presumably Tietjens had been putting heart into that acting temporary sergeant-major. He could not remember what he had been saying to the N.C.O. because his mind had been so deeply occupied with the image of Perowne…. He said:

“You’re a Lincolnshire man, aren’t you? You come from a Fen country. What do you want to stand up on a hill for?”

The man said:

“Ah, but you do, sir!”

He added:

“You want to stand up! Take a look around…” He struggled for expression: “Like as if you wanted to breathe deep after bein’ in a stoopin’ posture for a long time!”

Tietjens said:

“Well, you can do that here. With discretion. I did it just now….”

The man said:

“You, sir… You’re a law hunto yourself!”

It was the most considerable shock that Tietjens received in the course of his military career. And the most considerable reward.

There were all these inscrutable beings: the Other Ranks, a brownish mass, spreading underground, like clay strata in the gravel, beneath all this waving country that the sun would soon be warming; they were in holes, in tunnels, behind sack cloth curtains, carrying on… carrying on some sort of life, conversing, breathing, desiring. But completely mysterious, in the mass. Now and then you got a glimpse of a passionate desire: “A man could stand up on a bleedin’ ’ill”; now and then you got — though you knew that they watched you eternally and knew the minutest gestures of your sleep — you got some sort of indication as to how they regarded you: “You are a law unto yourself!”

That must be hero-worship: an acting temporary regimental sergeant-major, without any real knowledge of his job, extemporising, not so long ago a carrier in an eastern county of remarkable flatness does not tell his Acting Commanding Officer that he is a law unto himself without meaning it to be a flattering testimony: a certificate, as far as it went, of trustworthiness….

They were now crawling out into the light of day; from behind the sacking, six files that he had last night transferred from C to D Coy., D having been reduced to forty-three rank and file. They shuffled out, an extraordinary Falstaff’s battalion of muddy odd-come shorts, fell into some sort of alignment in the trench, shuffled an inch further this way, an inch further that; pushed up their chinstraps and pulled them down; humped up their packs by hunching their shoulders and jerking; adjusted their water bottles and fell into some sort of immobility, their rifles, more or less aligned, poked out before them. In that small company they were men of all sorts of sizes, of all sorts of disparities and grotesquenesses of physique. Two of them were music-hall comedians and the whole lot looked as if they made up a knock-about turn…. The Rag-Time Army at its vocation, living and breathing.

The sergeant called them to attention and they wavered back and forward. The sergeant said:

“The Commandin’ Officer’s lookin’ at you. FIX… B’ts!”

And, positively, a dwarf concealed under a pudding basin shuffled a foot-length and a half forward in the mud, protruded his rifle-muzzle between his bent knees, jerked his head swiftly to strain his sight along the minute line…. It was like a blurred fairy-tale! Why did that dwarf behave in a smart and soldierly manner? Through despair? It wasn’t likely!

The men wavered like the edge of a field of tall grass with the wind running along it; they felt round themselves for their bayonet-handles, like women attempting difficult feats with their skirts…. The dwarf cut his hand smartly away to his side, as the saying is, the men pulled their rifles up into line. Tietjens exclaimed:

“Stand at ease, stand easy,” negligently enough, then he burst out in uncontrollable irritation: “For God’s