Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

we did; but I couldn’t propel my sympathy as far as the Balkan States, Turks, Italians, and all the rest of them; and somehow or other the French were just the French and too busy fighting and selling things to the troops to need my intervention. So I got back to thinking about “all the good chaps who’d been killed with the First and Second Battalions since I left them”⁠ ⁠… Ormand, dying miserably out in a shell-hole.⁠ ⁠… I remembered his exact tone of voice when saying that if his children ever asked what he did in the Great War, his answer would be, “No bullet ever went quick enough to catch me”; and how he used to sing “Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee,” when we were being badly shelled. I thought of the typical Flintshire Fusilier at his best, and the vast anonymity of courage and cheerfulness which he represented as he sat in a front-line trench cleaning his mess-tin. How could one connect him with the gross profiteer whom I’d overheard in a railway carriage remarking to an equally repulsive companion that if the War lasted another eighteen months he’d be able to retire from business?⁠ ⁠… How could I coordinate such diversities of human behaviour, or believe that heroism was its own reward? Something must be put on paper, however, and I re-scrutinized the rough notes I’d been making. Fighting men are victims of conspiracy among (a) politicians; (b) military caste; (c) people who are making money out of the War. Under this I had scribbled, Also personal effort to dissociate myself from intolerant prejudice and conventional complacence of those willing to watch sacrifices of others while they sit safely at home. This was followed by an indignant afterthought. I believe that by taking this action I am helping to destroy the system of deception, etc., which prevents people from facing the truth and demanding some guarantee that the torture of humanity shall not be prolonged unnecessarily through the arrogance and incompetence of⁠ ⁠… Here it broke off, and I wondered how many c’s there were in “unnecessarily.” I am not a conscientious objector. I am a soldier who believes he is acting on behalf of soldiers. How inflated and unconvincing it all looked! If I wasn’t careful I should be yelling like some crank on a barrel in Hyde Park. Well, there was nothing for it but to begin all over again. I couldn’t ask Tyrrell to give me a few hints. He’d insisted that I must be independent-minded, and had since written to remind me that I must decide my course of action for myself and not be prompted by anything he’d said to me.

Sitting there with my elbows on the table I stared at the dingy red wallpaper in an unseeing effort at mental concentration. If I stared hard enough and straight enough, it seemed, I should see through the wall. Truth would be revealed, and my brain would become articulate. I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. That would be all right as a kickoff, anyhow. So I continued my superhuman cogitations. Around me was London with its darkened streets; and far away was the War, going on with wave on wave of gunfire, devouring its victims, and unable to blunder forward either to Paris or the Rhine. The air-raids were becoming serious, too. Looking out of the window at the searchlights, I thought how ridiculous it would be if a bomb dropped on me while I was writing out my statement.

III

Exactly a week after our first conversation I showed the statement to Tyrrell. He was satisfied with it as a whole and helped me to clarify a few minor crudities of expression. Nothing now remained but to wait until my leave had expired and then hurl the explosive document at the Commanding Officer at Clitherland (an event which I didn’t permit myself to contemplate clearly). For the present the poor man only knew that I’d applied for an instructorship with a Cadet Battalion at Cambridge. He wrote that he would be sorry to lose me and congratulated me on what he was generous enough to describe as my splendid work at the front. In the meantime Tyrrell was considering the question of obtaining publicity for my protest. He introduced me to some of his colleagues on the “Stop the War Committee” and the “No Conscription Fellowship.” Among them was an intellectual conscientious objector (lately released after a successful hunger-strike). Also a genial veteran Socialist (recognizable by his red tie and soft grey hat) who grasped my hand with rugged good wishes. One and all, they welcomed me to the Anti-War Movement, but I couldn’t quite believe that I had been assimilated. The reason for this feeling was their antipathy to everyone in a uniform. I was still wearing mine, and somehow I was unable to dislike being a Flintshire Fusilier. This little psychological dilemma now seems almost too delicate to be divulged. In their eyes, I suppose, there was no credit attached to the fact of having been at the front, but for me it had been a supremely important experience. I am obliged to admit that if these anti-war enthusiasts hadn’t happened to be likeable I might have secretly despised them. Any man who had been on active service had an unfair advantage over those who hadn’t. And the man who had really endured the War at its worst was everlastingly differentiated from everyone except his fellow soldiers.

Tyrrell (a great man and to be thought of as in a class by himself) took me up to Hampstead one hot afternoon to interview a member of Parliament who was “interested in my case.” Walking alongside of the philosopher I felt as if we were a pair of