I

THE SEED

I have in my mind the tale of a superior young man a very superior young man, genteel, and thoroughly versed in the intricacies of etiquette. The majority of the human race was, without any loss to itself, unaware that he existed; but the “ladies” and “gentlemen” on the staff of Mogg’s Mammoth Emporium viewed him as the supreme arbiter of elegance. And just because the average human being would have asserted and asserted correctly that for such as him there is no hope save drowning in puppyhood, I would tell his story. It is the exception which proves the rule. It is the proof that we are the slaves of custom and environment; and that, given something as the bed-rock, much may be done by a good teacher. There was something in this very superior young man as it turned out, though few would have suspected it, had they seen him before the war. But then, no one can ever listen to a person of the male sex proffering a good line of stockings in Lisle thread at one and eleven-three without experiencing a strong desire to be sick. Which goes back to what I said before: the whole thing is one of environment. The stocking vendors knew no better; for want of the necessary teaching they took to their nauseating trade. It’s all in the Old Book how shall they learn, unless they be taught? Had they had the teaching well, listen to the story of this very superior young “gentleman,” one time deputy chief stomach bender of Mogg’s Mammoth Millinery Emporium terms. Strictly Cash. What the sub deputy chief waistcoat creaser will say if he reads these words I shudder to think. You see, the very superior young “gentleman” was so genteel.

A hot morning sun shone down on the outskirts of the town. Nothing moved, nothing stirred; utter silence brooded over the houses that once had been buzzing with people the people of Arras. Now their only occupants were rats. The little gardens at the back were dank with unchecked weeds, save where a great conical hole showed the clean brown earth. And at the bottom of each of these holes lay a pool of foetid green water. The walls were crumbling, decay was rampant, the place breathed corruption. Occasionally the silence would be broken by a crash, and a little heap of brick rubble would subside into the road, raising a cloud of thick choking dust. Occasionally there would be another sound, like the drone of a great beetle, followed by a dull echoing roar and a bigger cloud of dust. Occasionally would come the ping-phut of a stray bullet; but of human life there was no sign.

Not, that is to say, to the casual observer; but to the man who looked out of the aeroplane circling above much was visible which you or I would not see. To him there came the vision of an occasional move behind some mouldering wall: sometimes an upturned face, sometimes the glint of steel. In one garden by a broken cucumber frame a man was polishing his bayonet, and the flash from it caught the observer’s eye. Just opposite thirty yards away two or three men were sitting round a fire from which the smoke curled slowly up. And the bayonet cleaner was clothed in khaki, while the cookers had on a dirty field grey; between them lay No Man’s Land. But to the casual observer silence: silence and death and the dreadful stink of corruption. Many others had cleaned bayonets and cooked stews under these same conditions, and many in the doing thereof had gone suddenly, and without warning, into the great Silence. For it was a sniper’s paradise, as the victims could they have spoken would have testified. As it was they lay there lightly buried, and the same fool men made the same fool mistakes and came and joined them. As I say, it was a sniper’s paradise. . . .

Into this abode of joy, then, came the very superior young “gentleman.” It was principally owing to the fact that Miss Belsize the “lady” who dispensed camisoles, or some equally seductive garments had flatly refused to accompany him any longer to the High Street Picture Palace if he remained in his frock coat, that our friend had donned khaki. For a long while he had stoutly affirmed that he was indispensable; then the transfer of affection on the part of camisoles to a dangerous-looking corporal from the wild and woolly West decided him. He did not like that corporal. No man who, meeting a comparative stranger, beat him on the back painfully, and, having looked his latest glad rags up and down, remarked with painful distinctness, “Lumme! is it real?” could possibly be considered a gentleman. But Miss Belsize had laughed long and laughed loud; and well, I will not labour the point. In due course our superior one found himself in the haunt of death I have briefly described above, still full of self-importance and as inconceivably ignorant as the majority are who come for the first time to the game across the water.

Recently arrived with a draft it was his initial experience of war in France, in contrast with training in England; in fact, the morning in question was his first visit to the trenches. And because many better men than he have endeavoured to conceal a peculiar sinking of the stomach by an assumed bravado, let us not blame him for the attitude he endeavoured to take up.

“Pretty quiet, isn’t it, corporal?” he remarked airily, as his section came to rest in a trench behind a mass of broken brick and cobble stones. “Lor’, look at that glass up there, hidden in the stones.” For a moment curiosity mastered him, and he reached up towards it with his hand. The next instant he gave a cry of anger, as a jolt in his ribs with a rifle doubled him up. “What the deuce ” he began angrily.

“Don’t you deuce me, my lad,” said the corporal dispassionately, “or you and me will quarrel. Just you do what you’re told, and I’ll write and tell your ma you’re a good little boy.” The corporal a man of few words went on his way, leaving our hero whose name by the way was Reginald Simpkins fuming.

“If that blighter hits me again,” he remarked when the N.C.O. was out of hearing, “I’ll ”

“You’ll what?” An old soldier looked at him scornfully. “He goes an’ saves yer mouldy life and then yer bleats. Got yer bib, Reggie darling?”

“Not so much of your row.” The corporal had come back again. “This ain’t a ruddy colony of rooks in the nesting season. Now, Simpkins, you and Ginger first relief. There’s your periscope you can relieve them other two.”

“Where’s the periscope?” asked Reginald of his companion in a whisper.

“The glass up there, you flat-faced perisher hidden in the stones. Wot d’you think it is? A noyster laying eggs!”

The trench settled down to silence as the company relief was completed, and Reginald morosely nursed his grievance. Much of the gentle flattery to which he had been accustomed at Mogg’s Mammoth Emporium seemed conspicuous by its absence in this new sphere in which he found himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, people seemed positively rude at times, even ruder than they had been at home. He confided as much in an aggrieved whisper to the unsympathetic Ginger.

“Rude!” That worthy spat with violence and accuracy. “You wait till you bump into Shorty Bill. Rude! Gawd! ’E’s a ’oly terror.”

“Who is Shorty Bill?” queried Reggie, his eyes fixed on the glass whose mysteries he was beginning to understand.

But Ginger was in no mood for further confidences. “You’ll find out fast enough ’oo Shorty is. ’E’s down ’ere to-day. You watch that there periscope. This ain’t no rest cure this bit ’ere. It’s ’ell.”

“It seems pretty quiet,” ventured the watcher after a short silence.

“Yus! That’s wot the last man said wot I was with behind this wall. There’s ’is brains on that stone behind you.”

With an involuntary shudder Reginald looked round at the stone, on which the grim stains still remained. “What did it?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

“Black Fritz,” answered the other. “’E’s a sniper, what lives opposite; and ’e’s paid for ’is keep that swine ’as paid for ’is keep. Charlie Turner, an’ ‘Arry, an’ Ginger Woodward, an’ Nobby Clark, an’ the sergeant-major, an’ two orficers. Yus ’e’s paid for ’is keep, ’e ’as ’as Master Black Fritz.”

“And he’s over there,” said Reggie, a little breathlessly.

“Yus. Where the ’ell do you think ’e is? In an aeryplane?” Once again Ginger spat dispassionately, and then relapsed into a silence from which he refused to be drawn until the presence of two more men beside him indicated that the hour of relief had come.

“Now look here, Simpkins,” said the corporal when the relief was completed, “this is your first visit to the trenches, isn’t it? Well, you can sit down now and have a sleep, or you can write or read if you like. But, whatever you do, don’t go showing your ugly face over the top; because this place ain’t healthy.” He turned away, and Reggie was left to his own resources.

“Come round the corner,” said Ginger in his ear. “I’ll show you a spot to sleep. I know this ’ere bit like me own back parlour.”

And so had any one been sufficiently interested in his doings to report the fact it might have been noted that ten minutes later our friend was sitting on the fire step writing a lurid epistle to Miss Belsize, while Ginger lay peacefully asleep beside him, breaking the complete silence with his snores.

At last the letter was finished, and Reggie gave way to meditation. Everything was so utterly different to what he had anticipated that he could hardly believe he was actually in that mystic place the trenches. To his left a crumbling wall ran along until it bent out of sight, a wall which in most places was three or four feet high, but which at one spot had been broken down until it was almost flush with the ground, and the bricks and rubble littered the weeds. In front of him lay the town, desolate, appalling, with a few rooks cawing discordantly round the windowless houses. And over everything brooded an oppressive hot stinking stillness that almost terrified him. . . .

After a while his gaze settled on the place where the wall was broken down, and his imagination began to play. If he went there it was only about ten yards away he would be able to look straight at the Germans. So obsessed did he become with this wonderful idea that he woke up the sleeping Ginger and confided it to him. There being a censor of public morals I will refrain from giving that worthy warrior’s reply when he had digested this astounding piece of information; it is sufficient to say that it did not encourage further conversation, nor did it soothe our hero’s nerves. He was getting jangled jangled over nothing. It was probably because there was such a complete nothing happening that the jangling process occurred. A shell, a noise, anything; but not this awful, silent stagnation. He bent down mechanically and picked up half a brick; then just as mechanically he bowled the half-brick at the lump of debris behind the broken bit of the wall. And it was that simple action which changed our very superior young “gentleman” into a man: on such slender threads hang the destinies even of nations.

He watched the brick idly as it went through space; he watched it idly as it hit the ground just by a clump of dock leaves; and from that moment idly ceases to be the correct adverb. Five seconds later, with a pricking sensation in his scalp and a mouth oddly dry, he was muttering excitedly into the ear of the now infuriated Ginger.

“A man where, you ruddy perisher?” he grunted savagely. “Fust yer tells me if you goes and looks at the ’Uns you can see ’em; and then you says there’s a man in the nettles. You ought to be locked up.”

“There is, I tell you. I heaved a brick at that bunch of leaves, and it hit something that grunted.” Reginald was still clutching his companion’s arm.

“Un’and me, Clara,” said the other peevishly, “this ain’t a sixpenny ’op.”

He got up impressed in spite of himself by the other’s manner and peered at the mass of debris. “Wot d’yer want with ’eaving bricks for, anyway,” he continued irately after a long inspection which revealed nothing. “This ’ere ain’t a bean-feast where you gets the bag of nuts.”

“Watch this time, Ginger.” Once again a large fragment came down in the neighbourhood of the dock leaves followed by an unmistakable groan.

“Lumme, mate,” said Ginger hoarsely, “wot is it?” The two men stood peering at the rubbish, not ten yards away. “I’ll go and get the corporal. You . . .” But he didn’t finish his sentence.

Two shots rang out almost simultaneously. One was from the German lines, and there was a short stifled scream from the other side of the traverse. The other was from the rubbish heap ten yards away, and the blast made a piece of hemlock rock violently. Otherwise the rubbish heap was lifeless save for a sepulchral voice “Got him.” There was a crash of falling bricks from a house opposite the sound of what seemed to be a body slithering down and then silence.

Ginger’s grip relaxed, and he grinned gently. “Gawd ’elp you, Reginald; you ’ave my blessing. You’ve been dropping the brickyard on Shorty Bill’s back.” He faded rapidly away, and our friend was left alone, gazing with fascinated eyes at the miraculous phenomenon which was occurring under his very nose. Suddenly and with incredible swiftness a portion of the rubbish heap, with dock leaves, nettles, old cans, and bricks adhering to it, detached itself from the main pile and hurled itself into the trench. With a peculiar sliding movement it advanced along the bottom, and then it stopped and stood upright. Speechless with amazement, Reginald found himself gazing into the eyes of a man which were glaring at him out of a small slit in the sacking which completely covered him. A pair of dirty earth-stained hands gently laid down a rifle on the fire-step a rifle with a telescopic sight. Then from the apparition came a voice.

“Say, kid, are you the son of a , who has been practising putting the weight in my back? Don’t speak, son, don’t speak, or I might forget my manners. Once in the ribs and once in the small of the back. God above, my lad, if I’d missed Black Fritz, after lying up there for him for eight hours as part of the scenery, I’d have ”

“’Ullo, Shorty.” The corporal rounded the traverse. “Fritz has got another. Poor old Bill Trent. Copped clean through the ’ead.”

The corporal, followed by the strange uncouth being in sacking, with his leaves and bricks hanging about him, moved away, and Reginald followed. With his heart thumping within him he looked at the dreadful thing that ten minutes before had been a speaking, seeing, man; and as he looked something seemed to be born in his soul. With a sudden lightning flash of insight he saw himself in a frock coat behind the counter; then he looked at the silent object on the step, and his jaw set. He turned to Shorty Bill.

“I’m dam sorry about that brick; but I’m new to the game, and I had no idea you were there. Didn’t you say you’d got Black Fritz?”

“’Ave you, Shorty ’ave you got the swine?” An eager chorus assailed him, but the man in the sack had his eyes fixed on the very superior young “gentleman.” At length he turned to the men around.

“Yep I got him. Half left by the base of that red house. He came out of the top window. You can see a black thing there through a periscope.” The men thronged to have a look, and Shorty Bill turned to the stone thrower.

“Can you shoot?”

“A little; not much I’m afraid.”

“Like to learn the game? Yep? Right. I’ll teach you. It’s great.” He moved slowly away and turned up a communication trench, while into the eyes of Mogg’s pride there came a peculiar look quite foreign to his general disposition. A game a great game! He looked again at the poor still thing on the step, and his teeth clenched. Thus began his fall from gentility! . . .

II

THE FIRST LESSON

It was not a very rapid descent. The art of sniping and its attendant pastime scouting is not learned in a day. Moreover, in company with the other games that are played in the trenches, it has the one dominant feature about it. One mistake made in the rules is one too many; there is no chance of making a second. True, the player will have taught the man who takes his place yet another of the things not to do; but personally even at the risk of being dubbed a pessimist the method of teaching is one I would prefer to see others employ, sentiments which were shared to the full by Shorty Bill. Therefore our superior young friend, having gazed upon the result of a sniper’s bullet, and in the gazing remoulded his frock-coated existence, could not have come under a better master.

Shorty Bill was a bit of a character. Poacher and trapper, with an eye like a lynx and a fore-arm like a bullock’s leg, he was undoubtedly a tough proposition. What should have made him take a liking to Reginald is one of those things which passes understanding, for two more totally dissimilar characters can hardly be imagined. Our friend at the time of the shooting of Black Fritz was essentially of that type of town-bred youth who sneers at authority behind its back and cringes to its face. Such a description may sound worse than the type deserves; for all that, it is a true one of the street-bred crowd they’ve been reared on the doctrine. Shorty was exactly the reverse. Shorty, on one occasion, having blocked six miles of traffic with a fractious mule, and being confronted suddenly by an infuriated Staff officer who howled at him, smiled genially and electrified the onlookers by remarking pleasantly, “Dry up, little man; this is my show.” That was Shorty in front of authority. Behind its back well, his methods may not have commended themselves to purists in etiquette, but I have known officers sigh with relief when they have found out unofficially that Shorty had taken some little job or other into his own personal care. There are many little matters which need not be gone into, and which are bound to crop up when a thousand men are trying to live as a happy family where the unofficial ministrations of our Shorty Bills and they are a glorious if somewhat unholy company are worth the regimental sergeant-major, the officers, and all the N.C.O.’s put together. But I digress; sufficient has been said to show that the two characters were hardly what one would have expected to form an alliance.

The gentle art of sniping in the battalion when Bill joined with a draft had been woefully neglected. In fact, it was practically non-existent. It is not necessary to give any account of how Bill got the ear of his platoon commander, how he interested him in the possibilities of sniping in trench warfare, or any other kind of warfare for that matter, and how ultimately his platoon officer became mad keen, and with the consent of his C.O. was made Battalion sniping officer. Though interesting possibly to students of the gun and other subjects intimately connected with sniping, I have not the time to describe the growth of the battalion scouts from a name only to the period when they became a holy terror to the Hun. I am chiefly concerned with the development of our frock-coated friend into a night prowler in holes full of death and corruption, and one or two sage aphorisms from the lips of Shorty Bill which helped that development. They were nothing new or original, those remarks of his teacher, and yet they brought home to him for the first time in his life the enormous gulf which separated him from the men who live with nature.

“Say, kid, do you ever read poetry?” remarked Bill to him one night soon after the episode of the brick-bats as they sat in an estaminet. “I guess your average love tosh leaves me like a one-eyed codfish; but there’s a bit I’ve got in me head writ by some joker who knows me and the likes o’ me.

“’There’s a whisper on the night wind, there’s a star
agleam to guide us,
And the wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.’”

Shorty contemplatively finished his beer. “‘The wild is calling.’ Ever felt that call, kid?”

“Can’t say I have, Shorty.” His tone was humble; gone was the pathetic arrogance that had been the pride of Mogg’s; in its place the beginnings of the realisation of his utter futility had come, coupled with a profound hero worship for the man who had condescended to notice him. “When are you going to teach me that sniping game?”

The real sniping commander of the battalion I mean no disrespect to the worthy young officer who officially filled that position looked at the eager face opposite him and laughed.

“You’d better quit it, son. Why, to start with, you’re frightened of the dark.”

“I’m damned if I am.” The aggrieved Percy waxed indignant.

“Oh, cut it out! I don’t mean you’re frightened of going to bed in the dark, or that you want a nightlight or a nurse. But yours is a town dark: standing under lamps gettin’ the glad from a passing skirt. But in the real dark, when it’s pressing round you like a blanket, and there are things moving, and people breathing near by, and you don’t know whether it’s a German or a pal, or where the wire is, or which way your own trenches are what then, son, what then? Why, I reckon you don’t even know which the Pole Star is, or what it’s there for?”

“I guess not, Shorty,” remarked the other, abashed; “but I’d soon learn, if you’d teach me.”

“Well, I’ll see. An’ there’s that blamed old woman with a face like a wet street tryin’ to shut up the shop. Give me another, mother darling; no good your na-poohing me I’m going to have it if I takes it.”

Being what he was he got it, and that evening the lessons began. Going back to their billet, they had to cross a field. It was a pitch-black night, and before they had proceeded twenty yards Reggie could hardly see his hand in front of his face.

“Dark, Shorty, ain’t it?” he remarked.

There was no answer, and he stopped and repeated the question. Still no answer, though he seemed to feel some one close by. Something brushed his face, and then silence. With a short laugh he walked on a laugh which had just the faintest touch of bravado in it. Four times in the distance to the billet did that something brush his face again, and though each time he felt that there was some one near him, yet he heard nothing. The fourth time he stopped and spoke.

“Is that you, Shorty?” The next instant he gave a jump of pure nervous fright. From within six inches of his ear came the single word “Yep.”

“Jove! You did give me a start.” He laughed a little shakily. “Where have you been?”

“Circling round you, son, dusting your face with my glove. Understand now what I meant by helpless in the dark?”

Thus ended the first lesson. . . .

The others followed in due course. The correct way to crawl through grass so as to avoid being mistaken for a rhinoceros going to water; the power of observation so as to be able to spot a change in the German trenches maybe, only a few sand bags moved, but just enough to place the position of a machine gun; the value of disguise to defeat the curious on the other side; patience, the way to fire a rifle, the use of his eyes. All these and certain other things was he taught.

And the certain other things were mysterious and secret. They occurred at odd times and in odd places, and the instructor was always Shorty Bill personally.

“Some men,” he would say, “like killing with a rifle; I do for one. Some like killing with a revolver; not bad either, and essential, son, when you’re out on the tiles by night and can’t carry a rifle. A rifle is a dam nuisance at night if one’s on patrol, whatever any one says to the contrary. An’ if you don’t carry a gun you can’t use a bayonet, which is a beautiful method of sticking ’em.” Shorty thoughtfully removed his pipe. “I was almost converted to the bayonet one day by a pal of mine. He’s dead now, poor devil, but he lived well. He was givin’ tongue over the beauties of picking Huns out of dug-out entrances with the bayonet like winkles out of their shells with a pin. Gosh! it was great that boy’s palaver. He almost converted me, an’ then I showed him a couple o’ little stunts of mine.” Shorty put his pipe in his pocket. “Come here, son, an’ pay attention. It was through forgetting in the excitement of the moment and not payin’ attention that my pal the winkle plucker went west.”

Thus the mysterious lesson would start. “There’ll come a time one night, boy, when you’re out in the dark, an’ you’re crawling near the wire, when you’ll feel on a sudden there’s some one near you. Maybe, by the smell of him, you’ll know it’s a Boche. Well then it’s up to you to make good. You can plug him with your hand gun when you’ve got his dirty face dead set; but if you start shooting practice in No Man’s Land, the audience join in. So I’ll just show you a couple o’ little tricks silent tricks, which you can use when you get your hands on him. They kill just as clean if not cleaner than a gun, and no one’s the wiser. Now come at me as if you meant to hurt me. No; not as if you were out pushing the baby in the pram, but just as if you was goin’ all out to kill me. That’s better, son; an’ where are you now?”

To be correct our one and only Reginald was lying on his face with the unpleasant knowledge in his brain that if he moved an inch his left arm would snap at the elbow; and that kneeling above him Shorty held, in the neighbourhood of his ear, a villainous weapon of his own invention, which resembled a cross between a bill-hook and a kukri.

“You see the idea, boy, don’t you? Now, you ask him if he’d like to surrender, and if you don’t understand what he says or he seems doubtful like, put your clasp knife in there.” Reginald felt a prick under his right ear. “Right in you take me. Get up, and we’ll do it again.”

“Where did you learn that, Shorty?” asked our pupil as he got up.

“A Jap taught me that an’ a good few more in Los Angeles. Jujitsu, he said it was; dam good sense I call it. Come on it takes practice.”

And Reginald Simpkins practised. With growing confidence he practised day in, day out. Mogg’s had faded into the limbo of forgotten things; his horizon consisted of a foetid shell hole, a panting, writhing Hun fighting for his life in the darkness of the night, a cracking arm and then . . . His imagination never took him beyond that point. Sufficient of the old Adam of gentility still remained to prevent him picturing the final tableau. You see, Reginald Simpkins had not as yet killed anything larger than a rat, and even then he had bungled. . . .

III

AN IMPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION

As was proper and fitting his first head was gained cold-bloodedly and from a distance. It was his blooding into the ranks of the snipers. His probationary period was over; Shorty Bill had professed himself satisfied. The battalion had moved from the place in which we found them, and had gone farther north. The country was flat and desolate; periodically the ground would shake and tremble, and in No Man’s Land chalk and rubble and the salmon-pink fumes of ammonal would shoot upwards, showing that the men of the underworld still carried on. Slag-heaps, sandbags, and desolate mounds of earth formed the scenery for his debut, while the orchestra consisted of rum jars and rifle grenades.

D Company it was who had lost a sergeant through a German sniper; and the fact was duly reported. Now when a German sniper takes the life of a man in a battalion which goes in for the art itself, it is an unwritten law that from that moment a blood feud exists between the German and English snipers opposite. Though it takes a fortnight to carry out, yet death is the only finish.

Wherefore, one morning, just as the first pale glints of dawn came stealing over the silent land, Reginald Simpkins climbed carefully into a great mound of sandbags which had conveniently been deposited just behind the front line by the miners. But it is doubtful if Miss Belsize of the camisole department would have recognised him. No longer the frock coat and pearl tie, no longer the patent-leather boots and immaculate trousers. In their place a dirty-faced man in khaki, tastefully draped in flapping sandbags his boots covered, his hands stained. Very cautiously he made himself comfortable; with immense care he laid his rifle also covered with sacking in the direction he required; and then he covered his front and sides with filled bags. Through a hole also carefully arranged his screened telescope covered the bit of German trench where the day before the German sniper had lain. Then he waited.

The mists cleared away; the morning sun shone down. From his point of vantage for he was seven or eight feet above the trenches below he watched the German lines. His fingers itched to pull the trigger two or three times; and once when he saw a German officer come out of his dug-out in the second line and lean against the back of the trench, smoking a fat cigar, he almost yielded to the temptation. But the splintering of a periscope glass below him, as a German bullet hit it, told him that the sniper was there hidden somewhere, and watching too; and he knew that, perfect though his position was for one shot, that one shot would probably give him away. And that one shot was for the sniper, and not to be wasted on a fat Ober Lieutenant. . . .

Three or four hours passed, and the silence was complete. The perspiration trickled down his neck as he lay there motionless and clouded the eyepiece of his telescope. Then suddenly he saw a little black object shoot up into the air from the junction of two trenches near the German support line an object which turned over and over in the air, and fell with a soft thud fifty yards to his right. A roar and some sandbags and lumps of chalk flew in all directions, while fragments pattered down on Reginald out of the sky.

“Hope to God they don’t come any closer,” he muttered, watching the next rum jar shoot up. “Anyway, I’ve marked the place they’re coming from.” Then his eyes came back to the sniper’s locality, and as they did so a quiver of excitement ran through him. Utterly regardless of the second rum jar which burst with a crack behind him, he knew for the first time the feeling of the big game man who has stalked his quarry successfully. There, five yards to the left of where he had been looking, a little stunted bush was moving and there was no wind. Trembling with excitement he focussed his telescope on the bush, and even as he did so, he knew his vigil was over. The thing which up to that moment he had taken for a log was a man the man, the sniper. He could see the faint outline of his face, now that his attention was drawn to it, and with infinite care he drew a bead on the centre of it. Then suddenly he started shaking with nervous keenness; his left hand wobbled like a jelly through sheer excitement until he almost sobbed with rage. The German moved again as another rum jar burst, confident that the English would have gone to ground to escape the trench mortaring. It was that arrogant movement that infuriated our friend. It struck him as a deliberate challenge. And for just a moment the German’s face and the crossed hairs of his telescopic sight coincided, and coincided steadily.

It seemed to Reginald that his pressing the trigger and the wild convulsive lurch of the man opposite were simultaneous. With his eye to the telescope he watched the log that writhed and squirmed; then it grew still, and the disguise had gone. No more a log: just a motionless twisted form; while something that showed dark and ominous through the telescope spread round its head. The sergeant of D Company was avenged. . . .

With a feeling rather as if he personally had won the war, our hero slipped backwards into the boyau beside him, and went in search of Shorty Bill. Two hours later he found him and poured out the story. Shorty listened in silence; then he spoke.

“I’ve heard men talk like you, son, when they’ve kissed their first woman. Have you reported where that trench mortar is?”

“God! Shorty, I clean forgot. I’ll go and do it now,” remarked Reggie, his ardour somewhat damped.

“I should dam well think you’d better.” Shorty relit his pipe, and grinned amiably. “Well done, kid; but for Holy Mike’s sake don’t crow over one plurry Boche. When you’ve touched three figures we’ll celebrate. . . .”

He may have been right; but even on his own showing, is there any kiss which is quite like the first? Is there any Hun, who ? Still, possibly the analogy is unfortunate. Anyway, I have given the account of his first cold-blooded victim; I will follow with his first hot-blooded one.

IV

SOMEWHAT MORE PERSONAL

It occurred about six weeks later in the same part of the line; and as a mark of special favour he had been allowed to accompany Shorty on one of his nightly prowls. That worthy was wont to remark that two men on a joy ride in No Man’s Land was one too many; wherefore it must be assumed that Reginald had grown in wisdom and cunning, and found favour in the sight of his taskmaster.

They slipped over the top about ten p.m. Shorty was armed as usual merely with the villainous billhook-kukri of his own design, while Reggie carried a revolver and a clasp knife which resembled a young bayonet. It was not a reconnoitring patrol as laid down in the book of the words; it was merely a pleasure ramble, so Shorty said, as they passed silently out of a sap and disappeared in the darkness.

The first thing Reggie did was to kick a tin and fall into a shell hole, where he was joined by Shorty.

“Frightening rooks, son,” he remarked kindly, “or rehearsing as a knockabout comedian? About twenty-five yards from here on our left is the German sap party that I am visiting to-night. I like ’em to know I’m coming.”

“Sorry, Shorty,” muttered the delinquent. “I never saw the ruddy thing.”

“You don’t say. I thought you’d a-done it on purpose,” returned the other with ponderous sarcasm. “Now you stop here; I’m goin’ to that sap an’ I’ll come back for you.”

Like a wraith Shorty faded into the night, leaving our friend alone with his thoughts. A Lewis gun was firing away down the line in short bursts, while Verey lights and flares went up every now and then with a faint hiss. Above, the low-flying clouds scudded over the sky, and our friend lay back in his shell hole and pondered. With an inward chuckle he wondered what the beautiful Miss Belsize and the other fair ones of Mogg’s would say if they could see him at that moment. A sense of physical well-being was on him, and he stretched himself luxuriously. The next instant he was struggling impotently in a grip that throttled him.

“Quite so,” remarked a voice as the grip relaxed, and by the light of a flare he found Shorty occupying the shell hole once again. “A ruddy lot o’ good you are. Killed and dead as mutton by now, if I’d been a Boche.”

Reggie reddened in the darkness with shame. “I wasn’t thinking, Shorty. I er . . .” His words died away.

“Thinking! You flat-footed clam this show ain’t a debating society, nor yet a penny reading.” Shorty snorted with rage. “Go over to that saphead there d’you see it an’ see what thinking does.” His hand pointed to a low hummock of chalk behind a crater. “Go an’ look in, I tell you; an’ if ever you sit out here again dreaming like a love-sick poet, I hope to God it happens to you. You’ll deserve it.”

With a push like the kick of an elephant’s hind leg he propelled the wretched Reggie in the required direction. Puzzled and surprised, but feeling very ashamed of himself, he moved cautiously towards the low mound that stood up dimly outlined against the night sky. Once on the short journey he crouched motionless while a flare burnt itself out twenty yards away, only to move forward immediately the darkness settled again with quickened step. There is no time so good to movement as the few seconds after the eyes of possible watchers have been dazzled. . . .

And so he came to the saphead, and cautiously peered in. Under ordinary circumstances his action was that of a fool; but Shorty had ordered, and those who knew Shorty got in the habit of carrying out his instructions. For a while in the blackness he could see nothing. He noted the sap running back towards the German lines; but at the head of it there was no sign of life. He carefully stretched farther over, and as he looked at the bottom of the trench he made out a dark, huddled figure. Then the next flare went up, and Reginald Simpkins got the shock of his life.

The green ghostly light came flooding in, and then went out as abruptly as it had come. But the moment was enough. Clear stamped on his brain, like a photographic exposure, was the image of two men. One lay at the bottom of the trench and grinned at the sky with his throat cut from ear to ear; the other huddled in a corner with his hand still clutching a bomb was even as he looked turning on his head and his knees, only to subside with a squelch in the mud, kick spasmodically, and lie still.

“Right in you take me? with your clasp knife.” Shorty’s words came back to him and he gasped. So this was what his teacher had meant, when he’d sent him to see the dangers of thinking.

It was just as he was visualising the scene: the sudden ghostly appearance of Shorty on top of the unsuspecting Germans; the sudden stroke of that awful weapon; the feeble attempt to get the bomb; the well, it was just then that Reggie found himself contemplating from about six inches range the glaring face of a Prussian N.C.O. who had suddenly materialised. By the light of a flare down the line he watched, as he lay on top of the ground, with his head over the edge of the sap, the ring of the Prussian’s revolver as it moved up towards his face.

What happened, happened quickly: most of these things are touch and go. The bullet whizzed past his face into the night his left hand hit the revolver just in time; and even as the bullet went wide his right hand struck sideways with the knife. It sank into the Prussian’s neck; he felt a rush of something warm and sticky, and then he was grabbed from behind.

“Quick,” muttered Shorty in his ear, “hop it; hop it like hell. I’ll guide you.”

Blinded and dazed by the blast of the revolver, he stumbled mechanically after his leader. “Into this shell hole for a moment,” whispered Bill imperatively, as a machine gun let drive with a few rounds which passed over them like a flight of cockchafers. “Now come on. Home this trip, my boy I didn’t know that swab was there. . . .”

“I killed him, Bill,” said Reginald, half an hour later, as he sat rubbing his eyes on the fire step of their own trenches to get the stinging of the cordite out.

“You done well, son,” said Bill; “an’ if any one doubts it show ’em your hand.”

By the light of a match Reggie looked at it, and he shuddered. It bore, as Bill implied, the proof of death.

He was silent too awhile; the first hot-blooded one is more rattling to the nerves than a stranger three hundred yards away. Then a great thought struck him, and he cursed.

“I’ve left my knife in his neck, Bill. What a blasted idiot!”

V

A PROJECT AND SOME SIDE-ISSUES

It is quite possible that there are some who, having read thus far, will consider that the education of Reginald Simpkins as a soldier was now complete. Transformed from a dreadful being who cut up silks and things and discoursed on the merits of what I understand is known as lingerie, he had become a man: a man with a quick hand and a sure eye, a man who had met one of his kind in fair fight and killed him. In his mind there had been born pride the right sort of pride. Not the spurious article which had passed for it at Mogg’s that unpleasant type of conceit of which pimples and a high collar are the outward and visible sign. No, not that at all. He had cast that off with his frock coat, and in its place had grown the inherent pride which is the birthright of a man.

It was just because the metamorphosis had been so complete, and the growth had been so rapid, that his education was by no means finished. It had only just begun.

So far I have dealt principally with one phase in the gentle game of war: the phase that concerns itself with outing the wily Hun by means of a rifle bullet. True, Reginald had tasted of other pleasant methods under the kindly guidance of Shorty Bill; he had even gone so far as to enter into wordy warfare with the battalion exponent of bayonet fighting with regard to the relative merits of the bayonet G.S. and the weapon that he had presented to the Huns on his night prowl. In fact, our friend was beginning to hold opinions and quite decided opinions of his own. He was still in his infancy, I admit; but to those who were privileged to watch his growth he seemed a hopeful specimen. The seed appeared to be falling on good soil.

But it may be remembered that with regard to the question of the sower, the seed which fell on stony ground appeared good for a time, until it was found that there was nothing behind it. Precocity is a dangerous thing, and in his new school Reginald was certainly precocious. Nowadays it is necessary to form judgments quickly in the Army: the game is being played at such high pressure. And so mistakes are bound to occur, though the Honourable James Lascelles disliked making them now, just as much as he did in the days when he could take his time.

The thing in question at the moment was the fitness of our friend for the stripe when a vacancy occurred; and the Honourable Jimmy, being the Adjutant of the South Devons, and having the headquarter specialists under his eye, was somewhat intimately concerned with the solution of the question. I think I have failed to mention previously that it was the South Devons that Reginald adorned that celebrated regiment known to the Army and the world at large by the more familiar soubriquet of the “Stick ’em and be damned.”

So when the edict of Toby Seymour, the C.O., went forth, the Adjutant seized the opportunity of trying to find out a little more fully whether it really was good soil in Reginald’s case, or whether it was stony. To-day the edict would seem almost a matter of routine; at that time things were different. Toby ordered a raid, and it was so.

It was to be a raid on a large scale: no isolated affair like the pilgrimages of Shorty Bill, but an affair where the enemy’s trenches were to be entered by a large party. No silent, stealthy work, but a thorough good jolly, with bombs and noises complete.

To-day raids are stale, and things of but little account. Sometimes the bag is large, and sometimes the bag is small; but the performance occurs twice nightly, with frequently a matinee thrown in. Then they were something new, and enterprises to be talked about.

The project first took concrete form in the back room of a certain estaminet which served as the Headquarters mess when the battalion was resting after a spell in the trenches. The omelette had been successful, the port had recently arrived, and that pleasing, though somewhat selfish, glow which comes even to the best of us when we realise that it is the other fellow who is out in the cold wet night permeated the room.

“Sarah Jane,” remarked Toby to his second-in-command, as he thoughtfully sipped his port, “I have been thinking.”

“Have you, dear old soul? That’s very jolly.”

“I have been thinking,” went on the C.O., “that the boys require waking up. There is a danger of their degenerating into trench machines. They want ginger.”

The second-in-command looked at his Colonel keenly. “I agree with you,” he returned after a short silence. “But it’s rather hard to give ’em anything to ginger with in the middle of winter and in this locality. The division will probably be pulling out to train shortly, and then ”

“No that won’t do,” Toby interrupted him. “I don’t mean that sort of ginger. How many men of this battalion feel instinctively, and know as a positive fact, that man for man they are better than the Huns? That’s the point, and training behind won’t help that; at least, it won’t start it. Once give it to them as a foundation, and the training will gain five hundred per cent. in its value.”

“True, O king, but how?”

“They must fight the Germans, and find out for themselves. We’ve got some new drafts, Sarah quite a number of new drafts who not only have never fought the Hun, but who have never even seen him. Their horizon is bounded by a dirty sandbag and a smell; and I maintain that their value as fighting troops is not one quarter what it might be.”

He carefully lit his pipe while the rest of the mess watched him curiously wondering what was in his mind.

“Listen to me, you fellows.” Toby leant forward in his chair and emphasised his remarks with his ancient and powerful briar. “Every one in this room is for want of a better word blooded. We have all, thank Heavens! had the unforgettable pleasure of killing Huns at close quarters, with our own hands. Now that broadens one’s horizon at once. We are not bounded by sandbags and stinks; when we are in the trenches, we know our imagination tells us that over the way are men whom we can visualise: living, actual beings whose ideal and object in life is to kill us. Not so, I regret to say, with a new draft: how can you expect it? To them the Hun is a strange something living in a trench, whom they never see, and whom they don’t particularly want to. One might almost say that ‘live and let live’ is bound to be the way they look at life at present. Until the terrier sees the rat he has no wish to kill it; and until he has killed it he has no idea what a delightful occupation it is. Same with the men; and we’ve got to alter it.”

“Bravely spoken, sir, as the poets would say,” remarked the Honourable James. “The only point is how to do it.”

“Easy as falling off a log. One night we will pay the Huns a visit and kill ’em. Cheery amusement, charming hobby. The terriers will get bitten on the nose, and as soon as that happens they’ll see red. Then they’ll start to kill; and once they’ve done that there will be no holding them. Their tails will be stickin’ up above their heads.”

“It was done a few weeks ago up the line, wasn’t it?” The second-in-command thoughtfully replenished his glass.

“I believe it was but what matter? The Stick’ems don’t require any damned pilot for their fences.” The C.O. brought a fist like a leg of mutton down on the table. “Before the division leaves the line, we are going to visit the Hun; we are going to kill the Hun; we are going to capture the swab, to wound him, to out him; and when we’ve done it and got him as wild as a civet cat in the nesting season, we’ll laugh at him by platoons.”

“Prolonged applause from a breathless audience,” laughed the Adjutant. “We can merely murmur a Benedictined Bismillah.” . . .

Now it is possible that to those who sit at home, and regard war from arm-chairs as a movement of little flags on a large-scale map, the words of Toby Seymour may come in the nature of a surprise. It is possible that they have never really thought about the human side of killing: of killing as a hobby as a trade. Vaguely they realise that a soldier does not go into the army to pick buttercups; vaguely they understand that men die and are killed in war, and that soldiers are the people who kill and are killed. But I venture to think that they do not realise the intense importance of inculcating in every private soldier the necessity and the desire of outing the other fellow. Horrible, you say; revolting. Of course it’s horrible, my good man; of course it’s revolting; but what the devil do you think this war is minding a creche for imbecile children? You bring in a crowd of men whose sole qualification in August 1914 to be considered soldiers was an intense and national love of games. You pit them against a machine perfect in technique, in which every part had been trained from earliest infancy in the trade of soldiering, and the trade of ruthless killing.

You ask them to go across the water and beat this machine for you. And so, if I harry you at times with details of the type blood-curdling, it is only that you may understand something of the nature of the task: the task which your brothers and sons and partners and clerks are carrying to a successful issue.

Has it occurred to you why they are succeeding?

You say that right is triumphing over might; that a good cause must win. It is beautiful, it is magnificent your contention; but it is not war. History does not support you; common sense does not bear you out. We are beating them because as a nation of sportsmen the men have taken to the new sport as a duck takes to water; and the new sport is to kill, capture, wound, or out the Boche before he kills, captures, wounds, or outs you. And having taken to it as a sport, now that the technique and other things are equal, we are better at it than the Hun who views it as a business.

Which recalls to mind the celebrated utterance of a celebrated officer. Should he read these lines, I trust he will pardon the plagiarism; but the utterance was so wonderful that it should be perpetuated, even thus modestly. He spoke lightly; but if I may be forgiven the platitude, there is many a true word spoken in jest.

Why not institute, he suggested, a list of battalion averages? Just as the relative position of Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield Wednesday in the Football League is the subject of frenzied back chat; just as the defeat of Yorkshire by Kent causes head shakings in the public-houses of the North towards the end of August, why not have a league of battalions?

A wonderful idea if one thinks into it. A dead’un two points, a prisoner one; the Ober-lieutenant five points and a Colonel twenty with other grades according to fancy. Think of the frantic excitement in the London clubs and the quiet villages when the relative scoring merits of a Jaeger sharpshooter and a one-eyed Landsturmer were sized up. Think of the Putney Peashooters’ ladies meeting those of the Shoreditch Snipers at a small and early, and counting up the bag: five Saxons and a stretcher-bearer against four prisoners and a carrier pigeon.

One might almost wind up with England versus Scotland, the winner to play Australia on a percentage basis. In fact, there is no limit to it; and I will cease, lest I get lost in a maze of wonderful developments.

I will cease, and return to the Stick’ems; but as a last word I would say, in all seriousness, that wildly farcical though that celebrated utterance may be, there underlies it an absolutely true valuation of the fundamental bed-rock of war. To emulate the deeds of others and go one better, to put the men in good heart with their tails up, that is the secret of winning. And the best way of doing it is to treat the matter as a sport: the Englishman understands it that way best. . . .

VI

THE SECOND LESSON, AND SOME FURTHER SIDE-ISSUES

No Man’s Land in that part of the line where the South Devons resided was wide well over a quarter of a mile to be exact. Across their front, about a hundred and fifty yards from the German lines, there ran a small bank two or three feet high, with its right resting on a main road which crossed No Man’s Land, and its left gradually falling away till it came level with the ground. The remnants of a hedge and two or three forlorn tree stumps still remained on the bank, over the top of which could be seen the German wire running round a small orchard in which lay their front line trenches. The locality was peaceful; the Hun was quiet, asking for nothing more than that he should be left alone, which undoubtedly made Toby Seymour’s breach of the rules the more reprehensible from the exclusively Teuton point of view. They were extremely angry; in fact, one large prisoner went so far as to state that it was a barbarous method of fighting, and unheard of in civilised warfare. The suggestion that he should be kept as the battalion mascot and supply the comic relief at all subsequent smoking concerts, unfortunately fell through. Other “non-barbarians” who escaped joining him in captivity emulated his altruistic spirit by informing the South Devons daily from a position where the lines ran close together, that they were looking forward to crucifying the next Englishman they caught, which again was an immense success, and was greeted invariably by a specially selected choir chanting the Hymn of Hate. And yet the damage done was not very great from the material point of view. It was the mental jolt, the jar to their spiritual loftiness, that tickled the dear souls up. . . .

Now primarily my story concerns Reginald Simpkins and his transformation to manhood. And therefore, before I tell of the raid itself, I will touch on one or two matters concerning that transformation, and the methods of the Honourable James.

D Company won the toss, so to speak, and was deputed to perform; and Reginald Simpkins was not in D Company. Being a sniper, he was attached to that mystic band of specialists who adorn battalion headquarters. And so, one morning, the snipers were assembled and the Adjutant gazed at them benignly through his eyeglass.

“D Company are going to raid the Huns,” he remarked. “I want six volunteers to go with them.” The result was as he anticipated. “I said six, not the whole bunch,” he continued genially, “so I’ll have to draw lots.”

Now nothing would induce me to hint that everything was not perfectly square in that drawing, but Reginald Simpkins was one of the six. In due course his part in the programme was explained to him, and during the explanation his face became more and more suggestive of a street corner on a rainy day.

“You understand what you have to do, Simpkins?” The Honourable James looked at him keenly.

“Yes, sir, I understand; but but ain’t I to have a go at the swine at all?” Our friend’s grievance boiled over. “Can’t I just go into the trench once and have a go at them? It’ll be a bit hard sitting by the tree stump, and hearing the boys at it, and having to . . . .” His words died away under the steady glance of the man opposite.

“And because it’s a bit hard, you don’t want to do it?”

“It ain’t that, sir, it’s it’s ”

“Well, what is it? Not the showy part of the performance, eh? Not the part where the fun comes sitting by a bank and taking the roll as they come back. But some one has to do it why not you?”

The second lesson in the making of a soldier subordination of self. . . . As a matter of fact there was no reason why Reginald should have been deputed to the job: there were many others who could have done it equally well if not better. But the Honourable Jimmy had his own methods. . . .

The desire for the game was there in the pupil: that he knew: the point was whether the character which would suppress and master that desire when necessary was there too. Could reliability be added to keenness? . . .

That was what the Adjutant wished to find out. He knew that our friend was in the vernacular throwing a chest. He knew that lately, well, Reginald Simpkins had been rather full of Reginald Simpkins. Adjutants good Adjutants do know these things. Which was all to the good within certain limits. . . .

An unpromising subject had learned the first lesson of the soldier: would he be able to learn the second, without which the third and greatest would be impossible? All soldiers must learn the first lesson; only a limited number can learn the second and third.

So it came about that for the good of his soul Reginald played a very minor part in this raid, and my information on the doings that occurred in the Hun lines was obtained from the lips of one Samuel Pipston, sometime auctioneer’s assistant, who had joined the battalion with the last draft. He was just a second Reginald one stage behind him in development, that’s all an apathetic lad, finding war a tedious operation.

It was not until ten o’clock on the night, as he lay with his party behind the bank of which I have spoken, that a pleasurable thrill of anticipation began to take hold of Samuel. A slight frost nip was in the air, and in the sky there shone a myriad stars. Away behind him lay the trenches he had just quitted, peaceful and still in the faint moonlight; and looking to his front he could see the German lines, just as still, only much closer. He tried to realise that he was shortly going to be inside those trenches, and that when he got there he would meet real live men, who would endeavour to kill him, Samuel Pipston. He thought of Mary Johnston, the daughter of the leading grocer, and wondered what she was doing at the moment, and what she would think if

“Don’t shoot for God’s sake not a sound.”

With a start Samuel heard the hoarse whisper of a subaltern beside him, and became suddenly aware that a struggle was going on two or three yards away. He peered eagerly in the direction of the noise, and saw three men in a confused mass heaving on the ground behind the bank.

“What the devil ” he muttered, and then the heaving ceased. In the dim light he saw a still figure lying on the ground, and two men crouching over him. “Someone ’ad a fit, I reckons,” he whispered to the man next him, an old hand at the game.

“Fit be blowed. It’s a ’Un, yer fool or was before he ’opped it. He’s dead.”

“A ’Un!” Samuel gazed stupidly at the speaker, and then peered at the motionless figure. “Wot’s the sargint a-doin’ of.”

A low question came from the officer. “Have you killed him, Melstead?”

“I have that, sir; but I can’t get my perishing bayonet out. Put your foot on his chest, Charlie, and heave. Again, so, heave.” The sergeant sat down suddenly as the bayonet came out, and immediately crawled to the subaltern. “There’ll be another with him, sir, for a cert.” The two peered over the bank towards the German lines, while drawn by an irresistible impulse Samuel crept towards the dead man. He peered into the distorted face, he looked at the still twitching body, and an uncontrollable fit of shuddering took him and gripped him. His knees knocked together; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth; and only one coherent thought hammered at his brain.

“Lemme get away; it’s awful. Gawd! it’s awful. Lemme go.” He was whispering and muttering to himself, and Heaven knows what might have happened, because there are moments when a man is not responsible for his actions, when a large body hit him on the head, and he found himself at the bottom of a mass of struggling, kicking men.

As a matter of fact it was merely the expected arrival of number two of the German patrol, and he could not have selected a better place to come to as far as Samuel was concerned. There is no better banisher of knocking knees than a heavy kick in the ribs from a German boot, and in an instant our friend was fighting like a tiger cat.

“Quietly, quietly, for the love of Heaven.” The officer’s insistent voice reached him, and he felt for the German’s mouth with his hands. He was lying on his back, and the Hun was on top of him; but beyond that, the only other clear remembrance of the episode he has is of a fine and complete set of teeth nearly meeting in his hand. That was enough; one new terrier at any rate was blooded. He don’t quite know how he killed him; in fact, it is quite on the cards that it wasn’t he who killed him at all. The fact remains that the German died; and whether it was the sergeant, or whether it was the subaltern, or whether it was Samuel, is immaterial. All that matters is that as far as motive and endeavour went Samuel Pipston killed his first rat, and gloried in the operation. Such is the effect of mistaking the thumb of even our nearest and dearest for a ration biscuit. . . .

Thus ended the little episode of the German patrol. For months previously those two men, or others like them, had wandered over No Man’s Land, and returned in due course to their sausage and their beer, with nothing of interest to report. Then, as the invariable rule of war, there came the hundredth time when the unexpected happened. Shells, bombs, bullets they take the others and pass you by. But sooner or later, it will be “nah-poo.” You can only pray Heaven it’s a Blighty. With the German patrol, it was not.

A whispered word came down the waiting line. “Get ready.” All along the bank men tightened their belts and took a last look at their bombs and rifles. Two parties each under a subaltern were going to enter the German lines, while, as a reserve, the Company Commander, with a machine gun and some rifle grenadiers, and Reginald Simpkins were remaining at the bank. The two parties were going to enter at different points and move towards one another, the leading men of each ceaselessly calling out, “’Ow’s yer father?” Then when the mystic answer came, “Merry and bright,” they would know they were meeting one another and be careful with their bombs. En passant, it is not too easy to recognise who’s who at night in a strange trench when every one is somewhat excited.

“Are you all ready, ‘A’ party? Then come on.” Worming over the bank Samuel followed his subaltern into the darkness, and the raid had begun. Without a sound they approached the wire through which they had to cut, crawling as they had practised. Timed to a nicety they reached it and lay still, just as a couple of flashes from the rear proclaimed the gunners were beginning. Five six seven seconds, and with a shrill scream two shells whistled over their heads and burst fifty yards in front of them.

“Come on.” The whisper was hardly audible, and quite unnecessary: they had all been too well drilled. Snip snip; the wire strands parted as they forced their way through to the silent lines, while the shells still moaned over their heads; and the German sentries, who had heard shells before and liked them no more than any one else, kept their heads down till the English swine should have concluded their nightly hate. Three minutes later the party dropped into a deserted bit of trench and the fun commenced. . . .

Samuel was a bomber, and he carried twenty of these pleasant little instruments as his stock in trade. With every nerve tingling with excitement he followed the officer in front of him, who with a couple of bayonet men headed the party. The first man they met was the sentry, who was crouching on the fire-step to avoid the shelling, and from that moment on well, things hummed.

The subaltern an excitable youth smiled genially at the dazed Bavarian, who was regarding the sudden invasion of his privacy as if it was a bad dream; and having shot him in the stomach, passed breezily on round the traverse, followed by his surging mob.

“Picket the other entrance,” he roared to those behind, as he stepped by the first shaft of a dug out, up which a man was rushing. “Come on, my pet, come on roll, bowl, or pitch, it’s a cocoa-nut to a berlud orange. . . .” The man fell back with a bullet through his brain, and slid head down to the bottom of the shaft. “Bomb ’em, boys; bomb ’em.”

With a roar the bombs went off in the confined space below the ground; the lights went out, and a confused medley of shouts and groans followed them up the trench as they sought pastures new. Control was impossible: it was every man for himself, and to hell with everything he could see. Each man fought his own little battle, in his own little way, against one or two or three of the bewildered men who appeared suddenly from odd places. And though they were bewildered, they fought those Huns: fought like good ’uns. In one corner a great burly miner grappled with a Bavarian N.C.O. who had suddenly dropped over the back of the trench armed only with a pick straight from a working party. Farther on, the subaltern and a bayonet man carried on the good work with howls of joy, while a small party of bombers, having found a large sump pit covered by boards in a communication trench, removed the boards just in time to catch a relief party of six who came rushing up the trench. With a resounding splash they went through the ice several feet below the top of the hole, and were immediately joined by two bombs.

As the corporal in charge of that party put it afterwards: “It was a good idea that sump ’olé; because them that wern’t killed by the bombs was drowned, and the only one wot was neither, I ’it over the ’ead with me gun; and ’ere he is. Ain’t ’e a little dear?” The little dear with a cracked jaw, and a face reminiscent of Hindenburg on the morning after, looked the part. . . .

But I have neglected Samuel Pipston. As I mentioned, he was a bomber, and he was also excited. In the general confusion and darkness he got parted from the rest of the gallant band, and found himself in a bit of trench alone save for a large and morose sapper who was tenderly nursing a mobile charge of several pounds of ammonal. Away in front the noise and shouting and the crack of bursting bombs was getting fainter, and Samuel was undecided. He had explored a little cul-de-sac on his own, and had drawn blank; and at the moment he was in the unfortunate predicament of thirsting for blood and being unable to get any. In front the trench was being cleared up; behind it had been cleared up; wherefore Samuel stood undecided, and cursed fluently.

“Shut yer mouth” the morose sapper gripped his arm “an’ listen. I heard some of the swine, I reckons.”

Silently the two men stood in the trench, and suddenly from close at hand there came the noise of a man climbing a dug-out shaft. It was exactly as a faint cry of “’Ow’s yer father?” came from a long way off that a curtain just beside them moved, and a man, crouching slightly, came out of a screened dug-out shaft into the trench. It must be remembered that neither of our warriors had a rifle, and that bombs and ammonal charges are not weapons with which to tackle a man you can touch. They are apt to be impartial to friend and foe alike. . . . Resource was necessary, and it is at moments such as these that the national instinct for games is so invaluable. There was a psychological moment as the crouching man came up into the trench with his rifle and bayonet, when his chin was in the perfect position: moreover, the sapper was a full back of merit. He kicked hard and true, and if any one doubts the effect of a service boot on the point of the jaw, no doubt he can experiment with the matter at a small cost. The Bavarian fell forward as if he had been pole-axed, and having relieved him of his rifle the sapper held forth.

“There’s a ruddy dug-out full of ’em, mate, wot was missed.” They peered down the opening, where a faint light showed. “They think we’ve gone on, and they’re coming up to see. Look, there’s one.”

The shadow of a man showed grotesquely in the flickering light, and Samuel quivered with excitement.

“I’m a-going down the plurry steps,” he affirmed, “an’ I’ll bomb ’em from the bottom.”

The next instant he was down the shaft and peering cautiously round the corner; and having peered he let out one wild whoop and gently lobbed his first bomb into the far corner. It was a bomber’s paradise.

All round the walls in bunks were Bavarians stout ones, thin ones, drunk ones, sober ones and the bunks were arranged in tiers one above the other. Two men were up, getting on their equipment, and evidently preparing to sally forth after the gentleman upstairs; but after the first bomb burst the fog of war descended on that Hun hostel. Samuel had just time to see the fearful mess up in the far corner before the light went out, and then things moved. Shots came whizzing past his head into the woodwork of the shaft, but Samuel didn’t care a damn for shots; had he not been bitten in the hand less than an hour previously? Methodically he pulled out pins, and impartially he distributed his favours in every direction, what time he softly sang a song that had long been one of his favourites, and which dealt with the singer’s overmastering predilection for “fish and chips.”

Suddenly he found the sapper behind him. “Stand by to ’op it like a ruddy ’are,” remarked that worthy tersely. “I’m a going to give ’em my little present from Brighton, and it won’t be ’ealthy when it goes off.”

There was a sudden sizzle as he lit the fuze, and he saw a stream of smoky light fly through the darkness and fall on to the ground in the centre of the dug-out. Then Samuel ’opped it, the sapper just behind him, up the shaft and into the trench. The sapper rushed him round a bend, and then crouched down.

“Twenty seconds,” he gasped, “an’ me out of training. Lumme! wot a life.”

The next instant the ground quivered as if an earthquake had occurred; a thunderous roar shook the air, while the blast of the explosion nearly knocked them down.

“Nothin’ wrong with that there ammonal,” remarked the Sapper professionally. “’Andy stuff it is too. Let’s go and see what’s ’appened.”

But that they will never know. From the dug-out shaft a volume of smoke and dust was belching out, while from inside there came a medley of noises and grunts indicative of annoyance and pain.

“Sounds like one of them there gramophone records, don’t it?” murmured Samuel. “A summer morning, or the departure of a troop ship. Ain’t it lovely? ’Ullo, wot’s that?”

Clear above the din and the moaning, and the spasmodic fighting which they could still hear going on up the trench, there sounded the officers’ dinner call. Twice it blared forth from the British lines, and every man knew what it meant: “Come back, at once.” The raid was over. . . .

And so by ones and two and threes D Company returned to the fold, where hot tea and a noggin of rum awaited them, giving their names to Reginald on the way. To the casual observer it might have seemed that D Company were drunk one and all. They were but not with wine. They were drunk with excitement, and with the knowledge just acquired that they could beat the Germans, man-to-man. They were blooded.

The lies they told those cheery lads! Not a man had done in less than forty Boches, which rose to eighty when they wrote their girls. What matter? D Company of the Stick’em and be damned was made for life. The men walked three inches higher; the men, as men, had come into their own. Every new draft that came heard the story; every new draft realised it had got something to live up to. No longer sand bags and smells their horizon, but the memory of one glorious half-hour.

And when he thought over it afterwards, there was only one small thing that struck Samuel Pipston as peculiar. He was just retailing to Reginald Simpkins with some wealth of detail his experiences in the German dug-out, when he became aware of the Honourable James beside him, who listened for a while until he had finished.

“So you had a good time did you, Pipston?” he remarked. “Splendid!” Then he turned to Simpkins. “The Company Commander tells me you were a great help to him, checking the men as they came back. Well done.”

It struck Samuel that he might have had a “Well done.”

But then, he didn’t know the Honourable Jimmy’s methods; nor did he know that while he and those with him had merely learned the first and easiest lesson that night, Reginald Simpkins had learned the second.

VII

THE THIRD LESSON, AND A DIGRESSION

And so, with two of the lessons learned, we come to the third and greatest. The first was basely material, and was taught by Shorty Bill; the second was a little nearer the heart of things, and was taught by the Honourable James; the third is the heart of things, and can be taught by no one. The rules vague rules may be given by men who have learned it to those who have not; but its true meaning, its real significance, can only be reached by the pupil for himself. And there are many who fall by the way. . . .

It arises out of the second: it must be preceded by subordination of self. For until a man can subordinate himself, he cannot take on his shoulders the cares of others; he cannot put those others first, And until he can put others before him, he cannot be put in a position of responsibility: he is not fitted to fill it. And it is the principle of responsibility on which the British Army is built up: another thing about which I am very doubtful as to the knowledge of those whose paths have not led them near things military. . . .

I have touched on things material; let me hold forth awhile on things spiritual.

What think you, my masters, is the driving force of a regiment in the field? The answer is in one word Leadership. Quite so, you say; the remark seems to have been made before. It has, which makes it all the stranger that it is so little understood.

What does the word mean to you? Prancing in front of the men with a drawn sword, shouting, “For King and Country”? They’d laugh at you, and follow a leader: one of their own. Ruling by fear, ruthlessly without thought of human weakness, without tinge of mercy? They’d hate you, and you would have to drive them like the Prussians do. Ruling by pusillanimous kindness, by currying favour, by seeking to be a popularity Jack? They’d despise you and rightly.

The quality of leadership is none of these things: it is something much more simple, much more homely, if I may use the word. To lead men a man must first of all understand men, understand human nature; he must know his job, and know it better than his men; he must possess intensity of purpose.

Human nature! What the men like and what they dislike; the little fetishes they put up, the little gods; the few words of praise when they have done well, of disappointment when they have not; consideration for them, giving them beer and concerts; being with them in the trenches when the weather is bad, and not in a dug-out. Little points perhaps, but it’s the little points that are so important.

Human sympathy the appealing to the spark of better things that lies in the worst; the inculcation of an ideal to live up to the ideal of the regiment. All the hundred and one things that go to make up a man’s life and not an automaton’s; all the things that make for the affection and love of those under you. It is a very great thing for an officer to be loved by his men. . . .

Knowledge! The capability of doing yourself anything you call on those under you to do; of showing them when they are right and when they are wrong; of making them trust your ability. It is a very great thing for an officer to be trusted by his men.

Intensity of purpose! The driving force that gives enthusiasm, that causes the hand on the plough to remain there until the job is done; the quality that abhors vacillation, that prevents a man taking a thing up one moment with red-hot eagerness and dropping it the next because he’s tired of it. The men despise vacillation and chopping and changing. Being “messed about,” they call it; only the word is not messed. And it is a terrible thing for an officer to be despised by his men. . . .

From good leadership there springs good discipline, that other word so little understood by those who have not met it in the flesh. Not, believe me, the rigorous punishment for breaking certain arbitrary rules, enforced by an autocrat on men placed temporarily under him by a whim of fate; far from it. Discipline is merely the doctrine which teaches of the subordination of self for the whole; it teaches the doctrine of playing the game; it teaches the all-important fact that the fear of being found out and punished should not be the chief force in a man’s life, but rather that the realisation of his responsibility should be the guiding factor.

Such is the ideal aimed at in a good regiment. That there are some who miss that aim none but a fool would deny; the same may be said of most professions, even, I suppose, of bishops. That there are some officers who go the wrong way to work, who nag and bully and generally turn themselves into something even worse than nature intended is an undoubted fact. That there are some men who are wasters; who were born wasters and will die as such is also quite true. But I maintain that the training, the ideals, the traditions, the morale of the good British regiment does produce, and has produced, a growth of character and a condition of mind in the men who belong to it which was largely conspicuous by its absence in civil life.

Why, I do not profess to say. Why the great thinkers and the vaporising burblers between them should not have hit on some method of training character which would have produced equally good results to those produced by what they are still pleased to call “militarism,” I do not know. All that I do know is that they did not. Let us leave it at that.

I have digressed; our Reginald is calling. For weeks his battalion was destined to remain in peace trenches, to live that dreary life of monotony which tests the capabilities of the leader as no big push can do. The excitement is absent, there is plenty of time too much time for thought. And boredom is of all things one of the hardest to combat. It calls for leadership of the highest type. There is many a man capable of supreme devotion in a crisis who is incapable of the steady, unseen strain, day in, day out, of keeping up his men’s spirits in fact, of appreciating human nature in one of its many phases.

The men feel that dull routine on which the lime-light does not shine, and only the leader can help them. It claims its victims, just as do the big offensive, that trench life, when the flares lob up ceaselessly and the bursts of machine-gun fire come swishing over the ground. Here men are wiring; there is a party digging a new bit of trench; and out beyond in No Man’s Land an officer and three scouts are creeping about examining the enemy’s wire. So it goes on throughout the night, until as the first streaks of dawn show faintly in the east it ceases. The men come in, back to the dreary mud holes; and next night there is the same damned thing to be done all over again somewhere else. . . .

Only, Ginger won’t be there any more; he has put up his last bit of wire. He started on the last journey unnoticed save by the man standing next him; and Gawd above! what’s the use? They’d been together for two years, share and share alike; and now the end. Putting up a bit of rusty wire round a sap. . . .

“Easy, boy, easy. ’Ere, cut them ruddy braces away. ’Orl rite, old son, you’ve copped a Blighty. Thro’ yer stummik Gor luv yer no. Get that dressing on, Bill; turn over, mate we’ll give yer a drink in a minute; but one thing at a time, old pal, that’s my motto. Always merry and bright, as the perisher said in the play.” Back in the trench, pulled in from the wire where the work goes on, an officer’s electric torch shines on the stretcher bearers working with clumsy gentleness on the quivering body. “Now, then, mate, we can’t get the blinking stretcher along this ’ere trench, so we’ll ’ave to carry you.”

“Copped it?” asks an N.C.O. in a whisper.

“Gawd! a fair crumpler,” mutters the other. “Come on, Ginger, let’s get off on the first stage for Blighty. On me back, we does it on me back. ’Ere, boy lumme! turn ’im over, Bill.” The torch shines down on the face upturned to the stars; the stretcher bearers bend down and suddenly straighten up again. For Ginger is even now passing along the last great road: he has copped it. The group disperse; the officer goes back to his job; the stretcher bearers do their work; and soon nothing remains save the stain on the dirty sandbags. Just another letter to a woman at home; just war.

Only to his pal, it’s Ginger: Ginger whom he’d joined up with; Ginger killed putting up a bit of rusty wire. Not doing anything brilliant, not in a charge or going over the top, but putting up a bit of ruddy wire. What is the use of it all, what? . . .

Come on, my leader; come on, you platoon commander; the soul of Ginger’s pal is in the melting-pot, though he doesn’t know it, and would curse in your face if you told him so. A quiet hand on the back, a laugh perhaps, just a word to show him that you feel with him. His outlook on life is not as big as yours; help him for Heaven’s sake, help him. Thus is it done if the leader of the regiment is a man of understanding; for each of his assistants, right down the long chain to the junior lance-corporal, have been imbued with their responsibility to those under them. They are there to help them, to lighten their burdens, to sink self for the men they lead. The strong must help the weak that is the principle; and every one must pull his weight for the good of the team.

But I have got off the rails again; I apologise.

During those weeks of boredom, Reginald, though he knew it not, was being watched, still watched, by the Honourable James. And it seemed to that judge of character that the soil was good.

“The Adjutant asked me if I’d like to take the stripe this morning, Shorty.” Reginald and his pal were watching an inter-company football match on the ground by the Lens main road, near the little village of Noyelles-les-Vermelles. It is on the borders of the coal country that village, and all around it rise the great pyramidical slag heaps of the pits.

“Did ’e now?” Shorty contemplated with interest a shell bursting on the derelict fosse in the next village of Annequin, and turned thoughtfully to the speaker. “An’ what did you say to him?”

“I said I didn’t want to. Why the devil should I? I don’t want a stripe, Bill I’m happier as I am. It means a lot of extra work an’ trouble, an’ ”

“Did you tell him that, son?” Shorty Bill hooked himself over on his arm and proceeded to fill his pipe.

“Yes, I told him that: and he ”

He did not finish his sentence for a moment or two; he seemed to be turning something over in his mind. Then he burst out: “He talked a lot of rot about responsibility.”

“Cut it out. It’s you that is coughing up the rot. Listen here a moment, an’ I’ll tell you what the Honourable James said. Got a match?” He took the proffered box and carefully lit up. “He first-ways told you that he’d had his eye on you for some time, an’ he was pleased with ’ow you was doing. That may have been a lie or it may not, but the Honourable Jimmy knows more’n one cottons to. Then he told you what a gran’ thing it was to be in this regiment, and that to be in a position of responsibility was grander still. Then he told you that no man worthy of the name of a man ought to be afraid of shouldering responsibility. An’ lastly he said: ’Will you take the stripe?’”

Reggie was staring at the speaker amazed. “Lumme! you might have been there, Shorty. How did you know?”

“Because he offered the same thing to me six months ago,” returned the other shortly. “Now see here, boy: that there aristocratic Johnny is the goods. It don’t matter a damn to me if a man’s a duke or a coal-heaver as long as he’s the goods, and the Honourable Jimmy is. So’s the olé man. An’ what he says goes. He’s right d’you see, son; he’s right.” Shorty brought his fist down into his open palm. “I’ve been watching you lately, an’ you’re worth teaching you’ve shown that. But now you’ve begun to feel your legs, you’re inclined to think you’re a bit bigger cheese-mite than you really are. You want a bit o’ sobering up; an’ there’s nothing like taking on responsibility to sober up a man. As soon as you start looking after other fellows, you begin to realise you ain’t the Lord High Emperor of the whole outfit.”

“But I don’t want to look after other fellows, Shorty.” Our friend’s tone was dubious. “Why, good Lord! I’d be bossing it over you if I took the stripe.”

An enigmatic smile wreathed gently over Shorty’s face. “Don’t you worry about that; I’ll chance it.” Then he turned suddenly on the man lying beside him. “You’ve got to take it this bally little stripe in this funny old army. Otherwise you’re a quitter see? a quitter. You’d not be pullin’ your weight. Do you get me?”

“Right ho! Bill; I’ll tell him I will.” Reginald Simpkins stared silently at the football match for a while, and then a sudden thought struck him. “Say, why didn’t you take it, Shorty?”

“Never you mind; there are things as you can’t get a hold of as yet. I pull more weight where I am, my son, than I would if I was the ruddy sergeant-major himself.”

With which sage utterance our friend had to rest content. But while we are on the question, it is passing strange that, in a community such as a regiment, the power of the old soldier should be as great as it is. There was but little exaggeration in Shorty’s last remark. In his present position he exercised a far greater influence on the men around him than if he had been a sergeant. It was his individuality an individuality which made him an oracle whom all approached with their little grievances and their little troubles. Had he been a senior N.C.O. there would have been the bar of rank; and though his influence would have been very great, now it was even greater. But with our friend the case was different. He had no such individuality developed as yet which marked him out at once as a man among men; and before he could become an oracle to whom others would turn in their troubles, he must first be given a helping hand shown a short cut, so to speak to the character on which men lean instinctively.

And there is only one way to produce that character only one. It may succeed and it may fail; the shrewdest judges of human character make mistakes, the best leaders err sometimes. But give him responsibility, and help him to understand that responsibility, with the help that only a good leader can give. Help him to grasp that phrase My men; help him to realise that their worries are his worries, their amusements his amusements; help him to understand the value of cheerfulness when everything is damnable utterly damnable. Then watch him. He may fail; well, you’ve made a mistake; but he may succeed, and then you’ve made a man. Which is always a thing worth doing. . . .

VIII

THE THIRD LESSON IS LEARNED

And so it came about that three months later Reginald Simpkins lance-corporal and Shorty Bill private were seated on the fire-step of a trench side by side. With one continuous droning roar the shells passed over their heads and crumped into the German lines opposite. The days of peace for the battalion were over; in a quarter of an hour they were going over the top. Thousands like them sat on similar fire-steps and realised that same fact, for it was no little show this time: it was one where divisions and corps were involved. But to the pawns in the game, the horizon is limited: it is just their own destination, their own life, their own fate that looms up big and blots out the rest. It’s not the other hundred thousand who matter at the moment it’s the pawn himself who wonders, and laughs, and sings, and prays. . . .

Shorty, smoking his pipe imperturbably, was feeling the edge of his own particular weapon, with critical finger, and every now and then stealing a look at the boy beside him. Apparently satisfied at last with its sharpness he laid it down on the step and turned to our friend.

“You done well, son,” he remarked at length, thoughtfully removing his pipe. “I’m pleased with you. I was afraid at one time just after you took the stripe when some of ’em was ragging you, as you would turn out a quitter. But you got guts. You’re twice the man you was when you took it; and as for what you was when you joined us, you wasn’t nothing at all save a walking disease.”

“I’m glad you think I’ve made good, Shorty.” Reginald was swallowing a little hard. “I er I Good God! Shorty, I’m just sick with funk that’s straight.” It was out at last, and Shorty Bill smiled gently and nodded his head.

“Son,” he remarked, “it’s one good sign that you ain’t afraid o’ saying so. Now personally I’m not though it ain’t no credit to me. It’s how we’re made, I reckon. When my time comes, it comes, and there’s no blamed use worrying.”

“I know all that, but somehow it ain’t much comfort that idea, when it comes to the point. I tell you, Shorty, I don’t want to be killed; I ” His voice died away, and he looked shamefacedly at the sandbags in front of him.

“No more don’t I, son; no more don’t I. An’ no more don’t your men your six boys you are responsible for. They’re your men, that little bunch: they’re looking to you, they’re relying on you.” He put his hand on the other’s knee. “Are you a’-goin’ to let ’em down, that six?”

Once again the great doctrine the third great lesson the doctrine that laughs at life and death, the doctrine of thinking for others of responsibility.

“It’s better, I reckon, to die a man than live a worm. So long, son; time’s up.”

The last words were shouted, and even then they could not be heard. Five minutes previously it would have seemed impossible that there could have been more noise; then suddenly it seemed to double and treble in intensity. The ground shook; and over the German trenches there hung a choking cloud of fumes which drifted slowly across the front with the wind. As if by clockwork, the men got out of their trenches and walked slowly over No Man’s Land behind the creeping barrage towards the reeking caldron. A great long line of men thousands and thousands of men; but do not think of them as the men of “some of our county regiments who did well, whom we are now allowed to mention”; as some “kilted battalions and Canadians who greatly distinguished themselves”; do not think of them in the mass, rather think of the individual.

The farm-hand, until two years ago just a clod-hopping countryman, was there; and the local lawyer’s articled clerk. The gillie from a Scotch stream, and the bar-tender from a Yukon saloon walked side by side; and close to them a High Church curate in a captain’s uniform grinned pleasantly and strolled on. The sheep-rancher, the poacher, the fifth son of an impecunious earl, and the man from the chorus were all there leaving their respective lives behind them, the things which they had done, good and bad, the successes and the failures. For the moment nothing mattered save that seething volcano in front: it might be the end it might not.

And some were quiet, and some were green; some were shouting, and some were red; some laughed, and some cursed. But whatever they did, however they took it, the leaders of whom I have spoken, each in his own sphere, big or little as the case might be, kept ’em, held ’em, looked after ’em, cheered ’em. Though their own stomachs were turning, though their own throats were dry, they had a job to do: a responsibility rested on their shoulders. And until death relieved them of that responsibility they could not lay it down. They were the leaders; to them much had been given; of them much was expected. . . .

But in this great advance, which has already been ably portrayed by the powers of the journalistic world, we are only concerned with the fortunes of two individuals. To them those flowery phrases, those magnificent “dashes carried out in faultless style,” those wonderful “lines which went into the jaws of hell as if on parade,” would have conveyed a peculiarly inept description of their feelings. Not that the descriptions in many cases are not wonderfully good! They are but they represent the point of view of the spectator in a pageant; not the point of view of one of the actors. To him they are meaningless: he only knows the intense vital part he plays himself. The shell that burst next door to him and killed his sergeant is only one of similar thousands to the looker-on behind. . . .

And so, in a dazed world of his own, Reginald Simpkins, Lance-Corporal and sometime pride of Mogg’s, walked over No Man’s Land. Every now and then he looked mechanically to his left and right, and grinned. At least he made a contortion with his facial muscles, which experience told him used to produce a grin. He did it to encourage the six. Whether he succeeded or not is immaterial: the intention was good, even if the peculiar tightness of his skin spoiled the result. Occasionally he spoke. No one could have heard what he said, but once again the intention was good.

“Steady, boys come on.” He said it four or five times and punctuated it with grins. Then he tripped over a body and cursed.

He wondered if he was doing all right; he wondered if Shorty was pleased with him. The funk seemed to have gone: in its place had come a kind of dazed doggedness, while a fury of impatience to justify himself and his powers of leadership shook him at times. Surely to God they could go faster than this cursed crawl. Why was the barrage lifting so slowly? It seemed interminable that walk over the torn-up earth; and yet the German trenches were still some way off.

He grinned again, and turned round just in time to see the garage assistant next to him fall forward into a shell hole, and lie with his head stuck in the slimy ooze at the bottom. He frowned, and then almost uncomprehendingly he saw the back of the fallen man’s head. Of course he was shot, that’s what it was: his six were reduced to five.

“Steady, boys come on.” As he spoke he felt something catch his coat, and he looked down irritably on feeling the material tear. It was a strand of barbed wire that stuck up from the ground, with its free end loose. They had come to the wire. . . .

In all directions twisted and torn, with ends that stuck up, and stray strands uncut was wire: thick and rusty it coiled in and out between the screw pickets cut to pieces, but still there. Men picked their way over it gingerly, stepping with care and walking round the little ridges that separated the shell holes. Festoons of it lay in these holes, and in one large crater a dead Hun lay sprawled on a mattress of it. To the spectator behind, it was one dead Hun one of thousands. To the man who happened to see him as he passed, it was an individual whose chalky face had been ripped by one of the barbs as he fell.

And there is a difference. . . .

Then they came to the trenches the front line, or what was left of it. Just facing them a man with his hands above his head opened and shut his mouth. He appeared to be saying something, but no voice could be heard above the din. Reginald grinned again: the Hun who was trying to imitate a fish struck him as a humorous spectacle; moreover, in a flash of memory, he reminded him very much of Mr. Mogg’s ample wife. He grinned again as he thought of Mogg’s.

Once more they were advancing again over the other side of the trench: the moppers-up would attend to the piscatorial gentleman. Our friend was better now very much better; he felt more sure of himself; in fact, absolutely sure of himself. In addition he was beginning to get excited. And then a machine gun opened fire.

Hundreds of other machine guns opened fire too; but this one was Reginald’s machine gun the one that concerned his limited horizon. For a moment it did not strike him that way, though he saw the gun quite clearly. He looked round for help, and in looking round for help, he found that his five and three others who were close to him were looking to him for help. And he realised his responsibility: he had learned the lesson. . . .

It was a masterly little piece of work: an excellent piece of subordinate leadership. With his arm he directed those eight he had not been trained as a scout in vain and with the loss of only two he got them out of the direct zone of fire. A few minutes later he, with the six remaining, fell upon that gun’s team from a flank. In five seconds it was over, and the little group passed on.

It was just after this that he saw Shorty. At the moment that worthy was lying in a shell hole drawing a bead on some target with the utmost care. Reggie saw the kick of the gun, but failed to see what he had been firing at until the firer stood up and screamed in his ear.

“Machine gunner nest of them over there. Hanging up the ruddy advance.”

“We’re doing well, Shorty.” He howled back the answer.

“I reckon so. The swine are running all along the line; only one or two of ’em holdin’ us up. Look out.” He pulled Reginald to one side, and pointed behind him.

Majestically, squelching through the mud, came Tiny Tim, or the Tired Tank. It was pitching and rolling like a squat old tramp making heavy weather beating up Channel. They waved at it as it passed by, lurching ominously but going straight for the machine-gun nest. Once it almost seemed to disappear as it waddled down an extra large hole with its two stern wheels waving foolishly in the air; but a moment later it squirmed solemnly up the far side, and rolled on to its chosen target. The wire was uncut; but it trod on the wire, and the wire was not.

“Look at the perishers running,” howled Shorty, as he watched some men doubling back from the death-trap. Their arms were waving foolishly: one could imagine their faces grey-green with terror, their hoarse shouts of fear, their desperate hurry to avoid the thing that was coming. “Lumme! I must draw a bead on that bunch,” muttered Shorty eagerly. “Now then, son, you can hit one of that lot.” He turned from the scene in front, and the next instant he was down on his knees. “What is it, boy, what is it?”

The man lying stiffly on the ground grinned yet once again, and shook his head. Thus does it come suddenly, in a second. To the spectator behind “our losses were not as great as had been anticipated.” To the man journey’s end.

“I’ve got it this time, Shorty,” he remarked, and he seemed to speak with difficulty. The roar of the guns was passing onwards, the din was not quite so deafening. “My bally old back seems all numb.”

Just a stray bullet; just a broken back; just a finish. With the eye of knowledge Shorty looked at the grey tinge already spreading over the boy’s face, and the mystery of death struck him forcibly: something of the strangeness of it all. In five minutes four ten what matter? the lips now capable of speech would close for ever: the man whom he had known and lived alongside of for months would be gone for good. The desperate finality of it; the utter futility of the onlooker. . . .

“Is the Tank clearing ’em out, Shorty?” The dying man interrupted his thoughts, and he looked up to see what was happening.

“It is that, son; it’s doing fine. The old thing is sittin’ there like a broody hen spittin’ at ’em, and the swine are running like hell.”

“God! Shorty, could one hit ’em with a gun?” The glazing eyes brightened; the lolling head straightened with a jerk.

“Sure thing.” Shorty looked at him, and understood. “Like to try, boy; you’d get the cocoa-nut, I’ll bet.”

“That’s it, Shorty; that’s it. Turn me over, an’ prop me up. I’d like to. . . . Lord! man, I can see ’em there, hundreds of ’em running to beat the band. Give me the gun, Bill, quick; I must just get one; I. . . .”

With powerless hands he took the rifle for the last time, and looked along the sights. “God!” he whimpered, “I can’t hold it steady I can’t. . . . Shorty, Shorty, I’m wobbling all over the target.”

But Shorty did not come to him. He was lying on the ground two or three feet away, with his own rifle hugged to his shoulder. “If there be anything in religion,” he muttered fiercely, “let me shoot straight this time, God.”

“That’s all right,” he shouted; “you’ve got him covered fine. Fire, son, fire an’ hit the perisher. You ain’t wobbling.”

And so Reginald Simpkins, lance-corporal and man, fired his last shot. Heaven knows where it went; all that matters is that a running grey-green figure two hundred yards away suddenly threw his hands above his head and pitched forward on his face.

“Great shooting, son, great shooting.” Shorty Bill was beside him, turning him over once again on his back. “You plugged him clean as a whistle. Good boy.”

The grey had spread; the end was very near. “I thought I heard another shot close by.” The tired eyelids closed. “I’ve made good, Shorty, ain’t I? . . . Honourable Jimmy . . . Regiment great thing . . . responsibility . . . greater. . . .” And so he died.

IX

“AND OTHER FELL ON GOOD GROUND”

Shorty Bill thoughtfully ejected a spent cartridge case from his magazine and pulled back the safety catch. “I’m glad I hit him. It’ll be something for the boy to take away with him. I suppose he’ll remember it.” Shorty’s brow wrinkled with the strain of this abstruse theological problem. Then he shrugged his shoulders and gave it up. “So long, son; you made good you did well. But the old Tank has cleared ’em out, an’ I must be toddling on.” Then he remembered something, and produced his own patent weapon. It was only as he actually started to cut another nick in the long row which adorned the stock of his rifle that he paused: paused and looked up.

“Lumme! I’d better wait a bit; it wouldn’t never do for the boy to know it was me what hit that Hun. I’ll just go on a little, I’ll . . . Good-bye, boy; I’m sorry dam sorry.”

With his strange, loping walk the poacher and jailbird walked off in the wake of the Tank, which was now ploughing merrily forward again. Fifty yards away he stopped, and cut another nick. “Ninety-three,” he muttered; “not bad. But it wouldn’t never have done for the boy to have known.” Undoubtedly theology was not his strong point.

Slowly, an inch or two at a time, Reginald Simpkins slithered down the sloping side of the shell hole till he reached the bottom. To the batches of prisoners coming back just a casualty; to the reinforcements coming up just a casualty. To the boy himself the great price.

And so, in the shell-ploughed, gun-furrowed No Man’s Land is the seed of Britain sown. And the harvest ?