A Passionate Prodigality by Guy Chapman

Author:Guy Chapman [Chapman, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military, History, World War I, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781526750129
Google: ok8IEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2019-01-31T00:46:53+00:00

PART TWO

THE GROGNARDS

‘We are but soldiers for the working day.’

HENRY V

XIII

CHORUS OF RUSTICS.‘What will Master Jack say? But here comes Master Jack!’

(BAND AD LIB.—see the Conquering Hero comes.)

MASTER JACK. ‘Home again after forty years at the Front!

How the old place has changed.’

AUCTOR IGNOTUS

THEY were lying in Kemmel Shelters, preparing for the line. Smith had taken over command a few days earlier. ‘Sit tight and look round,’ he said. ‘There’ll be a job for you soon.’ I looked round.

Ten months had made deep changes in the battalion. It was like an ancient garment which had been darned and redarned until, though it hangs in the same shape, few fragments of the original cloth remain. Here and there were patches of the first fabric. The transport, the stores, the orderly room still showed familiar faces. The R.S.M. still swelled his chest and roared, though in a voice hoarser than of old. There was the calm and capable C.S.M. of No. 2, Edmonds, with his quiet persistent cheerfulness. The quartermaster-sergeants were the same, but they had shed all their militarism. In the ranks appeared now and again a face one remembered, a Crossley, a Ting. But the change was more definite than the loss of familiar landmarks. The spring, which had driven the battalion, was worn. The last flickers of our early credulous idealism had died in the Arras battles. The men, though docile, willing, and biddable, were tired beyond hope. Indeed, they knew now too well to hope, though despair had not overthrown them. They lived from hand to mouth, expecting nothing, and so disappointed nowhere. They were no longer decoyed by the vociferous patriotism of the newspapers. They no longer believed in the purity of politicians or the sacrifices of profiteers. They were as fed up with England as they were with France and Belgium, ‘fed up, ——, and far from home.’ The best they could count on was a blighty good for a year; the next, a little breathing space to stretch their legs and fill their lungs with sweet air in some back area, a village with good estaminets. The worst—they knew so much now that they dare not envisage worse than they knew: yet they felt that worse did exist and might even now be ripening for them.

The officers in degree were as the men. Very few of the pre-Somme , vintage remained; Vanneck, miraculously escaped, worn and bitter, Whitehead, with two long periods in hospital, Jerome and P. E. Lewis wounded and rejoined. The rest were either very young or had served in the ranks. Many were as worn as their men, suffering in turn irritation, fear, and cafard. Our speech has grown coarser; our humour threadbare, at best cruel, met by sardonic laughter. We are in truth grognards, who have known, not Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, and Borodino, but frustrated attack upon attack along one tract, fifty miles long, of man-stale earth ; and we have learned to appreciate that grim jape: ‘The first seven years will be the worst.

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