The curse of the army, as far as the organisation is concerned, was our imbecile national belief that the game is more than the player. That was our ruin, mentally, as a nation. We were taught that cricket is more than clearness of mind, so the blasted quartermaster, O.C. Depot Ordnance Stores next door, thought he had taken a wicket if he refused to serve out tin hats to their crowd. That’s the Game! And if any of his, Tietjens’, men were killed, he grinned and said the game was more than the players of the game…. And of course if he got his bowling average down low enough he got promotion. There was a quartermaster in a west-country cathedral city who’d got more D.S.O.s and combatant medals than anyone on active service in France, from the sea to Peronne, or wherever our lines ended. His achievement was to have robbed almost every wretched Tommie in the Western Command of several weeks’ separation allowance… for the good of the taxpayer, of course. The poor —— Tommies’ kids went without proper food and clothing, and the Tommies themselves had been in a state of exasperation and resentment. And nothing in the world was worse for discipline and the army as a fighting machine. But there that quartermaster sat in his office, playing the romantic game over his A.F.B.s till the broad buff sheets fairly glowed in the light of the incandescent gas. “And,” Tietjens concluded, “for every quarter of a million sterling for which he bowls out the wretched fighting men he gets a new clasp on his fourth D.S.O. ribbon…. The game, in short, is more than the players of the game.”
“Oh, damn it!” Captain Mackenzie said. “That’s what’s made us what we are, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Tietjens answered. “It’s got us into the hole and it keeps us there.”
Mackenzie remained dispiritedly looking down at his fingers.
“You may be wrong or you may be right,” he said. “It’s contrary to everything that I ever heard. But I see what you mean.”
“At the beginning of the war,” Tietjens said, “I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow… What do you think he was doing… what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can’t say we were not prepared in one matter at least…. Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease; the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more parades…. Don’t you see how symbolical it was — the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying There will be no more parades?… For there won’t. There won’t, there damn well won’t… No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country… nor for the world, I dare say… None… Gone… Na poo, finny! No… more… parades!”
“I dare say you’re right,” the other said slowly. “But, all the same, what am I doing in this show? I hate soldiering. I hate this whole beastly business….”
“Then why didn’t you go on the gaudy Staff?” Tietjens asked. “The gaudy Staff apparently was yearning to have you. I bet God intended you for Intelligence, not for the footslogging department.”
The other said wearily:
“I don’t know. I was with the battalion. I wanted to stop with the battalion. I was intended for the Foreign Office. My miserable uncle got me hoofed out of that. I was with the battalion. The C.O. wasn’t up to much. Someone had to stay with the battalion. I was not going to do the dirty on it, taking any soft job….”
“I suppose you speak seven languages and all?” Tietjens asked.
“Five,” the other said patiently, “and read two more. And Latin and Greek, of course.”
A man, brown, stiff, with a haughty parade step, burst into the light. He said with a high wooden voice:
“‘Ere’s another bloomin casualty.” In the shadow he appeared to have draped half his face and the right side of his breast with crape. He gave a high, rattling laugh. He bent, as if in a stiff bow, woodenly at his thighs. He pitched, still bent, on to the iron sheet that covered the brazier, rolled off that and lay on his back across the legs of the other runner, who had been crouched beside the brazier. In the bright light it was as if a whole pail of scarlet paint had been dashed across the man’s face on the left and his chest. It glistened in the firelight — just like fresh paint, moving! The runner from the Rhondda, pinned down by the body across his knees, sat with his jaw fallen, resembling one girl that should be combing the hair of another recumbent before her. The red viscousness welled across the floor; you sometimes so see fresh water bubbling up in sand. It astonished Tietjens to see that a human body could be so lavish of blood. He was thinking it was a queer mania that that fellow should have, that his uncle was a friend of his, Tietjens. He had no friend in trade, uncle of a fellow who in ordinary times would probably bring you pairs of boots on approval…. He felt as he did when you patch up a horse that has been badly hurt. He remembered a horse from a cut on whose chest the blood had streamed down over the off foreleg like a stocking. A girl had lent him her petticoat to bandage it. Nevertheless his legs moved slowly and heavily across the floor.
The heat from the brazier was overpowering on his bent face. He hoped he would not get his hands all over blood, because blood is very sticky. It makes your fingers stick together impotently. But there might not be any blood in the darkness under the fellow’s back where he was putting his hand. There was, however: it was very wet.
The voice of Sergeant-Major Cowlcy said from outside:
“Bugler, call two sanitary lance-corporals and four men. Two sanitary corporals and four men.” A prolonged wailing with interruptions transfused the night, mournful, resigned, and prolonged.
Tietjens thought that, thank God, someone would come and relieve him of that job. It was a breathless affair holding up the corpse with the fire burning his face. He said to the other runner:
“Get out from under him, damn you! Are you hurt?” Mackenzie could not get at the body from the other side because of the brazier. The runner from under the corpse moved with short sitting shuffles as if he were getting his legs out from under a sofa. He was saying: “Poor — O Nine Morgan! Surely to goodness I did not recognice the poor — Surely to goodness I did not recognice the pore —”
Tietjens let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the floor. He was more gentle than if the man had been alive. All hell in the way of noise burst about the world. Tietjen’s thoughts seemed to have to shout to him between earthquake shocks. He was thinking it was absurd of that fellow Mackenzie to imagine that he could know any uncle of his. He saw very vividly also the face of his girl who was a pacifist. It worried him not to know what expression her face would have if she heard of his occupation, now. Disgust?… He was standing with his greasy, sticky hands held out from the flaps of his tunic…. Perhaps disgust!… It was impossible to think in this row…. His very thick soles moved gluily and came up after suction…. He remembered he had not sent a runner along to I.B.D. Orderly Room to see how many of his crowd would be wanted for garrison fatigue next day, and this annoyed him acutely. He would have no end of a job warning the officers he detailed. They would all be in brothels down in the town by now…. He could not work out what the girl’s expression would be. He was never to see her again, so what the hell did it matter?… Disgust, probably!… He remembered that he had not looked to see how Mackenzie was getting on in the noise. He did not want to see Mackenzie. He was a bore…. How would her face express disgust? He had never seen her express disgust. She had a perfectly undistinguished face. Fair… O God, how suddenly his bowels turned over!… Thinking of the girl… The face below him grinned at the roof — the half face! The nose was there, half the mouth with the teeth showing in the firelight… It was extraordinary how defined the peaked nose and the serrated teeth were in that mess…. The eye looked jauntily at the peak of canvas hut-roof…. Gone with a grin. Singular the fellow should have spoken! After he was aead. He must have been dead when he spoke. It had been done with the last air automatically going out of the lungs. A reflex action, probably, in the dead…. If he, Tietjens, had given the fellow the leave he wanted he would be alive now!… Well, he was quite right not to have given the poor devil his leave. He was, anyhow, better where he was. And so was he, Tietjens. He had not had a single letter from home since he had been out this time! Not a single letter. Not even gossip. Not a bill. Some circulars of old furniture dealers. They never neglected him! They had got beyond the sentimental stage at home. Obviously so…. He wondered if his bowels would turn over again if he thought of the girl. He was gratified that they had. It showed that he had strong feelings…. He thought about her deliberately. Hard. Nothing happened. He thought of her fair, undistinguished, fresh face that made your heart miss a beat when you thought about it. His heart missed a beat. Obedient heart! Like the first primrose. Not any primrose. The first primrose. Under a bank with the hounds breaking through the underwood…. It was sentimental to say Du bist wie eine Blume…. Damn the German language! But that fellow was a Jew…. One should not say that one’s young woman was like a flower, any flower. Not even to oneself. That was sentimental. But one might say one special flower. A man could say that. A man’s job. She smelt like a primrose when you kissed her. But, damn it, he had never kissed her. So how did he know how she smelt! She was a little tranquil, golden spot. He himself must be a — eunuch. By temperament. That dead fellow down there must be one, physically. It was probably indecent to think of a corpse as impotent. But he was, very likely. That would be why his wife had taken up with the prize-fighter Red Evans Williams of Castell Coch. If he had given the fellow leave the prize-fighter would have smashed him to bits. The police of Pontardulais had asked that he should not be let come home — because of the prize-fighter. So he was better dead. Or perhaps not. Is death better than discovering that your wife is a whore and being done in by her cully? Gwell angau na gwillth, their own regimental badge bore the words. “Death is better than dishonour.”… No, not death, angau means pain. Anguish! Anguish is better than dishonour. The devil it is! Well, that fellow would have got both. Anguish and dishonour. Dishonour from his wife and anguish when the prize-fighter hit him…. That was no doubt why his half-face grinned at the roof. The gory side of it had turned brown. Already! Like a mummy of a Pharaoh, that half looked…. He was born to be a blooming casualty. Either by shell-fire or by the fist of the prize-fighter…. Pontardulais! Somewhere in Mid-Wales. He had been through it once in a car, on duty. A long, dull village. Why should anyone want to go back to it?…