‘What kind of questions did they ask?’
Sassoon smiled. ‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve read the report, if that’s what you mean. I’d still like to hear your version.’
‘Oh: “Did I object to fighting on religious grounds?” I said I didn’t. It was rather amusing, actually. For a moment I thought they were asking me whether I objected to going on a crusade. “Did I think I was qualified to decide when the war should end?” I said I hadn’t thought about my qualifications.’ He glanced at Rivers. ‘Not true. And then… then Colonel Langdon asked said “Your friend tells us you’re very good at bombing. Don’t you still dislike the Germans?”’
A long silence. The net curtain behind Rivers’s head billowed out in a glimmering arc, and a gust of cool air passed over their faces.
‘And what did you say to that?’
‘I don’t remember.’ He sounded impatient now. ‘It didn’t matter what I said.’
‘It matters now.’
‘All right.’ A faint smile. ‘Yes, I am quite good at bombing. No, I do not still dislike the Germans.’
‘Does that mean you once did?’
Sassoon looked surprised. For the first time something had been said that contradicted his assumptions. ‘Briefly. April and May of last year, to be precise.’
A pause. Rivers waited. After a while Sassoon went on, almost reluctantly. ‘A friend of mine had been killed. For a while I used to go out on patrol every night, looking for Germans to kill. Or rather I told myself that’s what I was doing. In the end I didn’t know whether I was trying to kill them, or just giving them plenty of opportunities to kill me.’
‘ “Mad Jack.” ’
Sassoon looked taken aback. ‘Graves really has talked, hasn’t he?’
‘It’s the kind of thing the Medical Board would need to know.’ Rivers hesitated. ‘Taking unnecessary risks is one of the first signs of a war neurosis.’
‘Is it?’ Sassoon looked down at his hands. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Nightmares and hallucinations come later.’
‘What’s an “unnecessary risk” anyway? The maddest thing I ever did was done under orders.’ He looked up, to see if he should continue. ‘We were told to go and get the regimental badges off a German corpse. They reckoned he’d been dead two days, so obviously if we got the badges they’d know which battalion was opposite. Full moon, not a cloud in sight, absolutely mad, but off we went. Well, we got there — eventually — and what do we find? He’s been dead a helluva lot longer than two days, and he’s French anyway.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Pulled one of his boots off and sent it back to battalion HQ. With quite a bit of his leg left inside.’
Rivers allowed another silence to open up. ‘I gather we’re not going to talk about nightmares?’
‘You’re in charge.’
‘Ye-es. But then one of the paradoxes of being an army psychiatrist is that you don’t actually get very far by ordering your patients to be frank.’
‘I’ll be as frank as you like. I did have nightmares when I first got back from France. I don’t have them now.’
‘And the hallucinations?’
He found this more difficult. ‘It was just that when I woke up, the nightmares didn’t always stop. So I used to see…’ A deep breath. ‘Corpses. Men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor.’
‘And you were awake when this happened?’
‘I don’t know. I must’ve been, because I could see the sister.’
‘And was this always at night?’
‘No. It happened once during the day. I’d been to my club for lunch, and when I came out I sat on a bench, and… I suppose I must’ve nodded off.’ He was forcing himself to go on. ‘When I woke up, the pavement was covered in corpses. Old ones, new ones, black, green.’ His mouth twisted. ‘People were treading on their faces.’
Rivers took a deep breath. ‘You say you’d just woken up?’
‘Yes. I used to sleep quite a bit during the day, because I was afraid to go to sleep at night.’
‘When did all this stop?’
‘As soon as I left the hospital. The atmosphere in that place was really terrible. There was one man who used to boast about killing German prisoners. You can imagine what living with him was like.’
‘And the nightmares haven’t recurred?’
‘No. I do dream, of course, but not about the war. Sometimes a dream seems to go on after I’ve woken up, so there’s a a kind of in-between stage.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t know whether that’s abnormal.’
‘I hope not. It happens to me all the time.’ Rivers sat back in his chair. ‘When you look back now on your time in the hospital, do you think you were “shell-shocked”?’
‘I don’t know. Somebody who came to see me told my uncle he thought I was. As against that, I wrote one or two good poems while I was in there. We-ell…’ He smiled. ‘I was pleased with them.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible to write a good poem in a state of shock?’
‘No, I don’t.’
Rivers nodded. ‘You may be right. Would it be possible for me to see them?’
‘Yes, of course. I’ll copy them out.’
Rivers said, ‘I’d like to move on now to the… thinking behind the Declaration. You say your motives aren’t religious?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘Would you describe yourself as a pacifist?’
‘I don’t think so. I can’t possibly say “No war is ever justified”, because I haven’t thought about it enough. Perhaps some wars are. Perhaps this one was when it started. I just don’t think our war aims — whatever they may be — and we don’t know — justify this level of slaughter.’
‘And you say you have thought about your qualifications for saying that?’
‘Yes. I’m only too well aware of how it sounds. A second-lieutenant, no less, saying “The war must stop”. On the other hand, I have been there. I’m at least as well qualified as some of the old men you see sitting around in clubs, cackling on about “attrition” and “wastage of manpower” and…’ His voice became a vicious parody of an old man’s voice. ‘“Lost heavily in that last scrap. You don’t talk like that if you’ve watched them die.’
‘No intelligent or sensitive person would talk like that anyway.’
A slightly awkward pause. ‘I’m not saying there are no exceptions.’
Rivers laughed. ‘The point is you hate civilians, don’t you? The “callous”, the “complacent”, the “unimaginative”. Or is “hate” too strong a word?’
‘No.’
‘So. What you felt for the Germans, rather briefly, in the spring of last year, you now feel for the overwhelming majority of your fellow-countrymen?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know, I think you were quite right not to say too much to the Board.’
‘That wasn’t my idea, it was Graves’s. He was afraid I’d sound too sane.’
‘When you said the Board was “rigged”, what did you mean?’
‘I meant the decision to send me here, or or somewhere similar, had been taken before I went in.’
‘And this had all been fixed by Captain Graves?’
‘Yes.’ Sassoon leant forward. ‘The point is they weren’t going to court-martial me. They were just going to lock me up somewhere…’ He looked round the room. ‘Worse than this.’