A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [52]
Don't we say prayers before battle?...He could not imagine himself doing it...He just hoped that nothing would happen that would make him lose control of his mind...Otherwise he found that he was meditating on how to get the paper affairs of the unit into a better state...'Who sweeps a room as for Thy cause ...' It was the equivalent of prayer probably...
He noted that Brigade's injunctions about the coming fight were not only endorsed with earnestness by Division but also by very serious exhortations from Army. The chit from Brigade was in handwriting, that from Division in fairly clear type-script, that from Army in very pale typed characters...It amounted to this: that they were that day to stick it till they burst...That meant that there was nothing behind their backs--from there to the North Sea!...The French were hurrying along probably...He imagined a lot of little blue fellows in red breeches trotting along pink, sunlit plains.
(You cannot control your imagination's pictures. Of course the French no longer wore red trousers.) He saw the line breaking just where the blue section came to: the rest, swept back into the sea. He saw the whole of the terrain behind them. On the horizon was a glistening haze. That was where they were going to be swept to. Or of course they would not be swept. They would be lying on their faces, exposing the seats of their breeches. Too negligible for the large dust-pan and broom...What was death like: the immediate process of dissolution? He stuffed the papers into his tunic pocket.
He remembered with grimmish amusement that one chit promised him reinforcements. Sixteen men! Sixteen! Worcesters! From a Worcester training camp...Why the deuce weren't they sent to the Worcester battalion just next door? Good fellows, no doubt. But they hadn't got the drill quiffs of our lot: they were not pals with our men: they did not know the officers by name. There would be no welcome to cheer them...It was a queer idea, the deliberate destruction of regimental esprit de corps that the Home Authorities now insisted on. It was said to be imitated at the suggestion of a civilian of advanced social views from the French who in turn had imitated it from the Germans. It is of course lawful to learn of the Enemy: but is it sensible?
Perhaps it is. The Feudal Spirit was broken. Perhaps it would therefore be harmful to Trench Warfare. It used to be comfortable and cosy. You fought beside men from your own hamlet under the leadership of the parson's son. Perhaps that was not good for you?
At any rate, as at present arranged, dying was a lonely affair.
He, Tietjens, and little Aranjuez there, if something hit them would die--a Yorkshire territorial magnate's son and the son of, positively, an Oporto Protestant minister, if you can imagine such a thing!--the dissimilar souls winging their way to heaven side by side. You'd think God would find it more appropriate if Yorkshiremen went with other North Country fellows, and Dagoes with other Papists. For Aranjuez, though the son of a Nonconformist of sorts, had reverted to the faith of his fathers.
He said:
'Come along, Aranjuez...I want to see that wet bit of trench before the Hun shells hit it.'
Well...They were getting reinforcements. The Home Authorities had awakened to their prayers. They sent them sixteen Worcesters. They would be three hundred and forty-four--no, forty-three, because he had sent back 0-Eleven Griffith, the fellow with the cornet--three hundred and forty-three lonely souls against...say two Divisions! Against about eighteen thousand, very likely. And they were to stick it till they burst. Reinforced!
Reinforced. Good God!...Sixteen Worcesters!
What was at the bottom of it all?
Campion was going to command that Army. That meant that real reinforcements had been promised from the millions of men that filled the base camps. And it meant the Single Command!