I’m still worried over that Ronnie Boyd business for I told the CO to send ‘F’ Company along that way, having travelled it myself.
I met a Rifle Brigade subaltern on my way down: I forget his name, but he asked after you. Typical R.B., because he evidently regarded you as eccentric in staying away from the R.B. which to him, he made plain, was the most satisfactory regiment one could ever be in. He was very nice.
This leg of mine is getting on well, but they keep messing around with my arm, and I gather are going to do a third operation on it. Myself I think there is nothing wrong with it, I’m afraid.
I am so glad to have remembered to tell you that the Penguin Shakespeares must be avoided. I had been reading Hamlet off and on for months from the normal version in that American book I had. In hospital I picked up a Penguin Hamlet and the difference is distressing. Nearly as bad as reading the Bible R.V. after being used to the A.V.
I must try to get a few books while in this place for it was so enjoyable to argue about T. Mann and so on, and to discover that you were a Hellenist pagan and that I was a puritan more than I realised. I must get you weaving on Tolstoy — myself too, for I have not really worked him out. Did you finish Resurrection? It was horribly translated but the simplicity of the ideas that the chap arrived at were very impressive. Nekhlyudov I think he was called. I love these Russian names.
Good luck and learn to go carefully. No heroics. Yours, Mervyn.
As Christmas approached we were in a quieter part of the line and the weather cleared. There was a slope to a valley below and no sign of Germans; we could once more sit and admire the beautiful landscape. There was a farmstead in the valley that seemed deserted — except for a pig or two that snuffled about and a gaggle of strutting turkeys. We eyed these greedily. As soon as we were out of danger we were aware of hunger. It occurred to me, and I think to all my platoon, that for once a really sensible patrol would be to go down into the valley and take prisoner a few turkeys. One of my men claimed to have been in civilian life a butcher; he said that if we escorted him to the farmyard he would dispatch a few of them quickly and silently. So we set off, just before dusk, fully armed, five or six of us; and we proceeded peacefully into the valley. We surrounded the hut where we had watched the turkeys go to roost; the self-designated butcher crept in with a bayonet. After a moment the hut exploded as if a grenade had gone off inside; turkeys flew squawking and flapping in all directions, the man with the bayonet in pursuit of them vainly. Someone shouted, ‘Shoot them!’ I shouted, ‘No!’ Eventually we managed to capture a few. We carried them back in triumph and had our pre-Christmas dinner.
I had a letter from Mervyn –
It is fortunate that there is a brandy allocation in the ward as I really had to call for it after reading your demoniac denunciation of Resurrection and your relegation of it to the futile and obvious. I have certainly got over my first rapture on its account, but I really do regard it as frightfully interesting account of the working of God (or what one pleases to put in place of that word) on a man’s mind. It is certainly not original, as you say, but it does describe how a wrongful act worries the mind until at last you feel you have to do something to make up for it. As I understand them, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky regard this as the direct influence of God. I think (with respect) that you miss the point of the last chapter on the Sermon on the Mount. That is added as a personal reflection of the author and is not really concerned with the story at all. It was his last book and I feel he could not quite confine himself to a dissection of the mind of le bon Nekhlyudov but kept breaking into his own theological thoughts.
Really of course why we disagree is as plain to you as it is to me. You can look at the efforts of a man to convince of Christianity in a detached fashion and can be critical both of Christianity and his ways. I, on the other hand, am so desperately anxious to be convinced of Christianity’s truth that I am unable to look with that critical Mosley eye. So I suppose you will call me a bigoted old puritan and smile at your own open-mindedness — with satisfaction of course.
There is just one other thing you say that I must comment on, to disagree again I am afraid. You say men will not follow the Sermon on the Mount until they are sane and merciful, and when they are that it does not matter what sermon (creed) they punch up. Apart from the fact that the second part of your conclusion implicitly denies that Jesus is of God, I reckon that the first conclusion is wrong because chaps will become sane and merciful by practising the Sermon and not, as you say, will practise the Sermon when they are S. and M. The Sermon is the means pointed out to men whereby they can better the world; and this means will end in folks being good and kind, or sane and merciful.
Then there came a day in the New Year when we were in the mountains again — somewhere close to Monte Spaduro, I think — and the weather was still fine and there was no sign of Germans; and I was standing beside my trench in the sunlight and I saw our commanding officer, Bela Bredin, and his adjutant coming along a path up the hill; and they were moving in a stately manner like a small religious procession and smiling; and I thought — So that is all right. And then Bala came up to me and said that for the battle of Casa Spinello I had been awarded the Military Cross; and so had Mervyn; and Desmond Fay had got a bar to the MC he already had; and Corporal Tomkinson had got a Military Medal and Corporal McClarnon had been Mentioned in Despatches. And so what I had not exactly hoped for nor expected but had felt I needed, this had happened; and perhaps I would not have to feel cynical again.
Mervyn wrote –
I was vastly pleased to get your letter and to read that we have both been begonged and Desmond has been bebarred. My salutations to you (and D.) and thanks for yours. I will not go on with any more mutual admiration except to say that I reckon we are all mighty fine fellows!
I knew yours was coming of course because the CO told me in a letter. Your mighty charge was terrific to see.
I wrote to my sister –
It’s the full ridicule, the ultimate absurdity, but there it is — a slender little purple and white ribbon stitched upon my heaving bosom, and me in the full enjoyment of outrageous false modesty.
The MC will help, yes, for it will give authority to the anti-war, anti-patriotic preaching which I intend to deliver to one and all after the war. Even in this so-called universal war there are so very few people who have seen anything of the real fighting, that it is essential for these few to bellow their views even if it means discomforting others. I hope you won’t find me too soap-boxish and bitter.
To my father I wrote –
It is the young Siegfried after all.
10
The superficial aspect of elation did not last long. We were soon back at the place we had so disliked a month or so ago — with the race to the bridge across the stream. More people were now saying they could not go on.
I had one man in my platoon — an ex-jailbird from Belfast — who was known as a troublemaker; in army jargon a barrack-room lawyer. I made him my batman/ runner because I thought he would be less trouble under my eye than away from it. He was also an invigorating ‘character’. Once, when we were in our perilous position by the bridge, I ordered him to take a message back to headquarters and he refused. I said, ‘Obey my order or I shall shoot you!’ He said, ‘Then shoot me sir!’ and tore open the front of his battledress. I said, ‘Oh all right!’