The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916

While the following pages are a record of experience on the Somme
and Ancre fronts, with an interval behind the lines, during the
latter half of the year 1916; and the events described in it
actually happened; the characters are fictitious. It is true
that in recording the conversations of the men I seemed at times
to hear the voices of ghosts. Their judgments were necessarily
partial and prejudiced; but prejudices and partialities provide
most of the driving power of life. It is better to allow them to
cancel each other, than attempt to strike an average between them.
Averages are too colourless, indeed too abstract in every way, to
represent concrete experience. I have drawn no portraits; and my
concern has been mainly with the anonymous ranks, whose opinion,
often mere surmise and ill-informed, but real and true for them,
I have tried to represent faithfully.

War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods. It is a peculiarly
human activity. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at
least half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime.
That raises a moral question, the kind of problem with which the
present age is disinclined to deal. Perhaps some future attempt
to provide a solution for it may prove to be even more astonishing
than the last.



To
Peter Davies who made me write it




Chapter I


By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a
death ... and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year
is quit for the next. --- SHAKESPEARE


The darkness was increasing rapidly, as the whole sky had clouded,
and threatened thunder. There was still some desultory shelling.
When the relief had taken over from them, they set off to return
to their original line as best they could. Bourne, who was beaten
to the wide, gradually dropped behind, and in trying to keep the
others in sight missed his footing and fell into a shellhole.

By the time he had picked himself up again the rest of the party
had vanished and, uncertain of his direction, he stumbled on alone.
He neither hurried nor slackened his pace; he was light-headed,
almost exalted, and driven only by the desire to find an end.
Somewhere, eventually, he would sleep. He almost fell into the
wrecked trench, and after a moment's hesitation turned left, caring
little where it led him.

The world seemed extraordinarily empty of men, though he knew the
ground was alive with them. He was breathing with difficulty, his
mouth and throat seemed to be cracking with dryness, and his water
bottle was empty. Coming to a dugout, he groped his way down,
feeling for the steps with his feet; a piece of Wilson canvas,
hung across the passage but twisted aside, rasped his cheek;
and a few steps lower his face was enveloped suddenly in the
musty folds of a blanket. The dugout was empty. For the moment
he collapsed there, indifferent to everything. Then with shaking
hands he felt for his cigarettes, and putting one between his lips
struck a match. The light revealed a candle-end stuck by its own
grease to the oval lid of a tobacco-tin, and he lit it; it was
scarcely thicker than a shilling, but it would last his time. He
would finish his cigarette, and then move on to find his company.