IX
TWO UNDECORATED HEROES
I TALKED for hours, recently, with two heroes who will never wear a decoration! Indeed, I talk with heroes every day. Some are lads of eighteen and twenty, who tell me how they went over the top; how they felt when their bayonets first pierced German breasts—"a bit shaky, sir, yes, sir"; how they got "theirs" from a bit of shell, shrapnel, or machine gun ball; how they lay three days and nights in a shell hole, or crawled back far enough for comrades to find them; how they are "quite all right now, sir," and eager to get back to France, or "unfit for active service" and are set to guarding German prisoners.
A young Virginian named Burke, red headed and eighteen, carried two gold stripes on his arm. The first is for a wound through the shoulder and the second through the thigh.
"I'm going back next week, sir," he said, "and is there any way I could get transferred to the American army?" The handsomest woman we have met in England opened conversation with three of us the other day, in a railway carriage, and bit by bit we learned her story.
"My husband was killed three years ago. All the men I know have been killed. Nobody in our sphere of life is left. My little boy is the last of his name; he will inherit that great place yonder. But we can no longer bear it in England. We shall go to the colonies. I am under thirty, but life to me is done."
She is a superb woman, a Juno. There was no tear, no heroics, no melodramatics. It tugged at our hearts.
Another incident I would not have believed, if told to me by another. Some of us went with "Captain Peg" to a cinema.
"Ah, there are friends of mine," said he. "How do you do?" bowing to them. "That
is Mrs. , and her daughter. She lost
three sons in France, and has another at the front."
They were showing war films—the siege of Antwerp. It was said the films had been taken at great risk, by the consent of the military authorities. By and by, a young officer in a trench turned toward the camera and smiled. He was life size, and very handsome. Herbert, oh, my Herbert!" Mrs.
behind us, was standing, her hands outstretched towards the screen. Then a shell came, or a mine, and Herbert was blown into bits. The mother fell fainting. She had known her son was dead, but never how he died. Captain Peg gathered her in his arms and bore her out.
Now, for the two heroes. The first, we
met in an officers' training camp at G
Park—the beautiful private grounds of an English mansion. There were lads with down on their chins, the flush of youth and health on their cheeks. They were college men for the most part. Some were fine musicians. Some were men over thirty who had been making as much as $25,000 and $30,000 a year as managers in "the city." All now were in the rough khaki! There was a viscount or two, sons of dukes and earls, and of M. P.'s, double honor men at Oxford or Cambridge.
"Yes, my father," said one, modestly, yet with pride, "was with Mr. Balfour's commission to America. He is a member of Parliament and quite a speaker. You see, sir, Mr. Balfour is no longer young, and must have someone to help him with the talking."
It was the best audience I had spoken to in England, and I enjoyed my address immensely, whether anybody else had a good time or not. I could imagine myself talking to Missouri University cadets, my own lads among them.
All this time I paid little heed to a small man in civilian dress in a dim corner. Then the secretary, Mr. Bull, informed me that Mr. Dyer was going back to town by our train.
"He is a great Y. M. man. He heard I was perplexed about my lighting system for this hut and came out to help me. He has a hut of his own in Camberwell—the finest in England. You will enjoy talking with him."
"Ay, ay," thought I. "He will bore me all the way in. He must be one of the unco' guid."
He was in reality, a heavily charged carbonated bottle. I lazily pulled the cork when we were in the compartment and he effervesced. We sat up and took notice, interjecting a question here and there.
"Yes, sir, I'm a business man. I work twelve hours a day. Furniture is my line. Thirty-three years in Camberwell Road. When the war came I built a hut o' me own on Camberwell Green, just across from my place. Oh, yes, it took some work to get the consent of the council; it took eighteen months. I gathered twelve thousand signatures and addressed many public meetings. Yes, I work three nights a week at Victoria Station."
"Three nights—you mean all night, and then back to business"
"Yes, sir, all night, and a bite of breakfast, then back to business."
"But, man, you'll kill yourself!"
"What's the odds? Didn't ye say in your address, a few years more or a few years less, what odds?"
Here he ran his hands through his thick, snow-white hair.
"Three years ago this was black as the crow; and I'm fifty-five. But the lads are dying for me and mine. I've a lad at the front now—flying corps. Once I had three. Now only the one."
"What do you do all the night?"
"I go after the lads. There are twenty thousand a night that come into the town, straight from the trenches or elsewhere. The same people are waiting to get them, sharks, they are, and I can pick one out of their clutches now and again. When I see a woman of the town nab one I go up and say, 'Bad company, old chap.' Then he may say, What the hell is it to you?' I've been knocked down three times; but sometimes I get him, give the girl some money and take him to my hut, a bath and a clean, nice bed. Sometimes I get a drunk one—the police turn him over to me. There was a mine sweeper, and his wife and children waitin' for him"—but the story is too long. Enough to say the mine sweeper went home sober for his holiday, stayed sober and came back with a great bouquet of coarse flowers from the "missus." He was lost at sea next trip.
"Then there was a lad dog-tired, so tired he could hardly speak, straight from the trenches. He was filthy. He came with me half asleep. I took off his clothes m'self. His feet were blistered. I gave him his bath and put him in clean night-clothes and between clean sheets. I took his wallet and found ninety-five pounds in it!
"Then I found his father's address and rang him up on the telephone. It was past midnight, and he cursed me when he came to the 'phone. I told him I had his son. Then there was a pause. He said he'd be there in half an hour. The big motor rolled up, and the man came in. He was a stock broker, and he and his lad had not spoken for some years. The boy had run through half his fortune. He came in and stood by the little bed, and cried; then he bent down and kissed the sleeping boy, and went away. I arranged for them to meet next morning at ten." There is more to the story, but the lad is an officer now in France, an honor to his father.
Story after story poured from the lips of the little white-haired man, as we rolled up to London. Our throats were drawn and ached.
"Good night, gentlemen, and will you come and see my hut, some time, in Camberwell?"
"By Jove, old man, you can't shake us. We're going straight to your darned old hut, if it takes all night."
We drove through the dark streets, the little man beaming and pointing out all the spots immortalized by Dickens, such as Marshalsea Prison, Blackman's Road and Shakespeare's first dwelling in London and the like. He was certainly up on old London.
We had expected disappointment in the hut; but there it stood, flashing out in the night, like an officers' club. Indeed it looked like an officers' club within.
"This is the lady manageress," said Mr. Dyer, introducing us, and a handsome lady smiled and bowed. "This is Alderman So-and-so." Then beneath his breath, "Yonder
is the Duchess of ." The little man
was all swelled up with innocent pride. There were four handsome billiard tables in apple pie order, in a room all to themselves. There was a writing room that would do credit to a seaside hotel. There were great easy chairs, dainty hangings and tasty crockery.
There were well chosen pictures everywhere. It was midnight, and the place was full of Tommies. I tell you, it was as handsome as an officers' club. Then there were the lavatories and showers. We tiptoed into the dormitory—a hundred and seventy-five beds, as clean and artistic as your boy's bed at home, the linen all changed every day and the price sixpence a night. For a little more a lad may have a neat little room alone.
Then we walked out in the "tea garden" in Camberwell Green, under the moon.
"It's fine to serve tea in, in summer, now, isn't it, sir? There is but one thing more I want to make the place complete. I shall build a room just here, with a bow window full of glass, for the sun to come in; where husbands and wives, fathers and sons may meet, to talk alone. You know they do get estranged, when separated in the war, and they must talk it out alone to get set right, you know, sir."
"Have you brought husbands and wives together again?"
"Oh, time and again sir. Now there was" "Look here, Mr. Dyer, is this the night you're to stay up all night?"
"No, to-morrow night."
"Then, you go home and go to bed. You shan't stand 'gassing' to us all night."
He will never wear a decoration—in this life, at least.
The other hero is a Scotch Presbyterian chaplain. Captain Robertson. He stands six feet and an inch in his stockings, is built like a North American Indian, with a face by Phidias or Praxiteles. He is just from a hospital, convalescent from wounds received in France. It was dim twilight in the corner of the hut where we sat very close, eye to eye, and I got his story out of him, in the clean-cut English, almost American English, characteristic of the cultivated Scot.
"Ah, 'tis great experience I I am almost fit to go back—breathing is still a bit bad. I don't know if they will let me go back. Yes, I was in a transverse, coming back from the front line trenches—yes, I was in the front line every day—when the shell got me.
"I did not think at first I was hurt, but felt a strange sense of exhilaration. My left arm, though, was twisted clear around in front of me and quite useless. Still I thought it was but shock. I walked on, feeling no pain, to the dressing dugout. The doctor asked me what was the matter, as I looked pale. I told him I supposed I was hit. They cut off my tunic, and I was bleeding profusely in the chest and under the arm, which was broken here and here.
"A large piece of shell had cut through my check book, which was just beneath my heart, and penetrated the side. If the check book had not been there it might really have been serious. I fainted by the by. They operated. I had ever so long in the hospital. Ah, yes; you never know brotherhood except in the danger and in the hospital. Brotherhood—that is the great discovery of this war.
"Another time, in the town of A , in
the ruins of the cathedral, I had a marvelous escape. I took refuge from the shelling, as I was passing on the street, and one burst fifteen yards away; they kill at thirty. Fragments whizzed past my ears and I was covered with debris. It was the Almighty. We had called a service for that day and had sung only a few hymns, prayed, and I had begun to preach when the major stepped up to me saying:
"'It is too dangerous, captain. We must disperse the men.'
"'Righto!' said I, though I had begun to forget to be afraid in the interest in my sermon. Wonderful how interesting a man's sermon becomes to himself I
"Oh, yes, in the trenches every day and all day, visiting the men. One night an officer said to me:
"'Let's crawl across No Man's Land, only ninety yards, and see the Hun at home.'
"'What's the good of being a fool?' said I. But we went. We peeped down into the trench, but never a Roche was in sight.
"I was saying the burial service once in a cemetery—just a passage or two from the Good Book, d'ye know, and a prayer. A few soldier lads were there. Shells were whizzing over all the time. Suddenly we heard the loud whirr of aircraft and machine guns. The lads scattered crying: 'She's coming down in flames. Run! Run I'
"I opened my eyes and looked up. There was a plane, all afire, coming straight down at my head. I was glued to the spot. Then, just above me, she veered off with the wind, and fell fifty yards away. Ah, yes, it was the Almighty! It burned a long time; yes, it was our own. When the flames had done, there was naught of the two brave lads but two shriveled mummies. It is a great experience, a great life. I hope to go back."