HEROISM IN EVOLUTION, 1915–1916 147
Men spoke in whispers. Their faces were pallid, dirty, and unshaven,
many with eyes ringed with fatigue after the night, hot and fetid, gaseous
and disturbed by shell fire, in Bazetin. Few there were whose demeanor
expressed eagerness for the assault. They were moving into position with
good discipline, yet listless, as if facing an inevitable. Their identity as
individuals seemed to be swallowed up in the immensity of war: devital-
ized electrons.^61
In mid-November Surfleet found himself in the front lines before Serre. A
call for volunteers to go over the top generated little enthusiasm among
Surfleet’s mates, until they were told it was to rescue the helpless wounded,
whereupon ‘each of us went about that job with real enthusiasm.’^62
This reaction is far from the aggressiveness the VC statistics indicate.
A trip into no-man’s-land was dangerous, whether it was an assault or a
rescue. Here we see soldiers who were unwilling to volunteer when they
thought it was to attack, but eager to risk life and limb when they discovered
their risk had the concrete (and achievable) object of recovering the
wounded.
As the battle dragged on the futility and waste induced a state of pessimism
and fatalism. Private Ivor Gurney echoed the thoughts of Wilfred Owen:
What a life! What a life! My memories of this week will be – Blockhouse;
cold; stuffy heat; smashed or stuck Tanks; A gas and smoke barrage put
up by us. A glorious but terrifying sight; Fritz’s shells; one sunset; two
sunrises; Thirst; Gas; Shrapnel; Very H. E.; Our liquid fire;Does it
sound interesting? May God forgive me if I ever come to cheat myself
into thinking that it was, and later lie to the younger men of the Great
Days. It was damnable.^63
The fatalism could even take on apocalyptic overtones, as the living began
to envy the dead:
I think, too, we are becoming more or less fatalistic; you get like that. I,
for one, cannot imagine this blasted war ever ending without most of us
being killed or so wounded that we go home to Blighty for goodIt
boils down to this: we’ve got to the stage when we don’t dare think about
the future. If we are alright today – if we are alright this hour, almost – it
is enoughFour of the new draft who had only just arrived were killed
and some of the new lads woundedIt seemed like fate that those poor
lads should be put out of it all so soon; someone said they were lucky.^64
lily
(lily)
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