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Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Test of
Scarlet: A Romance of Reality
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The Test of Scarlet: A Romance of Reality

Author: Coningsby Dawson

Release date: June 30, 2016 [eBook #52450]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously

provided by the Internet Archive

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TEST OF

SCARLET: A ROMANCE OF REALITY ***
THE TEST OF SCARLET
A Romance of Ideality
By Coningsby Dawson
New York: John Lane Company London

1919
CONTENTS
THE TEST OF SCARLET
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
BOOK II—THE MARCH TO CONQUEST
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
BOOK III—INTO THE BLUE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
THE TEST OF SCARLET
 I

T
HE raid is over. The frenzied appeal of the Hun flares has died
down. Flares are the deaf and dumb language of the Front.
Sometimes they say, “We are advancing”; sometimes, “We are
beaten back.” Most often they say, “We are in danger; call upon the
artillery for help.” Tonight they seemed to be crying out for mercy—
speaking not to friends, but to us. We were silent as God, and now
they too are silent.
In the welter of darkness one can still make out the exact location
of the enemy’s front-line by the glow of his burning dug-outs. Our
chaps set them on fire, standing in the doorways like avenging
angels, and hurling down incendiary bombs as he tried to rush up
the stairs. A horrid way to die, imprisoned underground in a raging
furnace! Yet at this distance the destruction looks comfortable as the
reflection of many camp-fires about which companions sit and warm
their hands. The only companions in those trenches now are
Corruption and his old friend Death.
I can see it all—the twisted terror of the bodies, the mangled
redness of what once were men. I see these things too clearly—
before they happen, while they are happening and when I ‘m not
there. It is only when I am there that I do not see them, and they
fail to impress me. It was so tonight as I crouched in my observation
post, my telephonist beside me, waiting for the show to commence.
As the second-hand ticked round to zero hour, I had an
overpowering desire to delay the on-coming destruction. I peopled
the enemy line with imaginary characters and built up stories about
them. I pictured the homes they had left, the affections, the
sweethearts, the little children. God knows why I should pity them.
And then our chaps—they are known personalities; I can paint with
exact precision the contrast between what they are and what they
were. I see them always with laughter in their eyes, however
desperate the job in hand. Their faces lean and eager as bayonets,
they assemble in some main trench, as likely as not facetiously
named after some favorite actress. On our present front we have the
Doris Keane, the Teddie Gerrard and the Gaby. A sharply whispered
word of command! They move forward, shuffling along the
duckboard, come to the jumping-off point and commence to follow
the lanes in the wire which lead out from safety across No Man’s
Land. They crouch like panthers, flinging themselves flat every time
a rocket ascends. Within shouting distance of the enemy, they drop
into shell-holes and lie silent. All this I see in my mind as I gaze
impotently through the blackness. My turn comes later when the raid
is in full swing; it consists in directing the artillery fire and reporting
to the rear what is happening.
I consult the illuminated dial of my wrist-watch—five seconds to
go. Some battery, which has grown nervous, starts pooping off its
rounds. A machine-gunner, imitating the bad example, commences a
swift rat-a-tat-tat: Destiny demanding entrance on the door of some
sleeping house. In the wall of darkness, as though a candle had
been lighted and a blind pulled aside, a solitary flare ascends—then
another, then another. North end south, like panic spreading, the
illumination runs. With the clash of an iron door flung wide, all our
batteries open up. I look behind me; flash follows flash. The horizon
is lit up from end to end. The gunners are baking their loaves of
death. The air is filled with a hissing as of serpents. Shells travel so
thick and fast overhead that they seem to jostle and struggle for a
passage. The first of them arrive. So far no eye has followed their
flight. Suddenly they halt, reined in by their masters at the guns,
and plunge snarling and golden on the heads of the enemy. Where a
second ago there was blackness, a wall of fire and lead has grown
up. Poor devils! Those who escape the shells will be destroyed by
bomb and bayonet. Pity there is none; this is the hour of revenge.
We shall take three prisoners, perhaps, in order that we may gather
information, but the rest.... Our chaps have to think of their own
safety. There is only one company in the raid, consisting of not over
a hundred men. They might easily be surrounded. Their success
depends on the element of surprise and the quickness of their get-
away when they have done their work. If they took too many
prisoners they would be hampered in their return. If they left any of
the enemy alive behind them, they would be fired on as they retired.
So the order is “No quarter and kill swiftly.”
Now that the attack has started, I cease to be concerned for the
Hun: all my thought is for our chaps. I knew so many of them.
Silborrad, the scout officer of the nth Battalion is there; a frail
appearing lad, with the look of a consumptive and the heart of a
lion. It was he who with one sergeant held up sixty Huns at Avion,
driving them back with bombs from traverse to traverse. Battling
Brown is in charge of the company; he’s the champion raiding officer
of our corps and, with the exception of the V. C., has won every
decoration that a man can earn. Curious stories are told about him.
It is said that in the return from one raid he had brought three
prisoners within sight of our lines when suddenly, without rhyme or
reason, he lined them up and shot them dead. The moment he had
done so he fell to weeping. This particular raid had been put on to
gain identifications of the enemy Division that was facing us. By
killing his prisoners he had failed in the purpose for which the raid
bad been planned. You cannot wring answer? from the dead. Having
seen his men safely back into our trenches, he set out alone across
No Man’s Land. What he did there or how he did it, he has never
told to anyone; but by dawn he came padding back through our
wire, driving three new prisoners in front of him. For every Hun he
shoots he makes a notch in the handle of his revolver. He has used
up the handles of three revolvers already. He’s tall and slim as a girl,
with nice eyes and a wistful sort of mouth. When he came to the
war he was barely eighteen; today he’s scarcely twenty-one. War
hasn’t aged him; he thrives on it and looks, if anything, more boyish.
It’s only in a fight that his face loses its brooding expression of
thwarted tenderness. Of a sudden it becomes hard and stern—
almost Satanic. There never was such a man for clutching at glory.
And then there’s big Dick Dirk. When he first joined our Brigade,
he got the reputation for being yellow because he talked so freely
about being afraid. He has no right to be in the raid. It isn’t his job;
he’s supposed to be deep underground in the Battalion
Headquarters’ dug-out, carrying on his duties as liaison-officer. None
of the artillery know, except myself, that he intended to go over the
top with the infantry tonight. When our Colonel learns of his
escapade, he’ll give him hell.
Dick is six-foot-three, slow in speech, simple as a child and so
honest that it hurts. He stoups a little at the shoulders, falls forward
at the knees and is as gray as a badger. His expression is worn and
kindly, and his lower lip pendulous. You would set him down as
stupid, if it were not for the twinkle in his eyes. I don’t think Dick
ever kissed a girl; he would not consider it honorable and, in any
case, holds too humble an opinion of himself. Since he’s been at the
Front he’s managed to get engaged to one of his sister’s school-girl
friends. She’s a Brazilian. He knows nothing about her, has never
seen her, but like all of us, dreads the loneliness of “going West”
without the knowledge that there is one girl who cares. She started
the friendship by adding postscripts to his sister’s letters. Then she
asked that he would send her a photo of himself. For some time he
dodged her request, and afterwards spent weeks of wracking
nervousness lest his looks should fall below her standards. Now that
he’s engaged, he treats the entire war as though it were being
fought for her. He still talks of being afraid. He refuses to lie about
his sensations. The more he sees of shell-fire the stronger grows his
physical dread. Because of this, he continually sets traps for his
cowardice. Tonight he set another trap. I suppose he got to thinking
how he’d hate to be an infantryman in a raid, so he decided to go
over the top with them. At the present moment he might be in
England, but cut his leave short, returned from Blighty and was sent
up forward as liaison-officer. It was only yesterday that he surprised
me by raising the gas-blanket and pushing in his head.
“You!” I exclaimed. “I was picturing you in Piccadilly. What’s
brought you back from Blighty six days ahead of time?”
He flushed, but his eyes mocked his confusion. “It was devilishly
lonely in London,” he said slowly; “there were too many girls.” And
then, with an embarrassed smile, “I wanted to go straight because
of her.”
So because he wanted to go straight for her, he’s out in No Man’s
Land tonight, re-testing his worth and taking his life in his hands.
There’s a woman at the back of each one of us who inspires most of
our daring. With some of us she’s the woman whom we hope to
meet, with others the woman whom we’ve met. Whether she lives in
the future or the present, we carry on in an effort to be worthy of
her. And when it’s ended, will she be worthy? Will she guess that we
did it all for her? We shall never tell her; if she loves us, she will
guess.
A sunken road, rotten with rain and mud, runs twenty yards to my
left. I shall know when the raiders return, for I shall hear the weary
tread of the wounded and the prisoners as they pass this point. A
little higher up the road I can already hear the muffled panting of an
ambulance, waiting to carry back the dead. Should I miss them, the
quickened beat of the engine will warn me. The enemy knows that
this is the route by which they must return; he’s lobbing over gas-
shells and searching with whizz-bangs. A messy way of spending life
Did God know that it was for this that He was creating us when He
launched us on our adventure through the world?
 II

I
T’s morning. We’re always safe when the light has come. The
most dangerous hour in the twenty-four is the one when day is
dawning Throughout that hour the infantry always “stand to”
with rifles, bombs and Lewis guns, on the alert for an attack. S. O.
S. rockets are kept handy, so that help can be summoned. At every
observation-post an especially keen look-out is kept; at the batteries
the sentries stand with eyes fixed on the eastern horizon to catch
the first signal of distress.
The anxious hour is over and morning has come. For another day
men breathe more freely; till night returns, death has been averted.
The narrow slit, just above the level of the ground, through which I
spy on the enemy, reveals a green and dewy country. The little
flowers of the field are still asleep, their faces covered by their tiny
petal-hands. I want to shout to them to wake up and be
companionable. After watching many dawns I have discovered that
poppies are the early risers among the flowers and that dandelions
are the sleepy heads.
The ridge fans away from where I am. Beneath the slope, directly
in front, there is a village destroyed by shell-fire. To the right there is
another village equally desolate. Still further in front there are two
more villages which have been trampled into dust by attacks and
counter-attacks. Every tree is dead. Every wood has been uprooted.
Every Calvary, with its suffering Christ, has been knocked down.
When the morning clears I shall be able to see for miles across all
the intricate trench system of the Huns, defence line behind defence
line, to the barricade of cities on the eastward edge of the plain. In
those cities life seems to follow its normal round. The clock in the
town-hall of Douai is so accurate that we can set our watches by it.
Plumes of smoke puff lazily from chimneys and drift across the red
roofs of houses. Through a telescope one can pick up lorries
speeding along roads and trains steaming in and out of cuttings.
Throughout the day we search hollows and woods for the flash of
guns, taking bearings to them when they have been found. Early
morning is the time to spot infantry movement. The men approach
out of the distance in twos and threes. They may be carrying-parties
or they may be runners. By careful watching you get to know their
routes and even the places to which they are going. You telephone
back the target to the guns and keep them “standing to” until your
victims have reached a favorable point, then you send back the
order for one gun to fire. You observe where the shell lands, send
back a rapid correction and, when you’ve got the correct line and
range, bring all your guns to bear upon the target, adjusting the
range and line of your shots as they run. In the dull round of an
observing officer’s life these little spells of man hunting are the chief
excitement. There is another, however—when the enemy has
spotted you and sets to work to knock you out. Neither of these
diversions is likely to happen for some time yet; it’s too early. Long
scarves of mist are swaying low along the ground. The more distant
landscape is a sea of vaporous billows, above which only the
blackened fangs of trees show up.
One day the greatest excitement of all may happen: camouflaged
in a pit to my right we have an anti-tank gun; in the dug-out below
me I have a specially selected detachment of gunners. Should the
Hun make up his mind to break through, he would certainly employ
tanks—perhaps some of our own, which he captured further south.
Any one of these fine mornings when night is melting into dawn, our
great chance may come. Then our gallant little thirteen-pounder,
which has held its tongue ever since we dropped it in the trench, will
start talking and we shall have a merry time, taking pot-shots over
open sights, till the enemy Is beaten back or we are all dead.
How many days, weeks, months have I sat here gazing on this
same stretch of country? I know it all by heart—every blasted tree,
every torn roadway, every ruined house. We have names for
everything—Dick House, Telephone House, Lone Tree; all the names
are set down on our maps. Through summer, winter and spring, ever
since we first stormed the ridge, we have watched the same scene
till our eyes ache with the monotony—and now again it is summer.
Every now and then they have withdrawn us to put on an attack in a
new part of the line, but always they have had to bring us back. This
ridge is the Gibraltar of the entire Front from Yprhs to Amiens; if the
British were thrown back from here it would mean a huge retreat to
the north and south. The Hun knows that. Directly we march out
and another corps takes over from us, he begins to make his plans
for an offensive. In the spring, when we were away, he put on an
attack and gained a dangerously large amount of ground. As soon as
we re-appeared he fell back. He has learnt the cost of provoking the
Canadians—the white Gurkhas as he has called us—and prefers to
express his high spirits elsewhere. So here we sit guarding our
fortress, with orders to hold it at any price The most we can do is to
annoy the Hun when we’re itching to crush him.
Each day we hope that our turn has come. The line is being
pressed back to the south of us. Amiens and Rheims are threatened.
Big Bertha is shelling Paris. Our nurses near the coast are being
murdered by airmen. We hear of whole divisions being wiped out—
of both the attacking and the attacked being so spent with fighting
that they cannot raise their rifles, and crawl towards each other only
to find that they have no strength in their hands to strangle.... And
here we sit watching, always watching. It is because we are so fed
up that we send out raiding parties. The damage they do doesn’t
count for much when compared with the total damage that the
enemy is doing to us; but it’s consoling. It’s our way of saying, “You
think you’re top-dog; but the Canadians are here with their tails up.
You haven’t finished with the British yet—not by a damned sight.”
The enemy settled his account with some of our boys last night. It
appears that our party got safely to their rendezvous in No Man’s
Land, where they had to lie in hiding in shell-holes till the artillery
started. Everything was going well and it was only a few seconds to
zero hour when a returning enemy patrol stumbled across them. Our
chaps didn’t dare to shoot lest they should warn the garrison in the
Hun front-line. They had to use their bayonets, trip them up and
choke them into silence. While this was in the doing our barrage
came down and then, since noise no longer mattered, they made
short work of the patrol In this preliminary scrap Silborrad, the
scout-officer, was killed. He was hugely popular with his men, for he
had a reputation of always recovering his wounded. His death made
them see red. When our barrage lifted and they stormed the Hun
trench, they killed everything in sight; it was only when nothing
living was left that they remembered that they had taken no
prisoners. The proper thing to have done would have been to have
come back. Their orders were not to remain in enemy territory
longer than fifteen minutes; there’s always the danger that the
enemy supports may move up for a counter-attack and his artillery is
almost certain to place a wall of fire in No Man’s Land to prevent the
raiders from getting back. It was Battling Brown who decided the
question. “We’ll take a chance at their second-line,” he said. “If we
don’t find anyone there, we’ll poke about in their communication-
trenches till we do find someone.”
They found the second-line strongly held by machine-gunners.
There was bloody work, but they secured their prisoners. The
problem now was how to get back with their dead and wounded.
The green lights which the men in our front-line were shooting up to
guide them, showed very faintly and were often lost to sight on
account of the rolling nature of the country. The return journey was
made still more difficult by snipers who picked them off as they
retired. They had already entered our wire, when word was passed
along that one of our men was missing. Dick must have heard it;
when they were safe in our trench and called the roll, it was
discovered that he too was absent. This much I learnt in the early
hours from the wounded who limped up the sunken road to my left.
It wasn’t until dawn that I heard the rest of the story: that was
when they were bringing out the dead. The engine of the ambulance
had quickened its beat, getting ready to climb the hill. I ran out and
found them lifting something wrapped in a blanket.
“‘E was some man,” one of the bearers was saying; “but ‘e’s too
‘eavy. They ‘adn’t ought to ‘ave brought ‘im out.” Then I caught sight
of Dick’s gray hair Beneath his half-shut lids his eyes still seemed to
twinkle, mocking at anything good that might be said about him.
They told how, when within reach of safety, he had gone back to
find the missing man. He had been gone two hours, when
something was seen moving behind our wire. Just as they
challenged, they recognized him by his great height. He was half-
carrying, half-dragging the missing chap who had lost his way
through being blinded in the encounter with the patrol. They went
out to help him in with his burden. When they got to him, he said,
“Boys, I’m done.” After he’d spoken he just crumpled up. Blood was
trickling from his mouth and, when they unbuttoned his tunic, it was
sticky. Before they could bind him he pegged out.
As I gazed down at him in the early morning twilight I could guess
exactly what had happened—just as surely as if his lips had moved
to tell me: he had been frightened to go back, so he went.
He had wanted to go straight for her. Because he’d feared that his
loneliness might trap him into beastliness, he’d come back six days
ahead of time to meet his death. I wonder how much she’ll care.
Out here one continually wonders that about the women men spend
their hearts on, idealizing them into an impossible perfection. Would
she have, turned her pretty back on him if he had lived to meet her?
No matter, Dick; to have gone straight, even for the sake of a
delusion, was worth while.
 III
The larks are singing above the melting mists and there’s a sense
of peace in the air. One by one the signallers tumble up the dug-out
stairs; they stand in the trench yawning, stretching themselves and
breathing in the golden coolness. Very lazily they set to work
preparing breakfast. They have to be careful lest any smoke escapes
and gives away our post to the enemy. If once the Hun suspected
we were here, it wouldn’t take him long to knock us out. They’ll be
bringing me in some stewed tea presently; I can hear the bacon
sizzling. I wish there was some water to wash with; but we gave
must of ours to the wounded last night.
I was in England this spring when the big Hun drive against Paris
started. I’d just recovered from being wounded and directly I heard
the news, commenced moving heaven and earth to get back.
Heaven and earth didn’t require much moving—men were too badly
needed. I reported back to my reserve depot on a Wednesday and
within the hour was told that I could proceed on the next draft
leaving for France. I was given a two days’ leave to collect my kit,
and permission to join the draft at the London station.
That London leave is curiously blurred in my memory. It was only
my body that was in England; my soul was in France. I rushed from
tailors to bankers, from bankers to bootmakers, from bootmakers to
lunches and theatres; I met people and laughed with people and
said “Good-bye” to people, but there was nothing real in anything
that I saw or did. In imagination I saw myself on the Amiens road
fighting. “Our backs are to the wall,” Sir Douglas Haig had told us.
“The Canadians will advance or fall with their faces to the foe”—that
was how my Corps Commander’s special order had run. Every
moment that I was not there with the chaps seemed shameful. If we
were beaten back it seemed that it would be my fault—one more
man in the line might make all the difference.
 How little I was noticing the world about me was emphasized by
one small incident. I had been taxi riding all over the map in a
frenzied effort to collect my gear. In these war-days London taxi-
drivers have developed short tempers, especially for fares who keep
them waiting. My man had been extraordinarily docile. At the end of
two hours, when I had deposited some of my baggage at Victoria, I
said to him, “I suppose I’d better pay you off now. I’ve got to go to
Battersea; you won’t want to go there, so I’ll have to go by train.”
“My time’s yours,” said the man. “We can’t get any jobs since this
offensive started; all the officers have left for France.”
It was true, and I hadn’t noticed it. The restaurants were empty,
except for a few civilians. You could get seats for any theatre and as
many as you wanted. Almost over night the soldier-men had
departed.
I remember with peculiar vividness the attitude of my friends
towards me. They treated me as a person who tomorrow would be
dead—the way we treated men in khaki in 1914, before we had
learnt that not every man who goes into battle stays there a corpse.
My two brothers got leave from the Navy and came to see me off. I
left them to do the booking of rooms at the hotel: when we went up
to bed the night before I started, I found that instead of booking
three rooms, they had booked one room with two beds. I didn’t
comment on it.
It was dark when we rose. While we dressed, we talked emptily
with a feverish jocularity. In the midst of a hurried breakfast four
friends appeared, who had given me no previous warning of their
intentions. They were people who liked their comfort; they must
have travelled by workmen’s trains to get there. Chatting with a
spurious gaiety, we walked over to the station through the damp raw
half-light. I wasn’t allowed to carry anything. As though their minds
were clocks ticking, I could hear them repeating over and over, “The
Canadians will advance, or fall with their faces to the foe. Our backs
are to the wall—He’ll fall,” they kept repeating; “he’ll fall.”
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