A Fable

‘They didn’t even tell you?’ the aide said. He didn’t answer, immobile, bull-like and indestructible; and, bull-like and indestructible, quite calm. The aide told him. ‘They are stopping it. Our whole front—I dont mean just our division and corps, but the whole French front—remanded at noon except for air patrols and artillery like that yonder at the corner. And the air people are not crossing: just patrolling up and down our front, and the orders to the artillery were to range, not on the boche, but between us and them, on what the Americans call no-man’s land. And the boche is doing the same thing with his artillery and air; and the order is out for the British and Americans to remand at fifteen hours, to see if the boche will do the same thing in front of them.’ The division commander stared at him. ‘It’s not just our division: it’s all of them: us and the boche too.’ Then the aide saw that even now the division commander did not understand. ‘It’s the men,’ the aide said. ‘The ranks. Not just that regiment, nor even our division, but all the private soldiers in our whole front, the boche too, since he remanded too as soon as our barrage lifted, which would have been his chance to attack since he must have seen that our regiment had refused, mutinied; he went further than we have, because he is not even using artillery: only his air people, not crossing either, just patrolling up and down his front. Though of course they wont know for sure about the British and the Americans and the boche in front of them until fifteen hours. It’s the men; not even the sergeants knew, suspected anything, had any warning. And nobody knows if they just happened to set a date in advance which coincided with our attack, or if they had a pre-arranged signal which our regiment put up when it knew for certain that it was going over this morning——’

‘You lie,’ the division commander said. ‘The men?’

‘Yes. Everybody in the line below sergeant——’

‘You lie,’ the division commander said. He said with a vast, a spent, an indomitable patience: ‘Cant you understand? Cant you see the difference between a single regiment getting the wind up—a thing which can and might happen to any regiment, at any time; to the same regiment which took a trench yesterday and which tomorrow, simply because it turned tail today, will take a village or even a walled town? And you try to tell me this (using again the succinct soldierly noun). The men,’ he said. ‘Officers—marshals and generals—decreed that business this morning and decreed it as a preordained failure; staff officers and experts made the plans for it within the specifications of failure; I supplied the failure with a mutinying regiment, and still more officers and generals and marshals will collect the cost of it out of my reputation. But the men. I have led them in battle all my life. I was always under the same fire they were under. I got them killed: yes; but I was there too, leading them, right up to the day when they gave me so many stars that they could forbid me to anymore. But not the men. They understand even if you cannot. Even that regiment would have understood; they knew the risk they took when they refused to leave the trench. Risk? Certainty. Because I could have done nothing else. Not for my reputation, not even for my own record or the record of the division I command, but for the future safety of the men, the rank and file of all the other regiments and divisions whose lives might be thrown away tomorrow or next year by another regiment shirking, revolting, refusing, that I was going to have them executed——’ thinking, Was. I’m already saying was; not is: was, while the aide stared at him in incredulous amazement.

‘Is it possible?’ the aide said. ‘Do you really contend that they are stopping the war just to deprive you of your right, as commander of the division, to execute that regiment?’

‘Not my reputation,’ the division commander said quickly, ‘not even my own record. But the division’s record and good name. What else could it be? What other reason could they have——’ blinking rapidly and painfully while the aide took the flask from his pocket and uncapped it and nudged it against the division commander’s hand. ‘The men,’ the division commander said.

‘Here,’ the aide said. The division commander took the flask.

‘Thanks,’ he said; he even started to raise the flask to his lips. ‘The men,’ he said. ‘The troops. All of them. Defying, revolting, not against the enemy, but against us, the officers, who not only went where they went, but led them, went first, in front, who desired for them nothing but glory, demanded of them nothing but courage.…’

‘Drink, General,’ the aide said. ‘Come now.’