"
VIII
"A FIRST-CLASS FIGHTING MAN"
"If ever I come back, and anybody at home talks to me about the glory of
war, I shall be d----d rude to him." That is an extract from the letter
of an officer who has seen too much of the grim and ugly side of the
campaign to find any romance in it. Yet out of all the horror there
emerge incidents of conspicuous bravery that strike across the
imagination like sunbeams, and cast a glow even in the darkest corners
of the stricken field.
Valor is neither a philosophy nor a calculation. The soldier does not
say to himself, "Look here, Atkins,
'One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.'"
He goes into the business of war determined to get it over as quickly as
possible,[E] and when he does something stupendous, as he does nearly
ever day, it is just because the thing has to be done, and he is there
to do it. Tommy Atkins doesn't stop to think whether he is doing a brave
thing, nor does he wait for orders to do it; he just sets about it as
part of the day's work, and looks very much abashed if anybody applauds
him for it.
For instance, there is a man in the Buffs (the story is told by a driver
of the Royal Marine Artillery), who picked up a wounded comrade and
carried him for more than a mile under a vicious German fire that was
exterminating nearly everything.
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