THE SECRET BATTLE
BY A. P. HERBERT
AUTHOR OF 'THE BOMBER GYPSY'
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published in 1919
CONTENTS
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
THE SECRET BATTLE
I
I am going to write down some of the history of Harry Penrose, because Ido not think full justice has been done to him, and because there mustbe many other young men of his kind who flung themselves into this warat the beginning of it, and have gone out of it after many sufferingswith the unjust and ignorant condemnation of their fellows. At times, itmay be, I shall seem to digress into the dreary commonplaces of allwar-chronicles, but you will never understand the ruthless progressionof Penrose's tragedy without some acquaintance with each chapter of hislife in the army.
He joined the battalion only a few days before we left Plymouth forGallipoli, a shy, intelligent-looking person, with smooth, freckled skinand quick, nervous movements; and although he was at once posted to mycompany we had not become at all intimate when we steamed at last intoMudros Bay. But he had interested me from the first, and at intervals inthe busy routine of a troopship passing without escort through submarinewaters, I had been watching him and delighting in his keenness and happydisposition.
It was not my first voyage through the Mediterranean, though it was thefirst I had made in a transport, and I liked to see my own earlierenthusiasm vividly reproduced in him. Cape Spartel and the first glimpseof Africa; Tangiers and Tarifa and all that magical hour's steamingthrough the narrow waters with the pink and white houses hiding underthe hills; Gibraltar Town shimmering and asleep in the noonday sun;Malta and the bumboat women, carozzes swaying through the narrow,chattering streets; cool drinks at cafés in a babel of strange tongues;all these were to Penrose part of the authentic glamour of the East; andhe said so. I might have told him, with the fatuous pomp of widerexperience, that they were in truth but a very distant reflection of thegenuine East; but I did not. For it was refreshing to see any one sofrankly confessing to the sensations of adventure and romance. To othermembers of the officers' mess the spectacle of Gibraltar from the seamay have been more stimulating than the spectacle of Southend (thoughthis is doubtful); but it is certain that few of them would haveadmitted the grave impeachment.
At Malta some of us spent an evening ashore, and sat for a little in atawdry, riotous little café, where two poor singing women strove vainlyto make themselves heard above the pandemonium of clinked glasses andbawled orders; there we met many officers newly returned from thelanding at Cape Helles, some of them with slight bodily wounds, but allof them with grievous injury staring out of t