The Human Boy and the War

I said to Mitchell--

"It may interest you to know that real soldiers never talk about the hideous side of war; and it would be a good deal more classy if you chaps tried to understand the meaning of it all, instead of wallowing in the dreadful details."

Of course, with such ignorance you can't argue, any more than you could with Rice, when he swore that he'd give up his home and family gladly in exchange for the heavenly joy of putting a bayonet through a German officer. It wasn't the spirit of war, and I told him so, and he called me "von Travers," and said that as I was going to be a soldier, he hoped, for the sake of the United Kingdom in general, there would be no war while I was in command of anybody.

Gradually there got to be a bit of feeling in the air, and we gave out that we stood for tactics and strategy and brain-power, and Rice and his lot gave out that they stood for hacking their way through. And as for strategy, they had the cheek to say that, if it came to actual battle, the Fourth would back its strategy against the Sixth every time. It was a sort of challenge, in fact, and rested chiefly on their complete ignorance of what strategy really meant.

When I asked Mitchell who were the strategists of the Fourth, he gave it away by saying--

"Me and Pegram."

Well, he and Pegram were merely cunning--nothing more. Mitchell was a good mathematician, and in money matters he excelled on a low plane; while Pegram was admitted to be a master in the art of cribbing, but no other. His bent of mind had been attracted to the subject of cribbing from the first, and while I hated him, and knew that he could never come to much good, I was bound to admit the stories told about his cribbing exploits showed great ingenuity combined with nerve. By a bitter irony, theology was his best subject, but only thanks to the possession of a Bible one inch square. He had found it when doing Christmas shopping with his aunt, who was his only relation, owing to his being an orphan, and when he asked her to buy it for him as one of his Christmas presents, she did so with pleasure and surprise, little dreaming of what was passing in his mind. I never saw the book, nor wished to see it, but Briggs, who did, told me it contained everything, only in such frightfully small print that you wanted a magnifying glass to read it. Needless to say, Pegram had the magnifying glass. And, thus armed, he naturally did Scripture papers second to none. He also manipulated a catapult for the benefit of his friends in the Lower Fourth, of whom he had a great many, and with this instrument, such was his delicacy of aim, he could send answers to questions in an examination through the air to other chaps, in the shape of paper pillets. He could also hurl insults in this way, or, in fact, anything. Once he actually fired his Bible across three rows of forms to Abbott. It flew through the air and fell at Abbott's feet, who instantly put one on it. But Brown, who was the master in command on the occasion, looked up at the critical moment and saw a strange object passing through the air. Only he failed to mark it down.

"What was that?" said Brown to Rice, who sat three chaps off Abbott.

"A moth, I think, sir," said Rice.

"Extraordinary time for a moth to be flying," said Brown.

"Very, sir," said Rice.

"Don't let it occur again, anyway," said Brown, who never investigated anything, but always ordered that it shouldn't occur again.

"No, sir," said Rice.

Then Abbott bent down to scratch his ankle, and all was well.

And this Pegram was supposed to have strategy as good as ours!

I never thought a real chance of a conflict would come, but it actually did in a most unexpected manner just before the holidays. The weather turned cold for a week, and then, after about three frosts, we had a big snow, and in about a day and a night there was nearly a foot of it. And, walking through the West Wood with Blades, I pointed out that the sand-pit, under the edge of the fir trees, would be a very fine spot for a battle on a small scale.

I said--

"If one army was above the sand-pit, and another army was down here, trying to storm the position, there would be an opportunity for a remarkably good fight and plenty of strategy; and if I led the Fifth and Sixth against the sand-pit, or if I defended the sand-pit against attacks by the Upper and Lower Fourth, the result would be very interesting."

And Blades agreed with me. He said he believed that it would give the Upper and Lower Fourth frightful pleasure to have a battle, and he was certain they would be exceedingly pleased at the idea. In fact, he went off at once to find Pegram and, if possible, Rice and Mitchell. The school was taking a walk that afternoon, as the football ground was eight inches under snow; and some were digging in the snow for eating chestnuts, of which a good many were to be found in West Wood, and others were scattered about. So Blades went to find Mitchell, Rice, and Pegram, and I considered the situation. The edge of the sand-pit was about eight feet high, and a frontal attack would have been very difficult, if not impossible; but there was an approach on the left--a gradual slope, fairly easy--and another on the right, rather difficult, as it consisted of loose stones and tree roots. On the whole, I thought I would rather defend than attack; but as, if anything came of it, I should be the challenger, I felt it would be more sporting to let the foe choose.

Then Rice and Mitchell came back with Blades, and they said that nothing would give them greater pleasure than a fight. They had heard my idea, and thought exceedingly well of it. They examined the spot and pretended to consider strategy, but, of course, they knew nothing about the possibilities of defence and attack. What they really wanted to know was how many troops they would have, and how many we should. We counted up and found that in the Fifth and Sixth, leaving out about four who were useless, and Perkins, who would have been valuable, but was crocked at footer for the moment, we should number thirty-one, while the Upper and Lower Fourth would have thirty-eight. I agreed to that, and Rice made the rather good suggestion that we should each have ten kids behind the fighting line to make ammunition. And I said I hoped there would be no stones in the snowballs, and Mitchell said the Fourth didn't consist of Germans, and I might be sure they would fight as fair as we did, if not fairer.

So it was settled for the next Saturday, and Brown and Fortescue consented to umpire the battle, and Fortescue showed great interest in it.

There were a good many preliminaries to decide, and I asked Mitchell what chap was to be general-in-chief for the Fourth, and, much to my surprise, he said that Pegram was. And, still more to my surprise, he said that Pegram wished to attack and not defend. This alone showed how little they knew about strategy; but I only said "All right," and Mitchell actually said that Pegram backed the Fourth to take the sand-pit inside an hour! And I said that pride generally went before a fall. Then I saw Pegram--which was at a meeting of the commanders-in-chief--and we arranged all the details. He asked about the fallen, and I said that nobody would fall; but he said he thought some very likely would; and he also said that it would be more like the real thing and more a reward for strategy if, when anybody was fairly bowled over in the battle and prevented from continuing without a rest, that that soldier was considered as a casualty and taken to the rear. This was pretty good for Pegram; but as our superior position on the top of the sand-pit was bound to make our fire more severe than his, and put more of his men out of action, I pointed that out. But he said that if I thought our fire would be more severe than his, I was much mistaken. He said the volume of his fire would be greater, which was true. So I let him have his way, and we each selected ten kids for the ammunition. Travers minor didn't much like fighting against me, but, of course, he had to, though it was rather typical of Mitchell and Pegram that they were very suspicious of him before the battle, and wouldn't tell him any of the strategy, or give him a command in their army, for fear of his being a traitor. And they felt the same to Briggs, though, of course, Briggs and Travers minor were really just as keen about victory for the Fourth as anybody else in it. And the only reason why my brother didn't like fighting against me was that, with my strategy, he felt pretty sure I must win.

The generals--Pegram and I--visited the battlefield twice more, and arranged where the wounded were to lie and where the umpires were to stand, in comparative safety behind a tree on the right wing; but, of course, we didn't discuss tactics or say a word about our battle plans. The fight was to last one hour, and if at the end of that time we still held the sand-pit, we were the victors. And for half an hour before the battle began, we were to make ammunition and pile snow and do what we liked to increase the chances of victory.