Ewart Alan Mackintosh

“ Alastair. The bitter gods, the beautiful white gods,
That will be walking on the darkened cliffs,
Lior the haunter of the roaring tides,
Whose emerald eyes the drowning sailors see
For one sweet instant, and are swallowed up.
And Balor panoplied in shining rain,
And armoured with the lightnings of the hills
That fire our hearts to war. And chief of all,
Angus the white-foot conqueror of men,
The mist that would destroy the moon with love
If she could hold him, the eternal mist
That wanders still within our quiet hearts,
Stirring the bitter love we may not sate
Save with his own white beauty. ”

“ THE sun struck through the still unriven trees upon earth, baked by a month of drying suns and torn into fantastic heaps and hollows by the hands of men and the burst of shells; for the wood had been the centre of a ten-days’ struggle, and either side had hurled earth-shaking crumps into it, and had dug frantically little slit trenches to hide themselves from the death which was menaced by every whining shell. Now at last it was British, and save for a commodious dug-out here and there, and some torn grey equipment, no trace was left of the German occupation. ”

“ Our pose of light-heartedness has succeeded too well; we have almost persuaded the world that we are incredible schoolboys out on a picnic. And so we are in a fashion; but it is a picnic with death.
The man at the Front is chiefly responsible for this impression, and yet he has a right to resent its acceptance. It is one thing to crack jokes about your own dying—quite another for the people whose lives you are preserving to laugh at them. The man at the Front is consciously risking his all for ideals. ”

“ Before we came to Morven of the stags.
They have fled by like the light winds that blow
Swift shadows o’er a waveless loch. But we,
Like the loch water, bide the same for ever,
Since first the gods fashioned our souls of mist,
That at the end will take them back again.
Mairi. The gods are dead, or if they live I care not,
For over my poor heart they have no power.
Here in the changing world we stand alone,
Ourselves forever. ”

“ A weapon to avenge the nation’s wrongs,
And they with many a discordant note
Shall chant in many a trench my poignant songs;
And the pale enemy (to whom I fear
For the rhyme’s sake I must refer as ‘‘Hunes”)
Shall tremble in their deep dug-outs to hear
Across the night those wild untuneful tunes,
And shall beseech their officers and cry,
“Let us retire at once, or else we die.” ”

“ Dream that the gods are mighty yet. But we
In Western Morven, by the winter fires,
Hear all night long above the talk of men
Our broken masters wailing on the hills.
Alastair. The gods are living yet, and have their thrones
In the invisible desires of men. ”

“ Then he remembered a score of things—his promise that he wouldn’t go back and leave one of them alive in the German trench, his pride that the men had always trusted him and followed him, his affection for the men, and, above all, the eternal principle, as old as war, “An officer can’t desert his men.” He turned to Charlie MacRae, suddenly calm, “Will you watch the left,” he said; “Sergeant Godstone and I will bring these fellows along.”
The impassive MacRae climbed on to the parapet, and sat there with his revolver in his right hand and a bomb in his left. ”

“ There is strangely little, indeed, about the war in any of them, but much about the minds and hearts of those who wage it. There shines through them a very triumph over war. This much loved gallant poet is of those whose living martyrdom rises whole-souled above the storm of violence and is humanity’s true victory. ”

“ A wide fireplace with peats burning, and big chests along the walls. At a table sits Mairi Bain. Ian and Alastair come in.
Ian. Mairi put out more peats upon the fire,
For we have strangers in the house to-night.
Mairi. The blessings of our Lord be with you, stranger.
Alastair. Blessings be with you, woman of the house,
From older gods and greater lords than he.
Mairi. Stranger, that is no luck-word to the house.
Alastair. Have you forgotten too, and do you bow,
Pale lily of Morven, to the beaten god,
Who should be following the mist of love
Over the hills beneath a summer moon? ”

“ The next few minutes seemed to MacTaggart interminable hours filled with the bursting of shells and the shrieks of the wounded men, as he pulled them along. Now he was lugging at one, now at the other, and now running back with Macdonald, screaming hysterical curses, to throw bombs into the Bosche trench. There was one moment of terror when their two land mines went up, and another, when Macdonald shouted “They’re coming, sir,” and he ran back, firing his revolver at grey figures that he fancied were looming through the smoke. ”

“ Discrownèd gods that are His enemies.
Alastair comes in.
Alastair. Christ’s love? Then even here men pray to Christ,
The pitiful intruder; even here
In Western Morven of the windy rocks,
Where once the old gods would be wandering
Along the outer fringes of the world,
The loving god is master.
The loving god is master. ”

“ And praying for the day.
Mines going up, and no one can say for us
When it will be; but they waiting some day for us.
Mines going up—oh! folk at home, pray for us
Here with the bloody mines.
Where are you lying, Sentry?
Wasn’t this your place?
Down below your feet, Sir,
Below your heavy feet, Sir,
With earth upon my face.
Mines gone up, and the earth and the clod on us—
Fighting for breath—and our own comrades trod on us.
Mines gone up—Have pity, oh God! on us,
Down in the bloody mines. ”

“ When a man can sit and dream again
Of the joys he threw away.
When the curtain of things is lifted up
And the naked life we see,
There comes the ghost of a boy, long dead,
And sits by the fire with me. ”

“ Shell-torn meadow and riven tree,
And their own fields grown strange.
They shall hear live men crying,
They shall see dead men lie,
Shall hear the rattling Maxims fire,
And see by broken twists of wire
Gold flares light up the sky. ”

“ He stood and stared too, wondering stupidly what the devil it could be. “It’s a dug-out,” said the man’s voice from very far away, and suddenly he was aware of a bullet hitting the side of the trench, and four Bosches stumbling up the dug-out steps, and shouting as they came. All at once his brain began to act rapidly. He yelled inarticulate curses, and pulled out a bomb from his haversack. The pin came out easily, but the Germans were too close. He dropped the lever and held the thing for a second or two; then flung it at the climbing men and leapt side-ways. ”

“ Fragments of the high Romance, the old Heroic fire.
All they dreamed of childishly, bravery and fame for them,
Charges at the cannon’s mouth, enemies they slew,
Bright across the waking world their romances came for them,
Is not life a little price when our dreams come true? ”

“ They think I’m unjust when I despise non-combatants. Because I’m anxious to get back to do my ‘bit’ they think I like living in the trenches.” Then he turns away to play the rôle that is expected of him—the rôle of the irresponsible boy out of school hours. The point he doesn’t realise is that why people are ignorant of his vision of sacrifice is because he has said nothing to mirror it to them. He can’t. It isn’t in his nature. His silence works an injustice both to others and to himself.
“I have a rendezvous with death!” Those words of Alan Seeger’s utter the true heart of the Front. ”

“ I suppose it is almost incredible to the civilian mind that any man who has experienced the Judgment Day of an attack can speak truly when he says that he wants to go back. Lieutenant Mackintosh explains the soldier’s attitude in one line, “And I not there with you.” Each man feels that the war cannot be won without him; if he shirks, the next man may shirk, and the example of duty will be lost. ”

“ Clear lay the wood before us
In the clear summer weather,
But broken, broken, broken
Are the sons of the heather.
In the cold of the morning,
In the burning of the day,
The thin lines stumbled forward,
The dead and dying lay. ”

“ Flesh and blood and brain,
You’ve made an end of dying,
Hurts and cold and crying,
And all but quiet lying
Easeful after pain.
2
Dead men at Beaumont,
Do you dream at all
When the leaves of summer
Ripen to their fall? ”

“ Alastair. The sword of night has severed the gentle chains that bound you,
The lovely gods of darkness rise in your heart anew.
Beautiful gods and mighty, in dreams they stand around you,
Kneel down in dreams and worship as once you used to do. ”

“ If I’d been in it too,
But you are lying stiff, my friends,
And I not there with you.
So here I sit in a pleasant room
By a comfortable fire,
With every thing that a man could want,
But not the heart’s desire. ”

“ Grenades that might have chilled the stoutest’s blood,
Only to hear that plaintive call from you,
Informing us it was another dud.
And when the gent from the Brigade was nigh,
Watching our Millses’ fizzing through the sky,
To see you hit him neatly in the eye
With little well-aimed lumps of harmless mud.
Often men came to me and said that they
Had done you in at last and heard you yell,
But ’twas my sorrow on th’ ensuing day
To hear again the voice I knew so well. ”

“ The impulsive injustice and pride of youth! Yes, but it’s what millions are thinking at the Front. Whether you like to acknowledge it or no, the supreme value of Mackintosh as a poet lies in the fact that he was articulate, where others are silent and, above all, that he spoke the Truth.
He had a strange, almost womanly tenderness for his men—not for Kipling’s red-coats, but for the civilians in khaki who fight because of duty, with hatred in their hearts of shedding blood. His attitude towards them was a good deal that of a chieftain. War brought out in him his pride of race ”

“ That hushed tone was offspring partly of pity for the dead man and partly of respect for his own grief at the loss of his friend, chiefly perhaps of reverence for an experience beyond the Sergeant’s knowledge and for the human spirit which had faced it. It was his own damned fastidiousness of mind that was wrong; always suspecting unreality subconsciously even when he knew it wasn’t there. No, perhaps it was that fear and reverence of death that irritated; he had never been afraid of death—nor had old Andy. ”

“ A stout and stolid Saxon with a healthy growth of beard,
And Hermann with his rifle is the pride of every German,
Until our Sandy gets on him, and Hermann gets afeared,
For when he hears the bullets come he slides down to the ground,
And tremblingly he gasps out to his comrades all around—
Chorus—“Sniper Sandy’s slaying Saxon soldiers,
Chorus—And Saxon soldiers seldom show but Sandy slays a few,
Chorus—And every day the Bosches put up little wooden crosses
Chorus—In the cemetery for Saxon soldiers Sniper Sandy slew.” ”

“ It’s hell.”
The British soldier is nothing if not inconsistent. When he’s in the trenches, sharing magnanimously and doing noble things with a will day and night, he likes to pose as a grumbler. One of his chief topics of conversation is the way he’ll “swing the lead” if ever he has the luck to be wounded and get out to Blighty. But when he does get back to Blighty, he isn’t content to stay there. He can’t rest. The heroism of the hell “out there”—a hell that has nothing romantic—shouts to him. It isn’t the fascination of the horror that draws him. It certainly isn’t the love of fighting. ”

“ Instantly self-preservation reasserted itself. Gone was the mourner longing for death and peace; in his place a wary animal, alert and fearful, watched the falling bomb with rapid and instinctive calculation. ”

“ Bécourt, Authuille, Thiepval,
Henancourt, Avelay,
Their names are keys that open
Remembered doors to me.
Doors that will open never
Upon this tortured land.
I shall not see you ever,
Or take you by the hand. ”

“ In the trees above he heard the vicious sound of bursting shrapnel.
“We’r trench is blown in on us,” gasped a man running, with wild eyes, to some shelter—he knew not quite what. Behind the Subaltern came a shout from another of his Company Mess.
“You can’t let those men any farther up, Tagg. There’s a dead end here; they’ve blown in our trench, and we’ll have to dig some men out. Pass up tools.”
“Can’t get any farther, Murray,” said MacTaggart the Subaltern, “get down oh, Lord, here’s another.” ”

“ The other spoke slowly, looking in front of him.
“Oh, I’m not in the least afraid of anything, if we can only get into the trench,” he said. “If the wire’s cut . . .”
“Oh, damn the wire,” said the Senior Subaltern hotly, “it can’t help being cut. Anyhow, there’s very little there to start with, and if there’s any bombardment at all, it’ll go west; and there’s going to be a hell of a bombardment. Anyhow, we can’t do any more. Come on in and feed.”
For the last week the two had been down in the village with their fifty men, training hard for a raid on the German salient opposite their line. ”