The Middle Parts of Fortune:
from Chapter 7
 (1930)

Context

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The chaplain is trying to persuade Bourne that he ought to put himself forward for training as an officer:

'I don't know how you can go on as you are, Bourne, 'said the chaplain......  'I suppose even the luckiest of us have a pretty rough time of it out here; but if you were an officer, you might at least have what comfort there is to be found, and  you would have a little privacy, and friends of your own kind.  I wonder how you stick it.  You haven't anyone whom you could call a friend among these men, have you?  
  Bourne paused for quite an appreciable time.
  'No,' he said, finally.  'I don't suppose I have anyone, whom I can call a friend.  I like the men, on the whole, and I think they like me.  They're a very decent generous lot, and they have helped me a great deal.  I have one or two particular chums, of course; and in some ways, you know, good comradeship takes the place of friendship.  It is different: it has its own loyalties and affections; and I am not so sure that it does not rise on occasion to an intensity of feeling which friendship never touches.  It may be less in itself, I don't know, but its opportunity is greater.  Friendship implies rather more stable conditions, don't you think?  You have time to choose.  Here you can't choose, or only to a very limited extent.  I didn't think heroism was such a common thing.  Oh, it has its degrees, of course.  When young Evans heard the Colonel had been left on the wire, he ran back into hell to do what he could do for him.  Of course he owed a good deal to the Colonel, who thought it a shame to send out a mere boy, and took him on as servant to try and give him a chance.  That is rather a special case, but I have seen a man risking himself for another more than once: I don't say that they would all do it.  It seems to be a spontaneous and irreflective action, like the kind of start forward you make instinctively when you see a child playing in a street turn and run suddenly almost under a car.  At one moment a particular man may be nothing at all to you, and the next minute you will go through hell for him.  No, it is not friendship.  The man doesn't matter so much, it's a kind of impersonal emotion, a kind of enthusiasm, in the old sense of the word.  Of course one is keyed-up, a bit over-wrought.  We help each other.  What is one man's fate today, may be another's tomorrow.  We are all in it up to the neck together, and we know it.'
  'Yes, but you know, Bourne, you get the same feeling between officers, and between officers and men.  Look at Captain Malet and the men, for instance.'
  'I don't know about officers, sir,' said Bourne, suddenly reticent.  'The men think a great deal of Captain Malet.  I am only talking about my own experience in the ranks.  It is a hard life, but it has its compensations, the other men have been awfully decent to me; as they say, we all muck in together........'
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.....
 'Well, I don't think you ought to stay as you are.  I don't think it is the right place for you.  You might be more useful in some other way.  However, I have got to do some work now.  Come in and see me again some night, though I think we shall be on the move again very soon.  Do you know that man Miller?'
  'Miller, who deserted just before the July show, sir?  I don't know him.  I know of him.'
  'Well, he has been arrested down at Rouen.  How he ever got so far I can't imagine.  He found a woman there who sheltered him until his money was finished, and then handed him over to the police.  I can't help wishing either that he had got clean away, or that something had happened to him.  It's a beastly business.  Good night.'
  'I am awfully sorry that you should be troubled about it, sir; it won't be pleasant for any of us.  ...  Goodnight, sir.'
  'Good night, Bourne; and look me up again some time.  Good night.'
  As he hurried down the twilit street, Bourne thought it certainly seemed more than likely that a firing-party would be detailed for the purpose of ending the career of Lance-Corporal Miller; and on the whole he was more sorry for the firing-party than for the prisoner.  He had always thought that Miller should have spelt his name Muller, because he had a high square head like a Hun.  It was a beastly business all right.  When Miller disappeared just before the attack, many of the men said he must have gone over to the Hun lines and given himself up to the enemy.  They were bitter and summary in their judgement on him.  The fact that he had deserted his commanding-officer, which would be the phrase used to describe his offence on the charge-sheet, was as nothing compared to the fact that he had deserted them.  They were to go through it while he saved his skin.  It was about as bad as it could be, and if one were to ask any man who had been through that spell of fighting what ought to be done in the case of Miller, there could only have been one answer.  Shoot the bugger.  But if that same man were detailed as one of the firing-party, his feelings would be modified considerably.
  Suddenly Bourne wondered what he himself would do, if he were detailed for the job.  He tried to put that involuntary question he had asked himself aside, and he found it was impossible: he was one of those men who must try to cross a bridge before coming to it.  It would be his duty; his conscience would not be too nice when there was collective responsibility, but these justifications seemed unreal.  The interval between the actual cowardice of Miller, and the suppressed fear which even brave men felt before a battle, seemed rather a short one, at first sight; but after all, the others went into action; if they broke down under the test, at least they had tried, and one might have some sympathy for them; others broke momentarily and recovered again, like the two men whom Sergeant-Major Glasspool had brought to their senses.  It might even be necessary to shoot fugitives for the sake of preventing panic.  All these cases were in a different class, and might be considered with sympathy.  If he were on the firing-line he would have to make the best of it; he took the same chance as the rest of them, none of whom would care for the job of an executioner.