The Memory of Mel Scott

Mel Scott walked up High Street towards Magdalen College, Oxford. Though the sky was speckled with clouds, it was certainly a sunny day. With this in mind, it was decided that they would gather outside at St Swithun’s Quad. This was to be the college reunion of Mel’s former fellow students, marking a decade since their graduation. 

Not since before the Great War had Mel walked through the college gates. It struck him, as it always had, that this was a magnificent place. For three brilliant years these grounds had been a home. Carved in each corridor was a memory of his fleeting youth that amalgamated with the antiquity of their structures, this stone spoke of century-spanning stories, and his now a part of them.

The buildings glowed in the sunlight whilst the clouds above painted pictures on grass lawns with their flowing shade. At such a clearing he saw the year of 1908 clustered at St Swithun’s Quad. Mel mixed and merged with the crowd, engaging in punctilious pleasantries. There was much reminiscing which was accompanied by a slightly noxious level of nostalgia. While there was rigour to their etiquette, the collegial competition had diminished over time, liberating the alumni’s personality from their personage. 

In the course of conversations, Mel found himself talking to an old friend in Christopher Pitt. Pitt and Scott had found friendship in shared interests during their time at Magdalen. They both studied history, had a keen interest in literature, captained the fencing team on separate occasions, romanticised the navy, often overdressed and always preserved a penchant for Paris. 

The two men embraced in a hug, carefully balancing their glasses of Pimm’s. “How good it is to see you Mel! I can’t believe we haven’t come across one another since returning from France.” 

“Yes Chris its been far too long, I should think it a travesty.” The two performed the necessary lamenting that the event merited, but they were quick to drive their discourse beyond Oxford. They discussed the latest literary ongoings and all that which had transpired in the writing world whilst they had been moored in the trenches. Each man held in equal admiration T.S. Elliot’s “Prufrock and other Observations”.

As talk of what had been happening during their preoccupation at the front lines grew, talk of the war itself seemed inevitable. Both had their reservations on the topic. Neither men had volunteered at the outbreak of the war and were only ushered towards warfare with the introduction of conscription in 1916. While Mel reluctantly accepted his dawn of truculence, Christopher fought it. As Mel began his military training, Christopher was pleading his case as a conscientious objector. He was met with scorn and shame from all those still in England and his case soon lost and so he found himself on his way to the front-lines. 

By 1918 both of them were officers with men under their command and lives in their hands, though the decision as to whether these men and boys would go over the top to face fury or hold their line to face fire was kept beyond their control. Christopher was stationed to north of France while Mel was further south near the Swiss border. 

Although Christopher was at first disgraced as a conscientious objector, he quickly distinguished himself on the battlefield. He rescued a great many wounded soldiers from no man’s land and saved what were surely dead men. For this act he was awarded the Military Medal and thought of as a hero. Still though, he detested the war and voiced his pacifism vigorously. While not on quite the same the level, Christopher’s sentiment now was the common consensus among the alumni. There was celebration of the victory, though there was also undoubtable horror at the price of it. The mood had swung firmly from Brooke to Owen.

“Thank god it’s over Mel, I don’t know if I could have lasted another week there. I was right at the breaking point you know. To be back here in Oxford, out of that hell, it’s just amazing.” Christopher looked right at Mel as he spoke. “Of course in a way I’m proud of the national victory, but I can’t fathom a justification for the horror of it all. I feel as though we lost something of ourselves out there. Out in the mud one had to undergo metamorphosis into a monster just to survive, how else could you be expected to go forth in the name of king and country and kill a man who is only doing the same for his. Monsters the lot of us Mel.”

Mel gave a gentle nod of his head. “It was a challenging time. Though I suppose you emerged as something of a hero?”

“Oh as if that’s of any importance.”

As chatter continued around them silence came over the two friends. Christopher and Mel had often held debates with each other but Mel sensed this was not a matter for discussion. The national dream of glorious combat had been shattered over four long years of war. Christopher did not look back on his heroics with any feeling of dignity and nor should Mel. It was not what one was supposed to do he thought.

“It was all an act there any way,” continued Christopher, “there were no real heroes in that fight. No one could have actually taken pleasure in the pain of people fighting, of seeing death hanging just behind each and every man.”

Again Mel offered an earnest nod. 

Guns bellow all around him, beckoning him forward, onward onward- just keep pushing through. Mel races through the mud as bullets zip all around him. Constant noises surround and drown him. He turns back to his men and swings his arm wildly, trying to rouse and direct them. Two fall dead as he yells his orders.

“I don’t think it’s something I shall ever forget,” said Mel.

The men follow manically. They can’t hear him over the cannons but they know they must keep going forward, ever forward. More fell to the bullets. They were ordered to spread out so as to disperse the machine gun fire and die individually. Some slip and fall into the mud and in a short time die. Others are rocked by shells and scattered over the surface. 

“And I don’t think I shall ever be the same.” 

Mel watches on as his men are ripped to pieces. They were scrambling in the smoke, searching for some sign that they might survive. He knows it has to be him. He turns his head from the turmoil and faces the enemy trench. Resuming the mantra of ever-forward he goes forth. Acting as though he knows what was to be done.

“Well now we can be who we were before it all started and leave those monsters behind now,” said Christopher- for he was at ease in Oxford. He was solemn and sorry for the past, but felt he had found who he was before the war and left his role behind. To him it was like a terrible dream from which he was slowly waking. Once again could he loll like an aristocrat and ponder matters of the upmost unimportance, while sporadically producing works of brilliance.

“I wonder is it so easy to leave those monsters behind,” replied Mel. 

He rushes forwards to the opposing trench. Like Orpheus he dares not look back lest he slow his men’s advance. At the top of the trench he sees a German gunman. Without a thought he raises his pistol and pulls the trigger. He watches with fascination as the German falls dead with such ease. He marvels at how slight a motion snuffs the life of a man. Forward. He keeps going and finally lands in the chaos of the enemy trench. Seeing more men he shoots them down. Mel saw other soldiers and readies his gun to kill them, barely noticing in time that they are his own. Feeling like a god and a master of mortality he moves manically, losing himself in murderous majesty.

Another silence broke out between the friends. As it ended they left discussion of the war behind, moving to the simpler topics such as lambasting the current fencing team, assuring themselves they would never had let standards drop had they been the reigning captain. Other alumni joined their chatter and all seemed completely comfortable. They felt as though the great play was over and all were now returned to their true selves, with the stage left behind on the continent.

The rapture of war is upon him, his empathy had deserted him at sound of his first shot. Born again as a berserk, he is in love with this life. His men storm the trench and take home a vapid victory that shall be swept aside like sand in a coast of conflict. It has killed and maimed many and it has changed Mel. It does not change the war.

The reunion came to and end as the sun said its goodbyes. The alumni dispersed with ten years disclosed over the course of a day. Christopher had a house not far down the road where retired for the evening. He planned to offer Mel a room to spare him the journey home in the dark but he decided not to. He felt there was a change between them. Previously they naturally nattered from noon till night but no longer. Something there’d been lost. It was as though Mel was merely a reading a script and playing a part. Though he played it well and seemed no different to the others, Christopher was certain it was only a portrayal of a friend once known. 

Mel walked out of Magdalen with a shrinking smile on his face. He took heavy breaths and each one with great relief. The performance was over and he could let go of his guise, cease the act of similarity to his younger self. He went to the reunion hoping to spark his vim and be reminded of all that which had enthralled him as a boy but left it feeling all the worse. Not even his treasured youth could trump his longing for the time spent charging through the trenches. Even his beautiful memories of Oxford had been corrupted by the conflict and were rendered dull and innocuous. They could not satisfy his addiction for brio in battle and his greed for glory. Dreaming of France, he walked away from the college completely true to himself, sad, sorry and hopelessly ardent.