"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."
We did not leave the village until eight o"clock. It was now very dark and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-sh.e.l.ls and the long tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even through the haze, star-sh.e.l.ls showed brilliant in their many different colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a beautiful light which bursts into four different flames that burn standing high in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute star, holds the sky for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote sisters from the heavens. The English and the Germans are content to fling rockets (p. 141) across and observe one another"s lines while these flare out their brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about five miles away; the starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so deceptive are they.
Part of our journey ran along the bank of a ca.n.a.l; there had been some heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to hospital--those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.
"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.
"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"
"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin"!"
"Doin" a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
"Got bombed out and were sent back."
"Lucky dogs, goin" back for a kip (sleep)." (p. 142)
""Ad two killed and seven wounded."
"Blimey!"
"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness swallowed up the working party.
The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats had been given up a week before.
The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle b.u.t.ts and dripping to the roadway. Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in Kore"s. We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is lullaby in the monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed boots on gravel.
We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way across a wide field. The field was under water in the wet season, and a brick pathway had been built across it. Along this path we took our way. A strong breeze had risen and was swishing our waterproofs (p. 143) about our bodies; the darkness was intense, I had to strain my eyes to see the man in front, Stoner. In the darkness he was a nebulous dark bulk that sprang into bold relief when the starlights flared in front.
When the flare died out we stumbled forward into pitch dark nothingness.
The pathway was barely two feet across, a mere tight-rope in the wide waste, and on either side nothing stood out to give relief to the desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low, shapeless and gloomy, behind was the darkness, in front when the starlights made the darkness visible they only increased the sense of solitude.
We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. Sometimes we fell singly, again in pairs, often we fell together a heap of rifles, khaki, and waterproof capes. We rose grumbling, spitting mud and laughing. Stoner was very unfortunate, a particle of dirt got into his eye almost blinding him. Afterwards he crawled along, now and again getting to his feet, merely to fall back into his earthy position. (p. 144) A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets whizzed past our ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching bullets.
"Anybody hurt?"
"No, all right so far."
"Stoner"s down."
"He"s up again."
"Blimey, it"s a balmy."
"Mervin"s crawling on his hands and knees."
"Nark the doin"s, ye"re on my waterproof. Let go!"
"Goliath"s down."
"Are you struck, Goliath?"
"No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he had been scratched as he stumbled.
We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light Infantry.
The place was very quiet, they a.s.sured us, it is always the same. It has become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion that it is taking over a cushy position. By this trench next morning we found six newly made graves, telling how six Highlanders had met their death, killed in action.
Next morning as I was looking through a periscope at the enemy"s (p. 145) trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their sandbag line, a man from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the trench with creosote and chloride of lime.
"Seein" anything?" he asked.
"Not much," I answered, "the gra.s.s is so high in front that I can see nothing but the tips of the enemy"s parapets. There"s some work for you here," I said.
"Where?"
"Under your feet," I told him. "The floor is soft as putty and smells vilely. Perhaps there is a dead man there. Last night I slept by the spot and it turned me sick."
"Have you an entrenchin" tool?"
I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to view, then a second; fifteen minutes a.s.siduous labour revealed an evil-smelling bundle of clothing and decaying flesh. I still remained an onlooker, but changed my position on the banquette.
"He must have been dead a long time," said the sanitary man, as he (p. 146) flung handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."
He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky. The features were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day before. The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point, the lips were drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like and vicious; the eyes were open and raised towards the forehead, and the whole face was splashed with clotted blood. A wound could be seen on the left temple, the fatal bullet had gone through there.
"He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the gloves on the dead soldier"s hands. "These trenches were the "Allemands" then, and the boys charged "em. I suppose this feller copped a packet and dropped into the mud and was tramped down."
"Who is he?" I asked.
The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the dead man and brought out an ident.i.ty disc.
"Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers." "What"s this?" he asked, taking a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from the dead man"s neck.
"It"s his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a (p. 147) barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Ma.s.s, with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather in blossom, the turf stacks, the laughing colleens....
"Here"s a letter," said the sanitary man, "it was posted last Christmas. It"s from a girl, too."
He commenced reading:--
"My dear Patrick,--I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my lone the day I was always reading it. I wish the black war was over and you back again--we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself wishes it as well; I was up at your house last night; there"s not much fun in it now. I read the papers to your mother, and me and her was looking at a map. But we didn"t know where you were so we could only make guesses. Your mother and me is making the Rounds of the Cross for you, and I am always thinking of you in my prayers. You"ll be having the parcel I sent before you get this letter. I hope it"s not broken or lost. The socks I sent were knitted by myself, three pairs of (p. 148) them, and I"ve put the holy water on them. Don"t forget to put them on when your feet get wet, at home you never used to bother about anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry. But you"ll take care of yourself now, won"t you: and not get killed? It"ll be a grand day when you come back, and G.o.d send the day to come soon! Send a letter as often as you can, I myself will write you one every day, and I"ll pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."
We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms of the cross which was erected over him. On the following day one of our men went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some flowers on it he got shot through the head. That evening he was buried beside the Munster Fusilier.
CHAPTER XII (p. 149)
THE Sh.e.l.lING OF THE KEEP