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Title: Return of the brute
Author: Liam O'Flaherty
Release date: November 11, 2025 [eBook #77215]
Language: English
Original publication: London: The Mandrake Press, 1929
Credits: Sean — for Remembrance Day, in memory of Lawrence
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RETURN OF THE BRUTE ***
RETURN OF THE
BRUTE
BY
LIAM O’FLAHERTY
LONDON 1929
THE MANDRAKE PRESS
41 MUSEUM STREET W.C.1
CHAPTER I
“Hey! What’s that? D’ye hear something crawling along the ground to the
right there?”
Gunn got to his feet and looked over the parapet. He peered into the
darkness. Then he turned his head to one side and listened. There was
no sound but the droning of the rain, falling on the sodden, naked
earth of the battle-front.
“I can hear nothing,” he said. “Probably it was a rat you heard.”
He yawned and added:
“God! Is this rain never going to stop? There’s eight inches of water
at the bottom of this post already.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
This is a lovely war.
If I ever have a son I’ll bring him up in petticoats.”
He had been dozing on the fire-step, when Lamont, the sentry, kicked
him. Now, as he awoke fully, he began to shudder with cold. He rubbed
his eyes and cursed. Then he noticed that Lamont, who leaned over the
parapet beside him, was trembling violently.
“What’s the matter, towny?” he said tenderly. “Cold?”
Lamont did not answer. He trembled still more violently. Instinctively,
he moved his body closer to Gunn. Gunn put his arm around the youth’s
shoulder and shook him.
“Hey!” he said gruffly. “Come on, Louis. What’s the matter? Got the
wind up? Cripes! I can’t see my hand.”
He held out his hand in front of his face and peered at it.
“I’m all right,” whispered Lamont in a trembling voice. “It’s only that
bloke crawling about... out there... that...”
“Oh! To hell with him!” said Gunn, taking away the hand that lay on
Lamont’s shoulder and inserting it in his left armpit, beneath his
great-coat, in order to scratch himself. “There’s nobody out there.
It’s only a rat. You sit down and have a draw at a fag. I’ll stand
here. Come on. Get out of it. God bless the man who invented fags
anyway. Oh! Christ! I’m sleepy. If my mother saw me now she’d take to
drink. Phew! I must have water on the brain. I’m soaked to the marrow.
Step down, lad, and light up. I’ll have a draw after you.”
Lamont got down hurriedly, crouched against the base of the parapet,
took off his steel helmet and rummaged within the band until he found
a packet of Woodbines. He took one from the packet and hurriedly put
on his hat. Rain had begun to fall on his shorn skull, making it feel
terribly cold.
“Poor little bastard!” muttered Gunn, now scratching himself with both
hands. “It’s tough on a youngster. Christ! What a life!”
He shook his fist at No Man’s Land and growled:
“Come on, you devil! Do your best. You won’t do me in.”
They were in the outpost occupied by the bombing section of No. 2
Platoon. They had been in the line for forty-eight hours and it had
rained ceaselessly all that time. There was no dug-out, except an
elephant frame which covered the Corporal’s corner. Eight of them
had to sleep in the water that covered the bottom of the hole. It
was impossible to drum up. Everybody was exhausted and demoralised;
especially young Lamont, who was unused to the trenches and was only a
youth of nineteen.
“Say, Bill,” whispered Lamont from the bottom of the hole. “I can’t
light this fag. My hands are numb.”
Gunn stepped down.
“Give it to me,” he said.
Sheltering his head under Lamont’s oil-sheet, he took the cigarette and
the box of matches.
“Cigarette is wet now,” he said. “So are the matches. Blast it!”
It took him a long time to light the cigarette. He puffed at it three
times and then stood up.
“Here,” he said, “have a draw. Do ye good. Blast this rain!”
He leaned over the parapet and began again to scratch himself.
“Say, Louis,” he whispered, “are they biting you?”
“No,” said Lamont, smoking eagerly. “At least, I don’t notice.”
“You’d notice if they were,” said Gunn. “Always worse when you wake up.
That bloody creosote I put on my shirt only made them worse. Hello!
That’s not a rat.”
He heard a sound in front; obviously a man crawling about in the mud,
dragging his body along the ground, or hauling something heavy. Lamont
also heard the sound and jumped to his feet.
“There it is again,” he whispered excitedly. “Do you hear it?”
“Sit down,” said Gunn. “I hear it all right. It’s probably that sniper
we were talking to yesterday evening. He’s all right.”
“I don’t think so,” said Lamont nervously. “They might be creeping up
on us to capture us by surprise.”
“Well! What about it if they capture us?” said Gunn. “We couldn’t be
worse off as prisoners.”
“But they might kill us.”
“Oh! Shut up, for God’s sake!”
“The Corporal said this post was in a dangerous position, stuck out in
front of the line.”
“You’ll drive me mad,” said Gunn. “Can’t you learn how to soldier? As
long as that sniping post is there within one hundred yards of us, they
can’t shell us. See? Anyway... They’re just as fed up as we are. It is
only somebody coming to relieve that sniper. There you are. Listen.
Hear them whispering?”
They listened. Above the droning of the rain, they heard voices
muttering in the darkness. The voices did not seem human to them, as
the words, uttered in a strange language, had no meaning in their ears.
They appeared to be sounds uttered by animals.
“Hear them?” said Gunn. “Funny, isn’t it, hearing these two blokes
muttering out there in their queer lingo. A Mills’ bomb’d give those
blokes a queer fright now, I bet. Still, he wasn’t a bad little fellow,
that sniper we were talking to yesterday evening. The bloody big lump
of chocolate he gave us for two Woodbines. Old Reilly made him eat a
bit before we swopped. It might be poisoned, he said. ‘You no fire,
I no fire,’ said the bloody little Jerry. Funny little bloke with a
ginger moustache. I’ve seen lots of Jerries in the States before the
war. Great bloody beer sharks. Good-natured blokes. They’re just driven
to it, same as we are. Still, I’d like to drop a bomb on top of those
two out there.”
Lamont shuddered. They listened in silence again to the muttering.
“Shouldn’t we call the Corporal all the same?” said Lamont. “It might
be... they might be... it might be an attack.”
“He’ll give you hell if you wake him,” said Gunn. “Hear him snore?”
The two enemy soldiers stopped chattering and began to move away.
“What did I tell you?” said Gunn. “See? They’re moving off.”
They listened to the queer, brutal sound of two human bodies dragging
themselves over the sodden mud in the darkness.
“It’s funny,” said Lamont, “those two blokes are soldiers same as we
are, with people at home. And they’re wet and lousy and hungry and
fed-up same as we are too. But we think... I mean to say that whenever
I think of Fritz I see him only as some cruel giant that’s.... No! But
just as an enemy. What’s an enemy, I wonder? It’s something....”
“Jesus!” said Gunn. “You’re only a kid. You have funny notions. You go
and have a sleep. I’ll stand here for you.”
“I can’t sleep,” said Lamont. “I’d rather stand here and talk to you,
if you don’t mind.”
Gunn cursed and said:
“You put the wind up me. Strike me bloody stiff but you do. You can’t
stand this racket and you shouldn’t be here.”
“Here,” said Lamont, “have the rest of this fag.”
Gunn took the cigarette. He lowered his head as he drew at it, lest the
glow might be seen.
“It’s queer,” said Lamont, “how a fellow never gets anything wrong with
him in the trenches. I’ve been soaked to the skin for two days and I’ve
slept in water. Still... I haven’t got a cold. At home, if I got wet
like this I’d catch pneumonia. I wish I could get pneumonia. I’d get as
far as the base anyway.”
“Shut up, for God’s sake!” muttered Gunn, drawing eagerly at the butt
of his cigarette. “No use talking like that. Probably be dead before
you got to the dressing station. Put that idea out of your head. You’ve
got to stick it, mate.”
He threw down the butt of his cigarette. It sizzled in the water.
“You’ve been wounded twice, haven’t you, Bill?” said Lamont.
“Yes.”
“What’s it like?”
“How do you mean? Hospital?”
“No. What’s it like getting hit? Does it hurt much?”
“How do I know? I don’t remember. It hurt like hell at the dressing
station. Quit talking about it. You’d drive anybody into a funk. You’re
like a woman. Can’t you sit down and have a sleep?”
“No. I don’t want to sleep.”
Gunn spat, cursed, rummaged in his clothes under his gas mask, grunted,
pulled out his hand and cracked a louse against the butt of his rifle.
“I’m crawling with them,” he said, shuddering. “It’s in the blood. The
longer you’re out here the worse you get.”
“Is there no way of getting out of here?” said Lamont.
“There’s only two ways,” said Gunn angrily. “You either go West or get
a blighty. Now quit it or I’ll give you a crack on the jaw. You’ll
drive me mad. I’ve got enough of a job looking after myself without
looking after you. You’re always nagging like a woman. Blimme! Can’t
you be cheerful sometimes?”
Lamont sat down on the fire-step. He got up almost at once, clutched
Gunn’s arm and whispered excitedly:
“Say, Bill, I can’t stick this any longer. I’ll go mad. Can’t you get
me out of it?”
Gunn gripped the lad with both hands and shook him.
“What are you driving at?” he said. “Eh?”
“You could do me a good turn if you wanted to,” whispered Lamont.
“How d’ye mean? I can’t get myself out of it.”
“Give me a blighty one.”
“What?”
“Lots have done it, haven’t they?”
“That’s enough now,” whispered Gunn, in a voice that was both angry and
panic-stricken. “Pull yourself together. You’re a fine mucking-in chum
to have. By God!”
Lamont dropped his face on his arms, against the muddy sandbags of the
parapet. Gunn took him roughly in his arms and muttered:
“Listen. I know what’s the matter with you. I’m going to give you a
good punch in the jaw if you’re not careful. You’re just nagging like a
woman. Chuck it.”
“Let me alone,” said Lamont, in a broken whisper. “Only for mother, I’d
do myself in. They’d tell her.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Gunn. “I’ll see to that. I’ve no
mother, but at your age I could stick this on my own legs, without no
mother. Aye! And a double ration of it, boy. Damn this rain! That’s the
cause of it. Rain. Mud. Lice. Curse it!”
He looked up at the sky and clenched his fist, as if threatening heaven.
He was a huge fellow, so burly that he looked stocky, although he was
well over six feet in height. He looked a typical fighter, with a
thick neck, square jaws and a body like a full sack. His right ear was
battered. There was a scar on his left cheek. He was thirty-two years
old and he had laboured for wages since his boyhood, but his body had
not become demoralised by enslaved toil. Nature had taken great pains
with this seemingly crude and large individual, endowing him with
muscles and sinews that refused to be stiffened by monotonous labour,
and with a spirit that hardship could not conquer. He had a simple
soul, which shone through his great, blue eyes; giving the lie to the
cruel strength of his neck, his jaws, his heavy-lipped mouth, his
massive shoulders, chest and thighs.
He was like a mastiff, that most ferocious-looking and most gentle
of all animals; who, however, when roused or made vicious by brutal
treatment, becomes as ferocious as he looks.
He looked down at Lamont and said, “You’ll drive me daft. I’m blowed if
I know why I muck in with you. Strike me stiff, if I do. You’re like a
woman.”
Then he shuddered and looked into the darkness.
“You’ve been out here now,” he said, “for three months. You should be
getting used to it by now. But you’re not.”
“I can’t help it,” whispered the youth, “I’m all in.”
Gunn shuddered again and struck himself a violent blow on the chest.
Then he cursed and said with extraordinary anger:
“Now listen to me. I’ve been out here over two years on this lousy
front and I’m as fed up with it as you are. I don’t give a curse
who wins this rotten war and I’d like to run my bayonet through the
fellahs that started it. We’re just fighting for a gang of robbers,
as ’79 Duncan said. I’ve got my eyes open now, although I hadn’t
when I enlisted. I came thousands of bloody miles to enlist. Jumped
freight all the way from Seattle, Washington, to New York, and then to
Liverpool as a trimmer on a liner. See? I walked into it. But if I ever
get desperate, same as you are, I’m not going to try and get out of it
by wounding myself or running across No Man’s Land to bloomin’ Fritz
with my hands up.”
He spat and added:
“That’s a coward’s way out of it. I promised to soldier and soldier I
will, though I hate their guts, from the lousiest Lance-Jack to the
Skipper.”
He spat again, cursed, looked at Lamont and said almost nervously:
“Jesus! You put the wind up me. I was married once to a woman, way up
in Nova Scotia, when I was working on a weekly boat. She was just like
you. She had me worn to a ghost. I left her, by Jesus, one night, after
giving her a bloody good hiding. I went out west and never saw her
again.”
He peered down into the post, towards the corner where Corporal
Williams lay asleep under an elephant frame. The Corporal was just a
dun blur, from which sounds of snoring came. The dim forms of his
comrades lay tossing in their sleep at the bottom of the hole, some of
them with their feet in muddy water. Gunn tipped Lamont and whispered,
jerking his head towards the Corporal:
“If he heard what you said, d’ye know what you’d get? Eh?”
Lamont shuddered, wiped his face with his sleeve and said:
“I don’t care. They can put me up before the firing squad whenever they
like. I’m fed up.”
Gunn ground his teeth.
“Then what the hell did you enlist in this mob for?” he said. “This
is the worst regiment in the whole army. Ye knew that. It’s the best
regiment, too! For I’ve seen our fellahs, by God, go through worse than
hell. They’re gathered from all corners of the earth, the toughest of
the tough. You should have joined the Army Medical Corps.”
“I wish I had no mother,” whimpered Lamont.
“I can’t stand this,” growled Gunn to himself. “As sure as hell I’m
going to get into trouble over this kid.”
Lamont had joined the battalion three months previously at a rest
camp. When they saw him, the tough soldiers greeted him with jeering
laughter. He was a beautiful boy, with pink cheeks, dazzling white
teeth like a girl and big blue eyes. He did not swear or drink and
it was obvious at once that he had never been used to any hardship.
Almost as soon as he arrived he began to receive parcels of food and
cigarettes with every post. It became known that his people were
well-to-do and that he had a mother who doted on him and that he was an
only child.
Gunn took him under his protection and cared for him like a father or a
big brother. At first it made Gunn very happy. There had been no gentle
influence like this in his rough and nomad life. He almost shed tears
when he got a letter from Lamont’s mother thanking him for being kind
to her boy. “God will bless you for it. He is the light of my eyes. My
heart would break if anything happened to my darling boy.” Gunn had
also reached the age when a virile man, who has no children, begins to
look upon youth with longing; when the fear of death and old age begins
to conquer the arrogant confidence of youth.
But after a while he became aware that the boy was sapping his
strength. The boy lived on his nerves. Not only did he have to do the
boy’s work, but he had to comfort him, to lend him courage.
And now the boy’s cowardice was sapping his sense of discipline; that
extraordinary religion of the soldier which is proof against the
greatest tortures; something that is brutally beautiful.
“Listen,” he said, “that’s the worst act of cowardice a soldier can
commit. And what’s more, you can’t get away with it. If a man could do
that without feeling ashamed of himself, d’ye think there’d be a man
left on this front? But, ye see, them blokes back there are too cute.”
He nodded his head to the rear. “You can’t beat them.” He touched his
forehead. “Up there they’ve got it. Brains! We’re mugs. Look at it that
way. Supposing it wasn’t a cowardly thing to give yourself a blighty
one? Let’s say you do it and get back the line. What happens? They’ll
cop you. Sure as hell. They’ve got blokes hired specially for copping
self-inflicted wounds. They’ve got smart at it now. At first, you could
get into hospital by eating a bar of soap. Now, if you try on any
silly stunt, they put you in dock till you get better and then you’re
for it. I know. I’ve been out here nearly two years and I’ve seen
many a man, good men too, chancing their arms. Thirty-Nine Townshend
tried to wound himself in the head when we were in the straw trenches.
The blighter blew his brains out by mistake. Eighty-Four Flynn broke
his leg with an entrenching tool at Neuve Chapelle. They copped him.
Ginger Moriarty was caught by an officer trying to wound himself in the
thigh with his rifle. He got what was coming to him all right. Christ!
They’ve got an hospital away back there for self-inflicted wounds.
There’s nothing to it.”
He dug his fist into Lamont’s back and said:
“Savvy?”
“I’ll get out of it somehow,” said Lamont with strange coolness.
Gunn peered at him in the darkness, almost with terror. A stupid
fellow, the youth’s curious feminine cunning unnerved him, and made him
also feel the temptation to do something shameful and desperate. The
youth’s obstinate determination to save himself from the horrible life
of the trenches roused in Gunn a dangerous desire for freedom. This
desire was dangerous for Gunn because he was a brave soldier, who knew
there was no means of escape, other than death or disablement inflicted
by the enemy.
Terrified by the temptation inspired by the boy’s words and manner,
he instinctively glanced again towards the corner where the Corporal
snored.
“Quit that!” he whispered savagely, turning back to Lamont. “What
are ye driving at now? Desertion? ’Fifty-Seven Flood tried that at
Armentières. What happened to him? Caught on the wires and riddled with
bullets. Disgraced his bloody company. Jerry’d make ye sorry ye came if
ye got there. He doesn’t want his own men trying that on, so he’d make
an example of ye.”
“I’ll get out of it somehow,” said Lamont coldly.
“God Almighty!” muttered Gunn.
They became silent, standing side by side, looking out into the
darkness over the parapet. With their steel hats and their oil-sheets,
which they wore, laced about their throats, over their great coats,
they looked like ghouls in the gloom, buried to their waists in a hole;
while all round them the earth lay naked, turned into mud, holed,
covered with the horrid débris of war, emitting a stench of rotting,
unburied corpses.
From the pitch-dark sky the rain fell, unceasing and monotonous, like
the droning of brine water falling on a floor of black rocks from the
roof of a subterranean cave where moaning seals are hidden and flap
about upon their ledges; sounds from a dead world; the mysterious gloom
of the primeval earth, where no life had yet arisen; no sap of growing
things; nothing but worms and rats feeding on death.
Clods of dislodged mud slipped from the sides of holes, flopped into
blood-stained pools, sank and turned into slime.
The silence was horrid.
CHAPTER II
Suddenly there was a loud crash in front. Lamont immediately ducked his
head.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
Another crash followed, a belching sound, preceded by a fountain
of fire that rose, widening into an arch, with great swiftness and
vanished in an instant. There was a series of crashes. When the sound
of the last explosion died away, there was silence for a little while.
Then a machine gun began to cackle some distance to the right. That
made a vicious sound; a snake’s hissing magnified.
“That’s one of ours,” said Gunn, looking to the right. “Something must
be happening. There were orders not to fire unless...”
He ducked as a shell came whizzing over the post from the rear and,
dropping short, burst ten yards in front of the post with a deafening
roar. Immediately the men awakened from their sleep. They tossed about,
instinctively making a movement to stand up and with the same instinct
crouching for shelter when they realised that a shell had dropped near.
“Hey! What’s that?” came the Corporal’s voice from under the elephant
frame.
Gunn opened his mouth to say something to the Corporal, but closed his
mouth without speaking and sheltered his head quickly. An enemy machine
gun raked the post from end to end. Its sound was guttural, as if
hoarse with fury.
Again the explosives boomed, now farther away, seemingly heavier, their
harshness dulled by distance.
Gunn crawled stooping through the post to the Corporal. The Corporal
was trying to crawl out of his shelter over two men who lay in the
doorway, and who cursed one another, helplessly trying to disentangle
their equipment.
“I think he’s blowing up his front line, Corporal,” said Gunn. “We’ve
opened fire on the right.”
“Eh?” said the Corporal. “What dropped there in front?”
“One of ours,” said Gunn. “It fell short.”
“Fred Karno’s bloody artillery,” said the Corporal. “Stand to,
everybody.”
Gunn crawled back, seized his rifle and got ready to open fire.
“Stand to,” cried the Corporal, kicking at a man who was trying to put
on his gas mask. “What are you doing?”
He pawed at the man.
“I’m taking no chances,” said a querulous voice.
“Who gave orders for gas masks?” said the Corporal.
“I’m taking no chances,” answered the voice.
“Get your blasted rifle and stand to,” said the Corporal. “Jump to it,
everybody. Heads!”
The enemy machine gun was now rattling on the elephant frame.
“They’ve opened fire on us, Corporal,” cried a voice, dazed with sleep.
“What d’ye think I am?” cried the Corporal. “Deaf and dumb?”
Two enemy shells dropped behind the post, the sound of their explosion
almost smothered by the sodden mud, which they sent in a shower of
heavy lumps into the air. The men, now fully awake and on their feet,
gripping their rifles and bombs, began to chatter.
“Come on. Get out of my way. He’s coming.”
“Move, blast it. Give me room. Let go my rifle.”
“Who? Fritz? Is he coming over?”
“Jesus! We’re surrounded.”
Now there was a heavy artillery and machine gun fire. The flashes of
the guns, belching their shots, and of the shells, bursting, lightened
the darkness in spots, making it still more awesome.
Awakened suddenly from sleep, they were dumbfounded by this sudden and
dangerous activity in which they took no part. They had been lying out
for two days in a hole without hearing a shot. Now, without warning,
a thunderstorm had burst over their heads. They tried to crowd the
parapet, but the post was so small that there was no room for them all.
There was no order. Everybody was talking.
Gunn, although he had been awake when the firing began, was as excited
as the others. To him this sudden alarm was merely an ordinary incident
in his trench life, but he had been disturbed by Lamont’s seductive
cowardice and by the demoralising desire for escape born of Lamont’s
determination “to get out of it somehow.”
Further, there had recently been continual rumours that the war was
nearly over, that the enemy was retiring, that peace had, in fact, been
already made. These rumours had, of course, been current since the
first day that Gunn arrived in France; but of late they had been more
persistent. All winter they had held that sector in practical idleness,
as far as fighting was concerned. More exhausted and demoralised by the
mud, hunger, rain, cold and constant “fatigues,” than they would have
been by dangerous activity, they were quite ready to believe anything.
Now Gunn was thinking as he heard the shells burst: “Suppose the war is
over and I get killed by the last shell?”
Then he remembered Lamont and started, ashamed because he had forgotten
the boy for a few minutes in his excitement. He stooped, looked and
found that Lamont had buried his head into the side of the parapet and
was lying as still as a rabbit which a dog has sighted. Gunn prodded
him in the ribs and whispered in his ear: “Stand to. Get your rifle.”
Lamont shuddered and tried to press his body still farther into the
parapet. Gunn pulled him back, shook him and made him stand up. Almost
at once he dragged him down and laid his body close against the bottom
of the hole.
An enemy shell had landed right on top of the parapet, a few feet to
the left of Gunn. It had come with that sharp screech which denotes an
almost direct hit to the horror-stricken listener; the screech lasts
just the fraction of a second of actual time, but it seems an eternity.
As the roar died away, swallowed by a more distant roar, lumps of mud
and pieces of torn sandbags began to fall. Then the top of the parapet
gave way and flopped into the trench. Somebody groaned. Others cursed.
There was a horrible stench.
Then there was silence. As if it had effected its purpose, the firing
shifted to the right.
“God!” cried a voice. “What’s this lying on top of me?”
“Eh?” said the Corporal. “Come on. Rebuild this parapet. Anybody hit? I
heard somebody groaning.”
Nobody answered him. Everybody began to examine his own body. Then the
first voice cried out again in horror:
“See? It’s a dead man’s leg. Blimme! One of them blasted Froggies
that’s buried here.”
“Whew!” cried another. “I just stuck my hand into somebody’s rotten
guts. God! What a stink!”
There were guffaws of nervous laughter. Delighted that they had not
been hit by the shell and that no more shells were falling near, they
laughed; grateful for their spared lives and eager to prove their
contempt for danger.
“Don’t mind the stink,” said the Corporal. “Build it up again. Throw
all them Frenchmen out. Build it up. Anybody hurt, I say? Who’s that
moaning?”
Gunn was holding Lamont in his arms, shielding him from the Corporal.
The bursting of the shell had thrown Lamont into a panic.
“I don’t hear anybody moaning,” said Gunn.
He felt an extraordinary fear lest the Corporal might become aware
of Lamont’s cowardice; because he associated Lamont’s cowardice with
himself. He felt that it was getting a grip on him.
“Yer a liar,” said the Corporal.
Gunn punched Lamont under the chin. The youth stopped moaning.
“Well! Anybody’d groan if two sandbags fell on his head,” said Gunn. “I
got an awful wallop.”
“You’re always getting in the way,” growled the Corporal. “Why didn’t
you say so? Build up the parapet.”
The Corporal stood up in the hole.
“Listen,” he said in a gay voice. “Corporal Wallace is getting it
now. Serve him bloody well right. We should have had his post. His
dug-out’ll be no good to him, though, if one of them jam-jars fall on
it. Move to it. Build it up.”
“They’ll die dry anyway,” grumbled a voice. “Those ---- Lewis gunners
always get whatever is going. Us bombers are treated like a lot of
criminals. We mop up all the s--t. We’re always stuck in front, a
spy-escort, listening post. First in, last out.”
“Stop talking,” said the Corporal. “Build it up.”
“Aye!” said another voice. “Then when we get out, they tie us up, for
fear we’d rob the canteen.”
Grumbling, they began to rebuild the parapet.
The sacks of earth, with which the parapet had been paved, had rotted.
The earth in the sacks had been turned to slime by the rain. It was
almost impossible to do anything with them. When a man lifted a sack it
broke in two and the fragments fell, leaving foul slime on his hands.
In the pitch darkness it was impossible for a man to see whether he was
lifting a sack or a piece of rotten corpse. They cursed violently.
The sounds of their movements and of their voices, uttering strange
oaths, were uncouth in the darkness.
Eight Frenchmen had been killed by shell fire in that hole some time
previously during an engagement. Their comrades, taking over the post
under heavy fire, had used the shattered corpses as fortification.
“Better leave it to two men,” said a voice, after they worked without
result for ten minutes.
“All right,” said the Corporal. “Reilly, you and Gunn do the job.
Get out of the way the rest of you. That bloody sniper we gave the
cigarettes to yesterday had his eyes open all right. Can’t trust one
of those bastards.”
They all began to curse the sniper to whom they had given cigarettes
the previous day and who had said: “You no fire. All right. I no fire.”
They cursed him, not because they believed that he had anything to do
with the firing, but because somebody had to be blamed for the fall of
the parapet, which caused work and a stink.
“It’s all very well,” said a voice. “It’s no good ---- and blinding him
now. When I wanted to shoot the ---- you blokes stopped me.”
“Don’t start coming the old soldier, Reilly,” said the Corporal. “Who’s
in charge of this post? You or me? I got orders not to allow any
firing. You think you own this mob because you’re a peace timer. Balls
to you, drummer.”
“Good job if there were more peace wallahs knocking about,” said the
voice. “Bloody lot of rookies....”
“What’s your number, Reilly?” said the Corporal.
“Before you came up,” mumbled the voice.
“See you later,” said the Corporal. “Who’s that bloody-well groaning
now? Somebody s--t himself?”
“It’s Lamont, Corporal,” said a voice.
Lamont had again dug his face into the parapet.
Gunn dropped a sack and went over to him.
“He’ll be all right, Corporal,” he said.
“Come on, kid.”
“What d’ye think you’re on?” bawled the Corporal. “A wet nurse? Get on
with your work. Sweet Jesus! Why did You put this baby in my section? I
didn’t crucify You.”
“Oh! God Almighty!” moaned a voice. “It’s a wonder the ground doesn’t
open up and swallow us for that blasphemy.”
“Hear old preacher Appleby,” laughed a voice. “The Holy Roller. Bloody
old hypocrite.”
The Corporal went over to Lamont and pulled him away from the parapet.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said.
Gunn, standing nearby, began to tremble and doubled his fists. At that
moment he hated Lamont for his cowardice and yet intended to assault
the Corporal in order to defend his mate. At the same time, a voice
kept suggesting to him, very anxiously, that he should save himself
from some awful catastrophe before it was too late.
Then Lamont raised his head and said in a querulous voice that amazed
Gunn by its cool cunning:
“I’ve an awful pain in my stomach, Corporal.”
“I’ll give you a pain somewhere else,” said the Corporal. “Wait ’till
we get out of the line. The M.O.’ll fix your guts all right. Stop
moaning or I’ll stuff my entrenching tool handle down your throat.”
Gunn breathed a sigh of relief and went back to his work.
“Christ!” said the Corporal. “What a crew I’ve got!”
“That’s the ticket,” said a voice. “Blame us for the whole bloomin’ war
while you’re at it.”
The Corporal, aware that he was unable to keep order in the darkness,
among this group of tough and discontented men, got very excited. He
moved about, gave ridiculous orders and got everybody into a dreadful
muddle. The military machine is kept working by the Corporal, the
purpose of whose existence is to irritate the cogs under his control,
keeping them continually active, irrespective of whether there is any
purpose in their activity or not. So it was ordained by the designers
of armies. But the designers had not foreseen, at least at that time,
that groups of cogs, almost entirely cut off from the body of the
machine, might lie in holes for days at a time, unable to find room
for the senseless chores of which army routine is composed. Instead
of producing that thoughtless bodily movement in response to orders,
which characterises the good soldier, the Corporal now caused the exact
opposite; simply because there was not enough room.
So that the nine men who babbled and staggered about in that sodden,
water-logged, stinking hole, looked like nine lunatics, who, guided
vaguely by a remnant of their former sanity, tried to keep in touch
with the reality they had lost by an affectation of furious energy.
They got in one another’s way, knocked things out of one another’s
hands, cursed one another, asked questions, gave orders, picked things
up and then dropped them again, sat down, got up again at once,
scratched themselves, spat, shuddered and chattered continuously.
Suddenly a body was heard crawling up to the post from the rear. The
Corporal cried out: “Who’s that?”
“That Corporal Williams?”
The Corporal instinctively brought his fists rigidly to his thighs, as
he answered:
“Sir-r-r-r!”
There was silence immediately. The droning of the rain became loud, as
Lieutenant Bull, a huge figure in the gloom, panting loudly, like a
primeval beast rising from the slime, slithered into the hole, bringing
a little heap of mud after him with a clatter.
“Everybody all right here, Corporal?”
The officer’s voice was bored and indifferent and his whole person
exuded a feeling of boredom and indifference, in marked contrast to
the nervousness of the men’s voices and the furtive movements of their
bodies. His breath smelt of whiskey. He carried a little, short stick,
to help himself along through the mud.
Gunn gaped in the direction of the officer, just barely seeing him in
the darkness. He felt terrified of him and was worried by this terror.
Bull was the only officer in the company whom Gunn really liked. He
felt towards him as towards a fellow human being. Bull was fearless. He
was just. He did not treat his men as if they were children or pawns
in a game of chess. He treated them as if they were really men and not
cogs in a machine. He was ruthless and brutal in action; but behind the
line he looked after his men with zeal, and protected their well-being
with the same enthusiasm that a man would show towards expensive and
cherished horses or hunting dogs.
He was the type of officer that a good soldier likes and respects. He
had no pity for the inefficient or the cowardly. There was no sentiment
in his nature. He was like a piston rod in a machine.
Until this moment, Gunn had always felt comforted by this officer’s
appearance in a trench. Now he felt afraid of him; sensing in himself
the growth of something that the ruthless Lieutenant Bull would smash
with his stick without a thought, or with a bullet from the heavy
revolver he carried on his hip.
Gunn sought Lamont in the darkness with terrified eyes.
“Yes, sir,” said the Corporal. “Everybody’s all right here.”
“Parapet blown down, I see,” said the officer, stepping along the
trench past the men, whom he brushed aside with his heavy body,
without paying any more heed to them than if they were pieces of
rubbish or indeed precious dogs.
They leaned back out of his way in awed silence, thrilled by the
nearness of his body, which was covered with a uniform different from
theirs.
His voice sounded horridly melancholy and remote, like the voice of
a mumbling priest, who stands bored upon an altar before his fetish,
while the devotees lie prostrate, worshipping both him and the fetish
he so casually addresses in droning tones.
“Yes, sir,” said the Corporal. “I’m getting it rebuilt.”
The Corporal’s voice throbbed, addressing the officer.
The officer walked back again, saying:
“Get your men ready. We’re going to advance. The enemy is retiring.
Report to Company Headquarters for instructions in... eh...”
“Yes, sir.”
“Eh... half an hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
The officer’s bored and melancholy voice died away. He cleared his
throat and slithered out of the hole. Casually, he stood up, rapped
his thigh with his stick, stood still with bowed head for a few
moments, as if thinking of something millions of miles away. Then he
wandered away into the darkness. The men remained silent for a few
moments and the rain made a loud sound, pattering on their steel hats
and on the oil-sheets which they wore as cloaks.
Each man was saying to himself, “We’re going over the top. Will I come
back?”
They had all been over the top except Lamont. They were all tough,
hardened fighters; because of that, they knew and respected the dangers
of an advance.
The Corporal, it being his business, called out to them cheerfully:
“Hear that, everybody? We’re going over. He’s retiring. We’ve got him
on the run. That railhead rumour that the post corporal brought up must
have been right. Jerry is chucking in his mitt. War over? Blimme!”
Everybody, except Lamont, got wildly excited, especially Gunn. Now
that there was a prospect of action, something to do with his muscles
and sinews, Gunn would not have to use his brain in combating the
seductive temptation of his comrade. He became most excited in his
ejaculations.
“Come on, boys,” he said. “Let’s have a last pot at them. Let’s run ’em
off the face of the earth. Up, the bloody bombing section!”
“He’s retiring!” they cried, one after the other. “He’s beat. Blighty
in a month!”
Shut in on a narrow sector of front, in fact, living in a lonely
hole in No Man’s Land, where a dark sky, sodden, naked earth and a
curtain of droning rain constituted their world, they were incapable
of comprehending the vastness of the army in which they formed the
smallest unit. They were quite eager to believe, on the slightest
encouragement, that the enemy had been defeated somewhere in a great
battle and was now retiring, practically annihilated.
“All we have to do,” said one, “is to run after him, mopping up his
dug-outs.”
“Leave that parapet alone now,” said the Corporal. “We won’t need it.
Next stop, Kaiser’s palace in Berlin. Get ready those bombs and rifle
grenades. Jump to it! Roll up your oil-sheets.”
They became as gay as schoolboys going on holiday; all except Lamont,
who stood apart, silent. His large, blue eyes had become cunning, and
his face had the strange cunning expression of a woman who is plotting
something in secret.
Gunn went over to him and said:
“Well, matey! you’ll get your baptism of fire to-night. Stick to me.
I’ll see you right. Then.... what price London?”
Lamont answered in a calm tone: “Do you really believe the war is going
to end?”
“Eh?” said Gunn, wrinkling his face in amazement at Lamont’s sudden
calmness.
“I don’t believe the war is nearly over,” said Lamont, in the same
curiously calm voice.
Gunn swore at him and moved away.
“I’m glad we’re getting out of here, anyway,” said a gloomy voice.
“Although you blokes won’t be as merry this time to-morrow as you are
now.”
Several voices said:
“Aw! Chuck it, Reilly.”
“What are you grousing about now, Reilly?” said the Corporal. “By
cripes! I’ll have you crimed for trying to demoralise the section.”
The gloomy voice again rose out of the dark hole, grumbling: “This
whole business is a trap. He ain’t retiring.”
“Chuck it! Cut it out!” they murmured.
“If you ask me,” cried the gloomy voice in a louder tone, “I don’t
believe one of us’ll come back alive. Whenever I got into a post where
men were buried it was unlucky.”
“Come on,” cried the Corporal, angrily. “Get your rifle clean, Reilly,
and close your trap. I’ll take your number if you’re not careful. What
d’ye think you’re on?”
Gunn went over and sat down beside Lamont. A stupid fellow, he was
very superstitious and prone to be driven to the deepest despair or
the wildest enthusiasm by the most trifling omen. Reilly, the gloomy
old soldier, a man whom Gunn respected because he had been at the
front since 1914, had said that a disaster was imminent. Then it must
be imminent. He was almost as certain of it as if he had read it in
a newspaper. At once, he connected Reilly’s warning with Lamont’s
tempting.
Now, however, he felt tender towards Lamont. There must have been, he
thought, a legitimate excuse for the boy’s cowardly panic, when an old
soldier like Reilly “had the wind up.”
“Don’t be afraid, lad,” he said, putting his hand on Lamont’s shoulder.
“Pay no attention to old Reilly. It’s only his old soldier’s way of
talking. There’s no danger. Jerry is on the run.”
“I’m not paying any attention to him,” said Lamont, in his girlish
voice. “I know myself what is going to happen. My mind is made up. I
feel happy now.”
“You do?” said Gunn in amazement. “What about?”
“Shaw,” said the Corporal, “you take charge here, while I’m away.”
“Yes, corporal,” said a dignified voice.
“What d’you feel happy about?” repeated Gunn.
Lamont’s voice broke as he said, “Bill, I want you to write to mother
for me when you come out of the line and tell her...”
“Shut up,” muttered Gunn.
“Tell her that I...”
“Shut up. Chuck it. Where’s your rifle?”
He took Lamont’s rifle and pretended to clean it.
“Listen,” he said. “If we come hand-to-hand, don’t forget... see... use
the butt. Just raise the butt like that, upper cut. Then bash him on
the head when he falls. Kill any man with a boot in the snout. Forget
the bayonet. Eh?”
Lamont sighed. Gunn suddenly bit his lower lip until it bled, threw
Lamont’s rifle on the fire-step and moved away to empty his bladder in
the corner.
The Corporal came back. He was nervous.
“Looks a big job,” he said. “The whole brigade is going over.”
Although they could not see his face, they felt the nervousness in his
voice. They also became nervous.
Now the battle front had again become silent. The melancholy droning of
the rain and the flopping of mud clods into shell holes were the only
sounds.
Suddenly Gunn’s voice rose loudly from the hole, crying, “By God!
I’m going to make some bastard suffer for this rain. I’ll spill some
bastard’s blood before long.”
Silence followed this outburst.
“What’s the matter with him?” whispered a voice.
“Hey! Hey!” said the Corporal. “You going off your chump?”
“Nothing the matter with me,” said Gunn, in a queer tone.
In spite of his words, he felt that there was something queer the
matter with him. He felt a pain in his eye sockets, and he kept
shutting his eyes in order to hide from little balls of fire that kept
approaching him from out the darkness.
“Damn-all the matter with me,” he repeated with stupid arrogance.
CHAPTER III
Just before dawn, Corporal Williams led his men out of the post into No
Man’s Land. All told, they numbered nine souls.
No. 7946 Corporal John Williams, leading, was a sallow-faced man, with
a long, thin neck and a wide, low forehead. He was six feet one inch
in height. His limbs were loose and nervous in their movements. His
hands were flabby and hot to the touch. His eyes were pale and watery.
They varied in expression, at one time furtive and terror-stricken, at
another cunning and determined. He moved like an eel. He was servile
to his superiors, arrogant and cruel to his subordinates. Although he
was extremely diligent in his duties and a severe disciplinarian, his
company commander disapproved of him. His failure to attain promotion
had made him very bitter. In civilian life he had been a grocer’s
assistant. He was twenty-nine years old. He had served two years and
twenty-four days.
No. 8740 Private George Appleby followed the Corporal. He had been
a labourer in a chocolate factory as a civilian. He was a fanatical
believer in the doctrines of an obscure Christian sect, whose members
encourage hysteria in their religious observances. His former work and
his creed injured his constitution and made it impossible for him to
become a really efficient soldier, although he was powerfully built,
with a dogged courage that made him worthy of serving in the ranks
of that famous regiment. He was too fat about the face and body. His
complexion was yellowish. His cheeks were puffy. He moved stiffly,
like an old dray-horse. All his organs were functioning inefficiently.
He was of a morbid disposition and never laughed. He always muttered
prayers, even on parade. He was thirty years old. He was commonly
called “The Preacher,” or “The Holy Roller.” He had served two years
and ten days.
No. 9087 Private Michael Friel followed Appleby. He was a lean, slim
man, with red hair, a freckled face and blue eyes. He had been a
policeman in civilian life. He stammered slightly when excited and he
constantly wore an expression of great worry, as if his mind were
engaged in unravelling very intricate problems. Although an excellent
soldier behind the line, he was unreliable in action, as he had utterly
no initiative and really had a streak of cowardice in him. He was a
very silent fellow. He never mixed with his section comrades behind the
line, always consorting with a man in No. 4 Platoon who had also been a
policeman. He corresponded with three women and was very proud of his
person. He had once been a sergeant but had been reduced to the ranks
for breaking camp one night and lying with a French whore until after
réveillé. He had served one year and 287 days. He was twenty-seven
years old. His height was five feet eleven inches.
No. 11145 Private Simon Jennings followed Friel. This soldier was
serving under an assumed name. He had formerly been an officer in the
Army Service Corps but had been cashiered for forging a cheque. He
was the younger son of a bishop and had led a very dissipated life,
principally on the score of drunkenness, gambling and lechery. Although
he was a poor soldier and unable to keep his uniform or equipment in
proper condition, his intelligence was often of assistance in moments
of stress. His manner and personal habits endeared him to his comrades,
who respected him because he had once been an officer; but more
especially because he received an allowance, about which he was very
generous. His mottled face and bleary eyes bore witness to the life
he had led. He was getting bald and he had legs like an old man. When
under the influence of drink, he preached a new form of Christianity,
which was mainly based on pacificism and “Universal, scientific,
ethical co-operation,” as he quaintly described it. The officers all
disliked him. He had served in this regiment for one year 110 days. He
was five feet ten inches in height. He was nicknamed “The Gent.”
No. 8637 Private Jeremiah McDonald followed Jennings. He had been a
farm labourer in civilian life. He was a bony, uncouth fellow, with
an ape-like face, outstanding ears, a short thick nose and stupid
grey eyes. His knuckles were very large. There was hardly any flesh
on his bones. He was the butt of the company owing to his stupidity,
his gluttony and his incapacity for performing correctly the simplest
movement of military drill. Because he was always picked for sanitary
fatigue, they nicknamed him “Crap.” He had served for two years and
twenty-seven days. He was exactly six feet in height and thirty-four
years old.
No. 4048 Private Daniel Reilly followed McDonald. This man was an
excellent soldier, but owing to his taste for drink and his peculiar
temperament, he had never risen from the ranks. He had never done
any useful labour in civilian life, having served as a tout for a
street bookmaker at one time, and at another time as chucker-out in
an illicit drinking shop which was also a brothel. He had been seven
years and sixty-four days in the service. He was a dark fellow, with
very shrewd, dark eyes and a countenance that seemed to express
innocence, simplicity and candour. He wore drooping, black moustaches.
He was never without money, as he had a regular organisation for the
collection and disposal of loot. He respected nothing in search for
loot and was known to have dug up and robbed an airman, who crashed
head first into muddy ground, sinking to the heels of his boots. He
was five feet ten inches in height. He had been at the front since the
outbreak of war, but had never been wounded. He found great pleasure
in foretelling disaster.
No. 8365 Private William Gunn followed Reilly. He was officially
described at headquarters as a general labourer, thirty-three years of
age, six feet two inches in height, marked by a crushed right ear and a
scar on the left cheekbone, with service of two years and thirty-four
days.
No. 12468 Private Louis Lamont followed Gunn. He was officially
described as a student, nineteen years of age, five feet nine inches in
height, with service of 310 days.
No. 3920 Private James Shaw brought up the rear. He had served for
nine years and eighty-one days, and was the most reliable and cunning
soldier, not only in the section, but in the battalion. His whole
body was covered with wounds. He had three bayonet scars on his face.
His head was completely bald. He was stoutly built and was immensely
strong. His face and neck were exactly the colour of an old penny.
He had risen twice to the rank of sergeant but had lost his stripes
each time through drink. He was prone to fits of melancholy and could
never sleep more than two hours at a stretch. He often spent whole
nights sitting on his blankets, smoking his pipe and thinking. He
was a champion billiard player. He had very long, black eyelashes and
a beautiful tenor voice. He was the most respected soldier in the
company. The company officer always chose him for dangerous work. He
had been decorated for valour three times. He was five feet ten inches
in height. His civilian occupation was officially described as that of
an excise officer.
These nine men, under the command of Corporal John Williams, went over
the top a little before dawn on the morning of March 20th, 1917.
CHAPTER IV
It still rained. As soon as they stepped out into No Man’s Land, they
sank into the mud to their ankles. They advanced in file, their rifles
at the high port, their bayonets fixed, their gas masks at the ready.
They floundered about, groaning at each step, dragged down by the
sticky mud, by the cumbersome weight of their rain-sodden great-coats
and by their war equipment, rifles, entrenching tools, bullets, bombs,
rifle-grenades, rations, Verey lights, wire-cutters, gas masks. They
rattled and clanked, like armoured ghosts, slopping and clucking and
groaning through the mud.
The Corporal had received orders to advance in a straight line and
occupy the section of the enemy’s front line that faced the outpost.
The distance was given to him as approximately three hundred and fifty
paces. It appeared to be simple enough before they left the post,
because the parapet of the post faced the enemy. But as soon as
they left the post and had advanced about twenty yards the Corporal
side-stepped to avoid a dump of barbed wire. He went on another five
yards and then halted, realising that he did not know where he was.
Appleby, following immediately behind, gloomily indifferent to where he
was going and praying under his breath, stumbled against the Corporal.
They both fell into the mud. Friel came up and, before he could halt,
fell over Appleby. As he fell, he lowered the point of his bayonet,
instinctively trying to save himself. He fleshed the Corporal slightly
on the buttocks.
“Halt!” whispered Jennings.
They all halted, one after the other. Being trained soldiers, as soon
as they moved out of their hole, they ceased to think of anything
except the business in hand, which consisted solely in placing one foot
carefully in front of the other and in keeping their eyes fixed on the
centre of the back of the man in front. The Corporal, being in command,
was thinking for them. They were half-asleep. Now, finding that
something had gone wrong and that they had to halt, a fact for which no
provision had been made, they awakened in a startled fashion. In their
excitement, they broke ranks and got into a bunch.
The Corporal, lying on the ground with Appleby across his back, began
to mutter curses, spluttering and spitting forth the mud which got into
his mouth. He reached out and struck Appleby a smart blow with the butt
of his rifle. He thought it was Appleby who had prodded him with the
bayonet.
Appleby squealed, “I’m wounded.”
“I’ll wound you, you bastard,” growled the Corporal, giving him another
whack. “What’s your number?”
“What’s on now?” grumbled Shaw from the rear. “Move on. We don’t want
to get caught here.”
Lamont leaned on Gunn and whispered, “I’m dead beat. I can go no
farther.”
The Corporal and Appleby were still on the ground arguing. Appleby was
swearing that it was not he who had stuck the Corporal. The Corporal
swore that it was. Friel, like the cute fellow he was, had at once
struggled to his feet as soon as he had done the damage and got out of
the way. He fell in behind Jennings.
“What’s the idea, Friel?” said Jennings. “Where are you going?”
“Don’t stick your blasted rifle in my face, you,” cried Gunn, digging
his elbow into McDonald’s face.
“Cripes!” said McDonald, staggering against Friel.
The Corporal got to his feet and cried in a loud whisper, “Move on.
Stop that whispering.”
Everybody took a step and then stopped. They were going in six
different directions.
“We’re lost,” said Reilly. “What did I say? I told you so.”
“Keep together,” said the Corporal.
“Don’t wander about. Come on.”
They moved on.
Suddenly there was a heavy splash. Jennings fell head first into a
shell-hole, having tripped over a barbed-wire stake. Friel tripped over
the stake also but saved himself. As he called out, “Mind the stake,”
he was pushed from behind by McDonald right into the shell-hole on top
of Jennings.
“Help!” cried Jennings. “I’m drowned.”
“What’s up now?” said the Corporal. “Halt!”
“Pull them out,” said Reilly. “They’re sure to drown. Come on, lads,
don’t stand looking at them. There were four Jocks drowned like that
relieving the Froggies at Sailly.”
“Who’s in that shell-hole?” said the Corporal, staggering over. “Get
out of that hole.”
“I can’t bloody well get out,” muttered McDonald. “Let go of my
scabbard, Gent.”
“Where the hell are you?” said Gunn, stooping over the hole. “Catch the
end of my rifle.”
“God!” said Jennings. “I’ve lost my rifle.”
“Fish it out, then,” said the Corporal. “You’re not much good with a
rifle, but you’re worse without one.”
They spent over ten minutes dragging McDonald and Jennings out of the
hole. Jennings came out without his rifle.
“Go in again and get it,” said the Corporal.
Jennings, shivering and shaking himself like a wet hen, was covered
from head to foot in slime.
“I’d die, Corporal,” he said. “I’m all in.”
Gunn cursed and said he would go in for it.
“Get out of my way,” he said.
He stepped into the hole, searched around with his foot, got the rifle
and hauled it out. He handed it to Jennings.
“Thank you,” said Jennings. “But how am I ever going to get it clean?”
“Everybody all right now?” said the Corporal. “Get in your proper
places.”
They floundered about until they were in line.
“Who’s that sitting down there?” said the Corporal. “Fall in that man.
Who told you to sit down? What is your number?”
“I was tying my puttee, Corporal,” said Lamont, in his girlish voice.
“Oh! Christ!” said the Corporal. “There he is again. The principal boy,
tightening her tights. Get up, you little bastard.”
Lamont got up. He had not really been doing anything but had sat down
for a rest. He fell in behind Gunn.
“Hang on to my scabbard,” whispered Gunn, “and give me your rifle.”
“Say, Corporal,” said Appleby. “I think we’re going wrong.”
“Shut up, you fool,” said the Corporal. “Eh? Where are we? All right!
I’ve got it. Move on.”
Again they advanced, floundering, for about ten yards and then Shaw
cried out, “Hey! Where are we going? That’s our post there. We’re on
the wrong side of it.”
“Halt!” said the Corporal.
He came over to Shaw. The latter pointed to the top of the elephant
frame which covered the extreme left of the post.
“See that?” said he.
“What? Where?” said the Corporal, peering.
Shaw tipped the zinc with the butt of his rifle. The Corporal swore.
“Turn back,” he said, moving up to the front of the line.
They all turned about, lost their positions and got into a bunch,
arguing and cursing.
“Get into your right places,” said the Corporal. “Get... Oh! God!”
Although there were only nine of them all told it seemed impossible
to form a line. The Corporal pushed them and threatened to take their
numbers, but only added to the confusion by his exhortations and
threats. Catching Lamont by the shoulders to put him into his place, he
noticed that the boy had no rifle.
“Where’s your rifle?” he said.
“I’ve got his rifle, Corporal,” said Gunn
“Give it to him, you daft bastard,” said the Corporal. “Did you ever
hear of a man going over the top with a servant to carry his rifle?
Gunn, I’ll report you for this.”
“What have I done?” said Gunn angrily. “It was only...”
“Don’t answer me back,” said the Corporal. “As for you, Lamont, your
mother won’t know you when I’ve done with you.”
“Chuck that, Corporal!” said Gunn with great violence. “Leave the kid’s
mother out of it.”
The Corporal thrust his face near to Gunn’s face and said, “Eh? Say
that again. D’ye know what you’re saying?”
In the darkness, the face of each appeared enormous to the other’s
eyes. They could not see one another’s eyes. But they could hear one
another’s breathing and smell one another. Gunn stood very stiffly,
with his heart thumping. The Corporal leant forward with his jaws
strained upwards, grasping his rifle with both hands, threatening.
Although Gunn did not speak and although he stood rigid in a respectful
attitude, the Corporal became afraid of the man and as a consequence
began at that moment to hate him.
Gunn also began to hate the Corporal.
Without saying anything further the Corporal moved away to the head of
the section, forgetting that Gunn still carried Lamont’s rifle, which
he had ordered Gunn to return to its owner. The men moved on.
There was silence for some time. Gunn kept grinding his teeth. He was
struggling to overcome his hatred of the Corporal, or rather, the
terrible inclination towards the commission of a certain act that was
inspired by this hatred. Lamont, clinging to his empty bayonet scabbard
for support, now appeared to him as something unpleasant which he
really detested but was forced to protect for an occult reason.
“How utterly idiotic!” said Jennings suddenly. “Nobody seems to know
where we are going.”
“No talking now,” said the Corporal. “We’re getting near his line.”
“We are like hell,” said Reilly.
“Who’s that?” said a voice from the right.
They all halted.
“No. 2 Bombers,” said the Corporal. “Is that Corporal Wallace?”.
“Yes,” said the voice. “Where are we?”
“How the hell do I know?” said Corporal Williams. “Wait there. I’m
coming over. Come on, lads.”
The bombers floundered across to Corporal Wallace’s Lewis gunners.
“I halted here,” said Corporal Wallace, “and sent a man out to look for
you, but he hasn’t come back. Did you see him?”
“No. We’re lost, I think. Whereabouts are you?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might know. Are you far from your post?”
“Can’t say. Are you far from your post.”
“I don’t know where I am.”
They began to argue about their position and about the orders which
they had received. The men of both sections, delighted at being able
to talk to one another after a separation of two days, eagerly asked
questions.
“What was it like in your post?”
“Bloody awful. Dusty Smith got back yesterday, sick. Any of your chaps
hit in that firing?”
“Yes. ’38 Finnigan got a packet in the back. Shrap.”
“Lucky bastard!”
They were indifferent to the business they had in hand and discussed
their little affairs, like gossiping old men, while the Corporals,
being in charge, shouldering all the responsibility for the
extraordinary situation in which they and their men were placed, lost
in No Man’s Land, argued about the direction of the enemy’s front line.
It was all to no purpose. In the pitch darkness, orders, officers,
Sergeant-Majors, trenches, positions and the enemy, with his rival
organisation of officers, orders, trenches and positions, all
disappeared and became meaningless, just as reality becomes transformed
in a wild nightmare. They were lost in No Man’s Land, floundering in
the mud, while the ceaseless rain fell upon them with a monotonous
drone.
Mud, rain, darkness and babbling men I
Unable to think of any intelligent solution of their difficulty, the
two Corporals decided to join forces. They marched off together in
what they considered was a new direction. They soon entered a space
which was covered with barbed wire entanglements. Appleby tripped over
a stake, hurtled forward and fell prone on the wire. He immediately
began to moan in his gloomy voice, “I’m wounded. I’m wounded.”
“The curse of God on you, Appleby,” said Corporal Williams. “What is
the matter with you now? Have you fallen into another shell-hole?”
The ground was wired in patches and the Corporal had got through the
entanglement on an open space. But as he stepped back to see what was
the matter with Appleby, he himself got caught and fell.
Now several voices cried out “Mind the wire. Look out!”
Trying to evade the wire, they nearly all got caught on it, as they
instinctively got together in a bunch for protection. Their voices rose
almost to a shout, in spite of the Corporals, who shouted still louder
than the men, ordering silence. There was an uproar, like a brawl in a
tavern.
Appleby, on being dragged away from the wire, was found to be gashed
severely along the right thigh. A man of the Lewis gun section had
his face cut. The Corporal’s right arm was slightly torn. The others
escaped with torn clothes. They bandaged the injured and set forth once
more, in search of the enemy’s front line.
Now there was no attempt at falling in by sections or moving in file.
Although the two Corporals, from sheer force of habit, still whispered
commands and threats, nobody took any notice. They had lost all
semblance of discipline, and indeed they had quite forgotten about the
enemy and about the war.
Now they only feared the darkness and the mud and the falling rain; and
they desired feverishly to reach the enemy’s line as a refuge from the
horrid wilderness in which they were lost.
Gunn got separated from Lamont during the confusion at the
entanglements. He still carried the youth’s rifle slung on his
shoulder. In his brain he carried the knowledge that he hated the
Corporal.
Now, as he floundered along through the mud, concealed from observation
by the darkness, this hatred took complete possession of him,
distorting his features, making his brain hot, stiffening his muscles,
causing his chest to expand and contract painfully, making his blood
tingle.
Suddenly another voice hailed them.
“Who’s that?”
Both Corporals answered.
“Where the blasted hell are you?” came the voice.
It was Platoon Sergeant Corcoran. They halted and waited for him to
come up. He had Corporal Tynan’s section with him.
“How the hell did you get here?” he said, angrily.
Now the Sergeant and the three Corporals began to argue. Then they all
set out together. A few minutes later they were joined by the fourth
section of the platoon. Another argument followed. Then the whole
platoon set out to seek the enemy’s front line, cursing, groaning,
falling into shell holes, getting caught on barbed wire, utterly
exhausted.
Dawn came. Somebody cried out suddenly, “See. There it is.”
They saw the enemy’s front line within a few yards of them. They gaped
at it like small boys who have for the first time reached a hill
distant from their village, and found to their amazement that it’s not
an imposing mountain but a dull hillock. This long, winding hole had, a
few hours before, contained dangerous enemies. It was a secure place,
fortified with parapets, with comfortable dug-outs, a place that
aroused envy in them, as they lay in shallow exposed holes. Now it was
deserted, a morass, half-full of débris.
The enemy had destroyed everything. Where dug-outs had been sunk deep
into the ground there were now quagmires. Planks, old iron, sheets of
zinc, pieces of concrete littered the ground.
They stepped down into this trench, with their weapons pointed
foolishly, although there was not even a rat to oppose them. They
spread out at the Sergeant’s command and then stood still. There was
nothing to do.
Word was passed along after a delay of twenty minutes.
“We are to wait here for orders.”
It still rained.
Then a groan of anger passed along the line. Sodden with rain, torn
by barbed wire, hungry, bloodshot in the eyes from want of sleep,
lousy, they suddenly became enraged with this foolish expedition in
the darkness from one hole to another; an expedition that now seemed
utterly without purpose.
It was a groan of revolt against Authority, but it had no power behind
it. It was rather like the revolt of an over-laden ass, which, when
whipped under his load by a cruel and stupid master, tosses his foolish
ears and grinds his teeth; but afterwards, groaning, with downcast
head, goes on until he falls.
CHAPTER V
It was at that moment that Gunn first allowed his hatred for the
Corporal to assert itself in action.
He was standing stiffly erect, in his torn, muddy great-coat, laden
with accoutrements, motionless, with his bayoneted rifle in his hands,
looking out across the parados of the enemy trench, towards a long
low hill, beyond which the enemy had retired. Night had now changed
into day; but there was hardly any light and the naked earth looked
still more melancholy than when it was concealed by the darkness. Its
ugliness was exposed.
When he heard the groaning of his comrades his reason suddenly
overbalanced. It was like the blow of a whip urging him to revolt.
As he listened to its sound, he had a strange vision. At first he
shuddered. Then he felt a sharp pain in his ears. He closed his eyes
and saw a dark cave in which a man was prowling about with a club. Afar
off, somewhere in the cave, seals were moaning and flopping about on
rocks and tumbling into unseen pools, while, from the roof of the cave,
brine water fell with a droning sound on slippery rocks.
He opened his eyes and shrugged himself. He heard the moaning of his
comrades and the droning of the rain, as it fell on his steel helmet
and on a sheet of zinc which lay in a puddle before him to the rear of
the trench. He heard the flopping sound of feet moving about in water.
Then he closed his eyes again and saw the man clubbing the seals as
they came towards him; smashing their blubbery skulls.
He started and opened his eyes. Impelled by a savage and irresistible
impulse, he leaned forward, rested his rifle against the sheet of zinc
and fired several times at the hill in front.
Then his brain cleared. He felt afraid and said to himself, “My God!
What’s the matter with me? What am I doing?”
At once he thought of the Corporal.
Everybody looked at Gunn and several men instinctively pointed their
rifles at the hill, thinking there were enemies in sight. Sergeant
Corcoran came running along from the right.
“Who fired that shot?” he cried, angrily.
Gunn stood still, looking to his front. He did not reply. The shock
of discovering that he was beginning to lose control of himself
had passed. Now he felt a cunning delight in something vague and
mysterious; some intention that was yet unnamed. He was laughing within
himself. He did not reply. With his flattened ear, his scarred cheek,
his thick neck, his heavy lips, his body that was like a full sack,
standing as straight as a pillar, he looked like a statue of Stupidity.
There was no sign of thought on his bronzed face, nor in his unblinking
eyes. He appeared to be exactly the same as he had been a few hours
before, standing in the outpost, advising Lamont against the shame of
cowardice and disloyalty to his soldier’s oath. But he had entirely
changed inside him. He had become subtle. Evil!
“Who fired those shots?” cried Corporal Williams, rushing along the
trench from the left.
Gunn smiled slightly without replying. But he said to himself:
“That’s him. Let him come.”
Others cried out on either side:
“Who fired those shots?”
Then, again, Gunn became afraid, as the two non-commissioned officers
approached. Again his ears pained him. He lost his subtlety. His brain
clouded. His thoughts became confused. His eyes opened wider. His lips
moved nervously. His heart throbbed violently. He felt a thickness in
his throat and he saw that some disaster was impending. Then he could
not restrain himself from crying out in a loud voice: “I fired the
bloody shots. What the hell do you blokes think you are here for? Eh?”
“It’s you again, Gunn,” bawled the Corporal, coming up with his fist
doubled. “I’ll give you firing, you cock-eyed, clumsy rookie. Is that
what you’re up to, trying to draw fire on us? Haven’t you got any
intelligence? Didn’t you hear the order?”
Gunn stared at the Corporal, breathing heavily, swaying back and forth.
His eyes became blurred and he had a curious hallucination that the
Corporal was becoming transformed into a hairy animal; a brute which he
wanted to kill.
That terrified him. He became craven, as he remembered the dreadful
consequences of such an act. He rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his
great-coat, saw the Corporal in his exact proportions and began to
blubber something inaudible.
“Silence!” yelled the Corporal. “Don’t answer me back.”
“Who fired those shots?” said Sergeant Corcoran, coming up.
“It’s Gunn, Sergeant,” said the Corporal.
“Here he is. Look at him.”
“Take his number,” said the Sergeant. “Put him in the book. Hey, you!
What’s the idea? By Jesus! I’ll put wheels under you.”
All Gunn’s fury withered away, like the ashes of a burnt fire blown
by the wind. He felt limp, empty, weak, before these two men, who
stood with their faces close to his, threatening him with their fists,
shouting foul abuse at him. It was not they who annihilated him but the
authority they represented, the great machine that stretched, covering
the whole battle front, like a sprawling colossus. Authority!
In his simplicity, he was at that moment certain that “It” could read
his mind and discover the germs of revolt that had come to life in his
mind.
The two N.C.O.’s were not so much excited by the offence he had
committed as by a desire to terrify the others through bullying
Gunn. They knew that the muttering of the men could best be silenced
by making an example of Gunn. They wanted to use Gunn as a butt
for maintaining the iron discipline which is necessary to make
soldiers suffer the unspeakable tortures and indignities of war with
resignation. They tapped him with their knuckles and with their rifle
butts. They kicked his shins, as if he were a horse, at which one
shouts “lift,” when his hoofs are wrongly placed. They pulled his
uniform about. They pulled at his rifle. They examined his ammunition
pouches, his gas mask, his haversack. They accused him of having eaten
his iron rations, of being deficient of his field dressing, of having
fouled his uniform, of having an obscene disease.
The Sergeant, being an old soldier and a drill sergeant dining
peace-time, was superior to the Corporal at this astounding business of
persecution. He was a lean, dandified fellow, with a Kaiser moustache
and bright blue eyes like a woman. His voice was as shrill and sharp as
that of a starling. Every second word he uttered was an oath or obscene.
“Look at him!” he cried. “Call himself a soldier? A farmer wouldn’t
hire him to frighten crows out of a cornfield. Take him for disorderly
dress, Corporal. Don’t answer me back. Take him for answering back,
Corporal.”
Gunn had not uttered a word.
“Stand to attention!” cried the Sergeant.
“Take him for insolence.”
Gunn had been standing to attention but had been thrown off his balance
when the Sergeant punched him violently in the chest.
Then Appleby hailed the Sergeant from the right, saving Gunn from
further persecution.
“Sergeant!” he called, “Corporal Wallace wants to speak to you.”
“All right,” said the Sergeant, moving away from Gunn, without any
emotion, as casually as if he had just stopped to say good morning to
the man. “Corporal Williams, get your men to clean their rifles and mop
up this trench. Jump to it.”
“Yes, Ser’nt.”
The Sergeant stepped briskly on his thin, elegant legs around the
corner of a traverse to the right. He called back, “Corporal Williams,
you had better keep order in your section. If those shots draw fire
on this position, you’ll be for it. The whole platoon is not going to
suffer for... All right! All right! I’m coming. What the bleedin’ hell
is the matter here?”
Corporal Williams put his notebook in his pocket and said to Gunn, “By
Jesus! Wait till I get you out of the line. You’ll be for it. I’ll make
you hop. It’s No. 1 for the duration.”
He pushed his clenched fist close to Gunn’s face and called him by an
obscene name. Gunn made no reply or movement of resistance to this
final insult. He was no longer a man, six feet two inches in height,
with a thick neck, powerful jaws and a body like a full sack, the
strongest man in that company of strong men, a fearless soldier in
battle. He was now like the dead carcass of an animal, propped up.
Now the Corporal did not fear Gunn as he had feared him during the
night when they stood face to face in No Man’s Land. He saw no hatred
and no revolt in Gunn’s eyes. He saw only the brutal submission of the
flogged slave.
He turned away, arrogantly, his mean soul exalted by the fact that he
had successfully baited and bullied into submission a man stronger and
braver than himself.
“Come on, lads,” he said. “Jump to it. Clean your rifles and
ammunition. Mop up this trench.”
“Which are we to do first?” said Reilly.
“Mop up the trench,” said the Corporal. “Be careful of anything
suspicious-looking you see lying around.”
Mechanically and subdued, the men moved about, mopping up the trench.
They had no shred of intelligence left owing to their exhaustion. They,
just wandered about helplessly, picking things up in one place and
putting them down in another place, where they were picked up again and
put down once more.
“Mop it up,” the Corporal kept saying.
He himself was almost as exhausted and stupid as the others and just
wandered, bobbing his head back and forth on his thin neck like a goose.
The men spread out, peering into destroyed dug-outs, into bays and down
communication trenches. It was dangerous to go far, as half the place
was a quagmire into which a man could sink twenty feet. Nobody spoke.
They were almost asleep, staggering, with their eyes nearly closed.
Gunn, wandering about, came upon Lamont. As soon as he had landed in
the trench, Lamont had got into a corner and sat down to rest. He had
the instinct of a born malingerer, always avoiding work and concealing
himself from the observation of his superiors. Now there was no trace
of panic in his beautiful blue eyes. He seemed perfectly at his ease.
He was gnawing a piece of biscuit.
Gunn looked at him. He felt terribly ashamed now, in the presence of
the youth, at the memory of the humiliation he had just suffered.
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“What?” said Lamont, looking up with indifference.
“Didn’t you hear the bawling off I got?” said Gunn.
“Yes! I heard something,” said the youth, casually. “Was it you they
were talking to? Why did you fire? You shouldn’t have fired.”
“Eh?” said Gunn, in amazement.
His eyes grew large and he opened his mouth. He wiped his face on his
sleeve.
“That little bastard!” he said. “He doesn’t give a damn if they put me
up against the parapet and shot me.”
“You’re a cool one,” he said, aloud. “Blowed, but you are. I get myself
bawled off over you and then you.... Blast it! It all happened over you
last night. See? I’m finished with you from now on. I’ll have no more
to do with you. What are you skiving there for? Can’t you muck in and
mop up the trench.”
Now Gunn hated the youth and was amazed at himself for having been such
a fool as to defend him, work for him and suffer the mockery of the
platoon on his account, for the past three months. This little fellow
with the damned subtlety and insincerity of a woman!
“By God!” he said, “never again will I be taken in by you. There’s
nothing the matter with you now. Last night you were on the point of...”
“What’s on here?” cried the Corporal, sticking his head around a
corner. “What are you doing here, Gunn. Did I tell you to mop up this
trench?”
Gunn moved off. Lamont got to his feet. He dropped his quizzical, sly
expression in a flash. His face became pathetic; as humbly melancholy
as that of a little barefooted street Arab, begging a penny from a
woman.
“Get out of my bloomin’ sight,” said the Corporal, “before I murder
you.”
Lamont shuddered and moved after Gunn.
“Say, Bill,” he said, “you’re not cross, are you?”
Gunn turned on him angrily, saw his pathetic face and felt sorry for
having been rough with him.
“Say, Bill,” said Lamont, “would you like a bit of that cake I got from
mother. Half of it is yours, you know. She told me to share it equally
with you. There’s some left yet.”
“I don’t want your bloody cake,” said Gunn, moving away again.
Lamont followed him.
“Where did you get your rifle?” said Gunn. “Eh? I didn’t give it back
to you. How did you get it?”
“Yes. You gave it back to me when we got here,” said Lamont. “Don’t you
remember?”
“I don’t remember,” said Gunn. “That’s queer.”
He stared at Lamont.
“My God!” he said to himself. “There must be something the matter with
me.”
“What the hell are you following me about for?” he said, aloud.
The youth stared at him in silence. His lower lip began to tremble.
Gunn swore and then, conquered by his inability to rid himself of this
incubus, Lamont, he said: “All right then. Hang on to me. Help me,
Christ! I’ll look after you.”
Suddenly a voice shrieked.
“Ha!” said Gunn. “That’s Appleby.”
Reilly, who was nearby, shaking a wickered cask that he found, looked
up and said, “There’s some left in this yoke. Wonder have they poisoned
it? It’s beer, I think.”
“Isn’t that Appleby that shouted?” said Gunn.
“Wonder would it be dangerous to touch it?” said Reilly.
“Help! Help!” cried Appleby in the distance.
There was an extraordinary note of terror in his voice.
“Oh, Christ! What has he done now?” said Friel.
The Corporal ran past. Reilly, still shaking the cask, suggested an
obscene reason for Appleby’s cry. They all laughed, except Gunn, who
stood with his head on his chest and his underlip protruding, saying to
himself.
“I must pull myself together. I mustn’t let it get hold of me.”
As soon as he had again come under the influence of his affection for
Lamont, his hatred of the Corporal returned.
“Where are you, Appleby?” shouted the Corporal on the right.
Gunn started and said aloud, “There he is.”
“Eh?” said Friel, stopping, as he passed Gunn, on his way to Appleby’s
assistance. “Who?”
Gunn looked at Friel and said fiercely, “I didn’t say anything.”
Friel looked at Gunn curiously and thought, “He’s getting queer.”
Then he passed on. Gunn thoughtlessly followed him. Now he did not know
what he was doing. There was a sharp pain at the rear of his skull.
When the Corporal reached the spot where Appleby had been posted to
mop up, there was no sign of the man. Neither was he crying out any
longer. A few minutes previously the Corporal had left him in an island
traverse, to the rear of which there was a quagmire, caused by the
demolition of a large dug-out. Then the Corporal rounded the corner
of the traverse, stepping over a heap of planks, empty casks, broken
boxes, torn sacks and wire netting. He uttered a cry of horror. In a
circular quagmire, about ten feet in diameter, he saw Appleby, sinking
slowly.
The unfortunate man had already sunk to his thighs. In his right hand
he held his rifle and bayonet. When he fell, he had reached out with
his weapon, striving to stick the bayonet into a pile of sandbags that
lay on the far brink of the hole. The bayonet had not reached the sacks
and had landed on the quagmire. There also, near the sacks, lay what
the wretched man had plunged into the quagmire to attain--two tins of
canned meat. Goaded by hunger, he had momentarily forgotten the death
trap that lay between him and his trivial booty. Instead of dropping
his rifle when the bayonet point had missed the bank, he held on to
it by a soldierly instinct, thereby weighing down his body; while, at
the same time, he reached out with his left hand, backwards, towards
the opposite bank of the quagmire. Now he was clawing the air with his
left hand. His face had gone yellow. His chest was heaving in a queer
fashion; remaining expanded for a long time and then contracting with
great speed. His eyes bulged. His lips moved in prayer. Intermittently
his back curved and writhed like that of a badly wounded animal. Hoarse
sounds issued from his throat. The fingers of his left hand opened and
closed slowly like the seemingly unguided movements of a worm tossing
its head, or a snail moving its horns.
The Corporal stood for a few moments looking at him open-mouthed, so
horrified by the sight that he could not comprehend the situation.
“What the bloody hell are you doing there?” he said. “Get out of that.”
Appleby twisted his head towards the Corporal, saw him and then moved
his lips to speak. Instead of speaking he stuck out his tongue at the
Corporal. His tongue lolled on his lower lip. His mouth fell wide open.
The tongue became still. He was speechless and almost paralysed with
fear. He was now buried to the waist, suddenly drawn down more quickly
by the movement he had made to face the Corporal.
Realising that the man was really drowning, the Corporal thrust forward
his rifle, crying, “Catch that.” At the same time he called out, “Help!
Man drowning.”
The muzzle of the Corporal’s rifle was within reach of Appleby’s left
hand. Instead of catching it with that hand, however, he dropped his
own rifle and twisted his body round so as to be able to grip the
Corporal’s rifle with both hands. The result was that he caught the gun
with violence, using the last of his strength for the effort. He pulled
it towards him and dragged the Corporal into the hole. As he fell, the
Corporal dropped the rifle, uttered a cry, turned about, gasped and
threw himself forward on his chest. He thrust out his right hand and
gripped the end of a plank that protruded from the wall of the trench.
Appleby, now making a gurgling sound in his throat, sank to his armpits.
Just then Friel, followed by Gunn, reached the brink of the quagmire.
“A hand! A hand!” cried the Corporal, seeing them.
“God Almighty!” said Friel, standing stock still.
Gunn, without a moment’s hesitation, pushed Friel aside and gripped the
Corporal’s hand.
“Help! Help!” cried Friel, standing foolishly on the bank, staring at
Appleby.
Gunn hauled at the Corporal’s hand so violently that he nearly wrenched
the arm from its socket. The Corporal groaned with pain. His body,
lying doubled up in the quagmire, with his thighs near his chest, was
sinking by the stern and had already become embedded. Gunn, in spite of
having pulled with all his strength, had not moved the body an inch.
Reilly had now come up and, immediately realising the situation, called
out to Gunn: “Just hold him. Don’t pull.”
“God!” said Friel, who still stood idly on the bank, gaping at Appleby,
as if hypnotised. “Look at Appleby. Hey! Appleby! Appleby!”
Reilly yelled into Friel’s ear, “Get your bloody equipment off. Hey!
Lads! Shaw! Come on. Hold him Gunn. Corporal Wallace! Ho, there! Keep
your head up, Corporal. Friel... your bloody... off with... I say...
equipment... equipment.”
“Give me your hand, Corporal,” said Gunn.
“No, don’t stir,” said Reilly. “Lie still, Corporal.”
“Jesus! He’s gone,” said Friel. “Look at Appleby.”
“Don’t mind him,” said Reilly. “Get off your equipment.”
No. 8740 Private George Appleby, formerly a worker in a chocolate
factory, recently a member of the bombing section of No. 2 Platoon, at
that moment ceased to exist as a living organism. He had thrown back
his head and stared at the sky with fixed eyes, with his tongue hanging
out, thick and still and yellow, on his green lower lip. Rain drops
fell into his open mouth. Then he disappeared with a gentle, sucking
sound into the morass, unnoticed except by Friel, who gaped at him in
horror. In another moment, all that was left to mark his sojourn on
this earth was a series of circular wrinkles in the slime that covered
the surface of the quagmire and five orphan children, fathered by him,
living with their widowed mother in Canning Town, London: all proudly
bearing his name, that of a hero who died in action, fighting for his
king and country.
Nobody except Friel took any notice of this hero’s death at that
moment, and when the bubble at the centre of the series of circles, at
the point where his nose had disappeared, burst and vanished, Friel
sighed with relief and turned towards the Corporal.
Gunn had taken no notice of the death of Appleby. Again he and the
Corporal were face to face as they had been the night before. Now,
however, the situation was reversed. Gunn had the Corporal’s life,
literally, in his hands, as he held him by the wrist. The Corporal,
staring in silence at Gunn’s face, wore the expression of a cornered
fox. Gunn’s eyes, avoiding the Corporal’s, had a wild look in them.
The Corporal’s danger had restored his humanity. But the touch of
the Corporal’s flabby hand excited him unpleasantly. This unpleasant
feeling was not articulate. It was like an impression received by a man
whose brain is reeling under the first assault of a heavy drunkenness;
when words and thoughts stand in a very remote corner of the mind and
are scarcely audible or recognisable. This unpleasantness was obviously
hatred, but Gunn could not fathom its meaning at that moment. He
turned away his face from it in fear, lest his eyes, meeting those of
the Corporal, might lead him at once to the disaster that he felt was
looming up somewhere in the distance.
They joined two sets of equipment and managed with a great deal of
difficulty to pull the Corporal on to the bank. He had behaved like a
brave man and a disciplined soldier. He did not relax until they had
laid him on the bank. Then, utterly exhausted, he closed his eyes, lay
back, drew in a deep breath and became unconscious. The strain on his
body, being hauled out, had almost pulled him to pieces. He was covered
with terrible slime as sticky as glue. They began to scrape the mud off
him.
Gunn, looking at him as he lay on the ground, unconscious and caked in
slime, like a Channel swimmer, had another hallucination. He saw the
Corporal’s body becoming transformed into that of an animal. At once
he hurriedly stepped aside, brushed his eyes with his sleeve and then
looked wildly at his comrades. Nobody had noticed him. “God!” he said
to himself, “what’s coming over me?”
He moved away from them. All the section was there except Lamont. Gunn
went to look for his comrade. He was now trembling. When he got round
the corner of the traverse, he halted, looked back furtively and said
to himself, “They’ll catch the two of us at it. Sure as God they will!”
He started and listened in awe to the sounds of the words he had
uttered to himself, re-echoing in his brain. “What?” he said to
himself. “What will they catch us at? Trying to escape? I must leave
that little devil. He’ll get me hung. Where is he now? I’ll go and tell
him he must chuck it and muck in with the others. We’ve got to soldier.
By God I we’ve got to stick it.”
Somebody had called out, “Stretcher bearers.”
Sergeant Corcoran, followed by Corporal Wallace and Duncan the
stretcher-bearer, came up.
“It’s Corporal Williams,” said Jennings. “He fell into a hole.”
“Appleby is...,” began Friel.
The Sergeant brushed him aside before he could finish.
“What cheer, Towny?”
The Sergeant’s voice was tender as he knelt beside the Corporal.
The Corporal opened his eyes, shook his head and tried to sit up. “One
of my men, Sergeant,” he stammered, “Appleby... in the hole. Fish him
out. I lost my rifle.”
“Yes, by God,” said Reilly. “Appleby is in there.”
The Sergeant jumped to his feet.
“Where?” he cried.
“He’s drowned,” said Friel, pointing at the series of circles, that had
now almost vanished.
“What?” cried the Sergeant. “Where is he?”
They explained to him what had happened. They all gazed at the hole.
“I saw him sink,” said Friel. “He had his tongue stuck out.”
“Then fish him out,” said the Sergeant, in his shrill voice. “What are
you blokes looking at?”
The Corporal sat up.
“I dived in after him,” he said. “Poor Appleby! Poor bastard!”
The Sergeant threw a piece of wood into the slimy pit. The mud began to
suck at the stick at once, like a living thing, dragging it down into
its gut.
“It must be fifty feet deep,” said Reilly.
“Napoo,” said the Sergeant.
“Give me a drink,” said the Corporal. “Haversack, water-bottle, rifle,
gas-mask and everything gone.”
“Get back, you fellahs,” said the Sergeant.
“Only for Gunn he was done for,” said Friel.
“Stop talking,” said the Sergeant. “Get on with your work. Jump to it.”
Going back, Shaw met Gunn, who was standing in a bay, staring at the
ground.
“What’s the matter, mate?” said Shaw.
Gunn started as if struck and turned around. His forehead was deeply
furrowed and the whites of his eyes had nearly altogether become
stained with blood.
“It’s this ---- rain,” he said. “If it doesn’t stop I’ll...”
“Keep your hair on, mate,” said Shaw. “Forget it. Don’t worry about
being bawled off just now over firing them shots. You’ll get away with
it. The Sergeant is a decent bloke. His bark is worse than his bite.”
“I’m not worrying about the Sergeant,” said Gunn, in a hoarse voice.
“Everybody has got to bawl off somebody,” said Shaw. “Forget it.”
Gunn swore and moved on.
Shaw shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “Gunn
is going off his chump. Better be careful.”
Lamont was still gnawing his biscuit when Gunn got back to him.
“What happened?” he said.
“Appleby is gone west,” said Gunn, gazing at the youth with furrowed
forehead.
“Really,” said Lamont, opening his lips, pausing, and then continuing
to chew.
“What happened to him?” he said, looking vacantly into the distance.
“Eh?” said Gunn.
The youth, still looking vacantly into the distance, stopped chewing
for a few moments. Then he continued to chew without repeating the
question. He showed no interest in Appleby’s death. Concentrating
on some purpose or fixed idea, he had become unconscious of his
“immediate” environment. His eyes were unhealthily brilliant.
Gunn scowled at him and moved away. Now he was afraid of Lamont. While
Lamont was panic-stricken and acting like a frightened girl, Gunn
had merely been irritated with the lad. He had felt superior to him,
even though he was being used as a servant and corrupted by ideas of
illegal means of escape. Now it was worse, when the lad had suddenly
become callous with a strange look in his eyes. He was more like a
woman.
The Sergeant came down the trench. Lamont went on chewing his biscuit
and gazing into the distance until the Sergeant stopped in front of
him. Then he looked at the Sergeant, opened his mouth and assumed a
pathetic expression.
“Hey, you!” yelled the Sergeant.
He paused, drew in a deep breath and then, in a low, biting voice,
uttered a long oath, which contained five nouns and nine adjectives.
Lamont trembled beneath this awesome abuse.
“I’ll dance in your guts,” said the Sergeant, “if you don’t wake up.
Hop it. Jump. Take his number, Corporal.”
He moved on.
Lamont threw away the bit of biscuit he was chewing.
“Take him, idle,” said the Sergeant, moving away.
The Corporal, even though he was trembling from head to foot as he
walked after the Sergeant, at once became rigid when he heard this
order. He dived into his tunic pocket for his notebook. His hands were
so thickly coated with slime that he could do nothing with them. He
called on Friel to take out the notebook and pencil. Friel had also to
write down Lamont’s name, number and crime report.
Gunn burst out laughing.
“That bloke is going off his knocker,” said Shaw to Jennings.
“What did I tell you blokes?” said Reilly, coming along. “Not one of
us’ll come out alive. There’s one gone already. Old Appleby. A crummy
bloody soldier he was but still.... There’s only eight of us left now.”
Gunn laughed again.
They all looked at him.
“It’s all a cod,” said Gunn.
“What is a cod?” said the Corporal.
“The whole war is a cod. I just saved you from drowning, and now you’re
taking my chum’s number. Why not take all our numbers, and be done with
it, for every crime in the King’s Regulations? All our numbers are up,
so it doesn’t matter.”
The Corporal looked at Gunn viciously. Then he walked past him without
speaking.
The men began to mutter.
“It’s not bloody well fair,” said Reilly, “when all is said and done,
taking a man’s number in the front line for next to nothing. I’m
referring to Bill and not to you,” he said to Lamont. “You bloody
little stink, you’re always getting somebody into trouble. You’re good
for nothing.”
“Let the kid alone, Reilly,” muttered Gunn.
The Corporal came back, again fully armed and equipped. The corpse of a
man who had been killed in Corporal Tyson’s section had been stripped
to equip him. He brought a fresh order.
“We’re to post sentries and drum up,” he said. “We’re going to advance
at eleven o’clock. Pass it along. Who’s next for sentry? You, Gunn.
It’s your turn. The rest can fall out and drum up.”
Gunn, still grinning, turned his face to the hill in front, laid his
rifle along the parados and covered the breach with a piece of sacking.
Lamont came over to him.
“Say, Bill,” he said. “Have you got the rations?”
Gunn turned around. Lamont had a mess-tin in his hand.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
“I’m going to make tea,” said Lamont.
“How?” said Gunn, pointing at the sky, from which rain was still
pouring. “What a hope you have!”
“The others are going to try,” said Lamont.
“All right. Take the tea and sugar in my haversack.”
Lamont opened the haversack, took out the packet and closed the sack.
Then he whispered, “What’s the matter, Bill?”
The youth’s voice was tender. Gunn looked at him. Seeing the boy’s
beautiful face, with despair in his young eyes and his pale lips drawn
tightly together to repress the emotion caused by a sudden memory of
his mother, Gunn nearly broke into tears. He wanted to say something
kind to the lad, or to take him in his arms and run out of the trench,
out of that damned, sodden, rotting place, to green earth and peace.
But he turned to his front again without saying anything. And he
grinned at the hill which concealed the enemy.
“Will we eat that tin of Maconochie, Bill?” said Lamont. “I could warm
it up on my mess-tin lid.”
“Do what you like,” said Gunn.
“Would you rather I fried the tin of bully?”
Gunn made no reply.
“We have no cheese. The rats bored a hole through my haversack and ate
it.”
Gunn turned around and said savagely: “I told you to put it in your
mess-tin, where they couldn’t get at it.”
He was now determined to conquer his feeling for the boy, to cease
hating the Corporal, to become a good, obedient, thoughtless soldier
once more. He must root out the weakness inspired in him by Lamont.
“But I had the cake in my mess-tin,” said Lamont. “I couldn’t let the
rats eat the cake that... she sent me.”
“Oh, blast!...”
Gunn stopped short, on the point of cursing the boy’s mother. “Go on,”
he said. “Do what you like. Go ahead.”
The lad walked away a few yards and then stood still, not knowing how
to drum up in the rain without shelter or dry wood. The Corporal, as
usual, had seized the only shelter in that part of the trench, a nook
formed by the posts of a destroyed dug-out. His mucking-in chum, Shaw,
was already getting ready to make tea in the nook, shaving with his
jack-knife some pieces of dry wood he had found.
Nearby, Reilly, the other old soldier, stood watching Shaw out of
the corner of his eye, while he caressed the drooping ends of his
moustache. Friel, who mucked in with Reilly, came up with two barbed
wire stakes.
“These what you want?” he asked.
“Do all right, I think,” said Reilly.
He stuck his bayonet into the side of the trench, at a point where the
parapet bulged. He stuck a stake of barbed wire into the wall on either
side of the bayonet, a little higher up. Then he spread an oil-sheet
over the stakes, lacing the ends of the sheet around them. He hung a
mess tin on the bayonet. Then he begged a piece of dry wood from Shaw.
At that moment, McDonald, who had dug a hole in the side of the parapet
with his entrenching tool and was now rummaging for his rations,
suddenly cried out, with great violence, “Well, I deserve what I got
for letting that bloody fool keep our rations. Now he’s gone and
drowned himself and they’re drowned with him.”
“What are you talking about?” said the Corporal, who sat near Shaw,
scraping the mud off his uniform with his jack-knife.
“Appleby,” said McDonald. “He had our rations.”
“Yes,” said Jennings, in his odd officer’s voice. “He had the whole
jolly lot with him.”
“The bloody fool!” said McDonald. “Now what are we going to do?”
“Serves you right, you savage,” cried Gunn. “Is that the way you refer
to a dead comrade?”
“Look to your front there, Gunn,” said the Corporal.
“God!” thought Gunn, biting his lip. “He won’t give me a chance. He’ll
make me do it.”
“By Jesus!” said McDonald. “I’ll dig him out of that hole to get my
rations.”
“You see,” said Jennings, “I’m an odd man since my mate went back sick,
so I mucked in with Appleby and McDonald. There was a tin of posset
belonging to me personally.”
“What about me?” shouted McDonald, his ape-like face writhing with
passion. “There was a sack-full of grub, including three tins of French
bully we found in a dug-out on fatigue yesterday. All the bloody
trouble I got digging the b---- up is gone for nothing. I’m going to
get it though.”
He set off towards the traverse where Appleby got drowned.
“Come back, you mad glutton,” said the Corporal. “I’ll give you a drop
of tea, if there’s any left.”
McDonald came back.
“What’s the good of tea?” said McDonald. “I wish I had eaten that
French bully when I got it.”
“Well! You ate four tins of it,” said Reilly. “Blimme! I saw him
digging into it like a savage, sitting beside the stinking corpse.
You’d be tied up for duration if an officer saw you. Come here. Give me
that dry wood you got, and muck in with us.”
“Get busy, lad,” said Shaw to Lamont.
“Ain’t you going to drum up?”
Shaw had already lit a fire under his mess tin. Lamont was standing by
watching him.
“He’s waiting for his mother to come and do it for him,” said the
Corporal. “You needn’t expect me to feed you. I’m not your father.”
Lamont winced at the reference to his mother. Gunn shuddered and
ground his teeth, staring at the hill.
“He’ll make me do it,” he said.
Now the sound of the Corporal’s voice hurt his nerves, like a finger
nail being rubbed against a stone.
“Come on, boy,” said Reilly to Lamont. “Bring your mess tin over here.
There’s room for it on this bayonet. Chip some slivers. Get out your
knife.”
They started a fire under the two mess-tins, with the wood McDonald had
foraged.
McDonald, Jennings, Friel and Lamont were now gathered around Reilly,
while Shaw and the Corporal sat apart. The Corporal got jealous of
Reilly ordering the men about and taking them under his protection.
“I suppose, Reilly,” he said, “you think you’re a hell of a fellow now,
being the father of rookies.”
“There he is again,” said Gunn to himself.
“He can let nothing alone.”
“I’m no more a rookie than you are, Corporal,” said McDonald, always
eager to take offence. “Trouble is that you’re a rookie as a Corporal.
In Corporal Wallace’s section....”
“What’s your number?” cried the Corporal, furiously angry.
“Before you came up,” said McDonald. “You can’t crime me for what I
didn’t say.”
“Eh?” said the Corporal.
“I didn’t say it,” said McDonald.
“What didn’t you say?” said the Corporal. “You did say it.”
“What did I say?” said McDonald. “Ask Reilly if I said it.”
McDonald always got out of an argument by infecting his opponent
with the confusion of his own stupidity. His mind had neither a
beginning nor an end. It was a circle. The Corporal swore at him and
became silent, conscious that he had been put to shame in front of
his section, conscious that his men had no respect for him and that
they were comparing him unfavourably in their minds and in their
conversation with Corporal Wallace.
Corporal Wallace was the most popular N.C.O. in the company. All his
men lived in a spirit of complete friendship with him. He got all the
intelligent and well-mannered recruits, whereas every “tough” was
ushered into the bombing section. It was the resting place of N.C.O.’s
who had been reduced to the ranks and of recruits who had to be
“broken in” with an iron hand. In the bombing section men were always
being crimed and everybody was at loggerheads with his comrades and
with his Corporal. There was a saying in the company: “Stand to your
kits. Here comes one of Corporal Williams’ bombers.” Yet every man in
the section, except Lamont, wore a ribbon on his tunic.
Suddenly Gunn, on sentry, cried out, “Christ! Look at the cavalry!”
Everybody jumped up, as excited as if the miracle of the loaves and
fishes was being performed in No Man’s Land within their reach; all
except Shaw, whose mess tin was almost boiling.
“Where?” said the Corporal.
“There, on the left. See?”
“I declare to God they are,” said Reilly. “Horses.”
“Never see horses before?” said Shaw, puffing at his fire.
“But what on earth are they doing here?” said Jennings.
“God only knows!” said Reilly. “Probably a circus going to start. The
war mustn’t be paying, so they’re going to turn it into a circus.”
“They must be circus horses,” said Friel, “to be able to come up over
the duck-boards.”
They all gaped in wonder at the horses, which looked like skeletons,
dimly outlined against the horizon on the left, with their cloaked
riders stooping forward from the rain. They moved very slowly in a
line, staggering through shell-holes, slipping in the mud and rearing.
“Can you beat that for lunacy?” said the Corporal. “What crazy fool
sent those horses up here?”
“Oh! some mad fool,” said Reilly. “Pay no heed to anything you see
happening in this war. Ha! Now they’ll get it.”
There was a rattle of machine gun fire. A rider threw up his hands.
His mount reared and shook its head, pawing the air with one fore-leg,
while the other leg hung limply. Then both rider and horse disappeared,
falling backwards into the mud. The other horses turned and tried to
gallop back. It was impossible for them to gallop. They all seemed
to have their spines injured by the way they sprawled, with their
legs spread out. Several of them got hit and came down. The others
disappeared. The machine-gun ceased fire.
“Fine bloody polo game that was,” said Jennings.
“Jerry is there yet all right,” said the Corporal. “The war is not
over.”
“Hurrah!” said Shaw. “She’s on the boil, Corporal.”
“Warm the tin of pork an’ beans,” said the Corporal. “Much rooty left?”
“Curse and blast it!” said Reilly, rushing back to his mess tin. “The
fire is gone out while we were looking at those horses. Come on, lads.
Chips. Chips.”
Jennings, McDonald, Lamont and Reilly gathered around the tiny fire
trying to restore it to life. The Corporal and Shaw began to eat their
breakfast. Gunn, on sentry, smelt the Corporal’s breakfast and became
terribly excited. He could hear the Corporal making noises as he ate.
Looking around, he saw the Corporal stuffing bread, pork, beans and
tea into his mouth with great rapidity, and then swallowing them all
ravenously and filling his mouth afresh with bread, pork, beans and
tea, before the first mouthful had gone down his throat.
“Christ! How I hate him!” said Gunn to himself, as he turned to his
front.
Then he became aware of his own body, with that painfully vivid
consciousness which is nearly always present in a sensitive,
intelligent being and leads to refinement of thought and conduct, but
which is almost entirely alien to a strong, stupid person. When it
strikes the latter it causes a dangerous ferment that leads invariably
to ill-considered violence.
Gunn felt something, actually alive, leaping against his ribs and
against the walls of his stomach, struggling to break forth.
“Look out! Oh, God Almighty!”
It was Reilly who had shouted. In their excitement, the men feeding the
fire under the mess-tins had paid no attention to the rain-water that
was gathering on the oil-sheet overhead. The oil-sheet had sagged down
in the middle, laden with water. Now it fell, dragging the stakes and
the bayonet with it. The mess-tins overturned. There was a sizzling
sound and an acrid smell of wet ashes. McDonald’s hand was burned as he
held fresh slivers to the flames.
All gaped. The Corporal laughed.
“Now,” he cried, taunting Reilly. “What price old soldiers?”
Reilly, undefeated, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Could I use your
fire, ’20?”
“No time now,” said the Corporal. “Get your rifles clean.”
Gunn’s eyes glittered.
The others looked at one another, speechless with misery. This spilling
of two quarts of hot water was a greater disaster to each of them than
the loss of an eye. It was the last straw in the load of misery that
overwhelmed them.
A look of despair came into their eyes. Gunn, looking from one to
the other of them, felt a black joy at the despair in their eyes. It
fortified his growing purpose.
“I hate him! I hate him,” he repeated.
His mind had now taken the shape of a glass ball, in the interior of
which there are pictures. The ball expanded and contracted. Expanded,
it contained a picture of the whole army, from the Commander-in-Chief
with his staff, right down the ranks of Authority, to the great
nameless, numbered multitude of men like himself, who lay hungry and
wet and covered with mud in holes, DOOMED TO DIE. Contracted, he saw in
it only the Corporal and himself.
The Corporal was a grinning brute. He himself was a savage man with a
club.
Lamont came over and whispered, “Might as well have a piece of this
cake, Bill.”
Gunn swallowed a lump in his throat, looked into the youth’s DEAD eyes,
and muttered tenderly, “Stick to me, kid. And, by God! If anything
happens to you.... D’ye hear?”
CHAPTER VI
The rain ceased about ten o’clock. The sky grew clear. The battle-front
was still silent. The men caught sight of a green slope, afar off on
the left, beyond a hollow.
“Look,” said Jennings, “there’s grass there. Astonishing.”
With the exception of Lamont, none of them had seen a blade of grass
for five months.
“By Christ!” said Reilly, “the next thing we’ll see is a woman.”
They became quite cheerful at the sight of green grass.
“Listen!” cried McDonald, “that’s a bird singing.”
“Yes!” said Friel. “It’s a lark. My God! that’s open country out there.
That’s the end of the desert.”
They all looked at the green grass and listened to the lark singing.
The sky was becoming blue and clear. Was the nightmare over? Was peace
coming?
That most demoralising thought brought fever to their blood.
Then Reilly brought them back to gloomy reality by saying, “That’s a
bad sign. We’re for it, lads. It’s unlucky to hear a bird singing in No
Man’s Land.”
Now their faces became drawn and their eyes narrowed as they listened
to the eerie singing of the lark in No Man’s Land.
“There are Jerries moving up that slope,” said Gunn. “Where’s our
bloody artillery?”
“They’re on the run,” said the Corporal.
“Like hell they are,” said Reilly. “That’s a gun they are dragging.
They’re going to pitch their tents there on dry land. I see their idea.”
“What?” said McDonald.
“Why!” said Reilly, “they’ll get us to follow them over this mud. It’s
a good place for a graveyard. Cheap. Look how Appleby went down. We’re
done for.”
“Ha!” said Gunn.
A sharp boom came from the rear, followed by another and still another.
Overhead, three shells passed whining and burst with a loud crash in
the green field where the enemy was moving. The earth spouted up in
three fountains where they fell.
“See them run!” cried the Corporal. “Ha! that got them. See the
stretcher-bearers, coming up. Come on, gunners. Give it to the
bastards.”
Their faces shone with excitement as the guns began to fire
continuously. In spite of their exhaustion, they felt that this
tremendous booming in their rear and the huge projectiles that went
whining over their heads towards the enemy were an expression of their
own power. Like skinny consumptives who are carried away by the thunder
of Nietzsche’s poetry into a belief in the superman, these hapless
wretches at that moment almost believed that the thunder was issuing
from their own mouths. They were hysterical with hunger, wet, want of
sleep, lice, terror of death.
They moved about restlessly. Their eyes assumed a tense, fierce
expression. They attained a grotesque dignity. They fingered their
weapons. Their monster was belching fire. Soon he would thrust forth
his claws, thousands of little men, covered with mud, at the enemy.
Gunn, listening to the artillery, was even more excited than the
others. Their sound exalted into ecstasy the blood lust that was
growing in him.
CHAPTER VII
Exactly at eleven o’clock, when the thunder of the guns had reached
its climax, two thousand, four hundred and forty-five men of all ranks
stepped out of their holes and walked into No Man’s Land towards the
enemy. They advanced in artillery formation, by sections.
This time, only seven men went over the top with Corporal Williams.
They were gathered about him in a bunch and he looked like the leader
of a primitive band of nomads, driven from their hole by ram, hunger,
disease or vermin, seeking a better hole. On either side, other
Corporals advanced with similar groups. There was no excitement, no
haste, no grandeur, no drums, no banners, no gleaming weapons, no
plumes, no terrifying devices, no shouting of war-maddened warriors;
just little crowds of dirty, stooping men, with ugly steel hats, gas
masks, bags of bombs.
A miserable, heat-less sun now shone in the sky. The earth seemed a
void, barren of life, the crater of a dead world; and the thunder of
the guns was no longer romantically awe-inspiring. The crash of their
bursting had become barren of power in their ears.
Suddenly, when they had advanced three hundred yards, the enemy opened
fire with his artillery. Shells began to fall in front of them.
Instinctively, they gathered closer together and shuddered. Their steps
became more brisk. Not a word was spoken. The shells fell more thickly.
They seemed to be alive, hissing as they swooped through the air. Yet
when they burst, they became almost impotent, smothered by the slime.
They reached the slope of the hill and began to ascend. Now
machine-guns opened fire to the left. They could see the hollow beyond
the hill and afar off, green fields, stumps of trees, ruined houses,
walls, roads, black railway lines. But there was no sign of an enemy;
just flashes of fire spotting the earth, which was a black crater,
scarred with holes, littered with wreckage, coated with oozing slime.
Above the roar of the artillery and the rattle of machine-guns, their
anxious ears caught the moaning of wounded men. The signal came: “Take
cover.” “Down. Down.”
Corporal Williams and his seven men threw themselves on the ground
at once and lay still, hugging the mud, unconscious now of hunger,
thirst, cold, wet, lice and other miseries, all except one, the misery
of death. As still as rabbits and with the fixed eyes of terrified
rabbits, they lay flat, while the gigantic missiles whined and burst
about them, covering them with a spray of mud. They were under cover
from bullets, lying in a crater formed by several shell-holes that had
been converted into one hole by other shells. There was a roar above
their heads, as if the earth had burst and was flying about in clashing
fragments, rebursting, revolving. The drums of their ears could not
differentiate between sounds. They were no longer afraid. They no
longer thought. They had lost individual consciousness. They had ceased
to be human.
Then a man came running across from the right, threw himself down
into their hole and called in a voice that startled them by its stern
fearlessness, “Corporal Williams!”
It was the Platoon Sergeant. They all raised their heads and stared
at him in amazement, because he had retained the power of speech and
of individual consciousness. He pointed towards the front and yelled
something into the Corporal’s ear. There was a clod of blood-stained
mud or human flesh on his moustache under his nose. Then he jumped to
his feet and ran crouching to the right.
The Corporal shouted to his men, “Come on, lads. We’re to dig in there
in front. Get ready.”
They again became afraid at the realisation that they had to rise from
the mud and become alive, in order to guide their bodies towards a
place somewhere in front, where they had to dig, exposed to this shower
of hot iron.
“It’s a massacre,” whined Jennings.
“Get ready, lads,” said the Corporal.
Suddenly, Lamont, who lay beside Gunn, jumped to his feet and dropping
his rifle, tried to run out of the hole towards the enemy.
Gunn seized him and hauled him back.
“Wait for it,” shouted the Corporal, in his excitement not
understanding the nature of Lamont’s movements.
“Now,” he shouted.
They all jumped up and ran forward. Gunn thrust his rifle into Lamont’s
hand. Then he seized him by the scruff of the neck and dragged him
along. The Corporal, running in front, threw himself down. They all
followed, dropping around him in a row. They now lay on exposed ground,
which offered only a few inches of cover.
“Dig,” cried the Corporal.
“How are we to dig into this?” yelled McDonald in an insane voice,
as he thrust his fingers into the slime and then pulled them forth,
webbed, as from a cake of kneaded flour.
Now they all babbled.
“What’s the good of entrenching tools here?” cried Friel.
“Dig in,” yelled the Corporal.
They got out their entrenching tools and began to dig.
“No use,” said Gunn, savagely driving his tool into the mud. “It’s
putty.”
“Dig, you bastards!” screamed the Corporal.
Like idiots, they all began to tear at the mud, without making the
slightest impression on the ground. It was a mass of sticky slime.
But they worked furiously, without thought, without hope of achieving
anything, merely obeying the order to drive their tools into the earth
and to pull them forth again.
Lamont struck the ground once feebly with his tool and then hauled at
it with both hands trying to draw it forth. His exhausted muscles were
unable for the effort. With the handle in his hand, he stared at the
ground and shuddered.
Gunn drove his elbow into the boy’s side and yelled, “Keep down. Make
cover for yourself.”
Lamont gasped and threw himself against Friel, who was digging on the
other side of him. He tried to crawl under Friel’s body. Friel swore,
raised himself on his knees and then seized Lamont to push him away.
Lamont crawled over to Gunn. As Friel was lying down again to dig, he
made a loud sound in his nostrils and then grunted. He fell prone,
doubled up at once and grasped his stomach with both hands.
He had been shot six times through the stomach. He began to moan.
Just then a shell burst immediately behind them. They all lay flat,
while the mud dislodged by the shell came falling down. Then they heard
Friel moaning.
“Who’s that?” cried the Corporal, raising his head.
He looked all round him and saw two things that interested him. One
was Friel, lying on his face, writhing, grasping his stomach with his
hands. The other was men running back on all sides. Somebody, far back,
was signalling, giving the order to retire.
“Retire,” cried the Corporal. “Get out of it.”
Lamont jumped up first and ran back like a deer. As McDonald was about
to follow, he saw Friel and stooped to pick him up.
“Leave him to me,” said Reilly. “Run.”
“Shouldn’t we open rapid fire,” said Shaw, “while Friel is carried
back?”
“There are no orders to fire,” said the Corporal.
“Jesus!” said Reilly. “What a bloody circus!”
Gunn and Reilly dragged Friel back into a shell-hole.
The others raced back, scattering into various shell-holes. Here it was
quiet. They were under cover from machine-gun fire, sheltered by the
hill. The shells were all dropping in front, exactly where they had
been ordered to dig in by the officers in charge.
Gunn and Reilly cut open Friel’s great-coat and tunic. He was bleeding
terribly. The Corporal dashed over from the shell-hole into which he
had dropped. Everybody was calling for stretcher bearers. Men in other
shell-holes were also calling for stretcher-bearers. Nobody came. They
tried to bandage the wound, but it was impossible to do so, as the
stomach seemed to be full of holes. On account of the filthy state of
their hands and their utter weariness, they only added to the poor
wretch’s agony without helping him.
“Where is the dressing station?” said Reilly. “We can do nothing with
him. He’s bleeding internally. His guts are smashed.”
“Where is the dressing station?” said the Corporal. “Eh?”
Nobody knew where anything was. They just gaped at one another.
“Come on,” said Reilly. “Put him on my back. I’ll carry him.”
As soon as they tried to lift him, Friel uttered a horrible moan and
clawed at them. Then he began to wriggle and a great gush of blood
issued from his stomach through the field bandages they had placed
on it. His face contorted. He bared his teeth, opened his mouth and
just when he was going to close it, Reilly thrust the handle of
his jack-knife between the teeth. His jaws closed with a snap; he
shivered, and strange gurgling noises issued from his throat.
“Stretcher-bearers, for Christ’s sake!” cried Gunn.
Friel began to make sounds like a dummy, a loutish mumbling. He threw
out his right leg and tapped the ground violently with his heel. Then
he shook all over and lay still, all except his chest, which rose and
fell slowly, at long intervals, causing a rumble in his throat. Another
stream of blood gushed forth, covering Reilly’s hand.
Reilly took away the bloody hand which he had placed on the torn
stomach to press in the bandages. “Good-bye, lad. Cheerio!” he said.
Gunn got to his feet, stared angrily at the Corporal and began to curse.
“What did you say?” said the Corporal.
Gunn raised his hand, muttered something and sat down, looking at the
ground gloomily.
The Corporal, paying no heed to him, leaned over the side of the hole
and yelled, “Keep your heads down! Stretcher-bearers!”
Shells were beginning to fall around. The enemy was getting the range
again. Friel was now motionless.
“It’s too late now,” said Reilly. “He’s gone West.”
The jack-knife was still in Friel’s mouth. Reilly forced open the jaws
and pulled it out. The jaws would not close again.
No. 9087 Private Michael Friel, formerly a constable in the Royal Irish
Constabulary, had died from hæmorrhage, following numerous gun-shot
wounds in the abdomen, received in action. He left three mistresses,
resident in Dublin, London and Liverpool.
“Where’s Lamont?” said Gunn, jumping to his feet.
He ran out of the hole, threw himself on the ground while a shell burst
and then ran on again, shouting, “Hey! Louis! Where are you?”
McDonald stuck his head out of a hole and cried, “He’s here.”
He ducked again at once. Gunn entered that hole. Lamont was sitting at
the bottom, doubled up. McDonald was cutting open a tin of bully beef.
He stopped when Gunn looked at him. Gunn glanced at Lamont and then
turned to McDonald.
“Where did you get that bully?” he said. “You took it from the kid.”
“Yer a liar, I didn’t,” said McDonald. “It’s out of my...”
He paused and looked around him furtively. He was eating his iron
rations.
Gunn raised Lamont’s head. The boy was deadly pale. He tried to smile
and then drew in his breath through his teeth. Gunn dropped the lad’s
head.
“Give us a bit,” he said to McDonald.
He now felt terribly hungry.
“Eat your own rations,” said McDonald, ravenously devouring lumps of
meat that he hauled out of the tin with his knife.
Suddenly Gunn, who had been only semiconscious from the moment that he
stepped out of the enemy’s front line trench, began to think once more.
A crowd of images and words rushed into his brain. He covered his eyes
with his hands, trying to conceal himself from the images. Then a voice
within him began to repeat: “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!”
He shuddered, took away his hands from his eyes, looked at Lamont and
began to tap the boy on the back, making a sucking noise in the corner
of his cheek, like a man making friends with a dog.
“Hey!” said McDonald. “What are you doing?”
Gunn looked up.
McDonald threw away the remains of his bully beef, stood up and cried
out in a terrified voice, “Hey! Corporal!”
“Sit down,” muttered Gunn, “or I’ll run my bayonet through ye.”
McDonald ran out of the hole, leaving his rifle. He dived into the hole
where Corporal Williams was. Two stretcher-bearers had now arrived.
They were taking away Friel’s corpse.
“Gunn is gone mad,” said McDonald.
“You’re daft, yourself, you fool,” said the Corporal. “What’s he trying
on? That’s an old dodge.”
“Come and see him,” said McDonald. “He threatened to bayonet me.”
Now the enemy shell-fire had ceased again. Men were standing up in
their holes on all sides, looking about them. The Corporal, Reilly and
McDonald walked across to the hole where McDonald had been.
“Better be careful, Corporal,” said Reilly. “If he’s off his chump....”
“Don’t you worry,” said the Corporal.
Shaw and Jennings were standing up in another hole farther away.
“Is Friel badly hurt?” said Shaw.
“Gone West,” said Reilly.
“What’s the ticket now then?” said Shaw. “Where are you off to?”
The Corporal, getting afraid of Gunn as he approached, signalled to
Shaw, pointing to the hole where Gunn lay.
“What’s up?” cried Jennings.
Shaw got out of his hole, signalling to Jennings to follow him. They
thus approached Gunn from both sides, as if ambushing an enemy, with
their rifles at the high port. They arrived all together on the banks
of the hole. They found Gunn sitting on his heels, ravenously devouring
the remains of McDonald’s bully beef. He looked up at them in surprise.
His face looked calm, showing nothing more strange than the rather
disgusting expression of a half-starved man devouring food.
“What are you doing there?” said the Corporal.
Lamont looked up, roused by the Corporal’s voice. Gunn dropped the
bully beef tin and rubbed his hands along his thighs. He remained
silent.
“He’s eaten my bully,” said McDonald, jumping down into the hole.
Gunn looked from man to man, blinking.
“I thought you didn’t want any more of it,” he said to McDonald. “You
threw it away.”
“Did you threaten to bayonet McDonald, Gunn?” said the Corporal.
“I?” said Gunn. “Who said so?”
McDonald had picked up the tin and looked into it. It was empty. “He’s
finished it,” he cried in rage. “My iron rations.”
“Your what?” cried the Corporal, forgetting Gunn in the excitement of
having discovered a serious crime to enter into his notebook. “You ate
your iron rations?”
McDonald waved his hands. His ape-like face wrinkled. His teeth
chattered. He could think of no excuse to offer for the crime which his
stupidity and gluttony had exposed.
“Speak up!” cried the Corporal, jumping down into the hole.
McDonald, almost in tears, began to explain how “the bloody fool,
Appleby, went and drowned himself, with all our rations.”
“What’s your number?” said the Corporal.
Gunn looked up and saw Shaw whispering to Reilly. He knew they were
talking about him. He also knew that they thought he was mad and that
they were discussing the best thing to do with him. And he suddenly
became aware of a great cunning in himself. He became conscious of it,
_actually_ saw it in his mind (at least, he imagined he saw it, which
amounted to the same thing). In a flash, he told himself that he must
deceive them, for now at all costs he must avoid being sent back from
the line until he had done what he intended to do.
Speaking quite coldly, much more coolly than anybody else in the hole,
he said to Shaw, “Give us a smoke, ’20. I know you have a packet.”
Shaw looked at him in surprise.
“Come on, mate,” said Gunn, smiling and showing a set of flashing,
white teeth, which contrasted strangely with his coarse face. The
whiteness of his teeth made his face look cunningly evil at that
moment, instead of stupid, as it had been until then.
His face was now “strange” and inhuman.
Shaw came down into the hole, and gave him a piece of cigarette. Reilly
and Jennings also came down into the hole. Now the whole section was
there, sitting close together, all hysterical with fear, exhaustion
and shock, except Gunn who was mad.
The Corporal had forgotten to “crime” McDonald for his offence.
He was too hysterical and exhausted to execute a simple purpose.
McDonald was scraping out the tin of bully beef. Lamont, indifferent
to his environment, stared into the distance. The Corporal, suddenly
aware of his utter exhaustion, covered his face with his hands and
yawned. Reilly and Shaw, being old soldiers and properly trained, sat
motionless, without thought, just conserving their life; which is the
only proper occupation of a soldier not fulfilling an order. Jennings
scratched himself with one hand and with the other searched his pockets
for the butt of a cigarette. Gunn’s eyes glittered.
CHAPTER VIII
While they were sitting idle in this fashion in the hole, the Sergeant
appeared. He was walking casually, with his rifle at the trail. He
seemed to be in a great humour.
“Come out of your holes, bombers,” he said. “Jerry is gone again.”
They all looked up quickly and made a move to get on their feet,
startled by the Sergeant’s appearance. A soldier is always terrified
when caught sitting in idleness by a superior; even when he is entitled
to sit in idleness. But the Sergeant was in such good humour that
he forgot to abuse them for sitting idly in their hole during an
engagement.
“Is he retiring?” said the Corporal. “That true, Sergeant?”
“Yes,” said the Sergeant. “The war is all over now bar the shouting.”
The men uttered exclamations of delight. A look of awe came into their
faces.
“Are we going after him, sarg.?” said the Corporal.
“Not just yet,” said the Sergeant. “Can’t bring up the guns over this
blasted mud. That’s what the delay is about. We’re to wait here till
dark and try to bring up the rations. Nobody exactly knows what’s on.
He retired suddenly.”
Then he changed his tone, and said, gloomily, “Looks as if we’re going
to be in the line for keeps.”
Now he spoke from his heart. Before, he had spoken as a Sergeant, whose
duty it was to cheer the men with good news and restore their morale,
which had been sapped by this ridiculous operation in the mud, sapped
by lice, by mud, by rain, by hunger, by lack of faith in the wisdom of
“the blokes in the rear.”
But the men believed his lies and paid no attention to his truth. The
Corporal even forgot to mention the death of Friel in his excitement.
As the Sergeant walked away, the Corporal called after him, “Are we to
wait here, Sergeant?”
“Yes,” said the Sergeant. “Wait there.”
Now a hysteria of joy, in direct reaction to their recent hysteria of
melancholy, overtook these seven men; overtook even Lamont whose eyes
lost their fixity and began to blink, like a young girl awaking from a
swoon.
As if they said to themselves, “Hello! He’s retiring. Shells are not
falling. We are certain of remaining alive for another few hours. Let’s
make the most of them.”
The Corporal jumped out of the hole, put his rifle on his shoulder and
swaggered about, saying, “I told you blokes the war was over. I felt
it in the air. Fritz is done for. He can’t stand up to it. If we could
get up the artillery, now, we’d drive him to Berlin in a week. Keep him
going. That’s all we need.”
He sat down and tightened his puttees.
“Jesus!” said McDonald, forgetting the crime of having eaten his iron
rations through excess of hunger and the disastrous death of Appleby,
who had incontinently got drowned while carrying his comrades’ rations.
“I wouldn’t mind a scrap to-night. I hope they’ll send us on a bombing
raid. Jerry is sure to leave a lot of grub behind on his retreat.”
Reilly rubbed together his two hands, which were covered with the gore
that had flown from Friel’s lacerated belly. “You can have his grub,”
he chuckled. “I’d like to get a cart-load of them new field glasses and
stuff that the Jerry officers have.”
“Be all right getting into a good billet,” said Shaw, licking his lips.
“Wouldn’t say no to a nice fat German wench.”
Gunn kept smiling, looking from face to face.
“There’ll never be another war,” said Jennings. “You’ll never get
fellows to go on a stunt like this again. By Jove! I’ll clear out to
the South Sea Islands as soon as I get home. Lie all day in the sun,
with native women feeding me on bananas. To hell with civilisation.”
“When do you think we’ll get home?” said Lamont.
“Home?” said the Corporal. “Eh?”
The word _home_ silenced their babbling. It reminded them of an
unattainable reality which the Sergeant’s lies could not bring within
reach of their credulous minds. As when the sun emerges suddenly from
dark clouds on a spring day, shines for a few moments, making the earth
gay and beautiful and then is covered again, leaving the day still
gloomier, so they relapsed into despair. At once their faces mirrored
their despair.
Then Gunn burst forth, “It’s all a cod. I know damn well it’s a cod.
Jerry is not retiring. They’re only saying that to put us in a good
humour, after making a hash of the whole thing. What do they take us
for?”
They all looked at him and remembered that a few minutes before he had
startled them by his queerness. Lamont’s eyes again became fixed. The
Corporal, sitting above the hole, assumed his habitual expression of
cunning and suspicion.
“Who do you think you are?” he said. “If you were running the war it
would be over long ago, wouldn’t it? Eh?”
Gunn turned towards the Corporal and said in a sombre voice, “If I were
running this war, in any case, Appleby and Friel’d be alive now. These
two men have been murdered.”
The Corporal opened his mouth to say something, but kept silent. He
began to bob his head on his thin neck and he rolled the tape of his
puttee round and round his leg with great energy. Then he said: “What’s
it got to do with you? Your business is to obey orders and keep your
mouth shut. You better be careful, my lad. Understand?”
He got to his feet, told the men not to move and walked away, going in
the direction of Corporal Wallace. Gunn stood up and looked around him.
Men were moving about in all directions. They resembled a swarm of
ants that have been dislodged and are dashing about, seemingly without
guidance, trying to restore order. Gunn saw the Sergeant-Major and the
Company Commander in the distance. They were walking back towards the
rear, followed by their servants, as calm and as tidy as if they were
going on a stroll. They irritated him. He cursed at them, and sat down
again.
“Listen, mate,” said Shaw to him. “You better be careful what you say.
You might get yourself into trouble. In the army, once they get their
knife in you, they rub it in. You’ll be blamed for everything. There’s
no use trying to beat them.”
“I don’t give a damn,” said Gunn, fiercely. “Since I came out here,
I’ve done my bit. I’ve soldiered and I’ve never said a word, except
what a man might say when he has his rag out. But I’m fed up with it.
They’re not going to put the wind up me. I’ll not let him walk on
me. He’s always picking at me and my mate. I know why. Because Monty
wouldn’t share his parcels with him. I tell you this is a lousy mob.”
“The mob is all right, mate,” said Shaw.
Gunn stared at the old soldier.
“Aw!” he said. “You’re only a slave. You think because you’re an old
soldier you’re something. But you’re only a slave. A bloody machine.
Any mule could be trained to do what you can do.”
“Watch out, boy,” said Shaw, his bronzed face getting redder.
“Chuck it, lads,” said Reilly.
“Let him alone, Reilly,” said Gunn. “I’ll soon settle his hash.”
Shaw winced and veins stood out on his sturdy neck; but he controlled
himself and turned away. His sense of discipline gained mastery over
his temper.
Gunn was now in the full tide of his fury.
“Up there they’ve got it,” he said, tapping his forehead. “They can do
what they like with us. Chucking us out of our post last night, without
giving a damn what happened to us. All day they have us mucking about.
What for? Just for fun. Same way with those poor bloody horses they
sent up. What for? They don’t know. They don’t care. They’re full of
rum. By Christ! Appleby and Friel don’t care either. They’re dead now,
I wouldn’t mind if they died fighting. But there hasn’t been a shot
fired. Not a bloody shot.”
“Except the shots you fired,” said Reilly, who had been listening to
Gunn’s outburst with a curious expression of boredom and indifference
on his face. “Take my tip for it. If you start thinking you’ll gain
nothing by it. It’s dangerous work. All the jails at home are full of
people who started to think and were caught in the act. There’s a law
against it.”
“You turn everything into a joke, Reilly,” said Gunn.
“Why not?” said Reilly.
“Oh! Blast you,” said Gunn. “Blast the lot of you. Give me that tin of
Maconochie, Louis.”
Suddenly a voice began to sing in the distance, faintly, in a tone that
was excruciatingly melancholy:--
“I want to go home,
I want to go home.
I don’t want to go to the trenches no more
Where whizz-bangs always do roar.
Take me over the sea,
Where the Alleymand can’t get at me.
Oh! My! I don’t want to die.
I want to go home.”
Their heads drooped, listening to the dreary song, that agonising cry
of doomed men, waiting for death.
The Corporal came back, and said, “Two men for a fatigue party. We’re
going to dig in there in front. Jump to it, Gunn. You too, McDonald.
Picks and shovels coming up.”
Gunn jumped up and swore.
“Could I loose a button, Corporal?” said Jennings.
CHAPTER IX
At three o’clock an order came that they were to advance and dig a hole
on the far side of the hill. Corporal Williams again set forth with his
men. Now there’s only seven souls in the section.
Not a shot was fired as they trudged along through the mud. When they
crossed the brow of the hill there was no sign of the enemy anywhere.
They marched in silence, slowly, without interest. Now they were too
bored to notice where they were going or to look around them. They had
become merely figures, that moved when ordered, halted when ordered,
lay down when ordered and dug when ordered. The silence was a drug.
When they had covered the required distance the Corporal ordered them
to halt. He then walked about, choosing the best place to dig. After
consultation with Reilly and Shaw he chose a spot and ordered them to
dig. They spread out in a line and seized their tools.
But they had no sooner begun to dig than the enemy opened fire on them.
It seemed as if the cunning fellow were playing a game with them,
enticing them into a trap, firing at them when they came to a spot on
which his weapons were trained, and then retiring when he had killed a
few of them.
They lay flat on the ground while bullets whizzed over their heads.
Then the firing stopped. They waited. Corporal Williams raised his
steel hat on a shovel. Nobody fired at it.
“Snipers,” he said. “Come on. Dig.”
“Why not open fire on the bastards?” said Reilly.
“There are orders not to waste ammunition,” said the Corporal. “We may
need all we have to-night. Can’t get any up.”
“God! What a life!” said Jennings.
They began to dig rapidly. An enemy machine-gun opened fire on Corporal
Wallace’s section, which was digging a hole on the right.
“Why the hell don’t they use their Lewis gun?” said Gunn. “Is this
supposed to be a funny joke?”
“Shut your trap,” said the Corporal. “Dig in.”
“This is a funny engagement,” said Jennings. “It should be set to
music and produced as a comic opera.”
“Dig in and stop talking,” said the Corporal. “Christ!”
A shower of rifle grenades came whining through the air, almost on top
of them. They lay flat while the grenades burst. Nobody was hit.
“He’s out there somewhere,” said Reilly, with his face in the mud.
“There’s a nest of them near here somewhere.”
“Come on, lads,” said the Corporal. “Dig in.”
Again they began to dig furiously. Here the ground was firmer. After
they had removed the muddy crust of the earth, their tools worked
efficiently.
After a few minutes, Jennings ceased to dig, and called out, “Say,
Corporal, I have to fall out for a moment.”
“What’s the matter with you? Keep your head down or you’ll lose it.”
“I simply can’t wait another minute,” said Jennings.
Forthwith he unfastened his uniform and crouched like a cat on the
little hole he had scraped in the mud.
“Lie down,” said McDonald, who was beside Jennings. “See here,
Corporal, he’ll draw fire on us.”
“I simply can’t wait,” whimpered Jennings.
“Knock him down,” cried the Corporal. “What’s your number, Jennings?”
A rifle grenade whizzed and burst right in front of the post. At the
same time a machine gun opened fire on them. They lay flat. Jennings
fell forward and grunted. The machine-gun stopped firing.
“I say, fellows,” said Jennings, in a strange tone. “I say, you chaps.
Look! Do look!”
“What?” cried McDonald, raising his head. “What are you...? Holy
jumping son of.... Look at him!”
“Say, Mac.,” said Jennings, holding out his right arm, “Do you think
I’m wounded? Am I cut? Do you see any blood?”
He had thrown up his right arm to shield his face when the grenade
burst. It was hanging by a strip of skin within the sleeve of his
great-coat, shattered below the elbow. The sleeve of his coat had been
ripped to the shoulder. His hand hung incongruously downwards as he
held up his arm. Blood was pouring from the wound in a full stream. His
sleeve was becoming dark as the blood soaked through the cloth. His
trousers and underwear had fallen down about his heels. His thighs, as
thin and frayed as those of an old man, were spattered with blood. His
eyeballs protruded like those of a rabbit, whose neck has been smartly
broken. Froth bubbled on his lips as he babbled.
“Lie down, blast you!” cried the Corporal, crawling over on his belly.
“Cut that bloody sleeve, Crap. Off with his puttees.”
“Oh! I see,” whimpered Jennings. “I’m really wounded. I do hope it’s
not serious. I’m bleeding. By Jove!”
“Bloody artery is cut,” said the Corporal. “Off with his puttees.
Something to burn it... quick. Stop talking, blast you!”
They threw Jennings on the ground with violence, as he insisted
on trying to stand up. They had no means of treating such a wound
properly, so they tied puttees about his arm and lashed it double; but
still the blood gushed forth. Jennings began to rave. His face became
an extraordinary colour. Already his uninjured hand looked like the
hand of a corpse. He could not hold his head steady on his neck. At
last, Shaw was detailed to drag him back over the brow of the hill,
while McDonald hurried back to call the stretcher-bearers.
“That is three,” said Reilly in a gloomy voice after they had gone.
“What did I tell you? Not one of us’ll come out alive.”
“He’s got a blighty one, anyway,” said Lamont. “Wish I had.”
“Shut up, you bloody little ferret,” said the Corporal, wiping
Jennings’ blood off his hands on to his great-coat. “Wish you had gone
instead of him. You haven’t dug an inch. Get on with your work.”
“That’s not a blighty one,” said Reilly. “He’ll never reach the
dressing station alive.”
Drrrrr. The machine spattered its bullets through the air to the left
of them.
“The bastard is firing on the wounded,” cried Gunn. “By Christ!
somebody is going to pay for this.”
He dug furiously.
“I’m under cover now,” said Reilly. “What about a rest, Corporal?”
“Dig,” said the Corporal. “We’re not digging for cover. We’re making a
post.”
They went on digging. After a while, Shaw and McDonald dashed up and
threw themselves into the hole, followed by a shower of bullets.
“He got another packet as I was taking him back,” said Shaw. “Right
through the heart, I think. He’s gone West.”
“Did you hand him over?” said the Corporal.
“Yes,” said McDonald. “I got the stretcher-bearers. There’s been a
lot hit in No. 4 Platoon. It is just like old Jennings. He was always
getting taken short at the wrong time. Too much beer.”
“Stop talking,” said the Corporal. “Dig.”
“We’re all for it,” said Reilly, gloomily.
“I wish it hit me instead,” said Lamont, plaintively.
Gunn seized the boy roughly by the arm and whispered in his ear, “If
anything happens to you, kid, they can watch out for themselves.
I’ll....”
“Stop talking, Gunn,” said the Corporal, “Dig.”
They continued to dig. Now the hole was over three feet deep in places.
It began to grow dark. Utterly exhausted, they began to pause for
breath, one after the other. The Corporal, himself exhausted, urged
them back to work again. Now they could only scoop out a few ounces of
clay at a time, and their hands moved with the slowness of snails.
Then Lamont dropped his shovel and lay down.
“Get up and dig,” whispered the Corporal, hoarsely.
Lamont did not move. McDonald lay down. Shaw sighed, sat down and
dropped his head on his chest. Reilly swore and fell forward on his
pick. The Corporal sat down and dropped his head on his right shoulder,
mumbling, “We’ve got to dig down deeper... deeper... we got to... dig.”
He spoke like a drunken man. Gunn laughed aloud, sat down, folded his
arms on his chest and began to strike his teeth together. Reilly began
to titter.
“What’s the joke?” muttered the Corporal.
Lamont began to snore.
“I’ll bet any man five francs,” said Reilly, “that we’ll be told to
move on out of here in a minute. The whole idea is to wander around in
this mud, scratching. Nothing to do but scrape up mud. Dig, dig, dig.
Scratch, scratch.”
“Ha!” said Gunn, “I see it now.”
“What?” said the Corporal, without looking at him.
Gunn started and wiped his face on his sleeve. He looked at the
Corporal. Then he uttered an exclamation and leaned back with
outstretched hands, horrified. There was a blur before his eyes and
through the blur he saw the Corporal, not in his human shape, but
transformed into a hairy brute. He wiped his eyes fiercely and looked
again. He stopped breathing with terror. Instead of the Corporal he saw
an uncouth animal, like a gorilla, crouching in sleep. He shook Reilly
who sat next to him.
“Hey! Hey!” he whispered. “Wake up, Reilly.”
“What is it?” said Reilly, slowly raising his head.
As soon as Reilly spoke, the blur vanished from before Gunn’s eyes, and
he saw the Corporal in his human shape. He sighed with relief.
“Eh?” said Reilly. “What did you say, Bill?”
“I said to wake up,” cried Gunn in a loud voice. “Don’t all go to sleep
here.”
He was trembling and the soles of his feet itched. Now his head seemed
to be a heavy weight that lay on his neck.
McDonald began to snore.
“Wake up there, that man,” mumbled the Corporal. “Who’s that man
asleep there? What’s your number?”
They all had their eyes closed now except Gunn, who sat with his hands
clasped, rotating his thumbs, whose movements he forced himself to
watch in order to prevent himself from....
What? To his horror, he had a suspicion that if he looked anywhere but
at his rotating thumbs he would see hordes of hairy brutes wandering
about, all watching him with bloodshot eyes as they wandered about,
floundering in the mud.
Around and around, his thumbs spun, round and round one another, while
his head became heavier and heavier, a ball that spun round and round
on his neck.
He breathed ever so gently, lest the brutes might hear him.
Darkness was coming, again hiding the horror of the battlefield within
the shroud of its own eternal ugliness. But the gloom only increased
Gunn’s distorted vision. The brutes kept springing up all round him,
moving about, making strange gestures with their paws, calling on him
to join them.
His countenance was assuming the expression of a brute and his body
was becoming hard--so he thought--becoming possessed of superhuman
strength.
Heavy steps approached. Gunn, thinking they were sounds made by the
creatures of his hallucination, took no notice. Then he heard a bored
voice say, “What post is this?”
He looked up and saw Lieutenant Bull crouching above the hole. Gunn did
not speak, being only faintly impressed and not at all intimidated by
the appearance of the officer. The Corporal, on the other hand, at once
sprang from his sleep and instinctively tried to bring his fists to his
thighs in salute.
“Sir,” he said, “No. 2 bombers.”
The officer’s face was drawn and still more melancholy than on the
previous night. Although he looked well nourished and almost quite
clean, his countenance was even more repulsive than that of the
soldiers because it contained the ghost of intelligence that had died
of horror.
He still smelt of whisky and carried his club.
Shaw and Reilly, as soon as they heard his voice, began to dig. Lamont
and McDonald still slept. The officer said, “Where are the others?”
“Dead, sir,” said the Corporal.
“I see,” said the officer. “Why are those men asleep?”
He stepped into the hole and whacked the sleepers with his club,
saying, “Wake up! Wake up! You can’t sleep here. You mustn’t let your
men go to sleep, Corporal. Take their names.”
“Sir,” said the Corporal in a trembling voice. “What’s your number,
McDonald?”
McDonald, rubbing his eyes, chattered, “No. 8637 Private Jeremiah
McDonald. I lost my--eh--eh... rations, sir, when...”
“You are to move on, Corporal,” said the officer, “and occupy...”
“Sir,” said the Corporal.
The officer, without finishing his sentence, leant on his elbows
and looked out towards the enemy. He lay beside Gunn, who was now
grinning, twitching his lips and sniffing. A maniacal joy had now taken
possession of Gunn.
“Any definite idea where that fire was coming from?” said the officer.
“Yes, sir,” said the Corporal, lying down beside him and pointing.
“Just about there. Can’t be far, as they got the range with rifle
grenades.”
“Hah!” said the officer. “It’s a machine-gun nest. We must try and
capture them. You’ll probably... later... go... just about there, I
should think. Probably just the one lot. They keep moving about under
cover of that.... You’re to come along. Follow me.”
They picked up their tools and their weapons. They followed the
officer, leaving the hole which they had dug with such trouble and
where No. 11145 Private Simon Jennings, formerly an officer in the Army
Service Corps, received a mortal wound in the right fore-arm.
Now it was freezing. The earth’s surface had already begun to harden.
There was dead silence on the battle front. Stooping, they walked about
three hundred yards, until they came to a large shell hole, shaped like
the sole of a shoe. The officer pointed at the hole with his stick.
“Here you are,” he said. “Occupy this. Corporal Wallace is on your
right, over there. If anything happens, get in touch with him. Later...
I’ll let you know.... You’ll send a man for rations... later... you’ll
be warned. Good luck in the meantime. We may have to send you out to
capture...”
Again he drifted away into the gloom.
The men stepped down into the hole and gaped at it. The narrow end of
it, the heel of the shoe, was a puddle. The wide part, the thick of the
sole, was littered with refuse. It had been occupied recently by the
enemy.
“Come on, lads,” said the Corporal. “Dig in.”
Gunn burst out laughing. All looked at Gunn. They could barely see
him in the dusk. Now it was almost night. They could only see his
figure outlined against the horizon. His head was thrust forward. His
shoulders were hunched. He was looking into the distance, laughing.
They were so exhausted that they did not comprehend the meaning of his
laughter. They themselves were almost insane. But his insane laughter
goaded them into an outburst of hysteria.
“What are you laughing at, you fool?” said the Corporal.
Then Reilly, the old soldier, burst out laughing, and cried, “Take his
number, Corporal.”
“I have an awful pain in my guts,” said Lamont, dropping his rifle to
the bottom of the hole.
“I’ll give you a worse pain, Lamont,” said the Corporal, “if you laugh
like that again.”
“I didn’t laugh,” said Lamont.
“Well! Dig, then,” said the Corporal, almost in a scream, although his
voice was scarcely audible. “Dig! I say!”
“What’ll we dig?” cried Shaw, striking the side of the hole with a
pick. “It’s as hard as iron. Hear it ring as on an anvil.”
“God!” said McDonald. “We’ll freeze here. Oh! Christ! What cold! Oh! My
bloody bones!”
“We’ll never come back,” said Reilly.
“Not one of us.”
“Dig,” said the Corporal.
Gunn laughed again, and seizing the pick which Shaw had dropped, he
hacked at the side of the hole.
Then stupidly, moving their limbs like figures in a dance, with their
eyes almost closed, they began to prod the sides of the hole. The earth
rang, as if jeering at their impotent blows.
Then the Corporal cried out, “Blast it! I’m fed up. Sit down lads and
have a smoke. It’s no bloody use. Look at this hole. We go from bad to
worse. No dug-out. Nowhere to drum up. Nothing. Then they expect us to
go out on a bombing raid and capture some ---- Jerries.”
He sat down and folded his arms. They all sat down. The Corporal almost
immediately called out angrily, “Hey! Someone has to go on sentry. It’s
your turn, Gunn.”
“I’ve just been on sentry,” said Gunn.
“Then it’s your turn, McDonald.”
McDonald grumbled. He got up and laid his rifle over the edge of the
hole.
The Corporal lit a cigarette.
“Nobody else has a smoke, Corporal,” said Reilly. “How about dishing us
out one each, from that packet, till the rations come up?”
“Who said there were going to be cigarettes in the rations?” said the
Corporal. “There might be no rations.”
“The officer said there would,” said McDonald. “I’ll do myself in if
there are no rations.”
“All right, Corporal,” said Reilly. “Keep your fags.”
“Here they are,” said the Corporal, with an oath.
He struck Reilly on the face with the packet.
“Don’t do that again,” said Reilly, clutching his rifle. He was panting.
Gunn, grinning, reached over and caught the packet. The Corporal
kicked Gunn on the hand.
“Leave that alone,” he growled. “You’ll get none, you bastard.”
Gunn moved back slowly, seized his rifle, clubbed it and then rose,
very slowly, breathing loudly.
“Who’s a bastard?” he growled.
Shaw jumped up and stood between them.
“Fall in two men,” gasped the Corporal, struggling to his feet.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Gunn?” cried Shaw.
Still gripping his rifle by the barrel, Gunn stepped back and crouched
with his back to the side of the hole, beside Lamont, watching the
Corporal like an animal at bay.
“Stay close to me, matey,” he whispered.
“He’s going to attack us,” cried McDonald.
Shaw and Reilly held down the Corporal, who was trying to unfix his
bayonet, in order to use it as a dagger.
“Keep your hair on,” they kept saying.
McDonald pointed his bayonet at Gunn.
“Don’t move,” he cried, “or I’ll stab you in the guts.”
“I’m not interfering with you,” said Gunn. “Turn away that bayonet.”
At that moment a shell burst to the rear, quite a distance away. They
all ducked, although there was no danger. A machine-gun began to fire
still further away. Somebody called out, “Bombers.”
“Here,” said Reilly, standing up. “Who’s that?”
A man ran towards the hole and plunged down into it. He was one of
Corporal Wallace’s men.
“One of your men for rations,” he said, panting.
“Eh? What’s that? Rations?”
Food!
Like a wild dog, who, when he sees a strip of raw beef in an intruder’s
hand, covers his snarling teeth, thrusts forth his lolling tongue and
comes forward with limp tail, smelling, so these men, who had a moment
before been snarling at one another like madmen, became transformed at
the thought of food. Their faces shone with joy. They uttered excited
cries. They gathered around the Lewis gunner, questioning him.
He knew nothing, being as excited as they were and just as stupefied by
mud, rain, cold, lice, hunger, terror and long, aimless wandering from
hole to hole.
“Hurry up!” he said in answer to their questions. “One of you come
along.”
“I’ll go! Corporal,” said McDonald.
“Better send me, Corporal,” said Reilly.
“You go, Shaw,” said the Corporal.
Shaw at once unfixed his bayonet and followed the Lewis gunner out of
the hole. They called after him, urging him to hurry. The Corporal
rubbed his hands.
“There are only six of us,” he said, “for nine men’s rations. There
might be two men to a loaf. I know there’s bread.”
“I don’t care what there is,” said Reilly, “provided there are fags.”
They grew silent, thinking of food.
Gunn’s face now began to work feverishly. The thought of food had
disturbed his hatred of the Corporal. It had weakened him, relaxing his
muscles, causing a void in his stomach. He could not resist wanting to
fawn on the enemy who held the strip of beef.
“Say, Corporal,” he said, “can’t you give a bloke a chance?”
“Eh?” said the Corporal.
There was a heavy silence in the hole. They all peered at Gunn, again
aware that they had with them a man who seemed to be going mad.
“What have you against me?” continued Gunn.
Even though he wanted to fawn, his voice was arrogant. The Corporal did
not reply, being in doubt as to what he should say. As it were, he had
at last been stripped of his Corporal’s stripes and of his authority by
exhaustion. He faced Gunn now as man to man and was silent because he
was an inferior man. It was a struggle between two brutes, and Gunn was
the superior brute.
Lamont tapped Gunn’s arm and tried to whisper something, but Gunn
roughly brushed the youth aside.
“I leave it to any of the men here,” said Gunn. “Haven’t I always done
my share of soldiering, Reilly?”
“Always found you a good mate,” said Reilly.
“I’ve nothing against you,” said the Corporal. “I’m responsible for
discipline in this section, though.”
“When you got wounded at Loos,” said Gunn, “I carried you under heavy
fire back to the dressing station. You were whining like a dog. You had
only a bloody scratch. First thing you did when you came out of dock
was to get me No. 1. I was tied to a bloody tree for seven days.”
“You broke camp and got into a fight with a lot of Froggies in an
estaminet,” said the Corporal. “You sold your boots for Vin Blanc.”
“You always had your knife in me,” said Gunn. “Every time I did you a
good turn you hated me all the more for it. You might be drowned now
with Appleby only for me. You have your knife in my chum because he
won’t give you half his parcels. It is no damn good. It seems I won’t
be let soldier in this mob. I ain’t the sort of a bloke that gets
sour over nothing. I was doing field punishment No. 1 when I got the
D.C.M., on the canal bank for capturing six of a Fritzy raiding party
single-handed. I’ll fight my share with any man in this mob. I’ve
always done my bit. I was one of four out of the whole company that
finished the march to Arras standing up. Why can’t I be let alone?”
“I ain’t got nothing against you,” the Corporal repeated.
Reilly, deeply moved by Gunn’s speech, came over and struck Gunn on the
back.
“Forget it, mate,” he said. “See?”
“Reilly,” said Gunn, “you’re the only bloody soldier in this mob. I
hope you get out of it.”
“That doesn’t worry me,” said Reilly. “I know I’m for it, sooner or
later. I know I’m unlucky. I’ve been out since the first shot was
fired in nineteen-fourteen without a scratch. So I know I’ll get mine
shortly. But that doesn’t worry me. I’ve drunk a nice lot of beer in my
time. Had a good few tidy wenches. Something to look back on when I’m
dead. But look at it this way. Every good soldier has his grouse, but
he never lets it get hold of him.”
“To hell with being a good soldier,” said Gunn. “A good soldier means
one thing to you and me, but it means another thing to THEM. To you and
me it means a MAN. To them it means a ---- clod.”
“I’ve been through it, mate,” said Reilly. “You needn’t tell me. The
only clink I ain’t copped is the Tower. The best place to look for a
good soldier is tied to the wheel of the cookhouse cart. A bloke has
got to stick it.”
“That’s all right, mate,” said Gunn. “Don’t worry. They’ll never have
to crime me again.”
“That’s the ticket, Gunn,” said the Corporal in a friendly tone. “You
muck in with me. I muck in with you. Savvy?”
“Why are they so friendly towards me?” thought Gunn. “They are treating
me as if I were a child.”
Now he could not remember that there had been anything the matter
with him all day, or that he had done, or said, or thought, or seen,
anything odd or irregular. He was greatly worried by the soothing
manner of Reilly, who was always so cynical and utterly devoid of
feeling. He was especially worried by the Corporal’s friendly tone.
Now the four men in the post seemed to have become entirely remote and
alien to him; just as when a man is falling asleep under the influence
of ether, he hears the voices of the doctors and the nurse as voices
heard from afar, entirely inhuman.
This was a great torture, from which he could not save himself. He felt
bound, hand and foot by it. He tried to talk to Lamont; but Lamont
answered him in the same tone as the others.
The others had now become very quiet. They were whispering to one
another. Why were they whispering so quietly? He must talk to them.
“I say, lads,” he said.
“What?” said Reilly.
He could not remember what he wanted to say for nearly a minute. Then
he burst forth, “I know now who’s running this show. Up here ye want
it.” He tapped his forehead. Then he shuddered and glanced around him
furtively, ashamed of what he had said. “Why don’t they let us fight?”
he cried. “It’s this crawling around in the ---- mud that’s killing us.”
Nobody answered him. Reilly tipped the Corporal and then walked over to
the narrow end of the hole. He began to void his bladder. The Corporal
followed, leaned up against the side of the hole and began also to void
his bladder.
“Better send him back,” said Reilly. “He’s going mad.”
“Eh?” said the Corporal. “Do you think so?”
He himself was quite sure that Gunn was mad, and he had been thinking
for the past few minutes that Gunn should be sent back at once. But
now, on being advised by Reilly to let Gunn go back, his hatred of Gunn
made him oppose the idea.
He said to himself, “He won’t escape me that way.”
“He’s only malingering,” he whispered. “He and the kid have it
made up between them. He knows he’s for it when he gets back for
insubordination in the line, so he’s gamming on mad. That’s all.”
“That may be so,” said Reilly, “but I doubt it. I think he’s really
going bugs. You remember ’53 Jones, that went daft on the canal. He
killed two men before he could be knocked out. He started just that
way. He was in the same dug-out as me. Fritz shelled us for twelve
hours without a break. He began the same sort of gibberish about the
war and everything. I’d send him back, Corporal.”
The Corporal looked towards Gunn, and saw Gunn looking towards him.
“He’ll go back when I go back,” he said, “and not before. I’m not
afraid of him.”
“In that case,” said Reilly, shrugging his shoulders, “none of us’ll
ever go back. I can see it coming.”
“Talking about me?” cried Gunn, angrily.
They walked back.
“It’s all right,” said Gunn. “I can guess what you were saying.”
“I think I’m poisoned,” said McDonald. “I have an awful pain in my
guts. I ate a piece of black Jerry bread I found here.”
“There are worse deaths,” said Reilly, casually. “You’ll die soon
anyway, one way or another. I saw a fellow die of eating a feed of
dirty straw.”
“Why don’t they let us fight?” cried Gunn.
“You’ll soon get a bellyful of fighting,” said the Corporal.
“When I went on leave,” said McDonald, “I said to myself I’d spend all
day and night eating. But ye can’t eat there either. Not enough.”
“That’s right,” cried Gunn, eagerly. “You can’t get away from it.
They’ve got you everywhere, in London as well as here. They’ve got
everybody, us, Jerries, Froggies, the lousy Russians and those dirty
little Belgians. You’ll parade everywhere as well as here, full
marching order, housewife and hold-all complete. Hear that, Louis.
Don’t hide your bloody head. Face it, kid. You got to fight them. As
Reilly says, we’re all for it. Let’s have it then and be done with it.”
A cold sweat was breaking out all over his body. Red stars began to
dance before his eyes. Reilly tipped the Corporal. The Corporal
growled.
“You can’t work it that way, Gunn,” he said. “Why not try something
cleverer than that? Can’t you work a trench foot?”
“Don’t you worry, Corporal,” said Gunn, tapping his forehead. “Up here
you want it. I’ve got it now.”
Reilly got to his feet and moved about restlessly.
“Jesus!” said McDonald. “I think I have trench feet. It’s freezing like
hell. My guts are freezing too.”
“Go sick, quick,” said Reilly. “Then I’ll have your rations.”
“Christ!” said Gunn. “A General! That’s what I want. A bloody General.
Why don’t Generals come into the front line. Them are the blokes I want
to talk to. I’ll tell ’em something.”
They all looked at him again in silence. He now spoke in an exalted
voice and although they could not see his face in the darkness, they
could feel a strange force in his presence. Something alien and
terrifying had taken possession of him.
“Something the matter with my kidneys,” said Reilly, again moving over
to the puddle.
The icy ground now crackled under his feet.
“Don’t worry, Reilly,” cried Gunn. “You won’t be long now.”
Lamont had not spoken or moved for half an hour. He had surrendered to
the cold and lay at the bottom of the hole, with his head fallen on his
chest, rapidly losing consciousness. There was a smile on his lips and
he was dreaming of his home.
There was now heavy firing on the left. The enemy was firing at the
ration party. Several machine-guns were in action. Rifle grenades were
bursting. But nobody in the hole took any notice of the firing. Their
limbs moved continuously, jerking, twisting about. Their mouths and
nostrils twitched. They kept getting to their feet and sitting down
again; all except Lamont who sat very still. They could no longer speak.
When they touched one another by chance they started violently. The
slightest noise in the hole excited them, the scraping of a boot on the
icy earth, the rattle of a gun butt on a stone, a cough.
Now the sky was bright with stars. The enemy began to rake their post
intermittently with machine-gun fire. Single shots rang out, like
the popping of corks. In the distance there was a heavy roar, like a
mountain river pouring through a gorge. On the far left, a corner of
the sky was covered with a bright red arc of flame, above which rolling
clouds of smoke rose in widening wreaths. Verey lights passed through
the sky in beautiful curves and fell in streamers of fire. The earth
shone with frost.
The night was very beautiful.
CHAPTER X
Suddenly they heard voices whispering to the rear of the hole, some
distance away.
“There they are,” cried Reilly, eagerly. “That’s Shaw and Hurley with
the rations. Whist! Listen.”
They crouched against the bank, listening. The voices were a mumble.
The Corporal peered over the top. Although the night was quite bright,
he could distinguish nothing moving over the dun back of the uneven
earth. Here and there a pool of water gleamed, a coil of wire stood
out, a stake, a sheet of zinc. In the distance there was a mound,
running zig-zag: a trench. The earth was monotonously similar. All
holes, water and débris. Dead. An unroofed tomb.
The whispering went on. It stopped at moments and then there were
sounds of feet crawling over the hard earth. A Verey light was shot
by the enemy. The Corporal bowed his head and lay still. The voices
ceased. The air became as bright as by day while the streaming light
fell beyond the hole. Then the light withered, hissing. Darkness
returned. There was a rush of feet. A machine-gun began to rattle, the
bullets speeding past the hole on the right.
“They’ve copped them,” whispered McDonald.
“Hush!”
The firing stopped. Then there was a rapid rush of feet going to the
right. Then a body dropped to the earth, heavily. They could hear a
clank of metal striking the frost-bound earth. The machine-gun again
opened fire. Another Verey light came over. Brilliant light was
followed by darkness. A terrible silence.
“That was Hurley running, away to the right,” whispered McDonald.
“Where’s Shaw?”
Reilly swallowed his breath and muttered, “I’m going out to look for
him.”
“Wait a mo’,” said the Corporal. “Listen!”
They heard a groan.
“That’s Shaw,” said Reilly. “He’s hit. I’m going....”
“Wait,” said the Corporal. “Here he comes. He’s not hit.”
Peering, they saw Shaw, crawling along slowly, with a sack on his back.
He was hauling himself on his belly, using his hands and one leg. The
other leg dragged after him.
“He’s hit!” cried Reilly, jumping up to the top of the hole.
“Down!” cried the Corporal.
Another Verey light came over. Reilly dropped to the ground. The glare
of the light caught Shaw as he lay prone, like a snail, with his grub
sack on his back. His steel hat had fallen back on his neck. The
stocking cap which he wore beneath the hat covered half his skull. The
front of his skull, above his forehead, shone baldly in the light.
The light had scarcely died down when the firing began again. In spite
of that, Reilly jumped to his feet, ran to Shaw and lay down beside him.
“Are you hit, ’20?” he said.
“That you, ’48?” whispered Shaw. “Yes. Got it somewhere in the leg.
Hip, I think. Take these rations.”
Lying flat on the ground, Reilly took the sack. The machine-gun was
still firing, trying to find them. Being old soldiers they lay so flat
on the ground that their bodies hardly broke the surface, even though
they lay in an exposed place.
“I’ll pull you along,” said Reilly, “when this stops.”
Shaw ground his teeth. Then he whispered, “You go on. I’ll make my way
back. I think I got another one somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in the back. I think I’m warned for parade the
other side. I just wanted to bring up the rations.”
Reilly swore at the enemy machine gunner in a long and obscene oath.
His voice was broken. The other casualties meant little to him. They
were only war soldiers. But Shaw was an old soldier, one of the
“regiment,” part of his life; joined to him in that close brotherhood
which is more binding even than blood relationship, the comradeship of
men who are bound by oath and ancient traditions to give their whole
lives to the service of a regiment.
Lying there together on the ground, while the machine hissed at
them, as if in conscious hatred, the two men clasped hands, and were
silent for a few moments; and without thinking of it actually, the
consciousness of their past associations welled gloriously through
their beings in a wave of romantic splendour; all the pride of a
soldier’s life, the rattle of drums, the thunderous music of brass
instruments, the applause of multitudes as the disciplined companies
march past with a swaying rhythm, the singing in taverns of war songs;
battles, and after them, the parade of the survivors before the
battalion commander, who, astride his horse, harangues his men in a
voice that is harsh with pride and sorrow for the dead; all the queer,
foolish romance of a soldier’s life that only a professional soldier
can understand.
Shaw made no complaint. Neither did he cry out at his wounds, but
calmly accepted them as part of his duty. And he had crawled three
hundred yards, badly wounded, with the rations, without even thinking
that he was doing anything brave or worthy of praise. He was merely
obeying an order. His voice was steady. Only by the grinding of his
teeth did he give any sign of the torture he was suffering.
It is such men who give glory to the foul horror of war.
“Half a mo’,” said Reilly. “I’ll just take the rations over and then
I’ll...”
“Don’t worry, ’48,” said Shaw. “Take the rations. I’ll get back.”
“No. Don’t stir. Are you bleeding much?”
“Don’t worry, ’48,” said Shaw. “Go on with the rations. I’m finished
soldiering.”
Reilly picked up the sack and plunged headlong towards the hole. He
threw himself down into it. They began to question him excitedly, but
he waved his hands and muttered, “Shaw’s wounded out there, Corporal.
Got any...?”
They hurriedly procured field dressings. He dashed out again, pursued
by bullets. He found that Shaw had crawled back about ten yards and now
lay with his head and chest in a small hole, while the remainder of his
body stuck up on level ground. Reilly slid into the hole, raised the
head and looked at the face. Shaw’s lips were moving but his eyes were
fixed.
“Say, mate,” said Reilly.
Shaw answered by vomiting a quantity of blood with a horrid sound.
Then he began to shudder. Reilly laid down the head quietly. He also
shuddered. Then he began to mutter, “It ain’t right. Something wrong
here. We’ll all be wiped out. Your time has come, ’48 Reilly. You’re
for it, lad.”
He began to twist the ends of his moustache and gazed at Shaw’s dead
body, no longer feeling any emotion or sympathy. Shaw, the old soldier,
had ceased to be. That thing was only a corpse. He shook his head and
shuddered to banish a vague thought that had crawled into his mind. It
was a doubt as to the wisdom of his superiors, a doubt as to the use
of war. He brushed it aside and became thoughtless, without sympathy
for the dead, without emotion as regarded his own future. He began to
grumble in a soldierly manner about the cold.
He was getting to his feet to go back and report Shaw’s death to the
Corporal, when he heard sounds of a man approaching from the right. He
hailed the sounds. A voice answered, saying, “Corporal Wallace. Who are
you?”
Reilly answered. The Corporal crawled over.
“Who’s that?” he whispered, nodding towards Shaw’s corpse.
Reilly answered. Corporal Wallace’s strained expression only for a
moment showed signs of being concerned with the death of Shaw, by a
twitching of the nostrils. Then he looked sharply at Reilly and said,
“Tell Corporal Williams to come along with me. Where’s your post? You
blokes are going over on a raid.”
“Post’s over there,” said Reilly. “It’s only a couple of yards.”
“I’ve got to get back to my post,” said Corporal Wallace. “Tell him to
come along. See? It’s over there.”
He pointed. Then he crawled away to the right. Reilly crawled off to
the front. They crawled in different directions from the corpse of
Shaw, which had ceased to crawl and lay idle in death.
When Reilly got back, they had already opened the sack and begun to
share the rations.
“Shaw’s dead,” said Reilly.
“There’s no bread and no fags,” said McDonald.
“Is he dead?” said the Corporal.
“You’re to go over to Corporal Wallace’s post,” said Reilly. “There’s
going to be a raid. We’re for it.”
The Corporal jumped up. “Only lousy biscuits,” he said. “God! That’s
tough about Shaw. I’ve only four men now and look at them.”
“Warn the stretcher-bearers,” said Reilly. “We can’t leave him lying
out there.”
“Whereabouts is Wallace?”
Reilly pointed, showing him the direction.
“You take charge here,” said the Corporal, leaving the hole. “Don’t let
anybody touch the rations.”
He crawled out under heavy fire and twisted himself along the ground.
Gunn looked after him and swore under his breath. Reilly looked at Gunn
and suddenly got very angry with the fellow.
“I’m in charge here now, Bill,” he said. “Cut it out.”
“What?” said Gunn.
“Put a sock in it,” said Reilly. “A Corporal is a Corporal and what’s
more he’s a good soldier, even if he has his faults.”
Gunn stared at Reilly and then pointed to the huddled figure of Lamont.
“Look at my mate,” he whispered, fiercely.
Reilly looked. Lamont sat very still with his arms folded and his head
on his chest.
“Kid should have been...” began Reilly. Then he added, “What’s the
matter with him?”
“You go and touch him,” said Gunn. “See? Go and touch him. He doesn’t
know.”
“Who doesn’t know?”
“The Corporal.”
Reilly stepped back and looked at McDonald and saw the latter putting a
tin of bully beef into his haversack.
“What are you doing with those rations?”
“Aren’t they divided?” said McDonald. “I’m replacing my...”
“You go and touch him,” said Gunn, crouching towards Reilly.
There was a note of malignant joy in Gunn’s voice. Reilly began to
tremble. Then he shook himself and went over to Lamont.
“Hey, lad,” he whispered.
“He won’t hear you,” said Gunn, going on one knee. “Touch him, though.
Touch his face. Then you’ll see. I didn’t want to draw attention to him
while the Corporal was here. See? He’s better that way. Look at the
smile on his face. He was thinking of her. God only knows how he did
it or where he is now. But he’s not here. I knew he had a plan, but I
thought it was something else. He never said a word. He tipped my arm
there about an hour ago, but I didn’t spot anything. See?”
“Hey! lad,” said Reilly. “Good Christ! Is he...?”
“See that?” said Gunn excitedly. “Not a move. He can’t be touched. They
can shout as much as they like but they can’t waken him. Fire a shot
past his ear now to see can you waken him.”
“Good Christ!” said Reilly, kneeling beside the boy and putting his ear
to his chest.
“What’s up?” said McDonald, coming over.
“You touch him, then,” said Gunn arrogantly to McDonald. “Then you’ll
see. They terrified the life out of him. That’s it. It’s not the cold
that did it. It’s they did it.”
“He’s stone cold,” said Reilly. “Good God! That’s five.”
“You can’t touch him, though,” said Gunn, in an exalted voice. “She
wrote to me and said I was to look after him, not to let anybody touch
him. See? Nobody has laid a hand on him. He just sat down there and
went to sleep.”
McDonald went back to the rations and picked up a biscuit which he
began to chew.
“Leave those rations alone,” cried Reilly.
Gunn folded his arms and continued to talk rapidly. Reilly went over,
took the biscuit from McDonald and growled, “I’m in charge here.
Understand that?”
McDonald munched the piece of biscuit he had in his mouth and mumbled,
“Is he dead?”
“Every man has got his rights,” said Gunn. “And any man that takes his
rights from another man deserves to die. But who took them? A million
men can’t be killed by one man. But one man can. But may God, if there
is a God, curse and burn whoever is responsible for the pain in my
head.”
Then he sat down beside Lamont and said, “Hey! Reilly!”
“What do you want?” said Reilly.
“You can’t touch him,” said Gunn.
“Where the hell is the Corporal?” said Reilly.
The three of them were now sitting at a distance, one from the other.
McDonald’s teeth began to chatter. “Oh! My bones!” he mumbled. “Oh! my
bloody bones!”
CHAPTER XI
The Corporal came back. As soon as he entered the hole, he called out,
“Reilly, you stay here. McDonald, Gunn and Lamont are coming with me.
We’re going out on a raid. Get ready, lads.”
“Aw! Aw! Aw!” cried McDonald. “What about the rations? Is there going
to be nothing in our bellies when we die?”
“Corporal,” whispered Reilly. “Lamont is...”
“He can’t touch him now,” said Gunn.
“What?” said the Corporal, excitedly. “What about Lamont? Asleep again?
Hey! You!” He dashed over to Lamont and seized him.
“You can’t touch him,” cried Gunn, exultantly.
“Christ!” said the Corporal, dropping Lamont. “He’s stiff.”
“Five gone now,” said Reilly in a gloomy voice. “There’s something
queer about it. I say, Corporal. Half a mo’.”
“What?” cried the Corporal. “What do you want? No time now. Get ready.
Get those bombs ready. As soon as the Lewis gun opens fire.... What do
you want?”
Reilly drew him aside and whispered in his ear, “Let Gunn stay here.
I’ll go. You can’t...”
“You’re detailed, blast it,” cried the Corporal.
“But don’t you see...”
“You stay here. Your orders are...”
Gunn knelt beside Lamont and began to pray with his hands clasped. Then
he got to his feet and cried, “Come on now. I’m ready.”
Soon the Lewis gun opened fire.
“Up,” said the Corporal.
They swung out of the hole all together, ran and dropped. Reilly
stretched himself and lay flat against the side of the hole with his
rifle pointed towards the enemy.
“No bloody fags,” he said. “Nothing.”
CHAPTER XII
After their first run they began to crawl, the Corporal in front, Gunn
behind him on the right, McDonald on the left. Gunn’s eyes were fixed
on the Corporal’s back.
Gunn was now completely unconscious of his environment. His mind was
entirely concentrated on the Corporal. As he crawled, a loud voice kept
crying out within him, uttering one word: “Now.” The word appeared
before his eyes like an electric sign, in varying colours, sometimes
composed of enormous letters, sometimes quite tiny. The letters were
made of fire and he thought he belched them from a furnace within
himself. The interior of his body appeared to be full of monstrous
sound, the roaring of flames. There was also, in some remote part of
his body, very distant and faint, a chorus of birds, of many species,
singing in beautiful harmony. The whole world had changed into sound.
The sounds of his feet, touching the frosty earth, were magnified, and,
as he crawled, his body seemed to rise and fall like a boat tossed
from the crests of tall waves down into wave troughs and up again. The
earth rolled like a sea, undulating. The air rushed past his ears with
a buzzing tumult.
Now he was aware that a vast multitude of brutes was crawling with him,
tracking the Corporal. He no longer feared the brutes, but felt akin
to them and savagely proud of their hairy bodies and of their smell,
and of their snorting breath. On all sides they rose in myriads, some
enormous, some as small as ferrets, some with monstrous bellies, some
as thin as snakes; all with protruding fangs and eyes that belched
fire. All made the same sounds as they moved, a pattering of furred
paws, like the pattering of heavy raindrops on a lake.
The Corporal halted, listened with his ear to the ground and made a
sign with his hand. Gunn and McDonald halted. Then the Corporal said
“up,” jumped to his feet and ran forward with a bomb in his hand. They
followed him.
Gunn stumbled, fell, rose again and ran on.
The Corporal and McDonald jumped down into a hole, out of sight. Then
the word, “Now,” appearing before Gunn’s eyes, expanded and burst
with a crash. The sounds ceased. The flames were extinguished. For a
moment he felt terribly cold. Then he growled. Instead of following
the Corporal and McDonald into their hole, he rushed aside and dropped
into another hole. He was panting loudly. He took out a bomb from his
bag and pulled the pin. He waited, listening. The Corporal and McDonald
were about eight yards away in the other hole.
“They’re gone,” said the Corporal. “See?”
“What are we to do now?” said McDonald.
“Hush!” said the Corporal. “Listen. They’re gone back there. See?
Where’s Gunn?”
Then Gunn stood up in his hole and growled, “Here I am.”
He hurled the bomb into their hole.
“Christ!”
It struck McDonald in the face. He fell backwards. The bomb rolled to
the ground beside him. The Corporal threw himself out of the hole and
lay flat. The bomb burst, shattering McDonald’s head to a pulp, sending
his steel hat flying into the air.
“There he is now,” cried Gunn, jumping out of his hole.
The Corporal raised his head, saw Guns and then jumped to his feet. The
two men rushed at one another. The Corporal had his bayoneted rifle
pointed. Gunn carried his rifle like a club, holding it by the barrel.
He swung his weapon when he came near. The Corporal put up his weapon
to ward off the blow. His rifle was knocked from his hands. He stumbled
and fell. Gunn hurtled forward, tripped over the Corporal’s body and
fell a few yards away, dropping his rifle.
They both got to their feet at the same time. The Corporal stooped
for his rifle, but before he could catch it, Gunn was on top of him.
They fell to the ground and grappled with one another. They fought in
silence, breathing heavily, tossing about on the ground, rolling over
and over, butting with their heads, kicking and biting like animals. In
spite of Gunn’s great size and his strength, he could not overcome the
Corporal, who twisted like an eel. It was impossible to hold him.
Then, suddenly, Gunn gathered himself together and threw his whole
weight on the Corporal, pinning him to the ground. The Corporal began
to gnash his teeth.
“Now,” cried Gunn, and again the word appeared before his eyes in
letters of fire.
Then with his chest pressed against the Corporal’s writhing body, he
slowly sought the throat, found it and enlaced it with his fingers and
pressed fiercely. The Corporal began to go limp. Then he lay still.
Gunn clutched the throat for a long time after the Corporal had become
still. Then, uttering queer sounds, he began to mangle the body with
his bare hands.
Now he was really an animal, brutish, with dilated eyes, with his face
bloody.
Suddenly he got up, looked about him furtively and ran off, crouching.
He set out in the direction of the enemy, moving at a jog trot. Then he
changed direction and began to trot about in a zig-zag course, mumbling.
They began to fire at him from somewhere. Hearing the shots he halted
and uttered a queer cry, like the bellow of an animal. Then he ran on
bellowing.
A bullet struck him. He fell and then jumped up at once. He waved his
arms about his head and ran on, bellowing.
He was running around in a circle.
Then they turned a machine-gun on him and brought him down.
Riddled with bullets, he died, bellowing and clawing the earth.
Later, Reilly came with two Lewis gunners to look for the raiding
party. When they examined Gunn they found his face and hands covered
with the Corporal’s gore.
Next day, the battalion was relieved.
No. 4048 Private Daniel Reilly was the only one of Corporal Williams’
section who came back alive.
THE END
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