AN ATMOSPHERE OF SHOCKS AND SUDDEN DEATH
§1
One evening, three days later, I was sitting, inconceivably bored,
in my new dug-out on the notorious Fusilier Bluff. This dug-out was
a recess, hewn in damp, crumbling soil, with a frontage built of
sand-bags. Its size was that of an anchorite's cell, and any
abnormal movement or extra loud noise within it brought the stones
and earth in showers down the walls. Indeed, the walls of my new
home so far resembled the walls of Jericho that it only required a
shout to bring them down upon the floor. In the sand-bag front were
two apertures, called the door and the window, which overlooked the
Ægean Sea. For this reason the name "Seaview" had been painted above
the door in lively moments by the preceding tenant, whose grave was
visible lower down the Bluff. I watched the night gathering on the
sea, while over my home the whizz-bang gun--that evil genius of the
place, and the murderer of Jimmy Doon--spat its high-velocity
shells.
I was alone. The C.O. of the East Cheshires, who did not seem to
have grasped that Doe and I were friends, had attached me to D
Company, which was in reserve on the slopes of Fusilier Bluff, and
Doe to B Company, which was holding the fire-trenches. The man was a
fool, of course, but what could a subaltern say to a colonel? And
Monty, too, had gone to live by himself. Finding that his new parish
was extensive and scattered, he had abandoned Fusilier Bluff, and,
choosing the most central spot, had built himself a sand-bag hovel
somewhere in the Eski Line. Struth! Everything was the limit.
I went to bed. And it was after I was deeply submerged in dreams
that I awoke with a start, for someone seemed to be telling me to
get up and dress, as there was an alarm afloat. A voice was saying:
"All the troops have been ordered to stand to, sir. There's an
attack expected. The Adjutant sent me to call you."
"Who are you?"
"Adjutant's orderly, 10th East Cheshires, sir."
"Thanks." Hurriedly dressing, I went out and found that the Bluff,
now white in the moonlight, was lined with men in full equipment.
Orders were being shouted, and telephones were buzzing.
"D Company, fall in."
"See that there are two men to every machine-gun at once."
D Company, with myself attached to it, left the Bluff and filed
through a communication trench to the firing line. Here every man
was a silent sentry, his bayonet shining in the moonlight. Doe,
whose eyes were bright with excitement, was walking hastily up and
down the company front, looking over the parapet, giving orders in a
fine whisper, and pretending in a variety of ways that he was
uncommonly efficient at this sort of surprise attack. I touched his
sleeve and asked:
"What's it all about?"
"Heaven knows! A sergeant spotted some trees waving in front of the
moon, thought they were Turks, and gave the alarm. He saw trees as
men walking. Sorry. Can't stay."
I wandered along the trench, seeing the men of my platoon properly
disposed so as to stiffen the resistance of B Company. Then I
returned for the latest news of the crisis to where Doe was
conversing with an unknown officer. They were recalling how they had
once travelled in the train together from Paddington to Falmouth,
and never seen each other again till this moment. Doe was praising
the lovely country through which the Great Western Railway
passed--Somerset, and the White Horse Vale, and the beautiful
stretch of water at Dawlish; or the red cliffs of Devon, where the
train ran along the coast. Some of the red earth of Gallipoli, he
said, reminded him of Devon's red loam.
Evidently the Turkish attack was not going to materialise. I stood
upon the firing-step and looked over the parapet. In the moonlight I
could see the black sand-bags of the Turks' front line, and the
desolate waste of No Man's Land.... Then my hand sprang to the butt
of my revolver. Something _had_ moved in No Man's Land. "Look out!"
I said. "They're coming!" just as from behind a bit of rising ground
a figure rose on to its hands and knees. I pointed my revolver at
it, and pulled the trigger. The figure collapsed, and rolled
forwards till its progress was arrested by a rocky projection, over
which it finally lay, doubled up like a bolster. As it fell my heart
gave a sickening leap, either of excitement or of fright.
At once the whole of the company front opened rapid fire. A few
things seemed to fall about in No Man's Land, and I saw some figures
pass across the moon as they scurried back to their trenches.
"Cease fire!" ordered the O.C. firing line. "Merely a reconnaissance
raid. Silly trouts, these Turks."
And Doe came up to me, saying almost enviously:
"You've killed your man, Rupert. Congratulations."
Without answering I stood on the firing-step again, and looked at
the limp form of my victim. It was dead beyond question, shapeless
and horrible.
I took my platoon back to the Bluff, dismissed it, and going up to
my dug-out door, stood there for a moment thinking. Since leaving it
an hour ago I had killed a man.
"You mustn't rest till you've slaughtered a Turk," our new C.O. had
said, for he was an apostle of the offensive spirit. "Then, if they
kill you, you'll at least have taken a life for a life. And any more
that you kill before they finish you off will be clear gain for King
George."
Not wishing to go to bed yet, I went back to the firing line, and
looked over our sand-bags once more. The body was still there,
shapeless and horrible, and as limp as a half-empty sack of coals.
§2
Some of the officers of B and D Companies were drinking together the
following day in a hole on the Bluff, when the Brigade Bombing
Officer burst in among us, and seized a mug.
"Thanks. I will," he said. "Just a spot of whisky. Well, here's to
you. Cheerioh!"
He drank half the mug, and addressed me.
"Ray, you have found favour in the sight of the General. He wants
you for his A.D.C., and won't be happy till he gets you. He thinks
you a pretty and a proper child and fairly clean. _What abaht it?_"
"Good Lord," said I. "I don't know what an A.D.C. is! What do I do?"
"Oh, see that the old gentleman is fed. And cut out the saucy girls
from 'La Vie Parisienne,' and decorate the mess walls with them.
And--and all that sort of thing."
"Go on, Ray," urged Doe. "Of course you'll be it. Put him down for
the job. I wish the old general had fallen in love with _me_.'
"I don't mind trying it," I said. "Anything for a change."
"Right," replied the Bombing Officer. "Ray, having been four days
with a company of the East Cheshires, feels in need of a change. He
desires to better himself. Now for the next point. I'm chucking this
Bombing Officer stunt. It's too dangerous. Both my predecessors were
killed, and yesterday the Turk threw a bomb at _me_. Now, is there
anybody tired of his life and laden with his sin? Anyone want to
commit suicide? Anyone feel a call? Anyone want to do the bloody
hero, and be Brigade Bombing Officer?"
Doe blushed at once.
"I'll have a shot at it.... Anything for a change," he added
apologetically.
"That's the spirit that made England great!" said the Bombing
Officer. "I do like keenness. Splendid! Ray goes to the softest job
in the Army, and Doe, stout fellow, to the damnedst. Thanks: just
another little spot. Cheerioh!"
In name my new character was that of Brigade Ammunition Officer, but
it amounted, as the Bombing Officer had said, to being A.D.C. to the
Brigadier. I was entirely miserable in it. Painfully shy of the old
general and his staff-officers, I never spoke at meals in the solemn
Headquarters Mess unless I had carefully rehearsed before what I was
going to say. And, when I said it, I saw how foolish it sounded.
And Major Hardy--who, you will remember, was our Brigade Major--used
to be unnecessarily funny about my youth, fixing me with his monocle
over the evening dinner-table and asking me if I were allowed to sit
up to dinner at home. I imagine he thought he was humorous.
Grand old Major Hardy! I must not speak lightly of him here. It is
only because I have now to finish his story that I have mentioned my
regrettable declension on to the staff.
Major Hardy had not been ten days on the Peninsula before he made
his reputation. His monocle, his "what," and his rich maledictions
were admired and imitated all along the Brigade front. From Fusilier
Bluff to Stanley Street it was agreed that Major Foolhardy was a
Sahib. Twice a day every bay in the trench system was cursed by him.
"God! give me ten Turks and a dog, and I'd capture the whole of this
sector any hour of the day or night," and his head was over the
parapet in broad daylight, examining the Turkish peepholes. It was a
common saying that he would be hit one fine morning.
The morning came. The Signal Officer and I were sitting in the
Headquarters Mess, sipping an eleven o'clock cherry brandy, and
wondering why the General and the Brigade Major had not returned
from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully
Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I
could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course,
winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep,
scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal
trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I
looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a
slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said:
"Hardy's hit. A hole in the face."
He was followed by the General, whose clothes and hands were
splashed with Major Hardy's blood. The General told us what had
happened. He had been talking to Hardy and some others on Fusilier
Bluff, when the infamous whizz-bang gun--that messenger of Satan
sent to buffet us--shot a shell whose splinters took the Major in
the face and lungs. He dropped, saying "Dammit, I'm hit, _what_,"
and was now being taken in a dying condition down Gully Ravine to
the Field Ambulance.
It surprised me what an everyday affair this tragedy seemed. There
were expressions of sorrow, but no hush of calamity. Jests were made
at lunch, and all ate as heartily as usual. "Well, he lasted ten
days," said the Brigadier, "which is more than a good many have
done."
Personally, I found myself repeating, in my wool-gathering way, the
word "Two." Already two out of the five who sat down to lunch
together that first day on board the _Rangoon_ had been killed--and,
for that matter, by the same gun. "Two." "The knitting women counted
_two_." Ah! that was what I was thinking of. The knitting women had
knitted two off the strength of that little company. Monty, Doe, and
myself were left. I wondered which of those would have fallen when
the knitting women should count "Three."
It was not difficult to prophesy. Monty, though he was as
venturesome as any combatant, could never quite share the dangers of
the men who lived in the trenches. His dug-out, back in the Eski
Line, was safe from everything but a howitzer shell. And I--ye gods!
I was comparatively secure, loafing about in the softest job in the
Army. Everything pointed to Doe as Number Three.
I thought of our unbroken partnership, and decided--as much in rash
defiance as in loyalty to my friend--that I would ask to be relieved
of my position as Ammunition Officer and allowed to return to my
battalion. The permission was granted. And oh! I cannot explain it,
but it was good to be back with my company after the enervating
experience of staff-life. And, better still, now that Doe was no
longer a platoon commander but Brigade Bombing Officer, he could
live where he liked, and had arranged to share my dug-out--that
delectable villa on Fusilier Bluff known as "Seaview." Really, under
these conditions, the Peninsula, we felt, would be quite "swish."