In the morning we made our tracks in virgin snow. It had fallen heavily
in the night, and was still falling as we turned into the trench. So was
a light shower of shell; but it blew over; and now our good luck seemed
almost certain to attend us to our journey's end.
The snow thinned off as we plodded on our way. But it had altered and
improved the trenches out of knowledge, lying thick along the top on
either hand and often half-way down the side, so that we seemed like
Gullivers striding between two chains of Lilliputian Alps. It was
nevertheless hard going in our valley, where the duck-boards were snowed
under for long stretches without a break, and warmer work in my fleece
lining than I had known it yet. My gas-mask was like a real mill-stone
round the neck; and though the other man had possessed himself of part
of my impedimenta, that only made me feel my age the more acutely.
Almost a great age I felt that morning; for nights on packing-cases in a
low temperature, and an early start on biscuits and condensed-milk
prepared with cold water, after short commons of sleep, are the kind of
combination that will find a man out. I was not indeed complaining, but
neither was I as observant as I might have been. I had been over this
part of the ground by myself the day before, on the way to my Christmas
dinner. It did look rather different in the snow, but that was to be
expected, and the other man knew the way well. So I understood, and he
emphatically affirmed the supposition on such provocation as I from time
to time felt justified in giving the voluntary bearer of my pack. It was
only when we came to some suspiciously unfamiliar landmark, something
important (but I honestly forget what) in a bay by itself, that I
asserted myself sufficiently to call a halt.
'We never passed _that_ before!'
'Oh, yes, we did. I'm sure we did. I think I remember it.'
That ought not to have satisfied me; but you cannot openly discredit a
man who insists on carrying your pack. I was too fatigued to take it
from him, and not competent to take the lead. On he led me, perspiring
my misgivings at every pore; but under a tangled bridge of barbed wire I
made a firmer stand.
'Anyhow, you don't remember _this_!' I asserted point-blank.
'No. I can't say I do.'
'Then how do you account for it?'
'It must have been put up in the night.'
I cannot remember by what further resource of casuistry that young man
induced me to follow him another yard; yet so it was, and all the shame
be mine. He himself was the next to falter and stand still in his
tracks, and finally to face me with a question whose effrontery I can
still admire:
'What would you do if we met a Hun? Put your hands up?'
We were, in fact, once more impinging upon the firing line, and by a
trench at the time, apparently, not much in use. I know it seemed long
hours since we had encountered a soul; but then it might have been for
the best part of another hour that my guilty guide now left me in order
to ascertain the worst, and I do not seriously suppose it was very many
minutes. I remember cooling off against the side of the trench, and
hearing absolutely nothing all the time. That I still think remarkable.
It was not snowing; the sun shone; visibility must have been better than
for two whole days; and yet nothing was happening. I might have been
waiting in some Highland glen, or in a quarry in the wilds of Dartmoor.
I think that particular silence was as impressive, as intimidating, as
the very heaviest firing that I heard in all my four months at the
front.
No harm came of our misadventure; it was possibly less egregious than it
sounds. A wrong turning in the snow had taken us perhaps a mile out of
our way; but a trench mile is a terribly long one, and I know how much I
should like to add for the state of the duck-boards on this occasion,
and how much more for that of a lame old duck who thought they were
never, never coming to an end! The valley of the guns was nothing after
them, though the guns were active at the time, an anti-aircraft battery
taking an academic interest in a humming speck on high. Beyond the
valley ran the road, and beyond the road the river, where we were to
have caught a boat. Of course we had just succeeded in missing it. A
homeward-bound lorry picked us up at last. And we were in plenty of time
for the plain mid-day meal at our humble headquarters in the town. But
by then I was done to the world and dead to shame. I suppose I have led
too soft a life, taking very little exercise for its own sake, though
occasionally going to the other extreme from an ulterior motive. So I
have been deservedly tired once or twice in my time; but I didn't know
what it was to be done up before last Boxing Day.
The short mile down to the hut that afternoon was the longest and worst
of all. Stiffness was setting in, and the snow so deep in the ruinous
streets; but every yard of the way I looked forward to my sheetless
bed; and few things in life have disappointed me so little. The fire was
out, it seemed, and was worth lighting first. There was a sensuous joy
about that last purely voluntary effort and delay. I even think I waited
to let my old hot-water bottle share in the triumphal entry between
blankets that were at least dry, plentiful, and soft as a feather-bed
after the lids of those packing-cases up the Line!
And it was our Christmas concert in the hut that evening: the copious
entertainment disturbed without spoiling my rest, rather bringing it
home to every aching inch of me as the heavenly thing it was. Song and
laughter travelled up the hut, and filtered through to me refined and
rarefied by far more than the little distance. Somebody came in and made
tea. It was better than being ill. I lay there till nine next morning;
then went down to the Officers' Baths, and came out feeling younger than
at any period of actual but insensate youth.