The graves at Frere were dug by our own men, or rather by a small
fatigue party from a regiment near by. Nearly every morning they came,
the men with the spades. There were six of them, with a corporal, and
they came up jauntily, with their spades on their shoulders and with
pipes in their mouths. They were in their shirt-sleeves, and there was
much display of belt and of unbuttoned neck. Their helmets were apt to
be stuck on their heads in informal attitudes. They were inexpressibly
untidy, and they made in their march a loose, shambling suggestion of a
procession.
They came past my tent about breakfast time, and every morning I
wondered whether the men with the spades would come, since, when they
came, I knew that a death had taken place in the night, and wondered who
it was.
As in some way symbols of death, as elements in the last services to be
rendered to the dead, the men with the spades filled me with great
curiosity. They came up cheerily, and when they reached the outskirts of
the hospital the corporal would call out to any orderly he saw: "Well,
nipper, how many have we got to dig to-day?"
When they had finished they went by my tent on their way back to camp:
still the same untidy, shambling lot; still, as a rule, smoking, and
still with the appearance of being infectiously cheerful.
I know well enough, however, that there was little cheeriness among
these men with the spades. They were dull enough in their inmost
hearts. The soldier is much impressed by a burying and by the
formalities which surround the dead. And as he knows he must not "give
way" he is prone to cover his easily stirred feelings by an attempt at a
"devil-may-care" attitude, and by an assumption of rollicking
indifference. It is, however, a poorly executed pretence, and it needed
no exceptional acumen to see that in reality no small shadow of
unhappiness followed the little shuffling procession, in spite of their
pipes and their jauntily posed helmets and their laboured jokes.
If a soldier's grave is to be dug by sympathising hands, let it be dug
by the hands of these very men with the spades.