THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY
There's a tramp o' feet in the mornin',
There's an oath from an N.C.O.,
As up the road to the trenches
The brown battalions go:
Guns and rifles and waggons,
Transports and horses and men,
Up with the flush of the dawnin',
And back with the night again.
Sometimes when our spell in the trenches comes to an end we go back
for a rest in some village or town. Here the _estaminet_ or _débitant_
(French as far as I am aware for a beer shop), is open to the British
soldier for three hours daily, from twelve to one and from six to
eight o'clock. For some strange reason we often find ourselves busy on
parade at these hours, and when not on parade we generally find
ourselves without money. I have been here for four months; looking at
my pay book I find that I've been paid 25 fr. (or in plain English,
one pound) since I have come to France, a country where the weather
grows hotter daily, where the water is seldom drinkable, and where (p. 139)
wine and beer is so cheap. Once we were paid five francs at five o'clock
in the afternoon after five penniless days of rest in a village, and
ordered as we were paid, to pack up our all and get ready to set off
at six o'clock for the trenches. From noon we had been playing cards,
and some of the boys gambled all their pay in advance and lost it.
Bill's five francs had to be distributed amongst several members of
the platoon.
"It's only five francs, anyway," he said. "Wot matter whether I spend
it on cards, wine, or women. I don't care for soldierin' as a
profession?"
"What is your profession, Bill?" Pryor asked; we never really knew
what Bill's civil occupation was, he seemed to know a little of many
crafts, but was master of none.
"I've been everything," he replied, employing his little finger in the
removal of cigarette ash. "My ole man apprenticed me to a marker of
'ot cross buns, but I 'ad a 'abit of makin' the long end of the cross
on the short side, an' got chucked out. Then I learned 'ow to jump
through tin plates in order to make them nutmeg graters, but left that
job after sticking plump in the middle of a plate. I had to stop (p. 140)
there for three days without food or drink. They were thinnin' me out,
see! Then I was a draughts manager at a bank, and shut the ventilators;
after that I was an electric mechanic; I switched the lights on and
off at night and mornin'; now I'm a professional gambler, I lose all
my tin."
"You're also a soldier," I said.
"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and
knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."
We did not leave the village until eight o'clock. It was now very dark
and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed
up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells and the long
tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks
afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even
through the haze, star-shells showed brilliant in their many different
colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a beautiful
light which bursts into four different flames that burn standing high
in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute star, holds the sky
for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote sisters from the
heavens. The English and the Germans are content to fling rockets (p. 141)
across and observe one another's lines while these flare out their
brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about five miles away; the
starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so
deceptive are they.
Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming
down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less
serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to
hospital--those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally
walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with
rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was
impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.
"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was
smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.
"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"
"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin'!"
"Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
"Got bombed out and were sent back."
"Lucky dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)." (p. 142)
"'Ad two killed and seven wounded."
"Blimey!"
"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness
swallowed up the working party.
The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we
turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to
the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats
had been given up a week before.
The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each
successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle butts
and dripping to the roadway. Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in
Kore's. We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is
lullaby in the monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed
boots on gravel.
We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered
bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way
across a wide field. The field was under water in the wet season, and
a brick pathway had been built across it. Along this path we took our
way. A strong breeze had risen and was swishing our waterproofs (p. 143)
about our bodies; the darkness was intense, I had to strain my eyes to
see the man in front, Stoner. In the darkness he was a nebulous dark
bulk that sprang into bold relief when the starlights flared in front.
When the flare died out we stumbled forward into pitch dark nothingness.
The pathway was barely two feet across, a mere tight-rope in the wide
waste, and on either side nothing stood out to give relief to the
desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low, shapeless and gloomy,
behind was the darkness, in front when the starlights made the
darkness visible they only increased the sense of solitude.
We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out
like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or
woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner
fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. Sometimes we fell
singly, again in pairs, often we fell together a heap of rifles,
khaki, and waterproof capes. We rose grumbling, spitting mud and
laughing. Stoner was very unfortunate, a particle of dirt got into his
eye almost blinding him. Afterwards he crawled along, now and again
getting to his feet, merely to fall back into his earthy position. (p. 144)
A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets whizzed past our
ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching bullets.
"Anybody hurt?"
"No, all right so far."
"Stoner's down."
"He's up again."
"Blimey, it's a balmy."
"Mervin's crawling on his hands and knees."
"Nark the doin's, ye're on my waterproof. Let go!"
"Goliath's down."
"Are you struck, Goliath?"
"No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the
flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he
had been scratched as he stumbled.
We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light Infantry.
The place was very quiet, they assured us, it is always the same. It
has become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion that it is
taking over a cushy position. By this trench next morning we found six
newly made graves, telling how six Highlanders had met their death,
killed in action.
Next morning as I was looking through a periscope at the enemy's (p. 145)
trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their sandbag line,
a man from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the trench with
creosote and chloride of lime.
"Seein' anything?" he asked.
"Not much," I answered, "the grass is so high in front that I can see
nothing but the tips of the enemy's parapets. There's some work for
you here," I said.
"Where?"
"Under your feet," I told him. "The floor is soft as putty and smells
vilely. Perhaps there is a dead man there. Last night I slept by the
spot and it turned me sick."
"Have you an entrenchin' tool?"
I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently
unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to
view, then a second; fifteen minutes assiduous labour revealed an
evil-smelling bundle of clothing and decaying flesh. I still remained
an onlooker, but changed my position on the banquette.
"He must have been dead a long time," said the sanitary man, as he (p. 146)
flung handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."
He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky. The features
were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day
before. The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point,
the lips were drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like
and vicious; the eyes were open and raised towards the forehead, and
the whole face was splashed with clotted blood. A wound could be seen
on the left temple, the fatal bullet had gone through there.
"He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the
gloves on the dead soldier's hands. "These trenches were the
'Allemands' then, and the boys charged 'em. I suppose this feller
copped a packet and dropped into the mud and was tramped down."
"Who is he?" I asked.
The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the
dead man and brought out an identity disc.
"Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers." "What's this?" he asked, taking
a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from
the dead man's neck.
"It's his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a (p. 147)
barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass,
with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of
the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little
boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather
in blossom, the turf stacks, the laughing colleens....
"Here's a letter," said the sanitary man, "it was posted last
Christmas. It's from a girl, too."
He commenced reading:--
"My dear Patrick,--I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my
lone the day I was always reading it. I wish the black war was over
and you back again--we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself
wishes it as well; I was up at your house last night; there's not much
fun in it now. I read the papers to your mother, and me and her was
looking at a map. But we didn't know where you were so we could only
make guesses. Your mother and me is making the Rounds of the Cross for
you, and I am always thinking of you in my prayers. You'll be having
the parcel I sent before you get this letter. I hope it's not broken
or lost. The socks I sent were knitted by myself, three pairs of (p. 148)
them, and I've put the holy water on them. Don't forget to put them on
when your feet get wet, at home you never used to bother about
anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry. But you'll
take care of yourself now, won't you: and not get killed? It'll be a
grand day when you come back, and God send the day to come soon! Send
a letter as often as you can, I myself will write you one every day,
and I'll pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."
We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms
of the cross which was erected over him. On the following day one of
our men went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some
flowers on it he got shot through the head. That evening he was buried
beside the Munster Fusilier.