Michael was sitting in the kitchen of a French farm-house just outside
the village of Laires, some three miles behind the English front. The
kitchen door was open, and on the flagged floor was cast an oblong of
primrose-coloured November sunshine, warm and pleasant, so that the
bluebottle flies buzzed hopefully about it, settling occasionally on
the cracked green door, where they cleaned their wings, and generally
furbished themselves up, as if the warmth was that of a spring day that
promised summer to follow. They were there in considerable numbers,
for just outside in the cobbled yard was a heap of manure, where they
hungrily congregated. Against the white-washed wall of the house there
lay a fat sow, basking contentedly, and snorting in her dreams. The
yard, bounded on two sides by the house walls, was shut in on the third
by a row of farm-sheds, and the fourth was open. Just outside it stood
a small copse half flooded with the brimming water of a sluggish stream
that meandered by the side of the farm-road leading out of the yard,
which turned to the left, and soon joined the highway. This farm-road
was partly under water, though not deeply, so that by skirting along its
raised banks it was possible to go dry-shod to the highway underneath
which the stream passed in a brick culvert.
Through the kitchen window, set opposite the door, could be seen a broad
stretch of country of the fenland type, flat and bare, and intersected
with dykes, where sedges stirred slightly in the southerly breeze. Here
and there were pools of overflowed rivulets, and here and there were
plantations of stunted hornbeam, the russet leaves of which still
clung thickly to them. But in the main it was a bare and empty land,
featureless and stolid.
Just below the kitchen window there was a plot of cultivated ground,
thriftily and economically used for the growing of vegetables.
Concession, however, was made to the sense of brightness and beauty, for
on each side of the path leading up to the door ran a row of Michaelmas
daisies, rather battered by the fortnight of rain which had preceded
this day of still warm sun, but struggling bravely to shake off the
effect of the adverse conditions under which they had laboured.
The kitchen itself was extremely clean and orderly. Its flagged floor
was still damp and brown in patches from the washing it had received two
hours before; but the draught between open window and open door was fast
drying it. Down the centre of the room was a deal table without a cloth,
on which were laid some half-dozen places, each marked with a knife and
fork and spoon and a thick glass, ready for the serving of the midday
meal. On the white-washed walls hung two photographs of family groups,
in one of which appeared the father and mother and three little
children, in the other the same personages some ten years later, and a
lithograph of the Blessed Virgin. On each side of the table was a
deal bench, at the head and foot two wooden armchairs. A dresser stood
against the wall, on the floor by the oven was a frayed rug, and most
important of all, to Michael’s mind, was a big stewpot that stood on
the top of the oven. From time to time a fat, comfortable Frenchwoman
bustled in, and took off the lid of this to stir it, or placed on the
dresser a plate of cheese, or a loaf of freshly cooked brown bread. Two
or three of Michael’s brother-officers were there, one sitting in the
patch of sunlight with his back against the green door, another on the
step outside. The post had come in not long before, and all of them,
Michael included, were occupied with letters and papers.
To-day there happened to be no letters for Michael, and the paper which
he glanced at seemed a very feeble effort in the way of entertainment.
There was no news in it, except news about the war, which here, out at
the front, did not interest him in the least. Perhaps in England people
liked to know that a hundred yards of trenches had been taken at one
place, and that three German attacks had failed at another; but when
you were actually engaged (or had been or would soon again be) in taking
part in those things, it seemed a waste of paper and compositor’s
time to record them. There was a column of letters also from indignant
Britons, using violent language about the crimes and treachery of
Germany. That also was uninteresting and far-fetched. Nothing that
Germany had done mattered the least. There was no use in arguing and
slinging wild expressions about; it was a stale subject altogether
when you were within earshot of that incessant booming of guns. All the
morning that had gone on without break, and no doubt they would get news
of what had happened before they set out again that evening for another
spell in the trenches. But in all probability nothing particular had
happened. Probably the London papers would record it next day, a further
tediousness on their part. It would be much more interesting to hear
what was going on there, whether there were any new plays, whether there
had been any fresh concerts, what the weather was like, or even who had
been lunching at Prince’s, or dining at the Carlton.
He put down his uninteresting paper, and strolled out into the farmyard,
stepping over the legs of the junior officer who blocked the doorway,
and did not attempt to move. On the doorstep was sitting a major of his
regiment, who, more politely, shifted his place a little so that Michael
should pass. Outside the smell of manure was acrid but not unpleasant,
the old sow grunted in her sleep, and one of the green shutters outside
the upper windows slowly blew to. There was someone inside the room
apparently, for the moment after a hand and arm bare to the elbow were
protruded, and fastened the latch of the shutter, so that it should not
move again.
A little further on was a rail that separated the copse from the
roadway, and here out of the wind Michael sat down, and lit a cigarette
to stop his yearning for the bubbling stewpot, which would not be
broached for half an hour yet. The day, he believed, was Wednesday,
but the whole quiet of the place, apart from that drowsy booming on
the eastern horizon, made it feel like Sunday. Nobody but the fat
Frenchwoman who bustled about had anything to do; there was a Sabbath
leisure about everything, about the dozing sow, the buzzing flies, the
lounging figures that read letters and papers. When last they were here,
it is true, there were rather more of them. Eight officers had been
billeted here last week, before they had been in the trenches and now
there were but six. This evening they would set out again for another
forty-eight hours in that hellish inferno, but to-morrow a fresh draft
was arriving, so that when next they foregathered here, whatever had
happened in the interval, there would probably be at least six of them.
It did not seem to matter much what six there would be, or whether there
would be more than six or less. All that mattered at this moment, as he
inhaled the first incense of his cigarette, was that the rain was
over for the present, that the sun shone from a blue sky, that he felt
extraordinarily well and tranquil, and that dinner would soon be
ready. But of all these agreeable things what pleased him most was the
tranquillity; to be alive here with the manure heap steaming in the
sun, and the sow asleep by the house wall, and swallows settling on the
eaves, was “Paradise enow.” Somewhere deep down in him were streams of
yearning and of horror, flowing like an underground river in the dark.
He yearned for Sylvia, he thought with horror of the two days in the
trenches that had preceded this rest in the white-washed farm-house, and
with horror he thought of the days and nights that would succeed it. But
both horror and yearnings were stupefied by the content that flooded the
present moment. No doubt it was reaction from what had gone before, but
the reaction was complete. Just now he asked for nothing but to sit in
the sun and smoke his cigarette, and wait for dinner. As far as he knew
he did not think of anything particular; he just existed in the sun.
The wind must have shifted a little, for before long it came round
the corner of the house, and slightly spoiled the mellow warmth of the
sunshine. This would never do. The Epicurean in him revolted at the idea
of losing a moment of this complete well-being, and arguing that if the
wind blew here, it must be dead calm below the kitchen window on the
other side of the house, he got off his rail and walked along the
slippery bank at the edge of the flooded road in order to go there. It
was hard to keep his footing here, and his progress was slow, but he
felt he would take any amount of trouble to avoid getting his feet wet
in the flooded road. Then there was a patch of kitchen-garden to cross,
where the mud clung rather annoyingly to his instep, and, having gained
the garden path, he very carefully wiped his boots and with a fallen
twig dug away the clots of soil that stuck to the instep.
He found that he had been quite right in supposing that the air would
be windless here, and full of great content he sat down with his back
to the house wall. A tortoise-shell butterfly, encouraged by the warmth,
was flitting about among the Michaelmas daisies that bordered the path
and settling on them, opening its wings to the genial sun. Two or three
bees buzzed there also; the summer-like tranquillity inserted into the
middle of November squalls and rain, deluded them as well as Michael
into living completely in the present hour. Gnats hovered about. One
settled on Michael’s hand, where he instantly killed it, and was sorry
he had done so. For the time the booming of guns which had sounded
incessantly all the morning to the east, stopped altogether, and
absolute quiet reigned. Had he not been so hungry, and so unable to get
the idea of the stewpot out of his head, Michael would have been content
to sit with his back to the sun-warmed wall for ever.
The high-road, raised and embanked above the low-lying fields, ran
eastwards in an undeviating straight line. Just opposite the farm were
the last outlying huts of the village, and from there onwards it lay
untenanted. But before many minutes were passed, the quiet of the autumn
noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint at first, and then
quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a little brown speck coming
swiftly towards him. It turned out to be a dispatch-rider, mounted on a
motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of his horn roared westward through
the village. Immediately afterwards another humming, steadier and
more sonorous, grew louder, and Michael, recognising it, looked up
instinctively into the blue sky overhead, as an English aeroplane,
flying low, came from somewhere behind, and passed directly over him,
going eastwards. Before long it stopped its direct course, and began to
mount in spirals, and when at a sufficient height, it resumed its onward
journey towards the German lines. Then three or four privates, billeted
in the village, and now resting after duty in the trenches, strolled
along the road, laughing and talking. They sat down not a hundred yards
from Michael and one began to whistle “Tipperary.” Another and another
took it up until all four were engaged on it. It was not precisely
in tune nor were the performers in unison, but it produced a vaguely
pleasant effect, and if not in tune with the notes as the composer wrote
them, the sight and sound of those four whistling and idle soldiers was
in tune with the air of security of Sunday morning.
Something far down the road caught Michael’s eye, some moving line
of brown wagons. As they came nearer he saw that they were the
motor-ambulances of the Red Cross, moving slowly along the ruts and
holes which the traffic had worn, so that the occupants should suffer
as little jolting as was possible. They carried no doubt the wounded who
had been taken from the trenches last night, and now, after calling
for them at the first dressing station in the rear of the lines, were
removing them to hospital. As they passed the four men sitting by the
roadside, one of them shouted, “Cheer, oh, mates!” and then they fell
to whistling “Tipperary” again. Then, oh, blessed moment! the fat
Frenchwoman looked out of the kitchen window just above his head.
“Diner, m’sieu,” she said, and Michael, without another thought of
ambulance or aeroplane, scrambled to his feet. Somewhere in the middle
distance of his mind he was sorry that this tranquil morning was over,
just as below in the darkness of it there ran those streams of yearning
and of horror, but all his ordinary work-a-day self was occupied with
the immediate prospect of the stewpot. It was some sort of a ragout, he
knew, and he lusted for it. Red wine of the country would be there,
and cheese and new brown bread. . . . It surprised him to find how
completely his bodily needs and the pleasure of their gratification had
possession of him.
They were under orders to go back to the trenches shortly after sunset,
and when their meal was over there remained but an hour or two before
they had to start. The warmth and glory of the day was already gone,
and streamers of cloud were beginning to form over the open sky.
All afternoon these thickened till a dull layer of grey had thickly
overspread the heavens and below that arch of vapour that cut off
the sun the wind was blowing chilly. With that change in the weather,
Michael’s mood changed also, and the horror of the return to the
trenches began to come to the surface. He was not as yet aware of any
physical fear of death or of wound, rather, the feeling was one of some
mental and spiritual shrinking from the whole of this vast business of
murder, where hundreds and thousands of men along the battle front that
stretched half-way across Europe, were employed, day and night, without
having any quarrel with each other, in the unsleeping vigilant work of
killing. Most of them in all probability, were quite decent fellows,
like those four who had whistled “Tipperary” together, and yet they were
spending months of young, sweet life up to the knees in water, in foul
and ill-smelling trenches in order to kill others whom they had never
seen except as specks on the sights of their rifles. Somewhere behind
that gruesome business, as he knew, there stood the Cause, calm and
serene, like some great statue, which made this insensate murdering
necessary; but just for an hour to-day, as he waited till they had to be
on the move again, he found himself unable to make real to his own mind
the existence of that cause, and could not see beyond the bloody and
hideous things that resulted from it.
Then, in this inaction of waiting, an attack of mere physical cowardice
seized him, and he found himself imagining the mutilation and torture
that perhaps awaited him personally in those deathly ditches. He tried
to busy himself with the preparation of the few things that he would
take with him, he tried to encourage himself by remembering that in his
previous experiences there he had not been conscious of any fear, by
telling himself that these were only the unreal anticipations that were
always ready to pounce on one even before such mildly alarming affairs
as a visit to the dentist; but in spite of his efforts, he found his
hands growing clammy and cold at the thoughts which beset his brain.
What if there happened to him what had happened to another junior
officer who was close to him at the moment, when a fragment of shell
turned him from a big gay boy into a writhing bundle at the bottom of
the trench! He had lived for a couple of hours like that, moaning and
crying out, “For God’s sake kill me!” What if, more mercifully, he was
killed outright, so that he would lie there in peace till next night
they removed his body, or perhaps had to bury him in the trench itself,
with a dozen handfuls of soil cast over him! At that he suddenly
realised how passionately he wanted to live, to escape from this
infernal butchery, to be safe again, gloriously or ingloriously, it
mattered not which, to be with Sylvia once more. He told himself that
he had been an utter fool ever to re-enter the army again like this.
He could certainly have got some appointment as dispatch-carrier or had
himself attached to the headquarters staff, or even have shuffled out of
it altogether. . . . But, above all, he wanted Sylvia; he wanted to be
allowed to lead the ordinary human life, safely and securely, with the
girl he loved, and with the musical pursuits that were his passion.
He had hated soldiering in times of peace; he found now that he was
terrified of it in times of war. He felt physically sick, as with cold
hands and trembling knees he stood and waited, lighting cigarettes and
throwing them away, in front of the kitchen fire, where the stewpot
was already bubbling again for those lucky devils who would return here
to-night.
The Major of his company was sitting in the window watching him, though
Michael was unaware of it. Suddenly he got up, and came across to the
fire, and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t mind it, Comber,” he said quietly. “We all get a touch of it
sometimes. But you’ll find it will pass all right. It’s the waiting
doing nothing that does it.”
That touched Michael absolutely in the right place.
“Thanks awfully, sir,” he said.
“Not a bit. But it’s damned beastly while it lasts. You’ll be all right
when we move. Don’t forget to take your fur coat up if you’ve got one.
We shall have a cold night.”
Just after sunset they set out, marching in the gathering dusk down the
road eastwards, where in a mile or two they would strike the huge rabbit
warren of trenches that joined the French line to the north and south.
Once or twice they had to open out and go by the margin of the road to
let ambulances or commissariat wagon go by, but there was but little
traffic here, as the main lines of communication lay on other roads.
High above them, scarcely visible in the dusk, an English aeroplane
droned back from its reconnaissance, and once there was the order given
to scatter over the fields as a German Taube passed across them. This
caused much laughter and chaff among the men, and Michael heard one
say, “Dove they call it, do they? I’d like to make a pigeon-pie of
them doves.” Soon they scrambled back on to the road again, and the
interminable “Tipperary” was resumed, in whistle and song. Michael
remembered how Aunt Barbara had heard it at a music-hall, and had spoken
of it as a new and catchy tune which you could carry away with you.
Nowadays, it carried you away. It had become the audible soul of the
British army.
The trench which Michael’s company were to occupy for the next
forty-eight hours was in the first firing-line, and to reach it they had
to pass in single file up a mile of communication trenches, from
which on all sides, like a vast rabbit warren, there opened out other
galleries and passages that led to different parts of this net-work
of the lines. It ran not in a straight line but in short sections with
angles intervening, so under no circumstances could any considerable
length of it be enfiladed, and was lit here and there by little oil
lamps placed in embrasures in one or other wall of it, or for some
distance at a time it was dark except for the vague twilight of the
cloudy sky overhead. Then again, as they approached the firing-line, it
would suddenly become intensely bright, when from the English lines, or
from those of the Germans which lay not more than two hundred yards
in front of them, a fireball or star-shell was sent up, that caused
everything it shone upon to leap into vivid illumination. Usually, when
this happened, there came from one side or the other a volley of rifle
shots, that sounded like the crack of stock-whips, and once or twice a
bullet passed over their heads with the buzz as of some vicious stinging
insect. Here and there, where the bottom lay in soft and clayey soil,
they walked through mud that came half-way up to the knee, and each foot
had to be lifted with an effort, and was set free with a smacking suck.
Elsewhere, if the ground was gravelly, the rain which for two days
previously had been incessant, had drained off, and the going was easy.
But whether the path lay over dry or soft places the air was sick with
some stale odour which the breeze that swept across the lines from the
south-east could not carry away. There was a perpetual pervading reek
that flowed along from the entrance of trenches to right and left, that
reminded Michael of the smell of a football scrimmage on a wet day,
laden with the odours of sweat and dripping clothes, and something
deadlier and more acrid. Sometimes they passed under a section covered
in with boards, over which the earth and clods of turf had been
replaced, so that reconnoitring aeroplanes should not so easily spy it
out, and here from dark excavations the smell hung overpoweringly. Now
and then the ground over which they passed yielded uneasily to the foot,
where lay, only lightly covered over, some corpse which it had been
impossible to remove, and from time to time they passed a huddled bundle
of khaki not yet taken away. But except for the artillery duel that
day they had heard going on that morning, the last day or two had been
quiet, and the wounded had all been got out, and for the most part the
dead also.
After a long tramp in this communication trench they made a sharp turn
to the right, and entered that which they were going to hold for
the next forty-eight hours. Here they relieved the regiment that
had occupied it till now, who filed out as they came in. Along it at
intervals were excavations dug out in the side, some propped up with
boards and posts, others, where the ground was of sufficiently holding
character, just scooped out. In front, towards the German lines ran a
parapet of excavated earth, with occasional peep-holes bored in it, so
that the sentry going his rounds could look out and see if there was
any sign of movement from opposite without showing his head above the
entrenchment. But even this was a matter of some risk, since the enemy
had located these peep-holes, and from time to time fired a shot from a
fixed rifle that came straight through them and buried its bullet in the
hinder wall of the trench. Other spy-holes were therefore being made,
but these were not yet finished, and for the present till they were dug,
it was necessary to use the old ones. The trench, like all the others,
was excavated in short, zigzag lengths, so that no point, either to
right or left, commanded more than a score of yards of it.
In front, from just outside the parapet to a depth of some twenty yards,
stretched the spider-web of wire entanglements, and a little farther
down on the right there had been a copse of horn-beam saplings. An
attempt had been made by the enemy during the morning to capture and
entrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the movement had been
seen, and the artillery fire, which had been so incessant all the
morning, denoted the searching of this and the rendering of it
untenable. How thorough that searching had been was clear, for that
which had been an acre of wood was now but a heap of timber fit only for
faggots. Scarcely a tree was left standing, and Michael, looking out
of one of the peep-holes by the light of a star-shell saw that the wire
entanglements were thick with leaves that the wind and the firing had
detached from the broken branches. In turn, the wire entanglements had
come in for some shelling by the enemy, and a squad of men were out now
under cover of the darkness repairing these. There was a slight dip in
the ground here, and by crouching and lying they were out of sight of
the trenches opposite; but there were some snipers in that which had
been a wood, from whom there came occasional shots. Then, from lower
down to the right, there came a fusillade from the English lines
suddenly breaking out, and after a few minutes as suddenly stopping
again. But the sniping from the wood had ceased.
Michael did not come on duty till six in the morning, and for the
present he had nothing to do except eat his rations and sleep as well as
he could in his dug-out. He had plenty of room to stretch his legs if he
sat half upright, and having taken his Major’s advice in the matter of
bringing his fur coat with him, he found himself warm enough, in spite
of the rather bitter wind that, striking an angle in the trench wall,
eddied sharply into his retreat, to sleep. But not less justified than
the advice to bring his fur coat was his Major’s assurance that the
attack of the horrors which had seized him after dinner that day, would
pass off when the waiting was over. Throughout the evening his
nerves had been perfectly steady, and, when in their progress up the
communication trench they had passed a man half disembowelled by a
fragment of a shell, and screaming, or when, as he trod on one of the
uneasy places an arm had stirred and jerked up suddenly through the
handful of earth that covered it, he had no first-hand sense of horror:
he felt rather as if those things were happening not to him but to
someone else, and that, at the most, they were strange and odd, but no
longer horrible. But now, when reinforced by food again and comfortable
beneath his fur cloak he let his mind do what it would, not checking
it, but allowing it its natural internal activity, he found that a mood
transcending any he had known yet was his. So far from these experiences
being terrifying, so far from their being strange and unreal, they
suddenly became intensely real and shone with a splendour that he had
never suspected. Originally he had been pitchforked by his father into
the army, and had left it to seek music. Sense of duty had made it easy
for him to return to it at a time of national peril; but during all the
bitter anxiety of that he had never, as in the light of the perception
that came to him now, as the wind whistled round him in the dim lit
darkness, had a glimpse of the glory of service to his country. Here,
out in this small, evil-smelling cavern, with the whole grim business of
war going on round him, he for the first time fully realised the reality
of it all. He had been in the trenches before, but until now that had
seemed some vague, evil dream, of which he was incredulous. Now in the
darkness the darkness cleared, and the knowledge that this was the very
thing itself, that a couple of hundred yards away were the lines of the
enemy, whose power, for the honour of England and for the freedom of
Europe, had to be broken utterly, filled him with a sense of firm,
indescribable joy. The minor problems which had worried him, the fact
of millions of treasure that might have fed the poor and needy over all
Britain for a score of years, being outpoured in fire and steel, the
fact of thousands of useful and happy lives being sacrificed, of widows
and orphans and childless mothers growing ever a greater company--all
these things, terrible to look at, if you looked at them alone, sank
quietly into their sad appointed places when you looked at the thing
entire. His own case sank there, too; music and life and love for which
he would so rapturously have lived, were covered up now, and at this
moment he would as rapturously have died, if, by his death, he could
have served in his own infinitesimal degree, the cause he fought for.
The hours went on, whether swiftly or slowly he did not consider.
The wind fell, and for some minutes a heavy shower of rain plumped
vertically into the trench. Once during it a sudden illumination blazed
in the sky, and he saw the pebbles in the wall opposite shining with
the fresh-falling drops. There were a dozen rifle-shots and he saw
the sentry who had just passed brushing the edge of his coat against
Michael’s hand, pause, and look out through the spy-hole close by, and
say something to himself. Occasionally he dozed for a little, and woke
again from dreaming of Sylvia, into complete consciousness of where he
was, and of that superb joy that pervaded him. By and by these dozings
grew longer, and the intervals of wakefulness less, and for a couple of
hours before he was roused he slept solidly and dreamlessly.
His spell of duty began before dawn, and he got up to go his rounds,
rather stiff and numb, and his sleep seemed to have wearied rather
than refreshed him. In that hour of early morning, when vitality burns
lowest, and the dying part their hold on life, the thrill that had
possessed him during the earlier hours of the night, had died down. He
knew, having once felt it, that it was there, and believed that it would
come when called upon; but it had drowsed as he slept, and was overlaid
by the sense of the grim, inexorable side of the whole business. A
disconcerting bullet was plugged through a spy-hole the second after
he had passed it; it sounded not angry, but merely business-like, and
Michael found himself thinking that shots “fired in anger,” as the
phrase went, were much more likely to go wide than shots fired calmly.
. . . That, in his sleepy brain, did not sound nonsense: it seemed to
contain some great truth, if he could bother to think it out.
But for that, all was quiet again, and he had returned to his dug-out,
just noticing that the dawn was beginning to break, for the clouds
overhead were becoming visible in outline with the light that filtered
through them, and on their thinner margin turning rose-grey, when the
alarm of an attack came down the line. Instantly the huddled, sleeping
bodies that lay at the side of the trench started into being, and in the
moment’s pause that followed, Michael found himself fumbling at the butt
of his revolver, which he had drawn out of its case. For that one moment
he heard his heart thumping in his throat, and felt his mouth grow
dry with some sudden panic fear that came from he knew not where, and
invaded him. A qualm of sickness took him, something gurgled in his
throat, and he spat on the floor of the trench. All this passed in one
second, for at once he was master of himself again, though not master of
a savage joy that thrilled him--the joy of this chance of killing those
who fought against the peace and prosperity of the world. There was an
attack coming out of the dark, and thank God, he was among those who had
to meet it.
He gave the order that had been passed to him, and on the word, this
section of the trench was lined with men ready to pour a volley over the
low parapet. He was there, too, wildly excited, close to the spy-hole
that now showed as a luminous disc against the blackness of the trench.
He looked out of this, and in the breaking dawn he saw nothing but
the dark ground of the dip in front, and the level lines of the German
trenches opposite. Then suddenly the grey emptiness was peopled; there
sprang from the earth the advance line of the surprise, who began hewing
a way through the entanglements, while behind the silhouette of the
trenches was broken into a huddled, heaving line of men. Then came the
order to fire, and he saw men dropping and falling out of sight, and
others coming on, and yet again others. These, again, fell, but others
(and now he could see the gleam of bayonets) came nearer, bursting and
cutting their way through the wires. Then, from opposite to right and
left sounded the crack of rifles, and the man next to Michael gave one
grunt, and fell back into the trench, moving no more.
Just immediately opposite were the few dozen men whose part it was to
cut through the entanglements. They kept falling and passing out of
sight, while others took their places. And then, for some reason,
Michael found himself singling out just one of these, much in advance of
the others, who was now close to the parapet. He was coming straight on
him, and with a leap he cleared the last line of wire and towered above
him. Michael shot him with his revolver as he stood but three yards from
him, and he fell right across the parapet with head and shoulders inside
the trench. And, as he dropped, Michael shouted, “Got him!” and then he
looked. It was Hermann.
Next moment he had scaled the side of the trench and, exerting all
his strength, was dragging him over into safety. The advance of this
section, who were to rush the trench, had been stopped, and again from
right and left the rifle-fire poured out on the heads that appeared
above the parapet. That did not seem to concern him; all he had to do
that moment was to get Hermann out of fire, and just as he dragged his
legs over the parapet, so that his weight fell firm and solid on to
him, he felt what seemed a sharp tap on his right arm, and could not
understand why it had become suddenly powerless. It dangled loosely from
somewhere above the elbow, and when he tried to move his hand he found
he could not.
Then came a stab of hideous pain, which was over almost as soon as he
had felt it, and he heard a man close to him say, “Are you hit, sir?”
It was evident that this surprise attack had failed, for five minutes
afterwards all was quiet again. Out of the grey of dawn it had come, and
before dawn was rosy it was over, and Michael with his right arm numb
but for an occasional twinge of violent agony that seemed to him more
like a scream or a colour than pain, was leaning over Hermann, who lay
on his back quite still, while on his tunic a splash of blood slowly
grew larger. Dawn was already rosy when he moved slightly and opened his
eyes.
“Lieber Gott, Michael!” he whispered, his breath whistling in his
throat. “Good morning, old boy!”