his dug-out. . . .
Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the telephone-pit. “He’s an
obstinate cove, is P.J.,” confided the battery-commander.
“He looks a mighty sick one,” replied the “Canadian.”
§ 3
The “dug-out” towards which Peter and Garton stumbled was a
coffin-shaped hole burrowed in the soil, roofed with a piece of
corrugated iron and one layer of sandbags. A mackintosh ground-sheet,
supported on a wooden beam, prolonged this improvised roof; provided
some protection from the rain which drove in at the “door”—a narrow
entrance reached by three “steps,” mostly mud. Down these, the pair
slithered.
Garton lit a match, revealing Peter’s valise, supported on two
ammunition-boxes and a stolen stretcher. The mud-walls of the coffin
touched the valise on either side, so that Garton had to scramble over
it before he could light “the candles”—one guttering dip stuck on a
wooden shelf above the head of the “bedstead.” A pool of slime on the
“floor” served for carpet.
“You’d better turn in, Garton,” said Peter, sitting down heavily between
the projecting stretcher-handles. “I’m afraid you’ll have to bring me my
tea at half-past four. Rather a change from H.Q. at Neuve Eglise, what?
Hope your lady friend there still writes to you, Garton?”
The fair-haired Yorkshireman blushed violently; bent to unlace his
master’s heavy boots.
“Don’t bother about that, I’ll do ’em myself.”
But Driver Garton went on with his work; and as his muddy fingers
fumbled at the muddy laces, he thought: “Poor old P.J.! He won’t last
much longer. Never saw a man look so ill in my life.”
“Should I help you off with your breeches, sir?”
“No. I’ll sleep in ’em. For God’s sake get off to bed, lad.”
With a cheery “good-night, sir,” Driver Garton disappeared. His master
hauled himself painfully along the valise; sat up—head touching roof;
unslung his gas-helmet, which he hung from a wooden-peg driven in the
wall; took off his tunic, spread it on the bed; unstudded his soft
collar; felt to make sure that the box-respirator was underneath his
canvas-pillow; and inserted his body inch by inch into the Jaeger
blankets.
“God,” thought Peter, “what a fool I’m making of myself. I ought to have
gone sick days ago.” He blew out the candle; laid himself down for
sleep; closed his eyes. “Sleep,” he thought, “sleep!” And for a moment,
sleep came to him. Then he felt the warning twitch below his heart;
started up; groped for his handkerchief. The cough tore at his throat,
seemed to be wrenching his lungs out. . . .
Pain passed, leaving him weak and sleepless. He fumbled among the litter
on the wooden shelf; found matches; lit the candle again. Number four
gun fired; shook a few flakes of soil onto his valise. His whole body
ached for sleep; but he was afraid to lie down again. If he lay down,
there would come that warning twitch below the heart, another
paroxysm. . . .
Listlessly, he pulled his tunic towards him; found the morrow’s orders;
began studying them. “Infantry will attack. . . . Objectives:
Guillemont—Ginchy-Maurepas Road—Bois de Leuze. . . . A/4 S.F.A.B. (‘A’
Battery Fourth Southdown Field Artillery Brigade) will detail Liaison
Officer on the right. . . . B/4 S.F.A.B. will detail Liaison Officer on
the left. . . .”
The blurred type danced in front of Peter’s eyes. He stuffed the orders
back into his tunic-pocket: doing so, his hand touched Patricia’s last
letter. This, too, he read listlessly, hardly taking in the words. . . .
Number four gun fired again. . . . He closed his eyes. . . .
“Sunflowers—Sunflowers—rather a jolly name.” . . . For a moment he
dreamed. . . .
“_Gas-shell, sir. Gas-shell!_” The voice from without wrenched him from
unconsciousness.
“Right,” he called back. “All right.” Now he was wide awake, bolt
upright on his haunches. Automatically he pulled the respirator from
under his pillow; took up the tube; adjusted clip to nostrils,
mouthpiece to lips. . . . Cough wrenched at his throat. . . . He put the
tube down again; sat listening. . . . “False alarm,” he thought. “Thank
goodness for that.” . . .
Then he heard, close overhead, a low slow whistle, like a sigh through
the night. . . . Sighing ceased. . . . Peter jammed the mouthpiece back
to his lips, re-adjusted the clip to his nostrils. . . . Another shell
sighed over him; he heard the faint plop of its grounding, the vague
hiss of its burst. . . .
The roof quivered; a handful of soil pattered onto his valise. . . . The
candle guttered: went out. . . .
Another shell sighed to ground. . . .
He knew himself afraid—horribly shamelessly afraid. The clip on his
nostrils was torture: the mouthpiece stifled him: blood drummed at his
ears: he wanted to cough. . . . But he dared not cough. . . .
The night above him was full of sighing poisonous things. . . . God,
there must be thousands of them. . . . They were falling all about him:
sighing slowly down out of the night: plopping to ground: sighing out
their poison. . . . They were looking for him: tap-tap-tapping round the
roof of his coffin. . . . They wanted to find the roof of his coffin: to
break through it; stifle him as he lay. . . .
Courage fought panic—alone in the darkness. “Damn it,” thought Peter,
“damn it. They _shan’t_ get my tail down.” And shelling ceased:
suddenly, miraculously, the night grew still.
Peter loosed the clips from his nostrils, sniffed cautiously. The air
was pure—no trace of gas. He let the mouthpiece fall, began to cough,
dropped back coughing on his pillow,—and knew neither fear nor courage,
but only the blissful unconsciousness of utter exhaustion till he heard
Driver Garton’s “Half-past four, sir. Half-past four. Time to get up,
sir.”
PART TWENTY-FIVE
THE LAST OUNCE
§ 1
The “Canadian”—unused to gun-fire—had not slept. Now, in the first
glimmer of dawn, he climbed map-in-hand out of the telephone-pit; began
to locate his position. Behind, a mere dip in the ground, lay the valley
through which he had walked overnight. Close on his left, bulked low
shattered walls which he knew to be Montauban. In front, about five
hundred yards from the battery, he could make out a ragged fringe of
trees—Bernafay Wood. On his right, flat ground rose slightly to a hump
near skyline which must be the Briqueterie. On three sides of him, in
the valley behind, among the trees in front, and on the flat ground to
his right, occasional guns flashed and smoked among the rising mists.
He looked round his own patch of this desolation—the four crazy
gun-shelters, the battered trenches, the shell-pocked wire-littered
ground; and thought:
“You’re a longish way from home, son.”
A soldier came stumbling towards him, saluted.
“Mr. Jameson’s compliments, sir; and he said I was to find where you
were sleeping; and to ask if there was anything I should do for you,
sir.”
“Where is Mr. Jameson?”
“Having breakfast, sir”—Driver Garton pointed to a wisp of smoke about
fifty yards away—“over there, sir. Should I get you some breakfast,
sir?”
“Thanks.” Charles Henry, already accustomed to the English Army’s habit
of perpetual valeting, followed Garton to the “Mess”—the same broken
chalk-trench, roofed with corrugated, into which he had slithered
overnight. From round the traverse came smell of a wood-fire, sizzling
of bacon. Peter, astride an ammunition box, mug of tea in front of him,
looked up; said:
“Morning, Henry. Not been to bed yet?”
“Good morning. No. Somehow I didn’t feel like turning in. You off to the
show?”
“Yes. As soon as I’ve had something to eat.”
Garton brought breakfast—bacon on a tin-plate. Peter made pretence of
eating; pushed the plate away from him; lit a cigar; began to cough.
Looking at this haggard white-faced man in the torn tunic and patched
breeches, Henry thought to himself: “Well, if you ever get to those
trenches, it’s a miracle.” What he said was: “Aren’t you going to take a
gun—revolver, I should say?”
“Oh, yes.”—Peter laughed. “I’ll be loaded like an ammunition-mule by
the time Garton’s finished with me—haversack, gas-helmet,
field-glasses, Sam Browne, the whole paraphernalia. Damned heavy. One
gets out of the habit of wearing ’em.”
“Do you think the attack will succeed?”
“Hope so. We’ve had about four shies at the sanguinary place already.”
“It’s our own infantry, I suppose.”
“Lord, no. They got smashed up at Delville Wood weeks ago. . . . Well,
it’s about time I was off”—Peter got up, took a long iron-shod stick
from behind him,—“_au revoir_ and enjoy yourself while I’m away.”
Henry watched him scramble painfully out of the trench, and remembered
Sandiland’s words: “An obstinate cove.” “I should say so,” muttered
Henry. “I should just about say so.”
§ 2
“You chaps got your rations?”
“Yes, sir.”
Peter looked at his three men: Bombardier Finlayson, tall, tight-lipped,
clean-shaven, shrapnel-helmet atilt on the back of his head; Blenkinsop,
a dark, keen little Northumbrian; and Mucksweat, huge, hairy, more like
a bear than a man, who had volunteered for “runner.”
“Then we’d better be off.”
Dawn was not yet day as the four crossed the track in front of the guns;
tramped away towards the wood. They walked slowly, eyes on the black
telephone-wire. “Seems O. K., so far,” said Peter, “better test her
though.” The Bombardier unslung his telephone-case, inserted pin in the
wire, tapped, was answered.
Now the wire rose from ground to poles; spanned a road yellow with mud;
disappeared breast-high among tree-trunks. They pashed across; tested
again; passed in among the trees; began fighting their way through the
undergrowth along the lip of a zig-zag and water-logged trench.
“Lucky we didn’t run her down there, sir,” grinned the Bombardier.
“Damned lucky.” Already Peter felt dog-weary. Twice he stumbled, and
Mucksweat helped him to his feet. Then fatigue reacted; the poison of
over-strain distilled its poison of over-energy. The apprehension of
overnight disappeared. . . .
They worked their way through the wood to the hillside. In front, the
world seemed asleep. From behind, came the occasional thud of a gun. A
’plane droned over, high in air. Below them, lay the Bois de Trônes,
still black in the half-light: all along the fringe of it, they could
see waiting infantry. The wire dipped into a dry trench; they followed
it down-hill.
They emerged from the trench—and the wire ended abruptly. “Call up the
battery,” ordered Peter. . . . “Battery on, sir.” . . . He took the
instrument: “Is Captain Sandiland there? . . . Hello—That you,
Sandiland. . . . We’re at the edge of Trônes Wood. . . . All O. K. up to
here. . . . What’s that? . . . No good trying to run her any
further. . . . Quite. . . . I’ll leave Finlayson here. . . . You’d
better send him up a linesman. . . . What’s that? . . . Oh, yes, I’m
quite all right. Cheerio.”
“Hadn’t you better leave Blenkinsop, sir,” suggested the Bombardier.
“Why?” asked Peter. Finlayson’s lips tightened. “Blenkinsop’s a very
good operator, sir.”
“I know that as well as you do, Bombardier. What are you driving at?”
“Well, sir, as N.C.O. of the party. . . .”
“Sportsman!” thought Peter; and reversed an order for the first time.
They left Blenkinsop at the instrument; made their way, three helmeted
figures, across a road dark with slime and rotted leaves, past the
waiting infantry into Trônes Wood. The wood still stank of putrefying
flesh. Barbed wire looped the trailing undergrowth. Here a shell-axed
tree leaned drunkenly against its bullet-pocked neighbour. There,
fresh-turned earth betrayed the scavenging pick. Beyond the tree-trunks,
day glimmered. Above, black branches trellised gray sky. A ditch full of
water led through this place of death.
Ahead of them, something whistled into the undergrowth. They dropped
into the ditch; waded along, single file, calf-deep in liquid mud;
ducked under a fallen log; waded on again. Another shell whistled into
the undergrowth above them. “Whizz-bang,” said Peter laconically.
Now, they were under open sky; making their way along a battered trench
towards the support-lines. In front of them and behind them, hidden by
humped earth from the enemy, toiled little parties of infantry:
bomb-carriers, water-carriers, men with loaded rifles and men with empty
stretchers.
The liquid mud deepened to quagmire.
Peter, fighting his way forward, felt the false energy of over-fatigue
ebbing from his veins. With every painful pace, his feet rooted
themselves deeper. Sodden leather wrenched at his ankles. Heavy water
bottle, heavier revolver-holster, dragged at hip and shoulder. Each
gasped breath seemed to tear at his heart. His helmet was a shifting
torment. Bitter sweat blinded his eyes; dripped from chin to tie. Time
and again, only the long iron-shod stick saved him from collapse. . . .
Gradually they neared destination; edged way past crouching men, past
the gap where Lindsay had died, to a little eminence above plain-level.
Here three mud-lanes met in heaped breastworks. Listless
stretcher-bearers and a bundle of S.O.S. rockets marked
Battalion-Headquarters—a German dug-out, thirty feet below
ground-level, reached by a deep chute of greasy slime.
Peter sank down on one of the bomb boxes which littered the ground;
leaned gasping on his stick.
“Feeling tired, sir?” asked Finlayson; and getting no answer, unslung
his water-bottle, drew out the cork. “Try a drop of this, sir. It’s cold
tea.”
“Thanks, Bombardier—but you’d better keep it for yourself—I’ll be all
right in a minute.”
A little strength came back to him; he slipped off his helmet; loosed
belt at waist. A dozen times during the half mile from Trônes Wood,
Peter had wanted to give in; the last three hundred yards had been just
a blurr of continuous effort. “Like rowing,” he thought, “got to put
your last ounce into it”; and like a rowed-out oarsman he rested for a
little—knowing only blessed relief.
“Where’s Mucksweat?” he asked at last.
“You told him to stop about 20 yards back, sir. Just round the corner.”
“Quite right. So I did. You’d better go and join him. I’ll observe from
there. This place is rather dangerous.” He staggered to his feet; made
for the entrance to Headquarters. Finlayson watched him disappear down
the greasy mud-chute; shrugged shoulders; rejoined his companions.
“I dunno what you think about it, Muckie,” said Bombardier Finlayson;
“but it seems to me we’re in for a hell of a day.”
Answered Mucksweat the ex-coalminer, crouching bear-like in yellow
slime, “He shouldn’t have come. That’s what _I_ say.”
§ 3
Peter slid, feet first, into cavernous darkness. A hand gripped him by
the shoulder; helped him up. A voice said “Hello. Who are you?”
“Gunner Liaison Officer, sir.”
Darkness cleared to half light. Peter was aware of a man sitting over a
map at an uncleanly table.
“Well, if you’d come from the door we might see something of you.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Peter shifted position; found himself in a square cave of concrete. The
orderly who had helped him arrive, grinned; proffered an ammunition-box.
An R.A.M.C. officer emerged from the gloom; said “Good morning.”
“I dunno what they send you chaps out for”—began the Infantry Colonel,
a wiry resolute man, square of chin and square of forehead—“you can’t
_do_ anything. How do you propose getting your messages back?”
“Runner to beyond Trônes Wood, sir. Then telephone.”
“Hm. We can do as well as that ourselves. What’s the use of information
two hours old? These new creeping barrages are the very devil. No
stopping ’em once they start. Where are you going to observe from?”
Peter told him; and they discussed details for ten minutes. The
Colonel’s servant brought him tea.
“Have some?” asked the Colonel.
Peter, wet through and shivering, accepted gratefully. Asked the doctor,
watching him as he drank: “Do you go over the top with the first
attack?”
“He’s supposed to come with me,” interrupted the Colonel. Then to Peter:
“You’d rather be on your own I expect.”
“I think so, sir.”
“Right”—the Colonel dabbed a finger at the map—“I shall make for here.
Join me if you can. I must be off now. It’ll take me the best part of an
hour to go round the front line.” He took his helmet from the wall
behind him; gripped a stout stick; and scrambled off up the mud-chute.
“Shouldn’t like your job much,” commented the doctor.
“Shouldn’t like his,” observed Peter; looking at the disappearing soles
of the Colonel’s boots. . . .
By now it was nearly nine o’clock. Above, all seemed quiet. Peter
finished his tea; said _au revoir_ to the doctor; hauled himself—breast
on mud—into the upper air again; found Finlayson and Mucksweat waiting
in the narrow mud-floored trench from which he had elected to observe;
rested elbows on parapet; peered cautiously over.
Immediately beneath him a smashed railway-line curved northwards, ending
in the heap of twisted metal, upcurved like the ribs of a skeleton
horse, which had been Guillemont Station. Over the railway, straight to
his front, bare ground dipped to green—cut by the narrow brown cleft of
our own front line. Beyond this, four hundred yards away, great
molehills of white chalk marked the enemy’s position. But between the
narrow brown cleft and the white molehills, lay the sunken road which
had so often defied assault. At that distance it was hardly visible;
showed only as a discolouration on the drab landscape—a discolouration
which ended at skyline in the three-cornered bush-clump of Arrowhead
Copse. Right of the Copse—our ground—rose the trees of Trônes Wood:
left of it, beyond sunk road and white molehills, the enemy’s territory
stretched in colourless desert tossed to occasional fountains by
long-range shell-fire. Of what had been Guillemont village nothing
showed except four tree-tops on the extreme left of the shell-tossed
desert. . . .
It still lacked two and a half hours to the time of the attack; and
Peter, having shown the ground and explained his plans to the Bombardier
and Mucksweat, sat down to wait.
Ten minutes passed—a quarter of an hour—twenty minutes. He looked at
his watch, lit a cigar. Half-an-hour went by. Two hours more to wait! A
couple of infantrymen appeared, took station beside him. Round the
traverse, he could hear other infantrymen coming up. Damn it, would the
time never pass? . . . Very high overhead, five Hun machines planed
gleaming across gray sky. . . . He began to be afraid. . . . Fear
gripped his stomach. . . . He must look over again, make sure of his way
to those white molehills. . . . Twenty past ten—a whole miserable hour
and forty-three wretched minutes more. . . .
Suddenly, the first enemy shell howled across the sky, burst hollowly at
the edge of Trônes Wood.
“Dommned if that one didn’t come from behind us,” ejaculated Mucksweat.
“Pretty well,” said the Bombardier calmly. “Often got ’em that way in
the Salient, didn’t you? . . . Course you did. . . . Well, this is a
salient too, see!”
“I see,” said the huge hairy man. Even while he spoke, the second shell
screamed and lit crashing to the ground behind. Splinters whizzed over
them as they crouched to cover.
Barrage fire began—a slow barrage, terrifying in its very
deliberateness. Scream followed scream down the unchanging sky; crash
followed crash—now right of them, now left, now directly behind. Only
their own tiny portion of trench, the sodden mud-walls between which
they huddled under whirling splinters, seemed immune—burrow of safety
in an exploding world.
“Christ!” thought Peter, “how long can this go on?” For a second, he
knew absolute panic; his legs wanted to run away with him; he couldn’t
stick it, couldn’t stick it another minute. Came a pause in the crash of
sound.
Peter looked at the two infantrymen, crouching white-faced below the
parapet; at Finlayson, tight-lipped, apprehensive; at Mucksweat biting
his huge moustache. Then, very deliberately, he stood upright; drew
field-glasses from case; peered over towards the enemy. One of the
infantrymen joined him. “Do you know the ground?” began Peter. . . .
The shell gave no warning. He was aware only of a terrific thunder-clap,
of a savage boot-hack at ear-drum. . . . Then blackness, blackness
through which he struggled for light. . . . In the slime he struggled,
fighting a warm dead thing. . . . The thing lifted from him. . . . Light
came back. . . . He felt hands gripping him; heard Mucksweat’s voice.
Face down in the slime, lay the dead body of the infantryman,
helmetless, brains oozing—crimson sweet-breads—from shattered skull.
Above the body, bent its living mate—the second infantryman. Suddenly,
he turned; snarled over his shoulder: “_You_ killed him, damn you. You!
You! You! You bastard.”
“Easy on, mate,” cut in the voice of Finlayson, “you’re talking to an
officer.”
“Officer. Who the hell cares for ’tillery officers?”—the man rose,
sworded rifle gripped in both hands. “Blast you. You killed him. And now
you’ll bloody well bury him”—bayonet drew back for the plunge. “Come
on, you bloody coward, you. We’re going over the top, you and me—going
to bury my mate decent, we are—like a Christian.”
Said Peter, and he spoke as tired men speak in dreams: “Don’t make an
ass of yourself, lad.”
Mucksweat’s doubled fist crashed home to chin-point. The madman’s rifle
fell clattering across his mate’s body as he toppled backwards.
“Who the devil told you to do that?”—Peter’s voice was again the voice
of command—“pick him up, will you?”—the bear stooped over his
victim—“take his helmet off.” . . .
But already the infantryman had regained consciousness. “What happened,
sir?” he asked: head on the coalminer’s knee. Then he saw the body on
the ground; stared at it.
“Oh, Gawd,” he sobbed, “it’s Harry. Poor old Harry.” Swiftly the man
rose to his feet; picked up his rifle; started to climb out of the
trench. Mucksweat pulled him back. “Let me go,” he howled, “let me go.
I’ll give ’em something for this. Christ, I’ll give ’em something they
won’t forget.”
They wrestled with him, panting, there in the trench; fought him till
the madness passed. Shells screamed and crashed about them as they
wrestled; splinters hissed into the slime. But for the moment these four
had forgotten shell-fire. . . .
Came a man through the mud, a man who shouted, “Artillery Liaison
Officer. Colonel wants the Artillery Liaison Officer.”
Automatically, Peter staggered off round the traverse. A shell screamed
down. He fell on his face; heard the splinters whizz over; picked
himself up; saw the exploded S. O. S. rockets frizzling red and useless
among a knot of crouching stretcher-bearers. Then he was slithering down
the mud-chute, slithering to a moment’s safety.
§ 4
Peter stood on his feet; blinked about him in the half-light. The
dug-out seemed full of men. At his table, sat the Colonel. Peter walked
across to him, saluted.
“You sent for me, sir.”
A shell crashed to ground thirty feet above; rocking the solid concrete.
“Anybody hurt?” roared the doctor. A moment’s pause; then, “No, sir,”
from the top of the mud-chute.
“Can’t you do anything to stop this?” asked the Colonel. “I’ll lose half
of my men before the show starts.”
Peter looked at his wrist-watch; saw that the face of it was caked solid
with mud. He wiped away the mud with his sleeve. The hands pointed to
eleven o’clock.
“I’m afraid not, sir. There’s no time to get a message back. . . .”
Came voices from above: “Easy on there, mates. Let me get down first.
That’s right, now his feet. All right, sir, you’ll be all right in a
minute.” Light vanished. Followed the sound of heavy bodies slithering
down the mud-chute. Light appeared again. Peter was aware of a huge
officer, helmetless, red bandage across his forehead—an officer who
staggered to his feet, cursing some one who was trying to assist him.
“Damn you,” he cursed, “damn you, I don’t want your help. I’m all right,
perfectly all right, I tell you. . . .”
“Of course you are, old chap. Of course you are”—the doctor’s voice
sounded perfectly calm—“you come over here with me. We’ll fix you up in
a minute. . . .”
“But I told him to keep his helmet on, I told them all to keep their
helmets on. . . .”
“Quite right, old chap. Quite right. Now just you sit down for a
moment.”
The officer sank down in a gloomy corner of the cave. Doctor bent over
him. Delirium ebbed away to vague mutterings. Another shell exploded
above.