It was at that moment that Gunn first allowed his hatred for the
Corporal to assert itself in action.
He was standing stiffly erect, in his torn, muddy great-coat, laden
with accoutrements, motionless, with his bayoneted rifle in his hands,
looking out across the parados of the enemy trench, towards a long
low hill, beyond which the enemy had retired. Night had now changed
into day; but there was hardly any light and the naked earth looked
still more melancholy than when it was concealed by the darkness. Its
ugliness was exposed.
When he heard the groaning of his comrades his reason suddenly
overbalanced. It was like the blow of a whip urging him to revolt.
As he listened to its sound, he had a strange vision. At first he
shuddered. Then he felt a sharp pain in his ears. He closed his eyes
and saw a dark cave in which a man was prowling about with a club. Afar
off, somewhere in the cave, seals were moaning and flopping about on
rocks and tumbling into unseen pools, while, from the roof of the cave,
brine water fell with a droning sound on slippery rocks.
He opened his eyes and shrugged himself. He heard the moaning of his
comrades and the droning of the rain, as it fell on his steel helmet
and on a sheet of zinc which lay in a puddle before him to the rear of
the trench. He heard the flopping sound of feet moving about in water.
Then he closed his eyes again and saw the man clubbing the seals as
they came towards him; smashing their blubbery skulls.
He started and opened his eyes. Impelled by a savage and irresistible
impulse, he leaned forward, rested his rifle against the sheet of zinc
and fired several times at the hill in front.
Then his brain cleared. He felt afraid and said to himself, “My God!
What’s the matter with me? What am I doing?”
At once he thought of the Corporal.
Everybody looked at Gunn and several men instinctively pointed their
rifles at the hill, thinking there were enemies in sight. Sergeant
Corcoran came running along from the right.
“Who fired that shot?” he cried, angrily.
Gunn stood still, looking to his front. He did not reply. The shock
of discovering that he was beginning to lose control of himself
had passed. Now he felt a cunning delight in something vague and
mysterious; some intention that was yet unnamed. He was laughing within
himself. He did not reply. With his flattened ear, his scarred cheek,
his thick neck, his heavy lips, his body that was like a full sack,
standing as straight as a pillar, he looked like a statue of Stupidity.
There was no sign of thought on his bronzed face, nor in his unblinking
eyes. He appeared to be exactly the same as he had been a few hours
before, standing in the outpost, advising Lamont against the shame of
cowardice and disloyalty to his soldier’s oath. But he had entirely
changed inside him. He had become subtle. Evil!
“Who fired those shots?” cried Corporal Williams, rushing along the
trench from the left.
Gunn smiled slightly without replying. But he said to himself:
“That’s him. Let him come.”
Others cried out on either side:
“Who fired those shots?”
Then, again, Gunn became afraid, as the two non-commissioned officers
approached. Again his ears pained him. He lost his subtlety. His brain
clouded. His thoughts became confused. His eyes opened wider. His lips
moved nervously. His heart throbbed violently. He felt a thickness in
his throat and he saw that some disaster was impending. Then he could
not restrain himself from crying out in a loud voice: “I fired the
bloody shots. What the hell do you blokes think you are here for? Eh?”
“It’s you again, Gunn,” bawled the Corporal, coming up with his fist
doubled. “I’ll give you firing, you cock-eyed, clumsy rookie. Is that
what you’re up to, trying to draw fire on us? Haven’t you got any
intelligence? Didn’t you hear the order?”
Gunn stared at the Corporal, breathing heavily, swaying back and forth.
His eyes became blurred and he had a curious hallucination that the
Corporal was becoming transformed into a hairy animal; a brute which he
wanted to kill.
That terrified him. He became craven, as he remembered the dreadful
consequences of such an act. He rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his
great-coat, saw the Corporal in his exact proportions and began to
blubber something inaudible.
“Silence!” yelled the Corporal. “Don’t answer me back.”
“Who fired those shots?” said Sergeant Corcoran, coming up.
“It’s Gunn, Sergeant,” said the Corporal.
“Here he is. Look at him.”
“Take his number,” said the Sergeant. “Put him in the book. Hey, you!
What’s the idea? By Jesus! I’ll put wheels under you.”
All Gunn’s fury withered away, like the ashes of a burnt fire blown
by the wind. He felt limp, empty, weak, before these two men, who
stood with their faces close to his, threatening him with their fists,
shouting foul abuse at him. It was not they who annihilated him but the
authority they represented, the great machine that stretched, covering
the whole battle front, like a sprawling colossus. Authority!
In his simplicity, he was at that moment certain that “It” could read
his mind and discover the germs of revolt that had come to life in his
mind.
The two N.C.O.’s were not so much excited by the offence he had
committed as by a desire to terrify the others through bullying
Gunn. They knew that the muttering of the men could best be silenced
by making an example of Gunn. They wanted to use Gunn as a butt
for maintaining the iron discipline which is necessary to make
soldiers suffer the unspeakable tortures and indignities of war with
resignation. They tapped him with their knuckles and with their rifle
butts. They kicked his shins, as if he were a horse, at which one
shouts “lift,” when his hoofs are wrongly placed. They pulled his
uniform about. They pulled at his rifle. They examined his ammunition
pouches, his gas mask, his haversack. They accused him of having eaten
his iron rations, of being deficient of his field dressing, of having
fouled his uniform, of having an obscene disease.
The Sergeant, being an old soldier and a drill sergeant dining
peace-time, was superior to the Corporal at this astounding business of
persecution. He was a lean, dandified fellow, with a Kaiser moustache
and bright blue eyes like a woman. His voice was as shrill and sharp as
that of a starling. Every second word he uttered was an oath or obscene.
“Look at him!” he cried. “Call himself a soldier? A farmer wouldn’t
hire him to frighten crows out of a cornfield. Take him for disorderly
dress, Corporal. Don’t answer me back. Take him for answering back,
Corporal.”
Gunn had not uttered a word.
“Stand to attention!” cried the Sergeant.
“Take him for insolence.”
Gunn had been standing to attention but had been thrown off his balance
when the Sergeant punched him violently in the chest.
Then Appleby hailed the Sergeant from the right, saving Gunn from
further persecution.
“Sergeant!” he called, “Corporal Wallace wants to speak to you.”
“All right,” said the Sergeant, moving away from Gunn, without any
emotion, as casually as if he had just stopped to say good morning to
the man. “Corporal Williams, get your men to clean their rifles and mop
up this trench. Jump to it.”
“Yes, Ser’nt.”
The Sergeant stepped briskly on his thin, elegant legs around the
corner of a traverse to the right. He called back, “Corporal Williams,
you had better keep order in your section. If those shots draw fire
on this position, you’ll be for it. The whole platoon is not going to
suffer for... All right! All right! I’m coming. What the bleedin’ hell
is the matter here?”
Corporal Williams put his notebook in his pocket and said to Gunn, “By
Jesus! Wait till I get you out of the line. You’ll be for it. I’ll make
you hop. It’s No. 1 for the duration.”
He pushed his clenched fist close to Gunn’s face and called him by an
obscene name. Gunn made no reply or movement of resistance to this
final insult. He was no longer a man, six feet two inches in height,
with a thick neck, powerful jaws and a body like a full sack, the
strongest man in that company of strong men, a fearless soldier in
battle. He was now like the dead carcass of an animal, propped up.
Now the Corporal did not fear Gunn as he had feared him during the
night when they stood face to face in No Man’s Land. He saw no hatred
and no revolt in Gunn’s eyes. He saw only the brutal submission of the
flogged slave.
He turned away, arrogantly, his mean soul exalted by the fact that he
had successfully baited and bullied into submission a man stronger and
braver than himself.
“Come on, lads,” he said. “Jump to it. Clean your rifles and
ammunition. Mop up this trench.”
“Which are we to do first?” said Reilly.
“Mop up the trench,” said the Corporal. “Be careful of anything
suspicious-looking you see lying around.”
Mechanically and subdued, the men moved about, mopping up the trench.
They had no shred of intelligence left owing to their exhaustion. They,
just wandered about helplessly, picking things up in one place and
putting them down in another place, where they were picked up again and
put down once more.
“Mop it up,” the Corporal kept saying.
He himself was almost as exhausted and stupid as the others and just
wandered, bobbing his head back and forth on his thin neck like a goose.
The men spread out, peering into destroyed dug-outs, into bays and down
communication trenches. It was dangerous to go far, as half the place
was a quagmire into which a man could sink twenty feet. Nobody spoke.
They were almost asleep, staggering, with their eyes nearly closed.
Gunn, wandering about, came upon Lamont. As soon as he had landed in
the trench, Lamont had got into a corner and sat down to rest. He had
the instinct of a born malingerer, always avoiding work and concealing
himself from the observation of his superiors. Now there was no trace
of panic in his beautiful blue eyes. He seemed perfectly at his ease.
He was gnawing a piece of biscuit.
Gunn looked at him. He felt terribly ashamed now, in the presence of
the youth, at the memory of the humiliation he had just suffered.
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“What?” said Lamont, looking up with indifference.
“Didn’t you hear the bawling off I got?” said Gunn.
“Yes! I heard something,” said the youth, casually. “Was it you they
were talking to? Why did you fire? You shouldn’t have fired.”
“Eh?” said Gunn, in amazement.
His eyes grew large and he opened his mouth. He wiped his face on his
sleeve.
“That little bastard!” he said. “He doesn’t give a damn if they put me
up against the parapet and shot me.”
“You’re a cool one,” he said, aloud. “Blowed, but you are. I get myself
bawled off over you and then you.... Blast it! It all happened over you
last night. See? I’m finished with you from now on. I’ll have no more
to do with you. What are you skiving there for? Can’t you muck in and
mop up the trench.”
Now Gunn hated the youth and was amazed at himself for having been such
a fool as to defend him, work for him and suffer the mockery of the
platoon on his account, for the past three months. This little fellow
with the damned subtlety and insincerity of a woman!
“By God!” he said, “never again will I be taken in by you. There’s
nothing the matter with you now. Last night you were on the point of...”
“What’s on here?” cried the Corporal, sticking his head around a
corner. “What are you doing here, Gunn. Did I tell you to mop up this
trench?”
Gunn moved off. Lamont got to his feet. He dropped his quizzical, sly
expression in a flash. His face became pathetic; as humbly melancholy
as that of a little barefooted street Arab, begging a penny from a
woman.
“Get out of my bloomin’ sight,” said the Corporal, “before I murder
you.”
Lamont shuddered and moved after Gunn.
“Say, Bill,” he said, “you’re not cross, are you?”
Gunn turned on him angrily, saw his pathetic face and felt sorry for
having been rough with him.
“Say, Bill,” said Lamont, “would you like a bit of that cake I got from
mother. Half of it is yours, you know. She told me to share it equally
with you. There’s some left yet.”
“I don’t want your bloody cake,” said Gunn, moving away again.
Lamont followed him.
“Where did you get your rifle?” said Gunn. “Eh? I didn’t give it back
to you. How did you get it?”
“Yes. You gave it back to me when we got here,” said Lamont. “Don’t you
remember?”
“I don’t remember,” said Gunn. “That’s queer.”
He stared at Lamont.
“My God!” he said to himself. “There must be something the matter with
me.”
“What the hell are you following me about for?” he said, aloud.
The youth stared at him in silence. His lower lip began to tremble.
Gunn swore and then, conquered by his inability to rid himself of this
incubus, Lamont, he said: “All right then. Hang on to me. Help me,
Christ! I’ll look after you.”
Suddenly a voice shrieked.
“Ha!” said Gunn. “That’s Appleby.”
Reilly, who was nearby, shaking a wickered cask that he found, looked
up and said, “There’s some left in this yoke. Wonder have they poisoned
it? It’s beer, I think.”
“Isn’t that Appleby that shouted?” said Gunn.
“Wonder would it be dangerous to touch it?” said Reilly.
“Help! Help!” cried Appleby in the distance.
There was an extraordinary note of terror in his voice.
“Oh, Christ! What has he done now?” said Friel.
The Corporal ran past. Reilly, still shaking the cask, suggested an
obscene reason for Appleby’s cry. They all laughed, except Gunn, who
stood with his head on his chest and his underlip protruding, saying to
himself.
“I must pull myself together. I mustn’t let it get hold of me.”
As soon as he had again come under the influence of his affection for
Lamont, his hatred of the Corporal returned.
“Where are you, Appleby?” shouted the Corporal on the right.
Gunn started and said aloud, “There he is.”
“Eh?” said Friel, stopping, as he passed Gunn, on his way to Appleby’s
assistance. “Who?”
Gunn looked at Friel and said fiercely, “I didn’t say anything.”
Friel looked at Gunn curiously and thought, “He’s getting queer.”
Then he passed on. Gunn thoughtlessly followed him. Now he did not know
what he was doing. There was a sharp pain at the rear of his skull.
When the Corporal reached the spot where Appleby had been posted to
mop up, there was no sign of the man. Neither was he crying out any
longer. A few minutes previously the Corporal had left him in an island
traverse, to the rear of which there was a quagmire, caused by the
demolition of a large dug-out. Then the Corporal rounded the corner
of the traverse, stepping over a heap of planks, empty casks, broken
boxes, torn sacks and wire netting. He uttered a cry of horror. In a
circular quagmire, about ten feet in diameter, he saw Appleby, sinking
slowly.
The unfortunate man had already sunk to his thighs. In his right hand
he held his rifle and bayonet. When he fell, he had reached out with
his weapon, striving to stick the bayonet into a pile of sandbags that
lay on the far brink of the hole. The bayonet had not reached the sacks
and had landed on the quagmire. There also, near the sacks, lay what
the wretched man had plunged into the quagmire to attain--two tins of
canned meat. Goaded by hunger, he had momentarily forgotten the death
trap that lay between him and his trivial booty. Instead of dropping
his rifle when the bayonet point had missed the bank, he held on to
it by a soldierly instinct, thereby weighing down his body; while, at
the same time, he reached out with his left hand, backwards, towards
the opposite bank of the quagmire. Now he was clawing the air with his
left hand. His face had gone yellow. His chest was heaving in a queer
fashion; remaining expanded for a long time and then contracting with
great speed. His eyes bulged. His lips moved in prayer. Intermittently
his back curved and writhed like that of a badly wounded animal. Hoarse
sounds issued from his throat. The fingers of his left hand opened and
closed slowly like the seemingly unguided movements of a worm tossing
its head, or a snail moving its horns.
The Corporal stood for a few moments looking at him open-mouthed, so
horrified by the sight that he could not comprehend the situation.
“What the bloody hell are you doing there?” he said. “Get out of that.”
Appleby twisted his head towards the Corporal, saw him and then moved
his lips to speak. Instead of speaking he stuck out his tongue at the
Corporal. His tongue lolled on his lower lip. His mouth fell wide open.
The tongue became still. He was speechless and almost paralysed with
fear. He was now buried to the waist, suddenly drawn down more quickly
by the movement he had made to face the Corporal.
Realising that the man was really drowning, the Corporal thrust forward
his rifle, crying, “Catch that.” At the same time he called out, “Help!
Man drowning.”
The muzzle of the Corporal’s rifle was within reach of Appleby’s left
hand. Instead of catching it with that hand, however, he dropped his
own rifle and twisted his body round so as to be able to grip the
Corporal’s rifle with both hands. The result was that he caught the gun
with violence, using the last of his strength for the effort. He pulled
it towards him and dragged the Corporal into the hole. As he fell, the
Corporal dropped the rifle, uttered a cry, turned about, gasped and
threw himself forward on his chest. He thrust out his right hand and
gripped the end of a plank that protruded from the wall of the trench.
Appleby, now making a gurgling sound in his throat, sank to his armpits.
Just then Friel, followed by Gunn, reached the brink of the quagmire.
“A hand! A hand!” cried the Corporal, seeing them.
“God Almighty!” said Friel, standing stock still.
Gunn, without a moment’s hesitation, pushed Friel aside and gripped the
Corporal’s hand.
“Help! Help!” cried Friel, standing foolishly on the bank, staring at
Appleby.
Gunn hauled at the Corporal’s hand so violently that he nearly wrenched
the arm from its socket. The Corporal groaned with pain. His body,
lying doubled up in the quagmire, with his thighs near his chest, was
sinking by the stern and had already become embedded. Gunn, in spite of
having pulled with all his strength, had not moved the body an inch.
Reilly had now come up and, immediately realising the situation, called
out to Gunn: “Just hold him. Don’t pull.”
“God!” said Friel, who still stood idly on the bank, gaping at Appleby,
as if hypnotised. “Look at Appleby. Hey! Appleby! Appleby!”
Reilly yelled into Friel’s ear, “Get your bloody equipment off. Hey!
Lads! Shaw! Come on. Hold him Gunn. Corporal Wallace! Ho, there! Keep
your head up, Corporal. Friel... your bloody... off with... I say...
equipment... equipment.”
“Give me your hand, Corporal,” said Gunn.
“No, don’t stir,” said Reilly. “Lie still, Corporal.”
“Jesus! He’s gone,” said Friel. “Look at Appleby.”
“Don’t mind him,” said Reilly. “Get off your equipment.”
No. 8740 Private George Appleby, formerly a worker in a chocolate
factory, recently a member of the bombing section of No. 2 Platoon, at
that moment ceased to exist as a living organism. He had thrown back
his head and stared at the sky with fixed eyes, with his tongue hanging
out, thick and still and yellow, on his green lower lip. Rain drops
fell into his open mouth. Then he disappeared with a gentle, sucking
sound into the morass, unnoticed except by Friel, who gaped at him in
horror. In another moment, all that was left to mark his sojourn on
this earth was a series of circular wrinkles in the slime that covered
the surface of the quagmire and five orphan children, fathered by him,
living with their widowed mother in Canning Town, London: all proudly
bearing his name, that of a hero who died in action, fighting for his
king and country.
Nobody except Friel took any notice of this hero’s death at that
moment, and when the bubble at the centre of the series of circles, at
the point where his nose had disappeared, burst and vanished, Friel
sighed with relief and turned towards the Corporal.
Gunn had taken no notice of the death of Appleby. Again he and the
Corporal were face to face as they had been the night before. Now,
however, the situation was reversed. Gunn had the Corporal’s life,
literally, in his hands, as he held him by the wrist. The Corporal,
staring in silence at Gunn’s face, wore the expression of a cornered
fox. Gunn’s eyes, avoiding the Corporal’s, had a wild look in them.
The Corporal’s danger had restored his humanity. But the touch of
the Corporal’s flabby hand excited him unpleasantly. This unpleasant
feeling was not articulate. It was like an impression received by a man
whose brain is reeling under the first assault of a heavy drunkenness;
when words and thoughts stand in a very remote corner of the mind and
are scarcely audible or recognisable. This unpleasantness was obviously
hatred, but Gunn could not fathom its meaning at that moment. He
turned away his face from it in fear, lest his eyes, meeting those of
the Corporal, might lead him at once to the disaster that he felt was
looming up somewhere in the distance.
They joined two sets of equipment and managed with a great deal of
difficulty to pull the Corporal on to the bank. He had behaved like a
brave man and a disciplined soldier. He did not relax until they had
laid him on the bank. Then, utterly exhausted, he closed his eyes, lay
back, drew in a deep breath and became unconscious. The strain on his
body, being hauled out, had almost pulled him to pieces. He was covered
with terrible slime as sticky as glue. They began to scrape the mud off
him.
Gunn, looking at him as he lay on the ground, unconscious and caked in
slime, like a Channel swimmer, had another hallucination. He saw the
Corporal’s body becoming transformed into that of an animal. At once
he hurriedly stepped aside, brushed his eyes with his sleeve and then
looked wildly at his comrades. Nobody had noticed him. “God!” he said
to himself, “what’s coming over me?”
He moved away from them. All the section was there except Lamont. Gunn
went to look for his comrade. He was now trembling. When he got round
the corner of the traverse, he halted, looked back furtively and said
to himself, “They’ll catch the two of us at it. Sure as God they will!”
He started and listened in awe to the sounds of the words he had
uttered to himself, re-echoing in his brain. “What?” he said to
himself. “What will they catch us at? Trying to escape? I must leave
that little devil. He’ll get me hung. Where is he now? I’ll go and tell
him he must chuck it and muck in with the others. We’ve got to soldier.
By God I we’ve got to stick it.”
Somebody had called out, “Stretcher bearers.”
Sergeant Corcoran, followed by Corporal Wallace and Duncan the
stretcher-bearer, came up.
“It’s Corporal Williams,” said Jennings. “He fell into a hole.”
“Appleby is...,” began Friel.
The Sergeant brushed him aside before he could finish.
“What cheer, Towny?”
The Sergeant’s voice was tender as he knelt beside the Corporal.
The Corporal opened his eyes, shook his head and tried to sit up. “One
of my men, Sergeant,” he stammered, “Appleby... in the hole. Fish him
out. I lost my rifle.”
“Yes, by God,” said Reilly. “Appleby is in there.”
The Sergeant jumped to his feet.
“Where?” he cried.
“He’s drowned,” said Friel, pointing at the series of circles, that had
now almost vanished.
“What?” cried the Sergeant. “Where is he?”
They explained to him what had happened. They all gazed at the hole.
“I saw him sink,” said Friel. “He had his tongue stuck out.”
“Then fish him out,” said the Sergeant, in his shrill voice. “What are
you blokes looking at?”
The Corporal sat up.
“I dived in after him,” he said. “Poor Appleby! Poor bastard!”
The Sergeant threw a piece of wood into the slimy pit. The mud began to
suck at the stick at once, like a living thing, dragging it down into
its gut.
“It must be fifty feet deep,” said Reilly.
“Napoo,” said the Sergeant.
“Give me a drink,” said the Corporal. “Haversack, water-bottle, rifle,
gas-mask and everything gone.”
“Get back, you fellahs,” said the Sergeant.
“Only for Gunn he was done for,” said Friel.
“Stop talking,” said the Sergeant. “Get on with your work. Jump to it.”
Going back, Shaw met Gunn, who was standing in a bay, staring at the
ground.
“What’s the matter, mate?” said Shaw.
Gunn started as if struck and turned around. His forehead was deeply
furrowed and the whites of his eyes had nearly altogether become
stained with blood.
“It’s this ---- rain,” he said. “If it doesn’t stop I’ll...”
“Keep your hair on, mate,” said Shaw. “Forget it. Don’t worry about
being bawled off just now over firing them shots. You’ll get away with
it. The Sergeant is a decent bloke. His bark is worse than his bite.”
“I’m not worrying about the Sergeant,” said Gunn, in a hoarse voice.
“Everybody has got to bawl off somebody,” said Shaw. “Forget it.”
Gunn swore and moved on.
Shaw shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “Gunn
is going off his chump. Better be careful.”
Lamont was still gnawing his biscuit when Gunn got back to him.
“What happened?” he said.
“Appleby is gone west,” said Gunn, gazing at the youth with furrowed
forehead.
“Really,” said Lamont, opening his lips, pausing, and then continuing
to chew.
“What happened to him?” he said, looking vacantly into the distance.
“Eh?” said Gunn.
The youth, still looking vacantly into the distance, stopped chewing
for a few moments. Then he continued to chew without repeating the
question. He showed no interest in Appleby’s death. Concentrating
on some purpose or fixed idea, he had become unconscious of his
“immediate” environment. His eyes were unhealthily brilliant.
Gunn scowled at him and moved away. Now he was afraid of Lamont. While
Lamont was panic-stricken and acting like a frightened girl, Gunn
had merely been irritated with the lad. He had felt superior to him,
even though he was being used as a servant and corrupted by ideas of
illegal means of escape. Now it was worse, when the lad had suddenly
become callous with a strange look in his eyes. He was more like a
woman.
The Sergeant came down the trench. Lamont went on chewing his biscuit
and gazing into the distance until the Sergeant stopped in front of
him. Then he looked at the Sergeant, opened his mouth and assumed a
pathetic expression.
“Hey, you!” yelled the Sergeant.
He paused, drew in a deep breath and then, in a low, biting voice,
uttered a long oath, which contained five nouns and nine adjectives.
Lamont trembled beneath this awesome abuse.
“I’ll dance in your guts,” said the Sergeant, “if you don’t wake up.
Hop it. Jump. Take his number, Corporal.”
He moved on.
Lamont threw away the bit of biscuit he was chewing.
“Take him, idle,” said the Sergeant, moving away.
The Corporal, even though he was trembling from head to foot as he
walked after the Sergeant, at once became rigid when he heard this
order. He dived into his tunic pocket for his notebook. His hands were
so thickly coated with slime that he could do nothing with them. He
called on Friel to take out the notebook and pencil. Friel had also to
write down Lamont’s name, number and crime report.
Gunn burst out laughing.
“That bloke is going off his knocker,” said Shaw to Jennings.
“What did I tell you blokes?” said Reilly, coming along. “Not one of
us’ll come out alive. There’s one gone already. Old Appleby. A crummy
bloody soldier he was but still.... There’s only eight of us left now.”
Gunn laughed again.
They all looked at him.
“It’s all a cod,” said Gunn.
“What is a cod?” said the Corporal.
“The whole war is a cod. I just saved you from drowning, and now you’re
taking my chum’s number. Why not take all our numbers, and be done with
it, for every crime in the King’s Regulations? All our numbers are up,
so it doesn’t matter.”
The Corporal looked at Gunn viciously. Then he walked past him without
speaking.
The men began to mutter.
“It’s not bloody well fair,” said Reilly, “when all is said and done,
taking a man’s number in the front line for next to nothing. I’m
referring to Bill and not to you,” he said to Lamont. “You bloody
little stink, you’re always getting somebody into trouble. You’re good
for nothing.”
“Let the kid alone, Reilly,” muttered Gunn.
The Corporal came back, again fully armed and equipped. The corpse of a
man who had been killed in Corporal Tyson’s section had been stripped
to equip him. He brought a fresh order.
“We’re to post sentries and drum up,” he said. “We’re going to advance
at eleven o’clock. Pass it along. Who’s next for sentry? You, Gunn.
It’s your turn. The rest can fall out and drum up.”
Gunn, still grinning, turned his face to the hill in front, laid his
rifle along the parados and covered the breach with a piece of sacking.
Lamont came over to him.
“Say, Bill,” he said. “Have you got the rations?”
Gunn turned around. Lamont had a mess-tin in his hand.
“What are you going to do?” he said.
“I’m going to make tea,” said Lamont.
“How?” said Gunn, pointing at the sky, from which rain was still
pouring. “What a hope you have!”
“The others are going to try,” said Lamont.
“All right. Take the tea and sugar in my haversack.”
Lamont opened the haversack, took out the packet and closed the sack.
Then he whispered, “What’s the matter, Bill?”
The youth’s voice was tender. Gunn looked at him. Seeing the boy’s
beautiful face, with despair in his young eyes and his pale lips drawn
tightly together to repress the emotion caused by a sudden memory of
his mother, Gunn nearly broke into tears. He wanted to say something
kind to the lad, or to take him in his arms and run out of the trench,
out of that damned, sodden, rotting place, to green earth and peace.
But he turned to his front again without saying anything. And he
grinned at the hill which concealed the enemy.
“Will we eat that tin of Maconochie, Bill?” said Lamont. “I could warm
it up on my mess-tin lid.”
“Do what you like,” said Gunn.
“Would you rather I fried the tin of bully?”
Gunn made no reply.
“We have no cheese. The rats bored a hole through my haversack and ate
it.”
Gunn turned around and said savagely: “I told you to put it in your
mess-tin, where they couldn’t get at it.”
He was now determined to conquer his feeling for the boy, to cease
hating the Corporal, to become a good, obedient, thoughtless soldier
once more. He must root out the weakness inspired in him by Lamont.
“But I had the cake in my mess-tin,” said Lamont. “I couldn’t let the
rats eat the cake that... she sent me.”
“Oh, blast!...”
Gunn stopped short, on the point of cursing the boy’s mother. “Go on,”
he said. “Do what you like. Go ahead.”
The lad walked away a few yards and then stood still, not knowing how
to drum up in the rain without shelter or dry wood. The Corporal, as
usual, had seized the only shelter in that part of the trench, a nook
formed by the posts of a destroyed dug-out. His mucking-in chum, Shaw,
was already getting ready to make tea in the nook, shaving with his
jack-knife some pieces of dry wood he had found.
Nearby, Reilly, the other old soldier, stood watching Shaw out of
the corner of his eye, while he caressed the drooping ends of his
moustache. Friel, who mucked in with Reilly, came up with two barbed
wire stakes.
“These what you want?” he asked.
“Do all right, I think,” said Reilly.
He stuck his bayonet into the side of the trench, at a point where the
parapet bulged. He stuck a stake of barbed wire into the wall on either
side of the bayonet, a little higher up. Then he spread an oil-sheet
over the stakes, lacing the ends of the sheet around them. He hung a
mess tin on the bayonet. Then he begged a piece of dry wood from Shaw.
At that moment, McDonald, who had dug a hole in the side of the parapet
with his entrenching tool and was now rummaging for his rations,
suddenly cried out, with great violence, “Well, I deserve what I got
for letting that bloody fool keep our rations. Now he’s gone and
drowned himself and they’re drowned with him.”
“What are you talking about?” said the Corporal, who sat near Shaw,
scraping the mud off his uniform with his jack-knife.
“Appleby,” said McDonald. “He had our rations.”
“Yes,” said Jennings, in his odd officer’s voice. “He had the whole
jolly lot with him.”
“The bloody fool!” said McDonald. “Now what are we going to do?”
“Serves you right, you savage,” cried Gunn. “Is that the way you refer
to a dead comrade?”
“Look to your front there, Gunn,” said the Corporal.
“God!” thought Gunn, biting his lip. “He won’t give me a chance. He’ll
make me do it.”
“By Jesus!” said McDonald. “I’ll dig him out of that hole to get my
rations.”
“You see,” said Jennings, “I’m an odd man since my mate went back sick,
so I mucked in with Appleby and McDonald. There was a tin of posset
belonging to me personally.”
“What about me?” shouted McDonald, his ape-like face writhing with
passion. “There was a sack-full of grub, including three tins of French
bully we found in a dug-out on fatigue yesterday. All the bloody
trouble I got digging the b---- up is gone for nothing. I’m going to
get it though.”
He set off towards the traverse where Appleby got drowned.
“Come back, you mad glutton,” said the Corporal. “I’ll give you a drop
of tea, if there’s any left.”
McDonald came back.
“What’s the good of tea?” said McDonald. “I wish I had eaten that
French bully when I got it.”
“Well! You ate four tins of it,” said Reilly. “Blimme! I saw him
digging into it like a savage, sitting beside the stinking corpse.
You’d be tied up for duration if an officer saw you. Come here. Give me
that dry wood you got, and muck in with us.”
“Get busy, lad,” said Shaw to Lamont.
“Ain’t you going to drum up?”
Shaw had already lit a fire under his mess tin. Lamont was standing by
watching him.
“He’s waiting for his mother to come and do it for him,” said the
Corporal. “You needn’t expect me to feed you. I’m not your father.”
Lamont winced at the reference to his mother. Gunn shuddered and
ground his teeth, staring at the hill.
“He’ll make me do it,” he said.
Now the sound of the Corporal’s voice hurt his nerves, like a finger
nail being rubbed against a stone.
“Come on, boy,” said Reilly to Lamont. “Bring your mess tin over here.
There’s room for it on this bayonet. Chip some slivers. Get out your
knife.”
They started a fire under the two mess-tins, with the wood McDonald had
foraged.
McDonald, Jennings, Friel and Lamont were now gathered around Reilly,
while Shaw and the Corporal sat apart. The Corporal got jealous of
Reilly ordering the men about and taking them under his protection.
“I suppose, Reilly,” he said, “you think you’re a hell of a fellow now,
being the father of rookies.”
“There he is again,” said Gunn to himself.
“He can let nothing alone.”
“I’m no more a rookie than you are, Corporal,” said McDonald, always
eager to take offence. “Trouble is that you’re a rookie as a Corporal.
In Corporal Wallace’s section....”
“What’s your number?” cried the Corporal, furiously angry.
“Before you came up,” said McDonald. “You can’t crime me for what I
didn’t say.”
“Eh?” said the Corporal.
“I didn’t say it,” said McDonald.
“What didn’t you say?” said the Corporal. “You did say it.”
“What did I say?” said McDonald. “Ask Reilly if I said it.”
McDonald always got out of an argument by infecting his opponent
with the confusion of his own stupidity. His mind had neither a
beginning nor an end. It was a circle. The Corporal swore at him and
became silent, conscious that he had been put to shame in front of
his section, conscious that his men had no respect for him and that
they were comparing him unfavourably in their minds and in their
conversation with Corporal Wallace.
Corporal Wallace was the most popular N.C.O. in the company. All his
men lived in a spirit of complete friendship with him. He got all the
intelligent and well-mannered recruits, whereas every “tough” was
ushered into the bombing section. It was the resting place of N.C.O.’s
who had been reduced to the ranks and of recruits who had to be
“broken in” with an iron hand. In the bombing section men were always
being crimed and everybody was at loggerheads with his comrades and
with his Corporal. There was a saying in the company: “Stand to your
kits. Here comes one of Corporal Williams’ bombers.” Yet every man in
the section, except Lamont, wore a ribbon on his tunic.
Suddenly Gunn, on sentry, cried out, “Christ! Look at the cavalry!”
Everybody jumped up, as excited as if the miracle of the loaves and
fishes was being performed in No Man’s Land within their reach; all
except Shaw, whose mess tin was almost boiling.
“Where?” said the Corporal.
“There, on the left. See?”
“I declare to God they are,” said Reilly. “Horses.”
“Never see horses before?” said Shaw, puffing at his fire.
“But what on earth are they doing here?” said Jennings.
“God only knows!” said Reilly. “Probably a circus going to start. The
war mustn’t be paying, so they’re going to turn it into a circus.”
“They must be circus horses,” said Friel, “to be able to come up over
the duck-boards.”
They all gaped in wonder at the horses, which looked like skeletons,
dimly outlined against the horizon on the left, with their cloaked
riders stooping forward from the rain. They moved very slowly in a
line, staggering through shell-holes, slipping in the mud and rearing.
“Can you beat that for lunacy?” said the Corporal. “What crazy fool
sent those horses up here?”
“Oh! some mad fool,” said Reilly. “Pay no heed to anything you see
happening in this war. Ha! Now they’ll get it.”
There was a rattle of machine gun fire. A rider threw up his hands.
His mount reared and shook its head, pawing the air with one fore-leg,
while the other leg hung limply. Then both rider and horse disappeared,
falling backwards into the mud. The other horses turned and tried to
gallop back. It was impossible for them to gallop. They all seemed
to have their spines injured by the way they sprawled, with their
legs spread out. Several of them got hit and came down. The others
disappeared. The machine-gun ceased fire.
“Fine bloody polo game that was,” said Jennings.
“Jerry is there yet all right,” said the Corporal. “The war is not
over.”
“Hurrah!” said Shaw. “She’s on the boil, Corporal.”
“Warm the tin of pork an’ beans,” said the Corporal. “Much rooty left?”
“Curse and blast it!” said Reilly, rushing back to his mess tin. “The
fire is gone out while we were looking at those horses. Come on, lads.
Chips. Chips.”
Jennings, McDonald, Lamont and Reilly gathered around the tiny fire
trying to restore it to life. The Corporal and Shaw began to eat their
breakfast. Gunn, on sentry, smelt the Corporal’s breakfast and became
terribly excited. He could hear the Corporal making noises as he ate.
Looking around, he saw the Corporal stuffing bread, pork, beans and
tea into his mouth with great rapidity, and then swallowing them all
ravenously and filling his mouth afresh with bread, pork, beans and
tea, before the first mouthful had gone down his throat.
“Christ! How I hate him!” said Gunn to himself, as he turned to his
front.
Then he became aware of his own body, with that painfully vivid
consciousness which is nearly always present in a sensitive,
intelligent being and leads to refinement of thought and conduct, but
which is almost entirely alien to a strong, stupid person. When it
strikes the latter it causes a dangerous ferment that leads invariably
to ill-considered violence.
Gunn felt something, actually alive, leaping against his ribs and
against the walls of his stomach, struggling to break forth.
“Look out! Oh, God Almighty!”
It was Reilly who had shouted. In their excitement, the men feeding the
fire under the mess-tins had paid no attention to the rain-water that
was gathering on the oil-sheet overhead. The oil-sheet had sagged down
in the middle, laden with water. Now it fell, dragging the stakes and
the bayonet with it. The mess-tins overturned. There was a sizzling
sound and an acrid smell of wet ashes. McDonald’s hand was burned as he
held fresh slivers to the flames.
All gaped. The Corporal laughed.
“Now,” he cried, taunting Reilly. “What price old soldiers?”
Reilly, undefeated, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Could I use your
fire, ’20?”
“No time now,” said the Corporal. “Get your rifles clean.”
Gunn’s eyes glittered.
The others looked at one another, speechless with misery. This spilling
of two quarts of hot water was a greater disaster to each of them than
the loss of an eye. It was the last straw in the load of misery that
overwhelmed them.
A look of despair came into their eyes. Gunn, looking from one to
the other of them, felt a black joy at the despair in their eyes. It
fortified his growing purpose.
“I hate him! I hate him,” he repeated.
His mind had now taken the shape of a glass ball, in the interior of
which there are pictures. The ball expanded and contracted. Expanded,
it contained a picture of the whole army, from the Commander-in-Chief
with his staff, right down the ranks of Authority, to the great
nameless, numbered multitude of men like himself, who lay hungry and
wet and covered with mud in holes, DOOMED TO DIE. Contracted, he saw in
it only the Corporal and himself.
The Corporal was a grinning brute. He himself was a savage man with a
club.
Lamont came over and whispered, “Might as well have a piece of this
cake, Bill.”
Gunn swallowed a lump in his throat, looked into the youth’s DEAD eyes,
and muttered tenderly, “Stick to me, kid. And, by God! If anything
happens to you.... D’ye hear?”