When you have lived for ten days in a region where they wander
whistling overhead, where they somersault eccentrically in circles,
where they drop bits of themselves with the buzz of a drunken
bumblebee, where, in fact, they do everything but burst, you come to
know the projectile family fairly intimately. In fact, some poetically
constructed Bulldog has christened the various members of the family.
First, there is Whistling Willie, a bustling soul, who does his
journey, between the boom of leaving his front door and the moment
when he sneezes up a cloud of dust in front of our parapet, in about
four and a half seconds. You can almost hear him saying to the Turkish
gunners: "Now then, you chaps, come on, buck up, look alive! That's
it, off we go, _booooom!_ _zizzzzz!_ Here we are--tishoo!" Yes, he's a
brisk, pushing lad, is Willie, but rather superficial really. There's
more swagger and dust about him than the result justifies--although
it's only fair to say that he once threw up a stone large enough to
upset the Adjutant's tea. Probably the war will end (if ever) with that
deed of questionable military significance to his credit, and no more.
Willie's cousin, Whispering Walter, also of Ottoman origin, is a fellow
of infinitely more worth and solidity. Though he takes longer over his
trip from the muzzle to the mark he makes up for lost time when he gets
there. It is rather as though he gave his gunners instructions to push
him off slowly so as to give him time to pick a good place to drop.
"Very good," they say to him, "off yer goes!" _Booooom!_ A pause. Then
Walter comes into our area--"_Whizzlizzlizzle_," he whispers to himself
confidentially, as much as to say, "Now _where_, down below, is a good
fat Brigadier, or a mountain battery, or a pile of stores (dash it, I
must hurry up and spot _something_; I'm nearly exhausted)--oh, a girls'
school, a cabbage-patch--anything!" And down he comes--_whang!_--as
often as not half a mile from anything he could damage. There is a
lesson on the futility of procrastination in Walter's methods.
Walter has two brothers, Clanking Claud and Stumer Steve. Claud
always sets out, like his elder brother, in a meditative mood. Having
traveled a sufficient distance and found nothing worthy of his mettle,
he decides, apparently, to show his independence by never coming down
from his airy height to earth at all. So "_Kerlank!_" he says, and
disappears ostentatiously in a cloud of white smoke some fifty yards
above us. True, he showers a lot of little leaden marbles, but that
merely shows his spiteful nature.
And then there is poor Stumer Steve. "If ye have tears, prepare to
shed them now," for Stephen is both blind and dumb. Though he sets out
full as his brothers of resolution, though, like Walter, he whispers
promises of daring deeds, like Claud, passes with discriminating
deliberation over the ground below, yet his final descent is a hollow
and meaningless affair, though pathetic withal, "_Plunk!_" In a word
the requiem of Steve. A young and apparently vigorous life robbed of
its final destiny, a career despoiled of its rightful goal. Often we
find he is filled with--sawdust! Sawdust! Like any sixpence-halfpenny
doll! Sometimes he is empty altogether. Poor Steven, the best that can
be said of him, even when in desperation he lands upon a stone and goes
hurtling away in spiral somersaults, is--"stumer," and even _that's_ an
American word!
Quite another kettle of fish is Greasy Gregory. There is a solemnity,
a grandeur, and a determination about Greg that inspires respect.
Also he is just about twice the size of his fellows and takes quite
twice as long in making his way to earth. The mysterious and rather
awe-inspiring feature of his performance is that you never hear him
start! Possibly you are sitting over a slice of bacon or a savoury,
bully stew when he makes his advent known. Just a greasy flutter
overhead and then "_Crash!_" Gregory has come.
Everything gets up and changes places in a cloud of yellow dust and
smoke. The atmosphere being thick, things that have no sort of right
there get into intimate and inconvenient places (tea-pots, tunic
pockets, etc.), and I have spent as much as twenty minutes in a time of
famine separating Gallipoli Peninsula from raspberry-jam after one of
Gregory's little jokes.
Last, and least, comes the clown of the party--Airy Archibald. His
specialty is aeroplanes, and his efforts are acknowledged to be purely
humorous by both sides. His methods are something like this. On some
still, cloudless afternoon a distant buzzing sound is heard, heralding
the approach of an aeroplane. Instantly Archibald springs into life.
_Whoop-pop!_
Somewhere (it generally takes a good deal of finding) a tiny puff
of smoke appears against the blue. Never by any chance is it in the
same quarter of the sky as the aircraft. _Whoop-pop!_ _Whoop-pop!_
One after another they leap up to have a look. The airman never takes
the smallest notice, but sails serenely on, and never yet have I seen
Archibald get within a thousand yards of his object. Once, so rumor
has it, he _did_ get nearer, so near, in fact, that two of his bullets
hit a wing of the machine. But the shock of success was too great, and
Archie's empty shell falling to earth put two of his own gunners out
of action! This story I cannot vouch for, but this I know, that after
a monoplane has actually disappeared over the horizon I have seen
Archibald jump viciously at him four times and every time miss him
by quite three miles! Well, here's to you, my comic friend. You add
a humor to life, and I wish the others could follow your lead, and,
taking life less seriously, give us as wide a miss.
* * * * *
(Four weeks later, the writer of this narrative fell in the trenches a
victim of these Turkish guns.)