GRUB
PENFOLD spoke of his escape without emotion. He had been long enough
check by jowl with death to express no surprise. He had merely
remarked that it was a lucky chance that the occupants of the shelled
dug-out had not been inside when the heavy howitzer missile had
demolished it. What did seriously annoy him was the loss of the
promised food.
Ralph Setley, although by this time ravenously hungry, was fervently
thankful for his escape. Already the reaction of the raid into the
German trenches was beginning to tell. Shorn of excitement of the
wild rush over the top, the horrors of that nocturnal excursion rose
up in his mind. The knowledge that he had bayoneted a
fellow-creature, although he were an enemy and a brutal Hun, worried
him.
"Suppose the fellow would have done me in if I hadn't got him first,"
he soliloquized. Then, aloud:
"What are you jabbering about, Alderhame?"
The former actor was stamping up and down the duck-boards, now
encrusted with a thin coating of ice:--
"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot."
"That's _As You Like It!_ chum. It aptly describes our condition.
Horribly cold, and benefits in the shape of bully-beef gone, though
not forgotten. Where's our next lodging?"
The stream of prisoners and wounded Tommies had now dwindled.
Penfold, addressing a sergeant, stated his case.
"D'ye think I'm a Cook's tourist guide?" snapped the N.C.O. "Turn in
where you can. There are a good many half empty dug-outs now, I'm
thinking."
A shell shrieked overhead. The Huns were putting up a barrage, the
shrapnel falling amongst their own men, who, prisoners in the hands
of the British, were being escorted to the "Advance cages."
"In here," said Penfold, making a dive for the nearest entrance.
Alderhame followed close at his heels, then Setley and George
Anderson, the latter still grousing at the loss of a quarter of an
inch of his ear.
"Anyone at home?" enquired Penfold.
He pushed aside the covering to the sloping tunnel and entered the
dug-out, which in point of size and contents was much the same as his
demolished mud-hole--the damp steaming straw, the pungent fumes of
the charcoal brazier, the moisture dripping through the timber-shored
roof, and the guttering candle--a typical Tommy's barrack-room on the
Somme Front.
Seated on an upturned ammunition-case and with his feet resting on
another tin box, in order to keep them out of the slime, was a young,
pale-faced, dark-haired soldier He was busily engaged in writing with
an indelible pencil certain words of deeper violet hue, betraying the
fact that the paper shared the general failing of the subterranean
abode--it was moist: uncommonly so.
So engrossed was the writer that for some moments he "carried on"
with his task. Then looking up, and seeing strange faces, he
exclaimed, in a lisping drawl:
"I say, you've made a mistake. This isn't your caboodle."
"No mistake, chummy," replied Penfold firmly. "We've been shelled
out. We crave your hospitality. How many men in this dug-out?"
"There were eight this morning," replied the youth:
"Where are the others?"
"Ask me another."
"I will," rejoined Penfold, depositing his rifle on a bench. "Have
they left any grub?"
"Wish they had," was the grim answer. Then, with more eagerness than
he had hitherto shown, he asked: "Have you any food? I haven't had a
bite since this morning. Finished the whole of my ration, including
jam, thinking that the fresh stuff would be in--but it isn't!"
"You're welcome to a share of ours, laddie," remarked Alderhame,
"which happens to be nixes."
Ralph sat down on a bundle of straw, having first appropriated the
late occupant's pack as a pillow. He was feeling horribly tired. His
feet and hands were numbed with the cold. His saturated clothes were
throwing off wisps of muggy vapour. Even a huge rat pattering on the
muddy floor and scampering through the straw hardly troubled him, and
a few hours previously he would have gone twenty yards to avoid one.
In his drowsiness he found himself contemplating the latest of his
many new comrades.
"I'll bet that chap's a Jew," he thought.
Setley was right in his surmise. Sidney Bartlett was the grandson of
a Polish refugee who had become a naturalized Englishman and,
dropping the name of Bariniski, had successfully engaged in business
in Birmingham. Like many of the Hebrew race, young Bartlett was a
patriot and a staunch supporter of the land of his adoption. When the
call to arms came he rallied to the Colours, only to be sent back
until he was sufficiently old to serve in His Majesty's Forces. Only
three years previously Sidney was at a large day school, and there
occurred an incident that was to influence his conduct at the Somme
Front.
For some weeks the lad was persistently absent from school. The head
master constantly received notes to the effect that Sidney was kept
at home through domestic troubles, in which a grandmother figured
largely. The caligraphy arousing his suspicions, the head wrote to
the lad's father, and then the "cat was out of the bag."
One afternoon Bartlett Senior, accompanied by his errant son, came to
the head master's study.
"Now, Sidney," said his sire, solemnly, "I vant you to tell de
trut'--de whole trut', mind. Later on, in bizness, Sidney, you may
tell a lie; but now you must tell de trut'."
Utterly worn out, Setley fell asleep--a slumber broken with dreams of
the exciting episodes of the last few hours. Rats wandered at will
over his couch of straw; vermin of other kind swarmed everywhere. His
companions, too hungry to sleep, sat up and smoked, recounting
anecdotes on almost every topic except the war. Without the guns
thundered incessantly, but the duel was chiefly betwixt the
artillery, and the trenches were left almost untouched.
"I'm off to see if I can't find some grub," declared Penfold. "Who's
game?"
Ginger Anderson volunteered to accompany him with the greatest
alacrity. It was better than sitting still in a damp dug-out with
hunger gnawing at one's vitals. Alderhame and Bartlett also expressed
their willingness to take part in the foraging expedition.
"I reckon as if we do 'ave any luck," remarked Ginger, "the rations
will arrive directly we do, and all our work'll be for nothing."
"So much the better," rejoined Penfold.
"How about Setley?"
"Let him sleep on," suggested the ex-actor:
"Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber."
"'Buzzing night-flies' sounds poetical," remarked Penfold. "Poetic
licence shows tactful discretion in this case. Come along, you
fellows."
The four adventurers sallied forth to beg, borrow, or steal something
in the edible line. It was freezing so hard that the trench-boards
were immovably cemented in solid mud of the hardness of stone.
"Thank goodness we weren't warned for the wiring party," whispered
Penfold. "Black as pitch, and as cold as charity. Hist! What do you
make of that?"
He pointed to a faint ray of light emanating from an oblique shaft of
a dug-out--that of the major of his company. The opening was for
ventilating purposes, and was fitted with a piece of corrugated iron
to prevent the water making its way into the underground room. From
the shaft came the unmistakable odour of roast meat.
One by one the men reconnoitred, and withdrew to a safe distance to
deliberate.
"Regular old food-hog," declared Alderhame. "Not only is he about to
wolf a pound of meat, but there's a pudding and a packet of sausages.
Presumably, his missis has sent him out a hamper."
"Too much for one man, albeit a field officer," decided Penfold.
"Lads, we must have some of that grub!"
"'Ow?" enquired Anderson. "Yer can't just pop in an' say, friendly
like: 'Wot cheer, major, old sport; 'ow abart it? Can yer?"
"Can't we lure him out?" suggested Alderhame.
"We might; but what's the use?" rejoined Penfold. "These officers'
dug-outs have doors, and ten to one he'll lock it if he goes far from
his grub."
"You get him out," said Sidney Bartlett. "I'll do the rest. All we
want is a light pole. There are some in the next traverse. Lash a
bayonet to one end and spear what we can through that hole."
"Sounds feasible," agreed Penfold. "Nip off and get the gear ready."
In a short space of time Bartlett had rigged up his improvised
fishing-tackle.
"Now," he said, "I'm ready. You carry on, Penfold."
Drawing his woollen cap well over his eyes and turning up the collar
of his greatcoat as high as possible, Penfold knocked at the door of
the Major's dug-out.
"Well?" enquired a deep muffled voice testily.
"Colonel's compliments, sir," announced the mendacious private, in an
assumed tone. "He wants you to report to him at once upon the number
of men left in this section of the trench."
Grumbling, the Major issued from his subterranean retreat, carefully
locked the door, and set out to find the company sergeant-major, in
order to obtain the supposedly urgent information.
Before he returned the four raiders were scurrying back to their
dug-out, each with his mouth full of cold sausage, while Alderhame
retained a painful impression of an otherwise appetizing repast in
the shape of a cut on his cheek, caused by the end of the pole as the
elated Sidney swiftly withdrew it with the prized booty impaled upon
the bayonet.
"Where's my first-aid dressing?" enquired the ex-actor, with mock
concern.
"'And patches will I get unto these scars
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.'"
"Hardly good enough for Blighty," said Penfold, with a laugh. "My
word, won't the Major be in a tear when he misses his sausages!"
"Let him," said Bartlett. "He can only blame the rats."
"Halt! Who goes there?" exclaimed the hoarse voice of a sentry in the
next traverse.
"Engineers' ration party," was the reply. "Is this the Royal
Engineers?"
"Rather!" replied the ready Penfold. "Dump 'em down; we'll fetch
them."
Out of the neighbouring dug-outs poured other Tommies. Without having
any suspicion of the ruse played upon them, the ration party handed
over the stores intended for a company of the Royal Engineers, who
were engaged in tunnelling on the left of the Wheatshires' trenches.
Almost in the nick of time a famine was averted at the expense of the
sappers and miners. But, as Penfold remarked, it was each man for
himself when it came to a case of semi-starvation.