The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (7 page)

‘The poor divvil schewed in his juice for a while, very quiet. Then he out with an offer. “Will ye take sivinty francs for the dog? It's the whole of me property. An' it only comes short be five francs of th' entire net profuts ye'd make on the fiver, an' I comin' with you.”

‘“I will not,” says I, faint and low. It was tormint refusin' the cash.

‘“Won't
annythin'
do ye,” says he in despair, “but a live wan?”

‘“Depinds,” says I pensively, playin' me fish. I held up the dog for a second again, to keep his sowl workin'.

‘He plunged, at the sight of the creature. “Couldn't ye do with a body?” he says very low.

‘“Depinds,” says I, marvellin' was ut a human sacrifice he was for makin', the like of the Druids, to get back the dog.

‘“Not fourteen hours back,” says he, “he died on us.”

‘“Was he wan of yourselves?” says I. “A nice fool I'd look if I came shankin' back from the fair wid a bit of the wrong unit.”

‘“He was,” says he, “an' the best of us all.” An' then he went on, wid me puttin' in just a word now and then, or a glimpse of the dog, to keep him desirous and gabbin'. There's no use in cheapenin' your wares. He let on how this fellow he spoke of had never joyed since they came to that place, an' gone mad at the finish wi' not gettin' his sleep without he'd be seein' Them Wans in a dream and hearin' the Banshies; the way he bruk out at three in the morning that day, apt to cut anny in two that would offer to hold him. “Here's out of it all,” he appeared to have said; “I've lived through iv'ry room in hell, how long, O Lord, how long, but it's glory an' victory now,” an' off an' away wid him West, through The Garden. “Ye'll not have seen him at all?” says me friend. We hadn't notussed, I told him. “We were right then,” says he; “he'll have died on the way. For he let a scream in the night that a man couldn't give an' live after. If he'd fetched up at your end,” says he, “you'd have known, for he was as brave as a lion.”

‘“A livin' dog's better,” says I, “than anny dead lion. It's a Jew's bargain you're makin'. Where's the deceased?”

‘“Pass me the dog,” says he, “an' I'll give you his route out from here to where he'll have dropped. It's his point of deparchure I stand at.”

‘“I'll come to ye there,” says I, “an' ye'll give me his bearin's, an' when I've set eyes on me man I'll come back an' hand ye the dog, an' not sooner.”

‘He was spaichless a moment. “Come now,” says I, from me lair in the fog, “wan of the two of us has to be trustful. I'll not let ye down.”

‘“Ye'll swear to come back?” says he in great anguish.

‘I said, “Tubbe sure.”

‘“Come on with ye, then,” he answered.

‘I went stoopin' along to within six feet of his voice, the way ye'd swim under water, an' then I came to the surface. The clayey-white face that he had, an' the top of his body showed over a breastwork the moral of ours. An', be cripes, it was all right. The red figures were plain on his shoulder-strap – wan-eighty-six. Another breastwork the fellow to his was not thirty yards south. There was jus' the light left me to see that the sentry there was wan-eighty-six too. I'd inspicted the goods in bulk now, an' only had to see to me sample an' off home with it.'

Toomey looked benedictively down on the long stiff frame with its Iron Cross ribbon and red worsted ‘186'. ‘An ould storm-throoper!' Toomey commendingly said. ‘His friend gev me the line to him. Then he got anxious. “Ye'll bury him fair?” he said. “Is he a Prod'stant?” says I, “or a Cath'lic?” “A good Cath'lic,” says he; “we're Bavarians here.” “Good,” says I, “I'll speak to Father Moloney meself.” “An' ye'll come back,” says he, “wi' the dog?” ‘”I will not,” says I, “I shall hand him ye now. Ye're a straight man not to ha' shot me before. Besides, ye're a Cath'lic.” So I passed him the an'mal and off on me journey. Not the least trouble at all, findin' the body. The birds were all pointin' to ut. They hated ut. Faith, but that fellow had seen the quare things!' Toomey looked down again at the monstrously staring eyes of his capture, bursting with agonies more fantastic, I thought, than any that stare from the bayoneted dead in a trench.

‘The man wi' the dog,' Toomey said, ‘may go the same road. His teeth are all knockin' together. A match for your own, Billy.' In trenches you did not pretend not to know all about one another, the best and the worst. In that screenless life friendship frankly condoled with weak nerves or an ugly face or black temper.

‘Sergeant,' said Toomey, ‘ye'll help me indent for the fiver? A smart drop of drink it'll be for the whole of the boys.'

I nodded. ‘Bring him along,' I said, ‘now.'

‘Well, God ha' mercy on his sowl,' said Toomey, hoisting the load on to his back.

‘And of all Christian souls, I pray God.' I did not say it. Only Ophelia's echo, crossing my mind. How long would Mynns last? Till I could wangle his transfer to the divisional laundry or gaff?

I brought Toomey along to claim the fruit of his guile. We had to pass Schofield. He looked more at ease in his mind than before. I asked the routine question. ‘All correct, Sergeant,' he answered. ‘Deucks is coom dahn. Birds is all stretchin' dahn to it, proper.'

Its own mephitic mock-peace was re-filling The Garden. But no one can paint a miasma. Anyhow, I am not trying to. This is a trade report only.

‘From Division, sir. Urgent.'

Captain Baron, commanding C Company,
¹
shoved his transparent map case under his arm and irritatedly thrust back his tin hat, which was new and chafed his head. He was a plump, stuggy little man in gold-rimmed glasses, in peace time the head of the clerical department of a large London commercial firm, and enormously devoted to ‘bumph,'
i.e.
all the vast paper apparatus of war. His conscientiousness in answering paper questions drew down on him and his cursing subalterns unending streams of chits and reports. He spent hours a day in useless writing. This made him so tired that he was always dropping off to sleep, like the Dormouse in
Alice
.
²
Under the stress of perpetual insomnia and conscientiousness this mildest of men had become frightfully irritable. He liked a well-planned unalterable routine, and his conscientiousness was always flabbergasted by any scrimshanking in his subordinates. He petulantly disapproved of the open warfare which had suddenly come after years of trench routine: unexpected things kept happening and decisions had to be made at once without any guiding precedent – which was most incorrect. Consequently, much of the practical work of the company was performed by his second-in-command, a tall young man, who submitted to
his superior's fantasies with bored resignation – an attitude he adopted to the whole war.

‘Tch, tch, tch! Now what are we to make of this, Ellerton? Another of these
wretched
counter-orders!'

Ellerton glanced at the despatch. It was marked ‘Urgent', and contained a peremptory order to all units not to cross the Mons–Maubeuge road. Baron mechanically pushed up his ill-fitting helmet again, and continued irritatedly:

‘What
do
they want us to do? First we get urgent orders to push on at all costs and establish contact with the Boche – the Colonel strafed me not fifteen minutes ago because I hadn't made good that bally
³
road. I sent Hogbin with a chit to Warburton, telling him to take his platoon and establish posts three hundred yards beyond the road. And now comes this order from Division! What the devil do they mean?'

Ellerton looked slowly round him and took a deep breath. The dull misty twilight of a greyish November afternoon was deepening about them. The worn
pavê
road, still littered with dêbris from the retreating German armies, ran with dreary straightness through bare blank fields. A few hundred yards in front were the meagre leafless trees of the main road from Maubeuge to Mons. To their left was a dirty little hamlet, intact except for the smoke-blackened ruins of the church, burned in 1914.

‘I should say the war is ending.'

Baron was amazed and annoyed by this remark.

‘Don't talk such nonsense! Why, we're scarcely in Belgium yet, and we've got to get to Berlin. The old Boche will make a stand at every river, especially the Rhine. We're miles ahead of our transport and most of the artillery. You know we're tired out – ought to have been relieved days ago. The colonel says we're going so fast the relieving division can't overtake us. A regular staff yarn…'

The motor despatch-rider had turned his machine and chugged off into the gloom. Ellerton sighed at Baron's eloquent complaints. He more than half shared his pessimism about the duration of the war, though the Boches certainly were retreating in undisguised panic, and had made no attempt at a real stand
for days. Still, you never knew with the old Boche. He had blown bridges, culverts, crossroads, with exemplary military destructiveness. Every railway they passed had each alternative rail most neatly blown about six inches – the maximum of destructiveness with the minimum of effort. The whole railway would have to be re-laid. They must be forty to sixty miles from rail-head. It certainly was impossible to fight even one more big battle at present… Ellerton sighed again.

‘I suppose you're right. Probably they don't want us to overrun our objective and get involved in a premature action. I'll go myself and tell Warburton to bring his platoon back.'

‘All right. I'd better go and see the colonel again. He told me we were to continue the pursuit at dawn – I expect he's changed his mind, too!'

And the agitated little man, still occasionally pushing up his helmet, plodded off irritatedly.

Ellerton found Warburton, a round-faced, yellow-haired young man, with a perpetual frown of perplexity giving verbose orders to a couple of sections.

‘Hullo, Ellerton. I say, there must be a Boche machine-gun post somewhere to our front. I sent out a couple of patrols, and Corporal Eliot was killed – damn nuisance, one of our best NCOs. I'm going out with a couple of sections to try and snaffle the post after dark.'

‘No, you're not! There's an order from Division just arrived – we're to retire behind the Mons–Maubeuge road.'

‘What on earth for?'

‘God knows. But that's the order.'

Warburton swore copiously.

‘And my best corporal's killed!'

Ellerton took the two-to-four watch, after nearly four hours' sleep. Seated on the only available chair, in front of a biscuit-box table with a guttering candle stuck in a bottle, the conscientious Baron was drearily bowed asleep over masses of Situation Reports, Ration Indents, Casualty Reports, and letters from and to relatives of men killed. Baron's kindliness and paper fever involved him in long carefully docketed correspondence with the relatives of the dead; once, five minutes before zero hour,
⁴
Ellerton had found him in a dugout agitatedly explaining by letter to an indignant parent why the pocket-knife was missing from the effects of a man killed two months before.

‘Why don't you lie down, Baron? You're worn out, old man, and you're only nodding asleep there. Chuck that silly bumph, and go to sleep.'

Baron sat up with a jerk.

‘Wha's time?'

‘Two o'clock.'

‘Tch, tch! And I
must
get all this done before dawn!'

Ellerton knew it was useless to argue further, and slowly got into his equipment. As he shut the door, he saw Baron was already beginning to nod again.

And Baron was not the only one who was tired. The whole battalion was tired, tired to a mortal indifference. The last newspapers they had seen, dating from the end of October, informed them they had won splendid victories. It was, of course, interesting to get news about this big war which was going on, but they were too much absorbed in their own job, and far too tired to give much attention to it.

The cold wind smote Ellerton's cheek as he stumbled wearily along, with a weary, silent runner behind him. Overhead a wasted-looking moon sagged westwards, encumbered by heavy clouds. Ellerton was leg-weary, body-weary, mind-weary, heart-weary, so sick of the war that he had ceased to think about it, and simply plodded on, resigned to an eternity of trench duty, hopeless about the infernal thing ever ending. Even the sudden return to open warfare, even the large map outside
Divisional Headquarters, almost daily marked with new bulging advances in blue pencil, failed to alter him. Shut inside the blinkers of duty as an infantry officer, his intelligence was dead or somnolent – he almost believed Baron's imbecility about having to get to Berlin, which was only Baron's conscientious feeling that the routine even of war must be carried out to the end predetermined by ‘the authorities'. Who the devil are ‘the authorities', though, Ellerton reflected as he stumbled along? God knows. Anyhow it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Not a button. And talking of buttons, I must tell that idiot, Fen-church, that he forgot again to sew that fly-button on my slacks…

He came to the first of the three sentry positions, established about fifty yards from the main road. Damn funny, not having any trenches; so awkward and unprotected. The sentries, too, felt awkward without the customary fire-step and parapet… You never knew what might happen with the old Boche. Yet it was very quiet, unbelievably quiet. But for an occasional Very light and a little artillery fire to the left they might have been on night ops. in England.

‘Anything to report, Corporal?'

‘No, sir, all quiet, sir.'

‘Let the men rest as much as you can.'

‘Very good, sir.'

‘You know we're being relieved to-morrow?'

‘'Eard that tale before, sir.'

‘Well, there's another division bivouacked just behind us. Captain Baron saw one of their officers at Battalion HQ. I think we've earned a few days' rest.'

‘Men are worn out, sir, and them iron rations…'

‘I know, I know, but they'll get hot food to-morrow, or the QM shall perish…'

‘Very good, sir.'

‘Good-night, Corporal.'

‘Good-night, sir.'

Undoubtedly it was amazingly quiet. Ellerton peered through the dim air – not a light, not a bullet, not a shell, not a sound from the German army. A surprise attack pending? Or had they
retreated faster than ever, and fallen back on another prepared line? True, their Siegfried line
⁵
had proved a wash-out, a mere rough trench with scarcely any wire. But still, you never knew. He went back to Number I post, and warned the corporal to keep a good watch, and instantly report anything unusual. He repeated this order to the other posts.

How still it was! How slowly the time went! Only twenty minutes gone. The runner stumbled heavily and nearly fell. Poor devil, tired out.

‘Tired, Hogbin?'

‘Yessir, a bit, sir.'

‘All right, go and sleep. It's so quiet I shan't need you.'

‘Very good, sir, thank y' very much, sir.'

He listened to the sound of the man's heavy hobnailed boots on the cobbled side road. How awkward-animal a man is when he's tired out. Good to be alone, though. Ellerton established a sort of beat for himself, more to keep awake than for any other reason. Quiet and cold. Nothing to report. The moon suddenly jumped into clear sky from behind a heavy cloud. He gazed eagerly in the direction of the enemy. Nothing but dim fields and the vague forms of trees. To the right was a sort of round valley, half-filled with very white mist, so level that it looked like cream in a large brown bowl…

He continued his beat.