With Haig on the Somme Part 13

"Why didn't yer sing out, sir?" he wailed.

"I did sing out, my boy, but you sang in! However, never mind. How is it going?" said Dennis, squeezing the disconsolate one's shoulder.

"We've got the trench, sir," said Tiddler, whose face was as white as Hawke's under the dirt that grimed it. "Our chaps are consolidating the position now."

"Then one of you go and bring my brother here," said Dennis. "You go, Tiddler; and Hawke, come with me."

A great rent had been torn in the mouth of the sniper's gallery, and the sniper himself was not good to look upon, every rag of clothing having been stripped from his back and lower limbs by the bomb, while a couple of yards farther on lay the man whom Dennis had shot.

Picking his way past them, Dennis flashed his torch on again, and, followed by Hawke, made his way back into that underground storehouse, which had so nearly been his grave.

As he entered it he gave a prodigious yawn, and felt an indescribable la.s.situde creep over him.

"I'm frightfully tired, Hawke. I've been through a lot since we crawled over to their wire last night, and I'm hanged if I can keep up much longer. You see those steps? A spy fellow pitched me down them neck and crop. I fell just here, with a bomb in my hand too!"

"Lumme!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his listener, as Dennis sat down heavily on the pile of blankets, just as the sh.e.l.l-proof door above them was opened from the other side.

Lights flashed into the lower vaults, and several officers chorused their surprise, among them Captain Bob. Tiddler had not yet reached him, and Bob was searching anxiously for some trace of his brother.

"My hat!" he cried. "We've touched lucky to-day, but Dennis can't possibly be down there. I'll go back and question No. 2 Platoon; he may have gone to the right."

"Arf a mo', sir!" sang out Harry Hawke. "'E is 'ere right enough, and bust me if he ain't snorin' already!"

Hawke, looking up the steps, saw the group part and General Dashwood himself come quickly down the ladder, and the store of shot and sh.e.l.l and the piles of rifles were as nothing to the brigadier as he saw the boy he thought he had lost for ever lying on the blanket pile, sleeping the sleep of physical exhaustion.

"That blood's nothing, sir," explained the delighted private, coming to attention. "It ain't 'is own. I can show you the man wot that come art of. 'E was that sniper we never could spot, and I reckon it was 'arf me and 'arf Mr. Dashwood wot killed him." And he gave his listeners a brief outline of what had happened, as Dennis had told him on their way there from the tunnel.

"And I sent him out of harm's way, as I thought!" was the brigadier's inaudible whisper under his moustache, and then aloud he said: "Get four men and carry him back to his own dug-out. It will do him good to sleep the clock round, and he will do it better there."

So, oblivious of the jolting, Dennis Dashwood was borne across what had lately been No Man's Land, and was now ours, and tucked up tenderly in his bunk, where, if he did not exactly sleep the clock round, he certainly did not open an eyelid until sunrise next morning.

CHAPTER X

In which Dennis Meets Claude Laval, Pilote Aviateur

When Dennis awoke he saw Captain Bob looking at him, and he became conscious of a very pleasant odour of coffee permeating the dug-out.

"Oh, I say, why didn't you turn me out before, old chap?" Dennis cried.

"I shall be late for the blooming inspection."

"Never mind about that," laughed his brother. "And it's no use looking about for your duds; we've moved into new quarters over yonder, and all our clobber's gone across, but I've had some breakfast brought in here for you, so peg in, and tell me the whole story. There are some funny yarns knocking about, and I left the governor doing a sort of war dance.

He only left out the whoop from deference to the B.M.'s feelings. But all joking apart, old chap, the pater's in the very seventh heaven of delight, for a letter has come from some wounded French officer who has recommended you for the Military Medal."

Dennis sprang out of his bunk, fresh as paint, and flung himself on the coffee and bacon ravenously, and while he ate he talked in his simple boyish way, making light of his own share in the story, and Captain Bob, filling in the gaps for himself, beamed like the rising sun which flung a rosy glow into that dismal mud-hole.

"By Jove! old chap, I congratulate you heartily," he said, grasping his brother by both shoulders. "If you go on like this you'll either go far, or you'll be very suddenly nipped in the bud. You mustn't take too many chances, Dennis, for the sake of the little mater at home. But this is good news!"

"Some have greatness thrust upon them, and I've had the luck to be one of those," said Dennis, looking rather ashamed of himself. "I did nothing at all, old man, that you wouldn't have done, or any of our crush. It just happened to come my way, and it just happened to come out all right, but I don't know which was the worst--that ride with poor old Thompson and that sh.e.l.l that blew us to smithereens, or Hawke's bomb.

They were tight places, both of them! And, I say, Bob, I'll swear on oath it was Van Drissel or Von Dussel, or whatever he calls himself, who pitched me down that ladder. I recognised his voice distinctly."

"I should like to recognise his ugly mug," said the captain. "But he must have gone under, for he certainly wasn't among the prisoners. I saw them all."

"Well, Bob, I'd rather have a wash now than the Victoria Cross itself, and I must get into another tunic. Where's our new Little Grey Home on the western front?"

"Come on," said his brother. "I'll show you."

The Germans had sunk a well deep down through the chalk, and there was a stand-pipe close to the Dashwoods' new quarters.

Dennis stripped himself to the buff, and sallying out to the pipe, enjoyed the unexpected luxury of a glorious shower-bath, which he wanted badly. Then he dressed himself, appropriating the belts and equipment of a poor youngster named Binks, who had been killed during the raid, and, emerging from the door, almost ran into the arms of his father and the Divisional General.

"You are the very man I have been looking for," said the general. "Let me give you my heartiest congratulations, Mr. Dashwood. I have been in communication this morning with the G.O.C., and I think there's another slice of good luck coming your way. I wish I'd paid as much attention to languages when I was your age."

For a moment Dennis failed to grasp the drift of his words, but the Divisional Commander soon made himself quite clear.

"I had no sooner telegraphed a report of your doings from the commandant of the 400th Regiment of the Line than a wire came back from Sir Douglas Haig, who wants an intelligent officer with a fluent knowledge of French, and he asked me if I thought you would fill the bill. I at once answered in the affirmative, and you will go back with me in my car on your way to Sir Douglas, and it may be a very good thing for you."

Dennis glanced at his father, and saw approval in his face, and after a brief consultation between the generals about the consolidation of the ground we had gained, Dennis found himself whirling along the familiar road that he had traversed on the motorcycle two evenings before.

"I hope I shall be back in time for the big push, sir," he said, as the car pulled up in front of D.H.Q., and the general smiled.

"You must leave that to circ.u.mstances," he replied. "I'm afraid the 'big push,' as you call it, is becoming too much public property." And he turned to an officer who was just mounting a motorcycle.

"One moment, Spencer," he called. "You going to Sir Douglas? Ah, yes, I remember. Will you give Mr. Dashwood a lift and take him with you?"

There was a blanket strapped on the carrier, and away they whizzed, the continued thunder of the guns making conversation difficult, and the Allied aircraft circling high above their heads.

League after league they pa.s.sed through a vast camp of armed men; brown battalions marching up to the front singing as they marched, brigades under canvas to right and left of them, miles of supply columns, some cavalry eating their hearts out, kite balloon sections 'phoning results to hidden batteries, all the seething ma.s.s of military activities to be found behind the firing line.

And then his companion slowed down as they approached the quiet chateau, where worked the keen, well-balanced brain that guided and controlled all those activities, and Dennis found himself in the presence of Sir Douglas Haig, who, after an interview of half an hour's duration, summed up the result of it in a few brief soldierly words.

"You are the very man I was wanting, Mr. Dashwood," he said pleasantly.

"Your one object in life now is to find General Joffre, lay these papers before him, and explain any point upon which the French Generalissimo may be doubtful. Exactly where he is you will have to discover, but if you are fortunate you should be back here again before the end of the week."

"I hope to return well before that, sir!" said Dennis, and Sir Douglas smiled.

"I know what is in your mind, Mr. Dashwood, but that will rest entirely with yourself," said the Commander-in-Chief. "So far, from what I am told, you seem to have surprisingly good luck. Good-bye, the car is ready for you now."

The frank, handsome face of the distinguished cavalry soldier was still before Dennis's eyes as the little six-cylinder motor, with the small Union Jack fluttering from one of the lamp brackets, whirled him away on a long journey and an important errand.

His driver was a young Frenchman, who enjoyed that mad dash every whit as much as the English lad.

At Soissons they were told that the Generalissimo had left for Chalons that morning, and at Chalons opinions were divided as to whether he would be found at Reims, or Bar-le-Duc, which were in opposite directions.

"Which shall we try?" said the driver. "Reims means going back."