The Red Horizon Part 4

"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in London."

"And you, Pryor?"

"I went cold all over for a minute."

"Bill?"

"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out one of our popular rhymes.

Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys To drive the Kaiser balmy.

And _we'll_ smash up that fool Von Kluck And all his bloomin' army!

We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor (p. 059) ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was smoking a cigarette.

"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.

"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."

"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a wound like that. You're d.a.m.ned lucky, and its your first journey!"

"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.

"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the old regiment left, and it makes me wish this d.a.m.ned business was over and done with."

"Ye don't like war, then."

"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks, and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the ---- work." (p. 060)

"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing round his lips. "G.o.d's with us, you know."

"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on G.o.d," I remarked.

"Blimey! talk about G.o.d!" said the regular.

"There's more of the d.a.m.ned devil in this than there is of anything else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church, and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."

"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.

"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work, never could stomach it."

The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.

We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the province of death and desolation. We pa.s.sed the last ploughman. He was a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home, now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green gra.s.ses, the old farm holed by a thousand sh.e.l.ls, the old plough, (p. 061) and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage which had been done.

We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive sh.e.l.ls in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast of burden--the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.

We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-s.h.i.+vered (p. 062) roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.

"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.

As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time I was in England as a marker at our rifle b.u.t.ts, cut through the air, and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.

"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.

"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere, and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling (p. 063) a fresh cigarette.

Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance, with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath, "This way to the war."

The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front sh.e.l.ls were exploding, and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides, and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon (p. 064) on his breast.

"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How did you get it?" he called up to the man.

"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve, thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"

he asked.

"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."

We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood, and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.

"How did it happen?" I asked.

"Oh, a d.a.m.ned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel sh.e.l.l) caught me on the parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who are you?"

"The London Irish."

"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ----," he said, rubbing a miry hand across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065) luck! Are you from Chelsea?"

"Yes."

"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the two men lay.

They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.

Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066) lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in something else, a problem which he failed to solve.

One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless body in the trench.

"Brothers," he said.

For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.

Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the bursting sh.e.l.ls and indifferent to his own safety.

The enemy sh.e.l.led persistently. Their objective was the ruined church, but most of their sh.e.l.ls flew wide or went over their mark, and made matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of G.o.d.

"Why do they keep sh.e.l.lin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067) who never left the parapet even when the sh.e.l.ls were bursting barely a hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.

"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"