My Year of the War Part 19

Then I asked if they had ever had any doubt that they would reach the Rhine.

"How could we, sir?"

"And how about the Germans. Do you hate them?"

"Hate!" exclaimed the big man. "What good would it do to hate them?

No, we don't hate. We get our blood up when we're fighting and when they don't play the game. But hate! Don't you think that's kind of ridiculous, sir?"

"How do they fight?"

"They take a bit of beating, do the Boches!"

"So you call them Boches!"

"Yes. They don't like that. But sometimes we call them Allemands, which is Germans in French. Oh, we're getting quite French scholars!"

"They're good soldiers. Not many tricks they're not up to. But in my opinion they're overdoing the hate. You can't keep up to your work on hate, sir. I should think it would be weakening to the mind, too."

"Still, you would like the war over? You'd like to go home?"

They certainly would. Back to the barracks, out of the trenches! They certainly would.

"And call it a draw?"

"Call it a draw, now! Call it a draw, after all we've been through------"

"Spring is coming. The ground will dry up and it will be warm."

"And the going will be good to Berlin, as it was back from Paris in August, we tell the Boches."

"Good for the Russians going over the Carpathians, or the Pyrenees, or whatever those mountains are, too. I read they're all covered with snow in winter."

It was good, regular soldier talk, very "homey" to me. As you will observe, I have not elided the h's. Indeed, Tommy has a way of prefixing his h's to the right vowels more frequently than a generation ago. The Soldiers Three type has pa.s.sed. Popular education will have its way and induce better habits. Believing in the old remedy for exhaustion and exposure to cold, the army served out a tot of rum every day to the men. But many of them are teetotalers, these hardy regulars, and not even Mulvaney will think them effeminate when they have seen fighting which makes anything Mulvaney ever saw child's play. So they asked for candy and chocolate, instead of rum.

Some people have said that Tommy has no patriotism. He fights because he is paid and it is his business. That is an insinuation.

Tommy doesn't care for the "hero stuff," or for waving flags and speechmaking. Possibly he knows how few Germans that sort of thing kills. His weapons are bullets. To put it cogently, he is fighting because he doesn't want any Kaiser "in his."

Is not that what all the speeches in Parliament are about and all the editorials and the recruiting campaign? Is not that what England and France are fighting for? It seems to me that Tommy's is a very practical patriotism, free from cant; and the way that he refuses to hate or to get excited, but sticks to it, must be very irritating to the Germans.

"Would you like a Boche helmet for a souvenir, sir?" asked a soldier who appeared on the outer edge of the group. He was the small, active type, a British soldier with the elan of the Frenchman. "There are lots of them out among the German dead "--the unburied German dead who fell like gra.s.s before the mower in a desperate and futile counter-attack to recover Neuve Chapelle. "I'll have one for you on your way back."

There was no stopping him; he had gone.

"Matty's a devil!" said the big man. "He'll get it, all right. He's equal to reaching over the Boches' parapet and picking one off a Boche's head!"

As we proceeded on our way, officers came out of the little houses to meet Captain P------and the stranger civilian. They had to come out, as there was no room to take us inside; and sometimes they talked shop together after I had answered the usual question, "Is America against us?" There seemed to be an idea that we were, possibly because of the prodigious advertising tactics of a minority. But any feeling that we might be did not interfere with their simple courtesy, or lead them to express any bitterness or break into argument.

"How are things going on over your side?"

"Nicely."

"Any sh.e.l.ling?"

"A little this morning. No harm done."

"We cleaned out one bad sniper to-day."

"Ought to have some sandbags up to-night."

"It's a bad place there. They've got a machine-gun trained which has quite a sweep. I asked if the artillery shouldn't put in a word, but the general didn't think it worth while."

"You must run across that break. Three or four shots at you every time. We're gradually getting shipshape, though."

Just then a couple of bullets went singing overhead. The group paid no attention to them. If you paid attention to bullets over the parapet you would have no time for anything else. But these bullets have a way of picking off tall officers who are standing up among their houses. In the course of their talk they happened to speak of such an instance, though not with reference to the two bullets I have mentioned.

"Poor S------did not last long. He had been out only three weeks."

"How is J------? Hit badly?"

"Through the shoulder; not seriously."

"H------is back. Recovered very quickly."

Normal trench talk, this! A crack which signifies that the bullet has. .h.i.t --another man down. One grows accustomed to it, and one of this group of officers might be gone to-morrow.

"I have one, sir," said Matty, exhibiting a helmet when we returned past his station. "Bullet went right through the head and came out the peak!"

It was time that Captain P------ was back to his own command. As we came to his company's line word was just being pa.s.sed from sentry to sentry:

"No firing. Patrols going out."

It was midnight now.

"We'll go in the other direction," said Captain P------ when he had learned that there was no news.

This brought us to an Irish regiment. The Irish naturally had something to say.

XVI Nearer The Germans

Here not the Irish Sea lay between the broad a and the brogue, but the s.p.a.ce between two sentries or between two rifles with bayonets fixed, lying against the wall of the breastworks ready for their owners'

hands when called to arms in case of an alarm. One stepped from England into Ireland; and my prediction that the Irish would have something to say was correct.

The first man who made his presence felt was a good six feet in height, with a heavy moustache and the earpieces of his cap tied under his chin, though the night was not cold. He placed himself fairly in front of me in the narrow path back of the breastworks and he looked a cowled and sinister figure in the faint glow from a brazier. I certainly did not want any physical argument with a man of his build.