Our Casualty, and Other Stories Part 26

"This," said Captain Power, "is an utterly rotten war."

The rain was dripping through the roof of the shed which had been allotted to Power as a billet The mud outside was more than ankle deep.

The damp inside was chilly and penetrating. Ned Waterhouse, a Second Lieutenant, the only other occupant of the shed, looked up from an old newspaper which he was trying to read.

"All wars are rotten," he said.

"Not at all," said Power; "a properly conducted war, run in a decent way by civilized men is quite agreeable, rather fun, in fact. Now the last in which I was mixed up was rather fun."

Waterhouse eyed Power suspiciously. He suspected that he was being made the victim of some kind of joke. Waterhouse was an Englishman and it was not of his own desire that he was an officer in the Hibernian light Infantry. He felt himself out of place among Irishmen whom he never quite understood. He was particularly distrustful of Captain Power.

Power was an expert in the art of "pulling the legs" of innocent people.

Waterhouse had several times found himself looking like a fool without knowing exactly why.

"What I call a civilized war," said Power, "is waged in fine weather for one thing, and men have a chance of keeping clean. The combatants show some regard for the other side's feelings and don't try to make things as nasty for each other as they can. The business is done in a picturesque way, with flags and drums and speeches. There are negotiations and flags of truce and mutual respect for gallant foemen--instead of this d____d coldblooded, scientific slaughter."

"No war was ever like that," said Waterhouse. "Novelists and other silly fools write about war as if it were a kind of sport. But it never was really."

"The last war I was in, was," said Power.

"I don't believe you ever were in a war before," said Waterhouse.

"You're not old enough to have gone to South Africa."

"All the same I was in a war," said Power, "though I didn't actually fight. I was wounded at the time and couldn't But I was there. Our Irish war at Easter, 1916."

"That footy little rebellion," said Waterhouse.

"You may call it what you like," said Power, "but it was a much better war than this one from every point of view, except mere size. It was properly conducted on both sides."

"I suppose you want to tell a yarn about it," said Waterhouse, "and if you do I can't stop you; but you needn't suppose I'll believe a word you say."

"The truth of this narrative," said Power, "will compel belief even in the most sceptical mind. I happened to be at home at the time on sick leave, wounded in the arm. Those were the days when one got months of sick leave, before some rotten a.s.s invented convalescent homes for officers and kept them there. I had three months' leave that time and I spent it with my people in Ballymahon."

"The whole of it?" said Waterhouse. "Good Lord!"

"You'd have spent it in the Strand Palace Hotel, I suppose, running in and out of music halls, but I prefer the simple joys of country life, though I couldn't shoot or ride properly on account of my arm. Still I could watch the sunset and listen to the birds singing, which I like.

Besides, I was absolutely stoney at the time, and couldn't have stayed in London for a week. As it happened, it was a jolly good thing I was there. If I'd been in London I'd have missed that war. Perhaps I'd better begin by telling you the sort of place Ballymahon is."

"You needn't," said Waterhouse. "I spent three months in camp in County Tipperary. I know those dirty little Irish towns. Twenty public-houses.

Two churches, a workhouse and a police barrack."

"In Ballymahon there is also a court house and our ancestral home. My old dad is the princ.i.p.al doctor in the neighbourhood. He lives on one side of the court house. The parish priest lives on the other. You must grasp these facts in order to understand the subsequent military operations. The only other thing you really must know is that Ballymahon lies in a hole with hills all round it, like the rim of a saucer. Well, on Monday afternoon, Easter Monday, the enemy, that is to say, the Sinn Feiners, marched in and took possession of the town. It was a most imposing sight, Waterhouse. There were at least eight hundred of them.

Lots of them had uniforms. Most of them had flags. There were two bands and quite a lot of rifles. The cavalry----"

"You can't expect me to believe in the cavalry," said Waterhouse. ''But I say, supposing they really came, didn't the loyal inhabitants put up any kind of resistance?"

"My old dad," said Power, "was the only loyal inhabitant, except four policemen. You couldn't expect four policemen to give battle to a whole army. They shut themselves up in their barrack and stayed there. My dad, being a doctor, was of course a non-combatant I couldn't do anything with my arm in a sling, so there was no fight at all."

"I suppose the next thing they did was loot the public-houses," said Waterhouse, "and get gloriously drunk?"

"Certainly not I told you that our war was properly conducted. There was no looting in Ballymahon and I never saw a drunken man the whole time.

If those Sinn Feiners had a fault it was over-respectability. I shouldn't care to be in that army myself."

"I believe that," said Waterhouse. "It's the first thing in this story that I really have believed."

"They used to march about all day in the most orderly manner, and at night there were sentries at every street corner who challenged you in Irish. Not knowing the language, I thought it better to stay indoors.

But my dad used to wander about He's a sporting old bird and likes to know what's going on. Well, that state of things lasted three days and we all began to settle down comfortably for the summer. Except that there were no newspapers or letters there wasn't much to complain about.

In fact, you'd hardly have known there was a war on. It wasn't the least like this beastly country where everyone destroys everything he sees, and wretched devils have to live in rabbit-holes. In Ballymahon we lived in houses with beds and chairs and looked after ourselves properly.

Then one morning--it must have been Friday--news came in that a lot of soldiers were marching on the town. Some country girls saw them and came running in to tell us. I must say for the Sinn Fein commander that he kept his head. His name was O'Farrelly and he called himself a Colonel.

He sent out scouts to see where the soldiers were and how many there were. Quite the proper thing to do. I didn't hear exactly what the scouts reported; but that evening O'Farrelly came round to our house to talk things over with my dad."

"I thought you said your father was a loyal man."

"So he is. There isn't a loyaller man in Ireland. You'd know that if you'd ever seen him singing 'G.o.d Save the King.' He swells out an inch all over when he's doing it."

"If he's as loyal as all that," said Waterhouse, "he wouldn't consult with rebels."

"My dad, though loyal, has some sense, and so, as it happened, had O'Farrelly. Neither one nor the other of them wanted to see a battle fought in the streets of Ballymahon. You've seen battles, Waterhouse, and you know what they're like. Messy things. You can understand my father's feelings. O'Farrelly was awfully nice about it. He said that the people of Ballymahon, including my father and even the police, were a decent lot, and he'd hate to see licentious English soldiers rioting through the streets of the town. His idea was that my dad should use his influence with the C.O. of the troops and get him to march his men off somewhere else, so as to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. O'Farrelly promised he wouldn't go after them or molest them in any way if they left the neighbourhood My dad said he couldn't do that and even if he could, he wouldn't. He suggested that O'Farrelly should take his army away.

O'Farrelly said he was out to fight and not to run away. I chipped in at that point and said he could fight just as well in a lonelier place, where there weren't any houses and no damage would be done. I said I felt pretty sure the soldiers would go after him to any bog he chose to select O'Farrelly seemed to think there was something in the suggestion and said he'd hold a council of war and consult his officers."

"What an amazing liar you are, Power," said Waterhouse.

Captain Power took no notice of the insult. He went on with his story.

"The Council of War a.s.sembled next morning," he said, "and sat for about four hours. It might have all day if an English officer hadn't ridden in on a motor-bike about noon. He was stopped by a sentry, of course, and said he wanted to see the C.O. of the rebel army. So the sentry blindfolded him----"

"What on earth for?"

"In civilized war," said Power severely, "envoys with flags of truce are invariably blindfolded. I told you at the start that our war was properly conducted; but you wouldn't believe me. Now you can see for yourself that it was. The sentry led that officer into the council, which was sitting in the court house. I told you, didn't I, that the court house was the rebel H.Q.?"

"You didn't mention it, but it doesn't matter."

"It does matter. And you'll see later on it's most important Well, O'Farrelly was frightfully polite to the officer, and asked him what he wanted. The officer said that he had come to demand the unconditional surrender of the whole of the rebel army. O'Farrelly, still quite politely, said he'd rather die than surrender, and everybody present cheered. The officer said that the town was entirely surrounded and that there was a gun on top of one of the hills which would sh.e.l.l the place into little bits in an hour if it started firing. O'Farrelly said he didn't believe all that and accused the officer of putting up a bluff.

The officer stuck to it that what he said was true. That brought the negotiations to a dead-lock."

"Why the devil didn't they sh.e.l.l the place and have done with it, instead of talking?"

"That's what would happen out here," said Power. "But as I keep telling you our war was run on humane lines. After the officer and O'Farrelly had argued for half an hour my dad dropped in on them. He's a popular man in the place and I think everyone was glad to see him. He sized up the position at once and suggested the only possible way out O'Farrelly, with a proper safe conduct, of course, was to be allowed to go and see whether the town was really surrounded, and especially whether there was a gun on top of the hill, as the officer said. That, I think you'll agree with me, Waterhouse, was a sensible suggestion and fair to both sides. But they both boggled at it. The officer said he'd no power to enter into negotiation of any kind with rebels, and that all he could do was take yes or no to his proposal of unconditional surrender.

O'Farrelly seemed to think that he'd be shot, no matter what safe conducts he had. It took the poor old dad nearly an hour to talk sense into the two of them; but in the end he managed it O'Farrelly agreed to go if the safe conduct was signed by my dad as well as the officer, and the officer agreed to take him on condition that my dad went too to explain the situation to his colonel. I went with them just to see what would happen."

"I suppose they made O'Farrelly prisoner?" said Waterhouse.

"You are judging everybody by the standards of this infernal war," said Power. "That English colonel was a soldier and a gentleman. He stood us drinks and let O'Farrelly look at the gun. It was there all right and Ballymahon was entirely surrounded. We got back about five o'clock, with an ultimatum written out on a sheet of paper. Unless O'Farrelly and his whole army had marched out and laid down their arms by 8 p.m. the town would be sh.e.l.led without further warning. You'd have thought that would have knocked the heart out of O'Farrelly, considering that he hadn't a dog's chance of breaking through. But it didn't He became cheerfuller than I'd seen him before, and said that the opportunity he'd always longed for had come at last. His men, when he told them about the ultimatum, took the same view. They said they'd never surrender, not even if the town was sh.e.l.led into dust and them buried in the ruins.

That naturally didn't suit my dad--or for that matter, me. The soldiers were sure to begin by sh.e.l.ling the rebel H.Q. and that meant that they'd hit our house. I told you, didn't I, that it was next door to the court house? My poor dad did his best. He talked to O'Farrelly and the rest of them till the sweat ran off him. But it wasn't the least bit of good.

They simply wouldn't listen to reason. It was seven o'clock before dad gave the job up and left the court house. He was going home to make his will, but on the way he met Father Conway, the priest He was a youngish man and a tremendous patriot, supposed to be hand-in-glove with the rebels. Dad explained to him that he had less than an hour to live and advised him to go home and bury any valuables he possessed before the sh.e.l.ling began. It took Father Conway about ten minutes to grasp the situation. I chipped in and explained the bracket system on which artillery works. I told him that they wouldn't begin by aiming at the court house, but would drop their first sh.e.l.l on his house and their next on ours, so as to get the range right. As soon as he believed that--and I had to swear it was true before he did--he took the matter up warmly and said he'd talk to O'Farrelly himself. I didn't think he'd do much good, but I went into the court house with him, just to see what he'd say. I must say for him he wasted no time. It was a quarter past seven when he began, so there wasn't much time to waste."

"'Boys,' he said, 'will you tell me straight and plain what is it you want?' O'Farrelly began a long speech about an Irish republic and things of that kind. I sat with my watch in my hand opposite Father Conway and every now and then I pointed to the hands, so as to remind him that time was going on. At twenty-five past seven he stopped O'Farrelly and said they couldn't have an Irish republic just then--though they might later--on account of that gun. Then he asked them again to say exactly what they wanted, republics being considered a wash-out You'd have been surprised if you heard the answer he got Every man in the place stood up and shouted that he asked nothing better than to die for Ireland. They meant it, too. I thought it was all up and Father Conway was done. But he wasn't."

"'Who's preventing you?' he said. 'Just form fours in the square outside and you'll all be dead in less than half an hour. But if you stay here a lot of other people who don't want to die for Ireland or anything else will be killed too; along with having their homes knocked down on them.'