The Red Horizon Part 30

I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too, As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.

"But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.

I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said, "Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"

The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with star-sh.e.l.ls, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-sh.e.l.ls rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that (p. 293) disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the s.p.a.ces between. The dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun shadows of the parados.

Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm, sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the night air.

"Quiet?" he asked.

"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."

"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have the working parties come up yet?" he asked.

"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."

They came along the trench, about two hundred strong, engineers (p. 294) and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed wire, wooden supports, &c. They were going out digging on a new sap and putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished, would bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy. Needless to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they were digging out towards our lines.

The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.

"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.

"We're reserves there," he answered. "It's always working-parties; at night and at day. Sweeping gutters and picking papers and bits of stew from the street. Is it quiet here?"

"Very quiet," I answered. "We've only had five killed and nine wounded in six days. How is your regiment getting along?"

"Oh, not so bad," said the man; "some go west at times, but it's what one has to expect out here."

The working party were edging off, and some of the men were clambering over the parapet.

"Hi! Ginger!" someone said in a loud whisper, "Ginger Weeson; (p. 295) come along at once!"

The man on the banquette got to his feet, put out his cigarette and placed the f.a.g-end in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and was immediately asleep.

I was called again at one, three-quarters of an hour later.

"What's up?" I asked the corporal who wakened me.

"Oh, there's a party going down to the rear for rations," I was told.

"So you've got to take up sentry-go till stand-to; that'll be for an hour or so. You're better out in the air now for its beginning to stink everywhere, but the dug-out is the worst place of all."

So saying, the corporal entered the dug-out and stretched himself on the floor; he was going to have a sleep despite his mean opinion of the shelter.

The stench gathers itself in the early morning, in that chill (p. 296) hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze from the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and well-nigh tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed with the stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as it enters your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it crawl up your nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of the throat through the windpipe and into the stomach.

I leant my arms on the sandbags and looked across the field; I fancied I could see men moving in the darkness, but when the star-sh.e.l.ls went up there was no sign of movement out by the web of barbed-wire entanglements. The new sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising eerie from the s.p.a.ce between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing "Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting, deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was. .h.i.t I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then intense silence wrapped up everything as in a cloak. But only for (p. 297) a moment. The enemy must have heard the cry for a dozen star-sh.e.l.ls shot towards us and frittered away in sparks by our barbed-wire entanglements. There followed a second of darkness and then an explosion right over the sap. The enemy were firing shrapnel sh.e.l.ls on the working party. Three, four sh.e.l.ls exploded simultaneously out in front. I saw dark forms rise up and come rushing into shelter. There was a crunching, a stumbling and a gasping as if for air. Boots struck against the barbed entanglements, and like trodden mice, the wires squeaked in protest. I saw a man, outlined in black against the glow of a star-sh.e.l.l, struggling madly as he endeavoured to loose his clothing from the barbs on which it caught. There was a ripping and tearing of tunics and trousers.... A sh.e.l.l burst over the men again and I saw two fall; one got up and clung to the arm of a mate, the other man crawled on his belly towards the parapet.

In their haste they fell over the parapet into the trench, several of them. Many had gone back by the sap, I could see them racing along crouching as they ran. Out in front several forms were bending over the ground attending to the wounded. From my left the message (p. 298) came "Stretcher-bearers at the double." And I pa.s.sed it along.

Two men who had scrambled over the parapet were sitting on my banquette, one with a scratched forehead, the other with a bleeding finger. Their mates were attending to them binding up the wounds.

"Many hurt?" I asked.

"A lot 'ave copped a packet," said the man with the bleeding finger.

"We never 'eard the blurry things come, did we?" he asked his mates.

"Never 'eard nothin', we didn't till the thing burst over us," said a voice from the trench. "I was busy with Ginger----"

"Ginger Weeson?" I enquired.

"That's 'im," was the reply. "Did yer 'ear 'im yell? Course yer did; ye'd 'ave 'eard 'im over at La Ba.s.see."

"What happened to him?" I asked.

"A bullet through 'is belly," said the voice. "When 'e roared I put my 'and on 'is mouth and 'e gave me such a punch. I was nearly angry, and 'im in orful pain. Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like his one."

Their wounds dressed, the men went away; others came by carrying (p. 299) out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on the shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth knocked away.

The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died in hospital.

The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine breakfast.

CHAPTER XXII (p. 300)

ROMANCE

The young recruit is apt to think Of war as a romance; But he'll find its boots and bayonets When he's somewhere out in France.

When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from ---- his heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew, hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are thridding in the gra.s.s and the air is full of the minute clamouring, murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool, mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open s.p.a.ces, and on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into the land of mystery, the Unknown.

In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward (p. 301) as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-sh.e.l.ls and lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of death.

Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.

Nature is busy through it all, the gra.s.ses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the gra.s.shoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the heart of the young soldier.

I have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with (p. 302) the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-sh.e.l.ls burst into fire and drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses, gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.

Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame.

Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.

Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty pa.s.sion and deadly hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of G.o.d, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.

He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy ringing of church (p. 303) bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong; the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and dusty trucks.