Читать книгу The Secret Battle (Historical Novel) - A. P. Herbert - Страница 9

Harry's platoon was settled in when I found him, hidden away somewhere in the third (Reserve) line. He had conscientiously posted a few sentries, and done all those things which a good platoon commander should do, and was lying himself in a sort of stupor of fatigue. Physically he was not strong, rather frail, in fact, for the infantry; he had a narrow chest and slightly round shoulders, and his heart would not have passed any civilian doctor; and—from my own experience—I knew that the march must have tried him terribly. But a little rest had soothed the intense nervous irritation whose origins I have tried to describe, and his spirit was as sturdy as ever. He struggled to his feet and leaned over the parados with me. The moon was now high up in the north-east; the Turks had ceased their rapid fire at moonrise, and now an immense peace wrapped the Peninsula. We were high up on the centre slopes of Achi Baba, and all the six miles which other men had conquered lay bathed in moonlight below us. Far away at the cape we could see the long, green lights of the hospital ships, and all about us were glow-worms in the scrub. Left and right the pale parapets of trenches crept like dim-seen snakes into the little valleys, and vanished over the opposite slopes. Only a cruiser off shore firing lazily at long intervals disturbed the slumberous stillness. No better sedative could have been desired.

'How did you like the march?' I said.

'Oh, all right; one of my men was wounded, I believe, but I didn't see him.'

'All right?' I said. 'Personally I thought it was damned awful; it's a marvel that any of us are here at all. I hear A Company's still adrift, as it is.'

'Well, anyhow we got here,' said Harry. 'What a wonderful spot this is. And look at those damned glow-worms.'

I was anxious to know what impression the night had made on Harry, but these and other answers gave me no real clue. I had a suspicion that it had, in truth, considerably distressed him, but any such effect had clearly given way to the romantic appeal of the quiet moon. I, too, was enjoying the sense of peace, but I was still acutely conscious of the unpleasantness of the night's proceedings; and a certain envy took hold of me at this youth's capacity to concentrate on the attractive shadow of distasteful things. There was a heavy, musty smell over all this part of the trench, the smell of a dead Turk lying just over the parapet, and it occurred to me, maliciously, to wake Harry from his dreams, and bring home to him the reality of things.

'Funny smell you've got here, Harry,' I said; 'know what it is?'

'Yes, it's cactus or amaryllis, or one of those funny plants they have here, isn't it? I read about it in the papers.'

This was too much. 'It's a dead Turk,' I told him, with a wicked anticipation of the effect I should produce.

The effect, however, was not what I expected.

'No!' said Harry, with obvious elation. 'Let's find the devil.'

Forthwith he swarmed over the parapet, full of life again, nosed about till he found the reeking thing, and gazed on it with undisguised interest. No sign of horror or disgust could I detect in him. Yet it was not pure ghoulishness; it was simply the boy's greed for experience and the savour of adventure. Anyhow, my experiment had failed; and I found that I was glad. But when I was leaving him for the next platoon, he was lying down for a little sleep on the dirty floor of the trench, and as he flashed his electric torch over the ground, I saw several small white objects writhing in the dust. The company commander whom we had relieved had told me how under all these trenches the Turks and the French had buried many of their dead, and in a moment of nauseating insight I knew that these things were the maggots which fed upon their bodies.

'Harry,' I said, 'you can't sleep there; look at those things!' And I told him what they were.

'Rubbish,' he said, 'they're glow-worms gone to sleep.'

Well, then I left him. But that's how he was in those days.