Читать книгу The Test of Scarlet - Coningsby Dawson - Страница 9

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IT was growing dusk before the observing-officer of the relieving battery returned from his reconnaissance of the Front to take over from me. The Hun planes had already come out like monstrous bats from their hiding-places, and were dipping their wings in the aquamarine and saffron of the fading sky. Our machine-gunners and riflemen for miles round were busy taking pot-shots at them, trying to drive them back so that they should not detect the unusual movement of troops behind our lines.

One may say what he likes about war, but it has moments which possess a surpassing and enthralling beauty. One such moment came this evening as I watched what is likely to prove to be my last sunset over the Vimy plain. I know it all—every charred tree, every hollow, every shattered ruin. I ought to know it for it has made me suffer; Death, mounted on his black stallion, has waited for me behind almost every bit of cover within sight. I have felt him when I could not see him; there have been times when across the distance I have caught the gleam of his shrouded eyes. Because of these things, because of the friends who have died here, because of the risks we have taken and shared, because of the ice-cold nights, the poker-games, the brief escapes into cleaner country, the letters from a certain girl and the home-sick dreams which have wiled away tedious hours in dug-outs—because of all these things, in an obstinate kind of way I love the scarred, forsaken horror of this country. “For the last time,” I told myself as I watched the sunset glow grow fainter upon the enemy domes and spires of Douai.

If I live through the war I may come back to this ridge which has been my home for over a year; but, if I come back, it will not look the same. All the challenge to one’s daring will have vanished. There will be no gassing, no shelling; one will be able to expose himself as much as he likes. Everything will be desperately and conventionally safe. Curious how one learns to admire danger!

While I watched and the light faded, men became symbols and shadows. They crept along the trenches, going up to die, as men have gone up to die through the ages. Even in peace times we were soldiers for one cause or another, and none of us were immune from dying. We are fighting from the day we draw breath till the day when our bodies, like beggars’ rags, drop from us and our spirits in their swift lean whiteness escape. Death! What is it but just that, the casting aside of tattered clothing!—and how tattered one’s body can become in the front-line!

The dance of destruction commenced as darkness settled. Like ropes of pearls flung up, the luminous tracer-bullets of machine-guns darted towards the sky. From somewhere in the clouds the Hun planes replied, flinging down similar ropes of ruin, Against the horizon, like lilies floating, Hun flares soared and swayed. While they lasted, Gavrelle sprang ghostly into sight and the contorted skeleton of what once was Oppy. The flares sink and die, everything is again swallowed up in obscurity. Down the sunken road to my left go the anonymous feet of marching men. Other feet have, trampled that mud, and they now are silent. There are feet among those who march tonight which will not make the return journey.

The phone rings sharply. “You’re wanted, sir.” The message is shouted up from the depths of the dug-out. I press the button of my flash-lamp and hurriedly slither down the innumerable greasy stairs. As I take the receiver, I tell the signaller to light another candle as there may be a message to pencil. He lights the candle and sticks it against the planked wall in the orthodox way, by warming the wall with the flame so that the heat may melt the wax.

“Hulloa! Hulloa!... Oh, it’s you sir!” It’s my Major.

“No, the friend who came to see me, this morning has not returned; he went somewhere.... Yes, I know; he ought to have taken over from me... O, here he is.... You’ll have horses for... all my party. Yes, sir, I understand. I won’t waste any time.”

I turn round to the officer who is to relieve me, “You took your time, old thing, I must say. I hope the dinner at battalion headquarters was a wet one. But you’ve rather crowded me; my battery hits the trail tonight.”

He starts a lengthy explanation, but I’m in a hurry to be gone. While I hand over to him my fighting maps, my linesmen are loading themselves with reels of wire and instruments.

“Well, so long,” I say.

“Good luck,” he replies.

How often I have spoken such words in this cramped death-trap; now I’m speaking them for the last time. I take a final look round; there’s the frame-work bunk, with the chicken-wire nailed over it, on which I have spent so many restless nights; there’s the ground-sheet tacked over the second exit through which the draught was so persistent in coming; there’s the penciled message on the wall to his sweetheart in the Argonne from the captured French soldier who slaved for the Hun—a message of deathless love, which I forwarded to her as directed. This place was a home of sorts, and now it is another’s.

We scramble up the steep, clammy stairs into the trench. The night air is soft and warm; stars are coming out. Round the traverse where the thirteen-pounder lies concealed, the gun-detachment is waiting for me. I raise the camouflage to take one last look at the brave little piece; then I’m tempted to enter and to place my hand upon the smooth cold breech-block, which shines like silver.

“We never got our chance to fire you, old girl,” is my thought: “but we’d have done our bit, if the Hun tanks had come, you and I. If the chance does come, you’ll have to play the game with some other chap now.”

We’re in the sunken road, climbing the ridge where the chalk gleams white as snow in the darkness. Some runners go past us, smoking cigarettes. They belong to the relieving troops; none of our men would do that. A cigarette shows up like a lamp from this point of vantage. I halt the men and order them to put out their cigarettes.

We’re on the crest now, where a sentry challenges. To the right and left shells are falling with a sullen crash. Our faces are turned towards the west, where the horizon is still faintly flame-coloured and evening has not yet sunk into night. To our right the splinted tower of Mount St. Eloi points a martyred finger at the clouds. Beneath our feet runs the Concrete Road, built at such sacrifice across the torn battlefield. All our transport comes up along this route, as the Hun knows well; he makes it the special target of his harassing fire. We note the new hits which the enemy has scored on it since last we made the journey. The ground is ploughed with shells on either side; here and there one finds black pools of blood, dead horses and broken limbers. From craters and places of concealment our forward guns belch fire. Their flash is hidden from the enemy by the ridge; but he has guessed their approximate locations, and searches and sweeps day and night in an effort to find and destroy them. Now and then, like the blast of a furnace, a torrent of flame shoots up where he has exploded an ammunition dump. Against the swift and momentary illumination one sees the shadowy figures of men running and dropping into shell-holes. The spectacle of death fails to move us. We have become too used to dying.

As we plod along under our heavy loads of instruments, kit, revolvers and reels of wire, we spread out so that one shell may not get the lot of us. My men are singing; from the words I gather an idea of what is happening in their minds:

I said “Good-bye” to the flowers

And “Good-bye” to the trees,

And the little church which sleeps so quietly,

I said “Good-bye” to on my knees;

I said “Good-bye” to my sister

And my dear old mammy, too;

But my heart was almost breaking

When I said “Good-bye” to you.

They’re conscious of something different and devastating approaching, and are singing their farewell to security.

Foch’s Pets! The hammer-head of the counterattack! If that’s the game, there won’t be many of us left to celebrate peace. It’s August now; how many of us will be above ground by Christmas?