Part 1 (1/2)
Men, Women and Guns.
by H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile.
PROLOGUE
Two days ago a dear old aunt of mine asked me to describe to her what shrapnel was like.
”What does it feel like to be sh.e.l.led?” she demanded. ”Explain it to me.”
Under the influence of my deceased uncle's most excellent port I did so.
Soothed and in that expansive frame of mind induced by the old and bold, I drew her a picture--vivid, startling, wonderful. And when I had finished, the dear old lady looked at me.
”Dreadful!” she murmured. ”Did I ever tell you of the terrible experience I had on the front at Eastbourne, when my bath-chair attendant became inebriated and upset me?”
Slowly and sorrowfully I finished the decanter--and went to bed.
But seriously, my masters, it is a hard thing that my aunt asked of me.
There are many things worse than sh.e.l.ling--the tea-party you find in progress on your arrival on leave; the utterances of war experts; the non-arrival of the whisky from England. But all of those can be imagined by people who have not suffered; they have a standard, a measure of comparison. Sh.e.l.ling--no.
The explosion of a howitzer sh.e.l.l near you is a definite, actual fact--which is unlike any other fact in the world, except the explosion of another howitzer sh.e.l.l still nearer. Many have attempted to describe the noise it makes as the most explainable part about it. And then you're no wiser.
Listen. Stand with me at the Menin Gate of Ypres and listen. Through a cutting a train is roaring on its way. Rapidly it rises in a great swelling crescendo as it dashes into the open, and then its journey stops on some giant battlement--stops in a peal of deafening thunder just overhead. The sh.e.l.l has burst, and the echoes in that town of death die slowly away--reverberating like a sullen sea that lashes against a rock-bound coast.
And yet what does it convey to anyone who patronises inebriated bath-chair men? ...
Similarly--shrapnel! ”The Germans were searching the road with 'whizz-bangs.'” A common remark, an ordinary utterance in a letter, taken by fond parents as an unpleasing affair such as the cook giving notice.
Come with me to a spot near Ypres; come, and we will take our evening walk together.
”They're a bit lively farther up the road, sir.” The corporal of military police stands gloomily at a cross-roads, his back against a small wayside shrine. A pa.s.sing sh.e.l.l unroofed it many weeks ago; it stands there surrounded by debris--the image of the Virgin, chipped and broken. Just a little monument of desolation in a ruined country, but pleasant to lean against when it's between you and German guns.
Let us go on, it's some way yet before we reach the dug-out by the third dead horse. In front of us stretches a long, straight road, flanked on each side by poplars. In the middle there is pave. At intervals, a few small holes, where the stones have been shattered and hurled away by a bursting sh.e.l.l and only the muddy grit remains hollowed out to a depth of two feet or so, half-full of water. At the bottom an empty tin of bully, ammunition clips, numbers of biscuits--sodden and muddy.
Altogether a good obstacle to take with the front wheel of a car at night.
A little farther on, beside the road, in a ruined, desolate cottage two men are resting for a while, smoking. The dirt and mud of the trenches is thick on them, and one of them is contemplatively sc.r.a.ping his boot with his knife and fork. Otherwise, not a soul, not a living soul in sight; though away to the left front, through gla.s.ses, you can see two people, a man and a woman, labouring in the fields. And the only point of interest about them is that between you and them run the two motionless, stagnant lines of men who for months have faced one another. Those two labourers are on the other side of the German trenches.
The setting sun is glinting on the little crumbling village two or three hundred yards ahead, and as you walk towards it in the still evening air your steps ring loud on the pave. On each side the flat, neglected fields stretch away from the road; the drains beside it are choked with weeds and refuse; and here and there one of the gaunt trees, split in two half-way up by a sh.e.l.l, has crashed into its neighbour or fallen to the ground. A peaceful summer's evening which seems to give the lie to our shrine-leaner. And yet, to one used to the peace of England, it seems almost too quiet, almost unnatural.
Suddenly, out of the blue there comes a sharp, whizzing noise, and almost before you've heard it there is a crash, and from the village in front there rises a cloud of dust. A sh.e.l.l has burst on impact on one of the few remaining houses; some slates and tiles fall into the road, and round the hole torn out of the sloping roof there hangs a whitish-yellow cloud of smoke. In quick succession come half a dozen more, some bursting on the ruined cottages as they strike, some bursting above them in the air. More clouds of dust rise from the deserted street, small avalanches of debris cascade into the road, and, above, three or four thick white smoke-clouds drift slowly across the sky.
This is the moment at which it is well--unless time is urgent--to pause and reflect awhile. If you _must_ go on, a detour is strongly to be recommended. The Germans are sh.e.l.ling the empty village just in front with shrapnel, and who are you to interpose yourself between him and his chosen target? But if in no particular hurry, then it were wise to dally gracefully against a tree, admiring the setting sun, until he desists; when you may in safety resume your walk. _But_--do not forget that he may not stick to the village, and that whizz-bangs give no time. That is why I specified a tree, and not the middle of the road. It's nearer the ditch.
Suddenly, without a second's warning, they s.h.i.+ft their target.