Part 1 (2/2)

Whizz-bang! Duck, you blighter! Into the ditch. Quick! Move! Hang your bottle of white wine! Get down! Cower! Emulate the mole! This isn't the village in front now--he's sh.e.l.ling the road you're standing on! There's one burst on impact in the middle of the pave forty yards in front of you, and another in the air just over your head. And there are more coming--don't make any mistake. That short, sharp whizz every few seconds--the bang! bang! bang! seems to be going on all around you. A thing hums past up in the air, with a whistling noise, leaving a trail of sparks behind it--one of the fuses. Later, the curio-hunter may find it nestling by a turnip. He may have it.

With a vicious thud a jagged piece of sh.e.l.l buries itself in the ground at your feet; and almost simultaneously the bullets from a well-burst one cut through the trees above you and ping against the road, thudding into the earth around. No more impact ones--they've got the range. Our pessimistic friend at the cross-roads spoke the truth; they're quite lively. Everything bursting beautifully above the road about forty feet up. Bitter thought--if only the blighters knew that it was empty save for your wretched and unworthy self cowering in a ditch, with a bottle of white wine in your pocket and your head down a rat-hole, surely they wouldn't waste their ammunition so reprehensibly!

Then, suddenly, they stop, and as the last white puff of smoke drifts slowly away you cautiously lift your head and peer towards the village.

Have they finished? Will it be safe to resume your interrupted promenade in a dignified manner? Or will you give them another minute or two?

Almost have you decided to do so when to your horror you perceive coming towards you through the village itself two officers. What a position to be discovered in! True, only the very young or the mentally deficient scorn cover when sh.e.l.ling is in progress. But of course, just at the moment when you'd welcome a sh.e.l.l to account for your propinquity with the rat-hole, the blighters have stopped. No sound breaks the stillness, save the steps ringing towards you--and it looks silly to be found in a ditch for no apparent reason.

Then, as suddenly as before comes salvation. Just as with infinite stealth you endeavour to step out nonchalantly from behind a tree, as if you were part of the scenery--bang! cras.h.!.+ from in front. Cheer-oh! the village again, the church this time. A shower of bricks and mortar comes down like a landslip, and if you are quick you may just see two black streaks go to ground. From the vantage-point of your tree you watch a salvo of sh.e.l.ls explode in, on, or about the temporary abode of those two officers. You realise from what you know of the Hun that this salvo probably concludes the evening hate; and the opportunity is too good to miss. Edging rapidly along the road--keeping close to the ditch--you approach the houses. Your position, you feel, is now strategically sound, with regard to the wretched pair cowering behind rubble heaps.

You even desire revenge for your mental anguish when discovery in the rodent's lair seemed certain. So light a cigarette--if you didn't drop them all when you went to ground yourself; if you did--whistle some snappy tune as you stride jauntily into the village.

Don't go too fast or you may miss them; but should you see a head peer from behind a kitchen-range express no surprise. Just--”Toppin' evening, ain't it? Getting furniture for the dug-out--what?” To linger is bad form, but it is quite permissible to ask his companion--seated in a torn-up drain--if the ratting is good. Then pa.s.s on in a leisurely manner, _but_--when you're round the corner, run like a hare. With these cursed Germans, you never know.

Night--and a working-party stretching away over a ploughed field are digging a communication trench. The great green flares lob up half a mile away, a watery moon s.h.i.+nes on the bleak scene. Suddenly a noise like the tired sigh of some great giant, a scorching sheet of flame that leaps at you out of the darkness, searing your very brain, so close does it seem; the ping of death past your head; the clatter of shovel and pick next you as a muttered curse proclaims a man is. .h.i.t; a voice from down the line: ”Gawd! Old Ginger's took it. 'Old up, mate. Say, blokes, Ginger's done in!” Aye--it's worse at night.

Shrapnel! Woolly, fleecy puffs of smoke floating gently down wind, getting more and more attenuated, gradually disappearing, while below each puff an oval of ground has been plastered with bullets. And it's when the ground inside the oval is full of men that the damage is done.

Not you perhaps--but someone. Next time--maybe you.

And that, methinks, is an epitome of other things besides shrapnel. It's _all_ the war to the men who fight and the women who wait.

PART ONE

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

THE MOTOR-GUN

Nothing in this war has so struck those who have fought in it as its impersonal nature. From the day the British Army moved north, and the first battle of Ypres commenced--and with it trench warfare as we know it now--it has been, save for a few interludes, a contest between automatons, backed by every known scientific device. Personal rancour against the opposing automatons separated by twenty or thirty yards of smelling mud--who stew in the same discomfort as yourself--is apt to give way to an acute animosity against life in general, and the accursed fate in particular which so foolishly decided your s.e.x at birth. But, though rare, there have been cases of isolated encounters, where men--with the blood running hot in their veins--have got down to hand-grips, and grappling backwards and forwards in some cellar or dugout, have fought to the death, man to man, as of old. Such a case has recently come to my knowledge, a case at once bizarre and unique: a case where the much-exercised arm of coincidence showed its muscles to a remarkable degree. Only quite lately have I found out all the facts, and now at d.i.c.k O'Rourke's special request I am putting them on paper. True, they are intended to reach the eyes of one particular person, but ...

the personal column in the _Times_ interests others besides the lady in the magenta skirt, who will eat a banana at 3.30 daily by the Marble Arch!

And now, at the very outset of my labours, I find myself--to my great alarm--committed to the placing on paper of a love scene. O'Rourke insists upon it: he says the whole thing will fall flat if I don't put it in; he promises that he will supply the local colour. In advance I apologise: my own love affairs are sufficiently trying without endeavouring to describe his--and with that, here goes.

I will lift my curtain on the princ.i.p.als of this little drama, and open the scene at Ciro's in London. On the evening of April 21st, 1915, in the corner of that delectable resort, farthest away from the c.o.o.n band, sat d.i.c.kie O'Rourke. That afternoon he had stepped from the boat at Folkestone on seven days' leave, and now in the boiled s.h.i.+rt of respectability he once again smelled the smell of London.

With him was a girl. I have never seen her, but from his description I cannot think that I have lived until this oversight is rectified.

Moreover, my lady, as this is written especially for your benefit, I hereby warn you that I propose to remedy my omission as soon as possible.

And yet with a band that is second to none; with food wonderful and divine; with the choicest fruit of the grape, and--to top all--with the girl, d.i.c.kie did not seem happy. As he says, it was not to be wondered at. He had landed at Folkestone meaning to propose; he had carried out his intention over the fish--and after that the dinner had lost its savour. She had refused him--definitely and finally; and d.i.c.k found himself wis.h.i.+ng for France again--France and forgetfulness. Only he knew he'd never forget.

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