Part 12 (2/2)
WHICH WAY WAS WHICH?
The absence in places of any line or wiring (posts would not stand up in the watery soil) permitted men o' nights to wander unawares towards the Fritz trenches. A crack, a fall--for weeks the body would lie outside the enemy lines until it rotted and fell apart. And someone was posted ”Missing.”
Trench feet began to find its victims among the young Staffords--they trekked away in agony, but withal glad to get out of it. With the puzzling rapidity of trench casualties the daily roll increased without anyone quite grasping how or when this or that man went. He would be with you this morning, to-morrow you would miss him; inquire and learn that he had stopped a Blighty.
Evans, an adherent of the occult, vowed that he had been visited by some eternal being of the spirit world. Stumpy was profoundly interested.
”Wot'd 'e say?”
”Nothing much. Only that somethin' would portend for me to-morrow.”
”Oh, did 'e want a drink?”
”Course not.”
”If 'e 'ad asked you for your rum ration, would you,” anxiously, ”'ave given it to 'im.”
”Couldn't: 'adn't any left.”
”Wot woz 'e like?”
”Tall, shadowy.”
”An' you really believes it?”
”Yus. I 'ave proof--”
”I see. I, I s'pose 'e could give you anything you asked 'im for?”
”Within reason.”
”Then,” whispered ironically, ”ask 'im next time to give me a soft Blighty an' a drop of toddy, an', oh, some bloomin' f.a.gs.”
”Can't be done, for something will 'appen to me to-morrow.”
He was wrong; decided that the spook had altered for his own good reasons the daily course of his life and eagerly awaited a visit that never materialised. Stumpy was disgusted.
”All me eye. I know it wasn't a bloomin' spook when I 'eard 'e 'adn't asked for a drink. Wot on earth would anyone visit these yere bloomin'
trenches for unless he smelt rum?”
”You don't understand.”
”No, an' bloomin' well don't want to. A spook wot rejoins 'is ole friends on earth an' don't even offer 'em a drink is unnatural--that's wot I say.”
The large, dry and roomy dug-out beloved by the armchair artist, very, very rarely offers its cosy hospitality to the warrior dwelling in the Front Line--even if there is anything bearing a faint resemblance to such an elaboration it is immediately seized by Company Headquarters.
The inter-connecting series of holes occupied by the Normans and flattered with the term ”trenches” had cut here and there into the wet soil a number of side excavations of smart proportions that served the purpose of shelter from the elements and sh.e.l.ls alike--a heavy barrage from a pea-shooter would have blown in the muddy roofs of these water-logged death traps.
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