CHAPTER VIII

While they were sitting idle in this fashion in the hole, the Sergeant appeared. He was walking casually, with his rifle at the trail. He seemed to be in a great humour.

“Come out of your holes, bombers,” he said. “Jerry is gone again.”

They all looked up quickly and made a move to get on their feet, startled by the Sergeant’s appearance. A soldier is always terrified when caught sitting in idleness by a superior; even when he is entitled to sit in idleness. But the Sergeant was in such good humour that he forgot to abuse them for sitting idly in their hole during an engagement.

“Is he retiring?” said the Corporal. “That true, Sergeant?”

“Yes,” said the Sergeant. “The war is all over now bar the shouting.”

The men uttered exclamations of delight. A look of awe came into their faces.

“Are we going after him, sarg.?” said the Corporal.

“Not just yet,” said the Sergeant. “Can’t bring up the guns over this blasted mud. That’s what the delay is about. We’re to wait here till dark and try to bring up the rations. Nobody exactly knows what’s on. He retired suddenly.”

Then he changed his tone, and said, gloomily, “Looks as if we’re going to be in the line for keeps.”

Now he spoke from his heart. Before, he had spoken as a Sergeant, whose duty it was to cheer the men with good news and restore their morale, which had been sapped by this ridiculous operation in the mud, sapped by lice, by mud, by rain, by hunger, by lack of faith in the wisdom of “the blokes in the rear.”

But the men believed his lies and paid no attention to his truth. The Corporal even forgot to mention the death of Friel in his excitement. As the Sergeant walked away, the Corporal called after him, “Are we to wait here, Sergeant?”

“Yes,” said the Sergeant. “Wait there.”

Now a hysteria of joy, in direct reaction to their recent hysteria of melancholy, overtook these seven men; overtook even Lamont whose eyes lost their fixity and began to blink, like a young girl awaking from a swoon.

As if they said to themselves, “Hello! He’s retiring. Shells are not falling. We are certain of remaining alive for another few hours. Let’s make the most of them.”

The Corporal jumped out of the hole, put his rifle on his shoulder and swaggered about, saying, “I told you blokes the war was over. I felt it in the air. Fritz is done for. He can’t stand up to it. If we could get up the artillery, now, we’d drive him to Berlin in a week. Keep him going. That’s all we need.”

He sat down and tightened his puttees.

“Jesus!” said McDonald, forgetting the crime of having eaten his iron rations through excess of hunger and the disastrous death of Appleby, who had incontinently got drowned while carrying his comrades’ rations. “I wouldn’t mind a scrap to-night. I hope they’ll send us on a bombing raid. Jerry is sure to leave a lot of grub behind on his retreat.”

Reilly rubbed together his two hands, which were covered with the gore that had flown from Friel’s lacerated belly. “You can have his grub,” he chuckled. “I’d like to get a cart-load of them new field glasses and stuff that the Jerry officers have.”

“Be all right getting into a good billet,” said Shaw, licking his lips. “Wouldn’t say no to a nice fat German wench.”

Gunn kept smiling, looking from face to face.

“There’ll never be another war,” said Jennings. “You’ll never get fellows to go on a stunt like this again. By Jove! I’ll clear out to the South Sea Islands as soon as I get home. Lie all day in the sun, with native women feeding me on bananas. To hell with civilisation.”

“When do you think we’ll get home?” said Lamont.

“Home?” said the Corporal. “Eh?”

The word _home_ silenced their babbling. It reminded them of an unattainable reality which the Sergeant’s lies could not bring within reach of their credulous minds. As when the sun emerges suddenly from dark clouds on a spring day, shines for a few moments, making the earth gay and beautiful and then is covered again, leaving the day still gloomier, so they relapsed into despair. At once their faces mirrored their despair.

Then Gunn burst forth, “It’s all a cod. I know damn well it’s a cod. Jerry is not retiring. They’re only saying that to put us in a good humour, after making a hash of the whole thing. What do they take us for?”

They all looked at him and remembered that a few minutes before he had startled them by his queerness. Lamont’s eyes again became fixed. The Corporal, sitting above the hole, assumed his habitual expression of cunning and suspicion.

“Who do you think you are?” he said. “If you were running the war it would be over long ago, wouldn’t it? Eh?”

Gunn turned towards the Corporal and said in a sombre voice, “If I were running this war, in any case, Appleby and Friel’d be alive now. These two men have been murdered.”

The Corporal opened his mouth to say something, but kept silent. He began to bob his head on his thin neck and he rolled the tape of his puttee round and round his leg with great energy. Then he said: “What’s it got to do with you? Your business is to obey orders and keep your mouth shut. You better be careful, my lad. Understand?”

He got to his feet, told the men not to move and walked away, going in the direction of Corporal Wallace. Gunn stood up and looked around him. Men were moving about in all directions. They resembled a swarm of ants that have been dislodged and are dashing about, seemingly without guidance, trying to restore order. Gunn saw the Sergeant-Major and the Company Commander in the distance. They were walking back towards the rear, followed by their servants, as calm and as tidy as if they were going on a stroll. They irritated him. He cursed at them, and sat down again.

“Listen, mate,” said Shaw to him. “You better be careful what you say. You might get yourself into trouble. In the army, once they get their knife in you, they rub it in. You’ll be blamed for everything. There’s no use trying to beat them.”

“I don’t give a damn,” said Gunn, fiercely. “Since I came out here, I’ve done my bit. I’ve soldiered and I’ve never said a word, except what a man might say when he has his rag out. But I’m fed up with it. They’re not going to put the wind up me. I’ll not let him walk on me. He’s always picking at me and my mate. I know why. Because Monty wouldn’t share his parcels with him. I tell you this is a lousy mob.”

“The mob is all right, mate,” said Shaw.

Gunn stared at the old soldier.

“Aw!” he said. “You’re only a slave. You think because you’re an old soldier you’re something. But you’re only a slave. A bloody machine. Any mule could be trained to do what you can do.”

“Watch out, boy,” said Shaw, his bronzed face getting redder.

“Chuck it, lads,” said Reilly.

“Let him alone, Reilly,” said Gunn. “I’ll soon settle his hash.”

Shaw winced and veins stood out on his sturdy neck; but he controlled himself and turned away. His sense of discipline gained mastery over his temper.

Gunn was now in the full tide of his fury.

“Up there they’ve got it,” he said, tapping his forehead. “They can do what they like with us. Chucking us out of our post last night, without giving a damn what happened to us. All day they have us mucking about. What for? Just for fun. Same way with those poor bloody horses they sent up. What for? They don’t know. They don’t care. They’re full of rum. By Christ! Appleby and Friel don’t care either. They’re dead now, I wouldn’t mind if they died fighting. But there hasn’t been a shot fired. Not a bloody shot.”

“Except the shots you fired,” said Reilly, who had been listening to Gunn’s outburst with a curious expression of boredom and indifference on his face. “Take my tip for it. If you start thinking you’ll gain nothing by it. It’s dangerous work. All the jails at home are full of people who started to think and were caught in the act. There’s a law against it.”

“You turn everything into a joke, Reilly,” said Gunn.

“Why not?” said Reilly.

“Oh! Blast you,” said Gunn. “Blast the lot of you. Give me that tin of Maconochie, Louis.”

Suddenly a voice began to sing in the distance, faintly, in a tone that was excruciatingly melancholy:--

“I want to go home, I want to go home. I don’t want to go to the trenches no more Where whizz-bangs always do roar. Take me over the sea, Where the Alleymand can’t get at me. Oh! My! I don’t want to die. I want to go home.”

Their heads drooped, listening to the dreary song, that agonising cry of doomed men, waiting for death.

The Corporal came back, and said, “Two men for a fatigue party. We’re going to dig in there in front. Jump to it, Gunn. You too, McDonald. Picks and shovels coming up.”

Gunn jumped up and swore.

“Could I loose a button, Corporal?” said Jennings.

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