II
I was reading Blackwood’s in a dug-out in Maple Redoubt. It was just after four, and I was lying on my bed. Suddenly the candle flickered and went out. I had to get up to ring the bell, and when I did get up, the bell did not ring, so I went out and called Lewis. The bell, by the way, was an arrangement of string from our dug-out to the servants’ next door.
“Bring me a candle,” I said, as Lewis appeared, evidently flushed and blear-eyed from sleep. “I don’t know where you keep them. I can’t find one anywhere.”
Lewis fished under the bed and discovered a paper packet of candles, and lit one. “By the by,” I added, “tell the pioneer servant (this was Private Davies, my orderly) to fix up that bell, will you? And I think we’ll be ready for tea as soon as you can get it. What do you say, Teddy? Hullo, Clark! What are you doing here? Come in and have tea.”
“Thanks, I will,” said Clark, who had just come down Park Lane. “I was coming to invite myself, as a matter of fact.”
“Good man,” we said. Clark was no longer of “B” Company, having passed from Lewis-gun officer to the Brigade Machine-gun Corps. So we did not see very much of him.
At that moment Sergeant-Major Brown arrived and stood at the door. He saluted.
“Come in, sergeant-major.”
“The tea’s up, sir.”
“Oh, all right,” I said. “I’ll go. Don’t wait if tea comes in, Edwards. But I shan’t be a minute.”
As I went along with that tower of strength, the company sergeant-major, followed by an orderly carrying two rum jars produced from under my bed, I discussed the subject of working-parties for the night, and other such dull details of routine. Also we discussed leave. His dug-out was at the corner of Old Kent Road and Park Lane, and there I found the “Quarter” (Company Sergeant-Major Roberts) waiting with the five dixies of hot tea, just brought up on the ration trolley from the Citadel.
Sergeant Roberts saluted, and informed me that all was correct. Then the sergeant-major spilled the contents of the two jars into the five dixies, and as he did so the ten orderlies, two from each platoon, and two Lewis gunners, made off with the dixies. Then I made off, but followed by Sergeant Roberts with several papers to sign, and five pay books in which entries had to be made for men going on leave. One signed the pay-book, and also a paper to the quartermaster authorising him to pay 125 francs (the usual sum) to the undermentioned men, out of the company balance which was deposited with him on leaving billets. I signed everything Sergeant Roberts put before me, almost without question.
“Well, Clark,” I said, as we sat down to a tea of hot buttered toast, jam and cake. “How goes it?”
“I’ve just been down a mine-shaft with that R.E. officer, I forget his name—the fellow with the glasses.”
“I know,” I replied; “I don’t know his name either, but it doesn’t matter. Did you go right down, and along the galleries? How frightfully interesting. I always mean to go, but somehow don’t. Well, what about it?”
“By Jove,” said Clark. “It’s wonderful. It’s all as white as snow, dazzling white. I never realised that before, although you see these R.E.’s coming out all covered with white chalk-dust. First of all you go down three or four ladders; it’s awfully tricky work at the sort of halts on the way down, because there’s a little platform, and very often the ladder goes down a different side of the shaft after one of these halts; and if you don’t notice, you lower your foot to go on down the same side as you were going before, and there’s nothing there. The first time I did this and looked down and saw a dim light miles below, it quite gave me a turn. It’s a terrible long way down, and of course you go alone; the R.E. officer went first, and got ahead of me.”
“Have some more tea, and go on.”
“Well, down there it’s fearfully interesting. I didn’t go far up the gallery where they’re working, because you can’t easily pass along; but the R.E. officer took me along a gallery that is not being worked, and there, all alone, at the end of it was a man sitting. He was simply sitting, listening. Then I listened through his stethoscope thing ...”
“I know,” I interposed. It is an instrument like a doctor’s stethoscope, and by it you can hear underground sounds a hundred yards away as clearly as if they were five yards off.
“... and I could hear the Boche working as plainly as anything. Good heavens, it sounded about a yard off. Yet they told me it was forty yards. By Jove, it was weird. ‘Pick ... pick ... pick.’ I thought it must be our fellows really, but theirs made a different sound, and not a bit the same. But, you know, that fellow sitting there alone ... as we went away and left him, he looked round at us with staring eyes just like a hunted animal. To sit there for hours on end, listening. Of course, while you hear them working, it’s all right, they won’t blow. But if you don’t hear them! My God, I wouldn’t like to be an R.E. It’s an awful game.”
“By Jove,” said Edwards. “How fearfully interesting! Is it cold down there?”
“Fairly. I really didn’t notice.”
“I must go down,” I said. “We always laugh at these R.E.’s for looking like navvies, and for going about without gas-helmets or rifles. But really they are wonderful men. It’s awful being liable to be buried alive any moment. Somehow death in the open is far less terrible. Ugh! Do you remember that R.E., Teddy, we saw running down the Old Kent Road? It was that night the Boche blew the mine in the Quarry. Jove, Clark, that was a sight. I was just going up from Trafalgar Square, when I heard a running, and there was a fellow, great big brawny fellow, naked to the waist, and grey all over; and someone had given him his equipment and rifle in a hurry, and he’d got his equipment over his bare skin! The men were fearfully amused. ‘R.E.,’ they said, and smiled. But, by God, there was a death look in that man’s eyes. He’d been down when the Boche blew their mine, and as near as possible buried alive. No, it’s a rotten game.”
As I spoke, the ground shuddered, and the tea-things shook.
“There is a mine,” we all exclaimed together.
“I wonder if it’s ours, or theirs,” said Edwards.
“I saw Hills, this afternoon,” I answered, “and he said nothing about a mine. I’m sure he would have, if we had been going to send one up. No, I bet that’s a Boche mine. Good thing you’re out of it, Clark. Oh, don’t go. Well, cheero! if you must. Look us up oftener. Good luck!”
Clark departed, and I resumed Blackwood’s.
“I say, Edwards,” said I, after a while. “This stuff of Ian Hay’s is awfully good. This about the signallers is top-hole. You can simply smell it!”
“After you with it,” was the reply.
“There you are,” I said at last. “It’s called ‘Carry On’; there have been several others in the same series. You know the ‘First Hundred Thousand’?”
“No.”
“Good stuff,” said I. “Good readable stuff; the sort you’d give to your people at home. But it leaves out bits.”
“Such as ...?”
“Oh, well, the utter fed-upness, and the dullness—and—well, oh, I don’t know. You read it and see.”
That was a bad night. The Boche mine had caught our R.E.’s this time. All the night through they were rescuing fellows from our mine gallery. Seven or eight were killed, most of them “gassed”; two of “A” Company were badly gassed too while aiding in the rescue work. This mine gas is, I suppose, very like that encountered in coal mines; and the explosion of big charges of cordite must create cracks and fissures underground that release these gases in all directions. I do not profess to write as an expert on this. At any rate they were all night working to get the fellows out. One man when rescued disobeyed the doctor’s strict injunctions to lie still for half an hour before moving away from where he was put, just outside the mine shaft; and this cost him his life. He hurried down the Old Kent Road, and dropped dead with heart failure at the bottom of it. Hills told me he felt the pulses of two men who had been gassed and were waiting the prescribed half-hour; and they were going like a watch ticking. Yes, it was a bad night. I got snatches of sleep, but always there was the sound of stretchers being carried past our dug-out to the doctor’s dressing-station; several times I went out to investigate how things were going. But there was nothing I could do. It was my duty to sleep: we were going up in the line to-morrow. But sleep does not always come to order.
Before dawn we “stood to,” and it was quite light as I inspected the last rifle of No. 6 Platoon. They were just bringing the last of the gassed miners down to the dressing-station. I stood at the corner of Park Lane, and watched. The stretcher-bearers came and looked at two forms lying on stretchers close by me; then they asked me if I thought it would be all right to take those stretchers, and leave the dead men there another hour. I said if they wanted the stretchers, yes. So they lifted the bodies off, and went away with the stretchers. There were several men standing about, silent, as usual, in the presence of death. I looked at those two R.E.’s as they lay quite uncovered; grim their faces were, grim and severe. I told a man to get something and cover them up, until the stretcher-bearers came and removed them. And as I strode away in silence between my men, I felt that my face was grim too. I thought of Clark’s description, a few hours back, of the man sitting alone in the white chalk gallery, listening, listening, listening. And now!
Once more I thought of “blind death.” The Germans who had set light to the fuse at tea-time were doubtless sleeping the sleep of men who have worked well and earned their rest. And here.... They knew nothing of it, would never know whom they had slain. And I remembered the night Scott and I had watched our big mine go up. “Wonderful,” we had said, “magnificent.” And in the morning the R.E. officer had told us that we had smashed all their galleries up, and that they would not trouble us there for a fortnight at least. “A certain man drew a bow at a venture,” I said again, vaguely remembering something, but stiffening myself suddenly, and stifling my imagination.
I met Edwards by the dug-out as he returned from inspecting the Lewis guns.
“Remember,” I said, “I told you the ‘First Hundred Thousand’ leaves out bits? Did you see those R.E.’s who were gassed?”
Edwards nodded.
“Well,” I added, “that’s a thing it leaves out.”