§ 2
“You chaps got your rations?”
“Yes, sir.”
Peter looked at his three men: Bombardier Finlayson, tall, tight-lipped, clean-shaven, shrapnel-helmet atilt on the back of his head; Blenkinsop, a dark, keen little Northumbrian; and Mucksweat, huge, hairy, more like a bear than a man, who had volunteered for “runner.”
“Then we’d better be off.”
Dawn was not yet day as the four crossed the track in front of the guns; tramped away towards the wood. They walked slowly, eyes on the black telephone-wire. “Seems O. K., so far,” said Peter, “better test her though.” The Bombardier unslung his telephone-case, inserted pin in the wire, tapped, was answered.
Now the wire rose from ground to poles; spanned a road yellow with mud; disappeared breast-high among tree-trunks. They pashed across; tested again; passed in among the trees; began fighting their way through the undergrowth along the lip of a zig-zag and water-logged trench.
“Lucky we didn’t run her down there, sir,” grinned the Bombardier.
“Damned lucky.” Already Peter felt dog-weary. Twice he stumbled, and Mucksweat helped him to his feet. Then fatigue reacted; the poison of over-strain distilled its poison of over-energy. The apprehension of overnight disappeared. . . .
They worked their way through the wood to the hillside. In front, the world seemed asleep. From behind, came the occasional thud of a gun. A ’plane droned over, high in air. Below them, lay the Bois de Trônes, still black in the half-light: all along the fringe of it, they could see waiting infantry. The wire dipped into a dry trench; they followed it down-hill.
They emerged from the trench—and the wire ended abruptly. “Call up the battery,” ordered Peter. . . . “Battery on, sir.” . . . He took the instrument: “Is Captain Sandiland there? . . . Hello—That you, Sandiland. . . . We’re at the edge of Trônes Wood. . . . All O. K. up to here. . . . What’s that? . . . No good trying to run her any further. . . . Quite. . . . I’ll leave Finlayson here. . . . You’d better send him up a linesman. . . . What’s that? . . . Oh, yes, I’m quite all right. Cheerio.”
“Hadn’t you better leave Blenkinsop, sir,” suggested the Bombardier. “Why?” asked Peter. Finlayson’s lips tightened. “Blenkinsop’s a very good operator, sir.”
“I know that as well as you do, Bombardier. What are you driving at?”
“Well, sir, as N.C.O. of the party. . . .”
“Sportsman!” thought Peter; and reversed an order for the first time. They left Blenkinsop at the instrument; made their way, three helmeted figures, across a road dark with slime and rotted leaves, past the waiting infantry into Trônes Wood. The wood still stank of putrefying flesh. Barbed wire looped the trailing undergrowth. Here a shell-axed tree leaned drunkenly against its bullet-pocked neighbour. There, fresh-turned earth betrayed the scavenging pick. Beyond the tree-trunks, day glimmered. Above, black branches trellised gray sky. A ditch full of water led through this place of death.
Ahead of them, something whistled into the undergrowth. They dropped into the ditch; waded along, single file, calf-deep in liquid mud; ducked under a fallen log; waded on again. Another shell whistled into the undergrowth above them. “Whizz-bang,” said Peter laconically.
Now, they were under open sky; making their way along a battered trench towards the support-lines. In front of them and behind them, hidden by humped earth from the enemy, toiled little parties of infantry: bomb-carriers, water-carriers, men with loaded rifles and men with empty stretchers.
The liquid mud deepened to quagmire.
Peter, fighting his way forward, felt the false energy of over-fatigue ebbing from his veins. With every painful pace, his feet rooted themselves deeper. Sodden leather wrenched at his ankles. Heavy water bottle, heavier revolver-holster, dragged at hip and shoulder. Each gasped breath seemed to tear at his heart. His helmet was a shifting torment. Bitter sweat blinded his eyes; dripped from chin to tie. Time and again, only the long iron-shod stick saved him from collapse. . . .
Gradually they neared destination; edged way past crouching men, past the gap where Lindsay had died, to a little eminence above plain-level. Here three mud-lanes met in heaped breastworks. Listless stretcher-bearers and a bundle of S.O.S. rockets marked Battalion-Headquarters—a German dug-out, thirty feet below ground-level, reached by a deep chute of greasy slime.
Peter sank down on one of the bomb boxes which littered the ground; leaned gasping on his stick.
“Feeling tired, sir?” asked Finlayson; and getting no answer, unslung his water-bottle, drew out the cork. “Try a drop of this, sir. It’s cold tea.”
“Thanks, Bombardier—but you’d better keep it for yourself—I’ll be all right in a minute.”
A little strength came back to him; he slipped off his helmet; loosed belt at waist. A dozen times during the half mile from Trônes Wood, Peter had wanted to give in; the last three hundred yards had been just a blurr of continuous effort. “Like rowing,” he thought, “got to put your last ounce into it”; and like a rowed-out oarsman he rested for a little—knowing only blessed relief.
“Where’s Mucksweat?” he asked at last.
“You told him to stop about 20 yards back, sir. Just round the corner.”
“Quite right. So I did. You’d better go and join him. I’ll observe from there. This place is rather dangerous.” He staggered to his feet; made for the entrance to Headquarters. Finlayson watched him disappear down the greasy mud-chute; shrugged shoulders; rejoined his companions.
“I dunno what you think about it, Muckie,” said Bombardier Finlayson; “but it seems to me we’re in for a hell of a day.”
Answered Mucksweat the ex-coalminer, crouching bear-like in yellow slime, “He shouldn’t have come. That’s what I say.”