CHAPTER IV
GRUB
"Penfold spoke of his escape without emotion. He had been long enough check by jowl with death to express no surprise. He had merely remarked that it was a lucky chance that the occupants of the shelled dug-out had not been inside when the heavy howitzer missile had demolished it. What did seriously annoy him was the loss of the promised food.
Ralph Setley, although by this time ravenously hungry, was fervently thankful for his escape. Already the reaction of the raid into the German trenches was beginning to tell. Shorn of excitement of the wild rush over the top, the horrors of that nocturnal excursion rose up in his mind. The knowledge that he had bayoneted a fellow-creature, although he were an enemy and a brutal Hun, worried him.
"Suppose the fellow would have done me in if I hadn't got him first," he soliloquized. Then, aloud:
"What are you jabbering about, Alderhame?"
The former actor was stamping up and down the duck-boards, now encrusted with a thin coating of ice:—
"Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
Thou dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot."
"That's As You Like It! chum. It aptly describes our condition. Horribly cold, and benefits in the shape of bully-beef gone, though not forgotten. Where's our next lodging?"
The stream of prisoners and wounded Tommies had now dwindled. Penfold, addressing a sergeant, stated his case.
"D'ye think I'm a Cook's tourist guide?" snapped the N.C.O. "Turn in where you can. There are a good many half empty dug-outs now, I'm thinking."
A shell shrieked overhead. The Huns were putting up a barrage, the shrapnel falling amongst their own men, who, prisoners in the hands of the British, were being escorted to the "Advance cages."
"In here," said Penfold, making a dive for the nearest entrance. Alderhame followed close at his heels, then Setley and George Anderson, the latter still grousing at the loss of a quarter of an inch of his ear.
"Anyone at home?" enquired Penfold.
He pushed aside the covering to the sloping tunnel and entered the dug-out, which in point of size and contents was much the same as his demolished mud-hole—the damp steaming straw, the pungent fumes of the charcoal brazier, the moisture dripping through the timber-shored roof, and the guttering candle—a typical Tommy's barrack-room on the Somme Front.
Seated on an upturned ammunition-case and with his feet resting on another tin box, in order to keep them out of the slime, was a young, pale-faced, dark-haired soldier He was busily engaged in writing with an indelible pencil certain words of deeper violet hue, betraying the fact that the paper shared the general failing of the subterranean abode—it was moist: uncommonly so.
So engrossed was the writer that for some moments he "carried on" with his task. Then looking up, and seeing strange faces, he exclaimed, in a lisping drawl:
"I say, you've made a mistake. This isn't your caboodle."
"No mistake, chummy," replied Penfold firmly. "We've been shelled out. We crave your hospitality. How many men in this dug-out?"
"There were eight this morning," replied the youth:
"Where are the others?"
"Ask me another."
"I will," rejoined Penfold, depositing his rifle on a bench. "Have they left any grub?"
"Wish they had," was the grim answer. Then, with more eagerness than he had hitherto shown, he asked: "Have you any food? I haven't had a bite since this morning. Finished the whole of my ration, including jam, thinking that the fresh stuff would be in—but it isn't!"
"You're welcome to a share of ours, laddie," remarked Alderhame, "which happens to be nixes."
Ralph sat down on a bundle of straw, having first appropriated the late occupant's pack as a pillow. He was feeling horribly tired. His feet and hands were numbed with the cold. His saturated clothes were throwing off wisps of muggy vapour. Even a huge rat pattering on the muddy floor and scampering through the straw hardly troubled him, and a few hours previously he would have gone twenty yards to avoid one.
In his drowsiness he found himself contemplating the latest of his many new comrades.
"I'll bet that chap's a Jew," he thought.
Setley was right in his surmise. Sidney Bartlett was the grandson of a Polish refugee who had become a naturalized Englishman and, dropping the name of Bariniski, had successfully engaged in business in Birmingham. Like many of the Hebrew race, young Bartlett was a patriot and a staunch supporter of the land of his adoption. When the call to arms came he rallied to the Colours, only to be sent back until he was sufficiently old to serve in His Majesty's Forces. Only three years previously Sidney was at a large day school, and there occurred an incident that was to influence his conduct at the Somme Front.
For some weeks the lad was persistently absent from school. The head master constantly received notes to the effect that Sidney was kept at home through domestic troubles, in which a grandmother figured largely. The caligraphy arousing his suspicions, the head wrote to the lad's father, and then the "cat was out of the bag."
One afternoon Bartlett Senior, accompanied by his errant son, came to the head master's study.
"Now, Sidney," said his sire, solemnly, "I vant you to tell de trut'—de whole trut', mind. Later on, in bizness, Sidney, you may tell a lie; but now you must tell de trut'."
Utterly worn out, Setley fell asleep—a slumber broken with dreams of the exciting episodes of the last few hours. Rats wandered at will over his couch of straw; vermin of other kind swarmed everywhere. His companions, too hungry to sleep, sat up and smoked, recounting anecdotes on almost every topic except the war. Without the guns thundered incessantly, but the duel was chiefly betwixt the artillery, and the trenches were left almost untouched.
"I'm off to see if I can't find some grub," declared Penfold. "Who's game?"
Ginger Anderson volunteered to accompany him with the greatest alacrity. It was better than sitting still in a damp dug-out with hunger gnawing at one's vitals. Alderhame and Bartlett also expressed their willingness to take part in the foraging expedition.
"I reckon as if we do 'ave any luck," remarked Ginger, "the rations will arrive directly we do, and all our work'll be for nothing."
"So much the better," rejoined Penfold.
"How about Setley?"
"Let him sleep on," suggested the ex-actor:
"Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber."
"'Buzzing night-flies' sounds poetical," remarked Penfold. "Poetic licence shows tactful discretion in this case. Come along, you fellows."
The four adventurers sallied forth to beg, borrow, or steal something in the edible line. It was freezing so hard that the trench-boards were immovably cemented in solid mud of the hardness of stone.
"Thank goodness we weren't warned for the wiring party," whispered Penfold. "Black as pitch, and as cold as charity. Hist! What do you make of that?"
He pointed to a faint ray of light emanating from an oblique shaft of a dug-out—that of the major of his company. The opening was for ventilating purposes, and was fitted with a piece of corrugated iron to prevent the water making its way into the underground room. From the shaft came the unmistakable odour of roast meat.
One by one the men reconnoitred, and withdrew to a safe distance to deliberate.
"Regular old food-hog," declared Alderhame. "Not only is he about to wolf a pound of meat, but there's a pudding and a packet of sausages. Presumably, his missis has sent him out a hamper."
"Too much for one man, albeit a field officer," decided Penfold. "Lads, we must have some of that grub!"
"'Ow?" enquired Anderson. "Yer can't just pop in an' say, friendly like: 'Wot cheer, major, old sport; 'ow abart it? Can yer?"
"Can't we lure him out?" suggested Alderhame.
"We might; but what's the use?" rejoined Penfold. "These officers' dug-outs have doors, and ten to one he'll lock it if he goes far from his grub."
"You get him out," said Sidney Bartlett. "I'll do the rest. All we want is a light pole. There are some in the next traverse. Lash a bayonet to one end and spear what we can through that hole."
"Sounds feasible," agreed Penfold. "Nip off and get the gear ready."
In a short space of time Bartlett had rigged up his improvised fishing-tackle.
"Now," he said, "I'm ready. You carry on, Penfold."
Drawing his woollen cap well over his eyes and turning up the collar of his greatcoat as high as possible, Penfold knocked at the door of the Major's dug-out.
"Well?" enquired a deep muffled voice testily.
"Colonel's compliments, sir," announced the mendacious private, in an assumed tone. "He wants you to report to him at once upon the number of men left in this section of the trench."
Grumbling, the Major issued from his subterranean retreat, carefully locked the door, and set out to find the company sergeant-major, in order to obtain the supposedly urgent information.
Before he returned the four raiders were scurrying back to their dug-out, each with his mouth full of cold sausage, while Alderhame retained a painful impression of an otherwise appetizing repast in the shape of a cut on his cheek, caused by the end of the pole as the elated Sidney swiftly withdrew it with the prized booty impaled upon the bayonet.
"Where's my first-aid dressing?" enquired the ex-actor, with mock concern.
"'And patches will I get unto these scars
And swear I got them in the Gallia wars.'"
"Hardly good enough for Blighty," said Penfold, with a laugh. "My word, won't the Major be in a tear when he misses his sausages!"
"Let him," said Bartlett. "He can only blame the rats."
"Halt! Who goes there?" exclaimed the hoarse voice of a sentry in the next traverse.
"Engineers' ration party," was the reply. "Is this the Royal Engineers?"
"Rather!" replied the ready Penfold. "Dump 'em down; we'll fetch them."
Out of the neighbouring dug-outs poured other Tommies. Without having any suspicion of the ruse played upon them, the ration party handed over the stores intended for a company of the Royal Engineers, who were engaged in tunnelling on the left of the Wheatshires' trenches. Almost in the nick of time a famine was averted at the expense of the sappers and miners. But, as Penfold remarked, it was each man for himself when it came to a case of semi-starvation.