They moved slowly across the torn fields and down along the slope towards the road. In the valley they walked in thin, filmy mists, and further on, where low hills rose out of the hollow, camp fires twinkled and winked in scores on the hillsides. And still further, when they rounded a low shoulder and the valley and the hills beyond opened wide to them, the fires increased from scores to hundreds. “Bloomin’ Crystal Palis on firework night,” said one man, and “Why don’t the special constables make ’em draw the blinds an’ shade the lights?” said another.
Kentucky saw these things, heard the men’s talk, without noting them; and yet the impression must have been deeper and sharper than he knew, for there came a day when he recalled every spot of light and blot of shadow, every curve of hill and mist-shrouded valley, every word and smothered groan and rough jest and laugh, as clearly as if they had been in his eyes and ears a minute before. In the same detached way he saw the bodies of men lying stiff in grotesque, twisted postures or in the peaceful attitudes of quiet sleep, the crawling mists and the lanterns of orderlies and stretcher-bearers searching the field for any still living, heard the weak quavering calls that came out of the mists at intervals like the lonely cries of sheep lost on a mountain crag, the thin, long-drawn “He-e-e-lp” of men too sore stricken to move, calling to guide the rescuers they knew would be seeking them. And in the same fashion, after they came to the ambulances waiting on the broken roadside and he had been helped to the seat beside the driver of one, he noticed how slowly and carefully the man drove and twisted in and out dodging the shell holes; noticed, without then realizing their significance, the legions of men who tramped silently and stolidly, or whistling and singing and blowing on mouth-organs, on their way up to the firing line, the faces emerging white and the rifles glinting out of the darkness into the brightness of the headlights. The car made a wide detour by a road which ran over a portion of ground captured from the Germans a few weeks before. A cold gray light was creeping in before they cleared this ground that already was a swarming hive of British troops, and further than the faint light showed, Kentucky could see and sense parked ranks of wagons, lines of horses, packed camps of men and rows of bivouacs. From there and for miles back the car crept slowly past gun positions and batteries beyond count or reckoning, jolted across the metals of a railway line that was already running into the captured ground, past “dump” after “dump” of ammunition, big shells and little piled in stacks and house-high pyramids, patches of ground floored acre-wide with trench mortar bombs like big footballs, familiar gray boxes of grenades and rifle cartridges, shells again, and yet more shells. “Don’t look like we expected to ever lose any o’ this ground again,” said the driver cheerfully, and Kentucky realized—then and afterwards—just how little it looked like it, and quoted softly to himself, from the Battle Hymn again—“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.” As the light grew and the car passed back to where the road was less damaged or better repaired their speed increased and they ran spattering in the roadside to meet more long columns of men with the brown rifle barrels sloped and swaying evenly above the yellow ranks—”... a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel,” murmured Kentucky. “Wot say?” questioned the driver. “Nothing,” said Kentucky. “That’s the clearin’ station ahead there,” said the driver. “You’ll soon be tucked up safe in a bed now, or pushin’ on to the ambulance train and a straight run ’ome to Blighty.”
So Kentucky came out of the battle, and stepping down from the ambulance, with an alert orderly attentive at his elbow to help him, took the first step into the swift stages of the journey home, and the long vista of kindness, gentleness, and thoughtful care for which the hospital service is only another name. From here he had nothing to do but sleep, eat, and get well. He was done with battle, and quit of the firing line. But as he came away the war had one more word for his ear, and as he was carried on board the hospital train, the distant guns growled and muttered their last same message to him—“grapes of wrath, of wrath, of wrath.”
And after he had lost the last dull rumble of the guns he still bore the memory of their message with him, carried it down to the edge of France, and across the Narrow Seas, and into the sheltered calm of England.
He had been strangely impressed by the fitting of his half-forgotten verses to all he had come through, and their chance but clear coincidence worked oddly on him, and came in the end to be a vital influence in picking the path of his immediate future and leading it utterly away from other plans.
[CHAPTER XVI]
PLAY OUT THE GAME
Kentucky thought often over the Battle Hymn in the long waking hours of pain and the listless time of convalescence, and since his thoughts came in time to crystallize into words and words are easier to set down than thoughts, here is a talk that he had, many weeks after, when he was almost well again—or rather as well as he would ever be.
The talk was with Larry, with the broken wreck of a Larry who would never, as the doctors told him, walk or stand upright again. Kentucky had finished his convalescing at Larry’s home, and the talk came one night when they were alone together in the big dining-room, Larry, thin-faced and claw-handed, on a couch before the fire, Kentucky in a deep armchair. They had chatted idly and in broken snatches of old days, and of those last desperate days in “the Push,” and on a chance mention of Pug both had fallen silent for a space.