The Tale of a Trooper

by Clutha N. Mackenzie

"I'm afraid so, old boy," replied he. "I'll send a chap back with you."

One of the boys took charge of him, and Mac stumbled off through the little piece of trench into the open, across which, from both sides, the bullets fled whistling and zipping. Jogging awkwardly short distances over the rough ground, then lying in hollows for brief rests, they covered at length that exposed slope of about one hundred and fifty yards which separated the trench from the shallow head of a ravine, wherein lay hundreds of wounded and dead. The trooper guided Mac carefully over a space where bodies lay thick, and made him lie down on a sloping clay bank, took his field dressing from his pocket and bandaged his head.

Mac lay there through the whole of that long terrible day, a day of strange unearthliness, when he seemed to float away into a weird dreamland and at times into nightmare, and yet it was not a day of unmixed suffering. The sun glared down pitilessly through the hot hours, the tormenting flies swarmed in their millions, the dead lay thick around, already blackening in the heat, the dying raved in delirium for water which never came, and the battle raged on with unceasing violence. Lying uncomfortably on a slope, propped against a dead Turk, he scarcely seemed to feel the burning heat of the sun, the irritation of the flies, the torturing thirst nor the pain of his wound, for his spirit lay soothed in a strange restfulness, in the satisfaction of peace, in a manner like the weary wishing for nothing but sleep after a day of honest work. For Mac the fight was over; he had done what had been asked of him, and his spirit, serenely happy in this knowledge, seemed to rise above earthly discomfort and to concern itself little with the shattered state of his body, nor yet with the fact that he was far from out of the wood. Death was all around; and, had it come to him, he would have had no terror of it, but simply the resigned acceptance of a happy soul.

Early in the morning Mac had inquired whether he could not be taken on to the dressing-station, but learned that it was impossible as the enemy swept the country between with an impassable hail of bullets. The lower end of the ravine was in Turkish hands, elsewhere there were unscalable cliffs, and the only means of getting back was by crossing a ridge close under the enemy rifles. There was nothing for it but to await nightfall.

The ravine was full of wounded. The more lightly injured had drifted towards the bottom, but those who had not been able to walk lay crowded close in the shallow head near Mac. Most of them were already dead, for many had been wounded two nights previously, and few so seriously injured could stand a second day of such torment. Mac asked sometimes if there was water, but there was none. Occasionally he inquired how the battle was going, and if there were any men near to hear him, they replied only with unassuming grunts. He sat up once for a change of position and moved away a little from the dead Turk, but the flying bullets sent him back. He may have been light-headed once or twice, but this he himself could not tell. Queerly enough, he troubled not at all about the form his wound had taken. Though he knew with absolute certainty that he would never see again, he was not worried by the horrors of a future world of darkness; and found himself in his vague wanderings of mind deeply pitying those round him, and his heart was full of grief at their sufferings.

Gradually a lessening of the heat told of coming evening. A little water arrived and was distributed in small potions. Mac was conscious that those who came periodically to the hollow to do for the wounded all that lay in their power were performing fine actions of self-sacrifice. It grew cool, and Mac stirred himself to expect aid from the rear; word had come, too, that a large Imperial force would be sent up at nightfall to relieve the tattered remnant of the garrison, who had dwindled to a desperate handful from attack after attack by the enemy through all the long day, and who were almost light-headed from fatigue. The hours still dragged on without anything happening, and Mac almost feared they had been forgotten. At last, shortly after he had heard a voice say it was eleven o'clock, some one came into the ravine, and inquired in the dark who were there. Few answered, for, it seemed to Mac, most of them were too far gone. All those who could look after themselves had long ago drifted farther down the ravine.

"Who are you?" sang out Mac.

"I'm an Auckland stretcher-bearer."

"Well, if you can show me the way, you can take me back. I can't see, but I can walk all right."

"I dunno how I'm goin' to get you out of there. There are too many wounded round you."