And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him.
“I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see,” said McDermott.
The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing pulsations of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, or, at least, a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of railroad along which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, and was moving eastward through the town to the firing line. The men whom McDermott had seen asleep were rising at the word of command; taking their weapons, falling in, and staggering back to the interminable battle once more.
“I dunno,” mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, “whether I want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close to me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' slapey m'silf.”
It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself. It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head:
“I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!”
And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor just inside the open window of the Hôtel Fauçon.
The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for every inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, were forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with rifle and machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, they held the advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back again, doggedly establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande Place. Neither British nor Germans were dropping shells into that village now, each side fearful of damaging its own men.
A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a German bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at dusk an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more.
McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, and viewed it with surprise. “That war has been here ag'in an' me aslape,” said McDermott. “I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid it—but 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it wid no weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?”