XVI
Nearer The Germans
Here not the Irish Sea lay between the broad a and the brogue, but the space between two sentries or between two rifles with bayonets fixed, lying against the wall of the breastworks ready for their owners' hands when called to arms in case of an alarm. One stepped from England into Ireland; and my prediction that the Irish would have something to say was correct.
The first man who made his presence felt was a good six feet in height, with a heavy moustache and the earpieces of his cap tied under his chin, though the night was not cold. He placed himself fairly in front of me in the narrow path back of the breastworks and he looked a cowled and sinister figure in the faint glow from a brazier. I certainly did not want any physical argument with a man of his build.
"Who are you?" he demanded, as stiffly as if I had broken in at the veranda window with a jemmy.
For the nearer you come to the front, the more you feel that you are in the way. You are a stray extra piece of baggage; a dead human weight. Everyone is doing something definite as a part of the machine except yourself; and in your civilian clothes you feel the self- conscious conspicuousness of appearing on a dancing-floor in a dressing-gown.
Captain P———was a little way back in another passage. I was alone and in a rough tweed suit—a strange figure in that world of khaki and rifles.
"A German spy! That's why I am dressed this way, so as not to excite suspicion," I was going to say, when a call from Captain P——— identified me, and the sentry's attitude changed as suddenly as if the inspector of police had come along and told a patrolman that I might pass through the fire lines.
"So it's you, is it, right from America?" he said. "I've a sister living at
Nashua, New Hampshire, U.S.A. with three brothers in the United
States army."
Whether he had or not you can judge as well as I by the twinkle in his eye. He might have had five, and again he might not have one. I was a tenderfoot seeing the trenches.
"It's mesilf that's going to America when me sarvice in the army is up in one year and six months," he continued. "That's some time yet. I'm going if I'm not killed by the Germans. It's a way that they have, or we wouldn't be killing them."