No Man's Land

by H. C. McNeile

"It's no aeroplane, sir," said Jimmy, with his eyes on the sky. "It's a long-range gun, or I'm a Dutchman." He looked down to find a little girl clasping his knee and whimpering. "And phwat is it, me angel?" He caught her up in his arms and laughed. "Shure! and I've forgotten me little glass of stuff. Come along with me and find it."

He strode away, only to return with her in a second or two, laughing all over her face. Yes—he had a way with him, had Jimmy O'Shea.

But it was in the final tableau of that morning's work that I remember him best. It was a long-range gun as he said; and they put in fifteen twelve-inch shells in an hour, round about the square. Two got the hospital, and one hit a barber's shop where an officer was being shaved. I remember we saw him with half his face lathered, and later on we found his hand still gripping the arm of the chair. As for the barber—God knows——

We sorted out the remnants of some children from the débris of one house; and I left O'Shea after a while with a little kid of eight or nine in his arms. She was booked for God's nursery, and the passing was not going to be easy, for she was hit—nastily. And it was while Jimmy was nursing the poor torn atom with the tenderness of a woman that another sergeant of his battalion came on the scene to see if he could help.

"God! Jimmy," I heard him say, "this makes one sick."

"Sick!" O'Shea's voice was quiet. "Sick! I've stuck many of them, thank the powers, but never again—never again, my bucko—will it be anywhere save in the stomach. Anything else is too quick."

I looked at his face; and I understood. . . .

Yes—I understood because I had seen: otherwise, I should not. He would have been talking another language—one to which I was a stranger: even as were those around me, in that London restaurant, strangers—even as the men, when they first come to France, are strangers. That is the point which is in danger at times of being overlooked, especially by those who remain behind. The men are not changed in nature because they don a khaki coat, or even because they go into the trenches. They have gone to a new school, that is all; and if they would do well they must learn all the lessons—the many and very divergent lessons—they are taught. For in the hotch-potch of war there is a strange mixture of the material and the spiritual; and though at present I am concerned with the former, the latter is just as important. It is the material side of which the men such as Jimmy O'Shea are the teachers. Unless the pupils learn from the O'Sheas, they will have to do so from the Hun. And the process may not be pleasant. . . .

There are many branches of the main lesson: the counters in the game may be shells or bombs or rifle bullets or bayonets. But the method of scoring is the same in each case—one down or one up. And of them all the bayonet is the counter which is at once the most deadly and the most intolerant of mistakes. A good friend, a hard taskmaster is the bayonet, and O'Shea was the greatest of all its prophets. . . . The main object of his life was to imbue his men, and any one else he could persuade to listen, with its song. His practical teaching was sound, very sound; his verbal lashings were wonderful, unique. He'd talk and talk, and one's joy was to watch his audience. A sudden twitch, a snap of the jaw, and a bovine face would light up with unholy joy. The squad drawn up ready for practice, with the straw-filled sacks in front of them, would mutter ominously, and teeth would show in a snarl. Absurd, you say; not a bit; just a magnetic personality, and men of the right stuff. Dash it! I've seen even the Quartermaster, whose ways do not lie near such matters, hopping about from one leg to the other when Jimmy's peroration rose to its height.

"Have you a child, MacNab, a little wee kid?" he would begin.