“Wrist chiefly and shoulder-blade. Air fight. After six weeks.”
“Does you out?”
“For flying, I’m afraid. But there’s lots of ground jobs. And anyhow—home’s pleasant.”
“Yes,” said Ames. “Home’s pleasant. But I’d like to have got a scalp of some sort. Doubt if I killed a single Hun. D’you remember Probyn at school?—a dark chap.”
Peter found he still hated Probyn. “I remember him,” he said.
“He’s killed. He got the M.M. and the V.C. He wouldn’t take a commission. He was sergeant-major in my battalion. I just saw him, but I’ve heard about him since. His men worshipped him. Queer how men come out in a new light in this war.”
“How was he killed?” asked Peter.
“In a raid. He was with a bombing party, and three men straggled up a sap and got cornered. He’d taken two machine-guns and they’d used most of the bombs, and his officer was knocked out, so he sent the rest of his party back with the stuff and went to fetch his other men. One had been hit and the other two were thinking of surrendering when he came back to them. He stood right up on the parados, they say, and slung bombs at the Germans, a whole crowd of them, until they went back. His two chaps got the wounded man out and carried him back, and left him still slinging bombs. He’d do that. He’d stand right up and bung bombs at them until they seemed to lose their heads. Then he seems to have spotted that this particular bunch of Germans had gone back into a sort of blind alley. He was very quick at spotting a situation, and he followed them up, and the sheer blank recklessness of it seems to have put their wind up absolutely. They’d got bombs and there was an officer with them. But they held up their hands—nine of them. Panic. He got them right across to our trenches before the searchlights found him, and the Germans got him and two of their own chaps with a machine-gun. That was just the last thing he did. He’d been going about for months doing stunts like that—sort of charmed life business. The way he slung bombs, they say, amounted to genius.
“They say he’d let his hair grow long—perfect golliwog. When I saw him it certainly was long, but he’d got it plastered down. And there’s a story that he used to put white on his face like a clown with a great red mouth reaching from ear to ear—— Yes, painted on. It’s put the Huns’ wind up something frightful. Coming suddenly on a chap like that in the glare of a searchlight or a flare.”
“Queer end,” said Peter.