I suppose we're a lot of heathens,
Don't live on the angel plan,
But we're sticking it here in the trenches,
And doing the best we can.
When preachers over in Blighty,
Who talk about Kingdom Come,
Ain't pleased with our performance,
And are wanting to stop our rum,
Water, they say, would be better;
Water! Great God, out here?
Why, we're up to our knees in water—
Do you think we're standing in beer?
Oh, it sounds all right from the pulpit,
When you sit in a cushioned pew;
But try four days in the trenches,
And see what water will do.
Some of the coffin-faced Blighters
I think must be German-bred;
It's time that they called in the doctor,
For it's water they have in the head.
That nip of rum put hope into my heart once more, and I bit my lips and stifled my agony as well as I could.
Dawn broke, and just as the first streaks crept into the sky, the firing died down and that mystery which broods over the wonder of night turning into day pervaded outraged nature and even warring man. As I watched, the details of my watery retreat became plainer and plainer; I grew ashamed of my cowardice, and I did my best to stifle my groans.
At last Sergeant Purslowe, a replica of Campbell in coolness and leadership, noticed my plight and immediately set to work to get me carried out. My comrades were only too willing, but they waited in vain for a stretcher. Alas! There were entirely too few to accommodate half the wounded. Nothing for it but to carry me on their backs. Oh! the agony of that rough ride, and oh! the sacrifice of those blood brothers of mine. With my foot hanging by a shred of flesh, the bones grating against one another, shivering with cold, yet with perspiration standing out from every pore with the pain, I was gradually carried from the line we had taken. Once when passing a huge shell crater, the pain not yet having robbed me of my senses, I asked to be left till night-time in its shelter. It was broad daylight, and there was that little bunch of men risking utter annihilation just that a stricken chum might live.
They cursed my groans; they cursed the Huns; in fact, their language was sulphurous, yet I noticed I was saved from all jar or jolt, as far as they could prevent it; and when I asked to be left in the shell hole they cursed me for a blankety-blank fool, and profanely refused to do it. Think of it, you psalm-singers, who are worried over the morals of your soldiers. Picture those men, in full view of the Huns, in broad daylight, refusing to leave their chum at any cost. Any minute, any second, might blast them off the face of the earth, yet no thought for their own safety, until "Shorty" was at the dressing station. Since that time, Campbell, Shields and Cameron, have paid the supreme price, while Muirhead, Mead and Nish are crippled for life.
It was curious to watch their hesitation, even in the face of the danger they were in, to get me over the parapet into what was now the second line trench. They hated to cause me pain. A sympathetic Cockney, of the L.R.B.'s, gently lowered me to the fire-step and proceeded to get a stretcher. My ride now, although terribly painful, was decidedly easier. They tied my wounded leg to the sound leg, thus preventing that horrible rubbing together of the fractured bones.