The service was similar to the former, and throughout the brief time that it lasted the sides of the two black wooden boxes which lay before the altar, a wreath at the foot of each, appeared to fall asunder, and I seemed to see clearly the poor mangled bodies which were therein. The same impressive music as we passed from the church and up the avenue to the cemetery; the same word of command to the firing-party; the same volleys fired upward into futility; the same tribute paid by each of us, a spadeful of dust—to what would soon be but a spadeful of dust. There is little variation in Death, or in the ceremonies by which we endeavour to disguise from ourselves his distressing and disturbing realisms. Being Saturday, there were many civilians in the cemetery, staid old men who seemed to have come in from the country; students and schoolboys standing at the salute; women weeping at the burial of the dead who have caused their dead!
A few days later the civilians, mostly factory girls, killed in the air raid were buried, but we neither heard nor saw any evidences of the funeral. The German communiqué read: “Shortly after 9 a.m. an attack ensued on the open town of Carlsruhe. Ten or twelve bombs were dropped, which fell, partly in open country, partly in gardens. Some damage to houses caused. Unfortunately, four people fell victims to the attack; six others were badly hurt, partly from their own fault. At 9.45 the alarm was over.”
And—the four aviators and the four civilians were lying very quiet!
An Inimitable Imitator
Sometimes, after “lights out,” a warning siren would be blown in camp, which, to the initiated, simply made warning that Captain Teixeira, our inimitable imitator, had been induced good-naturedly to give a performance. Then might be heard the Captain sawing his way to freedom, to the bringing in of the disconcerted guard. Followed imitation of all the fowls in the farmyard, and all the feathers in the forest, or, most humorous of all, “an infant crying in the night, and with no language but a cry.” Perhaps I would suggest twins, whereat the Captain, who is a family man, would revert to poultry, and give an imitation of an exultant hen, whose cackling we found none the less realistic in that we have a tin of “eggs and bacon” under way for to-morrow’s breakfast.
CAPTAIN TEIXEIRA.
Captain Teixeira could not only imitate the song of birds. He was a singer himself. Among many other manifestations of friendship, he gave me a set of improvisations, “Songs from Coimbra”—Coimbra, a University town and capital of the Portuguese province of Beira, giving its name to that school of poetry which had inception in 1848 with the publication of “O Trovador.” I have made effort to convert these “Cantares” into English verse:
I
Let my coffin be