“Good-night!”
And Martin trudged through the mud with Sergeant Mason behind von Struben and the escort.
CHAPTER XXI
NEARING THE END
Sixty hours elapsed before Martin was able to unwrap the puttees from off his stiff legs and cut the laces of boots so caked with mud that he was too weary to untie them. In that time, as the official report put it, “enemy trenches extending from Rue du Bois to Houplines, over a front of nearly three miles, were occupied to an average depth of one thousand yards, and our troops are now consolidating the new territory.”
A bald announcement, indeed! Martin was one of the few who knew what it really meant. He had helped to organize the victory; he could sum up its costs. But this record is not a history of the war, nor even of one young soldier’s share in it. Martin himself has developed a literary style noteworthy for its simple directness. Some day, if he survives, he may tell his own story.
When the last of twelve hundred prisoners had been mustered in the Grande Place of Armentières, when the attacking battalions had been relieved and the reserve artillery was shelling Fritz’s hastily formed gun positions, when the last ambulance wagon of the “special” division had sped over the pavé to the base hospital at Bailleul, Martin thought he was free to go to bed.
As a matter of fact, he was not. Utterly spent, he had thrown himself on a cot and had slept the sleep of complete exhaustion for half an hour, when a brigade major discovered that “Captain Grant” was at liberty, and detailed him for an immediate inquiry. The facts were set forth on Army Form 122: “On the night of the 10th inst. a barrel of rum, delivered at Brigade Dump No. 35, was stolen or mislaid. It was last seen in trench 77. For investigation and report to D.A.Q.M.G. 50th Div.” That barrel of rum will never be seen again, though it was destined to roll through reams of variously numbered army forms during many a week.