“Have I been asleep long, sir?”
“Three days. They brought you in last Friday night. Do you not remember?”
“No,” said Jim. “I don’t remember coming here.” He drank some soup eagerly, but shook his head at the horrible bread. The food cleared his head, and when the little cure had gone away, promising to return as soon as possible, he lay quietly piecing matters together in his mind. Callaghan helped him: the Dublins had been in the line next his own regiment when they had gone “over the top” on that last morning.
“Oh, I remember all that well enough,” Jim said. “We took two lines of trench, and then they came at us like a wall; the ground was grey with them. And I was up on a smashed traverse, trying to keep the men together, when it went up too.”
“A shell was it?”
Jim shook his head.
“A shell did burst near us, but it wasn’t that. No, the trench was mined, and the mine went off a shade too late. They delayed, somehow; it should have gone off if we took the trench, before they counter-attacked. As it was, it must have killed as many of their men as ours. They told me about it afterwards.”
“Afterwards?” said Callaghan, curiously. He looked at Jim, a little doubtful as to whether he really knew what he was talking about. “Did ye not come straight here then, sir?”
“I did not; I was buried,” said Jim grimly. “The old mine went up right under me, and I went up too. I came down with what seemed like tons of earth on top of me; I was covered right in, I tell you, only I managed to get some of the earth away in front of my nose and mouth. I was lying on my side, near the edge of a big heap of dirt, with my hands near my face. If I’d been six inches further back there wouldn’t have been the ghost of a chance for me. I got some of the earth and mud away, and found I could breathe, just as I was choking. But I was buried for all that. All our chaps were fighting on top of me!”
“D’ye tell me!” gasped Callaghan incredulously.