The London Irish had just left the trenches and were following a sunken road on their way back to billets and a month's rest. The men were in a gay good humour, "Charlotte the Harlot," the Rabelaisian song was sung with great gusto. The faces of sweet French maidens, almost forgotten, were recalled again. The men's fancies rushed hither and thither, painting rosy pictures of snug farmhouses and good cafés. A month's rest away from the ructions of war; how splendid!
Where the wood grew thinner a brushwood screen had been improvised so as to hide the road. In front lay an unlucky red brick village, one which had suffered much from the guns of war. Every third house had been hit by shell fire and many of the homes were levelled to the ground. A heavy wall of cloud, ragged of front crawled across the sky; the sun was overcast, but far up, shooting through the advancing layers of black, a long, golden ray of sunshine streamed out and lit up the firing line.
Save for the crunch of marching feet there was quiet. The shower went by and the soft rustle of the rain falling on the grass by the roadside had ceased. All around the country lay in ruins, the self-sown crops in the wide meadows drooped abjectly to earth as if in mourning for the reaper who visited the place no more. The men passed a house which stood in the fields, a little red-brick cottage with its chimney thrown down, its doors latchless and its windows broken. Once a home of thrifty, toiling people; now the clear sun, which succeeded the shower, saw no housewife at work, no children playing, no man out in the fields storing up the harvest crops. Nothing there now save the guns which lurked privily and kept for the moment a decorous silence. A big shell was following the men along, bursting at intervals some five hundred yards behind. The Germans were sweeping the road, trusting that the projectile would drop on any troops who might be marching along there. The shell followed steadily, keeping its distance and doing no harm. But the range might be lengthened at any moment and then trouble would ensue. The men marched rapidly, hardly daring to breathe.
"Gawd, I don't like that 'ere coal-box," said Bubb, as he heard an explosion behind. "That blurry one was nearer, I fink."
"Further off, I should say," Bowdy Benners replied. "Light a fag, Spudhole, it will do you all the good in the world."
He burst into song:—
"Give me a lucifer to light my fag,
And laugh, boys, that's the style,
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, boys, smile."
"Come, boys, sing up," he called. "Come on, let go!"
The chorus was repeated and the men joined in singing, roaring at the tops of their voices. Bubb straightened his back, expanded his chest and looked at his mate. Bowdy, with his cigarette in his mouth, was bellowing out the chorus, the cigarette moving up and down as if keeping time with the measure.
Spudhole swept into a fresh song, a well-known favourite. The men joined in the singing:—