Bubb and Bowdy lay down together and dropped off to sleep, listening to the patter of the rain on the roof, while outside on the firestep Flanagan was standing on guard, humming an old Irish song, his heart filled with the joy of a wanderer who has returned to his kind.
CHAPTER IX
TRENCH FEVER
Now out in the trenches you'll find to your cost
That the slower you shuffle the sooner you're lost;
There are actions done better the quicker they're done,
Like getting your rations or bombing a Hun,
Or dodging a pip-squeak or catching a flea,—
The quicker you do them the better they be.
(From "Trench Wisdom.")
The Irish were back in the trenches again. It was night; the ground was covered with snow, and Spudhole who did not feel well was glad of an hour's rest in a dug-out.
The dug-out belonged at one time to the Germans. It was a spacious apartment stretching out into unfathomable corners. The dry floor was level as a board and all round the walls snug little crannies were scraped out in the clay. Here were stored all manner of odds and ends, bully beef tins, loaves, biscuits, coils of barbed wire, hand grenades, bandoliers, water jars, tins of jam, candles and firewood.
A brazier burned on the floor, the smoke curled upwards and was sucked out through a hole in the roof as through a chimney. A dozen men sat around the fire, their sheepskin jackets steaming and the brass buckles of their equipment shining like gold. The blaze, burning high, lit up the steady eyes and ruddied the strong features of the men. Spudhole, half asleep, leant forward over his knees, his arms folded, his shoulders humped up and his helmet well down over his face. Bowdy Benners was writing a letter, his notepaper spread out on Bubb's back, his knees crossed. An old, wrinkled man of forty-eight, named Bill Hurd, was telling how his own son had joined the Army at the outbreak of war. Hurd was an Irishman and had worked as a carpenter on a big estate in Devon, and his son John had a job in his father's workshop.
"'Twas two days after war was declared," Bill was saying, "and I was down in the kitchen waitin' till it was time to go out till my job. I was always an early riser. Upstairs I heard John singin' like a thrush. 'What's wrong with him?' I says till myself, for, though he was a good, willin' cub, he was not an early riser. When he came down I says till him, 'What's up wid ye this mornin'?' I says. 'I'm goin' till jine up,' he says. It most took my breath away. 'But ye're not only eighteen come the end of next week,' I says till him. 'But I can be nineteen at a pinch,' he answers, and what was to be said to that? I ups and shakes him by the hand. 'Ye're a man, that's what ye are,' I says till him. 'And where are ye goin' to jine up?' I asks him. 'In the town,' he says, meanin' the town nearest where there was a recruitin' station. 'Then I'll go 'long wid ye an' see that ye're right fitted up,' I says to him. 'I must go out an' do an hour's work,' he then says. 'When I've finished that I'll be ready to go.' 'Right, me boy,' I says, for I knew that he wanted to go out and tell the other men what he was going to do.