"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.
CHAPTER XXI
In the Watches of the Night
"What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,
And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;
I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.
I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made
For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,
As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.
"But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.
I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er
The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,
"Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"
The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between. The dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun shadows of the parados.
Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm, sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the night air.
"Quiet?" he asked.
"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."
"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have the working parties come up yet?" he asked.
"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."