The suspense wore us down; we breathed the suffocating fumes of one explosion and waited, our senses tensely strung for the coming of the next shell. The sang-froid which carried us through many a tight corner with credit utterly deserted us, we were washed-out things; with noses to the cold earth, like rats in a trap we waited for the next moment which might land us into eternity. The excitement of a bayonet charge, the mad tussle with death on the blood-stained field, which for some reason is called the field of honour was denied us; we had to wait and lie in the trench, which looked so like a grave, and sink slowly into the depths of depression.
Everything seemed so monstrously futile, so unfinished, so useless. Would the dawn see us alive or dead? What did it matter? All that we desired was that this were past, that something, no matter what, came and relieved us of our position. All my fine safeguards against terrible wounds were neglected. What did it matter where a shell hit me now, a weak useless thing at the bottom of a trench? Let it come, blow me to atoms, tear me to pieces, what did I care? I felt like one in a horrible nightmare; unable to help myself. I lay passive and waited.
I believe I dozed off at intervals. Visions came before my eyes, the sandbags on the parapet assumed fantastic shapes, became alive and jeered down at me. I saw Wee Hughie Gallagher of Dooran, the lively youth who is so real to all the children of Donegal, look down at me from the top of the trench. He carried a long, glistening bayonet in his hand and laughed at me. I thought him a fool for ever coming near the field of war. War! Ah, it amused him! He laughed at me. I was afraid; he was not; he was afraid of nothing. What would Bill think of him? I turned to the Cockney; but he knelt there, head to the earth, a motionless Moslem. Was he asleep? Probably he was; any way it did not matter.
The dawn came slowly, a gradual awaking from darkness into a cheerless day, cloudy grey and pregnant with rain that did not fall. Now and again we could hear bombs bursting out in front and still the artillery thundered at our communication trench.
Bill sat upright rubbing his chest.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"What's wrong! Everythink," he answered. "There are platoons of intruders on my shirt, sappin' and diggin' trenches and Lord knows wot!"
"Verminous, Bill?"
"Cooty as 'ell," he said. "But wait till I go back to England. I'll go inter a beershop and get a pint, a gallon, a barrel—"
"A hogshead," I prompted.