‘Things been quiet to-night?’ I said casually.
He started at the sound of my voice, for he had not heard my approach.
‘Quieter than usual, sir,’ he answered. ‘There was a bit of a haroosh on the left half an hour ago and the Gerboys opposite us took it up for a minute or so, but they’ve quieted down since. Funny creatures, them Gerboys,’ he ruminated—‘good fighters and yet always getting the wind up. I remember at Ligny when we was doin’ what wasn’t too elegant a retirement, me and Vinsen was in a farm’ouse....’
I stopped him hurriedly. When Rippon gets on to the subject of Ligny his garrulity knows no bounds.
‘I’m going out ahead, Rippon,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back again this way. Warn the next sentry that I shall be doing so. Give me an orderly, too.’ Rippon looked at me curiously. Perhaps my tone was not normal. Then he bent down and stirred a man snoring in the breastwork beside him. The man stirred uneasily and then suddenly jumped up and clutched at the rifle through the sling of which his right arm was thrust.
‘What’s up?’ he murmured. Rippon smiled.
‘It ain’t no attack,’ he answered. ‘The Captain wants you as his orderly.’
A minute later we had left the breastwork line and were out in front in the wood, our feet breaking through the thin film of ice and sinking over our ankles in the mud beneath. Belgian mud may not be any different from other mud, but to my dying day I shall always imagine it so. It clasps you as though it wants to pull and keep you down, as though, with so many of your friends lying beneath it, you too should be there. We tugged our feet out each step, treading on fallen branches where we could. I tried to trace by footsteps the path you had taken, but failed. I could not think of anything better to do than go out to the sniping pits and question the men there to know if you had visited them.
I turned to the left then and made for number one group, Bell, my orderly, following a pace or two behind. A cloud came over the face of the moon, the night became suddenly dark, and the next moment I had stumbled and almost fallen over what I imagined for a second to be a stray sand-bag.
It was not a sand-bag, God knows it was not! The moon reappeared and I saw it was you, Dick, lying on your side, with your legs outstretched. I bent down when I realised that it was a body, turned you over on your back and with Bell’s assistance ripped open your Burberry, your tunic and your vest. A bullet had gone straight through your heart, there was a little spot of congealed blood on your breast, and—you had died—well, as suddenly and as easily as you deserved to do, Dick. On your face was a smile.