“Sure? If you want to grouse, grouse away. That’s what I’m talking to you for.”
“I’m perfectly happy, sir.”
“Darn sight more than I am!” laughed the subaltern, and with a cheery nod in acknowledgment of Doggie’s salute, splashed down the muddy trench.
But Doggie was chilled to the bone, and he had no feeling in his feet, which were under six inches of water, and his woollen gloves being wet through were useless, and prevented his numbed hands from feeling the sandbags with which he and the rest of the platoon were repairing the parapet; for the Germans had just consecrated an hour’s general hate to the vicinity of the trench, and its exquisite symmetry, the pride of the platoon commander, had been disturbed. There had also been a few ghastly casualties. A shell had fallen and burst in the traverse at the far end of the trench. Something that looked like half a man’s head and a bit of shoulder had dropped just in front of the dug-out where Doggie and his section was sheltering. Doggie staring at it was violently sick. In a stupefied way he found himself mingling with others who were engaged in clearing up the horror. A murmur reached him that it was Taffy Jones who had thus been dismembered…. The bombardment over, he had taken his place with the rest in the reparation of the parapet; and as he happened to be at an end of the line, the officer had spoken to him. If he had been suffering tortures unknown to Attila, and unimagined by his successors, he would have answered just the same.
But he lamented Taffy’s death to Phineas, who listened sympathetically. Such a cheery comrade, such a smart soldier, such a kindly soul.
“Not a black spot in him,” said Doggie.
“A year ago, laddie,” said McPhail, “what would have been your opinion of a bookmaker’s clerk?”
“I know,” replied Doggie. “But this isn’t a year ago. Just look round.”
He laughed somewhat hysterically, for the fate of Taffy had unstrung him for the time. Phineas contemplated the length of deep narrow ditch, with its planks half swimming on filthy liquid, its wire revetment holding up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which it was death to put one’s head, the grey free sky, the only thing free along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable even by features from themselves.