A Soldier's Place Page 14

  It had been a snug billet, that overnight stopping place, very cooling and restful after marching over the hard, hot pavé. The big, stone-built barn held fresh clean straw, and in the rear were pollarded willows overhanging a little river of bright water. The splashings of many bathers and the murmur of the men’s voices had but added to the soothing qualities of the scene. Telfer had rested and slept like a child.

  Peter wondered how many of the men would go that way again. He wondered if he would. Such thinking was a recent thing for him, and, in a way, had gripped him. Before their last “trip” in the line there had been Simon Teale, his cousin, to talk to, to ask advice, but now he was alone save for young Telfer, and there were so many things that such a young lad could not understand. For instance, he would not know about dreams, and dreams were guides if one understood them as Simon had done.

  And Simon was a home man. He had lived at Old Bear Bay just down along from Peter, and they had fished and hunted and trapped together through many lean years. Simon was clever with tools, and he could read and was versed in many “outside” matters. Peter was more of a hunter and trapper. He knew every pond and barren and drogue all the way to Old Woman Tickle; could sense his way in the winter through dense stunted spruce where the windfalls of ages made countless pitfalls hidden under light snow coverings.

  He and Simon had come to France together, and their intimacy had been a great thing for Peter. They could talk of home, and the fishing and sealing, the old folks and young folks, and Simon could read their letters to him. He also wrote to Peter’s wife. It was a huge help, that letter writing, for Simon could put things in words so easily and Peter could not. He had less to write about, too, for Simon had a family, three husky sons and two daughters; Peter and his wife were childless.

  Strangely, it was Simon, the family man, who had first mentioned enlisting. Peter had heard vague rumours about a war over in Europe, but his meagre geography had never caused him to think that it had anything to do with Newfoundland, and he was astounded when Simon said so. His amazement increased when within the week his partner gravely informed him that it was their duty to go to St. John’s and “sign up.”

  “But who’ll do the hunting and fishing and get the firewood?” asked Peter. Simon had upset his world.

  “There’ll be money from the government,” Simon explained. “Wages like, that the wife will get, enough to buy ’lasses and flour. It’s our duty to go, man, a wonderful chanc’t, and the good Book says so.”

  That settled it. Peter hated to leave home but he was a pious man, a believer. He had not the religion of some of the outport Newfoundlanders, who were subject to “glory fits” and loud repentances, but he had a faith of his own, partly the result of hearing Simon read the Bible on stormy days and Sundays, and partly due to his own thinking.

  Out in the vast whiteness of winter, with the glitter on the trees and an awesome silence over all, he would think and think as he visited his snares and traps, and when a perfect pelt rewarded him he would stand and gaze about him in a peculiarly reverent fashion. On summer nights, when the huskies howled and the northern lights rustled with the changing of a million tints, he had the same sensations, and would go up on the hills and rocky crags above the little bay and sit for hours alone. Mary, his wife, did not like such moods, and so he never told her about them.

  “All right, Simon,” he had said. “I’ll go as soon as I fix for a winter’s diet, but I know I’ll hate the killing. It don’t seem right to me.”

  “There was killing in Bible times,” Simon asserted, “so it must have been right, and Samson slew the Philistines. ’Tis likely these Germans be the same.”

  So the two men had gone down to St. John’s and there had become soldiers of the English King who needed them. Peter had hated it all, the bayonet fighting and bomb throwing and especially the heartless jesting. And he hated leaving Mary.

  In France a discerning sergeant had noticed their silent cat-footed ways in the dark and made them his platoon scouts, which pleased Peter as much as anything could in that war-defiled country. Out in No Man’s Land, lying in the stealthy quiet of a listening post, he could watch the endless flares and imagine himself back on the hills behind Old Bear Bay. Such dreamings had been easy in the sector where Simon was killed. It was rough-cratered territory in a mining region and there had been a lovely crescent moon afloat, an enchanting moon that changed the lines into soft contours until reminiscence teased his memory, for even the sombre slag heaps, huge against the luminous sky, became the dark rocky spurs that guarded his home harbour. And there had been a stillness he liked, a quiet in which he could bathe his soul as in a deep, cool pool. He had said so to Simon.

  A shuddering sigh had been his comrade’s first response, then came a whisper, hoarse with emotion. “It’s my night, Peter. I’ve had my dream.”

  Peter had almost blamed himself afterward for letting Simon sleep. He had known, by his easy breathing, that Simon was dozing, and had not roused him, and so the death vision had come. But would it not have come anyway, or would he not have been killed without warning? Peter knew that no man could live beyond his time.

  “What was it like?” he had asked, crushing back a first urge toward pity, for it could never help a man. “What were the signs?”

  “I saw my door, wonderful clear,” whispered Simon, “and Maggie were in it waving good-bye. It were like daylight, all the bay, and the boys were down by the fish wharf. It were my dream.”

  And then, because he knew nothing else to do, Peter had held out his hand and gripped Simon’s with his warmest pressure and assured him that he had one consolation—he had lived clean and honest and God-fearing, and that was a comfort to anyone.

  When their hour was up they had crawled back toward the trench, and Peter had noticed how the wet weeds that brushed his face were like dead fingers. Then the Germans sent up coloured lights, and he saw that the red ones made the water holes pools of blood, and the green ones gave all the area a ghastly corpselike sheen. It did not surprise him the least when a sniper’s bullet came with the hiss of an evil thing and killed Simon instantly.

  Peter had helped carry the dead man far back to a little cemetery, where all the graves had white crosses, bearing names and numbers. To one of his faith and nature, respectful burial was a mighty thing. When, before they marched to the Somme, he had visited graves and seen skylarks springing up from them, flooding the earth with melody and soaring to enormous heights before dropping back to earth, he was certain that Simon was “Resting in Peace,” according to the legend above him.

  He was thinking of how obligingly young Telfer had written a decent letter to Simon’s wife, one that she would feel was a personal message, and how the lad had clung with him since, when the sergeant returned and stared across the dugout, blinking wearily.

  “That you, Peter? There was no letter. The mail’s slow these times.”

  “It is,” said Peter. “I’m a month without hearing from my woman, and the last one was long coming. I been wonderin’ about my Mary.”

  “She’ll be all right,” grunted the sergeant drowsily. “The folks back home have lots to do while we’re away. You’d better get to sleep. We’ll be in the front trench tomorrow night and we might be unlucky.”

  He had not stopped speaking, it seemed, before he was snoring, and Peter blew out the candle that had been burning beside him, waxed on the top of his steel helmet. Then he lay down and stared into the murk of his corner and listened to rats in the dugout walls while he tried to visualize Mary, his wife, in the tiny garden he had made of good earth scraped from hollows in the hills and carried down in baskets, and fed each spring with decaying small fish, after which he faced again the stern fact that Mary had not written him.

  Had she tried the salmon netting herself? He stirred uneasily. He had told her not to try it, for it was a man’s work, and there was no need while the government sen
t her money. Mary! He wanted to speak the name aloud, softly, caressingly, to hear the music of it, and as he stared into the dark he saw her face, smiling, wistful, alluring, daring, gay, whimsical—she could change like spring weather—and he gazed spellbound until a thudding over-head explosion shook the dugout, and faces vanished like reflections in the still water of the bay when a ripple crossed it.

  There was another jarring crash, dulled by the heavy gas blankets hung across the stairway but audible enough to rouse several sleepers. “That’s big stuff,” said one, and another growled assent. They listened and heard the next shells land farther away, and went to sleep again. Peter, his mind diverted, also slept.

  It was afternoon and the shelling was heavy, but Peter stayed in the trench. He wanted to think and he could not do so in the foul, fetid air of the dugout. The men were boiling tea, and frying bully in mess-tin tops, and the odours of their cookers mingled with the stale, saline smell of perspiration. He wanted to inhale fresh air.

  The trench was but one in a zigzag warren and had lately been German ground. A coal-scuttle helmet, daubed with camouflage paint, had been tramped into the earth, and stick bombs were piled on what had been the enemy fire step. He moved around a bay and saw a sand-bagged hollow that had been a machine gun post. A dead gunner was sprawled over his wrecked weapon and big blue flies buzzed about him. Old boots, bottles, a gas mask, were littered about, and the German’s pockets had been turned inside out by some hasty souvenir hunter. Letters, postcards, and a photo had been flung down. Peter’s face set grimly. He judged it an ungodly thing to rob the dead.

  He looked around. There were successive explosions in the area to his right, just where a house had been, and he saw a stretcher party hurrying away with a burden. He mused, sadly. Everyone had said that July 1916 would be the turning point of the war. It had come but nothing great had happened. There certainly was no rout. Soon the line would move on and the ruin would be but another rubbish heap; then a plot of little white crosses would be formed in what had been the garden and a signboard by the filled-in craters would say “Dangerous Corner.” That was the routine of war.

  He hated war, abhorred it. Over on the low ground he could see fresh graves in the swampy mud. The cross of the nearest one had been struck by a shell splinter, so that only the name remained. One name. “Karl…” And the inscription Ruht in Gott. Peter looked at the letters a long time, wondering what they meant, and when a corporal passed by he got him to decipher them and explain.

  “Them Heinies is all Karls and Ottos,” said the non-com as he hurried on. “Nobody’ll ever know who’s planted there.”

  The thought struck Peter forcibly. That was the worst part of war, the desecration of graves, of the dead. He had never dreaded death nearly as much as he had dreaded being left as a discard on a battlefield, to be rat-eaten and fly-blown, blackened and shrivelled, and at last hastily covered in a shell hole by a careless burial party. He moved down the trench to the dugout. The company was not to go forward until dark, and he would talk with Telfer, try to encourage the lad, and in the doing ease his own mind.

  “What’s it like up front?” asked Telfer. He was lying on his bunk and his face was pale and drawn.

  “Not so bad,” said Peter. “They’re shelling all over but no place gets much. It’s open ground in front and all trenches and wire and shell holes, same as we came through.”

  “We’re to go up at nine,” said Telfer. “The sergeant was here and told us. We stay in Pineapple Trench until five and then go over.” Then, as if for something to say, the boy looked up with a feeble grin. “Did you know it’ll be Sunday,” he said, “and the first day of August?”

  Peter felt as if someone had prodded him. He stared at Telfer.

  “The first of August,” he repeated. “It’s my wedding day, ten years ago. Man, there’ll be a letter, sure.”

  Then he moved over and sat beside Telfer and talked as if he were making explanations.

  “It were a Sunday, too, when we were married, though Mary didn’t want it. She were a great one for jolly times and there wasn’t much for to do that day, but her father had his boats to see and couldn’t come before. I didn’t like it because she didn’t, but any day would have suited me, lad, for I knew I were the luckiest man in Old Bear Bay in catching Mary. You’d never think, to see her, that she’d have the likes of me.”

  Peter paused and gazed at his rough hands and wrists, disfigured by sea boils. Then he shook his head in a solemn fashion.

  “I don’t know what she be doing now for to keep her spirits. There won’t be much going on with the men away, and Simon and two others killed, and” —he glanced at Telfer— “there were no children to make her busy. It’ll be hard on her, the waiting and the bad news, for Mary’s not like the others. She were always a gay one, bright and joking with everybody, and there isn’t her match in looks on the coast. I hope she isn’t trying the nets.” Peter’s voice was lower. “She’s not got the strength for it and there isn’t the need to do it.”

  Telfer turned uneasily. “There’s not much shelling now,” he said. “Let’s go and have a look. The sergeant said if it rained we wouldn’t go over this time.”

  But there was no hope. The air was windless and cool and the sun had set with every promise of fine weather. The early dusk revealed a desolation that appalled. The trenches and dugout entrances and tree stubs were all touched with a drab greyness that seemed phantom-laden, and a faint smell, indescribable, from the unburied dead, made Telfer shiver.

  “I hate it,” he said nervously. “Why don’t they bury them Heinies?”

  “There’s not the time,” said Peter, “but there should be. The dead should be respected wherever they are. I hope I have a grave when my time comes.”

  “Don’t talk that way,” said Telfer sharply. “You sounds as if—you expected to be killed.”

  Peter’s rugged features remained sombre. “I have a bad feeling,” he said moodily. “In Old Bear Bay there’s many has a gift of seeing ahead, and always they tell that a man’s luck begins on his tenth wedding day. It’s in me here”—Peter tapped his broad bony chest—“that something’s gone wrong with my Mary. She were a warm-loving woman, and there’s been a sickness or bad luck at the Bay. Simon told her how I keep her letters, and that I had them all.” Peter unbuttoned a tunic pocket and drew forth a closely tied bundle, rather thumbed and dirty but readable. “Them ’as been a help when we’re in a bad billet and there’s not much to do. I know ’em, what’s in ’em, every one.” Then he clenched a big fist and looked over the dim snaky line of trenches. “Them transport chaps needs lookin’ after,” he growled. “They be careless with the mail bags at times.”

  “Let’s go into the dugout,” said Telfer. “I hate this place.”

  The sergeant major met them. “I suppose you’re thinking of your leave, Peter,” he said. “I tried to get you off this trip, but we’re short of good men. You’ll be away as soon as we’re out again.”

  “Oh, my gosh,” gasped Telfer in an undertone, and when the sergeant major had gone he was vehement. “Beat them out,” he cried. “It’s a dirty trick, sending a man into a scrap when his leave’s due. Go sick or something. Don’t let them fool you that way.”

  But Peter shook his head. “I don’t do them tricks,” he said, “and I won’t start now. Besides I wouldn’t want to go afore I got my letter.”

  “They’re putting it all over you,” insisted Telfer. “You’ve earned two leaves. Go ahead and take a chance. The doc won’t think you’re playing sick. And never mind your mail. Lots of chaps haven’t got any since we started to move. Your wife’s all right or somebody would have wired you. That’s the way they send anything that’s important.”

  Peter smiled in his slow way. “If my time’s come, it’s come,” he said, “and being on leave wouldn’t make any change. There’s a chance a letter will come tonight, and if it’s
good news my luck will be all right for the rest of my life. If Simon were here he could tell you about it.”

  Pineapple Trench was swathed in darkness and the lines were fairly quiet. Now and then flares lobbed up and filled the night with an eerie whiteness, and when the machine guns were not shooting the very atmosphere seemed charged with expectancy. Peter was in a small trench shelter and Telfer was huddled beside him. The lad dozed occasionally and cowered in his sleep, whimpering with the poignant fears of anticipation.

  Peter wished that he could sleep—he needed it, was heavy with it—but his restless memory made sleep something to be resisted. Dark thoughts tormented him, hovered over him like haunting winged creatures. What had happened to Mary? Had she been drowned, her dory swamped as she went out to look at the salmon nets? Had she slipped on the rocks on a wet windy day as she went to their little garden on the sunny side of the hill? Had some fever come into the village?

  Then he remembered Telfer’s urgings about getting away on leave, and pondered. Never before had he had such a dread of going into battle. What had happened to him? He was not a coward. Any native of Old Bear Bay knew that life was a precarious thing, and Peter believed that every man had his time limit set when he began living. But he dreaded being left in the wilderness beyond Pineapple Trench, an unsightly body suddenly emptied of life, at which those passing would glance with furtive curiosity. He fingered his chin and was glad he had shaved before he left the dugout.

  Telfer pressed closer to him, as if for warmth, and Peter’s heart filled with pity. It seemed a crime to send such a boy into battle. Then he wondered, with dismay, who would read his letters and write them if anything happened to the lad. Telfer was a find. He had been so apt in comprehending all Peter’s affairs.

  An hour before the barrage was to begin, Peter awoke from a short sleep and sat up straight. Telfer was aroused by a tug at his shoulder.