A Soldier's Place Page 22

  Rats scrambling back of the board walls interrupted his thoughts, and while he listened he dozed and slept.

  Ashley woke him for stand-to. “It’s another Jake night,” he said. “We’ll have it easy, and this is a short trip. The sergeant-major says we’re going back to practice a kick-off from this trench we’re in.”

  Keene sat up and stared at the corporal. “Kick-off,” he echoed. “What’s the idea? We’re only just back to strength from the Vimy show.”

  “They want us to take a slice off of Avion, that’s all the SM told me,” said Ashley, “and if our artillery put down a decent barrage it hadn’t ought to be much of a job.”

  “No? It’ll just mean more work for the pioneers, making more white crosses, another draft to the company, that’s all.” Keene’s voice was bitter, hard.

  “Stand-to.” A voice shouted down the stairway.

  Keene went up sullenly. It was the sergeant major who had called. “Another nice evening,” he said pleasantly. “The major wants a patrol to go out and see if they can get information about the machine-gun post near that brick heap straight over there. Ashley can go. Tell him to take one of the scouts, that’s all.”

  Keene hated to tell Ashley. He hated patrols himself, and there seemed a sinister threat about the German line. It lay among too many cellars and brick heaps. But the corporal seemed cheerful. “I’ll be out among the roses,” he said. “There are quite a few near the German wire.”

  He had been gone an hour and Keene was listening anxiously when there was a sharp report, the bark of an army revolver, near the Hun line. Then there came sounds of plunging, running men, and Ashley and his scout slid under the wire. They were not a heartbeat too soon. Maxims raved and bullets hissed and swished over the ground they had passed.

  “One lone chap came outside their parapet,” Ashley panted. “I shot him and tore off his shoulder straps so’s to get his regimental numbers. That ought to be good information.”

  It was, but Keene stared. It was hard to visualize Ashley shooting a prowler in cold blood. Why…Ah, that was just the reason he made such arguments and never understood talk about the finer perceptions. He was devoid of them himself, so how could he see their lack in the Teuton make-up? Later, when he came back from making his report, Ashley paused and looked over the wire a long time.

  “It’s just come to me,” he said softly, “that that poor beggar might have been after some roses. If I had thought that I couldn’t have shot him.”

  Keene, in the shadows, grimaced, and spat at a rat.

  Dawn brought another glorious morning. Keene went up into the trench to get his lungs full of fresh air, and a sentry beckoned him to a periscope. Its glass showed him the bigger brick heap near the Hun trench. A grey-coated figure lay sprawled there, a pot helmet nearby. As he peered Keene saw a head upthrust from the German trench, a head that rose and withdrew several times. Then a German soldier scrambled over his parapet and crept out to the dead man. Every move was hurried, furtive, fear-ruled. He seized the inert form by the arms and dragged it back the way he had come, through a gap in the wire. Then he jumped down into the bay he had left and tugged the corpse in without exposing himself further.

  Keene looked around. Half a dozen men were peering over the top and had watched the German. Not one of them had reached for his rifle. Somehow, he felt proud of them.

  It wanted only three minutes to zero-hour. Keene looked up and down the trench, at the different expressions of the men. Some were white-faced, tight-lipped holding themselves as with a leash.

  Others showed unmastered fear, sheer terror. They were the ones with too vivid imaginations, going through all dangers twice, and the non-coms had to watch them.

  He smelled the morning and its dewy dampness. The odour of disturbed chalky earth was not obnoxious, but he hated the sight of flies buzzing around newly-emptied bully tins left on the trench floor. Flies, he hated them.

  Crash! The barrage! A smashing, tearing roar of guns. A flash of explosion in front, lurid lights, smoke. Crash—crash—crash. Three upheavals of soil just in front of them. Mushrooms of drifting, acrid smoke and fumes. The first retaliation. An officer looked at his wrist watch and held a whistle to his lips. The pounding gunfire increased. There was a red spurt of flame in front of a traverse on the right, and shrill cries.

  “Stretcher bearer—stretcher bearer!”

  Then they were over.

  Somebody pitched down at the cut wire and Keene tripped over a rolling tin hat. He plunged on without looking at the fallen man, drove on, leaping shell holes, seeing dim figures in smoke flurries, hearing the pin-ning of Mills bombs. He saw the scarlet of an explosion near him, heard a man scream in death agony, then…a searing white flame blinded him, hurled him to earth…oblivion.

  If only the clanging, banging bells would stop ringing…They did, but the slamming roar of guns jarred his head, made it ache with splitting violence. He tried to move, put down a hand, feebly. It touched earth, loose, soft earth, wet earth. Something hurt his neck. It was the edge of his steel helmet, twisted back, the strap under his chin holding it in place. After a tremendous effort he loosened it, let it fall away from him. Queer how such a trivial thing would be so difficult. He must be hit somewhere, wounded.

  It was hard to think. His head throbbed, burned; he was weak, too weak to move. Vaguely, he wondered where he was, what had happened. Oh yes, the attack. He must be hurt. Why didn’t someone come? Where were the Germans? Someone touched him and he looked up slowly—he could do nothing quickly—and saw a stretcher-bearer place his sack of bandages on the ground, on the rim of a crater. Funny, now, that he didn’t remember that crater. Where—

  “Don’t try to move, Sergeant.” The stretcher-bearer was speaking needlessly. “You’re lucky to be alive if you were here when that shell burst.” The man pointed to the new shell hole. “I’ll turn you a little, there. Hold still, now, when I pour on the iodine. Perhaps you won’t feel it, though. You’ve got a bad one.”

  Keene watched the fellow dully, then flinched as the sudden red-hot needles lanced his leg, pierced his flesh.

  “Easy, man,” he tried to shout, but his voice was faint and husky. The man seemed to fumble a long time, to be doing an endless amount of wrapping, then he gave Keene a drink of water.

  “We’ll get you in as soon as things get settled,” he said. “Heinie’s putting up an awful scrap over near the houses. I’ll prop you up and then I’ll have to leave you.”

  He pulled Keene’s equipment back off his shoulders and scooped loose-flung earth from the shell cavity into a supporting pillow. “Don’t try to move,” he added and was gone.

  Keene could see the rear of a ruin, shattered brick, a splintered beam, and a dead man on the ground near him. Sunlight on the man’s bayonet caught his eye first, and then his gaze travelled over an outflung arm to a face that was turned toward him as if in repose. “Hul…” He had tried to whisper, to speak to Ashley, and then he remembered that the man was dead.

  Why didn’t he shut his eyes? Keene didn’t like their dull, unseeing gaze. Why wasn’t Ashley tumbled about, twisted, bloodied? He lay there as if having a rest, and, somehow, he knew that the corporal would die like that. He was never headlong, excited, emotional; he wouldn’t even get angry in an argument. Arguments…hmmm…now it was too late to convince the man.

  Keene wanted to protest such unfairness. How could anyone die thinking that Germans were….

  He couldn’t think. The world was all noise, indefinite noise. It was all blue overhead, clear blue…no, something obstructed his view, wavered there. A man, what…it was a German.

  The fellow’s dirty-grey tunic looked so—so unsoldierly, his tin gas mask dangled in a silly way. What hideous uniforms these men wore!

  He looked at the man’s face, scanned it incuriously. In a way, it wasn’t so bad being hit—one lost all fear of the enem
y or anything; funny, that sort of feeling. The fellow muttered something, seemed to be pleading. He had his hands up, was stupid with the shock of being taken prisoner. A Hun! The forehead was too wide, the complexion too pasty, except…aha, he was wounded too. One ear was almost torn from his head, shredded, and blood clotted on his neck. Faugh—it was sickening. Keene shut his eyes. When he opened them the man had gone.

  He wished he had talked to him, asked him something, heard him speak…it seemed so long since anyone had been near, anyone but Ashley. Ashley…if only he had been able to see and understand for just a few minutes. A few words with that wounded Hun would have been enough, one could see that he was the “type,” a war cog, incapable of fine reasoning, intuition; just a number in the ranks; one more “goose stepper,” capable of any bloodshed, minus all thinking principles.

  The shelling had stopped. He must have dozed, for he couldn’t remember its cessation. What time was it? If only he were nearer Ashley. There was a watch on that hairy outflung wrist, and it would be the correct time, the corporal was so careful, clerk habits, of course.

  What…stars overhead. Flickers on the ruin, noiseless, flighty fingers, never-resting. Flare reflections. Night…why didn’t they get him? Ugh! What was that? Something cold touched his hand. He turned his head. It was a rat, a black, bloated thing, scuttling away.

  “Scat!” He tried to call out. That foul crawler mustn’t go near Ashley. Ashley—blast it—was his friend.

  Keene felt the rush of cool air as his stretcher swayed and jolted. There were murmurings, voices, near but indistinct. Ouch…the ambulance rocked, bumped, jerked him cruelly. Pain jabbed him, tore at him, knifed him, seared him, cut him…At last they had left him alone….

  They had seemed to probe at him for hours, that doctor and the square-shouldered nurse who had just gone. They had muttered, talked incoherently. If only he knew what they had said. His leg, his left leg, yes, his side, too, were hurt. But, how badly? One thing was sure—they should not operate in France.

  He had had that on his mind ever since he had seen the stars the first time. There had been chaps put on the table in France who lost legs through hurried work, quick work without proper precautions. No slip-shod treatment for him. And—the biggest thing—he wanted to get across the channel. To get away from the war, that was all he wanted, away from those twisting, raw- white trenches, from guns and shells, and ruins, and flies, and smells and rats. Once he had prided himself on being a good soldier, a hardy one; now he only wanted to get away, he had slipped from under all other ambitions.

  The nurse came again, with two men who carried a stretcher. Keene held up his hand. “No, sister,” he said, slowly, stubbornly. “You’re not putting me on a table over here. I’m for England. I refuse.”

  “But your leg. It is serious!”

  “I—refuse, you hear me, sister.”

  There were whisperings and then the two men went away again and took the stretcher with them. Keene gloated in his victory. England…no more France, and war.

  His leg and side pained him so that he could not sleep and he wondered fretfully when they would take him away. Then a nurse walked through the ward. She was a slim, dark-haired girl and she was carrying a violin and bow. A violin! Keene had not seen one for years, ages, eternities.

  Music! It began with a low fluting note, clear and yet soft, a tremolo that both stirred and soothed him. It woke memories long dormant, flooded him with them, calmed him with them. Music!

  Golden, soul-pulsing music! Exquisite harmonies that built exquisite pictures in sweet bewildering procession. Sunrise on the lake at home…a flashing splendour on still water…sparkles on a thousand rushes. Sunshine from a cobalt sky, shimmering over a greening countryside, on trees in bloom, hedgerows in colour…dandelions…buttercups…daisies…gay colour…sky larks springing up from poppy-spangled old graves across the Ridge, thrilling the air with melody and soaring as far as his eye could see…Sunset and amber haze, heart-swelling beauty…the sea, cool, murmuring, the lap of little waves….beach fires and scented dusk…the twang of a guitar…soft voices, singing. Music—

  The doctor returned. He looked haggard, worn, but he spoke patiently to Keene as he tied a fresh tag to his cot.

  “You’ll be moving in an hour, Sergeant,” he said.

  Moving—leaving that music! Keene felt his throat suddenly go dry, feverish. His fingers plucked at his cot.

  “I—you can do me here, doctor,” he said huskily. “Go ahead—anytime.”

  It was another evening when Keene was strong enough to watch for the girl with the violin. There had been a few days, he knew, that he could never count, but he had not lost out. There would be more music.

  The square-shouldered nurse was beside him and he looked up at her. “I stayed here because I wanted to hear that violin,” he whispered weakly.

  The nurse’s face did not express much emotion. Perhaps months of hard days had dulled her; but her voice was kind.

  “It saved your life, then,” she answered. “If you had gone many more hours it would have been too late. Gangrene had commenced.”

  Gangrene!

  Keene kicked his lips and did not try to speak again. That was a near go. England—and a grave. If he hadn’t seen that violin, heard it…The palms of his hands were moist with perspiration.

  Then she came, the dark-haired girl, passing quickly, but carrying that which he most wanted to see and hear.

  The music again. After its first throbbing sweetness it swept him away to far-off places, away, away, up, up, swirling, turning, gliding, until he could look down with elation on long valleys, rivers, tree-lined highways. A wild jangle of notes, fervent, stirring, tugging, drums and bugles…then the gliding, dipping, swinging turns, up, up, up again, and over….soothing, stilling, smoothing hands…soft lights, low murmurs, scents and perfumes, stars and a crescent moon…peace, quiet, tranquility, content, and love….

  He never knew when the music stopped. It was day again and the square-shouldered nurse was busy among the beds. A screen had been placed around one in the corner and he saw the two carriers come again with their stretcher, felt the hush that settled on the ward as they bore their burden outside.

  If he hadn’t heard that violin, that wonderful, speaking music, there would have been a screen for him, and what difference if in an English hospital? The thought stayed with him, dominated.

  What a debt he owed to that girl! Gangrene—a grave, a wooden cross. RIP.

  He shuddered, and remembered the graves he had seen at the Souchez end of the Ridge, French graves. “Mort pour la Patrie,” and dark, crude crosses bearing the inscription, “Ruht in Gott.”

  “Ruht in Gott!” Were Germans Christians?

  How Ashley would have answered that question, pale-faced Ashley, the clerk, lying with his head on the sod so comfortably, so placidly. Poor fellow, he never understood Keene’s arguments. Strange, too, for he seemed intuitive in other matters. If only he had been wounded instead of killed, if only he had come to the hospital and heard the violin—then it would have been easy to convince him.

  That slim, swift-footed girl with the dark hair had all those finer instincts, the perception that elevated the human race and put man on his highest levels. Only those so endowed were capable of such music, and—the thought struck him with delicious force—only their kind could understand it. It was as if they shared an almost visible aura of fellowship, figuratively touched hearts.

  The music that evening began on a sadder strain. It seemed as if the player were tired, perplexed, lonely, but after a time courage crept in, courage that was contagious. It was penetrating. Keene was a soldier again, ready for those chalk trenches that had become grey ghosts, nerved against the thick blackness of any night. Then the sweeping melody changed, toned to subtle, easy rhythm that seeped all Keene’s bitterness and animosity, expanded him, warmed him to contrition.
He wished that Ashley had not been killed, that he had never argued with him.

  The girl with the violin paused. “I want so much to thank you,” Keene whispered. “You’re wonderful. I was starved for music, sick for it, and it saved my life because….”

  “Wait, listen to me.” The girl shook her head. “This is my violin, but you didn’t hear me play it. I take it to a poor chap in the next ward who has an ear almost torn from his head. He’s a marvellous player, he seems to know just what will soothe the patients, and he’s a German prisoner!”

  An ear almost torn…German prisoner!

  How…what…Keene’s lips were working but he could not articulate.

  “Isn’t it wonderful,” said the dark-haired girl, “that he has such intuition, such sympathy?” Keene’s lips moved a little, but they made no sound.

  “Don’t you think,” said the girl as she moved away, “that all our finer instincts are alike, whether we’re British or German?”

  Keene nodded, and smiled.

  When he slept he dreamed of whispering to a calm, white face resting on sod back of the new line at Avion, and the face smiled, restfully.

  If You Were Me

  Part I: November 10

  The dawn spread out, sickly and menacing, over a low, ragged sky. An ominous quiet brooded over the sodden woods. Ahead, blocking the only opening, a group of dead trees cowered like grey skeletons twisted in a final agony. Crumpled figures, men in soggy, mud-stained kilts and khaki, were squatting among the thickets, making a hasty breakfast of bread and cheese and cold bully. It was the autumn of ’18 and the soldiers were a company of Canadian Highlanders. They were pursuing the Hun through wooded territory, a part of the Raismes Forest, where French nobles used to go boar hunting.

  “I dreamt last night that the war was over,” said Roberts, a tall, fair-haired man who was digging bully from a tin with his issue knife, “and they wouldn’t let us go home because we were lousy.”