§ 1

If this were a “war-book,” at least two chapters might here be devoted to the months which the Fourth Southdown Brigade spent in and around Neuve Eglise. But since we are only considering war as it affected the fortunes of our Mr. Jameson, his wife Patricia, and a few other individuals, the reader at this point—as once before, in the City of Fear—is asked to use his or her imagination.

Suffices, that the war went on. In England, goaded by a strong Press, vacillating politicians introduced their weakling Conscription Act with a brave fanfare of trumpets; a few perverts developed a “conscience” which did not prevent their eating food brought to them at the risk of human life; the bulk of the nation, humping its pack with a shrug, were much consoled by the official announcement of the Jutland Victory as a defeat. In the firing-line, the Huns hammered vainly at Verdun, the British and French prepared counter-attack on the Somme.

But Peter Jameson, Cigar Merchant, cared for none of these things. He had reached that particular point in the soldier’s existence which is only described by the French word “cafard” or its Anglo-Saxon equivalent “fed-up.”

How much the mental, how much the physical contributed to this “cafard” of our Mr. Jameson—are questions for the psychologist. Remain the facts that he was bored, irritable, depressed—and more intolerably efficient in the routine duties of his Adjutancy than ever.

Only two thoughts consoled: one personal, “I’ve made such a muck of things at home that perhaps the front is the best place for me”: and the other, “Besides, if anything does happen—Pat and the kids will get that insurance money.”

His home letters, of course, continued to depict the Brigade as a permanent poker-school established some leagues behind the firing-line!

§ 2

Meanwhile, the inevitable wastages of warfare—commenced at Loos and continued in the City of Fear—went on among that collection of voluntary fighters known as the Fourth Southdown Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. Now “re-organization” came to complete the process. “Billy” Williams and his command were transferred en bloc to the enlarged Divisional Ammunition Column—still presided over by that same Colonel Mallory who had dined with the Weasel on Christmas Eve, 1914: Bromley and his eighteen-pounders were exchanged for a Howitzer battery: Doctor Carson secured a specialist appointment at the Base—his place being taken by Laurillard, a young and not too sympathetic student of St. Bartholomew’s hospital: Horrocks the Veterinary officer took promotion, Morency a leg-breaking fall from his horse, and Stanley Purves to an impassioned flow of soldier poetry.

“Shan’t have a friend left at this rate,” thought our Mr. Jameson. And then to crown disasters, the Weasel announced his own promotion to Brigadier.

“Take you with me as A.D.C.,” he rasped as they wandered out, on that last morning, to inspect the batteries.

“Thank you, Colonel.” The phrase rose easily to Peter’s lips; but the tone of it was utterly non-committal.

They walked on.

“Well?” continued Stark.

“It’s very decent of you, Colonel, but—”

“Nice soft job, P.J.!”

“Too soft, Colonel.”

They looked each other in the eyes. Then the Weasel said: “You’re a married man, P.J.” and Peter, stubbornly: “What difference does that make, Colonel?”

“The pay’s better.”

“I didn’t join the army to make money, sir.”

“Damn you, P.J. Don’t ‘Sir’ me when we’re alone.” The rasp softened. “Don’t make an ass of yourself, P.J., I know you’ve had a pretty thin time, one way and another since you joined up. . . .”

“But at that,” as General Stark wrote his young wife some days later, “he seemed to freeze up completely; and when Revelsworth came to take over command—you’ll remember Revelsworth, darling, he used to be in the old show at Hillsea—P.J. asked me, as a particular favour, to send him to a battery. . . . He’s a dashed sight too good for ordinary subaltern’s work; but of course I couldn’t tell him so. . . . Bit of the fanatic about P.J. . . . Said he wanted to kill a Hun or two. . . . I shouldn’t mention anything to that nice wife of his when you write her.”

Which will serve to explain why Lieutenant-Colonel Percival Revelsworth’s orders bore the signature: “Stanley Purves, Lieutenant and Adjutant, Fourth Southdown Bde., R.F.A.”

§ 3

“Beer” Battery welcomed Peter with cordiality if not with effusion. The clean-shaven Sandiland ordered Quarter-master Sergeant (ex rough-rider) Murgatroyd to “snaffle a tent next time he saw one lyin’ about.” Pettigrew,—cheeks redder, eyes bluer, spirits higher, than even in Shoreham days—twinkled a “Wait till we’ve put you through it, P.J.” Charlie Straker held out a big hand, and stuttered: “T-thought you w-wouldn’t stand being Adjutant much longer.” Lindsay, newly-arrived junior member of the Mess—a raw-boned raw-voiced Aberdonian boy, with a budding moustache, and a passion for what he termed “Obsairvation Duties”—immediately offered to point out some “verra interesting features of the ground”; but being informed by Straker that “P.J. knew the ground a damn sight better than he did,” subsided into disciplinary silence.

Peter himself, once he grew accustomed to the restricted viewpoint of a battery-subaltern (who sees very little of war except his own particular job), lost a little of his cafard by the change of duties.

The open air life suited him, improved his temper. He felt further than ever removed from the annoyances of business. His by-weekly letters to Patricia, busy with the furnishing of Sunflowers, grew almost sentimental.

On the whole, he liked his new work better than the old. It held more excitement, less routine. During his first duty-spell alone at the “O. Pip” on Hill 63, he spotted a party of three Huns laying telephone-wires in the open; and managed to burst his shell exactly in their faces. The thrill of it—a thrill only to be compared with tiger shooting from an elephant howdah—kept Peter’s eye to his telescope for the rest of the day. And his two spells “in the trenches,” though spent in great peace at the sand-bagged Battalion Headquarters, also gave him a fresh experience.

But it was not only the freedom from responsibility and the excitement of fresh duties which appealed to Peter. Conway, with his usual luck, had tossed for—and of course won—the only comfortable habitation in the valley: a still intact though slightly battered farm-house, in which—equally of course—he had re-established his “poker-school.” Lodden disapproved—but came nightly. Bromley, still in touch with his old Brigade, was learning—an expensive process. They played in a room reduced to cabin-size by pit-props, sandbags and nine-by-two’s (the Army’s designation for its standard plank): constantly interrupted by the buzz of Conway’s telephone, and once by a misconceived S.O.S. call which sent every one scurrying back through intermittent shell-fire to their spurting cannons.

Altogether, not an unpleasant existence! Indeed, during that first easy fortnight only one thing troubled Peter: his health. Somehow or other, since the gas-attack, he had developed a little spitty cough, usually painless, but occasionally stabbing—the tiniest pin-prick—just below the heart.

“You ought to see the Doc. about that bark of yours, P.J.,” said Sandiland one evening, as they sat smoking in the Armstrong hut of batten and canvas which Q.M.S. Murgatroyd had snaffled for the Mess.

“Can’t stand Laurillard,” growled Peter—the pain had stabbed twice. “Besides, he’ll only tell me to leave off smoking cigars. Let’s go and get those five hundred francs back from Conway.”

§ 4

But the easy time did not endure.

The first of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen, which turned the British front opposite Albert from a picnic-ground to a cemetery, reacted promptly on the hitherto quiescent valleys below Messines. The words “maximum activity,” scribbled by a thousand telephonists, thumped on a thousand typewriters, stripped tarpaulin from the 12-inch naval gun on the railway by the cross-roads, unroofed its sister in the canvas house opposite Divisional Baths, woke howitzer and eighteen-pounder in their pits beneath the trees, mortar and machine-gun in their hiding-places among the trenches. To these, the Boche replied with his eight-inch at Oostaverne, his 77’s behind the ridge, and a peculiarly deadly Minenwerfer which ran on rails and changed position whenever fired at.

Gone were the unstrenuous days, the scarcely disturbed nights. Conway’s “poker-school” vanished like a raided gambling-house.

For a week, “demonstrations” continued; and on the eighth night, a handful of infantry, faces blackened, dirks at their belts, revolvers in hand, slipped over their parapet under cover of the shrapnel-barrage, crawled along the Steenbeek, dropped down into the nine-foot duck-boarded trenches of “Bon Fermier”. . . and returned, dirks bloody, revolvers reeking, with the four dazed and cowered prisoners—(four they were asked to bring and four only they brought)—which Brigade orders had demanded. . . .

Came rumours of the battle, “down south”: it went well, it went badly, we made progress, we did not make enough progress. Followed amazing manœuvres: Australian gunners, six-foot men who handled their leaping pieces like toys, arrived to “take over” from the Southdowns: “Beer” Battery moved back to a farm behind Bailleul, were ordered to dig gun-pits along the Stuiverbeek, laboured three days hauling beams and sand, were ordered back into action, “took over” from the Australians (who were “going to the Somme, by cripes”), were relieved by wrathy Ulstermen who cursed a place called Beaumont Hamel . . . and marched quietly westwards through Bailleul and Meteren and Fletre and Caestre to their old rest area in the farms about Eecke!

“I’m g-getting a bit fed-up with this,” stuttered Straker, “where the d-devil are we going to?”

“Oh, we’re going to the Somme all right, don’t you worry about that,” said Peter, wise in Staff mysteries. “This is just a preliminary canter.”

§ 5

And to the Somme they went.

They entrained at dawn, loading and lashing vehicles, coaxing horses into trucks, shepherding men, supervising equipment; slid off to the south; travelled endlessly through endless fields, past endless villages; till after three days they made Amiens.

“Now we shan’t be long,” said Gunner Mucksweat, as the last waggon came, groaning to ground, the last team backed into the swingle-trees.

“Dinna believe it, Muckie, we’ll no go into action yet,” warned his “Number Two.”

And Mucksweat’s “Number Two,” the canny Macnab, proved right. Back they marched, and back; through the broad tree-girt avenues of Amiens, where French munitionettes whirling homewards on rickety motor-lorries kissed greetings; over a vast canal below whose embankment silent poilus, blue-cloaked and blue-helmeted, sat glued to enormous fishing-rods; back, along the white and dusty road, to Hangest. . . .

“Told you we’d put you through it, P.J.,” chaffed Pettigrew late that night as—waggons unlimbered, horses tethered, men bivouacked at last—they flung themselves to bed in the lath-and-plaster room of a midden-courted farm.

“Dunno what’s the matter with me,” groused Peter. “Little Willie isn’t used to being anywhere except at the head of the column. He’s been pulling my arms out all this evening. Given me a stitch or something”—he coughed acridly in the darkness—“wonder how long we shall stop here?”

“Oh, about a week, I expect. . . . Good-night,” snored his companion.

§ 6

It took three days to concentrate the four brigades of Southdown Artillery at Hangest.

Concentration concluded, there followed a period of desultory “training”—taken with immense and harassing seriousness by Lt.-Colonel Revelsworth, a dapper arrogant-looking man of forty-five, very different from the Weasel; slightly less seriously by his subordinates.

Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon is not imaginative. Neither officers nor men of “Beer” Battery bothered as they went about their lawful (or unlawful) business, to consider the near future. To be out of action, away from the sound of guns, sufficed them.

Thus they waited—five days—six days—a week and a week-end; till there came, one warm summer’s evening while they sat at poker, a very affairé Purves, second star newly on his sleeve, with orders that, “The Colonel would like to see all available officers at Headquarters immediately.”

“Confound it,” said Lodden. “I’ve never been in such amazing luck.”

“Never bring messages like that yourself,” whispered Peter to Purves as they strolled across the cobbled courtyard to Headquarters. “What’s it all about?”

“Only a pi-jaw. We’re going into action tomorrow.”

And a “pi-jaw,” as Purves irreverently described it, they got.

Listening to it, Peter began to think of the Brigade in its Brighton days. So many of the faces about him were new since then: yet the Brigade, the Fourth Southdown Brigade, R.F.A.—the “Virgin-bosom” Brigade as Stark used to call them every time his meticulous recommendations for honours were struck out by the bemedalled Staff—still lived. The thing he, Peter, had helped to make, went on . . . went on, and would go on, right to the finish. . . . “A long wai ter get ter Berlin!” He seemed to hear his Cockneys again,—singing.

“So you see, when we begin moving up into action tomorrow,” interrupted Revelsworth’s voice. . . .

Peter looked round him at the mute expressionless faces above the khaki collars. There were a few of the “old gang” still. Lodden, Conway, Purves, Pettigrew and Straker, “Brat” Archdale, (acting orderly officer, grown from blushing boy to hollow-cheeked young man), Merrilees, solemn as an owl, unaltered. . . . Eight, including himself, nine. Nine out of twenty six!

How many of those nine would be left after this new show? Eight at most! One of them was done for already; couldn’t hope to last more than a month. And that one of them was himself. . . . Still, nobody need know about that till he came out of action. . . . If he came out of action. . . .

For Peter’s cough, the cough that drove him, hacking and spitting, night after night—gum-booted, “British Warm” over his pyjamas—out of the stifling room he shared with Pettigrew into the moonlight, was not the result of over-smoking. . . . Rolleston, the kindly diffident “general practitioner” who doctored Colonel Brasenose’s Brigade, had told Peter that much; told it him unconsciously.

They had met quite by accident, that very afternoon; gone to Rolleston’s “surgery.” Peter, accepting a drink, choked over it; put his handkerchief to his mouth.

“None of my business of course,” the doctor had ventured, “but if I were you I’d consult Laurillard about that wheeze of yours. Never been gassed, have you? Slightly, I mean.”

Peter kept silence.

“Funny stuff, gas,” went on the doctor. “I had a case of it before I came out, while I was still in civilian practice. A young Canadian came to me with a frightful cough—rather like that cough of yours, by the way. I tested for tubercle, of course. Not a trace. Then he began talking about the first gas-attack; said he’d been in it. That put me on the track. . . .”

“But surely,” interrupted Peter, “after all that time. . . .”

“Oh, he wasn’t gassed, in the Army sense of the word; but there’s no doubt in my mind that a tiny molecule of chlorine must have lodged in his left lung, and started the irritation. . . .”

“Did you cure him?”

“Oh, yes. But it took rather a long time. Fresh air and no exercise. Lucky he came to me when he did. Lungs are ticklish organs. If you once start ’em downhill, they take a lot of pulling back. Besides, you never know when that sort of thing won’t turn to consumption: the tubercle bacillus doesn’t take long to find a weak spot. . . . Still, if you’ve never been actually in the gas-cloud. . . .”

“No, I’ve never been actually in the gas-cloud.” Peter had lied mechanically. His was not the breed which “goes sick” on the eve of an action. . . .

Revelsworth’s voice interrupted musing. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he was saying, “I don’t think there’s anything else—except that I should like officers to wear full equipment for tomorrow’s march.”

§ 5

At ten o’clock of a gorgeous late-summer morning the Fourth Brigade marched out from Hangest, and at high nooning of the third sun-scorched day, they dropped down a swell of that bitter plain which is Picardy into the Bois de Tailles—straggling cleft of sand and trees which strides the naked chalk and the Bray-Corbie Road. Here again—officers and men bivouacked under ground-sheets among uncleanly bushes on the slopes,—horses tethered between limbers on the red-sand floor of the valley below—they waited, waited endlessly. . . .

For this battle was no action of sure attack, of reserves moving forward punctual to clock-time, of orderly pursuit and retreat. In that vast crucible of fire which bulged northwards astride the river from French Dompierre to English Ovilliers, Infantry Divisions of twelve thousand men shrivelled as paper shrivels in flame; brigades melted to battalions; battalions to companies: between a moonrise and a sun-setting they were and they were not. But always as Infantry Divisions shrivelled, fresh Infantry Divisions flung themselves into the crucible; and always, behind the shrivelling melting infantry, stayed the guns—stayed till human sinews could serve them no longer. . . .

Vague echoes of those guns, hints of their flashes, were borne o’ nights to Peter Jameson as he lay sleepless among sleeping men; as he twisted over and over between the ruggled blankets on his creaking camp-bed; as he sweated away the darkness and shivered through the dawn-chill; to Peter with the spitting cough fouling his mouth and the pin-prick pain stabbing below his heart,—to Peter Jameson, one tiny glorious fool among the millions whose folly saved our world.

§ 1

The “Somme Offensive” of 1916 is ancient history now: a thing of Staff maps and war-diaries, of barren paper and profitless arguments, flat as the faked film of it men once sold for profit in the market-place. The very ground over which it raged has been obliterated by the shells of vastier battles.

Yet the “Somme Offensive,” bloodiest experiment ever undertaken in the laboratory of war, marked the beginning of the ending—of War’s ending, as softies dream today. Compared to this holocaust, Loos was a skirmish.

Day after day, night after night, week after week, men flung themselves upon the Beast; drove him wave by wave across the barren swells of Picardy: till, at last, burning and ravaging, defiling the very beds in which he had slept, wreaking vengeance on the very trees whose fruit he had eaten, the Beast withdrew for a while—withdrew, and came on again, and was overthrown. . . . There died and were wounded in those drivings of the Beast more than two million English-speaking men.

The “Somme Offensive”! What remains of it today? Only memories, bitter memories that waken men o’ nights: so that they see once more the golden Virgin of Albert, poised miraculously on her red and riven tower; Carnoy shattered in its hollow, a giant-baby’s toy-village, dropped from careless hand and smashed in the falling; the ruins that were Mametz and the ruins that were Contalmaison and the ruins that were Fricourt and the ruins that were Pozières: see once more the crowded horselines blackening Happy Valley, the balloons strung like sausages across the sky, the thousand planes circling like hawks above them! So that they hear once more the staccato of machine-gun fire high in the air, the dull thump of the huge and hidden naval guns at Etinehem, the roar of squat nine-point-two’s on their wheel-less mountings, the roar of the railway-gun at Becordel, the thunder of eight-inch and six-inch Howitzers in Caterpillar Valley, the ear-splitting crash of Six-Inch Mark VII’s from the road by the Craters, the manifold clamour of the Archies at Montauban, the constant bark of the field-guns beyond: so that they walk once more, naked and alone, among the careless ghosts of men they knew, through that horror which was Trônes Wood. . . .

§ 2

“God, P.J., this is too damned awful.”

Sandiland stretched grimed fingers across the bacon-box which served for table; jerked a Gold-flake from its tin; lit it shakily at the guttering candle.

“Pretty bad,” admitted Peter: but his hand too shook as he tilted the whisky-bottle into his tin mug. “Better have some of this.”

A shell whistled over the dripping corrugated-iron above their heads, burst hollowly on the twisted railway behind.

“Blast that gun,” said Sandiland. . . .

They had been in action for eighteen days; and not once during that time had “B” battery’s guns been wholly silent. Of the men who had served those guns so blithely under the trees of Neuve Eglise barely one-third remained. Sergeant Ackroyd was dead, breast riven by direct hit of a gas-shell; Sergeant Duncan was dead, blown to bits as he ran for shelter; Corporal Haviland’s body lay drilled with machine-gun bullets in the No Man’s Land beyond Arrowhead Copse; seven signallers were dead, five they had watched hobble, one by one, up the sodden path to the dressing-station in Montauban. Now this ultimate horror had screamed down upon them out of the night, tearing the last veils between them and Hell. . . .

They had laboured three hours to cleanse that Hell, laboured calmly and cheerfully among their men, snatching only this brief respite for food and drink. But the Hell they had cleansed from the ground still remained, desperately and damnably clear, in their brains.

For the moment, the reticences of civilized life were in abeyance. Each of these two knew, as he crouched over the bacon-box in the sodden broken chalk-trench, that he was hanging on by the eye-teeth to his last remnant of sanity.

Each still saw the same bestial vision: smashed pit, half-buried gun, slithering soil, mangled men writhing and groaning, mangled men lying deadly still, Charlie Straker’s face white and drawn in the light of the hurricane-lamp—and the Head that watched him, the Head that still grinned under its shrapnel-helmet, the Head which had been Pettigrew. . . .

“That leaves only you and me, P.J.” Sandiland’s fingers plucked at one of the rents in his tunic sleeve. “Only you and me.” His voice quivered up into his head, and he began singing—“You and me together, love; never mind the weather, love.”

“Shut up, you bloody fool”—Peter’s haggard eyes stared across the candle-flame. “Shut up, I tell you. Why the hell don’t you drink that whisky?”

“Sorry, P.J.”—Sandiland crammed the mug against his teeth, sucked down the raw spirit. “By God, that’s good. Pour me out another, there’s a good chap”—he drank again—“I suppose we ought to telephone H.Q.”

“I did that while you were getting them away.”

“Thanks, dear boy. Purves say anything?”

“I spoke to the Colonel”—Peter started to cough—“and he said—damn this cough of mine—he said, ‘should he come up himself?’ I told him the gun would be in action again by midnight, and we could carry on all right if he’d get us another subaltern. He’s sending one up at once”—Peter’s voice too, quivered up into his head. “Poor old Lindsay. Do you remember?”

Once again, sanity trembled in the balance. Their haggard eyes met across the candle-flame; and from behind those eyes naked soul looked at naked soul.

“God”—Sandiland’s voice was low, but tense as a scream—“God, I never knew I was a coward. . . . I’m not a coward. . . . It’s sending the others into it I can’t stick. . . . I’d go myself. . . . You know I’d go myself, P.J. . . . But I can’t stand sending these chaps to their death, day after day, one after the other. . . . I killed Lindsay. . . . It wasn’t his turn for F.O.O. . . . I killed Haviland. . . .” The monologue went on. . . . “Seven of them—the best signallers a battery ever had—and I detailed them for duty. . . . One by one I detailed them, didn’t I? . . . I chose this battery position, didn’t I?” He began to laugh. “And it’s your turn tomorrow, P.J. . . . Your turn! . . . Bloody funny if I killed our old Adjutant, too. . . . God, I wish I could go instead of you. . . . I’ve got to be here, P.J. Do you understand that? . . . Here, waiting by these blasted cannons for some poor devil to come crawling back and tell me you’ve been killed. . . .”

But Peter, listening speechless, felt himself the greater coward of the two: for he would have given everything he possessed—everything except that last scrap of gold which is a man’s self-respect—not to go down on the morrow to those trenches whence he had brought back Lindsay’s body.

There came the scrabble of feet above their heads; some one called down out of the darkness:

“Say, is this Beer Battery, Fourth Southdown Brigade? Is this Captain Sandiland’s battery?”

“It is,”—Sandiland’s voice had lost all trace of hysteria. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Henry. Colonel Revelsworth told me to report to you for duty.”

“Stout fellow. Come down if you can find your way. Have you got a torch?”

“Yes. Is it safe to use it?”

“Quite. Mind the wire.”

Followed the sound of falling earth, and a huge man, long gloves and revolver at belt, long torch in brown hand. The newcomer flicked out his torch; saluted with a curious courteous bend of his head; stood blinking at the light of the candle. He was well over six-foot, blue-eyed and broad-shouldered, firm of chin and clean-shaven. He wore the usual cap, collar, belt and tunic of a British second lieutenant; but his breeches bagged curiously at the knee, had the appearance of being tucked loosely into his soft field-boots, at heels of which showed a pair of swan-neck spurs, loosely strapped and formidable of rowel. Boots and spurs were both caked with white chalk. He carried no cane.

“Sit down, won’t you?” said Sandiland. “There’s a box kicking about somewhere. This is Jameson.”

“Glad to know you.” Henry made a movement as if to shake hands; thought better of it; found the box Sandiland indicated; and sat down with that peculiar straddle which denotes a horseman the world over.

There was the usual awkward Anglo-Saxon silence during which men try to sum up fresh acquaintances. To the newcomer, his two hosts seemed two very ordinary British officers; they looked terribly tired, he thought, but their controlled features gave no hint of any other emotion. (For it is only to tried friends that men in battle voice the secret fears of true courage.)

“Have a drink?” asked Sandiland.

“Thanks, no.” The man extracted a small looped bag from one pocket, a packet of cigarette papers from the other; flicked off a thin leaf of paper, moistened it at his lips. Then, holding the paper between fingers and thumb of his right hand, he opened the bag with his left; poured a little heap of tobacco onto the paper, began to roll a cigarette.

“You’re a Canadian, aren’t you?” asked the battery-commander.

“Yes, sir. I’m a Canadian.”

“Been out long?”

“No, sir. About three months. I’ve been with the Ammunition Column most of that time.”

The newcomer spoke slowly, not nasally but with a curious deliberate drawl—a drawl somehow reminiscent to Peter Jameson of five men sitting round a poker-table under the awning of a zinc-decked ship in the Caribbean. One of those five men had drawled his words with just that identical deliberation—and would have been very insulted if he had been referred to as a “Canadian.”

“How did you manage to get here so quickly?” asked Sandiland.

“Well, sir, I happened to be reporting for duty at Headquarters just when your ’phone message got through. The Colonel told me to send my horses back, and come right along with the guide. He said you’d fix me somehow till my blankets arrived.”

Now a Canadian does not talk about his “blankets,” he uses the English word “kit.” Nor does he—as a general rule—smoke granulated tobacco from those looped bags which are referred to as “sacks” in the display-ads of the various firms whose communal address is 111 Fifth Avenue, New York. Also, he strongly objects to walking half-a-mile of sodden ground, trenched and littered with remnants of barbed wire, in his spurs.

These details flashed subconsciously through the mind of Peter Jameson, as the three of them sat together in the crumbling trench: but he was very tired, his cough troubled him—and anyway it was none of his business. There were, he knew from experience, many such “Canadians” among the men who originally joined Kitchener’s Army.

“But how in the devil,” thought Peter, “did he manage to get a commission?” . . .

“Number two gun ready for action, sorr,” called Sergeant Abernethy’s voice from above them.

Sandiland called back: “Splendid, Sergeant. We’ll come and have a look at it.”

The three officers scrambled up out of the trench into the noise of the night; picked their way across to the battery. It was pitch-dark with a drizzle of rain; so that the newcomer could see nothing except the occasional crimson of gun-flashes, and the circle of Sandiland’s torch as it danced over yellow pock-marked ground. They jumped a deep crumbling trench; skirted the lip of a huge shell-crater; came suddenly upon the resurrected gun.

By the vague glimmer of a hurricane lamp, men were still at work, disinterring the buried ammunition, wiping the brass cases, stacking them beside the gun-wheels. An improvised tent of tarpaulin, slung between four posts, provided the only overhead cover; a few sandbags had been piled in front of the shield.

Sergeant-Major Cresswell, a stout melancholy man with watery brown eyes and a waxed moustache, whom the death of Lindsay had summoned from the waggon-lines, saluted Sandiland, and said:

“I’m afraid that’s the best we can do for tonight, sir.”

“Very well, Sergeant Major. Have the men had their rum ration?”

“Yes, sir.” He added sotto voce, “They needed it, sir.”

“Right. You’d better let ’em turn in then.”

Number four gun spat its tongue of crimson flame, subsided into silence for another five minutes. “You chaps can knock off now,” called Cresswell’s voice.

Except for the two signallers in the telephone pit and Sergeant Duncan with his two “numbers” at the duty-gun, the whole battery-personnel—officers’ servants included—had been toiling with pick and shovel and dragropes since half-past eight. Now they disappeared into the darkness. Sergeant Abernethy and his six men—two of his own sub-section, the remainder told off from the other detachments—lay down to sleep under their piece.

A figure approached Peter, said, “Should I light the candles in your dug-out, sir?”

“You’d better turn in, I think, P.J.” interrupted Sandiland; “or you won’t get any sleep at all.”

“What about telephoning H.Q., and checking the night-lines of that cannon?”

“Never you mind about H.Q., or the cannon. Just do as you’re told and turn in, there’s a good chap.”

“Very well, sir”—chaffed Peter; and stumbled off, Garton leading, to his dug-out. . . .

Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the telephone-pit. “He’s an obstinate cove, is P.J.,” confided the battery-commander.

“He looks a mighty sick one,” replied the “Canadian.”

§ 3

The “dug-out” towards which Peter and Garton stumbled was a coffin-shaped hole burrowed in the soil, roofed with a piece of corrugated iron and one layer of sandbags. A mackintosh ground-sheet, supported on a wooden beam, prolonged this improvised roof; provided some protection from the rain which drove in at the “door”—a narrow entrance reached by three “steps,” mostly mud. Down these, the pair slithered.

Garton lit a match, revealing Peter’s valise, supported on two ammunition-boxes and a stolen stretcher. The mud-walls of the coffin touched the valise on either side, so that Garton had to scramble over it before he could light “the candles”—one guttering dip stuck on a wooden shelf above the head of the “bedstead.” A pool of slime on the “floor” served for carpet.

“You’d better turn in, Garton,” said Peter, sitting down heavily between the projecting stretcher-handles. “I’m afraid you’ll have to bring me my tea at half-past four. Rather a change from H.Q. at Neuve Eglise, what? Hope your lady friend there still writes to you, Garton?”

The fair-haired Yorkshireman blushed violently; bent to unlace his master’s heavy boots.

“Don’t bother about that, I’ll do ’em myself.”

But Driver Garton went on with his work; and as his muddy fingers fumbled at the muddy laces, he thought: “Poor old P.J.! He won’t last much longer. Never saw a man look so ill in my life.”

“Should I help you off with your breeches, sir?”

“No. I’ll sleep in ’em. For God’s sake get off to bed, lad.”

With a cheery “good-night, sir,” Driver Garton disappeared. His master hauled himself painfully along the valise; sat up—head touching roof; unslung his gas-helmet, which he hung from a wooden-peg driven in the wall; took off his tunic, spread it on the bed; unstudded his soft collar; felt to make sure that the box-respirator was underneath his canvas-pillow; and inserted his body inch by inch into the Jaeger blankets.

“God,” thought Peter, “what a fool I’m making of myself. I ought to have gone sick days ago.” He blew out the candle; laid himself down for sleep; closed his eyes. “Sleep,” he thought, “sleep!” And for a moment, sleep came to him. Then he felt the warning twitch below his heart; started up; groped for his handkerchief. The cough tore at his throat, seemed to be wrenching his lungs out. . . .

Pain passed, leaving him weak and sleepless. He fumbled among the litter on the wooden shelf; found matches; lit the candle again. Number four gun fired; shook a few flakes of soil onto his valise. His whole body ached for sleep; but he was afraid to lie down again. If he lay down, there would come that warning twitch below the heart, another paroxysm. . . .

Listlessly, he pulled his tunic towards him; found the morrow’s orders; began studying them. “Infantry will attack. . . . Objectives: Guillemont—Ginchy-Maurepas Road—Bois de Leuze. . . . A/4 S.F.A.B. (‘A’ Battery Fourth Southdown Field Artillery Brigade) will detail Liaison Officer on the right. . . . B/4 S.F.A.B. will detail Liaison Officer on the left. . . .”

The blurred type danced in front of Peter’s eyes. He stuffed the orders back into his tunic-pocket: doing so, his hand touched Patricia’s last letter. This, too, he read listlessly, hardly taking in the words. . . . Number four gun fired again. . . . He closed his eyes. . . . “Sunflowers—Sunflowers—rather a jolly name.” . . . For a moment he dreamed. . . .

“Gas-shell, sir. Gas-shell!” The voice from without wrenched him from unconsciousness.

“Right,” he called back. “All right.” Now he was wide awake, bolt upright on his haunches. Automatically he pulled the respirator from under his pillow; took up the tube; adjusted clip to nostrils, mouthpiece to lips. . . . Cough wrenched at his throat. . . . He put the tube down again; sat listening. . . . “False alarm,” he thought. “Thank goodness for that.” . . .

Then he heard, close overhead, a low slow whistle, like a sigh through the night. . . . Sighing ceased. . . . Peter jammed the mouthpiece back to his lips, re-adjusted the clip to his nostrils. . . . Another shell sighed over him; he heard the faint plop of its grounding, the vague hiss of its burst. . . .

The roof quivered; a handful of soil pattered onto his valise. . . . The candle guttered: went out. . . .

Another shell sighed to ground. . . .

He knew himself afraid—horribly shamelessly afraid. The clip on his nostrils was torture: the mouthpiece stifled him: blood drummed at his ears: he wanted to cough. . . . But he dared not cough. . . .

The night above him was full of sighing poisonous things. . . . God, there must be thousands of them. . . . They were falling all about him: sighing slowly down out of the night: plopping to ground: sighing out their poison. . . . They were looking for him: tap-tap-tapping round the roof of his coffin. . . . They wanted to find the roof of his coffin: to break through it; stifle him as he lay. . . .

Courage fought panic—alone in the darkness. “Damn it,” thought Peter, “damn it. They shan’t get my tail down.” And shelling ceased: suddenly, miraculously, the night grew still.

Peter loosed the clips from his nostrils, sniffed cautiously. The air was pure—no trace of gas. He let the mouthpiece fall, began to cough, dropped back coughing on his pillow,—and knew neither fear nor courage, but only the blissful unconsciousness of utter exhaustion till he heard Driver Garton’s “Half-past four, sir. Half-past four. Time to get up, sir.”

§ 1

The “Canadian”—unused to gun-fire—had not slept. Now, in the first glimmer of dawn, he climbed map-in-hand out of the telephone-pit; began to locate his position. Behind, a mere dip in the ground, lay the valley through which he had walked overnight. Close on his left, bulked low shattered walls which he knew to be Montauban. In front, about five hundred yards from the battery, he could make out a ragged fringe of trees—Bernafay Wood. On his right, flat ground rose slightly to a hump near skyline which must be the Briqueterie. On three sides of him, in the valley behind, among the trees in front, and on the flat ground to his right, occasional guns flashed and smoked among the rising mists.

He looked round his own patch of this desolation—the four crazy gun-shelters, the battered trenches, the shell-pocked wire-littered ground; and thought:

“You’re a longish way from home, son.”

A soldier came stumbling towards him, saluted.

“Mr. Jameson’s compliments, sir; and he said I was to find where you were sleeping; and to ask if there was anything I should do for you, sir.”

“Where is Mr. Jameson?”

“Having breakfast, sir”—Driver Garton pointed to a wisp of smoke about fifty yards away—“over there, sir. Should I get you some breakfast, sir?”

“Thanks.” Charles Henry, already accustomed to the English Army’s habit of perpetual valeting, followed Garton to the “Mess”—the same broken chalk-trench, roofed with corrugated, into which he had slithered overnight. From round the traverse came smell of a wood-fire, sizzling of bacon. Peter, astride an ammunition box, mug of tea in front of him, looked up; said:

“Morning, Henry. Not been to bed yet?”

“Good morning. No. Somehow I didn’t feel like turning in. You off to the show?”

“Yes. As soon as I’ve had something to eat.”

Garton brought breakfast—bacon on a tin-plate. Peter made pretence of eating; pushed the plate away from him; lit a cigar; began to cough. Looking at this haggard white-faced man in the torn tunic and patched breeches, Henry thought to himself: “Well, if you ever get to those trenches, it’s a miracle.” What he said was: “Aren’t you going to take a gun—revolver, I should say?”

“Oh, yes.”—Peter laughed. “I’ll be loaded like an ammunition-mule by the time Garton’s finished with me—haversack, gas-helmet, field-glasses, Sam Browne, the whole paraphernalia. Damned heavy. One gets out of the habit of wearing ’em.”

“Do you think the attack will succeed?”

“Hope so. We’ve had about four shies at the sanguinary place already.”

“It’s our own infantry, I suppose.”

“Lord, no. They got smashed up at Delville Wood weeks ago. . . . Well, it’s about time I was off”—Peter got up, took a long iron-shod stick from behind him,—“au revoir and enjoy yourself while I’m away.”

Henry watched him scramble painfully out of the trench, and remembered Sandiland’s words: “An obstinate cove.” “I should say so,” muttered Henry. “I should just about say so.”

§ 2

“You chaps got your rations?”

“Yes, sir.”

Peter looked at his three men: Bombardier Finlayson, tall, tight-lipped, clean-shaven, shrapnel-helmet atilt on the back of his head; Blenkinsop, a dark, keen little Northumbrian; and Mucksweat, huge, hairy, more like a bear than a man, who had volunteered for “runner.”

“Then we’d better be off.”

Dawn was not yet day as the four crossed the track in front of the guns; tramped away towards the wood. They walked slowly, eyes on the black telephone-wire. “Seems O. K., so far,” said Peter, “better test her though.” The Bombardier unslung his telephone-case, inserted pin in the wire, tapped, was answered.

Now the wire rose from ground to poles; spanned a road yellow with mud; disappeared breast-high among tree-trunks. They pashed across; tested again; passed in among the trees; began fighting their way through the undergrowth along the lip of a zig-zag and water-logged trench.

“Lucky we didn’t run her down there, sir,” grinned the Bombardier.

“Damned lucky.” Already Peter felt dog-weary. Twice he stumbled, and Mucksweat helped him to his feet. Then fatigue reacted; the poison of over-strain distilled its poison of over-energy. The apprehension of overnight disappeared. . . .

They worked their way through the wood to the hillside. In front, the world seemed asleep. From behind, came the occasional thud of a gun. A ’plane droned over, high in air. Below them, lay the Bois de Trônes, still black in the half-light: all along the fringe of it, they could see waiting infantry. The wire dipped into a dry trench; they followed it down-hill.

They emerged from the trench—and the wire ended abruptly. “Call up the battery,” ordered Peter. . . . “Battery on, sir.” . . . He took the instrument: “Is Captain Sandiland there? . . . Hello—That you, Sandiland. . . . We’re at the edge of Trônes Wood. . . . All O. K. up to here. . . . What’s that? . . . No good trying to run her any further. . . . Quite. . . . I’ll leave Finlayson here. . . . You’d better send him up a linesman. . . . What’s that? . . . Oh, yes, I’m quite all right. Cheerio.”

“Hadn’t you better leave Blenkinsop, sir,” suggested the Bombardier. “Why?” asked Peter. Finlayson’s lips tightened. “Blenkinsop’s a very good operator, sir.”

“I know that as well as you do, Bombardier. What are you driving at?”

“Well, sir, as N.C.O. of the party. . . .”

“Sportsman!” thought Peter; and reversed an order for the first time. They left Blenkinsop at the instrument; made their way, three helmeted figures, across a road dark with slime and rotted leaves, past the waiting infantry into Trônes Wood. The wood still stank of putrefying flesh. Barbed wire looped the trailing undergrowth. Here a shell-axed tree leaned drunkenly against its bullet-pocked neighbour. There, fresh-turned earth betrayed the scavenging pick. Beyond the tree-trunks, day glimmered. Above, black branches trellised gray sky. A ditch full of water led through this place of death.

Ahead of them, something whistled into the undergrowth. They dropped into the ditch; waded along, single file, calf-deep in liquid mud; ducked under a fallen log; waded on again. Another shell whistled into the undergrowth above them. “Whizz-bang,” said Peter laconically.

Now, they were under open sky; making their way along a battered trench towards the support-lines. In front of them and behind them, hidden by humped earth from the enemy, toiled little parties of infantry: bomb-carriers, water-carriers, men with loaded rifles and men with empty stretchers.

The liquid mud deepened to quagmire.

Peter, fighting his way forward, felt the false energy of over-fatigue ebbing from his veins. With every painful pace, his feet rooted themselves deeper. Sodden leather wrenched at his ankles. Heavy water bottle, heavier revolver-holster, dragged at hip and shoulder. Each gasped breath seemed to tear at his heart. His helmet was a shifting torment. Bitter sweat blinded his eyes; dripped from chin to tie. Time and again, only the long iron-shod stick saved him from collapse. . . .

Gradually they neared destination; edged way past crouching men, past the gap where Lindsay had died, to a little eminence above plain-level. Here three mud-lanes met in heaped breastworks. Listless stretcher-bearers and a bundle of S.O.S. rockets marked Battalion-Headquarters—a German dug-out, thirty feet below ground-level, reached by a deep chute of greasy slime.

Peter sank down on one of the bomb boxes which littered the ground; leaned gasping on his stick.

“Feeling tired, sir?” asked Finlayson; and getting no answer, unslung his water-bottle, drew out the cork. “Try a drop of this, sir. It’s cold tea.”

“Thanks, Bombardier—but you’d better keep it for yourself—I’ll be all right in a minute.”

A little strength came back to him; he slipped off his helmet; loosed belt at waist. A dozen times during the half mile from Trônes Wood, Peter had wanted to give in; the last three hundred yards had been just a blurr of continuous effort. “Like rowing,” he thought, “got to put your last ounce into it”; and like a rowed-out oarsman he rested for a little—knowing only blessed relief.

“Where’s Mucksweat?” he asked at last.

“You told him to stop about 20 yards back, sir. Just round the corner.”

“Quite right. So I did. You’d better go and join him. I’ll observe from there. This place is rather dangerous.” He staggered to his feet; made for the entrance to Headquarters. Finlayson watched him disappear down the greasy mud-chute; shrugged shoulders; rejoined his companions.

“I dunno what you think about it, Muckie,” said Bombardier Finlayson; “but it seems to me we’re in for a hell of a day.”

Answered Mucksweat the ex-coalminer, crouching bear-like in yellow slime, “He shouldn’t have come. That’s what I say.”

§ 3

Peter slid, feet first, into cavernous darkness. A hand gripped him by the shoulder; helped him up. A voice said “Hello. Who are you?”

“Gunner Liaison Officer, sir.”

Darkness cleared to half light. Peter was aware of a man sitting over a map at an uncleanly table.

“Well, if you’d come from the door we might see something of you.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Peter shifted position; found himself in a square cave of concrete. The orderly who had helped him arrive, grinned; proffered an ammunition-box. An R.A.M.C. officer emerged from the gloom; said “Good morning.”

“I dunno what they send you chaps out for”—began the Infantry Colonel, a wiry resolute man, square of chin and square of forehead—“you can’t do anything. How do you propose getting your messages back?”

“Runner to beyond Trônes Wood, sir. Then telephone.”

“Hm. We can do as well as that ourselves. What’s the use of information two hours old? These new creeping barrages are the very devil. No stopping ’em once they start. Where are you going to observe from?”

Peter told him; and they discussed details for ten minutes. The Colonel’s servant brought him tea.

“Have some?” asked the Colonel.

Peter, wet through and shivering, accepted gratefully. Asked the doctor, watching him as he drank: “Do you go over the top with the first attack?”

“He’s supposed to come with me,” interrupted the Colonel. Then to Peter: “You’d rather be on your own I expect.”

“I think so, sir.”

“Right”—the Colonel dabbed a finger at the map—“I shall make for here. Join me if you can. I must be off now. It’ll take me the best part of an hour to go round the front line.” He took his helmet from the wall behind him; gripped a stout stick; and scrambled off up the mud-chute.

“Shouldn’t like your job much,” commented the doctor.

“Shouldn’t like his,” observed Peter; looking at the disappearing soles of the Colonel’s boots. . . .

By now it was nearly nine o’clock. Above, all seemed quiet. Peter finished his tea; said au revoir to the doctor; hauled himself—breast on mud—into the upper air again; found Finlayson and Mucksweat waiting in the narrow mud-floored trench from which he had elected to observe; rested elbows on parapet; peered cautiously over.

Immediately beneath him a smashed railway-line curved northwards, ending in the heap of twisted metal, upcurved like the ribs of a skeleton horse, which had been Guillemont Station. Over the railway, straight to his front, bare ground dipped to green—cut by the narrow brown cleft of our own front line. Beyond this, four hundred yards away, great molehills of white chalk marked the enemy’s position. But between the narrow brown cleft and the white molehills, lay the sunken road which had so often defied assault. At that distance it was hardly visible; showed only as a discolouration on the drab landscape—a discolouration which ended at skyline in the three-cornered bush-clump of Arrowhead Copse. Right of the Copse—our ground—rose the trees of Trônes Wood: left of it, beyond sunk road and white molehills, the enemy’s territory stretched in colourless desert tossed to occasional fountains by long-range shell-fire. Of what had been Guillemont village nothing showed except four tree-tops on the extreme left of the shell-tossed desert. . . .

It still lacked two and a half hours to the time of the attack; and Peter, having shown the ground and explained his plans to the Bombardier and Mucksweat, sat down to wait.

Ten minutes passed—a quarter of an hour—twenty minutes. He looked at his watch, lit a cigar. Half-an-hour went by. Two hours more to wait! A couple of infantrymen appeared, took station beside him. Round the traverse, he could hear other infantrymen coming up. Damn it, would the time never pass? . . . Very high overhead, five Hun machines planed gleaming across gray sky. . . . He began to be afraid. . . . Fear gripped his stomach. . . . He must look over again, make sure of his way to those white molehills. . . . Twenty past ten—a whole miserable hour and forty-three wretched minutes more. . . .

Suddenly, the first enemy shell howled across the sky, burst hollowly at the edge of Trônes Wood.

“Dommned if that one didn’t come from behind us,” ejaculated Mucksweat.

“Pretty well,” said the Bombardier calmly. “Often got ’em that way in the Salient, didn’t you? . . . Course you did. . . . Well, this is a salient too, see!”

“I see,” said the huge hairy man. Even while he spoke, the second shell screamed and lit crashing to the ground behind. Splinters whizzed over them as they crouched to cover.

Barrage fire began—a slow barrage, terrifying in its very deliberateness. Scream followed scream down the unchanging sky; crash followed crash—now right of them, now left, now directly behind. Only their own tiny portion of trench, the sodden mud-walls between which they huddled under whirling splinters, seemed immune—burrow of safety in an exploding world.

“Christ!” thought Peter, “how long can this go on?” For a second, he knew absolute panic; his legs wanted to run away with him; he couldn’t stick it, couldn’t stick it another minute. Came a pause in the crash of sound.

Peter looked at the two infantrymen, crouching white-faced below the parapet; at Finlayson, tight-lipped, apprehensive; at Mucksweat biting his huge moustache. Then, very deliberately, he stood upright; drew field-glasses from case; peered over towards the enemy. One of the infantrymen joined him. “Do you know the ground?” began Peter. . . .

The shell gave no warning. He was aware only of a terrific thunder-clap, of a savage boot-hack at ear-drum. . . . Then blackness, blackness through which he struggled for light. . . . In the slime he struggled, fighting a warm dead thing. . . . The thing lifted from him. . . . Light came back. . . . He felt hands gripping him; heard Mucksweat’s voice.

Face down in the slime, lay the dead body of the infantryman, helmetless, brains oozing—crimson sweet-breads—from shattered skull. Above the body, bent its living mate—the second infantryman. Suddenly, he turned; snarled over his shoulder: “You killed him, damn you. You! You! You! You bastard.”

“Easy on, mate,” cut in the voice of Finlayson, “you’re talking to an officer.”

“Officer. Who the hell cares for ’tillery officers?”—the man rose, sworded rifle gripped in both hands. “Blast you. You killed him. And now you’ll bloody well bury him”—bayonet drew back for the plunge. “Come on, you bloody coward, you. We’re going over the top, you and me—going to bury my mate decent, we are—like a Christian.”

Said Peter, and he spoke as tired men speak in dreams: “Don’t make an ass of yourself, lad.”

Mucksweat’s doubled fist crashed home to chin-point. The madman’s rifle fell clattering across his mate’s body as he toppled backwards.

“Who the devil told you to do that?”—Peter’s voice was again the voice of command—“pick him up, will you?”—the bear stooped over his victim—“take his helmet off.” . . .

But already the infantryman had regained consciousness. “What happened, sir?” he asked: head on the coalminer’s knee. Then he saw the body on the ground; stared at it.

“Oh, Gawd,” he sobbed, “it’s Harry. Poor old Harry.” Swiftly the man rose to his feet; picked up his rifle; started to climb out of the trench. Mucksweat pulled him back. “Let me go,” he howled, “let me go. I’ll give ’em something for this. Christ, I’ll give ’em something they won’t forget.”

They wrestled with him, panting, there in the trench; fought him till the madness passed. Shells screamed and crashed about them as they wrestled; splinters hissed into the slime. But for the moment these four had forgotten shell-fire. . . .

Came a man through the mud, a man who shouted, “Artillery Liaison Officer. Colonel wants the Artillery Liaison Officer.”

Automatically, Peter staggered off round the traverse. A shell screamed down. He fell on his face; heard the splinters whizz over; picked himself up; saw the exploded S. O. S. rockets frizzling red and useless among a knot of crouching stretcher-bearers. Then he was slithering down the mud-chute, slithering to a moment’s safety.