Passport to Hell

by Hyde, Robin

  ‘Get along where you belong, if you belong anywhere.’

  Very well, Captain, I’ll go out hunting by myself.

  A little flare dipped in grease and tied to the end of a long stick. After that, when they’re potting at the Jack o’ Lantern from the strongpoint, creep round flat on your stomach from a different direction and roll the bomb down above them. Five tin hats to bring home and one Hun prisoner, and Captain Frere gets forgiving and says, ‘You won’t be forgotten, Starkie’—but I’ve heard that tale before.

  A hand of poker down in the trenches, sitting in the bombers’ dug-out. Every now and again they hear the little whiplash crack from No Man’s Land, and there’s no use pretending it doesn’t take everyone’s mind off the game. Out there the Germans have turned on a sniper who knows his job. His tally for the one morning is six British soldiers, each potted clean through the head. A message is shouted down the lines: ‘Colonel Chalmers says ten days’ leave in Paris or England for any man who’ll kill the sniper over there.’ The men tell Colonel Chalmers what he can do with his Paris or England leave. Broad daylight and a fine morning on No Man’s Land, and yourself for the sniper’s Aunt Sally. At home they told us suicide was the coward’s way out. Go tell the Colonel to pot his own sniper.

  Months and months of back pay, all tucked away where you can’t get at it. The face at Le Havre, waiting and grinning. Nobody’s soldier. Odd jobs, running wine from the corpse-pool for the men; tagging along at the heels of the battalion; getting the boots of the Provost-Marshals and the Military Police in your face; moving along till further orders. A little raid now and again, but nobody takes any notice of that. Nobody except the men. Hanger-on till the end of the War—and after that, God knows what. One thing’s certain. If a chap doesn’t belong to their war any more they aren’t going to pay to ship him back to New Zealand. If he went anywhere at Government expense, it would be Le Havre, or Dartmoor, or Broadmoor.

  ‘Tell Colonel Chalmers I’ll kill the sniper for a cup of rum.’

  Five minutes later. ‘Tell Stark to report at once in my dug-out.’

  Into the dug-out, grinning, abashed, a little defiant. Colonel Chalmers never said a word, not so much as: ‘Good chap, Starkie!’ or: ‘Don’t bother any more about that little business of socking the corporal, Stark; and they’re full up now at Le Havre.’ He broke the red seal on a jar of rum, poured it out, filling a tin mug to the brim. One thing to be said for the Colonel. Whatever he gives you, there’s an awful lot of it—rum, trouble, or hell.

  The rum’s overproof, too, and the full mug sends little wisps of fire flicking through your body. That’s the stuff to bring a man’s courage back. Easy to cock your head on one side and grin impudently at the Colonel.

  ‘Well, good-bye, Stark.’

  Just that. The Colonel thinks the sniper is going to get you. Get you in the neck this time, and a good job too. Better out of the road … nobody’s soldier.

  But it’s easier to die at midnight, when you need never know what hit you … like poor little Val, in her old estaminet. Gran’ père, what’s that? I am Death, my child…. In the middle of a fine morning, with the sky a tent of pale-blue triumphant silk above you, it’s not so simple.

  ‘Cup of rum, you bloody black lamb for the slaughter, you! Can’t you see he only wants you out of the way? Let him do his own killing.’ Then a stretcher goes past, and on it young Jackie Kearney, with the bullet between his wide-open eyes. That makes seven up for the Hun sniper in one morning. Well, so long, boys. I’m off now!

  Three thousand watching from the trenches, enough to give the show away. First shot in the duel, a clean miss on both sides. No one to say whether the sniper’s hiding in a shell-crater or in the old German strongpoint where he picked up the five tin helmets. They only used that at nights, but you couldn’t tell what a new sniper might get up to.

  Down into an old communication trench. Double back again, and sling a shot into the strongpoint. Was that a stifled groan? Better luck, maybe. Five hundred yards from the British trench the grass is high enough to reach over a man’s head if he lies very flat. Rank grass, keen with the smell of winter. Inch by inch now. My father was a Delaware Indian, and I’m playing at snake in the grass. Safely under the wire, and there’s the old strongpoint straight ahead. The point is, where’s the sniper? In there, or waiting in the shell-crater to pot a man in the back?

  Once upon a time in the Invercargill hills there used to be a tunnel that burrowed straight into the earth; disused, its black mouth hung with a green fringe of fern, its walls dripping with the cold sweat of porous rock. One of the kids, an imaginative little beast, swore black and blue he had seen a horrible creature go in there. There weren’t any such things; everyone knew it. Someone dared Starkie to go in. Round the first corner of the tunnel the light was blotted out, the air smelt fetid. For a minute the beast was quite real. The tunnel’s wall was icy and dripped rank water. Looking into the old strongpoint was just like that, but this time death was at home.

  At a range of six yards, crack, through the right lung. The shock lifted him clean off his feet, but when he went down he was still perfectly conscious. He pulled the Mills bomb out of his pocket, pressed it into the mud so that it would explode two seconds after he threw it into the strongpoint. Mustn’t give the beast time to run away.

  The bomb rolled gently into the strongpoint. There was a flash, and the solid earth quivered like a quicksand. The roof of the strongpoint was torn away; and the sniper, almost cut in two, lay under the rubble-heap of its walls.

  From the British trenches a long roar, which meant the three thousand Jack-in-the-box heads were pleased. But all the blood ever spilt in the War can pour up through the lungs into one man’s throat, mouth, and nose. It’s like old Pharaoh being drowned in the Red Sea. Dirty trick that, Moses always sucking up to God so that the other fellow never had a fighting chance. The Maori in the wine-cellar had a red death too. Stumbling, falling, clambering to a crawling position again. Then collapse, but he couldn’t lose consciousness. Peter Macy, Mick McGrath, Tim O’Dorman, came running from the trench. He was picked up, and then lay on a blanket in the bottom of a dug-out, while Captain Dryer, the doctor for the Otago crowd, cut away his shirt and looked him over.

  ‘It’s curtains, Starkie.’

  All those officials’ faces, hated so long, not hostile any more; just stern, set, saying good-bye with indifference to something that wouldn’t be missed much. Oddly, you knew they’d say good-bye to life themselves in the same manner when their turn came round. I have a rendezvous with death…. No, no, not yet to die. When you can’t speak, you can still form the shapes of words with your bleeding lips.

  Colonel Drury bent down. ‘It’s an outer, Starkie.’ That was the official answer to his question; but Starkie wasn’t going to die.

  Morphine starts from the prick in the arm and works upwards in waves of drowsy, heavy gold. First the crushing, tearing pain in back and lungs was beaten down and numbed, then his eyelids were weighted with a sweet drowsiness that made him want to cry. His breath laboured a little less painfully. Colonel Drury’s face became long, vague, and blurred. Of the friendlier faces that had bent over his stretcher when he was carried into the dressing-station, he could no longer distinguish which was which. He was drifting out fast on a tide of sleep, and made a great effort as he went to remember things, things that would be a rope in the swift water. Things dying men said, patient, submissive things…. ‘Tell Mum ….’ ‘Don’t leave me here.’ ‘Leave me, I’m done; go and get some of the boys ….’ ‘Take me outside and let me roll on the grass ….’ All whispered. That showed they were ready to die.

  With the last ounce of strength in body and brain he dragged himself out of the morphine and sat up. With the movement, the blood gushed anew from his lungs in great clots, and someone ran towards him. He spoke thickly through the blood, ‘I’m — if I die!’

  17 Sunshine

  ‘DON’T leave me, Nurse! Please don’t
leave me, Nurse! Please hold on to me, Nurse!’

  ‘Hush! … Go to sleep again. I won’t leave you.’

  Rest, rest on Mother’s breast,

  Father will come to thee soon.

  The dream again; and the young chap’s face lying on the pillows of the next bed, whiter than marble and graven with such a strange, sweet look. Unfair—unfair that youth, meant to sin and battle, and break itself against the rocks of the world, should cease from its striving and look so unearthly sweet. Eyelids deep sunken as if in mortal weariness, black lashes a shadow beneath them. The corners of the mouth faintly turned down, not quite enough to express disappointment or bitterness, but surely yet a little sorry for somebody….

  ‘Hush! Go to sleep again. I won’t leave you.’

  Little stiff rattle of wheels as the white trolley comes along bearing trays with white surgical dressings, gauze, cotton-wool, needles plunged into jars of hot water, forceps wrapped in sterile gauze, pots marked with red and blue poison labels. What’s yours, Digger? What about a couple of good old number nines? What’s the name of that blinking little coffin on wheels, anyhow? You’ll find out soldier. That’s the agony-waggon.

  Ah, Christ, Sister, what’re they doing to me now? Doctor—ah, Nurse, Nurse, don’t leave me! Three great hulking orderlies sitting on my legs holding me down, bending my body back—God, it’s set all stiff and crooked, stiff like a corpse! Yes, soldier, it’s set stiff, that’s why we’ve got to bend you up again. Nearly breaks a man in two, that does. Aa-aah …! What’s that? Knife stuck into a man’s back? That’s the glass needle, soldier. Got to pump the blood off those lungs of yours. Hold him still, Nurse, it’ll be over in a minute.

  Ah, Nurse, don’t leave me!

  Keep still. You’ll go to sleep again in just a minute.

  There, that’s done! Give him a quarter, Sister.

  Dab of iodine, a little tiny prick where the steel needle secretes its drop of morphine in the veins. Sleep, welling out of the unutterable depths of a man’s weariness … sleep, drawn up in buckets from the pit of death, and dropped into you through the hollow fang of a tiny needle. On the white pillow the man in the next bed sleeps for ever and for ever. Don’t leave me, Nurse.

  ‘Hush! Go to sleep. I won’t leave you.’

  Better now. The great yellowish globes of light in the X-ray department are all ready and waiting for you. The oiled sheet on your bed can be cautiously, gingerly lifted, inch by inch. With scarcely a jerk you’re aboard the trolley. See those humped shapes in the beds you’re passing now? They often hear the trolley rattle by, and mostly they turn over again and say: ‘Well, poor blighter, it’s a little hole in the ground for him.’ But this time you’ve got the laugh on them. We’re only going to take X-ray plates, we’d like to see just what that bullet’s done with your inside. Can’t go swallowing lead like you did, soldier, and not expect to have a stomach-ache. There’s the big, solemn lights, waiting to fizz and crackle with the power that can see through to your bones. It’s all dark except for the white-coated men with the shades on their eyes. Straighten him up there, Sister. Get those sandbags along beside his arms, I want him perfectly still. Now on your left side…. Right, Sister; that’ll do for now. Take him away again….

  Say ‘good morning’ to Dr Paget, Stark. That lean, lined face is familiar, out of the looming depths of a hundred years or so. Well, Stark, you don’t know how lucky you are—and you never will. You always were tough. You’ve got a heart of stone, and that bullet’s ricocheted off it.

  Going to live, do you hear that? Beat them all at the post—Colonel Chalmers, Colonel Drury, the doctors, the Hun sniper. And what’s that gnawing feeling down in the pit of your stomach? God, that’s not a bullet, that’s hunger. Sister, Sister, I’m starving. Don’t they give you any tucker in this shop?

  See that little girl moving about among the beds? Just a shine of brown hair peeping out from under her nurse’s cap…. That girl isn’t like the rest of them. I’ve watched her for a month, and I ought to know. You never catch her out when she isn’t laughing or smiling—not rough, just a plucky little kid who’d try to make a chap see the funny side of things even if she died for it. The others are all right—good girls; but that little smiling one’s different.

  I’ve seen men brought in here with the most frightful wounds you can imagine—men nearly torn to bits, and the gangrene spreading up their bodies as they lie. And I’ve seen others with the death-sweat dripping off their faces in big clammy drops, and there wasn’t one of them that didn’t try to smile back at that plucky kid. The dying tried to die easier so they wouldn’t hurt her; I’d try myself if I were dying. I’ve got a name for that little girl. I call her Sunshine. It’s all over the hospital now—she gets ‘Sunshine’ whenever she comes into the ward, and I’ll bet she doesn’t know who started it. Maybe she does, though.

  Anyhow, last night she came up to my bed and laughed in that friendly way of hers, and she said: ‘Well, I’m going to call you the Chocolate Soldier.’ So there’s me with a nickname and a pair of crutches, leaning over this rotten little gas-ring and trying to make toast for the nurses’ supper. I’ve cut the fingers as pretty as you please; but how can I make it fit for the poor kids to eat when we haven’t got any butter, only that slimy, grubby margarine? God, girls like Sunshine oughtn’t to hang about in a country like England where there’s nothing fit to eat and Zeppelin strafes every third night or so! Sunshine ought to live out in New Zealand, where the cows are something like, and we can mind our own business and live happy.

  There’s only two things worrying me. There’s that church parade stuff, the moment you can hobble they get you along to church on Sundays. I told Sunshine and Sister Froude—she’s a nice woman, she comes from Taranaki—that I’d got claustrophobia, that I was a Mahommedan, and that I jolly well didn’t believe in it. It’s no use. They did get me along, but the whole time I was in church I kept thinking of that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ stuff. When it was over I had a long talk with the padre, and he seemed to understand. He’s the first padre that ever did. He just looked old and sorry, and said some kind of a mumbo-jumbo prayer when I went out. But I’m not going back again. I can’t stand it.

  And there’s the way they all chip me about what I said when I was delirious, and won’t tell me straight out what I did say. And when I ask Sunshine she gets as red as a poppy and tells me to go to sleep. It’s not fair chipping a fellow about what he says when he’s off his nut. And it might have been such a lot of things. Oh, God, I hope it wasn’t that! Not to Sunshine. I’d never be able to look her straight in the face again. God, a little kid like Sunshine oughtn’t to be hanging about hearing things like that, and knocking round with a lot of soldiers who’ve been out where we came from! But she did say she’d tell me tonight what I said, because she knows it’s worrying me. She doesn’t want to, though. God, if it was that I’ll clear out, and I’ll never see her again!

  Flowers, flowers—won’t anyone bring me some flowers? How can I be expected to keep all you boys looking nice if nobody gives me any flowers for the ward?

  All right, Sunshine, we’ll go and get you some flowers. Come on, Jim. Come on, Fitz. We’ve got to go get some flowers for the ward. Sunshine says so. Hell, the way they polish up these floors you’d think it was done specially so we poor helpless cripples could slip and break our useless necks! Ever think you’d go skating on crutches, Big Fitz?

  . . .

  Big Fitz the tunneller, and Jim Turner—who came from Invercargill—thought the place was sure to be pretty posh because you could see peacocks strewing their blue-and-green tails over a strip of terraced lawn. There wasn’t anybody in sight, though to be on the safe side they’d crept very cautiously up the long, beech-leaf-coloured drive. Flowers, scanty but beautiful, with the sparse purity of an English spring, nodded at them from various dark-soiled plots and borders, but there weren’t enough of them for Starkie.

  So they roamed about in the grounds until they found a nest
of glasshouses, ten of them in a row. Here the flowers were as brilliant and manifold as humming-birds in a tropical forest, and soon they had a load for the wards—Chinese white, saffron, and all the tints shading through from apricot to rich pink, from pink to cerise, from cerise to the proud velvet heads of crimson and purple. There were also eccentric flowers with freckled faces, light green and brown—flowers which oddly reminded Starkie of rushes by a frog-pond and the garments of fine ladies. He brought some of them along too.

  When Sunshine saw the flowers she behaved in the silly manner of very young girls contemplating delight and beauty—she clapped her hands; she danced several steps of a pas seul; she made little exclamations of incredulity, astonishment, hope, and finally rapture. Then she said reproachfully, ‘Oh, boys, boys, you must have spent a fortune on these! Cattleyas….’ And a delicate pinkish spray curled its elfin blossoms in a place of honour against the round of her cheek.

  ‘Ah, rats, Sunshine; them didn’t cost us anything! Them was give to us,’ semi-truthfully protested Big Fitz.

  ‘Not too good for any of you.’ And, with a swish of her skirts, Sunshine disappeared.

  Some hours later—when the ward looked like Christmas—it was penetrated by policemen, detectives, gardeners, and a member of the English peerage. The last was a grand old gentleman with a monocle in his eye and a wail on his tongue. Full in the centre of the ward he stood, and lectured all New Zealand. From the beds arose a simultaneous cry of ‘Hot air!’ The men who could get about well enough to fall under the doctor’s suspicion were lined up as for a firing-party, and treated to a discourse on orchids. Starkie gathered, rather appalled, that some of the stolen blossoms were worth ten pounds a spray and a wholly impossible sum per plant.