by Philip Child
Dolughoff appeared from the pillbox, carrying the OP logbook. “Here’s the book, Thatcher. Then aren’t any distinguishing marks in the terrain, if you can call this damned rhinoceros wallow a terrain. Over there’s the famous ridge. There’s the promised land, eight degrees to the right of that bitched grove of trees. That’s Passchendaele village. And that’s about all there is to see. Just mud and filthy skyline. Come on Ack Emma Thatcher, let’s go.”
“Eyes front!” exclaimed the infantry officer suddenly, and added in a resigned tone: “Now we won’t go home until morning! … Spread your men out, Thatcher, will you?”
A spray of multi-coloured lights had soared from the section of shell holes and pillboxes marked red in the trench maps, bursting into a shivering cluster. This beautiful firework, worthy of its task, had slipped the leash from a straining pack of upthrust, sleek steel muzzles and the barrage charged down upon them. It swooped down the air on steel wings. It gored the earth with self-destroying roars, blasting it and tossing it upward in great fistfuls.… Dan looked behind him: spouts of smoke and mud were dancing a hornpipe there, too, and to their flanks, and in front of them.… It was what gunners called a box barrage; its purpose was to isolate them within walls of steel and sound. You had the illusion that the earth was slipping about you, and it was no mere illusion. Beside Dan, a boy threw himself flat, then jumped up — to go where? A gout of wet mud plastered him across the shoulders and sent him squattering into the unsumped scum at the bottom of the enlarged shell hole. Officers and men had tensed themselves instantly, adopting to their sudden need their several tried soul-attitudes with the speed of habit, as one braces oneself to physical pain after a short surcease. One felt like a cork in a hurricane. What terrified was the rhythm of the sound to which one’s nerves danced a jangled accompaniment. Each shell swinged the distant air, increased to a full-throated roar that promised completion this time, and burst its sides in triumphant self-immolation .… Time ceased to have meaning.… A long time. A long time. A long time.
Dan’s mind was working queerly — shakily; it was abnormally lucid, but alarmingly separated from his body; it had suddenly become an instrument you were not quite sure of. He attempted to put it in its place by mocking it with a phrase of pedantic precision. “This,” he informed himself, “is a barrage of no ordinary magnitude. (The infantry officer would not have agreed.) This is a — an experience!” It was an experience. One learnt things. This is to be hunted. He restrained an absurd impulse to shout, “Hi! Stop a minute. Wait till I get my breath.”
He was astonished to find that two of his men had quietly crumpled up at his feet — when had they been hit? — and a portion of the abbreviated trench had lost its contour like a cake that someone had stepped on. Stooped figures scurried by and someone was yelling — you could hear a human voice, then — someone was yelling: “Give me that bloody, muckin’ field dressing, quick! … Dusty, you’re done for! They’ve got you.… Stretcher here.… Where did it hit you, chum?”
He realized that the infantry officer was watching him with a kind of secret malice. His look said: “How do you like it, you bleeding gunner? See what it’s like when the artillery make war by pounding each other’s infantry line!” He said in Dan’s ear: “Pretty gusty, this is. I shouldn’t wonder if they really came over this time.”
Well, if they did, it would be a relief.
The thing to do was to unite oneself to Mother Earth with a clinging fondness till there wasn’t room for a matchstick between one’s belly and the mud — and wait. Ashes to ashes — dust to dust, if the worms don’t get you, the devil must. Though, to be accurate, one ought to say mud, not dust.… Mud, mud, and a damned big thud, thur-ud , thur-ud , thurud-dud-dud . Rhythm.… A man maun dree his weird. Who used to say that? Mother. No wound in the groin, anyhow, if you lie on your belly. A yellow ticket that said, “gunshot wound in the groin.” Umpteen units of anti-tetanus and a shot of morphine and you pass out and find yourself in the casualty clearing station.
Dan did the only thing a man could do when natural phenomena were asserting themselves — lit a cigarette, and waited. It surprised him to find that his hand was steady. He felt better. Anyhow, it couldn’t go on forever. Either — or —
He was astonished to find that he was actually becoming adjusted to a world of noise and violence. For instance, he felt sure that he could manage himself. And he became aware of the other human beings beside him and round him — an immense comfort. Two infantry privates were carrying on a cozy chat by shouting at the tops of their voices. “What did you enlist for, chum?” — “Well, there was a poster of a girl. Very good looking, see? And she was saying: ‘I wish I was a man; I’d join the infantry.’ I wish she’d got her wish!”
He could distinguish the different noises. High explosive — a jealous roar; shrapnel bursting with a staccato ping! let me in too! Minnies, making a kind of satisfied crunching noise. To be familiar with the intimate hunting habits of the powers that destroyed, bred almost a contempt for their efficiency.… At any rate, so far none of them had considered him worth obliterating.
“Where’s this Passiondale I’ve heard so much about, sir?”
“Up ahead. Mind you don’t stand up.”
“Doesn’t seem much of a place to sweat your guts out for, sir.”
“What were you, Timmis?”
“Bank clerk, sir.”
“Going back to the bank, afterwards?”
“Lock myself into the teller’s cage, sir, and never come out for anyone!”
Alastair’s voice: “Well, Granny, you old philosopher, what are you thinking of?”
The question surprised Dan. It hadn’t occurred to him that Alastair might have an affection for him. It struck him that Alastair was really hard to know because he had the Burnet trait of play-acting to people. Always the beau geste with Alastair.
Dan decided to make the rounds.… It was disquieting, on getting up and looking back over your shoulder, to find that the spot where you had been lying was turning over like a wave.… The shell holes about the pillbox had been enlarged and connected with shallow ditches to make a strong point. In one of the ditches next to Dan’s shell hole, Sergeant Watts lay with his rifle pointing over what should have been the parapet. Dan crawled up to him. “See anything?” — “Not yet, sir.” The sergeant gave him a mournful smile. “If only I had my teeth, sir, I wouldn’t care.” … In the next shell hole the men were playing Kitty Nap with greasy franc notes. No. 00459, Gunner Loversedge put out his hand and gathered in a pile of notes. “You’re unco lucky wi’ the carrds, Jobey,” said a gunner. “Dootless ye’ll have your lights put out the day.…” A man with a wound stripe on his sleeve was sitting with his head in his hands, moaning. “No, he ain’t hurt, sir,” explained the sentry apologetically, “he’s always like that when the crumps come to set a while. Ever since he copped one. He’ll be all right when they come over.… Will they come, sir?”
“Seems likely.… Keep your rifles out of the mud, men.” Most of them were gunners to whom such precautions were not second nature. They grinned. The sentry actually winked. The strafe drew them together on a human plane, so that for the moment they forgot class consciousness.
He went back to his own shell hole.
The infantry officer had come back and was bending over a sprawling figure: “Conked, by God! And look, the wound’s no bigger than a pinprick.” A thin needle of steel through the heart.
“Where are you from?” the infantry officer was saying to Dan. “Oh, Wellington.… Me? I’m from Wiarton. Do you know the Bruce Peninsula? It’s a sweet country. You can’t make much of a living farming there, but it’s a good land to remember. Lots of wild woods there, and fishing.… If they come before dark, we’ll get them from the blockhouse. Unless they get in on the flank. Wish we had more bombs.”
“I’ve got some,” said Dan.
“Up the Royal Eight-Inch Rifle Brigade! We’ll make pukka infantry out of you yet.… What I like to do is start out before dawn with a rod and haversack and try a stream at random. You don’t have to buy the right to fish there at five dollars a dozen fish. By God, in Canada there’s room to stretch your arms and breathe!”
One of his own men was saying something and pointing. The OP they had sweated blood over had been knocked into a memory. The gunner was angry; he said something about “bloody sods … work all night … bleeding waste.” What got under the men’s skins wasn’t so much the straightforward destruction, it was the practical jokes played by mindless forces, destroying one’s teeth and blotting out a night’s work with a single metal bellow of laughter.
Dan was talking to Alastair when, suddenly, he was surprised to notice that they were shouting to each other. The barrage had stumbled down into silence, and its cessation called for a new adjustment of the nerves.
“Are they coming over?”
The infantry subaltern pointed in front of them. “See the control lights? They’re redirecting their artillery. I’d like to know what in blazes has happened to our own guns.”
“That’s so like the infantry!” said Alastair. “As soon as there’s the slightest bit of a stink, they howl for artillery support like a spanked child for its mother.”
At this moment a strange figure, covered with mud, crawled over the broken rim of the trench, slumped head first into the muddy water at the bottom and sat up, wiping the muck from its eyes and cursing in a steady monotone. This figure was Dolughoff, and his eyes stared at them with insane excitement.
“And where in the name of old Satan have you been?” enquired Alastair levelly.
The Russian raised his finger impressively and pointed toward no man’s land. “Out there. And there is one — person who will never, never trouble me again.”
“Well,” said Alastair, “as long as you don’t want to take off your clothes again — God, man, but you must have been tight!”
Anger flashed in Dolughoff’s eyes — for a moment he looked really dangerous. “Tight! I tell you there is no soberer, saner man in the salient than me.… I tell you I had had enough! They can’t do that to me with impunity.”
“Do what, Dolly?”
“Just before the first strafe started, I was doing a rear in a shell hole — if you laugh, Thatcher, I’ll — I’ll kill you! He must have seen me, for he let fly at me with his machine gun and I had to run for dear life — with my pants down. Every time I tripped and fell he would let me get up, then he would fire just behind me or just in front of me as I ran. Chased me round, do you see? Then, finally, let me go. Deliberately.”
Alastair was laughing. “I’m sorry, Dolly. But I wish I had seen it!”
“Shut up!” said the Russian furiously. “You don’t understand. Do you know who was shooting at me? It was the devil — Satan himself. He wanted to kill my dignity … break my spirit. It’s easy to kill a man’s body, but he was after my soul, I tell you! I know.… Then, when he let me go — that was too much. I wouldn’t have minded if he had killed me outright.”
“I bet you wouldn’t,” agreed Alastair.
A cunning look came into Dolughoff’s eyes. “But I fooled him. I showed him I could take off all my clothes and still be dignified.… And what is more, every time the devil pops off at me, I’ll crawl into no man’s land and cut his heart out. Look!”
Dolughoff opened his haversack, which was soaked with blood, and took out an object.… The three subalterns had been roaring with laughter at the thought of Dolughoff chased in circles with his breeches down, they could not help themselves (and besides, after the bombardment, anything that relieved their nervous tension was a godsend). But at the sight of the Russian holding that bloodstained object, their laughter ceased abruptly.
“My God!” breathed the infantry subaltern, his face colourless. “He’s off his chump.”
“Damn you!” screamed Dolughoff, in sudden fury. “You philistines with your nice, well-tubbed , little Anglo-Saxon souls understand nothing! But I’ve got a life inside me you know nothing about. You can’t touch me. I’m above all of you, and you don’t know what I think of you. I always do exactly what I want to, that’s why I’m a great man. People don’t want me. Well, let them go! What do I care? They are sticks and stones to me. There is nobody but me. Do you see? That is why nobody — nobody can touch me.”
“And what about your message, Dolly? All that about the brotherhood of man and so on.”
Dan nudged his brother and whispered: “Hold your tongue, Alastair, for God’s sake!”
Dolughoff spat words at them. “It is the devil who keeps me from speaking. First it was the politicians and generals, and now it’s the devil.… But I cut his heart out.”
The infantry subaltern looked at Dolughoff with disgust. The fellow didn’t belong to his unit, thank God! Some sort of a mongrel foreigner. And before the men. People that talked about their souls! When everyone knew we were like blasted ants scurrying about on a bit of mud. Why pretend that we were so damned important, then? But after all, the poor devil was obviously off his chump.
Dolughoff went on talking, talking, talking. They could see his mouth opening and closing.… But they could no longer hear him, for the barrage had once more dropped on them. It thundered down upon them, and to brace themselves all over again, after the interval of quiet, was to endure a subtle addition to their suffering.… Dolughoff crept out into no man’s land with an unsheathed bayonet between his teeth, but only Alastair saw him go.… Alastair hesitated a moment, then crawled after him.
Dan braced his feet against the sides of the trench and, lying back, lit another cigarette … and waited. Each explosion drew the nerves together into a cringing knot, and before that second passed in which you had begun to relax, the next monster charged in like an apocalyptic doom. The sheer din, coming after the surcease of sound, was flattening; it hammered and disintegrated the personality into crazy fragments of thoughts, desires.…
Someone was yelling into Dan’s ears: the infantry subaltern.
Dan said: “What?” gathering himself together.
The infantry officer pointed.
The barrage had lifted and dropped behind them. The subaltern straightened himself as well as he could without showing all of his head above the shell crater and threw away his cigarette. “Well, lads, here they come!”
They came in little, uneven knots of men, lightly weighted with equipment, but nonetheless stumbling and sliding down into scummy shell holes, struggling through the mud that sucked at the legs like glue. In driblets they came, but there were a lot of them.… They withered to the chatter of rifles and Lewis guns like a house of cards when you flip your finger. Their own barrage came down like a breaking comber and simply blotted them from sight in smoke.
The infantry officer scurried past him, not bothering to stoop any longer, and shouted over his shoulder. “They’re in on the left. Bring your bombs, gunner. Now’s your chance!” Dan got Loversedge and they scuttled down the shallow ditches that were ditches no longer but a tossed up runnel of stinking mud vaguely conforming to the trench line: as if a shaking finger had been run through a bowl of porridge. Action lifted his spirit and cleared his mind of the poisoning thoughts that formed like a cesspool while you were waiting to be blown to fragments. As he ran, he marvelled that anyone could have stayed alive in these crazy ditches while the earth round about and beneath was being pummelled into new shapes. The answer was that not many had; all that remained of most of the defenders lay beneath him and before him and had to be tripped over and trodden under as he ran. But those few, those devoted few who were left alive, were firing, cursing, or singing, or simply firing as coolly as if they were at the butts.
A black object on a short stick came hurtling toward them end over end. It was not well aimed and e
xploded short. Coal-scuttle helmets were visible bobbing and weaving to the left. “While my bombs last,” Dan thought. He threw at the helmets. Arms splayed out centrifugally above the rim of a shell crater. He heard groans. He felt neither fear, nor rage, nor pity, only the release of power.
A few minutes later, those of them who were still alive had crawled into the pillbox. They were a mere handful of gunners and infantry, including Dan and Loversedge, and Alastair and Dolughoff (both wounded). The pillbox reeked with the fumes of explosion, and the living shared it with the dead. A shell of large calibre had struck the entrance which faced the German lines, and the lintel had sagged drunkenly, partly blocking the opening. Under this girder, a broken Lewis gun projected, its muzzle drooping toward the ground like a dejected dog’s tail.
“Where are you hit, Alastair?”
“Arm. It would be a good blighty if — not that I’ll ever get there from here.”
“Did you bring Dolly in?”
“Dragged him in from no man’s land.”
“Why? It was a hundred to one you’d both be killed.”
“He was mad … and I mocked him,” said Alastair soberly. “Keep a look out, Dan, and I’ll see about Dolly.”
Friend Jerry was coming on again, not looking as if he liked it much. Knots of plodding pilgrims, muddy, stooping, methodically ploughing knee deep in the muck, came on. They saw the crumped entrance to the pillbox, drew their conclusions, and passed by. That outraged Dan’s professional instincts — they ought to have chucked in a bomb to make sure. Apparently, then, there were amateur soldiers among the Jerries, too: in it just for love, without any professional background.
Loversedge was beside him, smoking. His swarthy skin was covered with sweat, his face was filthy, and he lay with his hands behind his neck. He looked as if he were enjoying it — in a way. “Remember when we sat talking and drinking in the boat shacks in Wellington, Jobey?” — “I remember you farther back than that, sir.” — “We talked a lot of rot about ‘freedom,’ I remember. Well, we got caught in something bigger than us, Jobey.” — “No, sir. I’m still a free man. It’s inside you, freedom is. Hard to find, easy to lose track of again.”