“See!” one of the women said. “His mouth. He is reading the name. What did I tell you? It is as I said. His son fell here.”
“Then he had lots of sons,” the other woman said. “He has read the name each time since we left Arras. Eh! Eh! Him a son? That cold?”
“They do get children, though.”
“That is why they drink whisky. Otherwise …”
“That’s so. They think of nothing save money and eating, the English.”
Presently they got out; the train went on. Then others entered the carriage, other peasants with muddy boots, carrying baskets or live or dead beasts; they in turn watched the rigid, motionless figure leaning at the window while the train ran across the ruined land and past the brick or iron stations among the tumbled ruins, watching his lips move as he read the names. “Let him look at the war, about which he has apparently heard at last,” they told one another. “Then he can go home. It was not in his barnyard that it was fought.”
“Nor in his house,” a woman said.
II
THE BATTALION stands at ease in the rain. It has been in rest billets two days, equipment has been replaced and cleaned, vacancies have been filled and the ranks closed up, and it now stands at ease with the stupid docility of sheep in the ceaseless rain, facing the streaming shape of the sergeant-major.
Presently the colonel emerges from a door across the square. He stands in the door a moment, fastening his trench coat, then, followed by two A.D.C.’s, he steps gingerly into the mud in polished boots and approaches.
“Para-a-a-de—’Shun!” the sergeant-major shouts. The battalion clashes, a single muffled, sullen sound. The sergeant major turns, takes a pace toward the officers, and salutes, his stick beneath his armpit. The colonel jerks his stick toward his cap peak.
“Stand at ease, men,” he says. Again the battalion clashes, a single sluggish, trickling sound. The officers approach the guide file of the first platoon, the sergeant-major falling in behind the last officer. The sergeant of the first platoon takes a pace forward and salutes. The colonel does not respond at all. The sergeant falls in behind the sergeant-major, and the five of them pass down the company front, staring in turn at each rigid, forward-staring face as they pass it. First Company.
The sergeant salutes the colonel’s back and returns to his original position and comes to attention. The sergeant of the second company has stepped forward, saluted, is ignored, and falls in behind the sergeant-major, and they pass down the second company front. The colonel’s trench coat sheathes water onto his polished boots. Mud from the earth creeps up his boots and meets the water and is channelled by the water as the mud creeps up the polished boots again.
Third Company. The colonel stops before a soldier, his trench coat hunched about his shoulders where the rain trickles from the back of his cap, so that he looks somehow like a choleric and outraged bird. The other two officers, the sergeant-major and the sergeant halt in turn, and the five of them glare at the five soldiers whom they are facing. The five soldiers stare rigid and unwinking straight before them, their faces like wooden faces, their eyes like wooden eyes.
“Sergeant,” the colonel says in his pettish voice, “has this man shaved today?”
“Sir!” the sergeant says in a ringing voice; the sergeant-major says:
“Did this man shave today, Sergeant?” and all five of them glare now at the soldier, whose rigid gaze seems to pass through and beyond them, as if they were not there. “Take a pace forward when you speak in ranks!” the sergeant-major says.
The soldier, who has not spoken, steps out of ranks, splashing a jet of mud yet higher up the colonel’s boots.
“What is your name?” the colonel says.
“024186 Gray,” the soldier raps out glibly. The company, the battalion, stares straight ahead.
“Sir!” the sergeant-major thunders.
“Sir-r,” the soldier says.
“Did you shave this morning?” the colonel says.
“Nae, sir-r.”
“Why not?”
“A dinna shave, sir-r.”
“You dont shave?”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave.”
“Sir!” the sergeant-major thunders.
“Sir-r,” the soldier says.
“You are not …” The colonel’s voice dies somewhere behind his choleric glare, the trickling water from his cap peak. “Take his name, Sergeant-major,” he says, passing on.
The battalion stares rigidly ahead. Presently it sees the colonel, the two officers and the sergeant-major reappear in single file. At the proper place the sergeant-major halts and salutes the colonel’s back. The colonel jerks his stick hand again and goes on, followed by the two officers, at a trot toward the door from which he had emerged.
The sergeant-major faces the battalion again. “Para-a-a-de—” he shouts. An indistinguishable movement passes from rank to rank, an indistinguishable precursor of that damp and sullen clash which dies borning. The sergeant-major’s stick has come down from his armpit; he now leans on it, as officers do. For a time his eye roves along the battalion front.
“Sergeant Cunninghame!” he says at last.
“Sir!”
“Did you take that man’s name?”
There is silence for a moment—a little more than a short moment, a little less than a long one. Then the sergeant says: “What man, sir?”
“You, soldier!” the sergeant-major says.
The battalion stands rigid. The rain lances quietly into the mud between it and the sergeant-major as though it were too spent to either hurry or cease.
“You soldier that dont shave!” the sergeant-major says.
“Gray, sir!” the sergeant says.
“Gray. Double out ’ere.”
The man Gray appears without haste and tramps stolidly before the battalion, his kilts dark and damp and heavy as a wet horse-blanket. He halts, facing the sergeant-major.
“Why didn’t you shave this morning?” the sergeant-major says.
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray says.
“Sir!” the sergeant-major says.
Gray stares rigidly beyond the sergeant-major’s shoulder.
“Say sir when addressing a first-class warrant officer!” the sergeant-major says. Gray stares doggedly past his shoulder, his face beneath his vizorless bonnet as oblivious of the cold lances of rain as though it were granite. The sergeant-major raises his voice:
“Sergeant Cunninghame!”
“Sir!”
“Take this man’s name for insubordination also.”
“Very good, sir!”
The sergeant-major looks at Gray again. “And I’ll see that you get the penal battalion, my man. Fall in!”
Gray turns without haste and returns to his place in ranks, the sergeant-major watching him. The sergeant-major raises his voice again:
“Sergeant Cunninghame!”
“Sir!”
“You did not take that man’s name when ordered. Let that happen again and you’ll be for it yourself.”
“Very good, sir!”
“Carry on!” the sergeant-major says.
“But why did ye no shave?” the corporal asked him. They were back in billets: a stone barn with leprous walls, where no light entered, squatting in the ammoniac air on wet straw about a reeking brazier. “Ye kenned we were for inspection thae mor-rn.”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray said.
“But ye kenned thae colonel would mar-rk ye on parade.”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave,” Gray repeated doggedly and without heat.
III
“FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS,” Matthew Gray said, “there’s never a day, except Sunday, has passed but there is a hull rising on Clyde or a hull going out of Clydemouth with a Gray-driven nail in it.” He looked at young Alec across his steel spectacles, his neck bowed. “And not excepting their godless Sabbath hammering and sawing either. Because if a hull could be built in a day, Gra
ys could build it,” he added with dour pride. “And now, when you are big enough to go down to the yards with your grandadder and me and take a man’s place among men, to be trusted manlike with hammer and saw yersel.”
“Whisht, Matthew,” old Alec said. “The lad can saw as straight a line and drive as mony a nail a day as yersel or even me.”
Matthew paid his father no attention. He continued to speak his slow, considered words, watching his oldest son across the spectacles. “And with John Wesley not old enough by two years, and wee Matthew by ten, and your grandfather an auld man will soon be—”
“Whisht,” old Alec said. “I’m no but sixty-eight. Will you be telling the lad he’ll make his bit journey to London and come back to find me in the parish house, mayhap? ’Twill be over by Christmastide.”
“Christmastide or no,” Matthew said, “a Gray, a shipwright, has no business at an English war.”
“Whisht ye,” old Alec said. He rose and went to the chimney cupboard and returned, carrying a box. It was of wood, dark and polished with age, the corners bound with iron, and fitted with an enormous iron lock which any child with a hairpin could have solved. From his pocket he took an iron key almost as big as the lock. He opened the box and lifted carefully out a small velvet-covered jeweler’s box and opened it in turn. On the satin lining lay a medal, a bit of bronze on a crimson ribbon: a Victoria Cross. “I kept the hulls going out of Clydemouth while your uncle Simon was getting this bit of brass from the Queen,” old Alec said. “I heard naught of complaint. And if need be, I’ll keep them going out while Alec serves the Queen a bit himsel. Let the lad go,” he said. He put the medal back into the wooden box and locked it “A bit fighting winna hurt the lad. If I were his age, or yours either, for that matter, I’d gang mysel. Alec, lad, hark ye. Ye’ll see if they’ll no take a hale lad of sixty-eight and I’ll gang wi ye and leave the auld folk like Matthew to do the best they can. Nay, Matthew; dinna ye thwart the lad; have no the Grays ever served the Queen in her need?”
So young Alec went to enlist, descending the hill on a weekday in his Sunday clothes, with a New Testament and a loaf of homebaked bread tied in a handkerchief. And this was the last day’s work which old Alec ever did, for soon after that, one morning Matthew descended the hill to the shipyard alone, leaving old Alec at home. And after that, on the sunny days (and sometimes on the bad days too, until his daughter-in-law found him and drove him back into the house) he would sit shawled in a chair on the porch, gazing south and eastward, calling now and then to his son’s wife within the house: “Hark now. Do you hear them? The guns.”
“I hear nothing,” the daughter-in-law would say. “It’s only the sea at Kinkeadbight. Come into the house, now. Matthew will be displeased.”
“Whisht, woman. Do you think there is a Gray in the world could let off a gun and me not know the sound of it?”
They had a letter from him shortly after he enlisted, from England, in which he said that being a soldier, England, was different from being a shipwright, Clydeside, and that he would write again later. Which he did, each month or so, writing that soldiering was different from building ships and that it was still raining. Then they did not hear from him for seven months. But his mother and father continued to write him a joint letter on the first Monday of each month, letters almost identical with the previous one, the previous dozen:
We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde faster than they can sink them. You still have the Book?
This would be in his father’s slow, indomitable hand. Then, in his mother’s:
Are you well? Do you need anything? Jessie and I are knitting the stockings and will send them. Alec, Alec.
He received this one during the seven months, during his term in the penal battalion, forwarded to him by his old corporal, since he had not told his people of his changed life. He answered it, huddled among his fellow felons, squatting in the mud with newspapers buttoned inside his tunic and his head and feet wrapped in strips of torn blanket:
I am well. Yes I still have the Book (not telling them that his platoon was using it to light tobacco with and that they were now well beyond Lamentations). It still rains. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley.
Then his time in the penal battalion was up. He returned to his old company, his old platoon, finding some new faces, and a letter:
We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde yet. You have a new sister. Your Mother is well.
He folded the letter and put it away. “A see mony new faces in thae battalion,” he said to the corporal. “We ha a new sair-rgeant-major too, A doot not?”
“Naw,” the corporal said. “ ’Tis the same one.” He was looking at Gray, his gaze intent, speculative; his face cleared. “Ye ha shaved thae mor-rn,” he said.
“Ay,” Gray said. “Am auld enough tae shave noo.”
That was the night on which the battalion was to go up to Arras. It was to move at midnight, so he answered the letter at once:
I am well. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and the baby.
“Morning! Morning!” The General, lap-robed and hooded, leans from his motor and waves his gloved hand and shouts cheerily to them as they slog past the car on the Bapaume road, taking the ditch to pass.
“A’s a cheery auld card,” a voice says.
“Awfficers,” a second drawls; he falls to cursing as he slips in the greaselike mud, trying to cling to the crest of the kneedeep ditch.
“Aweel,” a third says, “thae awfficers wud gang tae thae war-r too, A doot not.”
“Why dinna they gang then?” a fourth says. “Thae war-r is no back that way.”
Platoon by platoon they slip and plunge into the ditch and drag their heavy feet out of the clinging mud and pass the halted car and crawl terrifically onto the crown of the road again: “A says tae me, a says: ‘Fritz has a new gun that will carry to Par-ris,’ a says, and A says tae him: ‘ ’Tis nawthin: a has one that will hit our Cor-rps Headquar-rters.’ ”
“Morning! Morning!” The General continues to wave his glove and shout cheerily as the battalion detours into the ditch and heaves itself back onto the road again.
They are in the trench. Until the first rifle explodes in their faces, not a shot has been fired. Gray is the third man. During all the while that they crept between flares from shellhole to shellhole, he has been working himself nearer to the sergeant-major and the Officer; in the glare of that first rifle he can see the gap in the wire toward which the Officer was leading them, the moiled rigid glints of the wire where bullets have nicked the mud and rust from it, and against the glare the tall, leaping shape of the sergeant-major. Then Gray, too, springs bayonet first into the trench full of grunting shouts and thudding blows.
Flares go up by dozens now; in the corpse glare Gray sees the sergeant-major methodically tossing grenades into the next traverse. He runs toward him, passing the Officer leaning, bent double, against the fire step. The sergeant-major has vanished beyond the traverse. Gray follows and comes upon the sergeant-major. Holding the burlap curtain aside with one hand, the sergeant-major is in the act of tossing a grenade into a dugout as if he might be tossing an orange hull into a cellar.
The sergeant-major turns in the rocket glare. “ ’Tis you, Gray,” he says. The earth-muffled bomb thuds; the sergeant-major is in the act of catching another bomb from the sack about his neck as Gray’s bayonet goes into his throat. The sergeant-major is a big man. He falls backward, holding the rifle barrel with both hands against his throat, his teeth glaring, pulling Gray with him. Gray clings to the rifle. He tries to shake the speared body on the bayonet as he would shake a rat on an umbrella rib.
He frees the bayonet. The sergeant-major falls. Gray reverses the rifle and hammers its butt into the sergeant-major’s face, but the trench floor is too soft to supply any resistance. He glares about. His gaze falls upon a duckboard upended in the mud. He drags it free and slips it beneath the sergeant-major’s head and hammers the
face with his rifle-butt. Behind him in the first traverse the Officer is shouting: “Blow your whistle, Sergeant-major!”
IV
IN THE CITATION it told how Private Gray, on a night raid, one of four survivors, following the disablement of the Officer and the death of all the N.C.O.’s, took command of the situation and (the purpose of the expedition was a quick raid for prisoners); held a foothold in the enemy’s front line until a supporting attack arrived and consolidated the position. The Officer told how he ordered the men back out, ordering them to leave him and save themselves, and how Gray appeared with a German machine gun from somewhere and, while his three companions built a barricade, overcame the Officer and took from him his Very pistol and fired the colored signal which called for the attack; all so quickly that support arrived before the enemy could counterattack or put down a barrage.
It is doubtful if his people ever saw the citation at all. Anyway, the letters which he received from them during his sojourn in hospital, the tenor of them, were unchanged: “We are well. Ships are still going out.”
Collected Stories Page 40