No Man's Land Part 24

"Is he? You ask him about the German at Les Boeufs whom he met unexpectedly, and see what he says."

The "Ballad of Boh da Thone" came back--the humour of it. d.i.c.k--the old blackguard--a rifle b.u.t.t, and a German's head after he'd hit it--one side; a boiled s.h.i.+rt, dress clothes, and a general air of complacent peacefulness--the other. And the girl: it is always the girl who points the contrast. . . .

I laughed. "Go away, and talk to your harmless husband. I am wrapped in thought, or was, till you disturbed me."

What did she know--G.o.d bless her--of the details, the filthy, necessary details of war. To her it was just a parting from one man, who went into an unknown land where there was danger--hideous, intangible danger.

But of the reality. . . .

It is all contained in the one axiom--Kill, and kill at once, so as to have a maximum of time to kill more. And with the bayonet, do not let it be imagined for a moment that the work is easy. Bayonet fighting requires perfect condition, a fair share of strength, and a quick eye.

Mistakes, when a man comes to the real thing, are not likely to occur twice, and there are many things which a man must learn who aspires to become even as Jimmy O'Shea.

How to go round a traverse when a Boche is on the other side, and it's him or you; how to take on three men in succession, when the last one throws his arms round your neck, and burbles, "Ve vos friends--nein?"

Jimmy was great on that point: with the bayonet jabbed upwards into the chin, and the sapient remark, "Ve _vos_, ma tear." But enough; this is not a treatise on bayonet fighting, and I have in mind to tell of O'Shea's last fight.

There is just one more scene which comes back vividly before I reach the end, and that is the final exercise he gave his men in their training. When they'd thrust and parried and stabbed; when they'd jumped trenches and thrust their bayonets into sacks on the other side; when they'd been confronted with strange b.a.l.l.s of straw in unexpected places, and kicked them or jabbed them or bit them as the case might be--then came the gem, the _bonne bouche_.

These preliminary practices were only one stroke, one thrust; the last was a fight to the death in a manner of speaking, and it was generally preceded by one of Jimmy's better stories. The best he kept for recital just before going over the top; so as to send 'em along frothing at the mouth, as he put it.

"You don't remember Captain Trent, do you, boys?" he'd begin. "Just stand easy a while, and I'll tell you about him. After that you've got to fight a bit. He was a great officer, boys, a grand officer--one of the best. Did you ever hear how he was killed? Come out here, Malvaney; we'll just start the sc.r.a.pping while I tell you. Do you see this straw ball on the top of the stick? As long as it's off the ground, it's a German. Hit it, stick it, bite it, kick it, and go on till I put it on the ground again. And curse, you blighter, curse.

Just think it's the German who stuck his bayonet into Captain Trent--one of _your_ officers--while he was lying on the ground wounded in the head."

The ball began to dance. "Go on, Malvaney. Kill it, man, kill it; grunt, snarl; think of the swine and what they've done. Jab, jab--up in his throat. I'll get you a live one to practise on one day." At last the ball would come to rest, and Malvaney--his teeth bared, snarling--would face Jimmy, who stood there smiling grimly. And in a few seconds Malvaney would grin too, and the blood l.u.s.t would die out of his eyes. . . .

"Good boy--not half bad!" O'Shea would nod approvingly. "The worst of it is the swine will never stand up to you--bayonet to bayonet. They prefer women and wounded men--like the Captain. Come here, MacNab, and get an appet.i.te for your dinner. You can just rest a while--I'll get on a bit with that story. It was way back in the Spring, down south a bit; and we went over the top. Have you been over the top, MacNab?"

"I have that," answered the Scotchman in a reminiscent tone.

"How many did you kill?"

"Four-r--ah'm thinking; but ah'm no certain aboot one of them."

"Four! And none too dusty. Hit it, MacNab, me boy"--the ball would dance in his face--"hit it, as if 'twas the one of which you are not certain. Listen here, boys"--once again the ball was at rest on the ground--"I was behind Captain Trent when we went over--in the third wave; and when I got to the Germans I was just in time to see it."

Jimmy's pauses were always dramatic.

"See wot, sargint?" An interested and comparatively new arrival to the battalion would lean forward.

"Captain Trent lying at the bottom of the trench--he'd gone over with the first wave--and a Hun pulling a bayonet out of him. Moreover, Captain Trent was wounded in the head." His voice gathered in fury.

"Think of it, me bohunks; then think of a conscientious objector; and then come and kill this ruddy ball. A dirty filthy scut of a German waiter murdering a wounded Englishman. Hit it, MacNab; hit it; stab it, kick it; think you're scrambling for whisky in a prohibited area."

"Wot did you do, sargint?" The new arrival was still interested.

"What would you have done, Marmaduke? Come here, my boy; come here and breathe blood."

The new arrival--a little bashful at his sudden notoriety--stepped forward. "I'd have killed him, sargint."

"Then kill this ball; go on--kill it. Damme, boy; you're jumping about like an old woman looking for a flea in a bed. Move, boy, move; the ball's the flea, and you're the old trout. Bite it, boy, bite it; stamp on it; take out your fork and stick it with that." The ball came to rest; the new arrival mopped his brow. "Did I ever tell you how to kill a man with your dinner fork, by sticking it into his neck? I will some day; it's a good death for a Hun."

"Did you catch that there swine, sergeant?" Another voice from the squad took up the tale.

"Did I catch him? Did I catch him? If I hadn't caught him, Percival, I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't dare look an exempted indispensable in the face--let alone you. And for a fat man he ran well."

"Didn't 'e fight?" Marmaduke had more or less recovered his breath.

"Fight!" O'Shea grinned at the recollection. "He looked up; he saw me about five yards away; he gave one squawk like the female ducked-billed platypus calling to her young, and he faded round the traverse like the family do when the landlord comes for the rent. Come here, O'Sullivan--and break up the home."

Marmaduke retired, to be replaced by a brawny Irishman.

"I caught him, O'Sullivan--hit, man, hit--just as he reached his dug-out. Kick it, man; you can't use your b.u.t.t from there. Jab, jab--you blighter; for G.o.d's sake use your gun as if you loved it. He stuck in the door, O'Sullivan, for half a second. There's the ball--that's his back. Go on. Good, good." With an awful curse the Irishman lunged and the ball dropped to the ground.

"Dead," O'Shea grinned. "That's what I did; through the back. But the blamed thing stuck; I couldn't get it out. What do you do then, Marmaduke?"

"Put a round in, sargint, and blow it out."

"Good boy, Marmaduke. You'll be a Field-Marshal before you've done.

That's what I did too; and I blew the swine down the entrance. Now then, half with sticks and half with rifles; go on--fight----"

This, as I said, was one of Jimmy's better stories. Incidentally it had the merit of being true. . . .

But one could continue indefinitely. Some one will write a book one day about Jimmy O'Shea, and the manner of his life. If so, order an advance copy; it will be the goods. Just at the moment it was the manner of his death that had me. I was back again in derelict Vermelles, with its spattered water tower, and the flat desolate plain in front. Loos is out of sight over the hill; only the great slag heap lies squat and menacing on one's left, with the remnants of Big Willie and Little Willie near to its base in the old blood-soaked Hohenzollern redoubt. Cambrin, Guinchy, La Ba.s.see--silent and haunted, teeming with ghosts, lie stagnant in the morning sun. The cobwebs drift across the Hulluch road, and in the distance, by the first bend, a man pus.h.i.+ng a wheeled stretcher comes slowly walking back to the dressing station.

It's still going on: nothing much has changed; and yet--the cigar is good; the brandy superb: the brandy Jimmy preferred. He only spent one leave in England; as a sergeant he couldn't get more; but I dined with him one night, dress clothes and all complete, and we drank that brandy. One need hardly say, perhaps, that the writing on the register of his birth would have been hard put to it to spell O'Shea. There have been many like him this war, from "the legions of the lost ones and the cohorts of the d.a.m.ned"; and they've come to us out of the waste places, out of the lands that lie beyond the mountains. Unhonoured, unknown, they've finished the game; and having finished, they lie at peace. Britain called them; they came--those so-called wasters; look to it, you overmuch righteous ones, who have had to be dragged by the hairs of your heads--bleating of home ties and consciences. . . .

I forget which of the stories I heard him telling the men that morning before they went over. He read one lot a thing he swore he'd got out of a German paper--Heaven knows if it was true. I remember it ended up: "Above all things show no mercy to the accursed English. They are the starters of this war; so spit on them, kick them, use them as the swine they are."

"There you are, boys," cried Jimmy cheerily, "listen to what the pretties say about you. You'll be into 'em in a minute; and don't forget what I've told you about the way to use your gun. Kill fast and kill clean. Don't you put up with any back lash from a sausage-eating waiter. Remember you're English, me boys; and remember the Regiment--the Regiment that's never yet failed."

And so he went on; worth a hundred times his weight in gold to men going in for the first time.

"Your point is at his throat, boy, don't forget it. You ain't playing the goat with a dam lump of straw now; you're going to get a bit of your own back with a real live Fritz. And if you make a mistake you may not have a chance of making another. Go there steady; don't get blown, or you'll find you won't be able to do what you'd like when you b.u.mp Master Boche."

He pa.s.sed me with a salute and a wink.

"Coming over?" he asked me.

"I am, Jimmy, with some wire and other atrocities."

"Good," he said. "The boys are simply frothing blood."

He went on; and that was the last time I saw Jimmy O'Shea alive.

Ye G.o.ds! My Lord ----, some day I'll tell you of your son's end. You kicked him out--perhaps rightly; though mercy was never your strong point. But if any of the belted ancestors in that gallery of yours did as much for England as Jimmy did, or died as gloriously as Jimmy died, well, you should be a proud man, prouder even than you are. He sent the boys over raving mad with blood, and they struck Bavarians--and good Bavarians: men who could fight, and men who did fight. They were at it, teeth, feet, and steel for ten minutes: primitive, l.u.s.tful fighting; and then the Bavarians broke; with the boys after them, stabbing and cursing. One or two were left, though they wouldn't surrender, more power to them. A Bavarian officer, in fact, concluded the eventful career of Sapper O'Toole, the company rum-swallowing champion. True he brained that officer with a coil of barbed wire on the end of a pick helve, even as the bullet entered his heart; but he was a great loss to us. And it was just as we surged over their bodies that we came to the tableau.

Jimmy lay round the traverse. We found him at the bottom when we'd sorted out the litter. There were six of them he'd done in in all; you could trace what had happened. They'd been lining the trench, and he'd taken them in order. It was in the fifth that his bayonet stuck. He couldn't get it out. It was still there. At that moment, evidently, Number Six had come at him, and he'd had no time. So they closed; and, my G.o.d! they'd fought.

I think they both must have gone out about the same time. Jimmy was shot through the heart by the Bavarian's revolver; the Bavarian's throat was cut with Jimmy's clasp knife.