Behind the Lines (20 page)

Rawley put down the petrol tin and broke the silence: “Well!” he said.

The other continued to regard him for a few moments longer in silence. “Well!” he repeated at last, in a deep, gruff voice. “And what the hell do you think you're doing here?”

Rawley was feeling uncomfortable under the man's intense and hostile gaze, but he shrugged his shoulder and answered, “Much about the same as you, I suppose.”

The other grunted and spat. “And who the hell asked you to come?”

“No one,” answered Rawley. “But I should have thought there was enough room for both of us in this God-forsaken place.”

The other raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. “Oh, you would, would you! Well, that depends.” He rested his elbow on his upraised knee. “And so you're a deserter, Mr. Officer! I've heard of you.” And his eyes travelled slowly and insolently over the stained braid on the cuff of Rawley's unbuttoned tunic, the tarnished buttons, the collarless shirt, unshaven chin and tousled hair. “And you got the wind up when the guns went bang, and ran away, eh!” he continued slowly, with curling lip.

Rawley controlled his temper with great difficulty. “It's true I'm a deserter,” he retorted, “but not through cold feet. And what the hell has it got to do with you, anyway!”

The other withdrew his foot from the fire-step and grinned unpleasantly. “What it's got to do with me is that I don't want white-livered little bastards crawling round here. Do you understand that, little Mr. Officer?” And very deliberately he dealt Rawley a stinging blow across the face with his open palm.

Rawley staggered sideways with flaming cheek, and then leapt forward in fury. His left cracked home on the big man's jaw; his right thudded into the big body. The man stepped back out of reach, slipped the rifle from his shoulder, and put up his fists. Rawley went at him again. He got one more blow in under the long arms, and then one of the huge fists shot out and knocked him off his feet on to the floor of the trench.

He struggled up again painfully. The big man stood waiting for him with an anticipatory grin on his face. Rawley went for him again, but he had no chance. The big man was not only vastly superior to him in weight, height and reach, but was also more than his match in skill. Rawley feinted and dodged and hit desperately, but the big man blocked all his punches, and, waiting for a favourable moment, very deliberately and scientifically dealt Rawley a blow on the jaw that rattled every tooth in his head and stretched him almost senseless on the floor of the trench.

He lay motionless for a few moments. Then slowly and painfully, by digging his fingers into the wall of the trench, rose shakily to his feet. He was covered in mud from head to foot and the blood from a cut lip furrowed the grime on his chin. He tottered a pace towards his opponent who stood watching him with arms akimbo, but his shaking legs gave way and he collapsed.

The big man sat down leisurely on the fire-step. He gripped the back of Rawley's tunic with one huge hand, and yanked him on to the fire-step beside him. Then he took a cigarette case from his pocket, stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and pushed the case under Rawley's nose. Rawley, sick and giddy, leaning back against the trench wall, shook his head; but the big fellow shoved the case against his chest and growled menacingly, “Go on, take one.”

Rawley raised a shaking hand and fumbled at the case, whereupon the fellow plucked out a cigarette, unceremoniously jerked up Rawley's chin with his hand, and poked the cigarette between his lips. Then he struck a match and lighted both cigarettes.

“Um. You've got more guts than I thought,” he said presently, in a voice that was almost friendly. “What did you desert for if it wasn't cold feet?”

Rawley did not reply.

“Come on now,” growled the other, in his old menacing tone. “And the truth, mind, or I'll knock your flaming head off.”

Rawley turned his aching head slowly and looked at the weather-beaten face thrust close to his own. “I don't see what the hell it's got to do with you,” he said. “But if you must know, I quarrelled with a senior officer and hit him.”

The other blew a cloud of smoke from his nose and looked at Rawley sideways. “What did you hit him for?” he demanded, after a pause during which he seemed to have been considering whether he could believe this.

“He was one of those swine who always wangle out of unhealthy jobs,” answered Rawley. “And when during a little shelling he wanted to stop a fellow's leave so that he himself could go back out of it, I saw red.”

“Saw red!” echoed the big man contemptuously. “Why didn't you shoot him? That sort's best dead.”

“He is,” said Rawley. “That's why I'm here. He went over backwards and broke his neck.”

The other chuckled. “Well, that's not so bad after all,” he conceded. He stood up and slung the rifle over one shoulder. “Well, Mr. Neckbreaker, understand that I'm boss here, and you'll have to hit damned hard to break my neck. Get in my way and—phut!” He made a significant movement with his fingers. “Jump to it when I give the word, and you can take your pickings with the rest.” And with that he turned and sauntered off round the traverse.

IV

The degrading discomforts of the life worried Rawley. He had borne discomforts with the battery patiently and
cheerfully, for they were part of the necessary business of getting on with the war; but filth and squalor were hard to bear when the sense of mortification for the common good was lacking. In the gun-pits some degree of personal cleanliness was always attainable. In times of stress one might have to wait two or three days for a shave; and even if one became lousy, always sooner or later came the luxury of a hot bath and clean underclothes. But living here, in an abandoned dug-out of the devastated area, he had to go unshaven. He had no razor. He had no soap, except when he was lucky enough to find a hard, gritty morsel in one of the old trenches. He had only the clothes he stood up in, and they were filthy. One night he heated a can of water on their fire and washed his undergarment as well as he could without soap. He stood wrapt in a blanket during the task, and when he put on his clothes on the following morning they seemed little cleaner for all his efforts.

The matter did not worry Alf; but Rawley found it insupportable. What he needed was a change of undergarments. It was impossible to go frequently through that ordeal of going naked, but for a blanket, while one washed the garments and waited for them to dry.

He found a way out of the difficulty one evening at dusk when he found himself in the neighbourhood of a shattered village. This village lay on the outskirts of the devastated area, and though badly battered was more than a mere heap of brick and rubble. Tiles were gone from the roofs; walls stood ragged against the sky, and many of them
were but tumbled piles of bricks, but the shell of many of the cottages remained.

The whole front wall of one cottage had been removed by shell or bomb as neatly as though sliced by a knife, and the interior gaped open to the street like a doll's house with the front removed. Bricks and smashed furniture littered the floors and faded paper hung in strips from the walls. A staircase with a shattered banister-rail led upstairs to a room where overturned bedroom furniture hung precariously on a sagging floor and threatened an avalanche into the street. Odds and ends of garments were mixed up with the litter, and against the back wall of that upper room was a chest with half-open drawers spilling clothes.

It was these that Rawley coveted. One or two of the less damaged cottages on the outskirts of the village were occupied by an A.S.C. unit, and two Nissen huts stood in a weed-grown field nearby. Otherwise the village and the surrounding country were deserted.

Rawley lay down to wait for darkness.

Lights appeared in the occupied cottages and in the Nissen huts. The strident screech of a gramophone was wafted fitfully on the breeze. Outside one of the huts a man was singing, and the silhouette of his head and shoulders came and went against the light square window. Then he opened the door, releasing for a moment a flood of light and a strident burst of gramophone, and closed it behind him.

Rawley entered the tiny village from the other end and flitted along the road to the cottage. He picked his way cautiously over the bricks and fallen furniture on the ground floor. He groped his way step by step up the cranky staircase, praying that it would not collapse beneath him. Fortunately that chest of drawers was against the wall where the sagging bedroom floor would be at its strongest. He sidled along with his back to the wall and reached the chest.

The top drawer was half open. He put in his hand and pulled a bundle of damp clothing on to the top of the chest. He held up the garments one by one in front of him so that their outlines showed against the night sky, framed in the shattered cottage front. They were all women's clothes. He tried to get at the next drawer, but the top drawer was warped with the damp and would neither close nor come out. The next drawer itself was slightly open, but would not move further. He was afraid to pull hard lest he should send the whole chest toppling down the sloping floor into the road. He tried the bottom drawer. It did not move. He pulled again harder, and to his joy the front came out in his hand. He pulled out the pile of garments inside, and tested them against the night sky. They were men's garments.

He took trousers, shirts, pants, vests and socks and rolled them into a bundle under his arm; but before he could move away the lights of a car or lorry flooded the road below him, and he crouched motionless and helpless
beside the chest till the dark shape of a lorry rumbled past and the road was dark again. Then he sidled back along the wall to the little landing. As he groped his way round to the head of the staircase his head became enveloped in something hanging on the wall. It was a damp-smelling jacket. He took it and went cautiously down the cranky stairs and out across the road to the open country.

CHAPTER XV

I

The question of supplies became acute. They discussed ways and means. “Kelly copped a lorry full of canteen stores the other day,” said Alf.

“How did he manage it?” asked Rawley.

“Well, he knew all about the lorry, you see—where it was going and what time. He and another chap stopped it on the road and got a lift. There was two chaps on the lorry. One chap driving and another bloke on the back. Kelly and his mate sat in front beside the driver. Then when they got to a bit of road with nothing in sight, Kelly loses his cap, and the driver stops for him to pick it up. Kelly and his mate jumps down, picks up the cap, and then Kelly goes to the front of the lorry and says to the driver: ‘Struth, look 'ere!' ‘What is it?' says the driver. ‘You come and have a look,' says Kelly, staring hard at the ground. So out jumps the driver and comes round to have a look. ‘Where?' he says. ‘Under there,' says Kelly. And when the bloke bent down to look, Kelly lays him out with his little sandbag. Then he calls the chap at the back: ‘Here, something's wrong with your mate.' So out jumps the other chap, and while he is bending over his mate, Kelly slogs him too. Then they drove off, cached all the stuff and burnt the lorry. He's a one, is Kelly. All canteen stuff, too—tinned crab, Ideal milk; proper stuff, I tell you.”

“Yes, but we aren't going to do any sandbagging,” objected Rawley. “I don't mind relieving the E.F.C. of some stuff, but I draw the line at that.”

“We might pinch some stuff from a ration dump,” suggested Alf.

“That's more like it,” said Rawley. “The Q.M.G. owes me some rations.”

Alf grinned. “I know the very place,” he went on eagerly. “They bring the stuff up by lorry at about ten at night, and the horse transport collects it at about six in the morning.”

“How far away?” asked Rawley.

“Goodish way. Ten kilos about.”

“That's all right. So long as it's not too near home.”

“They take about an hour to unload. Then we shall have to wait for the blokes at the dump to go to sleep. I know, 'cause I won a sack of bread from there before.”

“What about sentries?”

“Only one. We can dodge him or pull a sack over his head.”

“We'll dodge him. If the G.S. wagons come at six, the dump men won't turn out before five. That gives us five hours or thereabouts. We ought to be able to take a lot of stuff in that time without being seen.”

They set out soon after dark carrying empty sacks. A drizzling rain was falling, and they trudged along over the rough ground with old waterproof sheets round their shoulders. The usual pale flickerings of gun flashes rippled to and fro on the eastern horizon. Rawley trudged along in gloomy silence. Darkness and the mechanical
exercise of walking always stimulated his thoughts. And they always followed the same cycle. They began with a nagging sense of impotence and resentment, passed on to bitter comparisons between his present predicament and his previous happiness, took refuge in re-living and idealizing that happiness, came back to reality and groped desperately for some hole in the net which entangled him, and finding none, refused to think of the future and took refuge in the present.

His thoughts followed that course tonight. This expedition that sent him a dirty, unshaven, bedrabbled outcast tramping through the wilderness with a guttersnipe to steal from a dump disgusted him. Only necessity had made him consent to it. But having consented he found excuses for it. The primitive law of self-preservation overrode all others. Even in civilized English law it was held on occasion to abrogate that paramount one, thou shalt not kill. There was a distinction between taking Government stores and ordinary theft. Men in no such predicament as himself “won” or “scrounged” things and boasted of it. But it was the pettiness and meanness of it that disgusted him. It was a skulking mean business for one who had been an officer. Open brigandage would be less repugnant.