THE CINDER PATH (31 page)

looked already dead.

Charlie was turning his gaze away when he almost

flung himself round again and towards the last stretcher; then addressing the lieutenant, he said, "Could I be excused for a moment, a friend?"

"Carry on."

He now hurried after the line of stretchers, and when

he reached the end one he looked across at the nurse

on the other side and 'started, "Is he?"

"No, no." She shook her head. "But he's in a bad way."

When the stretchers were lowered to the ground to await their turn for transport, he bent down and whispered,

"Arthur! Arthur!"

There was a flicker of the eyelids, the head turned

just the slightest.

Again he said, "Arthur! it's me, Charlie."

The lids were raised slowly, the jaw dropped, the

lips moved, they said Charlie but without making a

sound.

"Oh, Arthur."

"Excuse me, sir; we must get him in." The

stretcher was lifted again, the jaw moved, the lips

moved, Charlie put his hand out and cupped the ashen

face. "Oh, Arthur."

"Excuse me." He was pushed gently aside;

the stretcher was lifted up into the ambulance; he

turned and looked at the man who was giving some kind

of instruction to the nurse. She climbed up into the

ambulance, the doors were closed, and it drove

away.

The man spoke now. "You knew him?"

He gulped in his throat; there was an avalanche

of tears pouring down inside him.

"He ... he was a friend."

"I'm afraid he's in a bad way."

"What's . . . what's wrong with him?"

"Almost everything I should say; he's lost both

legs and an arm."

God Almighty!

He was closing his eyes against the picture when a

voice acting like an injection in his own arm yelled,

"Fall in! Come on now! Come on now! Look

slippy! Fall in!"

Without further words he and the doctor

parted.

Now he was at the head of his platoon, looking

along them, seeing them all without legs and minus an

arm each.

"Quick march!"

The quick march developed into a mark time, then into a scramble up the gangway, and they were aboard.

The quay had seemed crowded and it was a long

quay and the boat seemed very small compared with it, yet everyone who had been on that quay seemed to have boarded the boat. They stood packed like up-ended sardines,

one against the other, and as the ship left the quay and a cheer went up, he thought, We're mad.

Everybody's mad. Life

had become so cheap that they were cheering for death.

Poor Arthur. Poor Arthur.

Good-bye, Nellie.

H

E was seasoned; he had been pickled in mud,

blood, and slime. The anatomy of man had been

laid bare for him to examine in the first week in the

trenches when his sergeant's belly was split open.

It was in that moment when he had viewed the squirming

mass of intestines that a strange, almost lunatic

thought struck him. It was the first time his

whirling mind told him that the sergeant's innards had

seen daylight. It was in that moment too that he lost his fear. What was death after all? A mere blowing from

existence into oblivion, you wouldn't know anything about it. In a way it was better than being maimed,

burned, gassed, or blinded. If he had to go,

well, that was the way he wanted to go, like his sergeant had gone.

Yet there was another side to this business of dying,

the side that was still alive . . . over there, his

sergeant's wife and her four children. But one tried not to dwell on this. Such things were docketed in the corner of

the mind where Nellie dwelt and from where she was apt

to escape and occupy the narrow camp bed with him.

He was sharing this particular dug-out with Lieutenant

Bradshaw. He liked Bradshaw, he had come

to respect him. Beyond his ah-lah fashion of talking

he was a nice fellow. Three of his brothers in a

Kent battalion had been killed near Arras

last year; another had gone on the Somme; an

uncle had been killed near Hebuterne early in

this year. He seemed to have relatives in all the

regiments; a cousin who had died in the 20th

Wearsiders and another brother who was

severely wounded in the Pioneers.

Bit by bit, Charlie was able to gauge his

companion's family history. They were army people on

his mother's side but not on his father's. His father was a judge. He, Bradshaw, was one of six brothers,

and all four who had been killed had been going in for

law. There was only himself and his elder brother left.

He had come close to Bradshaw in the last few

months. He was flattered that Bradshaw thought him so

well-read, even admitting that he was no reader

himself, not of literature at any rate,

mathematics was his subject. He felt

he would have got a first at Oxford if he'd time

to finish, but he had wanted to get into this business.

The weather had been stinking. It was April but there

had been snow; there was mud everywhere, and when going over the top should you slip and fall you swallowed it, and you hadn't to be surprised if as you groped and pulled

yourself to your feet there was a hand outstretched to help you.

The first time he had gripped such a hand he had

sprung back as if he had been shot, and he had

felt he wanted to vomit as he stared down at the

stiff wide-spread fingers appealingly held out

to him.

There were days when the mud was the sole

enemy, when it bogged down horses, guns,

lorries and even the new monsters, the tanks, and

at times like this the spirits of all those concerned would sink into it, only to be dragged upwards by their

lieutenant's voice.

Bradshaw was popular with the men. Charlie himself was

popular too, he knew that, but in a different way

from Bradshaw. The men would talk to him, ask him

questions, try to pump him; they never took that liberty with Lieutenant Bradshaw. Of course Bradshaw

was a pip up, that might be the

answer; but no, there was a subtle difference between them, it was in the tone of the voice, the tilt of the chin, the look in the eye. Bradshaw always remembered that he

was in command, that was the difference.

But at the particular moment spirits were high and they had right to be. They had heard that the 10th had broken through the Hindenburg Line from the West and then within a few days had been relieved by the

6th and 8th, and the 5th and 9th. And as news of

further advances by other divisions came through so

morale soared, from the still spruce top brass behind the line down to the lice-ridden Tommy in the thick of

it.

There was rejoicing too that the casualties

had been light compared with other battles for only

seven officers and around three hundred and fifty

N.c.odds and men had been killed and wounded-that was

all. Cheap payment for the Wancourt line.

At times Charlie likened the whole affair to a

game of chess played with the Mad Hatter and

Alice; that the divisions, brigades and

battalions, even platoons ever got themselves

sorted out was a miracle to him. In some cases they

overlapped so much, with the result that chaos followed and with chaos unnecessary

death. But that was war as played out by the generals.

It was the middle of May and both Charlie and

Lieutenant Bradshaw had decided long before this that

their Blighty leave was overdue. They had been

relieved and had had a few days behind the lines

twice within the past months; but what was that? As

Bradshaw said, they'd never had a real bath. He

would, he said, be quite content to drown in steaming hot water. Of course, he had added with a laugh, it would

be an added comfort if he had a companion by his

side at the time.

"What are you going to do when you get back,

Charlie?" They had come to using Christian names

by now.

"The same as you, first go off, although I won't

let the water up to my eyebrows, there's no outlet

beyond; then I'll have the biggest meal that's ever been cooked, roast lamb, six veg. I'll have the veg

on a separate plate because there won't be room for

them on the main one, and then I'll have three

Yorkshire puddings, two with gravy and one with milk

and sugar."

"Oh my God!" John Bradshaw screwed

up his face in disgust.

"Well, what would be your choice?"'

"Salmon, a whole salmon, fresh, straight

out of the river, lightly boiled and floating in butter and nothing else, nothing... no vegetables, just the

whole salmon to myself, and wine . . . wine, of

course. Then a whole bottle of port, thick,

sliding, tongue-coating port. And then Pd be

ready to meet the ladies. Of course, you won't

want any ladies, you'll have your wife, and by the

number of letters you get from her I imagine she'll be

as eager to see you as you are to see her."

"Yes, yes, I hope so."

Nellie ... his wife. Well, she'd be as good

as when he got back.

When he got back? The thought caused

him to say, "Do you think they'll clip us and we'll be in the next push?"

John Bradshaw remained silent for a moment.

Then he moved his tongue around the inside of his lower lip before pushing it into his cheek and saying, "I hope the hell not; but there's something in the wind. The pressure must be off the Germans now on the

Russian front, and the French are no more bleeding

use, and so it would appear it's solely up to us.

One good sign is the stuff they're bringing up

looks enough to blow

the bloody world to bits. Anyway, we'll see,

Charlie boy; we'll see."

Second-Lieutenant Charles MacFell and

Lieutenant John Bradshaw didn't get their

leave, but like thousands of others their senses had become dulled with the continuous bombardment of the past fortnight.

In the early morning of June 7th Charlie,

walking along the duck-boards, stopped here and there

and, when he could make himself heard, spoke to the men leaning against the parapet, their guns by their sides.

"Good luck!" he said, and the answer always came back, "An5 you, sir."

When he stopped near his sergeant he checked his

watch, and the sergeant, without speaking, looked

at his.

"Three minutes."

"Yes, sir, three minutes. Good cover,

isn't it, sir?"

"Excellent."

At a curve in the trench John Bradshaw was

standing and next to him Captain LeeFarrow. It was the

captain who asked, "Everything set?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good cover?"

"Excellent, sir."

The captain now looked up into the sky, to the stars

twinkling between the flashes from the guns. "Nice night," he said.

Both John Bradshaw and Charlie, following the

captain's gaze, answered together, "Yes, sir,

nice night." Then in the darkness they smiled at

each other without being aware of it.

"Good luck."

"And you, sir."

"Better take your positions."

Charlie and John Bradshaw moved away, and

when they parted a few steps further up the trench,

Bradshaw said quietly, "All the best,

Charlie," and Charlie answered, "And a

whole salmon done in butter."

Another deafening explosion smothered the chuckle, then Charlie was standing in place.

"Thirty seconds."

"Twenty."

"Ten."

"Over. Over. Over." The word ran along the

trench like the echo of a song that was cut off here and there by the noise of the band.

How far did he run across the open space before

he started to yell? How many of his pistol shots found

their target. He didn't

know, he heard screams and groans between the deafening blast of the artillery. A shell exploded near him

and he was thrown off his feet, but surprisingly as

soon as he was down he was up again. He remembered

being worried for a flashing second in case his pistol

had been blocked with mud. He couldn't remember

reloading.

When he fell flat over a body and heard a

broad North Country voice, saying, "Bloody

hell!" he shouted, "All right?" and the face close to his bawled, "Is that you, Mister MacFell?"

"Yes!" He was screaming, and he was answered by a scream. "Thought it was Jerry. I've

copped it in the knee. In the knee, sir."

"Well, stay put! I'll be back."

"You will?" There was the slightest trace of fear in the question and he yelled firmly, "Yes,

definitely, I'll be back," while thinking the

man would likely be blown to smithereens in a few

minutes, if not by the enemy by his own artillery.

He was going through a maze of blasted barbed wire;

it tore at his hands, then he was in a melee again, but now he could make out

the whirling, prancing figures. "Thrust it in!

Turn. Pull. Thrust it in! Turn. Pull."

The steel blade was coming at him. He pulled on

the trigger of his pistol but nothing happened; the blade within inches of his chest was knocked sidewards, and in the flare of the bursting shells he gave a lightning

glance towards the man who had saved his skin. But there was no recognition; as far as he could remember he

wasn't one of theirs. But this often happened,