And We Go On by Will R. Bird

Author:Will R. Bird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2014-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

In a German Trench

We found a little estaminet between our village and Bourecq, a small house managed by a gaunt, bony-faced woman with eye sockets like a skull. A varied company used to gather there each night and spend money freely, but, like the widow’s cruse, it never seemed to run dry of wine or coffee. It was there we met old “Peter.” We never knew him by any other name. He belonged to the R.C.R.’s and was a hard-bitten, fantastic old soldier used for odd duties. Tommy sympathized with him regarding his regiment’s well-known liking for brasso and blanco, and was soon in his confidence. Peter wanted to win a medal. He had had nineteen months in the line without receiving the slightest recognition of his worth, and it grieved him.

“Some bleedin’ pup comes over wot has money and goes in the line five minutes and has a Military Cross stuck on his chest,” he wheezed. “Wot for, I awsks yer? Nobody knows. Some chap’ll come fresh and dandy from Blighty and be feelin’ good as he gits in a big scrap. He pulls some blinkin’ stunt and up goes a V.C. ’Course he’s likely won the trinket, but I awsks yer, wot would he be like if he’d had a year first in the muck. Jist like any of us, I tells yer, with his tail draggin’ and only watchin’ his own hide.”

He had been crimed once for striking a sergeant. Up in the crater line at Vimy one night when it was raining in French style a messenger had said that the non-com wanted to see him. Peter asked if morning would not do, as he would be obliged to go overland to get to the sergeant’s dugout, the sap having been blown in by Minnenwefers. No, it was urgent, so after Peter got through his turn on post he wallowed through the mire – and got caught by machine gun fire. For over half an hour he was forced to stay back of the trench, soaked, chilled, cramped, trying to lie flatter each time the gun fired. Then at last, after twice falling into water-filled craters, mud from hoofs to horns, dead beat, wet to the skin, fed up to the back teeth, he reached the sergeant’s shelter where that three-striped authority had remained in dry comfort-and the non-com wished to know the number of his rifle.

“I soaked him a good one,” said Peter. “Number of me blinkin’ rifle! I hit him hard, I did.”

He told us of another place they had been, some area on the Somme. They were hurried up after dark, before they had rations drawn, to repulse an expected German attack. It had rained a steady drizzle, and when they got to their place there was not a flare going up. They lay in a ditch, without definite orders, without food, without wire in front of them, waiting for an attack that never came, and just before daylight discovered that they were in the rear of the second defense line.

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