Sergeant Michael Cassidy RE by Herman Cyril McNeile

Author:Herman Cyril McNeile
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sergeant Michael Cassidy RE
ISBN: 9780755123360
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2013-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

10: Mud and Noise

Any Old Place – the Trenches, Winter, 1914

“’Tis a strange war, sir,” said Cassidy to me one day, as we watched the ceaseless stream of London traffic through the open window. “’Tis a strange war, and one which makes a man think, and wonder what will be the end of it at all. ’Tis beating them we shall be in the end, but who will be giving us back the friends and the lads we have lost? They tell me we may be after taking money from them to punish them, but will money give back life to those who are lying stiff and stark out yonder – the lads we have fought with, and drunk with, and lived alongside of for years?”

“It’s the same in all wars,” I answered soberly, for in all faith the thought gives one to think.

“Ah! ’tis different, sir,” he said. “Was I not through the South African War, and are you putting this on the same footing at all? Some of these battalions have left at the present moment eight or nine men out of the thousand odd who came out with them in August. Think of it, sir – eight out of a thousand! And where will you be finding the others at all? They are not all dead, I know, but they are either that or wounded or missing. You cannot conceive it at all, sir. ’Twas only the other day I was talking to a lad home on leave, and he was telling me what it was like in the trenches now. It was a sergeant he was, and they were relieved one night in the ordinary way like by another regiment. They were not going back there again for four days, and when they had formed up behind, and the roll call was being taken, they found one of the lads was missing – at least there were many missing, but it was of this one he was after speaking.

“The other regiment took over the trenches in the dark, and another one took over from them two days later. And then the first regiment went back again to the same place. That night the sergeant happened to go down a bit of a communication trench which the other regiments had not happened to use. At the end he found the man of whom I spoke – the one who was missing. He was wounded and weak, and he was stuck. Stuck, I tell you, stuck in the mud, and it was unable to move that he was. His cries had not been heard, and for four days and four nights had the lad been there. They got him out just before he died. ’Twas no one’s fault – just sheer bad luck – but it shows what those trenches are like these days; though no one can realise what they really are till he has actually seen them. If you imagine a gateway into a field, which

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