"Hold your tongues," I said, "fill them with water, fill them with (p. 128) anything. Ready? To the Section cook, Stoner, long life and ability to cook our sweets evermore."
We drank. Just as we had finished, our company stretcher-bearers came by the door, a pre-occupied look on their faces and dark clots of blood on their trousers and tunics.
"The cooks have copped it," one of the bearers answered. "They were cooking grub in a shed at the rear near Dead Cow Villa, and a pip-squeak came plunk into the place. The head cook copped it in the legs, both were broken, and Erney, you know Erney?"
"Dead," said the stretcher-bearer. "Poor fellow he was struck unconscious. We carried him to the dressing station, and he came to at the door. 'Mother!' he said, trying to sit up on the stretcher. That was his last word. He fell back and died."
There was a long silence. The glory of the flowers seemed to have faded away and the lighted cigars went out on the table. Dead! Poor fellow. He was such a clean, hearty boy, very obliging and kind. How often had he given me hot water, contrary to regulations, to pour on my tea. (p. 129)
"To think of it," said Stoner. "It might have been any of us! We must put these flowers on his grave."
That night we took the little vase with its poppies, cornflowers, pinks, and roses, and placed them on the black, cold earth which covered Erney, the clean-limbed, good-hearted boy. May he rest in peace.
Our old battalion billets still, Parades as usual go on. We buckle in with right good will, And daily our equipment don As if we meant to fight, but no! The guns are booming through the air, The trenches call us on, but oh! We don't go there, we don't go there!
I have come to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of what appears to the unit as loitering by the wayside. We longed for action, for some adventure with which to relieve the period of "everlastin' waitin'."
Nine o'clock was striking in the room downstairs and the old man and woman who live in the house were pottering about, locking doors, and putting the place into order. Lying on the straw in the loft we (p. 131) could hear them moving chairs and washing dishes; they have seven sons in the army, two are wounded and one is a prisoner in Germany. They are very old and are unable to do much hard work; all day long they listen to the sound of the guns "out there." In the evening they wash the dishes, the man helping the woman, and at night lock the doors and say a prayer for their sons. Now and again they speak of their troubles and narrate stories of the war and the time when the Prussians passed by their door on the journey to Paris. "But they'll never pass here again," the old man says, smoking the pipe of tobacco which our boys have given him. "They'll get smashed out there." As he speaks he points with a long lean finger towards the firing line, and lifts his stick to his shoulder in imitation of a man firing a rifle.