We went wide and got round to the rear of the position. Not a sign of any of the detachments in any houses round about. Then we worked our way up a hedge which led to the rear of the guns, dropping flat for shells to burst. They were more on the farm now than the guns. We reached the signal pit,--a sort of dug-out with a roof of pit props, and earth and a trench dug to the entrance.
The corporal went along the trench. “Christ!” he said, and came blindly back.
For an instant the world spun. Without seeing I saw. Then I climbed along the broken trench. A five-nine had landed on the roof of the pit and crashed everything in.
A pair of boots was sticking out of the earth.--
He had been in charge of the battery for _me_. From the safety of the cellar he had gone out to see if the men were all right. He had done _my_ job!
Gunners came with shovels. In five minutes we had him out. He was still warm. The doctor was on his way. We carried him out of the shelling on a duck board. Some of the gunners went on digging for the other boy. The doctor was there by the time we’d carried him to the road. He was dead.
A pair of boots sticking out of the earth.
For days I saw nothing else. That jolly fellow whom I’d left laughing, sitting down to write a letter to his wife,--a pair of boots sticking out. Why? Why?
We had laid him in a cottage. The sergeant and I went back, and by the light of a candle which flickered horribly, emptied his pockets and took off his ring. How cold Death was. It made him look ten years younger.
Then we put him into an army blanket with his boots on and all his clothes. The only string we had was knotted. It took a long time to untie it. At last it was done.
A cigarette holder, a penknife, a handkerchief, the ring. I took them out with me into the moonlight, all that King and country had left of him.
What had this youngster been born for, sent to a Public School, earned his own living and married the pretty girl whose photo I had seen in the dug-out? To die like a rat in a trap, to have his name one day in the Roll of Honour and so break two hearts, and then be forgotten by his country because he was no more use to it. What was the worth of Public School education if it gave the country no higher ideal than war?--to kill or be killed. Were there no brains in England big enough to avert it? He hadn’t wanted it. He was a representative specimen. What had he joined for? Because all his pals had. He didn’t want them to call him coward. For that he had left his wife and his home, and to-morrow he would be dropped into a hole in the ground and a parson would utter words about God and eternal life.