A Man Could Stand Up— - Ford Madox Ford (best books to read for success .TXT) 📗

Tietjens. Half-a-dozen Germans had jumped into that sector of trenches in various places. As mad as march hares!⁠ ⁠… That fellow had been shot through both eyes, a fact that seemed to fill the little Aranjuez with singular horror. He said he would go mad if he thought he would be blinded, because there was a girl in the teashop at Bailleul, and a fellow called Spofforth of the Wiltshires would get her if his, Aranjuez’s, beauty was spoiled. He positively whimpered at the thought and then gave the information that this was considered to be a false alarm: he meant a feigned attack to draw off troops from somewhere else where the real attempt was being made. There must be pretty good hell going on somewhere else, then.

It looked like that. For almost immediately all the guns had fallen silent except for one or two that bumped and grumped.⁠ ⁠… It had all been just for fun, then!

Well, they were damn near Bailleul now. They would be driven past it in a day or two. On the way to the Channel. Aranjuez would have to hurry to see his girl. The little devil! He had overdrawn his confounded little account over his girl, and Tietjens had had to guarantee his overdraft⁠—which he could not afford to do. Now the little wretch would probably overdraw still more⁠—and Tietjens would have to guarantee still more of an overdraft.

But that night, when Tietjens had gone down into the black silence of his own particular branch of a cellar⁠—they really had been in wine-cellars at that date, cellars stretching for hundreds of yards under chalk with strata of clay which made the mud so particularly sticky and offensive⁠—he had found the sound of the pickaxes beneath his flea-bag almost unbearable. They were probably our own men. Obviously they were our own men. But it had not made much difference, for, of course, if they were there they would be an attraction, and the Germans might just as well be below them, countermining.

His nerves had been put in a bad way by that rotten strafe⁠—that had been just for fun. He knew his nerves were in a bad way because he had a ghostly visit from 09 Evans, a fellow whose head had been smashed, as it were, on his, Tietjen’s, own hands, just after Tietjens had refused him home leave to go and get killed by a prizefighter who had taken up with his, 09 Evans’, wife. It was complicated, but Tietjens wished that fellows who wished to fall on him when they were stopping things would choose to stop things with something else than their heads. That wretched Hun dropping on his shoulder, when, by the laws of war, he ought to have been running back to his own lines, had given him, Tietjens, a jar that still shook his whole body. And, of course, a shock. The fellow had looked something positively Apocalyptic, his whitey-grey arms and legs spread abroad.⁠ ⁠… And it had been an imbecile affair, with no basis of real fighting.⁠ ⁠…

That thin surge of whitey-grey objects of whom not more than a dozen had reached the line⁠—Tiejens knew that, because, with a melodramatically drawn revolver and the fellows who would have been really better employed carrying away the unfortunate Hun who had had in consequence to wait half an hour before being attended to⁠—with those fellows loaded up with Mills bombs like people carrying pears, he had dodged, revolver first, round half-a-dozen traverses, and in quite enough of remains of gas to make his lungs unpleasant⁠ ⁠… Like a child playing a game of “I spy!” Just like that.⁠ ⁠… But only to come on several lots of Tommies standing round unfortunate objects who were either trembling with fear and wet and sweat, or panting with their nice little run.⁠ ⁠…

This surge then of whitey-grey objects, sacrificed for fun, was intended⁠ ⁠… was intended ulti⁠ ⁠… ultim⁠ ⁠… then⁠ ⁠…

A voice, just under his camp-bed, said:

“Bringt dem Hauptmann eine Kerze.⁠ ⁠…” As who should say: “Bring a candle for the Captain.⁠ ⁠…” Just like that! A dream!

It hadn’t been as considerable of a shock as you might have thought to a man just dozing off. Not really as bad as the falling dream: but quite as awakening.⁠ ⁠… His mind had resumed that sentence.

The handful of Germans who had reached the trench, had been sacrificed for the stupid sort of fun called Strategy. Probably. Stupid!⁠ ⁠… It was, of course, just like German spooks to go mining by candlelight. Obsoletely Nibelungen-like. Dwarfs probably!⁠ ⁠… They had sent over that thin waft of men under a blessed lot of barrage and stuff.⁠ ⁠… A lot! A whole lot! It had been really quite an artillery strafe. Ten thousand shells as like as not. Then, somewhere up the line they had probably made a demonstration in force. Great bodies of men, an immense surge. And twenty to thirty thousand shells. Very likely some miles of esplanade, as it were, with the sea battering against it. And only a demonstration in force.⁠ ⁠…

It could not be real fighting. They had not been ready for their spring advance.

It had been meant to impress somebody imbecile.⁠ ⁠… Somebody imbecile in Wallachia, or Sofia, or Asia Minor. Or Whitehall, very likely. Or the White House!⁠ ⁠… Perhaps they had killed a lot of Yankees⁠—to make themselves Transatlantically popular. There were no doubt, by then, whole American Army Corps in the line somewhere. By then! Poor devils, coming so late into such an accentuated hell. Damnably accentuated.⁠ ⁠… The sound of even that little bit of fun had been portentously more awful than even quite a big show say in ’15. It was better to have been in then and got used to it.⁠ ⁠… If it hadn’t broken you, just by duration.⁠ ⁠…

Might be to impress anybody.⁠ ⁠… But who was going to be impressed? Of course, our legislators with the stewed-pear brains running about the ignoble corridors with coke-brize floors and mahogany doors⁠ ⁠… might be impressed.⁠ ⁠… You must not rhyme!⁠ ⁠… Or, of course, our