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

forward in the mud, protruded his rifle-muzzle between his bent knees, jerked his head swiftly to strain his sight along the minute line.⁠ ⁠… It was like a blurred fairytale! Why did that dwarf behave in a smart and soldierly manner? Through despair? It wasn’t likely!

The men wavered like the edge of a field of tall grass with the wind running along it; they felt round themselves for their bayonet-handles, like women attempting difficult feats with their skirts.⁠ ⁠… The dwarf cut his hand smartly away to his side, as the saying is; the men pulled their rifles up into line. Tietjens exclaimed:

“Stand at ease: stand easy,” negligently enough, then he burst out in uncontrollable irritation: “For God’s sake, put your beastly hats straight!” The men shuffled uneasily, this being no order known to them, and Tietjens explained: “No, this isn’t drill. It’s only that your hats all at sixes and sevens give me the pip!” And the whispers of the men went down the little line:

“You ’eer the orfcer.⁠ ⁠… Gives ’im the pip, we do!⁠ ⁠… Goin’ for a wawk in the pawk wiv our gels, we are.⁠ ⁠…” They glanced nevertheless aside and upwards at each other’s tin-hat rims and said: “Shove ’im a shade forward, ’Orace.⁠ ⁠… You tighten your martingale, Erb!” They were gaily rueful and impenitently profane: they had had thirty-six hours of let-off. A fellow louder-than-hummed:

“ ’As I wawk erlong ther Bor dee Berlong
Wiv an indipendent air⁠ ⁠… ⁠ ⁠…
W’ere’s me swegger-kine, you fellers!”

Tietjens addressed him:

“Did you ever hear Coborn sing that, Runt?” and Runt replied:

“Yes, sir. I was the hind legs of the elephant when he sung it in the Old Drury panto!”⁠ ⁠… A little, dark, beady-eyed Cockney, his enormous mouth moved lip on lip as if he were chewing a pebble in pride at the reminiscence. The men’s voices went on: “ ’Ind legs ’f the elephink!⁠ ⁠… good ol’ Helefink.⁠ ⁠… I’ll go n see ’n’ elephink first thing I do in Blighty!”

Tietjens said:

“I’ll give every man of you a ticket for Drury Lane next Boxing Day. We’ll all be in London for the next Boxing Day. Or Berlin!”

They exclaimed polyphonically and low:

“Oo-er! Djee ’eer ’im? Di’djee ’eer the orfcer? The noo C.O.?”

A hidden man said:

“Mike it the old Shoreditch Empire, sir, ’n’ we’ll thenk you!”

Another:

“I never keered fer the Lane meself! Give me the old Balham for Boxing Day.” The Sergeant made the sounds for them to move off.

They shuffled off up the trench. An unseen man said:

“Better’n a bleedin’ dipso!” Lips said “S.h.h.h!”

The Sergeant shouted⁠—with an astonishing, brutal panic:

“You shut your bleedin’ mouth, you man, or I’ll shove you in the b⁠⸺⁠y clink!” He looked nevertheless at Tietjens with calm satisfaction a second later.

“A good lot of chaps, sir,” he said. “The best!” He was anxious to wipe out the remembrance of the last spoken word. “Give ’em the right sort of officers ’n’ they’ll beat the world!”

“Do you think it makes any difference to them what officers they have?” Tietjens asked. “Wouldn’t it be all the same if they had just anyone?”

The Sergeant said:

“No, sir. They bin frightened these last few days. Now they’re better.”

This was just exactly what Tietjens did not want to hear. He hardly knew why. Or he did.⁠ ⁠… He said:

“I should have thought these men knew their job so well⁠—for this sort of thing⁠—that they hardly needed orders. It cannot make much difference whether they receive orders or not.”

The Sergeant said:

“It does make a difference, sir,” in a tone as near that of cold obstinacy as he dare attain to; the feeling of the approaching strafe was growing on them. It hung over them.

Mckechnie stuck his head out from behind the sacking. The sacking had the lettering P X L in red and the word Minn in black. Mckechnie’s Minn eyes were blazing maniacally. Jumping maniacally in his head. They always were jumping maniacally in his head. He was a tiring fellow. He was wearing not a tin hat, but an officer’s helmet. The gilt dragon on it glittered. The sun was practically up, somewhere. As soon as its disc cleared the horizon, the Huns, according to Brigade, were to begin sending over their wearisome stuff. In thirteen and a half minutes.

Mckechnie gripped Tietjens by the arm, a familiarity that Tietjens detested. He hissed⁠—he really hissed because he was trying to speak under his breath:

“Come past the next traverse. I want to speak to you.”

In correctly prepared trenches, made according to order as these had been to receive them in retreat, by a regular battalion acting under the orders of the Royal Engineers, you go along a straight ditch of trench for some yards, then you find a square block of earth protruding inwards from the parapet round which you must walk; then you come to another straight piece, then to another traverse, and so on to the end of the line, the lengths and dimensions varying to suit the nature of the terrain or the character of the soil. These outjuttings were designed to prevent the lateral spreading of fragments of shell bursting in the trench which would otherwise serve as a funnel, like the barrel of a gun to direct those parts of missiles into men’s bodies. It was also exciting⁠—as Tietjens expected to be doing before the setting of the not quite risen sun⁠—to crouch rapidly along past one of them, the heart moving very disagreeably, the revolver protruded well in advance, with half a dozen careless fellows with grenades of sorts just behind you. And you not knowing whether, crouching against the side that was just round the corner you would or would not find a whitish, pallid, dangerous object that you would have no time to scrutinise closely.

Past the nearest of these Mckechnie led Tietjens. He was portentous and agitated.

At the end of the next stretch of trench, leaning as it were against a buttress in an attitude of intense fatigue was a mud-coloured, very thin, tall fellow; squatting dozing on his heels in the mud just beside