History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0452/04527.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 14KB | 294 lines

$Unique_ID{how04527}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
'The Red Horizon' - Stories Of The London Irish}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{MacGill, Patrick}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{london
irish
five
fell
front
trenches
day
dead
letter
little}
$Date{1916}
$Log{}
Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        "The Red Horizon" - Stories Of The London Irish
Author:      MacGill, Patrick
Date:        1916

"The Red Horizon" - Stories Of The London Irish

I - The Soldier Tells His Tale

The Man With the Rosary

Told by Patrick MacGill, Rifleman Number 3008, London Irish

[Patrick MacGill is the genius of the battlefield.  The War has given his
great Irish heart its opportunity to express itself, and his stories from the
front have become little classics in the War's literature.  He dedicates his
stories: "To the London Irish, to the Spirit of Those Who Fight and to the
Memory of Those Who Have Passed Away." A letter to him by the President of
the County of London Territorial Association reads: "When I recruited you
into the London Irish - one of those splendid regiments that London has sent
to Sir John French, himself an Irishman - it was with gratitude and pride.
You had much to give us.  The rare experiences of your boyhood, your talents,
your brilliant hopes for the future.  Upon all these the Western hills and
loughs of your native Donegal seemed to have the prior claim.  But you gave
them to London and to our London Territorials.  The London Irish will be
proud of their young artist in words and he will forever be proud of the
London Irish Regiment, its deeds and valour, to which he has dedicated such
great gifts.  May God preserve you." Patrick MacGill, shoulder to shoulder
with the Tommies as a private soldier, is writing many great books.]

[Footnote * - All numerals relate to stories herein told - not to chapters
from original sources.]

     Sometimes when our spell in the trenches comes to an end we go back for
a rest in some village or town.  Here the estaminet or debitant (French, as
far as I am aware, for a beer shop), is open to the British soldier for three
hours daily, from twelve to one and from six to eight o'clock.  For some
strange reason we often find ourselves busy on parade at these hours, and
when not on parade we generally find ourselves without money.  I have been
here for four months; looking at my pay book I find that I've been paid 25
fr. (or in plain English, one pound) since I have come to France, a country
where the weather grows hotter daily, where the water is seldom drinkable,
and where wine and beer is so cheap.  Once we were paid five francs at five
o'clock in the afternoon after five penniless days of rest in a village, and
ordered as we were paid, to pack up our all and get ready to set off at six
o'clock for the trenches.  From noon we had been playing cards, and some of
the boys gambled all their pay in advance and lost it.  Bill's five francs
had to be distributed amongst several members of the platoon.

     "It's only five francs, anyway," he said.  "Wot matter whether I spend
it on cards, wine, or women?  I don't care for soldierin' as a profession."

     "What is your profession, Bill?" Pryor asked; we never really knew what
Bill's civil occupation was, he seemed to know a little of many crafts, but
was master of none.

     "I've been everything," he replied, employing his little finger in the
removal of cigarette ash.  "My ole man apprenticed me to a marker of 'ot
cross buns, but I 'ad a 'abit of makin' the long end of the cross on the
short side, an' got chucked out.  Then I learned 'ow to jump through tin
plates in order to make them nutmeg graters, but left that job after sticking
plump in the middle of a plate.  I had to stop there for three days without
food or drink.  They were thinnin' me out, see!  Then I was a draughts
manager at a bank, and shut the ventilators; after that I was an electric
mechanic; I switched the lights on and off at night and mornin'; now I'm a
professional gambler, I lose all my tin.'

     "You're also a soldier," I said.

     "Course, I am," Bill replied.  "I can present hipes by numbers, and
knock the guts out of sand-bags at five hundred yards."

II - A Night March In The Rain

     We did not leave the village until eight o'clock.  It was now very dark
and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed up with
the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells, the long tremulous glimmer of
flashlights, the blood red blaze of haystacks afire near Givenchy, threw a
sombre haze over our line of march.  Even through the haze, star-shells
showed brilliant in their many different colours, red, green, and electric
white.  The French send up a beautiful light which bursts into four different
flames that burn standing high in mid-air for five minutes; another, a
parachute star, holds the sky for three minutes, and almost blots its more
remote sisters from the heavens.  The English and the Germans are content to
fling rockets across and observe one another's lines while these flare out
their brief meteoric life.  The firing-line was about five miles away; the
star-lights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so
deceptive are they.

     Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming down by
barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less serious cases
go by motor ambulance from dressing station to hospital - those who are
damaged slightly in arm or head generally walk.  Here we encountered a party
of men marching in single file with rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and
shovels.  In the dark it was impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.

     "Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was smoking
a cigarette contrary to orders.

     "The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer.  "Oo are yer?"

     "The Chelesa Cherubs," said Bill.  "Up workin'?"

     "Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
"Got bombed out and were sent back."

     "Lucky dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)."

     "'Ad two killed and seven wounded."

     "Blimey!"

     "Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness swallowed
up the working party.

     The pace was a sharp one.  Half a mile back from the firing-line we
turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to the
trenches.  We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats had been
given up a week before.

     The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each
successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle butts and
dripping to the roadway.  Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in Kore's.
We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is lullaby in the
monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed boots on gravel.

     We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered
bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way across
a wide field.  The field was under water in the wet season, and a brick
pathway had been built across it.  Along this path we took our way.  A strong
breeze had risen and was swishing our waterproofs about our bodies; the
darkness was intense, I had to strain my eyes to see the man in front,
Stoner.  In the darkness he was a nebulous dark bulk that sprang into bold
relief when the star-lights flared in front.  When the flare died out we
stumbled forward into pitch dark nothingness.  The pathway was barely two
feet across, a mere tight-rope in the wide waste, and on either side nothing
stood out to give relief to the desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low,
shapeless and gloomy, behind was the darkness, in front when the star-lights
made the darkness visible they only increased the sense of solitude.

     We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out like
wings and our rifles falling in the mud.  The sight of a man or woman falling
always makes me laugh.  I laughed as I fell, as Stoner fell, as Mervin,
Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell.  Sometimes we fell singly, again in pairs,
often we fell together a heap of rifles, khaki, and waterproof capes.  We
rose grumbling, spitting mud and laughing.  Stoner was very unfortunate, a
particle of dirt got into his eye, almost blinding him.  Afterwards he
crawled along, now and again getting to his feet, merely to fall back into
his earthy position.  A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets
whizzed past our ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching bullets.

     "Anybody hurt?"

     "No, all right so far."

     "Stoner's down."

     "He's up again."

     "Blimey, it's a balmy."

     "Mervin's crawling on his hands and knees."

     "Nark the doin's,' ye're on my water proof.  Let go!"

     "Goliath's down."

     "Are you struck, Goliath?"

     "No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the
flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he had been
scratched as he stumbled.

     We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light Infantry.
The place was very quiet, they assured us, it is always the same.  It has
become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion that it is taking
over a cushy position.  By this trench next morning we found six newly made
graves, telling how six Highlanders had met their death, killed in action.

III - "The Dead Man Under My Feet"

     Next morning as I was looking through a periscope at the enemy's
trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their sand-bag line, a man
from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the trench with creosote and
chloride of lime.

     "Seein' anything?" he asked.

     "Not much," I answered, "the grass is so high in front that I can see
nothing but the tips of the enemy's parapets.  There's some work for you
here," I said.

     "Where?"

     "Under your feet," I told him.  "The floor is soft as putty and smells
vilely.  Perhaps there is a dead man there.  Last night I slept by the spot
and it turned me sick."

     "Have you an entrenchin' tool?"

     I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently
unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to view,
then a second; fifteen minutes assiduous labour revealed an evil-smelling
bundle of clothing and decayed flesh.  I still remained an onlooker, but
changed my position on the banquette.

     "He must have been dead a long time," said the sanitary man, as he flung
handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."

     He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky.  The features
were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day before.
The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point, the lips were
drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like and vicious; the eyes
were open and raised towards the forehead, and the whole face was splashed
with clotted blood.  A wound could be seen on the left temple, the fatal
bullet had gone through there.

     "He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the
gloves on the dead soldier's hand.  "These trenches were the 'Allemands''
then, and the boys charged 'em.  I suppose this feller copped a packet and
dropped into the mud and was tramped down."

     "Who is he?" I asked.

IV - A Crucifix And A Love Letter

     The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the dead
man and brought out an identity disc.

     "Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers.  What's this?" he asked, taking
a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from the
dead man's neck.

     "It's his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a
barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass, with his
beads in his hand.  On either side rose the thatched cabins of the peasantry,
the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little boreens running through
the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather in blossom, the turf stacks,
the laughing colleens. . . ."

     "Here's a letter," said the sanitary man; "it was posted last Christmas.
It's from a girl, too."

     He commenced reading : -

     "My dear Patrick, - I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my
lone the day I was always reading it.  I wish the black war was over and you
back again - we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself wishes it as
well; I was up at your house last night; there's not much fun in it now.  I
read the papers to your mother, and me and her was looking at a map.  But we
didn't know where you were so we could only make guesses.  Your mother and
me is making the Rounds of the Cross for you, and I am always thinking of you
in my prayers.  You'll be having the parcel I sent before you get this
letter.  I hope it's not broken or lost.  The socks I sent were knitted by
myself, three pairs of them, and I've put the holy water on them.  Don't
forget to put them on when your feet get wet, at home you never used to
bother about anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry.  But
you'll take care of yourself now, won't you: and not get killed?  It'll be
a grand day when you come back, and God send the day to come soon!  Send a
letter as often as you can; I myself will write you one every day, and I'll
pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."

     We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms
of the cross which was erected over him.  On the following day one of our men
went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some flowers on it he
got shot through the head.  That evening he was buried beside the Munster
Fusilier.

     (Patrick MacGill tells many heart stories of the trenches in "The Red
Horizon." He tells of "The Night Before the Trenches"; "A Dugout Banquet";
"A Nocturnal Adventure"; "Everyday Life at the Front"; "The Women of France"
- his genius is immortalizing every human phase of the War.)