VIII
THE SONG OF THE BAYONET
Two men were seated at a table in a restaurant. Dinner was over, and from all around them came the murmur of complacent and well-fed London. A string band of just sufficient strength gave forth a ragtime effort; a supreme being hovered near to ensure that the '65 brandy was all it should be. Of the men themselves little need be said: my story is not of them. Only their conversation, half serious, half joking, brought back the picture of Jimmy O'Shea—Irishman, cowpuncher, general scallywag, and his doctrines of war and the way of his death. As I sat at the next table lazily watching pictures in the haze of tobacco smoke, their words conjured up the vision of that incomparable fighter who paid the great price a year ago, and now lies somewhere near Le Rutoire in the plains beyond Loos. For their talk was of a strange thing: the bayonet and the psychology of killing. . . .
"Have you ever killed a man, Joe? that is, killed him with a bayonet?" It was the man in mufti who was speaking; and his companion—a Major in khaki—laughed shortly.
"I can't say that I have. I've shot one or two Huns, but I've never put a bayonet into one."
The other grunted. "They were teaching me to use a bayonet this morning. It's rather fun. An intensely pugilistic little man stamped his foot at me, and brandished a ball on the end of a stick in front of my face. One's aim and object, as far as I could tell from the book of the words, was to stab the ball with the point of one's bayonet, and at the same time grunt in a manner calculated to cause alarm and despondency to every one within earshot. At times you hit the ball with the butt of the rifle; at others you kick it, endeavouring if possible not to stub your toe. Everything depends on what part of the German's anatomy it is supposed to represent at the moment." He paused and relit his cigar; then he smiled slightly. "I rather enjoyed it. The pugilistic warrior was quite pleased with me. He barked 'stomach' at me out of my turn, and there was the dam ball about a yard away. I stabbed it, kicked it, hit it with my butt, and fell down, all in the course of two seconds. But you know, Joe,"—again he paused slightly—"it's one thing to joke and talk about it here. I can't help thinking it's going to be a very different matter when one gets to the real goods. Fancy putting a foot of cold steel into a man's body."
A woman paused by their table on the way out. "So you've actually joined up, you poor dear. Your wife told me you quite liked it."
"Yes, dear lady." He stood up and bowed. "After refusing me a commission for two years they've pushed me into what I believe they call the Feet. It's rather jolly. I haven't felt so well for years."
"And what do you do?" She adjusted her wrap to pass on.
"Oh! learn to stab people, and kick them in the tummy; and all sorts of little parlour tricks like that."
"You dreadful man! I don't believe you're a bit bloodthirsty really." She shook a reproving finger at him and laughed. "But I shan't mind a bit if you kill a lot of those nasty Germans."
She drifted away, and the man in mufti sat down again. "The last time I saw her she had a concert for the wounded at her house. A slightly bow-legged woman of great bulk was singing about her soldier lover, who saved her icckle bruvver. My hostess cried—she's that type. Only a little of course; but one tear somehow arrived."
The soldier laughed. "There are a few like that; thank heaven! not many. They've learned, Dick; they're learning every day."
"Up to a point. I am learning to stab people; a thing which, when you actually come down to it, is beyond her comprehension. She vaguely knows that that is a soldier's job—or one of them; but it means nothing to her. And I don't know that it means very much more to me."
"You'll find it will, my dear fellow, when the moment comes, and you've got your rag out and are seeing red. Let's go."
The two men got up; waiters hastened forward; and in a few moments their table was empty. For a brief space the curtain of imagination had been lifted; the drama of grim stark death had flashed into a setting of luxury and life. ...
And with the rise of the curtain Jimmy O'Shea had stepped on to the boards; for no man who knew him could ever hear the word bayonet without recalling him, if only for a second.
He was a mixture was Jimmy—one of those strange jumbles of character in which no country is more rich than Ireland. He would not take a commission, though times and again he was offered one by his Colonel.
"I can teach the boys more as a sergeant, sir," he would answer; "teach them better how to score the points that win."
"You bloodthirsty ruffian," laughed the Colonel. "Your old doctrine, I suppose, of close-quarter work."
"You have it, sir," answered O'Shea quietly. "Every dead German is one point up to us; every dead Englishman is a point down. I am teaching the boys how to kill, and not be killed themselves."
"But what the devil do you suppose they have been taught?" The C.O. would lean back and light a cigarette. "To sit and pick buttercups, and ask the Huns to shoot 'em?"
"Shooting, is it?" Jimmy's tone expressed immeasurable scorn. "The shooting will look after itself. It's the bayonet I talk to them about, and where to put it, and how to use it. As you know yourself, sir, a man will shoot to kill, where he'll hesitate to use his bayonet—if he's new."
"That's so. It's instinctive at times."
"Bedad, sir, they have no instinct when I've finished with them—save one. Kill clean and kill fast; and God help you if you slip. ..."
It is possible that when a person has given no thought to war, and the objects of war, this distinction may seem strange. Death is a big matter to the average being, and one of some finality; and the manner of one's going may strike him as of little account. In which assumption he is perfectly right—if he is the member of the party who is going to be killed. But that is not the idea which a man going into a scrap should hold for a moment. A man goes into a scrap to kill—not to be killed. To die for one's country may be glorious; to kill for one's country is very much more so, and a deuced sight less uncomfortable. Wherefore, as Jimmy O'Shea would have said, if you'd asked him, "It's outing the other swine you're after, me bucko; not being outed yourself. Once you've got your manicured lunch hooks (as a phrase for hands I liked that sentence) on the blighter's throat, it's up to you to kill him before he kills you. And don't forget it's no dress rehearsal show. You won't fail twice."
Now I do not wish to appear over-bloodthirsty, or to pretend for one moment that war is a gigantic and continuous shambles. It is not. But the essence of war is man power, and the points are scored by putting men out of action, without being put out of action yourself. The idea may not be nice—but war is not nice: one may not approve of the sea being salt, but disapproval does not alter hard truth. And having once granted that fact—and surely none can deny it—it is the different methods of scoring points which must be discussed. Some are impersonal—some are not: some are done in cold blood—some in hot. The whole thing is just a question of human nature; and in war, above every other known thing in this world, it is human nature that tells: it is human nature that is the great deciding factor. A man throws a bomb into a saphead full of Huns. He lies there covered by the darkness, crouching, waiting One, two, three—and the sharp roar of the explosion shatters the peace of the night. Guttural cursings and a dreadful agonised moaning follow in the silence that seems the more intense through the contrast. And with a smile of great content wreathing his face, the bomber creeps stealthily away to avoid intrusive flares. The matter was impersonal, the groaning Hun was a Hun, not an individuality. ...
A couple of men, mud-caked and weary, with a Lewis gun between them, are peering over the top in an early light of dawn. Beside them there are others: tense, with every nerve alert, looking fixedly into the grey shadows, wondering, a little jumpy.
"Wot is it, Bill?" A man at the bottom of the trench is fixing a rifle grenade in his rifle. "Shall I put this one over?"
"Gawd knows." Bill is craning his head from side to side, standing on the fire-step. "Lumme! there they are. Let 'em 'ave it, Joe. It's a ruddy working party." Drawing a steady hand he fires, only to eject his spent cartridge at once and fire again. With a sudden phlop the rifle grenade goes drunkenly up into the mist; with a grunt of joy the Lewis gun and its warrior discharge a magazine at the dim-seen figures. And later, with intense eagerness, the ground in front will be searched with periscopes for the discovering and counting of the bag. The matter is impersonal; the dead are Huns, not individuals. ...
But with a bayonet the matter is different. No longer is the man you fight an unknown impersonality. He stands before you, an individual whose face you can see, whose eyes you can read. He has taken unto himself the guise of a man; he has dropped the disguise of an automaton. In those eyes you may read the redness of fury or the greyness of terror; in either case it is you or him. And a soldier's job is to kill. ...
In nine cases out of ten he has forfeited the right to surrender, for as Jimmy used to say, "There's only one method of surrendering, and that's by long-distance running. When the blackguards come out of their trenches fifty yards away and walk towards you bleating, 'Yes, sare; coming at once, sare, thick or clear, sare;' you may take 'em prisoners, boys."
Thus the doctrine in brief of Jimmy O'Shea, sergeant and cowpuncher, scallywag and sahib, devil and tender-hearted gentleman. I lifted my glass in a silent toast. The music was sobbing gently; the voices of women came stealing into my reverie; the smell of the brandy in my glass brought back a memory of other women, other brandy. ...
The square in the old French town was alive with market carts, which lumbered noisily over the cobble stones, while around the pavements, stalls and barrows did a roaring trade. It was market-day, and the hot summer sun shone down on the busy crowds. Soldiers and civilians, women and small children bargained and laughed and squabbled over the prices of "oofs" and other delicacies for the inner man. Except for the khaki and the ever present ambulance which threaded its way through the creaking country carts, it might have been peace time again in Northern France. Yet eight or nine miles away were the trenches.
Facing the square was an open-air café, where a procession of large light beers was pursuing its way down various dry throats, belonging to officers both French and British: beer that was iced, and beautiful to behold. Away down a little farther on sat Jimmy O'Shea; not admitted into the sacred portals marked "Officers only," but none the less happy for that. In front of him was a small glass of cognac. ...
It was just as a stout and somewhat heated Frenchman in civilian clothes got up from the little table next to mine that it happened. There was no sound of warning—it just occurred. The house by the clock was there one moment; the next moment it was not. A roar filled the air, drowning the clattering carts; bricks, tables, beds went hurtling up into space; walls collapsed and crashed on to the cobbles. A great cloud of stifling dust rose swiftly and blotted out the scene. Then silence—the silence of stupefaction settled for a while on the watching hundreds, while bricks and stones rained down on them from the sky.
It was the little Frenchman who spoke first. "Mon Dieu! une bombe. Et moi je suis le Maire." He walked unsteadily towards the cloud of dust, and with his going pandemonium broke loose. Mechanically the beer went down our throats, while in all directions carts bumped and jolted, wheels got locked, barrows overturned. Still the same blue sky; still the same serene sun; but in the place of a quiet grey house—wreckage, dust, death. And around us the first frenzy of panic.
"Do you put that down to an aeroplane?" I looked up to see Jimmy O'Shea beside me. "All right, mother." He was patting an excited woman on her back. "I'll help you." He started to pick up the contents of her barrow, which reposed principally in the gutter, having been knocked off by a bolting horse. "No need to get your wind up. You're cutting no ice in this show; you're only on as a super."
The woman somewhat naturally did not understand a word; but O'Shea had a way with women and children, wherein lay the charm of his strange mixture of character.
"Now these eggs, mother dear, these eggs. Bedad! they've gone to their last long rest. We can't even scramble them. Oofs, dear heart, oofs; napoo—finis."
"C'est tout napoo." She even laughed as she looked at the concentrated essence of yellow and white flowing slowly down the gutter. "Mon Dieu! voilà une autre." Another thunderous roar; another belching, choking cloud of dust and death, and a house on the other side of the square collapsed.
"It's no aeroplane, sir," said Jimmy, with his eyes on the sky. "It's a long-range gun, or I'm a Dutchman." He looked down to find a little girl clasping his knee and whimpering. "And phwat is it, me angel?" He caught her up in his arms and laughed. "Shure! and I've forgotten me little glass of stuff. Come along with me and find it."
He strode away, only to return with her in a second or two, laughing all over her face. Yes—he had a way with him, had Jimmy O'Shea.
But it was in the final tableau of that morning's work that I remember him best. It was a long-range gun as he said; and they put in fifteen twelve-inch shells in an hour, round about the square. Two got the hospital, and one hit a barber's shop where an officer was being shaved. I remember we saw him with half his face lathered, and later on we found his hand still gripping the arm of the chair. As for the barber—God knows
We sorted out the remnants of some children from the débris of one house; and I left O'Shea after a while with a little kid of eight or nine in his arms. She was booked for God's nursery, and the passing was not going to be easy, for she was hit—nastily. And it was while Jimmy was nursing the poor torn atom with the tenderness of a woman that another sergeant of his battalion came on the scene to see if he could help.
"God! Jimmy," I heard him say, "this makes one sick."
"Sick!" O'Shea's voice was quiet. "Sick! I've stuck many of them, thank the powers, but never again—never again, my bucko—will it be anywhere save in the stomach. Anything else is too quick."
I looked at his face; and I understood. ...
Yes—I understood because I had seen: otherwise, I should not. He would have been talking another language—one to which I was a stranger: even as were those around me, in that London restaurant, strangers—even as the men, when they first come to France, are strangers. That is the point which is in danger at times of being overlooked, especially by those who remain behind. The men are not changed in nature because they don a khaki coat, or even because they go into the trenches. They have gone to a new school, that is all; and if they would do well they must learn all the lessons—the many and very divergent lessons—they are taught. For in the hotch-potch of war there is a strange mixture of the material and the spiritual; and though at present I am concerned with the former, the latter is just as important. It is the material side of which the men such as Jimmy O'Shea are the teachers. Unless the pupils learn from the O'Sheas, they will have to do so from the Hun. And the process may not be pleasant. ...
There are many branches of the main lesson: the counters in the game may be shells or bombs or rifle bullets or bayonets. But the method of scoring is the same in each case—one down or one up. And of them all the bayonet is the counter which is at once the most deadly and the most intolerant of mistakes. A good friend, a hard taskmaster is the bayonet, and O'Shea was the greatest of all its prophets. ... The main object of his life was to imbue his men, and any one else he could persuade to listen, with its song. His practical teaching was sound, very sound; his verbal lashings were wonderful, unique. He'd talk and talk, and one's joy was to watch his audience. A sudden twitch, a snap of the jaw, and a bovine face would light up with unholy joy. The squad drawn up ready for practice, with the straw-filled sacks in front of them, would mutter ominously, and teeth would show in a snarl. Absurd, you say; not a bit; just a magnetic personality, and men of the right stuff. Dash it! I've seen even the Quartermaster, whose ways do not lie near such matters, hopping about from one leg to the other when Jimmy's peroration rose to its height.
"Have you a child, MacNab, a little wee kid?" he would begin.
"I have, sargint," MacNab would answer.
"Then can you imagine that wee kid with his little hands cut off? Is it a boy, MacNab?"
"It is, sargint."
"It is. That's good. But they preferred doing it to boys, MacNab. Listen to me, the lot of you. Don't mind the aeroplane. Number Two in the rear rank. They're like gooseberries out here." Number Two's eyes would abruptly come to earth again and focus themselves on the man in front. "I want you to think," Jimmy would go on quietly, "of the dirty, lousy crowd of German waiters you remember at home in the days before the war. Do you remember their greasy-looking clothes, and their greasy-looking faces, and the way you used to treat 'em as the scum of the world? Would you have one of them, MacNab, cut the hands off your kid; would you, me bucko?"
"I would not, sargint." MacNab's slow brain was working; his eyes were beginning to glint.
"Then come out here." Jimmy's voice rose to a shout. "Come out and move. Do you see that sack? do you see that white disc? Run at it, you blighter; run, snarl, spit. That's the German who has killed your kid. The white paper is his heart; run, man, run. Stab him, kill him; stuff your bayonet in him, and scream with rage."
The bewildered MacNab, on the conclusion of this tirade, would amble up to the sack, push his gun feebly in its direction, completely miss it—and look sheepishly into space.
"Mother of heaven! The first competitor in Nuts and May. Did you hear me tell you to hit the sack, MacNab? For God's sake, man, stick your bayonet in; hit it with your butt; kick it; tear it in pieces with your teeth; worry it; do anything—but don't stand there looking like a Scotchman on Sunday. The dam thing's laughing at you."
And so at last MacNab would begin. Bits of sacking would fly in all directions, streams of straw and sawdust would exude. He's kicked it twice, and hit it an appalling welt with the butt of his gun. The sweat pours from his face; but his eyes are gleaming, as he stops at last from sheer exhaustion.
"Splendid, MacNab; you're a credit to Glasgow, me boy. Are you beginning to feel what it's like to stick your point into something, even though it's only a sack?"
But MacNab is already more than half ashamed of his little outburst; he is unable to understand what made him see red—and somewhat uncomfortably he returns to his place in the squad. Only, if you look at Jimmy, you will see the glint of a smile in his eyes: the squad is new—the beginning has not been bad. He knows what made MacNab see red; by the time he has finished with him, the pride of Glasgow will never see anything else. ...
And yet what do they know of seeing red, these diners of London? It is just as well, I grant, that they should know nothing; but sometimes one wonders, when they talk so glibly of the trenches, when they dismiss with a casual word the many months of hideous boredom, the few moments of blood-red passion of the overseas life, what would they think—how would they look—if they did know.
Would they look as did O'Neil's bride, when the robber chief's head arrived at the breakfast table? Lest there be any unfortunates who know not Kipling let me quote:
As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide
The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride,
Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year,
When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer.
As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water,
In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter,
And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life
Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife. ...
Perhaps—who knows? It is difficult to imagine the results of an impossibility—and knowledge in this case is an impossibility. Still at times the grim cynicism of the whole thing comes over one with a rush, and one—laughs. It is the only solution—laughter. Let us blot it out, all this strange performance in France: let us eat, drink and be merry. But some quotations are better not finished. ...
"Come and join us at our table." A girl was speaking, an awfully dear girl, one to whom I had been among the many "also rans." Her husband—an officer in the infantry—grinned affably from another table.
"In a moment," I answered her, "I will come, and you won't like me at all when I do." Then I remembered something. "Why do you dine with that scoundrel?"
"Who?—My funny old Dick? A dreadful sight, isn't he, but quite harmless."
"Is he? You ask him about the German at Les Boeufs whom he met unexpectedly, and see what he says."
The "Ballad of Boh da Thone" came back—the humour of it. Dick—the old blackguard—a rifle butt, and a German's head after he'd hit it—one side; a boiled shirt, dress clothes, and a general air of complacent peacefulness—the other. And the girl: it is always the girl who points the contrast. ...
I laughed. "Go away, and talk to your harmless husband. I am wrapped in thought, or was, till you disturbed me."
What did she know—God bless her—of the details, the filthy, necessary details of war. To her it was just a parting from one man, who went into an unknown land where there was danger—hideous, intangible danger.
But of the reality. ...
It is all contained in the one axiom—Kill, and kill at once, so as to have a maximum of time to kill more. And with the bayonet, do not let it be imagined for a moment that the work is easy. Bayonet fighting requires perfect condition, a fair share of strength, and a quick eye. Mistakes, when a man comes to the real thing, are not likely to occur twice, and there are many things which a man must learn who aspires to become even as Jimmy O'Shea.
How to go round a traverse when a Boche is on the other side, and it's him or you; how to take on three men in succession, when the last one throws his arms round your neck, and burbles, "Ve vos friends—nein?" Jimmy was great on that point: with the bayonet jabbed upwards into the chin, and the sapient remark, "Ve vos, ma tear." But enough; this is not a treatise on bayonet fighting, and I have in mind to tell of O'Shea's last fight.
There is just one more scene which comes back vividly before I reach the end, and that is the final exercise he gave his men in their training. When they'd thrust and parried and stabbed; when they'd jumped trenches and thrust their bayonets into sacks on the other side; when they'd been confronted with strange balls of straw in unexpected places, and kicked them or jabbed them or bit them as the case might be—then came the gem, the bonne bouche.
These preliminary practices were only one stroke, one thrust; the last was a fight to the death in a manner of speaking, and it was generally preceded by one of Jimmy's better stories. The best he kept for recital just before going over the top; so as to send 'em along frothing at the mouth, as he put it.
"You don't remember Captain Trent, do you, boys?" he'd begin. "Just stand easy a while, and I'll tell you about him. After that you've got to fight a bit. He was a great officer, boys, a grand officer—one of the best. Did you ever hear how he was killed? Come out here, Malvaney; we'll just start the scrapping while I tell you. Do you see this straw ball on the top of the stick? As long as it's off the ground, it's a German. Hit it, stick it, bite it, kick it, and go on till I put it on the ground again. And curse, you blighter, curse. Just think it's the German who stuck his bayonet into Captain Trent—one of your officers—while he was lying on the ground wounded in the head."
The ball began to dance. "Go on, Malvaney. Kill it, man, kill it; grunt, snarl; think of the swine and what they've done. Jab, jab—up in his throat. I'll get you a live one to practise on one day." At last the ball would come to rest, and Malvaney—his teeth bared, snarling—would face Jimmy, who stood there smiling grimly. And in a few seconds Malvaney would grin too, and the blood lust would die out of his eyes. . . .
"Good boy—not half bad!" O'Shea would nod approvingly. "The worst of it is the swine will never stand up to you—bayonet to bayonet. They prefer women and wounded men—like the Captain. Come here, MacNab, and get an appetite for your dinner. You can just rest a while—I'll get on a bit with that story. It was way back in the Spring, down south a bit; and we went over the top. Have you been over the top, MacNab?"
"I have that," answered the Scotchman in a reminiscent tone.
"How many did you kill?"
"Four-r—ah'm thinking; but ah'm no certain aboot one of them."
"Four! And none too dusty. Hit it, MacNab, me boy"—the ball would dance in his face—"hit it, as if 'twas the one of which you are not certain. Listen here, boys"—once again the ball was at rest on the ground—"I was behind Captain Trent when we went over—in the third wave; and when I got to the Germans I was just in time to see it." Jimmy's pauses were always dramatic.
"See wot, sargint?" An interested and comparatively new arrival to the battalion would lean forward.
"Captain Trent lying at the bottom of the trench—he'd gone over with the first wave—and a Hun pulling a bayonet out of him. Moreover, Captain Trent was wounded in the head." His voice gathered in fury. "Think of it, me bohunks; then think of a conscientious objector; and then come and kill this ruddy ball. A dirty filthy scut of a German waiter murdering a wounded Englishman. Hit it, MacNab; hit it; stab it, kick it; think you're scrambling for whisky in a prohibited area."
"Wot did you do, sargint?" The new arrival was still interested.
"What would you have done, Marmaduke? Come here, my boy; come here and breathe blood."
The new arrival—a little bashful at his sudden notoriety—stepped forward. "I'd have killed him, sargint."
"Then kill this ball; go on—kill it. Damme, boy; you're jumping about like an old woman looking for a flea in a bed. Move, boy, move; the ball's the flea, and you're the old trout. Bite it, boy, bite it; stamp on it; take out your fork and stick it with that." The ball came to rest; the new arrival mopped his brow. "Did I ever tell you how to kill a man with your dinner fork, by sticking it into his neck? I will some day; it's a good death for a Hun."
"Did you catch that there swine, sergeant?" Another voice from the squad took up the tale.
"Did I catch him? Did I catch him? If I hadn't caught him, Percival, I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't dare look an exempted indispensable in the face—let alone you. And for a fat man he ran well."
"Didn't 'e fight?" Marmaduke had more or less recovered his breath.
"Fight!" O'Shea grinned at the recollection. "He looked up; he saw me about five yards away; he gave one squawk like the female ducked-billed platypus calling to her young, and he faded round the traverse like the family do when the landlord comes for the rent. Come here, O'Sullivan—and break up the home."
Marmaduke retired, to be replaced by a brawny Irishman.
"I caught him, O'Sullivan—hit, man, hit—just as he reached his dug-out. Kick it, man; you can't use your butt from there. Jab, jab—you blighter; for God's sake use your gun as if you loved it. He stuck in the door, O'Sullivan, for half a second. There's the ball—that's his back. Go on. Good, good." With an awful curse the Irishman lunged and the ball dropped to the ground.
"Dead," O'Shea grinned. "That's what I did; through the back. But the blamed thing stuck; I couldn't get it out. What do you do then, Marmaduke?"
"Put a round in, sargint, and blow it out."
"Good boy, Marmaduke. You'll be a Field-Marshal before you've done. That's what I did too; and I blew the swine down the entrance. Now then, half with sticks and half with rifles; go on—fight"
This, as I said, was one of Jimmy's better stories. Incidentally it had the merit of being true. ...
But one could continue indefinitely. Some one will write a book one day about Jimmy O'Shea, and the manner of his life. If so, order an advance copy; it will be the goods. Just at the moment it was the manner of his death that had me. I was back again in derelict Vermelles, with its spattered water tower, and the flat desolate plain in front. Loos is out of sight over the hill; only the great slag heap lies squat and menacing on one's left, with the remnants of Big Willie and Little Willie near to its base in the old blood-soaked Hohenzollern redoubt. Cambrin, Guinchy, La Bassée—silent and haunted, teeming with ghosts, lie stagnant in the morning sun. The cobwebs drift across the Hulluch road, and in the distance, by the first bend, a man pushing a wheeled stretcher comes slowly walking back to the dressing station. It's still going on: nothing much has changed; and yet—the cigar is good; the brandy superb: the brandy Jimmy preferred. He only spent one leave in England; as a sergeant he couldn't get more; but I dined with him one night, dress clothes and all complete, and we drank that brandy. One need hardly say, perhaps, that the writing on the register of his birth would have been hard put to it to spell O'Shea. There have been many like him this war, from "the legions of the lost ones and the cohorts of the damned"; and they've come to us out of the waste places, out of the lands that lie beyond the mountains. Unhonoured, unknown, they've finished the game; and having finished, they lie at peace. Britain called them; they came—those so-called wasters; look to it, you overmuch righteous ones, who have had to be dragged by the hairs of your heads—bleating of home ties and consciences. ...
I forget which of the stories I heard him telling the men that morning before they went over. He read one lot a thing he swore he'd got out of a German paper—Heaven knows if it was true. I remember it ended up: "Above all things show no mercy to the accursed English. They are the starters of this war; so spit on them, kick them, use them as the swine they are."
"There you are, boys," cried Jimmy cheerily, "listen to what the pretties say about you. You'll be into 'em in a minute; and don't forget what I've told you about the way to use your gun. Kill fast and kill clean. Don't you put up with any back lash from a sausage-eating waiter. Remember you're English, me boys; and remember the Regiment—the Regiment that's never yet failed."
And so he went on; worth a hundred times his weight in gold to men going in for the first time.
"Your point is at his throat, boy, don't forget it. You ain't playing the goat with a dam lump of straw now; you're going to get a bit of your own back with a real live Fritz. And if you make a mistake you may not have a chance of making another. Go there steady; don't get blown, or you'll find you won't be able to do what you'd like when you bump Master Boche."
He passed me with a salute and a wink.
"Coming over?" he asked me.
"I am, Jimmy, with some wire and other atrocities."
"Good," he said. "The boys are simply frothing blood."
He went on; and that was the last time I saw Jimmy O'Shea alive.
Ye Gods! My Lord , some day I'll tell you of your son's end. You kicked him out—perhaps rightly; though mercy was never your strong point. But if any of the belted ancestors in that gallery of yours did as much for England as Jimmy did, or died as gloriously as Jimmy died, well, you should be a proud man, prouder even than you are. He sent the boys over raving mad with blood, and they struck Bavarians—and good Bavarians: men who could fight, and men who did fight. They were at it, teeth, feet, and steel for ten minutes: primitive, lustful fighting; and then the Bavarians broke; with the boys after them, stabbing and cursing. One or two were left, though they wouldn't surrender, more power to them. A Bavarian officer, in fact, concluded the eventful career of Sapper O'Toole, the company rum-swallowing champion. True he brained that officer with a coil of barbed wire on the end of a pick helve, even as the bullet entered his heart; but he was a great loss to us. And it was just as we surged over their bodies that we came to the tableau.
Jimmy lay round the traverse. We found him at the bottom when we'd sorted out the litter. There were six of them he'd done in in all; you could trace what had happened. They'd been lining the trench, and he'd taken them in order. It was in the fifth that his bayonet stuck. He couldn't get it out. It was still there. At that moment, evidently, Number Six had come at him, and he'd had no time. So they closed; and, my God! they'd fought.
I think they both must have gone out about the same time. Jimmy was shot through the heart by the Bavarian's revolver; the Bavarian's throat was cut with Jimmy's clasp knife.
No bad end, my lord; what say you? I will show you the exact spot some day, and your son's grave near by. I'd have his picture in the gallery if I were you. ... I've got a snapshot I can let you have, taken in France. But I treasure it; and unless you hang it in the place of honour, amongst the Raeburns—I keep it. Mark you, he deserves that place of honour. ...
•••••
"Captain Johnson's compliments, sir, and are you coming over to have a liqueur at his table?"
The waiter's voice cut in on my thoughts. The band was hitting a ragtime stunt; London had dined and was pleased with itself; Dick and his lady were beckoning. For the moment it felt like coming to from an anæsthetic.
I shook myself and got up. Of course I was drinking a liqueur with them: another glass of brandy—Jimmy O'Shea's brandy.
"Are you in love?" queried the girl anxiously as I sat down. "You've been muttering to yourself and squinting and Dickie got worried about you."
"Not more than usual—though I'm glad to learn the symptoms." Then I looked at her, and the wonder of a girl in love hit me almost like a blow. In it lay the answer to my thoughts. No longer a cynical amusement in their failure to realise the contrast, but rather a mighty thankfulness. For it is they, in their blessed ignorance, who keep us sane.
I raised my glass. "To things as they are, my lady," I murmured. And from the land of shadows Jimmy drank with me.