A Fable

‘Not here,’ the corporal said. ‘Hop it. Sharp, now’—and (the corporal) still watching him until darkness hid him again; then he too left the road, into a wood, walking toward the lines now; and (telling it, sprawled on the firestep beneath the rigid and furious sentry almost as though he drowsed, his eyes half-closed, talking in the glib, dreamy, inconsequent voice) how from the shadows again he watched the crew of an anti-aircraft battery, with hooded torches, unload the blank shells from one of the lorries, and tumble their own live ammunition back into it, and went on until he saw the hooded lights again and watched the next lorry make its exchange; and at midnight was in another wood—or what had been a wood, since all that remained now was a nightingale somewhere behind him—, not walking now but standing with his back against the blasted corpse of a tree, hearing still above the bird’s idiot reiteration the lorries creeping secretly and steadily through the darkness, not listening to them, just hearing them, because he was searching for something which he had lost, mislaid, for the moment, though when he thought that he had put the digit of his recollection on it at last, it was wrong, flowing rapid and smooth through his mind, but wrong: In Christ is death at end in Adam that began:—true, but the wrong one: not the wrong truth but the wrong moment for it, the wrong one needed and desired; clearing his mind again and making the attempt again, yet there it was again: In Christ is death at end in Adam that——still true, still wrong, still comfortless; and then, before he had thought his mind was clear again, the right one was there, smooth and intact and instantaneous, seeming to have been there for a whole minute while he was still fretting its loss:

—but that was in another country;—and besides

the wench is dead

And this time the flare went up from their own trench, not twenty yards away beyond the up traverse, so near this time that after the green corpse-glare died the sentry could have discerned that what washed over the runner’s face was neither the refraction assumed nor the grease it resembled, but the water it was: ‘A solid corridor of harmless archie batteries, beginning at our parapet and exactly the width of the range at which a battery in either wall would decide there wasn’t any use in even firing at an aeroplane flying straight down the middle of it, running back to the aerodrome at Villeneuve Blanche, so that to anyone not a general it would look all right—and if there was just enough hurry and surprise about it, maybe even to the men themselves carrying the shells running to the guns ramming them home and slamming the blocks and pulling the lanyards and blistering their hands snatching the hot cases out fast enough to get out of the way of the next one, let alone the ones in front lines trying to cringe back out of man’s sight in case the aeroplane flying down the corridor to Villeneuve wasn’t carrying ammunition loaded last night at whatever the Hun calls his Saint Omer, it would still look and sound all right, even if the Hun continued not falling all the way back to Villeneuve because Flying Corps people say archie never hits anything anyway——

‘So you see what we must do, before that German emissary or whatever he will be, can reach Paris or Chaulnesmont or wherever he is to go, and he and whoever he is to agree with, have agreed, not on what to do because that is no problem: only on how, and goes back home to report it. We dont even need to start it; the French, that one French regiment, has already taken up the load. All we need is, not to let it drop, falter, pause for even a second. We must do it now, tomorrow—tomorrow? it’s already tomorrow; it’s already today now—do as that French regiment did, the whole battalion of us: climb over this parapet tomorrow morning and get through the wire, with no rifles, nothing, and walk toward jerry’s wire until he can see us, enough of him can see us—a regiment of him or a battalion or maybe just a company or maybe even just one because even just one will be enough. You can do it. You own the whole battalion, every man in it under corporal, beneficiary of every man’s insurance in it who hasn’t got a wife and I.O.U.’s for their next month’s pay of all the rest of them in that belt around your waist. All you’ll need is just to tell them to when you say Follow me; I’ll go along to the first ones as soon as you are relieved, so they can see you vouch for me. Then others will see you vouch for me when I vouch for them, so that by daylight or by sunup anyway, when jerry can see us, all the rest of Europe can see us, will have to see us, cant help but see us——’ He thought: He’s really going to kick me this time, and in the face. Then the sentry’s boot struck the side of his jaw, snapping his head back even before his body toppled, the thin flow of water which sheathed his face flying at the blow like a thin spray of spittle or perhaps of dew or rain from a snapped leaf, the sentry kicking at him again as he went over backward onto the firestep, and was still stamping his boot at the unconscious face when the officer and the sergeant ran back around the traverse, still stamping at the prone face and panting at it:

‘Will you for Christ’s sake now? Will you? Will you?’ when the sergeant jerked him bodily down to the duck- boards. The sentry didn’t even pause, whirling while the sergeant held him, and slashing his reversed rifle blindly across the nearest face. It was the officer’s, but the sentry didn’t even wait to see, whirling again back toward the firestep though the sergeant still gripped him in one arm around his middle, still—the sentry—striking with the rifle-butt at the runner’s bleeding head when the sergeant fumbled his pistol out with his free hand and thumbed the safety off.

‘As you were,’ the officer said, jerking the blood from his mouth, onto his wrist and flinging it away. ‘Hold him.’ He spoke without turning his head, toward the corner of the down traverse, raising his voice a little: ‘Two-eight. Pass the word for corporal.’

The sentry was actually foaming now, apparently not even conscious that the sergeant was holding him, still jabbing the rifle-butt at or at least toward the runner’s peaceful and bloody head, until the sergeant spoke almost against his ear.

‘Two-seven .… for corporal,’ a voice beyond the down traverse said; then fainter, beyond that, another:

‘Two-six …. corporal.’

‘Use yer boot,’ the sergeant muttered. ‘Kick his .… ing teeth in.’

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

He had already turned back toward the aerodrome when he saw the Harry Tate. At first he just watched it, merely alerting himself to overshoot it safely; they looked so big and were travelling so slowly that you always made the mistake of overestimating them if you were not careful. Then he saw that the thing obviously not only hoped but actually believed that it could cut him off—a Harry Tate, which usually had two Australians in it or one general-and-pilot, this one indubitably a general since only by some esoteric factor like extreme and even overwhelming rank could an R.E.8 even hope to catch an S.E. and send it to earth.

Which was obviously what this one intended to do, he throttling back now until the S.E. was hanging on its airscrew just above stalling. And it was a general: the two aeroplanes broadside on for a second or so, a hand in a neat walking-out glove from the observer’s seat gesturing him peremptorily downward until he waggled his wings in acknowledgment and put his nose down for home, thinking, Why me? What’ve I done now? Besides, how did they know where I was?——having suddenly a sort of vision of the whole sky full of lumbering R.E.8’s, each containing a general with a list compiled by frantic telephone of every absent unaccounted-for scout on the whole front, hunting them down one by one out of back-areas and harrying them to earth.

Then he reached the aerodrome and saw the ground signal-strip laid out on it; he hadn’t seen one since ground school and for a goodish while he didn’t even know what it was; not until he saw the other aeroplanes on the