Once I’d shaken off my stupor it wasn’t so bad to be out in the night air. The rain had stopped and Ormand had nothing to report. For the next two hours I should loiter up and down with my knobkerrie in my hand; now and again I had a whack at a rat running along the parados. From one “bay” to another I went, stopping for a word in an undertone with the sentries; patient in their waterproof sheets they stood on the firestep, peering above the parapet until bleak daylight began to show itself. The trench was falling in badly in places after the rain. …
Then there was the bombing-post up a sap which went thirty or forty yards out into No Man’s Land. Everything had been very quiet, the bombers muttered. …
Back in the main trench, I stood on the firestep to watch the sky whitening. Sad and stricken the country emerged. I could see the ruined village below the hill and the leafless trees that waited like sentries up by Contalmaison. Down in the craters the dead water took a dull gleam from the sky. I stared at the tangles of wire and the leaning posts, and there seemed no sort of comfort left in life. My steel hat was heavy on my head while I thought how I’d been on leave last month. I remembered how I’d leant my elbows on Aunt Evelyn’s front gate (it was my last evening); that twilight, with its thawing snow, made a comfortable picture now. John Homeward had come past with his van, plodding beside his weary horse. He had managed to make his journey, in spite of the state of the roads. … He had pulled up for a few minutes, and we’d talked about Dixon, who had been such an old friend of his. “Ay; Tom was a good chap; I’ve never known a better. …” He had said goodbye and good night and set his horse going again. As he turned the corner the past had seemed to go with him. …
And here I was, with my knobkerrie in my hand, staring across at the enemy I’d never seen. Somewhere out of sight beyond the splintered treetops of Hidden Wood a bird had begun to sing. Without knowing why, I remembered that it was Easter Sunday. Standing in that dismal ditch, I could find no consolation in the thought that Christ was risen. I sploshed back to the dugout to call the others up for stand-to.
Colophon
Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man
was published in 1928 by
Siegfried Sassoon.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2020 by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, and Distributed Proofreaders Canada
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Faded Page
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Thomas Oldaker on Pickle with His Hounds,
a painting completed in 1886 by
Benjamin Marshall.
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League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
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