Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/598

My dear Charles,―Five days' leave for Henry. O beauteous prospect! Five whole days and nights of liberty and indiscipline, England and no ruins! Five fours are twenty, five twos are ten and two's twelve: a hundred-and-twenty glorious hours of crowded life with never a "Stand to arms!" Nobody shall inspect me or anything that is mine; I will inspect nobody and nothing. There shall be no barbed wire, no bully-beef tins anywhere. All around me shall be peaceful, refined, decadent, effeminate; silk socks, for instance, possibly of the mauve kind; the green squash hat, the patent leather shoe, even the umbrella. Shall I continue to carry all I possess upon my aching back? No; a taxicab shall carry me; and a messenger boy, following at a respectful distance, shall carry my gloves and evening paper. I will spend many of those precious hours watching real hot water gush out of a real tap, and I've a good mind to shave off my moustache for the time being.

There shall be no order or method in my comings and goings; I will saunter, possibly even slouch. Fair English women shall adorn the thoroughfares along which I pass; no coarse male hands shall tamper with my food; enamel ware and large grimy hands shall disappear; I will revel in white tablecloths, clean napkins, bright silver; in coffee and correspondence served on trays. "Spotless evening dress" and real beds shall reassert themselves in my life. The rising and setting of the sun shall be no concern of mine; at the former I will be sleeping, at the latter dining. I will be no man's master and no man shall be mine; my afternoon I will spend in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair, drinking delicate tea from frail china cups (with saucers to them, ye gods!) gossiping scandalously, or trifling flippantly with things that don't matter. I will wash me a hundred times a day; the Turkish Bath shall be my second home; sardines and all other things that inhabit tins shall be taboo; milk shall come straight from the cow and no Swiss middleman shall have had a hand in it; light in any degree required shall be had for the mere pressing of a button, and breakfast shall be at a reasonable hour.

Upon consideration, all other programmes are a wash-out; I will do nothing all the time.

Such are the orders I have issued to myself during this, the last tour in the trenches, before I go. My leave is in my pocket; my very ticket is in my cigarette-case. Life, these last days, has been one whirl of gay anticipation; I wait here for the relief to come. For the fourth time in four days the sun has returned to his accustomed west. "Lucky beggar," say I, a fellow-feeling making me wondrous kind.

In the telephone dug-out sits the signaller, quarreling with his confrère at the other end of the line, and repeating undeterred his spirited "Akk, akk, akk." Barbed wire in all fancy designs stands everywhere, patiently awaiting darkness so that it may emerge and join its kind outside the parapet. The senior captain sits in the mess hut struggling with reports and returns, certificates and lists of trench stores. The junior captain prowls as ever in search of the least untidiness in the demesne (what a curse he'll be to his wife when he goes on leave!). As usual the subalterns congregate and resettle European affairs and rearrange the end of the war for an early date. The latest rumour floats round the boys: "Turkey's hostility has given in; Austria's ammunition has given out; we are for home and light guard duties at Buckingham Palace this day fortnight." The inevitable slice of bacon frizzles over the brazier; breakfast in the trenches may begin at dawn, but it is not over by dusk. My pet irrepressible hurls threats at the enemy over the way; the answering bullet bespatters irritably the top line of our sand-bags. At his enplacement the sergeant of the machine gun section lays his aim for his customary twenty or thirty rounds at eventide, and explains for the hundredth time that the parts of the gun which recoil are technically known as the recoiling parts, the parts which don't recoil as the non-recoiling parts. His audience show their appreciation by gently humming songs about aged mothers and canteens.

To my happiness my servant puts the last touch with a cup of soup. "One of these days, William," say I, you will get a D.C.M." "D.C.M., Sir?" he queries. "A distinguished conduct medal," I say. "More likely, Sir," says he, "a district court-martial." My smile prompts William, ever a sympathetic subject, to gossip. Had I heard of the local parson? No. William gives me the facts. "He couldn't serve himself, Sir," says he, 'or said he couldn't, so he mounted his organist on his own best horse and despatched the pair of them, with his compliments, to the nearest Yeomanry Recruiting Office." A true raconteur, William pauses before making his point. "The Yeomanry people expressed their thanks, Sir," says he, "keeping the horse but returning the organist."

After all, the world is a good place, even this Flanders corner of it, and I have a smile of welcome even for the orderly who brings me from the Adjutant one of those familiar notes which wear such important envelopes but have usually such insignificant insides. I open it and read...

This is a true incident, Charles―they all are. I have been accused of making light of tragedy in these letters; in this case, however, I am only leading up to the horror of the thing. The contents of the note are: "Brigade message runs:―All leave cancelled, except in the case of those who have already gone. For your information." For my information!

It is past weeping for, a long way past swearing about. Things have never so suddenly become sordid and vile for me, especially the ubiquitous sandbags and chloride of lime. My temper is black; tinged with purple. I want to abuse somebody, hit him, kill him. The orderly, knowing the contents of the note, has gone. William, knowing me, has also withdrawn. I am about to help myself to two bombs from the trench stores, with a view to destroying my immediate surroundings, when my eye falls on the machine-gun, with its new belt in, all ready to fire. I advance upon it; the anger flashing from my eyes awes the section. With no man's leave or licence I sit down behind the gun and, raising the safety catch and depressing the button, I loose off without pause 250 passionate fiery rounds, meaning every one of them...

Amongst my fellows is a better-educated private who in civilian life is apparently a poet. His life also is at this moment one overwhelming burning grievance against things at large. His last day in the trenches has been one of that peculiarly offensive kind which, occurring in the life of every private at some time or other, consists of duty upon duty, task after task. His last straw is also a message just arrived: a verbal message from his platoon-sergeant to the effect that the first twenty-four hours of his rest will be spent on headquarters guard. Being either unaware of my presence or else aware of my inner feelings, he gives vent to verse, which, however little he may mean it or however emphatically it would have been suppressed by me in other circumstances, I now take a wicked delight in reproducing, without, of course, endorsing its sentiment:―

Your dismal