A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [23]
Cannon...Yes, that was the right thing to call them. Like the up-ended, rusted things that stuck up out of parades when one had been a child.
No, not the signal for a barrage! A good thing! One might as well say 'Thank Goodness', for the later they began the less long it lasted...Less long it lasted was ugly alliteration. Sooner it was over better...No doubt half-past eight or at half-past eight to the stroke those boring fellows would let off their usual offering, probably plump, right on top of that spot...As far as one could tell three salvoes of a dozen shells each at half-minute intervals between the salvoes. Perhaps salvoes was not the right word. Damn all artillery, anyhow!
Why did those fellows do it? Every morning at half-past eight; every afternoon at half-past two. Presumably just to show that they were still alive, and still boring. They were methodical. That was their secret. The secret of their boredom. Trying to kill them was like trying to shut up Liberals who would talk party politics in a non-political club had to be done, though! Otherwise the world was no place for...Oh, post-prandial naps!...Simple philosophy of the contest!...Forty minutes! And he glanced aside and upwards at the phosphorescent cockscomb! Within his mind something said that if he were only suspended up there...
He stepped once more on to the rifle-step and on to the bully-beef case. He elevated his head cautiously: grey desolation sloped down and away. FRRRrrr! A gentle purring sound!
He was automatically back, on the duckboard, his breakfast hurting his chest. He said:
'By jove! I got the fright of my life!' A laugh was called for: he managed it, his whole stomach shaking. And cold!
A head in a metal pudding-basin--a Suffolk type of blonde head, pushed itself from a withdrawn curtain of sacking in the gravel wall beside him, at his back. A voice said with concern:
'There ain't no beastly snipers, is there, sir? I did 'ope there would'n be henny beastly snipers 'ere. It gives such a beastly lot of extra trouble warning the men.'
Tietjens said it was a beastly skylark that almost walked into his mouth. The Acting Seargeant-Major said with enthusiasm that them 'ere skylarks could fair scare the guts out of you. He remembered a raid in the dark, crawling on 'is 'ands 'n knees wen 'e put 'is 'and on a skylark on its nest. Never left 'is nest till 'is 'and was on 'im! Then it went up and fair scared the wind out of 'im. Cor! Never would 'e fergit that!
With an air of carefully pulling parcels out of a carrier's cart he produced from the cavern behind the sacking two blinking assemblages of tubular khaki-clad limbs. They wavered to erectness, pink cheeses of faces yawning beside tall rifles and bayonets. The Sergeant said:
'Keep yer 'eds down as you go along. You never knows!'
Tietjens told the Lance-Corporal of that party of two that his confounded gas-mask nozzle was broken. Hadn't he seen that for himself? The dismembered object bobbed on the man's chest. He was to go and borrow another from another man and see the other drew a new one at once.
Tietjens' eyes were drawn aside and upwards. His knees were still weak. If he were levitated to the level of that thing he would not have to use his legs for support.
The elderly Sergeant went on with enthusiasm about skylarks. Wonderful the trust they showed in hus 'uman beens! Never left ther nesteses till you trod on them tho hall 'ell was rockin' around them...An appropriate skylark from above and before the parapet made its shrill and heartless noise heard. No doubt the skylark that Tietjens had frightened--that had frightened him.
Therd bin, the Sergeant went on still enthusiastically, pointing a hand in the direction of the noise, skylarks singin' on the mornin' of every straf 'e'd ever bin in! Won'erful trust in yumanity! Won'erful hinstinck set in the fethered brest by the Halmighty! For oo was goin' to 'it a skylark on a battlefield!
The solitary Man drooped beside his long,