A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [36]
But there they had been--Perowne broken down, principally at the thought that he was not going to see his, Tietjens', wife ever again in a golden gown...Unless, perhaps, with a golden harp on a cloud, for he looked at things like that....And, positively, as soon as that baggage-car--it had been a baggage-car, not a cattle-truck!--had discharged the deserter with escort and the three wounded Cochin-Chinese platelayers whom the French authorities had palmed off on them...And where the devil had they all been going? Obviously up into the line, and already pretty near it: near Division Headquarters. But where?...God knew? Or when? God knew too! ...A fine-ish day with a scanty remains of not quite melted snow in the cutting and the robins singing in the coppice above. Say February...Say St Valentine's Day: which, of course would agitate Perowne some more...Well, positively as soon as the baggage-car had discharged the wounded who had groaned, and the sheepish escort who did not know whether they ought to be civil to the deserter in the presence of the orfcers, and the deserter who kept on defiantly--or if you like brokenheartedly, for there was no telling the difference--asking the escort questions as to the nature of their girls, or volunteering information as to the intimate behaviour of his...The deserter a gipsyfied, black-eyed fellow with an immense jeering mouth; the escort a Corporal and two Tommies, blond and blushing East Kents, remarkably polished about the buttons and brass numerals, with beautifully neatly put on puttees: obviously Regulars, coming from behind the lines; the Cochin-Chinese, with indistinguishable broad yellow faces, brown poetic eyes, furred top-boots and blue furred hoods over their bandaged heads and swathed faces. Seated, leaning back against the side of the box-truck and groaning now and then and shivering all the time...
Well, the moment they had been cleared out at the Deputy Sub RTO's tin shed by the railway bridge, the fellow Perowne with his well-padded presence and his dark babu-Hinduish aspect had bubbled out with questions as to the hereafter according to Tietjens and as to the nature of Death; the immediate process of dissolution: dying...And in between Perowne's questions McKechnie, with his unspeakable intonation and his dark eyes as mad as a cat's, had asked Tietjens how he dared get himself appointed second-in-command of his, McKechnie's own battalion...'You're no soldier,' he would burst out. 'Do you think you are a b----y infantryman? You're a mealsack, and what the devil's to become of my battalion...Mine...My battalion! Our battalion of pals!'
That had been in, presumably, February, and, presumably, it was now April. The way the dawn came up looked like April...What did it matter?...That damned truck had stayed under that bridge for two hours and a half ...in the process of the eternal waiting that is War. You hung about and you hung about, and you kicked your heels and you kicked your heels: waiting for Mills bombs to come, or for jam, or for generals, or for the tanks, or transport, or the clearance of the road ahead. You waited in offices under the eyes of somnolent orderlies, under fire on the banks of canals, you waited in hotels, dug-outs, tin sheds, ruined houses. There will be no man who survives of His Majesty's Armed Forces that shall not remember those eternal hours when Time itself stayed still as the true image of bloody War! ...
Well, in that case Providence seemed to have decreed a waiting just long enough to allow Tietjens to persuade the unhappy mortal called Perowne that death was not a very dreadful affair...He had enough intellectual authority to persuade the fellow with his glued-down black hair that Death supplied His