A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [47]
'Keep your glass on him!'
And they had chased that miserable German about that naked hillside, with shells, for ten minutes. Whichever way he bolted, they put a shell in front of him. Then they let him go. His action, when he had realized that they were really attending to him, had been exactly that of a rabbit dodging out of the wheat the reapers have just reached. At last he just lay down. He wasn't killed. They had seen him get up and walk off later. Still carrying his bait can!
His antics had afforded those gunners infinite amusement. It afforded them almost more when all the German artillery on that front, imagining that God knew what was the matter, had awakened and plastered heaven and earth and everything between for a quarter of an hour with every imaginable kind of missile. And had then, abruptly, shut up...Yes...Irresponsible people, gunners!
The incident had really occurred because Tietjens had happened to ask that gunner how much he imagined it had cost in shells to smash to pieces an indescribably smashed field of twenty acres that lay between Bazentin-le-petit and Mametz Wood. The field was unimaginably smashed, pulverized, powdered...The gunner had replied that with shells from all the forces employed it might have cost three million sterling. Tietjens asked how many men the gunner imagined might have been killed there. The gunner said he didn't begin to know. None at all, like as not! No one was very likely to have been strolling about there for pleasure, and it hadn't contained any trenches. It was just a field. Nevertheless, when Tietjens had remarked that in that case two Italian labourers with a steam plough could have pulverized that field about as completely for, say, thirty shillings the gunner had taken it quite badly. He had made his men poop off after that inoffensive Hun with the bait can, just to show what artillery can do.
...At that point Tietjens had remarked to McKechnie:
Tor my part, I shall advise the M.O. to recommend that the Colonel should be sent back on sick leave for a couple of months. It is within his power to do that.'
McKechnie had exhausted all his obscene expletives. He was thus sane. His jaw dropped:
'Send the C.O. back!' he exclaimed lamentably. 'At the very moment when...'
Tietjens exclaimed:
'Don't be an ass. Or don't imagine that I'm an ass. No one is going to reap any glory. In this Army. Here and now!' McKechnie said:
'But what price the money? Command pay! Nearly four quid a day. You could do with two-fifty quid at the end of his two months!'
Not so very long ago it would have seemed impossible that any man could speak to him about either his private financial affairs or his intimate motives.
He said:
'I have obvious responsibilities...'
'Some say,' McKechnie went on, 'that you're a b----y millionaire. One of the richest men in England. Giving coal mines to duchesses. So they say. Some say you're such a pauper that you hire your wife out to generals...Any generals. That's how you get your jobs.'
To that Tietjens had had to listen before...
Max Redoubt...It had come suddenly on to his tongue--just as, before, the name of Bemerton had come, belatedly. The name of the artillery observation post between Albert and Bécourt-Bécordel had been Max Redoubt! During the intolerable waitings of that half-forgotten July and August the name had been as familiar on his lips as...say, as Bemerton itself...When I forget thee, oh my Bemerton...or, oh my Max Redoubt...may my right hand forget its cunning!...The unforgettables!...Yet