A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [55]
This shell appeared heavier and to be more than usually tired. Desultory. It seemed to pass within six feet over the heads of Aranjuez and himself. Then, just twenty yards up the hill it said, invisibly, 'Dud!'...And it was a dud!
It had not, very likely, been aimed at their trench at all. It was probably just an aircraft shrapnel shell that had not exploded. The Germans were firing a great number of duds--these days.
So it might not be a sign of the beginning! It was tantalizing. But as long as it ended the right way one could bear it.
Lance-Corporal Duckett, the fair boy, ran to within two foot of Tietjens' feet and pulled up with a Guardee's stamp and a terrific salute. There was life in the old dog yet. Meaning that a zest for spit and polish survived in places in these ragtime days.
The boy said, panting--it might have been agitation, or that he had run so fast...But why had he run so fast if he were not agitated:
'If you please, sir,'...Pant...'Will you come to the Colonel?'...Pant. 'With as little delay as possible!' He remained panting.
It went through Tietjens' mind that he was going to spend the rest of that day in a comfortable, dark hole. Not in the blinding daylight...Let us be thankful!
Leaving Lance-Corporal Duckett...it came suddenly into his head that he liked that boy because he suggested Valentine Wannop!...to converse in intimate tones with Aranjuez and so to distract him from the fear of imminent death or blindness that would mean the loss of his girl, Tietjens went smartly back along the trenches. He didn't hurry. He was determined that the men should not see him hurry. Even if the Colonel should refuse to be relieved of the command, Tietjens was determined that the men should have the consolation of knowing that Headquarters numbered one cool, sauntering soul amongst its members.
They had had, when they took over the Trasna Valley trenches before the Mametz Wood affair, a rather good Major who wore an eyeglass and was of good family. He had something the matter with him, for he committed suicide later...But, as they went in, the Huns, say fifty yards away, began to shout various national battle-cries of the Allies or the melodies of regimental quicksteps of British regiments. The idea was that if they heard, say: 'Some talk of Alexander...' resounding from an opposite trench, H.M. Second Grenadier Guards would burst into cheers and Brother Hun would know what he had before him.
Well, this Major Grosvenor shut his men up, naturally, and stood listening with his eyeglass screwed into his face and the air of a connoisseur at a quartette party. At last he took his eyeglass out, threw it in the air and caught it again.
'Shout, Banzai! men,' he said.
That, on the off-chance, might give the Enemy a scunner at the thought that we had Japanese troops in the line in front of them, or it would show them that we were making game of them, a form of offensive that sent these owlish fellows mad with rage...So the Huns shut up!
That was the sort of humour in an officer that the men still liked--. The sort of humour Tietjens himself had not got: but he could appear unconcernedly reflective and all there--and he could tell them, at trying moments, that, say, their ideas about skylarks were all wrong...That was tranquilizing.
Once he had heard a Papist Padre preaching in a barn, under shell-fire. At any rate shells were going overhead and pigs underfoot. The Padre had preached about very difficult points in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the men had listened raptly. He said that was common sense. They didn't want lachrymose or mortuary orations. They wanted their minds taken off...So did the Padre!
Thus you talk to the men, just before the event, about skylarks, or the hind-legs of the elephant at the old Lane! And you don't hurry when the Colonel sends for you.
He walked along, for a moment or two, thinking