A Man Could Stand Up - Ford Madox Ford [57]
Why couldn't they chuck that? What good did it do them to keep that mad drummer incessantly thundering on his stupid instrument?...Possibly they might bring down some of our planes, but they generally didn't. You saw the black balls of their shells exploding and slowly expand like pocket-handkerchiefs about the unconcerned planes, like black peas aimed at dragon-flies, against the blue: the illuminated, pinkish, pretty things!...But his dislike of those guns was just dislike--a Tory prejudice. They were probably worth while. Just...
You naturally tried every argument in the unseen contest of wills that went on across the firmament.
'Ho!' says our Staff, 'they are going to attack in force at such an hour ackemma,' because naturally the staff thought in terms of ackemma years after the twenty-four-hour day had been established. 'Well, we'll send out a million machine gun planes to wipe out any men they've got moving up into support!'
It was of course unusual to move bodies of men by daylight. But this game had only two resources: you used the usual. Or the unusual. Usually you didn't begin your barrage after dawn and launch your attack at ten-thirty or so. So you might do it--the Huns might be trying it on--as a surprise measure.
On the other hand, our people might be sending over the planes, whose immense droning was then making your very bones vibrate, in order to tell the Huns that we were ready to be surprised: that the time had now come round when we might be expecting the Hun brain to think out a surprise. So we sent out those deathly, dreadful things to run along just over the tops of the hedgerows, in spite of all the guns! For there was nothing more terrifying in the whole war than that span of lightness, swaying, approaching a few feet above the heads of your column of men: instinct with wrath: dispensing the dreadful rain! So we had sent them. In a moment they would be tearing down...
Of course if this were merely a demonstration: if, say, there were no reinforcements moving, no troops detraining at the distant railhead, the correct Hun answer would be to hammer some of our trenches to hell with all the heavy stuff they could put on to them. That was like saying sardonically:
'God, if you interfere with our peace and quiet on a fine day we'll interfere with yours!' And...Kerumph...the wagons of coal would fly over until we recalled our planes and all went to sleep again over the chess-board...You would probably be just as well off if you refrained from either demonstration or counter-demonstration. But Great General Staff liked to exchange these wittiscisms in iron. And a little blood!
A Sergeant of sorts approached him from Bn H.Q. way, shepherding a man with a head wound. His tin hat, that is to say, was perched jauntily forward over a bandage. He was Jewish-nosed, appeared not to have shaved, though he had, and appeared as if he ought to have worn pince-nez to complete his style of Oriental manhood. Private Smith. Tietjens said:
'Look here, what was your confounded occupation before the war?'
The man replied with an agreeable, cultured throaty intonation:
'I was a journalist, sir. On a Socialist paper. Extreme Left!'
'And what,' Tietjens asked, 'was your agreeable name?...I'm obliged to ask you that question. I don't want to insult you.'
In the old regular army it was an insult to ask a private if he was not going under his real name. Most men enlisted under false names.
The man said:
'Eisenstein, sir!'
Tietjens asked if the man were a Derby recruit or compulsorily enlisted. He said he had enlisted voluntarily. Tietjens said: 'Why?' If the fellow was a capable journalist and on the right side he would be more useful outside the army. The man said he had been foreign correspondent of a Left paper. Being correspondent of a Left paper with a name like Eisenstein deprived one of one's chance of usefulness. Besides he wanted to have a whack at