we’re bound on a death and glory adventure there’s no man to whom we would sooner entrust or for whom we would sooner lay down our lives. We forget the carelessness of the putter’s thumb and remember only the stoutness of heart which the feeble body hides. His name is Wraith—Charlie Wraith; and his age—. I should guess him to be thirty, though three and a half years of war have so battered his body that he looks forty-five.     

       At last the game ends. It’s eleven o’clock; we march at midnight and can just reach the wagonlines by short-cuts and hard riding. The Major has been in luck; he’s pocketing all the winnings. The glasses are filled for a final toast. The new Major who is taking over from us, raises his glass, “Here’s to Hell with the Kaiser and, if you’ve got to die, may you all die smiling.”     

       We laugh as we make a no heeler of it; dying might be the merriest of sports. But to me—I can’t help thinking of that laddie, a single day at the Front, lying beneath a saddle-blanket with his throat cut and that amazed expression of protest in his staring eyes.     

       We’ve climbed out of the trench and stand looking down at the faces clustered in the angle formed by the lifted curtain. A few paces to my left a cross shows plainly, upon which is written, “Here lies an Unknown British Soldier.” Unknown! A hundred years from now we shall all be unknown. We shall be massed together in an anonymous glory as       “the heroes who stormed the Vimy Ridge.” It won’t mean any more to be remembered as John Smith than merely as “An Unknown British Soldier” who did his duty faithfully.     

       “Good-luck,” the faces in the candle-light cry.     

       “Cheerio,” we answer. But the words which are in all our minds are, “Those about to die, salute thee.”     

       Waving our hands, we turn away. The old racehorse, Fury, from a hundred yards has recognised his master’s voice and whinnies. With a pat on the neck and some coaxing words we get mounted, and walk carefully through the pit-falls of craters till we strike the road, when we grip with our knees and set off at the gallop.     

       Beneath the moonlight the chalk of the shell-ploughed battlefield creates the illusion of a country under snow, spreading beneath the velvet darkness for 

 Prev. P 35/182 next