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Read Ebook: The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War by MacGill Patrick
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Ebook has 1210 lines and 55136 words, and 25 pages
Five minutes afterwards a sergeant and two men came in from listening patrol and reported to our officer.
"We've just encountered a strong German patrol between the lines," said the sergeant. "We exchanged shots with them and then withdrew. We have no casualties, but the Germans have one man out of action, shot through the stomach."
"How do you know it went through his stomach?" asked the officer.
"In this way," said the sergeant. "When we fired one of the Germans put his hands across his stomach and fell to the ground yellin' 'Mein Gutt! Mein Gutt!'"
"So it did get 'im in the guts then," said Bill Teake, when he heard of the incident.
"You fool!" exclaimed Pryor. "It was 'My God' that the German said."
"But Pat 'as just told me that the German said 'Mine Gut,'" Bill protested.
"Well, 'Mein Gott' is the same as 'My God,'" said Pryor.
"Well, any'ow, that's just wot the Allymongs would say," Bill muttered. "It's just like them to call God Almighty nick names."
When dawn showed pale yellow in a cold sky, and stars were fading in the west, we packed up and took our way out and marched back to Nouex-les-Mines, there to rest for a day or two.
OUT FROM NOUEX-LES-MINES
Every soldier to his trade-- Trigger sure and bayonet keen-- But we go forth to use a spade Marching out from Nouex-les-Mines.
AS I was sitting in the Caf? Pierre le Blanc helping Bill Teake, my Cockney mate, to finish a bottle of vin rouge, a snub-nosed soldier with thin lips who sat at a table opposite leant towards me and asked:
"Are you MacGill, the feller that writes?"
"Yes," I answered.
"Thought I twigged yer from the photo of yer phiz in the papers," said the man with the snub nose, as he turned to his mates who were illustrating a previous fight in lines of beer representing trenches on the table.
"See!" he said to them, "I knew 'im the moment I clapped my eyes on 'im."
"Hold your tongue," one of the men, a ginger-headed fellow, who had his trigger finger deep in beer, made answer. Then the dripping finger rose slowly and was placed carefully on the table.
"This," said Carrots, "is Richebourg, this drop of beer is the German trench, and these are our lines. Our regiment crossed at this point and made for this one, but somehow or another we missed our objective. Just another drop of beer and I'll show you where we got to; it was--Blimey! where's that bloomin' beer? 'Oo the 'ell!--Oh! it's Gilhooley!"
I had never seen Gilhooley before, but I had often heard talk of him. Gilhooley was an Irishman and fought in an English regiment; he was notorious for his mad escapades, his dare-devil pranks, and his wild fearlessness. Now he was opposite to me, drinking a mate's beer, big, broad-shouldered, ungainly Gilhooley.
Once, when a German sniper potting at our trenches in Vermelles picked off a few of our men, an exasperated English subaltern gripped a Webley revolver and clambered over the parapet.
There was no reply: Gilhooley sauntered back, waited in the trench till dusk, when he went across to the sniper's abode with a bomb and "got him out of it."
Four men accompanied Gilhooley when he was considered fit for further fight. The five appeared before the Colonel.
"How do you feel?" the Colonel asked the first man.
"Not well at all," was the answer. "I can't eat 'ardly nuffink."
"That's the sort of man required up there," Colonel Z. answered. "So up you go and the best of luck."
"How far can you see?" the Colonel asked the next man, who had complained that his eyesight was bad.
"Only about fifty yards," was the answer.
"Your regiment is in trenches barely twenty-five yards from those of the enemy," the Colonel told him. "So up you go, and the best of luck."
"Off you go and find the man who wounded you," the third soldier was told; the fourth man confessed that he had never killed a German.
It came to Gilhooley's turn.
"How many men have you killed?" he was asked.
"In and out about fifty," was Gilhooley's answer.
"Make it a hundred then," said the Colonel; "and up you go, and the best of luck."
Gilhooley, penniless and thirsty, had an unrivalled capacity for storing beer in his person.
"Back again, Gilhooley?" someone remarked in a diffident voice.
"Back again!" said Gilhooley wearily, putting his hand in the pocket of his tunic and taking out a little round object about the size of a penny inkpot.
"I hear there's going to be a big push shortly," he muttered. "This," he said, holding the bomb between trigger finger and thumb, "will go bang into the enemy's trenches next charge."
A dozen horror-stricken eyes gazed at the bomb for a second, and the soldiers in the caf? remembered how Gilhooley once, in a moment of distraction, forgot that a fuse was lighted, then followed a hurried rush, and the caf? was almost deserted by the occupants. Gilhooley smiled wearily, replaced the bomb in his pocket, and set himself the task of draining the beer glasses.
My momentary thrill of terror died away when the bomb disappeared, and, leaving Bill, I approached the Wild Man's table and sat down.
"Gilhooley?" I said.
"Eh, what is it?" he interjected.
"Will you have a drink with me?" I hurried to inquire. "Something better than this beer for a change. Shall we try champagne?"
"Yes, we'll try it," he said sarcastically, and a queer smile hovered about his eyes. Somehow I had a guilty sense of doing a mean action.... I called to Bill.
"Come on, matey," I said.
Bill approached the table and sat down. I called for a bottle of champagne.
"This is Gilhooley, Bill," I said to my mate. "He's the bomber we've heard so much about."
"I suppose ye'll want to know everythin' about me now, seein' ye've asked me to take a drop of champagne," said Gilhooley, his voice rising. "Damn yer champagne. You think I'm a bloomin' alligator in the Zoo, d'ye? Give me a bun and I'll do anythin' ye want me to."
"What the devil are ye talkin' about?" asked Gilhooley.
"About you," I said.
He burst out laughing at this and clinked glasses with me when we drank, but he seemed to forget Bill.
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