Pass Guard at Ypres by Ronald; Gurner Read Free Book Online Page A

feeling that he was embarking upon an enchanted sea, but he was giving nothing away. Occasionally, from some tumbled dug-out, a head or two appeared, but otherwise nothing moved save grass and rats. After a time signs of other inhabitants ceased to appear, and they crept alone, and very stealthily, through a maze of wire, shell-holes and ruined trenches to their destination. Lucky it was a quiet night. They were near the plateau at last, and just over there, behind the wire, was the Boche: here were the tapes all ready laid for the embankment, so now tunics off and down to it, and for God’s sake see that nobody makes a noise. Nothing to worry about, of course, but it’s a bit on the near side, and there’s nobody else about, and—it was a damned silly remark for the Major to have made.
    Pity about this. The Major had done his best for them, and it wasn’t his fault that no shell had fallen and hardly a rifle or machine gun had been heard since ten o’clock, that the men had got started without any trouble, and that now, at 2.30, the job was practically done. They’d done it pretty well on their own, too: an R.E. corporal in attendance upon an infantry working party usually has about as many other jobs as a porter at a terminus on aBank Holiday, and as far as they were concerned Corporal Bonner hadn’t done as much as Private Bamford. Not that on this occasion such a comparison conveyed as much as would usually have been the case, for Private Bamford had got into the job tonight. Freddy Mann for once had taken no chances: he had turned a deaf ear to Bamford’s representations as to the importance of an officer’s comfort, and his batman had dug his little sector with the rest of them; furthermore, he and his comrades, knowing exactly where they were in relation to the enemy, had not tarried in the digging. No, it wasn’t the R.E.’s fault that things had gone well that night, that they had had no casualties, that in four hours a machine gun emplacement had been completed that would satisfy the most exacting of corps commanders; no fault of theirs that at about 1 p.m. he and Robbie, knowing that the situation was now in hand, had had an unforgettable moment during the midway easy, lying on their backs concealed in the rank grasses of untilled fields, and watching the starlights flicker and fall against the clear sky of the summer night, till suddenly, here at Hooge, on the roof of an unknown world, a strange spirit of utter and elemental peace had touched them. No fault, all this, of the Major’s, and, by Jove! they’d let him know. Back now, tails up, down past the Culvert to the Birr Cross Roads, past Gordon Farm and the Halfway House, back to the embankment and the gates of Ypres. Mitchell and Baines could take the men up those few hundred yards to the Prison, while he and Robbie dug out the Major to tell him all about it; it washigh time he was about at 5 a.m. and they were certain he would like to know that the job was done. The Major looked at them with interest. Full of it, weren’t they, this curly-headed boy and this quietly elated sober-faced young man; thought they’d won the war to all intents and purposes, if one could judge from the way they talked. Well, well—the Major stuck his hands deeper into the pockets of his British warm, looked at them and smiled.
    â€œThink you’ve done down Hooge, eh? Think you’re top dog over Wipers? Think again, young feller-me-lads. All right this time, I grant you, but—have a drink and think again.”

CHAPTER VIII
    This was as it should be: there was peace in Ypres tonight. Major Baggallay
     walked contentedly, humming to himself as he smoked a cigarette and strolled along
     the middle of the road. He was a wily old war-dog, and he knew his Ypres. They
     wouldn’t shell Ypres again tonight. Funny thing, that, about Ypres: you might
     have hell let loose the whole day long, and then about six