Behind the Lines Read Free Page B

button of his torch. Immediately a pair of glassy eyes set in a dough-like face surmounted by tousled black hair seemed to leap at him in the sudden brilliance. One muddy khaki leg stuck out over the edge of the track; the other leg—was not there. All below the thigh was just a tangle of sopping rags. The torch flickered in his shaking hand and went out. He was violently sick.
    And the first time he had fired a gun in anger, that too, he remembered. It was his third day with the battery. They were engaged in harassing fire. The familiar, “Ready! . . . Set” had been called, when he had been seized with a sudden desire to fire the gun himself. He squinted through the sight and changed places with the layer on the seat. The smooth polished firing lever was in his hand. ‘Fire!’ He had pulled the lever and had immediately been blinded by the flash, and his ears had been stung by the report. The gun slid smoothly back and up again, and he heard his shell sizzling away on its flight towards the enemy.
    That too had been an experience. He had fired his first round, one among millions it is true, but individually he had performed an act that may have caused death to some of the enemy. He had taken his place in the world war.
    It was all intensely interesting. He felt that he was really living. It was all so different from the quiet humdrum life of a provincial insurance office, broken each year by a fortnight’s holiday at Lowestoft where one wore carefullychosen négligé and had mild flirtations with rather silly girls one picked up round the bandstand.
    This was France. Everything proclaimed the fact. That farm wain with its high hurdle arrangement fore and aft and its two long-maned, long-tailed greys was quite different from the creaking tumbrils one met on the roads of Norfolk. And the plodding peasant with his long whip—his deep-throated “Heu!” was quite unlike the sing-song “Arld ye!” of East Anglia. And the estaminet they were passing and on which the men cast longing glances; it stood flush with the dusty white road; Café du Commerce was painted in large faded black letters across its flat yellow-washed front, and white blistered shutters were closed against the glare. A few self-important chickens patrolled the doorstep. It was all different, all so different from the “White Harts” and “Red Lions” of rural England.
    â€œThere we are,” cried Cane suddenly. “C Battery is over there.” He pointed towards the grey point of a low spire which rose above a clump of trees a kilometre on his left. “And this is our turning.” He swung his riding whip round towards a narrow winding road to the right which left the straight main road a hundred yards ahead.
    A low brick building with an ornamental ironwork door stood on the corner where the road forked. Two army lorries were parked on the grass of the roadside, and a third lorry with the front part jacked up and the wheels off stood in a yard bounded by the outbuildings. A man in shirt sleeves carrying a bleached canvas bucket “eyes righted” as Cane and Rawley rode by.
    â€œSome workshop, got a nice cushy billet!” commented Cane. And then he added, “Lead on,” and turned his mare to watch the battery turn off the main road.
    The narrow road curved round the slope of a hill, thick dark woods above, lush grass and a tiny stream below. Round another curve Rawley rode, and then the village appeared. Yellow or whitewashed cottages bordered the road which now widened and divided to encircle the church, a short grey tower surmounted by a shorter peaked spire. Here they met a procession of first communicants, little girls in white frocks and long white veils, two by two, followed by little boys in black suits and large white bows, whose hands were clasped devotionally but whose eyes strayed to the dun column of horsemen and guns. Behind the church the broad and