A Long Long Way Read Online Free PDF Page A

been pleased to discover also as they had boarded the Dublin train at Limerick Junction that their platoon leader was a young captain from Wicklow, one of the Pasleys of the Mount, and Willie’s father when he wrote to tell him was pleased also, because everyone knew the Pasleys and they were highly respected people and had a lovely garden there around their house. Willie’s father indeed was sure the captain would be a chip off of the old block, just as he himself was a chip off the old block of his father, who had been steward of Humewood in his heyday, and just as Willie was a chip off him.
    The big transport lurched on towards the war. He felt so proud of himself he thought his toes might burst out of his boots. In fact he imagined for a moment that he had grown those wanting inches, and might go now after all and be a policeman if he chose, astonishing his father. The men of the decent world had been asked by Lord Kitchener to go and drive back the filthy Hun, back where they belonged, in their own evil country beyond the verdant borders of Belgium. Willie felt his body folding and folding over and over with pride like the very Wicklow mountains must feel the roll of heather and the roll of rain.
    It was this country he had come to heal, he himself, Willie Dunne. He hoped his father’s fervent worship of the King would guide him, as the lynchpin that held down the dangerous tent of the world. And he was sure that all that Ireland was, and all that she had, should be brought to bear against this entirely foul and disgusting enemy.
    The blood in his arms seemed to flush along his veins with a strange force. Yes, yes, he felt, though merely five foot six, that he had grown, it was surely an absolute fact, something in him had leaped forth towards this other unknown something. He could put it no clearer than that in his mind. All confusion he had felt, all intimations that troubled him and unsettled him, melted away in this euphoria. He was full of health after the nine-month slog in Fermoy. His muscles were like wraps of prime meat to make a butcher happy. The lecturers at Fermoy had described the cavalry engagements that would soon be possible, and there would be no more of that miserable retreat that had made the beginning of the war a horror, killing indeed so many of the old Dublin Fusiliers and making prisoners of heroes. The enemy lines would be burst asunder now by this million of new men that had come out at Lord Kitchener’s behest. It was obvious, Willie thought. A million was a terrible lot of men. They would smash the line in a thousand places, and the horses and their gallant riders would be brought up and they would go off ballyhooing across open ground, slashing at the ruined Germans with their sabres. And good enough for them. Their headgear would stream in the foreign sun and the good nations would be relieved and grateful!
    ‘Why are you lashing your arm about?’ said Clancy playfully.
    ‘Was I, Joe?’ he said, laughing.
    ‘You nearly had my head off,’ said Joe Clancy of the village of Brittas in County Dublin - not the seaside place, mind, as he often was driven to point out. The other Brittas. Without the sea.
    ‘The other fucking Brittas!’ Williams had said when this litany was first rehearsed. ‘For the love of God!’
    ‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ said Willie. ‘Isn’t it a fine, long-looking country?’ he said.
    Then suddenly a hand of fear dipped into his stomach. What a curious thing. One moment as brave as a young bird. Well, he felt as if he might even throw up his breakfast, truth to tell. And that had been three gristly black sausages murdered into life by the cook, so he didn’t want to see them again.
    ‘Jaysus, what’s the matter, Private? You have gone very green,’ said Christy Moran, the sergeant-major.
    ‘Ah, just the rocking about, sir.’
    ‘He’s not used to travelling in style, sir,’ said Clancy.
    The truckload of men laughed.
    ‘Don’t be puking this