A Long Long Way Read Online Free PDF Page B

same da in the trenches under Sebastopol in the Crimean War.
    But it was quite pleasant eating the tinned maconochie then, instead of good hot grub, all of them there, and shaking their heads at the sergeant-major’s energy and lingo. Because you could be shot for less, they knew. But they knew it was just the fiddly bloody mirror and the noise that had annoyed him, and the fact that the ration detail hadn’t showed - or the blessed rum.

    ‘It’s fucking stand-to in five minutes, Willie,’ said Christy Moran, ‘so lug your arse to the latrine and do your business, and then mount the fucking fire-step for a lookout before the captain comes out of his fucking dugout and has your arse for a handbag.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Willie Dunne.
    ‘Williams, Clancy, McCann, all you buggers, likewise,’ he said. And the men of the platoon stirred like disturbed woodlice. ‘I’ve a horrible feeling the captain has plans for us tonight, I do,’ he said.
    McCann was a quiet sort of a sourpuss of a man from Glasnevin, with a face that looked like it was spattered with smuts of soot, but that was only because it was perpetually unshaven.
    So while one man kept a watch, the rest went round the traverse to the latrines. There were four nice big buckets there with wooden planks above for seats and the men eagerly took their turn. It was like a drug, when the shit left them, the body seemed to race high into happiness. It might have been the poisonous, but hopefully nutritious, stuff in those tins.
    Christy Moran however merely suffered. He sat like an afflicted saint on the wooden seating. He scowled and moaned. Little lines of red and blue seemed to gather on his thin cheeks. He looked like a whiskey drinker that hadn’t had a drink for ten days. He was the very picture of suffering.
    ‘If a man could have a wash and steam his poor bollocks in a tub of hot water, that would be some recompense for this fucking torture of pissing fire,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Clancy helpfully.
    ‘I didn’t fucking say anything,’ said Christy Moran, genuinely surprised.
    ‘You did, Sarge,’ said Clancy, ‘you said -’
    ‘I never spoke,’ said Christy Moran.
    ‘You did, sir,’ said Clancy, in a friendly way.
    And Sergeant-Major Moran looked at him with real fright. It was a fact that the sergeant-major had a little problem. He thought he was only thinking his thoughts and not speaking his thoughts. It was odd. But they were beginning to get a handle on their sergeant-major. They certainly liked him, all guff and gristle that he was.
    ‘Mother of the good Jesus,’ said Christy Moran, and he pissed at last like a free man, and his bowels mercifully opened.
    ‘Hallelujah,’ said McCann, quietly, and lifted up his big square hands to the skies.

    Now at least they understood the purpose of the bombardment. That night not a crumb of fresh grub reached them from the rear.
    The unwearying Boche had worked out where those supply trenches were, not merely because they had been their own trenches in a previous time, but because a watchful airplane passed over yester-eve. That pilot must have bollocking returned the information to his artillery, like a gillie guiding huntsmen.
    Now those bombs had fallen, right on top of the supply boys. Not only were those lads incinerated, blown out among the atoms of Flanders, but the vats of soup had been spilled and ruined. The rum was roasted. The tobacco was turned to ashes.
    By the fucking boys of East Bavaria.

Chapter Three
    In those days, as chance would have it, or the striving plots of generals, they did not rise up and crest the parapets.
    They were dug in God hardly knew where, although wise maps had their numbers, and the river was said to be not too far off. But what river Willie never was sure. His ear wasn’t attuned to the strange, harsh names. Their trench was called Sackville Street anyhow; that was enough to be going on with.
    Willie and the other lads knew there had been a great