Behind the Lines Read Online Free PDF Page A

from the desolation of the forward area. There were shops with homely unwarlike goods in the windows; things one had forgotten anyone had a use for—white stiff collars, and civilian suits, children’s toys and photograph frames, fancy notepaper and ladies’ hats. Where the street widened to form a small square was a market. Fat market women sat complacently beneath their large umbrellas before trays piled with stockings, hats, pots and pans, vegetables, fruit, crockery or ironmongery.
    Rawley rode slowly through the main street and enjoyed it all. Two army nursing sisters in red and grey uniforms stood before a window hung with silk and linen lingeries, and Rawley smiled to think how remote such fragile garments were from the rough masculine world of gun-pits and dug-outs from which he had come.
    For luncheon he turned into the Quatre Fils. It was market day, and there were but few vacant chairs at either of the long tables that ran the length of the dining-room. The atmosphere was redolent of cooked food, and hazy with the steam of hot dishes; and there was aswelling buzz of sound, for the vin ordinaire , a bottle of which stood before each plate and was included in the table d’hôte, seemed to have loosened the tongues of the taciturn Picardy farmers and to have increased the natural volubility of their wives. A sprinkling of British officers served to remind one of the war.
    Rawley was looking for a vacant chair when he heard his name called and, turning, discovered Charles Tankard seated at a small table by the wall. Tankard was an old school friend and together they had enlisted in a Territorial battalion in 1914. They had both been commissioned about the same time and separated, Rawley to the Artillery, and Tankard to a Yeomanry regiment.
    Tankard gripped Rawley’s hand and grinned. “Hullo, Peter, old cock! Take a pew. I thought we’d run across each other before long.” He signalled to a waitress. “Let’s have some drinkable juice to celebrate in. Can’t swallow the local red ink.” He pushed the bottle of vin ordinaire aside. “And where are your old pop-guns now?”
    â€œErvillers—back resting for a bit. We pulled in from La Basse last night.”
    â€œThat’s bad luck,” exclaimed Tankard. “Here have we been hanging round here for the last month, and now we go north tomorrow, and I have to get back to the squadron toute suite after this, so I shall not see you again. Rotten luck!”
    â€œRotten luck,” agreed Rawley.
    â€œWell, what have you been doing up at La Basse, old son? Pitching shorts on the poor ruddy infanteers as usual?”
    Rawley grinned. “You old horse-wallah, you! No—winning the war, that’s what we’ve been doing—you know, the usual harassing fire relieved by occasional S.O.S. calls.”
    â€œNo fruity barrages yet?”
    â€œNot yet; that’s to come.”
    Tankard nodded. “Sure. You will get all you want before you are through. Well, how does this little war agree with you, Peter?”
    Rawley put down his glass and answered thoughtfully. “Well, to tell the truth, I really rather like it. It’s deuced interesting.”
    â€œInteresting! My God!” exclaimed Tankard. “Look here, young fellow, if you go on like that you will be a general before you know where you are, so be warned in time.”
    â€œYou old cynic,” retorted Rawley. “But after all, that’s what we joined up for, isn’t it.”
    â€œI suppose so,” admitted Tankard. “But we were very young in those days.”
    â€œThree years younger to be precise,” put in Rawley dryly.
    Tankard shrugged his shoulders. “One can learn a lot in three years. Oh, ay, I don’t want to die,” he sang softly.
    â€œNeither do I,” retorted Rawley. “But what is wrong with you, Charles, is that you’re fed up with hanging about. I suppose