Behind the Lines Read Online Free PDF

you have been spending your evenings loaded up with sandbags and junk, wandering round in the dark among crumps, looking for a map reference and a sapper lance-corporal who isn’t there.”
    â€œThat’s about the size of it,” agreed Tankard.
    â€œBut you know damn well that, if the infanteers made a break and pushed you through, you would be as keen as mustard the moment you got your old quadrupeds on the other side barging among the Bosche.”
    â€œWell, that would be a reasonable kind of war,” protested Tankard. “Not this damned ditch-digging game.”
    â€œThey will push you through the gap one of these days,” Rawley asserted confidently.
    â€œMy God! Have they been telling you, too, about that gap!” exclaimed Tankard in disgust. “When I first came out it was to be a break through—vanguard to Berlin. Now it’s this cursed gap. For weeks we have been practising finding that gap. Why, my troop horses wake up in the night and imagine they’ve found it, poor brutes. The only gap I’ve ever found—or am ever likely to find—is in the brains of the Brass Hats.”
    Rawley smiled. “It’s not a bad old war,” he said.
    â€œIt might be worse, I suppose,” admitted Tankard. “But not much. Yours a decent push?”
    â€œQuite a good crowd. We are only four in the mess at the moment; we lost a subaltern up at La Basse. The Major is all right—young and keen; a bit regimental, but he doesn’t muck the battery about or try experiments. Old Whedbee, the second-in-command, is a rum old bird—dry old stick. Was a schoolmaster in civil life—got the pedagogic manner. Reminds me of old Piecrust at Ventchester. But he’s a jolly good sort when you know him. And then there’s young Piddock; he’s quite a good kid. We are a cheery crush.”
    â€œThat’s half the battle,” said Tankard. “What are you doing in Doullens?”
    â€œHaving a look round.”
    â€œNot much to see, I’m afraid.”
    â€œIt’s new to me and a change from the battery position.”
    Tankard nodded. “Civilization again. The devastated area is ghastly.”
    â€œYes. And yet it has its own peculiar charm.”
    Tankard raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Same old Peter,” he commented.
    â€œWell, it has,” asserted Rawley. “In a way it reminds me of the Broads—Hickling and Horsey.”
    â€œOh, I say!” protested Tankard.
    â€œIt has the same loneliness—and timelessness,” went on Rawley. “There one might be living in the twelfth century or the ninth; there is nothing to show that it is the twentieth.”
    â€œExcept crumps,” put in Tankard.
    â€œThose great stretches of devastated, uncultivated, deserted downland are rather fine—especially at night, when there is only a faint flickering of Verey lights to the east and the grumble of a distant strafe. The universe seems grander and nearer then—and anything might happen.”
    Tankard shook his head. “You will be a poet one of these days, Peter, my lad. But I know what you mean.”
    â€œAnd those stark trees, all points and shivered branches without leaves, and the great mine craters in the chalk all white in the moonlight. Did you ever see anything more like a dead world—like another planet, like a Lunar landscape must be?”
    Tankard smiled reminiscently. “You haven’t changed much since the old days at Piecrust’s,” he said. “Do you remember that day after the Ely match when you nearly missed the train and we found you up the cathedral tower in the dark trying to light a beacon!”
    Rawley grinned. “I had been reading Hereward the Wake ,” he said.
    Tankard looked at his wrist-watch. “I must walk march.” He beckoned a waitress.
    Rawley’s hand went to his breast pocket, but Tankard held his arm. “No;