The Penguin Book of First World War Stories Read Online Free PDF

hit.’
    â€˜Probably walked into the German trenches by mistake,’ grunted the CSM dispassionately, and retired. Outside the dugout men had moved the corporal; but the red pools still remained – stagnant at the bottom of the trench…
    â€˜Well, you’re through all right now, Major,’ said a voice in the doorway, and an officer with the white and blue brassard of the signals came in and sat down. ‘There are so many wires going back that have been laid at odd times, that it’s difficult to trace them in a hurry.’ He gave a ring on the telephone, and in a moment the thin, metallic voice of the man at the other end broke the silence.
    â€˜All right. Just wanted to make sure we were through. Ring off.’
    â€˜I remember kicking that damn thing this morning when I found we were cut off,’ remarked Seymour, with a weary smile. ‘Funny how childish one is at times.’
    â€˜Aye – but natural. This war’s damnable.’ The two men fell silent. ‘I’ll have a bit of an easy here,’ went on the signal officer after a while, ‘and then go down with you.’
    A few hours later the two men clambered out of the back of the trench. ‘It’s easier walking, and I know every stick,’ remarked the Major. ‘Make for that stunted pollard first.’
    Dimly the tree stood outlined against the sky – a conspicuous mark and signpost. It was the signal officer who tripped over it first – that huddled quiet body – and gave a quick ejaculation. ‘Somebody caught it here, poor devil. Look out – duck.’
    A flare shot up into the night, and by its light the two motionless officers close to the pollard looked at what they had found.
    â€˜How the devil did he get here!’ muttered Seymour. ‘It’s one of my men.’
    â€˜Was he anywhere near you when you kicked the telephone?’ asked the other, and his voice was a little hoarse.
    â€˜He may have been – I don’t know. Why?’
    â€˜Look at his right hand.’ From the tightly clenched fingers two broken ends of wire stuck out.
    â€˜Poor lad.’ The Major bit his lip. ‘Poor lad – I wonder. They called him the Company Idiot. Do you think…?’
    â€˜I think he came out to find the break in the wire,’ said the other quietly. ‘And in doing so he found the answer to the big riddle.’
    â€˜I knew he’d make good – I knew it all along. He used to dream of big things – something big for the regiment.’
    â€˜And he’s done a big thing, by Jove,’ said the signal officer gruffly, ‘for it’s the motive that counts. And he couldn’t know that he’d got the wrong wire.’
    â€˜When ’e doesn’t forget, ’e does things wrong.’
    As I said, both the Sergeant-Major and his officer proved right according to their own lights.

C. E. MONTAGUE
A TRADE REPORT ONLY
    No one has said what was wrong with The Garden, nor even why it was called by that name: whether because it had apples in it, and also a devil, like Eden; or after Gethsemane and the agonies there; or, again, from Proserpine’s 1 garden, because of the hush filling the foreground. All the air near you seemed like so much held breath, with the long rumble of far-away guns stretching out beyond it like some dreamful line of low hills in the distance of a landscape.
    The rest of the Western Front has been well written up – much too well. The Garden alone – the Holy Terror, as some of the men used to call it – has not. It is under some sort of taboo. I think I know why. If you never were in the line there before the smash came and made it like everywhere else, you could not know how it would work on the nerves when it was still its own elfish self. And if you were there and did know, then you knew also that it was no good to try to tell people. They only said, ‘Oh, so you all