Free And We Go On by Will R. Bird

looked around. We saw signs, “Keep low. Use trench in daytime,” and we went along the trench until we came to a Y.M.C.A. canteen. We had money and so we bought plenty of tinned goods and chocolate and went back to our little home. There we stayed all day. At night we went again and found the sergeant-major’s place. He was a dour-faced man, very Scotch, but we knew instantly that he was a “white” man and never had occasion to alter our opinion. We asked for mail and he piled out letters, over sixty for the five of us. On the way back we met Mickey. “How did you like it?” he asked.
    â€œLike what?” blurted Tommy.
    â€œThe working party.” Then Mickey told us that all of his crowd, all of the draft but us, had gone to some distant trench and filled and emptied sandbags until nearly morning. It had rained and was beastly cold, and the new men were used like dogs, so he said. We grinned at each other and went back to our billet.
    For three days we drew rations and stayed in that cellar and then, through Tommy being anxious to see what the front was like, we ventured out and “fell in” with the crowd. The sergeant in charge stared at us, but said nothing. He was a small man with a vitriol tongue and seemed to resent us. We were given in charge of a corporal, Stevenson, a veteran of South Africa, and went down a long trench until we were at the front. I thrilled. At long last I had arrived.
    We had got used to the slamming roar of gun fire, and now we heard machine guns barking and snapping, and bullets came singing overhead to go swishing into the distant darkness. Some struck on wire or other obstructions and we heard the sibilant whine of ricochets. We had sandbags to fill. One man held them and the other shovelled in the gruel-like mud. When twenty or more were done, a man jumped up on top and emptied the bags as they were handed up to him. It was ticklish work and one often had to jump into the trench as bullets were humming about all night.
    We got soaked to the skin. The cold slime ran down our wrists as we lifted the bags, and we stood so long in the mire that our feet were numbed, sodden things. All that next day we growled at Tommy for having caused us such displeasure, and at night Stevenson sought us out. We were to go, Tommy and Arthur and I, to an emplacement used by a big mortar they called the “flying pig.”
    When we got there we noticed a peculiar odour. All that shapeless ruin of Neuville St. Vaast stank of decay and slime, but this new smell halted us. A corporal stepped from the gloom. “Here’s bags,” he said. “Go in there and gather up all you can find, then we’ll bury it back of the trench. Get a move on.”
    A flying pig had exploded as it left the gun and three men had been shredded to fragments. We were to pick up legs and bits of flesh from underfoot and from the muddy walls, place all in the bags and then bury them in one grave. It was a harsh breaking in. We did not speak as we worked. When we were done the corporal told us we could go back, we were through, but Tommy and I lingered in a bay and stared over the dark flickeringly-silhouetted landscape.
    Over the tangle of wire in front lay the no man’s land about which we had heard. Not two hundred yards away were the Germans in their trenches, and I wondered if there were Tommys and Arthurs and Big Hermans among them. Then I thought of Steve and wondered what it had been like up Ypres way when he arrived, and I thought of Phyllis, the last glimpse I had had of her face, cameo-like in the light of a window. A thin stalk of silver shot up as we looked, curved over in a graceful parabola and flowered into a luminous glow, pulsating and wavering, flooding the earth below with a weird whiteness. It was a Very light. We craned our necks and stared. Jumbled earth and debris, torn earth, jagged wreckage; it looked as if a gigantic upheaval had destroyed all the