Free No Man's Land by Pete Ayrton Page B

off so I fired at them and never hit one. The rifle I’d got was one of those “wirer’s rifles” which hadn’t been properly looked after, and very soon nothing happened when I pressed the trigger which had come loose somehow and wouldn’t fire the charge. I reloaded and tried again, then threw the thing away and got back into the trench. There was a man kneeling with his rifle sticking up, so I thought I’d use that; but as I was turning to take it another peacetime tag came into my head – Never deprive a man of his weapon in a post of danger!
    â€˜The next thing I knew was when I came to and found myself remembering a tremendous blow in the throat and right shoulder and feeling speechless and paralysed. Men were moving to and fro above me. Then there was a wild yell – “They’re coming back!” and I was alone. I thought “I shall be bombed to bits lying here” and just managed to get along to where a Lewis gun was firing. I fell down and Johnson came along and cut my equipment off and tied up my throat. Someone put my pistol in my side pocket, but when Johnson got me on to my legs it was too heavy and pulled me over so he threw it away. I remember him saying, “Make way; let him come,” and men saying “Good luck, sir” – pretty decent of them under such conditions! Got along the trench and out at the back somehow – everything very hazy – drifting smoke and shell-holes – down the hill – thinking “I must get back to Mother” – kept falling down and getting up – Johnson always helping. Got to Battalion headquarters; R. S. M. outside; he took me very gently by the left hand and led me along, looking terribly concerned. Out in the open again at the back of the hill I knew I was safe. Fell down and couldn’t get up any more. Johnson disappeared. I felt it was all over with me till I heard his voice saying, “Here he is,” and the stretcher-bearers picked me up… When I was at the dressing-station they took a scrap of paper out of my pocket and read it to me. “I saved your life under heavy fire”; signed and dated. The stretcher-bearers do that sometimes, I’m told!’
    He laughed huskily, his face lighting up with a gleam of his old humour…
    I asked whether the attack had been considered successful. He thought not. The Manchesters had failed, and Ginchy wasn’t properly taken till about a week later. ‘When I was in hospital in London,’ he went on, ‘I talked to a son of a gun from the Brigade Staff; he’d been slightly gassed. He told me we’d done all that was expected of us; it was only a holding attack in our sector, so as to stop the Boches from firing down the hill into the backs of our men who were attacking Guillemont. They knew we hadn’t a hope of getting Ale Alley.’
    He had told it in a simple unemphatic way, illustrating the story with unconscious gestures – taking aim with a rifle, and so on. But the nightmare of smoke and sunlight had been in his eyes, with a sense of confusion and calamity of which I could only guess at the reality. He was the shattered survivor of a broken battalion which had ‘done all that was expected of it.’
    I asked about young Fernby. Durley had been in the same hospital with him at Rouen and had seen him once. ‘They were trying to rouse him up a bit, as he didn’t seem to recognize anybody. They knew we’d been in the same Battalion, so I was taken into his ward one night. His head was all over shrapnel wounds. I spoke to him and tried to get him to recognize me, but he didn’t know who I was; he died a few hours later.’
    Silence was the only comment possible; but I saw the red screens round the bed, and Durley whispering to Fernby’s bandaged head and irrevocable eyes, while the nurse stood by with folded hands.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON
    THAT NECESSARY FACULTY FOR