Free The Somme by H. G.; A. D.; Wells Gristwood

narrow trench, they were laid flat on the ground over against the edge of the parados, Everitt’s turn came early. It was a grotesque performance, with one leg useless and a stiff arm, but in a breathless minute he had scrambled from the shadow of the trench into the moonlight. Lying flat upon the stretcher, a folded great-coat made a pillow. No one suggested delay, and forthwith the journey started. Even then Everitt was beginning to look upon it as a stage on the road to London.
    The night was cool, and clear, with a brilliant moon and a multitude of stars. The Germans lay not half a mile away across perfectly open country, and it was well for the party to move as rapidly as possible. Four men carried the stretchers, but the maze of craters and the dazzle of the flares made the going irksome; moreover the weight of even the lightest man is a considerable load for four strong bearers. Progress was cruelly slow, and occasionally a man’s stumbling tilted the stretcher until Everitt with difficulty kept himself from falling. It was an eerie sensation to be thus carried through the night. The guns gave tongue only intermittently, and the staccato crack of the rifles and machine-guns broke the uncanny silence but rarely. The other parties were lost in the night, and from a probably misplaced dread of being overheard, no one spoke above a whisper. Their language naturally was lurid, and what their curses lost in volume they gained in bitterness. Hoisted high upon the shoulders of-four men, Everitt felt himself tremendously conspicuous, and, in the radiance of the Verey lights, it seemed incredible that the whole party was not clearly visible. From his swaying platform nothing was to be seen save a dead world of desolation. It was easy to believe that he was asleep, and that this was the landscape of a fantastic dream.
    In accordance with tradition, at every nearer flare the bearers remained motionless, sometimes erect in picturesque silhouette, more often lowering the stretcher, and passing the brief respite in whispered and comprehensive anathemas. Once a machine-gun seemed to fire directly at them, and the soft whizz of the bullets passed apparently close to their ears. It was impossible and perhaps superfluous to know how near the shots were passing, or to discover whether they were being deliberately fired upon, but it seemed best to lie motionless. Everitt, for one, was too badly scared to risk the feeblest remark, and yet he realized what a masterpiece Bairnsfather would have made of the occasion.
    Then up again, with Everitt’s consciousness of exposure tremendously strengthened! As they left the trench farther behind them, they reached the region of dropping bullets. Several times they took cover in holes, the stretcher tilting awkwardly in the tumbled earth, and twice Everitt was spilled outright as the men stooped too suddenly for shelter.
    But, thanks to the moon, progress was far speedier than he had dared hope. At one point indeed they were held up in the shelter of a low ridge that seemed to be swept by machine-gun-fire coming from no one knew where, and, when at length they crossed it at a stumbling trot, he held his breath with strained ears. By good fortune they passed the place in safety, and perhaps his fears were largely imaginary. For some time Everitt lost his bearings with his courage, but in just under an hour the party reached some batteries of ‘eighteen pounders’ which he remembered must be about half-way to the road. Here they met men of a relieving battalion ‘going up,’ and, contrary to tradition, Everitt’s account of the conditions ‘up there’ was not encouraging. Certainly he was tired and frayed to distraction, but every reader of optimistic special correspondents knows that the wounded are ‘wonderfully cheerful.’ Yet it seemed absurd to paint Les Bœufs as rather a joke, and perhaps an abortive attack conveys to its survivors on the whole