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

over the remainder of the wilderness between headquarters and the road.
    It was an enormous relief to reach even so battered a relic of civilization. How long ago was it that he had left it behind him as the boundary of a habitable world he might never see again? A stretcher-dump by the wayside gave promise of an organized system of evacuation, and the very presence of a road suggested welcome company and traffic after the emptiness of the dreary desolated fields. The bearers laid the stretcher in the mud beside the roadside ditch, and wishing him ‘Good luck’ shambled away towards Guillemont. If ever men had earned gratitude it was they, yet Everitt could only mumble the heartlessly inadequate: ‘Thanks awfully’ of his nation, received as inevitably with: ‘Not a bit of it.’
    Every such journey is one long series of risks to all concerned. The slow progress and the impossibility of taking quick cover add immeasurably to its dangers, and the temptation to abandon the helpless cause of the trouble is often wellnigh irresistible. That night they had been unusually lucky, for the spasmodic shelling had never been within twenty yards of them, and the rifle-fire had been negligible. More often to the physical exertion of the journey is added the imminent fear of death. Yet, in any event, stretcher-bearing is the most exhausting task on active service. At the end of a spell a man is commonly dripping with sweat without, bone-dry within, and so exhausted that he can sleep in his equipment in the adjacent mud. It is all a commonplace of the line. Everybody does it, everybody curses it, and everybody, despite the most desperate extremes of toil and danger, carries the job through to the end, knowing that he too may one day lie helpless and in need of the same succour.
    Lying prone in the road, Everitt’s chief fear was that a careless wanderer would tread upon him in the darkness. Several times the catastrophe nearly occurred, but he at length grew so sleepy that he could no longer concern himself with trifles. Six-inch howitzers were stationed beside the road – the mud preventing their ponderous weight leaving it – and almost overhead their deafening uproar split the night continually. The remorseless flash and din of their firing was maddening enough to a man wellnigh hopeless of peace: it seemed to Everitt he would never again be out of their hearing. Nevertheless, he must have slept in spite of them, for a familiar voice roused him.
    The Loamshires had been relieved and the survivors were moving back to ‘reserve.’ In the gloom he could see nothing plainly, but there was evidently no attempt at any sort of order and discipline. They were merely a forlorn mob of weary men dragging themselves doggedly through the mud, half asleep, silent for the most part, continually stumbling against each other, forming and reforming into fortuitous groups of friends and strangers. The voice was Mason’s, a man of Everitt’s platoon. He had no definite news of anyone, and all he could say of Sunday afternoon was that ‘the whole thing was a bloody wash-out.’ They were out now, anyway, and had been promised a rest. In any case there were so few of them that a further stay in the line was impossible. The relief, too, was of another Division, which spelled a week or two of peace. ‘But you could never tell what might happen.’ Attracted by their voices, a third man joined them. This was Tubby Staunton, platoon runner and famous for plum-cake from home. He thought he had seen several of their mutual friends go over, but he too had no certain news. In the morning they would be able to count their losses, but by then Everitt hoped to be far away. Mason gave him a cigarette (the way to Heaven must be paved with the Ashes of Woodbines), wished him good luck, and became another ship that had passed in the night. Everitt never saw him again, and for the worst of reasons.
    Several