The Love of an Unknown Soldier Found in a Dug-Out | Page 6

your nurse's uniform. You're a captain in rank, aren't youj Then you're my superior, for I'm only a subaltern. There must be more in you than I have guessed; to have left luxury and come into danger just to look after other people's babies, that took courage. I never thought of you as a soldier when we were in Paris you were only the most beautiful girl I had ever met. No, more than that the gentlest and the kindest. There's a religion about you when I think of you as a nurse. There's a sacredness of devotion, which goes deeper than mere beauty.
The blot which ended my last sentence was not entirely my fault. A shell landed at the entrance to our dug-out, killed one runner, wounded two and blew the candle out. We've just finished binding up the two wounded men; the other lies in the passage, covered by a blanket. Poor chap ! He's a mere boy and has not been out long. They didn't give him much of a run for his money. Such accidents are largely our own fault. We're always expecting to advance, so we do very little to the trenches which we capture and occupy. The dug-outs faced the right way for the Boche when he held them, but for us they face his shells. Cent la guerre f
It's not taken very long for me to plunge into action. How long? Only four nights since we listened to William Tell and bade each other that unsatisfactory farewell. When I arrived at the railhead on my journey back, I failed to discover my groom with the horses. I phoned up my Division and had to wait till close on midnight before my man arrived. It was a cold ride to the waggon-lines. The road was like glass in places where ditches had overflowed and frozen. We had to walk our beasts a good part of the way; they slithered like cats on the tiles. A hard, chiselled moon was in the sky; the ruined country, forbidding and ghostly, was carved into deep shadows. 1 learnt that our battery had only moved into its new position that day; consequently everything was at sixes and sevens.
It was nearer three than two in the morning by the time we reached our waggonlines. The horses were pretty nearly " all in " with the amount of travelling they had done. The place was a battered village; every barn was full of troops, and for the most part only the walls of the houses were standing. We roused the quartermaster with difficulty; he wasn't very certain as to where our waggon-line officer had his billet. It was too late to go out and search; I unrolled my sleeping-sack and got into it, only removing my boots and tunic. Rather a sudden change from the luxury of the Crillon, the warm baths and the cleansheeted beds! Do you begin to understand why it is that you seem so far away? Changes, even more sudden, were in store for me. Shortly after six next morning I was wakened by an orderly; he had come down from the guns to order me to report at once. My toilet didn't take very longthat 's one advantage of not undressing. My poor little mare was once more saddled; I slung a haversack across my shoulder and away we went along the glassy roads, scrambling and sliding. The orderly informed me on the way what he supposed was the reason for so much haste. One of our subalterns had been sent back of the lines on a course of instruction and another had collected a most beautiful Blighty in the leg. As a consequence our major was short-handed.
I found the battery in a narrow valley. It is one which by name you know well; but names must not be mentioned. A year ago the French made it famous by the fierceness of their fighting. The fighting was all hand-to-hand so close that bayonets were out of the question, and men stormed the heights with daggers in their mouths. There in the undergrowth the fallen still lie unburied. The snow has covered them for the present, but you can feel their bones beneath your tread. Part way down the valley is a little clump of trees among which our guns are hidden. There are paths leading through the island wood, covered with trellis-work to hide them from aeroplane observation. I left my horses and went on foot the last part of the journey; one does not want to make too many tracks the snow shows them up too plainly.
I found my major in a hole sunk beneath the ground. " Glad you've come," he said. 'Sorry to rush you into harness this way, but it can't