The Red Horizon | Page 2

raised a certain expectancy in my mind.
"Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?" I asked
myself. "Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his
body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen,
comes out at the back? I'll not think of it."
But the thoughts could not be chased away. The month was March, and
the night was bitterly cold on deck. A sharp penetrating wind swept
across the sea and sung eerily about the dun-coloured funnel. With my
overcoat buttoned well up about my neck and my Balaclava helmet
pulled down over my ears I paced along the deck for quite an hour;
then, shivering with cold, I made my way down to the cabin where my
mates had taken up their quarters. The cabin was low-roofed and lit
with two electric lamps. The corners receded into darkness where the
shadows clustered thickly. The floor was covered with sawdust, packs
and haversacks hung from pegs in the walls; a gun-rack stood in the
centre of the apartment; butts down and muzzles in line, the rifles (p.
015) stretched in a straight row from stern to cabin stairs. On the
benches along the sides the men took their seats, each man under his
equipment, and by right of equipment holding the place for the length
of the voyage.
My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco
smoke. In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.
"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a broken
row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."
"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought
we weren't goin' out at all."
"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not all
fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother----"
"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.

"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.
"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's
only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."
"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a
line regiment."
"That's why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the Cockney. (p. 016)
"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.
"Well, it's like this," said Spud----
"Hold your tongue," snapped the sergeant, and Spud relapsed into
silence.
After a moment he turned to me where I sat. "It's not only Germans that
I'll look for in the trenches," he said, "when I have my rifle loaded and
get close to that sergeant----"
"You'll put a bullet through him"; I said, "just as you vowed you'd do to
me some time ago. You were going to put a bullet through the
sergeant-major, the company cook, the sanitary inspector, the army
tailor and every single man in the regiment. Are you going to destroy
the London Irish root and branch?" I asked.
"Well, there's some in it as wants a talking to at times," said Spud.
"'Ave yer got a fag to spare?"
Somebody sung a ragtime song, and the cabin took up the chorus. The
boys bound for the fields of war were light-hearted and gay. A journey
from the Bank to Charing Cross might be undertaken with a more
serious air: it looked for all the world as if they were merely out on (p.
017) some night frolic, determined to throw the whole mad vitality of
youth into the escapade.
"What will it be like out there?" I asked myself. The war seemed very
near now. "What will it be like, but above all, how shall I conduct

myself in the trenches? Maybe I shall be afraid--cowardly. But no! If I
can't bear the discomforts and terrors which thousands endure daily I'm
not much good. But I'll be all right. Vanity will carry me through where
courage fails. It would be such a grand thing to become conspicuous by
personal daring. Suppose the men were wavering in an attack, and then
I rushed out in front and shouted: 'Boys, we've got to get this job
through'--But, I'm a fool. Anyhow I'll lie on the floor and have a sleep."
Most of the men were now in a deep slumber. Despite an order against
smoking, given a quarter of an hour before, a few of my mates had the
"fags" lit, and as the lamps had been turned off the cigarettes glowed
red through the gloom. The sleepers lay in every conceivable position,
some with faces turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues
stretching over the lower lips; some with knees curled up and (p. 018)
heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement, some