The Red Horizon | Page 6

reminded me strongly of my
home in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the description
in her book.

The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road,
with a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the
very door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid
and dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure
and every other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an
unclean dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and
beer are excellent, the new-laid eggs are delightful for breakfast, the
milk and butter, fresh and pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave
(p. 031) about.
We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the
midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try to
gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens that
flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the barn-roof at
dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces and meddling
fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants
who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even
now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through
the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations
when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose--but the
tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other time.
We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March day.
We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A additional
load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of the
sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to the
firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened soldiers. The
march to the barn billet was a miracle of endurance, (p. 032) but all
lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when it was over. That
night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw, our waterproof sheets
under us and our blankets and sheepskins round our bodies. It was very
comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might wish to remain awake to
feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man can be.
Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the
scent of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had
already flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere

near a girl was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she
worked; a cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and
the dogs of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was
one to be remembered.
But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost
new; we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been in
our ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a day to
come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard its
summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the air,
and sweeping round the barn where we lay, telling all who chanced (p.
033) to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered across the
face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another: soldiers of
many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of Australia, and
Germany; of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand; Saxon, Gurkha,
and Prussian, Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were engaged in
deadly combat. The sound was the sound of guns--our farmhouse was
within the range of the big artillery.
We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and despite
the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy. On one
farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with roguish eyes
and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as lean as some I
have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as Granada beggars.
They were very hungry and one ate a man's food-wallet and all it
contained, comprising bread, army biscuits, canned beef, including can
and other sundries. "I wish the animal had choked itself," my mate said
when he discovered his loss. Personally I had a profound respect for
any pig who voluntarily eats army (p. 034) biscuit.
We got up about six o'clock every morning