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ON PATROL

MARTIN ARMSTRONG

HE AIR in the dugout was flat, stale, and earthy, and neither warm nor cool. A single candle burned on a table, shedding a melancholy light which hardly reached to the walls of the square, low-roofed room. Along one of the Along one of the walls ran a rough wooden structure, like a large, three-storied rabbithutch open in front, which comprised three sleeping-bunks. The beds were shallow hammocks of wire netting, stapled along each edge to the wooden framework. The two upper bunks were empty except for a blanket and a kit-bag; in the bottom one lay a young man rolled up in a brown blanket with a coat thrown over his feet. Nothing was exposed except his brown head and a fraction of khaki shoulder. His name was Freen, and he was a platoon commander.

In a dugout it is always night. There that sense of the time of day which, under normal life, a man derives intuitively from his varied routine, and the degree of light or darkness, is lost. Time has stood still, it seems, at some unknown hour not far from midnight. Young Freen opened his eyes and, shaking a wrist clear of the blanket, saw that his watch was near upon seven o'clock. Up above, the sun must have set an hour ago; the men in the trench would be feeling that desolate,

homeless sensation which comes with returning nightfall in the line, and at the thought of it Freen felt it too. He had been trying to get a little sleep before 8:30, when it was his duty to take out a patrol consisting of a sergeant and eight men, to examine the state of the German wire. But he could not sleep. He lay with his eyes closed, trying to keep his mind empty of thought; and when thoughts came none the less, he opened his eyes and stared with a sort of sick hatred at the crass reality of the things that stood before him. Like some hateful being that no effort of his could make to flinch, each thing stared back at him, loathsome and oppressive in its inescapable familiarity. Time after time he fell into a brief doze, from which he woke to a sense of something that oppressed his mind like a physical weight; and with wearying reiteration, as his mind cleared, he once again found himself faced by the impending patrol. It was horrible. Freen was not a coward. He was just as able as any of his fellow-officers to disguise his feelings under a calm exterior, and now he had not the smallest doubt that when the moment arrived he would be perfectly competent to carry out the job. In fact, he kept wishing that the moment would arrive. It was the suspense that was so horrible—

the long inaction which separated him from the moment, leaving him at the mercy of the physical protests which the vigorous life in him was making against the threat of extinction. He was cold, and reaching out one arm he felt for the coat at his feet and drew it up over him. That coldness, he knew well enough, was simply honest terror; and he knew too that if he did not keep his teeth clenched they would chatter, and if he relaxed the muscles of his legs they would shudder in a continuous palsy. And suddenly he felt that he was weary of keeping up this restraint. What, after all, was the point in pretending to himself? He relaxed his leg-muscles and felt a kind of relief in letting them obey their impulse. But he still kept his teeth clenched, for fear that, if he were to let them chatter, Dixon, his company commander, would hear.

That reminded him of Dixon: he had forgotten that he was there; and he opened his eyes once again and glanced toward the table. Dixon was still in exactly the same attitude as half an hour ago. He was sitting, a dark heap, on the bench that divided the table from the wall; his elbows were on the table and his head in his hands. He was not reading or writing or even dozing. He was doing nothing at all but simply existing in that state of torpor which the air of a dugout always induces. It seemed to Freen, as he watched him, that he was waiting patiently waiting. for what? For the end of the war, no doubt. Freen closed his eyes once more and began to run over again the orders for the patrol. Eight men! They expected him—

those damned fools at Headquarters to take eight men. It was easy enough to sit in a comfortable dugout or hut, well behind the front line, and issue orders; but if they would try taking a patrol or two themselves, or even come and live in the line for a few days and get to know something about it, they would discover that to take eight men racketing about in that particular place would be sheer lunacy. The boche was barely two hundred yards away—a bit to the left he was not more than fifty yards away, and you could hear him coughing-and No-Man's-Land just there was as flat as a billiard-table. Besides, any one who had done the thing before knew what a row eight men made, even when they were trying their hardest to be quiet. "Examine the enemy wire," those were the orders, "and report on its condition and whether there are any gaps.' And 8:30! What an hour to choose! Last night at 8:30 it had still been clear twilight. A pretty sort of lunatic he would look leading eight men along the boche wire, all clearly outlined against a green sky like a lot of cardboard birds and beasts in a shooting-gallery. Yes, a shooting-gallery; that's just what it would be! His mind boiled with impotent rage against the unknown writer of the orders. Damned swine! Bloody fool! "Skipper!" he broke out aloud, urged into speech by the violence of his feelings; "eight men's simply absurd."

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"What eight men?" murmured the immovable shape of Dixon.

"Why, the eight men I'm supposed to take on this damned Cook's tour along the boche wire. I might

just as well line them up in the trench and shoot them before we start."

Dixon's only reply was a sound which might have been either a laugh or a grunt.

"They'll only be in my way," Freen went on. "I'd much better leave them all behind and just take Sergeant Sims."

The object of this statement was to sound Dixon, but Dixon was not to be drawn, and so Freen went on:

"It's not as if we were supposed to be a fighting patrol. What's the good of eight men when you've got to be noiseless and invisible and keep out of trouble? Eh, skipper?"

"To protect you, my son."

"Protect? Why, they'll give the show away for a certainty before we get within fifty yards of the boche line."

Dixon made no reply. He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, waiting for the end of the war.

"But really, skipper," came the voice from the bed again; "mayn't I leave the men behind?"

"What about orders?"

"But, as you must admit, the orders are absurd. I can't think," he broke out in exasperation, "why they don't just tell us to get the information they want and leave it to us, who know something, how and when we are to get it." He lay on his side, his head propped on his left hand, staring at Dixon. A feeling of despair was coming over him, for Dixon looked as if he were paying no attention to his troubles.

But after a moment's silence Dixon slowly raised his head. "Well, look here," he said. "Take four

men and leave the other four in the trench. Tell them they're to be a sort of extra sentry-post and keep a special lookout in the direction you go in."

Freen heaved a sigh of relief. He was too tired to argue any more; but why even four men? It was just like old Dixon, always so cautious about orders, whether he saw that they were impossible or not. However, something at least had been achieved. The weight on his mind had been lightened, and he turned wearily away from the flame of the candle and closed his eyes again. After all, he reflected, it was a short job. In two hours he would actually be back, lying where he was now, the whole business over. Looked at like that, the thing seemed simple. For one hour he had merely to lie still and do nothing, and during the next he had to crawl about cautiously in the dark, playing a sort of grim hide-and-seek. Yes, it was simple enough. The thought of having to take a lot of men with him had been the only trouble.

22

At a quarter past eight, feeling cold and tired, he got up and began to get ready. He handed his pocketcase to Dixon and took off his identity-disk and shoulder-badges, so that if the boche got hold of him there would be nothing on him to identify the battalion. "My home address is in the pocket-case," he remarked casually. "I shan't take my tin hat and gas-bag: they only get in the way when it comes to crawling"; and bareheaded, with nothing but his revolver and a handful of extra rounds in his pocket, he turned to go.

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was clearly visible. The eight men, a conglomeration of restless, murmuring shapes, stood waiting near the dugout entrance. Freen divided them into two parties and put each in charge of its senior man. Then he gave to each its orders-the one to remain on guard in the trench, the other to lie down outside our wire and keep quiet till he and the sergeant returned. "And remember," Sims warned them; "if you shoot us, you're for it." Freen was aware, whether by sympathy or some still undefined power of perception, of a slackening of tension

Freen lowered his voice. "Look here, Sims; I'm not taking out all the men. We're to leave four of them in the trench." "And a good idea too, sir. It's among the men, of something like an pretty light upstairs."

"Is it? How light?"

inaudible sigh of relief, and the sense of it aroused a similar feeling in him

"Well, as you'll see, sir, a good self. He led them along the winding

bit too light for the job."

Freen was silent for a moment. "Then we'll not take the other four either," he said. "We'll dump them just outside our wire to wait till we come back. You and I can manage much better alone. What do you think?"

"I'm all for going alone, sir."

"Good. Then hadn't you better leave your rifle and get a revolver? Do as you like about your hat and gas-bag. I'm leaving mine; they're a damned nuisance when you crawl."

As he climbed the dugout stair Freen saw a pale, translucent square of sky waiting for him at the top of it. He climbed with his body bent forward to avoid the low roof that threatened his hatless head. It was a relief, when he had stepped out into the trench, to stretch his back and shoulders and breathe in the fresh air. The evening was clear and green; he looked at his watch and saw that even the second-hand

trench to the point from which he was to start, and having posted the party that was to remain in the trench, he and Sims with the remaining four climbed on to the parapet and began with infinite caution to pick their way through the thick tangles of wire. Every soundeach small click of a buckle against the wire, even the breathing and occasional sniffing of the menseemed, in the night stillness, as if it must be audible for miles. It was as if the whole world were listening for them alone. How slow and clumsy they seemed, as Freen, who was the first to get through the wire, stood watching the five swaying shapes sharply defined in the clear green light. "It's a wonder," he thought, "that they haven't spotted us already."

At last, thank God, all were through, and, finding an old shellhole a few yards in front of the wire, Freen settled them down in it and

gave them their final instructions. "Now we're all right," he whispered to Sims. Having got those fellows safely through the wire, the worst, he felt, was over. He and Sims began slowly to move forward, and Freen felt, as he always felt in NoMan's-Land, that he was walking in some high place, exposed, as if under a searchlight, to hundreds of eyes. After they had gone about fifty yards he stopped and Sims, who followed behind, glided up beside him like ghost meeting ghost.

"There's a hole just ahead there," Freen whispered, "a bit of trench. You see the chalk? May be a sap. Better get down. Follow me, and if I waggle my heel, lie still."

They dropped quietly to their hands and knees and crept forward in single file. When he was within a few yards of the chalk Freen stopped again. From where he lay he could see down into the hole. It was a small isolated trench, a motionless confusion of glimmering whiteness and black shadow. He was watching one of the shadows. It seemed, as he stared at it, to stand out detached, blacker and more solid than the rest. Sims slid up beside him and they lay for an age, watching together. But the shadow never moved, and they began to crawl forward again. And as he crawled, Freen was thinking to himself: "The waiting's over. Here we are, doing the job. The hour's actually running its course"; and it seemed to him that he was engaged in the performance of something unreal. He felt detached, incredulous, and, except for a sort of physical tension somewhere about the pit of his stomach, perfectly calm. He

stared into the darkness ahead, and it seemed to him that he could detect a vague gray hedge stretched across the world in front of him. They must be getting somewhere near the enemy wire. But next moment, at a point much farther ahead, a light shot up out of the ground, and in one brief flash Freen saw the boche wire clearly outlined against it. It was much farther away than he had thought. In an instant the light had soared upward, filling all NoMan's-Land with a staring brilliance scarred by great slashes of trembling shadows. Then it drooped and dived winking to the earth, where it lay pulsating like a dying thing ten yards from where they lay. In the ebbing brightness Freen saw a long stretch of silver-washed foreground spread out before him.

When the darkness came back it seemed much deeper than before and they crawled ahead, feeling for the first time that they were invisible. Progression by crawling is slow, and it seemed that they had covered a great distance when Freen came upon a shallow shell-hole overgrown with grass. He slid into it to rest, for the crawling was laborious work, and Sims slid in after him. "Rest a bit," Freen whispered in his ear, "and see where we are." But it was difficult now to see anything, and Sims sat up on his heels and began to look about him. Freen, glancing up at him, saw the dark mass of his head and shoulders sway across the background of green sky.

Next minute there came three loud reports out of the darkness to their right and, following the reports, the hum of a flying fragment, low overhead. Hand-grenades. Had the

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