Page:War, the Liberator (1918).djvu/168

 Behind the Subaltern came a shout from another of his Company Mess.

“You can’t let those men any farther up, Tagg. There’s a dead end here; they’ve blown in our trench, and we’ll have to dig some men out. Pass up tools.”

“Can’t get any farther, Murray,” said MacTaggart the Subaltern, “get down oh, Lord, here’s another.”

Another long-drawn whine was followed by a crash so close that the trench seemed to collapse though it was only loose earth falling. The Subaltern saw the mess dixie hurled into a bush, and the terrified man beside him darted his head into a little hole in the side of the trench. Over the Subaltern came the bombardment feeling; a sensation which mingles a curious numbness of all ordinary emotions with an abounding pride and a complete contempt for anybody more frightened than oneself; he turned slowly to the man and told him to take his head out of the hole.

“It’ll come in on you if a crump drops near,” he said, “and then you’ll suffocate. Have a cigarette.”

The man rejected the offer with scorn, as badly shell-shocked men will.

“Well, don’t be so proud about it,” said the Subaltern, “I wish I could find my pipe,” and began to grope for it. The