Chapter 4

MAJOR GAULT COMES BACK

"The King Is Dead": "Long Live the King"--Back to Belle-waarde--The Seventh of May.

That was on the fifth. In the afternoon young Park came to us. He was the Commanding Officer's orderly. There was down on his face but he was full of all that strange wisdom of a trenchman who had experienced the bitter hardships and the heartbreaking losses of a winter in the cursed salient of St. Eloi, by Shelley Farm and The Mound of Death. But just now this infant of the trenches had the round eyes of a startled child, which in him meant mad excitement.

"The C.O.'s hit."

The word slid up the trench: "The C.O.'s hit."

"Strike me! Cawn't this bleedin' regiment keep a bleedin' Colonel----? That makes two of them!"

"How did it happen?"

"What the devil are we goin' to do?"

"Who says so?"

"The second in six weeks!"

"Parkie."

"By----! This mob's in a Hell of a fix, Bo'."

Park was leaning on his rifle, trench fashion. "Oh, dry up. You give me a pain."

And then he launched his thunderbolt, "Gault's back."

The chorus of despair became one of wild delight.

"We're jake!" "He'll see us through." "Where is he?" "How's his arm?" "The son-of-a-gun! Couldn't keep him away, could they?"

"No fear. Not 'im. Bloody well wanted to be wiv 'is bleedin' boys, 'e did. 'E ain't bloody well goin' to do 'is bloody solderin' in a 'cushy' job in Blighty--like some of 'em. Not after rysin' us. Do it wiv 'is bloody self like a man; an' that's wot 'e is."

The speaker glared accusingly; but his declaration agreed too well with what all thought for any one to take exception to it.

The new Commanding Officer had been wounded at St. Eloi on March 1st and this was our first intimation of his return.

Park took up his tale. "He's over there with the C.O. now," and switching: "Shell splinter got him in the eye. Guess it's gone and maybe the other one too."

"By----!" he burst out passionately: "I hope it don't. He's been damn good to me--and to you fellows too," he added fiercely, while his lower lip quivered.

I think all stared anywhere but at Park, in a curious embarrassment.

"Got it goin' from one trench to another to see about the rations comin' up instead of stayin' in like a 'dug-out wallah.' Got out on top of the ground, walked across an' stopped one," he added bitterly.

A considerable draft of "old boys," ruddy of face and fresh from hospital, together with some more new men reached us that night. We "went up" again with the dusk of the following night and "took over" our previous trenches in front of Belle-waarde Wood.

We were told that the Shropshires had been rather badly cut up in the interval of their occupation by a further course of intense bombardment and some fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches had been put into much better shape since our earlier occupancy of them, so that what with our work that night they were by the morning of the seventh in fairly good shape.

The night was not unusual in any way. There was the regular amount of shelling, of star shells, of machine gun and rifle fire, and of course, casualties. Those we always had, be it ever so quiet.

Even the morning "Stand-to" with that mysterious dread of unknown dangers that it invariably brought gave us nothing worse than an hour of chilly waiting--and later, the smoke of the Germans' cooking fires.

There were none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention--the Germans had artillery; we had not. They had fires; we had not.

The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for the fresh graves and a certain number of unburied dead the small-pox appearance of the shell-pitted ground about might have been thought to have been of ancient origin; so filled with water were the shell holes and so large had they grown as a result of the constant sloughing in of their sodden banks.

During all these days the German fire on the salient at large had continued as fiercely as before but had spared us its severest trials.

The night of the seventh passed to all outward appearance pretty much in the same manner as the preceding one.