The Vpres Times.
15
the curious incident of finding the bogie unattended. So little did it trouble them that
they did not even mention itwhile no one for a moment connected it with the strange
alarm which had caused their sentry to challenge, and afterwards fire.
Neither did anyone in the battalion attach much importance to the quartermaster-
sergeant's report that Private Patrick Horgan was again absent. He simply reported his
absence because he knew from experience that he would soon turn up again and anyway
it would be soon enough to report him missing later on. To be sure he explained every
thing to the adjutantbut that officer was too busy over important matters to bother
about the whereabouts of a man who would not be missed, however missing he might be.
IV.
Everyone who remembers the Salient at the time will recall that the two front lines
at Hooge approximated at one point till less than a score of yards separated them. That
was in the neighbourhood of the famous crater. There one night about a week after the
disappearance of Rummy Horgan there was unusual liveliness, which came about this
way. Just before dark, and before the gathering shades of night made it impossible
to see, a man was observed to leap out of the German front line, plunge into a large hole
under the entanglements, and then jump into the British trench. Of course he was
pounced upon at once and he had performed the complex feat so rapidly that he had
escaped injury', though he had contrived to raise the devil of a row. He was dressed in
Bavarian blue, with the number of the regiment on the shoulder-straps, and he was fully
equipped, even to the long-barrelled rifle, and the picturesque steel helmet.
His departure and arrival were followed by intensive bombing, gunning, the firing of
flares, and artillery shooting.
But the deserter escaped it all, for before it began he was well under way to brigade
headquarters.
There followed the customary procedure. An interpreter lost no time in interviewing
the captive but he was rather taken aback when, on enquiring the prisoner's name, he
was told curtly that it was Patrick Horgan, Private in the York and Lanes.
So indeed it was, but not a single detail of his experiences during his sojourn in
German territory could be got from him then. It was gathered, however, that on getting
through the second line of wire across the railway he had rolled into a hole, still clinging
to the rum jar, from which he freely partook to keep his flagging spirits up. Some time
in the night he awoke to hear Germans conversing near at hand, so he had slipped into the
clothes of the nearest dead Bavarian. Then he had mixed with the enemy for seven
mortal days and nights, always going in fear for his life, till at last he was obliged to end
the situation as described.
Rummy resumed his duties in the quartermaster-sergeant's stores as if nothing
out of the ordinary had happened but he was never sent out with the rum ration again.
He was also cured of his failing for rum shortly afterwards in a curious way. Someone
had discovered that he had formed the habit of going to sleep in his dugout with a canteen
of rum by the side of his bed.
One night, when Rummy woke up he reached his hand out for the canteen con
taining his usual draught, which he emptied lying on his back. But he had got hold of
the wrong canteen that time, and instead of filling up with rum he was "filled with paraffin
c il. He was unconscious for several days, but energetic pumping cured him, and he was
returned to the battalion once more.
MICHAEL GIT/VARY, M.A.
(One-time Captain, jth York and Lancaster Regt.).
