38
THE YPRES TIMES
chlorinated to its purification, so maddening to the palate, if hot, sufficed. The flavour
of tea and sugar imparted qualities in that hour which priceless Pekoe never yet
possessed.
Then, covered from direct fire, I would tour my other posts, disposed in depth to
rake the valleys with fire lest the German high command be seized with madness, and
should seek to recover the cemetery of hope.
Even in December, for what purpose no god can know, we were ordered to carry
out strong assaults across ground physically impassable against concrete machine-gun
posts, fortressed islands rising above the quagmire. I recall the mood and how curious
were my sensations and feelings in one such effort eastwards -
I go on through the darkness. My eyes have learned to penetrate its blinding
blackness.
Shapes and forms appear and disappear. I heed them not. Some are tree stumps
and holes, corpses and carcasses. They are still. I realize their attitude and manner.
Others move, figures like myself, hurrying, groping, stumbling, slipping. Going on.
Some lurch against me as we pass. Of what use a greeting or a curse It must be
shouted to be heard, and then either becomes absurd. We go our way, deafened, yet
the ear pierced always with the chant of No Man's Land Stretcher Bearer
Give me water."
The legs carry the body mechanicallythe brain knows the body's destination.
On. If no metal strikes me I shall blunder on. The mind wanders. What dreariness,
what boredom, even when the ground heaves suddenly before the eyes leaving a yawning
hole to trap the unwary foot and drag the body and the earth shrieks and belches
above the tempest.
Time and reasonboth have ceased. They are insignificant, inexplicable. Only
the earth shudders and hate justifies itself in staggering noise. Little lights soar into
the air, tremulously, like children's fireworks. They do not break the blackness,
illumine only themselves as with a halo. All days are the same, all nights. But each
night is for itself distinct.
The earth, the heavens, the body, the spirit close in upon the self, the living-dead-
thing which goes on and on and on. It perspiresthe beads of sweat grow cold in
chill wind. I am neither hot nor cold. I am nothing.
Yet last week, or perhaps five months agowhat a mockery is time in relation to
the sensesI saw the sun steal in from behind the blinds and light soft linen in a bed
room, and the darkness of night was tender and quiet. My mother crept into the room
to peep at her boy as she had done when I was a little fellow. I lay on my side gazing
at the familiar furnishings and pictures on the walls, whose shapes and forms I knew
and could decorate and colour. And I heard the door handle turn and closed my eyes
feigning sleep, with its deep regular breathing. She held a candle, its light shielded by
one hand, and looked at me, then so gently touched the hair on my brow with her lips
and turned and went out. I dared not look at her bent figure, but heard her slippered
feet padding quietly over the carpet. How sweet to have died then.
The candle resembled that Verey light hovering above the next horizon, very faint
with its own halo. My boots squelch hideously in the morass, so different from mocassins
upon a deep pile. A dream. Perhaps it was not true. There is no truth but I and
my thoughts.
I go on. Time is nothing. And space I do not know. The lights are nearer.
Death stalks closer. He no longer leaps and bounds in wild, haphazard ecstacy.
His is now a heavy, steady, tread marching across my path. I heed him not. I go on.
