Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114)
somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the
others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
pray every time I go up."
"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
(nice)."
"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap.
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