A Man Could Stand Up— · Part II · Chapter 2 1 (4/4)

It had been meant to impress somebody imbecile.⁠ ⁠… Somebody imbecile in Wallachia, or Sofia, or Asia Minor. Or Whitehall, very likely. Or the White House!⁠ ⁠… Perhaps they had killed a lot of Yankees⁠—to make themselves Transatlantically popular. There were no doubt, by then, whole American Army Corps in the line somewhere. By then! Poor devils, coming so late into such an accentuated hell. Damnably accentuated.⁠ ⁠… The sound of even that little bit of fun had been portentously more awful than even quite a big show say in ’15. It was better to have been in then and got used to it.⁠ ⁠… If it hadn’t broken you, just by duration.⁠ ⁠…

Might be to impress anybody.⁠ ⁠… But who was going to be impressed? Of course, our legislators with the stewed-pear brains running about the ignoble corridors with coke-brize floors and mahogany doors⁠ ⁠… might be impressed.⁠ ⁠… You must not rhyme!⁠ ⁠… Or, of course, our own legislators might have been trying a nice little demonstration in force, equally idiotic somewhere else, to impress someone just as unlikely to be impressed.⁠ ⁠… This, then, would be the answer! But no one ever would be impressed again. We all had each other’s measures. So it was just wearisome.⁠ ⁠…

It was remarkably quiet in that thick darkness. Down below, the picks continued their sinister confidences in each other’s ears.⁠ ⁠… It was really like that. Like children in the corner of a schoolroom whispering nasty comments about their masters, one to the other.⁠ ⁠… Girls, for choice.⁠ ⁠… Chop, chop, chop, a pick whispered. Chop? another asked in an undertone. The first said Chopchopchop. Then Chup.⁠ ⁠… And a silence of irregular duration.⁠ ⁠… Like what happens when you listen to typewriting and the young woman has to stop to put in another page.⁠ ⁠…

Nice young women with typewriters in Whitehall had very likely taken from dictation, on hot-pressed, square sheets with embossed royal arms, the plan for that very strafe.⁠ ⁠… Because, obviously it might have been dictated from Whitehall almost as directly as from Unter den Linden. We might have been making a demonstration in force on the Dwolologda in order to get the Huns to make a counter-demonstration in Flanders. Hoping poor old Puffles would get it in the neck. For they were trying still to smash poor old General Puffles and stop the single command.⁠ ⁠… They might very well be hoping that our losses through the counter-demonstration would be so heavy that the Country would cry out for the evacuation of the Western Front.⁠ ⁠… If they could get half-a-million of us killed perhaps the Country might.⁠ ⁠… They, no doubt, thought it worth trying. But it was wearisome: those fellows in Whitehall never learned. Any more than Brother Boshe.⁠ ⁠…

Nice to be in poor old Puffles’ army. Nice but wearisome.⁠ ⁠… Nice girls with typewriters in well-ventilated offices. Did they still put paper cuffs on to keep their sleeves from ink? He would ask Valen⁠ ⁠… Valen.⁠ ⁠… It was warm and still.⁠ ⁠… On such a night.⁠ ⁠…

“Bringt dem Hauptmann eine Kerze!” A voice from under his camp bed! He imagined that the Hauptmann spook must be myopic: short-sightedly examining a tamping fuse.⁠ ⁠… If they used tamping fuses or if that was what they called them in the army!

He could not see the face or the spectacles of the Hauptmann any more than he could see the faces of his men. Not through his flea-bag and shins! They were packed in the tunnel; whitish-grey, tubular agglomerations.⁠ ⁠… Large! Like the maggots that are eaten by Australian natives.⁠ ⁠… Fear possessed him!

He sat up in his flea-bag, dripping with icy sweat.

“By Jove, I’m for it!” he said. He imagined that his brain was going: he was mad and seeing himself go mad. He cast about in his mind for some subject about which to think so that he could prove to himself that he had not gone mad.