After a fortnight’s inactivity at the Base, the Southdown Artillery, split into half Brigades for war-training, marched three days till they came by Aire and Lambres and Mazinghem, and long-streeted Lilliers and the railway-tangles of Chocques to their last rest-billets behind that section of the firing-line which lay between the Double Crassier, the spider-tower Pylons of Loos, and the fall pit-shaft buildings of Fosse Eight.

“Well,” said Torrington, “what do you think of it so far, P.J.?”

The three blond women of La Jaudrie farm had spread mattresses on the stone floor of the churn-room; and on these, curled up in their valises, candle guttering between them, the two were lying.

“Can’t quite make up my mind,” reflected Peter. “It all seems so extraordinarily casual. We’ve had no post, our rations have been twenty-four hours late all the way up, our own staff threw most of the officers’ valises off the G.S. waggons the day we started....”

“Oh, that!” Torrington laughed. “You’ll get used to the Staff when you’ve been out a bit longer, P.J. Mustn’t take ’em too seriously you know. These Seventh Division birds don’t seem too bad.”

“No,” admitted our Mr. Jameson. “I must say that Staff Captain man knows his job. I’ve got quite a decent shanty for H.Q.”

“That little house behind the battery-positions?”

“Yes.”

Torrington fumbled under his canvas pillow; found his cigarette-case; stretched arm and shoulder out of blankets to light a “Gold-flake.” He looked very ill: black eyes bright with fever; pale hair damp on damp brow. The anaemic lips over the prominent teeth quivered as he drew in the smoke.

“Feeling pretty rotten,” he announced.

“You never ought to have come out.”

“No.... I don’t suppose I’ll last very long. But I had to have another cut at the Boche. Besides, it doesn’t look well for a B.C.^[4] to hand his battery over to some one else as soon as it’s ordered abroad.”

“Well, I think you’re a damn fool,” said Peter. Every one in the Divisional Artillery, from General Blacklock to his own Battery Sergeant Major, had tried—and tried in vain—to keep Torrington at home.

“Possibly. It’s this marching that does me in. I’m as stiff as the devil tonight.” He turned over uneasily in his “flea-bag.” “You don’t want to go to sleep yet, do you?”

“No. Give me one of those filthy gaspers. All right, don’t you move; I’ll get them.”

They lay smoking for a few minutes. There are few reticences on active service; and soon both felt the need for intimate talk.

“Does it hurt much—being wounded?” asked Peter.

“Like hell. At least, mine did.”

“Where were you hit?”

“Oh, about sixteen places. Like to hear about it?”

“Rather.”

This is how Torrington told his own story: “It was right at the beginning, you know. Second day of the retreat. Our infantry—Buffs—were entrenched on the forward slope of a hill. I was doing F.O.O.;^[5] and like a fool I tried to observe from the crest. Boches! My hat, you should have seen ’em. Millions of ’em. Like—like gray ants. Stark was with the guns. I got in some topping bursts; must have knocked out hundreds. The Infanteers were simply mowing ’em down. Pity we hadn’t any Emma G’s.^[6] Then their guns go to work. First shell landed over the trench; got me in the head; killed one of my signallers.”

“What were you using”—asked Peter—“visual or the telephone?”

“Telephone. My other signaller kept on sending down the orders all right.... I managed to get the blood out of my eyes and we gave ’em gun-fire. That kept the devils back a bit. Then they spotted me. Turned a machine gun on me. First bullet got me in the calf of the leg. Next one in the shoulder.”

“How long was that after the first shell hit you?”

“Dunno. Must have been about an hour. I should think. ... Then they got my signaller, and I had to do the telephoning myself.... I don’t remember much else; except crawling round and round in a ring. You know—like a rabbit when you shoot too far behind. Then some one started singing ‘God Save the King.’ God, how I cursed that fellow. I remember saying to myself, ‘What’s the bally fool singing for? There’s nothing to sing about.’”

He paused a minute, eyes curiously bright, cigarette singeing stubby moustache.

“Just before I went off altogether, I found out who’d been singing. It was myself! Funny, isn’t it? Fancy crawling round and round on one’s elbows, singing ‘God save the King,’ in the middle of a battle.”

“Very funny,” said Peter, sorry for present sickness, but imagination only vaguely stirred by bare recital of the past. “How did you get away?”

“Oh, that was where the Weasel got his D.S.O.”^[7] Now that he told another’s story, Torrington grew a little more explicit. “He came up, under direct rifle and machine-gun fire, on his horse mark you, as soon as I stopped telephoning. They killed his horse for him, and he got a bullet through his ankle: but he managed to get us both away somehow—he’s as strong as a mule you know. Damned if I understand how he managed it: we only had one leg between the pair of us....”

He leaned forward, stretched a hand to the candle: as he blew it out, his pajama slipped from his neck and Peter saw the sullen weal of a bullet-wound on the shrunken shoulder.

“Wonder you’ve got the nerve to go into action again,” commented Peter across the darkness.

“As a matter of fact, the mere idea of marching up to those gun-pits tomorrow night, scares me to death,” said Torrington, V.C.

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