Part 33

A long wrangle ensued. Wild threats and foul insults were flung about. But the quarrel, like nearly all our quarrels, did not go beyond violent words.

I began to search and soon found a big swollen louse. I crushed it with my thumb-nail so that the blood spurted out. I heard several faint cracks coming from the opposite side of the tent and knew that others were also hunting for vermin.

I examined the seams of my shirt and found two or three more. Then, to my dismay, I discovered several eggs. They are so minute that some are sure to escape the most careful scrutiny. The presence of eggs is always a warning that many nights of irritation will have to pass by before the young grow sufficiently big to be discovered easily.

I thought I had looked at every square inch of my shirt, but I looked at it a second time in order to make sure. I soon found a whitish elongated body clinging tightly to the cloth. Then I found another wedged into the seam.

Meanwhile, my neighbour, who had been tossing about restlessly and scratching himself and sighing with desperate vexation, lit his candle and began to search busily. The sound of an occasional crack showed how successful he was.

The night was warm and sultry. A storm threatened and it was necessary to close the tent flap. I blew out my candle and wrapped myself in my blankets. I was unable to stretch my legs because others were in the way. I was hemmed and pressed in on all sides. I felt an impulse to kick out savagely, but was able to control myself.

The stifling heat became unbearable, and at the same time the cold, clammy moisture from the soft sodden mud underneath began to penetrate ground-sheet and blankets.

The irritation recommenced. A louse so big that I could feel it crawling along stopped and drew blood. I tried in vain to go to sleep. I heard my neighbour scratching himself steadily. Nor could he find a comfortable position to lie in and kept twisting and turning and moaning. The other men were snoring or fidgeting restlessly.

At length a fitful slumber came upon me and a confusion of rotting bodies swarming with monstrous lice passed before my closed eyes. I was fully awake long before reveille, sleepy and unrefreshed, and when reveille came we received orders to move within two hours.

Four of us and one N.C.O. were left behind to load a lorry. And then we, too, packed up and set out to follow the unit.

Thinking to take a short cut across country we ascended the hill-slope, jumping and clambering across shell-holes and striding through long grass and weeds. Now and again we would chance upon some narrow winding track that soon lost itself again amid the tangled growth.

Low clouds burdened the sky and a fine rain began to fall. The top of the hill was hidden in grey mist.

We passed a heap of broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends of iron rods projected. A little further on a concrete shelter stood intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in greenish-black water. I drew slowly back, feeling sick with horror.

As we climbed the hill-side the devastation increased. The trees and bushes were torn, splintered and uprooted. Only a few grey trunks remained standing like scarred, bare poles. We approached the summit and crossed shell-hole next to shell-hole, for not a square yard of ground had remained untouched. Some of the holes were wide and deeply funnel-shaped, others were shallow, and others were hardly distinguishable, the earth having been churned and tossed up time after time. On the very top of the hill, there was nothing left of the trees that had densely clothed it a few months before, except fragments of wood and stringy lengths of root. Even the grass and weeds had been destroyed and blasted by the bursting of innumerable shells.

We walked along the crest between upright bundles of splinters that projected from the ground in two parallel rows--all that remained of an avenue of pines and larches.

We descended the further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp--a chaos of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed to clutch frantically at some invisible object.

A little further on two soldiers were scraping the soil with sticks.

"Gorblimy--'e ain't 'alf rotten--puh--don't 'e stink! I 'ope 'e's got summat in 'is pockets arter we've bin takin' all this trouble."

"Yer never find much on these 'ere Froggies, the rotten bastards. They don't 'ardly get no dibs [money, pay]. Canadians and Aussies--them's the blokes yer want ter look for. Fritz ain't so bad neither. I got a bloody fine watch orf a Fritz last year down on the Somme--sold it to an orficer for thirty bleed'n' francs!"

"Put yer stick under 'im an' 'eave 'im out!"

One of the men pushed his stick obliquely into the ground and levered up the putrefying corpse. The other turned the pockets inside out. A few soiled and mouldy bits of paper came to light, but nothing of any value.

"Just our bastard bleed'n' luck! Let's see if we can't find a Fritz or a Tommy!"

Robbing the dead was always a recognized thing at the front, but our Corporal, who was rather an unsoldierly individual, did not seem to think it quite the proper thing, and shouted:

"What d'you want to rob the dead for? Why don't you leave them alone?"

"What's it got ter do wi' you?" answered one of the treasure-seekers. "Why don't yer mind yer own bleed'n' business? What's the use o' lettin' good stuff go west? A dead un can't do nothin' wi' watches an' rings an' five-franc notes! Gorblimy, 'ave a bit o' sense! It's allus your class o' blokes what makes a bleed'n' fuss!"

Having thus vindicated their rights, the two men turned away in order to continue their search for the legitimate spoils of war.

We walked on and the gulley widened out into a level crater-field. The hill loomed dimly behind us, and, looking ahead through the rain and mist, we could see the reddish blur of a ruined village.

Near a small shell-hole were the remains of a German who had been blown to bits. The clothes, limbs and trunk were in one confused heap. The head lay some distance off; it was quite undamaged. The skin was black and drawn tightly over the skull. The hair was matted, but the short, blonde moustache had been neatly trimmed. The lips were shrivelled, exposing two perfect rows of white teeth, giving the dead face a horrible expression of ferocity. The eyelids were closed and taut, the cracks near the nose revealed the dark, empty eye-cavities underneath.