It's "Carry on!" and "Carry on!" and "Carry on!" all day,
And when we cannot carry on, they'll carry us away
To slumber1 sound beneath the ground, pore beggars dead and gone,
'Till Gabriel shouts on Judgment2 Day, "Get out and carry on!"
On Michaelmas Eve things were quiet; the big guns were silent, and the only sign of war was in the star-shells playing near Hill 70; the rifles pinging up by Bois Hugo, and occasional clouds of shrapnel incense3 which the guns offered to the god they could not break, the Tower Bridge of Loos. We had not been relieved yet, but we hoped to get back to Les Brebis for a rest shortly. The hour was midnight, and I felt very sleepy. The wounded in our sector4 had been taken in, the peace of the desert was over the level land and its burden of unburied dead. I put on my overcoat, one that I had just found in a pack on the roadway, and went into a barn which stood near[207] our trench5. The door of the building hung on one hinge. I pulled it off, placed it on the floor, and lay on it. With due caution I lit a cigarette, and the smoke reeked6 whitely upwards7 to the skeleton roof which the shell fire had stripped of nearly all its tiles.
My body was full of delightful8 pains of weariness, my mind was full of contentment. The moon struggled through a rift9 in the clouds and a shower of pale light streamed through the chequered framework overhead. The tiles which had weathered a leaden storm showed dark against the sky, queer shadows played on the floor, and in the subdued10 moonlight, strange, unexpected contrasts were evoked11. In the corners, where the shadows took on definite forms, there was room for the imagination to revel12 in. The night of ruination with its soft moonlight and delicate shading had a wonderful fascination13 of its own. The enemy machine gun, fumbling14 for an opening, chirruped a lullaby as its bullets pattered against the wall. I was under the spell of an enchanting15 poem. "How good, how very good it is to be alive," I said.
My last remembrance before dozing16 off was of the clatter17 of picks and shovels18 on the road outside. The sanitary19 squad20 was at work burying the dead. I fell asleep.
I awoke to find somebody tugging21 at my[208] elbow and to hear a voice which I recognised as W.'s, saying, "It's only old Pat."
"What's wrong?" I mumbled22, raising myself on my elbow and looking round. The sanitary diggers were looking at me, behind them the Twin Towers stood out dark against the moonlight. Girders, ties and beams seemed to have been outlined with a pen dipped in molten silver. I was out in the open.
"This isn't half a go," said one of the men, a mate of mine, who belonged to the sanitary squad. "We thought you were a dead 'un. We dug a deep grave, put two in and there was room for another. Then L. said that there was a bloke lying on a door inside that house, and in we goes and carries you out—door and all. You're just on the brink23 of your grave now."
I peeped over the side and down a dark hole with a bundle of khaki and a white face at the bottom.
"I refuse to be buried," I muttered, and took up my bed and walked.
As I lay down again in the building which I had left to be buried, I could hear my friends laughing. It was a delightful joke. In a moment I was sound asleep.
I awoke with a start to a hell-riot of creaking timbers and tiles falling all around me. I got to my feet and crouched24 against the wall[209] shuddering25, almost paralyzed with fear. A tense second dragged by. The tiles ceased to fall and I looked up at the place where the roof had been. But the roof was gone; a shell had struck the centre beam, raised the whole construction as a lid is raised from a teapot, and flung it over into the street.... I rushed out into the trench in undignified haste, glad of my miraculous26 escape from death, and stumbled across Bill Teake as I fell into the trench.
"Wot's wrong with yer, mate?" he asked.
I drew in a deep breath and was silent for a moment. I was trying to regain27 my composure.
"Bill," I replied, "this is the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. I've led such an exemplary life that St. Michael and All Angels in Paradise want me to visit them. They caused the sanitary squad to dig my grave to-night, and when I refused to be buried they sent a shell along to strafe me. I escaped. I refuse to be virtuous28 from now until the end of my days."
"'Ave a drop of rum, Pat," said Bill, uncorking a bottle.
"Thank you, Bill," I said, and drank. I wiped my lips.
"Are we going to be relieved?" I asked.
"In no time," said Bill. "The 22nd[210] London are coming along the trench now. We're going back to Les Brebis."
"Good," I said.
"'Ave another drop of rum," said Bill.
He left me then and I began to make up my pack. It was useless for me to wait any longer. I would go across the fields to Les Brebis.
The night grew very dark, and heavy clouds gathered overhead. The nocturnal rustling29 of the field surrounded me, the dead men lay everywhere and anyhow, some head-downwards30 in shell-holes, others sitting upright as they were caught by a fatal bullet when dressing31 their wounds. Many were spread out at full length, their legs close together, their arms extended, crucifixes fashioned from decaying flesh wrapped in khaki. Nature, vast and terrible, stretched out on all sides; a red star-shell in the misty32 heavens looked like a lurid33 wound dripping with blood.
I walked slowly, my eyes fixed34 steadily35 on the field ahead, for I did not desire to trip over the dead, who lay everywhere. As I walked a shell whistled over my head and burst against the Twin Towers, and my gaze rested on the explosion. At that moment I tripped on something soft and went headlong across it. A dozen rats slunk away into the darkness as I fell. I got to my feet again and looked at the dead man. The corpse36 was a mere37[211] condensation38 of shadows with a blurred39 though definite outline. It was a remainder and a reminder40; a remnant of clashing steel, of rushing figures, of loud-voiced imprecations—of war, a reminder of mad passion, of organised hatred41, of victory and defeat.
Engirt with the solitude42 and loneliness of the night it wasted away, though no waste could alter it now; it was a man who was not; henceforth it would be that and that alone.
For the thing there was not the quietude of death and the privacy of the tomb, it was outcast from its kind. Buffeted43 by the breeze, battered44 by the rains it rotted in the open. Worms feasted on its entrails, slugs trailed silverly over its face, and lean rats gnawed45 at its flesh. The air was full of the thing, the night stank46 with its decay.
Life revolted at that from which life was gone, the quick cast it away for it was not of them. The corpse was one with the mystery of the night, the darkness and the void.
In Loos the ruined houses looked gloomy by day, by night they were ghastly. A house is a ruin when the family that dwelt within its walls is gone; but by midnight in the waste, how horrible looks the house of flesh from which the soul is gone. We are vaguely47 aware of what has happened when we look upon the tenantless48 home, but man is stricken[212] dumb when he sees the tenantless body of one of his kind. I could only stare at the corpse until I felt that my eyes were as glassy as those on which I gazed. The stiffness of the dead was communicated to my being, the silence was infectious; I hardly dared to breathe.
"This is the end of all the mad scurry49 and rush," I said. "What purpose does it serve? And why do I stand here looking at the thing?" There were thousands of dead around Loos; fifty thousand perhaps, scattered50 over a few square miles of country, unburied. Some men, even, might still be dying.
A black speck51 moved along the earth a few yards away from me, slunk up to the corpse and disappeared into it, as it were. Then another speck followed, and another. The rats were returning to their meal.
The bullets whistled past my ears. The Germans had a machine gun and several fixed rifles trained on the Vallé Cross-roads outside Loos, and all night long these messengers of death sped out to meet the soldiers coming up the road and chase the soldiers going down.
The sight of the dead man and the rats had shaken me; I felt nervous and could not restrain myself from looking back over my shoulder at intervals52. I had a feeling that[213] something was following me, a Presence, vague and terrible, a spectre of the midnight and the field of death.
I am superstitious53 after a fashion, and I fear the solitude of the night and the silent obscurity of the darkness.
Once, at Vermelles, I passed through a deserted54 trench in the dusk. There the parapet and parados were fringed with graves, and decrepit55 dug-outs leant wearily on their props56 like hags on crutches57. A number of the dug-outs had fallen in, probably on top of the sleeping occupants, and no one had time to dig the victims out. Such things often happen in the trenches58, and in wet weather when the sodden59 dug-outs cave in, many men are buried alive.
The trench wound wayward as a river through the fields, its traverse steeped in shadow, its bays full of mystery. As I walked through the maze60 my mind was full of presentiments61 of evil. I was full of expectation, everything seemed to be leading up to happenings weird62 and uncanny, things which would not be of this world. The trench was peopled with spectres; soldiers, fully63 armed, stood on the fire-steps, their faces towards the enemy. I could see them as I entered a bay, but on coming closer the phantoms64 died away. The boys in khaki were tilted65 sandbags heaped on the banquette,[214] the bayonets splinters of wood sharply defined against the sky. As if to heighten the illusion, torn ground-sheets, hanging from the parados, made sounds like travelling shells, as the breezes caught them and brushed them against the wall.
I went into a bay to see something dark grey and shapeless bulked in a heap on the fire-step. Another heap of sandbags I thought. But no! In the darkness of the weird locality realities were exaggerated and the heap which I thought was a large one was in reality very small; a mere soldier, dead in the trench, looked enormous in my eyes. The man's bayonet was pressed between his elbow and side, his head bending forward almost touched the knees, and both the man's hands were clasped across it as if for protection. A splinter of shell which he stooped to avoid must have caught him. He now was the sole occupant of the deserted trench, this poor, frozen effigy66 of fear. The trench was a grave unfilled.... I scrambled67 over the top and took my way across the open towards my company.
Once, at midnight, I came through the deserted village of Bully-Grenay, where every house was built exactly like its neighbour. War has played havoc68 with the pattern, however, most of the houses are shell-stricken, and some are levelled to the ground. The church[215] stands on a little knoll69 near the coal-mine, and a shell has dug a big hole in the floor of the aisle70. A statue of the Blessed Virgin71 sticks head downwards in the hole; how it got into this ludicrous position is a mystery.
The Germans were shelling the village as I came through. Shrapnel swept the streets and high explosives played havoc with the mine; I had no love for a place in such a plight72. In front of me a limber was smashed to pieces, the driver was dead, the offside wheeler dead, the nearside wheeler dying and kicking its mate in the belly73 with vicious hooves. On either side of me were deserted houses with the doors open and shadows brooding in the interior. The cellars would afford secure shelter until the row was over, but I feared the darkness and the gloom more than I feared the shells in the open street. When the splinters swept perilously74 near to my head I made instinctively75 for an open door, but the shadows seemed to thrust me back with a powerful hand. To save my life I would not go into a house and seek refuge in the cellars.
I fear the solitude of the night, but I can never ascertain76 what it is I fear in it. I am not particularly interested in the supernatural, and spiritualism and table-rapping is not at all to my taste. In a crowded room a spirit in my way of thinking loses its dignity[216] and power to impress, and at times I am compelled to laugh at those who believe in manifestations77 of disembodied spirits.
Once, at Givenchy, a soldier in all seriousness spoke78 of a strange sight which he had seen. Givenchy Church has only one wall standing79, and a large black crucifix with its nailed Christ is fixed to this wall. From the trenches on a moonlight night it is possible to see the symbol of sorrow with its white figure which seems to keep eternal watch over the line of battle. The soldier of whom I speak was on guard; the night was very clear, and the enemy were shelling Givenchy Church. A splinter of shell knocked part of the arm of the cross away. The soldier on watch vowed80 that he saw a luminous81 halo settle round the figure on the Cross. It detached itself from its nails, came down to the ground, and put the fallen wood back to its place. Then the Crucified resumed His exposed position again on the Cross. It was natural that the listeners should say that the sentry82 was drunk.
It is strange how the altar of Givenchy Church and its symbol of Supreme83 Agony has escaped destruction. Many crosses in wayside shrines84 have been untouched though the locality in which they stand is swept with eternal artillery85 fire.
But many have fallen; when they become[217] one with the rubble86 of a roadway their loss is unnoticed. It is when they escape destruction that they become conspicuous87. They are like the faithful in a storm at sea who prayed to the Maria del Stella and weathered the gale88. Their good fortune became common gossip. But gossip, historical and otherwise, is mute upon those who perished.
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1
slumber
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| n.睡眠，沉睡状态 | |
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2
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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4
sector
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| n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形 | |
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trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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reeked
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的过去式和过去分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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7
upwards
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| adv.向上，在更高处...以上 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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rift
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| n.裂口，隙缝，切口；v.裂开，割开，渗入 | |
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subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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11
evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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12
revel
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| vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢 | |
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13
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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dozing
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| v.打瞌睡,假寐 n.瞌睡 | |
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clatter
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| v./n.(使)发出连续而清脆的撞击声 | |
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18
shovels
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| n.铲子( shovel的名词复数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份v.铲子( shovel的第三人称单数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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19
sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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tugging
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| n.牵引感v.用力拉，使劲拉，猛扯( tug的现在分词 ) | |
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22
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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26
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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27
regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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28
virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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29
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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30
downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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31
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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32
misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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lurid
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| adj.可怕的；血红的；苍白的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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condensation
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| n.压缩，浓缩；凝结的水珠 | |
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blurred
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| v.（使）变模糊( blur的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）难以区分；模模糊糊；迷离 | |
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40
reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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41
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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42
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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43
buffeted
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| 反复敲打( buffet的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续猛击； 打来打去； 推来搡去 | |
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44
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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45
gnawed
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| 咬( gnaw的过去式和过去分词 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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46
stank
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| n. (英)坝，堰，池塘 动词stink的过去式 | |
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47
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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48
tenantless
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| adj.无人租赁的，无人居住的 | |
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49
scurry
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| vi.急匆匆地走；使急赶；催促；n.快步急跑，疾走；仓皇奔跑声；骤雨，骤雪；短距离赛马 | |
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50
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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51
speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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52
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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53
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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54
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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decrepit
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| adj.衰老的，破旧的 | |
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56
props
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| 小道具； 支柱( prop的名词复数 )； 支持者； 道具； （橄榄球中的）支柱前锋 | |
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crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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59
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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61
presentiments
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| n.（对不祥事物的）预感( presentiment的名词复数 ) | |
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weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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phantoms
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| n.鬼怪，幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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65
tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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effigy
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| n.肖像 | |
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67
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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68
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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knoll
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| n.小山，小丘 | |
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70
aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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73
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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74
perilously
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| adv.充满危险地，危机四伏地 | |
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75
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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76
ascertain
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| vt.发现，确定，查明，弄清 | |
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77
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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78
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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79
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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80
vowed
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| 起誓，发誓（vow的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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81
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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82
sentry
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| n.哨兵，警卫 | |
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83
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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84
shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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85
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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86
rubble
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| n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾 | |
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87
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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88
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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