Front Lines. Boyd Cable
space was precious and ill to spare, and the elephant took up one complete side pocket to itself.
Arrived at their appointed place in the show, Copple continued to carry his elephant, but had little time to work on it because he was busy every moment of the day and many hours of the night on his hard and risky duties. The casualties came back to the Aid Post in a steady stream that swelled at times to an almost overwhelming rush, and every man of the Field Ambulance was kept going at his hardest. The Aid Post was established in a partly wrecked German gun emplacement built of concrete, and because all the ground about them was too ploughed up and cratered with shell-fire to allow a motor ambulance to approach it, the wounded had to be helped or carried back to the nearest point to which the hard-working engineers had carried the new road, and there were placed on the motors.
Private Copple was busy one morning helping to carry back some of the casualties. A hot “strafe” was on, the way back led through lines and clumped batches of batteries all in hot action, the roar of gun-fire rose long and unbroken and deafeningly, and every now and then through the roar of their reports and the diminishing wails of their departing shells there came the rising shriek and rush of a German shell, the crump and crash of its burst, the whistle and hum of flying splinters. Private Copple and the rest of the R.A.M.C. men didn’t like it any more than the casualties, who appeared to dread much more, now that they were wounded, the chance of being hit again, chiefly because it would be such “rotten luck” to get killed now that they had done their share, got their “Blighty,” and with decent luck were soon to be out of it all, and safely and comfortably back in hospital and home.
But, although many times the wounded asked to be laid down in a shell-hole, or allowed to take cover for a moment at the warning shriek of an approaching shell, the ambulance men only gave way to them when, from the noise, they judged the shell was going to fall very perilously close. If they had stopped for every shell the work would have taken too long, and the Aid Post was too cram-full, and too many fresh cases were pouring in, to allow of any delay on the mere account of danger. So there were during the day a good many casualties amongst the ambulance men, and so at the end Private Copple was caught. He had hesitated a moment too long in dropping himself into the cover of the shell crater where he had just lowered the “walking wounded” he was supporting back. The shell whirled down in a crescendo of howling, roaring noise, and, just as Copple flung himself down, burst with an earth-shaking crash a score or so of yards away. Copple felt a tremendous blow on his side.
They had ripped most of the clothes off him and were busy with first field dressings on his wounds when he recovered enough to take any interest in what was going on. The dressers were in a hurry because more shells were falling near; there was one vacant place in a motor ambulance, and its driver was in haste to be off and out of it.
“You’re all right,” said one of the men, in answer to Copple’s faint inquiry. “All light wounds. Lord knows what you were carrying a lump of stone about in your pocket for, but it saved you this trip. Splinter hit it, and smashed it, and most of the wounds are from bits of the stone – luckily for you, because if it hadn’t been there a chunk of Boche iron would just about have gone through you.”
“Stone?” said Copple faintly. “Strewth! That was my blessed elephant in my bloomin’ pocket.”
“Elephant?” said the orderly. “In your pocket? An’ did it have pink stripes an’ a purple tail? Well, never mind about elephants now. You can explain ’em to the Blighty M.O.1 Here, up you get.” And he helped Copple to the ambulance.
Later on, the humour of the situation struck Private Copple. He worked up a prime witticism which he afterwards played off on the Sister who was dressing his wounds in a London hospital.
“D’you know,” he said, chuckling, “I’m the only man in this war that’s been wounded by a elephant?”
The Sister stayed her bandaging, and looked at him curiously. “Wounded by a elephant,” repeated Copple cheerfully. “Funny to think it’s mebbe a bit of ’is trunk made the ’ole in my thigh, an’ I got ’is ’ead and ’is ’ind leg in my ribs.”
“You mustn’t talk nonsense, you know,” said the Sister hesitatingly. Certainly, Copple had shown no signs of shell-shock or unbalanced mind before, but —
“We used to carve things out o’ chalk stone in my lot,” went on Copple, and explained how the shell splinter had been stopped by the elephant in his pocket. The
Sister was immensely interested and a good deal amused, and laughed – rather immoderately and in the wrong place, as Copple thought when he described his coffin masterpiece with the name-plate bearing his own name, and the dodge of starting on the elephant with a trunk at each end.
“Well, I’ve heard a lot of queer things about the front, Copple,” she said, busying herself on the last bandage. “But I didn’t know they went in for sculpture. ‘Ars longa, vitæ brevis.’ That’s a saying in Latin, and it means exactly, ‘Art is long, life is short.’ You’d understand it better if I put it another way. It means that it takes a long, long time to make a perfect elephant – ”
“It does,” said Copple. “But if you begins ‘im like I told you, with a trunk each end – ”
“There, that’ll do,” said the Sister, pinning the last bandage. “Now lie down and I’ll make you comfortable. A long time to make a perfect elephant; and life is very short – ”
“That’s true,” said Copple. “Especially up Wipers way.”
“So, if making elephants gives some people the greatest possible pleasure in life, why not let them make elephants? I’m an artist of sorts myself, or was trying to be before the war, so I speak feelingly for a brother elephant-maker, Copple.”
“Artist, was you?” said Copple, with great interest. “That must be a jolly sorter job.”
“It is, Copple – or was,” said the Sister, finishing the tucking-up. “Much jollier than a starched-smooth uniform and life – and lots in it.” And she sighed and made a little grimace at the stained bandages she picked up. “But if you and thousands of other men give up your particular arts and go out to have your short lives cut shorter, the least I can do is to give up mine to try to make them longer.”
Copple didn’t quite follow all this. “I wish I’d a bit o’ chalk stone, Sister,” he said; “I’d teach you how to do a elephant with the two trunks.”
“And how if a trunk breaks off one’s elephant – or life, one can always try to trim it down to quite a useful tail,” said the Sister, smiling at him as she turned to go. “You’ve already taught me something of that, Copple – you and the rest there in the trenches – better than you know.”
II
THE SUICIDE CLUB
The Royal Jocks (Oughth Battalion) had suffered heavily in the fighting on the Somme, and after they had been withdrawn from action to another and quieter part of the line, all ranks heard with satisfaction that they were to be made up to full strength by a big draft from Home. There were the usual wonderings and misgivings as to what sort of a crowd the draft would be, and whether they would be at all within the limits of possibility of licking into something resembling the shape that Royal Jocks ought to be.
“Expect we’ll ’ave a tidy job to teach ’em wot’s wot,” said Private “Shirty” Low, “but we must just pass along all the fatigues they can ’andle, and teach ’em the best we can.”
“Let’s hope,” said his companion, “that they get an advance o’ pay to bring with ’em. We’ll be goin’ back to billets soon, and we’ll be able to introduce ’em proper to the estaminets.”
“You boys’ll have to treat ’em easy to begin with,” said a corporal. “Don’t go breakin’ their hearts for a start. They’ll be pretty sick an’ home-sick for a bit, and you don’t want to act rough before they begin to feel their feet.”
This was felt to be reasonable, and there
M.O. Medical Officer