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Page 42
Most of us went to bed, but a few continued to pace up and down in great
agitation. One man picked up his blankets in a bundle and went off in
order to sleep in the open fields, far away from the camp.
An hour had hardly passed before distant anti-aircraft fire broke out
again. Anxiety began to renew its tortures. We heard the dull, sullen
roar of bombs exploding at intervals. Then fourteen burst in rapid
succession as though a gigantic ball of solid iron had bounced fourteen
times with thundering reverberations on a resonant surface. But the
sound of firing died down and soon all was quiet. And then sleep came
upon us and our troubles were over for a time.
The next morning was windless and clear. All day we kept looking at the
sky, but not a cloud was to be seen.
The evening approached, darkness fell, and the stars shone. "Lights Out"
was sounded and we extinguished our candles. None of us said a word, but
everybody knew what everybody else was thinking of. And soon we heard
the familiar buzz. At first it only came from one propeller, but others
arrived and the sound multiplied and increased in volume, and at the
same time it rose and fell in irregular gusts and regular pulsations.
Anti-aircraft firing burst out suddenly and for a few minutes there was
a blending of whining, whistling, rushing sounds overhead punctuated by
faint reports. The firing ceased, but the droning noises continued
louder than ever. The German aeroplanes seemed to be above us like a
swarm of angry wasps, and above us they seemed to remain, hovering and
circling. We awaited the downward rush and the deafening thunder-clap
that would destroy us all. One man was groaning loudly. Another
shivered. I could hear the chattering of many teeth. My neighbour
trembled violently and cowered beneath his blankets. But his fear grew
so strong that he could not bear it any longer. He got up and said in a
strained voice, trying to appear calm, "I'm goin' to 'ave a look at
'em." He ran out of the marquee and disappeared. I found my powers of
resistance ebbing. I was unable to control my imagination. I saw my
comrades and myself blown to pieces. I saw the clerk in the office of
the C.C.S. write out the death-intimations on a buff slip and filling in
a form. I saw a telegraph boy taking the telegram to my home. He stopped
on the way in order to talk to a friend. Then he whistled and threw a
stone at a dog. He sauntered through the garden gate and knocked at the
front door. The door opened ... but I could not face the rest, and with
a tremendous mental impulse I turned my mind away to other things. But
my terrible thoughts lay in wait for me like tigers ready to rush upon
me as soon as my will relaxed its efforts. I tried to compromise, and I
imagined myself killed and invented all the details of a post-mortem
examination and burial. I found some relief in these imaginings, but
soon that implacable telegram claimed my attention once more and drew me
on to what I dared not face. I sought distraction by muttering some
verses of poetry to myself. They had no meaning to me, they were just
empty sound and their rhythm had a hideous pulsation like that other
pulsation overhead:
"He above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tower...."
and so on, line after line. The dreariness of the verses grew so intense
as to be almost intolerable. At the same time I was dimly conscious of
the fact that at one time I thought this passage beautiful. But the beat
of the blank verse carried me on. Sometimes it seemed to blend with the
buzzing of those angry wasps above and sometimes the two rhythms would
vie with each other for speed, so that they hurried along each
alternately ahead of the other. I came to a line where my memory failed
me. I faltered for a moment, but the droning sound seemed to grow into
an enormous roar, and I leapt back to the beginning:
"He above the rest...."
and then on and on a second time until my head throbbed with the double
pulsation.
Suddenly a man who had been lying on the far side of the marquee got up
and said:
"I've had enough of this, I'm going to sleep in a ditch."
He went off. The wasps were still buzzing, but the interruption had
broken the spell. I felt a sense of relief. I became conscious of
intense weariness and felt ashamed of my fears. I cursed the German
aeroplanes and thought, "Let them do their worst, I don't care." I made
up my mind to go to sleep and resolutely buried my face in my pillow.
Then it occurred to me that I would never be able to enjoy _Paradise
Lost_ again, and I was half-amused and agreeably distracted by the
trivial thought.
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