Each man who took his instructions and pocketed his message and walked
up the cellar steps knew that he might never walk down them again, that
he might not take a dozen paces from them before the bullet found him.
He knew that its finding might come in black dark and in the middle of
an open field, that it might drop him there and leave him for the
stretcher-bearers to find some time, or for the burying party to lift
any time. Each man who carried out a message was aware that he might
never deliver it, that when some other hand did so, and the message was
being read, he might be past all messages, lying stark and cold in the
mud and filth with the rain beating on his gray unheeding face; or, on
the other hand, that he might be lying warm and comfortable in the
soothing ease of a bed in the hospital train, swaying gently and lulled
by the song of the flying wheels, the rock and roll of the long
compartment, swinging at top speed down the line to the base and the
hospital ship and home. An infinity of possibilities lay between the
two extremes. They were undoubtedly the two extremes: the death that
each man hoped to evade, the wound whose painful prospect held no
slightest terror but only rather the deep satisfaction of a task
performed, of an escape from death at the cheap price of a few days' or
weeks' pain, or even a crippled limb or a broken body.
Pages:
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205