A Man Could Stand Up—, Ford Madox Ford [ebook reader macos .txt] 📗

realise that he was a fit person to take responsibility.

He said to Mckechnie:

“The M.O. is the person who has to dispose of the Colonel.”

Mckechnie exclaimed:

“By God, if that drunken little squit dares.⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens said:

“Derry will act along the lines of my suggestions. He doesn’t have to take orders from me. But he has said that he will act along the lines of my suggestions. I shall accept the moral responsibility.”

He felt the desire to pant: as if he had just drunk at a draft a too great quantity of liquid. He did not pant. He looked at his wristwatch. Of the time he had decided to give Mckechnie thirty seconds remained.

Mckechnie made wonderful use of the time. The Germans sent over several shells. Not such very long distance shells either. For ten seconds Mckechnie went mad. He was always going mad. He was a bore. If that were only the German customary pooping off.⁠ ⁠… But it was heavier. Unusual obscenities dropped from the lips of Mckechnie. There was no knowing where the German projectiles were going. Or aimed at. A steam laundry in Bailleul as like as not. He said:

“Yes! Yes! Aranjuez!”

The tiny subaltern had peeped again, with his comic hat, round the corner of the pinkish gravel buttress.⁠ ⁠… A good, nervous boy. Imagining that the fact that he had reported had not been noticed! The gravel certainly looked more pink now the sun was come up⁠ ⁠… It was rising on Bemerton! Or perhaps not so far to the west yet. The parsonage of George Herbert, author of “Sweet Day So Cool, So Calm, So Bright, the Bridal of the Earth and Sky!”

It was odd where Mckechnie who was still shouting got his words for unnatural vice. He had been Latin Prize Man. But he was probably quite pure. The words very likely meant nothing to him.⁠ ⁠… As to the Tommies!⁠ ⁠… Then, why did they use them?

The German artillery thumped on! Heavier than the usual salvoes with which methodically they saluted the dawn. But there were no shells falling in that neighbourhood. So it might not be the barrage opening the Great Strafe! Very likely they were being visited by some little German Prince and wanted to show him what shooting was. Or by Field Marshal Count von Brunkersdorf! Who had ordered them to shoot down the chimney of the Bailleul steam laundry. Or it might be sheer irresponsibility such as distinguished all gunners. Few Germans were imaginative enough to be irresponsible, but no doubt their gunners were more imaginative than other Germans.

He remembered being up in the artillery O.P.⁠—what the devil was its name?⁠—before Albert. On the Albert-Bécourt-Bécordel Road! What the devil was its name? A gunner had been looking through his glasses. He had said to Tietjens: “Look at that fat⁠ ⁠… !” And through the glasses lent him, Tietjens had seen, on a hillside in the direction of Martinpuich, a fat Hun, in shirt and trousers, carrying in his right hand a food tin from which he was feeding himself with his left. A fat, lousy object: suggesting an angler on a quiet day. The gunner had said to Tietjens:

“Keep your glass on him!”

And they had chased that miserable German about that naked hillside, with shells, for ten minutes. Whichever way he bolted, they put a shell in front of him. Then they let him go. His action, when he had realised that they were really attending to him, had been exactly that of a rabbit dodging out of the wheat the reapers have just reached. At last he just lay down. He wasn’t killed. They had seen him get up and walk off later. Still carrying his bait can!

His antics had afforded those gunners infinite amusement. It afforded them almost more when all the German artillery on that front, imagining that God knew what was the matter, had awakened and plastered heaven and earth and everything between for a quarter of an hour with every imaginable kind of missile. And had then, abruptly, shut up.⁠ ⁠… Yes.⁠ ⁠… Irresponsible people, gunners!

The incident had really occurred because Tietjens had happened to ask that gunner how much he imagined it had cost in shells to smash to pieces an indescribably smashed field of about twenty acres that lay between Bazentin-le-petit and Mametz Wood. The field was unimaginably smashed, pulverised, powdered.⁠ ⁠… The gunner had replied that with shells from all the forces employed it might have cost three million sterling. Tietjens asked how many men the gunner imagined might have been killed there. The gunner said he didn’t begin to know. None at all, as like as not! No one was very likely to have been strolling about there for pleasure, and it hadn’t contained any trenches. It was just a field. Nevertheless, when Tietjens had remarked that in that case two Italian labourers with a steam plough could have pulverised that field about as completely for, say, thirty shillings, the gunner had taken it quite badly. He had made his men poop off after that inoffensive Hun with the bait can, just to show what artillery can do.

… At that point Tietjens had remarked, to Mckechnie:

“For my part, I shall advise the M.O. to recommend that the Colonel should be sent back on sick leave for a couple of months. It is within his power to do that.”

Mckechnie had exhausted all his obscene expletives. He was thus sane. His jaw dropped:

“Send the C.O. back!” he exclaimed lamentably. “At the very moment when⁠ ⁠…”

Tietjens exclaimed:

“Don’t be an ass. Or don’t imagine that I’m an ass. No one is going to reap any glory. In this Army. Here and now!”

Mckechnie said:

“But what price the money? Command pay! Nearly four quid a day. You could do with two-fifty quid at the end of his two months!”

Not so very long ago it would have seemed impossible that any man could, speak to him about either his private financial affairs or his intimate motives.

He said:

“I have obvious responsibilities.⁠ ⁠…”

“Some say,” Mckechnie went on, “that you’re