Then he suddenly realized that his words were unlucky.
"Touch wood!" David cried. Everybody jumped to touch wood, but it was a French trench and unriveted. I pulled a pencil out of my pocket; that was wood enough for me.
Richardson said: "I’m not superstitious, anyway."
The following evening I led "A" Company forward as a working-party. "B" and "D" Companies were in the line, and we overtook "C" also going to work. David, bringing up the rear of "C," looked worried about something. "What’s wrong?" I asked.
"Oh, I’m fed up," he answered, "and I’ve got a cold."
"C" Company filed along to the right of the Battalion frontage; and we went to the left. It was a weird kind of night, with a bright moon. Germans occupied a sap only forty or fifty yards away. We stood on the parapet piling the sandbags, with the moon at our backs, but the German sentries ignored us--probably because they had work on hand themselves. It happened at times when both sides were busy putting up needful defenses that they turned a blind eye to each other’s work. Occasionally, it was said, the rival wiring-parties "as good as used the same mallets" for hammering in the pickets. The Germans seemed much more ready than we were to live and let live. (Only once, so far as I know, apart from Christmas 1914, did both sides show themselves in daylight without firing at each other: one February at Ypres, when the trenches got so flooded that everyone had to crawl out on top to avoid drowning.) Nevertheless, a continuous exchange of grenades and trench-mortars had begun. Several canisters went over, and the men found it difficult to get out of their way in the dark; but for the first time we were giving the enemy as good as they gave us. Pritchard had been using his Stokes mortars all day, and sent over hundreds of rounds; twice the Germans located his emplacement and forced him to shift hurriedly.
"A" Company worked from seven in the evening until midnight. We must have put three thousand sandbags into position, and fifty yards of front trench were already looking presentable. About half-past ten, rifle-fire broke out on the right, and the sentries passed along the news: "Officer hit."
Richardson hurried away to investigate. He came back to say: "It's young Thomas. A bullet through the neck: but I think he’s all right. It can’t have hit his spine or an artery, because he’s walking to the dressing-station."
I was delighted: David should now be out of it long enough to escape the coming offensive, and perhaps even the rest of the War.
At twelve o’clock we finished for the night. Richardson said: "Von Ranke," (only he pronounced it "Von Runicke"--which was my Regimental nickname) "take the Company down for their rum and tea, will you? They’ve certainly earned it tonight. I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’m going out with Corporal Chamberlen to see what the wiring-party’s been at."
As I took the men back, I heard a couple of shells fall somewhere behind us. I noticed them, because they were the only shells fired that night: five-nines, by the noise. We had hardly reached the support line on the reverse side of the hill, when we heard the cry: "Stretcher-bearers!" and presently a man ran up to say: "Captain Graves is hit!"
That raised a general laugh, and we walked on: but all the same I sent a stretcher-party to investigate. It was Richardson: the shells had caught him and Corporal Chamberlen among the wire. Chamberlen lost his leg and died of wounds a day or two later. Richardson, blown into a shell hole full of water, lay there stunned for some minutes before the sentries heard the corporal’s cries and realized what had happened. The stretcher-bearers brought him down semi-conscious; he recognized us, said he wouldn’t be long away from the Company, and gave me instructions about it. The doctor found no wound in any vital spot, though the skin of his left side had been riddled, as we saw, with the chalky soil blown against it. We felt the same relief in his case as in David’s: that he would be out of it for a while.
Then news came that David was dead. The Regimental doctor, a throat specialist in civil life, had told him at the dressing-station: "You’ll be all right, only don’t raise your head for a bit." David then took a letter from his pocket, gave it to an orderly, and said: "Post this!" It had been written to a girl in Glamorgan, for delivery if he got killed. The doctor saw that he was choking and tried tracheotomy; but too late.
Edmund and I were talking together in "A" Company Headquarters at about one o’clock when the Adjutant entered. He looked ghastly. Richardson was dead: the explosion and the cold water had overstrained his heart, weakened by rowing in the Eight at Radley. The Adjutant said nervously: "You know, somehow I feel--I feel responsible in a way for this: what I said yesterday at Trafalgar Square. Of course, really, I don’t believe in superstition, but . . ."
Just at that moment three or four whizz-bang shells burst about twenty yards off. A cry of alarm went up, followed by: "Stretcher-bearers!"
The Adjutant turned white, and we did not have to be told what had happened. Pritchard, having fought his duel all night, and finally silenced the enemy, was coming off duty. A whizz-bang had caught him at the point where the communication trench reached Maple Redoubt--a direct hit. The total casualties were three officers and one corporal.
It seemed ridiculous, when we returned without Richardson to "A" Company billets at Morlancourt to find the old lady still alive and to hear her once more quaver: "Triste, la guerre!" when her daughter explained that le jeune capitaine had been killed. The old woman had taken a fancy to le jeune capitaine; we used to chaff him about it.
(Concluded on page three)
