Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

doesn't he do anything else to help us? He could attack their guns—"
    "His artillery has been trying to reach their artillery all morning; their shells have passed over us. Evidently the Commander-in-Chief's artillerymen can't see the Mippite guns. Remember, our hill is in the way."
    "Well, then, the Commander-in-Chief could create a diversion. Bloody blades, man, he has twenty thousand soldiers under his command. Why doesn't he do something?"
    "He may not have received my message yet. You know what army communications are like."
    "Have you received any messages back from him?"
    "I'm not sure. I haven't had time to check with the signalmen— Oh, sweet blood, not again."
    Attack from the sharpshooters. Try to push the Mippites back. They creep forward, taking five yards, ten yards, forty yards, sixty . . . They're within twenty yards now of our trenches.
    "I don't care if you want to be with your men! You're a general , Fairview! We need you behind the General's rock . . . sir."
    Silence.
    "Will you keep your head down, Rook?"
    "Believe me, Fairview, the only way I could keep my head any lower would be to burrow into the rock. Where are those bloody reinforcements?"
    CHAPTER 9
    THIS TERRIBLE DAY
    Account by the field-cornet of the Mippite forces at Spy Hill:
    "Spy Hill, although steep, is not very high on the eastern slope where we went up, and it did not take us long to reach the top. Here we found that our advance had got no farther than the fringe of loose rocks that runs like a girdle around the upper tableland. For the rest of the flat stretch beyond was still wholly in the hands of the Landsteaders, who lay in a shallow trench behind a long low wall of stone about twenty yards away. From here came a vicious rifle-fire that made further progress impossible.
    I met my brother coming down and gave him a hurried handshake, then went forward to the firing-line a few yards further on. We were sustaining heavy casualties from the Landsteader soldiers immediately in front of us, and the men grew restive under the galling point-blank fire, a thing not to be wondered at, for the moral effect of rifle volleys at twenty yards must be experienced to be appreciated. The Landsteader troops lay so near that one could have tossed a biscuit among them, and whilst the losses which they were causing us were only too evident, we on our side did not know that we were inflicting even greater damage upon them. Our own casualties lay hideously among us, but theirs were screened from view behind the breastwork, so the comfort of knowing that we were giving worse than we received was denied us.
    The sun became hotter and hotter, and we had neither food nor water. Around us lay scores of dead and wounded men. As the hours dragged on a trickle of men slipped down the hill, and this gradual wastage so depleted our strength that long before nightfall we were holding the blood-splattered ledge with a mere handful of rifles. I wanted to go too, but the thought of Demas and my other men saved me from deserting. No further attempt was made to press forward, and for the rest of this terrible day both sides stubbornly held their ground, and, although the battle remained stationary, the heavy close-range rifle-fire continued hour after hour, and the tale of losses mounted while we lay in the blazing heat."
    ****
    Bullets are not a soldier's worst enemy. Not bullets, nor the deadly thunderstorm of shrapnel, nor shells that smash a man's innards to pulp, nor machine-rifle fire that spears him in a dozen places.
    No, ask any soldier, and he'll tell you: far worse than weapon-fire is the fire of thirst.
    The mist had long since dissipated. The hill was hot, the grass so dry that it might never have been watered. It cut us as we scrambled across it. The summer sun licked us with its fiery lash. My mouth was a desert. I licked my dry lips with my dry tongue as sweat poured off my forehead. I resisted the temptation to lick the sweat. I was a waterman; I knew better than to try to quench my thirst with salt-water.
    All around me, as I wriggled my way across the ground, came the panting of men who were dry, who were hot, who were on the edge of passing out. None of us had eaten any food since dawn; we had been given no such leisure. And what water we had was going to the wounded, who lay beside us in the trenches, crying piteously or suffering in dreadful silence.
    "We can't go on like this," I told Fairview, when I had finally squirmed my way to the