A conversation with Mr. Atkins -- 3

You have the duty tonight. 

Only for another quarter hour.

The night is uncommonly dark. I remember a night so dark, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I put out my hand and brought it in and my hand touched my nose, but I couldn’t see it.

The darker the night, the more your ears listen.

Sometimes, though, you hear things that aren’t there. Just like on a night when there’s a moon, you see things that aren’t there.

Better to see things that aren’t there than not to see the things that are.

There is that. At night when there’s a moon, the trees and the bushes move. You don’t have to worry about trees moving here. There aren’t any trees.

Once there were trees. Over there was a tree. The last barrage took it away. It was dead. Had the barrage not taken the tree, our officers would have sent a party at night and cut it down. The tree was a reference point for snipers.

I once read a story of the French removing a dead tree at night and replacing the tree with an artificial one. Inside the artificial tree, they placed an observer. He had a field phone and called back reports of Germans and adjusted artillery fire on the trenches.

Ah, the subtlety of the French.

The rats are busy.

You heard that one scurry, did you?

And another. I guess they find enough to eat.

More than, I’d say. More today than yesterday. Even more, tomorrow.*

Or the next day.

Tomorrow and the next day. And the next.

I remember rats in the bunkers. People drop food, don't clean it up, the rats find it.

Out there’s plenty of food not picked up.

They die like cattle.

Who?

Them.

Ha. As do we.

The first time I saw a machine gun firing at me, I didn’t hear it. There was so much other firing going on, so many other weapons, I didn’t hear the machine gun. It was at night -- like tonight -- and I saw a flickering red light, no larger than the end of a cigarette. That’s the way it looked, like a cigarette in the darkness, blinking and blinking. I think I shot the gunner, but I was never certain. After I fired, the machine stopped. If I killed the gunner, good. If I did not kill him, he stopped shooting at me.

There are enough machine guns over there to make you remember. And you can hear them. Drumsticks beating on a large tin. Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. A snare drum of machine guns, and a thousand timpani of cannon.

I remember mortars. The rounds go ka-whump when they hit, and there’s dirty gray smoke. A small bit of red in the center, and then dirty gray smoke and the whizz of shrapnel. I remember rounds going overhead. A mortar round sounds like a flock of startled birds, like a covey of quail flushed from a hiding place. The big ones, artillery, roar like a freight train in the night. Rifle and machine gun bullets … An evil, frightening sound. A zzzzz-CRACK!

If you hear them, though, they’re going somewhere else and not on you.

Yes. Sometimes the roar stops directly overhead.

That would be a close one. But if you hear it ...

You’re safe.

As safe as can be until one comes and you don’t hear it.

They say you never hear the one that gets you.

People who say that were not got, were they.

I suppose not. You’ve had rain.

God has not seen fit to give us many good days. If there were a good day, we would go over there.

And if on the day selected by red-striped colonels and generals, God decides to bless the land with nourishing rain ... Well, I suppose you go in the rain.

Yes. Proper form. They shoot them sitting down, you know. Deserters, slackers and mutineers.

Do they?

I’ve seen it. There must be witnesses, you see. Someone must testify that it is done all proper. They sit them in chairs, or on a wooden box, caps off, hands tied behind their backs, and then they shoot them. The ones who are shot are not given the dignity of standing. Poor boys.

Which ones?

Ha-ha. Now you’re a philosopher. I understand your meaning. Those who do the shooting are not given a choice, are they? Follow orders, or you might find your own chair, your own biscuit box.

I understand the inability of your colonels and generals to know the true nature of your war. I understand your colonels and generals were trained to do things a certain way, and their training did not include machine guns and massed artillery. But what do they think when numbers of men simply refuse to do it any longer? Do they take time to determine why? Do they truly believe execution of deserters will make other men more brave?

You misunderstand. It is war. If a man deserts because he is sick of the slaughter, and his punishment is a term of confinement in a prison in England ... No. He must be shot.

Poor Tommy?

Ah, go on with you. Poor Tommy? Oh, yes, it’s Tommy this and Tommy that, and chuck him out, the brute.

But it’s savior of his country when the guns begin to shoot. Yes.

And what of poor Fritz? Poor Pierre, poor Ivan, poor any name you wish to mention. But do not mention pawns in their game.

Even a pawn must hold a grudge.

So, you can quote verse. Anybody can memorize. The more you quote, the less we become, the less you become. You think of us as pawns, of yourself as another fool. Do you not think we want our dry homes when the rain falls? Do you not think we want to hear the crackle of a fire when winds blow wet and cold across all that is out there? Do you not think we want to lie beside our wives, to hear the sleep of peace, and not the hacking coughs of men confined to this small place of hell? We are not fools, and if we are pawns in a greater game, it is because we allow ourselves to be so. We are greater than the red-striped colonels and generals. We do not plan, we do not direct, we simply do. And in the doing, we are greater than they are.

I apologize. Sometimes, though ...

He lost his son here, you know. Kipling. If that was the price of his glory ... My relief comes. I shall return to my present home, perhaps have a bit of char, a twist of tobacco in my old and battered pipe.  And then I will listen to the glorious sounds of men hacking.