WAR

He was not used to it yet, that was it. He felt exasperated but in a
quite impotent way. He did not interfere, and even had he wanted to he
did not know how. Things happened, that was all.

At noon they took their first prisoners. That, too, happened
curiously. Not a shot was fired. The driver ran his motor right into
their sentries; obviously he had been deceived by the half-mufti in
which the regular troops appeared. The Commandant whistled, and the
motorists were bidden drive on to the place where he stood. As the motor
car moved down the road towards him a man stood up in it, and quite
casually tore to shreds some documents which he had been carrying. In
the high wind the scraps of paper began to fly until they were lost among
the fields around. Still he could not stop the destruction, it was all
over before he understood what was happening.

 He searched the prisoners carefully but he found nothing except
a bomb which was in the righthand pocket of the driver's tunic.

 “Do you know,” he said to the driver, “I can have you shot as a
spy?”

 “You can?” said the driver in a dumbfounded fashion.

 “I can. You wear our uniform.”

 “It’s my own uniform.”

 “It’s the uniform of the Irish Army.”

 “And what am I?”

 “You’re a rebel prisoner.”

 The driver’s face began to change slowly. It grew pale beneath
the eyes, and the mouth began to twitch, this way and that, like the
mouth of a child beginning to cry. Then he began to talk in an
incoherent way. A torrent of blasphemy poured from his lips, but still
they retained their first look of weeping. His whole face was quite
grey, like smoke.

 The Commandant heard his men murmur indignantly among
themselves, but he could do nothing to stop the flood of obscenity. He
turned to another of the prisoners and questioned him till the
hysterical driver became silent. Then he said sternly, “Follow me,” and,
taking one side of the driver, he motioned a soldier to the other.

 As they walked down the road he heard a giggle behind them. Then
came the crash of a rifle and a short cry, a thud, and the soldier
walking in line with him rolled over and slid into the ditch at the
roadside. It took the Commandant some moments to realise what had
happened. The rifle of a soldier behind him had been fired, evidently
with the intention of terrifying the prisoner. He ran to the prone
figure in the dyke. First he opened the tunic collar and then the tunic,
looking for a wound. He heard a voice behind him murmur, “Say an Act of
Contrition,” and then go on: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and earth.” He knew that was the wrong prayer but he
could not correct it. The unconscious soldier opened his eyes and sat up
suddenly, swearing with violence. There was nothing wrong with him, only
a weakness, but still the ridiculous voice gabbled on,“— and the blessed
Apostles, Peter and Paul, Peter and Paul, Peter and Paul, Peter —.”

“Come, come!” he said. “No more of this fooling.”

He put his three prisoners into a room off the kitchen, a tiny room
that looked out upon the garden of the cottage they had occupied. He
asked them if they had had food and they said no, they had been
travelling since six that morning. Then he ordered the young woman of
the house to prepare food for them, and she did so, bringing them cold
meat and cabbage, and then some tea. He noticed that the young driver
did not touch the food, but stretched his hand out eagerly for the first
cup of tea. He took a mouthful and spat it out. A wry look came into his
face, and then changed to a look of bitter anger. He covered his face
with his hands, and the Commandant noticed that his hands were trembling
violently.

About three o’clock he ordered them into the waiting lorries. The
engines were running and the prisoners had taken their places when a
volley rang out from a nearby field. The Commandant saw a head appear
and disappear, and from the turn of the road he saw the sloping mask of
a strange armoured car tilting as it rounded the corner. He ordered his
men back and banged the door behind them. As he did so he heard the
machine guns on the car begin their irregular chitter-chatter.

Coolly, though for a moment he felt inclined to scream with fright,
he put the men into their places, leaving the prisoners where they had
been. Two of them lay flat down by the wall under the tiny window. He
looked round and took up a bag of meal which he put against the pane in
front of a pot of paint that was standing on the sill. The window was
low, and by kneeling on a second bag one could fire over the
protection. He put five men to hold the room and went upstairs.

Two men were firing through the attic window at the armoured car as
it raced up and down the road. It was a rudely-constructed but powerful
machine, an oblong box with ends that sloped in and up, and at each side
were little porches that projected about ten inches from the body. As he
watched it one of his soldiers toppled over from the window and lay
quite still. He could see no blood, but when he looked closer he noticed
that a slight hole had been burned in the pit of the nostril. A tiny
drop of blood gathered at its edge and slid across the cheek to the
ear. He knew then the man was dead. Outside on the road the deserted
cars were still humming.

He went back through the kitchen to the front room and mentioned the
death of the soldier to his lieutenant. One of the prisoners noticed him
and understood. “One of your fellows dead,” he shouted at the top of his
voice. A tall soldier who was sitting idle by the wall looked blankly
around, a Southerner, the Commandant knew him for, and deaf as a
post.

“What are ’oo saying?” he shouted. 

“One of your fellows dead. Dead, d’ye hear me? Dead.” 

“Dead? What did he die of?” 

A soldier who had been firing from the window handed his hot and
empty rifle to a comrade.

 
“When night comes we’re done,” he muttered. 

The great Southerner sat stiffly up and shouted again. 

“What’s up? Why are ye deceiving me? What’s the firing for, I
say?”

“Ye’ re surrounded,” yelled the prisoner in a frenzy. 

“Curse you, shut up!” said the soldier who was firing. But to the
Commandant his voice sounded quite aloof, even genial.

“Well,” said the Southerner, “will ye surrender so?” At that moment
there was a fierce volley of machine gun fire, and the young officer
threw his Commandant to the ground. “Cover!” he shouted. The men who
were sitting up now flung themselves flat. Looking round, the Commandant
saw what had happened. He had placed the bag of meal at an unsteady
angle before the window and a blast of firing had swept it away and,
with it, the pot of paint that had been reposing on the sill. A man’s
head appeared from the floor swathed in folds of thick red paint that
swung from his dripping forelock. The deaf man alone had not obeyed the
order to take cover. He was sitting up against a sidewall with a dazed
look in his eyes, and as the Commandant rose he looked at him and
shouted in a dismal voice:

“I surrender. I surrender.” 

Confused, but quite without the sensation of fear, the Commandant
went to the window and replaced the bag of meal. Then he looked about
him and said simply, “It’s all right.” Mechanically, as though suddenly
remembering the phrase, he added: “You can surrender when your
ammunition is exhausted.”

“Say it again,” said the deaf man. 

He repeated the phrase dully, and as he did so he noticed one of the
men looking at him with a sneer. It occurred to him then that he was
absolutely apart from these men and that they did not in the least mind
what he said, and he struggled with himself to discover what had
happened to him and to them which had changed their attitudes to one
another. It wasn’t that they were braver than he was, because he had
replaced the bag of meal under fire, which none of them offered to
do. It was something else that would bring him into contact with all
this, but for the life of him he did not know what it was. Things were
happening outside him, that was all.

He saw a man take some clips of ammunition from his sling and slip
them into his pocket. Another smiled and did the same. They did not
appear to mind his seeing them. The deaf man let his body slide gently
to the floor and fell asleep. The Commandant heard his heavy breathing
in the intervals of silence.

In the kitchen his lieutenant was standing by a window, firing from
the cover of the wall, and every now and again he would sing tunelessly
between set teeth:

 “You called me Baby Dear a year ago.” 

The Commandant walked about fearlessly, not troubling to crouch as
the others did when they crossed the floor. He did not know why they did
it; the windows were all barricaded. Then the lieutenant asked him about
the women of the house, and that, too, struck him as being silly. Still,
he opened the door of the bedroom and asked them were they all
right. They were crouching in a corner, an old, old man and two women,
and when a burst of firing came they turned their heads into the wall
and drew up their shoulders as he had seen his sisters do when there was
thunder. The elder woman was saying her rosary. He told them they were
quite safe, and smiled at them, and they thanked him, he did not know
for what. They asked him then what time was it, and when he told them it
was seven o’clock the young woman said with a shudder that it had been
on for four hours.

“As long as that?” he said.
 
 He suddenly thought of home, and felt a great longing to be
there and away from all this thing. It revolted him; it was drab and
stupid and unreal—unreal, that was the word. They had found this cottage
a pleasant, quiet place, and, whatever happened, they would leave it
still a pleasant, quiet place; home would always go on here as home had
been—whatever happened. He tried to rid his mind of the thought, but it
was horribly clear to him that nothing he could ever do would change the
course of things. Even let him not return, his sweetheart would be just
the same as she had always been, the same woman with no single shred of
difference because of anything in the world that might happen. The
thought clung to him, although he felt that it was pushing him farther
and farther from the understanding of this thing. He was thinking, and
he should not think. He tried to concentrate his mind on what was going
on around him but all he could hear was the cracking of the rifles
outside and their crashing sound within and his lieutenant’s tuneless
voice singing:
 
 “You called me Baby Dear a year ago.” All senseless
  things. 

“Do you know, Maurice, we’ll have to surrender.” 

It was his lieutenant’s voice again, and he said: 

“Yes, I suppose so,” and looked out over the other man’s shoulder. He
could see nothing, but he heard the machine gun fire concentrating
itself outside the window. “The cars are running still,” he said with a
smile. Then one of them stopped. “Fire getting very heavy,” he
added. Suddenly he heard a crash, the lieutenant’s head swung away, and
the whole window became very bright. He saw a blinding, bright, cold sky
and miles of grey fields stretching away from him. Then he felt as if
something had sprung up from the ground and hit him viciously into the
mouth so that his flesh and teeth were smashed together in the blow. He
heard a shout and somebody lifted his ringing head, only to let it down
again. Then it was all shouting, and he was being carried away
somewhere, and somebody was forcing something into his mouth. It was
liquor, but it grew salty in his mouth. He opened his eyes and spat it
out and saw a great clot of blood fall on his tunic.

“Drink it,” said a friendly voice; “you’re all right.” 

He heard himself talking, rapidly, incoherently, but the talk had no
relation to what was going on in his mind. Fascinated, he watched the
blood flow steadily down his tunic and smelt it as it fell, and the
horror he could not express made him unconscious of everything except
the steady drip-drip of blood from his mouth.

“Come,” said the voice, “it’s not bad. Your head is safe.”

But he could only wave his hands in a frenzy of hysteria, and
blaspheme, and say petulantly, like a child:

“Let me alone! Go away and let me alone!”

(1926)