SubscribeAs I stepped down from my somewhat exposed position a soldier standing a few feet farther along the line raised his head above the parapet, as though to relieve his cramped muscles. Just then a star-shell burst above us, turning the trench into day.Great stuff.
Ping!!! There was a ringing metallic sound, as when a 22-caliber bullet strikes the target in a shooting-gallery, and the big soldier who had incautiously exposed himself crumpled up in the bottom of the trench with a bullet through his helmet and through his brain. The young officer in command of the listening-post cursed softly. "I'm forever warning the men not to expose themselves," he said irritatedly, "but they forget it the next minute. They're nothing but stupid children." He spoke in much the same tone of annoyance he might have used if the man had been a clumsy servant who had broken a valuable dish. Then he went into the tiny dugout where the telephone was, and rang up the trench commander, and asked him to send out a bearer, for the boyau communicating with the listening-post was too narrow to admit the passage of a stretcher. The bearer arrived just as we started to return. He was a regular dray-horse of a man, with shoulders as massive and competent as those of a Constantinople hamel. Strapped to his back by a sort of harness was a contrivance which looked like a rude armchair with the legs cut off. His comrades hoisted the dead man onto the back of the live man, and with a rope took a few turns about the bodies of both. As we made our slow way back to the fire-trench, and so to the rear, there stumbled at our heels the grunting porter with his ghastly burden. Now and then I would glance over my shoulder and, in the fleeting glare of the star-shells, would glimpse, above the porter's straining shoulders, the head of the dead soldier lolling inertly from side to side, as though very, very tired . . . .
And I wondered if in some lonely cabin by the Volga a woman was praying for her boy.
Bluff had served us so well up to this point that we were over-confident, and disaster followed. We knew it was too early for any inhabitants to be about, but we had only gone a few yards when to our horror we stumbled on a sentry. We passed him with a greeting in Turkish, but he followed and said his sergeant wished to speak to us. We turned back, only to be confronted by an armed guard of ten men.Great post, mwhybark, though you might want to add a "history" tag to it.
We told the sergeant the usual story, and showed him our passport. We added that we wished to hire a boat to take us to another Turkish port, and we asked him to negotiate a passage in the boat we had seen. The sergeant suggested that we should go with him by water to a town a few miles westward, to see his officer. We said we couldn't spare the time, but he would take no refusal and compelled us to embark with part of the guard. During the passage we saw several boats that seemed to be unwatched, and we cursed the fate that had made us turn to the right instead of the left when we reached the beach that morning. We had little doubt that we could have secured a boat and got away in it at night, if we had not run into the guard.
On arrival at our destination we stayed in the boat while Sweet, who acted the part of the German officer named in the passport, went to interview the gendarme officer. He actually convinced him that we were Germans, and the officer was conducting him back to the boat when, as luck would have it, they met a naval officer, who probably knew a German when he saw one and insisted that Sweet should visit the Governor of the town. The Governor sent for the rest of us, and said that as we were Germans we would probably like to speak to a German officer on the telephone. He gave the receiver to Tipton, who, poor man, knew no German but Sprechen sie deutsch? This he gallantly shouted half-a-dozen times into the mouthpiece. Then he put the receiver back in disgust, saying the line was out of order. But the Governor was only amusing himself; he had a description of us, and the game was up. He was politeness itself, and there was nothing for us to do but to try and look pleasant too.
« Older The Secret History of Hacking [google video from a... | So Much Fire To Roast Human Fl... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:04 PM on September 1, 2006