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"I heard the yell plainly," replied the sentry. The news seemed to give some satisfaction. At any rate, the Germans stopped their trench shells. The quiet hush of late afternoon was at hand. Soon the cook came down the trench with kettles of hot soup. Five months have passed since I last saw the inhabitants of this abri, the tenants of the "Ritz-Marmite." How many are still alive?
"Tu tawnie vassavie lubbeny, Tu chal from miry tan abri; Had a Romany chal kair'd tute cambri, Then I had penn'd ke tute chie, But tu shan a vassavie lubbeny With gorgikie rat to be cambri." "There's some kernel in those songs, brother," said Mr. Petulengro, when the songs and music were over. "Yes," said I; "they are certainly very remarkable songs.
Abri was a brand new word to me, but it seemed to be some place to go and that was enough for me. The ambulance boy took me by the arm and led me on a trot to a dugout covered with railroad iron, and logs and sand bags, and we went in there and found it full of French officers. They have some sense.
That night I happened to be watching the raid myself from a convenient street-corner. Unconsciously I stood up against a street-lamp with a shade over me, made of tin about the size of a soldier's steel helmet. Along came a French street-walker, looked at me standing there under that tiny canopy, and with a laugh said as she swiftly passed me, "C'est un abri, monsieur?" looking up.
Most of it was anonymous. I have kept it all, however, and I quote the following poem, which is rather nice: Passant, te voila sans abri: La flamme a ravage ton gite. Hier plus leger qu'un colibri; Ton esprit aujourd'hui s'agite, S'exhalant en gemissements Sur tout ce que le feu devore. Tu pleures tes beaux diamants?... Non, tes grands yeux les ont encore!
In 1885 he was transferred to Cairo, and accompanied the Cameron Highlanders on the march to Abri, thence on the return journey to Wady Halfa. All the way through, the men were loud in his praises. He spared himself no toil, cheerfully shared the men's privations and dangers, and became to them almost more than a friend.
Such names as Bugeaud, Poniatowski, Bataille, and the like, were so many pieces of gibberish which it was hardly possible for a self-respecting English soldier to pronounce, while Boyau, Abri, Feuillée and Puisard were not helpful forms of identification.
In the middle of the rock wall by the corridor a semicircular funnel had been carved out to serve as a fireplace, and at its base a flameless fire of beautiful, crumbling red brands was glowing. This hearth cut in the living rock was very wonderful and beautiful. Suddenly a trench shell landed right on the roof of the abri, shaking little fragments of stone down into the fire on the hearth.
The abri would not turn a direct explosion of a shell; but it would shield one against a glancing blow and against the shrapnel which sprays itself out from the point where the shell hits like a molten iron fountain. After the ninth bomb had come over we left the abri. The Germans had been allowancing Recicourt to nine a day. But that day they gave us three more prunes for dessert.
He said that the head nurse summoned all her nurses, marched them to the abri at the rear of the hospital, and stood at the door of the abri, while the girls filed in, and just as the last nurse was going into the dugout with the head nurse standing outside, the airmen dropped a bomb upon her and erased her! None of the nurses inside was hurt. Two doctors were killed and a number of patients.
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