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Updated: May 16, 2025
"I like good company," answered Dellarme cheerfully. "Compliment for you, grandfather!" said Stransky. "Put me down!" screamed grandfather. "Still there, eh? Thanks, grandpop!" said Stransky, turning on Dellarme. "Can't you run any faster than that, captain? Your place is with your men, sir. If you got wounded I'd have to carry you, too. Your company's gaining on you every minute. Hurry up!"
Again Dellarme looked toward regimental headquarters, his fixed, cheery smile not wholly masking the appeal in his eyes. The Grays had only two or three hundred yards to go when they should make their next charge in order to reach the crest. But his men had fifteen hundred to go in the valley before they were out of range.
"We're making them pay for seeing our garden, but, anyhow, we won't let them pick any flowers," Stransky remarked pungently. "If they get as far as the first terrace well, in case of a crisis, we have hand-grenades," Dellarme added in explanation. "But, God knows, I hope we shall not have to use them." After an interval, more figures made a rush across the road.
Then "thur-eesh thur-eesh" above every other sound in a long wail! No man ever forgets the first crack of a shrapnel at close quarters, the first bullet breath on his cheek, or the first supporting shell from his side in flight that passes above him. "That is ours!" called Dellarme. "Ours!" shouted the sergeant. "Ours!" sang the thought of every one of the men.
Our losses have been heavy enough, but nothing to theirs and how they are driving their men in! But where is Major Dellarme?" When he saw Dellarme's still body he dismounted and in a tide of feeling which, for the moment, submerged all thought of the machine, stood, head bowed and cap off, looking down at Dellarme's face. "I was very fond of him! He was at the school when I was teaching there.
It was the laugh of the red, of bastardy, of blanketless nights in the hedgerows, and boot soles worn through to the macadam, with the dust of speeding automobiles blown in the gaunt face of hunger. Dellarme still hesitated, recollecting Lanstron's remark. He pictured Stransky in a last stand in a redoubt, and every soldier was as precious to him as a piece of gold to a miser.
One man's rifle shot up as his spine was broken by a jagged piece of shrapnel jacket. Now there were too many shells to watch them individually. "It's all right all right, men!" Dellarme called again, assuming his cheery smile. "It takes a lot of shrapnel to kill anybody. Our batteries will soon answer!" His voice was unheard, yet its spirit was felt.
Stransky put it back on the man's head, and the example was followed in other cases. It was a good idea to keep up a show of a full line of caps to the enemy. Suddenly, as by command, the fire from the base of the knoll ceased altogether. Dellarme understood at once what this meant the next step in the course of a systematic, irresistible approach by superior numbers.
Thus the hours wore on, and the church clock struck nine and ten. "Never a movement down there!" called the sergeant from the crest to Dellarme. "Maybe this is just their final bluff before they come to terms about Bodlapoo" that stretch of African jungle that seemed very far away to them all. "Let us hope so!" said Dellarme seriously. "Hope there won't be any war!
The satire of war makes the valet's son a hero; the chance of war kills the manufacturer's son and lets the day-laborer's son live; the sport of war gives the latent forces of a Stransky full play; the mercy of war grants Grandfather Fragini a happy death; the glory of war brings Dellarme quick promotion; the glamour and the spectacular folly of war turn the bolts of the lightnings which man has mastered against man.
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