United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was little use at that stage trying to bring in the wounded. To do so only meant exposing them to almost a certainty of another wound and of further casualties amongst the stretcher-bearers. One or two men were killed. Lieutenant Riley, dragging himself along the line, found Rifleman McRory hard at work behind the shelter of a body rolled up on top of his parapet.
"I've just come from the dressing station," he said, "and there's a boy there, McRory, that has me fair bewildered with his ravings. He's wounded in the head with a shrapnel splinter, and, although he seems sane and sensible enough in other ways, he's been begging me and the doctor not to send him back to the hospital.
"It's killed he is," said McRory in answer to a question "killed to the bone. He won't be feeling any more bullets that hit him, and it's himself would be the one to have said to use him this way." Riley admitted the force of the argument and crept on.
And to beat all, McRory, when he was told he was going just the minute the ambulance came, had a confab with the stretcher bearers, and I heard him arguing with them about 'his share, and 'when they got the Gineral, and 'my bit o' the fifty thousand francs. It has me beat completely."
"I must tell that to the Brigadier, too," said the O.C.; "that finish to the joke will completely satisfy him." "And I must go," said the Padre, rising, "and tell McRory, though I'm not just sure whether it will be after satisfying him quite so completely." "Here we are," said the Colonel, halting his horse. "Fine view one gets from here."
"And what use might it be to make it any deeper?" grumbled McRory. "Sure it's deep enough for all we need it." "May be," said Sergeant Clancy, with bitter sarcasm, "it's yourself that'll just be stepping up to the Colonel and saying friendly like to him: 'Prickles, me lad, it's deep enough we've dug to lave us get out to our German Gineral.
"'Twill take some scheming," agreed another rifleman, "but maybe we can get round the officer that's in the listening-post to-night to let us drive a sap out." "It's not him ye'll be getting round," said McRory, "for it's the Little Lad himself that's in it.
Light after light commenced to toss in an unbroken stream from their parapet in the direction of the working party, and a score of bullets, obviously aimed at them, hissed close overhead. "Glory be!" said Rifleman McRory, flattening himself to the ground. "It's a good foot and a half I have of head-cover, and I'm thinking it's soon we will be needing it, and all the rest we can get."
Of their leaders the most distinguished were McNeil Cam, or the Crooked, and McRory, in the service of O'Conor, and McDonnell, McSorley, and McSweeney, in the service of O'Neil, O'Donnell, and O'Conor Sligo. The leaders of these warlike bands are called the Constables of Tyr-Owen, of North Connaught, or of Connaught, and are distinguished in all the warlike encounters in the north and west.
"Prickles," be it noted, being the fitting, if somewhat disrespectful, name which the O.C. carried in the Rifles. "It's yourself has the tongue on ye," admitted Rifleman McRory admiringly, "though I'm wonnering how'll you be schamin' to get another trench dug from the listening-post out to the Gineral."
Word Of The Day