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Updated: May 3, 2025
But only in the scenes with the curate, when the narrator is stirred to passionate anger, and in his later passages with the sapper, do we catch any glimpses of the novelist intrigued with the intimate affairs of humanity. Even the narrator's brother, in his account of the escape with two women in a pony-carriage, has become infected with that sense of detachment.
So after dark, when the cannonade slackened, he put the receiver to his ears and listened to a Tyrolese ballad sung by an orderly, and to the admirable imitation of a barking dog performed by a sapper, and to a Parisian chanson delightfully rendered by the aviator. "Bonne nuit, maman," wrote the officer of artillery at the end of each letter from his windmill.
They were coming from Leicester Square, and he met them just as they turned up the Haymarket. Waiting until they had all gone by, he followed on in the rear of the party, which suddenly turned sharp to the left, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth. "No. 7," murmured the Sapper to himself. "I wonder if the officer is new?" He turned to a bombardier standing at the entrance to the passage.
"But never mind, my dear," he comments, "I had a good run for my money." Staff-Sergeant J.W. Butler, 1st Lincolns, was saved by a paper pad in his pocket book; the bullet embedded itself there. Sapper McKenny, Royal Engineers, records the unique experience of a comrade whose cap was shot off so neatly that the bullet left a groove in his hair just like a barber's parting!
Through the keyhole of the front door I could see a light coming from an inside room. I opened the door and walked down the passage, calling, "Is this the rd Field Artillery Brigade?" "No! This is the nd Field Company," replied a fair-moustached sapper captain, who was lying on a mattress in the room from which the light came, reading a book of O. Henry stories.
When inclined for exercise, he goes for a promenade across an open space labelled "Not to be used by troops by daylight." Therefore, despite his technical excellence and superb courage, he is an uncomfortable neighbour for establishments like Hush Hall. In this respect he offers a curious contrast to the Sapper. Off duty, the Sapper is the most unobtrusive of men a cave-man, in fact.
Then he suddenly sent a shell into the library by the Town Hall. The next fell just beyond the Town Hall itself. The third went right into the roof, burst on contact, flung its bullets and segments far and wide over the sick and wounded below. One poor fellow a sapper of the balloon section hearing it coming, sprang up in bed with terror.
He was at first supported in this by the officer in charge of the men billeted in the barn and sheds, but the Sapper explained the urgency of his need and cunningly clinched the argument by reminding the Infantry officer that probably he and his men would soon be installed in the trenches from which the mine ran, and that he the Sapper although he was not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his mine was only hurrying to forestall an enemy mine which was judged to be approaching the trench the Infantry officer would presently occupy.
There was a psychological moment as the crouching man came up into the trench with his rifle and bayonet, when his chin was in the perfect position: moreover, the sapper was a full back of merit. He kicked hard and true, and if any one doubts the effect of a service boot on the point of the jaw, no doubt he can experiment with the matter at a small cost.
He would have been killed by the Afghans had not a sapper and two men of the 13th rushed forward and rescued him. The enemy's horse, charging with much resolution, approached within 30 yards; but their leader was shot, and, exposed to a heavy fire in front and flank, they retired in confusion. Again Havelock's column advanced, and once more the Afghan horse charged it.
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