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The lorry was waiting, so was the Canal, so was Number 5 Infantry Track. I was disappointed to see it was an unmistakably quiet night. If we found the tank again … what? We could beat it with shovels so the enemy would open fire. “We got there sir, but the enemy fire was so heavy they beat us off it every time …” But in fact I was too green to think of it. Later one became more of a veteran liar.
This time our journey was easier. We had only revolvers, the heavy service Colts, and little ammunition instead of those Lewis guns which seemed both flimsy and made of lead. At one point the ground became dark and lumpy; there were men resting or sleeping – a relief party.
A lump detached itself and came up to me. “Who are you?” it said. I told him. “And you?” “Number 17XY battery-gunners.” “What's it like forward – do you know?” He told me it was very quiet. Of course I could see that for myself. In any case we were on one of the well-worn infantry tracks so clearly marked by the duck boards that the enemy gunners had registered it weeks ago. If it were not ‘very quiet’ the track would be spouting with high explosive and the air above whining.
The clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight revealed us momentarily to each other. “Good God! It's you Bion isn't it?” “Bonsey! E. K. Bonsey!” I remembered him at school, a couple of years older than I, studious, wearing spectacles; I neither liked nor disliked him.
Now, sixty years later, that momentary moonlight contact is etched on my mind. We walked a few yards. In the quiet a groan came from the mud in the distance, followed by a cry further off. I was listening – but not to Bonsey. How queer! Like marsh birds, innumerable bitterns mating. Or perhaps, a more comfortable vision, the moonlit
plain near Avignon bathed in light, alive with the cheerful songs of nightingales spreading a web of sound.
“What's that?” I said – as if I didn't know!
“I was just telling you”, he said, exasperated. “Don't go off this track. You may get wounded