by John Masters
The wind was in the east and the smoke from Roulers, the big town down there, was being blown up toward him. With the smoke of the home fires came the sound of church bells, clanging and jangling against the pale sky, but muted and softened by distance. The ground was iron hard under his elbow, and under the corpse on whose body his rifle stock was propped. He wished he could be spending Christmas with Betty, but quickly dismissed the thought from his mind. Snipers couldn’t afford to daydream.
From behind he heard the men of his battalion singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’ Old Rowley must be going round, dishing out strawberry jam. None of the other officers had been in the battalion long enough for the men to sing that for them.
In the middle distance a movement caught his eye, and with an infinitesimal bend of his head he lowered his eye to the telescopic sight. There it was – a German lighting a cigar in the door of a dugout in their third line … a little over 400 yards … 440. Carefully he set the range. Behind him the men of the Wealds were chanting lugubriously:
See him in the grand theayter
Eating apples in the pit;
While that poor girl what he ruined
Wanders round through mud and shit.
It’s the same the whole world over
It’s the poor what gets the blyme,
While the rich gets all the pleasure –
Ain’t it all a bleeding shy me!
There was a gap in the wall of the trench over there. The Jerries didn’t realize that they were in full view down to just below the knees, as they stood in the entrance to that dugout.
The German’s third tunic button rested on the cross hairs of the sight.
Now she’s living in a cottage
But she very rarely smiles;
For her only occupation’s
Crushing ice for father’s piles.
She was poor but she was honest…
He was a long-faced fellow who hadn’t shaved this morning, wearing the silly little round cap with the red button in front, sort of a fatigue cap, like our cunt caps … he was just standing there, taking the air, not thinking of the war at all. Or of death. Was there poetry in death? There was poetry to be written about death, sure, but was there any in the thing itself? For a moment Fletcher thought of all his dead comrades, then of Betty Merritt, his love. The fellow would learn the truth about death one day, as he himself would. But not today.
Gently he lowered the sights until he had the German’s right knee squarely in them. Then he squeezed the trigger. The rifle jerked in his shoulder, the German fell back into the dugout, disappearing suddenly as the gas blanket swung back into place behind him. Fletcher knew he had shot true.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, but silently, making no sound, ‘and a Happy New Year.’
Family Trees
A Note on the Author
John Masters was born in Calcutta in 1914. He was educated in England but in 1934 he returned to India and joined the Fourth Prince of Wales’ Own Gurkha Rifles, then served on the North-West Frontier. He saw active service in Waziristan in 1937 and, after the outbreak of war, in Iraq, Syria and Persia. In 1944 he joined General Wingate’s Chindits in Burma. He fought at the Singu Bridgehead, the capture of Mandalay, at Toungoo and on the Mawchi Road. John Masters retired from the Army in 1948 as Lieutenant-Colonel with the DSO and an OBE. Shortly afterwards he settled in the USA where he turned to writing and soon had articles and short stories published in many well-known American magazines. He also wrote several novels and was especially praised for his trilogy of the Great War: Now, God be Thanked, Heart of War and By the Green of the Spring. He died in 1983 in New Mexico.
Discover books by John Masters published by Bloomsbury Reader at
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Now, God be Thanked
Heart of War
By the Green of the Spring
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This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 1980 by Michael Joseph Ltd
Copyright © 1980 John Masters
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eISBN: 9781448214785
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