The Great Push: An Episode of the Great War. Patrick MacGill

said."

      "But Pat 'as just told me that the German said 'Mine Gut,'" Bill protested.

      "Well, 'Mein Gott' (the Germans pronounce 'Gott' like 'Gutt' on a dark night) is the same as 'My God,'" said Pryor.

      "Well, any'ow, that's just wot the Allymongs would say," Bill muttered. "It's just like them to call God Almighty nick names."

      When dawn showed pale yellow in a cold sky, and stars were fading in the west, we packed up and took our way out and marched back to Nouex-les-Mines, there to rest for a day or two.

CHAPTER II

       Out from Nouex-les-Mines

       Table of Contents

      Every soldier to his trade—

      Trigger sure and bayonet keen—

      But we go forth to use a spade

      Marching out from Nouex-les-Mines.

      As I was sitting in the Café Pierre le Blanc helping Bill Teake, my Cockney mate, to finish a bottle of vin rouge, a snub-nosed soldier with thin lips who sat at a table opposite leant towards me and asked:

      "Are you MacGill, the feller that writes?"

      "Yes," I answered.

      "Thought I twigged yer from the photo of yer phiz in the papers," said the man with the snub nose, as he turned to his mates who were illustrating a previous fight in lines of beer representing trenches on the table.

      "See!" he said to them, "I knew 'im the moment I clapped my eyes on 'im."

      "Hold your tongue," one of the men, a ginger-headed fellow, who had his trigger finger deep in beer, made answer. Then the dripping finger rose slowly and was placed carefully on the table.

      "This," said Carrots, "is Richebourg, this drop of beer is the German trench, and these are our lines. Our regiment crossed at this point and made for this one, but somehow or another we missed our objective. Just another drop of beer and I'll show you where we got to; it was—Blimey! where's that bloomin' beer? 'Oo the 'ell!—Oh! it's Gilhooley!"

      I had never seen Gilhooley before, but I had often heard talk of him. Gilhooley was an Irishman and fought in an English regiment; he was notorious for his mad escapades, his dare-devil pranks, and his wild fearlessness. Now he was opposite to me, drinking a mate's beer, big, broad-shouldered, ungainly Gilhooley.

      The first impression the sight of him gave me was one of almost irresistible strength; I felt that if he caught a man around the waist with his hand he could, if he wished it, squeeze him to death. He was clumsily built, but an air of placid confidence in his own strength gave his figure a certain grace of its own. His eyes glowed brightly under heavy brows, his jowl thrust forward aggressively seemed to challenge all upon whom he fixed his gaze. It looked as if vast passions hidden in the man were thirsting to break free and rout everything. Gilhooley was a dangerous man to cross. Report had it that he was a bomber, and a master in this branch of warfare. Stories were told about him how he went over to the German trenches near Vermelles at dusk every day for a fortnight, and on each visit flung half a dozen bombs into the enemy's midst. Then he sauntered back to his own lines and reported to an officer, saying, "By Jasus! I got them out of it!"

      Once, when a German sniper potting at our trenches in Vermelles picked off a few of our men, an exasperated English subaltern gripped a Webley revolver and clambered over the parapet.

      "I'm going to stop that damned sniper," said the young officer. "I'm going to earn the V.C. Who's coming along with me?"

      "I'm with you," said Gilhooley, scrambling lazily out into the open with a couple of pet bombs in his hand. "By Jasus! we'll get him out of it!"

      The two men went forward for about twenty yards, when the officer fell with a bullet through his head. Gilhooley turned round and called back, "Any other officer wantin' to earn the V.C.?"

      There was no reply: Gilhooley sauntered back, waited in the trench till dusk, when he went across to the sniper's abode with a bomb and "got him out of it."

      A calamity occurred a few days later. The irrepressible Irishman was fooling with a bomb in the trench when it fell and exploded. Two soldiers were wounded, and Gilhooley went off to the Hospital at X. with a metal reminder of his discrepancy wedged in the soft of his thigh. There he saw Colonel Z., or "Up-you-go-and-the-best-of-luck," as Colonel Z. is known to the rank and file of the B.E.F.

      The hospital at X. is a comfortable place, and the men are in no hurry to leave there for the trenches; but when Colonel Z. pronounces them fit they must hasten to the fighting line again.

      Four men accompanied Gilhooley when he was considered fit for further fight. The five appeared before the Colonel.

      "How do you feel?" the Colonel asked the first man.

      "Not well at all," was the answer. "I can't eat 'ardly nuffink."

      "That's the sort of man required up there," Colonel Z. answered. "So up you go and the best of luck."

      "How far can you see?" the Colonel asked the next man, who had complained that his eyesight was bad.

      "Only about fifty yards," was the answer.

      "Your regiment is in trenches barely twenty-five yards from those of the enemy," the Colonel told him. "So up you go, and the best of luck."

      "Off you go and find the man who wounded you," the third soldier was told; the fourth man confessed that he had never killed a German.

      "You had better double up," said the Colonel. "It's time you killed one."

      It came to Gilhooley's turn.

      "How many men have you killed?" he was asked.

      "In and out about fifty," was Gilhooley's answer.

      "Make it a hundred then," said the Colonel; "and up you go, and the best of luck."

      "By Jasus! I'll get fifty more out of it in no time," said Gilhooley, and on the following day he sauntered into the Café Pierre le Blanc in Nouex-les-Mines, drank another man's beer, and sat down on a chair at the table where four glasses filled to the brim stood sparkling in the lamplight.

      Gilhooley, penniless and thirsty, had an unrivalled capacity for storing beer in his person.

      "Back again, Gilhooley?" someone remarked in a diffident voice.

      "Back again!" said Gilhooley wearily, putting his hand in the pocket of his tunic and taking out a little round object about the size of a penny inkpot.

      "I hear there's going to be a big push shortly," he muttered. "This," he said, holding the bomb between trigger finger and thumb, "will go bang into the enemy's trenches next charge."

      A dozen horror-stricken eyes gazed at the bomb for a second, and the soldiers in the café remembered how Gilhooley once, in a moment of distraction, forgot that a fuse was lighted, then followed a hurried rush, and the café was almost deserted by the occupants. Gilhooley smiled wearily, replaced the bomb in his pocket, and set himself the task of draining the beer glasses.

      My momentary thrill of terror died away when the bomb disappeared, and, leaving Bill, I approached the Wild Man's table and sat down.

      "Gilhooley?" I said.

      "Eh, what is it?" he interjected.

      "Will you have a drink with me?" I hurried to inquire. "Something better than this beer for a change. Shall we try champagne?"

      "Yes, we'll try it," he said sarcastically, and a queer smile hovered about his eyes. Somehow I had a guilty sense of doing a mean action. … I called to Bill.

      "Come on, matey," I said.

      Bill approached the table and sat down. I called for a bottle of champagne.

      "This is Gilhooley, Bill,"