THE REHABILITATION OF PRIVATE HAGAN.

BY ‘MAJOR, R.A.M.C.’

Private Timothy Hagan, of ‘D’ Company, extracted a box of matches from his pocket, mechanically lighted a seasoned briar pipe, and sought inspiration from the log roof of the dugout.

The last of the enemy’s usual evening salvo of shells screamed above the tree-tops and burst harmlessly in a stubble field. Hagan did not move. The announcement that the evening meal was ready equally failed to interest him.

The dugout, efficiently constructed of sand-bags, logs, and earth, was just large enough for the accommodation of two improvised beds and blankets. Private Sawyer, the normal occupant of the other half, was at the moment busy in the kitchen outside beneath the trees. It was seclusion that Hagan courted, not protection.

Presently, Sawyer, his face smoke-begrimed and heated, thrust his head over a sand-bag parapet.

‘Tea ready, cooky,’ he cried.

‘Phwat’s the good ov thay?’ grunted Hagan, dropping his pipe listlessly. ‘Fed up!’

Sawyer’s eyes dilated in speechless surprise. His rapid scrutiny of his pal’s downcast features failed to help.

‘’Ullo, what’s wrong, hey?’ he asked, wiping his face with the back of his hand and dropping into the trench. ‘Can’t yer high-class stomach relish bully-beef no more? What’s wrong with it?’

Without answering in words Timothy slipped his hand into the breast pocket of his tunic, produced a much-thumbed envelope, and slowly unfolded a letter. The sight of the irregular writing seemed to have an immediate tonic effect upon his demeanour. His eyes suddenly became suffused with red-blood anger. (He had learned the habit in more than one barbed-wire scrimmage against the enemy.) Clenching his fists, he cursed beneath his breath, thoughtfully, with intent.

‘H’m!’ grunted Sawyer sympathetically.

‘There’s a blighter at home,’ stammered Hagan, ‘phwat is afeared to do his bit out here’—he hesitated as if to swallow pent-up gorge—‘of the name of O’Shea—a damned thaivin’ grocer. The letter says as how he’s afther walking out wid Kitty Murphy, as is promised to mesilf.’

‘Ugh, a woman is it?’ breathed Sawyer.

‘And me not able to get me hands on him,’ groaned Hagan. ‘’Tis perishin’ hard.’

The sharp explosions of anti-aircraft shells in rapid succession overhead caused Sawyer to glance upwards. Shading his eyes with his hand, he shook his head in disappointment at the marksmanship displayed, and slipped back again into a sitting posture.

‘What abhart leave ’ome?’ he inquired. ‘The captain says as ’ow each of us is to ’ave a turn—in doo course.’

‘Bah!’ ejaculated Hagan contemptuously. ‘We all knows phwat in doo course mains.’ Meditatively refolding his letter, he consigned it again to its inner pocket. ‘There ain’t no proper foighting now naither—nothin’ but scrappin’ phwat doesn’t even kape the blood wharm in yez veins.’ Striking a match on the heel of his boot, he stared into space and forgot to use it. ‘I be afther thinkin’, Jock, it is now that I could be sphared, or not at all.’

‘Wot’s wimmin to you now, anyway? ’Tis different with the married blokes,’ murmured Sawyer. ‘Won’t we both be killed in doo course?’

‘We will that,’ agreed Hagan. ‘But, all the same, I could not lie happy loike widout I be afther settlin’ first wid the grocer.’

For some seconds Sawyer did not speak. In the cool calm of the autumn evening there arose before him the memory of a dozen little wayside cemeteries marked by stereotyped plain wooden crosses—the British soldier’s humble badge of honour won. With a whimsical smile upon his lips he wondered vaguely where his own resting-place would lie.

‘Ye see, Jock,’ persisted Hagan, ‘’tisn’t as if I was much wanted here just now.’

Sawyer, turning suddenly, stared hard at his friend’s bronzed countenance, noted the stern-set jaw, and ceased sucking his pipe. He had learned to read Tim Hagan’s moods with the accuracy of much practice in the course of many devious wanderings.

‘Humph! Wot’s the bloomin’ plan of campaign?’ he demanded. ‘Sneakin’ be’ind mud’eaps, or fightin’ in the open?’

Hagan mechanically refilled his pipe and rammed down the tobacco with mature deliberation. An indefinite hum of voices near the company cooking-pots and the sharp bark of a French 75-gun in the near distance accentuated the seclusion of the dugout. A dull crimson glow of sunset irradiated a cloudless skyline. To the rear of the wood the lowing of a cow sounded strangely out of place. On the left, cutting the winding line of trenches, lay the long, straight, deserted, pavé road leading to the German lines. The scene, through many days of comparative stagnation, had grown contemptuously familiar.

‘I’m sick,’ said Hagan, ‘to-morrow morning as iver is.’

Sawyer, gurgling in a characteristic manner meant to denote mirth, shook his head.

‘Sick is it?’ he commented. ‘Wot’s the complaint, matey? Some ’as fits; others injures their trigger fingers; some ’as lost their glasses and carn’t see nothink; some breaks their false teeth and gets shockin’ pains from the hard biscuits; some ’as pains in the kidneys; some ’as a narsty corph. ’Tain’t the season for corphs.’ Rubbing his nose with the back of a begrimed finger, he relapsed into thought. ‘Some ’as a buzzin’ in the ’ead wot nothink can cure. Some’—looking serious, he suddenly ended in a grunt—‘’Tain’t good enough, Tim, me lad, even for the pleasure of punchin’ the ’ead of a stinkin’ grocer. You see, if you only get a few days in ’orspital, back you come again. If you’re took serious, ’ome you goes and stays there for a long time and misses everythink ’ere.’ Gripping Hagan’s arm with highly strung fingers, he leaned nearer. ‘You ain’t goin’ to schrimshank at ’ome if a big push comes, old pal, are you?’

Hagan’s jaw clenched and his lips moved speechlessly. Then once more he drew the letter from his pocket and handed it to his friend.

‘Read that!’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ home.’

Sawyer’s face assumed a sphinx-like gravity. He knew the proverbial strength of obstinacy, also the amount of that commodity possessed by Tim Hagan. He smoothed out the paper and sniffed violently. A faint perfume of cheap scent permeated the immediate atmosphere. With a grunt, he proceeded to master the contents of the epistle. So slowly did he progress, however, that presently even Hagan began to show signs of impatience. Sawyer was, in truth, merely gaining time for thought.

‘If you’re caught out malingerin’ on active service, Tim,’ he whispered at length, ‘it won’t be only seven days “confined to barracks” you will be gettin’ off with.’

With eyes bent upon the crimson skyline, Hagan sighed wearily.

‘’Tis goin’ home I be, Jock,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be afther marryin’ Kitty Murphy, and thin me sickness will all go and back it is I’ll come.’

With a groan of despair Sawyer crawled to his feet and, without another word, walked off in the direction of a ruined château. He knew there was no immediate urgency. For ordinary cases of illness the ambulance wagon would not arrive until the morning. He, therefore, still had all night in which to formulate a plan of operations. It was, of course, open to him to drop a hint to the R.A.M.C. orderly, but that would have to be a dernier ressort indeed.

Left to himself, Hagan brooded more sombrely than before. The regulations regarding reporting sick were perfectly familiar to him. For a serious case the medical officer could be summoned within a few minutes. The Field Ambulance advanced dressing-station, located in a school-house in the nearest village, was not more than a mile away. Weighing the matter in all its visible points, he suddenly decided that the rôle of an emergency case would better fit his purpose than that of the ordinary sick soldier reporting at the sealed-pattern hour.

To determine was to act. Smearing the perspiration of undue thought from his forehead, he buttoned his tunic, looked hastily about the interstices of the sand-bags of the dugout for small valued possessions, and slipped out beneath the shelter of the trees.

The area lying between the wood and the village where the Field Ambulance had located its post was alive with troops. The pavé of the road, upheaved by continuous traffic and an occasional shell, was not a healthy place for evening exercise, but there was no order against it. The danger of being shot during the journey had long become a negligible quantity. A church tower, shell-riddled and tottering, was the landmark. Behind it Hagan knew he should find the red-cross flag hanging limply from its pole.

Women, with a horse and cart gathering the wheat in a field on his left, glanced up with pleasant smile of greeting as he passed. The orderlies filling a regimental water-cart at the village pump took no notice of him whatever. Presently, reaching the shadows of the church, he began to walk slower, then halted. He felt as if he needed a moment in which to pull himself together. So far in his life his histrionic sense had never been tested. It is notorious that even experienced actors occasionally suffer from stage fright.

A couple of R.A.M.C. orderlies, leaning against the door-post beneath the red-cross flag, presently noticed a soldier staggering towards them and blindly clutching at the empty air. In normal times their unanimous diagnosis woud have been ‘beer.’ They knew, however, that in the firing line such could not be.

Hagan, squinting between half-closed eyelashes, staggered another ten yards, embraced one of the orderlies round the neck, slid limply to the ground, and, breathing heavily, lay quite still.

In a moment a stretcher was at hand; within a minute the patient was inside the building. There were only half a dozen other men to share it with him, as the evening evacuation of sick and wounded to the Clearing Hospital had already taken place.

‘What’s wrong, matey?’ questioned one of the orderlies, holding a pannikin of soup to the patient’s lips. ‘Here, drink this. Wake up! Can you hear me?’

With a shudder Hagan opened his eyes, and, half-rising to his feet, glared about him. Rolls of wool and bandages, trays of surgical instruments, splints, buckets, and basins surrounded him upon all sides.

‘Ah—the hospital!’ he muttered. ‘I remimber now. It is afther faintin’ I be.’

‘H’m—lie down!’ advised the orderly, pushing him back on the stretcher. ‘I will call the medical officer. Perhaps he’ll give you a tot of brandy.’

‘Begob, and I’m all roight, me bhoy,’ asserted Hagan, with well-assumed eagerness to depart. ‘Give me only foive—or maybe tin—minutes’ rest and a sip av whater.’

The orderly gave the water, but, none the less, called his officer. Meanwhile Hagan, with shut eyes, summoned to his aid all medical knowledge, real and spurious, that had ever crossed his path of life. The rôle he had assigned to himself was extremely difficult. Whatever else might be imaginary, the beads of perspiration bedewing his forehead were certainly genuine enough. In order to fool a man successfully one requires to know something of his mental attitude towards the subject in hand. What a medico’s mind might contain, or what pitfalls it was necessary to beware of in dealing with him, were points that suddenly assailed the wretched Tim with terrifying force. In fact, had the R.A.M.C. officer not arrived within a few moments, it is probable that fear of superior wisdom would have driven the schemer forth from the building.

‘Well, my man, what is the matter?’ asked the officer, feeling his patient’s pulse. ‘Fainted, hey?’

‘Yes, sir,’ asserted the orderly. ‘Fell into my arms.’

Hagan, opening his eyes slowly, shook his head from side to side, noisily blew out his cheeks, and ‘marked time.’ Adjusting a stethoscope, the officer examined his chest, grunted, and ordered his temperature to be taken. That the result would be negative Hagan knew only too well. Consequently, it seemed obvious that it behoved him to make the next move.

‘Terrible buzzin’ in me head, sor,’ he breathed.

‘Ah—quite so. Rest and light diet. Overstrain. Perhaps you will be all right again by morning.’

Emboldened by an initiatory success, Hagan ventured upon driving the nail still deeper.

‘Lost all feelin’s in me legs, sor,’ he added, with a groan. ‘It—er—has been comin’ on, sor, for a week; but it wasn’t loikin’ to go sick I was.’

The medico, with newly awakened interest, bent his eyes upon the man’s face and silently observed the movements of his rolling head and eyes. Hagan, gradually ceasing his gyrations, at length opened his eyes and met the doctor’s absorbed gaze. It was at that moment—had he but known it—that he sorely needed all the knowledge available regarding his interrogator. The latter was by nature a silent man, but that did not interfere with his power of absorbing details and piecing them together with uncanny accuracy.

‘A pin, sir?’ suggested the orderly.

‘What for?’ asked the officer blandly.

‘Thought, perhaps, you wanted to test his feelings, sir,’ explained the zealot.

‘No—er—that is, not to-night,’ answered the officer, suppressing a half-smile beneath his moustache. ‘We will see what a night’s rest can do.’

As he watched the tall figure of the doctor sauntering out of the room, Hagan experienced a sensation of acute alarm. In the presence of the calm assurance of this man of few words he felt that he had slipped up somewhere. But where? Loss of all feeling in the legs was surely a good effort! Glancing at the orderly, he noticed the man smiling in a peculiar manner as his officer disappeared from sight. An orderly’s knowledge has its limitations, even if a doctor’s has not. The more thought he gave to it the more suspicious did he feel, and a guilty conscience did not assist matters.

Soup and biscuits were served out for supper. Tim Hagan could have absorbed both with relish. He felt, however, that such diet might not be good for buzzing in the head—and said so. The night orderly, indifferent to arguments, deposited the food on a box by his side and departed. The fact, however, that all the articles of diet had disappeared by morning was by no means lost upon the day orderly when he returned to duty at the hour of breakfast.

During the silent watches of the night Hagan had time to think of many things. He decided that he did not like the look of the medical officer, nor, indeed, did he know what to make of the orderly. Could he have fought them hand to hand, he would have known exactly where he was. In this subtle, silent contest of brains he was beginning to writhe against an invisible foe which seemed to be closing in upon him more surely with every tick of his watch. A change of diagnosis seemed advisable. But, with his scanty repertoire of diseases, the point was none too easy. In fact, when the officer unexpectedly stood by his side, he was still so undecided, that closed eyes and immobility seemed the path of least resistance.

‘Well, Private Hagan, how are you this morning?’ inquired the officer, shaking him by the shoulder.

What the answer to the question was Timothy did not know. He conceded a point, however, by opening his eyes.

The question being repeated with emphasis, an inspiration gripped him. In a flash his line of country seemed to open out before him. The dizziness in the head had led to complications.

‘Carn’t hear,’ he blurted.

‘Ah!’ commented the persecutor, raising his eyebrows. ‘Deaf, are you? That’s bad.’ Perceptibly dropping his voice, he studied his victim’s face. ‘H’m—I wonder what degree of deafness. Which is the worst ear?’

With praiseworthy presence of mind, Hagan resisted the impulse to answer. Staring blankly at the ceiling, he made no sign.

Stepping a pace nearer, the officer spoke louder. Hagan still made no voluntary response, but the perspiration upon his face attested to the physical effort.

From the psychological standpoint the doctor was intensely amused. That Private Timothy Hagan was a clumsy malingerer, pure and simple, he had no doubt. To prove such a negative condition however is quite another matter. If proved, the offence meant a court-martial. As an officer it was his duty to conceal no crime which could be proved. He was interested, but had little time just then for fancy cases. Hagan’s facial expression of struggling conjecture condemned him, morally, beyond a doubt, but the production of the self-same expression before the members of a court-martial could hardly be guaranteed.

It was a six-inch German shell that solved the situation for the moment. Dropping three hundred yards from the dressing-station in the middle of the village street it exploded with a roar which smashed every pane of glass in the building. A second quickly followed. The R.A.M.C. staff, expectant of they knew not what, stood listening. Hagan, feeling the eyes of the medical officer upon him, did not move a muscle.

‘One to you,’ murmured the officer to himself. ‘I don’t believe a word of it all the same.’ Turning on his heel, he winked to the orderly and with well-assumed indifference strode to the far end of the room.

The orderly, quickly stepping round to the head of Hagan’s stretcher, needed no further instructions. With book and pencil in hand, he appeared to be engaged upon his ordinary duty of taking names for the Clearing Hospital.

‘What’s your number, matey?’ he asked quickly.

The wretched competitor, breathing heavily after his recent mental tension, had dropped his guard.

‘4179,’ he answered promptly.

‘Thank you!’ remarked a bland voice from the doorway.

To state that Hagan could have kicked himself for his stupidity, is to put the case mildly. Conscious that no words of his could possibly regain lost ground, he stared blankly at the accusing face of the officer.

‘It’s all UP, matey,’ whispered the orderly, indulging in an open guffaw.

‘Thin I may as well be afther gettin’ on me bhoots,’ remarked the culprit quietly, rising to his feet. ‘You’ve bin done down, Tim, me bhoy, and there ain’t no manner av use in kickin’.’

What happened next in that little school-house, as regards points of detail, has never been actually recorded. That a deafening explosion resembling the noise of the end of all things earthly, accompanied by the caving in of the brickwork of the side of the room, and followed by the collapse of most of the roof, took place at that moment are facts of history.

‘It has come at last,’ groaned the doctor. ‘Thank God, there are only a few men in the building.’

A second later, a tottering rafter, swaying beneath its weight of tiles, fell with a sickening crash and buried him beneath its ruins.

In an instant all had become chaos.

Whatever the damage done, it was probably at an end. Hagan appreciated that much immediately. That he himself remained unhurt was a miracle. The orderly, holding both hands to his head, lay like a log on the floor. Several stretchers, with their occupants, lay buried beneath the débris of brick and plaster.

‘A fifteen-inch, begob!’ exclaimed Hagan, seizing the orderly by the shoulders and dragging him into the open air.

The atmosphere outside was still reeking with heavy black smoke and dust. A cavern in the road, large enough to conceal a motor-bus, yawned in his path. The heat of action was upon him. Handing over the orderly to other hands, he did not hesitate. There were wounded men to be rescued. At any moment a second shell might follow the first, or more walls might fall. A feeble, muffled call for help, emanating from the very centre of the wreckage, arrested his attention. He knew that bland, cool voice only too well. The available orderlies were already struggling to remove the wounded and unearth their officer.

Hagan dashed forward. He was a strong man, and in the best of condition. Without argument, he took command.

To remove the smaller masses of mortared brick was the work of but a few moments. The men worked at fever heat. The cries from beneath grew feebler, almost ceased. It was the weight of long rafters which formed the main obstruction. Without axes or saws, its removal might be a matter of hours.

Wiping the sweat from his face, Hagan set his teeth and urged on his party to final effort. But their combined strength was without avail to clear the rafters. The victim beneath seemed nearing suffocation with every breath he drew.

Hagan could see only one way, and he took it.

Throwing himself on his face, he insinuated his head beneath the rafters, and by herculean efforts forced his shoulders to follow. Tearing away the loose stuff with his hands, whilst the orderlies endeavoured to ease the weight above him, he at length was able to gauge the situation accurately. A great beam lay across the chest of the officer, whose body supported it.

Tim Hagan sweated in an agony as he looked. He had seen hundreds of men killed in action, but to see his late persecutor being slowly crushed to death before his eyes was more than he could bear.

From outside the cries of men with axes reached him. Immediate action, however, was what was wanted. An instant’s thought, a whispered, guttural prayer, and he proceeded with his task.

Rolling with difficulty upon his back, he wriggled himself, inch by inch, close up beside his now silent antagonist, and with all the strength in his body pressed upwards until he managed to relieve the pressure on the other’s chest. Inch by inch he shoved the unconscious man aside and replaced the latter’s body by his own. Then, with ears at acutest tension, he listened to the crash of the axes and wondered how long he could last—how long it would take him to die.

Two weeks later, Private Timothy Hagan, propped up in bed, lay in a hospital at the base. Presently an R.A.M.C. officer, obviously also more or less convalescent, entered the ward by means of a wheeled chair and looked about him. Hagan, catching the visitor’s eye, flushed deeply, laboriously drew a long breath, and turned away his head. The next minute, the officer, having given an order to the orderly pushing his chair, was at Hagan’s side. A word to the orderly, and the two wounded men were alone.

‘I have come, Hagan, to thank you for my life,’ said the officer.

Hagan nervously rubbed his forehead with his hand, moved his lips as if framing unspoken words, and drew a deep inspiration.

‘’Twasn’t cowardice, sor,’ he breathed at last. ‘’Twas nought but a litle gurl at home phwat drew me.’

‘Cowardice! You! You’re one of the pluckiest men I have ever seen. What do you mean?’

‘I main, sor, whin I was schrimshankin’.’

‘Sh—sh, my man! That little matter is all forgotten.’

‘Yez did have me beat, sor,’ persisted Hagan, with a flash of humour in his eyes. ‘’Twas too cliver for me you was, sor. ’Twas the orderly hit me below the belt. He took me unbeknownst, sor.’

With a light laugh, the medical officer placed his hand upon the brawny fist of the man beside him.

‘You will get home to see your girl after all, Hagan—in your own way—and I am glad,’ he said.

‘Is it to be quits then, sor?’

‘Yes—we will call it that,’ agreed the officer. ‘For the time being, we are quits. Later, I will repay you what is over—if I ever can.’