THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN THINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 58

THE MAN WHO HAD SEEN THINGS.

(By Patrick Mac Gill, author of "The Great Push," etc.)

It was a rooky, a green-hand, newly out, who asked the question, and it was Gahey, D.C.M., a red-haired Irish soldier, who answered it—in fact, no one else could answer it so fully or make a reply so telling and effective. But to think that a man looking Gahey in the face should ask such a question was in itself surprising. It was more than surprising—it was astounding. The simplicity of a rooky of nineteen is, no doubt, one of the outstanding phenomena of the war. But to get to the story. The draft came to Gahey's battalion, and it consisted of fifty men, and twenty of the fifty were green to the grind of the trenches. Ten of the twenty came to Gahey's platoon, and it was one of the ten, a young fellow whose ,chin had never known shaving soap, who asked the question. The men were billeted in a barn to the rear of the firing-line. The old sweats were spinning yarns of trench life, and the young rooky Avas listening to them, his mouth hanging a little open and his ears taking in every word. " Fifty iv the limbs iv ' evil came up to the wires and tried to break through," said Gahey, describing a little episode in which the Germans tried to raid an advance post in broad daylight. " Fifty iv them, if a man, there were, and we let spit at them with a machine gun and seven rifles, and all that were left alive when the scrap came to an end was ten wounded Jerrys that we took -prisoners." " Have you killed a man yourself?" asked the rooky. Gahey was thunderstruck. Ha fixed a helpless look on the youngster, then on the other occupants of the barn. A man who sat in the corner with three gold stripes on his arm came to Gahey's assistance. "No, ye've never killed a man, Gahey," said the soldier. "Ye were . sent out here to wipe the flies from the officer's rations." Gahey turned again to the rooky, who was now shrinking into himself. "Killed a man!" the Irishman repeated. "Mother iv heaven! what makes ye ask a question like that? . . . Well, rooky, I'll tell ye the whole truth about it, seein' that ye have the face to put the question," he went on. "Look at me and tell me if I look like a boy who would kill a man."

"Not altogether," said the rooky in a diffident voice. " But if you were angry you might." Somebody laughed in the corner of the barn and Gahey spat on the floor with an air of decision. e

"Yes, I might kill a man," he said in a quiet voice. " That's if I was in a temper. But this boyo that's sitting here now is as simple as a child, and wouldn't kill anything, not even a rat." Gahey tapped his own chest with a miry trigger-finger as he .spoke. "But I do know a man who was fond iv killin' at times, especially when his blocd was up. tie was a soldier in the army, a soldier be trade, and a soldier be instinct, a bit iv a rascal, and a bit iv a drinker, and a man that had done his days in the digger be the time they were lookin' for a cradle for you, me rooky. "Well, this boyo came but to France, and was one iv the first to set foot on the mud iv Flanders, and he was in advance and in retrate, and he learned things that will never be set down before the swells that sits in drawin' rooms. He saw women ill-treated and children ill-treated, and that goes hard agin the conscience iv a man with the least sense iv right and fair play. This man that I'm tellin' ye about was at a place called Mons, and he helped to cover the retrate iv his army, bay'net to the enemy all the time. Great days for fightin' then, for ye could get to yer man if he stood to ye, and have a neat parry and point to cheer ye up. Now, it's sandbags and shovels and—and a lot o' dirtiness.

"Well, this man was in the race from Mons, and he saw that the Jerry was a dirty fighter, without mercy in his carcase. God pity the poor fellows who fell and were left behind in them days ! And things were done be the Jerrys—things that this man could never forget. He saw his mates left behind, and afterwards it came to his ears what had happened to them. There was very little mercy shown to the wounded. The Jerry with his hands up, shouting "Kamerad! Kamerad !" is not such a lamb when he's top-dog. He's a divil then, and there's no gettin' away from it. " Well, this man saw the Jerry more than once. He saw him taken prisoner and allowed to hang about behind the lines before he was sent back to safe keepin'. And he saw him pick up a rifle after he had surrendered, and have a sly shot at the wounded that were lyin' near him. But when this man saw a Hun do a thing like that he did not give the Hun much time to say his prayers. And he also saw —for he was an old cock at the game iv war, and travelled far in France—he also saw the' poor people that were left_ behind when the Hun retreated, accordin' to plan, near a year back. Poor women and childer! They would draw tears from a stone.

"And seem' so many things this man got to be a very divil fox* killin' the Jerrys. He was first to throw the bomb in a' raid and the last man to turn his back on the job. And with a bay'net. . . Well, what's the good iv talkin'! He has killed more than one man, and if Ke is spared he is goin'to add to the tally till all the business is finished and done with. So if ye follow in hi 3 footsteps, Kooky, ye won't be far astray when it comes to yer turn to show the stuff that yo are made iv." "And was that man yourself?" asked the rooky who had followed the Irishman's narrative with breathless interest.

" Well, damn me! but ye are the most inquisitive pup that I've ever met," said Rifleman Gahey, D.C.M.—Per favour of the secretary of the Royal Colonial Institute.