Editing courtesy: Pz MAcfor enlarged version, click on the pic
Monday, May 12, 2008
Friday, May 02, 2008
Fly Away Peter
........Clancy Parkett decide to get some hot water for tea,while the wagons were still rolling slowly forward, he and Jim, leaving their rifles, jumped down and jogged along the whole length of the train till they came to the engine.They were racing it. Running easily in the soft French snow.Fellows leaned out of the wagons cheering.When they got there at last Clancy, who was a bit on the heavy side, was too breathless to speak.It was Jim, as they still jogged alongside, who told the driver what they wanted and showed the billy..................................But they got the water,took it, all steaming as it was , on the run, then waited beside the track for their wagon and its familiar faces to reappear.Jim held up the billy as if it were some sort of trophy, and each wagon rolled by the men in it chiacked or cheered.
Jim would never have done any of it alone, but with Clancy it seemed like an adventure, a time out of all this that he would remember and maybe tell: The time I raced the train up to Bailleul with the engine driver, the moment of simply standing all aglow in the cold, a spectator, while the faces of the whole battalion passed before them and the land behind dipping away, foreign, mysterious, in snowy folds, crossed by black highways and tracks but empty habitation.The tea when they gulped it down in sweet , steamy mouthfuls was especially good.
Chapter 17
........... The earth smelled so good.It was a smell that belonged to the beginning of things.............. falling on his knees he began awkwardly to knead the earth, which was warm, damp, delightfully crumbly, and then to claw as it as the others were doing.It felt good.
'That's it, mate.That 's the style! Dig!
Jim looked around , astonished.It was Clancy Parkett..........................I thought.................'No'Clancy told him, 'not air mate.Earth'.And he held up a fistful of the richly smelling mud.....................................'We're digging through to the other side'
'But it'll take so long,'Jim said reasonably.
Clancy laughed.'There's all the time in the world, mate.No trouble about time.And it is better tryin' to walk it'........................Jim thought.........He knelt and dug.
Jim would never have done any of it alone, but with Clancy it seemed like an adventure, a time out of all this that he would remember and maybe tell: The time I raced the train up to Bailleul with the engine driver, the moment of simply standing all aglow in the cold, a spectator, while the faces of the whole battalion passed before them and the land behind dipping away, foreign, mysterious, in snowy folds, crossed by black highways and tracks but empty habitation.The tea when they gulped it down in sweet , steamy mouthfuls was especially good.
Chapter 17
........... The earth smelled so good.It was a smell that belonged to the beginning of things.............. falling on his knees he began awkwardly to knead the earth, which was warm, damp, delightfully crumbly, and then to claw as it as the others were doing.It felt good.
'That's it, mate.That 's the style! Dig!
Jim looked around , astonished.It was Clancy Parkett..........................I thought.................'No'Clancy told him, 'not air mate.Earth'.And he held up a fistful of the richly smelling mud.....................................'We're digging through to the other side'
'But it'll take so long,'Jim said reasonably.
Clancy laughed.'There's all the time in the world, mate.No trouble about time.And it is better tryin' to walk it'........................Jim thought.........He knelt and dug.
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