He opened the box and lifted carefully out a small velvet-covered jeweler’s box and opened it in turn. On the satin lining lay a medal, a bit of bronze on a crimson ribbon: a Victoria Cross. “I kept the hulls going out of Clydemouth while your uncle Simon was getting this bit of brass from the Queen,” old Alec said. “I heard naught of complaint.
And if need be, I’ll keep them going out while Alec serves the Queen a bit himsel. Let the lad go,” he said. He put the medal back into the wooden box and locked it. “A bit fighting winna hurt the lad. If I were his age, or yours either, for that matter, I’d gang mysel.
Alec, lad, hark ye. Ye’ll see if they’ll no take a hale lad of sixty-eight and I’ll gang wi ye and leave the auld folk like Matthew to do the best they can. Nay, Matthew; dinna ye thwart the lad; have no the Grays ever served the Queen in her need?”
So young Alec went to enlist, descending the hill on a weekday in his Sunday clothes, with a New Testament and a loaf of homebaked bread tied in a handkerchief. And this was the last day’s work which old Alec ever did, for soon after that, one morning Matthew descended the hill to the shipyard alone, leaving old Alec at home.
And after that, on the sunny days (and sometimes on the bad days too, until his daughter-in-law found him and drove him back into the house) he would sit shawled in a chair on the porch, gazing south and eastward, calling now and then to his son’s wife within the house: “Hark now. Do you hear them? The guns.”
“I hear nothing,” the daughter-in-law would say. “It’s only the sea at Kinkeadbight. Come into the house, now. Matthew will be displeased.”
“Whisht, woman. Do you think there is a Gray in the world could let off a gun and me not know the sound of it?”
They had a letter from him shortly after he enlisted, from England, in which he said that being a soldier, England, was different from being a shipwright, Clydeside, and that he would write again later.
Which he did, each month or so, writing that soldiering was different from building ships and that it was still raining. Then they did not hear from him for seven months. But his mother and father continued to write him a joint letter on the first Monday of each month, letters almost identical with the previous one, the previous dozen:
We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde faster than they can sink them. You still have the Book?
This would be in his father’s slow, indomitable hand. Then, in his mother’s:
Are you well? Do you need anything? Jessie and I are knitting the stockings and will send them. Alec, Alec.
He received this one during the seven months, during his term in the penal battalion, forwarded to him by his old corporal, since he had not told his people of his changed life. He answered it, huddled among his fellow felons, squatting in the mud with newspapers buttoned inside his tunic and his head and feet wrapped in strips of torn blanket:
I am well. Yes I still have the Book (not telling them that his platoon was using it to light tobacco with and that they were now well beyond Lamentations). It still rains. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley.
Then his time in the penal battalion was up. He returned to his old company, his old platoon, finding some new faces, and a letter:
We are well. Ships are going out of Clyde yet. You have a new sister. Your Mother is well.
He folded the letter and put it away. “A see mony new faces in thae battalion,” he said to the corporal. “We ha a new sair-rgeant-major too, A doot not?”
“Naw,” the corporal said. “’Tis the same one.” He was looking at Gray, his gaze intent, speculative; his face cleared. “Ye ha shaved thae mor-rn,” he said.
“Ay,” Gray said. “Am auld enough tae shave noo.”
That was the night on which the battalion was to go up to Arras. It was to move at midnight, so he answered the letter at once:
I am well. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and the baby.
“Morning! Morning!” The General, lap-robed and hooded, leans from his motor and waves his gloved hand and shouts cheerily to them as they slog past the car on the Bapaume road, taking the ditch to pass.
“A’s a cheery auld card,” a voice says.
“Awfficers,” a second drawls; he falls to cursing as he slips in the greaselike mud, trying to cling to the crest of the kneedeep ditch.
“Aweel,” a third says, “thae awfficers wud gang tae thae war-r too, A doot not.”
“Why dinna they gang then?” a fourth says. “Thae war-r is no back that way.”
Platoon by platoon they slip and plunge into the ditch and drag their heavy feet out of the clinging mud and pass the halted car and crawl terrifically onto the crown of the road again: “A says tae me, a says: ‘Fritz has a new gun that will carry to Par-ris,’ a says, and A says tae him: ‘’Tis nawthin: a has one that will hit our Cor-rps Headquar-rters.’”
“Morning! Morning!” The General continues to wave his glove and shout cheerily as the battalion detours into the ditch and heaves itself back onto the road again.
They are in the trench. Until the first rifle explodes in their faces, not a shot has been fired. Gray is the third man. During all the while that they crept between flares from shellhole to shellhole, he has been working himself nearer to the sergeant-major and the Officer; in the glare of that first rifle he can see the gap in the wire toward which the Officer was leading them, the moiled rigid glints of the wire where bullets have nicked the mud and rust from it, and against the glare the tall, leaping shape of the sergeant-major. Then Gray, too, springs bayonet first into the trench full of grunting shouts and thudding blows.
Flares go up by dozens now; in the corpse glare Gray sees the sergeant-major methodically tossing grenades into the next traverse. He runs toward him, passing the Officer leaning, bent double, against the fire step. The sergeant-major has vanished beyond the traverse. Gray follows and comes upon the sergeant-major. Holding the burlap curtain aside with one hand, the sergeant-major is in the act of tossing a grenade into a dugout as if he might be tossing an orange hull into a cellar.
The sergeant-major turns in the rocket glare. “’Tis you, Gray,” he says. The earth-muffled bomb thuds; the sergeant-major is in the act of catching another bomb from the sack about his neck as Gray’s bayonet goes into his throat. The sergeant-major is a big man. He falls backward, holding the rifle barrel with both hands against his throat, his teeth glaring, pulling Gray with him. Gray clings to the rifle. He tries to shake the speared body on the bayonet as he would shake a rat on an umbrella rib.
He frees the bayonet. The sergeant-major falls. Gray reverses the rifle and hammers its butt into the sergeant-major’s face, but the trench floor is too soft to supply any resistance. He glares about. His gaze falls upon a duckboard upended in the mud. He drags it free and slips it beneath the sergeant-major’s head and hammers the face with his riflebutt. Behind him in the first traverse the Officer is shouting: “Blow your whistle, Sergeant-major!”
IV
In the citation it told how Private Gray, on a night raid, one of four survivors, following the disablement of the Officer and the death of all the N.C.O.’s, took command of the situation and (the purpose of the expedition was a quick raid for prisoners); held a foothold in the enemy’s front line until a supporting attack arrived and consolidated the position.
The Officer told how he ordered the men back out, ordering them to leave him and save themselves, and how Gray appeared with a German machine gun from somewhere and, while his three companions built a barricade, overcame the Officer and took from him his Very pistol and fired the colored signal which called for the attack; all so quickly that support arrived before the enemy could counterattack or put down a barrage.
It is doubtful if his people ever saw the citation at all. Anyway, the letters which he received from them during his sojourn in hospital, the tenor of them, were unchanged: “We are well. Ships are still going out.”
His next letter home was once more months late. He wrote it when he was sitting up again, in London:
I have been sick but I am better now. I have a ribbon like in the box but not all red. The Queen was there. Love to Grandadder and Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and the baby.
The reply was written on Friday:
Your mother is glad that you are better. Your grandfather is dead. The baby’s name is Elizabeth. We are well. Your mother sends her love.
His next letter was three months later, in winter again:
My hurt is well. I am going to a school for officers. Love to Jessie and Matthew and John Wesley and Elizabeth.
Matthew Gray pondered over this letter for a long while; so long that
