The Lieutenant and Others/The Sixth Drunk
THE SIXTH DRUNK
TO A VERY GALLANT IRISHMAN, WHO DIED IN NOVEMBER, 1914
“No. 10,379 Private Michael O’Flannigan, you are charged, first, with being absent from roll-call on the 21st instant until 3.30 a.m. on the 22nd, a period of five hours and thirty minutes; second, being drunk; third, assaulting an N.C.O. in the execution of his duty.”
The colonel leant back in his chair in the orderly-room and gazed through his eyeglass at the huge bullet-headed Irishman standing on the other side of the table.
The evidence was uninteresting, as such evidence usually is, the only humorous relief being afforded by the sergeant of the guard on the night of the 21st, who came in with an eye of cerulean hue which all the efforts of his painstaking wife with raw beefsteak had been unable to subdue. It appeared from his evidence that he and Private O’Flannigan had had a slight difference of opinion, and that the accused had struck him in the face with his fist.
“What have you got to say, Private O’Flannigan?”
“Shure, ’twas one of the boys from Waterford, sorr, I met in the town yonder, and we put away a bit of the shtuff. I would not be denying I was late, but I was not drunk at all. And as for the sergeant, sure ’twas messing me about he was and plaguing me, and I did but push him in the face. Would I be hitting him, and he a little one?”
The colonel glanced at the conduct-sheet in his hand; then he looked up at O’Flannigan.
“Private O’Flannigan, this is your fifth drunk. In addition to that you have struck a non-commissioned officer in the execution of his duty, one of the most serious crimes a soldier can commit. I’m sick of you. You do nothing but give trouble. The next drunk you have I shall endeavour to get you discharged as incorrigible and worthless. As it is, I shall send you up for court-martial. Perhaps they will save me the trouble. March out.”
“Prisoner and escort—right turn—quick march!” The sergeant-major piloted them through the door; the incident closed. ••••• Now all that happened eighteen months ago. The rest is concerning the sixth drunk of Michael O’Flannigan and what he did; and it will also explain why at the present moment, in a certain depot mess in England, there lies in the centre of the dinner-table, every guest night, a strange jagged-looking piece of brown earthenware. It was brought home one day in December by an officer on leave, and it was handed over by him to the officer commanding the depot. And once a week officers belonging to the 13th and 14th and other battalions gaze upon the strange relic and drink a toast to the Sixth Drunk.
It seems that during November last the battalion was in the trenches round Ypres. Now, as all the world knows, at that time the trenches were scratchy, the weather was vile, and the Germans delivered infantry attacks without cessation. In fact, it was a most unpleasing and unsavoury period. In one of these scratchy trenches reposed the large bulk of Michael O’Flannigan. He did not like it at all—the permanent defensive which he and everyone else were forced into. It did not suit his character. Along with O’Flannigan there were a sergeant and three other men, and at certain periods of the day and night the huge Irishman would treat the world to an impromptu concert. He had a great deep bass voice, and when the mood was on him he would bellow out strange seditious songs—songs of the wilds of Ireland—and mingle with them taunts and jeers at the Germans opposite.
Now these bursts of song were erratic, but there was one period which never varied. The arrival of the rum issue was invariably heralded by the most seditious song in O’Flannigan’s very seditious repertory.
One evening it came about that the Huns tactlessly decided to deliver an attack just about the same time as the rum was usually issued. For some time O’Flannigan had been thirstily eyeing the traverse in his trench round which it would come—when suddenly the burst of firing all along the line proclaimed an attack. Moreover, it was an attack in earnest. The Huns reached the trenches and got into them, and, though they were twice driven out, bit by bit the battalion retired. O’Flannigan’s trench being at the end and more or less unconnected with the others, the Germans passed it by: though, as the sergeant in charge very rightly realised, it could only be a question of a very few minutes before it would be untenable.
“Get out,” he ordered, “and join up with the regiment in the trenches behind.”
“And phwat of the issue of rum?” demanded Michael O’Flannigan, whose rifle was too hot to hold.
“You may think yourself lucky, my bucko, if you ever get another,” said the sergeant. “Get out.” ••••• O’Flannigan looked at him. “If you’re after thinking that I would be leaving the rum to them swine you are mistaken, sergeant.”
“Are you going, O’Flannigan?”
“Bedad, I’m not! Not if the King himself was asking me.”
At that moment a Boche rounded the traverse. With a howl of joy O’Flannigan hit him with the butt of his rifle. From that moment he went mad. He hurled himself over the traverse and started. It was full of Germans—but this wild apparition finished them. Roaring like a bull and twisting his rifle round his head like a cane, the Irishman fell on them—and as they broke, he saw in the corner the well-beloved earthenware pot containing the rum. He seized the thing in his right hand and poured most of the liquid down his throat, while the rest of it ran over his face and clothes. And then Michael O’Flannigan ran amok. His great voice rose high above the roar of the rifles, as, with the empty rum jar in one hand and his clubbed rifle in the other he went down the trench.
What he must have looked like with the red liquid pouring down his face, his hands covered with it, his clothes dripping with it, in that eerie half-light, Heaven knows. He was shouting an old song of the Fenian days, and it is possible they thought he was the devil. He was no bad substitute anyway. And then of a sudden his regiment ceased to shoot from the trenches behind and a voice cried, “O’Flannigan.” It passed down the line, and, as one man, they came back howling, “O’Flannigan.” They drove the Germans out like chaff and fell back into the lost trenches—all save one little party, who paused at the sight in front of them. There stood O’Flannigan astride the colonel, who was mortally wounded. They heard rather than saw the blow that fetched home on the head of a Prussian officer—almost simultaneously with the crack of his revolver. They saw him go down with a crushed skull, while the big earthenware jar shivered to pieces. They saw O’Flannigan stagger a little and then look round—still with the top of the rum jar in his hand.
“You are back,” he cried. “It is well, but the rum is gone.”
And then the colonel spoke. He was near death and wandering. “The regiment has never yet lost a trench. Has it, O’Flannigan, you scoundrel?” And he peered at him.
“It has not, sorr,” answered the Irishman.
“I thought,” muttered the dying officer, “there were Prussians in here a moment ago.”
“They were, sorr, but they were not liking it, so they went.”
Suddenly the colonel raised himself on his elbow. “What’s the matter with you, O’Flannigan? What’s that red on your face? It’s rum, you blackguard. You’re drunk again.” His voice was growing weaker. “Sixth time … discharged … incorrigible and worthless.” And with that he died.
They looked at O’Flannigan, and he was sagging at the knees. “Bedad! ’tis not all rum, the red on me, colonel, dear.”
He slowly collapsed and lay still.
And that is the story of the strange table adornment of the depot mess, the depot of the regiment who have never yet lost a trench.