The Red Horizon / MacGill, Patrick, 1889-1960The Red Horizon / MacGill, Patrick, 1889-1960| Author: | MacGill, Patrick, 1889-1960 |
| Title: | The Red Horizon |
| Date: | 2006-11-04 |
| Contributor(s): | Sutro, Alfred, 1863-1933 [Translator] |
| Size: | 340987 |
| Identifier: | etext19710 |
| Language: | en |
| Publisher: | Project Gutenberg |
| Rights: | GNU General Public License |
| Tag(s): | bill trench trenches man patrick macgill ebook cost restrictions whatsoever red horizon project gutenberg sutro alfred translator |
| Versions: | original; local mirror; plain HTML (this file); concordance (most frequent 100 words, etc.) |
| Related: | Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts |
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
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Title: The Red Horizon
Author: Patrick MacGill
Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19710]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED HORIZON ***
Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
The original spelling has been retained.
Page 17: "some with faces turned upwards,"
the word "turned" was crossed
Page 234: Added a round bracket.
(A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.)]
THE RED HORIZON
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END.
The Autobiography of a Navvy.
Ten Thousand Printed within Ten
Days of Publication.
THE RAT-PIT. _Third Edition._
THE AMATEUR ARMY.
The Experiences of a Soldier in the Making.
THE GREAT PUSH.
THE RED HORIZON
BY
PATRICK MACGILL
WITH A FOREWORD BY
VISCOUNT ESHER G. C. B.
TORONTO
McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD &
STEWART, LIMITED
LONDON
HERBERT JENKINS, LIMITED
1916
THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX.
TO
THE LONDON IRISH
TO THE SPIRIT OF THOSE WHO FIGHT AND TO
THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
FOREWORD
_To_ PATRICK MACGILL,
Rifleman No. 3008, London Irish.
DEAR PATRICK MACGILL,
There is open in France a wonderful exhibition of the work of the many
gallant artists who have been serving in the French trenches through
the long months of the War.
There is not a young writer, painter, or sculptor of French blood, who
is not risking his life for his country. Can we make the same proud
boast?
When I recruited you into the London Irish--one of those splendid
regiments that London has sent to Sir John French, himself an
Irishman--it was with gratitude and pride.
You had much to give us. The rare experiences of your boyhood, your
talents, your brilliant hopes for the future. Upon all these the
Western hills and loughs of your native Donegal seemed to have a prior
claim. But you gave them to London and to our London Territorials. It
was an example and a symbol.
The London Irish will be proud of their young artist in words, and he
will for ever be proud of the London Irish Regiment, its deeds and
valour, to which he has dedicated such great gifts. May God preserve
you.
Yours sincerely,
ESHER.
_President_ County of London
Callander. Territorial Association.
_16th September, 1915._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT 13
II. SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE 19
III. OUR FRENCH BILLETS 30
IV. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES 43
V. FIRST BLOOD 49
VI. IN THE TRENCHES 69
VII. BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH 88
VIII. TERRORS OF THE NIGHT 110
IX. THE DUG-OUT BANQUET 116
X. A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE 130
XI. THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY 138
XII. THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP 149
XIII. A NIGHT OF HORROR 175
XIV. A FIELD OF BATTLE 200
XV. THE REACTION 209
XVI. PEACE AND WAR 216
XVII. EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT 228
XVIII. THE COVERING PARTY 249
XIX. SOUVENIR HUNTERS 264
XX. THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 279
XXI. IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 292
XXII. ROMANCE 300
THE RED HORIZON (p. 013)
CHAPTER 1
THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT
I wish the sea were not so wide
That parts me from my love;
I wish the things men do below
Were known to God above.
I wish that I were back again
In the glens of Donegal;
They'll call me coward if I return,
But a hero if I fall.
"Is it better to be a living coward,
Or thrice a hero dead?"
"It's better to go to sleep, my lad,"
The Colour Sergeant said.
Night, a grey troubled sky without moon or stars. The shadows lay on
the surface of the sea, and the waves moaned beneath the keel of the
troopship that was bearing us away on the most momentous journey of
our lives. The hour was about ten. Southampton lay astern; by dawn we
should be in France, and a day nearer the war for which we had trained
so long in the cathedral city of St. Albans.
I had never realized my mission as a rifleman so acutely before. (p. 014)
"To the war! to the war!" I said under my breath. "Out to France and
the fighting!" The thought raised a certain expectancy in my mind.
"Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?" I asked
myself. "Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his
body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen,
comes out at the back? I'll not think of it."
But the thoughts could not be chased away. The month was March, and
the night was bitterly cold on deck. A sharp penetrating wind swept
across the sea and sung eerily about the dun-coloured funnel. With my
overcoat buttoned well up about my neck and my Balaclava helmet pulled
down over my ears I paced along the deck for quite an hour; then,
shivering with cold, I made my way down to the cabin where my mates
had taken up their quarters. The cabin was low-roofed and lit with two
electric lamps. The corners receded into darkness where the shadows
clustered thickly. The floor was covered with sawdust, packs and
haversacks hung from pegs in the walls; a gun-rack stood in the centre
of the apartment; butts down and muzzles in line, the rifles (p. 015)
stretched in a straight row from stern to cabin stairs. On the benches
along the sides the men took their seats, each man under his
equipment, and by right of equipment holding the place for the length
of the voyage.
My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco smoke.
In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.
"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a
broken row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."
"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought
we weren't goin' out at all."
"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not
all fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother----"
"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.
"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.
"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's
only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."
"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a
line regiment."
"That's why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the Cockney. (p. 016)
"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.
"Well, it's like this," said Spud----
"Hold your tongue," snapped the sergeant, and Spud relapsed into
silence.
After a moment he turned to me where I sat. "It's not only Germans
that I'll look for in the trenches," he said, "when I have my rifle
loaded and get close to that sergeant----"
"You'll put a bullet through him"; I said, "just as you vowed you'd do
to me some time ago. You were going to put a bullet through the
sergeant-major, the company cook, the sanitary inspector, the army
tailor and every single man in the regiment. Are you going to destroy
the London Irish root and branch?" I asked.
"Well, there's some in it as wants a talking to at times," said Spud.
"'Ave yer got a fag to spare?"
Somebody sung a ragtime song, and the cabin took up the chorus. The
boys bound for the fields of war were light-hearted and gay. A journey
from the Bank to Charing Cross might be undertaken with a more serious
air: it looked for all the world as if they were merely out on (p. 017)
some night frolic, determined to throw the whole mad vitality of youth
into the escapade.
"What will it be like out there?" I asked myself. The war seemed very
near now. "What will it be like, but above all, how shall I conduct
myself in the trenches? Maybe I shall be afraid--cowardly. But no! If
I can't bear the discomforts and terrors which thousands endure daily
I'm not much good. But I'll be all right. Vanity will carry me through
where courage fails. It would be such a grand thing to become
conspicuous by personal daring. Suppose the men were wavering in an
attack, and then I rushed out in front and shouted: 'Boys, we've got
to get this job through'--But, I'm a fool. Anyhow I'll lie on the
floor and have a sleep."
Most of the men were now in a deep slumber. Despite an order against
smoking, given a quarter of an hour before, a few of my mates had the
"fags" lit, and as the lamps had been turned off the cigarettes glowed
red through the gloom. The sleepers lay in every conceivable position,
some with faces turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues
stretching over the lower lips; some with knees curled up and (p. 018)
heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement, some
with hands clasped tightly over their breasts and others with their
fingers bent as if trying to clutch at something beyond their reach. A
few slumbered with their heads on their rifles, more had their heads
on the sawdust-covered floor, and these sent the sawdust fluttering
whenever they breathed. The atmosphere of the place was close and
almost suffocating. Now and again someone coughed and spluttered as if
he were going to choke. Perspiration stood out in little beads on the
temples of the sleepers, and they turned round from time to time to
raise their Balaclava helmets higher over their eyes.
And so the night wore on. What did they dream of lying there? I
wondered. Of their journey and the perils that lay before them? Of the
glory or the horror of the war? Of their friends whom, perhaps, they
would never see again? It was impossible to tell.
For myself I tried not to think too clearly of what I might see
to-morrow or the day after. The hour was now past midnight and a new
day had come. What did it hold for us all? Nobody knew--I fell asleep.
CHAPTER II (p. 019)
SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
When I come back to England,
And times of Peace come round,
I'll surely have a shilling,
And may be have a pound;
I'll walk the whole town over,
And who shall say me nay,
For I'm a British soldier
With a British soldier's pay.
The Rest Camp a city of innumerable bell-tents, stood on the summit of
a hill overlooking the town and the sea beyond. We marched up from the
quay in the early morning, followed the winding road paved with
treacherous cobbles that glory in tripping unwary feet, and sweated to
the summit of the hill. Here a new world opened to our eyes: a canvas
city, the mushroom growth of our warring times lay before us; tent
after tent, large and small, bell-tent and marquee in accurate
alignment.
It took us two hours to march to our places; we grounded arms at the
word of command and sank on our packs wearily happy. True, a few (p. 020)
had fallen out; they came in as we rested and awkwardly fell into
position. They were men who had been sea-sick the night before. We
were too excited to rest for long; like dogs in a new locality we were
presently nosing round looking for food. Two hours march in full
marching order makes men hungry, and hungry men are ardent explorers.
The dry and wet canteens faced one another, and each was capable of
accommodating a hundred men. Never were canteens crowded so quickly,
never have hundreds of the hungry and drouthy clamoured so eagerly for
admission as on that day. But time worked marvels; at the end of an
hour we fell in again outside a vast amount of victuals, and the
sea-sickness of the previous night, and the strain of the morning's
march were things over which now we could be humorously reminiscent.
Sheepskin jackets, the winter uniform of the trenches, were served out
to us, and all were tried on. They smelt of something chemical and
unpleasant, but were very warm and quite polar in appearance.
"Wish my mother could see me now," Bill the Cockney remarked. "My, she
wouldn't think me 'alf a cove. It's a balmy. I discovered the (p. 021)
South Pole, I'm thinkin'."
"More like you're up the pole!" some one cut in, then continued, "If
they saw us at St. Albans[1] now! Bet yer they wouldn't say as we're
for home service."
[Footnote 1: It was at St. Albans that we underwent
most of our training.]
That night we slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight
as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central
pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement
was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed
the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came
in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in
a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a
paradise of sympathy and mutual agreement.
We rose early, washed and shaved, and found our way to the canteen, a
big marquee under the control of the Expeditionary Force, where bread
and butter, bacon and tea were served out for breakfast. Soldiers
recovering from wounds worked as waiters, and told, when they had a
moment to spare, of hair-breadth adventures in the trenches. They (p. 022)
found us willing listeners; they had lived for long in the locality
for which we were bound, and the whole raw regiment had a personal
interest in the narratives of the wounded men. Bayonet-charges were
discussed.
"I've been in three of 'em," remarked a quiet, inoffensive-looking
youth who was sweeping the floor of the room. "They were a bit 'ot,
but nothin' much to write 'ome about. Not like a picture in the
papers, none of them wasn't. Not much stickin' of men. You just ops
out of your trench and rush and roar, like 'ell. The Germans fire and
then run off, and it's all over."
After breakfast feet were inspected by the medical officer. We sat
down on our packs in the parade ground, took off our boots, and
shivered with cold. The day was raw, the wind sharp and penetrating;
we forgot that our sheepskins smelt vilely, and snuggled into them,
glad of their warmth. The M.O. asked questions: "Do your boots pinch?"
"Any blisters?" "Do you wear two pairs of socks?" &c., &c. Two
thousand feet passed muster, and boots were put on again.
The quartermaster's stores claimed our attention afterwards, and (p. 023)
the attendants there were almost uncannily kind. "Are you sure you've
got everything you want?" they asked us. "There mayn't be a chance to
get fitted up after this." Socks, pull-throughs, overcoats, regimental
buttons, badges, hats, tunics, oil-bottles, gloves, puttees, and laces
littered the floor and were piled on the benches. We took what we
required; no one superintended our selection.
At St. Albans, where we had been turned into soldiers, we often stood
for hours waiting until the quartermaster chose to give us a few
inches of rifle-rag; here a full uniform could be obtained by picking
it up. And our men were wise in selecting only necessities; they still
remembered the march of the day before. All took sparingly and chose
wisely. Fancy socks were passed by in silence, the homely woollen
article, however, was in great demand. Bond Street was forgotten. The
"nut" was a being of a past age, or, if he still existed, he was
undergoing a complete transformation. Also he knew what socks were
best for the trenches.
At noon we were again ready to set out on our journey. A tin of
bully-beef and six biscuits, hard as rocks, were given to each man (p. 024)
prior to departure. Sheepskins were rolled into shape and fastened on
the tops of our packs, and with this additional burden on the shoulder
we set out from the rest-camp and took our course down the hill. On
the way we met another regiment coming up to fill our place, to sleep
in our bell-tents, pick from the socks which we had left behind, and
to meet for once, the first and last time perhaps, a quartermaster who
is really kind in the discharge of his professional duties. We marched
off, and sang our way into the town and station. Our trucks were
already waiting, an endless number they seemed lined up in the siding
with an engine in front and rear, and the notice "Hommes 40 chevaux
20" in white letters on every door. The night before I had slept in a
bell-tent where a man's head pointed to each seam in the canvas,
to-night it seemed as if I should sleep, if that were possible, in a
still more crowded place, where we had now barely standing room, and
where it was difficult to move about. But a much-desired relief came
before the train started, spare waggons were shunted on, and a number
of men were taken from each compartment and given room elsewhere. (p. 025)
In fact, when we moved off we had only twenty-two soldiers in our
place, quite enough though when our equipment, pack, rifle, bayonet,
haversack, overcoat, and sheepskin tunic were taken into account.
A bale of hay bound with wire was given to us for bedding, and
bully-beef, slightly flavoured, and biscuits were doled out for
rations. Some of us bought oranges, which were very dear, and paid
three halfpence apiece for them; chocolate was also obtained, and one
or two adventurous spirits stole out to the street, contrary to
orders, and bought _cafe au lait_ and _pain et beurre_, drank the
first in the _estaminet_, and came back to their trucks munching the
latter.
At noon we started out on the journey to the trenches, a gay party
that found expression for its young vitality in song. The
sliding-doors and the windows were open; those of us who were not
looking out of the one were looking out of the other. To most it was a
new country, a place far away in peace and a favourite resort of the
wealthy; but now a country that called for any man, no matter how
poor, if he were strong in person and willing to give his life away
when called upon to do so. In fact, the poor man was having his first
holiday on the Continent, and alas!--perhaps his last; and like (p. 026)
cattle new to the pasture fields in Spring, we were surging full of
life and animal gaiety.
We were out on a great adventure, full of thrill and excitement; the
curtain which surrounded our private life was being lifted; we stood
on the threshold of momentous events. The cottagers who laboured by
their humble homes stood for a moment and watched our train go by; now
and again a woman shouted out a blessing on our mission, and ancient
men seated by their doorsteps pointed in the direction our train was
going, and drew lean, skinny hands across their throats, and yelled
advice and imprecations in hoarse voices. We understood. The ancient
warriors ordered us to cut the Kaiser's throat and envied us the job.
The day wore on, the evening fell dark and stormy. A cold wind from
somewhere swept in through chinks in windows and door, and chilled the
compartment. The favourite song, _Uncle Joe_, with its catching
chorus,
When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo,
Eberybody starts aswayin to and fro,
Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor,
Yellin' "Uncle Joe, give us more! give us more!"
died away into a melancholy whimper. Sometimes one of the men would
rise, open the window and look out at a passing hamlet, where (p. 027)
lights glimmered in the houses and heavy waggons lumbered along the
uneven streets, whistle an air into the darkness and close the window
again. My mate had an electric torch--by its light we opened the
biscuit box handed in when we left the station, and biscuits and
bully-beef served to make a rather comfortless supper. At ten o'clock,
when the torch refused to burn, and when we found ourselves short of
matches, we undid the bale, spread out the hay on the floor of the
truck and lay down, wearing our sheepskin tunics and placing our
overcoats over our legs.
We must have been asleep for some time. We were awakened by the
stopping of the train and the sound of many voices outside. The door
was opened and we looked out. An officer was hurrying by, shouting
loudly, calling on us to come out. On a level space bordering the line
a dozen or more fires were blazing merrily, and dixies with some
boiling liquid were being carried backwards and forwards. A sergeant
with a lantern, one of our own men, came to our truck and clambered
inside.
"Every man get his mess tin," he shouted. "Hurry up, the train's not
stopping for long, and there's coffee and rum for us all." (p. 028)
"I wish they'd let us sleep," someone who was fumbling in his pack
remarked in a sleepy voice. "I'm not wantin' no rum and cawfee. Last
night almost choked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and
now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"
We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter
cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim
light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders,
everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being
awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were
now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a
halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the
bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would
be! I counted the men in front--there were no more than twelve or
thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee--suddenly a whistle
was blown, then another.
"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling
party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order; (p. 029)
in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered till
dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits and
bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner. At
half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed into
column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay
before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we
waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in
from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound
of guns!
CHAPTER III (p. 030)
OUR FRENCH BILLETS
The fog is white on Glenties moors,
The road is grey from Glenties town,
Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog,
And ah! the homely moors of brown.
The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home
in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the
description in her book.
The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with
a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very
door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and
dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every
other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean
dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and beer are
excellent, the new-laid eggs are delightful for breakfast, the milk and
butter, fresh and pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave (p. 031)
about.
We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the
midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try
to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens
that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the
barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces
and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the
farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on
parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that
scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and
devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a
man's nose--but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other
time.
We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March
day. We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A
additional load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of
the sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to
the firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened
soldiers. The march to the barn billet was a miracle of endurance, (p. 032)
but all lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when it was over.
That night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw, our waterproof
sheets under us and our blankets and sheepskins round our bodies. It
was very comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might wish to remain
awake to feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man can be.
Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the scent
of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had already
flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere near a girl
was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she worked; a
cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and the dogs
of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was one to be
remembered.
But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost new;
we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been in our
ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a day to
come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard its
summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the air,
and sweeping round the barn where we lay, telling all who chanced (p. 033)
to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered across the
face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another: soldiers of
many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of Australia, and Germany;
of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand; Saxon, Gurkha, and Prussian,
Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were engaged in deadly combat. The
sound was the sound of guns--our farmhouse was within the range of the
big artillery.
We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and
despite the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy.
On one farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with
roguish eyes and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as
lean as some I have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as
Granada beggars. They were very hungry and one ate a man's
food-wallet and all it contained, comprising bread, army biscuits,
canned beef, including can and other sundries. "I wish the animal had
choked itself," my mate said when he discovered his loss. Personally I
had a profound respect for any pig who voluntarily eats army (p. 034)
biscuit.
We got up about six o'clock every morning and proceeded to wash and
shave. All used the one pump, sometimes five or six heads were stuck
under it at the same moment, and an eager hand worked the handle, and
poured a plentiful supply of very cold water on the close cropped
pates. The panes of the farmhouse window made excellent shaving
mirrors and, incidentally, I may mention that rifle-slings generally
serve the purpose of razor strops. Breakfast followed toilet; most of
the men bought _cafe-au-lait_, at a penny a basin, and home-made
bread, buttered lavishly, at a penny a slice. A similar repast would
cost sixpence in London.
Parade then followed. In England we had cherished the illusion that
life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing
practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in
rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and
tots of rum would be served out _ad infinitum_. This rum would have a
certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all
discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought,
though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035)
drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty
bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the
past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we
joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown
crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for
words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause its owner
to meditate in the guard-room.
Dinner consists of bully beef and biscuits; now and again we fry the
bully beef on the farmhouse stove, and when cash is plentiful cook an
egg with it. The afternoon is generally given up to practising
bayonet-fighting, and our day's work comes to an end about six
o'clock. In the evening we go into the nearest village and discuss
matters of interest in some _cafe_. Here we meet all manner of men,
Gurkhas fresh from the firing line; bus-drivers, exiles from London;
men of the Army Service Corps; Engineers, kilted Highlanders, men
recovering from wounds, who are almost fit to go to the trenches
again; French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and all sorts of people,
helpers in some way or another of the Allies in the Great War.
We have to get back to our billets by eight o'clock, to stop out (p. 036)
after that hour is a serious crime here. A soldier out of doors at
midnight in the cathedral city was merely a minor offender. But under
the range of long artillery fire all things are different for the
soldier.
St. Patrick's Day was an event. We had a half holiday, and at night,
with the aid of beer, we made merry as men can on St. Patrick's Day.
We sang Irish songs, told stories, mostly Cockney, and laughed without
restraint as merry men will, for to all St. Patrick was an admirable
excuse for having a good and rousing time.
There is, however, one little backwater of rest and quiet into which
we men of blood and iron drift at all too infrequent intervals--that
is when we become what is known officially as "barn orderly." A barn
orderly is the company unit who looks after the billets of the men out
on parade. In due course my turn arrived, and the battalion marched
away leaving me to the quiet of farmyard.
Having heaped up the straw, our bedding, in one corner of the barn,
swept the concrete floor, rolled the blankets, explained to the
gossipy farm servant that I did not "compree" her gibberish, and (p. 037)
watched her waddle across the midden towards the house, my duties were
ended. I was at liberty until the return of the battalion. It was all
very quiet, little was to be heard save the gnawing of the rats in the
corner of the barn and the muffled booming of guns from "out
there"--"out there" is the oft repeated phrase that denotes the
locality of the firing line.
There was sunlight and shade in the farmyard, the sun lit up the pump
on the top of which a little bird with salmon-pink breast,
white-tipped tail, and crimson head preened its feathers; in the shade
where our barn and the stables form an angle an old lady in snowy
sunbonnet and striped apron was sitting knitting. It was good to be
there lying prone upon the barn straw near the door above the crazy
ladder, writing letters. I had learned to love this place and these
people whom I seem to know so very well from having read Rene Bazin,
Daudet, Maupassant, Balzac and Marie Claire. High up and far away to
the west a Zeppelin was to be seen travelling in a westerly direction;
the farmer's wife, our landlady, had just rescued a tin of bully beef
from one of her all-devouring pigs; at the barn door lay my recently
cleaned rifle and ordered equipment--how incongruous it all was (p. 038)
with the home of Marie Claire.
Suddenly I was brought back to realities by the recollection that the
battalion was to have a bath that afternoon and towels and soap must
be ready to take out on the next parade.
The next morning was beautifully clear; the sun rising over the firing
line lit up wood and field, river and pond. The hens were noisy in the
farmyard, the horse lines to the rear were full of movement, horses
strained at their tethers eager to break away and get free from the
captivity of the rope; the grooms were busy brushing the animals' legs
and flanks, and a slight dust arose into the air as the work was
carried on.
Over the red-brick houses of the village the church stood high, its
spire clearly defined against the blue of the sky. The door of the
_cafe_ across the road opened, and the proprietress, a merry-faced,
elderly woman, came across to the farmhouse. She purchased some newly
laid eggs for breakfast, and entered into conversation with our men,
some of whom knew a little of her language. They asked about her son
in the trenches; she had heard from him the day before and he was (p. 039)
quite well and hoped to have a holiday very soon. He would come home
then and spend a fortnight with the family. She looked forward to his
coming, he had been away from her ever since the war started; she had
not seen him for eight whole months. What happiness would be hers when
he returned! She waved her hand to us as she went off, tripping
lightly across the roadway and disappearing into the _cafe_. She was
going to church presently; it was Holy Week when the Virgin listened
to special intercessors, and the good matron of the _cafe_ prayed
hourly for the safety of her soldier boy.
At ten o'clock we went to chapel, our pipers playing _The Wearing of
the Green_ as we marched along the crooked village streets, our rifles
on our shoulders and our bandoliers heavy with the ball cartridge
which we carried. The rifle is with us always now, on parade, on
march, in _cafe_, billet, and church; our "best friend" is our eternal
companion. We carried it into the church and fastened the sling to the
chair as we knelt in prayer before the altar. We occupied the larger
part of the building, only three able-bodied men in civilian clothing
were in attendance.
The youth of the country were out in the trenches, and even here (p. 040)
in the quiet little chapel with its crucifixes, images, and pictures,
there was the suggestion of war in the collection boxes for wounded
soldiers, in the crepe worn by so many women; one in every ten was in
mourning, and above all in the general air of resignation which showed
on all the faces of the native worshippers.
The whole place breathed war, not in the splendid whirlwind rush of
men mad in the wild enthusiasm of battle, but in silent yearning,
heartfelt sorrow, and great bravery, the bravery of women who remain
at home. Opposite us sat the lady of the _cafe_, her head low down on
her breast, and the rosary slipping bead by bead through her fingers.
Now and again she would stir slightly, raise her eyes to the Virgin on
the right of the high altar, and move her lips in prayer, then she
would lower her head again and continue her rosary.
As far as I could ascertain singing in church was the sole privilege
of the choir, none of the congregation joined in the hymns. But to-day
the church had a new congregation--the soldiers from England, the men
who sing in the trenches, in the billet, and on the march; the men who
glory in song on the last lap of a long, killing journey in full (p. 041)
marching order. To-day they sang a hymn well-known and loved, the
clarion call of their faith was started by the choir. As one man the
soldiers joined in the singing, and their voices filled the building.
The other members of the congregation looked on for a moment in surprise,
then one after another they started to sing, and in a moment nearly
all in the place were aiding the choir. One was silent, however, the
lady of the _cafe_; still deep in prayer she scarcely glanced at the
singers, her mind was full of another matter. Only a mother thinking
about a loved son can so wholly lose herself from the world. And as I
looked at her I thought I detected tears in her eyes.
The priest, a pleasant faced young man, who spoke very quickly (I have
never heard anybody speak like him), thanked the soldiers, and through
them their nation for all that was being done to help in the war;
prayers were said for the men at the front, those who were still
alive, as well as those who had given up their lives for their
country's sake, and before leaving we sang the national anthem, our's,
_God Save the King_.
With the pipers playing at our front, and an admiring crowd of (p. 042)
boys following, we took our way back to our billets. On the march a
mate was speaking, one who had been late coming on parade in the
morning.
"Saw the woman of the _cafe_ in church?" he asked me. "Saw her
crying?"
"I thought she looked unhappy."
"Just after you got off parade the news came," my mate told me. "Her
son had been killed. She is awfully upset about it and no wonder. She
was always talking about her _petit garcon_, and he was to be home on
holidays shortly."
Somewhere "out there" where the guns are incessantly booming, a
nameless grave holds the "_petit garcon_," the _cafe_ lady's son; next
Sunday another mourner will join with the many in the village church
and pray to the Virgin Mother for the soul of her beloved boy.
CHAPTER IV (p. 043)
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES
Four by four in column of route,
By roads that the poplars sentinel,
Clank of rifle and crunch of boot--
All are marching and all is well.
White, so white is the distant moon,
Salmon-pink is the furnace glare,
And we hum, as we march, a ragtime tune,
Khaki boys in the long platoon,
Going and going--anywhere.
"The battalion will move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating
the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot
of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It
was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in
their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese
are easily scooped out with clasp-knives and make excellent sconces;
we often use them for that purpose in our barn billet. We had been
quite a long time in the place and had grown to like it. But to-morrow
we were leaving.
"Oh, dash the rifle!" said the Jersey boy, getting to his feet and
kicking a bundle of straw across the floor of the barn. "To-morrow (p. 044)
night we'll be in the trenches up in the firing line."
"The slaughter line," somebody remarked in the corner where the
darkness hung heavy. A match was lighted disclosing the speaker's face
and the pipe which he held between his teeth.
"No smoking," yelled a corporal, who had just entered. "You'll burn
the damned place down and get yourself as well as all of us into
trouble."
"Oh blast the barn!" muttered Bill Sykes, a narrow chested Cockney
with a good-humoured face that belied his nickname. "It's only fit for
rats and there's 'nuff of 'em 'ere. I'm goin' to 'ave a fag anyway.
Got me?"
The corporal asked Bill for a cigarette and lit it. "We're all mates
now and we'll make a night of it," he cried. "Damn the barn, there'll
be barns when we're all washed out with Jack Johnsons. What are you
doin', Feelan?"
Feelan, an Irishman with a brogue that could be cut with a knife, laid
down the sword which he was burnishing and glanced at the non-com.
"The Germans don't fire at men with stripes, I hear," he remarked,
"They only shoot rale good soldiers. A livin' corp'ral's hardly as (p. 045)
good as a dead rifleman."
Six foot three of Cumberland bone and muscle detached itself from the
straw and looked round the barn. We call it Goliath on account of its
size.
"Who's to sing the first song," asked Goliath. "A good hearty song!"
"One with whiskers on it!" said the corporal.
"I'll slash the game up and give a rale ould song, whiskers
to the toes of it," said Feelan, shoving his sword in its scabbard and
throwin' himself flat back on the straw. "Its a song about the
time Irelan' was fightin' for freedom and it's called _The Rising of
the Moon_! A great song entirely it is, and I cannot do it justice."
Feelan stood up, his legs wide apart and both his thumbs stuck in the
upper pockets of his tunic. Behind him the barn stretched out into the
gloom that our solitary candle could not pierce. On either side rifles
hung from the wall, and packs and haversacks stood high from the straw
in which most of the men had buried themselves, leaving nothing but
their faces, fringed with the rims of Balaclava helmets, exposed to
view. The night was bitterly cold, outside where the sky stood high
splashed with countless stars and where the earth gripped tight on (p. 046)
itself, the frost fiend was busy; in the barn, with its medley of men,
roosting hens and prowling rats all was cosy and warm. Feelan cleared
his throat and commenced the song, his voice strong and clear filled
the barn:--
"Arrah! tell me Shan O'Farrel; tell me why you hurry so?"
"Hush, my bouchal, hush and listen," and his cheeks were all aglow--
"I've got orders from the Captain to get ready quick and soon
For the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon,
At the risin' of the moon!
At the risin' of the moon!
And the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon!"
"That's some song," said the corporal. "It has got guts in it. I'm
sick of these ragtime rotters!"
"The old songs are always the best ones," said Feelan, clearing his
throat preparatory to commencing a second verse.
"What about _Uncle Joe_?" asked Goliath, and was off with a regimental
favourite.
When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo--
("Oh!" the occupants of the barn yelled.)
Ev'rybody starts a swayin' to and fro--
("Ha!" exclaimed the barn.)
Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor!--
("What!" we chorused.)
Crying, "Uncle Joe, give us more, give us more!"
"Give us no more of that muck!" exclaimed Feelan, burrowing into (p. 047)
the straw, no doubt a little annoyed at being interrupted in his song.
"Damn ragtime!"
"There's ginger in it!" said Goliath. "Your old song is as flat as
French beer!"
"Some decent music is what you want," said Bill Sykes, and forthwith
began strumming an invisible banjo and humming _Way down upon the
Swanee Ribber_.
The candle, the only one in our possession, burned closer to the
cheese sconce, a daring rat slipped into the light, stopped still for
a moment on top of a sheaf of straw, then scampered off again, shadows
danced on the roof, over the joists where the hens were roosting, an
unsheathed sword glittered brightly as the light caught it, and Feelan
lifted the weapon and glanced at it.
"Burnished like a lady's nail," he muttered.
"Thumb nail?" interrogated Goliath.
"Ragnail, p'raps," said the Cockney.
"I wonder whether we'll have much bayonet-fightin' or not?" remarked
the Jersey boy, looking at each of us in turn and addressing no one in
particular.
"We'll get some now and again to keep us warm!" said the corporal. (p. 048)
"It'll be 'ot when it comes along."
"'Ot's not the word," said Bill; "I never was much drawn to soldierin'
'fore the war started, but when it came along I felt I'd like to 'ave
a 'and in the gime. There, that candle's goin' out!"
"Bunk!" roared the corporal, putting his pipe in his pocket and
seizing a blanket, the first to hand. Almost immediately he was under
the straw with the blanket wrapped round him. We were not backward in
following, and all were in bed when the flame which followed the wax
so greedily died for lack of sustenance.
To-morrow night we should be in the trenches.
CHAPTER V (p. 049)
FIRST BLOOD
The nations like Kilkenny cats,
Full of hate that never dies out,
Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,
Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.
The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles,
and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down
on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs
stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The
sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down
their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled
on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on
haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless
in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and
were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds
of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack
stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field (p. 050)
necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and
sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and
were on our way towards the firing line.
A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had
just come out of an _estaminet_, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and
knife and fork stuck in his putties.
"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile
hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating
glance.
"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"
"About a matter of nine months."
"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.
"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer.
"'Oo are you?"
"The London Irish."
"Territorials?"
"That's us," someone said.
"First time up this way?"
"First time."
"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile
reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a
word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a tight grip (p. 051)
of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties. My
pack went West at Mons."
"You were there then?"
"Blimey, yes." was the answer.
"How did you like it?"
"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round.
There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if
you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with
your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever
you go into a charge--Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man
who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're
swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this
beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of
this dashed muck. Good-bye"--we were moving off, "and good luck to
you!"
Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been
great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and
committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has
been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown
oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I don't (p. 052)
know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a tin of
bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our section who
can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few grind biscuits
when they can beg bread.
A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four
platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section
consisted of thirteen--there are only four boys left now, Mervin has
been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher
bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of
his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much
sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he
told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home
when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps.
I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will
pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch
friend.
Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that
the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal
Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the
same route. In the village all was quiet, the _cafes_ were open, (p. 053)
and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as usual.
There were very few young men of military age in the place; all were
engaged in the business of war.
A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me;
Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar,
marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a
clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and
wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to
the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate
and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept
open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker,
and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to
the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital
suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and
get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest
bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the
rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had
come.
Teak and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of the (p. 054)
road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither look
it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest when his
own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould,
but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in
business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his
profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these
amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known
to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most
delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato.
Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument.
He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one
he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.
Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055)
and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous
masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses.
For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in
the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about
with him.
Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.
We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men
stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and
singing _Macnamara's Band_, a favourite song with our regiment.
Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and
we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.
The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in front,
and it sounded like a waggon-load of rubble being emptied on a (p. 056)
landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.
"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his
cigarette with the little finger.
"Some transport has broken down."
"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.
"Oh! your grandmother."
Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a
wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side
of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air,
curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates.
Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away
from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking
to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his
tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath
yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:--
"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this
way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell (p. 057)
had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her head
bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two children, a
boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep in a
childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the bursting
shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little
affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of
surprise--surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting
shrapnel.
"Quick march!"
We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing
through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was
almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although
not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a _cafe_. A pale
stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the
threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.
Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking
beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard,
seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing
heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, (p. 058)
and his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash showed
on the flesh.
"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The
one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field
where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."
"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.
"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came
to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of
shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in
London."
"And you, Pryor?"
"I went cold all over for a minute."
"Bill?"
"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do
you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a
song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out
one of our popular rhymes.
Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys
To drive the Kaiser balmy.
And _we'll_ smash up that fool Von Kluck
And all his bloomin' army!
We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor (p. 059)
ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his
coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm
on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg
bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was
smoking a cigarette.
"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.
"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the
answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."
"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the
pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a
wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"
"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.
"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the
old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over
and done with."
"Ye don't like war, then."
"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks,
and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the ---- work." (p. 060)
"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing
round his lips. "God's with us, you know."
"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.
"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.
"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything
else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church,
and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up
to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."
"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.
"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work,
never could stomach it."
The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.
We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the
province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was
a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and
turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home,
now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green
grasses, the old farm holed by a thousand shells, the old plough, (p. 061)
and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for
the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the
destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage
which had been done.
We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive
shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a
point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast
of burden--the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace
by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something
pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising
and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving
backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the
stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching
along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an
inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All
individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes
in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing
death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.
We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-shivered (p. 062)
roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.
"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were
told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.
As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time
I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air,
and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and
now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was
sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French
soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his
bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade
who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.
"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.
"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere,
and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he
cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall
over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling (p. 063)
a fresh cigarette.
Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found
our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance,
with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath,
"This way to the war."
The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow
cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces
in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full
equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were exploding,
and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our
heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but
sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and
dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with
bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general
air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides,
and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and
well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with
him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when
he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon (p. 064)
on his breast.
"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How
did you get it?" he called up to the man.
"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve,
thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"
he asked.
"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."
We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood,
and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the
parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have
copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who
are you?"
"The London Irish."
"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ----," he said, rubbing a miry hand across
the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done
in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief
and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065)
luck! Are you from Chelsea?"
"Yes."
"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody
took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the
two men lay.
They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that
branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the
other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost
touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and
smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's
hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot
showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066)
lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
body in the trench.
"Brothers," he said.
For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067)
who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a
hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to
duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"
"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
"and they always keep potting at the place."
"But have we?"
"I dunno."
"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"
"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.
"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.
"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068)
continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
"never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when
you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."
In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
"stopped a packet."
CHAPTER VI (p. 069)
IN THE TRENCHES
Up for days in the trenches,
Working and working away;
Eight days up in the trenches
And back again to-day.
Working with pick and shovel,
On traverse, banquette, and slope,
And now we are back and working
With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.
We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at
the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had
not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.
Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his
shovel.
"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit
from his haversack.
"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"
"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the
latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it
wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were
new to the grind of war.
"I've found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from (p. 070)
his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A
shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches
have got a humour peculiarly their own.
"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell _cafe noir_
and _pain et beurre_."
"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like
ourselves."
"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent
for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a
mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the
Cockney brightened.
"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and butter."
"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.
"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and
the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."
"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping
a shower of muck which a bursting shell flung in his face. We were
with him immediately, and presently found ourselves at the door (p. 071)
of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled with
shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.
A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly,
well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a
short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn
of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all
good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as
we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our
needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his
hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs
in the house were already occupied.
The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on
the wall, the portrait of the woman herself, _The Holy Family
Journeying to Egypt_, a print of Millet's _Angelus_, and a rude
etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the glass broken.
A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing
piece of a shell dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its
pendulum gone and the glass broken.
Bill, naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his coffee, (p. 072)
and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl, he
undertook the matter himself.
"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no
milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be
amused.
"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like
French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound)
it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno,
that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n
milk."
"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like
that."
"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be
nice if I got one."
"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for
queer things if she did."
"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey,
that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a shell exploded overhead,
and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her
head for a moment and crossed herself, then she continued her (p. 073)
work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the
shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill forthwith
relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When we got
out to our work again he spoke.
"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with
her."
"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.
"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a
woman with blunt finger nails."
"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.
"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my
ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a space for
wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch
them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The
toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps.
Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She
becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she
becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They could not (p. 074)
fashion you in Eden! When I think of a woman washing herself! Ugh!
Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled
beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"
"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a fag end from the bottom of
the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen
maggots!"
It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk
with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.
"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting
poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior
slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and
some so bad that I almost ran away from them."
For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side
keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to
open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in
your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is
suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English
communication trenches are narrow--so narrow, indeed, that a man with
a pack often gets held, and sticks there until his comrades pull (p. 075)
him clear.
The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for
the passage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there,
packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his
mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the
risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks,
bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the
reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp
earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the
mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking
back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move
backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the
active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression and despair.
The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help
him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen
grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet
that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole
pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, and wait. When an (p. 076)
attack is on the communication trenches are persistently shelled by
the enemy with a view to stop the advance of reinforcements. Once our
company lay in a trench as reserves for fourteen hours, and during
that time upwards of two thousand shells were hurled in our direction,
our trench being half filled with rubble and clay. Two mates, one on
my right and one on my left, were wounded. I did not receive a
scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours during the cannonade;
but this is another story.
Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches,
ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to
the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality.
Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one
point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is
under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all
rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to
court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a
little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be
covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the
sniper plies his trade. He hides somewhere in the slack, and pots (p. 077)
at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range
of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a
warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop
low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger zone is
past.
Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift
shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly
singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however,
who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his
telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of
my cigarettes told me the story.
"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows
that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five
hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's
a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of
pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and
my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me,
but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'll not lave this place (p. 078)
till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was there
prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the sniper.
I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he didn't bury
his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole of hell when
an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his sandbagged castle,
with me gun on the cock and me finger on the trigger, but he wasn't
there; there was nothin' in the place but a few rounds of ball an' a
half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I had a sup without
winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down the bottle, 'its
little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a bottle with nothin'
in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and I lay down in the
corner and waited for him to come in.
"But sorrow the fut of him came, and me waiting there till the colour
of day was in the sky. Then I goes back to me own place, and there was
he waiting for me. He only made one mistake, he had fallen to sleep,
and he just sprung up as I came in be the door.
"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and
he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves
and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked (p. 079)
him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye
have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a
Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with nothin' bar
the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye know, I had a
kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in to my house
without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as if he was in
his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said, 'This is only
a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for ye, so come
along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to our trenches
as stand-to was coming to an end."
Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where
the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the
grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives
one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with
daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of
colour--crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some
weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080)
lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught
in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows
across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and
perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and
decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of
the tragedy between the trenches.
There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the
spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, moulders in (p. 081)
ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray
nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they
often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the
banquette.
"The fire trench to-night," said Stoner that evening, a nervous light
in his soft brown eyes, as he fumbled with the money on the card
table. His luck had been good, and he had won over six francs; he
generally loses. "Perhaps we're in for the high jump when we get up
there."
"The high jump?" I queried, "what's that?"
"A bayonet charge," he replied, dealing a final hand and inviting us
to double the stakes as the deal was the last. A few wanted to play
for another quarter of an hour, but he would not prolong the game.
Turning up an ace he shoved the money in his pocket and rose to his
feet.
In an hour we were ready to move. We carried much weight in addition
to our ordinary load, firewood, cooking utensils, and extra loaves. We
bought the latter at a neighbouring _boulangerie_, one that still
plied its usual trade in dangerous proximity to the firing-line.
The loaves cost 6-1/2_d._ each, and we prefer them to the English (p. 082)
bread which we get now and again, and place them far above the
tooth-destroying army biscuits. Fires were permitted in the trenches,
we were told, and our officers advised us to carry our own wood with
us. So it came about that the enemy's firing served as a useful
purpose; we pulled down the shrapnel shattered rafters of our billets,
broke them up into splinters with our entrenching tools, and tied them
up into handy portable bundles which we tied on our packs.
At midnight we entered Harley Street, and squeezed our way through the
narrow trench. The distance to the firing-line was a long one;
traverse and turning, turning and traverse, we thought we should never
come to the end of them. There was no shelling, but the questing
bullet was busy, it sung over our heads or snapped at the sandbags on
the parapet, ever busy on the errand of death and keen on its mission.
But deep down in the trench we regarded it with indifference. Our way
was one of safety. Here the bullet was foiled, and pick and shovel
reigned masters in the zone of death.
We were relieving the Scots Guards (many of my Irish friends (p. 083)
belong to this regiment). Awaiting our coming, they stood in the full
marching order of the regulations, packs light, forks and spoons in
their putties, and all little luxuries which we still dared to carry
flung away. They had been holding the place for seven days, and were
now going back somewhere for a rest.
"Is this the firing-line?" asked Stoner.
"Yes, sonny," came the answer in a voice which seemed to be full of
weariness.
"Quiet here?" Mervin enquired, a note of awe in his voice.
"Naethin' doin'," said a fresh voice that reminded me forcibly of
Glasgow and the Cowcaddens. "It's a gey soft job here."
"No casualties?"
"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and
they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."
In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of
it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the
humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that
sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.
"Irish?" I asked. (p. 084)
"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha
regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"
"I am," I answered.
"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody
said. "Are ye dry?"
I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is
there something to drink?" I queried.
"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied.
"Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"
A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea.
The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.
"It's the Saxons that's across the road," he said, pointing to the
enemy's lines which were very silent. I had not heard a bullet whistle
over since I entered the trench. On the left was an interesting rifle
and machine gun fire all the time. "They're quiet fellows, the Saxons,
they don't want to fight any more than we do, so there's a kind of
understanding between us. Don't fire at us and we'll not fire at you.
There's a good dug-out there," he continued, pointing to a dark (p. 085)
hole in the parados (the rear wall of the trench), "and ye'll find a
pot of jam and half a loaf in the corner. There's also a water jar
half full."
"Where do you get water?"
"Nearly a mile away the pump is," he answered. "Ye've to cross the
fields to get it."
"A safe road?" asked Stoner.
"Not so bad, ye know," was the answer.
"This place smells 'orrid," muttered Bill, lighting a cigarette and
flinging on his pack. "What is it?"
"Some poor devils between the trenches; they've been lyin' there since
last Christmas."
"Blimey, what a stink," muttered Bill, "Why don't ye bury them up?"
"Because nobody dare go out there, me boy," was the answer. "Anyway,
it's Germans they are. They made a charge and didn't get as far as
here. They went out of step so to speak."
"Woo-oo-oo!" Bill suddenly yelled and kicked a tin pail on to the floor
of the trench. A shower of sparks flew up into the air and fluttered
over the rim of the parapet. "I put my 'and on it, 'twas like a (p. 086)
red 'ot poker, it burned me to the bone!"
"It's the brazier ye were foolin' about with," said Mike, who was
buckling his pack-straps preparatory to moving, "See, and don't put
yer head over the top, and don't light a fire at night. Ye can put up
as much flare as you like by day. Good-bye, boys, and good luck t'ye."
"Any Donegal men in the battalion?" I called after him as he was
moving off.
"None that I know of," he shouted back, "but there are two other
battalions that are not here, maybe there are Donegal men there. Good
luck, boys, good luck!"
We were alone and lonely, nearly every man of us. For myself I felt
isolated from the whole world, alone in front of the little line of
sand bags with my rifle in my hand. Who were we? Why were we there?
Goliath, the junior clerk, who loved Tennyson; Pryor, the draughtsman,
who doted on Omar; Kore, who read Fanny Eden's penny stories, and
never disclosed his profession; Mervin, the traveller, educated for
the Church but schooled in romance; Stoner, the clerk, who reads my
books and says he never read better; and Bill, newsboy, street-arab,
and Lord knows what, who reads _The Police News_, plays (p. 087)
innumerable tricks with cards, and gambles and never wins. Why were we
here holding a line of trench, and ready to take a life or give one as
occasion required? Who shall give an answer to the question?
CHAPTER VII (p. 088)
BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH
At night the stars are shining bright,
The old-world voice is whispering near,
We've heard it when the moon was light,
And London's streets were verydear;
But dearer now they are, sweetheart,
The 'buses running to the Strand,
But we're so far, so far apart,
Each lonely in a different land.
The night was murky and the air was splashed with rain. Following the
line of trench I could dimly discern the figures of my mates pulling
off their packs and fixing their bayonets. These glittered brightly as
the dying fires from the trench braziers caught them, and the long
array of polished blades shone into their place along the dark brown
sandbags. Looking over the parados I could see the country in rear,
dim in the hazy night. A white, nebulous fog lay on the ground and
enveloped the lone trees that stood up behind. Here and there I could
discern houses where no light shone, and where no people dwelt. All
the inhabitants were gone, and in the village away to the right (p. 089)
there was absolute silence, the stillness of the desert. To my mind
came words I once read or heard spoken, "The conqueror turns the
country into a desert, and calls it peace."
I clamped my bayonet into its standard and rested the cold steel on
the parapet, the point showing over; and standing up I looked across
to the enemy's ground.
"They're about three hundred yards away," somebody whispered taking
his place at my side. "I think I can see their trenches."
An indistinct line which might have been a parapet of sandbags, became
visible as I stared through the darkness; it looked very near, and my
heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped
upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped
under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright
flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space
between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all
its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see
the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished;
further back was a ruined cottage, the bare beams and rafters giving
it the appearance of a skeleton. A year ago a humble farmer might (p. 090)
have lived there; his children perhaps played where dead were lying. I
could see the German trench, the row of sandbags, the country to rear,
a ruined village on a hill, the flashes of rifles on the left ... the
flare died out in mid-air and darkness cloaked the whole scene again.
"What do you think of it, Stoner?" I asked the figure by my side.
"My God, it's great," he answered. "To think that they're over there,
and the poor fellows lying out on the field!"
"They're their own bloomin' tombstones, anyway," said Bill, cropping
up from somewhere.
"I feel sorry for the poor beggars," I said.
"They'll feel sorry for themselves, the beggars," said Bill.
"There, what's that?"
It crept up like a long white arm from behind the German lines, and
felt nervously at the clouds as if with a hand. Moving slowly from
North to South it touched all the sky, seeking for something. Suddenly
it flashed upon us, almost dazzling our eyes. In a flash Bill was upon
the banquette.
"Nark the doin's, nark it," he cried and fired his rifle. The (p. 091)
report died away in a hundred echoes as he slipped the empty cartridge
from its breech.
"That's one for them," he muttered.
"What did you fire at?" I asked.
"The blasted searchlight," he replied, rubbing his little potato of a
nose. "That's one for 'em, another shot nearer the end of the war!"
"Did you hit it?" asked our corporal.
"I must 'ave 'it it, I fired straight at it."
"Splendid, splendid," said the corporal. "Its only about three miles
away though."
"Oh, blimey!..."
Sentries were posted for the night, one hour on and two off for each
man until dawn. I was sentry for the first hour. I had to keep a sharp
look out if an enemy's working party showed itself when the rockets
went up. I was to fire at it and kill as many men as possible. One
thinks of things on sentry-go.
"How can I reconcile myself to this," I asked, shifting my rifle to
get nearer the parapet. "Who are those men behind the line of sandbags
that I should want to kill them, to disembowel them with my sword,
blow their faces to pieces at three hundred yards, bomb them into (p. 092)
eternity at a word of command. Who am I that I should do it; what have
they done to me to incur my wrath? I am not angry with them; I know
little of the race; they are utter strangers to me; what am I to
think, why should I think?
"Bill," I called to the Cockney, who came by whistling, "what are you
doing?"
"I'm havin' a bit of rooty (food) 'fore goin' to kip (sleep)."
"Hungry?
"'Ungry as an 'awk," he answered. "Give me a shake when your turn's
up; I'm sentry after you."
There was a pause.
"Bill!"
"Pat?"
"Do you believe in God?"
"Well, I do and I don't," was the answer.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't 'old with the Christian business," he replied, "but I believe
in God."
"Do you think that God can allow men to go killing one another like
this?"
"Maybe 'E can't help it."
"And the war started because it had to be?
"It just came--like a war-baby." (p. 093)
Another pause.
"Yer write songs, don't yer?" Bill suddenly asked.
"Sometimes."
"Would yer write me one, just a little one?" he continued. "There was
a bird (girl) where I used to be billeted at St. Albans, and I would
like to send 'er a bit of poetry."
"You've fallen in love?" I ventured.
"No, not so bad as that--"
"You've not fallen in love."
"Well its like this," said my mate, "I used to be in 'er 'ouse and she
made 'ome-made torfee."
"Made it well?"
"Blimey, yes; 'twas some stuff, and I used to get 'eaps of it. She
used to slide down the banisters, too. Yer should 'ave seen it, Pat.
It almost made me write poetry myself."
"I'll try and do something for you," I said. "Have you been in the
dug-out yet?"
"Yes, it's not such a bad place, but there's seven of us in it," said
Bill, "it's 'ot as 'ell. But we wouldn't be so bad if Z---- was out of
it. I don't like the feller."
"Why?" I asked, Z---- was one of our thirteen, but he couldn't (p. 094)
pull with us. For some reason or other we did not like him.
"Oh, I don't like 'im, that's all," was the answer. "Z---- tries to
get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when
your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He
clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without
another word he vanished into the dug-out.
On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in
civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the
whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique
live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between
them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a
new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish
cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another,
stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language.
Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer
says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men
and babies.
"Stand-to!" (p. 095)
I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my
head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a
pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.
"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and
stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over
another prostrate form.
"Stand-to! Stand-to!"
We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette,
each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and
entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our
equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the
bayonets are always fixed.
"Where's Z----?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.
"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."
"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it
lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.
The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."
Z---- stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out. (p. 096)
"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.
"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get
on with the work."
In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive
the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits
for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we
stood for half a day.
The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in
intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The
last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air
for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the
trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and
shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and
there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it
were, on the grass.
"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said
Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."
The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked
enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097)
fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes,
a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth
again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the
German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on
the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing
again.
"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the
Cockney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."
"An if I do!"
"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.
"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.
"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his
rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at,
but don't waste ammunition."
The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened
on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by
each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every
sixth man was posted as sentry.
Stoner, diligent worker that he is, set about preparing breakfast (p. 098)
when stand-to was over. In an open space at the rear of the dug-out he
fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the regimental
issue of coke ablaze.
"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried
with me.
"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."
Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the
work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the
size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and
fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if
selecting a spot to rest on.
"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."
It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into
the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped
into Stoner's fire.
"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"
No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a
bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to us (p. 099)
from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some
of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed
Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often
spoken of in my little volume _The Amateur Army_, came face to face
with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in,
and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted
trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.
"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.
"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell.
"Run."
A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the
bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers
carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.
Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the
bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter
of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of
eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of
their food whenever that is possible.
In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which
are supplied to the trenches, and went out with the intention of (p. 100)
getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we
had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road
branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one;
added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow
trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the
parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp,
clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the
story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a
soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have
been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and
number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died
fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave.
Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the
man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of
kindly grass were now covering it up.
Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late
breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped
to the waist as they bent over their little mess-tins of soapy (p. 101)
water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep
in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The
row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders,
had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his
pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry
with him.
"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing
like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"
"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"
"Would one of us not carry it?"
"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"
"Why didn't ye give it to us?"
"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the
sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless
twisters!"
"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who,
stripped to the waist, was washing himself.
"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as
he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.
"Leave down that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who has (p. 102)
the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the soapsuds
from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive attitude, with clenched
fists before him, in true fighting manner.
"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost
things that way before, I'ave."
Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic
remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier
into silence.
A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay
on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms,
their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in
Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch,
his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was
fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position,
fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's
lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other
side.
"Firin' at beastly sandbags!" one of the men said to me, "Blimey, (p. 103)
that's no game. Yer 'ere and the sandbags is there, you never see
anything, and you've to fire at nothin'. They call this war. Strike me
ginger if it's like the pictures in _The Daily ----_; them papers is
great liars!"
"Do you want to kill men?" I asked.
"What am I here for?" was the rejoinder, "If I don't kill them they'll
kill me."
No trench is straight at any place; the straight line is done away
with in the makeup of a trench. The traverse, jutting out in a sharp
angle to the rear, gives way in turn to the fire position, curving
towards the enemy, and there is never more than twelve yards liable to
be covered by enfilade fire. The traverse is the home of spare
ammunition, of ball cartridge, bombs, and hand-grenades. These are
stored in depots dug into the wall of the trench. There are two things
which find a place anywhere and everywhere, the biscuit and the bully
beef. Tins of both are heaped in the trenches; sometimes they are used
for building dug-outs and filling revetements. Bully beef and biscuits
are seldom eaten; goodness knows why we are supplied with them.
We came into the territory of another battalion, and were met by (p. 104)
an officer.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For water, sir," said Pryor.
"Have you got permission from your captain?"
"No, sir."
"Then you cannot get by here without it. It's a Brigade order," said
the officer. "One of our men got shot through the head yesterday when
going for water."
"Killed, sir," I enquired.
"Killed on the spot," was the answer.
On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging
operation.
"Have you got the water already?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"How is that?"
"An officer of the ---- wouldn't let us go by without a written
permission."
"Why?"
"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naive reply. He wanted
to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took
out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on
his knee and the paper on his hat, and wrote us out the pass. (p. 105)
For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our
parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's
rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the
fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good
view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs
at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a
ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was
named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its
belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in
an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into
the open to bury it.
The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a
robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date.
Having filled our jars, Pryor and I made a tour of inspection of the
place.
In a green field to the rear we discovered a graveyard, fenced in
except at our end, where a newly open grave yawned up at us as if
aweary of waiting for its prey.
"Room for extension here," said Pryor. "I suppose they'll not (p. 106)
close in this until the graves reach the edge of the roadway. Let's
read the epitaphs."
How peaceful the place was. On the right I could see through a space
between the walls of the cottage the wide winding street of the
village, the houses, cornstacks, and the waving bushes, and my soul
felt strangely quieted. In its peace, in its cessation from labour,
there was neither anxiety nor sadness, there remained rest, placid and
sad. It seemed as if the houses, all intact at this particular spot,
held something sacred and restful, that with them and in them all was
good. They knew no evil or sorrow. There was peace, the desired
consummation of all things--peace brought about by war, the peace of
the desert, and death.
I looked at the first grave, its cross, and the rude lettering. This
was the epitaph; this and nothing more:--
"An Unknown British Soldier."
On a grave adjoining was a cheap gilt vase with flowers, English flowers,
faded and dying. I looked at the cross. One of the Coldstream Guards lay
there killed in action six weeks before. I turned up the black-edged
envelope on the vase, and read the badly spelt message, "From his (p. 107)
broken-hearted wife and loving little son Tommy."
We gazed at it for a moment in silence. Then Pryor spoke. "I think
we'll go back," he said, and there was a strained note in his voice;
it seemed as if he wanted to hide something.
On our way out to the road we stopped for a moment and gazed through
the shattered window of Dead Cow Cottage. The room into which we
looked was neatly furnished. A round table with a flower vase on it
stood on the floor, a number of chairs in their proper position were
near the wall, a clock and two photos, one of an elderly man with a
heavy beard, the other of a frail, delicate woman, were on the
mantlepiece. The pendulum of the clock hung idle; it must have
ceased going for quite a long time. As if to heighten a picture of
absolute comfort a cat sat on the floor washing itself.
"Where will the people be?" I asked.
"I don't know," answered Pryor. "Those chairs will be useful in our
dug-out. Shall we take them?"
We took one apiece, and with chair on our head and jar in hand we (p. 108)
walked towards the trenches. The sun was out, and it was now very hot.
We sweated. My face became like a wet sponge squeezed in the hand;
Pryor's face was very red.
"We'll have a rest," he said, and laying down the jar he placed his
chair in the road and sat on it. I did the same.
"You know Omar?" he asked.
"In my calf-age I doated on him," I answered.
"What's the calf-age?"
"The sentimental period that most young fellows go through," I said.
"They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise
everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the
universe one day. They prefer vegetable food to pork, and read Omar."
"Have you come through the calf-age?"
"Years ago! You'll come through, too, Pryor--"
A bullet struck the leg of my chair and carried away a splinter of
wood. I got to my feet hurriedly. "Those trenches seem quite a
distance away," I said, hoisting my chair and gripping the jar as I
moved off, "and we'll be safer when we're there."
All the way along we were sniped at, but we managed to get back (p. 109)
safely. Finding that our supply of coke ran out we used the chairs for
firewood.
CHAPTER VIII (p. 110)
TERRORS OF THE NIGHT
Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,
When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.
They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:
For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.
"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said
Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the
periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like
shells--especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a
mile away."
"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.
"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is
always on the go."
"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was
cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111)
when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of
me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me
to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench
and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was
looking at me, I could see its eyes--"
"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you
lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at
me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back
round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas
some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
part I am more afraid of ----"
"What?"
"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of (p. 112)
death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet,
and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am
more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about
one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning
over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp,
penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep
as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the
grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing,
agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit
below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It
thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it
before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know
what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the
yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's
head.
When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench
of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113)
day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I
awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The
place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered
down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by
concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a
groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was
being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile
cries that slowly died away into silence.
Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114)
somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the
others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
pray every time I go up."
"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
(nice)."
"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it
wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a
bad locality."
He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag,
and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115)
into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed
a look of pity on Pryor.
"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I
asked.
"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men
as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain
comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke
snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're
goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin'
you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work
for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ----"
Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not
for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the
cushiest in the world."
CHAPTER IX (p. 116)
THE DUG-OUT BANQUET
You ask me if the trench is safe?
As safe as home, I say;
Dug-outs are safest things on land,
And 'buses running to the Strand
Are not as safe as they.
You ask me if the trench is deep?
Quite deep enough for me,
And men can walk where fools would creep,
And men can eat and write and sleep
And hale and happy be.
The dug-out is the trench villa, the soldiers' home, and is considered
to be proof against shrapnel bullets and rifle fire. Personally, I do
not think much of our dug-outs, they are jerry-built things, loose in
construction, and fashioned in haste. We have kept on improving them,
remedying old defects, when we should have taken the whole thing to
pieces and started afresh. The French excel us in fashioning dug-outs;
they dig out, we build. They begin to burrow from the trench downwards,
and the roof of their shelter is on a line with the floor of the
trench; thus they have a cover over them seven or eight feet in (p. 117)
thickness; a mass of earth which the heaviest shell can hardly pierce
through. We have been told that the German trenches are even more
secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion shell to
burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose most of
its burrowing power. One of our heaviest shells struck an enemy's
dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of the
residents were merely scratched. The place was packed at the time.
As I write I am sitting in a dug-out built in the open by the French.
It is a log construction, built of pit-props from a neighbouring
coal-mine. Short blocks of wood laid criss-cross form walls four feet
in thickness; the roof is quite as thick, and the logs are much
longer. Yesterday morning, while we were still asleep, a four-inch
shell landed on the top, displaced several logs, but did us no harm.
The same shell (pipsqueaks we call them) striking the roof of one of
our trench dug-outs would blow us all to atoms.
The dug-out is not peculiar to the trench. For miles back from the
firing-line the country is a world of dug-outs; they are everywhere,
by the roadsides, the canals, and farmhouses, in the fields, the (p. 118)
streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A fortnight
ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and the enemy
began to shell the place about midnight. Bootless, half-naked, and
half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was a regular Black
Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt of queer things,
and there were six soldiers, the man of the house, his wife, and seven
children, one a sucking babe two months old, cooped up in the place.
I did not like the place--in fact, I seldom like any dug-out, it
reminds me of the grave, the covering earth, and worms, and always
there is a feeling of suffocation. But I have enjoyed my stay in one
or two. There was a delightful little one, made for a single soldier,
in which I stayed. At night when off sentry, and when I did not feel
like sleeping, I read. Over my head I cut a niche in the mud, placed
my candle there, pulled down over the door my curtain, a real good
curtain, taken from some neighbouring chateau, spent a few moments
watching the play of light and shadows on the roof, and listening to
the sound of guns outside, then lit a cigarette and read. Old (p. 119)
Montaigne in a dug-out is a true friend and a fine companion. Across
the ages we held conversation as we have often done. Time and again I
have read his books; there was a time when for a whole year I read a
chapter nightly: in a Glasgow doss-house, in a king's castle, in my
Irish home, and now in Montaigne's own country, in a little earthy
dug-out, I made the acquaintance of the man again. The dawn broke to
the clatter of bayonets on the fire position when I put the book aside
and buckled my equipment for the stand-to hour.
The French trench dug-outs are not leaky, ours generally are, and the
slightest shower sometimes finds its way inside. I have often awakened
during the night to find myself soaked through on a floor covered with
slush. When the weather is hot we sleep outside. In some cases the
dug-out is handsomely furnished with real beds, tables, chairs, mirrors,
and candlesticks of burnished brass. Often there are stoves built into
the clayey wall and used for cooking purposes. In "The Savoy" dug-out,
which was furnished after this fashion, Section 3 once sat down to a
memorable dinner which took a whole day long to prepare; and eatables
and wine were procured at great risk to life. Incidentally, Bill, (p. 120)
who went out of the trenches and walked four kilometres to procure a
bottle of _vin rouge_ was rewarded by seven days' second field
punishment for his pains.
Mervin originated the idea in the early morning as he was dressing a
finger which he had cut when opening a tin of bully beef. He held up
the bleeding digit and gazed at it with serious eyes.
"All for this tin of muck!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we have a good
square meal. I think we could get up one if we set to work."
Stoner's brown eyes sparkled eagerly.
"I know where there are potatoes and carrots and onions," he said.
"Out in a field behind Dead Cow Villa; I'm off; coming Pat?"
"Certainly, what are the others doing, Bill?"
"We must have fizz," said my friend, and money was forthwith collected
for wine. Bill hurried away, his bandolier round his shoulder and his
rifle at the slope; and Mervin undertook to set the place in order and
arrange the dug-out for the banquet. Goliath dragged his massive weight
over the parados and busied himself pulling flowers. Kore cleaned (p. 121)
the mess-tins, and Pryor, artistic even in matters of food, set about
preparing a menu-card.
When we returned from a search which was very successful, Stoner
divested himself of tunic and hat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
got on with the cooking. I took his turn at sentry-go, and Z----,
sleeping on the banquette, roused his stout body, became interested
for a moment, and fell asleep again. Bill returned with a bottle of
wine and seven eggs.
"Where did you get them?" I asked.
"'Twas the 'en as 'ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so
much about it that I couldn't stand it, so I took the egg, and it
looked so lonely all by itself in my 'and that I took the others to
keep it company."
At six o'clock we sat down to dine.
Our brightly burnished mess-tin lids were laid on the table, a neatly
folded khaki handkerchief in front of each for serviette. Clean towels
served for tablecloths, flowers--tiger-lilies, snapdragons, pinks,
poppies, roses, and cornflowers rioted in colour over the rim of a
looted vase. In solitary state a bottle of wine stood beside the flowers,
and a box of cigars, the gift of a girl friend, with the lid open (p. 122)
disclosed the dusky beauties within. The menu, Pryor's masterpiece,
stood on a wire stand, the work of Mervin.
Goliath seated at the table, was smiles all over, in fact, he was one
massive good humoured smile, geniality personified.
"Anything fresh from the seat of war?" he asked, as he waited for the
soup.
"According to the latest reports," Pryor answered, "we've gained an
inch in the Dardanelles and captured three trenches in Flanders. We
were forced to evacuate two of these afterwards."
"We miscalculated the enemy's strength, of course," said Mervin.
"That's it," Pryor cut in. "But the trenches we lost were of no
strategic importance."
"They never are," said Kore. "I suppose that's why we lose thousands
to take 'em, and the enemy lose as many to regain them."
"Soup, gentlemen," Stoner interrupted, bringing a steaming tureen to
the table. "Help yourselves."
"Mulligatawny?" said Pryor sipping the stuff which he had emptied into
his mess-tin, "I don't like this."
[Illustration: Menu of the dug-out banquet] (p. 123)
"Wot," muttered Bill, "wot's wrong with it?" (p. 124)
"As soup its above reproach, but the name," said Pryor. "It's beastly."
"Wot's wrong with it?"
"Everything," said the artistic youth, "and besides I was fed as a
child on mulligatawny, fed on it until I grew up and revolted. To meet
it again here in a dug-out. Oh! ye gods!"
"I'll take it," I said, for I had already finished mine.
"Will you?" exclaimed Pryor, employing his spoon with Gargantuan zeal.
"It's not quite etiquette."
As he spoke a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of
condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went
right through and the milk oozed out and fell on the table.
"Waiter," said Goliath in a sharp voice, fixing one eye on the cook,
and another on the falling milk.
"Sir," answered Stoner, raising his head from his mess-tin.
"What beastly stuff is this trickling down? You shouldn't allow this
you know."
"I'm sorry," said Stoner, "you'd better lick it up."
"'Ad 'e," cried Bill. "Wot will we do for tea?" The Cockney held (p. 125)
a spare mess