A BATH
Temperature 100,000°! And I am lying on a bed in a wee cottage, very, very dusty and dirty. Hale, however, is going to bring some water from the pump, and, oh Jerusalem, won't it be heavenly—a bath! All these things off, and lovely clean things on, and lovely coffee to drink when that's done. I wouldn't change the prospects of the next half-hour for all the pearls and peacocks of Araby—no, not if you offered me the Peace of Europe! Europe be blowed! I want my bath.
You see, it's like this: The corps H.Q. moved to a different area some days ago, preceded by us. Everything in the area left in an utterly unorganized, uncatalogued condition. We have to tear round and find out where the various divisions can go.
And we havegotto find room for more divisions than have ever occupied this area before. Useless to come back and report that such and such villages have no water for men or horses. The water has got to be found. Dig for it. Organize fatigue-parties and dig. Dam up little trickles by the roadside until quite large ponds are formed. Get the engineers and pioneers on to it. Labour battalions—anything. So I've been riding madly about, and I'm like a treacle pudding in a sand-storm.
The bath! Hale, you are a most excellent fellow. That'll do splendidly. Have you got my towel?...Interval.... And now, dear friends, it is another man that you see before you. A man who has had a bath. A man less like a bit of oily motor-waste, and more like Sir George Alexander. This delicious coffee, too! A bowl of it, made by Mme. Whatever-her-name-is. I take it up in both hands and quaff it. Here's to You and to Home, and to Everybody—and (just to show there's no ill feeling) here's to the poor old Boche!
July 29.
In the same cottage.
It's very hot. Ammunition lorries go by in an endless string, making the deuce of a dust. But we are far away from guns and gun food and noise. I got leave to go up to —— yesterday.
I do dislike noise so, don't you? The noise of a battery in action is diabolical, and the very thought of it makes me shiver. There go the senseless lorries, all packed with music for a more hellish orchestra than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and tear your ears out of their sockets. Can you understand a noise that hits you? Hits unbearably, and then again. Crashes on to you. Bangs your bones out of your skin, till you feel dazed and sick.
Still the lorries go by.
FRICOURT CEMETERYThe moon and some signal lights overFricourt.La Boisellejust over the hill. French crosses all bent and twisted. The little chapel still standing.
August 3.
GUNS AT FRICOURT
I hear the General doesn't like Swallow, so there's a good chance of his returning. When you get angry with Swallow, he loses control of his legs altogether, and they all fly about in every direction. He is quite like Rinaldo in character,—not so perpetually fidgety, but as nervous, and more easily frightened. Jezebel is showing her worth now like a Trojan. She knows she has to make up for the loss of Swallow (whom I think she rather misses). She is behaving splendidly. She is blatantly well, and obeys all orders like clockwork; never tired; always hungry—a model. The other mare, Moonlight, a dark brown, seems to be somehow exhausted. I think she has had a very hard time of it, and has been wounded in the foot. Her foot is all right now, but she seems to have no life left in her. The war has utterly beaten her. Hunt is grazing and grooming and petting her all day. So she may pick up. At present she is somehow rather pathetic. She was with the Indian cavalry before she got wounded. And then she went to a veterinary hospital. She is well made, and may possibly brighten up. Hunt declares that she has "lost all her courage." I'm glad I'm not a horse.
August 5.
This is such an amazing country and in such an amazing condition. I could collect a Harrod's Stores in a day—interesting and useful things, too. But it's impossible to carry things about. One daren't overload the horses, and one daren't overload the transport. Both are so heavy laden, as it is.
The signal job is quite interesting, really, and the Colonel gives me an absolutely free hand.
Jezebel and Co. are driven distracted by the horse-flies. I took Jezebel into a stream to-day, but she started to sit down! So the flies must just bite, I fear. Large grey brutes.
Hunt made me laugh so last night. I was looking round the horses with Edward. They were waiting to be fed with their evening hay. To my surprise and pleasure, Moonlight suddenly neighed. "Evidently getting her appetite back," I remarked. "Oh yes, sir," says Hunt; "several times I've caught herhollerin'for her meals lately!" Isn't that a lovely expression?
JEZEBEL IN ONE OF HER MOODS
Hunt is such a good chap. He thinks nothing of "abroad," but a lot of the "'osses," as he calls them. I found him what seemed to me a very nice loft to sleep in when we got here. But no: "I'd rather sleep with my 'osses, sir, thank you." And he sleeps practically under their noses. "You see, sir, the mare might get one of her moods on."
He is getting very fond of Jezebel now, and whenever she errs, he attributes the error to one of her moods.
She tore her nosebag to pieces the other day; whether because she was hungry and it was empty, or because it amused her, or because she was being bitten by a fly, I don't know. No one seems to have seen her do it. "One of her moods," says Hunt; and that's all there is to be said about the incident.
My dear, this country is most enchanting. Far away from nasty noises, full of unexpected wooded valleys and willowy streams.
All the little shrines are, as usual, surrounded by half-clipped trees.
And the wild-flowers. Clear pale blue succory is the most charming of all, and I am going to send you some plants as soon as they have ceased flowering.
August 6.
You can't think how difficult it is to take any interest in military matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps out one evening to sketch?
August 8.
Do you know, it's unintelligent, but I do so enjoy being here away from the fevers of war. War is getting tedious, and the summer is all too short.
Swallow is coming back. Isn't it splendid! The General finds him too irritating and tiresome. Jezebel will be glad, for she doesn't like the ghost-horse Moonlight, and she never really disliked Swallow. I can't say she liked him, because she likes no one, dear lamb. But she used to look on Swallow with rather less suspicion, somehow. And Swallow has a habit of licking that she approves of. I have often seen her snap at him even while he is licking her; but he always continues after a moment. I think it soothes her when the flies are tiresome.
This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn. It's quite an unusually charming bit of the country.
August 11.
DOMART
Jezebel did such an astonishing thing yesterday. I was out with the signallers practising. We didn't want the bother of holding or picketing the horses. So I ordered "off-saddle," and then put a guard over the disused quarry where I had decided to leave them. The quarry had a grassy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7 foot high. Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined to leave her with the other horses. They were stripped of all bridles and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.
Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.
Presently shouts from the guard. I went back to see what was the matter. My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!
She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had slipped back. When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had happened. Ah, but wait. This is not all.
Later on in the morning another hooroosh. A loud squealing and sounds of kicking. One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly. That well-known voice. I should recognize her squeal anywhere. As I was going towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished. "What the devil...." And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill like mad! It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and shouted with laughter.
My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose horse.
Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight into a corps H.Q. village. This village is crawling with Generals!
Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck, for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else, seems to have got wind of the incident. Subalterns, yes, and I am sumptuously ragged about it. But how all the Generals and things happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don't know. Andstillthis is not the cream of the comedy.
After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry with Corporal Dutton. My dear,There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a cucumber!
She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.
ANOTHER MOVE NORTHWARDS
The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion. The other horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose, something—a fly, perhaps—had frightened them, and off they had galloped. While "the accursed female," as we sometimes call Jezebel, too sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding. I shall never be taken in by her air of innocence again. Never. I don't a bit mind saying I was decidedly alarmed. That mare might have been responsible for the death of the Corps Commander.
O Jezebel, I wish I could get angry with you and give you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses make when they sigh.
August 15.
On the move. This is our first day's trek, and we are at a place where we have been before—but not the same billets. I am in a cottage with an earth floor (which looks very odd with a hideous drab-coloured wall-paper), and small children and hens, both dirty, wander in and out of my room. It's too hot to keep the door latched. A swallow's nest in the room next door; and the people say that, although the young have flown, they still return at night.
August 19.
The Adjutant is away, and won't be returning for some time; so I am still acting. And this, together with signal work, etc., is somewhat arduous. I live all day in the "office," a very small bivouac in a green field. There I sit praying for inspiration, when letters come in markedUrgent, beginning something like this:
"LP/3657042—G1."Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for completion and immediate return."
"LP/3657042—G1.
"Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for completion and immediate return."
And I haven't the least idea what I said in my memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, and I can't find any record of it. And I can't for the life of me make out how I am meant to fill in A.F. 361B, because I haven't the least idea what it's all about.
August 26.
BEHIND KEMMEL
Impossible to write yesterday, and only a brief scrawl to-day.
The regiment is being scattered over the face of the earth—an O.P. here, an O.P. there; a digging-party here, a draining-party there, etc., etc., etc.; not to mention a few on duty as military policepro tem., others guarding bomb shelters, others reconnoitring new areas for new divisions, etc. Dennis is very badly wounded. He can't be moved yet. Some bits of shell went into his thigh, up his back, and it's not certain yet whether it entered his lungs or not. They are afraid so. He was on his tummy at an O.P. A crump got him. Dear old Dennis! I hope he'll pull round. Also Clive is very seriously wounded, I fear. Damn!
August 27.
I am Acting Adjutant now. An Adjutant's job is a most hairy job, and I sit with drops of perspiration dripping off my brow all day. Never see the horses, never get any exercise except for a moment or two.
August 29.
We are probably going to move again soon, and consequently the amount of correspondence is vast. Clive is better, I think. Dennis about the same. I suppose a thing can go into your lung and not kill you?
September 2.
The Colonel seemed (from a telegram he sent yesterday morning) to be in a great hurry for me to come down to the other squadron. So I decided to go by train, and send Hunt with the horses. And this is the train journey.
The station at —— quite recovered and tidy after a feeble strafing the other day. Even two or three civilians travelling. Not many of the military—a hundred or so, perhaps, all waiting and smoking idly, each armed with his "Movement Order." The dull boom of guns not excessive, though there's a frequent "plom! plom! plom!" of the Archies, and the sky is dotted with clusters of pretty little shrapnel clouds. Sometimes the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue. It makes you feel slightly homesick. I don't quite know why. That sort of thing isn't done at home.
THROUGH HAZEBROUCK
In comes the train. The French station officials all in a paroxysm of excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to run over. Up we clamber. Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth, and retires to a "third," while I feel a beast lounging in this luxurious "first." Off we go, and I look out at all the familiar country.
There's one of those quaint French notices in the carriage:
Taisez-vous!Méfiez-vous!Les oreilles ennemies vous écoutent!
All too necessary, they tell me.
Later.—It is getting dark. We stop at a large town that I know well. Two hours to wait. I turn in to a Follies show. There is usually one going on, run by this or that division, all soldiers, but looking very odd in their paint and ruffles. But what a curious concert. The first I've seen out here. The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep. You know? However, they love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.
Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey, who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain. Delightful talking over old times.
Later.—Into the train again. On the platform beforehand I meet a gunner subaltern. We talk. He's very well read, and interested in lots of the things I love so much. We discuss the war. He knows a lot of the billets I know. Evidently we have nearly met out here often before. What is that book he is reading? Richard Jefferies? From Jefferies to Maeterlinck. What has become of him? War so foreign to that mystic mind. Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it still exists at all. We talk for about two hours. Then he gets out at ——. I don't know what his name is, and very likely I won't ever meet him again. But out here one makes friends quickly. There are so many of us all in the same boat. And one hardly expects ever to meet again. Then (alone in the carriage) I doze. The electric light in full blaze, and no curtains are down. Stations rather like bad dreams. Soldiers everywhere. A great clanking of horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely. That, combined with all the shouting and clatter of trollies, etc., rather racking in the small hours. At 5 a.m. we arrive at ——, where we all change.
Later.—No one allowed outside the station except officers and sergeants. But, dash it all, I can't leave Hale here the whole day. Our train leaves at 8.36 to-night. The R.T.O. will be here at 7 a.m. Let's see what we can work. Meanwhile (5.30) the platformless station is full of men, who have just dumped themselves and their kits down where they stood. They haven't finished sleeping. It looks like a battle-field. They lie in every attitude, officers among them. Hale is eating from his bully-beef tin in silence. A few men stand round a Y.M.C.A. stall drinking coffee or eating chocolate, cake, and stuff.
ABBEVILLE
Later.—I got Hale out, and took him to see the cathedral. He said he thought it must have cost a lot of money. Not a bad criticism, either. Then I let him go his own way, and now it's 1.45 p.m. Had a charming lunch—two œufs à la coque, thé, and croissants. Now I'm sitting by the side of the river—very peaceful. There's a white goat on the other bank, and its reflection is dancing gently all the time.
Several French widows are talking together near the goat, their black veils hanging funereally; and there's a small boy with socks and a bowler hat, all black, too. Poor dears!
Good heavens alive! there's George! He has just flashed by in a car, red cap and all. If only there had been time to hail him! Now for a sleep till it's time for tea.
September 5.
This is a part of the line I don't know at all, a most exciting area. I have been up several times into what is by the way of being our front line, but the whole thing is so chaotic that often the Huns come into our trenches and we go into theirs quite by mistake.
I have several times gone right across the open, within full view of Fritz (whom I could see), at a distance of 600 yards. I think they must all be very confused, also, as there is very little rifle fire and very little organized sniping. Nothing but shelling, with the result that for miles and miles there's just tumbled earth.
The famous woods you read about are mere scratchy little collections of a few tree-stumps splintered and wrecked beyond belief. Things lie scattered everywhere in aimless profusion. Muddy rifles, coats, boots, and every description of kit, both British and Hun. I have met lots of men I know, and everyone is very cheery and hopeful. Fritz is withdrawing his big guns—always a good sign. However, the myriads of prisoners nearly all look a sound type of man still. They are put to work a long way behind the line immediately, which is good.
September 7.
THE SOMME FRONT
We have been for some time right up in parts quite destitute of houses and villages and shops. All the remnants of villages here are ruins. And messing is consequently more difficult. So may I have a large-sized cake now and then?
The war isn't over yet, I fear. We live in the usual touch-and-go condition.
September 8.
Things hum. Troops like ants all over the ground. In tents, in bivvies, in the open, everywhere. And the eternal chain of motor lorries bringing up ammunition and supplies. These one sees all over France. But here they block half the roads. Well, yesterday morning I rode out alone with the Colonel and two orderlies. We went to some high ground from which you can see it all, dismounted, and sent the horses back. In front of us, in the valley, a wrecked town with the strangest thing on the still-standing tower. I hope to make a picture of it if ever I can get any time again.
Later in the day from one of our O.P.'s I began a sketch of the whole panorama of the battle. Desolate ragged country, torn with shell wounds; the poor scarecrow trees like arms stretched up to heaven for help. Fields that once were golden with corn now grey and scarred with white trenches that look like a network of pale worms lying where they died.
Now, from another O.P. I'm looking at the arid chaos below. Arid and lonely-looking, but not silent. A strafe is on. Seems to be getting louder and more continuous. We passed on our way here a great naval gun crashing out death to the burrowing Huns. Swallow doesn't like naval guns.
From flimsy net shelters flash the expensive guns, and the bombardment gathers strength, gathers volume, until you'd think something must burst—the world or the universe: either might split from end to end. The dust and smoke are gradually making everything invisible. Crumps come whistling and heaving up great clouds of heavy blackness. We look at our watches. Zero hour in five minutes. The aeroplanes buzzing aloft, and the sausages sitting among the low clouds, inert and so vulnerable-looking. Can there be anything left? Can a single soul live?
TRENCHES BETWEEN FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLEThey don't look much like trenches, because they were battered to pieces. A 'dump' on the near horizon was hit by a Boche shell. It blazed and crackled and smouldered all night, a drifting column of dull pink smoke.
September 9.
Surely we shall get through. Even in spite of the rain. The rain has made the country into a quagmire.
Reconnoitred the front trenches to-day with the Colonel, in a particular part where everything is at sixes and sevens, and no one quite knows what we haven't or have got. Most odd. Shells of all calibres bursting on every side—corpses, odours unspeakable.
DELVILLE WOOD
You see, things are expected to happen soon, and so I'm anxious to know all about it. This part of the line is terrific.
Where we are, and for miles and miles around, myriads of troops, cavalry, artillery, everything, all camped in the open—no concealment. Mud? Why, everyone is mud, up to the eyes, and so are the horses. This big movement has quite dislocated the ordinary trench warfare, and now all over the dreary uplands are trenches hurriedly dug by the Hun and then abandoned. Trenches that often barely shelter you above the knees. Chaos, chaos. Rifles lying to rust in the mud, duds everywhere, men sitting in dug-outs, not knowing what they are expected to do next. Others in mere scratched-out shelters or in actual shell holes. Sometimes they sing. Often they are asleep. Wreckage indescribable. Shrapnel cracking into black clouds close by. Enormous and magnificent H.E.'s hurling up black earth and red earth, and smoke that drifts slowly and solidly away to limbo. Poor dead men lying about, and dead horses, too. And in the trenches this limitless porridge of mud. Cr-r-r-ump! go the crumps searching out a battery. But oh the woods—the poor scarecrow woods. I was in a famous wood that looked positively devilish in its sinister nakedness. And it's September, too, when woods are so often at their loveliest. Not a leaf—not one single leaf; and, instead of undergrowth, just tossed earth, fuses, a boot, a coat, some wire, and above-ground dead men. Below-ground (or as far below as they can get in the time) live men.
The Boche dug-outs are marvellous. They are really works of art. So solidly, even beautifully built. I went into one that had wooden pillars supporting the roof like some baronial hall, with neat little cupboards, tables, beds, and everything complete. There were two of our M.M.G. officers sleeping there, and we left them sleeping. But emerge out into daylight, and ye gods! the confusion makes you feel awed. A village is usually a heap of rubble, with here and there a bit of a gaudy enamelled coffee-pot or something; a geranium from a window, still growing; a china egg, a bit of a chair, a bit of an iron gateway. And as far as the eye can see in this particular region, just undulating stretches of tormented earth. All the old game of never showing above the parapet is quite disregarded, for often there is no parapet. Time after time the Huns could have seen us, and I saw lots of them running across gaps. You see, no sniping or anything like that can be organized yet. Huns often come into our lines by mistake, and we do likewise. And when you are not actually in close view of them, you go across the open. If you get cut off by a barrage you just wait till it's over.
I have been round all our M.G. positions and other Detachments.
September 10.
TOWARDS FLERS
About 5 p.m. the mess cook came and said he had been unable to get enough food in for the morrow, as the expected hampers from England had not arrived, and the district was so packed with other troops. So we decided to get some hares or partridges. But it's forbidden to shoot game. Very well, we wouldn't shoot them. We'd ride them down. The country behind is entirely open. No hedges. Just gently undulating uplands. The crops are all cut. So three of us set out. The orderly-room work had almost been finished, and the remainder could wait. Jezebel was brought round for me, Chloe for Roger, and Minotaur for the Colonel. The Colonel's orderly, Corporal Orchard, following on Shotover. We rode back to the more open country where there are few troops, and then started the drive. Jezebel on the right, Chloe next, Shotover next, and Minotaur on the left, at intervals of 20 yards or so.
It had been decided that, if a hare got up, even while we were after partridges, we must chase the hare.
Well, presently a covey got up, and away we galloped up a long slope. Suddenly a wild tally-ho from Roger. A hare had got up and was lepping across Jezebel's line. So Jezebel fairly flattened herself out to keep the hare in. But the hare was across before she could get wide enough.
Then the hare doubled back and we swung round, so that now Minotaur was on the right. Hooroosh down the hill. The hare was gaining. There was a minute brick enclosure a quarter of a mile ahead. The hare was making for that. And gained it. Check. We surrounded the enclosure and Corporal Orchard dismounted and went in. After about ten minutes out popped the hare on t'other side. Loud yells, and after her again. She made for some high ground where there was a small wood. "Cut her off," signalled the Colonel wildly.
Impossible to cut off the hare. She gained the wood, which we surrounded. But, oh silly hare! she came out the other side. Minotaur after her like an arrow.
Then she tried to get away across Jezebel's front. But Jezebel was too quick, and Chloe came up in support.
Then the hare doubled again through Shotover and Minotaur, and we swung about. The hare was getting tired. She had run about three miles. She then doubled back again through Chloe and Jezebel.
CHASING THE HARE
But meanwhile the horses were all getting dark with sweat, and although a low line of upland hid us, we knew we were approaching some reserve wire. The hare must not gain that wire.
She was dead beat and going very slow, flopping along, and looked as if she would tumble head over heels any second. We were close behind her.
She got into some long grass 20 yards away from the wire, and disappeared from view. We had got her. Corporal Orchard dismounted and began beating the grass for her. There! Just missed her. She flopped on a few yards, and Corporal Orchard dashed after. Then he tripped and fell. The hare came out of cover and lolloped towards the wire. Yells from Roger and the Colonel.
And the hare got there first!
Inwardly I laughed with joy and relief. Thank goodness that little hare got away. Corporal Orchard took over the horses, and we went in amongst the wire, but we never found her. The weeds had grown tall, and were perfect cover for the poor wee beastie. I sometimes say what I think, but such views are naturally neither understood nor taken seriously. And the Major, bless him! likes me to do this type of thing because he thinks it is good for me. "We must really try and teach you to be more of a sportsman, you know. Sporting instinct. What? Every Englishman should have it!" This all very good-humouredly, and I answer, laughing: "Aha, sir. You see I know better." Which merely stirs some jovial spirit to stand up and propose: "Gentlemen, fox-hunting!" You see?
September 12.
The next act will shortly begin. We are all very hopeful. Certain signs.... Fritz very nervous. Of that there can be no doubt at all. Prisoners betray it quite unwillingly. Poor Fritz! He comes to attention when we go up to him and ask him if he is fairly happy, which he is (with a smile) invariably. He talks good English, and wishes the war would end.
Some of our machine gunners, including Clare, were done in the other day, and they put up a biscuit tin, with their names pierced in with nail holes, to mark the spot. This war is the quaintest, most incongruous show.
GIRD TRENCHGird Trench was only won after repeeated attacks. It was the main German defence ofGeudecourt. While this sketch was being made things were comparatively quiet. And the innumerable people living underground could get a little sleep.
September 15.
Zero hour has come and gone. The show is a peach. Fritz is scuttling back with us on his tail. We are to creep up, and as soon as Fritz is beyond his last line of trenches (which he jolly nearly is now) up and through we hope to go.
September 20.
TOWARDS GEUDECOURT
We are long past Fritz's first line; past his second line; at his third line; and his fourth line he is wildly digging now—places for his M.G.'s wire, etc. But he's very, very hard put to it. We have almost all the high ground. Our guns are at it day and night. Trench warfare no longer exists. A few hastily dug holes, a few short lines of trench, mostly battered to pieces, and that's all. It's almost open fighting. Even the infantry come up across the open. No communication trenches, nothing of that sort. The crump holes are continuous. There's scarcely an inch of ground that isn't a crump hole.
I was up in an interesting wood this morning with the Colonel. Now, this will give you some idea of how dislocated and above-ground everything is:
We wanted to go to a place the other side of the wood. When we reached the middle of the wood, where a new O.P. of ours has been established, Fritz put up a barrage on the edge of the wood. Very well, then. We just waited at the O.P. till the barrage was over, and then calmly walked out. The wood is only a few shattered stumps of trees, and the place where undergrowth once was is one continuous sea of earth thrown about in every conceivable shape, with dead Tommies and dead Fritzes lying side by side. So the wood isn't much cover, you can imagine.
On the far side of the wood is beautiful rolling country, but not green. It's all brown, just a mess of earth. It's pitted with holes just like sand after a hailstorm. In the distance you can see real lovely trees, but nothing grows where the strafing is. Overhead the martins flicker and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal noises crash and boom away merrily.
Ought I, perhaps, not to talk of these things? Does it worry you to think of crumps bursting and so on? But, really, it seems quite ordinary and in the day's work here. Men talk of crumps as you would talk of bread and butter. That is, perhaps, why letters from home that talk about homely things—cows and lavender and the new chintz—are so welcome.
Besides, good heavens! don't you know that there's not a man in France but knows that the best-beloved ones at home are having a far worse time than we are having here? Wet clothes? Mud? Shells a-bursting, guns a-popping? Even a wound, perhaps? Pish! No onethinksat all out here. There isn't time. Most of the people out here are perfectly happy and merry, really. The sort of "long-drawn-out-agony" touch is, I think, rare.
I'm writing this in a jolly Boche dug-out, all panelled and cosy. Jezebel and Swallow and a new pack mare I've got are in a valley that's hardly ever touched, and in fine, all's well.
September 24.
TEAR SHELLS
Tear shells or "lachrymatory shells." They haven't been putting many over lately, apparently. But they put some over the other day, and they are so amusing that I must describe them to you.
The Colonel and I were up trying to find a "working-party" from the regiment. The regiment is sadly split up at present into various parties doing various jobs in various places, all unpleasant. Better than infantry work, but still unpleasant.
We rode up much closer than we have ridden before, and left the Colonel's orderly and Hale in a bit of a valley with Minotaur, Jezebel, Hob, and Tank. Tank is a new mare I've got. Hale was riding her, as I never take Swallow closer than I can help.
We dismounted in this small valley, and the Colonel's orderly and Hale were given orders to move if any shells were put over too near them.
Then the Colonel and I went up through a wood that is just a few splintered stumps now.
We passed behind several batteries, and I thought to myself: "Dash it all! I know my eyes can't be watering because of the noise. What the deuce is the matter? I hope the Colonel won't notice."
However, on we waded and plodded. Suddenly the Colonel stopped, and exclaimed: "Oh damnation! This is perfect nonsense." His eyes were like tomatoes, and the tears were rolling down his cheeks!
By this time we could hardly see at all, and it dawned on us that we must hastily put on our tear goggles, which we had never used before, but always, of course, carry. They go in the satchel along with the two gas helmets.
Presently we met some infantry coming back, all safely begoggled. The Huns, they told us, were dropping tear shells just into that valley in front, where our working-party was supposed to be. You can tell them (the tear shells), they said, by the fluttering sound, and they knock up no earth and make very little smoke.
Sure enough, as soon as we got over the brow there they were. They make a foolish wobbly, wavy sound as they come over, and look most innocent. So they are really if you get your goggles on in time. But if one bursts close to you, and you haven't got goggles on, why, then you'll be as blind as an owl, and you'll weep like a shower bath.
BETWEEN HIGH WOOD AND FLERS
Then the absurd thing was that we couldn't find the working-party. Plenty of dead Huns, but nobody alive. Not a sign. Only crumps dropping here and there and everywhere. So we found a bit of a trench that led back round the side of the wood. The front line trenches were only very lightly held, partly because they are almost completely blown in. And we could get no information as to the working-party at all.
Presently we saw why. The Huns had put up a barrage across the valley they were coming up. We knew they would come up this other valley, as they had to report on their way to H.Q., —— Division. So we got into a hole and waited.
After about half an hour the barrage lifted and up came our working-party none the worse. It is a most amazing war. People literally dodge shells and things as you might dodge snow-balls.
When we arrived back at the place where we left our two men, they also were not to be seen.
After some time and anxious inquiries for two men with four horses, we at last discovered them nearly half a mile away. Fritz had put some heavy stuff over fairly near, and they had moved.
"A very interesting bit of the line isn't it, Hale?" I said as we moved off. "Yes, sir," he said, adding with a fierce frown, "but not verysafe, sir."
And then we all laughed. Hale does frown so when he makes one of his oracular utterances.
September 29.
It's up to us to reconnoitre carefully every time there is a move forward, so as to see the new ground.
One of the most curious and interesting things is this: the Boche rarely wastes. He only puts his crumps and pip-squeaks just where he thinks (or knows) our batteries are, and our infantry want to be, and our horses would be likely to be (if they weren't somewhere else). So that gradually you begin to track out safe routes. Don't go near the edge of —— Wood, but 200 yards inside the wood, on the north side, you're pretty comfy. Don't go near the mangled remains of —— village, but keep to the right of it until you get to the wrecked aeroplane, and then turn down the remains of —— trench, and you probably won't be touched. That sort of thing.
BOCHE DUG-OUTS
I've been sleeping in the most superb Boche dug-out. Very deep; I should think 30 feet down. The inside is pillared rather like the studio, and cretonned all over with maroon-coloured stuff instead of wall-paper. There are lovely little cupboards everywhere, and doors and window-frames just like a real house. The windows, of course, only look out on to an air-shaft, so it's very dark, and you have to have candles all the time. The windows have no glass, of course, as that would be shattered to smithereens by the vibrations. Then there's an arch and more steps down lower still, into the bedroom for two.
Yesterday, being rather misty, I thought as follows:
"It is too foggy to see what Fritz is doing. No attack is intended or expected. The Colonel is at corps H.Q. Swallow and Jezebel and Tank are safe in —— valley. Roger is still here as Adjutant. Why not an afternoon off?"
So picture a holiday-maker armed with a revolver, two gas helmets, tear goggles, some sandwiches, and a large empty haversack. Now where to go? What about —— trench and all round —— village, even, perhaps, a lightning five minutes in the village itself? We have just taken the village, but it's rather an unhealthy spot at present.
—— trench is a new trench that poor Fritz dug just before he was driven out of it. I had seen lots of dead Fritzes there the day before. Also there were reports of curious things flung out into the mud in and round the village.
A HOUSE IN GEUDECOURTHere, as in many of these sketches, there are no people to be seen, for the simple reason that they are all underground in dug-outs.
TROPHIES
So I set forth. And at —— met another fellow I knew, and the affair became neither more nor less than a search for souvenirs. Here is a list:
There now. Isn't that a good haul! It's not easy to get anything worth sending home, because everything is so utterly smashed up.
October 2.
Jezebel and Swallow and Tank have all been clipped trace high. I am getting rather attached to Tank. She is so modest and unselfish—a contrast to Jezebel. She never expects little treats, and seems quite surprised when I give her anything. Swallow and Jezebel always neigh when they see my electric torch coming towards them after dinner (while we are back in these safe places). But Tank is very shy of the light, and thinks it will bite her.
Swallow is getting much better, and really seems to understand that the shells and guns and things probably won't hurt him. We have been most extraordinarily lucky. The troop that got through nearly to —— the other day, hadn't a single casualty, although Dick's own mare was shot under him and a great many other horses were wounded. The squadron of —— were very badly scuppered, I fear. But, anyhow, we all feel that Lloyd George is right. We are just beginning to win.
October 5.
It is a glorious day. Such clouds. Swallow kicked up his heels and played about like a kitten when Hunt took him to water this morning. It's extraordinary how used the horses are getting to trenches and wire, etc. At first they were rather afraid to jump these sudden deep ditches, but now they pop across like rabbits.
October 17.