We had tea, and things seemed to quiet down.
Then about six o’clock the bombardment got louder, and our guns woke up like fun. ‘Vee-bm ... vee-bm’ from our whizz-bangs going over, and then the machine-guns began on our left. Simultaneously, in came Richards (Dixon’s servant) with an excited air. ‘Gas,’ he exclaimed. Instinctively, I felt for my gas helmet. Meanwhile Dixon had gone outside. ‘Absurd,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘The wind’s wrong. Who brought that message?’
Then up came a telephone orderly. I heardhim running on the hard road. ‘Stand to,’ he said breathlessly, and Dixon went off to the ’phone with him. Nicolson appeared in a gas helmet. I was looking for my pipe, but could not find it. Then at last I went out without it.
Outside it was getting dark. It was a fairly nippy air. The bombardment was going strong. All the sky was flickering, and our guns were screaming over. ‘Crump, crump,’ the Boche shells were bursting up by Maple Redoubt. ‘Scream, scream,’ went our guns back; and right overhead our big guns went griding.
All this I noticed gradually. My first impression was the strong smell of gas helmets in the cold air. The gas alarm had spread, and some of the men had their helmets on. I felt undecided. I simply did notknow, whether the men should wear them or not. What was happening? I wished Dixon would come back. Ah! there he was. What news?
‘I can’t get through,’ he said, ‘but we shall get a message all right if necessary.’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked. ‘Do you think they are coming over.’
‘No. It won’t last long, I expect. Still, just let’s see if the men have got their emergency rations with them.’
A few had not, and were sent into the dug-outs for them. Gas helmets were ordered back into their satchels.
‘No possibility of gas,’ said Dixon; ‘wind’s dead south.’
I was immensely bucked now. There was a feeling of tenseness and bracing-up. I felt the importance of essentials—rifles and bayonets in good order—the men fit, and able to run. This was the real thing, somehow.
I made Lewis go in and get my pipe. I found I had no pouch, and stuffed loose baccy in my pocket.
I realised I had not thought out what I would do in case of attack. I did not know what was happening. I was glad Dixon was there....
It was great, though, to hear the continuous roar of the cannonade, and the machine-guns rapping, not for five minutes, but all the time. That I think was the most novel sound of all. No news. That was a new feature. A Manchester officer came up and said all their communications were cut with the left.
I was immensely bucked, especially with my pipe. Our servants were good friends to have behind us, and Dixon was a man in his element. The men were all cool. ‘Germans have broken through,’ I heard one man say. ‘Where?’ said someone rather excitedly. ‘In the North Sea,’ was the stolid reply.
At last the cannonade developed into a roar on our left, and we realised that any show was there, and not on our sector. Then up came thequartermaster with some boots for Dixon and me, and we all went into the dug-out, where was a splendid fire. And we stayed there, and certain humorous remarks from the quartermaster suddenly turned my feelings, and I felt that the tension was gone, the thing was over; and that outside the bombardment was slackening. In half an hour it was ‘stand down’ at 7.40.
I was immensely bucked. I knew I should be all right now in an attack. And the cannonade at night was a magnificent sight. Of course we had not been shelled, though some whizz-bangs had been fired fifty yards behind us just above ‘Redoubt A,’ trying for the battery just over the hill.
My chief impression was, ‘This is the real thing.’ You must know your men. They await clear orders, that is all. It was dark. I remember thinking of Brigade and Division behind, invisible, seeing nothing, yet alone knowing what was happening. No news, that was interesting. An entirely false rumour came along, ‘All dug-outs blown in in Maple Redoubt.’
I had sent Evans to Bray to try and buy coal: he returned in the middle of the bombardment with a long explanation of why he had been unable to get it.
‘Afterwards,’ I said. Somehow coal could wait.
All the while I have been writing this, there is a regular blizzard outside.”
Such is my record of my first bombardment. The Manchesters, who were in the front line, suffered rather heavily, but not in Maple Redoubt. No dug-outs were smashed in at all there, though Canterbury Avenue was blocked in two places, and Old Kent Road in one. The Germans came over from just north of Fricourt, but only a very few reached our trenches, and of them about a dozen were made prisoners, and the rest killed. It was a “bad show” from the enemy point of view.
And now I will leave my diary. These first impressions are interesting enough, but later the entries became more and more spasmodic, and usually introspective. The remaining chapters are not exactly, though very nearly, chronological. From February 6th to March 8th I was Sniping and Intelligence officer to the battalion. Chapters VIII, IX, and XII describe incidents in that period. Then on March 8th Captain Dixon was transferred as Second-in-Command to our ——th Battalion, and on that date I took over the command of “B” Company, which I held until I was wounded on the 7th of June. These were the three months in which I learnt the strain of responsibility as well as the true tragedy of this war.
During all these four months I was fortunate in having as a commanding officer a really great soldier. The C.O. had inaugurated his arrival by a vigorous emphasis of the following principle:“No Man’s Land belongs toUS; if the Boche dare show his face in it, he’s going to be d—d sorry for it. We are top-dogs, and if there is any strafing, the last word must always be ours.” Such was the policy of the man behind me during those four months. Meanwhile, from eight to midnight every night, trenches were being deepened, the parapet thickened, and fire-steps and traverses being put in the front line, which had hitherto been a maze of hasty improvisations; barbed wire was put out at an unprecedented pace, and patrols were going out every night. If things went wrong, there was the devil to pay; but if things went well, one was left entirely unmolested; and if there was a bombardment on, the orders came quick and clear. And any company commander will know that those three qualities in a commanding officer are worth almost anything.
Thesnow was coming down in big white flakes, whirling and dancing against a grey sky. I shivered as I looked out from the top of the dug-out steps in Maple Redoubt. It was half-past seven, a good hour since the snipers had reported to me before going to their posts. It was quite dark then, for a sniper must always be up on his post a good hour before dawn to catch the enemy working a few minutes too late. It is so easy to miss those first faint glimmerings of twilight when you are just finishing off an interesting piece of wiring in “No Man’s Land.” I speak from experience. For so a sniper got me.
“U—u—u—gh,” I shuddered, “it’s no good keeping the men on in this”; so, putting my whiskey-bottle full of rum in my haversack, I set off up Old Kent Road to visit my posts and withdraw the menpro tem. I expected to find the fellows unutterably cold, shrivelled up, and bored. To my surprise, at No. 1 post Thomas and Everton were in a state of huge excitement, eyes glowing,and faces full of life. There seemed to be a great rivalry, too, for the possession of the rifle. For the snipers always worked in pairs: a man cannot gaze out at the opposing lines with acute interest for more than about half an hour on end; so I used to work them by pairs, and give them shifts according to the weather. In summer you could put a pair on for four hours, and they would work well, taking half-hour shifts; but in cold weather two hours was quite enough.
“We’ve got them, sir,” from 75 Thomas; “they was working in the trench over there—by all them blue sand-bags, sir—four of them, sir——”
“Yes, and I saw him throw up his arms, sir,” put in Everton, excited for the first time I have ever seen him, and trying to push Thomas out of the box, and have another look. But Thomas would not be pushed.
“Splendid,” I said: “by Jove, that’s good work. Can I see?” But it was snowing hard, and I could see very little. I tried the telescope. “Put it right up to your eye, sir,” said Thomas, forgetting that I had myself taught him this in billets as he vainly tried to see through it holding it about four inches from his face, and declaring that he could see everything just as well with his own eyes!
“Yes, I think I see where you mean,” said I; “up by that sand-bag dump. There’s a mine-shaft there, and they were probably some of their R.E.’s piling up sand-bags, or emptying them out. I believe thatis what they usually do now, fill the sand-bags below in their galleries, bring them up, empty them, and use the same ones again.”
Thomas and Everton gaped at this. It had not occurred to them to consider that the Boche had R.E.’s. They were of the unimaginative class of snipers, who “saw, did, and reported,” and on the whole I preferred them to those who saw, and immediately “concluded.” For their conclusions were usually wrong. To men like Thomas I was, I think, looked upon as one who had some slightly supernatural knowledge of the German lines; he did not realise that by careful compass-bearings I knew the exact ground visible from his post, and that my map of the German lines, showing every trench as revealed by aeroplane photographs, was accurate to a yard. He was like a retriever, who keeps to heel, noses out his bird with unerring skill, and brings it in with the softest of mouths; yet the cunning and strategy he leaves to his master, who is decidedly his inferior in nose and mouth. So 75 Thomas could see and shoot far better than I; but it was I who thought out the strategy of the shoot.
“Well,” said I, as I doled out a rather more liberal rum ration than usual, “that’s d—— good work, anyway. Two you got, you say? Not sure about the second? Anyway you had two good shots, and remember what I told you, a sniper only shoots to kill. So two it’s going to be, anyhow.” (They bothgrinned at this, which was the nearest they could get to a wink.) “I’m very pleased about it. Now it’s not much good staying up here in this thick snow, so you can go off till I send word to your dug-out for you to go on again.”
I turned to go away, thinking that the other posts, rumless, and in all probability quarryless, must be in a state of exasperating coldness by now. But Thomas and Everton did not move. There was something wanted.
“Well, what is it?”
“Please sir, can we stay on here a bit? P’raps one of those R.E. fellows may come back for something.”
“Good heavens, yes,” I said, “stay on as long as you like,” and smiled as I made off to my other posts. (Later I used to get the snipers to report to me coming off their posts, and get their rum ration then; as I found it gave a bad appearance and damaged the reputation of the snipers when people saw me going about with the nose of a bottle of “O.V.H.” whiskey sticking out of my haversack!) There, as I expected, I found the men blue and bored.
“You can’t see nothing to-day, sir, at all,” was the sentence with which I was immediately greeted. Even the rum seemed to inspire very little outward enthusiasm.
“You can go off to your dug-outs till I send for you,” I replied, carefully corking the bottle and not looking at them while I spoke: “if you like,” Iadded after a pause, looking up. But the post was empty.
That afternoon I was up on No. 1 post, with a sniper who was new to the work. It was still freezing, but the snow-clouds had cleared right away, and the wind had dropped. There was a tingle in the air; everything was as still as death; the sun was shining from a very blue sky, and throwing longer and longer shadows in the snow as the afternoon wore on. It was a valuable afternoon, the enemy’s wire showing up very clearly against the white ground, and I was showing the new sniper how to search the trench systematically from left to right, noting the exact position of anything that looked like a loophole, or steel-plate, and especially the thickness of the wire, what kind, whether it was grey and new, or rusty-red and old; whether there were any gaps in it, and where. All these things a sniper should note every morning when he comes on to his post. Gaps are important, as patrols must come out through gaps, and the Lewis gunners should know these, and be ready to fire at them if a patrol is heard thereabouts in No Man’s Land. Similarly, old gaps closed up must be reported.
It was very still. “Has the war stopped?” one felt inclined to ask. No, there is the sound of shells exploding far away on the right somewhere; in the French lines it must be, somewhere about Frise. Then a “phut” from just opposite, and a long whining “we’oo—we’oo—we’oo—we’-oo ...bzung,” and a rifle-grenade burst with a snarl about a hundred yards behind. Then another, and another, and another. “They’re trying for Trafalgar Square,” said I. No. 1 post was a little to the right of the top of 76 Street. I waited. There were no more. It was just about touch and go whether we replied. If they went on up to about a dozen, the chances were that the bombing-corporal in charge of our rifle-grenade battery would rouse himself, and loose off twenty in retaliation. But, no. Perhaps the German had repented him of the evil of desecrating the peace of such an afternoon; or perhaps he was just ranging, and had an observer away on the flank somewhere to watch the effect of his shooting. Anyway he did not fire again, and the afternoon slumber was resumed, till the evening “strafe” came on in due course.
“I can see something over on the left, sir. It is a man’s head, sir! Look!”
I looked. Yes!
“No,” I almost shouted. “It’s a dummy head. Just have a look. And don’t, whatever you do, fire.”
Sure enough, a cardboard head appeared over the front parapet opposite, with a grey cap on. Slowly it disappeared. Without the telescope it would have been next to impossible to see it was not a man. Again it appeared, then slowly sank out of view. It was well away on the left, just in front of where the “R.E.’s” had been hit at dawn. For this post waswell-sited, having an oblique field of vision, as all good sniping-posts should. That is to say, they should be sited something like this:
The ideal is to have all your posts in the supports, andnotin the front line, and at about three hundred yards from the enemy front line. Of course if the ground slopesawaybehind you, you cannot get positions in the supports unless there are buildings to make posts in. By getting anobliqueview, you gain two advantages:
(a) If A gets a shot at C, C’s friends look out for “that d——d sniper opposite,” and look in the direction of B, who is carefully concealed from direct view.
(b) A’s loophole is invisible from direct observation by D, as it is pointing slantwise at C.
All this I now explained to my new sniper.
“But why not smash up his old dummy, sir? Might put the wind up the fellow working it.”
“No,” I explained. “Look at the paper again. (I had drawn it out for him, as I have on the previous page.) Thomas shot at those R.E.’s this morning, don’t you see? He was here (B), and they’re at D. Now they’re trying to findyou, or the man who shot their pal; and you can bet anything you like they’ve got a man watching either at C or right away on the left to spot you if you fire at the dummy. No. Lie doggo, and see if you can spot that man on the flank. He’s probably got a periscope.”
“Can’t see him, sir,” at length.
“No. Never mind; he’s probably far too well concealed. Always remember the Boche is as clever as you, and sometimes cleverer.”
“Ah, but he wants me to shoot, sir, and I won’t,” came the cheery answer. “What about smashing up his old dummy?” I reminded him. His face fell. He had forgotten his old un-sniper-like self already. “Never mind,” said I. “Now when Thomas and Everton come up here, mind you tell them all about the dummy; and tell Thomas from me that the Boche doesn’t spend his time dummy-wagging for nothing. Probably it was an R.E. sergeant.”
“Swis-s-sh—báng. Swis-s-sh—báng.”
“That settles it,” said I, as I scrambled hastily down into the trench, preceded by the sniper I had with me that day as orderly. I more or less pushedhim along for ten yards—then halted; we faced each other both very much out of breath and “blowy.” The whole place was reeking with the smell of powder, and the air full of sand-bag fluff.
“That settles it,” I repeated: “I always thought that was a rotten post; and I object to being whizz-banged. ‘A sniper’s job is to see and not be seen.’ Isn’t that right, Morris?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Morris, adding with a sad lack of humour “They must have seen us, sir!”
“Exactly: they did. And they weren’t very far off hitting one of us into the bargain. As I say, that settles it. We’ll leave that post for ever and ever; and to-night we’ll build a new one that theywon’tsee.”
At ten o’clock that night we were well at work. Just on the one hundred metre contour line there was a small quarry, at the west end of which had been the too conspicuous post where the Boche had spotted us. Every loophole must by its very nature be “spottable”; but when the natural ground is so little disturbed that it looks exactly the same as it did before the post was made, then indeed this “spottability” is so much reduced that it verges on invisibility. So, leaving the old post exactly as before, we were building a new one about twenty yards to the west of it.
There was a disused support trench running west from the Quarry, and this suited my purpose admirably. It ran just along the crest of the hill, andcommanded even a better view of Fricourt than the Quarry itself. Moreover, there was enough earth thrown up in front of the trench to enable us to fix in the steel-plate (at an angle of 45°: this increases its impenetrability) on ground level, without the top protruding above the top of the earth. The soil in front was not touched at all until the plate was fixed in, and then enough was carefully scooped away from the front of the actual loophole to secure a fair field of view. The earth in front of the loophole is then exactly like a castle wall, with a splay window. If you think of a Norman castle you will know exactly what I mean. The loophole represents the inch-wide aperture in the inner side of the splay. Similarly an embrasure is built behind the loophole, with room for one man to stand and fire, and the second man to sit by him. A rainproof shelter of corrugated iron is placed over this embrasure, and covered over with earth; this prevents it being spotted by aeroplane; also it makes the place habitable in the rain. Here is a section of a typical sniper’s post:
“Click, click click” went the pick into the chalk, cutting room for the embrasure; there was a tinny sound as some of the loose surface soil came away with a spurt, spilling on to the two sheets of corrugated iron waiting to go on to the roof. Added to this were the few quiet whispers, such as “Where’s that sand-bag?” or “Is this low enough, sir?”, and the heavy breathing of Private Evans as he returned from the Quarry after emptying his sand-bag. For all the chalk cut away had to be carried to the Quarry and emptied there; new earth on the top there would not give any clue to those gentlemen in Fricourt Wood who put the smell of powder in my nostrils a few hours back.
It was a darkish night, but not so dark but what you could see the top of the trench. There are very few nights when the sky does not show lighter than the trench-sides. There are a few, though, especially when it is raining; and they are bad, very bad. But that night I could just distinguish the outline of the big crater-top, half-right, and follow the near skyline along the German parapet down into Fricourt valley. I was gazing down into that silent blackness, when a machine-gun started popping; I could see the flashes very clearly from my position. Somewhere in Fricourt they must be.
Meanwhile the post was nearly finished; the corrugated iron was being fixed to the wooden upright, and Jones was on the parapet sprinkling earthover it. The others were deepening the trench from the Quarry to the post.
“That’s the machine-gun that goes every night, sir,” said Jones. “Enfilading, that’s what it is.”
“Pop—pop—pop,” answered the machine-gun.
“Look here, Jones,” said I. “You know No. 5 post, opposite Aeroplane Trench?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, go down there, and see if you can see the flashes from there; and if you can, mark it down. See?”
“Yes, sir!” and he had his equipment on in no time, and was starting off when I called him back.
“Be very careful to mark your own position,” I warned him. “You know what I mean.”
He knew, and I knew that he knew.
Meanwhile, I stuck an empty cartridge case in the parados behind my head and waited.
Five flashes spat out again, and “pop—pop—pop—pop—pop” came up out of the valley: and between me and them in the parapet I stuck a second cartridge case——
I looked at my watch. It was half-past twelve. The post was finished, and the trench deep enough to get along, crawling anyway.
“Cease work.”
The next day was so misty that you could see practically nothing over five hundred yards, and the new post was useless. The following day it hadfrozen again, and an inch of snow lay on the ground. It was a sunny morning, and from the new post all Fricourt lay in full view before me. How well I remember every detail of that city of the dead! In the centre stood the white ruin of the church, still higher than the houses around it, though a stubby stump compared to what it must have been before thousands of shells reduced it to its present state. All around were houses; roofless, wall-less skeletons all of them, save in a few cases, where a red roof still remained, or a house seemed by some magic to be still untouched. On the extreme right was Rose Cottage, a well-known artillery mark; just to its left were some large park-gates, with stone pillars, leading into Fricourt Wood; and just inside the wood was a small cottage—a lodge, I suppose. The extreme northern part of the village was invisible, as the ground fell away north of the church. I could see where the road disappeared from view; then beyond, clear of the houses, the road reappeared and ran straight up to the skyline, a mile further on. A communication trench crossed this road: (I remember we saw some men digging there one morning). With my glasses I could see every detail; beyond the communication trench were various small copses, and tracks running over the field; and on the skyline, about three thousand yards away, was a long row of bushes.
And just to the left of it all ran the two white lace-borders of chalk trenches, winding and wobblingalong, up, up, up until they disappeared over the hill to La Boiselle. Sometimes they diverged as much as three hundred yards, but only to come in together again, so close that it was hard to see which was ours and which the German. Due west of Fricourt church they touched in a small crater chain.
It was a fascinating view. I could not realise that there lay aFrenchvillage; I think we often forgot that we were on French soil, and not on a sort of unreal earth that would disappear when the war was over; especially was No Man’s Land a kind of neutral stage, whereon was played the great game. To a Frenchman, of course, Fricourt was as French as ever it had been. But I often forgot, when I watched the shells demolishing a few more houses, that these were not German houses deserving of their fate. Perhaps people will not understand this: it is true, anyway.
I was drawing a sketch of the village, when lo! and behold! coolly walking down the road into Fricourt came a solitary man. I had to think rapidly, and decide it must be a German, because the thing was so unexpected; I could not for the moment get out of my head the unreasonable idea that it might be one of our own men! However, I soon got over that.
“Sight your rifle at two thousand yards,” said I to Morgan, who was with me. “Now, give it to me.”
Carefully I took aim. I seemed to be holding the rifle up at an absurd angle. I squeezed, and squeezed——
The German jumped to one side, on to the grass at the side of the road, and doubled for all he was worth out of sight into Fricourt! Needless to say, I did not see him again to get another shot!
“They’ve been using that road last night, sir,” said 58 Morgan, while I was taking a careful bearing on my empty cartridge case. (A prismatic compass is invaluable for taking accurate cross-bearings.)
“Yes,” I said. “Why yes, of course, they must have used it last night. I never thought of that. Good. We’ll get the artillery on there to-night, and upset their ration-carts.”
This pleased the fancy of Sniper 58 Morgan, and a broad grin came over his face at the thought of the Boche losing his breakfast.
“Maybe, sir, we’ll see the sausages on the road to-morrow morning.”
For which thought I commended him not a little: a sense of humour is one of the attributes of a good sniper, just as rash conclusions are not.
I then went down to No. 5 Post, where Jones was awaiting me, according to arrangement. There I took a second bearing, and retired to my dug-out to work out the two angles on the map. “From map to compass add: from compass to map subtract” I repeated to myself, and disposed of the magneticvariation summarily. Then with the protractor I plotted out the angles. “Exactly. The small house with the grey roof standing out by itself on the left. So that’s where you live, my friend, is it?”
Once more I was up at the new post, scrutinising the grey-roofed house with the telescope. After a long gaze, I almost jumped. I gave the telescope to Morgan. He gazed intently for a moment.
Then, “Is that a hole, sir, over the door, in the shadow, like ...?”
“It is,” I answered
That night the machine-gun started popping as usual, when suddenly a salvo of whizz-bangs screamed over, and H.E.’s joined in the game. All round and about the little grey-roofed house flickered the flashes of bursting shells. Then the enemy retaliated, and for a quarter of an hour “a certain liveliness prevailed.” Then came peace. But there was no sound all night of a machine-gun popping from Fricourt village; on the other hand, our machine-guns had taken up the tune, with short bursts of overhead fire, searching for those Boche ration carts. And in the morning the grey-roofed cottage appeared with two tiles left on the right-hand bottom corner of the roof, and the front wall had a huge gap in it big enough to act as a mouth for fifty machine-guns. Only Morgan was disappointed: all marks of the sausages had been cleared away before dawn! After all, are not the Germans pre-eminently a tidy people?
Private Ellis had hard blue eyes that looked at you, and looked, and went on looking; they always reminded me of the colour of the sea when a north wind is blowing and the blue is hard and bright. I have seen two other pairs of eyes like them. One belonged to Captain Jefferies, the big game shooter, who lectured on Sniping at the Third Army School. The other pair were the property of a sergeant I met this week for the first time. “Are you a marksman?” I asked him. “Yes, sir! Always a marksman, sir.”
There is no mistaking those eyes. They are the eyes of a man who has used them all his life, and found them grow steadier and surer every year. They are essentially the eyes of a man who can watch, watch, watch all day, and not get tired of watching; and they were the eyes of my best sniper.
For Private Ellis had all the instincts of a cunning hunter. I had no need to tell him to keep his telescope well inside the loophole, lest the sun should catch on the glass; no need to remind him to stuff a bit of sand-bag in the loophole when he left the post unoccupied. He never forgot to let the sand-bag curtain drop behind him as he entered the box, to prevent light coming into it and showing white through a loophole set in dark earth. There was no need either to make sure that he understood thetelescopic sights on his rifle; and there was no need to tell him that the Boches were clever people. He never under-estimated his foe.
It was a warm day in early March. Private Ellis was in No. 5 Box, opposite Aeroplane Trench. This post was very cunningly concealed. Our front trench ran along a road, immediately behind which was a steep chalk bank, the road having originally been cut out of a rather steep slope. You will see the lie of the ground clearly enough on Map III. Just about five yards behind this bank was cut a deep narrow trench, and in this trench were built several snipers’ posts, with loopholes looking out of the chalk bank. These loopholes were almost impossible to see, as they were very nearly indistinguishable from the shadows in the bank. Anyone who has hunted for oyster-catchers’ eggs on a pebbly beach knows that black and white is the most protective colour scheme existing. And so these little black loopholes were almost invisible in the black and white of the chalk bank.
All the morning Private Ellis had been watching out of the corner of his eye a little bit of glass shining in Aeroplane Trench. Now Aeroplane Trench (as you will also see from the map) was a sap running out from the German front trench into a sunken road. From the centre sap two little branch saps ran up and down the road, and then slightly forward; the whole plan of it rather resembled an aeroplane and gave it its name. In it to-day was a Boche witha periscopic rifle; and it was this little bit of glass at the top of the periscope, and the nose of the rifle-barrel that Private Ellis was watching. Every now and again the glass and nose-cap would give a little jump, and “plop” a bullet would bury itself in our front parapet. One of our sentries had had his periscope smashed during the morning, I was informed by a company commander with rather the air of “What’s the use of you and your snipers, if you can’t stop them sniping us?” I told Ellis about the periscope, to which he replied: “It won’t break us, I guess, sir—twopenn’orth of new glass for a periscope. It’s heads that count.” In which remark was no little wisdom.
“Crack—plop,” and after a long interval another “Crack—zin—n—n—g,” as a bullet ricocheted off a stone, and went away over the ridge and fell with a little sigh somewhere in the ground right away beyond Redoubt A. So it went on all the afternoon, while the sun was warming everyone up and one dreamed of the summer, and warm days, dry trenches, and short nights. Ellis had gone off rather reluctantly at midday, and the other relief was there. There was a slumbrous sensation about that brought on the feeling that there was no one really in the enemy trenches at all. Yet there was the little glass eye looking at us: it reminded one of a snake in the grass. It glittered, unblinking.
At about six o’clock I again visited the post. Ellis was back there, and watching as keenly as ever.
“No luck?” I remarked. “I’m afraid your friend is too wily for you; he’s not going to put his head over, when he can see through a periscope as well.”
Still Private Ellis said little, but his eye was as clear and keen as ever; and still the periscope remained.
“We must shell him out to-morrow,” I said, and went off.
At half-past seven we had “stood down,” and I was messing with “B” Company, when I heard a voice at the top of the dug-out, and the servant who was waiting—Lewis, I think it was—said a sniper wanted to see me.
“Tell him to come down.”
Private Ellis appeared at the door. Not a muscle in his body or face moved, but his eyes were glowing and glittering. “Got him, sir,” was all he said.
“What?” I cried. “Got that Boche in Aeroplane Trench? By Jove, tell us all about it.”
And so to the accompaniment of a whiskey and Perrier he told us exactly what happened. It was not till well after “stand-to,” it appeared, that any change had occurred in Aeroplane Trench. Then the periscope had wobbled and disappeared below ground. Then there had been another long wait, and the outline of the sunken road had begun to get faint. Then slowly, very slowly, a pink forehead had appeared over the top, and as slowly disappeared. I wish I had been there to watch Ellisthen. I can imagine him coolly, methodically sighting his rifle on the trench-edge, and waiting. “I had to wait another minute, sir; then it appeared again, the whole head this time. He thought it was too dark to be seen ... Oh, he won’t worry us any more, sir! I saw one of his arms go up, and I thought I could see him fall against the back of the trench. But it was getting so dark, I couldn’t have seen him five minutes later at all.”
And if Ellis couldn’t, who could?
Next day, and for many days, there was no sniping from Aeroplane Trench.
“Hullo, Bill!” from Will Todd, as he passed me going up 76 Street.
“Hullo,” I answered, “where are you off to?”
“Going on patrol,” was the reply. “Oh, by the way, you probably know something about this rotten sap opposite the Quarry. I’m going out to find out if it’s occupied at night or not.”
“Opposite the Quarry?” said I. “Oh, yes, I know it. We get rather a good view of it from No. 1 Post.”
“That post up on the right here? Yes, I was up there this afternoon, but you can’t see much from anywhere here. The worst of it is I was going with 52 Jones; only his leave has just come through. You see, I’ve never been out before. I’m trying a fellow called Edwards, but I don’t know him.”
“If you can’t get Edwards,” I said suddenly, “I’ve a good mind to come out with you. Meet me at Trafalgar Square, and let me know.”
As Will disappeared, I immediately repented of my offer, repented heartily, repented abjectly. I had never been on patrol, and a great sinking feelingcame over me. I hoped with all my might that Edwards would be bubbling over with enthusiasm for patrolling. I was afraid. With all the indifference to shells and canisters that was gradually growing upon me, I had never been out into No Man’s Land. And yet I had volunteered to go out, and at the time of doing so I felt quite excited at the prospect. “Fool,” I said to myself.
“Edwards doesn’t seem at all enthusiastic about it,” said Will. “Will you really come out?”
“Yes, rather. I’m awfully keen to go. I’ve never been before, either. How are you going?”
We exchanged views on how best to dress and carry our revolvers, which instantly assumed a new interest.
“What time are you going out?”
“Eight o’clock.”
It was a quarter to already.
In the dug-out I was emptying my pockets, taking off my equipment, and putting on a cap-comforter. I had my compass with me, and put it in my pocket. I looked on the map and saw that the sap was practically due north of the Quarry. And I took a nip of brandy out of my flask. Will had gone to arrange with Captain Robertson about warning the sentries. I was alone, and still cursing myself for this unnecessary adventure. When I was ready, I stodged up 76 Street to the Quarry. It was certainly a good night, very black.
When I saw Will and Captain Robertson together on the fire-step peering over, I felt rather bucked with myself. Hitherto I had felt like an enthusiastic bather undressing, nearly everyone else having decided it was not warm enough to bathe; now it was as if I suddenly found that they were watching me as I ran down the beach, and I no longer repented of my resolution. Next moment I was climbing up on to the slimy sandbag wall, and dropping over the other side. I was surprised to find there was very little drop at all. There was an old ditch to be crossed, and then we came to our wire, which was very thin at this point. While Will was cursing, and making, it seemed to me, rather an unnecessary rattling and shaking of the wire (you know how wire reverberates if you hit a fence by the road), I looked back at our own parapet. I felt it would be a good thing to see on one’s return; again, it struck me how low it was, regarded from this side; I saw a head move along the top of it. This made me jump. Already our trench seemed immeasurably far off.
I looked in front again, as the noise of Will’s wire-rattling had ceased. In fact he was clean out of sight. This made me jump again, and I hurried on. It was “knife-rest” wire (see next page).
I stepped over it, and my foot came down on to more wire, which rattled with a noise that made me stand stock still awaiting something to happen.I felt like a cat who has upset a tablecloth and all the tea things. I stood appalled at the unexpected clatter. But really it was hardly audible tooursentries, much less to the Germans at least a hundred and twenty yards away.
At last I got through and flopped down. Immediately Will’s form showed up dark in front of me. When I was standing up, I had been unable to see him against the black ground. We lay about a minute absolutely quiet, according to arrangement.
I had fairly made the plunge now, and I felt like the bather shaking his hair as he comes up for the first time, and shouting out how glorious it is. I was elated. The feel of the wet grass was good under my hands; the silence was good; the immense loneliness, save for Will’s black form, was good; and a slight rustle of wind in the grass was good also. I just wanted to lie, and enjoy it. I hoped Will would not go on for another minute. But soon he began to crawl.
Have you done much crawling? It is slow work.You take knee-steps, and they are not like footsteps: they are not a hundred and twenty to the hundred yards They are more like fifty to ten yards, I should think. Anyway it seemed endless. The end of the sap was, to be precise, just one hundred and twenty-five yards from our front trench. Yet when I had gone, I suppose, forty yards, I expected to be on it any minute. Will must be going wrong. I thought of the map. Could we be going north-east instead of north? Will halted. I nearly bumped into his right foot, which raised itself twice, signalling a halt. I took out my compass, and looked at it. I shaded it with my hand, the luminous arrow seemed so bright: “rather absurd,” I thought immediately, “as if the Boches could possibly see it from the trench.” But we were going straight enough. Then the figure in front moved on, and I came up to where he had halted. It was the edge of a big shell-hole, full of water; I put my left hand in up to the wrist, I don’t know why.
Still the figure crawled on, with a sort of hump-backed sidle that I had got to know by now. It was interminable this crawling....
“Swis—s—sh.” A German flare shot up from ever so close. It seemed to be falling right over us. Then it burst with a “pop.” I had my head down on my arms, but I could squint out sideways. It seemed impossible we should not be seen; for there, hardly twenty yards away, was the Germanwire, as clear as anything. Meanwhile the flare had fallen behind us. Would it never go out? I noticed the way the blades of grass were lit up by it; and there was an old tin or something.... I started as a rat ran across the grass past me. I wondered if it were a German rat, or one of ours.
Then at last the flare went out, and the blackness was intense. For a while longer we lay still as death; then I saw Will’s foot move again. I listened intently, and on my right I heard a metallic sound. Quite close it was; it sounded like the clank of a dixie. I peered hard in the direction of the sound. Faintly I could distinguish earth above the ground-line. I had not looked to my right when the flare went up, and realised, as Will already had done, that we were out as far as the end of the sap. It was perhaps ten yards off, due right. I lay with my ear cocked sideways to catch the faintest sound. Clearly there was someone in the sap. But there was a wind swishing in the grass, and I could not hear anything more. Then my tense attitude relaxed, and I gradually sank my chin on my arm. I felt very comfortable. I did not want to move....
“Bang!!” and then a flame spat out; then came that gritty metallic sound I had heard before, and another “Bang!” I kept my head down and waited for the next, but it did not come. Then I heard a most human scroopy cough, whichalso soundedverynear. The “bangs” were objectionably near; I literally shrank from them. To tell the truth, I had the “wind up” a bit. Those bullets seemed to me vicious personal spits that were distinctly unpleasant and near; and I wanted to get away from so close a proximity to them. I remembered a maxim of some famous General to the intent that if you are afraid of the enemy, the best thing was to remember that in all probability he was just as afraid of you. The maxim did not seem to apply somehow here. At the first “bang” I had thought we were seen; but I now realised that the sentry was merely blazing off occasional shots, and that the bullets had just plopped into our parapet.
Then Will turned round, and I did the same. Our business was certainly ended, for there was no doubt about the sap being occupied. Then I heard a thud behind us, and looking up saw the slow climbing trail of a canister blazing up into the sky; up it mounted, up, up, up, hovered a moment, then turned, and with a gathering impetus blazed down somewhere well behind our front trench.
“Trafalgar Square,” I thought, as I lay doggo, for the blaze lit up the sky somewhat.
“Bomp.” The earth shook as the canister exploded.
“Thud,” and the process was repeated exactly as before, ending in another quaking “Bomp!”
I enjoyed this. It was rather a novel way of seeing canisters, and moreover a very safe way.
Two more streamed over.
Then our footballs answered, and burst with a bang in the air not soveryfar over into the German lines. The trench-mortar fellow was evidently trying short fuses, for usually our trench-mortar shells burst on percussion.
Then in the distance I heard four bangs, and the Boche 4·2’s started, screaming over at Maple Redoubt. I determined to move on.
Then suddenly came four distant bangs from the right of our lines (as we faced them), and with “wang—wang ... wang—wang” four whizz-bangs burst right around us, with most appalling flickers. “Bang—bang ... bang—bang” in the distance again, and I braced every muscle tightly, as you do when you prepare to meet a shock. Behind us, and just in front, the beastly things burst. I lay with every fibre in my body strained to the uttermost. And yet I confess I enjoyed the sensation!
There was a lull, and I began crawling as fast as I could. I stopped to see if Will was following. “By God,” I heard, “let’s get out of this.” So I was thinking! Then as I went on I saw the edge of a crater. Where on earth?
I halted and pulled out my compass. Due south I wanted. I found I was bearing off to the right far too much, so with compass in hand I correctedmy course. Some crawling this time! It was not long before we could see wire in the distance. Then I got up and ran. How I got through that wire I don’t know; I tore my puttees badly, and must have made a most unnecessary rattling. After which I fell into the ditch.
“Thank heaven you’re all right,” was the greeting from Captain Robertson. “I was just coming out after you. Those d—d artillery fellows. I sent down at once to ’phone to them to stop....”
And so on. I hardly heard a word. I was so elated, I could not listen. As we went back to Trafalgar Square for dinner, I heard them warning the sentries “The patrol’s in.” I looked up at the sandbag parapet. “In,” I thought. “One does not realise what ‘in’ is, till one’s been out.”
I have been out several times later. I never had any adventures much. But always, before going out, I felt the shivers of the bather; and always, after I came in, a most splendid glow.
“Noofficer wounded since we came out in October,” said Edwards: “we’re really awfully lucky, you know.”
“For heaven’s sake, touch wood,” I cried.
We laughed, for the whole of our establishment was wood. We were sitting on a wooden seat, leaning our hands against wooden uprights, eating off a wooden table, and resting our feet on a wooden floor. Sometimes, too, we found splinters of wood in the soup—but it was more often straw. For this dining-room in Trafalgar Square was known sometimes as the “Summer-house” and sometimes as the “Straw Palace.” It was really the maddest so-called “dug-out” in the British lines, I should think; I might further add, “in any trench in Europe.” For the French, although they presumably built it in the summer days of 1915 when the Bois Français trenches were a sort of summer-rest for tired-out soldiers, would never have tolerated the “Summer-house” since the advent of the canister-age. As for the Boche, he would have merely stared if anyone had suggested him using itas a Company Headquarters. “But,” he would have said, “it is not shell-proof.”
Exactly. It would not have stood even a whizz-bang. A rifle-grenade would almost certainly have come right through it. As for a canister or H.E., it would have gone through like a stone piercing wet paper. But it had been Company Headquarters for so long—it was so light and, being next door to the servants’ dug-out, so convenient—that we always lived in it still; though we slept in a dug-out a little way down Old Kent Road, which was certainly whizz-bang—if not canister—proof.
At any rate, here were Edwards and myself, drinking rather watery ox-tail soup out of very dinted tin-plates—the spoons were scraping noisily on the metal; overhead, a rat appeared out of the straw thatch, looked at me, blinked, turned about, and disappeared again, sending a little spill of earth on to the table.
“Hang these rats,” I exclaimed, for the tenth time that day.
Outside, it was brilliant moonlight: whenever the door opened, I saw it. It was very quiet. Then I heard voices, the sound of a lot of men, moving in the shuffling sort of way that men do move at night in a communication trench.
The door flew open, and Captain Robertson looked in.
“Hullo, Robertson; you’re early!”
It was not much past half-past seven.
“You’ve got those sand-bags up by 78 Street?” he said, sitting down.
“Yes, 250 there, and 250 right up in the Loop. The rest I shall use on the Fort. Oh! by the way, you know we are strafing at 12.5? We just had a message up from Dale. I shall knock off at 11.45 to-night!”
“I’ll see how we get on. I want to finish that traverse. Righto. I’m just drawing tools and going up now.”
“See you up there in a few minutes.”
And the muttering stream of “A” Company filed past the dug-out, going up to the front line. The door swung open suddenly, and each man looked in as he went by.
“Shut the door,” I shouted. Our plates themselves somehow suddenly looked epicurean.
Soon after eight I was up in the front line. It was the brightest night we had had, and ideal for sand-bag work. The men were already at it. There was a certain amount of inevitable talking going on, before everyone got really started. We were working on the Fort, completing two box dug-outs that we had half put in the night before; also, we were thickening the parapet, between the Fort and the Loop, and building a new fire-step.
“Can’t see any b—— sand-bags here,” came from one man.
“We’ll have to pick this, sir,” from another.
“Where’s Mullens gone off to?” sharply from a sergeant.