Most people, I imagine, have had the followingexperience. They have a great interest in some particular subject, yet they have somehow not got the key to it. They regret that they were never taught the elements of it at school; or it is some new science or interest that has arisen since their schooldays, such as flying or motoring. They are really ashamed of asking questions; and all books on the subject are technical and presuppose just that elementary knowledge that the interested amateur does not possess. Then suddenly he comes on a book with those delicious phrases in the preface promising “to avoid all technical details,” apologising for “what may seem almost childishly elementary,” and containing at the end an expert bibliography. These are the books written by very wise and very kind men, and because they are worth so much they usually cost least of all!
Such was my delightful experience at the Army School. I will confess to a terrible ignorance of my profession—I did not know how many brigades made up a division; “the artillery” were to me vague people whom the company commander rang up on the telephone, and who appeared in gaiters in Béthune; a bomb was a thing I avoided with a peculiar aversion; and as to the general conduct of the war I was the most ignorant of pawns. The wildest things were said about Loos; theDaily Mailhad just heard of the Fokker, and I had not the remotest idea whether we were hopelessly outclassedin the air, or whether perhaps after all there were people “up top” who were not so surprised or disconcerted at the appearance of the Fokker as the Northcliffe Press. Moreover, I had been impressed with the reiteration of my C.O., that my battalion was the finest in the Army, and that my division was likewise the best. Yet I had always felt that there were other good battalions, and that “K.’s Army” was, to say the least of it, in a considerable majority when compared with the contemptible little original which I had had the luck to join!
Imagine my delight, then, at finding myself one of over a hundred captains and senior subalterns representing their various battalions. Regulars, Territorials, and Kitcheners, we were all there together; one’s vision widened like that of a boy first going to school. Here at least was a great opportunity, if only the staff was good. And any doubt on that question was instantly set at rest by the Commandant’s opening address, explaining that the instructors were all picked men with a large experience in this war, that in the previous month’s course mostly subalterns had been sent and this time it had been the aim to secure captains only (oh! balm in Gilead this!) and that apologies were due if some of the lectures and instructions were elementary; that bombing experts, for instance, must not mind if the bombing course started right at the very beginning, as it had beenfound in the previous course that it was wrong to presumeanymilitary knowledge to be the common possession of all officers in the school. Those who understood my simile of the expert’s kind book to the amateur will understand that there were few of us who did not welcome such a promising bill of fare.
I do not intend to say much about the instruction at the Army School—a good deal of what I learnt there is unconsciously embodied in the rest of this book—but it is the spirit of the place that I want to record. I can best describe it as the opposite of what is generally known as academic. Theories and text-books about the war were at a discount: here were men who had been through the fire, every phase of it. It was not a question of opinions, but of facts. This came out most clearly in discussions after the lectures; a point would be raised about advancing over the open: “We attacked at St. Julien over open ground under heavy fire, and such and such a thing was our experience” would at once come out from someone. And there was no scoring of debating points! We were all out to pool our knowledge and experience all the time.
The Commandant inspired in everyone a most tremendous enthusiasm. His lectures on “Morale” were the finest I have ever heard anywhere. “Put yourself in your men’s position on every occasion; continually think for them, give them the bestpossible time, be in the best spirits always;” “long faces” were anathema! No one can forget his tale of the doctor who never laughed, and whom he put in a barn and taught him how to! “‘Hail fellow well met’ to all other officers and regiments” was another of his great points. “Give ’em a d—d good lunch—ad—dgood lunch.” “Get a good mess going.” “Ask your Brigadier into lunch in the trenches:makehim come in.” “Concerts?—plenty of concerts in billets.” “An extra tot of rum to men coming off patrol.” All this was a “good show.” But long faces, inhospitality, men not cheerful and singing, officers not seeing that their men get their dinners, after getting into billets, before getting their own; officers supervising working-parties by sitting under haystacks instead of going about cheering the men; brigadiers not knowing their officers; poor lunches—all these things were a “bad show, a d—d bad show!” These lectures were full of the most delicious anecdotes and thrilling stories, and backed up by a huge enthusiasm and a most emphatic practice of his preaching. We had a concert every Wednesday, and every Saturday the four motor-buses took the officers into Amiens, and the sergeants on Sundays—week-ends were in fact “good shows.”
Then there were the lectures. The second week, for instance, was a succession of lectures on the Battle of Loos. These lectures used to take place after tea, and the discussion usually lasted tilldinner. First was a lecture by an infantry major of the Seventh Division (who needless to say had been very much in it!). Then followed one by an artillery officer, giving his version of it; then followed an R.E. officer. There was nothing hidden away in a corner. It was all facts, facts, facts. An enlarged map of our own and the German trenches was most fascinating to us who had for the most part never handled one before. I remember the Major’s description of the fighting in the Quarries; it was one of the most vivid bits of narrative I have ever heard. Then there were other fascinating lectures—Captain Jefferies, the big game hunter, on Sniping: the Commandant again on Patrol work and discipline, and Dealing with prisoners: two lectures from the Royal Flying Corps, perhaps most fascinating of all.
We drilled hard with rifles: we took a bombing course and threw live bombs: we went through the gas, and had a big demonstration with smoke bombs: we went to a squadron of the R.F.C., inspected the sheds, saw the aeroplanes, and had anything we liked explained: we went out in motor-buses and carried out schemes of attack and defence: we did outpost schemes: drew maps: dug trenches and revetted them. In short, there was very little we did not do at the School.
It was, in fact, a “good show.” The School was in a big white château on the main road—a new house built by the owner of a factory. The villagereally lies like a sediment at the bottom of a basin, with houses clustering and scrambling up the sides along the high road running out of it east and west, getting thinner and fewer up the hill, to disappear altogether on the tableland. The jute factory was working hard night and day: we used to have hot baths in the long wooden troughs that are used for dyeing long rolls of matting, and I know no hot baths to equal those forty-footers!
Needless to say, we took advantage of our commandant’s arrangement for free ‘bus rides into Amiens every Saturday. Christmas Day falling on a Saturday, we all had a Christmas dinner at the Hôtel de l’Univers. This, needless to say, was a “good show.” It was a pity, though, that turkey had been insisted on, as turkey with salad, minus sausages, bread-sauce, and brussels sprouts did not seem somehow the real thing; the chef had jibbed at sausages especially! Better at Rome to have done completely as Rome does. After all we cannot give the French much advice in cooking or in war. Otherwise the dinner was good, and unlike our folk at home we had a merry Christmas.
Of course I went to see the Cathedral that Ruskin has claimed to be the most perfect building in the world; indeed, each Saturday found me there; for like all true beauty the edifice does not attract merely by novelty but satisfies the far truer test of familiarity. Yet I confess to a thrill on first entering that dream in stone, which could not comea second time. For down in the mud I had forgotten, in the obsession of the present, man’s dreams and aspirations for the future. Now, here again I was in touch with eternal things that wars do not affect. I remember once at Malvern we had been groping and choking in a thick fog all day; then someone suggested a walk, and three of us ventured out and climbed the Beacon. Half-way up the fog began to thin, and soon we emerged into a clear sunshine. Below lay all the plain wrapped in a great level blanket of white fog; here and there the top of a tall tree or a small hill protruded its head out of the mist and seemed to be laughing at its poor hidden companions; and in a cloudless blue the sun was smiling at mankind below who had forgotten his very existence. So in Amiens Cathedral I used to get my head out of the thick fog of war for a time, and in that stately silence recover my vision of the sun.
The cathedral is a building full of all the freshness of spring. I was at vespers there on Christmas afternoon, and was then impressed by the wonderful lightness of the building: so often there is gloom in a cathedral, that gives a heavy feeling. But Amiens Cathedral is perfectly lighted, and in the east window glows a blue that reminded me of viper’s bugloss in a Swiss meadow. My imagination flew back to the building of the cathedral, and to the brain that conceived it, and beyond that again to the tradition that through long yearsmoulded the conception; and behind all to the idea, the ultimate birth of this perfect creation. And one seemed to be straining almost beyond humanity, to see the first spring flowers looking up in wonder at the sky. The stately pillars were man’s aspiration towards his Creator, the floating music his attempt at praise.
Yet it was only as I left the building that I found the key to the full understanding of this perfect expression of an idea. Round the chancel is a set of bas-reliefs depicting a saint labouring among his people. But what people! They live, they speak! The relief is so deep, that some of the figures are almost in the round, and several come outside the slabs altogether. They are the people of mediæval Amiens; they are the very people who were living in the town while their great cathedral rose stone by stone to be the wonder of their city, the pride of all Picardy. Almost grotesque in their vivid humanity, they are the same people who walk outside the cathedral to-day. The master-artist, greater in his dreams than his fellow men, was yet blessed with that divine sense of humour that made him love them for their quaint smallnesses! So in Amiens I felt a double inspiration: there was man’s offering of his noblest and most beautiful to his Creator, and there was also the reminder, in the saint among the Amiens populace, that God’s answer was not a proud bend of the head as He deigned to accept the offeringof poor little man, but a coming down among them, a claiming of equality with them, even though they refuse still to realise their divinity, and choose to live in a self-made suffering and to degrade themselves in a fog of war.
All too quickly the month went by. The enthusiasm and interest of everybody grew in a steady crescendo, and no one, I am sure, will ever forget the impression left by the Major-General who was deputed to come and “tell us one or two things” from the General Staff. In a quiet voice, with a quiet smile, he compared our position with that of a year ago; told us facts about our numbers compared with the enemy’s; our guns compared with his; the real position in the air, the temporary superiority of the Fokker that would vanish completely and finally in a month or so; in everything we were now superior except heavy trench-mortars, and in a month or so we should have a big supply of them too, and a d—d sight heavier! And we could afford to wait. One got the impression that all our grousings and doubtings were completely out of date, that up at the top now was a unity of command that had thought everything out and could afford to wait. Later on I forgot this impression, but I remember it so well now. Even through Verdun we could afford to wait. We had all the cards now. There was a sort of breathless silence throughout this quiet speech. And when it ended with a “Good luck to you, gentlemen,” there wasapplause; but one’s chief desire was to go outside and shout. It was a bonfire mood: best of all would have been a bonfire ofDaily Mails!
We returned to our units on Sunday, 9th January, 1916, by motor-bus, which conveyed us some sixty or seventy miles, when we were dropped, Sergeant Roberts, myself, and Lewis, my servant. Leaving Lewis with my valise, we walked in the moonlight up to Montagne, where I got the transport officer to send a limber for my valise. “O’Brien on leave” was the first thing I grasped, as I tried to acclimatise myself to my surroundings. Leave! My three months was up, so I ought to get leave myself in a week or so; in a few days in fact. My first leave! The next week was rosy from the prospect. My second impression was like that of a poet full of a great sunset and trying to adjust himself to the dry unimaginative remarks of the rest of the community who have relegated sunsets to perdition during dinner. For every one was so dull! They groused, they maligned the Staff, they were pessimistic, they were ignorant, oh! profoundly ignorant; they were in fact in a state of not having seen a vision! I could not believe then that the time would come when I, too, should forget the vision, and fix my eyes on the mud! Still, for the moment, I was immensely surprised, though I was not such a fool as to start at once on a general reform of everyone, starting with the Brigadier. For under the Commandant’s influenceone felt ready to tell off the Brigadier, if he didn’t get motor-’buses to take your men to a divisional concert instead of saying the men must march three miles to it. But, as I say, I restrained myself.
A week of field days, of advance guards and attacks in open order, of battalion drill, company drill, arm-drill, gas-helmet drill; lectures in the school in the evening, and running drill before breakfast. Yet all the time I felt chafing to get back into the firing-line. I felt so much better equipped to command my men. I wanted to practise all my new ideas. Then my leave came through.
Leave “comes through” in the following manner. The lucky man receives an envelope from the orderly room, in the corner of which is written “Leave.” Inside is an “A” Form (Army Form C 2121) with this magic inscription: “Please note you will take charge of —— other ranks proceeding on leave to-morrow morning, 17th inst. They will parade outside orderly room at 7.0 a.m. sharp.” Then follow instructions as to where to meet the ’bus. “Take charge!” If you blind-folded those fellows they would find their way somehow by the quickest route to Blighty! The officer is then an impossible person to live with. He is continually jumping about, upsetting everybody, getting sandwiches, and discussing England, looking at the paper to see “What’s on” in town, talking, being unnecessarily bright and cheery. He is particularlyoffensive in the eyes of the man just come back from leave. Still, it is his day; abide with him until he clears off! So they abode with me until the evening, and next morning Oliver and I started off in the darkness with our four followers. As we left the village it was just beginning to lighten a little, and we met the drums just turning out, cold and sleepy. As we sprang down the hill, leaving Montagne behind us, faintly through the dawn we heard réveillé rousing our unfortunate comrades to another Monday morning!
Then came the long, long journey that nobody minds really, though every one grumbles at it. At B—— an hour’s halt for omelettes and coffee and bread and jam, while the Y.M.C.A. stall supplied tea and buns innumerable. B—— will be a station known for all time to thousands. “Do you remember B——?” we shall ask each other. “Oh! yes. Good omelettes one got there.” Then the port, and fussy R.T.O’s again. Why make a fuss, when everyone is magnetised towards the boat? Under the light of a blazing gas-jet squirting from a pendant ball, we crossed the gangway.
There were men of old time who fell on their native earth and kissed it, on returning after exile. We did not kiss the boards of Southampton pier-head, but we understood the spirit that inspired that action as we steamed quietly along the Solent overa grey and violet sea. There were mists that morning, and the Hampshire coast was grey and vague; but steadily the engine throbbed, and we glided nearer and nearer, entered Southampton Water, and at last were near enough to see houses and fields and people. People. English women.
We disembarked. But what dull people to meet us! Officials and watermen who have seen hundreds of leave-boats arrive—every day in fact! The last people to be able to respond to your feelings. Still, what does it matter? There is the train, and an English First! Some one started to run for one, and in a moment we were all running!...
But you have met us on leave.
Onthis leave I most religiously visited relations and graciously received guests. For one thing, I felt it my duty to dispel all this ignorant pessimism that I found rolling about in large chunks, like the thunder inAlice in Wonderland. I exacted apologies, humble apologies from them. “How can we help it?” they pleaded. “We have no means of knowing anything except through the papers.”
“No, I suppose you can’t help it,” I would reply, and forgive them from my throne of optimism. Eight days passed easily enough.
After dinner sometimes comes indigestion: people enjoy the one and not the other. So after leave comes the return from leave, the one in Tommy-Frenchbon, the otherno bon. I hope I do not offend by calling the state of the latter a mental indigestion! It was with a kind of fierce joy that we threw out our bully and biscuits to the crowds of French children who lined the railway banks crying out, “Bullee-beef,” “Biskeet.” The custom of supplying these rations on the leave train haslong since been discontinued now, but in those days the little beggars used to know the time of the train to a nicety, and must have made a good trade of it.
As soon as I got back to Montagne I heard a “move” was in the air, and I was delighted. I was fearfully keen to get back into the firing-line again. I was full of life, and in the mood for adventure. I started a diary. Here are some extracts.
“29th January, 1916. Lewis (my servant) brought in a bucket of water this morning which contained 10% of mud. As the mud dribbled on to the green canvas of my bath during the end of the pouring, he saw it for the first time. Apparently the well is running dry.... He managed to get some clean water at length and I had a great bath. Madame asked me as I went in to breakfast why I whistled getting up that morning. I tried to explain that I was in good spirits. It was an exhilarating morning; outside was a great cawing of rooks, and the slant sunlight lit up everything with a rich colour; the mouldy green on the twigs of the apple trees was a joy to see. Later in the day I noticed how all this delicious morning light had gone.
“7 p.m. Orders have just come in for the move to-morrow. Loading party at 6.0 a.m. under Edwards, who is inwardly fed up but outwardly quite pleased. Valises to be ready by 6.45 a.m. Dixon grouses as usual at orders coming in late.These moves always try the tempers of all concerned. O’Brien and Edwards are now on the rustle, collecting kit. We have accumulated rather a lot of papers, books, tins of ration, tobacco, etc.”
Madame was genuinely sorry to see us go. We gave her a large but beautiful ornament for her mantelpiece, suitably inscribed. The dear soul was overwhelmed, and drew cider from a cellar hitherto unknown to us, which she pressed on our servants as well as on us. We made the fellows drink it, though they were not very keen on it!
“30 Jan., 1916. Montagne—Vaux-en-Amienois. I found myself suddenly detailed as O.C. rear party, in lieu of Edwards, who has to remain in Montagne and hand over to the incoming battalion. At 9.30 three A.S.C. lorries arrived, and we loaded up. I had about forty men for the job. It was good to see these boys heaving up rolls of many-coloured blankets, which filled nearly two lorries; the third was packed with a mixture of boilers, dixies, brooms, spades, lamps, etc. The leather and skin waistcoats had to be left behind for a second journey: I left the shoemaker-sergeant and four men with these to await the return of one of the lorries. As we worked a fog rolled up, which was to stay all day. Edwards meanwhile saw to it that all the odd coal and wood left at the transport was taken to our good Madame; this much annoyed the groups of women who peered like vultures from the doorways, readyto squabble over the pickings as soon as the last of us had departed.
Farewell to Montagne. All the fellows were dull. Even Sawyer the smiling, who had been prominent with his cheery face in the loading-up, was silent and dull. No life. No spirit. A mournful lot, save for the plum-pudding dog that galloped ahead and on either flank, smelling and pouncing and tossing his mongrel ears in delight. He belonged to one of the men, a gift from a warm-hearted daughter of France.
A dull lot, I say. I rallied them. I persuaded. I whistled, hoping to put a tune into their dull hearts; and as we swung downhill into Riencourt they began to sing. It was but a sorry thin sort of singing though, like a winter sunshine; there was no power behind it, no joy, no spontaneity. Suddenly, however, as we came into the village, there was a company of the Warwicks falling in, and everyone sang like fury. Baker, one of the last draft, was the moving spirit. But he is young to this life, and later on, when the fog had entered their souls again, he said he could not well sing with a pack on. Yet is not that the very time to sing, is not that the very virtue of singing, the conquest of the poor old body by the indomitable spirit?
It was a fifteen-mile march. At the third halt I gave half an hour for the eating of bread and cheese. Then was the hour of the plum-pudding hound; also appeared a sort of Newfoundlandcollie, very big in the hind-quarters, and very dirty as well as ill-bred. Between them they made rich harvest of crusts and cheese. We sat on a bank along the road, but after half an hour we were all getting cold in the raw air, and I fell them in again, and we got on our way. Soon they warmed up and whistled and sang for a quarter of an hour; then silence returned, and eyes turned to the ground again. This march began to tell on the older men. Halford fell out, and I sent Corporal Dewey to bring him along, hastily scribbling the name of our destination on a slip torn from my field-message book, and giving it to him. Then Riley fell out, and Flynn. I began to dread the appearance of Sergeant Hayman from the rear, to tell me of some one else. They were men, these, who had been employed on various jobs; the older and weaker men. There was no skrim-shanking, for there was no Red Cross cart behind us. But no one else fell out; the pace was steady and they were as fit as anything, these fellows. Then happened an incident. We had just turned off the main Amiens road, and come to a forked road. I halted a moment to make sure of the way by the map, and while I did so apparently some sergeant from a regiment billeted in the village there told Sergeant Hayman that the battalion had taken the left road. The way was to the right, and as I struck up a steep hill, Sergeant Hayman ran up and told me the battalion (which had started nearly two hours before us)had gone to the left. ‘I’m going to the right, sergeant,’ said I. And the sergeant returned to the rear. Up, up, up. Grind, grind, grind. I began to hear signs of doubt behind. ‘Did you hear that? Said the battalion went t’other way,’ and so on. ‘Ain’t ’e got a map all right?’ from a believer. ‘Three kilos more,’ I said at the next stop. But some of the fellows had got it into their heads, I could see, that we were wrong. I studied the map; there was no doubt we were all right. Yet a mistake would be calamitous, as the men were very done. Ah! a kilo-stone! ‘Two kilos to ——,’ a place not named on the map at all. This gave me a qualm; and behind came the usual mispronunciations of this annoying village on the stone. But lo! on the left came a turning as per map. Round we swung, downhill, and suddenly we were in a village. Another qualm as I saw it full of Jocks. The doubters were just beginning to realise this fact, when we turned another corner, and almost fell on top of the C.O.! In five minutes we were in billets....”
The next day we marched to the village of Querrieux. There I heard the guns again after two months.
“31st January. This evening was full of the walking tour spirit, the spirit of good company. We were billeted at a farmhouse, and the farmershowed Captain Dixon and me all round his farm. He was full of pride in everything; of his horses first of all. There were three in the first stable, sleek and strong; then we sawla mère, a beautiful mare in foal; then lastly there was ‘Piccaninny,’ a yearling. All the stables were spotlessly clean, and the animals well kept. But to see him with his lambs was best of all. The ewes were feeding from racks that ran all along both sides of the sheds, and his lantern showed two long rows of level backs, solid and uniform and dull; while in the middle of the shed was a jocund company of close-cropped lambs, frisking, pushing, jostling, or pulling at their dams; as lively and naughty a crew as you could imagine. ‘Ah!voleur,’ cried our friend, picking up a lamb that was stealing a drink from the wrong tap, and pointing to its dam at the other end of the shed; he fondled and stroked it like a puppy, making us hold it, and assuring us it was notméchant!
At 7.0 we had our dinner in the kitchen. The farmer, his wife, and thedomestique(a manservant, whose history I will tell in a few minutes) had just finished, and were going to clear off; but we asked them to stay and let us drink their health in whiskey and soda. The farmer said this was wont to make thedomestiquego ‘zigzag’; for himself, he would drink, not for the inherent pleasure of the whiskey, which was a strong drink to which he was unused, he being of the land of light wines, but to give us pleasure! So the usual healths were given inOld Orkney and Perrier. Then we were told the history of thedomestique, which brought one very close to the spirit in which France is fighting. He had eight children in Peronne, barely ten miles the other side of the line. Called up in September, 1914, he was in the trenches until March, 1915, when he was released on account of his eight children. But by then the living line had set between them in steel and blood, and never a word yet has he heard of his wife and eight children, the youngest of whom he left nine days old! There are times when our cause seems clouded with false motives; but there seemed no doubt on this score to-night, as we watched this man in his own land, creeping up, as it were, as near as possible to his wife and children and home, and yet barred from his own village, and without the knowledge even that his own dear ones were alive. The farmer told us he had gone half crazed. Yet he had a fine face, though furrowed with deep lines down his forehead. ‘Ten minutes in the yard with the Germans—ah! what would he do!’ And vividly he drew his hand across his throat. But the Germans would never go back: that was another of his opinions. No wonder he told us he doubted thebon Dieu: no wonder he sometimes went zigzag.
The farmer was well educated, and had very intelligent views on the war; one son was a captain; the other was also serving in some capacity. The wife made us good coffee, but got very sleepy. Ilearnt she rose every morning at 4.0 a.m. to milk the cows.
To-night we can hear the guns. There seems a considerable liveliness at several parts of the line, and strange rumours of the Germans breaking through, which I do not believe. To-morrow we shall be within the shell-zone again.”
“Feb. 1st. To-day we marched to Morlancourt and are spending the night in huts. It is very cold, and we have a brazier made out of a biscuit tin, but it smokes abominably. We are busy getting trench-kit ready for the next day. From outside the hut I can see star-lights, and hear machine-guns tapping. It thrills like the turning up of the footlights.”
And it was a long act. The curtain did not fall till June.
Thisis a chapter of maps, diagrams, and technicalities. There are people, I know, who do not want maps, to whom maps convey practically nothing. These people can skip this chapter, and (from their point of view) they will lose nothing. The main interest of life lies in what is done and thought, and it does not much matter exactly where these acts and thoughts take place. Maps are like anatomy: to some people it is of absorbing interest to know where our bones, muscles, arteries and all the rest of our interior lie; to others these things are of no account whatever. Yet all are alike interested in human people. And so, quite understanding (I think you are really very romantic in your dislike of maps: you associate them with the duller kind of history, and examination papers!), I bid you mapless ones farewell till page 117, promising you (again) that you shall lose nothing.
Now to work. We understand each other, we map-lovers. The other folk have gone on to the next chapter, so we can take our time.
To face page 97MAP II.TRENCH LINE —·—·—·—·—·—
To face page 97
MAP II.
TRENCH LINE —·—·—·—·—·—
Now look at Map II. The River Ancre runs down west of the Thiepval ridge, through Albert, and then in a south-westerly course through Méricourt-l’abbé down to Corbie, where it joins the Somme on its way to Amiens. On each side of the Ancre is high ground of about 100 metres. The high ground between the Ancre and the Somme forms a long tableland. There is no ridge, it is just high flat country, from three hundred and thirty to three hundred and forty feet, cultivated and hedgeless. Now look at Fricourt. It is a break in this high ground running on the left bank of the Ancre, and this break is caused by a nameless tributary of that river, that joins it just west of Méaulte. And now you will see that this little streamlet was for over a year and a half the cause of much thought and labour to very many men indeed: for this stream formed the valley in which Fricourt lies; and right across this valley, just south of that unimportant little village, ran for some twenty months or so the Franco-German and later the Anglo-German lines.
Now look at the dotted line (—·—·) which represents the trenches. From Thiepval down to Fricourt they run almost due north and south; then they run up out of the valley on to the high ground at Bois Français (a small copse, I suppose, once; I have never discovered any vestige of a tree-stump among the shell-holes), and then abruptly run due east. It is as though someone had appeared suddenly onthe corner of the shoulder at Bois Français, and pushed them off, compelling them to make a détour. After five miles they manage to regain their direction and run south again.
It is these trenches at Bois Français that we held for over four months. I may fairly claim to know every inch of them, I think! It is obvious that if you are at Bois Français, and look north, you have an uninterrupted view not only of both front lines running down into Fricourt valley, but of both lines running up on to the high ground north of Fricourt, and a very fine view indeed of Fricourt itself, and Fricourt wood. It is also quite clear that from their front lines north of Fricourt the Germans had a good view ofourfront lines and communications in the valley; but of Bois Français and our trenches east of it they had no enfilade view, as all our communications were on the reverse slope of this shoulder of high ground. So as regards observation we were best off. Moreover, whereas they could not possibly see our support lines and communications at Bois Français, we could get a certain amount of enfilade observation of their trenches opposite from point 87, where was a work called Boute Redoubt and an artillery observation post.
The position of the artillery immediately becomes clear, when the lie of the ground is once grasped. For field artillery enfilade fire is far most effective, as the trajectory is lower than that of heavy artillery. That is to say, a whizz-bang (the name given to an18-lb. shell) more or less skims along the ground and comesatyou; whereas howitzers fire up in the air, and the shell rushes down on top of you. To be explicit at the risk of boring:—
If a battery of eighteen-pounders can fire up a trench like this:—it has far more effect against the nine men in that trench than if it fires like this:
The same applies of course to howitzers, but as howitzers drop shells down almost perpendicularly, they can be used with great effect traversing along a trench, that is to say, getting the exact range of the trench in sketch (b), and dropping shells methodically from right to left, or left to right, so many to each fire-bay, and dodging about a bit, and going back on to a bit out of turn so that the enemy cannot tell where the next coal-box is coming. Oh! it is a great game this for the actors, but not for the unwilling audience.
So you can see now why a battery of field artillerywas stationed in the gully called Gibraltar, and another just west of Albert (at B): each of these batteries could bring excellent enfilade fire on to the German trenches. There was another battery that fired from the place I have marked C, and another at D. The howitzers lived in all sorts of secret places, as far back as Morlancourt some of them. One never worried about them. They knew their own business. Once, in June, on our way into the trenches we halted close by a battery at E, and I looked into one of the gun-pits and saw the terrible monster sitting with its long nose in the air. And I saw the great shells (it was a 9·6) waiting in rows. But I felt like an interloper, and fled at the approach of a gunner. All these howitzers you see firing on the Somme films, we never saw or thought about; only we loved to hear their shells whistling and “griding” (if there is no such word, I cannot help it: there is an “r” and a “d” in the sound anyway!) over our head, and falling “crump,” “crump,” “crump” along the German support trenches. There were a lot of batteries in the Bois des Tailles; the woods were full of them, and grew fuller and fuller. I do not know what they all were.
As one brigade contains four battalions, we almost invariably had two battalions in the line, and two “in billets.” So it was usually “six days in and six days out.” During these six days out we also invariably supplied four working-parties per company,which lasted nine hours from the time of falling in outside company headquarters to dismissing after marching back. Still, it was “billets.” One slept uninterruptedly, and with equipment and boots off. Now we were undeniably lucky in being invariably (from February to June, 1916) billeted in Morlancourt, which, as you can see from the map, is situated in a regular cup with high ground all round it. I have put in the 50-metre contour line to show exactly how the roads all run down into it from every quarter. It was a cosy spot, and a very jolly thing after that long, long weary grind up from Méaulte at the end of a weary six days in, to look down on the snug little village waiting for you below. For once over the hill and “swinging” down into Morlancourt, one became, as it were, cut off from the war suddenly and completely. It was somewhat like shutting the door on a stormy night: everything outside was going on just the same, but with it was shut out also a wearing, straining tension of body and mind.
Yes, we were very lucky in being billeted at Morlancourt. It was just too far off to be worth shelling, whereas Bray was shelled regularly almost every day. So was Méaulte. And there were brigades billeted in both Bray and Méaulte. There were troops in tents in the Bois des Tailles, and this too was sometimes shelled.
Now just look, please, at the two thick lines, which represent alternative routes to the trenches.We were always able to relieve by day, thanks to the rolling nature of the country. (Where the line is dotted, this represents a trench.) We always used to go by the route through Méaulte at one time, until they took to shelling the road at the point I have marked Z; whether they could see us from an observation post up la-Boiselle way, or whether they spotted us by observation balloon or aeroplane, one cannot say. But latterly we always used the route by the Bois des Tailles and Gibraltar. In both cases we had to cross the high ground S.W. of point 71 by trench, but on arrival at that point we were again in a valley and out of observation. All along this road were a series of dug-outs, and here were companies in reserve, R.E. headquarters, R.A.M.C. dressing-station, field kitchens, stores, etc. And here the transport brought up rations every evening viâ Bray. One could walk about here, completely secure from view; but latterly they took to shelling it, and it was not a healthy spot then. It was also enfiladed occasionally by long-range machine-gun fire. But on the whole it was a good spot, and one had a curious sensation being able to walk about on an open road within a thousand yards of the Germans. The dug-outs called “71 North” were the best. The bank sloped up very steeply from the road, thus protecting the dug-outs along it from anything but shell-fire of very high trajectory. And this the Germans never used. However, one did not want to walktoo far along the road, for it led round the corner into full view of Fricourt at X. There was a trench at the side of the road that ought to be hopped down into, but it could easily be missed, and there was no barrier across the road! I saw a motor-cyclist dash right along to the corner once, and return very speedily when he found himself gazing full view at Fricourt!
To face page 103MAP III.
To face page 103
MAP III.
Map III is an enlargement of the area in Map II, and gives details of our trenches and the German trenches opposite. I wish I could convey the sense of intimacy with which I am filled when I look at this map. It is something like the feelings I should ascribe to a farmer looking at a map of his property, every inch of which he knows by heart; every field, every copse, every lane, every hollow and hill are intimate things to him. With every corner he has some association; every tree cut down, every fence repaired, every road made up, every few hundred yards of shaw grubbed up, every acre of orchard enclosed and planted—all these he can call back to memory at his will. So do I know every corner, every turning in these trenches; every traverse has its peculiar familiarity, very often its peculiar history. This traverse was built the night after P——’s death; this trench was dug because “75 Street” was so marked down by the enemy rifle-grenades; another was a terrible straight trench till we built those traverses in it; anotherwas a morass until we boarded it. How well I remember being half buried by a canister at the corner of “78 Street”; and the night the mine blew in all the trench between the Fort and the Loop; what an awful dug-out that was at Trafalgar Square; how we loathed the straightness of Watling Street. And so on,ad infinitum. We were in those trenches for over four months, and I know them as one knows the creakings of the doors at home, the subtle smell of the bath-room, the dusty atmosphere of the box-room, or the lowness of the cellar door. Particularly intimate are the recollections of dug-outs, with their good or bad conveniences in the way of beds and tables, their beams that smote you on the head as regularly as clockwork, or their peculiarly musty smell. One dug-out invariably smelt of high rodent; another of sand-bag, nothing but sand-bag.
From February, then, to June we kept on going into these trenches drawn on Map III, and then back to Morlancourt for rest and working-parties, all as regular as clockwork. Once or twice the actual front line held by our battalion was altered, so that I have been in the trenches all along from the Cemetery (down in the valley) to the end of the craters opposite Danube Trench. But every time except twice my company held part of the trench between 83 B (the end of the craters) and the Lewis gun position to the right of 76 Street. The usual distribution of the battalion was as follows:—
(After three days A and B, and C and D, relieved each other.)
(After three days A and B, and C and D, relieved each other.)
Maple Redoubt was what is known as a “strong point.” In case of an enemy attack piercing our front line, the company in Maple Redoubt held out at all costs to the last man, even if the enemy got right past and down the hill. There was a dug-out which was provisioned full up with bully-beef and water (in empty petrol cans) ready for this emergency. There was a certain amount of barbed-wire put out in front of the trenches to N., W., and E.; and there were two Lewis-gun positions at A and B. Really it was not a bad little place, although the “Defences of Maple Redoubt” were always looked on by us as rather more of a big joke than anything. No one ever really took seriously the thought of the enemy coming over and reaching Maple Redoubt. Raid the front line he was liable to do at any moment; but attack on such a big scale as to come right through, no, no one reallyever (beneath the rank of battalion commander, anyway) worried about that. Still, if he did, there was the redoubt anyway; and there was another called “Redoubt A” on the hill facing us, as one looked from Maple Redoubt across the smoke rising from dug-outs which could just not be seen under the bank at 71 North. Here was rumoured to be bully-beef and water also, and the Machine-gun Corps had some positions in it which they visited occasionally; but even a notice “No one allowed this way,” failed to tempt me to explore its interior. One saw it, traced out on the hill, from Maple Redoubt, and there I have no doubt it still is, with its bully-beef intact and its water a little stale!
So much for Maple Redoubt. In case of attack, as I have said, it was a strong point that must hold out at all costs, while the company at 71 North came up to Rue Albert, and would support either of the front companies as the C.O. directed. The front companies of course held the front line to the last man. Meanwhile, the two battalions in billets would be marching up from Morlancourt, to the high ground above Redoubt A (that is, just east of D on Map II). Up there were a series of entrenched “works,” known as the “intermediate line.” (The “second line” ran a little north of point 90, N.E. of Morlancourt. But no one tookthatseriously, anyway.) The battalions marching up from billets might have to hold these positions, or, what wasmore likely, be ordered to counter-attack immediately. Such was the defence scheme.
“Six days in billets: three days in support. Not particularly hard, that sounds,” I can hear someone say. I tried to disillusion people in an earlier chapter about the easiness of the “rest” in billets, owing to the incessant working-parties. These were even more incessant during these four months. Let me say a few words then, also, about life in support trenches. I admit that for officers it was not always an over-strenuous time; but look at Tommy’s ordinary programme:—
This would be a typical day, say, in April.
4 a.m. Stand to, until it got light enough to clean your rifle; then clean it.About 5 a.m. Get your rifle inspected, and turn in again.6.30 a.m. Turn out to carry breakfast up to company in front line. (Old Kent Road very muddy after rain. A heavy dixie to be carried from top of Weymouth Avenue, up viâ Trafalgar Square, and 76 Street to the platoon holding the trench at the Loop.)7.45 a.m. Get your own breakfast.9 a.m. Turn out for working-party; spend morning filling sandbags for building traverses in Maple Redoubt.11.30 a.m. Carry dinner up to front company. Same as 6.30 a.m.1 p.m. Get your own dinner.1 to 4 p.m. (With luck) rest.4 p.m. Carry tea up to front company.5 p.m. Get your own tea.5.15 to 7.15 p.m. (With luck) rest.7.15 p.m. Clean rifle.7.30 p.m. Stand to. Rifle inspected.Jones puts his big ugly boot out suddenly, just after you have finished cleaning rifle, and upsets it. Result—mud all over barrel and nose-cap.8.30 p.m. Stand down. Have to clean rifle again and show platoon sergeant.9 p.m. Turn out for working-party till 12 midnight in front line.12 midnight. Hot soup.12.15 a.m. Dug-out at last till4 a.m. Stand to.
4 a.m. Stand to, until it got light enough to clean your rifle; then clean it.
About 5 a.m. Get your rifle inspected, and turn in again.
6.30 a.m. Turn out to carry breakfast up to company in front line. (Old Kent Road very muddy after rain. A heavy dixie to be carried from top of Weymouth Avenue, up viâ Trafalgar Square, and 76 Street to the platoon holding the trench at the Loop.)
7.45 a.m. Get your own breakfast.
9 a.m. Turn out for working-party; spend morning filling sandbags for building traverses in Maple Redoubt.
11.30 a.m. Carry dinner up to front company. Same as 6.30 a.m.
1 p.m. Get your own dinner.
1 to 4 p.m. (With luck) rest.
4 p.m. Carry tea up to front company.
5 p.m. Get your own tea.
5.15 to 7.15 p.m. (With luck) rest.
7.15 p.m. Clean rifle.
7.30 p.m. Stand to. Rifle inspected.
Jones puts his big ugly boot out suddenly, just after you have finished cleaning rifle, and upsets it. Result—mud all over barrel and nose-cap.
Jones puts his big ugly boot out suddenly, just after you have finished cleaning rifle, and upsets it. Result—mud all over barrel and nose-cap.
8.30 p.m. Stand down. Have to clean rifle again and show platoon sergeant.
9 p.m. Turn out for working-party till 12 midnight in front line.
12 midnight. Hot soup.
12.15 a.m. Dug-out at last till
4 a.m. Stand to.
And so on for three days and nights. This is really quite a moderate programme: it is one that you would aim at for your men. But there are disturbing elements that sometimes compel you to dock a man’s afternoon rest, for instance. A couple of canisters block Watling Street; youmustsend a party of ten men and an N.C.O. to clear it at once: or you suddenly have to supply a party to carry “footballs” up to Rue Albert for the trench-mortar man. The Adjutant is sorry; he could not let you know before; but they have just come up to the Citadel, and must be unloaded at once. Soyou have to find the men for this on the spur of the moment. And so it goes on night and day. Oh, it’s not all rum and sleep, is life in Maple Redoubt.
Three days and nights in support, and then comes the three days in the front line.
Now we will take it that “B” Company is holding from 80 A to the Lewis-gun position to the right of 76 Street. You will notice at once that almost the whole of No Man’s Land in front of this sector of trenches is a chain of mine craters. No one can have much idea of a crater until he actually sees one. I can best describe it as a hollow like a quarry or chalk hole about fifty yards in diameter and some forty or fifty feet deep. (They vary in size, of course, but that is about the average.) The sides, which are steepish, and vary in angle between thirty and sixty degrees, are composed of a very fine thin soil, which is, in point of fact, a thick sediment of powdered soil that has returned to earth after a tempestuous ascent into the sky. A large mine always causes a “lip” above the ground level, which appears in section somewhat like this:—
There is usually water in the bottom of the deeper craters. When a series of craters is formed,running into one another, you get a very uneven floor that appears in lengthwise section thus:—
The dotted line is the ground level: the uneven line is the course that would be taken by a man walking along the bottom of the chain of craters, and keeping in the centre. Actually, of course, (on patrol) one would not keep in the centre where the crater contained water, but would skirt the water by going to one side of it. The “bridges” are important, as they are naturally the easiest way across the craters; a bombing patrol, for instance, could crawl over a bridge, without having to go right down to the bottom level, and (which is more important) will not have a steep climb up over very soft and spongy soil. These bridges are the “lips” of the larger craters where they join the smaller; looking at a crater-chainin planX is a “bridge,” whereas Y and Z are “lips” rising above ground level.
This crater-chain being understood, the system of sentries is easily grasped. Originally, before mining commenced, our front line ran (roughly) from left to right along Rue Albert up 80 A Street and along to the top of 76 Street in a straight line. Then began the great game of mining under the enemy parapet and blowing him up; and its corollary countermining, or blowing up the enemy’s mine galleries before he reached your parapet. Such is the game as played underground by the tunnelling companies, R.E. To the infantry belongs the work (if not blown up) of consolidating the crater, whether made by your or an enemy mine, that is to say, of seizing your side of the crater and guarding it by bombing-posts in such a way as to prevent the enemy from doing anything except hold his side of the crater.
For instance, take a single crater, caused by us blowing up the German gallery before it reaches our parapet. If we do nothing, the enemy digs a trench into the crater at A, and can get into the crater any time he likes and bomb our front line,and return to his trench unseen. This, of course, never happens, as we dig a sap into the crater from our side, and the result is stale-mate; each side can see into the crater, so neither can go into it.
That is all. 83 B, 81 A, the Matterhorn sap, the Loop, the Fort—they are all saps up to crater-edges, in some cases joined up along the edge (as between 83 B and 83 A, or at the Loop and the Fort.) And these saps are held by bombing-posts. Where there are no craters in front (as, for instance, between the Fort and the Loop), there the trench is held by sentry groups in the ordinary way. The most important bombing-posts are at the “bridges,” which are the points that most want guarding.
Each platoon has so many posts to “find” men for. No. 5 Platoon has three posts between the Lewis-gun position and the top of 76 Street; No. 6 finds two in the Fort and one between the Fort and the Loop; there is another post before you reach the Loop, found by No. 7, who also finds two in the Loop itself; while No. 8 finds the Matterhorn post and the top of 80 A. All these posts are composed of one bomber, who has a box of bombs with him and his rifle without bayonet fixed, and one bayonet man. There is no special structure about a “post”: it is just the spot in the trench where the sentries are placed. Sometimes one or two posts could be dispensed with by day, if one post could with a periscope watch the ground in front of both. The sentry groups arerelieved every two hours by the platoon N.C.O. on trench duty. There is always an N.C.O. on trench duty, going the rounds of his sentry groups, in every platoon; and one officer going round the groups in the company. Thus is secured the endless chain of unwinking eyes that stretches from Dunkirk to Switzerland.
There were two Lewis guns to every company. One had a position at the Fort, covering the ground between the Fort and the Loop; the other was just to the right of 80 A, where it had a good position sweeping the craters. The Lewis-gun teams found their sentries independently of the platoons, and had their dug-outs. A nice compact little affair was a Lewis-gun team; always very snug and self-contained.
Company Headquarters were at Trafalgar Square, though later we changed to a dug-out half-way up 76 Street. Each platoon had a dug-out about fifty yards behind the front line, and as far as possible one arranged to get the men a few hours’ sleep in them every day; but only a certain percentage at a time. There were four stretcher-bearers and two signallers also at Trafalgar Square. Also a permanent wiring-party had its quarters here, a corporal and five men; they made up “concertina” or “gooseberry” wire by day, and were out three or four hours every night putting it out. They were, of course, exempt from other platoon duties. Each platoon had a pioneer to attend to sanitary arrangements,and other odd jobs such as fetching up soup; and each platoon had an orderly ready to take messages. At Company Headquarters, besides the officers’ servants, were the company orderly, and company officers’ cook. An officer on trench duty was accompanied by his servant as orderly.
This was the distribution of the company in the front line. Every morning from 9 to 12 all men not on sentry worked at repairing and improving the trenches; and the same for four hours during the night. Work done to strengthen the parapet can only be done by night. Every night wire was put out. Every night a patrol went out. Every day one “stood to” arms for an hour before dawn, and an hour after dusk. And day and night there was an intermittent stinging and buzzing of black-winged instruments between the opposing trenches. Of shells I have already spoken; next in deadliness were rifle-grenades, which are bombs with a rod attachment that is put down the barrel of an ordinary rifle. Four of these rifles are stood in a rack fixed to the ground, and fired by a string from a few yards away, at a very high trajectory. They are a very deadly weapon, as you cannot see them dropping on to you. Then there is a multiform genus called “trench-mortar,” being projectiles of all kinds and shapes lobbed over from close range. The canister was the most loathed. It was simply a tin oil-can, the size of a lady’s muff (large); one heard a thud, and watched the beast rising, rising,then stationary, it seemed, in mid-air, and then come toppling down, down, down on top of one with a crash—three seconds’ silence—and then a most colossal explosion, blowing everything in its vicinity to atoms. These canisters were loathed by the men with a most personal and intense aversion. Yet they were really not nearly so dangerous as rifle-grenades, as one had time to dodge them very often, unless enfiladed in a communication trench. They were, moreover, very local in their effects. A shell has splinters that spread far and wide; a trench-mortar is a clumsy monster with a thin skin, no splinters, and an abominable, noisy, vulgar way of making the most of itself. “Sausages” were another but milder form of the vulgar trench-mortar; aerial torpedoes were daintier people with wings, who looked so cherubic as they came sailing over, that one almost forgot their deadly stinging powers; they, too, were a species of trench-mortar.
It is natural to write lightly of these things; yet they were no light matters. They were the instruments of death that took their daily toll of lives. In this chapter describing the system and routine of ordinary trench warfare, I have tried to prepare the canvas for several pictures I have drawn in bold bare lines; now I am putting in a wash of colour, the atmosphere of Death.
Sometimes we forgot it in the interest of the present activity; sometimes we saw it face to face, without a qualm; but always it was there withits relentless overhanging presence, dulling our spirits, wearing out our lives. The papers are always full of Tommy smiling: Bairnsfather has immortalised his indomitable humour. Yes, it is true. We laugh, we smile. But for an hour of laughter, there are how many hours of weariness, strain, and grim agony! It is great that Tommy’s laughter has been immortalised; but do not forget that its greatness lies in this, that it was uttered beneath the canopy of ever-impending Death.
Itmust not be imagined that I at once grasped all the essential details of our trench system, as I have tried to put them concisely in the preceding chapter. On the contrary, it was only very gradually that I accumulated my intimate knowledge of our maze of trenches, only by degrees that I learnt the lie of the land, and only by personal patrolling that I learnt the interior economy of the craters. At first the front line, with its loops and bombing-posts, and portions “patrolled only,” its sand-bag dumps, its unexpected visions of R.E.’s scurrying like bolted rabbits from mine-shafts, its sudden jerk round a corner that brought you in full view of the German parapet across a crater that made you gaze fascinated several seconds before you realised that you should be stooping low, as here was a bad bit of trench that wanted deepeningat onceand had not been cleared properly after being blown in last night—all this, I say, was at first a most perplexing labyrinth. It was only gradually that I solved its mysteries, and discovered an order in its complexity.
I will give a few more extracts from my diary, some of which seem to me now delightfully naïve! Here they are, though.
“2nd Feb., 1916. In the trenches. Everything very quiet. We are in support, in a place called Maple Redoubt, on the reverse slope of a big ridge. Good dug-outs (sic), and a view behind, over a big expanse of chalk-downs, which is most exhilarating. A day with blue sky and a tingle of frost. Being on the reverse slope, you can walk about anywhere, and so can see everything. Have just been up in the front trenches, which are over the ridge, and a regular, or rather very irregular, rabbit-warren. The Boche generally only about thirty to forty yards away. The trenches aredry, that is the glorious thing.Dry.Just off to pow-wow to the new members of my platoon.”
Here I will merely remark that the “good” dug-out in which we were living was blown in by a 4·2 shell exactly four days later, killing one officer and wounding the other two badly. With regard to the state of the trenches, it was dry weather, and “when they were dry they were dry, and when they were wet they were wet!”
“3rd Feb. Another beautiful February morning. Slept quite well, despite rats overhead. O’Brien and Dixon awfully dull and heavy; can’tthink why. Everything outside is full of life; there is a crispness in the air, and a delightful sharp shadow and light contrast as you look up Maple Redoubt.
Meditations on coldness, and how it unmans—on hunger, and how it weakens—on the art of feeding and warming, and how women realise this, while men do not usually know there is any art in keeping house at all!
Meditations, too, on the stupidity, slowness, and clumsiness of officers’ servants.”
Dixon’s snores make me bucked with life; so, too, this same clumsiness of the servants. Lewis came in just now. ‘Why are you waiting, Lewis?’ I asked. ‘I thought Watson was waiting to-day.’ (This after a great strafing of servants for general stupidity and incompetence.) ‘None of the others dared come in, sir,’ he replied, in his high piping voice, and a broad grin on his face. Oh! they are good fellows! Why be fed up with life? Why long faces? Long faces, these are the bad things of life, the things to fight against....”
So did my vision of the Third Army School bear fruit, I see now!
“Philosophy from the trenches. Does it cover everything? Does it explain the fellows I passed this morning being carried to the Aid Post, one with blood and orange iodine all over his face, andthe other wounded in both legs? It always comes as a surprise when the bombs and shells produce wounds and death....
Watched a mine go up this evening—great yellow-brown mass of smoke, followed by a beautiful under-cloud of orange-pink that steamed up in a soft creamy way. No firing and shelling followed as at Givenchy....
Take over from ‘A’ to-morrow morning.
10 p.m. Great starlight. Jupiter and Venus both up, and the Great Bear and Orion glittering hard and clean in the steely sky. I wish I had a Homer. I am sure he has just one perfect epithet for Orion on a night like this. I shall read Homer in a new light after these times. I begin to understand the spirit of the Homeric heroes; it was all words, words, words before. Now I see. Billet life—where is that in theIliad? In the tents, of course. And the eating and drinking, the ‘word that puts heart into men,’ the cool stolid facing of death, all those gruesome details of wounds and weapons, all is being enacted here every day exactly as in the Homeric age. Human nature has not altered.
And did not Homer tell, too, how utterly ‘fed up’ they were with it all? Can one not read between the lines and see, besides the glamour of physical courage, the strain, the weariness, the ‘fed-upness’ of them all! I think so. ‘Νόστος’ isa word I remember so well. They were all longing for the day of their return. As here, the big fights were few and far between; and as here, there were the months and years of waiting.
And on them, too, the stars looked down, winking alike at Greeks and Trojans; just as to-night thousands of German and British faces, dull-witted or sharp, sour-faced or smiling, sad or happy, are gazing up and wondering if there is any wisdom in the world yet.
Four thousand years ago? And all the time the stars in the Great Bear have been hurtling apart at thousands of miles an hour, and the human eye sees no difference. No wonder they wink at us....
And our mothers, and wives ... the women-folk—Euripides understood their views on war. Ten years they waited....
Mustgo to bed. D—— these scuffling rats.”
Frequently I found my thoughts flying back through the years, and more especially on starlit nights, or on a breathless spring evening, to the Greeks and Romans. Life out here was so primitive; so much a matter of eating and drinking, and digging, and sleeping, and so full of the elements, of cold, and frost, and wind, and rain; there were so many definite and positive physical goods and bads, that the barrier of an unreal civilisation was completely swept away. Underthe stars and in a trench you were as good as any Homeric warrior; but you were little better. And so you felt you understood him. And here I will add that it was especially at sunset that the passionate desire to live would sometimes surge up, so intense, so clamorous, that it swept every other feeling clean aside for the time.
But to return to Maple Redoubt, or rather to Gibraltar, where the next entry in my diary was written.
“6th Feb. Rather an uncomfortable dug-out in Gibraltar. Yesterday was a divine day. I sat up in ‘the Fort’ most of the day, watching the bombardment. Blue sky, on the top of a high chalk down; larks singing; and a real sunny dance in the air. We watched four aeroplanes sail over, amid white puffs of shrapnel; and a German ’plane came over. I could see the black crosses very plainly with my glasses. Most godlike it must have been up there on such a morning. I felt very pleased with life, and did two sketches, one of Sawyer, another of Richards....
A dull thud, and then ‘there goes another,’ shouts someone. It reminds me of Bill the lizard coming out of the chimney-pot inAlice in Wonderland. Everyone gazes and waits for the crash! Toppling through the sky comes a big tin oil-can, followed immediately by another; both fall and explode with a tremendous din, sending up a fifty-footspurt of black earth and flying débris, while down the wind comes the scud of sand-bag fluff and the smell of powder. This alternated with the 4·2’s, which come over with a scream and wait politely a second or two before bursting so inelegantly.” (I seem to have got mixed up a bit here: it was usually the canisters that “waited.”)
“The mining is a great mystery to me at present. One part of the trench is only patrolled, as the Boche may ‘blow’ there at any moment. I must say it is an uncomfortable feeling, this liability to sudden projection skywards! The first night I had a sort of nightmare all the time, and kept waking up, and thinking about a mine going up under one. The second night I was too tired to have nightmares.
The ratsswarm. I woke up last night, and saw one sitting on Edwards, licking its whiskers. Then it ran on to the box by the candle. It was a pretty brown fellow, rather attractive, I thought. I felt no repulsion whatever at sight of it....
The front trenches are amaze. I cannot disentangle all the loops and saps; and now we are cut off from ‘C,’ as the front trench is all blown in; one has to have a connecting patrol that goes viâ Rue Albert. A very weird affair. The only consolation is that the Boche would bemorelost if he got in!
I cannot help feeling that ‘B’ company hasbeen very lucky. We were in Maple Redoubt, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; everything was quite quiet with us, but ‘D’ had seven casualties in the front trench. On Friday we relieved ‘A,’ and all Saturday the enemy bombarded a spot just behind our company’s left, putting over 4·2’s and canisters all day long from 9.0 a.m. onwards, and absolutely smashing up our trenches there. Then Trafalgar Square has been rather a hot shop: two of our own whizz-bangs fell short there, and several rifle grenades fellveryclose—also, splinters of the 4·2’s came humming round, ending with little plops quite close. O’Brien picked up a large splinter that fell in the trench right outside the dug-out. Again, at ‘stand-down,’ when Dixon, Clark, Edwards, and I were standing talking together at the top of 76 Street, two canisters fell most alarmingly near us, about ten yards behind, covering us with dirt. Yet we have not had a single casualty.
To-day we were to have been relieved by the Manchesters at midday, but this morning at ‘stand to’ we heard the time had been altered to 8.0 a.m. ‘B’ was duly relieved, and No. 5 Platoon had just changed gum-boots, while 6, 7, and 8 were sitting at the corner of Maple Redoubt enthralled in the same process, when over came two canisters, one smashing in Old Kent Road, down which we had just come, and the other falling right into an ‘A’ Company dug-out, twenty yards to my left, killing two men and wounding three others, one probablymortally. And now I have just had the news that the Manchester have had twenty-three casualties to-day, including three officers, their R.S.M., and a company sergeant-major.”
As I read some of these sentences, true in every detail as they are, I cannot help smiling. For it was no “bombardment” that took place on our left all day; it was merely the Germans potting one of our trench-mortar positions! And Trafalgar Square was really very quiet, that first time in. But what I notice most is the way in which I record the fall ofindividualcanisters and rifle grenades, even if they were twenty yards away! Never a six days in, latterly, that we did not have to clear Old Kent Road and Watling Street two or three times; and we used to fire off a hundred rifle grenades a day very often, and received as many in return always. And the record of casualties one did not keep. Wewerelucky, it is true. Once, and once only, after, did “B” Company go in and come out without a casualty. Those first two days in Maple Redoubt, when “everything was quiet,” were the most deceitful harbingers of the future that could have been imagined. “Why long faces?” I could write. The Manchesters had a ruder but a truer introduction to the Bois Français trenches, and especially to Maple Redoubt. For the dug-outs were abominable; not one was shell-proof; and there was no parados or traverse for a hundredand fifty yards. The truth of the matter was that these trenches had been some of the quietest in the line; for some reason or other, when our Division took them over, they immediately changed face about, and took upon themselves the task of growing in a steady relentless crescendo into one of the hottest sectors in the line.
On the 22nd of February the Germans raided our trenches on the left opposite Fricourt. They did not get much change out of it. I can remember at least four raids close on our left or right during those four months; they never actually came over on our front, but we usually came in for the bombardment. The plan is to isolate the sector to be raided by an intense bombardment on that sector, and on the sectors on each side; to “lift” the barrage, or curtain of fire, at a given moment off the front line of the sector raided “what time” (as the old phrase goes) they come over, enter the trench, if they can, make a few prisoners, and get back quickly. All the while the sectors to right and left are being bombarded heavily. It was this isolating bombardment that our front line was receiving, while we were left unmolested in 71 North. All this I did not know at the time. Here is my record of it.
“25 Feb., 1916. It is snowing hard. We are in a very comfortable tubular dug-out in 71 North. This dug-out is the latest pattern, being on the twopenny-tube model; very warm, and free fromdraughts. It isnotshell-proof, but then shells never seem to come near here.
Let me try and record the raid on our left on the 22nd, before I forget it.
The Manchesters were in the front line and Maple Redoubt. During the afternoon the Boche started putting heavies on to Maple Redoubt, and the corner of Canterbury Avenue. ‘Bad luck on the Manchesters again,’ we all agreed—and turned in for tea. There was a wonderful good fire going.
‘By Jove, they are going it,’ I said, as we sat down and Gray brought in the teapot. Thud! Thud! Thud—thud! We simply had to go out and watch. Regular coal-boxes, sending up great columns of mud, and splinters humming and splashing right over us, a good hundred yards or more. ‘Better keep inside,’ from Dixon.