"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How did you get it?" he called up to the man.
"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve, thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?" he asked.
"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."
We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood, and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who are you?"
"The London Irish."
"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ——," he said, rubbing a miry hand across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief andwiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse luck! Are you from Chelsea?"
"Yes."
"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the two men lay.
They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity. Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands ofthe makers, lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless body in the trench.
"Brothers," he said.
For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs. Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church, but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Billasked the engineer, who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even when I read it in the papers at home, but now—"
"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer, "and they always keep potting at the place."
"But have we?"
"I dunno."
"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"
"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.
"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.
"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before this war. Now!" he paused. "That whatwe saw just now," he continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench, "never moves me.You'llfeel it a bit being just new out, but when you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."
In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion "stopped a packet."
Up for days in the trenches,Working and working away;Eight days up in the trenchesAnd back again to-day.Working with pick and shovel,On traverse, banquette, and slope,And now we are back and workingWith tooth-brush, razor, and soap.
We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.
Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his shovel.
"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit from his haversack.
"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"
"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were new to the grind of war.
"I'vefound out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches have got a humour peculiarly their own.
"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sellcafé noirandpain et beurre."
"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like ourselves."
"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the Cockney brightened.
"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and butter."
"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.
"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."
"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping a shower of muck which a bursting shell flung in his face. We were with him immediately, and presently foundourselves at the door of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled with shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.
A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly, well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs in the house were already occupied.
The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on the wall, the portrait of the woman herself,The Holy Family Journeying to Egypt, a print of Millet'sAngelus, and a rude etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the glass broken. A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing piece of a shell dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its pendulum gone and the glass broken.
Bill,naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his coffee, and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl, he undertook the matter himself.
"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be amused.
"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound) it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno, that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n milk."
"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like that."
"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be nice if I got one."
"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for queer things if she did."
"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey, that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a shell exploded overhead, and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her head for a momentand crossed herself, then she continued her work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill forthwith relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When we got out to our work again he spoke.
"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with her."
"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.
"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a woman with blunt finger nails."
"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.
"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a space for wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps. Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They couldnot fashion you in Eden! When I think of a woman washing herself! Ugh! Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"
"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a fag end from the bottom of the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen maggots!"
It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.
"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and some so bad that I almost ran away from them."
For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English communication trenches are narrow—so narrow, indeed, that a man with a packoften gets held, and sticks there until his comrades pull him clear.
The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for the passage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there, packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks, bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression and despair.
The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, andwait. When an attack is on the communication trenches are persistently shelled by the enemy with a view to stop the advance of reinforcements. Once our company lay in a trench as reserves for fourteen hours, and during that time upwards of two thousand shells were hurled in our direction, our trench being half filled with rubble and clay. Two mates, one on my right and one on my left, were wounded. I did not receive a scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours during the cannonade; but this is another story.
Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches, ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality. Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the sniper plies his trade.He hides somewhere in the slack, and pots at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger zone is past.
Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however, who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of my cigarettes told me the story.
"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me, but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'llnot lave this place till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was there prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the sniper. I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he didn't bury his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole of hell when an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his sandbagged castle, with me gun on the cock and me finger on the trigger, but he wasn't there; there was nothin' in the place but a few rounds of ball an' a half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I had a sup without winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down the bottle, 'its little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a bottle with nothin' in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and I lay down in the corner and waited for him to come in.
"But sorrow the fut of him came, and me waiting there till the colour of day was in the sky. Then I goes back to me own place, and there was he waiting for me. He only made one mistake, he had fallen to sleep, and he just sprung up as I came in be the door.
"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselvesand flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with nothin' bar the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye know, I had a kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in to my house without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as if he was in his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said, 'This is only a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for ye, so come along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to our trenches as stand-to was coming to an end."
Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of colour—crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, andlimp, lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of the tragedy between the trenches.
There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, mouldersin ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the banquette.
"The fire trench to-night," said Stoner that evening, a nervous light in his soft brown eyes, as he fumbled with the money on the card table. His luck had been good, and he had won over six francs; he generally loses. "Perhaps we're in for the high jump when we get up there."
"The high jump?" I queried, "what's that?"
"A bayonet charge," he replied, dealing a final hand and inviting us to double the stakes as the deal was the last. A few wanted to play for another quarter of an hour, but he would not prolong the game. Turning up an ace he shoved the money in his pocket and rose to his feet.
In an hour we were ready to move. We carried much weight in addition to our ordinary load, firewood, cooking utensils, and extra loaves. We bought the latter at a neighbouringboulangerie, one that still plied its usual trade in dangerous proximity to the firing-line.
Theloaves cost 6-1/2d.each, and we prefer them to the English bread which we get now and again, and place them far above the tooth-destroying army biscuits. Fires were permitted in the trenches, we were told, and our officers advised us to carry our own wood with us. So it came about that the enemy's firing served as a useful purpose; we pulled down the shrapnel shattered rafters of our billets, broke them up into splinters with our entrenching tools, and tied them up into handy portable bundles which we tied on our packs.
At midnight we entered Harley Street, and squeezed our way through the narrow trench. The distance to the firing-line was a long one; traverse and turning, turning and traverse, we thought we should never come to the end of them. There was no shelling, but the questing bullet was busy, it sung over our heads or snapped at the sandbags on the parapet, ever busy on the errand of death and keen on its mission. But deep down in the trench we regarded it with indifference. Our way was one of safety. Here the bullet was foiled, and pick and shovel reigned masters in the zone of death.
We were relieving the Scots Guards (many ofmy Irish friends belong to this regiment). Awaiting our coming, they stood in the full marching order of the regulations, packs light, forks and spoons in their putties, and all little luxuries which we still dared to carry flung away. They had been holding the place for seven days, and were now going back somewhere for a rest.
"Is this the firing-line?" asked Stoner.
"Yes, sonny," came the answer in a voice which seemed to be full of weariness.
"Quiet here?" Mervin enquired, a note of awe in his voice.
"Naethin' doin'," said a fresh voice that reminded me forcibly of Glasgow and the Cowcaddens. "It's a gey soft job here."
"No casualties?"
"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."
In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.
"Irish?"I asked.
"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"
"I am," I answered.
"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody said. "Are ye dry?"
I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is there something to drink?" I queried.
"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied. "Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"
A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea. The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.
"It's the Saxons that's across the road," he said, pointing to the enemy's lines which were very silent. I had not heard a bullet whistle over since I entered the trench. On the left was an interesting rifle and machine gun fire all the time. "They're quiet fellows, the Saxons, they don't want to fight any more than we do, so there's a kind of understanding between us. Don't fire at us and we'll not fire at you. There's agood dug-out there," he continued, pointing to a dark hole in the parados (the rear wall of the trench), "and ye'll find a pot of jam and half a loaf in the corner. There's also a water jar half full."
"Where do you get water?"
"Nearly a mile away the pump is," he answered. "Ye've to cross the fields to get it."
"A safe road?" asked Stoner.
"Not so bad, ye know," was the answer.
"This place smells 'orrid," muttered Bill, lighting a cigarette and flinging on his pack. "What is it?"
"Some poor devils between the trenches; they've been lyin' there since last Christmas."
"Blimey, what a stink," muttered Bill, "Why don't ye bury them up?"
"Because nobody dare go out there, me boy," was the answer. "Anyway, it's Germans they are. They made a charge and didn't get as far as here. They went out of step so to speak."
"Woo-oo-oo!" Bill suddenly yelled and kicked a tin pail on to the floor of the trench. A shower of sparks flew up into the air and fluttered over the rim of the parapet. "I put my'and on it, 'twas like a red 'ot poker, it burned me to the bone!"
"It's the brazier ye were foolin' about with," said Mike, who was buckling his pack-straps preparatory to moving, "See, and don't put yer head over the top, and don't light a fire at night. Ye can put up as much flare as you like by day. Good-bye, boys, and good luck t'ye."
"Any Donegal men in the battalion?" I called after him as he was moving off.
"None that I know of," he shouted back, "but there are two other battalions that are not here, maybe there are Donegal men there. Good luck, boys, good luck!"
We were alone and lonely, nearly every man of us. For myself I felt isolated from the whole world, alone in front of the little line of sand bags with my rifle in my hand. Who were we? Why were we there? Goliath, the junior clerk, who loved Tennyson; Pryor, the draughtsman, who doted on Omar; Kore, who read Fanny Eden's penny stories, and never disclosed his profession; Mervin, the traveller, educated for the Church but schooled in romance; Stoner, the clerk, who reads my books and says he never read better; and Bill, newsboy, street-arab, andLord knows what, who readsThe Police News, plays innumerable tricks with cards, and gambles and never wins. Why were we here holding a line of trench, and ready to take a life or give one as occasion required? Who shall give an answer to the question?
At night the stars are shining bright,The old-world voice is whispering near,We've heard it when the moon was light,And London's streets were verydear;But dearer now they are, sweetheart,The 'buses running to the Strand,But we're so far, so far apart,Each lonely in a different land.
The night was murky and the air was splashed with rain. Following the line of trench I could dimly discern the figures of my mates pulling off their packs and fixing their bayonets. These glittered brightly as the dying fires from the trench braziers caught them, and the long array of polished blades shone into their place along the dark brown sandbags. Looking over the parados I could see the country in rear, dim in the hazy night. A white, nebulous fog lay on the ground and enveloped the lone trees that stood up behind. Here and there I could discern houses where no light shone, and where no people dwelt. All the inhabitants were gone, and in thevillage away to the right there was absolute silence, the stillness of the desert. To my mind came words I once read or heard spoken, "The conqueror turns the country into a desert, and calls it peace."
I clamped my bayonet into its standard and rested the cold steel on the parapet, the point showing over; and standing up I looked across to the enemy's ground.
"They're about three hundred yards away," somebody whispered taking his place at my side. "I think I can see their trenches."
An indistinct line which might have been a parapet of sandbags, became visible as I stared through the darkness; it looked very near, and my heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished; further back was a ruined cottage, the bare beams and rafters givingit the appearance of a skeleton. A year ago a humble farmer might have lived there; his children perhaps played where dead were lying. I could see the German trench, the row of sandbags, the country to rear, a ruined village on a hill, the flashes of rifles on the left ... the flare died out in mid-air and darkness cloaked the whole scene again.
"What do you think of it, Stoner?" I asked the figure by my side.
"My God, it's great," he answered. "To think that they're over there, and the poor fellows lying out on the field!"
"They're their own bloomin' tombstones, anyway," said Bill, cropping up from somewhere.
"I feel sorry for the poor beggars," I said.
"They'll feel sorry for themselves, the beggars," said Bill.
"There, what's that?"
It crept up like a long white arm from behind the German lines, and felt nervously at the clouds as if with a hand. Moving slowly from North to South it touched all the sky, seeking for something. Suddenly it flashed upon us, almost dazzling our eyes. In a flash Bill was upon the banquette.
"Narkthe doin's, nark it," he cried and fired his rifle. The report died away in a hundred echoes as he slipped the empty cartridge from its breech.
"That's one for them," he muttered.
"What did you fire at?" I asked.
"The blasted searchlight," he replied, rubbing his little potato of a nose. "That's one for 'em, another shot nearer the end of the war!"
"Did you hit it?" asked our corporal.
"I must 'ave 'it it, I fired straight at it."
"Splendid, splendid," said the corporal. "Its only about three miles away though."
"Oh, blimey!..."
Sentries were posted for the night, one hour on and two off for each man until dawn. I was sentry for the first hour. I had to keep a sharp look out if an enemy's working party showed itself when the rockets went up. I was to fire at it and kill as many men as possible. One thinks of things on sentry-go.
"How can I reconcile myself to this," I asked, shifting my rifle to get nearer the parapet. "Who are those men behind the line of sandbags that I should want to kill them, to disembowel them with my sword, blow their facesto pieces at three hundred yards, bomb them into eternity at a word of command. Who am I that I should do it; what have they done to me to incur my wrath? I am not angry with them; I know little of the race; they are utter strangers to me; what am I to think, why should I think?
"Bill," I called to the Cockney, who came by whistling, "what are you doing?"
"I'm havin' a bit of rooty (food) 'fore goin' to kip (sleep)."
"Hungry?
"'Ungry as an 'awk," he answered. "Give me a shake when your turn's up; I'm sentry after you."
There was a pause.
"Bill!"
"Pat?"
"Do you believe in God?"
"Well, I do and I don't," was the answer.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't 'old with the Christian business," he replied, "but I believe in God."
"Do you think that God can allow men to go killing one another like this?"
"Maybe 'E can't help it."
"And the war started because it had to be?
"Itjust came—like a war-baby."
Another pause.
"Yer write songs, don't yer?" Bill suddenly asked.
"Sometimes."
"Would yer write me one, just a little one?" he continued. "There was a bird (girl) where I used to be billeted at St. Albans, and I would like to send 'er a bit of poetry."
"You've fallen in love?" I ventured.
"No, not so bad as that—"
"You've not fallen in love."
"Well its like this," said my mate, "I used to be in 'er 'ouse and she made 'ome-made torfee."
"Made it well?"
"Blimey, yes; 'twas some stuff, and I used to get 'eaps of it. She used to slide down the banisters, too. Yer should 'ave seen it, Pat. It almost made me write poetry myself."
"I'll try and do something for you," I said. "Have you been in the dug-out yet?"
"Yes, it's not such a bad place, but there's seven of us in it," said Bill, "it's 'ot as 'ell. But we wouldn't be so bad if Z—— was out of it. I don't like the feller."
"Why?"I asked, Z—— was one of our thirteen, but he couldn't pull with us. For some reason or other we did not like him.
"Oh, I don't like 'im, that's all," was the answer. "Z—— tries to get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without another word he vanished into the dug-out.
On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another, stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language. Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men and babies.
"Stand-to!"
I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.
"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over another prostrate form.
"Stand-to! Stand-to!"
We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette, each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the bayonets are always fixed.
"Where's Z——?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.
"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."
"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun. The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."
Z——stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out.
"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.
"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get on with the work."
In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we stood for half a day.
The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it were, on the grass.
"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."
The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked enquiringly in, his yellow billmoving from side to side, and fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes, a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing again.
"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the Cockney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."
"An if I do!"
"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.
"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.
"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at, but don't waste ammunition."
The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every sixth man was posted as sentry.
Stoner,diligent worker that he is, set about preparing breakfast when stand-to was over. In an open space at the rear of the dug-out he fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the regimental issue of coke ablaze.
"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried with me.
"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."
Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if selecting a spot to rest on.
"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."
It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped into Stoner's fire.
"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"
No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come tous from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often spoken of in my little volumeThe Amateur Army, came face to face with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in, and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.
"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.
"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell. "Run."
A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.
Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of their food whenever that is possible.
In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which are supplied tothe trenches, and went out with the intention of getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one; added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp, clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave. Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of kindly grass were now covering it up.
Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped to the waist as they bent over their littlemess-tins of soapy water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders, had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry with him.
"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"
"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"
"Would one of us not carry it?"
"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"
"Why didn't ye give it to us?"
"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless twisters!"
"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who, stripped to the waist, was washing himself.
"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.
"Leavedown that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who has the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the soapsuds from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive attitude, with clenched fists before him, in true fighting manner.
"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost things that way before, I'ave."
Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier into silence.
A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms, their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch, his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position, fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other side.
"Firin' at beastly sandbags!" one of the mensaid to me, "Blimey, that's no game. Yer 'ere and the sandbags is there, you never see anything, and you've to fire at nothin'. They call this war. Strike me ginger if it's like the pictures inThe Daily ——; them papers is great liars!"
"Do you want to kill men?" I asked.
"What am I here for?" was the rejoinder, "If I don't kill them they'll kill me."
No trench is straight at any place; the straight line is done away with in the makeup of a trench. The traverse, jutting out in a sharp angle to the rear, gives way in turn to the fire position, curving towards the enemy, and there is never more than twelve yards liable to be covered by enfilade fire. The traverse is the home of spare ammunition, of ball cartridge, bombs, and hand-grenades. These are stored in depots dug into the wall of the trench. There are two things which find a place anywhere and everywhere, the biscuit and the bully beef. Tins of both are heaped in the trenches; sometimes they are used for building dug-outs and filling revêtements. Bully beef and biscuits are seldom eaten; goodness knows why we are supplied with them.
Wecame into the territory of another battalion, and were met by an officer.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"For water, sir," said Pryor.
"Have you got permission from your captain?"
"No, sir."
"Then you cannot get by here without it. It's a Brigade order," said the officer. "One of our men got shot through the head yesterday when going for water."
"Killed, sir," I enquired.
"Killed on the spot," was the answer.
On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging operation.
"Have you got the water already?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"How is that?"
"An officer of the —— wouldn't let us go by without a written permission."
"Why?"
"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naïve reply. He wanted to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on his knee and thepaper on his hat, and wrote us out the pass.
For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into the open to bury it.
The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date. Having filled our jars, Pryor and I made a tour of inspection of the place.
In a green field to the rear we discovered a graveyard, fenced in except at our end, where a newly open grave yawned up at us as if aweary of waiting for its prey.
"Roomfor extension here," said Pryor. "I suppose they'll not close in this until the graves reach the edge of the roadway. Let's read the epitaphs."
How peaceful the place was. On the right I could see through a space between the walls of the cottage the wide winding street of the village, the houses, cornstacks, and the waving bushes, and my soul felt strangely quieted. In its peace, in its cessation from labour, there was neither anxiety nor sadness, there remained rest, placid and sad. It seemed as if the houses, all intact at this particular spot, held something sacred and restful, that with them and in them all was good. They knew no evil or sorrow. There was peace, the desired consummation of all things—peace brought about by war, the peace of the desert, and death.
I looked at the first grave, its cross, and the rude lettering. This was the epitaph; this and nothing more:—"An Unknown British Soldier."
On a grave adjoining was a cheap gilt vase with flowers, English flowers, faded and dying. I looked at the cross. One of the Coldstream Guards lay there killed in action six weeks before. I turned up the black-edged envelope onthe vase, and read the badly spelt message, "From his broken-hearted wife and loving little son Tommy."
We gazed at it for a moment in silence. Then Pryor spoke. "I think we'll go back," he said, and there was a strained note in his voice; it seemed as if he wanted to hide something.
On our way out to the road we stopped for a moment and gazed through the shattered window of Dead Cow Cottage. The room into which we looked was neatly furnished. A round table with a flower vase on it stood on the floor, a number of chairs in their proper position were near the wall, a clock and two photos, one of an elderly man with a heavy beard, the other of a frail, delicate woman, were on the mantlepiece. The pendulum of the clock hung idle; it must have ceased going for quite a long time. As if to heighten a picture of absolute comfort a cat sat on the floor washing itself.
"Where will the people be?" I asked.
"I don't know," answered Pryor. "Those chairs will be useful in our dug-out. Shall we take them?"
We took one apiece, and with chair on our headand jar in hand we walked towards the trenches. The sun was out, and it was now very hot. We sweated. My face became like a wet sponge squeezed in the hand; Pryor's face was very red.
"We'll have a rest," he said, and laying down the jar he placed his chair in the road and sat on it. I did the same.
"You know Omar?" he asked.
"In my calf-age I doated on him," I answered.
"What's the calf-age?"
"The sentimental period that most young fellows go through," I said. "They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the universe one day. They prefer vegetable food to pork, and read Omar."
"Have you come through the calf-age?"
"Years ago! You'll come through, too, Pryor—"
A bullet struck the leg of my chair and carried away a splinter of wood. I got to my feet hurriedly. "Those trenches seem quite a distance away," I said, hoisting my chair and gripping the jar as I moved off, "and we'll be safer when we're there."
Allthe way along we were sniped at, but we managed to get back safely. Finding that our supply of coke ran out we used the chairs for firewood.
Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,When you're in the trenches come and visit you,They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,They come in close formation, in column and platoon.There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.
"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like shells—especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a mile away."
"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.
"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is always on the go."
"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the oneI met in the trench when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was looking at me, I could see its eyes—"
"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own part I am more afraid of ——"
"What?"
"—— the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike ofdeath. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet, and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me. Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp, penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing, agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's head.
When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stenchof the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile cries that slowly died away into silence.
Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines. Icould hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony. Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me pray every time I go up."
"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy (nice)."
"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe 'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a bad locality."
He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag, and lit it off the stump of hisold one. He blew a puff of smoke into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed a look of pity on Pryor.
"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I asked.
"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin' you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ——"
Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the cushiest in the world."