Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets, and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony. This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages of war.
In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have seen the street so thickwith flies that it was impossible to see the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette, salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup ofcafé au laitfor fifteen sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum of ten francs on pay day.
In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe. That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy connected with it.
Insome places the enemy's bullets search the main street by night and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your keeping.
No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.
We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the great mother, was busy; the butterflies flitted overthe soldiers' graves, the grass grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to be sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs, holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:—
Here lies a dog as dead as dead,A Sniper's bullet through its head,Untroubled now by shots and shells,It rots and can do nothing else.
The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men, two women and two children,all civilians, were killed. The natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.
In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.
I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean,And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine;I've carried it from A to X and back to A again,I've found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.A souvenir for blighty away across the foam,That's if the French authorities will let me take it home.
Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles—one of our men who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until he was killed by a shell and then the boot fell into my hands. I have two percussion caps, one from a shell that came through the roof of a dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert.In addition to these I have many shell splinters that fell into the trench and landed at my feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of shells and several other odds and ends picked up from the field of battle. Once I found a splendid English revolver—but that is a story.
We were billeted in a model mining-village of red brick houses and terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness relieved here and there by a shell-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German shells and counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the grass from the trenches with reaping hooks. In the morning a white mist lay on the meadows and dry dung and dust rose from the roadway as we marched out to our labour.
We halted by the last house in the village, one that stood almost intact, although the adjoining buildings were well nigh levelled to the ground. My mate, Pryor, fixed his eyes on the villa.
"I'mgoing in there," he said pointing at the doors.
"Souvenirs?" I asked.
"Souvenirs," he replied.
The two of us slipped away from the platoon and entered the building. On the ground floor stood a table on which a dinner was laid; an active service dinner of soup made from soup tablets (2d.each) the wrappers of which lay on the tiled floor, some tins of bully beef, opened, a loaf, half a dozen apples and an unopened tin ofcafé au lait. The dinner was laid for four, although there were only three forks, two spoons and two clasp knives, the latter were undoubtedly used to replace table knives. Pryor looked under the table, then turned round and fixed a pair of scared eyes on me, and beckoned to me to approach. I came to his side and saw under the table on the floor a human hand, severed from the arm at the wrist. Beside it lay a web-equipment, torn to shreds, a broken range-finder and a Webley revolver, long of barrel and heavy of magazine.
"A souvenir," said Pryor. "It must have been some time since that dinner was made; the bully smells like anything."
"The shell came in there," I said pointing at thewindow, the side of which was broken a little, "and it hit one poor beggar anyway. Nobody seems to have come in here since then."
"We'll hide the revolver," Pryor remarked, "and we'll come here for it to-night."
We hid the revolver behind the door in a little cupboard in the wall; we came back for it two days later, but the weapon was gone though the hand still lay on the floor. What was the history of that house and of the officers who sat down to dinner? Will the tragedy ever be told?
I had an interesting experience near Souchez when our regiment was holding part of the line in that locality. On the way in was a single house, a red brick villa, standing by the side of the communication trench which I used to pass daily when I went out to get water from the carts at the rear. One afternoon I climbed over the side and entered the house by a side door that looked over the German lines. The building was a conspicuous target for the enemy, but strange to say, it had never been touched by shell fire; now and again bullets peppered the walls, chipped the bricks and smashed the window-panes. On the ground floor was a large living-room with a big-bodied stovein the centre of the floor, religious pictures hung on the wall, a grandfather's clock stood in the niche near the door, the blinds were drawn across the shattered windows, and several chairs were placed round a big table near the stove. Upstairs in the bedrooms the beds were made and in one apartment a large perambulator, with a doll flung carelessly on its coverlet, stood near the wall, the paper of which was designed in little circles and in each circle were figures of little boys and girls, hundreds of them, frivolous mites, absurd and gay.
Another stair led up to the garret, a gloomy place bare under the red tiles, some of which were broken. Looking out through the aperture in the roof I could see the British and German trenches drawn as if in chalk on a slate of green by an erratic hand, the hand of an idle child. Behind the German trenches stood the red brick village of ——, with an impudent chimney standing smokeless in the air, and a burning mine that vomited clouds of thick black smoke over meadow-fields splashed with poppies. Shells were bursting everywhere over the grass and the white lines; the greenish grey fumes of lyddite, the white smoke of shrapnel rose into mid-air, curled away and died. On the left of thevillage a road ran back into the enemy's land, and from it a cloud of dust was rising over the tree-tops; no doubt vehicles of war which I could not see were moving about in that direction. I stayed up in that garret for quite an hour full of the romance of my watch and when I left I took my souvenir with me, a picture of the Blessed Virgin in a cedar frame. That night we placed it outside our dug-out over the door. In the morning we found it smashed to pieces by a bullet.
Daily I spent some time in the garret on my way out to the water-cart; and one day I found it occupied. Five soldiers and an officer were standing at my peephole when I got up, with a large telescope fixed on a tripod and trained on the enemy's lines. The War Intelligence Department had taken over the house for an observation post.
"What do you want here?" asked the officer.
Soldiers are ordered to keep to the trenches on the way out and in, none of the houses that line the way are to be visited. It was a case for a slight prevarication. My water jar was out in the trench: I carried my rifle and a bandolier.
"I'mlooking for a sniping position," I said.
"You cannot stop here," said the officer. "We've taken this place over. Try some of the houses on the left."
I cleared out. Three days later when on my usual errand I saw that the roof of my observation villa had been blown in. Nobody would be in there now I concluded and ventured inside. The door which stood at the bottom of the garret stair was closed. I caught hold of the latch and pulled it towards me. The door held tight. As I struggled with it I had a sense of pulling against a detaining hand that strove to hide a mystery, something fearful, from my eye. It swung towards me slowly and a pile of bricks fell on my feet as it opened. Something dark and liquid oozed out under my boots. I felt myself slip on it and knew that I stood on blood. All the way up the rubble-covered stairs there was blood, it had splashed red on the railings and walls. Laths, plaster, tiles and beams lay on the floor above and in the midst of the jumble was a shattered telescope still moist with the blood of men. Had all been killed and were all those I had met a few days before in the garret when the shell landed on the roof? It was impossible to tell.
Ireturned to the dug-out meditating on the strange things that can be seen by him who goes souvenir-hunting between Souchez and Ypres. As I entered I found Bill gazing mutely at some black liquid in a sooty mess-tin.
"Some milk, Bill," I said handing him the tin of Nestle's which had just come to me in a Gargantuan parcel from an English friend.
"No milk, matey," he answered, "I'm feelin' done up proper, I am. Cannot eat a bite. Tummy out of order, my 'ead spinnin' like a top. When's sick parade?" he asked.
"Seven o'clock," I said, "Is it as bad as that?"
"Worse than that," he answered with a smile, "'Ave yer a cigarette to spare?"
"Yes," I answered, fumbling in my pocket.
"Well, give it to somebody as 'asn't got none," said Bill, "I'm off the smokin' a bit."
The case was really serious since Bill could not smoke, a smokeless hour was for him a Purgatorial period, his favourite friend was his fag. After tea I went with him to the dressing station, and Ted Vittle of Section 4 accompanied us. Ted's tummy was also out of order and his head was spinning like a top. The men'sequipment was carried out, men going sick from the trenches to the dressing-station at the rear carry their rifles and all portable property in case they are sent off to hospital. The sick soldier's stuff always goes to hospital with him.
I stood outside the door of the dressing-station while the two men were in with the M.O. "What's wrong, Bill?" I asked when he came out.
"My tempratoor's an 'undred and nine," said my comrade.
"A hundred and what?" I ejaculated.
"'Undred point nine 'is was," said Ted Vittle. "Mine's a 'undred point eight. The Twentieth 'as 'ad lots of men gone off to 'orsp to-day sufferin' from the same thing. Pyraxis the M.O. calls it. Trench fever is the right name."
"Right?" interrogated Bill.
"Well it's a name we can understand," said Ted.
"Are you going back to the trenches again?" I asked.
"We're to sleep 'ere to-night in the cellar under the dressin'-station," they told me. "In the mornin' we're to report to the doctor again. 'E's a bloke 'e is, that doctor. 'E says we're totake nothing but heggs and milk and the milk must be boiled."
"Is the army going to supply it?"
"No blurry fear," said Bill. "Even if we 'ad the brass and the appetite we can't buy any milk or heggs 'ere."
I went back to the firing trench alone. Bill and Ted Vittle did not return the next day or the day after. Three weeks later Bill came back.
We were sitting in our dug-out at a village the bawl of a donkey from Souchez, when a jew's harp, playing ragtime was heard outside.
"Bill," we exclaimed in a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man who has seen strange sights in strange regions.
"What's your temperature?" asked Stoner.
"Blimey, it's the correct thing now, but it didn't arf go up and down," said Bill sitting down on the dug-out chair, our only one since a shell dropped through the roof. Some days before B Company had held the dug-out and two of the boys were killed. "It's no fun the 'orspital I can tell yer."
"Whatsort of disease is Pyraxis?" asked Goliath.
"It's not 'arf bad, if you've got it bad, and it's not good when you've it only 'arf bad," said Bill, adding, "I mean that if I 'ad it bad I would get off to blighty, but my case was only a light one, not so bad as Ted Vittle. 'E's not back yet, maybe it's a trip across the Channel for 'im. 'E was real bad when 'e walked down with me to Mazingarbe. I was rotten too, couldn't smoke. It was sit down and rest for fifteen minutes then walk for five. Mazingarbe is only a mile and an 'arf from the dressing-station and it took us three hours to get down; from there we took the motor-ambulance to the clearing hospital. There was a 'ot bath there and we were put to bed in a big 'ouse, blankets, plenty of them and a good bed. 'Twas a grand place to kip in. Bad as I was, I noticed that."
"No stand-to at dawn?" I said.
"Two 'ours before dawn we 'ad to stand-to in our blankets, matey," said Bill. "The Germans began to shell the blurry place and 'twas up to us to 'op it. We went dozens of us to the rear in a 'bus. Shook us! We were rattled about like tins on cats' tails and dumped down at another 'orsp about breakfast time. Mytempratoor was up more than ever there; I almost burst the thremometur. And Ted! Blimey, yer should 'ave seen Ted! Lost to the wide, 'e was. 'E could 'ardly speak; but 'e managed to give me his mother's address and I was to write 'ome a long letter to 'er when 'e went West."
"Allowed to 'ave peace in that place! No fear; the Boches began to shell us, and they sent over fifty shells in 'arf an 'our. All troops were ordered to leave the town and we went with the rest to a 'orsp under canvas in X——.
"A nice quiet place X—— was, me and Ted was along with two others in a bell-tent and 'ere we began to get better. Our clothes were taken from us, all my stuff and two packets of fags and put into a locker. I don't know what I was thinking of when I let the fags go. There was one feller as had two francs in his trousers' pocket when 'e gave 'is trousers in and 'e got the wrong trousers back. 'E discovered that one day when 'e was goin' to send the R.A.M.C. orderly out for beer for all 'ands.
"'Twas a 'ungry place X. We were eight days in bed and all we got was milk and once or twice a hegg. Damned little heggs they were;they must 'ave been laid by tomtits in a 'urry. I got into trouble once; I climbed up the tent-pole one night just to 'ave a song on my own, and when I was on the top down comes the whole thing and I landed on Ted Vittle's bread basket. 'Is tempratoor was up to a 'undred and one point five next mornin'. The doctor didn't 'arf give me a look when 'e 'eard about me bein' up the pole."
"Was he a nice fellow, the doctor?" I asked.
"Not 'arf, 'e wasn't," said Bill. "When I got into my old uniform 'e looked 'ard at my cap. You remember it boys; 'twas more like a ragman's than a soldier of the King's. Then 'e arst me: ''Ave yer seen much war?' 'Not 'arf, I 'avent,' I told him. 'I thought so,' 'e said, 'judgin' by yer cap.' And 'e told the orderly to indent me for a brand new uniform. And 'e gave me two francs to get a drink when I was leavin'."
"Soft-hearted fellow," said Goliath.
"Was he!" remarked Bill. "Yer should be there when 'e came in one mornin'."
"'Ow d'ye feel?" he asked Ted Vittle.
"Not fit at all, sir," says Ted.
"Well carry on," said the doctor.
Ilooked at Ted, Ted looked at me and 'e tipped me the wink.
"'Ow d'ye feel," said the doctor to me.
"Not fit at all," I answers.
"Back to duties," 'e said and my jaw dropped with a click like a rifle bolt. 'Twas ten minutes after that when 'e gave me the two francs."
"I saw Spud 'Iggles, 'im that was wounded at Givenchy;" Bill informed us after he had lit a fresh cigarette.
"'Ole Spud!"
"'Ows Spud?"
"Not so bad, yer know," said Bill, answering our last question. "'E's got a job."
"A good one?" I queried.
"Not 'arf," Bill said. "'E goes round with the motor car that goes to places where soldiers are billeted and gathers up all the ammunition, bully beef tins, tins of biscuits and everything worth anything that's left behind—"
"Bill Teake. Is Bill Teake there?" asked a corporal at the door of the dug-out.
"I'm 'ere, old Sawbones," said Bill, "wot d'ye want me for?"
"It's your turn on sentry," said the corporal.
"Oh! blimey, that's done it!" grumbled Bill."I feel my tempratoor goin' up again. It's always some damn fatigue or another in this cursed place. I wonder when will I 'ave the luck to go sick again."
Lonely and still the village lies,The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.The road is straight as the bullet flies,And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.Shadowy forms creep through the night,Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,A scream as a woman's soul takes flightThrough the quivering morning air.
Lonely and still the village lies,The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.The road is straight as the bullet flies,And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.
Shadowy forms creep through the night,Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,A scream as a woman's soul takes flightThrough the quivering morning air.
We had been working all morning in a cornfield near anestamineton the La Bassée Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by drinking white wine in anestaminetby the La Bassée Road.
"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we entered.
"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approachof a sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the trench."
"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and the back room empty."
Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear, where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.
"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.
I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris, speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work since five o'clock that morning.
"TheGermans will never get back here again unless as prisoners."
"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.
"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten, our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench.Plusieurs morts, plusieurs blessés.Run! Some go right, some left. The second shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as the 75."
"What about the gun that sent this over?"
Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic shells with which the Germans raked La Bassée Road in the early stages of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson." The shellrelic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye, opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene of the great war become fashionable, the woman of theestaminetis going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way with a long purse, "après la guerre." At present a needy urchin will sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.
"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes silently, it's quicker than its own sound."
"Doyou work here?" asked Pryor.
"I work here," said the potato-peeler.
"In a coal-mine?"
"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."
"Always?"
"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez to-day."
"Oh!" I ejaculated.
"Oh!" said Pryor. "Seen some fighting?"
"Not much," said the man, "not too much." His eyes lit up as with fire and he sent a potato stripped clean of its jacket up to the roof but with such precision that it dropped down straight into the bucket. "First we went south and the Germans came across up north. 'Twas turn about and up like mad; perched on taxis, limbers, ambulance waggons, anything. We got into battle near Paris. The Boches came in clusters, they covered the ground like flies on the dead at Souchez. The 75's came into work there. 'Twas wonderful. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Men were cut down, wiped out in hundreds. When the gun was useless—guns had short lives and glorious lives there—anew one came into play and killed, killed, until it could stand the strain no longer."
"Much hand-to-hand fighting?" asked Pryor.
"The bayonet! Yes!" The potato-peeler thrust his knife through a potato and slit it in two. "The Germans said 'Eugh! Eugh! Eugh!' when we went for them like this." He made several vicious prods at an imaginary enemy. "And we cut them down."
He paused as if at a loss for words, and sent his knife whirling into the air where it spun at an alarming rate. I edged my chair nearer the door, but the potato-peeler, suddenly standing upright, caught the weapon by the haft as it circled and bent to lift a fresh potato.
"What is that for?" asked Pryor, pointing to a sword wreathed in a garland of flowers, tattooed on the man's arm.
"The rapier," said the potato-peeler. "I'm a fencer, a master-fencer; fenced in Paris and several places."
The woman of the house, the man's wife, had been buzzing round like a bee, droning out in an incoherent voice as she served the customers. Now she came up to the master-fencer, looked at him in the face for a second, and then looked atthe bucket. The sweat oozed from her face like water from a sponge.
"Hurry, and get the work done," she said to her husband, then she turned to us. "You're keeping him from work," she stuttered, "you two, chattering like parrots. Allez-vous en! Allez-vous en!"
We left the house of the potato-peeler and returned to our digging. The women of France are indeed wonderful.
That evening Bill came up to me as I was sitting on the banquette. In his hand was an English paper that I had just been reading and in his eye was wrath.
"The 'ole geeser's fyce is in this 'ere thing again," he said scornfully. "Blimy! it's like the bad weather, it's everywhere."
"Whose face do you refer to?" I asked my friend.
"This Jimace," was the answer and Bill pointed to the photo of a well-known society lady who was shown in the act of escorting a wounded soldier along a broad avenue of trees that tapered away to a point where an English country mansion showed like a doll's house in the distance. "Every pyper I open she's in it; if she's not makin' socks for poor Tommies atthe front, she's tyin' bandages on wounded Tommies at 'ome."
"There's nothing wrong in that," I said, noting the sarcasm in Bill's voice.
"S'pose its natural for 'er to let everybody know what she does, like a 'en that lays a negg," my mate answered. "She's on this pyper or that pyper every day. She's learnin' nursin' one day, learnin' to drive an ambulance the next day, she doesn't carry a powder puff in 'er vanity bag at present——"
"Who said so?" I asked.
"It's 'ere in black and white," said Bill. "'Er vanity bag 'as given place to a respirator, an' instead of a powder puff she now carries an antiskeptic bandage. It makes me sick; it's all the same with women in England. 'Ere's another picture called 'Bathin' as usual.' A dozen of girls out in the sea (jolly good legs some of 'em 'as, too) 'avin' a bit of a frisky. Listen what it says: 'Despite the trying times the English girls are keepin' a brave 'eart——' Oh! 'ang it, Pat, they're nothin' to the French girls, them birds at 'ome."
"What about that girl you knew at St. Albans?" I asked. "You remember how she slid down the banisters and made toffee."
"Shewasn't no class, you know," said Bill.
"She never answered the verse you sent from Givenchy, I suppose," I remarked.
"It's not that——"
"Did she answer your letter saying she reciprocated your sentiments?" I asked.
"Reshiperate your grandmother, Pat!" roared Bill. "Nark that language, I say. Speak that I can understand you. Wait a minute till I reshiperate that," he suddenly exclaimed pressing a charge into his rifle magazine and curving over the parapet. He sent five shots in the direction from which he supposed the sniper who had been potting at us all day, was firing. Then he returned to his argument.
"You've seen that bird at the farm in Mazingarbe?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied. "Pryor said that her ankles were abnormally thick."
"Pryor's a fool," Bill exclaimed.
"But they really looked thick——"
"You're a bigger fool than 'im!"
"I didn't know you had fallen in love with the girl," I said "How did it happen?"
"Blimey, I'm not in love," said my mate, "but I like a girl with a good 'eart. Twas out inthe horchard in the farm I first met 'er. I was out pullin' apples, pinchin' them if you like to say so, and I was shakin' the apples from the branches. I had to keep my eyes on the farm to see that nobody seen me while I shook. It takes a devil of a lot of strength to rumble apples off a tree when you're shakin' a trunk that's stouter than the bread basket of a Bow butcher. All at once I saw the girl of the farm comin' runnin' at me with a stick. Round to the other side of the tree I ran like lightnin', and after me she comes. Then round to the other side went I——"
"Which side?" I asked.
"The side she wasn't on," said Bill. "After me she came and round to her side I 'opped——"
"Who was on the other side now?" I inquired.
"I took good care that she was always on the other side until I saw what she was up to with the stick," said Bill. "But d'yer know what the stick was for? 'Twas to help me to bring down the apples. Savve. They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.
The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every shell-shattered villagefrom Souchez to the sea! What labours they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the Church of ——, where the woman nearest the German lines sells rum under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace and power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men destroy and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one villages which fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their day's work under shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to pounce on them at every corner.
I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked "Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the trenches nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French have gone further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out and trench but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiershave come and my husband had to go away," she says. "He went south beyond Souchez, and now he's dead."
The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.
A woman sellscafé noirnear Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks that was once her home. Once it wascafé au laitand it cost four sous a cup, she only charges three sous now since her cow got shot in the stomach outside her ramshackleestaminet. Along with a few mates I was in the place two months ago and a bullet entered the door and smashed the coffee pot; the woman now makes coffee in a biscuit tin.
The road from our billet to the firing line is as uncomfortable as a road under shell fire can be, but what time we went that way nightly as working parties, we met scores of women carrying furniture away from a deserted village behind the trenches. The French military authorities forbade civilians to live there and drove them back to villages that were free from danger. But nightly they came back, contrary toorders, and carried away property to their temporary homes. Sometimes, I suppose they took goods that were not entirely their own, but at what risk! One or two got killed nightly and many were wounded. However, they still persisted in coming back and carrying away beds, tables, mirrors and chairs in all sorts of queer conveyances, barrows, perambulators and light spring-carts drawn by strong intelligent dogs.
"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.
"What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is madeFor me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew."But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'erThe sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,"Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"
The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells roseand fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between. The dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun shadows of the parados.
Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm, sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the night air.
"Quiet?" he asked.
"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."
"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have the working parties come up yet?" he asked.
"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."
Theycame along the trench, about two hundred strong, engineers and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed wire, wooden supports, &c. They were going out digging on a new sap and putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished, would bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy. Needless to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they were digging out towards our lines.
The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.
"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.
"We're reserves there," he answered. "It's always working-parties; at night and at day. Sweeping gutters and picking papers and bits of stew from the street. Is it quiet here?"
"Very quiet," I answered. "We've only had five killed and nine wounded in six days. How is your regiment getting along?"
"Oh, not so bad," said the man; "some go west at times, but it's what one has to expect out here."
The working party were edging off, and some of the men were clambering over the parapet.
"Hi! Ginger!" someone said in a loud whisper,"Ginger Weeson; come along at once!"
The man on the banquette got to his feet, put out his cigarette and placed the fag-end in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and was immediately asleep.
I was called again at one, three-quarters of an hour later.
"What's up?" I asked the corporal who wakened me.
"Oh, there's a party going down to the rear for rations," I was told. "So you've got to take up sentry-go till stand-to; that'll be for an hour or so. You're better out in the air now for its beginning to stink everywhere, but the dug-out is the worst place of all."
So saying, the corporal entered the dug-out and stretched himself on the floor; he was going to have a sleep despite his mean opinion of the shelter.
The stench gathers itself in the early morning, inthat chill hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze from the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and well-nigh tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed with the stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as it enters your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it crawl up your nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of the throat through the windpipe and into the stomach.
I leant my arms on the sandbags and looked across the field; I fancied I could see men moving in the darkness, but when the star-shells went up there was no sign of movement out by the web of barbed-wire entanglements. The new sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising eerie from the space between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing "Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting, deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was hit I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then intense silence wrapped up everythingas in a cloak. But only for a moment. The enemy must have heard the cry for a dozen star-shells shot towards us and frittered away in sparks by our barbed-wire entanglements. There followed a second of darkness and then an explosion right over the sap. The enemy were firing shrapnel shells on the working party. Three, four shells exploded simultaneously out in front. I saw dark forms rise up and come rushing into shelter. There was a crunching, a stumbling and a gasping as if for air. Boots struck against the barbed entanglements, and like trodden mice, the wires squeaked in protest. I saw a man, outlined in black against the glow of a star-shell, struggling madly as he endeavoured to loose his clothing from the barbs on which it caught. There was a ripping and tearing of tunics and trousers.... A shell burst over the men again and I saw two fall; one got up and clung to the arm of a mate, the other man crawled on his belly towards the parapet.
In their haste they fell over the parapet into the trench, several of them. Many had gone back by the sap, I could see them racing along crouching as they ran. Out in front several forms were bending over the ground attendingto the wounded. From my left the message came "Stretcher-bearers at the double." And I passed it along.
Two men who had scrambled over the parapet were sitting on my banquette, one with a scratched forehead, the other with a bleeding finger. Their mates were attending to them binding up the wounds.
"Many hurt?" I asked.
"A lot 'ave copped a packet," said the man with the bleeding finger.
"We never 'eard the blurry things come, did we?" he asked his mates.
"Never 'eard nothin', we didn't till the thing burst over us," said a voice from the trench. "I was busy with Ginger——"
"Ginger Weeson?" I enquired.
"That's 'im," was the reply. "Did yer 'ear 'im yell? Course yer did; ye'd 'ave 'eard 'im over at La Bassée."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
"A bullet through 'is belly," said the voice. "When 'e roared I put my 'and on 'is mouth and 'e gave me such a punch. I was nearly angry, and 'im in orful pain. Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like his one."
Theirwounds dressed, the men went away; others came by carrying out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on the shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth knocked away.
The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died in hospital.
The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine breakfast.
The young recruit is apt to thinkOf war as a romance;But he'll find its boots and bayonetsWhen he's somewhere out in France.
When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from —— his heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew, hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring, murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool, mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into the land of mystery, the Unknown.
Infront is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of death.
Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.
Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead, and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery, the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to the heart of the young soldier.
Ihave looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses, gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.
Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame. Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.
Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.
He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsyringing of church bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong; the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and dusty trucks.
There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing line.
Ahead, the star-shells, constellations of green, electric white, and blue, light the scenes of war. From the ridge of the hill, downwards towards an illimitable plain, the road takes its way through a ghost-world of ruined homes where dark and ragged masses of broken roof and wall stand out in blurred outlines against indistinct and formless backgrounds.
A gun is belching forth murder and sudden deathfrom an emplacement on the right; in a spinney on the left a battery is noisy and the flashes from there light up the cluster of trees that stand huddled together as if for warmth. Vehicles of war lumber along the road, field-kitchens, gun-limbers, water-carts, motor-ambulances, and Red Cross waggons. Men march towards us, men in brown, bearing rifles and swords, and pass us in the night. A shell bursts near, and there is a sound as of a handful of peas being violently flung to the ground.
For the night we stop in a village where the branches of the trees are shrapnelled clean of their leaves, and where all the rafters of the houses are bared of their covering of red tiles. A wind may rise when you're dropping off to sleep on the stone flags of a cellar, and then you can hear the door of the house and of nearly every house in the place creaking on its hinges. The breeze catches the telephone wires which run from the artillery at rear to their observation stations, and the wires sing like light shells travelling through space.
At dawn you waken to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from explodingshells, swish to the earth with a sound like burning magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a skull, if any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to remain in shelter until the row is over.
Outside, the birds are merry on the roofs; you can hear them sing defiantly at the lone cat that watches them from the grassy spot which was once a street. Spiders' webs hang over the doorways, many flies have come to an untimely end in the glistening snares, poor little black, helpless things. Here and there lies a broken crucifix and a torn picture of the Holy Family, the shrines that once stood at the street corners are shapeless heaps of dust and weeds and the village church is in ruins.
No man is allowed to walk in the open by day; a German observation balloon, a big banana of a thing, with ends pointing downwards stands high over the earth ten kilometres away and sees all that takes place in the streets.
There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.
How fine it is to leave the trenches at night afterdays of innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife, the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn, with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all the strain of getting there.
Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet one another inquiringly.
"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"
Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting. Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.
There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.
[Footnote 1:It was at St. Albans that we underwent most of our training.](back)
[Footnote 2:Fiancée.](back)
[Footnote 3:Rifle.](back)
[Footnote 4:The London Irish charged over this ground later, and entered Loos on Saturday, 25th September, 1915.](back)