 CHAPTER XI SITTING DITE. ONE LEMONS AND CRICKET BALLS. Around October we fulfilled the prophecy of the officer who told us that sitting tight in the German trenches was to be our function. There were nightly counterattacks preceded by heavy artillery fire when the enemy made determined efforts to retake the lost territory. There were needless alarms when nervous sentries got the wind up to use the authentic trench expression and contagious excitement set men to firing like mad into blank darkness. In the daytime there were moments of calm which we could not savor owing through that other warfare waged upon us by increasing hordes of parasitic enemies. We moved from one position to another through trenches where the tangled mass of telephone wires seemingly gifted with a kind of malignant humor called themselves about our feet or caught in the piling swivels of our rifles. There were orders and counter-orders, alarms and excursions. Through them all Tommy kept his balance and his air of fury unconcerned, but he wished that he might be struck pink if he knew what we was a do-and-elf anyway. Our ideas of the tactical situation were decidedly vague. However we did know in a general way our position with reference to important military landmarks and the amateur strategists were busy at all times explaining the situation to frankly ignorant comrades and outlining plans for definite action. Now if I was general French I'd make Erlich me main objective. There ain't no use of trying to get at this part of the line till you've got that village. Don't talk so bloom and ignorant, ain't that just what they've been a-trying? What we got to do is go around Erlich, take them in the rear and from both sides. Why don't they get on with it? What blazes are we a-doing? Of giving them a chance to get dug in again? Here we are, but got them on the run and the old show stops. The continuation of the offensive was a chief topic of conversation. The men dreaded it, but they were anxious to get through with the business. They believed that now if ever there was a chance to push the Germans out of France. In the meantime the day's work was still the day's work. There were nightly bombing affairs, some of them most desperate hand-to-hand contests for the possession of small sectors of trench. One of these I witnessed from a trench sixty yards away. The advantage lay with us. The enemy held only the center of the line and were forced to meet attacks from either end. However they had a communication trench connecting with their second line, through which carrying parties brought them a limitless supply of bombs. The game of pitch and toss over the barricades had continued for several days without a decision. Then came orders for more decisive action. The barricades were to be destroyed and the enemy bombed out. In underground fighting of this kind the element of surprise is possible if one opponent can be suddenly overwhelmed with a heavy rain of bombs. The chances of success for the attacking party are quite favorable. The action took place at dusk, shortly before the hour set. The bombers, all of them boys in their early twenties, filed slowly along the trench, the pockets of their grenade-waste-coast bulging with lemons and cricket-balls. As the two most effective kinds of bombs are called, they went to their places with that spirit of stulled cheeriness, which is the wonder and admiration of everyone who knows Tommy Atkins intimately. Formerly when I saw him in this mood I would think, he doesn't realize, men don't go out to meet death like this. But long association with him had convinced me of the error of this opinion. These men knew that death, or terrible injury, was in store for many of them. But they were talking in excited and gleeful undertones, as they might have passed through the gates at a football match. Are we downhearted? Not likely, old son. Take a feel of this little puffball, smack on old Fritzy's napper as she goes. I'm going to ask for a nice, blighty one. Four months in Brentford Hospital on me, Christmas put a knot me home. Now don't forget, you blokes. Go to the London War Hospital for me. If I get a knock, write it on a piece of paper and pin it on me tunic, when it sends me back to the ambulance. The barricades were blown up and the fight was on. A two hundred piece orchestra of blacksmiths with sledgehammers beating kettle drums the size of brewery vats might have approximated in quality and volume the sound of the battle. This spectacular effect was quite different from that of a counterattack across the open. Lurid flashes of light issued from the ground as though a door to the infernal regions had been thrown jarringly open. The cloud of thick smoke was shot through with red gleams. Men ran along the parapet hurling bombs down into the trench. Now they were hidden by the smoke, now silhouetted for an instant against the glare of blinding light. One hour passed and there was no change in the situation. "'Ritchie's a tough old bird,' said Tommy. "'He's a going-to-die game. You gotta give it to him.'" The excitement was intense. Urgent calls for more lemons, more cricket balls, were sent back constantly. Box after box, each containing a dozen grenades, was passed up the line from hand to hand and still the call for more bombs. We couldn't send them up fast enough. The wounded were coming back in twos and threes. One lad, his eyes covered with a bloody bandage, was led by another with a shattered hand. Poor old Titch, she went off right in his face. But you did your bit, Titch. You ought to be seeing him. You blokes. Wasn't we a letting-em-avit? Another man hobbled past on one foot supporting himself against the side of the trench. "'Got a bloody one,' he said gleefully. "'So long, you lads. I'll be with you after the holidays.'" Those who do not know the horrors of modern warfare cannot readily understand the joy of the soldier at receiving a wound which is not likely to prove serious. A bullet in the arm or the shoulder, even though it shatters the bone or a piece of shrapnel or shell casing in the leg, was always a matter of congratulation. Those were blighty wounds. When Tommy received one of this kind, he was a candidate for hospital in Blighty, as England was affectionately called. For several months he would be far away from the awful turmoil, his body would be clean, he would be rid of the vermin and sleep comfortably in a bit at night. The strain would be relaxed, and who knows the war might be over before he was again fit for active service, and so the less seriously wounded made their way painfully but cheerfully along the trench, on their way to the field dressing station, the motor ambulance, the hospital ship, and home, while their unwounded comrades gave them words of encouragement and good cheer. "'Good luck to you, Sammy boy. If you seize my misses, tell her I'm as bright as rain.'" "'Sami, you lucky blighter. When you're convalescent and have a pint of ale at the White Lion for me." "'And a good feed of fish and chips for me, Sammy. Mind your foot. There's a ol' just here.' "'Here comes ol' Sid. Where you caught it, mate?' "'In me bloomin' shoulder, and ain't our for givin' it to me.' "'Never you mind, Sid, blighty for you, boy.' "'I, Sid, tell me, ol' lady, I'm still up and comin', will ya? You know, where she lives, Forty-sixth Broomey Road?' One lad, his nerve gone, pushed his way frantically down the trench. He had funked it. He was hysterical with fright and crying in a dry, shaking voice. "'It's too horrible. I can't stand it. Blow your head to the hell they do. Look at me. I'm slatter than blood. I can't stand it. There ain't no man can stand it.'" He met with scant courtesy. A trench during an attack is no place for the faint-hearted. An unsympathetic tommy kicked him savagely. "'Go ahead, you sub'ya bloody little coward!' More lemons, more cricket-balls, and at least victory Fritzi had chucked it, and men of the royal engineers that wonderfully efficient corps were on the spot with picks and shovels and sandbags clearing out the wreckage and building a new barricade at the further end of the communication trench. It was only a minor affair, one of many which take place nightly in the firing line. Two-score yards of trench were captured. The cost was perhaps one man per yard. But as tommy said, "'It ain't to trench what counts. It's a more ale. Bucks the blokes up to win. And that's worth a ol' bloomin' army-corer.'" II. "'Go at the Norfolk's.'" Rumors of all degrees of absurdity reached us. The enemy was massing on our right, on our left, on our immediate front. The division was to attack at dawn under cover of a hundred bomb-dropping battle-planes. Units of the new armies to the number of five hundred thousand were concentrating behind the lines from Labrasé to Arras. And another tremendous drive was to be made in conjunction with the French. As a matter of fact, we knew less of what was actually happening than did people in England and America. Most of these reports sprang full-grown from the fertile brains of officers' servants. Reports of information which they gathered while in attendance at the officer's mess dug out were pieced together, and much new material of their own invention added. The striving was for pecancy rather than plausibility. A wild tale was always better than a dull one, furthermore the Batman were our only sources of official information and could always command a hearing. When one of them came down the trench with that mysterious, I could a tale unfold here. He was certain to be halted by willingly gullible comrades. What's up, Jerry? Anything? Nope. Narf, now. Keep this under your aps, you blokes. My governor was a-talking to Major Bradley this morning while I was a-making this tea. And he says... Then followed the thrilling narrative a disclosure of official secrets while groups of war-torn Tommies listened with eager interest. During the news was a tragic comedy enacted daily in the trenches. But we were not entirely in their dark. The signs which preceded an engagement were unmistakable, and toward the middle of October there was general agreement that an important action was about to take place. But a share-craft had been patrolling our front ceaselessly for hours. Several battalions, including our own which had just gone into the reserve at Vermeels, were placed on bomb-carrying fatigue. As we went up to the firing line with our first load, we found all of the support trenches filled to overflowing with troops in fighting order. We reached the first line as the preliminary bombardment started. Scores of batteries were concentrating their fire on the enemy's trenches directly opposite us. It is useless to attempt to depict what lay before us as we looked over the parapet. The trenches were hidden from view in a cloud of smoke and flame and dirt. The earth was like a muddy sea, dashed high in spray against hidden rocks. The men who were to leave the attack were standing rifle in hand, waiting for the sudden cessation of fire, which would be the signal for them to mount the parapet. Bombers and bayonet men alternated in series of two. The bombers wore their medieval-looking shrapnel-proof helmets, and heavy canvas-grenade coats, with twelve pockets sagging with bombs. Their rifles were slung under backs to give them free use of their hands. Everyone was smoking. Some calmly, some with short nervous puffs. It was interesting to watch the faces of the men. One could read almost to a certainty what was going on in their minds. Some of them were thinking of the terrible events so near at hand. They were imagining the horrors of the attack in detail. Men's were unconcerned the intent upon adjusting straps of their equipment or in rubbing their clips of ammunition with an oily rag. Several men were singing to a mouth-organ accompaniment. I saw their lips moving, but not a sound reached me above the din of the guns. Although I was standing only a few yards distant, it was like an absurd pantomime. As I watched them, the sense of the unreality of the whole thing swept over me more strongly than ever before. This can't be true, I thought. I have never been a soldier. There isn't any European war. I had the curious feeling that my body and brain were functioning quite apart from me. I was only a slow-witted, incredulous spectator, looking on with a stupid animal wonder. I have learned that this feeling is quite common among men in the trenches. A part of the mind works normally, and another part which seems to be one's essential self refuses to assimilate and classify experiences so unusual, so different from anything in the catalogue of memory. For two hours and a half the roar of the guns continued, then it stopped as suddenly as it had begun. An officer near me shouted, "'Now, men, follow me!' and clambered over the parapet. There was no hesitation in a moment that trench was empty, saved for the bomb-carrying parties and an artillery observation officer who was jumping up and down on a firing-line bench shouting, "'Go at the Norfolk's! Go at the Norfolk's! My God! Isn't it fine? Isn't it splendid?' There you have the British officer, true to type. He is a sportsman, next to taking part in a fight. He loves to see one. And he says, isn't, not, ain't. One under stress of the greatest excitement. The German artillery, which had been reserving fire, now poured forth a deluge of shrapnel. The sound of rifle fire was scattered and ragged at first, but it increased steadily in volume. Then came the boiler factory chorus. The sharp rattle of dozens of machine-guns. The bullets were flying over our heads like swarms of angry wasps. A ration-box board, which I held above the parapet, was struck almost immediately. Fortunately for the artillery officer, a disrespectful NCO pulled him down into the trench. "'It's no use you're a-throwing your life away, sir. You won't help him over by barking at him.'" He was up again almost at once, cruelly watching the progress of the troops from behind a small barricade of sandbags and reporting upon it to batteries several miles in rear. The temptation to look over the parapet was not to be resisted. The artillery lengthened their ranges. I saw the curtain of flame-shot smoke leap at a bound to the next line of German trenches. Within a few moments several lines of reserves filed into the front trench and went over the parapet in support of the first line, advancing with heads down like men bucking into the fury of a gale. We saw them only for an instant as they jumped to their feet outside the trench and rushed forward. Many were hit before they had passed through the gaps in our barbed wire. Those who were able crept back and were helped into the trench by comrades, one man was killed, as he was about to reach a place of safety, he lay on a parapet, with his head and arms hanging down inside the trench. His face was that of a boy of twenty-one or twenty-two. I carry the memory of it with me to-day, as vividly as when I left the trenches in November. Following the attacking infantry were those other soldiers whose work, though less spectacular than that of the rifleman, was just as essential and quite as dangerous. Royal engineers with picks and shovels and sandbags rushed forward to reverse the parapets of the captured trenches and to clear out the wreckage, while the rifleman waited for the launching of the first counter-attack. They were preceded by men of the signaling corps who advanced swiftly and skillfully unwinding spools of insulated telephone wire as they went, bomb carriers, stretcher-bearers, and tent upon their widely divergent duties followed. The work of salvage and destruction went hand in hand. The battle continued until evening, when we received orders to move up to the firing line. We started at five o'clock, and although we had less than three miles to go, we did not reach the end of our journey until four the next morning, owing to the fatigue-parties and the long stream of wounded which blocked the communication trenches. For more than an hour we lay just outside of the trench, looking down on a seemingly endless procession of casualties. Some of the men were crying like children, some growing pitifully, some laughing despite their wounds. I heard dialects peculiar to every part of England, and fragmentary accounts of hare-breath escapes and desperate fighting. There was a big Dutchman coming at me from the other side, lucky for me, that I had a round-of-me-breach. He'd have got me if it hadn't been for that cartridge. I let him have it, and he crumbled up like a wet blanket. Save one of them, and that days like there wasn't a good for any thing, man, I would have been fair-murder to kill him. There wasn't a wanton to fight. Boys scarcely out of their teams talked with the air of old veterans. Many of them had been given their first taste of real fighting, and they were experiencing a very common and natural reaction. Their courage had been put to the most severe test, and had not given way. It was not difficult to understand the relation, and one could forgive their boastful talk of bloody deeds. One highly strong lad was dangerously near to nervous breakdown. He had bayoneted his first German, and could not forget the experience. He told of it over and over as the line moved slowly along. I couldn't get me bayoneted out, he said. When he fell, he pulled me over on top of him. I had to put me foot against him to a bullet, and it came out with a jerk. We met small groups of prisoners under escort of proud and happy Tommies, who gave us conflicting reports of the success of the attack. Some of them said that two more lines of German trenches had been taken, others declared, that we had broken completely through, and that the enemy were in full retreat. Upon arriving at our position, we were convinced that at least one trench had been captured. But when we mounted our guns and peered cautiously over the parapet, the lights which we saw in the distance were the flashes of German rifles, not the street lamps of Berlin. 3. Christian Practice Meanwhile, the inhumanity of war without truces was being revealed to us on every hand. Hundreds of bodies were lying between the opposing lines of trenches, and there was no chance to bury them. Fatigue parties were set out at night to dispose of those which were lying close to the parapets, but the work was constantly delayed and interrupted by persistent sniping and heavy shell fire. The soldiers further out lay where they had fallen, day after day, and week after week. Many an anxious mother in England was seeking news of a son whose body had become a part of the Flemish landscape. During the week following the commencement of the offensive, the wounded were brought back in twos and threes from the contested area over which attacks and counterattacks were taking place. One plucky Englishman was discovered about fifty yards in front of our trenches. He was waving a handkerchief tied to the handle of his entrenching tool. Stretcher-bearers ran out under fire and brought him in. He had been wounded in the foot when his company were advancing up the slope fifteen hundred yards away. When he was found necessary to retire he had been left with many dead and wounded comrades, far from the possibility of help by friends. He had bandaged his wound with his first aid dressing and had crawled back a few yards at a time. He secured food from the haversacks of dead comrades, and at length after a week of painful creeping reached our lines. Another of our comrades was discovered by a listening patrol six days after he had been wounded. He too had been stuck down close to the enemy's second line. Two kind-hearted German sentries, to whom he had signaled, crept out at night and gave him hot coffee to drink. He begged them to carry him in. But they told him they were forbidden to take any wounded prisoners. As he was unable to crawl he must have died had it not been for the keen ears of the men at the listening patrol, a third victim, who I saw was brought in at daybreak by a working party. He had been shot into jaw and lay unattended through at least five wet October days and nights. His eyes were swollen shut. Blood poisoning had set in from a wound which would certainly not have been fatal. Could it have received early attention? We knew that there must be many wounded still alive in the tall grass between our lines. We knew that many were dying, who might be saved. The Red Cross Corps made nightly searches for them, but the difficulties to be overcome were great. The volume of fire increased tremendously at night, for the more. There was a wide area to be searched and, in the darkness, men laying unconscious or too weak from the loss of blood to groan or shout, were discovered only by accident. Tommy Atkins isn't an advocate of peace at any price. But the sight of awful and needless suffering invariably moved him to declare himself against the inhuman practices in war of so-called Christian nations. Christian nations, he would say scornfully. If this here is a sample of Christianity, I'll take me chances down below when I get knocked out. His comrades greeted such outbursts with hearty approval. I'm with you there, mate. It won't be such a dusty old place if all the Christians go upstairs. They ain't no God having anything to do with this war, I'm telling you. All the religious blokes in England and France and Germany ain't a going to pray them. I'm into it. I'm not in a position to speak for Hans and Fritz, who faced us from the other side of no man's land. But as for Tommy, it seemed to me that he had a higher opinion of the deity than many of his better educated countrymen at home. For Tommy. By the end of the month we had seen more of suffering and death than it is good for men to see in a lifetime. There were attacks and counterattacks, hand-to-hand fights in communication trenches with bombs and bayonets, heavy bombardments, nightly burial parties. Tommy Atkins looked like a beast. His clothing was hardened mud casing. His body was the color of the sticky, flanders clay in which he lived. But his soul was clean and fine. I saw him rescuing wounded comrades, tending them in the trenches, encouraging them, and heartening them when he himself was discouraged and sick at heart. You're going home already, blimey. Think of that. Back to old Blighty, while the rest of us got to stick it out here. Don't I wish I was you. Not Arp. You ain't bad, or strike me pink. You'll be as keen as a whistle in a couple of months. And here, Christmas in Blighty, son, say I'll take your busted shoulder if you'll give me that chance. There ain't nothing they can't do for you back at the base hospital. Remember how they fixed old Ginger up? He ain't caught it off as bad. And England before I knew him, for the man he is, I said, how am I to endure living with him? And now I am thinking how am I to endure living without him? Without the inspiration of his splendid courage? Without the visible example of his unselfish devotion to his fellows? There were a few cowards and shirkers who failed to live up to the standards set by their comrades. I remember the man of thirty-five or forty who lay whimpering in the trench when there was unpleasant work to be done, while boys half his age kicked him in a vain attempt to awaken him to a sense of duty. But instances of this kind were rare. There were not enough of them to serve as a foil to the shining deeds which were of daily and hourly occurrence. Tommy is sick of the war, dead sick of it. He is weary of the interminable procession of comfortless nights and days. He is weary of the sight of maimed and bleeding men, of the awful suspense of waiting for death. In the words of his pathetic little song, he does, want to go home. But there is that within him which says, hold on, he is a compound of cheery optimism and grim tenacity, which makes him an incomparable fighting man. The intimate picture of him, which lingers most willingly in my mind, is that which I carried with me from the trenches on the dreary November evening shortly before I bade him good-bye. It had been raining and sleeting for a week. The trenches were knee- deep in water, in some places waist-deep, for the ground was as level as the floor, and there was no possibility of drainage. We were wet, through and our legs were numb, with the cold. Near a gun-position there was a hole in the floor of the trench, where the water had collected in a deep pool. A bridge of boards had been built around one side of this, but in the darkness a passer-by slipped and fell into the icy water nearly up to his armpits. "'Now, then, matey,' said an exasperating voice, bathing in our private pool without a permit. "'And another, ere, son, this ain't a swim-and-blath. That's where tea-water you're a-standin' in.' The tommy in the pool must have been nearly frozen, but for a moment he made no attempt to get out. "'Why don't you fetch me a bit of soap, will you?' he said coaxingly. "'You ain't a-goin' to talk about tea-water to a bloke one ain't at a-bath in seven weeks!' It is men of this stamp who have the fortunes of England in their keeping, and they are called, the boys of the bulldog breed."