 CHAPTER VII Midsummer Calm During our first summer in the trenches there were days, sometimes weeks, at a time in the language of the official bulletins, there was nothing to report, or calm, prevailed along our entire front. From the war-office point of view these statements were doubtless true enough, but from Tommy Atkinson's point of view calm was putting it somewhat mildly. Life in the trenches, even on the quietest days, is full of adventure, highly spiced with danger. Snipers, machine-gunners, artillerymen, airmen, engineers of the opposing sides by with each other in skill and daring in order to secure that coveted advantage, the morale. Tommy calls it the Morail, but he jolly well knows when he has it and when he hasn't. There were many nights of official calm when we machine-gunners crept out of the trenches with our guns to positions prepared beforehand, either in front of the line or to the rear of it. There we waited for messages from our listening patrols who were lying in the tall grass of the front yard. They sent word to us immediately, when they discovered enemy working-parties building up their parapets or mending their barbed-wire entanglements. We would then lay our guns according to instructions received and blazed away, each gun firing at the rate of from three hundred to five hundred rounds per minute. After a heavy burst of fire we would change our positions at once. It was then that the most exciting part of our work began. For as soon as we ceased firing there were answering full assaids from hundreds of German rifles, and within two or three minutes German field artillery began a search for us with shrapnel. We crawled from one position to another over the open ground or along shallow ditches dug for the purpose. These offered protection from rifle fire, but frequently the shell fire was so heavy and so well directed that we were given some very unpleasant half-hours, lying flat on our faces, listening to the deafening explosions and the vicious whistling of flying shrapnel. We fired from the trenches as well as in front and to the rear of them. We were in fact busy during most of the night, for it was our duty to see to it that our guns lived up to their reputation as weapons of opportunity and surprise. With the aid of large scale maps we located all of the roads within range, back of the German lines. Roads which we knew were used by enemy troops moving in and out of the trenches. We located all of their communication trenches leading back to the rear, and at uncertain intervals we covered roads and trenches with bursts of searching fire. The German gunners were by no means inactive. They too profited by their knowledge of night life in the firing line. Their knowledge of soldier nature they knew as we did we, that the roads in the rear of the trenches are filled at night with troops, transport wagons and fatigue parties. They knew as did we, that men become so utterly weary of living in ditches, living in holes like rats, that they are willing to take big risks when moving in or out of the trenches, for the pure joy of getting up on top of the ground. Many a night when we were moving up for our week in the first line or back for our week in reserve, we heard the far off rattle of German Maximums, and in an instant the bullets would be zipped, zipping all around us. There was no need for the sharp word of command. If there was a communication trench at hand we all made a dime for it at once. If there was not we fell face down in ditches, shell holes, anyplace which offered a little protection from that terrible hail of lead. Many of our men were killed and wounded nightly by machine-gun fire, usually because they were too tired to be conscious and doubtless we did as much damage with our own guns. It seemed to me horrible. Living in the nature of murder, that advantage must be taken of these opportunities. But it was all part of the game of war, and fortunately we rarely knew nor did Germans what damage was done during those summer nights of calm along the entire front. The artillerymen, both British and German, did much to relieve the boredom of those nothing to report days. There were desolatory bombardments of the trenches at Daybreak and at Dusk, when every infantryman is at his post, rifle in hand, bayonet fixed, on the alert for signs of a surprise attack. If it was a bombardment with shrapnel, Tommy was not greatly concerned, for in trenches he is fairly safe from shrapnel fire. But if the shells were large caliber high explosives he cropped close to the front wall of the trench, lamenting the day he was foolish enough to become an infantryman. Abloom on Yuma Ninepin. Covered with dirt sometimes half buried in fallen trench, he wagered his next week's tobacco rations that the London papers would print the same old story. Along the western front there is nothing to report, and usually he won. Much mortaring was more to our liking. That is an infantryman's game, and while extremely hazardous the men in the trenches have a sporting chance. Everyone forgot breakfast when the word was passed down the line that we were going to mortify Fritzee. The last relief night-centuries who had just tumbled sleepily into the dugouts tumbled out of them again to watch the fun. Fatigue parties. Working in the communication trenches dropped their picks and shovels and came hurrying up to the first line. Eagerly, expectably, everyone waited for the sport to begin. Our projectiles were immense balls of hollow steel filled with high explosive of tremendous power. They were fired from a small gun placed usually in the first line of reserve trenches. A dull boom from the rear warned us that the game had started. There she is. There, going true as a die. She's going to it. She's going it to it. All the boys would be shouting at once. Up it goes, turning over and over, rising to a height of several hundred feet. Then, if well aimed, it reaches the end of its upward journey, directly over the enemy's line, and falls straight into his trench. There is a moment of silence followed by a terrific explosion which throws dirt and debris high into the air. By this time, every Tommy along the line is standing on the firing bench, head and shoulders above the parapet, quite forgetting his own danger in his excitement, and shouting at the top of his voice, How's that one, fritzy boy? Guten Morgen, you Prussian sausage wallopers. Talk a bit of that, old year-misses. But fritzy could be dependent on to keep up his end of the game. He gave us just as good as we sent, and often he added something for full measures. His surprises were sausage-shaped missiles, which came wobbling towards us slowly, almost awkwardly. But they dropped with lightning speed, and I'll ask for any poor Tommy who misjudged the speed of its fall. However, everyone had a chance. Trench mortar projectiles are so large that one can see them coming, and they describe so leisurely an arc before they fall that men have time to run. I have always admired Tommy Atkins for his sense of fair play. He enjoyed giving frits a little bit of all right, but he never resented it when frits had his own fun at our expense. In the far-off days of peace I used to lament the fact that we had fallen upon evil times. I read of old wars with a feeling of regret that men had lost their old primal love for dangerous sport. Their naive ignorance and fear. All the brave heroic things of life were said and done. But on those trench-mortaring days, when I watched boys playing with death with right good zest, heard them shouting and laughing as they tumbled over one another in their eagerness to escape it, I was convinced of my error. Daily I saw men going through the test of fire triumphantly, and at the last what a severe test it was, and how splendidly they met it. During six months continuously in the firing line I met less than a dozen natural-born cowards. And my experience was largely with plumbers, draper's assistants, clerks, men who had no fighting traditions to back them up, make them heroic in spite of themselves. The better I knew Tommy, the better I liked him. He hasn't a shred of sentimentality in his makeup. There is plenty of sentiment, sincere feeling, but it is admirably concealed. I had been a soldier of the king for many months before I realized that the men with whom I was living, sharing rations and hardships, were anything other than the healthy animals they looked. They relished their food and talked about it. They grumbled at the restraints military discipline imposed upon them. And at the paltry shilling a day which they received for the first really hard work they had ever done. They appeared to regard England as a miserly employer, exacting their last ounce of energy for a wretchedly inadequate wage. To the casual observers, Thurus was not the ador of loyal sons, fighting for a beloved motherland. Rather, it seemed that of irresponsible schoolboys on a long holiday. They said nothing about patriotism or the duty of Englishmen in wartime. And if I attempted to start a conversation along that line, they walked right over me, with their boots on. This was a great disappointment at first. I should never have known from anything that was said that a man of them was stirred at the thought of fighting for old England. England was all right. But I ain't going balmy about the old flag and all that stuff. Many of them insisted that they were in the army for personal and selfish reasons alone. They went out of their way to ridicule any and every indication of sentiment. There was the matter of talk about mothers, for example. I can't imagine this being the case in a volunteer army of American boys. But not once, during fifteen months of British army life, did I hear a discussion of mothers. When the weekly parcels from England arrived and the boys were sharing their cake and chocolate and tobacco, one of them would say, Good ol' mom, she ain't bad sort. To be answered with reluctant mouth-filled grunts or grudging nods of approval. As for fathers, I often thought to myself, What a tremendous army of posthumous sons. Months before I would have been astonished at this reticence. But I had learned to understand Tommy. His silences were as eloquent as any splendid outbursts or glowing tributes could have been. Indeed, they were far more eloquent. Englishmen seemed to have an instinctive understanding of the futility, the emptiness of words in the face of unspeakable experiences. It was a matter of constant wonder to me that men living in the daily and hourly presence of death could so surely control and conceal their feelings. Their talk was of anything but home, and yet I knew they thought of but little else. One of our boys was killed, and there was the letter to be written to his parents. Three Tommies who knew him best were to attempt this. They made innumerable beginnings, each of them was afraid of blundering, of causing unnecessary pain, by an indelicate revelation of the facts. There was a feminine fineness about their concern, which was beautiful to see. The final draft of the letter was a little masterpiece, not of English, but of insight. Such a letter as any one of us would have wished his own parents to receive under the circumstances. Nothing was forgotten which could have made the news in the slightest degree more durable. Every traveling personal belonging was carefully saved and packed in a little box to follow the letter. All of this was done amid much boisterous jesting. There was the usual hilarious singing to the wheezing accompaniment of an old mouth organ. But of reference to home or mothers, comradeship, nothing. Rarely a night passed without its burial parties. Digging in the garden, Tommy calls the grave-making. The bodies, wrapped in blankets or waterproof ground-sheets, are lifted over the peridose and carried back a convenient 20 yards or more. The desolation of that garden choked with weeds and a wild growth of self-sown crops is indescribable. It was wreckage-droom, gaping with shell-holes, billing with innumerable graves, a wasteland speechlessly pathetic. The popular trees and willow hedges have been blasted and splintered by shell-fire. Tommy calls these Kaiser-Bills flowers. Coming from England he feels more deeply than he would care to admit the crimes done to trees in the name of war. Our chaplain was a devout man, but prudent to a fault. Never to my knowledge did he visit in the trenches. Therefore our burial parties proceeded without the rights of the church. This arrangement was highly satisfactory to Tommy. He liked to get the planning done with the least possible delay in fuss. His whispered conversations while the graves were being scooped to say the least quite out of the spirit of the occasion. Once we were burying two boys with whom we had been having supper a few hours before. There was an artillery duel in progress, the shells whistling high over our heads and bursting in great splotches of white fire, far in rear of the opposing lines and trenches. The grave-making went speedily on, while the burial party argued in whispers as to the caliber of the guns. Some said they were six inch while others thought nine inch. Discussion was momentarily suspended when a trench rocket shot in an arc from the enemy's line. We crouched, motionless, until the welcome darkness spread again. And then in loud whispers, Air, if there was nine inch, they would have had more screech. And one from the other school of opinion would reply, Don't talk so blowin' silly. Ain't I tellin' you that you can't always size them by the screech? Not a prayer, not a word, either of censure or of praise, for the boys who had gone. Not an expression of opinion as to the meaning of the great change which had come to them, and which might come, as suddenly to any or all of us, and yet I knew they were each thinking of these things. There were days when the front was really quiet. The thin trickle of rifle fire only accentuated the stillness of an early summer morning. Far down the line, Tommy could be heard singing to himself as he sat in the door of his dugout. Cleaning his rifle were making a careful scrutiny of his shirt for those unwelcome little parasites, which made life so miserable for him at all times. There were pleasant cracklings of burning pine sticks and the sizzle of frying bacon. Great swarms of blue bottle flies, buzzed lazily in the warm sunshine. Sometimes across a pool of noonday silence we heard birds singing, for the birds didn't desert us. When we gave them a hearing they did their cheery little best to assure us that everything would come right in the end. Once we heard a skylark, an English skylark, singing over no man's land. I scarcely know which gave me more pleasure, the song or the sight of the faces of those English lads as they listened. I was deeply touched when one of them said, Adial plucky little chap, singing right in front of Fritzi's trenches for us, English blokes. It was a sincere and fitting tribute as perfect for a soldier as Shelley's owed for a poet. Along the part of the British front which we held during the summer, the opposing lines of trenches were from less than a hundred to four hundred and fifty or five hundred yards apart. When we were neighborly as regards to distance, we were also neighborly as regards to social intercourse. In the early mornings when the heavy night mist still concealed the lines, the boys stood head and shoulder above the parapet and shouted, Hi Fritzi! And the greeting was returned. Hi Tommy! Then we conversed. Very few of us knew German, but it is surprising how many Germans could speak English. Frequently they shouted, Got any wood-mines, Tommy? His favorite brand of cigarettes. And Tommy would reply, Sure, should I bring him over or would you come and fetch him? This was often the ice-breaker, the beginning of a conversation which varied considerably in other details. Who are you? Fritzi would shout. And Tommy? We're the King's Own, Yemen of Adders, for some such subtle repartee as that. What's your mob? We're a battalion of Irish rifles the Germans liked to provoke us by pretending that the Irish were disloyal to England. Sometimes they shouted, Any of you from London? Not off what was you doing off in London, waiting table at Sam's Isaac's fish shop? The rising of the mist put an end to these conversations. Sometimes they were concluded earlier with bursts of rifle and machine gun fire. All right, to be friendly, Tommy would say. But we gotta let him know. This ain't no love-feast. Part One. Unseen Forces Ah, we come across the Channel for to wallop Germany. But they haven't got no soldiers. Not that any one can see. They plug us with the rifles and they let their shrapnel fly. But they never takes a pot at us, excepting on the sly. Of course. Fritzi, when you're coming out, this what you call the fight, you won't never get the Calais. Always keeping out of sight. We're all going back to Blighty. What's the use of waiting here? Like a lot of bloomin' mudlarks for old Fritzi to appear. He never puts his napper up above the parapet. We've been in France for seven months and haven't seen him yet. So sang Tommy the incorrigible paradist during the long summer days and nights of 1915, when he was impatiently waiting for something to turn up. For three months and more we were face to face with an enemy whom we rarely saw. It was a weird experience. Rifles cracked, bullets zipped zipped along the top of the parapet, great shells whistled over our heads or torrimous holes in the trenches. Trench mortar projectiles and hand grenades were hurled at us, and yet there was not a living soul to be seen across the narrow strip of no man's land. Once all this murderous rain of steel and lead was coming. Daily we kept careful and continuous watch, searching the long curving line of German trenches and the ground behind them with our periscopes and field-glasses, and nearly always with the same barren result. We saw only the thin wreaths of smoke rising morning and evening from trench fires, the shattered trees, the forlorn and silent ruins, the long grass waving in the wind. Although we were often within two hundred yards of thousands of German soldiers, rarely further than four hundred yards away, I did not see one of them until we had been in the trenches for more than six weeks, and then only for the interval of a second or two. My German was building up a piece of damaged parapet. I watched the earth being thrown over the top of the trench, when suddenly a head appeared, only to be immediately withdrawn. One of our snipers had evidently been watching too. A rifle cracked and I saw a cloud of dust arise where the bullet clipped the top of the parapet. The German waved his spade defiantly in the air and continued digging, but he remained discreetly undercover thereafter. This marked an epic in my experience in a war of unseen forces. I had actually be held a German. Although Tommy insisted that it was only the old caretaker, to bloke what keeps the trenches tidy, this mythical personage. A creature of Tommy's own fancy assumed a very real importance during the summer when the attractions at the western theatre of war were only mildly interesting. Carl the caretaker was supposed to be a methodical old man whom the emperor had left in charge of his trenches on the western front during the absence of the German armies in Russia. Many were the stories told about him at different parts of the line. Sometimes he was endowed with a family. His misses and his three little nippers were with him and together they were blocking the way to Berlin of the entire British army. Sometimes he was haunts the grenadier owing to his fondness for nightly bombing parties. Sometimes he was many's husband, many being the redoubtable lady known in polite military circles as mine and wife for her. As already explained, she was sausage-like in shape and, frightfully, demonstrative. When she went visiting at the behest of her husband, Tommy used the contrive to be not at home, whereupon many wrecked the house and disappeared in a cloud of dense black smoke. One imagines all sorts of monstrous things about an unseen enemy. The strain of constantly watching and seeing nothing became almost imbearable at times. We were often too far apart to have our early morning interchange of courtesies and then the constant tch-tch of bullets annoyed and exasperated us. I, for one, welcomed any evidence that our opponents were fathers and husbands and brothers, just as we were. I remember my delight one fine summer morning at seeing three great kites soaring above the German line. There is much to be said for men who enjoy flying kites. Once they mounted a dummy figure of a man on their parapet. Tommy had great sport shooting at it, the Germans jiggling its arms and legs in a most laughable manner whenever a hit was registered. In their eagerness to get a good bead on the figure, the men threw caution to the winds and stood on the firing benches shooting over the top of the parapet. Fritz and Hans were true sportsmen while the fun was on and did not once fire at us. Then the dummy was taken down and we returned to the more serious game of war with old, deadly earnestness. I recall such incidents with joy as I remember certain happy events in childhood. We needed these trivial occurrences to keep us sane and human. There were not many of them, but such as there were. We talked of for days and weeks afterward. As for the matter of keeping out of sight, there was a good deal to be said on both sides. Although Tommy was impatient with his prudent enemy and sang songs tweeting him about always keeping undercover, he did not usually forget, in the daytime at least, to make his own observations of the German line with caution. Telescopic sites have made the business of sniping an exact science. They magnify the object aimed at many diameters, and if it remains in view long enough to permit the pulling of a trigger, the chances of a hit are almost one hundred percent. 2. The Butt-Nature Snipers have a roving commission. They move from one part of the line to another, sometimes firing from carefully concealed loopholes in the parapet, sometimes from sniper's nests in trees or hedges. Often they creep out into the tall grass of no man's land. There, with a plentiful supply of food and ammunition, they remain for a day or two at a time, lying in wait for victims. It was a cold-blooded business and hateful to some of the men. With others, the passion for it grew. They kept tally of their victims by cutting notches on the butts of the rifles. I will well remember the pleasant June day when I first met a Butt-Nature. I was going for water to an old farmhouse about half a mile from our sector of trench. It was a day of bright sunshine. Poppies and butter-cups had taken root in the banks of earth, heaped up on either side of the communication trench. They were nodding their heads as gaily in the breeze as of old Wordsmith Daffodils, in the quiet countryside at Royal Mount. It was a joy to see them there, reminding one that God was, still in his heaven. Whatever might be wrong with the world, it was a joy to be alive, a joy which one could share unsufficially with friend and enemy alike. The colossal stupidity of war was never more apparent to me than upon that day. I hated my job, and if I hated any man, it was the one who ended then the murderous little weapon known as the Machine Gun. I longed to get out on top of the ground. I wanted to lie at full length in the grass, for it was June, and nature has a way of making one feel the call of June, even from the bottom of a communication trench seven feet deep. Flowers and grass peeped down at one, and white clouds sailed placidly across the strip of blue weepersners call the sky. I felt that I must see all of the sky and see it at once. Therefore I sat down my water cans, one on top of the other, stepped up on them, and was soon over the top of the trench crawling through the tall grass towards a clump of willows about fifty yards away. I passed two lonely graves with their wooden crosses hidden in depths of shimmering, wavering green, and found an old rifle, its stock weather warped, and the barrel eaten away with rust. The ground was covered with tin cans, fragments of shell casing, and rubbish of all sorts. But it was hidden from view. Man had been laying waste the earth during the long winter, and now June was healing the wounds with flowers and cool green grasses. I was sorry that I went to the willows, or it was there that I found the sniper. He had a wonderfully concealed position, which was made bulletproof with steel plates and sand bags, all covered so naturally with growing grass and willow brushes that it would have been impossible to detect it at a distance of ten yards. In fact, I would not have discovered it had not been for the loud crack of a rifle sounding so close at hand. I crept on to investigate and found the sniper looking quite disappointed. Missed the blighter, he said. Then he told me that it wasn't a good place for a sniper's nest at all. For one thing, it was too far back, nearly a half mile from the German trenches. Furthermore, it was a mistake to plant a nest in a solitary clump of willows such as this. A clump of trees offers too good an aiming mark for artillery. Much better to make a position right out in the open. However, so far he had not been annoyed by shellfire. A machine gun had searched for him, but he had adequate cover from machine gun fire. But, blimey, you ought to hurt him all row when the bullets was all smacking against the sandbags. Somebody was knocking at the door, I give you my word. However, it wasn't such a dusty little coop. And he had a good field of fire. He had registered four hits during the day, and he proudly displayed four new notches on a badly notched butt in proof of the fact. There's a big hole where the artillery pushed in their parapet last night. That's where I caught my last one. About half an hour ago, the bloke goes by every little while and forgets to duck his napper. Take your field glasses and watch me clip the next one. Quarter left it is. This side of the old house with the old in the wall. I focused my glasses and waited. Presently said in a very cool matter-of-fact voice. There's one coming. See him? He's carrying a plank. You can see it sticking up above the parapet. He's going to get a nasty one if he don't duck when he comes out of that hole. I found the moving plank and followed it along the trench as it approached nearer and nearer to the opening. And I was guilty of the most unprofessional conduct, for I kept thinking as hard as I could. Duck fritzy, whatever you do, duck when you come to that hole. And surely enough he did. The plank was lowered into the trench just before the opening was reached, and a top of it reappeared again a moment later on the other side of the opening. The sniper was greatly disappointed. Now wouldn't that give you that camel-zumpy said? I believe you're a genre for me, matey. Presently another man carrying a plank went along the trench and he ducked, too. Grease off, Jerry, said the but notcher. You're bringing me bad luck. However, they probably got the place tapped. They lost one man there and they won't lose another, not if they knows it. I talked with many snipers at different parts of the line. It was interesting to get their points of view, to learn what their reaction was to their work. The but notchers were very few. Although snipers invariably took pride in their work, it was the sportsman pride in good markmanship rather than the love of killing for its own sake. The general attitude was that of a corporal whom I knew. He never fired hastily, but when he did pull the trigger, his bullet went true to the mark. He can't help feeling sorry for the poor blighters, he would say. But it's us or them, and every one you knocks over means one of our blokes saved. I have no doubt that the Germans felt the same way about us. At any rate, they thoroughly believed in a policy of attrition, and in carrying it out, they often wasted thousands of rounds in sniping every yard of our parapet. The sound was deafening at times, particularly when there were ruined walls of houses or row of trees just back of our trenches. The ear-splitting reports were hurled against them, and seemed to be shattered into thousands of fragments, the sound rattling and tumbling on until it died away far in the distance. 3. Night Routine Meanwhile, like futile inhabitants of an infamous underworld, we remained hidden in our lairs in the daytime, waiting for night when we could creep out of our holes and go about our business under cover of darkness. Sleep is a luxury indulged in but rarely in the first-line trenches. When not on central duty at night, the men were organized into working parties and sent out, in front of our trenches, to mend the barbed wire entanglements which are being constantly destroyed by our tellery fire, or in summer, to cut the tall grass and the weeds which would otherwise offer concealment to enemy listening controls or bombing parties. Ration fatigues of twenty or thirty men per company went back to meet the battalion transport wagons at some point several miles in the rear of the firing line. There were trench supplies and stores to be brought up as well, and the never-finished business of mending and improving the trenches kept many off-duty men employed during the hours of darkness. The men on duty in front of the trenches were always in very great danger. They were swiftly and silently, but they were often discovered in which case. The only warning they received was a sudden burst of machine-gun fire. Then would come the urgent calls for stretcher-bearers. As soon as the breakage was brought in over the parapet, the stretchers were set down in the bottom of the trench and hasty examinations made by the light of a flash-lamp. Where he caught it. Here it is. Do the leg. Take his puttee off, one of you. Easy now, it's smashed to the bone. Stick it, matey. We'll soon have you as right as rain. For God's sake, boys, go easy as given me, and let up. Let up just a minute. Many a conversation of this sort did we hear at night, when the field dressings were being put on. But even in his suffering, Tommy never forgot to be unrighteously indignant, if he had been wounded when on a working-party. What could he say up to the women of England who would bring him fruit and flowers in hospital, call him a poor, brave fellow, and ask how he was wounded? He had enlisted as a soldier, and as a reward for his patriotism the government had given him a shovel. And here I am, working like a bloomin' nappy, fillin' sandbags full of France, we're not. And up and gets plugged. The men who most bitterly resented the pick-and- shovel phrase of army life were given a great deal of it to do for that very reason. One of my comrades was shot in the leg while digging a refuse pit. The wound was a bad one, and he suffered much pain. But the humiliation was even harder to bear. What could he tell them at home? Do you think I'm gonna say I was carrying a sandbag full of old jam-tins back to the refuse pit when Fritzy gave me this air-wound in a leg? Not so bloomin' likely. I was afraid I'd get one like this. Ate it a rotten bit of luck. If he had to be a casualty, Tommy wanted to be an interesting one. He wanted to fall in the heat of battle. Not in the heat of inglorious fatigue duty. But there was more heroic work to be done going out on listening patrol, for example. One patrol consisting of a sergeant or corporal and four or five privates was sent out from each company. It was the duty of these men to cover the area immediately in front of the company lines of trench, to see and hear without being discovered, and to report immediately any activity of the enemy, above or below ground, of which they might learn. They were on duty for from three to five hours and might use a wide discretion in their prowlings, provided they kept within the limits of frontage allotted to their own company, and returned to the meeting-place where the change of relief was made. These requirements were not easily complied with unless there were trees or other prominent landmarks standing out against the sky, by means of which the patrol could keep its direction. The work required above everything else, cool heads and stout hearts. There was the ever-present danger of meeting an enemy patrol or bombing party, in which case they could not be avoided. There would be a hand-to-hand encounter with bayonets or a noisy exchange of hand grenades. There was danger, too, of a false alarm, started by a nervous sentry. It needs, but a moment for such an alarm to become general. So great is the nervous tension at which men live on the firing line. Terrific falsades from both sides followed while the listening patrols flattened themselves out on the ground, and listened, in no pleasant frame of mind, to the bullets whistling over their heads. But at night, and under the stress of great excitement, men fire high. Strange as it may seem, one is comparatively safe, even in the open, when lying flat on the ground. Bombing affairs were of almost nightly occurrence. Tommy enjoyed these extremely hazardous adventures which he called Carian-A-Aparoth, or Eight-to-Fritzy, a half-benny worth of eight, consisting of six or a dozen hand grenades which he hurled into the German trenches from the far side of their entanglements. The more hardy spirits often worked their way through the barbed wire, and from his position, close under the parapet, they waited for the sound of voices. When they had located the position of the sentries, they tossed their bombs over with deadly effect. The sound of the explosions called forth an immediate and heavy fire from sentries near and far, but lying close under the very muscles of the German rifles. The bombers were in no danger unless a party were set out in search of them. This of course constituted the chief element of risk. The strain of waiting for developments was a severe one. I have seen men come in from a bombing stunt, worn out and trembling from nervous fatigue, and yet many of them enjoyed it, and were sent out night after night. The excitement of the thing worked into their blood. Throughout the summer there was a great deal more digging to do than fighting, for it was not until the arrival on active service of Kitchener's armies that the construction of the double line of reserve or support trenches was undertaken. From June until September this work was pushed rapidly forward. There were also trenches to be made in advance of the original firing line, for the purpose of connecting and advancing points and removing dangerous salience. At such times there was no loafing until we had reached a depth sufficient to protect us both from view and from fire. We picked and shoveled with might in Maine, working in absolute silence, throwing ourselves flat on the ground whenever a trench rocket was set up from the German lines. Casualties were frequent, but this was inevitable, working as we did in the open, exposed to every chance shot of an enemy century. The stretcher-bearers lay in the tall grass, close at hand, awaiting the whispered word, Stretchers Bearers, this way. And they were kept busy during much of the time we were at work, carrying the wounded to the rear. It was surprising how quickly men became accustomed to the nerve-trying duties in the firing line. Fortunately for Tomory, the longer he is in the army, the greater becomes his indifference to danger. His philosophy is fatalistic. What is to be will be, is his only comment, when one of his comrades is killed. A bullet or a shell works with such lightning speed. The dangerous past, before one realizes, it is at hand. Therefore men work doggedly, carelessly, and in the background of consciousness there is always the comforting belief common to all soldiers. That others may be killed, but somehow I shall escape. The most important in trench duty as well as the most worrisome one for men is their period of century go. Eight hours and twenty-four, four two-hour shifts. Each man stands at his post on the firing line, rifle in hand, keeping a sharp lookout over the front yard. At night he observes as well as he can over the top of the parapet. In the daytime by means of his periscope. Most of our large periscopes were shattered by keen-sighted German snipers. We used a very good substitute, one of the simplest kind, a piece of broken pocket mirror placed on the end of a split stick, and set up at an angle on top of the paradoles. During the two hours of century duty we had nothing to do other than keep watch and keep awake. The latter was by far the most difficult business at night. Hey, Sergeant! Tommy would say as the platoon sergeant felt his way along the trench in the darkness. When is the next relief coming on? Your watch needs a good blacksmith. I've been on century three hours if I've been a minute. Never you mind about my watch, son. You've got another forty-five minutes to go. Well, you listen to that, you bloke. Say, I could make you a better timepiece out of my old bully tin, I'm telling you straight. I'll be asleep when you come around again. But he isn't. Although the temptation may be great. Tommy isn't longing for a court-martial. When the platoon officer or the company commander makes his hourly rounds flashing his electric pocket lamp before him, he is ready with a cherry. Post all correct, sir. He whistles or sings to himself until, at last, he hears the platoon sergeant waking the next relief by whacking the soles of their boots with his rifle butt. Wake up, air. Come along, my lads. Your century go. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Kitchener's Mob by James Norman Hall This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Venditti, MikeVenditti.com Kitchener's Mob by James Norman Hall Chapter 9 Billets Cave life had its alleviations and chief among these was a pleasure of anticipating our week in reserve. We could look forward to this with certainty. During the long stalemate on the Western Front, British military organization has been perfected until in times of quiet. It works with the monotonous smoothness of a machine. Even during periods of prolonged and heavy fighting there is but little confusion. Only twice during six months of campaigning did we fail to receive our daily post of letters and parcels from England. And then, we were told, the delay was due to mind sweeping in the Channel. With every detail of military routine carefully thought out and every possible emergency provided for in advance, we lived as methodically in the firing line as we had during our months of training in England. The movements of troops in and out of the trenches were excellently arranged and timed. The outgoing battalion was prepared to move back as soon as the relief had taken place. The trench water cans had been filled and active courtesy between battalions. The dugouts thoroughly cleaned and the refuse buried. The process of taking over was a very brief one. The centuries of the incoming battalion were posted and listening patrols sent out to relieve those of the outgoing battalion which then moved down the communications trenches. The men happy in the prospect of a night of undisturbed sleep. Second only to sleep in importance was the fortnightly bath. Sometimes we cleaned ourselves as best we could in muddy little duckponds, populace with frogs and green was scum. But oh the joy when our march ended at a military bath-house. The government had provided these whenever possible and for several weeks we were within marching distance of one. There we received a fresh change of under-clothing and our uniforms were fumigated while we splashed and scrubbed in great vats of clean warm water. The order everybody out was obeyed with great reluctance and usually not until the bath attendants of the Army Service Corps enforced it with the cold water hose. Tommy who has a song for every important ceremonial never sang Rule Britannia with the enthusiasm which marked his rendition of the following chorus, whiter than a whitewash on the wall, whiter than a whitewash on the wall. If you're leading us to slaughter, leave us have our soap and water first. Then we'll be whiter than the whitewash on the wall. When out of the firing line we washed and mended our clothing and scraped the week's accumulation of mud from our uniforms. Before breakfast we were inflicted with the old punishment, Swedish drill. Got strafe, Sweden, Tommy would say, as he puffed and perspired under a hot, august sun, but he was really glad that he had no choice but to submit. In the trenches there was little opportunity for vigorous exercise and our arms and legs became stiff with the long inactivity. Throughout the mornings we were busy with a multitude of duties. Arms and equipment were cleaned and inspected, machine guns thoroughly overhauled, gas helmets sprayed, and there was frequent instruction in bomb throwing and bayonet fighting, in preparation for the day to which every soldier looks forward with some misgiving but with increasing confidence. The day when the enemy shall be driven out of France. Classes in grenade fighting were under the supervision of officers of the Royal Engineers. In the early days of the war there was but one grenade in use. And that accrued affair made by the soldiers themselves, an empty jam tin, was filled with explosive and scrap iron, and tightly bound with wire, a fuse was attached and the bomb was ready for use. But England early anticipated the importance which grenade fighting was to play in trench warfare. Her experts and explosives were set to work and by the time we were ready for active service ten or a dozen variety of bombs were in use, all of them made in the ammunition factories in England. The hairbrush, the lemon bomb, the cricket ball, and the policemen's trenching were the most important of these, all of them so-called because of their resemblance to the articles for which they were named. The first three were exploded by a time fuse set from three to five seconds. The fourth was a percussion bomb, which had long cloth streamers fastened to the handle to ensure greater accuracy in throwing. The men became remarkably accurate at a distance of thirty to forty yards. Old cricketers were especially good for the bomb must be thrown over hand with a full arm movement. Instruction and bayonet fighting was made as realistic as possible. Upon a given signal we rushed forward, jumping in and out of successive lines of trenches where dummy figures clad in the uniforms of German foot soldiers to give zest to the game, took our blades both front and rear with conciliatory indifference. In the afternoon Tommy's time was his own. He could sleep or wander along the country roads, within a prescribed area, or, which was more often the case, indulge in those games of chance which were as the breath of life to him. Payday was the event of the weekend, Billets, because it gave him the wherewithal to satisfy the promptings of his sporting blood. Our fortnightly allowance of from five to ten francs was not a princely sum, but in pennies and half pennies it was quite enough to provide many hours of absorbing amusement. Tommy gambled because he could not help it. When he had no money he wagered his allowance of cigarettes or his share of the daily jam ration. I believe that the appeal which war made to him was largely one of his sporting instincts, life and death, were playing stakes for his soul, with the betting odds about even. The most interesting feature of our life in Billets was the contact which it gave us with the civilian population, who remained in the war zone either because they had no place else to go, or because of that indomitable, unconquerable spirit which is characteristic of the French. There are few British soldiers along the western front, who do not have memories of the heroic mothers who clung to the ruined homes as long as there was a wall standing. It was one of those who summed it up for me in five words all the heartbreaking tragedy of war. She kept a little shop in our materials on one of the streets leading to the firing line. We often stopped there, when going up to the trenches to buy loaves of delicious French bread. She had candles for sale as well, and chocolates and packets of stationary. Her stock was exhausted daily and in some way replenished daily. I think she made long journeys to the other side of the town, bringing back fresh supplies at a push cart which stood outside her door. Her cottage, which was less than a mile from our first line trenches, was partially in ruins. I couldn't understand her being there in such danger. Evidently it was with the consent of the military authorities. There were other women living on the same street but somehow she was different from the others. There was a spiritual fineness about her which impressed one at once. Her eyes were dry as though the tears had been drained from them to the last drop, long ago. One day calling for a packet of candles, I found her standing at the barricaded window which looks towards the trenches. And the desolate towns and villages back of the German lines, my curiosity got the better of my courtesy. And I asked her, in my poor French, why she was living there. She was silent for a moment and then she pointed towards that part of France, which was on the other side of the world to us. Her children were over there, or had been at the outbreak of the war. That is all she had told me of her story and I would have been a beast to have asked more. In some way she had become separated from them and for nearly a year she had been watching there, not knowing whether her little family was living or dead. To many of the soldiers she was just a plain fifty little French woman, who knew not the meaning of fear, willing to risk her life daily, that she might put by something for the long hard years which would follow the war. To me she is the spirit of France, splendid, superb France. But more than that she is the spirit of mother love which wars can never alter. Strangely enough I had not thought of the firing line as a boundary, a limit, during all those weeks of trench warfare. Henceforth it had a new meaning from me. I realized how completely it cut Europe in half. Separating friends and relatives as thousands of miles of ocean could not have done. Roads crossed from one side to the other. But they were barricaded with sandbags and barbwire entanglements. At night they were deluged with shrapnel and cobblestones, were chipped and scarred with machine gun bullets. Tommy had already sympathy for the women and children who lived near the trenches. I remember many incidents which illustrate abundantly his quick understanding of the hardship and danger of their lives. Once at our materials we were marching to the vass when the German artillery were shelling the town in the usual hit-or-miss fashion. The enemy knew of course that many of our troops and reserve were billeted there and they searched for them daily. Doubtless they would have destroyed the town long ago had it not been for the fact that Lali, one of their most important bases, is within such easy range of our batteries. As it was they bombarded it as heavily as they dared and on this particular morning they were sending them over too frequently for comfort. Some of the shells were exploding close to our line of march. But the boys tramped along with that nonchalant air which they assume in times of danger. One immense shell struck an empty house less than a block away and sent the masonry flying in every direction. The cloud of brick dust shone like gold in the sun. A moment later a fleshy peasant woman wearing wooden shoes turned out of an adjoining street and ran awkwardly towards the scene of the explosion. Her movements were so clumsy and slow in proportion to the great exertion she was making that at any time the sight would have been ludicrous. Now it was inevitable that such a sight should first appeal to Tommy's sense of humor and thoughtlessly the boys started laughing and shouting at her. Go it, old dear. You're making a grand race. Two to one on Liza. Get away, ma. That's the wrong direction. You're running right into him. She gave no heed and a moment later we saw her gather up a little girl from a doorstep hugging and comforting her and shielding her with her body instinctively at the sound of another exploding shell. The laughter in the ranks stopped as though every man had been suddenly struck dumb. They were courageous those women in the firing line. Their thoughts were always for their husbands and sons and brothers who were fighting side by side with us. Meanwhile, they kept their little shops and estamments open for the soldiers' trade and made a brave show of living in the old way. In arms and tears a few old men lent their aid to keeping up the pretense, but the feeble trickle of civilian life made scarcely an impression in the broad current of military activity. A solitary postman, with a mere handful of letters, made his morning rounds of echoing streets and mental men with newspapers hobbled slowly along the roux, saudi carat, shouting, li martin, li jarnal, to boarded windows and bolted doors. Meanwhile, we marched back and forth between billets in the town and trenches just outside. And the last thing which we saw upon leaving the town and the first upon returning was the lengthening row of new-made graves close to a sunny wall in the garden of the ruined convent. It was a pathetic little burial pot filled with the bodies of women and children who had been killed in German bombardments of the town. And thus, for more than three months while we were waiting for Fritzi to come out, we adapted ourselves to the changing conditions of trench life and trench warfare, with a readiness which surprised and gratified us. Our very practical training in England had prepared us in a measure for simple and primitive living. But even with such preparation we had constantly to revise downward our standards. We lived without comforts which formerly we had regarded as absolutely essential. We lived a life so crude and rough that our army experiences in England seemed utopian by comparison. But we drove splendidly. A government paternalistic in its solicitude for our welfare had schooled our bodies to withstand hardships and to endure privations. In England we had been inoculated and vaccinated, rather we would or no, and the result was that fevers were practically non-existent in the trenches. What little sickness there was was due to inclement weather rather than to unsanitary conditions. Although there were sad gaps in our ranks, the trench and camp fevers prevalent in other wars were not responsible for them. Bullets, shells, and bombs took their toll day by day, but so gradually that we had been given time to forget that we had ever known the security of civilian life. We were soon to experience the indescribable horrors of modern warfare, at its worst, to be living from morning until evening and from dusk to dawn, looking upon a new day with a feeling of wonder that we had survived so long. About the middle of September it became clear to us that the big drive was at hand. It was increased artillery activity along the entire front. The men noted with great satisfaction that the shells from our own batteries were of larger caliber. This was a welcome indication that England was at last meeting the long-felt need for high explosives. Lord George ain't been asleep. Someone shaven seer would say, Nottingham's head wisely. He's a long while getting ready, but when he is ready, there is something going to drop. There was a feeling of excitement everywhere. The men looked to their rifles with greater interest. They examined more carefully their bandoliers of ammunition and their gas helmets, and they were thoughtful about keeping their metal pocket mirrors and their cigarette cases in their left-hand breast pockets, for any time it can tell you of miraculous escapes from death due to such a protective armoring over the heart. The thunder of the guns increased with every passing day. The fire appeared to be evenly distributed over many miles of frontage. In moments of comparative quiet along our sector we could hear them muttering and rumbling miles away to our right and left. We awaited developments with the greatest impatience, for we knew that this general bombardment was but a preliminary one for the purpose of concealing until the last moment the plan of attack, the portion of the front where the great artillery concentration would be made, and the infantry assault pushed home. Then came sudden orders to move. Within twenty-four hours the roads were filled with the incoming troops of a new division. We made a rapid march to a railhead. Entrained and were soon moving southward by an indirect route, southward, towards the sound of the guns, to take an inconspicuous part in the battle at Luz. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Kitcheter's Mob by James Norman Hall This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Vendetti, Mike Vendetti.com Kitcheter's Mob by James Norman Hall, Chapter 10 New Lodgings. One moving in. We were wet and tired and cold and hungry, for we had left the train miles back of the firing line and had been marching through the rain since early morning. But, as the sergeant said, a bloke standing by the side of the road watching this ear column pass would think we was a going to a Sunday school picnic. The roads were filled with endless processions of singing, shouting soldiers. Seen from a distance the long columns gave the appearance of imposing strength. One thought of them as battalions, brigades, divisions, cohesive parts of a great fighting machine. But when our lines of march crossed, when we halted to make way for each other, what an absorbing pageant of personality. Each rank was a series of intimate pictures. Everywhere there was laughing singing a merry ministry of mouth organs. The jollity on my part of the line was doubtless a picture in little of what was happening elsewhere. We were anticipating the exciting times just at hand. Mac, who was blown to pieces by a shell a few hours later, was dancing in and out of the ranks singing. Oh, won't it be joyful! Oh, won't it be joyful! Preston, who was killed at the same time, threw his rifle in the air and caught it again in sheer excess of animal spirits. Three rollicking lads, all of whom we buried during the week in the same shell-hole, under the same wooden cross. Stumbled with an exaggerated show of utter weariness singing, we never know till now how muddy mud is. We never know how muddy mud could be. And little Charlie Harrison, who had fibbed bravely about his age to the recruiting officer, trudged contentedly along his rifle-slung jauntedly over his shoulder, and munched army biscuit with all the relish of an old campaigner. Several days later he said goodbye to us, and made the journey back the same road, this time in the motor ambulance. And, as I write, he is hobbling about a London Hospital ward, one trouser leg, pathetically empty. I remember that march in the light of our later experiences, in the light of the official report of the total British casualties at Luz. Sixty thousand British lads killed, wounded, and missing. Marching for a breast, a column of casualties, miles and length. I see them plotting lightheartedly through the mud as they did on that gray September day. Their faces wet with the rain. And a bloke, standing by the side of the road, would think they was a going to a Sunday school picnic. The sergeant was in a talkative mood. Listen to them, guns-barkin. We're in fort this time straight. Then, turning to the men behind, have you got your wills made out, you lads? You are going to see a scrap presently, and it ain't a going to be no fleabite. I give you my word. Right you are, sergeant. I'm leaving me razor to his majesty. Hope you'll take it to aunt. Strike me, pink sergeant. You getting cold feet? Let's sing them. I want to go home. Get them to crying like a baby. Where's your mouth, Oregon ginger? Right, oh, Mike. It's weeping now. Slow march. I want to go home. I want to go home. Jack Johnson's coal boxes in shrapnel. Oh, Lord, I don't want to go in the trenches no more. Send me across the sea, where the Olliman can't shoot me. Oh, my, I don't want to die. I want to go home. It is one of the most plaintive and yearning of soldier songs. Jack Johnson's and coal boxes are two greatly dreaded types of high explosive shells which Tommy would much rather sing about than meet. Wait, the sergeant said, smiling grimly. Just wait till we see the end of this here march. You'll be singing that song out of the other side of your faces. We halted in the evening at a little mining village, and were billeted for the night in houses, stables, and even in the water-soaked fields, for there was not sufficient accommodation for all of us. With a dozen of my comrades I slept on the floor in the kitchen of a miner's cottage and listened far into the night to the constant procession of motor ambulances. The tramp of marching feet, the thunder of guns, the rattle of windows, and the sound of breaking glass. The following day we spent cleaning our rifles, which were caked with rust, and in washing our clothes. We had to put these still wet into our packs, for at dusk we fell in, in column of route, along the village street where our officers told us what was before us. I remember how vividly and honestly one of them described the situation. Listen carefully, men. We are moving off in a few moments to take over captured German trenches on the left of Luz. No one knows yet just how the land lies there. Three ports we have had are confused and rather conflicting. The boys you are going to relieve have been having a hard time. The trenches are full of dead. Those who are left are worn out with the strain, and they need sleep. They won't care to stop long after you come in, so you must not expect much information from them. You will have to find out things for yourselves. But I know you well enough to feel certain that you will. From now on you will not have it easy. You will have to sit tight under a heavy fire from the German batteries. You will have to repulse counter attacks, for they will make every effort to retake those trenches. But remember, you are British soldiers. Whatever happens, you've got to hang on. We marched down a road nearly a foot deep in mud. It had been churned to a thick paste by thousands of feet. All the heavy wheel traffic incident to the business of war. The rain was still coming down steadily, and it was pitch dark, except for the reflected light on the low hanging clouds, of the flashes from guns of our batteries, and those of the bursting shells of the enemy. We halted frequently, to make way for long files of ambulances which moved as rapidly as the darkness and the awful condition of the roads would permit. I counted twenty of them during one halt, and then stopped. Thinking of the pain of the poor fellows inside, their wounds wrenched and torn by the constant pitching and jolting. We had vivid glimpses of them by the light from flashing guns and the red cross attendance at the rear of the cars, steadying the upper tiers of stretchers on either side. The heavy garrison artillery was by this time far behind us. The big shells went over with a hollow roar, like the sound of an express train heard at a distance. Field artillery was concealed in the ruins of houses on every side. Guns were firing at a tremendous rate, the shells exploding several miles away with the sound of jarring thunderclaps. In addition to the ambulances, there was a constant stream of outgoing traffic of other kinds. Dispatch riders on motorcycles feeling their way cautiously along the side of the road. Ammunition supply and battalion transport wagons, the horses rearing and plunging in the darkness. We approached a crossroad, and halted to make way for some batteries of field pieces moving to new positions. They went by on a slippery cobbled road, the horses at a dead gallop. In the red lightnings of heavy gunfire they looked like a series of splendid, sculptured groups. We moved on and halted, moved on again, stumbled into ditches to get out of the way of headquarters cars and motor dories, jumped up and pushed on. Every step through the thick mud was taken with an effort. We frequently lost touch with the troops ahead of us, and would have to march at the double in order to catch up. I was fast getting into that despondent, despairing frame of mind which often follows great physical weariness. When I remembered a bit of wisdom out of a book by William James, which I had read several years before, he had said in effect that men have layers of energy, reserves of nervous force, which they are rarely called upon to use but which are, nevertheless, assets of great value in times of strain. I had occasion to test the truth of this statement during that night march, and, at intervals later, when I felt I had reached the end of my resources of strength. And I found it to be practical wisdom which stood me in good stead on more than one occasion. We halted to wait for a trench guide at the village of Vermeels, about three miles back of our lines. The men lay down thankfully in the mud and many were soon asleep despite the terrific noise. Our batteries concealed in the ruins of houses were keeping up a steady fire, and the German guns were replying almost as hotly. The weird flashes lit up the shattered walls with a fascinating bizarre effect. By their light I saw men lying with their heads thrown back over their pack sacks, the rifles leaning across their bodies, others standing in attitudes of suspended animation. The noise was deafening. One was thrown entirely upon his own resources for comfort and companionship, for it was impossible to converse. While we were waiting for the order to move, a homeless dog put his cold nose into my hand. I patted him and he crept up close beside me. Every muscle in his body was quivering. I wanted to console him in his own language, but I knew very little French. And I should have had to shout into his ear at the top of my voice to have made myself heard. When we marched on I lost him, and I never saw him again. There was a further march of two and a half miles over open country. The scene of the great battle, the ground was a maze of abandoned trenches and was pitted with shell holes, the clay was so slippery and we were so heavily loaded that we fell down at every step. Some of the boys told me afterwards that I cursed like blue blazes all the way up. I was not conscious of this, but I can readily understand that it may have been true at any rate as a result of that march I lost what reputation I had for being temperate in the use of profanity. We crossed what had been the first line of British trenches, which marked the starting point of the advance and from there the ground was covered with the bodies of our comrades, men who had done their bit, as Tommy says, and would never go home again. Some were huddled in pathetic little groups of two or three as they might have crept together for companionship before they died. Some were laying face downward just as they had fallen, others in attitudes revealing dreadful suffering. Many were hanging upon the tangles of German barbed wire, where the heaviest of bombardments never completely destroys. We saw them only by the light of distant trench rockets, and stumbled on them and over them when the darkness returned. It is an unpleasant experience, marching under fire on top of the ground, even though it is dark and the enemy is shelling haphazardly. We machine-gunners were always heavily loaded. In addition to the usual infantrymen's burden, we had our machine-guns to carry, and our ammunition, water supply, tools, and instruments. We were very eager to get under cover, but we had to go slowly. By the time we reached our trench, we were nearly exhausted. The men whom we were to relieve were packed up, ready to move out, when we arrived. We threw our rifles and equipment on the parapet and stood close to the side of the trench to allow them to pass. They were cased in mud, their faces, which I saw by the glow of matches or lighted cigarettes, were haggard and worn. A weak growth of beard gave them a wild and barbaric appearance. They talked eagerly. They were hysterically cheerful, voluble from sheer nervous reaction. They had the prospect of getting away for little while from the sickening horrors, the sight of maimed, shattered bodies, the deafening noise, the nauseating odor of decaying flesh. As they moved out, there were the usual conversations which take place between incoming and outgoing troops. What sort of weak you had, mate? It ain't been a weak sun. It's been a lifetime. Lucky for us, you blokes came in just when you did. We about reached the limit. How far we got to go for water? About two miles, awful journey. Take you all night to do it. You've got to stop every minute. There's so much traffic along that trench. Go down Stanley Road, about five hundred yards. Turn off to your left on Essex Alley. Then your first right brings you right out by the house where the pump is. Here's a straight tip. Send your water fatigue down early in the morning, three o'clock at the latest. There's thousands using that well, and she goes dry after you a little while. You blokes want any souvenirs? All you got to do is pick them up. Elmets, revolvers, rifles, German diaries. You wait till morning. You'll see plenty. Is this the last line of Fritz's trenches? Can't tell you, mate. All we know is we got here somehow, and we've been aholding on. My God, it was awful. They calmed down a bit. Tonight, you blokes is lucky, coming in just when you did. I had got a pal left on my section. You'll see some of them. We ain't had time to bury them. They were soon gone, and we were left in ignorance of the situation. We knew only approximately the direction of the living enemy. And the dead spoke to us only in dumb show, telling us unspeakable things about the horrors of modern warfare. Fortunately for us, the fire on the German batteries during our first night in captured trenches was directed chiefly upon positions to our right and left. The shells from our own batteries were exploding far in advance of our sector of trench. And we judged from this, that we were holding what had been the enemy's last line, and that the British artillery were shelling the line along which they would dig themselves in anew. We felt more certain of this later in the night, when working parties were sent from the battalion to a point twelve hundred yards in front of the trenches. We were then holding. They were to dig a new line there to connect the inter-trenchments, which had been pushed forward on either side of us. At daybreak we learned that we were slightly to the left of Hill Seventy. Haluch, a small village still in possession of the Germans, was to our left front. Midway between Hill Seventy and Haluch, and immediately to the front of our position. There was a long stretch of open country, which sloped gently forward for six or eight hundred yards, and then rose gradually toward the skyline. In the first assault the British troops had pushed on past the trenches we were holding, and had advanced up the opposite slope, nearly a mile further on. There they started to dig themselves in, but an unfortunate delay in getting forward had given the enemy time to collect a strong force of local reserves behind his second line, which was several hundred yards beyond. So heavy a fire had been concentrated upon them that the British troops had been forced to retire to the line we were then occupying. They had met with heavy losses both in advancing and retiring, and the ground in front of us for nearly a mile was strewn with bodies. We did not learn all of this at once. We knew nothing of our exact position during the first night. But as there appeared to be no enemy within striking distance, for of our immediate front, we stood on the firing benches, vainly trying to get our bearings. About one o'clock we witnessed the fascinating spectacle of a counter attack at night. It came with dramatic suddenness, the striking spectacular display of a motion picture battle. The pictorial effect seemed extravagantly overdrawn. There was a sudden hurricane of rifle and machine gun fire. And in an instant all the desolate landscape was revealed under the light of innumerable trench rockets. We saw the enemy advancing in irregular lines to the attack. They were exposed to a pitiless infantry fire. I could follow the curve of our trenches on the left, by the almost solid sheet of flame issuing from the rifles of our comrades against whom the assault was launched. The artillery ranged upon the advancing lines at once, and the air was filled with a roar of bursting shells and the melancholy wing of flying shrapnel. I did not believe that anyone could cross that fire-swept area alive. But before many moments we heard the staccato of bursting bombs and hand grenades which meant that some of the enemy, at least, were within striking distance. There was a sharp crescendo of deafening sound, then gradually the firing ceased. And the word came down the line. Counter-attack against the guards. And jolly well beaten off, too. Another was attempted before daybreak. And again the same torrent of lead, the same hideous uproar, the same sickening smell of lighted, the same ghastly noon-day effect, the same gradual silence, and the same result. Two damaged trenches. The brief respite which we enjoyed during our first night soon came to an end. We were given time, however, to make our trenches tenable. Early the following morning we set to work removing the wreckage of human bodies. Never before had death revealed itself so terribly to us. Many of the men had been literally blown to pieces, and it was necessary to gather the fragments in blankets. For weeks afterwards we had to eat and sleep and work and think among such awful sights. We became hardened to them. Finally it was absolutely essential that we should. The trenches and dugouts had been battered to pieces by the British artillery fire before the infantry assault, and since their capture the work of destruction had been carried on by the German gunners. Even in the wrecked condition we could see how skillfully they had been constructed. No labor had been spared in making them as nearly shell-proof and as comfortable for living quarters as is possible for such earthworks to be. The ground here was unusually favourable. Under a clay surface oil there was a stratum of solid chalk. Advantage of this had been taken by the German engineers who must have planned and supervised the work. Many of the shell-proof dugouts were fifteen and even twenty feet below the surface of the ground. Entrance to these was made in the front wall of the trench on a level with the floor. Stairways just large enough to permit the passage of a man's body led down to them. The roofs were reinforced with heavy timbers. They were so strongly built throughout that most of them were intact, although the passageways leading up to the trench were choked with loose earth. There were larger surface dugouts with floors but slightly lower than that of the trench. These were evidently built for living quarters in times of comparative quiet. Many of them were six feet wide, from twenty to thirty feet long, and quite palaces compared to the wretched little funcoals to which we had been accustomed. They were roofed with logs of foot or more in diameter, placed close together and one on top of the other, in tiers of three, with a covering of earth three or four feet thick. But although they were solidly built, they had not been proof against the rain of high explosives. Many of them were in ruins, the logs splintered like kindling wood, and strewn far and wide over the ground. We found several dugouts, evidently officers' quarters, which were almost luxuriously furnished. There were rugs for the wooden floors and pictures and mirrors for the walls, and in each of them there was the jolliest little stove with a removable lid. We discovered one of these underground palaces at the end of a blind alley leading off from the main trench. It was at least fifteen feet underground, with two stairways leading down to it. So that if escape were cut off in one direction, it was still possible to get out on the other side. We immediately took possession, built a roaring fire, and was soon passing canteens of hot tea around the circle. Life was worthwhile again. We all agreed that there were less comfortable places in which to have breakfast on rainy autumn mornings than German officers' dugouts. The haste with which the Germans abandoned their trenches was evidenced by the amount of war material which were they left behind. We found two machine guns and a great deal of small arms ammunition in our own limited sector of carnage. Rifles, entrenching tools, haversacks, canteens, greatcoats, bayonets were scattered everywhere. All of this material was of a very best. Canteens, water-bottles, and small frying pans were made of aluminum and most ingeniously fashioned to make them less bulky for carrying. Some of the bayonets were saw-edged. We found three of these needlessly cruel weapons in a dugout which bore the following inscription over the door. Glutt treat hierrin bringluck hierrin. It was an interesting commentary on German character. Tommy Atkins never writes inscriptions of a religious nature over the doorway of his splinter-roof shelter. Neither does he file a saw-edge on his bayonet. We found many letters, picture-postcards, and newspapers among the latter. One called Vick Grieg Zutang, published at Lilly, were the soldiers in the field and filled with glowing accounts of battles fought by the ever-victorious German armies. Death comes swiftly in war. One's life hangs by a thread. The most trivial circumstance saves or destroys. Mack came in to the half-ruined dugout, where the off-duty machine-gunners were making tea over a fire of splintered logs. Jamie said, take my place at Century for a few minutes, will you? I've lost my water-bottle. It's here in the dugout somewhere. That'd be only a minute. I went out to the gun-position a few yards away and immediately afterward the Germans began a bombardment of our line. One's ear becomes exacted, distinguishing the size of shells by the sound which they make in travelling through the air. And it is possible to judge the direction and the probable place of their fall. Two of us stood by the machine-gun. We heard at the same time the sound which we knew meant danger, possibly death. It was the awful whistling roar of a high explosive. We dropped to the floor of the trench at once. The explosion blackened our faces with lighted. And half blinded us. The dugout, which I left less than a moment ago, was a massive wreckage. Seven of our comrades were inside. One of them crawled out, pulling himself along with one arm. The other arm was terribly crushed and one leg was hanging by a tendon and a few shreds of flesh. My God, boys! Look what they did to me! He kept saying it over and over while we cut the cords from our bandoliers, tied them about his leg and arm, and twisted them up to stop the flow of blood. He was a fine, healthy lad, a moment before he had been telling us what he was going to do when we went home, on furlough. Now his face was the color of ashes. His voice grew weaker and weaker. And he died. But we were working over him. High explosive shells were bursting all along the line. Great masses of earth and chalk were blown in, on top of men seeking protection, where there was none. The ground rocked like so much pasteboard. I heard frantic cries for picks and shovels. Stretcher-bearers, stretcher-bearers, this way for God's sake! The voices sounded as weak and futile as the squeaking of rats in a thunderstorm. When the bombardment began, all off-duty men were ordered into the deepest of the shell-proof dugouts, where they were really quite safe. But those English lads were not cowards. Orders or no orders. They came out to the rescue of their comrades. They worked without a thought of their own danger. I felt actually happy. For I was witnessing splendid heroic things. It was an experience which gave one a new and unshakable faith in these fellows. The sergeant and I rushed into the ruins of our machine-gun dugout. The roof still held in one place. There we found Mack. His head split in two as though it had been done with an axe. Gardner's head was blown completely off. And his body was so terribly mangled, that we did not know until later who he was. Preston was lying on his back with a great jagged blood stand-hole through his tunic. Burt Powell was so badly hurt that we exhausted our supply of field-dressings and bandaging him. We found little Charlie Harrison lying close to the side of the wall, gazing at his crushed foot with a look of incredulity and horror pitiful to see. One of the men gave him first aid with all the deafness and tenderness of a woman. The rest of us dug hurriedly into a great heap of earth at the other end of the shelter. We quickly uncovered Walter, a lad who had kept us laughing at his drullery on many a rainy night. The earth had been heaped loosely on him and he was still conscious. Good old boys, you said weekly. I was about done for. In our haste we dislodged another heap of earth which completely buried him again, and it seemed a lifetime before we were able to remove it. I have never seen a finer display of pure grit than Walter's. Easy now, he said. Can't feel anything below me waste. I think I'm hurt down there. We worked as swiftly and as carefully as we could. We knew that he was badly wounded for the earth was soaked with blood. But when we saw, we turned away sick with horror. Fortunately he lost consciousness while we were trying to disentangle him from the fallen timbers, and he died on the way to the field-dressing station. Of the seven lads and a dugout, three were killed outright, three died within half an hour, and one escaped with a crushed foot, which had to be amputated at the field hospital. What had happened to our little group was happening to others along the entire line. Americans may have read of the bombardment which took place that autumn morning, dispatches. I believe described it with the usual official brevity, giving all the information really necessary from the point of view of the region-republic. Along the Lus-La Brase sector, there was a lively artillery's action. We demolished some earthworks in the vicinity of Hulich. Some of our trenches near Hill Seventy were damaged. Damaged. It was a guarded mission. Our line was a shambles of loose earth and splintered logs. At some places it was difficult to see just where the trench had been. Had the Germans launched a counter-attack immediately after the bombardment? We should have had difficulty in holding the position. But it was only what Tommy called a big apartheid hate. No attempt was made to follow up the advantage. And we had once set to work rebuilding. The loose earth had to be put into sandbags. The parapets mended. The holes blasted out by shells filled in. The worst of it was that we could not get away from the sight of the mangled bodies of our comrades. Arms and legs stuck out of the wreckage. And on every side we saw distorted human faces, the faces of men we had known, with whom we had lived and shared hardships and dangers for the months past. Those who have never lived through experiences of this sort cannot possibly know the horror of them. It is not in the heat of battle that men lose their reason. Battle frenzy is perhaps a temporary madness. The real danger comes when the strain is relaxed. Men look about them and see the bodies of their comrades torn to pieces, as though they had been hacked and butchered by fiends. One thinks of the human body as embollet, a beautiful and sacred thing. The sight of dismembered or disemboweled trampled in the bottom of a trench smeared with blood and filth is so revolting as to be hardly endurable. And yet we had to endure it. We could not escape it, whichever way we looked, that were dead. Worse even than the sight of dead men were the groans and entreaties of those lying wounded in the trenches, waiting to be taken back to the dressing stations. I'm shot to the stomach, matey. Can't you give me back to the ambulance? Ain't there some way you can give me back out of this? Stick to it, old lad. You won't have long to wait. There'll be some other red cross along here for you to jiffy now. Give me a lift, boys, can't you? Look at my leg. Do you think it apt to come off? Maybe they could save it if I could get to the hospital in time. Won't some of you give me a lift? Gonna hobble along with a little help? Don't you fret, sonny. You're going to ride back in a stretcher, presently. Keep your courage up a little while longer. Some of the men in their suffering forgot everyone but themselves. And it was not strange that they should, others with more iron in their natures, endured fearful agony and silence. During memorable half hours filled with danger and death, many of my gross misjudgements of character were made clear to me. Men, whom no one had credited with heroic qualities, revealed them. Others failed brotherpidably, to live up to one's expectations. It seemed to me that there was strength or weakness in men, quite apart from the real selves, for which they were no way responsible but doubtless. It had always been there, waiting to be called forth at just such crucial times. During the afternoon I heard for the first time the hysterical cry of a man whose nerve had given way. He picked up an arm and threw it far out in front of the trenches, shouting as he did in a way that made one's blood run cold. Then he sat down and started crying and moaning. He was taken back to the rear, under the saddest casualties in a war of inconceivable horrors. I heard of many instances of nervous breakdown, but I witnessed surprisingly few of them. Men, more often badly shaken and trembled from head to foot. Usually they pulled themselves together under the taunts of their less susceptible comrades. Three. Prisoles and a requiem. At the close of a gloomy October day, six unshaven, mud-encrusted machine gunners, the surviving members of two teams, were gathered at the C Company gun emplacement, D Company's gun had been destroyed by a shell, and so we had joined forces here in front of the wrecked dugout, and were waiting for night when we could bury our dead comrades. A fine drenching rain was falling. We sat with our waterproof sheets thrown over our shoulders and our knees drawn up to our chins, that we might conserve the damp warmth of our bodies. No one spoke. No reference was made to our dead comrades who were lying there so close that we could almost touch them from where we sat. Nevertheless, I believe that we were all thinking of them, however unwillingly. I tried to see them as they were only a few hours before. I tried to remember the sound of their voices. How they had laughed. But I could think only of the appearance of their mutilated bodies. On a dreary autumn evening, one's thoughts often take a melancholy turn, even though one is indoors sitting before a pleasant fire, and hearing but faintly the sighing of the wind and the sound of the rain beating against the window. It is hardly to be wondered at that soldiers and trenches become discouraged at times. And on this occasion, when an unquenchably cheerful voice shouted over and adjoining traverse, What's your lads? Are we downhearted? A growling chorus answered with an unmistakable, Yes. We were in an open ditch. The rain was beating down on our faces. We were waiting for darkness when we could go to our unpleasant work of grave digging. Tomorrow there would be more dead bodies and more graves to dig. And the day after, the same duty. And the day after that, the same. Week after week. We should be living like this, killing and being killed, binding up terrible wounds, digging graves, always doing the same work with not one bright or pleasant thing to look forward to. These were my thoughts as I sat on the firing bench with my head drawn down between my knees, watching the water dripping from the edges of my patees. But I had forgotten one important item in the daily routine, supper. And I had forgotten, privately me, our cook, or to give him his due, our chef. He was not the man to waste his time in gloomy reflection. With a dozen moldy potatoes which he had procured, heaven knows where, four tens of corned beef, and a canteen lid filled with bacon grease for raw materials, he had set to work with the enthusiasm of a born artist, the result being Rissol's brown crisp and piping hot. It is a pleasure to think of that meal. Private Lemmy was one of the rare souls of earth, one of the Marc de Plays who never lost his courage or his good spirits. I remember how our spirits rose at the sound of his voice, and how gladly and quickly responded to his summons. There you are, my lads. Bully beef, Rissol's, and auntie. And it ain't our bad for the trenches if I do say it. I can only wonder, now, at the keenness of our appetites in the midst of the most gruesome surroundings. Dead men were laying about us both in the trenches and outside of them. And yet, a Rissol's were not a wit the less enjoyable on that account. It was quite dark when we finished. The sergeant jumped to his feet. Let's get ahead of the boys, he said. Half an hour later, we erected wooden crosses in Tommy's Grave's Drone Garden. It bore the following description written in pencil. P. T. E. Number four, three, two, six. McDonald. P. T. E. Number seven, eight, six, four. Gardner. P. T. E. Number nine, eight, five, one. Preston. P. T. E. Number six, nine, four, zero. Allen. Royal Fusiliers. They did their bit. Quietly, we slipped back into the trench and piled our picks and shovels on the Prados. Got your mouth organ, Andy? Someone ask? He's always Andy. What do they have, lads? Give us silk and hat, Tony. That's a proper funerallium. Right you are. Sing up now. And we sang Tommy's favorite kind of requiem. I'm silk and hat, Tony. I'm down and I'm stony. I'm not only broke, but I'm bent. The fringe of my trousers keeps lashing the houses. But still I'm again content. I stroll the West Gallery. You'll see me there daily. From Burlington Arcade, up to the old Bailey. I'm stony. I'm Tony. But that makes no difference, you see. Though I have an affraction, I've this satisfaction. They built Piccadilly for me. End of chapter 10.