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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Horizon
+
+Author: Patrick MacGill
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED HORIZON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
+The original spelling has been retained.
+
+Page 17: "some with faces turned upwards,"
+ the word "turned" was crossed
+Page 234: Added a round bracket.
+ (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.)]
+
+
+
+
+ THE RED HORIZON
+
+
+
+
+ BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+ CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END.
+ The Autobiography of a Navvy.
+ Ten Thousand Printed within Ten
+ Days of Publication.
+
+ THE RAT-PIT. _Third Edition._
+
+ THE AMATEUR ARMY.
+ The Experiences of a Soldier in the Making.
+
+ THE GREAT PUSH.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RED HORIZON
+
+ BY
+
+ PATRICK MACGILL
+
+
+ WITH A FOREWORD BY
+ VISCOUNT ESHER G. C. B.
+
+
+
+
+ TORONTO
+ McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD &
+ STEWART, LIMITED
+
+
+ LONDON
+ HERBERT JENKINS, LIMITED
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX.
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+ THE LONDON IRISH
+ TO THE SPIRIT OF THOSE WHO FIGHT AND TO
+ THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY
+ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+_To_ PATRICK MACGILL,
+ Rifleman No. 3008, London Irish.
+
+
+DEAR PATRICK MACGILL,
+
+There is open in France a wonderful exhibition of the work of the many
+gallant artists who have been serving in the French trenches through
+the long months of the War.
+
+There is not a young writer, painter, or sculptor of French blood, who
+is not risking his life for his country. Can we make the same proud
+boast?
+
+When I recruited you into the London Irish--one of those splendid
+regiments that London has sent to Sir John French, himself an
+Irishman--it was with gratitude and pride.
+
+You had much to give us. The rare experiences of your boyhood, your
+talents, your brilliant hopes for the future. Upon all these the
+Western hills and loughs of your native Donegal seemed to have a prior
+claim. But you gave them to London and to our London Territorials. It
+was an example and a symbol.
+
+The London Irish will be proud of their young artist in words, and he
+will for ever be proud of the London Irish Regiment, its deeds and
+valour, to which he has dedicated such great gifts. May God preserve
+you.
+
+ Yours sincerely,
+
+ ESHER.
+
+ _President_ County of London
+
+Callander. Territorial Association.
+
+ _16th September, 1915._
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ I. THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT 13
+
+ II. SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE 19
+
+ III. OUR FRENCH BILLETS 30
+
+ IV. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES 43
+
+ V. FIRST BLOOD 49
+
+ VI. IN THE TRENCHES 69
+
+ VII. BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH 88
+
+ VIII. TERRORS OF THE NIGHT 110
+
+ IX. THE DUG-OUT BANQUET 116
+
+ X. A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE 130
+
+ XI. THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY 138
+
+ XII. THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP 149
+
+ XIII. A NIGHT OF HORROR 175
+
+ XIV. A FIELD OF BATTLE 200
+
+ XV. THE REACTION 209
+
+ XVI. PEACE AND WAR 216
+
+ XVII. EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT 228
+
+ XVIII. THE COVERING PARTY 249
+
+ XIX. SOUVENIR HUNTERS 264
+
+ XX. THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 279
+
+ XXI. IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 292
+
+ XXII. ROMANCE 300
+
+
+
+
+THE RED HORIZON (p. 013)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1
+
+THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT
+
+ I wish the sea were not so wide
+ That parts me from my love;
+ I wish the things men do below
+ Were known to God above.
+
+ I wish that I were back again
+ In the glens of Donegal;
+ They'll call me coward if I return,
+ But a hero if I fall.
+
+ "Is it better to be a living coward,
+ Or thrice a hero dead?"
+ "It's better to go to sleep, my lad,"
+ The Colour Sergeant said.
+
+
+Night, a grey troubled sky without moon or stars. The shadows lay on
+the surface of the sea, and the waves moaned beneath the keel of the
+troopship that was bearing us away on the most momentous journey of
+our lives. The hour was about ten. Southampton lay astern; by dawn we
+should be in France, and a day nearer the war for which we had trained
+so long in the cathedral city of St. Albans.
+
+I had never realized my mission as a rifleman so acutely before. (p. 014)
+
+"To the war! to the war!" I said under my breath. "Out to France and
+the fighting!" The thought raised a certain expectancy in my mind.
+"Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?" I asked
+myself. "Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his
+body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen,
+comes out at the back? I'll not think of it."
+
+But the thoughts could not be chased away. The month was March, and
+the night was bitterly cold on deck. A sharp penetrating wind swept
+across the sea and sung eerily about the dun-coloured funnel. With my
+overcoat buttoned well up about my neck and my Balaclava helmet pulled
+down over my ears I paced along the deck for quite an hour; then,
+shivering with cold, I made my way down to the cabin where my mates
+had taken up their quarters. The cabin was low-roofed and lit with two
+electric lamps. The corners receded into darkness where the shadows
+clustered thickly. The floor was covered with sawdust, packs and
+haversacks hung from pegs in the walls; a gun-rack stood in the centre
+of the apartment; butts down and muzzles in line, the rifles (p. 015)
+stretched in a straight row from stern to cabin stairs. On the benches
+along the sides the men took their seats, each man under his
+equipment, and by right of equipment holding the place for the length
+of the voyage.
+
+My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco smoke.
+In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.
+
+"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a
+broken row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."
+
+"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought
+we weren't goin' out at all."
+
+"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not
+all fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother----"
+
+"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.
+
+"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.
+
+"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's
+only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."
+
+"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a
+line regiment."
+
+"That's why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the Cockney. (p. 016)
+
+"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.
+
+"Well, it's like this," said Spud----
+
+"Hold your tongue," snapped the sergeant, and Spud relapsed into
+silence.
+
+After a moment he turned to me where I sat. "It's not only Germans
+that I'll look for in the trenches," he said, "when I have my rifle
+loaded and get close to that sergeant----"
+
+"You'll put a bullet through him"; I said, "just as you vowed you'd do
+to me some time ago. You were going to put a bullet through the
+sergeant-major, the company cook, the sanitary inspector, the army
+tailor and every single man in the regiment. Are you going to destroy
+the London Irish root and branch?" I asked.
+
+"Well, there's some in it as wants a talking to at times," said Spud.
+"'Ave yer got a fag to spare?"
+
+Somebody sung a ragtime song, and the cabin took up the chorus. The
+boys bound for the fields of war were light-hearted and gay. A journey
+from the Bank to Charing Cross might be undertaken with a more serious
+air: it looked for all the world as if they were merely out on (p. 017)
+some night frolic, determined to throw the whole mad vitality of youth
+into the escapade.
+
+"What will it be like out there?" I asked myself. The war seemed very
+near now. "What will it be like, but above all, how shall I conduct
+myself in the trenches? Maybe I shall be afraid--cowardly. But no! If
+I can't bear the discomforts and terrors which thousands endure daily
+I'm not much good. But I'll be all right. Vanity will carry me through
+where courage fails. It would be such a grand thing to become
+conspicuous by personal daring. Suppose the men were wavering in an
+attack, and then I rushed out in front and shouted: 'Boys, we've got
+to get this job through'--But, I'm a fool. Anyhow I'll lie on the
+floor and have a sleep."
+
+Most of the men were now in a deep slumber. Despite an order against
+smoking, given a quarter of an hour before, a few of my mates had the
+"fags" lit, and as the lamps had been turned off the cigarettes glowed
+red through the gloom. The sleepers lay in every conceivable position,
+some with faces turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues
+stretching over the lower lips; some with knees curled up and (p. 018)
+heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement, some
+with hands clasped tightly over their breasts and others with their
+fingers bent as if trying to clutch at something beyond their reach. A
+few slumbered with their heads on their rifles, more had their heads
+on the sawdust-covered floor, and these sent the sawdust fluttering
+whenever they breathed. The atmosphere of the place was close and
+almost suffocating. Now and again someone coughed and spluttered as if
+he were going to choke. Perspiration stood out in little beads on the
+temples of the sleepers, and they turned round from time to time to
+raise their Balaclava helmets higher over their eyes.
+
+And so the night wore on. What did they dream of lying there? I
+wondered. Of their journey and the perils that lay before them? Of the
+glory or the horror of the war? Of their friends whom, perhaps, they
+would never see again? It was impossible to tell.
+
+For myself I tried not to think too clearly of what I might see
+to-morrow or the day after. The hour was now past midnight and a new
+day had come. What did it hold for us all? Nobody knew--I fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II (p. 019)
+
+SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
+
+ When I come back to England,
+ And times of Peace come round,
+ I'll surely have a shilling,
+ And may be have a pound;
+ I'll walk the whole town over,
+ And who shall say me nay,
+ For I'm a British soldier
+ With a British soldier's pay.
+
+
+The Rest Camp a city of innumerable bell-tents, stood on the summit of
+a hill overlooking the town and the sea beyond. We marched up from the
+quay in the early morning, followed the winding road paved with
+treacherous cobbles that glory in tripping unwary feet, and sweated to
+the summit of the hill. Here a new world opened to our eyes: a canvas
+city, the mushroom growth of our warring times lay before us; tent
+after tent, large and small, bell-tent and marquee in accurate
+alignment.
+
+It took us two hours to march to our places; we grounded arms at the
+word of command and sank on our packs wearily happy. True, a few (p. 020)
+had fallen out; they came in as we rested and awkwardly fell into
+position. They were men who had been sea-sick the night before. We
+were too excited to rest for long; like dogs in a new locality we were
+presently nosing round looking for food. Two hours march in full
+marching order makes men hungry, and hungry men are ardent explorers.
+The dry and wet canteens faced one another, and each was capable of
+accommodating a hundred men. Never were canteens crowded so quickly,
+never have hundreds of the hungry and drouthy clamoured so eagerly for
+admission as on that day. But time worked marvels; at the end of an
+hour we fell in again outside a vast amount of victuals, and the
+sea-sickness of the previous night, and the strain of the morning's
+march were things over which now we could be humorously reminiscent.
+
+Sheepskin jackets, the winter uniform of the trenches, were served out
+to us, and all were tried on. They smelt of something chemical and
+unpleasant, but were very warm and quite polar in appearance.
+
+"Wish my mother could see me now," Bill the Cockney remarked. "My, she
+wouldn't think me 'alf a cove. It's a balmy. I discovered the (p. 021)
+South Pole, I'm thinkin'."
+
+"More like you're up the pole!" some one cut in, then continued, "If
+they saw us at St. Albans[1] now! Bet yer they wouldn't say as we're
+for home service."
+
+ [Footnote 1: It was at St. Albans that we underwent
+ most of our training.]
+
+That night we slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight
+as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central
+pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement
+was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed
+the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came
+in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in
+a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a
+paradise of sympathy and mutual agreement.
+
+We rose early, washed and shaved, and found our way to the canteen, a
+big marquee under the control of the Expeditionary Force, where bread
+and butter, bacon and tea were served out for breakfast. Soldiers
+recovering from wounds worked as waiters, and told, when they had a
+moment to spare, of hair-breadth adventures in the trenches. They (p. 022)
+found us willing listeners; they had lived for long in the locality
+for which we were bound, and the whole raw regiment had a personal
+interest in the narratives of the wounded men. Bayonet-charges were
+discussed.
+
+"I've been in three of 'em," remarked a quiet, inoffensive-looking
+youth who was sweeping the floor of the room. "They were a bit 'ot,
+but nothin' much to write 'ome about. Not like a picture in the
+papers, none of them wasn't. Not much stickin' of men. You just ops
+out of your trench and rush and roar, like 'ell. The Germans fire and
+then run off, and it's all over."
+
+After breakfast feet were inspected by the medical officer. We sat
+down on our packs in the parade ground, took off our boots, and
+shivered with cold. The day was raw, the wind sharp and penetrating;
+we forgot that our sheepskins smelt vilely, and snuggled into them,
+glad of their warmth. The M.O. asked questions: "Do your boots pinch?"
+"Any blisters?" "Do you wear two pairs of socks?" &c., &c. Two
+thousand feet passed muster, and boots were put on again.
+
+The quartermaster's stores claimed our attention afterwards, and (p. 023)
+the attendants there were almost uncannily kind. "Are you sure you've
+got everything you want?" they asked us. "There mayn't be a chance to
+get fitted up after this." Socks, pull-throughs, overcoats, regimental
+buttons, badges, hats, tunics, oil-bottles, gloves, puttees, and laces
+littered the floor and were piled on the benches. We took what we
+required; no one superintended our selection.
+
+At St. Albans, where we had been turned into soldiers, we often stood
+for hours waiting until the quartermaster chose to give us a few
+inches of rifle-rag; here a full uniform could be obtained by picking
+it up. And our men were wise in selecting only necessities; they still
+remembered the march of the day before. All took sparingly and chose
+wisely. Fancy socks were passed by in silence, the homely woollen
+article, however, was in great demand. Bond Street was forgotten. The
+"nut" was a being of a past age, or, if he still existed, he was
+undergoing a complete transformation. Also he knew what socks were
+best for the trenches.
+
+At noon we were again ready to set out on our journey. A tin of
+bully-beef and six biscuits, hard as rocks, were given to each man (p. 024)
+prior to departure. Sheepskins were rolled into shape and fastened on
+the tops of our packs, and with this additional burden on the shoulder
+we set out from the rest-camp and took our course down the hill. On
+the way we met another regiment coming up to fill our place, to sleep
+in our bell-tents, pick from the socks which we had left behind, and
+to meet for once, the first and last time perhaps, a quartermaster who
+is really kind in the discharge of his professional duties. We marched
+off, and sang our way into the town and station. Our trucks were
+already waiting, an endless number they seemed lined up in the siding
+with an engine in front and rear, and the notice "Hommes 40 chevaux
+20" in white letters on every door. The night before I had slept in a
+bell-tent where a man's head pointed to each seam in the canvas,
+to-night it seemed as if I should sleep, if that were possible, in a
+still more crowded place, where we had now barely standing room, and
+where it was difficult to move about. But a much-desired relief came
+before the train started, spare waggons were shunted on, and a number
+of men were taken from each compartment and given room elsewhere. (p. 025)
+In fact, when we moved off we had only twenty-two soldiers in our
+place, quite enough though when our equipment, pack, rifle, bayonet,
+haversack, overcoat, and sheepskin tunic were taken into account.
+
+A bale of hay bound with wire was given to us for bedding, and
+bully-beef, slightly flavoured, and biscuits were doled out for
+rations. Some of us bought oranges, which were very dear, and paid
+three halfpence apiece for them; chocolate was also obtained, and one
+or two adventurous spirits stole out to the street, contrary to
+orders, and bought _café au lait_ and _pain et beurre_, drank the
+first in the _estaminet_, and came back to their trucks munching the
+latter.
+
+At noon we started out on the journey to the trenches, a gay party
+that found expression for its young vitality in song. The
+sliding-doors and the windows were open; those of us who were not
+looking out of the one were looking out of the other. To most it was a
+new country, a place far away in peace and a favourite resort of the
+wealthy; but now a country that called for any man, no matter how
+poor, if he were strong in person and willing to give his life away
+when called upon to do so. In fact, the poor man was having his first
+holiday on the Continent, and alas!--perhaps his last; and like (p. 026)
+cattle new to the pasture fields in Spring, we were surging full of
+life and animal gaiety.
+
+We were out on a great adventure, full of thrill and excitement; the
+curtain which surrounded our private life was being lifted; we stood
+on the threshold of momentous events. The cottagers who laboured by
+their humble homes stood for a moment and watched our train go by; now
+and again a woman shouted out a blessing on our mission, and ancient
+men seated by their doorsteps pointed in the direction our train was
+going, and drew lean, skinny hands across their throats, and yelled
+advice and imprecations in hoarse voices. We understood. The ancient
+warriors ordered us to cut the Kaiser's throat and envied us the job.
+
+The day wore on, the evening fell dark and stormy. A cold wind from
+somewhere swept in through chinks in windows and door, and chilled the
+compartment. The favourite song, _Uncle Joe_, with its catching
+chorus,
+
+ When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo,
+ Eberybody starts aswayin to and fro,
+ Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor,
+ Yellin' "Uncle Joe, give us more! give us more!"
+
+died away into a melancholy whimper. Sometimes one of the men would
+rise, open the window and look out at a passing hamlet, where (p. 027)
+lights glimmered in the houses and heavy waggons lumbered along the
+uneven streets, whistle an air into the darkness and close the window
+again. My mate had an electric torch--by its light we opened the
+biscuit box handed in when we left the station, and biscuits and
+bully-beef served to make a rather comfortless supper. At ten o'clock,
+when the torch refused to burn, and when we found ourselves short of
+matches, we undid the bale, spread out the hay on the floor of the
+truck and lay down, wearing our sheepskin tunics and placing our
+overcoats over our legs.
+
+We must have been asleep for some time. We were awakened by the
+stopping of the train and the sound of many voices outside. The door
+was opened and we looked out. An officer was hurrying by, shouting
+loudly, calling on us to come out. On a level space bordering the line
+a dozen or more fires were blazing merrily, and dixies with some
+boiling liquid were being carried backwards and forwards. A sergeant
+with a lantern, one of our own men, came to our truck and clambered
+inside.
+
+"Every man get his mess tin," he shouted. "Hurry up, the train's not
+stopping for long, and there's coffee and rum for us all." (p. 028)
+
+"I wish they'd let us sleep," someone who was fumbling in his pack
+remarked in a sleepy voice. "I'm not wantin' no rum and cawfee. Last
+night almost choked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and
+now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"
+
+We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter
+cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim
+light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders,
+everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being
+awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were
+now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a
+halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the
+bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would
+be! I counted the men in front--there were no more than twelve or
+thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee--suddenly a whistle
+was blown, then another.
+
+"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling
+party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order; (p. 029)
+in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered till
+dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits and
+bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner. At
+half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed into
+column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay
+before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we
+waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in
+from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound
+of guns!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III (p. 030)
+
+OUR FRENCH BILLETS
+
+ The fog is white on Glenties moors,
+ The road is grey from Glenties town,
+ Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog,
+ And ah! the homely moors of brown.
+
+
+The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home
+in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
+brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
+that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the
+description in her book.
+
+The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with
+a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very
+door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and
+dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every
+other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean
+dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and beer are
+excellent, the new-laid eggs are delightful for breakfast, the milk and
+butter, fresh and pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave (p. 031)
+about.
+
+We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the
+midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try
+to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens
+that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the
+barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces
+and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the
+farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on
+parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that
+scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and
+devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a
+man's nose--but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other
+time.
+
+We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March
+day. We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A
+additional load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of
+the sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to
+the firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened
+soldiers. The march to the barn billet was a miracle of endurance, (p. 032)
+but all lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when it was over.
+That night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw, our waterproof
+sheets under us and our blankets and sheepskins round our bodies. It
+was very comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might wish to remain
+awake to feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man can be.
+
+Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the scent
+of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had already
+flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere near a girl
+was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she worked; a
+cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and the dogs
+of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was one to be
+remembered.
+
+But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost new;
+we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been in our
+ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a day to
+come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard its
+summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the air,
+and sweeping round the barn where we lay, telling all who chanced (p. 033)
+to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered across the
+face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another: soldiers of
+many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of Australia, and Germany;
+of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand; Saxon, Gurkha, and Prussian,
+Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were engaged in deadly combat. The
+sound was the sound of guns--our farmhouse was within the range of the
+big artillery.
+
+We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and
+despite the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy.
+On one farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with
+roguish eyes and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as
+lean as some I have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as
+Granada beggars. They were very hungry and one ate a man's
+food-wallet and all it contained, comprising bread, army biscuits,
+canned beef, including can and other sundries. "I wish the animal had
+choked itself," my mate said when he discovered his loss. Personally I
+had a profound respect for any pig who voluntarily eats army (p. 034)
+biscuit.
+
+We got up about six o'clock every morning and proceeded to wash and
+shave. All used the one pump, sometimes five or six heads were stuck
+under it at the same moment, and an eager hand worked the handle, and
+poured a plentiful supply of very cold water on the close cropped
+pates. The panes of the farmhouse window made excellent shaving
+mirrors and, incidentally, I may mention that rifle-slings generally
+serve the purpose of razor strops. Breakfast followed toilet; most of
+the men bought _café-au-lait_, at a penny a basin, and home-made
+bread, buttered lavishly, at a penny a slice. A similar repast would
+cost sixpence in London.
+
+Parade then followed. In England we had cherished the illusion that
+life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing
+practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in
+rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and
+tots of rum would be served out _ad infinitum_. This rum would have a
+certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all
+discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought,
+though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035)
+drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty
+bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the
+past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we
+joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown
+crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for
+words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause its owner
+to meditate in the guard-room.
+
+Dinner consists of bully beef and biscuits; now and again we fry the
+bully beef on the farmhouse stove, and when cash is plentiful cook an
+egg with it. The afternoon is generally given up to practising
+bayonet-fighting, and our day's work comes to an end about six
+o'clock. In the evening we go into the nearest village and discuss
+matters of interest in some _café_. Here we meet all manner of men,
+Gurkhas fresh from the firing line; bus-drivers, exiles from London;
+men of the Army Service Corps; Engineers, kilted Highlanders, men
+recovering from wounds, who are almost fit to go to the trenches
+again; French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and all sorts of people,
+helpers in some way or another of the Allies in the Great War.
+
+We have to get back to our billets by eight o'clock, to stop out (p. 036)
+after that hour is a serious crime here. A soldier out of doors at
+midnight in the cathedral city was merely a minor offender. But under
+the range of long artillery fire all things are different for the
+soldier.
+
+St. Patrick's Day was an event. We had a half holiday, and at night,
+with the aid of beer, we made merry as men can on St. Patrick's Day.
+We sang Irish songs, told stories, mostly Cockney, and laughed without
+restraint as merry men will, for to all St. Patrick was an admirable
+excuse for having a good and rousing time.
+
+There is, however, one little backwater of rest and quiet into which
+we men of blood and iron drift at all too infrequent intervals--that
+is when we become what is known officially as "barn orderly." A barn
+orderly is the company unit who looks after the billets of the men out
+on parade. In due course my turn arrived, and the battalion marched
+away leaving me to the quiet of farmyard.
+
+Having heaped up the straw, our bedding, in one corner of the barn,
+swept the concrete floor, rolled the blankets, explained to the
+gossipy farm servant that I did not "compree" her gibberish, and (p. 037)
+watched her waddle across the midden towards the house, my duties were
+ended. I was at liberty until the return of the battalion. It was all
+very quiet, little was to be heard save the gnawing of the rats in the
+corner of the barn and the muffled booming of guns from "out
+there"--"out there" is the oft repeated phrase that denotes the
+locality of the firing line.
+
+There was sunlight and shade in the farmyard, the sun lit up the pump
+on the top of which a little bird with salmon-pink breast,
+white-tipped tail, and crimson head preened its feathers; in the shade
+where our barn and the stables form an angle an old lady in snowy
+sunbonnet and striped apron was sitting knitting. It was good to be
+there lying prone upon the barn straw near the door above the crazy
+ladder, writing letters. I had learned to love this place and these
+people whom I seem to know so very well from having read René Bazin,
+Daudet, Maupassant, Balzac and Marie Claire. High up and far away to
+the west a Zeppelin was to be seen travelling in a westerly direction;
+the farmer's wife, our landlady, had just rescued a tin of bully beef
+from one of her all-devouring pigs; at the barn door lay my recently
+cleaned rifle and ordered equipment--how incongruous it all was (p. 038)
+with the home of Marie Claire.
+
+Suddenly I was brought back to realities by the recollection that the
+battalion was to have a bath that afternoon and towels and soap must
+be ready to take out on the next parade.
+
+The next morning was beautifully clear; the sun rising over the firing
+line lit up wood and field, river and pond. The hens were noisy in the
+farmyard, the horse lines to the rear were full of movement, horses
+strained at their tethers eager to break away and get free from the
+captivity of the rope; the grooms were busy brushing the animals' legs
+and flanks, and a slight dust arose into the air as the work was
+carried on.
+
+Over the red-brick houses of the village the church stood high, its
+spire clearly defined against the blue of the sky. The door of the
+_café_ across the road opened, and the proprietress, a merry-faced,
+elderly woman, came across to the farmhouse. She purchased some newly
+laid eggs for breakfast, and entered into conversation with our men,
+some of whom knew a little of her language. They asked about her son
+in the trenches; she had heard from him the day before and he was (p. 039)
+quite well and hoped to have a holiday very soon. He would come home
+then and spend a fortnight with the family. She looked forward to his
+coming, he had been away from her ever since the war started; she had
+not seen him for eight whole months. What happiness would be hers when
+he returned! She waved her hand to us as she went off, tripping
+lightly across the roadway and disappearing into the _café_. She was
+going to church presently; it was Holy Week when the Virgin listened
+to special intercessors, and the good matron of the _café_ prayed
+hourly for the safety of her soldier boy.
+
+At ten o'clock we went to chapel, our pipers playing _The Wearing of
+the Green_ as we marched along the crooked village streets, our rifles
+on our shoulders and our bandoliers heavy with the ball cartridge
+which we carried. The rifle is with us always now, on parade, on
+march, in _café_, billet, and church; our "best friend" is our eternal
+companion. We carried it into the church and fastened the sling to the
+chair as we knelt in prayer before the altar. We occupied the larger
+part of the building, only three able-bodied men in civilian clothing
+were in attendance.
+
+The youth of the country were out in the trenches, and even here (p. 040)
+in the quiet little chapel with its crucifixes, images, and pictures,
+there was the suggestion of war in the collection boxes for wounded
+soldiers, in the crêpe worn by so many women; one in every ten was in
+mourning, and above all in the general air of resignation which showed
+on all the faces of the native worshippers.
+
+The whole place breathed war, not in the splendid whirlwind rush of
+men mad in the wild enthusiasm of battle, but in silent yearning,
+heartfelt sorrow, and great bravery, the bravery of women who remain
+at home. Opposite us sat the lady of the _café_, her head low down on
+her breast, and the rosary slipping bead by bead through her fingers.
+Now and again she would stir slightly, raise her eyes to the Virgin on
+the right of the high altar, and move her lips in prayer, then she
+would lower her head again and continue her rosary.
+
+As far as I could ascertain singing in church was the sole privilege
+of the choir, none of the congregation joined in the hymns. But to-day
+the church had a new congregation--the soldiers from England, the men
+who sing in the trenches, in the billet, and on the march; the men who
+glory in song on the last lap of a long, killing journey in full (p. 041)
+marching order. To-day they sang a hymn well-known and loved, the
+clarion call of their faith was started by the choir. As one man the
+soldiers joined in the singing, and their voices filled the building.
+The other members of the congregation looked on for a moment in surprise,
+then one after another they started to sing, and in a moment nearly
+all in the place were aiding the choir. One was silent, however, the
+lady of the _café_; still deep in prayer she scarcely glanced at the
+singers, her mind was full of another matter. Only a mother thinking
+about a loved son can so wholly lose herself from the world. And as I
+looked at her I thought I detected tears in her eyes.
+
+The priest, a pleasant faced young man, who spoke very quickly (I have
+never heard anybody speak like him), thanked the soldiers, and through
+them their nation for all that was being done to help in the war;
+prayers were said for the men at the front, those who were still
+alive, as well as those who had given up their lives for their
+country's sake, and before leaving we sang the national anthem, our's,
+_God Save the King_.
+
+With the pipers playing at our front, and an admiring crowd of (p. 042)
+boys following, we took our way back to our billets. On the march a
+mate was speaking, one who had been late coming on parade in the
+morning.
+
+"Saw the woman of the _café_ in church?" he asked me. "Saw her
+crying?"
+
+"I thought she looked unhappy."
+
+"Just after you got off parade the news came," my mate told me. "Her
+son had been killed. She is awfully upset about it and no wonder. She
+was always talking about her _petit garçon_, and he was to be home on
+holidays shortly."
+
+Somewhere "out there" where the guns are incessantly booming, a
+nameless grave holds the "_petit garçon_," the _café_ lady's son; next
+Sunday another mourner will join with the many in the village church
+and pray to the Virgin Mother for the soul of her beloved boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV (p. 043)
+
+THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES
+
+ Four by four in column of route,
+ By roads that the poplars sentinel,
+ Clank of rifle and crunch of boot--
+ All are marching and all is well.
+ White, so white is the distant moon,
+ Salmon-pink is the furnace glare,
+ And we hum, as we march, a ragtime tune,
+ Khaki boys in the long platoon,
+ Going and going--anywhere.
+
+
+"The battalion will move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating
+the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot
+of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It
+was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in
+their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese
+are easily scooped out with clasp-knives and make excellent sconces;
+we often use them for that purpose in our barn billet. We had been
+quite a long time in the place and had grown to like it. But to-morrow
+we were leaving.
+
+"Oh, dash the rifle!" said the Jersey boy, getting to his feet and
+kicking a bundle of straw across the floor of the barn. "To-morrow (p. 044)
+night we'll be in the trenches up in the firing line."
+
+"The slaughter line," somebody remarked in the corner where the
+darkness hung heavy. A match was lighted disclosing the speaker's face
+and the pipe which he held between his teeth.
+
+"No smoking," yelled a corporal, who had just entered. "You'll burn
+the damned place down and get yourself as well as all of us into
+trouble."
+
+"Oh blast the barn!" muttered Bill Sykes, a narrow chested Cockney
+with a good-humoured face that belied his nickname. "It's only fit for
+rats and there's 'nuff of 'em 'ere. I'm goin' to 'ave a fag anyway.
+Got me?"
+
+The corporal asked Bill for a cigarette and lit it. "We're all mates
+now and we'll make a night of it," he cried. "Damn the barn, there'll
+be barns when we're all washed out with Jack Johnsons. What are you
+doin', Feelan?"
+
+Feelan, an Irishman with a brogue that could be cut with a knife, laid
+down the sword which he was burnishing and glanced at the non-com.
+
+"The Germans don't fire at men with stripes, I hear," he remarked,
+"They only shoot rale good soldiers. A livin' corp'ral's hardly as (p. 045)
+good as a dead rifleman."
+
+Six foot three of Cumberland bone and muscle detached itself from the
+straw and looked round the barn. We call it Goliath on account of its
+size.
+
+"Who's to sing the first song," asked Goliath. "A good hearty song!"
+
+"One with whiskers on it!" said the corporal.
+
+"I'll slash the game up and give a rale ould song, whiskers
+to the toes of it," said Feelan, shoving his sword in its scabbard and
+throwin' himself flat back on the straw. "Its a song about the
+time Irelan' was fightin' for freedom and it's called _The Rising of
+the Moon_! A great song entirely it is, and I cannot do it justice."
+
+Feelan stood up, his legs wide apart and both his thumbs stuck in the
+upper pockets of his tunic. Behind him the barn stretched out into the
+gloom that our solitary candle could not pierce. On either side rifles
+hung from the wall, and packs and haversacks stood high from the straw
+in which most of the men had buried themselves, leaving nothing but
+their faces, fringed with the rims of Balaclava helmets, exposed to
+view. The night was bitterly cold, outside where the sky stood high
+splashed with countless stars and where the earth gripped tight on (p. 046)
+itself, the frost fiend was busy; in the barn, with its medley of men,
+roosting hens and prowling rats all was cosy and warm. Feelan cleared
+his throat and commenced the song, his voice strong and clear filled
+the barn:--
+
+ "Arrah! tell me Shan O'Farrel; tell me why you hurry so?"
+ "Hush, my bouchal, hush and listen," and his cheeks were all aglow--
+ "I've got orders from the Captain to get ready quick and soon
+ For the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon,
+ At the risin' of the moon!
+ At the risin' of the moon!
+ And the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon!"
+
+"That's some song," said the corporal. "It has got guts in it. I'm
+sick of these ragtime rotters!"
+
+"The old songs are always the best ones," said Feelan, clearing his
+throat preparatory to commencing a second verse.
+
+"What about _Uncle Joe_?" asked Goliath, and was off with a regimental
+favourite.
+
+ When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo--
+ ("Oh!" the occupants of the barn yelled.)
+ Ev'rybody starts a swayin' to and fro--
+ ("Ha!" exclaimed the barn.)
+ Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor!--
+ ("What!" we chorused.)
+ Crying, "Uncle Joe, give us more, give us more!"
+
+"Give us no more of that muck!" exclaimed Feelan, burrowing into (p. 047)
+the straw, no doubt a little annoyed at being interrupted in his song.
+"Damn ragtime!"
+
+"There's ginger in it!" said Goliath. "Your old song is as flat as
+French beer!"
+
+"Some decent music is what you want," said Bill Sykes, and forthwith
+began strumming an invisible banjo and humming _Way down upon the
+Swanee Ribber_.
+
+The candle, the only one in our possession, burned closer to the
+cheese sconce, a daring rat slipped into the light, stopped still for
+a moment on top of a sheaf of straw, then scampered off again, shadows
+danced on the roof, over the joists where the hens were roosting, an
+unsheathed sword glittered brightly as the light caught it, and Feelan
+lifted the weapon and glanced at it.
+
+"Burnished like a lady's nail," he muttered.
+
+"Thumb nail?" interrogated Goliath.
+
+"Ragnail, p'raps," said the Cockney.
+
+"I wonder whether we'll have much bayonet-fightin' or not?" remarked
+the Jersey boy, looking at each of us in turn and addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+"We'll get some now and again to keep us warm!" said the corporal. (p. 048)
+"It'll be 'ot when it comes along."
+
+"'Ot's not the word," said Bill; "I never was much drawn to soldierin'
+'fore the war started, but when it came along I felt I'd like to 'ave
+a 'and in the gime. There, that candle's goin' out!"
+
+"Bunk!" roared the corporal, putting his pipe in his pocket and
+seizing a blanket, the first to hand. Almost immediately he was under
+the straw with the blanket wrapped round him. We were not backward in
+following, and all were in bed when the flame which followed the wax
+so greedily died for lack of sustenance.
+
+To-morrow night we should be in the trenches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V (p. 049)
+
+FIRST BLOOD
+
+ The nations like Kilkenny cats,
+ Full of hate that never dies out,
+ Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,
+ Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.
+
+
+The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles,
+and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down
+on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs
+stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The
+sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down
+their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled
+on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on
+haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless
+in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and
+were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds
+of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack
+stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field (p. 050)
+necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and
+sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and
+were on our way towards the firing line.
+
+A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had
+just come out of an _estaminet_, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and
+knife and fork stuck in his putties.
+
+"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile
+hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating
+glance.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"
+
+"About a matter of nine months."
+
+"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.
+
+"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer.
+"'Oo are you?"
+
+"The London Irish."
+
+"Territorials?"
+
+"That's us," someone said.
+
+"First time up this way?"
+
+"First time."
+
+"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile
+reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a
+word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a tight grip (p. 051)
+of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties. My
+pack went West at Mons."
+
+"You were there then?"
+
+"Blimey, yes." was the answer.
+
+"How did you like it?"
+
+"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round.
+There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if
+you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with
+your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever
+you go into a charge--Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man
+who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're
+swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this
+beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of
+this dashed muck. Good-bye"--we were moving off, "and good luck to
+you!"
+
+Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been
+great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and
+committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has
+been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown
+oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I don't (p. 052)
+know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a tin of
+bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our section who
+can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few grind biscuits
+when they can beg bread.
+
+A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four
+platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section
+consisted of thirteen--there are only four boys left now, Mervin has
+been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher
+bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of
+his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much
+sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he
+told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home
+when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps.
+I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will
+pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch
+friend.
+
+Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that
+the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal
+Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the
+same route. In the village all was quiet, the _cafés_ were open, (p. 053)
+and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as usual.
+There were very few young men of military age in the place; all were
+engaged in the business of war.
+
+A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me;
+Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar,
+marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a
+clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and
+wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to
+the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate
+and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept
+open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker,
+and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to
+the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital
+suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and
+get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest
+bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the
+rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had
+come.
+
+Teak and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of the (p. 054)
+road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither look
+it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest when his
+own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould,
+but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in
+business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his
+profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these
+amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known
+to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most
+delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato.
+Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument.
+He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one
+he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.
+
+Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
+The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
+in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
+shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
+willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055)
+and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous
+masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses.
+For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in
+the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about
+with him.
+
+Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
+drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
+did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
+ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
+that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
+he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
+Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.
+
+We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men
+stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and
+singing _Macnamara's Band_, a favourite song with our regiment.
+Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and
+we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.
+
+The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in front,
+and it sounded like a waggon-load of rubble being emptied on a (p. 056)
+landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.
+
+"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his
+cigarette with the little finger.
+
+"Some transport has broken down."
+
+"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.
+
+"Oh! your grandmother."
+
+Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a
+wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side
+of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air,
+curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates.
+Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away
+from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking
+to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his
+tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath
+yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:--
+
+"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this
+way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell (p. 057)
+had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her head
+bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two children, a
+boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep in a
+childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the bursting
+shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little
+affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of
+surprise--surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting
+shrapnel.
+
+"Quick march!"
+
+We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing
+through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was
+almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although
+not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a _café_. A pale
+stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the
+threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.
+
+Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking
+beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard,
+seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing
+heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, (p. 058)
+and his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash showed
+on the flesh.
+
+"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The
+one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field
+where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."
+
+"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.
+
+"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came
+to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of
+shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in
+London."
+
+"And you, Pryor?"
+
+"I went cold all over for a minute."
+
+"Bill?"
+
+"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do
+you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a
+song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out
+one of our popular rhymes.
+
+ Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys
+ To drive the Kaiser balmy.
+ And _we'll_ smash up that fool Von Kluck
+ And all his bloomin' army!
+
+We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor (p. 059)
+ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his
+coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm
+on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg
+bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was
+smoking a cigarette.
+
+"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.
+
+"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the
+answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."
+
+"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the
+pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a
+wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"
+
+"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.
+
+"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the
+old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over
+and done with."
+
+"Ye don't like war, then."
+
+"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks,
+and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the ---- work." (p. 060)
+
+"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing
+round his lips. "God's with us, you know."
+
+"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.
+
+"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.
+
+"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything
+else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church,
+and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up
+to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."
+
+"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work,
+never could stomach it."
+
+The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.
+
+We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the
+province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was
+a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and
+turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home,
+now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green
+grasses, the old farm holed by a thousand shells, the old plough, (p. 061)
+and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for
+the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the
+destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage
+which had been done.
+
+We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive
+shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a
+point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast
+of burden--the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace
+by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something
+pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising
+and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving
+backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the
+stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching
+along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an
+inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All
+individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes
+in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing
+death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.
+
+We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-shivered (p. 062)
+roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.
+
+"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were
+told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.
+
+As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time
+I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air,
+and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and
+now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was
+sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French
+soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his
+bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade
+who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.
+
+"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.
+
+"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere,
+and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he
+cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall
+over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling (p. 063)
+a fresh cigarette.
+
+Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found
+our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance,
+with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath,
+"This way to the war."
+
+The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow
+cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces
+in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full
+equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were exploding,
+and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our
+heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but
+sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and
+dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with
+bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general
+air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides,
+and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and
+well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with
+him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when
+he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon (p. 064)
+on his breast.
+
+"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How
+did you get it?" he called up to the man.
+
+"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve,
+thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."
+
+We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood,
+and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.
+
+"How did it happen?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the
+parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have
+copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who
+are you?"
+
+"The London Irish."
+
+"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ----," he said, rubbing a miry hand across
+the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done
+in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief
+and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065)
+luck! Are you from Chelsea?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody
+took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the
+two men lay.
+
+They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that
+branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the
+other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost
+touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and
+smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's
+hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot
+showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
+clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
+under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
+waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
+stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
+dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
+Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
+ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066)
+lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
+youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
+the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
+something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
+
+One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
+body in the trench.
+
+"Brothers," he said.
+
+For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
+Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
+might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
+sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
+to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
+come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
+was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
+bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
+
+The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
+but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
+matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
+
+"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067)
+who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a
+hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to
+duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
+
+"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
+when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"
+
+"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
+"and they always keep potting at the place."
+
+"But have we?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
+mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
+the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"
+
+"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
+way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.
+
+"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.
+
+"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
+through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
+this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068)
+continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
+"never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when
+you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."
+
+In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
+up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
+a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
+back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
+called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
+potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
+for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
+"stopped a packet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI (p. 069)
+
+IN THE TRENCHES
+
+ Up for days in the trenches,
+ Working and working away;
+ Eight days up in the trenches
+ And back again to-day.
+ Working with pick and shovel,
+ On traverse, banquette, and slope,
+ And now we are back and working
+ With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.
+
+
+We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at
+the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had
+not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.
+
+Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his
+shovel.
+
+"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit
+from his haversack.
+
+"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"
+
+"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the
+latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it
+wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were
+new to the grind of war.
+
+"I've found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from (p. 070)
+his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A
+shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches
+have got a humour peculiarly their own.
+
+"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell _café noir_
+and _pain et beurre_."
+
+"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like
+ourselves."
+
+"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent
+for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a
+mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the
+Cockney brightened.
+
+"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and butter."
+
+"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.
+
+"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and
+the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."
+
+"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping
+a shower of muck which a bursting shell flung in his face. We were
+with him immediately, and presently found ourselves at the door (p. 071)
+of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled with
+shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.
+
+A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly,
+well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a
+short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn
+of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all
+good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as
+we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our
+needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his
+hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs
+in the house were already occupied.
+
+The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on
+the wall, the portrait of the woman herself, _The Holy Family
+Journeying to Egypt_, a print of Millet's _Angelus_, and a rude
+etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the glass broken.
+A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing
+piece of a shell dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its
+pendulum gone and the glass broken.
+
+Bill, naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his coffee, (p. 072)
+and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl, he
+undertook the matter himself.
+
+"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no
+milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be
+amused.
+
+"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like
+French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound)
+it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno,
+that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n
+milk."
+
+"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like
+that."
+
+"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be
+nice if I got one."
+
+"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for
+queer things if she did."
+
+"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey,
+that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a shell exploded overhead,
+and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her
+head for a moment and crossed herself, then she continued her (p. 073)
+work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the
+shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill forthwith
+relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When we got
+out to our work again he spoke.
+
+"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with
+her."
+
+"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.
+
+"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a
+woman with blunt finger nails."
+
+"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.
+
+"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my
+ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a space for
+wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch
+them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The
+toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps.
+Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She
+becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she
+becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They could not (p. 074)
+fashion you in Eden! When I think of a woman washing herself! Ugh!
+Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled
+beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"
+
+"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a fag end from the bottom of
+the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen
+maggots!"
+
+It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk
+with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.
+
+"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting
+poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior
+slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and
+some so bad that I almost ran away from them."
+
+For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side
+keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to
+open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in
+your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is
+suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English
+communication trenches are narrow--so narrow, indeed, that a man with
+a pack often gets held, and sticks there until his comrades pull (p. 075)
+him clear.
+
+The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for
+the passage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there,
+packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his
+mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the
+risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks,
+bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the
+reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp
+earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the
+mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking
+back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move
+backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the
+active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression and despair.
+
+The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help
+him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen
+grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet
+that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole
+pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, and wait. When an (p. 076)
+attack is on the communication trenches are persistently shelled by
+the enemy with a view to stop the advance of reinforcements. Once our
+company lay in a trench as reserves for fourteen hours, and during
+that time upwards of two thousand shells were hurled in our direction,
+our trench being half filled with rubble and clay. Two mates, one on
+my right and one on my left, were wounded. I did not receive a
+scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours during the cannonade;
+but this is another story.
+
+Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches,
+ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to
+the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality.
+Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one
+point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is
+under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all
+rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to
+court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a
+little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be
+covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the
+sniper plies his trade. He hides somewhere in the slack, and pots (p. 077)
+at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range
+of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a
+warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop
+low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger zone is
+past.
+
+Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift
+shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly
+singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however,
+who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his
+telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of
+my cigarettes told me the story.
+
+"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows
+that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five
+hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's
+a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of
+pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and
+my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me,
+but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'll not lave this place (p. 078)
+till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was there
+prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the sniper.
+I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he didn't bury
+his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole of hell when
+an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his sandbagged castle,
+with me gun on the cock and me finger on the trigger, but he wasn't
+there; there was nothin' in the place but a few rounds of ball an' a
+half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I had a sup without
+winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down the bottle, 'its
+little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a bottle with nothin'
+in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and I lay down in the
+corner and waited for him to come in.
+
+"But sorrow the fut of him came, and me waiting there till the colour
+of day was in the sky. Then I goes back to me own place, and there was
+he waiting for me. He only made one mistake, he had fallen to sleep,
+and he just sprung up as I came in be the door.
+
+"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and
+he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves
+and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked (p. 079)
+him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye
+have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a
+Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with nothin' bar
+the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye know, I had a
+kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in to my house
+without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as if he was in
+his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said, 'This is only
+a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for ye, so come
+along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to our trenches
+as stand-to was coming to an end."
+
+Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where
+the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the
+grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives
+one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with
+daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of
+colour--crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some
+weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080)
+lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught
+in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows
+across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and
+perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and
+decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of
+the tragedy between the trenches.
+
+There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
+being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
+ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
+dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
+through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
+there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
+shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
+lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
+over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
+there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
+considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the
+spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, moulders in (p. 081)
+ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray
+nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they
+often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the
+banquette.
+
+"The fire trench to-night," said Stoner that evening, a nervous light
+in his soft brown eyes, as he fumbled with the money on the card
+table. His luck had been good, and he had won over six francs; he
+generally loses. "Perhaps we're in for the high jump when we get up
+there."
+
+"The high jump?" I queried, "what's that?"
+
+"A bayonet charge," he replied, dealing a final hand and inviting us
+to double the stakes as the deal was the last. A few wanted to play
+for another quarter of an hour, but he would not prolong the game.
+Turning up an ace he shoved the money in his pocket and rose to his
+feet.
+
+In an hour we were ready to move. We carried much weight in addition
+to our ordinary load, firewood, cooking utensils, and extra loaves. We
+bought the latter at a neighbouring _boulangerie_, one that still
+plied its usual trade in dangerous proximity to the firing-line.
+
+The loaves cost 6-1/2_d._ each, and we prefer them to the English (p. 082)
+bread which we get now and again, and place them far above the
+tooth-destroying army biscuits. Fires were permitted in the trenches,
+we were told, and our officers advised us to carry our own wood with
+us. So it came about that the enemy's firing served as a useful
+purpose; we pulled down the shrapnel shattered rafters of our billets,
+broke them up into splinters with our entrenching tools, and tied them
+up into handy portable bundles which we tied on our packs.
+
+At midnight we entered Harley Street, and squeezed our way through the
+narrow trench. The distance to the firing-line was a long one;
+traverse and turning, turning and traverse, we thought we should never
+come to the end of them. There was no shelling, but the questing
+bullet was busy, it sung over our heads or snapped at the sandbags on
+the parapet, ever busy on the errand of death and keen on its mission.
+But deep down in the trench we regarded it with indifference. Our way
+was one of safety. Here the bullet was foiled, and pick and shovel
+reigned masters in the zone of death.
+
+We were relieving the Scots Guards (many of my Irish friends (p. 083)
+belong to this regiment). Awaiting our coming, they stood in the full
+marching order of the regulations, packs light, forks and spoons in
+their putties, and all little luxuries which we still dared to carry
+flung away. They had been holding the place for seven days, and were
+now going back somewhere for a rest.
+
+"Is this the firing-line?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Yes, sonny," came the answer in a voice which seemed to be full of
+weariness.
+
+"Quiet here?" Mervin enquired, a note of awe in his voice.
+
+"Naethin' doin'," said a fresh voice that reminded me forcibly of
+Glasgow and the Cowcaddens. "It's a gey soft job here."
+
+"No casualties?"
+
+"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and
+they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."
+
+In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of
+it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the
+humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that
+sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.
+
+"Irish?" I asked. (p. 084)
+
+"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha
+regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"
+
+"I am," I answered.
+
+"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody
+said. "Are ye dry?"
+
+I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is
+there something to drink?" I queried.
+
+"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied.
+"Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"
+
+A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea.
+The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.
+
+"It's the Saxons that's across the road," he said, pointing to the
+enemy's lines which were very silent. I had not heard a bullet whistle
+over since I entered the trench. On the left was an interesting rifle
+and machine gun fire all the time. "They're quiet fellows, the Saxons,
+they don't want to fight any more than we do, so there's a kind of
+understanding between us. Don't fire at us and we'll not fire at you.
+There's a good dug-out there," he continued, pointing to a dark (p. 085)
+hole in the parados (the rear wall of the trench), "and ye'll find a
+pot of jam and half a loaf in the corner. There's also a water jar
+half full."
+
+"Where do you get water?"
+
+"Nearly a mile away the pump is," he answered. "Ye've to cross the
+fields to get it."
+
+"A safe road?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Not so bad, ye know," was the answer.
+
+"This place smells 'orrid," muttered Bill, lighting a cigarette and
+flinging on his pack. "What is it?"
+
+"Some poor devils between the trenches; they've been lyin' there since
+last Christmas."
+
+"Blimey, what a stink," muttered Bill, "Why don't ye bury them up?"
+
+"Because nobody dare go out there, me boy," was the answer. "Anyway,
+it's Germans they are. They made a charge and didn't get as far as
+here. They went out of step so to speak."
+
+"Woo-oo-oo!" Bill suddenly yelled and kicked a tin pail on to the floor
+of the trench. A shower of sparks flew up into the air and fluttered
+over the rim of the parapet. "I put my 'and on it, 'twas like a (p. 086)
+red 'ot poker, it burned me to the bone!"
+
+"It's the brazier ye were foolin' about with," said Mike, who was
+buckling his pack-straps preparatory to moving, "See, and don't put
+yer head over the top, and don't light a fire at night. Ye can put up
+as much flare as you like by day. Good-bye, boys, and good luck t'ye."
+
+"Any Donegal men in the battalion?" I called after him as he was
+moving off.
+
+"None that I know of," he shouted back, "but there are two other
+battalions that are not here, maybe there are Donegal men there. Good
+luck, boys, good luck!"
+
+We were alone and lonely, nearly every man of us. For myself I felt
+isolated from the whole world, alone in front of the little line of
+sand bags with my rifle in my hand. Who were we? Why were we there?
+Goliath, the junior clerk, who loved Tennyson; Pryor, the draughtsman,
+who doted on Omar; Kore, who read Fanny Eden's penny stories, and
+never disclosed his profession; Mervin, the traveller, educated for
+the Church but schooled in romance; Stoner, the clerk, who reads my
+books and says he never read better; and Bill, newsboy, street-arab,
+and Lord knows what, who reads _The Police News_, plays (p. 087)
+innumerable tricks with cards, and gambles and never wins. Why were we
+here holding a line of trench, and ready to take a life or give one as
+occasion required? Who shall give an answer to the question?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII (p. 088)
+
+BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH
+
+ At night the stars are shining bright,
+ The old-world voice is whispering near,
+ We've heard it when the moon was light,
+ And London's streets were verydear;
+ But dearer now they are, sweetheart,
+ The 'buses running to the Strand,
+ But we're so far, so far apart,
+ Each lonely in a different land.
+
+
+The night was murky and the air was splashed with rain. Following the
+line of trench I could dimly discern the figures of my mates pulling
+off their packs and fixing their bayonets. These glittered brightly as
+the dying fires from the trench braziers caught them, and the long
+array of polished blades shone into their place along the dark brown
+sandbags. Looking over the parados I could see the country in rear,
+dim in the hazy night. A white, nebulous fog lay on the ground and
+enveloped the lone trees that stood up behind. Here and there I could
+discern houses where no light shone, and where no people dwelt. All
+the inhabitants were gone, and in the village away to the right (p. 089)
+there was absolute silence, the stillness of the desert. To my mind
+came words I once read or heard spoken, "The conqueror turns the
+country into a desert, and calls it peace."
+
+I clamped my bayonet into its standard and rested the cold steel on
+the parapet, the point showing over; and standing up I looked across
+to the enemy's ground.
+
+"They're about three hundred yards away," somebody whispered taking
+his place at my side. "I think I can see their trenches."
+
+An indistinct line which might have been a parapet of sandbags, became
+visible as I stared through the darkness; it looked very near, and my
+heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped
+upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped
+under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright
+flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space
+between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all
+its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see
+the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished;
+further back was a ruined cottage, the bare beams and rafters giving
+it the appearance of a skeleton. A year ago a humble farmer might (p. 090)
+have lived there; his children perhaps played where dead were lying. I
+could see the German trench, the row of sandbags, the country to rear,
+a ruined village on a hill, the flashes of rifles on the left ... the
+flare died out in mid-air and darkness cloaked the whole scene again.
+
+"What do you think of it, Stoner?" I asked the figure by my side.
+
+"My God, it's great," he answered. "To think that they're over there,
+and the poor fellows lying out on the field!"
+
+"They're their own bloomin' tombstones, anyway," said Bill, cropping
+up from somewhere.
+
+"I feel sorry for the poor beggars," I said.
+
+"They'll feel sorry for themselves, the beggars," said Bill.
+
+"There, what's that?"
+
+It crept up like a long white arm from behind the German lines, and
+felt nervously at the clouds as if with a hand. Moving slowly from
+North to South it touched all the sky, seeking for something. Suddenly
+it flashed upon us, almost dazzling our eyes. In a flash Bill was upon
+the banquette.
+
+"Nark the doin's, nark it," he cried and fired his rifle. The (p. 091)
+report died away in a hundred echoes as he slipped the empty cartridge
+from its breech.
+
+"That's one for them," he muttered.
+
+"What did you fire at?" I asked.
+
+"The blasted searchlight," he replied, rubbing his little potato of a
+nose. "That's one for 'em, another shot nearer the end of the war!"
+
+"Did you hit it?" asked our corporal.
+
+"I must 'ave 'it it, I fired straight at it."
+
+"Splendid, splendid," said the corporal. "Its only about three miles
+away though."
+
+"Oh, blimey!..."
+
+Sentries were posted for the night, one hour on and two off for each
+man until dawn. I was sentry for the first hour. I had to keep a sharp
+look out if an enemy's working party showed itself when the rockets
+went up. I was to fire at it and kill as many men as possible. One
+thinks of things on sentry-go.
+
+"How can I reconcile myself to this," I asked, shifting my rifle to
+get nearer the parapet. "Who are those men behind the line of sandbags
+that I should want to kill them, to disembowel them with my sword,
+blow their faces to pieces at three hundred yards, bomb them into (p. 092)
+eternity at a word of command. Who am I that I should do it; what have
+they done to me to incur my wrath? I am not angry with them; I know
+little of the race; they are utter strangers to me; what am I to
+think, why should I think?
+
+"Bill," I called to the Cockney, who came by whistling, "what are you
+doing?"
+
+"I'm havin' a bit of rooty (food) 'fore goin' to kip (sleep)."
+
+"Hungry?
+
+"'Ungry as an 'awk," he answered. "Give me a shake when your turn's
+up; I'm sentry after you."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Bill!"
+
+"Pat?"
+
+"Do you believe in God?"
+
+"Well, I do and I don't," was the answer.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I don't 'old with the Christian business," he replied, "but I believe
+in God."
+
+"Do you think that God can allow men to go killing one another like
+this?"
+
+"Maybe 'E can't help it."
+
+"And the war started because it had to be?
+
+"It just came--like a war-baby." (p. 093)
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Yer write songs, don't yer?" Bill suddenly asked.
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Would yer write me one, just a little one?" he continued. "There was
+a bird (girl) where I used to be billeted at St. Albans, and I would
+like to send 'er a bit of poetry."
+
+"You've fallen in love?" I ventured.
+
+"No, not so bad as that--"
+
+"You've not fallen in love."
+
+"Well its like this," said my mate, "I used to be in 'er 'ouse and she
+made 'ome-made torfee."
+
+"Made it well?"
+
+"Blimey, yes; 'twas some stuff, and I used to get 'eaps of it. She
+used to slide down the banisters, too. Yer should 'ave seen it, Pat.
+It almost made me write poetry myself."
+
+"I'll try and do something for you," I said. "Have you been in the
+dug-out yet?"
+
+"Yes, it's not such a bad place, but there's seven of us in it," said
+Bill, "it's 'ot as 'ell. But we wouldn't be so bad if Z---- was out of
+it. I don't like the feller."
+
+"Why?" I asked, Z---- was one of our thirteen, but he couldn't (p. 094)
+pull with us. For some reason or other we did not like him.
+
+"Oh, I don't like 'im, that's all," was the answer. "Z---- tries to
+get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when
+your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He
+clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without
+another word he vanished into the dug-out.
+
+On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in
+civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the
+whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique
+live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between
+them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a
+new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish
+cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another,
+stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language.
+Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer
+says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men
+and babies.
+
+"Stand-to!" (p. 095)
+
+I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my
+head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a
+pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.
+
+"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and
+stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over
+another prostrate form.
+
+"Stand-to! Stand-to!"
+
+We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette,
+each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and
+entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our
+equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the
+bayonets are always fixed.
+
+"Where's Z----?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.
+
+"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."
+
+"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it
+lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.
+The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."
+
+Z---- stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out. (p. 096)
+
+"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.
+
+"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get
+on with the work."
+
+In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive
+the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits
+for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we
+stood for half a day.
+
+The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in
+intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The
+last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air
+for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the
+trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and
+shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and
+there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it
+were, on the grass.
+
+"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said
+Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."
+
+The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked
+enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097)
+fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes,
+a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth
+again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the
+German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on
+the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing
+again.
+
+"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the
+Cockney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."
+
+"An if I do!"
+
+"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.
+
+"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.
+
+"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his
+rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at,
+but don't waste ammunition."
+
+The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened
+on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by
+each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every
+sixth man was posted as sentry.
+
+Stoner, diligent worker that he is, set about preparing breakfast (p. 098)
+when stand-to was over. In an open space at the rear of the dug-out he
+fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the regimental
+issue of coke ablaze.
+
+"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried
+with me.
+
+"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."
+
+Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the
+work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the
+size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and
+fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if
+selecting a spot to rest on.
+
+"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."
+
+It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into
+the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped
+into Stoner's fire.
+
+"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"
+
+No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a
+bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to us (p. 099)
+from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some
+of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed
+Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often
+spoken of in my little volume _The Amateur Army_, came face to face
+with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in,
+and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted
+trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.
+
+"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell.
+"Run."
+
+A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the
+bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers
+carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.
+
+Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the
+bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter
+of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of
+eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of
+their food whenever that is possible.
+
+In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which
+are supplied to the trenches, and went out with the intention of (p. 100)
+getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we
+had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road
+branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one;
+added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow
+trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the
+parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp,
+clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the
+story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a
+soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have
+been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and
+number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died
+fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave.
+Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the
+man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of
+kindly grass were now covering it up.
+
+Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late
+breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped
+to the waist as they bent over their little mess-tins of soapy (p. 101)
+water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep
+in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The
+row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders,
+had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his
+pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry
+with him.
+
+"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing
+like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"
+
+"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"
+
+"Would one of us not carry it?"
+
+"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"
+
+"Why didn't ye give it to us?"
+
+"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the
+sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless
+twisters!"
+
+"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who,
+stripped to the waist, was washing himself.
+
+"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as
+he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.
+
+"Leave down that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who has (p. 102)
+the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the soapsuds
+from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive attitude, with clenched
+fists before him, in true fighting manner.
+
+"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost
+things that way before, I'ave."
+
+Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic
+remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier
+into silence.
+
+A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay
+on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms,
+their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in
+Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch,
+his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was
+fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position,
+fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's
+lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other
+side.
+
+"Firin' at beastly sandbags!" one of the men said to me, "Blimey, (p. 103)
+that's no game. Yer 'ere and the sandbags is there, you never see
+anything, and you've to fire at nothin'. They call this war. Strike me
+ginger if it's like the pictures in _The Daily ----_; them papers is
+great liars!"
+
+"Do you want to kill men?" I asked.
+
+"What am I here for?" was the rejoinder, "If I don't kill them they'll
+kill me."
+
+No trench is straight at any place; the straight line is done away
+with in the makeup of a trench. The traverse, jutting out in a sharp
+angle to the rear, gives way in turn to the fire position, curving
+towards the enemy, and there is never more than twelve yards liable to
+be covered by enfilade fire. The traverse is the home of spare
+ammunition, of ball cartridge, bombs, and hand-grenades. These are
+stored in depots dug into the wall of the trench. There are two things
+which find a place anywhere and everywhere, the biscuit and the bully
+beef. Tins of both are heaped in the trenches; sometimes they are used
+for building dug-outs and filling revêtements. Bully beef and biscuits
+are seldom eaten; goodness knows why we are supplied with them.
+
+We came into the territory of another battalion, and were met by (p. 104)
+an officer.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+"For water, sir," said Pryor.
+
+"Have you got permission from your captain?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then you cannot get by here without it. It's a Brigade order," said
+the officer. "One of our men got shot through the head yesterday when
+going for water."
+
+"Killed, sir," I enquired.
+
+"Killed on the spot," was the answer.
+
+On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging
+operation.
+
+"Have you got the water already?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"An officer of the ---- wouldn't let us go by without a written
+permission."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naïve reply. He wanted
+to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took
+out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on
+his knee and the paper on his hat, and wrote us out the pass. (p. 105)
+
+For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our
+parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's
+rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the
+fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good
+view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs
+at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a
+ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was
+named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its
+belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in
+an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into
+the open to bury it.
+
+The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a
+robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date.
+Having filled our jars, Pryor and I made a tour of inspection of the
+place.
+
+In a green field to the rear we discovered a graveyard, fenced in
+except at our end, where a newly open grave yawned up at us as if
+aweary of waiting for its prey.
+
+"Room for extension here," said Pryor. "I suppose they'll not (p. 106)
+close in this until the graves reach the edge of the roadway. Let's
+read the epitaphs."
+
+How peaceful the place was. On the right I could see through a space
+between the walls of the cottage the wide winding street of the
+village, the houses, cornstacks, and the waving bushes, and my soul
+felt strangely quieted. In its peace, in its cessation from labour,
+there was neither anxiety nor sadness, there remained rest, placid and
+sad. It seemed as if the houses, all intact at this particular spot,
+held something sacred and restful, that with them and in them all was
+good. They knew no evil or sorrow. There was peace, the desired
+consummation of all things--peace brought about by war, the peace of
+the desert, and death.
+
+I looked at the first grave, its cross, and the rude lettering. This
+was the epitaph; this and nothing more:--
+
+ "An Unknown British Soldier."
+
+On a grave adjoining was a cheap gilt vase with flowers, English flowers,
+faded and dying. I looked at the cross. One of the Coldstream Guards lay
+there killed in action six weeks before. I turned up the black-edged
+envelope on the vase, and read the badly spelt message, "From his (p. 107)
+broken-hearted wife and loving little son Tommy."
+
+We gazed at it for a moment in silence. Then Pryor spoke. "I think
+we'll go back," he said, and there was a strained note in his voice;
+it seemed as if he wanted to hide something.
+
+On our way out to the road we stopped for a moment and gazed through
+the shattered window of Dead Cow Cottage. The room into which we
+looked was neatly furnished. A round table with a flower vase on it
+stood on the floor, a number of chairs in their proper position were
+near the wall, a clock and two photos, one of an elderly man with a
+heavy beard, the other of a frail, delicate woman, were on the
+mantlepiece. The pendulum of the clock hung idle; it must have
+ceased going for quite a long time. As if to heighten a picture of
+absolute comfort a cat sat on the floor washing itself.
+
+"Where will the people be?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," answered Pryor. "Those chairs will be useful in our
+dug-out. Shall we take them?"
+
+We took one apiece, and with chair on our head and jar in hand we (p. 108)
+walked towards the trenches. The sun was out, and it was now very hot.
+We sweated. My face became like a wet sponge squeezed in the hand;
+Pryor's face was very red.
+
+"We'll have a rest," he said, and laying down the jar he placed his
+chair in the road and sat on it. I did the same.
+
+"You know Omar?" he asked.
+
+"In my calf-age I doated on him," I answered.
+
+"What's the calf-age?"
+
+"The sentimental period that most young fellows go through," I said.
+"They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise
+everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the
+universe one day. They prefer vegetable food to pork, and read Omar."
+
+"Have you come through the calf-age?"
+
+"Years ago! You'll come through, too, Pryor--"
+
+A bullet struck the leg of my chair and carried away a splinter of
+wood. I got to my feet hurriedly. "Those trenches seem quite a
+distance away," I said, hoisting my chair and gripping the jar as I
+moved off, "and we'll be safer when we're there."
+
+All the way along we were sniped at, but we managed to get back (p. 109)
+safely. Finding that our supply of coke ran out we used the chairs for
+firewood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII (p. 110)
+
+TERRORS OF THE NIGHT
+
+ Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,
+ When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
+ They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
+ Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.
+ They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
+ They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
+ There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:
+ For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.
+
+
+"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said
+Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the
+periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like
+shells--especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a
+mile away."
+
+"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.
+
+"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is
+always on the go."
+
+"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was
+cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
+
+"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111)
+when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of
+me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me
+to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench
+and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was
+looking at me, I could see its eyes--"
+
+"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
+
+"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you
+lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at
+me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back
+round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas
+some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
+
+"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
+part I am more afraid of ----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
+
+I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
+that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of (p. 112)
+death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet,
+and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am
+more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
+Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about
+one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning
+over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp,
+penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep
+as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the
+grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing,
+agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit
+below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It
+thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it
+before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know
+what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the
+yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's
+head.
+
+When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
+deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench
+of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113)
+day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I
+awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The
+place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered
+down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by
+concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a
+groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was
+being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile
+cries that slowly died away into silence.
+
+Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
+unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
+might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
+dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
+down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
+to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
+mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
+
+The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
+battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
+I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114)
+somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the
+others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
+Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
+
+"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
+pray every time I go up."
+
+"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
+(nice)."
+
+"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
+tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
+cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
+from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
+'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
+you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
+whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
+the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it
+wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a
+bad locality."
+
+He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag,
+and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115)
+into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed
+a look of pity on Pryor.
+
+"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I
+asked.
+
+"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men
+as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain
+comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke
+snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're
+goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin'
+you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work
+for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ----"
+
+Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
+
+"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not
+for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the
+cushiest in the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX (p. 116)
+
+THE DUG-OUT BANQUET
+
+ You ask me if the trench is safe?
+ As safe as home, I say;
+ Dug-outs are safest things on land,
+ And 'buses running to the Strand
+ Are not as safe as they.
+
+ You ask me if the trench is deep?
+ Quite deep enough for me,
+ And men can walk where fools would creep,
+ And men can eat and write and sleep
+ And hale and happy be.
+
+
+The dug-out is the trench villa, the soldiers' home, and is considered
+to be proof against shrapnel bullets and rifle fire. Personally, I do
+not think much of our dug-outs, they are jerry-built things, loose in
+construction, and fashioned in haste. We have kept on improving them,
+remedying old defects, when we should have taken the whole thing to
+pieces and started afresh. The French excel us in fashioning dug-outs;
+they dig out, we build. They begin to burrow from the trench downwards,
+and the roof of their shelter is on a line with the floor of the
+trench; thus they have a cover over them seven or eight feet in (p. 117)
+thickness; a mass of earth which the heaviest shell can hardly pierce
+through. We have been told that the German trenches are even more
+secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion shell to
+burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose most of
+its burrowing power. One of our heaviest shells struck an enemy's
+dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of the
+residents were merely scratched. The place was packed at the time.
+
+As I write I am sitting in a dug-out built in the open by the French.
+It is a log construction, built of pit-props from a neighbouring
+coal-mine. Short blocks of wood laid criss-cross form walls four feet
+in thickness; the roof is quite as thick, and the logs are much
+longer. Yesterday morning, while we were still asleep, a four-inch
+shell landed on the top, displaced several logs, but did us no harm.
+The same shell (pipsqueaks we call them) striking the roof of one of
+our trench dug-outs would blow us all to atoms.
+
+The dug-out is not peculiar to the trench. For miles back from the
+firing-line the country is a world of dug-outs; they are everywhere,
+by the roadsides, the canals, and farmhouses, in the fields, the (p. 118)
+streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A fortnight
+ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and the enemy
+began to shell the place about midnight. Bootless, half-naked, and
+half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was a regular Black
+Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt of queer things,
+and there were six soldiers, the man of the house, his wife, and seven
+children, one a sucking babe two months old, cooped up in the place.
+
+I did not like the place--in fact, I seldom like any dug-out, it
+reminds me of the grave, the covering earth, and worms, and always
+there is a feeling of suffocation. But I have enjoyed my stay in one
+or two. There was a delightful little one, made for a single soldier,
+in which I stayed. At night when off sentry, and when I did not feel
+like sleeping, I read. Over my head I cut a niche in the mud, placed
+my candle there, pulled down over the door my curtain, a real good
+curtain, taken from some neighbouring chateau, spent a few moments
+watching the play of light and shadows on the roof, and listening to
+the sound of guns outside, then lit a cigarette and read. Old (p. 119)
+Montaigne in a dug-out is a true friend and a fine companion. Across
+the ages we held conversation as we have often done. Time and again I
+have read his books; there was a time when for a whole year I read a
+chapter nightly: in a Glasgow doss-house, in a king's castle, in my
+Irish home, and now in Montaigne's own country, in a little earthy
+dug-out, I made the acquaintance of the man again. The dawn broke to
+the clatter of bayonets on the fire position when I put the book aside
+and buckled my equipment for the stand-to hour.
+
+The French trench dug-outs are not leaky, ours generally are, and the
+slightest shower sometimes finds its way inside. I have often awakened
+during the night to find myself soaked through on a floor covered with
+slush. When the weather is hot we sleep outside. In some cases the
+dug-out is handsomely furnished with real beds, tables, chairs, mirrors,
+and candlesticks of burnished brass. Often there are stoves built into
+the clayey wall and used for cooking purposes. In "The Savoy" dug-out,
+which was furnished after this fashion, Section 3 once sat down to a
+memorable dinner which took a whole day long to prepare; and eatables
+and wine were procured at great risk to life. Incidentally, Bill, (p. 120)
+who went out of the trenches and walked four kilometres to procure a
+bottle of _vin rouge_ was rewarded by seven days' second field
+punishment for his pains.
+
+Mervin originated the idea in the early morning as he was dressing a
+finger which he had cut when opening a tin of bully beef. He held up
+the bleeding digit and gazed at it with serious eyes.
+
+"All for this tin of muck!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we have a good
+square meal. I think we could get up one if we set to work."
+
+Stoner's brown eyes sparkled eagerly.
+
+"I know where there are potatoes and carrots and onions," he said.
+"Out in a field behind Dead Cow Villa; I'm off; coming Pat?"
+
+"Certainly, what are the others doing, Bill?"
+
+"We must have fizz," said my friend, and money was forthwith collected
+for wine. Bill hurried away, his bandolier round his shoulder and his
+rifle at the slope; and Mervin undertook to set the place in order and
+arrange the dug-out for the banquet. Goliath dragged his massive weight
+over the parados and busied himself pulling flowers. Kore cleaned (p. 121)
+the mess-tins, and Pryor, artistic even in matters of food, set about
+preparing a menu-card.
+
+When we returned from a search which was very successful, Stoner
+divested himself of tunic and hat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
+got on with the cooking. I took his turn at sentry-go, and Z----,
+sleeping on the banquette, roused his stout body, became interested
+for a moment, and fell asleep again. Bill returned with a bottle of
+wine and seven eggs.
+
+"Where did you get them?" I asked.
+
+"'Twas the 'en as 'ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so
+much about it that I couldn't stand it, so I took the egg, and it
+looked so lonely all by itself in my 'and that I took the others to
+keep it company."
+
+At six o'clock we sat down to dine.
+
+Our brightly burnished mess-tin lids were laid on the table, a neatly
+folded khaki handkerchief in front of each for serviette. Clean towels
+served for tablecloths, flowers--tiger-lilies, snapdragons, pinks,
+poppies, roses, and cornflowers rioted in colour over the rim of a
+looted vase. In solitary state a bottle of wine stood beside the flowers,
+and a box of cigars, the gift of a girl friend, with the lid open (p. 122)
+disclosed the dusky beauties within. The menu, Pryor's masterpiece,
+stood on a wire stand, the work of Mervin.
+
+Goliath seated at the table, was smiles all over, in fact, he was one
+massive good humoured smile, geniality personified.
+
+"Anything fresh from the seat of war?" he asked, as he waited for the
+soup.
+
+"According to the latest reports," Pryor answered, "we've gained an
+inch in the Dardanelles and captured three trenches in Flanders. We
+were forced to evacuate two of these afterwards."
+
+"We miscalculated the enemy's strength, of course," said Mervin.
+
+"That's it," Pryor cut in. "But the trenches we lost were of no
+strategic importance."
+
+"They never are," said Kore. "I suppose that's why we lose thousands
+to take 'em, and the enemy lose as many to regain them."
+
+"Soup, gentlemen," Stoner interrupted, bringing a steaming tureen to
+the table. "Help yourselves."
+
+"Mulligatawny?" said Pryor sipping the stuff which he had emptied into
+his mess-tin, "I don't like this."
+
+[Illustration: Menu of the dug-out banquet] (p. 123)
+
+"Wot," muttered Bill, "wot's wrong with it?" (p. 124)
+
+"As soup its above reproach, but the name," said Pryor. "It's beastly."
+
+"Wot's wrong with it?"
+
+"Everything," said the artistic youth, "and besides I was fed as a
+child on mulligatawny, fed on it until I grew up and revolted. To meet
+it again here in a dug-out. Oh! ye gods!"
+
+"I'll take it," I said, for I had already finished mine.
+
+"Will you?" exclaimed Pryor, employing his spoon with Gargantuan zeal.
+"It's not quite etiquette."
+
+As he spoke a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of
+condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went
+right through and the milk oozed out and fell on the table.
+
+"Waiter," said Goliath in a sharp voice, fixing one eye on the cook,
+and another on the falling milk.
+
+"Sir," answered Stoner, raising his head from his mess-tin.
+
+"What beastly stuff is this trickling down? You shouldn't allow this
+you know."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Stoner, "you'd better lick it up."
+
+"'Ad 'e," cried Bill. "Wot will we do for tea?" The Cockney held (p. 125)
+a spare mess-tin under the milk and caught it as it fell. This was
+considered very unseemly behaviour for a gentleman, and we suggested
+that he should go and feed in the servants' kitchen.
+
+A stew, made of beef, carrots, and potatoes came next, and this in
+turn was followed by an omelette. Then followed a small portion of
+beef to each man, we called this chicken in our glorious game of
+make-believe. Kore asserted that he had caught the chicken singing
+_The Watch on the Rhine_ on the top of a neighbouring chateau and took
+it as lawful booty of war.
+
+"Chicken, my big toe!" muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a
+tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of
+the bloomin' weathercock."
+
+The confiture was Stoner's greatest feat. The sweet was made from
+biscuits ground to powder, boiled and then mixed with jam. Never was
+anything like it. We lingered over the dish loud in our praise of the
+energetic Stoner. "By God, I'll give you a job as head-cook in my
+establishment at your own salary," said Pryor. "Strike me ginger,
+pink, and crimson if ever I ate anything like it," exclaimed Bill. (p. 126)
+"We must 'ave a bit of this at every meal from now till the end of the
+war."
+
+Coffee, wine, and cigars came in due course, then Section 3 clamoured
+for an address.
+
+"Ool give it?" asked Bill.
+
+"Pat," said Mervin.
+
+"Come on Pat," chorused Section 3.
+
+I never made a speech in my life, but I felt that this was the moment
+to do something. I got to my feet.
+
+"Boys," I said, "it is a pleasure to rise and address you, although
+you haven't shaved for days, and your faces remind me every time I
+look at them of our rather sooty mess-tins."
+
+(Bill: "Wot of yer own phiz.")
+
+"Be quiet, Bill," I said, and continued. "Of course, none of you are
+to blame for the adhesive qualities of mud, it must stick somewhere,
+and doubtless it preferred your faces; but you should have shaved; the
+two hairs on Pryor's upper lip are becoming very prominent."
+
+"Under a microscope," said Mervin.
+
+"Hold your tongue," I shouted, and Mervin made a mock apology. "To-night's
+dinner was a grand success," I said, "all did their work (p. 127)
+admirably."
+
+"All but you," muttered Bill, "yer spent 'arf the time writin' when
+yer should have been peelin' taters or pullin' onions."
+
+"I resent the imputation of the gentleman at the rear," I said, "if I
+wasn't peeling potatoes and grinding biscuits I was engaged in
+chronicling the doings of Section 3. I can't make you fat and famous
+at the same time, much though I'd like to do both. You are an
+estimable body of men; Goliath, the big elephant--
+
+(Goliath: "Just a baby elephant, Pat.")
+
+"Mervin, who has travelled far and who loves bully stew; Pryor who
+dislikes girls with thick ankles, Kore who makes wash-out puns, Bill
+who has an insatiable desire for fresh eggs, and Stoner--I see a blush
+on his cheeks and a sparkle in his brown eyes already--I repeat the
+name Stoner with reverence. I look on the mess-tins which held the
+confiture and almost weep--because it's all eaten. There's only one
+thing to be done. Gentlemen, are your glasses charged?"
+
+"There's nothin' now but water," said Bill.
+
+"Water shame," remarked the punster.
+
+"Hold your tongues," I said, "fill them with water, fill them with (p. 128)
+anything. Ready? To the Section cook, Stoner, long life and ability to
+cook our sweets evermore."
+
+We drank. Just as we had finished, our company stretcher-bearers came
+by the door, a pre-occupied look on their faces and dark clots of
+blood on their trousers and tunics.
+
+"What has happened?" I asked.
+
+"The cooks have copped it," one of the bearers answered. "They were
+cooking grub in a shed at the rear near Dead Cow Villa, and a
+pip-squeak came plunk into the place. The head cook copped it in the
+legs, both were broken, and Erney, you know Erney?"
+
+"Yes?" we chorused.
+
+"Dead," said the stretcher-bearer. "Poor fellow he was struck unconscious.
+We carried him to the dressing station, and he came to at the door.
+'Mother!' he said, trying to sit up on the stretcher. That was his
+last word. He fell back and died."
+
+There was a long silence. The glory of the flowers seemed to have faded
+away and the lighted cigars went out on the table. Dead! Poor fellow.
+He was such a clean, hearty boy, very obliging and kind. How often had
+he given me hot water, contrary to regulations, to pour on my tea. (p. 129)
+
+"To think of it," said Stoner. "It might have been any of us! We must
+put these flowers on his grave."
+
+That night we took the little vase with its poppies, cornflowers,
+pinks, and roses, and placed them on the black, cold earth which
+covered Erney, the clean-limbed, good-hearted boy. May he rest in
+peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X (p. 130)
+
+A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE
+
+ Our old battalion billets still,
+ Parades as usual go on.
+ We buckle in with right good will,
+ And daily our equipment don
+ As if we meant to fight, but no!
+ The guns are booming through the air,
+ The trenches call us on, but oh!
+ We don't go there, we don't go there!
+
+
+I have come to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that
+blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in
+pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There
+is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The
+road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of what
+appears to the unit as loitering by the wayside. We longed for action,
+for some adventure with which to relieve the period of "everlastin'
+waitin'."
+
+Nine o'clock was striking in the room downstairs and the old man and
+woman who live in the house were pottering about, locking doors, and
+putting the place into order. Lying on the straw in the loft we (p. 131)
+could hear them moving chairs and washing dishes; they have seven sons
+in the army, two are wounded and one is a prisoner in Germany. They
+are very old and are unable to do much hard work; all day long they
+listen to the sound of the guns "out there." In the evening they wash
+the dishes, the man helping the woman, and at night lock the doors and
+say a prayer for their sons. Now and again they speak of their troubles
+and narrate stories of the war and the time when the Prussians passed
+by their door on the journey to Paris. "But they'll never pass here
+again," the old man says, smoking the pipe of tobacco which our boys
+have given him. "They'll get smashed out there." As he speaks he
+points with a long lean finger towards the firing line, and lifts his
+stick to his shoulder in imitation of a man firing a rifle.
+
+Ten o'clock struck. We were deep in our straw and lights had been out
+for a long time. I couldn't sleep, and as I lay awake I could hear
+corpulent Z---- snoring in the corner. Outside a wind was whistling
+mournfully and sweeping through the joists of the roof where the red
+tiles had been shattered by shrapnel. There was something (p. 132)
+melancholy and superbly grand in the night; the heaven was splashed
+with stars, and the glow of rockets from the firing line lit up the
+whole scene, and at intervals blotted out the lights of the sky. Here
+in the loft all was so peaceful, so quiet; the pair downstairs had
+gone to bed, they were now perhaps asleep and dreaming of their loved
+ones. But I could not rest; I longed to get up again and go out into
+the night.
+
+Suddenly a hand tugged at my blanket, a form rose from the floor by my
+side and a face peered into mine.
+
+"It's me--Bill," a low voice whispered in my ear.
+
+"Well?" I interrogated, raising myself on my elbow.
+
+"Not sleepin'?" mumbled Bill, lighting a cigarette as he flopped down
+on my blanket, half crushing my toes as he did so. "I'm not sleeping
+neither," he continued. "Did you see the wild ducks to-day?"
+
+"On the marshes? Yes."
+
+"Could we pot one?"
+
+"Rubbish. We might as well shoot at the stars."
+
+"I never tried that game," said Bill, with mock seriousness. "But (p. 133)
+I'm goin' to nab a duck. Strike me balmy if I ain't."
+
+"It'll be the guard-room if we're caught."
+
+"If _we_ are caught. Then you're comin'? I thought you'd be game."
+
+I slipped into my boots, tied on my puttees, slung a bandolier with
+ten rounds of ball cartridge over my shoulder, and groped for my rifle
+on the rack beneath the shrapnel-shivered joists. Bill and I crept
+downstairs and stole out into the open.
+
+"Gawd! that puts the cawbwebs out of one's froat," whispered my mate
+as he gulped down mighty mouthfuls of cold night air. "This is great.
+I couldn't sleep."
+
+"But we'll never hit a duck to-night," I whispered, my mind reverting
+to the white-breasted fowl which we had seen in an adjoining marsh
+that morning when coming back from the firing line. "Its madness to
+dream of hitting one with a bullet."
+
+"Maybe yes and maybe no," said my mate, stumbling across the midden
+and floundering into the field on the other side.
+
+We came to the edge of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of
+us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and
+osier beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising a (p. 134)
+plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the
+osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton
+of a house stood up naked against the sky, the cold stars shining
+through its shattered rafters. "'Twas shelled like 'ell, that 'ouse,"
+whispered Bill, leaning on his rifle and fixing his eyes on the ruined
+homestead. "The old man at our billet was tellin' some of us about it.
+The first shell went plunk through the roof and two children and the
+mother were bowled over."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"I should say so," mumbled my mate; then, "There's one comin' our
+way." Out over the line of trenches it sped towards us, whistling in
+its flight, and we could almost trace by its sound the line it
+followed in the air. It fell on the pool in front, bursting as it
+touched the water, and we were drenched with spray.
+
+"'Urt?" asked Bill.
+
+"Just wet a little."
+
+"A little!" he exclaimed, gazing at the spot where the shell exploded.
+"I'm soaked to the pelt. Damn it, 'twill frighten the ducks."
+
+"Have you ever shot any living thing?" I asked my mate as I tried (p. 135)
+to wipe the water from my face with the sleeve of my coat.
+
+"Me! Never in my nat'ral," Bill explained. "But when I saw them ducks
+this mornin' I thought I'd like to pot one o' em."
+
+"Its impossible to see anything now," I told him. "And there's another
+shell!"
+
+It yelled over our heads and burst near our billet on the soft mossy
+field which we had just crossed. Another followed, flew over the roof
+of the dwelling and shattered the wall of an outhouse to pieces.
+Somewhere near a dog barked loudly when the echo of the explosion died
+away, and a steed neighed in the horse-lines on the other side of the
+marsh. Then, drowning all other noises, an English gun spoke and a
+projectile wheeled through the air and towards the enemy. The monster
+of the thicket awake from a twelve hour sleep was speaking. Bill and I
+knew where he was hidden; the great gun that the enemy had been trying
+to locate for months and which he never discovered. He, the monster of
+the thicket, was working havoc in the foeman's trenches, and day after
+day great searching shells sped up past our billet warm from the
+German guns, but always they went far wide of their mark. Never could
+they discover the locality of the terrifying ninety-pounder, he (p. 136)
+who slept all day in his thicket home, awoke at midnight and worked
+until dawn.
+
+"That's some shootin'," said my mate as the shells shrieked overhead.
+"Blimey, they'll shake the country to pieces--and scare the ducks."
+
+Along a road made of bound sapling-bundles we took our way into the
+centre of the marsh. Here all was quiet and sombre; the marsh-world
+seemed to be lamenting over some ancient wrong. At times a rat would
+sneak out of the grass, slink across our path and disappear in the
+water, again; a lonely bird would rise into the air and cry piteously
+as it flew away, and ever, loud and insistent, threatening and
+terrible, the shells would fly over our heads, yelling out their
+menace of pain, of sorrow and death as they flew along.
+
+We killed no birds, we saw none, although we stopped out till the
+colour of dawn splashed the sky with streaks of early light. As we
+went in by the door of our billet the monster of the thicket was still
+at work, although no answering shells sped up from the enemy's lines.
+Up in the loft Z---- was snoring loudly as he lay asleep on the straw,
+the blanket tight round his body, his jaw hanging loosely, and (p. 137)
+an unlighted pipe on the floor by his side. Placing our rifles on the
+rack, Bill and I took off our bandoliers and lay down on our blankets.
+Presently we were asleep.
+
+That was how Bill and I shot wild duck in the marshes near the village
+of--Somewhere in France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI (p. 138)
+
+THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY
+
+ There's a tramp o' feet in the mornin',
+ There's an oath from an N.C.O.,
+ As up the road to the trenches
+ The brown battalions go:
+ Guns and rifles and waggons,
+ Transports and horses and men,
+ Up with the flush of the dawnin',
+ And back with the night again.
+
+
+Sometimes when our spell in the trenches comes to an end we go back
+for a rest in some village or town. Here the _estaminet_ or _débitant_
+(French as far as I am aware for a beer shop), is open to the British
+soldier for three hours daily, from twelve to one and from six to
+eight o'clock. For some strange reason we often find ourselves busy on
+parade at these hours, and when not on parade we generally find
+ourselves without money. I have been here for four months; looking at
+my pay book I find that I've been paid 25 fr. (or in plain English,
+one pound) since I have come to France, a country where the weather
+grows hotter daily, where the water is seldom drinkable, and where (p. 139)
+wine and beer is so cheap. Once we were paid five francs at five o'clock
+in the afternoon after five penniless days of rest in a village, and
+ordered as we were paid, to pack up our all and get ready to set off
+at six o'clock for the trenches. From noon we had been playing cards,
+and some of the boys gambled all their pay in advance and lost it.
+Bill's five francs had to be distributed amongst several members of
+the platoon.
+
+"It's only five francs, anyway," he said. "Wot matter whether I spend
+it on cards, wine, or women. I don't care for soldierin' as a
+profession?"
+
+"What is your profession, Bill?" Pryor asked; we never really knew
+what Bill's civil occupation was, he seemed to know a little of many
+crafts, but was master of none.
+
+"I've been everything," he replied, employing his little finger in the
+removal of cigarette ash. "My ole man apprenticed me to a marker of
+'ot cross buns, but I 'ad a 'abit of makin' the long end of the cross
+on the short side, an' got chucked out. Then I learned 'ow to jump
+through tin plates in order to make them nutmeg graters, but left that
+job after sticking plump in the middle of a plate. I had to stop (p. 140)
+there for three days without food or drink. They were thinnin' me out,
+see! Then I was a draughts manager at a bank, and shut the ventilators;
+after that I was an electric mechanic; I switched the lights on and
+off at night and mornin'; now I'm a professional gambler, I lose all
+my tin."
+
+"You're also a soldier," I said.
+
+"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and
+knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."
+
+We did not leave the village until eight o'clock. It was now very dark
+and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed
+up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells and the long
+tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks
+afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even
+through the haze, star-shells showed brilliant in their many different
+colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a beautiful
+light which bursts into four different flames that burn standing high
+in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute star, holds the sky
+for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote sisters from the
+heavens. The English and the Germans are content to fling rockets (p. 141)
+across and observe one another's lines while these flare out their
+brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about five miles away; the
+starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so
+deceptive are they.
+
+Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
+heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming
+down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less
+serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to
+hospital--those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally
+walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with
+rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was
+impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.
+
+"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was
+smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.
+
+"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"
+
+"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin'!"
+
+"Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
+"Got bombed out and were sent back."
+
+"Lucky dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)." (p. 142)
+
+"'Ad two killed and seven wounded."
+
+"Blimey!"
+
+"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness
+swallowed up the working party.
+
+The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we
+turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to
+the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats
+had been given up a week before.
+
+The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each
+successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle butts
+and dripping to the roadway. Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in
+Kore's. We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is
+lullaby in the monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed
+boots on gravel.
+
+We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered
+bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way
+across a wide field. The field was under water in the wet season, and
+a brick pathway had been built across it. Along this path we took our
+way. A strong breeze had risen and was swishing our waterproofs (p. 143)
+about our bodies; the darkness was intense, I had to strain my eyes to
+see the man in front, Stoner. In the darkness he was a nebulous dark
+bulk that sprang into bold relief when the starlights flared in front.
+When the flare died out we stumbled forward into pitch dark nothingness.
+The pathway was barely two feet across, a mere tight-rope in the wide
+waste, and on either side nothing stood out to give relief to the
+desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low, shapeless and gloomy,
+behind was the darkness, in front when the starlights made the
+darkness visible they only increased the sense of solitude.
+
+We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out
+like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or
+woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner
+fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. Sometimes we fell
+singly, again in pairs, often we fell together a heap of rifles,
+khaki, and waterproof capes. We rose grumbling, spitting mud and
+laughing. Stoner was very unfortunate, a particle of dirt got into his
+eye almost blinding him. Afterwards he crawled along, now and again
+getting to his feet, merely to fall back into his earthy position. (p. 144)
+A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets whizzed past our
+ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching bullets.
+
+"Anybody hurt?"
+
+"No, all right so far."
+
+"Stoner's down."
+
+"He's up again."
+
+"Blimey, it's a balmy."
+
+"Mervin's crawling on his hands and knees."
+
+"Nark the doin's, ye're on my waterproof. Let go!"
+
+"Goliath's down."
+
+"Are you struck, Goliath?"
+
+"No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the
+flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he
+had been scratched as he stumbled.
+
+We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light Infantry.
+The place was very quiet, they assured us, it is always the same. It
+has become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion that it is
+taking over a cushy position. By this trench next morning we found six
+newly made graves, telling how six Highlanders had met their death,
+killed in action.
+
+Next morning as I was looking through a periscope at the enemy's (p. 145)
+trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their sandbag line,
+a man from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the trench with
+creosote and chloride of lime.
+
+"Seein' anything?" he asked.
+
+"Not much," I answered, "the grass is so high in front that I can see
+nothing but the tips of the enemy's parapets. There's some work for
+you here," I said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Under your feet," I told him. "The floor is soft as putty and smells
+vilely. Perhaps there is a dead man there. Last night I slept by the
+spot and it turned me sick."
+
+"Have you an entrenchin' tool?"
+
+I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently
+unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to
+view, then a second; fifteen minutes assiduous labour revealed an
+evil-smelling bundle of clothing and decaying flesh. I still remained
+an onlooker, but changed my position on the banquette.
+
+"He must have been dead a long time," said the sanitary man, as he (p. 146)
+flung handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."
+
+He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky. The features
+were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day
+before. The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point,
+the lips were drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like
+and vicious; the eyes were open and raised towards the forehead, and
+the whole face was splashed with clotted blood. A wound could be seen
+on the left temple, the fatal bullet had gone through there.
+
+"He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the
+gloves on the dead soldier's hands. "These trenches were the
+'Allemands' then, and the boys charged 'em. I suppose this feller
+copped a packet and dropped into the mud and was tramped down."
+
+"Who is he?" I asked.
+
+The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the
+dead man and brought out an identity disc.
+
+"Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers." "What's this?" he asked, taking
+a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from
+the dead man's neck.
+
+"It's his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a (p. 147)
+barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass,
+with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of
+the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little
+boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather
+in blossom, the turf stacks, the laughing colleens....
+
+"Here's a letter," said the sanitary man, "it was posted last
+Christmas. It's from a girl, too."
+
+He commenced reading:--
+
+"My dear Patrick,--I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my
+lone the day I was always reading it. I wish the black war was over
+and you back again--we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself
+wishes it as well; I was up at your house last night; there's not much
+fun in it now. I read the papers to your mother, and me and her was
+looking at a map. But we didn't know where you were so we could only
+make guesses. Your mother and me is making the Rounds of the Cross for
+you, and I am always thinking of you in my prayers. You'll be having
+the parcel I sent before you get this letter. I hope it's not broken
+or lost. The socks I sent were knitted by myself, three pairs of (p. 148)
+them, and I've put the holy water on them. Don't forget to put them on
+when your feet get wet, at home you never used to bother about
+anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry. But you'll
+take care of yourself now, won't you: and not get killed? It'll be a
+grand day when you come back, and God send the day to come soon! Send
+a letter as often as you can, I myself will write you one every day,
+and I'll pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."
+
+We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms
+of the cross which was erected over him. On the following day one of
+our men went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some
+flowers on it he got shot through the head. That evening he was buried
+beside the Munster Fusilier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII (p. 149)
+
+THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP
+
+ A brazier fire at twilight,
+ And glow-worm fires ashine,
+ A searchlight sweeping heaven,
+ Above the firing-line.
+ The rifle bullet whistles
+ The message that it brings
+ Of death and desolation
+ To common folk and kings.
+
+
+We went back from the trenches as reserves to the Keep. Broken down
+though the place was when we entered it there was something restful in
+the brown bricks, hidden in ivy, in the well-paved yard, and the
+glorious riot of flowers. Most of the original furniture remained--the
+beds, the chairs, and the pictures. All were delighted with the place,
+Mervin particularly. "I'll make my country residence here after the
+war," he said.
+
+On the left was a church. Contrary to orders I spent an hour in the
+dusk of the first evening in the ruined pile. The place had been
+shelled for seven months, not a day had passed when it was not (p. 150)
+struck in some part. The sacristy was a jumble of prayer books,
+vestments, broken rosaries, crucifixes, and pictures. An ink pot and
+pen lay on a broken table beside a blotting pad. A lamp which once
+hung from the roof was beside them, smashed to atoms. In the church
+the altar railing was twisted into shapeless bars of iron, bricks
+littered the altar steps, the altar itself even, and bricks, tiles,
+and beams were piled high in the body of the church.
+
+Outside in the graveyard the graves lay open and the bones of the dead
+were scattered broadcast over the green grass. Crosses were smashed or
+wrenched out of the ground and flung to earth; near the Keep was the
+soldiers' cemetery, the resting place of French, English, Indian, and
+German soldiers. Many of the French had bottles of holy water placed
+on their graves under the crosses. The English epitaphs were short and
+concise, always the same in manner: "Private 999 J. Smith, 26th London
+Battalion, killed in action 1st March, 1915." And under it stamped on
+a bronze plate was the information, "Erected by the Mobile Unit
+(B.R.C.S.) to preserve the record found on the spot." Often the dead
+man's regiment left a token of remembrance, a bunch of flowers, the
+dead man's cap or bayonet and rifle (these two latter only if (p. 151)
+they had been badly damaged when the man died). Many crosses had been
+taken from the churchyard and placed over these men. One of them read,
+"A notre dévote fille," and another, "To my beloved mother."
+
+Several Indians, men of the Bengal Mountain Battery, were buried here.
+A woman it was stated, had disclosed their location to the enemy, and
+the billet in which they were staying was struck fair by a high
+explosive shell. Thirty-one were killed. They were now at
+rest--Anaytullah, Lakhasingh, and other strange men with queer names
+under the crosses fashioned from biscuit boxes. On the back of
+Anaytullah's cross was the wording in black: "Biscuits, 50 lbs."
+
+Thus the environment of the Keep: the enemy's trenches were about
+eight hundred yards away. No fighting took place here, the men's
+rifles stood loaded, but no shot was fired; only when the front line
+was broken, if that ever took place, would the defenders of the Keep
+come into play and hold the enemy back as long as that were possible.
+Then when they could no longer hold out, when the foe pressed in (p. 152)
+on all sides, there was something still to do, something vitally
+important which would cost the enemy many lives, and, if a miracle did
+not happen, something which would wipe out the defenders for ever.
+This was the Keep.
+
+The evening was very quiet; a few shells flew wide overhead, and now
+and again stray bullets pattered against the masonry. We cooked our
+food in the yard, and, sitting down amidst the flowers, we drank our
+tea and ate our bread and jam. The first flies were busy, they flew
+amidst the flower-beds and settled on our jam. Mervin told a story of
+a country where he had been in, and where the flies were legion and
+ate the eyes out of horses. The natives there wore corks hung by
+strings from their caps, and these kept the flies away.
+
+"How?" asked Bill.
+
+"The corks kept swinging backwards and forwards as the men walked,"
+said Mervin. "Whenever a cork struck a fly it dashed the insect's
+brains out."
+
+"Blimey!" cried Bill, then asked, "What was the most wonderful thing
+you ever seen, Mervin?"
+
+"The most wonderful thing," repeated Mervin. "Oh, I'll tell you. It
+was the way they buried the dead out in Klondike. The snow lies (p. 153)
+there for six months and it's impossible to dig, so when a man died
+they sharpened his toes and drove him into the earth with a mallet."
+
+"I saw a more wonderful thing than that, and it was when we lay in the
+barn at Richebourg," said Bill, who was referring to a comfortless
+billet and a cold night which were ours a month earlier. "I woke up
+about midnight 'arf asleep. I 'ad my boots off and I couldn't 'ardly
+feel them I was so cold. 'Blimey!' I said, 'on goes my understandin's,
+and I 'ad a devil of a job lacing my boots up. When I thought I 'ad
+them on I could 'ear someone stirrin' on the left. It was my cotmate.
+'Wot's yer gime?' he says. 'Wot gime?' I asks. 'Yer foolin' about
+with my tootsies,' he says. Then after a minute 'e shouts, 'Damn it
+ye've put on my boots,' So I 'ad, put on his blessed boots and laced
+them mistaking 'is feet for my own."
+
+"We never heard of this before," I said.
+
+"No, cos 'twas ole Jersey as was lying aside me that night, next day
+'e was almost done in with the bomb."
+
+"It's jolly quiet here," said Goliath, sitting back in an armchair and
+lighting a cigarette. "This will be a jolly holiday."
+
+"I heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place was (p. 154)
+hot," Stoner remarked. "The Irish Guards were here, and they said they
+preferred the trenches to the Keep."
+
+"It will be a poor country house," said Mervin, "if it's going to be
+as bad as you say."
+
+On the following evening I was standing guard in a niche in the
+building. Darkness was falling and the shadows sat at the base of the
+walls east of the courtyard. My niche looked out on the road, along
+which the wounded are carried from the trenches by night and sometimes
+by day. The way is by no means safe. As I stood there four men came
+down the road carrying a limp form on a stretcher. A waterproof
+ground-sheet lay over the wounded soldier, his head was uncovered, and
+it wobbled from side to side, a streak of blood ran down his face and
+formed into clots on the ear and chin. There was something uncannily
+helpless in the soldier, his shaking head, his boots caked brown with
+mud, the heels close together, the toes pointing upwards and outwards
+and swaying a little. Every quiver of the body betokened abject
+helplessness. The limp, swaying figure, clinging weakly to life, was a
+pathetic sight.
+
+The bearers walked slowly, carefully, stepping over every (p. 155)
+shell-hole and stone on the road. The sweat rolled down their faces
+and arms, their coats were off and their shirt sleeves rolled up
+almost to the shoulders. Down the road towards the village they
+pursued their sober way, and my eyes followed them. Suddenly they came
+to a pause, lowered the stretcher to the ground, and two of them bent
+over the prostrate form. I could see them feel the soldier's pulse,
+open his tunic, and listen for the beating of the man's heart, when
+they raised the stretcher again there was something cruelly careless
+in the action, they brought it up with a jolt and set off hurriedly,
+stumbling over shell-hole and boulder. There was no doubt the man was
+dead now; it was unwise to delay on the road, and the soldiers'
+cemetery was in the village.
+
+In the evening we stood to arms in the Keep; all our men were now out
+in the open, and the officers were inspecting their rifles barely four
+yards away from me. At that moment I saw the moon, a crescent of pale
+smoke standing on end near the West. I felt in my pocket for money,
+but found I had none to turn.
+
+"Have you a ha'penny?" I asked Mervin who was passing.
+
+"What for?" (p. 156)
+
+"I want to turn it, you know the old custom."
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Mervin, handing me a coin. "Long ago I used to
+turn my money, but I found the oftener I saw the moon the less I had
+to turn. However, I'll try it again for luck." So saying he turned a
+penny.
+
+"Do any of you fellows know Marie Redoubt?" an officer asked at that
+moment.
+
+"I know the place," said Mervin, "it's just behind the Keep."
+
+"Will you lead me to the place?" said the officer.
+
+"Right," said Mervin, and the two men went off.
+
+They had just gone when a shell hit the building on my left barely
+three yards away from my head. The explosion almost deafened me, a
+pain shot through my ears and eyes, and a shower of fine lime and
+crumpled bricks whizzed by my face. My first thought was, "Why did I
+not put my hands over my eyes, I might have been struck blind." I had
+a clear view of the scene in front, my mates were rushing hither and
+thither in a shower of white flying lime; I could see dark forms
+falling, clambering to their feet and falling again. One figure
+detached itself from the rest and came rushing towards me, by my (p. 157)
+side it tripped and fell, then rose again. I could now see it was
+Stoner. He put his hands up as if in protest, looked at me vacantly,
+and rushed round the corner of the building. I followed him and found
+him once more on the ground.
+
+"Much hurt?" I asked, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, rising slowly, "I got it there," he raised a
+finger to his face which was bleeding, "and there," he put his hand
+across his chest.
+
+"Well, get into the dug-out," I said, and we hurried round the front
+of the building. A pile of fallen masonry lay there and half a dozen
+rifles, all the men were gone. We found them in the dug-out, a hole
+under the floor heavily beamed, and strong enough to withstand a fair
+sized shell. One or two were unconscious and all were bleeding more or
+less severely. I found I was the only person who was not struck.
+Goliath and Bill got little particles of grit in the face, and they
+looked black as chimney sweeps. Bill was cut across the hand, Kore's
+arm was bleeding.
+
+"Where's Mervin?"
+
+"He had just gone out," I said, "I was speaking to him, he went (p. 158)
+with Lieut. ---- to Marie Redoubt."
+
+I suddenly recollected that I should not have left my place outside,
+so I went into my niche again. Had Mervin got clear, I wondered? The
+courtyard was deserted, and it was rapidly growing darker, a drizzle
+had begun, and the wet ran down my rifle.
+
+"Any word of Mervin?" I called to Stoner when he came out from the
+dug-out, and moved cautiously across the yard. There was a certain
+unsteadiness in his gait, but he was regaining his nerve; he had
+really been more surprised than hurt. He disappeared without answering
+my question, probably he had not heard me.
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double."
+
+The cry, that call of broken life which I have so often heard,
+faltered across the yard. From somewhere two men rushed out carrying a
+stretcher, and hurried off in the direction taken by Stoner. Who had
+been struck? Somebody had been wounded, maybe killed! Was it Mervin?
+
+Stoner came round the corner, a sad look in his brown eyes.
+
+"Mervin's copped it," he said, "in the head. It must have been (p. 159)
+that shell that done it; a splinter, perhaps."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He's gone away on the stretcher unconscious. The officer has been
+wounded as well in the leg, the neck, and the face."
+
+"Badly?"
+
+"No, he's able to speak."
+
+Fifteen minutes later I saw Mervin again. He was lying on the
+stretcher and the bearers were just going off to the dressing station
+with it. He was breathing heavily, round his head was a white bandage,
+and his hands stretched out stiffly by his sides. He was borne into
+the trench and carried round the first traverse. I never saw him
+again; he died two days later without regaining consciousness.
+
+On the following day two more men went: one got hit by a concussion
+shell that ripped his stomach open, another, who was on sentry-go got
+messed up in a bomb explosion that blew half of his side away. The
+charm of the courtyard, with the flower-beds and floral designs, died
+away; we were now pleased to keep indoors and allow the chairs outside
+to stand idle. All day long the enemy shelled us, most of the shells
+dropped outside and played havoc with the church; but the figure (p. 160)
+on the crucifix still remained, a symbol of something great and
+tragical, overlooking the area of destruction and death. Now and again
+a shell dropped on the flower-beds and scattered splinters and showers
+of earth against buildings and dug-outs. In the evening an orderly
+came to the Keep.
+
+"I want two volunteers," he said.
+
+"For what?" I asked him.
+
+"I don't know," was the answer, "they've got to report immediately to
+Headquarters."
+
+Stoner and I volunteered. The Headquarters, a large dug-out roofed
+with many sandbags piled high over heavy wooden beams, was situated on
+the fringe of the communication trench five hundred yards away from
+the Keep. We took up our post in an adjacent dug-out and waited for
+orders. Over our roof the German shells whizzed incessantly and tore
+up the brick path. Suddenly we heard a crash, an ear-splitting
+explosion from the fire line.
+
+"What's that?" asked Stoner. "Will it be a mine blown up?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," I ventured. "I wish they'd stop the shelling, suppose
+one of these shells hit our dug-out."
+
+"It would be all U.P. with us," said Stoner, trying to roll a (p. 161)
+cigarette and failing hopelessly. "Confound it," he said, "I'm all a
+bunch of nerves, I didn't sleep last night and very little the night
+before."
+
+His eyebrows were drawn tight together and wrinkles were forming
+between his eyes; the old sparkle was almost entirely gone from them.
+
+"Mervin," he said, "and the other two, the bloke with his side blown
+away. It's terrible."
+
+"Try and have a sleep," I said, "nobody seems to need us yet."
+
+He lay down on the empty sandbags which littered the floor, and
+presently he was asleep. I tried to read Montaigne, but could not, the
+words seemed to be running up and down over the page; the firing
+seemed to have doubled in intensity, and the shells swept low almost
+touching the roof of the dug-out.
+
+"Orderly!"
+
+I stumbled out into the open, and a sharp penetrating rain, and made
+my way to the Headquarters. The adjutant was inside at the telephone
+speaking to the firing line.
+
+"Hello! that the Irish?" he said. "Anything to report? The mine has done
+no damage? No, fifteen yards back, lucky! Only three casualties (p. 162)
+so far."
+
+The adjutant turned to an orderly officer: "The mine exploded fifteen
+yards in front, three wounded. Are you the orderly?" he asked, turning
+to me.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Find out where the sergeant-major is and ask him if to-morrow's
+rations have come in yet."
+
+"Where is the sergeant-major?" I asked.
+
+"I'm not sure where he stays," said the adjutant. "Enquire at the
+Keep."
+
+The trench was wet and slobbery, every hole was a pitfall to trap the
+unwary; boulders and sandbags which had fallen in waited to trip the
+careless foot. I met a party of soldiers, a corporal at their head.
+
+"This the way to the firing line?" he asked.
+
+"You're coming from it!" I told him.
+
+"That's done it!" he muttered. "We've gone astray, there's some fun up
+there!"
+
+"A mine blown up?" I asked.
+
+"'Twas a blow up," was the answer. "It almost deafened us, someone
+must have copped it. What's the way back?"
+
+"Go past Gunner Siding and Marie Redoubt, then touch left and (p. 163)
+you'll get through."
+
+"God! it's some rain," he said. "Ta, ta."
+
+"Ta, ta, old man."
+
+I turned into the trench leading to the Keep. The rain was pelting
+with a merciless vigour, and loose earth was falling from the sides to
+the floor of the trench. A star-light flared up and threw a brilliant
+light on the entrance of the Keep as I came up. The place bristled
+with brilliant steel, half a dozen men stood there with fixed
+bayonets, the water dripping from their caps on to their equipment.
+
+"Halt! who goes there!" Pryor yelled out, raising his bayonet to the
+"on guard" position.
+
+"A friend," I replied. "What's wrong here?"
+
+"Oh, it's Pat," Pryor answered. "Did you not hear it?" he continued,
+"the Germans have broken through and there'll be fun. The whole Keep
+is manned ready."
+
+"Is the pantomime parapet manned?" I asked. I alluded to the flat roof
+of the stable in which our Section slept. It had been damaged by shell
+fire, and was holed in several places, a sandbag parapet with (p. 164)
+loop-holes opened out on the enemy's front.
+
+"Kore, Bill, Goliath, they're all up there," said Pryor, "and the
+place is getting shelled too, in the last five minutes twenty shells
+have missed the place, just missed it."
+
+"Where does the sergeant-major stick?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know, not here I think."
+
+The courtyard was tense with excitement. Half a dozen new soldiers
+were called to take up posts on the parapet, and they were rushing to
+the crazy stairs which led to the roof. On their way they overturned a
+brazier and showers of fine sparks rioted into the air. By the flare
+it was possible to see the rain falling slanting to the ground in fine
+lines that glistened in the flickering light. Shells were bursting
+overhead, flashing out into spiteful red and white stars of flame, and
+hurling their bullets to the ground beneath. Shell splinters flew over
+the courtyard humming like bees and seeming to fall everywhere. What a
+miracle that anybody could escape them!
+
+I met our platoon sergeant at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"Where does the sergeant-major hold out?"
+
+"Down at Givenchy somewhere," he told me. "The Germans have broken (p. 165)
+through," he said. "It looks as if we're in for a rough night."
+
+"It will be interesting," I replied, "I haven't seen a German yet."
+
+Over the parapet a round head, black amidst a line of bayonets
+appeared, and a voice called down, "Sergeant!"
+
+"Right oh!" said the sergeant, and rushed upstairs. At that moment a
+shell struck a wall at the back somewhere, and pieces of brick whizzed
+into the courtyard and clattered down the stair. When the row subsided
+Kore was helped down, his face bleeding and an ugly gash showing above
+his left eye.
+
+"Much hurt, old man?" I asked.
+
+"Not a blighty, I'm afraid," he answered.
+
+A "blighty" is a much desired wound; one that sends a soldier back to
+England. A man with a "blighty" is a much envied person. Kore was
+followed by another fellow struck in the leg, and drawing himself
+wearily along. He assured us that he wasn't hurt much, but now and
+again he groaned with pain.
+
+"Get into the dug-outs," the sergeant told them. "In the morning you
+can go to the village, to-night it's too dangerous."
+
+About midnight I went out on the brick pathway, the way we had (p. 166)
+come up a few nights earlier. I should have taken Stoner with me, but
+he slept and I did not like to waken him. The enemy's shells were
+flying overhead, one following fast on another, all bursting in the
+brick path and the village. I could see the bright hard light of
+shrapnel shells exploding in the air, and the signal-red flash of
+concussion shells bursting ahead. Splinters flew back buzzing like
+angry bees about my ears. I would have given a lot to be back with
+Stoner in the dug-out; it was a good strong structure, shrapnel and
+bullet proof, only a concussion shell falling on top would work him
+any harm.
+
+The rain still fell and the moon--there was a bit of it somewhere--never
+showed itself through the close-packed clouds. For a while I struggled
+bravely to keep to the tight-rope path, but it was useless, I fell
+over first one side, then the other. Eventually I kept clear of it,
+and walked in the slush of the field. Half way along a newly dug
+trench, some three feet in depth, ran across my road; an attack was
+feared at dawn, and a first line of reserves were in occupation. I
+stumbled upon the men. They were sitting well down, their heads lower
+than the parapet, and all seemed to be smoking if I could form (p. 167)
+judgment by the line of little glow-worm fires, the lighted cigarette
+ends that extended out on either hand. Somebody was humming a music-hall
+song, while two or three of his mates helped him with the chorus.
+
+"Halt! who goes there?"
+
+The challenge was almost a whisper, and a bayonet slid out from the
+trench and paused irresolutely near my stomach.
+
+"A London Irish orderly going down to the village," I answered.
+
+A voice other than that which challenged me spoke: "Why are you alone,
+there should be two."
+
+"I wasn't aware of that."
+
+"Pass on," said the second voice, "and be careful, it's not altogether
+healthy about here."
+
+Somewhere in the proximity of the village I lost the brick path and
+could not find it again. For a full hour I wandered over the sodden
+fields under shell fire, discovering the village, a bulk of shadows
+thinning into a jagged line of chimneys against the black sky when the
+shells exploded, and losing it again when the darkness settled down
+around me. Eventually I stumbled across the road and breathed freely
+for a second.
+
+But the enemy's fire would not allow me a very long breathing (p. 168)
+space, it seemed bent on battering the village to pieces. In front of
+me ran a broken-down wall, behind it were a number of houses and not a
+light showing. The road was deserted.
+
+A shell exploded in mid-air straight above, and bullets sang down and
+shot into the ground round me. Following it came the casing splinters
+humming like bees, then a second explosion, the whizzing bullets and
+the bees, another explosion....
+
+"Come along and get out of it," I whispered to myself, and looked
+along the road; a little distance off I fancied I saw a block of
+buildings.
+
+"Run!"
+
+I ran, "stampeded!" is a better word, and presently found myself
+opposite an open door. I flung myself in, tripped, and went prostrate
+to the floor.
+
+Boom! I almost chuckled, thinking myself secure from the shells that
+burst overhead. It was only when the bees bounced on the floor that I
+looked up to discover that the house was roofless.
+
+I made certain that the next building had a roof before I entered. It
+also had a door, this I shoved open and found myself amongst a (p. 169)
+number of horses and warm penetrating odour of dung.
+
+"Now, 3008, you may smoke," I said, addressing myself, and drew out my
+cigarette case. My matches were quite dry; I lit one and was just
+putting it to my cigarette when one of the horses began prancing at
+the other end of the building. I just had a view of the animal coming
+towards me when the match went out and left me in the total darkness.
+I did not like the look of the horse, and I wished that it had been
+better bound when its master left it. It was coming nearer and now
+pawing the floor with its hoof. I edged closer to the door; if it were
+not for the shells I would go outside. Why was that horse allowed to
+remain loose in the stable? I tried to light another match, but it
+snapped in my fingers. The horse was very near me now; I could feel
+its presence, it made no noise, it seemed to be shod with velvet. The
+moment was tense, I shouted: "Whoa there, whoa!"
+
+It shot out its hind legs and a pair of hoofs clattered on the wall
+beside me.
+
+"Whoa, there! whoa there! confound you!" I growled, and was outside in
+a twinkling and into the arms of a transport sergeant.
+
+"What the devil--'oo are yer?" he blurted out. (p. 170)
+
+"Did you think I was a shell?" I couldn't help asking. "I'm sorry," I
+continued, "I came in here out of that beastly shelling."
+
+"Very wise," said the sergeant, getting quickly into the stable.
+
+"One of your horses is loose," I said. "Do you know where the London
+Irish is put up here?"
+
+"Down the road on the right," he told me, "you come to a large gate
+there on the left and you cross a garden. It's a big buildin'."
+
+"Thank you. Good night."
+
+"Good night, sonny."
+
+I went in by the wrong gate; there were so many on the left, and found
+myself in a dark spinney where the rain was dripping heavily from the
+branches of the trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the
+road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and
+a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with
+graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've
+done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or
+wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the air and caused (p. 171)
+a tickling sensation in my throat that almost choked me. When I
+scrambled to my feet again and found myself uninjured, a strange
+dexterity had entered my legs; I was outside the gate in the space of
+a second.
+
+Ten minutes later I found the sergeant-major, who rose from a blanket
+on the ground-floor of a pretentious villa with a shell splintered
+door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The rations had not arrived;
+they would probably be in by dawn. Had I seen the mine explode? I
+belonged to the company holding the Keep, did I not? The rumour about
+the Germans breaking through was a cock-and-bull story. Had I any
+cigarettes? Turkish! Not bad for a change. Good luck, sonny! Take care
+of yourself going back.
+
+I came in line with the rear trench on my way back.
+
+"Who's there?" came a voice from the line of little cigarette lights.
+
+"A London Irish orderly--going home!" I answered, and a laugh rewarded
+my ironical humour.
+
+"Jolly luck to be able to return home," I said to myself when I got
+past. "3008, you weren't very brave to-night. By Jove, you did (p. 172)
+hop into that roofless house and scamper out of that spinney! In fact,
+you did not shine as a soldier at all. You've not been particularly
+afraid of shell fire before, but to-night! Was it because you were
+alone you felt so very frightened? You've found out you've been posing
+a little before. Alone you're really a coward."
+
+I felt a strange delight in saying these things; the firing had
+ceased; it was still raining heavily.
+
+"Remember the bridge at Suicide Corner," I said, alluding to a recent
+incident when I had walked upright across a bridge, exposed to the
+enemy's rifle fire. My mates hurried across almost bent double whilst
+I sauntered slowly over in front of them. "You had somebody to look at
+you then; 'twas vanity that did it, but to-night! You were afraid,
+terribly funky. If there had been somebody to look on, you'd have been
+defiantly careless. It's rather nerve-racking to be shelled when
+you're out alone at midnight and nobody looking at you!"
+
+Dawn was breaking when I found myself at the Keep. The place in some
+manner fascinated me and I wanted to know what had happened there. (p. 173)
+I found that a few shells were still coming that way and most of the
+party were in their dug-outs. I peered down the one which was under my
+old sleeping place; at present all stayed in their dug-outs when off
+duty. They were ordered to do so, but none of the party were sleeping
+now, the night had been too exciting.
+
+"'Oo's there?" Bill called up out of the darkness, and when I spoke he
+muttered:
+
+"Oh, it's ole Pat! Where were yer?"
+
+"I've been out for a walk," I replied.
+
+"When that shellin' was goin' on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're a cool beggar, you are!" said Bill. "I was warm here I tell
+yer!"
+
+"Have the Germans come this way?" I asked.
+
+"Germans!" ejaculated Bill. "They come 'ere and me with ten rounds in
+the magazine and one in the breech! They knows better!"
+
+Stoner was awake when I returned to the dug-out by Headquarters.
+
+"Up already?" I asked.
+
+"Up! I've been up almost since you went away," he answered. "My! the
+shells didn't half fly over here. And I thought you'd never get (p. 174)
+back."
+
+"That's due to lack of imagination," I told him. "What's for
+breakfast?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII (p. 175)
+
+A NIGHT OF HORROR
+
+ 'Tis only a dream in the trenches,
+ Told when the shadows creep,
+ Over the friendly sandbags
+ When men in the dug-outs sleep.
+ This is the tale of the trenches
+ Told when the shadows fall,
+ By little Hughie of Dooran,
+ Over from Donegal.
+
+
+On the noon following the journey to the village I was sent back to
+the Keep; that night our company went into the firing trench again. We
+were all pleased to get there; any place was preferable to the block
+of buildings in which we had lost so many of our boys. On the night
+after our departure, two Engineers who were working at the Keep could
+not find sleeping place in the dug-outs, and they slept on the spot
+where I made my bed the first night I was there. In the early morning
+a shell struck the wall behind them and the poor fellows were blown to
+atoms.
+
+For three days we stayed in the trenches, narrow, suffocating and damp
+places, where parados and parapet almost touched and where it was (p. 176)
+well-nigh impossible for two men to pass. Food was not plentiful here,
+all the time we lived on bully beef and biscuits; our tea ran short
+and on the second day we had to drink water at our meals. From our
+banquette it was almost impossible to see the enemy's position; the
+growing grass well nigh hid their lines; occasionally by standing
+tiptoed on the banquette we could catch a glimpse of white sandbags
+looking for all the world like linen spread out to dry on the grass.
+But the Germans did not forget that we were near, pipsqueaks, rifle
+grenades, bombs and bullets came our way with aggravating persistence.
+It was believed that the Prussians, spiteful beggars that they are,
+occupied the position opposite. In these trenches the dug-outs were
+few and far between; we slept very little.
+
+On the second night I was standing sentry on the banquette. My watch
+extended from twelve to one, the hour when the air is raw and the
+smell of the battle line is penetrating. The night was pitch black; in
+ponds and stagnant streams in the vicinity frogs were chuckling. Their
+hoarse clucking could be heard all round; when the star-shells flew up
+I could catch vague glimpses of the enemy's sandbags and the line (p. 177)
+of tall shrapnel-swept trees which ran in front of his trenches. The
+sleep was heavy in my eyes; time and again I dozed off for a second
+only to wake up as a shell burst in front or swept by my head. It
+seemed impossible to remain awake, often I jumped down to the floor of
+the trench, raced along for a few yards, then back to the banquette
+and up to the post beside my bayonet.
+
+One moment of quiet and I dropped into a light sleep. I punched my
+hands against the sandbags until they bled; the whizz of the shells
+passed like ghosts above me; slumber sought me and strove to hold me
+captive. I had dreams; a village standing on a hill behind the
+opposite trench became peopled; it was summer and the work of haying
+and harvesting went on. The men went out to the meadows with
+long-handled scythes and mowed the grass down in great swathes. I
+walked along a lane leading to the field and stopped at the stile and
+looked in. A tall youth who seemed strangely familiar was mowing. The
+sweat streamed down his face and bare chest. His shirt was folded
+neatly back and his sleeves were thrust up almost to the shoulders.
+
+The work did not come easy to him; he always followed the first (p. 178)
+sweep of the scythe with a second which cropped the grass very close
+to the ground. For an expert mower the second stroke is unnecessary;
+the youngster had not learned to put a keen edge on the blade. I
+wanted to explain to him the best way to use the sharping stone, but I
+felt powerless to move: I could only remain at the stile looking on.
+Sometimes he raised his head and looked in my direction, but took no
+notice of me. Who was he? Where had I seen him before? I called out to
+him but he took no notice. I tried to change my position, succeeded
+and crossed the stile. When I came close to him, he spoke.
+
+"You were long in coming," he said, and I saw it was my brother, a
+youngster of eighteen.
+
+"I went to the well for a jug of water," I said, "But it's dry now and
+the three trout are dead at the bottom."
+
+"'Twas because we didn't put a cross of green rushes over it last
+Candlemas Eve," he remarked. "You should have made one then, but you
+didn't. Can you put an edge on the scythe?" he asked.
+
+"I used to be able before--before the--" I stopped feeling that I had
+forgotten some event.
+
+"I don't know why, but I feel strange," I said, "When did you come (p. 179)
+to this village?"
+
+"Village?"
+
+"That one up there." I looked in the direction where the village stood
+a moment before, but every red-brick house with its roof of
+terra-cotta tiles had vanished. I was gazing along my own glen in
+Donegal with its quiet fields, its sunny braes, steep hills and white
+lime-washed cottages, snug under their neat layers of straw.
+
+The white road ran, almost parallel with the sparkling river, through
+a wealth of emerald green bottom lands. How came I to be here? I
+turned to my brother to ask him something, but I could not speak.
+
+A funeral came along the road; four men carried a black coffin
+shoulder high; they seemed to be in great difficulties with their
+burden. They stumbled and almost fell at every step. A man carrying
+his coat and hat in one hand walked in front, and he seemed to be
+exhorting those who followed to quicken their pace. I sympathised with
+the man in front. Why did the men under the coffin walk so slowly? It
+was a ridiculous way to carry a coffin, on the shoulders. Why did they
+not use a stretcher? It would be the proper thing to do. I turned (p. 180)
+to my brother.
+
+"They should have stretchers, I told him."
+
+"Stretchers?"
+
+"And stretcher-bearers."
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double!" he snapped and vanished. I flashed
+back into reality again; the sentinel on the left was leaning towards
+me; I could see his face, white under the Balaclava helmet. There was
+impatience in his voice when he spoke.
+
+"Do you hear the message?" he called.
+
+"Right!" I answered and leant towards the man on my right. I could see
+his dark, round head, dimly outlined above the parapet.
+
+"Stretcher bearers at the double!" I called. "Pass it along."
+
+From mouth to mouth it went along the living wire; that ominous call
+which tells of broken life and the tragedy of war. Nothing is so poignant
+in the watches of the night as the call for stretcher-bearers; there
+is a thrill in the message swept from sentinel to sentinel along the
+line of sandbags, telling as it does, of some poor soul stricken down
+writhing in agony on the floor of the trenches.
+
+For a moment I remained awake; then phantoms rioted before my (p. 181)
+eyes; the trees out by the German lines became ghouls. They held
+their heads together in consultation and I knew they were plotting
+some evil towards me. What were they going to do? They moved, long,
+gaunt, crooked figures dressed in black, and approached me. I felt
+frightened but my fright was mixed with curiosity. Would they speak?
+What would they say? I knew I had wronged them in some way or another;
+when and how I did not remember. They came near. I could see they wore
+black masks over their faces and their figures grew in size almost
+reaching the stars. And as they grew, their width diminished; they
+became mere strands reaching form earth to heaven. I rubbed my eyes,
+to find myself gazing at the long, fine grasses that grew up from the
+reverse slope of the parapet.
+
+I leant back from the banquette across the narrow trench and rested my
+head on the parados. I could just rest for a moment, one moment then
+get up again. The ghouls took shape far out in front now, and careered
+along the top of the German trench, great gaunt shadows that raced as
+if pursued by a violent wind. Why did they run so quickly? Were they
+afraid of something? They ran in such a ridiculous way that I (p. 182)
+could not help laughing. They were making way, that was it. They had
+to make way. Why?
+
+"Make way!"
+
+Two stretcher-bearers stood on my right; in front of them a sergeant.
+
+"Make way, you're asleep," he said.
+
+"I'm not," I replied, coming to an erect position.
+
+"Well, you shouldn't remain like that, if you don't want to get your
+head blown off."
+
+My next sentry hour began at nine in the morning; I was standing on
+the banquette when I heard Bill speaking. He was just returning with a
+jar of water drawn from a pump at the rear, and he stopped for a
+moment in front of Spud Higgles, one of No. 4's boys.
+
+"Mornin'! How's yer hoppin' it?" said Spud.
+
+"Top over toe!" answered Bill. "Ow's you?"
+
+"Up to the pink. Any news?"
+
+"Yer 'aven't 'eard it?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The Brigadier's copped it this mornin'."
+
+"Oo?"
+
+"Our Brigadier." (p. 183)
+
+"Git!"
+
+"'S truth!"
+
+"Strike me pink!" said Spud. "'Ow?"
+
+"A stray bullet."
+
+"Stone me ginger! but one would say he'd a safe job."
+
+"The bullet 'ad 'is number!"
+
+"So, he's gone west!"
+
+"He's gone west!"
+
+Bill's information was quite true. Our Brigadier while making a tour
+of inspection of the trenches, turned to the orderly officer and said:
+"I believe I am hit, here." He put his hand on his left knee.
+
+His trousers were cut away but no wound was visible. An examination
+was made on his body and a little clot of blood was found over the
+groin on the right. A bullet had entered there and remained in the
+body. Twenty minutes later the Brigadier was dead.
+
+Rations were short for breakfast, dinner did not arrive, we had no tea
+but all the men were quite cheerful for it was rumoured that we were
+going back to our billets at four o'clock in the afternoon. About that
+hour we were relieved by another battalion, and we marched back (p. 184)
+through the communication trench, past Marie Redoubt, Gunner Siding,
+the Keep and into a trench that circled along the top of the Brick
+Path. This was not the way out; why had we come here? had the officer
+in front taken the wrong turning? Our billet there was such a musty
+old barn with straw littered on the floor and such a quaint old farmhouse
+where they sold newly laid eggs, fresh butter, fried potatoes, and
+delightful salad! We loved the place, the sleepy barges that glided
+along the canal where we loved to bathe, the children at play; the
+orange girls who sold fruit from large wicker baskets and begged our
+tunic buttons and hat-badges for souvenirs. We wanted so much to go
+back that evening! Why had they kept us waiting?
+
+"'Eard that?" Bill said to me. "Two London battalions are goin' to
+charge to-night. They're passing up the trench and we're in 'ere to
+let them get by."
+
+"About turn!"
+
+We stumbled back again into the communication trench and turned to the
+left, to go out we should have gone to the right. What was happening?
+Were we going back again? No dinner, no tea, no rations and sleepless
+nights.... The barn at our billet with the cobwebs on the rafters (p. 185)
+... the salad and soup.... We weren't going out that night.
+
+We halted in a deep narrow trench between Gunner Siding and Marie
+Redoubt, two hundred yards back from the firing trench. Our officer
+read out orders.
+
+"The ---- Brigade is going to make an attack on the enemy's position
+at 6.30 this evening. Our battalion is to take part in the attack by
+supporting with rifle fire."
+
+Two of our companies were in the firing line; one was in support and
+we were reserves; we had to remain in the trench packed up like
+herrings, and await further instructions. The enemy knew the
+communication trench; they had got the range months before and at one
+time the trench was occupied by them.
+
+We got into the trench at the time when the attack took place; our
+artillery was now silent and rapid rifle fire went on in front; a life
+and death struggle was in progress there. In our trench it was very
+quiet, we were packed tight as the queue at the gallery door of a
+cheap music-hall on a Saturday night.
+
+"Blimey, a balmy this!" said Bill making frantic efforts to squash my
+toes in his desire to find a fair resting place for his feet. (p. 186)
+"I'm 'ungry. Call this the best fed army in the world. Dog and maggot
+all the bloomin' time. I need all the hemery paper given to clean my
+bayonet, to sharpen my teeth to eat the stuff. How are we goin' to
+sleep this night, Pat?"
+
+"Standing."
+
+"Like a blurry 'oss. But Stoner's all right," said Bill. Stoner was
+all right; somebody had dug a little burrow at the base of the
+traverse and he was lying there already asleep.
+
+We stood in the trench till eight o'clock almost suffocated. It was
+impossible for the company to spread out, on the right we were
+touching the supports, on the left was a communication trench leading
+to the point of attack, and this was occupied by part of another
+battalion. We were hemmed in on all sides, a compressed company in
+full marching order with many extra rounds of ammunition and empty
+stomachs.
+
+I was telling a story to the boys, one that Pryor and Goliath gave
+credence to, but which the others refused to believe. It was a tale of
+two trench-mortars, squat little things that loiter about the firing
+line and look for all the world like toads ready to hop off. I came on
+two of these the night before, crept on them unawares and found (p. 187)
+them speaking to one another.
+
+"Nark it, Pat," muttered Bill lighting a cigarette. "Them talking. Git
+out!"
+
+"Of course you don't understand," I said. "The trench-mortar has a
+soul, a mind and great discrimination," I told him.
+
+"What's a bomb?" asked Bill.
+
+"'Tis the soul finding expression. Last night they were speaking, as I
+have said. They had a wonderful plan in hand. They decided to steal
+away and drink a bottle of wine in Givenchy."
+
+"Blimey!"
+
+"They did not know the way out and at that moment up comes Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran; in his sea-green bonnet, his salmon-pink coat,
+and buff tint breeches and silver shoon and mounted one of the
+howitzers and off they went as fast as the wind to the wineshop at
+Givenchy."
+
+"Oo's 'Ughie what dy'e call 'im of that place?"
+
+"He used to be a goat-herd in Donegal once upon a time when cows were
+kine and eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of giants."
+
+"Wot!"
+
+"I often met him there, going out to the pastures, with a herd of (p. 188)
+goats before him and a herd of goats behind him and a salmon tied to
+the laces of his brogues for supper."
+
+"I wish we 'ad somethin' for supper," said Bill.
+
+"Hold your tongue. He has lived for many thousands of years, has Wee
+Hughie Gallagher of Dooran," I said, "but he hasn't reached the first
+year of his old age yet. Long ago when there were kings galore in
+Ireland, he went out to push his fortune about the season of
+Michaelmas and the harvest moon. He came to Tirnan-Oge, the land of
+Perpetual Youth which is flowing with milk and honey."
+
+"I wish this trench was!"
+
+"Bill!"
+
+"But you're balmy, chum," said the Cockney, "'owitzers talkin' and
+then this feller. Ye're pullin' my leg."
+
+"I'm afraid you're not intellectual enough to understand the
+psychology of a trench-howitzer or the temperament of Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran, Bill."
+
+"'Ad 'e a finance?"[2]
+
+ [Footnote 2: Fiancée.]
+
+"A what?" I asked.
+
+"Wot Goliath 'as, a girl at home." (p. 189)
+
+"That's it, is it? Why do you think of such a thing?"
+
+"I was trying to write a letter to-day to St. Albans," said Bill, and
+his voice became low and confidential. "But you're no mate," he added.
+"You were goin' to make some poetry and I haven't got it yet."
+
+"What kind of poetry do you want me to make?" I asked.
+
+"Yer know it yerself, somethin' nice like!"
+
+"About the stars--"
+
+"Star-shells if you like."
+
+"Shall I begin now? We can write it out later."
+
+"Righto!"
+
+I plunged into impromptu verse.
+
+ I lie as still as a sandbag in my dug-out shrapnel proof,
+ My candle shines in the corner, and the shadows dance on the roof,
+ Far from the blood-stained trenches, and far from the scenes of war,
+ My thoughts go back to a maiden, my own little guiding star.
+
+"That's 'ot stuff," said Bill.
+
+I was on the point of starting a fresh verse when the low rumble of an
+approaching shell was heard; a messenger of death from a great German
+gun out at La Bassée. This gun was no stranger to us; he often (p. 190)
+played havoc with the Keep; it was he who blew in the wall a few nights
+before and killed the two Engineers. The missile he flung moved slowly
+and could not keep pace with its own sound. Five seconds before it
+arrived we could hear it coming, a slow, certain horror, sure of its
+mission and steady to its purpose. The big gun at La Bassée was
+shelling the communication trench, endeavouring to stop reinforcements
+from getting up to the firing lines and the red field between.
+
+The shell burst about fifty yards away and threw a shower of dirt over
+us. There was a precipitate flop, a falling backwards and forwards and
+all became messed up in an intricate jumble of flesh, equipment,
+clothing and rifles in the bottom of the trench. A swarm of "bees"
+buzzed overhead, a few dropped into the trench and Pryor who gripped
+one with his hand swore under his breath. The splinter was almost
+red-hot.
+
+The trench was voluble.
+
+"I'm chokin'; get off me tummy."
+
+"Your boot's on my face."
+
+"Nobody struck?"
+
+"Nobody." (p. 191)
+
+"Gawd! I hope they don't send many packets like that."
+
+"Spread out a little to the left," came the order from an officer.
+"When you hear a shell coming lie flat."
+
+We got to our feet, all except Stoner, who was still asleep in his
+lair, and changed our positions, our ears alert for the arrival of the
+next shell. The last bee had scarcely ceased to buzz when we heard the
+second projectile coming.
+
+"Another couple of steps. Hurry up. Down." Again we threw ourselves in
+a heap; the shell burst and again we were covered with dust and muck.
+
+"Move on a bit. Quicker! The next will be here in a minute," was the
+cry and we stumbled along the narrow alley hurriedly as if our lives
+depended on the very quickness. When we came to a halt there was only
+a space of two feet between each man. The trench was just wide enough
+for the body of one, and all set about to sort themselves in the best
+possible manner. A dozen shells now came our way in rapid succession.
+Some of the men went down on their knees and pressed their faces close
+to the ground like Moslems at prayer. They looked for all the (p. 192)
+world like Moslems, as the pictures show them, prostrate in prayer.
+The posture reminded me of stories told of ostriches, birds I have
+never seen, who bury their heads in the sand and consider themselves
+free from danger when the world is hidden from their eyes.
+
+Safety in that style did not appeal to me; I sat on the bottom of the
+trench, head erect. If a splinter struck me it would wound me in the
+shoulders or the arms or knees. I bent low so that I might protect my
+stomach; I had seen men struck in that part of the body, the wounds
+were ghastly and led to torturing deaths. When a shell came near, I
+put the balls of my hands over my eyes, spread my palms outwards and
+covered my ears with the fingers. This was some precaution against
+blindness; and deadened the sound of explosion. Bill for a moment was
+unmoved, he stood upright in a niche in the wall and made jokes.
+
+"If I kick the bucket," he said, "don't put a cross with ''E died for
+'is King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do,
+and on it scrawled in chalk, ''E died doin' fatigues on an empty
+stomach.'"
+
+"A cig.," he called, "'oo as a cig., a fag, a dottle. If yer can't (p. 193)
+give me a fag, light one and let me look at it burnin.' Give Tommy a
+fag an' 'e doesn't care wot 'appens. That was in the papers. Blimey!
+it puts me in mind of a dummy teat. Give it to the pore man's
+pianner...."
+
+"The what!"
+
+"The squalling kid, and tell the brat to be quiet, just like they tell
+Tommy to 'old 'is tongue when they give 'im a cig. Oh, blimey!"
+
+A shell burst and a dozen splinters whizzed past Bill's ears. He was
+down immediately another prostrate Moslem on the floor of the trench.
+In front of me Pryor sat, his head bent low, moving only when a shell
+came near, to raise his hands and cover his eyes. The high explosive
+shells boomed slowly in from every quarter now, and burst all round
+us. Would they fall into the trench? If they did! The La Bassée
+monster, the irresistible giant, so confident of its strength was only
+one amongst the many. We sank down, each in his own way, closer to the
+floor of the trench. We were preparing to be wounded in the easiest
+possible way. True we might get killed; lucky if we escaped! Would any
+of us see the dawn?...
+
+One is never aware of the shrapnel shell until it bursts. They (p. 194)
+had been passing over our heads for a long time, making a sound like
+the wind in telegraph wires, before one burst above us. There was a
+flash and I felt the heat of the explosion on my face. For a moment I
+was dazed, then I vaguely wondered where I had been wounded. My nerves
+were on edge and a coldness swept along my spine.... No, I wasn't
+struck....
+
+"All right, Pryor?" I asked.
+
+"Something has gone down my back, perhaps it's clay," he answered.
+"You're safe?"
+
+"I think so," I answered. "Bill."
+
+"I've copped it," answered the Cockney. "Here in my back, it's burnin'
+'orrid."
+
+"A minute, matey," I said, tumbling into a kneeling position and
+bending over him. "Let me undo your equipment."
+
+I pulled his pack-straps clear, loosened his shirt front and tunic,
+pulled the clothes down his back. Under the left shoulder I found a
+hot piece of shrapnel casing which had just pierced through his dress
+and rested on the skin. A black mark showed where it had burned in but
+little harm was done to Bill.
+
+"You're all right, matey," I said. "Put on your robes again."
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double," came the cry up the trench and (p. 195)
+I turned to Pryor. He was attending to one of our mates, a Section 3 boy
+who caught a bit in his arm just over the wrist. He was in pain, but
+the prospect of getting out of the trench buoyed him up into great
+spirits.
+
+"It may be England with this," he said.
+
+"Any others struck?" I asked Pryor who was busy with a first field
+dressing on the wounded arm.
+
+"Don't know," he answered. "There are others, I think."
+
+"Every man down this way is struck," came a voice; "one is out."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Spud Higgles," came the answer; then--"No, he's not killed, just got
+a nasty one across the head."
+
+They crawled across us on the way to the dressing station, seven of
+them. None were seriously hurt, except perhaps Spud Higgles, who was a
+little groggy and vowed he'd never get well again until he had a
+decent drink of English beer, drawn from the tap.
+
+The shelling never slackened; and all the missiles dropped (p. 196)
+perilously near; a circle of five hundred yards with the trench
+winding across it, enclosed the dumping ground of the German guns. At
+times the trench was filled with the acid stench of explosives mixed
+with fine lime flung from the fallen masonry with which the place was
+littered. This caused every man to cough, almost choking as the throat
+tried to rid itself of the foreign substance. One or two fainted and
+recovered only after douches of cold water on the face and chest.
+
+The suspense wore us down; we breathed the suffocating fumes of one
+explosion and waited, our senses tensely strung for the coming of the
+next shell. The sang-froid which carried us through many a tight
+corner with credit utterly deserted us, we were washed-out things;
+with noses to the cold earth, like rats in a trap we waited for the
+next moment which might land us into eternity. The excitement of a
+bayonet charge, the mad tussle with death on the blood-stained field,
+which for some reason is called the field of honour was denied us; we
+had to wait and lie in the trench, which looked so like a grave, and
+sink slowly into the depths of depression.
+
+Everything seemed so monstrously futile, so unfinished, so (p. 197)
+useless. Would the dawn see us alive or dead? What did it matter? All
+that we desired was that this were past, that something, no matter
+what, came and relieved us of our position. All my fine safeguards
+against terrible wounds were neglected. What did it matter where a
+shell hit me now, a weak useless thing at the bottom of a trench? Let
+it come, blow me to atoms, tear me to pieces, what did I care? I felt
+like one in a horrible nightmare; unable to help myself. I lay passive
+and waited.
+
+I believe I dozed off at intervals. Visions came before my eyes, the
+sandbags on the parapet assumed fantastic shapes, became alive and
+jeered down at me. I saw Wee Hughie Gallagher of Dooran, the lively
+youth who is so real to all the children of Donegal, look down at me
+from the top of the trench. He carried a long, glistening bayonet in
+his hand and laughed at me. I thought him a fool for ever coming near
+the field of war. War! Ah, it amused him! He laughed at me. I was
+afraid; he was not; he was afraid of nothing. What would Bill think of
+him? I turned to the Cockney; but he knelt there, head to the earth,
+a motionless Moslem. Was he asleep? Probably he was; any way it (p. 198)
+did not matter.
+
+The dawn came slowly, a gradual awaking from darkness into a cheerless
+day, cloudy grey and pregnant with rain that did not fall. Now and
+again we could hear bombs bursting out in front and still the
+artillery thundered at our communication trench.
+
+Bill sat upright rubbing his chest.
+
+"What's wrong?" I asked.
+
+"What's wrong! Everythink," he answered. "There are platoons of
+intruders on my shirt, sappin' and diggin' trenches and Lord knows
+wot!"
+
+"Verminous, Bill?"
+
+"Cooty as 'ell," he said. "But wait till I go back to England. I'll go
+inter a beershop and get a pint, a gallon, a barrel--"
+
+"A hogshead," I prompted.
+
+"I've got one, my own napper's an 'og's 'ead," said Bill.
+
+"When I get the beer I'll capture a coot, a big bull coot, an' make
+'im drunk," he continued. "When 'e's in a fightin' mood I'll put him
+inside my shirt an' cut 'im amok. There'll be ructions; 'e'll charge
+the others with fixed bayonets an' rout 'em. Oh! blimey! will they
+ever stop this damned caper? Nark it. Fritz, nark yer doin's, (p. 199)
+ye fool."
+
+Bill cowered down as the shell burst, then sat upright again.
+
+"I'm gettin' more afraid of these things every hour," he said, "what is
+the war about?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered.
+
+"I'm sick of it," Bill muttered.
+
+"Why did you join?"
+
+"To save myself the trouble of telling people why I didn't," he
+answered with a laugh. "Flat on yer tummy, Rifleman Teake, there's
+another shell."
+
+About noon the shelling ceased; we breathed freely again and
+discovered we were very hungry. No food had passed our lips since
+breakfast the day before. Stoner was afoot, alert and active, he had
+slept for eight hours in his cubby-hole, and the youngster was now
+covered with clay and very dirty.
+
+"I'll go back to the cook's waggon at Givenchy and rake up some grub,"
+he said, and off he went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV (p. 200)
+
+A FIELD OF BATTLE
+
+ The men who stand to their rifles
+ See all the dead on the plain
+ Rise at the hour of midnight
+ To fight their battles again.
+
+ Each to his place in the combat,
+ All to the parts they played,
+ With bayonet brisk to its purpose,
+ With rifle and hand-grenade.
+
+ Shadow races with shadow,
+ Steel comes quick on steel,
+ Swords that are deadly silent,
+ And shadows that do not feel.
+
+ And shades recoil and recover,
+ And fade away as they fall
+ In the space between the trenches,
+ And the watchers see it all.
+
+
+I lay down in the trench and was just dropping off to sleep when a
+message came along the trench.
+
+"Any volunteers to help to carry out wounded?" was the call.
+
+Four of us volunteered and a guide conducted us along to the firing
+line. He was a soldier of the 23rd London, the regiment which had made
+the charge the night before; he limped a little, a dejected look (p. 201)
+was in his face and his whole appearance betokened great weariness.
+
+"How did you get on last night?" I asked him.
+
+"My God! my God!" he muttered, and seemed to be gasping for breath. "I
+suppose there are some of us left yet, but they'll be very few."
+
+"Did you capture the trench?"
+
+"They say we did," he answered, and it seemed as if he were speaking
+of an incident in which he had taken no part. "But what does it
+matter? There's few of us left."
+
+We entered the main communication trench, one just like the others,
+narrow and curving round buttresses at every two or three yards. The
+floor was covered with blood, not an inch of it was free from the dark
+reddish tint.
+
+"My God, my God," said the 23rd man, and he seemed to be repeating the
+phrase without knowing what he said. "The wounded have been going down
+all night, all morning and they're only beginning to come."
+
+A youth of nineteen or twenty sat in a niche in the trench, naked to
+the waist save where a bandaged-arm rested in a long arm-sling.
+
+"How goes it, matey?" I asked.
+
+"Not at all bad, chummie," he replied bravely; then as a spasm of (p. 202)
+pain shot through him he muttered under his breath, "Oh! oh!"
+
+A little distance along we met another; he was ambling painfully down
+the trench, supporting himself by resting his arms on the shoulders of
+a comrade.
+
+"Not so quick, matey," I heard him say, "Go quiet like and mind the
+stones. When you hit one of them it's a bit thick you know. I'm sorry
+to trouble you."
+
+"It's all right, old man," said the soldier in front. "I'll try and be
+as easy as I can."
+
+We stood against the wall of the trench to let them go by. Opposite us
+they came to a dead stop. The wounded man was stripped to the waist,
+and a bandage, white at one time but now red with blood, was tied
+round his shoulder. His face was white and drawn except over his cheek
+bones. There the flesh, tightly drawn, glowed crimson as poppies.
+
+"Have you any water to spare, chummy?" he asked.
+
+"We've been told not to give water to wounded men," I said.
+
+"I know that," he answered. "But just a drop to rinse out my mouth!
+I've lain out between the lines all night. Just to rinse my mouth, (p. 203)
+chummy!"
+
+I drew the cork from my water bottle and held it to his lips, he took
+a mouthful, paused irresolutely for a moment and a greedy light shone
+in his eyes. Then he spat the water on the floor of the trench.
+
+"Thank you, chummy, thank you," he said, and the sorrowful journey was
+resumed.
+
+Where the road from the village is cut through by the trench we came
+on a stretcher lying on the floor. On it lay a man, or rather, part of
+a man, for both his arms had been blown off near the shoulders. A
+waterproof ground sheet, covered with mud lay across him, the two
+stumps stuck out towards the stretcher-poles. One was swathed in
+bandages, the other had come bare, and a white bone protruded over a
+red rag which I took to be a first field dressing. Two men who had
+been busy helping the wounded all morning and the night before carried
+the stretcher to here, through the tortuous cutting. One had now
+dropped out, utterly exhausted. He lay in the trench, covered with
+blood from head to foot and gasping. His mate smoked a cigarette
+leaning against the revêtement.
+
+"Reliefs?" he asked, and we nodded assent. (p. 204)
+
+"These are the devil's own trenches," he said. "The stretcher must be
+carried at arms length over the head all the way, even an empty
+stretcher cannot be carried through here."
+
+"Can we go out on the road?" asked one of my mates; an Irishman
+belonging to another section.
+
+"It'll be a damned sorry road for you if you go out. They're always
+shelling it."
+
+"Who is he?" I asked pointing to the figure on the stretcher. He was
+unconscious; morphia, that gift of Heaven, had temporarily relieved
+him of his pain.
+
+"He's an N.C.O., we found him lying out between the trenches," said
+the stretcher-bearer. "He never lost consciousness. When we tried to
+raise him, he got up to his feet and ran away, yelling. The pain must
+have been awful."
+
+"Has the trench been captured?"
+
+"Of course it has," said the stretcher-bearer, an ironical smile
+hovering around his eyes. "It has been a grand victory. Trench taken
+by Territorials, you'll see in the papers. And there'll be pictures
+too, of the gallant charge. Heavens! they should see between the (p. 205)
+trenches where the men are blown to little pieces."
+
+The cigarette which he held between his blood-stained fingers dropped
+to the ground; he did not seem to notice it fall.
+
+We carried the wounded man out to the road and took our way down
+towards Givenchy. The route was very quiet; now and then a rifle
+bullet flew by; but apart from that there was absolute peace. We
+turned in on the Brick Pathway and had got half way down when a shell
+burst fifty yards behind us. There was a moment's pause, a shower of
+splinters flew round and above us, the stretcher sank towards the
+ground and almost touched. Then as if all of us had become suddenly
+ashamed of some intended action, we straightened our backs and walked
+on. We placed the stretcher on a table in the dressing-room and turned
+back. Two days later the armless man died in hospital.
+
+The wounded were still coming out; we met another party comprised of
+our own men. The wounded soldier who lay on the stretcher had both
+legs broken and held in place with a rifle splint; he also had a
+bayonet tourniquet round the thick of his arm. The poor fellow was (p. 206)
+in great agony. The broken bones were touching one another at every
+move. Now and again he spoke and his question was always the same:
+"Are we near the dressing station yet?"
+
+That night I slept in the trench, slept heavily. I put my equipment
+under me, that kept the damp away from my bones. In the morning Stoner
+told an amusing story. During the night he wanted to see Bill, but did
+not know where the Cockney slept.
+
+"Where's Bill?" he said.
+
+"Bill," I replied, speaking though asleep.
+
+"Bill, yes," said Stoner.
+
+"Bill," I muttered turning on my side, seeking a more comfortable
+position.
+
+"Do you know where Bill is?" shouted Stoner.
+
+"Bill!" I repeated again.
+
+"Yes, Bill!" he said, "Bill. B-i-double l, Bill. Where is here?"
+
+"He's here," I said getting to my feet and holding out my water
+bottle. "In here." And I pulled out the cork.
+
+I was twitted about this all day. I remembered nothing of the incident
+of the water bottle although in some vague way I recollected (p. 207)
+Stoner asking me about Bill.
+
+On the following day I had a chance of visiting the scene of the
+conflict. All the wounded were now carried away, only the dead
+remained, as yet unburied.
+
+The men were busy in the trench which lay on the summit of a slope;
+the ground dipped in the front and rear. The field I came across was
+practically "dead ground" as far as rifle fire was concerned. Only one
+place, the wire front of the original German trench, was dangerous.
+This was "taped out" as our boys say, by some hidden sniper. Already
+the parados was lined with newly-made firing positions, that gave the
+sentry view of the German trench some forty or fifty yards in front.
+All there was very quiet now but our men were making every preparation
+for a counter attack. The Engineers had already placed some barbed
+wire down; they had been hard at it the night before; I could see the
+hastily driven piles, the loosely flung intricate lines of wire flung
+down anyhow. The whole work was part of what is known as
+"consolidation of our position."
+
+Many long hours of labour had yet to be expended on the trench (p. 208)
+before a soldier could sleep at ease in it. Now that the fighting had
+ceased for a moment the men had to bend their backs to interminable
+fatigues. The war, as far as I have seen it is waged for the most part
+with big guns and picks and shovels. The history of the war is a
+history of sandbags and shells.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV (p. 209)
+
+THE REACTION
+
+ We are marching back from the battle,
+ Where we've all left mates behind,
+ And our officers are gloomy,
+ And the N.C.O.'s are kind,
+ When a Jew's harp breaks the silence,
+ Purring out an old refrain;
+ And we thunder through the village
+ Roaring "Here we are again."
+
+
+Four days later we were relieved by the Canadians. They came in about
+nine o'clock in the evening when we stood to-arms in the trenches in
+full marching order under a sky where colour wrestled with colour in a
+blazing flare of star-shells. We went out gladly and left behind the
+dug-out in which we cooked our food but never slept, the old crazy
+sandbag construction, weather-worn and shrapnel-scarred, that stooped
+forward like a crone on crutches on the wooden posts that supported
+it.
+
+"How many casualties have we had?" I asked Stoner as we passed out of
+the village and halted for a moment on the verge of a wood, (p. 210)
+waiting until the men formed up at rear.
+
+"I don't know," he answered gloomily. "See the crosses there," he said
+pointing to the soldiers' cemetery near the trees. "Seven of the boys
+have their graves in that spot; then the wounded and those who went
+dotty. Did you see X. of ---- Company coming out?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I saw him last night when I went out to the Quartermaster's stores
+for rations," Stoner told me. "They were carrying him out on their
+shoulders, and he sat there very quiet like looking at the moon.
+
+"Over there in the corner all by themselves they are," Stoner went on,
+alluding to the graves towards which my eyes were directed. "You can
+see the crosses, white wood----"
+
+"The same as other crosses?"
+
+"Just the same," said my mate. "Printed in black. Number something or
+another, Rifleman So and So, London Irish Rifles, killed in action on
+a certain date. That's all."
+
+"Why do you say 'Chummy' when talking to a wounded man, Stoner?" I
+asked. "Speaking to a healthy pal you just say 'mate.'"
+
+"Is that so?" (p. 211)
+
+"That's so. Why do you say it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I suppose because it's more motherly."
+
+"That may be," said Stoner and laughed.
+
+Quick march! The moon came out, ghostly, in a cloudy sky; a light,
+pale as water, slid over the shoulders of the men in front and rippled
+down the creases of their trousers. The bayonets wobbled wearily on
+the hips, those bayonets that once, burnished as we knew how to
+burnish them, were the glory and delight of many a long and strict
+general inspection at St. Albans; they were now coated with mud and
+thick with rust, a disgrace to the battalion!
+
+When the last stray bullet ceased whistling over our heads, and we
+were well beyond the range of rifle fire, leave to smoke was granted.
+To most of us it meant permission to smoke openly. Cigarettes had been
+burned for quite a quarter of an hour before and we had raised them at
+intervals to our lips, concealing the glow of their lighted ends under
+our curved fingers. We drew the smoke in swiftly, treasured it
+lovingly in our mouths for some time then exhaled it slowly and
+grudgingly.
+
+The sky cleared a little, but at times drifts of grey cloud swept (p. 212)
+over the moon and blotted out the stars. On either side of the road
+lone poplars stood up like silent sentinels, immovable, and the soft
+warm breeze that touched us like a breath shook none of their branches.
+Here and there lime-washed cottages, roofed with patches of straw
+where the enemy's shells had dislodged the terra-cotta tiles, showed
+lights in the windows. The natives had gone away and soldiers were
+billeted in their places. Marching had made us hot; we perspired
+freely and the sweat ran down our arms and legs; it trickled down our
+temples and dropped from our eyebrows to our cheeks.
+
+"Hang on to the step! Quick march! As you were! About turn!" some one
+shouted imitating our sergeant-major's voice. We had marched in
+comparative silence up to now, but the mimicked order was like a match
+applied to a powder magazine. We had had eighteen days in the trenches,
+we were worn down, very weary and very sick of it all; now we were out
+and would be out for some days; we were glad, madly glad. All began to
+make noises at the same time, to sing, to shout, to yell; in the night,
+on the road with its lines of poplars we became madly delirious, we
+broke free like a confused torrent from a broken dam. Everybody (p. 213)
+had something to say or sing, senseless chatter and sentimental songs
+ran riot; all uttered something for the mere pleasure of utterance; we
+were out of the trenches and free for the time being from danger.
+
+Stoner marched on my right, hanging on his knees a little, singing a
+music hall song and smoking. A little flutter of ash fell from his
+cigarette, which seemed to be stuck to his lower lip as it rose and
+fell with the notes of the song. When he came to the chorus he looked
+round as if defying somebody, then raised his right hand over his head
+and gripping his rifle, held the weapon there until the last word of
+the chorus trembled on his lips; then he brought it down with the last
+word and looked round as if to see that everybody was admiring his
+action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental,
+music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with
+exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived,
+his whole person surged with a vitality impossible to stem.
+
+We came in line with a row of cottages, soldiers' billets for the most
+part, and the boys were not yet in bed. It was a place to sing something
+great, something in sympathy with our own mood. The song when it (p. 214)
+came was appropriate, it came from one voice, and hundreds took it up
+furiously as if they intended to tear it to pieces.
+
+ Here we are, here we are, here we are again.
+
+The soldiers not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble;
+but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something
+pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a
+vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was
+as yet one with the night, with my mood and the whole spin of things.
+The song rolled on:--
+
+ Fit and well and feeling as right as rain,
+ Now we're all together; never mind the weather,
+ Since here we are again,
+ When there's trouble brewing; when there's something doing,
+ Are we downhearted. No! let them all come!
+ Here we are, here we are, here we are again!
+
+As the song died away I felt very lonely, a being isolated. True there
+was a barn with cobwebs on its rafters down the road, a snug farm where
+they made fresh butter and sold new laid eggs. But there was something
+in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes out in the (p. 215)
+fields nodding together as if in consultation, in the tall poplars, in
+the straight road, in the sound of rifle firing to rear and in the song
+sung by the tired boys coming back from battle, that filled me with
+infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a shelterless world.
+"Here we are; here we are again." I thought of Mervin, and six others
+dead, of their white crosses, and I found myself weeping silently like
+a child....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI (p. 216)
+
+PEACE AND WAR
+
+ You'll see from the La Bassée Road, on any summer day,
+ The children herding nanny goats, the women making hay.
+ You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,
+ Come swinging up La Bassée Road from billets in Bethune.
+ There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far
+ Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.
+ You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,
+ The long, straight road, La Bassée Road, on any summer day.
+
+
+The farmhouse stood in the centre of the village; the village rested
+on the banks of a sleepy canal on which the barges carried the wounded
+down from the slaughter line to the hospital at Bethune. The village
+was shelled daily. When shelling began a whistle was blown warning all
+soldiers to seek cover immediately in the dug-outs roofed with sandbags,
+which were constructed by the military authorities in nearly every garden
+in the place. When the housewifes heard the shells bursting they ran
+out and brought in their washing from the lines where it was hung out
+to dry; then they sat down and knitted stockings or sewed garments (p. 217)
+to send to their menfolk at the war. In the village they said: "When
+the shells come the men run in for their lives, and the women run out
+for their washing."
+
+The village was not badly battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched
+once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was
+used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The
+village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat
+puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet,
+but were going up presently.
+
+Bill and I were sitting in an _estaminet_ when two of these youngsters
+came in and sat opposite.
+
+"New 'ere?" asked Bill.
+
+"Came to Boulogne six days ago and marched all the way here," said one
+of them, a red-haired youth with bushy eyebrows. "Long over?" he
+asked.
+
+"Just about nine months," said Bill.
+
+"You've been through it then."
+
+"Through it," said Bill, lying splendidly, "I think we 'ave. At Mons
+we went in eight 'undred strong. We're the only two as is left."
+
+"Gracious! And you never got a scratch?"
+
+"Never a pin prick," said Bill, "And I saw the shells so thick (p. 218)
+comin' over us that you couldn't see the sky. They was like crows up
+above."
+
+"They were?"
+
+"We were in the trenches then," Bill said. "The orficer comes up and
+sez: 'Things are getting despirate! We've got to charge. 'Ool foller
+me?' 'I'm with you!' I sez, and up I jumps on the parapet pulling a
+machine gun with me."
+
+"A machine gun!" said the red-haired man.
+
+"A machine gun," Bill went on. "When one is risen 'e can do anything.
+I could 'ave lifted a 'ole battery on my shoulders because I was mad.
+I 'ad a look to my front to get the position then I goes forward.
+'Come back, cried the orficer as 'e fell----"
+
+"Fell!"
+
+"'E got a bullet through his bread basket and 'e flopped. But there
+was no 'oldin' o' me. 'Twas death or glory, neck 'an nothin', 'ell for
+leather at that moment. The London Irish blood was up; one of the
+Chelsea Cherubs was out for red blood 'olesale and retail. I slung the
+machine gun on my shoulder, sharpened my bayonet with a piece of
+sand-paper, took the first line o' barbed wire entanglements at (p. 219)
+a jump and got caught on the second. It gored me like a bull. I got
+six days C.B. for 'avin' the rear of my trousers torn when we came out
+o' the trenches."
+
+"Tell me something I can believe," said the red-haired youth.
+
+"Am I not tellin' you something," asked Bill. "Nark it, matey, nark
+it. I tell Gospel-stories and you'll not believe me."
+
+"But it's all tommy rot."
+
+"Is it? The Germans did'nt think so when I charged plunk into the
+middle of 'em. Yer should 'ave been there to see it. They were all
+round me and two taubes over 'ead watching my movements. Swish! and my
+bayonet went through the man in front and stabbed the identity disc of
+another. When I drew the bayonet out the butt of my 'ipe[3] would 'it
+a man behind me in the tummy. Ugh! 'e would say and flop bringing a
+mate down with 'im may be. The dead was all round me and I built a
+parapet of their bodies, puttin' the legs criss-cross and makin' loop
+'oles. Then they began to bomb me from the other side. 'Twas gettin'
+'ot I tell you and I began to think of my 'ome; the dug-out in (p. 220)
+the trench. What was I to do? If I crossed the open they'd bring me
+down with a bullet. There was only one thing to be done. I had my
+boots on me for three 'ole weeks of 'ot weather, 'otter than this and
+beer not so near as it is now----"
+
+ [Footnote 3: Rifle.]
+
+"Have another drink, Bill?" I asked.
+
+"Glad yer took the 'int," said my mate. "Story tellin's a dry fatigue.
+Well as I was sayin' my socks 'ad been on for a 'ole month----"
+
+"Three weeks," I corrected.
+
+"Three weeks," Bill repeated and continued. "I took orf my boots.
+'Respirators!' the Germans yelled the minute my socks were bare, and
+off they went leavin' me there with my 'ome-made trench. When I came
+back I got a dose of C.B. as I've told you before."
+
+We went back to our billet. In the farmyard the pigs were busy on the
+midden, and they looked at us with curious expressive eyes that peered
+roguishly out from under their heavy hanging cabbage-leaves of ears.
+In one corner was the field-cooker. The cooks were busy making dixies
+of bully beef stew. Their clothes were dirty and greasy, so were their
+arms, bare from the shoulders almost, and taut with muscles. (p. 221)
+Through a path that wound amongst a medley of agricultural instruments,
+ploughs harrows and grubbers, the farmer's daughter came striding like
+a ploughman, two children hanging on to her apron strings. A stretcher
+leant against our water-cart, and dried clots of blood were on its
+shafts. The farmer's dog lay panting on the midden, his red tongue
+hanging out and saliva dropping on the dung, overhead the swallows
+were swooping and flying in under the eaves where now and again they
+nested for a moment before getting up to resume their exhilirating
+flight. A dirty barefooted boy came in through the large entrance-gate
+leading a pair of sleepy cows with heavy udders which shook backwards
+and forwards as they walked. The horns of one cow were twisted, the
+end of one pointed up, the end of the other pointed down.
+
+One of Section 4's boys was looking at the cow.
+
+"The ole geeser's 'andlebars is twisted," said Bill, addressing nobody
+in particular and alluding to the cow.
+
+"It's 'orns, yer fool!" said Section 4.
+
+"Yer fool, yerself!" said Bill. "I'm not as big a fool as I look----"
+
+"Git! Your no more brains than a 'en." (p. 222)
+
+"Nor 'ave you either," said Bill.
+
+"I've twice as many brains, as you," said Section 4.
+
+"So 'ave I," was the answer made by Bill; then getting pugilistic he
+thundered out: "I'll give yer one on the moosh."
+
+"Will yer?" said Section 4.
+
+"Straight I will. Give you one across your ugly phiz! It looks as if
+it had been out all night and some one dancing on it."
+
+Bill took off his cap and flung it on the ground as if it were the
+gauntlet of a knight of old. His hair, short and wiry, stood up on
+end. Section 4 looked at it.
+
+"Your hair looks like furze in a fit," said Section 4.
+
+"You're lookin' for one on the jor," said Bill closing and opening his
+fist. "And I'll give yer one."
+
+"Will yer? Two can play at that gyme!"
+
+Goliath massive and monumental came along at that moment. He looked at
+Bill.
+
+"Looking for trouble, mate?" he asked.
+
+"Section 4's shouting the odds, as usual," Bill replied.
+
+"Come along to the Canal and have a bath; it will cool your (p. 223)
+temper."
+
+"Will it?" said Bill as he came along with us somewhat reluctantly
+towards the Canal banks.
+
+"What does shouting the odds mean?" I asked him.
+
+"Chewin' the rag," he answered.
+
+"And that means----"
+
+"Kicking up a row and lettin' every one round you know," said Bill.
+"That's what shoutin' the blurry odds means."
+
+"What's the difference between shouting the odds and shouting the
+blurry odds?" I asked.
+
+"It's like this, Pat," Bill began to explain, a blush rising on his
+cheeks. Bill often blushed. "Shoutin' the odds isn't strong enough,
+but shoutin' the blurry odds has ginger in it. It makes a bloke listen
+to you."
+
+Stoner was sitting on the bank of La Bassée canal, his bare feet
+touching the water, his body deep in a cluster of wild iris. I sat
+down beside him and took off my boots.
+
+I pulled a wild iris and explained to Stoner how in Donegal we made
+boats from the iris and placed them by the brookside at night. When
+we went to bed the fairies crossed the streams on the boats which (p. 224)
+we made.
+
+"Did they cross on the boats?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Of course they did," I answered. "We never found a boat left in the
+morning."
+
+"The stream washed them away," said Stoner.
+
+"You civilised abomination," I said and proceeded to fashion a boat,
+when it was made I placed it on the stream and watched it circle round
+on an eddy near the bank.
+
+"Here's something," said Stoner, getting hold of a little frog with
+his hand and placing it on the boat. For a moment the iris bark swayed
+unsteadily, the frog's little glistening eyes wobbled in its head then
+it dived in to the water, overturning the boat as it hopped off it.
+
+An impudent-looking little boy with keen, inquisitive eyes, came along
+the canal side wheeling a very big barrow on which was heaped a number
+of large loaves. His coat a torn, ragged fringe, hung over the hips,
+he wore a Balaclava helmet (thousands of which have been flung away by
+our boys in the hot weather) and khaki puttees.
+
+The boy came to a stop opposite, laid down his barrow and wiped (p. 225)
+the sweat from his brow with a dirty hand.
+
+"Bonjour!" said the boy.
+
+"Bonjour, petit garçon," Stoner replied, proud of his French which is
+limited to some twenty words.
+
+The boy asked for a cigarette; a souvenir. We told him to proceed on
+his journey, we were weary of souvenir hunters. The barrow moved on,
+the wheel creaking rustily and the boy whistled a light-hearted tune.
+That his request had not been granted did not seem to trouble him.
+
+Two barges, coupled and laden with coal rounded a corner of the canal.
+They were drawn by five persons, a woman with a very white sunbonnet
+in front. She was followed by a barefooted youth in khaki tunic, a
+hunch-backed man with heavy projecting jowl and a hare-lipped youth of
+seventeen or eighteen. Last on the tug rope was an oldish man with a
+long white beard parted in the middle and rusty coloured at the tips.
+A graceful slip of a girl, lithe as a marsh sapling, worked the tiller
+of the rear barge and she took no notice of the soldiers on the shore
+or in the water.
+
+"Going to bathe, Stoner?" I asked. (p. 226)
+
+"When the barges go by," he answered and I twitted him on his modesty.
+
+Goliath, six foot three of magnificent bone and muscle was in the
+canal. Swanking his trudgeon stroke he surged through the dirty water
+like an excited whale, puffing and blowing. Bill, losing in every
+stroke, tried to race him, but retired beaten and very happy. The cold
+water rectified his temper, he was now in a most amiable humour. Pryor
+was away down the canal on the barge, when he came to the bridge he
+would dive off and race some of Section 4 boys back to the spot where
+I was sitting. There is an eternal and friendly rivalry between
+Sections 3 and 4.
+
+"Stoner, going in?" I asked my comrade, who was standing stark on the
+bank.
+
+"In a minute," he answered.
+
+"Now," I said.
+
+"Get in yourself ----"
+
+"Presently," I replied, "but you go in now, unless you want to get
+shoved in."
+
+He dived gracefully and came up near the other bank spluttering and
+shaking the water off his hair. Bill challenged him to a race and both
+struck off down the stream, as they swam passing jokes with their (p. 227)
+comrades on the bank. In the course of ten minutes they returned,
+perched proudly on the stern of a barge and making ready to dive. At
+that moment I undressed and went in.
+
+My swim was a very short one; shorter than usual, and I am not much of
+a swimmer. A searching shell sped over from the German lines hit the
+ground a few hundred yards to rear of the Canal and whirled a shower
+of dust into the water, which speedily delivered several hundred nude
+fighters to the clothes-littered bank. A second and third shell
+dropping nearer drove all modest thoughts from our minds for the
+moment (unclothed, a man feels helplessly defenceless), and we hurried
+into our warrens through throngs of women rushing out to take in their
+washing.
+
+One of the shells hit the artillery horse lines on the left of the
+village and seven horses were killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII (p. 228)
+
+EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT
+
+ There's the butter, gad, and horse-fly,
+ The blow-fly and the blue,
+ The fine fly and the coarse fly,
+ But never flew a worse fly
+ Of all the flies that flew
+
+ Than the little sneaky black fly
+ That gobbles up our ham,
+ The beggar's not a slack fly,
+ He really is a crack fly,
+ And wolfs the soldiers jam.
+
+ So strafe that fly! Our motto
+ Is "strafe him when you can."
+ He'll die because he ought to,
+ He'll go because he's got to,
+ So at him every man!
+
+
+What time we have not been in the trenches we have spent marching out
+or marching back to them, or sleeping in billets at the rear and going
+out as working parties, always ready to move at two hours' notice by
+day and one hour's notice by night.
+
+I got two days C.B. at La Beuvriere; because I did not come out on
+parade one morning. I really got out of bed very early, and went for a
+walk. Coming to a pond where a number of frogs were hopping from (p. 229)
+the bank into the water, I sat down and amused myself by watching them
+staring at me out of the pond; their big, intelligent eyes full of
+some wonderful secret. They interested and amused me, probably I
+interested and amused them, one never knows. Then I read a little and
+time flew by. On coming back I was told to report at the Company
+orderly room. Two days C.B.
+
+I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
+place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
+beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
+an _estaminet_. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
+had an unholy knack of prodding a stomach which rebelled against
+digesting bully and biscuit, I unloosed my equipment buckles. The
+Visiting Rounds found me imperfectly dressed, my shoulder flaps
+wobbled, my haversack hung with a slant and the cartridge pouches
+leant out as if trying to spring on my feet. The next evening I was up
+before the C.O.
+
+My hair was rather long, and as it was well-brushed it looked imposing.
+So I thought in the morning when I looked in the platoon mirror--the
+platoon mirror was an inch square glass with a jagged edge. My (p. 230)
+imposing hair caught the C.O.'s eye the moment I entered the orderly
+room. "Don't let me see you with hair like that again," he began and
+read out the charge. I forget the words which hinted that I was a
+wrong-doer in the eyes of the law military; the officers were there,
+every officer in the battalion, they all looked serious and resigned.
+It seemed as if their minds had been made up on something relating to
+me.
+
+The orderly officer who apprehended me in the act told how he did it,
+speaking as if from a book but consulting neither notes nor papers.
+
+"What have you to say?" asked the C.O. looking at me.
+
+I had nothing particular to say, my thoughts were busy on an enigma
+that might not interest him, namely, why a young officer near him kept
+rubbing a meditative chin with a fugitive finger, and why that finger
+came down so swiftly when the C.O.'s eyes were turned towards the
+young man. I replied to the question by saying "Guilty."
+
+"We know you are guilty," said the C.O. and gave me a little lecture.
+I had a reputation, the young men of the regiment looked up to me, an
+older man; and by setting a good example I could do a great deal (p. 231)
+of good, &c., &c. The lecture was very trying, but the rest of the
+proceedings were interesting. I was awarded three extra guards. I only
+did one of them.
+
+We hung on the fringe of the Richebourge _mêlée_, but were not called
+into play.
+
+"What was it like?" we asked the men marching back from battle in
+the darkness and the rain. There was no answer, they were too weary
+even to speak.
+
+"How did you get along in the fight?" I called to one who straggled
+along in the rear, his head sunk forward on his breast, his knees
+bending towards the ground.
+
+"Tsch! Tsch!" he answered, his voice barely rising above a whisper as
+his boots paced out in a rhythm of despair to some village at the
+rear.
+
+There in the same place a night later, we saw soldiers' equipments
+piled on top of one another and stretching for yards on either side of
+the road: packs, haversacks, belts, bayonets, rifles, and cartridge
+pouches. The equipments were taken in from the field of battle, the
+war-harness of men now wounded and dead was out of use for the moment,
+other soldiers would wear them presently and make great fight in them.
+
+Once at Cuinchy, Section 3 went out for a wash in a dead stream (p. 232)
+that once flowed through our lines and those of the Germans. The water
+was dirty and it was a miracle that the frogs which frisked in it were
+so clean.
+
+"It's too dirty to wash there," said Pryor.
+
+"A change of dirt is 'olesome," said Bill, placing his soap on the
+bank and dipping his mess tin in the water. As he bent down the body
+of a dead soldier inflated by its own rottenness bubbled up to the
+surface. We gave up all idea of washing. Stoner who was on the
+opposite bank tried to jump across at that moment. Miscalculating the
+distance, he fell short and into the water. We dragged him out
+spluttering and I regret to say we laughed, almost heartily. That
+night when we stood to arms in the trenches, waiting for an attack
+that did not come off, Stoner stood to with his rifle, an overcoat, a
+pair of boots and a pair of socks as his sole uniform.
+
+How many nights have we marched under the light of moon and stars,
+sleepy and dog-weary, in song or in silence, as the mood prompted us
+or the orders compelled us, up to the trenches and back again! We have
+slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and straw (p. 233)
+deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on
+the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new
+songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their
+circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great
+adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one
+another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of
+any member of our party who was flouted by any one who was not one of
+WE. "Section 3, right or wrong" was and is our motto. And the section
+dwindles, the bullet and shell has been busy in lessening our
+strength, for that is the way of war.
+
+When in the trenches Bill and Kore amuse themselves by potting all day
+long at the German lines. A conversation like the following may be
+often heard.
+
+Bill:--"Blimey, I see a 'ead."
+
+Kore:--"Fire then." (Bill fires a shot.) "Got him?"
+
+Bill:--"No blurry fear. The 'ead was a sandbag. I'll bet yer the shot
+they send back will come nearer me than you. Bet yer a copper."
+
+Kore:--"Done." (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.) (p. 234)
+"I think they're firing at you."
+
+Bill:--"Not me, matey, but you. It's their aiming that's bad. 'And
+over the coin." (Enter an officer.)
+
+Officer:--"Don't keep your heads over the parapet, you'll get sniped.
+Keep under cover as much as possible."
+
+Bill:--"Orl right, Sir."
+
+Kore:--"Yes, sir." (Exit Officer.)
+
+Bill:--"They say there's a war 'ere."
+
+Kore:--"It's only a rumour."
+
+At Cuinchy where the German trenches are hardly a hundred yards away
+from ours, the firing from the opposite trenches ceased for a moment
+and a voice called across.
+
+"What about the Cup Final?" It was then the finish of the English
+football season.
+
+"Chelsea lost," said Bill, who was a staunch supporter of that team.
+
+"Hard luck!" came the answer from the German trench and firing was
+resumed. But Bill used his rifle no more until we changed into a new
+locality. "A blurry supporter of blurry Chelsea," he said. "'E must be
+a damned good sort of sausage-eater, that feller. If ever I meet 'im
+in Lunnon after the war, I'm goin' to make 'im as drunk as a (p. 235)
+public-'ouse fly."
+
+"What are you going to do after the war?" I asked.
+
+He rubbed his eyes which many sleepless nights in a shell-harried
+trench had made red and watery.
+
+"What will I do?" he repeated. "I'll get two beds," he said, "and have
+a six months' snooze, and I'll sleep in one bed while the other's
+being made, matey."
+
+In trench life many new friends are made and many old friendships
+renewed. We were nursing a contingent of Camerons, men new to the
+grind of trench work, and most of them hailing from Glasgow and the
+West of Scotland. On the morning of the second day one of them said to
+me, "Big Jock MacGregor wants to see you."
+
+"Who's Big Jock?" I asked.
+
+"He used to work on the railway at Greenock," I was told, and off I
+went to seek the man.
+
+I found him eating bully beef and biscuit on the parapet. He was
+spotlessly clean, he had not yet stuck his spoon down the rim of his
+stocking where his skein should have been, he had a table knife (p. 236)
+and fork (things that we, old soldiers, had dispensed with ages ago),
+in short, he was a hat-box fellow, togged up to the nines, and as yet,
+green to the grind of war.
+
+His age might be forty, he looked fifty, a fatherly sort of man, a
+real block of Caledonian Railway thrown, tartanised, into a trench.
+
+"How are you, Jock?" I said. I had never met him before.
+
+"Are you Pat MacGill?"
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+"Man, I've often heard of you, Pat," he went on, "I worked on the Sou'
+West, and my brother's an engine driver on the Caly. He reads your
+songs a'most every night. He says there are only two poets he'd give a
+fling for--that's you and Anderson, the man who wrote _Cuddle Doon_."
+
+"How do you like the trenches, Jock?"
+
+"Not so bad, man, not so bad," he said.
+
+"Killed any one yet?" I asked.
+
+"Not yet," he answered in all seriousness. "But there's a sniper over
+there," and he pointed a clean finger, quite untrenchy it was, towards
+the enemy's lines, "And he's fired three at me."
+
+"At you?" I asked.
+
+"Ay, and I sent him five back ----" (p. 237)
+
+"And didn't do him in?" I asked.
+
+"Not yet, but if I get another two or three at him, I'll not give much
+for his chance."
+
+"Have you seen him?" I asked, marvelling that Big Jock had already
+seen a sniper.
+
+"No, but I heard the shots go off."
+
+A rifle shot is the most deceptive thing in the world, so, like an old
+soldier wise in the work, I smiled under my hand.
+
+I don't believe that Big Jock has killed his sniper yet, but it has
+been good to see him. When we meet he says, "What about the Caly,
+Pat?" and I answer, "What about the Sou' West, Jock?"
+
+On the first Sunday after Trinity we marched out from another small
+village in the hot afternoon. This one was a model village, snug in
+the fields, and dwindling daily. The German shells are dropping there
+every day. In the course of another six months if the fronts of the
+contending armies do not change, that village will be a litter of red
+bricks and unpeopled ruins. As it is the women, children and old men
+still remain in the place and carry on their usual labours with the
+greatest fortitude and patience. The village children sell percussion
+caps of German shells for half a franc each, but if the shell (p. 238)
+has killed any of the natives when it exploded, the cap will not be
+sold for less than thirty sous. But the sum is not too dear for a
+nose-cap with a history.
+
+There are a number of soldiers buried in the graveyard of this place.
+At one corner four different crosses bear the following names: Anatole
+Séries, Private O'Shea, Corporal Smith and under the symbol of the
+Christian religion lies one who came from sunny heathen climes to help
+the Christian in his wars. His name is Jaighandthakur, a soldier of
+the Bengal Mountain Battery.
+
+It was while here that Bill complained of the scanty allowance of his
+rations to an officer, when plum pudding was served at dinner.
+
+"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.
+
+"How much have you got?" asked the officer.
+
+"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all
+gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the
+neck of 'is waterbottle," said Bill. The officer ordered both men (p. 239)
+to be served out with a second portion.
+
+We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of
+the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of
+Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going
+had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line
+is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the
+Hills of Lorette at present.
+
+The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they
+march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every
+halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are
+going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty
+minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous
+path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several
+shell-shattered huts and some acres of shell-scooped ground. The place
+was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to
+the enemy. Early one morning the shells began to sweep in, carrying
+the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a
+memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in shell-holes on
+that field. The bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the (p. 240)
+ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred
+yards out on any side there is not a trace of a shell, every shot went
+true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not
+be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But
+their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the
+night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor
+gun would have escaped.
+
+The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever
+seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At
+several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags
+proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in,
+and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore,
+down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead,
+our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the
+whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our
+bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got
+some tea, a godsend to us all.
+
+We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel and (p. 241)
+the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up against a
+man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled against
+the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.
+
+"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish
+voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see
+things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm
+stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea
+greedily.
+
+"There's a lot of you ones comin' up," the voice said. "You ones!" How
+often have I said "You ones," how often do I say it still when I'm too
+excited to be grammatical. "Ye had a' must to be too late for tay!"
+the voice said from the darkness.
+
+"What does he say?" asked Pryor who was just ahead of me.
+
+"He says that we were almost too late for tea," I replied and stared
+hard into the darkness on my left. Figures of men in khaki took form
+in the gloom, a bayonet sparkled; some one was putting a lid on a
+mess-tin and I could see the man doing it....
+
+"Inniskillings?" I asked.
+
+"That's us." (p. 242)
+
+"Quiet?" I asked, alluding to their life in the trench.
+
+"Not bad at all," was the answer. "A shell came this road an hour
+agone, and two of us got hit."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"Boys, oh! boys, aye," was the answer; "and seven got wounded. Nine of
+the best, man, nine of the best. Have another drop of tay?"
+
+At the exit of the tunnel the floor was covered with blood and the
+flies were buzzing over it; the sated insects rose lazily as we came
+up, settled down in front, rose again and flew back over our heads.
+What a feast they were having on the blood of men!
+
+The trenches into which we had come were not so clean as many we had
+been in before; although the dug-outs were much better constructed
+than those in the British lines, they smelt vilely of something
+sickening and nauseous.
+
+A week passed away and we were still in the trenches. Sometimes it
+rained, but for the most part the sky was clear and the sun very hot.
+The trenches were dug out of the chalk, the world in which we lived
+was a world of white and green, white parapet and parados with a (p. 243)
+fringe of grass on the superior slope of each. The place was very
+quiet, not more than two dozen shells came our way daily, and it was
+there that I saw a shell in air, the only shell in flight I have ever
+seen. It was dropping to earth behind the parados and I had a distinct
+view of the missile before ducking to avoid the splinters flung out by
+the explosion. Hundreds of shells have passed through the sky near me
+every day, I could almost see them by their sound and felt I could
+trace the line made by them in their flight, but this was the only
+time I ever saw one.
+
+The hill land of Lorette stood up sullen on our right; in a basin
+scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards
+square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in
+progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes
+of bursting shells. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this
+titanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to
+see--it was the face of a god. The mortal who gazed on it must die.
+But by night and day I spent most of my spare time in watching the
+smoke of bursting shells and the flash of innumerable explosions.
+
+One morning, after six days in the trenches, I was seated on the (p. 244)
+parados blowing up an air pillow which had been sent to me by an
+English friend and watching the fight up at Souchez when Bill came up
+to me.
+
+"Wot's that yer've got?" he asked.
+
+"An air pillow," I answered.
+
+"'Ow much were yer rushed for it?"
+
+"Somebody sent it to me," I said.
+
+"To rest yer weary 'ead on?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"I like a fresh piller every night," said Bill.
+
+"A fresh what?"
+
+"A fresh brick."
+
+"How do you like these trenches?" I asked after a short silence.
+
+"Not much," he answered. "They're all blurry flies and chalk." He
+gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese
+rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was
+all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags
+were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and shell whirled showers
+of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the
+parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the
+rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245)
+of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up to the sky.
+
+Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet
+for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea
+of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.
+Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their
+way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags,
+only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged
+the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the
+beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the
+spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side
+blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not
+fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy,
+their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by shell splinters
+whizzing through the air.
+
+The space between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green
+leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the shivered trees, thistles with
+magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, grasses hung over
+the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking
+if we would allow them to enter. The garden of death was a riot (p. 246)
+of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst
+the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face;
+and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature
+was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the
+face of the country.
+
+At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in
+his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible
+to write, eat or even to sleep.
+
+The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something
+putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who
+had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair
+poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great
+frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping
+their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground
+in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the
+stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour
+of flowers.
+
+The order came like a bomb flung into the trench and woke us up like
+an electric thrill. True we did not believe it at first, there (p. 247)
+are so many practical jokers in our ranks. Such an insane order! Had
+the head of affairs gone suddenly mad that such an order was issued.
+"All men get ready for a bath. Towels and soap are to be carried!!!"
+
+"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.
+
+"In the village at the rear," he answered.
+
+"There's nobody there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And
+the place gets shelled daily."
+
+"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be
+a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."
+
+We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered
+Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather
+pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the
+effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all
+that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window glass was
+smashed to pieces.
+
+We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a
+serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed
+badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. We went back (p. 248)
+clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.
+
+That same evening, what time the star-shells began to flare and the
+flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our
+men got done to death in their dug-out. A shell hit the roof and
+smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was
+instantaneous in both cases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII (p. 249)
+
+THE COVERING PARTY
+
+ Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind,
+ With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind;
+ And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn,
+ The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?
+
+
+The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines
+was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze
+scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing
+something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my
+hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the spacious
+construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags,
+which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were
+apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon
+sergeant stopped me at the door.
+
+"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.
+
+"If I'm lucky," I answered.
+
+"Your luck's dead out," said the sergeant. "You're to be one of a (p. 250)
+covering party for the Engineers. They're out to-night repairing the
+wire entanglements."
+
+"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.
+
+"Bill's on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the
+vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its
+dullest mood, explode with laughter.
+
+Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other
+riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came
+to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten
+to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The
+German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to
+our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and
+most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire
+entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of
+the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the
+damage only to start the game of demolition over again.
+
+The line of entanglements does not run parallel with the trench (p. 251)
+it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem
+always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags.
+But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are
+laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing towards our trench.
+
+The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a
+charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and
+rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of
+death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the
+parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become
+creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to
+get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up
+to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and
+thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the
+enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a
+man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and
+the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the
+vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the
+V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252)
+are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the
+concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow
+part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers
+tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone,
+mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The
+tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
+
+In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
+shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
+immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
+We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
+on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
+The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
+stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
+dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
+through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
+had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the
+threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild
+fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout (p. 253)
+across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the
+shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that
+intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a
+violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that
+illumined the place like a sun.
+
+"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoarsely.
+
+"Well, blimey, that's a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What 'ave
+I done, splunk on a dead 'un I flopped, a stinking corpse. 'E was
+'uggin' me, kissin' me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff 'un," said Bill,
+addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes,
+striped with red and deep in the grass. "Talk about rotten eggs
+burstin' on your jor; they're not in it."
+
+The light of the star-shell waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to
+Bill.
+
+"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you're giving the whole damned
+show away," the Corporal said. "If you're spotted it's all up with
+us."
+
+We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat
+on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months
+before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and got (p. 254)
+about half way across the field. There they stopped, mown down by
+rifle and machine gun fire and they lie there still, little bundles of
+wasting flesh in the midst of the poppies. When the star-shells went
+up I could see a face near me, a young face clean-shaven and very pale
+under a wealth of curly hair. It was the face of a mere boy, the eyes
+were closed as if the youth were only asleep. It looked as if the
+effacing finger of decay had forborne from working its will on the
+helpless thing. His hand still gripped the rifle, and the long bayonet
+on the standard shone when the light played upon it. It seemed as if
+he fell quietly to the ground, dead. Others, I could see, had died a
+death of agony; they lay there in distorted postures, some with faces
+battered out of recognition, others with their hands full of grass and
+clay as if they had torn up the earth in their mad, final frenzy. Not
+a nice bed to lie in during a night out on listening patrol.[4]
+
+ [Footnote 4: The London Irish charged over this
+ ground later, and entered Loos on Saturday, 25th
+ September, 1915.]
+
+The Engineers were now at work just behind us, I could see their dark
+forms flitting amongst the posts, straightening the old ones, (p. 255)
+driving in fresh supports and pulling the wires taut. They worked as
+quietly as possible, but to our ears, tensely strained, the noise of
+labour came like the rumble of artillery. The enemy must surely hear
+the sound. Doubtless he did, but probably his own working parties were
+busy just as ours were. In front when one of our star-shells went
+across I fancied that I could see dark forms standing motionless by
+the German trench. Perhaps my eyes played me false, the objects might
+be tree-trunks trimmed down by shell fire....
+
+The message came out from our trench and the Corporal passed it along
+his party. "On the right a party of the --th London are working." This
+was to prevent us mistaking them for Germans. All night long
+operations are carried on between the lines, if daylight suddenly shot
+out about one in the morning what a scene would unfold itself in No
+Man's Land; listening patrols marching along, Engineers busy with the
+wires, sanitary squads burying the dead and covering parties keeping
+watch over all the workers.
+
+"Halt! who goes there?"
+
+The order loud and distinct came from the vicinity of the German (p. 256)
+trench, then followed a mumbled reply and afterwards a scuffle, a
+sound as of steel clashing in steel, and then subdued laughter. What
+had happened? Next day we heard that a sergeant and three men of the
+--th were out on patrol and went too near the enemy's lines. Suddenly
+they were confronted by several dark forms with fixed bayonets and the
+usual sentry's challenge was yelled out in English. Believing that he
+had fallen across one of his own outposts, the unsuspecting sergeant
+gave the password for the night, approached those who challenged him
+and was immediately made prisoner. Two others met with the same fate,
+but one who had been lagging at the rear got away and managed to get
+back to his own lines. Many strange things happen between the lines at
+night; working parties have no love for the place and hundreds get
+killed there.
+
+The slightest tinge of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back
+over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the
+conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin
+at dawn.
+
+We go out often as working parties or listening patrols.
+
+From Souchez to Ypres the firing line runs through a land of (p. 257)
+stinking drains, level fields, and shattered villages. We know those
+villages, we have lived in them, we have been sniped at in their
+streets and shelled in the houses. We have had men killed in them,
+blown to atoms or buried in masonry, done to death by some damnable
+instrument of war.
+
+In our trenches near Souchez you can see the eternal artillery
+fighting on the hills of Lorette, up there men are flicked out of
+existence like flies in a hailstorm. The big straight road out of a
+village runs through our lines into the German trenches and beyond.
+The road is lined with poplars and green with grass; by day you can
+see the German sandbags from our trenches, by night you can hear the
+wind in the trees that bend towards one another as if in conversation.
+There is no whole house in the place; chimneys have been blown down
+and roofs are battered by shrapnel. But few of the people have gone
+away, they have become schooled in the process of accommodation, and
+accommodate themselves to a woeful change. They live with one foot on
+the top step of the cellar stairs, a shell sends them scampering down;
+they sleep there, they eat there, in their underground home they (p. 258)
+wait for the war to end. The men who are too old to fight labour in a
+neighbouring mine, which still does some work although its chimney is
+shattered and its coal waggons are scraps of wood and iron on broken
+rails. There are many graves by the church, graves of our boys,
+civilians' graves, children's graves, all victims of war. Children are
+there still, merry little kids with red lips and laughing eyes.
+
+One day, when staying in the village, I met one, a dainty little dot,
+with golden hair and laughing eyes, a pink ribbon round a tress that
+hung roguishly over her left cheek. She smiled at me as she passed
+where I sat on the roadside under the poplars, her face was an angel's
+set in a disarray of gold. In her hand she carried an empty jug,
+almost as big as herself and she was going to her home, one of the
+inhabited houses nearest the fighting line. The day had been a very
+quiet one and the village took an opportunity to bask in the sun. I
+watched her go up the road tripping lightly on the grass, swinging her
+big jug. Life was a garland of flowers for her, it was good to watch
+her to see her trip along; the sight made me happy. What caused the
+German gunner, a simple woodman and a father himself perhaps, (p. 259)
+to fire at that moment? What demon guided the shell? Who can say? The
+shell dropped on the roadway just where the child was; I saw the
+explosion and dropped flat to avoid the splinters, when I looked again
+there was no child, no jug, where she had been was a heap of stones on
+the grass and dark curls of smoke rising up from it. I hastened
+indoors; the enemy were shelling the village again.
+
+Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets,
+and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing
+and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
+This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French
+by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets
+saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the
+village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the
+cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking
+up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak
+up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages
+of war.
+
+In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have
+seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260)
+the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning
+after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for
+halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a
+dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette,
+salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of _café au lait_ for fifteen
+sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum
+of ten francs on pay day.
+
+In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a
+cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
+That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same
+place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young
+Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a
+shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with
+us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of
+comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door
+and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in
+the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy
+connected with it.
+
+In some places the enemy's bullets search the main street by night (p. 261)
+and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the
+open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our
+boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety
+in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely
+trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your
+keeping.
+
+No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman
+there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the
+colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the
+pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church
+was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The
+woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None
+of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that
+she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.
+
+We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a
+cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the
+great mother, was busy; the butterflies flitted over the soldiers' (p. 262)
+graves, the grass grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to be
+sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom
+which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the
+whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the
+morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a
+jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs,
+holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog
+dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones
+showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if
+the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our
+laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and
+sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by
+the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:--
+
+ Here lies a dog as dead as dead,
+ A Sniper's bullet through its head,
+ Untroubled now by shots and shells,
+ It rots and can do nothing else.
+
+The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men,
+two women and two children, all civilians, were killed. The (p. 263)
+natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.
+
+In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange
+things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX (p. 264)
+
+SOUVENIR HUNTERS
+
+ I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean,
+ And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine;
+ I've carried it from A to X and back to A again,
+ I've found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.
+ A souvenir for blighty away across the foam,
+ That's if the French authorities will let me take it home.
+
+
+Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has
+never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of
+curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I
+took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a
+little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton
+piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles--one of our men
+who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until
+he was killed by a shell and then the boot fell into my hands. I have
+two percussion caps, one from a shell that came through the roof of a
+dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead
+lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert. In addition to these (p. 265)
+I have many shell splinters that fell into the trench and landed at my
+feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of shells and several
+other odds and ends picked up from the field of battle. Once I found a
+splendid English revolver--but that is a story.
+
+We were billeted in a model mining-village of red brick houses and
+terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it
+and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness
+relieved here and there by a shell-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow
+and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be
+seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German shells and
+counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went
+out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the grass from the
+trenches with reaping hooks. In the morning a white mist lay on the
+meadows and dry dung and dust rose from the roadway as we marched out
+to our labour.
+
+We halted by the last house in the village, one that stood almost
+intact, although the adjoining buildings were well nigh levelled to
+the ground. My mate, Pryor, fixed his eyes on the villa.
+
+"I'm going in there," he said pointing at the doors. (p. 266)
+
+"Souvenirs?" I asked.
+
+"Souvenirs," he replied.
+
+The two of us slipped away from the platoon and entered the building.
+On the ground floor stood a table on which a dinner was laid; an
+active service dinner of soup made from soup tablets (2_d._ each) the
+wrappers of which lay on the tiled floor, some tins of bully beef,
+opened, a loaf, half a dozen apples and an unopened tin of _café au
+lait_. The dinner was laid for four, although there were only three
+forks, two spoons and two clasp knives, the latter were undoubtedly
+used to replace table knives. Pryor looked under the table, then
+turned round and fixed a pair of scared eyes on me, and beckoned to me
+to approach. I came to his side and saw under the table on the floor a
+human hand, severed from the arm at the wrist. Beside it lay a
+web-equipment, torn to shreds, a broken range-finder and a Webley
+revolver, long of barrel and heavy of magazine.
+
+"A souvenir," said Pryor. "It must have been some time since that
+dinner was made; the bully smells like anything."
+
+"The shell came in there," I said pointing at the window, the side (p. 267)
+of which was broken a little, "and it hit one poor beggar anyway.
+Nobody seems to have come in here since then."
+
+"We'll hide the revolver," Pryor remarked, "and we'll come here for it
+to-night."
+
+We hid the revolver behind the door in a little cupboard in the wall;
+we came back for it two days later, but the weapon was gone though the
+hand still lay on the floor. What was the history of that house and of
+the officers who sat down to dinner? Will the tragedy ever be told?
+
+I had an interesting experience near Souchez when our regiment was
+holding part of the line in that locality. On the way in was a single
+house, a red brick villa, standing by the side of the communication
+trench which I used to pass daily when I went out to get water from
+the carts at the rear. One afternoon I climbed over the side and
+entered the house by a side door that looked over the German lines.
+The building was a conspicuous target for the enemy, but strange to
+say, it had never been touched by shell fire; now and again bullets
+peppered the walls, chipped the bricks and smashed the window-panes.
+On the ground floor was a large living-room with a big-bodied stove
+in the centre of the floor, religious pictures hung on the wall, (p. 268)
+a grandfather's clock stood in the niche near the door, the blinds
+were drawn across the shattered windows, and several chairs were
+placed round a big table near the stove. Upstairs in the bedrooms the
+beds were made and in one apartment a large perambulator, with a doll
+flung carelessly on its coverlet, stood near the wall, the paper of
+which was designed in little circles and in each circle were figures
+of little boys and girls, hundreds of them, frivolous mites, absurd
+and gay.
+
+Another stair led up to the garret, a gloomy place bare under the red
+tiles, some of which were broken. Looking out through the aperture in
+the roof I could see the British and German trenches drawn as if in
+chalk on a slate of green by an erratic hand, the hand of an idle
+child. Behind the German trenches stood the red brick village of ----,
+with an impudent chimney standing smokeless in the air, and a burning
+mine that vomited clouds of thick black smoke over meadow-fields
+splashed with poppies. Shells were bursting everywhere over the grass
+and the white lines; the greenish grey fumes of lyddite, the white
+smoke of shrapnel rose into mid-air, curled away and died. On the left
+of the village a road ran back into the enemy's land, and from (p. 269)
+it a cloud of dust was rising over the tree-tops; no doubt vehicles of
+war which I could not see were moving about in that direction. I
+stayed up in that garret for quite an hour full of the romance of my
+watch and when I left I took my souvenir with me, a picture of the
+Blessed Virgin in a cedar frame. That night we placed it outside our
+dug-out over the door. In the morning we found it smashed to pieces by
+a bullet.
+
+Daily I spent some time in the garret on my way out to the water-cart;
+and one day I found it occupied. Five soldiers and an officer were
+standing at my peephole when I got up, with a large telescope fixed on
+a tripod and trained on the enemy's lines. The War Intelligence
+Department had taken over the house for an observation post.
+
+"What do you want here?" asked the officer.
+
+Soldiers are ordered to keep to the trenches on the way out and in,
+none of the houses that line the way are to be visited. It was a case
+for a slight prevarication. My water jar was out in the trench: I
+carried my rifle and a bandolier.
+
+"I'm looking for a sniping position," I said. (p. 270)
+
+"You cannot stop here," said the officer. "We've taken this place
+over. Try some of the houses on the left."
+
+I cleared out. Three days later when on my usual errand I saw that the
+roof of my observation villa had been blown in. Nobody would be in
+there now I concluded and ventured inside. The door which stood at the
+bottom of the garret stair was closed. I caught hold of the latch and
+pulled it towards me. The door held tight. As I struggled with it I
+had a sense of pulling against a detaining hand that strove to hide a
+mystery, something fearful, from my eye. It swung towards me slowly
+and a pile of bricks fell on my feet as it opened. Something dark and
+liquid oozed out under my boots. I felt myself slip on it and knew
+that I stood on blood. All the way up the rubble-covered stairs there
+was blood, it had splashed red on the railings and walls. Laths,
+plaster, tiles and beams lay on the floor above and in the midst of
+the jumble was a shattered telescope still moist with the blood of
+men. Had all been killed and were all those I had met a few days
+before in the garret when the shell landed on the roof? It was
+impossible to tell.
+
+I returned to the dug-out meditating on the strange things that (p. 271)
+can be seen by him who goes souvenir-hunting between Souchez and
+Ypres. As I entered I found Bill gazing mutely at some black liquid in
+a sooty mess-tin.
+
+"Some milk, Bill," I said handing him the tin of Nestle's which had
+just come to me in a Gargantuan parcel from an English friend.
+
+"No milk, matey," he answered, "I'm feelin' done up proper, I am.
+Cannot eat a bite. Tummy out of order, my 'ead spinnin' like a top.
+When's sick parade?" he asked.
+
+"Seven o'clock," I said, "Is it as bad as that?"
+
+"Worse than that," he answered with a smile, "'Ave yer a cigarette to
+spare?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, fumbling in my pocket.
+
+"Well, give it to somebody as 'asn't got none," said Bill, "I'm off
+the smokin' a bit."
+
+The case was really serious since Bill could not smoke, a smokeless
+hour was for him a Purgatorial period, his favourite friend was his
+fag. After tea I went with him to the dressing station, and Ted Vittle
+of Section 4 accompanied us. Ted's tummy was also out of order and his
+head was spinning like a top. The men's equipment was carried (p. 272)
+out, men going sick from the trenches to the dressing-station at the
+rear carry their rifles and all portable property in case they are
+sent off to hospital. The sick soldier's stuff always goes to hospital
+with him.
+
+I stood outside the door of the dressing-station while the two men
+were in with the M.O. "What's wrong, Bill?" I asked when he came out.
+
+"My tempratoor's an 'undred and nine," said my comrade.
+
+"A hundred and what?" I ejaculated.
+
+"'Undred point nine 'is was," said Ted Vittle. "Mine's a 'undred point
+eight. The Twentieth 'as 'ad lots of men gone off to 'orsp to-day
+sufferin' from the same thing. Pyraxis the M.O. calls it. Trench fever
+is the right name."
+
+"Right?" interrogated Bill.
+
+"Well it's a name we can understand," said Ted.
+
+"Are you going back to the trenches again?" I asked.
+
+"We're to sleep 'ere to-night in the cellar under the dressin'-station,"
+they told me. "In the mornin' we're to report to the doctor again.
+'E's a bloke 'e is, that doctor. 'E says we're to take nothing (p. 273)
+but heggs and milk and the milk must be boiled."
+
+"Is the army going to supply it?"
+
+"No blurry fear," said Bill. "Even if we 'ad the brass and the
+appetite we can't buy any milk or heggs 'ere."
+
+I went back to the firing trench alone. Bill and Ted Vittle did not
+return the next day or the day after. Three weeks later Bill came
+back.
+
+We were sitting in our dug-out at a village the bawl of a donkey from
+Souchez, when a jew's harp, playing ragtime was heard outside.
+
+"Bill," we exclaimed in a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to
+us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and
+with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man
+who has seen strange sights in strange regions.
+
+"What's your temperature?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Blimey, it's the correct thing now, but it didn't arf go up and
+down," said Bill sitting down on the dug-out chair, our only one since
+a shell dropped through the roof. Some days before B Company had held
+the dug-out and two of the boys were killed. "It's no fun the
+'orspital I can tell yer."
+
+"What sort of disease is Pyraxis?" asked Goliath. (p. 274)
+
+"It's not 'arf bad, if you've got it bad, and it's not good when
+you've it only 'arf bad," said Bill, adding, "I mean that if I 'ad it
+bad I would get off to blighty, but my case was only a light one, not
+so bad as Ted Vittle. 'E's not back yet, maybe it's a trip across the
+Channel for 'im. 'E was real bad when 'e walked down with me to
+Mazingarbe. I was rotten too, couldn't smoke. It was sit down and rest
+for fifteen minutes then walk for five. Mazingarbe is only a mile and
+an 'arf from the dressing-station and it took us three hours to get
+down; from there we took the motor-ambulance to the clearing hospital.
+There was a 'ot bath there and we were put to bed in a big 'ouse,
+blankets, plenty of them and a good bed. 'Twas a grand place to kip
+in. Bad as I was, I noticed that."
+
+"No stand-to at dawn?" I said.
+
+"Two 'ours before dawn we 'ad to stand-to in our blankets, matey,"
+said Bill. "The Germans began to shell the blurry place and 'twas up
+to us to 'op it. We went dozens of us to the rear in a 'bus. Shook us!
+We were rattled about like tins on cats' tails and dumped down at
+another 'orsp about breakfast time. My tempratoor was up more (p. 275)
+than ever there; I almost burst the thremometur. And Ted! Blimey, yer
+should 'ave seen Ted! Lost to the wide, 'e was. 'E could 'ardly speak;
+but 'e managed to give me his mother's address and I was to write 'ome
+a long letter to 'er when 'e went West."
+
+"Allowed to 'ave peace in that place! No fear; the Boches began to
+shell us, and they sent over fifty shells in 'arf an 'our. All troops
+were ordered to leave the town and we went with the rest to a 'orsp
+under canvas in X----.
+
+"A nice quiet place X---- was, me and Ted was along with two others in
+a bell-tent and 'ere we began to get better. Our clothes were taken
+from us, all my stuff and two packets of fags and put into a locker. I
+don't know what I was thinking of when I let the fags go. There was
+one feller as had two francs in his trousers' pocket when 'e gave 'is
+trousers in and 'e got the wrong trousers back. 'E discovered that one
+day when 'e was goin' to send the R.A.M.C. orderly out for beer for
+all 'ands.
+
+"'Twas a 'ungry place X. We were eight days in bed and all we got was
+milk and once or twice a hegg. Damned little heggs they were; (p. 276)
+they must 'ave been laid by tomtits in a 'urry. I got into trouble
+once; I climbed up the tent-pole one night just to 'ave a song on my
+own, and when I was on the top down comes the whole thing and I landed
+on Ted Vittle's bread basket. 'Is tempratoor was up to a 'undred and
+one point five next mornin'. The doctor didn't 'arf give me a look
+when 'e 'eard about me bein' up the pole."
+
+"Was he a nice fellow, the doctor?" I asked.
+
+"Not 'arf, 'e wasn't," said Bill. "When I got into my old uniform 'e
+looked 'ard at my cap. You remember it boys; 'twas more like a
+ragman's than a soldier of the King's. Then 'e arst me: ''Ave yer seen
+much war?' 'Not 'arf, I 'avent,' I told him. 'I thought so,' 'e said,
+'judgin' by yer cap.' And 'e told the orderly to indent me for a brand
+new uniform. And 'e gave me two francs to get a drink when I was
+leavin'."
+
+"Soft-hearted fellow," said Goliath.
+
+"Was he!" remarked Bill. "Yer should be there when 'e came in one
+mornin'."
+
+"'Ow d'ye feel?" he asked Ted Vittle.
+
+"Not fit at all, sir," says Ted.
+
+"Well carry on," said the doctor.
+
+I looked at Ted, Ted looked at me and 'e tipped me the wink. (p. 277)
+
+"'Ow d'ye feel," said the doctor to me.
+
+"Not fit at all," I answers.
+
+"Back to duties," 'e said and my jaw dropped with a click like a rifle
+bolt. 'Twas ten minutes after that when 'e gave me the two francs."
+
+"I saw Spud 'Iggles, 'im that was wounded at Givenchy;" Bill informed
+us after he had lit a fresh cigarette.
+
+"'Ole Spud!"
+
+"'Ows Spud?"
+
+"Not so bad, yer know," said Bill, answering our last question. "'E's
+got a job."
+
+"A good one?" I queried.
+
+"Not 'arf," Bill said. "'E goes round with the motor car that goes to
+places where soldiers are billeted and gathers up all the ammunition,
+bully beef tins, tins of biscuits and everything worth anything that's
+left behind--"
+
+"Bill Teake. Is Bill Teake there?" asked a corporal at the door of the
+dug-out.
+
+"I'm 'ere, old Sawbones," said Bill, "wot d'ye want me for?"
+
+"It's your turn on sentry," said the corporal.
+
+"Oh! blimey, that's done it!" grumbled Bill. "I feel my tempratoor (p. 278)
+goin' up again. It's always some damn fatigue or another in this
+cursed place. I wonder when will I 'ave the luck to go sick again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX (p. 279)
+
+THE WOMEN OF FRANCE
+
+ Lonely and still the village lies,
+ The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.
+ The road is straight as the bullet flies,
+ And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.
+
+ Shadowy forms creep through the night,
+ Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;
+ A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,
+ A scream as a woman's soul takes flight
+ Through the quivering morning air.
+
+
+We had been working all morning in a cornfield near an _estaminet_ on
+the La Bassée Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt
+very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a
+sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by
+drinking white wine in an _estaminet_ by the La Bassée Road.
+
+"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we
+entered.
+
+"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor
+explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on
+sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approach of a (p. 280)
+sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the
+trench."
+
+"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant
+looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and
+the back room empty."
+
+Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear,
+where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating
+over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor
+peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a
+fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over
+sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from
+the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript
+pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of
+bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long
+rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.
+
+"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.
+
+I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris,
+speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work
+since five o'clock that morning.
+
+"The Germans will never get back here again unless as prisoners." (p. 281)
+
+"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.
+
+"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz
+like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten,
+our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip!
+pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing
+can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. _Plusieurs
+morts, plusieurs blessés._ Run! Some go right, some left. The second
+shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes
+the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as
+the 75."
+
+"What about the gun that sent this over?"
+
+Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic
+shells with which the Germans raked La Bassée Road in the early stages
+of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not
+the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell
+is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson."
+The shell relic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, (p. 282)
+was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye,
+opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene
+of the great war become fashionable, the woman of the _estaminet_ is
+going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many
+mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way
+with a long purse, "après la guerre." At present a needy urchin will
+sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and
+horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely
+with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.
+
+"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the
+clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which
+lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But
+compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes
+boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out
+before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in
+shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes
+silently, it's quicker than its own sound."
+
+"Do you work here?" asked Pryor. (p. 283)
+
+"I work here," said the potato-peeler.
+
+"In a coal-mine?"
+
+"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for
+seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez
+to-day."
+
+"Oh!" I ejaculated.
+
+"Oh!" said Pryor. "Seen some fighting?"
+
+"Not much," said the man, "not too much." His eyes lit up as with fire
+and he sent a potato stripped clean of its jacket up to the roof but
+with such precision that it dropped down straight into the bucket.
+"First we went south and the Germans came across up north. 'Twas turn
+about and up like mad; perched on taxis, limbers, ambulance waggons,
+anything. We got into battle near Paris. The Boches came in clusters,
+they covered the ground like flies on the dead at Souchez. The 75's
+came into work there. 'Twas wonderful. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Men were
+cut down, wiped out in hundreds. When the gun was useless--guns had
+short lives and glorious lives there--a new one came into play (p. 284)
+and killed, killed, until it could stand the strain no longer."
+
+"Much hand-to-hand fighting?" asked Pryor.
+
+"The bayonet! Yes!" The potato-peeler thrust his knife through a
+potato and slit it in two. "The Germans said 'Eugh! Eugh! Eugh!' when
+we went for them like this." He made several vicious prods at an
+imaginary enemy. "And we cut them down."
+
+He paused as if at a loss for words, and sent his knife whirling into
+the air where it spun at an alarming rate. I edged my chair nearer the
+door, but the potato-peeler, suddenly standing upright, caught the
+weapon by the haft as it circled and bent to lift a fresh potato.
+
+"What is that for?" asked Pryor, pointing to a sword wreathed in a
+garland of flowers, tattooed on the man's arm.
+
+"The rapier," said the potato-peeler. "I'm a fencer, a master-fencer;
+fenced in Paris and several places."
+
+The woman of the house, the man's wife, had been buzzing round like a
+bee, droning out in an incoherent voice as she served the customers.
+Now she came up to the master-fencer, looked at him in the face for a
+second, and then looked at the bucket. The sweat oozed from her (p. 285)
+face like water from a sponge.
+
+"Hurry, and get the work done," she said to her husband, then she
+turned to us. "You're keeping him from work," she stuttered, "you two,
+chattering like parrots. Allez-vous en! Allez-vous en!"
+
+We left the house of the potato-peeler and returned to our digging.
+The women of France are indeed wonderful.
+
+That evening Bill came up to me as I was sitting on the banquette. In
+his hand was an English paper that I had just been reading and in his
+eye was wrath.
+
+"The 'ole geeser's fyce is in this 'ere thing again," he said
+scornfully. "Blimy! it's like the bad weather, it's everywhere."
+
+"Whose face do you refer to?" I asked my friend.
+
+"This Jimace," was the answer and Bill pointed to the photo of a
+well-known society lady who was shown in the act of escorting a
+wounded soldier along a broad avenue of trees that tapered away to a
+point where an English country mansion showed like a doll's house in
+the distance. "Every pyper I open she's in it; if she's not makin'
+socks for poor Tommies at the front, she's tyin' bandages on (p. 286)
+wounded Tommies at 'ome."
+
+"There's nothing wrong in that," I said, noting the sarcasm in Bill's
+voice.
+
+"S'pose its natural for 'er to let everybody know what she does, like
+a 'en that lays a negg," my mate answered. "She's on this pyper or
+that pyper every day. She's learnin' nursin' one day, learnin' to
+drive an ambulance the next day, she doesn't carry a powder puff in
+'er vanity bag at present----"
+
+"Who said so?" I asked.
+
+"It's 'ere in black and white," said Bill. "'Er vanity bag 'as given
+place to a respirator, an' instead of a powder puff she now carries an
+antiskeptic bandage. It makes me sick; it's all the same with women in
+England. 'Ere's another picture called 'Bathin' as usual.' A dozen of
+girls out in the sea (jolly good legs some of 'em 'as, too) 'avin' a
+bit of a frisky. Listen what it says: 'Despite the trying times the
+English girls are keepin' a brave 'eart----' Oh! 'ang it, Pat, they're
+nothin' to the French girls, them birds at 'ome."
+
+"What about that girl you knew at St. Albans?" I asked. "You remember
+how she slid down the banisters and made toffee."
+
+"She wasn't no class, you know," said Bill. (p. 287)
+
+"She never answered the verse you sent from Givenchy, I suppose," I
+remarked.
+
+"It's not that----"
+
+"Did she answer your letter saying she reciprocated your sentiments?"
+I asked.
+
+"Reshiperate your grandmother, Pat!" roared Bill. "Nark that language,
+I say. Speak that I can understand you. Wait a minute till I
+reshiperate that," he suddenly exclaimed pressing a charge into his
+rifle magazine and curving over the parapet. He sent five shots in the
+direction from which he supposed the sniper who had been potting at us
+all day, was firing. Then he returned to his argument.
+
+"You've seen that bird at the farm in Mazingarbe?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "Pryor said that her ankles were abnormally thick."
+
+"Pryor's a fool," Bill exclaimed.
+
+"But they really looked thick----"
+
+"You're a bigger fool than 'im!"
+
+"I didn't know you had fallen in love with the girl," I said "How did
+it happen?"
+
+"Blimey, I'm not in love," said my mate, "but I like a girl with a
+good 'eart. Twas out in the horchard in the farm I first met 'er. (p. 288)
+I was out pullin' apples, pinchin' them if you like to say so, and I
+was shakin' the apples from the branches. I had to keep my eyes on the
+farm to see that nobody seen me while I shook. It takes a devil of a
+lot of strength to rumble apples off a tree when you're shakin' a
+trunk that's stouter than the bread basket of a Bow butcher. All at
+once I saw the girl of the farm comin' runnin' at me with a stick.
+Round to the other side of the tree I ran like lightnin', and after me
+she comes. Then round to the other side went I----"
+
+"Which side?" I asked.
+
+"The side she wasn't on," said Bill. "After me she came and round to
+her side I 'opped----"
+
+"Who was on the other side now?" I inquired.
+
+"I took good care that she was always on the other side until I saw
+what she was up to with the stick," said Bill. "But d'yer know what
+the stick was for? 'Twas to help me to bring down the apples. Savve.
+They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.
+
+The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every
+shell-shattered village from Souchez to the sea! What labours (p. 289)
+they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the
+Church of ----, where the woman nearest the German lines sells rum
+under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace and
+power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men destroy
+and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one villages which
+fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their day's work under
+shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to pounce on them at
+every corner.
+
+I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture
+when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again
+when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same
+field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that
+the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she
+replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked
+"Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the trenches
+nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French have gone
+further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out and trench
+but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiers have come and (p. 290)
+my husband had to go away," she says. "He went south beyond Souchez,
+and now he's dead."
+
+The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and
+bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter
+when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers
+were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.
+
+A woman sells _café noir_ near Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks
+that was once her home. Once it was _café au lait_ and it cost four
+sous a cup, she only charges three sous now since her cow got shot in
+the stomach outside her ramshackle _estaminet_. Along with a few mates
+I was in the place two months ago and a bullet entered the door and
+smashed the coffee pot; the woman now makes coffee in a biscuit tin.
+
+The road from our billet to the firing line is as uncomfortable as a
+road under shell fire can be, but what time we went that way nightly
+as working parties, we met scores of women carrying furniture away
+from a deserted village behind the trenches. The French military
+authorities forbade civilians to live there and drove them back to
+villages that were free from danger. But nightly they came back,
+contrary to orders, and carried away property to their temporary (p. 291)
+homes. Sometimes, I suppose they took goods that were not entirely
+their own, but at what risk! One or two got killed nightly and many
+were wounded. However, they still persisted in coming back and
+carrying away beds, tables, mirrors and chairs in all sorts of queer
+conveyances, barrows, perambulators and light spring-carts drawn by
+strong intelligent dogs.
+
+"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI (p. 292)
+
+IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
+
+ "What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,
+ And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;
+ I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.
+ I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made
+ For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,
+ As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.
+ "But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.
+ I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er
+ The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,
+ "Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"
+
+
+The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French
+summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with
+star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on
+the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away
+on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth
+where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched
+the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells
+rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that (p. 293)
+disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on
+my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead
+wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between. The
+dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun
+shadows of the parados.
+
+Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our
+corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the
+tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside
+the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm,
+sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen
+floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the
+night air.
+
+"Quiet?" he asked.
+
+"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."
+
+"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and
+gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have
+the working parties come up yet?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."
+
+They came along the trench, about two hundred strong, engineers (p. 294)
+and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed wire,
+wooden supports, &c. They were going out digging on a new sap and
+putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished, would
+bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy. Needless
+to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they were
+digging out towards our lines.
+
+The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the
+banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.
+
+"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.
+
+"We're reserves there," he answered. "It's always working-parties; at
+night and at day. Sweeping gutters and picking papers and bits of stew
+from the street. Is it quiet here?"
+
+"Very quiet," I answered. "We've only had five killed and nine wounded
+in six days. How is your regiment getting along?"
+
+"Oh, not so bad," said the man; "some go west at times, but it's what
+one has to expect out here."
+
+The working party were edging off, and some of the men were clambering
+over the parapet.
+
+"Hi! Ginger!" someone said in a loud whisper, "Ginger Weeson; (p. 295)
+come along at once!"
+
+The man on the banquette got to his feet, put out his cigarette and
+placed the fag-end in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he
+returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette
+would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the
+parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My
+hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and was
+immediately asleep.
+
+I was called again at one, three-quarters of an hour later.
+
+"What's up?" I asked the corporal who wakened me.
+
+"Oh, there's a party going down to the rear for rations," I was told.
+"So you've got to take up sentry-go till stand-to; that'll be for an
+hour or so. You're better out in the air now for its beginning to
+stink everywhere, but the dug-out is the worst place of all."
+
+So saying, the corporal entered the dug-out and stretched himself on
+the floor; he was going to have a sleep despite his mean opinion of
+the shelter.
+
+The stench gathers itself in the early morning, in that chill (p. 296)
+hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze from
+the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and well-nigh
+tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed with the
+stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as it enters
+your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it crawl up your
+nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of the throat
+through the windpipe and into the stomach.
+
+I leant my arms on the sandbags and looked across the field; I fancied
+I could see men moving in the darkness, but when the star-shells went
+up there was no sign of movement out by the web of barbed-wire
+entanglements. The new sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky
+white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep
+yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising
+eerie from the space between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing
+"Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting,
+deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was
+hit I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then
+intense silence wrapped up everything as in a cloak. But only for (p. 297)
+a moment. The enemy must have heard the cry for a dozen star-shells
+shot towards us and frittered away in sparks by our barbed-wire
+entanglements. There followed a second of darkness and then an
+explosion right over the sap. The enemy were firing shrapnel shells on
+the working party. Three, four shells exploded simultaneously out in
+front. I saw dark forms rise up and come rushing into shelter. There
+was a crunching, a stumbling and a gasping as if for air. Boots struck
+against the barbed entanglements, and like trodden mice, the wires
+squeaked in protest. I saw a man, outlined in black against the glow
+of a star-shell, struggling madly as he endeavoured to loose his
+clothing from the barbs on which it caught. There was a ripping and
+tearing of tunics and trousers.... A shell burst over the men again
+and I saw two fall; one got up and clung to the arm of a mate, the
+other man crawled on his belly towards the parapet.
+
+In their haste they fell over the parapet into the trench, several of
+them. Many had gone back by the sap, I could see them racing along
+crouching as they ran. Out in front several forms were bending over
+the ground attending to the wounded. From my left the message (p. 298)
+came "Stretcher-bearers at the double." And I passed it along.
+
+Two men who had scrambled over the parapet were sitting on my
+banquette, one with a scratched forehead, the other with a bleeding
+finger. Their mates were attending to them binding up the wounds.
+
+"Many hurt?" I asked.
+
+"A lot 'ave copped a packet," said the man with the bleeding finger.
+
+"We never 'eard the blurry things come, did we?" he asked his mates.
+
+"Never 'eard nothin', we didn't till the thing burst over us," said a
+voice from the trench. "I was busy with Ginger----"
+
+"Ginger Weeson?" I enquired.
+
+"That's 'im," was the reply. "Did yer 'ear 'im yell? Course yer did;
+ye'd 'ave 'eard 'im over at La Bassée."
+
+"What happened to him?" I asked.
+
+"A bullet through 'is belly," said the voice. "When 'e roared I put my
+'and on 'is mouth and 'e gave me such a punch. I was nearly angry, and
+'im in orful pain. Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like
+his one."
+
+Their wounds dressed, the men went away; others came by carrying (p. 299)
+out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on the
+shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth
+knocked away.
+
+The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the
+morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died
+in hospital.
+
+The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived
+when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for
+us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine
+breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII (p. 300)
+
+ROMANCE
+
+ The young recruit is apt to think
+ Of war as a romance;
+ But he'll find its boots and bayonets
+ When he's somewhere out in France.
+
+
+When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from ---- his
+heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he
+is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the
+branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew,
+hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are
+thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring,
+murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool,
+mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the
+roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and
+on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into
+the land of mystery, the Unknown.
+
+In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward (p. 301)
+as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can
+mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of
+smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and
+lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of
+death.
+
+Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is
+a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken
+homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of
+yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last
+autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.
+
+Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead,
+and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the
+skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle
+in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the
+wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In
+it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery,
+the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to
+the heart of the young soldier.
+
+I have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with (p. 302)
+the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the
+heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and
+drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of
+evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses,
+gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.
+
+Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and
+catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame.
+Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of
+smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of
+bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.
+
+Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly
+hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of
+God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the
+Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.
+
+He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can
+never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening
+sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy ringing of church (p. 303)
+bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong;
+the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of
+war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the
+stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by
+the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening
+and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half
+moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their
+chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and
+dusty trucks.
+
+There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the
+crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects
+every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing
+line.
+
+Ahead, the star-shells, constellations of green, electric white, and
+blue, light the scenes of war. From the ridge of the hill, downwards
+towards an illimitable plain, the road takes its way through a
+ghost-world of ruined homes where dark and ragged masses of broken
+roof and wall stand out in blurred outlines against indistinct and
+formless backgrounds.
+
+A gun is belching forth murder and sudden death from an (p. 304)
+emplacement on the right; in a spinney on the left a battery is noisy
+and the flashes from there light up the cluster of trees that stand
+huddled together as if for warmth. Vehicles of war lumber along the
+road, field-kitchens, gun-limbers, water-carts, motor-ambulances, and
+Red Cross waggons. Men march towards us, men in brown, bearing rifles
+and swords, and pass us in the night. A shell bursts near, and there
+is a sound as of a handful of peas being violently flung to the
+ground.
+
+For the night we stop in a village where the branches of the trees are
+shrapnelled clean of their leaves, and where all the rafters of the
+houses are bared of their covering of red tiles. A wind may rise when
+you're dropping off to sleep on the stone flags of a cellar, and then
+you can hear the door of the house and of nearly every house in the
+place creaking on its hinges. The breeze catches the telephone wires
+which run from the artillery at rear to their observation stations,
+and the wires sing like light shells travelling through space.
+
+At dawn you waken to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at
+aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from
+exploding shells, swish to the earth with a sound like burning (p. 305)
+magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a skull, if
+any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to remain in
+shelter until the row is over.
+
+Outside, the birds are merry on the roofs; you can hear them sing
+defiantly at the lone cat that watches them from the grassy spot which
+was once a street. Spiders' webs hang over the doorways, many flies
+have come to an untimely end in the glistening snares, poor little
+black, helpless things. Here and there lies a broken crucifix and a
+torn picture of the Holy Family, the shrines that once stood at the
+street corners are shapeless heaps of dust and weeds and the village
+church is in ruins.
+
+No man is allowed to walk in the open by day; a German observation
+balloon, a big banana of a thing, with ends pointing downwards stands
+high over the earth ten kilometres away and sees all that takes place
+in the streets.
+
+There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings
+where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this
+village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.
+
+How fine it is to leave the trenches at night after days of (p. 306)
+innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is
+good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore
+and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife,
+the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn,
+with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all
+the strain of getting there.
+
+Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light
+a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a
+chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The
+flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the
+roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet
+one another inquiringly.
+
+"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"
+
+Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting.
+Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when
+the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a
+rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.
+
+There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Horizon
+
+Author: Patrick MacGill
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED HORIZON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
+The original spelling has been retained.<br>
+
+Page 17: "some with faces turned upwards,"
+the word "turned" was crossed.<br>
+Page 234: Added a round bracket,
+ (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.).]</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img001.jpg" width="400" height="648" alt="Front page" title="">
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE RED HORIZON</h1>
+
+
+<h2>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</h2>
+
+<h3>CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END.<br>
+The Autobiography of a Navvy.<br>
+Ten Thousand Printed within Ten<br>
+Days of Publication.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE RAT-PIT. <i>Third Edition.</i></h3>
+
+<h3>THE AMATEUR ARMY.<br>
+The Experiences of a Soldier in the
+Making.</h3>
+
+<h3>THE GREAT PUSH.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<h1>THE RED HORIZON</h1>
+
+<h2>BY<br>
+PATRICK MACGILL</h2>
+
+
+<h2>WITH A FOREWORD BY<br>
+VISCOUNT ESHER G. C. B.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h4>TORONTO<br>
+McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD &amp;<br>
+STEWART, LIMITED</h4>
+
+
+<h4>LONDON<br>
+HERBERT JENKINS, LIMITED<br>
+1916</h4>
+
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD.,
+TIPTREE, ESSEX.</span></h5>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="smcap">TO</span><br>
+THE LONDON IRISH<br>
+<span class="smcap">TO THE SPIRIT OF THOSE WHO FIGHT AND TO<br>
+THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY<br>
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED</span></h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2>FOREWORD</h2>
+
+
+
+<p><i>To</i> <span class="smcap">Patrick MacGill,</span><br>
+<span class="left10">Rifleman No. 3008, London Irish.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<span class="smcap">Dear Patrick MacGill,</span>
+
+<p>There is open in France a wonderful exhibition of the work of the many
+gallant artists who have been serving in the French trenches through
+the long months of the War.</p>
+
+<p>There is not a young writer, painter, or sculptor of French blood, who
+is not risking his life for his country. Can we make the same proud
+boast?</p>
+
+<p>When I recruited you into the London Irish&mdash;one of those splendid
+regiments that London has sent to Sir John French, himself an
+Irishman&mdash;it was with gratitude and pride.</p>
+
+<p>You had much to give us. The rare experiences of your boyhood, your
+talents, your brilliant hopes for the future. Upon all these the
+Western hills and loughs of your native Donegal seemed to have a prior
+claim. But you gave them to London and to our London Territorials. It
+was an example and a symbol.</p>
+
+<p>The London Irish will be proud of their young artist in words, and he
+will for ever be proud of the London Irish Regiment, its deeds and
+valour, to which he has dedicated such great gifts. May God preserve
+you.</p>
+
+
+<p class="left25">Yours sincerely,</p>
+
+<p class="left35"><span class="smcap">Esher.</span></p>
+
+<p class="left25"><i>President</i> County of London</p>
+<p>Callander. <span class="left30">Territorial Association.</span></p>
+
+<p><i>16th September, 1915.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" summary="Chapter">
+<colgroup>
+ <col class="c20">
+ <col class="c80">
+</colgroup>
+
+<tbody>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ Chapter.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ &nbsp;
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ I.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page013">THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ II.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page019">SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ III.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page030">OUR FRENCH BILLETS</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ IV.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page043">THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ V.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page049">FIRST BLOOD</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ VI.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page069">IN THE TRENCHES</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ VII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page088">BLOOD AND IRON&mdash;AND DEATH</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ VIII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page110">TERRORS OF THE NIGHT</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ IX.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page116">THE DUG-OUT BANQUET</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ X.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page130">A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XI.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page138">THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page149">THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XIII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page175">A NIGHT OF HORROR</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XIV.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page200">A FIELD OF BATTLE</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XV.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page209">THE REACTION</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XVI.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page216">PEACE AND WAR</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XVII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page228">EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XVIII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page249">THE COVERING PARTY</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XIX.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page264">SOUVENIR HUNTERS</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XX.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page279">THE WOMEN OF FRANCE</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XXI.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page292">IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+ <td class="td-right">
+ XXII.
+ </td>
+ <td>
+ <a href="#page300">ROMANCE</a>
+ </td>
+</tr>
+
+</tbody>
+</table>
+
+
+<h2>THE <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page013" name="page013">(p. 013)</a>
+</span> RED HORIZON</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER 1</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Passing of the Regiment</span></h3>
+
+<div class="left30 smsize">
+<p>I wish the sea were not so wide<br>
+That parts me from my love;<br>
+I wish the things men do below<br>
+Were known to God above.</p>
+
+<p>I wish that I were back again<br>
+In the glens of Donegal;<br>
+They'll call me coward if I return,<br>
+But a hero if I fall.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it better to be a living coward,<br>
+Or thrice a hero dead?"<br>
+"It's better to go to sleep, my lad,"<br>
+The Colour Sergeant said.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">Night, a grey troubled sky without moon or stars. The shadows lay on
+the surface of the sea, and the waves moaned beneath the keel of the
+troopship that was bearing us away on the most momentous journey of
+our lives. The hour was about ten. Southampton lay astern; by dawn we
+should be in France, and a day nearer the war for which we had trained
+so long in the cathedral city of St. Albans.</p>
+
+<p>I <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page014" name="page014">(p. 014)</a>
+</span> had never realized my mission as a rifleman so acutely
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"To the war! to the war!" I said under my breath. "Out to France and
+the fighting!" The thought raised a certain expectancy in my mind.
+"Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?" I asked
+myself. "Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his
+body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen,
+comes out at the back? I'll not think of it."</p>
+
+<p>But the thoughts could not be chased away. The month was March, and
+the night was bitterly cold on deck. A sharp penetrating wind swept
+across the sea and sung eerily about the dun-coloured funnel. With my
+overcoat buttoned well up about my neck and my Balaclava helmet pulled
+down over my ears I paced along the deck for quite an hour; then,
+shivering with cold, I made my way down to the cabin where my mates
+had taken up their quarters. The cabin was low-roofed and lit with two
+electric lamps. The corners receded into darkness where the shadows
+clustered thickly. The floor was covered with sawdust, packs and
+haversacks hung from pegs in the walls; a gun-rack stood in the centre
+of the apartment; butts
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page015" name="page015">(p. 015)</a>
+</span> down and muzzles in line, the rifles
+stretched in a straight row from stern to cabin stairs. On the benches
+along the sides the men took their seats, each man under his
+equipment, and by right of equipment holding the place for the length
+of the voyage.</p>
+
+<p>My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco smoke.
+In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a
+broken row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."</p>
+
+<p>"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought
+we weren't goin' out at all."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not
+all fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's
+only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a
+line regiment."</p>
+
+<p>"That's <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page016" name="page016">(p. 016)</a>
+</span> why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the
+Cockney.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's like this," said Spud&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue," snapped the sergeant, and Spud relapsed into
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment he turned to me where I sat. "It's not only Germans
+that I'll look for in the trenches," he said, "when I have my rifle
+loaded and get close to that sergeant&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll put a bullet through him"; I said, "just as you vowed you'd do
+to me some time ago. You were going to put a bullet through the
+sergeant-major, the company cook, the sanitary inspector, the army
+tailor and every single man in the regiment. Are you going to destroy
+the London Irish root and branch?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's some in it as wants a talking to at times," said Spud.
+"'Ave yer got a fag to spare?"</p>
+
+<p>Somebody sung a ragtime song, and the cabin took up the chorus. The
+boys bound for the fields of war were light-hearted and gay. A journey
+from the Bank to Charing Cross might be undertaken with a more serious
+air: it looked <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page017" name="page017">(p. 017)</a>
+</span> for all the world as if they were merely out
+on some night frolic, determined to throw the whole mad vitality of
+youth into the escapade.</p>
+
+<p>"What will it be like out there?" I asked myself. The war seemed very
+near now. "What will it be like, but above all, how shall I conduct
+myself in the trenches? Maybe I shall be afraid&mdash;cowardly. But no! If
+I can't bear the discomforts and terrors which thousands endure daily
+I'm not much good. But I'll be all right. Vanity will carry me through
+where courage fails. It would be such a grand thing to become
+conspicuous by personal daring. Suppose the men were wavering in an
+attack, and then I rushed out in front and shouted: 'Boys, we've got
+to get this job through'&mdash;But, I'm a fool. Anyhow I'll lie on the
+floor and have a sleep."</p>
+
+<p>Most of the men were now in a deep slumber. Despite an order against
+smoking, given a quarter of an hour before, a few of my mates had the
+"fags" lit, and as the lamps had been turned off the cigarettes glowed
+red through the gloom. The sleepers lay in every conceivable position,
+some with faces turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues
+stretching over <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page018" name="page018">(p. 018)</a></span>
+the lower lips; some with knees curled up
+and heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement,
+some with hands clasped tightly over their breasts and others with
+their fingers bent as if trying to clutch at something beyond their
+reach. A few slumbered with their heads on their rifles, more had
+their heads on the sawdust-covered floor, and these sent the sawdust
+fluttering whenever they breathed. The atmosphere of the place was
+close and almost suffocating. Now and again someone coughed and
+spluttered as if he were going to choke. Perspiration stood out in
+little beads on the temples of the sleepers, and they turned round
+from time to time to raise their Balaclava helmets higher over their
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And so the night wore on. What did they dream of lying there? I
+wondered. Of their journey and the perils that lay before them? Of the
+glory or the horror of the war? Of their friends whom, perhaps, they
+would never see again? It was impossible to tell.</p>
+
+<p>For myself I tried not to think too clearly of what I might see
+to-morrow or the day after. The hour was now past midnight and a new
+day had come. What did it hold for us all? Nobody knew&mdash;I fell asleep.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page019" name="page019">(p. 019)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Somewhere in France</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+When I come back to England,<br>
+ And times of Peace come round,<br>
+I'll surely have a shilling,<br>
+ And may be have a pound;<br>
+I'll walk the whole town over,<br>
+ And who shall say me nay,<br>
+For I'm a British soldier<br>
+ With a British soldier's pay.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The Rest Camp a city of innumerable bell-tents, stood on the summit of
+a hill overlooking the town and the sea beyond. We marched up from the
+quay in the early morning, followed the winding road paved with
+treacherous cobbles that glory in tripping unwary feet, and sweated to
+the summit of the hill. Here a new world opened to our eyes: a canvas
+city, the mushroom growth of our warring times lay before us; tent
+after tent, large and small, bell-tent and marquee in accurate
+alignment.</p>
+
+<p>It took us two hours to march to our places; we grounded arms at the
+word of command and sank <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page020" name="page020">(p. 020)</a>
+</span> on our packs wearily happy. True, a
+few had fallen out; they came in as we rested and awkwardly fell into
+position. They were men who had been sea-sick the night before. We
+were too excited to rest for long; like dogs in a new locality we were
+presently nosing round looking for food. Two hours march in full
+marching order makes men hungry, and hungry men are ardent explorers.
+The dry and wet canteens faced one another, and each was capable of
+accommodating a hundred men. Never were canteens crowded so quickly,
+never have hundreds of the hungry and drouthy clamoured so eagerly for
+admission as on that day. But time worked marvels; at the end of an
+hour we fell in again outside a vast amount of victuals, and the
+sea-sickness of the previous night, and the strain of the morning's
+march were things over which now we could be humorously reminiscent.</p>
+
+<p>Sheepskin jackets, the winter uniform of the trenches, were served out
+to us, and all were tried on. They smelt of something chemical and
+unpleasant, but were very warm and quite polar in appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Wish my mother could see me now," Bill the Cockney remarked. "My, she
+wouldn't think <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page021" name="page021">(p. 021)</a>
+</span> me 'alf a cove. It's a balmy. I discovered
+the South Pole, I'm thinkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"More like you're up the pole!" some one cut in, then continued, "If
+they saw us at St. Albans<a id="notetag001" name="notetag001"></a>
+<a href="#note001">[1]</a> now! Bet yer they wouldn't say as we're
+for home service."</p>
+
+<p>That night we slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight
+as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central
+pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement
+was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed
+the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came
+in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in
+a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a
+paradise of sympathy and mutual agreement.</p>
+
+<p>We rose early, washed and shaved, and found our way to the canteen, a
+big marquee under the control of the Expeditionary Force, where bread
+and butter, bacon and tea were served out for breakfast. Soldiers
+recovering from wounds worked as waiters, and told, when they had a
+moment to spare, of hair-breadth adventures in <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page022" name="page022">(p. 022)</a></span> the trenches.
+They found us willing listeners; they had lived for long in the
+locality for which we were bound, and the whole raw regiment had a
+personal interest in the narratives of the wounded men.
+Bayonet-charges were discussed.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been in three of 'em," remarked a quiet, inoffensive-looking
+youth who was sweeping the floor of the room. "They were a bit 'ot,
+but nothin' much to write 'ome about. Not like a picture in the
+papers, none of them wasn't. Not much stickin' of men. You just ops
+out of your trench and rush and roar, like 'ell. The Germans fire and
+then run off, and it's all over."</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast feet were inspected by the medical officer. We sat
+down on our packs in the parade ground, took off our boots, and
+shivered with cold. The day was raw, the wind sharp and penetrating;
+we forgot that our sheepskins smelt vilely, and snuggled into them,
+glad of their warmth. The M.O. asked questions: "Do your boots pinch?"
+"Any blisters?" "Do you wear two pairs of socks?" &amp;c., &amp;c. Two
+thousand feet passed muster, and boots were put on again.</p>
+
+<p>The quartermaster's stores claimed our attention afterwards,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page023" name="page023">(p. 023)</a></span>
+and the attendants there were almost uncannily kind. "Are you sure
+you've got everything you want?" they asked us. "There mayn't be a
+chance to get fitted up after this." Socks, pull-throughs, overcoats,
+regimental buttons, badges, hats, tunics, oil-bottles, gloves,
+puttees, and laces littered the floor and were piled on the benches.
+We took what we required; no one superintended our selection.</p>
+
+<p>At St. Albans, where we had been turned into soldiers, we often stood
+for hours waiting until the quartermaster chose to give us a few
+inches of rifle-rag; here a full uniform could be obtained by picking
+it up. And our men were wise in selecting only necessities; they still
+remembered the march of the day before. All took sparingly and chose
+wisely. Fancy socks were passed by in silence, the homely woollen
+article, however, was in great demand. Bond Street was forgotten. The
+"nut" was a being of a past age, or, if he still existed, he was
+undergoing a complete transformation. Also he knew what socks were
+best for the trenches.</p>
+
+<p>At noon we were again ready to set out on our journey. A tin of
+bully-beef and six biscuits, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page024" name="page024">(p. 024)</a>
+</span> hard as rocks, were given to
+each man prior to departure. Sheepskins were rolled into shape and
+fastened on the tops of our packs, and with this additional burden on
+the shoulder we set out from the rest-camp and took our course down
+the hill. On the way we met another regiment coming up to fill our
+place, to sleep in our bell-tents, pick from the socks which we had
+left behind, and to meet for once, the first and last time perhaps, a
+quartermaster who is really kind in the discharge of his professional
+duties. We marched off, and sang our way into the town and station.
+Our trucks were already waiting, an endless number they seemed lined
+up in the siding with an engine in front and rear, and the notice
+"Hommes 40 chevaux 20" in white letters on every door. The night
+before I had slept in a bell-tent where a man's head pointed to each
+seam in the canvas, to-night it seemed as if I should sleep, if that
+were possible, in a still more crowded place, where we had now barely
+standing room, and where it was difficult to move about. But a
+much-desired relief came before the train started, spare waggons were
+shunted on, and a number of men were taken from each compartment and
+given room elsewhere. In <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page025" name="page025">(p. 025)</a>
+</span> fact, when we moved off we had only
+twenty-two soldiers in our place, quite enough though when our
+equipment, pack, rifle, bayonet, haversack, overcoat, and sheepskin
+tunic were taken into account.</p>
+
+<p>A bale of hay bound with wire was given to us for bedding, and
+bully-beef, slightly flavoured, and biscuits were doled out for
+rations. Some of us bought oranges, which were very dear, and paid
+three halfpence apiece for them; chocolate was also obtained, and one
+or two adventurous spirits stole out to the street, contrary to
+orders, and bought <i>café au lait</i> and <i>pain et beurre</i>, drank the
+first in the <i>estaminet</i>, and came back to their trucks munching the
+latter.</p>
+
+<p>At noon we started out on the journey to the trenches, a gay party
+that found expression for its young vitality in song. The
+sliding-doors and the windows were open; those of us who were not
+looking out of the one were looking out of the other. To most it was a
+new country, a place far away in peace and a favourite resort of the
+wealthy; but now a country that called for any man, no matter how
+poor, if he were strong in person and willing to give his life away
+when called upon to do so. In fact, the poor man was having his first
+holiday on the Continent, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page026" name="page026">(p. 026)</a>
+</span> and alas!&mdash;perhaps his last; and
+like cattle new to the pasture fields in Spring, we were surging full
+of life and animal gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>We were out on a great adventure, full of thrill and excitement; the
+curtain which surrounded our private life was being lifted; we stood
+on the threshold of momentous events. The cottagers who laboured by
+their humble homes stood for a moment and watched our train go by; now
+and again a woman shouted out a blessing on our mission, and ancient
+men seated by their doorsteps pointed in the direction our train was
+going, and drew lean, skinny hands across their throats, and yelled
+advice and imprecations in hoarse voices. We understood. The ancient
+warriors ordered us to cut the Kaiser's throat and envied us the job.</p>
+
+<p>The day wore on, the evening fell dark and stormy. A cold wind from
+somewhere swept in through chinks in windows and door, and chilled the
+compartment. The favourite song, <i>Uncle Joe</i>, with its catching
+chorus,</p>
+
+<p class="left10 smsize">
+When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo,<br>
+Eberybody starts aswayin to and fro,<br>
+Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor,<br>
+Yellin' "Uncle Joe, give us more! give us more!"</p>
+
+<p>died away into a melancholy whimper. Sometimes one of the men would
+rise, open the window <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page027" name="page027">(p. 027)</a>
+</span> and look out at a passing hamlet,
+where lights glimmered in the houses and heavy waggons lumbered along
+the uneven streets, whistle an air into the darkness and close the
+window again. My mate had an electric torch&mdash;by its light we opened
+the biscuit box handed in when we left the station, and biscuits and
+bully-beef served to make a rather comfortless supper. At ten o'clock,
+when the torch refused to burn, and when we found ourselves short of
+matches, we undid the bale, spread out the hay on the floor of the
+truck and lay down, wearing our sheepskin tunics and placing our
+overcoats over our legs.</p>
+
+<p>We must have been asleep for some time. We were awakened by the
+stopping of the train and the sound of many voices outside. The door
+was opened and we looked out. An officer was hurrying by, shouting
+loudly, calling on us to come out. On a level space bordering the line
+a dozen or more fires were blazing merrily, and dixies with some
+boiling liquid were being carried backwards and forwards. A sergeant
+with a lantern, one of our own men, came to our truck and clambered
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Every man get his mess tin," he shouted. "Hurry up, the train's not
+stopping for long, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page028" name="page028">(p. 028)</a>
+</span> and there's coffee and rum for us all."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish they'd let us sleep," someone who was fumbling in his pack
+remarked in a sleepy voice. "I'm not wantin' no rum and cawfee. Last
+night almost choked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and
+now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"</p>
+
+<p>We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter
+cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim
+light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders,
+everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being
+awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were
+now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a
+halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the
+bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would
+be! I counted the men in front&mdash;there were no more than twelve or
+thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee&mdash;suddenly a whistle
+was blown, then another.</p>
+
+<p>"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling
+party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page029" name="page029">(p. 029)</a></span>
+in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered
+till dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits
+and bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner.
+At half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed
+into column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay
+before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we
+waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in
+from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound
+of guns!</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page030" name="page030">(p. 030)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Our French Billets</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+The fog is white on Glenties moors,<br>
+The road is grey from Glenties town,<br>
+Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog,<br>
+And ah! the homely moors of brown.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home
+in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
+brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
+that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the
+description in her book.</p>
+
+<p>The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road,
+with a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the
+very door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks
+squalid and dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of
+manure and every other filth that can find a resting place in the
+vicinity of an unclean dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its
+home-made bread and beer are excellent, the new-laid eggs are
+delightful for breakfast, the milk and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page031" name="page031">(p. 031)</a></span> butter, fresh and
+pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave about.</p>
+
+<p>We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the
+midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try
+to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens
+that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the
+barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces
+and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the
+farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on
+parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that
+scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and
+devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a
+man's nose&mdash;but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other
+time.</p>
+
+<p>We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March
+day. We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A
+additional load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of
+the sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to
+the firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened
+soldiers. The march to the barn <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page032" name="page032">(p. 032)</a>
+</span> billet was a miracle of
+endurance, but all lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when
+it was over. That night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw,
+our waterproof sheets under us and our blankets and sheepskins round
+our bodies. It was very comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might
+wish to remain awake to feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man
+can be.</p>
+
+<p>Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the scent
+of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had already
+flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere near a girl
+was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she worked; a
+cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and the dogs
+of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was one to be
+remembered.</p>
+
+<p>But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost
+new; we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been
+in our ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a
+day to come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard
+its summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the
+air, and sweeping round <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page033" name="page033">(p. 033)</a>
+</span> the barn where we lay, telling all
+who chanced to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered
+across the face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another:
+soldiers of many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of
+Australia, and Germany; of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand;
+Saxon, Gurkha, and Prussian, Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were
+engaged in deadly combat. The sound was the sound of guns&mdash;our
+farmhouse was within the range of the big artillery.</p>
+
+<p>We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and
+despite the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy.
+On one farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with
+roguish eyes and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as
+lean as some I have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as
+Granada beggars. They were very hungry and one ate a man's
+food-wallet and all it contained, comprising bread, army biscuits,
+canned beef, including can and other sundries. "I wish the animal had
+choked itself," my mate said when he discovered his loss. Personally I
+had a profound respect for <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page034" name="page034">(p. 034)</a>
+</span> any pig who voluntarily eats army
+biscuit.</p>
+
+<p>We got up about six o'clock every morning and proceeded to wash and
+shave. All used the one pump, sometimes five or six heads were stuck
+under it at the same moment, and an eager hand worked the handle, and
+poured a plentiful supply of very cold water on the close cropped
+pates. The panes of the farmhouse window made excellent shaving
+mirrors and, incidentally, I may mention that rifle-slings generally
+serve the purpose of razor strops. Breakfast followed toilet; most of
+the men bought <i>café-au-lait</i>, at a penny a basin, and home-made
+bread, buttered lavishly, at a penny a slice. A similar repast would
+cost sixpence in London.</p>
+
+<p>Parade then followed. In England we had cherished the illusion that
+life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing
+practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in
+rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and
+tots of rum would be served out <i>ad infinitum</i>. This rum would have a
+certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all
+discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought,
+though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page035" name="page035">(p. 035)</a></span> get rum now,
+few drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in
+duty bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the
+past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we
+joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are
+full-grown crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a
+matter for words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause
+its owner to meditate in the guard-room.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner consists of bully beef and biscuits; now and again we fry the
+bully beef on the farmhouse stove, and when cash is plentiful cook an
+egg with it. The afternoon is generally given up to practising
+bayonet-fighting, and our day's work comes to an end about six
+o'clock. In the evening we go into the nearest village and discuss
+matters of interest in some <i>café</i>. Here we meet all manner of men,
+Gurkhas fresh from the firing line; bus-drivers, exiles from London;
+men of the Army Service Corps; Engineers, kilted Highlanders, men
+recovering from wounds, who are almost fit to go to the trenches
+again; French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and all sorts of people,
+helpers in some way or another of the Allies in the Great War.</p>
+
+<p>We <span class="pagenum"><a id="page036" name="page036">(p. 036)</a>
+</span> have to get back to our billets by eight o'clock, to stop
+out after that hour is a serious crime here. A soldier out of doors at
+midnight in the cathedral city was merely a minor offender. But under
+the range of long artillery fire all things are different for the
+soldier.</p>
+
+<p>St. Patrick's Day was an event. We had a half holiday, and at night,
+with the aid of beer, we made merry as men can on St. Patrick's Day.
+We sang Irish songs, told stories, mostly Cockney, and laughed without
+restraint as merry men will, for to all St. Patrick was an admirable
+excuse for having a good and rousing time.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one little backwater of rest and quiet into which
+we men of blood and iron drift at all too infrequent intervals&mdash;that
+is when we become what is known officially as "barn orderly." A barn
+orderly is the company unit who looks after the billets of the men out
+on parade. In due course my turn arrived, and the battalion marched
+away leaving me to the quiet of farmyard.</p>
+
+<p>Having heaped up the straw, our bedding, in one corner of the barn,
+swept the concrete floor, rolled the blankets, explained to the
+gossipy farm servant that I did not "compree" her
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page037" name="page037">(p. 037)</a>
+</span> gibberish,
+and watched her waddle across the midden towards the house, my duties
+were ended. I was at liberty until the return of the battalion. It was
+all very quiet, little was to be heard save the gnawing of the rats in
+the corner of the barn and the muffled booming of guns from "out
+there"&mdash;"out there" is the oft repeated phrase that denotes the
+locality of the firing line.</p>
+
+<p>There was sunlight and shade in the farmyard, the sun lit up the pump
+on the top of which a little bird with salmon-pink breast,
+white-tipped tail, and crimson head preened its feathers; in the shade
+where our barn and the stables form an angle an old lady in snowy
+sunbonnet and striped apron was sitting knitting. It was good to be
+there lying prone upon the barn straw near the door above the crazy
+ladder, writing letters. I had learned to love this place and these
+people whom I seem to know so very well from having read René Bazin,
+Daudet, Maupassant, Balzac and Marie Claire. High up and far away to
+the west a Zeppelin was to be seen travelling in a westerly direction;
+the farmer's wife, our landlady, had just rescued a tin of bully beef
+from one of her all-devouring pigs; at the barn door lay my recently
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page038" name="page038">(p. 038)</a>
+</span> cleaned rifle and ordered equipment&mdash;how incongruous it all
+was with the home of Marie Claire.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I was brought back to realities by the recollection that the
+battalion was to have a bath that afternoon and towels and soap must
+be ready to take out on the next parade.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning was beautifully clear; the sun rising over the firing
+line lit up wood and field, river and pond. The hens were noisy in the
+farmyard, the horse lines to the rear were full of movement, horses
+strained at their tethers eager to break away and get free from the
+captivity of the rope; the grooms were busy brushing the animals' legs
+and flanks, and a slight dust arose into the air as the work was
+carried on.</p>
+
+<p>Over the red-brick houses of the village the church stood high, its
+spire clearly defined against the blue of the sky. The door of the
+<i>café</i> across the road opened, and the proprietress, a merry-faced,
+elderly woman, came across to the farmhouse. She purchased some newly
+laid eggs for breakfast, and entered into conversation with our men,
+some of whom knew a little of her language. They asked about her son
+in the trenches; she had heard from him <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page039" name="page039">(p. 039)</a>
+</span> the day before and
+he was quite well and hoped to have a holiday very soon. He would come
+home then and spend a fortnight with the family. She looked forward to
+his coming, he had been away from her ever since the war started; she
+had not seen him for eight whole months. What happiness would be hers
+when he returned! She waved her hand to us as she went off, tripping
+lightly across the roadway and disappearing into the <i>café</i>. She was
+going to church presently; it was Holy Week when the Virgin listened
+to special intercessors, and the good matron of the <i>café</i> prayed
+hourly for the safety of her soldier boy.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o'clock we went to chapel, our pipers playing <i>The Wearing of
+the Green</i> as we marched along the crooked village streets, our rifles
+on our shoulders and our bandoliers heavy with the ball cartridge
+which we carried. The rifle is with us always now, on parade, on
+march, in <i>café</i>, billet, and church; our "best friend" is our eternal
+companion. We carried it into the church and fastened the sling to the
+chair as we knelt in prayer before the altar. We occupied the larger
+part of the building, only three able-bodied men in civilian clothing
+were in attendance.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page040" name="page040">(p. 040)</a>
+</span> youth of the country were out in the trenches, and even
+here in the quiet little chapel with its crucifixes, images, and
+pictures, there was the suggestion of war in the collection boxes for
+wounded soldiers, in the crêpe worn by so many women; one in every ten
+was in mourning, and above all in the general air of resignation which
+showed on all the faces of the native worshippers.</p>
+
+<p>The whole place breathed war, not in the splendid whirlwind rush of
+men mad in the wild enthusiasm of battle, but in silent yearning,
+heartfelt sorrow, and great bravery, the bravery of women who remain
+at home. Opposite us sat the lady of the <i>café</i>, her head low down on
+her breast, and the rosary slipping bead by bead through her fingers.
+Now and again she would stir slightly, raise her eyes to the Virgin on
+the right of the high altar, and move her lips in prayer, then she
+would lower her head again and continue her rosary.</p>
+
+<p>As far as I could ascertain singing in church was the sole privilege
+of the choir, none of the congregation joined in the hymns. But to-day
+the church had a new congregation&mdash;the soldiers from England, the men
+who sing in the trenches, in the billet, and on the march; the men who
+glory <span class="pagenum"><a id="page041" name="page041">(p. 041)</a>
+</span> in song on the last lap of a long, killing journey in
+full marching order. To-day they sang a hymn well-known and loved, the
+clarion call of their faith was started by the choir. As one man the
+soldiers joined in the singing, and their voices filled the building.
+The other members of the congregation looked on for a moment in
+surprise, then one after another they started to sing, and in a moment
+nearly all in the place were aiding the choir. One was silent,
+however, the lady of the <i>café</i>; still deep in prayer she scarcely
+glanced at the singers, her mind was full of another matter. Only a
+mother thinking about a loved son can so wholly lose herself from the
+world. And as I looked at her I thought I detected tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The priest, a pleasant faced young man, who spoke very quickly (I have
+never heard anybody speak like him), thanked the soldiers, and through
+them their nation for all that was being done to help in the war;
+prayers were said for the men at the front, those who were still
+alive, as well as those who had given up their lives for their
+country's sake, and before leaving we sang the national anthem, our's,
+<i>God Save the King</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With the pipers playing at our front, and an admiring
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page042" name="page042">(p. 042)</a></span> crowd
+of boys following, we took our way back to our billets. On the march a
+mate was speaking, one who had been late coming on parade in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Saw the woman of the <i>café</i> in church?" he asked me. "Saw her
+crying?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought she looked unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>"Just after you got off parade the news came," my mate told me. "Her
+son had been killed. She is awfully upset about it and no wonder. She
+was always talking about her <i>petit garçon</i>, and he was to be home on
+holidays shortly."</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere "out there" where the guns are incessantly booming, a
+nameless grave holds the "<i>petit garçon</i>," the <i>café</i> lady's son; next
+Sunday another mourner will join with the many in the village church
+and pray to the Virgin Mother for the soul of her beloved boy.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page043" name="page043">(p. 043)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Night Before the Trenches</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+Four by four in column of route,<br>
+By roads that the poplars sentinel,<br>
+Clank of rifle and crunch of boot&mdash;<br>
+All are marching and all is well.<br>
+White, so white is the distant moon,<br>
+Salmon-pink is the furnace glare,<br>
+And we hum, as we march, a ragtime tune,<br>
+Khaki boys in the long platoon,<br>
+Going and going&mdash;anywhere.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">"The battalion will move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating
+the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot
+of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It
+was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in
+their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese
+are easily scooped out with clasp-knives and make excellent sconces;
+we often use them for that purpose in our barn billet. We had been
+quite a long time in the place and had grown to like it. But to-morrow
+we were leaving.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dash the rifle!" said the Jersey boy, getting to his feet and
+kicking a bundle of straw <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page044" name="page044">(p. 044)</a>
+</span> across the floor of the barn.
+"To-morrow night we'll be in the trenches up in the firing line."</p>
+
+<p>"The slaughter line," somebody remarked in the corner where the
+darkness hung heavy. A match was lighted disclosing the speaker's face
+and the pipe which he held between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"No smoking," yelled a corporal, who had just entered. "You'll burn
+the damned place down and get yourself as well as all of us into
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh blast the barn!" muttered Bill Sykes, a narrow chested Cockney
+with a good-humoured face that belied his nickname. "It's only fit for
+rats and there's 'nuff of 'em 'ere. I'm goin' to 'ave a fag anyway.
+Got me?"</p>
+
+<p>The corporal asked Bill for a cigarette and lit it. "We're all mates
+now and we'll make a night of it," he cried. "Damn the barn, there'll
+be barns when we're all washed out with Jack Johnsons. What are you
+doin', Feelan?"</p>
+
+<p>Feelan, an Irishman with a brogue that could be cut with a knife, laid
+down the sword which he was burnishing and glanced at the non-com.</p>
+
+<p>"The Germans don't fire at men with stripes, I hear," he remarked,
+"They only shoot rale good <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page045" name="page045">(p. 045)</a>
+</span> soldiers. A livin' corp'ral's
+hardly as good as a dead rifleman."</p>
+
+<p>Six foot three of Cumberland bone and muscle detached itself from the
+straw and looked round the barn. We call it Goliath on account of its
+size.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's to sing the first song," asked Goliath. "A good hearty song!"</p>
+
+<p>"One with whiskers on it!" said the corporal.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll slash the game up and give a rale ould song, whiskers
+to the toes of it," said Feelan, shoving his sword in its scabbard and
+throwin' himself flat back on the straw. "Its a song about the
+time Irelan' was fightin' for freedom and it's called <i>The Rising of
+the Moon</i>! A great song entirely it is, and I cannot do it justice."</p>
+
+<p>Feelan stood up, his legs wide apart and both his thumbs stuck in the
+upper pockets of his tunic. Behind him the barn stretched out into the
+gloom that our solitary candle could not pierce. On either side rifles
+hung from the wall, and packs and haversacks stood high from the straw
+in which most of the men had buried themselves, leaving nothing but
+their faces, fringed with the rims of Balaclava helmets, exposed to
+view. The night was bitterly cold, outside where the sky stood high
+splashed with countless <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page046" name="page046">(p. 046)</a>
+</span> stars and where the earth gripped
+tight on itself, the frost fiend was busy; in the barn, with its
+medley of men, roosting hens and prowling rats all was cosy and warm.
+Feelan cleared his throat and commenced the song, his voice strong and
+clear filled the barn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="smsize">
+"Arrah! tell me Shan O'Farrel; tell me why you hurry so?"<br>
+"Hush, my bouchal, hush and listen," and his cheeks were all aglow&mdash;<br>
+"I've got orders from the Captain to get ready quick and soon<br>
+For the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon,<br>
+ At the risin' of the moon!<br>
+ At the risin' of the moon!<br>
+And the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's some song," said the corporal. "It has got guts in it. I'm
+sick of these ragtime rotters!"</p>
+
+<p>"The old songs are always the best ones," said Feelan, clearing his
+throat preparatory to commencing a second verse.</p>
+
+<p>"What about <i>Uncle Joe</i>?" asked Goliath, and was off with a regimental
+favourite.</p>
+
+<p class="left10 smsize">
+When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo&mdash;<br>
+ ("Oh!" the occupants of the barn yelled.)<br>
+Ev'rybody starts a swayin' to and fro&mdash;<br>
+ ("Ha!" exclaimed the barn.)<br>
+Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor!&mdash;<br>
+ ("What!" we chorused.)<br>
+Crying, "Uncle Joe, give us more, give us more!"</p>
+
+
+<p>"Give <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page047" name="page047">(p. 047)</a>
+</span> us no more of that muck!" exclaimed Feelan, burrowing
+into the straw, no doubt a little annoyed at being interrupted in his
+song. "Damn ragtime!"</p>
+
+<p>"There's ginger in it!" said Goliath. "Your old song is as flat as
+French beer!"</p>
+
+<p>"Some decent music is what you want," said Bill Sykes, and forthwith
+began strumming an invisible banjo and humming <i>Way down upon the
+Swanee Ribber</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The candle, the only one in our possession, burned closer to the
+cheese sconce, a daring rat slipped into the light, stopped still for
+a moment on top of a sheaf of straw, then scampered off again, shadows
+danced on the roof, over the joists where the hens were roosting, an
+unsheathed sword glittered brightly as the light caught it, and Feelan
+lifted the weapon and glanced at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Burnished like a lady's nail," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Thumb nail?" interrogated Goliath.</p>
+
+<p>"Ragnail, p'raps," said the Cockney.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether we'll have much bayonet-fightin' or not?" remarked
+the Jersey boy, looking at each of us in turn and addressing no one in
+particular.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll get some now and again to keep us warm!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page048" name="page048">(p. 048)</a>
+</span> said the
+corporal. "It'll be 'ot when it comes along."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ot's not the word," said Bill; "I never was much drawn to soldierin'
+'fore the war started, but when it came along I felt I'd like to 'ave
+a 'and in the gime. There, that candle's goin' out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bunk!" roared the corporal, putting his pipe in his pocket and
+seizing a blanket, the first to hand. Almost immediately he was under
+the straw with the blanket wrapped round him. We were not backward in
+following, and all were in bed when the flame which followed the wax
+so greedily died for lack of sustenance.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow night we should be in the trenches.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page049" name="page049">(p. 049)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">First Blood</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+The nations like Kilkenny cats,<br>
+Full of hate that never dies out,<br>
+Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,<br>
+Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.<br>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles,
+and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down
+on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs
+stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The
+sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down
+their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled
+on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on
+haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless
+in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and
+were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds
+of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack
+stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page050" name="page050">(p. 050)</a></span>
+necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and
+sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and
+were on our way towards the firing line.</p>
+
+<p>A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had
+just come out of an <i>estaminet</i>, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and
+knife and fork stuck in his putties.</p>
+
+<p>"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile
+hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"About a matter of nine months."</p>
+
+<p>"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer.
+"'Oo are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The London Irish."</p>
+
+<p>"Territorials?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's us," someone said.</p>
+
+<p>"First time up this way?"</p>
+
+<p>"First time."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile
+reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a
+word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page051" name="page051">(p. 051)</a>
+</span> tight
+grip of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties.
+My pack went West at Mons."</p>
+
+<p>"You were there then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, yes." was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round.
+There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if
+you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with
+your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever
+you go into a charge&mdash;Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man
+who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're
+swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this
+beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of
+this dashed muck. Good-bye"&mdash;we were moving off, "and good luck to
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been
+great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and
+committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has
+been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown
+oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page052" name="page052">(p. 052)</a></span>
+don't know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a
+tin of bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our
+section who can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few
+grind biscuits when they can beg bread.</p>
+
+<p>A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four
+platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section
+consisted of thirteen&mdash;there are only four boys left now, Mervin has
+been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher
+bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of
+his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much
+sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he
+told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home
+when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps.
+I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will
+pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that
+the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal
+Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the
+same route. In <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page053" name="page053">(p. 053)</a>
+</span> the village all was quiet, the <i>cafés</i> were
+open, and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as
+usual. There were very few young men of military age in the place; all
+were engaged in the business of war.</p>
+
+<p>A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me;
+Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar,
+marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a
+clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and
+wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to
+the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate
+and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept
+open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker,
+and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to
+the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital
+suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and
+get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest
+bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the
+rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>Teak <span class="pagenum"><a id="page054" name="page054">(p. 054)</a>
+</span> and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of
+the road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither
+look it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest
+when his own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a
+strong mould, but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be
+a clerk in business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing
+of his profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns;
+these amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is
+known to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the
+most delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white
+potato. Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in
+argument. He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not
+fingering one he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
+The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
+in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
+shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
+willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page055" name="page055">(p. 055)</a>
+</span> heavy
+jaw, and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a
+momentous masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath
+wears glasses. For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say,
+he delights in the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked
+Tennyson about with him.</p>
+
+<p>Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
+drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
+did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
+ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
+that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
+he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
+Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.</p>
+
+<p>We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men
+stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and
+singing <i>Macnamara's Band</i>, a favourite song with our regiment.
+Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and
+we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.</p>
+
+<p>The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in
+front, and it sounded like a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page056" name="page056">(p. 056)</a>
+</span> waggon-load of rubble being
+emptied on a landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his
+cigarette with the little finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Some transport has broken down."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! your grandmother."</p>
+
+<p>Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a
+wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side
+of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air,
+curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates.
+Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away
+from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking
+to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his
+tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath
+yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this
+way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page057" name="page057">(p. 057)</a>
+</span> had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her
+head bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two
+children, a boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep
+in a childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the
+bursting shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own
+little affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a
+sensation of surprise&mdash;surprise because we were not more afraid of the
+bursting shrapnel.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick march!"</p>
+
+<p>We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing
+through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was
+almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although
+not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a <i>café</i>. A pale
+stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the
+threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.</p>
+
+<p>Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking
+beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard,
+seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing
+heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page058" name="page058">(p. 058)</a>
+</span> his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash
+showed on the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The
+one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field
+where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."</p>
+
+<p>"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came
+to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of
+shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in
+London."</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Pryor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went cold all over for a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do
+you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a
+song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out
+one of our popular rhymes.</p>
+
+<p class="left10 smsize">
+Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys<br>
+To drive the Kaiser balmy.<br>
+And <i>we'll</i> smash up that fool Von Kluck<br>
+And all his bloomin' army!</p>
+
+<p>We came to a halt again, this time alongside a
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page059" name="page059">(p. 059)</a>
+</span> Red Cross
+motor ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was
+seated; his coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling
+down his arm on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with
+his right leg bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked
+dazed, but was smoking a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the
+answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."</p>
+
+<p>"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the
+pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a
+wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.</p>
+
+<p>"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the
+old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over
+and done with."</p>
+
+<p>"Ye don't like war, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks,
+and cold, and heat, and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page060" name="page060">(p. 060)</a>
+</span> everything connected with
+the &mdash;&mdash; work."</p>
+
+<p>"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing
+round his lips. "God's with us, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.</p>
+
+<p>"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything
+else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church,
+and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up
+to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work,
+never could stomach it."</p>
+
+<p>The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.</p>
+
+<p>We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the
+province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was
+a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and
+turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home,
+now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green
+grasses, the old farm holed by <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page061" name="page061">(p. 061)</a>
+</span> a thousand shells, the old
+plough, and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other
+world for the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of
+the destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the
+damage which had been done.</p>
+
+<p>We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive
+shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a
+point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast
+of burden&mdash;the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace
+by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something
+pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising
+and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving
+backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the
+stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching
+along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an
+inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All
+individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes
+in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing
+death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.</p>
+
+<p>We <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page062" name="page062">(p. 062)</a>
+</span> were marched to a red brick building with a
+shrapnel-shivered roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were
+told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.</p>
+
+<p>As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time
+I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air,
+and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and
+now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was
+sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French
+soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his
+bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade
+who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere,
+and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he
+cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall
+over the head of the laughing <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page063" name="page063">(p. 063)</a>
+</span> Frenchman, who was busily
+rolling a fresh cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found
+our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance,
+with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath,
+"This way to the war."</p>
+
+<p>The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow
+cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces
+in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full
+equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were
+exploding, and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters
+sung over our heads, for the most part delving into the field on
+either side, but sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a
+pile of earth and dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The
+floor was paved with bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt;
+there was a general air of cleanliness about the place, the level
+floor, the smooth sides, and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer
+walking along the top, and well back from the side, counted us as we
+walked along in line with him. He had taken charge of our section as a
+working party, and
+<span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page064" name="page064">(p. 064)</a>
+</span> when he turned to me in making up his
+tally I saw that he wore a ribbon on his breast.</p>
+
+<p>"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How
+did you get it?" he called up to the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve,
+thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."</p>
+
+<p>We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood,
+and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"How did it happen?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the
+parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have
+copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who
+are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"The London Irish."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the &mdash;&mdash;," he said, rubbing a miry hand
+across the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are
+done in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare
+handkerchief and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page065" name="page065">(p. 065)</a>
+</span> wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to
+England, worse luck! Are you from Chelsea?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody
+took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the
+two men lay.</p>
+
+<p>They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that
+branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the
+other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost
+touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and
+smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's
+hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot
+showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
+clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
+under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
+waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
+stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
+dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
+Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
+ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page066" name="page066">(p. 066)</a>
+</span> the
+makers, lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
+youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
+the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
+something else, a problem which he failed to solve.</p>
+
+<p>One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
+body in the trench.</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers," he said.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
+Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
+might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
+sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
+to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
+come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
+was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
+bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
+but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
+matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill
+<span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page067" name="page067">(p. 067)</a></span> asked the
+engineer, who never left the parapet even when the shells were
+bursting barely a hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took
+the precaution to duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
+when I read it in the papers at home, but now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
+"and they always keep potting at the place."</p>
+
+<p>"But have we?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno."</p>
+
+<p>"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
+mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
+the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
+way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.</p>
+
+<p>"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
+through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
+this war. Now!" he paused. "That what
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page068" name="page068">(p. 068)</a>
+</span> we saw just now," he
+continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
+"never moves me. <i>You'll</i> feel it a bit being just new out, but when
+you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."</p>
+
+<p>In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
+up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
+a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
+back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
+called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
+potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
+for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
+"stopped a packet."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page069" name="page069">(p. 069)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In the Trenches</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+Up for days in the trenches,<br>
+ Working and working away;<br>
+Eight days up in the trenches<br>
+ And back again to-day.<br>
+Working with pick and shovel,<br>
+ On traverse, banquette, and slope,<br>
+And now we are back and working<br>
+ With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at
+the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had
+not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.</p>
+
+<p>Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his
+shovel.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit
+from his haversack.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the
+latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it
+wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were
+new to the grind of war.</p>
+
+<p>"I've <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page070" name="page070">(p. 070)</a>
+</span> found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat
+from his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing
+line. A shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the
+trenches have got a humour peculiarly their own.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell <i>café noir</i>
+and <i>pain et beurre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like
+ourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent
+for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a
+mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the
+Cockney brightened.</p>
+
+<p>"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and butter."</p>
+
+<p>"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and
+the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping
+a shower of muck which a bursting shell flung in his face. We were
+with him immediately, and presently found
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page071" name="page071">(p. 071)</a>
+</span> ourselves at the
+door of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled
+with shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.</p>
+
+<p>A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly,
+well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a
+short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn
+of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all
+good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as
+we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our
+needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his
+hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs
+in the house were already occupied.</p>
+
+<p>The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on
+the wall, the portrait of the woman herself, <i>The Holy Family
+Journeying to Egypt</i>, a print of Millet's <i>Angelus</i>, and a rude
+etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the glass broken.
+A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing
+piece of a shell dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its
+pendulum gone and the glass broken.</p>
+
+<p>Bill, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page072" name="page072">(p. 072)</a>
+</span> naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his
+coffee, and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl,
+he undertook the matter himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no
+milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be
+amused.</p>
+
+<p>"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like
+French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound)
+it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno,
+that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be
+nice if I got one."</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for
+queer things if she did."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey,
+that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a shell exploded overhead,
+and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her
+head for a moment <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page073" name="page073">(p. 073)</a>
+</span> and crossed herself, then she continued
+her work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the
+shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill
+forthwith relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When
+we got out to our work again he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a
+woman with blunt finger nails."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my
+ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a space for
+wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch
+them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The
+toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps.
+Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She
+becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she
+becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They could
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page074" name="page074">(p. 074)</a></span>
+not fashion you in Eden! When I think of a woman washing herself! Ugh!
+Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled
+beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a fag end from the bottom of
+the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen
+maggots!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk
+with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.</p>
+
+<p>"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting
+poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior
+slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and
+some so bad that I almost ran away from them."</p>
+
+<p>For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side
+keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to
+open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in
+your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is
+suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English
+communication trenches are narrow&mdash;so narrow, indeed, that a man with
+a pack <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page075" name="page075">(p. 075)</a>
+</span> often gets held, and sticks there until his comrades
+pull him clear.</p>
+
+<p>The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for
+the passage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there,
+packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his
+mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the
+risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks,
+bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the
+reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp
+earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the
+mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking
+back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move
+backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the
+active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression and despair.</p>
+
+<p>The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help
+him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen
+grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet
+that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole
+pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page076" name="page076">(p. 076)</a></span> wait.
+When an attack is on the communication trenches are persistently
+shelled by the enemy with a view to stop the advance of
+reinforcements. Once our company lay in a trench as reserves for
+fourteen hours, and during that time upwards of two thousand shells
+were hurled in our direction, our trench being half filled with rubble
+and clay. Two mates, one on my right and one on my left, were wounded.
+I did not receive a scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours
+during the cannonade; but this is another story.</p>
+
+<p>Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches,
+ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to
+the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality.
+Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one
+point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is
+under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all
+rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to
+court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a
+little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be
+covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the
+sniper plies his trade. <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page077" name="page077">(p. 077)</a>
+</span> He hides somewhere in the slack, and
+pots at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the
+range of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we
+find a warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away.
+"Stoop low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger
+zone is past.</p>
+
+<p>Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift
+shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly
+singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however,
+who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his
+telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of
+my cigarettes told me the story.</p>
+
+<p>"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows
+that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five
+hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's
+a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of
+pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and
+my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me,
+but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'll <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page078" name="page078">(p. 078)</a></span> not lave this
+place till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was
+there prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the
+sniper. I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he
+didn't bury his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole
+of hell when an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his
+sandbagged castle, with me gun on the cock and me finger on the
+trigger, but he wasn't there; there was nothin' in the place but a few
+rounds of ball an' a half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I
+had a sup without winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down
+the bottle, 'its little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a
+bottle with nothin' in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and
+I lay down in the corner and waited for him to come in.</p>
+
+<p>"But sorrow the fut of him came, and me waiting there till the colour
+of day was in the sky. Then I goes back to me own place, and there was
+he waiting for me. He only made one mistake, he had fallen to sleep,
+and he just sprung up as I came in be the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and
+he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page079" name="page079">(p. 079)</a>
+</span> and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I
+asked him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't
+ye have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him.
+Dang a Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with
+nothin' bar the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye
+know, I had a kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in
+to my house without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as
+if he was in his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said,
+'This is only a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for
+ye, so come along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to
+our trenches as stand-to was coming to an end."</p>
+
+<p>Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where
+the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the
+grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives
+one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with
+daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of
+colour&mdash;crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some
+weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page080" name="page080">(p. 080)</a></span>
+limp, lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been
+caught in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze
+blows across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of
+death and perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of
+desolation and decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out
+all traces of the tragedy between the trenches.</p>
+
+<p>There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
+being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
+ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
+dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
+through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
+there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
+shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
+lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
+over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
+there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
+considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the
+spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, moulders
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page081" name="page081">(p. 081)</a></span>
+in ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray
+nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they
+often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the
+banquette.</p>
+
+<p>"The fire trench to-night," said Stoner that evening, a nervous light
+in his soft brown eyes, as he fumbled with the money on the card
+table. His luck had been good, and he had won over six francs; he
+generally loses. "Perhaps we're in for the high jump when we get up
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"The high jump?" I queried, "what's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"A bayonet charge," he replied, dealing a final hand and inviting us
+to double the stakes as the deal was the last. A few wanted to play
+for another quarter of an hour, but he would not prolong the game.
+Turning up an ace he shoved the money in his pocket and rose to his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>In an hour we were ready to move. We carried much weight in addition
+to our ordinary load, firewood, cooking utensils, and extra loaves. We
+bought the latter at a neighbouring <i>boulangerie</i>, one that still
+plied its usual trade in dangerous proximity to the firing-line.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page082" name="page082">(p. 082)</a>
+</span> loaves cost 6-1/2<i>d.</i> each, and we prefer them to the
+English bread which we get now and again, and place them far above the
+tooth-destroying army biscuits. Fires were permitted in the trenches,
+we were told, and our officers advised us to carry our own wood with
+us. So it came about that the enemy's firing served as a useful
+purpose; we pulled down the shrapnel shattered rafters of our billets,
+broke them up into splinters with our entrenching tools, and tied them
+up into handy portable bundles which we tied on our packs.</p>
+
+<p>At midnight we entered Harley Street, and squeezed our way through the
+narrow trench. The distance to the firing-line was a long one;
+traverse and turning, turning and traverse, we thought we should never
+come to the end of them. There was no shelling, but the questing
+bullet was busy, it sung over our heads or snapped at the sandbags on
+the parapet, ever busy on the errand of death and keen on its mission.
+But deep down in the trench we regarded it with indifference. Our way
+was one of safety. Here the bullet was foiled, and pick and shovel
+reigned masters in the zone of death.</p>
+
+<p>We were relieving the Scots Guards (many of <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page083" name="page083">(p. 083)</a></span> my Irish friends
+belong to this regiment). Awaiting our coming, they stood in the full
+marching order of the regulations, packs light, forks and spoons in
+their putties, and all little luxuries which we still dared to carry
+flung away. They had been holding the place for seven days, and were
+now going back somewhere for a rest.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this the firing-line?" asked Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sonny," came the answer in a voice which seemed to be full of
+weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet here?" Mervin enquired, a note of awe in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Naethin' doin'," said a fresh voice that reminded me forcibly of
+Glasgow and the Cowcaddens. "It's a gey soft job here."</p>
+
+<p>"No casualties?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and
+they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."</p>
+
+<p>In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of
+it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the
+humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that
+sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.</p>
+
+<p>"Irish?" <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page084" name="page084">(p. 084)</a></span> I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha
+regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody
+said. "Are ye dry?"</p>
+
+<p>I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is
+there something to drink?" I queried.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied.
+"Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"</p>
+
+<p>A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea.
+The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the Saxons that's across the road," he said, pointing to the
+enemy's lines which were very silent. I had not heard a bullet whistle
+over since I entered the trench. On the left was an interesting rifle
+and machine gun fire all the time. "They're quiet fellows, the Saxons,
+they don't want to fight any more than we do, so there's a kind of
+understanding between us. Don't fire at us and we'll not fire at you.
+There's a <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page085" name="page085">(p. 085)</a>
+</span> good dug-out there," he continued, pointing to a
+dark hole in the parados (the rear wall of the trench), "and ye'll
+find a pot of jam and half a loaf in the corner. There's also a water
+jar half full."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you get water?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly a mile away the pump is," he answered. "Ye've to cross the
+fields to get it."</p>
+
+<p>"A safe road?" asked Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so bad, ye know," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"This place smells 'orrid," muttered Bill, lighting a cigarette and
+flinging on his pack. "What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some poor devils between the trenches; they've been lyin' there since
+last Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, what a stink," muttered Bill, "Why don't ye bury them up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because nobody dare go out there, me boy," was the answer. "Anyway,
+it's Germans they are. They made a charge and didn't get as far as
+here. They went out of step so to speak."</p>
+
+<p>"Woo-oo-oo!" Bill suddenly yelled and kicked a tin pail on to the
+floor of the trench. A shower of sparks flew up into the air and
+fluttered over the rim of the parapet. "I put my <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page086" name="page086">(p. 086)</a></span> 'and on it,
+'twas like a red 'ot poker, it burned me to the bone!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the brazier ye were foolin' about with," said Mike, who was
+buckling his pack-straps preparatory to moving, "See, and don't put
+yer head over the top, and don't light a fire at night. Ye can put up
+as much flare as you like by day. Good-bye, boys, and good luck t'ye."</p>
+
+<p>"Any Donegal men in the battalion?" I called after him as he was
+moving off.</p>
+
+<p>"None that I know of," he shouted back, "but there are two other
+battalions that are not here, maybe there are Donegal men there. Good
+luck, boys, good luck!"</p>
+
+<p>We were alone and lonely, nearly every man of us. For myself I felt
+isolated from the whole world, alone in front of the little line of
+sand bags with my rifle in my hand. Who were we? Why were we there?
+Goliath, the junior clerk, who loved Tennyson; Pryor, the draughtsman,
+who doted on Omar; Kore, who read Fanny Eden's penny stories, and
+never disclosed his profession; Mervin, the traveller, educated for
+the Church but schooled in romance; Stoner, the clerk, who reads my
+books and says he never read better; and Bill, newsboy, street-arab,
+and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page087" name="page087">(p. 087)</a>
+</span> Lord knows what, who reads <i>The Police News</i>, plays
+innumerable tricks with cards, and gambles and never wins. Why were we
+here holding a line of trench, and ready to take a life or give one as
+occasion required? Who shall give an answer to the question?</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page088" name="page088">(p. 088)</a></span></h2>
+
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Blood and Iron&mdash;and Death</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+At night the stars are shining bright,<br>
+ The old-world voice is whispering near,<br>
+We've heard it when the moon was light,<br>
+ And London's streets were verydear;<br>
+But dearer now they are, sweetheart,<br>
+ The 'buses running to the Strand,<br>
+But we're so far, so far apart,<br>
+ Each lonely in a different land.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The night was murky and the air was splashed with rain. Following the
+line of trench I could dimly discern the figures of my mates pulling
+off their packs and fixing their bayonets. These glittered brightly as
+the dying fires from the trench braziers caught them, and the long
+array of polished blades shone into their place along the dark brown
+sandbags. Looking over the parados I could see the country in rear,
+dim in the hazy night. A white, nebulous fog lay on the ground and
+enveloped the lone trees that stood up behind. Here and there I could
+discern houses where no light shone, and where no people dwelt. All
+the inhabitants were gone, and in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page089" name="page089">(p. 089)</a>
+</span> village away to the
+right there was absolute silence, the stillness of the desert. To my
+mind came words I once read or heard spoken, "The conqueror turns the
+country into a desert, and calls it peace."</p>
+
+<p>I clamped my bayonet into its standard and rested the cold steel on
+the parapet, the point showing over; and standing up I looked across
+to the enemy's ground.</p>
+
+<p>"They're about three hundred yards away," somebody whispered taking
+his place at my side. "I think I can see their trenches."</p>
+
+<p>An indistinct line which might have been a parapet of sandbags, became
+visible as I stared through the darkness; it looked very near, and my
+heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped
+upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped
+under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright
+flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space
+between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all
+its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see
+the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished;
+further back was a ruined cottage, the bare beams and rafters giving
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page090" name="page090">(p. 090)</a>
+</span> it the appearance of a skeleton. A year ago a humble farmer
+might have lived there; his children perhaps played where dead were
+lying. I could see the German trench, the row of sandbags, the country
+to rear, a ruined village on a hill, the flashes of rifles on the
+left ... the flare died out in mid-air and darkness cloaked the whole
+scene again.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of it, Stoner?" I asked the figure by my side.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, it's great," he answered. "To think that they're over there,
+and the poor fellows lying out on the field!"</p>
+
+<p>"They're their own bloomin' tombstones, anyway," said Bill, cropping
+up from somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel sorry for the poor beggars," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll feel sorry for themselves, the beggars," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"There, what's that?"</p>
+
+<p>It crept up like a long white arm from behind the German lines, and
+felt nervously at the clouds as if with a hand. Moving slowly from
+North to South it touched all the sky, seeking for something. Suddenly
+it flashed upon us, almost dazzling our eyes. In a flash Bill was upon
+the banquette.</p>
+
+<p>"Nark <span class="pagenum"><a id="page091" name="page091">(p. 091)</a>
+</span> the doin's, nark it," he cried and fired his rifle. The
+report died away in a hundred echoes as he slipped the empty cartridge
+from its breech.</p>
+
+<p>"That's one for them," he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you fire at?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The blasted searchlight," he replied, rubbing his little potato of a
+nose. "That's one for 'em, another shot nearer the end of the war!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hit it?" asked our corporal.</p>
+
+<p>"I must 'ave 'it it, I fired straight at it."</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid, splendid," said the corporal. "Its only about three miles
+away though."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, blimey!..."</p>
+
+<p>Sentries were posted for the night, one hour on and two off for each
+man until dawn. I was sentry for the first hour. I had to keep a sharp
+look out if an enemy's working party showed itself when the rockets
+went up. I was to fire at it and kill as many men as possible. One
+thinks of things on sentry-go.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I reconcile myself to this," I asked, shifting my rifle to
+get nearer the parapet. "Who are those men behind the line of sandbags
+that I should want to kill them, to disembowel them with my sword,
+blow their faces <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page092" name="page092">(p. 092)</a>
+</span> to pieces at three hundred yards, bomb them
+into eternity at a word of command. Who am I that I should do it; what
+have they done to me to incur my wrath? I am not angry with them; I
+know little of the race; they are utter strangers to me; what am I to
+think, why should I think?</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," I called to the Cockney, who came by whistling, "what are you
+doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm havin' a bit of rooty (food) 'fore goin' to kip (sleep)."</p>
+
+<p>"Hungry?</p>
+
+<p>"'Ungry as an 'awk," he answered. "Give me a shake when your turn's
+up; I'm sentry after you."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe in God?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do and I don't," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't 'old with the Christian business," he replied, "but I believe
+in God."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that God can allow men to go killing one another like
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe 'E can't help it."</p>
+
+<p>"And the war started because it had to be?</p>
+
+<p>"It <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page093" name="page093">(p. 093)</a>
+</span> just came&mdash;like a war-baby."</p>
+
+<p>Another pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer write songs, don't yer?" Bill suddenly asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Would yer write me one, just a little one?" he continued. "There was
+a bird (girl) where I used to be billeted at St. Albans, and I would
+like to send 'er a bit of poetry."</p>
+
+<p>"You've fallen in love?" I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not so bad as that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've not fallen in love."</p>
+
+<p>"Well its like this," said my mate, "I used to be in 'er 'ouse and she
+made 'ome-made torfee."</p>
+
+<p>"Made it well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, yes; 'twas some stuff, and I used to get 'eaps of it. She
+used to slide down the banisters, too. Yer should 'ave seen it, Pat.
+It almost made me write poetry myself."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try and do something for you," I said. "Have you been in the
+dug-out yet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's not such a bad place, but there's seven of us in it," said
+Bill, "it's 'ot as 'ell. But we wouldn't be so bad if Z&mdash;&mdash; was out of
+it. I don't like the feller."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page094" name="page094">(p. 094)</a>
+</span> I asked, Z&mdash;&mdash; was one of our thirteen, but he
+couldn't pull with us. For some reason or other we did not like him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't like 'im, that's all," was the answer. "Z&mdash;&mdash; tries to
+get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when
+your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He
+clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without
+another word he vanished into the dug-out.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in
+civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the
+whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique
+live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between
+them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a
+new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish
+cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another,
+stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language.
+Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer
+says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men
+and babies.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand-to!" <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page095" name="page095">(p. 095)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my
+head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a
+pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and
+stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over
+another prostrate form.</p>
+
+<p>"Stand-to! Stand-to!"</p>
+
+<p>We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette,
+each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and
+entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our
+equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the
+bayonets are always fixed.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Z&mdash;&mdash;?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.</p>
+
+<p>"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it
+lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.
+The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."</p>
+
+
+<p>Z&mdash;&mdash; <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page096" name="page096">(p. 096)</a>
+</span> stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get
+on with the work."</p>
+
+<p>In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive
+the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits
+for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we
+stood for half a day.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in
+intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The
+last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air
+for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the
+trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and
+shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and
+there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it
+were, on the grass.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said
+Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."</p>
+
+<p>The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked
+enquiringly in, his yellow bill
+<span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page097" name="page097">(p. 097)</a>
+</span> moving from side to side,
+and fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some
+minutes, a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to
+earth again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see
+the German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the
+sandbags on the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was
+firing again.</p>
+
+<p>"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the
+Cockney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."</p>
+
+<p>"An if I do!"</p>
+
+<p>"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.</p>
+
+<p>"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his
+rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at,
+but don't waste ammunition."</p>
+
+<p>The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened
+on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by
+each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every
+sixth man was posted as sentry.</p>
+
+<p>Stoner, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page098" name="page098">(p. 098)</a>
+</span> diligent worker that he is, set about preparing
+breakfast when stand-to was over. In an open space at the rear of the
+dug-out he fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the
+regimental issue of coke ablaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried
+with me.</p>
+
+<p>"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."</p>
+
+<p>Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the
+work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the
+size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and
+fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if
+selecting a spot to rest on.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."</p>
+
+<p>It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into
+the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped
+into Stoner's fire.</p>
+
+<p>"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"</p>
+
+<p>No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a
+bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page099" name="page099">(p. 099)</a>
+</span> us from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had
+seen; some of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the
+blue-eyed Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has
+been often spoken of in my little volume <i>The Amateur Army</i>, came face
+to face with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung
+in, and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a
+deserted trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell.
+"Run."</p>
+
+<p>A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the
+bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers
+carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.</p>
+
+<p>Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the
+bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter
+of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of
+eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of
+their food whenever that is possible.</p>
+
+<p>In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of
+which are supplied to <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page100" name="page100">(p. 100)</a>
+</span> the trenches, and went out with the
+intention of getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of
+the way we had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the
+road branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery
+one; added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the
+narrow trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where
+the parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp,
+clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the
+story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a
+soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have
+been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and
+number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died
+fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave.
+Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the
+man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of
+kindly grass were now covering it up.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late
+breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had
+stripped to the waist as they bent over their little
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page101" name="page101">(p. 101)</a></span>
+mess-tins of soapy water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench
+routine. They were deep in argument at the door of one dug-out, and
+almost came to blows. The row was about rations. A light-limbed youth,
+with sloping shoulders, had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the
+trenches. He said his pack was heavy enough without the bread. His
+mates were very angry with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing
+like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would one of us not carry it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't ye give it to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the
+sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless
+twisters!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who,
+stripped to the waist, was washing himself.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as
+he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page102" name="page102">(p. 102)</a>
+</span> down that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who
+has the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the
+soapsuds from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive attitude, with
+clenched fists before him, in true fighting manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost
+things that way before, I'ave."</p>
+
+<p>Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic
+remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier
+into silence.</p>
+
+<p>A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay
+on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms,
+their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in
+Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch,
+his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was
+fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position,
+fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's
+lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other
+side.</p>
+
+<p>"Firin' at beastly sandbags!" one of the men
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page103" name="page103">(p. 103)</a>
+</span> said to me,
+"Blimey, that's no game. Yer 'ere and the sandbags is there, you never
+see anything, and you've to fire at nothin'. They call this war.
+Strike me ginger if it's like the pictures in <i>The Daily &mdash;&mdash;</i>; them
+papers is great liars!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to kill men?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I here for?" was the rejoinder, "If I don't kill them they'll
+kill me."</p>
+
+<p>No trench is straight at any place; the straight line is done away
+with in the makeup of a trench. The traverse, jutting out in a sharp
+angle to the rear, gives way in turn to the fire position, curving
+towards the enemy, and there is never more than twelve yards liable to
+be covered by enfilade fire. The traverse is the home of spare
+ammunition, of ball cartridge, bombs, and hand-grenades. These are
+stored in depots dug into the wall of the trench. There are two things
+which find a place anywhere and everywhere, the biscuit and the bully
+beef. Tins of both are heaped in the trenches; sometimes they are used
+for building dug-outs and filling revêtements. Bully beef and biscuits
+are seldom eaten; goodness knows why we are supplied with them.</p>
+
+<p>We <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page104" name="page104">(p. 104)</a>
+</span> came into the territory of another battalion, and were met
+by an officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"For water, sir," said Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got permission from your captain?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you cannot get by here without it. It's a Brigade order," said
+the officer. "One of our men got shot through the head yesterday when
+going for water."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed, sir," I enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Killed on the spot," was the answer.</p>
+
+<p>On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging
+operation.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got the water already?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"How is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"An officer of the &mdash;&mdash; wouldn't let us go by without a written
+permission."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naïve reply. He wanted
+to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took
+out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on
+his knee and the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page105" name="page105">(p. 105)</a>
+</span> paper on his hat, and wrote us out the
+pass.</p>
+
+<p>For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our
+parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's
+rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the
+fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good
+view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs
+at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a
+ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was
+named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its
+belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in
+an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into
+the open to bury it.</p>
+
+<p>The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a
+robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date.
+Having filled our jars, Pryor and I made a tour of inspection of the
+place.</p>
+
+<p>In a green field to the rear we discovered a graveyard, fenced in
+except at our end, where a newly open grave yawned up at us as if
+aweary of waiting for its prey.</p>
+
+<p>"Room <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page106" name="page106">(p. 106)</a>
+</span> for extension here," said Pryor. "I suppose they'll not
+close in this until the graves reach the edge of the roadway. Let's
+read the epitaphs."</p>
+
+<p>How peaceful the place was. On the right I could see through a space
+between the walls of the cottage the wide winding street of the
+village, the houses, cornstacks, and the waving bushes, and my soul
+felt strangely quieted. In its peace, in its cessation from labour,
+there was neither anxiety nor sadness, there remained rest, placid and
+sad. It seemed as if the houses, all intact at this particular spot,
+held something sacred and restful, that with them and in them all was
+good. They knew no evil or sorrow. There was peace, the desired
+consummation of all things&mdash;peace brought about by war, the peace of
+the desert, and death.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the first grave, its cross, and the rude lettering. This
+was the epitaph; this and nothing more:&mdash;<br>
+<span class="left30">
+"An Unknown British Soldier."</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>On a grave adjoining was a cheap gilt vase with flowers, English
+flowers, faded and dying. I looked at the cross. One of the Coldstream
+Guards lay there killed in action six weeks before. I turned up the
+black-edged envelope on <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page107" name="page107">(p. 107)</a>
+</span> the vase, and read the badly spelt
+message, "From his broken-hearted wife and loving little son Tommy."</p>
+
+<p>We gazed at it for a moment in silence. Then Pryor spoke. "I think
+we'll go back," he said, and there was a strained note in his voice;
+it seemed as if he wanted to hide something.</p>
+
+<p>On our way out to the road we stopped for a moment and gazed through
+the shattered window of Dead Cow Cottage. The room into which we
+looked was neatly furnished. A round table with a flower vase on it
+stood on the floor, a number of chairs in their proper position were
+near the wall, a clock and two photos, one of an elderly man with a
+heavy beard, the other of a frail, delicate woman, were on the
+mantlepiece. The pendulum of the clock hung idle; it must have
+ceased going for quite a long time. As if to heighten a picture of
+absolute comfort a cat sat on the floor washing itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Where will the people be?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," answered Pryor. "Those chairs will be useful in our
+dug-out. Shall we take them?"</p>
+
+<p>We took one apiece, and with chair on our head
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page108" name="page108">(p. 108)</a>
+</span> and jar in
+hand we walked towards the trenches. The sun was out, and it was now
+very hot. We sweated. My face became like a wet sponge squeezed in the
+hand; Pryor's face was very red.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have a rest," he said, and laying down the jar he placed his
+chair in the road and sat on it. I did the same.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Omar?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"In my calf-age I doated on him," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the calf-age?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sentimental period that most young fellows go through," I said.
+"They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise
+everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the
+universe one day. They prefer vegetable food to pork, and read Omar."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come through the calf-age?"</p>
+
+<p>"Years ago! You'll come through, too, Pryor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A bullet struck the leg of my chair and carried away a splinter of
+wood. I got to my feet hurriedly. "Those trenches seem quite a
+distance away," I said, hoisting my chair and gripping the jar as I
+moved off, "and we'll be safer when we're there."</p>
+
+<p>All <span class="pagenum"><a id="page109" name="page109">(p. 109)</a>
+</span> the way along we were sniped at, but we managed to get
+back safely. Finding that our supply of coke ran out we used the
+chairs for firewood.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page110" name="page110">(p. 110)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Terrors of the Night</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left20 smsize">
+Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,<br>
+ When you're in the trenches come and visit you,<br>
+They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,<br>
+ Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.<br>
+They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,<br>
+ They come in close formation, in column and platoon.<br>
+There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:<br>
+For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said
+Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the
+periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like
+shells&mdash;especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a
+mile away."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is
+always on the go."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was
+cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.</p>
+
+<p>"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page111" name="page111">(p. 111)</a>
+</span> I met in the
+trench when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in
+front of me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of
+instinct told me to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung
+it into the trench and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind
+to explode. It was looking at me, I could see its eyes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you
+lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at
+me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back
+round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas
+some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
+part I am more afraid of &mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash; the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"</p>
+
+<p>I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
+that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page112" name="page112">(p. 112)</a></span>
+death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a
+bullet, and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with
+either. I am more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike
+terror into me. Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on
+the parapet about one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a
+breeze crooning over the meadows between the lines, and the air was
+full of the sharp, penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired
+and was half asleep as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the
+dead are lying on the grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a
+yell, a piercing, agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A
+devil from the pit below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a
+weird cry. It thrilled me through and through. I had never heard
+anything like it before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again.
+I do not know what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might
+have been the yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an
+opponent's head.</p>
+
+<p>When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
+deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The
+stench <span class="pagenum"><a id="page113" name="page113">(p. 113)</a>
+</span> of the house in which the section was billeted was
+terrible. By day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was
+devilish. I awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of
+fresh air. The place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the
+spire battered down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled
+broadcast by concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there
+I heard a groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some
+one was being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak,
+infantile cries that slowly died away into silence.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
+unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
+might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
+dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
+down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
+to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
+mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.</p>
+
+<p>The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
+battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
+I <span class="pagenum"><a id="page114" name="page114">(p. 114)</a>
+</span> could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and
+suddenly somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing,
+the others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense
+agony. Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.</p>
+
+<p>"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
+pray every time I go up."</p>
+
+<p>"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
+(nice)."</p>
+
+<p>"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
+tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
+cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
+from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
+'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
+you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
+whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
+the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it
+wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a
+bad locality."</p>
+
+<p>He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag,
+and lit it off the stump of his <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page115" name="page115">(p. 115)</a>
+</span> old one. He blew a puff of
+smoke into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and
+fixed a look of pity on Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men
+as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain
+comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke
+snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're
+goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin'
+you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work
+for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the &mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Bill paused, sweating at every pore.</p>
+
+<p>"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not
+for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the
+cushiest in the world."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page116" name="page116">(p. 116)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Dug-out Banquet</span></h3>
+
+<div class="left30 smsize">
+
+<p>You ask me if the trench is safe?<br>
+As safe as home, I say;<br>
+Dug-outs are safest things on land,<br>
+And 'buses running to the Strand<br>
+Are not as safe as they.</p>
+
+<p>You ask me if the trench is deep?<br>
+Quite deep enough for me,<br>
+And men can walk where fools would creep,<br>
+And men can eat and write and sleep<br>
+And hale and happy be.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The dug-out is the trench villa, the soldiers' home, and is considered
+to be proof against shrapnel bullets and rifle fire. Personally, I do
+not think much of our dug-outs, they are jerry-built things, loose in
+construction, and fashioned in haste. We have kept on improving them,
+remedying old defects, when we should have taken the whole thing to
+pieces and started afresh. The French excel us in fashioning dug-outs;
+they dig out, we build. They begin to burrow from the trench
+downwards, and the roof of their shelter is on a line with the floor
+of the trench; thus they have <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page117" name="page117">(p. 117)</a>
+</span> a cover over them seven or
+eight feet in thickness; a mass of earth which the heaviest shell can
+hardly pierce through. We have been told that the German trenches are
+even more secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion
+shell to burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose
+most of its burrowing power. One of our heaviest shells struck an
+enemy's dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of
+the residents were merely scratched. The place was packed at the time.</p>
+
+<p>As I write I am sitting in a dug-out built in the open by the French.
+It is a log construction, built of pit-props from a neighbouring
+coal-mine. Short blocks of wood laid criss-cross form walls four feet
+in thickness; the roof is quite as thick, and the logs are much
+longer. Yesterday morning, while we were still asleep, a four-inch
+shell landed on the top, displaced several logs, but did us no harm.
+The same shell (pipsqueaks we call them) striking the roof of one of
+our trench dug-outs would blow us all to atoms.</p>
+
+<p>The dug-out is not peculiar to the trench. For miles back from the
+firing-line the country is a world of dug-outs; they are everywhere,
+by <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page118" name="page118">(p. 118)</a>
+</span> the roadsides, the canals, and farmhouses, in the fields,
+the streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A
+fortnight ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and
+the enemy began to shell the place about midnight. Bootless,
+half-naked, and half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was
+a regular Black Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt
+of queer things, and there were six soldiers, the man of the house,
+his wife, and seven children, one a sucking babe two months old,
+cooped up in the place.</p>
+
+<p>I did not like the place&mdash;in fact, I seldom like any dug-out, it
+reminds me of the grave, the covering earth, and worms, and always
+there is a feeling of suffocation. But I have enjoyed my stay in one
+or two. There was a delightful little one, made for a single soldier,
+in which I stayed. At night when off sentry, and when I did not feel
+like sleeping, I read. Over my head I cut a niche in the mud, placed
+my candle there, pulled down over the door my curtain, a real good
+curtain, taken from some neighbouring chateau, spent a few moments
+watching the play of light and shadows on the roof, and listening to
+the sound of guns outside, then
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page119" name="page119">(p. 119)</a>
+</span> lit a cigarette and read.
+Old Montaigne in a dug-out is a true friend and a fine companion.
+Across the ages we held conversation as we have often done. Time and
+again I have read his books; there was a time when for a whole year I
+read a chapter nightly: in a Glasgow doss-house, in a king's castle,
+in my Irish home, and now in Montaigne's own country, in a little
+earthy dug-out, I made the acquaintance of the man again. The dawn
+broke to the clatter of bayonets on the fire position when I put the
+book aside and buckled my equipment for the stand-to hour.</p>
+
+<p>The French trench dug-outs are not leaky, ours generally are, and the
+slightest shower sometimes finds its way inside. I have often awakened
+during the night to find myself soaked through on a floor covered with
+slush. When the weather is hot we sleep outside. In some cases the
+dug-out is handsomely furnished with real beds, tables, chairs,
+mirrors, and candlesticks of burnished brass. Often there are stoves
+built into the clayey wall and used for cooking purposes. In "The
+Savoy" dug-out, which was furnished after this fashion, Section 3 once
+sat down to a memorable dinner which took a whole day long to prepare;
+and eatables <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page120" name="page120">(p. 120)</a>
+</span> and wine were procured at great risk to life.
+Incidentally, Bill, who went out of the trenches and walked four
+kilometres to procure a bottle of <i>vin rouge</i> was rewarded by seven
+days' second field punishment for his pains.</p>
+
+<p>Mervin originated the idea in the early morning as he was dressing a
+finger which he had cut when opening a tin of bully beef. He held up
+the bleeding digit and gazed at it with serious eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"All for this tin of muck!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we have a good
+square meal. I think we could get up one if we set to work."</p>
+
+<p>Stoner's brown eyes sparkled eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"I know where there are potatoes and carrots and onions," he said.
+"Out in a field behind Dead Cow Villa; I'm off; coming Pat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, what are the others doing, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"We must have fizz," said my friend, and money was forthwith
+collected for wine. Bill hurried away, his bandolier round his
+shoulder and his rifle at the slope; and Mervin undertook to set the
+place in order and arrange the dug-out for the banquet. Goliath
+dragged his massive weight over the parados and busied himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page121" name="page121">(p. 121)</a>
+</span> pulling flowers. Kore cleaned the mess-tins, and Pryor, artistic
+even in matters of food, set about preparing a menu-card.</p>
+
+<p>When we returned from a search which was very successful, Stoner
+divested himself of tunic and hat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
+got on with the cooking. I took his turn at sentry-go, and Z&mdash;&mdash;,
+sleeping on the banquette, roused his stout body, became interested
+for a moment, and fell asleep again. Bill returned with a bottle of
+wine and seven eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you get them?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas the 'en as 'ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so
+much about it that I couldn't stand it, so I took the egg, and it
+looked so lonely all by itself in my 'and that I took the others to
+keep it company."</p>
+
+<p>At six o'clock we sat down to dine.</p>
+
+<p>Our brightly burnished mess-tin lids were laid on the table, a neatly
+folded khaki handkerchief in front of each for serviette. Clean towels
+served for tablecloths, flowers&mdash;tiger-lilies, snapdragons, pinks,
+poppies, roses, and cornflowers rioted in colour over the rim of a
+looted vase. In solitary state a bottle of wine stood beside the
+flowers, and a box of cigars, the gift <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page122" name="page122">(p. 122)</a>
+</span> of a girl friend,
+with the lid open disclosed the dusky beauties within. The menu,
+Pryor's masterpiece, stood on a wire stand, the work of Mervin.</p>
+
+<p>Goliath seated at the table, was smiles all over, in fact, he was one
+massive good humoured smile, geniality personified.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything fresh from the seat of war?" he asked, as he waited for the
+soup.</p>
+
+<p>"According to the latest reports," Pryor answered, "we've gained an
+inch in the Dardanelles and captured three trenches in Flanders. We
+were forced to evacuate two of these afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"We miscalculated the enemy's strength, of course," said Mervin.</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," Pryor cut in. "But the trenches we lost were of no
+strategic importance."</p>
+
+<p>"They never are," said Kore. "I suppose that's why we lose thousands
+to take 'em, and the enemy lose as many to regain them."</p>
+
+<p>"Soup, gentlemen," Stoner interrupted, bringing a steaming tureen to
+the table. "Help yourselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Mulligatawny?" said Pryor sipping the stuff which he had emptied into
+his mess-tin, "I don't like this."</p>
+
+
+<p class="pagenum"><a id="page123" name="page123">(p. 123)</a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/img002.jpg" width="400" height="583" alt="Dug-out menu" title="">
+</div>
+
+
+<p>"Wot," <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page124" name="page124">(p. 124)</a>
+</span> muttered Bill, "wot's wrong with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"As soup its above reproach, but the name," said Pryor. "It's
+beastly."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's wrong with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything," said the artistic youth, "and besides I was fed as a
+child on mulligatawny, fed on it until I grew up and revolted. To meet
+it again here in a dug-out. Oh! ye gods!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take it," I said, for I had already finished mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you?" exclaimed Pryor, employing his spoon with Gargantuan zeal.
+"It's not quite etiquette."</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of
+condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went
+right through and the milk oozed out and fell on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"Waiter," said Goliath in a sharp voice, fixing one eye on the cook,
+and another on the falling milk.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," answered Stoner, raising his head from his mess-tin.</p>
+
+<p>"What beastly stuff is this trickling down? You shouldn't allow this
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," said Stoner, "you'd better lick it up."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ad 'e," <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page125" name="page125">(p. 125)</a>
+</span> cried Bill. "Wot will we do for tea?" The Cockney
+held a spare mess-tin under the milk and caught it as it fell. This
+was considered very unseemly behaviour for a gentleman, and we
+suggested that he should go and feed in the servants' kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>A stew, made of beef, carrots, and potatoes came next, and this in
+turn was followed by an omelette. Then followed a small portion of
+beef to each man, we called this chicken in our glorious game of
+make-believe. Kore asserted that he had caught the chicken singing
+<i>The Watch on the Rhine</i> on the top of a neighbouring chateau and took
+it as lawful booty of war.</p>
+
+<p>"Chicken, my big toe!" muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a
+tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of
+the bloomin' weathercock."</p>
+
+<p>The confiture was Stoner's greatest feat. The sweet was made from
+biscuits ground to powder, boiled and then mixed with jam. Never was
+anything like it. We lingered over the dish loud in our praise of the
+energetic Stoner. "By God, I'll give you a job as head-cook in my
+establishment at your own salary," said Pryor. "Strike me ginger,
+pink, and <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page126" name="page126">(p. 126)</a>
+</span> crimson if ever I ate anything like it," exclaimed
+Bill. "We must 'ave a bit of this at every meal from now till the end
+of the war."</p>
+
+<p>Coffee, wine, and cigars came in due course, then Section 3 clamoured
+for an address.</p>
+
+<p>"Ool give it?" asked Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Pat," said Mervin.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on Pat," chorused Section 3.</p>
+
+<p>I never made a speech in my life, but I felt that this was the moment
+to do something. I got to my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," I said, "it is a pleasure to rise and address you, although
+you haven't shaved for days, and your faces remind me every time I
+look at them of our rather sooty mess-tins."</p>
+
+<p>(Bill: "Wot of yer own phiz.")</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, Bill," I said, and continued. "Of course, none of you are
+to blame for the adhesive qualities of mud, it must stick somewhere,
+and doubtless it preferred your faces; but you should have shaved; the
+two hairs on Pryor's upper lip are becoming very prominent."</p>
+
+<p>"Under a microscope," said Mervin.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue," I shouted, and Mervin made a mock apology.
+"To-night's dinner was <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page127" name="page127">(p. 127)</a>
+</span> a grand success," I said, "all did
+their work admirably."</p>
+
+<p>"All but you," muttered Bill, "yer spent 'arf the time writin' when
+yer should have been peelin' taters or pullin' onions."</p>
+
+<p>"I resent the imputation of the gentleman at the rear," I said, "if I
+wasn't peeling potatoes and grinding biscuits I was engaged in
+chronicling the doings of Section 3. I can't make you fat and famous
+at the same time, much though I'd like to do both. You are an
+estimable body of men; Goliath, the big elephant&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>(Goliath: "Just a baby elephant, Pat.")</p>
+
+<p>"Mervin, who has travelled far and who loves bully stew; Pryor who
+dislikes girls with thick ankles, Kore who makes wash-out puns, Bill
+who has an insatiable desire for fresh eggs, and Stoner&mdash;I see a blush
+on his cheeks and a sparkle in his brown eyes already&mdash;I repeat the
+name Stoner with reverence. I look on the mess-tins which held the
+confiture and almost weep&mdash;because it's all eaten. There's only one
+thing to be done. Gentlemen, are your glasses charged?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothin' now but water," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Water shame," remarked the punster.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page128" name="page128">(p. 128)</a>
+</span> your tongues," I said, "fill them with water, fill them
+with anything. Ready? To the Section cook, Stoner, long life and
+ability to cook our sweets evermore."</p>
+
+<p>We drank. Just as we had finished, our company stretcher-bearers came
+by the door, a pre-occupied look on their faces and dark clots of
+blood on their trousers and tunics.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The cooks have copped it," one of the bearers answered. "They were
+cooking grub in a shed at the rear near Dead Cow Villa, and a
+pip-squeak came plunk into the place. The head cook copped it in the
+legs, both were broken, and Erney, you know Erney?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" we chorused.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead," said the stretcher-bearer. "Poor fellow he was struck
+unconscious. We carried him to the dressing station, and he came to at
+the door. 'Mother!' he said, trying to sit up on the stretcher. That
+was his last word. He fell back and died."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence. The glory of the flowers seemed to have
+faded away and the lighted cigars went out on the table. Dead! Poor
+fellow. He was such a clean, hearty boy, very obliging and kind. How
+often had he given <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page129" name="page129">(p. 129)</a>
+</span> me hot water, contrary to regulations, to
+pour on my tea.</p>
+
+<p>"To think of it," said Stoner. "It might have been any of us! We must
+put these flowers on his grave."</p>
+
+<p>That night we took the little vase with its poppies, cornflowers,
+pinks, and roses, and placed them on the black, cold earth which
+covered Erney, the clean-limbed, good-hearted boy. May he rest in
+peace.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page130" name="page130">(p. 130)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Nocturnal Adventure</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+Our old battalion billets still,<br>
+ Parades as usual go on.<br>
+We buckle in with right good will,<br>
+ And daily our equipment don<br>
+As if we meant to fight, but no!<br>
+ The guns are booming through the air,<br>
+The trenches call us on, but oh!<br>
+ We don't go there, we don't go there!</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">I have come to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that
+blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in
+pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There
+is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The
+road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of what
+appears to the unit as loitering by the wayside. We longed for action,
+for some adventure with which to relieve the period of "everlastin'
+waitin'."</p>
+
+<p>Nine o'clock was striking in the room downstairs and the old man and
+woman who live in the house were pottering about, locking doors, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page131" name="page131">(p. 131)</a>
+</span> putting the place into order. Lying on the straw in the loft
+we could hear them moving chairs and washing dishes; they have seven
+sons in the army, two are wounded and one is a prisoner in Germany.
+They are very old and are unable to do much hard work; all day long
+they listen to the sound of the guns "out there." In the evening they
+wash the dishes, the man helping the woman, and at night lock the
+doors and say a prayer for their sons. Now and again they speak of
+their troubles and narrate stories of the war and the time when the
+Prussians passed by their door on the journey to Paris. "But they'll
+never pass here again," the old man says, smoking the pipe of tobacco
+which our boys have given him. "They'll get smashed out there." As he
+speaks he points with a long lean finger towards the firing line, and
+lifts his stick to his shoulder in imitation of a man firing a rifle.</p>
+
+<p>Ten o'clock struck. We were deep in our straw and lights had been out
+for a long time. I couldn't sleep, and as I lay awake I could hear
+corpulent Z&mdash;&mdash; snoring in the corner. Outside a wind was whistling
+mournfully and sweeping through the joists of the roof where the red
+tiles had been shattered by shrapnel. There was something
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page132" name="page132">(p. 132)</a></span>
+melancholy and superbly grand in the night; the heaven was splashed
+with stars, and the glow of rockets from the firing line lit up the
+whole scene, and at intervals blotted out the lights of the sky. Here
+in the loft all was so peaceful, so quiet; the pair downstairs had
+gone to bed, they were now perhaps asleep and dreaming of their loved
+ones. But I could not rest; I longed to get up again and go out into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a hand tugged at my blanket, a form rose from the floor by my
+side and a face peered into mine.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me&mdash;Bill," a low voice whispered in my ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" I interrogated, raising myself on my elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Not sleepin'?" mumbled Bill, lighting a cigarette as he flopped down
+on my blanket, half crushing my toes as he did so. "I'm not sleeping
+neither," he continued. "Did you see the wild ducks to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the marshes? Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Could we pot one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish. We might as well shoot at the stars."</p>
+
+<p>"I never tried that game," said Bill, with mock
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page133" name="page133">(p. 133)</a>
+</span> seriousness.
+"But I'm goin' to nab a duck. Strike me balmy if I ain't."</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be the guard-room if we're caught."</p>
+
+<p>"If <i>we</i> are caught. Then you're comin'? I thought you'd be game."</p>
+
+<p>I slipped into my boots, tied on my puttees, slung a bandolier with
+ten rounds of ball cartridge over my shoulder, and groped for my rifle
+on the rack beneath the shrapnel-shivered joists. Bill and I crept
+downstairs and stole out into the open.</p>
+
+<p>"Gawd! that puts the cawbwebs out of one's froat," whispered my mate
+as he gulped down mighty mouthfuls of cold night air. "This is great.
+I couldn't sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"But we'll never hit a duck to-night," I whispered, my mind reverting
+to the white-breasted fowl which we had seen in an adjoining marsh
+that morning when coming back from the firing line. "Its madness to
+dream of hitting one with a bullet."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe yes and maybe no," said my mate, stumbling across the midden
+and floundering into the field on the other side.</p>
+
+<p>We came to the edge of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of
+us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and
+osier <span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134">(p. 134)</a>
+</span> beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising
+a plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the
+osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton
+of a house stood up naked against the sky, the cold stars shining
+through its shattered rafters. "'Twas shelled like 'ell, that 'ouse,"
+whispered Bill, leaning on his rifle and fixing his eyes on the ruined
+homestead. "The old man at our billet was tellin' some of us about it.
+The first shell went plunk through the roof and two children and the
+mother were bowled over."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should say so," mumbled my mate; then, "There's one comin' our
+way." Out over the line of trenches it sped towards us, whistling in
+its flight, and we could almost trace by its sound the line it
+followed in the air. It fell on the pool in front, bursting as it
+touched the water, and we were drenched with spray.</p>
+
+<p>"'Urt?" asked Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wet a little."</p>
+
+<p>"A little!" he exclaimed, gazing at the spot where the shell exploded.
+"I'm soaked to the pelt. Damn it, 'twill frighten the ducks."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever shot any living thing?" I asked <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page135" name="page135">(p. 135)</a></span> my mate as I
+tried to wipe the water from my face with the sleeve of my coat.</p>
+
+<p>"Me! Never in my nat'ral," Bill explained. "But when I saw them ducks
+this mornin' I thought I'd like to pot one o' em."</p>
+
+<p>"Its impossible to see anything now," I told him.
+"And there's another shell!"</p>
+
+<p>It yelled over our heads and burst near our billet on the soft mossy
+field which we had just crossed. Another followed, flew over the roof
+of the dwelling and shattered the wall of an outhouse to pieces.
+Somewhere near a dog barked loudly when the echo of the explosion died
+away, and a steed neighed in the horse-lines on the other side of the
+marsh. Then, drowning all other noises, an English gun spoke and a
+projectile wheeled through the air and towards the enemy. The monster
+of the thicket awake from a twelve hour sleep was speaking. Bill and I
+knew where he was hidden; the great gun that the enemy had been trying
+to locate for months and which he never discovered. He, the monster of
+the thicket, was working havoc in the foeman's trenches, and day after
+day great searching shells sped up past our billet warm from the
+German guns, but always they went far wide of their mark. Never could
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page136" name="page136">(p. 136)</a>
+</span> they discover the locality of the terrifying ninety-pounder,
+he who slept all day in his thicket home, awoke at midnight and worked
+until dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"That's some shootin'," said my mate as the shells shrieked overhead.
+"Blimey, they'll shake the country to pieces&mdash;and scare the ducks."</p>
+
+<p>Along a road made of bound sapling-bundles we took our way into the
+centre of the marsh. Here all was quiet and sombre; the marsh-world
+seemed to be lamenting over some ancient wrong. At times a rat would
+sneak out of the grass, slink across our path and disappear in the
+water, again; a lonely bird would rise into the air and cry piteously
+as it flew away, and ever, loud and insistent, threatening and
+terrible, the shells would fly over our heads, yelling out their
+menace of pain, of sorrow and death as they flew along.</p>
+
+<p>We killed no birds, we saw none, although we stopped out till the
+colour of dawn splashed the sky with streaks of early light. As we
+went in by the door of our billet the monster of the thicket was still
+at work, although no answering shells sped up from the enemy's lines.
+Up in the loft Z&mdash;&mdash; was snoring loudly as he lay asleep on the straw,
+the blanket tight round his <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page137" name="page137">(p. 137)</a>
+</span> body, his jaw hanging loosely,
+and an unlighted pipe on the floor by his side. Placing our rifles on
+the rack, Bill and I took off our bandoliers and lay down on our
+blankets. Presently we were asleep.</p>
+
+<p>That was how Bill and I shot wild duck in the marshes near the village
+of&mdash;Somewhere in France.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page138" name="page138">(p. 138)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Man with the Rosary</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+There's a tramp o' feet in the mornin',<br>
+There's an oath from an N.C.O.,<br>
+As up the road to the trenches<br>
+The brown battalions go:<br>
+Guns and rifles and waggons,<br>
+Transports and horses and men,<br>
+Up with the flush of the dawnin',<br>
+And back with the night again.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">Sometimes when our spell in the trenches comes to an end we go back
+for a rest in some village or town. Here the <i>estaminet</i> or <i>débitant</i>
+(French as far as I am aware for a beer shop), is open to the British
+soldier for three hours daily, from twelve to one and from six to
+eight o'clock. For some strange reason we often find ourselves busy on
+parade at these hours, and when not on parade we generally find
+ourselves without money. I have been here for four months; looking at
+my pay book I find that I've been paid 25 fr. (or in plain English,
+one pound) since I have come to France, a country where the weather
+grows hotter daily, where the water is seldom
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page139" name="page139">(p. 139)</a>
+</span> drinkable, and
+where wine and beer is so cheap. Once we were paid five francs at five
+o'clock in the afternoon after five penniless days of rest in a
+village, and ordered as we were paid, to pack up our all and get ready
+to set off at six o'clock for the trenches. From noon we had been
+playing cards, and some of the boys gambled all their pay in advance
+and lost it. Bill's five francs had to be distributed amongst several
+members of the platoon.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only five francs, anyway," he said. "Wot matter whether I spend
+it on cards, wine, or women. I don't care for soldierin' as a
+profession?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is your profession, Bill?" Pryor asked; we never really knew
+what Bill's civil occupation was, he seemed to know a little of many
+crafts, but was master of none.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been everything," he replied, employing his little finger in the
+removal of cigarette ash. "My ole man apprenticed me to a marker of
+'ot cross buns, but I 'ad a 'abit of makin' the long end of the cross
+on the short side, an' got chucked out. Then I learned 'ow to jump
+through tin plates in order to make them nutmeg graters, but left that
+job after sticking plump in the middle of a plate. I had to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page140" name="page140">(p. 140)</a></span>
+stop there for three days without food or drink. They were thinnin' me
+out, see! Then I was a draughts manager at a bank, and shut the
+ventilators; after that I was an electric mechanic; I switched the
+lights on and off at night and mornin'; now I'm a professional
+gambler, I lose all my tin."</p>
+
+<p>"You're also a soldier," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and
+knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."</p>
+
+<p>We did not leave the village until eight o'clock. It was now very dark
+and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed
+up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells and the long
+tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks
+afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even
+through the haze, star-shells showed brilliant in their many different
+colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a
+beautiful light which bursts into four different flames that burn
+standing high in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute
+star, holds the sky for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote
+sisters from the heavens. The English and the Germans are content to
+fling rockets <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page141" name="page141">(p. 141)</a>
+</span> across and observe one another's lines while
+these flare out their brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about
+five miles away; the starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an
+adjacent spinney, so deceptive are they.</p>
+
+<p>Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
+heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming
+down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less
+serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to
+hospital&mdash;those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally
+walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with
+rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was
+impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.</p>
+
+<p>"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was
+smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.</p>
+
+<p>"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
+"Got bombed out and were sent back."</p>
+
+<p>"Lucky <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page142" name="page142">(p. 142)</a>
+</span> dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ad two killed and seven wounded."</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness
+swallowed up the working party.</p>
+
+<p>The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we
+turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to
+the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats
+had been given up a week before.</p>
+
+<p>The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each
+successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle butts
+and dripping to the roadway. Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in
+Kore's. We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is
+lullaby in the monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed
+boots on gravel.</p>
+
+<p>We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered
+bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way
+across a wide field. The field was under water in the wet season, and
+a brick pathway had been built across it. Along this path we took our
+way. A strong breeze had risen <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page143" name="page143">(p. 143)</a></span> and was swishing our
+waterproofs about our bodies; the darkness was intense, I had to
+strain my eyes to see the man in front, Stoner. In the darkness he was
+a nebulous dark bulk that sprang into bold relief when the starlights
+flared in front. When the flare died out we stumbled forward into
+pitch dark nothingness. The pathway was barely two feet across, a mere
+tight-rope in the wide waste, and on either side nothing stood out to
+give relief to the desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low,
+shapeless and gloomy, behind was the darkness, in front when the
+starlights made the darkness visible they only increased the sense of
+solitude.</p>
+
+<p>We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out
+like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or
+woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner
+fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. Sometimes we fell
+singly, again in pairs, often we fell together a heap of rifles,
+khaki, and waterproof capes. We rose grumbling, spitting mud and
+laughing. Stoner was very unfortunate, a particle of dirt got into his
+eye almost blinding him. Afterwards he crawled along, now and again
+getting to <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page144" name="page144">(p. 144)</a>
+</span> his feet, merely to fall back into his earthy
+position. A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets
+whizzed past our ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching
+bullets.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, all right so far."</p>
+
+<p>"Stoner's down."</p>
+
+<p>"He's up again."</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, it's a balmy."</p>
+
+<p>"Mervin's crawling on his hands and knees."</p>
+
+<p>"Nark the doin's, ye're on my waterproof. Let go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Goliath's down."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you struck, Goliath?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the
+flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he
+had been scratched as he stumbled.</p>
+
+<p>We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light
+Infantry. The place was very quiet, they assured us, it is always the
+same. It has become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion
+that it is taking over a cushy position. By this trench next morning
+we found six newly made graves, telling how six Highlanders had met
+their death, killed in action.</p>
+
+<p>Next <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page145" name="page145">(p. 145)</a>
+</span> morning as I was looking through a periscope at the
+enemy's trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their
+sandbag line, a man from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the
+trench with creosote and chloride of lime.</p>
+
+<p>"Seein' anything?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," I answered, "the grass is so high in front that I can see
+nothing but the tips of the enemy's parapets. There's some work for
+you here," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Under your feet," I told him. "The floor is soft as putty and smells
+vilely. Perhaps there is a dead man there. Last night I slept by the
+spot and it turned me sick."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you an entrenchin' tool?"</p>
+
+<p>I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently
+unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to
+view, then a second; fifteen minutes assiduous labour revealed an
+evil-smelling bundle of clothing and decaying flesh. I still remained
+an onlooker, but changed my position on the banquette.</p>
+
+<p>"He must have been dead a long time," said the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page146" name="page146">(p. 146)</a></span> sanitary man,
+as he flung handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."</p>
+
+<p>He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky. The features
+were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day
+before. The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point,
+the lips were drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like
+and vicious; the eyes were open and raised towards the forehead, and
+the whole face was splashed with clotted blood. A wound could be seen
+on the left temple, the fatal bullet had gone through there.</p>
+
+<p>"He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the
+gloves on the dead soldier's hands. "These trenches were the
+'Allemands' then, and the boys charged 'em. I suppose this feller
+copped a packet and dropped into the mud and was tramped down."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the
+dead man and brought out an identity disc.</p>
+
+<p>"Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers." "What's this?" he asked, taking
+a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from
+the dead man's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"It's <span class="pagenum"><a id="page147" name="page147">(p. 147)</a>
+</span> his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture
+a barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass,
+with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of
+the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little
+boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather
+in blossom, the turf stacks, the laughing colleens....</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a letter," said the sanitary man, "it was posted last
+Christmas. It's from a girl, too."</p>
+
+<p>He commenced reading:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Patrick,&mdash;I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my
+lone the day I was always reading it. I wish the black war was over
+and you back again&mdash;we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself
+wishes it as well; I was up at your house last night; there's not much
+fun in it now. I read the papers to your mother, and me and her was
+looking at a map. But we didn't know where you were so we could only
+make guesses. Your mother and me is making the Rounds of the Cross for
+you, and I am always thinking of you in my prayers. You'll be having
+the parcel I sent before you get this letter. I hope it's not broken
+or lost. <span class="pagenum"><a id="page148" name="page148">(p. 148)</a>
+</span> The socks I sent were knitted by myself, three
+pairs of them, and I've put the holy water on them. Don't forget to
+put them on when your feet get wet, at home you never used to bother
+about anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry. But
+you'll take care of yourself now, won't you: and not get killed? It'll
+be a grand day when you come back, and God send the day to come soon!
+Send a letter as often as you can, I myself will write you one every
+day, and I'll pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms
+of the cross which was erected over him. On the following day one of
+our men went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some
+flowers on it he got shot through the head. That evening he was buried
+beside the Munster Fusilier.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page149" name="page149">(p. 149)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Shelling of the Keep</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+A brazier fire at twilight,<br>
+And glow-worm fires ashine,<br>
+A searchlight sweeping heaven,<br>
+Above the firing-line.<br>
+The rifle bullet whistles<br>
+The message that it brings<br>
+Of death and desolation<br>
+To common folk and kings.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">We went back from the trenches as reserves to the Keep. Broken down
+though the place was when we entered it there was something restful in
+the brown bricks, hidden in ivy, in the well-paved yard, and the
+glorious riot of flowers. Most of the original furniture remained&mdash;the
+beds, the chairs, and the pictures. All were delighted with the place,
+Mervin particularly. "I'll make my country residence here after the
+war," he said.</p>
+
+<p>On the left was a church. Contrary to orders I spent an hour in the
+dusk of the first evening in the ruined pile. The place had been
+shelled for seven months, not a day had passed when it
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page150" name="page150">(p. 150)</a>
+</span> was
+not struck in some part. The sacristy was a jumble of prayer books,
+vestments, broken rosaries, crucifixes, and pictures. An ink pot and
+pen lay on a broken table beside a blotting pad. A lamp which once
+hung from the roof was beside them, smashed to atoms. In the church
+the altar railing was twisted into shapeless bars of iron, bricks
+littered the altar steps, the altar itself even, and bricks, tiles,
+and beams were piled high in the body of the church.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the graveyard the graves lay open and the bones of the dead
+were scattered broadcast over the green grass. Crosses were smashed or
+wrenched out of the ground and flung to earth; near the Keep was the
+soldiers' cemetery, the resting place of French, English, Indian, and
+German soldiers. Many of the French had bottles of holy water placed
+on their graves under the crosses. The English epitaphs were short and
+concise, always the same in manner: "Private 999 J. Smith, 26th London
+Battalion, killed in action 1st March, 1915." And under it stamped on
+a bronze plate was the information, "Erected by the Mobile Unit
+(B.R.C.S.) to preserve the record found on the spot." Often the dead
+man's regiment left a token of remembrance, a bunch of flowers, the
+dead <span class="pagenum"><a id="page151" name="page151">(p. 151)</a>
+</span> man's cap or bayonet and rifle (these two latter only
+if they had been badly damaged when the man died). Many crosses had
+been taken from the churchyard and placed over these men. One of them
+read, "A notre dévote fille," and another, "To my beloved mother."</p>
+
+<p>Several Indians, men of the Bengal Mountain Battery, were buried here.
+A woman it was stated, had disclosed their location to the enemy, and
+the billet in which they were staying was struck fair by a high
+explosive shell. Thirty-one were killed. They were now at
+rest&mdash;Anaytullah, Lakhasingh, and other strange men with queer names
+under the crosses fashioned from biscuit boxes. On the back of
+Anaytullah's cross was the wording in black: "Biscuits, 50 lbs."</p>
+
+<p>Thus the environment of the Keep: the enemy's trenches were about
+eight hundred yards away. No fighting took place here, the men's
+rifles stood loaded, but no shot was fired; only when the front line
+was broken, if that ever took place, would the defenders of the Keep
+come into play and hold the enemy back as long as that were possible.
+Then when they could no longer hold out, when the foe
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page152" name="page152">(p. 152)</a></span>
+pressed in on all sides, there was something still to do, something
+vitally important which would cost the enemy many lives, and, if a
+miracle did not happen, something which would wipe out the defenders
+for ever. This was the Keep.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was very quiet; a few shells flew wide overhead, and now
+and again stray bullets pattered against the masonry. We cooked our
+food in the yard, and, sitting down amidst the flowers, we drank our
+tea and ate our bread and jam. The first flies were busy, they flew
+amidst the flower-beds and settled on our jam. Mervin told a story of
+a country where he had been in, and where the flies were legion and
+ate the eyes out of horses. The natives there wore corks hung by
+strings from their caps, and these kept the flies away.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" asked Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"The corks kept swinging backwards and forwards as the men walked,"
+said Mervin. "Whenever a cork struck a fly it dashed the insect's
+brains out."</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey!" cried Bill, then asked, "What was the most wonderful thing
+you ever seen, Mervin?"</p>
+
+<p>"The most wonderful thing," repeated Mervin. "Oh, I'll tell you. It
+was the way they buried the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page153" name="page153">(p. 153)</a>
+</span> dead out in Klondike. The snow
+lies there for six months and it's impossible to dig, so when a man
+died they sharpened his toes and drove him into the earth with a
+mallet."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a more wonderful thing than that, and it was when we lay in the
+barn at Richebourg," said Bill, who was referring to a comfortless
+billet and a cold night which were ours a month earlier. "I woke up
+about midnight 'arf asleep. I 'ad my boots off and I couldn't 'ardly
+feel them I was so cold. 'Blimey!' I said, 'on goes my understandin's,
+and I 'ad a devil of a job lacing my boots up. When I thought I 'ad
+them on I could 'ear someone stirrin' on the left. It was my cotmate.
+'Wot's yer gime?' he says. 'Wot gime?' I asks. 'Yer foolin' about
+with my tootsies,' he says. Then after a minute 'e shouts, 'Damn it
+ye've put on my boots,' So I 'ad, put on his blessed boots and laced
+them mistaking 'is feet for my own."</p>
+
+<p>"We never heard of this before," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, cos 'twas ole Jersey as was lying aside me that night, next day
+'e was almost done in with the bomb."</p>
+
+<p>"It's jolly quiet here," said Goliath, sitting back in an armchair and
+lighting a cigarette. "This will be a jolly holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"I <span class="pagenum"><a id="page154" name="page154">(p. 154)</a>
+</span> heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place
+was hot," Stoner remarked. "The Irish Guards were here, and they said
+they preferred the trenches to the Keep."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be a poor country house," said Mervin, "if it's going to be
+as bad as you say."</p>
+
+<p>On the following evening I was standing guard in a niche in the
+building. Darkness was falling and the shadows sat at the base of the
+walls east of the courtyard. My niche looked out on the road, along
+which the wounded are carried from the trenches by night and sometimes
+by day. The way is by no means safe. As I stood there four men came
+down the road carrying a limp form on a stretcher. A waterproof
+ground-sheet lay over the wounded soldier, his head was uncovered, and
+it wobbled from side to side, a streak of blood ran down his face and
+formed into clots on the ear and chin. There was something uncannily
+helpless in the soldier, his shaking head, his boots caked brown with
+mud, the heels close together, the toes pointing upwards and outwards
+and swaying a little. Every quiver of the body betokened abject
+helplessness. The limp, swaying figure, clinging weakly to life, was a
+pathetic sight.</p>
+
+<p>The bearers walked slowly, carefully, stepping over
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page155" name="page155">(p. 155)</a>
+</span> every
+shell-hole and stone on the road. The sweat rolled down their faces
+and arms, their coats were off and their shirt sleeves rolled up
+almost to the shoulders. Down the road towards the village they
+pursued their sober way, and my eyes followed them. Suddenly they came
+to a pause, lowered the stretcher to the ground, and two of them bent
+over the prostrate form. I could see them feel the soldier's pulse,
+open his tunic, and listen for the beating of the man's heart, when
+they raised the stretcher again there was something cruelly careless
+in the action, they brought it up with a jolt and set off hurriedly,
+stumbling over shell-hole and boulder. There was no doubt the man was
+dead now; it was unwise to delay on the road, and the soldiers'
+cemetery was in the village.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening we stood to arms in the Keep; all our men were now out
+in the open, and the officers were inspecting their rifles barely four
+yards away from me. At that moment I saw the moon, a crescent of pale
+smoke standing on end near the West. I felt in my pocket for money,
+but found I had none to turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a ha'penny?" I asked Mervin who was passing.</p>
+
+<p>"What <span class="pagenum"><a id="page156" name="page156">(p. 156)</a>
+</span> for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to turn it, you know the old custom."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," answered Mervin, handing me a coin. "Long ago I used to
+turn my money, but I found the oftener I saw the moon the less I had
+to turn. However, I'll try it again for luck." So saying he turned a
+penny.</p>
+
+<p>"Do any of you fellows know Marie Redoubt?" an officer asked at that
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I know the place," said Mervin, "it's just behind the Keep."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you lead me to the place?" said the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Right," said Mervin, and the two men went off.</p>
+
+<p>They had just gone when a shell hit the building on my left barely
+three yards away from my head. The explosion almost deafened me, a
+pain shot through my ears and eyes, and a shower of fine lime and
+crumpled bricks whizzed by my face. My first thought was, "Why did I
+not put my hands over my eyes, I might have been struck blind." I had
+a clear view of the scene in front, my mates were rushing hither and
+thither in a shower of white flying lime; I could see dark forms
+falling, clambering to their feet and falling again. One figure
+detached <span class="pagenum"><a id="page157" name="page157">(p. 157)</a>
+</span> itself from the rest and came rushing towards me,
+by my side it tripped and fell, then rose again. I could now see it
+was Stoner. He put his hands up as if in protest, looked at me
+vacantly, and rushed round the corner of the building. I followed him
+and found him once more on the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Much hurt?" I asked, touching him on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he muttered, rising slowly, "I got it there," he raised a
+finger to his face which was bleeding, "and there," he put his hand
+across his chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, get into the dug-out," I said, and we hurried round the front
+of the building. A pile of fallen masonry lay there and half a dozen
+rifles, all the men were gone. We found them in the dug-out, a hole
+under the floor heavily beamed, and strong enough to withstand a fair
+sized shell. One or two were unconscious and all were bleeding more or
+less severely. I found I was the only person who was not struck.
+Goliath and Bill got little particles of grit in the face, and they
+looked black as chimney sweeps. Bill was cut across the hand, Kore's
+arm was bleeding.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Mervin?"</p>
+
+<p>"He <span class="pagenum"><a id="page158" name="page158">(p. 158)</a>
+</span> had just gone out," I said, "I was speaking to him, he
+went with Lieut. &mdash;&mdash; to Marie Redoubt."</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly recollected that I should not have left my place outside,
+so I went into my niche again. Had Mervin got clear, I wondered? The
+courtyard was deserted, and it was rapidly growing darker, a drizzle
+had begun, and the wet ran down my rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"Any word of Mervin?" I called to Stoner when he came out from the
+dug-out, and moved cautiously across the yard. There was a certain
+unsteadiness in his gait, but he was regaining his nerve; he had
+really been more surprised than hurt. He disappeared without answering
+my question, probably he had not heard me.</p>
+
+<p>"Stretcher-bearers at the double."</p>
+
+<p>The cry, that call of broken life which I have so often heard,
+faltered across the yard. From somewhere two men rushed out carrying a
+stretcher, and hurried off in the direction taken by Stoner. Who had
+been struck? Somebody had been wounded, maybe killed! Was it Mervin?</p>
+
+<p>Stoner came round the corner, a sad look in his brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mervin's copped it," he said, "in the head. It <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page159" name="page159">(p. 159)</a></span> must have
+been that shell that done it; a splinter, perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone away on the stretcher unconscious. The officer has been
+wounded as well in the leg, the neck, and the face."</p>
+
+<p>"Badly?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he's able to speak."</p>
+
+<p>Fifteen minutes later I saw Mervin again. He was lying on the
+stretcher and the bearers were just going off to the dressing station
+with it. He was breathing heavily, round his head was a white bandage,
+and his hands stretched out stiffly by his sides. He was borne into
+the trench and carried round the first traverse. I never saw him
+again; he died two days later without regaining consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day two more men went: one got hit by a concussion
+shell that ripped his stomach open, another, who was on sentry-go got
+messed up in a bomb explosion that blew half of his side away. The
+charm of the courtyard, with the flower-beds and floral designs, died
+away; we were now pleased to keep indoors and allow the chairs outside
+to stand idle. All day long the enemy shelled us, most of the shells
+dropped outside and played havoc with <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page160" name="page160">(p. 160)</a></span> the church; but the
+figure on the crucifix still remained, a symbol of something great and
+tragical, overlooking the area of destruction and death. Now and again
+a shell dropped on the flower-beds and scattered splinters and showers
+of earth against buildings and dug-outs. In the evening an orderly
+came to the Keep.</p>
+
+<p>"I want two volunteers," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"For what?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," was the answer, "they've got to report immediately to
+Headquarters."</p>
+
+<p>Stoner and I volunteered. The Headquarters, a large dug-out roofed
+with many sandbags piled high over heavy wooden beams, was situated on
+the fringe of the communication trench five hundred yards away from
+the Keep. We took up our post in an adjacent dug-out and waited for
+orders. Over our roof the German shells whizzed incessantly and tore
+up the brick path. Suddenly we heard a crash, an ear-splitting
+explosion from the fire line.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Stoner. "Will it be a mine blown up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it is," I ventured. "I wish they'd stop the shelling, suppose
+one of these shells hit our dug-out."</p>
+
+<p>"It <span class="pagenum"><a id="page161" name="page161">(p. 161)</a>
+</span> would be all U.P. with us," said Stoner, trying to roll a
+cigarette and failing hopelessly. "Confound it," he said, "I'm all a
+bunch of nerves, I didn't sleep last night and very little the night
+before.</p>"
+
+<p>His eyebrows were drawn tight together and wrinkles were forming
+between his eyes; the old sparkle was almost entirely gone from them.</p>
+
+<p>"Mervin," he said, "and the other two, the bloke with his side blown
+away. It's terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"Try and have a sleep," I said, "nobody seems to need us yet."</p>
+
+<p>He lay down on the empty sandbags which littered the floor, and
+presently he was asleep. I tried to read Montaigne, but could not, the
+words seemed to be running up and down over the page; the firing
+seemed to have doubled in intensity, and the shells swept low almost
+touching the roof of the dug-out.</p>
+
+<p>"Orderly!"</p>
+
+<p>I stumbled out into the open, and a sharp penetrating rain, and made
+my way to the Headquarters. The adjutant was inside at the telephone
+speaking to the firing line.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! that the Irish?" he said. "Anything to report? The mine has
+done no damage? <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page162" name="page162">(p. 162)</a>
+</span> No, fifteen yards back, lucky! Only three
+casualties so far."</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant turned to an orderly officer: "The mine exploded fifteen
+yards in front, three wounded. Are you the orderly?" he asked, turning
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Find out where the sergeant-major is and ask him if to-morrow's
+rations have come in yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the sergeant-major?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure where he stays," said the adjutant. "Enquire at the
+Keep."</p>
+
+<p>The trench was wet and slobbery, every hole was a pitfall to trap the
+unwary; boulders and sandbags which had fallen in waited to trip the
+careless foot. I met a party of soldiers, a corporal at their head.</p>
+
+<p>"This the way to the firing line?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You're coming from it!" I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's done it!" he muttered. "We've gone astray, there's some fun up
+there!"</p>
+
+<p>"A mine blown up?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas a blow up," was the answer. "It almost deafened us, someone
+must have copped it. What's the way back?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go <span class="pagenum"><a id="page163" name="page163">(p. 163)</a>
+</span> past Gunner Siding and Marie Redoubt, then touch left and
+you'll get through."</p>
+
+<p>"God! it's some rain," he said. "Ta, ta."</p>
+
+<p>"Ta, ta, old man."</p>
+
+<p>I turned into the trench leading to the Keep. The rain was pelting
+with a merciless vigour, and loose earth was falling from the sides to
+the floor of the trench. A star-light flared up and threw a brilliant
+light on the entrance of the Keep as I came up. The place bristled
+with brilliant steel, half a dozen men stood there with fixed
+bayonets, the water dripping from their caps on to their equipment.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt! who goes there!" Pryor yelled out, raising his bayonet to the
+"on guard" position.</p>
+
+<p>"A friend," I replied. "What's wrong here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's Pat," Pryor answered. "Did you not hear it?" he continued,
+"the Germans have broken through and there'll be fun. The whole Keep
+is manned ready."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the pantomime parapet manned?" I asked. I alluded to the flat roof
+of the stable in which our Section slept. It had been damaged by shell
+fire, and was holed in several places, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page164" name="page164">(p. 164)</a></span> a sandbag parapet
+with loop-holes opened out on the enemy's front.</p>
+
+<p>"Kore, Bill, Goliath, they're all up there," said Pryor, "and the
+place is getting shelled too, in the last five minutes twenty shells
+have missed the place, just missed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Where does the sergeant-major stick?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know, not here I think."</p>
+
+<p>The courtyard was tense with excitement. Half a dozen new soldiers
+were called to take up posts on the parapet, and they were rushing to
+the crazy stairs which led to the roof. On their way they overturned a
+brazier and showers of fine sparks rioted into the air. By the flare
+it was possible to see the rain falling slanting to the ground in fine
+lines that glistened in the flickering light. Shells were bursting
+overhead, flashing out into spiteful red and white stars of flame, and
+hurling their bullets to the ground beneath. Shell splinters flew over
+the courtyard humming like bees and seeming to fall everywhere. What a
+miracle that anybody could escape them!</p>
+
+<p>I met our platoon sergeant at the foot of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does the sergeant-major hold out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down <span class="pagenum"><a id="page165" name="page165">(p. 165)</a>
+</span> at Givenchy somewhere," he told me. "The Germans have
+broken through," he said. "It looks as if we're in for a rough night."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be interesting," I replied, "I haven't seen a German yet."</p>
+
+<p>Over the parapet a round head, black amidst a line of bayonets
+appeared, and a voice called down, "Sergeant!"</p>
+
+<p>"Right oh!" said the sergeant, and rushed upstairs. At that moment a
+shell struck a wall at the back somewhere, and pieces of brick whizzed
+into the courtyard and clattered down the stair. When the row subsided
+Kore was helped down, his face bleeding and an ugly gash showing above
+his left eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Much hurt, old man?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a blighty, I'm afraid," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>A "blighty" is a much desired wound; one that sends a soldier back to
+England. A man with a "blighty" is a much envied person. Kore was
+followed by another fellow struck in the leg, and drawing himself
+wearily along. He assured us that he wasn't hurt much, but now and
+again he groaned with pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Get into the dug-outs," the sergeant told them. "In the morning you
+can go to the village, to-night it's too dangerous."</p>
+
+<p>About <span class="pagenum"><a id="page166" name="page166">(p. 166)</a>
+</span> midnight I went out on the brick pathway, the way we
+had come up a few nights earlier. I should have taken Stoner with me,
+but he slept and I did not like to waken him. The enemy's shells were
+flying overhead, one following fast on another, all bursting in the
+brick path and the village. I could see the bright hard light of
+shrapnel shells exploding in the air, and the signal-red flash of
+concussion shells bursting ahead. Splinters flew back buzzing like
+angry bees about my ears. I would have given a lot to be back with
+Stoner in the dug-out; it was a good strong structure, shrapnel and
+bullet proof, only a concussion shell falling on top would work him
+any harm.</p>
+
+<p>The rain still fell and the moon&mdash;there was a bit of it
+somewhere&mdash;never showed itself through the close-packed clouds. For a
+while I struggled bravely to keep to the tight-rope path, but it was
+useless, I fell over first one side, then the other. Eventually I kept
+clear of it, and walked in the slush of the field. Half way along a
+newly dug trench, some three feet in depth, ran across my road; an
+attack was feared at dawn, and a first line of reserves were in
+occupation. I stumbled upon the men. They were sitting well down,
+their heads lower than the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page167" name="page167">(p. 167)</a>
+</span> parapet, and all seemed to be
+smoking if I could form judgment by the line of little glow-worm
+fires, the lighted cigarette ends that extended out on either hand.
+Somebody was humming a music-hall song, while two or three of his
+mates helped him with the chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt! who goes there?"</p>
+
+<p>The challenge was almost a whisper, and a bayonet slid out from the
+trench and paused irresolutely near my stomach.</p>
+
+<p>"A London Irish orderly going down to the village," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>A voice other than that which challenged me spoke: "Why are you alone,
+there should be two."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't aware of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Pass on," said the second voice, "and be careful, it's not altogether
+healthy about here."</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the proximity of the village I lost the brick path and
+could not find it again. For a full hour I wandered over the sodden
+fields under shell fire, discovering the village, a bulk of shadows
+thinning into a jagged line of chimneys against the black sky when the
+shells exploded, and losing it again when the darkness settled down
+around me. Eventually I stumbled across the road and breathed freely
+for a second.</p>
+
+<p>But <span class="pagenum"><a id="page168" name="page168">(p. 168)</a>
+</span> the enemy's fire would not allow me a very long breathing
+space, it seemed bent on battering the village to pieces. In front of
+me ran a broken-down wall, behind it were a number of houses and not a
+light showing. The road was deserted.</p>
+
+<p>A shell exploded in mid-air straight above, and bullets sang down and
+shot into the ground round me. Following it came the casing splinters
+humming like bees, then a second explosion, the whizzing bullets and
+the bees, another explosion....</p>
+
+<p>"Come along and get out of it," I whispered to myself, and looked
+along the road; a little distance off I fancied I saw a block of
+buildings.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!"</p>
+
+<p>I ran, "stampeded!" is a better word, and presently found myself
+opposite an open door. I flung myself in, tripped, and went prostrate
+to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Boom! I almost chuckled, thinking myself secure from the shells that
+burst overhead. It was only when the bees bounced on the floor that I
+looked up to discover that the house was roofless.</p>
+
+<p>I made certain that the next building had a roof before I entered. It
+also had a door, this I shoved <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page169" name="page169">(p. 169)</a>
+</span> open and found myself amongst
+a number of horses and warm penetrating odour of dung.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, 3008, you may smoke," I said, addressing myself, and drew out my
+cigarette case. My matches were quite dry; I lit one and was just
+putting it to my cigarette when one of the horses began prancing at
+the other end of the building. I just had a view of the animal coming
+towards me when the match went out and left me in the total darkness.
+I did not like the look of the horse, and I wished that it had been
+better bound when its master left it. It was coming nearer and now
+pawing the floor with its hoof. I edged closer to the door; if it were
+not for the shells I would go outside. Why was that horse allowed to
+remain loose in the stable? I tried to light another match, but it
+snapped in my fingers. The horse was very near me now; I could feel
+its presence, it made no noise, it seemed to be shod with velvet. The
+moment was tense, I shouted: "Whoa there, whoa!"</p>
+
+<p>It shot out its hind legs and a pair of hoofs clattered on the wall
+beside me.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoa, there! whoa there! confound you!" I growled, and was outside in
+a twinkling and into the arms of a transport sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"What <span class="pagenum"><a id="page170" name="page170">(p. 170)</a>
+</span> the devil&mdash;'oo are yer?" he blurted out.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think I was a shell?" I couldn't help asking. "I'm sorry," I
+continued, "I came in here out of that beastly shelling."</p>
+
+<p>"Very wise," said the sergeant, getting quickly into the stable.</p>
+
+<p>"One of your horses is loose," I said. "Do you know where the London
+Irish is put up here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down the road on the right," he told me, "you come to a large gate
+there on the left and you cross a garden. It's a big buildin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, sonny."</p>
+
+<p>I went in by the wrong gate; there were so many on the left, and found
+myself in a dark spinney where the rain was dripping heavily from the
+branches of the trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the
+road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and
+a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with
+graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've
+done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or
+wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page171" name="page171">(p. 171)</a></span> air and
+caused a tickling sensation in my throat that almost choked me. When I
+scrambled to my feet again and found myself uninjured, a strange
+dexterity had entered my legs; I was outside the gate in the space of
+a second.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later I found the sergeant-major, who rose from a blanket
+on the ground-floor of a pretentious villa with a shell splintered
+door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The rations had not arrived;
+they would probably be in by dawn. Had I seen the mine explode? I
+belonged to the company holding the Keep, did I not? The rumour about
+the Germans breaking through was a cock-and-bull story. Had I any
+cigarettes? Turkish! Not bad for a change. Good luck, sonny! Take care
+of yourself going back.</p>
+
+<p>I came in line with the rear trench on my way back.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" came a voice from the line of little cigarette lights.</p>
+
+<p>"A London Irish orderly&mdash;going home!" I answered, and a laugh rewarded
+my ironical humour.</p>
+
+<p>"Jolly luck to be able to return home," I said to myself when I got
+past. "3008, you weren't <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page172" name="page172">(p. 172)</a>
+</span> very brave to-night. By Jove, you
+did hop into that roofless house and scamper out of that spinney! In
+fact, you did not shine as a soldier at all. You've not been
+particularly afraid of shell fire before, but to-night! Was it because
+you were alone you felt so very frightened? You've found out you've
+been posing a little before. Alone you're really a coward."</p>
+
+<p>I felt a strange delight in saying these things; the firing had
+ceased; it was still raining heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember the bridge at Suicide Corner," I said, alluding to a recent
+incident when I had walked upright across a bridge, exposed to the
+enemy's rifle fire. My mates hurried across almost bent double whilst
+I sauntered slowly over in front of them. "You had somebody to look at
+you then; 'twas vanity that did it, but to-night! You were afraid,
+terribly funky. If there had been somebody to look on, you'd have been
+defiantly careless. It's rather nerve-racking to be shelled when
+you're out alone at midnight and nobody looking at you!"</p>
+
+<p>Dawn was breaking when I found myself at the Keep. The place in some
+manner fascinated me and I wanted to know what had happened there.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page173" name="page173">(p. 173)</a>
+</span> I found that a few shells were still coming that way and most
+of the party were in their dug-outs. I peered down the one which was
+under my old sleeping place; at present all stayed in their dug-outs
+when off duty. They were ordered to do so, but none of the party were
+sleeping now, the night had been too exciting.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oo's there?" Bill called up out of the darkness, and when I spoke he
+muttered:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's ole Pat! Where were yer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been out for a walk," I replied.</p>
+
+<p>"When that shellin' was goin' on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You're a cool beggar, you are!" said Bill. "I was warm here I tell
+yer!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have the Germans come this way?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Germans!" ejaculated Bill. "They come 'ere and me with ten rounds in
+the magazine and one in the breech! They knows better!"</p>
+
+<p>Stoner was awake when I returned to the dug-out by Headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>"Up already?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Up! I've been up almost since you went away," he answered. "My! the
+shells didn't half <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page174" name="page174">(p. 174)</a>
+</span> fly over here. And I thought you'd never
+get back."</p>
+
+<p>"That's due to lack of imagination," I told him. "What's for
+breakfast?"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page175" name="page175">(p. 175)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Night of Horror</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+'Tis only a dream in the trenches,<br>
+Told when the shadows creep,<br>
+Over the friendly sandbags<br>
+When men in the dug-outs sleep.<br>
+This is the tale of the trenches<br>
+Told when the shadows fall,<br>
+By little Hughie of Dooran,<br>
+Over from Donegal.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="p2">On the noon following the journey to the village I was sent back to
+the Keep; that night our company went into the firing trench again. We
+were all pleased to get there; any place was preferable to the block
+of buildings in which we had lost so many of our boys. On the night
+after our departure, two Engineers who were working at the Keep could
+not find sleeping place in the dug-outs, and they slept on the spot
+where I made my bed the first night I was there. In the early morning
+a shell struck the wall behind them and the poor fellows were blown to
+atoms.</p>
+
+<p>For three days we stayed in the trenches, narrow, suffocating and damp
+places, where parados <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page176" name="page176">(p. 176)</a>
+</span> and parapet almost touched and where
+it was well-nigh impossible for two men to pass. Food was not
+plentiful here, all the time we lived on bully beef and biscuits; our
+tea ran short and on the second day we had to drink water at our
+meals. From our banquette it was almost impossible to see the enemy's
+position; the growing grass well nigh hid their lines; occasionally by
+standing tiptoed on the banquette we could catch a glimpse of white
+sandbags looking for all the world like linen spread out to dry on the
+grass. But the Germans did not forget that we were near, pipsqueaks,
+rifle grenades, bombs and bullets came our way with aggravating
+persistence. It was believed that the Prussians, spiteful beggars that
+they are, occupied the position opposite. In these trenches the
+dug-outs were few and far between; we slept very little.</p>
+
+<p>On the second night I was standing sentry on the banquette. My watch
+extended from twelve to one, the hour when the air is raw and the
+smell of the battle line is penetrating. The night was pitch black; in
+ponds and stagnant streams in the vicinity frogs were chuckling. Their
+hoarse clucking could be heard all round; when the star-shells flew up
+I could catch vague glimpses <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page177" name="page177">(p. 177)</a>
+</span> of the enemy's sandbags and the
+line of tall shrapnel-swept trees which ran in front of his trenches.
+The sleep was heavy in my eyes; time and again I dozed off for a
+second only to wake up as a shell burst in front or swept by my head.
+It seemed impossible to remain awake, often I jumped down to the floor
+of the trench, raced along for a few yards, then back to the banquette
+and up to the post beside my bayonet.</p>
+
+<p>One moment of quiet and I dropped into a light sleep. I punched my
+hands against the sandbags until they bled; the whizz of the shells
+passed like ghosts above me; slumber sought me and strove to hold me
+captive. I had dreams; a village standing on a hill behind the
+opposite trench became peopled; it was summer and the work of haying
+and harvesting went on. The men went out to the meadows with
+long-handled scythes and mowed the grass down in great swathes. I
+walked along a lane leading to the field and stopped at the stile and
+looked in. A tall youth who seemed strangely familiar was mowing. The
+sweat streamed down his face and bare chest. His shirt was folded
+neatly back and his sleeves were thrust up almost to the shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page178" name="page178">(p. 178)</a>
+</span> work did not come easy to him; he always followed the
+first sweep of the scythe with a second which cropped the grass very
+close to the ground. For an expert mower the second stroke is
+unnecessary; the youngster had not learned to put a keen edge on the
+blade. I wanted to explain to him the best way to use the sharping
+stone, but I felt powerless to move: I could only remain at the stile
+looking on. Sometimes he raised his head and looked in my direction,
+but took no notice of me. Who was he? Where had I seen him before? I
+called out to him but he took no notice. I tried to change my
+position, succeeded and crossed the stile. When I came close to him,
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"You were long in coming," he said, and I saw it was my brother, a
+youngster of eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>"I went to the well for a jug of water," I said, "But it's dry now and
+the three trout are dead at the bottom."</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas because we didn't put a cross of green rushes over it last
+Candlemas Eve," he remarked. "You should have made one then, but you
+didn't. Can you put an edge on the scythe?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to be able before&mdash;before the&mdash;" I stopped feeling that I had
+forgotten some event.</p>
+
+<p>"I <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page179" name="page179">(p. 179)</a>
+</span> don't know why, but I feel strange," I said, "When did you
+come to this village?"</p>
+
+<p>"Village?"</p>
+
+<p>"That one up there." I looked in the direction where the village stood
+a moment before, but every red-brick house with its roof of
+terra-cotta tiles had vanished. I was gazing along my own glen in
+Donegal with its quiet fields, its sunny braes, steep hills and white
+lime-washed cottages, snug under their neat layers of straw.</p>
+
+<p>The white road ran, almost parallel with the sparkling river, through
+a wealth of emerald green bottom lands. How came I to be here? I
+turned to my brother to ask him something, but I could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>A funeral came along the road; four men carried a black coffin
+shoulder high; they seemed to be in great difficulties with their
+burden. They stumbled and almost fell at every step. A man carrying
+his coat and hat in one hand walked in front, and he seemed to be
+exhorting those who followed to quicken their pace. I sympathised with
+the man in front. Why did the men under the coffin walk so slowly? It
+was a ridiculous way to carry a coffin, on the shoulders. Why did they
+not use a <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page180" name="page180">(p. 180)</a>
+</span> stretcher? It would be the proper thing to do. I
+turned to my brother.</p>
+
+<p>"They should have stretchers, I told him."</p>
+
+<p>"Stretchers?"</p>
+
+<p>"And stretcher-bearers."</p>
+
+<p>"Stretcher-bearers at the double!" he snapped and vanished. I flashed
+back into reality again; the sentinel on the left was leaning towards
+me; I could see his face, white under the Balaclava helmet. There was
+impatience in his voice when he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear the message?" he called.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" I answered and leant towards the man on my right. I could see
+his dark, round head, dimly outlined above the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>"Stretcher bearers at the double!" I called. "Pass it along."</p>
+
+<p>From mouth to mouth it went along the living wire; that ominous call
+which tells of broken life and the tragedy of war. Nothing is so
+poignant in the watches of the night as the call for
+stretcher-bearers; there is a thrill in the message swept from
+sentinel to sentinel along the line of sandbags, telling as it does,
+of some poor soul stricken down writhing in agony on the floor of the
+trenches.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I remained awake; then phantoms <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page181" name="page181">(p. 181)</a></span> rioted before
+my eyes; the trees out by the German lines became ghouls. They held
+their heads together in consultation and I knew they were plotting
+some evil towards me. What were they going to do? They moved, long,
+gaunt, crooked figures dressed in black, and approached me. I felt
+frightened but my fright was mixed with curiosity. Would they speak?
+What would they say? I knew I had wronged them in some way or another;
+when and how I did not remember. They came near. I could see they wore
+black masks over their faces and their figures grew in size almost
+reaching the stars. And as they grew, their width diminished; they
+became mere strands reaching form earth to heaven. I rubbed my eyes,
+to find myself gazing at the long, fine grasses that grew up from the
+reverse slope of the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>I leant back from the banquette across the narrow trench and rested my
+head on the parados. I could just rest for a moment, one moment then
+get up again. The ghouls took shape far out in front now, and careered
+along the top of the German trench, great gaunt shadows that raced as
+if pursued by a violent wind. Why did they run so quickly? Were they
+afraid of <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page182" name="page182">(p. 182)</a>
+</span> something? They ran in such a ridiculous way that
+I could not help laughing. They were making way, that was it. They had
+to make way. Why?</p>
+
+<p>"Make way!"</p>
+
+<p>Two stretcher-bearers stood on my right; in front of them a sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"Make way, you're asleep," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," I replied, coming to an erect position.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you shouldn't remain like that, if you don't want to get your
+head blown off."</p>
+
+<p>My next sentry hour began at nine in the morning; I was standing on
+the banquette when I heard Bill speaking. He was just returning with a
+jar of water drawn from a pump at the rear, and he stopped for a
+moment in front of Spud Higgles, one of No. 4's boys.</p>
+
+<p>"Mornin'! How's yer hoppin' it?" said Spud.</p>
+
+<p>"Top over toe!" answered Bill. "Ow's you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the pink. Any news?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yer 'aven't 'eard it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Brigadier's copped it this mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Oo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page183" name="page183">(p. 183)</a></span> Brigadier."</p>
+
+<p>"Git!"</p>
+
+<p>"'S truth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Strike me pink!" said Spud. "'Ow?"</p>
+
+<p>"A stray bullet."</p>
+
+<p>"Stone me ginger! but one would say he'd a safe job."</p>
+
+<p>"The bullet 'ad 'is number!"</p>
+
+<p>"So, he's gone west!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's gone west!"</p>
+
+<p>Bill's information was quite true. Our Brigadier while making a tour
+of inspection of the trenches, turned to the orderly officer and said:
+"I believe I am hit, here." He put his hand on his left knee.</p>
+
+<p>His trousers were cut away but no wound was visible. An examination
+was made on his body and a little clot of blood was found over the
+groin on the right. A bullet had entered there and remained in the
+body. Twenty minutes later the Brigadier was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Rations were short for breakfast, dinner did not arrive, we had no tea
+but all the men were quite cheerful for it was rumoured that we were
+going back to our billets at four o'clock in the afternoon. About that
+hour we were relieved by another battalion, and we marched back
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page184" name="page184">(p. 184)</a></span>
+through the communication trench, past Marie Redoubt, Gunner
+Siding, the Keep and into a trench that circled along the top of the
+Brick Path. This was not the way out; why had we come here? had the
+officer in front taken the wrong turning? Our billet there was such a
+musty old barn with straw littered on the floor and such a quaint old
+farmhouse where they sold newly laid eggs, fresh butter, fried
+potatoes, and delightful salad! We loved the place, the sleepy barges
+that glided along the canal where we loved to bathe, the children at
+play; the orange girls who sold fruit from large wicker baskets and
+begged our tunic buttons and hat-badges for souvenirs. We wanted so
+much to go back that evening! Why had they kept us waiting?</p>
+
+<p>"'Eard that?" Bill said to me. "Two London battalions are goin' to
+charge to-night. They're passing up the trench and we're in 'ere to
+let them get by."</p>
+
+<p>"About turn!"</p>
+
+<p>We stumbled back again into the communication trench and turned to the
+left, to go out we should have gone to the right. What was happening?
+Were we going back again? No dinner, no tea, no rations and sleepless
+nights.... <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page185" name="page185">(p. 185)</a>
+</span> The barn at our billet with the cobwebs on
+the rafters ... the salad and soup.... We weren't going out that
+night.</p>
+
+<p>We halted in a deep narrow trench between Gunner Siding and Marie
+Redoubt, two hundred yards back from the firing trench. Our officer
+read out orders.</p>
+
+<p>"The &mdash;&mdash; Brigade is going to make an attack on the enemy's position
+at 6.30 this evening. Our battalion is to take part in the attack by
+supporting with rifle fire."</p>
+
+<p>Two of our companies were in the firing line; one was in support and
+we were reserves; we had to remain in the trench packed up like
+herrings, and await further instructions. The enemy knew the
+communication trench; they had got the range months before and at one
+time the trench was occupied by them.</p>
+
+<p>We got into the trench at the time when the attack took place; our
+artillery was now silent and rapid rifle fire went on in front; a life
+and death struggle was in progress there. In our trench it was very
+quiet, we were packed tight as the queue at the gallery door of a
+cheap music-hall on a Saturday night.</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, a balmy this!" said Bill making frantic efforts to squash my
+toes in his desire to <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page186" name="page186">(p. 186)</a>
+</span> find a fair resting place for his
+feet. "I'm 'ungry. Call this the best fed army in the world. Dog and
+maggot all the bloomin' time. I need all the hemery paper given to
+clean my bayonet, to sharpen my teeth to eat the stuff. How are we
+goin' to sleep this night, Pat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Standing."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a blurry 'oss. But Stoner's all right," said Bill. Stoner was
+all right; somebody had dug a little burrow at the base of the
+traverse and he was lying there already asleep.</p>
+
+<p>We stood in the trench till eight o'clock almost suffocated. It was
+impossible for the company to spread out, on the right we were
+touching the supports, on the left was a communication trench leading
+to the point of attack, and this was occupied by part of another
+battalion. We were hemmed in on all sides, a compressed company in
+full marching order with many extra rounds of ammunition and empty
+stomachs.</p>
+
+<p>I was telling a story to the boys, one that Pryor and Goliath gave
+credence to, but which the others refused to believe. It was a tale of
+two trench-mortars, squat little things that loiter about the firing
+line and look for all the world like toads ready to hop off. I came on
+two <span class="pagenum"><a id="page187" name="page187">(p. 187)</a>
+</span> of these the night before, crept on them unawares and
+found them speaking to one another.</p>
+
+<p>"Nark it, Pat," muttered Bill lighting a cigarette. "Them talking. Git
+out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you don't understand," I said. "The trench-mortar has a
+soul, a mind and great discrimination," I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"What's a bomb?" asked Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tis the soul finding expression. Last night they were speaking, as I
+have said. They had a wonderful plan in hand. They decided to steal
+away and drink a bottle of wine in Givenchy."</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey!"</p>
+
+<p>"They did not know the way out and at that moment up comes Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran; in his sea-green bonnet, his salmon-pink coat,
+and buff tint breeches and silver shoon and mounted one of the
+howitzers and off they went as fast as the wind to the wineshop at
+Givenchy."</p>
+
+<p>"Oo's 'Ughie what dy'e call 'im of that place?"</p>
+
+<p>"He used to be a goat-herd in Donegal once upon a time when cows were
+kine and eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of giants."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot!"</p>
+
+<p>"I <span class="pagenum"><a id="page188" name="page188">(p. 188)</a>
+</span> often met him there, going out to the pastures, with a
+herd of goats before him and a herd of goats behind him and a salmon
+tied to the laces of his brogues for supper."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we 'ad somethin' for supper," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue. He has lived for many thousands of years, has Wee
+Hughie Gallagher of Dooran," I said, "but he hasn't reached the first
+year of his old age yet. Long ago when there were kings galore in
+Ireland, he went out to push his fortune about the season of
+Michaelmas and the harvest moon. He came to Tirnan-Oge, the land of
+Perpetual Youth which is flowing with milk and honey."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish this trench was!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bill!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you're balmy, chum," said the Cockney, "'owitzers talkin' and
+then this feller. Ye're pullin' my leg."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you're not intellectual enough to understand the
+psychology of a trench-howitzer or the temperament of Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran, Bill."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ad 'e a finance?"<a id="notetag002" name="notetag002"></a>
+<a href="#note002">[2]</a></p>
+
+
+<p>"A what?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot <span class="pagenum"><a id="page189" name="page189">(p. 189)</a>
+</span> Goliath 'as, a girl at home."</p>
+
+<p>"That's it, is it? Why do you think of such a thing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was trying to write a letter to-day to St. Albans," said Bill, and
+his voice became low and confidential. "But you're no mate," he added.
+"You were goin' to make some poetry and I haven't got it yet."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of poetry do you want me to make?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer know it yerself, somethin' nice like!"</p>
+
+<p>"About the stars&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Star-shells if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I begin now? We can write it out later."</p>
+
+<p>"Righto!"</p>
+
+<p>I plunged into impromptu verse.</p>
+
+<p class="smsize">
+I lie as still as a sandbag in my dug-out shrapnel proof,<br>
+My candle shines in the corner, and the shadows dance on the roof,<br>
+Far from the blood-stained trenches, and far from the scenes of war,<br>
+My thoughts go back to a maiden, my own little guiding star.</p>
+
+
+<p>"That's 'ot stuff," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>I was on the point of starting a fresh verse when the low rumble of an
+approaching shell was heard; a messenger of death from a great German
+gun <span class="pagenum"><a id="page190" name="page190">(p. 190)</a>
+</span> out at La Bassée. This gun was no stranger to us; he
+often played havoc with the Keep; it was he who blew in the wall a few
+nights before and killed the two Engineers. The missile he flung moved
+slowly and could not keep pace with its own sound. Five seconds before
+it arrived we could hear it coming, a slow, certain horror, sure of
+its mission and steady to its purpose. The big gun at La Bassée was
+shelling the communication trench, endeavouring to stop reinforcements
+from getting up to the firing lines and the red field between.</p>
+
+<p>The shell burst about fifty yards away and threw a shower of dirt over
+us. There was a precipitate flop, a falling backwards and forwards and
+all became messed up in an intricate jumble of flesh, equipment,
+clothing and rifles in the bottom of the trench. A swarm of "bees"
+buzzed overhead, a few dropped into the trench and Pryor who gripped
+one with his hand swore under his breath. The splinter was almost
+red-hot.</p>
+
+<p>The trench was voluble.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm chokin'; get off me tummy."</p>
+
+<p>"Your boot's on my face."</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody struck?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody." <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page191" name="page191">(p. 191)</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Gawd! I hope they don't send many packets like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Spread out a little to the left," came the order from an officer.
+"When you hear a shell coming lie flat."</p>
+
+<p>We got to our feet, all except Stoner, who was still asleep in his
+lair, and changed our positions, our ears alert for the arrival of the
+next shell. The last bee had scarcely ceased to buzz when we heard the
+second projectile coming.</p>
+
+<p>"Another couple of steps. Hurry up. Down." Again we threw ourselves in
+a heap; the shell burst and again we were covered with dust and muck.</p>
+
+<p>"Move on a bit. Quicker! The next will be here in a minute," was the
+cry and we stumbled along the narrow alley hurriedly as if our lives
+depended on the very quickness. When we came to a halt there was only
+a space of two feet between each man. The trench was just wide enough
+for the body of one, and all set about to sort themselves in the best
+possible manner. A dozen shells now came our way in rapid succession.
+Some of the men went down on their knees and pressed their faces close
+to the ground like Moslems at prayer. They <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page192" name="page192">(p. 192)</a></span> looked for all
+the world like Moslems, as the pictures show them, prostrate in
+prayer. The posture reminded me of stories told of ostriches, birds I
+have never seen, who bury their heads in the sand and consider
+themselves free from danger when the world is hidden from their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Safety in that style did not appeal to me; I sat on the bottom of the
+trench, head erect. If a splinter struck me it would wound me in the
+shoulders or the arms or knees. I bent low so that I might protect my
+stomach; I had seen men struck in that part of the body, the wounds
+were ghastly and led to torturing deaths. When a shell came near, I
+put the balls of my hands over my eyes, spread my palms outwards and
+covered my ears with the fingers. This was some precaution against
+blindness; and deadened the sound of explosion. Bill for a moment was
+unmoved, he stood upright in a niche in the wall and made jokes.</p>
+
+<p>"If I kick the bucket," he said, "don't put a cross with ''E died for
+'is King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do,
+and on it scrawled in chalk, ''E died doin' fatigues on an empty
+stomach.'"</p>
+
+<p>"A cig.," he called, "'oo as a cig., a fag, a dottle.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page193" name="page193">(p. 193)</a>
+</span> If yer
+can't give me a fag, light one and let me look at it burnin.' Give
+Tommy a fag an' 'e doesn't care wot 'appens. That was in the papers.
+Blimey! it puts me in mind of a dummy teat. Give it to the pore man's
+pianner...."</p>
+
+<p>"The what!"</p>
+
+<p>"The squalling kid, and tell the brat to be quiet, just like they tell
+Tommy to 'old 'is tongue when they give 'im a cig. Oh, blimey!"</p>
+
+<p>A shell burst and a dozen splinters whizzed past Bill's ears. He was
+down immediately another prostrate Moslem on the floor of the trench.
+In front of me Pryor sat, his head bent low, moving only when a shell
+came near, to raise his hands and cover his eyes. The high explosive
+shells boomed slowly in from every quarter now, and burst all round
+us. Would they fall into the trench? If they did! The La Bassée
+monster, the irresistible giant, so confident of its strength was only
+one amongst the many. We sank down, each in his own way, closer to the
+floor of the trench. We were preparing to be wounded in the easiest
+possible way. True we might get killed; lucky if we escaped! Would any
+of us see the dawn?...</p>
+
+<p>One is never aware of the shrapnel shell until <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page194" name="page194">(p. 194)</a></span> it bursts.
+They had been passing over our heads for a long time, making a sound
+like the wind in telegraph wires, before one burst above us. There was
+a flash and I felt the heat of the explosion on my face. For a moment
+I was dazed, then I vaguely wondered where I had been wounded. My
+nerves were on edge and a coldness swept along my spine.... No, I
+wasn't struck....</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Pryor?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Something has gone down my back, perhaps it's clay," he answered.
+"You're safe?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so," I answered. "Bill."</p>
+
+<p>"I've copped it," answered the Cockney. "Here in my back, it's burnin'
+'orrid."</p>
+
+<p>"A minute, matey," I said, tumbling into a kneeling position and
+bending over him. "Let me undo your equipment."</p>
+
+<p>I pulled his pack-straps clear, loosened his shirt front and tunic,
+pulled the clothes down his back. Under the left shoulder I found a
+hot piece of shrapnel casing which had just pierced through his dress
+and rested on the skin. A black mark showed where it had burned in but
+little harm was done to Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"You're all right, matey," I said. "Put on your robes again."</p>
+
+<p>"Stretcher-bearers <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page195" name="page195">(p. 195)</a>
+</span> at the double," came the cry up the trench
+and I turned to Pryor. He was attending to one of our mates, a Section
+3 boy who caught a bit in his arm just over the wrist. He was in pain,
+but the prospect of getting out of the trench buoyed him up into great
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be England with this," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Any others struck?" I asked Pryor who was busy with a first field
+dressing on the wounded arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know," he answered. "There are others, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Every man down this way is struck," came a voice; "one is out."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Spud Higgles," came the answer; then&mdash;"No, he's not killed, just got
+a nasty one across the head."</p>
+
+<p>They crawled across us on the way to the dressing station, seven of
+them. None were seriously hurt, except perhaps Spud Higgles, who was a
+little groggy and vowed he'd never get well again until he had a
+decent drink of English beer, drawn from the tap.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page196" name="page196">(p. 196)</a>
+</span> shelling never slackened; and all the missiles dropped
+perilously near; a circle of five hundred yards with the trench
+winding across it, enclosed the dumping ground of the German guns. At
+times the trench was filled with the acid stench of explosives mixed
+with fine lime flung from the fallen masonry with which the place was
+littered. This caused every man to cough, almost choking as the throat
+tried to rid itself of the foreign substance. One or two fainted and
+recovered only after douches of cold water on the face and chest.</p>
+
+<p>The suspense wore us down; we breathed the suffocating fumes of one
+explosion and waited, our senses tensely strung for the coming of the
+next shell. The sang-froid which carried us through many a tight
+corner with credit utterly deserted us, we were washed-out things;
+with noses to the cold earth, like rats in a trap we waited for the
+next moment which might land us into eternity. The excitement of a
+bayonet charge, the mad tussle with death on the blood-stained field,
+which for some reason is called the field of honour was denied us; we
+had to wait and lie in the trench, which looked so like a grave, and
+sink slowly into the depths of depression.</p>
+
+<p>Everything <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page197" name="page197">(p. 197)</a>
+</span> seemed so monstrously futile, so unfinished, so
+useless. Would the dawn see us alive or dead? What did it matter? All
+that we desired was that this were past, that something, no matter
+what, came and relieved us of our position. All my fine safeguards
+against terrible wounds were neglected. What did it matter where a
+shell hit me now, a weak useless thing at the bottom of a trench? Let
+it come, blow me to atoms, tear me to pieces, what did I care? I felt
+like one in a horrible nightmare; unable to help myself. I lay passive
+and waited.</p>
+
+<p>I believe I dozed off at intervals. Visions came before my eyes, the
+sandbags on the parapet assumed fantastic shapes, became alive and
+jeered down at me. I saw Wee Hughie Gallagher of Dooran, the lively
+youth who is so real to all the children of Donegal, look down at me
+from the top of the trench. He carried a long, glistening bayonet in
+his hand and laughed at me. I thought him a fool for ever coming near
+the field of war. War! Ah, it amused him! He laughed at me. I was
+afraid; he was not; he was afraid of nothing. What would Bill think of
+him? I turned to the Cockney; but he knelt there, head to the earth,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page198" name="page198">(p. 198)</a>
+</span> a motionless Moslem. Was he asleep? Probably he was; any way
+it did not matter.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn came slowly, a gradual awaking from darkness into a cheerless
+day, cloudy grey and pregnant with rain that did not fall. Now and
+again we could hear bombs bursting out in front and still the
+artillery thundered at our communication trench.</p>
+
+<p>Bill sat upright rubbing his chest.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong! Everythink," he answered. "There are platoons of
+intruders on my shirt, sappin' and diggin' trenches and Lord knows
+wot!"</p>
+
+<p>"Verminous, Bill?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cooty as 'ell," he said. "But wait till I go back to England. I'll go
+inter a beershop and get a pint, a gallon, a barrel&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A hogshead," I prompted.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got one, my own napper's an 'og's 'ead," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"When I get the beer I'll capture a coot, a big bull coot, an' make
+'im drunk," he continued. "When 'e's in a fightin' mood I'll put him
+inside my shirt an' cut 'im amok. There'll be ructions; 'e'll charge
+the others with fixed bayonets an' rout 'em. Oh! blimey! will they
+ever <span class="pagenum"><a id="page199" name="page199">(p. 199)</a>
+</span> stop this damned caper? Nark it. Fritz, nark yer
+doin's, ye fool."</p>
+
+<p>Bill cowered down as the shell burst, then sat upright again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm gettin' more afraid of these things every hour," he said, "what is
+the war about?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sick of it," Bill muttered.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you join?"</p>
+
+<p>"To save myself the trouble of telling people why I didn't," he
+answered with a laugh. "Flat on yer tummy, Rifleman Teake, there's
+another shell."</p>
+
+<p>About noon the shelling ceased; we breathed freely again and
+discovered we were very hungry. No food had passed our lips since
+breakfast the day before. Stoner was afoot, alert and active, he had
+slept for eight hours in his cubby-hole, and the youngster was now
+covered with clay and very dirty.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go back to the cook's waggon at Givenchy and rake up some grub,"
+he said, and off he went.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page200" name="page200">(p. 200)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Field of Battle</span></h3>
+
+<div class="left30 smsize">
+<p>The men who stand to their rifles<br>
+See all the dead on the plain<br>
+Rise at the hour of midnight<br>
+To fight their battles again.</p>
+
+<p>Each to his place in the combat,<br>
+All to the parts they played,<br>
+With bayonet brisk to its purpose,<br>
+With rifle and hand-grenade.</p>
+
+<p>Shadow races with shadow,<br>
+Steel comes quick on steel,<br>
+Swords that are deadly silent,<br>
+And shadows that do not feel.</p>
+
+<p>And shades recoil and recover,<br>
+And fade away as they fall<br>
+In the space between the trenches,<br>
+And the watchers see it all.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">I lay down in the trench and was just dropping off to sleep when a
+message came along the trench.</p>
+
+<p>"Any volunteers to help to carry out wounded?" was the call.</p>
+
+<p>Four of us volunteered and a guide conducted us along to the firing
+line. He was a soldier of the 23rd London, the regiment which had made
+the charge the night before; he limped a <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page201" name="page201">(p. 201)</a></span> little, a dejected
+look was in his face and his whole appearance betokened great
+weariness.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you get on last night?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"My God! my God!" he muttered, and seemed to be gasping for breath. "I
+suppose there are some of us left yet, but they'll be very few."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you capture the trench?"</p>
+
+<p>"They say we did," he answered, and it seemed as if he were speaking
+of an incident in which he had taken no part. "But what does it
+matter? There's few of us left."</p>
+
+<p>We entered the main communication trench, one just like the others,
+narrow and curving round buttresses at every two or three yards. The
+floor was covered with blood, not an inch of it was free from the dark
+reddish tint.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, my God," said the 23rd man, and he seemed to be repeating the
+phrase without knowing what he said. "The wounded have been going down
+all night, all morning and they're only beginning to come."</p>
+
+<p>A youth of nineteen or twenty sat in a niche in the trench, naked to
+the waist save where a bandaged-arm rested in a long arm-sling.</p>
+
+<p>"How goes it, matey?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page202" name="page202">(p. 202)</a>
+</span> at all bad, chummie," he replied bravely; then as a
+spasm of pain shot through him he muttered under his breath, "Oh! oh!"</p>
+
+<p>A little distance along we met another; he was ambling painfully down
+the trench, supporting himself by resting his arms on the shoulders of
+a comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so quick, matey," I heard him say, "Go quiet like and mind the
+stones. When you hit one of them it's a bit thick you know. I'm sorry
+to trouble you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right, old man," said the soldier in front. "I'll try and be
+as easy as I can."</p>
+
+<p>We stood against the wall of the trench to let them go by. Opposite us
+they came to a dead stop. The wounded man was stripped to the waist,
+and a bandage, white at one time but now red with blood, was tied
+round his shoulder. His face was white and drawn except over his cheek
+bones. There the flesh, tightly drawn, glowed crimson as poppies.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any water to spare, chummy?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been told not to give water to wounded men," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I know that," he answered. "But just a drop to rinse out my mouth!
+I've lain out between <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page203" name="page203">(p. 203)</a>
+</span> the lines all night. Just to rinse my
+mouth, chummy!"</p>
+
+<p>I drew the cork from my water bottle and held it to his lips, he took
+a mouthful, paused irresolutely for a moment and a greedy light shone
+in his eyes. Then he spat the water on the floor of the trench.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, chummy, thank you," he said, and the sorrowful journey was
+resumed.</p>
+
+<p>Where the road from the village is cut through by the trench we came
+on a stretcher lying on the floor. On it lay a man, or rather, part of
+a man, for both his arms had been blown off near the shoulders. A
+waterproof ground sheet, covered with mud lay across him, the two
+stumps stuck out towards the stretcher-poles. One was swathed in
+bandages, the other had come bare, and a white bone protruded over a
+red rag which I took to be a first field dressing. Two men who had
+been busy helping the wounded all morning and the night before carried
+the stretcher to here, through the tortuous cutting. One had now
+dropped out, utterly exhausted. He lay in the trench, covered with
+blood from head to foot and gasping. His mate smoked a cigarette
+leaning against the revêtement.</p>
+
+<p>"Reliefs?" <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page204" name="page204">(p. 204)</a>
+</span> he asked, and we nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>"These are the devil's own trenches," he said. "The stretcher must be
+carried at arms length over the head all the way, even an empty
+stretcher cannot be carried through here."</p>
+
+<p>"Can we go out on the road?" asked one of my mates; an Irishman
+belonging to another section.</p>
+
+<p>"It'll be a damned sorry road for you if you go out. They're always
+shelling it."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?" I asked pointing to the figure on the stretcher. He was
+unconscious; morphia, that gift of Heaven, had temporarily relieved
+him of his pain.</p>
+
+<p>"He's an N.C.O., we found him lying out between the trenches," said
+the stretcher-bearer. "He never lost consciousness. When we tried to
+raise him, he got up to his feet and ran away, yelling. The pain must
+have been awful."</p>
+
+<p>"Has the trench been captured?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it has," said the stretcher-bearer, an ironical smile
+hovering around his eyes. "It has been a grand victory. Trench taken
+by Territorials, you'll see in the papers. And there'll be pictures
+too, of the gallant charge. Heavens! <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page205" name="page205">(p. 205)</a>
+</span> they should see between
+the trenches where the men are blown to little pieces."</p>
+
+<p>The cigarette which he held between his blood-stained fingers dropped
+to the ground; he did not seem to notice it fall.</p>
+
+<p>We carried the wounded man out to the road and took our way down
+towards Givenchy. The route was very quiet; now and then a rifle
+bullet flew by; but apart from that there was absolute peace. We
+turned in on the Brick Pathway and had got half way down when a shell
+burst fifty yards behind us. There was a moment's pause, a shower of
+splinters flew round and above us, the stretcher sank towards the
+ground and almost touched. Then as if all of us had become suddenly
+ashamed of some intended action, we straightened our backs and walked
+on. We placed the stretcher on a table in the dressing-room and turned
+back. Two days later the armless man died in hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The wounded were still coming out; we met another party comprised of
+our own men. The wounded soldier who lay on the stretcher had both
+legs broken and held in place with a rifle splint; he also had a
+bayonet tourniquet round the thick of his arm. The poor fellow was
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page206" name="page206">(p. 206)</a>
+</span> in great agony. The broken bones were touching one another at
+every move. Now and again he spoke and his question was always the
+same: "Are we near the dressing station yet?"</p>
+
+<p>That night I slept in the trench, slept heavily. I put my equipment
+under me, that kept the damp away from my bones. In the morning Stoner
+told an amusing story. During the night he wanted to see Bill, but did
+not know where the Cockney slept.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Bill?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," I replied, speaking though asleep.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill, yes," said Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," I muttered turning on my side, seeking a more comfortable
+position.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where Bill is?" shouted Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill!" I repeated again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Bill!" he said, "Bill. B-i-double l, Bill. Where is here?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's here," I said getting to my feet and holding out my water
+bottle. "In here." And I pulled out the cork.</p>
+
+<p>I was twitted about this all day. I remembered nothing of the incident
+of the water bottle although <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page207" name="page207">(p. 207)</a>
+</span> in some vague way I recollected
+Stoner asking me about Bill.</p>
+
+<p>On the following day I had a chance of visiting the scene of the
+conflict. All the wounded were now carried away, only the dead
+remained, as yet unburied.</p>
+
+<p>The men were busy in the trench which lay on the summit of a slope;
+the ground dipped in the front and rear. The field I came across was
+practically "dead ground" as far as rifle fire was concerned. Only one
+place, the wire front of the original German trench, was dangerous.
+This was "taped out" as our boys say, by some hidden sniper. Already
+the parados was lined with newly-made firing positions, that gave the
+sentry view of the German trench some forty or fifty yards in front.
+All there was very quiet now but our men were making every preparation
+for a counter attack. The Engineers had already placed some barbed
+wire down; they had been hard at it the night before; I could see the
+hastily driven piles, the loosely flung intricate lines of wire flung
+down anyhow. The whole work was part of what is known as
+"consolidation of our position."</p>
+
+<p>Many long hours of labour had yet to be expended <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page208" name="page208">(p. 208)</a></span> on the
+trench before a soldier could sleep at ease in it. Now that the
+fighting had ceased for a moment the men had to bend their backs to
+interminable fatigues. The war, as far as I have seen it is waged for
+the most part with big guns and picks and shovels. The history of the
+war is a history of sandbags and shells.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page209" name="page209">(p. 209)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Reaction</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+We are marching back from the battle,<br>
+Where we've all left mates behind,<br>
+And our officers are gloomy,<br>
+And the N.C.O.'s are kind,<br>
+When a Jew's harp breaks the silence,<br>
+Purring out an old refrain;<br>
+And we thunder through the village<br>
+Roaring "Here we are again."</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="p2">Four days later we were relieved by the Canadians. They came in about
+nine o'clock in the evening when we stood to-arms in the trenches in
+full marching order under a sky where colour wrestled with colour in a
+blazing flare of star-shells. We went out gladly and left behind the
+dug-out in which we cooked our food but never slept, the old crazy
+sandbag construction, weather-worn and shrapnel-scarred, that stooped
+forward like a crone on crutches on the wooden posts that supported
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"How many casualties have we had?" I asked Stoner as we passed out of
+the village and halted for a moment on the verge of a wood,
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page210" name="page210">(p. 210)</a></span>
+waiting until the men formed up at rear.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he answered gloomily. "See the crosses there," he said
+pointing to the soldiers' cemetery near the trees. "Seven of the boys
+have their graves in that spot; then the wounded and those who went
+dotty. Did you see X. of &mdash;&mdash; Company coming out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him last night when I went out to the Quartermaster's stores
+for rations," Stoner told me. "They were carrying him out on their
+shoulders, and he sat there very quiet like looking at the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Over there in the corner all by themselves they are," Stoner went on,
+alluding to the graves towards which my eyes were directed. "You can
+see the crosses, white wood&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The same as other crosses?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same," said my mate. "Printed in black. Number something or
+another, Rifleman So and So, London Irish Rifles, killed in action on
+a certain date. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say 'Chummy' when talking to a wounded man, Stoner?" I
+asked. "Speaking to a healthy pal you just say 'mate.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Is <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page211" name="page211">(p. 211)</a></span> that so?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's so. Why do you say it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose because it's more motherly."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be," said Stoner and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Quick march! The moon came out, ghostly, in a cloudy sky; a light,
+pale as water, slid over the shoulders of the men in front and rippled
+down the creases of their trousers. The bayonets wobbled wearily on
+the hips, those bayonets that once, burnished as we knew how to
+burnish them, were the glory and delight of many a long and strict
+general inspection at St. Albans; they were now coated with mud and
+thick with rust, a disgrace to the battalion!</p>
+
+<p>When the last stray bullet ceased whistling over our heads, and we
+were well beyond the range of rifle fire, leave to smoke was granted.
+To most of us it meant permission to smoke openly. Cigarettes had been
+burned for quite a quarter of an hour before and we had raised them at
+intervals to our lips, concealing the glow of their lighted ends under
+our curved fingers. We drew the smoke in swiftly, treasured it
+lovingly in our mouths for some time then exhaled it slowly and
+grudgingly.</p>
+
+<p>The sky cleared a little, but at times drifts of grey
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page212" name="page212">(p. 212)</a>
+</span> cloud
+swept over the moon and blotted out the stars. On either side of the
+road lone poplars stood up like silent sentinels, immovable, and the
+soft warm breeze that touched us like a breath shook none of their
+branches. Here and there lime-washed cottages, roofed with patches of
+straw where the enemy's shells had dislodged the terra-cotta tiles,
+showed lights in the windows. The natives had gone away and soldiers
+were billeted in their places. Marching had made us hot; we perspired
+freely and the sweat ran down our arms and legs; it trickled down our
+temples and dropped from our eyebrows to our cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Hang on to the step! Quick march! As you were! About turn!" some one
+shouted imitating our sergeant-major's voice. We had marched in
+comparative silence up to now, but the mimicked order was like a match
+applied to a powder magazine. We had had eighteen days in the
+trenches, we were worn down, very weary and very sick of it all; now
+we were out and would be out for some days; we were glad, madly glad.
+All began to make noises at the same time, to sing, to shout, to yell;
+in the night, on the road with its lines of poplars we became madly
+delirious, we broke free like a confused <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page213" name="page213">(p. 213)</a></span> torrent from a
+broken dam. Everybody had something to say or sing, senseless chatter
+and sentimental songs ran riot; all uttered something for the mere
+pleasure of utterance; we were out of the trenches and free for the
+time being from danger.</p>
+
+<p>Stoner marched on my right, hanging on his knees a little, singing a
+music hall song and smoking. A little flutter of ash fell from his
+cigarette, which seemed to be stuck to his lower lip as it rose and
+fell with the notes of the song. When he came to the chorus he looked
+round as if defying somebody, then raised his right hand over his head
+and gripping his rifle, held the weapon there until the last word of
+the chorus trembled on his lips; then he brought it down with the last
+word and looked round as if to see that everybody was admiring his
+action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental,
+music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with
+exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived,
+his whole person surged with a vitality impossible to stem.</p>
+
+<p>We came in line with a row of cottages, soldiers' billets for the most
+part, and the boys were not yet in bed. It was a place to sing
+something <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page214" name="page214">(p. 214)</a>
+</span> great, something in sympathy with our own mood.
+The song when it came was appropriate, it came from one voice, and
+hundreds took it up furiously as if they intended to tear it to
+pieces.</p>
+
+<p class="left10 smsize">
+Here we are, here we are, here we are again.
+</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble;
+but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something
+pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a
+vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was
+as yet one with the night, with my mood and the whole spin of things.
+The song rolled on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="smsize">
+Fit and well and feeling as right as rain,<br>
+Now we're all together; never mind the weather,<br>
+Since here we are again,<br>
+When there's trouble brewing; when there's something doing,<br>
+Are we downhearted. No! let them all come!<br>
+Here we are, here we are, here we are again!</p>
+
+
+<p>As the song died away I felt very lonely, a being isolated. True there
+was a barn with cobwebs on its rafters down the road, a snug farm
+where they made fresh butter and sold new laid eggs. But there was
+something in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page215" name="page215">(p. 215)</a></span>
+out in the fields nodding together as if in consultation, in the
+tall poplars, in the straight road, in the sound of rifle firing to
+rear and in the song sung by the tired boys coming back from battle,
+that filled me with infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a
+shelterless world. "Here we are; here we are again." I thought of
+Mervin, and six others dead, of their white crosses, and I found
+myself weeping silently like a child....</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page216" name="page216">(p. 216)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Peace and War</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+You'll see from the La Bassée Road, on any summer day,<br>
+The children herding nanny goats, the women making hay.<br>
+You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,<br>
+Come swinging up La Bassée Road from billets in Bethune.<br>
+There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far<br>
+Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.<br>
+You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,<br>
+The long, straight road, La Bassée Road, on any summer day.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The farmhouse stood in the centre of the village; the village rested
+on the banks of a sleepy canal on which the barges carried the wounded
+down from the slaughter line to the hospital at Bethune. The village
+was shelled daily. When shelling began a whistle was blown warning all
+soldiers to seek cover immediately in the dug-outs roofed with
+sandbags, which were constructed by the military authorities in nearly
+every garden in the place. When the housewifes heard the shells
+bursting they ran out and brought in their washing from the lines
+where it was hung out to dry; then they sat down and knitted stockings
+or <span class="pagenum"><a id="page217" name="page217">(p. 217)</a>
+</span> sewed garments to send to their menfolk at the war. In
+the village they said: "When the shells come the men run in for their
+lives, and the women run out for their washing."</p>
+
+<p>The village was not badly battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched
+once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was
+used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The
+village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat
+puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet,
+but were going up presently.</p>
+
+<p>Bill and I were sitting in an <i>estaminet</i> when two of these youngsters
+came in and sat opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"New 'ere?" asked Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Came to Boulogne six days ago and marched all the way here," said one
+of them, a red-haired youth with bushy eyebrows. "Long over?" he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Just about nine months," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been through it then."</p>
+
+<p>"Through it," said Bill, lying splendidly, "I think we 'ave. At Mons
+we went in eight 'undred strong. We're the only two as is left."</p>
+
+<p>"Gracious! And you never got a scratch?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page218" name="page218">(p. 218)</a>
+</span> a pin prick," said Bill, "And I saw the shells so
+thick comin' over us that you couldn't see the sky. They was like
+crows up above."</p>
+
+<p>"They were?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were in the trenches then," Bill said. "The orficer comes up and
+sez: 'Things are getting despirate! We've got to charge. 'Ool foller
+me?' 'I'm with you!' I sez, and up I jumps on the parapet pulling a
+machine gun with me."</p>
+
+<p>"A machine gun!" said the red-haired man.</p>
+
+<p>"A machine gun," Bill went on. "When one is risen 'e can do anything.
+I could 'ave lifted a 'ole battery on my shoulders because I was mad.
+I 'ad a look to my front to get the position then I goes forward.
+'Come back, cried the orficer as 'e fell&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fell!"</p>
+
+<p>"'E got a bullet through his bread basket and 'e flopped. But there
+was no 'oldin' o' me. 'Twas death or glory, neck 'an nothin', 'ell for
+leather at that moment. The London Irish blood was up; one of the
+Chelsea Cherubs was out for red blood 'olesale and retail. I slung the
+machine gun on my shoulder, sharpened my bayonet with a piece of
+sand-paper, took <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page219" name="page219">(p. 219)</a>
+</span> the first line o' barbed wire entanglements
+at a jump and got caught on the second. It gored me like a bull. I got
+six days C.B. for 'avin' the rear of my trousers torn when we came out
+o' the trenches."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me something I can believe," said the red-haired youth.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I not tellin' you something," asked Bill. "Nark it, matey, nark
+it. I tell Gospel-stories and you'll not believe me."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's all tommy rot."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it? The Germans did'nt think so when I charged plunk into the
+middle of 'em. Yer should 'ave been there to see it. They were all
+round me and two taubes over 'ead watching my movements. Swish! and my
+bayonet went through the man in front and stabbed the identity disc of
+another. When I drew the bayonet out the butt of my 'ipe<a id="notetag003"
+name="notetag003"></a><a href="#note003">[3]</a> would 'it
+a man behind me in the tummy. Ugh! 'e would say and flop bringing a
+mate down with 'im may be. The dead was all round me and I built a
+parapet of their bodies, puttin' the legs criss-cross and makin' loop
+'oles. Then they began to bomb me from the other side. 'Twas gettin'
+'ot I tell you and I began <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page220" name="page220">(p. 220)</a>
+</span> to think of my 'ome; the dug-out
+in the trench. What was I to do? If I crossed the open they'd bring me
+down with a bullet. There was only one thing to be done. I had my
+boots on me for three 'ole weeks of 'ot weather, 'otter than this and
+beer not so near as it is now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+<p>"Have another drink, Bill?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Glad yer took the 'int," said my mate. "Story tellin's a dry fatigue.
+Well as I was sayin' my socks 'ad been on for a 'ole month&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks," I corrected.</p>
+
+<p>"Three weeks," Bill repeated and continued. "I took orf my boots.
+'Respirators!' the Germans yelled the minute my socks were bare, and
+off they went leavin' me there with my 'ome-made trench. When I came
+back I got a dose of C.B. as I've told you before."</p>
+
+<p>We went back to our billet. In the farmyard the pigs were busy on the
+midden, and they looked at us with curious expressive eyes that peered
+roguishly out from under their heavy hanging cabbage-leaves of ears.
+In one corner was the field-cooker. The cooks were busy making dixies
+of bully beef stew. Their clothes were dirty and greasy, so were their
+arms, bare from <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page221" name="page221">(p. 221)</a>
+</span> the shoulders almost, and taut with muscles.
+Through a path that wound amongst a medley of agricultural
+instruments, ploughs harrows and grubbers, the farmer's daughter came
+striding like a ploughman, two children hanging on to her apron
+strings. A stretcher leant against our water-cart, and dried clots of
+blood were on its shafts. The farmer's dog lay panting on the midden,
+his red tongue hanging out and saliva dropping on the dung, overhead
+the swallows were swooping and flying in under the eaves where now and
+again they nested for a moment before getting up to resume their
+exhilirating flight. A dirty barefooted boy came in through the large
+entrance-gate leading a pair of sleepy cows with heavy udders which
+shook backwards and forwards as they walked. The horns of one cow were
+twisted, the end of one pointed up, the end of the other pointed down.</p>
+
+<p>One of Section 4's boys was looking at the cow.</p>
+
+<p>"The ole geeser's 'andlebars is twisted," said Bill, addressing nobody
+in particular and alluding to the cow.</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'orns, yer fool!" said Section 4.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer fool, yerself!" said Bill. "I'm not as big a fool as I look&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+
+<p>"Git! <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page222" name="page222">(p. 222)</a>
+</span> Your no more brains than a 'en."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor 'ave you either," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"I've twice as many brains, as you," said Section 4.</p>
+
+<p>"So 'ave I," was the answer made by Bill; then getting pugilistic he
+thundered out: "I'll give yer one on the moosh."</p>
+
+<p>"Will yer?" said Section 4.</p>
+
+<p>"Straight I will. Give you one across your ugly phiz! It looks as if
+it had been out all night and some one dancing on it."</p>
+
+<p>Bill took off his cap and flung it on the ground as if it were the
+gauntlet of a knight of old. His hair, short and wiry, stood up on
+end. Section 4 looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>"Your hair looks like furze in a fit," said Section 4.</p>
+
+<p>"You're lookin' for one on the jor," said Bill closing and opening his
+fist. "And I'll give yer one."</p>
+
+<p>"Will yer? Two can play at that gyme!"</p>
+
+<p>Goliath massive and monumental came along at that moment. He looked at
+Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Looking for trouble, mate?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Section 4's shouting the odds, as usual," Bill replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Come <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page223" name="page223">(p. 223)</a>
+</span> along to the Canal and have a bath; it will cool your
+temper."</p>
+
+<p>"Will it?" said Bill as he came along with us somewhat reluctantly
+towards the Canal banks.</p>
+
+<p>"What does shouting the odds mean?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Chewin' the rag," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And that means&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Kicking up a row and lettin' every one round you know," said Bill.
+"That's what shoutin' the blurry odds means."</p>
+
+<p>"What's the difference between shouting the odds and shouting the
+blurry odds?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like this, Pat," Bill began to explain, a blush rising on his
+cheeks. Bill often blushed. "Shoutin' the odds isn't strong enough,
+but shoutin' the blurry odds has ginger in it. It makes a bloke listen
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>Stoner was sitting on the bank of La Bassée canal, his bare feet
+touching the water, his body deep in a cluster of wild iris. I sat
+down beside him and took off my boots.</p>
+
+<p>I pulled a wild iris and explained to Stoner how in Donegal we made
+boats from the iris and placed them by the brookside at night. When
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page224" name="page224">(p. 224)</a>
+</span> we went to bed the fairies crossed the streams on the boats
+which we made.</p>
+
+<p>"Did they cross on the boats?" asked Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they did," I answered. "We never found a boat left in the
+morning."</p>
+
+<p>"The stream washed them away," said Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"You civilised abomination," I said and proceeded to fashion a boat,
+when it was made I placed it on the stream and watched it circle round
+on an eddy near the bank.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's something," said Stoner, getting hold of a little frog with
+his hand and placing it on the boat. For a moment the iris bark swayed
+unsteadily, the frog's little glistening eyes wobbled in its head then
+it dived in to the water, overturning the boat as it hopped off it.</p>
+
+<p>An impudent-looking little boy with keen, inquisitive eyes, came along
+the canal side wheeling a very big barrow on which was heaped a number
+of large loaves. His coat a torn, ragged fringe, hung over the hips,
+he wore a Balaclava helmet (thousands of which have been flung away by
+our boys in the hot weather) and khaki puttees.</p>
+
+<p>The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page225" name="page225">(p. 225)</a>
+</span> boy came to a stop opposite, laid down his barrow and
+wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonjour!" said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"Bonjour, petit garçon," Stoner replied, proud of his French which is
+limited to some twenty words.</p>
+
+<p>The boy asked for a cigarette; a souvenir. We told him to proceed on
+his journey, we were weary of souvenir hunters. The barrow moved on,
+the wheel creaking rustily and the boy whistled a light-hearted tune.
+That his request had not been granted did not seem to trouble him.</p>
+
+<p>Two barges, coupled and laden with coal rounded a corner of the canal.
+They were drawn by five persons, a woman with a very white sunbonnet
+in front. She was followed by a barefooted youth in khaki tunic, a
+hunch-backed man with heavy projecting jowl and a hare-lipped youth of
+seventeen or eighteen. Last on the tug rope was an oldish man with a
+long white beard parted in the middle and rusty coloured at the tips.
+A graceful slip of a girl, lithe as a marsh sapling, worked the tiller
+of the rear barge and she took no notice of the soldiers on the shore
+or in the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Going <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page226" name="page226">(p. 226)</a>
+</span> to bathe, Stoner?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"When the barges go by," he answered and I twitted him on his modesty.</p>
+
+<p>Goliath, six foot three of magnificent bone and muscle was in the
+canal. Swanking his trudgeon stroke he surged through the dirty water
+like an excited whale, puffing and blowing. Bill, losing in every
+stroke, tried to race him, but retired beaten and very happy. The cold
+water rectified his temper, he was now in a most amiable humour. Pryor
+was away down the canal on the barge, when he came to the bridge he
+would dive off and race some of Section 4 boys back to the spot where
+I was sitting. There is an eternal and friendly rivalry between
+Sections 3 and 4.</p>
+
+<p>"Stoner, going in?" I asked my comrade, who was standing stark on the
+bank.</p>
+
+<p>"In a minute," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Get in yourself &mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Presently," I replied, "but you go in now, unless you want to get
+shoved in."</p>
+
+<p>He dived gracefully and came up near the other bank spluttering and
+shaking the water off his hair. Bill challenged him to a race and both
+struck off down the stream, as they swam passing <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page227" name="page227">(p. 227)</a></span> jokes with
+their comrades on the bank. In the course of ten minutes they
+returned, perched proudly on the stern of a barge and making ready to
+dive. At that moment I undressed and went in.</p>
+
+<p>My swim was a very short one; shorter than usual, and I am not much of
+a swimmer. A searching shell sped over from the German lines hit the
+ground a few hundred yards to rear of the Canal and whirled a shower
+of dust into the water, which speedily delivered several hundred nude
+fighters to the clothes-littered bank. A second and third shell
+dropping nearer drove all modest thoughts from our minds for the
+moment (unclothed, a man feels helplessly defenceless), and we hurried
+into our warrens through throngs of women rushing out to take in their
+washing.</p>
+
+<p>One of the shells hit the artillery horse lines on the left of the
+village and seven horses were killed.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page228" name="page228">(p. 228)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Everyday Life at the Front</span></h3>
+
+<div class="left30 smsize">
+<p>There's the butter, gad, and horse-fly,<br>
+The blow-fly and the blue,<br>
+The fine fly and the coarse fly,<br>
+But never flew a worse fly<br>
+Of all the flies that flew</p>
+
+<p>Than the little sneaky black fly<br>
+That gobbles up our ham,<br>
+The beggar's not a slack fly,<br>
+He really is a crack fly,<br>
+And wolfs the soldiers jam.</p>
+
+<p>So strafe that fly! Our motto<br>
+Is "strafe him when you can."<br>
+He'll die because he ought to,<br>
+He'll go because he's got to,<br>
+So at him every man!</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">What time we have not been in the trenches we have spent marching out
+or marching back to them, or sleeping in billets at the rear and going
+out as working parties, always ready to move at two hours' notice by
+day and one hour's notice by night.</p>
+
+<p>I got two days C.B. at La Beuvriere; because I did not come out on
+parade one morning. I really got out of bed very early, and went for a
+walk. Coming to a pond where a number of frogs <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page229" name="page229">(p. 229)</a></span> were hopping
+from the bank into the water, I sat down and amused myself by watching
+them staring at me out of the pond; their big, intelligent eyes full
+of some wonderful secret. They interested and amused me, probably I
+interested and amused them, one never knows. Then I read a little and
+time flew by. On coming back I was told to report at the Company
+orderly room. Two days C.B.</p>
+
+<p>I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
+place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
+beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
+an <i>estaminet</i>. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
+had an unholy knack of prodding a stomach which rebelled against
+digesting bully and biscuit, I unloosed my equipment buckles. The
+Visiting Rounds found me imperfectly dressed, my shoulder flaps
+wobbled, my haversack hung with a slant and the cartridge pouches
+leant out as if trying to spring on my feet. The next evening I was up
+before the C.O.</p>
+
+<p>My hair was rather long, and as it was well-brushed it looked
+imposing. So I thought in the morning when I looked in the platoon
+mirror&mdash;the platoon mirror was an inch square glass <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page230" name="page230">(p. 230)</a></span> with a
+jagged edge. My imposing hair caught the C.O.'s eye the moment I
+entered the orderly room. "Don't let me see you with hair like that
+again," he began and read out the charge. I forget the words which
+hinted that I was a wrong-doer in the eyes of the law military; the
+officers were there, every officer in the battalion, they all looked
+serious and resigned. It seemed as if their minds had been made up on
+something relating to me.</p>
+
+<p>The orderly officer who apprehended me in the act told how he did it,
+speaking as if from a book but consulting neither notes nor papers.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you to say?" asked the C.O. looking at me.</p>
+
+<p>I had nothing particular to say, my thoughts were busy on an enigma
+that might not interest him, namely, why a young officer near him kept
+rubbing a meditative chin with a fugitive finger, and why that finger
+came down so swiftly when the C.O.'s eyes were turned towards the
+young man. I replied to the question by saying "Guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"We know you are guilty," said the C.O. and gave me a little lecture.
+I had a reputation, the young men of the regiment looked up to me, an
+older man; and by setting a good example <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page231" name="page231">(p. 231)</a></span> I could do a great
+deal of good, &amp;c., &amp;c. The lecture was very trying, but the rest of
+the proceedings were interesting. I was awarded three extra guards. I
+only did one of them.</p>
+
+<p>We hung on the fringe of the Richebourge <i>mêlée</i>, but were
+not called
+into play.</p>
+
+<p>"What was it like?" we asked the men marching back from battle in
+the darkness and the rain. There was no answer, they were too weary
+even to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you get along in the fight?" I called to one who straggled
+along in the rear, his head sunk forward on his breast, his knees
+bending towards the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Tsch! Tsch!" he answered, his voice barely rising above a whisper as
+his boots paced out in a rhythm of despair to some village at the
+rear.</p>
+
+<p>There in the same place a night later, we saw soldiers' equipments
+piled on top of one another and stretching for yards on either side of
+the road: packs, haversacks, belts, bayonets, rifles, and cartridge
+pouches. The equipments were taken in from the field of battle, the
+war-harness of men now wounded and dead was out of use for the moment,
+other soldiers would wear them presently and make great fight in them.</p>
+
+
+<p>Once <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page232" name="page232">(p. 232)</a>
+</span> at Cuinchy, Section 3 went out for a wash in a dead
+stream that once flowed through our lines and those of the Germans.
+The water was dirty and it was a miracle that the frogs which frisked
+in it were so clean.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too dirty to wash there," said Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"A change of dirt is 'olesome," said Bill, placing his soap on the
+bank and dipping his mess tin in the water. As he bent down the body
+of a dead soldier inflated by its own rottenness bubbled up to the
+surface. We gave up all idea of washing. Stoner who was on the
+opposite bank tried to jump across at that moment. Miscalculating the
+distance, he fell short and into the water. We dragged him out
+spluttering and I regret to say we laughed, almost heartily. That
+night when we stood to arms in the trenches, waiting for an attack
+that did not come off, Stoner stood to with his rifle, an overcoat, a
+pair of boots and a pair of socks as his sole uniform.</p>
+
+<p>How many nights have we marched under the light of moon and stars,
+sleepy and dog-weary, in song or in silence, as the mood prompted us
+or the orders compelled us, up to the trenches and back again! We have
+slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page233" name="page233">(p. 233)</a></span>
+straw deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on
+the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new
+songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their
+circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great
+adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one
+another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of
+any member of our party who was flouted by any one who was not one of
+WE. "Section 3, right or wrong" was and is our motto. And the section
+dwindles, the bullet and shell has been busy in lessening our
+strength, for that is the way of war.</p>
+
+<p>When in the trenches Bill and Kore amuse themselves by potting all day
+long at the German lines. A conversation like the following may be
+often heard.</p>
+
+<p>Bill:&mdash;"Blimey, I see a 'ead."</p>
+
+<p>Kore:&mdash;"Fire then." (Bill fires a shot.) "Got him?"</p>
+
+<p>Bill:&mdash;"No blurry fear. The 'ead was a sandbag. I'll bet yer the shot
+they send back will come nearer me than you. Bet yer a copper."</p>
+
+<p>Kore:&mdash;"Done." (A bullet whistles by on the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page234" name="page234">(p. 234)</a></span> right of Bill's
+head.) "I think they're firing at you."</p>
+
+<p>Bill:&mdash;"Not me, matey, but you. It's their aiming that's bad. 'And
+over the coin." (Enter an officer.)</p>
+
+<p>Officer:&mdash;"Don't keep your heads over the parapet, you'll get sniped.
+Keep under cover as much as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Bill:&mdash;"Orl right, Sir."</p>
+
+<p>Kore:&mdash;"Yes, sir." (Exit Officer.)</p>
+
+<p>Bill:&mdash;"They say there's a war 'ere."</p>
+
+<p>Kore:&mdash;"It's only a rumour."</p>
+
+<p>At Cuinchy where the German trenches are hardly a hundred yards away
+from ours, the firing from the opposite trenches ceased for a moment
+and a voice called across.</p>
+
+<p>"What about the Cup Final?" It was then the finish of the English
+football season.</p>
+
+<p>"Chelsea lost," said Bill, who was a staunch supporter of that team.</p>
+
+<p>"Hard luck!" came the answer from the German trench and firing was
+resumed. But Bill used his rifle no more until we changed into a new
+locality. "A blurry supporter of blurry Chelsea," he said. "'E must be
+a damned good sort of sausage-eater, that feller. If ever I meet 'im
+in Lunnon after the war, I'm <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page235" name="page235">(p. 235)</a>
+</span> goin' to make 'im as drunk as a
+public-'ouse fly."</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do after the war?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>He rubbed his eyes which many sleepless nights in a shell-harried
+trench had made red and watery.</p>
+
+<p>"What will I do?" he repeated. "I'll get two beds," he said, "and have
+a six months' snooze, and I'll sleep in one bed while the other's
+being made, matey."</p>
+
+<p>In trench life many new friends are made and many old friendships
+renewed. We were nursing a contingent of Camerons, men new to the
+grind of trench work, and most of them hailing from Glasgow and the
+West of Scotland. On the morning of the second day one of them said to
+me, "Big Jock MacGregor wants to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's Big Jock?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He used to work on the railway at Greenock," I was told, and off I
+went to seek the man.</p>
+
+<p>I found him eating bully beef and biscuit on the parapet. He was
+spotlessly clean, he had not yet stuck his spoon down the rim of his
+stocking where his skein should have been, he had <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page236" name="page236">(p. 236)</a></span> a table
+knife and fork (things that we, old soldiers, had dispensed with ages
+ago), in short, he was a hat-box fellow, togged up to the nines, and
+as yet, green to the grind of war.</p>
+
+<p>His age might be forty, he looked fifty, a fatherly sort of man, a
+real block of Caledonian Railway thrown, tartanised, into a trench.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, Jock?" I said. I had never met him before.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you Pat MacGill?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, I've often heard of you, Pat," he went on, "I worked on the Sou'
+West, and my brother's an engine driver on the Caly. He reads your
+songs a'most every night. He says there are only two poets he'd give a
+fling for&mdash;that's you and Anderson, the man who wrote <i>Cuddle Doon</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you like the trenches, Jock?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so bad, man, not so bad," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Killed any one yet?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," he answered in all seriousness. "But there's a sniper over
+there," and he pointed a clean finger, quite untrenchy it was, towards
+the enemy's lines, "And he's fired three at me."</p>
+
+<p>"At you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page237" name="page237">(p. 237)</a>
+</span> and I sent him five back &mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't do him in?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, but if I get another two or three at him, I'll not give much
+for his chance."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him?" I asked, marvelling that Big Jock had already
+seen a sniper.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I heard the shots go off."</p>
+
+<p>A rifle shot is the most deceptive thing in the world, so, like an old
+soldier wise in the work, I smiled under my hand.</p>
+
+<p>I don't believe that Big Jock has killed his sniper yet, but it has
+been good to see him. When we meet he says, "What about the Caly,
+Pat?" and I answer, "What about the Sou' West, Jock?"</p>
+
+<p>On the first Sunday after Trinity we marched out from another small
+village in the hot afternoon. This one was a model village, snug in
+the fields, and dwindling daily. The German shells are dropping there
+every day. In the course of another six months if the fronts of the
+contending armies do not change, that village will be a litter of red
+bricks and unpeopled ruins. As it is the women, children and old men
+still remain in the place and carry on their usual labours with the
+greatest fortitude and patience. The village children sell percussion
+caps of German <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page238" name="page238">(p. 238)</a>
+</span> shells for half a franc each, but if the
+shell has killed any of the natives when it exploded, the cap will not
+be sold for less than thirty sous. But the sum is not too dear for a
+nose-cap with a history.</p>
+
+<p>There are a number of soldiers buried in the graveyard of this place.
+At one corner four different crosses bear the following names: Anatole
+Séries, Private O'Shea, Corporal Smith and under the symbol of the
+Christian religion lies one who came from sunny heathen climes to help
+the Christian in his wars. His name is Jaighandthakur, a soldier of
+the Bengal Mountain Battery.</p>
+
+<p>It was while here that Bill complained of the scanty allowance of his
+rations to an officer, when plum pudding was served at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.</p>
+
+<p>"How much have you got?" asked the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the
+neck of 'is waterbottle," <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page239" name="page239">(p. 239)</a>
+</span> said Bill. The officer ordered
+both men to be served out with a second portion.</p>
+
+<p>We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of
+the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of
+Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going
+had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line
+is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the
+Hills of Lorette at present.</p>
+
+<p>The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they
+march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every
+halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are
+going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty
+minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous
+path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several
+shell-shattered huts and some acres of shell-scooped ground. The place
+was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to
+the enemy. Early one morning the shells began to sweep in, carrying
+the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a
+memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in shell-holes on
+that field. The <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page240" name="page240">(p. 240)</a>
+</span> bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the
+ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred
+yards out on any side there is not a trace of a shell, every shot went
+true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not
+be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But
+their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the
+night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor
+gun would have escaped.</p>
+
+<p>The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever
+seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At
+several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags
+proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in,
+and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore,
+down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead,
+our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the
+whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our
+bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got
+some tea, a godsend to us all.</p>
+
+<p>We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page241" name="page241">(p. 241)</a></span>
+and the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up
+against a man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled
+against the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish
+voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see
+things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm
+stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea
+greedily.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a lot of you ones comin' up," the voice said. "You ones!" How
+often have I said "You ones," how often do I say it still when I'm too
+excited to be grammatical. "Ye had a' must to be too late for tay!"
+the voice said from the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"What does he say?" asked Pryor who was just ahead of me.</p>
+
+<p>"He says that we were almost too late for tea," I replied and stared
+hard into the darkness on my left. Figures of men in khaki took form
+in the gloom, a bayonet sparkled; some one was putting a lid on a
+mess-tin and I could see the man doing it....</p>
+
+<p>"Inniskillings?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page242" name="page242">(p. 242)</a></span> us."</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet?" I asked, alluding to their life in the trench.</p>
+
+<p>"Not bad at all," was the answer. "A shell came this road an hour
+agone, and two of us got hit."</p>
+
+<p>"Killed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, oh! boys, aye," was the answer; "and seven got wounded. Nine of
+the best, man, nine of the best. Have another drop of tay?"</p>
+
+<p>At the exit of the tunnel the floor was covered with blood and the
+flies were buzzing over it; the sated insects rose lazily as we came
+up, settled down in front, rose again and flew back over our heads.
+What a feast they were having on the blood of men!</p>
+
+<p>The trenches into which we had come were not so clean as many we had
+been in before; although the dug-outs were much better constructed
+than those in the British lines, they smelt vilely of something
+sickening and nauseous.</p>
+
+<p>A week passed away and we were still in the trenches. Sometimes it
+rained, but for the most part the sky was clear and the sun very hot.
+The trenches were dug out of the chalk, the world in which we lived
+was a world of white <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page243" name="page243">(p. 243)</a>
+</span> and green, white parapet and parados
+with a fringe of grass on the superior slope of each. The place was
+very quiet, not more than two dozen shells came our way daily, and it
+was there that I saw a shell in air, the only shell in flight I have
+ever seen. It was dropping to earth behind the parados and I had a
+distinct view of the missile before ducking to avoid the splinters
+flung out by the explosion. Hundreds of shells have passed through the
+sky near me every day, I could almost see them by their sound and felt
+I could trace the line made by them in their flight, but this was the
+only time I ever saw one.</p>
+
+<p>The hill land of Lorette stood up sullen on our right; in a basin
+scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards
+square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in
+progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes
+of bursting shells. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this
+titanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to
+see&mdash;it was the face of a god. The mortal who gazed on it must die.
+But by night and day I spent most of my spare time in watching the
+smoke of bursting shells and the flash of innumerable explosions.</p>
+
+<p>One <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page244" name="page244">(p. 244)</a>
+</span> morning, after six days in the trenches, I was seated on
+the parados blowing up an air pillow which had been sent to me by an
+English friend and watching the fight up at Souchez when Bill came up
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's that yer've got?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"An air pillow," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow much were yer rushed for it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody sent it to me," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"To rest yer weary 'ead on?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I like a fresh piller every night," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"A fresh what?"</p>
+
+<p>"A fresh brick."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you like these trenches?" I asked after a short silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," he answered. "They're all blurry flies and chalk." He
+gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese
+rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was
+all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags
+were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and shell whirled showers
+of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the
+parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the
+rain-wet chalk melted to <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page245" name="page245">(p. 245)</a>
+</span> milk and whitened the barrels and
+actions of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up
+to the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet
+for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea
+of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.
+Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their
+way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags,
+only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged
+the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the
+beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the
+spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side
+blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not
+fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy,
+their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by shell splinters
+whizzing through the air.</p>
+
+<p>The space between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green
+leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the shivered trees, thistles with
+magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, grasses hung over
+the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking
+if we would <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page246" name="page246">(p. 246)</a>
+</span> allow them to enter. The garden of death was a
+riot of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from
+amidst the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing
+its face; and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our
+dug-out. Nature was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused
+by man to the face of the country.</p>
+
+<p>At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in
+his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible
+to write, eat or even to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something
+putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who
+had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair
+poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great
+frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping
+their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground
+in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the
+stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour
+of flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The order came like a bomb flung into the trench and woke us up like
+an electric thrill. True <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page247" name="page247">(p. 247)</a>
+</span> we did not believe it at first,
+there are so many practical jokers in our ranks. Such an insane order!
+Had the head of affairs gone suddenly mad that such an order was
+issued. "All men get ready for a bath. Towels and soap are to be
+carried!!!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"In the village at the rear," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nobody there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And
+the place gets shelled daily."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be
+a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."</p>
+
+<p>We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered
+Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather
+pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the
+effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all
+that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window glass was
+smashed to pieces.</p>
+
+<p>We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a
+serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed
+badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page248" name="page248">(p. 248)</a></span> We went
+back clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.</p>
+
+<p>That same evening, what time the star-shells began to flare and the
+flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our
+men got done to death in their dug-out. A shell hit the roof and
+smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was
+instantaneous in both cases.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page249" name="page249">(p. 249)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Covering Party</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind,<br>
+With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind;<br>
+And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn,<br>
+The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?<br>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines
+was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze
+scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing
+something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my
+hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the spacious
+construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags,
+which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were
+apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon
+sergeant stopped me at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm lucky," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Your <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page250" name="page250">(p. 250)</a>
+</span> luck's dead out," said the sergeant. "You're to be one
+of a covering party for the Engineers. They're out to-night repairing
+the wire entanglements."</p>
+
+<p>"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill's on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the
+vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its
+dullest mood, explode with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other
+riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came
+to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten
+to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The
+German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to
+our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and
+most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire
+entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of
+the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the
+damage only to start the game of demolition over again.</p>
+
+<p>The line of entanglements does not run parallel <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page251" name="page251">(p. 251)</a></span> with the
+trench it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes
+seem always to be about the same distance away from the nearest
+sandbags. But taken in relation to the trench opposite the
+entanglements are laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing
+towards our trench.</p>
+
+<p>The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a
+charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and
+rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of
+death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the
+parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become
+creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to
+get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up
+to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and
+thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the
+enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a
+man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and
+the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the
+vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the
+V-shaped recess that narrows towards <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page252" name="page252">(p. 252)</a></span> our lines. Here the
+attackers are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey
+for the concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The
+narrow part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the
+attackers tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from
+bone, mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through.
+The tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire
+entanglements.</p>
+
+<p>In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
+shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
+immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
+We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
+on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
+The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
+stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
+dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
+through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
+had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the
+threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild
+fascination. I was for a moment <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page253" name="page253">(p. 253)</a>
+</span> tempted to rise up and shout
+across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the
+shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that
+intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a
+violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that
+illumined the place like a sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, blimey, that's a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What 'ave
+I done, splunk on a dead 'un I flopped, a stinking corpse. 'E was
+'uggin' me, kissin' me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff 'un," said Bill,
+addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes,
+striped with red and deep in the grass. "Talk about rotten eggs
+burstin' on your jor; they're not in it."</p>
+
+<p>The light of the star-shell waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to
+Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you're giving the whole damned
+show away," the Corporal said. "If you're spotted it's all up with
+us."</p>
+
+<p>We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat
+on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page254" name="page254">(p. 254)</a>
+</span> before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and
+got about half way across the field. There they stopped, mown down by
+rifle and machine gun fire and they lie there still, little bundles of
+wasting flesh in the midst of the poppies. When the star-shells went
+up I could see a face near me, a young face clean-shaven and very pale
+under a wealth of curly hair. It was the face of a mere boy, the eyes
+were closed as if the youth were only asleep. It looked as if the
+effacing finger of decay had forborne from working its will on the
+helpless thing. His hand still gripped the rifle, and the long bayonet
+on the standard shone when the light played upon it. It seemed as if
+he fell quietly to the ground, dead. Others, I could see, had died a
+death of agony; they lay there in distorted postures, some with faces
+battered out of recognition, others with their hands full of grass and
+clay as if they had torn up the earth in their mad, final frenzy. Not
+a nice bed to lie in during a night out on listening patrol.<a id="notetag004"
+name="notetag004"></a><a href="#note004">[4]</a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>The Engineers were now at work just behind us, I could see their dark
+forms flitting amongst the <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page255" name="page255">(p. 255)</a>
+</span> posts, straightening the old
+ones, driving in fresh supports and pulling the wires taut. They
+worked as quietly as possible, but to our ears, tensely strained, the
+noise of labour came like the rumble of artillery. The enemy must
+surely hear the sound. Doubtless he did, but probably his own working
+parties were busy just as ours were. In front when one of our
+star-shells went across I fancied that I could see dark forms standing
+motionless by the German trench. Perhaps my eyes played me false, the
+objects might be tree-trunks trimmed down by shell fire....</p>
+
+<p>The message came out from our trench and the Corporal passed it along
+his party. "On the right a party of the &mdash;th London are working." This
+was to prevent us mistaking them for Germans. All night long
+operations are carried on between the lines, if daylight suddenly shot
+out about one in the morning what a scene would unfold itself in No
+Man's Land; listening patrols marching along, Engineers busy with the
+wires, sanitary squads burying the dead and covering parties keeping
+watch over all the workers.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt! who goes there?"</p>
+
+<p>The order loud and distinct came from the vicinity
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page256" name="page256">(p. 256)</a>
+</span> of the
+German trench, then followed a mumbled reply and afterwards a scuffle,
+a sound as of steel clashing in steel, and then subdued laughter. What
+had happened? Next day we heard that a sergeant and three men of the
+&mdash;th were out on patrol and went too near the enemy's lines. Suddenly
+they were confronted by several dark forms with fixed bayonets and the
+usual sentry's challenge was yelled out in English. Believing that he
+had fallen across one of his own outposts, the unsuspecting sergeant
+gave the password for the night, approached those who challenged him
+and was immediately made prisoner. Two others met with the same fate,
+but one who had been lagging at the rear got away and managed to get
+back to his own lines. Many strange things happen between the lines at
+night; working parties have no love for the place and hundreds get
+killed there.</p>
+
+<p>The slightest tinge of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back
+over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the
+conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin
+at dawn.</p>
+
+<p>We go out often as working parties or listening patrols.</p>
+
+<p>From <span class="pagenum"><a id="page257" name="page257">(p. 257)</a>
+</span> Souchez to Ypres the firing line runs through a land of
+stinking drains, level fields, and shattered villages. We know those
+villages, we have lived in them, we have been sniped at in their
+streets and shelled in the houses. We have had men killed in them,
+blown to atoms or buried in masonry, done to death by some damnable
+instrument of war.</p>
+
+<p>In our trenches near Souchez you can see the eternal artillery
+fighting on the hills of Lorette, up there men are flicked out of
+existence like flies in a hailstorm. The big straight road out of a
+village runs through our lines into the German trenches and beyond.
+The road is lined with poplars and green with grass; by day you can
+see the German sandbags from our trenches, by night you can hear the
+wind in the trees that bend towards one another as if in conversation.
+There is no whole house in the place; chimneys have been blown down
+and roofs are battered by shrapnel. But few of the people have gone
+away, they have become schooled in the process of accommodation, and
+accommodate themselves to a woeful change. They live with one foot on
+the top step of the cellar stairs, a shell sends them scampering down;
+they sleep there, they eat there, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page258" name="page258">(p. 258)</a>
+</span> in their underground home
+they wait for the war to end. The men who are too old to fight labour
+in a neighbouring mine, which still does some work although its
+chimney is shattered and its coal waggons are scraps of wood and iron
+on broken rails. There are many graves by the church, graves of our
+boys, civilians' graves, children's graves, all victims of war.
+Children are there still, merry little kids with red lips and laughing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when staying in the village, I met one, a dainty little dot,
+with golden hair and laughing eyes, a pink ribbon round a tress that
+hung roguishly over her left cheek. She smiled at me as she passed
+where I sat on the roadside under the poplars, her face was an angel's
+set in a disarray of gold. In her hand she carried an empty jug,
+almost as big as herself and she was going to her home, one of the
+inhabited houses nearest the fighting line. The day had been a very
+quiet one and the village took an opportunity to bask in the sun. I
+watched her go up the road tripping lightly on the grass, swinging her
+big jug. Life was a garland of flowers for her, it was good to watch
+her to see her trip along; the sight made me happy. What caused the
+German gunner, a simple woodman <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page259" name="page259">(p. 259)</a></span> and a father himself
+perhaps, to fire at that moment? What demon guided the shell? Who can
+say? The shell dropped on the roadway just where the child was; I saw
+the explosion and dropped flat to avoid the splinters, when I looked
+again there was no child, no jug, where she had been was a heap of
+stones on the grass and dark curls of smoke rising up from it. I
+hastened indoors; the enemy were shelling the village again.</p>
+
+<p>Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets,
+and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing
+and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
+This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French
+by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets
+saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the
+village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the
+cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking
+up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak
+up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages
+of war.</p>
+
+<p>In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have
+seen the street so thick <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page260" name="page260">(p. 260)</a>
+</span> with flies that it was impossible
+to see the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the
+morning after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence,
+for halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a
+dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette,
+salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of <i>café au lait</i> for fifteen
+sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum
+of ten francs on pay day.</p>
+
+<p>In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a
+cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
+That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same
+place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young
+Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a
+shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with
+us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of
+comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door
+and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in
+the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy
+connected with it.</p>
+
+<p>In <span class="pagenum"><a id="page261" name="page261">(p. 261)</a>
+</span> some places the enemy's bullets search the main street by
+night and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across
+the open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for
+our boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged
+safety in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you
+merely trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your
+keeping.</p>
+
+<p>No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman
+there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the
+colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the
+pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church
+was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The
+woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None
+of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that
+she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.</p>
+
+<p>We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a
+cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the
+great mother, was busy; the butterflies flitted over <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page262" name="page262">(p. 262)</a></span> the
+soldiers' graves, the grass grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to
+be sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom
+which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the
+whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the
+morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a
+jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs,
+holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog
+dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones
+showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if
+the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our
+laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and
+sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by
+the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="left10">
+Here lies a dog as dead as dead,<br>
+A Sniper's bullet through its head,<br>
+Untroubled now by shots and shells,<br>
+It rots and can do nothing else.</p>
+
+
+<p>The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men,
+two women and two children, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page263" name="page263">(p. 263)</a>
+</span> all civilians, were killed. The
+natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.</p>
+
+<p>In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange
+things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page264" name="page264">(p. 264)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Souvenir Hunters</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean,<br>
+And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine;<br>
+I've carried it from A to X and back to A again,<br>
+I've found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.<br>
+A souvenir for blighty away across the foam,<br>
+That's if the French authorities will let me take it home.</p>
+
+
+<p class="p2">Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has
+never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of
+curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I
+took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a
+little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton
+piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles&mdash;one of our men
+who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until
+he was killed by a shell and then the boot fell into my hands. I have
+two percussion caps, one from a shell that came through the roof of a
+dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead
+lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert. <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page265" name="page265">(p. 265)</a></span> In addition to
+these I have many shell splinters that fell into the trench and landed
+at my feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of shells and
+several other odds and ends picked up from the field of battle. Once I
+found a splendid English revolver&mdash;but that is a story.</p>
+
+<p>We were billeted in a model mining-village of red brick houses and
+terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it
+and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness
+relieved here and there by a shell-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow
+and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be
+seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German shells and
+counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went
+out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the grass from the
+trenches with reaping hooks. In the morning a white mist lay on the
+meadows and dry dung and dust rose from the roadway as we marched out
+to our labour.</p>
+
+<p>We halted by the last house in the village, one that stood almost
+intact, although the adjoining buildings were well nigh levelled to
+the ground. My mate, Pryor, fixed his eyes on the villa.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page266" name="page266">(p. 266)</a>
+</span> going in there," he said pointing at the doors.</p>
+
+<p>"Souvenirs?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Souvenirs," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>The two of us slipped away from the platoon and entered the building.
+On the ground floor stood a table on which a dinner was laid; an
+active service dinner of soup made from soup tablets (2<i>d.</i> each) the
+wrappers of which lay on the tiled floor, some tins of bully beef,
+opened, a loaf, half a dozen apples and an unopened tin of <i>café au
+lait</i>. The dinner was laid for four, although there were only three
+forks, two spoons and two clasp knives, the latter were undoubtedly
+used to replace table knives. Pryor looked under the table, then
+turned round and fixed a pair of scared eyes on me, and beckoned to me
+to approach. I came to his side and saw under the table on the floor a
+human hand, severed from the arm at the wrist. Beside it lay a
+web-equipment, torn to shreds, a broken range-finder and a Webley
+revolver, long of barrel and heavy of magazine.</p>
+
+<p>"A souvenir," said Pryor. "It must have been some time since that
+dinner was made; the bully smells like anything."</p>
+
+<p>"The shell came in there," I said pointing at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267">(p. 267)</a>
+</span> window,
+the side of which was broken a little, "and it hit one poor beggar
+anyway. Nobody seems to have come in here since then."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll hide the revolver," Pryor remarked, "and we'll come here for it
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>We hid the revolver behind the door in a little cupboard in the wall;
+we came back for it two days later, but the weapon was gone though the
+hand still lay on the floor. What was the history of that house and of
+the officers who sat down to dinner? Will the tragedy ever be told?</p>
+
+<p>I had an interesting experience near Souchez when our regiment was
+holding part of the line in that locality. On the way in was a single
+house, a red brick villa, standing by the side of the communication
+trench which I used to pass daily when I went out to get water from
+the carts at the rear. One afternoon I climbed over the side and
+entered the house by a side door that looked over the German lines.
+The building was a conspicuous target for the enemy, but strange to
+say, it had never been touched by shell fire; now and again bullets
+peppered the walls, chipped the bricks and smashed the window-panes.
+On the ground floor was a large living-room with a big-bodied stove
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page268" name="page268">(p. 268)</a>
+</span> in the centre of the floor, religious pictures hung on the
+wall, a grandfather's clock stood in the niche near the door, the
+blinds were drawn across the shattered windows, and several chairs
+were placed round a big table near the stove. Upstairs in the bedrooms
+the beds were made and in one apartment a large perambulator, with a
+doll flung carelessly on its coverlet, stood near the wall, the paper
+of which was designed in little circles and in each circle were
+figures of little boys and girls, hundreds of them, frivolous mites,
+absurd and gay.</p>
+
+<p>Another stair led up to the garret, a gloomy place bare under the red
+tiles, some of which were broken. Looking out through the aperture in
+the roof I could see the British and German trenches drawn as if in
+chalk on a slate of green by an erratic hand, the hand of an idle
+child. Behind the German trenches stood the red brick village of &mdash;&mdash;,
+with an impudent chimney standing smokeless in the air, and a burning
+mine that vomited clouds of thick black smoke over meadow-fields
+splashed with poppies. Shells were bursting everywhere over the grass
+and the white lines; the greenish grey fumes of lyddite, the white
+smoke of shrapnel rose into mid-air, curled away and died. On the left
+of the <span class="pagenum"><a id="page269" name="page269">(p. 269)</a>
+</span> village a road ran back into the enemy's land, and
+from it a cloud of dust was rising over the tree-tops; no doubt
+vehicles of war which I could not see were moving about in that
+direction. I stayed up in that garret for quite an hour full of the
+romance of my watch and when I left I took my souvenir with me, a
+picture of the Blessed Virgin in a cedar frame. That night we placed
+it outside our dug-out over the door. In the morning we found it
+smashed to pieces by a bullet.</p>
+
+<p>Daily I spent some time in the garret on my way out to the water-cart;
+and one day I found it occupied. Five soldiers and an officer were
+standing at my peephole when I got up, with a large telescope fixed on
+a tripod and trained on the enemy's lines. The War Intelligence
+Department had taken over the house for an observation post.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want here?" asked the officer.</p>
+
+<p>Soldiers are ordered to keep to the trenches on the way out and in,
+none of the houses that line the way are to be visited. It was a case
+for a slight prevarication. My water jar was out in the trench: I
+carried my rifle and a bandolier.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm <span class="pagenum"><a id="page270" name="page270">(p. 270)</a>
+</span> looking for a sniping position," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot stop here," said the officer. "We've taken this place
+over. Try some of the houses on the left."</p>
+
+<p>I cleared out. Three days later when on my usual errand I saw that the
+roof of my observation villa had been blown in. Nobody would be in
+there now I concluded and ventured inside. The door which stood at the
+bottom of the garret stair was closed. I caught hold of the latch and
+pulled it towards me. The door held tight. As I struggled with it I
+had a sense of pulling against a detaining hand that strove to hide a
+mystery, something fearful, from my eye. It swung towards me slowly
+and a pile of bricks fell on my feet as it opened. Something dark and
+liquid oozed out under my boots. I felt myself slip on it and knew
+that I stood on blood. All the way up the rubble-covered stairs there
+was blood, it had splashed red on the railings and walls. Laths,
+plaster, tiles and beams lay on the floor above and in the midst of
+the jumble was a shattered telescope still moist with the blood of
+men. Had all been killed and were all those I had met a few days
+before in the garret when the shell landed on the roof? It was
+impossible to tell.</p>
+
+<p>I <span class="pagenum"><a id="page271" name="page271">(p. 271)</a>
+</span> returned to the dug-out meditating on the strange things
+that can be seen by him who goes souvenir-hunting between Souchez and
+Ypres. As I entered I found Bill gazing mutely at some black liquid in
+a sooty mess-tin.</p>
+
+<p>"Some milk, Bill," I said handing him the tin of Nestle's which had
+just come to me in a Gargantuan parcel from an English friend.</p>
+
+<p>"No milk, matey," he answered, "I'm feelin' done up proper, I am.
+Cannot eat a bite. Tummy out of order, my 'ead spinnin' like a top.
+When's sick parade?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Seven o'clock," I said, "Is it as bad as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse than that," he answered with a smile, "'Ave yer a cigarette to
+spare?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I answered, fumbling in my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, give it to somebody as 'asn't got none," said Bill, "I'm off
+the smokin' a bit."</p>
+
+<p>The case was really serious since Bill could not smoke, a smokeless
+hour was for him a Purgatorial period, his favourite friend was his
+fag. After tea I went with him to the dressing station, and Ted Vittle
+of Section 4 accompanied us. Ted's tummy was also out of order and his
+head was spinning like a top. The men's <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page272" name="page272">(p. 272)</a></span> equipment was
+carried out, men going sick from the trenches to the dressing-station
+at the rear carry their rifles and all portable property in case they
+are sent off to hospital. The sick soldier's stuff always goes to
+hospital with him.</p>
+
+<p>I stood outside the door of the dressing-station while the two men
+were in with the M.O. "What's wrong, Bill?" I asked when he came out.</p>
+
+<p>"My tempratoor's an 'undred and nine," said my comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred and what?" I ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>"'Undred point nine 'is was," said Ted Vittle. "Mine's a 'undred point
+eight. The Twentieth 'as 'ad lots of men gone off to 'orsp to-day
+sufferin' from the same thing. Pyraxis the M.O. calls it. Trench fever
+is the right name."</p>
+
+<p>"Right?" interrogated Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Well it's a name we can understand," said Ted.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going back to the trenches again?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"We're to sleep 'ere to-night in the cellar under the
+dressin'-station," they told me. "In the mornin' we're to report to
+the doctor again. 'E's a bloke 'e is, that doctor. 'E says we're to
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page273" name="page273">(p. 273)</a>
+</span> take nothing but heggs and milk and the milk must be boiled."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the army going to supply it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No blurry fear," said Bill. "Even if we 'ad the brass and the
+appetite we can't buy any milk or heggs 'ere."</p>
+
+<p>I went back to the firing trench alone. Bill and Ted Vittle did not
+return the next day or the day after. Three weeks later Bill came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>We were sitting in our dug-out at a village the bawl of a donkey from
+Souchez, when a jew's harp, playing ragtime was heard outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," we exclaimed in a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to
+us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and
+with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man
+who has seen strange sights in strange regions.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your temperature?" asked Stoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, it's the correct thing now, but it didn't arf go up and
+down," said Bill sitting down on the dug-out chair, our only one since
+a shell dropped through the roof. Some days before B Company had held
+the dug-out and two of the boys were killed. "It's no fun the
+'orspital I can tell yer."</p>
+
+<p>"What <span class="pagenum"><a id="page274" name="page274">(p. 274)</a>
+</span> sort of disease is Pyraxis?" asked Goliath.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not 'arf bad, if you've got it bad, and it's not good when
+you've it only 'arf bad," said Bill, adding, "I mean that if I 'ad it
+bad I would get off to blighty, but my case was only a light one, not
+so bad as Ted Vittle. 'E's not back yet, maybe it's a trip across the
+Channel for 'im. 'E was real bad when 'e walked down with me to
+Mazingarbe. I was rotten too, couldn't smoke. It was sit down and rest
+for fifteen minutes then walk for five. Mazingarbe is only a mile and
+an 'arf from the dressing-station and it took us three hours to get
+down; from there we took the motor-ambulance to the clearing hospital.
+There was a 'ot bath there and we were put to bed in a big 'ouse,
+blankets, plenty of them and a good bed. 'Twas a grand place to kip
+in. Bad as I was, I noticed that."</p>
+
+<p>"No stand-to at dawn?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Two 'ours before dawn we 'ad to stand-to in our blankets, matey,"
+said Bill. "The Germans began to shell the blurry place and 'twas up
+to us to 'op it. We went dozens of us to the rear in a 'bus. Shook us!
+We were rattled about like tins on cats' tails and dumped down at
+another 'orsp about breakfast time. My <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page275" name="page275">(p. 275)</a></span> tempratoor was up
+more than ever there; I almost burst the thremometur. And Ted! Blimey,
+yer should 'ave seen Ted! Lost to the wide, 'e was. 'E could 'ardly
+speak; but 'e managed to give me his mother's address and I was to
+write 'ome a long letter to 'er when 'e went West."</p>
+
+<p>"Allowed to 'ave peace in that place! No fear; the Boches began to
+shell us, and they sent over fifty shells in 'arf an 'our. All troops
+were ordered to leave the town and we went with the rest to a 'orsp
+under canvas in X&mdash;&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>"A nice quiet place X&mdash;&mdash; was, me and Ted was along with two others in
+a bell-tent and 'ere we began to get better. Our clothes were taken
+from us, all my stuff and two packets of fags and put into a locker. I
+don't know what I was thinking of when I let the fags go. There was
+one feller as had two francs in his trousers' pocket when 'e gave 'is
+trousers in and 'e got the wrong trousers back. 'E discovered that one
+day when 'e was goin' to send the R.A.M.C. orderly out for beer for
+all 'ands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Twas a 'ungry place X. We were eight days in bed and all we got was
+milk and once or twice a hegg. Damned little heggs they were;
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page276" name="page276">(p. 276)</a>
+</span> they must 'ave been laid by tomtits in a 'urry. I got into
+trouble once; I climbed up the tent-pole one night just to 'ave a song
+on my own, and when I was on the top down comes the whole thing and I
+landed on Ted Vittle's bread basket. 'Is tempratoor was up to a
+'undred and one point five next mornin'. The doctor didn't 'arf give
+me a look when 'e 'eard about me bein' up the pole."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he a nice fellow, the doctor?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not 'arf, 'e wasn't," said Bill. "When I got into my old uniform 'e
+looked 'ard at my cap. You remember it boys; 'twas more like a
+ragman's than a soldier of the King's. Then 'e arst me: ''Ave yer seen
+much war?' 'Not 'arf, I 'avent,' I told him. 'I thought so,' 'e said,
+'judgin' by yer cap.' And 'e told the orderly to indent me for a brand
+new uniform. And 'e gave me two francs to get a drink when I was
+leavin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Soft-hearted fellow," said Goliath.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he!" remarked Bill. "Yer should be there when 'e came in one
+mornin'."</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow d'ye feel?" he asked Ted Vittle.</p>
+
+<p>"Not fit at all, sir," says Ted.</p>
+
+<p>"Well carry on," said the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>I <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page277" name="page277">(p. 277)</a>
+</span> looked at Ted, Ted looked at me and 'e tipped me the wink.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ow d'ye feel," said the doctor to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Not fit at all," I answers.</p>
+
+<p>"Back to duties," 'e said and my jaw dropped with a click like a rifle
+bolt. 'Twas ten minutes after that when 'e gave me the two francs."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Spud 'Iggles, 'im that was wounded at Givenchy;" Bill informed
+us after he had lit a fresh cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ole Spud!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Ows Spud?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not so bad, yer know," said Bill, answering our last question. "'E's
+got a job."</p>
+
+<p>"A good one?" I queried.</p>
+
+<p>"Not 'arf," Bill said. "'E goes round with the motor car that goes to
+places where soldiers are billeted and gathers up all the ammunition,
+bully beef tins, tins of biscuits and everything worth anything that's
+left behind&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bill Teake. Is Bill Teake there?" asked a corporal at the door of the
+dug-out.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm 'ere, old Sawbones," said Bill, "wot d'ye want me for?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's your turn on sentry," said the corporal.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! blimey, that's done it!" grumbled Bill.
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page278" name="page278">(p. 278)</a>
+</span> "I feel my
+tempratoor goin' up again. It's always some damn fatigue or another in
+this cursed place. I wonder when will I 'ave the luck to go sick
+again."</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page279" name="page279">(p. 279)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Women of France</span></h3>
+
+<div class="left30 smsize">
+<p>Lonely and still the village lies,<br>
+The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.<br>
+The road is straight as the bullet flies,<br>
+And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>Shadowy forms creep through the night,<br>
+Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;<br>
+A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,<br>
+A scream as a woman's soul takes flight<br>
+Through the quivering morning air.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="p2">We had been working all morning in a cornfield near an <i>estaminet</i> on
+the La Bassée Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt
+very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a
+sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by
+drinking white wine in an <i>estaminet</i> by the La Bassée Road.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we
+entered.</p>
+
+<p>"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor
+explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on
+sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approach
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page280" name="page280">(p. 280)</a>
+</span> of a
+sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the
+trench."</p>
+
+<p>"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant
+looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and
+the back room empty."</p>
+
+<p>Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear,
+where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating
+over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor
+peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a
+fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over
+sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from
+the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript
+pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of
+bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long
+rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.</p>
+
+<p>"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.</p>
+
+<p>I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris,
+speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work
+since five o'clock that morning.</p>
+
+<p>"The <span class="pagenum"><a id="page281" name="page281">(p. 281)</a>
+</span> Germans will never get back here again unless as
+prisoners."</p>
+
+<p>"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz
+like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten,
+our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip!
+pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing
+can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. <i>Plusieurs
+morts, plusieurs blessés.</i> Run! Some go right, some left. The second
+shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes
+the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as
+the 75."</p>
+
+<p>"What about the gun that sent this over?"</p>
+
+<p>Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the
+gigantic shells with which the Germans raked La Bassée Road in the
+early stages of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for
+destruction had not the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A
+light shrapnel shell is more deadly to a marching platoon than the
+biggest "Jack Johnson." The shell <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page282" name="page282">(p. 282)</a></span> relic before us, the
+remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, was cast on by a shell in the field
+heavy with ripening corn and rye, opposite the doorway. When peace
+breaks out, and holidays to the scene of the great war become
+fashionable, the woman of the <i>estaminet</i> is going to sell the
+percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many mementos of the
+great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way with a long purse,
+"après la guerre." At present a needy urchin will sell the nose-cap of
+a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and horses, for a few
+sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely with needy French
+urchins who live near the firing line.</p>
+
+<p>"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the
+clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which
+lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But
+compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes
+boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out
+before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in
+shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes
+silently, it's quicker than its own sound."</p>
+
+<p>"Do <span class="pagenum"><a id="page283" name="page283">(p. 283)</a>
+</span> you work here?" asked Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"I work here," said the potato-peeler.</p>
+
+<p>"In a coal-mine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."</p>
+
+<p>"Always?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for
+seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" I ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Pryor. "Seen some fighting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," said the man, "not too much." His eyes lit up as with fire
+and he sent a potato stripped clean of its jacket up to the roof but
+with such precision that it dropped down straight into the bucket.
+"First we went south and the Germans came across up north. 'Twas turn
+about and up like mad; perched on taxis, limbers, ambulance waggons,
+anything. We got into battle near Paris. The Boches came in clusters,
+they covered the ground like flies on the dead at Souchez. The 75's
+came into work there. 'Twas wonderful. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Men were
+cut down, wiped out in hundreds. When the gun was useless&mdash;guns had
+short lives and glorious lives there&mdash;a <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page284" name="page284">(p. 284)</a></span> new one came into
+play and killed, killed, until it could stand the strain no longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Much hand-to-hand fighting?" asked Pryor.</p>
+
+<p>"The bayonet! Yes!" The potato-peeler thrust his knife through a
+potato and slit it in two. "The Germans said 'Eugh! Eugh! Eugh!' when
+we went for them like this." He made several vicious prods at an
+imaginary enemy. "And we cut them down."</p>
+
+<p>He paused as if at a loss for words, and sent his knife whirling into
+the air where it spun at an alarming rate. I edged my chair nearer the
+door, but the potato-peeler, suddenly standing upright, caught the
+weapon by the haft as it circled and bent to lift a fresh potato.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that for?" asked Pryor, pointing to a sword wreathed in a
+garland of flowers, tattooed on the man's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"The rapier," said the potato-peeler. "I'm a fencer, a master-fencer;
+fenced in Paris and several places."</p>
+
+<p>The woman of the house, the man's wife, had been buzzing round like a
+bee, droning out in an incoherent voice as she served the customers.
+Now she came up to the master-fencer, looked at him in the face for a
+second, and then looked at <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page285" name="page285">(p. 285)</a>
+</span> the bucket. The sweat oozed from
+her face like water from a sponge.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, and get the work done," she said to her husband, then she
+turned to us. "You're keeping him from work," she stuttered, "you two,
+chattering like parrots. Allez-vous en! Allez-vous en!"</p>
+
+<p>We left the house of the potato-peeler and returned to our digging.
+The women of France are indeed wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Bill came up to me as I was sitting on the banquette. In
+his hand was an English paper that I had just been reading and in his
+eye was wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"The 'ole geeser's fyce is in this 'ere thing again," he said
+scornfully. "Blimy! it's like the bad weather, it's everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose face do you refer to?" I asked my friend.</p>
+
+<p>"This Jimace," was the answer and Bill pointed to the photo of a
+well-known society lady who was shown in the act of escorting a
+wounded soldier along a broad avenue of trees that tapered away to a
+point where an English country mansion showed like a doll's house in
+the distance. "Every pyper I open she's in it; if she's not makin'
+socks for poor Tommies at <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page286" name="page286">(p. 286)</a>
+</span> the front, she's tyin' bandages on
+wounded Tommies at 'ome."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing wrong in that," I said, noting the sarcasm in Bill's
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"S'pose its natural for 'er to let everybody know what she does, like
+a 'en that lays a negg," my mate answered. "She's on this pyper or
+that pyper every day. She's learnin' nursin' one day, learnin' to
+drive an ambulance the next day, she doesn't carry a powder puff in
+'er vanity bag at present&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Who said so?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's 'ere in black and white," said Bill. "'Er vanity bag 'as given
+place to a respirator, an' instead of a powder puff she now carries an
+antiskeptic bandage. It makes me sick; it's all the same with women in
+England. 'Ere's another picture called 'Bathin' as usual.' A dozen of
+girls out in the sea (jolly good legs some of 'em 'as, too) 'avin' a
+bit of a frisky. Listen what it says: 'Despite the trying times the
+English girls are keepin' a brave 'eart&mdash;&mdash;' Oh! 'ang it, Pat, they're
+nothin' to the French girls, them birds at 'ome."</p>
+
+<p>"What about that girl you knew at St. Albans?" I asked. "You remember
+how she slid down the banisters and made toffee."</p>
+
+<p>"She <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page287" name="page287">(p. 287)</a>
+</span> wasn't no class, you know," said Bill.</p>
+
+<p>"She never answered the verse you sent from Givenchy, I suppose," I
+remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did she answer your letter saying she reciprocated your sentiments?"
+I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Reshiperate your grandmother, Pat!" roared Bill. "Nark that language,
+I say. Speak that I can understand you. Wait a minute till I
+reshiperate that," he suddenly exclaimed pressing a charge into his
+rifle magazine and curving over the parapet. He sent five shots in the
+direction from which he supposed the sniper who had been potting at us
+all day, was firing. Then he returned to his argument.</p>
+
+<p>"You've seen that bird at the farm in Mazingarbe?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I replied. "Pryor said that her ankles were abnormally thick."</p>
+
+<p>"Pryor's a fool," Bill exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"But they really looked thick&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're a bigger fool than 'im!"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know you had fallen in love with the girl," I said "How did
+it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blimey, I'm not in love," said my mate, "but I like a girl with a
+good 'eart. Twas out in <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page288" name="page288">(p. 288)</a>
+</span> the horchard in the farm I first met
+'er. I was out pullin' apples, pinchin' them if you like to say so,
+and I was shakin' the apples from the branches. I had to keep my eyes
+on the farm to see that nobody seen me while I shook. It takes a devil
+of a lot of strength to rumble apples off a tree when you're shakin' a
+trunk that's stouter than the bread basket of a Bow butcher. All at
+once I saw the girl of the farm comin' runnin' at me with a stick.
+Round to the other side of the tree I ran like lightnin', and after me
+she comes. Then round to the other side went I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Which side?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The side she wasn't on," said Bill. "After me she came and round to
+her side I 'opped&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Who was on the other side now?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I took good care that she was always on the other side until I saw
+what she was up to with the stick," said Bill. "But d'yer know what
+the stick was for? 'Twas to help me to bring down the apples. Savve.
+They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.</p>
+
+<p>The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every
+shell-shattered village <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page289" name="page289">(p. 289)</a>
+</span> from Souchez to the sea! What
+labours they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees
+and the Church of &mdash;&mdash;, where the woman nearest the German lines sells
+rum under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace
+and power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men
+destroy and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one
+villages which fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their
+day's work under shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to
+pounce on them at every corner.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture
+when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again
+when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same
+field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that
+the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she
+replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked
+"Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the
+trenches nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French
+have gone further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out
+and trench but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiers
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page290" name="page290">(p. 290)</a></span>
+have come and my husband had to go away," she says. "He went
+south beyond Souchez, and now he's dead."</p>
+
+<p>The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and
+bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter
+when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers
+were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.</p>
+
+<p>A woman sells <i>café noir</i> near Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks
+that was once her home. Once it was <i>café au lait</i> and it cost four
+sous a cup, she only charges three sous now since her cow got shot in
+the stomach outside her ramshackle <i>estaminet</i>. Along with a few mates
+I was in the place two months ago and a bullet entered the door and
+smashed the coffee pot; the woman now makes coffee in a biscuit tin.</p>
+
+<p>The road from our billet to the firing line is as uncomfortable as a
+road under shell fire can be, but what time we went that way nightly
+as working parties, we met scores of women carrying furniture away
+from a deserted village behind the trenches. The French military
+authorities forbade civilians to live there and drove them back to
+villages that were free from danger. But nightly they came back,
+contrary to <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page291" name="page291">(p. 291)</a>
+</span> orders, and carried away property to their
+temporary homes. Sometimes, I suppose they took goods that were not
+entirely their own, but at what risk! One or two got killed nightly
+and many were wounded. However, they still persisted in coming back
+and carrying away beds, tables, mirrors and chairs in all sorts of
+queer conveyances, barrows, perambulators and light spring-carts drawn
+by strong intelligent dogs.</p>
+
+<p>"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page292" name="page292">(p. 292)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">In the Watches of the Night</span></h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+"What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,<br>
+And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;<br>
+I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.<br>
+I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made<br>
+For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,<br>
+As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.<br>
+"But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.<br>
+I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er<br>
+The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,<br>
+"Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="p2">The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French
+summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with
+star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on
+the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away
+on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth
+where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched
+the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the
+star-shells rose <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page293" name="page293">(p. 293)</a>
+</span> and fell in brilliant riot above the
+battle-line that disfigured the green meadows between my trench and
+Ypres, and out on my front a thousand yards away were the German
+trenches with the dead wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the
+spaces between. The dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay
+silent in the dun shadows of the parados.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our
+corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the
+tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside
+the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm,
+sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen
+floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the
+night air.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."</p>
+
+<p>"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and
+gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have
+the working parties come up yet?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."</p>
+
+<p>They <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page294" name="page294">(p. 294)</a>
+</span> came along the trench, about two hundred strong,
+engineers and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed
+wire, wooden supports, &amp;c. They were going out digging on a new sap
+and putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished,
+would bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy.
+Needless to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they
+were digging out towards our lines.</p>
+
+<p>The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the
+banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"We're reserves there," he answered. "It's always working-parties; at
+night and at day. Sweeping gutters and picking papers and bits of stew
+from the street. Is it quiet here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very quiet," I answered. "We've only had five killed and nine wounded
+in six days. How is your regiment getting along?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not so bad," said the man; "some go west at times, but it's what
+one has to expect out here."</p>
+
+<p>The working party were edging off, and some of the men were clambering
+over the parapet.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi! Ginger!" someone said in a loud whisper, <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page295" name="page295">(p. 295)</a></span> "Ginger
+Weeson; come along at once!"</p>
+
+<p>The man on the banquette got to his feet, put out his cigarette and
+placed the fag-end in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he
+returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette
+would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the
+parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My
+hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and was
+immediately asleep.</p>
+
+<p>I was called again at one, three-quarters of an hour later.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" I asked the corporal who wakened me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there's a party going down to the rear for rations," I was told.
+"So you've got to take up sentry-go till stand-to; that'll be for an
+hour or so. You're better out in the air now for its beginning to
+stink everywhere, but the dug-out is the worst place of all."</p>
+
+<p>So saying, the corporal entered the dug-out and stretched himself on
+the floor; he was going to have a sleep despite his mean opinion of
+the shelter.</p>
+
+<p>The stench gathers itself in the early morning, in
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page296" name="page296">(p. 296)</a>
+</span> that
+chill hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze
+from the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and
+well-nigh tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed
+with the stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as
+it enters your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it
+crawl up your nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of
+the throat through the windpipe and into the stomach.</p>
+
+<p>I leant my arms on the sandbags and looked across the field; I fancied
+I could see men moving in the darkness, but when the star-shells went
+up there was no sign of movement out by the web of barbed-wire
+entanglements. The new sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky
+white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep
+yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising
+eerie from the space between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing
+"Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting,
+deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was
+hit I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then
+intense silence wrapped up everything <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page297" name="page297">(p. 297)</a></span> as in a cloak. But
+only for a moment. The enemy must have heard the cry for a dozen
+star-shells shot towards us and frittered away in sparks by our
+barbed-wire entanglements. There followed a second of darkness and
+then an explosion right over the sap. The enemy were firing shrapnel
+shells on the working party. Three, four shells exploded
+simultaneously out in front. I saw dark forms rise up and come rushing
+into shelter. There was a crunching, a stumbling and a gasping as if
+for air. Boots struck against the barbed entanglements, and like
+trodden mice, the wires squeaked in protest. I saw a man, outlined in
+black against the glow of a star-shell, struggling madly as he
+endeavoured to loose his clothing from the barbs on which it caught.
+There was a ripping and tearing of tunics and trousers.... A shell
+burst over the men again and I saw two fall; one got up and clung to
+the arm of a mate, the other man crawled on his belly towards the
+parapet.</p>
+
+<p>In their haste they fell over the parapet into the trench, several of
+them. Many had gone back by the sap, I could see them racing along
+crouching as they ran. Out in front several forms were bending over
+the ground attending <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page298" name="page298">(p. 298)</a>
+</span> to the wounded. From my left the
+message came "Stretcher-bearers at the double." And I passed it along.</p>
+
+<p>Two men who had scrambled over the parapet were sitting on my
+banquette, one with a scratched forehead, the other with a bleeding
+finger. Their mates were attending to them binding up the wounds.</p>
+
+<p>"Many hurt?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A lot 'ave copped a packet," said the man with the bleeding finger.</p>
+
+<p>"We never 'eard the blurry things come, did we?" he asked his mates.</p>
+
+<p>"Never 'eard nothin', we didn't till the thing burst over us," said a
+voice from the trench. "I was busy with Ginger&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ginger Weeson?" I enquired.</p>
+
+<p>"That's 'im," was the reply. "Did yer 'ear 'im yell? Course yer did;
+ye'd 'ave 'eard 'im over at La Bassée."</p>
+
+<p>"What happened to him?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"A bullet through 'is belly," said the voice. "When 'e roared I put my
+'and on 'is mouth and 'e gave me such a punch. I was nearly angry, and
+'im in orful pain. Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like
+his one."</p>
+
+<p>Their <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page299" name="page299">(p. 299)</a>
+</span> wounds dressed, the men went away; others came by
+carrying out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on
+the shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth
+knocked away.</p>
+
+<p>The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the
+morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died
+in hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived
+when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for
+us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine
+breakfast.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page300" name="page300">(p. 300)</a></span></h2>
+
+<h3>ROMANCE</h3>
+
+<p class="left30 smsize">
+The young recruit is apt to think<br>
+ Of war as a romance;<br>
+But he'll find its boots and bayonets<br>
+ When he's somewhere out in France.</p>
+
+
+
+<p class="p2">When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from &mdash;&mdash; his
+heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he
+is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the
+branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew,
+hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are
+thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring,
+murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool,
+mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the
+roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and
+on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into
+the land of mystery, the Unknown.</p>
+
+<p>In <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page301" name="page301">(p. 301)</a>
+</span> front is the fighting line, where trench after trench,
+wayward as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day
+you can mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and
+puffs of smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of
+star-shells and lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with
+the lights of death.</p>
+
+<p>Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is
+a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken
+homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of
+yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last
+autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.</p>
+
+<p>Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead,
+and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the
+skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle
+in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the
+wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In
+it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery,
+the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to
+the heart of the young soldier.</p>
+
+<p>I <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page302" name="page302">(p. 302)</a>
+</span> have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed
+with the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the
+heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and
+drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of
+evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses,
+gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.</p>
+
+<p>Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and
+catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame.
+Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of
+smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of
+bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.</p>
+
+<p>Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly
+hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of
+God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the
+Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.</p>
+
+<p>He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can
+never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening
+sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page303" name="page303">(p. 303)</a></span> ringing of
+church bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to
+evensong; the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the
+harness of war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the
+darkness; the stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky;
+the trees by the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as
+if listening and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm
+night, half moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages
+with their chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling
+engines and dusty trucks.</p>
+
+<p>There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the
+crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects
+every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing
+line.</p>
+
+<p>Ahead, the star-shells, constellations of green, electric white, and
+blue, light the scenes of war. From the ridge of the hill, downwards
+towards an illimitable plain, the road takes its way through a
+ghost-world of ruined homes where dark and ragged masses of broken
+roof and wall stand out in blurred outlines against indistinct and
+formless backgrounds.</p>
+
+<p>A gun is belching forth murder and sudden death <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page304" name="page304">(p. 304)</a></span> from an
+emplacement on the right; in a spinney on the left a battery is noisy
+and the flashes from there light up the cluster of trees that stand
+huddled together as if for warmth. Vehicles of war lumber along the
+road, field-kitchens, gun-limbers, water-carts, motor-ambulances, and
+Red Cross waggons. Men march towards us, men in brown, bearing rifles
+and swords, and pass us in the night. A shell bursts near, and there
+is a sound as of a handful of peas being violently flung to the
+ground.</p>
+
+<p>For the night we stop in a village where the branches of the trees are
+shrapnelled clean of their leaves, and where all the rafters of the
+houses are bared of their covering of red tiles. A wind may rise when
+you're dropping off to sleep on the stone flags of a cellar, and then
+you can hear the door of the house and of nearly every house in the
+place creaking on its hinges. The breeze catches the telephone wires
+which run from the artillery at rear to their observation stations,
+and the wires sing like light shells travelling through space.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn you waken to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at
+aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from
+exploding <span class="pagenum">
+<a id="page305" name="page305">(p. 305)</a>
+</span> shells, swish to the earth with a sound like
+burning magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a
+skull, if any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to
+remain in shelter until the row is over.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the birds are merry on the roofs; you can hear them sing
+defiantly at the lone cat that watches them from the grassy spot which
+was once a street. Spiders' webs hang over the doorways, many flies
+have come to an untimely end in the glistening snares, poor little
+black, helpless things. Here and there lies a broken crucifix and a
+torn picture of the Holy Family, the shrines that once stood at the
+street corners are shapeless heaps of dust and weeds and the village
+church is in ruins.</p>
+
+<p>No man is allowed to walk in the open by day; a German observation
+balloon, a big banana of a thing, with ends pointing downwards stands
+high over the earth ten kilometres away and sees all that takes place
+in the streets.</p>
+
+<p>There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings
+where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this
+village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.</p>
+
+<p>How fine it is to leave the trenches at night after
+<span class="pagenum"><a id="page306" name="page306">(p. 306)</a>
+</span> days of
+innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is
+good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore
+and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife,
+the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn,
+with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all
+the strain of getting there.</p>
+
+<p>Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light
+a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a
+chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The
+flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the
+roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet
+one another inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"</p>
+
+<p>Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting.
+Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when
+the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a
+rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.</p>
+
+<p>There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.</p>
+
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+<p><a id="note001" name="note001"></a>
+<b>[Footnote 1:</b> It was at St. Albans that we underwent most of our
+training.]
+<a href="#notetag001">(back)</a></p>
+
+<p><a id="note002" name="note002"></a>
+<b>[Footnote 2:</b> Fiancée.]
+<a href="#notetag002">(back)</a></p>
+
+<p><a id="note003" name="note003"></a>
+<b>[Footnote 3:</b> Rifle.]
+<a href="#notetag003">(back)</a></p>
+
+<p><a id="note004" name="note004"></a>
+<b>[Footnote 4:</b> The London Irish charged over this ground later, and
+entered Loos on Saturday, 25th September, 1915.]
+<a href="#notetag004">(back)</a></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Red Horizon
+
+Author: Patrick MacGill
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2006 [EBook #19710]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED HORIZON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sigal Alon, Christine P. Travers and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.
+The original spelling has been retained.
+
+Page 17: "some with faces turned upwards,"
+ the word "turned" was crossed
+Page 234: Added a round bracket.
+ (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.)]
+
+
+
+
+ THE RED HORIZON
+
+
+
+
+ BY THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+ CHILDREN OF THE DEAD END.
+ The Autobiography of a Navvy.
+ Ten Thousand Printed within Ten
+ Days of Publication.
+
+ THE RAT-PIT. _Third Edition._
+
+ THE AMATEUR ARMY.
+ The Experiences of a Soldier in the Making.
+
+ THE GREAT PUSH.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RED HORIZON
+
+ BY
+
+ PATRICK MACGILL
+
+
+ WITH A FOREWORD BY
+ VISCOUNT ESHER G. C. B.
+
+
+
+
+ TORONTO
+ McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD &
+ STEWART, LIMITED
+
+
+ LONDON
+ HERBERT JENKINS, LIMITED
+ 1916
+
+
+
+
+ THE ANCHOR PRESS, LTD., TIPTREE, ESSEX.
+
+
+
+
+ TO
+ THE LONDON IRISH
+ TO THE SPIRIT OF THOSE WHO FIGHT AND TO
+ THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO HAVE PASSED AWAY
+ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+_To_ PATRICK MACGILL,
+ Rifleman No. 3008, London Irish.
+
+
+DEAR PATRICK MACGILL,
+
+There is open in France a wonderful exhibition of the work of the many
+gallant artists who have been serving in the French trenches through
+the long months of the War.
+
+There is not a young writer, painter, or sculptor of French blood, who
+is not risking his life for his country. Can we make the same proud
+boast?
+
+When I recruited you into the London Irish--one of those splendid
+regiments that London has sent to Sir John French, himself an
+Irishman--it was with gratitude and pride.
+
+You had much to give us. The rare experiences of your boyhood, your
+talents, your brilliant hopes for the future. Upon all these the
+Western hills and loughs of your native Donegal seemed to have a prior
+claim. But you gave them to London and to our London Territorials. It
+was an example and a symbol.
+
+The London Irish will be proud of their young artist in words, and he
+will for ever be proud of the London Irish Regiment, its deeds and
+valour, to which he has dedicated such great gifts. May God preserve
+you.
+
+ Yours sincerely,
+
+ ESHER.
+
+ _President_ County of London
+
+Callander. Territorial Association.
+
+ _16th September, 1915._
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER PAGE
+
+ I. THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT 13
+
+ II. SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE 19
+
+ III. OUR FRENCH BILLETS 30
+
+ IV. THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES 43
+
+ V. FIRST BLOOD 49
+
+ VI. IN THE TRENCHES 69
+
+ VII. BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH 88
+
+ VIII. TERRORS OF THE NIGHT 110
+
+ IX. THE DUG-OUT BANQUET 116
+
+ X. A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE 130
+
+ XI. THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY 138
+
+ XII. THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP 149
+
+ XIII. A NIGHT OF HORROR 175
+
+ XIV. A FIELD OF BATTLE 200
+
+ XV. THE REACTION 209
+
+ XVI. PEACE AND WAR 216
+
+ XVII. EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT 228
+
+ XVIII. THE COVERING PARTY 249
+
+ XIX. SOUVENIR HUNTERS 264
+
+ XX. THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 279
+
+ XXI. IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT 292
+
+ XXII. ROMANCE 300
+
+
+
+
+THE RED HORIZON (p. 013)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 1
+
+THE PASSING OF THE REGIMENT
+
+ I wish the sea were not so wide
+ That parts me from my love;
+ I wish the things men do below
+ Were known to God above.
+
+ I wish that I were back again
+ In the glens of Donegal;
+ They'll call me coward if I return,
+ But a hero if I fall.
+
+ "Is it better to be a living coward,
+ Or thrice a hero dead?"
+ "It's better to go to sleep, my lad,"
+ The Colour Sergeant said.
+
+
+Night, a grey troubled sky without moon or stars. The shadows lay on
+the surface of the sea, and the waves moaned beneath the keel of the
+troopship that was bearing us away on the most momentous journey of
+our lives. The hour was about ten. Southampton lay astern; by dawn we
+should be in France, and a day nearer the war for which we had trained
+so long in the cathedral city of St. Albans.
+
+I had never realized my mission as a rifleman so acutely before. (p. 014)
+
+"To the war! to the war!" I said under my breath. "Out to France and
+the fighting!" The thought raised a certain expectancy in my mind.
+"Did I think three years ago that I should ever be a soldier?" I asked
+myself. "Now that I am, can I kill a man; run a bayonet through his
+body; right through, so that the point, blood red and cruelly keen,
+comes out at the back? I'll not think of it."
+
+But the thoughts could not be chased away. The month was March, and
+the night was bitterly cold on deck. A sharp penetrating wind swept
+across the sea and sung eerily about the dun-coloured funnel. With my
+overcoat buttoned well up about my neck and my Balaclava helmet pulled
+down over my ears I paced along the deck for quite an hour; then,
+shivering with cold, I made my way down to the cabin where my mates
+had taken up their quarters. The cabin was low-roofed and lit with two
+electric lamps. The corners receded into darkness where the shadows
+clustered thickly. The floor was covered with sawdust, packs and
+haversacks hung from pegs in the walls; a gun-rack stood in the centre
+of the apartment; butts down and muzzles in line, the rifles (p. 015)
+stretched in a straight row from stern to cabin stairs. On the benches
+along the sides the men took their seats, each man under his
+equipment, and by right of equipment holding the place for the length
+of the voyage.
+
+My mates were smoking, and the whole place was dim with tobacco smoke.
+In the thick haze a man three yards away was invisible.
+
+"Yes," said a red-haired sergeant, with a thick blunt nose, and a
+broken row of tobacco-stained teeth; "we're off for the doin's now."
+
+"Blurry near time too," said a Cockney named Spud Higgles. "I thought
+we weren't goin' out at all."
+
+"You'll be there soon enough, my boy," said the sergeant. "It's not
+all fun, I'm tellin' you, out yonder. I have a brother----"
+
+"The same bruvver?" asked Spud Higgles.
+
+"What d'ye mean?" inquired the sergeant.
+
+"Ye're always speakin' about that bruvver of yours," said Spud. "'E's
+only in Ally Sloper's Cavalry; no man's ever killed in that mob."
+
+"H'm!" snorted the sergeant. "The A.S.C. runs twice as much risk as a
+line regiment."
+
+"That's why ye didn't join it then, is it?" asked the Cockney. (p. 016)
+
+"Hold yer beastly tongue!" said the sergeant.
+
+"Well, it's like this," said Spud----
+
+"Hold your tongue," snapped the sergeant, and Spud relapsed into
+silence.
+
+After a moment he turned to me where I sat. "It's not only Germans
+that I'll look for in the trenches," he said, "when I have my rifle
+loaded and get close to that sergeant----"
+
+"You'll put a bullet through him"; I said, "just as you vowed you'd do
+to me some time ago. You were going to put a bullet through the
+sergeant-major, the company cook, the sanitary inspector, the army
+tailor and every single man in the regiment. Are you going to destroy
+the London Irish root and branch?" I asked.
+
+"Well, there's some in it as wants a talking to at times," said Spud.
+"'Ave yer got a fag to spare?"
+
+Somebody sung a ragtime song, and the cabin took up the chorus. The
+boys bound for the fields of war were light-hearted and gay. A journey
+from the Bank to Charing Cross might be undertaken with a more serious
+air: it looked for all the world as if they were merely out on (p. 017)
+some night frolic, determined to throw the whole mad vitality of youth
+into the escapade.
+
+"What will it be like out there?" I asked myself. The war seemed very
+near now. "What will it be like, but above all, how shall I conduct
+myself in the trenches? Maybe I shall be afraid--cowardly. But no! If
+I can't bear the discomforts and terrors which thousands endure daily
+I'm not much good. But I'll be all right. Vanity will carry me through
+where courage fails. It would be such a grand thing to become
+conspicuous by personal daring. Suppose the men were wavering in an
+attack, and then I rushed out in front and shouted: 'Boys, we've got
+to get this job through'--But, I'm a fool. Anyhow I'll lie on the
+floor and have a sleep."
+
+Most of the men were now in a deep slumber. Despite an order against
+smoking, given a quarter of an hour before, a few of my mates had the
+"fags" lit, and as the lamps had been turned off the cigarettes glowed
+red through the gloom. The sleepers lay in every conceivable position,
+some with faces turned upwards, jaws hanging loosely and tongues
+stretching over the lower lips; some with knees curled up and (p. 018)
+heads bent, frozen stiff in the midst of a grotesque movement, some
+with hands clasped tightly over their breasts and others with their
+fingers bent as if trying to clutch at something beyond their reach. A
+few slumbered with their heads on their rifles, more had their heads
+on the sawdust-covered floor, and these sent the sawdust fluttering
+whenever they breathed. The atmosphere of the place was close and
+almost suffocating. Now and again someone coughed and spluttered as if
+he were going to choke. Perspiration stood out in little beads on the
+temples of the sleepers, and they turned round from time to time to
+raise their Balaclava helmets higher over their eyes.
+
+And so the night wore on. What did they dream of lying there? I
+wondered. Of their journey and the perils that lay before them? Of the
+glory or the horror of the war? Of their friends whom, perhaps, they
+would never see again? It was impossible to tell.
+
+For myself I tried not to think too clearly of what I might see
+to-morrow or the day after. The hour was now past midnight and a new
+day had come. What did it hold for us all? Nobody knew--I fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II (p. 019)
+
+SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
+
+ When I come back to England,
+ And times of Peace come round,
+ I'll surely have a shilling,
+ And may be have a pound;
+ I'll walk the whole town over,
+ And who shall say me nay,
+ For I'm a British soldier
+ With a British soldier's pay.
+
+
+The Rest Camp a city of innumerable bell-tents, stood on the summit of
+a hill overlooking the town and the sea beyond. We marched up from the
+quay in the early morning, followed the winding road paved with
+treacherous cobbles that glory in tripping unwary feet, and sweated to
+the summit of the hill. Here a new world opened to our eyes: a canvas
+city, the mushroom growth of our warring times lay before us; tent
+after tent, large and small, bell-tent and marquee in accurate
+alignment.
+
+It took us two hours to march to our places; we grounded arms at the
+word of command and sank on our packs wearily happy. True, a few (p. 020)
+had fallen out; they came in as we rested and awkwardly fell into
+position. They were men who had been sea-sick the night before. We
+were too excited to rest for long; like dogs in a new locality we were
+presently nosing round looking for food. Two hours march in full
+marching order makes men hungry, and hungry men are ardent explorers.
+The dry and wet canteens faced one another, and each was capable of
+accommodating a hundred men. Never were canteens crowded so quickly,
+never have hundreds of the hungry and drouthy clamoured so eagerly for
+admission as on that day. But time worked marvels; at the end of an
+hour we fell in again outside a vast amount of victuals, and the
+sea-sickness of the previous night, and the strain of the morning's
+march were things over which now we could be humorously reminiscent.
+
+Sheepskin jackets, the winter uniform of the trenches, were served out
+to us, and all were tried on. They smelt of something chemical and
+unpleasant, but were very warm and quite polar in appearance.
+
+"Wish my mother could see me now," Bill the Cockney remarked. "My, she
+wouldn't think me 'alf a cove. It's a balmy. I discovered the (p. 021)
+South Pole, I'm thinkin'."
+
+"More like you're up the pole!" some one cut in, then continued, "If
+they saw us at St. Albans[1] now! Bet yer they wouldn't say as we're
+for home service."
+
+ [Footnote 1: It was at St. Albans that we underwent
+ most of our training.]
+
+That night we slept in bell-tents, fourteen men in each, packed tight
+as herrings in a barrel, our feet festooning the base of the central
+pole, our heads against the lower rim of the canvas covering. Movement
+was almost an impossibility; a leg drawn tight in a cramp disturbed
+the whole fabric of slumbering humanity; the man who turned round came
+in for a shower of maledictions. In short, fourteen men lying down in
+a bell-tent cannot agree for very long, and a bell-tent is not a
+paradise of sympathy and mutual agreement.
+
+We rose early, washed and shaved, and found our way to the canteen, a
+big marquee under the control of the Expeditionary Force, where bread
+and butter, bacon and tea were served out for breakfast. Soldiers
+recovering from wounds worked as waiters, and told, when they had a
+moment to spare, of hair-breadth adventures in the trenches. They (p. 022)
+found us willing listeners; they had lived for long in the locality
+for which we were bound, and the whole raw regiment had a personal
+interest in the narratives of the wounded men. Bayonet-charges were
+discussed.
+
+"I've been in three of 'em," remarked a quiet, inoffensive-looking
+youth who was sweeping the floor of the room. "They were a bit 'ot,
+but nothin' much to write 'ome about. Not like a picture in the
+papers, none of them wasn't. Not much stickin' of men. You just ops
+out of your trench and rush and roar, like 'ell. The Germans fire and
+then run off, and it's all over."
+
+After breakfast feet were inspected by the medical officer. We sat
+down on our packs in the parade ground, took off our boots, and
+shivered with cold. The day was raw, the wind sharp and penetrating;
+we forgot that our sheepskins smelt vilely, and snuggled into them,
+glad of their warmth. The M.O. asked questions: "Do your boots pinch?"
+"Any blisters?" "Do you wear two pairs of socks?" &c., &c. Two
+thousand feet passed muster, and boots were put on again.
+
+The quartermaster's stores claimed our attention afterwards, and (p. 023)
+the attendants there were almost uncannily kind. "Are you sure you've
+got everything you want?" they asked us. "There mayn't be a chance to
+get fitted up after this." Socks, pull-throughs, overcoats, regimental
+buttons, badges, hats, tunics, oil-bottles, gloves, puttees, and laces
+littered the floor and were piled on the benches. We took what we
+required; no one superintended our selection.
+
+At St. Albans, where we had been turned into soldiers, we often stood
+for hours waiting until the quartermaster chose to give us a few
+inches of rifle-rag; here a full uniform could be obtained by picking
+it up. And our men were wise in selecting only necessities; they still
+remembered the march of the day before. All took sparingly and chose
+wisely. Fancy socks were passed by in silence, the homely woollen
+article, however, was in great demand. Bond Street was forgotten. The
+"nut" was a being of a past age, or, if he still existed, he was
+undergoing a complete transformation. Also he knew what socks were
+best for the trenches.
+
+At noon we were again ready to set out on our journey. A tin of
+bully-beef and six biscuits, hard as rocks, were given to each man (p. 024)
+prior to departure. Sheepskins were rolled into shape and fastened on
+the tops of our packs, and with this additional burden on the shoulder
+we set out from the rest-camp and took our course down the hill. On
+the way we met another regiment coming up to fill our place, to sleep
+in our bell-tents, pick from the socks which we had left behind, and
+to meet for once, the first and last time perhaps, a quartermaster who
+is really kind in the discharge of his professional duties. We marched
+off, and sang our way into the town and station. Our trucks were
+already waiting, an endless number they seemed lined up in the siding
+with an engine in front and rear, and the notice "Hommes 40 chevaux
+20" in white letters on every door. The night before I had slept in a
+bell-tent where a man's head pointed to each seam in the canvas,
+to-night it seemed as if I should sleep, if that were possible, in a
+still more crowded place, where we had now barely standing room, and
+where it was difficult to move about. But a much-desired relief came
+before the train started, spare waggons were shunted on, and a number
+of men were taken from each compartment and given room elsewhere. (p. 025)
+In fact, when we moved off we had only twenty-two soldiers in our
+place, quite enough though when our equipment, pack, rifle, bayonet,
+haversack, overcoat, and sheepskin tunic were taken into account.
+
+A bale of hay bound with wire was given to us for bedding, and
+bully-beef, slightly flavoured, and biscuits were doled out for
+rations. Some of us bought oranges, which were very dear, and paid
+three halfpence apiece for them; chocolate was also obtained, and one
+or two adventurous spirits stole out to the street, contrary to
+orders, and bought _cafe au lait_ and _pain et beurre_, drank the
+first in the _estaminet_, and came back to their trucks munching the
+latter.
+
+At noon we started out on the journey to the trenches, a gay party
+that found expression for its young vitality in song. The
+sliding-doors and the windows were open; those of us who were not
+looking out of the one were looking out of the other. To most it was a
+new country, a place far away in peace and a favourite resort of the
+wealthy; but now a country that called for any man, no matter how
+poor, if he were strong in person and willing to give his life away
+when called upon to do so. In fact, the poor man was having his first
+holiday on the Continent, and alas!--perhaps his last; and like (p. 026)
+cattle new to the pasture fields in Spring, we were surging full of
+life and animal gaiety.
+
+We were out on a great adventure, full of thrill and excitement; the
+curtain which surrounded our private life was being lifted; we stood
+on the threshold of momentous events. The cottagers who laboured by
+their humble homes stood for a moment and watched our train go by; now
+and again a woman shouted out a blessing on our mission, and ancient
+men seated by their doorsteps pointed in the direction our train was
+going, and drew lean, skinny hands across their throats, and yelled
+advice and imprecations in hoarse voices. We understood. The ancient
+warriors ordered us to cut the Kaiser's throat and envied us the job.
+
+The day wore on, the evening fell dark and stormy. A cold wind from
+somewhere swept in through chinks in windows and door, and chilled the
+compartment. The favourite song, _Uncle Joe_, with its catching
+chorus,
+
+ When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo,
+ Eberybody starts aswayin to and fro,
+ Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor,
+ Yellin' "Uncle Joe, give us more! give us more!"
+
+died away into a melancholy whimper. Sometimes one of the men would
+rise, open the window and look out at a passing hamlet, where (p. 027)
+lights glimmered in the houses and heavy waggons lumbered along the
+uneven streets, whistle an air into the darkness and close the window
+again. My mate had an electric torch--by its light we opened the
+biscuit box handed in when we left the station, and biscuits and
+bully-beef served to make a rather comfortless supper. At ten o'clock,
+when the torch refused to burn, and when we found ourselves short of
+matches, we undid the bale, spread out the hay on the floor of the
+truck and lay down, wearing our sheepskin tunics and placing our
+overcoats over our legs.
+
+We must have been asleep for some time. We were awakened by the
+stopping of the train and the sound of many voices outside. The door
+was opened and we looked out. An officer was hurrying by, shouting
+loudly, calling on us to come out. On a level space bordering the line
+a dozen or more fires were blazing merrily, and dixies with some
+boiling liquid were being carried backwards and forwards. A sergeant
+with a lantern, one of our own men, came to our truck and clambered
+inside.
+
+"Every man get his mess tin," he shouted. "Hurry up, the train's not
+stopping for long, and there's coffee and rum for us all." (p. 028)
+
+"I wish they'd let us sleep," someone who was fumbling in his pack
+remarked in a sleepy voice. "I'm not wantin' no rum and cawfee. Last
+night almost choked in the bell-tent, the night before sea-sick, and
+now wakened up for rum and cawfee. Blast it, I say!"
+
+We lined up two deep on the six-foot way, shivering in the bitter
+cold, our mess-tins in our hands. The fires by the railway threw a dim
+light on the scene, officers paraded up and down issuing orders,
+everybody seemed very excited, and nearly all were grumbling at being
+awakened from their beds in the horse-trucks. Many of our mates were
+now coming back with mess-tins steaming hot, and some would come to a
+halt for a moment and sip from their rum and coffee. Chilled to the
+bone we drew nearer to the coffee dixies. What a warm drink it would
+be! I counted the men in front--there were no more than twelve or
+thirteen before me. Ah! how cold! and hot coffee--suddenly a whistle
+was blown, then another.
+
+"Back to your places!" the order came, and never did a more unwilling
+party go back to bed. We did not learn the reason for the order; (p. 029)
+in the army few explanations are made. We shivered and slumbered till
+dawn, and rose to greet a cheerless day that offered us biscuits and
+bully-beef for breakfast and bully-beef and biscuits for dinner. At
+half-past four in the afternoon we came to a village and formed into
+column of route outside the railway station. Two hours march lay
+before us we learned, but we did not know where we were bound. As we
+waited ready to move off a sound, ominous and threatening, rumbled in
+from the distance and quivered by our ears. We were hearing the sound
+of guns!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III (p. 030)
+
+OUR FRENCH BILLETS
+
+ The fog is white on Glenties moors,
+ The road is grey from Glenties town,
+ Oh! lone grey road and ghost-white fog,
+ And ah! the homely moors of brown.
+
+
+The farmhouse where we were billeted reminded me strongly of my home
+in Donegal with its fields and dusky evenings and its spirit of
+brooding quiet. Nothing will persuade me, except perhaps the Censor,
+that it is not the home of Marie Claire, it so fits in with the
+description in her book.
+
+The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with
+a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very
+door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and
+dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every
+other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean
+dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and beer are
+excellent, the new-laid eggs are delightful for breakfast, the milk and
+butter, fresh and pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave (p. 031)
+about.
+
+We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the
+midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try
+to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens
+that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the
+barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces
+and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the
+farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on
+parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that
+scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and
+devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a
+man's nose--but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other
+time.
+
+We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March
+day. We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A
+additional load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of
+the sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to
+the firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened
+soldiers. The march to the barn billet was a miracle of endurance, (p. 032)
+but all lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when it was over.
+That night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw, our waterproof
+sheets under us and our blankets and sheepskins round our bodies. It
+was very comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might wish to remain
+awake to feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man can be.
+
+Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the scent
+of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had already
+flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere near a girl
+was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she worked; a
+cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and the dogs
+of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was one to be
+remembered.
+
+But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost new;
+we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been in our
+ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a day to
+come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard its
+summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the air,
+and sweeping round the barn where we lay, telling all who chanced (p. 033)
+to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered across the
+face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another: soldiers of
+many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of Australia, and Germany;
+of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand; Saxon, Gurkha, and Prussian,
+Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were engaged in deadly combat. The
+sound was the sound of guns--our farmhouse was within the range of the
+big artillery.
+
+We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and
+despite the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy.
+On one farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with
+roguish eyes and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as
+lean as some I have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as
+Granada beggars. They were very hungry and one ate a man's
+food-wallet and all it contained, comprising bread, army biscuits,
+canned beef, including can and other sundries. "I wish the animal had
+choked itself," my mate said when he discovered his loss. Personally I
+had a profound respect for any pig who voluntarily eats army (p. 034)
+biscuit.
+
+We got up about six o'clock every morning and proceeded to wash and
+shave. All used the one pump, sometimes five or six heads were stuck
+under it at the same moment, and an eager hand worked the handle, and
+poured a plentiful supply of very cold water on the close cropped
+pates. The panes of the farmhouse window made excellent shaving
+mirrors and, incidentally, I may mention that rifle-slings generally
+serve the purpose of razor strops. Breakfast followed toilet; most of
+the men bought _cafe-au-lait_, at a penny a basin, and home-made
+bread, buttered lavishly, at a penny a slice. A similar repast would
+cost sixpence in London.
+
+Parade then followed. In England we had cherished the illusion that
+life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing
+practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in
+rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and
+tots of rum would be served out _ad infinitum_. This rum would have a
+certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all
+discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought,
+though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few (p. 035)
+drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty
+bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the
+past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we
+joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown
+crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for
+words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause its owner
+to meditate in the guard-room.
+
+Dinner consists of bully beef and biscuits; now and again we fry the
+bully beef on the farmhouse stove, and when cash is plentiful cook an
+egg with it. The afternoon is generally given up to practising
+bayonet-fighting, and our day's work comes to an end about six
+o'clock. In the evening we go into the nearest village and discuss
+matters of interest in some _cafe_. Here we meet all manner of men,
+Gurkhas fresh from the firing line; bus-drivers, exiles from London;
+men of the Army Service Corps; Engineers, kilted Highlanders, men
+recovering from wounds, who are almost fit to go to the trenches
+again; French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and all sorts of people,
+helpers in some way or another of the Allies in the Great War.
+
+We have to get back to our billets by eight o'clock, to stop out (p. 036)
+after that hour is a serious crime here. A soldier out of doors at
+midnight in the cathedral city was merely a minor offender. But under
+the range of long artillery fire all things are different for the
+soldier.
+
+St. Patrick's Day was an event. We had a half holiday, and at night,
+with the aid of beer, we made merry as men can on St. Patrick's Day.
+We sang Irish songs, told stories, mostly Cockney, and laughed without
+restraint as merry men will, for to all St. Patrick was an admirable
+excuse for having a good and rousing time.
+
+There is, however, one little backwater of rest and quiet into which
+we men of blood and iron drift at all too infrequent intervals--that
+is when we become what is known officially as "barn orderly." A barn
+orderly is the company unit who looks after the billets of the men out
+on parade. In due course my turn arrived, and the battalion marched
+away leaving me to the quiet of farmyard.
+
+Having heaped up the straw, our bedding, in one corner of the barn,
+swept the concrete floor, rolled the blankets, explained to the
+gossipy farm servant that I did not "compree" her gibberish, and (p. 037)
+watched her waddle across the midden towards the house, my duties were
+ended. I was at liberty until the return of the battalion. It was all
+very quiet, little was to be heard save the gnawing of the rats in the
+corner of the barn and the muffled booming of guns from "out
+there"--"out there" is the oft repeated phrase that denotes the
+locality of the firing line.
+
+There was sunlight and shade in the farmyard, the sun lit up the pump
+on the top of which a little bird with salmon-pink breast,
+white-tipped tail, and crimson head preened its feathers; in the shade
+where our barn and the stables form an angle an old lady in snowy
+sunbonnet and striped apron was sitting knitting. It was good to be
+there lying prone upon the barn straw near the door above the crazy
+ladder, writing letters. I had learned to love this place and these
+people whom I seem to know so very well from having read Rene Bazin,
+Daudet, Maupassant, Balzac and Marie Claire. High up and far away to
+the west a Zeppelin was to be seen travelling in a westerly direction;
+the farmer's wife, our landlady, had just rescued a tin of bully beef
+from one of her all-devouring pigs; at the barn door lay my recently
+cleaned rifle and ordered equipment--how incongruous it all was (p. 038)
+with the home of Marie Claire.
+
+Suddenly I was brought back to realities by the recollection that the
+battalion was to have a bath that afternoon and towels and soap must
+be ready to take out on the next parade.
+
+The next morning was beautifully clear; the sun rising over the firing
+line lit up wood and field, river and pond. The hens were noisy in the
+farmyard, the horse lines to the rear were full of movement, horses
+strained at their tethers eager to break away and get free from the
+captivity of the rope; the grooms were busy brushing the animals' legs
+and flanks, and a slight dust arose into the air as the work was
+carried on.
+
+Over the red-brick houses of the village the church stood high, its
+spire clearly defined against the blue of the sky. The door of the
+_cafe_ across the road opened, and the proprietress, a merry-faced,
+elderly woman, came across to the farmhouse. She purchased some newly
+laid eggs for breakfast, and entered into conversation with our men,
+some of whom knew a little of her language. They asked about her son
+in the trenches; she had heard from him the day before and he was (p. 039)
+quite well and hoped to have a holiday very soon. He would come home
+then and spend a fortnight with the family. She looked forward to his
+coming, he had been away from her ever since the war started; she had
+not seen him for eight whole months. What happiness would be hers when
+he returned! She waved her hand to us as she went off, tripping
+lightly across the roadway and disappearing into the _cafe_. She was
+going to church presently; it was Holy Week when the Virgin listened
+to special intercessors, and the good matron of the _cafe_ prayed
+hourly for the safety of her soldier boy.
+
+At ten o'clock we went to chapel, our pipers playing _The Wearing of
+the Green_ as we marched along the crooked village streets, our rifles
+on our shoulders and our bandoliers heavy with the ball cartridge
+which we carried. The rifle is with us always now, on parade, on
+march, in _cafe_, billet, and church; our "best friend" is our eternal
+companion. We carried it into the church and fastened the sling to the
+chair as we knelt in prayer before the altar. We occupied the larger
+part of the building, only three able-bodied men in civilian clothing
+were in attendance.
+
+The youth of the country were out in the trenches, and even here (p. 040)
+in the quiet little chapel with its crucifixes, images, and pictures,
+there was the suggestion of war in the collection boxes for wounded
+soldiers, in the crepe worn by so many women; one in every ten was in
+mourning, and above all in the general air of resignation which showed
+on all the faces of the native worshippers.
+
+The whole place breathed war, not in the splendid whirlwind rush of
+men mad in the wild enthusiasm of battle, but in silent yearning,
+heartfelt sorrow, and great bravery, the bravery of women who remain
+at home. Opposite us sat the lady of the _cafe_, her head low down on
+her breast, and the rosary slipping bead by bead through her fingers.
+Now and again she would stir slightly, raise her eyes to the Virgin on
+the right of the high altar, and move her lips in prayer, then she
+would lower her head again and continue her rosary.
+
+As far as I could ascertain singing in church was the sole privilege
+of the choir, none of the congregation joined in the hymns. But to-day
+the church had a new congregation--the soldiers from England, the men
+who sing in the trenches, in the billet, and on the march; the men who
+glory in song on the last lap of a long, killing journey in full (p. 041)
+marching order. To-day they sang a hymn well-known and loved, the
+clarion call of their faith was started by the choir. As one man the
+soldiers joined in the singing, and their voices filled the building.
+The other members of the congregation looked on for a moment in surprise,
+then one after another they started to sing, and in a moment nearly
+all in the place were aiding the choir. One was silent, however, the
+lady of the _cafe_; still deep in prayer she scarcely glanced at the
+singers, her mind was full of another matter. Only a mother thinking
+about a loved son can so wholly lose herself from the world. And as I
+looked at her I thought I detected tears in her eyes.
+
+The priest, a pleasant faced young man, who spoke very quickly (I have
+never heard anybody speak like him), thanked the soldiers, and through
+them their nation for all that was being done to help in the war;
+prayers were said for the men at the front, those who were still
+alive, as well as those who had given up their lives for their
+country's sake, and before leaving we sang the national anthem, our's,
+_God Save the King_.
+
+With the pipers playing at our front, and an admiring crowd of (p. 042)
+boys following, we took our way back to our billets. On the march a
+mate was speaking, one who had been late coming on parade in the
+morning.
+
+"Saw the woman of the _cafe_ in church?" he asked me. "Saw her
+crying?"
+
+"I thought she looked unhappy."
+
+"Just after you got off parade the news came," my mate told me. "Her
+son had been killed. She is awfully upset about it and no wonder. She
+was always talking about her _petit garcon_, and he was to be home on
+holidays shortly."
+
+Somewhere "out there" where the guns are incessantly booming, a
+nameless grave holds the "_petit garcon_," the _cafe_ lady's son; next
+Sunday another mourner will join with the many in the village church
+and pray to the Virgin Mother for the soul of her beloved boy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV (p. 043)
+
+THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRENCHES
+
+ Four by four in column of route,
+ By roads that the poplars sentinel,
+ Clank of rifle and crunch of boot--
+ All are marching and all is well.
+ White, so white is the distant moon,
+ Salmon-pink is the furnace glare,
+ And we hum, as we march, a ragtime tune,
+ Khaki boys in the long platoon,
+ Going and going--anywhere.
+
+
+"The battalion will move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating
+the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot
+of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It
+was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in
+their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese
+are easily scooped out with clasp-knives and make excellent sconces;
+we often use them for that purpose in our barn billet. We had been
+quite a long time in the place and had grown to like it. But to-morrow
+we were leaving.
+
+"Oh, dash the rifle!" said the Jersey boy, getting to his feet and
+kicking a bundle of straw across the floor of the barn. "To-morrow (p. 044)
+night we'll be in the trenches up in the firing line."
+
+"The slaughter line," somebody remarked in the corner where the
+darkness hung heavy. A match was lighted disclosing the speaker's face
+and the pipe which he held between his teeth.
+
+"No smoking," yelled a corporal, who had just entered. "You'll burn
+the damned place down and get yourself as well as all of us into
+trouble."
+
+"Oh blast the barn!" muttered Bill Sykes, a narrow chested Cockney
+with a good-humoured face that belied his nickname. "It's only fit for
+rats and there's 'nuff of 'em 'ere. I'm goin' to 'ave a fag anyway.
+Got me?"
+
+The corporal asked Bill for a cigarette and lit it. "We're all mates
+now and we'll make a night of it," he cried. "Damn the barn, there'll
+be barns when we're all washed out with Jack Johnsons. What are you
+doin', Feelan?"
+
+Feelan, an Irishman with a brogue that could be cut with a knife, laid
+down the sword which he was burnishing and glanced at the non-com.
+
+"The Germans don't fire at men with stripes, I hear," he remarked,
+"They only shoot rale good soldiers. A livin' corp'ral's hardly as (p. 045)
+good as a dead rifleman."
+
+Six foot three of Cumberland bone and muscle detached itself from the
+straw and looked round the barn. We call it Goliath on account of its
+size.
+
+"Who's to sing the first song," asked Goliath. "A good hearty song!"
+
+"One with whiskers on it!" said the corporal.
+
+"I'll slash the game up and give a rale ould song, whiskers
+to the toes of it," said Feelan, shoving his sword in its scabbard and
+throwin' himself flat back on the straw. "Its a song about the
+time Irelan' was fightin' for freedom and it's called _The Rising of
+the Moon_! A great song entirely it is, and I cannot do it justice."
+
+Feelan stood up, his legs wide apart and both his thumbs stuck in the
+upper pockets of his tunic. Behind him the barn stretched out into the
+gloom that our solitary candle could not pierce. On either side rifles
+hung from the wall, and packs and haversacks stood high from the straw
+in which most of the men had buried themselves, leaving nothing but
+their faces, fringed with the rims of Balaclava helmets, exposed to
+view. The night was bitterly cold, outside where the sky stood high
+splashed with countless stars and where the earth gripped tight on (p. 046)
+itself, the frost fiend was busy; in the barn, with its medley of men,
+roosting hens and prowling rats all was cosy and warm. Feelan cleared
+his throat and commenced the song, his voice strong and clear filled
+the barn:--
+
+ "Arrah! tell me Shan O'Farrel; tell me why you hurry so?"
+ "Hush, my bouchal, hush and listen," and his cheeks were all aglow--
+ "I've got orders from the Captain to get ready quick and soon
+ For the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon,
+ At the risin' of the moon!
+ At the risin' of the moon!
+ And the pikes must be together at the risin' of the moon!"
+
+"That's some song," said the corporal. "It has got guts in it. I'm
+sick of these ragtime rotters!"
+
+"The old songs are always the best ones," said Feelan, clearing his
+throat preparatory to commencing a second verse.
+
+"What about _Uncle Joe_?" asked Goliath, and was off with a regimental
+favourite.
+
+ When Uncle Joe plays a rag upon his old banjo--
+ ("Oh!" the occupants of the barn yelled.)
+ Ev'rybody starts a swayin' to and fro--
+ ("Ha!" exclaimed the barn.)
+ Mummy waddles all around the cabin floor!--
+ ("What!" we chorused.)
+ Crying, "Uncle Joe, give us more, give us more!"
+
+"Give us no more of that muck!" exclaimed Feelan, burrowing into (p. 047)
+the straw, no doubt a little annoyed at being interrupted in his song.
+"Damn ragtime!"
+
+"There's ginger in it!" said Goliath. "Your old song is as flat as
+French beer!"
+
+"Some decent music is what you want," said Bill Sykes, and forthwith
+began strumming an invisible banjo and humming _Way down upon the
+Swanee Ribber_.
+
+The candle, the only one in our possession, burned closer to the
+cheese sconce, a daring rat slipped into the light, stopped still for
+a moment on top of a sheaf of straw, then scampered off again, shadows
+danced on the roof, over the joists where the hens were roosting, an
+unsheathed sword glittered brightly as the light caught it, and Feelan
+lifted the weapon and glanced at it.
+
+"Burnished like a lady's nail," he muttered.
+
+"Thumb nail?" interrogated Goliath.
+
+"Ragnail, p'raps," said the Cockney.
+
+"I wonder whether we'll have much bayonet-fightin' or not?" remarked
+the Jersey boy, looking at each of us in turn and addressing no one in
+particular.
+
+"We'll get some now and again to keep us warm!" said the corporal. (p. 048)
+"It'll be 'ot when it comes along."
+
+"'Ot's not the word," said Bill; "I never was much drawn to soldierin'
+'fore the war started, but when it came along I felt I'd like to 'ave
+a 'and in the gime. There, that candle's goin' out!"
+
+"Bunk!" roared the corporal, putting his pipe in his pocket and
+seizing a blanket, the first to hand. Almost immediately he was under
+the straw with the blanket wrapped round him. We were not backward in
+following, and all were in bed when the flame which followed the wax
+so greedily died for lack of sustenance.
+
+To-morrow night we should be in the trenches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V (p. 049)
+
+FIRST BLOOD
+
+ The nations like Kilkenny cats,
+ Full of hate that never dies out,
+ Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,
+ Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.
+
+
+The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles,
+and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down
+on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs
+stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The
+sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down
+their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled
+on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on
+haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless
+in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and
+were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds
+of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack
+stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field (p. 050)
+necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and
+sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and
+were on our way towards the firing line.
+
+A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had
+just come out of an _estaminet_, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and
+knife and fork stuck in his putties.
+
+"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile
+hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating
+glance.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"
+
+"About a matter of nine months."
+
+"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.
+
+"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer.
+"'Oo are you?"
+
+"The London Irish."
+
+"Territorials?"
+
+"That's us," someone said.
+
+"First time up this way?"
+
+"First time."
+
+"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile
+reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a
+word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a tight grip (p. 051)
+of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties. My
+pack went West at Mons."
+
+"You were there then?"
+
+"Blimey, yes." was the answer.
+
+"How did you like it?"
+
+"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round.
+There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if
+you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with
+your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever
+you go into a charge--Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man
+who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're
+swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this
+beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of
+this dashed muck. Good-bye"--we were moving off, "and good luck to
+you!"
+
+Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been
+great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and
+committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has
+been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown
+oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I don't (p. 052)
+know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a tin of
+bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our section who
+can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few grind biscuits
+when they can beg bread.
+
+A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four
+platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section
+consisted of thirteen--there are only four boys left now, Mervin has
+been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher
+bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of
+his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much
+sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he
+told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home
+when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps.
+I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will
+pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch
+friend.
+
+Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that
+the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal
+Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the
+same route. In the village all was quiet, the _cafes_ were open, (p. 053)
+and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as usual.
+There were very few young men of military age in the place; all were
+engaged in the business of war.
+
+A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me;
+Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar,
+marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a
+clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and
+wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to
+the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate
+and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept
+open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker,
+and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to
+the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital
+suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and
+get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest
+bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the
+rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had
+come.
+
+Teak and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of the (p. 054)
+road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither look
+it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest when his
+own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould,
+but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in
+business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his
+profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these
+amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known
+to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most
+delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato.
+Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument.
+He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one
+he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.
+
+Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
+The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
+in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
+shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
+willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055)
+and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous
+masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses.
+For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in
+the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about
+with him.
+
+Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
+drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
+did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
+ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
+that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
+he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
+Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.
+
+We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men
+stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and
+singing _Macnamara's Band_, a favourite song with our regiment.
+Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and
+we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.
+
+The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in front,
+and it sounded like a waggon-load of rubble being emptied on a (p. 056)
+landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.
+
+"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his
+cigarette with the little finger.
+
+"Some transport has broken down."
+
+"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.
+
+"Oh! your grandmother."
+
+Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a
+wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side
+of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air,
+curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates.
+Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away
+from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking
+to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his
+tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath
+yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:--
+
+"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this
+way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell (p. 057)
+had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her head
+bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two children, a
+boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep in a
+childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the bursting
+shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little
+affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of
+surprise--surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting
+shrapnel.
+
+"Quick march!"
+
+We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing
+through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was
+almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although
+not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a _cafe_. A pale
+stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the
+threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.
+
+Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking
+beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard,
+seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing
+heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, (p. 058)
+and his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash showed
+on the flesh.
+
+"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The
+one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field
+where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."
+
+"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.
+
+"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came
+to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of
+shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in
+London."
+
+"And you, Pryor?"
+
+"I went cold all over for a minute."
+
+"Bill?"
+
+"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do
+you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a
+song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out
+one of our popular rhymes.
+
+ Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys
+ To drive the Kaiser balmy.
+ And _we'll_ smash up that fool Von Kluck
+ And all his bloomin' army!
+
+We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor (p. 059)
+ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his
+coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm
+on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg
+bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was
+smoking a cigarette.
+
+"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.
+
+"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the
+answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."
+
+"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the
+pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a
+wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"
+
+"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.
+
+"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the
+old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over
+and done with."
+
+"Ye don't like war, then."
+
+"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks,
+and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the ---- work." (p. 060)
+
+"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing
+round his lips. "God's with us, you know."
+
+"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.
+
+"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.
+
+"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything
+else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church,
+and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up
+to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."
+
+"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work,
+never could stomach it."
+
+The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.
+
+We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the
+province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was
+a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and
+turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home,
+now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green
+grasses, the old farm holed by a thousand shells, the old plough, (p. 061)
+and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for
+the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the
+destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage
+which had been done.
+
+We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive
+shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a
+point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast
+of burden--the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace
+by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something
+pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising
+and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving
+backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the
+stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching
+along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an
+inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All
+individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes
+in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing
+death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.
+
+We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-shivered (p. 062)
+roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.
+
+"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were
+told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.
+
+As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time
+I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air,
+and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and
+now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was
+sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French
+soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his
+bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade
+who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
+
+"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.
+
+"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.
+
+"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere,
+and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he
+cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall
+over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling (p. 063)
+a fresh cigarette.
+
+Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found
+our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance,
+with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath,
+"This way to the war."
+
+The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow
+cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces
+in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full
+equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were exploding,
+and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our
+heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but
+sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and
+dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with
+bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general
+air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides,
+and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and
+well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with
+him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when
+he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon (p. 064)
+on his breast.
+
+"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How
+did you get it?" he called up to the man.
+
+"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve,
+thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"
+he asked.
+
+"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."
+
+We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood,
+and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.
+
+"How did it happen?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the
+parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have
+copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who
+are you?"
+
+"The London Irish."
+
+"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ----," he said, rubbing a miry hand across
+the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done
+in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief
+and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065)
+luck! Are you from Chelsea?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody
+took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the
+two men lay.
+
+They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that
+branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the
+other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost
+touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and
+smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's
+hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot
+showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
+clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
+under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
+waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
+stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
+dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
+Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
+ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066)
+lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
+youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
+the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
+something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
+
+One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
+body in the trench.
+
+"Brothers," he said.
+
+For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
+Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
+might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
+sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
+to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
+come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
+was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
+bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
+
+The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
+but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
+matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
+
+"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067)
+who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a
+hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to
+duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
+
+"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
+when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"
+
+"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
+"and they always keep potting at the place."
+
+"But have we?"
+
+"I dunno."
+
+"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
+mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
+the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"
+
+"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
+way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.
+
+"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.
+
+"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
+through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
+this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068)
+continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
+"never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when
+you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."
+
+In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
+up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
+a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
+back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
+called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
+potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
+for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
+"stopped a packet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI (p. 069)
+
+IN THE TRENCHES
+
+ Up for days in the trenches,
+ Working and working away;
+ Eight days up in the trenches
+ And back again to-day.
+ Working with pick and shovel,
+ On traverse, banquette, and slope,
+ And now we are back and working
+ With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.
+
+
+We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at
+the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had
+not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.
+
+Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his
+shovel.
+
+"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit
+from his haversack.
+
+"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"
+
+"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the
+latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it
+wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were
+new to the grind of war.
+
+"I've found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from (p. 070)
+his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A
+shell whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches
+have got a humour peculiarly their own.
+
+"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell _cafe noir_
+and _pain et beurre_."
+
+"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like
+ourselves."
+
+"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent
+for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a
+mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the
+Cockney brightened.
+
+"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and butter."
+
+"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.
+
+"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and
+the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."
+
+"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping
+a shower of muck which a bursting shell flung in his face. We were
+with him immediately, and presently found ourselves at the door (p. 071)
+of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled with
+shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.
+
+A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly,
+well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a
+short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn
+of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all
+good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as
+we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our
+needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his
+hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs
+in the house were already occupied.
+
+The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on
+the wall, the portrait of the woman herself, _The Holy Family
+Journeying to Egypt_, a print of Millet's _Angelus_, and a rude
+etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the glass broken.
+A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing
+piece of a shell dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its
+pendulum gone and the glass broken.
+
+Bill, naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his coffee, (p. 072)
+and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl, he
+undertook the matter himself.
+
+"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no
+milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be
+amused.
+
+"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like
+French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound)
+it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno,
+that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n
+milk."
+
+"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like
+that."
+
+"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be
+nice if I got one."
+
+"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for
+queer things if she did."
+
+"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey,
+that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a shell exploded overhead,
+and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her
+head for a moment and crossed herself, then she continued her (p. 073)
+work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the
+shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill forthwith
+relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When we got
+out to our work again he spoke.
+
+"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with
+her."
+
+"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.
+
+"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a
+woman with blunt finger nails."
+
+"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.
+
+"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my
+ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a space for
+wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch
+them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The
+toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps.
+Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She
+becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she
+becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They could not (p. 074)
+fashion you in Eden! When I think of a woman washing herself! Ugh!
+Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled
+beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"
+
+"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a fag end from the bottom of
+the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen
+maggots!"
+
+It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk
+with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.
+
+"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting
+poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior
+slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and
+some so bad that I almost ran away from them."
+
+For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side
+keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to
+open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in
+your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is
+suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English
+communication trenches are narrow--so narrow, indeed, that a man with
+a pack often gets held, and sticks there until his comrades pull (p. 075)
+him clear.
+
+The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for
+the passage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there,
+packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his
+mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the
+risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks,
+bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the
+reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp
+earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the
+mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking
+back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move
+backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the
+active front, and hearts prone to feelings of depression and despair.
+
+The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help
+him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen
+grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet
+that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole
+pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, and wait. When an (p. 076)
+attack is on the communication trenches are persistently shelled by
+the enemy with a view to stop the advance of reinforcements. Once our
+company lay in a trench as reserves for fourteen hours, and during
+that time upwards of two thousand shells were hurled in our direction,
+our trench being half filled with rubble and clay. Two mates, one on
+my right and one on my left, were wounded. I did not receive a
+scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours during the cannonade;
+but this is another story.
+
+Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches,
+ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to
+the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality.
+Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one
+point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is
+under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all
+rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to
+court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a
+little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be
+covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the
+sniper plies his trade. He hides somewhere in the slack, and pots (p. 077)
+at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range
+of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a
+warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop
+low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger zone is
+past.
+
+Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift
+shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly
+singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however,
+who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his
+telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of
+my cigarettes told me the story.
+
+"The coal slack is festooned with devils of snipers, smart fellows
+that can shoot round a corner and blast your eye-tooth out at five
+hundred yards," he said. "They're not all their ones, neither; there's
+a good sprinkling of our own boys as well. I was doing a wee bit of
+pot-shot-and-be-damned-to-you work in the other side of the slack, and
+my eyes open all the time for an enemy's back. There was one near me,
+but I'm beggared if I could find him. 'I'll not lave this place (p. 078)
+till I do,' I says to meself, and spent half the nights I was there
+prowlin' round like a dog at a fair with my eyes open for the sniper.
+I came on his post wan night. I smelt him out because he didn't bury
+his sausage skins as we do, and they stunk like the hole of hell when
+an ould greasy sinner is a-fryin'. In I went to his sandbagged castle,
+with me gun on the cock and me finger on the trigger, but he wasn't
+there; there was nothin' in the place but a few rounds of ball an' a
+half empty bottle. I was dhry as a bone, and I had a sup without
+winkin'. 'Mother of Heaven,' I says, when I put down the bottle, 'its
+little ye know of hospitality, stranger, leaving a bottle with nothin'
+in it but water. I'll wait for ye, me bucko,' and I lay down in the
+corner and waited for him to come in.
+
+"But sorrow the fut of him came, and me waiting there till the colour
+of day was in the sky. Then I goes back to me own place, and there was
+he waiting for me. He only made one mistake, he had fallen to sleep,
+and he just sprung up as I came in be the door.
+
+"Immediately I had him by the big toe. 'Hands up, Hans'! I said, and
+he didn't argue, all that he did was to swear like one of ourselves
+and flop down. 'Why don't ye bury yer sausages, Hans?' I asked (p. 079)
+him. 'I smelt yer, me bucko, by what ye couldn't eat. Why didn't ye
+have something better than water in yer bottle?' I says to him. Dang a
+Christian word would he answer, only swear, an swear with nothin' bar
+the pull of me finger betwixt him and his Maker. But, ye know, I had a
+kind of likin' for him when I thought of him comin' in to my house
+without as much as yer leave, and going to sleep just as if he was in
+his own home. I didn't swear back at him but just said, 'This is only
+a house for wan, but our King has a big residence for ye, so come
+along before it gets any clearer,' and I took him over to our trenches
+as stand-to was coming to an end."
+
+Referring again to our trenches there is one portion known to me where
+the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the
+grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives
+one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with
+daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of
+colour--crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some
+weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080)
+lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught
+in a mad rush to the trenches which they never took. A breeze blows
+across the meadow as I write, carrying with it the odour of death and
+perfumed flowers, of aromatic herbs and summer, of desolation and
+decay. It is good that Nature does her best to blot out all traces of
+the tragedy between the trenches.
+
+There is a vacant spot in our lines, where there is no trench and none
+being constructed; why this should be I do not know. But all this
+ground is under machine-gun fire and within rifle range. No foe would
+dare to cross the open, and the foe who dared would never live to get
+through. Further to the right, is a pond with a dead German stuck
+there, head down, and legs up in air. They tell me that a concussion
+shell has struck him since and part of his body was blown over to our
+lines. At present the pond is hidden and the light and shade plays
+over the kindly grasses that circle round it. On the extreme right
+there is a graveyard. The trench is deep in dead men's bones and is
+considered unhealthy. A church almost razed to the ground, with the
+spire blown off and buried point down in the earth, moulders in (p. 081)
+ruins at the back. It is said that the ghosts of dead monks pray
+nightly at the shattered altar, and some of our men state that they
+often hear the organ playing when they stand as sentries on the
+banquette.
+
+"The fire trench to-night," said Stoner that evening, a nervous light
+in his soft brown eyes, as he fumbled with the money on the card
+table. His luck had been good, and he had won over six francs; he
+generally loses. "Perhaps we're in for the high jump when we get up
+there."
+
+"The high jump?" I queried, "what's that?"
+
+"A bayonet charge," he replied, dealing a final hand and inviting us
+to double the stakes as the deal was the last. A few wanted to play
+for another quarter of an hour, but he would not prolong the game.
+Turning up an ace he shoved the money in his pocket and rose to his
+feet.
+
+In an hour we were ready to move. We carried much weight in addition
+to our ordinary load, firewood, cooking utensils, and extra loaves. We
+bought the latter at a neighbouring _boulangerie_, one that still
+plied its usual trade in dangerous proximity to the firing-line.
+
+The loaves cost 6-1/2_d._ each, and we prefer them to the English (p. 082)
+bread which we get now and again, and place them far above the
+tooth-destroying army biscuits. Fires were permitted in the trenches,
+we were told, and our officers advised us to carry our own wood with
+us. So it came about that the enemy's firing served as a useful
+purpose; we pulled down the shrapnel shattered rafters of our billets,
+broke them up into splinters with our entrenching tools, and tied them
+up into handy portable bundles which we tied on our packs.
+
+At midnight we entered Harley Street, and squeezed our way through the
+narrow trench. The distance to the firing-line was a long one;
+traverse and turning, turning and traverse, we thought we should never
+come to the end of them. There was no shelling, but the questing
+bullet was busy, it sung over our heads or snapped at the sandbags on
+the parapet, ever busy on the errand of death and keen on its mission.
+But deep down in the trench we regarded it with indifference. Our way
+was one of safety. Here the bullet was foiled, and pick and shovel
+reigned masters in the zone of death.
+
+We were relieving the Scots Guards (many of my Irish friends (p. 083)
+belong to this regiment). Awaiting our coming, they stood in the full
+marching order of the regulations, packs light, forks and spoons in
+their putties, and all little luxuries which we still dared to carry
+flung away. They had been holding the place for seven days, and were
+now going back somewhere for a rest.
+
+"Is this the firing-line?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Yes, sonny," came the answer in a voice which seemed to be full of
+weariness.
+
+"Quiet here?" Mervin enquired, a note of awe in his voice.
+
+"Naethin' doin'," said a fresh voice that reminded me forcibly of
+Glasgow and the Cowcaddens. "It's a gey soft job here."
+
+"No casualties?"
+
+"Yin or twa stuck their heads o'er the parapet when they shouldn't and
+they copped it," said Glasgow, "but barrin' that 'twas quiet."
+
+In the traverse where I was planted I dropped into Ireland; heaps of
+it. There was the brogue that could be cut with a knife, and the
+humour that survived Mons and the Marne, and the kindliness that
+sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane.
+
+"Irish?" I asked. (p. 084)
+
+"Sure," was the answer. "We're everywhere. Ye'll find us in a Gurkha
+regiment if you scratch the beggars' skins. Ye're not Irish!"
+
+"I am," I answered.
+
+"Then you've lost your brogue on the boat that took ye over," somebody
+said. "Are ye dry?"
+
+I wiped the sweat from my forehead as I sat down on the banquette. "Is
+there something to drink?" I queried.
+
+"There's a drop of cold tay, me boy," the man near me replied.
+"Where's yer mess-tin, Mike?"
+
+A tin was handed to me, and I drank greedily of the cold black tea.
+The man Mike gave some useful hints on trench work.
+
+"It's the Saxons that's across the road," he said, pointing to the
+enemy's lines which were very silent. I had not heard a bullet whistle
+over since I entered the trench. On the left was an interesting rifle
+and machine gun fire all the time. "They're quiet fellows, the Saxons,
+they don't want to fight any more than we do, so there's a kind of
+understanding between us. Don't fire at us and we'll not fire at you.
+There's a good dug-out there," he continued, pointing to a dark (p. 085)
+hole in the parados (the rear wall of the trench), "and ye'll find a
+pot of jam and half a loaf in the corner. There's also a water jar
+half full."
+
+"Where do you get water?"
+
+"Nearly a mile away the pump is," he answered. "Ye've to cross the
+fields to get it."
+
+"A safe road?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Not so bad, ye know," was the answer.
+
+"This place smells 'orrid," muttered Bill, lighting a cigarette and
+flinging on his pack. "What is it?"
+
+"Some poor devils between the trenches; they've been lyin' there since
+last Christmas."
+
+"Blimey, what a stink," muttered Bill, "Why don't ye bury them up?"
+
+"Because nobody dare go out there, me boy," was the answer. "Anyway,
+it's Germans they are. They made a charge and didn't get as far as
+here. They went out of step so to speak."
+
+"Woo-oo-oo!" Bill suddenly yelled and kicked a tin pail on to the floor
+of the trench. A shower of sparks flew up into the air and fluttered
+over the rim of the parapet. "I put my 'and on it, 'twas like a (p. 086)
+red 'ot poker, it burned me to the bone!"
+
+"It's the brazier ye were foolin' about with," said Mike, who was
+buckling his pack-straps preparatory to moving, "See, and don't put
+yer head over the top, and don't light a fire at night. Ye can put up
+as much flare as you like by day. Good-bye, boys, and good luck t'ye."
+
+"Any Donegal men in the battalion?" I called after him as he was
+moving off.
+
+"None that I know of," he shouted back, "but there are two other
+battalions that are not here, maybe there are Donegal men there. Good
+luck, boys, good luck!"
+
+We were alone and lonely, nearly every man of us. For myself I felt
+isolated from the whole world, alone in front of the little line of
+sand bags with my rifle in my hand. Who were we? Why were we there?
+Goliath, the junior clerk, who loved Tennyson; Pryor, the draughtsman,
+who doted on Omar; Kore, who read Fanny Eden's penny stories, and
+never disclosed his profession; Mervin, the traveller, educated for
+the Church but schooled in romance; Stoner, the clerk, who reads my
+books and says he never read better; and Bill, newsboy, street-arab,
+and Lord knows what, who reads _The Police News_, plays (p. 087)
+innumerable tricks with cards, and gambles and never wins. Why were we
+here holding a line of trench, and ready to take a life or give one as
+occasion required? Who shall give an answer to the question?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII (p. 088)
+
+BLOOD AND IRON--AND DEATH
+
+ At night the stars are shining bright,
+ The old-world voice is whispering near,
+ We've heard it when the moon was light,
+ And London's streets were verydear;
+ But dearer now they are, sweetheart,
+ The 'buses running to the Strand,
+ But we're so far, so far apart,
+ Each lonely in a different land.
+
+
+The night was murky and the air was splashed with rain. Following the
+line of trench I could dimly discern the figures of my mates pulling
+off their packs and fixing their bayonets. These glittered brightly as
+the dying fires from the trench braziers caught them, and the long
+array of polished blades shone into their place along the dark brown
+sandbags. Looking over the parados I could see the country in rear,
+dim in the hazy night. A white, nebulous fog lay on the ground and
+enveloped the lone trees that stood up behind. Here and there I could
+discern houses where no light shone, and where no people dwelt. All
+the inhabitants were gone, and in the village away to the right (p. 089)
+there was absolute silence, the stillness of the desert. To my mind
+came words I once read or heard spoken, "The conqueror turns the
+country into a desert, and calls it peace."
+
+I clamped my bayonet into its standard and rested the cold steel on
+the parapet, the point showing over; and standing up I looked across
+to the enemy's ground.
+
+"They're about three hundred yards away," somebody whispered taking
+his place at my side. "I think I can see their trenches."
+
+An indistinct line which might have been a parapet of sandbags, became
+visible as I stared through the darkness; it looked very near, and my
+heart thrilled as I watched. Suddenly a stream of red sparks swooped
+upwards into the air and circled towards us. Involuntarily I stooped
+under cover, then raised my head again. High up in the air a bright
+flame stood motionless lighting up the ground in front, the space
+between the lines. Every object was visible: a tree stripped of all
+its branches stood bare, outlined in black; at its foot I could see
+the barbed wire entanglements, the wire sparkling as if burnished;
+further back was a ruined cottage, the bare beams and rafters giving
+it the appearance of a skeleton. A year ago a humble farmer might (p. 090)
+have lived there; his children perhaps played where dead were lying. I
+could see the German trench, the row of sandbags, the country to rear,
+a ruined village on a hill, the flashes of rifles on the left ... the
+flare died out in mid-air and darkness cloaked the whole scene again.
+
+"What do you think of it, Stoner?" I asked the figure by my side.
+
+"My God, it's great," he answered. "To think that they're over there,
+and the poor fellows lying out on the field!"
+
+"They're their own bloomin' tombstones, anyway," said Bill, cropping
+up from somewhere.
+
+"I feel sorry for the poor beggars," I said.
+
+"They'll feel sorry for themselves, the beggars," said Bill.
+
+"There, what's that?"
+
+It crept up like a long white arm from behind the German lines, and
+felt nervously at the clouds as if with a hand. Moving slowly from
+North to South it touched all the sky, seeking for something. Suddenly
+it flashed upon us, almost dazzling our eyes. In a flash Bill was upon
+the banquette.
+
+"Nark the doin's, nark it," he cried and fired his rifle. The (p. 091)
+report died away in a hundred echoes as he slipped the empty cartridge
+from its breech.
+
+"That's one for them," he muttered.
+
+"What did you fire at?" I asked.
+
+"The blasted searchlight," he replied, rubbing his little potato of a
+nose. "That's one for 'em, another shot nearer the end of the war!"
+
+"Did you hit it?" asked our corporal.
+
+"I must 'ave 'it it, I fired straight at it."
+
+"Splendid, splendid," said the corporal. "Its only about three miles
+away though."
+
+"Oh, blimey!..."
+
+Sentries were posted for the night, one hour on and two off for each
+man until dawn. I was sentry for the first hour. I had to keep a sharp
+look out if an enemy's working party showed itself when the rockets
+went up. I was to fire at it and kill as many men as possible. One
+thinks of things on sentry-go.
+
+"How can I reconcile myself to this," I asked, shifting my rifle to
+get nearer the parapet. "Who are those men behind the line of sandbags
+that I should want to kill them, to disembowel them with my sword,
+blow their faces to pieces at three hundred yards, bomb them into (p. 092)
+eternity at a word of command. Who am I that I should do it; what have
+they done to me to incur my wrath? I am not angry with them; I know
+little of the race; they are utter strangers to me; what am I to
+think, why should I think?
+
+"Bill," I called to the Cockney, who came by whistling, "what are you
+doing?"
+
+"I'm havin' a bit of rooty (food) 'fore goin' to kip (sleep)."
+
+"Hungry?
+
+"'Ungry as an 'awk," he answered. "Give me a shake when your turn's
+up; I'm sentry after you."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Bill!"
+
+"Pat?"
+
+"Do you believe in God?"
+
+"Well, I do and I don't," was the answer.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I don't 'old with the Christian business," he replied, "but I believe
+in God."
+
+"Do you think that God can allow men to go killing one another like
+this?"
+
+"Maybe 'E can't help it."
+
+"And the war started because it had to be?
+
+"It just came--like a war-baby." (p. 093)
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Yer write songs, don't yer?" Bill suddenly asked.
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Would yer write me one, just a little one?" he continued. "There was
+a bird (girl) where I used to be billeted at St. Albans, and I would
+like to send 'er a bit of poetry."
+
+"You've fallen in love?" I ventured.
+
+"No, not so bad as that--"
+
+"You've not fallen in love."
+
+"Well its like this," said my mate, "I used to be in 'er 'ouse and she
+made 'ome-made torfee."
+
+"Made it well?"
+
+"Blimey, yes; 'twas some stuff, and I used to get 'eaps of it. She
+used to slide down the banisters, too. Yer should 'ave seen it, Pat.
+It almost made me write poetry myself."
+
+"I'll try and do something for you," I said. "Have you been in the
+dug-out yet?"
+
+"Yes, it's not such a bad place, but there's seven of us in it," said
+Bill, "it's 'ot as 'ell. But we wouldn't be so bad if Z---- was out of
+it. I don't like the feller."
+
+"Why?" I asked, Z---- was one of our thirteen, but he couldn't (p. 094)
+pull with us. For some reason or other we did not like him.
+
+"Oh, I don't like 'im, that's all," was the answer. "Z---- tries to
+get the best of everything. Give ye a drink from 'is water bottle when
+your own's empty; 'e wouldn't. I wouldn't trust 'im that much." He
+clicked his thumb and middle finger together as he spoke, and without
+another word he vanished into the dug-out.
+
+On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in
+civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the
+whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique
+live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between
+them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a
+new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish
+cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another,
+stinking of regimental shag, slang plays skittles with our language.
+Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer
+says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men
+and babies.
+
+"Stand-to!" (p. 095)
+
+I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my
+head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a
+pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.
+
+"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and
+stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over
+another prostrate form.
+
+"Stand-to! Stand-to!"
+
+We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette,
+each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and
+entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our
+equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the
+bayonets are always fixed.
+
+"Where's Z----?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.
+
+"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."
+
+"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it
+lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.
+The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."
+
+Z---- stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out. (p. 096)
+
+"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.
+
+"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get
+on with the work."
+
+In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive
+the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits
+for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we
+stood for half a day.
+
+The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in
+intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The
+last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air
+for a space, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the
+trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and
+shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and
+there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it
+were, on the grass.
+
+"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said
+Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."
+
+The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked
+enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097)
+fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes,
+a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth
+again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the
+German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on
+the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing
+again.
+
+"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the
+Cockney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."
+
+"An if I do!"
+
+"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.
+
+"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.
+
+"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his
+rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at,
+but don't waste ammunition."
+
+The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened
+on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by
+each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every
+sixth man was posted as sentry.
+
+Stoner, diligent worker that he is, set about preparing breakfast (p. 098)
+when stand-to was over. In an open space at the rear of the dug-out he
+fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the regimental
+issue of coke ablaze.
+
+"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried
+with me.
+
+"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."
+
+Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the
+work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the
+size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and
+fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if
+selecting a spot to rest on.
+
+"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."
+
+It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into
+the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped
+into Stoner's fire.
+
+"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"
+
+No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a
+bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to us (p. 099)
+from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some
+of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed
+Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often
+spoken of in my little volume _The Amateur Army_, came face to face
+with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in,
+and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted
+trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.
+
+"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.
+
+"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell.
+"Run."
+
+A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the
+bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers
+carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.
+
+Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the
+bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter
+of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of
+eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of
+their food whenever that is possible.
+
+In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which
+are supplied to the trenches, and went out with the intention of (p. 100)
+getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we
+had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road
+branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one;
+added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow
+trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the
+parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp,
+clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the
+story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a
+soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have
+been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and
+number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died
+fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave.
+Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the
+man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of
+kindly grass were now covering it up.
+
+Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late
+breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped
+to the waist as they bent over their little mess-tins of soapy (p. 101)
+water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep
+in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The
+row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders,
+had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his
+pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry
+with him.
+
+"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing
+like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"
+
+"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"
+
+"Would one of us not carry it?"
+
+"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"
+
+"Why didn't ye give it to us?"
+
+"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the
+sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless
+twisters!"
+
+"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who,
+stripped to the waist, was washing himself.
+
+"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as
+he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.
+
+"Leave down that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who has (p. 102)
+the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the soapsuds
+from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive attitude, with clenched
+fists before him, in true fighting manner.
+
+"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost
+things that way before, I'ave."
+
+Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic
+remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier
+into silence.
+
+A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay
+on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms,
+their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in
+Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch,
+his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was
+fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position,
+fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's
+lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other
+side.
+
+"Firin' at beastly sandbags!" one of the men said to me, "Blimey, (p. 103)
+that's no game. Yer 'ere and the sandbags is there, you never see
+anything, and you've to fire at nothin'. They call this war. Strike me
+ginger if it's like the pictures in _The Daily ----_; them papers is
+great liars!"
+
+"Do you want to kill men?" I asked.
+
+"What am I here for?" was the rejoinder, "If I don't kill them they'll
+kill me."
+
+No trench is straight at any place; the straight line is done away
+with in the makeup of a trench. The traverse, jutting out in a sharp
+angle to the rear, gives way in turn to the fire position, curving
+towards the enemy, and there is never more than twelve yards liable to
+be covered by enfilade fire. The traverse is the home of spare
+ammunition, of ball cartridge, bombs, and hand-grenades. These are
+stored in depots dug into the wall of the trench. There are two things
+which find a place anywhere and everywhere, the biscuit and the bully
+beef. Tins of both are heaped in the trenches; sometimes they are used
+for building dug-outs and filling revetements. Bully beef and biscuits
+are seldom eaten; goodness knows why we are supplied with them.
+
+We came into the territory of another battalion, and were met by (p. 104)
+an officer.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked.
+
+"For water, sir," said Pryor.
+
+"Have you got permission from your captain?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Then you cannot get by here without it. It's a Brigade order," said
+the officer. "One of our men got shot through the head yesterday when
+going for water."
+
+"Killed, sir," I enquired.
+
+"Killed on the spot," was the answer.
+
+On our way back we encountered our captain superintending some digging
+operation.
+
+"Have you got the water already?" he asked.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"An officer of the ---- wouldn't let us go by without a written
+permission."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He said it was a Brigade order," was Pryor's naive reply. He wanted
+to go up that perilous road. The captain sat down on a sandbag, took
+out a slip of paper (or borrowed one from Pryor), placed his hat on
+his knee and the paper on his hat, and wrote us out the pass. (p. 105)
+
+For twenty yards from the trench the road was sheltered by our
+parapet, past that lay the beaten zone, the ground under the enemy's
+rifle fire. He occupied a knoll on the left, the spot where the
+fighting was heavy on the night before, and from there he had a good
+view of the road. We hurried along, the jars striking against our legs
+at every step. The water was obtained from a pump at the back of a
+ruined villa in a desolate village. The shrapnel shivered house was
+named Dead Cow Cottage. The dead cow still lay in the open garden, its
+belly swollen and its left legs sticking up in the air like props in
+an upturned barrel. It smelt abominably, but nobody dared go out into
+the open to bury it.
+
+The pump was known as Cock Robin Pump. A pencilled notice told that a
+robin was killed by a Jack Johnson near the spot on a certain date.
+Having filled our jars, Pryor and I made a tour of inspection of the
+place.
+
+In a green field to the rear we discovered a graveyard, fenced in
+except at our end, where a newly open grave yawned up at us as if
+aweary of waiting for its prey.
+
+"Room for extension here," said Pryor. "I suppose they'll not (p. 106)
+close in this until the graves reach the edge of the roadway. Let's
+read the epitaphs."
+
+How peaceful the place was. On the right I could see through a space
+between the walls of the cottage the wide winding street of the
+village, the houses, cornstacks, and the waving bushes, and my soul
+felt strangely quieted. In its peace, in its cessation from labour,
+there was neither anxiety nor sadness, there remained rest, placid and
+sad. It seemed as if the houses, all intact at this particular spot,
+held something sacred and restful, that with them and in them all was
+good. They knew no evil or sorrow. There was peace, the desired
+consummation of all things--peace brought about by war, the peace of
+the desert, and death.
+
+I looked at the first grave, its cross, and the rude lettering. This
+was the epitaph; this and nothing more:--
+
+ "An Unknown British Soldier."
+
+On a grave adjoining was a cheap gilt vase with flowers, English flowers,
+faded and dying. I looked at the cross. One of the Coldstream Guards lay
+there killed in action six weeks before. I turned up the black-edged
+envelope on the vase, and read the badly spelt message, "From his (p. 107)
+broken-hearted wife and loving little son Tommy."
+
+We gazed at it for a moment in silence. Then Pryor spoke. "I think
+we'll go back," he said, and there was a strained note in his voice;
+it seemed as if he wanted to hide something.
+
+On our way out to the road we stopped for a moment and gazed through
+the shattered window of Dead Cow Cottage. The room into which we
+looked was neatly furnished. A round table with a flower vase on it
+stood on the floor, a number of chairs in their proper position were
+near the wall, a clock and two photos, one of an elderly man with a
+heavy beard, the other of a frail, delicate woman, were on the
+mantlepiece. The pendulum of the clock hung idle; it must have
+ceased going for quite a long time. As if to heighten a picture of
+absolute comfort a cat sat on the floor washing itself.
+
+"Where will the people be?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," answered Pryor. "Those chairs will be useful in our
+dug-out. Shall we take them?"
+
+We took one apiece, and with chair on our head and jar in hand we (p. 108)
+walked towards the trenches. The sun was out, and it was now very hot.
+We sweated. My face became like a wet sponge squeezed in the hand;
+Pryor's face was very red.
+
+"We'll have a rest," he said, and laying down the jar he placed his
+chair in the road and sat on it. I did the same.
+
+"You know Omar?" he asked.
+
+"In my calf-age I doated on him," I answered.
+
+"What's the calf-age?"
+
+"The sentimental period that most young fellows go through," I said.
+"They then make sonnets to the moon, become pessimistic, criticise
+everything, and feel certain that they will become the hub of the
+universe one day. They prefer vegetable food to pork, and read Omar."
+
+"Have you come through the calf-age?"
+
+"Years ago! You'll come through, too, Pryor--"
+
+A bullet struck the leg of my chair and carried away a splinter of
+wood. I got to my feet hurriedly. "Those trenches seem quite a
+distance away," I said, hoisting my chair and gripping the jar as I
+moved off, "and we'll be safer when we're there."
+
+All the way along we were sniped at, but we managed to get back (p. 109)
+safely. Finding that our supply of coke ran out we used the chairs for
+firewood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII (p. 110)
+
+TERRORS OF THE NIGHT
+
+ Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,
+ When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
+ They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
+ Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.
+ They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
+ They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
+ There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:
+ For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.
+
+
+"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said
+Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the
+periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like
+shells--especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a
+mile away."
+
+"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.
+
+"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is
+always on the go."
+
+"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was
+cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
+
+"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111)
+when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of
+me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me
+to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench
+and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was
+looking at me, I could see its eyes--"
+
+"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
+
+"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you
+lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at
+me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back
+round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas
+some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
+
+"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
+part I am more afraid of ----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
+
+I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
+that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of (p. 112)
+death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet,
+and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am
+more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
+Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about
+one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning
+over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp,
+penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep
+as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the
+grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing,
+agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit
+below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It
+thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it
+before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know
+what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the
+yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's
+head.
+
+When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
+deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench
+of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113)
+day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I
+awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The
+place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered
+down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by
+concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a
+groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was
+being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile
+cries that slowly died away into silence.
+
+Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
+unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
+might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
+dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
+down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
+to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
+mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
+
+The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
+battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
+I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114)
+somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the
+others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
+Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
+
+"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
+pray every time I go up."
+
+"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
+(nice)."
+
+"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
+tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
+cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
+from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
+'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
+you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
+whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
+the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it
+wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a
+bad locality."
+
+He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag,
+and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115)
+into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed
+a look of pity on Pryor.
+
+"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I
+asked.
+
+"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men
+as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain
+comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke
+snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're
+goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin'
+you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work
+for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ----"
+
+Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
+
+"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not
+for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the
+cushiest in the world."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX (p. 116)
+
+THE DUG-OUT BANQUET
+
+ You ask me if the trench is safe?
+ As safe as home, I say;
+ Dug-outs are safest things on land,
+ And 'buses running to the Strand
+ Are not as safe as they.
+
+ You ask me if the trench is deep?
+ Quite deep enough for me,
+ And men can walk where fools would creep,
+ And men can eat and write and sleep
+ And hale and happy be.
+
+
+The dug-out is the trench villa, the soldiers' home, and is considered
+to be proof against shrapnel bullets and rifle fire. Personally, I do
+not think much of our dug-outs, they are jerry-built things, loose in
+construction, and fashioned in haste. We have kept on improving them,
+remedying old defects, when we should have taken the whole thing to
+pieces and started afresh. The French excel us in fashioning dug-outs;
+they dig out, we build. They begin to burrow from the trench downwards,
+and the roof of their shelter is on a line with the floor of the
+trench; thus they have a cover over them seven or eight feet in (p. 117)
+thickness; a mass of earth which the heaviest shell can hardly pierce
+through. We have been told that the German trenches are even more
+secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion shell to
+burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose most of
+its burrowing power. One of our heaviest shells struck an enemy's
+dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of the
+residents were merely scratched. The place was packed at the time.
+
+As I write I am sitting in a dug-out built in the open by the French.
+It is a log construction, built of pit-props from a neighbouring
+coal-mine. Short blocks of wood laid criss-cross form walls four feet
+in thickness; the roof is quite as thick, and the logs are much
+longer. Yesterday morning, while we were still asleep, a four-inch
+shell landed on the top, displaced several logs, but did us no harm.
+The same shell (pipsqueaks we call them) striking the roof of one of
+our trench dug-outs would blow us all to atoms.
+
+The dug-out is not peculiar to the trench. For miles back from the
+firing-line the country is a world of dug-outs; they are everywhere,
+by the roadsides, the canals, and farmhouses, in the fields, the (p. 118)
+streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A fortnight
+ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and the enemy
+began to shell the place about midnight. Bootless, half-naked, and
+half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was a regular Black
+Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt of queer things,
+and there were six soldiers, the man of the house, his wife, and seven
+children, one a sucking babe two months old, cooped up in the place.
+
+I did not like the place--in fact, I seldom like any dug-out, it
+reminds me of the grave, the covering earth, and worms, and always
+there is a feeling of suffocation. But I have enjoyed my stay in one
+or two. There was a delightful little one, made for a single soldier,
+in which I stayed. At night when off sentry, and when I did not feel
+like sleeping, I read. Over my head I cut a niche in the mud, placed
+my candle there, pulled down over the door my curtain, a real good
+curtain, taken from some neighbouring chateau, spent a few moments
+watching the play of light and shadows on the roof, and listening to
+the sound of guns outside, then lit a cigarette and read. Old (p. 119)
+Montaigne in a dug-out is a true friend and a fine companion. Across
+the ages we held conversation as we have often done. Time and again I
+have read his books; there was a time when for a whole year I read a
+chapter nightly: in a Glasgow doss-house, in a king's castle, in my
+Irish home, and now in Montaigne's own country, in a little earthy
+dug-out, I made the acquaintance of the man again. The dawn broke to
+the clatter of bayonets on the fire position when I put the book aside
+and buckled my equipment for the stand-to hour.
+
+The French trench dug-outs are not leaky, ours generally are, and the
+slightest shower sometimes finds its way inside. I have often awakened
+during the night to find myself soaked through on a floor covered with
+slush. When the weather is hot we sleep outside. In some cases the
+dug-out is handsomely furnished with real beds, tables, chairs, mirrors,
+and candlesticks of burnished brass. Often there are stoves built into
+the clayey wall and used for cooking purposes. In "The Savoy" dug-out,
+which was furnished after this fashion, Section 3 once sat down to a
+memorable dinner which took a whole day long to prepare; and eatables
+and wine were procured at great risk to life. Incidentally, Bill, (p. 120)
+who went out of the trenches and walked four kilometres to procure a
+bottle of _vin rouge_ was rewarded by seven days' second field
+punishment for his pains.
+
+Mervin originated the idea in the early morning as he was dressing a
+finger which he had cut when opening a tin of bully beef. He held up
+the bleeding digit and gazed at it with serious eyes.
+
+"All for this tin of muck!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we have a good
+square meal. I think we could get up one if we set to work."
+
+Stoner's brown eyes sparkled eagerly.
+
+"I know where there are potatoes and carrots and onions," he said.
+"Out in a field behind Dead Cow Villa; I'm off; coming Pat?"
+
+"Certainly, what are the others doing, Bill?"
+
+"We must have fizz," said my friend, and money was forthwith collected
+for wine. Bill hurried away, his bandolier round his shoulder and his
+rifle at the slope; and Mervin undertook to set the place in order and
+arrange the dug-out for the banquet. Goliath dragged his massive weight
+over the parados and busied himself pulling flowers. Kore cleaned (p. 121)
+the mess-tins, and Pryor, artistic even in matters of food, set about
+preparing a menu-card.
+
+When we returned from a search which was very successful, Stoner
+divested himself of tunic and hat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and
+got on with the cooking. I took his turn at sentry-go, and Z----,
+sleeping on the banquette, roused his stout body, became interested
+for a moment, and fell asleep again. Bill returned with a bottle of
+wine and seven eggs.
+
+"Where did you get them?" I asked.
+
+"'Twas the 'en as 'ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so
+much about it that I couldn't stand it, so I took the egg, and it
+looked so lonely all by itself in my 'and that I took the others to
+keep it company."
+
+At six o'clock we sat down to dine.
+
+Our brightly burnished mess-tin lids were laid on the table, a neatly
+folded khaki handkerchief in front of each for serviette. Clean towels
+served for tablecloths, flowers--tiger-lilies, snapdragons, pinks,
+poppies, roses, and cornflowers rioted in colour over the rim of a
+looted vase. In solitary state a bottle of wine stood beside the flowers,
+and a box of cigars, the gift of a girl friend, with the lid open (p. 122)
+disclosed the dusky beauties within. The menu, Pryor's masterpiece,
+stood on a wire stand, the work of Mervin.
+
+Goliath seated at the table, was smiles all over, in fact, he was one
+massive good humoured smile, geniality personified.
+
+"Anything fresh from the seat of war?" he asked, as he waited for the
+soup.
+
+"According to the latest reports," Pryor answered, "we've gained an
+inch in the Dardanelles and captured three trenches in Flanders. We
+were forced to evacuate two of these afterwards."
+
+"We miscalculated the enemy's strength, of course," said Mervin.
+
+"That's it," Pryor cut in. "But the trenches we lost were of no
+strategic importance."
+
+"They never are," said Kore. "I suppose that's why we lose thousands
+to take 'em, and the enemy lose as many to regain them."
+
+"Soup, gentlemen," Stoner interrupted, bringing a steaming tureen to
+the table. "Help yourselves."
+
+"Mulligatawny?" said Pryor sipping the stuff which he had emptied into
+his mess-tin, "I don't like this."
+
+[Illustration: Menu of the dug-out banquet] (p. 123)
+
+"Wot," muttered Bill, "wot's wrong with it?" (p. 124)
+
+"As soup its above reproach, but the name," said Pryor. "It's beastly."
+
+"Wot's wrong with it?"
+
+"Everything," said the artistic youth, "and besides I was fed as a
+child on mulligatawny, fed on it until I grew up and revolted. To meet
+it again here in a dug-out. Oh! ye gods!"
+
+"I'll take it," I said, for I had already finished mine.
+
+"Will you?" exclaimed Pryor, employing his spoon with Gargantuan zeal.
+"It's not quite etiquette."
+
+As he spoke a bullet whistled through the door and struck a tin of
+condensed milk which hung by a string from the rafter. The bullet went
+right through and the milk oozed out and fell on the table.
+
+"Waiter," said Goliath in a sharp voice, fixing one eye on the cook,
+and another on the falling milk.
+
+"Sir," answered Stoner, raising his head from his mess-tin.
+
+"What beastly stuff is this trickling down? You shouldn't allow this
+you know."
+
+"I'm sorry," said Stoner, "you'd better lick it up."
+
+"'Ad 'e," cried Bill. "Wot will we do for tea?" The Cockney held (p. 125)
+a spare mess-tin under the milk and caught it as it fell. This was
+considered very unseemly behaviour for a gentleman, and we suggested
+that he should go and feed in the servants' kitchen.
+
+A stew, made of beef, carrots, and potatoes came next, and this in
+turn was followed by an omelette. Then followed a small portion of
+beef to each man, we called this chicken in our glorious game of
+make-believe. Kore asserted that he had caught the chicken singing
+_The Watch on the Rhine_ on the top of a neighbouring chateau and took
+it as lawful booty of war.
+
+"Chicken, my big toe!" muttered Bill, using his clasp-knife for a
+tooth-pick. "It's as tough as a rifle sling. Yer must have got hold of
+the bloomin' weathercock."
+
+The confiture was Stoner's greatest feat. The sweet was made from
+biscuits ground to powder, boiled and then mixed with jam. Never was
+anything like it. We lingered over the dish loud in our praise of the
+energetic Stoner. "By God, I'll give you a job as head-cook in my
+establishment at your own salary," said Pryor. "Strike me ginger,
+pink, and crimson if ever I ate anything like it," exclaimed Bill. (p. 126)
+"We must 'ave a bit of this at every meal from now till the end of the
+war."
+
+Coffee, wine, and cigars came in due course, then Section 3 clamoured
+for an address.
+
+"Ool give it?" asked Bill.
+
+"Pat," said Mervin.
+
+"Come on Pat," chorused Section 3.
+
+I never made a speech in my life, but I felt that this was the moment
+to do something. I got to my feet.
+
+"Boys," I said, "it is a pleasure to rise and address you, although
+you haven't shaved for days, and your faces remind me every time I
+look at them of our rather sooty mess-tins."
+
+(Bill: "Wot of yer own phiz.")
+
+"Be quiet, Bill," I said, and continued. "Of course, none of you are
+to blame for the adhesive qualities of mud, it must stick somewhere,
+and doubtless it preferred your faces; but you should have shaved; the
+two hairs on Pryor's upper lip are becoming very prominent."
+
+"Under a microscope," said Mervin.
+
+"Hold your tongue," I shouted, and Mervin made a mock apology. "To-night's
+dinner was a grand success," I said, "all did their work (p. 127)
+admirably."
+
+"All but you," muttered Bill, "yer spent 'arf the time writin' when
+yer should have been peelin' taters or pullin' onions."
+
+"I resent the imputation of the gentleman at the rear," I said, "if I
+wasn't peeling potatoes and grinding biscuits I was engaged in
+chronicling the doings of Section 3. I can't make you fat and famous
+at the same time, much though I'd like to do both. You are an
+estimable body of men; Goliath, the big elephant--
+
+(Goliath: "Just a baby elephant, Pat.")
+
+"Mervin, who has travelled far and who loves bully stew; Pryor who
+dislikes girls with thick ankles, Kore who makes wash-out puns, Bill
+who has an insatiable desire for fresh eggs, and Stoner--I see a blush
+on his cheeks and a sparkle in his brown eyes already--I repeat the
+name Stoner with reverence. I look on the mess-tins which held the
+confiture and almost weep--because it's all eaten. There's only one
+thing to be done. Gentlemen, are your glasses charged?"
+
+"There's nothin' now but water," said Bill.
+
+"Water shame," remarked the punster.
+
+"Hold your tongues," I said, "fill them with water, fill them with (p. 128)
+anything. Ready? To the Section cook, Stoner, long life and ability to
+cook our sweets evermore."
+
+We drank. Just as we had finished, our company stretcher-bearers came
+by the door, a pre-occupied look on their faces and dark clots of
+blood on their trousers and tunics.
+
+"What has happened?" I asked.
+
+"The cooks have copped it," one of the bearers answered. "They were
+cooking grub in a shed at the rear near Dead Cow Villa, and a
+pip-squeak came plunk into the place. The head cook copped it in the
+legs, both were broken, and Erney, you know Erney?"
+
+"Yes?" we chorused.
+
+"Dead," said the stretcher-bearer. "Poor fellow he was struck unconscious.
+We carried him to the dressing station, and he came to at the door.
+'Mother!' he said, trying to sit up on the stretcher. That was his
+last word. He fell back and died."
+
+There was a long silence. The glory of the flowers seemed to have faded
+away and the lighted cigars went out on the table. Dead! Poor fellow.
+He was such a clean, hearty boy, very obliging and kind. How often had
+he given me hot water, contrary to regulations, to pour on my tea. (p. 129)
+
+"To think of it," said Stoner. "It might have been any of us! We must
+put these flowers on his grave."
+
+That night we took the little vase with its poppies, cornflowers,
+pinks, and roses, and placed them on the black, cold earth which
+covered Erney, the clean-limbed, good-hearted boy. May he rest in
+peace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X (p. 130)
+
+A NOCTURNAL ADVENTURE
+
+ Our old battalion billets still,
+ Parades as usual go on.
+ We buckle in with right good will,
+ And daily our equipment don
+ As if we meant to fight, but no!
+ The guns are booming through the air,
+ The trenches call us on, but oh!
+ We don't go there, we don't go there!
+
+
+I have come to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that
+blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in
+pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There
+is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The
+road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of what
+appears to the unit as loitering by the wayside. We longed for action,
+for some adventure with which to relieve the period of "everlastin'
+waitin'."
+
+Nine o'clock was striking in the room downstairs and the old man and
+woman who live in the house were pottering about, locking doors, and
+putting the place into order. Lying on the straw in the loft we (p. 131)
+could hear them moving chairs and washing dishes; they have seven sons
+in the army, two are wounded and one is a prisoner in Germany. They
+are very old and are unable to do much hard work; all day long they
+listen to the sound of the guns "out there." In the evening they wash
+the dishes, the man helping the woman, and at night lock the doors and
+say a prayer for their sons. Now and again they speak of their troubles
+and narrate stories of the war and the time when the Prussians passed
+by their door on the journey to Paris. "But they'll never pass here
+again," the old man says, smoking the pipe of tobacco which our boys
+have given him. "They'll get smashed out there." As he speaks he
+points with a long lean finger towards the firing line, and lifts his
+stick to his shoulder in imitation of a man firing a rifle.
+
+Ten o'clock struck. We were deep in our straw and lights had been out
+for a long time. I couldn't sleep, and as I lay awake I could hear
+corpulent Z---- snoring in the corner. Outside a wind was whistling
+mournfully and sweeping through the joists of the roof where the red
+tiles had been shattered by shrapnel. There was something (p. 132)
+melancholy and superbly grand in the night; the heaven was splashed
+with stars, and the glow of rockets from the firing line lit up the
+whole scene, and at intervals blotted out the lights of the sky. Here
+in the loft all was so peaceful, so quiet; the pair downstairs had
+gone to bed, they were now perhaps asleep and dreaming of their loved
+ones. But I could not rest; I longed to get up again and go out into
+the night.
+
+Suddenly a hand tugged at my blanket, a form rose from the floor by my
+side and a face peered into mine.
+
+"It's me--Bill," a low voice whispered in my ear.
+
+"Well?" I interrogated, raising myself on my elbow.
+
+"Not sleepin'?" mumbled Bill, lighting a cigarette as he flopped down
+on my blanket, half crushing my toes as he did so. "I'm not sleeping
+neither," he continued. "Did you see the wild ducks to-day?"
+
+"On the marshes? Yes."
+
+"Could we pot one?"
+
+"Rubbish. We might as well shoot at the stars."
+
+"I never tried that game," said Bill, with mock seriousness. "But (p. 133)
+I'm goin' to nab a duck. Strike me balmy if I ain't."
+
+"It'll be the guard-room if we're caught."
+
+"If _we_ are caught. Then you're comin'? I thought you'd be game."
+
+I slipped into my boots, tied on my puttees, slung a bandolier with
+ten rounds of ball cartridge over my shoulder, and groped for my rifle
+on the rack beneath the shrapnel-shivered joists. Bill and I crept
+downstairs and stole out into the open.
+
+"Gawd! that puts the cawbwebs out of one's froat," whispered my mate
+as he gulped down mighty mouthfuls of cold night air. "This is great.
+I couldn't sleep."
+
+"But we'll never hit a duck to-night," I whispered, my mind reverting
+to the white-breasted fowl which we had seen in an adjoining marsh
+that morning when coming back from the firing line. "Its madness to
+dream of hitting one with a bullet."
+
+"Maybe yes and maybe no," said my mate, stumbling across the midden
+and floundering into the field on the other side.
+
+We came to the edge of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of
+us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and
+osier beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising a (p. 134)
+plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the
+osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton
+of a house stood up naked against the sky, the cold stars shining
+through its shattered rafters. "'Twas shelled like 'ell, that 'ouse,"
+whispered Bill, leaning on his rifle and fixing his eyes on the ruined
+homestead. "The old man at our billet was tellin' some of us about it.
+The first shell went plunk through the roof and two children and the
+mother were bowled over."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"I should say so," mumbled my mate; then, "There's one comin' our
+way." Out over the line of trenches it sped towards us, whistling in
+its flight, and we could almost trace by its sound the line it
+followed in the air. It fell on the pool in front, bursting as it
+touched the water, and we were drenched with spray.
+
+"'Urt?" asked Bill.
+
+"Just wet a little."
+
+"A little!" he exclaimed, gazing at the spot where the shell exploded.
+"I'm soaked to the pelt. Damn it, 'twill frighten the ducks."
+
+"Have you ever shot any living thing?" I asked my mate as I tried (p. 135)
+to wipe the water from my face with the sleeve of my coat.
+
+"Me! Never in my nat'ral," Bill explained. "But when I saw them ducks
+this mornin' I thought I'd like to pot one o' em."
+
+"Its impossible to see anything now," I told him. "And there's another
+shell!"
+
+It yelled over our heads and burst near our billet on the soft mossy
+field which we had just crossed. Another followed, flew over the roof
+of the dwelling and shattered the wall of an outhouse to pieces.
+Somewhere near a dog barked loudly when the echo of the explosion died
+away, and a steed neighed in the horse-lines on the other side of the
+marsh. Then, drowning all other noises, an English gun spoke and a
+projectile wheeled through the air and towards the enemy. The monster
+of the thicket awake from a twelve hour sleep was speaking. Bill and I
+knew where he was hidden; the great gun that the enemy had been trying
+to locate for months and which he never discovered. He, the monster of
+the thicket, was working havoc in the foeman's trenches, and day after
+day great searching shells sped up past our billet warm from the
+German guns, but always they went far wide of their mark. Never could
+they discover the locality of the terrifying ninety-pounder, he (p. 136)
+who slept all day in his thicket home, awoke at midnight and worked
+until dawn.
+
+"That's some shootin'," said my mate as the shells shrieked overhead.
+"Blimey, they'll shake the country to pieces--and scare the ducks."
+
+Along a road made of bound sapling-bundles we took our way into the
+centre of the marsh. Here all was quiet and sombre; the marsh-world
+seemed to be lamenting over some ancient wrong. At times a rat would
+sneak out of the grass, slink across our path and disappear in the
+water, again; a lonely bird would rise into the air and cry piteously
+as it flew away, and ever, loud and insistent, threatening and
+terrible, the shells would fly over our heads, yelling out their
+menace of pain, of sorrow and death as they flew along.
+
+We killed no birds, we saw none, although we stopped out till the
+colour of dawn splashed the sky with streaks of early light. As we
+went in by the door of our billet the monster of the thicket was still
+at work, although no answering shells sped up from the enemy's lines.
+Up in the loft Z---- was snoring loudly as he lay asleep on the straw,
+the blanket tight round his body, his jaw hanging loosely, and (p. 137)
+an unlighted pipe on the floor by his side. Placing our rifles on the
+rack, Bill and I took off our bandoliers and lay down on our blankets.
+Presently we were asleep.
+
+That was how Bill and I shot wild duck in the marshes near the village
+of--Somewhere in France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI (p. 138)
+
+THE MAN WITH THE ROSARY
+
+ There's a tramp o' feet in the mornin',
+ There's an oath from an N.C.O.,
+ As up the road to the trenches
+ The brown battalions go:
+ Guns and rifles and waggons,
+ Transports and horses and men,
+ Up with the flush of the dawnin',
+ And back with the night again.
+
+
+Sometimes when our spell in the trenches comes to an end we go back
+for a rest in some village or town. Here the _estaminet_ or _debitant_
+(French as far as I am aware for a beer shop), is open to the British
+soldier for three hours daily, from twelve to one and from six to
+eight o'clock. For some strange reason we often find ourselves busy on
+parade at these hours, and when not on parade we generally find
+ourselves without money. I have been here for four months; looking at
+my pay book I find that I've been paid 25 fr. (or in plain English,
+one pound) since I have come to France, a country where the weather
+grows hotter daily, where the water is seldom drinkable, and where (p. 139)
+wine and beer is so cheap. Once we were paid five francs at five o'clock
+in the afternoon after five penniless days of rest in a village, and
+ordered as we were paid, to pack up our all and get ready to set off
+at six o'clock for the trenches. From noon we had been playing cards,
+and some of the boys gambled all their pay in advance and lost it.
+Bill's five francs had to be distributed amongst several members of
+the platoon.
+
+"It's only five francs, anyway," he said. "Wot matter whether I spend
+it on cards, wine, or women. I don't care for soldierin' as a
+profession?"
+
+"What is your profession, Bill?" Pryor asked; we never really knew
+what Bill's civil occupation was, he seemed to know a little of many
+crafts, but was master of none.
+
+"I've been everything," he replied, employing his little finger in the
+removal of cigarette ash. "My ole man apprenticed me to a marker of
+'ot cross buns, but I 'ad a 'abit of makin' the long end of the cross
+on the short side, an' got chucked out. Then I learned 'ow to jump
+through tin plates in order to make them nutmeg graters, but left that
+job after sticking plump in the middle of a plate. I had to stop (p. 140)
+there for three days without food or drink. They were thinnin' me out,
+see! Then I was a draughts manager at a bank, and shut the ventilators;
+after that I was an electric mechanic; I switched the lights on and
+off at night and mornin'; now I'm a professional gambler, I lose all
+my tin."
+
+"You're also a soldier," I said.
+
+"Course, I am," Bill replied. "I can present hipes by numbers, and
+knock the guts out of sandbags at five hundred yards."
+
+We did not leave the village until eight o'clock. It was now very dark
+and had begun to rain, not real rain, but a thin drizzle which mixed
+up with the flashes of guns, the glow of star-shells and the long
+tremulous glimmer of flashlights. The blood-red blaze of haystacks
+afire near Givenchy, threw a sombre haze over our line of march. Even
+through the haze, star-shells showed brilliant in their many different
+colours, red, green, and electric white. The French send up a beautiful
+light which bursts into four different flames that burn standing high
+in mid-air for three minutes; another, a parachute star, holds the sky
+for four minutes, and almost blots its more remote sisters from the
+heavens. The English and the Germans are content to fling rockets (p. 141)
+across and observe one another's lines while these flare out their
+brief meteoric life. The firing-line was about five miles away; the
+starlights seemed to rise and fall just beyond an adjacent spinney, so
+deceptive are they.
+
+Part of our journey ran along the bank of a canal; there had been some
+heavy fighting the night previous, and the wounded were still coming
+down by barges, only those who are badly hurt come this way, the less
+serious cases go by motor ambulance from dressing station to
+hospital--those who are damaged slightly in arm or head generally
+walk. Here we encountered a party of men marching in single file with
+rifles, skeleton equipment, picks and shovels. In the dark it was
+impossible to distinguish the regimental badge.
+
+"Oo are yer?" asked Bill, who, like a good many more of us, was
+smoking a cigarette contrary to orders.
+
+"The Camberwell Gurkhas," came the answer. "Oo are yer?"
+
+"The Chelsea Cherubs," said Bill. "Up workin'!"
+
+"Doin' a bit between the lines," answered one of the working party.
+"Got bombed out and were sent back."
+
+"Lucky dogs, goin' back for a kip (sleep)." (p. 142)
+
+"'Ad two killed and seven wounded."
+
+"Blimey!"
+
+"Good luck, boys," said the disappearing file as the darkness
+swallowed up the working party.
+
+The pace was a sharp one. Half a mile back from the firing-line we
+turned off to the left and took our way by a road running parallel to
+the trenches. We had put on our waterproof capes, our khaki overcoats
+had been given up a week before.
+
+The rain dripped down our clothes, our faces and our necks, each
+successive star-light showed the water trickling down our rifle butts
+and dripping to the roadway. Stoner slept as he marched, his hand in
+Kore's. We often move along in this way, it is quite easy, there is
+lullaby in the monotonous step, and the slumbrous crunching of nailed
+boots on gravel.
+
+We turned off the road where it runs through the rubble and scattered
+bricks, all that remains of the village of Givenchy, and took our way
+across a wide field. The field was under water in the wet season, and
+a brick pathway had been built across it. Along this path we took our
+way. A strong breeze had risen and was swishing our waterproofs (p. 143)
+about our bodies; the darkness was intense, I had to strain my eyes to
+see the man in front, Stoner. In the darkness he was a nebulous dark
+bulk that sprang into bold relief when the starlights flared in front.
+When the flare died out we stumbled forward into pitch dark nothingness.
+The pathway was barely two feet across, a mere tight-rope in the wide
+waste, and on either side nothing stood out to give relief to the
+desolate scene; over us the clouds hung low, shapeless and gloomy,
+behind was the darkness, in front when the starlights made the
+darkness visible they only increased the sense of solitude.
+
+We stumbled and fell, rose and fell again, our capes spreading out
+like wings and our rifles falling in the mud. The sight of a man or
+woman falling always makes me laugh. I laughed as I fell, as Stoner
+fell, as Mervin, Goliath, Bill, or Pryor fell. Sometimes we fell
+singly, again in pairs, often we fell together a heap of rifles,
+khaki, and waterproof capes. We rose grumbling, spitting mud and
+laughing. Stoner was very unfortunate, a particle of dirt got into his
+eye almost blinding him. Afterwards he crawled along, now and again
+getting to his feet, merely to fall back into his earthy position. (p. 144)
+A rifle fire opened on us from the front, and bullets whizzed past our
+ears, voices mingled with the ting of searching bullets.
+
+"Anybody hurt?"
+
+"No, all right so far."
+
+"Stoner's down."
+
+"He's up again."
+
+"Blimey, it's a balmy."
+
+"Mervin's crawling on his hands and knees."
+
+"Nark the doin's, ye're on my waterproof. Let go!"
+
+"Goliath's down."
+
+"Are you struck, Goliath?"
+
+"No, I wish to heaven I was," muttered the giant, bulking up in the
+flare of a searchlight, blood dripping from his face showed where he
+had been scratched as he stumbled.
+
+We got safely into the trench and relieved the Highland Light Infantry.
+The place was very quiet, they assured us, it is always the same. It
+has become trench etiquette to tell the relieving battalion that it is
+taking over a cushy position. By this trench next morning we found six
+newly made graves, telling how six Highlanders had met their death,
+killed in action.
+
+Next morning as I was looking through a periscope at the enemy's (p. 145)
+trenches, and wondering what was happening behind their sandbag line,
+a man from the sanitary squad came along sprinkling the trench with
+creosote and chloride of lime.
+
+"Seein' anything?" he asked.
+
+"Not much," I answered, "the grass is so high in front that I can see
+nothing but the tips of the enemy's parapets. There's some work for
+you here," I said.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Under your feet," I told him. "The floor is soft as putty and smells
+vilely. Perhaps there is a dead man there. Last night I slept by the
+spot and it turned me sick."
+
+"Have you an entrenchin' tool?"
+
+I handed him the implement, he dug into the ground and presently
+unearthed a particle of clothing, five minutes later a boot came to
+view, then a second; fifteen minutes assiduous labour revealed an
+evil-smelling bundle of clothing and decaying flesh. I still remained
+an onlooker, but changed my position on the banquette.
+
+"He must have been dead a long time," said the sanitary man, as he (p. 146)
+flung handfuls of lime on the body, "see his face."
+
+He turned the thing on its back, its face up to the sky. The features
+were wonderfully well-preserved; the man might have fallen the day
+before. The nose pinched and thin, turned up a little at the point,
+the lips were drawn tight round the gums, the teeth showed dog-like
+and vicious; the eyes were open and raised towards the forehead, and
+the whole face was splashed with clotted blood. A wound could be seen
+on the left temple, the fatal bullet had gone through there.
+
+"He was killed in the winter," said the sanitary man, pointing at the
+gloves on the dead soldier's hands. "These trenches were the
+'Allemands' then, and the boys charged 'em. I suppose this feller
+copped a packet and dropped into the mud and was tramped down."
+
+"Who is he?" I asked.
+
+The man with the chloride of lime opened the tunic and shirt of the
+dead man and brought out an identity disc.
+
+"Irish," he said, "Munster Fusiliers." "What's this?" he asked, taking
+a string of beads with a little shiny crucifix on the end of it, from
+the dead man's neck.
+
+"It's his rosary," I said, and my mind saw in a vivid picture a (p. 147)
+barefooted boy going over the hills of Corrymeela to morning Mass,
+with his beads in his hand. On either side rose the thatched cabins of
+the peasantry, the peat smoke curling from the chimneys, the little
+boreens running through the bushes, the brown Irish bogs, the heather
+in blossom, the turf stacks, the laughing colleens....
+
+"Here's a letter," said the sanitary man, "it was posted last
+Christmas. It's from a girl, too."
+
+He commenced reading:--
+
+"My dear Patrick,--I got your letter yesterday, and whenever I was my
+lone the day I was always reading it. I wish the black war was over
+and you back again--we all at home wish that, and I suppose yourself
+wishes it as well; I was up at your house last night; there's not much
+fun in it now. I read the papers to your mother, and me and her was
+looking at a map. But we didn't know where you were so we could only
+make guesses. Your mother and me is making the Rounds of the Cross for
+you, and I am always thinking of you in my prayers. You'll be having
+the parcel I sent before you get this letter. I hope it's not broken
+or lost. The socks I sent were knitted by myself, three pairs of (p. 148)
+them, and I've put the holy water on them. Don't forget to put them on
+when your feet get wet, at home you never used to bother about
+anything like that; just tear about the same in wet as dry. But you'll
+take care of yourself now, won't you: and not get killed? It'll be a
+grand day when you come back, and God send the day to come soon! Send
+a letter as often as you can, I myself will write you one every day,
+and I'll pray to the Holy Mother to take care of you."
+
+We buried him behind the parados, and placed the rosary round the arms
+of the cross which was erected over him. On the following day one of
+our men went out to see the grave, and while stooping to place some
+flowers on it he got shot through the head. That evening he was buried
+beside the Munster Fusilier.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII (p. 149)
+
+THE SHELLING OF THE KEEP
+
+ A brazier fire at twilight,
+ And glow-worm fires ashine,
+ A searchlight sweeping heaven,
+ Above the firing-line.
+ The rifle bullet whistles
+ The message that it brings
+ Of death and desolation
+ To common folk and kings.
+
+
+We went back from the trenches as reserves to the Keep. Broken down
+though the place was when we entered it there was something restful in
+the brown bricks, hidden in ivy, in the well-paved yard, and the
+glorious riot of flowers. Most of the original furniture remained--the
+beds, the chairs, and the pictures. All were delighted with the place,
+Mervin particularly. "I'll make my country residence here after the
+war," he said.
+
+On the left was a church. Contrary to orders I spent an hour in the
+dusk of the first evening in the ruined pile. The place had been
+shelled for seven months, not a day had passed when it was not (p. 150)
+struck in some part. The sacristy was a jumble of prayer books,
+vestments, broken rosaries, crucifixes, and pictures. An ink pot and
+pen lay on a broken table beside a blotting pad. A lamp which once
+hung from the roof was beside them, smashed to atoms. In the church
+the altar railing was twisted into shapeless bars of iron, bricks
+littered the altar steps, the altar itself even, and bricks, tiles,
+and beams were piled high in the body of the church.
+
+Outside in the graveyard the graves lay open and the bones of the dead
+were scattered broadcast over the green grass. Crosses were smashed or
+wrenched out of the ground and flung to earth; near the Keep was the
+soldiers' cemetery, the resting place of French, English, Indian, and
+German soldiers. Many of the French had bottles of holy water placed
+on their graves under the crosses. The English epitaphs were short and
+concise, always the same in manner: "Private 999 J. Smith, 26th London
+Battalion, killed in action 1st March, 1915." And under it stamped on
+a bronze plate was the information, "Erected by the Mobile Unit
+(B.R.C.S.) to preserve the record found on the spot." Often the dead
+man's regiment left a token of remembrance, a bunch of flowers, the
+dead man's cap or bayonet and rifle (these two latter only if (p. 151)
+they had been badly damaged when the man died). Many crosses had been
+taken from the churchyard and placed over these men. One of them read,
+"A notre devote fille," and another, "To my beloved mother."
+
+Several Indians, men of the Bengal Mountain Battery, were buried here.
+A woman it was stated, had disclosed their location to the enemy, and
+the billet in which they were staying was struck fair by a high
+explosive shell. Thirty-one were killed. They were now at
+rest--Anaytullah, Lakhasingh, and other strange men with queer names
+under the crosses fashioned from biscuit boxes. On the back of
+Anaytullah's cross was the wording in black: "Biscuits, 50 lbs."
+
+Thus the environment of the Keep: the enemy's trenches were about
+eight hundred yards away. No fighting took place here, the men's
+rifles stood loaded, but no shot was fired; only when the front line
+was broken, if that ever took place, would the defenders of the Keep
+come into play and hold the enemy back as long as that were possible.
+Then when they could no longer hold out, when the foe pressed in (p. 152)
+on all sides, there was something still to do, something vitally
+important which would cost the enemy many lives, and, if a miracle did
+not happen, something which would wipe out the defenders for ever.
+This was the Keep.
+
+The evening was very quiet; a few shells flew wide overhead, and now
+and again stray bullets pattered against the masonry. We cooked our
+food in the yard, and, sitting down amidst the flowers, we drank our
+tea and ate our bread and jam. The first flies were busy, they flew
+amidst the flower-beds and settled on our jam. Mervin told a story of
+a country where he had been in, and where the flies were legion and
+ate the eyes out of horses. The natives there wore corks hung by
+strings from their caps, and these kept the flies away.
+
+"How?" asked Bill.
+
+"The corks kept swinging backwards and forwards as the men walked,"
+said Mervin. "Whenever a cork struck a fly it dashed the insect's
+brains out."
+
+"Blimey!" cried Bill, then asked, "What was the most wonderful thing
+you ever seen, Mervin?"
+
+"The most wonderful thing," repeated Mervin. "Oh, I'll tell you. It
+was the way they buried the dead out in Klondike. The snow lies (p. 153)
+there for six months and it's impossible to dig, so when a man died
+they sharpened his toes and drove him into the earth with a mallet."
+
+"I saw a more wonderful thing than that, and it was when we lay in the
+barn at Richebourg," said Bill, who was referring to a comfortless
+billet and a cold night which were ours a month earlier. "I woke up
+about midnight 'arf asleep. I 'ad my boots off and I couldn't 'ardly
+feel them I was so cold. 'Blimey!' I said, 'on goes my understandin's,
+and I 'ad a devil of a job lacing my boots up. When I thought I 'ad
+them on I could 'ear someone stirrin' on the left. It was my cotmate.
+'Wot's yer gime?' he says. 'Wot gime?' I asks. 'Yer foolin' about
+with my tootsies,' he says. Then after a minute 'e shouts, 'Damn it
+ye've put on my boots,' So I 'ad, put on his blessed boots and laced
+them mistaking 'is feet for my own."
+
+"We never heard of this before," I said.
+
+"No, cos 'twas ole Jersey as was lying aside me that night, next day
+'e was almost done in with the bomb."
+
+"It's jolly quiet here," said Goliath, sitting back in an armchair and
+lighting a cigarette. "This will be a jolly holiday."
+
+"I heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place was (p. 154)
+hot," Stoner remarked. "The Irish Guards were here, and they said they
+preferred the trenches to the Keep."
+
+"It will be a poor country house," said Mervin, "if it's going to be
+as bad as you say."
+
+On the following evening I was standing guard in a niche in the
+building. Darkness was falling and the shadows sat at the base of the
+walls east of the courtyard. My niche looked out on the road, along
+which the wounded are carried from the trenches by night and sometimes
+by day. The way is by no means safe. As I stood there four men came
+down the road carrying a limp form on a stretcher. A waterproof
+ground-sheet lay over the wounded soldier, his head was uncovered, and
+it wobbled from side to side, a streak of blood ran down his face and
+formed into clots on the ear and chin. There was something uncannily
+helpless in the soldier, his shaking head, his boots caked brown with
+mud, the heels close together, the toes pointing upwards and outwards
+and swaying a little. Every quiver of the body betokened abject
+helplessness. The limp, swaying figure, clinging weakly to life, was a
+pathetic sight.
+
+The bearers walked slowly, carefully, stepping over every (p. 155)
+shell-hole and stone on the road. The sweat rolled down their faces
+and arms, their coats were off and their shirt sleeves rolled up
+almost to the shoulders. Down the road towards the village they
+pursued their sober way, and my eyes followed them. Suddenly they came
+to a pause, lowered the stretcher to the ground, and two of them bent
+over the prostrate form. I could see them feel the soldier's pulse,
+open his tunic, and listen for the beating of the man's heart, when
+they raised the stretcher again there was something cruelly careless
+in the action, they brought it up with a jolt and set off hurriedly,
+stumbling over shell-hole and boulder. There was no doubt the man was
+dead now; it was unwise to delay on the road, and the soldiers'
+cemetery was in the village.
+
+In the evening we stood to arms in the Keep; all our men were now out
+in the open, and the officers were inspecting their rifles barely four
+yards away from me. At that moment I saw the moon, a crescent of pale
+smoke standing on end near the West. I felt in my pocket for money,
+but found I had none to turn.
+
+"Have you a ha'penny?" I asked Mervin who was passing.
+
+"What for?" (p. 156)
+
+"I want to turn it, you know the old custom."
+
+"Oh, yes," answered Mervin, handing me a coin. "Long ago I used to
+turn my money, but I found the oftener I saw the moon the less I had
+to turn. However, I'll try it again for luck." So saying he turned a
+penny.
+
+"Do any of you fellows know Marie Redoubt?" an officer asked at that
+moment.
+
+"I know the place," said Mervin, "it's just behind the Keep."
+
+"Will you lead me to the place?" said the officer.
+
+"Right," said Mervin, and the two men went off.
+
+They had just gone when a shell hit the building on my left barely
+three yards away from my head. The explosion almost deafened me, a
+pain shot through my ears and eyes, and a shower of fine lime and
+crumpled bricks whizzed by my face. My first thought was, "Why did I
+not put my hands over my eyes, I might have been struck blind." I had
+a clear view of the scene in front, my mates were rushing hither and
+thither in a shower of white flying lime; I could see dark forms
+falling, clambering to their feet and falling again. One figure
+detached itself from the rest and came rushing towards me, by my (p. 157)
+side it tripped and fell, then rose again. I could now see it was
+Stoner. He put his hands up as if in protest, looked at me vacantly,
+and rushed round the corner of the building. I followed him and found
+him once more on the ground.
+
+"Much hurt?" I asked, touching him on the shoulder.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, rising slowly, "I got it there," he raised a
+finger to his face which was bleeding, "and there," he put his hand
+across his chest.
+
+"Well, get into the dug-out," I said, and we hurried round the front
+of the building. A pile of fallen masonry lay there and half a dozen
+rifles, all the men were gone. We found them in the dug-out, a hole
+under the floor heavily beamed, and strong enough to withstand a fair
+sized shell. One or two were unconscious and all were bleeding more or
+less severely. I found I was the only person who was not struck.
+Goliath and Bill got little particles of grit in the face, and they
+looked black as chimney sweeps. Bill was cut across the hand, Kore's
+arm was bleeding.
+
+"Where's Mervin?"
+
+"He had just gone out," I said, "I was speaking to him, he went (p. 158)
+with Lieut. ---- to Marie Redoubt."
+
+I suddenly recollected that I should not have left my place outside,
+so I went into my niche again. Had Mervin got clear, I wondered? The
+courtyard was deserted, and it was rapidly growing darker, a drizzle
+had begun, and the wet ran down my rifle.
+
+"Any word of Mervin?" I called to Stoner when he came out from the
+dug-out, and moved cautiously across the yard. There was a certain
+unsteadiness in his gait, but he was regaining his nerve; he had
+really been more surprised than hurt. He disappeared without answering
+my question, probably he had not heard me.
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double."
+
+The cry, that call of broken life which I have so often heard,
+faltered across the yard. From somewhere two men rushed out carrying a
+stretcher, and hurried off in the direction taken by Stoner. Who had
+been struck? Somebody had been wounded, maybe killed! Was it Mervin?
+
+Stoner came round the corner, a sad look in his brown eyes.
+
+"Mervin's copped it," he said, "in the head. It must have been (p. 159)
+that shell that done it; a splinter, perhaps."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He's gone away on the stretcher unconscious. The officer has been
+wounded as well in the leg, the neck, and the face."
+
+"Badly?"
+
+"No, he's able to speak."
+
+Fifteen minutes later I saw Mervin again. He was lying on the
+stretcher and the bearers were just going off to the dressing station
+with it. He was breathing heavily, round his head was a white bandage,
+and his hands stretched out stiffly by his sides. He was borne into
+the trench and carried round the first traverse. I never saw him
+again; he died two days later without regaining consciousness.
+
+On the following day two more men went: one got hit by a concussion
+shell that ripped his stomach open, another, who was on sentry-go got
+messed up in a bomb explosion that blew half of his side away. The
+charm of the courtyard, with the flower-beds and floral designs, died
+away; we were now pleased to keep indoors and allow the chairs outside
+to stand idle. All day long the enemy shelled us, most of the shells
+dropped outside and played havoc with the church; but the figure (p. 160)
+on the crucifix still remained, a symbol of something great and
+tragical, overlooking the area of destruction and death. Now and again
+a shell dropped on the flower-beds and scattered splinters and showers
+of earth against buildings and dug-outs. In the evening an orderly
+came to the Keep.
+
+"I want two volunteers," he said.
+
+"For what?" I asked him.
+
+"I don't know," was the answer, "they've got to report immediately to
+Headquarters."
+
+Stoner and I volunteered. The Headquarters, a large dug-out roofed
+with many sandbags piled high over heavy wooden beams, was situated on
+the fringe of the communication trench five hundred yards away from
+the Keep. We took up our post in an adjacent dug-out and waited for
+orders. Over our roof the German shells whizzed incessantly and tore
+up the brick path. Suddenly we heard a crash, an ear-splitting
+explosion from the fire line.
+
+"What's that?" asked Stoner. "Will it be a mine blown up?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," I ventured. "I wish they'd stop the shelling, suppose
+one of these shells hit our dug-out."
+
+"It would be all U.P. with us," said Stoner, trying to roll a (p. 161)
+cigarette and failing hopelessly. "Confound it," he said, "I'm all a
+bunch of nerves, I didn't sleep last night and very little the night
+before."
+
+His eyebrows were drawn tight together and wrinkles were forming
+between his eyes; the old sparkle was almost entirely gone from them.
+
+"Mervin," he said, "and the other two, the bloke with his side blown
+away. It's terrible."
+
+"Try and have a sleep," I said, "nobody seems to need us yet."
+
+He lay down on the empty sandbags which littered the floor, and
+presently he was asleep. I tried to read Montaigne, but could not, the
+words seemed to be running up and down over the page; the firing
+seemed to have doubled in intensity, and the shells swept low almost
+touching the roof of the dug-out.
+
+"Orderly!"
+
+I stumbled out into the open, and a sharp penetrating rain, and made
+my way to the Headquarters. The adjutant was inside at the telephone
+speaking to the firing line.
+
+"Hello! that the Irish?" he said. "Anything to report? The mine has done
+no damage? No, fifteen yards back, lucky! Only three casualties (p. 162)
+so far."
+
+The adjutant turned to an orderly officer: "The mine exploded fifteen
+yards in front, three wounded. Are you the orderly?" he asked, turning
+to me.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Find out where the sergeant-major is and ask him if to-morrow's
+rations have come in yet."
+
+"Where is the sergeant-major?" I asked.
+
+"I'm not sure where he stays," said the adjutant. "Enquire at the
+Keep."
+
+The trench was wet and slobbery, every hole was a pitfall to trap the
+unwary; boulders and sandbags which had fallen in waited to trip the
+careless foot. I met a party of soldiers, a corporal at their head.
+
+"This the way to the firing line?" he asked.
+
+"You're coming from it!" I told him.
+
+"That's done it!" he muttered. "We've gone astray, there's some fun up
+there!"
+
+"A mine blown up?" I asked.
+
+"'Twas a blow up," was the answer. "It almost deafened us, someone
+must have copped it. What's the way back?"
+
+"Go past Gunner Siding and Marie Redoubt, then touch left and (p. 163)
+you'll get through."
+
+"God! it's some rain," he said. "Ta, ta."
+
+"Ta, ta, old man."
+
+I turned into the trench leading to the Keep. The rain was pelting
+with a merciless vigour, and loose earth was falling from the sides to
+the floor of the trench. A star-light flared up and threw a brilliant
+light on the entrance of the Keep as I came up. The place bristled
+with brilliant steel, half a dozen men stood there with fixed
+bayonets, the water dripping from their caps on to their equipment.
+
+"Halt! who goes there!" Pryor yelled out, raising his bayonet to the
+"on guard" position.
+
+"A friend," I replied. "What's wrong here?"
+
+"Oh, it's Pat," Pryor answered. "Did you not hear it?" he continued,
+"the Germans have broken through and there'll be fun. The whole Keep
+is manned ready."
+
+"Is the pantomime parapet manned?" I asked. I alluded to the flat roof
+of the stable in which our Section slept. It had been damaged by shell
+fire, and was holed in several places, a sandbag parapet with (p. 164)
+loop-holes opened out on the enemy's front.
+
+"Kore, Bill, Goliath, they're all up there," said Pryor, "and the
+place is getting shelled too, in the last five minutes twenty shells
+have missed the place, just missed it."
+
+"Where does the sergeant-major stick?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, I don't know, not here I think."
+
+The courtyard was tense with excitement. Half a dozen new soldiers
+were called to take up posts on the parapet, and they were rushing to
+the crazy stairs which led to the roof. On their way they overturned a
+brazier and showers of fine sparks rioted into the air. By the flare
+it was possible to see the rain falling slanting to the ground in fine
+lines that glistened in the flickering light. Shells were bursting
+overhead, flashing out into spiteful red and white stars of flame, and
+hurling their bullets to the ground beneath. Shell splinters flew over
+the courtyard humming like bees and seeming to fall everywhere. What a
+miracle that anybody could escape them!
+
+I met our platoon sergeant at the foot of the stairs.
+
+"Where does the sergeant-major hold out?"
+
+"Down at Givenchy somewhere," he told me. "The Germans have broken (p. 165)
+through," he said. "It looks as if we're in for a rough night."
+
+"It will be interesting," I replied, "I haven't seen a German yet."
+
+Over the parapet a round head, black amidst a line of bayonets
+appeared, and a voice called down, "Sergeant!"
+
+"Right oh!" said the sergeant, and rushed upstairs. At that moment a
+shell struck a wall at the back somewhere, and pieces of brick whizzed
+into the courtyard and clattered down the stair. When the row subsided
+Kore was helped down, his face bleeding and an ugly gash showing above
+his left eye.
+
+"Much hurt, old man?" I asked.
+
+"Not a blighty, I'm afraid," he answered.
+
+A "blighty" is a much desired wound; one that sends a soldier back to
+England. A man with a "blighty" is a much envied person. Kore was
+followed by another fellow struck in the leg, and drawing himself
+wearily along. He assured us that he wasn't hurt much, but now and
+again he groaned with pain.
+
+"Get into the dug-outs," the sergeant told them. "In the morning you
+can go to the village, to-night it's too dangerous."
+
+About midnight I went out on the brick pathway, the way we had (p. 166)
+come up a few nights earlier. I should have taken Stoner with me, but
+he slept and I did not like to waken him. The enemy's shells were
+flying overhead, one following fast on another, all bursting in the
+brick path and the village. I could see the bright hard light of
+shrapnel shells exploding in the air, and the signal-red flash of
+concussion shells bursting ahead. Splinters flew back buzzing like
+angry bees about my ears. I would have given a lot to be back with
+Stoner in the dug-out; it was a good strong structure, shrapnel and
+bullet proof, only a concussion shell falling on top would work him
+any harm.
+
+The rain still fell and the moon--there was a bit of it somewhere--never
+showed itself through the close-packed clouds. For a while I struggled
+bravely to keep to the tight-rope path, but it was useless, I fell
+over first one side, then the other. Eventually I kept clear of it,
+and walked in the slush of the field. Half way along a newly dug
+trench, some three feet in depth, ran across my road; an attack was
+feared at dawn, and a first line of reserves were in occupation. I
+stumbled upon the men. They were sitting well down, their heads lower
+than the parapet, and all seemed to be smoking if I could form (p. 167)
+judgment by the line of little glow-worm fires, the lighted cigarette
+ends that extended out on either hand. Somebody was humming a music-hall
+song, while two or three of his mates helped him with the chorus.
+
+"Halt! who goes there?"
+
+The challenge was almost a whisper, and a bayonet slid out from the
+trench and paused irresolutely near my stomach.
+
+"A London Irish orderly going down to the village," I answered.
+
+A voice other than that which challenged me spoke: "Why are you alone,
+there should be two."
+
+"I wasn't aware of that."
+
+"Pass on," said the second voice, "and be careful, it's not altogether
+healthy about here."
+
+Somewhere in the proximity of the village I lost the brick path and
+could not find it again. For a full hour I wandered over the sodden
+fields under shell fire, discovering the village, a bulk of shadows
+thinning into a jagged line of chimneys against the black sky when the
+shells exploded, and losing it again when the darkness settled down
+around me. Eventually I stumbled across the road and breathed freely
+for a second.
+
+But the enemy's fire would not allow me a very long breathing (p. 168)
+space, it seemed bent on battering the village to pieces. In front of
+me ran a broken-down wall, behind it were a number of houses and not a
+light showing. The road was deserted.
+
+A shell exploded in mid-air straight above, and bullets sang down and
+shot into the ground round me. Following it came the casing splinters
+humming like bees, then a second explosion, the whizzing bullets and
+the bees, another explosion....
+
+"Come along and get out of it," I whispered to myself, and looked
+along the road; a little distance off I fancied I saw a block of
+buildings.
+
+"Run!"
+
+I ran, "stampeded!" is a better word, and presently found myself
+opposite an open door. I flung myself in, tripped, and went prostrate
+to the floor.
+
+Boom! I almost chuckled, thinking myself secure from the shells that
+burst overhead. It was only when the bees bounced on the floor that I
+looked up to discover that the house was roofless.
+
+I made certain that the next building had a roof before I entered. It
+also had a door, this I shoved open and found myself amongst a (p. 169)
+number of horses and warm penetrating odour of dung.
+
+"Now, 3008, you may smoke," I said, addressing myself, and drew out my
+cigarette case. My matches were quite dry; I lit one and was just
+putting it to my cigarette when one of the horses began prancing at
+the other end of the building. I just had a view of the animal coming
+towards me when the match went out and left me in the total darkness.
+I did not like the look of the horse, and I wished that it had been
+better bound when its master left it. It was coming nearer and now
+pawing the floor with its hoof. I edged closer to the door; if it were
+not for the shells I would go outside. Why was that horse allowed to
+remain loose in the stable? I tried to light another match, but it
+snapped in my fingers. The horse was very near me now; I could feel
+its presence, it made no noise, it seemed to be shod with velvet. The
+moment was tense, I shouted: "Whoa there, whoa!"
+
+It shot out its hind legs and a pair of hoofs clattered on the wall
+beside me.
+
+"Whoa, there! whoa there! confound you!" I growled, and was outside in
+a twinkling and into the arms of a transport sergeant.
+
+"What the devil--'oo are yer?" he blurted out. (p. 170)
+
+"Did you think I was a shell?" I couldn't help asking. "I'm sorry," I
+continued, "I came in here out of that beastly shelling."
+
+"Very wise," said the sergeant, getting quickly into the stable.
+
+"One of your horses is loose," I said. "Do you know where the London
+Irish is put up here?"
+
+"Down the road on the right," he told me, "you come to a large gate
+there on the left and you cross a garden. It's a big buildin'."
+
+"Thank you. Good night."
+
+"Good night, sonny."
+
+I went in by the wrong gate; there were so many on the left, and found
+myself in a dark spinney where the rain was dripping heavily from the
+branches of the trees. I was just on the point of turning back to the
+road when one of our batteries concealed in the place opened fire, and
+a perfect hell of flame burst out around me. I flopped to earth with
+graceless precipitancy, and wallowed in mud. "It's all up 3008, you've
+done it now," I muttered, and wondered vaguely whether I was partly or
+wholly dead. The sharp smell of cordite filled the air and caused (p. 171)
+a tickling sensation in my throat that almost choked me. When I
+scrambled to my feet again and found myself uninjured, a strange
+dexterity had entered my legs; I was outside the gate in the space of
+a second.
+
+Ten minutes later I found the sergeant-major, who rose from a blanket
+on the ground-floor of a pretentious villa with a shell splintered
+door, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The rations had not arrived;
+they would probably be in by dawn. Had I seen the mine explode? I
+belonged to the company holding the Keep, did I not? The rumour about
+the Germans breaking through was a cock-and-bull story. Had I any
+cigarettes? Turkish! Not bad for a change. Good luck, sonny! Take care
+of yourself going back.
+
+I came in line with the rear trench on my way back.
+
+"Who's there?" came a voice from the line of little cigarette lights.
+
+"A London Irish orderly--going home!" I answered, and a laugh rewarded
+my ironical humour.
+
+"Jolly luck to be able to return home," I said to myself when I got
+past. "3008, you weren't very brave to-night. By Jove, you did (p. 172)
+hop into that roofless house and scamper out of that spinney! In fact,
+you did not shine as a soldier at all. You've not been particularly
+afraid of shell fire before, but to-night! Was it because you were
+alone you felt so very frightened? You've found out you've been posing
+a little before. Alone you're really a coward."
+
+I felt a strange delight in saying these things; the firing had
+ceased; it was still raining heavily.
+
+"Remember the bridge at Suicide Corner," I said, alluding to a recent
+incident when I had walked upright across a bridge, exposed to the
+enemy's rifle fire. My mates hurried across almost bent double whilst
+I sauntered slowly over in front of them. "You had somebody to look at
+you then; 'twas vanity that did it, but to-night! You were afraid,
+terribly funky. If there had been somebody to look on, you'd have been
+defiantly careless. It's rather nerve-racking to be shelled when
+you're out alone at midnight and nobody looking at you!"
+
+Dawn was breaking when I found myself at the Keep. The place in some
+manner fascinated me and I wanted to know what had happened there. (p. 173)
+I found that a few shells were still coming that way and most of the
+party were in their dug-outs. I peered down the one which was under my
+old sleeping place; at present all stayed in their dug-outs when off
+duty. They were ordered to do so, but none of the party were sleeping
+now, the night had been too exciting.
+
+"'Oo's there?" Bill called up out of the darkness, and when I spoke he
+muttered:
+
+"Oh, it's ole Pat! Where were yer?"
+
+"I've been out for a walk," I replied.
+
+"When that shellin' was goin' on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You're a cool beggar, you are!" said Bill. "I was warm here I tell
+yer!"
+
+"Have the Germans come this way?" I asked.
+
+"Germans!" ejaculated Bill. "They come 'ere and me with ten rounds in
+the magazine and one in the breech! They knows better!"
+
+Stoner was awake when I returned to the dug-out by Headquarters.
+
+"Up already?" I asked.
+
+"Up! I've been up almost since you went away," he answered. "My! the
+shells didn't half fly over here. And I thought you'd never get (p. 174)
+back."
+
+"That's due to lack of imagination," I told him. "What's for
+breakfast?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII (p. 175)
+
+A NIGHT OF HORROR
+
+ 'Tis only a dream in the trenches,
+ Told when the shadows creep,
+ Over the friendly sandbags
+ When men in the dug-outs sleep.
+ This is the tale of the trenches
+ Told when the shadows fall,
+ By little Hughie of Dooran,
+ Over from Donegal.
+
+
+On the noon following the journey to the village I was sent back to
+the Keep; that night our company went into the firing trench again. We
+were all pleased to get there; any place was preferable to the block
+of buildings in which we had lost so many of our boys. On the night
+after our departure, two Engineers who were working at the Keep could
+not find sleeping place in the dug-outs, and they slept on the spot
+where I made my bed the first night I was there. In the early morning
+a shell struck the wall behind them and the poor fellows were blown to
+atoms.
+
+For three days we stayed in the trenches, narrow, suffocating and damp
+places, where parados and parapet almost touched and where it was (p. 176)
+well-nigh impossible for two men to pass. Food was not plentiful here,
+all the time we lived on bully beef and biscuits; our tea ran short
+and on the second day we had to drink water at our meals. From our
+banquette it was almost impossible to see the enemy's position; the
+growing grass well nigh hid their lines; occasionally by standing
+tiptoed on the banquette we could catch a glimpse of white sandbags
+looking for all the world like linen spread out to dry on the grass.
+But the Germans did not forget that we were near, pipsqueaks, rifle
+grenades, bombs and bullets came our way with aggravating persistence.
+It was believed that the Prussians, spiteful beggars that they are,
+occupied the position opposite. In these trenches the dug-outs were
+few and far between; we slept very little.
+
+On the second night I was standing sentry on the banquette. My watch
+extended from twelve to one, the hour when the air is raw and the
+smell of the battle line is penetrating. The night was pitch black; in
+ponds and stagnant streams in the vicinity frogs were chuckling. Their
+hoarse clucking could be heard all round; when the star-shells flew up
+I could catch vague glimpses of the enemy's sandbags and the line (p. 177)
+of tall shrapnel-swept trees which ran in front of his trenches. The
+sleep was heavy in my eyes; time and again I dozed off for a second
+only to wake up as a shell burst in front or swept by my head. It
+seemed impossible to remain awake, often I jumped down to the floor of
+the trench, raced along for a few yards, then back to the banquette
+and up to the post beside my bayonet.
+
+One moment of quiet and I dropped into a light sleep. I punched my
+hands against the sandbags until they bled; the whizz of the shells
+passed like ghosts above me; slumber sought me and strove to hold me
+captive. I had dreams; a village standing on a hill behind the
+opposite trench became peopled; it was summer and the work of haying
+and harvesting went on. The men went out to the meadows with
+long-handled scythes and mowed the grass down in great swathes. I
+walked along a lane leading to the field and stopped at the stile and
+looked in. A tall youth who seemed strangely familiar was mowing. The
+sweat streamed down his face and bare chest. His shirt was folded
+neatly back and his sleeves were thrust up almost to the shoulders.
+
+The work did not come easy to him; he always followed the first (p. 178)
+sweep of the scythe with a second which cropped the grass very close
+to the ground. For an expert mower the second stroke is unnecessary;
+the youngster had not learned to put a keen edge on the blade. I
+wanted to explain to him the best way to use the sharping stone, but I
+felt powerless to move: I could only remain at the stile looking on.
+Sometimes he raised his head and looked in my direction, but took no
+notice of me. Who was he? Where had I seen him before? I called out to
+him but he took no notice. I tried to change my position, succeeded
+and crossed the stile. When I came close to him, he spoke.
+
+"You were long in coming," he said, and I saw it was my brother, a
+youngster of eighteen.
+
+"I went to the well for a jug of water," I said, "But it's dry now and
+the three trout are dead at the bottom."
+
+"'Twas because we didn't put a cross of green rushes over it last
+Candlemas Eve," he remarked. "You should have made one then, but you
+didn't. Can you put an edge on the scythe?" he asked.
+
+"I used to be able before--before the--" I stopped feeling that I had
+forgotten some event.
+
+"I don't know why, but I feel strange," I said, "When did you come (p. 179)
+to this village?"
+
+"Village?"
+
+"That one up there." I looked in the direction where the village stood
+a moment before, but every red-brick house with its roof of
+terra-cotta tiles had vanished. I was gazing along my own glen in
+Donegal with its quiet fields, its sunny braes, steep hills and white
+lime-washed cottages, snug under their neat layers of straw.
+
+The white road ran, almost parallel with the sparkling river, through
+a wealth of emerald green bottom lands. How came I to be here? I
+turned to my brother to ask him something, but I could not speak.
+
+A funeral came along the road; four men carried a black coffin
+shoulder high; they seemed to be in great difficulties with their
+burden. They stumbled and almost fell at every step. A man carrying
+his coat and hat in one hand walked in front, and he seemed to be
+exhorting those who followed to quicken their pace. I sympathised with
+the man in front. Why did the men under the coffin walk so slowly? It
+was a ridiculous way to carry a coffin, on the shoulders. Why did they
+not use a stretcher? It would be the proper thing to do. I turned (p. 180)
+to my brother.
+
+"They should have stretchers, I told him."
+
+"Stretchers?"
+
+"And stretcher-bearers."
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double!" he snapped and vanished. I flashed
+back into reality again; the sentinel on the left was leaning towards
+me; I could see his face, white under the Balaclava helmet. There was
+impatience in his voice when he spoke.
+
+"Do you hear the message?" he called.
+
+"Right!" I answered and leant towards the man on my right. I could see
+his dark, round head, dimly outlined above the parapet.
+
+"Stretcher bearers at the double!" I called. "Pass it along."
+
+From mouth to mouth it went along the living wire; that ominous call
+which tells of broken life and the tragedy of war. Nothing is so poignant
+in the watches of the night as the call for stretcher-bearers; there
+is a thrill in the message swept from sentinel to sentinel along the
+line of sandbags, telling as it does, of some poor soul stricken down
+writhing in agony on the floor of the trenches.
+
+For a moment I remained awake; then phantoms rioted before my (p. 181)
+eyes; the trees out by the German lines became ghouls. They held
+their heads together in consultation and I knew they were plotting
+some evil towards me. What were they going to do? They moved, long,
+gaunt, crooked figures dressed in black, and approached me. I felt
+frightened but my fright was mixed with curiosity. Would they speak?
+What would they say? I knew I had wronged them in some way or another;
+when and how I did not remember. They came near. I could see they wore
+black masks over their faces and their figures grew in size almost
+reaching the stars. And as they grew, their width diminished; they
+became mere strands reaching form earth to heaven. I rubbed my eyes,
+to find myself gazing at the long, fine grasses that grew up from the
+reverse slope of the parapet.
+
+I leant back from the banquette across the narrow trench and rested my
+head on the parados. I could just rest for a moment, one moment then
+get up again. The ghouls took shape far out in front now, and careered
+along the top of the German trench, great gaunt shadows that raced as
+if pursued by a violent wind. Why did they run so quickly? Were they
+afraid of something? They ran in such a ridiculous way that I (p. 182)
+could not help laughing. They were making way, that was it. They had
+to make way. Why?
+
+"Make way!"
+
+Two stretcher-bearers stood on my right; in front of them a sergeant.
+
+"Make way, you're asleep," he said.
+
+"I'm not," I replied, coming to an erect position.
+
+"Well, you shouldn't remain like that, if you don't want to get your
+head blown off."
+
+My next sentry hour began at nine in the morning; I was standing on
+the banquette when I heard Bill speaking. He was just returning with a
+jar of water drawn from a pump at the rear, and he stopped for a
+moment in front of Spud Higgles, one of No. 4's boys.
+
+"Mornin'! How's yer hoppin' it?" said Spud.
+
+"Top over toe!" answered Bill. "Ow's you?"
+
+"Up to the pink. Any news?"
+
+"Yer 'aven't 'eard it?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The Brigadier's copped it this mornin'."
+
+"Oo?"
+
+"Our Brigadier." (p. 183)
+
+"Git!"
+
+"'S truth!"
+
+"Strike me pink!" said Spud. "'Ow?"
+
+"A stray bullet."
+
+"Stone me ginger! but one would say he'd a safe job."
+
+"The bullet 'ad 'is number!"
+
+"So, he's gone west!"
+
+"He's gone west!"
+
+Bill's information was quite true. Our Brigadier while making a tour
+of inspection of the trenches, turned to the orderly officer and said:
+"I believe I am hit, here." He put his hand on his left knee.
+
+His trousers were cut away but no wound was visible. An examination
+was made on his body and a little clot of blood was found over the
+groin on the right. A bullet had entered there and remained in the
+body. Twenty minutes later the Brigadier was dead.
+
+Rations were short for breakfast, dinner did not arrive, we had no tea
+but all the men were quite cheerful for it was rumoured that we were
+going back to our billets at four o'clock in the afternoon. About that
+hour we were relieved by another battalion, and we marched back (p. 184)
+through the communication trench, past Marie Redoubt, Gunner Siding,
+the Keep and into a trench that circled along the top of the Brick
+Path. This was not the way out; why had we come here? had the officer
+in front taken the wrong turning? Our billet there was such a musty
+old barn with straw littered on the floor and such a quaint old farmhouse
+where they sold newly laid eggs, fresh butter, fried potatoes, and
+delightful salad! We loved the place, the sleepy barges that glided
+along the canal where we loved to bathe, the children at play; the
+orange girls who sold fruit from large wicker baskets and begged our
+tunic buttons and hat-badges for souvenirs. We wanted so much to go
+back that evening! Why had they kept us waiting?
+
+"'Eard that?" Bill said to me. "Two London battalions are goin' to
+charge to-night. They're passing up the trench and we're in 'ere to
+let them get by."
+
+"About turn!"
+
+We stumbled back again into the communication trench and turned to the
+left, to go out we should have gone to the right. What was happening?
+Were we going back again? No dinner, no tea, no rations and sleepless
+nights.... The barn at our billet with the cobwebs on the rafters (p. 185)
+... the salad and soup.... We weren't going out that night.
+
+We halted in a deep narrow trench between Gunner Siding and Marie
+Redoubt, two hundred yards back from the firing trench. Our officer
+read out orders.
+
+"The ---- Brigade is going to make an attack on the enemy's position
+at 6.30 this evening. Our battalion is to take part in the attack by
+supporting with rifle fire."
+
+Two of our companies were in the firing line; one was in support and
+we were reserves; we had to remain in the trench packed up like
+herrings, and await further instructions. The enemy knew the
+communication trench; they had got the range months before and at one
+time the trench was occupied by them.
+
+We got into the trench at the time when the attack took place; our
+artillery was now silent and rapid rifle fire went on in front; a life
+and death struggle was in progress there. In our trench it was very
+quiet, we were packed tight as the queue at the gallery door of a
+cheap music-hall on a Saturday night.
+
+"Blimey, a balmy this!" said Bill making frantic efforts to squash my
+toes in his desire to find a fair resting place for his feet. (p. 186)
+"I'm 'ungry. Call this the best fed army in the world. Dog and maggot
+all the bloomin' time. I need all the hemery paper given to clean my
+bayonet, to sharpen my teeth to eat the stuff. How are we goin' to
+sleep this night, Pat?"
+
+"Standing."
+
+"Like a blurry 'oss. But Stoner's all right," said Bill. Stoner was
+all right; somebody had dug a little burrow at the base of the
+traverse and he was lying there already asleep.
+
+We stood in the trench till eight o'clock almost suffocated. It was
+impossible for the company to spread out, on the right we were
+touching the supports, on the left was a communication trench leading
+to the point of attack, and this was occupied by part of another
+battalion. We were hemmed in on all sides, a compressed company in
+full marching order with many extra rounds of ammunition and empty
+stomachs.
+
+I was telling a story to the boys, one that Pryor and Goliath gave
+credence to, but which the others refused to believe. It was a tale of
+two trench-mortars, squat little things that loiter about the firing
+line and look for all the world like toads ready to hop off. I came on
+two of these the night before, crept on them unawares and found (p. 187)
+them speaking to one another.
+
+"Nark it, Pat," muttered Bill lighting a cigarette. "Them talking. Git
+out!"
+
+"Of course you don't understand," I said. "The trench-mortar has a
+soul, a mind and great discrimination," I told him.
+
+"What's a bomb?" asked Bill.
+
+"'Tis the soul finding expression. Last night they were speaking, as I
+have said. They had a wonderful plan in hand. They decided to steal
+away and drink a bottle of wine in Givenchy."
+
+"Blimey!"
+
+"They did not know the way out and at that moment up comes Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran; in his sea-green bonnet, his salmon-pink coat,
+and buff tint breeches and silver shoon and mounted one of the
+howitzers and off they went as fast as the wind to the wineshop at
+Givenchy."
+
+"Oo's 'Ughie what dy'e call 'im of that place?"
+
+"He used to be a goat-herd in Donegal once upon a time when cows were
+kine and eagles of the air built their nests in the beards of giants."
+
+"Wot!"
+
+"I often met him there, going out to the pastures, with a herd of (p. 188)
+goats before him and a herd of goats behind him and a salmon tied to
+the laces of his brogues for supper."
+
+"I wish we 'ad somethin' for supper," said Bill.
+
+"Hold your tongue. He has lived for many thousands of years, has Wee
+Hughie Gallagher of Dooran," I said, "but he hasn't reached the first
+year of his old age yet. Long ago when there were kings galore in
+Ireland, he went out to push his fortune about the season of
+Michaelmas and the harvest moon. He came to Tirnan-Oge, the land of
+Perpetual Youth which is flowing with milk and honey."
+
+"I wish this trench was!"
+
+"Bill!"
+
+"But you're balmy, chum," said the Cockney, "'owitzers talkin' and
+then this feller. Ye're pullin' my leg."
+
+"I'm afraid you're not intellectual enough to understand the
+psychology of a trench-howitzer or the temperament of Wee Hughie
+Gallagher of Dooran, Bill."
+
+"'Ad 'e a finance?"[2]
+
+ [Footnote 2: Fiancee.]
+
+"A what?" I asked.
+
+"Wot Goliath 'as, a girl at home." (p. 189)
+
+"That's it, is it? Why do you think of such a thing?"
+
+"I was trying to write a letter to-day to St. Albans," said Bill, and
+his voice became low and confidential. "But you're no mate," he added.
+"You were goin' to make some poetry and I haven't got it yet."
+
+"What kind of poetry do you want me to make?" I asked.
+
+"Yer know it yerself, somethin' nice like!"
+
+"About the stars--"
+
+"Star-shells if you like."
+
+"Shall I begin now? We can write it out later."
+
+"Righto!"
+
+I plunged into impromptu verse.
+
+ I lie as still as a sandbag in my dug-out shrapnel proof,
+ My candle shines in the corner, and the shadows dance on the roof,
+ Far from the blood-stained trenches, and far from the scenes of war,
+ My thoughts go back to a maiden, my own little guiding star.
+
+"That's 'ot stuff," said Bill.
+
+I was on the point of starting a fresh verse when the low rumble of an
+approaching shell was heard; a messenger of death from a great German
+gun out at La Bassee. This gun was no stranger to us; he often (p. 190)
+played havoc with the Keep; it was he who blew in the wall a few nights
+before and killed the two Engineers. The missile he flung moved slowly
+and could not keep pace with its own sound. Five seconds before it
+arrived we could hear it coming, a slow, certain horror, sure of its
+mission and steady to its purpose. The big gun at La Bassee was
+shelling the communication trench, endeavouring to stop reinforcements
+from getting up to the firing lines and the red field between.
+
+The shell burst about fifty yards away and threw a shower of dirt over
+us. There was a precipitate flop, a falling backwards and forwards and
+all became messed up in an intricate jumble of flesh, equipment,
+clothing and rifles in the bottom of the trench. A swarm of "bees"
+buzzed overhead, a few dropped into the trench and Pryor who gripped
+one with his hand swore under his breath. The splinter was almost
+red-hot.
+
+The trench was voluble.
+
+"I'm chokin'; get off me tummy."
+
+"Your boot's on my face."
+
+"Nobody struck?"
+
+"Nobody." (p. 191)
+
+"Gawd! I hope they don't send many packets like that."
+
+"Spread out a little to the left," came the order from an officer.
+"When you hear a shell coming lie flat."
+
+We got to our feet, all except Stoner, who was still asleep in his
+lair, and changed our positions, our ears alert for the arrival of the
+next shell. The last bee had scarcely ceased to buzz when we heard the
+second projectile coming.
+
+"Another couple of steps. Hurry up. Down." Again we threw ourselves in
+a heap; the shell burst and again we were covered with dust and muck.
+
+"Move on a bit. Quicker! The next will be here in a minute," was the
+cry and we stumbled along the narrow alley hurriedly as if our lives
+depended on the very quickness. When we came to a halt there was only
+a space of two feet between each man. The trench was just wide enough
+for the body of one, and all set about to sort themselves in the best
+possible manner. A dozen shells now came our way in rapid succession.
+Some of the men went down on their knees and pressed their faces close
+to the ground like Moslems at prayer. They looked for all the (p. 192)
+world like Moslems, as the pictures show them, prostrate in prayer.
+The posture reminded me of stories told of ostriches, birds I have
+never seen, who bury their heads in the sand and consider themselves
+free from danger when the world is hidden from their eyes.
+
+Safety in that style did not appeal to me; I sat on the bottom of the
+trench, head erect. If a splinter struck me it would wound me in the
+shoulders or the arms or knees. I bent low so that I might protect my
+stomach; I had seen men struck in that part of the body, the wounds
+were ghastly and led to torturing deaths. When a shell came near, I
+put the balls of my hands over my eyes, spread my palms outwards and
+covered my ears with the fingers. This was some precaution against
+blindness; and deadened the sound of explosion. Bill for a moment was
+unmoved, he stood upright in a niche in the wall and made jokes.
+
+"If I kick the bucket," he said, "don't put a cross with ''E died for
+'is King and Country' over me. A bully beef tin at my 'ead will do,
+and on it scrawled in chalk, ''E died doin' fatigues on an empty
+stomach.'"
+
+"A cig.," he called, "'oo as a cig., a fag, a dottle. If yer can't (p. 193)
+give me a fag, light one and let me look at it burnin.' Give Tommy a
+fag an' 'e doesn't care wot 'appens. That was in the papers. Blimey!
+it puts me in mind of a dummy teat. Give it to the pore man's
+pianner...."
+
+"The what!"
+
+"The squalling kid, and tell the brat to be quiet, just like they tell
+Tommy to 'old 'is tongue when they give 'im a cig. Oh, blimey!"
+
+A shell burst and a dozen splinters whizzed past Bill's ears. He was
+down immediately another prostrate Moslem on the floor of the trench.
+In front of me Pryor sat, his head bent low, moving only when a shell
+came near, to raise his hands and cover his eyes. The high explosive
+shells boomed slowly in from every quarter now, and burst all round
+us. Would they fall into the trench? If they did! The La Bassee
+monster, the irresistible giant, so confident of its strength was only
+one amongst the many. We sank down, each in his own way, closer to the
+floor of the trench. We were preparing to be wounded in the easiest
+possible way. True we might get killed; lucky if we escaped! Would any
+of us see the dawn?...
+
+One is never aware of the shrapnel shell until it bursts. They (p. 194)
+had been passing over our heads for a long time, making a sound like
+the wind in telegraph wires, before one burst above us. There was a
+flash and I felt the heat of the explosion on my face. For a moment I
+was dazed, then I vaguely wondered where I had been wounded. My nerves
+were on edge and a coldness swept along my spine.... No, I wasn't
+struck....
+
+"All right, Pryor?" I asked.
+
+"Something has gone down my back, perhaps it's clay," he answered.
+"You're safe?"
+
+"I think so," I answered. "Bill."
+
+"I've copped it," answered the Cockney. "Here in my back, it's burnin'
+'orrid."
+
+"A minute, matey," I said, tumbling into a kneeling position and
+bending over him. "Let me undo your equipment."
+
+I pulled his pack-straps clear, loosened his shirt front and tunic,
+pulled the clothes down his back. Under the left shoulder I found a
+hot piece of shrapnel casing which had just pierced through his dress
+and rested on the skin. A black mark showed where it had burned in but
+little harm was done to Bill.
+
+"You're all right, matey," I said. "Put on your robes again."
+
+"Stretcher-bearers at the double," came the cry up the trench and (p. 195)
+I turned to Pryor. He was attending to one of our mates, a Section 3 boy
+who caught a bit in his arm just over the wrist. He was in pain, but
+the prospect of getting out of the trench buoyed him up into great
+spirits.
+
+"It may be England with this," he said.
+
+"Any others struck?" I asked Pryor who was busy with a first field
+dressing on the wounded arm.
+
+"Don't know," he answered. "There are others, I think."
+
+"Every man down this way is struck," came a voice; "one is out."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Spud Higgles," came the answer; then--"No, he's not killed, just got
+a nasty one across the head."
+
+They crawled across us on the way to the dressing station, seven of
+them. None were seriously hurt, except perhaps Spud Higgles, who was a
+little groggy and vowed he'd never get well again until he had a
+decent drink of English beer, drawn from the tap.
+
+The shelling never slackened; and all the missiles dropped (p. 196)
+perilously near; a circle of five hundred yards with the trench
+winding across it, enclosed the dumping ground of the German guns. At
+times the trench was filled with the acid stench of explosives mixed
+with fine lime flung from the fallen masonry with which the place was
+littered. This caused every man to cough, almost choking as the throat
+tried to rid itself of the foreign substance. One or two fainted and
+recovered only after douches of cold water on the face and chest.
+
+The suspense wore us down; we breathed the suffocating fumes of one
+explosion and waited, our senses tensely strung for the coming of the
+next shell. The sang-froid which carried us through many a tight
+corner with credit utterly deserted us, we were washed-out things;
+with noses to the cold earth, like rats in a trap we waited for the
+next moment which might land us into eternity. The excitement of a
+bayonet charge, the mad tussle with death on the blood-stained field,
+which for some reason is called the field of honour was denied us; we
+had to wait and lie in the trench, which looked so like a grave, and
+sink slowly into the depths of depression.
+
+Everything seemed so monstrously futile, so unfinished, so (p. 197)
+useless. Would the dawn see us alive or dead? What did it matter? All
+that we desired was that this were past, that something, no matter
+what, came and relieved us of our position. All my fine safeguards
+against terrible wounds were neglected. What did it matter where a
+shell hit me now, a weak useless thing at the bottom of a trench? Let
+it come, blow me to atoms, tear me to pieces, what did I care? I felt
+like one in a horrible nightmare; unable to help myself. I lay passive
+and waited.
+
+I believe I dozed off at intervals. Visions came before my eyes, the
+sandbags on the parapet assumed fantastic shapes, became alive and
+jeered down at me. I saw Wee Hughie Gallagher of Dooran, the lively
+youth who is so real to all the children of Donegal, look down at me
+from the top of the trench. He carried a long, glistening bayonet in
+his hand and laughed at me. I thought him a fool for ever coming near
+the field of war. War! Ah, it amused him! He laughed at me. I was
+afraid; he was not; he was afraid of nothing. What would Bill think of
+him? I turned to the Cockney; but he knelt there, head to the earth,
+a motionless Moslem. Was he asleep? Probably he was; any way it (p. 198)
+did not matter.
+
+The dawn came slowly, a gradual awaking from darkness into a cheerless
+day, cloudy grey and pregnant with rain that did not fall. Now and
+again we could hear bombs bursting out in front and still the
+artillery thundered at our communication trench.
+
+Bill sat upright rubbing his chest.
+
+"What's wrong?" I asked.
+
+"What's wrong! Everythink," he answered. "There are platoons of
+intruders on my shirt, sappin' and diggin' trenches and Lord knows
+wot!"
+
+"Verminous, Bill?"
+
+"Cooty as 'ell," he said. "But wait till I go back to England. I'll go
+inter a beershop and get a pint, a gallon, a barrel--"
+
+"A hogshead," I prompted.
+
+"I've got one, my own napper's an 'og's 'ead," said Bill.
+
+"When I get the beer I'll capture a coot, a big bull coot, an' make
+'im drunk," he continued. "When 'e's in a fightin' mood I'll put him
+inside my shirt an' cut 'im amok. There'll be ructions; 'e'll charge
+the others with fixed bayonets an' rout 'em. Oh! blimey! will they
+ever stop this damned caper? Nark it. Fritz, nark yer doin's, (p. 199)
+ye fool."
+
+Bill cowered down as the shell burst, then sat upright again.
+
+"I'm gettin' more afraid of these things every hour," he said, "what is
+the war about?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered.
+
+"I'm sick of it," Bill muttered.
+
+"Why did you join?"
+
+"To save myself the trouble of telling people why I didn't," he
+answered with a laugh. "Flat on yer tummy, Rifleman Teake, there's
+another shell."
+
+About noon the shelling ceased; we breathed freely again and
+discovered we were very hungry. No food had passed our lips since
+breakfast the day before. Stoner was afoot, alert and active, he had
+slept for eight hours in his cubby-hole, and the youngster was now
+covered with clay and very dirty.
+
+"I'll go back to the cook's waggon at Givenchy and rake up some grub,"
+he said, and off he went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV (p. 200)
+
+A FIELD OF BATTLE
+
+ The men who stand to their rifles
+ See all the dead on the plain
+ Rise at the hour of midnight
+ To fight their battles again.
+
+ Each to his place in the combat,
+ All to the parts they played,
+ With bayonet brisk to its purpose,
+ With rifle and hand-grenade.
+
+ Shadow races with shadow,
+ Steel comes quick on steel,
+ Swords that are deadly silent,
+ And shadows that do not feel.
+
+ And shades recoil and recover,
+ And fade away as they fall
+ In the space between the trenches,
+ And the watchers see it all.
+
+
+I lay down in the trench and was just dropping off to sleep when a
+message came along the trench.
+
+"Any volunteers to help to carry out wounded?" was the call.
+
+Four of us volunteered and a guide conducted us along to the firing
+line. He was a soldier of the 23rd London, the regiment which had made
+the charge the night before; he limped a little, a dejected look (p. 201)
+was in his face and his whole appearance betokened great weariness.
+
+"How did you get on last night?" I asked him.
+
+"My God! my God!" he muttered, and seemed to be gasping for breath. "I
+suppose there are some of us left yet, but they'll be very few."
+
+"Did you capture the trench?"
+
+"They say we did," he answered, and it seemed as if he were speaking
+of an incident in which he had taken no part. "But what does it
+matter? There's few of us left."
+
+We entered the main communication trench, one just like the others,
+narrow and curving round buttresses at every two or three yards. The
+floor was covered with blood, not an inch of it was free from the dark
+reddish tint.
+
+"My God, my God," said the 23rd man, and he seemed to be repeating the
+phrase without knowing what he said. "The wounded have been going down
+all night, all morning and they're only beginning to come."
+
+A youth of nineteen or twenty sat in a niche in the trench, naked to
+the waist save where a bandaged-arm rested in a long arm-sling.
+
+"How goes it, matey?" I asked.
+
+"Not at all bad, chummie," he replied bravely; then as a spasm of (p. 202)
+pain shot through him he muttered under his breath, "Oh! oh!"
+
+A little distance along we met another; he was ambling painfully down
+the trench, supporting himself by resting his arms on the shoulders of
+a comrade.
+
+"Not so quick, matey," I heard him say, "Go quiet like and mind the
+stones. When you hit one of them it's a bit thick you know. I'm sorry
+to trouble you."
+
+"It's all right, old man," said the soldier in front. "I'll try and be
+as easy as I can."
+
+We stood against the wall of the trench to let them go by. Opposite us
+they came to a dead stop. The wounded man was stripped to the waist,
+and a bandage, white at one time but now red with blood, was tied
+round his shoulder. His face was white and drawn except over his cheek
+bones. There the flesh, tightly drawn, glowed crimson as poppies.
+
+"Have you any water to spare, chummy?" he asked.
+
+"We've been told not to give water to wounded men," I said.
+
+"I know that," he answered. "But just a drop to rinse out my mouth!
+I've lain out between the lines all night. Just to rinse my mouth, (p. 203)
+chummy!"
+
+I drew the cork from my water bottle and held it to his lips, he took
+a mouthful, paused irresolutely for a moment and a greedy light shone
+in his eyes. Then he spat the water on the floor of the trench.
+
+"Thank you, chummy, thank you," he said, and the sorrowful journey was
+resumed.
+
+Where the road from the village is cut through by the trench we came
+on a stretcher lying on the floor. On it lay a man, or rather, part of
+a man, for both his arms had been blown off near the shoulders. A
+waterproof ground sheet, covered with mud lay across him, the two
+stumps stuck out towards the stretcher-poles. One was swathed in
+bandages, the other had come bare, and a white bone protruded over a
+red rag which I took to be a first field dressing. Two men who had
+been busy helping the wounded all morning and the night before carried
+the stretcher to here, through the tortuous cutting. One had now
+dropped out, utterly exhausted. He lay in the trench, covered with
+blood from head to foot and gasping. His mate smoked a cigarette
+leaning against the revetement.
+
+"Reliefs?" he asked, and we nodded assent. (p. 204)
+
+"These are the devil's own trenches," he said. "The stretcher must be
+carried at arms length over the head all the way, even an empty
+stretcher cannot be carried through here."
+
+"Can we go out on the road?" asked one of my mates; an Irishman
+belonging to another section.
+
+"It'll be a damned sorry road for you if you go out. They're always
+shelling it."
+
+"Who is he?" I asked pointing to the figure on the stretcher. He was
+unconscious; morphia, that gift of Heaven, had temporarily relieved
+him of his pain.
+
+"He's an N.C.O., we found him lying out between the trenches," said
+the stretcher-bearer. "He never lost consciousness. When we tried to
+raise him, he got up to his feet and ran away, yelling. The pain must
+have been awful."
+
+"Has the trench been captured?"
+
+"Of course it has," said the stretcher-bearer, an ironical smile
+hovering around his eyes. "It has been a grand victory. Trench taken
+by Territorials, you'll see in the papers. And there'll be pictures
+too, of the gallant charge. Heavens! they should see between the (p. 205)
+trenches where the men are blown to little pieces."
+
+The cigarette which he held between his blood-stained fingers dropped
+to the ground; he did not seem to notice it fall.
+
+We carried the wounded man out to the road and took our way down
+towards Givenchy. The route was very quiet; now and then a rifle
+bullet flew by; but apart from that there was absolute peace. We
+turned in on the Brick Pathway and had got half way down when a shell
+burst fifty yards behind us. There was a moment's pause, a shower of
+splinters flew round and above us, the stretcher sank towards the
+ground and almost touched. Then as if all of us had become suddenly
+ashamed of some intended action, we straightened our backs and walked
+on. We placed the stretcher on a table in the dressing-room and turned
+back. Two days later the armless man died in hospital.
+
+The wounded were still coming out; we met another party comprised of
+our own men. The wounded soldier who lay on the stretcher had both
+legs broken and held in place with a rifle splint; he also had a
+bayonet tourniquet round the thick of his arm. The poor fellow was (p. 206)
+in great agony. The broken bones were touching one another at every
+move. Now and again he spoke and his question was always the same:
+"Are we near the dressing station yet?"
+
+That night I slept in the trench, slept heavily. I put my equipment
+under me, that kept the damp away from my bones. In the morning Stoner
+told an amusing story. During the night he wanted to see Bill, but did
+not know where the Cockney slept.
+
+"Where's Bill?" he said.
+
+"Bill," I replied, speaking though asleep.
+
+"Bill, yes," said Stoner.
+
+"Bill," I muttered turning on my side, seeking a more comfortable
+position.
+
+"Do you know where Bill is?" shouted Stoner.
+
+"Bill!" I repeated again.
+
+"Yes, Bill!" he said, "Bill. B-i-double l, Bill. Where is here?"
+
+"He's here," I said getting to my feet and holding out my water
+bottle. "In here." And I pulled out the cork.
+
+I was twitted about this all day. I remembered nothing of the incident
+of the water bottle although in some vague way I recollected (p. 207)
+Stoner asking me about Bill.
+
+On the following day I had a chance of visiting the scene of the
+conflict. All the wounded were now carried away, only the dead
+remained, as yet unburied.
+
+The men were busy in the trench which lay on the summit of a slope;
+the ground dipped in the front and rear. The field I came across was
+practically "dead ground" as far as rifle fire was concerned. Only one
+place, the wire front of the original German trench, was dangerous.
+This was "taped out" as our boys say, by some hidden sniper. Already
+the parados was lined with newly-made firing positions, that gave the
+sentry view of the German trench some forty or fifty yards in front.
+All there was very quiet now but our men were making every preparation
+for a counter attack. The Engineers had already placed some barbed
+wire down; they had been hard at it the night before; I could see the
+hastily driven piles, the loosely flung intricate lines of wire flung
+down anyhow. The whole work was part of what is known as
+"consolidation of our position."
+
+Many long hours of labour had yet to be expended on the trench (p. 208)
+before a soldier could sleep at ease in it. Now that the fighting had
+ceased for a moment the men had to bend their backs to interminable
+fatigues. The war, as far as I have seen it is waged for the most part
+with big guns and picks and shovels. The history of the war is a
+history of sandbags and shells.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV (p. 209)
+
+THE REACTION
+
+ We are marching back from the battle,
+ Where we've all left mates behind,
+ And our officers are gloomy,
+ And the N.C.O.'s are kind,
+ When a Jew's harp breaks the silence,
+ Purring out an old refrain;
+ And we thunder through the village
+ Roaring "Here we are again."
+
+
+Four days later we were relieved by the Canadians. They came in about
+nine o'clock in the evening when we stood to-arms in the trenches in
+full marching order under a sky where colour wrestled with colour in a
+blazing flare of star-shells. We went out gladly and left behind the
+dug-out in which we cooked our food but never slept, the old crazy
+sandbag construction, weather-worn and shrapnel-scarred, that stooped
+forward like a crone on crutches on the wooden posts that supported
+it.
+
+"How many casualties have we had?" I asked Stoner as we passed out of
+the village and halted for a moment on the verge of a wood, (p. 210)
+waiting until the men formed up at rear.
+
+"I don't know," he answered gloomily. "See the crosses there," he said
+pointing to the soldiers' cemetery near the trees. "Seven of the boys
+have their graves in that spot; then the wounded and those who went
+dotty. Did you see X. of ---- Company coming out?"
+
+"No," I said.
+
+"I saw him last night when I went out to the Quartermaster's stores
+for rations," Stoner told me. "They were carrying him out on their
+shoulders, and he sat there very quiet like looking at the moon.
+
+"Over there in the corner all by themselves they are," Stoner went on,
+alluding to the graves towards which my eyes were directed. "You can
+see the crosses, white wood----"
+
+"The same as other crosses?"
+
+"Just the same," said my mate. "Printed in black. Number something or
+another, Rifleman So and So, London Irish Rifles, killed in action on
+a certain date. That's all."
+
+"Why do you say 'Chummy' when talking to a wounded man, Stoner?" I
+asked. "Speaking to a healthy pal you just say 'mate.'"
+
+"Is that so?" (p. 211)
+
+"That's so. Why do you say it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"I suppose because it's more motherly."
+
+"That may be," said Stoner and laughed.
+
+Quick march! The moon came out, ghostly, in a cloudy sky; a light,
+pale as water, slid over the shoulders of the men in front and rippled
+down the creases of their trousers. The bayonets wobbled wearily on
+the hips, those bayonets that once, burnished as we knew how to
+burnish them, were the glory and delight of many a long and strict
+general inspection at St. Albans; they were now coated with mud and
+thick with rust, a disgrace to the battalion!
+
+When the last stray bullet ceased whistling over our heads, and we
+were well beyond the range of rifle fire, leave to smoke was granted.
+To most of us it meant permission to smoke openly. Cigarettes had been
+burned for quite a quarter of an hour before and we had raised them at
+intervals to our lips, concealing the glow of their lighted ends under
+our curved fingers. We drew the smoke in swiftly, treasured it
+lovingly in our mouths for some time then exhaled it slowly and
+grudgingly.
+
+The sky cleared a little, but at times drifts of grey cloud swept (p. 212)
+over the moon and blotted out the stars. On either side of the road
+lone poplars stood up like silent sentinels, immovable, and the soft
+warm breeze that touched us like a breath shook none of their branches.
+Here and there lime-washed cottages, roofed with patches of straw
+where the enemy's shells had dislodged the terra-cotta tiles, showed
+lights in the windows. The natives had gone away and soldiers were
+billeted in their places. Marching had made us hot; we perspired
+freely and the sweat ran down our arms and legs; it trickled down our
+temples and dropped from our eyebrows to our cheeks.
+
+"Hang on to the step! Quick march! As you were! About turn!" some one
+shouted imitating our sergeant-major's voice. We had marched in
+comparative silence up to now, but the mimicked order was like a match
+applied to a powder magazine. We had had eighteen days in the trenches,
+we were worn down, very weary and very sick of it all; now we were out
+and would be out for some days; we were glad, madly glad. All began to
+make noises at the same time, to sing, to shout, to yell; in the night,
+on the road with its lines of poplars we became madly delirious, we
+broke free like a confused torrent from a broken dam. Everybody (p. 213)
+had something to say or sing, senseless chatter and sentimental songs
+ran riot; all uttered something for the mere pleasure of utterance; we
+were out of the trenches and free for the time being from danger.
+
+Stoner marched on my right, hanging on his knees a little, singing a
+music hall song and smoking. A little flutter of ash fell from his
+cigarette, which seemed to be stuck to his lower lip as it rose and
+fell with the notes of the song. When he came to the chorus he looked
+round as if defying somebody, then raised his right hand over his head
+and gripping his rifle, held the weapon there until the last word of
+the chorus trembled on his lips; then he brought it down with the last
+word and looked round as if to see that everybody was admiring his
+action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental,
+music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with
+exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived,
+his whole person surged with a vitality impossible to stem.
+
+We came in line with a row of cottages, soldiers' billets for the most
+part, and the boys were not yet in bed. It was a place to sing something
+great, something in sympathy with our own mood. The song when it (p. 214)
+came was appropriate, it came from one voice, and hundreds took it up
+furiously as if they intended to tear it to pieces.
+
+ Here we are, here we are, here we are again.
+
+The soldiers not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble;
+but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something
+pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a
+vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was
+as yet one with the night, with my mood and the whole spin of things.
+The song rolled on:--
+
+ Fit and well and feeling as right as rain,
+ Now we're all together; never mind the weather,
+ Since here we are again,
+ When there's trouble brewing; when there's something doing,
+ Are we downhearted. No! let them all come!
+ Here we are, here we are, here we are again!
+
+As the song died away I felt very lonely, a being isolated. True there
+was a barn with cobwebs on its rafters down the road, a snug farm where
+they made fresh butter and sold new laid eggs. But there was something
+in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes out in the (p. 215)
+fields nodding together as if in consultation, in the tall poplars, in
+the straight road, in the sound of rifle firing to rear and in the song
+sung by the tired boys coming back from battle, that filled me with
+infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a shelterless world.
+"Here we are; here we are again." I thought of Mervin, and six others
+dead, of their white crosses, and I found myself weeping silently like
+a child....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI (p. 216)
+
+PEACE AND WAR
+
+ You'll see from the La Bassee Road, on any summer day,
+ The children herding nanny goats, the women making hay.
+ You'll see the soldiers, khaki clad, in column and platoon,
+ Come swinging up La Bassee Road from billets in Bethune.
+ There's hay to save and corn to cut, but harder work by far
+ Awaits the soldier boys who reap the harvest fields of war.
+ You'll see them swinging up the road where women work at hay,
+ The long, straight road, La Bassee Road, on any summer day.
+
+
+The farmhouse stood in the centre of the village; the village rested
+on the banks of a sleepy canal on which the barges carried the wounded
+down from the slaughter line to the hospital at Bethune. The village
+was shelled daily. When shelling began a whistle was blown warning all
+soldiers to seek cover immediately in the dug-outs roofed with sandbags,
+which were constructed by the military authorities in nearly every garden
+in the place. When the housewifes heard the shells bursting they ran
+out and brought in their washing from the lines where it was hung out
+to dry; then they sat down and knitted stockings or sewed garments (p. 217)
+to send to their menfolk at the war. In the village they said: "When
+the shells come the men run in for their lives, and the women run out
+for their washing."
+
+The village was not badly battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched
+once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was
+used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The
+village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat
+puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet,
+but were going up presently.
+
+Bill and I were sitting in an _estaminet_ when two of these youngsters
+came in and sat opposite.
+
+"New 'ere?" asked Bill.
+
+"Came to Boulogne six days ago and marched all the way here," said one
+of them, a red-haired youth with bushy eyebrows. "Long over?" he
+asked.
+
+"Just about nine months," said Bill.
+
+"You've been through it then."
+
+"Through it," said Bill, lying splendidly, "I think we 'ave. At Mons
+we went in eight 'undred strong. We're the only two as is left."
+
+"Gracious! And you never got a scratch?"
+
+"Never a pin prick," said Bill, "And I saw the shells so thick (p. 218)
+comin' over us that you couldn't see the sky. They was like crows up
+above."
+
+"They were?"
+
+"We were in the trenches then," Bill said. "The orficer comes up and
+sez: 'Things are getting despirate! We've got to charge. 'Ool foller
+me?' 'I'm with you!' I sez, and up I jumps on the parapet pulling a
+machine gun with me."
+
+"A machine gun!" said the red-haired man.
+
+"A machine gun," Bill went on. "When one is risen 'e can do anything.
+I could 'ave lifted a 'ole battery on my shoulders because I was mad.
+I 'ad a look to my front to get the position then I goes forward.
+'Come back, cried the orficer as 'e fell----"
+
+"Fell!"
+
+"'E got a bullet through his bread basket and 'e flopped. But there
+was no 'oldin' o' me. 'Twas death or glory, neck 'an nothin', 'ell for
+leather at that moment. The London Irish blood was up; one of the
+Chelsea Cherubs was out for red blood 'olesale and retail. I slung the
+machine gun on my shoulder, sharpened my bayonet with a piece of
+sand-paper, took the first line o' barbed wire entanglements at (p. 219)
+a jump and got caught on the second. It gored me like a bull. I got
+six days C.B. for 'avin' the rear of my trousers torn when we came out
+o' the trenches."
+
+"Tell me something I can believe," said the red-haired youth.
+
+"Am I not tellin' you something," asked Bill. "Nark it, matey, nark
+it. I tell Gospel-stories and you'll not believe me."
+
+"But it's all tommy rot."
+
+"Is it? The Germans did'nt think so when I charged plunk into the
+middle of 'em. Yer should 'ave been there to see it. They were all
+round me and two taubes over 'ead watching my movements. Swish! and my
+bayonet went through the man in front and stabbed the identity disc of
+another. When I drew the bayonet out the butt of my 'ipe[3] would 'it
+a man behind me in the tummy. Ugh! 'e would say and flop bringing a
+mate down with 'im may be. The dead was all round me and I built a
+parapet of their bodies, puttin' the legs criss-cross and makin' loop
+'oles. Then they began to bomb me from the other side. 'Twas gettin'
+'ot I tell you and I began to think of my 'ome; the dug-out in (p. 220)
+the trench. What was I to do? If I crossed the open they'd bring me
+down with a bullet. There was only one thing to be done. I had my
+boots on me for three 'ole weeks of 'ot weather, 'otter than this and
+beer not so near as it is now----"
+
+ [Footnote 3: Rifle.]
+
+"Have another drink, Bill?" I asked.
+
+"Glad yer took the 'int," said my mate. "Story tellin's a dry fatigue.
+Well as I was sayin' my socks 'ad been on for a 'ole month----"
+
+"Three weeks," I corrected.
+
+"Three weeks," Bill repeated and continued. "I took orf my boots.
+'Respirators!' the Germans yelled the minute my socks were bare, and
+off they went leavin' me there with my 'ome-made trench. When I came
+back I got a dose of C.B. as I've told you before."
+
+We went back to our billet. In the farmyard the pigs were busy on the
+midden, and they looked at us with curious expressive eyes that peered
+roguishly out from under their heavy hanging cabbage-leaves of ears.
+In one corner was the field-cooker. The cooks were busy making dixies
+of bully beef stew. Their clothes were dirty and greasy, so were their
+arms, bare from the shoulders almost, and taut with muscles. (p. 221)
+Through a path that wound amongst a medley of agricultural instruments,
+ploughs harrows and grubbers, the farmer's daughter came striding like
+a ploughman, two children hanging on to her apron strings. A stretcher
+leant against our water-cart, and dried clots of blood were on its
+shafts. The farmer's dog lay panting on the midden, his red tongue
+hanging out and saliva dropping on the dung, overhead the swallows
+were swooping and flying in under the eaves where now and again they
+nested for a moment before getting up to resume their exhilirating
+flight. A dirty barefooted boy came in through the large entrance-gate
+leading a pair of sleepy cows with heavy udders which shook backwards
+and forwards as they walked. The horns of one cow were twisted, the
+end of one pointed up, the end of the other pointed down.
+
+One of Section 4's boys was looking at the cow.
+
+"The ole geeser's 'andlebars is twisted," said Bill, addressing nobody
+in particular and alluding to the cow.
+
+"It's 'orns, yer fool!" said Section 4.
+
+"Yer fool, yerself!" said Bill. "I'm not as big a fool as I look----"
+
+"Git! Your no more brains than a 'en." (p. 222)
+
+"Nor 'ave you either," said Bill.
+
+"I've twice as many brains, as you," said Section 4.
+
+"So 'ave I," was the answer made by Bill; then getting pugilistic he
+thundered out: "I'll give yer one on the moosh."
+
+"Will yer?" said Section 4.
+
+"Straight I will. Give you one across your ugly phiz! It looks as if
+it had been out all night and some one dancing on it."
+
+Bill took off his cap and flung it on the ground as if it were the
+gauntlet of a knight of old. His hair, short and wiry, stood up on
+end. Section 4 looked at it.
+
+"Your hair looks like furze in a fit," said Section 4.
+
+"You're lookin' for one on the jor," said Bill closing and opening his
+fist. "And I'll give yer one."
+
+"Will yer? Two can play at that gyme!"
+
+Goliath massive and monumental came along at that moment. He looked at
+Bill.
+
+"Looking for trouble, mate?" he asked.
+
+"Section 4's shouting the odds, as usual," Bill replied.
+
+"Come along to the Canal and have a bath; it will cool your (p. 223)
+temper."
+
+"Will it?" said Bill as he came along with us somewhat reluctantly
+towards the Canal banks.
+
+"What does shouting the odds mean?" I asked him.
+
+"Chewin' the rag," he answered.
+
+"And that means----"
+
+"Kicking up a row and lettin' every one round you know," said Bill.
+"That's what shoutin' the blurry odds means."
+
+"What's the difference between shouting the odds and shouting the
+blurry odds?" I asked.
+
+"It's like this, Pat," Bill began to explain, a blush rising on his
+cheeks. Bill often blushed. "Shoutin' the odds isn't strong enough,
+but shoutin' the blurry odds has ginger in it. It makes a bloke listen
+to you."
+
+Stoner was sitting on the bank of La Bassee canal, his bare feet
+touching the water, his body deep in a cluster of wild iris. I sat
+down beside him and took off my boots.
+
+I pulled a wild iris and explained to Stoner how in Donegal we made
+boats from the iris and placed them by the brookside at night. When
+we went to bed the fairies crossed the streams on the boats which (p. 224)
+we made.
+
+"Did they cross on the boats?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Of course they did," I answered. "We never found a boat left in the
+morning."
+
+"The stream washed them away," said Stoner.
+
+"You civilised abomination," I said and proceeded to fashion a boat,
+when it was made I placed it on the stream and watched it circle round
+on an eddy near the bank.
+
+"Here's something," said Stoner, getting hold of a little frog with
+his hand and placing it on the boat. For a moment the iris bark swayed
+unsteadily, the frog's little glistening eyes wobbled in its head then
+it dived in to the water, overturning the boat as it hopped off it.
+
+An impudent-looking little boy with keen, inquisitive eyes, came along
+the canal side wheeling a very big barrow on which was heaped a number
+of large loaves. His coat a torn, ragged fringe, hung over the hips,
+he wore a Balaclava helmet (thousands of which have been flung away by
+our boys in the hot weather) and khaki puttees.
+
+The boy came to a stop opposite, laid down his barrow and wiped (p. 225)
+the sweat from his brow with a dirty hand.
+
+"Bonjour!" said the boy.
+
+"Bonjour, petit garcon," Stoner replied, proud of his French which is
+limited to some twenty words.
+
+The boy asked for a cigarette; a souvenir. We told him to proceed on
+his journey, we were weary of souvenir hunters. The barrow moved on,
+the wheel creaking rustily and the boy whistled a light-hearted tune.
+That his request had not been granted did not seem to trouble him.
+
+Two barges, coupled and laden with coal rounded a corner of the canal.
+They were drawn by five persons, a woman with a very white sunbonnet
+in front. She was followed by a barefooted youth in khaki tunic, a
+hunch-backed man with heavy projecting jowl and a hare-lipped youth of
+seventeen or eighteen. Last on the tug rope was an oldish man with a
+long white beard parted in the middle and rusty coloured at the tips.
+A graceful slip of a girl, lithe as a marsh sapling, worked the tiller
+of the rear barge and she took no notice of the soldiers on the shore
+or in the water.
+
+"Going to bathe, Stoner?" I asked. (p. 226)
+
+"When the barges go by," he answered and I twitted him on his modesty.
+
+Goliath, six foot three of magnificent bone and muscle was in the
+canal. Swanking his trudgeon stroke he surged through the dirty water
+like an excited whale, puffing and blowing. Bill, losing in every
+stroke, tried to race him, but retired beaten and very happy. The cold
+water rectified his temper, he was now in a most amiable humour. Pryor
+was away down the canal on the barge, when he came to the bridge he
+would dive off and race some of Section 4 boys back to the spot where
+I was sitting. There is an eternal and friendly rivalry between
+Sections 3 and 4.
+
+"Stoner, going in?" I asked my comrade, who was standing stark on the
+bank.
+
+"In a minute," he answered.
+
+"Now," I said.
+
+"Get in yourself ----"
+
+"Presently," I replied, "but you go in now, unless you want to get
+shoved in."
+
+He dived gracefully and came up near the other bank spluttering and
+shaking the water off his hair. Bill challenged him to a race and both
+struck off down the stream, as they swam passing jokes with their (p. 227)
+comrades on the bank. In the course of ten minutes they returned,
+perched proudly on the stern of a barge and making ready to dive. At
+that moment I undressed and went in.
+
+My swim was a very short one; shorter than usual, and I am not much of
+a swimmer. A searching shell sped over from the German lines hit the
+ground a few hundred yards to rear of the Canal and whirled a shower
+of dust into the water, which speedily delivered several hundred nude
+fighters to the clothes-littered bank. A second and third shell
+dropping nearer drove all modest thoughts from our minds for the
+moment (unclothed, a man feels helplessly defenceless), and we hurried
+into our warrens through throngs of women rushing out to take in their
+washing.
+
+One of the shells hit the artillery horse lines on the left of the
+village and seven horses were killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII (p. 228)
+
+EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT
+
+ There's the butter, gad, and horse-fly,
+ The blow-fly and the blue,
+ The fine fly and the coarse fly,
+ But never flew a worse fly
+ Of all the flies that flew
+
+ Than the little sneaky black fly
+ That gobbles up our ham,
+ The beggar's not a slack fly,
+ He really is a crack fly,
+ And wolfs the soldiers jam.
+
+ So strafe that fly! Our motto
+ Is "strafe him when you can."
+ He'll die because he ought to,
+ He'll go because he's got to,
+ So at him every man!
+
+
+What time we have not been in the trenches we have spent marching out
+or marching back to them, or sleeping in billets at the rear and going
+out as working parties, always ready to move at two hours' notice by
+day and one hour's notice by night.
+
+I got two days C.B. at La Beuvriere; because I did not come out on
+parade one morning. I really got out of bed very early, and went for a
+walk. Coming to a pond where a number of frogs were hopping from (p. 229)
+the bank into the water, I sat down and amused myself by watching them
+staring at me out of the pond; their big, intelligent eyes full of
+some wonderful secret. They interested and amused me, probably I
+interested and amused them, one never knows. Then I read a little and
+time flew by. On coming back I was told to report at the Company
+orderly room. Two days C.B.
+
+I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
+place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
+beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
+an _estaminet_. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
+had an unholy knack of prodding a stomach which rebelled against
+digesting bully and biscuit, I unloosed my equipment buckles. The
+Visiting Rounds found me imperfectly dressed, my shoulder flaps
+wobbled, my haversack hung with a slant and the cartridge pouches
+leant out as if trying to spring on my feet. The next evening I was up
+before the C.O.
+
+My hair was rather long, and as it was well-brushed it looked imposing.
+So I thought in the morning when I looked in the platoon mirror--the
+platoon mirror was an inch square glass with a jagged edge. My (p. 230)
+imposing hair caught the C.O.'s eye the moment I entered the orderly
+room. "Don't let me see you with hair like that again," he began and
+read out the charge. I forget the words which hinted that I was a
+wrong-doer in the eyes of the law military; the officers were there,
+every officer in the battalion, they all looked serious and resigned.
+It seemed as if their minds had been made up on something relating to
+me.
+
+The orderly officer who apprehended me in the act told how he did it,
+speaking as if from a book but consulting neither notes nor papers.
+
+"What have you to say?" asked the C.O. looking at me.
+
+I had nothing particular to say, my thoughts were busy on an enigma
+that might not interest him, namely, why a young officer near him kept
+rubbing a meditative chin with a fugitive finger, and why that finger
+came down so swiftly when the C.O.'s eyes were turned towards the
+young man. I replied to the question by saying "Guilty."
+
+"We know you are guilty," said the C.O. and gave me a little lecture.
+I had a reputation, the young men of the regiment looked up to me, an
+older man; and by setting a good example I could do a great deal (p. 231)
+of good, &c., &c. The lecture was very trying, but the rest of the
+proceedings were interesting. I was awarded three extra guards. I only
+did one of them.
+
+We hung on the fringe of the Richebourge _melee_, but were not called
+into play.
+
+"What was it like?" we asked the men marching back from battle in
+the darkness and the rain. There was no answer, they were too weary
+even to speak.
+
+"How did you get along in the fight?" I called to one who straggled
+along in the rear, his head sunk forward on his breast, his knees
+bending towards the ground.
+
+"Tsch! Tsch!" he answered, his voice barely rising above a whisper as
+his boots paced out in a rhythm of despair to some village at the
+rear.
+
+There in the same place a night later, we saw soldiers' equipments
+piled on top of one another and stretching for yards on either side of
+the road: packs, haversacks, belts, bayonets, rifles, and cartridge
+pouches. The equipments were taken in from the field of battle, the
+war-harness of men now wounded and dead was out of use for the moment,
+other soldiers would wear them presently and make great fight in them.
+
+Once at Cuinchy, Section 3 went out for a wash in a dead stream (p. 232)
+that once flowed through our lines and those of the Germans. The water
+was dirty and it was a miracle that the frogs which frisked in it were
+so clean.
+
+"It's too dirty to wash there," said Pryor.
+
+"A change of dirt is 'olesome," said Bill, placing his soap on the
+bank and dipping his mess tin in the water. As he bent down the body
+of a dead soldier inflated by its own rottenness bubbled up to the
+surface. We gave up all idea of washing. Stoner who was on the
+opposite bank tried to jump across at that moment. Miscalculating the
+distance, he fell short and into the water. We dragged him out
+spluttering and I regret to say we laughed, almost heartily. That
+night when we stood to arms in the trenches, waiting for an attack
+that did not come off, Stoner stood to with his rifle, an overcoat, a
+pair of boots and a pair of socks as his sole uniform.
+
+How many nights have we marched under the light of moon and stars,
+sleepy and dog-weary, in song or in silence, as the mood prompted us
+or the orders compelled us, up to the trenches and back again! We have
+slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and straw (p. 233)
+deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on
+the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new
+songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their
+circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great
+adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one
+another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of
+any member of our party who was flouted by any one who was not one of
+WE. "Section 3, right or wrong" was and is our motto. And the section
+dwindles, the bullet and shell has been busy in lessening our
+strength, for that is the way of war.
+
+When in the trenches Bill and Kore amuse themselves by potting all day
+long at the German lines. A conversation like the following may be
+often heard.
+
+Bill:--"Blimey, I see a 'ead."
+
+Kore:--"Fire then." (Bill fires a shot.) "Got him?"
+
+Bill:--"No blurry fear. The 'ead was a sandbag. I'll bet yer the shot
+they send back will come nearer me than you. Bet yer a copper."
+
+Kore:--"Done." (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.) (p. 234)
+"I think they're firing at you."
+
+Bill:--"Not me, matey, but you. It's their aiming that's bad. 'And
+over the coin." (Enter an officer.)
+
+Officer:--"Don't keep your heads over the parapet, you'll get sniped.
+Keep under cover as much as possible."
+
+Bill:--"Orl right, Sir."
+
+Kore:--"Yes, sir." (Exit Officer.)
+
+Bill:--"They say there's a war 'ere."
+
+Kore:--"It's only a rumour."
+
+At Cuinchy where the German trenches are hardly a hundred yards away
+from ours, the firing from the opposite trenches ceased for a moment
+and a voice called across.
+
+"What about the Cup Final?" It was then the finish of the English
+football season.
+
+"Chelsea lost," said Bill, who was a staunch supporter of that team.
+
+"Hard luck!" came the answer from the German trench and firing was
+resumed. But Bill used his rifle no more until we changed into a new
+locality. "A blurry supporter of blurry Chelsea," he said. "'E must be
+a damned good sort of sausage-eater, that feller. If ever I meet 'im
+in Lunnon after the war, I'm goin' to make 'im as drunk as a (p. 235)
+public-'ouse fly."
+
+"What are you going to do after the war?" I asked.
+
+He rubbed his eyes which many sleepless nights in a shell-harried
+trench had made red and watery.
+
+"What will I do?" he repeated. "I'll get two beds," he said, "and have
+a six months' snooze, and I'll sleep in one bed while the other's
+being made, matey."
+
+In trench life many new friends are made and many old friendships
+renewed. We were nursing a contingent of Camerons, men new to the
+grind of trench work, and most of them hailing from Glasgow and the
+West of Scotland. On the morning of the second day one of them said to
+me, "Big Jock MacGregor wants to see you."
+
+"Who's Big Jock?" I asked.
+
+"He used to work on the railway at Greenock," I was told, and off I
+went to seek the man.
+
+I found him eating bully beef and biscuit on the parapet. He was
+spotlessly clean, he had not yet stuck his spoon down the rim of his
+stocking where his skein should have been, he had a table knife (p. 236)
+and fork (things that we, old soldiers, had dispensed with ages ago),
+in short, he was a hat-box fellow, togged up to the nines, and as yet,
+green to the grind of war.
+
+His age might be forty, he looked fifty, a fatherly sort of man, a
+real block of Caledonian Railway thrown, tartanised, into a trench.
+
+"How are you, Jock?" I said. I had never met him before.
+
+"Are you Pat MacGill?"
+
+I nodded assent.
+
+"Man, I've often heard of you, Pat," he went on, "I worked on the Sou'
+West, and my brother's an engine driver on the Caly. He reads your
+songs a'most every night. He says there are only two poets he'd give a
+fling for--that's you and Anderson, the man who wrote _Cuddle Doon_."
+
+"How do you like the trenches, Jock?"
+
+"Not so bad, man, not so bad," he said.
+
+"Killed any one yet?" I asked.
+
+"Not yet," he answered in all seriousness. "But there's a sniper over
+there," and he pointed a clean finger, quite untrenchy it was, towards
+the enemy's lines, "And he's fired three at me."
+
+"At you?" I asked.
+
+"Ay, and I sent him five back ----" (p. 237)
+
+"And didn't do him in?" I asked.
+
+"Not yet, but if I get another two or three at him, I'll not give much
+for his chance."
+
+"Have you seen him?" I asked, marvelling that Big Jock had already
+seen a sniper.
+
+"No, but I heard the shots go off."
+
+A rifle shot is the most deceptive thing in the world, so, like an old
+soldier wise in the work, I smiled under my hand.
+
+I don't believe that Big Jock has killed his sniper yet, but it has
+been good to see him. When we meet he says, "What about the Caly,
+Pat?" and I answer, "What about the Sou' West, Jock?"
+
+On the first Sunday after Trinity we marched out from another small
+village in the hot afternoon. This one was a model village, snug in
+the fields, and dwindling daily. The German shells are dropping there
+every day. In the course of another six months if the fronts of the
+contending armies do not change, that village will be a litter of red
+bricks and unpeopled ruins. As it is the women, children and old men
+still remain in the place and carry on their usual labours with the
+greatest fortitude and patience. The village children sell percussion
+caps of German shells for half a franc each, but if the shell (p. 238)
+has killed any of the natives when it exploded, the cap will not be
+sold for less than thirty sous. But the sum is not too dear for a
+nose-cap with a history.
+
+There are a number of soldiers buried in the graveyard of this place.
+At one corner four different crosses bear the following names: Anatole
+Series, Private O'Shea, Corporal Smith and under the symbol of the
+Christian religion lies one who came from sunny heathen climes to help
+the Christian in his wars. His name is Jaighandthakur, a soldier of
+the Bengal Mountain Battery.
+
+It was while here that Bill complained of the scanty allowance of his
+rations to an officer, when plum pudding was served at dinner.
+
+"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.
+
+"How much have you got?" asked the officer.
+
+"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all
+gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the
+neck of 'is waterbottle," said Bill. The officer ordered both men (p. 239)
+to be served out with a second portion.
+
+We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of
+the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of
+Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going
+had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line
+is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the
+Hills of Lorette at present.
+
+The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they
+march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every
+halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are
+going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty
+minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous
+path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several
+shell-shattered huts and some acres of shell-scooped ground. The place
+was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to
+the enemy. Early one morning the shells began to sweep in, carrying
+the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a
+memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in shell-holes on
+that field. The bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the (p. 240)
+ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred
+yards out on any side there is not a trace of a shell, every shot went
+true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not
+be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But
+their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the
+night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor
+gun would have escaped.
+
+The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever
+seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At
+several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags
+proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in,
+and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore,
+down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead,
+our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the
+whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our
+bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got
+some tea, a godsend to us all.
+
+We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel and (p. 241)
+the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up against a
+man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled against
+the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.
+
+"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish
+voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see
+things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm
+stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea
+greedily.
+
+"There's a lot of you ones comin' up," the voice said. "You ones!" How
+often have I said "You ones," how often do I say it still when I'm too
+excited to be grammatical. "Ye had a' must to be too late for tay!"
+the voice said from the darkness.
+
+"What does he say?" asked Pryor who was just ahead of me.
+
+"He says that we were almost too late for tea," I replied and stared
+hard into the darkness on my left. Figures of men in khaki took form
+in the gloom, a bayonet sparkled; some one was putting a lid on a
+mess-tin and I could see the man doing it....
+
+"Inniskillings?" I asked.
+
+"That's us." (p. 242)
+
+"Quiet?" I asked, alluding to their life in the trench.
+
+"Not bad at all," was the answer. "A shell came this road an hour
+agone, and two of us got hit."
+
+"Killed?"
+
+"Boys, oh! boys, aye," was the answer; "and seven got wounded. Nine of
+the best, man, nine of the best. Have another drop of tay?"
+
+At the exit of the tunnel the floor was covered with blood and the
+flies were buzzing over it; the sated insects rose lazily as we came
+up, settled down in front, rose again and flew back over our heads.
+What a feast they were having on the blood of men!
+
+The trenches into which we had come were not so clean as many we had
+been in before; although the dug-outs were much better constructed
+than those in the British lines, they smelt vilely of something
+sickening and nauseous.
+
+A week passed away and we were still in the trenches. Sometimes it
+rained, but for the most part the sky was clear and the sun very hot.
+The trenches were dug out of the chalk, the world in which we lived
+was a world of white and green, white parapet and parados with a (p. 243)
+fringe of grass on the superior slope of each. The place was very
+quiet, not more than two dozen shells came our way daily, and it was
+there that I saw a shell in air, the only shell in flight I have ever
+seen. It was dropping to earth behind the parados and I had a distinct
+view of the missile before ducking to avoid the splinters flung out by
+the explosion. Hundreds of shells have passed through the sky near me
+every day, I could almost see them by their sound and felt I could
+trace the line made by them in their flight, but this was the only
+time I ever saw one.
+
+The hill land of Lorette stood up sullen on our right; in a basin
+scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards
+square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in
+progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes
+of bursting shells. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this
+titanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to
+see--it was the face of a god. The mortal who gazed on it must die.
+But by night and day I spent most of my spare time in watching the
+smoke of bursting shells and the flash of innumerable explosions.
+
+One morning, after six days in the trenches, I was seated on the (p. 244)
+parados blowing up an air pillow which had been sent to me by an
+English friend and watching the fight up at Souchez when Bill came up
+to me.
+
+"Wot's that yer've got?" he asked.
+
+"An air pillow," I answered.
+
+"'Ow much were yer rushed for it?"
+
+"Somebody sent it to me," I said.
+
+"To rest yer weary 'ead on?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"I like a fresh piller every night," said Bill.
+
+"A fresh what?"
+
+"A fresh brick."
+
+"How do you like these trenches?" I asked after a short silence.
+
+"Not much," he answered. "They're all blurry flies and chalk." He
+gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese
+rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was
+all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags
+were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and shell whirled showers
+of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the
+parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the
+rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245)
+of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up to the sky.
+
+Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet
+for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea
+of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.
+Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their
+way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags,
+only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged
+the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the
+beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the
+spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side
+blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not
+fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy,
+their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by shell splinters
+whizzing through the air.
+
+The space between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green
+leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the shivered trees, thistles with
+magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, grasses hung over
+the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking
+if we would allow them to enter. The garden of death was a riot (p. 246)
+of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst
+the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face;
+and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature
+was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the
+face of the country.
+
+At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in
+his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible
+to write, eat or even to sleep.
+
+The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something
+putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who
+had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair
+poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great
+frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping
+their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground
+in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the
+stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour
+of flowers.
+
+The order came like a bomb flung into the trench and woke us up like
+an electric thrill. True we did not believe it at first, there (p. 247)
+are so many practical jokers in our ranks. Such an insane order! Had
+the head of affairs gone suddenly mad that such an order was issued.
+"All men get ready for a bath. Towels and soap are to be carried!!!"
+
+"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.
+
+"In the village at the rear," he answered.
+
+"There's nobody there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And
+the place gets shelled daily."
+
+"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be
+a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."
+
+We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered
+Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather
+pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the
+effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all
+that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window glass was
+smashed to pieces.
+
+We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a
+serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed
+badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. We went back (p. 248)
+clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.
+
+That same evening, what time the star-shells began to flare and the
+flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our
+men got done to death in their dug-out. A shell hit the roof and
+smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was
+instantaneous in both cases.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII (p. 249)
+
+THE COVERING PARTY
+
+ Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind,
+ With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind;
+ And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn,
+ The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?
+
+
+The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines
+was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze
+scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing
+something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my
+hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the spacious
+construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags,
+which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were
+apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon
+sergeant stopped me at the door.
+
+"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.
+
+"If I'm lucky," I answered.
+
+"Your luck's dead out," said the sergeant. "You're to be one of a (p. 250)
+covering party for the Engineers. They're out to-night repairing the
+wire entanglements."
+
+"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.
+
+"Bill's on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the
+vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its
+dullest mood, explode with laughter.
+
+Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other
+riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came
+to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten
+to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The
+German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to
+our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and
+most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire
+entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of
+the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the
+damage only to start the game of demolition over again.
+
+The line of entanglements does not run parallel with the trench (p. 251)
+it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem
+always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags.
+But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are
+laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing towards our trench.
+
+The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a
+charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and
+rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of
+death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the
+parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become
+creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to
+get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up
+to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and
+thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the
+enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a
+man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and
+the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the
+vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the
+V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252)
+are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the
+concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow
+part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers
+tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone,
+mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The
+tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
+
+In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
+shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
+immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
+We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
+on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
+The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
+stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
+dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
+through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
+had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the
+threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild
+fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout (p. 253)
+across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the
+shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that
+intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a
+violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that
+illumined the place like a sun.
+
+"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoarsely.
+
+"Well, blimey, that's a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What 'ave
+I done, splunk on a dead 'un I flopped, a stinking corpse. 'E was
+'uggin' me, kissin' me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff 'un," said Bill,
+addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes,
+striped with red and deep in the grass. "Talk about rotten eggs
+burstin' on your jor; they're not in it."
+
+The light of the star-shell waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to
+Bill.
+
+"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you're giving the whole damned
+show away," the Corporal said. "If you're spotted it's all up with
+us."
+
+We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat
+on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months
+before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and got (p. 254)
+about half way across the field. There they stopped, mown down by
+rifle and machine gun fire and they lie there still, little bundles of
+wasting flesh in the midst of the poppies. When the star-shells went
+up I could see a face near me, a young face clean-shaven and very pale
+under a wealth of curly hair. It was the face of a mere boy, the eyes
+were closed as if the youth were only asleep. It looked as if the
+effacing finger of decay had forborne from working its will on the
+helpless thing. His hand still gripped the rifle, and the long bayonet
+on the standard shone when the light played upon it. It seemed as if
+he fell quietly to the ground, dead. Others, I could see, had died a
+death of agony; they lay there in distorted postures, some with faces
+battered out of recognition, others with their hands full of grass and
+clay as if they had torn up the earth in their mad, final frenzy. Not
+a nice bed to lie in during a night out on listening patrol.[4]
+
+ [Footnote 4: The London Irish charged over this
+ ground later, and entered Loos on Saturday, 25th
+ September, 1915.]
+
+The Engineers were now at work just behind us, I could see their dark
+forms flitting amongst the posts, straightening the old ones, (p. 255)
+driving in fresh supports and pulling the wires taut. They worked as
+quietly as possible, but to our ears, tensely strained, the noise of
+labour came like the rumble of artillery. The enemy must surely hear
+the sound. Doubtless he did, but probably his own working parties were
+busy just as ours were. In front when one of our star-shells went
+across I fancied that I could see dark forms standing motionless by
+the German trench. Perhaps my eyes played me false, the objects might
+be tree-trunks trimmed down by shell fire....
+
+The message came out from our trench and the Corporal passed it along
+his party. "On the right a party of the --th London are working." This
+was to prevent us mistaking them for Germans. All night long
+operations are carried on between the lines, if daylight suddenly shot
+out about one in the morning what a scene would unfold itself in No
+Man's Land; listening patrols marching along, Engineers busy with the
+wires, sanitary squads burying the dead and covering parties keeping
+watch over all the workers.
+
+"Halt! who goes there?"
+
+The order loud and distinct came from the vicinity of the German (p. 256)
+trench, then followed a mumbled reply and afterwards a scuffle, a
+sound as of steel clashing in steel, and then subdued laughter. What
+had happened? Next day we heard that a sergeant and three men of the
+--th were out on patrol and went too near the enemy's lines. Suddenly
+they were confronted by several dark forms with fixed bayonets and the
+usual sentry's challenge was yelled out in English. Believing that he
+had fallen across one of his own outposts, the unsuspecting sergeant
+gave the password for the night, approached those who challenged him
+and was immediately made prisoner. Two others met with the same fate,
+but one who had been lagging at the rear got away and managed to get
+back to his own lines. Many strange things happen between the lines at
+night; working parties have no love for the place and hundreds get
+killed there.
+
+The slightest tinge of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back
+over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the
+conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin
+at dawn.
+
+We go out often as working parties or listening patrols.
+
+From Souchez to Ypres the firing line runs through a land of (p. 257)
+stinking drains, level fields, and shattered villages. We know those
+villages, we have lived in them, we have been sniped at in their
+streets and shelled in the houses. We have had men killed in them,
+blown to atoms or buried in masonry, done to death by some damnable
+instrument of war.
+
+In our trenches near Souchez you can see the eternal artillery
+fighting on the hills of Lorette, up there men are flicked out of
+existence like flies in a hailstorm. The big straight road out of a
+village runs through our lines into the German trenches and beyond.
+The road is lined with poplars and green with grass; by day you can
+see the German sandbags from our trenches, by night you can hear the
+wind in the trees that bend towards one another as if in conversation.
+There is no whole house in the place; chimneys have been blown down
+and roofs are battered by shrapnel. But few of the people have gone
+away, they have become schooled in the process of accommodation, and
+accommodate themselves to a woeful change. They live with one foot on
+the top step of the cellar stairs, a shell sends them scampering down;
+they sleep there, they eat there, in their underground home they (p. 258)
+wait for the war to end. The men who are too old to fight labour in a
+neighbouring mine, which still does some work although its chimney is
+shattered and its coal waggons are scraps of wood and iron on broken
+rails. There are many graves by the church, graves of our boys,
+civilians' graves, children's graves, all victims of war. Children are
+there still, merry little kids with red lips and laughing eyes.
+
+One day, when staying in the village, I met one, a dainty little dot,
+with golden hair and laughing eyes, a pink ribbon round a tress that
+hung roguishly over her left cheek. She smiled at me as she passed
+where I sat on the roadside under the poplars, her face was an angel's
+set in a disarray of gold. In her hand she carried an empty jug,
+almost as big as herself and she was going to her home, one of the
+inhabited houses nearest the fighting line. The day had been a very
+quiet one and the village took an opportunity to bask in the sun. I
+watched her go up the road tripping lightly on the grass, swinging her
+big jug. Life was a garland of flowers for her, it was good to watch
+her to see her trip along; the sight made me happy. What caused the
+German gunner, a simple woodman and a father himself perhaps, (p. 259)
+to fire at that moment? What demon guided the shell? Who can say? The
+shell dropped on the roadway just where the child was; I saw the
+explosion and dropped flat to avoid the splinters, when I looked again
+there was no child, no jug, where she had been was a heap of stones on
+the grass and dark curls of smoke rising up from it. I hastened
+indoors; the enemy were shelling the village again.
+
+Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets,
+and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing
+and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
+This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French
+by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets
+saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the
+village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the
+cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking
+up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak
+up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages
+of war.
+
+In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have
+seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260)
+the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning
+after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for
+halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a
+dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette,
+salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of _cafe au lait_ for fifteen
+sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum
+of ten francs on pay day.
+
+In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a
+cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
+That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same
+place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young
+Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a
+shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with
+us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of
+comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door
+and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in
+the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy
+connected with it.
+
+In some places the enemy's bullets search the main street by night (p. 261)
+and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the
+open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our
+boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety
+in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely
+trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your
+keeping.
+
+No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman
+there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the
+colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the
+pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church
+was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The
+woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None
+of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that
+she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.
+
+We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a
+cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the
+great mother, was busy; the butterflies flitted over the soldiers' (p. 262)
+graves, the grass grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to be
+sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom
+which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the
+whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the
+morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a
+jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs,
+holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog
+dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones
+showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if
+the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our
+laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and
+sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by
+the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:--
+
+ Here lies a dog as dead as dead,
+ A Sniper's bullet through its head,
+ Untroubled now by shots and shells,
+ It rots and can do nothing else.
+
+The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men,
+two women and two children, all civilians, were killed. The (p. 263)
+natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.
+
+In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange
+things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX (p. 264)
+
+SOUVENIR HUNTERS
+
+ I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean,
+ And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine;
+ I've carried it from A to X and back to A again,
+ I've found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.
+ A souvenir for blighty away across the foam,
+ That's if the French authorities will let me take it home.
+
+
+Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has
+never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of
+curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I
+took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a
+little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton
+piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles--one of our men
+who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until
+he was killed by a shell and then the boot fell into my hands. I have
+two percussion caps, one from a shell that came through the roof of a
+dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead
+lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert. In addition to these (p. 265)
+I have many shell splinters that fell into the trench and landed at my
+feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of shells and several
+other odds and ends picked up from the field of battle. Once I found a
+splendid English revolver--but that is a story.
+
+We were billeted in a model mining-village of red brick houses and
+terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it
+and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness
+relieved here and there by a shell-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow
+and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be
+seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German shells and
+counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went
+out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the grass from the
+trenches with reaping hooks. In the morning a white mist lay on the
+meadows and dry dung and dust rose from the roadway as we marched out
+to our labour.
+
+We halted by the last house in the village, one that stood almost
+intact, although the adjoining buildings were well nigh levelled to
+the ground. My mate, Pryor, fixed his eyes on the villa.
+
+"I'm going in there," he said pointing at the doors. (p. 266)
+
+"Souvenirs?" I asked.
+
+"Souvenirs," he replied.
+
+The two of us slipped away from the platoon and entered the building.
+On the ground floor stood a table on which a dinner was laid; an
+active service dinner of soup made from soup tablets (2_d._ each) the
+wrappers of which lay on the tiled floor, some tins of bully beef,
+opened, a loaf, half a dozen apples and an unopened tin of _cafe au
+lait_. The dinner was laid for four, although there were only three
+forks, two spoons and two clasp knives, the latter were undoubtedly
+used to replace table knives. Pryor looked under the table, then
+turned round and fixed a pair of scared eyes on me, and beckoned to me
+to approach. I came to his side and saw under the table on the floor a
+human hand, severed from the arm at the wrist. Beside it lay a
+web-equipment, torn to shreds, a broken range-finder and a Webley
+revolver, long of barrel and heavy of magazine.
+
+"A souvenir," said Pryor. "It must have been some time since that
+dinner was made; the bully smells like anything."
+
+"The shell came in there," I said pointing at the window, the side (p. 267)
+of which was broken a little, "and it hit one poor beggar anyway.
+Nobody seems to have come in here since then."
+
+"We'll hide the revolver," Pryor remarked, "and we'll come here for it
+to-night."
+
+We hid the revolver behind the door in a little cupboard in the wall;
+we came back for it two days later, but the weapon was gone though the
+hand still lay on the floor. What was the history of that house and of
+the officers who sat down to dinner? Will the tragedy ever be told?
+
+I had an interesting experience near Souchez when our regiment was
+holding part of the line in that locality. On the way in was a single
+house, a red brick villa, standing by the side of the communication
+trench which I used to pass daily when I went out to get water from
+the carts at the rear. One afternoon I climbed over the side and
+entered the house by a side door that looked over the German lines.
+The building was a conspicuous target for the enemy, but strange to
+say, it had never been touched by shell fire; now and again bullets
+peppered the walls, chipped the bricks and smashed the window-panes.
+On the ground floor was a large living-room with a big-bodied stove
+in the centre of the floor, religious pictures hung on the wall, (p. 268)
+a grandfather's clock stood in the niche near the door, the blinds
+were drawn across the shattered windows, and several chairs were
+placed round a big table near the stove. Upstairs in the bedrooms the
+beds were made and in one apartment a large perambulator, with a doll
+flung carelessly on its coverlet, stood near the wall, the paper of
+which was designed in little circles and in each circle were figures
+of little boys and girls, hundreds of them, frivolous mites, absurd
+and gay.
+
+Another stair led up to the garret, a gloomy place bare under the red
+tiles, some of which were broken. Looking out through the aperture in
+the roof I could see the British and German trenches drawn as if in
+chalk on a slate of green by an erratic hand, the hand of an idle
+child. Behind the German trenches stood the red brick village of ----,
+with an impudent chimney standing smokeless in the air, and a burning
+mine that vomited clouds of thick black smoke over meadow-fields
+splashed with poppies. Shells were bursting everywhere over the grass
+and the white lines; the greenish grey fumes of lyddite, the white
+smoke of shrapnel rose into mid-air, curled away and died. On the left
+of the village a road ran back into the enemy's land, and from (p. 269)
+it a cloud of dust was rising over the tree-tops; no doubt vehicles of
+war which I could not see were moving about in that direction. I
+stayed up in that garret for quite an hour full of the romance of my
+watch and when I left I took my souvenir with me, a picture of the
+Blessed Virgin in a cedar frame. That night we placed it outside our
+dug-out over the door. In the morning we found it smashed to pieces by
+a bullet.
+
+Daily I spent some time in the garret on my way out to the water-cart;
+and one day I found it occupied. Five soldiers and an officer were
+standing at my peephole when I got up, with a large telescope fixed on
+a tripod and trained on the enemy's lines. The War Intelligence
+Department had taken over the house for an observation post.
+
+"What do you want here?" asked the officer.
+
+Soldiers are ordered to keep to the trenches on the way out and in,
+none of the houses that line the way are to be visited. It was a case
+for a slight prevarication. My water jar was out in the trench: I
+carried my rifle and a bandolier.
+
+"I'm looking for a sniping position," I said. (p. 270)
+
+"You cannot stop here," said the officer. "We've taken this place
+over. Try some of the houses on the left."
+
+I cleared out. Three days later when on my usual errand I saw that the
+roof of my observation villa had been blown in. Nobody would be in
+there now I concluded and ventured inside. The door which stood at the
+bottom of the garret stair was closed. I caught hold of the latch and
+pulled it towards me. The door held tight. As I struggled with it I
+had a sense of pulling against a detaining hand that strove to hide a
+mystery, something fearful, from my eye. It swung towards me slowly
+and a pile of bricks fell on my feet as it opened. Something dark and
+liquid oozed out under my boots. I felt myself slip on it and knew
+that I stood on blood. All the way up the rubble-covered stairs there
+was blood, it had splashed red on the railings and walls. Laths,
+plaster, tiles and beams lay on the floor above and in the midst of
+the jumble was a shattered telescope still moist with the blood of
+men. Had all been killed and were all those I had met a few days
+before in the garret when the shell landed on the roof? It was
+impossible to tell.
+
+I returned to the dug-out meditating on the strange things that (p. 271)
+can be seen by him who goes souvenir-hunting between Souchez and
+Ypres. As I entered I found Bill gazing mutely at some black liquid in
+a sooty mess-tin.
+
+"Some milk, Bill," I said handing him the tin of Nestle's which had
+just come to me in a Gargantuan parcel from an English friend.
+
+"No milk, matey," he answered, "I'm feelin' done up proper, I am.
+Cannot eat a bite. Tummy out of order, my 'ead spinnin' like a top.
+When's sick parade?" he asked.
+
+"Seven o'clock," I said, "Is it as bad as that?"
+
+"Worse than that," he answered with a smile, "'Ave yer a cigarette to
+spare?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, fumbling in my pocket.
+
+"Well, give it to somebody as 'asn't got none," said Bill, "I'm off
+the smokin' a bit."
+
+The case was really serious since Bill could not smoke, a smokeless
+hour was for him a Purgatorial period, his favourite friend was his
+fag. After tea I went with him to the dressing station, and Ted Vittle
+of Section 4 accompanied us. Ted's tummy was also out of order and his
+head was spinning like a top. The men's equipment was carried (p. 272)
+out, men going sick from the trenches to the dressing-station at the
+rear carry their rifles and all portable property in case they are
+sent off to hospital. The sick soldier's stuff always goes to hospital
+with him.
+
+I stood outside the door of the dressing-station while the two men
+were in with the M.O. "What's wrong, Bill?" I asked when he came out.
+
+"My tempratoor's an 'undred and nine," said my comrade.
+
+"A hundred and what?" I ejaculated.
+
+"'Undred point nine 'is was," said Ted Vittle. "Mine's a 'undred point
+eight. The Twentieth 'as 'ad lots of men gone off to 'orsp to-day
+sufferin' from the same thing. Pyraxis the M.O. calls it. Trench fever
+is the right name."
+
+"Right?" interrogated Bill.
+
+"Well it's a name we can understand," said Ted.
+
+"Are you going back to the trenches again?" I asked.
+
+"We're to sleep 'ere to-night in the cellar under the dressin'-station,"
+they told me. "In the mornin' we're to report to the doctor again.
+'E's a bloke 'e is, that doctor. 'E says we're to take nothing (p. 273)
+but heggs and milk and the milk must be boiled."
+
+"Is the army going to supply it?"
+
+"No blurry fear," said Bill. "Even if we 'ad the brass and the
+appetite we can't buy any milk or heggs 'ere."
+
+I went back to the firing trench alone. Bill and Ted Vittle did not
+return the next day or the day after. Three weeks later Bill came
+back.
+
+We were sitting in our dug-out at a village the bawl of a donkey from
+Souchez, when a jew's harp, playing ragtime was heard outside.
+
+"Bill," we exclaimed in a voice, and sure enough it was Bill back to
+us again, trig and tidy from hospital, in a new uniform, new boots and
+with that air of importance which can only be the privilege of a man
+who has seen strange sights in strange regions.
+
+"What's your temperature?" asked Stoner.
+
+"Blimey, it's the correct thing now, but it didn't arf go up and
+down," said Bill sitting down on the dug-out chair, our only one since
+a shell dropped through the roof. Some days before B Company had held
+the dug-out and two of the boys were killed. "It's no fun the
+'orspital I can tell yer."
+
+"What sort of disease is Pyraxis?" asked Goliath. (p. 274)
+
+"It's not 'arf bad, if you've got it bad, and it's not good when
+you've it only 'arf bad," said Bill, adding, "I mean that if I 'ad it
+bad I would get off to blighty, but my case was only a light one, not
+so bad as Ted Vittle. 'E's not back yet, maybe it's a trip across the
+Channel for 'im. 'E was real bad when 'e walked down with me to
+Mazingarbe. I was rotten too, couldn't smoke. It was sit down and rest
+for fifteen minutes then walk for five. Mazingarbe is only a mile and
+an 'arf from the dressing-station and it took us three hours to get
+down; from there we took the motor-ambulance to the clearing hospital.
+There was a 'ot bath there and we were put to bed in a big 'ouse,
+blankets, plenty of them and a good bed. 'Twas a grand place to kip
+in. Bad as I was, I noticed that."
+
+"No stand-to at dawn?" I said.
+
+"Two 'ours before dawn we 'ad to stand-to in our blankets, matey,"
+said Bill. "The Germans began to shell the blurry place and 'twas up
+to us to 'op it. We went dozens of us to the rear in a 'bus. Shook us!
+We were rattled about like tins on cats' tails and dumped down at
+another 'orsp about breakfast time. My tempratoor was up more (p. 275)
+than ever there; I almost burst the thremometur. And Ted! Blimey, yer
+should 'ave seen Ted! Lost to the wide, 'e was. 'E could 'ardly speak;
+but 'e managed to give me his mother's address and I was to write 'ome
+a long letter to 'er when 'e went West."
+
+"Allowed to 'ave peace in that place! No fear; the Boches began to
+shell us, and they sent over fifty shells in 'arf an 'our. All troops
+were ordered to leave the town and we went with the rest to a 'orsp
+under canvas in X----.
+
+"A nice quiet place X---- was, me and Ted was along with two others in
+a bell-tent and 'ere we began to get better. Our clothes were taken
+from us, all my stuff and two packets of fags and put into a locker. I
+don't know what I was thinking of when I let the fags go. There was
+one feller as had two francs in his trousers' pocket when 'e gave 'is
+trousers in and 'e got the wrong trousers back. 'E discovered that one
+day when 'e was goin' to send the R.A.M.C. orderly out for beer for
+all 'ands.
+
+"'Twas a 'ungry place X. We were eight days in bed and all we got was
+milk and once or twice a hegg. Damned little heggs they were; (p. 276)
+they must 'ave been laid by tomtits in a 'urry. I got into trouble
+once; I climbed up the tent-pole one night just to 'ave a song on my
+own, and when I was on the top down comes the whole thing and I landed
+on Ted Vittle's bread basket. 'Is tempratoor was up to a 'undred and
+one point five next mornin'. The doctor didn't 'arf give me a look
+when 'e 'eard about me bein' up the pole."
+
+"Was he a nice fellow, the doctor?" I asked.
+
+"Not 'arf, 'e wasn't," said Bill. "When I got into my old uniform 'e
+looked 'ard at my cap. You remember it boys; 'twas more like a
+ragman's than a soldier of the King's. Then 'e arst me: ''Ave yer seen
+much war?' 'Not 'arf, I 'avent,' I told him. 'I thought so,' 'e said,
+'judgin' by yer cap.' And 'e told the orderly to indent me for a brand
+new uniform. And 'e gave me two francs to get a drink when I was
+leavin'."
+
+"Soft-hearted fellow," said Goliath.
+
+"Was he!" remarked Bill. "Yer should be there when 'e came in one
+mornin'."
+
+"'Ow d'ye feel?" he asked Ted Vittle.
+
+"Not fit at all, sir," says Ted.
+
+"Well carry on," said the doctor.
+
+I looked at Ted, Ted looked at me and 'e tipped me the wink. (p. 277)
+
+"'Ow d'ye feel," said the doctor to me.
+
+"Not fit at all," I answers.
+
+"Back to duties," 'e said and my jaw dropped with a click like a rifle
+bolt. 'Twas ten minutes after that when 'e gave me the two francs."
+
+"I saw Spud 'Iggles, 'im that was wounded at Givenchy;" Bill informed
+us after he had lit a fresh cigarette.
+
+"'Ole Spud!"
+
+"'Ows Spud?"
+
+"Not so bad, yer know," said Bill, answering our last question. "'E's
+got a job."
+
+"A good one?" I queried.
+
+"Not 'arf," Bill said. "'E goes round with the motor car that goes to
+places where soldiers are billeted and gathers up all the ammunition,
+bully beef tins, tins of biscuits and everything worth anything that's
+left behind--"
+
+"Bill Teake. Is Bill Teake there?" asked a corporal at the door of the
+dug-out.
+
+"I'm 'ere, old Sawbones," said Bill, "wot d'ye want me for?"
+
+"It's your turn on sentry," said the corporal.
+
+"Oh! blimey, that's done it!" grumbled Bill. "I feel my tempratoor (p. 278)
+goin' up again. It's always some damn fatigue or another in this
+cursed place. I wonder when will I 'ave the luck to go sick again."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX (p. 279)
+
+THE WOMEN OF FRANCE
+
+ Lonely and still the village lies,
+ The houses asleep and the blinds all drawn.
+ The road is straight as the bullet flies,
+ And the east is touched with the tinge of dawn.
+
+ Shadowy forms creep through the night,
+ Where the coal-stacks loom in their ghostly lair;
+ A sentry's challenge, a spurt of light,
+ A scream as a woman's soul takes flight
+ Through the quivering morning air.
+
+
+We had been working all morning in a cornfield near an _estaminet_ on
+the La Bassee Road. The morning was very hot, and Pryor and I felt
+very dry; in fact, when our corporal stole off on the heels of a
+sergeant who stole off, we stole off to sin with our superiors by
+drinking white wine in an _estaminet_ by the La Bassee Road.
+
+"This is not the place to dig trenches," said the sergeant when we
+entered.
+
+"We're just going to draw out the plans of the new traverse," Pryor
+explained. "It is to be made on a new principle, and a rifleman on
+sentry-go can sleep there and get wind of the approach of a (p. 280)
+sergeant by the vibration of stripes rubbing against the walls of the
+trench."
+
+"Every man in the battalion must not be in here," said the sergeant
+looking at the khaki crowd and the full glasses. "I can't allow it and
+the back room empty."
+
+Pryor and I took the hint and went to the low roofed room in the rear,
+where we found two persons, a woman and a man. The woman was sweating
+over a stove, frying cutlets and the man was sitting on the floor
+peeling potatoes into a large bucket. He was a thickset lump of a
+fellow, with long, hairy arms, dark heavy eyebrows set firm over
+sharp, inquisitive eyes, a snub nose, and a long scar stretching from
+the butt of the left ear up to the cheekbone. He wore a nondescript
+pair of loose baggy trousers, a fragment of a shirt and a pair of
+bedroom slippers. He peeled the potatoes with a knife, a long
+rapier-like instrument which he handled with marvellous dexterity.
+
+"Digging trenches?" he asked, hurling a potato into the bucket.
+
+I understand French spoken slowly, Pryor, who was educated in Paris,
+speaks French and he told the potato-peeler that we had been at work
+since five o'clock that morning.
+
+"The Germans will never get back here again unless as prisoners." (p. 281)
+
+"They might thrust us back; one never knows," said Pryor.
+
+"Thrust us back! Never!" The potato swept into the bucket with a whizz
+like a spent bullet. "Their day has come! Why? Because they're beaten,
+our 75 has beaten them. That's it: the 75, the little love. Pip! pip!
+pip! pip! Four little imps in the air one behind the other. Nothing
+can stand them. Bomb! one lands in the German trench. _Plusieurs
+morts, plusieurs blesses._ Run! Some go right, some left. The second
+shot lands on the right, the third on the left, the fourth finishes
+the job. The dead are many; other guns are good, but none so good as
+the 75."
+
+"What about the gun that sent this over?"
+
+Pryor, as he spoke, pointed at the percussion cap of one of the gigantic
+shells with which the Germans raked La Bassee Road in the early stages
+of the war, what time the enemy's enthusiasm for destruction had not
+the nice discrimination that permeates it now. A light shrapnel shell
+is more deadly to a marching platoon than the biggest "Jack Johnson."
+The shell relic before us, the remnant of a mammoth Krupp design, (p. 282)
+was cast on by a shell in the field heavy with ripening corn and rye,
+opposite the doorway. When peace breaks out, and holidays to the scene
+of the great war become fashionable, the woman of the _estaminet_ is
+going to sell the percussion cap to the highest bidder. There are many
+mementos of the great fight awaiting the tourists who come this way
+with a long purse, "apres la guerre." At present a needy urchin will
+sell the nose-cap of a shell, which has killed multitudes of men and
+horses, for a few sous. Officers, going home on leave, deal largely
+with needy French urchins who live near the firing line.
+
+"A great gun, the one that sent that," said the Frenchman, digging the
+clay from the eye of a potato and looking at the percussion-cap which
+lay on the mantelpiece under a picture of the Virgin and Child. "But
+compared with the 75, it is nothing; no good. The big shell comes
+boom! It's in no hurry. You hear it and you're into your dug-out
+before it arrives. It is like thunder, which you hear and you're in
+shelter when the rain comes. But the 75, it is lightning. It comes
+silently, it's quicker than its own sound."
+
+"Do you work here?" asked Pryor. (p. 283)
+
+"I work here," said the potato-peeler.
+
+"In a coal-mine?"
+
+"Not in a coal-mine," was the answer. "I peel potatoes."
+
+"Always?"
+
+"Sometimes," said the man. "I'm out from the trenches on leave for
+seven days. First time since last August. Got back from Souchez
+to-day."
+
+"Oh!" I ejaculated.
+
+"Oh!" said Pryor. "Seen some fighting?"
+
+"Not much," said the man, "not too much." His eyes lit up as with fire
+and he sent a potato stripped clean of its jacket up to the roof but
+with such precision that it dropped down straight into the bucket.
+"First we went south and the Germans came across up north. 'Twas turn
+about and up like mad; perched on taxis, limbers, ambulance waggons,
+anything. We got into battle near Paris. The Boches came in clusters,
+they covered the ground like flies on the dead at Souchez. The 75's
+came into work there. 'Twas wonderful. Pip! pip! pip! pip! Men were
+cut down, wiped out in hundreds. When the gun was useless--guns had
+short lives and glorious lives there--a new one came into play (p. 284)
+and killed, killed, until it could stand the strain no longer."
+
+"Much hand-to-hand fighting?" asked Pryor.
+
+"The bayonet! Yes!" The potato-peeler thrust his knife through a
+potato and slit it in two. "The Germans said 'Eugh! Eugh! Eugh!' when
+we went for them like this." He made several vicious prods at an
+imaginary enemy. "And we cut them down."
+
+He paused as if at a loss for words, and sent his knife whirling into
+the air where it spun at an alarming rate. I edged my chair nearer the
+door, but the potato-peeler, suddenly standing upright, caught the
+weapon by the haft as it circled and bent to lift a fresh potato.
+
+"What is that for?" asked Pryor, pointing to a sword wreathed in a
+garland of flowers, tattooed on the man's arm.
+
+"The rapier," said the potato-peeler. "I'm a fencer, a master-fencer;
+fenced in Paris and several places."
+
+The woman of the house, the man's wife, had been buzzing round like a
+bee, droning out in an incoherent voice as she served the customers.
+Now she came up to the master-fencer, looked at him in the face for a
+second, and then looked at the bucket. The sweat oozed from her (p. 285)
+face like water from a sponge.
+
+"Hurry, and get the work done," she said to her husband, then she
+turned to us. "You're keeping him from work," she stuttered, "you two,
+chattering like parrots. Allez-vous en! Allez-vous en!"
+
+We left the house of the potato-peeler and returned to our digging.
+The women of France are indeed wonderful.
+
+That evening Bill came up to me as I was sitting on the banquette. In
+his hand was an English paper that I had just been reading and in his
+eye was wrath.
+
+"The 'ole geeser's fyce is in this 'ere thing again," he said
+scornfully. "Blimy! it's like the bad weather, it's everywhere."
+
+"Whose face do you refer to?" I asked my friend.
+
+"This Jimace," was the answer and Bill pointed to the photo of a
+well-known society lady who was shown in the act of escorting a
+wounded soldier along a broad avenue of trees that tapered away to a
+point where an English country mansion showed like a doll's house in
+the distance. "Every pyper I open she's in it; if she's not makin'
+socks for poor Tommies at the front, she's tyin' bandages on (p. 286)
+wounded Tommies at 'ome."
+
+"There's nothing wrong in that," I said, noting the sarcasm in Bill's
+voice.
+
+"S'pose its natural for 'er to let everybody know what she does, like
+a 'en that lays a negg," my mate answered. "She's on this pyper or
+that pyper every day. She's learnin' nursin' one day, learnin' to
+drive an ambulance the next day, she doesn't carry a powder puff in
+'er vanity bag at present----"
+
+"Who said so?" I asked.
+
+"It's 'ere in black and white," said Bill. "'Er vanity bag 'as given
+place to a respirator, an' instead of a powder puff she now carries an
+antiskeptic bandage. It makes me sick; it's all the same with women in
+England. 'Ere's another picture called 'Bathin' as usual.' A dozen of
+girls out in the sea (jolly good legs some of 'em 'as, too) 'avin' a
+bit of a frisky. Listen what it says: 'Despite the trying times the
+English girls are keepin' a brave 'eart----' Oh! 'ang it, Pat, they're
+nothin' to the French girls, them birds at 'ome."
+
+"What about that girl you knew at St. Albans?" I asked. "You remember
+how she slid down the banisters and made toffee."
+
+"She wasn't no class, you know," said Bill. (p. 287)
+
+"She never answered the verse you sent from Givenchy, I suppose," I
+remarked.
+
+"It's not that----"
+
+"Did she answer your letter saying she reciprocated your sentiments?"
+I asked.
+
+"Reshiperate your grandmother, Pat!" roared Bill. "Nark that language,
+I say. Speak that I can understand you. Wait a minute till I
+reshiperate that," he suddenly exclaimed pressing a charge into his
+rifle magazine and curving over the parapet. He sent five shots in the
+direction from which he supposed the sniper who had been potting at us
+all day, was firing. Then he returned to his argument.
+
+"You've seen that bird at the farm in Mazingarbe?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," I replied. "Pryor said that her ankles were abnormally thick."
+
+"Pryor's a fool," Bill exclaimed.
+
+"But they really looked thick----"
+
+"You're a bigger fool than 'im!"
+
+"I didn't know you had fallen in love with the girl," I said "How did
+it happen?"
+
+"Blimey, I'm not in love," said my mate, "but I like a girl with a
+good 'eart. Twas out in the horchard in the farm I first met 'er. (p. 288)
+I was out pullin' apples, pinchin' them if you like to say so, and I
+was shakin' the apples from the branches. I had to keep my eyes on the
+farm to see that nobody seen me while I shook. It takes a devil of a
+lot of strength to rumble apples off a tree when you're shakin' a
+trunk that's stouter than the bread basket of a Bow butcher. All at
+once I saw the girl of the farm comin' runnin' at me with a stick.
+Round to the other side of the tree I ran like lightnin', and after me
+she comes. Then round to the other side went I----"
+
+"Which side?" I asked.
+
+"The side she wasn't on," said Bill. "After me she came and round to
+her side I 'opped----"
+
+"Who was on the other side now?" I inquired.
+
+"I took good care that she was always on the other side until I saw
+what she was up to with the stick," said Bill. "But d'yer know what
+the stick was for? 'Twas to help me to bring down the apples. Savve.
+They're great women, the women of France," concluded my mate.
+
+The women of France! what heroism and fortitude animates them in every
+shell-shattered village from Souchez to the sea! What labours (p. 289)
+they do in the fields between the foothills of the Pyrenees and the
+Church of ----, where the woman nearest the German lines sells rum
+under the ruined altar! The plough and sickle are symbols of peace and
+power in the hands of the women of France in a land where men destroy
+and women build. The young girls of the hundred and one villages which
+fringe the line of destruction, proceed with their day's work under
+shell fire, calm as if death did not wait ready to pounce on them at
+every corner.
+
+I have seen a woman in one place take her white horse from the pasture
+when shells were falling in the field and lead the animal out again
+when the row was over; two of her neighbours were killed in the same
+field the day before. One of our men spoke to her and pointed out that
+the action was fraught with danger. "I am convinced of that," she
+replied. "It is madness to remain here," she was told, and she asked
+"Where can I go to?" During the winter the French occupied the trenches
+nearer her home; her husband fought there, but the French have gone
+further south now and our men occupy their place in dug-out and trench
+but not in the woman's heart. "The English soldiers have come and (p. 290)
+my husband had to go away," she says. "He went south beyond Souchez,
+and now he's dead."
+
+The woman, we learned, used to visit her husband in his dug-out and
+bring him coffee for breakfast and soup for dinner; this in winter
+when the slush in the trenches reached the waist and when soldiers
+were carried out daily suffering from frostbite.
+
+A woman sells _cafe noir_ near Cuinchy Brewery in a jumble of bricks
+that was once her home. Once it was _cafe au lait_ and it cost four
+sous a cup, she only charges three sous now since her cow got shot in
+the stomach outside her ramshackle _estaminet_. Along with a few mates
+I was in the place two months ago and a bullet entered the door and
+smashed the coffee pot; the woman now makes coffee in a biscuit tin.
+
+The road from our billet to the firing line is as uncomfortable as a
+road under shell fire can be, but what time we went that way nightly
+as working parties, we met scores of women carrying furniture away
+from a deserted village behind the trenches. The French military
+authorities forbade civilians to live there and drove them back to
+villages that were free from danger. But nightly they came back,
+contrary to orders, and carried away property to their temporary (p. 291)
+homes. Sometimes, I suppose they took goods that were not entirely
+their own, but at what risk! One or two got killed nightly and many
+were wounded. However, they still persisted in coming back and
+carrying away beds, tables, mirrors and chairs in all sorts of queer
+conveyances, barrows, perambulators and light spring-carts drawn by
+strong intelligent dogs.
+
+"They are great women, the women of France," as Bill Teake remarks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI (p. 292)
+
+IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT
+
+ "What do you do with your rifle, son?" I clean it every day,
+ And rub it with an oily rag to keep the rust away;
+ I slope, present and port the thing when sweating on parade.
+ I strop my razor on the sling; the bayonet stand is made
+ For me to hang my mirror on. I often use it, too,
+ As handle for the dixie, sir, and lug around the stew.
+ "But did you ever fire it, son?" Just once, but never more.
+ I fired it at a German trench, and when my work was o'er
+ The sergeant down the barrel glanced, and looked at me and said,
+ "Your hipe is dirty, sloppy Jim; an extra hour's parade!"
+
+
+The hour was midnight. Over me and about me was the wonderful French
+summer night; the darkness, blue and transparent, splashed with
+star-shells, hung around me and gathered itself into a dark streak on
+the floor of the trench beneath the banquette on which I stood. Away
+on my right were the Hills of Lorette, Souchez, and the Labyrinth
+where big guns eternally spoke, and where the searchlights now touched
+the heights with long tremulous white arms. To my left the star-shells
+rose and fell in brilliant riot above the battle-line that (p. 293)
+disfigured the green meadows between my trench and Ypres, and out on
+my front a thousand yards away were the German trenches with the dead
+wasting to clay amid the poppy-flowers in the spaces between. The
+dug-out, in which my mates rested and dreamt, lay silent in the dun
+shadows of the parados.
+
+Suddenly a candle was lit inside the door, and I could see our
+corporal throw aside the overcoat that served as blanket and place the
+tip of a cigarette against the spluttering flame. Bill slept beside
+the corporal's bed, his head on a bully beef tin, and one naked arm,
+sunned and soiled to a khaki tint, lying slack along the earthen
+floor. The corporal came out puffing little curls of smoke into the
+night air.
+
+"Quiet?" he asked.
+
+"Dull enough, here," I answered. "But there's no peace up by Souchez."
+
+"So I can hear," he answered, flicking the ash from his cigarette and
+gazing towards the hills where the artillery duel was raging. "Have
+the working parties come up yet?" he asked.
+
+"Not yet," I answered, "but I think I hear men coming now."
+
+They came along the trench, about two hundred strong, engineers (p. 294)
+and infantry, men carrying rifles, spades, coils of barbed wire,
+wooden supports, &c. They were going out digging on a new sap and
+putting up fresh wire entanglements. This work, when finished, would
+bring our fire trench three hundred yards nearer the enemy. Needless
+to say, the Germans were engaged on similar work, and they were
+digging out towards our lines.
+
+The working party came to a halt; and one of them sat down on the
+banquette at my feet, asked for a match and lit a cigarette.
+
+"You're in the village at the rear?" I said.
+
+"We're reserves there," he answered. "It's always working-parties; at
+night and at day. Sweeping gutters and picking papers and bits of stew
+from the street. Is it quiet here?"
+
+"Very quiet," I answered. "We've only had five killed and nine wounded
+in six days. How is your regiment getting along?"
+
+"Oh, not so bad," said the man; "some go west at times, but it's what
+one has to expect out here."
+
+The working party were edging off, and some of the men were clambering
+over the parapet.
+
+"Hi! Ginger!" someone said in a loud whisper, "Ginger Weeson; (p. 295)
+come along at once!"
+
+The man on the banquette got to his feet, put out his cigarette and
+placed the fag-end in his cartridge pouch. He would smoke this when he
+returned, on the neutral ground between the lines a lighted cigarette
+would mean death to the smoker. I gave Ginger Weeson a leg over the
+parapet and handed him his spade when he got to the other side. My
+hour on sentry-go was now up and I went into my dug-out and was
+immediately asleep.
+
+I was called again at one, three-quarters of an hour later.
+
+"What's up?" I asked the corporal who wakened me.
+
+"Oh, there's a party going down to the rear for rations," I was told.
+"So you've got to take up sentry-go till stand-to; that'll be for an
+hour or so. You're better out in the air now for its beginning to
+stink everywhere, but the dug-out is the worst place of all."
+
+So saying, the corporal entered the dug-out and stretched himself on
+the floor; he was going to have a sleep despite his mean opinion of
+the shelter.
+
+The stench gathers itself in the early morning, in that chill (p. 296)
+hour which precedes the dawn one can almost see the smell ooze from
+the earth of the firing line. It is penetrating, sharp, and well-nigh
+tangible, the odour of herbs, flowers, and the dawn mixed with the
+stench of rotting meat and of the dead. You can taste it as it enters
+your mouth and nostrils, it comes in slowly, you feel it crawl up your
+nose and sink with a nauseous slowness down the back of the throat
+through the windpipe and into the stomach.
+
+I leant my arms on the sandbags and looked across the field; I fancied
+I could see men moving in the darkness, but when the star-shells went
+up there was no sign of movement out by the web of barbed-wire
+entanglements. The new sap with its bags of earth stretched out chalky
+white towards the enemy; the sap was not more than three feet deep
+yet, it afforded very little protection from fire. Suddenly rising
+eerie from the space between the lines, I heard a cry. A harrowing
+"Oh!" wrung from a tortured soul, then a second "Oh!" ear-splitting,
+deafening. Something must have happened, one of the working party was
+hit I knew. A third "Oh!" followed, weak it was and infantile, then
+intense silence wrapped up everything as in a cloak. But only for (p. 297)
+a moment. The enemy must have heard the cry for a dozen star-shells
+shot towards us and frittered away in sparks by our barbed-wire
+entanglements. There followed a second of darkness and then an
+explosion right over the sap. The enemy were firing shrapnel shells on
+the working party. Three, four shells exploded simultaneously out in
+front. I saw dark forms rise up and come rushing into shelter. There
+was a crunching, a stumbling and a gasping as if for air. Boots struck
+against the barbed entanglements, and like trodden mice, the wires
+squeaked in protest. I saw a man, outlined in black against the glow
+of a star-shell, struggling madly as he endeavoured to loose his
+clothing from the barbs on which it caught. There was a ripping and
+tearing of tunics and trousers.... A shell burst over the men again
+and I saw two fall; one got up and clung to the arm of a mate, the
+other man crawled on his belly towards the parapet.
+
+In their haste they fell over the parapet into the trench, several of
+them. Many had gone back by the sap, I could see them racing along
+crouching as they ran. Out in front several forms were bending over
+the ground attending to the wounded. From my left the message (p. 298)
+came "Stretcher-bearers at the double." And I passed it along.
+
+Two men who had scrambled over the parapet were sitting on my
+banquette, one with a scratched forehead, the other with a bleeding
+finger. Their mates were attending to them binding up the wounds.
+
+"Many hurt?" I asked.
+
+"A lot 'ave copped a packet," said the man with the bleeding finger.
+
+"We never 'eard the blurry things come, did we?" he asked his mates.
+
+"Never 'eard nothin', we didn't till the thing burst over us," said a
+voice from the trench. "I was busy with Ginger----"
+
+"Ginger Weeson?" I enquired.
+
+"That's 'im," was the reply. "Did yer 'ear 'im yell? Course yer did;
+ye'd 'ave 'eard 'im over at La Bassee."
+
+"What happened to him?" I asked.
+
+"A bullet through 'is belly," said the voice. "When 'e roared I put my
+'and on 'is mouth and 'e gave me such a punch. I was nearly angry, and
+'im in orful pain. Pore Ginger! Not many get better from a wound like
+his one."
+
+Their wounds dressed, the men went away; others came by carrying (p. 299)
+out the stricken; many had fractured limbs, one was struck on the
+shoulder, another in the leg and one I noticed had several teeth
+knocked away.
+
+The working-party had one killed and fifty-nine wounded in the
+morning's work; some of the wounded, amongst them, Ginger Weeson, died
+in hospital.
+
+The ration-party came back at two o'clock jubilant. The post arrived
+when the men were in the village and many bulky parcels came in for
+us. Meals are a treat when parcels are bulky. We would have a fine
+breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII (p. 300)
+
+ROMANCE
+
+ The young recruit is apt to think
+ Of war as a romance;
+ But he'll find its boots and bayonets
+ When he's somewhere out in France.
+
+
+When the young soldier takes the long, poplar-lined road from ---- his
+heart is stirred with the romance of his mission. It is morning and he
+is bound for the trenches; the early sunshine is tangled in the
+branches, and silvery gossamer, beaded with iridescent jewels of dew,
+hang fairylike from the green leaves. Birds are singing, crickets are
+thridding in the grass and the air is full of the minute clamouring,
+murmuring and infinitesimal shouting of little living things. Cool,
+mysterious shadows are cast like intricate black lace upon the
+roadway, light is reflected from the cobbles in the open spaces, and
+on, on, ever so far on, the white road runs straight as an arrow into
+the land of mystery, the Unknown.
+
+In front is the fighting line, where trench after trench, wayward (p. 301)
+as rivers, wind discreetly through meadow and village. By day you can
+mark it by whirling lyddite fumes rising from the ground, and puffs of
+smoke curling in the air; at night it is a flare of star-shells and
+lurid flamed explosions colouring the sky line with the lights of
+death.
+
+Under the moon and stars, the line of battle, seen from a distance, is
+a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken
+homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of
+yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last
+autumn rots with withering men on the field of death and decay.
+
+Nature is busy through it all, the grasses grow green over the dead,
+and poppies fringe the parapets where the bayonets glisten, the
+skylarks sing their songs at dawn between the lines, the frogs chuckle
+in the ponds at dusk, the grasshoppers chirrup in the dells where the
+wild iris, jewel-starred, bends mournfully to the breezes of night. In
+it all, the watching, the waiting, and the warring, is the mystery,
+the enchantment, and the glamour of romance; and romance is dear to
+the heart of the young soldier.
+
+I have looked towards the horizon when the sky was red-rimmed with (p. 302)
+the lingering sunset of midsummer and seen the artillery rip the
+heavens with spears of flame, seen the star-shells burst into fire and
+drop showers of slittering sparks to earth, seen the pale mists of
+evening rise over black, mysterious villages, woods, houses,
+gun-emplacements, and flat meadows, blue in the evening haze.
+
+Aeroplanes flew in the air, little brown specks, heeling at times and
+catching the sheen of the setting sun, when they glimmered like flame.
+Above, about, and beneath them were the white and dun wreathes of
+smoke curling and streaming across the face of heaven, the smoke of
+bursting explosives sent from earth to cripple the fliers in mid-air.
+
+Gazing on the battle struggle with all its empty passion and deadly
+hatred, I thought of the worshipper of old who looked on the face of
+God, and, seeing His face, died. And the scene before me, like the
+Countenance of the Creator, was not good for mortal eye.
+
+He who has known and felt the romance of the long night marches can
+never forget it. The departure from barn billets when the blue evening
+sky fades into palest saffron, and the drowsy ringing of church (p. 303)
+bells in the neighbouring village calling the worshippers to evensong;
+the singing of the men who swing away, accoutred in the harness of
+war; the lights of little white houses beaming into the darkness; the
+stars stealing silently out in the hazy bowl of the sky; the trees by
+the roadside standing stiff and stark in the twilight as if listening
+and waiting for something to take place; the soft, warm night, half
+moonlight and half mist, settling over mining villages with their
+chimneys, railways, signal lights, slag-heaps, rattling engines and
+dusty trucks.
+
+There is a quicker throbbing of the heart when the men arrive at the
+crest of the hill, well known to all, but presenting fresh aspects
+every time the soldier reaches its summit, that overlooks the firing
+line.
+
+Ahead, the star-shells, constellations of green, electric white, and
+blue, light the scenes of war. From the ridge of the hill, downwards
+towards an illimitable plain, the road takes its way through a
+ghost-world of ruined homes where dark and ragged masses of broken
+roof and wall stand out in blurred outlines against indistinct and
+formless backgrounds.
+
+A gun is belching forth murder and sudden death from an (p. 304)
+emplacement on the right; in a spinney on the left a battery is noisy
+and the flashes from there light up the cluster of trees that stand
+huddled together as if for warmth. Vehicles of war lumber along the
+road, field-kitchens, gun-limbers, water-carts, motor-ambulances, and
+Red Cross waggons. Men march towards us, men in brown, bearing rifles
+and swords, and pass us in the night. A shell bursts near, and there
+is a sound as of a handful of peas being violently flung to the
+ground.
+
+For the night we stop in a village where the branches of the trees are
+shrapnelled clean of their leaves, and where all the rafters of the
+houses are bared of their covering of red tiles. A wind may rise when
+you're dropping off to sleep on the stone flags of a cellar, and then
+you can hear the door of the house and of nearly every house in the
+place creaking on its hinges. The breeze catches the telephone wires
+which run from the artillery at rear to their observation stations,
+and the wires sing like light shells travelling through space.
+
+At dawn you waken to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at
+aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from
+exploding shells, swish to the earth with a sound like burning (p. 305)
+magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a skull, if
+any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to remain in
+shelter until the row is over.
+
+Outside, the birds are merry on the roofs; you can hear them sing
+defiantly at the lone cat that watches them from the grassy spot which
+was once a street. Spiders' webs hang over the doorways, many flies
+have come to an untimely end in the glistening snares, poor little
+black, helpless things. Here and there lies a broken crucifix and a
+torn picture of the Holy Family, the shrines that once stood at the
+street corners are shapeless heaps of dust and weeds and the village
+church is in ruins.
+
+No man is allowed to walk in the open by day; a German observation
+balloon, a big banana of a thing, with ends pointing downwards stands
+high over the earth ten kilometres away and sees all that takes place
+in the streets.
+
+There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings
+where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this
+village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.
+
+How fine it is to leave the trenches at night after days of (p. 306)
+innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is
+good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore
+and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife,
+the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn,
+with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all
+the strain of getting there.
+
+Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light
+a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a
+chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The
+flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the
+roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet
+one another inquiringly.
+
+"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"
+
+Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting.
+Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when
+the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a
+rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.
+
+There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill
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