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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Crumps, The Plain Story of a Canadian Who
+Went by Louis Keene
+
+
+
+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 http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went
+
+Author: Louis Keene
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2009 [Ebook #28964]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "CRUMPS", THE PLAIN STORY OF A CANADIAN WHO WENT***
+
+
+
+
+
+                                 "Crumps"
+
+                      The Plain Story of a Canadian
+
+                                 Who Went
+
+                              By Louis Keene
+
+                       Canadian Expeditionary Force
+
+                         With a Prefatory Note By
+
+                           General Leonard Wood
+
+                        Illustrated by the Author
+
+                           Boston and New York
+
+                         Houghton Mifflin Company
+
+                                   1917
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                                The "Sub".
+
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+HEADQUARTERS SOUTHEASTERN DEPARTMENT
+CHARLESTON, S.C.
+
+11th August, 1917
+
+Captain Keene has made an interesting contribution to the literature of
+the present war in his account of service, which covers the experience of
+a young officer in the making and on the battle front,--the transformation
+of an artist into a first-class machine-gun officer. He covers the
+training period at home and abroad and the work at the front. This direct
+and interesting account should serve to bring home to all of us an
+appreciation of how much has to be done before troops can be made
+effective for modern war, the cost of unpreparedness, and the disadvantage
+under which troops, partially equipped, labor when they meet highly
+organized ones, prepared, even to the last detail, for all the exigencies
+of modern war. It also brings out the splendid spirit of Canada, the
+Mother Country, and the distant Colonies,--the spirit of the Empire, united
+and determined in a just cause.
+
+This and similar accounts should serve to make clear to us the wisdom of
+the admonition of Washington and many others: "In time of peace prepare
+for war."
+
+Many young Americans are about to undergo experiences similar to those of
+Captain Keene, and a perusal of this modest and straight-forward narrative
+will help in the great work of getting ready.
+
+LEONARD WOOD,
+_Maj.-Gen. U.S.A._
+
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Frontispiece.
+
+The "Sub."
+
+"Beat It!"
+
+The Canadian, Johnnie Canuck, The American, And The ANZAC.
+
+Bringing Up A Motor Machine Gun.
+
+"Wipers."
+
+What's The Use?
+
+A French Soldier.
+
+"Whiz-Bangs."
+
+The "Crump."
+
+Mr. Tommy Atkins.
+
+
+
+
+
+                [Illustration: "Don't Linger Around Here"
+                        "The Enemy Can See You."
+                       "Who Me? Yes You. Beat It!"]
+
+
+
+
+
+"CRUMPS"
+
+
+_The Plain Story of a Canadian who went_
+
+The Laurentian Mountains in the Province of Quebec are noted for their
+beauty, fine hunting and fishing, and are the stamping-grounds for many
+artists from the States and Eastern Canada. It was in this capacity that I
+was working during the hot summer of 1914. All through June and July I
+sketched with my father. Other than black flies my only worry was the
+price of my tubes of color.
+
+We usually received our newspapers two or three days after publication;
+consequently we were poorly posted on worldly happenings. Suddenly the war
+clouds gathered and almost before we knew it they became so threatening
+that we grew restless, and even went in to the depot to get our papers so
+that we could have the news sooner.
+
+The assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince and the subsequent events
+were exciting, but it was only when Russia sent that one word "Mobilize"
+to Serbia that we suspected serious results. Even the summer visitors from
+the States exhibited signs of excitement, yet they were skeptical of the
+chances of war; that is, war that would really affect us! My newspaper in
+Montreal wired for me to come down to do war cartoons and I left my father
+and hiked to the depot.
+
+The Montreal train was crowded and conversation centered on the one topic,
+War; the English Navy's ability to maintain her rule of the seas, and what
+would Canada do. A young Austrian reservist two seats away was telling
+some people in a loud voice how much he wanted to get into it. He was
+going back to answer the call. And I had already begun to hear my
+country's call.
+
+A newsboy boarding the train at a junction was overwhelmed and succeeded
+in getting twenty-five cents a copy for his papers.
+
+Montreal teemed with suppressed anxiety and every hour fresh news was
+posted. Special bulletin boards were put up on store fronts. Already men
+in uniform were seen in the street. And men were trying to enlist.
+
+The war fever was rising steadily; the chief occupation of Canadians in
+those days was watching the bulletin boards. Rumors of sea fights,
+ultimatums, disasters, and victories were common. The Kaiser seemed to
+declare war on the world at the rate of three countries a day.
+
+On the night of August 4th, as I was putting the finishing touches on a
+cartoon, a friend burst into the room:--"Come out of here! Something must
+happen any minute now." We marched downtown,--everybody marched in those
+days; walking was abolished in its favor. One met demonstrations
+everywhere, large crowds of cheering men with flags, victrolas at shop
+windows played patriotic airs, and soldiers with civilians crowded before
+the bulletin boards singing the national anthems with great enthusiasm.
+The King had declared war and his message to the fleet had just been put
+up! Newspaper extras were given away by thousands and movies of the
+British Navy were shown on the street. Any one who thought the British
+could not enthuse, changed his mind then.
+
+The audiences at the theatres and moving picture houses on receipt of the
+news rose simultaneously and sang the national anthems, then cheered
+themselves hoarse. These were the first days of the war. Several
+battalions of militia were called out and posted to protect the bridges
+and grain elevators. Battalions were raised overnight, and so many
+recruits came forward that men were refused by the score. England was
+immediately offered ten battalions. Then an army division was possible.
+The Militia Department suddenly became a hive of industry. Men with all
+kinds of business capacity tendered their services gratis, and the
+Canadian war machine, without the experience of previous campaigns, took
+shape. They worked night and day bringing everlasting credit on
+themselves. Banks offered full pay to their employees in uniform, and this
+example was widely followed. The principle prompting this action being,
+"It's our country; if we can't fight ourselves, we will help others to
+fight for her."
+
+Existent camp sites were inadequate, hence new ones were necessary. We had
+a few, but none were big enough. We bought Valcartier, one of the best
+sites in the world, which was equipped almost over-night with water
+service, electric light and drainage. The longest rifle range in the world
+with three and one-half miles of butts was constructed. Railroad sidings
+were put in and 35,000 troops from all over the Dominion poured into it.
+Think of it,--Canada with her population of seven and one-half millions
+offering 35,000 volunteers the first few weeks, without calling out her
+militia. And even to-day the militia are yet to be called. Thus every
+Canadian who has served at the front has been a volunteer. England
+accepted an army division. Fifteen hundred qualified officers were told
+that they would have to stay and train men for the next contingent. But
+this was not fighting. They were dissatisfied. They resigned their
+commissions and went as privates. Uniforms, boots, rifles and equipment
+were found for everybody. Every man was trained as much as possible in the
+time allowed, and within six weeks of the declaration of war, guns, horses
+and 35,000 men were going forward to avenge Belgium.
+
+With me the question of signing up was a big one. In the first place, I
+wanted to go; I wanted to go quickly. Several other fellows and myself had
+decided upon a certain battalion. But much to our disgust and regret we
+were informed that enlistments had stopped only a short time before.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                               The Canadian
+
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                              Johnnie Canuck
+
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                               The American
+
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                                The ANZAC
+
+
+Then came the announcement of the organization of the First Auto Machine
+Gun Brigade, the generous gift of several of Canada's most prominent
+citizens, and it was in this unit that I enlisted with my friend Pat, a
+six-foot, husky Scotchman, with the fighting blood of the kilties very
+near the surface. We were immediately transported to Ottawa in company
+with fifty other picked men from Montreal. At Ottawa the complement of our
+battery was completed upon the arrival of one hundred more men from Ottawa
+and Toronto. Here we trained until it came time for us to move to
+Montreal, and there the battery was embarked on board the Corinthian with
+a unit of heavy artillery. We sailed down to Quebec where we joined the
+other ships assembled to take over the First Canadian Contingent.
+
+
+    _Corinthian, Wednesday, Sept. 30th, 1914._
+
+    MY DEAR MOTHER AND FATHER:--
+
+    We are now steaming down the St. Lawrence. No one knows where we
+    are going.
+
+    Our fleet is a wonderful sight. All the ships are painted war
+    gray--sides, boats and funnels. We are expecting to pick up the
+    warships which are to convoy us across at Father Point, somewhere
+    near where the Empress of Ireland was sunk.
+
+    Quebec looked very fine. The big guns were being hoisted into
+    boats, horses embarking, and battalion after battalion arriving
+    and going aboard. Those who came from Valcartier have had a rough
+    time. They actually look as if they had come through a campaign.
+    It gave me thrills all day to see these fine men come through the
+    dock-gates with a steady swing. It is a magnificent contribution
+    to any army. It's good to think of all these men coming at their
+    country's call.
+
+    Some day, if I get back, I want to paint a picture of the fleet
+    assembled at Quebec. The grays and greens looked really beautiful.
+    Quebec, the city of history and the scene of many big battles,
+    views with disdain the Canadian patriotism in the present crisis,
+    and we had no send-off, no flags and no bands.
+
+    This letter will not be mailed for ten days, until we are well on
+    the way over. We are crowded, and if we are going through the
+    tropics we shall have a bad time; it is cold now, so we don't
+    notice the congestion.
+
+    We had one hundred and forty horses aboard and two batteries of
+    heavy artillery, besides our own armored cars. All the transports
+    are crowded. We were passed by about ten of the other boats, and
+    as they did so we cheered each other. The thin lines of khaki on
+    all the ships will make a name for themselves. I'm proud I am one
+    of them.
+
+    We've had a big dose of vaccine pumped into our arms to-day. This
+    will be the last letter I send before I arrive, wherever we are
+    going.
+
+
+The Corinthian sailed from Quebec to Father Point, where a patrol boat
+arrived with orders. We then sailed into the Gulf, but toward evening we
+turned into the coast. When we passed Fame Point Light a small boat, which
+afterwards turned out to be another patrol boat, sailing without lights,
+flashed further orders to us. The Corinthian immediately turned round and
+headed back. The minute the patrol boat's signal light went out we were
+unable to distinguish it from the sea. The coloring is a good protection;
+even a boat, close to, sailing without lights, it is impossible to pick
+out. Apparently our orders were to cruise around until daylight and then
+sail for the Bay of Gaspé, and this morning at daybreak we sailed into
+that beautiful, natural harbor, which is big enough to accommodate the
+entire British fleet.
+
+I expect that to the villagers living around this harbor all events will
+date from to-day--to-day, when the wonderful sight of twenty-five ocean
+liners drawn up in battleship formation in this quiet place, deserted
+except for an occasional visit from a river steamer or fishing craft,
+greeted their gaze.
+
+Five gray fighting ships are mounting guard, and by their signals and
+pinnaces chasing backward and forward between the troopers are bossing the
+show. A corporal, a South African War veteran, as we looked at them,
+quoted Kipling's
+
+
+    "The liner she's a lady
+    With the paint upon 'er face,
+    The man o' war's 'er 'usband
+    And keeps 'er in 'er place."
+
+
+Towards noon a smart launch came alongside. Even at a distance the boys
+were quick to recognize our popular minister of militia, Sam Hughes, and a
+thundering cheer rang out. With him were several soldiers who threw
+bundles of papers aboard. These were printed copies of his farewell to the
+troops. His launch sailed by the ship, and then on to the next and so on,
+through the fleet.
+
+Our orders forbade the display of lights or even striking of matches after
+6 P.M.; consequently all lights were masked to-night on the vessels,
+except those on the Royal Edward. The minute her lights were put out the
+Bay resumed its normal condition, not even the outlines of the vessels
+being visible.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+A press photographer on a launch has been taking pictures all the
+afternoon. Sailed at five o'clock this afternoon just as the twilight
+commenced. We sailed out in three lines. The convoy is now under way and
+we extend as far as can be seen in both directions. We have two military
+police patrols whose chief duty is to see that no matches are struck on
+deck. Bill, who smokes more matches than tobacco, has had to go below so
+often to light his pipe, that he has decided to do without smoking on
+deck. It is surprising how far a match struck in the dark will show. We
+noticed how matches struck on the other ships showed up last night. All
+our portholes are screwed down with the heavy weather irons and those of
+the second-class cabins are covered with blankets. The authorities are
+taking no chances.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We are having physical drills and lectures all day, and we are working
+just as hard on board as we would ashore. Our speed will not be more than
+nine knots; the speed of the slowest vessel regulating the speed of the
+whole fleet.
+
+Matches are getting very scarce. We complained about the tea to the
+orderly officer to-day; milk is running out, so the tea is made with milk
+and sugar in. We asked to have the three separate, but we were told that
+if we complained we would have all three taken away. As a floor stain it's
+great, but as tea it's a failure.
+
+We are quartered in the steerage part of the ship and our food is in
+keeping. It is really remarkable how they can consistently get that same
+coal-oil flavor in all the food.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+War news is signaled from ship to ship by semaphore flags by day. It is
+posted up in the guard room daily. The news that the Indian troops landed
+in France on the 29th of September was the chief item on the bulletin
+yesterday. We're short on things to read. Scraps of newspapers are
+devoured, even to the advertisements. In our cabin we have a "Saturday
+Evening Post" of September 26th which is thumb-marked and torn, but it is
+still treasured. We were not allowed to bring anything besides our kit on
+board on account of the limited space.
+
+Reveille blows at six o'clock and we have to answer the roll-call at 6.15.
+The idea is, that if the men get up and walk about, they are not so likely
+to get seasick, but in spite of that quite a number are sick. We have on
+board one hundred of our brigade; two hundred and sixteen heavy artillery
+and one hundred and forty horses, together with artillery officers and
+equipment. The horses take up the same space which in ordinary times is
+occupied by humans. Otherwise, we should have a great many more troops.
+Our destination is still a mystery. We're a fleet without a port.
+
+Have just been ordered on fatigue to take a prisoner on deck for exercise.
+He is to be tried by court-martial to-morrow for striking a sergeant. All
+day he is kept locked up and only allowed out at night for exercise, under
+escort. The escort consists of two men and a non-com. While on this job we
+watched the signalers flashing the war news from the stern of our boat to
+the bridge of the next astern, the Virginian. The news is flashed at night
+by the lamps--short and long flashes. The news is picked up by wireless on
+the flagship, the Charybdis, at the head of our line and signaled back
+from ship to ship.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+This is the list of the fleet. It is written here in the order in which
+they are sailing. Three warships are heading the fleet; the flagship is
+the H.M.S. Charybdis, commanded by Admiral Wemyss, who distinguished
+himself a few weeks ago in the Battle of Heligoland.
+
+H.M.S. Diana
+H.M.S. Eclipse
+H.M.S. Charybdis
+Caribbean
+Megantic
+Scotian
+Athenia
+Ruthenia
+Arcadian
+Royal Edward
+Bermudian
+Zealand
+Franconia
+Alaunia
+Corinthian (The transport on which I was shipped.)
+H.M.S. Glory
+Canada
+Ivernia
+Virginian
+Monmouth
+Scandinavian
+Sasconia
+Manitou
+Sicilian
+Grampian
+Tyrolia
+Montezuma
+Andania
+Tunisian
+Lapland
+Montreal
+Laurentic
+Cassandra
+Laconia
+Royal George
+H.M.S. Talbot
+
+The H.M.S. Glory, the vessel on our starboard beam, altered her course
+to-day and held up a tramp steamer. We could just see the two vessels
+through our glasses. Apparently everything was all right as the tramp was
+allowed to go on her way afterwards.
+
+We are all given our boat stations. This afternoon a submarine alarm was
+sounded. Everybody on board, including the stewards, had to drop
+everything and chase to the boats. In the excitement a cook shot a "billy"
+of soup over an officer's legs, much to our silent delight.
+
+Thinking it over, it will be remarkable if the Germans allow us to cross
+without making some attempt to sink a few transports. Besides the actual
+loss of the men, the demoralizing effect it will have on the recruiting
+would count a great deal. No man likes to be shot or drowned without a
+show.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I am writing this in my cabin, which is only nine feet by six feet and in
+which six of us sleep at night. Besides living in it we have to keep all
+our equipment clean, which is some job!
+
+About eleven this morning a commotion occurred in the middle line. The
+cruiser heading it and the second ship, the Royal Edward, turned back.
+Also several other boats turned in their course. As we have very little
+excitement we hoped it might be a German attack, for we all want to see a
+naval battle. I looked at the cruiser through powerful glasses and saw
+sailors fixing up the starboard lifeboat, so we presumed that it was
+simply a case of "man overboard."
+
+A big cruiser has joined our fleet and is acting as a flank guard about
+three miles away from our starboard side.
+
+We have a great deal of physical exercise in spite of the rolling of the
+deck. This morning, while in the middle of it I was called away to dress
+and form part of an escort to the prisoner who was to be tried by field
+court-martial to-day. The court was very dignified, and it took a long
+time owing to the inexperience of the officers in such matters. It was the
+first court-martial I have seen,--the proceedings are strictly legal, being
+conducted according to the book, and with the officers wearing their
+swords. The poor devil expects two years.
+
+We have been pitching and tossing a great deal to-day. Physical exercising
+on the sloping decks is becoming a mighty risky thing.
+
+Quite a number of the transports have guns mounted on board so they are
+not entirely dependent on the cruisers. It looks as if we are sailing
+north of the usual trade routes. I have just heard that five more
+battleships are on the starboard beam. They came into sight early this
+morning, but have since been out of sight. We are sailing north of the
+trade routes.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+The fleet is being increased. All ships are stopped. Those sailing west
+are allowed to go after being boarded; those going in the same direction
+as ourselves are made to fall into line, so there will be no danger of the
+news of our sailing reaching Europe ahead of us. If we continue to pick up
+ships sailing in our direction, the fleet will be enormous by the time we
+arrive at our unknown destination. We sailed two hundred and twelve miles
+the last twenty-four hours.
+
+Two more transports have joined us. They came from Newfoundland. I hear
+that we now have forty-three ships in the fleet. We sail at ten cables'
+length apart, about one thousand yards.
+
+We are getting into more dangerous water evidently. Early this morning the
+Royal George steamed up from the end of the line and took up a position at
+the head of the fleet, but in line with the battleship Glory about three
+miles away on the port. The Laurentic took up a similar position on the
+starboard. Both these ships are armored and have guns mounted on them.
+They are being used as scouts.
+
+We all rushed up on deck to see a cruiser pass close to us this midday. It
+was a magnificent sight. She was either the H.M.S. Bristol or the H.M.S.
+Essex; her name was painted The bluejackets were massed on the decks
+forward and as she went by the marines' band played "The Maple Leaf
+Forever." We returned cheers with the sailors. It gives you a great thrill
+to see a British ship and to have the knowledge of what it represents. To
+be British is a great thing, and I'm proud to think that I'm going to
+fight for my country. When this war is over and men are talking round a
+table, it will be, "Where were you fighting during the war?" not "Did you
+fight during the war?"
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I'm in a gun-cleaning squad every afternoon. To-day I cleaned the machine
+gun on which I'm second gunner. We treat our machine guns as if they were
+pets. No one will ever be able to say that my gun is dirty. It will
+probably be my best friend some day.
+
+The finding of the court-martial was read out to us on full parade this
+afternoon. First the "Heavies" were lined up on all sides of the deck,
+then the "Mosquitos," as the Machine Gunners are called, lined up inside;
+the prisoner between an escort was led up in the center. It was
+wonderfully impressive. I felt that I was to witness the condemning of a
+fellow soldier to a number of years of hard labor. Over the whole assembly
+there came a deathlike silence and the finding of the court was read to us
+by an officer, the sentence being thirty-six days!
+
+The second steward told me that it took two hundred carpenters twelve
+hours to tear down the cabins and fix up horse fittings. First the
+authorities made arrangements to ship a thousand troops on this ship.
+We're crowded as we are now with only three hundred odd. I hate to think
+what it would have been like with a thousand.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Early this morning a large man-o'-war came up on the port at a speed that
+made everything else seem to stop. We have now battleships on all sides.
+This ship, although a long way off, looks tremendous. She is one of the
+latest super-dreadnaughts.
+
+I was on guard last night when one of the cruisers came alongside to TALK
+to the captain about having lights showing in some of the ports. I enjoyed
+it immensely, for I discovered that the British Navy, true to tradition,
+was still able to maintain its high level of profanity. The ship is in
+pitch darkness and there is no moon. On deck it's almost impossible to
+walk it's so dark. Tonight is supposed to be the night on which the
+Germans are going to make a raid. I am going to sleep on deck so that I
+shall not miss anything. I'd hate to miss the chance of seeing a naval
+engagement. I can't see how the Germans can possibly let a chance go by. A
+nervy cruiser could sink any amount of ships. If the British Navy were up
+against us they would have had a cut in before now.
+
+Slept on deck last night. Nothing happened except that early this morning
+a French cruiser joined us, and I got covered with smuts from the
+smokestack.
+
+The Admiral has received one hundred and twenty-six words of war news, but
+will not let us have them. Probably they're disastrous. We break up
+to-night or to-morrow. It's scarcely likely that the whole fleet will be
+taken to one port at the same time.
+
+That super-dreadnaught passed down the columns to-day. She is of
+tremendous size and travels at high speed. She is probably the Queen Mary.
+
+Expect to see land Wednesday.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Blowing a gale. All day the spendrift has been blowing over. The decks
+have been too wet for parades, thank God! All the way over we have had
+physical exercise, sometimes as much as four hours a day. We're all in
+fine physical condition.
+
+To-day we were allowed to wash our clothes. I can see the advantage of
+khaki now. Even after working hard on my clothes, my underwear is still
+dark white. The rails were covered with underwear and socks when the storm
+started. Now every square inch below is used for drying clothes. Even the
+electric lights are festooned. We have a final kit inspection to-morrow
+and then we pack for disembarkation. We are only about one hundred miles
+from the "Bishop's Light."
+
+It has been a very long voyage and we have been very cramped. All our
+equipment has to be carried in our cabins. Try sleeping six men with all
+their outfit in a cabin nine feet by six feet. The ship carpenter has a
+standing job to repair our cabin. We have rough-housed so much that his
+attention was continually necessary. The trip has been so long that we are
+now beginning to hate each other. I went down in the stoke-hole and the
+engine-room. Even amongst the whirling machines it was more peaceful than
+in our quarters. It seems months since I was in Montreal last.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Dear Old England in sight!
+
+We're passing the Lizard now.
+
+The kit has all been inspected and we hope to land to-morrow some time.
+
+We're lying in the historic harbor of Plymouth; arrived here about two
+hours ago. We're surrounded by fast little torpedo-boat destroyers, which
+are chasing round us all the time like dogs loosened from a chain. The
+breakwater has searchlights mounted on each end and fixed lights are
+playing from the shore. As the lights occasionally flash up the ships in
+the bay, it is as bright as day. Nobody is allowed ashore, not even the
+officers. We may go on to Southampton, only we must get there before five
+at night. After that time nothing is allowed in.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Sailed at daybreak on to Devonport. Most of the transports are now lying
+in pairs at anchor in the harbor. We're close to the shore. We can see
+naval "jolly boats" and pinnaces sailing back and forth. On one side are
+lying the H.M.S Powerful and another boat, both of which in their day were
+the pride of the Navy. The Powerful was the boat which made such a name
+for herself in the Boer War. Now both of these vessels are training ships
+and obsolete so far as this war goes.
+
+All our haversacks have been boiled in coffee to stain them khaki.
+
+One of the Navy steam launches came by and we asked them to get us
+newspapers. They came back with a bundle and we nearly had a riot trying
+to get at them.
+
+It was only to-day that we heard of the fall of Antwerp, the atrocities of
+Belgium, and the treachery of Maritz in Cape Colony.
+
+We shall be getting off in a few hours and this may be the last I shall
+write for some time. I have put in a great deal of time during the voyage
+writing and have done so under difficulties. Sometimes the cabin has been
+torn in pieces, and often arguments, carried on by leather-lunged
+opponents of "Kultur," have made this work hard.
+
+We hear that some paper published an account of the sinking of twenty of
+the ships. This rumor is false, and it's a beastly thing for the newspaper
+to do, but you must remember to discount all news a great deal.
+
+Still on board and we shall probably be here for a few days more. My, it's
+galling to be so near to the land and yet to be cooped up in our crowded
+quarters. Crowded launches and steamers are sailing round the liners. All
+day long cheering crowds come out to see us. Last night another liner
+called Florizel, with the First Regiment Newfoundland troops, tied up to
+us. They were a fine-looking lot of men. We told them we had no tobacco;
+they threw dozens of tins of their tobacco and cigarettes over to us. We
+fought for them. I got the remains of one tin with most of the contents
+spilt. Still, as many of us haven't had a smoke for three days, we
+appreciated it. Several cruisers have come in to-day, and there seem to be
+dozens of submarines and torpedo boats cruising around all day. The reason
+we did not go to Southampton is that five German submarines were waiting
+for us.
+
+The transports are unloading at the rate of five or six ships a day. It
+will probably be our turn on Sunday. The fleet looks splendid at night now
+that we have most of the lights on. All night the steel riveters are at
+work on three battleships that are being built close by. Near us are
+several "wooden walls." One is a ship of Nelson's, the Queen Adelaide.
+Every boat, tug, lighter and motor boat here is the property of the
+Admiralty.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We are probably going to Salisbury Plain for two months. We are the first
+Expeditionary Force to land in England from the dominions or colonies, but
+others are on their way. The sailors from the training ships serenade us
+in boats with bands and play "O Canada," "The Maple Leaf Forever," and all
+day long on one ship or the other we hear "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."
+Every one is singing it; without doubt it is _the_ song of the war. To-day
+we got a bundle of papers. We read them right through to the
+advertisements. Cigarettes and matches are at a premium and food is
+running out on board. The strain of staying here is becoming too great.
+We're all disagreeable and insubordinate. The guard room is already full
+and will soon need enlarging.
+
+On guard to prevent the men of the two ships (our own and the Florizel
+with the Newfoundlanders) coming over to visit each other. At ten o'clock
+at night I got the tip that a bunch of men were going to make a break for
+shore and I was asked to go. I had just come off sentry and was dressed
+for shore. We all met up forward, hailed a police boat, climbed down a
+rope ladder across two barges unloading shells and into the police launch.
+When I got in I found that I and one other fellow were the only privates;
+all the rest were sergeants and corporals, thirteen altogether, unlucky
+number. The police sergeants asked me if we had passes. I said, "You bet,"
+and we sailed away from the ship right under everybody's nose. We landed
+and then took a car to Plymouth and went on the Hoe, which has been in
+absolute darkness since the beginning of the war. Girls were very
+interested in us and took most of our collar badges and buttons as
+souvenirs. One man asked me to give him a cigarette as a souvenir.
+
+We met an English captain in a tobacconist's and he invited us up to the
+barracks. Two of us went. I was one. To get there we had to go on a street
+car. We had just sat down when up the stairs came my Lieutenant McCarthy.
+When he saw me he said, "How the hell did you get here?" "Oh, just swam
+across." "Well, if you get caught it'll be the guard room for you." I
+said, "Never mind, we'll have company." He is a pretty good sport. We went
+to the barracks, had a session with the captain, then went to the quay,
+picked up the rest of the men, and sneaked on board. I got to bed at three
+and had to get up this morning at six o'clock to go on guard.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Sunday, very tired. On guard all day, two hours on, four off. It's very
+unfortunate having a Sunday guard, because in the ordinary way we have to
+attend church parade in the morning and after having listened to a sermon
+and sung "Onward, Christian Soldiers," or, "Fight the good fight," we are
+free for the day, whereas guards stay on twenty-four hours.
+
+The major noticed one of the sergeants coming on board this morning at six
+o'clock. The idiot missed us this morning and of course that dished us.
+The sergeants got in wrong. As I am only a private, and therefore ignorant
+and simple according to the military code, and, being with
+non-commissioned officers who are supposed to possess superior
+intelligence, I got away with it. The sergeants have had to do sentry on
+the same ladder we went down.
+
+Everybody is as disagreeable as possible. We are lying in midstream and
+can see the town. Can you imagine anything more galling than that?
+
+While I was on guard the Vicar of Plymouth came aboard and held service.
+He said that the last time a Vicar of Plymouth preached to warriors was
+just before Drake sailed to meet the Armada.
+
+Thank God! moving at last. We've moored up to the docks just opposite two
+magnificent dreadnaughts. Naval men are handling our cargo, our kit bags
+are packed and we are ready to disembark.
+
+Near our ship's stern is a barge full of ventilators and spare parts of
+ships which are taken away when ships are cleared for action. Some of the
+rifle racks were marked Cornwall and I noticed a davit post with the name
+Highflyer, the boat that sank the Kaiser Wilhelm after she had been
+preying on the shipping off South Africa. When a ship is cleared for
+action, all inflammable fittings, such as wooden doors, ladders, racks,
+extra boats, and davits, etc., are discarded. If the order to "clear the
+decks for action" comes at sea, overboard go all these luxuries. It is
+calculated that the cost of "clearing decks" on a cruiser is five thousand
+dollars.
+
+Some of our stuff was unloaded yesterday, and when the ship moved a guard
+was placed over it. When the corporal went down the gangplank with the
+relief, Pat and I walked down behind as if we were part of the same, right
+by the officers. We had a devil of a job to get through the dock gates, a
+suspicious policeman and sentry on guard. We told the sergeant of the
+police a pitiful story, saying that we hadn't had anything to eat for
+three days, and finally he relented. "All right, my lads, only don't
+'swing the lead' in town." We got into Devonport and went to the biggest
+hotel. Before they had time to throw us out we ordered breakfast of real
+food. It was fine after the ship's grub. After sitting there ten minutes,
+the general commanding the district came in and sat behind us. He stared.
+Two privates in the same room as the general!! But all he said was, "If
+you boys can fight as you eat, you'll make an impression." Then we visited
+some other places!
+
+We went back to the docks and went over the super-dreadnaughts, Tiger and
+Benbow, the biggest war vessels in the world. The Tiger's speed on her
+trials was 37.5 knots an hour.
+
+After we had seen enough, we went back to the ship and tried to look as if
+we had been working with one of the fatigue parties on shore. It worked!
+
+We marched off the ship midday and then I had to go on guard again all
+night. That was the first time we were allowed ashore to see the town, and
+I was on guard, so if I hadn't slipped ashore on the two occasions
+mentioned, I should not have seen it at all.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It rained all night, and when I was off guard I slept on the top of one of
+our armored trucks, under a tarpaulin. It's wonderful how we can sleep now
+anywhere, and we often have our clothes on for three days at a time. Many
+a time I sleep with all my equipment on. Get wet and dry it by keeping it
+on. We all have to do it. The idea of pajamas or baths as necessities
+seems funny. At one time I would sooner go without breakfast than miss a
+bath. Now I make sure of the breakfast.
+
+We are going to drive our cars through England to Salisbury Plain. We
+started this morning and drove through Devonport. Cheering crowds
+everywhere. All our cars wear the streaming pennants: "Canada With the
+Empire," which pleased the people a great deal.
+
+As we rode through the streets people showered gifts upon us, such as
+cakes, chocolates, newspapers and apples, and everywhere made lusty
+demonstrations. The people of Taunton, as soon as they heard that the
+Canadians were coming, turned out the barracks and we were met by all the
+officers, who came in to talk to us. One second lieutenant, after studying
+me for some time, said, "Isn't your name Keene?" "Yes," I replied, "but
+how do you know?" "I went to school with you fifteen years ago." His name
+was Carter; he was in the Second Dorsets. That night he got me out of
+barracks for a couple of hours, and we hashed over the schoolboy
+reminiscences. The people of Taunton were arranging a dance for us, but
+nobody was allowed to attend. The major believes in putting us to bed
+early; his theory being that a man can't drive cars well after a party,
+and he couldn't keep the drivers in alone.
+
+Ladies from Taunton, of the pleasing English type with beautiful
+complexions, handed round all sorts of rubbish, jam puffs, and other
+things which belong to the time before we joined the army.
+
+Traveled all the morning. Everybody turned out to see us. The
+Brigadier-General wired ahead, and hastily prepared placards, still wet,
+were hanging from the windows,--
+
+
+    God Bless the Canadians
+    Loyal Sons
+    of
+    The Empire
+
+    The gathering of
+    the Lions' whelps
+
+
+and in one case the haste was so great that "God Save the King" was hung
+upside down.
+
+Everybody wants my badges and buttons, and some men in the unit have not
+one left. Hence I have requisitioned an order for a hundred to meet the
+demand.
+
+All over the country you see "Kitchener's Army" drilling. In one case we
+passed about a hundred of them. When they saw us they broke ranks and
+shook us by the hands. The people of England are much impressed with our
+speed in coming over. Old men and women shouted, "God bless you,
+Canadians!" while tears trickled down their cheeks.
+
+I read this notice in one little shop,--
+
+
+    At noon every day the church bell will ring a few chimes and
+    everybody is asked to stop whatever he is doing and offer this
+    prayer, "Oh, Lord, help our soldiers and sailors to defeat our
+    enemies, and let us have Peace."
+
+    (Signed) The Vicar.
+
+
+Recruiting notices ten feet by six feet with the sentence "Your King and
+Country Need You" are to be seen everywhere in shops, on barns, trees, and
+even church doors.
+
+Motorists and cyclists are warned to pull up whenever requested or the
+results may be serious. Most of the motors have O.H.M.S. plates above the
+number plate.
+
+We billeted in a village school; all slept in our blankets on the floor.
+Left the school and cleaned up before the kids came for their lessons next
+day.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Salisbury Plain. Arrived to-day. This part is called Bustard and takes its
+name from the small Bustard Inn, Headquarters of General Alderson, General
+Officer Commanding. Troops are here in thousands and we are no novelty.
+The roads are torn up. Mud is two feet deep in places. All through the day
+and night motor lorries, artillery and cavalry are traveling over the
+ground. Aeroplanes are circling overhead and heavy artillery are firing.
+We see the shells bursting on the ranges every day.
+
+Always raining. Everything is wet, and I am sleeping in a rotten tent
+which leaks. Still, we are all so fit that what would kill an ordinary man
+doesn't worry us much.
+
+We all get three days' leave and are trying by every means possible to
+wangle another day or two. Many men have to see dentists, and lots of men
+have grandparents in Scotland who display signs of dying suddenly. If the
+excuse is good enough, we get four days and sometimes five. I have a
+sweetheart in Scotland, but if that is played out I have to work something
+else.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Wonderful sight from where I am now. Miles of tents, motors and horse
+lines on this desolate moorland. No houses; only camps and a few trees
+which have been planted as wind screens. The soil is very poor, too poor
+for farming. It is government property and it is only used for troops. We
+are ten miles from a railroad. We are so isolated that we might be in
+Africa, except that it's so cold.
+
+The papers are starting an agitation to get the Canadians to march through
+London, and are asking why they should be smuggled in and then shut up on
+Salisbury Plain. They want to see us, AND WE WANT TO SEE LONDON!!
+
+Our ambulance car has been used every day since we came here, taking
+wounded from one hospital to another. The rest of our cars have been used
+to carry German prisoners.
+
+One of the spies caught on the ships is said to have been shot. Several
+were arrested; two were caught in Devonport while we were there, one in a
+Canadian officer's uniform.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Am spending seventy-two hours' leave in London. Got leave through this
+telegram which is from "the girl I'm engaged to":
+
+
+    Disappointed. Met train. Please do come. Leaving for Belgium soon.
+    Love.
+
+    EDYTHE.
+
+
+She is a Red Cross nurse. This is a new one and it worked. McCarthy sent
+it to me.
+
+London is very dismal. No electric signs, and the tops of all the street
+lamps are painted black so that the lights don't show from above. However,
+we managed to have a good time, in spite of it all. The Germans say that
+the Canadians are being held in England to repel the invasion.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+The facilities for bathing are not very extensive. I rode into Salisbury,
+a distance of seventeen miles, yesterday, on top of some packing-cases in
+a covered transport wagon, for a bath, the first since I was last on
+leave. We get a Turkish bath in town for thirty cents. After that we had a
+large juicy steak and then started our seventeen-mile trip back through
+the pouring rain. Every other mile we got down and helped the driver swear
+and push the car out of the mud, vast quantities of which abound on the
+Salisbury roads, believe me!!
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It is Sunday afternoon. Most of the men in camp are asleep or reading.
+Outside it is raining. It seems to be always raining, and occasionally we
+have such a thick fog that even a trip to get water is exciting before you
+can get back to your own lines.
+
+Owing to our camp having become a swamp we have had to move our quarters
+to drier ground. Moving the tents is not a big job, but rebuilding the
+cook-house is! I figure that when I leave the army I shall have a few more
+professions to choose from. For example, I'm a pretty hefty trench digger;
+then as a scavenger I am pretty good at picking up tin cans and pieces of
+paper; also I'm an expert in building things such as shelters from any old
+pieces of timber that we can steal; then as a cook I can now make that
+wonderful tea that I wrote you about, besides many other things which we
+didn't realize that we had to do when we enlisted.
+
+To-day the paper says "Fair and Warmer." We could do with some of that.
+Years ago, before I joined the army and lost my identity, I rather liked
+occasionally getting wet in the refreshing rain; but now the trouble is
+that we are always wet and have nowhere to dry our things, except by
+sleeping on them.
+
+Our major has an original scheme of training men in the ranks to qualify
+for commissions, sort of having half a dozen embryo officers ready. I have
+been picked as one and have to study in all my spare time. It means a
+great deal more work, but it's very interesting and the sort of thing I
+would like to do. We start to-day.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We began our instruction on the machine gun to the officers and the men
+who are up here for a special course; I have a boozy lieutenant, who
+doesn't care a hang, and a bright non-com. Some of the officers we brought
+over make good mascots.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It was fine to-day. We were even able to open up the tent flap to dry the
+place a bit. To-day the major congratulated me on the Christmas card I
+designed for the unit.
+
+Our classes of instruction to the "alien" officers finish to-morrow. Both
+the men I was instructing passed.
+
+The adjutant is very anxious to put us through our officers' training
+course quickly.
+
+We are now recognized as the specialist corps in the machine-gun work with
+the Canadian Division, and he is anxious that we shall be ready to take
+commissions when casualties occur. Every battalion of infantry has a
+machine-gun section attached, and we have the job of training the officers
+and sergeants of these sections.
+
+Owing to the bombardment of the east coast, several of our battalions are
+under orders to move at a moment's notice. It is thought that the
+bombardment was simply a ruse to draw the British fleet away from around
+Heligoland.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+The newspaper boys in Salisbury, when you refuse to buy an "Hextra," shout
+"Montreal Star" and "Calgary Eyeopener," and all the shopgirls and
+barmaids in Salisbury say, "Some kid," "Believe muh," "Oh, Boy!"
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I had been granted Christmas leave at the last minute, and as it was
+awkward to telegraph to Northwich, I arrived after a long journey, lasting
+sixteen hours, ten minutes ahead of the letter I'd sent saying I was
+coming. My arrival soon spread over the town. A Canadian--this was a rather
+unique thing for Northwich, a little Cheshire town. Out of a population of
+about eighteen thousand, two thousand men have joined the colors. The men
+in uniform from the works are all receiving half pay. The other men who
+are staying are working twelve hours a day and give up part of their pay
+so that the jobs of the soldiers will be open when they come back.
+Thirty-five Belgian refugees are being kept here. Money to keep them for
+twelve months has been subscribed. One huge house has been taken over as a
+hospital with twenty-three nurses, all volunteers from Northwich.
+Everybody has done or is doing something in the great struggle. The young
+ladies in this neighborhood have no use for a man who is not in khaki, and
+with customary north of England frankness tell them so.
+
+I expect that you know that the Government has sent around forms to every
+house asking the men who are going to volunteer to sign, and men long past
+the military age have signed the papers, "too old for the war service, but
+willing to serve either at home or abroad voluntary for the period of the
+war." Others have offered to do work to allow young men to go, to keep
+their jobs for them. This shows the spirit that permeates England. There
+is only one end and that MUST be the crushing of the Germans. I don't
+believe people have any idea of the number of men who are at present under
+arms, and still the posters everywhere say that we must have more men.
+
+I wonder if you know that the Germans are shooting British prisoners who
+are found with what they consider insulting post-cards of the Kaiser, and
+even references to His All Highest in letters are dangerous. As we are
+nearing the time when we shall go across I thought I would mention it.
+
+We expect to leave England somewhere around January 15th. We have been
+living in the mud so long that we are getting quite web-footed.
+
+This is a war Christmas. People are too excited and anxious to celebrate
+it. I wonder what sort of a Christmas the next one will be! What a
+terrible Christmas the Germans must have had in Germany. They admit over
+one million casualties. Fancy a million in less than five months. During
+the Napoleonic wars, which extended over twenty years, six million died,
+and yet one side in this war already admits one million.
+
+The Canadian ordnance stores have been given instructions that all
+equipments down to the last button must be ready by the 15th of January.
+That date seems to be the favorite one. I believe it is the commencement
+of big things; a move will then be made to embark large numbers of troops
+across to France.
+
+All our telegraphic addresses were taken when we came away on leave in
+case it were decided to send units over before our term of leave expired.
+
+A German aviator flew over Dover yesterday and made a fierce and terrible
+bomb attack on a cabbage patch. Terrible casualty in cabbages. Berlin must
+have designs on a bumper crop of sauerkraut.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Back in camp. It was hard to come down to it. Our blankets and clothes
+left in the tent were mildewed, clammy, and partly submerged. Our feet are
+wet and we are again soldiers, dirty and cold.
+
+Traveled down in the train with thirty-six men of the Canadian contingent
+who had formed an escort for fifty-six undesirables who have been shipped
+back to Canada. It seems strange when men are needed so badly to ship them
+back because they are a bit unruly or get drunk too often. They will all
+come back with future contingents. Six of them made a dash for it at
+Liverpool. Three of them got away altogether.
+
+It snowed yesterday. Last night the camp looked beautiful; the tents lit
+up through the snow in the moonlight made a pretty picture, a suitable
+subject for a magazine cover, but mighty uncomfortable to camp in.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+In a gale last night many tents were blown down. We spent all day putting
+them up again. The cook house, a substantial frame building, has also
+blown down again.
+
+When I got back I found a Christmas hamper, a bunch of holly and a small
+box of maple sugar and packet of cigarettes from the Duchess of Connaught
+with her Christmas card. All parcels for the troops came in duty free. Our
+postal system is very efficient. We get our letters as regularly as we
+would in a town.
+
+People send us so many cigarettes that we sometimes have too many. I wish
+we could get more tobacco and fewer cigarettes. If you remember during the
+Boer War the authorities tried to break the "Tommy" of his "fags" by
+giving him more tobacco. Now they really seem to encourage cigarette
+smoking, although it really doesn't matter; the same things which are
+harmful in towns don't have the same bad effects when we are living in the
+open.
+
+All leave is up by the 10th of January for everybody, officers and men.
+
+The Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry have gone to the front to
+the envy of everybody. It is a splendid battalion with fine officers. They
+have been lying next to our lines and we have made many friends with the
+"Pats."
+
+Cerebro-spinal meningitis has broken out, and in spite of all efforts to
+check it, seems to be gaining ground. Several officers have died with it,
+and I believe that four battalions are quarantined. We have to use
+chloride of lime on the tent floors and around the lines. My friend Pat
+calls it "Spike McGuiness." The worst of a disease like this is that a
+patient never recovers. Even a cure means partial paralysis for life. I
+believe that Salisbury Plain is known for it, and I hear that all the
+ground that troops are now occupying is to be ploughed up when we leave.
+As far as that goes we have ploughed it up a bit already, but a systematic
+ploughing will make it more regular. The subsoil is only four inches, then
+you come to chalky clay. The tent-pegs when they are taken from the ground
+are covered with chalk.
+
+I think that the Canadian Contingent has had a pretty raw deal. We're not
+even included in the six army divisions which are going to France by the
+end of March. Wish I had joined the "Princess Pats," who are already
+there. We want to fight.
+
+We're having a beastly time as compared with the Belgian refugees and the
+German prisoners in England. We're beginning to wonder if we are ever
+going to the front. There is now some talk of billeting us in Bristol.
+We've been under arms nearly five months and should be good fighting
+material by now. With a similar number of men the Germans would have done
+something by this time.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+All the last week the selected few of us have been working separately on a
+course of work to qualify us for commissions. We have had to study hard
+every spare minute when not drilling each other.
+
+Several dogs have attached themselves to us; sometimes they find
+themselves on a piece of string, the other end being in a man's hand. One
+of these, a big bull terrier, sleeps in the canteen. The beer is quite
+safe with him there, but two nights ago the canteen tent, after a great
+struggle, tore itself off the tent-poles and went fifteen feet up in the
+air like a balloon, then collapsed. The dog, I regret to say, did not stay
+at his post, so a quantity of beer will have to be marked down as lost.
+This same bull has a pal, a white bull terrier, who came out with the
+officers' class the other morning. We had not been drilling more than
+fifteen minutes when he came back with a large rabbit. We stewed it at
+night. It certainly was good.
+
+One of the mechanics has forged an Iron Cross which has been presented to
+the dog in recognition of his services.
+
+I doubt if I shall ever be able to sit up to a table again regularly. I
+would much sooner sleep on the floor, and I have found, when on leave,
+that I preferred sitting on a hearthrug to a chair. Even while writing
+this I am lying on my blankets. My pipe is burnt down on one side from
+lighting it from my candle.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+To-day being Sunday and as there were only two of us left in the tent, the
+others being on leave, we gave it a thorough spring cleaning. It needed
+it! By some oversight the sun came out to-day, so that helped. We also
+washed up all our canteens and pannikins with disinfectant.
+
+The infantry are bayonet-fighting and practicing charges every day. If you
+want a thrill, see them coming over the top at you with a yell; the
+bayonets catch the light and flash in a decidedly menacing fashion. They
+practice on dummies, and are so enthusiastic that they need new dummies
+almost every lesson.
+
+Every man, on becoming a soldier, becomes a man with a number and an
+identification disk. My number is 45555 and my "cold meat ticket," a tag
+made of red fiber, is hanging round my neck on a piece of string.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We're packing up and expect to go away next week. Of course, it may be
+another bluff, but somehow I think we really are going now, as we have
+been fitted out with a "field service-dressing," a packet containing two
+bandages and safety pins, which we have to sew into the right-hand bottom
+corner of our tunics. We have also been given our active service pay book,
+a little account book in which we have our pay entered. We don't get paid
+much in the field. We carry this book instead.
+
+It seems always cold and wet. We are very hardened. We look tough and feel
+that way. I haven't had a bath for a month. Since I have been soldiering I
+have done every dirty job that there is in the army, and there are many.
+Often when a job seemed to be too dirty and too heavy for anybody else,
+they looked around for Keene and Pat.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+"On guard." Writing this in the guard tent, when we are not actually on
+sentry. We keep all our equipment on, as we are liable to be called out at
+any minute. We sleep with our belts and revolvers in place.
+
+A quarter guard is three men and a noncom. The men do two hours on and
+four off. When it comes to a man's turn he has to be on his beat no matter
+what the weather is like during the day or night. The cold is pretty bad
+and occasionally it snows. Some units have sentry boxes, but we haven't.
+We use a bell tent. I was called this morning at five o'clock to do my
+sentry from five to seven. The small oil stove which serves to heat the
+guard tents had evidently been smoking for an hour, and over everything
+was a thick film of lamp-black. Everybody thought it a great joke until
+they looked at themselves in the mirror and caught sight of their own
+equipment. We must come off guard as clean as we go on. I got out quickly
+and left them swearing and cleaning up.
+
+From five to seven is the most interesting relief. I had first to wake the
+cooks at five o'clock and then I watched the gradual waking up of the
+camp. At six o'clock I had to wake the orderly sergeants and then far away
+in the distance the first bugle sounded reveille, then it was taken up all
+around and gradually the camps all over the Plains woke up. Men came out
+of the tents, the calls for the "fall in" sounded, and the rolls were
+called and the usual business of the day commenced. The change from the
+deadness of the night with its absolute stillness all takes place in a
+very short time. To a person with any imagination it seems rather
+wonderful. You must remember that we can see for miles, and in every
+direction there are hundreds of tents. Each battalion is separate, and
+they have great spaces between them; still wherever you look you can see
+tents.
+
+I wonder if I told you that aeroplanes are all the time flying over our
+camp. With characteristic British frankness they always have two huge
+Union Jacks painted on the undersides of the wings. We have become so used
+to them that we scarcely trouble to look up unless they are doing stunts.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+The frost makes a fine grip for the cars; when the ground freezes over we
+can take the cars anywhere, but unfortunately it thaws again too quickly.
+As we are a motor battery we are of course a mile from the road, and
+sometimes it takes an hour and a half to get on to it.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It is a howling night, wind and rain galore. I'm wondering how long the
+tent will last. I have been out three times already to look at the tent
+pegs. How often it has been so since we first came on to these plains. If
+you are living in tents you notice the changes in weather more than under
+ordinary circumstances, and every rain-storm has meant wet feet for us.
+But now we have been given new black boots, magnificent things, huge,
+heavy "ammunition boots," and the wonderful thing is they don't let water
+in. They are very big and look like punts, but it's dry feet now. I can
+tell you I am as pleased with them as if some one had given me a present
+of cold cash. At first they felt something like the Dutch sabots. They
+seemed absolutely unbendable and so we soaked them with castor-oil. Once
+they become moulded to the feet they are fine. Of course they are not
+pretty, but they keep the wet out.
+
+We have had new tunics issued to us of the regular English pattern, much
+more comfortable than our other original ones, and then instead of the
+hard cap we now have a soft one, something like a big golf cap with the
+flap on to pull down over the ears. These are much more comfortable. They
+have one great advantage over the old kind--we can sleep in them. We can
+now lie down in our complete outfits even to our hats. Once I considered
+it a hardship to sleep in my clothes. Now to go to bed we don't undress;
+we put on clothes.
+
+I managed to get a pass to Salisbury on Saturday and went to the local
+vaudeville show. In the row in front of me were several young officers of
+the British Army, and it was striking what a clean-cut lot they were.
+England is certainly giving of her best. They were not very much different
+from any others, but at the same time they are the type of Englishmen who
+have done things in the past and will do things again. They are all
+Kitchener's Army. Thousands of men who have never been in the army before
+threw up everything to go in the ranks. You see side by side professors,
+laborers, lawyers, doctors, stevedores, carters, all classes, rich and
+poor, a great democratic army, drilling to fight so that this may be a
+decent world to live in.
+
+At present it is almost impossible to use each man in his own profession
+as they do in Germany, but sometimes the non-commissioned officers work it
+out in this way.
+
+Sergeant to squad of recruits:--
+
+"Henybody 'ere know anythink abart cars?"
+
+"Yes; I do. I own a Rolls Royce."
+
+"Olright; fall out and clean the major's motor bike."
+
+One patriotic mother who had a son who was a butcher did her best to get
+him to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, because he was proficient at
+cutting up meat and would feel quite at home assisting at amputations.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Now that we are approaching the time for our departure to France we are
+hearing that favorite farewell to all men going to the front, "Good-bye,
+I'll look every day for your name in the casualty list."
+
+The "Princess Pats" have already been in action. They had a hard fight and
+many of them have been put out of business. We envied them when they went
+away and still do, although it only seems yesterday that we were lying
+together here and now a number of them are lying "somewhere in France."
+
+The jam-making firm of Tickler was awarded a huge contract for the supply
+of "Tommy's" daily four ounces of jam; either plum and apple were the
+cheapest combination or else the crop of these two fruits must have been
+enormous, because every single tin of jam that went to the training camps,
+France, Dardanelles, or Mesopotamia, was of this mixture.
+
+We became so tired of it that we used the unopened tins to make borders of
+flower-beds, or we used them to make stepping-stones across puddles.
+Eventually the world's supply of plums and apples having been used up, the
+manufacturers were forced to use strawberries.
+
+In the army all food is handled by the Army Service Corps, and as soon as
+they found real jam coming through they took it for their own and still
+forwarded on to us their reserve "plum and apple." The news got around
+amongst the fighting units: result--the Army Service Corps is now known as
+the "Strawberry Jam Pinchers."
+
+Reviewed by King George V, and it was indeed a very impressive sight.
+Although there were only twenty thousand troops, they seemed endless.
+During the time that the King was on the parade ground in company with
+Lord Kitchener, two aeroplanes kept guard in the sky. Our K. of K. is a
+big, fine man who looks the part. An inspection by the King is always a
+sure sign of a unit's impending departure. He traveled down on the new
+railway which had just been built by the defaulters of the Canadian
+Contingent.
+
+At the last minute I managed to get weekend leave and went to London. No
+Canadians there! I caught sight of a military picket, sergeant and twelve
+men, looking for stray ones, though. Another picket held me up and made me
+button my greatcoat. I did! It isn't clever to argue with pickets at any
+time!
+
+The train was three hours late. Troops' trains were occupying the lines.
+From Bulford we walked home in a hail-storm. Got in about five o'clock
+just as the reveille was blowing in the other lines. They were just
+leaving for the front, and had made great fires where they were burning up
+rubbish and stuff they couldn't take with them. Tons of it! Chairs,
+mattresses, and tables. When we move, everything except equipment has to
+be discarded. We can't do anything with extras. We have to cut our own
+stuff down to the very smallest dimensions. I walked through the lines
+afterward of other battalions who had left, and I saw fold-up bedsteads,
+uniforms, equipment, books, buckets, washing-bowls, cartridges and stoves
+of every conceivable kind and shape; hundreds, from the single "Beatrice"
+to the big tiled heaters. Some tents were half full of blankets thrown in,
+others with harness. All the government stuff is collected, but private
+stuff is burnt.
+
+In the army you soon realize that you have to make yourself comfortable
+your own way. I don't hesitate to take anything. If I have on a pair of
+puttees which are a bit worn and I find a new pair,--well, I just calmly
+yet cautiously annex them and discard the old ones. We found a barrel of
+beer had been left by one of the other units, so we carefully carried the
+prize to our lines and then tapped it. Zowie! It was a beer barrel all
+right, only it was filled with linseed oil.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Thank the Lord!! Under a roof, sitting on a real chair; tablecloth,
+plates; and I'm dry. We have come to Wilton (of carpet fame) and I'm in a
+billet. I have a real bed to sleep in. Last night I lay on the floor of a
+mildewed tent; couldn't sleep on account of the cold. To-night I sleep
+between sheets, and the wonderful thing is that I'm not on leave.
+
+We drove our cars down here, each of us hoping that we would never again
+see Bustard Camp, Salisbury Plain, as long as we lived; it had been our
+home for five months. Yesterday we felt like mutiny; to-day every one is
+smiling. As soon as we were "told off" Pat and I went to our billet, a
+nice clean little house close to the center of the town. The owner is a
+baker. I felt kind of uncomfortable with my boots and clothes plastered up
+with mud, but the good lady said, "Don't 'e mind, come in, bless you; I've
+'ad soldiers afore. The last one 'e said as 'ow he couldn't sleep it were
+so quiet 'ere."
+
+I had a wash (this is Friday night), the first since Wednesday morning.
+The idea of having as much water as you want, without having to go a half
+mile over a swamp, pleased me so much that I used about six basinsful in
+the scullery.
+
+When the lady of the house asked us _what_ we would _like_ to eat, we both
+fainted. I'm afraid we're going to get spoiled here. Couldn't sleep at
+first. Cold sheets and having all my clothes off--too great a strain! Had
+breakfast and then drove our cars to the canal, where we scrubbed and
+washed them down inside and out.
+
+This afternoon I've been into every shop I could find, chiefly to talk to
+people who are not soldiers. Even went into the church to look around and
+listened to the parrotlike description of the place by the sexton.
+
+Everybody is happy, and although it has rained ever since we have been
+here, we haven't noticed it yet. I may say there are four or five kids,
+and the whole house could be packed into our front room. Still, "gimme a
+billet any time."
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I have just received the news that I have been given a Second Lieutenancy
+in the Motor Machine Gun Service, Royal Field Artillery, and I go into
+camp at Bisley at once. I am very glad that before being an officer I have
+been a private, because I now have the latter's point of view. I am going
+to try hard to be a good officer; promotion always means more work and
+responsibility,--so here goes.
+
+I have been very busy lately training my new section, and we are now part
+of the 12th Battery, Motor Machine Guns, 17th Division British
+Expeditionary Force, leaving to-day for the "Great Adventure."
+
+Somewhere in France. At last we are here. We landed at a place the name of
+which I am not allowed to mention, and were then taken by a guide to a
+"Rest Camp" about two miles from the docks. If they had called it a
+garbage dump I shouldn't have been surprised. You would be very much
+surprised with the France of to-day. Everybody speaks English; smart khaki
+soldiers in thousands everywhere.
+
+Already I have seen men who have been gassed and the hospitals here are
+full of wounded. Our troops are arriving all day and night and marching
+away. English money is taken here, but French is more satisfactory as you
+are likely to get done on the change. The officers have a mess here just
+as in England. Actually we are farther away from the firing line than we
+were in camp at Bisley; but we leave to-day on our machines going direct
+to it. There was a transport torpedoed just outside; they managed to beach
+her just in time. The upper decks and masts are sticking up above water.
+
+Since I last wrote anything in this diary we have ridden over one hundred
+and ten miles by road towards the firing line. All day yesterday it
+poured. The country was beautiful, ripening corn everywhere, the villages
+are full of old half-timbered houses, the roads are all national roads
+built for war purposes by Napoleon, and run straight; on either side are
+tall, poplar shade trees, so that the roads run through endless avenues.
+
+At night we stayed in a quaint village inn. The men all slept in a loft
+over their machines. Our soaked clothes were put in the kitchen to dry,
+but owing to the number of them, they just warmed up by the morning. One
+officer has to follow in the rear of every unit to pick up the stragglers.
+I had to bring up the rear of the column to-day--result: I didn't get in
+until early in the morning, only to find the other subalterns "sawing
+wood."
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Yesterday was the French National Day. We were cheered as we rode along,
+and women and children smothered us with flowers. In the morning a funeral
+of two small children passed us. Our battery commander called the battery
+to attention and officers saluted. The priest was two days overdue with
+his shave--soldiers notice things like that, you know.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+To-day we continued our ride; the weather was much better--dried our
+clothes by wearing them. Strange to run through Normandy villages and
+suddenly come across British Tommies--many of them speaking French. A Royal
+Navy car has just passed us; our navy seems omnipresent. I saw an old
+woman reading a letter by the side of an old farmhouse to some old people,
+evidently from a soldier, probably their son. It reminded me a great deal
+of one of Millet's pictures. Every one thinks of the war here and nothing
+but the war; it's not "Business as Usual."
+
+We stay here one night and move away to-morrow. We can hear the guns
+faintly.
+
+The three section officers, myself and two others, are sleeping in a hut
+together. It is one of these new collapsible kind, very convenient. We are
+now all in bed. Outside the only sound we can hear is the sentries
+challenging and the mosquitoes singing.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+All males are soldiers in France, even the old men. They look very fine in
+their blue uniforms, but I have a prejudice for our khaki Tommies. We get
+good food as we travel, but pay war prices for it. Cherries are now in
+season; we don't pay for them, however.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Rode another sixty miles to-day. A car smashed into the curb, cannoned off
+and ran over me, busting my machine up. The front wheel went over my leg.
+My revolver and leather holster saved me from a fracture, but I got badly
+bruised up. I was very scared that I should not be able to go "up" with
+the Battery. It would be almost a disgrace to go back broken up by a car
+without even getting a whack at the Boche. Had to ride later on another
+machine twenty-five miles through the night without lights, in a blinding
+rain.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Everything interesting. Should like to have a camera with me. I had to
+post mine back. So many things are done in the British Army by putting a
+man on his honor. They just ask you to do things. They don't order you to
+do it. It was that way with me; they merely "asked" me to post my camera
+back.
+
+Great powerful cars rush by here all day and all night, regardless of
+speed limits. Every hour or so you see a convoy of twenty or thirty motor
+lorries in line bringing up ammunition or supplies, or coming back empty.
+Every point bristles with sentries who demand passes. If you are not able
+to answer satisfactorily, they just shoot. The French soldiers have
+magnificent uniforms; the predominating color is a sort of cobalt blue. To
+see sentries, French and British together, they make quite a nice color
+scheme.
+
+Officers censor all letters. I censor sometimes fifty letters a day. One
+man put in a letter to-day, "I can't write anything endearing in this, as
+my section officer will read it." Another, "I enclose ten shillings. Very
+likely you will not receive this, as my officer has to censor this
+letter." Of course we don't have time to read all the letters through. We
+look for names of places and numbers of divisions, brigades, etc., but I
+couldn't help noticing that one of my men, whom I have long suspected of
+being a Don Juan, had by one mail written exactly the same letter to five
+different girls in England, altering only the addresses and the
+affectionate beginnings.
+
+The village in which I am now was visited last September by twelve German
+officers who came through in motor cars; the villagers cried, "Vivent les
+Anglais," for not having seen an English soldier they took it for granted
+that the "Tommy" had come.
+
+Everybody goes armed to the teeth. I have my belt, a regular Christmas
+tree for hanging things on, with revolver and cartridges on even while I'm
+writing this. We carry a lot, but we soon get used to it.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+The corn is being cut now. Through the window opposite I can see it
+standing in newly-stacked sheaves. These places are the favorite sketching
+grounds of artists in normal times, and I often wonder if they ever will
+be again.
+
+We return salutes with all the French and Belgian officers. It is
+difficult sometimes to distinguish them. I got fooled by a Belgian
+postman, and then went to work and cut a French general.
+
+The nearer we get to the firing line the finer the type of soldier. They
+are the magnificent Britishers of Kitchener's First Army. It makes you
+proud to see them marching by, dirty and wet with sweat. I watched two
+battalions come through; they had marched twenty miles through the sun
+with new issue boots; a few of them had fallen out, and other men and
+officers were carrying their equipment and rifles; many of the officers
+carried two rifles.
+
+I am now well within sound of the guns. A German Taube was shelled as it
+came over our firing line yesterday. One man was lying on his back asleep
+with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the
+"Archies" hit him in the stomach--result: one blasphemous, indignant
+casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer
+sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at any
+time now.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I have been over into Belgium to-day: crossed the frontier on my motor
+bike; the roads are terrible, all this beastly "pavé" cobblestones; awful
+stuff to ride over on a motor cycle. Shell holes on both sides of the
+road, and I saw three graves in the corner of a hop garden. All along the
+road there were dozens and dozens of old London motor buses, taking men to
+the trenches. They still have the advertisements on them and are driven by
+the bus-drivers themselves. Three hundred came over with their own
+machines. They are now soldiers. The observation balloon I mentioned
+yesterday was shelled down to-day.
+
+I am writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in
+has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage
+wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are
+at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here.
+They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have
+been filled in, all the wreckage cleared, and they have a new mayor.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It is not yet 7 A.M. I am an orderly officer and have to take the men out
+for a run at six. I came back and bought a London "Daily Mail" of
+yesterday from a country-woman. We are at least three miles from the town,
+but they are enterprising enough to bring papers to us at this time in the
+morning. A "Daily Mail" costs four cents.
+
+Since I last wrote I have been up to the front line. Everything is
+different from what you imagine. The German trenches are easily
+distinguished through glasses; their sand-bags are multi-colored. Shrapnel
+was bursting over ruins of an old town in their lines. When you look
+through a periscope at the wilderness, it is difficult to imagine that
+thousands of soldiers on both sides have burrowed themselves into the
+earth. The evidence of their alertness is shown by their snipers, who are
+always busy whenever the target is up.
+
+A battery of eight-inch howitzers was opening fire. Our battery commander,
+hearing this, sent us up. The guns, big fellows, were well concealed. They
+were painted in protective colors and covered with screens of branches to
+prevent aerial observation. In the grounds all over the place were
+dug-outs, deep rabbit burrows, ten or twelve feet down, into which
+everybody went immediately. The Germans started their "hate." The firing
+is done by hand cord; other big guns are fired electrically. An enormous
+flash, an ear-splitting crash, a great sheet of flame from the muzzle, and
+two hundred pounds of steel is sent tearing through the air to the
+"Kultur" exponents. The whole gun lifts off the ground and runs back on
+its oil-compression springs. These guns are moved by their own caterpillar
+tractors which are kept somewhere close by. In three quarters of an hour
+they can get them started on the road. The ground for these emplacements
+was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three
+times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men
+took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could
+once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few
+minutes. At a few yards' distance I couldn't see the guns myself. The
+"Hows" were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving
+trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to "dust" the
+neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who
+are with the guns don't see the effects. Apparently they fire straight
+away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer
+in the fire trenches who corrects them by 'phone.
+
+After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the
+chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror
+panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most
+of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in
+splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a
+shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been
+drilled. It hadn't smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room,
+which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen.
+Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a
+horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion occurred in the garden.
+"Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate," said an artillery sub. We left! We
+had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.
+
+To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that
+was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be
+left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their
+merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a
+wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A
+grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down
+through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has
+been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be
+continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the
+Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the
+tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great
+stew. In some of the villages a few of the inhabitants had stayed and
+traded with the soldiers. They lived in cellars usually and suffered
+terribly. British military police direct the traffic when there is any,
+and are stationed at crossroads with regular beats like a city policeman.
+
+While traveling to another part of the line we had an opportunity of
+seeing the "Archies" (anti-aircraft guns) working. They were mounted on
+lorries and fire quite good-sized shells. They fired about fifty shots at
+one Taube, but didn't register a bull. Later in the evening from a trench
+we had the satisfaction of seeing another aeroplane set on fire, burn, and
+drop into the German lines like a shot partridge. Aeroplanes are as common
+as birds. Yesterday a "Pfeil" (arrow) biplane came right over our lines
+and was chased off by our own machines. The enemy's aeroplanes have their
+iron cross painted on the underside of their wings and are more
+hawkish-looking than ours. They are more often used for reconnoitering and
+taking photographs than for dropping bombs.
+
+We are being moved up closer to the firing line. I have been made
+billeting officer. I went to headquarters; a staff colonel showed me a
+subdivision on a map. "Go there and select a place for your unit." The
+place was a wretched village of about six houses, all of which are more or
+less smashed about, windows repaired with sacking and pieces of wood. All
+of the inhabitants have moved except those who are too poor. Every square
+inch is utilized. I managed to get a cow-shed for the officers. It looks
+comfortable. On the door I could just decipher, written in chalk, by some
+previous billeting officer,--
+
+
+    2 Staff Officers
+    6 Officers
+    2 Horses
+
+
+Billeting chalk marks are on almost all the shops and houses up from the
+coast to the front.
+
+The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller
+who lived in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn't speak
+English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I
+noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to
+find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up
+and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two
+Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun
+positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on
+both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite
+dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells,
+very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man's Land. The enemy has a
+very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.
+
+Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are
+working hard, it is miserable here,--wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes,
+smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a poor,
+wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium,
+where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.
+
+Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by
+sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened
+shell-riddled town and knocked up an _estaminet_; we got a much finer meal
+than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who
+kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. "Oh, no! I sleep
+upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at
+night. Then I go into the cellar." This woman was a very pleasant,
+intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally
+leave the danger zone.
+
+Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with
+putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party
+returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with
+scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over their clothes was a veneer of
+plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way
+sang--
+
+
+    "Left--Left--Left
+    We--are--the tough Guys!"
+
+
+Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a
+few beats they commenced again--
+
+
+    "Left--Left--Left--"
+
+
+They looked exactly what they said they were.
+
+Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under
+observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy
+information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the
+same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in
+the same way.
+
+I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully
+wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers said
+quietly to him, "Be British." He immediately straightened himself out and
+asked for a "fag." He died that night.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We had a terrific bombardment last night; the ground shook all night and
+the sky was lit up for miles. The Boches used liquid fire on some new
+troops and we lost ground.
+
+I found this piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I
+have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall,
+and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place
+passes as "Dead Cow Farm" on all official maps.
+
+
+    I've traveled many journeys in my one score years and ten,"
+    And oft enjoyed the company of jovial fellow men,
+    But of all the happy journeys none can compare to me
+    With the Red-Cross special night express from the trenches to the
+                sea.
+
+    "It's Bailleul, Boulogne, Blighty, that's the burden of the song,
+    Oh, speed the train along.
+    If you've only half a stomach and you haven't got a knee,
+    You'll choke your groans and try to shout the chorus after me.
+
+    Bailleul, Boulogne, and Blighty, dear old Blighty "cross the sea."
+
+    "Now some of us are mighty bad and some are wounded slight,
+    And some will see their threescore years and some won't last the
+                night,
+    But the Red Cross train takes up the strain all in a minor key
+    And sings Boulogne and Blighty as she rumbles to the sea.
+
+    "Oh, it's better than the trenches and it's better than the rain,
+    It's better than the mud and stink; we're going home again,
+    Though most of us have left some of us on the wrong side of the
+                sea.
+    We are a lot of blooming cripples, but--downhearted? No, siree.
+
+    "There's a holy speed about this train for each of us can see
+    That we will cross the shining channel that lies 'twixt her and me
+    To the one and only Blighty, our Blighty, 'cross the sea,'
+    Where the blooming Huns can never come, 'twixt her and home and
+                me."
+
+
+"Blighty" is the wound which sends a man home to England; it's a war word
+which came originally from the Indians, but now universally adopted in the
+new trench language.
+
+I was walking along a trench when a man, who was sitting on a firestep
+looking up into a little trench mirror (which is used by putting the end
+of the bayonet between the glass and the frame), just crumpled up, shot
+through the heart. He didn't say a word. The trench had thinned out and
+the bullet had come through, nearly four feet down from the top of the
+parapet.
+
+Bad shell fire this afternoon. Saw shells churning things up seventy-five
+yards away; many passed overhead; had a ride on my motor cycle with the
+other officers to reconnoiter the roads leading down to the part of the
+trenches we have taken over; road was shelled as we came along. Two "coal
+boxes" hit the road and smashed up a cottage in front of us; we picked up
+pieces of the shell too hot to hold.
+
+Our billet now is another large farm, with the pump in the center of the
+manure heap as usual; our machines are parked all round a field close to
+the hedges to make a smaller target and also to prevent aerial
+observation.
+
+I went through a town this morning which has been on everybody's lips for
+months--I have never seen such devastation in my life; it baffles
+description. The San Francisco earthquake was a joke to this. Thousands
+and thousands of shells have pummeled and smashed until very little
+remains besides wreckage. Most of the shelling has been done to
+deliberately destroy the objects of architectural value.
+
+My quarters are in a loft amongst rags, old agricultural implements,
+sacks, and the accumulation of years of dirt; flies wake me up at
+daylight.
+
+This morning I went for a drink in the _estaminet_ I have mentioned
+already. Two shells have been through the sides of the house since we were
+last there, but they both came through at the usual scheduled time.
+
+This poor country is pockmarked with shell craters like a great country
+with a skin disease. Trees have been splintered worse than any storm could
+do. Nothing has been spared. The mineral rights of this territory should
+be very valuable some day. When we have all finished salting the earth
+with nickel, lead, steel, copper, and aluminum, old-metal dealers will
+probably set up offices in No Man's Land.
+
+Belgium will have to be rebuilt entirely, or left as it is, a monument to
+"Kultur."
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+My section has been ordered up to a divisional area on the south of the
+salient. In accordance with instructions I went up to Ypres this morning
+to find a place to park the machines.
+
+Contrary to the popular belief, we do not fight our guns from the motor
+cycles themselves. We use our machines to get about on, and the guns are
+taken up as near as possible to the position we are to occupy, which is
+usually behind Brigade Headquarters. Brigadiers have a great aversion to
+any kind of motor vehicle being driven past their headquarters, owing to
+the movement and noise, which they believe attracts attention to
+themselves, and as a rule the sentries posted outside will see that no
+machines go by. We get up as far as we can, because after we part from our
+machines, everything must be carried up through the trenches by hand.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                     Bringing Up A Motor Machine Gun
+
+
+I arrived at the town early and reported to the major who is in charge of
+the town and of the troops quartered there. He was living in the prison, a
+substantial brick and stone building, which has been smashed about a bit,
+but which is still a fairly good structure. The major is a fine, gruff old
+gentleman who was a master of fox hounds in the North of England. He came
+over with a detachment of cavalry. He is past the age limit, and it was
+decided that although he was a fine soldier, perhaps his age would be a
+deterrent and his job ought to be something lighter, so they gave him one
+of the fiercest jobs in the world--O. C. Ypres!
+
+I was sent in, and when he heard my errand he said, "You want to park your
+machines in Ypres? Why don't you take them up in the German front lines?
+You'll be safer there than here. Listen to the shelling now." I knew this,
+but I was doing just exactly what I was told. He continued: "I have now
+thousands of troops here and my daily casualties are enormous, so
+naturally I don't want any more men. The best plan for you will be to go
+down the Lille road and pick a house below 'Shrapnel Corner.' "
+
+I went on through the town, under the Lille gate, across the tram lines,
+past the famous cross-roads known as "Shrapnel Corner" and chummed up with
+some artillery officers. They told me that I could have any of the houses
+I wanted. I picked a couple which looked to me to be more complete than
+the rest and chalked them up. This whole place was alive with batteries.
+While I was there I heard a shout and suddenly a hidden battery of guns,
+sunk behind the road with the muzzles almost resting on it, started firing
+across in the direction of the part of Belgium occupied by Fritz. I had
+passed within two feet of these guns and yet had not seen them, they were
+so well "camouflaged." On my way back I saw the "Big Berthas" bursting in
+the town, and I was surprised that so little damage had been actually done
+to the Lille gate itself. Shells had visited everywhere in the
+neighborhood, but had not smashed this old structure.
+
+I went home, collected my men together, and told them the importance of
+the work we were to undertake. I have found it always a good thing to make
+the men think the job that they are doing is of great importance. Better
+results are obtained that way.
+
+We went to an "engineer dump" on the way up just after the enemy had
+landed a shell on a wagon loading building material, and wounded were
+being carried off and the mangled horses had been dragged on one side. As
+the wounded came by I called my section to attention, the compliment due
+to wounded men paid by units drawn up.
+
+We drew our sandbags in the usual way by requisitioning for five thousand
+and getting one thousand. Always ask for more than you expect to get.
+
+As we came into Ypres, a military policeman on duty told me it was
+unhealthy to go the usual way through the Market Square, because the
+shelling was bad in that part of the town, so I spread the machines out
+and started on down a side street. We were getting on finely and I was
+congratulating myself on getting through, when two houses, hit from the
+back, collapsed across the street in front of my machine. Without any
+ceremony I turned my machine back along the street which we had come and
+went through the Market Square down the Lille road, under the gate, being
+followed by my section. About four hundred yards down I stopped; holding
+my solo motor cycle between my legs, standing up, I looked back. I counted
+my machines as they came up. If it hadn't been so scary, it really would
+have been funny, to see these machines coming down the road through shell
+holes and over piles of bricks, as fast as the drivers could make them go.
+The men were hanging on for dear life and the machines rocked from side to
+side, but they were all there.
+
+Down the road we went to the houses; there we parked the machines and
+unpacked. A guard was placed over them and the rest of us marched down to
+the trenches.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+An officer has to buy all his own equipment and is allowed two hundred and
+fifty dollars by the Government towards the cost. An officer carries a
+revolver, but all junior officers as soon as possible acquire a rifle. The
+men of a "salvage company" were collecting all the rifles, bayonets, and
+parts of equipment near where I was to-day and I managed to get a
+Lee-Enfield (British rifle) in good shape. I felt that I would like to
+have a rifle and bayonet handy. I found a good-looking bayonet sticking in
+the side of a sandbag wall. It looked lonely. The scabbard I am using was
+resting in a loft of a deserted brewery. I am now complete with rifle,
+bayonet, and scabbard.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                                 "Wipers"
+
+
+Sometimes you see a man smashed about in a terrible way, such a mess that
+you think he is a goner; he may recover. Another man may have just a small
+wound and will die. A bullet hitting a man in the head will smash it as
+effectually as a sledge-hammer. Once a man leaves your unit, wounded, you
+don't see him again. You get a fresh draft.
+
+No one thinks of peace here. Germany must be put in a similar state to
+Belgium first.
+
+We never travel anywhere without our smoke helmets; they come right over
+our heads and are tucked into our shirts; they have two glass eye-pieces.
+When we have them on we look like the old Spanish gentleman who ran the
+"Star Chamber." Helmets must always be ready to put on instantly. Gas is a
+matter of seconds in coming over. The helmets are better than respirators,
+but have to be constantly inspected. A small hole, or if one is allowed to
+dry, means a casualty.
+
+Storm brewing. Flies bad, driven in by the wind. Nature goes on just the
+same. I suppose that this farm would be just as fly-ridden in an ordinary
+summer. During the bombarding yesterday I noticed swallows flying about
+quite unconcerned. Corn, mostly self-planted, grows right up to the
+trenches. Cabbages grow wild. Communicating trenches run right through
+fields of crops; flowers grow in profusion between the lines, big red
+poppies and field daisies, and there are often hundreds of little frogs in
+the bottom of the trenches.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+A trip to No Man's Land is an excursion which you never forget. It varies
+in width and horrors. My impression was similar to what I should feel
+being on Broadway without any clothes--a naked feeling. Forty-seven and one
+half inches of earth are necessary to stop a bullet, and it's nice to have
+that amount of dirt between you and the enemy's bullets. The dead lie out
+in between the lines or hang up on the wire; they don't look pretty after
+they have been out some time. It's a pleasant job to have to get their
+identification disks, and we have to search the bodies of the enemy dead
+for papers and even buttons so that we can know what unit is in front of
+us. Flowers grow in between, butterflies play together, and birds nest in
+the wire. When the grass becomes too high it has to be cut, because
+otherwise it would prevent good observation. In some places grass doesn't
+have a chance to even take root, let alone grow. The shells take care of
+that.
+
+I managed to get a translation of a diary kept by a German soldier who
+fell on the field. Below is an exact translation and gives the point of
+view of a man in the trenches on the other side of the line. He was
+writing his diary at the same time I was writing mine, and we were both
+fighting around the salient at Ypres, Hooge being on the point of the
+salient farthest east. This part, which was once a place of beauty which
+people came long distances to see, is now like a great muddy Saragossa Sea
+which at the height of its fury has suddenly become frozen with the
+tortured limbs of trees and men, and wreckage and reeking smells, until it
+can again lash itself in wild fury into whirlpools. It is in all respects
+Purgatory, but of greater horror than Dante ever dreamt of.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+_Diary of F---- P---- of the 6th Company, 3d Battalion, 132d Regiment.
+Killed at Hooge on August 9th, 1915._
+
+On May 10, we were told to prepare for the journey to the front. Each man
+received his service ammunition and two days' rations, and we then started
+with heavy packs on our backs and our water-bottles full of coffee. After
+a long march we reached our reserve position, where we were put into rest
+billets for two days in wooden huts hidden in a wood. We could hear from
+here the noise of the shells coming through the air.
+
+On May 13, we moved into the trenches, in the night. We were a whole hour
+moving along a communication trench one and one-half metres deep, right up
+to the front line some fifty metres from the enemy. This was to be our
+post. We had hardly got in before the bullets came flying over our heads.
+Look out for the English! They know how to shoot! I need hardly say we did
+not wait to return the compliment. We answered each one of their greetings
+and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for
+twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.
+
+At length early on the 15th, at four o'clock, came our first attack. After
+a preliminary smoking-out with gas, our artillery got to work, and about
+ten o'clock we climbed out of the trenches and advanced fifty metres in
+the hail of bullets. Here I got my first shot through the coat. Three
+comrades were killed at the outset of the assault, and some twenty
+slightly or severely wounded, but we had obtained our object. The trench
+was ours, although the English twice attempted to turn us out of it.
+
+The fight went on till eleven o'clock that evening. We were then relieved
+by the 10th Company, and made our way back along the communication
+trenches to our old positions. Here we remained until the third day,
+standing by at night and passing two days without sleep. We were hardly
+able to get our meals. From every side firing was going on, and shots came
+plugging two metres deep into the ground. This was my baptism of fire. It
+cannot be described as it really is--something like an earthquake, when the
+big shells come at one and make holes in the ground large enough to hold
+forty or fifty men comfortably. How easy and comfortable seemed our road
+back to the huts.
+
+We remained in the huts for three days, resting before we went up again to
+"Hell Fire," as they call the first line trenches in front of Ypres.
+
+Then suddenly in the middle of the night an alarm. Our neighbors had
+allowed themselves to be driven out of our hard-won position, and the 6th
+Company, with the 8th and 5th, had to make good the lost ground. A hasty
+march through the communication trenches up to the front, the night lit up
+far and wide with searchlights and flares and ourselves in a long chain
+lying on our bellies. Towards two in the morning the Englishmen came on,
+1500 men strong. The battle may be imagined. About 200 returned to the
+line they started from. Over 1300 dead and wounded lay on the ground. Six
+machine guns and a quantity of rifles and equipment were taken back by us,
+the 132d Regiment, and the old position was once more in our possession.
+What our neighbors lost the 132d regained. There was free beer that
+evening and a concert! At 11 P.M. once more we withdrew to the rear, our
+2d, 4th and 10th Companies relieving us. We slept a whole day and night
+like the dead.
+
+On June 15th, we again went back to rest billets, but towards midday we
+were once more sent up to the front line to reinforce our right wing,
+which was attacked by French and English. Just as we got to our trenches
+we were greeted by a heavy shell fire, the shells falling in front of our
+parapets, making the sandbags totter. Seeing this, I sprang to the spot
+and held the whole thing together till the others hurried up to my
+assistance. Just as I was about to let go, I must have got my head too
+high above the parapet, as I got shot in the scalp. In the excitement I
+did not at once realize that I was wounded, until Gubbert said--"Hullo,
+Musch! Why, you're bleeding!" The stretcher-bearer tied me up, and I had
+to go back to the dressing-station to be examined. Happily it was nothing
+more than a mere scalp wound, and I was only obliged to remain on the
+sick-list four days, having the place attended to.
+
+June 24th. All quiet in the West, except for sniping. The weather is such
+that no offensive can take place. The English will never have a better
+excuse for inactivity than this--"It is raining." Thank God for that! Less
+dust to swallow to-day! Odd that here in Belgium we are delighted with the
+rain, while in Germany they are watching it with anxiety.
+
+To-day we shall probably be relieved. Then we go to Menin to rest. Ten
+days without coming under fire. It is Paradise!
+
+Sunday, June 27th. At nine o'clock clean up. At eleven roll-call. At three
+o'clock went to the Cinema--very fine pictures. In the afternoon all the
+men danced till seven, but we had to take each other for partners--no
+girls.
+
+July 2d. 11 P.M. Alarm. Three persons have been arrested who refused to
+make sandbags. They were pulled out of bed and carried off. Eight o'clock
+marched to drill. This lasts till 11. Then 1 to 4 rest. Six, physical
+drill and games. I went to the Cinema in the evening.
+
+July 6th. Inspection till eleven. Three hours standing in the sun--enough
+to drive me silly. Twenty-three men fell out. Three horses also affected
+by the heat. Eleven to one Parade march--in the sun. Thirty-six more men
+reported sick. I was very nearly one of them.
+
+July 9th. Preparation for departure. From seven to ten pack up kits.
+Eleven, roll-call. One-thirty, march to light railway. At seven reached
+firing trench. The English are firing intermittently over our heads;
+otherwise, all is quiet. We are now on the celebrated,
+much-bewritten-about "Hill 60." Night passes without incident.
+
+July 12th. At three in the morning the enemy makes a gas attack. We put on
+respirators. Rifle in hand we leap from the trenches and assault. In front
+of Hill 60 the enemy breaks, and we come into possession of a trench.
+Rapid digging. Counter-attack repulsed. At nine o'clock all is quiet, only
+the artillery still popping. This evening we are to be relieved. The 132d
+Regiment is much beloved by the English! In a dugout we found two labels.
+One of them had the following writing on it: "God strafe the 132d Regiment
+(not 'God strafe England' this time). Sergeant Scott (?) Remington,
+Sewster Wall (?)." On the other was, "I wish the Devil would take you, you
+pigs."
+
+At 7.20 Hill 60 is bombarded by artillery, and shakes thirty to fifty
+metres, as if from an earthquake. Two English companies blown into the
+air--a terrible picture. Dug-outs, arms, equipment--all blown to bits.
+
+July 17th. Marched to new quarters. We have got a new captain. He wants to
+see the company, so at 8 A.M. drill in pouring rain. Four times we have to
+lie on our belly, and get wet through and through. All the men grumbling
+and cursing. At eleven we are dismissed. I, with a bad cold and a
+headache. I wish this soldiering were all over.
+
+July 19th. At seven sharp we marched off to our position. Heavy
+bombardment. At nine we were buried by a shell. I know no more. At eleven
+I found myself lying in the Field Hospital. I have pains inside me over my
+lungs; and headache, and burning in the joints.
+
+July 20th. The M.O. has had a look at me. He says my stomach and left lung
+are suffering from the pressure which was put on them. The principal
+remedy is rest.
+
+July 21st. Thirty-nine degrees of fever (temp. 100° Fahr.). Stay in bed
+and sleep, and oh! how tired I am!
+
+July 22d. I slept all day. Had milk and white bread to eat.
+
+July 26th. Returned to duty with three days' exemption, i.e., we do not
+have any outdoor work.
+
+July 28th and 29th. Still on exemption. Nothing to do but sleep and think
+of home and of my dear wife and daughter. But dreaming does not bring
+peace any sooner. How I would love an hour or two back home.
+
+July 31st. In rest. Baths going. Duke of Württemberg passed through our
+camp.
+
+August 1st. Up to the trenches. Shrapnel flying like flies. A heavy
+bombardment; bombardment of Hooge. Second Battalion, 132d Regiment, sent
+up to reinforce 126th Regiment, which has already lost half its men.
+
+August 4th. Heavy artillery fire the whole night. The English are
+concentrating 50,000 Indians on our front to attack Hooge and Hill 60.
+Just let them come, we shall stand firm. At three marched off to the
+front. Watch beginning again. Five o'clock marched off to the Witches'
+Cauldron, Hooge. A terrible night again. H.E. and shrapnel without number.
+Oh, thrice-cursed Hooge! In one hour eleven killed and twenty-three
+wounded and the fire unceasing. It is enough to drive one mad, and we have
+to spend three days and three nights more. It is worse than an earthquake,
+and any one who has not experienced it can have no idea what it is like.
+The English fired a mine, a hole fifteen metres deep and fifty to sixty
+broad, and this "cauldron" has to be occupied at night. At present it
+isn't too badly shelled. At every shot the dug-outs sway to and fro like a
+weather-cock. This life we have to stick to for months. One needs nerves
+of steel and iron. Now I must crawl into our hole, as trunks and branches
+of trees fly in our trench like spray.
+
+August 6th. To-night moved to the crater again, half running and half
+crawling. At seven a sudden burst of fire from the whole of the artillery.
+From about eleven yesterday fires as if possessed. This morning at four we
+fall back. We find the 126th have no communication with the rear, as the
+communication trenches have been completely blown in. The smoke and thirst
+are enough to drive one mad. Our cooker doesn't come up. The 126th gives
+us bread and coffee from the little they have. If only it would stop! We
+get direct hits one after another and lie in a sort of dead end, cut off
+from all communication. If only it were night. What a feeling to be
+thinking every second when I shall get it! ---- has just fallen, the third
+man in our platoon. Since eight the fire has been unceasing; the earth
+shakes and we with it. Will God ever bring us out of this fire? I have
+said the Lord's Prayer and am resigned.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+To-day I saw the "Mound of Death" at Saint-Eloi; it has been mined a
+number of times, and thousands of shells have beaten it into a disorderly
+heap of earth; the trenches are twenty-five yards apart; all the grass and
+vegetation has been blown away and never has had time to grow up again.
+
+It's all arranged for you, if there's a bit of shell or a bullet with your
+name on it you'll get it, so you've nothing to worry about. You are a
+soldier--then be one. This is the philosophy of the trenches.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                             What's The Use?
+
+
+War is a great ager. Young men grow old quickly here. It can be seen in
+their faces; they have lost all the irresponsibility of youth. I have met
+many men who have been here since Mons; they all look weary and worn out
+by the strain. Now new troops are coming forward and it is hoped that they
+will be able to send some back for a rest.
+
+Several days ago the adjutant of the Tenth Battalion Sherwood Foresters
+came to me with this message which was sent through our lines:--
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Arrest Officer Royal Engineers with orderly. Former, six feet, black
+moustache, web equipment, revolver. Latter, short, carries rifle, canvas
+bandolier. Please warn transports and all concerned.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Everybody kept a good lookout for these spies. One sentry surprised a real
+R.E. officer named Perkins who was working out a drainage scheme. Seeming
+to answer the above description, he stalked him,--"Come 'ere, you ----
+----, you're the ---- I've been looking for." The officer, nonplussed,
+commenced to stutter. "Sergeant, I've got 'im and he can't speak a word of
+English." The sergeant collected him in and guarded him until another
+engineer officer, known to the guard, came along. As soon as Perkins saw
+him, he said, "F-r-r-ed, t-t-tell this d-d-damn fool wh-ho I am." "Who the
+hell are you calling Fred? I don't know him; hold him, sergeant, he's a
+desperate one." Scarcely able to contain his joy, Fred went back to the
+Engineers' Camp to tell the great news and Perkins spent three hours in
+the sandbag dugout listening to a description of what the sergeant and his
+guard would do to him if they only had their way.
+
+The real spies, who did a great deal of damage, were finally rounded up
+and shot in a listening post trying to regain their own lines.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Enemy snipers give us a great deal of trouble. It is very difficult to
+locate them. One of our men tried out an original scheme. He put an empty
+biscuit tin on the parapet. Immediately the sniper put a bullet through
+it. Now thought the Genius, "If I look through the two holes it will give
+me my direction,"--so getting up on the firestep he looked through, only to
+roll over with the top of his head smashed off by a bullet. The sniper was
+shooting his initials on the tin.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We are all used to dead bodies or pieces of men, so much so that we are
+not troubled by the sight of them. There was a right hand sticking out of
+the trench in the position of a man trying to shake hands with you, and as
+the men filed out they would often grip it and say, "So long, old top,
+we'll be back again soon." One man had the misfortune to be buried in such
+a way that the bald part of the head showed. It had been there a long time
+and was sun-dried. Tommy used him to strike his matches on. A corpse in a
+trench is quite a feature, and is looked for when the men come back again
+to the same trench.
+
+We live mostly on bully beef and hard tack. The first is corned beef and
+the second is a kind of dog biscuit. We always wondered why they were so
+particular about a man's teeth in the army. Now I know. It's on account of
+these biscuits. The chief ingredient is, I think, cement, and they taste
+that way too. To break them it is necessary to use the handle of your
+entrenching tool or a stone. We have fried, baked, mashed, boiled,
+toasted, roasted, poached, hashed, devilled them alone and together with
+bully beef, and we have still to find a way of making them into
+interesting food.
+
+However, the Boche likes our beef. He prefers the brand canned in Chicago
+to his own, and will almost sit up and beg if we throw some over to him.
+The method is as follows: Throw one over ... sounds of shuffling and
+getting out of the way are heard in the enemy trench. Fritz thinks it's
+going to go off. Pause, and throw another. Fritz not so suspicious this
+time. Keep on throwing until happy voices from enemy trenches shout,
+"More! Give us more!" Then lob over as many hand grenades as you can pile
+into that part of the trench and tell them to share those too.
+
+It takes some time to distinguish whether shells are arrivals or
+departures, but after a while you get into the way of telling their
+direction and size by sound. Roads are constantly shelled, searching for
+troops or supply columns. I was coming home to-day, up a road which ran
+approximately at right angles to main fire trenches. At one place the road
+was exposed for a matter of thirty or forty feet, and again farther up it
+was necessary to go over the brow of a small hill. This was about three
+hundred yards farther on and was exposed to the enemy's view. Thinking
+they wouldn't bother about a single rider on a motor cycle, I went up past
+the first exposed position. My carburetor was giving me some trouble and I
+thought I would see if any rain had got into it, so I turned off the road
+down a cross-road and dismounted when _crash_! a shell landed right in the
+middle of the road as far up the exposed place as I was round the corner.
+Then five more followed the first shell. Had I gone on I could not
+possibly have missed collecting most of the fragments. The German gunners
+had spotted me in the first position and decided that a lone man on a
+motor cycle must be either an officer or despatch rider. So they tried to
+get him. The shells were shrapnel and the time was calculated splendidly.
+They had taken into consideration the speed of my motor cycle. Cross-roads
+are particularly attended to, for there is a double chance of hitting
+something, and in consequence it is always unhealthy to linger on a
+crossroad.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Dugouts are often made very comfortable with windows, tiled floors and
+furniture taken from neighboring shattered chateaux. I have even seen them
+with flowers growing in window-boxes over the entrance. They all have
+names. Some I saw yesterday were called "Anti-Krupp Cottage," "Pleasant
+View," and "Little Grey Home in the West." There was one very homey site,
+well equipped and fitted, which had been dubbed the "Nut,"--the colonel
+lived there.
+
+My old corps brought an aeroplane down with a machine gun last night. They
+were in a shell hole between the main and support trenches.
+
+For the last few days I have been "up" looking for gun positions.
+
+The lice are getting to be a torment. You have no idea how bad they are.
+Everybody up here is infested with them. I have tried smearing myself with
+kerosene, but that does not seem to trouble them at all. Silk underwear is
+supposed to keep them down. I suppose their feet slip on the shiny
+surface.
+
+The food lately has taken on a wonderful flavor and I now know how
+dissolved German tastes. The cook, instead of sending back two miles for
+water to cook with, has been using water from the moat in which a Boche
+had been slowly disintegrating.
+
+To-day I was able to see what a German seventeen-inch shell could do; one
+had made a crater fifty feet across and twenty feet deep in the middle of
+the road. The top of the road was paved--think it over--and pieces kill at a
+thousand yards. Thirty horses were buried in another hole.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I have been given a special job by the general to enfilade a wood over the
+Mound. I have my section now in the second-line trenches waiting till it
+is dark before making a move. We have to make a machine-gun emplacement in
+a piece of ground which is decidedly unhealthy to visit during daylight. I
+have been there in daylight, but I had to creep out of it. On the map it
+is called a farm, but the highest wall is only three feet six inches high.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Arrived home about two o'clock this morning. We crawled to the place we
+have to take up, and I put some men filling sandbags in the ruins and
+others even digging a dugout. The enemy had "the wind up" and were using a
+great number of star shells. When one goes up we all "freeze," remain
+motionless, or lie still. They send them up to see across their front, and
+if they locate a working party, then they start playing a tune with their
+machine guns. Bullets and shells whistled through the trees all the time.
+They seemed to come from all directions. The men didn't like it at all. I
+wasn't altogether comfortable myself, but an officer must keep going. I
+walked about and joked and laughed with them. The range-taker said, "Some
+of us are getting the didley-i-dums, Sir." I don't know what that is, but
+I had a feeling that I had them too.
+
+Of course, to start with, everybody thinks every single shell and bullet
+is coming straight for him. Then you find out how much space there is
+around you. One man came to tell me that two men were firing at him with
+his own rifle from the ruins of the alleged farmhouse, ten yards away from
+the dugout we are making. Just then a field mouse squeaked, and he jumped
+up in the air and said, "There's another." I told the men to fill sandbags
+from the ruins; they all crowded behind this three-foot-six wall for
+protection; they dug up a French needle bayonet--that was all right, but
+they afterwards dug up a rifle and I noticed a suspicious smell, so I
+moved them.
+
+We came home very tired. We are attacking Hooge, a counter-attack, to take
+back trenches lost in the liquid fire attack--you will hear what we did
+from the papers, probably in three months' time.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+I'm writing this in a new home, this time a splinter-proof dugout. The
+Huns are again strafing us--last shell burst fifty yards away a few minutes
+ago. Several times since I started writing I have had to shake off the
+dust and debris thrown by shell bursts on to these pages. I was again
+sniped at with shrapnel this morning on my machine while reconnoitering
+the roads--they all missed, but they're not nice. I'm filthy, alive, and
+covered with huge mosquito bites; you get sort of used to the incessant
+din in time. Even the forty-two centimeter shells, which make a row like
+freight trains with loose couplings going through the air, are not so
+terrible now.
+
+Through a hole in my dugout I can see the Huns' shells Kulturing a
+chateau. It was once a very beautiful place with a moat, bridges, and
+splendid gardens. Now it's useless except that the timber and the
+furniture come in useful for our dugouts and the making of "duck walks,"
+the grated walks which line the bottom of the trenches.
+
+Last night I was sitting in the Medical Officer's dugout when a man I knew
+came in. He was an officer in the Second Gordons. "I feel pretty bad,
+doc." He explained his symptoms. "Trench fever; you go down the line."
+"No, fix me up for tonight and maybe I won't need anything else." He
+didn't! All that is left of him is being buried now, less than a hundred
+yards from where I write this.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Before I came here I had to go to another part of the line, in which the
+"Princess Pats" distinguished themselves. We have been hanging on ever
+since, and a mighty stiff proposition it is. The O.C. to-day told me that
+he had not slept for fifty-six hours. The Germans in one place are only
+twenty-five yards away--so close that conversation is carried on in a
+whisper.
+
+In one place they had stuck up a board with "Warsaw Captured" on it.
+
+My section worked until two o'clock and then the sandbags gave out, so we
+had to come home. This was a disappointment to me. I wanted to get the job
+finished. My men went on filling sandbags from the same place last night
+and discovered the remains of the late owner of the sword bayonet. He has
+now been decently buried, with a little wooden cross marked--
+
+
+    TO AN UNKNOWN FRENCH SOLDIER
+    R.I.P.
+
+
+When you read in the newspapers, that a trench was lost or taken, just
+think what it means. Think what happens to the men in the trenches; that's
+the part of it we see. Stretchers pass by all day. Since I have been here
+the cemetery has grown--a new mound--a simple wooden cross. Nobody talks
+about it, but everybody wonders who's next. The men here are splendid, the
+best in the world, and the officers are gentlemen.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                            A French Soldier.
+
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We have moved to the famous Langhof Chateau on the Lille road. This is
+supposed to have belonged to Hennessey of "Three Star" fame, but the
+Germans had been through the wine cellars. We looked very, very carefully,
+but only found empties. My batman has made me comfortable. I'm writing
+this on a washstand; in front of me I have a bunch of roses in a broken
+vase. My trench coat is hanging on a nail from a coat-hanger. A large
+piece of broken wardrobe mirror has been nailed up to a beam for my use.
+One of the men just came in to ask if a trousers press would be of any
+use. We have a fine little bureau cupboard of carved oak; we use this for
+the rations. A pump, repaired with the leather from a German helmet, has
+been persuaded to work and has been busy ever since. The roof of my cellar
+is arched brick and has a few tons of fallen debris on the floor upstairs.
+That strengthens it. It is shored up from inside with rafters. This makes
+the roof shell-proof, except for big shells, and the enemy always use big
+shells. The cellar floors are concrete.
+
+It is very strange the lightness with which serious things are taken by
+men here, and it took me some time to understand it. I met a young captain
+of the Royal Marine Artillery who was in charge of a battery of trench
+mortars. He was telling me of how one of his mortars and the crew were
+wiped out by a direct hit. He referred to it as though he had just missed
+his train.
+
+Two days later I went up with the Machine-Gun Officer of the Second
+Gordons to look at a piece of ground. To get there we had to crawl on our
+hands and knees. In one part of our journey we came to a sunken road. The
+day was fine, so we lay there. He asked me about Canada. He wanted to know
+something about the settler's grant. He said: "Of course you know after a
+chap has been out here in the open, it will be impossible to go back again
+to office life." I boosted Canada and suddenly the irony of the situation
+occurred to me. Here we were lying down in a road quite close to the
+German lines, so close that it would be suicide to even stand up, and yet
+here we were calmly discussing the merits of Canadian emigration. I
+commented on this and he replied: "My dear fellow, when you have been out
+as long as I have, you will come to realize that being at the front is a
+period of intense boredom punctuated by periods of intense fear, and that
+if you allow yourself to be carried away by depression it will be your
+finish." He had been out since just after Mons.
+
+I remembered this and I found that the nonchalant and care-free attitude
+of the average British officer was really a mask and simulated to keep his
+mind off the whole beastly business: this great big dirty job which white
+people must do.
+
+I was sitting one afternoon by the side of the canal bank about two
+hundred yards in front of my chateau having tea with the officers of the
+East Yorks when suddenly the chateau-smashing started again. To go back
+was dangerous and useless. My men were under cover, resting, so that they
+would be ready for the night work. The shelling was intermittent. One
+shell went over and presently I heard _crack_,--_crack_,--_boom_, _crack_,
+_crack_,--_crack_; my heart was in my boots and I was unable to move.
+
+The colonel listened for a few seconds, then said: "Keene, do you know
+what that is?" I lied: "No, sir." I thought it was the explosion of my
+machine-gun bullets in their web belts and I dreaded to go up to see my
+section. I had worked with them and tried hard to be a good officer and
+the feeling that I should probably only find their mangled remains
+sickened me. The colonel said: "That's the 'Archie' in Bedford House. I
+think the last 'crump' got it. You two"--indicating myself and another
+officer--"go up and see if we can do anything. See if they want a working
+party and let me know."
+
+We started to run. On the way up I looked into the cellars to see the men
+whom I, the minute previously, had mourned for, and found two asleep,
+three hunting through their shirts, and the rest breaking the army orders
+by "shooting craps." From Bedford House a long trail of smoke was rising
+and the explosions became louder. We suddenly discovered the "Archie" in
+flames. It was in the courtyard and for camouflage had been covered with
+branches. It was mounted on an armored Pierce-Arrow truck. The "crump" had
+hit it, and gasoline, paint, branches, and hubs were supplying the fuel
+which was cooking out the ammunition, the _crack_, _crack_, being the
+report of single shells, whereas one loud _boom_ signified the explosion
+of an entire box. These shells were going off in all directions and it
+became dangerous to stay too near.
+
+The flames on the car were of pretty colors. It is surprising the amount
+of inflammable material there is on a car. The late owner of the car, a
+lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery, was cursing in a low, but
+emphatic, marine manner, and several other officers from nearby batteries
+were attracted by the noise and the pyrotechnic display. I spoke to the
+lieutenant and sympathized with him, and he retorted: "Gott strafe
+Germany. Why they should hit the 'bus' when I have a brand-new pair of
+trench boots that I had never worn, I dunno." Just then and there the case
+cooked out and a piece of shell cut between us and buried itself deep in
+the support of a dugout, so we got under cover.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                              "Whiz-Bangs."
+
+
+In the group was a splendid type of army chaplain. He came over almost at
+the start of the war and had seen a great deal of the open warfare at the
+commencement of hostilities. He said: "My friend Fritz is not through;
+he'll try to do some more yet." As the smoke died down and the cracking
+stopped, the enemy decided that an attempt would be made either to carry
+out salvage of whatever they had hit or else we would try to get the
+wounded away. So without any preliminary warning the whole area was
+covered by a battery fire of _whiz bangs_, and the shrapnel bullets came
+down like rain, several men being hit. The fire eventually died down and
+the wreck was allowed to cool off. The "Archies" are used so much to keep
+the aeroplanes up, and next to the loss of his boots the officer in charge
+was worried by the fact that the enemy would send an aeroplane over to see
+what they had hit. It was very necessary to keep the planes away, because
+at this time there were one hundred and fourteen batteries of artillery in
+the neighborhood.
+
+Later on the battery commander came down, and as he looked at the red-hot
+armor plates he said: "Five thousand pounds gone up in smoke. Sorry I
+missed the fireworks." The Divisional general called him up at the dugout
+and gave him areas for the distribution of the four anti-aircraft guns and
+cars comprising his battery. After he was through the commander replied:
+"Very good, sir, that will be done with all the guns except the third
+gun." The voice over the wire became very dignified, a preliminary to
+becoming sulphuric. "What do you mean, all but the third gun?" "Because,
+sir, the enemy has just 'crumped' the third gun and all that remains of it
+is scrap iron."
+
+One of the battalions has a fine victrola in the officers' mess dugout
+with a good selection of records. I have heard Caruso accompanied on the
+outside by an orchestra of guns. It was a wonderful mixture. Speaking of
+canned music reminds me we have a small portable trench machine, which
+closes up like a valise, easily handled and carried about. One man near
+had a box full of needles distributed in his back by a bomb; he considers
+himself disgraced; he says it will be kind of foolish in years to come to
+show his grandchildren twenty-five or thirty needles and tell them that
+they were the cause of his wounds.
+
+The Tommies play mouth organs a great deal and it is much easier to march
+to the sound of one, even
+
+
+    'Ere we are; 'ere we are,
+        'Ere we are agin.
+    We beat 'em on the Marne,
+    We beat 'em on the Aisne,
+    We gave 'em 'ELL at Neuve Chapelle,
+        And 'ere we are agin--
+
+
+sounds well with the addition of a little music.
+
+Anything is used for trench work; often if we waited for the proper
+materials we should be uncomfortable, so it is one of the qualifications
+of a good soldier to find things. Sometimes we steal material belonging to
+other units, then stick around until the owners come back and help them
+look for them; however, it is always advisable to steal materials from
+juniors in rank; if they find it out, and are senior, then you are in for
+a one-sided strafe.
+
+One of the other battery subalterns found a deserted carpenter's shop and
+he let his men loose to dismantle it. They took the parts of steel
+machines and used them for the construction of a dugout. One man said,
+"It's like coming home drunk and smashing up the grand piano with an axe."
+They must have attracted the attention of the ever-alert Boche, for no
+sooner had they moved out than the place was shelled to the ground.
+Everything I now look at with an eye to its value for trench construction;
+thus, telegraph poles, doors, iron girders, and rails are more valuable to
+us out here than a Rolls Royce.
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                               The "Crump."
+
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Slang or trench language is used universally. My own general talks about
+"Wipers," the Tommy's pronunciation of Ypres, and I have seen a reference
+to "Granny" (the fifteen-inch howitzer) in orders "mother" is the name
+given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so
+quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date,
+because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must
+not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a
+"dud Minnie" arrived over back of "mud lane," it is necessary to put, "I
+have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer
+landed in rear of Trench F 26 and failed to explode."
+
+Sometimes names of shells go through several changes. For example, high
+explosives in the early part of the war were called "black Marias," that
+being the slang name for the English police patrol wagon. Then they were
+called "Jack Johnsons," then "coal boxes," and finally they were
+christened "crumps" on account of the sound they make, a sort of
+_cru-ump!_ noise as they explode. "Rum jar" is the trench mortar.
+"Sausage" is the slow-going aerial torpedo, a beastly thing about six feet
+long with fins like a torpedo. It has two hundred and ten pounds of high
+explosive and makes a terrible hole. "Whiz bang" is shrapnel.
+
+Shelling is continuous. We have thousands of pieces of shells and fuse
+caps about the premises. I have in front of me a fragment of a shell about
+fourteen inches long and about four and one-half inches across, which came
+from a German gun. The edges are so sharp that it cuts your hand to hold
+it. I use it as a paper-weight.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+This morning I experienced a wonderful surprise. I had gone up to one of
+the North Stafford Batteries to borrow a clinometer. The major, while he
+was getting the instrument for me, casually remarked: "There's yesterday's
+'Times' on the bench if you care to look at it." I turned first to the
+casualty list and later to the "London Gazette" for the promotions, and
+wholly by accident perused carefully the Motor Machine Gun Service list
+and there noted the announcement, "Keene, Louis, 2d Lieut., to be 1st
+Lieut.," and for a fact this was the "official" intimation that I had been
+promoted. I had a couple of spare "pips", rank stars, in my pocket-book,
+so I got my corporal to sew them on right away.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We are all very happy at times, very dirty, and covered with stings and
+bites; have no idea how long we are to remain up. Getting used to the
+shell fire, and can sleep through it if it's not too close. When it comes
+near it makes you very thoughtful. Still working at night and resting
+during the day. Made another emplacement for one of my machine guns last
+night; had twenty men digging; surprising how fast men dig when the
+bullets are flying.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+It's about 2 A.M. We have just come in. My new emplacement is splendid;
+we've made it shell-proof and have it ready for firing. I was coming home
+this afternoon after having been to the fire trenches when I heard a
+shout: "Keene!" I looked up on the canal bank and I saw the general with
+one of his A.D.C.'s sitting watching an aeroplane duel. "I've come up to
+see your gun position, Keene." I saluted, waited for him, and took him to
+it. It is below the level of the ground under tons of bricks in the ruins
+of a farmhouse. He was standing on the roof of it and said, "Well, where's
+the emplacement?" "You're standing on it, sir." "Tut, tut, 'pon my word,
+that's good." He was delighted and congratulated me on it. My preliminary
+work under the eyes of the general has gone off quite well. I start firing
+to-night.
+
+Intimacy between generals and lieutenants is unusual, but it looks as if
+mine had taken an interest in me, because when he noticed my insect-bitten
+face, he sent me down some dope he had used with good effect in India. I
+expect the mosquitoes in India were the ordinary kind, but, believe me,
+trench "skeeters" are constructed differently and are proof against the
+general's pet concoction.
+
+I have several miners in my section who take a personal pride in the
+digging and shoring up of dugouts. So far the other two sections of the
+Battery are always behind in this work but they may look better on parade.
+
+The canal has one big lock suitable for swimming; a lot of "jocks" were
+bathing there to-day. I ordered a bathing parade for my section. Later I
+found that the swimming had livened three Germans, long submerged--the
+bathing parade is off.
+
+A Belgian battery commander has just wakened up and his shells are
+rattling overhead. From the fire trenches an incessant rattle of rifles is
+heard; all the bullets seem to come over here; constantly the whine of a
+musical ricochet bullet is heard. Otherwise things are dead quiet. It's
+getting on for three, so I'm going to bed in my blankets on one of the
+late chateau owner's splendid spring mattresses and carved oak bedstead.
+Oh! how nice it would be to sleep without lice. From an adjoining cellar
+my section are snoring, and I'm going to add to the chorus. Good-night,
+everybody.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+We have been having Sunday "hate." Eight-inch crumps are once more busting
+"up" the chateau. How they must detest this place. My tea and bully beef
+are covered with dust of the last shell. You have no idea how terrible the
+shell-fire is. First you hear the whistle and then a terrific burst which
+shakes the ground for a hundred yards around; when it clears away you find
+a hole ten feet across and six feet deep. At least fifteen have dropped
+around us in the last half hour.
+
+This place isn't somewhere in France, it's somewhere in Hell! It has been
+the scene of a great many encounters; decayed French uniforms, old rifles,
+ammunition and leather equipment and bundles of mildewed tobacco leaves
+are strewn all over the place. I found the chin-strap of a German
+"Pickelhaube" in the grounds, the helmet of a French cuirassier, and the
+red pants of a Zouave, close together. When digging in the trenches or
+anywhere near the firing line you have to be careful: corpses, dead
+horses, and cattle are buried everywhere. I'm building a trench to my
+emplacement and we have a stinking cow in the direct line; this will have
+to be buried before we can cut through.
+
+Everybody is cheerful and going strong. Yesterday some of my men went
+swimming in the moat of the chateau; a shell dropped in the water near
+them, and threw up a lot of fish on to the bank. That kind of discouraged
+the Tommies swimming, so they cooked the fish and decided that safety
+comes before cleanliness out here.
+
+It's hot and sticky, and when you have to wear thick clothes and equipment
+it makes you very uncomfortable, but it's all in the game.
+
+All through the night we fired single shots from a machine gun; my orders
+were to fire between half-past eight at night and four o'clock in the
+morning. We have a number of guns doing this. It harasses the enemy and
+keeps them from sleeping; anything that will wear a man down is practiced
+here.
+
+I've constructed a fire emplacement amongst the ruins underground; to get
+to it you have to travel through a tunnel eighteen feet long; inside it's
+very damp. I was working with my corporal, crouched up; we were both wet
+and cold, and so to cheer things up every now and again we let off a few
+rounds and warmed our hands on the barrel. Outside it poured with rain,
+and mosquitoes sought refuge inside and mealed off me. The corporal was
+immune. I had a water bottle full of whiskey and water. We used it to keep
+out the cold, but it wasn't strong enough. In a case like that you need
+wood alcohol. I would like to have had some Prohibitionists with me here.
+We had no light except the flash of the gun and the enemy star shells.
+
+At daybreak I came home dead beat. I got into my cellar, was so tired that
+I threw myself down on the bed and wrapped myself up in my blankets,
+boots, mud, lice and all. I hadn't been asleep long before the Huns
+started "hating" the chateau. They have put over twenty-five large calibre
+shells into my place, the grounds and the house. They are still at it.
+Every time a shell bursts it makes a hole big enough to bury five horses,
+and it shakes the foundations all round. The shells are bigger than usual.
+The smoke and earth are blown up fifty or sixty feet in the air. The
+effect is a moral disruption. _Why can't they keep that cotton out of
+Germany?_
+
+I have divided my section up into two teams, one in the cellars and one in
+the gun-pits. I relieve them every twenty-four hours, and I practically
+have to be in both places at once, but I have got a telephone in between
+the two places. I have it by my bed so that I can constantly know how
+things are going. However, the wire is cut two or three times a day by
+bullets and shell splinters, my linesman has a constant job.
+
+Fired all night; came back at six o'clock this morning, very tired. Had a
+telegram from the general to fire two thousand rounds in twenty-four
+hours; this is quite hard work. Actually we could fire the lot in five
+minutes, but it would attract too much attention. The enemy use whole
+batteries of artillery to blot out machine guns which attract attention,
+so we have to fire single shots.
+
+We have for neighbors four dead cows and an unexploded six-inch shell,
+liable to go off any time, all in a radius of one hundred yards. We have
+smashed holes through five walls so that we can go through the ruins
+unobserved. In one place we pass over a dead cow, and in another we wade
+through several tons of rotten potatoes, and I believe we have a corpse
+handy; and part of our trench goes through another heap of rotten mangles.
+I'm an authority on smells. I can almost tell the nationality of a corpse
+now by the smell. It will soon be necessary to wear our smoke-helmets to
+go into the emplacement. I don't think that I have told you that I cross
+the Yser canal about six times a day. I'd been up a week before I knew
+what it was. Now it only has a few feet of water in it, the rest being
+held in the German locks. The part I cross over is full of bulrushes, and
+is the home of moor-hens, water rats, mosquitoes and frogs.
+
+On one side of the canal is a bank which is in great demand by the machine
+gunners, who are able to get a certain amount of height and observation of
+their fire. The general has ordered a field gun to take up a position on
+this bank. He refers to it as his "Sniping eighteen-pounder." It is firing
+at seven hundred yards right at the German line and smashes up their
+parapet in a style that is pretty to watch. The machine gunners are in a
+great state, because the enemy will soon be "searching" with his artillery
+for the eighteen-pounder and the lairs of the smaller hidden guns will
+suffer.
+
+The men are hunting for lice in their underwear. This is the kind of
+conversation that is coming through from the next cellars: "I've got you
+beat--that's forty-seven." "Wait a minute"--a sound of tearing cloth--"but
+look at this lot, mother and young." "With my forty and these you'll have
+to find some more." They were betting on the number they could find. I
+peel off my shirt myself and burn them off with a candle. I glory in the
+little pop they make when the heat gets to them. All the insect powder in
+the world has been tried out on them and they've won.
+
+All sentries here are doubled; one thing it's safer, and another it's
+company; even when things are quiet, rats and mice scamper about and it
+sets your nerves on end. Things which are inanimate during the day become
+alive at night. Trees seem to walk about. I wonder what it tastes like to
+have a real meal in which tinned food does not figure; fancy a tablecloth;
+my tablecloth is a double sheet of newspaper, and even then I can't have a
+new one every day.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Had a good night's rest; came in about twelve o'clock and slept until
+eight-thirty this morning. One eye is completely closed up by a sting.
+
+A German aeroplane has been hovering over our positions looking for my
+gun, so we have stopped firing and all movement. I know just how the
+chicken feels when the hawk hovers over it. Few people realize how much
+aeroplanes figure in this war, for war would be much different without
+them. They do the work of Cavalry only in the sky. Whenever they come
+over, the sentries blow three blasts on their whistles and everybody runs
+for cover or freezes; guns stop firing and are covered up with branches
+made on frames. If men are caught in the open they stand perfectly still
+and do not look up, for on the aeroplane photographs faces at certain
+heights show light; dugouts are covered over with trees, straw or grass.
+We use aeroplane photographs a great deal; they show trenches distinctly
+and look very like the canals on Mars.
+
+The Huns have been "hating" the road one quarter of a mile away all the
+morning. That doesn't worry us a bit as long as they don't come any
+closer. I'm willing always to share up on the shelling.
+
+This order has just been issued. It speaks for itself:--
+
+
+    All ranks are warned that bombs and grenades must not be used for
+    fishing and killing game.
+
+
+I went over another farm to-day. It is one of the well-ventilated kind,
+punched full of holes. In the kitchen, stables and outhouses there was a
+most wonderful collection of junk: ammunition, British and French
+bandoliers, old sheepskin coats abandoned by the British troops from last
+winter, smashed rifles, bayonets, meat tins, parts of broken equipment,
+sandbags, stacks of rotten potatoes and three dead cows. The fruit trees
+are laden with fruit, and vines are growing up the houses with their
+bunches of green grapes.
+
+In the garden several lonely graves are piled high with old boots, straw,
+American agricultural implements, rotting sacks and rubbish of every
+description, pieces of shells, barrels, and in one room the rusty remains
+of a perambulator and sewing machine; rats are the only inhabitants now.
+In the garret (the staircase leading up to it gone long ago) I found a
+British rifle, bayonet fixed, ten rounds in the magazine, and the bolt
+partly drawn out. Evidently the owner was in the act of reloading his
+chamber when something happened. The graves were dated second and third
+months of this year. The poor wooden crosses were made of pieces of ration
+cases and the names written with an indelible pencil. The wretchedness of
+this farm, which was flourishing only a short time ago, is very pathetic.
+
+We have adopted an old Belgian mother cat with her family of three kittens
+in the dugout. Now we find that three more little wild kittens are living
+in the bricks which we have piled around the windows to protect us against
+shells. They are all encouraged to live with us in the cellars. I like
+cats, and they will help to keep the rats down. Although some of the rats
+are nearly the size of cats.
+
+It has been raining again and the trenches are filling up with slush. We
+carry a big trench stick, a thick sapling about four feet long with a
+ferrule made from a cartridge of a "very-light" (star shell), to help
+ourselves in walking; our feet are beginning to get wet and cold as a
+regular thing now, and we are revetting our trenches firm and solid for
+the winter. Eleven P.M. A mine under the Boche line has just been
+exploded. The fighting has just started for the crater.
+
+I took a German Uhlan helmet from a gentleman who had no further use for
+it. It was pretty badly knocked about; still, if I can get it home it's a
+trophy.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                            Mr. Tommy Atkins.
+
+
+It's about eight o'clock Sunday evening. All day long shells have been
+coming over like locomotives. Every five seconds one goes over into the
+old town; every five seconds for the last two hours. The chateau has been
+shelled again with "crumps"; they are such rotten shots; if only they
+would put in two good ones in the center it would blow it to bits and then
+they might leave us alone. The whole of the ground is pitted because they
+can't hit it squarely.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+My work lies behind the front line and in front of the support, firing
+over the heads of the men in the main trenches. The emplacement was
+shelled to-day; one shell hit the roof, burst and knocked over one of my
+men, cutting his head open. He is not very badly hurt, but has gone to the
+hospital. The shelling has been terrible to-day.
+
+The Germans have been very quiet lately, and working parties are out all
+along their front lines at night--something's up. Dirty work can be
+expected at any time now. We have steel helmets to protect us from spent
+bullets and splinters. They look like the old Tudor steel helmets and they
+are fine to wash in.
+
+You have no idea what a big part food plays in our life. Yesterday morning
+I went with the machine-gun officer of another outfit to crawl about
+looking for positions. We were in an orchard. I happened to look up and
+saw ripe plums! Terrified lest he should see them and forestall me, I
+said, "Let's beat it, this is too unhealthy," so we crawled back. Last
+night in the light of a big moon such as coons always steal watermelons
+by, a section officer and his cook crawled to the plum tree. The section
+officer, being large, stood underneath while the cook climbed the tree and
+dropped them into a sandbag held open by the S.O. They got about ten
+pounds. They go well stewed, believe me. The fact that bullets whistled
+through the trees most of the time made them taste better to-day. Sat the
+rest of the night in a hedge firing at the Boches with a Lewis gun. I
+struck for bed just as dawn broke.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+To-day the guns are again "hating" the chateau, and they have put sixty
+shells in the neighborhood. Still, "there's no cloud without a silver
+lining." I've got a new way home. Instead of going right around the
+kennels, stables, and through the yards, I go "through" the greenhouse
+direct, thereby saving a lot of time. The Huns' calendar is wrong. They
+have always shelled me Sunday and Wednesday. To-day's Tuesday!
+
+We use up the window frames and doorways for kindling, and consequently
+the doors have gone long ago. I have been smashing up mouldings this
+morning with an axe. We prefer the dry wood which is built into the walls;
+it burns better and doesn't cause smoke. As soon as smoke is seen rising,
+the enemy's range-finders get busy and then we suffer.
+
+Another mine went up yesterday; nobody seems to know where. I think it
+came south from the French lines; it rocked the whole neighborhood for
+miles. The ground here is a kind of quicksand for a few feet down, and
+shock is easily transmitted, the whole ground being honeycombed with
+mines, old trenches, shafts, saps made by French, Belgians, Germans and
+our own people.
+
+The use for timber of any description is manifold; every little bit is
+used up. Our chief source of supply of dry wood is from the smashed-up
+chateaux. Langhof, my home, has been punished almost every day, and after
+the bombardment lets up men from the neighborhood come to collect the wood
+torn up by the shelling. The men of the Tenth East Yorks came up this
+morning and climbed to the remains of the second story, ripping up the
+floor boards. The enemy evidently saw them, for the shelling soon started.
+We have been shelled often here before, but it was nothing compared to
+this. The shells were carefully placed and came over with disgusting
+regularity. The buildings rocked and the whole neighborhood shook.
+Fountains of bricks, mortar, and dirt were spewed up into the air. Trees
+were torn to shreds, a wall in front of me was hit--and disappeared, a lead
+statue of Apollo in the garden was hurled through the air and landed fifty
+yards away crumpled up against the balustrade of the moat.
+
+We were in our cellars, and gradually the shelling crept up towards us.
+Slowly a solemn dread which soon moulded into a sordid fear took
+possession of my being. In a flash I began to devise a philosophy of death
+for my chances were fading with every crash. I took out my pocketbook,
+containing some letters from my mother and some personal things, and put
+them on one of the beams, so that, being in another part of the building,
+they might perhaps be found some day. The shelling continued and shells
+dropped completely round the cellars, demolishing nearly everything in
+sight. The enemy evidently wanted to obliterate the whole place. The smell
+of the smoke and the dirt from the debris was choking, and every minute we
+expected to be our last. Suddenly it stopped. Philosophy and fear
+disappeared simultaneously as I sputtered out a choking laugh of relief.
+Then Hawkins, my servant, in a scared voice started, and the others joined
+in, singing the old marching refrain of the Training Camps:--
+
+
+    "Hail, hail, the gang's all here,
+    What the hell do we care!
+    What the hell do we care!
+    Hail, hail, the gang's all here,
+    What the hell do we care NOW!"
+
+
+When a man has lived night after night in a trench, he gradually finds it
+quite possible to snatch a good night's sleep. In other words, it is
+merely a case of becoming acclimated to rackets, smells and food. I had
+always been able to sleep, but on the night following the bombardment of
+the chateau I just could not doze off. I thrashed about continuously, and
+while in this restless state harbored the notion that trouble was brewing
+for me. Every one has had that feeling, the feeling that hangs in your
+bones and warns you to watch out. Well, that is how I felt.
+
+At last the sun rose and with it came a beautiful morning, warm and sunny.
+I walked out amongst the ruins to see the extent of the damage caused by
+the shelling of the previous day. I was waiting for the stew which was
+cooking on a little fire near the side of the cellar. The "dixie" was
+resting on two old bayonets, and they in turn rested on bricks at either
+side. Towards noon a big shell came over and landed in the moat, covering
+everything around with a coat of evil-smelling, black mud. This shell was
+followed by another, arriving in the part of the ruins where once a
+cow-shed stood. I was talking to Hawkins, my batman, when I saw him dive
+across my front and fall flat on his face. At the same time I was in the
+center of an explosion, a great flame of light and then bricks, wood and
+cement flew in all directions. For a few seconds I thought I was dead,
+then I picked myself up and saw that blood was pouring down the front of
+my jacket. I followed up the stream and found that my right hand was
+smashed and hanging limp. My men rushed out and I told them it was
+nothing, but promptly fell in a heap. When I came to, my hand was wrapped
+up in an emergency bandage, and a stretcher was coming down from Bedford
+House, an advanced dressing-station, the next house back. To the delight
+of the men who were carrying it, I waved them away and told them I could
+walk. Assisted up to the dressing-station by one of my men, I made it. I
+then made a discovery. A soldier is a man until he's hit, then he's a
+case. I first had an injection of "anti-tetanus" in the side, and the fact
+was recorded on a label tied to my left-hand top pocket button. The doctor
+tied me up, then said: "You'll soon be all right. Will you have a bottle
+of English beer or a drop of whiskey?" I had the whiskey. I needed it. All
+the time I was there the wounded poured in. Seeing them I felt ashamed to
+be there with only a smashed hand. A corporal came in with both hands
+blown off and fifty-six other wounds. He had tried to save the men in his
+bay by throwing back a German bomb and it had gone off in his hands.
+Hawkins came up later on with my helmet and the fuse head of the shell
+which blew me up. We were all collected together and waited in the dugouts
+of the dressing station until dusk. Several shells came close to us. I
+tried to write to my mother with my left hand, so that when she received
+the War Office cable she would know I was able to write.
+
+Dusk came, then night, and finally the Ford ambulance cars which were to
+take us out of Hell. It was a beautiful night. Belgium looked lovely. The
+merciful night had thrown a veil over the war scars on the land and a moon
+was shining. I was told to sit up in the seat with the driver. We traveled
+along one road, then the shelling became so bad that the drivers decided
+to go back and take another road which was running nearly parallel. Back
+over the line the planes of the Royal Flying Corps were bombing the Forest
+of Houltholst, and the bursting of the shrapnel from the German
+anti-aircraft guns pierced the velvet of the sky like stars as we went out
+of Belgium into France.
+
+                  -------------------------------------
+
+Several times shells burst on the road, and from the inside of the car
+came the stifled groans of the men as the Ford hit limbs of trees and
+shell-holes.
+
+Our first stop was a ruined windmill, the walls of which were nearly six
+feet thick. Here the dangerous cases were taken off and attended to. The
+last I saw of the corporal was after they had cut off his coat at the
+seams and the doctors were taking a piece of wire out of his chest. While
+I was waiting a chaplain asked me if I would like a cup of coffee or some
+whiskey, realising that it would take some time to get the coffee made I
+had some more whiskey.
+
+I was given two more tags, which this time were tied on buttons at the top
+of my jacket. I stayed here about two hours, then I was sent to a clearing
+hospital. It was here that I met the first nurses. They were two fine,
+splendid women who were wearing the scarlet hoods of the British Regular
+Army nurse. They were both strong and quite capable of handling a man,
+even if he became delirious. One of them quickly got me into bed. I
+apologized for my terribly dirty state, but I was told that it made no
+difference; they were used to it. To be between clean sheets again was
+wonderful. I felt I wanted to go to sleep forever. Suddenly a roar, and a
+terrible explosion. The hospital was being bombed; a bomb had dropped
+within a hundred yards of my tent. This was the German reprisal for our
+bombing Houltholst. They deliberately bombed a hospital. The doctor at
+this hospital next day looked at my hand and said in a nonchalant way,
+"Looks as though you will lose it." At that time it didn't strike me as a
+great loss to lose a hand, even if it was my "painting hand."
+
+The hospital train of the next day was crowded and the nurse in charge of
+my coach was named Keene. We tried in the little spare time she had to see
+if we couldn't work out our genealogy and find out if we were even
+remotely connected, but before we did we came to the station of Étaples
+and then went to the Duchess of Westminster Hospital at Latouquet. Here I
+was operated on. A piece of Krupp's steel was taken out of my hand and a
+rubber drainage tube inserted instead. The Duchess used to come round a
+great deal and won everybody's affection. She used to sit on my bed and
+talk to me about pleasant things. So unlike many people who visit
+hospitals and ask the patients silly war questions, such as: "How does it
+feel to be wounded?" or "Which hurts more, a bayonet or a shell wound?"
+One exasperated Tommy, when asked if the shell hit him, said: "Naw, it
+crept up behind and bit me."
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CRUMPS, THE PLAIN STORY OF A CANADIAN WHO WENT***
+
+
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