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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bullets & Billets, by Bruce Bairnsfather
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bullets & Billets
+
+Author: Bruce Bairnsfather
+
+Release Date: February 23, 2004 [EBook #11232]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BULLETS & BILLETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Steven desJardins, and Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+Bullets & Billets
+
+By Bruce Bairnsfather
+
+1916
+
+TO MY OLD PALS,
+"BILL," "BERT," AND "ALF,"
+WHO HAVE SAT IN THE MUD WITH ME
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER I
+  Landing at Havre--Tortoni's--Follow the tram lines--Orders
+  for the Front.
+
+CHAPTER II
+  Tortuous travelling--Clippers and tablets--Dumped at a
+  siding--I join my Battalion.
+
+CHAPTER III
+  Those Plugstreet trenches--Mud and rain--Flooded out--A
+  hopeless dawn.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+  More mud--Rain and bullets--A bit of cake--"Wind up"--Night
+  rounds.
+
+CHAPTER V
+  My man Friday--"Chuck us the biscuits"--Relieved--Billets.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+  The Transport Farm--Fleeced by the Flemish--Riding--Nearing
+  Christmas.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+  A projected attack---Digging a sap--An 'ell of a night--The
+  attack--Puncturing Prussians.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+  Christmas Eve--A lull in hate--Briton cum Boche.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+  Souvenirs--A ride to Nieppe--Tea at H.Q.--Trenches once more.
+
+CHAPTER X
+  My partial escape from the mud--The deserted village--My
+  "cottage."
+
+CHAPTER XI
+  Stocktaking--Fortifying--Nebulous Fragments.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+  A brain wave--Making a "funk hole"--Plugstreet Wood--Sniping.
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+  Robinson Crusoe--That turbulent table.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+  The Amphibians--Fed-up, but determined--The gun parapet.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+  Arrival of the "Johnsons"--"Where did that one go?"--The
+  First Fragment dispatched--The exodus--Where?
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+  New trenches--The night inspection--Letter from the
+  _Bystander_.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+  Wulverghem--The Douve--Corduroy boards--Back at our farm.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+  The painter and decorator--Fragments forming--Night on the
+  mud prairie.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+  Visions of leave--Dick Turpin--Leave!
+
+CHAPTER XX
+  That Leave train--My old pal--London and home--The call of
+  the wild.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+  Back from leave--That "blinkin' moon"--Johnson 'oles--Tommy
+  and "frightfulness"--Exploring expedition.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+  A daylight stalk--The disused trench--"Did they see me?"--A
+  good sniping position.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+  Our moated farm--Wulverghem--The Cure's house--A shattered
+  Church--More "heavies"--A farm on fire.
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+  That ration fatigue--Sketches in request--Bailleul--Baths and
+  lunatics--How to conduct a war.
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+  Getting stale--Longing for change--We leave the Douve--On the
+  march--Spotted fever--Ten days' rest.
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+  A pleasant change--Suzette, Berthe and Marthe--"La jeune
+  fille farouche"--Andre.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+  Getting fit--Caricaturing the Cure--"Dirty work ahead"--A
+  projected attack--Unlooked-for orders.
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+  We march for Ypres--Halt at Locre--A bleak camp and meagre
+  fare--Signs of battle--First view of Ypres.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+  Getting nearer--A lugubrious party--Still nearer--Blazing
+  Ypres--Orders for attack.
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+  Rain and mud--A trying march--In the thick of it--A wounded
+  officer--Heavy shelling--I get my "quietus!"
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+  Slowly recovering--Field hospital--Ambulance train--Back in
+  England.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Bruce Bairnsfather: a photograph
+
+The Birth of "Fragments": Scribbles on the farmhouse walls
+
+That Astronomical Annoyance, the Star Shell
+
+"Plugstreet Wood"
+
+A Hopeless Dawn
+
+The usual line in Billeting Farms
+
+"Chuck us the biscuits, Bill. The fire wants mendin'"
+
+"Shut that blinkin' door. There's a 'ell of a draught in 'ere"
+
+A Memory of Christmas, 1914
+
+The Sentry
+
+A Messines Memory: "'Ow about shiftin' a bit further down the road, Fred?"
+
+"Old soldiers never die"
+
+Photograph of the Author. St. Yvon, Christmas Day, 1914
+
+Off "in" again
+
+"Poor old Maggie! She seems to be 'avin' it dreadful wet at 'ome!"
+
+The Tin-opener
+
+"They're devils to snipe, ain't they, Bill?"
+
+Old Bill
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+_Down South, in the Valley of the Somme, far
+from the spots recorded in this book, I began
+to write this story._
+
+_In billets it was. I strolled across the old
+farmyard and into the wood beyond. Sitting
+by a gurgling little stream, I began, with the
+aid of a notebook and a pencil, to record the
+joys and sorrows of my first six months in
+France._
+
+_I do not claim any unique quality for these
+experiences. Many thousands have had the
+same. I have merely, by request, made a
+record of my times out there, in the way that
+they appeared to me_.
+
+BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+LANDING AT HAVRE--TORTONI'S--FOLLOW
+THE TRAM LINES--ORDERS FOR THE FRONT
+
+
+[Illustration: G]
+
+Gliding up the Seine, on a transport crammed to the lid with troops, in
+the still, cold hours of a November morning, was my debut into the war.
+It was about 6 a.m. when our boat silently slipped along past the great
+wooden sheds, posts and complications of Havre Harbour. I had spent most
+of the twelve-hour trip down somewhere in the depths of the ship,
+dealing out rations to the hundred men that I had brought with me from
+Plymouth. This sounds a comparatively simple process, but not a bit of
+it. To begin with, the ship was filled with troops to bursting point,
+and the mere matter of proceeding from one deck to another was about as
+difficult as trying to get round to see a friend at the other side of
+the ground at a Crystal Palace Cup final.
+
+I stood in a queue of Gordons, Seaforths, Worcesters, etc., slowly
+moving up one, until, finally arriving at the companion (nearly said
+staircase), I tobogganed down into the hold, and spent what was left of
+the night dealing out those rations. Having finished at last, I came to
+the surface again, and now, as the transport glided along through the
+dirty waters of the river, and as I gazed at the motley collection of
+Frenchmen on the various wharves, and saw a variety of soldiery, and a
+host of other warlike "props," I felt acutely that now I was _in_ the
+war at last--the real thing! For some time I had been rehearsing in
+England; but that was over now, and here I was--in the common or garden
+vernacular--"in the soup."
+
+At last we were alongside, and in due course I had collected that
+hundred men of mine, and found that the number was still a hundred,
+after which I landed with the rest, received instructions and a guide,
+then started off for the Base Camps.
+
+[Illustration: "Rations"]
+
+These Camps were about three miles out of Havre, and thither the whole
+contents of the ship marched in one long column, accompanied on either
+side by a crowd of ragged little boys shouting for souvenirs and
+biscuits. I and my hundred men were near the rear of the procession, and
+in about an hour's time arrived at the Base Camps.
+
+I don't know that it is possible to construct anything more atrociously
+hideous or uninteresting than a Base Camp. It consists, in military
+parlance, of nothing more than:--
+
+  Fields, grassless   1
+  Tents, bell       500
+
+In fact, a huge space, once a field, now a bog, on which are perched
+rows and rows of squalid tents.
+
+I stumbled along over the mud with my troupe, and having found the
+Adjutant, after a considerable search, thought that my task was over,
+and that I could slink off into some odd tent or other and get a sleep
+and a rest. Oh no!--the Adjutant had only expected fifty men, and here
+was I with a hundred.
+
+Consternation! Two hours' telephoning and intricate back-chat with the
+Adjutant eventually led to my being ordered to leave the expected fifty
+and take the others to another Base Camp hard by, and see if they would
+like to have them there.
+
+The rival Base Camp expressed a willingness to have this other fifty, so
+at last I had finished, and having found an empty tent, lay down on the
+ground, with my greatcoat for a pillow and went to sleep.
+
+I awoke at about three in the afternoon, got hold of a bucket of water
+and proceeded to have a wash. Having shaved, washed, brushed my hair,
+and had a look at the general effect in the polished back of my
+cigarette case (all my kit was still at the docks), I emerged from my
+canvas cave and started off to have a look round.
+
+I soon discovered a small cafe down the road, and found it was a place
+used by several of the officers who, like myself, were temporarily
+dumped at the Camps. I went in and got something to eat. Quite a good
+little place upstairs there was, where one could get breakfast each
+morning: just coffee, eggs, and bread sort of thing. By great luck I met
+a pal of mine here; he had come over in a boat previous to mine, and
+after we had had a bit of a refresher and a smoke we decided to go off
+down to Havre and see the sights.
+
+A tram passed along in front of this cafe, and this we boarded. It took
+about half an hour getting down to Havre from Bleville where the Camps
+were, but it was worth it.
+
+Tortoni's Cafe, a place that we looked upon as the last link with
+civilization: Tortoni's, with its blaze of light, looking-glass and gold
+paint--its popping corks and hurrying waiters--made a deep and pleasant
+indent on one's mind, for "to-morrow" meant "the Front" for most of
+those who sat there.
+
+As we sat in the midst of that kaleidoscopic picture, formed of French,
+Belgian and English uniforms, intermingled with the varied and gaudy
+robes of the local nymphs; as we mused in the midst of dense clouds of
+tobacco smoke, we could not help reflecting that this _might_ be the
+last time we should look on such scenes of revelry, and came to the
+conclusion that the only thing to do was to make the most of it while we
+had the chance. And, by Gad, we did....
+
+A little after midnight I parted from my companion and started off to
+get back to that Base Camp of mine.
+
+Standing in the main square of the town, I realized a few points which
+tended to take the edge off the success of the evening:
+
+No. 1.--It was too late to get a tram.
+
+No. 2.--All the taxis had disappeared.
+
+No. 3.--It was pouring with rain.
+
+No. 4.--I had three miles to go.
+
+I started off to walk it--but had I known what that walk was going to
+be, I would have buttoned myself round a lamp-post and stayed where I
+was.
+
+I made that fatal mistake of thinking that I knew the way.
+
+Leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees against the driving rain, I
+staggered along the tram lines past the Casino, and feeling convinced
+that the tram lines must be correct, determined to follow them.
+
+After about half an hour's walk, mostly uphill, I became rather
+suspicious as to the road being quite right.
+
+Seeing a sentry-box outside a palatial edifice on the right, I tacked
+across the road and looked for the sentry.
+
+A lurid thing in gendarmes advanced upon me, and I let off one of my
+curtailed French sentences at him:
+
+"Pour Bleville, Monsieur?"
+
+I can't give his answer in French, but being interpreted I think it
+meant that I was completely on the wrong road, and that he wasn't
+certain as to how I could ever get back on it without returning to Havre
+and starting again.
+
+He produced an envelope, made an unintelligible sketch on the back of
+it, and started me off again down the way I had come.
+
+I realized what my mistake had been. There was evidently a branch tram
+line, which I had followed, and this I thought could only have branched
+off near the Casino, so back I went to the Casino and started again.
+
+I was right about the branch line, and started merrily off again, taking
+as I thought the main line to Bleville.
+
+After another half-hour of this, with eyes feverishly searching for
+recognizable landmarks, I again began to have doubts as to the veracity
+of the tram lines. However, pretending that I placed their honesty
+beyond all doubt, I plodded on; but round a corner, found the outlook so
+unfamiliar that I determined to ask again. Not a soul about. Presently I
+discovered a small house, standing back off the road and showing a thin
+slit of light above the shutters of a downstairs window. I tapped on the
+glass. A sound as of someone hurriedly trying to hide a pile of
+coverless umbrellas in a cupboard was followed by the opening of the
+window, and a bristling head was silhouetted against the light.
+
+I squeezed out the same old sentence:
+
+"Pour Bleville, Monsieur?"
+
+A fearful cataract of unintelligible words burst from the head, but left
+me almost as much in the dark as ever, though with a faint glimmering
+that I was "warmer." I felt that if I went back about a mile and turned
+to the left, all would be well.
+
+I thanked the gollywog in the window, who, somehow or other, I think
+must have been a printer working late, and started off once more.
+
+After another hour's route march I came to some scattered houses, and
+finally to a village. I was indignantly staring at a house when
+suddenly, joy!--I realized that what I was looking at was an unfamiliar
+view of the cafe where I had breakfasted earlier in the day.
+
+Another ten minutes and I reached the Camp. Time now 2.30 a.m. I thought
+I would just take a look in at the Orderly Room tent to see if there
+were any orders in for me. It was lucky I did. Inside I found an orderly
+asleep in a blanket, and woke him.
+
+"Anything in for me?" I asked. "Bairnsfather's my name."
+
+"Yes, sir, there is," came through the blanket, and getting up he went
+to the table at the other end of the tent. He sleepily handed me the
+wire: "Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as
+machine-gun officer...."
+
+"What time do I have to push off?" I inquired.
+
+"By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir."
+
+Time now 3 a.m. To-morrow--THE FRONT! And then I crept into my tent and
+tried to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND
+TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN
+MY BATTALION
+
+
+Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams
+in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the officer
+in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after all.
+
+However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise, which
+had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went off on the tram down
+to Havre. That hundred men I had brought over had nothing to do with me
+now. I was entirely on my own, and was off to the Front to join my
+battalion. Down at Havre the officials at the station gave me a
+complicated yellow diagram, known as a travelling pass, and I got into a
+carriage in the train bound for Rouen.
+
+I was not alone now; a whole forest of second lieutenants like myself
+were in the same train, and with them a solid, congealed mass of
+valises, packs, revolvers and haversacks. At last the train started, and
+after the usual hour spent in feeling that you have left all the most
+important things behind, I settled down on a mound of equipment and
+tried to do a bit of a sleep.
+
+So what with sleeping, smoking and talking, we jolted along until we
+pulled up at Rouen. Here I had to leave the train, for some obscure
+reason, in order to go to the Palais de Justice to get another ticket. I
+padded off down over the bridge into Rouen, found the Palais, went in
+and was shown along to an office that dealt in tickets.
+
+In this dark and dingy oak-panelled saloon, illuminated by electric
+light and the glittering reflections from gold braid, there lurked a
+general or two. I was here given another pass entitling me to be
+deposited at a certain siding in Flanders.
+
+Back I went to the station, and in due course rattled off in the train
+again towards the North.
+
+A fearfully long journey we had, up to the Front! The worst of it was
+that nobody knew--or, if they did, wouldn't tell you--which way you
+were going, or how long it would take to get to your destination. For
+instance, we didn't know we were going to Rouen till we got there; and
+we didn't know we were going from Rouen to Boulogne until, after a night
+spent in the train, the whole outfit jolted and jangled into the Gare de
+Something, down by the wharf at that salubrious seaport.
+
+We spent a complete day and part of an evening at Boulogne, as our train
+did not leave until midnight.
+
+[Illustration: having a smoke]
+
+I and another chap who was going to the next railhead to mine at the
+Front, went off together into the town and had lunch at a cafe in the
+High Street. We then strolled around the shops, buying a few things we
+needed. Not very attractive things either, but I'll mention them here to
+show how we thought and felt.
+
+We first went to a "pharmacie" and got some boxes of morphia tablets,
+after which we went to an ironmonger's (don't know the French for it)
+and each bought a ponderous pair of barbed wire cutters. So what with
+wire clippers and morphia tablets, we _were_ gay. About four o'clock we
+calmed down a bit, and went to the same restaurant where we had
+lunched.
+
+Here we had tea with a couple of French girls, exceeding good to look
+upon, who had apparently escaped from Lille. We got on splendidly with
+them till a couple of French officers, one with the Legion of Honour,
+came along to the next table. That took all the shine out of us, so we
+determined to quit, and cleared off to the Hotel de Folkestone, where we
+had a bath to console us. Dinner followed, and then, feeling
+particularly hilarious, I made my will. Not the approved will of family
+lawyer style, but just a letter announcing, in bald and harsh terms
+that, in the event of my remaining permanently in Belgium, I wanted my
+total small worldly wealth to be disposed of in a certain way.
+
+Felt better after this outburst, and, rejoining my pal, we went off into
+the town again and by easy stages reached the train.
+
+At about one a.m. the train started, and we creaked and groaned our way
+out of Boulogne. We were now really off for the Front, and the
+situation, consequently, became more exciting. We were slowly getting
+nearer and nearer to the real thing. But what a train! It dribbled and
+rumbled along at about five miles an hour, and, I verily believe,
+stopped at every farmhouse within sight of the line. I could not help
+thinking that the engine driver was a German in disguise, who was trying
+to prevent our ever arriving at our destination. I tried to sleep, but
+each time the train pulled up, I woke with a start and thought that we'd
+got there. This went on for many hours, and as I knew we must be getting
+somewhere near, my dreams became worse and worse.
+
+I somehow began to think that the engine driver was becoming
+cautious--(he was a Frenchman again)--thought that, perhaps, he had to
+get down occasionally and walk ahead a bit to see if it was safe to go
+on.
+
+Nobody in the train had the least idea where the Front was, how far off,
+or what it was like. For all we knew, our train might be going right up
+into the rear of the front line trenches. Somewhere round 6 a.m. I
+reached my siding. All the others, except myself and one other, had got
+out at previous halts. I got down from the carriage on to the cinder
+track, and went along the line to the station. Nobody about except a few
+Frenchmen, so I went back to the carriage again, and sat looking out
+through the dimmed window at the rain-soaked flat country. The other
+fellow with me was doing the same. A sudden, profound depression came
+over me. Here was I and this other cove dumped down at this horrible
+siding; nothing to eat, and nobody to meet us. How rude and callous of
+someone, or something. I looked at my watch; it had stopped, and on
+trying to wind it I found it was broken.
+
+I stared out of the window again; gave that up, and stared at the
+opposite seat. Suddenly my eye caught something shiny under the seat. I
+stooped and picked it up; it was a watch! I have always looked upon this
+episode as an omen of some sort; but of what sort I can't quite make
+out. Finding a watch means finding "Time"--perhaps it meant I would find
+time to write this book; on the other hand it may have meant that my
+time had come--who knows?
+
+At about eight o'clock by my new watch I again made an attack on the
+station, and at last found the R.T.O., which, being interpreted, means
+the Railway Transport Officer. He told me where my battalion was to be
+found; but didn't know whether they were in the trenches or out. He also
+added that if he were me he wouldn't hurry about going there, as I could
+probably get a lift in an A.S.C. wagon later on. I took his advice, and
+having left all my tackle by his office, went into the nearest estaminet
+to get some breakfast. The owner, a genial but garrulous little
+Frenchman, spent quite a lot of time explaining to me how those hateful
+people, the Boches, had occupied his house not so long before, and had
+punched a hole in his kitchen wall to use a machine-gun through. After
+breakfast I went to the station and arranged for my baggage to be sent
+on by an A.S.C. wagon, and then started out to walk to Nieppe, which I
+learnt was the place where my battalion billeted. As I plodded along the
+muddy road in the pouring rain, I became aware of a sound with which I
+was afterwards to become horribly familiar.
+
+"Boom!" That was all; but I knew it was the voice of the guns, and in
+that moment I realized that here was the war, and that I was in it.
+
+I ploughed along for about four miles down uninteresting mud
+canals--known on maps as roads--until, finally, I entered Nieppe.
+
+The battalion, I heard from a passing soldier, was having its last day
+in billets prior to going into the trenches again. They were billeted at
+a disused brewery at the other end of the town. I went on down the
+squalid street and finally found the place.
+
+A crowd of dirty, war-worn looking soldiers were clustered about the
+entrance in groups. I went in through the large archway past them into
+the brewery yard. Soldiers everywhere, resting, talking and smoking. I
+inquired where the officers' quarters were, and was shown to the brewery
+head office. Here I found the battalion officers, many of whom I knew,
+and went into their improvised messroom, which, in previous days, had
+apparently been the Brewery Board room.
+
+I found everything very dark, dingy and depressing. That night the
+battalion was going into the trenches again, and last evenings in
+billets are not generally very exhilarating. I sat and talked with those
+I knew, and presently the Colonel came in, and I heard what the orders
+were for the evening. I felt very strange and foreign to it all, as
+everyone except myself had had their baptism of trench life, and,
+consequently, at this time I did not possess that calm indifference,
+bred of painful experience, which is part of the essence of a true
+trench-dweller.
+
+The evening drew on. We had our last meal in billets--sardines, bread,
+butter and cake sort of thing--slung on to the bare table by the soldier
+servants, who were more engrossed in packing up things they were taking
+to the trenches than in anything else.
+
+And now the time came to start off. I found the machine-gun section in
+charge of a sergeant, a most excellent fellow, who had looked after the
+section since the officer (whose place I had come to fill) had been
+wounded. I took over from him, and, as the battalion moved off along the
+road, fell in behind with my latest acquisition--a machine-gun section,
+with machine guns to match. It was quite dusk now, and as we neared the
+great Bois de Ploegstert, known all over the world as "Plugstreet
+Wood," it was nearly night. The road was getting rougher, and the
+houses, dotted about in dark silhouettes against the sky-line, had a
+curiously deserted and worn appearance. Everything was looking dark,
+damp and drear.
+
+On we went down the road through the wood, stumbling along in the
+darkness over the shell-pitted track. Weird noises occasionally floated
+through the trees; the faint "crack" of a rifle, or the rumble of limber
+wheels. A distant light flickered momentarily in the air, cutting out in
+bold relief the ruins of the shattered chateau on our left. On we went
+through this scene of dark and humid desolation, past the occasional
+mounds of former habitations, on into the trenches before Plugstreet
+Wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THOSE PLUGSTREET TRENCHES--MUD AND
+RAIN--FLOODED OUT--A HOPELESS DAWN
+
+
+An extraordinary sensation--the first time of going into trenches. The
+first idea that struck me about them was their haphazard design. There
+was, no doubt, some very excellent reason for someone or other making
+those trenches as they were; but they really did strike me as curious
+when I first saw them.
+
+A trench will, perhaps, run diagonally across a field, will then go
+along a hedge at right angles, suddenly give it up and start again fifty
+yards to the left, in such a position that it is bound to cross the
+kitchen-garden of a shattered chateau, go through the greenhouse and out
+into the road. On getting there it henceforth rivals the ditch at the
+side in the amount of water it can run off into a row of dug-outs in the
+next field. There is, apparently, no necessity for a trench to be in any
+way parallel to the line of your enemy; as long as he can't shoot you
+from immediately behind, that's all you ask.
+
+It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trenches.
+Everything was strange, and wet and horrid. First of all I had to go and
+fix up my machine guns at various points, and find places for the
+gunners to sleep in. This was no easy matter, as many of the dug-outs
+had fallen in and floated off down stream.
+
+In this, and subsequent descriptions of the trenches, I may lay myself
+open to the charge of exaggeration. But it must be remembered that I am
+describing trench life in the early days of 1914, and I feel sure that
+those who had experience of them will acquit me of any such charge.
+
+To give a recipe for getting a rough idea, in case you want to, I
+recommend the following procedure. Select a flat ten-acre ploughed
+field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country
+drains into it. Now cut a zig-zag slot about four feet deep and three
+feet wide diagonally across, dam off as much water as you can so as to
+leave about a hundred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one
+side of the slot, then endeavour to live there for a month on bully beef
+and damp biscuits, whilst a friend has instructions to fire at you with
+his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface.
+
+Well, here I was, anyway, and the next thing was to make the best of it.
+As I have before said, these were the days of the earliest trenches in
+this war: days when we had none of those desirable "props," such as
+corrugated iron, floorboards, and sand bags _ad lib_.
+
+[Illustration: "ullo! 'Arry"]
+
+When you made a dug-out in those days you made it out of anything you
+could find, and generally had to make it yourself. That first night I
+was "in" I discovered, after a humid hour or so, that our battalion
+wouldn't fit into the spaces left by the last one, and as regards
+dug-outs, the truth of that mathematical axiom, "Two's into one, won't
+go," suddenly dawned on me with painful clearness. I was faced with
+making a dug-out, and it was raining, of course. (_Note._--Whenever I
+don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.") After sloshing
+about in several primitive trenches in the vicinity of the spot where we
+had fixed our best machine-gun position, my sergeant and I discovered a
+sort of covered passage in a ditch in front of a communication trench.
+It was a sort of emergency exit back from a row of ramshackle,
+water-logged hovels in the ditch to the communication trench. We decided
+to make use of this passage, and arranged things in such a way that by
+scooping out the clay walls we made two caves, one behind the other. The
+front one was about five yards from the machine gun, and you reached the
+back cave by going through the outer one. It now being about 11 p.m.,
+and having been for the last five hours perpetually on the scramble,
+through trenches of all sorts, I drew myself into the inner cave to go
+to sleep.
+
+This little place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I
+got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fishing out a
+candle-end from my pocket, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a
+cigarette. I now lay down and tried to size up the situation and life
+in general.
+
+Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles
+and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud. This was
+the first day; and, so far as I could see, the future contained nothing
+but repetitions of the same thing, or worse.
+
+[Illustration: rucksacks]
+
+Nothing was to be heard except the occasional crack of the sniper's
+shot, the dripping of the rain, and the low murmur of voices from the
+outer cave.
+
+In the narrow space beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a sodden
+packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end
+guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the
+Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life,
+and then--swish, bang--back to the reality that the damp clay wall is
+only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am--that the Boche is
+just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the
+slightest chance of leaving except in an ambulance.
+
+My machine-gun section for the gun near by lay in the front cave, a
+couple of feet from me; their spasmodic talking gradually died away as,
+one by one, they dropped off to sleep. One more indignant, hopeless
+glare at the flickering candle-end, then I pinched the wick, curled up,
+and went to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden cold sort of peppermint sensation assailed me; I awoke and sat
+up. My head cannoned off the clay ceiling, so I partially had to lie
+down again.
+
+I attempted to strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and
+sodden. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer
+cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours:
+
+"We're bein' flooded out, sir; there's water a foot deep in this place
+of ours."
+
+That explains it. I feel all round the back of my greatcoat and find I
+have been sleeping in a pool of water.
+
+I crawled out of my inner chamber, and the whole lot of us dived through
+the rapidly rising water into the ditch outside. I scrambled up on to
+the top of the bank, and tried to focus the situation.
+
+From inquiries and personal observation I found that the cause of the
+tide rising was the fact that the Engineers had been draining the
+trench, in the course of which process they had apparently struck a
+spring of water.
+
+We accepted the cause of the disaster philosophically, and immediately
+discussed what was the best thing to be done. Action of some sort was
+urgently necessary, as at present we were all sitting on the top of the
+mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being
+occasionally illuminated by a German star shell--more like a family
+sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else.
+
+We decided to make a dam. Having found an empty ration box and half a
+bag of coke, we started on the job of trying to fence off the water from
+our cave. After about an hour's struggle with the elements we at last
+succeeded, with the aid of the ration box, the sack of coke and a few
+tins of bully, in reducing the water level inside to six inches.
+
+Here we were, now wetter than ever, cold as Polar bears, sitting in this
+hygroscopic catacomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was
+decided on. We had a fire bucket--it had started life as a biscuit
+tin--a few bits of damp wood, but no coke. "We had some coke, I'm sure!
+Why, of course--we built it into the dam!" Down came the dam, out came
+the coke, and in came the water. However, we preferred the water to the
+cold; so, finally, after many exasperating efforts, we got a fire going
+in the bucket. Five minutes' bliss followed by disaster. The fire bucket
+proceeded to emit such dense volumes of sulphurous smoke that in a few
+moments we couldn't see a lighted match.
+
+We stuck it a short time longer, then one by one dived into the water
+and out into the air, shooting out of our mud hovel to the surface like
+snakes when you pour water down their holes.
+
+Time now 3 a.m. No sleep; rain, water, _plus_ smoke. A board meeting
+held immediately decides to give up sleep and dug-outs for that night. A
+motion to try and construct a chimney with an entrenching tool is
+defeated by five votes to one ... dawn is breaking--my first night in
+trenches comes to an end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MORE MUD--RAIN AND BULLETS--A BIT OF
+CAKE--"WIND UP"--NIGHT ROUNDS
+
+
+  The rose-pink sky fades off above to blue,
+    The morning star alone proclaims the dawn.
+  The empty tins and barbed wire bathed in dew
+    Emerge, and then another day is born.
+
+I wrote that "poem" in those--trenches, so you can see the sort of state
+to which I was reduced.
+
+Well, my first trench night was over; the dawn had broken--everything
+else left to break had been seen to by the artillery, which started off
+generally at about eight. And what a fearful long day it seemed, that
+first one! As soon as it was light I began scrambling about, and having
+a good look at the general lie of things. In front was a large expanse
+of root field, at the further side of which a long irregular parapet
+marked the German trenches. Behind those again was more root field,
+dented here and there with shell holes filled with water, beyond which
+stood a few isolated remnants which had once been cottages. I stood at a
+projection in one of our trenches, from where I could see the general
+shape of our line, and could glimpse a good view of the German
+arrangements. Not a soul could be seen anywhere. Here and there a wisp
+of smoke indicated a fire bucket. Behind our trenches, behind the
+shattered houses at the top of a wooded rise in the ground, stood what
+once must have been a fine chateau. As I looked, a shrieking hollow
+whistle overhead, a momentary pause, then--"Crumph!" showed clearly what
+was the matter with the chateau. It was being shelled. The Germans
+seemed to have a rooted objection to that chateau. Every morning, as we
+crouched in our mud kennels, we heard those "Crumphs," and soon got to
+be very good judges of form. _We_ knew they were shelling the chateau.
+When they didn't shell the chateau, we got it in the trenches; so we
+looked on that dear old mangled wreck with a friendly eye--that
+tapering, twisted, perforated spire, which they never could knock down,
+was an everlasting bait to the Boche, and a perfect fairy godmother to
+us.
+
+Oh, those days in that trench of ours! Each day seemed about a week
+long. I shared a dug-out with a platoon commander after that first
+night. The machine-gun section found a suitable place and made a dug-out
+for themselves.
+
+Day after day, night after night, my companion and I lay and listened to
+the daily explosions, read, and talked, and sloshed about that trench
+together.
+
+The greatest interest one had in the daytime was sitting on the damp
+straw in our clay vault, scraping the mud off one's saturated boots and
+clothes. The event to which one looked forward with the greatest
+interest was the arrival of letters in the evening.
+
+Now and again we got out of our dug-out and sloshed down the trench to
+scheme out some improvement or other, or to furtively look out across
+the water-logged turnip field at the Boche trenches opposite.
+Occasionally, in the silent, still, foggy mornings, a voice from
+somewhere in the alluvial depths of a miserable trench, would suddenly
+burst into a scrap of song, such as--
+
+  Old soldiers never die,
+    They simply fade away.
+
+--a voice full of "fed-upness," steeped in determination.
+
+Then all would be silence for the next couple of hours, and so the day
+passed.
+
+[Illustration: The Knave of Spades.]
+
+At dusk, my job was to emerge from this horrible drain and go round the
+various machine-gun positions. What a job! I generally went alone, and
+in the darkness struck out across the sodden field, tripping,
+stumbling, and sometimes falling into various shell holes on the way.
+
+One does a little calling at this time of day. Having seen a gun in
+another trench, one looks up the nearest platoon commander. You look
+into so-and-so's dug-out and find it empty. You ask a sergeant where the
+occupant is.
+
+"He's down the trench, sir." You push your way down the trench, dodging
+pools of water and stepping over fire buckets, mess tins, brushing past
+men standing, leaning or sitting--right on down the trench, where, round
+a corner, you find the platoon commander. "Well, if we can't get any
+sandbags," he is probably saying to a sergeant, "we will just have to
+bank it up with earth, and put those men on the other side of the
+traverse," or something like that. He turns to me and says, "Come along
+back to my dug-out and have a bit of cake. Someone or other has sent one
+out from home."
+
+We start back along the trench. Suddenly a low murmuring, rattling sound
+can be heard in the distance. We stop to listen, the sound gets louder;
+everyone stops to listen--the sound approaches, and is now
+distinguishable as rifle-fire. The firing becomes faster and faster;
+then suddenly swells into a roar and now comes the phenomenon of trench
+warfare: "wind up"--the prairie fire of the trenches.
+
+Everyone stands to the parapet, and away on the left a tornado of
+crackling sound can be heard, getting louder and louder. In a few
+seconds it has swept on down the line, and now a deafening rattle of
+rifle-fire is going on immediately in front. Bullets are flicking the
+tops of the sandbags on the parapet in hundreds, whilst white streaks
+are shooting up with a swish into the sky and burst into bright
+radiating blobs of light--the star shell at its best.
+
+A curious thing, this "wind up." We never knew when it would come on. It
+is caused entirely by nerves. Perhaps an inquisitive Boche, somewhere a
+mile or two on the left, had thought he saw someone approaching his
+barbed wire; a few shots are exchanged--a shout or two, followed by more
+shots--panic--more shots--panic spreading--then suddenly the whole line
+of trenches on a front of a couple of miles succumbs to that well-known
+malady, "wind up."
+
+In reality it is highly probable that there was no one in front near
+the wire, and no one has had the least intention of being there.
+
+Presently there comes a deep "boom" from somewhere in the distance
+behind, and a large shell sails over our heads and explodes somewhere
+amongst the Boches; another and another, and then all becomes quiet
+again. The rifle fire diminishes and soon ceases. Total result of one of
+these firework displays: several thousand rounds of ammunition squibbed
+off, hundreds of star shells wasted, and no casualties.
+
+It put the "wind up" me at first, but I soon got to know these affairs,
+and learnt to take them calmly.
+
+I went along with the platoon commander back to his lair. An excellent
+fellow he was. No one in this war could have hated it all more than he
+did, and no one could have more conscientiously done his very best at
+it. Poor fellow, he was afterwards killed near Ypres.
+
+"Well, how are things going with you?" I said.
+
+"Oh, all right. They knocked down that same bit of parapet again to-day.
+I think they must imagine we've got a machine gun there, or something.
+That's twice we've had to build it up this week. Have a bit of cake?"
+
+So I had a bit of cake and left him; he going back to that old parapet
+again, whilst I struck off into the dark, wet field towards another gun
+position, falling into an unfamiliar "Johnson 'ole" on the way.
+
+No one gets a better idea of the general lie of the position than a
+machine-gun officer. In those early, primitive days, when we had so few
+of each thing, we, of course, had few machine guns, and these had to be
+sprinkled about a position to the best possible advantage. The
+consequence was that people like myself had to cover a considerable
+amount of ground before our rambles in the dark each night were done.
+
+One machine gun might be, say, in "Dead Man Farm"; another at the
+"Barrier" near the cross roads; whilst another couple were just at some
+effective spot in a trench, or in a commanding position in a shattered
+farm or cottage behind the front line trenches.
+
+I would leave my dug-out as soon as it was dark and do the round of all
+the guns every night. Just as a sample, I will carry on from where I
+left the platoon commander.
+
+I slosh across the ploughed field at what I feel to be a correct angle
+to bring me out on the cross roads, where, about two hundred yards away,
+I have another gun. I scramble across a broken gateway and an old bit of
+trench, and close behind come to a deep cutting into which I jump. About
+five yards along this I come to a machine-gun emplacement, with a
+machine-gun sentry on guard.
+
+"Where's the corporal?"
+
+"I'm 'ere, sir," is emitted from the slimy depths of a narrow low-roofed
+dug-out, and the corporal emerges, hooking back the waterproof sheet as
+he comes out to prevent the light showing.
+
+"How about this gun, Corporal--is everything all right?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but I was looking around to-day, and thought that if we was
+to shift the gun over there, where the dead cow is, we'd get a better
+field of fire."
+
+Meeting adjourned to inspect this valuable site from the windward side.
+
+After a short, blood-thirsty conversation relative to the perforating of
+the enemy, I leave and push off into the bog again, striking out for
+another visit. Finally, after two hours' visiting, floundering, bullet
+dodging, and star shell shirking, accompanied by a liberal allowance of
+"narrow squeaks," I get back to my own bit of trench; and tobogganing
+down where I erroneously think the clay steps are, I at last reach my
+dug-out, and entering on all fours, crouch amongst the damp tobacco
+leaves and straw and light a cigarette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MY MAN FRIDAY--"CHUCK US THE
+BISCUITS"--RELIEVED--BILLETS
+
+
+It was during this first time up in the trenches that I got a soldier
+servant.
+
+As I had arrived only just in time to go with the battalion to the
+trenches, the acquisition had to be made by a search in the mud. I found
+a fellow who hadn't been an officer's servant before, but who wanted to
+be. I liked the look of him; so feeling rather like Robinson Crusoe,
+when he booked up Friday, "I got me a man."
+
+He lived in a dug-out about five yards away, and from then onwards
+continued with me right to the point where this book finishes. This
+fellow of mine did all my cooking, such as it was, and worked in
+conjunction with my friend, the platoon commander's servant. Cooking, at
+the times I write about, consisted of making innumerable brews of tea,
+and opening tins of bully and Maconochie. Occasionally bacon had to be
+fried in a mess-tin lid. One day my man soared off into culinary fancies
+and curried a Maconochie. I have never quite forgiven him for this; I am
+nearly right again now.
+
+These two soldier servants never had to leave the trench. It was their
+job to try and find something to make a fire with, and to do all they
+could to keep the water out of our dug-out, a task which not one of us
+succeeded in doing. My plan for sustaining life under these conditions
+was to change my boots as often as possible. If there wasn't time for
+this I used to try and boil the water in my boots by keeping my feet to
+the fire bucket. I always put my puttees on first and then a pair of
+thick socks, and finally a pair of boots. I could, by this means,
+hurriedly slip off the sodden pair of boots and socks and slip on
+another set which had become fairly dry by the fire. We lived
+perpetually damp, if not thoroughly wet. My puttees, which I rarely
+removed, were more like long rolls of the consistency of nougat than
+anything else, thanks to the mud. Dug-outs had no wooden linings in
+those days; no corrugated iron roofs; no floorboards. They were just
+holes in the clay side of the fire trench, with any old thing for a
+roof, and old straw or tobacco leaves, which we pinched from some
+abandoned farm, for a floor. So, you see, there was not much of a chance
+of dodging the moisture.
+
+The cold was what got me. Personally, I would far rather have gone
+without food than a fire. A fire of some sort was the only thing to
+cheer. Coke was scarce and always wet, and it was by no means uncommon
+to over-hear a remark of this sort: "Chuck us the biscuits, Bill; the
+fire wants mendin'."
+
+At night I would frequently sally forth to a cracked up village behind,
+and perhaps procure half a mantelpiece and an old clog to stoke our
+"furnace" with.
+
+Well, after the usual number of long days and still longer nights spent
+under these conditions, we came to the day when it was our turn to go
+out to rest billets, and a relieving battalion to come in. What a
+splendid day that is! You start "packing" at about 4 p.m. As soon as it
+is dusk the servants slink off across that turnip morass behind and drag
+our few belongings back to where the limbers are. These limbers have
+come up from about three to four miles away, from the Regimental
+Transport headquarters, to take all the trench "props" back to the
+billets.
+
+We don't leave, ourselves, until the "incoming" battalion has taken
+over.
+
+[Illustration: soldier at rest]
+
+After what seems an interminable wait, we hear a clinking of mess tins
+and rattling of equipment, the sloshing of feet in the mud, and much
+whispered profanity, which all goes to announce to you that "they're
+here!" Then you know that the other battalion has arrived, and are now
+about to take over these precious slots in the ground.
+
+When the exchange is complete, we are free to go!--to go out for our few
+days in billets!
+
+The actual going out and getting clear of the trenches takes a long
+time. Handing over, and finally extricating ourselves from the morass,
+in the dark, with all our belongings, is a lengthy process; and then we
+have about a mile of country which we have never been able to examine in
+the day time, and get familiar with, to negotiate. This is before we get
+to the high road, and really start for billets.
+
+I had the different machine-gun sections to collect from their various
+guns, and this not until the relieving sections had all turned up. It
+was a good two hours' job getting all the sections with their guns,
+ammunition and various extras finally collected together in the dark a
+mile back, ready to put all the stuff in the limbers, and so back to
+billets. When all was fixed up I gave the order and off we started,
+plodding along back down the narrow, dreary road towards our
+resting-place. But it was quite a cheerful tramp, knowing as we did that
+we were going to four days' comparative rest, and, anyway, safety.
+
+On we went down the long, flat, narrow roads, occasionally looking round
+to see the faint flicker of a star shell showing over the tops of the
+trees, and to think momentarily of the "poor devils" left behind to take
+our place, and go on doing just what we had been at. Then, finally,
+getting far enough away to forget, songs and jokes took us chirping
+along, past objects which soon became our landmarks in the days to come.
+ On we went, past estaminets, shrines and occasional windmills, down
+the long winding road for about four miles, until at last we reached our
+billets, where the battalion willingly halted and dispersed to its
+various quarters. I and my machine-gun section had still to carry on,
+for we lived apart, a bit further on, at the Transport Farm. So we
+continued on our own for another mile and a half, past the estaminet at
+Romerin, out on towards Neuve Eglise to our Transport Farm. This was the
+usual red-tiled Belgian farm, with a rectangular smell in the middle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE TRANSPORT FARM--FLEECED BY THE
+FLEMISH--RIDING--NEARING CHRISTMAS
+
+
+It was about 9 p.m. when we turned into the courtyard of the farm. My
+sergeant saw to the unlimbering, and dismissed the section, whilst I
+went into the farm and dismantled myself of all my tackle, such as
+revolver, field-glass, greatcoat, haversacks, etc.
+
+My servant had, of course, preceded me, and by the time I had made a
+partial attempt at cleaning myself, he had brought in a meal of sorts
+and laid it on the oilcloth-covered table by the stove. I was now joined
+by the transport officer and the regimental quartermaster. They lived at
+this farm permanently, and only came to the trenches on occasional
+excursions. They had both had a go at the nasty part of warfare though,
+before this, so although consumed with a sneaking envy, I was full of
+respect for them.
+
+We three had a very merry and genial time together. We now had something
+distinctly resembling a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, each day. The
+transport officer took a lively interest in the efforts of Messrs.
+Fortnum and Mason, and thus added generously to our menus. It was a
+glorious feeling, pushing open the door of that farm and coming in from
+all the wet, darkness, mud and weariness of four days in the trenches.
+After the supper, I disappeared into the back kitchen place and did what
+was possible in the shaving and washing line. The Belgian family were
+all herded away in here, as their front rooms were now our exclusive
+property. I have never quite made out what the family consisted of, but,
+approximately, I should think, mother and father and ten children. I am
+pretty certain about the children, as about half a platoon stood around
+me whilst shaving, and solemnly watched me with dull brown Flemish eyes.
+The father kept in the background, resting, I fancy, from his usual
+day's work of hiding unattractive turnips in enormous numbers, under
+mounds of mud--(the only form of farming industry which came under my
+notice in Flanders).
+
+The mother, however, was "all there," in more senses than one. She was
+of about observation balloon proportions, and had an unerring eye for
+the main chance. Her telegraphic address, I should imagine, was
+"Fleecem." She had one sound commercial idea, _i.e._, "charge as much as
+you can for everything they want, hide everything they _do_ want, and
+slowly collect any property, in the way of food, they have in the
+cellar; so that, in the future, there shall be no lack of bully and jam
+in our farm, at any rate."
+
+They had one farm labourer, a kind of epileptic who, I found out, gave
+his services in return for being fed--no pay. He will regret this
+contract of his in time, as the food in question was bully beef and plum
+and apple jam, with an occasional change to Maconochie and apple and
+plum jam. That store in the cellar absolutely precludes him from any
+change from this diet for many years to come. Of course, I must say his
+work was not such as would be classed amongst the skilled or
+intellectual trades; it was, apparently, to pump all the accumulated
+drainage from a subterranean vault out into the yard in front, about
+twice a week, the rest of his time being taken up by assisting at the
+hiding of the turnips.
+
+After I had washed and shaved under the critical eyes of Angele, Rachel,
+Andre and Co., I retired into an inner chamber which had once been an
+apple store, and went to bed on a straw mattress in the corner. Pyjamas
+at last! and an untroubled sleep. Occasionally in the night one would
+wake and, listening at the open window, would hear the distant rattle of
+rifle fire far away beyond the woods.
+
+[Illustration: boy and bird]
+
+These four days at the Transport Farm were days of wallowing in rest.
+There was, of course, certain work to be done in connection with the
+machine-gun department, such as overhauling and cleaning the guns, and
+drilling the section at intervals; but the evenings and nights were a
+perfect joy after those spent in the trenches.
+
+One could walk about the fields near by; could read, write letters, and
+sleep as much as one liked. And if one wished, walk or ride over to see
+friends at the other billets. Ah, yes! ride--I am sorry to say that
+riding was not, and is not, my forte. Unfortunate this, as the
+machine-gun officer is one of the few privileged to have a horse. I was
+entitled to ride to the trenches, and ride away from them, and during
+our rest, ride wherever I wanted to go; but these advantages, so coveted
+by my horseless pals in the regiment, left me cold. I never will be any
+good at the "Haute Ecole" act, I'm sure, although I made several
+attempts to get a liking for the subject in France. When the final day
+came for our departure to the trenches again, I rode from that Transport
+Farm.
+
+Riding in England, or in any civilized country, is one thing, and riding
+in those barren, shell-torn wastes of Flanders is another. The usual
+darkness, rain and mud pervaded the scene when the evening came for our
+return journey to the trenches. My groom (curse him) had not forgotten
+to saddle the horse and bring it round. There it was, standing gaunt and
+tall in front of the paraded machine-gun section. With my best
+equestrian demeanour I crossed the yard, and hauling myself up on to my
+horse, choked out a few commands to the section, and sallied forth on to
+the road towards the trenches.
+
+Thank Heaven, I didn't go into the Cavalry. The roads about the part we
+were performing in were about two yards wide and a precipitous ditch at
+each side. In the middle, all sorts and conditions of holes punctuated
+their long winding length. Add to this the fact that you are either
+meeting, or being passed by, a motor lorry every ten minutes, and you
+will get an idea of the conditions under which riding takes place.
+
+[Illustration: kit and kaboodle]
+
+Well, anyway, during the whole of my equestrian career in France, I
+never came off. I rode along in front of my section, balancing on this
+"Ship of the Desert" of mine, past all the same landmarks, cracked
+houses, windmills, estaminets, etc. I experienced innumerable tense
+moments when my horse--as frequently happened--took me for a bit of a
+circular tour in an adjacent field, so as to avoid some colossal motor
+lorry with one headlight of about a million candle-power, which would
+suddenly roar its way down our single narrow road. At last we got to the
+dumping-ground spot again--the spot where we horsemen have to come to
+earth and walk, and where everything is unbaled from the limbers. Here
+we were again, on the threshold of the trenches.
+
+This monotonous dreary routine of "in" and "out" of the trenches had to
+be gone through many, many times before we got to Christmas Day. But,
+during that pre-Christmas period, there was one outstanding feature
+above the normal dangerous dreariness of the trenches: that was a slight
+affair in the nature of our attack on the 18th of December, so in the
+next chapter I will proceed to outline my part in this passage of arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A PROJECTED ATTACK---DIGGING A SAP--
+AN 'ELL OF A NIGHT--THE ATTACK--
+PUNCTURING PRUSSIANS
+
+
+[Illustration: O]
+
+One evening I was sitting, coiled up in the slime at the bottom of my
+dug-out, toying with the mud enveloping my boots, when a head appeared
+at a gap in my mackintosh doorway and said, "The Colonel wants to see
+you, sir." So I clambered out and went across the field, down a trench,
+across a road and down a trench again to where the headquarter dug-outs
+lay all in a row.
+
+I came to the Colonel's dug-out, where, by the light of a candle-end
+stuck on an improvised table, he was sitting, busily explaining
+something by the aid of a map to a group of our officers. I waited till
+he had finished, knowing that he would want to see me after the others,
+as the machine-gunner's job is always rather a specialized side-line.
+Soon he explained to me what he wished me to do with my guns, and gave
+me a rough outline of the projected attack. He pointed out on the map
+where he wished me to take up positions, and closed the interview by
+saying that he thought I should at once proceed to reconnoitre the
+proposed sites, and lay all my plans for getting into position, as we
+were going to conduct an operation on the Boches at dawn the next day.
+
+I left, and started at once on my plans. The first thing was to have a
+thorough good look at the ground, and examine all the possibilities for
+effective machine-gun co-operation. I determined to take my sergeant
+along with me, so that he would be as familiar with the scheme in hand
+as I was. It was raining, of course, and the night was as black as pitch
+when we both started out on our Sherlock Holmes excursion. I explained
+the idea of the attack to him, and the part we had to play. The troops
+on our right were going to carry out the actual attack, and we, on their
+left flank, were going to lend assistance by engaging the Deutschers in
+front and by firing half-right to cover our men's advance. My job was
+clear enough. I had to bring as many machine guns as I could spare down
+to the right of our own line to assist as much as possible in the real
+attack. My sergeant and I went down to examine the ground where it was
+essential for us to fix up. We got to our last trench on the right, and
+clambering over the parapet, did what we could to find out the nature of
+the ground in front, and see how we could best fix our machine guns to
+cover the enemy. We soon saw that in order to get a really clear field
+of fire it was necessary for us to sap out from the end of our existing
+right-hand trench and make a machine-gun emplacement at the end.
+
+[Illustration: 'Ere, you leave that ---- rum jar alone.]
+
+This necessitated the digging of a sap of about ten yards in length,
+collecting all the materials for making an emplacement, and mounting our
+machine gun. It was now about 11 p.m., and all this work had to be
+completed before dawn.
+
+Having rapidly realized that there was not the slightest prospect of any
+sleep, and that the morrow looked like being a busy day, we commenced
+with characteristic fed-up vigour to carry out our nefarious design.
+
+A section, myself and the sergeant, started on digging that sap, and
+what a job it was! The Germans were particularly restless that night;
+kept on squibbing away whilst we were digging, and as it was some time
+before we had the sap deep enough to be able to stand upright without
+fear of a puncture in some part of our anatomy, it was altogether most
+unpleasant. At about an hour before dawn we had got as far as making the
+emplacement. This we started to put together as hard as we could. We
+filled sandbags with the earth excavated from the sap, and with frenzied
+energy tried to complete our defences before dawn. The rain and
+darkness, both very intense that night, were really very trying. One
+would pause, shovel in hand, lean against the clay side of the sap, and
+hurriedly contemplate the scene. Five men, a sergeant and myself, wet
+through and muddy all over; no sleep, little to eat, silently digging
+and filling sandbags with an ever-watchful eye for the breaking of the
+dawn.
+
+Light was breaking across the sky before the job was done, and we had
+still to complete the top guard of our emplacement. Then we had some
+fireworks. The nervy Boches had spotted our sap as something new, and
+their bullets, whacking up against our newly-thrown-up parapet, made us
+glad we had worked so busily.
+
+We were bound to complete that emplacement, so, at convenient intervals,
+we crept to the opening, and after saying "one, two, three!" suddenly
+plumped a newly-filled sandbag on the top. Each time we did this half a
+dozen bullets went zipping through the canvas or just past overhead.
+This operation had to be done about a dozen times.
+
+A warm job! At last it was finished, and we sank down into the bottom of
+the sap to rest. The time for the artillery bombardment had been fixed
+to begin at about 6 a.m., if I remember rightly, so we got a little rest
+between finishing our work and the attack itself.
+
+Of course the whole of this enterprise, as far as the bombardment and
+attack were concerned, cannot be compared with the magnitude of a
+similar performance in 1915. All the same, it was pretty bad, but not
+anything like so accurately calculated, or so mechanically efficient as
+our later efforts in this line. The precise time-table methods of the
+present period did not exist then, but the main idea of giving the
+Opposition as much heavy lyddite, followed by shrapnel, was the same.
+
+At about half-past six, as we sat in the sap, we heard the first shell
+go over. I went to the end of the traverse alongside the emplacement,
+and watched the German trenches. We were ready to fire at any of the
+enemy we could see, and when the actual attack started, at the end of
+the bombardment, we were going to keep up a perpetual sprinkling of
+bullets along their reserve trenches. A few isolated houses stood just
+in line with the German trenches. Our gunners had focussed on these,
+and they gave them a good pasting.
+
+"Crumph! bang! bang! crumph!"--hard at it all the time, whilst shrapnel
+burst and whizzed about all along the German parapet. The view in front
+soon became a sort of haze of black dust, as "heavy" after "heavy" burst
+on top of the Boche positions. Columns of earth and black smoke shot up
+like giant fountains into the air. I caught sight of a lot of the enemy
+running along a shallow communication trench of theirs, apparently with
+the intention of reinforcing their front line. We soon had our machine
+gun peppering up these unfortunates, and from that moment on kept up an
+incessant fire on the enemy.
+
+On my left, two of our companies were keeping up a solid rapid fire on
+the German lines immediately in front.
+
+At last the bombardment ceased. A confused sound of shouts and yells on
+our right, intermingled with a terrific crackle of rifle fire, told us
+the attack had started. Without ceasing, we kept up the only assistance
+we could give: our persistent firing half-right.
+
+How long it all lasted I can't remember; but when I crept into a
+soldier's dug-out, back in one of our trenches, completely exhausted, I
+heard that we had taken the enemy trench, but that, unfortunately, owing
+to its enfiladed position, we had to abandon it later.
+
+Such was my first experience of this see-saw warfare of the trenches.
+
+A few days later, as I happened to be passing through poor, shattered
+Plugstreet Wood, I came across a clearance 'midst the trees.
+
+Two rows of long, brown mounds of earth, each surmounted by a rough,
+simple wooden cross, was all that was inside the clearing. I stopped,
+and looked, and thought--then went away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHRISTMAS EVE----A LULL IN HATE--
+BRITON CUM BOCHE
+
+
+Shortly after the doings set forth in the previous chapter we left the
+trenches for our usual days in billets. It was now nearing Christmas
+Day, and we knew it would fall to our lot to be back in the trenches
+again on the 23rd of December, and that we would, in consequence, spend
+our Christmas there. I remember at the time being very down on my luck
+about this, as anything in the nature of Christmas Day festivities was
+obviously knocked on the head. Now, however, looking back on it all, I
+wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything.
+
+Well, as I said before, we went "in" again on the 23rd. The weather had
+now become very fine and cold. The dawn of the 24th brought a perfectly
+still, cold, frosty day. The spirit of Christmas began to permeate us
+all; we tried to plot ways and means of making the next day, Christmas,
+different in some way to others. Invitations from one dug-out to another
+for sundry meals were beginning to circulate. Christmas Eve was, in the
+way of weather, everything that Christmas Eve should be.
+
+I was billed to appear at a dug-out about a quarter of a mile to the
+left that evening to have rather a special thing in trench dinners--not
+quite so much bully and Maconochie about as usual. A bottle of red wine
+and a medley of tinned things from home deputized in their absence. The
+day had been entirely free from shelling, and somehow we all felt that
+the Boches, too, wanted to be quiet. There was a kind of an invisible,
+intangible feeling extending across the frozen swamp between the two
+lines, which said "This is Christmas Eve for both of us--_something_ in
+common."
+
+About 10 p.m. I made my exit from the convivial dug-out on the left of
+our line and walked back to my own lair. On arriving at my own bit of
+trench I found several of the men standing about, and all very cheerful.
+There was a good bit of singing and talking going on, jokes and jibes
+on our curious Christmas Eve, as contrasted with any former one, were
+thick in the air. One of my men turned to me and said:
+
+"You can 'ear 'em quite plain, sir!"
+
+"Hear what?" I inquired.
+
+"The Germans over there, sir; 'ear 'em singin' and playin' on a band or
+somethin'."
+
+I listened;--away out across the field, among the dark shadows beyond, I
+could hear the murmur of voices, and an occasional burst of some
+unintelligible song would come floating out on the frosty air. The
+singing seemed to be loudest and most distinct a bit to our right. I
+popped into my dug-out and found the platoon commander.
+
+[Illustration: hayseed]
+
+"Do you hear the Boches kicking up that racket over there?" I said.
+
+"Yes," he replied; "they've been at it some time!"
+
+"Come on," said I, "let's go along the trench to the hedge there on the
+right--that's the nearest point to them, over there."
+
+So we stumbled along our now hard, frosted ditch, and scrambling up on
+to the bank above, strode across the field to our next bit of trench on
+the right. Everyone was listening. An improvised Boche band was playing
+a precarious version of "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber Alles," at the
+conclusion of which, some of our mouth-organ experts retaliated with
+snatches of ragtime songs and imitations of the German tune. Suddenly we
+heard a confused shouting from the other side. We all stopped to listen.
+The shout came again. A voice in the darkness shouted in English, with a
+strong German accent, "Come over here!" A ripple of mirth swept along
+our trench, followed by a rude outburst of mouth organs and laughter.
+Presently, in a lull, one of our sergeants repeated the request, "Come
+over here!"
+
+"You come half-way--I come half-way," floated out of the darkness.
+
+"Come on, then!" shouted the sergeant. "I'm coming along the hedge!"
+
+"Ah! but there are two of you," came back the voice from the other side.
+
+Well, anyway, after much suspicious shouting and jocular derision from
+both sides, our sergeant went along the hedge which ran at right-angles
+to the two lines of trenches. He was quickly out of sight; but, as we
+all listened in breathless silence, we soon heard a spasmodic
+conversation taking place out there in the darkness.
+
+Presently, the sergeant returned. He had with him a few German cigars
+and cigarettes which he had exchanged for a couple of Maconochie's and a
+tin of Capstan, which he had taken with him. The seance was over, but it
+had given just the requisite touch to our Christmas Eve--something a
+little human and out of the ordinary routine.
+
+After months of vindictive sniping and shelling, this little episode
+came as an invigorating tonic, and a welcome relief to the daily
+monotony of antagonism. It did not lessen our ardour or determination;
+but just put a little human punctuation mark in our lives of cold and
+humid hate. Just on the right day, too--Christmas Eve! But, as a curious
+episode, this was nothing in comparison to our experience on the
+following day.
+
+On Christmas morning I awoke very early, and emerged from my dug-out
+into the trench. It was a perfect day. A beautiful, cloudless blue sky.
+The ground hard and white, fading off towards the wood in a thin
+low-lying mist. It was such a day as is invariably depicted by artists
+on Christmas cards--the ideal Christmas Day of fiction.
+
+"Fancy all this hate, war, and discomfort on a day like this!" I thought
+to myself. The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there, so much so
+that I remember thinking, "This indescribable something in the air, this
+Peace and Goodwill feeling, surely will have some effect on the
+situation here to-day!" And I wasn't far wrong; it did around us,
+anyway, and I have always been so glad to think of my luck in, firstly,
+being actually in the trenches on Christmas Day, and, secondly, being on
+the spot where quite a unique little episode took place.
+
+Everything looked merry and bright that morning--the discomforts seemed
+to be less, somehow; they seemed to have epitomized themselves in
+intense, frosty cold. It was just the sort of day for Peace to be
+declared. It would have made such a good finale. I should like to have
+suddenly heard an immense siren blowing. Everybody to stop and say,
+"What was that?" Siren blowing again: appearance of a small figure
+running across the frozen mud waving something. He gets closer--a
+telegraph boy with a wire! He hands it to me. With trembling fingers I
+open it: "War off, return home.--George, R.I." Cheers! But no, it was a
+nice, fine day, that was all.
+
+Walking about the trench a little later, discussing the curious affair
+of the night before, we suddenly became aware of the fact that we were
+seeing a lot of evidences of Germans. Heads were bobbing about and
+showing over their parapet in a most reckless way, and, as we looked,
+this phenomenon became more and more pronounced.
+
+A complete Boche figure suddenly appeared on the parapet, and looked
+about itself. This complaint became infectious. It didn't take "Our
+Bert" long to be up on the skyline (it is one long grind to ever keep
+him off it). This was the signal for more Boche anatomy to be disclosed,
+and this was replied to by all our Alf's and Bill's, until, in less time
+than it takes to tell, half a dozen or so of each of the belligerents
+were outside their trenches and were advancing towards each other in
+no-man's land.
+
+A strange sight, truly!
+
+I clambered up and over our parapet, and moved out across the field to
+look. Clad in a muddy suit of khaki and wearing a sheepskin coat and
+Balaclava helmet, I joined the throng about half-way across to the
+German trenches.
+
+It all felt most curious: here were these sausage-eating wretches, who
+had elected to start this infernal European fracas, and in so doing had
+brought us all into the same muddy pickle as themselves.
+
+This was my first real sight of them at close quarters. Here they
+were--the actual, practical soldiers of the German army. There was not
+an atom of hate on either side that day; and yet, on our side, not for a
+moment was the will to war and the will to beat them relaxed. It was
+just like the interval between the rounds in a friendly boxing match.
+The difference in type between our men and theirs was very marked. There
+was no contrasting the spirit of the two parties. Our men, in their
+scratch costumes of dirty, muddy khaki, with their various assorted
+headdresses of woollen helmets, mufflers and battered hats, were a
+light-hearted, open, humorous collection as opposed to the sombre
+demeanour and stolid appearance of the Huns in their grey-green faded
+uniforms, top boots, and pork-pie hats.
+
+The shortest effect I can give of the impression I had was that our men,
+superior, broadminded, more frank, and lovable beings, were regarding
+these faded, unimaginative products of perverted kulture as a set of
+objectionable but amusing lunatics whose heads had _got_ to be
+eventually smacked.
+
+"Look at that one over there, Bill," our Bert would say, as he pointed
+out some particularly curious member of the party.
+
+I strolled about amongst them all, and sucked in as many impressions as
+I could. Two or three of the Boches seemed to be particularly interested
+in me, and after they had walked round me once or twice with sullen
+curiosity stamped on their faces, one came up and said "Offizier?" I
+nodded my head, which means "Yes" in most languages, and, besides, I
+can't talk German.
+
+These devils, I could see, all wanted to be friendly; but none of them
+possessed the open, frank geniality of our men. However, everyone was
+talking and laughing, and souvenir hunting.
+
+I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and
+being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy
+to some of his buttons.
+
+We both then said things to each other which neither understood, and
+agreed to do a swap. I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft
+snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then
+gave him two of mine in exchange.
+
+Whilst this was going on a babbling of guttural ejaculations emanating
+from one of the laager-schifters, told me that some idea had occurred to
+someone.
+
+Suddenly, one of the Boches ran back to his trench and presently
+reappeared with a large camera. I posed in a mixed group for several
+photographs, and have ever since wished I had fixed up some arrangement
+for getting a copy. No doubt framed editions of this photograph are
+reposing on some Hun mantelpieces, showing clearly and unmistakably to
+admiring strafers how a group of perfidious English surrendered
+unconditionally on Christmas Day to the brave Deutschers.
+
+Slowly the meeting began to disperse; a sort of feeling that the
+authorities on both sides were not very enthusiastic about this
+fraternizing seemed to creep across the gathering. We parted, but there
+was a distinct and friendly understanding that Christmas Day would be
+left to finish in tranquillity. The last I saw of this little affair was
+a vision of one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur
+hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile
+Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic
+clippers crept up the back of his neck.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SOUVENIRS--A RIDE TO NIEPPE--TEA AT
+H.Q.--TRENCHES ONCE MORE
+
+
+A couple of days after Christmas we left for billets. These two days
+were of a very peaceful nature, but not quite so enthusiastically
+friendly as the day itself. The Germans could be seen moving about in
+their trenches, and one felt quite at ease sitting on the top of our
+parapet or strolling about the fields behind our lines.
+
+It was during these two days that I managed to get a German rifle that I
+had had my eye on for a month. It lay out in the open, near one or two
+corpses between our trenches and theirs, and until this Christmas truce
+arrived, the locality was not a particularly attractive one to visit.
+Had I fixed an earlier date for my exploit the end of it would most
+probably have been--a battered second-lieutenant's cap and a rusty
+revolver hanging up in the ingle-nook at Herr Someone-or-other's
+country home in East Prussia. As it was, I was able to walk out and
+return with the rifle unmolested.
+
+When we left the trenches to "go out" this time I took the rifle along
+with me. After my usual perilous equestrian act I got back to the
+Transport Farm, and having performed the usual routine of washing,
+shaving, eating and drinking, blossomed forth into our four days' rest
+again.
+
+The weather was splendid. I went out for walks in the fields, rehearsed
+the machine-gun section in their drill, and conducted cheery sort of
+"Squire-of-the-village" conversations with the farmer who owned our
+farm.
+
+At this period, most of my pals in the regiment used to go into
+Armentieres or Bailleul, and get a breath of civilized life. I often
+wished I felt as they did, but I had just the opposite desire. I felt
+that, to adequately stick out what we were going through, it was
+necessary for me to keep well in the atmosphere, and not to let any
+exterior influence upset it.
+
+I was annoyed at having to take up this line, but somehow or other I had
+a feeling that I could not run the war business with a spot of
+civilization in it. Personally, I felt that, rather than leave the
+trenches for our periodic rests, I would sooner have stayed there all
+the time consecutively, until I could stick it out no longer.
+
+During this after-Christmas rest, however, I so far relapsed from these
+views as to decide to go into Nieppe to get some money from the Field
+Cashier. That was my first fall, but my second was even more strange. In
+a truculent tone I said I would ride!
+
+"Smith, go and tell Parker to get my horse ready!" It just shows how
+reckless warfare makes one.
+
+A beautiful, fine, still afternoon. I started off. Enormous success. I
+walked and trotted along, past all sorts of wagons, lorries, guns and
+despatch riders. Nearly decided to take up hunting, when the time came
+for me to settle in England once more. However, as I neared the
+outskirts of Nieppe, and saw the flood of interlacing traffic, I decided
+to leave well alone--to tie this quadruped of mine up at some outlying
+hostelry and walk the short remaining distance into the town where the
+cashier had his office. I found a suitable place and, letting myself
+down to the ground, strode off with a stiff bandy-legged action to the
+office. Having got my 100 francs all right I made the best of my short
+time on earth by walking about and having a good look at the town. A
+squalid, uninteresting place, Nieppe; a dirty red-brick town with a good
+sprinkling of factory chimneys and orange peel; rather the same tone as
+one of the Potteries towns in England. Completing my tour I returned to
+the horse, and finally, stiff but happy, I glided to the ground in the
+yard of the Transport Farm.
+
+Encouraged by my success I rode over to dinner one night with one of the
+Companies in the Battalion which was in billets about a mile and a half
+away. Riding home along the flat, winding, water-logged lane by the
+light of the stars I nearly started off on the poetry lines again, but I
+got home just in time.
+
+During these rests from the trenches I was sometimes summoned to Brigade
+Headquarters, where the arch machine gunner dwelt. He was a captain of
+much engineering skill, who supervised the entire machine-gun outfit of
+the Brigade. New men were being perpetually trained by him, and I was
+sent for on occasion to discuss the state and strength of my section,
+or any new scheme that might be on hand.
+
+This going to Brigade Headquarters meant putting on a clean bib, as it
+were; for it was here that the Brigadier himself lived, and after a
+machine-gun seance it was generally necessary to have tea in the farm
+with the Brigade staff.
+
+I am little or no use on these social occasions. The red and gold mailed
+fist of a General Staff reduces me to a sort of pulverized state of
+meekness, which ends in my smiling at everyone and declining anything to
+eat.
+
+As machine-gun officer to our Battalion I had to go through it, and as
+everyone was very nice to me, it all went off satisfactorily.
+
+On this time out we were wondering how we should find the Boches on our
+return, and pleasant recollections of the time before filled us with a
+curious keenness to get back and see. A wish like this is easily
+gratified at the front, and soon, of course, the day came to go into
+trenches again, and in we went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MY PARTIAL ESCAPE FROM THE MUD--THE
+DESERTED VILLAGE--MY "COTTAGE"
+
+
+Our next time up after our Christmas Day experiences were full of
+incident and adventure. During the peace which came upon the land around
+the 25th of December we had, as I mentioned before, been able to stroll
+about in an altogether unprecedented way. We had had the courage to walk
+into the mangled old village just behind our front line trenches, and
+examine the ruins. I had never penetrated into this gloomy wreck of a
+place, even at night, until after Christmas. It had just occasionally
+caught our attention as we looked back from our trenches; mutilated and
+deserted, a dirty skeleton of what once had been a small village--very
+small--about twelve small houses and a couple of farms. Anyway, during
+this time in after Christmas we started thinking out plans, and in a few
+days we heard that it had been decided to put some men into the
+village, and hold it, as a second line.
+
+The platoon commander with whom I lived happened to be the man selected
+to have charge of the men in the village. Consequently one night he left
+our humble trench and, together with his servant and small belongings
+from the dug-out, went off to live somewhere in the village.
+
+About this time the conditions under which we lived were very poor. The
+cold and rain were exceedingly severe, and altogether physical
+discomfort was at its height. When my stable companion had gone I
+naturally determined to pay him a call the next night, and to see what
+sort of a place he had managed to get to live in. I well remember that
+next night. It was the first on which I realized the chances of a change
+of life presented by the village, and this was the start of two months'
+"village" life for me. I went off from our old trench after dusk on my
+usual round of the machine guns. When this was over I struck off back
+across the field behind our trench to the village, and waded up what had
+been the one and only street. Out of the dozen mangled wrecks of houses
+I didn't know which one my pal had chosen as his residence, so I went
+along the shell-mutilated, water-logged road, peering into this ruin and
+that, until, at the end of the street, about four hundred yards from the
+Germans and two hundred yards from our own trenches, I came across a
+damp and dark figure lurking in the shadows: "'Alt! 'oo goes there?"
+"Friend!" "Pass, friend, all's well." The sentry, evidently posted at
+end of village.
+
+I got a tip from him as to my friend's new dwelling-place. "I say,
+Sentry, which house does Mr. Hudson live in?" "That small 'un down
+t'other end on the left, sir." "Thanks." I went back along the deserted
+ruin of a street, and at the far end on the left I saw the dim outline
+of a small cottage, almost intact it appeared, standing about five yards
+back from the road. This was the place the sentry meant right enough,
+and in I went at the hole in the plaster wall. The front door having
+apparently stopped something or other previously, was conspicuous by its
+absence.
+
+All was dark. I groped my way along round to the back, stumbling over
+various bits of debris on the ground, until I found the opening into
+what must be the room where Hudson had elected to live. Not a light
+showed anywhere, which was as it should be, for a light would be easily
+seen by the Boches not far away, and if they did see one there would be
+trouble.
+
+[Illustration: "Someone's been <u>at</u> this blinkin Strawberry"]
+
+I came to an opening covered with an old sack. Pulling this a little to
+one side I was greeted with a volume of suffocating smoke. I proceeded
+further, and diving in under the sack, got inside the room. In the midst
+of the smoke, sitting beside a crushed and battered fire-bucket, sat a
+man, his face illuminated by the flickering light from the fire. The
+rest of the room was bathed in mysterious darkness. "Where's Mr.
+Hudson?" I asked. "He's out havin' a look at the barbed wire in front
+of the village, I think, sir; but he'll be back soon, as this is where
+'e stays now." I determined to wait, and, to fill in the time, started
+to examine the cottage.
+
+It was the first house I had been into in the firing line, and,
+unsavoury wreck of a place as it was, it gave one a delightful feeling
+of comfort to sit on the stone-flagged floor and look upon four
+perforated walls and a shattered roof. The worst possible house in the
+world would be an improvement on any of those dug-outs we had in the
+trenches. The front room had been blown away, leaving a back room and a
+couple of lean-tos which opened out from it. An attic under the thatched
+roof with all one end knocked out completed the outfit. The outer and
+inner walls were all made of that stuff known as wattle and daub--sort
+of earth-like plaster worked into and around hurdles. A bullet would, of
+course, go through walls of this sort like butter, and so they had. For,
+on examining the outer wall on the side which faced the Germans, I found
+it looking like the top of a pepper-pot for holes.
+
+A sound as of a man trying to waltz with a cream separator, suggested
+to my mind that someone had tripped and fallen over that mysterious
+obstacle outside, which I had noticed on entering, and presently I heard
+Hudson's voice cursing through the sack doorway.
+
+He came in and saw me examining the place. "Hullo, you're here too, are
+you?" he exclaimed. "Are you going to stay here as well?"
+
+"I don't quite know yet," I replied. "It doesn't seem a bad idea, as I
+have to walk the round of all the guns the whole time; all I can and
+have to do is to hitch up in some central place, and this is just as
+central as that rotten trench we've just come from."
+
+"Of course it is," he replied. "If I were you I'd come along and stay
+with me, and go to all your places from here. If an attack comes you'll
+be able to get from one place to another much easier than if you were
+stuck in that trench. You'd never be able to move from there when an
+attack and bombardment had started."
+
+Having given the matter a little further consideration I decided to move
+from my dug-out to this cottage, so I left the village and went back
+across the field to the trench to see to the necessary arrangements.
+
+I got back to my lair and shouted for my servant. "Here, Smith," I said,
+"I'm going to fix up at one of the houses in the village. This place of
+ours here is no more central than the village, and any one of those
+houses is a damn sight better than this clay hole here. I want you to
+collect all my stuff and bring it along; I'll show you the way." So
+presently, all my few belongings having been collected, we set out for
+the village. That was my last of that fearful trench. A worse one I know
+could not be found. My new life in the village now started, and I soon
+saw that it had its advantages. For instance, there was a slight chance
+of fencing off some of the rain and water. But my knowledge of "front"
+by this time was such that I knew there were corresponding
+disadvantages, and my instinct told me that the village would present a
+fresh crop of dangers and troubles quite equal to those of the trench,
+though slightly different in style. I had now started off on my two
+months' sojourn in the village of St. Yvon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+STOCKTAKING--FORTIFYING--NEBULOUS FRAGMENTS
+
+
+Hudson, myself, his servant and my servant, all crushed into that house
+that night. What a relief it was! We all slept in our greatcoats on the
+floor, which was as hard as most floors are, and dirtier than the
+generality; but being out of the water and able to stretch oneself at
+full length made up for all deficiencies. Hudson and I both slept in the
+perforated room; the servants in the larger chamber, near the fire
+bucket.
+
+I got up just before dawn as usual, and taking advantage of the grey
+light, stole about the village and around the house, sizing up the
+locality and seeing how my position stood with regard to the various
+machine-gun emplacements. The dawn breaking, I had to skunk back into
+the house again, as it was imperative to us to keep up the effect of
+"Deserted house in village." We had to lurk inside all day, or if we
+went out, creep about with enormous caution, and go off down a slight
+slope at the back until we got to the edge of the wood which we knew
+must be invisible to the enemy. I spent this day making a thorough
+investigation of the house, creeping about all its component parts and
+thinking out how we could best utilize its little advantages. Hudson had
+crept out to examine the village by stealth, and I went on with plots
+for fortifying the "castle," and for being able to make ourselves as
+snug as we could in this frail shell of a cottage. I found a hole in the
+floor boards of the attic and pulled myself up into it thereby.
+
+This attic, as I have said before, had all one end blown away, but the
+two sloping thatched sides remained. I cut a hole in one of these with
+my pocket-knife, and thus obtained a view of the German trenches without
+committing the error of looking out through the blown-out end, which
+would have clearly shown an observer that the house was occupied.
+Looking out through the slit I had made I obtained a panoramic view,
+more or less, of the German trenches and our own. The view, in short,
+was this: One saw the backs of our own trenches, then the "No man's
+land" space of ground, and beyond that again the front of the German
+trenches. This is best explained by the sketch map which I give on the
+opposite page. I saw exactly how the house stood with regard to the
+position, and also noticed that it had two dangerous sides, _i.e._, two
+sides which faced the Germans, as our position formed two sides of a
+triangle.
+
+[Illustration: clogs and bucket]
+
+I then proceeded to explore the house. In the walls I found a great many
+bullets which had stuck in between the bricks of the solitary chimney or
+imbedded themselves in the woodwork of the door or supporting posts at
+the corners. Amongst the straw in the attic I found a typical selection
+of pathetic little trifles: two pairs of very tiny clogs, evidently
+belonging to some child about four or five years old, one or two old and
+battered hats, and a quantity of spinning material and instruments. I
+have the small clogs at my home now, the only souvenir I have of that
+house at St. Yvon, which I have since learnt is no more, the Germans
+having reduced it to a powdered up mound of brick-dust and charred
+straw. Outside, and lying all around, were a miscellaneous collection of
+goods. Half a sewing machine, a gaudy cheap metal clock, a sort of
+mangle with strange wooden blades (which I subsequently cut off to make
+shelves with), and a host of other dirty, rain-soaked odds and ends.
+
+[Illustration: map of village]
+
+Having concluded my examination I crept out back to the wood and took a
+look at it all from there. "Yes," I thought to myself, "it's all very
+nice, but, by Gad, we'll have to look out that they don't see us, and
+get to think we're in this village, or they'll give us a warm time." It
+had gone very much against my thought-out views on trench warfare,
+coming to this house at all, for I had learnt by the experiences of
+others that the best maxim to remember was "Don't live in a house."
+
+The reason is not far to seek. There is something very attractive to
+artillery about houses. They can range on them well, and they afford a
+more definite target than an open trench. Besides, if you can spot a
+house that contains, say, half a dozen to a dozen people, and just plop
+a "Johnson" right amidships, it generally means "exit house and people,"
+which, I suppose, is a desirable object to be attained, according to
+twentieth century manners.
+
+However, we had decided to live in the house, but as I crept back from
+the wood, I determined to take a few elementary and common-sense
+precautions. Hudson had returned when I got back, and together we
+discussed the house, the position, and everything we could think of in
+connection with the business, as we sat on the floor and had our midday
+meal of bully beef and biscuits, rounded up by tea and plum and apple
+jam spread neat from the tin on odd corners of broken biscuits. We
+thoroughly talked over the question of possible fortifications and
+precautions. I said, "What we really want is an emergency exit
+somewhere, where we can stand a little chance, if they start to shell
+us."
+
+He agreed, and we both decided to pile up all the odd bricks, which were
+lying outside at the back of the house, against the perforated wall, and
+then sleep there in a little easier state of mind. We contented
+ourselves with this little precaution to begin with, but later on, as we
+lived in that house, we thought of larger and better ideas, and launched
+out into all sorts of elaborate schemes, as I will show when the time
+comes.
+
+Anyway, for the first couple of sessions spent in that house in St.
+Yvon, we were content with merely making ourselves bullet proof. The
+whole day had to be spent with great caution indoors; any visit
+elsewhere had to be conducted with still greater caution, as the one
+great thing to be remembered was "Don't let 'em see we're in the
+village." So we had long days, just lying around in the dirty old straw
+and accumulated dirt of the cottage floor.
+
+We both sat and talked and read a bit, sometimes slept, and through the
+opening beneath the sack across the back door we watched the evenings
+creeping on, and finally came the night, when we stole out like vampires
+and went about our trench work. It was during these long, sad days that
+my mind suddenly turned on making sketches. This period of my trench
+life marked the start of _Fragments from France_, though it was not till
+the end of February that a complete and presentable effort, suitable for
+publication in a paper, emerged. It was nothing new to me to draw, as
+for a very long time before the war I had drawn hundreds of sketches,
+and had spent a great amount of time reading and learning about all
+kinds of drawing and painting. I have always had an enormous interest in
+Art; my room at home will prove that to anyone. Stacks of bygone efforts
+of mine will also bear testimony to this. Yet it was not until January,
+1915, that I had sufficiently resigned myself to my fate in the war, to
+let my mind turn to my only and most treasured hobby. In this cottage at
+St. Yvon the craving came back to me. I didn't fight against it, and
+began by making a few pencil scribbles with a joke attached, and pinned
+them up in our cracked shell of a room. Jokes at the expense of our
+miserable surroundings they were, and these were the first "Fragments."
+Several men in the local platoon collared these spasms, and soon after I
+came across them, muddy and battered, in various dug-outs near by. After
+these few sketches, which were done on rough bits of paper which I found
+lying about, I started to operate on the walls. With some bits of
+charcoal, I made a mess on all the four walls of our back room. There
+was a large circular gash, made by a spent bullet I fancy, on one of the
+walls, and by making it appear as though this mark was the centre point
+of a large explosion, I gave an apparent velocity to the figure of a
+German, which I drew above.
+
+These daubs of mine provoked mirth to those who lived with me, and
+others who occasionally paid us visits. I persisted, and the next
+"masterpiece" was the figure of a soldier (afterwards Private Blobs, of
+"Fragments") sitting up a tree staring straight in front of him into the
+future, whilst a party of corpulent Boches are stalking towards him
+through the long grass and barbed wire. He knows there's something not
+quite nice going on, but doesn't like to look down. This was called "The
+Listening Post," and the sensation described was so familiar to most
+that this again was apparently a success. So what with scribbling,
+reading and sleeping, not to mention time occupied in consuming plum and
+apple jam, bully, and other delicacies which a grateful country has
+ordained as the proper food for soldiers, we managed to pull through our
+days. Two doses of the trenches were done like this, and then came the
+third time up, when a sudden burst of enthusiasm and an increasing
+nervousness as to the safety of ourselves and our house, caused us to
+launch out into really trying to fortify the place. The cause of this
+decision to do something, to our abode was, I think, attributable to the
+fact that for about a fortnight the Germans had taken to treating us to
+a couple of dozen explosions each morning--the sort of thing one doesn't
+like just before breakfast; but if you've got to have it, the thing
+obviously to do is to try and defend yourself; so the next time, up we
+started.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A BRAIN WAVE--MAKING A "FUNK HOLE"
+--PLUGSTREET WOOD--SNIPING
+
+
+On arriving up at St. Yvon for our third time round there, we--as usual
+now--went into our cottage again, and the regiment spread itself out
+around the same old trenches. There was always a lot of work for me to
+do at nights, as machine guns always have to be moved as occasion
+arises, or if one gets a better idea for their position. By this time I
+had one gun in the remnant of a house about fifty yards away from our
+cottage. This was a reserve gun, and was there carrying out an idea of
+mine, _i.e._, that it was in a central position, which would enable it
+to be rapidly moved to any threatened part of the line, and also it
+would form a bit of an asset in the event of our having to defend the
+village.
+
+The section for this gun lived in the old cellar close by, and it was
+this cellar which gave me an idea. When I went into our cottage I
+searched to see if we had overlooked a cellar. No, there wasn't one.
+Now, then, the idea. I thought, "Why not make a cellar, and thus have a
+place to dive into when the strafing begins." After this terrific
+outburst of sagacity I sat down in a corner and, with a biscuitload of
+jam, discussed my scheme with my platoon-commander pal. We agreed it was
+a good idea. I was feeling energetic, and always liking a little
+tinkering on my own, I said I would make it myself.
+
+So Hudson retired into the lean-to and I commenced to plot this
+engineering project. I scraped away as much as necessary of the
+accumulated filth on the floor, and my knife striking something hard I
+found it to be tiles. Up till then I had always imagined it to be an
+earth floor, but tiled it was right enough--large, square, dark red ones
+of a very rough kind. I called for Smith, my servant, and telling him to
+bring his entrenching tool, I began to prize up some of the tiles. It
+wasn't very easy, fitting the blade of the entrenching tool into the
+crevices, but once I had got a start and had got one or two out, things
+were easier.
+
+I pulled up all the tiles along one wall about eight feet long and out
+into the room a distance of about four feet. I now had a bare patch of
+hard earth eight feet by four to contend with. Luckily we had a pickaxe
+and a shovel lying out behind the house, so taking off my sheepskin
+jacket and balaclava, I started off to excavate the hole which I
+proposed should form a sort of cellar.
+
+It was a big job, and my servant and I were hard at it, turn and turn
+about, the whole of that day. A dull, rainy day, a cold wind blowing the
+old sack about in the doorway, and in the semi-darkness inside yours
+truly handing up Belgian soil on a war-worn shovel to my servant, who
+held a sandbag perpetually open to receive it. A long and arduous job it
+was, and one in which I was precious near thinking that danger is
+preferable to digging. Mr. Doan, with his back-ache pills, would have
+done well if he had sent one of his travellers with samples round there
+that night. However, at the end of two days, I had got a really good
+hole delved out, and now I was getting near the more interesting
+feature, namely, putting a roof on, and finally being able to live in
+this under-ground dug-out.
+
+This roof was perhaps rather unique as roofs go. It was a large mattress
+with wooden sides, a kind of oblong box with a mattress top. I found it
+outside in a ruined cottage. Underneath the mattress part was a cavity
+filled with spiral springs. I arranged a pile of sandbags at each side
+of the hole in the floor in such a way as to be able to lay this
+curiosity on top to form a roof, the mattress part downwards. I then
+filled in with earth all the parts where the spiral springs were placed.
+Total result--a roof a foot thick of earth, with a good backbone of iron
+springs. I often afterwards wished that that mattress had been filleted,
+as the spiral springs had a nasty way of bursting through the striped
+cover and coming at you like the lid of a Jack-in-the-box. However, such
+is war.
+
+Above this roof I determined to pile up sandbags against the wall, right
+away up to the roof of the cottage.
+
+This necessitated about forty sandbags being filled, so it may easily be
+imagined we didn't do this all at once.
+
+However, in time, it was done--I mean after we had paid one or two more
+visits to the trenches.
+
+We all felt safer after these efforts. I think we were a bit safer, but
+not much. I mean that we were fairly all right against anything but a
+direct hit, and as we knew from which direction direct hits had to come,
+we made that wall as thick as possible. We could, I think, have smiled
+at a direct hit from an 18-pounder, provided we had been down our funk
+hole at the time; but, of course, a direct hit from a "Johnson" would
+have snuffed us completely (mattress and all).
+
+Life in this house and in the village was much more interesting and
+energetic than in that old trench. It was possible, by observing great
+caution, to creep out of the house by day and dodge about our position a
+bit, crawl up to points of vantage and survey the scene. Behind the
+cottage lay the wood--the great Bois de Ploegstert--and this in itself
+repaid a visit. In the early months of 1915 this wood was in a pretty
+mauled-about state, and as time went on of course got more so. It was
+full of old trenches, filled with water, relies of the period when we
+turned the Germans out of it. Shattered trees and old barbed wire in a
+solution of mud was the chief effect produced by the parts nearest the
+trenches, but further back "Plugstreet Wood" was quite a pretty place to
+walk about in. Birds singing all around, and rabbits darting about the
+tangled undergrowth. Long paths had been cut through the wood leading to
+the various parts of the trenches in front. A very quaint place, take it
+all in all, and one which has left a curious and not unpleasing
+impression on my mind.
+
+This ability to wander around and creep about various parts of our
+position, led to my getting an idea, which nearly finished my life in
+the cottage, village, or even Belgium. I suddenly got bitten with the
+sniping fever, and it occurred to me that, with my facilities for
+getting about, I could get into a certain mangled farm on our left and
+remain in the roof unseen in daylight. From there I felt sure that, with
+the aid of a rifle, I could tickle up a Boche or two in their trenches
+hard by. I was immensely taken with this idea. So, one morning (like
+Robinson Crusoe again) I set off with my fowling-piece and ammunition,
+and crawled towards the farm. I got there all right, and entering the
+dark and evil-smelling precincts, searched around for a suitable sniping
+post. I saw a beam overhead in a corner from which, if I could get on to
+it, I felt sure I should obtain a view of the enemy trenches through a
+gap in the tiled roof. I tied a bit of string to my rifle and then
+jumping for the beam, scrambled up on it and pulled the rifle up after
+me. When my heart pulsations had come down to a reasonable figure I
+peered out through the hole in the tiles. An excellent view! The German
+parapet a hundred yards away! Splendid!
+
+Now I felt sure I should see a Boche moving about or something; or I
+might possibly spot one looking over the top.
+
+I waited a long time on that beam, with my loaded rifle lying in front
+of me. I was just getting fed up with the waiting, and about to go away,
+when I thought I saw a movement in the trench opposite. Yes! it was. I
+saw the handle of something like a broom or a water scoop moving above
+the sandbags. Heart doing overtime again! Most exciting! I felt
+convinced I should see a Boche before long. And then, at last, I saw
+one--or rather I caught a glimpse of a hat appearing above the line of
+the parapet. One of those small circular cloth hats of theirs with the
+two trouser buttons in front.
+
+Up it came, and I saw it stand out nice and clear against the skyline. I
+carefully raised my rifle, took a steady aim, and fired. I looked:
+disappearance of hat! I ejected the empty cartridge case, and was just
+about to reload when, whizz, whistle, bang, crash! a shell came right at
+the farm, and exploded in the courtyard behind. I stopped short on the
+beam. Whizz, whistle, bang, crash! Another, right into the old cowshed
+on my left. Without waiting for any more I just slithered down off that
+beam, grabbed my rifle and dashing out across the yard back into the
+ditch beyond, started hastily scrambling along towards the end of one of
+our trenches. As I went I heard four more shells crash into that farm.
+It was at this moment that I coined the title of one of my sketches,
+"They've evidently seen me," for which I afterwards drew the picture
+near Wulverghem. I got back to our cottage, crawled into the hole in the
+floor, and thought things over. They must have seen the flash of my
+rifle through the tiles, and, suspecting possible sniping from the farm,
+must have wired back to their artillery, "Snipingberg from farmenhausen
+hoch!" or words to that effect.
+
+Altogether a very objectionable episode.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+ROBINSON CRUSOE--THAT TURBULENT TABLE
+
+
+By this time we had really got our little house quite snug. A hole in
+the floor, a three-legged chair, and brown paper pushed into the largest
+of the holes in the walls--what more could a man want? However, we did
+want something more, and that was a table. One gets tired of balancing
+tins of pl--(nearly said it again)--marmalade on one's knee and holding
+an enamel cup in one hand and a pocket-knife in the other. So we all
+said how nice a table would be. I determined to say no more, but to show
+by deeds, not by words, that I would find a table and have one there by
+the next day, like a fairy in a pantomime. I started off on my search
+one night. Take it from me--a fairy's is a poor job out there, and when
+you've read the next bit you'll agree.
+
+Behind our position stood the old ruined chateau, and beyond it one or
+two scattered cottages. I had never really had a good look at all at
+that part, and as I knew some of our reserve trenches ran around there,
+and that it would be a good thing to know all about them, I decided to
+ask the Colonel for permission to creep off one afternoon and explore
+the whole thing; incidentally I might by good luck find a table. It was
+possible, by wriggling up a mud valley and crawling over a few scattered
+remnants of houses and bygone trenches to reach the Colonel's
+headquarter dug-out in daytime. So I did it, and asked leave to go off
+back to have a look at the chateau and the land about it. He gave me
+permission, so armed with my long walking-stick (a billiard cue with the
+thin part cut off, which I found on passing another chateau one night) I
+started off to explore.
+
+I reached the chateau. An interesting sight it was. How many shells had
+hit it one couldn't even guess, but the results indicated a good few.
+What once had been well-kept lawns were now covered with articles which
+would have been much better left in their proper places. One suddenly
+came upon half a statue of Minerva or Venus wrapped in three-quarters of
+a stair carpet in the middle of one of the greenhouses. Passing on, one
+would find the lightning conductor projecting out through the tapestried
+seat of a Louis Quinze chair. I never saw such a mess.
+
+Inside, the upstairs rooms were competing with the ground-floor ones, as
+to which should get into the cellars first. It was really too terrible
+to contemplate the fearful destruction.
+
+I found it impossible to examine much of the interior of the chateau, as
+blocks of masonry and twisted iron girders closed up most of the doors
+and passages. I left this melancholy ruin, full of thought, and
+proceeded across the shell-pitted gardens towards the few little
+cottages beyond. These were in a better state of preservation, and were
+well worth a visit. In the first one I entered I found a table! the very
+thing I wanted. It was stuck away in a small lean-to at the back. A nice
+little green one, just the size to suit us.
+
+I determined to get it back to our shack somehow, but before doing so
+went on rummaging about these cottages. In the second cottage I made an
+enormously lucky find for us. Under a heap of firewood in an outhouse I
+found a large pile of coal. This was splendid, and would be invaluable
+to us and our fire-bucket. Nothing pleased me more than this, as the
+cold was very severe, and a fire meant so much to us. When I had
+completed my investigations and turned over all the oddments lying about
+to see if there was anything else of use to us, I started off on the
+return journey. It was now dark, and I was able to walk along without
+fear of being seen. Of course, I was taking the table with me. I decided
+to come back later for the coal, with a few sandbags for filling, so I
+covered it over and hid it as much as possible. (Sensation: Ali Baba
+returns from the forest.) I started off with the table. I had about
+three-quarters of a mile to go. Every hundred yards I had to sit down
+and rest. A table is a horrible thing to accompany one on a mile walk.
+
+I reached the chateau again, and out into the fields beyond, resting
+with my burden about three times before I got to the road which led
+straight on to our trenches. My task was a bit harder now, as I was in
+full view of the German trenches. Had it been daylight they could have
+seen me quite easily.
+
+Fortunately it was dark, but, of course, star shells would show one up
+quite distinctly. I staggered on down the road with the green table on
+my back, pausing as little as possible, but a rest had to be taken, and
+this at a very exposed part of the road. I put the table down and sat
+panting on the top. A white streak shot into the air--a star shell.
+Curse! I sprang off the green top and waltzed with my four-legged wooden
+octopus into the ditch at the side, where I lay still, waiting for the
+light to die out. Suspense over. I went on again.
+
+At last I got back with that table and pushed it into our hovel under
+the sack doorway.
+
+Immense success! "Just the thing we wanted!"
+
+We all sat down to dinner that night in the approved fashion, whilst I,
+with the air of a conspirator, narrated the incredible story of the vast
+Eldorado of coal which I had discovered, and, over our shrimp paste and
+biscuits we discussed plans for its removal.
+
+[Illustration: "Take away me rank and honour, but give me a bag of
+coke."]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE AMPHIBIANS--FED UP, BUT DETERMINED
+--THE GUN PARAPET
+
+
+So you see, life in our cottage was quite interesting and adventurous in
+its way. At night our existence was just the same as before; all the
+normal work of trench life. Making improvements to our trenches led to
+endless work with sandbags, planks, dug-outs, etc. My particular job was
+mostly improving machine-gun positions, or selecting new sites and
+carrying out removals,
+
+  "BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER.
+  MACHINE GUNS REMOVED AT SHORTEST NOTICE.
+  ATTACKS QUOTED FOR."
+
+And so the long dark dreary nights went on. The men garrisoning the
+little cracked-up village lived mostly in cellars. Often on my rounds,
+during a rainy, windy, mournful night, I would look into a cellar and
+see a congested mass of men playing cards by the light of a candle stuck
+on a tin lid. A favourite form of illumination I came across was a lamp
+made out of an empty tobacco tin, rifle oil for the illuminant, and a
+bit of a shirt for a wick!
+
+People who read all these yarns of mine, and who have known the war in
+later days, will say, "Ah, how very different it was then to now." In my
+last experiences in the war I have watched the enormous changes creeping
+in. They began about July, 1915. My experiences since that date were
+very interesting; but I found that much of the romance had left the
+trenches. The old days, from the beginning to July, 1915, were all so
+delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and
+ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sadly needs--a touch
+of romance.
+
+Way back there, in about January, 1915, our soldiers had a perfectly
+unique test of human endurance against appalling climatic conditions.
+They lived in a vast bog, without being able to utilize modern
+contrivances for making the tight against adverse conditions anything
+like an equal contest. And yet I wouldn't have missed that time for
+anything, and I'm sure they wouldn't either.
+
+Those who have not actually had to experience it, or have not had the
+opportunity to see what our men "stuck out" in those days, will never
+fully grasp the reality.
+
+One night a company commander came to me in the village and told me he
+had got a bit of trench under his control which was altogether
+impossible to hold, and he wanted me to come along with him to look at
+it, and see if I could do anything in the way of holding the position by
+machine guns. His idea was that possibly a gun might be fixed in such a
+place behind so as to cover the frontage occupied by this trench. I came
+along with him to have a look and see what could be done. He and I went
+up the rain-soaked village street and out on to the field beyond. It was
+as dark as pitch, and about 11 p.m. Occasional shots cracked out of the
+darkness ahead from the German trenches, and I remember one in
+particular that woke us up a bit. A kind of derelict road-roller stood
+at one side of the field, and as we passed this, walking pretty close
+together, a bullet whizzed between us. I don't know which head it was
+nearest to, but it was quite near enough for both of us. We went on
+across the field for about two hundred yards, out towards a pile of
+ruins which had once been a barn, and which stood between our lines and
+the Germans.
+
+Near this lay the trench which he had been telling me about. It was
+quite the worst I have ever seen. A number of men were in it, standing
+and leaning, silently enduring the following conditions. It was quite
+dark. The enemy was about two hundred yards away, or rather less. It was
+raining, and the trench contained over three feet of water. The men,
+therefore, were standing up to the waist in water. The front parapet was
+nothing but a rough earth mound which, owing to the water about, was
+practically non-existent. Their rifles lay on the saturated mound in
+front. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their
+equipment below the water at the bottom of the trench. There they were,
+taking it all as a necessary part of the great game; not a grumble nor a
+comment.
+
+The company commander and I at once set about scheming out an
+alternative plan. Some little distance back we found a cellar which had
+once been below a house. Now there was no house, so by standing in the
+cellar one got a view along the ground and level with it. This was the
+very place for a machine gun. So we decided on fixing one there and
+making a sort of roof over a portion of the cellar for the gunners to
+live in. After about a couple of hours' work we completed this
+arrangement, and then removed the men, who, it was arranged, should
+leave the trenches that night and go back to our billets for a rest,
+till the next time up. We weren't quite content with the total safety of
+our one gun in that cellar, so we started off on a further idea.
+
+Our trenches bulged out in a bit of a salient to the right of the rotten
+trench, and we decided to mount another gun at a certain projection in
+our lines so as to enfilade the land across which the other gun would
+fire.
+
+On inspecting the projected site we found it was necessary to make
+rather an abnormally high parapet to stand the gun on. No sandbags to
+spare, of course, so the question was, "What shall we make a parapet
+of?"
+
+We plodded off back to the village and groped around the ruins for
+something solid and high enough to carry the gun. After about an hour's
+climbing about amongst debris in the dark, and hauling ourselves up into
+remnants of attics, etc., we came upon a sewing machine. It was one of
+that sort that's stuck on a wooden table with a treadle arrangement
+underneath. We saw an idea at a glance. Pull off the sewing machine, and
+use the table. It was nearly high enough, and with just three or four
+sandbags we felt certain it would do. We performed the necessary
+surgical operation on the machine, and taking it in turns, padded off
+down to the front line trench. We had a bit of a job with that table.
+The parapet was a jumbled assortment of sandbags, clay, and old bricks
+from the neighbouring barn: but we finally got a good sound parapet
+made, and in about another hour's time had fixed a machine gun, with
+plenty of ammunition, in a very unattractive position from the Boche
+point of view. We all now felt better, and I'm certain that the men who
+held that trench felt better too. But I am equally certain that they
+would have stayed there _ad lib_ even if we hadn't thought of and
+carried out an alternative arrangement. A few more nights of rain,
+danger and discomfort, then the time would come for us to be relieved,
+and those same men would be back at billets, laughing, talking and
+smoking, buoyant as ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+ARRIVAL OF THE "JOHNSONS"--"WHERE
+DID THAT ONE GO?"--THE FIRST FRAGMENT
+DISPATCHED--THE EXODUS--WHERE?
+
+
+Shortly after these events we experienced rather a nasty time in the
+village. It had been decided, way back somewhere at headquarters, that
+it was essential to hold the village in a stronger way than we had been
+doing. More men were to be kept there, and a series of trenches dug in
+and around it, thus forming means for an adequate defence should
+disaster befall our front line trenches, which lay out on a radius of
+about five hundred yards from the centre of the village. This meant
+working parties at night, and a pretty considerable collection of
+soldiers lurking in cavities in various ruined buildings by day.
+
+Anyone will know that when a lot of soldiers congregate in a place it is
+almost impossible to prevent someone or other being seen, or smoke from
+some fire showing, or, even worse, a light visible at night from some
+imperfectly shuttered house.
+
+At all events, something or other gave the Boches the tip, and we soon
+knew they had got their attention on our village.
+
+Each morning as we clustered round our little green table and had our
+breakfast, we invariably had about half a dozen rounds of 18-pounders
+crash around us with varying results, but one day, as we'd finished our
+meal and all sat staring into the future, we suddenly caught the sound
+of something on more corpulent lines arriving. That ponderous, slow
+rotating whistle of a "Johnson" caught our well-trained ears; a pause!
+then a reverberating, hollow-sounding "crumph!" We looked at each other.
+
+"Heavies!" we all exclaimed.
+
+"Look out! here comes another!" and sure enough there it was, that
+gargling crescendo of a whistle followed by a mighty crash, considerably
+nearer.
+
+We soon decided that our best plan was to get out of the house, and stay
+in the ditch twenty yards away until it was over.
+
+A house is an unwholesome spot to be in when there's shelling about. Our
+funk hole was all right for whizz-bangs and other fireworks of that
+sort, but no use against these portmanteaux they were now sending along.
+
+Well, to resume; they put thirteen heavies into that village in pretty
+quick time. One old ruin was set on fire, and I felt the consequent
+results would be worse than just losing the building; as all the men in
+it had to rush outside and keep darting in and out through the flames
+and smoke, trying to save their rifles and equipment.
+
+After a bit we returned into the house--a trifle prematurely, I'm
+afraid--as presently a pretty large line in explosive drainpipes landed
+close outside, and, as we afterwards discovered, blew out a fair-sized
+duck pond in the road. We were all inside, and I think nearly every one
+said a sentence which gave me my first idea for a _Fragment from
+France_. A sentence which must have been said countless times in this
+war, _i.e._, "Where did that one go?"
+
+We were all inside the cottage now, with intent, staring faces, looking
+outside through the battered doorway. There was something in the whole
+situation which struck me as so pathetically amusing, that when the
+ardour of the Boches had calmed down a bit, I proceeded to make a pencil
+sketch of the situation. When I got back to billets the next time I
+determined to make a finished wash drawing of the scene, and send it to
+some paper or other in England. In due course we got back to billets,
+and the next morning I fished out my scanty drawing materials from my
+valise, and sitting at a circular table in one of the rooms at the farm,
+I did a finished drawing of "Where did that one go," occasionally
+looking through the window on to a mountain of manure outside for
+inspiration.
+
+The next thing was to send it off. What paper should I send it to? I had
+had a collection of papers sent out to me at Christmas time from some
+one or other. A few of these were still lying about. A _Bystander_ was
+amongst them. I turned over the pages and considered for a bit whether
+my illustrated joke might be in their line. I thought of several other
+papers, but on the whole concluded that the _Bystander_ would suit for
+the purpose, and so, having got the address off the cover, I packed up
+my drawing round a roll of old paper, enclosed it in brown paper, and
+put it out to be posted at the next opportunity. In due course it went
+to the post, and I went to the trenches again, forgetting all about the
+incident.
+
+Next time in the trenches was full of excitement. We had done a couple
+of days of the endless mud, rain, and bullet-dodging work when suddenly
+one night we heard we were to be relieved and go elsewhere. Every one
+then thought of only one thing--where were we going? We all had
+different ideas. Some said we were bound for Ypres, which we heard at
+that time was a pretty "warm" spot; some said La Bassee was our
+destination--"warm," but not quite as much so as Ypres. Wild rumours
+that we were going to Egypt were of course around; they always are.
+There was another beauty: that we were going back to England for a rest!
+
+The night after the news, another battalion arrived, and, after handing
+over our trenches, we started off on the road to "Somewhere in France."
+It was about 11.30 p.m. before we had handed over everything and finally
+parted from those old trenches of ours. I said good-bye to our little
+perforated hovel, and set off with all my machine gunners and guns for
+the road behind the wood, to go--goodness knows where. We looked back
+over our shoulders several times as we plodded along down the muddy road
+and into the corduroy path which ran through the wood. There, behind us,
+lay St. Yvon, under the moonlight and drifting clouds; a silhouetted
+mass of ruins beyond the edge of the wood. Still the same old
+intermittent cracking of the rifle shots and the occasional star shell.
+It was quite sad parting with that old evil-smelling, rain-soaked scene
+of desolation. We felt how comfortable we had all been there, now that
+we were leaving. And leaving for what?--that was the question. When I
+reached the road, and had superintended loading up our limbers, I got
+instructions from the transport officer as to which way we were to go.
+The battalion had already gone on ahead, and the machine-gun section was
+the last to leave. We were to go down the road to Armentieres, and at
+about twelve midnight we started on our march, rattling off down the
+road leading to Armentieres, bound for some place we had never seen
+before. At about 2 a.m. we got there; billets had been arranged for us,
+but at two in the morning it was no easy task to find the quarters
+allotted to us without the assistance of a guide. The battalion had got
+there first, had found their billets and gone to bed. I and the
+machine-gun section rattled over the cobbles into sleeping Armentieres,
+and hadn't the slightest idea where we had to go. Nobody being about to
+tell us, we paraded the town like a circus procession for about an hour
+before finally finding out where we were to billet, and ultimately we
+reached our destination when, turning into the barns allotted to us, we
+made the most of what remained of the night in well-earned repose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+NEW TRENCHES--THE NIGHT INSPECTION--
+LETTER FROM THE "BYSTANDER"
+
+
+Next day we discovered the mystery of our sudden removal. The battle of
+Neuve Chapelle was claiming considerable attention, and that was where
+we were going. We were full of interest and curiosity, and were all for
+getting there as soon as possible. But it was not to be. Mysterious
+moves were being made behind the scenes which I, and others like me,
+will never know anything about; but, anyway, we now suddenly got another
+bewildering order. After a day spent in Armentieres we were told to
+stand by for going back towards Neuve Eglise again, just the direction
+from which we had come. We all knew too much about the war to be
+surprised at anything, so we mutely prepared for another exit. It was a
+daylight march this time, and a nice, still, warm day. Quite a cheery,
+interesting march we had, too, along the road from Armentieres to Neuve
+Eglise. We were told that we were to march past General Sir Horace Smith
+Dorrien, whom we should find waiting for us near the Pont de Nieppe--a
+place we had to pass _en route_. Every one braced up at this, and keenly
+looked forward to reaching Nieppe. I don't know why, but I had an idea
+he would be in his car on the right of the road. To make no mistake I
+muttered "Eyes right" to myself for about a quarter of a mile, so as to
+make a good thing of the salute. We came upon the Pont de Nieppe
+suddenly, round the corner, and there was the General--on the left! All
+my rehearsing useless. Annoying, but I suppose one can't expect Generals
+to tell you where they are going to stand.
+
+We reached Neuve Eglise in time, and went into our old billets. We all
+thought our fate was "back into those ---- old Plugstreet trenches
+again," but _mirabile dictu_--it was not to be so. The second day in
+billets I received a message from the Colonel to proceed to his
+headquarter farm. I went, and heard the news. We were to take over a new
+line of trenches away to the left of Plugstreet, and that night I was to
+accompany him along with all the company commanders on a round of
+inspection.
+
+A little before dusk we started off and proceeded along various roads
+towards the new line. All the country was now brand new to me, and full
+of interest. After we had gone about a mile and a half the character of
+the land changed. We had left all the Plugstreet wood effect behind, and
+now emerged on to far more open and flatter ground. By dusk we were
+going down a long straight road with poplar trees on either side. At the
+end of this stood a farm on the right. We walked into the courtyard and
+across it into the farm. This was the place the battalion we were going
+to relieve had made its headquarters. Not a bad farm. The roof was still
+on, I noticed, and concluded from that that life there was evidently
+passable. We had to wait here some time, as we were told that the enemy
+could see for a great distance around there, and would pepper up the
+farm as sure as fate if they saw anyone about. Our easy-going entry into
+the courtyard had not been received with great favour, as it appeared we
+were doing just the very thing to get the roof removed. However, the
+dusk had saved us, I fancy.
+
+[Illustration: Comin' on down to the Estaminet tonight, Arry?]
+
+As soon as it was really dark we all sallied forth, accompanied by
+guides this time, who were to show us the trenches. I crept along behind
+our Colonel, with my eyes peeled for possible gun positions, and
+drinking in as many details of the entire situation as I could.
+
+We walked about ten miles that night, I should think, across unfamiliar
+swamps and over unsuspected antique abandoned trenches, past dead cows
+and pigs. We groped about the wretched shell-pitted fields, examining
+the trenches we were about to take over. You would be surprised to find
+how difficult a simple line of trenches can seem at night if you have
+never seen them before.
+
+You don't seem able to get the angles, somehow, nor to grasp how the
+whole situation faces, or how you get from one part to another, and all
+that sort of thing. I know that by the time I had been along the whole
+lot, round several hundred traverses, and up dozens of communication
+trenches and saps, all my mariner-like ability for finding my way back
+to Neuve Eglise had deserted me. Those guides were absolutely necessary
+in order to get us back to the headquarter farm. One wants a compass,
+the pole star, and plenty of hope ever to get across those enormous
+prairies--known as fields out there--and reach the place at the other
+side one wants to get to. It is a long study before you really learn the
+simplest and best way up to your own bit of trench; but when it comes to
+learning everybody else's way up as well (as a machine gunner has to),
+it needs a long and painful course of instruction--higher branches of
+this art consisting of not only knowing the way up, but the _safest_ way
+up.
+
+The night we carried out this tour of inspection we were all left in a
+fog as to how we had gone to and returned from the trenches. After we
+had got in we knew, by long examination of the maps, how everything
+lay, but it was some time before we had got the real practical hang of
+it all.
+
+Our return journey from the inspection was a pretty silent affair. We
+all knew these were a nasty set of trenches. Not half so pleasant as the
+Plugstreet ones. The conversations we had with the present owners made
+it quite clear that warm times were the vogue round there. Altogether we
+could see we were in for a "bit of a time."
+
+We cleared off back to Neuve Eglise that night, and next day took those
+trenches over. This was the beginning of my life at Wulverghem. When we
+got in, late that night, we found that the post had arrived some time
+before. Thinking there might be something for me, I went into the back
+room where they sorted the letters, to get any there might be before
+going off to my own billets. "There's only one for you, sir, to-night,"
+said the corporal who looked after the letters. He handed me an
+envelope. I opened it. Inside, a short note and a cheque.
+
+"We shall be very glad to accept your sketch, 'Where did that one go
+to?' From the _Bystander_"--the foundation-stone of _Fragments from
+France_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+WULVERGHEM--THE DOUVE--CORDUROY
+BOARDS--BACK AT OUR FARM
+
+
+We got out of the frying-pan into the fire when we went to Wulverghem--a
+much more exciting and precarious locality than Plugstreet. During all
+my war experiences I have grown to regard Plugstreet as the unit of
+tranquillity. I have never had the fortune to return there since those
+times mentioned in previous chapters. When you leave Plugstreet you take
+away a pleasing memory of slime and reasonable shelling, which is more
+than you can say for the other places. If you went to Plugstreet after,
+say, the Ypres Salient, it would be more or less like going to a
+convalescent home after a painful operation.
+
+But, however that may be, we were now booked for Wulverghem, or rather
+the trenches which lie along the base of the Messines ridge, about a
+mile in front of that shattered hamlet. Two days after our tour of
+inspection we started off to take over. The nuisance about these
+trenches was that the point where one had to unload and proceed across
+country, man-handling everything, was abnormally far away from the
+firing line. We had about a mile and a half to do after we had marched
+collectively as a battalion, so that my machine-gunners were obliged to
+carry the guns and all the tackle we needed all that distance to their
+trenches. This, of course, happened every time we "came in."
+
+The land where these trenches lay was a vast and lugubrious expanse of
+mud, with here and there a charred and ragged building. On our right lay
+the River Douve, and, on our left, the trenches turned a corner back
+inwards again. In front lay the long line of the Messines ridge. The
+Boches had occupied this ridge, and our trenches ran along the valley at
+its foot. The view which the Boches got by being perched on this hill
+rendered them exactly what their soul delights in, _i.e._, "uber alles."
+They can see for miles. However, those little disadvantages have not
+prevented us from efficiently maintaining our trenches at the far end of
+the plain, in spite of the difficulty of carrying material across this
+flat expanse.
+
+I forget what night of the week we went in and took over those trenches,
+but, anyhow, it was a precious long one. I had only seen the place once
+before, and in the darkness of the night had a long and arduous job
+finding the way to the various positions allotted for my guns, burdened
+as I was with all my sections and impedimenta. I imagine I walked about
+five or six miles that night. We held a front of about a mile, and,
+therefore, not only did I have to do the above-mentioned mile and a
+half, but also two or three miles going from end to end of our line. It
+was as dark as could be, and the unfamiliar ground seemed to be pitted
+like a Gruyere cheese with shell holes. Unlimbering back near a farm we
+sloshed off across the mud flat towards the section of trench which we
+had been ordered to occupy. I trusted to instinct to strike the right
+angles for coming out at the trenches which henceforth were to be ours.
+In those days my machine guns were the old type of Maxim--a very weighty
+concern. To carry these guns and all the necessary ammunition across
+this desert was a long and very exhausting process. Occasional bursts of
+machine-gun fire and spent bullets "zipping" into the mud all around
+hardly tended to cheer the proceedings. The path along to the right-hand
+set of trenches, where I knew a couple of guns must go, was lavishly
+strewn with dead cows and pigs. When we paused for a rest we always
+seemed to do so alongside some such object, and consequently there was
+no hesitation in moving on again. None of us had the slightest idea as
+to the nature of the country on which we were now operating. I myself
+had only seen it by night, and nobody else had been there at all.
+
+The commencement of the journey from the farm of disembarkation lay
+along what is known as corduroy boards. These are short, rough, wooden
+planks, nailed crossways on long baulks of timber. This kind of path is
+a very popular one at the front, and has proved an immense aid in saving
+the British army from being swallowed up in the mud.
+
+The corduroy path ran out about four hundred yards across the grassless,
+sodden field. We then came suddenly to the beginning of a road. A small
+cottage stood on the right, and in front of it a dead cow. Here we
+unfortunately paused, but almost immediately moved on (gas masks weren't
+introduced until much later!).
+
+From this point the road ran in a long straight line towards Messines.
+At intervals, on the right-hand side only, stood one or two farms, or,
+rather, their skeletons. As we went along in the darkness these farms
+silhouetted their dreary remains against the faint light in the sky, and
+looked like vast decayed wrecks of antique Spanish galleons upside down.
+On past these farms the road was suddenly cut across by a deep and ugly
+gash: a reserve trench. So now we were getting nearer to our
+destination. A particularly large and evil-smelling farm stood on the
+right. The reserve trench ran into its back yard, and disappeared
+amongst the ruins. From the observations I had made, when inspecting
+these trenches, I knew that the extreme right of our position was a bit
+to the right of this farm, so I and my performing troupe decided to go
+through the farmyard and out diagonally across the field in front. We
+did this, and at last could dimly discern the line of the trenches in
+front. We were now on the extreme right of the section we had to
+control, close to the River Douve, and away to the left ran the whole
+line of our trenches. Along the whole length of this line the business
+of taking over from the old battalion was being enacted. That old
+battalion made a good bargain when they handed over that lot of slots to
+us. The trenches lay in a sort of echelon formation, the one on the
+extreme right being the most advanced. This one we made for, and as we
+squelched across the mud to it a couple of German star shells fizzed up
+into the air and illuminated the whole scene. By their light I could see
+the whole position, but could only form an approximate idea of how our
+lines ran, as our parapets and trenches merged into the mud so
+effectively as to look like a vast, tangled, disorderly mass of
+sandbags, slime and shell holes. We reached the right-hand trench. It
+was a curious sort of a trench too, quite a different pattern to those
+we had occupied at St. Yvon, The first thing that struck me about all
+these trenches was the quantity of sandbags there were, and the
+geometrical exactness of the attempts at traverses, fire steps, bays,
+etc. Altogether, theoretically, much superior trenches, although very
+cramped and narrow. I waited for another star shell in order to see the
+view out in front. One hadn't long to wait around there for star shells.
+One very soon sailed up, nice and white, into the inky sky, and I saw
+how we were placed with regard to the Germans, the hill and Messines. We
+were quite near a little stream, a tributary of the Douve, in fact it
+ran along the front of our trenches. Immediately on the other side the
+ground rose in a gradual slope up the Messines hill, and about
+three-quarters way up this slope were the German trenches.
+
+When I had settled the affairs of the machine guns in the right-hand
+trench I went along the line and fixed up the various machine-gun teams
+in the different trenches as I came to them. The ground above the
+trenches was so eaten away by the filling of sandbags and the cavities
+caused by shell fire, that I found it far quicker and simpler to walk
+along in the trenches themselves, squeezing past the men standing about
+and around the thick traverses. Our total frontal length must have been
+three-quarters of a mile, I should think. This, our first night in, was
+a pretty busy one. Dug-outs had to be found to accommodate every one;
+platoons arranged in all the sections of trench, all the hundred-and-one
+details which go to making trench life as secure and comfortable as is
+possible under the circumstances, had to be seen to and arranged. I had
+fixed up all the sections by about ten o'clock and then started along
+the lines again trying to get as clear an idea as possible of the entire
+situation of the trenches, the type of land in front of each, the means
+of access to each trench, and possible improvements in the various gun
+positions. All this had to be done to the accompaniment of a pretty
+lively mixture of bullets and star shells. Sniping was pretty severe
+that night, and, indeed, all the time we were in those Douve trenches.
+There was an almost perpetual succession of rifle shots, intermingled
+with the rapid crackling of machine-gun fire. However, you soon learn
+out there that you can just as easily "get one" on the calmest night by
+an accidental spent bullet as you can when a little hate is on, and
+bullets are coming thick and fast. The first night we came to the Douve
+was a pretty calm one, comparatively speaking; yet one poor chap in the
+leading platoon, going through the farm courtyard I mentioned, got shot
+right through the forehead. No doubt whatever it was an accidental
+bullet, and not an aimed shot, as the Germans could not have possibly
+seen the farm owing to the darkness of the night.
+
+Just as I was finishing my tour of inspection I came across the Colonel,
+who was going round everything, and thoroughly reconnoitring the
+position. He asked me to show him the gun positions. I went with him
+right along the line. We stood about on parapets, and walked all over
+the place, stopping motionless now and again as a star shell went up,
+and moving on again just in time to hear a bullet or two whizz past
+behind and go "smack" into a tree in the hedge behind, or "plop" into
+the mud parados. When the Colonel had finished his tour of inspection he
+asked me to walk back with him to his headquarters. "Where are you
+living, Bairnsfather?" said the Colonel to me. "I don't know, sir," I
+replied. "I thought of fixing up in that farm (I indicated the most
+aromatized one by the reserve trench) and making some sort of a dug-out
+if there isn't a cellar; it's a fairly central position for all the
+trenches."
+
+The Colonel thought for a moment: "You'd better come along back to the
+farm on the road for to-night anyway, and you can spend to-morrow
+decorating the walls with a few sketches," he said. This was a decidedly
+better suggestion, a reprieve, in fact, as prior to this remark my
+bedroom for the night looked like being a borrowed ground sheet slung
+over some charred rafters which were leaning against a wall in the yard.
+
+I followed along behind the Colonel down the road, down the corduroy
+boards, and out at the old moated farm not far from Wulverghem. Thank
+goodness, I should get a floor to sleep on! A roof, too! Straw on the
+floor! How splendid!
+
+It was quite delightful turning into that farm courtyard, and entering
+the building. Dark, dismal and deserted as it was, it afforded an
+immense, glowing feeling of comfort after that mysterious, dark and
+wintry plain, with its long lines of grey trenches soaking away there
+under the inky sky.
+
+Inside I found an empty room with some straw on the floor. There was
+only one shell hole in it, but some previous tenant had stopped it up
+with a bit of sacking. My word, I was tired! I rolled myself round with
+straw, and still retaining all my clothes, greatcoat, balaclava,
+muffler, trench boots, I went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE PAINTER AND DECORATOR--FRAGMENTS
+FORMING--NIGHT ON THE MUD PRAIRIE
+
+
+Had a fairly peaceful night. I say fairly because when one has to get up
+three or four times to see whether the accumulated rattle of rifle fire
+is going to lead to a battle, or turn out only to be merely "wind up,"
+it rather disturbs one's rest. You see, had an attack of some sort come
+on, yours truly would have had to run about a mile and a half to some
+central spot to overlook the machine-gun department. I used to think
+that to be actually with one gun was the best idea, but I subsequently
+found that this plan hampered me considerably from getting to my others;
+the reason being that, once established in one spot during an open
+trench attack, it is practically impossible to get to another part
+whilst the action is on.
+
+At the Douve, however, I discovered a way of getting round this which I
+will describe later.
+
+On this first night, not being very familiar with the neighbourhood, I
+found it difficult to ignore the weird noises which floated in through
+the sack-covered hole. There is something very eerie and strange about
+echoing rifle shots in the silence of the night. Once I got up and
+walked out into the courtyard of the farm, and passing through it came
+out on to the end of the road. All as still as still could be, except
+the distant intermittent cracking of the rifles coming from away across
+the plain, beyond the long straight row of lofty poplar trees which
+marked the road. A silence of some length might supervene, in which one
+would only hear the gentle rustling of the leaves; then suddenly, far
+away on the right, a faint surging roar can be heard, and then louder
+and louder. "Wind up over there." Then, gradually, silence would assert
+itself once more and leave you with nothing but the rustling leaves and
+the crack of the sniper's rifle on the Messines ridge.
+
+My first morning at this farm was, by special request, to be spent in
+decorating the walls.
+
+There wasn't much for anyone to do in the day time, as nobody could go
+out. The same complaint as the other place in St. Yvon: "We mustn't look
+as if anyone lives in the farm." Drawing, therefore, was a great aid to
+me in passing the day. Whilst at breakfast I made a casual examination
+of the room where we had our meals. I was not the first to draw on the
+walls of that room. Some one in a previous battalion had already put
+three or four sketches on various parts of the fire-place. Several large
+spaces remained all round the room, however; but I noticed that the
+surface was very poor compared with the wall round the fire-place.
+
+The main surface was a rough sort of thing, and, on regarding it
+closely, it looked as if it was made of frozen porridge, being slightly
+rough, and of a grey-brown colour. I didn't know what on earth I could
+use to draw on this surface, but after breakfast I started to scheme out
+something. I went into the back room, which we were now using as a
+kitchen, and finding some charcoal I tried that. It was quite
+useless--wouldn't make a mark on the wall at all. Why, I don't know; but
+the charcoal just glided about and merely seemed to make dents and
+scratches on the "frozen porridge." I then tried to make up a mixture.
+It occurred to me that possibly soot might be made into a sort of ink,
+and used with a paint brush. I tried this, but drew a blank again. I was
+bordering on despair, when my servant said he thought he had put a
+bottle of Indian ink in my pack when we left to come into the trenches
+this time. He had a look, and found that his conjecture was right; he
+had got a bottle of Indian ink and a few brushes, as he thought I might
+want to draw something, so had equipped the pack accordingly.
+
+I now started my fresco act on the walls of the Douve farm.
+
+I spent most of the day on the job, and discovered how some startling
+effects could be produced.
+
+Materials were: A bottle of Indian ink, a couple of brushes, about a
+hundredweight of useless charcoal, and a G.S. blue and red pencil.
+
+Amongst the rough sketches that I did that day were the original
+drawings for two subsequent "Fragments" of mine.
+
+One was the rough idea for "They've evidently seen me," and the other
+was "My dream for years to come." The idea for "They've evidently seen
+me" came whilst carrying back that table to St. Yvon, as I mentioned in
+a previous chapter, but the scenario for the idea was not provided for
+until I went to this farm some time later. In intervals of working at
+the walls I rambled about the farm building, and went up into a loft
+over a barn at the end of the farm nearest the trenches. I looked out
+through a hole in the tiles just in time to hear a shell come over from
+away back amongst the Germans somewhere, and land about five hundred
+yards to the left. The sentence, "They've evidently seen me," came
+flashing across my mind again, and I now saw the correct setting in my
+mind: _i.e._, the enthusiastic observer looking out of the top of a
+narrow chimney, whilst a remarkably well-aimed shell leads "him of the
+binoculars" to suppose that they _have_ seen him.
+
+I came downstairs and made a pencil sketch of my idea, and before I left
+the trenches that time I had done a wash drawing and sent it to England.
+This was my second "Fragment."
+
+The other sketch, "My dream for years to come," was drawn on one wall
+of a small apple or potato room, opening off our big room, and the
+drawing occupied the whole wall.
+
+[Illustration: porters]
+
+I knocked off drawing about four o'clock, and did a little of the
+alternative occupation, that of looking out through the cracked windows
+on to the mutilated courtyard in front. It was getting darker now, and
+nearing the time when I had to put on all my tackle, and gird myself up
+for my round of the trenches. As soon as it was nearly dark I started
+out. The other officers generally left a bit later, but as I had such a
+long way to go, and as I wanted to examine the country while there was
+yet a little light, I started at dusk. Not yet knowing exactly how much
+the enemy could see on the open mud flat, I determined to go along by
+the river bank, and by keeping among the trees I hoped to escape
+observation. I made for the Douve, and soon got along as far as the row
+of farms. I explored all these, and a shocking sight they were. All
+charred and ruined, and the skeleton remains slowly decomposing away
+into the unwholesome ground about them. I went inside several of the
+dismantled rooms. Nearly all contained old and battered bits of
+soldiers' equipment, empty tins, and remnants of Belgian property. Sad
+relics of former billeting: a living reminder of the rough times that
+had preceded our arrival in this locality. I passed on to another farm,
+and entered the yard near the river. It was nearly full of black wooden
+crosses, roughly made and painted over with tar. All that was left to
+mark the graves of those who had died to get our trenches where they
+were--at the bottom of the Messines ridge. A bleak and sombre winter's
+night, that courtyard of the ruined farm, the rows of crosses--I often
+think of it all now.
+
+As the darkness came on I proceeded towards the trenches, and when it
+had become sufficiently dark I entered the old farm by the reserve
+trench and crossed the yard to enter the field which led to the first of
+our trenches. At St. Yvon it was pretty airy work, going the rounds at
+night, but this was a jolly sight more so. The country was far more
+open, and although the Boches couldn't see us, yet they kept up an
+incessant sniping demonstration. Picking up my sergeant at Number 1
+trench, he and I started on our tour.
+
+We made a long and exhaustive examination that night, both of the
+existing machine-gun emplacements and of the entire ground, with a view
+to changing our positions. It was a long time before I finally left the
+trenches and started off across the desolate expanse to the Douve farm,
+and I was dead beat when I arrived there. On getting into the big room I
+found the Colonel, who had just come in. "Where's that right-hand gun of
+yours, Bairnsfather?" he asked. "Down on the right of Number 2 trench,
+sir," I answered; "just by the two willows near the sap which runs out
+towards Number 1." "It's not much of a place for it," he said; "where we
+ought to have it is to the right of the sap, so that it enfilades the
+whole front of that trench." "When do you want it moved, sir?" I asked.
+"Well, it ought to be done at once; it's no good where it is."
+
+That fixed it. I knew what he wanted; so I started out again, back over
+the mile and a half to alter the gun. It was a weary job; but I would
+have gone on going back and altering the whole lot for our Colonel, who
+was the best line in commanding officers I ever struck. Every one had
+the most perfect confidence in him. He was the most shell, bullet, and
+bomb defying person I have ever seen. When I got back for the second
+time that night I was quite ready to roll up in the straw, and be lulled
+off to sleep by the cracking rifle fire outside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+VISIONS OF LEAVE--DICK TURPIN--LEAVE!
+
+
+Our first time in the Douve trenches was mainly uneventful, but we all
+decided it was not as pleasant as St. Yvon. For my part, it was fifty
+per cent. worse than St. Yvon; but I was now buoyed up by a new light in
+the sky, which made the first time in more tolerable than it might
+otherwise have been. It was getting near my turn for leave! I had been
+looking forward to this for a long time, but there were many who had to
+take their turn in front of me, so I had dismissed the case for a bit.
+Recently, however, the powers that be had been sending more than one
+officer away at a time; consequently my turn was rapidly approaching. We
+came away back to billets in the usual way after our first dose of the
+Douve, and all wallowed off to our various billeting quarters. I was hot
+and strong on the leave idea now. It was really getting close and I
+felt disposed to find everything _couleur de rose_. Even the manure heap
+in the billeting farm yard looked covered with roses. I could have
+thrown a bag of confetti at the farmer's wife--it's most exhilarating to
+think of the coming of one's first leave. One maps out what one will do
+with the time in a hundred different ways. I was wondering how I could
+manage to transport my souvenirs home, as I had collected a pretty good
+supply by this time--shell cases, fuse tops, clogs, and that Boche rifle
+I got on Christmas Day.
+
+One morning (we had been about two days out) I got a note from the
+Adjutant to say I could put in my application. I put it in all right and
+then sat down and hoped for the best.
+
+My spirits were now raised to such a pitch that I again decided to ride
+to Nieppe--just for fun.
+
+I rode away down the long winding line, smiling at everything on either
+side--the three-sailed windmill with the top off; the estaminet with the
+hole through the gable end--all objects seemed to radiate peace and
+goodwill. There was a very bright sun in the sky that day. I rode down
+to the high road, and cantered along the grass at the side into Nieppe.
+Just as I entered the town I met a friend riding out. He shouted
+something at me. I couldn't hear what he said. "What?" I yelled.
+
+"All leave's cancelled!"
+
+That was enough for me. I rode into Nieppe like an infuriated cowboy. I
+went straight for the divisional headquarters, flung away the horse and
+dashed up into the building. I knew one or two of the officers there.
+"What's this about leave?" I asked. "All about to be cancelled," was the
+reply. "If you're quick, you may get yours through, as you've been out
+here long enough, and you're next to go." "What have I got to do?" I
+screamed. "Go to your Colonel, and ask him to wire the Corps
+headquarters and ask them to let you go; only you'll have to look sharp
+about it."
+
+He needn't have told me that. He had hardly finished before I was
+outside and making for my horse. I got out of Nieppe as quickly as I
+could, and lit out for our battalion headquarters. About four miles to
+go, but I lost no time about it. "Leave cancelled!" I hissed through the
+triangular gap in my front tooth, as I galloped along the road; "leave
+cancelled!"
+
+I should have made a good film actor that day: "Dick Turpin's ride to
+York" in two reels. I reached the turning off the high road all right,
+and pursued my wild career down the lanes which led to the Colonel's
+headquarters. The road wound about in a most ridiculous way, making
+salients out of ploughed fields on either side. I decided to throw all
+prudence to the winds, and cut across these. My horse evidently thought
+this an excellent idea, for as soon as he got on the fields he was off
+like a trout up stream. Most successful across the first salient, then,
+suddenly, I saw we were approaching a wide ditch. Leave _would_ be
+cancelled as far as I was concerned if I tried to jump that, I felt
+certain. I saw a sort of a narrow bridge about fifty yards to the right.
+Tried to persuade the horse to make for it. No, he believed in the ditch
+idea, and put on a sprint to jump it. Terrific battle between Dick
+Turpin and Black Bess!
+
+A foaming pause on the brink of the abyss. Dick Turpin wins the
+argument, and after a few prancing circles described in the field
+manages to cross the bridge with his fiery steed. I then rode down the
+road into the little village. The village school had been turned into a
+battalion stores, and the quartermaster-sergeant was invariably to be
+found there. I dismounted and pulled my horse up a couple of steps into
+the large schoolroom. Tied him up here, and last saw him blowing clouds
+of steam out of his nose on to one of those maps which show interesting
+forms of vegetable life with their Latin names underneath. Now for the
+Colonel. I clattered off down the street to his temporary orderly room.
+Thank heaven, he was in! I explained the case to him. He said he would
+do his best, and there and then sent off a wire. I could do no more now,
+so after fixing up that a message should be sent me, I slowly retraced
+my steps to the school, extracted the horse, and wended my way slowly
+back to the Transport Farm. Here I languished for the rest of the day,
+feeling convinced that "all leave was cancelled." I sat down to do some
+sketching after tea, full of marmalade and depression. About 6 p.m. I
+chucked it, and went and sat by the stove, smoking a pipe. Suddenly the
+door opened and a bicycle orderly came in: "There's a note from the
+Adjutant for you, sir."
+
+I tore it open. "Your leave granted; you leave to-morrow. If you call
+here in the morning, I'll give you your pass."
+
+LEAVE!!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THAT LEAVE TRAIN--MY OLD PAL--LONDON
+AND HOME--THE CALL OF THE WILD
+
+
+One wants to have been at the front, in the nasty parts, to appreciate
+fully what getting seven days' leave feels like. We used to have to be
+out at the front for three consecutive months before being entitled to
+this privilege. I had passed this necessary apprenticeship, and now had
+actually got my leave.
+
+[Illustration: Leave!!!]
+
+The morning after getting my instructions I rose early, and packed the
+few things I was going to take with me. Very few things they were, too.
+Only a pack and a haversack, and both contained nothing but souvenirs. I
+decided to go to the station via the orderly room, so that I could do
+both in one journey. I had about two miles to go from my billets to the
+orderly room in the village, and about a mile on from there to the
+station. Some one suggested my riding--no fear; I was running no risks
+now. I started off early with my servant. We took it in shifts with my
+heavy bags of souvenirs. One package (the pack) had four "Little Willie"
+cases inside, in other words, the cast-iron shell cases for the German
+equivalent of our 18-pounders. The haversack was filled with aluminium
+fuse tops and one large piece of a "Jack Johnson" shell case. My
+pockets--and I had a good number, as I was wearing my greatcoat--were
+filled with a variety of objects. A pair of little clogs found in a roof
+at St. Yvon, several clips of German bullets removed from equipment
+found on Christmas Day, and a collection of bullets which I had picked
+out with my pocket knife from the walls of our house in St. Yvon. The
+only additional luggage to this inventory I have given was my usual
+copious supply of Gold Flake cigarettes, of which, during my life in
+France, I must have consumed several army corps.
+
+It was a glorious day--bright, sunny, and a faint fresh wind. Everything
+seemed bright and rosy. I felt I should have liked to skip along the
+road like a young bay tree--no, that's wrong--like a ram, only I didn't
+think it would be quite the thing with my servant there (King's
+Regulations: Chapter 158, paragraph 96, line 4); besides, he wasn't
+going on leave, so it would have been rather a dirty trick after all.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We got to the village with aching arms and souvenirs intact. I got my
+pass, and together with another officer we set out for the station. It
+was a leave train. Officers from all sorts of different battalions were
+either in it or going to get in, either here or at the next stop.
+
+Having no wish to get that station into trouble, or myself either, by
+mentioning its name, I will call it Creme de Menthe. It was the same
+rotten little place I had arrived at. It is only because I am trying to
+sell the "station-master" a copy of this book that I call the place a
+station at all. It really is a decomposing collection of half-hearted
+buildings and moss-grown rails, with an apology for a platform at one
+side.
+
+We caught the train with an hour to spare. You can't miss trains in
+France: there's too much margin allowed on the time-table. The 10.15
+leaves at 11.30, the 11.45 at 2.20, and so on; besides, if you did miss
+your train, you could always catch it up about two fields away, so
+there's nothing to worry about.
+
+We started. I don't know what time it was.
+
+If you turn up the word "locomotion" in a dictionary, you will find it
+means "the act or power of moving from place to place"; from _locus_, a
+place, and _motion_, the act of moving. Our engine had got the _locus_
+part all right, but was rather weak about the _motion_. We creaked and
+squeaked about up the moss-grown track, and groaned our way back into
+the station time after time, in order to tie on something else behind
+the train, or to get on to a siding to let a trainload of trench
+floorboards and plum and apple jangle past up the line. When at last we
+really started, it was about at the speed of the "Rocket" on its trial
+trip.
+
+Our enthusiastic "going on leave" ardour was severely tested, and nearly
+broke down before we reached Boulogne, which we did late that night. But
+getting there, and mingling with the leave-going crowd which thronged
+the buffet, made up for all travelling shortcomings. Every variety of
+officer and army official was represented there. There were colonels,
+majors, captains, lieutenants, quantities of private soldiers, sergeants
+and corporals, hospital nurses and various other people employed in some
+war capacity or other. Representatives from every branch of the Army, in
+fact, whose turn for leave had come.
+
+I left the buffet for a moment to go across to the Transport Office, and
+walking along through the throng ran into my greatest friend. A most
+extraordinary chance this! I had not the least idea whereabouts in
+France he was, or when he might be likely to get leave. His job was in
+quite a different part, many miles from the Douve. I have known him for
+many years; we were at school together, and have always seemed to have
+the lucky knack of bobbing up to the surface simultaneously without
+prior arrangement. This meeting sent my spirits up higher than ever. We
+both adjourned to the buffet, and talked away about our various
+experiences to the accompaniment of cold chicken and ham. A merry scene
+truly, that buffet--every one filled with thoughts of England. Nearly
+every one there must have stepped out of the same sort of mud and danger
+bath that I had. And, my word! it is a first-class feeling: sitting
+about waiting for the boat when you feel you've earned this seven days'
+leave. You hear men on all sides getting the last ounce of appreciation
+out of the unique sensation by saying such things as, "Fancy those poor
+blighters, sitting in the mud up there; they'll be just about getting
+near 'Stand to' now."
+
+You rapidly dismiss a momentary flash in your mind of what it's going to
+be like in that buffet on the return journey.
+
+Early in the morning, and while it was still dark, we left the harbour
+and ploughed out into the darkness and the sea towards England.
+
+I claim the honoured position of the world's worst sailor. I have
+covered several thousand miles on the sea, "brooked the briny" as far as
+India and Canada. I have been hurtled about on the largest Atlantic
+waves; yet I am, and always will remain, absolutely impossible at sea.
+Looking at the docks out of the hotel window nearly sends me to bed;
+there's something about a ship that takes the stuffing out of me
+completely. Whether it's that horrible pale varnished woodwork, mingled
+with the smell of stuffy upholstery, or whether it's that nauseating
+whiff from the open hatch of the engine-room, I don't know; but once on
+a ship I am as naught ... not nautical.
+
+Of course the Channel was going to be rough. I could see that at a
+glance. I know exactly what to do about the sea now. I go straight to a
+bunk, and hope for the best; if no bunk--bribe the steward until there
+is one.
+
+I got a bunk, deserted my friend in a cheerless way, and retired till
+the crossing was over. It _was_ very rough....
+
+
+In the cold grey hours we glided into Dover or Folkestone (I was too
+anaemic to care which) and fastened up alongside the wharf. I had a dim
+recollection of getting my pal to hold my pack as we left Boulogne, and
+now I could see neither him nor the pack. Fearful crush struggling up
+the gangway. I had to scramble for a seat in the London train, so
+couldn't waste time looking for my friend. I had my haversack--he had
+my pack.
+
+The train moved off, and now here we all were back in clean, fresh,
+luxurious England, gliding along in an English train towards London.
+It's worth doing months and months of trenches to get that buoyant,
+electrical sensation of passing along through English country on one's
+way to London on leave.
+
+I spent the train journey thinking over what I should do during my seven
+days. Time after time I mentally conjured up the forthcoming performance
+of catching the train at Paddington and gliding out of the shadows of
+the huge station into the sunlit country beyond--the rapid express
+journey down home, the drive out from the station, back in my own land
+again!
+
+We got into London in pretty quick time, and I rapidly converted my
+dreams into facts.
+
+Still in the same old trench clothes, with a goodly quantity of Flanders
+mud attached, I walked into Paddington station, and collared a seat in
+the train on Number 1 platform. Then, collecting a quantity of papers
+and magazines from the bookstalls, I prepared myself for enjoying to the
+full the two hours' journey down home.
+
+
+I spent a gorgeous week in Warwickshire, during which time my friend
+came along down to stay a couple of days with me, bringing my missing
+pack along with him. He had had the joy of carrying it laden with shell
+cases across London, and taking it down with him to somewhere near
+Aldershot, and finally bringing it to me without having kept any of the
+contents ... Such is a true friend.
+
+As this book deals with my wanderings in France I will not go into
+details of my happy seven days' leave. I now resume at the point where I
+was due to return to France. In spite of the joys of England as opposed
+to life in Flanders, yet a curious phenomenon presented itself at the
+end of my leave. I was anxious to get back. Strange, but true. Somehow
+one felt that slogging away out in the dismal fields of war was the real
+thing to do. If some one had offered me a nice, safe, comfortable job in
+England, I wouldn't have taken it. I claim no credit for this feeling of
+mine. I know every one has the same. That buccaneering, rough and tumble
+life out there has its attractions. The spirit of adventure is in most
+people, and the desire and will to biff the Boches is in every one, so
+there you are.
+
+I drifted back via London, Dover and Boulogne, and thence up the same
+old stagnant line to Creme de Menthe. Once more back in the land of mud,
+bullets, billets, and star shells.
+
+It was the greyest of grey days when I arrived at my one-horse terminus.
+I got out at the "station," and had a solitary walk along the empty,
+muddy lanes, back to the Transport Farm.
+
+Plodding along in the thin rain that was falling I thought of home,
+London, England, and then of the job before me. Another three months at
+least before any further chance of leave could come my way again.
+Evening was coming on. Across the flat, sombre country I could see the
+tall, swaying poplar trees standing near the farm. Beyond lay the rough
+and rugged road which led to the Douve trenches.
+
+How nice that leave had been! To-morrow night I should be going along
+back to the trenches before Wulverghem.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+BACK FROM LEAVE--THAT "BLINKIN' MOON"
+--JOHNSON 'OLES--TOMMY AND "FRIGHTFULNESS"
+--EXPLORING EXPEDITION
+
+As I had expected, the battalion were just finishing their last days out
+in rest billets, and were going "in" the following night.
+
+Reaction from leave set in for me with unprecedented violence. It was
+horrible weather, pouring with rain all the time, which made one's
+depression worse.
+
+Leave over; rain, rain, rain; trenches again, and the future looked like
+being perpetually the same, or perhaps worse. Yet, somehow or other, in
+these times of deep depression which come to every one now and again, I
+cannot help smiling. It has always struck me as an amusing thing that
+the world, and all the human beings thereon, do get themselves into such
+curious and painful predicaments, and then spend the rest of the time
+wishing they could get out.
+
+My reflections invariably brought me to the same conclusion, that here I
+was, caught up in the cogs of this immense, uncontrollable war machine,
+and like every one else, had to, and meant to stick it out to the end.
+
+The next night we went through all the approved formula for going into
+the trenches. Started at dusk, and got into our respective mud cavities
+a few hours later. I went all round the trenches again, looking to see
+that things were the same as when I left them, and, on the Colonel's
+instructions, started a series of alterations in several gun positions.
+There was one trench that was so obscured along its front by odd stumps
+of trees that I decided the only good spot for a machine gun was right
+at one end, on a road which led up to Messines. From here it would be
+possible for us to get an excellent field of fire. To have this gun on
+the road meant making an emplacement there somehow. That night we
+started scheming it out, and the next evening began work on it. It was a
+bright moonlight night, I remember, and my sergeant and I went out in
+front of our parapet, walked along the field and crept up the ditch a
+little way, considering the machine-gun possibilities of the land. That
+moonlight feeling is very curious. You feel as if the enemy can see you
+clearly, and that all eyes in the opposite trench are turned on you. You
+can almost imagine a Boche smilingly taking an aim, and saying to a
+friend, "We'll just let him come a bit closer first." Every one who has
+had to go "out in front," wiring, will know this feeling. As a matter of
+fact, it is astonishing how little one can see of men in the moonlight,
+even when the trenches are very close together. One gets quite used to
+walking about freely in this light, going out in front of the parapet
+and having a look round. The only time that really makes one
+apprehensive is when some gang of men or other turn up from way back
+somewhere, and have come to assist in some operation near the enemy.
+They, being unfamiliar with the caution needed, and unappreciative of
+what it's like to have neighbours who "hate" you sixty yards away,
+generally bring trouble in their wake by one of the party shouting out
+in a deep bass or a shrill soprano, "'Ere, chuck us the 'ammer, 'Arry,"
+or something like that, following the remark up with a series of
+vulcan-like blows on the top of an iron post. Result: three star shells
+soar out into the frosty air, and a burst of machine-gun fire skims over
+the top of your head.
+
+We made a very excellent and strong emplacement on the road, and used it
+henceforth. I had a lot of bother with one gun in those trenches, which
+was placed at very nearly the left-hand end of the whole line. I had
+been obliged to fix the gun there, as it was very necessary for
+dominating a certain road. But when I took the place over from the
+previous battalion, I thought there might be difficulties about this gun
+position, and there were. The night before we had made our inspection of
+these trenches, a shell had landed right on top of the gun emplacement
+and had "outed" the whole concern, unfortunately killing two of the gun
+section belonging to the former battalion. For some reason or other that
+end of our line was always being shelled. Just in the same way as they
+plunked shells daily into St. Yvon, so they did here. Each morning, with
+hardly ever a miss, they shelled our trenches, but almost invariably in
+the same place: the left-hand end. The difference between St. Yvon and
+this place was, however, that here they always shelled with "heavies."
+Right back at the Douve farm a mile away, the thundering crash of one of
+these shells would rattle all the windows and make one say, "Where did
+that one go?"
+
+All round that neighbourhood it seemed to have been the fashion, past
+and present, to use the largest shells. In going along the Douve one
+day, I made a point of measuring and examining several of the holes. I
+took a photograph of one, with my cap resting on one side of it, to show
+the relative proportion and give an idea of the size. It was about
+fourteen feet in diameter, and seven feet deep. The largest shell hole I
+have ever seen was over twenty feet in diameter and about twelve feet
+deep. The largest hole I have seen, made by an implement of war, though
+not by a gun or a howitzer, was larger still, and its size was colossal.
+I refer to a hole made by one of our trench mortars, but regret that I
+did not measure it. Round about our farm were a series of holes of
+immense size, showing clearly the odium which that farm had incurred,
+and was incurring; but, whilst I was in it, nothing came in through the
+roof or walls. I have since learnt that that old farm is no more, having
+been shelled out of existence. All my sketches on those plaster walls
+form part of a slack heap, surrounded by a moat.
+
+Well, this persistent shelling of the left-hand end of our trenches
+meant a persistent readjustment of our parapets, and putting things back
+again. Each morning the Boches would knock things down, and each evening
+we would put them up again. Our soldiers are only amused by this
+procedure. Their humorously cynical outlook at the Boche temper renders
+them impervious to anything the Germans can ever do or think of. Their
+outlook towards a venomous German attempt to do something "frightfully"
+nasty, is very similar to a large and powerful nurse dealing with a
+fractious child--sort of: "Now, then, Master Frankie, you mustn't kick
+and scream like that."
+
+One can almost see a group of stolid, unimaginative, non-humorous
+Germans, taking all things with their ridiculous seriousness, sending
+off their shells, and pulling hateful faces at the same time. You can
+see our men sending over a real stiff, quietening answer, with a
+sporting twinkle in the eye, perhaps jokingly remarking, as a shell is
+pushed into the gun, "'Ere's one for their Officers' Mess, Bert."
+
+On several evenings I had to go round and arrange for the reconstruction
+of the ruined parapet or squashed-in dug-outs. It was during one of
+these little episodes that I felt the spirit of my drawing, "There goes
+our blinking parapet again," which I did sometime later. I never went
+about looking for ideas for drawings; the whole business of the war
+seemed to come before me in a series of pictures. Jokes used to stick
+out of all the horrible discomfort, something like the points of a
+harrow would stick into you if you slept on it.
+
+I used to visit all the trenches, and look up the various company
+commanders and platoon commanders in the same way as I did at St. Yvon.
+I got a splendid idea of all the details of our position; all the
+various ways from one part of it to another. As I walked back to the
+Douve farm at night, nearly always alone, I used to keep on exploring
+the wide tract of land that lay behind our trenches. "I'll have a look
+at that old cottage up on the right to-night," I used to say to myself,
+and later, when the time came for me to walk back from the trenches, I
+would go off at a new angle across the plain, and make for my objective.
+Once inside, and feeling out of view of the enemy, I would go round the
+deserted rooms and lofts by the light of a few matches, and if the house
+looked as if it would prove of interest, I would return the next night
+with a candle-end, and make an examination of the whole thing. They are
+all very much alike, these houses in Flanders; all seem to contain the
+same mangled remains of simple, homely occupations. Strings of onions,
+old straw hats, and clogs, mixed with an assortment of cheap clothing,
+with perhaps here and there an umbrella or a top hat. That is about the
+class of stuff one found in them. After one of these expeditions I would
+go on back across the plain, along the corduroy boards or by the bank of
+the river, to our farm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+A DAYLIGHT STALK--THE DISUSED TRENCH--
+"DID THEY SEE ME?"--A GOOD SNIPING
+POSITION
+
+
+Our farm was, as I have remarked, a mile from the trenches at the
+nearest part, and about a mile and a half from the furthest. Wulverghem
+was about half a mile behind the farm.
+
+As time went on at these Douve trenches, I became more and more familiar
+with the details of the surrounding country, for each day I used to
+creep out of the farm, and when I had crossed the moat by a small wooden
+bridge at the back, I would go off into the country near by looking at
+everything. One day the Colonel expressed a wish to know whether it was
+possible to get up into our trenches in day time without being seen. Of
+course any one could have gone to the trenches, and been momentarily
+seen here and there, and could have done so fairly safely and easily by
+simply walking straight up, taking advantage of what little cover there
+was; but to get right up without showing at all, was rather a poser, as
+all cover ceased about a hundred yards behind the trenches.
+
+The idea of trying attracted me. One morning I crept along the ragged
+hedge, on the far side of the moat which led to the river, and started
+out for the trenches. I imagined a German with a powerful pair of
+binoculars looking down on the plain from the Messines Hill, with
+nothing better to do than to see if he could spot some one walking
+about. Keeping this possibility well in mind, I started my stalk up to
+the trenches with every precaution.
+
+I crept along amongst the trees bordering the river for a considerable
+distance, but as one neared the trenches, these got wider apart, and as
+the river wound about a lot there were places where to walk from one
+tree to the next, one had to walk parallel to the German trenches and
+quite exposed, though, of course, at a considerable range off. I still
+bore in mind my imaginary picture of the gentleman with binoculars,
+though, so I got down near the water's edge and moved along,
+half-concealed by the bank. Soon I reached the farms, and by dodging
+about amongst the scattered shrubs and out-houses, here and there
+crawling up a ditch, I got into one of the farm buildings. I sat in it
+amongst a pile of old clothes, empty tins and other oddments, and had a
+smoke, thinking the while on how I could get from these farms across the
+last bit of open space which was the most difficult of all.
+
+I finished my cigarette, and began the stalk again. Another difficulty
+presented itself. I found that it was extremely difficult to cross from
+the second last farm to the last one, as the ground was completely open,
+and rather sloped down towards the enemy. This was not apparent when
+looking at the place at night, for then one never bothers about
+concealment, and one walks anywhere and anyhow. But now the question
+was, how to do it. I crept down to the river again, and went along there
+for a bit, looking for a chance of leaving it under cover for the farm.
+
+Coming to a narrow, cart-rutted lane a little further on, I was just
+starting to go up it when, suddenly, a bright idea struck me. An old
+zig-zag communication trench (a relic of a bygone period) left the lane
+on the right, and apparently ran out across the field to within a few
+yards of the furthest farm. Once there, I had only a hundred yards more
+to do.
+
+I entered the communication trench. It was just a deep, narrow slot cut
+across the field, and had, I should imagine, never been used. I think
+the enormous amount of water in it had made it a useless work. I saw no
+sign of it ever having been used. A fearful trench it was, with a deep
+deposit of dark green filthy, watery mud from end to end.
+
+This, I could see, was the only way up to the farm, so I made the best
+of it. I resigned myself to getting thoroughly wet through. Quite
+unavoidable. I plunged into this unwholesome clay ditch and went along,
+each step taking me up to my thighs in soft dark ooze, whilst here and
+there the water was so deep as to force me to scoop out holes in the
+clay at the side when, by leaning against the opposite side, with my
+feet in the holes, I could slowly push my way along. In time I got to
+the other end, and sat down to think a bit. As I sat, a bullet suddenly
+whacked into the clay parapet alongside of me, which stimulated my
+thinking a bit. "Had I been seen?" I tried to find out, and reassure
+myself before going on. I put my hat on top of a stick and brought it up
+above the parapet at two or three points to try and attract another
+shot; but no, there wasn't another, so I concluded the first one had
+been accidental, and went on my way again. By wriggling along behind an
+undulation in the field, and then creeping from one tree to another, I
+at last managed to get up into our reserve trenches, where I obtained my
+first daylight, close-up view of our trenches, German trenches, and
+general landscape; all laid out in panorama style.
+
+In front of me were our front-line trenches, following the line of the
+little stream which ran into the Douve on the right. On the far side of
+the stream the ground gently rose in a long slope up to Messines, where
+you could see a shattered mass of red brick buildings with the old grey
+tower in the middle. At a distance of from about two to four hundred
+yards away lay the German trenches, parallel to ours, their barbed wire
+glistening in the morning sunlight.
+
+"This place I'm in is a pretty good place for a sniper to hitch up," I
+thought to myself. "Can see everything there is to be seen from here."
+
+After a short stocktaking of the whole scene, I turned and wallowed my
+way back to the farm. Some few days later they did make a sniper's post
+of that spot, and a captain friend of mine, with whom I spent many
+quaint and dismal nights in St. Yvon, occupied it. He was the "star"
+shot of the battalion, an expert sniper, and, I believe, made quite a
+good bag.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+OUR MOATED FARM--WULVERGHEM--THE
+CURE'S HOUSE--A SHATTERED CHURCH
+--MORE "HEAVIES"--A FARM ON FIRE
+
+
+Our farm was one of a cluster of three or four, each approximately a
+couple of hundred yards apart. It was perhaps the largest and the most
+preserved of the lot. It was just the same sort of shape as all Flemish
+farms--a long building running round three sides of the yard, in the
+middle of which there was an oblong tank, used for collecting all the
+rubbish and drainage.
+
+The only difference about our farm was, we had a moat. Very superior to
+all the cluster in consequence. Sometime or other the moat must have
+been very effective; but when I was there, only about a quarter of it
+contained water. The other three-quarters was a sort of bog, or marsh,
+its surface broken up by large shell holes. On the driest part of this I
+discovered a row of graves, their rough crosses all battered and bent
+down. I just managed to discern the names inscribed; they were all
+French. Names of former heroes who had participated in some action or
+other months before. Going out into the fields behind the farm, I found
+more French graves, enclosed in a rectangular graveyard that had been
+roughly made with barbed wire and posts, each grave surmounted with the
+dead soldier's hat. Months of rough wintry weather had beaten down the
+faded cloth cap into the clay mound, and had started the obliteration of
+the lettering on the cross. A few more months; and cross, mound and hat
+will all have merged back into the fields of Flanders.
+
+Beyond these fields, about half a mile distant, lay Wulverghem. Looking
+at what you can see of this village from the Douve farm, it looks
+exceedingly pretty and attractive. A splendid old church tower could be
+seen between the trees, and round about it were clustered the red roofs
+of a fair-sized village. It has, to my mind, a very nice situation. In
+the days before the war it must have been a pleasing place to live in. I
+went to have a look at it one day. It's about as fine a sample of what
+these Prussians have brought upon Belgian villages as any I have seen.
+The village street is one long ruin. On either side of the road, all the
+houses are merely a collection of broken tiles and shattered bricks and
+framework. Huge shell holes punctuate the street. I had seen a good many
+mutilated villages before this, but I remember thinking this was as bad,
+if not worse, than any I had yet seen. I determined to explore some of
+the houses and the church.
+
+I went into one house opposite the church. It had been quite a nice
+house once, containing about ten rooms. It was full of all sorts of
+things. The evacuation had evidently been hurried. I went into the front
+right-hand room first, and soon discovered by the books and pictures
+that this had been the Cure's house. It was in a terrible state.
+Religious books in French and Latin lay about the floor in a vast
+disorder, some with the cover and half the book torn off by the effect
+of an explosion. Pictures illustrating Bible scenes, images, and other
+probably cherished objects, smashed and ruined, hung about the walls, or
+fragmentary portions of them lay littered about on the floor.
+
+A shell hole of large proportions had rent a gash in the outer front
+wall, leaving the window woodwork, bricks and wall-paper piled up in a
+heap on the floor, partially obliterating a large writing desk. Private
+papers lay about in profusion, all dirty, damp and muddy. The remains of
+a window blind and half its roller hung in the space left by the absent
+window, and mournfully tapped against the remnant of the framework in
+the light, cold breeze that was blowing in from outside. Place this
+scene in your imagination in some luxuriant country vicarage in England,
+and you will get an idea of what Belgium has had to put up with from
+these Teutonic madmen. I went into all the rooms; they were in very much
+the same state. In the back part of the house the litter was added to by
+empty tins and old military equipment. Soldiers had evidently had to
+live there temporarily on their way to some part of our lines. I heard a
+movement in the room opposite the one I had first gone into; I went back
+and saw a cat sitting in the corner amongst a pile of leather-backed
+books. I made a movement towards it, but with a cadaverous, wild glare
+at me, it sprang through the broken window and disappeared.
+
+The church was just opposite the priest's house. I went across the road
+to look at it. It was a large reddish-grey stone building, pretty old, I
+should say, and surrounded by a graveyard. Shell holes everywhere; the
+old, grey grave stones and slabs cracked and sticking about at odd
+angles. As I entered by the vestry door I noticed the tower was fairly
+all right, but that was about the only part that was. Belgium and
+Northern France are full of churches which have been sadly knocked
+about, and all present very much the same appearance. I will describe
+this one to give you a sample. I went through the vestry into the main
+part of the church, deciding to examine the vestry later. The roof had
+had most of the tiles blown off, and underneath them the roofing-boards
+had been shattered into long narrow strips. Fixed at one end to what was
+left of the rafters they flapped slowly up and down in the air like
+lengths of watch-spring. Below, on the floor of the church, the chairs
+were tossed about in the greatest possible disorder, and here and there
+a dozen or so had been pulverized by the fall of an immense block of
+masonry. Highly coloured images were lying about, broken and twisted.
+The altar candelabra and stained-glass windows lay in a heap together
+behind a pulpit, the front of which had been knocked off by a falling
+pillar. One could walk about near some of the broken images, and pick up
+little candles and trinkets which had been put in and around the shrine,
+off the floor and from among the mass of broken stones and mortar. The
+vestry, I found, was almost complete. Nearly trodden out of recognition
+on the floor, I found a bright coloured hand-made altar cloth, which I
+then had half a mind to take away with me, and post it back to some
+parson in England to put in his church. I only refrained from carrying
+out this plan as I feared that the difficulties of getting it away would
+be too great. I left the church, and looked about some of the other
+houses, but none proved as pathetically interesting as the church and
+the vicar's house, so I took my way out across the fields again towards
+the Douve farm.
+
+Not a soul about anywhere. Wulverghem lay there, empty, wrecked and
+deserted. I walked along the river bank for a bit, and had got about two
+hundred yards from the farm when the quiet morning was interrupted in
+the usual way, by shelling. Deep-toned, earth-shaking crashes broke into
+the quiet peaceful air. "Just in the same place," I observed to myself
+as I walked along behind our left-hand trenches. I could see the cloud
+of black smoke after each one landed, and knew exactly where they were.
+"Just in the same old--hullo! hullo!" With that rotating, gurgling
+whistle a big one had just sailed over and landed about fifty yards from
+our farm! I nipped in across the moat, through the courtyard, and
+explained to the others where it had landed. We all remained silent,
+waiting for the next. Here it came, gurgling along through the air; a
+pause, then "Crumph!"--nearly in the same place again, but, if anything,
+nearer the next farm. The Colonel moved to the window and looked out.
+"They're after that farm," he said, as he turned away slowly and struck
+a match by the fireplace to light his pipe with. About half a dozen
+shells whizzed along in close succession, and about four hit and went
+into the roof of the next farm.
+
+Presently I looked out of the window again, and saw a lot of our men
+moving out of the farm and across the road into the field beyond. There
+was a reserve trench here, so they went into it. I looked again, and
+soon saw the reason. Dense columns of smoke were coming out of the straw
+roof, and soon the whole place was a blazing ruin. Nobody in the least
+perturbed; we all turned away from the window and wondered how soon
+they'd "have our farm."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THAT RATION FATIGUE----SKETCHES IN
+REQUEST--BAILLEUL--BATHS AND
+LUNATICS--HOW TO CONDUCT A WAR
+
+[Illustration: T]
+
+They seemed to me long, dark, dismal days, those days spent in the Douve
+trenches; longer, darker and more dismal than the Plugstreet ones. Night
+after night I crossed the dreary mud flat, passed the same old wretched
+farms, and went on with the same old trench routine. We all considered
+the trenches a pretty rotten outfit; but every one was fully prepared to
+accept far rottener things than that. There was never the least sign of
+flagging determination in any man there, and I am sure you could say the
+same of the whole front.
+
+And, really, some jobs on some nights wanted a lot of beating for
+undesirability. Take the ration party's job, for instance. Think of the
+rottenest, wettest, windiest winter's night you can remember, and add to
+it this bleak, muddy, war-worn plain with its ruined farms and
+shell-torn lonely road. Then think of men, leaving the trenches at dusk,
+going back about a mile and a half, and bringing sundry large and heavy
+boxes up to the trenches, pausing now and again for a rest, and ignoring
+the intermittent crackling of rifle fire in the darkness, and the sharp
+"_phit_" of bullets hitting the mud all around. Think of that as your
+portion each night and every night. When you have finished this job, the
+rest you get consists of coiling yourself up in a damp dug-out. Night
+after night, week after week, month after month, this job is done by
+thousands. As one sits in a brilliantly illuminated, comfortable, warm
+theatre, having just come from a cosy and luxurious restaurant, just
+think of some poor devil half-way along those corduroy boards struggling
+with a crate of biscuits; the ration "dump" behind, the trenches on in
+front. When he has finished he will step down into the muddy slush of a
+trench, and take his place with the rest, who, if need be, will go on
+doing that job for another ten years, without thinking of an
+alternative. The Germans made a vast mistake when they thought they had
+gauged the English temperament.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We went "in" and "out" of those trenches many times. During these
+intervals of "out" I began to draw pictures more and more. It had become
+known that I drew these trench pictures, not only in our battalion but
+in several others, and at various headquarters I got requests for four
+or five drawings at a time. About three weeks after I returned from
+leave, I had to move my billeting quarters. I went to a farm called "La
+petite Monque"; I don't know how it's really spelt, but that's what the
+name sounded like. Here I lived with the officers of A Company, and a
+jolly pleasant crew they were. We shared a mess together, and had one
+big room and one small room between us. There were six of us altogether.
+The Captain had the little room and the bed in it, whilst we all slept
+round the table on the floor in the big room. Here, in the daytime, when
+I was not out with the machine-gun sections, I drew several pictures.
+The Brigadier-General of our brigade took a particular fancy to one
+which he got from me. The divisional headquarters had half a dozen;
+whilst I did two sets of four each for two officers in the regiment.
+
+Sometimes we would go for walks around the country, and occasionally
+made an excursion as far as Bailleul, about five miles away. Bailleul
+held one special attraction for us. There were some wonderfully good
+baths there. The fact that they were situated in the lunatic asylum
+rather added to their interest.
+
+The first time I went there, one of the subalterns in A Company was my
+companion. We didn't particularly want to walk all the way, so we
+decided to get down to the high road as soon as we could, and try and
+get a lift in a car. With great luck we managed to stop a fairly empty
+car, and got a lift. It was occupied by a couple of French soldiers who
+willingly rolled us along into Bailleul. Once there, we walked through
+the town and out to the asylum close by. I expect by now the lunatics
+have been called up under the group system; but in those days they were
+there, and pulled faces at us as we walked up the wide gravel drive to
+the grand portals of the building. They do make nice asylums over there.
+This was a sort of Chatsworth or Blenheim to look at. Inside it was
+fitted up in very great style: long carpeted corridors opening out into
+sort of domed winter gardens, something like the snake house at the Zoo.
+We came at length to a particularly lofty, domed hall, from which opened
+several large bathrooms. Splendid places. A row of large white enamelled
+baths along one wall, cork mats on the floor, and one enormous central
+water supply, hot and cold, which you diverted to whichever bath you
+chose by means of a long flexible rubber pipe. Soap, sponges, towels,
+_ad lib_. You can imagine what this palatial water grotto meant to us,
+when, at other times, our best bath was of saucepan capacity, taken on
+the cold stone floor of a farm room. We lay and boiled the trenches out
+of our systems in that palatial asylum. Glorious! lying back in a long
+white enamel bath in a warm foggy atmosphere of steam, watching one's
+toes floating in front. When this was over, and we had been grimaced off
+the premises by "inmates" at the windows, we went back into Bailleul
+and made for the "Faucon d'Or," an old hotel that stands in the square.
+Here we had a civilized meal. Tablecloth, knives, forks, spoons, waited
+on, all that sort of thing. You could have quite a good dinner here if
+you liked. A curious thought occurred to me then, and as it occurs again
+to me now I write it down. Here it is: If the authorities gave one
+permission, one could have rooms at the Faucon d'Or and go to the war
+daily. It would be quite possible to, say, have an early dinner, table
+d'hote (with, say, a half-bottle of Salmon and Gluckstein), get into
+one's car and go to the trenches, spend the night sitting in a small
+damp hole in the ground, or glaring over the parapet, and after "stand
+to" in the morning, go back in the car in time for breakfast. Of course,
+if there was an attack, the car would have to wait--that's all; and of
+course you would come to an understanding with the hotel management that
+the terms were for meals taken in the hotel, and that if you had to
+remain in the trenches the terms must be reduced accordingly.
+
+[Illustration: I hear you callin' me]
+
+A curious war this; you _can_ be at a table d'hote dinner, a music-hall
+entertainment afterwards, and within half an hour be enveloped in the
+most uncomfortable, soul-destroying trench ever known. I said you can
+be; I wish I could say you always are.
+
+The last time I was at Bailleul, not many months ago, I heard that we
+could no longer have baths at the asylum; I don't know why. I think some
+one told me why, but I can't remember. Whether it was the baths had been
+shelled, or whether the lunatics objected, it is impossible for me to
+say; but there's the fact, anyway. "Na Pu" baths at Bailleul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+GETTING STALE--LONGING FOR CHANGE--
+WE LEAVE THE DOUVE--ON THE MARCH--
+SPOTTED FEVER--TEN DAYS' REST
+
+
+The Douve trenches claimed our battalion for a long time. We went in and
+out with monotonous regularity, and I went on with my usual work with
+machine guns. The whole place became more and more depressing to me, and
+yet, somehow, I have got more ideas for my pictures from this part of
+the line than any other since or before. One's mental outlook, I find,
+varies very much from day to day. Some days there were on which I felt
+quite merry and bright, and strode along on my nightly rambles, calmly
+ignoring bullets as they whisked about. At other times I felt thoroughly
+depressed and weary. As time wore on at the Douve, I felt myself getting
+into a state when it took more and more out of me to keep up my vigour,
+and suppress my imagination. There were times when I experienced an
+almost irresistible desire to lie down and sleep during some of my night
+walks. I would feel an overwhelming desire to ignore the rain and mud,
+and just coil up in a farm amongst the empty tins and rubbish and sleep,
+sleep, sleep. I looked forward to sleep to drown out the worries of the
+daily and nightly life. In fact, I was slowly getting ill, I suppose.
+The actual rough and ready life didn't trouble me at all. I was bothered
+with the _idea_ of the whole thing. The unnatural atmosphere of things
+that one likes and looks upon as pleasing, peaceful objects in ordinary
+times, seemed now to obsess me. It's hard to describe; but the following
+gives a faint idea of my feelings at this time. Instead of deriving a
+sense of peace and serenity from picturesque country farms, old trees,
+setting suns, and singing birds, here was this wretched war business
+hashing up the whole thing. A farm was a place where you expected a
+shell through the wall any minute; a tree was the sort of thing the
+gunners took to range on; a sunset indicated a quantity of light in
+which it was unsafe to walk abroad. Birds singing were a mockery. All
+this sort of thing bothered me, and was slowly reducing my physical
+capacity to "stick it out." But I determined I would stick to the ship,
+and so I did. The periodical going out to billets and making merry there
+was a thing to look forward to. Every one comes up in a rebound of
+spirits on these occasions. In the evenings there, sitting round the
+table, writing letters, talking, and occasionally having other members
+of the regiment in to a meal or a call of some sort, made things quite
+pleasant. There was always the post to look forward to. Quite a thrill
+went round the room when the door opened and a sergeant came in with an
+armful of letters and parcels.
+
+Yet during all this latter time at the Douve I longed for a change in
+trench life. Some activity, some march to somewhere or other; anything
+to smash up the everlasting stagnant appearance of life there. Suddenly
+the change came. We were told we had to go out a day before one of our
+usual sessions in the trenches was ended. We were all immensely pleased.
+We didn't know where we were bound for, but, anyway, we were going. This
+news revived me enormously, and everything looked brighter. The
+departure-night came, and company by company we handed over to a
+battalion that had come to relieve us, and collected on the road leading
+back to Neuve Eglise. I handed over all my gun emplacements to the
+incoming machine-gun officer, and finally collected my various sections
+with all their tackle on the road as well. We merely marched back to our
+usual billets that night, but next morning had orders to get all our
+baggage ready for the transport wagons. We didn't know where we were
+going, but at about eleven o'clock in the morning we started off on the
+march, and soon realized that our direction was Bailleul.
+
+On a fine, clear, warm spring day we marched along, all in the best of
+spirits, songs of all sorts being sung one after the other. As I marched
+along in the rear of the battalion, at the head of my machine-gun
+section, I selected items from their repertoire and had them sung "by
+request." I had some astonishingly fine mouth-organists in my section.
+When we had "In the trail of the Lonesome Pine" sung by half the
+section, with mouth-organ accompaniment by the other half, the effect
+was enormous. We passed several battalions of my regiment on the road,
+evidently bound for the Armentieres direction. Shouts, jokes and much
+mirth showed the kindred spirits of the passing columns. All battalions
+of the same regiment, all more or less recruited in the same counties.
+When we reached Bailleul we halted in the Square, and then I learnt we
+were to be billeted there. There was apparently some difficulty in
+getting billets, and so I was faced with the necessity of finding some
+for my section myself. The transport officer was in the same fix; he
+wanted a large and commodious farm whenever he hitched up countless as
+he had a crowd of horses, wagons and men to put up somehow. He and I
+decided to start out and look for billets on our own.
+
+I found a temporary rest for my section in an old brickyard on the
+outskirts of the town, and the transport officer and I started out to
+look for a good farm which we could appropriate.
+
+Bailleul stands on a bit of a hill, so you can get a wide and extensive
+view of the country from there. We could see several farms perched
+about in the country. We fixed on the nearest, and walked out to it. No
+luck; they were willing to have us, but it wasn't big enough. We tried
+another; same result. I then suggested we should separate, and each try
+different roads, and thus we should get one quicker. This we did, I
+going off up a long straight road, and finally coming to a most
+promising looking edifice on one side--a real large size in farms.
+
+I went into the yard and walked across the dirty cobbles to the front
+door. The people were most pleasant. I didn't understand a word they
+said; but when a person pushes a flagon of beer into one of your hands
+and an apple into the other, one concludes he means to be pleasant,
+anyway.
+
+I mumbled a lot of jargon to them for some time, and I really believe
+they saw that I wanted to use their place for a billet. The owner, a man
+of about forty-five, then started a long and hardy discussion right at
+me. He put on a serious face at intervals, so I guessed there was
+something rather important he was trying to convey to me. I was saved
+from giving my answer by catching sight of my pal, the transport
+officer, crossing the yard. He came in. "I've brought Jean along to
+talk," he announced. (Jean was our own battalion interpreter.) "I can't
+find a place; but this looks all right." Jean and the owner at once
+dived off into a labyrinth of unintelligible words, from which they
+emerged five minutes later. We sat around and listened. Jean turned to
+us and remarked: "They have got fever here, he says, what you call the
+spotted fever--how you say, spotted fever?--and this farm is out of
+bounds."
+
+"Oh! spotted fever! I see!" we both said, and slid away out of that farm
+pretty quick. So that was what that farmer was trying to say to me:
+spotted fever!
+
+I went down the road wondering whether cerebral meningitis germs
+preferred apples or beer, or perhaps they liked both; awful thought!
+
+We went back to our original selection and decided to somehow or other
+squeeze into the farm which we thought too small. Many hours later we
+got the transport and the machine-gun section fixed up. We spent two
+nights there. On the second day I went up into Bailleul. Walking along
+in the Square, looking at the shops and market stalls, I ran into the
+brigade machine-gun officer.
+
+"Topping about our brigade, isn't it?" he said.
+
+"What's topping?" I asked.
+
+"Why, we're going to have about ten day's rest; we clear off out of here
+to-morrow to a village about three miles away, and our battalion will
+billet there. Where we go after that I don't know; but, anyway, ten
+days' rest. Ten days' rest!!"
+
+"Come and split one at the Faucon d'Or?"
+
+"No thanks, I've just had one."
+
+"Well, come and have another."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A PLEASANT CHANGE--SUZETTE, BERTHE AND
+MARTHE--"LA JEUNE FILLE FAROUCHE"--ANDRE
+
+
+On the next morning we left Bailleul, and the whole of our battalion
+marched off down one of the roads leading out into the country in a
+westerly direction. The weather was now excellent; so what with a
+prospect of a rest, fine weather and the departure from the Wulverghem
+trenches, we were all very merry and bright, and "going strong" all
+round. It seemed to us as if we had come out of some dark, wet
+under-world into a bright, wholesome locality, suitable for the
+habitation of man.
+
+Down the long, straight, dusty road we marched, hop yards and bright
+coloured fields on either side, here and there passing prosperous
+looking farms and estaminets: what a pleasant change it was from that
+ruined, dismal jungle we had so recently left! About three or four miles
+out we came to a village; the main road ran right through it, forming
+its principal street. On either side small lanes ran out at right angles
+into the different parts of the village. We received the order to halt,
+and soon learnt that this was the place where we were to have our ten
+days' rest. A certain amount of billets had been arranged for, but, as
+is generally the case, the machine-gun section have to search around for
+themselves; an advantage really, as they generally find a better crib
+this way than if somebody else found it for them. As soon as we were
+"dismissed," I started off on a billet search. The transport officer was
+again with me on the same quest. We separated, and each searched a
+different part of the village. The first house I went into was a dismal
+failure. An old woman of about 84 opened the door about six inches, and
+was some time before she permitted the aperture to widen sufficiently to
+allow me to go inside the house. A most dingy, poky sort of a place, so
+I cleared off to search for something better. As I crossed the farmyard
+behind, my servant, who had been conducting a search on his own,
+suddenly appeared round the corner of the large barn at the end of the
+yard, and came towards me.
+
+"I've found a place over 'ere, Sir, I expect you'll like."
+
+"Where?" I asked.
+
+"This way, Sir!" and he led the way across a field to a gate, which we
+climbed. We then went down a sort of back lane to the village, and
+turned in at a small wicket-gate leading to a row of cottages. He led me
+up to one in the centre, and knocked at the door. A woman opened it, and
+I told her what I was looking for. She seemed quite keen for us to go
+there, and asked if there was anyone else to come there with me. I told
+her the transport officer would be coming there too, and our two
+servants. She quite agreed to this, and showed me the rooms we could
+have. They were extremely small, but we decided to have them. "Them"
+consisted of one bedroom, containing two beds, the size of the room
+being about fourteen feet by eight, and the front kitchen-sitting-room
+place, which was used by everybody in the house, and was about twice the
+size of the bedroom. I went away and found the transport officer,
+brought him back and showed him the place. He thought it a good spot,
+so we arranged to fix up there.
+
+Our servants started in to put things right for us, get our baggage
+there, and so on, whilst I went off to see to billets for the
+machine-gun section. I had got them a pretty good barn, attached to the
+farm I first called at, but I wanted to go and see that it was really
+large enough and suitable when they had all got in and spread
+themselves. I found that it did suit pretty well. The space was none too
+large, but I felt sure we wouldn't find a better. There was a good field
+for all the limbers and horses adjoining, so on the whole it was quite a
+convenient place. The section had already got to work with their cooking
+things, and had a fire going out in the field. Those gunners were a very
+self-contained, happy throng; they all lived together like a family, and
+were all very keen on their job.
+
+I returned to my cottage to see how things were progressing. My man had
+unrolled my valise, and put all my things out and about in the bedroom.
+I took off all my equipment, which I was still wearing, pack,
+haversacks, revolver, binoculars, map case, etc., and sat down in the
+kitchen to take stock of the situation. I now saw what the family
+consisted of; and by airing my feeble French, I found out who they were
+and what they did. The woman who had come to the door was the wife of a
+painter and decorator, who had been called up, and was in a French
+regiment somewhere in Alsace.
+
+Another girl who was there was a friend, and really lived next door with
+her sister, but owing to overcrowding, due to our servants and some
+French relatives, she spent most of her time in the house I was in.
+
+The owner of the place was Madame Charlet-Flaw, Christian name Suzette.
+The other two girls were, respectively, Berthe and Marthe. Ages of all
+three in the order I have mentioned them were, I should say,
+twenty-eight, twenty-four, and twenty. The place had, I found, been used
+as billets before. I discovered this in two ways.
+
+Firstly: On the mantelpiece over the old stove I saw a collection of
+many kinds of regimental badges, with a quantity of English magazines.
+Secondly, after I had been talking for some time, Suzette answered my
+remarks with one of her stock English sentences, picked up from some
+former lodgers, "And very nice too," a phrase much in vogue at that
+time.
+
+The transport officer, who had been out seeing about something or other,
+soon returned, and with him came the regimental doctor, who had got his
+billets all right, but had come along to see how we were fixed up. A
+real good chap he was, one of the best. All six of us now sat about in
+the kitchen and talked over things in general. We were a very cheery
+group. The transport officer, doctor and myself were all thoroughly in
+the mood for enjoying this ten days' rest. To live amongst ordinary
+people again, and see the life of even a village, was refreshing to us.
+We had a pretty easy afternoon, and all had tea in that kitchen, after
+which I went out and round to look up my old pals in A company. They
+had, I found, got hold of the Cure's house, the village parson's
+rectory, in fact. It was a square, plain-looking house, standing very
+close to the church, and they all seemed very comfortable there. The
+Cure himself and his housekeeper only had three rooms reserved for
+themselves, the rest being handed over to the officers of A company. I
+stayed round there for a bit, having a talk and a smoke, and we each of
+us remarked in turn, about every five minutes, what a top-hole thing it
+was that we had got this ten days' rest.
+
+I then went back to our cottage, where I had a meal with the transport
+officer, conversing the while with Suzette, Berthe and Marthe. I don't
+know which I liked the best of these three, they were all so cheery and
+hospitable. Marthe was the most interesting from the pictorial point of
+view. She was so gipsy-like to look at: brown-skinned, large dark eyes,
+exceeding bright, with a sort of sparkling, wild look about her. I
+called her "La jeune fille farouche" (looked this up first before doing
+so), and she was always called this afterwards. It means "the young wild
+girl"; at least I hope it means that. The doctor came back again after
+dinner, and we all proceeded to fill the air in the small kitchen with
+songs and tobacco-smoke. The transport officer was a "Corona Corona"
+expert, and there he would sit with his feet up on the rail at the side
+of the stove, smoking one of these zeppelins of a cigar, till we all
+went to bed.
+
+There was an heir to the estate in that cottage--one Andre, Suzette's
+son, aged about five. He went to bed early, and slept with wonderful
+precision and persistence whilst we were making noise enough to wake the
+Cure a hundred yards away. But, when we went to bed, this little demon
+saw fit to wake, and continue a series of noises for several hours. He
+slept in a small cot alongside Suzette's bed, so it was her job, and not
+mine, to smack his head.
+
+Anyway, we all managed very comfortably and merrily in those billets,
+and I look back on them very much as an oasis in a six months' desert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+GETTING FIT--CARICATURING THE CURE--
+"DIRTY WORK AHEAD"--A PROJECTED
+ATTACK--UNLOOKED-FOR ORDERS
+
+
+Military life during our ten days was to consist of getting into good
+training again in all departments. After long spells of trench life,
+troops get very much out of strong, efficient marching capabilities, and
+are also apt to get slack all round. These rests, therefore, come
+periodically to all at the front, and are, as it were, tonics. If men
+stayed long enough in trenches, I should say, from my studies in
+evolution, that their legs would slowly merge into one sort of fin-like
+tail, and their arms into seal-like flappers. In fact, time would
+convert them into intelligent sea-lions, and render them completely in
+harmony with their natural life.
+
+Our tonic began by being taken, one dose after meals, twice daily. In
+the morning the battalion generally went for a long route march, and in
+the afternoon practised military training of various kinds in the fields
+about the village. My whole time was occupied with machine-gun training.
+Morning and afternoon I and my sections went off out into the country,
+and selecting a good variegated bit of land proceeded to go through
+every phase of machine-gun warfare. We practised the use of these
+weapons in woods, open fields, along hedges, etc. It was an interesting
+job. We used to decide on some section of ground with an object to be
+attacked in the distance, and approach it in all kinds of ways.
+Competitions would follow between the different sections. The days were
+all bright, warm and sunny, so life and work out in the fields and roads
+there was quite pleasant. Each evening we assembled in our cheerful
+billet, and thus our rest went on. My sketching now broke out like a
+rash. I drew a great many sketches. I joked in pencil for every one,
+including Suzette, Berthe and Marthe. I am sorry to say I plead guilty
+to having cast a certain amount of ridicule at the Cure. He was so
+splendidly austere, and wore such funny clothes, that I couldn't help
+perpetrating several sketches of him. The disloyalty of his
+parishioners was very marked in the way they laughed at these drawings,
+which were pinned up in the row of cottages. Sometimes I would let him
+off for a day, and then he would come drifting past the window again,
+with his "Dante" face, surmounted by a large curly, faded black hat, and
+I gave way to temptation again.
+
+He didn't like soldiers being billeted in his village, so Suzette told
+me. I think he got this outlook from his rather painful experiences when
+the Germans were in the same village, prior to being driven north. They
+had locked him up in his own cellar for four or five days, after
+removing his best wine, which they drank upstairs. This sort of thing
+_does_ tend towards giving one a bitter outlook. He preached a sermon
+whilst we were there. I didn't hear it, but was told about it
+simultaneously by Suzette, Berthe and Marthe, who informed me that it
+was directed against soldiery in general. His text had apparently been
+"Do not trust them, gentle ladies." A gross libel. I retaliated
+immediately by drawing a picture of him, with a girl sitting on each
+knee, singing "The soldiers are going, hurrah! hurrah!" (tune--"The
+Campbells are coming").
+
+I'm afraid I was rather a canker in his village.
+
+One day, my dear old friend turned up, the same who accompanied me on
+leave to England. He didn't know we were having our rest, and searched
+for me first behind Wulverghem. He there heard where we were, and came
+on. He was rather a star in a military way, and could, therefore, get
+hold of a car now and again. I was delighted to see him, as it was
+possible for me to go into Bailleul with him for the afternoon. We went
+off and had a real good time at the "Faucon d'Or." We went out for a
+short drive round in the evening, and then parted. He was obliged to get
+back to somewhere near Bethune that night. The next day I was just
+starting off on my machine-gun work when an orderly arrived with a
+message for me. The Colonel wanted to see me at headquarters. I went
+along, and arriving at his house found all the company commanders, the
+second in command, and the Adjutant, already assembled there.
+
+"Dirty work ahead," I thought to myself, and went into the Colonel's
+room with the others. Enormous maps were produced, and we all stood and
+listened.
+
+"We are going to make an attack," started the Colonel, so I saw that my
+conjecture wasn't far wrong. He explained the details to us all there,
+and pointed out on the maps as many of the geographical features of the
+forthcoming "show" as he could, after which he told us that, that very
+afternoon, we were all to go on a motor-bus, that would come for us,
+down to the allotted site for the "scrap," to have a look at the ground.
+This was news, if you like: a thunderbolt in the midst of our rural
+serenity. At two o'clock the bus arrived, and we, the chosen initiated
+few, rattled off down the main street of the village and away to the
+scene of operations. Where it was I won't say (cheers from Censor), but
+it took us about an hour to get there. We left the motor-bus well back,
+and walked about a couple of miles up roads and communication trenches
+until we reached a line of trenches we had never seen before. A
+wonderful set of trenches they were, it seemed to us; beautifully built,
+not much water about, and nice dug-outs. The Colonel conferred with
+several authorities who had the matter in hand, and then, pointing out
+the sector in front which affected us, told us all to study it to the
+best of our ability. I spent the time with a periscope and a pair of
+binoculars drinking in the scene. It's difficult to get a good view of
+the intervening ground between opposing lines of trenches in the day
+time, when one's only means of doing so is through a periscope. Night is
+the time for this job, when you can go in front and walk about. This
+ground which we had come to see was completely flat, and one had to put
+a periscope pretty high over the parapet to see the sort of thing it
+was. It was no place to put your head up to have a look. A bullet went
+smack into the Colonel's periscope and knocked it out of his hand.
+However, with time and patience, we formed a pretty accurate idea of the
+appearance of the country opposite. Behind the German trench was the
+remains of a village, a few of the houses of which were up level with
+the Boche front line. A great scene of wreckage. Every single house was
+broken, and in a crumbling state. This was the place we had to take.
+Other regiments were to take other spots on the landscape on either
+side, but this particular spot was our objective. I stared long and
+earnestly at the wrecks in front and the intervening ground. "About a
+two-hundred yard sprint," I thought to myself. We stayed in the trenches
+an hour or two, and then all went back to a spot a couple of miles away
+and had tea, after which we mounted the motor-bus and drove back home to
+our village. We had got something to think about now all right;--the
+coming "show" was the feature uppermost in our lives now. Every one keen
+to get at it, as we all felt sure we could push the Boches out of that
+place when the time came. We, the initiated few, had to keep our
+"inside" information to ourselves, and it was supposed to be a dark
+mystery to the rest of the battalion. But I imagine that anyone who
+didn't guess what the idea was must have been pretty dense. When a
+motor-bus comes and takes off a group of officers for the day, and
+brings them back at night, one would scarcely imagine that they had been
+to a cricket match, or on the annual outing.
+
+Well, the "tumbril," as we called it, arrived each day for nearly a
+week, and we drove off gaily to the appointed spot and saturated
+ourselves in the characteristics of the land we were shortly to attack.
+In the mornings, before we started, I took the machine-gun sections out
+into the fields, and by mapping out a similar landscape to the one we
+were going to attack, I rehearsed the coming tribulation as far as
+possible. My gunners were a pretty efficient lot, and I was sure they
+would give a good account of themselves on "der Tag." We practised
+bolting across a ploughed field, and coming into action, until we could
+do it in record time. My sergeant and senior corporal were both
+excellent men.
+
+The whole battalion were now in excellent trim, and ready for anything
+that came along. A date had been fixed for the "show," and now, day by
+day, we were rapidly approaching it. It was Friday, I remember, when, as
+we were all sitting in our billets thinking that we were to leave on
+Sunday, a fresh thunderbolt arrived. A message was sent round to us all
+to stand-to and be ready to move off that evening. Before the appointed
+day! What could be up now? I was full of enthusiasm and curiosity, but
+was rather hampered by having been inoculated the day before, and was
+feeling a bit quaint in consequence. However, I pulled myself together,
+and set about collecting all the machine gunners, guns and accessories.
+We said good-bye to the fair ones at the billets, and by about five
+o'clock in the evening the whole battalion, transport and all, was lined
+up on the main road. Soon we moved off. Why were we going before our
+time? Where were we going to? Nobody knew except the Colonel, but it was
+not long before we knew as well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+WE MARCH FOR YPRES--HALT AT LOCRE--A
+BLEAK CAMP AND MEAGRE FARE--SIGNS OF
+BATTLE--FIRST VIEW OF YPRES
+
+
+We marched off in the Bailleul direction, and ere long entered Bailleul.
+We didn't stop, but went straight on up the road, out of the town, past
+the Asylum with the baths. It was getting dusk now as we tramped along.
+
+"The road to Locre," I muttered to myself, as I saw the direction we had
+taken. We were evidently not going to the place we had been rehearsing
+for.
+
+"Locre? Ah, yes; and what's beyond Locre?" I pulled out my map as we
+went along. "What's on beyond Locre?" I saw it at a glance now, and had
+all my suspicions confirmed. The word YPRES stood out in blazing letters
+from the map. Ypres it was going to be, sure enough.
+
+"It looks like Ypres," I said, turning to my sergeant, who was silently
+trudging along behind me. He came up level with me, and I showed him
+the map and the direction we were taking. I was mighty keen to see this
+famous spot. Stories of famous fights in that great salient were common
+talk amongst us, and had been for a long time. The wonderful defence of
+Ypres against the hordes of Germans in the previous October had filled
+our lines of trenches with pride and superiority, but no wonderment.
+Every one regarded Ypres as a strenuous spot, but every one secretly
+wanted to go there and see it for themselves. I felt sure we were now
+bound for there, or anyway, somewhere not far off. We tramped along in
+the growing darkness, up the winding dusty road to Locre. When we
+arrived there it was quite dark. The battalion marched right up into the
+sort of village square near the church and halted. It was late now, and
+apparently not necessary for us to proceed further that night. We got
+orders to get billets for our men. Locre is not a large place, and
+fitting a whole battalion in is none too easy an undertaking. I was
+standing about a hundred yards down the road leading from the church,
+deciding what to do, when I got orders to billet my men in the church. I
+marched the section into a field, got my sergeant, and went to see what
+could be done in the church. It was a queer sight, this church; a
+company of ours had had orders to billet there too, and when I got there
+the men were already taking off their equipment and making themselves as
+comfortable as possible under the circumstances, in the main body of the
+church. The French clergy had for some time granted permission for
+billeting there; I found this out the next morning, when I saw a party
+of nuns cleaning it up as much as possible after we had left it. The
+only part I could see where I could find a rest for my men was the part
+where the choir sits. I decided on this for our use, and told the
+sergeant to get the men along, and move the chairs away so as to get a
+large enough space for them to lie down in and rest.
+
+It was a weird scene, that night in the church. Imagine a very lofty
+building, and the only light in the place coming from various bits of
+candles stuck about here and there on the backs of the chairs. All was
+dark and drear, if you like: a fitting setting for our entry into the
+Ypres salient. When I had fixed up my section all right, I left the
+church and went to look about for the place I was supposed to sleep in.
+It turned out to be a room at the house occupied by the Colonel. I got
+in just in time to have a bit of a meal before the servants cleared the
+things away to get ready for the early start the next day. I spent that
+night in my greatcoat on the stone floor of the room, and not much of a
+night at that. We were all up and paraded at six, and ready to move off.
+We soon started and trekked off down the road out of Locre towards
+Ypres. I noticed a great change in the scenery now. The land was flatter
+and altogether more uninteresting than the parts we had come from. The
+weather was fine and hot, which made our march harder for us. We were
+all strapped up to the eyes with equipment of every description, so that
+we fully appreciated the short periodic rests when they came. The road
+got less and less attractive as we went on, added to which a horrible
+gusty wind was blowing the dust along towards us, too, which made it
+worse. It was a most cheerless, barren, arid waste through which we were
+now passing. I wondered why the Belgians hadn't given it away long ago,
+and thus saved any further dispute on the matter. We were now making for
+Vlamertinghe, which is a place about half-way between Locre and Ypres,
+and we all felt sure enough now that Ypres was where we were going;
+besides, passers-by gave some of us a tip or two, and rumours were
+current that there was a bit of a bother on in the salient. Still, there
+was nothing told us definitely, and on we went, up the dusty,
+uninteresting road. Somewhere about midday we halted alongside an
+immense grassless field, on which were innumerable wooden huts of the
+simplest and most unattractive construction. The dust whirled and
+swirled around them, making the whole place look as uninviting as
+possible. It was the rottenest and least encouraging camp I have ever
+seen. I've seen a few monstrosities in the camp line in England, and in
+France, but this was far and away a champion in repulsion. We halted
+opposite this place, as I have said, and in a few moments were all
+marched into the central, baked-mud square, in the midst of the huts. I
+have since learnt that this camp is no more, so I don't mind mentioning
+it. We were now dismissed, whereupon we all collared huts for our men
+and ourselves, and sat down to rest.
+
+We had had a very early and scratch sort of a breakfast, so were rather
+keen to get at the lunch question. The limbers were the last things to
+turn up, being in the rear of the battalion, but when they did the cooks
+soon pulled the necessary things out and proceeded to knock up a meal.
+
+I went outside my hut and surveyed the scene whilst they got the lunch
+ready. It _was_ a rotten place. The huts hadn't got any sides to them,
+but were made by two slopes of wood fixed at the top, and had triangular
+ends. There were just a few huts built with sides, but not many. Apart
+from the huts the desert contained nothing except men in war-worn, dirty
+khaki, and clouds of dust. It reminded me very much of India, as I
+remembered it from my childhood days. The land all around this mud plain
+was flat and scrubby, with nothing of interest to look at anywhere. But,
+yes, there was--just one thing. Away to the north, I could just see the
+top of the towers of Ypres.
+
+I wondered how long we were going to stay in this Sahara, and turned
+back into the hut again. Two or three of us were resting on a little
+scanty straw in that hut, and now, as we guessed that it was about the
+time when the cooks would have got the lunch ready, we crossed to
+another larger hut, where a long bare wooden table was laid out for us.
+With sore eyes and a parched throat I sat down and devoured two chilly
+sardines, reposing on a water biscuit, drank about a couple of gallons
+of water, and felt better. There wasn't much conversation at that meal;
+we were all too busy thinking. Besides, the C.O. was getting messages
+all the time, and was immersed in the study of a large map, so we
+thought we had better keep quiet.
+
+Our Colonel was a splendid person, as good a one as any battalion could
+wish to have. (He's sure to buy a copy of this book after that.) He was
+with the regiment all through that 1914-15 winter, and is now a
+Brigadier.
+
+We had made all preparations to stay in the huts at that place for the
+night, when, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, another message
+arrived and was handed to the C.O.
+
+He issued his orders. We were to march off at once. Every one was
+delighted, as the place was unattractive, and what's more, now that we
+were on the war-path, we wanted to get on with the job, whatever it was.
+
+Now we were on the road once more, and marching on towards Ypres. The
+whole brigade was on the road somewhere, some battalions in front of us
+and some behind. On we went through the driving dust and dismal scenery,
+making, I could clearly see, for Ypres. We ticked off the miles at a
+good steady marching pace, and in course of time turned out of our long,
+dusty, winding lane on to a wide cobbled main road, leading evidently
+into the town of Ypres itself, now about two miles ahead. It was a fine
+sight, looking back down the winding column of men. A long line of
+sturdy, bronzed men, in dust-covered khaki, tramping over the grey
+cobbled road, singing and whistling at intervals; the rattling and
+clicking of the various metallic parts of their equipment forming a kind
+of low accompaniment to their songs. We halted about a mile out of the
+city, and all "fell out" on the side of the road, and sat about on
+heaps of stones or on the bank of the ditch at the road-side. It was
+easy enough to see now where we were going, and what was up. There was
+evidently a severe "scrap" on. Parties of battered, dishevelled looking
+men, belonging to a variety of regiments, were now streaming past down
+the road--many French-African soldiers amongst them. From these we
+learnt that a tremendous attack was in progress, but got no details.
+Their stories received corroboration by the fact that we could see many
+shells bursting in and around the city of Ypres. These vagrant men were
+wounded in a degree, inasmuch as most of them had been undergoing some
+prodigious bombardment and were dazed from shell-shock. They cheered us
+with the usual exaggerated and harrowing yarns common to such people,
+and passed on. This was what we had come here for--to participate in
+this business; not very nice, but we were all "for it," anyway. If we
+hadn't come here, we would have been attacking at that other place, and
+this was miles more interesting. If one has ever participated in an
+affair of arms at Ypres, it gives one a sort of honourable trade-mark
+for the rest of the war as a member of the accepted successful Matadors
+of the Flanders Bull-ring.
+
+We sat about at the side of the road for about half an hour, then got
+the order to fall in again. Stiff and weary, I left my heap of stones,
+took my place at the head of the section, and prepared for the next act.
+On we went again down the cobbled road, crossed a complicated mixture of
+ordinary rails and tram-lines, and struck off up a narrow road to the
+left, which apparently also ended in the city. It was now evening, the
+sky was grey and cloudy. Ypres, only half a mile away, now loomed up
+dark and grey against the sky-line. Shells were falling in the city,
+with great hollow sounding crashes. We marched on up the road.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+GETTING NEARER----A LUGUBRIOUS PARTY--STILL
+NEARER--BLAZING YPRES--ORDERS FOR ATTACK
+
+
+[Illustration: A]
+
+After about another twenty minutes' march we halted again. Something or
+other was going on up the road in front, which prevented our moving. We
+stood about in the lane, and watched the shells bursting in the town. We
+were able to watch shells bursting closer before we had been there long.
+With a screeching whistle a shell shot over our heads and exploded in
+the field on our left. This was the signal, apparently, for shrapnel to
+start bursting promiscuously about the fields in all directions, which
+it did.
+
+Altogether the lane was an unwholesome spot to stand about in. We were
+there some time, wondering when one of the bursts of shrapnel would
+strike the lane, but none did. Straggling, small groups of Belgian
+civilians were now passing down the lane, driven out no doubt from some
+cottage or other that until now they had managed to persist in living
+in. Mournful little groups would pass, wheeling their total worldly
+possessions on a barrow.
+
+Suddenly we were moved on again, and as suddenly halted a few yards
+further on. Without a doubt, strenuous operations and complications were
+taking place ahead. A few of the officers collected together by a gate
+at the side of the lane and had a smoke and a chat. "I wonder how much
+longer we're going to stick about here" some one said. "What about going
+into that house over there and see if there's a fire?" He indicated a
+tumbled down cottage of a fair size, which stood nearly opposite us on
+the far side of the lane. It was almost dark by now, and the wind made
+it pretty cold work, standing and sitting about in the lane. Four of us
+crossed the roadway and entered the yard of the cottage. We knocked at
+the door, and asked if we might come in and sit by the fire for a bit.
+We asked in French, and found that it was a useless extravagance on our
+part, as they only spoke Flemish, and what a terrible language that is!
+These were Flemish people--the real goods; we hadn't struck any before.
+
+They seemed to understand the signs we made; at all events they let us
+into the place. There was a dairy alongside the house belonging to them,
+and in here our men were streaming, one after another, paying a few
+coppers for a drink of milk. The woman serving it out with a ladle into
+their mess tins was keeping up a flow of comment all the time in
+Flemish. Nobody except herself understood a word of what she was saying.
+Hardy people, those dwellers in that cottage. Shrapnel was dropping
+about here and there in the fields near by, and at any moment might come
+into the roof of their cottage, or through the flimsy walls.
+
+We four went inside, and into their main room--the kitchen. It was in
+the same old style which we knew so well. A large square, dark, and
+dingy room, with one of their popular long stoves sticking out from one
+wall. Round this stove, drawn up in a wide crescent formation, was a row
+of chairs with high backs. On each chair sat a man or a woman, dressed
+in either black or very dark clothes. Nobody spoke, but all were staring
+into the stove. I wished, momentarily, I had stayed in the lane. It was
+like breaking in on some weird sect--"Stove Worshippers." One wouldn't
+have been surprised if, suddenly, one member of the party had removed
+the lid of the stove and thrown in a "grey powder," or something of the
+sort. This to be followed by flames leaping high into the air, whilst
+low-toned monotonous chanting would break out from the assembly. Feast
+in honour of their god "Shrapnel," who was "angry." I suppose I
+shouldn't make fun of these people though. It was enough to make them
+silent and lugubrious, to have all their country and their homes
+destroyed. We sat around the stove with them, and offered them
+cigarettes. We talked to each other in English; they sat silently
+listening and understanding nothing. I am sure they looked upon all
+armies and soldiers, irrespective of nationality, as a confounded
+nuisance. I am sure they wished we'd go and fight the matter out
+somewhere else. And no wonder.
+
+We sat in there for a short time, and stepped out into the road again
+just in time to hear the order to advance. We hadn't far to go now. It
+was quite dark as we turned into a very large flat field at the back of
+Ypres, right close up against the outskirts of the town. Just the field,
+I felt sure, that a circus would choose, if visiting that
+neighbourhood.
+
+The battalion spread itself out over the field and came to the
+conclusion that this was where it would have to stay for the night. It
+was all very cold and dark now. We sat about on the great field in our
+greatcoats and waited for the field kitchens and rations to arrive. As
+we sat there, just at the back of Ypres, we could hear and see the
+shells bursting in the city in the darkness. The shelling was getting
+worse, fires were breaking out in the deserted town, and bright yellow
+flames shot out here and there against the blackened sky. On the arrival
+of the field kitchens we all managed to get some tea in our mess tins;
+and the rum ration being issued we were a little more fortified against
+the cold. We sat for the most part in greatcoats and silence, watching
+the shelling of Ypres. Suddenly a huge fire broke out in the centre of
+the town. The sky was a whirling and twisting mass of red and yellow
+flames, and enormous volumes of black smoke. A truly grand and awful
+spectacle. The tall ruins of the Cloth Hall and Cathedral were
+alternately silhouetted or brightly illuminated in the yellow glare of
+flames. And now it started to rain. Down it came, hard and fast. We
+huddled together on the cold field and prepared ourselves to expect
+anything that might come along now. Shells and rain were both falling in
+the field. I think a few shells, meant for Ypres, had rather overshot
+the mark and had come into our field in consequence.
+
+I leant up as one of a tripod of three of us, my face towards the
+burning city. The two others were my old pal, the platoon commander at
+St. Yvon, and a subaltern of one of the other companies. I sat and
+watched the flames licking round the Cloth Hall. I remember asking a
+couple of men in front to shift a bit so that I could get a better view.
+It poured with rain, and we went sitting on in that horrible field,
+wondering what the next move was to be.
+
+At about eleven o'clock, an orderly came along the field with a
+mackintosh ground-sheet over his head, and told me the Colonel wished to
+see me. "Where is he?" I asked. "In that little cottage place at the far
+corner of the field, near the road, sir." I rose up and thus spoilt our
+human tripod. "Where are you going 'B.B.'?" asked my St. Yvon friend.
+"Colonel's sent for me," I replied. "Well, come back as soon as you
+can." I left, and never saw him again. He was killed early the next
+morning; one of the best chaps I ever knew.
+
+I went down the field to the cottage at the corner, and, entering, found
+all the company commanders, the second in command, the Adjutant and the
+Colonel. "We shall attack at 4 a.m. to-morrow," he was saying. This was
+the moment at which I got my _Fragment_ idea, "The push, by one who's
+been pushed!" "We shall attack at dawn!"
+
+The Colonel went on to explain the plans. We stood around in the
+semi-darkness, the only light being a small candle, whose flame was
+being blown about by the draught from the broken window.
+
+"We shall move off from here at midnight, or soon after," he concluded,
+"and go up the road to St. Julien."
+
+We all dispersed to our various commands. I went and got my sergeant and
+section commanders together. I explained the coming operations to them.
+Sitting out in the field in the rain, the map on my knees being
+occasionally brightly illuminated by the burning city, I looked out the
+road to St. Julien.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+RAIN AND MUD--A TRYING MARCH--IN THE
+THICK OF IT--A WOUNDED OFFICER--HEAVY
+SHELLING--I GET MY "QUIETUS!"
+
+
+At a little after midnight we left the field, marching down the road
+which led towards the Yser Canal and the village of St. Jean. Our
+transport remained behind in a certain field that had been selected for
+the purpose. The whole brigade was on the road, our battalion being the
+last in the long column. The road from the field in which we had been
+resting to the village of St. Jean passes through the outskirts of
+Ypres, and crosses the Yser Canal on its way. I couldn't see the details
+as it was a dark night, and the rain was getting worse as time went on.
+I knew what had been happening now in the last forty-eight hours, and
+what we were going to do. The Germans had launched gas in the war for
+the first time, and, as every one knows now, had by this means succeeded
+in breaking the line on a wide front to the north of Ypres. The Germans
+were directing their second great effort against the Salient.
+
+The second battle of Ypres had begun. We were making for the threatened
+spot, and were going to attack them at four o'clock in the morning.
+
+Ypres, at this period, ought to have been seen to get an accurate
+realization of what it was like. All other parts of the front faded into
+a pleasing memory; so it seemed to me as I marched along. I thought of
+our rest at the village, the billets, the Cure, the bright sunny days of
+our country life there, and then compared them with this wretched spot
+we were in now. A ghastly comparison.
+
+We were marching in pouring rain and darkness down a muddy, mangled
+road, shattered poplar trees sticking up in black streaks on either
+side. Crash after crash, shells were falling and exploding all around
+us, and behind the burning city. The road took a turn. We marched for a
+short time parallel to now distant Ypres. Through the charred skeleton
+wrecks of houses one caught glimpses of the yellow flames mounting to
+the sky. We passed over the Yser Canal, dirty, dark and stagnant,
+reflecting the yellow glow of the flames. On our left was a church and
+graveyard, both blown to a thousand pieces. Tombstones lying about and
+sticking up at odd angles all over the torn-up ground. I guided my
+section a little to one side to avoid a dead horse lying across the
+road. The noise of shrapnel bursting about us only ceased occasionally,
+making way for ghastly, ominous silences. And the rain kept pouring
+down.
+
+What a march! As we proceeded, the road got rougher and narrower: debris
+of all sorts, and horrible to look upon, lay about on either side. We
+halted suddenly, and were allowed to "fall out" for a few minutes.
+
+I and my section had drawn up opposite what had once been an estaminet.
+I entered, and told them all to come in and stay there out of the rain.
+The roof still had a few tiles left on it, so the place was a little
+drier than the road outside. The floor was strewn with broken glass,
+chairs, and bottles. I got hold of a three-legged chair, and by
+balancing myself against one of the walls, tried to do a bit of a doze.
+I was precious near tired out now, from want of sleep and a surfeit of
+marching. I told my sergeant to wake me when the order came along, and
+then and there slept on that chair for twenty minutes, lulled off by the
+shrapnel bursting along the road outside. My sergeant woke me. "We are
+going on again, sir!" "Right oh!" I said, and left my three-legged
+chair. I shouted to the section to "fall in," and followed on after the
+battalion up the road once more. After we had covered another horrible
+half-mile we halted again, but this time no houses were near. How it
+rained! A perfect deluge. I was wearing a greatcoat, and had all my
+equipment strapped on over the top. The men all had macintosh capes. We
+were all wet through and through, but nobody bothered a rap about that.
+Anyone trying to find a fresh discomfort for us now, that would make us
+wince, would have been hard put to it.
+
+People will scarcely credit it, but times like these don't dilute the
+tenacity or light-heartedness of our soldiers. You can hear a joke on
+these occasions, and hear the laughter at it too.
+
+In the shattered estaminet we had just left, one of the men went behind
+the almost unrecognizable bar-counter, and operating an imaginary
+handle, asked a comrade, "And what's yours, mate?"
+
+Again we got the order to advance, and on we went. We were now nearing
+the village of Wieltj, about two miles from St. Jean, which we had
+passed. The ruined church we had seen was at St. Jean.
+
+The road was now perfectly straight, bordered on either side by broken
+poplar trees, beyond which large flat fields lay under the mysterious
+darkness. As we went on we could see a faint, red glow ahead. This
+turned out to be Wieltj. All that was left of it, a smouldering ruin.
+Here and there the bodies of dead men lay about the road. At intervals I
+could discern the stiffened shapes of corpses in the ditches which
+bordered the road. We went through Wieltj without stopping. Passing out
+at the other side we proceeded up this awful, shell-torn road, towards a
+slight hill, at the base of which we stopped. Now came my final orders.
+"Come on at once, follow up the battalion, who, with the brigade, are
+about to attack."
+
+"Now we're for it," I said to myself, and gave the order to unlimber the
+guns. One limber had been held up some little way back I found, by
+getting jammed in a shell-hole in the road. I couldn't wait for it to
+come up, so sent my sergeant back with some men to get hold of the guns
+and tackle in it, and follow on as soon as they could. I got out the
+rest of the things that were there with us and prepared to start on
+after the battalion. "I'll go to the left, and you'd better go to the
+right," I shouted to my sergeant. "Here, Smith, let's have your rifle,"
+I said, turning to my servant. I had decided that he had best stay and
+look after the limbers. I seized his rifle, and slipping on a couple of
+bandoliers of cartridges, led on up the slight hill, followed by my
+section carrying the machine guns. I felt that a rifle was going to be
+of more use to me in this business than a revolver, and, anyway, it was
+just as well to have both.
+
+It was now just about four o'clock in the morning. A faint light was
+creeping into the sky. The rain was abating a bit, thank goodness!
+
+We topped the rise, and rushed on down the road as fast as was possible
+under the circumstances. Now we were in it! Bullets were flying through
+the air in all directions. Ahead, in the semi-darkness, I could just see
+the forms of men running out into the fields on either side of the road
+in extended order, and beyond them a continuous heavy crackling of
+rifle-fire showed me the main direction of the attack. A few men had
+gone down already, and no wonder--the air was thick with bullets. The
+machine-gun officer of one of the other regiments in the brigade was
+shot right through the head as he went over the brow of the hill. I
+found one of his machine-gun sections a short time later, and
+appropriated them for our own use. After we had gone down the road for
+about two hundred yards I thought that my best plan was to get away over
+to the left a bit, as the greatest noise seemed to come from there.
+"Come on, you chaps," I shouted, "we'll cross this field, and get to
+that hedge over there." We dashed across, intermingled with a crowd of
+Highlanders, who were also making to the left. Through a cloud of
+bullets, flying like rice at a wedding, we reached the other side of the
+field. Only one casualty--one man with a shot in the knee.
+
+Couldn't get a good view of the enemy from the hedge, so I decided to
+creep along further to the left still, to a spot I saw on the left front
+of a large farm which stood about two hundred yards behind us. The
+German machine guns were now busy, and sent sprays of bullets flicking
+up the ground all round us. Lying behind a slight fold in the ground we
+saw them whisking through the grass, three or four inches over our
+heads. We slowly worked our way across to the left, past an old, wide
+ditch full of stagnant water, and into a shallow gully beyond. Dawn had
+come now, and in the cold grey light I saw our men out in front of me
+advancing in short rushes towards a large wood in front. The Germans
+were firing star shells into the air in pretty large numbers, why, I
+couldn't make out, as there was quite enough light now to see by. I
+ordered the section out of the gully, and ran across the open to a bit
+of old trench I saw in the field. This was the only suitable spot I
+could see for bringing our guns to bear on the enemy, and assist in the
+attack. We fixed up a couple of machine guns, and awaited a favourable
+opportunity. I could see a lot of Germans running along in front of the
+wood towards one end of it. We laid our aim on the wood, which seemed to
+me the chief spot to go for. One or two of my men had not managed to get
+up to the gun position as yet. They were ammunition carriers, and had
+had a pretty hard job with it. I left the guns to run back and hurry
+them on. The rifle-fire kept up an incessant rattle the whole time, and
+now the German gunners started shelling the farm behind us. Shell after
+shell burst beyond, in front of, and on either side of the farm. Having
+got up the ammunition, I ran back towards the guns past the farm. In
+front of me an officer was hurrying along with a message towards a
+trench which was on the left of our new-found gun position. He ran
+across the open towards it. When about forty yards from me I saw him
+throw up his hands and collapse on the ground. I hurried across to him,
+and lifted his head on to my knee. He couldn't speak and was rapidly
+turning a deathly pallor. I undid his equipment and the buttons of his
+tunic as fast as I could, to find out where he had been shot. Right
+through the chest, I saw. The left side of his shirt, near his heart,
+was stained deep with blood. A captain in the Canadians, I noticed. The
+message he had been carrying lay near him. I didn't know quite what to
+do. I turned in the direction of my gun section without disturbing his
+head, and called out to them to throw me over a water-bottle. A man
+named Mills ran across with one, and took charge of the captain, whilst
+I went through his pockets to try and discover his name. I found it in
+his pocket-book. His identity disc had apparently been lost.
+
+With the message I ran back to the farm, and, as luck would have it,
+came across a colonel in the Canadians. I told him about the captain who
+had been carrying the message, and said if there was a stretcher about I
+could get him in. All movement in the attack had now ceased, but the
+rifle and shell fire was on as strong as ever. My corporal was with the
+two guns, and had orders to fire as soon as an opportunity arose, so I
+thought my best plan was to see to getting this officer in while there
+was a chance. I got hold of another subaltern in the farm, and together
+we ran back with a stretcher to the spot where I had left Mills and the
+captain. We lifted him on to the stretcher. He seemed a bit better, but
+his breathing was very difficult. How I managed to hold up that
+stretcher I don't know; I was just verging on complete exhaustion by
+this time. I had to take a pause about twenty yards from the farm and
+lie flat out on the ground for a moment or two to recuperate
+sufficiently to finish the journey. We got him in and put him down in an
+outbuilding which had been turned into a temporary dressing station.
+Shells were crashing into the roof of the farm and exploding round it in
+great profusion. Every minute one heard the swirling rush overhead, the
+momentary pause, saw the cloud of red dust, then "Crumph!" That farm was
+going to be extinguished, I could plainly see. I went along the edge of
+the dried-up moat at the back, towards my guns. I couldn't stand up any
+longer. I lay down on the side of the moat for five minutes. Twenty
+yards away the shells burst round and in the farm, but I didn't care,
+rest was all I wanted. "What about my sergeant and those other guns?" I
+thought, as I lay there. I rose, and cut across the open space again to
+the two guns.
+
+"You know what to do here, Corporal?" I said. "I am going round the farm
+over to the right to see what's happened to the others."
+
+I left him, and went across towards the farm. As I went I heard the
+enormous ponderous, gurgling, rotating sound of large shells coming. I
+looked to my left. Four columns of black smoke and earth shot up a
+hundred feet into the air, not eighty yards away. Then four mighty
+reverberating explosions that rent the air. A row of four "Jack
+Johnsons" had landed not a hundred yards away, right amongst the lines
+of men, lying out firing in extended order. I went on, and had nearly
+reached the farm when another four came over and landed fifty yards
+further up the field towards us.
+
+"They'll have our guns and section," I thought rapidly, and hurried on
+to find out what had become of my sergeant. The shelling of the farm
+continued; I ran past it between two explosions and raced along the old
+gulley we had first come up. Shells have a way of missing a building,
+and getting something else near by. As I was on the sloping bank of the
+gully I heard a colossal rushing swish in the air, and then didn't hear
+the resultant crash....
+
+All seemed dull and foggy; a sort of silence, worse than all the
+shelling, surrounded me. I lay in a filthy stagnant ditch covered with
+mud and slime from head to foot. I suddenly started to tremble all over.
+I couldn't grasp where I was. I lay and trembled ... I had been blown up
+by a shell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I lay there some little time, I imagine, with a most peculiar sensation.
+All fear of shells and explosions had left me. I still heard them
+dropping about and exploding, but I listened to them and watched them as
+calmly as one would watch an apple fall off a tree. I couldn't make
+myself out. Was I all right or all wrong? I tried to get up, and then I
+knew. The spell was broken. I shook all over, and had to lie still, with
+tears pouring down my face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I could see my part in this battle was over.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+SLOWLY RECOVERING--FIELD HOSPITAL--AMBULANCE
+TRAIN--BACK IN ENGLAND
+
+
+How I ever got back I don't know. I remember dragging myself into a
+cottage, in the garden of which lay a row of dead men. I remember some
+one giving me a glass of water there, and seeing a terribly mutilated
+body on the floor being attended to. And, finally, I remember being
+helped down the Wieltj road by a man into a field dressing station. Here
+I was labelled and sent immediately down to a hospital about four miles
+away. Arrived there, I lay out on a bench in a collapsed state, and I
+remember a cheery doctor injecting something into my wrist. I then lay
+on a stretcher awaiting further transportation. My good servant Smith
+somehow discovered my whereabouts, and turned up at this hospital. He
+sat beside me and gave me a writing-pad to scribble a note on. I
+scrawled a line to my mother to say I had been knocked out, but was
+perfectly all right. Smith went back to the battalion, and I lay on the
+stretcher, partially asleep. Night came on and I went off into a series
+of agonizing dreams. I awoke with a start. I was being lifted up from
+the floor on the stretcher. They carried me out. It was bright
+moonlight, and looking up I saw the moon, a dazzling white against the
+dark blue sky. The stretcher and I were pushed into an ambulance in
+which were three other cases beside myself. We were driven off to some
+station or other. I stared up at the canvas bottom of the stretcher
+above me, trying to realize it all. Presently we reached the train.
+Another glimpse of the moon, and I was slid into the ambulance car....
+
+In three days I was back in England at a London hospital--"A fragment
+from France."
+
+[Illustration: FINIS]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Bullets & Billets, by Bruce Bairnsfather
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