"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is always on the go."
"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the ma.s.sive soldier who was cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111) when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was looking at me, I could see its eyes--"
"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
"Of course, you couldn"t see the thing"s eyes," said Goliath, "you lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! "Twas some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
"We"ll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own part I am more afraid of ----"
"What?"
"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man"s dislike of (p. 112) death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a sh.e.l.l or a bullet, and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp, penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the gra.s.s. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing, agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent"s head.
When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113) day it was bad, but at two o"clock in the morning it was devilish. I awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by concussion sh.e.l.ls, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile cries that slowly died away into silence.
Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114) somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
"I never like the bloomin" trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me pray every time I go up."
"They"re not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy (nice)."
"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are cushy if one"s not caught with a sh.e.l.l goin" in, if one"s not bombed from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn"t snipe "arf yer "ead off, or gas doesn"t send you to "eaven, or flies send you to the "orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and whizz-bangs don"t blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it wasn"t for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn"t be such a bad locality."
He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a f.a.g, and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115) into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed a look of pity on Pryor.
"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I asked.
"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There"s the stink of the dead men as well as the stink of the cheese, there"s the dug-outs with the rain comin" in and the muck fallin" into your tea, the vermin, the bloke snorin" as won"t let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye"re goin" to "ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin" and "arf poisonin"
you when they come, the sweepin" and brushin" of the trenches, work for a "ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ----"
Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the cushiest in the world."
CHAPTER IX (p. 116)
THE DUG-OUT BANQUET
You ask me if the trench is safe?
As safe as home, I say; Dug-outs are safest things on land, And "buses running to the Strand Are not as safe as they.
You ask me if the trench is deep?
Quite deep enough for me, And men can walk where fools would creep, And men can eat and write and sleep And hale and happy be.
The dug-out is the trench villa, the soldiers" home, and is considered to be proof against shrapnel bullets and rifle fire. Personally, I do not think much of our dug-outs, they are jerry-built things, loose in construction, and fashioned in haste. We have kept on improving them, remedying old defects, when we should have taken the whole thing to pieces and started afresh. The French excel us in fashioning dug-outs; they dig out, we build. They begin to burrow from the trench downwards, and the roof of their shelter is on a line with the floor of the trench; thus they have a cover over them seven or eight feet in (p. 117) thickness; a ma.s.s of earth which the heaviest sh.e.l.l can hardly pierce through. We have been told that the German trenches are even more secure, and are roofed with bricks, which cause a concussion sh.e.l.l to burst immediately it strikes, thus making the projectile lose most of its burrowing power. One of our heaviest sh.e.l.ls struck an enemy"s dug-out fashioned on this pattern, with the result that two of the residents were merely scratched. The place was packed at the time.
As I write I am sitting in a dug-out built in the open by the French.
It is a log construction, built of pit-props from a neighbouring coal-mine. Short blocks of wood laid criss-cross form walls four feet in thickness; the roof is quite as thick, and the logs are much longer. Yesterday morning, while we were still asleep, a four-inch sh.e.l.l landed on the top, displaced several logs, but did us no harm.
The same sh.e.l.l (pipsqueaks we call them) striking the roof of one of our trench dug-outs would blow us all to atoms.
The dug-out is not peculiar to the trench. For miles back from the firing-line the country is a world of dug-outs; they are everywhere, by the roadsides, the ca.n.a.ls, and farmhouses, in the fields, the (p. 118) streets, and the gardens. Cellars serve for the same purpose. A fortnight ago my section was billeted in a house in a mining town, and the enemy began to sh.e.l.l the place about midnight. Bootless, half-naked, and half-asleep, we hurried into the cellar. The place was a regular Black Hole of Calcutta. It was very small, damp, and smelt of queer things, and there were six soldiers, the man of the house, his wife, and seven children, one a sucking babe two months old, cooped up in the place.
I did not like the place--in fact, I seldom like any dug-out, it reminds me of the grave, the covering earth, and worms, and always there is a feeling of suffocation. But I have enjoyed my stay in one or two. There was a delightful little one, made for a single soldier, in which I stayed. At night when off sentry, and when I did not feel like sleeping, I read. Over my head I cut a niche in the mud, placed my candle there, pulled down over the door my curtain, a real good curtain, taken from some neighbouring chateau, spent a few moments watching the play of light and shadows on the roof, and listening to the sound of guns outside, then lit a cigarette and read. Old (p. 119) Montaigne in a dug-out is a true friend and a fine companion. Across the ages we held conversation as we have often done. Time and again I have read his books; there was a time when for a whole year I read a chapter nightly: in a Glasgow doss-house, in a king"s castle, in my Irish home, and now in Montaigne"s own country, in a little earthy dug-out, I made the acquaintance of the man again. The dawn broke to the clatter of bayonets on the fire position when I put the book aside and buckled my equipment for the stand-to hour.
The French trench dug-outs are not leaky, ours generally are, and the slightest shower sometimes finds its way inside. I have often awakened during the night to find myself soaked through on a floor covered with slush. When the weather is hot we sleep outside. In some cases the dug-out is handsomely furnished with real beds, tables, chairs, mirrors, and candlesticks of burnished bra.s.s. Often there are stoves built into the clayey wall and used for cooking purposes. In "The Savoy" dug-out, which was furnished after this fashion, Section 3 once sat down to a memorable dinner which took a whole day long to prepare; and eatables and wine were procured at great risk to life. Incidentally, Bill, (p. 120) who went out of the trenches and walked four kilometres to procure a bottle of _vin rouge_ was rewarded by seven days" second field punishment for his pains.
Mervin originated the idea in the early morning as he was dressing a finger which he had cut when opening a tin of bully beef. He held up the bleeding digit and gazed at it with serious eyes.
"All for this tin of muck!" he exclaimed. "Suppose we have a good square meal. I think we could get up one if we set to work."
Stoner"s brown eyes sparkled eagerly.
"I know where there are potatoes and carrots and onions," he said.
"Out in a field behind Dead Cow Villa; I"m off; coming Pat?"
"Certainly, what are the others doing, Bill?"
"We must have fizz," said my friend, and money was forthwith collected for wine. Bill hurried away, his bandolier round his shoulder and his rifle at the slope; and Mervin undertook to set the place in order and arrange the dug-out for the banquet. Goliath dragged his ma.s.sive weight over the parados and busied himself pulling flowers. Kore cleaned (p. 121) the mess-tins, and Pryor, artistic even in matters of food, set about preparing a menu-card.
When we returned from a search which was very successful, Stoner divested himself of tunic and hat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and got on with the cooking. I took his turn at sentry-go, and Z----, sleeping on the banquette, roused his stout body, became interested for a moment, and fell asleep again. Bill returned with a bottle of wine and seven eggs.
"Where did you get them?" I asked.
""Twas the "en as "ad laid one," he replied. "And it began to brag so much about it that I couldn"t stand it, so I took the egg, and it looked so lonely all by itself in my "and that I took the others to keep it company."
At six o"clock we sat down to dine.
Our brightly burnished mess-tin lids were laid on the table, a neatly folded khaki handkerchief in front of each for serviette. Clean towels served for tablecloths, flowers--tiger-lilies, snapdragons, pinks, poppies, roses, and cornflowers rioted in colour over the rim of a looted vase. In solitary state a bottle of wine stood beside the flowers, and a box of cigars, the gift of a girl friend, with the lid open (p. 122) disclosed the dusky beauties within. The menu, Pryor"s masterpiece, stood on a wire stand, the work of Mervin.
Goliath seated at the table, was smiles all over, in fact, he was one ma.s.sive good humoured smile, geniality personified.
"Anything fresh from the seat of war?" he asked, as he waited for the soup.
"According to the latest reports," Pryor answered, "we"ve gained an inch in the Dardanelles and captured three trenches in Flanders. We were forced to evacuate two of these afterwards."