I
The outstanding feature of to-day's intelligence is that spring is coming—has come, in fact.
It arrived with a bump. March entered upon its second week with seven degrees of frost and four inches of snow. We said what was natural and inevitable to the occasion, wrapped our coats of skins more firmly round us, and made a point of attending punctually when the rum ration was issued.
Forty-eight hours later winter had disappeared. The sun was blazing in a cloudless sky. Aeroplanes were battling for photographic rights overhead; the brown earth beneath our feet was putting forth its first blades of tender green. The muck-heap outside our rest-billet displayed unmistakable signs of upheaval from its winter sleep. Primroses appeared in Bunghole Wood; larks soared up into the sky above No Man's Land, making music for the just and the unjust. Snipers, smiling cheerfully over the improved atmospheric conditions, polished up their telescopic sights. The artillery on each side hailed the birth of yet another season of fruitfulness and natural increase with some more than usually enthusiastic essays in mutual extermination. Half the Mess caught colds in their heads.
Frankly, we are not sorry to see the end of winter. Caesar, when he had concluded his summer campaign, went into winter quarters. Caesar, as Colonel Kemp once huskily remarked, knew something!
Still, each man to his taste. Corporal Mucklewame, for one, greatly prefers winter to summer.
"In the winter," he points out to Sergeant M'Snape, "a body can breathe withoot swallowing a wheen bluebottles and bum-bees. A body can aye streitch himself doon under a tree for a bit sleep withoot getting wasps and wee beasties crawling up inside his kilt, and puddocks craw-crawing in his ear! A body can keep himself frae sweitin'—"
"He can that!" assents M'Snape, whose spare frame is more vulnerable to the icy breeze than that of the stout corporal.
However, the balance of public opinion is against Mucklewame. Most of us are unfeignedly glad to feel the warmth of the sun again. That working-party, filling sandbags just behind the machine-gun emplacement, are actually singing. Spring gets into the blood, even in this stricken land. The Boche over the way resents our efforts at harmony.
Sing us a song, a song of Bonnie Scotland!
Any old song will do.
By the old camp-fire, the rough-and-ready choir
Join in the chorus too.
"You'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road"—
'Tis a song that we all know,
To bring back the days in Bonnie Scotland,
Where the heather and the bluebells—
Whang!
The Boche, a Wagnerian by birth and upbringing, cannot stand any more of this, so he has fired a rifle-grenade at the glee-party—on the whole a much more honest and direct method of condemnation than that practiced by musical critics in time of peace. But he only elicits an encore. Private Nigg perches a steel helmet on the point of a bayonet, and patronisingly bobs the same up and down above the parapet.
These steel helmets have not previously been introduced to the reader's notice. They are modelled upon those worn in the French Army—and bear about as much resemblance to the original pattern as a Thames barge to a racing yacht. When first issued, they were greeted with profound suspicion. Though undoubtedly serviceable,—they saved many a crown from cracking round The Bluff the other day,—they were undeniably heavy, and they were certainly not becoming to the peculiar type of beauty rampant in "K(1)." On issue, then, their recipients elected to regard the wearing of them as a peculiarly noxious form of "fatigue." Private M'A. deposited his upon the parapet, like a foundling on a doorstep, and departed stealthily round the nearest traverse, to report his new headpiece "lost through the exigencies of military service." Private M'B. wore his insecurely perched upon the top of his tam-o'-shanter bonnet, where it looked like a very large ostrich egg in a very small khaki nest. Private M'C. set his up on a convenient post, and opened rapid fire upon it at a range of six yards, surveying the resulting holes with the gloomy satisfaction of the vindicated pessimist. Private M'D. removed the lining from his, and performed his ablutions in the inverted crown.
"This," said Colonel Kemp, "will never do. We must start wearing the dashed things ourselves."
And it was so. Next day, to the joy of the Battalion, their officers appeared in the trenches selfconsciously wearing what looked like small sky-blue wash-hand basins balanced upon their heads. But discipline was excellent. No one even smiled. In fact, there was a slight reaction in favour of the helmets. Conversations like the following were overheard:—
"I'm tellin' you, Jimmy, the C.O. is no the man for tae mak' a show of himself like that for naething. These tin bunnets must be some use. Wull we pit oors on?"
"Awa' hame, and bile your held!" replied the unresponsive James.
"They'll no stop a whish-bang," conceded the apostle of progress, "but they would keep off splunters, and a wheen bullets, and—and—"
"And the rain!" supplied Jimmy sarcastically.
This gibe suddenly roused the temper of the other participant in the debate.
"I tell you," he exclaimed, in a voice shrill with indignation, "that these —— helmets are some —— use!"
"And I tell you," retorted James earnestly, "that these —— helmets are no —— —— use!"
When two reasonable persons arrive at a controversial impasse, they usually agree to differ and go their several ways. But in "K(1)" we prefer practical solutions. The upholder of helmets hastily thrust his upon his head.
"I'll show you, Jimmy!" he announced, and clambered up on the firing-step.
"And I'll —— well show you, Wullie!" screamed James, doing likewise.
Simultaneously the two zealots thrust their heads over the parapet, and awaited results. These came. The rifles of two Boche snipers rang out, and both demonstrators fell heavily backwards into the arms of their supporters.
By all rights they ought to have been killed. But they were both very much alive. Each turned to the other triumphantly, and exclaimed,—
"I tellt ye so!"
There was a hole right through the helmet of Jimmy, the unbeliever. The fact that there was not also a hole through his head was due to his forethought in having put on a tam-o'-shanter underneath. The net result was a truncated "toorie." Wullie's bullet had struck his helmet at a more obtuse angle, and had glanced off, as the designer of the smooth exterior had intended it to do.
At first glance, the contest was a draw. But subsequent investigation elicited the fact that Jimmy in his backward fall had bitten his tongue to the effusion of blood. The verdict was therefore awarded, on points, to Wullie, and the spectators dispersed in an orderly manner just as the platoon sergeant came round the traverse to change the sentry.