“GROUSE”
We aren’t happy; our clothes don’t fit, and we ain’t got no friends! Rations are not up yet—confound the Transport Officer—it’s raining like the dickens, as dark as pitch, and we’ve only got one bit of candle. Some one has pinched a jar of rum, that idiot batman of mine can’t find a brazier, and young John has lost his raincoat. In fact it’s a rotten war.
We had lobster for lunch; it has never let us forget we had it! The Johnny we “took over” from said there were 7698 million bombs in the Battalion grenade store, and there are only 6051. The Adjutant has just sent a “please explain,” which shows what you get for believing a fellow.
The little round fat chap has left his gumboots (thigh) “Somewhere in France,” and fell into the trench tramway trying to wear an odd six on the right foot, and an odd nine on the left. George has busted the D string of the mandoline, and A. P. has lost the only pack of cards we had to play poker with.
It’s a simply rotten war!
John has a working-party out of sixty “other ranks” and says they are spread in two’s and three’s over a divisional frontage. He has made two trips to locate them, and meditates a third. His language is positively hair-raising. If he falls into any more shell-holes no one will let him in the dug-out.
Those confounded brigade machine gunners are firing every other second just in front of the dug-out. Heaven knows what they are firing at, or where, but how a man could be expected to sleep through the noise only a siege artillery man could tell you.
George went out on a “reconnaissance” recently. George is great on doing reconnaissances and drawing maps. This time the reconnaissance did him, and the only map he’s yet produced is mud tracings on his person. Incidentally he says that all the communication trenches are impassable, and that no one but a cat could go over the top and keep on his feet for more than thirty seconds. (N.B.—George fell into the main support line and had to be pulled out by some of John’s working-party.) George says that if the Germans come over it’s all up. Cheerful sort of beggar, George.
My new smoke-helmet—the one you wear round your neck all the time, even in your dreams—is lost again. This is the third time in the course of six hours. The gas N.C.O. has calculated that with the wind at its present velocity we should be gassed in one and three-quarter seconds, not counting the recurring decimal.
John has just told a story about a bayonet. It would be funny at any other time. Now, it simply sticks!
The cook has just come in to say our rations have been left behind by mistake. Troubles never come singly. May heaven protect the man who is responsible if we get him! John has told another story, about an Engineer. It can’t be true, for he says this chap was out in No Man’s Land digging a trench. No one ever knew a Canadian Engineer do anything but tell the infantry how to work. It’s a rotten story, anyhow.
Just look at this dug-out; a bottle of rum on the table—empty. The odd steel helmet, some dirty old newspapers, and a cup or two (empty!), and a pile of strafes from the Adjutant six inches thick. My bed has a hole in it as big as a “Johnson ’ole,” and there are rats. Also the place is inhabited by what the men call “crumbs.” Poetic version of a painful fact.
John says this is the d—est outfit he has ever been in. John is right. My gumboots were worn by the Lance-Corporal in No. 2 platoon, and they are wet, beastly wet. Also my batman has forgotten to put any extra socks in my kit-bag. Also he’s lost my German rifle—the third I’ve bought for twenty francs and lost.
This is a deuce of a war!
The mail has just arrived. George got five, the little round fat fellow nine, A. P. two, and John and me shake hands with a duck’s-egg. Still the second mentioned has his troubles. One of his many inamoratas has written to him in French. He knows French just about as well as he knows how to sing! Nuff said!
John has “parti’d” to his triple-starred working-party. The men have not got any letters either. You should hear them! The most expert “curser” of the Billingsgate fishmarket would turn heliotrope with envy. George is feeling badly too. He lent his flash-light to dish out rations with. That is to say, to illuminate what the best writers of nondescript fiction call the “Cimmerian gloom!”
A. P. has had letters from his wife. Lucky dog! She takes up four pages telling him how she adores him.
This is a beastly rotten war.
Fritz is a rotter too. My dug-out is two hundred yards north by nor’-east. Every time I have to make the trip he never fails to keep the Cimmerian gloom strictly “Cim.” And the bath-mats are broken in two places, and I’ve found both of them every time.
Another strafe from the Adjutant. May jackals defile his grave, but he’ll never have one in France, anyhow. “Please render an account to Orderly Room of the number of men in your unit who are qualified plumbers.”
We haven’t any.
If we had we should have mended the hole in the roof, which leaks on John’s bed. It has only just begun to leak. It will be fun to hear what John says when he comes back. Only he may be speechless.
The little round fat fellow is still reading letters, and A. P. is hunting in his nether garments. “Kinder scratterin’ aroun’!” So far the bag numbers five killed and two badly winged, but still on the run.
Somebody has turned out the guard. Yells of fire. After due inspection proves to be the C.O.’s tunic. It was a new one! May his batman preserve himself in one piece.
More yells of “Guard turn out!” Support my tottering footsteps! Our—that is to say my dug-out is on fire.... Confusion.... Calm.... I have no dug-out, no anything.... This is, pardonnez-moi, a Hell of a war!