"THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND"—WITH KITCHENER'S ARMY IN FRANCE
Stories Straight from the Trenches
Told by Captain Ian Hay Beith, Famous Scotch Novelist with the Argyil and Sutherland Highlanders
Ian Hay's collection of War stories is pronounced in England "the greatest book of the War." This Scotch novelist went to the trenches to fight with the Highlanders. He sends "back home" graphic and absorbing stories of a thousand heroes. They are full of humor, with bits of superb character drawing that make the men at the front seem like old friends. His division has been badly cut up and seriously reduced in numbers during the War; he has risen from a sub-lieutenant to the rank of Captain, finally to be transferred to the machine gun division and recommended for a military cross. The story of the first hundred thousand was originally contributed in the form of an anonymous narrative to Blackwood's Magazine. In a letter to his publishers, Capt. Beith describes the circumstances under which he is writing: "I write this from the stone floor of an outhouse, where the pigmeal is first accumulated and then boiled up at a particularly smelly French farm, which is saying a good deal. It is a most interesting life and if I come through the present unpleasantness I shall have enough copy to last me twenty years." His pictures of the Great Struggle, uniquely rich in graphic human detail, have been collected into a volume, "The First Hundred Thousand," by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, of Boston and New York, which is creating wide attention. One of the stories entitled, "The Front of the Front," is here retold by permission of his publishers.
[4] I—THE FRONT OF THE FRONT
We took over these trenches a few days ago; and as the Germans are barely two hundred yards away, this chapter seems to justify its title.... We find that we are committed to an indefinite period of trench life, like every one else.
Certainly we are starting at the bottom of the ladder. These trenches are badly sited, badly constructed, difficult of access from the rear, and swarming with large, fat, unpleasant flies, of the bluebottle variety. They go to sleep, chiefly upon the ceiling of one's dugout, during the short hours of darkness, but for twenty hours out of twenty-four they are very busy indeed. They divide their attentions between stray carrion—there is a good deal hereabout—and our rations. If you sit still for five minutes they also settle upon you, like pins in a pincushion. Then, when face, hands, and knees can endure no more, and the inevitable convulsive wriggle occurs, they rise in a vociferous swarm, only to settle again when the victim becomes quiescent. To these, high-explosives are a welcome relief.
The trenches themselves are no garden city, like those at Armentières. They were sited and dug in the dark, not many weeks ago, to secure two hundred yards of French territory recovered from the Boche by bomb and bayonet. (The captured trench lies behind us now, and serves as our second line.) They are muddy—you come to water at three feet—and at one end, owing to their concave formation, are open to enfilade. The parapet in many places is too low. If you make it higher with sandbags you offer the enemy a comfortable target: if you deepen the trench you turn it into a running stream. Therefore long-legged subalterns crawl painfully past these danger-spots on all-fours, envying Little Tich.