AT THE FRONT.
I wonder if the chap who first thought out this shell business realized the extraordinary inconvenience it would cause to gentlemen at rest during what the Photographic Press alludes to as "a lull in the fighting."
Once upon a time billets were billets. You came into such, and thereafter for a spell of days forgot about the War unless you got an odd shell into the kitchen. But now—well, about noon on the first day's rest, seventy odd batteries of our 12, 16, and 24 inch guns set about their daily task of touching up a selected target, say a sap-head or something new from Unter den Linden in spring barbed-wirings which has been puzzling a patrol. This is all right in its way; but the Hun still owns one or two guns opposite us. And by 12.5 all is unquiet on the Western Front. This is all right in its way; but about 3 P.M. the Hun is roused to the depths of his savage nature, and one wakes up to find Hildebrand and Hoffelbuster, the two guns told off to attend to our liberty area, scattering missiles far and wide, but mostly wide, and a covey of aeroplanes bombing the local cabbageries. This again is all right in its way, but in the meantime the mutual noise further up the line has become so loud that Someone very far back and high up catches the echo of it, and a bare hour later we receive the order to stand-to at once, ready to move off twenty minutes ago.
Within three minutes of our first stand-to I was up with the company, hastily but adequately mobilized with my servant's rifle, five smoke helmets, (I took all I could see; this is camaraderie), a biscuit, the Indispensable Military Pocket Book (8 in. by 10 in.), a revolver (disqualified for military uses owing to absence of ammunition), Russian Picture Tales, and a tooth-brush. I find a general opinion prevalent in the company that "if Fritz knew we was standing-to 'e'd pack in." Word must have come through to Fritz somehow, for he shortly packs in—say about 1 A.M.—and we follow suit after the news has spent a couple or hours or so flashing round the wires in search of us. And we go to sleep until to-morrow midday, when the day's play begins again.
When we had been thus "rested" for some days we went and took over a nice new line, with lots of funny bits in it. The front line had three bits.
Left sector—Mine (exploded; possibly held by Bosch on far side).
Central sector—Mine? (unexploded; not held by Bosch anywhere).
Right sector—Mine (exploded; possibly held by Bosch on far side).
Our position seemed a little problematical. The left and right we satisfied ourselves about at once, but the centre was in a class by itself. We demanded an investigator, somebody with wide mine-sweeping experience preferred.
About 2 A.M. on our first day in, a figure loomed up through a snow-storm from the back of the central trench and asked forlornly if there might be any mines hereabouts. We admitted there might be, or again there might not. He questioned us precisely where it was suspected, and we told him "underneath." He scratched his head and announced that he was sent to look for it. His qualifications consisted apparently in his having coal-mined. But he seemed confident of detecting the quicker combustion sort, until he asked for necessary impedimenta. It seems that no good collier can detect an H.E. or any sort of mine without a pail of water, and a hole about 2,000 feet deep, and a pulley, and a rope ladder and a bratting-slat.
It's true we had some good holes in parts of the trench, where you probably go down 2,000 feet if you step off the footboards, and the rest of the stuff we might have contrived to improvise. But for the moment we had somehow run clean out of bratting-slats.
So we had to return the poor fellow with a request that all experts should be completed with bratting-slats before being sent to the front line. This request only produced the senseless interrogation, "What is a bratting-slat?" to which we have not yet bothered to reply. In the meantime if we are really sitting on a mine it seems quite a tame one. It hasn't as much as barked yet.
Just in our bit we aren't very well off for dug-outs; it isn't really what you'd call a representative sector from any point of view. But during a blizzard the other night a messenger who had mislaid himself took us for a serious trench. He made his way along, looking to right and left for some seat of authority until he came to a hole in the parados, two feet by one, where some fortunate fellow had ejected an ammunition box and was attempting to boil water on a night-light. The messenger bent low and asked huskily—
"Is this 'ere comp'ny edquarters?"
The water-boiler looked up. "No," he replied, "it ain't. It's G.H.Q., but Duggie 'Aig ain't at 'ome to no one this evenin'."
First Tommy. "The C.O.'s recommended you for a V.C"
Second Tommy (half asleep and thinking of C.B.). "Oh lumme! What 'ave I done now?"
"GERMANS' TERRIBLE LOSSES.
WHOLE CORPS WIPED OUT.
By Lord Northcliffe."
Belfast News Letter.
Yet, with commendable modesty, his lordship said nothing about this in his recent despatch.
The Daily News reports the case of a conscientious objector at York who said he could not take life—he "would not even eat an egg." We ourselves have conscientious objections to that sort of egg.