A "Temporary Gentleman" in France

by A. J. Dawson

Here in billets the amount of letter-writing the men do is something appalling—for the officers who have to censor their letters. As you know, our training in England included some time in four different parts of the country, and our fellows have sweethearts in each place. And they seem to get parcels from most of 'em, too. Then there are the home letters. They all describe their writers as being "in the pink," and getting on "champion," as, I believe, I told you before.

My billet—or, rather, our billet, for all "A" Company officers are under the one roof here—is in the church house, and there's a candlestick three feet high in the bedroom I share with Taffy. There's no glass in the windows, and the roof at one end has had a shell through it, and so the room gets a bit swampy. Otherwise, the place is all right. Our own batteries near by shake it up at times, and the shell-holes, in the road outside show it's had some very narrow squeaks; but neither it nor the church has suffered very much, though they stand well up on a hill, less than half a mile from our support line of trenches, which the Battalion billeted here mans in event of alarm—gas attack, you know, or anything of that sort. So while we're here we sleep fully equipped at night. But in our next week out, at the village farther back, we are more luxurious, and undress of a night.

But I promised to tell you about that second patrol of mine. We were greatly interested in some kind of an erection we could see just behind the Boche front line on our left. All we could see was sand-bags; but, somehow, it looked too big and massive for a mere machine-gun emplacement, and we were all most anxious to find out what it could be. So "the Peacemaker" agreed that I should take a patrol that night and try to investigate. This was the first patrol we sent out as a Company in the line on our own. My first was when we were in with another Company for instruction, you know, and they apparently had not noticed this sand-bag structure. At all events, they made no report to "the Peacemaker" about it when we took over.

The moon was not due to rise till about eleven that night, so I decided to go out at nine. The Company Sergeant-Major asked if he could come, so I arranged to take him and one Platoon scout from each Platoon. They had none of them been out as yet, and we wanted them to have practice. Getting out into No Man's Land marks a distinct epoch in a man's training for trench warfare, you know. If it happens that he has some considerable time in trenches without ever going over the parapet, he's apt to be jumpy when he does get out. I fancy that must be one reason why the Boches make such a poor show in the matter of individual effort of an aggressive sort. They're so trench-bound that their men seem no use out of trenches, except in massed formation.

Don't make any mistake about it; there's some excuse for a man being jumpy over the parapet when he's never had a chance of getting accustomed to it. That's why I think our O.C. is very wise in the way he tries to give all the men a turn at work over the parapet, wiring, patrolling, improving saps, and what not: because it's a pretty eerie business until you get used to it. Behind our line you have graves and crosses, and comparatively friendly things of all kinds—rubbish, you know, and oddments discarded by fellow humans no longer ago than a matter of hours. But out in No Man's Land, of course, the dominant factor is the swift, death-dealing bullet, and the endless mass of barbed-wire entanglements which divides Boches from Britons and Frenchmen for so many hundreds of miles. There are plenty of dead things out there, but, barring the rats, when you get any other movement in No Man's Land you may reckon it's enemy movement: creeping men with bombs and daggers, who may have been stalking you or may not have seen you. But it wouldn't do to reckon much on anyone's not having seen you, because if there's one place in the world in which every man's ears and eyes are apt to be jolly well open it's out there in the slimy darkness of No Man's Land.

You may very well chance to stick your hand in the upturned face of a far-gone corpse, as I did my first time out; but if you do so you mustn't shiver—far less grunt—because shivering may make your oilskin coat or something else rustle, and draw fire on you and your party. So a man needs to have his wits about him when he's over the parapet, and the cooler he keeps and the more deliberate are his movements the better for all concerned. One needn't loaf, but, on the other hand, it's rather fatal to hurry, and quite fatal to flurry, especially when you're crawling among wire with loose strands of it and "giant gooseberries" of the prickly stuff lying round in all directions on the ground to catch your hands and knees and hold you up. If you lose your head or do anything to attract attention, your number's pretty well up. But, on the other hand, if you keep perfectly cool and steady, making no sound whatever happens, and lying perfectly flat and still while Boche flares are up or their machine-guns are trying to locate you, it's surprising how very difficult it is for the Hun to get you, and what an excellent chance you have of returning to your own line with a whole skin.

I had an exact compass bearing on the spot we wanted to investigate, taken from the sap on our left from which we were starting. "The Peacemaker" ran his own hands over the men of the party before we climbed out, to make sure everyone had remembered to leave all papers and things of that sort behind. (One goes pretty well stripped for these jobs, to avoid anything useful falling perchance into Boche hands.) We each carried a couple of bombs, the men had knobkerries, and I had revolver and dagger, to be on the safe side. But we were out for information, not scrapping.

It was beautifully dark, and, starting from a sap-head, clear of our own wire, we crossed the open very quickly, hardly so much as stooping, till we were close to the Boche wire, when a burst of machine-gun fire from them sent us to ground. The Companies on each flank in our line had been warned we were out. This is always done to prevent our own men firing at us. Such little fire as was coming from our line was high, and destined for the Boche support lines and communications; nothing to hurt us.

Now, when we began crawling through the Boche wire I made the sort of mistake one does make until experience teaches. I occupied myself far too much with what was under my nose, and too little with what lay ahead—and too little with my compass. To be sure, there's a good deal in the Boche wire which rather forces itself upon the attention of a man creeping through it on hands and knees. The gooseberries and loose strands are the devil. Still, it is essential to keep an eye on the compass, and to look ahead, as well as on the ground under one's nose, lest you over-shoot your mark or drop off diagonally to one side or the other of it. I know a good deal better now. But one has no business to make even one mistake, if one's a "Temporary Officer and Gentleman," because one's men have been taught to follow and trust one absolutely, and it's hardly ever only one's own safety that's at stake.

Suddenly I ran my face against the side of a "giant gooseberry" with peculiarly virulent prongs, and in that moment a bullet whizzed low over my head, and—here's the point—the bolt of the rifle from which that bullet came was pulled back and jammed home for the next shot—as it seemed right in my ear. We all lay perfectly flat and still. I could feel the Sergeant-Major's elbow just touching my left hip. Very slowly and quietly I raised my head enough to look round the side of that "giant gooseberry," and instinct made me look over my right shoulder.