"Looks almost like a Blighty for me, sir, don't it? Well, even the Boche must hit something sometimes. It's only an outer this time, an' look at the thousands o' rounds when he don't get on the target at all! Sorry I couldn't 've finished them stays, sir. If you send for Davis, o' Number 5 Section, you'll find him pretty good at it, sir." And then he turned to the stretcher-bearer in front, who had the strap over his shoulder, and was just bracing himself to start off when he'd done talking. "Home, John!" he says, with a little kick up of his head, which I really can't describe. "An' be sure you don't exceed the limit, for I can't abide them nasty low perlice courts an gettin' fined."
And yet, when we got down to Battalion Headquarters, the M.O. told me Tommy Dodd ought by all rights to have been insensible, from the blood he'd lost and the shock of those wounds: not surface wounds, you know. He'll have two or three months of hospital comfort now. I hope to goodness nothing septic will intervene. The Battalion would be the poorer for it if we lost Tommy. The M.O. says he'll pull through. The M.O. cropped little patches of hair off round my head, to rub the iodine in where I was scratched, so I look as if I had ringworm.
But to get back to business. I've got to "jot down" this everyday trench routine for you, haven't I? And I only got as far as breakfast in yesterday's letter. We'll get a move on and run through it now. I'm due on deck directly after lunch to relieve Taffy; and it's past eleven now.
After breakfast one-half the men kip down for a sleep, and the other half turn to for work. Then after the mid-day dinner, the half that rested in the forenoon, work; and throughout the night all hands stand their turn at sentry-go. That's the principle—in our Company, anyhow. But, of course, it doesn't always work out quite like that. Everything naturally gives way to strafing considerations, and at times urgent repairing work makes it necessary to forgo half or all the day rest-time. As for the officers—there are only three of us now, besides "the Peacemaker"—one officer is always on duty, day and night. We take that in three-hour spells, the three of us. Then in the day-time, while the turn of duty is a fixed thing, we are, as a matter of fact, about at some job or another all the time; just as the O.C. Company is about all the twenty-four hours. At night we three do take our time off for sleep after a tour of duty, unless in some emergency or other. "The Peacemaker" just gets odd cat-naps when he can.
You might think that if there'd been no particular artillery strafing going on there would be no necessary repair work for the men to do in the trench. But you see, we've practically always got a new dug-out in course of construction, and a refuse pit to be dug, and a sniping shelter to be made, and a new bit of trench to be cut. We have nine separate sumps where pumps are fixed in our line. And if those pumps were not well worked each day we'd soon be flooded out. There's generally some wire and standards to be got ready for putting out at night, with a few "Gooseberries" and trip wires where our entanglements have been weakened by shell fire. I've never yet seen a trench that wasn't crying out for some sort of work on it.
At breakfast "the Peacemaker" will generally talk over the jobs he specially wants us to put through during the day, and give us any notes he may have taken during the night, round the trenches. Then chits begin coming in by 'phone from Battalion Headquarters; and chits, however short and innocent they may look, nearly always boil down to a job of work to be done. In fact, one way and another, jobs invariably invade the breakfast table and every other meal-time; and before the tea-mugs are filled up a second time one nearly always hears a batman told to "clear this end, will you, to make room for me to write a chit."
Then there will be a visitor, probably the C.O., pretty soon after breakfast, and "the Peacemaker" will trot round our line with him, discussing. Ten to one that visit will mean more jobs of work; and, occasionally, what's a deal more welcome, a new plan for a little strafe of some sort.
And then one sees the ration parties trailing up again from the rear, and dinner has arrived; some kind of a stew, you know, as a rule, with bully as alternative; potatoes if you're lucky, jam anyhow, more tea, and some sort of pickings from home parcels in the way of cake or biscuits, figs or what not. During and immediately after dinner—in the dug-out we call it lunch, from habit, but it's about the same thing as the evening meal, as a rule—we always plan out the night's work, patrols, wiring, any little strafe we have on, and that sort of thing.
We are a bit luxurious in "A" Company, and generally run to a mug of afternoon tea; sometimes (if the recent mails have been heavy) to an outburst of plum cake or shortbread with it. And an hour before dark comes evening Stand-to. Technically, this has some tactical significance, even as the morning Stand-to has actually. But as a matter of fact, in the evening it's a parade, more than anything else, to inspect rifles, check up ammunition, call the roll, and see the men are all right.
By the way, you asked me something about the rum. I don't think it's issued at all in the summer months. What we issue now, once a day, is, I think, one gill per man of the half-and-half mixture of rum and water. I think it's a gill; a pint mug has to supply eight men. I think, on the whole, it's a useful issue, and can't possibly do any harm. It's thundering good rum; good, honest, mellow stuff, and very warming.