A "Temporary Gentleman" in France

by A. J. Dawson

"The Peacemaker" marched his half-Company round the end of the wire above Petticoat Lane, and I took mine round the end in front of Stinking Sap-head. Then we wheeled round to the rear of the new wire entanglement and marched out again, immediately in rear of it, till "the Peacemaker" and I met, as we had previously met in front. So we took up our second and final position and got down to it exactly as we had done in the first position.

When the O.C. reported that we were in position, "C" Company marched out, half from each end of the line, under their own officers, but with the O.C.R.E. in command, and his officers helping. They were at three yards' interval. There was a peg for every man, and the first operation was for each man to dig a hole in which he could take cover. It had all been thought out beforehand, and every man knew just what to do. Their instructions were to dig as hard as ever they knew how, but silently, till they got cover. All the sections were working against each other, and the O.C. Company was giving prizes for the first, second, and third sections, in order of priority, to get underground.

We couldn't see them, of course, and had all the occupation we cared for, thank you, in looking after our line. I was glad to find, too, that we could only hear them when we listened. They were wonderfully quiet. It's a wet clayey soil, and they had been carefully drilled never to let one tool touch another. I am told they went at it like tigers, and that the earth fairly flew from their shovels. In our line there wasn't a sound, and every man's eyes were glued on his front.

The evening had been amazingly quiet, nothing but desultory rifle fire, and unusually little of that. At a quarter to nine a Boche machine-gun dead opposite the centre of my half-Company began to traverse our line—his real objective, of course, being, not our line, but the line of trench, the old fire trench, in our rear. I know now that at that moment the slowest of "C's" diggers was underground. That burst of fire did not get a single man; not a scratch.

A fine rain, very chilling, began to fall, and got less fine as time went on. The wind rose a bit, too, and drove the rain in gusts in our faces. By good luck it was coming from the Boche trenches. At half-past ten they sent over ten or twelve whizz-bangs, all of which landed in rear of our old front line, except two that hit its parapet. Rifle fire was a little less desultory now, but nothing to write home about. They gave us an occasional belt or two from their machine-guns, but our men were lying flat, and the diggers were below ground, so there was nothing to worry about in that.

By half-past eleven I confess I was feeling deuced tired. One had been creeping up and down the line for over five hours, you know; but it wasn't that. One spends vitality; it somehow oozes out of you on such a job. I never wanted anything in my life so much as I wanted to get my half-Company through that job without casualties. And there was one thing I wanted even more than that—to make absolutely certain that no prowling Boche patrol got through my bit of the line.

Down on our flank at The Gut there were half a dozen little bombing shows between six and midnight, and one bigger scrap, when the Hun exploded a mine and made a good try to occupy its crater, but, as we learned next day, was hammered out of it after some pretty savage hand-to-hand work. Farther away on the other flank the Boche artillery was unusually busy, and, at intervals, sent over bursts of heavy stuff, the opening salvoes of which rather jangled one's nerves. You see, "A" Company could have been extinguished in a very few minutes had Boche known enough to go about it in the right way.

If only one enterprising Boche, working on his own—a sniper, anybody,—without getting through our line just gets near enough to make out that it is a line, and then gets back to his own trenches, our little game will be up, I thought. It wasn't restful. The men were getting pretty stiff, as you may guess, lying still in the wet hour after hour.

At half-past two "the Peacemaker" came along and whispered to me to take my men in: "Finished for to-night."

I wasn't sorry. I put my senior Sergeant on to lead, and myself brought up the rear. I was, of course, the last to get into Stinking Sap, and my Platoon Sergeant was waiting for me there to tell me that not one of our men had a scratch, nor yet a single man of "C" Company. One man of No. 3 Platoon, in "the Peacemaker's" half-Company, had a bullet through his shoulder; a Blighty, and no more. And that was our record.