Then the night routine begins; the men who have worked all day “get down to it,” while the wirers begin to slide over the parapet with their rolls of barbed wire and posts; the patrol puts on boiler-suits and cap-comforters—each man leaving behind any possible identification, and slides off into the waste, fitfully lit by enemy flares, in front of us.
The Officer and N.C.O. on duty start their tour of the line, candles are lit in Company Headquarters and correspondence is dealt with, while the Company Commander has another good look round while waiting for the patrol to return; when they come in the leader’s report has to be reduced to writing—often no easy matter when an unfortunate reference to “enemy seen” raises a perfect hail of questions from higher authority, truculently asking why they were not instantly gone for and spitted! Picture Second Lieutenant Snooks, on patrol for the first or second time with three men, sent out to examine enemy wire, shivering and squirming his way across NO MAN’S LAND, all eyes and ears, suddenly hearing guttural voices and seeing six or more figures looming big in the haze. Of course, he ought to bluff them and bring them in—that is what you would do, Reader, wouldn’t you?—but he doesn’t; he remembers that he was told to examine wire, not to make trouble, so he crouches motionless in the mud till they pass, and thinks he has done the right thing—till he sends in his report. Then, all at once, the Brigadier, the Colonel, the Company Commander send for him, and ask him abruptly, and with degrees of rudeness befitting their respective ranks, what the —— he meant by letting those Boches escape! Needless to say, he never repeats the mistake! And in time he learns that in the Division and the Battalion it is a criminal offence to let slip any opportunity of killing, capturing, or annoying Boche!
About 10 p.m. is “tea up,” and the rum issue is mixed with this or with the breakfast tea at the discretion of the Company Commander. The patrol and other men coming in cold and wet need theirs at once, followed by a walk down to the Brigade drying room, where they can sleep in blankets before a brazier while their clothes are dried.
With the patrol’s return operations usually close for the night, and about midnight, having dealt with the last batch of chits which a thoughtful and zealous runner has seen fit to pick off the Adjutant’s table and deliver, asking searching questions about the “number of sandbags laid” or “the number of screw posts, long, salved” the day before, or the name of a man used to operating an electric light plant or minding pigeons or mixing cocktails (“nil returns to be rendered!” which means “If none, say so”), the Company Commander, who alone has no allotted sleeping time, takes off his tin hat, loosens his belt, and sleeps. At 3 a.m. the Officer on duty, who does a four-hour spell, sends in another “situation and wind report,” and waits for the hour when he can stir up everyone else for “stand-to,” strolling from one post to another and keeping an eye on things in general and the Boche in particular.
It is very quiet, probably raining a little; nothing on the move, except rats. What brutes they were, those rats of the Salient! huge mangy brutes the size of a cat, a few patches of fur on their otherwise bare pink bodies; getting under your feet, running over your face as you lay trying to sleep, eating through haversacks to get the biscuits within, scurrying, scratching, gnawing all night long!
To resume the thread of the story:—The following extracts from a Company Commander’s diary, given under the dates on which they were written, help to give life to an otherwise bald narrative:—
25th. “This dugout is very poor and the roof is leaky—my canvas bucket catches most of the drip, however.... Have just been entering up Logbook sitting in the dugout with a candle for company—caked in mud, sandbags over my boots—feet cold, raining outside, but quite cheerful, as I am expecting some hot stew before long. The old skin-lined coats are no longer issued; instead we have leather jerkins lined with fleece, very warm and comfy.”
26th. “To-day is apparently Sunday, but out here one can’t tell it except by the calendar; the daily hate goes on much as usual—in fact to-day we have been hating the Boche rather extra much. Our guns have been slowly and deliberately knocking his front line to blazes all day, but if I know anything of him he will be about half a mile behind down a hole of some sort—we all go to ground in these days: ‘They shall go into the caves and dens of the rocks, they shall say unto the mountains, “Fall on us” and to the hills “Cover us,” men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking for those things which are coming on the earth’—a wonderful book, the Bible!... One of the men said to-day, ‘The Boche isn’t here, Sir; he’s gone to the Somme and left his missus to look after this place!’ ... How nice a change of boots will be!”
27th. “A fighting patrol under Second Lieutenant Agostini went out but encountered no enemy. At 7 30 p.m. we were relieved by the 1/5th South Lancashires; they were very strong and all arrived together instead of post by post and the narrow trench was jammed with men so that our fellows had a struggle to get out. However, we got out without a casualty, assembled at YPRES station, and trained to BRANDHOEK, whence we marched to C Camp for a rest.”