[CHAPTER XVI]
In the Trenches
"Punch" represents a soldier newly arrived at the front asking, "What's the programme?" An old hand in the trenches answers, "Well, you lie down in this water, and you get peppered all day and night, and you have the time of your life!" The new arrival remarks, "Sounds like a bit of all right; I'm on it!"
This was a joke, but it was very like what our soldiers seem to have felt. One of them, for instance, in the Durham Light Infantry, wrote: "We are in the thick of it, and enjoying it. We had an engagement on Sunday, and managed to drive back the enemy. We are still at it, but as happy as sand-boys. When I read in books of the coolness of men under fire I thought somebody was blathering, but after eight weeks of it I can say that no book has ever done justice to the coolness of British soldiers under conditions that would try anybody. The night I was hit we were just leaving the trenches for an interview with some Germans who were trying some of their fancy tricks about our left. As we stood up there was a ghastly shower of bullets and shells bursting all round. Into it we had to go, and as we looked ahead one of our chaps said, 'I think we'll have to get our great coats, boys; it's raining bullets to-night, and we'll get wet to the skin if we're not careful.' Men of C company started laughing, and then they took to singing, 'Put up your umbrella when it comes on wet.' The song was taken up all along as we went into the thick of it, and some of us were humming it as we dashed into the German trenches. The Germans must have thought us a mad crew. Another day there was an officer of the Cheshire Regiment who was a bit of a cricketer in his day. He got uncomfortable after lying in the trenches for so long, and he raised his leg in shifting his position. He was hit in the thigh, and as he fell back all he said was, 'Out, by George! leg-before-the-wicket, as the umpire would say, Better luck next innings.'"
A trooper of the 15th Hussars wrote: "The horror of the nights spent in the trenches in our soaking wet clothes will never leave me while life lasts. The bare thought of it sends rheumatic pains all through me. We minded that more than the German fire, but you must understand that this isn't a grouse. Soldiers know that they have to put up with that sort of thing in war time, and our officers were no better off. Some of them were worse. There was an officer of the artillery who gave up his blanket to a poor devil who had the shivers something awful. The officer caught pneumonia and died a week later at the base hospital. One night, when it was unusually wet and miserable, and some of us had got all the humps that were ever seen on a camel's back, the assembly sounded, and we were paraded at midnight. We fell in, glad to have something to take us away from our miserable surroundings. Talk about fight? Why, we fought like demons. We had all got the 'get at 'em' fever."
A private of the West Kent Regiment wrote to his brother: "We have been living the life of rabbits, for we burrowed ourselves in trenches at ----, and here we remained for over fifty hours. It was an exciting and not unpleasant experience. The bursting of shells overhead was continuous, and it became monotonous. One chap used to raise a cheer each time shrapnel and shell spoke, making such remarks as 'There's another rocket, John.'"
Another when hit in the knee calmly remarked, "I can't play now on Christmas Day for Maidstone United."
"If all goes well we are going to have a football match to-morrow, as I have selected a team from our lot to play the Borderers, who are always swanking what they can do."
"There's a corporal of a regiment, that I won't name, that was a ticket collector on the railway before the war, and when he was called back to the colours he wasn't able to forget his old trade. One day he was in charge of a patrol that surprised a party of Germans in a wood, and, instead of the usual call to surrender, he sang out, 'Tickets, please!' The Germans seemed to understand what he was driving at, for they surrendered at once, but that chap will never hear the end of the story, for when everything else ceases to amuse in the trenches you have only to shout out 'Tickets, please!' to set everybody in fits."