GIVENCHY. “J” SAP.
GIVENCHY. MOAT FARM.
Though the phrase “nothing to report” occurred with unvarying monotony during the Division’s sojourn in this region, and though the experiences here seem to have had little in common with those of the closing stages of the war, it was in the Béthune—La Bassée area that the 42nd Division was raised to its highest standard of efficiency, esprit-de-corps, and enthusiasm, and that it received training and inspiration to accomplish the deeds by which it won distinction in the great battles of 1918, and helped to break the iron might of the German armies and bring about the final triumph.
The Trenches in Winter
The trench system here was “Bairnsfather-land” pure and simple. The very names conjure up vivid pictures—the trenches deep in melting snow; No Man’s Land, with its almost continuous line of craters, full of stagnant, green, stinking water, the sides of crumbling earth and slimy mud converting them into death-traps for night-patrols; the front line with its saps—eerie and lonely posts for the sentries who kept watch. As in the leading case of the Curate’s Egg, some parts were better than others. South of the Brickstacks, and south of the La Bassée—Béthune road, for instance, the accommodation in dugouts and tunnels was quite comfortable. Company Headquarters there were sometimes mistaken by delighted visiting Brigadiers for public picture-galleries, so elaborately were they decorated with illustrations from La Vie Parisienne and kindred works. But north of the canal the water-level was only a few feet below the surface, and the “trenches” were little more than parapets of turf and sandbag breastworks. They had been made at a time when little thought was given to “batter” and “berm,” and, under the influence of rain, frost, and thaw, shell fire and trench-mortar fire, duckboards had disappeared under pits of mud, and walls had collapsed and blocked the trenches in a tangle of wood, rabbit-netting, and mud. It seemed enough to ask a man merely to keep alive in the awful discomfort of the trenches in winter, and under such conditions to carry on the offensive and defensive work of the garrison. But far more than this was demanded, for there was no end to the work of maintaining existing defences and constructing a new system. Give the infantryman a rifle and bombs, and point out where and how he can use them, and his inevitable grouse is no more than the Englishman’s traditional method of disguising his real cheerfulness. But hand him a spade or barbed wire and stakes, and ask him to dig, or erect “apron” fences, and he ceases to be his old cheerful self. However nicely the detested term “working party” may be camouflaged, nothing will ever reconcile him to fatigues, and it must be remembered that he was attired for war, not for manual labour. The impedimenta he carried, including the box respirator strapped across his chest in the “alert” position, placed him under a heavy handicap. Yet he does the work—no soldier better! He loathed it, but he put his back into it, and found matter for facetious comment in his own and his chum’s personal appearance. For the leather jerkin which had been issued when the frost came had now been supplemented by a pair of “boots, gum, thigh,” and he looked like a Yarmouth fisherman in a tin hat.
In this sector sick and wounded were generally conveyed to the Base Hospitals by the Inland Water Transport’s comfortable hospital barges. This was a mode of transport much preferred to the alternative of conveyance over bumpy roads. One badly-wounded man, on being put aboard one of the barges, expressed the hope that there were no shell-holes in La Bassée Canal, as he would hate to be bumped. The men in the trenches regarded the “bargees” with some envy, and inquiries were made as to the qualifications necessary to obtain this coveted job.
An extensive scheme of concrete shelter construction was taken in hand by the engineers, especially in the support line, known as the Village Line. Owing to the presence of water a few feet below the ground level, tunnelled dug-outs were seldom practicable, so a system of 5·9-shell-proof, ferro-concrete structures was begun. The Brigade in rest-billets supplied working-parties, and some idea of the amount of labour required is shown in the records of the 428 Field Company, where the number of man-loads of material used in the making of these shelters for one brigade front alone is given as follows—
| Cement | 5,036 | sandbags |
| Shingle | 19,384 | ” |
| Sand | 9,692 | ” |
| Total | 34,112 | sandbags, |