“Good luck, and may your travelling be aisy; but if ye trip, may ye fall into a gold mine!”
We were back with the British regulars; and here, also, many of the men remained up around the braziers. The hours of duty of the few on watch do not take many of the twenty-four hours. One may sleep when he chooses in the little houses behind the breastworks. Night melts into day and day into night in the monotony of mud and sniping rifle-fire. By-and-by it is your turn to go into reserve; your turn to get out of your clothes—for there are no pajamas for officers or men in these “crawls,” as they are sometimes called. Boots off is the only undressing; boots off and puttees unloosed, which saves the feet. Yes, by-and-by the march back to the rear, where there are tubs filled with hot water and an outfit of clean clothes awaiting you, and nothing to do but rest and sleep.
“How soon after we leave the trenches may we cheer?” officers have been asked in the dead of winter, when water stood deep over the porous mud and morning found a scale of ice around the legs.
You, nicely testing the temperature of your morning tub; you, satisfied only with faucets of hot and cold water and a mat to stand on—you know nothing about the joy of bathing. Your bath is a mere part of the daily routine of existence. Try the trenches and get itchy with vermin; then you will know that heaven consists of soap and hot water.
No bad odour assails your nostrils wherever you may go in the British lines. Its cleanliness, if nothing else, would make British army comradeship enjoyable. My wonder never ceases how Tommy keeps himself so neat; how he manages to shave every day and get a part, at least, of the mud off his uniform. It makes him feel more as if he were “at home” in barracks.
From the breastworks, Captain P—— and I went for a stroll in the village, or the site of the village, silent except for the occasional singing of a bullet. When we returned he lighted the candle on a stick stuck into the wall of his little earth-roofed house and suggested a nap. It was three o’clock in the morning. Now I could see that my rubber boots had grown so heavy because I was carrying so much of the soil of Northern France. It looked as if I had gout in both feet—the over-bandaged, stage type of gout—which were encased in large mud poultices. I tried to stamp off the incubus, but it would not go. I tried scraping one foot on the other, and what I scraped off seemed to reattach itself as fast as I could remove it.
“Don’t try!” said the captain. “Lie down and pull your boots off in the doorway. Perhaps you will get some sleep before daybreak.”
Sleep! Does a débutante go to sleep at her first ball? Sleep in such good company, the company of this captain, who was smiling all the while with his eyes; smiling at his mud house, at the hardships in the trenches, and, I hope, at having a guest, who had been with armies before!
It was the first time that I had been in the trenches all night; the first time, indeed, when I had not been taken into them by an escort in a kind of promenade. On this visit I was in the family. If it is the right kind of a family that is the way to get a good impression. There would be plenty of time to sleep when I returned to London.
So Captain P—— and I lay there talking. One felt the dampness of the earth under his body and the walls exuded moisture. The average cellar was dry by comparison. “You will get your death of cold!” any mother would cry in alarm if her boy were found even sitting on such cold, wet ground. For it was a clammy night of early spring. Yet, peculiarly enough, few men get colds from this exposure. One gets colds from draughts in overheated rooms much oftener. Luckily, it was not raining; it had been raining most of the winter in the flat country of Northern France and Flanders.