During the cold, damp winter of 1915-1916 we could always get warmed up by going below. In the chalk-mines in the succeeding summer it was also quite pleasant to go below and cool off. The men working underground were certainly lucky in this respect. Down below, the rumble of the shelling overhead could be very distinctly heard, and it interfered much with our effective listening to enemy mining operations. It was a great relief sometimes though to get away from the ear-splitting Kr-r-r-umps all around.
In the "rabbit-holes" we were, of course, obliged to crawl on our hands and knees, and would spend many long hours listening to enemy work, which we heard close to us in these "rabbit-holes" most of the time.
Despite all attempts, it was impossible to keep these holes dry. I can remember several occasions when I was so thoroughly dead beat and "all in" that for a few minutes I dozed or slept whilst listening, incidentally lying in several inches of water, and only a few feet from the enemy's work. It was necessary for us to have experienced "listeners" to keep in touch at all times with the progress of enemy work whilst our own was going on, and naturally the officers on duty had to do a large part of this to satisfy themselves. Regular reports were kept in the dugouts on the surface as to the enemy's activity in every direction, and these were carefully studied and plotted on maps by all subalterns when relieving. Our dugouts, as they were called, although they differed very much from the more or less elaborate dugouts which we now use farther south in France, were really only splinter-proof shelters, and consisted of walls of sand-bags with a sheet of corrugated iron on top, and one or two rows of sand-bags on that. A direct hit of any kind was fatal to all occupants. Many hours have I spent in those dugouts with trench mortars and shells dropping all around, and wondering whether their next mortar was going to crack our "egg-shell" of a shelter. However, when things got too hot, we had a big advantage over the infantry in the fact that we could suddenly recollect at these times some very important work twenty feet below ground in our mines which demanded our immediate attention. Like the infantry, though, we were of a rather fatalistic turn of mind, and usually trusted to our luck. One of the half-dozen men who came over to the trenches from England with me was unfortunate enough to be caught in a dugout of this description the very first time he entered the trenches, a mile or two down the line from us, when a "rum-jar" landed on it. Another officer with him at the time was killed, and several men also, but he got off with a bad head wound which sent him back to an English hospital for a few months. Near us was an infantry company headquarters' dugout and we would go there for a little change from time to time. When fate was kind to us we would share some very decent meals together, usually the contents of some one's parcels from England.
These meals were not served in "Palais Royal" style, and often fingers were employed in lieu of forks, but nevertheless we had some merry times. Humor and tragedy touch elbows in the trenches. A man is laughing one minute—the next he is lying dead with a bullet crashed through his heart or brain; or what is more usual and worse to the survivors, with his body so mutilated that it is difficult to find enough of his pitiful remains to bury. So it was with us. We would wear that anxious look occasionally when Fritz would lob over some form of frightfulness which landed very close to us; but it seldom disturbed us for long. One night I had accepted an invitation to dinner with some friends of a very famous old British regiment, the Rifle Brigade, who were garrisoning the trenches we were in. The company commander was a young man about twenty-three, one of the very finest types of the old British regular army officer, and we had been very good friends. Friendships are made quickly under such circumstances. We had "blown" a mine the previous evening, and it was the duty of the infantry here to wire the crater formed by the explosion. The mine had been blown as a defensive measure in preventing the wily Hun from coming closer to this point underground and was located about midway between the trenches in No Man's Land. While we were at dinner, a runner reported that one of Captain G.'s corporals had been wounded while finishing some work on the wire.
Notwithstanding the fact that even at this time orders were in effect that no infantry company commander should go into No Man's Land unless in emergency or on a regular attack, my gallant friend, Captain G., at once got up from dinner and said he was going out to bring his corporal in. We endeavored to dissuade him, and suggested the usual course of sending out the company's stretcher-bearers to get the man in. He would not listen, but hurried out. Climbing over the slimy parapet he attempted to reach the wounded corporal, but was shot through the head just as he reached the edge of the crater. Two stretcher-bearers at once went out and were also shot in a minute or two. Two of his subalterns then very cautiously proceeded to go out through one of the cunningly devised "sally ports" which issue at frequent intervals from the breastworks out to No Man's Land, recovered the bodies, and brought in the wounded corporal. The loss of this fine officer made a great impression on me at the time, but so many incidents of a similar nature were constantly happening that one becomes callous in time without sensing it. I only know that if one gave way to his feelings his nerves would shortly break, and his usefulness would be ended—a somewhat brutal philosophy, but necessary in a war such as this that the German fiends have forced upon us.
By night we would get rid of our spoil or clay from the underground workings, dumping them from sand-bags or gunny sacks into shell-holes, mine-craters, abandoned trenches, depressions in the ground, behind hedges, and in other places offering some concealment from enemy observation. This work was all done under the enemy's machine-gun and rifle fire. Both we and the Boche would fire the "Very" or star lights at more or less regular intervals during the night; the enemy much more frequently than we; and the parties or individuals working on top would have to be very careful when they happened to come within the range of these ghostly silver flares. Usually it was sufficient if one kept quite still, but where trenches are very close and the light drops behind you and throws your figure into relief, the wise course is to immediately drop flat and remain motionless. It isn't quite so easy as one might imagine to stand still on these occasions; but it is quite effective. Any movement of a soldier is spotted in an instant, and at once every sniper and machine-gun operator, constantly on the alert on the enemy parapet, opens fire. One night I was working with my men on top in this way disposing of our sand-bags, and I noticed an infantry officer with a party of four men placing sand-bags on top of a dugout near us. An enemy "Very" light flashed over and behind us, throwing all of our figures into relief. We dropped pronto, as did the men with the infantry officer, but he, poor chap, then only three days in the trenches, was too slow, and got a bullet square through his head. It is strange to note the confidence with which men will work on top of the trenches at night after a little experience. At first it seems impossible that the enemy machine-guns can miss you in their frequent and thorough traverse or sweeps of the lines opposite them, but you gradually gain confidence and find that, unless you expose yourself carelessly by moving when their lights go up in your neighborhood, you usually get off scot-free.
There are many complaints of the monotony of trench life, and certainly some of them are well founded, but in our work there was not much room for monotony.
During my first month or two I was intensely interested in every weapon that the British were using, and whenever a machine-gun, trench-mortar, grenade, or sniper officer was about to start a "shoot" in my sector, I was invariably invited to witness the affair and learned to operate them all in time, much to my satisfaction. My particular delight consisted in using a Vickers machine-gun at night in traversing up and down the enemy's communication-trenches. I guess we soon acquire bloodthirstiness; at any rate, one develops without conscious effort an instinct to "strafe the Hun," not only on general principles, but particularly to avenge the loss of comrades. The artillerymen share this feeling; the F.O.O., or forward observing officers, for each artillery battery, can be found prowling around the trenches at all times, searching the enemy's lines with their powerful field-glasses for targets, and continually discussing the possibilities of new ones with the infantry and engineers in the lines; and at nearly all times lamenting the fact that they can get nothing to shoot at.
While we were here they sent us a bantam division to relieve the old division. These little fellows, hardly a man of them being over five feet two inches in height, were certainly not short of pluck. Nearly all of their officers by way of contrast were exceptionally big men, all over six feet. It was very amusing to see the bantams climbing on to their fire-steps and building up sand-bags to step on so they could see well over the parapet. It's a useful thing, anyway, to be short in trench warfare. You don't have to duck so much.