It's bloomin' well still the same,
Ever and always the same,
Right in the thick of it,
Not feelin' sick of it,
Naw! but it's always the same, the same.
I like the 'ole bisness, not 'alf,
Son of the Empire, not 'alf!
Le guerre never finny,
It's whizzbang and Minnie,
And always the usual strafe, strafe, strafe.
For ever and ever the same,
Bloomin' well always the same;
If the guns for a change
Would just lengthen their range,
But naw! they just strafe us the same.
(From Trench Doggerel.)
The winter was over, the birds were singing again on the barbed wire entanglements, the green grasses peeped out between the cobbles of the deserted village streets, and the flowers showed in the open spaces between the lines. The trenches were becoming dry; the parapets no longer crumbled down; it was possible to climb over the parados at night without flinging half the structure into the muddy alleys, where the soldiers kept eternal watch on the lines across the way. Sheepskin jackets were handed in; top boots were worn no more; a man could sleep at ease in a dug-out now, for the roofs, no longer weighted by the rain, had ceased falling in on the hapless sleepers. The tottering walls gathered strength; tottering spirits were braced up; men saw the sun and were pleased. The winter was over.
For one who has not experienced them, it is difficult to realise the hardships of the front line between the months of October and April. The trenches are deep ditches filled with mud and water that reach the waist. Now and again the heavy top-boots are useless protection against wet, the water rises over the tops of the boots and runs down the legs of the men. The boots stick in the mud, and often the men have to climb out of them; clamber from cells into a quagmire. In the days following the first trench winter when the earth got dry soldiers who had died in their top-boots were dug from the floors of the trenches. Weary with their efforts to get free from the deadly embrace of the muddy quagmire, they fell asleep and succumbed to exposure, died in their graves. And in spring they were dug out and buried anew.
The dug-out is as treacherous as the trench. The shaky construction, the lodge of fear, is always built in a hurry. Weak props hold a crazy roof in place; sandbags filled with earth serve the purpose of tiles. In dry weather a dug-out serves its purpose well, but in the rainy weather the sandbags becoming saturated finally weigh the rafters and props down to earth. Time and again the weary sleepers never wake, their shelter becomes their grave.
The trenches in the summer nights have a charm peculiarly their own when the starshells riot in the heavens and the air is full of the languorous scent of sleeping flowers. If the guns of war are silent, there is a genial atmosphere pervading the whole place, and men go about their work in a light-hearted manner.
One can smell tea brewing in the sheltered bay where a brazier glows cosily in the lee of the traverse. A game of cards is in progress in a dug-out, and a youth may be seen writing a letter by the light of a timid candle stuck on the wall. At that moment one does not feel far removed from home. But what a contrast in the cheerless winter. All the cosy comfort is a thing of the past. Men plough through muck and mire, dragging their feet and legs through water and mud, or sleep in the open, shivering with cold. The fingers are chilled to the bone, all feeling has gone away from the feet; for all one knows, the feet may have gone. No fires are lit, there is no wood, nothing that will burn.
The long night marches have lost all their romance. Clothes are seldom dry, they cling to the body like the rags of a drowned man, scourging and scaling the flesh. The cold rain stings the flesh, the snow freezes the fingers. Marching is difficult, the roads are thick with mud, and all roads lead to the firing line, the line of red agony, of desolation. The soldier is a mute, impotent figure, a blind pawn in the game of war. The billets are cold and cheerless. The broken roof, which allowed the winds of night to play round the sleepers in the hot summer weather, now lets in the cold and wet. Sleep is hardly a rest, it is a moment of forgetfulness similar to the solace which a sick man finds in a drug.