[pg 230] "Not bad for a first night," said Greens, peeping out.
"Hardly a comedy," replied Coronet, bandaging up a wounded hand.
"No, melodrama, with full effects. Corkleg's a sound actor manager. But, I say, how can we get those dead men buried? They'll soon smell like polecats."
"Not during the day. It isn't safe," remarked the captain, putting his cap up out of the trench on top of a stick. Crack! went a bullet.
"A bull!" shouted the owner, drawing it down and surveying a battered cap badge.
"Sniper, eh?"
"Yes, Greens, a top-hole one at that. We'll need to be careful." The men, however, enjoyed the sport. Spud Tamson and his friends delighted in putting up empty jam-tins on the end of sticks. In a second there was the usual crack, and down came the tin with a bullet-hole through it. When an unfortunate sentry popped his head up too far, he generally met the same fate, and was immediately struck off the strength of the regiment. In some cases the men signalled such hits by putting up a white piece of cardboard, meaning a bull's-eye to the [pg 231] sniper. These German snipers were also sportsmen. Each time a Tommy inoculated the square head of a Teuton with a dose of lead, they also signalled a hit. In this way the troops managed to keep a musketry record. Of course, all sorts of tricks were employed. One section placed a row of turnips with Balaclava hats and Glengarrys on them at the edge of the trench. At once there was a terrible fusilade, and for half an hour each sniper had a go. Indeed, the refusal of these turnips to become casualties so annoyed the opposing Germans that they all commenced to pop at them. While their whole attention was thus concentrated, a small body of marksmen under Lieutenant Greens suddenly popped out of a sap-head. They placed steel plates for protection in front of them. All then took a deliberate aim at the enemy. In three minutes they shot twelve men through the head, and would have got more but for the sudden attack of a Maxim gun. This was rather unpleasant, so Greens and his merry men flopped down into their burrow again.
There were three kinds of trenches in which the men were placed. The first line nearest the enemy was long and as deep as [pg 232] the holes in a graveyard. No head-cover was allowed, and luxuries were barred. For forty-eight hours all danced, cursed, snored, or shivered according to the thermometer and the fulness (or emptiness) of the stomach. When one grew tired of being a mole and absorbing the germs of rheumatism, pneumonia, and enteric, he simply put up his head and got a free discharge from an obliging sniper.
A communicating trench led to the supporting trenches. There was also a telephone to inform the Brigadier when the first line had been sent to heaven and more living targets required. Trunk calls to Oxford Street and Piccadilly, of course, were barred—an annoying restriction. In these supporting trenches, however, a man could manage to scrape a hole in the earth and there lie down. This was not exactly a comfortable experience, especially for those who slept with mouths open. Worms, snails, and other messy slugs would persist in dropping right into the gullets of the sleeping innocents. Only Frenchmen who had eaten frogs could enjoy such delicacies.
From the supporting trenches another communicating line led to the reserve [pg 233] trenches. These trenches were the last word in cunning, comfort, and luxury. They were literally dug-outs or caves, where officers and men improvised everything, from biscuit tins to toilet paper, in the making of underground homes to while away the weary days. Bridge and nap was played—not for money, but full tins of jam, which a beneficent commissariat showers upon all British soldiers to keep off scurvy and other Whitechapel diseases. Nights were made merry by liberal issues of rum, and hope was inspired by the regular arrival of love epistles through the F.P.O. Replies to these communications had to be vague and somewhat guarded, for the colonel censored all officers' letters, while the officers acted similarly with the correspondence of the rank and file. Parcels of tucker cheered the somewhat plain fare, and bundles of New Testaments from anxious maiden ladies taught many that their former deeds would eventually make them stokers down under. When things became too monotonous, the German artillery plunked a few Jack Johnsons over. This employed all hands on burial services and writing letters of sympathy to the widows and orphans.