Now, General Runner, the infantry brigadier, was a tough customer, and an Indian man, I think, from his ribbons and the colour of his face. His A.D.C. was trained to jump at the wrinkle of an eyelid or the bristle of a moustache hair. What his staff thought of him I don’t know, but he was liked well enough by the men. He had a curious droop of an eyelid; and when he shot his savage glances at you, he seemed to shut his eyes. He may have had a liver or he may not; but this I know, I should be sorry for his butler when the coffee was cold of a morning.
Like most of the big men, he was for ever poking about the trenches, nor was he chary of a risk. He was a true periscope fiend, holding the periscope well above the parapet so that every sniper for hundreds of yards was potting away. Possibly periscope casualties were his vanity. One morning the periscope was struck sideways. The general’s head was just below the parapet, and the bullet passed an inch or so over his cap. He cocked his wicked eye up—he had quick movements like a bird—and looked at the holes in the tin case. “Bullet through the periscope, sir?” came a toady’s voice. The brigadier twisted about his head, and looked down. Then followed a noise between a chuckle and a choke, and back he went to his observation.
When the colonel and I made an early call at infantry brigade headquarters, the general would be at breakfast or in his office. He had built a table of a sort, and he sat at the head of it, often in the open air, with his staff before him. There was nothing special to eat; but the company lived in a civilised fashion, which keeps a man alive. On the colonel’s approach, the general would look up. “Good morning, Jackson,” he would say, passing a hand over his hair in a way of his; and then he would pucker his face and squint, for the sun was always In his eyes. “Morning, sir.” Brigadier and colonel would talk then for a few minutes, the brigadier in a strong high-pitched voice, which generally had last word. It was said he was hard to turn from his opinion; and I believe he had strange artillery ideas. However, argument and explanation did not delay his breakfast. He chewed on with easy indifference. Presently the colonel would come away, not always best pleased, and we would start up a very stiff pinch which took us to the top of the valley. There it was the trenches ran away to right and left, excepting for a space of twenty yards maybe, where the empty waterway down the valley began. This opening was protected with wire entanglements and sandbag ramparts.
One or two really good dug-outs were about here, places with plenty of sawn timber gone to their making, with roofs of corrugated iron and sandbags, and curtains of old sacking to keep away the sun. There were always rough tables in such places, and plenty of up-ended packing cases for chairs. One can tell a man’s character from his funk-hole.
There was a cookhouse down in the bed of the creek, where a cook compounded savoury messes from pretty hopeless materials. I have sat on the bank above on a red-hot afternoon, wondering how he found the spirit to go on at the job. That cook grew a beard in time; but he never left it to straggle as did other men. It was pointed and trimmed. He talked to nobody, and I wondered what he thought about down there. Maybe he cooked to forget his miseries. He cooked and he kept shut his mouth, which was all asked of him. A fellow can grow into a hero by shutting his mouth on a remorseless campaign of this kind.
There was another dug-out near by, where later on lived among bombs and empty boxes the sergeant of the trench mortars. He was a small man, and middle-aged, with sad eyes. He was a man of birth, a gentleman, and was said to have a history. I wondered what he thought of sitting there alone after putting his mortars to bed.
Once we dragged a couple of guns behind these trenches, but we had no luck with them. Two sergeants were sniped before a shot was fired. The guns went back to the valley bottom afterwards, and stayed there; but the colonel was never truly content.
At the valley head you turned to the right hand for B Battery observing station, and for the left hand did you want Clayton’s trenches where Sands observed. Always we turned to the right. The way was through a deep cutting with scooped-out seats on either side, where often sat two stretcher-bearers reading papers or playing cards. Other fellows would be here too to gain the few yards of shade and the slight draught caused by the high, close walls. They gambled for ever for cigarettes.
Beyond the gamblers began the trenches, and near by at their mouth was B Battery observing station. I have described it before: it had been held by the marines. The spot was much improved since then, was wider and safer; besides, the enemy had lost interest in it. The telephonists grilled in the sun there, for as elsewhere in this barbarous country there was no spot of shade. As often as not Major Cannister, the battery commander, was with his men.
“Good morning, Cannister,” the colonel would say coming up, glad to stand still after the climb.