NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE

J B P Adams

NOTHING
OF IMPORTANCE
A RECORD OF EIGHT MONTHS AT THE
FRONT WITH A WELSH BATTALION
OCTOBER, 1915, TO JUNE, 1916
BY
BERNARD ADAMS
WITH A PORTRAIT AND THREE MAPS
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

First Published in 1917

TO
T. R. G.
WHO TAUGHT ME HOW TO THINK

IN MEMORIAM
BERNARD ADAMS

John Bernard Pye Adams was born on November 15th, 1890, at Beckenham, Kent. From his first school at Clare House, Beckenham, he obtained an entrance scholarship to Malvern, where he gained many Classical and English prizes and became House Prefect. In December, 1908, he won an open Classical scholarship at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he went into residence in October, 1909. He was awarded in 1911 Sir William Browne’s gold medals (open to the University) for a Greek epigram and a Latin ode, and in 1912 he won the medal for the Greek epigram again, and graduated with a First Class in the Classical Tripos. In his fourth year he read Economics.

On leaving Cambridge he was appointed by the India Office to be Warden and Assistant Educational Adviser at the Hostel for Indian Students at Cromwell Road, South Kensington. “He threw himself,” writes Dr. T. W. Arnold, C.I.E., Secretary of Indian Students, “with the enthusiasm of his ardent nature into the various activities connected with 21 Cromwell Road, and endeared himself both to the Indian students and to his colleagues.” Adams was always a quiet man, but his high abilities, despite his unobtrusiveness, could not be altogether hidden; and in London, as in Cambridge, his intellect and his gift for friendship had their natural outcome. Mr. E. W. Mallet, of the India Office, bears testimony to “the very high value which we all set on his work. He had great gifts of sympathy and character, strength as well as kindliness, influence as well as understanding; and these qualities won him—in the rather difficult work in which he helped so loyally and well—a rare and noticeable measure of esteem.” On his side, he felt that the choice had been a right one; he liked his work, and he learned a great deal from it.

His ultimate purpose was missionary work in India, and the London experience brought him into close touch with Indians from every part of India and of every religion.

In November, 1914, he joined up as lieutenant in the Welsh regiment with which these pages deal, and he obtained a temporary captaincy in the following spring. When he went out to the front in October, 1915, he resumed his lieutenancy, but was very shortly given charge of a company, a position which he retained until he was wounded in June, 1916, when he returned to England. He only went out to the front again on January 31st of this year. In the afternoon of February 26th he was wounded while leading his men in an attack and died the following day in the field hospital.

These few sentences record the bare landmarks of a career which, in the judgment of his friends, would have been noteworthy had it not been so prematurely cut short. For instance, here is what his friend, T. R. Glover, of St John’s, wrote in The Eagle (the St John’s College magazine) and elsewhere:

“Bernard Adams was my pupil during his Classical days at St John’s, and we were brought into very close relations. He remains in my mind as one of the very best men I have ever had to teach—best every way, in mind and soul and all his nature. He had a natural gift for writing—a natural habit of style; he wrote without artifice, and achieved the expression of what he thought and what he felt in language that was simple and direct and pleasing. (A College Prize Essay of his of those days was printed in The Eagle (vol. xxvii, 47-60)—on Wordsworth’s Prelude.) He was a man of the quiet and reserved kind, who did not talk much, for whom, perhaps, writing was a more obvious form of utterance than speech.

It was clear to those who knew him that he put conscience into his thinking—he was serious, above all about religion, and he was honest with himself. Other people will take religion at secondhand; he was of another type. He thought things out quietly and clearly, and then decided. His choice of Economics as a second subject at Cambridge was dictated by the feeling that it would prepare him for his life’s work in the Christian ministry. There was little hope in it of much academic distinction—but that was not his object. A man who had thought more of himself would have gone on with Classics, in the hope (a very reasonable one) of a Fellowship. Adams was not working for his own advancement. The quiet simple way in which, without referring to it, he dismissed academic distinction, gives the measure of the man—clear, definite, unselfish, and devoted. His ideal was service, and he prepared for it—at Cambridge, and with his Indian students in London.

When the war came he had difficulties of decision as to the course he should pursue. Like others who had no gust for war, and no animosity against the enemy, he took a commission, not so much to fight against as to fight for; the principles at stake appealed to him, and with an inner reluctance against the whole business he went into it—once again the quiet, thought-out sacrifice.”

In this phase of his career his characteristic conscientiousness was shown by the thoroughness and success with which he performed his military duties “He is a real loss to the regiment,” wrote a senior officer; “everybody who knew him had a very high opinion of his military efficiency.”

As is so often the case, a quiet and reserved manner hid a brave heart. When it came to personal danger he impressed men as being unconscious of it. “I never met a man who displayed coolly more utter disregard for danger.” And in this spirit he led his men against the enemy—and fell. From the last message that he gave the nurse for his people, “Tell them I’m all right,” it is clear that he died with as quiet a mind and as surrendered a will as he lived.

“What we have lost who knew him,” writes Mr. Glover, “these lines may hint—I do not think we really know the extent of our loss. But we keep a great deal, a very great deal—quidquid ex illo amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus, manet mansurumque est. Yes, that is true; and from the first my sorrow (it may seem an odd confession) was for those who were not to know him, whose chance was lost, for the work he was not to do. For himself, if ever a man lived his life, it was he; twenty-five or twenty-six years is not much, perhaps, as a rule, but here it was life and it was lived to some purpose; it told and it is not lost.”

CONTENTS

MAPS

ILLUSTRATION

PREFACE

“Then,” said my friend, “what is this war like? I ask you if it is this, or that; and you shake your head. But you will not satisfy me with negatives. I want to know the truth; what is it like?”

There was a long silence.

“Express that silence; that is what we want to hear.”

“The mask of glory,” I said, “has been stripped from the face of war.”

“And we are fighting the better for that,” continued my friend.

“You see that?” I exclaimed. “But of course you do. We know it, and you at home know it. And you want to know the truth?”

“Of course,” was the reply.

“I do not say that what you have read is not true,” said I; “but I do say that I have read nothing that gives a complete or proportioned picture. I have not yet found a perfect simile for this war, but the nearest I can think of is that of a pack of cards. Life in this war is a series of events so utterly different and disconnected, that the effect upon the actor in the midst of them is like receiving a hand of cards from an invisible dealer. There are four suits in the pack. Spades represent the dullness, mud, weariness, and sordidness. Clubs stand for another side, the humour, the cheerfulness, the jollity, and good-fellowship. In diamonds I see the glitter of excitement and adventure. Hearts are a tragic suit of agony, horror, and death. And to each man the invisible dealer gives a succession of cards; sometimes they seem all black; sometimes they are red and black alternately; and at times they come red, red, red; and at the end is the ace of hearts.”

“I understand,” said my friend. “And now tell me your hand.”

“It was a long hand,” I replied; “I think I had better try and write it down in a book. I have never written a book. I wonder how it would pan out? At first my hand was chiefly black with a sprinkling of diamonds; later I received more diamonds, but the hearts began to come as well; at last the hearts seemed to be squeezing out the clubs and diamonds. There were always plenty of spades.”

There was another silence.

“There was one phrase,” I resumed, “in the daily communiqués that used to strike us rather out there;” it was, “Nothing of importance to record on the rest of the front.” I believe that a hundred years hence this phrase will be repeated in the history books. There will be a passage like this: “Save for the gigantic effort of Germany to break through the French lines at Verdun, nothing of importance occurred on the western front between September, 1915, and the opening of the Somme offensive on the 1st of July, 1916.” And this will be believed, unless men have learnt to read history aright by then. For the river of history is full of waterfalls that attract the day excursionist—such as battles, and laws, and the deaths of kings; whereas the spirit of the river is not in the waterfalls. There are men who were wounded in the Somme battle, who had only seen a few weeks of war. I have yet to see a waterfall; but I have learned something of the spirit of the deep river in eight months of “nothing of importance.”

This, then, is the book that I have written. It is the spirit of the war as it came to me, first in big incoherent impressions, later as a more intelligible whole. Perhaps it will seem that the first chapters are somewhat light in tone and inclined to gloss over the terrible side of War. But that is just what happens; at first, the interest and adventure are paramount, and it is only after a time, only after all the novelty has worn away, that one gets the real proportion. If the first chapters do not bite deep, remember that this was my experience. This book does not claim to be always sensational or thrilling. One claim only I make for it: from end to end it is the truth.

The events recorded are real and true in every detail. I have nowhere exaggerated; for in this war there is nothing more terrible than the truth.

All the persons mentioned are also real, though I have thought it better to give them pseudonyms.

January, 1917.

NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE

NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE

CHAPTER I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS

“Good-bye!”

“Good-bye. Don’t forget to send me that Hun helmet!”

“All right! Good-bye!”

The train had long ago recovered from the shock of its initial jerk; a long steady grinding noise came up from the carriage wheels, as though they had recovered breath and were getting into their stride for Folkestone, regardless of the growing clatter of the South-Eastern rhythm;—if, indeed, so noble a word may be used for the noise made by the wheels as they passed over the rail-joints of this distinguished line.

“Don’t believe it’s a good thing having one’s people to see you off,” said Terry, whose people had accompanied him in large numbers to Charing Cross.

“They will come, though,” remarked Crowley very wisely.

“I tried to persuade my people not to come,” said I; “but they think you like it, I suppose. I would certainly rather say good-bye at home, and have no one come to the station.”

And so I started off my experience of “the great adventure” with a “lie direct”: but it does not weigh very heavily upon my conscience.

Six of us sat in a first-class carriage on the morning of the 5th of October, 1915: for months we had been together in a reserve battalion waiting to go out to the front, and now at last we had received marching orders, and were bound for Folkestone, and thence for France. For which battalion of our regiment any or all of us twelve officers were destined, we had no knowledge whatever; but even the most uncongenial pair of us would, I am sure, have preferred each other’s company to that of complete strangers. I, at any rate, have never in my life felt more shy and self-conscious and full of stupid qualms: unless, indeed, it was on the occasion, ten months before, when I had stood shaking in front of a platoon of twenty men!

The last few days I had gone about feeling as though the news that I was going to the front were printed in large letters round my cap. I felt that people in the railway carriages, and in the streets, were looking at me with an electric interest; and the necessary (and unnecessary!) purchases, as well as the good-byes, were of the kind to make one feel placed upon a pedestal of importance! Now, in company with five other officers in like predicament, I felt already that I had climbed down a step from that pedestal; in fact, the whole experience of the first few days was one of a steady reduction from all-importance to complete insignificance!

As soon as we had recovered from the silence that followed my remarks upon the disadvantages of prolonged valedictions, we commenced a critical survey of our various properties and accoutrements. Revolvers leapt from brand new holsters; feet were held up to show the ideal trench-nails; flash lamps and torches, compasses, map-cases, pocket medicine-cases, all were shown with an easy confidence of manner that screened a sinking dread of disapprobation. The prismatic compass was regarded rather as a joke by some of us; its use in trench warfare was a doubtful quantity; yet there were some of us who in the depths of our martial wisdom were half expecting that the Battle of Loos was the prelude of an autumn campaign of open-country warfare. There was only one man whose word we took for law in anything, and that was Barrett. He had spent five days in the trenches last December; he had then received his commission in our battalion. He was the “man from the front.” And I noticed with secret misgivings that he had not removed the badges of rank from his arm, or sewed his two stars upon his shoulder-straps; he had not removed his bright buttons, and substituted for them leather ones such as are worn on golfing-jackets; and in his valise, he told us, he had his Sam Browne belt.

“But you never wear Sam Brownes out there,” I said: “all officers now dress as much as possible like the men.”

That was so, we were informed; but officers used to wear them in billets, when they were out of the firing-line.

“Well,” said Crowley, “we could get them sent out, I expect.”

“Yes,” said I; “I expect they would arrive safely.”

But this infantile conversation is not worthy of record! Suffice to say we knew nothing about war, and were just beginning to learn that fact!

The first check to our enthusiasm was at Folkestone. We reported to the railway transport officer, whom we then regarded as a little demi-god; he told us to report in time for the boat at a certain hour. This we did, signed our names with a feeling of doing some awful and irrevocable deed, and then were told to wait another three hours: there was no room for us on this boat! We retired to an hotel with a feeling that perhaps after all there was no such imperious shouting for our help over in France, such as we had all, I think (save only Barrett, who was cynical and pessimistic!) secretly imagined.

Darkness came ere we started. The crossing did not seem long, and I stood up on deck with Barrett most of the time. Two destroyers followed a little astern, one on either side; and there were lights right across the Channel. We were picked out by searchlights more than once, although all lights were forbidden on board. I felt that I was now fair game for the Germans; and it was exciting to think that they would give anything to sink me! At last I was in for “the great adventure.”

At Boulogne we had to wait a long time on a dismal quay and in a drizzling rain to interview an irritated and sleepy railway transport officer. After a long, long queue had been safely negociated we were given tickets to ——; and then again we had to wait quite an hour on the platform. Some of our party were excited at their first visit to a foreign soil; but their enthusiasm abated when at the buffet they were charged exorbitant prices and their English money was rejected as “dam fool money.”

Then there came a long jerky journey through the night in a crowded carriage. (As I am out for confessions, I will here state that I did not think this could be an ordinary passenger train, and I wondered vaguely who these men and women were who got in and out of other carriages!) At Étaples there was a still longer wait, and a still longer queue; but, fortunately, my signature had not lengthened. I remember sitting tired and dazed on the top of a valise, and asking Barrett what the time was.

“Three forty-five!”

“What a time to arrive!” I replied. But in war three forty-five is as good a time as any other, I was soon to discover.

We walked to a camp a mile distant from the station; our arrival seemed quite unlooked for, and a quartermaster-sergeant had to be procured, by the officer who was our guide, in order to gain access to the tent that contained the blanket stores. Wearily, at close on five o’clock, we fell asleep on the boarded bottom of a bell-tent.

It must have been about 10 a.m. on the 6th when we turned out and found ourselves in a sandy country; behind us was a small ridge, crowned by a belt of fir trees; the sun was well up and shone warm on the face as we washed and shaved in the open. The feeling of camp was exhilarating, and I was in good spirits.

But two blows immediately damped my ardour most effectively. When I learned that I was posted to our first battalion, and I alone of all of us twelve, the thought of my arrival among the regulars, with no experience, and not even an acquaintance, far less a friend, was distinctly chilling! To add to my discomfiture there befell a second misfortune: my valise was nowhere to be seen!

Indeed, the rest of the day was chiefly occupied in searching for my valise, but to no purpose whatever. I did not see it until ten days later, when by some miracle it appeared again! I can hardly convey the sense of depression these two facts cast over me the next few days; the interest and novelty of my experiences made me forget for short periods, but always there would return the thought of my arrival alone into a line regiment, and with the humiliating necessity of borrowing at once. Unknown and inexperienced I could not help being; but as a fool who lost all his property the first day, I should not cut a brilliant figure!

We obtained breakfast at an estaminet by the station; omelettes, rolls and butter, and café noir. I bought a French newspaper, and thought how finely my French would improve under this daily necessity; but I soon found that one could get the Paris edition of the Daily Mail, and my French is still as sketchy as ever! I remember watching the French children and the French women at the doors of the houses, and wondering what they thought of this war on their own soil; I knew that the wild enthusiasms of a year ago had died down; I did not expect the shouting and singing, the souvenir-hunting, and the generous impulses that greeted our troops a year ago; but I felt so vividly myself the fact that between me and the Germans lay only a living wall of my own countrymen, that I could not help thinking these urchins and women must feel it too! The very way in which they swept the doorsteps seemed to me worth noting at the moment.

In the course of my wild peregrinations over the camp in search of my valise, I came upon a group of Tommies undergoing instruction in the machine-gun. Arrested by a familiar voice, I recognised as instructor a man I had known very well at Cambridge! He recognised me at the same moment, and in a few seconds we parted, after an invitation from him to dinner that evening; he was on “lines of communication” work, he told me.

Sitting in his tent after Mess, I was amazed at the apparent permanence of his abode; shelves, made out of boxes; novels, an army list, magazines, maps; bed, washstand, candlesticks, a chair; baccy, and whisky and soda! It was all so snug and comfortable. I was soon to find myself accumulating a very similar collection in billets six miles behind the firing-line, and taking most of it into the trenches! I remember being impressed by the statement that the cannonade had been heard day after day since the 25th, and still more impressed by references to “the plans of the Staff!”

I left Étaples early on the morning of the 7th, after receiving instructions, and a railway warrant for “Chocques,” from a one-armed major of the Gordons. Of our original twelve only Terry and Crowley remained with me; with a young Scot, we had a grey-upholstered first-class carriage to ourselves.

In the train I commenced my first letter home; and I should here like to state that the reason for the inclusion in these first chapters of a good many extracts from letters is that they do really represent my first vague, rather disconnected, impressions, and are therefore truer than any more coherent account I might now give. First impressions of people, houses, places, are always interesting; I hope that the reader will not find these without interest, even though he may find them at times lacking in style.

To face page 9

MAP I.

“I am now in the train. We are passing level-crossings guarded by horn-blowing women; the train is strolling leisurely along over grass-grown tracks, and stopping at platformless stations. It is very hot. At midday I shall be about ten miles from the firing-line, and I expect the cannonade will be pretty audible. I feel strangely indifferent to things now, though I have the feeling that all this will be stamped indelibly on my memory.” How well I remember the thrill of excitement when I found the name Chocques on my map, quite close to the firing-fine! And as we got nearer, and saw R.A.M.C. and cavalry camps, and talked to Tommies guarding the line, saw aeroplanes, and yes! a captive balloon, excitement grew still greater! At last we reached Chocques, and the railway transport officer calmly informed us that we had another four miles to go. He brilliantly suggested walking. But an A.S.C. lorry was there, and in we climbed, only to be ejected by the corporal! Eventually we tramped to Béthune with very full packs in a hot sun.

Walking gave us opportunity for observation; and that road was worth seeing to those who had not seen it before. There were convoys of A.S.C. lorries, drawn up (or “parked”) in twenties or thirties alongside the road, each with its mystical marking, a scarlet shell, a green shamrock, etc., painted on its side; Red Cross ambulances passed, impelling one to turn back and look in them, sometimes containing stretcher-cases (feet only visible), or sitting cases with bandaged head or arm in sling. Then there were motor-cars with Staff officers; motor-cars with youthful officers in immaculate Sam Brownes and “slacks”; and as we drew nearer Béthune, we saw canteens with Tommies standing and lounging outside, small squads of men, English notices, and boards with painted inscriptions, such as BILLETS.
Officers—2
Men—30 or H.Q.
117th Inf. Bde. and in the distance loomed the square tower of the cathedral, which I thought then to be a decapitated spire.

And so we came into the bustle of a French city.

I had never heard of Béthune before. As the crow flies it is about five to six miles from the front trenches. The shops were doing a roaring trade, and I was amazed to see chemists flaunting auto-strop razors, stationers offering “Tommy’s writing-pad,” and tailors showing English officers’ uniforms in their windows, besides all the goods of a large and populous town. We were very hungry and tired, and fate directed us to the famous tea-shop, where, at dainty tables, amid crowds of officers, we obtained an English tea! I was astounded; so were we all. To think that I had treasured a toothbrush as a thing that I might not be able to replace for months! Here was everything to hand. Were we really within six miles of the Germans? Yet officers were discussing “the hot time we had yesterday”; while “we only came out this morning,” or “they whizz-banged us pretty badly last night,” were remarks from officers redolent of bath and the hairdresser! Buttons brilliantly polished, boots shining like advertisements, swagger-canes, and immaculate collars, gave the strangest first impression of “active service” to us, with our leather equipment, packs, leather buttons, and trench boots!

“Old Barrett was right about the Sam Brownes,” I said to Terry, vainly trying to look at my ease.

“Let’s look at your map,” he answered. Then, after a moment:

“Oh, we’re not far from the La Bassée Canal. I’ve heard of that often enough!”

“So have I,” I replied. “Is La Bassée ours or theirs?”

“Ours, of course”; but he borrowed the map again to make sure!

Refreshed, but feeling strangely “out” of everything, we eventually found our way to the town major. Here my letter continues:

“I was told an orderly was coming in the evening to conduct me to the trenches, to my battalion! Suddenly, however, we were told to go off—seven of us in the same division—to our brigades in a motor-lorry. So we are packed off. I said good-bye to Crowley and Terry. This was about 7 p.m. We went rattling along till within a short distance of our front trenches. There was a lot of cannonading going on around and behind us, and star-shells bursting continuously, with Crystal-Palace-firework pops; we could hear rifles cracking too. At length we got to where the lorry could go no further, and we halted for a long time at a place where the houses were all ruins and the roofs like spiders’-webs, with the white glare of the shells silhouetting them against the sky. The houses had been shelled yesterday, but last night no shells were coming our way at all. My feelings were exactly like they are in a storm—the nearer and bigger the flashes and bangs the more I hoped the next would be really big and really near.” Of course, all this cannonade was our artillery; at the time we were quite muddled up as to what it all was! The snarling bangs were the 18-pounders quite close to us, about one thousand yards behind our front line; the cracking bullets were spent bullets, though it sounded to us as if they were from a trench about twenty yards in front of us! Nothing is more confusing at first than the different sounds of the different guns. I think several of us would have been ready to say we had been under shell-fire that night! The “star-shells” should be more accurately described as “flares” or “rockets.” But to continue my letter:

“Well, the next few hours were a strange mixture of sensations. We could nowhere find our brigades, and after ten hours in the lorry we landed here at a place sixteen miles back from the firing line; here our division had been located by a signaller, whom we had consulted when we stopped by the cross-roads! We were left by the lorry at 5.0 a.m. at a field ambulance station ‘close to H.Q.,’ where we slept wearily till 8.0, to awake and find ourselves miles from our division, which is really, I believe, quite near where we had been in the firing-line! Now we are sitting in a big old château awaiting a telephone-message; we are in a dining-room, walls peeling, and arm-chairs reduced to legless deformities! It is a jolly day: sun, and the smell of autumn.” I shall not forget that long ride. I was at the back, and could see out; innumerable villages we passed; innumerable mistakes we made; innumerable stops, innumerable enquiries! But always there was the throbbing engine while we halted, and the bump and rattle as we plunged through the night. Eight officers and seven valises, I think we were; one or two were reduced to grumbling; several were asleep; a few, like myself, were awake, but all absolutely tired out. It was too uncomfortable to rest, cramped up among bulky valises and all sorts of sprawling limbs! Once, at about four o’clock, we halted at a house with a light in the window, and found a miner just going off to work. An old woman brewed some very black coffee, and we hungrily devoured bits of bread and butter, coffee, and cognac; while the old woman, fat and smiling, gabbled incessantly at us! A strange weird picture we must have made, some of us in kilts and bonnets, standing half-awake in the flickering candle-light.

We were at the Château all the morning. “The R.A.M.C. fellows were very decent to us; gave us breakfast (eggs, bread and butter, and tinned jam) and also lunch (bully-beef, cheese, bread and butter, and beer). These were eaten off the dining-room table in style. I explored the Château during the morning; just a big ordinary empty house inside; outside, it is white plaster, with steep slate roofs, and a few ornamental turrets. The garden is mostly taken up with lines of picketed horses; outside the orchards and enclosures the country is bare and flat; it is a mining district, and pyramids of slag stand up all over the plain.”

I cannot do better than continue quoting from these first letters of mine; of course, I did not mention places by name:

“Well, at 2.0 p.m. the same old lorry and corporal turned up and took us back to Béthune. I gather he got considerable ‘strafing’ for last night’s performance, although I think he was not given clear enough instructions. Then, with seven other officers, we were sent off again in daylight, and dropped by twos and threes at our various Brigade Headquarters. Our “Brigade H.Q.” was in one of the few houses left standing. Here I reported, and was told that an orderly would take me to my battalion transport. In half an hour the orderly arrived on a bicycle, and by 6.0 p.m. I was only half a mile from our transport. We were walking along, when suddenly there was a scream like a rocket, followed by a big bang, and the sound of splinters falling all about. I expected to see people jump into ditches; but they stood calmly in the street, women and all, and watched, while several shells (whizz-bangs, I believe)”—No, dear innocence, High-explosive Shrapnel—“burst just near the road about a hundred yards ahead. We were four miles back from the firing-line. It was just the ‘evening hate,’ I expect. It didn’t last long. Just near us was one of our own batteries firing intermittently.”

This was my first experience of being under fire. I hadn’t the least idea what to do. The textbooks, I believe, said “Throw yourself on the ground.” I therefore looked at my orderly; but he was ducking behind his bicycle, which I am sure is not recommended by any manual of military training! I ducked behind nothing, copying him. This all took place in the middle of the road. But when I saw women opening the doors of their houses and standing calmly looking at the shells, ducking seemed out of the question; so we both stood and watched the bursting shells. Then the salvo ceased, and I, thinking I must show some sort of a lead, suggested that we should proceed. But my orderly, wiser by experience, suggested waiting to see if another salvo were forthcoming. After ten minutes, however, it was clear that the Germans had finished, and we resumed our journey in peace.

My letter continues: “At the transport I had a very comfortable billet. The quartermaster and two other new officers and myself had supper in an upstairs room. The quartermaster seemed very pessimistic, and told us a lot about our losses. We turned in at ten o’clock, and I slept well. It was ‘very quiet’; that is to say, only intermittent bangs such as have continued ever since the beginning of the war, and will continue to the end thereof!

“October 9th. This morning a cart took us at nine o’clock to within about a mile of the firing-line, putting us down at the corner of a street that has been renamed ‘H—— Street.’ The country was dead flat; the houses everywhere in ruins, though some were untouched and still inhabited. Thence an orderly conducted us to H.Q., where we reported to the Adjutant and the C.O. (who is quite young by the way); they were in the ground-floor room of a house, to which we came all the way from H—— Street along a communication trench about seven feet deep. These trenches were originally dug by the French, I believe. I was told I was posted to ‘D’ Company, so another orderly took me back practically to H—— Street, which must be six or seven hundred yards behind the firing-line. ‘D’ is in reserve; I am attached to it for the present. There are two other officers in it, Davidson and Symons. Both have only just joined.”

So at last I was fairly lodged in my battalion. I had been directed, dumped, shaken, and carried, in a kindly, yet to me most amazingly haphazard, way to my destination, and there I found myself quite unexpected, but immediately attached somewhere until I should sort myself out a little and find my feet. I had a servant called Smith. In the afternoon I went with Davidson to supervise a working party, which was engaged in paving a communication trench with tiles from the neighbouring houses. In the evening I set to and wrote letters. I will close this chapter with yet one more quotation:

“Now I am in the ground-room of one of the few standing houses in H—— Street. Next door is a big ‘École des filles,’ which I am quite surprised to find empty! Really the way the people go about their work here is amazing. Still, I suppose to carry on a girls’ school half a mile from the Boche is just beyond the capacity of even their indifference! I’ve already got quite used to the noise. There are two guns just about forty yards away, that keep on firing with a terrific bang! I can see the flashes just behind me. I think the noise would worry you, if you heard these blaring bangs at the end of the back garden, which is just about the distance this battery is from me! We are messing here in this room; half a table has been propped up, and three chairs discovered and patched up for us. All the windows facing the enemy have been blocked up with sand-bags. I sleep here to-night. If the house is shelled, I shall flee to the dug-out twenty yards away. Orders have not yet come, but I believe we go back to billets to-morrow.

A free issue of ‘Glory Boys’ cigarettes has just arrived: two packets for each officer and man. Please don’t forget to send my Sam Browne belt.”

CHAPTER II
CUINCHY AND GIVENCHY

Throughout October and November our battalion was in the firing-line. This meant that we spent life in an everlasting alternation between the trenches and our billets behind, just far enough behind, that is, to be out of the range of the light artillery; always, though, liable to be called suddenly into the firing-line, and never out of the atmosphere of the trenches. Always before us was dangled a promised “rest,” and always it was being postponed. Rumours were spread, dissected, laughed at, and eventually treated with bored incredulity. The battalion had had no rest, I believe, since May. Men, and especially N.C.O.‘s, who had been out since October, 1914, were tired out in body and spirit.

With the officers and certain new drafts of men, it was different. We came out enthusiastic and keen. On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed those first two months. I am surprised now to see how much detail I wrote in my letters home. Everything was fresh, everything new and interesting. And things were on the whole very quiet. We had a few casualties, but underwent no serious bombardment. And, most important to us, of course, we had no casualties among the officers.

Givenchy and Cuinchy are two small villages, north and south, respectively, of the La Bassée Canal, which runs almost due east and west between La Bassée and Béthune. Givenchy stands on a slight rise in the flattest of flat countries. A church tower of red brick must have been the most noticeable feature as one walked in pre-war days from the suburbs of Béthune along the La Bassée road. Cuinchy is a village straggling along a road. Both are as completely reduced to ruins as villages can be, the firing-line running just east of them. Between them flows the great sluggish canal.

During an afternoon in Béthune one could do all the shopping one required, and get a hair-cut and shampoo as well. Expensive cocktails were obtainable at the local bar; there was also a famous tea-shop. We were billeted in one of the small villages around. Sometimes we only stayed one night at a billet: there was always change, always movement. Sometimes I got a bed; often I did not; but a valise is comfortable enough, when once its tricks are mastered. Anyhow it is “billets” and not “trenches,” that is the point; a continuous night’s rest in pyjamas, the facilities of a bath, very often a free afternoon and evening, and no equipment and revolver to carry night and day! It was in billets the following letters were written, which are really the best description of my life at this period.

“19th October, 1915. Our battalion went into the trenches on the 14th and came out on the 17th. Our company, ‘B,’ was in support. The front line was about 300 yards ahead, and we held the second line, everything prepared to meet an attack in case the enemy broke through the first line. Half-way between our first and second lines was a kind of redoubt, to be held at all costs. Here you are:

The arrows indicate the direction in which the fire-trenches point.

The line here forms a big salient, so that we often used to get spent bullets dropping into the redoubt, from right behind, it seemed. Here, another drawing will show what I mean:

The dotted line is the German front trench. If the enemy A fires at the English B, the bullet will go on and fall at about C, who is facing in the direction of the arrow, in the support line. So C has to look out for enfilading spent bullets.

For three days and nights I was in command of this redoubt, isolated, and ready with stores, ammunition, water, barbed wire and pickets, bombs, and tools, to hold out a little siege for several days if necessary. I used to leave it to get meals at Company H.Q. in the support line; otherwise, I had always to be there, ready for instant action. No one used to get more than two or three hours’ consecutive sleep, and I could never take off boots, equipment, or revolver.

Here is a typical scene in the redoubt.

Scene. A dug-out, 6´ × 4´ × 4´: smell, earthy.

Time. 2.30 a.m.

I awake and listen. Deathly stillness.

A voice. ‘What’s the time, kid?’

Another voice. ‘Dunno. About 2 o’clock, I reckon.’

‘Past that.’

Long silence.

‘Rum job, this, ain’t it, kid?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I reckon if the —— Huns were coming over, we’d know it long afore they got ’ere. I reckon we’d ’ear the boys in front firing.’

Long pause.

‘I dunno. ’Spose there’s some sense in it, else we wouldn’t be ’ere.’

Silence.

‘—— cold on this —— fire step. Guess it’s time they relieved us.’

Long silence.

‘Don’t them flares look funny in the mist?’

‘Yus, I guess old Fritz uses some of them every night. Hullo, there they go again. ’Ear that machine-gun?’

Long pause, during which machine-guns pop, and snipers snipe merrily, and flares light up the sky. Trench-mortars begin behind us ‘whizz-sh-sh-sh-h-h’—silence—‘THUD.’ Then the Germans reply, sending two or three over which thud harmlessly behind. The invisible sentries have now become clearly visible to me as I look out of my dug-out. Two of them are about ten yards apart standing on the fire-platform. Theirs is the above dialogue.

With a sudden thud, a trench-mortar shell drops fifteen yards behind us.

‘Hullo, Fritz is getting the wind up.’

‘Getting the wind up’ is slang for getting nervous: this stolid comment from a sentry is typical of the attitude adopted towards ‘Fritz’ (the German) when he starts shelling or finding. He is supposed to be a bit jumpy! It seems hard to realise that Fritz is really trying to kill these sentries: the whole thing seems a weird, strange play.

I make an effort, and crawl out of the dug-out. The ‘strafing’ has died down. Only occasional flares climb up from the German lines, and ‘pop,’ ‘pop’ in the morning mist. I go round the sentries, standing up by them and looking over the parapet. It is cold and raw, and the sentries are looking forward to the next relief. Ah! there is the corporal on trench duty coming. I can hear him routing out the snoring relief.

‘Ping-g-g-g’ goes a stray bullet singing by—a ricochet by its sound.

‘A near one, sir.’

‘Yes, Evans. Safer in the front line.’

‘I guess it is, sir.’

Then, the sentries changed, I turn back again to my dug-out. Sleeping with revolvers and equipment requires some care of position.

‘Half-past four, sir,’ comes after a pause and some sleep.

Out I get, and everybody ‘stands to’ arms for an hour, each man taking up the position allotted to him along the fire-platform. Gradually it gets light. Some brick-stacks grow out of the mist in front, and ruined cottages loom up in the rear, and what was a church. The fire-platform being here pretty high, one can look back over the parados over bare flat country, cut up by trenches and run to waste terribly. ‘Parados,’ by the way, is the name given to the back of a trench; here is a drawing in section:

At 5.30 ‘Stand down and clean rifles’ is the order given; and the cleaning commences—a process as oft-repeated as ‘washing up’ in civilised lands, and as monotonous and unsatisfactory, for a few hours later the rifles are a bit rusty and muddy again, and need another inspection.

7.30. ‘Tell Sergeant Summers I’m going down to Company Headquarters.’

‘Very good, sir.’ Then I take a long mazy journey down the communication trench, which is six feet deep at least, and mostly paved with bricks from a neighbouring brick-field. There are an amazing lot of mice about the trenches, and they fall in and can’t get out. Most of them get squashed. Frogs too, which make a green and worse mess than the mice. Our C.O. always stops and throws a frog out if he meets one. Tommy, needless to say, is not so sentimental. These trenches have been built a long time, and grass-stalks, dried scabious, and plantain-stalks grow over the edges, which must make them very invisible from above. ‘H—— Street,’ ‘L—— Lane,’ ‘C—— Road,’ ‘P—— Lane’ are traversed, and so into ‘S—— Street,’ where, in the cellar of what was once a house, are two hungry officers already started on bacon and eggs, coffee (with condensed milk), and bread and tinned jam. We are lucky with three chairs and a table. A newspaper makes an admirable tablecloth, and a bottle a good candlestick, and there is room in a cellar to stand up. Breakfast done, a shave is manipulated, Meadows, my servant, getting ready my tackle and producing a mug of hot water.

9.30 finds me back in the redoubt and starting a ‘working party’ on repairing a communication trench and generally improving the trenches. Working parties are unpopular; Tommy does not believe in improving trenches he may never see again. And so the day goes on. Sentries change and take their place, sitting gazing into a scrap of mirror. Ration parties come up with dixies carried on wooden pickets, and the pioneer generally cleans up, sprinkling chloride of lime about in white showers, which seems as plentiful as the sand of the seashore, and the odour of which clings to the trenches, as the smell of seaweed does to the beach.

The redoubt was in the Cuinchy trenches, and that old cellar was really a delightful headquarters. The first time we were in it we found a cat there; on the second occasion the same cat appeared with three lusty kittens! These used to keep the place clear of rats and get sat on every half-hour or so. I soon learned to get used to smoke; on one occasion the smoke from our brazier became so thick that Gray, the cook, threatened to resign. For all the smoke gathers at the top of a dug-out and seems impossibly suffocating to anyone first entering; yet it is often practically clear two or three feet from the ground, so that when lying or sitting one does not notice the smoke at all; but a new-comer gets his eyes so stung that it seems impossible that anyone can live in the dug-out at all! (Gray, by the way, was not allowed to resign.)”

Here follows a letter describing the front trenches at Givenchy:

“7th November. On the 29th we marched off at 9.0 and halted at 11.0 for dinner. Luckily it was fine, and the piled arms, the steaming dixies, and the groups of men sitting about eating and smoking formed a pleasant sight. Our grub was put by mistake on the mess-cart which went straight on to the trenches! Edwards, however, our Company mess-president, came up to the scratch with bread, butter, and eggs. Tea was easily procured from the cookers. Then off we went to our H.Q. There we got down into the communication trench, and in single file were taken by guides into our part of the trenches: these guides were sent by the battalion we were relieving. I told you that all the trenches have names (which are painted on boards hung up at the trench corners). The first thing done was to post sentries along our company front: until this was done the outgoing battalion could not ‘out-go.’ Each man has his firing position allotted to him, and he always occupies it at ‘stand to’ and ‘stand down.’ We were three days and three nights in the trenches. Each officer was on duty for eight hours, during which he was responsible for a sector of firing-line and must be actually in the front trench. My watch was 12 to 4, a.m. and p.m. Work that out with ‘stand to’ in the morning and also in the evening and you will see that consecutive sleep is not easy! On paper 6-12 (midnight) looks good; but then, remember, dinner at 7.0 or 7.30 according to the fire, while you may have to turn out any time if you are being shelled at all. For instance, one night I was just turning in early at 7.0, when a mine went up on our right, and shelling and general ‘strafing’ kept me out till 9.30, after which I couldn’t sleep! So at midnight I was tired when I started my four hours, turned in at 4.0, out again for ‘stand to,’ 8.0 breakfast, 9.0 rifle inspection, and so it goes on! That is why you can appreciate billets, and bed from 9.0 to 7.0 if you want it.

Imagine a cold November night—with a ground fog. What bliss to be roused from a snug dug-out at midnight, and patrol the Company’s line for four interminable hours. It is deathly quiet. Has the war stopped? I stand up on the fire-step beside the sentry and try to see through the fog. ‘Pip-pip-pip-pip-pip’ goes a machine-gun. So the war’s still on.

‘Cold?’ I ask a sentry. ‘Only me feet, sir.’ ‘Why don’t you stamp your feet, then?’ This being equivalent to an order, Tommy stamps feebly a few times until made to do so energetically. Unless you make him stamp, he will not stamp; would infinitely prefer to let his feet get cold as ice. Of course, when you have gone into the next bay, he immediately stops. Still, that is Tommy.

I gaze across into No Man’s Land. I can just see our wire, and in front a collection of old tins—bully tins, jam tins, butter tins—paper, old bits of equipment. Other regiments always leave places so untidy. You clean up, but when you come into trenches you find the other fellows have left things about. You work hard repairing the trenches: the relieving regiment, you find on your return, has done ‘damn all,’ which is military slang for ‘nothing.’ And all other regiments, it seems, have the same complaint.

‘Swish.’ A German flare rocket lights up everything. You see our trenches all along. Everything is as clear as day. You feel as conspicuous as a cromlech on a hill. But the enemy can’t see you, fog or no fog, if you only keep still. The light has fallen on the parapet this time, and lies sizzling on the sand-bags. A flicker, and it is gone; and in the fog you see black blobs, the size and shape of the dazzling light you’ve just been staring at.

‘Crack—plop.’ ‘Crack—plop.’ A couple of bullets bury themselves in the sand-bags, or else with a long-drawn ‘ping’ go singing over the top. Why the sentries never get hit seems extraordinary. I suppose a mathematician would by combination and permutation tell you the chances against bullets aimed ‘at a venture’ hitting sentries exposing one-fourth of their persons at a given elevation at so many paces interval. Personally I won’t try, as my whole object is to keep awake till four o’clock. And then I shall be too sleepy. Only remember, it is night and the sentries are invisible.

‘Tap—tap—tap.’ ‘There’s a wiring party out, sir. I’ve heard ’em these last five minutes.’ Undoubtedly there are a few men out in No Man’s Land, repairing their wire. I tell the sentries near to look out and be ready to fire, and then I send off a ‘Very’ flare, fired by a thick cartridge from a thick-barrelled brass pistol. It makes a good row, and has a fair kick, so it is best to rest the butt on the parapet and hold it at arm’s length. Even so it leaves your ears singing for hours. The first shot was a failure—only a miserable rocket tail which failed to burst. The second was a magnificent shot. It burst beautifully, and fell right behind the party, two Germans, and silhouetted them, falling and burning still incandescent on the ground behind. A volley of fire followed from our waiting sentries. I could not see if the party were hit; most of the shots were fired after the light had died out. Anyhow, the working party stopped. The two figures stood quite motionless while the flare burned.

The Germans opposite us were very lively. One could often hear them whistling, and one night they were shouting to one another like anything. They were Saxons, who are always at that game. No one knows exactly what it means. It was quite cold, almost frosty, and the sound came across the 100 yards or so of No Man’s Land with a strange clearness in the night air. The voices seemed unnaturally near, like voices on the water heard from a cliff. ‘Tommee—Tommee. Allemands bon—Engleesh bon.’ ‘We hate ze Kronprinz.’ (I can hear now the nasal twang with which the ‘Kron’ was emphasised.) ‘D—— the Kaiser.’ ‘Deutschland unter Alles.’ I could hear these shouts most distinctly: the same sentences were repeated again and again. They shouted to one another from one part of the line to another, generally preceding each sentence by ‘Kamerad.’ Often you heard loud hearty laughter. As ‘Comic Cuts’ (the name given to the daily Intelligence Reports) sagely remarked, ‘Either this means that there is a spirit of dissatisfaction among the Saxons, or it is a ruse to try and catch us unawares, or it is mere foolery.’ Wisdom in high places!

Really it was intensely interesting. ‘Come over,’ shouted Tommy. ‘We—are—not—coming—over,’ came back. Loud clapping and laughter followed remarks like ‘We hate ze Kronprinz.’ Then they would yodel and sing like anything. Tommy replied with ‘Tipperary.’ They sang, ‘God save the King,’ or rather their German equivalent of it, to the familiar tune. Then, ‘Abide with us’ rose into the night air and starlight. This went on for an hour and a half; though almost any night you can hear them shout something, and give a yodel—

It is the strangest thing I have ever experienced. The authorities now try and stop our fellows answering. The entente of last Christmas is not to be repeated! One of the officers in our battalion has shown me several German signatures on his pay-book (he was in the ranks then), given in friendly exchange in the middle of No Man’s Land last Christmas Day.

I have had my baptism of mud now. It tires me to think of it, and I have not the effort to write fully about it! The second time we were in these trenches the mud was two feet deep. Even our Company Headquarters, a cellar, was covered with mud and slime. Paradoses and communication trenches had fallen in, and the going was terrible. The sticky mud yoicked one’s boots off nearly, and it felt as if one’s foot would be broken in extricating it. We all wore gum-boots, of blue-black rubber, that come right up to the waist like fishermen’s waders. But the mud is everywhere, and we get our arms all plastered with it as we literally “reel to and fro” along the trench, every now and again steadying ourselves against slimy sand-bags. One or two men actually got stuck, and had to be helped out with spades; one fellow lost heart and left one of his gum-boots stuck in the mud, and turned up in my platoon in a stockinged foot, of course plastered thick with clay! We worked day and night. Gradually the problem is being tackled. Trench-boards, or ‘mats,’ are the best, like this:

They are put along the bottom of the trench, the long ‘runners’ resting on bricks taken from ruined houses, so as to raise the board and allow drainage underneath. If possible, a deep sump-pit is dug under the centre of the board. (The shaded part represents the sump-pit: the dotted lines are the sides of the trench; the whole drawing in plan.)”

Weariness. Mud. The next experience (not mentioned in my letter) was Death. On our immediate right was “C” Company. Here our trench runs out like this __Ʌ_, more or less, and the opposite trenches are very close together. Consequently it is a great place for “mining activity.” One evening we put up a mine; the next afternoon the Germans put up a countermine, and accompanied it with a hail of trench-mortars. I was on trench duty at the time, and had ample opportunity of observing the genus trench-mortar and its habits. One can see them approaching some time before they actually fall, as they come from a great height (in military terms, “with a steep trajectory”), and one can see them revolving as they topple down. Then they fall with a thud, and black smoke comes up and mud spatters all about. Most of them were falling in our second line and support trenches. I was patrolling up and down our front trench. We were “standing to” after the mine, and for half an hour it was rather a “hot shop.” I was delighted to find that I rather enjoyed it: seeing one or two of the new draft with the “wind up” a bit steadied me at once. I have hardly ever since felt the slightest nervousness under fire. It is mainly temperament. Our company had four casualties: one in the front trench, the three others in the platoon in support. “C” Company suffered more heavily. At 6.0 Edwards came on duty, and I was able to go in quest of two bombers who were said to be wounded. Getting near the place I came on a man standing half-dazed in the trench. “Oh, sirrh,” he cried, in the burring speech of a true Welshman. “A terench-mohrterh hass fall-en ericht in-ter me duck-out.” For the moment I felt like laughing at the man’s curious speech and look, but I saw that he was greatly scared: and no wonder. A trench mortar had dropped right into the mouth of his dug-out, and had half buried two of his comrades. We were soon engaged in extricating them. Both had bad head wounds, and how he escaped is a miracle. I helped carry the two men out and over the debris of flattened trenches to Company Headquarters. So, for the first time I looked upon two dying men, and some of their blood was on my clothes. One died in half an hour—the other early next morning. It was really not my job to assist: the stretcher-bearers were better at it than I, yet in this first little bit of “strafe” I was carried away by my instinct, whereas later I should have been attending to the living members of my platoon, and the defence of my sector. I left the company sergeant-major in difficulties as to whether Randall, the man who had so miraculously escaped, and who was temporarily dazed, should be returned as “sick” or “wounded.”

Another death that came into my close experience was that of a lance-corporal in my platoon. I had only spoken to him a quarter of an hour before, and on returning found him lying dead on the fire-platform. He had been killed instantaneously by a rifle grenade. I lifted the waterproof sheet and looked at him. I remember that I was moved, but there was nothing repulsive about his recumbent figure. I think the novelty and interest of these first casualties made them quite easy to bear. I was so busy noticing details: the silence that reigned for a few hours in my platoon; the details of removing the bodies, the collecting of kit, etc. These things at first blunted my perception of the vileness of the tragedy; nor did I feel the cruelty of war as I did later.

Weariness. Mud. Death. So it was with great joy that we would return to billets, to get dry and clean, to eat, sleep, and write letters; to drill, and carry out inspections. Company drill, bayonet-fighting, gas-helmet drill, musketry, and lectures were usually confined to the morning and early afternoon. We thought that we had rather an overdose of lecturing from our medical officer (the M.O.) on sanitation and the care of the feet. “Trench feet,” one lecture always began, “is that state produced by excessive cold or long standing in water or liquid mud.” We soon got to know too much, we felt, about the use of whale-oil and anti-frostbite grease, the changing of socks and the rubbing and stamping of feet. We did get rather “fed up” with it; yet I believe we had only one case of trench feet in our battalion throughout the winter; so perhaps it was worth our discomfort of attending so many lectures! Our C.O.’s lectures on trench warfare were always worth hearing: he was so tremendously keen and such a perfect and whole-hearted soldier.

A chapter might be written on billet-life. Here are a few more extracts from letters:

“Oct. 13th. All day long this little inn has shaken from top to bottom: there is one battery about a hundred yards away that makes the whole house rattle like the inside of a motor-bus. The Germans might any time try and locate the battery, and a shell would reduce the house to ruins. Yet the old woman here declares she will not leave the house as long as she lives!

It is a strange place, this belt of land behind the firing-line. The men are out of the trenches for three days, and it is their duty, after perhaps a running parade before breakfast and two or three hours’ drill and inspection in the morning, to rest for the remainder of the day. In the morning you will see all the evolutions of company drill carried out in a small meadow behind a strip of woodland; in the next field an old man and woman are unconcernedly hoeing a cabbage-patch; then behind here are a battalion’s transport lines, with rows of horses picketed. Along the road an A.S.C. convoy is passing, each lorry at regulation distance from the next. In the afternoon you will see groups of Tommies doing nothing most religiously, smoking cigarettes, writing letters home. From six to eight the estaminets are open, and everyone flocks to them to get bad beer. They are also open an hour at midday, and then the orderly officer, accompanied by the provost-sergeant, produces an electric silence with ‘Any complaints?’ It does not pay an estaminet-keeper to dilute his beer too much, or else he will lose his licence.

I often wonder if these peasants think much. Think they must have done at the beginning, when their men were hastily called up. But now, after fifteen months of war? It is the children, chiefly, who are interested in the aeroplanes, shining like eagles silver-white against the blue sky; or in the boom from the battery across the street. But for their mothers and grandparents these things have settled into their lives; they are all one with the canal and the poplar trees. If a squad starts drilling on their lettuces, they are tremendously alert; but as for these other things, they are not interested, only unutterably tired of them. And after awhile you adopt the same attitude. The noise of the guns is boring and you hardly look up at an aeroplane, unless it is shrapnelled by the ‘Archies’ (anti-aircraft guns); then it is worth watching the pin-prick flashes dotting the sky all round it, leaving little white curls of smoke floating in the blue.”

That billet was close to the firing-line. Here is a letter from a village, eight miles back:

“20th Oct., 1915. We came out here on Monday. The whole division marched out together. It was really an impressive sight, over a mile of troops on the march. Perfect order, perfect arrangement. Where the road bent you could often see the column for a mile in front, a great snake curling along the right side of the road. Occasionally an adjutant would break out of the line to trot back and correct some straggling; or a C.O. would emerge for a gallop over the adjacent ploughland.

Our company is billeted in a big prosperous farm. The men are in a roomy barn and look very comfortable. We are in a big room, on the right as you enter the front door of the farm: on a tiled floor stands a round table with an oilcloth cover, originally of a bright red pattern, but now subdued by constant scrubbings to the palest pink with occasional scarlet dottings. There are big tall windows, a wardrobe and sideboard, a big chimney-place fitted with a coke stove, and on the walls hang three very dirty old prints. The only war touch (beside our scattered possessions) is a picture from a French Illustrated of L’Assaut de Vermelles. Outside is a yard animated by cows, turkeys, geese, chicken, and ducks: also a donkey and a peacock, not to mention the usual dogs and cats. At 5 a.m. I am awakened by an amazing chorus.

The ‘patron’ is a strong, competent man, with many fine buxom daughters, who do the farm work with great capacity and energy. Henriette with a pitchfork is strength and grace in action. Tommy is much in awe of her. She hustles the pigs relentlessly. The sons are at the war. Etienne and Marcelle, aged ten and eight respectively, complete the family; with Madame, of course, who makes inimitable coffee; and various grandparents who appear in white caps and cook and bake all day.

I have just ‘paid out’—all in five and twenty-franc notes. ‘In the field’ every man has his own pay book which the officer must sign, while the company quartermaster-sergeant sees that his acquittance roll is also signed by Tommy. We had a small table and chair out in the yard, and in an atmosphere of pigs and poultry I dealt out the blue-and-white oblongs which have already in many cases been converted into bread. For that is where most of the pay money goes, there and in the estaminets. The bread ration is always small, the biscuit ration overflowing. Bully beef, by the way, is simply ordinary corned beef. I watched cooking operations yesterday, and saw some fifty tins cut in half with an axe, clean hewn asunder, and the meat deftly hoicked with a fork into the field-kitchen, or ‘cooker,’ which is a range and boiler on wheels. This was converted into a big stew, and served out into dixies (camp kettles) and so to the men’s canteens.

This afternoon our company practised an attack over open country. I was surprised to find the men so well trained. I had imagined that prolonged trench-warfare would have made them stale. The country is very flat. There are no hedges. The only un-English characteristics are the poplar rows, the dried beans tied round poles like mother-gamp umbrellas, and the wayside chapels and crucifixes.

Yesterday afternoon Edwards and I got in a little revolver practice just near; and afterwards we had an energetic game of hockey, with sticks and an empty cartridge-case.”

Altogether, billet life was very enjoyable. On November 1st Captain Dixon joined our battalion and took over “B” Company. For over four months I worked under the most good-natured and popular officer in the battalion. We were always in good spirits while he was with us. “I can’t think why it is,” he used to say, “I’m not at all a jolly person, yet you fellows are always laughing; and in my old regiment it was always the same!” He was a fearful pessimist, but a fine soldier. His delight used to be to get a good fire blazing in billets, sit in front of it with a novel, and then deliver a tirade against the discomfort of war! The great occasion used to be when the arch-pessimist, our quartermaster, was invited to dinner. Then Edwards, the Mess president, would produce endless courses, and the two pessimists would warm to a delightful duologue on the fatuity of the Staff, the Army, and the Government.

“By Jove, we are the biggest fools on this earth!” Dixon would say at last.

“We’re fools enough to be led by fools,” Jim Potter would reply.

And somehow we were all more cheerful than ever!

CHAPTER III
WORKING-PARTIES

“Fall in the brick-party.”

The six privates awoke from a state of inert dreaming, or lolling against the barn that flanked the gateway of battalion headquarters, to stand in two rows of three and await orders. At last the A.S.C. lorry had turned up, an hour late, and while it turned round I despatched one of the privates to our transport to get six sand-bags. By the time he returned the lorry had performed its about-wheel, and, all aboard, myself in front and the six behind, we are off for C——.

We pass through Béthune. As we approach through the suburbs, we rattle past motor despatch riders, A.S.C. lorries, Red Cross carts, columns of transport horses being exercised, officers on horse-back, officers in motor-cars, small unarmed fatigue parties, battalions on the march; then there are carts carrying bricks, French postmen on bicycles, French navvies in blue uniforms repairing the road, innumerable peasant traps, coal waggons, women with baskets, and children of course everywhere. “Business as usual”—yet, but for a line of men not so many miles away the place would be a desolate ruin like the towns and villages that chance has doomed to be in the firing-line.

So I moralise. Not so the Tommies, sprawling behind, inside the lorry, and caring not a jot for anything save that they are on a “cushy” or soft job, as the rest of the battalion are doing four hours’ digging under R.E. supervision. A good thing to be a Tommy, to be told to fall in here or there, and not to know whether it is for a bayonet-charge, or a job of carting earth!

“Bang—Bang-bang.” We are nearing the firing-line, having left Béthune, where military police stand at every corner directing the traffic with flags, one road “up,” another “down”: we are once more within the noisy but invisible chain of batteries. “Lorries 6 miles per hour.” The shell-holes in the road, roughly filled with stones, would make quicker going impossible anyhow. We are entering C——, and I keep an eagle eye open for ruined houses, and soon stop by a house with two walls and half a roof. Out come the six Tommies and proceed to fill a sand-bag each with bricks and empty it into the lorry. The supply is inexhaustible, and in half an hour the A.S.C. corporal refuses to take more, declaring we have the regulation three-ton load, so I stop work and prepare to depart.

The corporal, however, has heard of a sister-lorry near by, which has unfortunately slipped into a ditch and, so to speak, sprained its ankle. Though extraordinarily unromantic in appearance, the corporal shows himself imbued with a spirit of knight errantry, and, having obtained my permission to rescue the fair damsel, sets off for what he declares cannot take more than ten minutes. As I thought the process would take probably more like twenty minutes, I let the men repair to a house on the opposite side of the road, where was a rather more undamaged piece of roof than usual (it was now raining), and myself explored the place I happened to be in.

Occasionally, at home one comes across a deserted cottage in the country; a most desolate spirit pervades the place. Imagine, then, what it is like in these villages half a mile or a mile behind what has been the firing-line for now twelve months. A few steps off the main road brought me into what had formerly been a small garden belonging to a farm. There had been a red-brick wall all along the north side with fruit trees trained along it. Now, the wall was mostly a rubble-heap, and the fruit trees dead. One sickly pear tree struggled to exist in a crumpled sort of heap, but its wilted leaves only added to the desolation of the scene. An iron gate, between red brick pillars, was still standing, strangely enough; but the little lawn was run to waste, and had a crater in the middle of it about five feet across, inside of which was some disintegrating animal, also empty tins, and other refuse. Trees were broken, weeds were everywhere. I tried to reconstruct the place in my imagination, but it was a chaotic tangle. I came across a few belated raspberries, and picked one or two; they were tasteless and watery. Rubbish and broken glass were strewn everywhere. It was a dreary sight in the grey rain; the only sign of life a few chattering blue-tits.

The house was an utter ruin, only a ground-room wall left standing; some of the outhouses had not suffered so much, but all the roofs were gone. I saw a rusty mangle staring forlornly out of a heap of débris; and a manger and hayrack showed what had been a stable. The pond was just near, too, and gradually I could piece together the various elements of the farm. Who the owners were I vaguely wondered; perhaps they will return after the war; but I doubt if they could make much of the old ruins. These villages will most likely remain a blighted area for years, like the villages reclaimed by the jungle. Already the virginia creeper and woodbine are trying to cover the ugliness....

The Tommies meanwhile had been smoking Gold Flakes, and one or two had also been exploring; one had discovered a child’s elementary botany book, and was studying the illustrations when I came up. Our combined view now was “Where is the lorry?” and this view held the field, with increasing curiosity, annoyance, and vituperation, for one solid hour and a half. It was dinner-time, and a common bond of hunger held us, until at last in exasperation I marched half the party in quest of our errant conveyance. I was thoroughly annoyed with the gallant corporal. Three-quarters of a mile away I found the two lorries. My little corporal had rescued his lorn princess, but she, being a buxom wench, had brought her rescuer into like predicament! And so we came up just in time to see the rescue of our lorry from the treacherous ditch! I felt I could not curse, especially as the little corporal had winded himself somehow in the stomach during the last bout. It had been a feeble show; yet there was the lorry, and in it the bricks, on to which the fellows climbed deliberately as men who recover a lost prize. And so we arrived at our transport (the bricks were for a horse-stand in a muddy yard) at half-past two; after which I dismissed the party to its belated dinner.

The above incident hardly deserves a place in a chapter headed “working-parties,” being in almost every respect different from any other I have ever conducted. I think the “working-party” is realised less than anything else in this war by those who have not been at the front. It does not appeal to the imagination. Yet it is essential to realise, if one wants to know what this war is like, the amount of sheer dogged labour performed by the infantry in digging, draining, and improving trenches.

The “working-party” usually consists of seventy to a hundred men from a company, with either one or two officers. The Brigadier going round the trenches finds a communication trench falling in, and about a foot of mud at the bottom. “Get a working-party on to this at once,” he says to his Staff Captain. The Staff Captain consults one of the R.E. officers, and a note is sent to the Adjutant of one of the two battalions in billets: “Your battalion will provide a working party of ... officers ... full ranks (sergeants and corporals) and ... other ranks to-morrow. Report to Lt. ..., R.E., at ... at 5.0 p.m. to-morrow for work on ... Trench. Tools will be provided.” The Staff Captain then dismisses the matter from his head. The Adjutant then sends the same note to one or more of the four company commanders, detailing the number of men to be sent by the companies specified by him. (He is scrupulously careful to divide work equally between the companies, by the way.) The company commander on receiving the note curses volubly, declares it a “d—d shame the hardest worked battalion in the brigade can’t be allowed a moment’s rest, feels sure the men will mutiny one of these days,” etc., summons the orderly, who is frowsting in the next room with the officers’ servants, and says, “Take this to the sergeant-major,” after scribbling on the note “Parade outside Company H.Q. 3.30 p.m.,” and adding, as the orderly departs, “Might tell the quartermaster-sergeant I want to see him.” Meanwhile the three subalterns are extraordinarily engrossed in their various occupations, until the company commander boldly states that it is “rotten luck, but he supposes as So-and-so took the last, it is So-and-so’s turn, isn’t it?” and details the officers; if they are new officers he tells them the sergeants will know exactly what to do, and if they are old hands he tells them nothing whatever. The “quarter” (company quartermaster-sergeant) then arrives, and is told the party will not be back, probably, till 10.0 p.m., and will he make sure, please, that hot soup is ready for the men on return, and also dry socks if it turns out wet; he is then given a drink, and the company commander’s work is finished.

Meanwhile the company sergeant-major has received the orders from the orderly, and summons unto him the orderly-sergeant, and from his “roster,” or roll, ticks off the men and N.C.O.’s to be warned for the working party. This the orderly-sergeant does by going round to the various barns and personally reading out each man’s name, and on getting the answer, saying, “You’re for working party, 3.15 to-day.” The exact nature of the remarks when he is gone are beyond my province. Only, as an officer taking the party, one knows that at 3.25 p.m. the senior sergeant calls the two lines of waiting “other ranks” to attention, and with a slap on his rifle, announces “Working-party present, Sir,” as you stroll up. Working-parties are dressed in “musketry order” usually—that is to say, with equipment, but no packs; rifles and ammunition, of course, and waterproof sheets rolled and fastened to the webbing belt. The officer then tells the sergeant to “stand them easy,” while he asks one or two questions, and looks once more at “orders” which the senior sergeant has probably brought on parade, and at 3.30, with a “Company-Shern! Slo-o-ope hip! Right-in-fours: form-fórs! Right! By the right, Quick march!” leads off his party, giving “March at ease, march-easy!” almost in one breath as soon as he rounds the corner. Then there is a hitching of rifles to the favourite position, and a buzz of remarks and whistles and song behind, while the sergeant edges up to the officer or the officer edges back to the sergeant, according to their degree of intimacy, and the working-party is on its way.

One working-party I remember very well. We were in billets at ——, and really tired out. It was Nov. 6th, and on looking up my letters I find our movements for the last week had been as follows:

Yet I thoroughly enjoyed those eight hours, I remember. There were, I suppose, about eighty N.C.O.’s and men from “B” Company. I was in charge, with one other officer. We halted at a place whither the “cooker” had been previously despatched, and where the men had their tea. Luckily it was fine. The men sat about on lumps of trench-boards and coils of barbed wire, for the place was an “R.E. Dump,” where a large accumulation of R.E. stores of all description was to be found. I apologised to the R.E. officer for keeping him a few minutes while the men finished their tea; he, however, a second-lieutenant, was in no hurry whatever, it seemed, and waited about a quarter of an hour for us. Then I fell the men in, and they “drew tools,” so many men a pick, so many a shovel (the usual proportion is one pick, two shovels), and we splodged along through whitish clay of the stickiest calibre in the gathering twilight. An R.E. corporal and two R.E. privates had joined us mysteriously by now, as well as the second-lieutenant, and crossing H—— Street we plunged down into a communication trench, and started the long mazy grope. The R.E. corporal was guide. The trench was all paved with trench-mats, but these were not “laid,” only “shoved down” anyhow; consequently they wobbled, and one’s boot slipped off the side into squelch, rubbing the ankle. Continually came up the message from behind, “Lost touch, Sir!” This involved a wait—one, two minutes—until the “All-up” or “All-in” came up. (One hears it coming in a hoarse whisper, and starts before it actually arrives. Infinite patience is necessary. R.E. officers are sometimes eager to go ahead; but once lose the last ten men at night in an unknown trench, and it may take three hours to find them.) The other officer was bringing up the rear.

At last we reached our destination, and the R.E. officer and myself told off the men to work along the trench. This particular work was clearing what is known as a “berm,” that is, the flat strip of ground between the edge of the trench and the thrown-up earth, each side of a C.T. (communication trench).

When a trench is first dug, the earth is thrown up each side; the recent rains were, however, causing the trenches to crumble in everywhere, and the weight of the thrown-up earth was especially the cause of this. Consequently, if the earth were cleared away a yard on each side of the trench, and thrown further back, the trench would probably be saved from falling in to any serious extent, and the light labour of shovelling dry earth a yard or so back would be substituted for the heart-breaking toil of throwing sloppy mud or sticky clay out of a trench higher than yourself.

The work to be done had been explained to the sergeants before we left our starting-point. As we went along, the R.E. officer told off men at ten or five yards’ interval, according to the amount of earth to be moved. Each man stopped when told off, and the rest of the company passed him. Sergeants and corporals stopped with their section or platoon, and got the men started as soon as the last man of the company had passed. At last up came the last man, sergeant, and the other officer, and together we went back all along. The men were on top (that is why the working-party was a night one); sometimes they had not understood their orders and were doing something wrong (a slack sergeant would then probably have to be routed out and told off). The men worked like fun, of course, it being known, to every one’s joy, that this was a piece-job, and that we went home as soon as it was finished. There was absolute silence, except the sound of falling earth, and an occasional chink of iron against stone; or a swish, and muttered cursings, as a bit of trench fell in with a slide, dragging a man with it; for it is not always easy to clear a yard-wide “berm” without crumbling the trench-edge in. One would not think these men were “worn out,” to see them working as no other men in the world can work; for nearly every man was a miner. The novice will do only half the work a trained miner will do, with the same effort.

Sometimes I was appealed to as to the “yard.” Was this wide enough? One man had had an unlucky bit given him with a lot of extra earth from a dug-out thrown on to the original lot. So I redivided the task. It is amazing the way the time passes while going along a line of workers, noticing, talking, correcting, praising. By the time I got to the first men of the company, they were half-way through the task.

At last the job was finished. As many men as space allowed were put on to help one section that somehow was behind; whether it was bad luck in distribution or slack work no one knew or cared. The work must be finished. The men wanted to smoke, but I would not let them; it was too near the front trenches. And then I did a foolish thing, which might have been disastrous! The R.E. corporal had remained, though the officer had left long ago. The corporal was to act as guide back, and this he was quite ready to do if I was not quite sure of the way. I, however, felt sure of it, and as the corporal would be saved a long tramp if he could go off to his dug-out direct without coming with us, I foolishly said I had no need of him, and let him go. I then lost my way completely. We had never been in that section before, and none of the sergeants knew it. We had come from the “R.E. Dump,” and thither we must return, leaving our tools on the way. But I had been told to take the men to the Divisional Soup Kitchen first, which was about four hundred yards north of X, the spot where we entered the C.T. and which I was trying to find. For all I knew I was going miles in the wrong direction. My only guide was the flares behind, which assured me I was not walking to the Germans but away from them. The unknown trenches began to excite among the sergeants the suspicion that all was not well. But I took the most colossal risk of stating that I knew perfectly well what I was doing, and strode on ahead.

There was silence behind after that, save for splashings and splodgings. My heart misgave me that I was coming to undrained trenches of the worst description, or to water-logged impasses! Still I strode on, or waited interminable waits for the “All up” signal. At last we reached houses, grim and black, new and awfully unknown. I nearly tumbled down a cellar as a sentry challenged. I was preparing for humble questions as to where we were, the nearest way to X, and a possible joke to the sergeant (this joke had not materialised, and seemed unlikely to be of the easiest), when I recovered myself from the cellar, mounted some steps, and found myself on a road beside a group of Tommies emerging from the Soup Kitchen! My star (the only one visible, I believe, that inky night) had led me there direct! I said nothing, as every one warmed up in spirits as well as bodies with that excellent soup; and no one ever knew of the quailings of my heart along those unknown trenches! To lead men wrong is always bad; but when they are tired out it is unpardonable, and not quickly forgotten. As it was, canteens were soon brimming with thick vegetable soup, filled from a bubbling cauldron with a mighty ladle. In the hot room men glistened and perspired, while a regular steam arose from muddied boots and puttees; every one, from officer to latest joined private, was sipping with dangerous avidity the boiling fluid. Many charges have been laid against divisional staffs, but never a complaint have I heard against a soup kitchen! So in good spirits we tramped along, and dumped our tools in the place where we had found them. “Clank-clank, clank,” as spade fell on spade. Then, “You may smoke” was passed down. The sergeant reported “All correct, Sir!” and we tramped along in file. Soon the bursts of song were swallowed up in a great whistling concert, and we were all merry. The fit passed, and there was silence; then came the singing again, which developed into hymns, and that took us into our billets. Here we were greeted with the most abominable news of réveillé at 5.0 a.m., but I think most of the men were too sleepy to hear it; we two officers deplored our fate while eating a supper set out for us in a greenhouse, our temporary mess-room!

That is a working-party: interesting as a first experience to an officer; but when multiplied exceedingly, by day, by night, in rain, mud, sleet, and snow, carrying trench boards, filling sand-bags, digging clay, bailing out liquid mud, and returning cold and drenched, without soup—then, working-parties became a monotonous succession of discomforts that wore out the spirit as well as the body.

The last six nights before the promised rest were spent in working-parties at Festubert. There the ground was low and wet, and it was decided to build a line of breastwork trenches a few hundred yards behind the existing line, so that we could retire on to dry ground in case of getting swamped out. For six nights in succession we left billets at 10.0 p.m. and returned by 4.0 a.m. The weather was the coldest, it turned out eventually, that winter. It started with snow; then followed hard frost for four nights; and, last but not least, a thaw and incessant sleet and rain. I have never before experienced such cold; but, on the other hand, I have never before had to stand about all night in a severe frost (it was actually, I believe, from 10° to 15° below freezing point). At 2.0 a.m. the stars would glitter with relentless mirth, as the cold pierced through two cardigans and a sheepskin waistcoat. I have skated at night, but always to return by midnight to fire and bed. Bed! At home people were sleeping as comfortably as usual; a few extra blankets, perhaps, or more coals in the grate!

I was out five nights of the six. Captain Dixon was on leave, so we only had three officers in “B,” and two had to go every night. Every night at 9.30 the company would be fallen in and marched off to the rendezvous, there, at 10.0, to join the rest of the battalion. There was no singing; very little talking. In parts the road was very bad, and we marched in file. The road was full of shell-holes, and bad generally; the ice crackled and tinkled in the ruts and puddles; the frozen mud inclined you to stumble over its ridges and bumps. It took us the best part of an hour to reach our destination. The first night we must have gone earlier than the other nights, as I distinctly remember viewing by daylight those most amazing ruins. There was a barrier across the road just before you entered the village; (a barrier is usually made like this—

you can defend the road without blocking it to traffic; at the same time it cannot be rushed by motor-cycles or armoured cars); then just opposite were the few standing fragments of the church; bits of wall and mullion here and there; and all around tombstones leaning in every direction, rooted up, shattered, split. There was one of the crucifixes standing untouched in the middle of it all, about which so much has been written; whether it had fallen and been erected again I cannot say. The houses were more smashed, crumpled, and chaotic than even Cuinchy or Givenchy.

I remember that corner very vividly, because at that spot came one of the few occasions on which I had the “wind up” a little. Why, I know not. We were halted a few moments, when two whizz-bangs shot suddenly into a garden about twenty yards to our right, with a vicious “Vee-bm ... Vee-bm.” We moved on, and just as we got round the corner I saw two flashes on my left, and two more shells hissed right over us and fell with the same stinging snarl into the same spot, just twenty yards over us this time. I was, luckily, marching at the rear of the company at the time, as I ducked and almost sprawled in alarm. For the next minute or two I was all quivery. I am glad to know what it feels like, as I have never experienced since such an abject windiness! I believe it was mainly due to being so exposed on the hard hedgeless road; or, perhaps that last pair did actually go particularly near me. At any rate, such was my experience, and so I record it.

At the entrance to the communication trench R.E. officers told us off: “A” Company, “carrying party”; “B” Company to draw shovels and picks and “follow me.” Then we started off along about a mile and a half of communication trenches. I have already said that Festubert is a very wet district, and it can easily be imagined that the drainage problem is none of the easiest. This long communication trench had been mastered by trench-mats fastened down on long pickets which were driven deep down into the mud. The result was that the trench floor was raised about two feet from the original bottom, and one walked along a hollow-sounding platform over stagnant water. The sound reminded me of walking along a wooden landing-stage off the end of a pier. Every few hundred yards were “passing points,” presumably to facilitate passing other troops coming in the other direction; but as I never had the good fortune to meet the other troops at these particular spots, though I did in many others, I cannot say they were particularly useful. Another disadvantage about these water-logged trenches was that the bad rains had made the water rise in several places even over the raised trench-board platform; others were fastened on top; but even these were often not enough. And when the frost came and froze the water on top of the boards, the procession became a veritable cake-walk, humorous no doubt to the stars and sky, but to the performers, feeling their way in the thick darkness and ever slipping and plunging a boot and puttee into the icy water at the side, a nightmare of painful and jarring experiences.

There was one junction of trenches where one had to cross a dyke full of half-frozen water; there was always a congestion of troops here, ration-parties, relieving-parties, and ourselves. All relieving had to be done at night, as the trenches with their artificially raised floors were no longer deep enough to give cover from view. This crossing had to be negociated in a most gingerly fashion, and several men got wet to their waists when compelled to cross while carrying an awkward-shaped hurdle. After this, the trench was worse than ever; in parts it was built with fire-steps on one side, and one could scramble on to this and proceed on the dry for awhile; but even here the slippery sand-bags would often treacherously slide you back into the worst part of the iced platform, and so gave but a doubtful advantage. At last the open was gained; then came the crossing of the old German trench, full of all kinds of grim relics from the spring fighting. And so to our destination.

On the open ground lay a tracing of white tape like this—

forming a serpentine series of contacting squares; in the blackness only two white-bordered squares were visible from one position. Each man was given a square to dig. I forget the measurements; about two yards square, I think, and two feet deep. The earth had to be thrown about eight yards back against a breastwork of hurdles. These hurdles were being brought up by the “carrying-parties” and fastened by wires by the R.E’s; the R.E. officers had, of course, laid our white tapes for us previously. Eventually the sentries will stand behind the hurdle breastwork with a water-ditch ten yards in front of them, which obstacle will be suitably enhanced by strong wire entanglements.

But all this vision of completion is hid from the eyes of Private Jones, who only knows he has his white-taped square to dig. Arms and equipment are laid carefully on the side of the trench furthest from the breastwork; and nothing can be heard but the hard breathing and the shovelling and scraping of the “other ranks.” For two hours those men worked their hardest; indeed, it was much the best job to have on those cold nights. I did more digging then than I have ever done before or since. “Come on, Davies, you’re all behind,” and for ten minutes I would do an abnormal amount of shovelling, until, out of breath, I would hand the boy back his shovel, and tell him to carry on, while all aglow I went along the line examining the progress of the work. We had quite a number of bullets singing and cracking across, and there were one or two casualties every night. Sometimes flares would pop over, and every one would freeze into static posture; but on the whole things were very quiet, the enemy doubtless as full of water as ourselves.

That intense cold! Yet I did not know then that it is far worse being on sentry in the frost than marching and digging. And I am not sure that the last night, when it rained incessantly, was not worse than all the rest. We had a particularly bad piece of ground that night, pitted with shell-holes, full of frozen water: you were bound to fall in one at last, and get wet to the waist; but even if you did escape that sticky humiliation, the driving sleet and rain were bad enough in themselves. That was a night when I found certain sergeants sheltered together in a corner; and certain other sergeants in the middle of their men and the howling gale. I soon routed the former out, but did not forget; and have since discovered how valuable a test of the good and the useless N.C.O. is a working party in the rain.

Never have I longed for 2.0 a.m. as I did that night! My feet were wet, my body tired, my whole frame shivering with an approaching cold. The men could do nothing any longer in that stinking slush (for these old shell-holes of stagnant water were, to say the least of it, unsavoury!). I was so heavy with sleep I could scarce keep my eyes open. But when at last the order came from our second-in-command “Cease work,” I was filled with a dogged energy that carried me back to billets in the best of spirits, though I actually fell asleep as I marched behind the company, and bumped into the last four, when they halted suddenly half-way home! And so at four o’clock the men tumbled upstairs to breakfast and braziers (thanks to a good quartermaster-sergeant). I drank Bovril down below, and then, in pyjamas, sweaters, and innumerable blankets, turned in till 11.0 a.m. Next afternoon we left Rue de l’Epinette and halted at a village on the road to Lillers, whence we were to train to “a more northern part of the line,” and enjoy at last our long-earned rest.

CHAPTER IV
REST

Rumours were rife again, and mostly right this time. “The C.O. knew the part we were going to: a chalk country ... rolling downs ... four or five weeks’ rest ... field training thirty miles from the firing-line.” Chalk downs! To a Kentish man the words were magic, after the dull sodden flats of Flanders. I longed for a map of France, but could not get hold of one. As we marched to Lillers I looked at the flat straight roads and the ditches, at the weary monotony, uninspired by hill or view, at the floods on the roads, and the uninteresting straightness of the villages; and I felt that I was at the end of a chapter. Any change must be better than this. And chalk! chalk! short dry turf, and slopes with purple woods! I had forgotten these things existed.

I forget the name of the village where we halted for two nights. I had a little room to myself, reached by a rickety staircase from the yard. One shut the staircase door to keep out the yard. Here several new officers joined us, Clark being posted to our company, and soon I began to see my last two months as history. For we began to tell our adventures to Clark, who had never been in the firing-line! Think of it! He was envious of our experiences! So I listened in awe and heard a tale develop, a true tale, the tale of the night the mine went up. It was no longer a case of disputing how many trench-mortars came over, but telling an interested audience that trench-mortars did come over! Clark had never seen one. And I listened agape to hear myself the hero of a humorous story. When the mine went up, I had come out of my dug-out rather late and asked if anything had happened. This tale became elaborated: I was putting my gloves on calmly, it seems, as I strolled out casually and asked if anyone had heard a rather loud noise! And so stories crystallised, a word altered here and there for effect, but true, and as past history quite interesting.

The move was made the occasion, by our C.O., of very elaborate and careful operation orders. No details were left to chance, and a conference of officers was called to explain the procedure of getting a battalion on a train and getting it off again. As usual, the officers’ valises had to be ready at a very early hour, and the company mess-boxes packed correspondingly early. Edwards, I think, was detailed as O.C. loading-party. Everything like this was down in the operation orders. The adjutant had had a time of it.

Certainly the entraining went like clockwork, and once more I was seated in a grey-upholstered corridor carriage; the men were in those useful adaptable carriages inscribed “Chevaux 10. Hommes 30.” Our Tommies were evidently a kind of centaur class, for they went in by twenties. As far as I can remember, we entrained at 10.0 a.m.; we arrived at a station a few miles from Amiens at 9.0 p.m. A slow journey, but I felt excited like a child. I must keep going to the corridor to put my head out of the window. It was a sparkling, nippy air; the smell of the steam, the grit of the engine—these were things I had forgotten; and soon there were rolling plains, hills, clustering villages. The route, through St. Pol, Doullens, and Canaples, is ordinary enough, no doubt; and so, too, the gleam of white chalk that came at last. But if you think that ordinary things cannot be wonderful beyond measure, then go and live above ground and underground in Flanders for two months on end in winter; then, perhaps, you will understand a little of my good spirits.

It was quite dark when we arrived. Then for three and a half hours we waited in a meadow outside the station, arms piled, the men sitting about on their waterproof sheets. Meanwhile the transport detrained, a lengthy business. Tea was produced from those marvellous field-kitchens. The night was cold, though, and it was too damp to sit down. For hours we stood about, tired. Then came the news that our six-mile march would be more like double six; that the billets had been altered!... At half-past twelve we marched off. It was starlight, but pretty dark. Eighteen miles we marched, reaching Montagne at half-past seven; every man was in full marching kit, and most of them carried sandbagfuls of extras. It was a big effort, especially as the men had done nothing in the nature of a long march for months. Well I remember it—the tired silence, the steady tramp, along the interminable road. Sometimes the band would strike up for a little, but even bands tire, and cannot play continuously. Mile after mile of hard road, and then the hedges would spring up into houses, and from the opened windows would gaze down awakened women. Hardly ever was a light shown in any house. Then the village would be left behind, and men shifted their packs and exchanged a sand-bag, unslung a rifle from one shoulder to the other, and settled down to another stretch, wondering if the next village would be the last.

So it went on interminably all through the winter night. Once we halted in a village, and I sat on a doorstep with O’Brien discussing methods of keeping our eyes open. Edwards had been riding the horse, and had nearly tumbled off asleep. At another halt, half-way up a hill, I discovered a box of beef lozenges and distributed it among No. 6 platoon. All the last ten miles I was carrying a rifle and a sand-bag. Sergeant Callaghan had the same, besides all his own kit. Sergeant Andrews kept on as steady as a rock. There were falterers, but we kept them in; only in the last two miles did one or two drop out. And all the while I was elated beyond measure; partly at seeing men like Ginger Joe, with his dry wit flashing, and Tudor, with his stolid power; but partly, too, at the climb uphill, the swing down, mysterious woods, and the unmistakable trunks of pines. And all the time we were steadily climbing; we must be upon a regular tableland.

Dawn broke, and it got lighter and lighter—and so we entered Montagne. The quartermaster had had a nice job billeting at 2.0 a.m., but he had done it, and the men dropped on to their straw, into outhouses, anywhere. The accommodation seemed small and bad, but that could be arranged later. To get the men in, that was the main thing. One old woman fussed terribly, and the men looked like bayoneting her! We soon got the men in somehow. Then for our own billets. We agreed to have a scratch breakfast as soon as it could be procured. Meanwhile I went to the end of the village and found myself on the edge of the tableland; before me was spread out a great valley, with a poplar-lined road flung right across it; villages were dotted about; there were woods, and white ribbon by-roads. And over it all glowed the slant morning sun. I was on the edge of a chalky plateau; it was all just as I had imagined. I slept from 11.0 a.m. to 7.0 p.m., when I got up for a meal at which we were all short-tempered! And at 9.0 p.m. I retired again to sleep till 7.0 next morning.

Montagne—How shall I be able to create a picture of Montagne? As I look back at all those eight months, the whole adventure seems unreal, a dream; yet somehow those first few days in the little village had for me a dream-like quality, unlike any other time. I think that then I felt that I was living in an unreality; whereas at other times life was real enough; and it is only now, afterwards, that these days are gradually melting through distance into dreams. At any rate, if the next few pages are dull to the reader, let him try and weave into them a sort of fairy glamour, and imagine a kind of spell cast over everything in which people moved as in a dream.

First, there was the country itself. The next day (after a day’s sleep and a night’s on top of it) was, if I remember right, rather wet, and we had kit inspection in billets, and tried to eke out the hours by gas-helmet drill, and arm-drill in squads distributed about the various farmyards and barns. Then Captain Dixon decided to take the company out on a short route march, and as it was raining very steadily we took half the company with two waterproof sheets per man. One sheet was thrown round the shoulders in the usual way; the other was tied kilt-wise round the waist. The result was an effective rainproof, if unmilitary-looking dress! We set off and soon came to a large wood with a broad ride through it.

Along this ride we marched, two-deep now, and I at the rear as second-in-command. Here I felt most strongly that strange glamour of unreality. It was but three months ago, and I was in the heart of Wales, yet such was the effect of a few months that I looked on everything with the most exuberant sense of novelty. The rain-beads on the red-brown birch trees; the ivy; the oaks; the strange stillness in the thick wood after the gusts of wind and slashes of rain; especially the sounds—chattering jays, invisible peeping birds, the squelching of boots on a wet grass track—everything reminded me of a past world that seemed immeasurably distant, of past winters that had been completely forgotten. Then we emerged into a wide clearing along the edge of the wood, full of stunted gorse and junipers. Long coarse grass grew in tussocks that matted under foot; and now I could see the whole company straggling along in front of me, slipping and sliding about on the wet grass in their curious kilt-like costumes, some of which were now showing signs of uneasiness and tending to slip in rings to the ground. Everyone was very pleased with life. A halt was called at length, and while officers discussed buying shot-guns at Amiens, or stalking the wily hare with a revolver, Tommy, I have reason to believe, was planning more effective means of snaring Brer rabbit. Next day in orders appeared an extract from corps orders re prohibition of poaching and destruction of game. It was all part of the dream that we were surprised, almost shocked, at this unwarranted exhibition of property rights! Not that there was much game about, anyhow.

The next day we did an advance guard scheme, down in the plain. It was a crisp winter day, and I remember the great view from the top of the hill, on the edge of the plateau as you leave Montagne. It was all mapped out, with its hedgeless fields, its curling white roads, and its few dark triangles and polygons of fir woods. But we had not long to see it, for we came into observation then (so this dream game pretended!) and were soon in extended order working our way along over the plain. It all came back to one, this “open warfare” business, the advancing in short rushes, the flurried messages from excited officers to stolid platoon-sergeants, the taking cover, the fire-orders, the rattling of the bolts, the lying on the belly in a ploughed field; and yes! the spectator, old man or woman, gazing in stupid amazement at the khaki figures rushing over his fields. Then came the assault, bayonets fixed, and the C.O.’s whistle, ending the game for that day. “Game,” that was it: it is all a game, and when you get tired you go home to a good meal, and discuss the humour of it, and probably have a pow-wow in the evening in which the O.C. “A” is asked why he went off to the left, the real answer being that he lost direction badly, but the actual answer given explaining the subtlety of a detour round a piece of dead ground! Which is the dream? this, or the mud-slogging in the trenches and the interminable nights?

For, every night we went to bed! Think of it! Every night! Always that bed, that silence, that priceless privacy of sleep! I had a rather cold ground-floor billet with a door that would not shut; yet it was worth any of your beds at home! And I should be here for a month, perhaps six weeks! I wrote for my basin and stand, for books, for all sorts of things. I felt I could accumulate, and spread myself. It was like home after hotels! For always we had been moving, moving; even our six days out were often in two or even three different billets.

So, too, with our mess. The dream here consisted of a jolly little parlour that was the envy of all the other company messes. As usual, the rooms led into one another, the kitchen into the parlour, the parlour into a bedroom; I might almost continue, and say the bedroom into a bed! For the four-poster, when curtained off, is a little room in itself. It was a good billet, but best of all was Madame herself. Suffice it to say she would not take a penny for use of crockery; and she would insist on us making full use of everything; she allowed all our cooking to be done in her kitchen; and on cold nights she would insist on our servants sitting in the kitchen, though that was her only sitting-room. Often have I come in about seven o’clock to find our dinner frizzling merrily on the fire under the supervision of Gray, the cook, while Madame sat humbly in the corner eating a frugal supper of bread and milk, before retiring to her little room upstairs. Ah, Madame! there are many who have done what you have done, but few, I think, more graciously. If we tried to thank her for some extra kindness, she had always the same reply “You are welcome, M. l’Officier. I have heard the guns, and the Germans passed through Amiens; if it were not for the English, where should we be to-day?”

So we settled down for our “rest,” for long field days, lectures after tea, football matches, and week-ends; I wrote for my Field Service Regulations, and rubbed up my knowledge of outposts and visual training. But scarcely had I been a week at Montagne when off I went suddenly, on a Sunday morning, to the Third Army School. I had been told my name was down for it, a few days before, but I had forgotten all about it, when I received instructions to bicycle off with Sergeant Roberts; my kit and servant to follow in a limber. I had no idea what the “Third Army School” was, but with “note-book, pencil, and protractor” I cycled off at 11.0 a.m. “to fields and pastures new.”

Most people, I imagine, have had the following experience. They have a great interest in some particular subject, yet they have somehow not got the key to it. They regret that they were never taught the elements of it at school; or it is some new science or interest that has arisen since their schooldays, such as flying or motoring. They are really ashamed of asking questions; and all books on the subject are technical and presuppose just that elementary knowledge that the interested amateur does not possess. Then suddenly he comes on a book with those delicious phrases in the preface promising “to avoid all technical details,” apologising for “what may seem almost childishly elementary,” and containing at the end an expert bibliography. These are the books written by very wise and very kind men, and because they are worth so much they usually cost least of all!

Such was my delightful experience at the Army School. I will confess to a terrible ignorance of my profession—I did not know how many brigades made up a division; “the artillery” were to me vague people whom the company commander rang up on the telephone, and who appeared in gaiters in Béthune; a bomb was a thing I avoided with a peculiar aversion; and as to the general conduct of the war I was the most ignorant of pawns. The wildest things were said about Loos; the Daily Mail had just heard of the Fokker, and I had not the remotest idea whether we were hopelessly outclassed in the air, or whether perhaps after all there were people “up top” who were not so surprised or disconcerted at the appearance of the Fokker as the Northcliffe Press. Moreover, I had been impressed with the reiteration of my C.O., that my battalion was the finest in the Army, and that my division was likewise the best. Yet I had always felt that there were other good battalions, and that “K.’s Army” was, to say the least of it, in a considerable majority when compared with the contemptible little original which I had had the luck to join!

Imagine my delight, then, at finding myself one of over a hundred captains and senior subalterns representing their various battalions. Regulars, Territorials, and Kitcheners, we were all there together; one’s vision widened like that of a boy first going to school. Here at least was a great opportunity, if only the staff was good. And any doubt on that question was instantly set at rest by the Commandant’s opening address, explaining that the instructors were all picked men with a large experience in this war, that in the previous month’s course mostly subalterns had been sent and this time it had been the aim to secure captains only (oh! balm in Gilead this!) and that apologies were due if some of the lectures and instructions were elementary; that bombing experts, for instance, must not mind if the bombing course started right at the very beginning, as it had been found in the previous course that it was wrong to presume any military knowledge to be the common possession of all officers in the school. Those who understood my simile of the expert’s kind book to the amateur will understand that there were few of us who did not welcome such a promising bill of fare.

I do not intend to say much about the instruction at the Army School—a good deal of what I learnt there is unconsciously embodied in the rest of this book—but it is the spirit of the place that I want to record. I can best describe it as the opposite of what is generally known as academic. Theories and text-books about the war were at a discount: here were men who had been through the fire, every phase of it. It was not a question of opinions, but of facts. This came out most clearly in discussions after the lectures; a point would be raised about advancing over the open: “We attacked at St. Julien over open ground under heavy fire, and such and such a thing was our experience” would at once come out from someone. And there was no scoring of debating points! We were all out to pool our knowledge and experience all the time.

The Commandant inspired in everyone a most tremendous enthusiasm. His lectures on “Morale” were the finest I have ever heard anywhere. “Put yourself in your men’s position on every occasion; continually think for them, give them the best possible time, be in the best spirits always;” “long faces” were anathema! No one can forget his tale of the doctor who never laughed, and whom he put in a barn and taught him how to! “‘Hail fellow well met’ to all other officers and regiments” was another of his great points. “Give ’em a d—d good lunch—a d—d good lunch.” “Get a good mess going.” “Ask your Brigadier into lunch in the trenches: make him come in.” “Concerts?—plenty of concerts in billets.” “An extra tot of rum to men coming off patrol.” All this was a “good show.” But long faces, inhospitality, men not cheerful and singing, officers not seeing that their men get their dinners, after getting into billets, before getting their own; officers supervising working-parties by sitting under haystacks instead of going about cheering the men; brigadiers not knowing their officers; poor lunches—all these things were a “bad show, a d—d bad show!” These lectures were full of the most delicious anecdotes and thrilling stories, and backed up by a huge enthusiasm and a most emphatic practice of his preaching. We had a concert every Wednesday, and every Saturday the four motor-buses took the officers into Amiens, and the sergeants on Sundays—week-ends were in fact “good shows.”

Then there were the lectures. The second week, for instance, was a succession of lectures on the Battle of Loos. These lectures used to take place after tea, and the discussion usually lasted till dinner. First was a lecture by an infantry major of the Seventh Division (who needless to say had been very much in it!). Then followed one by an artillery officer, giving his version of it; then followed an R.E. officer. There was nothing hidden away in a corner. It was all facts, facts, facts. An enlarged map of our own and the German trenches was most fascinating to us who had for the most part never handled one before. I remember the Major’s description of the fighting in the Quarries; it was one of the most vivid bits of narrative I have ever heard. Then there were other fascinating lectures—Captain Jefferies, the big game hunter, on Sniping: the Commandant again on Patrol work and discipline, and Dealing with prisoners: two lectures from the Royal Flying Corps, perhaps most fascinating of all.

We drilled hard with rifles: we took a bombing course and threw live bombs: we went through the gas, and had a big demonstration with smoke bombs: we went to a squadron of the R.F.C., inspected the sheds, saw the aeroplanes, and had anything we liked explained: we went out in motor-buses and carried out schemes of attack and defence: we did outpost schemes: drew maps: dug trenches and revetted them. In short, there was very little we did not do at the School.

It was, in fact, a “good show.” The School was in a big white château on the main road—a new house built by the owner of a factory. The village really lies like a sediment at the bottom of a basin, with houses clustering and scrambling up the sides along the high road running out of it east and west, getting thinner and fewer up the hill, to disappear altogether on the tableland. The jute factory was working hard night and day: we used to have hot baths in the long wooden troughs that are used for dyeing long rolls of matting, and I know no hot baths to equal those forty-footers!

Needless to say, we took advantage of our commandant’s arrangement for free ‘bus rides into Amiens every Saturday. Christmas Day falling on a Saturday, we all had a Christmas dinner at the Hôtel de l’Univers. This, needless to say, was a “good show.” It was a pity, though, that turkey had been insisted on, as turkey with salad, minus sausages, bread-sauce, and brussels sprouts did not seem somehow the real thing; the chef had jibbed at sausages especially! Better at Rome to have done completely as Rome does. After all we cannot give the French much advice in cooking or in war. Otherwise the dinner was good, and unlike our folk at home we had a merry Christmas.

Of course I went to see the Cathedral that Ruskin has claimed to be the most perfect building in the world; indeed, each Saturday found me there; for like all true beauty the edifice does not attract merely by novelty but satisfies the far truer test of familiarity. Yet I confess to a thrill on first entering that dream in stone, which could not come a second time. For down in the mud I had forgotten, in the obsession of the present, man’s dreams and aspirations for the future. Now, here again I was in touch with eternal things that wars do not affect. I remember once at Malvern we had been groping and choking in a thick fog all day; then someone suggested a walk, and three of us ventured out and climbed the Beacon. Half-way up the fog began to thin, and soon we emerged into a clear sunshine. Below lay all the plain wrapped in a great level blanket of white fog; here and there the top of a tall tree or a small hill protruded its head out of the mist and seemed to be laughing at its poor hidden companions; and in a cloudless blue the sun was smiling at mankind below who had forgotten his very existence. So in Amiens Cathedral I used to get my head out of the thick fog of war for a time, and in that stately silence recover my vision of the sun.

The cathedral is a building full of all the freshness of spring. I was at vespers there on Christmas afternoon, and was then impressed by the wonderful lightness of the building: so often there is gloom in a cathedral, that gives a heavy feeling. But Amiens Cathedral is perfectly lighted, and in the east window glows a blue that reminded me of viper’s bugloss in a Swiss meadow. My imagination flew back to the building of the cathedral, and to the brain that conceived it, and beyond that again to the tradition that through long years moulded the conception; and behind all to the idea, the ultimate birth of this perfect creation. And one seemed to be straining almost beyond humanity, to see the first spring flowers looking up in wonder at the sky. The stately pillars were man’s aspiration towards his Creator, the floating music his attempt at praise.

Yet it was only as I left the building that I found the key to the full understanding of this perfect expression of an idea. Round the chancel is a set of bas-reliefs depicting a saint labouring among his people. But what people! They live, they speak! The relief is so deep, that some of the figures are almost in the round, and several come outside the slabs altogether. They are the people of mediæval Amiens; they are the very people who were living in the town while their great cathedral rose stone by stone to be the wonder of their city, the pride of all Picardy. Almost grotesque in their vivid humanity, they are the same people who walk outside the cathedral to-day. The master-artist, greater in his dreams than his fellow men, was yet blessed with that divine sense of humour that made him love them for their quaint smallnesses! So in Amiens I felt a double inspiration: there was man’s offering of his noblest and most beautiful to his Creator, and there was also the reminder, in the saint among the Amiens populace, that God’s answer was not a proud bend of the head as He deigned to accept the offering of poor little man, but a coming down among them, a claiming of equality with them, even though they refuse still to realise their divinity, and choose to live in a self-made suffering and to degrade themselves in a fog of war.

All too quickly the month went by. The enthusiasm and interest of everybody grew in a steady crescendo, and no one, I am sure, will ever forget the impression left by the Major-General who was deputed to come and “tell us one or two things” from the General Staff. In a quiet voice, with a quiet smile, he compared our position with that of a year ago; told us facts about our numbers compared with the enemy’s; our guns compared with his; the real position in the air, the temporary superiority of the Fokker that would vanish completely and finally in a month or so; in everything we were now superior except heavy trench-mortars, and in a month or so we should have a big supply of them too, and a d—d sight heavier! And we could afford to wait. One got the impression that all our grousings and doubtings were completely out of date, that up at the top now was a unity of command that had thought everything out and could afford to wait. Later on I forgot this impression, but I remember it so well now. Even through Verdun we could afford to wait. We had all the cards now. There was a sort of breathless silence throughout this quiet speech. And when it ended with a “Good luck to you, gentlemen,” there was applause; but one’s chief desire was to go outside and shout. It was a bonfire mood: best of all would have been a bonfire of Daily Mails!

We returned to our units on Sunday, 9th January, 1916, by motor-bus, which conveyed us some sixty or seventy miles, when we were dropped, Sergeant Roberts, myself, and Lewis, my servant. Leaving Lewis with my valise, we walked in the moonlight up to Montagne, where I got the transport officer to send a limber for my valise. “O’Brien on leave” was the first thing I grasped, as I tried to acclimatise myself to my surroundings. Leave! My three months was up, so I ought to get leave myself in a week or so; in a few days in fact. My first leave! The next week was rosy from the prospect. My second impression was like that of a poet full of a great sunset and trying to adjust himself to the dry unimaginative remarks of the rest of the community who have relegated sunsets to perdition during dinner. For every one was so dull! They groused, they maligned the Staff, they were pessimistic, they were ignorant, oh! profoundly ignorant; they were in fact in a state of not having seen a vision! I could not believe then that the time would come when I, too, should forget the vision, and fix my eyes on the mud! Still, for the moment, I was immensely surprised, though I was not such a fool as to start at once on a general reform of everyone, starting with the Brigadier. For under the Commandant’s influence one felt ready to tell off the Brigadier, if he didn’t get motor-’buses to take your men to a divisional concert instead of saying the men must march three miles to it. But, as I say, I restrained myself.

A week of field days, of advance guards and attacks in open order, of battalion drill, company drill, arm-drill, gas-helmet drill; lectures in the school in the evening, and running drill before breakfast. Yet all the time I felt chafing to get back into the firing-line. I felt so much better equipped to command my men. I wanted to practise all my new ideas. Then my leave came through.

Leave “comes through” in the following manner. The lucky man receives an envelope from the orderly room, in the corner of which is written “Leave.” Inside is an “A” Form (Army Form C 2121) with this magic inscription: “Please note you will take charge of —— other ranks proceeding on leave to-morrow morning, 17th inst. They will parade outside orderly room at 7.0 a.m. sharp.” Then follow instructions as to where to meet the ’bus. “Take charge!” If you blind-folded those fellows they would find their way somehow by the quickest route to Blighty! The officer is then an impossible person to live with. He is continually jumping about, upsetting everybody, getting sandwiches, and discussing England, looking at the paper to see “What’s on” in town, talking, being unnecessarily bright and cheery. He is particularly offensive in the eyes of the man just come back from leave. Still, it is his day; abide with him until he clears off! So they abode with me until the evening, and next morning Oliver and I started off in the darkness with our four followers. As we left the village it was just beginning to lighten a little, and we met the drums just turning out, cold and sleepy. As we sprang down the hill, leaving Montagne behind us, faintly through the dawn we heard réveillé rousing our unfortunate comrades to another Monday morning!

Then came the long, long journey that nobody minds really, though every one grumbles at it. At B—— an hour’s halt for omelettes and coffee and bread and jam, while the Y.M.C.A. stall supplied tea and buns innumerable. B—— will be a station known for all time to thousands. “Do you remember B——?” we shall ask each other. “Oh! yes. Good omelettes one got there.” Then the port, and fussy R.T.O’s again. Why make a fuss, when everyone is magnetised towards the boat? Under the light of a blazing gas-jet squirting from a pendant ball, we crossed the gangway.

There were men of old time who fell on their native earth and kissed it, on returning after exile. We did not kiss the boards of Southampton pier-head, but we understood the spirit that inspired that action as we steamed quietly along the Solent over a grey and violet sea. There were mists that morning, and the Hampshire coast was grey and vague; but steadily the engine throbbed, and we glided nearer and nearer, entered Southampton Water, and at last were near enough to see houses and fields and people. People. English women.

We disembarked. But what dull people to meet us! Officials and watermen who have seen hundreds of leave-boats arrive—every day in fact! The last people to be able to respond to your feelings. Still, what does it matter? There is the train, and an English First! Some one started to run for one, and in a moment we were all running!...

But you have met us on leave.

CHAPTER V
ON THE MARCH

On this leave I most religiously visited relations and graciously received guests. For one thing, I felt it my duty to dispel all this ignorant pessimism that I found rolling about in large chunks, like the thunder in Alice in Wonderland. I exacted apologies, humble apologies from them. “How can we help it?” they pleaded. “We have no means of knowing anything except through the papers.”

“No, I suppose you can’t help it,” I would reply, and forgive them from my throne of optimism. Eight days passed easily enough.

After dinner sometimes comes indigestion: people enjoy the one and not the other. So after leave comes the return from leave, the one in Tommy-French bon, the other no bon. I hope I do not offend by calling the state of the latter a mental indigestion! It was with a kind of fierce joy that we threw out our bully and biscuits to the crowds of French children who lined the railway banks crying out, “Bullee-beef,” “Biskeet.” The custom of supplying these rations on the leave train has long since been discontinued now, but in those days the little beggars used to know the time of the train to a nicety, and must have made a good trade of it.

As soon as I got back to Montagne I heard a “move” was in the air, and I was delighted. I was fearfully keen to get back into the firing-line again. I was full of life, and in the mood for adventure. I started a diary. Here are some extracts.

“29th January, 1916. Lewis (my servant) brought in a bucket of water this morning which contained 10% of mud. As the mud dribbled on to the green canvas of my bath during the end of the pouring, he saw it for the first time. Apparently the well is running dry.... He managed to get some clean water at length and I had a great bath. Madame asked me as I went in to breakfast why I whistled getting up that morning. I tried to explain that I was in good spirits. It was an exhilarating morning; outside was a great cawing of rooks, and the slant sunlight lit up everything with a rich colour; the mouldy green on the twigs of the apple trees was a joy to see. Later in the day I noticed how all this delicious morning light had gone.

“7 p.m. Orders have just come in for the move to-morrow. Loading party at 6.0 a.m. under Edwards, who is inwardly fed up but outwardly quite pleased. Valises to be ready by 6.45 a.m. Dixon grouses as usual at orders coming in late. These moves always try the tempers of all concerned. O’Brien and Edwards are now on the rustle, collecting kit. We have accumulated rather a lot of papers, books, tins of ration, tobacco, etc.”

Madame was genuinely sorry to see us go. We gave her a large but beautiful ornament for her mantelpiece, suitably inscribed. The dear soul was overwhelmed, and drew cider from a cellar hitherto unknown to us, which she pressed on our servants as well as on us. We made the fellows drink it, though they were not very keen on it!

“30 Jan., 1916. Montagne—Vaux-en-Amienois. I found myself suddenly detailed as O.C. rear party, in lieu of Edwards, who has to remain in Montagne and hand over to the incoming battalion. At 9.30 three A.S.C. lorries arrived, and we loaded up. I had about forty men for the job. It was good to see these boys heaving up rolls of many-coloured blankets, which filled nearly two lorries; the third was packed with a mixture of boilers, dixies, brooms, spades, lamps, etc. The leather and skin waistcoats had to be left behind for a second journey: I left the shoemaker-sergeant and four men with these to await the return of one of the lorries. As we worked a fog rolled up, which was to stay all day. Edwards meanwhile saw to it that all the odd coal and wood left at the transport was taken to our good Madame; this much annoyed the groups of women who peered like vultures from the doorways, ready to squabble over the pickings as soon as the last of us had departed.

Farewell to Montagne. All the fellows were dull. Even Sawyer the smiling, who had been prominent with his cheery face in the loading-up, was silent and dull. No life. No spirit. A mournful lot, save for the plum-pudding dog that galloped ahead and on either flank, smelling and pouncing and tossing his mongrel ears in delight. He belonged to one of the men, a gift from a warm-hearted daughter of France.

A dull lot, I say. I rallied them. I persuaded. I whistled, hoping to put a tune into their dull hearts; and as we swung downhill into Riencourt they began to sing. It was but a sorry thin sort of singing though, like a winter sunshine; there was no power behind it, no joy, no spontaneity. Suddenly, however, as we came into the village, there was a company of the Warwicks falling in, and everyone sang like fury. Baker, one of the last draft, was the moving spirit. But he is young to this life, and later on, when the fog had entered their souls again, he said he could not well sing with a pack on. Yet is not that the very time to sing, is not that the very virtue of singing, the conquest of the poor old body by the indomitable spirit?

It was a fifteen-mile march. At the third halt I gave half an hour for the eating of bread and cheese. Then was the hour of the plum-pudding hound; also appeared a sort of Newfoundland collie, very big in the hind-quarters, and very dirty as well as ill-bred. Between them they made rich harvest of crusts and cheese. We sat on a bank along the road, but after half an hour we were all getting cold in the raw air, and I fell them in again, and we got on our way. Soon they warmed up and whistled and sang for a quarter of an hour; then silence returned, and eyes turned to the ground again. This march began to tell on the older men. Halford fell out, and I sent Corporal Dewey to bring him along, hastily scribbling the name of our destination on a slip torn from my field-message book, and giving it to him. Then Riley fell out, and Flynn. I began to dread the appearance of Sergeant Hayman from the rear, to tell me of some one else. They were men, these, who had been employed on various jobs; the older and weaker men. There was no skrim-shanking, for there was no Red Cross cart behind us. But no one else fell out; the pace was steady and they were as fit as anything, these fellows. Then happened an incident. We had just turned off the main Amiens road, and come to a forked road. I halted a moment to make sure of the way by the map, and while I did so apparently some sergeant from a regiment billeted in the village there told Sergeant Hayman that the battalion had taken the left road. The way was to the right, and as I struck up a steep hill, Sergeant Hayman ran up and told me the battalion (which had started nearly two hours before us) had gone to the left. ‘I’m going to the right, sergeant,’ said I. And the sergeant returned to the rear. Up, up, up. Grind, grind, grind. I began to hear signs of doubt behind. ‘Did you hear that? Said the battalion went t’other way,’ and so on. ‘Ain’t ’e got a map all right?’ from a believer. ‘Three kilos more,’ I said at the next stop. But some of the fellows had got it into their heads, I could see, that we were wrong. I studied the map; there was no doubt we were all right. Yet a mistake would be calamitous, as the men were very done. Ah! a kilo-stone! ‘Two kilos to ——,’ a place not named on the map at all. This gave me a qualm; and behind came the usual mispronunciations of this annoying village on the stone. But lo! on the left came a turning as per map. Round we swung, downhill, and suddenly we were in a village. Another qualm as I saw it full of Jocks. The doubters were just beginning to realise this fact, when we turned another corner, and almost fell on top of the C.O.! In five minutes we were in billets....”

The next day we marched to the village of Querrieux. There I heard the guns again after two months.

“31st January. This evening was full of the walking tour spirit, the spirit of good company. We were billeted at a farmhouse, and the farmer showed Captain Dixon and me all round his farm. He was full of pride in everything; of his horses first of all. There were three in the first stable, sleek and strong; then we saw la mère, a beautiful mare in foal; then lastly there was ‘Piccaninny,’ a yearling. All the stables were spotlessly clean, and the animals well kept. But to see him with his lambs was best of all. The ewes were feeding from racks that ran all along both sides of the sheds, and his lantern showed two long rows of level backs, solid and uniform and dull; while in the middle of the shed was a jocund company of close-cropped lambs, frisking, pushing, jostling, or pulling at their dams; as lively and naughty a crew as you could imagine. ‘Ah! voleur,’ cried our friend, picking up a lamb that was stealing a drink from the wrong tap, and pointing to its dam at the other end of the shed; he fondled and stroked it like a puppy, making us hold it, and assuring us it was not méchant!

At 7.0 we had our dinner in the kitchen. The farmer, his wife, and the domestique (a manservant, whose history I will tell in a few minutes) had just finished, and were going to clear off; but we asked them to stay and let us drink their health in whiskey and soda. The farmer said this was wont to make the domestique go ‘zigzag’; for himself, he would drink, not for the inherent pleasure of the whiskey, which was a strong drink to which he was unused, he being of the land of light wines, but to give us pleasure! So the usual healths were given in Old Orkney and Perrier. Then we were told the history of the domestique, which brought one very close to the spirit in which France is fighting. He had eight children in Peronne, barely ten miles the other side of the line. Called up in September, 1914, he was in the trenches until March, 1915, when he was released on account of his eight children. But by then the living line had set between them in steel and blood, and never a word yet has he heard of his wife and eight children, the youngest of whom he left nine days old! There are times when our cause seems clouded with false motives; but there seemed no doubt on this score to-night, as we watched this man in his own land, creeping up, as it were, as near as possible to his wife and children and home, and yet barred from his own village, and without the knowledge even that his own dear ones were alive. The farmer told us he had gone half crazed. Yet he had a fine face, though furrowed with deep lines down his forehead. ‘Ten minutes in the yard with the Germans—ah! what would he do!’ And vividly he drew his hand across his throat. But the Germans would never go back: that was another of his opinions. No wonder he told us he doubted the bon Dieu: no wonder he sometimes went zigzag.

The farmer was well educated, and had very intelligent views on the war; one son was a captain; the other was also serving in some capacity. The wife made us good coffee, but got very sleepy. I learnt she rose every morning at 4.0 a.m. to milk the cows.

To-night we can hear the guns. There seems a considerable liveliness at several parts of the line, and strange rumours of the Germans breaking through, which I do not believe. To-morrow we shall be within the shell-zone again.”

“Feb. 1st. To-day we marched to Morlancourt and are spending the night in huts. It is very cold, and we have a brazier made out of a biscuit tin, but it smokes abominably. We are busy getting trench-kit ready for the next day. From outside the hut I can see star-lights, and hear machine-guns tapping. It thrills like the turning up of the footlights.”

And it was a long act. The curtain did not fall till June.

CHAPTER VI
THE BOIS FRANÇAIS TRENCHES

This is a chapter of maps, diagrams, and technicalities. There are people, I know, who do not want maps, to whom maps convey practically nothing. These people can skip this chapter, and (from their point of view) they will lose nothing. The main interest of life lies in what is done and thought, and it does not much matter exactly where these acts and thoughts take place. Maps are like anatomy: to some people it is of absorbing interest to know where our bones, muscles, arteries and all the rest of our interior lie; to others these things are of no account whatever. Yet all are alike interested in human people. And so, quite understanding (I think you are really very romantic in your dislike of maps: you associate them with the duller kind of history, and examination papers!), I bid you mapless ones farewell till page 117, promising you (again) that you shall lose nothing.