DUGOUTS
The afternoon sun poured down steadily on little groups of men
preparing dugouts for habitation. I had a good many details to attend
to before I could look about for a suitable place for a dugout. Men
had to be told off for different fatigues. Men for pick and shovel
work that night were placed in sections so that each group would get
as much sleep as possible. All the available dugouts had been taken up
by the first comers. The location here was particularly well suited
for dugouts. A mule path to the beach ran along the bottom of a narrow
ravine. On one side of the path the ground shelved gradually up till
it merged into a plain, covered with long grass, overgrown and
neglected. On the other side, a ridge sloped up sharply and formed a
natural protection before it also merged into a "gorse" covered
plateau. Small evergreen bushes served the double purpose of hiding
our movements from the enemy and affording some shade from the
broiling sun. At the foot of the ridge we made our line of dugouts.
The angle of the ridge was so steep that an enemy shell could not
possibly drop on our dugouts. A little further away some of A
Company's dugouts were in the danger zone. After much hunting, I found
a likely looking place. It was about seven feet square, and where I
planned to put the head of my dugout a large boulder squatted. It was
so eminently suitable that I wondered that no one else had preempted
it. I took off my equipment, threw my coat on the ground, and began
digging. It was soft ground and gave easily.
A short distance away, I could see Art Pratt, digging. He was finding
it hard work to make any impression. He saw me, stopped to mop his
brow, and grinned cheerfully.
"You should take soft ground like this, Art," I yelled.
"I've gone so far now," said Art, "that it's too late to change," and
we resumed our work.
After a few more minutes' digging, my pick struck something that felt
like the root of a tree, but I knew there was no tree on that
God-forsaken spot large enough to send out big roots. I
disentangled the pick and dug a little more, only to find the same
obstruction. I took my small intrenching tool, scraped away the dirt I
had dug, and began cleaning away near the base of a big boulder. There
were no roots there, and gradually I worked away from it. I took my
pick again, and at the first blow it stuck. Without trying to
disengage it I began straining at it. In a few seconds it began to
give, and I withdrew it. Clinging to it was part of a Turkish uniform,
from which dangled and rattled the dried-up bones of a skeleton.
Nauseated, I hurriedly filled in the place, and threw myself on the
ground, physically sick. While I was lying there one of our men came
along, searching for a place to bestow himself. He gazed inquiringly
at the ground I had just filled in.
[Illustration: Washing day in war-time]
"Is there anybody here?" he asked me, indicating the place with a
pick-ax.
"Yes," I said, with feeling, "there is."
"It looks to me," he said, "as if some one began digging and then
found a better place. If he don't come back soon I'll take it."
For about fifteen minutes he stood there, and I lay regarding him
silently. At last he spoke again.
"I think I'll go ahead," he said. "Possession is nine points of the
law, and the fellow hasn't been here to claim it."
"I wouldn't if I were you," I said. "That fellow's been there a hell
of a long while."
I left him there digging, and crawled away to a safe distance. In a
few minutes he passed me.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded, reproachfully.
"Because half of the company saw me digging there and didn't tell me,"
I said.
I was prospecting around for another place when Art Pratt hailed me.
"Why don't you come with me," he said, "instead of digging another
place?"
I went to where he was and looked at the dugout. It wasn't very wide,
and I said so. Together we began widening and deepening the dugout,
until it was big enough for the two of us. It was grueling work, but
by supper time it was done. The night before, a fatigue party had gone
down to the beach and hauled up a big field kitchen. Our cooks had
made some tea, and we had been issued some loaves of bread. Art
unrolled a large piece of cloth, with all the pomp and ceremony of a
man unveiling a monument. He did it slowly and carefully. There was a
glitter in his eyes that one associates with an artist exhibiting his
masterpiece. He gave a triumphant switch to the last fold and held
toward me a large piece of fresh juicy steak!
"Beefsteak!" I gasped. "Sacred beefsteak! Where did you get it?"
Art leaned toward me mysteriously. "Officers' mess," he whispered.
"I've got salt and pepper," I said, "but how are you going to cook
it?"
"I don't know," said Art, "but I'm going up to the field kitchen;
there's some condensed milk that I may be able to get hold of to
spread on our bread."
While Art was gone, I strolled down the ravine a little way to where
some of the Royal Engineers were quartered. The Royal Engineers are
the men who are looked on in training as a noncombatant force, with
safe jobs. In war-time they do no fighting, but their safe jobs
consist of such harmless work as fixing up barbed wire in front of the
parapet and setting mines under the enemy's trenches. For a rest they
are allowed to conduct parties to listening posts and to give the
lines for advance saps. Sometimes they make loopholes in the parapet,
or bolster up some redoubt that is being shelled to pieces. The Turks
were sending over their compliments just as I came abreast of the
Engineers' lines. One of the engineers was sifting some gravel when
the first shell landed. He dropped the sieve, and turned a back
somersault into some gorse-bushes just behind him. The sieve rolled
down, swayed from side to side, and settled close to my head, in the
depression where I was conscientiously emulating an ostrich. I
gathered it to my bosom tenderly and began crawling away. From behind
a boulder I heard the engineer bemoaning to an officer the loss of his
sieve, and he described in detail how a huge shell had blown it out of
his hands. Joyfully I returned to Art with my prize.
"What's that for?" said Art.
"Turn it upside down," I said, "and it's a steak broiler."
"Where did you get it?" said Art.
I told him, and related how the engineer had explained it to his
officer.
Up at the field kitchen a group was standing around.
"What's the excitement?" I asked Art.
"Those fellows are a crowd of thieves," answered Art, virtuously.
"They're looking about to see what they can steal. I was up there a
few minutes ago and saw a can of condensed milk lying on the shaft of
the field kitchen. They were watching me too closely to give me a
chance, but you might be able to get away with it."
The two of us strolled up slowly to where Hebe Wheeler, the creative
artist who did our cooking, was holding forth to a critical audience.
"It's all very well to talk about giving you things to eat, but I
can't cook pancakes without baking powder. You can't get blood out of
a turnip. I'd give you the stuff if I got it to cook, but I don't get
it, do I, Corporal?" said Hebe, appealing to me.
I moved over and stood with my back to the shaft on which rested the
tin of condensed milk.
"No, Hebe," I said, "you don't get the things; and when you do get
them, this crowd steals them on you."
"By God," said Hebe, "that's got to be put a stop to. I'll report the
next man I find stealing anything from the cookhouse."
I put my hand cautiously behind my back, until I felt my fingers close
on the tin of milk. "You let me know, Hebe," I said, as I slipped the
tin into the roomy pocket of my riding breeches, "and I'll make out a
crime sheet against the first man whose name you give." I stayed about
ten minutes longer talking to Hebe, and then returned to my dugout.
Art had finished broiling the piece of steak, and we began our supper.
I put my hand in my breeches' pocket to get the milk. Instead of
grasping the tin, my fingers closed on a sticky, gluey mass. The tin
had been opened when I took it and I had it in my pocket upside down.
About half of it had oozed over my pocket. Art was just pouring the
remainder on some bread when some one lifted the rubber sheet and
stuck his head into our dugout. It was the enraged Hebe Wheeler. As
soon as he had missed his precious milk he had made a thorough
investigation of all the dugouts. He looked at Art accusingly.
"Come in, Hebe," I said pleasantly. "We don't see you very often."
Hebe paid no attention to my invitation, but glared at Art.
"I've caught you with the goods on," he said. "Give me back that milk,
or I'll report you to the platoon officer."
"You can report me to Lord Kitchener if you like," said Art, calmly,
as he drained the can; "but this milk stays right here."
Hebe disappeared, breathing vengeance.
After supper that night a crowd sat around the dying embers of one of
the fires. This was one of the first positions we had been in where
there was cover sufficient to warrant fires being lighted. A mail had
been distributed that day, and the men exchanged items of news and
swapped gossip. There were men there from all parts of Newfoundland.
They spoke in at least thirty different accents. Any one who made a
study of it could tell easily from each man's accent the district he
came from. Much of the mail was intimate, and necessitated private
perusal, but much more was of interest to others. It was interesting
to hear a man yell to a friend who came from his same "bay" that
another man had enlisted from Robinson's, making up eighteen of the
nineteen men of fighting age in the place. Sometimes the news was that
"Half has volunteered, and Hed was turned down by the doctor."
This from some resident of the northern parts where the fog is not,
and where aspirates are of little consequence. This news gives rise
to the opinion that "that's the hend o' Half." This with much
discussion and ominous shaking of the head. Sometimes a friend of the
absent "Half" would tell of Half's exploit of stealing a trolley from
the Reid Newfoundland Railway Company and going twenty miles to see a
girl. Sometimes the hero was a married man. Then it was opined that
his conjugal relations were not happy, and the reason he enlisted was
that "he had heard something." All these opinions and suggestions were
voiced with that beautiful freedom from restraint so characteristic of
the ordinary conversation of the members of our regiment. Much was
made of the arrival of a mail. It did not happen often, and the
letters that came were three or four months old. "As cold waters to a
thirsty soul," says Solomon, "so is good news from a far country." The
Newfoundlanders in that barren, scorched country caught eagerly at
every shred of news from that distant Northern country that they loved
enough to risk their lives for. With such a setting it is little
wonder that the talk was much of home. Behind the persiflage of the
talk there was a poignant longing for those dark, cool forests of
pine where the caribou roam, and the broad-bosomed lakes and rivers
that were the highways for the monsters of the Northern forests on
their journey to the mills. The lumbermen of Notre Dame Bay and Green
Bay told fearsome and wondrous tales of driving and swamping, of
teaming and landing, until one almost heard the blows of the ax, the
"gee" and "haw" of the teamsters, and smelt the pungent odor of
new-cut pine. The Reid Newfoundland Railway, the single narrow gage
road that twists a picturesque trail across the Island, had given
largely of its personnel toward the making of the regiment. Firemen
and engineers, brakemen and conductors, talked reminiscently of forced
runs to catch expresses with freight and accommodation trains. There
is an interesting tale of two drivers who blew their whistles in the
Morse code, and kept up communication with each other, until a girl
learned the code and broke up the friendship. A steamship fireman
contributed his quota with a story of laboring through mountainous
seas against furious tides when the stokers' utmost efforts served
only to keep steamers from losing way. By comparison with the
homeland, Turkey suffered much; and the things they said about
Gallipoli were lamentable. From the gloom on the other side of the
fire a voice chanted softly, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary, It's
a long way to go." Gradually all joined in. After Tipperary, came many
marching songs. "Are we downhearted? NO," with every one booming out
the "No." "Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue," and at last their own song;
to the tune of "There is a tavern in the town."
And when those Newfoundlanders start to yell, start to yell,
Oh, Kaiser Bill, you'll wish you were in hell, were in hell;
For they'll hang you high to your Potsdam palace wall,
You're a damn poor Kaiser, after all.
The singing died down slowly. The talk turned to the trenches and the
chances of victory, and by degrees to personal impressions.
"I'd like to know," said one chap, "why we all enlisted."
"When I enlisted," said a man with an accent reminiscent of the
Placentia Bay, "I thought there'd be lots of fun, but with weather
like this, and nothing fit to eat, there's not much poetry or romance
in war any more."
"Right for you, my son," said another; "your King and Country need
you, but the trouble is to make your King and Country feed you."
"Don't you wish you were in London now, Gal?" said one chap, turning
to me. "You'd have a nice bed to sleep in, and could eat anywhere you
liked."
"Well," I said, "enough people tried to persuade me to stop. One
fellow told me that the more brains a man had, the farther away he was
from the firing-line. He'd been to the front too. I think," I added,
"that General Sherman had the right idea."
"I wish you fellows would shut up and go to sleep," said a querulous
voice from a nearby dugout.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Gal; General Sherman was an
optimist."
"It doesn't do any good to talk about it now," said Art Pratt, in a
matter of fact voice. "Some of you enlisted so full of love of country
that there was patriotism running down your chin, and some of you
enlisted because you were disappointed in love, but the most of you
enlisted for love of adventure, and you're getting it."
Again the querulous subterranean voice interrupted: "Go to sleep, you
fellows--there's none of you knows what you're talking about. There's
only one reason any of us enlisted, and that's pure, low down,
unmitigated ignorance." Amid general laughter the class in applied
psychology broke up, and distributed themselves in their various
dugouts.
Halfway down to my dugout, I was arrested by the sound of scuffling,
much blowing and puffing, and finally the satisfied grunt that I knew
proceeded from Hebe Wheeler.
"I've got a spy," he yelled. "Here's a bloody Turk."
"Turk nothing," said a disgusted voice. "Don't you know a man from
your own company?"
Hebe relinquished his hold on his captive and subsided, grumbling. The
other arose, shook himself, and went his way, voicing his opinion of
people who built their dugouts flush with the ground.
"What do you think of the news from the Western front?" said Art, when
I located him.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The enemy are on the run at the Western front. The British have taken
four lines of German trenches for a distance of over five miles in the
vicinity of Loos. The bulletin board at Brigade headquarters says
that they have captured several large guns, a number of machine guns,
and seventeen thousand unwounded prisoners. If they can keep this up
long enough for the Turks to realize that it is hopeless to expect any
help from that quarter, Abdul Pasha will soon give in."
We were talking about Abdul Pasha's surrendering when we dropped off
to sleep. We must have been asleep about two hours when the insistent,
crackling sound of rapid fire, momentarily increasing in volume,
brought us to our feet. Away up on the right, where the Australians
were, the sky was a red glare from the flashing of many rifles.
Against this, we could see the occasional flare of different colored
rockets that gave the warships their signals for shelling. Very soon
one of our officers appeared.
"Stand to arms for the Newfoundlanders," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"The Australians are advancing," he answered. "We'll go up as
reinforcements if we're needed. Tell your men to put on their
ammunition belts, and have their rifles ready. They needn't put on
their packs; but keep them near them so that they can slip them on if
we get the order to move away."
I went about among the men of my section, passing along the word.
Everybody was tingling with excitement. Nobody knew just what was
about to happen; but every one thought that whatever it was it would
prove interesting. For about half an hour the rapid fire kept up, then
by degrees died down.
"Did you see that last rocket?" said a man near me; "that means
they've done it. A red rocket means that the navy is to fire, a green
to continue firing, and a white one means that we've won."
In a few minutes Mr. Nunns walked toward us. "You can put your
equipments off, and turn in again," he said, "nothing doing to-night."
"What is all the excitement?" I asked.
"Oh, it's the Anzacs again," he said; "when they heard of the advance
at Loos, they went over across, and surprised the Turks. They've taken
two lines of trenches. They did it without any orders--just wanted to
celebrate the good news."
I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a whizz-bang flying
over our dugout. Johnny Turk was sending us his best respects. I shook
Art, who was sleeping heavily.
"Get up, Art," I said. I might as well have spoken to a stone wall. I
tried again. Putting my mouth to his ear, I shouted, "Stand to, Art.
Stand to."
Art turned over, sleeping. "I'll stand three if you like, but don't
disturb me," he muttered, and relapsed into coma.
In a few minutes, two or three more shells came along. They were well
over the ridge behind us, but were landing almost in the midst of
another line of dugouts. I stood gazing at them for a little while. A
man passed me running madly. "Come on," he gasped, "and yell for the
stretcher." I followed him without further question. "It's all right,"
he said, slowing up just before we came to the line of dugouts that
had just been shelled. "They've got him all right." We continued
toward a group that crowded about a stretcher. A man was lying on it,
with his head raised on a haversack. He rolled his eyes slowly and
surveyed the group. "What the hell is the matter?" he said dazedly;
then felt himself over gingerly for wounds. Apparently he could find
none. "What hit me?" he asked, appealing to a grinning Red Cross man.
"Nothing," said the other, "except about a ton of earth. It's a lucky
thing some one saw you. That last shell buried you alive."
The whistle of a coming shell dispersed the grinning spectators. I
went back to my dugout, and found Art busily toasting some bread over
the sieve that I had commandeered the day before.
"What was the excitement?" he asked.
"Charlie Renouf," I said, "was buried alive."
"Heavens," said Art, "he's the postman; we can't afford to lose him.
That reminds me that I've got to write some letters."
[Illustration: Cleaning up after coming down from the trenches at
Suvla]
After we had finished breakfast, Art produced some writing paper and
an indelible pencil. I did not have any writing paper, but I
contributed a supply of service postcards, that bear such meager
information as "I am quite well," "I am sick," "I am wounded," "I am
in hospital and doing well," "I am in hospital and expect to be
discharged soon," "I have not heard from you for a long time," "I have
had no letter from you since ----," "I have your letter of ----," "I
have received your parcel of ----," and a space for the date and the
signature. When a man writes home from the front, he crosses out
all but the sentences he wants read, puts in the date, and adds his
signature. This is the ordinary means of communication. About once a
week a man is allowed to write some letters; but these are censored by
his platoon officer, who seals them, and signs his name as a record of
their having been passed by him. Sometimes the censor at the base
opens a few of them. Perhaps once a fortnight a few privileged
characters are given large blue envelopes, that have printed in the
corner:
NOTE.--
Correspondence in this envelope need not be censored
Regimentally. The contents are liable to examination at the
Base.
The following Certificate must be signed by the writer:
_I certify on my honour that the contents of this envelope refer
to nothing but private and family matters._
_Signature_
(_Name only_)
While we were writing, the orderly sergeant, that dread of loafers,
who appoints all details for fatigue work, bore down upon our dugout.
"Two men from you, Corporal Gallishaw," he said, "for bomb throwers.
Give me their names as soon as you can. They're for practice this
afternoon."
"One here, right away," said Art, "and put Lew O'Dea down for the
other."
Lew O'Dea was a character. He was in the next dugout to me. The first
day on the Peninsula, his rifle had stuck full of sand, and some one
had stolen his tin canteen for cooking food. He immediately formed
himself into an anti-poverty society of one thereafter, and went
around like a walking arsenal. I never saw him with fewer than three
rifles, usually he carried half a dozen. He always kept two or three
of them spotlessly clean; so that no matter when rifle inspection
came, he always had at least one to show. He had been a little late in
getting his rifle clean once and was determined not to be caught any
more. His equipment always contained a varied assortment of canteens,
seven or eight gas masks, and his dugout was luxurious with rubber
sheets and blankets. "I inherited them," he always answered, whenever
anybody questioned him about them. With ammunition for his several
rifles, when he started for the trenches in full marching order, he
carried a load that a mule need by no means have been ashamed of.
"Do you want to go on bomb throwing detail this afternoon?" I called
to O'Dea across the top of the dugout.
"Sure," he answered; "does a swim want to duck?"
"Fine," I said; "report here at two o'clock."
At two o'clock, accompanied by an officer and a sergeant, we went down
the road a little way to where some Australians were conducting a
class in bomb throwing. A brown-faced chap from Sydney showed me the
difference between bombs that you explode by lighting a match, bombs
that are started by pulling out a plug, and the dinky little
three-second "cricket balls" that explode by pressing a spring. I
asked him about the attack the night before. He told me that they had
been for some time waiting for a chance to make a local advance that
would capture an important redoubt in the Turkish line. Every night at
exactly nine o'clock, the Navy had thrown a searchlight on the part of
the line the Anzacs wanted to capture. For ten minutes they kept up
heavy firing. Then, after a ten minutes' interval of darkness and
suspended firing, they began a second illumination and bombardment,
commencing always at twenty minutes past nine, and ending precisely
at half past. After a little while, the enemy, knowing just the exact
minute the bombardment was to begin, took the first beam of the
searchlight as a hint to clear out. But the night before, a crowd of
eager Australians had crept softly along in the shadow made doubly
dark by the glare of the searchlight, the noise of their advance
covered by the sound of the bombardment. As soon as the bombardment
ceased and the searchlight's beam was succeeded by darkness, they
poured into the Turkish position. They had taken the astonished Turks
completely by surprise.
"We didn't expect to make the attack for another week," said the
Australian; "but as soon as our boys heard that we were winning in
France, they thought they'd better start something. There hasn't been
any excitement over our way now for a long time," he said. "I'm about
fed up on this waiting around the trenches." He fingered one of the
little cricket-ball bombs caressingly. "Think of it," he said; "all
you do is press that little spring, and three seconds after you're a
casualty."
"Pressing that little spring," said I, "is my idea of nothing to do,
unless you're a particularly fast sprinter."
"By the Lord Harry, Newfoundland," said the Australian, with a
peculiar, excited glint in his eye, "that's an inspiration."
"What's an inspiration?" I asked, in bewilderment.
The Australian stretched himself on the ground beside me, resting his
chin in his cupped hands. "When I was in Sydney," he said slowly and
thoughtfully, "I did a hundred yards in ten seconds easily. Now if I
can get in a traverse that's only eight or nine yards long, and press
the spring of one of those little cricket balls, I ought to be able to
get out on the other side of the traverse before it explodes."
Art and Lew O'Dea passed along just then and I jumped up to go with
them. "Don't forget to look for me if you're over around the Fifteenth
Australians," said the Australian. "Ask for White George."
"I won't forget," I said, as I hurried away to join the others.
We were about half way to our dugouts when we passed a string of our
men carrying about twenty mail bags. It was the second instalment of a
lot of mail that had been landed the day before. We followed the
sweating carriers up the road to the quarter-master sergeant's
dugout, and waited around humbly while that autocrat leisurely sorted
out the mail, making remarks about each letter and waiting after each
remark for the applause he felt it deserved. With maddening
deliberation he scanned each address. "Corporal W.P. Costello." "He's
at the base," some one answered. Corporal Costello's letter was put
aside. "Private George Butler." Private Butler, on the edge of the
crowd, pushed and elbowed his way toward the quarter-master sergeant.
"Here you are; letter for Butler." The august Q.M.S. placed the letter
beside his elbow. "Wait till the lot's sorted, and you'll get them all
together." Private Butler, with ill-restrained impatience, resumed his
place on the outside. After the letters, the parcels had to be sorted.
Some enterprising person at the base had opened a lot of them. One
fellow received a large box of cigarettes that he would have enjoyed
smoking if the man at the base had not seen them first. Art Pratt drew
a lot of mail, including a parcel, intact except for the contents. A
diligent search in a box a foot square failed to locate anything more
than a pair of socks, which Art presented to me with his compliments.
Some papers, two months old, with some casualty lists of the First
Newfoundland Regiment, had no address; the wrapper had gone before,
somewhere between Newfoundland and the Dardanelles. Everybody claimed
the papers. Various proofs were offered to show the ownership. One
fellow knew by the way they were rolled up that they were from his
family. Another, more original than the rest, was certain they were
his, because he had written for papers of those dates, in order to see
the announcement of the casualty of a friend. It was pointed out
derisively that a letter written after that casualty had occurred
would only then have reached Newfoundland; and to get a lot of papers
in reply would be a physical impossibility. The claimant, in no wise
abashed, suggested that lots be drawn. This was pooh-poohed. At last,
to avoid discussion, the quarter-master sergeant took the papers
himself, and put them in his greatcoat. "I'll distribute them after
I've read them," he announced, and pulled the rubber sheet across the
top of his dugout, as a delicate hint that the interview was finished.
The crowd slowly melted away. I received one letter, and was sitting
on the edge of my dugout reading it when one of our men passing
along, yelled to me. "Hey," he said, "you come from the United States,
don't you?"
"Yes," I said; "what do you want to know that for?"
"I've got something here," he said, stopping, "that comes from there
too." He dived into his pocket, and produced a medley of articles.
From these he selected a small paper-wrapped parcel.
"What's that?" I said.
"It's chewing gum," he answered; "real American chewing gum like the
girls chew in the subway in New York." He unwrapped it, selected a
piece, placed it in his mouth, and began chewing it with elaborated
enjoyment. After a few minutes, he came nearer. "By golly," he said,
with an exaggerated nasal drawl, "it's good gum, I'll soon begin to
feel like a blooming Yank. I'm talking like a Yank already. Don't you
wish you had some of this?"
"I'll make you a sporting offer," I answered. "I'll fight you for the
rest of what you've got."
"No, you won't," he answered nasally; "it's made me feel exactly like
a Yank; I'm too proud to fight."