"And Cuchullain ... deemed it no honour nor deemed he it fair to
take horses or garments or arms from corpses, or from the dead."
(TAIN BO CUAILGNE, 5th Century).
There were only a few stars visible above, but the whole eastern horizon
was flashing and scintillating. Down in the valley, where several
British batteries were in action, long thin jets of flame darted forth
incessantly.
As the day dawned we could see that the distant ridges were enveloped in
drifts of dense, white fog. From time to time patches of the fog would
glow redly and then become brilliantly incandescent and throw up sheets
of lurid flame. German shells came whistling over and burst with angry,
reverberating roars. Black fountains of earth and smoke spurted up from
the fields and left slowly thinning clouds that hung suspended for a
while and then dissolved in air. Sepia-coloured puffs appearing in the
sky above were followed by sharp explosions and the rattle of descending
shrapnel.
For several hours the tumult continued unabated and then the whistle of
German shells became less frequent until at last it died down
altogether.
Towards noon about a hundred German prisoners passed by under armed
escort.
The ridges had been taken.
* * * * *
Our new camp lay at the foot of a gloomy hill. A disused trench ran
right across it. Rifles, bayonets, bandoliers, grenades, water-bottles,
packs, articles of clothing and bits of equipment lay scattered
everywhere. Barbed wire rusted in coils or straggling lengths. Rusty
tins and twisted, rusty sheets of shrapnel-riddled corrugated iron
littered the sodden mud. Water, rust-stained or black and fetid,
stagnated in pools and shell-holes. The sides of the trench were moist
with iridescent slime. Dead soldiers lay everywhere with grey faces,
grey hands and mouldering uniforms. Their pockets were turned inside out
and mud-stained letters and postcards, and sometimes a mildewed
pocket-book or a broken mirror, were dispersed round every rotting
corpse. In front of my tent the white ribs of a horse projected from a
heap of loose earth. Near by a boot with a human foot inside emerged
from the black scummy water at the bottom of a shell-hole. An evil
stench hovered in the air.
We buried all the dead that lay within the camp-lines. Then darkness
descended and we crept into our tents.
We were lying on wet, oozy clay, thinly covered with wisps of soaked
grass and decaying straw--there had been a cornfield here a year ago.
There were thirteen of us in one tent. We were wedged in tightly,
shoulder to shoulder, our feet all in one bunch.
Candles were lit and some of the men sat up and searched their clothes.
I was conscious of a slight irritation, but was so tired and depressed
that I resolved to ignore it and postpone my usual search to the
following day.
But as I lay still, trying hard to fall asleep, the irritation
increased. At last it became so maddening that I started up in bitter
rage. I lit my candle and pulled off my shirt.
"Chatty [lousy] are yer?" said someone in an amused tone.
"I've got a big one crawling about somewhere," I answered. None of us
ever admitted that we had more than one or two, even when we knew we
had a great many. It was also considered less disreputable to have one
"big one" than two small ones.
"It's the Gink's fault--'e swarms with 'em. I was standin' be'ind 'im in
the ranks the other day an' I saw three of 'em crorlin' out of 'is
collar up 'is neck. 'E never washes and never changes 'is clothes, so
what can yer expect?"
The "Gink" flared up at once:
"Yer god-damn son of a bitch--it's youss guys that never washes. I bet
yer me borram dollar I ant got a god-damn chat on me...."
A long wrangle ensued. Wild threats and foul insults were flung about.
But the quarrel, like nearly all our quarrels, did not go beyond violent
words.
I began to search and soon found a big swollen louse. I crushed it with
my thumb-nail so that the blood spurted out. I heard several faint
cracks coming from the opposite side of the tent and knew that others
were also hunting for vermin.
I examined the seams of my shirt and found two or three more. Then, to
my dismay, I discovered several eggs. They are so minute that some are
sure to escape the most careful scrutiny. The presence of eggs is always
a warning that many nights of irritation will have to pass by before the
young grow sufficiently big to be discovered easily.
I thought I had looked at every square inch of my shirt, but I looked at
it a second time in order to make sure. I soon found a whitish elongated
body clinging tightly to the cloth. Then I found another wedged into the
seam.
Meanwhile, my neighbour, who had been tossing about restlessly and
scratching himself and sighing with desperate vexation, lit his candle
and began to search busily. The sound of an occasional crack showed how
successful he was.
The night was warm and sultry. A storm threatened and it was necessary
to close the tent flap. I blew out my candle and wrapped myself in my
blankets. I was unable to stretch my legs because others were in the
way. I was hemmed and pressed in on all sides. I felt an impulse to kick
out savagely, but was able to control myself.
The stifling heat became unbearable, and at the same time the cold,
clammy moisture from the soft sodden mud underneath began to penetrate
ground-sheet and blankets.
The irritation recommenced. A louse so big that I could feel it crawling
along stopped and drew blood. I tried in vain to go to sleep. I heard my
neighbour scratching himself steadily. Nor could he find a comfortable
position to lie in and kept twisting and turning and moaning. The other
men were snoring or fidgeting restlessly.
At length a fitful slumber came upon me and a confusion of rotting
bodies swarming with monstrous lice passed before my closed eyes. I was
fully awake long before reveillé, sleepy and unrefreshed, and when
reveillé came we received orders to move within two hours.
Four of us and one N.C.O. were left behind to load a lorry. And then we,
too, packed up and set out to follow the unit.
Thinking to take a short cut across country we ascended the hill-slope,
jumping and clambering across shell-holes and striding through long
grass and weeds. Now and again we would chance upon some narrow winding
track that soon lost itself again amid the tangled growth.
Low clouds burdened the sky and a fine rain began to fall. The top of
the hill was hidden in grey mist.
We passed a heap of broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends
of iron rods projected. A little further on a concrete shelter stood
intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow
entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by
stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself
from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in
greenish-black water. I drew slowly back, feeling sick with horror.
As we climbed the hill-side the devastation increased. The trees and
bushes were torn, splintered and uprooted. Only a few grey trunks
remained standing like scarred, bare poles. We approached the summit and
crossed shell-hole next to shell-hole, for not a square yard of ground
had remained untouched. Some of the holes were wide and deeply
funnel-shaped, others were shallow, and others were hardly
distinguishable, the earth having been churned and tossed up time after
time. On the very top of the hill, there was nothing left of the trees
that had densely clothed it a few months before, except fragments of
wood and stringy lengths of root. Even the grass and weeds had been
destroyed and blasted by the bursting of innumerable shells.
We walked along the crest between upright bundles of splinters that
projected from the ground in two parallel rows--all that remained of an
avenue of pines and larches.
We descended the further slope by a narrow gulley. Here the shell-holes
were less frequent. A miry path led through an abandoned camp--a chaos
of riddled and shattered boards and contorted iron sheeting. Dead
Frenchmen were lying everywhere. From a drab heap of mud and clothing a
human arm projected. The terminal finger-joints had dropped off. The
blackened skin was drawn tightly over the back of the hand which seemed
to clutch frantically at some invisible object.
A little further on two soldiers were scraping the soil with sticks.
"Gorblimy--'e ain't 'alf rotten--puh--don't 'e stink! I 'ope 'e's got
summat in 'is pockets arter we've bin takin' all this trouble."
"Yer never find much on these 'ere Froggies, the rotten bastards. They
don't 'ardly get no dibs [money, pay]. Canadians and Aussies--them's the
blokes yer want ter look for. Fritz ain't so bad neither. I got a bloody
fine watch orf a Fritz last year down on the Somme--sold it to an
orficer for thirty bleed'n' francs!"
"Put yer stick under 'im an' 'eave 'im out!"
One of the men pushed his stick obliquely into the ground and levered up
the putrefying corpse. The other turned the pockets inside out. A few
soiled and mouldy bits of paper came to light, but nothing of any value.
"Just our bastard bleed'n' luck! Let's see if we can't find a Fritz or a
Tommy!"
Robbing the dead was always a recognized thing at the front, but our
Corporal, who was rather an unsoldierly individual, did not seem to
think it quite the proper thing, and shouted:
"What d'you want to rob the dead for? Why don't you leave them alone?"
"What's it got ter do wi' you?" answered one of the treasure-seekers.
"Why don't yer mind yer own bleed'n' business? What's the use o' lettin'
good stuff go west? A dead un can't do nothin' wi' watches an' rings an'
five-franc notes! Gorblimy, 'ave a bit o' sense! It's allus your class
o' blokes what makes a bleed'n' fuss!"
Having thus vindicated their rights, the two men turned away in order to
continue their search for the legitimate spoils of war.
We walked on and the gulley widened out into a level crater-field. The
hill loomed dimly behind us, and, looking ahead through the rain and
mist, we could see the reddish blur of a ruined village.
Near a small shell-hole were the remains of a German who had been blown
to bits. The clothes, limbs and trunk were in one confused heap. The
head lay some distance off; it was quite undamaged. The skin was black
and drawn tightly over the skull. The hair was matted, but the short,
blonde moustache had been neatly trimmed. The lips were shrivelled,
exposing two perfect rows of white teeth, giving the dead face a
horrible expression of ferocity. The eyelids were closed and taut, the
cracks near the nose revealed the dark, empty eye-cavities underneath.
A little further on lay another head. The face had been smashed and no
features were recognizable except the lobe of one ear, behind which
there was a deep triangular hole. Two or three yards away there was a
booted leg and beyond that a severed hand lying beside a heap of rotting
flesh, bone and sodden clothing, all covered with thick brown masses
made up of the innumerable empty cases of maggot chrysalids.
We struck a main road. It was dotted with shell-holes that had recently
been filled in with bricks and pieces of stone. To the left of the road
were many scarred tree-trunks. Some were still erect, others were
aslant, while others lay prone, having been broken off short or torn up
by the roots. They were all dead and ashen grey. Behind them was a broad
ring of stagnant water covered with duckweed. On the island within the
ring was a huge heap of loose bricks--a few months ago this had been a
picturesque château with gabled roofs, surrounded by gardens and a
wooded park. Amongst the shell-holes and scattered branches and twisted
lengths of white railing, a few michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemums,
dahlias, and other garden flowers were in bloom.
Further on, to the right of the road, stood the ruins of the church. A
few thick pieces of wall were still standing and a part of the steeple
pointed upwards like a jagged finger. Heaped up inside were
brick-fragments and tiles, together with splintered beams and rafters,
riddled sheets of lead and zinc, broken chairs, twisted brass
candlesticks, bits of stained glass, and here and there chunks of
coloured plaster, the remains of apostolic or saintly images. One of
the confessionals was still visible, although all the woodwork was
shattered. Of the altar nothing could be seen. Behind a crumbling
fragment of brick wall was a band of machine-gun ammunition and a heap
of empty cartridge cases.
The big bronze bell lay outside the church in two pieces. The cemetery
had been churned by shell-fire. The tombstones were chipped and broken.
One big block of granite had been overturned by a bursting shell and the
inscription was so scarred as to be illegible. The stone Christ had been
hit in many places. His left hand was gone, so that He hung aslant by
the other. Both His legs had been blown off at the knees and His nose
and mouth had been carried away by some flying shell-fragment or
shrapnel-ball. All the graves had been thrown into confusion by the
violence of innumerable explosions. Bits of bone--femurs, ribs, lower
jaws--lay scattered about. The hip of a soldier who had been buried in
his clothes projected from the soil with the brown mass of maggot
chrysalids still clinging to it. Two bent knees of a greenish-grey
colour, that had only begun to decay, emerged from a patch of trodden
mud.
Beyond the church, by the roadside, were the dwelling-houses. Some of
them were a tangle of rafters mixed up with heaps of brick and
miscellaneous rubbish--stoves, pots and pans, chair-legs, pictures,
bedding, boxes, and all kinds of household articles. Others had been
dispersed around. Others seemed to have been tipped up bodily, so that
all their contents had been spilt into the street, and then to have been
dropped back again with such an impact that they had collapsed on their
own foundations. The sweet, sickly smell of bodies that had not been
decaying long, and the rank, pungent smell of those that were
approaching total dissolution emanated from under heaps of wreckage and
from hidden cellars.
The devastation increased with every mile and the shell-holes came
closer and closer together. Dead horses, shattered guns, wagons, and
limbers lay overturned in the ditches. At one spot on the roadside the
legs and buttocks of a man, all brown and shrivelled, slanted upwards
from a deep, wide rut, many heavy wheels having passed across the small
of his back.
Gradually houses, trees and bushes disappeared entirely. We reached the
site of a village that before the war had sheltered several thousands of
people. Nothing remained except small bits of brick mingling with the
bare soil, piled up and scooped and churned and tossed by shell-fire.
Here, too, there were many dead. A little way off the road lay an
Englishman who could not have fallen more than a few days before. His
hands were clenched, his mouth wide open, his eyes fixed and staring.
Near him was a tall German. He lay at full length with arms outstretched
and legs crossed. His left hand, immersed in a pool, was white and
puffy. His right hand was half closed and only slightly wrinkled. His
side had been ripped open and fragments of entrail projected from the
rent. The water beneath and around him was stained with blood. His
pockets were turned inside out and papers and postcards lay scattered
around in the usual manner. His cloak had been thrown across his face.
Other bodies had lain unburied for several months; others for several
years, and of these only the mud-stained bones were left.
We reached the highest point in the series of so-called ridges. The
desolate country spread out before us--miles and miles of low
undulations ploughed by shell-fire and bared of everything except an
occasional concrete shelter or the splintered stump of a dead tree.
We marched in silence through this dismal land of ruin and desolation.
At length, in the distance, we saw a solitary fragment of a brick wall
standing in a wide hollow, a sign that we were nearing a habitable
region once again.
We passed by riddled German sign-boards--Vormarschstrasse,
Hohenzollernstrasse, Kaiserstrasse, Mackensenstrasse, Admiral
Scheerstrasse. We came to a litter of wreckage that had once been a
village and then we left the main road and entered a little wood, or
rather an assembly of scarred tree-trunks leaning at all angles. It was
crossed by a zig-zag trench and all the refuse of battle lay scattered
about.
An Australian soldier lay on a low mound. His head had dropped off and
rolled backwards down the slope. The lower jaw had parted from the
skull. His hands had been devoured by rats and two little heaps of clean
bones were all that remained of them. The body was fully clothed and the
legs encased in boots and puttees. One thigh-bone projected through a
rent in the trousers and the rats had gnawed white grooves along it. A
mouldy pocket-book lay by his side and several postcards and a soiled
photograph of a woman and a child.
An attempt had been made to bury some of the dead, and several lay
beneath heaps of loose earth with their boots projecting. But the rats
had reached them all, and black, circular tunnels led down into the
fetid depths of the rotting bodies. The stench that filled the air was
so intolerable that we hastened to get out of this dreadful place.
Soon we perceived a church steeple far away. It brought some relief to
the feeling of oppression and despair which had begun to burden us. We
struck the road once again.
We passed houses of which the scarred walls were still standing, but
with their bare, splintered rafters, empty windows, and riddled doors
they looked more gloomy and forlorn than complete ruins. There were more
concrete shelters and then some rusty iron cranes and the site of a
"Munitionslager" from which every shell had been removed. We approached
a small town. Many of the houses were intact except for scattered tiles
and broken windows. The stately church was full of huge holes. All the
streets were deserted.
Beyond the town, on either side of the road, was a series of dumps,
collecting stations, R.E. parks, workshops, and woodyards--Mastenlager,
Pi-Park, Gruppenwegebaustofflager, Pferdesammelstelle, and others. Then
a German military cemetery, beautifully kept and planted all over with
shrubs and flowers. We had never seen a military cemetery like it
before.
A bend of the road, as it topped a gentle slope, revealed an expanse of
smooth green fields dotted with groups of trees. It did our eyes good to
see trees that were alive and unharmed. Their foliage was
autumn-tinted--until now we had hardly realized that autumn was with us.
A placid river flowed through the meadows. On the far shore was a town,
beyond it a hill crowned by a fine château.
As we walked on, the scattered houses drew closer and closer together
until they formed continuous rows. A civilian passed by, pushing a
wheelbarrow that clattered over the cobbles. Then there followed a woman
with a bundle on her back.
There was something peculiar about the houses. They were not damaged in
the same way as the others we had seen. They were all roofless and
floorless, but the walls were unharmed except for occasional holes and
scars. Then we suddenly realized that the Germans had stripped the
entire street of all woodwork--of floor-boards, of beams and rafters, of
doors and window-frames, leaving only the bare, empty shells of brick.
We turned a corner and entered another street in which the houses had
not been rifled. Several were occupied by civilians.
Before us, in an open field, lay our camp. Scribbled in chalk on a
piece of board nailed across a broken window were the words:
"Der Friede wird stündlich erwartet." [Peace is expected every hour.]
X