CHRISTMAS NIGHT IN "NO MAN'S LAND."
The setting is not a Biblical one. If, indeed, this cursed spot can
possibly recall the Book of Books, we must search the chapter of
immortal horrors in the Book of Revelation.
No vegetation will grow there within the next ten years; no ghost of a
tree or shadow of a house; the moon reveals the troubled earth whose
chalky mud is as a festering sore.
There is universal destruction, as though a huge tidal-wave,
overrunning the plain and the valley, had been struck by God's anger
and checked in the full force of its rolling waters. The evening of the
last day could bring no greater melancholy. Three horrors rule this
strip of land--Fright, Death and Frost. A bitter cold night with a
starry sky--such was Christmas in "No Man's Land."
And what of "man"? Here we have a Scotsman from the mountains, gaunt,
dour, wiry, with lynx-like eyes, the lusty chest of a woodman and the
soul of a hermit. Like hundreds of thousands and tens of hundreds
of thousands of his brother-soldiers, he had held the line in front
of Ypres, Loos and Arras. Like the soldiers of England, Ireland and
Wales, he had known the mist of Flanders, the marshes of the mine
country, the mossy peat of Artois. Like his fellows, he is weary.
With his grey-steel helmet, the leathern, fleece-lined waistcoat and
the leggings of buffalo-hide which show up the muscles of his legs,
you might think he was a centurion of the Roman Empire. Like all the
others, his name is Tommy.
[Illustration: 15. NEAR THE Y RAVINE.]
This Christmas Night Tommy has a care. The "bonnie Highland lassie"
whom he was courting in the good old days, when Highlanders had not yet
earned the ferocious nick-name of the "square-jawed," had written to
him that morning asking for a souvenir. A souvenir!
Those of you who have not seen Tommy, notwithstanding the certainty
of punishment, bartering his regimental badges or buttons in exchange
for a kiss from some village beauty, can hardly understand this
superstitious worship of "a souvenir." That word sums up all the
dangers, hardships and glories of war, and is considered the surest of
love tokens. But for soldiers of His Majesty's Guards the real souvenir
is the one snatched from the enemy in mortal combat. The day after the
Battle of the Ancre--that is, the day after the attack and victory--I
saw little groups of men scattered over the battlefield indifferent
to hostile barrages and machine-gun fire. These men, crawling from
shell-hole to shell-hole, looked only on the ground. _They were
souvenir hunting._
Now for our story. Tommy is in a listening post--a crump-hole between
the two trenches surrounded with barbed wire. The Germans are 30 yards
in front and the British 10 yards behind him. He hears the enemy's
observers behind their loopholes stamping their feet to keep them warm.
Small clouds shade the moon. A heavy silence pervades the frozen earth.
This Highlander is alone in "No Man's Land."
Is he thinking of the Christmas turkey, brown and crackling in its
juice, which has been carefully fattened at the farm at home; of the
plum-pudding, aflame with brandy, done to a turn by his bonnie lassie?
Is he thinking of the dying embers and the midnight kiss, stolen or
given--who knows? No; Tommy is simply thinking of "souvenirs."
Twice already, but in vain, he has searched his crump-hole. He can't
find the smallest relic. Creeping under the knife rests, and separating
with care the ring of wire which the British call "trench concertina
wire," he drags himself on his stomach through the wire system. These
iron blackberries catch hold of him and prick him. He likens himself to
one of those great trench rats on a poaching foray.
Suddenly his hand falls upon a human form. The body is cold--a corpse!
He remembers, a week ago, an evening patrol was caught by our artillery
fire, and this is one of them. "No Man's Land" in this sector is not
particularly healthy, and grave-diggers are dispensed with. This
dried-up corpse was so much part of the landscape that Tommy had not
noticed it. He now looks at it with a friendly eye. "Poor old Boche!
Poor old lump of souvenirs!" Tommy is a simple fellow. He goes straight
for what he wants. He first thought he would take the identity-disc.
That would be a fine souvenir; but the corpse has no arms, so he gives
up that idea. "D----d artillery that spoils even corpses!" he grumbles,
and then feels for the legs. Perhaps the old Boche keeps a knife in his
right legging. "Damn again! There is no right leg--nor left either!"
If only a sharp breeze were to lift the clouds from the moon, the
wide-open eyes of the observers would discover in "No Man's Land" a
great lusty Highlander, white as a sheet or as the whitest of white
Pierrots.
Suddenly our Highlander is seized with a mixture of horror and rage,
added to which there is a feeling of weird pride. The living and the
dead have made a ghastly Christmas bet.
Tommy hovers over this wreck of a man. He seizes the Boche's head--of
course, the helmet, badges and bandolier have disappeared.
The corpse, as though from the depths of the other world, gives a
horrid laugh. Tommy forces his fingers into the grinning mouth, but
the jaws shut with a spring--like a mousetrap. False teeth! Tommy,
exasperated, seizes the grim trophy.
The bonnie lassie will receive shortly a gold brooch inscribed with her
name and Tommy's. She will wear it proudly at church. She will make her
friends jealous without anyone ever suspecting the real history of the
souvenir. Perhaps it is as well!
Now this is not a Christmas story, but a real fact, which happened
on the evening of "Everyman's" Christmas among the outposts before
Grandcourt.
_Printed in Great Britain by Hayman, Christy and Lilly, Ltd., 113-117,
Farringdon Road, London, E.C._
Transcriber's Notes:
Retained inconsistent hyphenation of sandbags vs. sand-bags.
Changed oe ligatures to oe for the text edition; ligatures are retained
in the HTML.
Italics are represented with _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Square Jaw, by Henry Ruffin and André Tudesq