The trench system has one thing to recommend it. It tidies things up a
bit.
For the first few months after the war broke out confusion reigned
supreme. Belgium and the north of France were one huge jumbled
battlefield, rather like a public park on a Saturday afternoon--one of
those parks where promiscuous football is permitted. Friend and
foe were inextricably mingled, and the direction of the goal was
uncertain. If you rode into a village, you might find it occupied by
a Highland regiment or a squadron of Uhlans. If you dimly discerned
troops marching side by side with you in the dawning, it was by no
means certain that they would prove to be your friends. On the other
hand, it was never safe to assume that a battalion which you saw
hastily entrenching itself against your approach was German. It
might belong to your own brigade. There was no front and no rear, so
direction counted for nothing. The country swarmed with troops which
had been left "in the air," owing to their own too rapid advance,
or the equally rapid retirement of their supporters; with scattered
details trying to rejoin their units; or with despatch riders hunting
for a peripatetic Divisional Headquarters. Snipers shot both sides
impartially. It was all most upsetting.
Well, as already indicated, the trench system has put all that right.
The trenches now run continuously--a long, irregular, but perfectly
definite line of cleavage--from the North Sea to the Vosges. Everybody
has been carefully sorted out--human beings on one side, Germans on
the other. ("Like the Zoo," observes Captain Wagstaffe.) Nothing could
be more suitable. _You're there, and I'm here, so what do we care?_ in
fact.
The result is an agreeable blend of war and peace. This week, for
instance, our battalion has been undergoing a sort of rest-cure a few
miles from the hottest part of the firing line. (We had a fairly heavy
spell of work last week.) In the morning we wash our clothes, and
perform a few mild martial exercises. In the afternoon we sleep, in
all degrees of _déshabille_, under the trees in an orchard. In the
evening we play football, or bathe in the canal, or lie on our backs
on the grass, watching our aeroplanes buzzing home to roost, attended
by German shrapnel. We could not have done this in the autumn. Now,
thanks to our trenches, a few miles away, we are as safe here as in
the wilds of Argyllshire or West Kensington.
But there are drawbacks to everything. The fact is, a trench is that
most uninteresting of human devices, a compromise. It is neither
satisfactory as a domicile nor efficient as a weapon of offence. The
most luxuriant dug-out; the most artistic window-box--these, in spite
of all biassed assertions to the contrary, compare unfavourably with a
flat in Knightsbridge. On the other hand, the knowledge that you are
keeping yourself tolerably immune from the assaults of your enemy is
heavily discounted by the fact that the enemy is equally immune from
yours. In other words, you "get no forrarder" with a trench; and the
one thing which we are all anxious to do out here is to bring this war
to a speedy and gory conclusion, and get home to hot baths and regular
meals.
So a few days ago we were not at all surprised to be informed,
officially, that trench life is to be definitely abandoned, and
Hun-hustling to begin in earnest.
(To be just, this decision was made months ago: the difficulty was to
put it into execution. The winter weather was dreadful. The enemy
were many and we were few. In Germany, the devil's forge at Essen
was roaring night and day: in Great Britain Trades Union bosses were
carefully adjusting the respective claims of patriotism and personal
dignity before taking their coats off. So we cannot lay our want of
progress to the charge of that dogged band of Greathearts which has
been holding on, and holding on, and holding on--while the people at
home were making up for lost time--ever since the barbarian was hurled
back from the Marne to the Aisne and confined behind his earthen
barrier. We shall win this war one day, and most of the credit will
go, as usual, to those who are in at the finish. But--when we assign
the glory and the praise, let us not forget those who stood up to the
first rush. The new armies which are pouring across the Channel this
month will bring us victory in the end. Let us bare our heads,
then, in all reverence, to the memory of those battered, decimated,
indomitable legions which saved us from utter extinction at the
beginning.)
The situation appears to be that if we get through--and no one seems
to doubt that we shall: the difficulty lies in staying there when you
have got through--we shall be committed at once to an endless campaign
of village-fighting. This country is as flat as Cambridgeshire.
Every yard of it is under cultivation. The landscape is dotted with
farm-steadings. There is a group of cottages or an _estaminet_ at
every cross-roads. When our great invading line sweeps forward,
each one of these buildings will be held by the enemy, and must be
captured, house by house, room by room, and used as a base for another
rush.
And how is this to be done?
Well, it will be no military secret by the time these lines appear. It
is no secret now. The answer to the conundrum is--Bombs!
To-day, out here, bombs are absolutely _dernier cri_. We talk of
nothing else. We speak about rifles and bayonets as if they were so
many bows and arrows. It is true that the modern Lee-Enfield and
Mauser claim to be the most precise and deadly weapons of destruction
ever devised. But they were intended for proper, gentlemanly warfare,
with the opposing sides set out in straight lines, a convenient
distance apart. In the hand-to-hand butchery which calls itself war
to-day, the rifle is rapidly becoming _démodé_. For long ranges you
require machine-guns; for short, bombs and hand-grenades. Can you
empty a cottage by firing a single rifle-shot in at the door? Can you
exterminate twenty Germans in a fortified back-parlour by a single
thrust with a bayonet? Never! But you can do both these things with a
jam-tin stuffed with dynamite and scrap-iron.
So the bomb has come to its own, and has brought with it certain
changes--tactical, organic, and domestic. To take the last first,
the bomb-officer, hitherto a despised underling, popularly (but
maliciously) reputed to have been appointed to his present post
through inability to handle a platoon, has suddenly attained a
position of dazzling eminence. From being a mere super, he has become
a star. In fact, he threatens to dispute the pre-eminence of that
other regimental parvenu, the Machine-Gun Officer. He is now the
confidant of Colonels, and consorts upon terms of easy familiarity
with Brigade Majors. He holds himself coldly aloof from the rest of
us, brooding over the greatness of his responsibilities; and when he
speaks, it is to refer darkly to "detonators," and "primers,"
and "time-fuses." And we, who once addressed him derisively as
"Anarchist," crowd round him and hang upon his lips.
The reason is that in future it is to be a case of--"For every man,
a bomb or two"; and it is incumbent upon us, if we desire to prevent
these infernal machines from exploding while yet in our custody, to
attain the necessary details as to their construction and tender spots
by the humiliating process of conciliating the Bomb Officer.
So far as we have mastered the mysteries of the craft, there appear to
be four types of bomb in store for us--or rather, for Brother Bosche.
They are:--
(1) The hair-brush.
(2) The cricket-ball.
(3) The policeman's truncheon.
(4) The jam-tin.
The hair-brush is very like the ordinary hair-brush, except that
the bristles are replaced by a solid block of high-explosive. The
policeman's truncheon has gay streamers of tape tied to its tail, to
ensure that it falls to the ground nose downwards. Both these bombs
explode on impact, and it is unadvisable to knock them against
anything--say the back of the trench--when throwing them. The
cricket-ball works by a time-fuse. Its manipulation is simplicity
itself. The removal of a certain pin releases a spring which lights an
internal fuse, timed to explode the bomb in five seconds. You take the
bomb in your right hand, remove the pin, and cast the thing madly from
you. The jam-tin variety appeals more particularly to the sportsman,
as the element of chance enters largely into its successful use. It is
timed to explode about ten seconds after the lighting of the fuse. It
is therefore unwise to throw it too soon, as there will be ample time
for your opponent to pick it up and throw it back. On the other hand,
it is unwise to hold on too long, as the fuse is uncertain in its
action, and is given to short cuts.
Such is the tactical revolution promised by the advent of the bomb
and other new engines of war. As for its effect upon regimental and
company organisation, listen to the plaintive voice of Major Kemp:--
"I was once--only a few months ago--commander of a company of two
hundred and fifty disciplined soldiers. I still nominally command
that company, but they have developed into a heterogeneous mob of
specialists. If I detail one of my subalterns to do a job of work, he
reminds me that he is a bomb-expert, or a professor of sandbagging,
or director of the knuckle-duster section, or Lord High Thrower of
Stink-pots, and as such has no time to play about with such a
common thing as a platoon. As for the men, they simply laugh in the
sergeant-major's face. They are 'experts,' if you please, and are
struck off all fatigues and company duty! It was bad enough when
Ayling pinched fourteen of my best men for his filthy machine-guns;
now, the company has practically degenerated into an academy of
variety artists. The only occasion upon which I ever see them all
together is payday!"
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the word has just gone forth, quietly and without fuss,
that we are to uproot ourselves from our present billets, and be ready
to move at 5 A.M. to-morrow morning.
Is this the Big Push at last?