We took over these trenches a few days ago; and as the Germans are
barely two hundred yards away, this chapter seems to justify its
title.
For reasons foreshadowed last month, we find that we are committed to
an indefinite period of trench life, like every one else.
Certainly we are starting at the bottom of the ladder. These trenches
are badly sited, badly constructed, difficult of access from the rear,
and swarming with large, fat, unpleasant flies, of the bluebottle
variety. They go to sleep, chiefly upon the ceiling of one's dug-out,
during the short hours of darkness, but for twenty hours out of
twenty-four they are very busy indeed. They divide their attentions
between stray carrion--there is a good deal hereabout--and our
rations. If you sit still for five minutes they also settle upon
_you_, like pins in a pin-cushion. Then, when face, hands, and knees
can endure no more, and the inevitable convulsive wriggle occurs,
they rise in a vociferous swarm, only to settle again when the victim
becomes quiescent. To these, high-explosives are a welcome relief.
The trenches themselves are no garden city, like those at Armentières.
They were sited and dug in the dark, not many weeks ago, to secure two
hundred yards of French territory recovered from the Bosche by bomb
and bayonet. (The captured trench lies behind us now, and serves as
our second line.) They are muddy--you come to water at three feet--and
at one end, owing to their concave formation, are open to enfilade.
The parapet in many places is too low. If you make it higher with
sandbags you offer the enemy a comfortable target: if you deepen
the trench you turn it into a running stream. Therefore long-legged
subalterns crawl painfully past these danger-spots on all-fours,
envying Little Tich.
Then there is Zacchaeus. We call him by this name because he lives up
a tree. There is a row of pollarded willows standing parallel to our
front, a hundred and fifty yards away. Up, or in, one of these lives
Zacchaeus. We have never seen him, but we know he is there; because if
you look over the top of the parapet he shoots you through the head.
We do not even know which of the trees he lives in. There are nine
of them, and every morning we comb them out, one by one, with a
machine-gun. But all in vain. Zacchaeus merely crawls away into the
standing corn behind his trees, and waits till we have finished. Then
he comes back and tries to shoot the machine-gun officer. He has not
succeeded yet, but he sticks to his task with gentle persistence. He
is evidently of a persevering rather than vindictive disposition.
Then there is Unter den Linden. This celebrated thoroughfare is an old
communication-trench. It runs, half-ruined, from the old German trench
in our rear, right through our own front line, to the present German
trenches. It constitutes such a bogey as the Channel Tunnel scheme
once was: each side sits jealously at its own end, anticipating
hostile enterprises from the other. It is also the residence of
"Minnie." But we will return to Minnie later.
The artillery of both sides, too, contributes its mite. There is
a dull roar far in the rear of the German trenches, followed by a
whirring squeak overhead. Then comes an earth-shaking crash a mile
behind us. We whip round, and there, in the failing evening light,
against the sunset, there springs up the silhouette of a mighty tree
in full foliage. Presently the silhouette disperses, drifts away,
and--
"The coals is hame, right enough!" comments Private Tosh.
Instantly our guns reply, and we become the humble spectators of an
artillery duel. Of course, if the enemy gets tired of "searching"
the countryside for our guns and takes to "searching" our trenches
instead, we lose all interest in the proceedings, and retire to our
dug-outs, hoping that no direct hits will come our way.
But guns are notoriously erratic in their time-tables, and fickle in
their attentions. It is upon Zacchaeus and Unter den Linden--including
Minnie--that we mainly rely for excitement.
As already recorded, we took over these trenches a few days ago, in
the small hours of the morning. In the ordinary course of events,
relieving parties are usually able to march up under cover of darkness
to the reserve trench, half a mile in rear of the firing line, and
so proceed to their appointed place. But on this occasion the German
artillery happened to be "distributing coal" among the billets behind.
This made it necessary to approach our new home by tortuous ways, and
to take to subterranean courses at a very early stage of the journey.
For more than two hours we toiled along a trench just wide enough to
permit a man to wear his equipment, sometimes bent double to avoid the
bullets of snipers, sometimes knee-deep in glutinous mud.
Ayling, leading a machine-gun section who were burdened with their
weapons and seven thousand rounds of ammunition, mopped his steaming
brow and inquired of his guide how much farther there was to go.
"Abart two miles, sir," replied the youth with gloomy satisfaction.
He was a private of the Cockney regiment whom we were relieving; and
after the manner of his kind, would infinitely have preferred to
conduct us down half a mile of a shell-swept road, leading straight to
the heart of things, than waste time upon an uninteresting but safe
_détour_.
At this Ayling's Number One, who was carrying a machine-gun tripod
weighing forty-eight pounds, said something--something distressingly
audible--and groaned deeply.
"If we'd come the way I wanted," continued the guide, much pleased
with the effect of his words upon his audience, "we'd a' been there be
now. But the Adjutant, 'e says to me--"
"If we had come the way you wanted," interrupted Ayling brutally, "we
should probably have been in Kingdom Come by now. Hurry up!" Ayling,
in common with the rest of those present, was not in the best of
tempers, and the loquacity of the guide had been jarring upon him for
some time.
The Cockney private, with the air of a deeply-wronged man, sulkily led
on, followed by the dolorous procession. Another ten minutes' laboured
progress brought them to a place where several ways met.
"This is the beginning of the reserve trenches, sir," announced the
guide. "If we'd come the way I--"
"Lead on!" said Ayling, and his perspiring followers murmured
threatening applause.
The guide, now in his own territory, selected the muddiest opening and
plunged down it. For two hundred yards or so he continued serenely
upon his way, with the air of one exhibiting the metropolis to a party
of country cousins. He passed numerous turnings. Then, once or
twice, he paused irresolutely; then moved on. Finally he halted, and
proceeded to climb out of the trench.
"What are you doing?" demanded Ayling suspiciously.
"We got to cut across the open 'ere, sir," said the youth glibly.
"Trench don't go no farther. Keep as low as you can."
With resigned grunts the weary pilgrims hoisted themselves and their
numerous burdens out of their slimy thoroughfare, and followed their
conductor through the long grass in single file, feeling painfully
conspicuous against the whitening sky. Presently they discovered, and
descended into, another trench--all but the man with the tripod, who
descended into it before he discovered it--and proceeded upon their
dolorous way. Once more the guide, who had been refreshingly but
ominously silent for some time, paused irresolutely.
"Look here, my man," said Ayling, "do you, or do you not, know where
you are?"