Mr. Britling returned to the Dower House perplexed and profoundly
disturbed. He had a distressful sense that things were far more serious
with Teddy than he had tried to persuade Letty they were; that "wounded
and missing" meant indeed a man abandoned to very sinister
probabilities. He was distressed for Teddy, and still more acutely
distressed for Mrs. Teddy, whose every note and gesture betrayed
suppositions even more sinister than his own. And that preposterous
sense of liability, because he had helped Teddy to get his commission,
was more distressful than it had ever been. He was surprised that Letty
had not assailed him with railing accusations.
And this event had wiped off at one sweep all the protective scab of
habituation that had gathered over the wound of Hugh's departure. He was
back face to face with the one evil chance in five....
In the hall there was lying a letter from Hugh that had come by the
second post. It was a relief even to see it....
Hugh had had his first spell in the trenches.
Before his departure he had promised his half brothers a long and
circumstantial account of what the trenches were really like. Here he
redeemed his promise. He had evidently written with the idea that the
letter would be handed over to them.
"Tell the bruddykinses I'm glad they're going to Brinsmead school. Later
on, I suppose, they will go on to Statesminster. I suppose that you
don't care to send them so far in these troubled times....
"And now about those trenches--as I promised. The great thing to grasp
is that they are narrow. They are a sort of negative wall. They are more
like giant cracks in the ground than anything else.... But perhaps I had
better begin by telling how we got there. We started about one in the
morning ladened up with everything you can possibly imagine on a
soldier, and in addition I had a kettle--filled with water--most of the
chaps had bundles of firewood, and some had extra bread. We marched out
of our quarters along the road for a mile or more, and then we took the
fields, and presently came to a crest and dropped into a sort of maze of
zigzag trenches going up to the front trench. These trenches, you know,
are much deeper than one's height; you don't see anything. It's like
walking along a mud-walled passage. You just trudge along them in single
file. Every now and then some one stumbles into a soakaway for rainwater
or swears at a soft place, or somebody blunders into the man in front of
him. This seems to go on for hours and hours. It certainly went on for
an hour; so I suppose we did two or three miles of it. At one place we
crossed a dip in the ground and a ditch, and the trench was built up
with sandbags up to the ditch and there was a plank. Overhead there were
stars, and now and then a sort of blaze thing they send up lit up the
edges of the trench and gave one a glimpse of a treetop or a factory
roof far away. Then for a time it was more difficult to go on because
you were blinded. Suddenly just when you were believing that this sort
of trudge was going on forever, we were in the support trenches behind
the firing line, and found the men we were relieving ready to come
back.
"And the firing line itself? Just the same sort of ditch with a parapet
of sandbags, but with dug-outs, queer big holes helped out with sleepers
from a nearby railway track, opening into it from behind. Dug-outs vary
a good deal. Many are rather like the cubby-house we made at the end of
the orchard last summer; only the walls are thick enough to stand a high
explosive shell. The best dug-out in our company's bit of front was
quite a dressy affair with some woodwork and a door got from the ruins
of a house twenty or thirty yards behind us. It had a stove in it too,
and a chimbley, and pans to keep water in. It was the best dug-out for
miles. This house had a well, and there was a special trench ran back to
that, and all day long there was a coming and going for water. There had
once been a pump over the well, but a shell had smashed that....
"And now you expect me to tell of Germans and the fight and shelling and
all sorts of things. _I haven't seen a live German_; I haven't been
within two hundred yards of a shell burst, there has been no attack and
I haven't got the V.C. I have made myself muddy beyond describing; I've
been working all the time, but I've not fired a shot or fought a
ha'porth. We were busy all the time--just at work, repairing the
parapet, which had to be done gingerly because of snipers, bringing our
food in from the rear in big carriers, getting water, pushing our trench
out from an angle slantingways forward. Getting meals, clearing up and
so on takes a lot of time. We make tea in big kettles in the big
dug-out, which two whole companies use for their cooking, and carry them
with a pole through the handles to our platoons. We wash up and wash and
shave. Dinner preparation (and consumption) takes two or three hours.
Tea too uses up time. It's like camping out and picnicking in the park.
This first time (and next too) we have been mixed with some Sussex men
who have been here longer and know the business.... It works out that we
do most of the fatigue. Afterwards we shall go up alone to a pitch of
our own....
"But all the time you want to know about the Germans. They are a quarter
of a mile away at this part, or nearly a quarter of a mile. When you
snatch a peep at them it is like a low parti-coloured stone wall--only
the stones are sandbags. The Germans have them black and white, so that
you cannot tell which are loopholes and which are black bags. Our people
haven't been so clever--and the War Office love of uniformity has given
us only white bags. No doubt it looks neater. But it makes our loopholes
plain. For a time black sandbags were refused. The Germans sniped at us,
but not very much. Only one of our lot was hit, by a chance shot that
came through the sandbag at the top of the parapet. He just had a cut in
the neck which didn't prevent his walking back. They shelled the
trenches half a mile to the left of us though, and it looked pretty hot.
The sandbags flew about. But the men lie low, and it looks worse than it
is. The weather was fine and pleasant, as General French always says.
And after three days and nights of cramped existence and petty chores,
one in the foremost trench and two a little way back, and then two days
in support, we came back--and here we are again waiting for our second
Go.
"The night time is perhaps a little more nervy than the day. You get
your head up and look about, and see the flat dim country with its
ruined houses and its lumps of stuff that are dead bodies and its long
vague lines of sandbags, and the searchlights going like white windmill
arms and an occasional flare or star shell. And you have a nasty feeling
of people creeping and creeping all night between the trenches....
"Some of us went out to strengthen a place in the parapet that was only
one sandbag thick, where a man had been hit during the day. We made it
four bags thick right up to the top. All the while you were doing it,
you dreaded to find yourself in the white glare of a searchlight, and
you had a feeling that something would hit you suddenly from behind. I
had to make up my mind not to look round, or I should have kept on
looking round.... Also our chaps kept shooting over us, within a foot of
one's head. Just to persuade the Germans that we were not out of the
trench....
"Nothing happened to us. We got back all right. It was silly to have
left that parapet only one bag thick. There's the truth, and all of my
first time in the trenches.
"And the Germans?
"I tell you there was no actual fighting at all. I never saw the head of
one.
"But now see what a good bruddykins I am. I have seen a fight, a real
exciting fight, and I have kept it to the last to tell you about.... It
was a fight in the air. And the British won. It began with a German
machine appearing, very minute and high, sailing towards our lines a
long way to the left. We could tell it was a German because of the black
cross; they decorate every aeroplane with a black Iron Cross on its
wings and tail; that our officer could see with his glasses. (He let me
look.) Suddenly whack, whack, whack, came a line of little puffs of
smoke behind it, and then one in front of it, which meant that our
anti-aircraft guns were having a go at it. Then, as suddenly, Archibald
stopped, and we could see the British machine buzzing across the path of
the German. It was just like two birds circling in the air. Or wasps.
They buzzed like wasps. There was a little crackling--like brushing your
hair in frosty weather. They were shooting at each other. Then our
lieutenant called out, 'Hit, by Jove!' and handed the glasses to Park
and instantly wanted them back. He says he saw bits of the machine
flying off.
"When he said that you could fancy you saw it too, up there in the blue.
"Anyhow the little machine cocked itself up on end. Rather slowly....
Then down it came like dropping a knife....
"It made you say 'Ooooo!' to see that dive. It came down, seemed to get
a little bit under control, and then dive down again. You could hear the
engine roar louder and louder as it came down. I never saw anything fall
so fast. We saw it hit the ground among a lot of smashed-up buildings on
the crest behind us. It went right over and flew to pieces, all to
smithereens....
"It hurt your nose to see it hit the ground....
"Somehow--I was sort of overcome by the thought of the men in that dive.
I was trying to imagine how they felt it. From the moment when they
realised they were going.
"What on earth must it have seemed like at last?
"They fell seven thousand feet, the men say; some say nine thousand
feet. A mile and a half!
"But all the chaps were cheering.... And there was our machine hanging
in the sky. You wanted to reach up and pat it on the back. It went up
higher and away towards the German lines, as though it was looking for
another German. It seemed to go now quite slowly. It was an English
machine, though for a time we weren't sure; our machines are done in
tri-colour just as though they were French. But everybody says it was
English. It was one of our crack fighting machines, and from first to
last it has put down seven Germans.... And that's really all the
fighting there was. There has been fighting here; a month ago. There are
perhaps a dozen dead Germans lying out still in front of the lines.
Little twisted figures, like overthrown scarecrows, about a hundred
yards away. But that is all.
"No, the trenches have disappointed me. They are a scene of tiresome
domesticity. They aren't a patch on our quarters in the rear. There
isn't the traffic. I've not found a single excuse for firing my rifle. I
don't believe I shall ever fire my rifle at an enemy--ever....
"You've seen Rendezvous' fresh promotion, I suppose? He's one of the men
the young officers talk about. Everybody believes in him. Do you
remember how Manning used to hide from him?..."