RELIEF
When one battalion goes out of the line
it is relieved by another, and no section
or company of a battalion may go from its
point of duty until a corresponding section or
company has relieved it. Reliefs, except on
very quiet parts of the line, are usually carried
out by night to keep the enemy from being
aware that they are going on. A severe shelling
during a relief is always more likely to cause
many casualties than at other times. Battalion
H.Q. goes out last. As each company or
section is relieved it notifies H.Q., and when all
are relieved, H.Q. takes its departure, having
handed over all necessary documents and
information to the incoming battalion.
Because the human nervous system can
stand only a certain amount of abuse battalions
can be kept in the line only a certain
length of time, which depends upon the
activity upon that front, upon the exposure of the
lines to the enemy, and so the extra nervous
strain, or sometimes upon the urgency of
advance or retreat. A relief may be very
welcome, or very unwelcome, depending upon the
same things, but also to a certain extent upon
the quality of the dugouts in the lines, and the
kind of accommodation outside. For, strange
to say, the dugouts in the lines may be
preferable, even with their added danger, because,
on arriving at your rest station, your battalion
may find, instead of the good billets they hoped
for, a few forlorn-looking one-inch board huts,
with only one-half the required accommodation,
the temperature below freezing, and no
stoves; or you may find only tents; or you
may find virgin forest in which you are to
build your own camp, while the rain comes
down with monotonous persistence.
It is midnight in the late winter, and the
adjutant, Major P----, and I are just leaving
H.Q. dugout on our way to reserve billets.
The trenches are very dark, the light from the
stars overhead not reaching to their depths.
We throw down a glare from a flashlight, and
a Tommy's voice angrily cries:
"'Ave a 'eart there, myte; d'ye think ye're
the only man in the army? Douse the glim." So
we douse it, and decide that the best way
to keep peace in the army is to pick our way
along. Gradually our eyes become accustomed
to the dark, and instinctively our feet keep on
the trench mats as we twist and turn along
the trenches. An occasional flare or star shell
from the front lines aids us for a moment, but
plunges us into deeper darkness afterwards.
Our feet slip on the semi-frozen mud of the
mats, over our heads in both directions shells
sing at intervals, and we hear the pounding
of the guns and bursting shells before and
behind us. In the quieter moments we can
hear a quarter of a mile away the rattle of
transport wagons on the hard road as they
bring their nightly loads of ammunition and
food to the dump where we are going and
where we expect to find our horses.
We arrive at the dump, and here one might
think he was in the midst of a large city
market just before the dawn. Limbers, general
service wagons, pack mules and men make a
jumble of hurrying, scurrying workers. No
lights dare be shown for fear of drawing the
shells of the Germans, who have the range of
this dump and have been shelling it during the
day. Someone tells us our horses are just
around a bend in the road, and we make our
way there, and find the grooms holding the
animals, which have become cold and restive
with waiting.
Mounting, we start on a five mile ride along
a hard stone road, dodging and picking our
way among transport wagons and foot soldiers
all along it. The road is bordered with trees
which look like phantoms in the sighing night
breeze. The stars are twinkling brightly and
peacefully; to our left the big guns flash and
roar and their shells sing overhead, and on
the other side flares are being thrown up by
the battalions in the line. The north star is
well up to our right, so we are riding due west.
We approach a corner where we turn a little
northward. Flashing from the window of
a small house on the corner is a light that
should not be there. The adjutant who is a
strict disciplinarian draws up his horse
opposite the sentry and proceeds to "strafe" him for
negligence. (How many new words during
the next few years will be the result of the
war!) We take the road to the right and a
couple of miles in advance we see the dim
shadows of those ancient and architecturally
beautiful towers on the hill of Mont St. Eloy.
The Huns have for some days been trying to
complete their ruin, recently destroying a corner.
At 2 a.m. we arrive at wooden huts just
behind the towers. Our Colonel, who had
preceded us, with that fine thoughtfulness that
characterized him, had arranged that a battalion
in some adjoining huts supply us with tea and
toast--a banquet after our cold night ride. By
3 a.m. we are sleeping fast on the floor in our
Wolseley kits, as we are to rise at 6 a.m., for
by 7 a.m. the battalion is to be on the march
to a wood four miles back. As the camp we
are in was shelled yesterday by the Germans,
causing thirty casualties, we had better get out
of range while we can.
At the appointed hour we are all up, our
kits are rolled and piled on a transport by our
batmen, and a hurried breakfast of bacon,
bread and tea partaken of. I see a few sick
and send a couple to the field ambulance, the
battalion marches away, the camp is inspected
to see that all is spick and span,--for each
battalion must always leave a clean camp behind
it--and we are on the road to map location
W 17 c 4 9, the only description we have of
our new home.
As we start we pass the bodies of five dead
mules, victims of yesterday's shelling. The
roads are crowded with soldiers, horses, and
motor transports of all sorts. It is a bright
cool day--Sunday by the way--and a picturesque
scene meets the eye. In addition to the
busy, hurrying roadway traffic, the fields show
life of varying forms and pictures of interest
to a seeing eye. On one side in a field stands
a battalion forming three sides of a square.
The fourth side is filled by the regimental
band playing, "Lead, Kindly Light," the padre
standing beside them. It is an open air church
service. As far as the eye can see are military
huts, tents, drilling soldiers, and piles of
ammunition, but in the distance, overtopping
all, is the spire of a church, dumbly supplicating
us to send our thoughts upward to the
Prince of Peace, as everything on earth seems
to tell us to give our minds to the Gods of War.
And sailing high above the church steeple are
two military aeroplanes, like guardian angels
ready to protect their loved ones. Beyond
them in the dim distance hangs the lazy,
sausage-shaped form of an observation balloon.
Above the earth, on the earth, and under the
earth, one sees war, war, war!
Here and there one passes white limestone
farmhouses of France with red tiled roofs, the
buildings forming a square about the court.
The latter is filled to overflowing with its
ever-present pile of manure, at one side of which
always stands the well, raised, it is true, a little
above the manure dump, but built of brick and
mortar through which in many cases permeate
the fluids from this cesspool in the center. A
medical friend of mine once told me that the
peasant farmer objects to chloride of lime
being put on the manure, as it gives a disagreeable
taste to the water!
Then as far as the eye can see the fields that
are not employed for military purposes are
tilled and cultivated. How it is done is
something very difficult to understand, for one never
sees anybody working in them except an aged
man and woman, or a young child. Those in
the prime of youthful manhood are all
fighting for their adored country, la belle France.
On the corner of one of these cultivated areas
stands one of those small, stone shrines so
common in France. This one was erected, so it
said in carved letters, in 1816, "to the honor
of his beloved child, Eugenie de Lattre, by her
father."
The date unconsciously carries one back to
the great Napoleon. If he could rise from
his magnificent tomb in the Invalides and look
about him in the midst of a war which dwarfs
his famous battles into insignificance, what
would his thoughts be? No longer would he
see his famous guard on prancing steeds and
with flowing plumes charging bristling British
squares, as they did in his last great fight at
Waterloo. He would find them in somber,
semi-invisible garb, standing shoulder to
shoulder with their one-time hated enemies, the
latter clad in plain khaki, both facing the same
foe, the Prussian, whom he had once humbled
by marching into Berlin, but who had later
helped the British defeat him at Waterloo.
And many he would see groveling in the earth
in trenches, dugouts, and tunnels, like so many
earthworms. Some few he would discover
who, with the French love of the spectacular,
are sailing thousands of feet in the air, or
leagues under the surface of the sea.
We pass through a village, Camblain
L'Abbé, where we go into the town major's to
inquire about water supplies for our men. The
town major, a Canadian of fifty, reminds one
of us of an old friend of the same name in
Chicago, one of the many Canadians who has made
good--very good--in the United States. It
is a brother!
So, it is being continually shown that
this war has made the world an even
smaller place than it was before. Our
information obtained, we move on to our new camp,
a virgin forest one-half mile above Camblain
L'Abbé, where there is no sign of tent, hut, or
dwelling of any kind. But the men are
already lolling happily on the bare ground,
ignoring the pounding of our guns a few miles
north and inhaling with anticipatory pleasure
the fragrant odors of stew, steaming in the
Battalion field cookers just below the brow of
the hill.
The busy work of turning an open forest
into a camp to be occupied by one thousand
men for a week or more is already in progress.
The tents have not arrived, but brigade has
promised to get them along shortly. Plans
are being made as to where each company is
to be, where orderly room will be most
convenient, what is the best position for the
H.Q. and the other officers, where the cook houses,
cookers, water carts, latrines, refuse dumps,
canteen, batmen's quarters, medical inspection
tent, shoemaker, tailor, transport department,
and the hundred and one other departments
and sections are to be located.
You see, it is not as easy as it sounds to take
a thousand men and encamp them in a proper
manner. Gradually the chaos is subdued, and
as tents and half-built huts come they are
quickly placed in their proper positions. While
it is all in progress one is likely to stumble over
the Colonel who has stolen half an hour from
his busy work to sit on the ground and eat
some bully beef, biscuits and chocolate, and
who insists on everyone else doing the same;
or to bump into the corpulent form of the
R.S.M.--regimental sergeant major--who is
everywhere, directing everything, in the way
that only a R.S.M. can do, though his
crossest word is usually grumbled through a smiling
ruddy face, for his heart is proportionate to his
large size.
The day advances, night is coming on, and
the tents have arrived only in sufficient
numbers to cover one-third of the officers and men.
Fortunately the sun still shines, though the
March air is getting colder. A sleep in the
open air promises to require extra blankets
which do not exist in the camp. However,
everyone smiles, and there is at least a gradually,
though slowly, increasing amount of cover
for the men of the battalion. Some of the
men, wiser perhaps through previous like
predicaments, are choosing the sheltered side of a
small hill, and are digging shelters for
themselves over which they are putting coverings
of boughs. As it turns out they are wise, for
in the end only sufficient coverings come for
two-thirds of the battalion, and consequently,
a few officers and quite a few men sleep in the
open with only a blanket and their overcoats
for covering. And Nature, the deceitful jade,
who had smiled kindly upon us all day and
promised us a dry, though cold, night, about
midnight and for two days succeeding poured
torrents of rain down upon us.
The sick parade grew larger and the ground
became lakes of mud. The cook-houses--so-called--which
were only fires built in hollows,
had their fires so drowned that we all ate
primitive diet as well as lived most closely to
nature. Everyone, as usual, had his consolation
in laughing at the discomforts of the others,
till order came out of chaos in the days
that followed.