DUGOUTS
To anyone who has served any time at the
front the above word will bring back
recollections of various kinds, for dugouts are
of varying types. The term is employed to
denote any shelter in the neighborhood of the
firing line, from the funk hole which is only a
recess cut into the side of a trench with little
or no shelter above it and none at the entrance,
to the cavity dug down into the ground a
distance varying from ten feet to seventy, and
strengthened by supports of wood, steel, or
concrete. It is also loosely used to denote
cellars, caves, and shellholes which may be
employed as means of protection from rifle bullet,
shrapnel, or high explosive shell.
It is probably true in dugouts, as in many
of the other necessities of war, that we learned
much from the German, for he was probably
the first to recognize the protection rendered
by a well-built--or, rather, well-dug--reënforced
hole in the ground. At various times
when we have taken portions of the German
lines we have found well-made homes underground,
with two or more long entrances, one
at either end, so that if one is hit by a shell, the
other affords a means of exit to the inhabitants.
Those we took at Vimy seemed almost free
of rats, which statement could not truthfully
be made of our own dugouts. I don't know
whether the German has some method of
getting rid of rats, but I do know from practical
and irritating experience that the German
either has no method of freeing his dugouts of
lice, or else thoroughly enjoys the company of
vermin. None of us who occupied his
underground dwellings, even if only for a few days,
came back free from these annoying and
disgusting companions. So tenacious and
clinging were they that it took repeated baths and
changes to free us of them. One might conclude
that they had been treated in a brotherly
way by the Hun.
Of course, as Kelly said, scratching is
common in the best circles out there. The man
who has to reach over his shoulder in an
attempt to remove an irritation from that almost
unattainable spot between the shoulder blades
is not shunned or looked at askance, but serves
only as a source of amusement to his
companions. Underwear searching is a common,
very common, form of pastime. Though you
may have been a very dignified and sensitive
soul, your sensitiveness gradually dulls until
you care not a "hoot" who may see you sitting
in a brilliant sunshine anxiously scanning your
clothes; or rising at midnight from a
much-troubled sleep and by dim candle light
beginning the often well-rewarded inspection.
So far as the ordinary Tommy is concerned,
he ignores not only his acquaintances but the
world in general. There he sits in his bare
pelt and performs a massacre which in numbers
dwarfs almost to infinity the killings of the
Armenians by the Turks. In the town of
Vimy I one time passed a jocular, though
profitable, hour at this occupation while I sat
on the floor of the cellar of an old brewery
with a Scotch padre on one side of me, and a
Nova Scotia major on the other, all absorbed
in the same intense search, while above our
heads the shells every little while hit the fallen
walls of our shelter. And through the
thin-walled partition that separated us from our
soldier-servants we heard propounded a most
momentous question which showed us that they
too were employing their time to advantage.
The question was:--
"Say, Kelly, what the h---- will all the lice
do for a living after the war?" And for once
Kelly was floored.
Often dugouts are but shelters dug into the
wall of a trench, a thin sheet-iron roof put on
top, and two or three layers of sandbags on
top of that. This gives protection against
bullets, shrapnel, or bits of shell, but a straight
hit from a medium-sized shell would go right
through. And yet it is strange how seldom
these are hit direct, considering their large
numbers. This may in part account for one's
feeling of relative security while in them, but
this feeling is no doubt also partly due to our
resemblance to the ostrich which hides its head
to avoid danger. Be this as it may, many a
good night's sleep have I passed in shelters
such as this, with shells bursting within one
hundred yards at frequent intervals during the
night. During the month previous to the
Battle of Arras my orderlies and I lived in an
abode of this nature most of the time, only 500
yards from our front line trenches. Shells
continually fell well within the hundred yard
radius of it--as a matter of fact, shortly
afterwards this dugout was completely blown
in--yet no one worried in the least about it. This
is not told as a strange experience, for all
officers who have served at the front have often
lived in the same surroundings. This experience
is related only to illustrate one type of
protective shelter.
Deep dugouts vary in depth anywhere from
ten to forty or fifty feet in cases where the
soldier has had to do all the digging, but in some
cases where limestone quarrying has been
extensively carried on there have often been
found, ready to hand, caves, sixty to one
hundred feet in depth, such as the famous Zivy
cave, opposite Mt. St. Eloy. There are many
of them about this region, some of which, as
the one mentioned, are large enough to give
shelter to 1000 men. Usually there is a
circular airshaft in the center. This shaft in
Zivy cave was the target for months for
German gunners, as they had occupied this region,
and knew it well. In fact the story is told
that in this cave, or one of the others near
about, 800 Germans were gassed and killed by
the French when they retook this ground.
How much truth is in the story it is difficult to
say. But at any rate, all through the hard,
cold winter of 1916-17 the Canadians who were
holding this front found good protection and
some warmth in this cave for many of their
men, though at all times the air in it had a
grayish tinge, as the ventilation was hardly
up-to-date.
On one occasion at 11 p.m. Colonel J----
and the writer found Zivy cave as welcome a
sight as ever struck the eye of man. Coming
into the trenches, we stumbled into a heavy
Hun artillery barrage. After a number of
close shaves, in two of which we were buried in
mud from the exploding shell, we were heavily
dragging our feet through the thick mud of
Guillermot trench when a shell struck full in
the trench twenty feet in front of us, nearly
bursting our ear drums. We pressed closely
against the wall of the trench, awaiting the
next. It came almost immediately, landing
thirty feet behind us,--bracketing us.
"The next will get us, sir," I said.
"Not on your life, doctor," cheerfully
replied Colonel J----. And he was right, for a
few moments later we were stumbling into the
entrance of Zivy cave, and that slimy, dark,
four-foot opening was more welcome to us
than would be today the spacious rotunda of
the Savoy. I always admired the Colonel's
cheerful confidence, but, as Kelly well said,
"Confidence is a foine thing, but it raly has
very little affict in stoppin' a Hun shell that's
comin' yer way." This, the Colonel unfortunately
found out in the Battle of Arras.
From one of these deep caves on the Vimy
front previous to the battle of Easter Monday,
tunnels miles in length, electric lighted, were
built, leading to different headquarters, aid
posts, ambulance depots, and to various points
in No Man's Land. They were of inestimable
service when the day of battle arrived. No
doubt they will be among the show-places of
France to encourage tourist traffic after the
war.
The entrance to deep dugouts is usually
only high enough to go through in a stooped
position; and in this case the easiest way to
enter them is to back down. After some
practice one gets accustomed to this manner of
progression, and it becomes easy--as if our
bodies had reverted to the days of our
cave-dwelling ancestry to accompany the turning
back of civilization's clock. The two entrances
preferably point away from the enemy lines,
but in case of advance the enemy dugouts may
be taken over in spite of the fact that their
entrances seem to invite a shell to enter. And,
rather strangely, shells rarely seem to make a
straight hit on an entrance.
Cellars are quite often utilized as shelters
where a little village has become incorporated
in the lines. They often make comparatively
luxurious places of residence for officers and
men, as luxury goes in these parts. The fallen
brick walls, in addition to the cellar roof, give
fair protection, though a straight hit by a
shell would mean a good chance of death to
those within. As breweries are usually the
most palatial buildings in French towns, they
are often chosen as headquarters, or as dressing
stations either for field ambulances or
regimental aid posts. A brewery at Aix Noulette
which, not excepting the church, was the only
building not destroyed by shell fire, for many
months served as a most complete advanced
dressing station. The rats were plentiful, as
they are in most dugouts, and often their little
beady eyes would stare in a startled manner at
one's flashlight, and their bodies remain in a
sort of hypnotized immobility. But this brewery
gave shelter to thirty or forty patients, and
was exceedingly useful, till one day a selfish
artillery officer came along and placed a
battery of heavies just behind it to draw German
fire on the brewery. This is a disagreeable
habit of the artillery, to choose hitherto safe
locations and to turn them into uninhabitable
ones, to the disgust of those about.
One cellar dugout in Calonne is worthy of
description. It was in the cellar of what had
been a large residence. We used it as a
regimental aid post, and it was by far the most
luxurious that I have had the pleasure of
seeing. In the room of the cellar occupied by
the M.O. the walls had been papered, a
fireplace installed, and it contained two
comfortable beds, arm chairs, two carved oak-framed
mirrors, and a well-tuned piano with a stool.
This was only four hundred yards from the
front line. Often as the shells dropped all
about us a group of officers sat there in the
warm glow of a coal fire--the coal probably
filched by our batmen from the fosse nearby--while
someone of a musical turn played the
piano, and the others sang such classical ditties
as, Annie Laurie, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,
and Another Little Drink Wouldn't Do
Us Any Harm.
One morning, after a night of jollity such
as this during which the shelling had been fairly
heavy, one of the orderlies found a "dud" in
the next cellar which, had it exploded, would
have jolted the piano a bit! An engineering
officer mentioned to me that he had been
passing the previous night, and could not believe
his ears when he heard the singing and the
piano accompaniment. Could he be blamed?
I hasten to add that this was the only dugout
in which such luxury as this existed, or
anything approaching to it. This cellar had one
other advantage. It still had enough of the
walls and roof standing to allow us in spare
moments to look through the holes made by
shells and see what was happening in No
Man's Land. And on one occasion the writer
stood up there and watched every detail of one
of the most successful raids ever put on by a
battalion on the British front.
It was a cold winter's day, and the ground
had a complete covering of snow. Just at
daybreak a box barrage was put on a part of
the German line on our front. Our men
climbed out of the trenches, and apparently at
their leisure went across to the German lines.
One of the men carried a telephone with wire
coiled about it which he unrolled as he went,
and Major R----, M.C., telephoned back to
H.Q. in our lines that all was proceeding well.
They returned with one hundred prisoners,
at that time a record number for a raid. The
boy, aged twenty, who had carried the
telephone coolly rewound his wire, and brought
phone and wire back with him, getting a bullet
in the thigh, but finishing his work, and later
receiving a military medal for his conduct. I
was called down from this interesting sight to
dress him and some others of our wounded, as
well as many German wounded who were
brought in prisoners.
For those who are unacquainted with barrages,
it may be explained that a box barrage
is a heavy shelling put on the enemy lines in
the form of a box, taking in the front line and
some of the supports in such a manner that
those within it cannot get back and reinforcements
are unable to come up from the rear.
The enemy are then dependent upon shell, and
machine-gun, and trench mortar fire in retaliating.
We obtain the identification of the troops
opposite by the prisoners taken, as well as
getting from them in different ways information
useful to us and detrimental to the enemy. Of
course the enemy employs like methods, but
during the winter of 1916-17 on our different
fronts we positively owned No Man's Land.