running from the North Sea to Switzerland, five hundred miles. All
the way along that line, day and night, without a moment's cessation,
through all these long months, men's eyes have been glaring across that
forsaken strip, and lead has been flying to and fro over it. To show
yourself in it means death. But I have heard a lark trilling over it
in the early morning as sweetly as any bird ever sang over an English
meadow. A lane of death, five hundred miles long, strewn from end to
end with the remains of soldiers! And to either side of it, throughout
the whole of these five hundred miles, a warren of trenches, dug-outs,
saps, tunnels, underground passages, inhabited, not by rabbits, but by
millions of rats, it's true, and millions of hiving, busy men, with
countless billions of rounds of death-dealing ammunition, and a complex
organisation as closely ordered and complete as the organisation of any
city in England!
It's also inhabited at this moment by one man who simply must stop
scribbling, and have some grub before going on duty. This one among the
millions, with the very healthy appetite, manages, in despite of all
the strafing, to think quite a lot about you, and hopes you will go on
thinking equally cheerily of him--your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
THE DUG-OUT
Here's an odd coincidence. The second sentence in your letter that
reached me last night (with our rations of candles and coke) says: "Do
tell me just what a dug-out is like." You are always asking me what
something or other is "like," which forces upon me the sad conclusion
that my letters are not in the least descriptive. But, "Do not shoot
the pianist: he is doing his best," and if I had the pen of a readier
writer you may be sure I'd use it. Yet the odd thing is, with regard to
this particular command for information, I have the pen of a readier
writer. You know Taffy Morgan--Billy--of our Company? Well, it seems
he's quite a bit of a writer, and occasionally sends things home to his
father who, is trying to keep a consecutive narrative of the doings of
the Battalion. Now last night, within an hour of getting your letter,
I read a thing Taffy showed me that he was sending home, all about a
Company Headquarters dug-out in the line: much more decent than my
scribbles. So I've asked him to let me copy some of it, and here it is
pat, in answer to your question:
"'Dug-out' is the only word for it. I don't know who did the
christening, but it is, like so many words and phrases adopted without
question by Tommy at the front, the one proper, exact, and adequate
name for the places we inhabit in the trenches. The particular dug-out
I have in mind is a Company Headquarters, situated, like a good many
others, in a loop trench, perhaps seventy to a hundred yards long,
which curves round at a distance of twenty or thirty yards in rear
of the fire-trench. The average depth of this little back-water of a
trench is, say, seven feet. It was made by the French before we took
over, and is very wide at the top. It has no made parapet, but is just
a gaping ditch, its ragged, receding top edges eight or ten feet apart,
the lower part, in which one walks, being two to three feet wide. The
bottom of this ditch is duck-walked: that is to say, it has wooden
gratings six feet long and eighteen inches wide laid along it. Each
length of duck-walk is supported at either end by a trestle driven deep
down into the mud.
"Here and there at a bend in the trench there will be a gap of several
inches between duck-walks. Again one finds a place where one or two
slats have been broken. These are cheerless pitfalls on a dark night,
in which it is easy to sink one leg in mud or water over the knee.
In places a duck-walk has canted over by losing its bearings on the
trestle at one corner, giving the whole a treacherous list to one side
or the other, simple enough to negotiate by day, but unpleasant for
anyone hurrying along at night. Still, the trench is 'ducked' and, so
far, luxurious, and a vast improvement on the sort of trench (common
over the way among the Boches, I believe) in which men lose their
boots, and have to be dug out themselves.
"It happens that my picture of this Company Headquarters dug-out is a
three o'clock in the morning picture: moonless, and the deadest hour of
the night, when Brother Boche is pretty generally silent, save for a
mechanical sort of dropping rifle fire: a fire which one knows somehow,
from its sound, means nothing, unless perhaps it means a certain number
of German sentries sleepily proving to themselves that they are awake.
In the same desultory fashion, Boche, nearly two hundred yards away
across the wire entanglements and the centre strip of No Man's Land,
sends up a flare of parachute light every few minutes, which, for half
a minute, fills our black ditch with a queer, ghostly sort of radiance,
making its dank and jagged sides to gleam again, and drawing curses
from anyone feeling his way along it, even as motor lights in a country
lane at home make a pedestrian curse on a dark night.
"As one gropes along this ditch one comes to narrow gaps here and
there in the side farthest from the enemy. These lead to all kinds of
odd necessary places: the homes of signallers, runners, and others,
refuse pits, bomb and trench stores, and so on. Presently a thin streak
of light shows like a white string in the blackness. This is one of
the gaps, about four feet high and eighteen inches wide. A dripping
waterproof sheet hangs as a curtain over this gap: the white string is
the light from within escaping down one side of the sheet. Lift the
sheet to one side, take two steps down and forward--the sheet dripping
on your neck the while--and you are in the Company Headquarters
dug-out: a hole dug out of the back of the ditch, its floor two feet
below the level of the duck-boards outside, its internal dimensions ten
feet by eight by six.
"At the back of this little cave, facing you as you enter--and
unless you go warily you are apt to enter with a rush, landing on the
earthen floor in a sitting position, what with the wet slime on your
gum boots and the steps--are two bunks, one above the other, each two
feet wide and made of wire netting stretched on rough stakes fastened
to stout poles and covered more or less by a few empty sand-bags. One
of these is the bunk of the O.C. Company, used alternatively by one of
his subalterns. In the other, a Platoon Commander lies now asleep, one
gum-booted leg, mud-caked well above the knee, dangling over the front
edge, a goatskin coat over his shoulders, his cap jammed hard down over
his eyes to shut out the light of the candle which, stayed firmly to
the newspaper tablecloth by a small island of its own grease, burns as
cheerily as it can in this rather draughty spot, sheltered a little
from the entrance by a screen consisting of a few tins half full of
condensed milk, butter, sugar, and the like. The officer in the bunk is
sleeping as though dead, and the candle-light catching the mud-flecked
stubble on his chin suggests that his turn in the trenches should be
at least half over. Another few days should bring him to billets and
shaving water."
(Here, then, in addition to the description of a dug-out, you have a
portrait of your "Temporary Gentleman," rather unmercifully touched in,
I thought!)
"The table--say, 30 inches by 20 inches--was made from a packing-case,
and is perched on rough stake legs against the earthen side of the
dug-out, with a shelf over it which was formerly a case holding two
jars of rum. On the shelf are foodstuffs, Very lights, a couple of
rockets, a knobkerrie, a copy of _Punch_, a shortbread tin full
of candles, a map, an automatic pistol, and, most curiously, a
dust-encrusted French cookery-book, which has taken on the qualities
of an antique, and become a kind of landlord's fixture among 'trench
stores' in the eyes of the ever-changing succession of company
commanders who have 'taken over,' week in and week out, since the
French occupation in '14.
"Hung about the sides of the dug-out are half-empty canvas packs or
valises, field-glasses, a couple of periscopes, a Very pistol, two
sticks caked all over with dry mud, an oilskin coat or two similarly
varnished over with the all-pervading mud of the trench, a steel
helmet, a couple of pairs of field boots and half a dozen pictures
from illustrated papers, including one clever drawing of a grinning
cat, having under it the legend, 'Smile, damn you!' The field boots
are there, and not in use, because the weather is of the prevalent
sort, wet, and the tenants of the place are living in what the returns
call 'boots, trench, gum, thigh.' Overhead is stretched across the
low roof tarred felt. Above that are rough-hewn logs, then galvanised
iron and stones and earth: not shell-proof, really, but bullet- and
splinter-proof, and for the most part weather-proof--at least as much
so as the average coat sold under that description.
"The trench outside is very still just now, but inside the dug-out
there is plenty of movement. All round about it, and above and below,
the place is honeycombed by rats--brown rats with whitish bellies, big
as young cats, heavy with good living; blundering, happy-go-lucky,
fearless brutes, who do not bother to hunt the infinitely nimbler mice
who at this moment are delicately investigating the tins of foodstuffs
within a few inches of the head of the O.C. Company. The rats are
variously occupied: as to a couple of them, matrons, in opposite
corners of the roof, very obviously in suckling their young, who
feed with awful zest; as to half a dozen others, in courting, during
which process they keep up a curious kind of crooning, chirruping
song wearisome to human ears; and as to the numerous remainder, in
conducting a cross-country steeplechase of sorts, to and fro and round
and round on the top side of the roofing felt, which their heavy bodies
cause to bulge and sag till one fancies it must give way.
"There is a rough rickety stool beside the table. On this is
seated the O.C. Company, his arms outspread on the little ledge of
a table, his head on his arms, his face resting on the pages of an
open Army Book 153, in which, half an hour ago, he wrote his morning
situation report, in order that his signallers might inform Battalion
Headquarters, nearly a mile away down the communication trench to the
rear, with sundry details, that there was nothing doing beyond the
normal intermittent strafing of a quiet night. The O.C. Company is
asleep. A mouse is clearing its whiskers of condensed milk within two
inches of his left ear, and the candle is guttering within two inches
of his cap-peak. During the past few days he has had four or five such
sleeps as this, half an hour or so at a time, and no more, for there
has been work toward in the line, involving exposure for men on the
parapet and so forth, of a sort which does not make for restfulness
among O.C. Companies.
"There comes a quiet sound of footfalls on the greasy duck-boards
outside. Two mice on the table sit bolt upright to listen. The
cross-country meeting overhead is temporarily suspended. The O.C.
Company's oilskin-covered shoulders twitch nervously. The mother rats
continue noisily suckling their young, though one warily pokes its
sharp nose out over the edge of the felt, sniffing, inquiringly. Then
the waterproof sheet is drawn aside, and the O.C. Company sits up with
a jerk. A signaller on whose leather jerkin the raindrops glisten in
the flickering candle-light thrusts head and shoulders into the dug-out.
"'Message from the Adjutant, sir!'
"The O.C. reads the two-line message, initials the top copy for return
to the signaller, spikes the carbon copy on a nail overhead, where many
others hang, glances at his wrist-watch, and says wearily:
"'Well, what are the signallers strafing about, anyhow? It's ten
minutes before time now. Here you are!'
"He tears two written pages from the Army message book which was his
pillow, signs them, and hands them up to the signaller.
"'Call the Sergeant-Major on your way back, and tell him I've gone
down to the sap-head. He can bring the wiring party along right away.
It's nearly three o'clock. Send a runner to tell the officer on duty
I'm going out myself with this party. You might just remind the
Sergeant-Major I want two stretcher-bearers at the sap-head. Tell 'em
to keep out of sight till the others are out over the parapet. Right!
Messages will go to Mr. ----, of course, while I'm out.'
"Brother Boche may remain quiet. Three o'clock is a good quiet time.
And there is no moon. But, Brother Boche being dead quiet just now, may
conceivably have patrols out there in No Man's Land. They may carry
valuable information quickly to his line, and two or three machine-guns
may presently open up on the O.C. Company and his wiring party, who,
again, may be exposed by means of flare lights from the other side.
One hopes not. Meanwhile, after a glance round, the O.C. picks up
his mud-caked leather mitts, settles the revolver pouch on his belt,
blows out the guttering candle, feels his way out past the dripping
waterproof sheet into the black trench, and leaves the dug-out to his
sleeping brother officer (who was on deck from 10 to 1, and will be out
again an hour before dawn) and the rats.
"Theoretically, this O.C. Company may be himself as much in need of
sleep as anyone in the trench. Actually, however, apart from his needs,
he is personally responsible for whatever may happen in quite a long
stretch of dark, mysterious trench: of trench which in one moment may
be converted by the ingenious Boche into a raging hell of paralysing
gas and smoke, of lurid flame and rending explosion. German officers
seated in artillery dug-outs a mile or so away across the far side
of No Man's Land may bring about that transformation in one moment.
They did it less than a week ago, though, by reason of unceasing
watchfulness on this side, it availed them nothing. They may be just
about to do it now, and, unlike the average of German O.C. Companies,
our officers never ask their men to face any kind of danger which they
themselves do not face with them. And so, for this particular O.C.
Company, the interior of that queer little dug-out (where the men's rum
stands in jars under the lower bunk, and letters from home are scanned,
maps pored over, and reports and returns made out) does not exactly
bring unmixed repose. But the rats love it."
So there you are! By the judicious picking of Taffy's brains I have
been enabled to present you with a much better picture of a dug-out
than my own unaided pen could give. Reading over, there seems something
melancholy and sombre about it; I don't know why. It's a jolly little
dug-out, and Taffy's a thundering fine officer; nothing in the least
melancholy about him. Then why--? Oh, well, I guess it's his Celtic
blood. Maybe he's got a temperament. I must tell him so. By the way,
that wiring job he mentions came off all right; a nasty exposed place,
but "the Peacemaker" got his party through without a single casualty,
or, as the men always say, "Casu_al_ity."
Taffy writes a much better letter, doesn't he? than your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
A BOMBING SHOW
Very many thanks for the parcel with the horse-hide mitts and the torch
refills, both of which will be greatly appreciated. The mitts are the
best things of the kind I've seen for trench work, and as for electric
torches, I don't know what we should do without them.
I've come below for a sleep, really. Taffy Morgan was very much off
colour yesterday, and is far from fit to-day. I had to take his duty as
well as my own last night, so came off pretty short in the matter of
rest. But I must stop to tell you about the lark we had last night; the
jolliest thing that's happened since we came in, and no end of a score
for "A" Company. My batman tells me "B" are mad as hatters about it.
Our signalling officer happened to be along the front yesterday
afternoon with a brand-new telescope that someone had sent the C.O., a
very fine instrument. Signals wasn't interested in our bit of line, as
it happens, but was dead nuts on some new Boche machine-gun emplacement
or other away on "B's" left. When he was coming back through our line
I got him to lend me the new glass while he had some tea and wrote
reports in our dug-out. Perhaps you think there's not much need of a
telescope when the Boche line is less than a couple of hundred yards
away. Well, now you'd hardly believe how difficult it is to make things
out. At this time of the year the whole of this place is full of mist,
for one thing. And then, you see, the ground in front is studded all
over with barbed wire, stakes, long rank grass, things thrown out: here
and there an old log, and, here and there, of course, a dead body. One
has to look along the ground level, since to look from a higher level
would mean exposure, and I can assure you it's surprisingly easy to
miss things. I've wasted a good many rounds myself, firing at old rags
or bits of wood, or an old cape in the grass among the Boche wire,
feeling sure I'd got a sniper. The ground is pretty much torn up, too,
you understand, by shells and stuff, and that makes it more difficult.
Well, I was looking out from a little sheltered spot alongside the
entrance to what we call Stinking Sap. It has rather a rottener smell
than most trenches, I think. And all of a sudden I twigged something
that waked me right up. It was nothing much: just a shovel sticking up
against a little mound. But it led to other things. A yard away from
where this shovel lay the C.O.'s fine glass enabled me to make out a
gap in the wet, misty grass. You may be sure I stared jolly hard, and
presently the whole thing became clear to me. The Boches had run out
a new sap to fully sixty yards from their fire trench, which at this
particular point is rather far from ours: over 250 yards, I suppose. It
was right opposite our own Stinking Sap, and I suppose the head of it
was not more than 100 yards from the head of Stinking Sap. There was
no Boche working there then; not a sign of any movement. I made sure
of that. Then I got my compass and trench map, and took a very careful
bearing. And then I toddled round to Company Headquarters and got hold
of "the Peacemaker," without letting Signals know anything about it.
If the O.C. liked to let Battalion Headquarters know, that was his
business.
Of course, "the Peacemaker" was delighted. "It's perfectly clear they
must have cut it last night," he said. "And as sure as God made little
apples, they'll be going on with it to-night. Let's see, the moon rises
about 9.45. Splendid! They'll get to work as soon as it's dark."
He was awfully decent about it, and agreed to let me go, since I'd had
the luck to spot it. As a matter of fact, he did the more important
spotting himself. He twigged what I'd overlooked: a whacking big
shell-hole, shallow but wide, about fifteen or twenty feet to one side
of their sap-head; an absolutely ideal spot for cover, and no more
than a hundred yards from the head of Stinking Sap. I decided to take
Corporal Slade with me, because he's such a fine bomber, besides being
as cool as a cucumber and an all-round good chap. You remember he was
with me that time in Master Boche's trench. Somehow, the thing got
round before tea-time, and the competition among the men was something
awful. When Slade gave it out that I was taking all the men I wanted
from No. 1 Platoon, there was actually a fight between one of my lot
and a fellow named Ramsay, of No. 3 Platoon; a draper, I'll trouble
you, and a pillar of his chapel at home. Then a deputation of the other
Platoon Sergeants waited on "the Peacemaker," and in the end, to save
bloodshed, I agreed to take Corporal Slade and one man from my own
Platoon, and one man from each of the other three Platoons. To call
for volunteers for work over the parapet with our lot is perfectly
hopeless. You must detail your men, or the whole blessed Company
would swarm out over the sticks every time, especially if there's the
slightest hint of raiding or bombing.
"The Peacemaker's" idea was that we must reach that shell-hole from the
end of Stinking Sap, if possible, before the Boche started work in his
new sap, because once he started he'd be sure to have a particularly
sharp look-out kept, and might very well have a covering party outside
as well. Before it was dark my fellows were champing their bits in
Stinking Sap, fretting to be off. If one gave the beggars half a chance
they'd be out in the open in broad daylight. But, of course, I kept
'em back. There was no reason why Boche should be in a violent hurry
to start work, and I was most anxious he shouldn't suspect that we
suspected anything.
As it turned out, we were all lying in that shell-hole close to his
new sap for three-quarters of an hour before a single Boche made a
move. There was a fine rain all the time, and it was pitch dark.
The only thing we didn't like was the fact that all the flares and
parachute lights ever made seemed to be being sent up from the Boche
line, right alongside this new sap. However, we lay perfectly still
and flat, hands covered and faces down, and as long as you do that all
the flares in the world won't give you away much, in ground as full of
oddments and unevenness as that is.
By and by Slade gave a little tug at my jerkin. I listened hard, and
just made out footsteps, probably in the Boche fire trench itself, near
the entrance to their new sap. Two or three minutes later we began
really to enjoy ourselves. As far as we could make out Fritz hadn't a
notion that we were on to his game. Six or eight of 'em came shuffling
along the sap, carrying picks and shovels, and jabbering and growling
away nineteen to the dozen. We could hear every sound. One fellow,
anyhow, was smoking. We got the whiff of that. We could hear 'em spit,
and, very nearly, we could hear them breathe. I did wish I knew a
little more German than "Donnerwetter" and "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
I could feel the man on my left (the draper from No. 3) quivering like
a coursing greyhound in a leash, and had to whisper to him to wait for
the word. But Corporal Slade on my right might have been on the barrack
square. I saw him use a match to pick his teeth while he listened.
I'd rehearsed my fellows letter perfect in our own trench before we
started, and when the Boches were fairly under way digging, I gave the
signal with my left hand. There was a bomb in my right. Waiting for it
as I was, I could distinctly hear the safety-pins come out of our six
bombs, and could even hear the breathed murmur of the pugnacious draper
at my shoulder:
"A hundred an' one, a hundred an' two, a hundred an' three!" (He was
timing the fuse of his bomb, exactly as I'd told 'em.)
And then we tore a big hole in the night. Our six bombs landed, one on
the edge and the other five plumb in the sap-head before us, right in
the middle of the six or eight Boches digging there. Two seconds after
they left our hands they did their job. It was less than two seconds
really. And when the rending row was done we heard only one Boche
moaning, so I knew that at least six or seven were "gone West" for
keeps, and would strafe no more Englishmen.
Now the idea had been that directly our job was done we should bolt
for the head of Stinking Sap. But, while we'd been lying there, it had
occurred to me that the Boches, knowing all about what distance bombs
could be thrown, and that we must be lying in the open near their
sap-head, ought to be able to sweep that ground with machine-gun fire
before we could get to Stinking Sap, and that, having done that, they
would surely send a whole lot more men down their new sap, to tackle
what was left of us that way. Therefore I'd made each of my fellows
carry four bombs in his pockets: twenty-four among the lot of us. And
we'd only used six. Quite enough, too, for the Boches in that sap.
Therefore, again, we now lay absolutely still, and just as close as
wax, while Fritz rained parachute lights, stars, flares, and every kind
of firework in the sky, and, just as I had fancied, swept his sap-head
with at least a thousand rounds of machine-gun bullets, not one of
which so much as grazed us, where we lay spread-eagled in the mud of
that shell-hole.
And then--dead silence.