exactly an hour, and our gunners tell us the Boche sent more than 5000
shells over in that time. He has certainly knocked our line about
rather badly. All hands are at work now repairing the trench and
the wire, with a whole Company of R.E. to help. Our casualties were
eighteen wounded and seven killed. We buried thirty-one dead Boches,
and they removed a good many dead. We got eleven wounded and nine
unwounded Boche prisoners. Of course, they took a lot of their wounded
away. They captured no prisoners from us.
I am sorry to say that another of our officers, Tony, is among the
wounded, but the M.O. says he'll be back with us in a week. If only
we could say that of the Infant! We are all sad about him; such a
brave lad! but mighty pleased with the Company. The Brigadier says the
Company has done splendidly. He was specially glad to know that the
Boche collared no prisoners from us. It was our first taste, really,
of bombardment, and of hand-to-hand fighting; and the men are now much
keener even than they were before to get the Boche. They swear he shall
pay dearly for the Infant and for six of their mates. They mean it,
too, believe me. And we mean to help them get their payment. There
isn't so much as a scratch on your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
THE DAY'S WORK
Your letters are a great joy, and I feel that I give mighty little
in return for their unfailing regularity. But I am sure you will
understand that out here, where there's no writing-table to turn
to, one simply cannot write half as much as one would like. It's
astonishing how few moments there are in which, without neglect, one
can honestly say there is nothing waiting to be done.
In your letter of the fifteenth, at this moment propped up in front of
me against a condensed milk tin, you say: "When you can, I wish you'd
jot down for me a sort of schedule of the ordinary, average day's work
in the trenches when there is nothing special on, so that I can picture
the routine of your life." Oh, for more ability as a jotter down! I
know by what I used to see in the papers before leaving England there's
a general idea at home that the chief characteristic of trench life is
its dreary monotony, and that one of our problems is how to pass the
time. How the idea ever got abroad I can't imagine. I don't see how
there ever could have been a time like that in trenches. Certainly we
have never had a hint of it; not the shadow of a hint. If anyone has
ever tasted the boredom of idleness in the trenches--which I don't
believe, mind you--there must have been something radically wrong with
his Battalion; his Company Commander must have been a rotter. And I
don't see how _that_ could be.
A trench, especially in such country as this we're in, is not unlike a
ship; a rather ancient and leaky wooden ship. If you don't keep busy
about her she leaks like a sieve, gets unworkably encrusted and choked
by barnacles, and begins to decay. If you don't keep improving her, she
jolly soon begins to go to pieces. Only, I imagine the disintegrating
process is a great deal quicker in a trench in this part of the world
than it could be in the most unseaworthy of ships.
The daily routine? Well, it would be wrong to say there isn't any.
There is. But it differs every day and every hour of the day, except in
certain stable essentials. Every day brings happenings that didn't come
the day before. One fixed characteristic is that it's a twenty-four
day, rather than twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night. Of
course, the overruling factor is strafe. But there's also something
pretty bossy about the condition of your trench. Some kind of repairs
simply cannot wait. The trench must continue to provide cover from
observation, and some sort of cover from fire, or it ceases to be
tenable, and one would not be carrying out one's fundamental duty of
properly holding the sector of line to which one is detailed; which,
obviously, would be unthinkable. Still, as I say, there are some
elements of stable routine. Well, here goes. It won't cover the ground.
I'm not a competent enough jotter down for that, but such as it is----
We think of every fresh day as beginning with "Stand-to." The main
idea behind this function is that dawn is the classic moment for an
attack. I'm not quite sure that this or any other classic idea holds
good in trench warfare, but "Stand-to" is a pretty sound sort of an
institution, anyhow. We Stand-to one hour before daylight. In some
Companies the precise hour is laid down overnight or for the week. Our
skipper doesn't believe in that. He likes to make a sort of a test of
every Stand-to, and so gives no notice beforehand of the time at which
he is going to order it. And I think he's right.
You will easily understand that of all things in trench warfare
nothing is more important than the ability of your Company to man the
fire-step, ready to repel an attack, or to make one, on the shortest
possible notice. When the order comes there must be no fiddling about
looking for rifles, or appearing on the fire-step with incomplete
equipment. See how useless that would be in the event of a surprise
attack in the dark, when the enemy could creep very close indeed to
your parapet before the best of sentries could give any alarm! Troops
in the firing line must be able to turn out, equipped in every detail
for fighting--for days on end of fighting--not only quickly, but
instantly; without any delay at all. That is why, in the British Army,
at all events--and I've no doubt the French are the same--nobody in
the firing line is allowed to remove his equipment. Officer and man
alike, when we lie down to sleep, we lie down in precisely the same
order as we go into action: haversack and water-bottle, ammunition
and everything complete. That detail of the filled water-bottle, for
instance, may make all the difference between a man who is an asset to
his country in a critical action and a man who is useless and a bad
example. You never know the moment at which an action that will last
forty-eight hours or more is going to begin; and, though a man may keep
going a long while without food, he's not much use if he cannot rinse
his mouth out after a bit.
But at this rate I shall never get done. It's always so when I set out
to write to you about any specific thing.
Well, we Stand-to an hour before dawn. It happens this way: "the
Peacemaker" is in the trench doing something, or he comes out of the
dug-out. He looks at his watch and at the sky, and he tells his orderly
to bring another orderly. Then he says to the pair of them: "Pass the
word to Stand-to." One bolts along the trench to the left and one to
the right; and as they hurry along they give the word to every sentry
and to everyone they see: "Stand-to!" Meanwhile "the Peacemaker" pokes
about and observes, and jumps like a hundred of bricks on any man
whose bayonet is not fixed, whose belt is unbuckled, or who is slow in
getting to the fire-step. All this time he has his watch in his hand.
Pretty soon the first of those two orderlies comes racing back.
Very often they see each other approaching the Officer Commanding
from opposite directions, and make a real race of it, and report
breathlessly: "All correct, sir." To be able to do this, they must have
got the word from each Platoon Sergeant. Probably about this time the
officer on duty comes along from whatever part of the line he happens
to have been patrolling at the time. And he also reports that all was
correct in the part of the line he has come from, or that such and such
a section was a bit behind this morning, and that Corporal So-and-so
wants a little stirring up.
Also, by this time the Company Sergeant-Major will have arrived,
with a couple of runners, each carrying under his arm a jar of
mixed rum-and-water, half and half. Rum is never served out in any
circumstances, save in the presence of an officer. So the officer on
duty goes to one end of the line, and "the Peacemaker" to the other,
and both work slowly back toward the centre, watching the serving out
of the rum, and looking carefully over each man and his equipment. In
the centre, the officer on duty probably waits, while the O.C. Company
goes right on, so that he may see the whole of his line and every
single man in it. So you see, in a way, Stand-to is a parade, as well
as an important tactical operation. Because, remember, the sentries
are keenly watching all this while, and so are a good many more pairs
of eyes than look out at any other time. But, whereas the sentries are
steadily gazing into the rapidly greying mysteries of No Man's Land,
the other pairs of eyes are only taking occasional sharp glances, and
then down again, below the parapet.
There has probably been very little firing from either side during
this time. Now, very suddenly, a violent crackling starts along to
the left of the line. Instantly, every exposed head ducks. Fritz has
started the first verse of his morning Hymn of Hate. He always thinks
to catch us, and never does. We enjoy his hymn, because we love to see
him waste his ammunition, as he proceeds to do now in handsome style.
Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r! The spray of his machine-guns traverses very
neatly up and down the length of our parapet. His gunners are clearly
convinced that at Stand-to time they are certain to get a few English
heads. Then, as suddenly as he began, he stops; and--every head remains
ducked. We've been at some pains to teach 'em that. Twenty seconds
later--or it may be two minutes--the spray begins again, just where
it stopped, or a hundred yards to right or left of that. The Boche is
quite smart about this; only he seems to act on the assumption that we
never learn anything. That's where he's rather sold.
And, while Fritz sends forth his morning Hymn, our snipers in their
carefully-hidden posts have their eyes glued on the neighbourhood of
his machine-gun emplacements; and every now and again they get their
reward, and the head of a Boche machine-gun observer, or some other
Teuton whose curiosity overcomes his discretion, drops never to rise
any more.
Before the Hymn began, you understand, the greying mystery has grown
considerably less mysterious, and one has been able to see almost as
much in the pearly dawn light as one will see at high noon, especially
in these misty localities.
When Fritz has got through the last verse of his Hymn he is almost
invariably quiet and harmless as a sucking dove for an hour or two. I
take it he makes a serious business of his breakfast. And there again
he often pays. Our snipers have their brekker later, and devote half an
hour now to observation of the neighbourhood of all the little spirals
of smoke in the Boche lines which indicate breakfast fires. They
generally have some luck then; and sometimes it becomes worth while
to turn on a machine-gun or two, where Fritz's appetite has made him
careless.
It is now broad daylight, and our ration parties appear, four to each
platoon, trailing up the trenches from the rear with the breakfast
tea and bacon. Each party dumps its dixey of tea down in the centre
of the sector of its platoon, and the Platoon Sergeant dishes out to
the section commanders the whack of bacon for their sections, while
all hands draw their mugs of tea. The bread and jam and "dry rations"
were drawn overnight. And so to breakfast, in the dug-outs or along the
fire-step, according to the state of the weather. It's breakfast for
all hands, except the sentries, and they are relieved to get theirs
directly the men to relieve them have eaten. With the exception of
those who are on duty, the officers get along to the Company dug-out
for their breakfast, which the batmen have been preparing. They cook
it, you know, over a brazier--some old pail or tin with holes punched
in it, consuming coke and charcoal mixed, or whatever fuel one has.
Fried bacon, tea, and bread-and-jam; that's our usual menu. Sometimes
there may be a tin of fruit as well, or some luxury of that sort from
home. Always there are good appetites and no need of sauce.
But, look here, I've just got to stop now. And yet I've only reached
breakfast in my jotting of the day's routine in trenches. Isn't it
maddening? Well, I'll get another chance to-night or to-morrow, and
give you some more of it. I really will finish it, and I'm sorry I
couldn't have done it in one letter, as it would have been done by a
more competent jotter-down of things than your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
TOMMY DODD AND TRENCH ROUTINE
You'll be grieved to hear that cheery, indomitable little Tommy Dodd
was rather badly laid out this morning; four or five nasty wounds from
shrapnel. But I think he'll pull through. He has so much of the will to
live, and I am sure a soul so uniformly cheerful as his must make its
body easier to heal.
I wasn't six paces from him at the time. We were fastening some
barbed-wire stays on screw standards we meant to put out to-night. I
had just lent him my thick leather gloves after showing him exactly
how I wanted these stays fixed, with little stakes bound on at the end
of them, so as to save time to-night when we are over the parapet. He
was busy as a beaver, as he generally is; a bit nearer to Whizz-bang
Corner than was quite wise--I shall always reproach myself for not
keeping him farther from that ill-omened spot--when the shell burst low
overhead. I got a dozen tiny flicks myself on hands and head, which the
M.O. touched up with iodine after he bandaged Tommy Dodd. But Tommy was
badly hit in the thigh, one arm, and the left shoulder.
He was parchment-colour by the time I got the stretcher-bearers along,
and that was only a matter of seconds. We were close to their little
dug-out, as it happened. He'd lost a lot of blood. But he grinned at
me, with a kind of twist in his grin, as I helped lift him into the
trench stretcher.
"Looks almost like a Blighty for me, sir, don't it? Well, even the
Boche must hit something sometimes. It's only an outer this time, an'
look at the thousands o' rounds when he don't get on the target at
all! Sorry I couldn't 've finished them stays, sir. If you send for
Davis, o' Number 5 Section, you'll find him pretty good at it, sir."
And then he turned to the stretcher-bearer in front, who had the strap
over his shoulder, and was just bracing himself to start off when he'd
done talking. "Home, John!" he says, with a little kick up of his head,
which I really can't describe. "An' be sure you don't exceed the limit,
for I can't abide them nasty low perlice courts an gettin' fined."
And yet, when we got down to Battalion Headquarters, the M.O. told
me Tommy Dodd ought by all rights to have been insensible, from the
blood he'd lost and the shock of those wounds: not surface wounds,
you know. He'll have two or three months of hospital comfort now. I
hope to goodness nothing septic will intervene. The Battalion would be
the poorer for it if we lost Tommy. The M.O. says he'll pull through.
The M.O. cropped little patches of hair off round my head, to rub the
iodine in where I was scratched, so I look as if I had ringworm.
But to get back to business. I've got to "jot down" this everyday
trench routine for you, haven't I? And I only got as far as breakfast
in yesterday's letter. We'll get a move on and run through it now. I'm
due on deck directly after lunch to relieve Taffy; and it's past eleven
now.
After breakfast one-half the men kip down for a sleep, and the other
half turn to for work. Then after the mid-day dinner, the half that
rested in the forenoon, work; and throughout the night all hands
stand their turn at sentry-go. That's the principle--in our Company,
anyhow. But, of course, it doesn't always work out quite like that.
Everything naturally gives way to strafing considerations, and at times
urgent repairing work makes it necessary to forgo half or all the day
rest-time. As for the officers--there are only three of us now, besides
"the Peacemaker"--one officer is always on duty, day and night. We take
that in three-hour spells, the three of us. Then in the day-time, while
the turn of duty is a fixed thing, we are, as a matter of fact, about
at some job or another all the time; just as the O.C. Company is about
all the twenty-four hours. At night we three do take our time off for
sleep after a tour of duty, unless in some emergency or other. "The
Peacemaker" just gets odd cat-naps when he can.
You might think that if there'd been no particular artillery strafing
going on there would be no necessary repair work for the men to do in
the trench. But you see, we've practically always got a new dug-out
in course of construction, and a refuse pit to be dug, and a sniping
shelter to be made, and a new bit of trench to be cut. We have nine
separate sumps where pumps are fixed in our line. And if those pumps
were not well worked each day we'd soon be flooded out. There's
generally some wire and standards to be got ready for putting out at
night, with a few "Gooseberries" and trip wires where our entanglements
have been weakened by shell fire. I've never yet seen a trench that
wasn't crying out for some sort of work on it.
At breakfast "the Peacemaker" will generally talk over the jobs he
specially wants us to put through during the day, and give us any notes
he may have taken during the night, round the trenches. Then chits
begin coming in by 'phone from Battalion Headquarters; and chits,
however short and innocent they may look, nearly always boil down to a
job of work to be done. In fact, one way and another, jobs invariably
invade the breakfast table and every other meal-time; and before the
tea-mugs are filled up a second time one nearly always hears a batman
told to "clear this end, will you, to make room for me to write a chit."
Then there will be a visitor, probably the C.O., pretty soon after
breakfast, and "the Peacemaker" will trot round our line with him,
discussing. Ten to one that visit will mean more jobs of work; and,
occasionally, what's a deal more welcome, a new plan for a little
strafe of some sort.
And then one sees the ration parties trailing up again from the rear,
and dinner has arrived; some kind of a stew, you know, as a rule, with
bully as alternative; potatoes if you're lucky, jam anyhow, more tea,
and some sort of pickings from home parcels in the way of cake or
biscuits, figs or what not. During and immediately after dinner--in the
dug-out we call it lunch, from habit, but it's about the same thing
as the evening meal, as a rule--we always plan out the night's work,
patrols, wiring, any little strafe we have on, and that sort of thing.
We are a bit luxurious in "A" Company, and generally run to a mug of
afternoon tea; sometimes (if the recent mails have been heavy) to
an outburst of plum cake or shortbread with it. And an hour before
dark comes evening Stand-to. Technically, this has some tactical
significance, even as the morning Stand-to has actually. But as a
matter of fact, in the evening it's a parade, more than anything else,
to inspect rifles, check up ammunition, call the roll, and see the men
are all right.
By the way, you asked me something about the rum. I don't think it's
issued at all in the summer months. What we issue now, once a day,
is, I think, one gill per man of the half-and-half mixture of rum and
water. I think it's a gill; a pint mug has to supply eight men. I
think, on the whole, it's a useful issue, and can't possibly do any
harm. It's thundering good rum; good, honest, mellow stuff, and very
warming.
About seven o'clock we generally have a feed, from habit, you know,
that being the time we used to have dinner in camp in England. It's the
same sort of feed we have in middle day. And after that, the officer
who is going on duty at midnight, say, will generally get a sleep. The
usual round of night work is well under way by now--patrols, wiring
parties, work on the parapet, and so on, according to what the moon
allows. If there's too much light, these things have to come later.
With regard to work for sentry reliefs, the way we have in our Company
is this: a sentry's relief--the sentries are always double by night and
single by day--must always be within call of the sentry; therefore we
never let him go beyond the bay next to the one the sentry occupies,
that is, round the next traverse. Well, we hold the reliefs responsible
for keeping those two bays in good order; clean and pumped, sides
revetted, fire-step clear and in repair, the duck-boards lifted and
muck cleared out from under them each day, and so forth. All used
cartridges have to be gathered up and put in the sand-bag hung over the
fire-step for that purpose, for return to store.
Unless there is real strafing going on the trenches grow pretty silent
after midnight. At least, it seems so to the officer on duty as he
makes his way from one end of his line to the other. One gets very
tired then. There's never any place where you can sit down in a trench.
I am sure the O.C. Company is often actually on his feet for twenty-two
out of the twenty-four hours. I say it's very quiet. Well, it's a
matter of comparison, of course. If in the middle of the street at two
o'clock in the morning at home you heard a few rifles fired, you would
think it remarkably noisy. But here, if there's nothing going on except
rifle fire, say at the rate of a couple of shots a minute, the trenches
seem extraordinarily quiet; ghostly quiet.
You go padding along in your gum boots, feeling your way with your
stick, which usually carries such a thick coat of mud on it that its
taps on the duck-boards are hardly audible. You come round the corner
of a traverse, and spot a sentry's helmet against the sky-line. "Who
goes there?" he challenges you, hoarsely, and you answer, "Lieutenant
So-and-so, ---- Regiment," and he gives you leave to pass.
One has to be careful about these challenges. At first the men were
inclined to be casual and grunt out, "Tha's all right!" or just the
name of the Regiment when challenged. One had to correct that tendency.
It is easy for a Boche to learn to say "Tha's all right," or to mention
the name of a Regiment opposite his line. Plenty of them have been
waiters, barbers, clerks, bakers, and so on in London. So we insist
on formal correctness in these challenges, and the officer or man who
doesn't halt promptly on being challenged takes his chance of a bullet
or a bayonet in his chest.
One stops for a word or two with every sentry, and one creeps out
along the saps for a word with the listening posts. It helps them
through their time, and it satisfies you that they're on the spot,
mentally as well as physically. There's hardly a man in "A" Company who
is not an inveterate smoker, but, do you know, I have never once got
a whiff of 'baccy smoke in the neighbourhood of a sentry since we've
been in trenches, never a suspicion of it! Neither have I ever found a
sentry who was not genuinely watching to his front; and if the Colonel
himself comes along and asks one a question there's not one of them
ever betrayed into turning his eyes from his front. They're good lads.
And so the small hours lengthen into the rather larger ones, and
morning Stand-to comes round again. It isn't often it's so absolutely
uneventful as my jottings on the subject, of course. But you must just
regard this as the merest skeleton outline of the average routine of
trench days. And then, to be sure, I've left out lots of little things.
Also, every day brings its special happenings, and big or little
strafes. One thing we do not get in trenches, and I cannot believe we
ever should, from what I've seen of it; and that is monotony, boredom,
idleness, lack of occupation. That's a fancy of the newspaper writers
which, so far as I know, has literally no relation whatever to the
facts of trench life on the British Front in France; certainly not to
anything as yet seen by your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
STALKING SNIPERS