THOSE PLUGSTREET TRENCHES--MUD AND
RAIN--FLOODED OUT--A HOPELESS DAWN
An extraordinary sensation--the first time of going into trenches. The
first idea that struck me about them was their haphazard design. There
was, no doubt, some very excellent reason for someone or other making
those trenches as they were; but they really did strike me as curious
when I first saw them.
A trench will, perhaps, run diagonally across a field, will then go
along a hedge at right angles, suddenly give it up and start again fifty
yards to the left, in such a position that it is bound to cross the
kitchen-garden of a shattered chateau, go through the greenhouse and out
into the road. On getting there it henceforth rivals the ditch at the
side in the amount of water it can run off into a row of dug-outs in the
next field. There is, apparently, no necessity for a trench to be in any
way parallel to the line of your enemy; as long as he can't shoot you
from immediately behind, that's all you ask.
It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trenches.
Everything was strange, and wet and horrid. First of all I had to go and
fix up my machine guns at various points, and find places for the
gunners to sleep in. This was no easy matter, as many of the dug-outs
had fallen in and floated off down stream.
In this, and subsequent descriptions of the trenches, I may lay myself
open to the charge of exaggeration. But it must be remembered that I am
describing trench life in the early days of 1914, and I feel sure that
those who had experience of them will acquit me of any such charge.
To give a recipe for getting a rough idea, in case you want to, I
recommend the following procedure. Select a flat ten-acre ploughed
field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country
drains into it. Now cut a zig-zag slot about four feet deep and three
feet wide diagonally across, dam off as much water as you can so as to
leave about a hundred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one
side of the slot, then endeavour to live there for a month on bully beef
and damp biscuits, whilst a friend has instructions to fire at you with
his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface.
Well, here I was, anyway, and the next thing was to make the best of it.
As I have before said, these were the days of the earliest trenches in
this war: days when we had none of those desirable "props," such as
corrugated iron, floorboards, and sand bags _ad lib_.
[Illustration: "ullo! 'Arry"]
When you made a dug-out in those days you made it out of anything you
could find, and generally had to make it yourself. That first night I
was "in" I discovered, after a humid hour or so, that our battalion
wouldn't fit into the spaces left by the last one, and as regards
dug-outs, the truth of that mathematical axiom, "Two's into one, won't
go," suddenly dawned on me with painful clearness. I was faced with
making a dug-out, and it was raining, of course. (_Note._--Whenever I
don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.") After sloshing
about in several primitive trenches in the vicinity of the spot where we
had fixed our best machine-gun position, my sergeant and I discovered a
sort of covered passage in a ditch in front of a communication trench.
It was a sort of emergency exit back from a row of ramshackle,
water-logged hovels in the ditch to the communication trench. We decided
to make use of this passage, and arranged things in such a way that by
scooping out the clay walls we made two caves, one behind the other. The
front one was about five yards from the machine gun, and you reached the
back cave by going through the outer one. It now being about 11 p.m.,
and having been for the last five hours perpetually on the scramble,
through trenches of all sorts, I drew myself into the inner cave to go
to sleep.
This little place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I
got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fishing out a
candle-end from my pocket, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a
cigarette. I now lay down and tried to size up the situation and life
in general.
Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles
and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud. This was
the first day; and, so far as I could see, the future contained nothing
but repetitions of the same thing, or worse.
[Illustration: rucksacks]
Nothing was to be heard except the occasional crack of the sniper's
shot, the dripping of the rain, and the low murmur of voices from the
outer cave.
In the narrow space beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a sodden
packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end
guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the
Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life,
and then--swish, bang--back to the reality that the damp clay wall is
only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am--that the Boche is
just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the
slightest chance of leaving except in an ambulance.
My machine-gun section for the gun near by lay in the front cave, a
couple of feet from me; their spasmodic talking gradually died away as,
one by one, they dropped off to sleep. One more indignant, hopeless
glare at the flickering candle-end, then I pinched the wick, curled up,
and went to sleep.
* * * * *
A sudden cold sort of peppermint sensation assailed me; I awoke and sat
up. My head cannoned off the clay ceiling, so I partially had to lie
down again.
I attempted to strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and
sodden. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer
cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours:
"We're bein' flooded out, sir; there's water a foot deep in this place
of ours."
That explains it. I feel all round the back of my greatcoat and find I
have been sleeping in a pool of water.
I crawled out of my inner chamber, and the whole lot of us dived through
the rapidly rising water into the ditch outside. I scrambled up on to
the top of the bank, and tried to focus the situation.
From inquiries and personal observation I found that the cause of the
tide rising was the fact that the Engineers had been draining the
trench, in the course of which process they had apparently struck a
spring of water.
We accepted the cause of the disaster philosophically, and immediately
discussed what was the best thing to be done. Action of some sort was
urgently necessary, as at present we were all sitting on the top of the
mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being
occasionally illuminated by a German star shell--more like a family
sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else.
We decided to make a dam. Having found an empty ration box and half a
bag of coke, we started on the job of trying to fence off the water from
our cave. After about an hour's struggle with the elements we at last
succeeded, with the aid of the ration box, the sack of coke and a few
tins of bully, in reducing the water level inside to six inches.
Here we were, now wetter than ever, cold as Polar bears, sitting in this
hygroscopic catacomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was
decided on. We had a fire bucket--it had started life as a biscuit
tin--a few bits of damp wood, but no coke. "We had some coke, I'm sure!
Why, of course--we built it into the dam!" Down came the dam, out came
the coke, and in came the water. However, we preferred the water to the
cold; so, finally, after many exasperating efforts, we got a fire going
in the bucket. Five minutes' bliss followed by disaster. The fire bucket
proceeded to emit such dense volumes of sulphurous smoke that in a few
moments we couldn't see a lighted match.
We stuck it a short time longer, then one by one dived into the water
and out into the air, shooting out of our mud hovel to the surface like
snakes when you pour water down their holes.
Time now 3 a.m. No sleep; rain, water, _plus_ smoke. A board meeting
held immediately decides to give up sleep and dug-outs for that night. A
motion to try and construct a chimney with an entrenching tool is
defeated by five votes to one ... dawn is breaking--my first night in
trenches comes to an end.