STOCKTAKING--FORTIFYING--NEBULOUS FRAGMENTS
Hudson, myself, his servant and my servant, all crushed into that house
that night. What a relief it was! We all slept in our greatcoats on the
floor, which was as hard as most floors are, and dirtier than the
generality; but being out of the water and able to stretch oneself at
full length made up for all deficiencies. Hudson and I both slept in the
perforated room; the servants in the larger chamber, near the fire
bucket.
I got up just before dawn as usual, and taking advantage of the grey
light, stole about the village and around the house, sizing up the
locality and seeing how my position stood with regard to the various
machine-gun emplacements. The dawn breaking, I had to skunk back into
the house again, as it was imperative to us to keep up the effect of
"Deserted house in village." We had to lurk inside all day, or if we
went out, creep about with enormous caution, and go off down a slight
slope at the back until we got to the edge of the wood which we knew
must be invisible to the enemy. I spent this day making a thorough
investigation of the house, creeping about all its component parts and
thinking out how we could best utilize its little advantages. Hudson had
crept out to examine the village by stealth, and I went on with plots
for fortifying the "castle," and for being able to make ourselves as
snug as we could in this frail shell of a cottage. I found a hole in the
floor boards of the attic and pulled myself up into it thereby.
This attic, as I have said before, had all one end blown away, but the
two sloping thatched sides remained. I cut a hole in one of these with
my pocket-knife, and thus obtained a view of the German trenches without
committing the error of looking out through the blown-out end, which
would have clearly shown an observer that the house was occupied.
Looking out through the slit I had made I obtained a panoramic view,
more or less, of the German trenches and our own. The view, in short,
was this: One saw the backs of our own trenches, then the "No man's
land" space of ground, and beyond that again the front of the German
trenches. This is best explained by the sketch map which I give on the
opposite page. I saw exactly how the house stood with regard to the
position, and also noticed that it had two dangerous sides, _i.e._, two
sides which faced the Germans, as our position formed two sides of a
triangle.
[Illustration: clogs and bucket]
I then proceeded to explore the house. In the walls I found a great many
bullets which had stuck in between the bricks of the solitary chimney or
imbedded themselves in the woodwork of the door or supporting posts at
the corners. Amongst the straw in the attic I found a typical selection
of pathetic little trifles: two pairs of very tiny clogs, evidently
belonging to some child about four or five years old, one or two old and
battered hats, and a quantity of spinning material and instruments. I
have the small clogs at my home now, the only souvenir I have of that
house at St. Yvon, which I have since learnt is no more, the Germans
having reduced it to a powdered up mound of brick-dust and charred
straw. Outside, and lying all around, were a miscellaneous collection of
goods. Half a sewing machine, a gaudy cheap metal clock, a sort of
mangle with strange wooden blades (which I subsequently cut off to make
shelves with), and a host of other dirty, rain-soaked odds and ends.
[Illustration: map of village]
Having concluded my examination I crept out back to the wood and took a
look at it all from there. "Yes," I thought to myself, "it's all very
nice, but, by Gad, we'll have to look out that they don't see us, and
get to think we're in this village, or they'll give us a warm time." It
had gone very much against my thought-out views on trench warfare,
coming to this house at all, for I had learnt by the experiences of
others that the best maxim to remember was "Don't live in a house."
The reason is not far to seek. There is something very attractive to
artillery about houses. They can range on them well, and they afford a
more definite target than an open trench. Besides, if you can spot a
house that contains, say, half a dozen to a dozen people, and just plop
a "Johnson" right amidships, it generally means "exit house and people,"
which, I suppose, is a desirable object to be attained, according to
twentieth century manners.
However, we had decided to live in the house, but as I crept back from
the wood, I determined to take a few elementary and common-sense
precautions. Hudson had returned when I got back, and together we
discussed the house, the position, and everything we could think of in
connection with the business, as we sat on the floor and had our midday
meal of bully beef and biscuits, rounded up by tea and plum and apple
jam spread neat from the tin on odd corners of broken biscuits. We
thoroughly talked over the question of possible fortifications and
precautions. I said, "What we really want is an emergency exit
somewhere, where we can stand a little chance, if they start to shell
us."
He agreed, and we both decided to pile up all the odd bricks, which were
lying outside at the back of the house, against the perforated wall, and
then sleep there in a little easier state of mind. We contented
ourselves with this little precaution to begin with, but later on, as we
lived in that house, we thought of larger and better ideas, and launched
out into all sorts of elaborate schemes, as I will show when the time
comes.
Anyway, for the first couple of sessions spent in that house in St.
Yvon, we were content with merely making ourselves bullet proof. The
whole day had to be spent with great caution indoors; any visit
elsewhere had to be conducted with still greater caution, as the one
great thing to be remembered was "Don't let 'em see we're in the
village." So we had long days, just lying around in the dirty old straw
and accumulated dirt of the cottage floor.
We both sat and talked and read a bit, sometimes slept, and through the
opening beneath the sack across the back door we watched the evenings
creeping on, and finally came the night, when we stole out like vampires
and went about our trench work. It was during these long, sad days that
my mind suddenly turned on making sketches. This period of my trench
life marked the start of _Fragments from France_, though it was not till
the end of February that a complete and presentable effort, suitable for
publication in a paper, emerged. It was nothing new to me to draw, as
for a very long time before the war I had drawn hundreds of sketches,
and had spent a great amount of time reading and learning about all
kinds of drawing and painting. I have always had an enormous interest in
Art; my room at home will prove that to anyone. Stacks of bygone efforts
of mine will also bear testimony to this. Yet it was not until January,
1915, that I had sufficiently resigned myself to my fate in the war, to
let my mind turn to my only and most treasured hobby. In this cottage at
St. Yvon the craving came back to me. I didn't fight against it, and
began by making a few pencil scribbles with a joke attached, and pinned
them up in our cracked shell of a room. Jokes at the expense of our
miserable surroundings they were, and these were the first "Fragments."
Several men in the local platoon collared these spasms, and soon after I
came across them, muddy and battered, in various dug-outs near by. After
these few sketches, which were done on rough bits of paper which I found
lying about, I started to operate on the walls. With some bits of
charcoal, I made a mess on all the four walls of our back room. There
was a large circular gash, made by a spent bullet I fancy, on one of the
walls, and by making it appear as though this mark was the centre point
of a large explosion, I gave an apparent velocity to the figure of a
German, which I drew above.
These daubs of mine provoked mirth to those who lived with me, and
others who occasionally paid us visits. I persisted, and the next
"masterpiece" was the figure of a soldier (afterwards Private Blobs, of
"Fragments") sitting up a tree staring straight in front of him into the
future, whilst a party of corpulent Boches are stalking towards him
through the long grass and barbed wire. He knows there's something not
quite nice going on, but doesn't like to look down. This was called "The
Listening Post," and the sensation described was so familiar to most
that this again was apparently a success. So what with scribbling,
reading and sleeping, not to mention time occupied in consuming plum and
apple jam, bully, and other delicacies which a grateful country has
ordained as the proper food for soldiers, we managed to pull through our
days. Two doses of the trenches were done like this, and then came the
third time up, when a sudden burst of enthusiasm and an increasing
nervousness as to the safety of ourselves and our house, caused us to
launch out into really trying to fortify the place. The cause of this
decision to do something, to our abode was, I think, attributable to the
fact that for about a fortnight the Germans had taken to treating us to
a couple of dozen explosions each morning--the sort of thing one doesn't
like just before breakfast; but if you've got to have it, the thing
obviously to do is to try and defend yourself; so the next time, up we
started.