Some officers like putting up barbed wire, not so much, I think, from
any real deep-seated affection for the stuff itself, or from any
confidence in the protection it affords--its disintegration being one of
the assumed preliminaries of an attack--as for the satisfaction of
writing in the Weekly Work Report, "In front of X276 we put up 97 rolls
of barbed wire; in front of S279, 342 rolls; in front of X276a, 3,692
rolls ..." and so on.
An officer who overdoes this sport of kings gets a trench a bad name; it
becomes a trench with a great wiring tradition to be maintained. One of
us took over a legacy from one of these barbarians last trip. H.Q. had
got wind of his zeal and was determined that we for our part should not
be idle. It was murmured in billets, it was whispered upon the _pavé_,
that for the officer taking over B116 there was a great wiring toward.
The officer taking over B116 hated wiring worse than bully beef. He said
you either die of pneumonia through standing still pretending to
supervise, or tire yourself to bits and earn the undying contempt of
your party by pretending to take an active share in the game.
Howbeit he took over B116 and was told by the Next Man Up to wire to his
heart's content. He asked the Next Man Up just where he wanted the
wiring to be performed. The Next Man Up waved an airy arm in the
direction of the Hun, and observed, "Out there, of course. Think we
wanted you to wire Hampstead Heath?" Then the B116 officer took the
N.M.U. to the parapet and showed him waving acres of high wire, low
wire, loose wire, tight wire, thick wire, thin wire, two ply, three ply,
and four ply, plain and barbed, running out and out into the dusk.
The N.M.U. gave it all a dispassionate sort of look, and merely said,
"Oh, go out in front of all that. The Bosch is miles off just here."
Now B116 is a front line trench in a re-entrant. The Hun trench facing
it is also in a re-entrant, the original front lines on both sides
having been crumpled and flooded out of existence. So when night fell
the officer of B116 took his party and set out, and he went on and on,
and then on, and there was still wire. And he went on and on and on. And
there were bits of old trenches and saps and listening posts, but still
wire. And he went on and on and there were more bits of trench and more
wire. And he went on and on--and I know this is true because he told
me--and on and on until (no, he did not come back to our own trench, he
had a compass) an exceptionally good lot of fireworks went up, and he
was fired at and bombed by Germans behind and Germans in front and
Germans on either side, and, mind you, he was still in the wire. So he
waited until all the Germans appeared to have killed each other or gone
to sleep, and brought his party laboriously back to B116, from which he
sent to the Next Man Up a message which ran: "If you want me to wire
Bosch third line, kindly arrange for artillery preparation."
It is some days now since they put up any wire in front of B116.
It is a fact well known to all our most widely-circulated photographic
dailies that these German gunners waste a power of ammunition. The only
criticism I have to make is that I wish they would waste it more
carefully. The way they go strewing the stuff about round us is such
that they're bound to hit someone or something before long. Still we
have only two more days in, and they seldom give us more than ten
thousand shells a day.
We are in billets now, and frankly, I am beginning to be very exercised
about my boots. When I say "my boots" I mean rather the boots concerning
me than "the boots that are mine." I wanted, some couple of months ago,
a new pair of boots. I told the Quartermaster, and he looked at my then
boots superciliously and said he could quite believe it.
I rashly left it at that, imagining something would happen. A man like a
quartermaster, who rolls in boots, would, I felt, think nothing of
sending along a dozen pairs before breakfast, with a chit telling me to
give away what I couldn't use. But no. It seems every boot in his store
was numbered.
I approached him again, and demanded boots, soberly, seriously and
strenuously, I even offered to pay for them. This appeared to cheer him
a little, and he murmured something about Army Form 247 x2b, not at
present in stock, but indispensable to the issue of the most negligible
boot on payment. My further efforts were, owing to exigencies of my
military situation, conducted through emissaries. My servant would
demand of his company agent nightly, what about them boots? And the
company agent would reply--also nightly--that, if the officer would send
his size down, the matter would be put through at once. For five nights
running my size in boots went down with the empty water tins. On the
last night I added a sketch of my feet and of my present boots, with
scale of kilometres subjoined, a brief history of footgear in Flanders
from pre-Cæsarian times to the present day, one piece of broken lace
from the old boots, and anything else that struck me as likely to put
the matter a little further through.
The lace appeared to put quite a new idea into their heads. The advance
booting agent now seemed to think that if I had some boots already I
might get the new pair by a process known as exchange, which takes less
time and has the additional advantage of not costing anything. This
struck them as an excellent new game for several days while they were
deciding which was the right army form for an officer desirous of
exchanging boots. At last all appeared fixed up. I came back into
billets with every confidence of finding a couple of boots waiting for
me on the mat. Of course I didn't really _believe_ they would be there;
I only had every confidence. Anyhow they were not.
This morning the Quartermaster called in person. He wanted to know what
size I took in boots.