FIRST BLOOD
The nations like Kilkenny cats,
Full of hate that never dies out,
Tied tail to tail, hung o'er a rope,
Still strive to tear each other's eyes out.
The company came to a halt in the village; we marched for three miles,
and the morning being a hot one we were glad to fall out and lie down
on the pavement, packs well up under our shoulders and our legs
stretched out at full length over the kerbstone into the gutter. The
sweat stood out in beads on the men's foreheads and trickled down
their cheeks on to their tunics. The white dust of the roadway settled
on boots, trousers, and putties, and rested in fine layers on
haversack folds and cartridge pouches. Rifles and bayonets, spotless
in the morning's inspection, had lost all their polished lustre and
were gritty to the touch. We carried a heavy load, two hundred rounds
of ball cartridge, a loaded rifle with five rounds in magazine, a pack
stocked with overcoat, spare underclothing, and other field (p. 050)
necessaries, a haversack containing twenty-four hours rations, and
sword and entrenching tool per man. We were equipped for battle and
were on our way towards the firing line.
A low-set man with massive shoulders, bull-neck and heavy jowl had
just come out of an _estaminet_, a mess-tin of beer in his hand, and
knife and fork stuck in his putties.
"Going up to the slaughter line, mateys?" he enquired, an amused smile
hovering about his eyes, which took us all in with one penetrating
glance.
"Yes," I replied. "Have you been long out here?"
"About a matter of nine months."
"You've been lucky," said Mervin, my mate.
"I haven't gone West yet, if that's what you mean," was the answer.
"'Oo are you?"
"The London Irish."
"Territorials?"
"That's us," someone said.
"First time up this way?"
"First time."
"I knew that by the size of your packs," said the man, the smile
reaching his lips. "Bloomin' pack-horses you look like. If you want a
word of advice, sling your packs over a hedge, keep a tight grip (p. 051)
of your mess-tin, and ram your spoon and fork into your putties. My
pack went West at Mons."
"You were there then?"
"Blimey, yes." was the answer.
"How did you like it?"
"Not so bad," said the man. "'Ave a drink and pass the mess-tin round.
There is only one bad shell, that's the one that 'its you, and if
you're unlucky it'll come your way. The same about the bullet with
your number on it; it can't miss you if it's made for you. And if ever
you go into a charge--Think of your pals, matey!" he roared at the man
who was greedily gulping down the contents of the mess-tin, "You're
swigging all the stuff yourself. For myself I don't care much for this
beer, it has no guts in it, one good English pint is worth an ocean of
this dashed muck. Good-bye"--we were moving off, "and good luck to
you!"
Mervin, perspiring profusely, marched by my side. He and I have been
great comrades, we have worked, eaten, and slept together, and
committed sin in common against regimental regulations. Mervin has
been a great traveller, he has dug for gold in the Yukon, grown
oranges in Los Angeles, tapped for rubber in Camerango (I don't (p. 052)
know where the place is, but I love the name), and he can eat a tin of
bully beef, and relish the meal. He is the only man in our section who
can enjoy it, one of us cares only for cheese, and few grind biscuits
when they can beg bread.
A battalion is divided into four companies, a company contains four
platoons made up of sections of unequal strength; our section
consisted of thirteen--there are only four boys left now, Mervin has
been killed, five have been wounded, two have become stretcher
bearers, and one has left us to join another company in which one of
his mates is placed. Poor Mervin! How sad it was to lose him, and much
sadder is it for his sweetheart in England. He was engaged; often he
told me of his dreams of a farm, a quiet cottage and a garden at home
when the war came to an end. Somewhere in a soldier's grave he sleeps.
I know not where he lies, but one day, if the fates spare me, I will
pay a visit to the resting-place of a true comrade and a staunch
friend.
Outside the village we formed into single file. It was reported that
the enemy shelled the road daily, and only three days before the Royal
Engineers lost thirty-seven men when going up to the trenches on the
same route. In the village all was quiet, the _cafés_ were open, (p. 053)
and old men, women, and boys were about their daily work as usual.
There were very few young men of military age in the place; all were
engaged in the business of war.
A file marched on each side of the road. Mervin was in front of me;
Stoner, a slender youth, tall as a lance and lithe as a poplar,
marched behind, smoking a cigarette and humming a tune. He worked as a
clerk in a large London club whose members were both influential and
wealthy. When he joined the army all his pay was stopped, and up to
the present he has received from his employers six bars of chocolate
and four old magazines. His age is nineteen, and his job is being kept
open for him. He is one of the cheeriest souls alive, a great worker,
and he loves to listen to the stories which now and again I tell to
the section. When at St. Albans he spent six weeks in hospital
suffering from tonsilitis. The doctor advised him to stay at home and
get his discharge; he is still with us, and once, during our heaviest
bombardment, he slept for a whole eight hours in his dug-out. All the
rest of us remained awake, feeling certain that our last hour had
come.
Teak and Kore, two bosom chums, marched on the other side of the (p. 054)
road. Both are children almost; they may be nineteen, but neither look
it; Kore laughs deep down in his throat, and laughs heartiest when his
own jokes amuse the listeners. He is not fashioned in a strong mould,
but is an elegant marcher, and light of limb; he may be a clerk in
business, but as he is naturally secretive we know nothing of his
profession. Kore is also a punster who makes abominable puns; these
amuse nobody except, perhaps, himself. Teak, a good fellow, is known
to us as Bill Sykes. He has a very pale complexion, and has the most
delightful nose in all the world; it is like a little white potato.
Bill is a good-humored Cockney, and is eternally involved in argument.
He carries a Jew's harp and a mouth-organ, and when not fingering one
he is blowing music-hall tunes out of the other.
Goliath, six foot three of bone and muscle, is a magnificent animal.
The gods forgot little of their old-time cunning in the making of him,
in the forging of his shoulders, massive as a bull's withers, in the
shaping of his limbs, sturdy as pillars of granite and supple as
willows, in the setting of his well-poised head, his heavy jaw, (p. 055)
and muscled neck. But the gods seem to have grown weary of a momentous
masterpiece when they came to the man's eyes, and Goliath wears glasses.
For all that he is a good marksman and, strange to say, he delights in
the trivialities of verse, and carries an earmarked Tennyson about
with him.
Pryor is a pessimist, an artist, a poet, a writer of stories; he
drifted into our little world on the march and is with us still. He
did not like his previous section and applied for a transfer into
ours. He gloats over sunsets, colours, unconventional doings, hopes
that he will never marry a girl with thick ankles, and is certain that
he will never live to see the end of the War. Pryor, Teak, Kore, and
Stoner have never used a razor; they are as beardless as babes.
We were coming near the trenches. In front, the two lines of men
stretched on as far as the eye could see; we were near the rear and
singing _Macnamara's Band_, a favourite song with our regiment.
Suddenly a halt was called. A heap of stones bounded the roadway, and
we sat down, laying our rifles on the fine gravel.
The crash came from the distance, probably five hundred yards in front,
and it sounded like a waggon-load of rubble being emptied on a (p. 056)
landing and clattering down a flight of stairs.
"What's that?" asked Stoner, flicking the ash from the tip of his
cigarette with the little finger.
"Some transport has broken down."
"Perhaps it's a shell," I ventured, not believing what I said.
"Oh! your grandmother."
Whistling over our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a
wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side
of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air,
curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates.
Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all the blood had rushed away
from his face. Teak's mouth was a little open, his cigarette, sticking
to his upper lip, hung down quivering, and the ash was falling on his
tunic; a smile almost of contempt played on Pryor's face, and Goliath
yawned. At the time I wondered if he were posing. He spoke:--
"There's only one bad shell, you know," he said. "It hasn't come this
way yet. See that woman?" He pointed at the field where the shell (p. 057)
had exploded. At the far end a woman was working with a hoe, her head
bowed over her work, and her back bent almost double. Two children, a
boy and a girl, came along the road hand in hand, and deep in a
childish discussion. The world, the fighting men, and the bursting
shells were lost to them. They were intent on their own little
affairs. For ourselves we felt more than anything else a sensation of
surprise--surprise because we were not more afraid of the bursting
shrapnel.
"Quick march!"
We got to our feet and resumed our journey. We were now passing
through a village where several houses had been shattered, and one was
almost levelled to the ground. But beside it, almost intact, although
not a pane of glass remained in the windows, stood a _café_. A pale
stick of a woman in a white apron, with arms akimbo, stood on the
threshold with a toddling infant tugging at her petticoats.
Several French soldiers were inside, seated round a table, drinking
beer and smoking. One man, a tall, angular fellow with a heavy beard,
seemed to be telling a funny story; all his mates were laughing
heartily. A horseman came up at this moment, one of our soldiers, (p. 058)
and his horse was bleeding at the rump, where a red, ugly gash showed
on the flesh.
"Just a splinter of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The
one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field
where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler."
"What did you think of it," I called to Stoner.
"I didn't know what to think first," was the answer, "then when I came
to myself I thought it might have done for me, and I got a kind of
shock just like I'd get when I have a narrow shave with a 'bus in
London."
"And you, Pryor?"
"I went cold all over for a minute."
"Bill?"
"Oh! Blast them is what I say!" was his answer. "If it's going to do
you in 'twill do you in, and that's about the end of it. Well, sing a
song to cheer us up," and without another word he began to bellow out
one of our popular rhymes.
Oh! the Irish boys they are the boys
To drive the Kaiser balmy.
And _we'll_ smash up that fool Von Kluck
And all his bloomin' army!
We came to a halt again, this time alongside a Red Cross motor (p. 059)
ambulance. In front, with the driver, one of our boys was seated; his
coat sleeve ripped from the shoulder, and blood trickling down his arm
on to his clothes; inside, on the seat, was another with his right leg
bare and a red gash showing above the knee. He looked dazed, but was
smoking a cigarette.
"Stopped a packet, matey?" Stoner enquired.
"Got a scratch, but it's not worth while talking about," was the
answer. "I'll remember you to your English friends when I get back."
"You're all right, matey," said a regular soldier who stood on the
pavement, addressing the wounded man. "I'd give five pounds for a
wound like that. You're damned lucky, and its your first journey!"
"Have you been long out here?" asked Teak.
"Only about nine months," replied the regular. "There are seven of the
old regiment left, and it makes me wish this damned business was over
and done with."
"Ye don't like war, then."
"Like it! Who likes it? only them that's miles away from the stinks,
and cold, and heat, and everything connected with the ---- work." (p. 060)
"But this is a holy war," said Pryor, an inscrutable smile playing
round his lips. "God's with us, you know."
"We're placing more reliance on gunpowder than on God," I remarked.
"Blimey! talk about God!" said the regular.
"There's more of the damned devil in this than there is of anything
else. They take us out of the trenches for a rest, send us to church,
and tell us to love our neighbours. Blimey! next day they send you up
to the trenches again and tell you to kill like 'ell."
"Have you ever been in a bayonet charge?" asked Stoner.
"Four of them," we were told, "and I don't like the blasted work,
never could stomach it."
The ambulance waggon whirred off, and the march was resumed.
We were now about a mile from the enemy's lines, and well into the
province of death and desolation. We passed the last ploughman. He was
a mute, impotent figure, a being in rags, guiding his share, and
turning up little strips of earth on his furrowed world. The old home,
now a jumble of old bricks getting gradually hidden by the green
grasses, the old farm holed by a thousand shells, the old plough, (p. 061)
and the old horses held him in bondage. There was no other world for
the man; he was a dumb worker, crawling along at the rear of the
destructive demon War, repairing, as far as he was able, the damage
which had been done.
We came to a village, literally buried. Holes dug by high explosive
shells in the roadway were filled up with fallen masonry. This was a
point at which the transports stopped. Beyond this, man was the beast
of burden--the thing that with scissors-like precision cut off, pace
by pace, the distance between him and the trenches. There is something
pathetic in the forward crawl, in the automatic motion of boots rising
and falling at the same moment; the gleaming sword handles waving
backwards and forwards over the hip, and, above all, in the
stretcher-bearers with stretchers slung over their shoulders marching
along in rear. The march to battle breathes of something of an
inevitable event, of forces moving towards a destined end. All
individuality is lost, the thinking ego is effaced, the men are spokes
in a mighty wheel, one moving because the other must, all fearing
death as hearty men fear it, and all bent towards the same goal.
We were marched to a red brick building with a shrapnel-shivered (p. 062)
roof, and picks and shovels were handed out to us.
"You've got to help to widen the communication trench to-day!" we were
told by an R.E. officer who had taken charge of our platoon.
As we were about to start a sound made quite familiar to me what time
I was in England as a marker at our rifle butts, cut through the air,
and at the same moment one of the stray dogs which haunt their old and
now unfamiliar localities like ghosts, yelled in anguish as he was
sniffing the gutter, and dropped limply to the pavement. A French
soldier who stood in a near doorway pulled the cigarette from his
bearded lips, pointed it at the dead animal, and laughed. A comrade
who was with him shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.
"That dashed sniper again!" said the R.E. officer.
"Where is he?" somebody asked innocently.
"I wish we knew," said the officer. "He's behind our lines somewhere,
and has been at this game for weeks. Keep clear of the roadway!" he
cried, as another bullet swept through the air, and struck the wall
over the head of the laughing Frenchman, who was busily rolling (p. 063)
a fresh cigarette.
Four of our men stopped behind to bury the dog, the rest of us found
our way into the communication trench. A signboard at the entrance,
with the words "To Berlin," stated in trenchant words underneath,
"This way to the war."
The communication trench, sloping down from the roadway, was a narrow
cutting dug into the cold, glutinous earth, and at every fifty paces
in alternate sides a manhole, capable of holding a soldier with full
equipment, was hollowed out in the clay. In front shells were exploding,
and now and again shrapnel bullets and casing splinters sung over our
heads, for the most part delving into the field on either side, but
sometimes they struck the parapets and dislodged a pile of earth and
dust, which fell on the floor of the trench. The floor was paved with
bricks, swept clean, and almost free from dirt; there was a general
air of cleanliness about the place, the level floor, the smooth sides,
and the well-formed parapets. An Engineer walking along the top, and
well back from the side, counted us as we walked along in line with
him. He had taken charge of our section as a working party, and when
he turned to me in making up his tally I saw that he wore a ribbon (p. 064)
on his breast.
"He has got the Distinguished Conduct Medal," Mervin whispered. "How
did you get it?" he called up to the man.
"Just the luck of war," was the modest answer. "Eleven, twelve,
thirteen, that will be quite sufficient for me. Are you just new out?"
he asked.
"Oh, we've been a few weeks in training here."
We met another Engineer coming out, his face was dripping with blood,
and he had a khaki handkerchief tied round his hand.
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"Oh, a damned pip-squeak (a light shrapnel shell) caught me on the
parapet," he laughed, squeezing into a manhole. "Two of your boys have
copped it bad along there. No, I don't think it was your fellows. Who
are you?"
"The London Irish."
"Oh! 'twasn't you, 'twas the ----," he said, rubbing a miry hand across
the jaw, dripping with blood, "I think the two poor devils are done
in. Oh, this isn't much," he continued, taking out a spare handkerchief
and wiping his face, "'twon't bring me back to England, worse (p. 065)
luck! Are you from Chelsea?"
"Yes."
"What about the chances for the Cup Final?" he asked, and somebody
took up the thread of conversation as I edged on to the spot where the
two men lay.
They were side by side, face upwards, in a disused trench that
branched off from ours; the hand of one lay across the arm of the
other, and the legs of both were curled up to their knees, almost
touching their chests. They were mere boys, clean of lip and chin and
smooth of forehead, no wrinkles had ever traced a furrow there. One's
hat was off, it lay on the floor under his head. A slight red spot
showed on his throat, there was no trace of a wound. His mate's
clothes were cut away across the belly, the shrapnel had entered there
under the navel, and a little blood was oozing out on to the trouser's
waist, and giving a darkish tint to the brown of the khaki. Two
stretcher-bearers were standing by, feeling, if one could judge by the
dejected look on their faces, impotent in the face of such a calamity.
Two first field dressings, one open and the contents trod on the
ground, the other fresh as when it left the hands of the makers, (p. 066)
lay idle beside the dead man. A little distance to the rear a
youngster was looking vacantly across the parapet, his eyes fixed on
the ruined church in front, but his mind seemed to be deep in
something else, a problem which he failed to solve.
One of the stretcher-bearers pointed at the youth, then at the hatless
body in the trench.
"Brothers," he said.
For a moment a selfish feeling of satisfaction welled up in our lungs.
Teak gave it expression, his teeth chattering even as he spoke, "It
might be two of us, but it isn't," and somehow with the thought came a
sensation of fear. It might be our turn next, as we might go under
to-day or to-morrow; who could tell when the turn of the next would
come? And all that day I was haunted by the figure of the youth who
was staring so vacantly over the rim of the trench, heedless of the
bursting shells and indifferent to his own safety.
The enemy shelled persistently. Their objective was the ruined church,
but most of their shells flew wide or went over their mark, and made
matters lively in Harley Street, which ran behind the house of God.
"Why do they keep shellin' the church?" Bill asked the engineer, (p. 067)
who never left the parapet even when the shells were bursting barely a
hundred yards away. Like the rest of us, Bill took the precaution to
duck when he heard the sound of the explosion.
"That's what they always do," said Stoner, "I never believed it even
when I read it in the papers at home, but now--"
"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer,
"and they always keep potting at the place."
"But have we?"
"I dunno."
"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of
mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes
the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"
"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary
way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.
"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.
"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go
through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before
this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068)
continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench,
"never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when
you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."
In front a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it
up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down
a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went
back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men
called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our
potatoes, and tea in the open. Shells came our way continually, but
for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion
"stopped a packet."