TERRORS OF THE NIGHT
Buzz fly and gad fly, dragon fly and blue,
When you're in the trenches come and visit you,
They revel in your butter-dish and riot on your ham,
Drill upon the army cheese and loot the army jam.
They're with you in the dusk and the dawning and the noon,
They come in close formation, in column and platoon.
There's never zest like Tommy's zest when these have got to die:
For Tommy takes his puttees off and straffs the blooming fly.
"Some are afraid of one thing, and some are afraid of another," said
Stoner, perching himself on the banquette and looking through the
periscope at the enemy's lines. "For myself I don't like
shells--especially when in the open, even if they are bursting half a
mile away."
"Is that what you fear most?" I asked.
"No, the rifle bullet is a thing I dread; the saucy little beggar is
always on the go."
"What do you fear most, Goliath?" I asked the massive soldier who was
cleaning his bayonet with a strip of emery cloth.
"Bombs," said the giant, "especially the one I met in the trench (p. 111)
when I was going round the traverse. It lay on the floor in front of
me. I hardly knew what it was at first, but a kind of instinct told me
to stand and gaze at it. The Germans had just flung it into the trench
and there it lay, the bounder, making up its mind to explode. It was
looking at me, I could see its eyes--"
"Git out," said Bill, who was one of the party.
"Of course, you couldn't see the thing's eyes," said Goliath, "you
lack imagination. But I saw its eyes, and the left one was winking at
me. I almost turned to jelly with fear, and Lord knows how I got back
round the corner. I did, however, and then the bomb went bang! 'Twas
some bang that, I often hear it in my sleep yet."
"We'll never hear the end of that blurry bomb," said Bill. "For my own
part I am more afraid of ----"
"What?"
"---- the sergeant-major than anythink in this world or in the next!"
I have been thrilled with fear three times since I came out here, fear
that made me sick and cold. I have the healthy man's dislike of (p. 112)
death. I have no particular desire to be struck by a shell or a bullet,
and up to now I have had only a nodding acquaintance with either. I am
more or less afraid of them, but they do not strike terror into me.
Once, when we were in the trenches, I was sentry on the parapet about
one in the morning. The night was cold, there was a breeze crooning
over the meadows between the lines, and the air was full of the sharp,
penetrating odour of aromatic herbs. I felt tired and was half asleep
as I kept a lazy look-out on the front where the dead are lying on the
grass. Suddenly, away on the right, I heard a yell, a piercing,
agonising scream, something uncanny and terrible. A devil from the pit
below getting torn to pieces could not utter such a weird cry. It
thrilled me through and through. I had never heard anything like it
before, and hope I shall never hear such a cry again. I do not know
what it was, no one knew, but some said that it might have been the
yell of a Gurkha, his battle cry, when he slits off an opponent's
head.
When I think of it, I find that my three thrills would be denied to a
deaf man. The second occurred once when we were in reserve. The stench
of the house in which the section was billeted was terrible. By (p. 113)
day it was bad, but at two o'clock in the morning it was devilish. I
awoke at that hour and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The
place was so eerie, the church in the rear with the spire battered
down, the churchyard with the bones of the dead hurled broadcast by
concussion shells, the ruined houses.... As I stood there I heard a
groan as if a child were in pain, then a gurgle as if some one was
being strangled, and afterwards a number of short, weak, infantile
cries that slowly died away into silence.
Perhaps the surroundings had a lot to do with it, for I felt strangely
unnerved. Where did the cries come from? It was impossible to say. It
might have been a cat or a dog, all sounds become different in the
dark. I could not wander round to seek the cause. Houses were battered
down, rooms blocked up, cellars filled with rubble. There was nothing
to do but to go back to bed. Maybe it was a child abandoned by a
mother driven insane by fear. Terrible things happen in war.
The third fear was three cries, again in the dark, when a neighbouring
battalion sent out a working party to dig a sap in front of our lines.
I could hear their picks and shovels busy in front, and suddenly (p. 114)
somebody screamed "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the first loud and piercing, the
others weaker and lower. But the exclamation told of intense agony.
Afterwards I heard that a boy had been shot through the belly.
"I never like the bloomin' trenches," said Bill. "It almost makes me
pray every time I go up."
"They're not really so bad," said Pryor, "some of them are quite cushy
(nice)."
"Cushy!" exclaimed Bill, flicking the ash from his cigarette with the
tip of his little finger. "Nark it, Pryor, nark it, blimey, they are
cushy if one's not caught with a shell goin' in, if one's not bombed
from the sky or mined from under the ground, if a sniper doesn't snipe
'arf yer 'ead off, or gas doesn't send you to 'eaven, or flies send
you to the 'orspital with disease, or rifle grenades, pipsqueaks, and
whizz-bangs don't blow your brains out when you lie in the bottom of
the trench with yer nose to the ground like a rat in a trap. If it
wasn't for these things, and a few more, the trench wouldn't be such a
bad locality."
He put a finger and a thumb into my cigarette case, drew out a fag,
and lit it off the stump of his old one. He blew a puff of smoke (p. 115)
into the air, stuck his thumbs behind his cartridge pouches, and fixed
a look of pity on Pryor.
"What are the few more things that you did not mention, Bill?" I
asked.
"Few! Blimey, I should say millions. There's the stink of the dead men
as well as the stink of the cheese, there's the dug-outs with the rain
comin' in and the muck fallin' into your tea, the vermin, the bloke
snorin' as won't let you to sleep, the fatigues that come when ye're
goin' to 'ave a snooze, the rations late arrivin' and 'arf poisonin'
you when they come, the sweepin' and brushin' of the trenches, work
for a 'ousemaid and not a soldier, and the ----"
Bill paused, sweating at every pore.
"Strike me ginger, balmy, and stony," Bill concluded, "if it were not
for these few things the life in the trenches would be one of the
cushiest in the world."