EVERYDAY LIFE AT THE FRONT
There's the butter, gad, and horse-fly,
The blow-fly and the blue,
The fine fly and the coarse fly,
But never flew a worse fly
Of all the flies that flew
Than the little sneaky black fly
That gobbles up our ham,
The beggar's not a slack fly,
He really is a crack fly,
And wolfs the soldiers jam.
So strafe that fly! Our motto
Is "strafe him when you can."
He'll die because he ought to,
He'll go because he's got to,
So at him every man!
What time we have not been in the trenches we have spent marching out
or marching back to them, or sleeping in billets at the rear and going
out as working parties, always ready to move at two hours' notice by
day and one hour's notice by night.
I got two days C.B. at La Beuvriere; because I did not come out on
parade one morning. I really got out of bed very early, and went for a
walk. Coming to a pond where a number of frogs were hopping from (p. 229)
the bank into the water, I sat down and amused myself by watching them
staring at me out of the pond; their big, intelligent eyes full of
some wonderful secret. They interested and amused me, probably I
interested and amused them, one never knows. Then I read a little and
time flew by. On coming back I was told to report at the Company
orderly room. Two days C.B.
I got into trouble at another time. I was on sentry go at a dingy
place, a village where the people make their living by selling bad
beer and weak wine to one another. Nearly every house in the place is
an _estaminet_. I slept in the guard-room and as my cartridge pouches
had an unholy knack of prodding a stomach which rebelled against
digesting bully and biscuit, I unloosed my equipment buckles. The
Visiting Rounds found me imperfectly dressed, my shoulder flaps
wobbled, my haversack hung with a slant and the cartridge pouches
leant out as if trying to spring on my feet. The next evening I was up
before the C.O.
My hair was rather long, and as it was well-brushed it looked imposing.
So I thought in the morning when I looked in the platoon mirror--the
platoon mirror was an inch square glass with a jagged edge. My (p. 230)
imposing hair caught the C.O.'s eye the moment I entered the orderly
room. "Don't let me see you with hair like that again," he began and
read out the charge. I forget the words which hinted that I was a
wrong-doer in the eyes of the law military; the officers were there,
every officer in the battalion, they all looked serious and resigned.
It seemed as if their minds had been made up on something relating to
me.
The orderly officer who apprehended me in the act told how he did it,
speaking as if from a book but consulting neither notes nor papers.
"What have you to say?" asked the C.O. looking at me.
I had nothing particular to say, my thoughts were busy on an enigma
that might not interest him, namely, why a young officer near him kept
rubbing a meditative chin with a fugitive finger, and why that finger
came down so swiftly when the C.O.'s eyes were turned towards the
young man. I replied to the question by saying "Guilty."
"We know you are guilty," said the C.O. and gave me a little lecture.
I had a reputation, the young men of the regiment looked up to me, an
older man; and by setting a good example I could do a great deal (p. 231)
of good, &c., &c. The lecture was very trying, but the rest of the
proceedings were interesting. I was awarded three extra guards. I only
did one of them.
We hung on the fringe of the Richebourge _mêlée_, but were not called
into play.
"What was it like?" we asked the men marching back from battle in
the darkness and the rain. There was no answer, they were too weary
even to speak.
"How did you get along in the fight?" I called to one who straggled
along in the rear, his head sunk forward on his breast, his knees
bending towards the ground.
"Tsch! Tsch!" he answered, his voice barely rising above a whisper as
his boots paced out in a rhythm of despair to some village at the
rear.
There in the same place a night later, we saw soldiers' equipments
piled on top of one another and stretching for yards on either side of
the road: packs, haversacks, belts, bayonets, rifles, and cartridge
pouches. The equipments were taken in from the field of battle, the
war-harness of men now wounded and dead was out of use for the moment,
other soldiers would wear them presently and make great fight in them.
Once at Cuinchy, Section 3 went out for a wash in a dead stream (p. 232)
that once flowed through our lines and those of the Germans. The water
was dirty and it was a miracle that the frogs which frisked in it were
so clean.
"It's too dirty to wash there," said Pryor.
"A change of dirt is 'olesome," said Bill, placing his soap on the
bank and dipping his mess tin in the water. As he bent down the body
of a dead soldier inflated by its own rottenness bubbled up to the
surface. We gave up all idea of washing. Stoner who was on the
opposite bank tried to jump across at that moment. Miscalculating the
distance, he fell short and into the water. We dragged him out
spluttering and I regret to say we laughed, almost heartily. That
night when we stood to arms in the trenches, waiting for an attack
that did not come off, Stoner stood to with his rifle, an overcoat, a
pair of boots and a pair of socks as his sole uniform.
How many nights have we marched under the light of moon and stars,
sleepy and dog-weary, in song or in silence, as the mood prompted us
or the orders compelled us, up to the trenches and back again! We have
slept in the same old barns with cobwebs in the roof and straw (p. 233)
deep on the floor. We have sung songs, old songs that float on
the ocean of time like corks and find a cradle on every wave; new
songs that make a momentary ripple on the surface and die as their
circle extends outwards, songs of love and lust, of murder and great
adventure. We have gambled, won one another's money and lost to one
another again, we have had our disputes, but were firm in support of
any member of our party who was flouted by any one who was not one of
WE. "Section 3, right or wrong" was and is our motto. And the section
dwindles, the bullet and shell has been busy in lessening our
strength, for that is the way of war.
When in the trenches Bill and Kore amuse themselves by potting all day
long at the German lines. A conversation like the following may be
often heard.
Bill:--"Blimey, I see a 'ead."
Kore:--"Fire then." (Bill fires a shot.) "Got him?"
Bill:--"No blurry fear. The 'ead was a sandbag. I'll bet yer the shot
they send back will come nearer me than you. Bet yer a copper."
Kore:--"Done." (A bullet whistles by on the right of Bill's head.) (p. 234)
"I think they're firing at you."
Bill:--"Not me, matey, but you. It's their aiming that's bad. 'And
over the coin." (Enter an officer.)
Officer:--"Don't keep your heads over the parapet, you'll get sniped.
Keep under cover as much as possible."
Bill:--"Orl right, Sir."
Kore:--"Yes, sir." (Exit Officer.)
Bill:--"They say there's a war 'ere."
Kore:--"It's only a rumour."
At Cuinchy where the German trenches are hardly a hundred yards away
from ours, the firing from the opposite trenches ceased for a moment
and a voice called across.
"What about the Cup Final?" It was then the finish of the English
football season.
"Chelsea lost," said Bill, who was a staunch supporter of that team.
"Hard luck!" came the answer from the German trench and firing was
resumed. But Bill used his rifle no more until we changed into a new
locality. "A blurry supporter of blurry Chelsea," he said. "'E must be
a damned good sort of sausage-eater, that feller. If ever I meet 'im
in Lunnon after the war, I'm goin' to make 'im as drunk as a (p. 235)
public-'ouse fly."
"What are you going to do after the war?" I asked.
He rubbed his eyes which many sleepless nights in a shell-harried
trench had made red and watery.
"What will I do?" he repeated. "I'll get two beds," he said, "and have
a six months' snooze, and I'll sleep in one bed while the other's
being made, matey."
In trench life many new friends are made and many old friendships
renewed. We were nursing a contingent of Camerons, men new to the
grind of trench work, and most of them hailing from Glasgow and the
West of Scotland. On the morning of the second day one of them said to
me, "Big Jock MacGregor wants to see you."
"Who's Big Jock?" I asked.
"He used to work on the railway at Greenock," I was told, and off I
went to seek the man.
I found him eating bully beef and biscuit on the parapet. He was
spotlessly clean, he had not yet stuck his spoon down the rim of his
stocking where his skein should have been, he had a table knife (p. 236)
and fork (things that we, old soldiers, had dispensed with ages ago),
in short, he was a hat-box fellow, togged up to the nines, and as yet,
green to the grind of war.
His age might be forty, he looked fifty, a fatherly sort of man, a
real block of Caledonian Railway thrown, tartanised, into a trench.
"How are you, Jock?" I said. I had never met him before.
"Are you Pat MacGill?"
I nodded assent.
"Man, I've often heard of you, Pat," he went on, "I worked on the Sou'
West, and my brother's an engine driver on the Caly. He reads your
songs a'most every night. He says there are only two poets he'd give a
fling for--that's you and Anderson, the man who wrote _Cuddle Doon_."
"How do you like the trenches, Jock?"
"Not so bad, man, not so bad," he said.
"Killed any one yet?" I asked.
"Not yet," he answered in all seriousness. "But there's a sniper over
there," and he pointed a clean finger, quite untrenchy it was, towards
the enemy's lines, "And he's fired three at me."
"At you?" I asked.
"Ay, and I sent him five back ----" (p. 237)
"And didn't do him in?" I asked.
"Not yet, but if I get another two or three at him, I'll not give much
for his chance."
"Have you seen him?" I asked, marvelling that Big Jock had already
seen a sniper.
"No, but I heard the shots go off."
A rifle shot is the most deceptive thing in the world, so, like an old
soldier wise in the work, I smiled under my hand.
I don't believe that Big Jock has killed his sniper yet, but it has
been good to see him. When we meet he says, "What about the Caly,
Pat?" and I answer, "What about the Sou' West, Jock?"
On the first Sunday after Trinity we marched out from another small
village in the hot afternoon. This one was a model village, snug in
the fields, and dwindling daily. The German shells are dropping there
every day. In the course of another six months if the fronts of the
contending armies do not change, that village will be a litter of red
bricks and unpeopled ruins. As it is the women, children and old men
still remain in the place and carry on their usual labours with the
greatest fortitude and patience. The village children sell percussion
caps of German shells for half a franc each, but if the shell (p. 238)
has killed any of the natives when it exploded, the cap will not be
sold for less than thirty sous. But the sum is not too dear for a
nose-cap with a history.
There are a number of soldiers buried in the graveyard of this place.
At one corner four different crosses bear the following names: Anatole
Séries, Private O'Shea, Corporal Smith and under the symbol of the
Christian religion lies one who came from sunny heathen climes to help
the Christian in his wars. His name is Jaighandthakur, a soldier of
the Bengal Mountain Battery.
It was while here that Bill complained of the scanty allowance of his
rations to an officer, when plum pudding was served at dinner.
"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.
"How much have you got?" asked the officer.
"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all
gone."
"Gone?"
"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the
neck of 'is waterbottle," said Bill. The officer ordered both men (p. 239)
to be served out with a second portion.
We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of
the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of
Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going
had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line
is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the
Hills of Lorette at present.
The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they
march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every
halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are
going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty
minutes. We passed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous
path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several
shell-shattered huts and some acres of shell-scooped ground. The place
was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to
the enemy. Early one morning the shells began to sweep in, carrying
the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a
memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in shell-holes on
that field. The bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the (p. 240)
ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred
yards out on any side there is not a trace of a shell, every shot went
true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not
be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But
their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the
night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor
gun would have escaped.
The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever
seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At
several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags
proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in,
and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore,
down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead,
our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the
whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our
bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got
some tea, a godsend to us all.
We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel and (p. 241)
the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up against a
man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled against
the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.
"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish
voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see
things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm
stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea
greedily.
"There's a lot of you ones comin' up," the voice said. "You ones!" How
often have I said "You ones," how often do I say it still when I'm too
excited to be grammatical. "Ye had a' must to be too late for tay!"
the voice said from the darkness.
"What does he say?" asked Pryor who was just ahead of me.
"He says that we were almost too late for tea," I replied and stared
hard into the darkness on my left. Figures of men in khaki took form
in the gloom, a bayonet sparkled; some one was putting a lid on a
mess-tin and I could see the man doing it....
"Inniskillings?" I asked.
"That's us." (p. 242)
"Quiet?" I asked, alluding to their life in the trench.
"Not bad at all," was the answer. "A shell came this road an hour
agone, and two of us got hit."
"Killed?"
"Boys, oh! boys, aye," was the answer; "and seven got wounded. Nine of
the best, man, nine of the best. Have another drop of tay?"
At the exit of the tunnel the floor was covered with blood and the
flies were buzzing over it; the sated insects rose lazily as we came
up, settled down in front, rose again and flew back over our heads.
What a feast they were having on the blood of men!
The trenches into which we had come were not so clean as many we had
been in before; although the dug-outs were much better constructed
than those in the British lines, they smelt vilely of something
sickening and nauseous.
A week passed away and we were still in the trenches. Sometimes it
rained, but for the most part the sky was clear and the sun very hot.
The trenches were dug out of the chalk, the world in which we lived
was a world of white and green, white parapet and parados with a (p. 243)
fringe of grass on the superior slope of each. The place was very
quiet, not more than two dozen shells came our way daily, and it was
there that I saw a shell in air, the only shell in flight I have ever
seen. It was dropping to earth behind the parados and I had a distinct
view of the missile before ducking to avoid the splinters flung out by
the explosion. Hundreds of shells have passed through the sky near me
every day, I could almost see them by their sound and felt I could
trace the line made by them in their flight, but this was the only
time I ever saw one.
The hill land of Lorette stood up sullen on our right; in a basin
scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards
square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in
progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes
of bursting shells. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this
titanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to
see--it was the face of a god. The mortal who gazed on it must die.
But by night and day I spent most of my spare time in watching the
smoke of bursting shells and the flash of innumerable explosions.
One morning, after six days in the trenches, I was seated on the (p. 244)
parados blowing up an air pillow which had been sent to me by an
English friend and watching the fight up at Souchez when Bill came up
to me.
"Wot's that yer've got?" he asked.
"An air pillow," I answered.
"'Ow much were yer rushed for it?"
"Somebody sent it to me," I said.
"To rest yer weary 'ead on?"
I nodded.
"I like a fresh piller every night," said Bill.
"A fresh what?"
"A fresh brick."
"How do you like these trenches?" I asked after a short silence.
"Not much," he answered. "They're all blurry flies and chalk." He
gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese
rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was
all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags
were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and shell whirled showers
of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the
parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the
rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245)
of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up to the sky.
Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet
for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea
of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.
Butterflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their
way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags,
only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged
the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the
beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the
spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side
blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not
fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy,
their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by shell splinters
whizzing through the air.
The space between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green
leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the shivered trees, thistles with
magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, grasses hung over
the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking
if we would allow them to enter. The garden of death was a riot (p. 246)
of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst
the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face;
and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature
was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the
face of the country.
At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in
his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible
to write, eat or even to sleep.
The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something
putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who
had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair
poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great
frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping
their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground
in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the
stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour
of flowers.
The order came like a bomb flung into the trench and woke us up like
an electric thrill. True we did not believe it at first, there (p. 247)
are so many practical jokers in our ranks. Such an insane order! Had
the head of affairs gone suddenly mad that such an order was issued.
"All men get ready for a bath. Towels and soap are to be carried!!!"
"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.
"In the village at the rear," he answered.
"There's nobody there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And
the place gets shelled daily."
"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be
a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."
We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered
Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather
pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the
effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all
that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window glass was
smashed to pieces.
We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a
serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed
badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. We went back (p. 248)
clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.
That same evening, what time the star-shells began to flare and the
flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our
men got done to death in their dug-out. A shell hit the roof and
smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was
instantaneous in both cases.