PART II

THE LAND

I. A DAY OF PEACE

II. OVER THE TOP

III. THE MAN-TRAP

IV. A POINT OF DETAIL

V. MY LADY OF THE JASMINE

VI. MORPHIA

VII. BENDIGO JONES--HIS TREE

VIII. THE SONG OF THE BAYONET

I

A DAY OF PEACE

"For the fourteenth morning in succession I rise to a point of order.

Why is there no marmalade?" The Doctor glared round the breakfast table.

"I perceive a pot of unhealthy-looking damson, and a tin of golden syrup,

the greater part of which now adorns the infant's face. Why is there no

marmalade?"

"Could I remind you that there is a war on two miles up the road, my

splay-footed bolus-booster?" With a grand rolling of his R's, the man

who had driven a railway through the Rocky Mountains, and who now boasted

the badges of a subaltern in His Majesty's Corps of Royal Engineers, let

drive. "Ye come to live with us much against our will, because you're a

poor homeless wanderer----"

"All dressed up and nowhere to go," broke in the Doctor mournfully.

"You come to live with us, I say," went on the Scotchman, "and then do

nothing but criticise our food and our morals."

"Heaven knows they both need it. Pass me what's left of the syrup,

little one. Scrape the rest of it off your chin, my cherub, and wrap it

up in a handkerchief and take it up to the trenches with you."

"You're vewy wude." The junior subaltern adjusted the balance in the

matter of the letter R with the Scotchman. Two months ago he had been at

home--in peace time he would still have been at school. But of such

mixtures is the present British Army made. "It's my face."

As a statement of fact the remark left nothing to be desired; as a

statement of expediency, when other infants were present, the same cannot

be said. Words, in fact, were trembling on the tongue of a veteran of

six months when the C.O. came suddenly into the room.

"Bring me an egg," he shouted to the mess waiter in the kitchen next

door. "Listen to this, my bonnie boys." He produced a paper from his

coat pocket and sat down at the table. "Secret. A large object has

fallen beside the sap leading out to Vesuvius crater. It is about the

size of a rum jar, and is thought to be filled with explosive. It has

been covered with sandbags and its early removal would seem desirable, as

the sap is frequently bombarded--Damn it, this egg's addled. Take it

away, it's got spots on it. Where did I get to? Oh! yes--bombarded with

aerial darts and rifle grenades." He replaced the paper in his pocket

and reached for the teapot.

"Thought to be filled with explosive!" The Scotchman looked up

sarcastically from the letter he was censoring. "What's it likely to be

filled with?"

"Marmalade, ducky," remarked the Doctor, still harping on his grievance.

"In addition to that the Pumpkin desires my presence at the Centre

Battalion Head-quarters at 10 ak emma." The C.O. was prodding his second

egg suspiciously.

The Pumpkin, it may be explained in parenthesis, was the not unsuitable

nickname of the Divisional General.

"Is the old man coming round the trenches?" Jackson, the subaltern in

whose tender care reposed the crater of Vesuvius and all that appertained

thereto, including rum jars, looked up with mild interest.

The C.O. glanced at the message beside him. "'The G.O.C. wishes to meet

the Engineer Officer in charge of Left Section, at Centre Battalion

Headquarters, at 10 a.m., A.A.A. Message ends.' There in a nutshell you

have the glorious news."

Breakfast is never a loquacious meal, and for a while silence reigned,

broken only by a few desultory remarks as to the vileness of the food

produced by the officer responsible for the mess catering, and the

exorbitant price he demanded for it--statements which had staled with

much vain repetition.

"For heaven's sake dry up," he remarked peevishly. "You've had sardines

on toast twenty-one nights running; what more do you want? Listen to the

words of Sapper Mackintosh--the pudding-faced marvel. This"--he held up

a letter--"is the fifth which he hopes will find the recipient as it

leaves him at present--in the pink, and with the dreadful pains in his

stummik quite gone."

"Our Doctor has a wonderful bedside manner," remarked the Scotchman.

"Did ye no hear the story of him and the lady way back by Hazebrook?"

"That'll do," said the Doctor, rising hurriedly. "She had very bad

rheumatism--that poor girl."

"I know she had, Doc," put in the C.O. heartily. "And when I think of

the way you eased her sufferings I became lost in admiration over the

noble nature of your calling. In the meantime I'd be glad if you'd see

one of the men in the Head-quarters Section. From the strange explosive

noises he made when I spoke to him before breakfast I gathered by the aid

of an interpreter that he had somewhat foolishly placed his complete set

of uppers and lowers on a truss of compressed hay, and one of the mules

has eaten them."

He strolled to the door on his way to the kitchen in the next house that

served as his office.

"You'd better be careful with that rum jar, Jacko. Unless you're pretty

certain there's no danger, I'd put a slab of gun-cotton against it where

it is, and pop her off. No sense in running any risks carrying it back."

"Right-ho! I'll have a look as soon as I go up. Are you coming, Mac?"

He turned to the Scotchman.

"In five minutes, my boy. I have to perform a few blasting operations on

my pipe before I start, and then I'm with you." He pulled a battered

veteran out of his pocket, and peered into its noisome bowl.

"Not indoors, man, for heaven's sake!" The Doctor backed hurriedly out

of the room. "The last billet you cleaned your pipe in they complained

to the Mayor of the village."

"Go away, Doctor, go away. Go and put chloride of lime round the

cook-house," Mac was shouting through the window at the receding medico.

"And ask yon woman if she has a hairpin. My pipe. . . ." But the Doctor

was out of sight.

Ten minutes later the room was empty save for a batman clearing the

breakfast table.

* * * * * *

Now as a general rule the Sappers do not live in the trenches, but go up

there each day and most nights, the remainder of the time being spent in

dwellings of dubious sanitation and indubitable draughtiness a mile or so

in rear. To each company a certain front is allotted, and it is their

joy and pride to maintain this front and the network of trenches behind

it spotless and untarnished, what time they minister ceaselessly to the

lightest whim of its heroic defenders--usually known by the generic term

of P.B.I., or poor bally Infantry. Which, of course, is not what really

happens, but one likes to think thus beautifully.

In addition to the Infantry, other people thrust themselves forward in a

manner which requires firmness and tact to deal with: gunners require

O.P.'s, or observation posts; other gunners require trench mortar

emplacements; dangerous men with machine guns sit up and take notice, and

demand concrete and other abominations; while last, but not least, the

medical profession demand secret and secure places in which to practise

their nefarious trade. Finally, the Ordnance Department is with one

always. It was that branch of the great Machine which caused the frown

on the face of the Sapper Captain, hitherto alluded to as the O.C., while

next door the batman cleared the breakfast table.

"We're six bicycles short, you say, Quartermaster-Sergeant?" he exclaimed

irritably, gazing at some papers in front of him, while he filled his

pipe.

"Yes, sir; and two more with wheels buckled, and three that free-wheel

both ways."

"What d'you mean--free-wheel both ways?"

"The pedals rotate, sir, with great speed, but the bicycle remains

motionless." When a man habitually calls an armchair, A chair,

arm--Officers, for the use of, one--his conversation is apt to become

stilted.

"How were the wheels buckled?" demanded the Captain when he had digested

this great thought.

"Two of the officers, sir--playing what I believe they called bicycle

polo with a brick and two pick-helves--had--er--a slight mishap."

"When did it happen?"

"Er--after dinner, sir, one night." The N.C.O. looked tactfully out of

the window.

The officer did not pursue the topic. "Well, what about these six that

have been lost?"

"Completely destroyed by shell-fire," said the C.Q.M.S. firmly. "I have

prepared a statement of what happened for your perusal and signature."

He handed the officer a written paper and respectfully withdrew a few

paces to avoid any semblance of coercion.

"'The six bicycles were placed on the morning of the 10th ult. against

the entrance to the R.E. Dump at A.21, C.2.4. It would appear that

during the absence of the riders a hostile shell of large calibre fell on

the six said bicycles, completely demolishing them, for when the riders

returned after the day's work merely a few fragments remained scattered

round the shell crater.'"

The Captain read it over slowly, and then, in tones of awe, a murmured

"Wonderful" wafted through the office.

"I beg your pardon, sir?" The N.C.O. was again at his side.

"I said wonderful, Quartermaster-Sergeant--quite wonderful. Do you think

they'll swallow it?"

"It has been done before, sir." The tone was non-committal. "And one of

the six was undoubtedly badly punctured by a stray rifle bullet before we

lost it--er--that is, before it was finally destroyed by shell-fire."

"Right." With the air of a man who communes with great destinies, the

Captain signed his name. "Anything more?"

"Nothing at present, sir. The question of the consumption of Candles,

Tallow dip, Pounds Twenty-four, stolen from our yard by the 940th

Tunnelling Company has come back again with remarks from the Chief

Ordnance Officer at the Base--but it will wait until you come back from

the trenches."

"I'm glad of that," remarked the Captain, rising. "I'm not feeling very

strong this morning, and candles, tallow dip--especially lbs. 24 of

them--would cause a relapse. Orderly"--he strolled to the door--"my

bicycle, please."

A few minutes later he was riding slowly down the road towards the place

where there was "a war on." A cool mist hung over the fields on each

side of him, and in the early morning stray cobwebs glistening with

moisture brushed lightly across his face.

"_B'jour, monsieur._" A woman standing in the door of a roadside

_estaminet_ greeted him as he passed--a woman undisturbed by the guns

that at times roared close by; a woman whose house was one concentrated

draught, which whistled through what had once been walls and now were

holes held together by odd bricks.

He returned the greeting and rode on, while once again the

comparison--never far absent from those who live "within range"--came

into his mind: the comparison between England and France--between the

country which has only learned of war through its soldiers, and the

country whose women and children have learned of it first hand, even unto

death. All was absolutely silent--the peace and glory of a summer's

morning hung over everything, while the smell of the wet clover came

faintly to his nostrils. A military policeman at the corner saluted

smartly, while a small boy in a little cart drawn by three straining dogs

raced him blithely up the village street. At the end of the battered

houses still occupied by their owners, and the temporary abode of half a

battalion of infantry resting from a spell in the trenches, progression

by bicycle became a little harder. Great branches lay across the road,

and pits torn out of the pave by bursting shells made steering a trifle

intricate; while occasionally one of the many signal wires which had

slipped during the night and was hanging low above his head, scraped the

top of his steel helmet.

Once more the familiar "_B'jour, monsieur_"--this time from an old dame

who sat day in day out in a corner under a wall selling chocolate. Just

above her head, so that by raising her arm she could have touched it, the

nose of a "dud" German shell poked out from the brickwork.

Ruin, desolation--and shrouding it all the cool damp mist of seven

o'clock in July.

"The very man!" A voice hailed him from behind, and a gunner subaltern

materialised. "Are you going up the line?"

"I am--at once." The Sapper placed his bicycle against a heap of

sandbags. "What does my dear one desire?

"The accursed Hun placed two large obuses into the Ritz yesterday

afternoon. What do you propose to do about it?" They were strolling

slowly through the sopping grass.

"Nothing--if I can possibly avoid it," answered the Sapper firmly. "You

select for an O.P. the most prominent house in the locality--put a

signaller on the top of it with a large flag--wait till midday, when the

sun is at its brightest, and then send a message back that the bully beef

is bad. You----"

"Laddie," interrupted the gunner, "desist. All that you say is true and

more--but we must stick to the Ritz, if we can. It commands a

soul-inspiring view of the trenches behind that new crater in a way we

can't get from anywhere else. What I want you to do is to cover the

cellar with boards. Yesterday the second shell knocked two men

insensible, and they fell backwards into it. As they nearly drowned, it

will be obvious, even to your intelligence, that it contains--amongst

other things--water. Moreover, the water is deep, and stinketh. If,

therefore, my brainy _confrère_, you will authorise me to draw planks

twelve, I myself will cover yon hole with my own fair hands. The

cadaverous gentleman at your store, whose face has been passed over by

some heavy body, proved both unsympathetic and suspicious this morning

when I asked him for them. Wherefore, if you will sign----" He held out

a book to the Sapper.

"'Please issue bearer with twelve planks 9 inch by 2 inch; length, 6

feet.'" The Sapper glanced at the page and signed. "There you are,

James. Tell him to get them cut for you."

"I was going to, dearie. How marvellously your brain grasps the

importance of these trifling details! Are you passing the Ritz by any

chance? If so, tell my warriors to come down to the Store."

"Aren't you coming up?"

"No--it's too light. I have to be careful whom I'm seen with." He

turned back and was quickly lost in the white mist--though for some time

afterwards the faint strains of musical items selected from _The Bing

Boys_ followed the Sapper as he walked on.

Occasional voices came mysteriously from apparently nowhere, as a party

of men went up one of the deep communication trenches close by him--a

trench invisible in summer until you actually stood over it, for the long

rank grass hid everything: grass splashed with the red of great masses of

poppies, and the white of the daisies, with odd little patches of blue

cornflowers and borage, and buttercups glinting yellow. Just rank

luxuriant vegetation, run wild--untouched for more than a year.

Suddenly out of the mist there loomed the Ritz--the name of the

broken-down, shell-battered house which served his late companion as an

O.P. The Sapper gave the message as requested, and stepped down three

stairs into the communication trench, which passed close under one of the

crumbling walls. There was no necessity, as far as safety was concerned,

to get into the trench for several hundred yards--the mist effectually

prevented any chance of being seen from the German lines half a mile

farther on.

But he was mindful to see the condition of the trench--whether the sides

were crumbling, and whether the floor was suitably provided with

trench-boards and bricks. Twisting, winding with the poppies and the

weeds meeting over his head, and the water brushing off them against his

face and coat, he walked slowly on. Seven feet deep, perhaps three feet

wide, it might have been a sunken Devonshire lane in model, and a faint

red tinge in the soil helped the illusion.

Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had

all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered

lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following

him at that moment on a tour of inspection. Especially his Uncle John.

Uncle John was something in the City, and looked it. He lived near

Ascot, and nightly slept with a gas-mask beside his bed. He could

imagine Uncle John trembling audibly in that quiet model lane, and

assuring his faithful wife of his ability to protect her. He laughed at

the picture in his mind, and then with a slight frown stopped.

The trench bent sharply to the right, and almost subconsciously he

noticed a hole framed in thick wood, half filled in, in the wall in front

of him. The top had broken. He bent and peered through it. It went

right through the wall in front, and beyond, the same deep communication

trench could be seen stretching away. Just a loophole placed in a

traverse through which a rifle could be fired along a straight thirty

yards of trench, if the Germans ever got in. But to fire a rifle to any

purpose the loop-hole must not be broken, and so the Sapper made a note

before resuming his stroll.

Rounding a bend, a big white board at a cross-roads confronted him. It

advertised two or three salient facts written in large black letters. It

appeared that by turning to the right one would ultimately reach

Leicester Square and an aid post, to say nothing of the Charing Cross

Road, which was a down trench. By turning to the left, on the contrary,

one would reach Regent Street and a pump. It also stated that the name

of our wanderer's present route was the Haymarket, and further affirmed

that it was an up trench. For it will be plain to all that, where a

trench is but three feet wide, it is essential not to have men going both

ways in it--and further, it will also be plain why the aid posts occur in

the down ones.

A further interesting and momentous piece of information was imparted

from another board, to the effect that the name of the trench by which

one could reach the pump on one hand and the aid post on the other was

Piccadilly, and that it constituted the reserve line of the position.

In other words, it was not merely a communication trench, but was

recessed and traversed like a fire trench. In very fact, it was a fire

trench--the third of the system. In front was the support line, known as

Pall Mall, and in front of that, again, the firing line, whither later

the Sapper proposed to wend his way. He wanted to gaze on "the rum jar

reputed to be filled with explosive." But in the meantime there was the

question of the pump--the ever-present question which is associated with

all pumps. To work or not to work, and the answer is generally in the

negative.

He turned to the left down Piccadilly, wondering what particular ailment

had attacked this specimen of the breed, and had caused the Adjutant of

the battalion to write winged words anent it. The aspect of the trench

had changed; no longer did the red, white, and blue of the tangled wild

flowers meet over his head, but grey and drab the sandbag walls rose on

each side of him. Occasionally the mouth of a dug-out yawned in the

front of the trench, a dark passage cased in with timber, sloping steeply

down to the cave below. Voices, and sometimes snores, came drowsily up

from the bottom, where odd bunches of the South Loamshires for a space

existed beautifully.

"Hullo, old man--how's life?" He rounded a traverse to find an officer

of the battalion lathering his chin for his morning shave. A cracked

mirror was scotched up between two sandbags, and a small indiarubber

basin leaked stealthily on the firing step.

"So-so! That bally pump of yours won't work again, or so the cook says.

Jenkins, pass the word along for Smithson. He is the cook, and will tell

you the whole sordid story."

"Quiet night?" The Sapper sat down and refilled his pipe.

"Fairly. They caught one of our fellows in the entrance to his dug-out

up in the front line with an aerial dart about seven o'clock. Landed

just at the entrance. Blew the top of his head off. Good boy, too--just

been given his stripe. Oh, Smithson!--tell the Engineer officer about

that pump. Confound!--I've shaved a mosquito bite!"

The cook--a veteran of many years--looked at the placidly smoking Sapper

and cleared his throat. On any subject he was an artist; on pumps and

the deficiencies of Ally Sloper's Cavalry--as the A.S.C. is vulgarly

known--he was a genius.

"Well, sir, it's like this 'ere. That there pump is a funny kind o'

pump. Sometimes it gives you water and sometimes it don't."

"You surprise me," murmured the Sapper.

"Now, if I might be so bold, sir, I would suggest that another well be

sunk, sir--starting fresh-like from the beginning. Then I could keep my

heye on it, and see that no one wasn't a-monkeying with it. As it is,

wot with the stuff we're a-getting and the shortage of tea and the

distance I 'ave to go for water, and----"

"Well, what do you expect?" A bitter voice from round the traverse

rudely interrupted the discourse. "We make pumps to pump water--not dead

rats. Wasting my time, that's what it is. Where 'ave I put it? In that

there perisher Smithson's dug-out, and 'e can 'ave it for his dinner."

The plumber previously sent up on receipt of the Adjutant's note came

round the corner, and, seeing his officer, stopped and saluted.

"That there pump's all right, sir. There was a dead rat in it. They

_will_ leave the cover off the well." He perceived the horrified

Smithson, and fixed him with the frozen eye.

"Right. Then you can rejoin your section." The Sapper rose, the plumber

departed, the cook faded away, and for a space there was silence.

"Damn that fellow Smithson--he's the limit." The Infantry Officer

laughed. "I'll rend him for this."

"Sometimes it gives you water, and sometimes it don't," remarked the

Sapper pensively. "Last time it was a sock. Bye-bye. I hope he'll

enjoy his dinner."

He followed the plumber back along Piccadilly, composing in his mind a

suitable answer to the message of despair from the Adjutant.

"With ref. to your min. of yesterday I would suggest that a larger flow

of somewhat purer water would be available if the practice of inserting

deceased rodents in the delivery pipe was discontinued forthwith. I am

fully alive to the fact that what the eye does not see the heart does not

grieve about, and I realise that, viewed from that standpoint only, the

grave of the little animal in question could not well be improved on. I

also realise that it adds that flavour to the tea which is so sought

after by the true connoisseur. But, desiring to view the matter from the

clearer vantage point of an unbiassed onlooker, I venture to suggest----"

His meditations were interrupted by a procession of gunners each carrying

on his shoulder an unpleasant-looking object which resembled a gigantic

dumb-bell with only one blob on the end--a huge spherical cannon-ball on

a steel stalk. They were coming from Leicester Square, and he met them

just as they turned up the Haymarket. Waiting until they had all gone

by, he followed on in the rear of the party, which suddenly turned sharp

to the left, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

"No. 7," murmured the Sapper to himself. "I wonder if the officer is

new?" He turned to a bombardier standing at the entrance to the passage.

"Is your officer here?"

"He's down below, sir." The man drew to one side, and the Sapper passed

up a narrow deep trench and went "down below" to the trench-mortar

emplacement, a cave hewn out of the ground much on the principle of an

ordinary dug-out. But there were certain great differences; for half the

roof had been removed, and through the hole thus formed streamed in the

early morning sun. A screen of rabbit wire covered with bits of grass,

lying horizontally over the open hole when the gun was not firing, helped

to conceal it from the prying eyes of Hun aeroplanes. Let into the

ground and mounted and clamped to a stand was the mortar itself--while

beside it sat a very young gunner officer, much in the attitude of a

mother beside her firstborn. He was obviously new to the game, and the

Sapper surveyed him with indulgent eye.

"Good morning." The Gunner looked up quickly. "I'm the Sapper Officer

on this bit of line. You've just come in, haven't you?"

"Yes, early this morning. Everything seems very quiet here."

"From four till eight or nine it's always peaceful. But I don't know

that you'll find this spot very quiet once you start pooping off. This

particular emplacement was spotted some two months ago by the wily Hun,

and he got some direct hits on it with small stuff. Since then it hasn't

been used. There are lots of others, you know."

"I was ordered to come to this one," answered the boy doubtfully.

"Right-oh! my dear fellow--it's your funeral. I thought I'd just let you

know. Are you letting drive this morning?"

"Yes--as soon as I get the order to fire."

The boy was keen as mustard, and, as I have said, very young--just

another infant. He had not long to wait, for hardly were the words out

of his mouth when a sergeant came in.

"Captain's compliments, sir, and will you fire two rounds at G. 10 C. 5

4?"

Rapidly and without confusion the men did their appointed jobs; the great

stalk slithered down the gun, the bomb--big as a football--filled with

high explosive was fixed with a detonator, the lanyard to fire the charge

was adjusted. Then every one cleared out of the emplacement, while the

Sapper took his stand in the trench outside.

"Let her rip." The lanyard was pulled, and with a muffled crack the huge

cannon-ball rose into the air, its steel stalk swaying behind it.

Plainly visible, it reached its highest point, and still wobbling

drunkenly went swishing down on to G. 10 C. 54--or thereabouts. A roar

and a great column of black smoke rose from the German lines.

Almost before the report had died away, the gun was sponged out, and

another inebriated monster departed on its mission. But the Sapper was

already some way up the Haymarket. It was not his first view of a

trench-mortar firing.

A vicious crack from a rifle now and then broke the stillness, and

proclaimed that the sun was clearing away the morning mist, and that

rest-time was nearly over; while the sudden rattle of a machine gun close

by him, indulging in a little indirect fire at a well-known Hun gathering

place a thousand yards or so behind their lines, disturbed a covey of

partridges, which rose with an angry whirring of wings. Then came four

of those unmistakable faint muffled bursts from high above his head,

which betokened an aeroplane's morning gallop; and even as he

automatically jerked his head skywards, with a swishing noise something

buried itself in the earth not far away. It is well to remember that

even Archibald's offspring obey the laws of gravity, and shells from an

anti-aircraft gun, burst they never so high, descend sooner or later in

the shape of jagged fragments--somewhere. And if the somewhere is your

face, upturned to see the fun . . . !

The Sapper, with the remembrance fresh in his mind of a pal looking up in

just such a way a week before, quickly presented the top of his tin hat

to the skies, and all that might descend from them. There had been that

same swishing all round them as they stood watching some close shooting

at one of our own planes. He recalled the moment when he cried

suddenly--"Jove! they've got him!" He had turned as he spoke to see the

officer with him, slipping sideways, knees crumpling, body sagging.

"Good God! old man, what is it?" The question was involuntary, for as he

caught the limp figure--he knew.

The plane was all right: the German shells had not got it; but a piece of

shrapnel, the size of a match-box, had passed through that officer's eye,

and entered his brain. He had laid him on the firing-step, and covered

his head--or what was left of it. . . .

He reached Pall Mall, to be once again confronted with a large white

notice board. To the right were Boyaux 93 and 94--to the left, 91 and

90. Straight on to the front, 92 led to the firing line. With his

ultimate destination Vesuvius crater and the rum jar in view, he turned

to the right, and walked along the support trench. It was much the same

as Piccadilly: only being one degree nearer the front, it was one degree

more warlike. Boxes of bombs everywhere; stands for rifles on the

firing-step, which held them rigidly when they fired rifle grenades; and

every now and then a row of grey-painted rockets with a red top, which in

case of emergency send up the coloured flares that give the S.O.S.

signals to those behind. Also men: men who slept and ate and shaved and

wrote and got bored. A poor show is trench warfare!

"Look out, sir. They've knocked it in just round the corner last night

with trench mortars." A sergeant of the South Loamshires was speaking.

"Having a go at Laburnum Cottage, I'm thinking."

"What, that sniper's post? Have you been using it?"

"One of our men in there now, sir. He saw an Allemand go to ground in

his dug-out half an hour ago through the mist, and he reckons he ought to

finish breakfast soon, and come out again."

The Sapper crawled on his stomach over the _débris_ that blocked the

trench, and stopped at the entrance to Laburnum Cottage, officially known

as Sniper's Post No. 4. In a little recess pushed out to the front of

the trench, covered in with corrugated iron and surrounded by sandbags,

sprawled the motionless figure of a Lance-Corporal. With his eye glued

to his telescopic sight and his finger on the trigger of his rifle, he

seemed hardly to be breathing. Suddenly he gave a slight grunt, and the

next instant, with a sharp crack, the rifle fired.

"Get him?" asked the Sapper.

"Dunno, sir," answered the sniper, his eye still fixed to the telescope.

"Three 'undred yards, and 'e ducked like 'ell. It wasn't far off 'is

nibs, but one can't tell for sure." He got down and stretched himself.

"I've waited 'alf an 'our for the perisher, too, without no breakfast."

He grinned and scrambled over the broken-down trench to remedy the latter

deficiency, while once more the Sapper walked on. No need with this

particular regiment to suggest rebuilding the broken-in trench; it would

be done automatically--which cannot be said of them all.

At last he reached Boyau 94, and turned up towards the firing-line.

Twenty yards from the turn a mass of barbed wire crossed the trench above

his head, the barbed wire which ran in front of the support line. For it

is not only the fire-trench that is wired--each line behind is

plentifully supplied with this beautiful vegetable growth.

The mist had cleared away, and the morning sun was blazing down from a

cloudless sky, as he reached the front trench. Just to his left a

monstrous pair of bellows, slowly heaving up and down under the

ministrations of two pessimistic miners, sent a little of God's fresh air

down to the men in the mine-shafts underneath. The moles were there--the

moles who scratched and scraped stolidly, at the end of their gallery

thirty or forty yards in front, deep down under the earth in No Man's

Land.

A steady stream of sandbags filled with the result of their labours came

up the shaft down which the pipe from the bellows stretched into the

darkness--sandbags which must be taken somewhere and emptied, or used to

revet a bit of trench which needed repair.

To right and left there stretched the fire-trench--twisting and turning,

traversed and recessed--just one small bit of the edge of British land.

A hundred yards away, a similar line stretched right and left, where

other pessimistic miners ministered to other monstrous bellows, and

Piccadilly was known as Unter den Linden. The strange stagnation of it

all!

Look through the periscope at the country in front. Not a sign of life

in the torn-up crusted earth; not a movement between the two long lines

of wire. A few poppies here and there, and at one point a motionless

grey-green lump close to the farther wire. Impossible to tell exactly

what it is from the periscope--the range is too far. But, in No Man's

Land, such strange grey--and khaki--lumps may often be seen. The night,

a wiring party, perhaps a little raid or an officer's patrol,

and--discovery. You cannot always get your dead back to the trench, and

the laws that govern No Man's Land savour of the primitive. . . .

The Sapper watched the phlegmatic bellows-heaver for a few moments

curiously. His stoical indifference to any one or anything save the job

in hand, the wonderful accuracy with which he spat from time to time, the

appalling fumes from his short clay pipe, all tended to make of him an

interesting study. Supremely apathetic to friend or foe, Generals or

Huns, he did his shift without comment and, as far as could be seen,

without thought.

"Where are you putting the earth?" asked the Sapper after watching for a

while.

"Round corner, in a 'ole." The speaker pointed with his pipe, and the

subject dropped.

The officer turned away smiling slightly, and decided on the inspection

of the rum jar. The answer was clear and succinct, even if not couched

in the language of the old army discipline. He inspected the hole, and,

finding it was at the back of the trench, in a crater that was formed

nightly by German _minenwerfer_, and that more earth there not only would

not block the trench but, _mirabile dicta_, would be an actual advantage,

he passed on and shortly came to a passage leading out of the front of

the trench.

The passage was labelled Sap No. 130, and presented exactly the same

appearance as the boyaux which ran out of the support line to the front

trench. Only when one got into it did the difference become apparent,

for whereas the boyaux had continued until finally opening into a new

trench, the sap was a cul-de-sac, and finished abruptly in a little

covered-in recess built into a miniature mountain of newly-thrown-up

earth. And this great, tumbled mass of soil was the near lip of Vesuvius

crater--blown up half way between the two front lines.

Over the top of the mountain there was no passage. A man standing or

crawling there in daytime would have been in full view of German snipers

at a range of forty yards; while had he accomplished it in safety, he

would have slithered down the farther side into a great cavity shaped

like an egg-cup, at the bottom of which a pool of dirty, stagnant water

was slowly forming. Moreover, if we imagine the man continuing his

journey and climbing up the other side, he would run the gauntlet of the

English snipers as he topped the farther lip, before reaching the German

sap which ran out in just such a similar cul-de-sac to the one already

described.

Thus are craters consolidated; each side holds the lip nearest to them,

and hurls curses and bombs at his opponents on the other. The distance

between the sapheads is perhaps twenty or twenty-five yards, instead of

the hundred odd of the parent fire-trenches; and any closer

acquaintanceship is barred by the egg-cup crater, which stretches between

them.

"Keep down, sir--well down. Lot of sniping to-day." A sergeant of the

South Loamshires whispered hoarsely to the Sapper as he reached the end

of the sap--it is etiquette to whisper in a sap. Three men inside the

recess were drinking tea with the calmness born of long custom, while

lying on his side, with a periscope to his eye, was Jackson, the

subaltern.

"Anything fresh, Jacko?" muttered the Sapper, crouching down beside him.

"Yes--I think they're coming closer with their left sap round the crater.

Their periscope seems to be nearer than it was yesterday."

"Let's have a look." The two changed position, and the Captain turned

the periscope gently round until he got the exact direction. Absolute

stillness brooded over the ground he could see; a few rough strands of

wire straggled about, and disappeared into the great mound of earth that

formed the _débris_ of the crater.

There were the enemies' trenches--a railway embankment behind them with a

derelict row of trucks--a great chimney, gaunt and desolate, with the

buildings at its foot in ruins. But it was not on these old friends that

he was concentrating; his target was the bit of ground just in front of

him that lay close to the thrown-up earth of Vesuvius, along which the

German sap was reputed to be creeping nearer.

At last he got what he wanted. Close at hand, perhaps twenty yards away,

there stuck up out of the ground a motionless stick with something on the

end--the German's periscope. Now it is reputed to be a fact by several

people of apparent truthfulness that it is possible, in circumstances

such as these, for each watcher to see the other man's eyes reflected

from the mirrors of the periscopes; and it is an undoubted fact that the

laws which govern the refraction of light would allow of this phenomenon.

Personally, I am glad to say I have never seen a German's eye through a

periscope; but then personally I am inclined to doubt if any one has. It

must be quite dreadful to see a thing like a poached egg regarding you

balefully from the top of a stick a few yards away.

At last the Sapper got up. "He's no nearer, Jacko. What do you think,

sergeant?"

"I don't think they were working last night, sir," one of the

tea-drinkers answered.

"There was a party of 'em out, and we bunged some bombs. We 'eard 'em

padding the 'oof back."

"Been pretty quiet, then?"

"Except for that there rum jar, sir," answered the sergeant. "We thought

we was napoo[1] when we 'eard that little bundle of fun a-coming."

"Have you seen it, Jacko?"

"Yes, it rolled into the sap, and I've had it put into the fire-trench.

I'm taking it back to blow it up. I think it's a percussion fuse, but it

seems fairly safe. I've sent for a stretcher to carry it on."

"Let's go and have a look at it."

The two officers walked down the sap and back into the trench, and

started to investigate with a professional eye the object lying on the

fire-step. Apparently of steel, and painted a dull grey, it looked

harmless enough--but all those little love offerings of the Hun are

treated with respect. About the size of an ordinary rum jar, with a fuse

of sorts in place of a neck, it was at the time an unknown brand of

abomination, to them at any rate.

"It differs only in appearance, I fear," remarked the Captain, after

inspecting it gingerly, "from other presents they give us. Its object is

undoubtedly nefarious. Where do you propose to blow it up?"

"In that little quarry near the Ritz. Will that do all right?"

"Most excellently." With a smile he looked at his watch. "Just set your

watch by mine, Jacko--and poop it off at 10.5 ak emma. Do you take me?"

The other looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared.

"I'd forgotten for the moment that Centre Battalion Head-quarters was not

far from the quarry," he grinned. "Sir--I take you."

"My dear boy, the day is hot, and the Pumpkin is fat, and the flies are

glutinous. He doesn't want to see the trenches any more than I do--and

one's mission in life is to anticipate the wishes of the great."

It was just as he finished speaking that from up the line in the

direction of the Haymarket there came four dull, vicious cracks in

succession, and some clouds of black smoke drifted slowly over his head.

"Just about No. 7 T.M. emplacement," he muttered to himself. "I hope to

heavens . . ."

"Put it on the stretcher carefully, boys." His subaltern was speaking to

the two men who had arrived with a stretcher. "Have you got the slab of

gun-cotton?"

"Corporal 'Amick 'as gone to get it at the store, sir. He's a-going to

meet us at the quarry."

"Right-ho! Walk march."

The cavalcade departed, and the Captain resumed his morning walk, while

his thoughts wandered to the beer which is cold and light yellow. For

many weary months had he taken a similar constitutional daily; not always

in the same place, true; but variety is hard to find in the actual

trenches themselves. It is the country behind that makes the difference.

Time was when communication trenches existed only in the fertile brain of

those who were never called upon to use them; but that time has passed

long since. Time was when the thin, tired breaking line of men who

fought the Prussian Guard at Ypres in 1914--and beat them--had hard work

to find the fire-trenches, let alone the communication ones; when a daily

supervision was a nerve-shattering nightly crawl, and dug-outs were

shell-holes covered with a leaking mackintosh. It was then that men

stood for three weeks on end in an icy composition of water and slime,

and if by chance they did get a relief for a night, merely clambered out

over the back, and squelched wearily over the open ground with bullets

pinging past them from the Germans a few score yards away.

But now there are trenches in canal banks where dead things drift slowly

by, and trenches in railway embankments where the rails are red with rust

and the sleepers green with rot; there are trenches in the chalk, good

and deep, which stand well, and trenches in the slush and slime which

never stand at all; there are trenches where the smell of the long grass

comes sweetly on the west wind, and trenches where the stench of death

comes nauseous on the east. And one and all are they damnable, for ever

accursed . . .

But the country behind--ah! there's where the difference comes. You may

have the dead flat of pastoral Flanders, the little woods, the plough,

the dykes of Ypres and Boesinghe; you may have the slag-heaps and smoking

chimneys of La Bassée and Loos; you may have the gently undulating

country of Albert and the Somme. Each bears the marks of the German

beast--and, like their inhabitants, they show those marks differently.

Ypres and the North, apathetic, seemingly lifeless; the mining districts,

grim and dour; the rolling plains still, in spite of all, cheerful and

smiling. But underlying them all--deep implacable determination, a grand

national hatred of the Power who has done this thing. . . .

He turned out of the Old Kent Road into a siding which harboured the

dug-outs of the Centre Battalion.

"Is the General here yet, Murdock?" A tall sergeant of the regiment--an

old friend of his--flattened himself against the side of the trench to

let him pass.

"Yes, sir." The sergeant's face was expressionless, though his eyes

twinkled. "I think, sir, as 'ow the General is feeling the 'eat. 'E

seems worried. 'E's been trying to telephone."

The Sapper, with a suppressed chuckle, went down some steps into a

spacious dug-out. The darkness made him temporarily blind, so he saluted

and stood still just inside the doorway.

"Damn you, don't blow at me! What's that fool blowin' down the thing

for? I _have_ pressed a button--confound you!--and rung the bell twice.

No--I didn't ring off; somebody blew at me, and the machine fell on the

floor."

"The General is trying to get through to his château." A voice full of

unholy joy whispered in the Sapper's ear, and that worthy, whose eyes had

got accustomed to the gloom, recognised the Adjutant.

"I gathered that something of the sort was occurring," he whispered back.

But the General was at it again. "Who are you--the R.T.O.? Well, ring

off. Exchange. Exchange. It is the Divisional General speaking. I

want my head-quarters. I say, I want my--oh, don't twitter, and the

bally thing's singin' now! First it blows and then it sings. Good God!

what's that?"

A deafening explosion shook the dug-out, and a shower of earth and stones

rained down in the trench outside.

"They're very active this morning, sir," said the Sapper, stepping

forward. "Lot of rum jars and things coming over."

"Are you the Sapper officer? Good morning. I wish you'd get this

accursed instrument to work."

"There may be a line broken," he remarked tactfully.

"Well--I shall have to go back; I can't hear a word. The thing does

nothin' but squeak. Now it's purring like a cat. I hate cats. Most

annoyin'. I wanted to come round the front line this morning."

"In very good condition, sir; I've just been all round it. Mighty hot up

there, General--and swarms of flies."

"And they're puttin' over some stuff, you say?"

"Yes, sir--quite a lot."

"Hum! Well, of course, I fully intended to come round--but, dash it all,

I must get back. Can't hear a word the fellow says. Does nothing but

play tunes." The Pumpkin rose and stalked to the door. "Well, I'll come

round another morning, my boy. I wonder, by Jove! if that last one was

meant for this head-quarters? Devilish near, you know." He walked up

the stairs, followed by his staff officer. "Good mornin'--mind you see

about that telephone. Cursed thing blows."

"Dear old Pumpkin," murmured the Adjutant as his steps died away. "He's

a topper. His figure's against him, but he's got the heart of a lion."

"He has," answered the Sapper, preparing to follow his footsteps. "And

the men would do anything for him."

"What price that rum jar I sent in a bird about?"

"That was the last explosion you heard," laughed the Sapper. "I wasn't

leaving anything to chance. I am going to go and drink beer--iced beer,

in long glasses. _Toujours à toi_."

He was gone, leaving the Adjutant staring. A few moments later he

clambered out of the trench, and struck out for the crumbling church that

betokened a road and the near presence of his bicycle.

* * * * * *

A day of peace--yes, as things go, a day of perfect peace. Away down

South things were moving; this was stagnation. And yet--well, it was at

dinner that night . . .

"For the fourteenth night in succession I rise to a point of order." The

Doctor was speaking. "Why is the lady with the butterfly on her back

pushed away into one corner, and that horrible woman with the green wig

accorded the place of honour?"

I would hurriedly state that the Doctor's remarks were anent two pictures

which are, I believe, occasionally to be found in officers' messes in the

B.E.F.--pictures of a Parisian flavour as befits the Entente--pictures

which--at any rate they are well known to many, and I will not specify

further.

"Yes, the lady with the gween wig is dweadful." The boy sipped his port.

"Infant, I'm shocked at you. The depravity of these children

nowadays . . ."

An orderly came into the room with an envelope, which he handed to the

Captain.

The C.O. spread out the flimsy paper and frowned slightly as he read the

message.

"T.M. Emp. No. 7, completely wrecked by a direct hit 9.30 a.m. this

morning, A.A.A. Please inspect and report, A.A.A., C.R.E., 140th

Division."

"Delayed as usual," grunted the Scotchman. "I was there just after it

happened, and reported it to the O.C. Trench Mortars. Did you not hear,

sir, for it's useless repairing it? That position is too well known."

"Were there any casualties?" The Sapper Captain's voice was quiet.

"Aye. The poor lad that was crooning over his gun when I saw him this

morning, like a cat over her undrowned kitten, just disappeared."

"What d'you mean, Mac?"

"It was one of the big ones, and it came right through the wire on top of

him." The gruff voice was soft. "Poor bairn!"

[1] _Special Note to Lovers of Etymology_.

_Il n'y en a plus_. There is no more. French phrase signifying complete

absence of. Largely heard in estaminets near closing time.

_Naploo_.--Original pure English phrase signifying the perisher has run

out of beer.

_Napoo_.--Vulgar and bastardised shortening of original pure English

phrase. Has now been added to B.E.F. dictionary, and is used to imply

that a man, thing, person, animal, or what not, is "finished."

II

OVER THE TOP

"On the afternoon of the 21st we gained a small local success. Our

line was advanced on a front of six hundred yards, over an average

depth of a quarter of a mile. All the ground gained was successfully

consolidated. Up to date eighty-six unwounded prisoners have passed

through the corps cage, of whom three are officers."

Thus ran the brief official notice so tersely given in the

"Intelligence Summary," known to the ribald as "Comic Cuts"; later it

will appear even more tersely in the daily communiqué which delights

the matutinal kipper and twin eggs of England. It's all so simple; it

all sounds such a ridiculously easy matter to those who read. Map

maniacs stab inaccurate maps with pins; a few amateur strategists

discourse at length, and with incredible ignorance, on the bearing

it--and countless other similar operations--will have on the main

issue. And the vast majority remark gloomily to the other members of

the breakfast table that there is nothing in the paper as usual.

Nothing, my friend! I wonder. . . .

This is not a story; there is no plot; it is just what happens every

day somewhere or other in the land of glutinous, stinking mud, where

the soles are pulled off a man's boots when he walks and horses go in

up to their bellies; where one steers a precarious and slippery course

on the narrow necks of earth that separate shell holes, and huddled

things stare up at the sky with unseeing eyes. They went "over the

top" themselves--ten days ago--in just such another local success.

Nothing, my friend! Perhaps you're right; it's mainly a sense of

proportion that is needed in war, as in other things. . . .

"Good morning, dear old soul." The machine-gun officer emerged from a

watery hole of doubtful aspect, covered with a dented sheet of

corrugated iron and a flattened-out biscuit tin--the hole that is, not

the officer. "We have slept well, thank you; and the wife and family

are flourishing. Moreover--you're late."

The Sapper regarded him pessimistically through the chilly mist of an

October dawn. "Entirely owing to my new and expensive waders being

plucked from my feet with a sucking noise. A section of haggard men

are now engaged in salvage operations. Shall we process?"

"We shall--in one sweet moment, not before. Sweet, brave heart,

because----" He put his head round the corner. "Jones--the raspberry

wine--_toute suite_. Just a hollow tooth full, and we will gambol like

young lambs the whole long weary way."

"It is well," remarked the Sapper, returning the empty mug to the

soldier servant. "Personally I like it burnt at night, with a noggin

of port. You put it in a mug, add three spoonfuls of sugar, set light

to it, and let it burn for seven minutes. Then add some port, and

drink hot. Man, you can lead an army corps . . ." His voice died away

as the two officers departed on their three-mile squelch to the front

line, and the unshaven Jones gazed after them admiringly.

"A hartist!" he murmured admiringly, "a plurry hartist. Personally,

the rasberry juice, any old 'ow for me." He disappeared from view, and

further disclosures would be tactless. . . .

And so we lift the curtain on the dawn of the 21st. Doubtless the

setting is frivolous, but it has served to introduce two of the supers

who go to make up the final scene. In the portion of the front line

for which they were bound there lay the battalion which was cast for

the principal part, and it is the prerogative of stars to have their

entrance led up to. . . .

The mist hung thick over the shell-torn ground as the two officers

walked on. In places stretches of half-demolished wire and blown-in

trenches showed where the Germans had put up a fight. Stray graves,

ours and theirs, were dotted about promiscuously, and little heaps of

dirty and caked equipment showed that salvage work was in progress.

Away to the left a few crumbling walls and shattered trees marked a

one-time prosperous agricultural village, from which with great

regularity there came the sighing drone of a German crump followed by a

column of black smoke and a shower of bricks and _débris_. But the

place was dead; its inhabitants gone--God knows where. And soldiers:

well, soldiers have a rooted dislike to dead villages near the trenches.

A strange squat object loomed suddenly into sight--a well-known

landmark to those who wandered daily behind the lines. Derelict,

motionless, it lay on a sunken road, completely blocking it; and the

sunken road was heavy with the stench of death. It is not good for the

Hun to take liberties with a tank, even if it is temporarily

_hors-de-combat_.

A man limping wearily, his head bandaged, his face unshaved, his khaki

coated with half-dry mud, plodded heavily towards them.

"Can you tell me the way to the dressing-station, sir?" He had stopped

and, swaying slightly, stood in front of the two officers.

"Straight on, lad. You'll find it somewhere back there." The

machine-gun officer pointed vaguely into the mist. "About half a mile."

"You ain't got a drop of water, 'ave you, sir? The water party got

lost last night, and we've only had about a teacupful this last

twenty-four hours."

But when going up to visit the trenches water-bottles are a useless

encumbrance, and, with a tired sigh, the wounded Tommy resumed his

thirsty way in the direction of the dressing-station.

"Cooked, poor devil," remarked the Sapper, as he disappeared. "Pretty

nearly finished."

"But he'll be his mother's own bright boy again when he gets his nose

inside that aid post. We go left here, I think."

They paused for a moment to get their bearings--a matter of some

importance and no little difficulty.

It may seem an easy thing to walk up to the trenches. One goes on, and

ultimately one arrives, the casual reader will surmise. And with luck

the casual reader will be right. But there are certain small points

which may have escaped his ken and which render the task of reaching

the front line a trifle harder than walking to the club for lunch.

In the first place the aspect of the ground is not of that cheerful and

varied type which has inspired so many gifted landscape painters. No

trees and little rivers, no cottages and flowering paths delight one's

eye. It is impossible to say: "Take the turn to the left after passing

the cactus bush, and keep straight on till you come to the asparagus

bed; and then you'll see the front trench on your right."

The local cactus bush or its equivalent is hurled into space twice

daily, thereby largely interfering with its use as a landmark. The

local asparagus bed or its equivalent differs only from the remainder

of the ground in the fact that a mule passed peacefully away on it some

weeks previously. And one day even that difference vanished. The mule

passed away again--in small fragments.

Even the front trenches where they exist have a variegated career. At

certain periods quite a large proportion of them are in the air at the

same time, in company with the village just behind; and when they come

down again it is more than likely their position will change to the

next row of damp and unpleasant holes.

That is the trouble: the whole ground is one huge hole. Holes are the

only features of the landscape: big holes, little holes, damp ones,

smelly ones; holes occupied and holes to let; holes you fall into and

holes you don't--but, holes. Everywhere holes. The cactus bush is a

hole; the asparagus bed is a hole; the trenches are holes. The whole

country looks like a disease. A large amount of the wandering must

perforce be done at night; and should the casual reader still doubt the

difficulty of finding one's way, let him imagine three voluntary

descents, and as many compulsory ones, into the wet brand of hole; let

him further imagine a steady downpour of rain, no sign of a star, and a

shrewd suspicion that if he's walked as far as he thinks he has in the

right direction he ought to be in the front line; and then let him

imagine--holes. Whenever he moves he either negotiates or fails to

negotiate--holes. Having, in scrambling out of holes turned round

twice he doesn't know which way he's facing; he only knows there

are--holes. Toc--toc--toc; the slow tapping of a German machine-gun

sounds from the direction he had fondly imagined Battalion

Head-quarters to be; the swish of bullets come nearer as the Hun sweeps

the ground; a flare goes up, showing--holes. Another compulsory

descent; a phut! as a bullet passes over his head, and the swishing

passes on. Shortly that swishing will come back, and in the meantime

are there not--holes? But as for the front trench, whither he is

bound, the contest is unequal. No man can fight--holes.

A further point which is worthy of remark _en passant_ may possibly

escape the notice of the uninitiated. It is a well-known fact, and

will be vouched for by all who have experienced the Somme, that that

part of the ground which is not hole is carried, like the unexpended

portion of the day's rations, on the person. Acres of soil have been

removed from their original abode and have been carried laboriously to

other acres. They have then been brought back again; not by boot only,

but by hand, and face, by hair and teeth. It is reported--though I

will not vouch for the accuracy of the statement--that on one occasion

a relieving battalion completely defeated a small German counter-attack

by standing on the parapet and kicking viciously towards the advancing

Huns. The enormous mass of soil thus propelled not only crushed the

hated foe but effectually buried him. However, that is by the way. We

are digressing far from the Sapper and the machine-gun officer who

stood by a derelict tank in the damp mist of an October dawn and

cogitated on the direction of their particular piece of front line.

"It is amazing," said a voice behind them, "that man can have descended

to such a state of congenital idiocy as to do all this to an

inoffensive carrot field."

The Brigade-Major, followed by the Brigadier, joined the two officers.

Behind them the signal officer plucked France from his face. And then

of a sudden five officers disappeared. A droning roar rose with

extreme rapidity to that pitch of loudness that denotes undesirable

closeness; a mass of black fumes and flying mud shot up twenty odd

yards away; a flight of cockchafers seemed to pass into the distance as

the jagged fragments whizzed overhead--and five faces appeared as

suddenly from the ground. Holes have their uses at times.

"This sunken road is always hairy," remarked the signal officer--known

to his intimates as Sigs--giving the General a hand-up from his

particular lair. "It were unwise to linger, sir."

"Another quarter-mile and we hit Essex Trench," remarked the

Brigade-Major. "Sally's head-quarters are there." The five officers

passed on, squelching loudly, and once again peace and silence reigned

in the sunken road. . . .

And now we come to the principal actors in the drama. Crowded in Essex

Trench, damp with mist, were the men of the South Loamshires. A few

were scribbling notes, and an all-pervading smell of frying bacon

permeated the air. One or two, wrapped in great-coats, with a

mackintosh sheet over them, still slept peacefully--but the whole

regiment was stirring into life. The morning of the day had come. To

many it was a new experience; to others it was stale--going over the

top. But, new or old, not a man but realised that by evening the roll

of the regiment would have many gaps; new or old, not a man but

realised that his name might be one of those gaps. Just the luck of

the game; perhaps nothing, perhaps a Blighty, perhaps . . .

It is well without doubt that the lower the intelligence the less the

imagination. To ninety per cent. of these men the situation lost much

of its edge; to the remaining ten the edge was sharpened. What is to

be is to be, in war as elsewhere. Fatalism as regards one's own

prospects is inevitable; essential. But fatalism is an unsatisfying

creed; the word "Why?" is apt to creep into the back of a man's mind,

and the word "Why?" when the intelligence is low, is a dangerous one.

For the word "Why?" can only be satisfactorily answered by the

realisation of the bigness of the issue; by the knowledge that

individual effort is imperative if collective success is to be

obtained; by the absolute conviction that no man can be a law unto

himself. To the ten per cent. these facts were clear; but then, to the

ten per cent. the "Why?" was louder. The factor of their composition

which said to them "Why?"--clearly and insistently--even as they lay

motionless under their coats or outwardly wrangled for bacon and

tea--that very factor supplied the answer.

To the thinkers and dreamers there comes at such times the greater

knowledge: the knowledge which lifts them above self and the

trivialities of their own lives; the knowledge that is almost Divine.

They appreciate the futility--but they realise the necessity. And in

their hearts they laugh sardonically as the shadow of Dream's End

clouds the sky. The utter futility of it all--the utter necessity now

that futility has caught the world. Then they realise the bacon is

cold--and curse.

To the ninety per cent. it is not so. Not theirs to reason so acutely,

not theirs to care so much; to them the two dominant features of this

war--death and boredom--appeal with far less force. For both depend so

utterly on imagination in their effect on the individual. Death is

only awful in anticipation; boredom only an affliction to the

keen-witted. So to the ninety, perhaps, the "Why?" does not sound

insistently. It is as well, for if the answer is not forthcoming there

is danger, as I have said. And one wonders sometimes which class

produces the best results for the business in hand--the business of

slaughtering Huns. . . . The small one that rises to great heights and

sinks to great depths, or the big one, the plodders.

But I have digressed again. It is easy to wander into by-paths when

the main road is prosaic, and the study of a body of men before an

attack--the men who fear and don't show it, the men who fear and try

not to show it, the men who don't care a hang what happens--cannot but

grip the observer who has eyes to see. Almost does he forget his own

allotted part in the drama; the psychology of the thing is too

absorbing. And it can only be realised when seen first hand.

Let us leave them there for the time--that battalion of the South

Loamshires. Sally--as the C.O. is generally known--has talked with the

Brigadier and the Brigade-Major. He knows that zero hour is 11.30

a.m.; he knows his objective--Suffolk Trench; he knows the strong point

at its northern end which the sappers are going to consolidate. The

Sapper has found his section subaltern and his section nursing coils of

barbed wire and shovels, and has been informed with much blasphemy that

the guide had lost his way, and the party had been wandering all night.

The machine-gun officer has delivered words of wisdom to various guns'

crews--both Lewis and otherwise--who came under his eagle eye at

intervals along the trench. Just the prosaic main road; the details

are tedious; the actual orders uninteresting. The attack would either

succeed or it would fail; the strong point would either be consolidated

or it would not. The orders--the details--are necessary adjuncts to

the operation; of no more interest than the arrangements for pulling up

the fire curtain. Only if the fire curtain sticks, the play is robbed

of much of its natural charm to the onlooker.

"Bring me some more breakfast. That walk gives one the devil of a

hunger." The Brigadier was back once more in his dug-out, while,

outside, the mist had lifted and the autumn sun shone down on a world

of mud.

The Brigade-Major was shaving; the Staff Captain--a non-starter in the

morning's walk--was demanding corrugated iron from the unmoved Sapper.

"I tell you this roof is a disgrace. Cascades of water pour through

into the soup at dinner. Why don't you do something?"

"What do you propose I should do, brave heart? Sit on the roof and

catch it?"

The subject was a complicated one, touching deep problems of supply and

demand, to say nothing of carrying parties; so let us leave them to

their warfare.

The signal officer was looking wise over something that boomed and

buzzed alternately; the machine-gun officer may, or may not, have been

enjoying another toothful.

In short, the supers, the stage-managers had departed. The last

directions had been given, and the play was due to start in an hour and

a quarter. All that could be done for its success had been done by

those who were behind; now it was up to the men who sat and sprawled in

the mud-holes in front, with the blue smoke of their cigarettes curling

upwards and their equipment and rifles stacked beside them.

A desultory bombardment on each side droned stolidly on, while away to

the front three British aeroplanes, seemingly come from nowhere,

tumbled and looped round two Germans like mosquitoes over a pool. A

row of sausage balloons like a barber's rash adorned the sky as far as

the eye could see. Just an everyday scene on the Somme, and meanwhile

the actors waited.

"Come up to the top. There's ten minutes to go." The Staff Captain

and the Sapper--their dispute settled--strolled amicably to the top of

the hill behind the dug-out and produced their field-glasses. Away in

front Essex Trench could be seen, and the men inside it, standing to.

For them the period of suspense was nearly over--the curtain was just

going up.

"One minute." The Sapper snapped his watch to and focussed his

glasses. "They're on."

Suddenly from all around, as if touched by a spring, an ear-splitting

din leaped into life. In the valley behind them it seemed as if

hundreds of tongues of flame were darting and quivering, sprouting from

what a moment before was barren ground. The acrid smell of cordite

drifted over them, while without cessation there came the solemn

boom--boom--boom of the heavier guns way back. Like the _motif_ of an

opera, the field-guns and light howitzers cracked and snorted,

permeating everything with one continuous blast of sound; while the

sonorous roar and rumble of the giant pieces behind--slower, as

befitted them--completed the mighty orchestra. Neither man could hear

the other speak; but then, they were both watching too intently for

that.

Hardly had hell been let loose when a line of men arose from Essex

Trench and walked steadily to their front. Just ahead of them great

clouds of smoke rose belching from the ground: clouds into which they

vanished at times, only to reappear a moment later. They were

advancing behind a creeping barrage, and advancing with the steadiness

of automatic machines.

"Good lads! Good lads!" The Staff Captain's lips framed the words;

his voice was inaudible.

Every now and then a man pitched forward and lay still; or muttered a

curse as he felt the sting of something in his arm. A section on the

left dropped suddenly, only to worm on again by ones and twos, trying

to avoid the dreaded toc-toc--slow and menacing--of a German

machine-gun. Then the bombers were there. Crouching back, a man would

pull the pin out of his bomb, run forward, and hurl it into the trench

where the Germans were huddled in groups. And away behind the South

Loamshires, on the shell-pocked ground that now boiled and heaved like

some monstrous sulphur spring, with thick black and yellow fumes

drifting slowly across it, there lay the first fruits of the harvest: a

few of the gaps in the evening's roll-call.

On the flank a machine-gun was going, taking them in enfilade. In

front, Germans--numbers of Germans--glared snarling at them out of the

trench, or whimpered in a corner with arms upraised, as was the nature

of the beasts. A non-commissioned officer picked up a bomb and hurled

it at the advancing platoon sergeant; only to cry "_Kamerad_" when it

failed to explode. . . .

And so the South Loamshires, or such as were left of them, came to

their objective; the first part of the play was over. The

machine-gunner who had enfiladed them passed in his checks, fighting to

the end, brained with the butt of a rifle.

Occasionally a wounded man crawled into the trench; a German officer

sat sullenly in a corner stanching a gaping hole in his leg. Behind

them, towards the Essex Trench, the air was now clearer; the

bombardment had moved over the line they had won, and thundered down on

the German communications.

"Runner!" A Company Commander stood shakily trying to patch up a wound

in his arm. As far as he could tell from a hasty reconnaissance, he

was the senior officer present. "Give this to the C.O.: 'Objectives

won. Situation on right doubtful. Estimated casualties two hundred.'"

He handed the man a slip of paper.

At a steady lope the runner went over the back of the trench, into the

barrage of German shrapnel and high explosive. They saw him reach it,

stop suddenly, twist round, and slither slowly forward.

"Runner down, sir." A sergeant standing by spoke almost casually.

"Runner!" Once again the officer called; once again a man went off at

a jog-trot. They saw him reach his predecessor; stop a moment and bend

down. He looked round and shook his head and went steadily on. The

luck of the game--that's all. And it's only when one's sitting

still--waiting, that one asks "Why?" Ten minutes later he was with the

C.O., waiting for the answer to take back.

And so the drama is over; the play has been a success. From the wings

the Staff Captain and the Sapper have returned to Brigade Head-quarters.

"Saw 'em getting over the top, sir. Then they got into the smoke and

we lost 'em. Like a witches' cauldron."

"We shan't hear anything for two hours." The General thoughtfully

knocked the ashes out of his pipe. They were his men who had gone into

that witches' cauldron; with them daily he lived and daily died. Their

Dream's End was his too. But--a sense of proportion, always. "We

might as well have lunch," he remarked casually.

Gradually the bombardment died away, though from time to time the guns

burst into sullen mutterings, as though hungry at being baulked of

their food.

The same old aeroplanes--or different ones--buzzed busily about; the

same old stoical balloons looked more rash-like than ever.

And then suddenly outside the brigade office there was a stir.

A runner had hove in sight, and the signal officer emerged to get his

tidings.

"Good," he muttered to himself; "the old man will be pleased." He went

into the General's dug-out.

"Message just through, sir, from C.O. South Loamshires: 'Objectives

obtained. A.A.A. Situation on right somewhere obscure. A.A.A.

Estimated casualties 200 all ranks. A.A.A. Will be consolidated

to-night. A.A.A.'"

The "old man" _was_ pleased.

And so, on the afternoon of the 21st, we gained a small local success.

We advanced our line on a front of six hundred yards over an average

depth of a quarter of a mile, etc., etc.

It wasn't much, my friends at home; but--that runner will run no more,

and some eighty odd of that odd two hundred have cooked their last

ration of bacon. Their "Why?" is answered.

No, it wasn't much; but it wasn't--nothing.

III

THE MAN-TRAP

Should you, in the course of your wanderings, ever run across

Brigadier-General Herbert Firebrace, do not ask him if he knows Percy

FitzPercy. The warning is probably quite unnecessary: not knowing

FitzP. yourself, the question is hardly likely to occur to you. But I

mention it in case. One never knows, and Herbert will not be

prejudiced in your favour if you do.

As far as I know, the story of their first--and last--meeting has never

yet been told to the world at large. It is a harrowing tale, and it

found no place in official _communiqués_. Just one of those

regrettable incidents that fade into the limbo of forgotten things, it

served as a topic of conversation to certain ribald subalterns, and

then it gradually disappeared into obscurity along with Percy

FitzPercy. Only it took several months for the topic to fade; Percy

beat it in about ten seconds.

Before the war Percy had been, amongst other things, an actor of

indifferent calibre; he had helped a barman in Canada, carried a chain

for a railroad survey, done a bit of rubber-planting, and written

poetry. He was, in fact, a man of many parts, and cultivated a

frivolous demeanour and an eyeglass. Unkind acquaintances described

him as the most monumental ass that has yet been produced by a

painstaking world; personally, I think the picture a trifle harsh.

Percy meant well; and it wasn't really his fault that the events I am

about to chronicle ended so disastrously. Unfortunately, however, he

was unable to get the General to see eye to eye with him in this

trifling matter; and so, as I have already said, Percy beat it in about

ten seconds.

The whole trouble started over the question of man-traps. "If,"

remarked a Sapper subaltern one night after the port had been round

more than once--"If one could construct a large conical hole like an

inverted funnel in the front-line trench, so that the small opening was

in the trench itself, and the bottom of the funnel fifteen or twenty

feet below in the ground, and if the Huns came over and raided us one

night, one might catch one or two." He dreamily emptied and refilled

his glass.

"By Jove, dear old boy"--Percy fixed his eye-glass and gazed admiringly

at the speaker--"that's a splendid idea! Sort of glorified

man-trap--what!--dear old thing."

"That's it, Percy, old lad. Why don't you make one next time you're in

the trenches?" The speaker winked at the remainder of the party.

"'Pon my soul, dear old man, I think I will." Percy was clearly struck

with the idea. "Cover the hole, don't you know, with trench-boards by

day, and have it open at night. Great idea, old sport, great idea!"

"You could go and fish for them in the morning with a sausage on the

end of a string," murmured some one. "Get 'em to sing the 'Hymn of

Hate' before they got any breakfast."

"Or even place large spikes at the bottom on which they would fall and

become impaled." The first speaker was becoming bloodthirsty.

"Oh, no, dear old chap! I don't think an impaled Hun would look very

nice. It would be quite horrible in the morning, when one started to

count up the bag, to find them all impaled. Besides, there might be

two on one stake." Exactly the objection to the last contingency was

not clear; but after dinner attention to such trifles is of secondary

importance.

"Percy inaugurates new form of frightfulness," laughed the Major. "May

I be there when you catch your first!"

The conversation dropped; other and more intimate topics anent the fair

ones at home took its place; but in the mind of Percy FitzPercy the

germ of invention was sown. When he went back to his battalion that

night, in their so-called rest-billets, he was thinking. Which was

always a perilous proceeding for Percy.

Now it so happened that his part of the line at the moment had

originally belonged to the Hun. It was a confused bit of trench, in

which miners carried on extensively their reprehensible trade. And

where there are miners there is also spoil. Spoil, for the benefit of

the uninitiated, is the technical name given to the material they

remove from the centre of the earth during the process of driving their

galleries. It is brought up to the surface in sandbags, and is then

carried away and dumped somewhere out of harm's way. In reality it is

generally stacked carefully in the trenches themselves, thereby

completely blocking all traffic; which is by the way.

But after mining has been in progress for some time, and various

craters have been blown and sapped out to, and after trench mortars

have "strafed" consistently for many months and torn the original

surface of the ground to pieces, the actual position of the trenches

themselves becomes haphazard. They cease in many cases to bear the

slightest likeness to the ordinary trenches of commerce; they become

deep gorges in mountains of sandbags. I have sometimes wished that

those officers who apparently write home to devoted bands of female

workers asking for more sandbags would get in touch with me instead. I

shall be delighted to let them have anything up to five million, all

filled, by return; which is again by the way.

To return to Percy. In his part of the front sandbags grew like

pebbles on a shingly beach; and from time to time fresh cuts off the

trenches were opened to allow for further expansion in the sandbag

family. The existing front line in one place had started life as a cut

off the old trench, and had gradually been taken into use as a

permanency, and it was at this point that he stumbled on the great

discovery which was destined to cause all the trouble. How he first

stumbled is not recorded; but early one morning Percy FitzPercy could

have been seen like a terrier with his nose down a rabbit-hole, lying

flat at the bottom of the trench, peering into a noisome and

foul-smelling cavity underneath him.

"My dear old boy," he remarked, enthusiastically, to a brother

subaltern, who was watching the proceeding coldly, "it's an old German

dug-out; I'm certain it's an old German dug-out."

"I don't care a damn if it is," answered the other, without enthusiasm.

"It stinks like a polecat, and is undoubtedly full of all creeping

things. For heaven's sake, let's go and get something to eat."

Slowly and reluctantly Percy allowed himself to be led away, thinking

deeply. Only the week before had the Hun attempted a raid and actually

entered the trench close to the spot in question, and here was

apparently a ready-made man-trap should he do so again. After

breakfast he would explore his find; after breakfast he would himself

set to work and labour unceasingly. As I have said, Percy FitzPercy

meant well.

It is possible that lesser men might have been deterred by the

unpromising results of that exploration. Descending gingerly through

the hole, which had been widened sufficiently to allow of the passage,

Percy switched his torch around the cavity he found himself in. Above

his head long rounded timbers, side by side and touching one another,

formed the roof, which was in good condition, save in the centre, where

the blue sky shone through the hole he had entered by. In one corner

stood a bedstead covered by a moth-eaten blanket, while all over the

floor crumbling sandbags and old clothes and equipment gave it the

appearance of a rag-and-bone shop. In one place the wall had fallen

in, a mound of chalk filled the corner, and from a score of vantage

points elderly rodents watched with increasing disfavour this

unexpected human invasion.

Up above in the trench the disfavour was repeated in that picturesque

phraseology for which Thomas is famous.

"Wot are you a-doing 'ere?" An incensed sergeant rounded a corner, and

gazed wrathfully at three privates, each armed with a spade and wearing

gas helmets. "Wot 'ave you got them 'elmets on for?" He approached

the fatal hole, and recoiled slightly. "Gaw-lumme! Wot's that smell?"

"Percy," answered a sepulchral voice. "Our little Perce."

"Wot yer mean--Percy? Wot's that 'ole?" A cloud of dust at that

moment rose through it, and he recoiled still farther. "Oo's down

there?"

"Percy," answered the same sepulchral voice. "Percy FitzP. carrying

hout a reconaysance in force. 'E's found a 'Un smell factory, and 'e's

fair wallowing in it."

At that moment a voice came gently through the opening. "I say, you

fellahs, just come down here a moment, and bring your shovels--what?"

A face, covered with a fine coating of blackish-grey dust, popped up

out of the bottom of the trench. "We're fairly going to catch the old

Hun before we've finished."

With a choking gasp the sergeant lost all self-control and faded

rapidly away, while the three privates slowly and reluctantly followed

the face through the hole.

It was fortunate--or possibly, in view of future events,

unfortunate--that during the next two hours no responsible individual

came along that particular piece of front line. Incidentally there was

nothing surprising in the fact. In most places, especially during the

day, the front line is held but lightly by isolated posts, which are

visited from time to time by the company or platoon commander, and more

rarely by the Colonel. On this particular occasion the C.O. had

already paid his visit to the scene of activity. The company commander

was wrestling with returns, and Percy himself led the long-suffering

platoon. And so without hindrance from any outsiders the fell business

proceeded.

Volumes of evil-smelling dust poured out into the trench, punctuated

from time to time with boots, a few rats who had met with an untimely

end, some unrecognisable garments, and large numbers of empty bottles.

An early investigation had shown the indomitable leader that the old

shaft which had led down to the dug-out in the days when it was used

was completely blocked up, and so the hole through the roof was the

only means of entrance or exit. Moreover, the hole being in the centre

of the roof, and the dug-out being a high one, there was no method of

reaching it other than by standing on the bed or the decomposing chair.

Once the bird was in there, granted the bed had been removed, there was

therefore no way by which he could get out without being helped from

above. And so with joy in his heart the indefatigable Percy laboured

on, what time three sweating privates consigned him to the uttermost

depths of the pit.

Now one may say at once that Percy had all the makings in him of the

true artist. Having decided to stage his performance, he had no

intention of letting it fail through lack of attention to detail. Life

in the front trenches is not at any time an enlivening proceeding; the

days drag wearily by, the nights are full of noises and Verey

lights--and this particular part of the line was no exception to the

general rule. So our hero was not distracted by mundane influences or

stress of work from elaborating his scheme. In addition, once the

miasma had subsided, and the idea had been explained to them, the three

supers became quite keen themselves. It was one of them, in fact, who

suggested the first detail.

"'Ow are we to know, sir," he remarked, as they sat resting on an

adjacent fire-step after three hours' strenuous exhuming, "that

supposing two of the perishers fall through the 'ole they won't escape?

Two men could get out of that there place without no bed to 'elp 'em."

"By Jove, yes!" Percy scratched his forehead and left furrows of white

in the general darkness. "By Jove, yes; you're quite right--what?

Break one's heart to lose the blighters, don't you know. You're a

doocid clever fellow to think of that, Jenkins."

"Tomkins, sir," murmured the originator of the brain-wave, slightly

abashed by the unexpected praise.

"We might," remarked another of the world's workers, thoughtfully

sucking his teeth--"we might 'ave a trap-door, a 'eavy one, to let down

over the 'ole once they was in."

"Yus--and 'ow are we to know when they is in?" The third member of the

party proceeded to justify his existence. "They won't come over 'ere

and fall into the 'ole and then shout to us to let down the trap." He

thoughtfully lit a Woodbine. "The 'Un will be strafing if there's a

raid on, and there'll be the 'ell of a beano going on, and no one won't

never 'ear nothing."

With which sage aphorism he relapsed into silence, and a gloom settled

on the meeting.

"By Jove, you fellows, we must think of something! We must pull up our

socks and think--what? After we've spent all this time clearing the

bally place out we must really think of something--by Jove!" Percy

gazed hopefully at his three supers, but it seemed that their

contributions to the conversation were at an end, and for a space

silence reigned, broken only by the gentle lullaby of the tooth-sucker.

"We might," remarked Tomkins at length, after a period of profound

thought, "'ave a trip-wire, wot would ring a gong."

"That's it--that's it! 'Pon my word, you're a doocid clever fellow,

Thomson, doocid clever fellow--what?" Percy became enthusiastic.

"Ring the gong where the fellah is who lets down the door. He lets

down the door, and we bag the Hun. Dam good idea!"

"I don't believe in no gongs," remarked the musical one scornfully.

"No--nor trip-wires neither." He eyed his audience pugnaciously.

"But, my good fellah--er--what do you believe in?" Percy's spirits

were sinking.

"Tins, china, cups and saucers, plates, old saucepans--anything and

everything wot will make a noise when the 'Un falls on it. That's the

ticket, sir," he continued, with gathering emphasis as he noted the

impression he was causing. "Lumme--a trip-wire: it might break, or the

gong mightn't ring, or the blighter mightn't 'ear it. Wiv china--every

step he took 'e'd smash anuvver pot. Drahn a rum jar 'e would. But--a

trip-wire!" He spat impartially and resumed his tune.

"By Jove, that's a splendid idea!" The mercurial Percy's face shone

again. "Splendid idea! Fill it full of old tins and china--what? And

when we hear the second fellah hit the floor and start breakin' up the

home we can pull the string and let down the trap-door. Splendid idea!

Doocid clever of you, 'pon my soul it is!"

"And where do you think of getting the china from?" Tomkins, fearing

that his mantle of doocid cleverness was descending upon the

tooth-sucker, eyed him unconvinced. "I wasn't aware as 'ow there was a

penny bazaar in the neighbourhood, nor yet a William Whiteley's."

"Yes, by Jove," chirped Percy, "where do we get it all from? We shall

want lots of it, too, don't you know--what?"

"Get it?" The suggester of the idea looked scornful and addressed

himself to Tomkins. "There ain't no bully tins in the perishing

trenches, are there? Ho no! An' there hain't no china an' bits of

glass and old cups and things in that there village about 'alf a mile

down the road? Ho no! I reckon there's enough to fill twenty 'oles

like that there." Once again the oracle resumed his hobby.

"Splendid!" Percy jumped to his feet. "The very thing! We'll do it

this next company relief, by Jove! Now, boys, two more hours. We just

want to get the bedstead out and straighten things up, and we'll be all

ready for the dinner-service--what?"

Now there was another thing in which Percy FitzPercy showed that he had

the makings of a true artist. He fully appreciated the value of

secrecy in presenting his performances to the public at large. True,

all his platoon were bound to find out, and the remainder of the

company had a shrewd idea that something was afoot. But one does not

walk along trenches--especially in the front line--for pleasure; and

beyond a casual inquiry as to what new form of insanity he was up to

now, the company commander was not interested in Percy's doings. Now

that the place had been cleared out, the opening was covered during the

day by a trench-board carefully stolen from the nearest R.E. dump;

while the members of the platoon assiduously collected old tin and

china utensils, both great and small, which were thrown into the cavity

and arranged tastefully by the stage-manager.

At night the trench-board was removed, and after careful weighting with

two dud shells, a piece of rail, and the stalk of a sixty-pound

trench-mortar bomb, it was placed on edge beside the hole. It was so

arranged that it leaned slightly inwards, and was only kept from

falling by a cord which passed in front of it and which was attached to

two screw pickets--one on each side. The hole itself was covered with

a sack. So much for the scenery.