I
This, according to our latest subaltern from home, is the title of a
_revue_ which is running in Town; but that is a mere coincidence. The
entertainment to which I am now referring took place in Flanders, and
the leading parts were assigned to distinguished members of "K (1)."
The scene was the Château de Grandbois, or some other kind of Bois;
possibly Vert. Not that we called it that: we invariably referred to
it afterwards as Hush Hall, for reasons which will be set forth in due
course.
One morning, while sojourning in what Olympus humorously calls a
rest-camp,--a collection of antiquated wigwams half submerged in a
mud-flat,--we received the intelligence that we were to extricate
ourselves forthwith, and take over a fresh sector of trenches. The news
was doubly unwelcome, because, in the first place, it is always
unpleasant to face the prospect of trenches of any kind; and secondly,
to take over strange trenches in the dead of a winter night is an
experience which borders upon nightmare--the
hot-lobster-and-toasted-cheese variety.
The opening stages of this enterprise are almost ritualistic in their
formality. First of all, the Brigade Staff which is coming in visits
the Headquarters of the Brigade which is going out--usually a château
or farm somewhere in rear of the trenches--and makes the preliminary
arrangements. After that the Commanding Officers and Company
Commanders of the incoming battalions visit their own particular
section of the line. They are shown over the premises by the outgoing
tenants, who make little or no attempt to conceal their satisfaction
at the expiration of their lease. The Colonels and the Captains then
return to camp, with depressing tales of crumbling parapets, noisome
dug-outs, and positions open to enfilade.
On the day of the relief various advance parties go up, keeping under
the lee of hedges and embankments, and marching in single file.
(At least, that is what they are supposed to do. If not ruthlessly
shepherded, they will advance in fours along the skyline.) Having
arrived, they take over such positions as can be relieved by daylight
in comparative safety. They also take over trench-stores, and exchange
trench-gossip. The latter is a fearsome and uncanny thing. It usually
begins life at the "refilling point," where the A.S.C. motor-lorries
dump down next day's rations, and the regimental transport picks them
up.
An A.S.C. Sergeant mentions casually to a regimental Quartermaster
that he has heard it said at the Supply Dépôt that heavy firing has
been going on in the Channel. The Quartermaster, on returning to the
Transport Lines, observes to his Quartermaster-Sergeant that the
German Fleet has come out at last. The Quartermaster-Sergeant, when he
meets the ration parties behind the lines that night, announces to a
platoon Sergeant that we have won a great naval victory. The platoon
Sergeant, who is suffering from trench feet and is a constant reader
of a certain pessimistic halfpenny journal, replies gloomily: "We'll
have had heavy losses oorselves, too, I doot!" This observation is
overheard by various members of the ration party. By midnight several
hundred yards of the firing-line know for a fact that there has been a
naval disaster of the first magnitude off the coast of a place which
every one calls Gally Polly, and that the whole of our Division are
to be transferred forthwith to the Near East to stem the tide of
calamity.
Still, we must have _something_ to chat about.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Brigade Majors and Adjutants, holding a stumpy pencil in one
hand and a burning brow in the other, are composing Operation Orders
which shall effect the relief, without--
(1) Leaving some detail--the bombers, or the snipers, or the
sock-driers, or the pea-soup experts--unrelieved altogether.
(2) Causing relievers and relieved to meet violently together in some
constricted fairway.
(3) Trespassing into some other Brigade Area. (This is far more
foolhardy than to wander into the German lines.)
(4) Getting shelled.
Pitfall Number One is avoided by keeping a permanent and handy list
of "all the people who do funny things on their own" (as the vulgar
throng call the "specialists"), and checking it carefully before
issuing Orders.
Number Two is dealt with by issuing a strict time-table, which might
possibly be adhered to by a well-drilled flock of archangels, in broad
daylight, upon good roads, and under peace conditions.
Number Three is provided for by copious and complicated map
references.
Number Four is left to Providence--and is usually the best-conducted
feature of the excursion.
Under cover of night the Battalion sets out, in comparatively
small parties. They form a strange procession. The men wear their
trench-costume--thigh-boots (which do not go well with a kilt),
variegated coats of skins, and woollen nightcaps. Stuffed under their
belts and through their packs they carry newspapers, broken staves
for firewood, parcels from home, and sandbags loaded with mysterious
comforts. A dilapidated parrot and a few goats are all that is
required to complete the picture of Robinson Crusoe changing camp.
Progress is not easy. It is a pitch-black night. By day, this road
(and all the countryside) is a wilderness: nothing more innocent ever
presented itself to the eye of an inquisitive aeroplane. But after
nightfall it is packed with troops and transport, and not a light is
shown. If you can imagine what the Mansion House crossing would be
like if called upon to sustain its midday traffic at midnight--the
Mansion House crossing entirely unilluminated, paved with twelve
inches of liquid mud, intersected by narrow strips of _pavé_, and
liberally pitted with "crump-holes"--you may derive some faint idea of
the state of things at a busy road-junction lying behind the trenches.
Until reaching what is facetiously termed "the shell area"--as if any
spot in this benighted district were not a shell area--the troops plod
along in fours at the right of the road. If they can achieve two miles
an hour, they do well. At any moment they may be called upon to halt,
and crowd into the roadside, while a transport-train passes carrying
rations, and coke, and what is called "R.E. material"--this may be
anything from a bag of nails to steel girders nine feet long--up to
the firing-line. When this procession, consisting of a dozen limbered
waggons, drawn by four mules and headed by a profane person on
horseback--the Transport Officer--has rumbled past, the Company, which
has been standing respectfully in the ditch, enjoying a refreshing
shower-bath of mud and hoping that none of the steel girders are
projecting from the limber more than a yard or two, sets out once more
upon its way--only to take hasty cover again as sounds of fresh
and more animated traffic are heard approaching from the opposite
direction. There is no mistaking the nature of this cavalcade: the
long vista of glowing cigarette-ends tells an unmistakable tale.
These are artillery waggons, returning empty from replenishing the
batteries; scattering homely jests like hail, and proceeding, wherever
possible, at a hand-gallop. He is a cheery soul, the R.A. driver, but
his interpretation of the rules of the road requires drastic revision.
Sometimes an axle breaks, or a waggon side-slips off the _pavé_ into
the morass reserved for infantry, and overturns. The result is a
block, which promptly extends forward and back for a couple of miles.
A peculiarly British chorus of inquiry and remonstrance--a blend of
biting sarcasm and blasphemous humour--surges up and down the
line; until plunging mules are unyoked, and the offending vehicle
man-handled out of sight into the inky blackness by the roadside; or,
in extreme cases, is annihilated with axes. Everything has to make
way for a ration train. To crown all, it is more than likely that the
calmness and smooth working of the proceedings will be assisted by a
burst of shrapnel overhead. It is a most amazing scrimmage altogether.
One of those members of His Majesty's Opposition who are doing so much
at present to save our country from destruction, by kindly pointing
out the mistakes of the British Government and the British Army,
would refer to the whole scene as a pandemonium of mismanagement and
ineptitude. And yet, though the scene is enacted night after night
without a break, there is hardly a case on record of the transport
being surprised upon these roads by the coming of daylight, and none
whatever of the rations and ammunition failing to get through.
It is difficult to imagine that Brother Boche, who on the other
side of that ring of star-shells is conducting a precisely similar
undertaking, is able, with all his perfect organisation and cast-iron
methods, to achieve a result in any way superior to that which Thomas
Atkins reaches by rule of thumb and sheer force of character.
* * * * *
At length the draggled Company worms its way through the press to the
fringe of the shell-area, beyond which no transport may pass. The
distance of this point from the trenches varies considerably, and
depends largely upon the caprice of the Boche. On this occasion,
however, we still have a mile or two to go--across country now, in
single file, at the heels of a guide from the battalion which we are
relieving.