We have occupied our own present trenches since January. There was
a time when this sector of the line was regarded as a Vale of Rest.
Bishops were conducted round with impunity. Members of Parliament
came out for the week-end, and returned to their constituents with
first-hand information about the horrors of war. Foreign journalists,
and sight-seeing parties of munition-workers, picnicked in Bunghole
Wood. In the village behind the line, if a chance shell removed tiles
from the roof of a house, the owner, greatly incensed, mounted a
ladder and put in some fresh ones.
But that is all over now. "K(1)"--hard-headed men of business,
bountifully endowed with munitions--have arrived upon the scene, and
the sylvan peace of the surrounding district is gone. Pan has dug
himself in.
The trouble began two months ago, when our Divisional Artillery
arrived. Unversed in local etiquette, they commenced operations by
"sending up"--to employ a vulgar but convenient catch-phrase--a
strongly fortified farmhouse in the enemy's support line. The Boche,
by way of gentle reproof, deposited four or five small "whizz-bangs"
in our front-line trenches. The tenants thereof promptly telephoned to
"Mother," and Mother came to the assistance of her offspring with a
salvo of twelve-inch shells. After that. Brother Boche, realising that
the golden age was past, sent north to the Salient for a couple of
heavy batteries, and settled down to shell Bunghole village to pieces.
Within a week he had brought down the church tower: within a fortnight
the population had migrated farther back, leaving behind a few
patriots, too deeply interested in the sale of small beer and picture
postcards to uproot themselves. Company Headquarters in Bunghole Wood
ceased to grow primroses and began to fill sandbags.
A month ago the village was practically intact. The face of the church
tower was badly scarred, but the houses were undamaged. The little
shops were open; children played in the streets. Now, if you stand at
the cross-roads where the church rears its roofless walls, you will
understand what the Abomination of Desolation means. Occasionally a
body of troops, moving in small detachments at generous intervals,
trudges by, on its way to or from the trenches. Occasionally a big
howitzer shell swings lazily out of the blue and drops with a crash or
a dull thud--according to the degree of resistance encountered--among
the crumbling cottages. All is solitude.
But stay! Right on the cross-roads, in the centre of the village, just
below the fingers of a sign-post which indicates the distance to four
French townships, whose names you never heard of until a year ago,
and now will never forget, there hangs a large, white, newly painted
board, bearing a notice in black letters six inches high. Exactly
underneath the board, rubbing their noses appreciatively against
the sign-post, stand two mules, attached to a limbered waggon, the
property of the A.S.C. Their charioteers are sitting adjacent, in a
convenient shell-hole, partaking of luncheon.
"That was a rotten place we' ad to wait in yesterday, Sammy," observes
Number One. "The draught was somethink cruel."
The recumbent Samuel agrees. "This little 'oiler is a bit of all
right," he remarks. "When you've done strarfin' that bully-beef, 'and
it over, ole man!"
He leans his head back upon the lip of the shell-hole, and gazes
pensively at the notice-board six feet away. It says:--
VERY DANGEROUS.
DO NOT
LOITER
HERE.