Of recent days we have almost stopped pretending to be soldiers and
owned up to being civilian labourers lodged in the War zone. This is
felt so acutely that several leading privates have quite discarded that
absolute attribute of the infantryman, the rifle. They return from
working parties completely unarmed, discover the fact with a mild and
but half-regretful astonishment and report the circumstance to
section-commanders as if they had lost one round of small arms
ammunition or the last cube from an iron ration.
The hobby of the civilian labourer is obstacle-racing. To do this you
require a dark night, the assistance of some Royal Engineers, an
appointment just behind the front line with some supervisor of labour
whom you don't know and don't specially want to, and a four-mile stretch
across country to the rendezvous.
You start out at nightfall and do good time over the first hundred
yards. The field consists of forty to eighty labourers, and one of the
idle rich (formerly styled officers). At the hundred yards' mark the
Royal Engineers begin to come in. Obstacle 1 is a model trench, built
for instructional purposes and now being turned to obstructional
account. There's one place where you can get on to the parades without
swimming, and if we started by daylight we might strike it. We do not
start by daylight.
Beyond the trench is a wire entanglement, also a fine specimen of early
1915 R.E. work. We may note in passing the trip wire eight yards beyond.
We're getting pretty good with it now, but in our early days the R.E.
used to get a lot of marks for it.
You go on towards a couple of moated hedges, whimsically barbed in odd
spots, and emerge into a park or open space leading into an
unhealthy-looking road. It seems all plain sailing to the road--unless
you know the R.E., in which case you will not be surprised to find your
neck nearly bisected by a horizontal wire designed to encourage
telephonic communication.
Eventually you all reach an area known for some obscure reason--if for
any at all--as "The Brigade." Here the R.E. have a new game waiting for
you. We call it "Hunt the Shovels." You have been instructed to draw
shovels from the Brigade. The term covers a space of some thousand
square metres intersected with hedges, bridges, rivers, dugouts,
horseponds (natural and adventitious), any square metre of which may
contain your shovels.
If you are not behind time so far this is where you drop a quarter of an
hour. Of course you may just get fed up and go home. But in that case
you aren't allowed to play again, and as a matter of fact the game is
rather _de rigueur_ out here. So you hide your party behind a sign-post,
which tells you--if it were not too dark to read--INFANTRY MUST NOT HALT
HERE, and then a lance-corporal with a good nose for shovels looks
through the more likely hiding-places. The search is rendered pleasant
as well as interesting by the fact that all the Brigade has been trodden
into a morass by months of shovel-hunting.
Beyond the Brigade the obstacles really begin. But if you use a revolver
freely for wire-cutting and rope your party together--this prevents
anyone sitting down by the wayside to take his boots off "because they
draws that bad"--you will reach the rendezvous assigned to you within an
hour of the time assigned to you. At this point you will learn that no
guide has been seen or heard of there, and, subsequently, that the guide
was warned for another square that certainly looks very similar on the
map. But again, if you know guides, you will guess that he went straight
to the spot where the job was to be done without bothering about
anything so intricate or superfluous as a rendezvous. Anyhow you will
probably end by getting some sort of casual labour somewhere, some time
or other, and no questions asked so long as you don't inadvertently dig
through from a main drain into a C.O.'s dugout.
There is a new joke too, a Red Book, out of which we are gradually
becoming millionaires. It is full of comfortable claims and allowances
for gentlemen serving the KING overseas. The only thing is it takes a
bit of working out. There are so many channels of enrichment. Thus in
June--I forget the exact date--I spent a night in the train. Although I
had a bed and beer in bottles all the way from England, not to mention
usual meals and part use of doctor, I became entitled to one franc ten
centimes in lieu of something which I have now forgotten. (Authority,
W.O. Letter 2719.) Then a broken revolver is worth no less than
seventy-two shillings, but I have to collect autographs to get that
Unclaimed groom's allowance--I don't think my groom has claimed
it--comes to nearly four-and-sixpence; and I find I have been quite
needlessly getting my hair cut at my own expense these many months.
And yet I am afraid that when have made it all out and got a chartered
accountant to account for it--that ought to mean a few pounds Chartered
Accountant allowance--my application will be returned to me because the
envelope is not that shade of mauve officially ordained for the
enclosure of Overseas Officers' Claims.
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