A LETTER HOME
Zaidos, who was still on sick list and walked with a cane, was
nevertheless put to work, in order to familiarize him with the position
of the trenches. For two weeks the English had been expecting an
attack, and the inaction was telling on the nerves of the officers.
The men are only kept under fire for four days. At the end of that
time, they are sent back a few miles in shifts to the nearest village
where they find quarters, and rest from the nerve-racking, soul-shaking
clamor of guns and buzz of bullets.
The trenches were wonderful. Zaidos and Velo, the Red Cross badges on
their arms giving them free passage, soon explored every inch until
they were perfectly familiar with them all. Zaidos drew a sketch of the
plan to send to the fellows at school.
First of all, and nearest the opposing force, is the line of the
small trenches for the snipers or sharp-shooters. These men, facing
certain death in their little shelters, are picked shots, and keep up a
steady, harassing fire at anything showing over the tops of the enemy’s
trenches or, failing that, at anything that looks like the crew of a
rapid-fire gun. These, of course, they guess at from the line of fire
as the guns are placed in the first line of trenches in little pits of
their own. On his map Zaidos marked the positions of the guns with an
_A_.
Behind the snipers are the barbed wire entanglements, a nightmare of
tumbled wires piled high in cruel confusion. Close behind this are the
observation trenches. There was no firing from these small trenches;
they were simply what the name implied: look-outs. Leaving these, and
passing down the zig-zag connecting trench, the first line trench was
reached. This was fifty yards from the wire entanglements, and along
here the rapid-fire guns were set.
When Zaidos and Velo made their first visit through the trenches,
they were puzzled to see that the guns were all set at an angle, so
that the line of fire intersected, usually just over the barbed wire
entanglements.
Zaidos asked about it.
“We protect our guns in that way,” explained the young Lieutenant who
accompanied them. “With the fire coming at an angle, it is difficult
for the enemy to get the exact position of our guns, and they are
unable to follow the line of our fire with their own fire, and so
cripple us. On the other hand, you notice that all trenches are either
battlement shape or zig-zag.”
“I wondered why,” said Zaidos.
“Well, that is so a shot from the enemy, no matter what the angle,
striking in a trench, will simply go a few feet, and plow into the bank
of earth ahead of it. Formerly, a single shot, raking the length of a
portion of a trench, would cost hundreds of men. Now it seldom means a
loss of more than six or eight.”
It was fifty yards between the entanglements and the first line trench
and in the two hundred yards between that and the second line trench,
there was quite a little underground settlement.
The bomb-proof shelter was a regular cellar with sheets of steel over
it, and earth over that. It was dark, and the dirt walls and floor gave
out a damp and mouldy smell. The men had made crude provisions for
comfort. Narrow benches were about the walls, a door from some wrecked
building had been brought with much labor, and converted into a table,
around which the men sat and played cards.
But Zaidos was most interested in the First Aid Station. He felt that
much of his time might be spent here in this strange dug-out.
It was a strange mixture of the latest thing in surgical science and
the crudeness of the caveman.
The walls were simply scooped out. They might have been dug with a
gigantic spoon, so rough they were and so rounding. The floor had been
packed or trodden hard, and in the middle of the small space was a rude
operating table. Beside it, however, on enameled, collapsible iron
stands, looking as though they might have been just carried out of some
perfectly appointed hospital, were rows of delicate instruments.
There had been no firing for some time, and the place was empty. The
surgeon and his assistant sat reading a month-old copy of a London
paper. They scanned the columns eagerly, and laughed heartily at the
jokes. For London gallantly jests, even in war time.
The lieutenant introduced Zaidos and Velo to the doctors, and explained
their presence.
“Well, me lad,” said the older man, cordially taking note of Zaidos’
sunny smile and fearless eyes, “I’m thinkin’ that we need such as you.
We can’t hope those fellows over there beyond will keep still much
longer, and we will have the deuce of a time to hold our position, I
believe. Of course we will do it, but it will mean a lot of work for us
in here, worse luck!
“You want to familiarize yourself with every turn of the place. A lost
moment may mean a lost life, perhaps yours, perhaps the man you are
trying to help. You may have to leave the connecting trench you are
running along and take to the top of the ground. If a shell falls ahead
of you, you will find your path stopped up. Have you ever been under
fire?”
“I don’t know just what you would call it,” said Zaidos laughingly, and
proceeded to tell the doctor how they happened to be in their present
position.
“Well, well, well!” said the doctor. “You ought to do! First drowned,
and then shot at, and submarined. It does seem as though you ought to
be able to keep your head, with only a few simple bullets and gas bombs
flying around.”
He got to his feet stiffly, for living underground makes men rheumatic,
and put down his paper.
“Just pay attention,” he said in a crisp, business-like way. “When you
serve wounded men, remember two things. Work deliberately, yet with
the greatest speed. Many a man has died from one little twist given in
getting him on his stretcher. Forget the fight, forget everything for
the time but that the torn body is in your hands. Do you know anything
at all about lifting a man?”
“I do,” said Zaidos. “I’m a Boy Scout. Besides, we learned all that at
school.”
“Good!” said the doctor. “All you have to do is to remember what you
know, when the necessity of using your information arrives. When you
have your man on the stretcher, get here as soon as ever you can. Don’t
wait for anyone; private and General alike must stand aside for the Red
Cross. Wonder if you could stop a cut artery?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Zaidos.
“How?” said the doctor, reaching out his arm.
Zaidos took it and demonstrated the thing and the doctor gave a grunt
of satisfaction.
“When you get your man here, lay him down on one of the benches or on
the floor or anywhere else that you see a place for him. Don’t wait,
for we will attend to him after that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Zaidos. He foresaw lively times.
“Good morning,” said the doctor, sitting down and taking up his
precious paper. The boys went out, feeling as though they had been
dismissed from class.
The large cook house was very close to the First Aid Station, and
was equipped with wonderful field stoves and great kettles and pots.
A number of cooks were in charge, and the boiling soup smelled good
enough to eat!
Three zig-zag trenches led from the cook house and First Aid Station to
the second line of trenches.
Here was a repetition of the first line trench, machine guns and all.
Back of it stretched a line of snipers’ trenches, and behind them
another barbed wire entanglement. A tunnel led under this; several of
them in fact, and large enough to permit the passage of a number of men
at the same time. This was arranged in case the line was pushed back by
the advancing enemy.
When Zaidos had arrived at this point in his drawing, his paper gave
out, and he was obliged to write the rest on the back of the sheet.
“You will see, fellows,” he wrote, “just how the second trench is
laid out by looking at the first. Back of the barbed wire and the
observation trenches come a lot of connecting trenches again. These
are not laid out in exactly the same direction as the first group, of
course, but are generally the same. Instead of a shelter for thirty
men, there is a shelter for one hundred thirty men. The cook house is
much larger, and the First Aid Station is really a sort of hospital,
where the men can be placed until they are taken back to the regular
field hospital which is back of the third trench, four hundred yards
away. This makes the hospital proper pretty safe.
“The shelter for men in the third position holds three hundred men
easily and the hospital is quite complete.
“You never saw such courageous fellows as these are. Just think, you
chaps, kicking as you do over there about the feed and the beds and the
barracks, what it is like to live underground against the bare earth!
“The men are never able to undress to sleep. Once in two weeks each man
has a bath, which he has to take in _two minutes_. He is then given a
complete set of new underwear. The men spend four days in the trenches,
almost always under fire night and day. There has been no firing since
we struck the place, but there is going to be a bad time soon, they
say. And then the noise is perfectly deafening, they tell me.
“When the men have been four days in the trenches under fire, they are
sent back in squads to the nearest village for four days to rest and
get their nerves back in shape.
“I was talking to a jolly young Englishman this morning, and he told me
about the place he stayed in the village. He has just come back.
“He was quartered in a cellar, where they were perfectly safe from
Zeppelin bombs or stray shells, but it was dark and damp and cold. When
he went to sleep at night the rats ran all over him, and he and all the
other fellows had to wrap their coats around their faces to keep the
rats from running over the bare skin. Some rats, eh?
“A lot of chaps go to pieces with rheumatism, and have to be sent way
back to the stationary hospitals in the cities.
“This Englishman I was talking to was over in France last Christmas,
and he told me all about the time they had. Seems queer, but I think it
is so. He said almost every fellow in the outer trench had some sort of
a Christmas box with fruit-cake and candles, and ‘sweets’ as he calls
candies. There they were, wishing each other a merry Christmas, and
shaking hands, and laughing, and the snipers’ guns popping away at the
Germans a few feet away from them. Pretty soon a white flag went up
in the enemies’ trench, and they ran one up, too, and stuck up their
heads to see what was what. They didn’t know if it was a ruse or not;
but there was a group of Germans sitting on the edge of their trench
with their legs down inside ready to jump; and they were calling ‘Merry
Christmas, Englishmen!’ as jolly as you please.
“Well, that was all our fellows needed; and they got out of their holes
and advanced. But one of their officers went first, a young fellow who
was pretty homesick on account of the day, and he went up to a big
German officer, and they agreed that there should be a truce for the
day, and shook hands on it. So the men came across and met, and tried
to talk to each other and learned some words from each other. The
Germans had Christmas boxes, too, and they swapped their funny pink
frosted cakes for the English fruit-cake, and gave each other cigarette
cases and knives for souvenirs.
“Then it came dinner time, and they brought their stuff out on the
neutral ground, and ate it together. Then pretty soon they all went
back to their own trenches, and commenced singing to each other. The
English sang their Christmas carols, old as the hills of England; and
the Germans boomed back their songs in their big, deep voices. I tell
you, fellows, it must have been queer! Just before dark, the German
lieutenant stood up once more, with his white flag, and the English
officer went to meet him. The German talked pretty fair English and the
men heard what he said.
“‘We have a lot of dead men here to bury,’ he explained. ‘Will you
come and help us?’ So the English said yes, and they all came out again
and helped to bury the fellows they had shot. Then they all stood
together, and the German officer took off his helmet and everybody took
off their caps, and the German officer looked down at the graves, and
then up, and he said, ‘Hear us, Lieber Gott,’ and the fellow said he
must have thought his English was not good enough to pray in; so he
said a little prayer in German, but everybody sort of felt as though
they understood it, and of course some did. And then he put his helmet
back, and shook hands, very straight and stiff with our officer, and
said, ‘Auf wiedersehn,’ and turned away. And everybody shook hands and
went back to their own trenches, and long after dark they kept calling
to each other ‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’
“Well, fellows, that was the end. Next morning they were peppering away
at each other, struggling like a lot of dogs to get a throat hold.
Seems sort of queer, don’t you think so?
“I don’t believe this could happen now, because they have been fighting
so long that they hate each other now. I think at first that they were
like dogs that someone sicks into a fight. They do it because they want
to be obliging, or because they think they have to mind. They would
just as soon stop and wag their tails and go to chasing cats or digging
for rabbits together. But they have fought now until the bitterness
of it has entered deep. I can’t guess what the end will be. I don’t
believe anybody can.
“You had better stir up everybody over there about it, and ‘rustle the
requisite’ as Main always said. _Everything_ for field hospital work is
badly needed. Seems to me you could send a few hundred dollars of stuff
over, well as not. You, Corky, you had better sell that car of yours.
You know the Commandant doesn’t half approve of it, and Baxter can give
up that motor-boat. You will drown yourself, Baxter, sure as sure! And
think how much better you would feel to stay alive, and help a lot of
shot-to-bits poor fellows in the bargain.
“Things look so different when you are right on the ground. What they
tell me about some of the shot wounds that come to the hospitals makes
me wonder if I have enough backbone to stand up under it, when the
fighting really commences. I believe I am getting scared!
“The English fellow told me that after the first shot or two you
didn’t seem to mind anything; you just went right ahead, and tended to
work as though, as he said, it was a May morning in an English lane. I
suppose he thought that was about as near Paradise as he could imagine,
but the finest place _I_ can think of is--Oh well, fellows, you know. I
wish I was close enough to the gang to have you pound me on the back,
and to kick that big brute of a Mackilvane for trying to stuff me under
the bed. I’d like to hear some of Gregg’s rag-time, and see Mealy Jones
try to ride the bay horse.
“But this is the end of my paper, and I’ve got to go back to the
hospital. To-morrow I am to be put on regular duty. That’s why I am
writing you this long letter. It may be a good while before I write
another; so good-bye, old pals. I’ll come back some day if I live.”