BILLETS
Cave life had its alleviations, and chief among these was the pleasure of
anticipating our week in reserve. We could look forward to this with
certainty. During the long stalemate on the western front, British
military organization has been perfected until, in times of quiet, it
works with the monotonous smoothness of a machine. (Even during periods
of prolonged and heavy fighting there is but little confusion. Only
twice, during six months of campaigning, did we fail to receive our daily
post of letters and parcels from England, and then, we were told, the
delay was due to mine-sweeping in the Channel.) With every detail of
military routine carefully thought out and every possible emergency
provided for in advance, we lived as methodically in the firing-line as
we had during our months of training in England.
The movements of troops in and out of the trenches were excellently
arranged and timed. The outgoing battalion was prepared to move back as
soon as the "relief" had taken place. The trench water-cans had been
filled,--an act of courtesy between battalions,--the dugouts thoroughly
cleaned, and the refuse buried. The process of "taking over" was a very
brief one. The sentries of the incoming battalion were posted, and
listening patrols sent out to relieve those of the outgoing battalion,
which then moved down the communication trenches, the men happy in the
prospect of a night of undisturbed sleep.
Second only to sleep in importance was the fortnightly bath. Sometimes we
cleansed ourselves, as best we could, in muddy little duck ponds,
populous with frogs and green with scum; but oh, the joy when our march
ended at a military bathhouse! The Government had provided these whenever
possible, and for several weeks we were within marching distance of one.
There we received a fresh change of underclothing, and our uniforms were
fumigated while we splashed and scrubbed in great vats of clean warm
water. The order, "Everybody out!" was obeyed with great reluctance, and
usually not until the bath attendants of the Army Service Corps enforced
it with the cold-water hose. Tommy, who has a song for every important
ceremonial, never sang, "Rule Britannia" with the enthusiasm which marked
his rendition of the following chorus:--
"Whi--ter than the whitewash on the wall!
Whi--ter than the whitewash on the wall!
If yer leadin' us to slaughter
Let us 'ave our soap an' water--FIRST!
Then we'll be whiter than the whitewash on the wall!"
When out of the firing-line we washed and mended our clothing and scraped
a week's accumulation of mud from our uniforms. Before breakfast we were
inflicted with the old punishment, Swedish drill. "Gott strafe Sweden!"
Tommy would say as he puffed and perspired under a hot August sun, but he
was really glad that he had no choice but to submit. In the trenches
there was little opportunity for vigorous exercise, and our arms and legs
became stiff with the long inactivity. Throughout the mornings we were
busy with a multitude of duties. Arms and equipment were cleaned and
inspected, machine guns thoroughly overhauled, gas helmets sprayed; and
there was frequent instruction in bomb-throwing and bayonet-fighting in
preparation for the day to which every soldier looks forward with some
misgiving, but with increasing confidence--the day when the enemy shall
be driven out of France.
Classes in grenade-fighting were under the supervision of officers of the
Royal Engineers. In the early days of the war there was but one grenade
in use, and that a crude affair made by the soldiers themselves. An empty
jam tin was filled with explosive and scrap iron, and tightly bound with
wire. A fuse was attached and the bomb was ready for use. But England
early anticipated the importance which grenade-fighting was to play in
trench warfare. Her experts in explosives were set to work, and by the
time we were ready for active service, ten or a dozen varieties of bombs
were in use, all of them made in the munition factories in England. The
"hairbrush," the "lemon bomb," the "cricket ball," and the "policeman's
truncheon" were the most important of these, all of them so-called
because of their resemblance to the articles for which they were named.
The first three were exploded by a time-fuse set for from three to five
seconds. The fourth was a percussion bomb, which had long cloth streamers
fastened to the handle to insure greater accuracy in throwing. The men
became remarkably accurate at a distance of thirty to forty yards. Old
cricketers were especially good, for the bomb must be thrown overhand,
with a full-arm movement.
Instruction in bayonet-fighting was made as realistic as possible. Upon a
given signal, we rushed forward, jumping in and out of successive lines
of trenches, where dummy figures--clad in the uniforms of German foot
soldiers, to give zest to the game--took our blades both front and rear
with conciliatory indifference.
In the afternoon Tommy's time was his own. He could sleep, or wander
along the country roads,--within a prescribed area,--or, which was more
often the case, indulge in those games of chance which were as the breath
of life to him. Pay-day was the event of the week in billets because it
gave him the wherewithal to satisfy the promptings of his sporting blood.
Our fortnightly allowance of from five to ten francs was not a princely
sum; but in pennies and halfpennies, it was quite enough to provide many
hours of absorbing amusement. Tommy gambled because he could not help it.
When he had no money he wagered his allowance of cigarettes or his share
of the daily jam ration. I believe that the appeal which war made to him
was largely one to his sporting instincts. Life and Death were playing
stakes for his soul with the betting odds about even.
The most interesting feature of our life in billets was the contact which
it gave us with the civilian population who remained in the war zone,
either because they had no place else to go, or because of that
indomitable, unconquerable spirit which is characteristic of the French.
There are few British soldiers along the western front who do not have
memories of the heroic mothers who clung to their ruined homes as long as
there was a wall standing. It was one of these who summed up for me, in
five words, all the heart-breaking tragedy of war.
She kept a little shop, in Armentières, on one of the streets leading to
the firing-line. We often stopped there, when going up to the trenches,
to buy loaves of delicious French bread. She had candles for sale as
well, and chocolate, and packets of stationery. Her stock was exhausted
daily, and in some way replenished daily. I think she made long journeys
to the other side of the town, bringing back fresh supplies in a pushcart
which stood outside her door. Her cottage, which was less than a mile
from our first-line trenches, was partly in ruins. I couldn't understand
her being there in such danger. Evidently it was with the consent of the
military authorities. There were other women living on the same street;
but somehow, she was different from the others. There was a spiritual
fineness about her which impressed one at once. Her eyes were dry as
though the tears had been drained from them, to the last drop, long ago.
One day, calling for a packet of candles, I found her standing at the
barricaded window which looks toward the trenches, and the desolate towns
and villages back of the German lines. My curiosity got the better of my
courtesy, and I asked her, in my poor French, why she was living there.
She was silent for a moment, and then she pointed toward that part of
France which was on the other side of the world to us.
"Monsieur! Mes enfants! Là-bas!"
Her children were over there, or had been at the outbreak of the war.
That is all that she told me of her story, and I would have been a beast
to have asked more. In some way she had become separated from them, and
for nearly a year she had been watching there, not knowing whether her
little family was living or dead.
To many of the soldiers she was just a plain, thrifty little Frenchwoman
who knew not the meaning of fear, willing to risk her life daily, that
she might put by something for the long hard years which would follow the
war. To me she is the Spirit of France, splendid, superb France. But more
than this she is the Spirit of Mother-love which wars can never alter.
Strangely enough, I had not thought of the firing-line as a boundary, a
limit, during all those weeks of trench warfare. Henceforth it had a new
meaning for me. I realized how completely it cut Europe in half,
separating friends and relatives as thousands of miles of ocean could not
have done. Roads crossed from one side to the other, but they were
barricaded with sandbags and barbed-wire entanglements. At night they
were deluged with shrapnel and the cobblestones were chipped and scarred
with machine-gun bullets.
Tommy had a ready sympathy for the women and children who lived near the
trenches. I remember many incidents which illustrate abundantly his quick
understanding of the hardship and danger of their lives. Once, at
Armentières, we were marching to the baths, when the German artillery
were shelling the town in the usual hit-or-miss fashion. The enemy knew,
of course, that many of our troops in reserve were billeted there, and
they searched for them daily. Doubtless they would have destroyed the
town long ago had it not been for the fact that Lille, one of their own
most important bases, is within such easy range of our batteries. As it
was, they bombarded it as heavily as they dared, and on this particular
morning, they were sending them over too frequently for comfort.
Some of the shells were exploding close to our line of march, but the
boys tramped along with that nonchalant air which they assume in times of
danger. One immense shell struck an empty house less than a block away
and sent the masonry flying in every direction. The cloud of brick dust
shone like gold in the sun. A moment later, a fleshy peasant woman,
wearing wooden shoes, turned out of an adjoining street and ran awkwardly
toward the scene of the explosion. Her movements were so clumsy and slow,
in proportion to the great exertion she was making, that at any other
time the sight would have been ludicrous. Now it was inevitable that such
a sight should first appeal to Tommy's sense of humor, and thoughtlessly
the boys started laughing and shouting at her.
"Go it, old dear! Yer makin' a grand race!"
"Two to one on Liza!"
"The other w'y, ma! That's the wrong direction! Yer runnin' right into
'em!"
She gave no heed, and a moment later we saw her gather up a little girl
from a doorstep, hugging and comforting her, and shielding her with her
body, instinctively, at the sound of another exploding shell. The
laughter in the ranks stopped as though every man had been suddenly
struck dumb.
They were courageous, those women in the firing-line. Their thoughts were
always for their husbands and sons and brothers who were fighting side by
side with us. Meanwhile, they kept their little shops and _estaminets_
open for the soldiers' trade and made a brave show of living in the old
way. In Armentières a few old men lent their aid in keeping up the
pretense, but the feeble little trickle of civilian life made scarcely an
impression in the broad current of military activity. A solitary postman,
with a mere handful of letters, made his morning rounds of echoing
streets, and a bent old man with newspapers hobbled slowly along the Rue
Sadi-Carnot shouting, "Le Matin! Le Journal!" to boarded windows and
bolted doors. Meanwhile, we marched back and forth between billets in the
town and trenches just outside. And the last thing which we saw upon
leaving the town, and the first upon returning, was the lengthening row
of new-made graves close to a sunny wall in the garden of the ruined
convent. It was a pathetic little burial plot, filled with the bodies of
women and children who had been killed in German bombardments of the
town.
And thus for more than three months, while we were waiting for Fritzie to
"come out," we adapted ourselves to the changing conditions of trench
life and trench warfare, with a readiness which surprised and gratified
us. Our very practical training in England had prepared us, in a measure,
for simple and primitive living. But even with such preparation we had
constantly to revise downward our standards. We lived without comforts
which formerly we had regarded as absolutely essential. We lived a life
so crude and rough that our army experiences in England seemed Utopian by
comparison. But we throve splendidly. A government, paternalistic in its
solicitude for our welfare, had schooled our bodies to withstand
hardships and to endure privations. In England we had been inoculated and
vaccinated whether we would or no, and the result was that fevers were
practically non-existent in the trenches. What little sickness there was
was due to inclement weather rather than to unsanitary conditions.
Although there were sad gaps in our ranks, the trench and camp fevers
prevalent in other wars were not responsible for them. Bullets, shells,
and bombs took their toll day by day, but so gradually that we had been
given time to forget that we had ever known the security of civilian
life. We were soon to experience the indescribable horrors of modern
warfare at its worst; to be living from morning until evening and from
dusk to dawn, looking upon a new day with a feeling of wonder that we had
survived so long.
About the middle of September it became clear to us that the big drive
was at hand. There was increased artillery activity along the entire
front. The men noted with great satisfaction that the shells from our own
batteries were of larger calibre. This was a welcome indication that
England was at last meeting the longfelt need for high explosives.
"Lloyd George ain't been asleep," some unshaven seer would say, nodding
his head wisely. "'E's a long w'ile gettin' ready, but w'en 'e _is_
ready, there's suthin' a-go'n' to drop!"
There was a feeling of excitement everywhere. The men looked to their
rifles with greater interest. They examined more carefully their
bandoliers of ammunition and their gas helmets; and they were thoughtful
about keeping their metal pocket mirrors and their cigarette cases in
their left-hand breast pockets, for any Tommy can tell you of miraculous
escapes from death due to such a protective armoring over the heart.
The thunder of guns increased with every passing day. The fire appeared
to be evenly distributed over many miles of frontage. In moments of
comparative quiet along our sector, we could hear them muttering and
rumbling miles away to our right and left. We awaited developments with
the greatest impatience, for we knew that this general bombardment was
but a preliminary one for the purpose of concealing, until the last
moment, the plan of attack, the portion of the front where the great
artillery concentration would be made and the infantry assault pushed
home. Then came sudden orders to move. Within twenty-four hours the roads
were filled with the incoming troops of a new division. We made a rapid
march to a rail-head, entrained, and were soon moving southward by an
indirect route; southward, toward the sound of the guns, to take an
inconspicuous part in the battle at Loos.