THE COMMUNICATION TRENCH
FOR the next fifty yards Private Ralph Setley's range of vision was
bounded in front by the steel helmet, bulging pack and hunched
shoulders of the man preceding him. Right and left nothing but fields
lavishly pitted with shell holes. The only sounds, besides the
ever-thunderous roar of the guns, the quelching of the men's boots in
the mud.
"Left incline."
The platoon wriggled sideways like an enormous worm. The reason was
soon not only apparent to the eye but to the nostrils. A mule, struck
down by a shell, was lying half buried in the mud, its legs sticking
up grotesquely in the air.
Presently the man preceding Setley seemed to disappear from view. The
Tommies in front were descending the steps leading to the long
communication trench. For nearly a mile the only way of gaining the
reserve and firing trenches was by means of the sunken gallery.
Eight feet down Setley descended. His feet no longer sank to his
ankles in mud. The nailed soles of his boots grated upon
wire-netting, that, stretched across the seemingly endless line of
"duck-boards," prevented the men slipping on the lively pieces of
boarding into the slime that formed the major portion of the floor of
the trench.
On either hand the stiff, slimy walls of clay, topped by rows of
sandbags, threatened to collapse and bury the users of the narrow and
tortuous way, for in order to prevent the communicating trench being
enfiladed by hostile fire it was a continued succession of twists and
turns.
Still the rain poured down remorselessly upon the great-coated
Tommies. Here and there portions of the parapet had slipped bodily
into the trench, necessitating a tedious clamber over a heap of moist
clay of the consistency of soft putty.
Before a hundred yards of the narrow way had been traversed George
Anderson, who was immediately in front of Setley, stepped
incautiously upon the edge of one of the duck-boards. In a trice the
section of woodwork tilted, deporting the man up to his thighs in mud
and water, while Ralph, stopping abruptly to avoid the tilted end of
the board, was cannoned into by the man behind who happened to be
Private Alderhame. The next instant both were sprawling on top of the
luckless Anderson, driving his writhing body still deeper into the
mud.
With difficulty Ralph and the ex-actor extricated themselves. Ginger
was in a worse predicament, for until his comrades gripped his arm
and dragged him out by main force he was unable to disengage himself
from the clammy embrace of the tenacious clay.
"I came out 'ere for sojering," remarked the aggrieved man. "Not to
go in for mudlarkin'. I could get plenty of that at Gravesend."
"Phit! phit!" Something, buzzing like an angry bee, slapped viciously
into the mud wall a few inches above Setley's head. Then another,
glancing off the steel helmet of the still grumbling Anderson, sent
the man staggering into Ralph's arms.
"Keep down as you pass this place," shouted a hoarse voice through
the darkness. "The parapet's blown in."
A gap nearly twenty yards in length confirmed the speaker's words.
Through this exposed section rifle bullets were whizzing. Apparently
the Huns had marked the spot during the hours of daylight and had
lashed some rifles to posts, so trained that at fifteen hundred yards
they could command this part of the communication trench by night.
The platoon obeyed smartly, yet resentfully. It was bad enough to
have to walk through mud. To crawl on one's hands and knees was about
the limit.
"Way for the wounded!"
The men, most of them still in a prone position, hugged the slippery
side of the trench, peering through the darkness at the as yet
strange sight.
"Good luck, you blighters!" exclaimed the first of the wounded
Tommies, a tall cadaverous man, with his head roughly bandaged and
his arm in a sling. "You're going to a hot shop, s'welp me. Fifteen
of our chaps copped it in ten minutes. Never mind; it's for Blighty I
am."
The next casualty--a man with his left hand blown off at the
wrist--was groaning and cursing as he passed, staggering like a
drunken man and paying scant heed to the warning to keep well down.
Then two more, borne on stretchers. The knuckles of the bearers
rasped the equipment of the Wheatshires, so narrow was the space in
which to pass, while in order to cross the "unhealthy" section of the
trench the men had to deposit the stretchers on the duck-boards and
drag them sleigh fashion.
Three men, hobbling, using their rifles as crutches, completed the
pageant of pain.
"Copped it proper," explained one of the wounded. "Never 'ad as much
as a blinkin' chance to fire my blessed rifle."
"Wouldn't 'ave been much use if you did, Tommy," rejoined his comrade
with a laugh. "You knowed as 'ow you're the rottenest shot in the
battalion."
"No need to rub that in afore a lot of strangers," retorted the
other. "'Op it; I'll race you to the dressing-station. No more dashed
first line trenches for us for a bit, thank 'eaven. Foot it, you
blighter, afore your leg gets stiff."
The twain vanished into the darkness, leaving the dank, reeking
odours of dirt and sweat in the muggy air.
Another hundred yards and a voice rang out:
"Is that the ration party?"
"No," replied the sergeant. "Reliefs for the Wheatshires."
"Good luck to 'em, then!" rejoined the speaker. "But where the deuce
are the rations? There's no barrage fire on now, an' we ain't seen no
grub for two whole days."
"Keep your heads down, lads."
The caution was hardly necessary. Each man was bent almost double.
Over the parapet on the left a whiz-bang exploded, sending a shower
of dirt upon the soldiers' steel helmets. Trench mortars were lobbing
their deadly missiles into the British second-line trenches.
"Here you are," explained the guide as the head of the platoon
emerged into a short "bay" or section of the winding trench. "Two men
to each dug-out, sir; t'other fellows will show 'em the ropes better.
C.O.'s dug-out is fifty yards further on, sir."
"Stick to me, Setley," whispered Alderhame.
"Will if I can," replied Ralph. "They're telling us off in pairs."
"You two in there," ordered a strange sergeant, indicating what
appeared to be a glorified rabbit-hole burrowed out of the side of
the trench. "New chums, mates," he continued, calling to the as yet
invisible denizens of the subterranean dwelling.
"Come in," said a youthful voice. "Mind your head. I thought it was
Dixon with the grub. Don't keep the curtain held back longer than
usual. It isn't healthy, you know."
Down nine steps cut into the slippery clay, each succeeding step
being a little more like liquid slime than the preceding one, Setley
made his way, the top edge of his pack rubbing against the cross
timbers of the roof of the obliquely sloping tunnel. His hand came in
contact with a clammy ground-sheet, termed by courtesy a curtain.
Pulling it aside he had his first vision of the interior of a
dug-out--his temporary abode during his "turn" in the trenches. The
excavation measured roughly twelve feet by nine, its height being
barely sufficient to allow a tall man to stand upright. At the end
furthest from the entrance was a stove fashioned out of an old tin
bucket and provided with a decidedly inefficient chimney, since most
of the fumes wafted into the dug-out. On the stove a "billy" was
boiling. Stuck on the end of a flat piece of iron projecting from the
wall was a guttering candle, the sole illumination, its yellow light
being hardly powerful enough to penetrate the smoky atmosphere.
Against a horizontal slab of wood reposed six rifles, while on
slightly raised benches against the side walls were bundles of damp
straw, rolled blankets and kit-bags.
"That's right," continued the voice that had bidden the strangers
enter. "Sling your gear on that bench, and please don't trouble to
wipe your boots. We didn't bother to polish the floor this morning."
Ridding himself of his rifle and pack, an example that Alderhame was
quick to follow, Ralph turned his attention to his facetious new
comrade.
By this time Setley had grown more accustomed to the dim light. Half
lying, half sitting upon one of the benches was a mere lad of about
nineteen or twenty, burly of figure, round-faced except for a
pronounced hollow in his cheeks, and with dark brown eyes in which
lurked a suspicion of constant mental strain. He had discarded his
tunic, revealing a Cardigan jacket. Otherwise he was fully dressed,
even to his muddy boots, from which the warm vapour rose like steam
from the back of an overworked horse on a cold day. Pulled well down
over his head was a grey woollen cap, while wrapped loosely round his
neck was a khaki-coloured scarf.
"In the absence of a mutual friend to introduce us," remarked the
recumbent occupant of the sleeping-place, "I suppose we must do the
honours ourselves. My name's Penfold--No. 142857, which is jolly easy
to remember if you know anything about recurring decimals. What's
yours?"
Setley told him, adding gratuitously that he was a bank clerk.
"That so?" remarked Penfold. "I was in a shipping office. And your
chum?"
"Alderhame is my name," replied the actor. "My profession? Well, I
used to tread the boards."
"Strikes me you'll still tread the boards and feel jolly sick at
doing it before long," rejoined Penfold with a laugh. "Duck-boards I
mean. We were to have been relieved at eight this evening. Another
regiment is supposed to take our place, but they didn't turn up. Why,
I don't know; there wasn't much of a barrage this evening--and now
the infernal racket is starting again."
Heavy shells exploding in front and behind the lines of trenches
shook the dug-out until the timbering seemed in imminent danger of
giving way.
For some moments there was silence in the underground refuge. The
continuous crash without was appalling.
"Is this place shell-proof?" asked Alderhame.
"Nothing is," replied Penfold nonchalantly. "A direct hit with a big
shell and it's 'Gone West' with the three of us. Hullo!"
The waterproof-sheet was drawn aside and a red-faced sergeant, the
moisture running in rivulets from his steel helmet, thrust his head
into the reeking dug-out.
"Look slippy, you chaps!" he exclaimed. "Every man is wanted. There's
a massed attack developing."