[From The London Times, Dec. 18, 1914.]
_An officer in the R.A.M.C. writes:_
Figure to yourself (as Wells says, isn't it?) a country of flat plowed
field, pollard willows and deep muddy ditches. Then we come along, and
in military parlance "dig ourselves in." That is, with the sweat of
the brows of hundreds of Tommies working by night deep narrow trenches
five feet deep and at least with the earth thrown up another two and a
half feet as a bank on top. These trenches are one and a half to two
feet wide, and curl and twist about in a maddening manner to make them
safer from shell-fire. Little caves are scooped in the walls of the
trenches, where the men live about four to a hole, and slightly bigger
dugouts where two officers live. All the soil is clay, stickier and
greasier than one could believe possible. It's like almost solid
paint, and the least rain makes the sides of the trenches slimy, and
the bottom a perfect sea of mud--pulls the heels off your boots
almost. One feels like Gulliver walking along a Lilliputian town all
the time. The front line of trenches--the firing line--have scientific
loopholes and lookout places in them for seeing and firing from, and a
dropping fire goes on from both sides all day long, but is very
harmless.
Dec. 3, 1914.--I was just starting for my daily constitutional "on
top" when the enemy began their bombarding, nearly one and a half
hours earlier than usual, so I will postpone my little walk and finish
this instead. Yesterday we had one man killed and two wounded, the
first casualties for over a week. The story of one of the wounded is
worth telling to show you the pluck of these men. He told me he
noticed some new digging going on on the side of the enemy in front
of his firing post. One can see the spadefuls of earth coming up from
below the ground level when new trenches are being dug. Although this
was in broad daylight, our man thought he would go and see what the
Germans were up to, so he hops over the side of his trench and runs
forward thirty yards to a ditch and crawls along it some hundred yards
or so. He then spots a large shell-hole in the field on one side of
the ditch, so doubles off and gets into that and has a good look
around. Not satisfied with the point of view, he sprints to a line of
willows nearer still to the enemy--within 250 yards of them
indeed--and proceeds to climb up one of them. While doing this he gets
shot through the shoulder. He told me he thought he had ricked his arm
at first, as it felt numb and useless. Meanwhile a great pal of his in
the regiment, hearing that he had gone out like this, hops over the
parapet and sets off to look for him, and comes up just as he gets
hit. The second man upbraids the first roundly for being a fool,
carries his rifle for him, and brings him back. All this is done quite
in the day's work and "sub rosa," as they would get punished for
leaving the trench like that in the daytime if it was spotted. The
pluck of these men is perfectly extraordinary, and the placid way life
goes on under the risk of being sniped or shelled any moment is, until
one gets used to seeing it, quite past belief. I must say the officers
set the men a magnificent example.
_A young officer attached to the Yorkshire Light Infantry writes on
Dec. 6:_
One wonders when one sees a German face to face, is this really one of
those devils who wrought such devastation--for devastation they have
surely wrought. You can hardly believe it, for he seems much the same
as other soldiers. I can assure you that there is none of that
insensate hatred that one hears about, out here. We are out to kill,
and kill we do, at any and every opportunity. But, when all is done
and the battle is over, the splendid universal "soldier spirit" comes
over all the men, and we cannot help thinking that Kipling must have
been in the firing line when he wrote that "East is East and West is
West" thing. Just to give you some idea of what I mean, the other
night four German snipers were shot on our wire. The next night our
men went out and brought one in who was near and getatable and buried
him. They did it with just the same reverence and sadness as they do
to our own dear fellows. I went to look at the grave the next morning,
and one of the most uncouth-looking men in my company had placed a
cross at the head of the grave, and had written on it:
Here lies a German,
We don't know his name,
He died bravely fighting
For his Fatherland.
And under that, "got mit uns," (sic,) that being the highest effort of
all the men at German. Not bad for a bloodthirsty Briton, eh? Really,
that shows the spirit.
I don't believe there is a man living who, when first interviewing an
11-inch howitzer shell, is not pink with funk. After the first ten,
one gets quite used to them, but really, they are terrible! They hit a
house. You can see the great shell--a black streak--just before it
strikes, then, before you hear the explosion, the whole house simply
lifts up into the air, apparently quite silently; then you hear the
roar, and the whole earth shakes. In the place where the house was
there is a huge fountain-spout of what looks like pink fluff. It is
the pulverized bricks. Then a monstrous shoot of black smoke towering
up a hundred feet or more, and, finally, there is a curious
willow-like formation, and then--you duck, as huge pieces of shell,
and house, and earth, and haystack tumble over your head. And yet, do
you know, it is really remarkable how little damage they do against
earth trenches. With a whole morning's shelling, not a single man of
my company was killed, although not a single shell missed what it had
aimed at by more than fifty yards. That makes all the difference, that
fifty yards. If you only keep your head down, you are as safe as
houses; exactly, you will remark, "as safe as houses."