Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XII

A BRAIN WAVE--MAK­ING A “FUNK HOLE” --PLUGSTREET WOOD--SNIP­ING

On ar­riv­ing up at St. Yvon for our third time round there, we--as usu­al now--went in­to our cot­tage again, and the reg­iment spread it­self out around the same old trench­es. There was al­ways a lot of work for me to do at nights, as ma­chine guns al­ways have to be moved as oc­ca­sion aris­es, or if one gets a bet­ter idea for their po­si­tion. By this time I had one gun in the rem­nant of a house about fifty yards away from our cot­tage. This was a re­serve gun, and was there car­ry­ing out an idea of mine, _i.e._, that it was in a cen­tral po­si­tion, which would en­able it to be rapid­ly moved to any threat­ened part of the line, and al­so it would form a bit of an as­set in the event of our hav­ing to de­fend the vil­lage.

The sec­tion for this gun lived in the old cel­lar close by, and it was this cel­lar which gave me an idea. When I went in­to our cot­tage I searched to see if we had over­looked a cel­lar. No, there wasn't one. Now, then, the idea. I thought, “Why not make a cel­lar, and thus have a place to dive in­to when the straf­ing be­gins.” Af­ter this ter­rif­ic out­burst of sagac­ity I sat down in a cor­ner and, with a bis­cuit­load of jam, dis­cussed my scheme with my pla­toon-​com­man­der pal. We agreed it was a good idea. I was feel­ing en­er­get­ic, and al­ways lik­ing a lit­tle tin­ker­ing on my own, I said I would make it my­self.

So Hud­son re­tired in­to the lean-​to and I com­menced to plot this en­gi­neer­ing project. I scraped away as much as nec­es­sary of the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed filth on the floor, and my knife strik­ing some­thing hard I found it to be tiles. Up till then I had al­ways imag­ined it to be an earth floor, but tiled it was right enough--large, square, dark red ones of a very rough kind. I called for Smith, my ser­vant, and telling him to bring his en­trench­ing tool, I be­gan to prize up some of the tiles. It wasn't very easy, fit­ting the blade of the en­trench­ing tool in­to the crevices, but once I had got a start and had got one or two out, things were eas­ier.

I pulled up all the tiles along one wall about eight feet long and out in­to the room a dis­tance of about four feet. I now had a bare patch of hard earth eight feet by four to con­tend with. Luck­ily we had a pick­axe and a shov­el ly­ing out be­hind the house, so tak­ing off my sheep­skin jack­et and bal­acla­va, I start­ed off to ex­ca­vate the hole which I pro­posed should form a sort of cel­lar.

It was a big job, and my ser­vant and I were hard at it, turn and turn about, the whole of that day. A dull, rainy day, a cold wind blow­ing the old sack about in the door­way, and in the se­mi-​dark­ness in­side yours tru­ly hand­ing up Bel­gian soil on a war-​worn shov­el to my ser­vant, who held a sand­bag per­pet­ual­ly open to re­ceive it. A long and ar­du­ous job it was, and one in which I was pre­cious near think­ing that dan­ger is prefer­able to dig­ging. Mr. Doan, with his back-​ache pills, would have done well if he had sent one of his trav­ellers with sam­ples round there that night. How­ev­er, at the end of two days, I had got a re­al­ly good hole delved out, and now I was get­ting near the more in­ter­est­ing fea­ture, name­ly, putting a roof on, and fi­nal­ly be­ing able to live in this un­der-​ground dug-​out.

This roof was per­haps rather unique as roofs go. It was a large mat­tress with wood­en sides, a kind of ob­long box with a mat­tress top. I found it out­side in a ru­ined cot­tage. Un­der­neath the mat­tress part was a cav­ity filled with spi­ral springs. I ar­ranged a pile of sand­bags at each side of the hole in the floor in such a way as to be able to lay this cu­rios­ity on top to form a roof, the mat­tress part down­wards. I then filled in with earth all the parts where the spi­ral springs were placed. To­tal re­sult--a roof a foot thick of earth, with a good back­bone of iron springs. I of­ten af­ter­wards wished that that mat­tress had been fil­let­ed, as the spi­ral springs had a nasty way of burst­ing through the striped cov­er and com­ing at you like the lid of a Jack-​in-​the-​box. How­ev­er, such is war.

Above this roof I de­ter­mined to pile up sand­bags against the wall, right away up to the roof of the cot­tage.

This ne­ces­si­tat­ed about forty sand­bags be­ing filled, so it may eas­ily be imag­ined we didn't do this all at once.

How­ev­er, in time, it was done--I mean af­ter we had paid one or two more vis­its to the trench­es.

We all felt safer af­ter these ef­forts. I think we were a bit safer, but not much. I mean that we were fair­ly all right against any­thing but a di­rect hit, and as we knew from which di­rec­tion di­rect hits had to come, we made that wall as thick as pos­si­ble. We could, I think, have smiled at a di­rect hit from an 18-pounder, pro­vid­ed we had been down our funk hole at the time; but, of course, a di­rect hit from a “John­son” would have snuffed us com­plete­ly (mat­tress and all).

Life in this house and in the vil­lage was much more in­ter­est­ing and en­er­get­ic than in that old trench. It was pos­si­ble, by ob­serv­ing great cau­tion, to creep out of the house by day and dodge about our po­si­tion a bit, crawl up to points of van­tage and sur­vey the scene. Be­hind the cot­tage lay the wood--the great Bois de Ploeg­stert--and this in it­self re­paid a vis­it. In the ear­ly months of 1915 this wood was in a pret­ty mauled-​about state, and as time went on of course got more so. It was full of old trench­es, filled with wa­ter, re­lies of the pe­ri­od when we turned the Ger­mans out of it. Shat­tered trees and old barbed wire in a so­lu­tion of mud was the chief ef­fect pro­duced by the parts near­est the trench­es, but fur­ther back “Plugstreet Wood” was quite a pret­ty place to walk about in. Birds singing all around, and rab­bits dart­ing about the tan­gled un­der­growth. Long paths had been cut through the wood lead­ing to the var­ious parts of the trench­es in front. A very quaint place, take it all in all, and one which has left a cu­ri­ous and not un­pleas­ing im­pres­sion on my mind.

This abil­ity to wan­der around and creep about var­ious parts of our po­si­tion, led to my get­ting an idea, which near­ly fin­ished my life in the cot­tage, vil­lage, or even Bel­gium. I sud­den­ly got bit­ten with the snip­ing fever, and it oc­curred to me that, with my fa­cil­ities for get­ting about, I could get in­to a cer­tain man­gled farm on our left and re­main in the roof un­seen in day­light. From there I felt sure that, with the aid of a ri­fle, I could tick­le up a Boche or two in their trench­es hard by. I was im­mense­ly tak­en with this idea. So, one morn­ing (like Robin­son Cru­soe again) I set off with my fowl­ing-​piece and am­mu­ni­tion, and crawled to­wards the farm. I got there all right, and en­ter­ing the dark and evil-​smelling precincts, searched around for a suit­able snip­ing post. I saw a beam over­head in a cor­ner from which, if I could get on to it, I felt sure I should ob­tain a view of the en­emy trench­es through a gap in the tiled roof. I tied a bit of string to my ri­fle and then jump­ing for the beam, scram­bled up on it and pulled the ri­fle up af­ter me. When my heart pul­sa­tions had come down to a rea­son­able fig­ure I peered out through the hole in the tiles. An ex­cel­lent view! The Ger­man para­pet a hun­dred yards away! Splen­did!

Now I felt sure I should see a Boche mov­ing about or some­thing; or I might pos­si­bly spot one look­ing over the top.

I wait­ed a long time on that beam, with my load­ed ri­fle ly­ing in front of me. I was just get­ting fed up with the wait­ing, and about to go away, when I thought I saw a move­ment in the trench op­po­site. Yes! it was. I saw the han­dle of some­thing like a broom or a wa­ter scoop mov­ing above the sand­bags. Heart do­ing over­time again! Most ex­cit­ing! I felt con­vinced I should see a Boche be­fore long. And then, at last, I saw one--or rather I caught a glimpse of a hat ap­pear­ing above the line of the para­pet. One of those small cir­cu­lar cloth hats of theirs with the two trous­er but­tons in front.

Up it came, and I saw it stand out nice and clear against the sky­line. I care­ful­ly raised my ri­fle, took a steady aim, and fired. I looked: dis­ap­pear­ance of hat! I eject­ed the emp­ty car­tridge case, and was just about to reload when, whizz, whis­tle, bang, crash! a shell came right at the farm, and ex­plod­ed in the court­yard be­hind. I stopped short on the beam. Whizz, whis­tle, bang, crash! An­oth­er, right in­to the old cow­shed on my left. With­out wait­ing for any more I just slith­ered down off that beam, grabbed my ri­fle and dash­ing out across the yard back in­to the ditch be­yond, start­ed hasti­ly scram­bling along to­wards the end of one of our trench­es. As I went I heard four more shells crash in­to that farm. It was at this mo­ment that I coined the ti­tle of one of my sketch­es, “They've ev­ident­ly seen me,” for which I af­ter­wards drew the pic­ture near Wul­verghem. I got back to our cot­tage, crawled in­to the hole in the floor, and thought things over. They must have seen the flash of my ri­fle through the tiles, and, sus­pect­ing pos­si­ble snip­ing from the farm, must have wired back to their ar­tillery, “Snip­ing­berg from far­men­hausen hoch!” or words to that ef­fect.

Al­to­geth­er a very ob­jec­tion­able episode.