Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XIV

THE AM­PHIB­IANS--FED UP, BUT DE­TER­MINED --THE GUN PARA­PET

So you see, life in our cot­tage was quite in­ter­est­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous in its way. At night our ex­is­tence was just the same as be­fore; all the nor­mal work of trench life. Mak­ing im­prove­ments to our trench­es led to end­less work with sand­bags, planks, dug-​outs, etc. My par­tic­ular job was most­ly im­prov­ing ma­chine-​gun po­si­tions, or se­lect­ing new sites and car­ry­ing out re­movals,

“BRUCE BAIRNS­FA­THER. MA­CHINE GUNS RE­MOVED AT SHORT­EST NO­TICE. AT­TACKS QUOT­ED FOR.”

And so the long dark drea­ry nights went on. The men gar­rison­ing the lit­tle cracked-​up vil­lage lived most­ly in cel­lars. Of­ten on my rounds, dur­ing a rainy, windy, mourn­ful night, I would look in­to a cel­lar and see a con­gest­ed mass of men play­ing cards by the light of a can­dle stuck on a tin lid. A favourite form of il­lu­mi­na­tion I came across was a lamp made out of an emp­ty to­bac­co tin, ri­fle oil for the il­lu­mi­nant, and a bit of a shirt for a wick!

Peo­ple who read all these yarns of mine, and who have known the war in lat­er days, will say, “Ah, how very dif­fer­ent it was then to now.” In my last ex­pe­ri­ences in the war I have watched the enor­mous changes creep­ing in. They be­gan about Ju­ly, 1915. My ex­pe­ri­ences since that date were very in­ter­est­ing; but I found that much of the ro­mance had left the trench­es. The old days, from the be­gin­ning to Ju­ly, 1915, were all so de­light­ful­ly pre­car­ious and prim­itive. Am­ateur­ish trench­es and rough and ready life, which to my mind gave this war what it sad­ly needs--a touch of ro­mance.

Way back there, in about Jan­uary, 1915, our sol­diers had a per­fect­ly unique test of hu­man en­durance against ap­palling cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. They lived in a vast bog, with­out be­ing able to uti­lize mod­ern con­trivances for mak­ing the tight against ad­verse con­di­tions any­thing like an equal con­test. And yet I wouldn't have missed that time for any­thing, and I'm sure they wouldn't ei­ther.

Those who have not ac­tu­al­ly had to ex­pe­ri­ence it, or have not had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see what our men “stuck out” in those days, will nev­er ful­ly grasp the re­al­ity.

One night a com­pa­ny com­man­der came to me in the vil­lage and told me he had got a bit of trench un­der his con­trol which was al­to­geth­er im­pos­si­ble to hold, and he want­ed me to come along with him to look at it, and see if I could do any­thing in the way of hold­ing the po­si­tion by ma­chine guns. His idea was that pos­si­bly a gun might be fixed in such a place be­hind so as to cov­er the frontage oc­cu­pied by this trench. I came along with him to have a look and see what could be done. He and I went up the rain-​soaked vil­lage street and out on to the field be­yond. It was as dark as pitch, and about 11 p.m. Oc­ca­sion­al shots cracked out of the dark­ness ahead from the Ger­man trench­es, and I re­mem­ber one in par­tic­ular that woke us up a bit. A kind of derelict road-​roller stood at one side of the field, and as we passed this, walk­ing pret­ty close to­geth­er, a bul­let whizzed be­tween us. I don't know which head it was near­est to, but it was quite near enough for both of us. We went on across the field for about two hun­dred yards, out to­wards a pile of ru­ins which had once been a barn, and which stood be­tween our lines and the Ger­mans.

Near this lay the trench which he had been telling me about. It was quite the worst I have ev­er seen. A num­ber of men were in it, stand­ing and lean­ing, silent­ly en­dur­ing the fol­low­ing con­di­tions. It was quite dark. The en­emy was about two hun­dred yards away, or rather less. It was rain­ing, and the trench con­tained over three feet of wa­ter. The men, there­fore, were stand­ing up to the waist in wa­ter. The front para­pet was noth­ing but a rough earth mound which, ow­ing to the wa­ter about, was prac­ti­cal­ly non-​ex­is­tent. Their ri­fles lay on the sat­urat­ed mound in front. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their equip­ment be­low the wa­ter at the bot­tom of the trench. There they were, tak­ing it all as a nec­es­sary part of the great game; not a grum­ble nor a com­ment.

The com­pa­ny com­man­der and I at once set about schem­ing out an al­ter­na­tive plan. Some lit­tle dis­tance back we found a cel­lar which had once been be­low a house. Now there was no house, so by stand­ing in the cel­lar one got a view along the ground and lev­el with it. This was the very place for a ma­chine gun. So we de­cid­ed on fix­ing one there and mak­ing a sort of roof over a por­tion of the cel­lar for the gun­ners to live in. Af­ter about a cou­ple of hours' work we com­plet­ed this ar­range­ment, and then re­moved the men, who, it was ar­ranged, should leave the trench­es that night and go back to our bil­lets for a rest, till the next time up. We weren't quite con­tent with the to­tal safe­ty of our one gun in that cel­lar, so we start­ed off on a fur­ther idea.

Our trench­es bulged out in a bit of a salient to the right of the rot­ten trench, and we de­cid­ed to mount an­oth­er gun at a cer­tain pro­jec­tion in our lines so as to en­filade the land across which the oth­er gun would fire.

On in­spect­ing the pro­ject­ed site we found it was nec­es­sary to make rather an ab­nor­mal­ly high para­pet to stand the gun on. No sand­bags to spare, of course, so the ques­tion was, “What shall we make a para­pet of?”

We plod­ded off back to the vil­lage and groped around the ru­ins for some­thing sol­id and high enough to car­ry the gun. Af­ter about an hour's climb­ing about amongst de­bris in the dark, and haul­ing our­selves up in­to rem­nants of at­tics, etc., we came up­on a sewing ma­chine. It was one of that sort that's stuck on a wood­en ta­ble with a trea­dle ar­range­ment un­der­neath. We saw an idea at a glance. Pull off the sewing ma­chine, and use the ta­ble. It was near­ly high enough, and with just three or four sand­bags we felt cer­tain it would do. We per­formed the nec­es­sary sur­gi­cal op­er­ation on the ma­chine, and tak­ing it in turns, padded off down to the front line trench. We had a bit of a job with that ta­ble. The para­pet was a jum­bled as­sort­ment of sand­bags, clay, and old bricks from the neigh­bour­ing barn: but we fi­nal­ly got a good sound para­pet made, and in about an­oth­er hour's time had fixed a ma­chine gun, with plen­ty of am­mu­ni­tion, in a very unattrac­tive po­si­tion from the Boche point of view. We all now felt bet­ter, and I'm cer­tain that the men who held that trench felt bet­ter too. But I am equal­ly cer­tain that they would have stayed there _ad lib_ even if we hadn't thought of and car­ried out an al­ter­na­tive ar­range­ment. A few more nights of rain, dan­ger and dis­com­fort, then the time would come for us to be re­lieved, and those same men would be back at bil­lets, laugh­ing, talk­ing and smok­ing, buoy­ant as ev­er.