Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PAINTER AND DEC­ORA­TOR--FRAG­MENTS FORM­ING--NIGHT ON THE MUD PRAIRIE

Had a fair­ly peace­ful night. I say fair­ly be­cause when one has to get up three or four times to see whether the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed rat­tle of ri­fle fire is go­ing to lead to a bat­tle, or turn out on­ly to be mere­ly “wind up,” it rather dis­turbs one's rest. You see, had an at­tack of some sort come on, yours tru­ly would have had to run about a mile and a half to some cen­tral spot to over­look the ma­chine-​gun de­part­ment. I used to think that to be ac­tu­al­ly with one gun was the best idea, but I sub­se­quent­ly found that this plan ham­pered me con­sid­er­ably from get­ting to my oth­ers; the rea­son be­ing that, once es­tab­lished in one spot dur­ing an open trench at­tack, it is prac­ti­cal­ly im­pos­si­ble to get to an­oth­er part whilst the ac­tion is on.

At the Dou­ve, how­ev­er, I dis­cov­ered a way of get­ting round this which I will de­scribe lat­er.

On this first night, not be­ing very fa­mil­iar with the neigh­bour­hood, I found it dif­fi­cult to ig­nore the weird nois­es which float­ed in through the sack-​cov­ered hole. There is some­thing very eerie and strange about echo­ing ri­fle shots in the si­lence of the night. Once I got up and walked out in­to the court­yard of the farm, and pass­ing through it came out on to the end of the road. All as still as still could be, ex­cept the dis­tant in­ter­mit­tent crack­ing of the ri­fles com­ing from away across the plain, be­yond the long straight row of lofty poplar trees which marked the road. A si­lence of some length might su­per­vene, in which one would on­ly hear the gen­tle rustling of the leaves; then sud­den­ly, far away on the right, a faint surg­ing roar can be heard, and then loud­er and loud­er. “Wind up over there.” Then, grad­ual­ly, si­lence would as­sert it­self once more and leave you with noth­ing but the rustling leaves and the crack of the sniper's ri­fle on the Messines ridge.

My first morn­ing at this farm was, by spe­cial re­quest, to be spent in dec­orat­ing the walls.

There wasn't much for any­one to do in the day time, as no­body could go out. The same com­plaint as the oth­er place in St. Yvon: “We mustn't look as if any­one lives in the farm.” Draw­ing, there­fore, was a great aid to me in pass­ing the day. Whilst at break­fast I made a ca­su­al ex­am­ina­tion of the room where we had our meals. I was not the first to draw on the walls of that room. Some one in a pre­vi­ous bat­tal­ion had al­ready put three or four sketch­es on var­ious parts of the fire-​place. Sev­er­al large spaces re­mained all round the room, how­ev­er; but I no­ticed that the sur­face was very poor com­pared with the wall round the fire-​place.

The main sur­face was a rough sort of thing, and, on re­gard­ing it close­ly, it looked as if it was made of frozen por­ridge, be­ing slight­ly rough, and of a grey-​brown colour. I didn't know what on earth I could use to draw on this sur­face, but af­ter break­fast I start­ed to scheme out some­thing. I went in­to the back room, which we were now us­ing as a kitchen, and find­ing some char­coal I tried that. It was quite use­less--wouldn't make a mark on the wall at all. Why, I don't know; but the char­coal just glid­ed about and mere­ly seemed to make dents and scratch­es on the “frozen por­ridge.” I then tried to make up a mix­ture. It oc­curred to me that pos­si­bly soot might be made in­to a sort of ink, and used with a paint brush. I tried this, but drew a blank again. I was bor­der­ing on de­spair, when my ser­vant said he thought he had put a bot­tle of In­di­an ink in my pack when we left to come in­to the trench­es this time. He had a look, and found that his con­jec­ture was right; he had got a bot­tle of In­di­an ink and a few brush­es, as he thought I might want to draw some­thing, so had equipped the pack ac­cord­ing­ly.

I now start­ed my fres­co act on the walls of the Dou­ve farm.

I spent most of the day on the job, and dis­cov­ered how some startling ef­fects could be pro­duced.

Ma­te­ri­als were: A bot­tle of In­di­an ink, a cou­ple of brush­es, about a hun­dred­weight of use­less char­coal, and a G.S. blue and red pen­cil.

Amongst the rough sketch­es that I did that day were the orig­inal draw­ings for two sub­se­quent “Frag­ments” of mine.

One was the rough idea for “They've ev­ident­ly seen me,” and the oth­er was “My dream for years to come.” The idea for “They've ev­ident­ly seen me” came whilst car­ry­ing back that ta­ble to St. Yvon, as I men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous chap­ter, but the sce­nario for the idea was not pro­vid­ed for un­til I went to this farm some time lat­er. In in­ter­vals of work­ing at the walls I ram­bled about the farm build­ing, and went up in­to a loft over a barn at the end of the farm near­est the trench­es. I looked out through a hole in the tiles just in time to hear a shell come over from away back amongst the Ger­mans some­where, and land about five hun­dred yards to the left. The sen­tence, “They've ev­ident­ly seen me,” came flash­ing across my mind again, and I now saw the cor­rect set­ting in my mind: _i.e._, the en­thu­si­as­tic ob­serv­er look­ing out of the top of a nar­row chim­ney, whilst a re­mark­ably well-​aimed shell leads “him of the binoc­ulars” to sup­pose that they _have_ seen him.

I came down­stairs and made a pen­cil sketch of my idea, and be­fore I left the trench­es that time I had done a wash draw­ing and sent it to Eng­land. This was my sec­ond “Frag­ment.”

The oth­er sketch, “My dream for years to come,” was drawn on one wall of a small ap­ple or pota­to room, open­ing off our big room, and the draw­ing oc­cu­pied the whole wall.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: porters]

I knocked off draw­ing about four o'clock, and did a lit­tle of the al­ter­na­tive oc­cu­pa­tion, that of look­ing out through the cracked win­dows on to the mu­ti­lat­ed court­yard in front. It was get­ting dark­er now, and near­ing the time when I had to put on all my tack­le, and gird my­self up for my round of the trench­es. As soon as it was near­ly dark I start­ed out. The oth­er of­fi­cers gen­er­al­ly left a bit lat­er, but as I had such a long way to go, and as I want­ed to ex­am­ine the coun­try while there was yet a lit­tle light, I start­ed at dusk. Not yet know­ing ex­act­ly how much the en­emy could see on the open mud flat, I de­ter­mined to go along by the riv­er bank, and by keep­ing among the trees I hoped to es­cape ob­ser­va­tion. I made for the Dou­ve, and soon got along as far as the row of farms. I ex­plored all these, and a shock­ing sight they were. All charred and ru­ined, and the skele­ton re­mains slow­ly de­com­pos­ing away in­to the un­whole­some ground about them. I went in­side sev­er­al of the dis­man­tled rooms. Near­ly all con­tained old and bat­tered bits of sol­diers' equip­ment, emp­ty tins, and rem­nants of Bel­gian prop­er­ty. Sad relics of for­mer bil­let­ing: a liv­ing re­minder of the rough times that had pre­ced­ed our ar­rival in this lo­cal­ity. I passed on to an­oth­er farm, and en­tered the yard near the riv­er. It was near­ly full of black wood­en cross­es, rough­ly made and paint­ed over with tar. All that was left to mark the graves of those who had died to get our trench­es where they were--at the bot­tom of the Messines ridge. A bleak and som­bre win­ter's night, that court­yard of the ru­ined farm, the rows of cross­es--I of­ten think of it all now.

As the dark­ness came on I pro­ceed­ed to­wards the trench­es, and when it had be­come suf­fi­cient­ly dark I en­tered the old farm by the re­serve trench and crossed the yard to en­ter the field which led to the first of our trench­es. At St. Yvon it was pret­ty airy work, go­ing the rounds at night, but this was a jol­ly sight more so. The coun­try was far more open, and al­though the Boches couldn't see us, yet they kept up an in­ces­sant snip­ing demon­stra­tion. Pick­ing up my sergeant at Num­ber 1 trench, he and I start­ed on our tour.

We made a long and ex­haus­tive ex­am­ina­tion that night, both of the ex­ist­ing ma­chine-​gun em­place­ments and of the en­tire ground, with a view to chang­ing our po­si­tions. It was a long time be­fore I fi­nal­ly left the trench­es and start­ed off across the des­olate ex­panse to the Dou­ve farm, and I was dead beat when I ar­rived there. On get­ting in­to the big room I found the Colonel, who had just come in. “Where's that right-​hand gun of yours, Bairns­fa­ther?” he asked. “Down on the right of Num­ber 2 trench, sir,” I an­swered; “just by the two wil­lows near the sap which runs out to­wards Num­ber 1.” “It's not much of a place for it,” he said; “where we ought to have it is to the right of the sap, so that it en­filades the whole front of that trench.” “When do you want it moved, sir?” I asked. “Well, it ought to be done at once; it's no good where it is.”

That fixed it. I knew what he want­ed; so I start­ed out again, back over the mile and a half to al­ter the gun. It was a weary job; but I would have gone on go­ing back and al­ter­ing the whole lot for our Colonel, who was the best line in com­mand­ing of­fi­cers I ev­er struck. Ev­ery one had the most per­fect con­fi­dence in him. He was the most shell, bul­let, and bomb de­fy­ing per­son I have ev­er seen. When I got back for the sec­ond time that night I was quite ready to roll up in the straw, and be lulled off to sleep by the crack­ing ri­fle fire out­side.