Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XXI

BACK FROM LEAVE--THAT “BLINKIN' MOON” --JOHN­SON 'OLES--TOM­MY AND “FRIGHT­FUL­NESS” --EX­PLOR­ING EX­PE­DI­TION

As I had ex­pect­ed, the bat­tal­ion were just fin­ish­ing their last days out in rest bil­lets, and were go­ing “in” the fol­low­ing night.

Re­ac­tion from leave set in for me with un­prece­dent­ed vi­olence. It was hor­ri­ble weath­er, pour­ing with rain all the time, which made one's de­pres­sion worse.

Leave over; rain, rain, rain; trench­es again, and the fu­ture looked like be­ing per­pet­ual­ly the same, or per­haps worse. Yet, some­how or oth­er, in these times of deep de­pres­sion which come to ev­ery one now and again, I can­not help smil­ing. It has al­ways struck me as an amus­ing thing that the world, and all the hu­man be­ings there­on, do get them­selves in­to such cu­ri­ous and painful predica­ments, and then spend the rest of the time wish­ing they could get out.

My re­flec­tions in­vari­ably brought me to the same con­clu­sion, that here I was, caught up in the cogs of this im­mense, un­con­trol­lable war ma­chine, and like ev­ery one else, had to, and meant to stick it out to the end.

The next night we went through all the ap­proved for­mu­la for go­ing in­to the trench­es. Start­ed at dusk, and got in­to our re­spec­tive mud cav­ities a few hours lat­er. I went all round the trench­es again, look­ing to see that things were the same as when I left them, and, on the Colonel's in­struc­tions, start­ed a se­ries of al­ter­ations in sev­er­al gun po­si­tions. There was one trench that was so ob­scured along its front by odd stumps of trees that I de­cid­ed the on­ly good spot for a ma­chine gun was right at one end, on a road which led up to Messines. From here it would be pos­si­ble for us to get an ex­cel­lent field of fire. To have this gun on the road meant mak­ing an em­place­ment there some­how. That night we start­ed schem­ing it out, and the next evening be­gan work on it. It was a bright moon­light night, I re­mem­ber, and my sergeant and I went out in front of our para­pet, walked along the field and crept up the ditch a lit­tle way, con­sid­er­ing the ma­chine-​gun pos­si­bil­ities of the land. That moon­light feel­ing is very cu­ri­ous. You feel as if the en­emy can see you clear­ly, and that all eyes in the op­po­site trench are turned on you. You can al­most imag­ine a Boche smil­ing­ly tak­ing an aim, and say­ing to a friend, “We'll just let him come a bit clos­er first.” Ev­ery one who has had to go “out in front,” wiring, will know this feel­ing. As a mat­ter of fact, it is as­ton­ish­ing how lit­tle one can see of men in the moon­light, even when the trench­es are very close to­geth­er. One gets quite used to walk­ing about freely in this light, go­ing out in front of the para­pet and hav­ing a look round. The on­ly time that re­al­ly makes one ap­pre­hen­sive is when some gang of men or oth­er turn up from way back some­where, and have come to as­sist in some op­er­ation near the en­emy. They, be­ing un­fa­mil­iar with the cau­tion need­ed, and un­ap­pre­cia­tive of what it's like to have neigh­bours who “hate” you six­ty yards away, gen­er­al­ly bring trou­ble in their wake by one of the par­ty shout­ing out in a deep bass or a shrill so­pra­no, “'Ere, chuck us the 'am­mer, 'Ar­ry,” or some­thing like that, fol­low­ing the re­mark up with a se­ries of vul­can-​like blows on the top of an iron post. Re­sult: three star shells soar out in­to the frosty air, and a burst of ma­chine-​gun fire skims over the top of your head.

We made a very ex­cel­lent and strong em­place­ment on the road, and used it hence­forth. I had a lot of both­er with one gun in those trench­es, which was placed at very near­ly the left-​hand end of the whole line. I had been obliged to fix the gun there, as it was very nec­es­sary for dom­inat­ing a cer­tain road. But when I took the place over from the pre­vi­ous bat­tal­ion, I thought there might be dif­fi­cul­ties about this gun po­si­tion, and there were. The night be­fore we had made our in­spec­tion of these trench­es, a shell had land­ed right on top of the gun em­place­ment and had “out­ed” the whole con­cern, un­for­tu­nate­ly killing two of the gun sec­tion be­long­ing to the for­mer bat­tal­ion. For some rea­son or oth­er that end of our line was al­ways be­ing shelled. Just in the same way as they plunked shells dai­ly in­to St. Yvon, so they did here. Each morn­ing, with hard­ly ev­er a miss, they shelled our trench­es, but al­most in­vari­ably in the same place: the left-​hand end. The dif­fer­ence be­tween St. Yvon and this place was, how­ev­er, that here they al­ways shelled with “heav­ies.” Right back at the Dou­ve farm a mile away, the thun­der­ing crash of one of these shells would rat­tle all the win­dows and make one say, “Where did that one go?”

All round that neigh­bour­hood it seemed to have been the fash­ion, past and present, to use the largest shells. In go­ing along the Dou­ve one day, I made a point of mea­sur­ing and ex­am­in­ing sev­er­al of the holes. I took a pho­to­graph of one, with my cap rest­ing on one side of it, to show the rel­ative pro­por­tion and give an idea of the size. It was about four­teen feet in di­am­eter, and sev­en feet deep. The largest shell hole I have ev­er seen was over twen­ty feet in di­am­eter and about twelve feet deep. The largest hole I have seen, made by an im­ple­ment of war, though not by a gun or a how­itzer, was larg­er still, and its size was colos­sal. I re­fer to a hole made by one of our trench mor­tars, but re­gret that I did not mea­sure it. Round about our farm were a se­ries of holes of im­mense size, show­ing clear­ly the odi­um which that farm had in­curred, and was in­cur­ring; but, whilst I was in it, noth­ing came in through the roof or walls. I have since learnt that that old farm is no more, hav­ing been shelled out of ex­is­tence. All my sketch­es on those plas­ter walls form part of a slack heap, sur­round­ed by a moat.

Well, this per­sis­tent shelling of the left-​hand end of our trench­es meant a per­sis­tent read­just­ment of our para­pets, and putting things back again. Each morn­ing the Boches would knock things down, and each evening we would put them up again. Our sol­diers are on­ly amused by this pro­ce­dure. Their hu­mor­ous­ly cyn­ical out­look at the Boche tem­per ren­ders them im­per­vi­ous to any­thing the Ger­mans can ev­er do or think of. Their out­look to­wards a ven­omous Ger­man at­tempt to do some­thing “fright­ful­ly” nasty, is very sim­ilar to a large and pow­er­ful nurse deal­ing with a frac­tious child--sort of: “Now, then, Mas­ter Frankie, you mustn't kick and scream like that.”

One can al­most see a group of stol­id, unimag­ina­tive, non-​hu­mor­ous Ger­mans, tak­ing all things with their ridicu­lous se­ri­ous­ness, send­ing off their shells, and pulling hate­ful faces at the same time. You can see our men send­ing over a re­al stiff, qui­eten­ing an­swer, with a sport­ing twin­kle in the eye, per­haps jok­ing­ly re­mark­ing, as a shell is pushed in­to the gun, “'Ere's one for their Of­fi­cers' Mess, Bert.”

On sev­er­al evenings I had to go round and ar­range for the re­con­struc­tion of the ru­ined para­pet or squashed-​in dug-​outs. It was dur­ing one of these lit­tle episodes that I felt the spir­it of my draw­ing, “There goes our blink­ing para­pet again,” which I did some­time lat­er. I nev­er went about look­ing for ideas for draw­ings; the whole busi­ness of the war seemed to come be­fore me in a se­ries of pic­tures. Jokes used to stick out of all the hor­ri­ble dis­com­fort, some­thing like the points of a har­row would stick in­to you if you slept on it.

I used to vis­it all the trench­es, and look up the var­ious com­pa­ny com­man­ders and pla­toon com­man­ders in the same way as I did at St. Yvon. I got a splen­did idea of all the de­tails of our po­si­tion; all the var­ious ways from one part of it to an­oth­er. As I walked back to the Dou­ve farm at night, near­ly al­ways alone, I used to keep on ex­plor­ing the wide tract of land that lay be­hind our trench­es. “I'll have a look at that old cot­tage up on the right to-​night,” I used to say to my­self, and lat­er, when the time came for me to walk back from the trench­es, I would go off at a new an­gle across the plain, and make for my ob­jec­tive. Once in­side, and feel­ing out of view of the en­emy, I would go round the de­sert­ed rooms and lofts by the light of a few match­es, and if the house looked as if it would prove of in­ter­est, I would re­turn the next night with a can­dle-​end, and make an ex­am­ina­tion of the whole thing. They are all very much alike, these hous­es in Flan­ders; all seem to con­tain the same man­gled re­mains of sim­ple, home­ly oc­cu­pa­tions. Strings of onions, old straw hats, and clogs, mixed with an as­sort­ment of cheap cloth­ing, with per­haps here and there an um­brel­la or a top hat. That is about the class of stuff one found in them. Af­ter one of these ex­pe­di­tions I would go on back across the plain, along the cor­duroy boards or by the bank of the riv­er, to our farm.