Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER III

THOSE PLUGSTREET TRENCH­ES--MUD AND RAIN--FLOOD­ED OUT--A HOPE­LESS DAWN

An ex­traor­di­nary sen­sa­tion--the first time of go­ing in­to trench­es. The first idea that struck me about them was their hap­haz­ard de­sign. There was, no doubt, some very ex­cel­lent rea­son for some­one or oth­er mak­ing those trench­es as they were; but they re­al­ly did strike me as cu­ri­ous when I first saw them.

A trench will, per­haps, run di­ag­onal­ly across a field, will then go along a hedge at right an­gles, sud­den­ly give it up and start again fifty yards to the left, in such a po­si­tion that it is bound to cross the kitchen-​gar­den of a shat­tered chateau, go through the green­house and out in­to the road. On get­ting there it hence­forth ri­vals the ditch at the side in the amount of wa­ter it can run off in­to a row of dug-​outs in the next field. There is, ap­par­ent­ly, no ne­ces­si­ty for a trench to be in any way par­al­lel to the line of your en­emy; as long as he can't shoot you from im­me­di­ate­ly be­hind, that's all you ask.

It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trench­es. Ev­ery­thing was strange, and wet and hor­rid. First of all I had to go and fix up my ma­chine guns at var­ious points, and find places for the gun­ners to sleep in. This was no easy mat­ter, as many of the dug-​outs had fall­en in and float­ed off down stream.

In this, and sub­se­quent de­scrip­tions of the trench­es, I may lay my­self open to the charge of ex­ag­ger­ation. But it must be re­mem­bered that I am de­scrib­ing trench life in the ear­ly days of 1914, and I feel sure that those who had ex­pe­ri­ence of them will ac­quit me of any such charge.

To give a recipe for get­ting a rough idea, in case you want to, I rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing pro­ce­dure. Se­lect a flat ten-​acre ploughed field, so sit­ed that all the sur­face wa­ter of the sur­round­ing coun­try drains in­to it. Now cut a zig-​zag slot about four feet deep and three feet wide di­ag­onal­ly across, dam off as much wa­ter as you can so as to leave about a hun­dred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one side of the slot, then en­deav­our to live there for a month on bul­ly beef and damp bis­cuits, whilst a friend has in­struc­tions to fire at you with his Winch­ester ev­ery time you put your head above the sur­face.

Well, here I was, any­way, and the next thing was to make the best of it. As I have be­fore said, these were the days of the ear­li­est trench­es in this war: days when we had none of those de­sir­able “props,” such as cor­ru­gat­ed iron, floor­boards, and sand bags _ad lib_.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “ul­lo! 'Ar­ry”]

When you made a dug-​out in those days you made it out of any­thing you could find, and gen­er­al­ly had to make it your­self. That first night I was “in” I dis­cov­ered, af­ter a hu­mid hour or so, that our bat­tal­ion wouldn't fit in­to the spaces left by the last one, and as re­gards dug-​outs, the truth of that math­emat­ical ax­iom, “Two's in­to one, won't go,” sud­den­ly dawned on me with painful clear­ness. I was faced with mak­ing a dug-​out, and it was rain­ing, of course. (_Note._--When­ev­er I don't state the cli­mat­ic con­di­tions, read “rain­ing.”) Af­ter slosh­ing about in sev­er­al prim­itive trench­es in the vicin­ity of the spot where we had fixed our best ma­chine-​gun po­si­tion, my sergeant and I dis­cov­ered a sort of cov­ered pas­sage in a ditch in front of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion trench. It was a sort of emer­gen­cy ex­it back from a row of ramshack­le, wa­ter-​logged hov­els in the ditch to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion trench. We de­cid­ed to make use of this pas­sage, and ar­ranged things in such a way that by scoop­ing out the clay walls we made two caves, one be­hind the oth­er. The front one was about five yards from the ma­chine gun, and you reached the back cave by go­ing through the out­er one. It now be­ing about 11 p.m., and hav­ing been for the last five hours per­pet­ual­ly on the scram­ble, through trench­es of all sorts, I drew my­self in­to the in­ner cave to go to sleep.

This lit­tle place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fish­ing out a can­dle-​end from my pock­et, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a cigarette. I now lay down and tried to size up the sit­ua­tion and life in gen­er­al.

Here I was, in this hor­ri­ble clay cav­ity, some­where in Bel­gium, miles and miles from home. Cold, wet through and cov­ered with mud. This was the first day; and, so far as I could see, the fu­ture con­tained noth­ing but rep­eti­tions of the same thing, or worse.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: ruck­sacks]

Noth­ing was to be heard ex­cept the oc­ca­sion­al crack of the sniper's shot, the drip­ping of the rain, and the low mur­mur of voic­es from the out­er cave.

In the nar­row space be­side me lay my equip­ment; re­volver, and a sod­den pack­et of cigarettes. Ev­ery­thing damp, cold and dark; can­dle-​end gut­ter­ing. I think sud­den­ly of some­thing like the Em­pire or the Al­ham­bra, or any­thing else that's rem­inis­cent of bright­ness and life, and then--swish, bang--back to the re­al­ity that the damp clay wall is on­ly eigh­teen inch­es in front of me; that here I am--that the Boche is just on the oth­er side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slight­est chance of leav­ing ex­cept in an am­bu­lance.

My ma­chine-​gun sec­tion for the gun near by lay in the front cave, a cou­ple of feet from me; their spas­mod­ic talk­ing grad­ual­ly died away as, one by one, they dropped off to sleep. One more in­dig­nant, hope­less glare at the flick­er­ing can­dle-​end, then I pinched the wick, curled up, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

A sud­den cold sort of pep­per­mint sen­sa­tion as­sailed me; I awoke and sat up. My head can­noned off the clay ceil­ing, so I par­tial­ly had to lie down again.

I at­tempt­ed to strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and sod­den. I heard a mut­ter­ing of voic­es and a curse or two in the out­er cav­ern, and present­ly the sergeant en­tered my sanc­tum on all fours:

“We're bein' flood­ed out, sir; there's wa­ter a foot deep in this place of ours.”

That ex­plains it. I feel all round the back of my great­coat and find I have been sleep­ing in a pool of wa­ter.

I crawled out of my in­ner cham­ber, and the whole lot of us dived through the rapid­ly ris­ing wa­ter in­to the ditch out­side. I scram­bled up on to the top of the bank, and tried to fo­cus the sit­ua­tion.

From in­quiries and per­son­al ob­ser­va­tion I found that the cause of the tide ris­ing was the fact that the En­gi­neers had been drain­ing the trench, in the course of which pro­cess they had ap­par­ent­ly struck a spring of wa­ter.

We ac­cept­ed the cause of the dis­as­ter philo­soph­ical­ly, and im­me­di­ate­ly dis­cussed what was the best thing to be done. Ac­tion of some sort was ur­gent­ly nec­es­sary, as at present we were all sit­ting on the top of the mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole par­ty be­ing oc­ca­sion­al­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by a Ger­man star shell--more like a fam­ily sit­ting for a flash­light pho­to­graph than any­thing else.

We de­cid­ed to make a dam. Hav­ing found an emp­ty ra­tion box and half a bag of coke, we start­ed on the job of try­ing to fence off the wa­ter from our cave. Af­ter about an hour's strug­gle with the el­ements we at last suc­ceed­ed, with the aid of the ra­tion box, the sack of coke and a few tins of bul­ly, in re­duc­ing the wa­ter lev­el in­side to six inch­es.

Here we were, now wet­ter than ev­er, cold as Po­lar bears, sit­ting in this hy­gro­scop­ic cat­acomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was de­cid­ed on. We had a fire buck­et--it had start­ed life as a bis­cuit tin--a few bits of damp wood, but no coke. “We had some coke, I'm sure! Why, of course--we built it in­to the dam!” Down came the dam, out came the coke, and in came the wa­ter. How­ev­er, we pre­ferred the wa­ter to the cold; so, fi­nal­ly, af­ter many ex­as­per­at­ing ef­forts, we got a fire go­ing in the buck­et. Five min­utes' bliss fol­lowed by dis­as­ter. The fire buck­et pro­ceed­ed to emit such dense vol­umes of sul­phurous smoke that in a few mo­ments we couldn't see a light­ed match.

We stuck it a short time longer, then one by one dived in­to the wa­ter and out in­to the air, shoot­ing out of our mud hov­el to the sur­face like snakes when you pour wa­ter down their holes.

Time now 3 a.m. No sleep; rain, wa­ter, _plus_ smoke. A board meet­ing held im­me­di­ate­ly de­cides to give up sleep and dug-​outs for that night. A mo­tion to try and con­struct a chim­ney with an en­trench­ing tool is de­feat­ed by five votes to one ... dawn is break­ing--my first night in trench­es comes to an end.