Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER IV

MORE MUD--RAIN AND BUL­LETS--A BIT OF CAKE--“WIND UP”--NIGHT ROUNDS

The rose-​pink sky fades off above to blue, The morn­ing star alone pro­claims the dawn. The emp­ty tins and barbed wire bathed in dew Emerge, and then an­oth­er day is born.

I wrote that “po­em” in those--trench­es, so you can see the sort of state to which I was re­duced.

Well, my first trench night was over; the dawn had bro­ken--ev­ery­thing else left to break had been seen to by the ar­tillery, which start­ed off gen­er­al­ly at about eight. And what a fear­ful long day it seemed, that first one! As soon as it was light I be­gan scram­bling about, and hav­ing a good look at the gen­er­al lie of things. In front was a large ex­panse of root field, at the fur­ther side of which a long ir­reg­ular para­pet marked the Ger­man trench­es. Be­hind those again was more root field, dent­ed here and there with shell holes filled with wa­ter, be­yond which stood a few iso­lat­ed rem­nants which had once been cot­tages. I stood at a pro­jec­tion in one of our trench­es, from where I could see the gen­er­al shape of our line, and could glimpse a good view of the Ger­man ar­range­ments. Not a soul could be seen any­where. Here and there a wisp of smoke in­di­cat­ed a fire buck­et. Be­hind our trench­es, be­hind the shat­tered hous­es at the top of a wood­ed rise in the ground, stood what once must have been a fine chateau. As I looked, a shriek­ing hol­low whis­tle over­head, a mo­men­tary pause, then--“Crumph!” showed clear­ly what was the mat­ter with the chateau. It was be­ing shelled. The Ger­mans seemed to have a root­ed ob­jec­tion to that chateau. Ev­ery morn­ing, as we crouched in our mud ken­nels, we heard those “Crumphs,” and soon got to be very good judges of form. _We_ knew they were shelling the chateau. When they didn't shell the chateau, we got it in the trench­es; so we looked on that dear old man­gled wreck with a friend­ly eye--that ta­per­ing, twist­ed, per­fo­rat­ed spire, which they nev­er could knock down, was an ev­er­last­ing bait to the Boche, and a per­fect fairy god­moth­er to us.

Oh, those days in that trench of ours! Each day seemed about a week long. I shared a dug-​out with a pla­toon com­man­der af­ter that first night. The ma­chine-​gun sec­tion found a suit­able place and made a dug-​out for them­selves.

Day af­ter day, night af­ter night, my com­pan­ion and I lay and lis­tened to the dai­ly ex­plo­sions, read, and talked, and sloshed about that trench to­geth­er.

The great­est in­ter­est one had in the day­time was sit­ting on the damp straw in our clay vault, scrap­ing the mud off one's sat­urat­ed boots and clothes. The event to which one looked for­ward with the great­est in­ter­est was the ar­rival of let­ters in the evening.

Now and again we got out of our dug-​out and sloshed down the trench to scheme out some im­prove­ment or oth­er, or to furtive­ly look out across the wa­ter-​logged turnip field at the Boche trench­es op­po­site. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, in the silent, still, fog­gy morn­ings, a voice from some­where in the al­lu­vial depths of a mis­er­able trench, would sud­den­ly burst in­to a scrap of song, such as--

Old sol­diers nev­er die, They sim­ply fade away.

--a voice full of “fed-​up­ness,” steeped in de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Then all would be si­lence for the next cou­ple of hours, and so the day passed.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: The Knave of Spades.]

At dusk, my job was to emerge from this hor­ri­ble drain and go round the var­ious ma­chine-​gun po­si­tions. What a job! I gen­er­al­ly went alone, and in the dark­ness struck out across the sod­den field, trip­ping, stum­bling, and some­times falling in­to var­ious shell holes on the way.

One does a lit­tle call­ing at this time of day. Hav­ing seen a gun in an­oth­er trench, one looks up the near­est pla­toon com­man­der. You look in­to so-​and-​so's dug-​out and find it emp­ty. You ask a sergeant where the oc­cu­pant is.

“He's down the trench, sir.” You push your way down the trench, dodg­ing pools of wa­ter and step­ping over fire buck­ets, mess tins, brush­ing past men stand­ing, lean­ing or sit­ting--right on down the trench, where, round a cor­ner, you find the pla­toon com­man­der. “Well, if we can't get any sand­bags,” he is prob­ably say­ing to a sergeant, “we will just have to bank it up with earth, and put those men on the oth­er side of the tra­verse,” or some­thing like that. He turns to me and says, “Come along back to my dug-​out and have a bit of cake. Some­one or oth­er has sent one out from home.”

We start back along the trench. Sud­den­ly a low mur­mur­ing, rat­tling sound can be heard in the dis­tance. We stop to lis­ten, the sound gets loud­er; ev­ery­one stops to lis­ten--the sound ap­proach­es, and is now dis­tin­guish­able as ri­fle-​fire. The fir­ing be­comes faster and faster; then sud­den­ly swells in­to a roar and now comes the phe­nomenon of trench war­fare: “wind up”--the prairie fire of the trench­es.

Ev­ery­one stands to the para­pet, and away on the left a tor­na­do of crack­ling sound can be heard, get­ting loud­er and loud­er. In a few sec­onds it has swept on down the line, and now a deaf­en­ing rat­tle of ri­fle-​fire is go­ing on im­me­di­ate­ly in front. Bul­lets are flick­ing the tops of the sand­bags on the para­pet in hun­dreds, whilst white streaks are shoot­ing up with a swish in­to the sky and burst in­to bright ra­di­at­ing blobs of light--the star shell at its best.

A cu­ri­ous thing, this “wind up.” We nev­er knew when it would come on. It is caused en­tire­ly by nerves. Per­haps an in­quis­itive Boche, some­where a mile or two on the left, had thought he saw some­one ap­proach­ing his barbed wire; a few shots are ex­changed--a shout or two, fol­lowed by more shots--pan­ic--more shots--pan­ic spread­ing--then sud­den­ly the whole line of trench­es on a front of a cou­ple of miles suc­cumbs to that well-​known mal­ady, “wind up.”

In re­al­ity it is high­ly prob­able that there was no one in front near the wire, and no one has had the least in­ten­tion of be­ing there.

Present­ly there comes a deep “boom” from some­where in the dis­tance be­hind, and a large shell sails over our heads and ex­plodes some­where amongst the Boches; an­oth­er and an­oth­er, and then all be­comes qui­et again. The ri­fle fire di­min­ish­es and soon ceas­es. To­tal re­sult of one of these fire­work dis­plays: sev­er­al thou­sand rounds of am­mu­ni­tion squibbed off, hun­dreds of star shells wast­ed, and no ca­su­al­ties.

It put the “wind up” me at first, but I soon got to know these af­fairs, and learnt to take them calm­ly.

I went along with the pla­toon com­man­der back to his lair. An ex­cel­lent fel­low he was. No one in this war could have hat­ed it all more than he did, and no one could have more con­sci­en­tious­ly done his very best at it. Poor fel­low, he was af­ter­wards killed near Ypres.

“Well, how are things go­ing with you?” I said.

“Oh, all right. They knocked down that same bit of para­pet again to-​day. I think they must imag­ine we've got a ma­chine gun there, or some­thing. That's twice we've had to build it up this week. Have a bit of cake?”

So I had a bit of cake and left him; he go­ing back to that old para­pet again, whilst I struck off in­to the dark, wet field to­wards an­oth­er gun po­si­tion, falling in­to an un­fa­mil­iar “John­son 'ole” on the way.

No one gets a bet­ter idea of the gen­er­al lie of the po­si­tion than a ma­chine-​gun of­fi­cer. In those ear­ly, prim­itive days, when we had so few of each thing, we, of course, had few ma­chine guns, and these had to be sprin­kled about a po­si­tion to the best pos­si­ble ad­van­tage. The con­se­quence was that peo­ple like my­self had to cov­er a con­sid­er­able amount of ground be­fore our ram­bles in the dark each night were done.

One ma­chine gun might be, say, in “Dead Man Farm”; an­oth­er at the “Bar­ri­er” near the cross roads; whilst an­oth­er cou­ple were just at some ef­fec­tive spot in a trench, or in a com­mand­ing po­si­tion in a shat­tered farm or cot­tage be­hind the front line trench­es.

I would leave my dug-​out as soon as it was dark and do the round of all the guns ev­ery night. Just as a sam­ple, I will car­ry on from where I left the pla­toon com­man­der.

I slosh across the ploughed field at what I feel to be a cor­rect an­gle to bring me out on the cross roads, where, about two hun­dred yards away, I have an­oth­er gun. I scram­ble across a bro­ken gate­way and an old bit of trench, and close be­hind come to a deep cut­ting in­to which I jump. About five yards along this I come to a ma­chine-​gun em­place­ment, with a ma­chine-​gun sen­try on guard.

“Where's the cor­po­ral?”

“I'm 'ere, sir,” is emit­ted from the slimy depths of a nar­row low-​roofed dug-​out, and the cor­po­ral emerges, hook­ing back the wa­ter­proof sheet as he comes out to pre­vent the light show­ing.

“How about this gun, Cor­po­ral--is ev­ery­thing all right?”

“Yes, sir; but I was look­ing around to-​day, and thought that if we was to shift the gun over there, where the dead cow is, we'd get a bet­ter field of fire.”

Meet­ing ad­journed to in­spect this valu­able site from the wind­ward side.

Af­ter a short, blood-​thirsty con­ver­sa­tion rel­ative to the per­fo­rat­ing of the en­emy, I leave and push off in­to the bog again, strik­ing out for an­oth­er vis­it. Fi­nal­ly, af­ter two hours' vis­it­ing, floun­der­ing, bul­let dodg­ing, and star shell shirk­ing, ac­com­pa­nied by a lib­er­al al­lowance of “nar­row squeaks,” I get back to my own bit of trench; and to­bog­gan­ing down where I er­ro­neous­ly think the clay steps are, I at last reach my dug-​out, and en­ter­ing on all fours, crouch amongst the damp to­bac­co leaves and straw and light a cigarette.