A. J. Dawson

“ And yet, do you know, so quickly are things borne in upon you in this crude, savage life of raw realities, so narrow is your world, so vital your need of knowing it; so unavoidable is your continuous alertness, and so circumscribed the field of your occupation, that I feel now I know nothing else in the world quite so well and intimately as I know that warren of stinking mud: the two sub-sectors in which I spent last week. Manchester Avenue, Carlisle Road, Princes Street, with all their side alleys and boggy by-ways! ”

“ But I tell you, under the strain and stress of this savage existence he shows up for what he really is, under his rough, ugly hide: he's jewel all through without an ounce of dirty Boche meanness or cruelty in his whole carcass. You may hate his manners if you like but you can't help loving him; you simply can't help it if you work alongside of him in the trenches in face of the enemy. ”

“ Theoretically, this O.C. Company may be himself as much in need of sleep as anyone in the trench. Actually, however, apart from his needs, he is personally responsible for whatever may happen in quite a long stretch of dark, mysterious trench: of trench which in one moment may be converted by the ingenious Boche into a raging hell of paralysing gas and smoke, of lurid flame and rending explosion. German officers seated in artillery dug-outs a mile or so away across the far side of No Man's Land may bring about that transformation in one moment. ”

“ Come to think of it, do you know, that sums up the attitude of all the French women I have met, and of the old men of France, too; and it's an attitude which compels respect, while it elicits sympathy. They smile with their lips, and in the brave hearts of them they smile, too; even though they cannot altogether hide either the wearing anxiety of waiting, or, where bereavement has come, the grief of mourning for brave men lost, which shows in their eyes. ”

“ The trench outside is very still just now, but inside the dug-out there is plenty of movement. All round about it, and above and below, the place is honeycombed by rats—brown rats with whitish bellies, big as young cats, heavy with good living; blundering, happy-go-lucky, fearless brutes, who do not bother to hunt the infinitely nimbler mice who at this moment are delicately investigating the tins of foodstuffs within a few inches of the head of the O.C. Company. ”

“ You will easily understand that of all things in trench warfare nothing is more important than the ability of your Company to man the fire-step, ready to repel an attack, or to make one, on the shortest possible notice. When the order comes there must be no fiddling about looking for rifles, or appearing on the fire-step with incomplete equipment. See how useless that would be in the event of a surprise attack in the dark, when the enemy could creep very close indeed to your parapet before the best of sentries could give any alarm! ”

“ If anyone has ever tasted the boredom of idleness in the trenches—which I don't believe, mind you—there must have been something radically wrong with his Battalion; his Company Commander must have been a rotter. And I don't see how that could be.
A trench, especially in such country as this we're in, is not unlike a ship; a rather ancient and leaky wooden ship. If you don't keep busy about her she leaks like a sieve, gets unworkably encrusted and choked by barnacles, and begins to decay. If you don't keep improving her, she jolly soon begins to go to pieces. ”

“ In the same desultory fashion, Boche, nearly two hundred yards away across the wire entanglements and the centre strip of No Man's Land, [Pg 70] sends up a flare of parachute light every few minutes, which, for half a minute, fills our black ditch with a queer, ghostly sort of radiance, making its dank and jagged sides to gleam again, and drawing curses from anyone feeling his way along it, even as motor lights in a country lane at home make a pedestrian curse on a dark night. ”

“ First, there's your own parapet, anything from five to five-and-twenty feet of it, sloping gradually down to the open grass of No Man's Land. That's what stops the bullets destined for your head. When Boche shells are well enough placed to blow it in, you must build it up again as soon as you can, or the bit of trench behind it will be exposed, and as your men pass to and fro there will be casualties.
Well, then, anything from ten to twenty or thirty feet beyond the lip of your trench, your wire entanglements begin, and extend, say a good thirty or forty paces out into No Man's Land. ”

“ They love their ease and creature comforts at least as much as any conscientious objector could; and God knows they are here as far removed from ease and creature comfort as men well could be—entirely of their own free will. And they will carry on all night, cracking their simple jokes and chaffing one another, and jostling each other to get to the front if one or two are required for anything extra dangerous. And the spirit that dictates their little jokes, isn't it as fine as any shown in bygone days by the aristocrats of France and England? ”

“ If he slowly worms himself in, say twenty paces, without being heard—and he won't—and lobs a bomb at our line, imagine the hail of lead that's coming about him as he tries to wriggle his way back through the wire after shying his bomb! ”

“ Suddenly I ran my face against the side of a "giant gooseberry" with peculiarly virulent prongs, and in that moment a bullet whizzed low over my head, and—here's the point—the bolt of the rifle from which that bullet came was pulled back and jammed home for the next shot—as it seemed right in my ear. We all lay perfectly flat and still. I could feel the Sergeant-Major's elbow just touching my left hip. ”

“ But out in No Man's Land, of course, the dominant factor is the swift, death-dealing bullet, and the endless mass of barbed-wire entanglements which divides Boches from Britons and Frenchmen for so many hundreds of miles. There are plenty of dead things out there, but, barring the rats, when you get any other movement in No Man's Land you may reckon it's enemy movement: creeping men with bombs and daggers, who may have been stalking you or may not have seen you. ”

“ Now, when we began crawling through the Boche wire I made the sort of mistake one does make until experience teaches. I occupied myself far too much with what was under my nose, and too little with what lay ahead—and too little with my compass. To be sure, there's a good deal in the Boche wire which rather forces itself upon the attention of a man creeping through it on hands and knees. The gooseberries and loose strands are the devil. ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, the Boche is not good at that game. He does not shine at all at creep-in on our line. When he leaves his trenches at all he seems to prefer coming out in pretty close formation, rubbing shoulders with his pals. Our fellows are a good deal better at sculling about over the sticks than he is.
Here and there in the wire, among the tin cans and things, you can see fluttering bits of weather-worn uniform and old rags, and, at times, things more gruesome. Beyond the wire you see the strip of No Man's Land. ”

“ And you've seen how fellows going into the sea to bathe, at low tide, will gallop through the rows of little wavelets where the water's shallow; feet going high and arms waving, the men themselves whooping for the fun of the thing. That's exactly how our chaps went through that wire. ”

“ It happens that my picture of this Company Headquarters dug-out is a three o'clock in the morning picture: moonless, and the deadest hour of the night, when Brother Boche is pretty generally silent, save for a mechanical sort of dropping rifle fire: a fire which one knows somehow, from its sound, means nothing, unless perhaps it means a certain number of German sentries sleepily proving to themselves that they are awake. ”

“ The O.C. Company's oilskin-covered shoulders twitch nervously. The mother rats continue noisily suckling their young, though one warily pokes its sharp nose out over the edge of the felt, sniffing, inquiringly. Then the waterproof sheet is drawn aside, and the O.C. Company sits up with a jerk. A signaller on whose leather jerkin the raindrops glisten in the flickering candle-light thrusts head and shoulders into the dug-out. ”

“ There's a creepy kind of excitement about patrol work which makes it fascinating. If there's any light at all, you never know who's drawing a bead on you. If there's no light, you never know what you're going to bump into at the next step. It's very largely hands-and-knees' work, and our chaps just revel in it. My first, as you know, landed me in the Boche trenches; and that's by no means a very uncommon thing either, though it ought never to happen if you have a good luminous-faced compass and the sense to refer to it often enough. My second patrol was a bit more successful. ”

“ If you use all the care and judgment you can, and if each one of your men understands exactly what the job before him is, and your influence is such as to prevent anyone from losing his head, no matter what happens, then the casualty list will be low. Every casualty you prevent on a job like this is as good as an enemy casualty gained. When we have to lose our men, let us lose them fighting, as they themselves would choose to go down if go down they must. But in this job of the new trench, we pit our wits and our coolness and discipline and efficiency against those of the Boche ”

“ These are cheerless pitfalls on a dark night, in which it is easy to sink one leg in mud or water over the knee. In places a duck-walk has canted over by losing its bearings on the trestle at one corner, giving the whole a treacherous list to one side or the other, simple enough to negotiate by day, but unpleasant for anyone hurrying along at night. Still, the trench is 'ducked' and, so far, luxurious, and a vast improvement on the sort of trench (common over the way among the Boches, I believe) in which men lose their boots, and have to be dug out themselves. ”

“ Troops in the firing line must be able to turn out, equipped in every detail for fighting—for days on end of fighting—not only quickly, but instantly; without any delay at all. That is why, in the British Army, at all events—and I've no doubt the French are the same—nobody in the firing line is allowed to remove his equipment. Officer and man alike, when we lie down to sleep, we lie down in precisely the same order as we go into action: haversack and water-bottle, ammunition and everything complete. ”

“ I am sorry to say I left the little dagger there, but I collared the Boche's rifle and bayonet, thinking that was the only weapon I had, and clean forgetting the two Mills bombs in my pockets. Slade was a perfect brick and behaved all through like the man he is. We were anxious to make tracks without unnecessary delay, but, being there, thought we might as well have a look at the trench. We crept along two bays without hearing or seeing a soul. And then we heard a man struggling in deep mud and cursing in fluent German. ”

“ The life of a permanent official in one of these Clearing Stations must be curious, handling as he does a never-ending stream of the flotsam and jetsam of the great war. The war knocks chips off us, and as we are broken we stream in through the hospitable portals of this beautifully organised and managed place; are put in plaster of Paris, so to say, and off we go again to another place to be further doctored; the more newly chipped arriving by one gate, as we go trickling out by another. ”

“ We had verbal warnings in plenty from the Company we relieved, but it's experience that teaches; and, whilst they may not be brilliant tricksters—they're not,—our fellows will at all events never allow the same trick to be worked off twice on us.
By his fondness for all such petty tricks as these—and, of course, they have dozens of dirtier ones than this—the Boche has rather shut the door on chivalry. Given half a chance, the natural inclination of our men is to wage war as they would play cricket—like sportsmen. ”

“ There practically isn't any No Man's Land here. It's just our trench and their trench and the muddy, bloody cock-pit between, all churned into a slushy batter by high explosives, and full of all manner of ghastly remains. ”

“ Company, for I have never met an officer I would sooner have beside me. The men of the Platoon, and, indeed, of the whole Company, are devoted to him; and I regard it as little short of marvellous that in so comparatively short a time a man who had never had even the slightest hint of military training should have been able to become, all round, so efficient, so well posted technically, and, above all, so confident and absolutely so successful a leader of men. ”

“ I wore it on that last bombing raid. For patrol work, or wiring, for anything over the parapet, and in the trench, too, at night-time, for instance, I don't think there's anything to beat it. There's nothing to catch or get in one's way, and it's a great joy to keep one's ordinary clothes clean and decent. On patrol it's better than oilskin, because it's silent—doesn't rustle. ”

“ How I wish one could consciously enjoy the luxury of sleep while sleeping! Good night and God bless you! God bless all the sweet, brave waiting women of England, and France, and Russia; and I wish I could send a bit of my clean comfort to-night to as many as may be of our good chaps, and France's bon camarades, out here.
When next I write we shall have seen a bit of the trenches, I hope, and so then you should have something more like real news from your
"Temporary Gentleman." ”