Anonymous

“ There is an old military adage that the man who thinks each bullet he hears is going to hit him is making active service a torture to himself. Now, it is all very well to preach the value of being philosophical in warfare and to recommend the man under fire not to think about being hit, but that peculiar sharp little whistle which a bullet makes as it passes one's ear takes a good deal of getting used to, and one's first instinct as one hears it is to slide as deep and far into the ground as possible. ”

“ From an infantryman's point of view a Maxim is like water to a mad dog. It will stop him when nothing else will. There is something particularly deterring about the sound of a Maxim, with its ping-ping-ping-ping as it sweeps down a line of advancing troops, spurting lead like a hose-pipe. The great art from an infantryman's point of view is to locate these guns, and avoid going over ground they cover. It is, humanly speaking, hopeless to try to advance straight against them. ”

“ Every now and then a shower of shrapnel struck the roof of the cottage, and tiles went rattling to the road. All the while a section of our artillery fired incessantly. How gallant those guns of ours sound—Boom-boom-boom. They were fighting to their last shell. If the village went, they went with it. No horses could be brought up to draw them away in such an inferno. The doctor worked on quietly. His work extended now to houses on the left and right. He said it was terrible to see the fear of death on the faces of men shot through the stomach. ”

“ At last, after some further wandering, we struck boldly out on a road along which we were told we should find our second line transport. I was a little uneasy as we left the village behind us and marched out into the darkness, for I knew we were going in the direction of the enemy, and it would be a never-to-be-forgotten episode in an officer's career to lead a draft of reinforcements fresh from England straight into the hands of the enemy instead of to their regiment. ”

“ Round the fire were the Colonel, Adjutant, scout and machine-gun officers, the doctor, Goyle, and two other company commanders. These little informal gatherings are held by most regiments when the day's work is done and the night is not going to be busy, and a great relief it is, too, to be able to laugh and see the funny side of things after the strain of an anxious day. At the first sound of firing they melt. ”

“ For me, my fighting days are done. I am not sorry. Whatever ideas I had as a cadet, this war has taught me that fighting is too fierce and heart-racking to be a sport or anything except a duty.
These sketches of war as I saw it I write once more by the banks of the upper reaches of the Thames, calm and beautiful with her fringe of browning leaves, as she was stately and magnificent in full midsummer a year before. Now autumn has come and the dead leaves lie in the golden sunlight.
Of my brother officers, who read these words, I ask only the kindly tolerance they have always shown. ”

“ The regiment had been, so to speak, in the forefront of the battle for the past two or three days; that is to say, we had not had any troops between ourselves and the enemy, and, though the fighting had never been of a brisk nature, nevertheless the men were feeling the strain of constant watchfulness and going without sleep. Even if there is not much firing it is not a restful feeling to have nothing but a stretch of open ploughland between oneself and the enemy, and to feel one may be called upon to advance over the ploughland at any minute. ”

“ Artillery observing officers have a knack of living in places where any other man would be killed. However, we had no time to speculate on his fate, for a minute later another high-explosive shell burst fifty yards over the trench, followed by a second twenty-five yards over us. The enemy were shortening their range. The men stirred uneasily in their dug-outs. No rat in a trap could feel worse than an infantryman in a trench when a big gun is searching for him with high explosive. BANG! A shell burst on the other side of the road—ten yards from us. ”

“ Going out on outpost duty in the middle of a march is one of the hardest lots that can fall on an infantryman. It means that instead of being able to take his boots off, soap his feet (if they are sore) , change his socks, have a dinner of hot stew and a good cup of strong tea, he has to spend the night out in the cold watching over the safety of those who are doing these delightful things. He may get a bit of sleep if he is not on group sentry, but it won't be with the same sense of security, and he must lie down in his heavy equipment and have his rifle under his arm. ”

“ I noticed, however, that Goyle ran no risks, but made each man lay his equipment and rifle exactly in front of him so that the different working parties could be transformed into a firing-line at an instant's notice. The men worked away with a will as unconcerned as if they were digging a potato patch. The only thing which worried them a little was a searchlight which the enemy continually flashed across the front of their lines. ”

“ As I lay there I heard far away on the right the sound of rifle fire. Were they our troops or the French? Perhaps it was one of our divisions which we had been told was swinging round on our flank. So the division had done its march and was fighting now. I was glad we were not. It was much better to lie peacefully in a ditch. Fighting meant seeing one's pals killed—crawling about, peering forward with tired eyes—worry, anxiety, with, of course, always the fever of excitement. ”

“ Well, if it had to be it had to be, and I think every man was ready to do what was required of him. The officers and draft who had joined us fresh from England were eager for their chance, but the others who had already had a good measure of fighting, and some of whom had been at Mons and on the Marne and Aisne, had not been sorry for the respite which the past fortnight had given. It had been a rest to be away from the sound of gun and rifle fire and go to sleep knowing the enemy was nowhere near, and that one had anyhow the whole of the next day to live. ”

“ The officer of the regiment we were relieving said to me: "You see those stacks—well, I should keep clear of them; the enemy have them set." I nodded, very tired at finding myself back in the firing-line, where we had been almost continuously for ten days, and not particularly interested in what the enemy had set or what they had not. In fact, as soon as I had seen the men distributed along the trench, and had given one or two orders about its improvement, I made straight for the centre stack, pulled as much hay as I could out of the side of it, rolled myself up, and went to sleep. ”

“ The worst side of patrol work is the risk of not being found or it not being possible to bring wounded men in. We sent the two wounded men back to the ambulance, and asked for a party to be sent up to bury the other. I took the dead man's rifle myself. It was very bloody and nasty, but I felt it would be a good companion, as apart from a rifle and bayonet being twice as useful as a revolver and sword (no one carries the latter) , a rifle is also a very good disguise for an officer. ”

“ The privates could speak no French and the peasants no English, so conversation was impossible, but an interchange of thought could be read in the eyes of both parties; the women looking on the men sadly and devoutedly, realizing they had come there perhaps to give their lives for them, and across the men's faces would come a look of appreciation for the hot comforting coffee, and at other times a look of inscrutable purposefulness, which is hard to describe, but which all our men wear in France, and which is symbolic of the spirit which is carrying them through the campaign. ”

“ To be able to billet a company quickly is a question of practice. The eye quickly gets trained to know what amount of men will go into what space and the look of likely places. To stow away 200 men in a tiny village of two farms and four cottages would at first seem a difficult task, especially when a certain amount of the space has already been taken up by different details attached to battalion headquarters. Barns are the first things to look for, and we were lucky in finding two, which each held fifty men. The French barns always have plenty of straw in them, and make warm, snug lying. ”

“ Breakfast would follow at the table outside the farm—breakfast of eggs and bacon and as much tea and bread and butter and jam as one wanted. Then a visit to the company and an inspection of the men's rifles or their kit, perhaps a journey to the Quartermaster to try and get a man another pair of boots or a coat which he wanted. The men nearly all needed one thing or another renewed, and from where we were we could get fresh supplies up from the base. It was a pleasure to see the joy a man took in a new cardigan waistcoat or a clean pair of socks and a shirt. ”

“ They crowded joyfully into their billets as Goyle and I and Evans went round allotting so much space to each platoon.
Having arranged for the men we now looked round for quarters for ourselves. Goyle, whose natural inclinations for Spartan simplicity were being rapidly fanned to a mania by active service, suggested that he and Evans and I should share the stone-slabbed floor of the lower room of a cottage which looked out on a manure yard. ”

“ After half a mile we left the main road and crossed the pontoon bridge. From this point onwards our way lay across the fields. In the darkness we could see nothing and had no compass to give the direction. The transport sergeant picked his way by keeping to a muddy track which had been worn across the fields and stubble by troops passing to and fro from the firing-line to the rear. ”

“ If he is holding his rifle, as the men always do, at the trail in an advance, he is indistinguishable to the enemy. Especially was this the case at one time, when the enemy had got used to looking out for a gentleman with a revolver in one hand, a walking-stick in the other, and a pair of field-glasses slung round his neck, advancing slightly ahead of the line of men, and waving instructions to them with the stick. Nowadays the wise officer keeps well in a line with his men, and gives as few indications by hand signals to halt or advance, etc., as possible. ”

“ Fires were lit for cooking, and men spread themselves on the ground behind the trench reading old copies of newspapers, or mending their clothes, or cleaning their rifles. Here and there parties could be seen carrying away corpses which had been stiff and cold behind the trench for the last forty-eight hours. Goyle, my company commander, walked across from his headquarters. The day before it had been impossible for him to get to us, and messages were brought by orderlies, who crawled up on their stomachs along a narrow ditch. ”

“ The doctor looked up.
"I think we're all right here," he said. "We've got a double roof. I always try to pick a cottage with a double roof. But those poor devils over the way are getting awful scared; I think I'll slip across to them."
The bit of road he had to "slip across" was catching most of the shells which the cottage did not, and was also the channel for a steady stream of rifle and machine-gun fire. I began to see there wasn't much in it, whether one was a doctor or a platoon commander. ”

“ We climbed up out of the valley and crossed a high plateau of waste land. Goyle told me that the German rearguard of horse artillery and cavalry had dashed pell-mell across this plateau in their retreat from the Marne, hotly pursued by our cavalry and guns, pausing at intervals to exchange shots with their pursuers, crashing on down the valley and across the Aisne, where they had made the stand they had maintained ever since. It must have been a fine sight to have seen the pursuer and pursued crossing the plateau. ”

“ But the bank might also—as Goyle, who had had experience of canal banks at Mons, pointed out—prove a death-trap in the morning, for it would provide a fine mark for the enemy's guns should they get on to it. He therefore insisted on each man scraping himself out a small bomb-proof shelter from under the bank.
By great good fortune, just behind the section for which my platoon was responsible, there was a cottage. The owners, an old man and his wife, came to the door when I knocked. Like so many of the French peasants they preferred to remain in their home in spite of the proximity of war. ”

“ XII. THE FARM IN THE FIRING-LINE A farm lay behind our trench. Just in front of the farm there ran a wooden fence. This fence had been loopholed and banked with earth, and was now held by a platoon of infantry. Trenches ran to the right and left in continuation of the fence, and were manned by the remaining platoons of the company. For two days now the enemy had attacked the farm, and all through the past night bullets had come smack-smack against the walls, like heavy hailstones. ”

“ We pulled the kitchen table out to the garden for breakfast, and made a capital meal of fried eggs and bread and marmalade. We sat over breakfast smoking cigarettes and drinking last cups of tea. It seemed odd to be living such a leisurely life 700 yards from the enemy, but the cottages in front secured us as long as they did not use artillery. However, this was to come later. An artillery observing officer came to fix up a field telephone just by our breakfast table. He expressed his opinion that the enemy had got their guns up, and that the day would be lively. ”