No Man's Land Part 5

Stale as it all was, unprofitable and a weariness to the flesh as it had all become, the strangeness of it still struck him at times. He wondered lazily what the people he knew at home would think if they were following him at that moment on a tour of inspection. Especially his Uncle John.

Uncle John was something in the City, and looked it. He lived near Ascot, and nightly slept with a gas-mask beside his bed. He could imagine Uncle John trembling audibly in that quiet model lane, and a.s.suring his faithful wife of his ability to protect her. He laughed at the picture in his mind, and then with a slight frown stopped.

The trench bent sharply to the right, and almost subconsciously he noticed a hole framed in thick wood, half filled in, in the wall in front of him. The top had broken. He bent and peered through it. It went right through the wall in front, and beyond, the same deep communication trench could be seen stretching away. Just a loophole placed in a traverse through which a rifle could be fired along a straight thirty yards of trench, if the Germans ever got in. But to fire a rifle to any purpose the loop-hole must not be broken, and so the Sapper made a note before resuming his stroll.

Rounding a bend, a big white board at a cross-roads confronted him. It advertised two or three salient facts written in large black letters. It appeared that by turning to the right one would ultimately reach Leicester Square and an aid post, to say nothing of the Charing Cross Road, which was a down trench. By turning to the left, on the contrary, one would reach Regent Street and a pump. It also stated that the name of our wanderer's present route was the Haymarket, and further affirmed that it was an up trench. For it will be plain to all that, where a trench is but three feet wide, it is essential not to have men going both ways in it--and further, it will also be plain why the aid posts occur in the down ones.

A further interesting and momentous piece of information was imparted from another board, to the effect that the name of the trench by which one could reach the pump on one hand and the aid post on the other was Piccadilly, and that it const.i.tuted the reserve line of the position.

In other words, it was not merely a communication trench, but was recessed and traversed like a fire trench. In very fact, it was a fire trench--the third of the system. In front was the support line, known as Pall Mall, and in front of that, again, the firing line, whither later the Sapper proposed to wend his way. He wanted to gaze on "the rum jar reputed to be filled with explosive." But in the meantime there was the question of the pump--the ever-present question which is a.s.sociated with all pumps. To work or not to work, and the answer is generally in the negative.

He turned to the left down Piccadilly, wondering what particular ailment had attacked this specimen of the breed, and had caused the Adjutant of the battalion to write winged words anent it. The aspect of the trench had changed; no longer did the red, white, and blue of the tangled wild flowers meet over his head, but grey and drab the sandbag walls rose on each side of him. Occasionally the mouth of a dug-out yawned in the front of the trench, a dark pa.s.sage cased in with timber, sloping steeply down to the cave below. Voices, and sometimes snores, came drowsily up from the bottom, where odd bunches of the South Loamshires for a s.p.a.ce existed beautifully.

"Hullo, old man--how's life?" He rounded a traverse to find an officer of the battalion lathering his chin for his morning shave. A cracked mirror was scotched up between two sandbags, and a small indiarubber basin leaked stealthily on the firing step.

"So-so! That bally pump of yours won't work again, or so the cook says.

Jenkins, pa.s.s the word along for Smithson. He is the cook, and will tell you the whole sordid story."

"Quiet night?" The Sapper sat down and refilled his pipe.

"Fairly. They caught one of our fellows in the entrance to his dug-out up in the front line with an aerial dart about seven o'clock. Landed just at the entrance. Blew the top of his head off. Good boy, too--just been given his stripe. Oh, Smithson!--tell the Engineer officer about that pump. Confound!--I've shaved a mosquito bite!"

The cook--a veteran of many years--looked at the placidly smoking Sapper and cleared his throat. On any subject he was an artist; on pumps and the deficiencies of Ally Sloper's Cavalry--as the A.S.C. is vulgarly known--he was a genius.

"Well, sir, it's like this 'ere. That there pump is a funny kind o'

pump. Sometimes it gives you water and sometimes it don't."

"You surprise me," murmured the Sapper.

"Now, if I might be so bold, sir, I would suggest that another well be sunk, sir--starting fresh-like from the beginning. Then I could keep my heye on it, and see that no one wasn't a-monkeying with it. As it is, wot with the stuff we're a-getting and the shortage of tea and the distance I 'ave to go for water, and----"

"Well, what do you expect?" A bitter voice from round the traverse rudely interrupted the discourse. "We make pumps to pump water--not dead rats. Wasting my time, that's what it is. Where 'ave I put it? In that there perisher Smithson's dug-out, and 'e can 'ave it for his dinner."

The plumber previously sent up on receipt of the Adjutant's note came round the corner, and, seeing his officer, stopped and saluted.

"That there pump's all right, sir. There was a dead rat in it. They _will_ leave the cover off the well." He perceived the horrified Smithson, and fixed him with the frozen eye.

"Right. Then you can rejoin your section." The Sapper rose, the plumber departed, the cook faded away, and for a s.p.a.ce there was silence.

"d.a.m.n that fellow Smithson--he's the limit." The Infantry Officer laughed. "I'll rend him for this."

"Sometimes it gives you water, and sometimes it don't," remarked the Sapper pensively. "Last time it was a sock. Bye-bye. I hope he'll enjoy his dinner."

He followed the plumber back along Piccadilly, composing in his mind a suitable answer to the message of despair from the Adjutant.

"With ref. to your min. of yesterday I would suggest that a larger flow of somewhat purer water would be available if the practice of inserting deceased rodents in the delivery pipe was discontinued forthwith. I am fully alive to the fact that what the eye does not see the heart does not grieve about, and I realise that, viewed from that standpoint only, the grave of the little animal in question could not well be improved on. I also realise that it adds that flavour to the tea which is so sought after by the true connoisseur. But, desiring to view the matter from the clearer vantage point of an unbia.s.sed onlooker, I venture to suggest----"

His meditations were interrupted by a procession of gunners each carrying on his shoulder an unpleasant-looking object which resembled a gigantic dumb-bell with only one blob on the end--a huge spherical cannon-ball on a steel stalk. They were coming from Leicester Square, and he met them just as they turned up the Haymarket. Waiting until they had all gone by, he followed on in the rear of the party, which suddenly turned sharp to the left, and disappeared into the bowels of the earth.

"No. 7," murmured the Sapper to himself. "I wonder if the officer is new?" He turned to a bombardier standing at the entrance to the pa.s.sage.

"Is your officer here?"

"He's down below, sir." The man drew to one side, and the Sapper pa.s.sed up a narrow deep trench and went "down below" to the trench-mortar emplacement, a cave hewn out of the ground much on the principle of an ordinary dug-out. But there were certain great differences; for half the roof had been removed, and through the hole thus formed streamed in the early morning sun. A screen of rabbit wire covered with bits of gra.s.s, lying horizontally over the open hole when the gun was not firing, helped to conceal it from the prying eyes of Hun aeroplanes. Let into the ground and mounted and clamped to a stand was the mortar itself--while beside it sat a very young gunner officer, much in the att.i.tude of a mother beside her firstborn. He was obviously new to the game, and the Sapper surveyed him with indulgent eye.

"Good morning." The Gunner looked up quickly. "I'm the Sapper Officer on this bit of line. You've just come in, haven't you?"

"Yes, early this morning. Everything seems very quiet here."

"From four till eight or nine it's always peaceful. But I don't know that you'll find this spot very quiet once you start p.o.o.ping off. This particular emplacement was spotted some two months ago by the wily Hun, and he got some direct hits on it with small stuff. Since then it hasn't been used. There are lots of others, you know."

"I was ordered to come to this one," answered the boy doubtfully.

"Right-oh! my dear fellow--it's your funeral. I thought I'd just let you know. Are you letting drive this morning?"

"Yes--as soon as I get the order to fire."

The boy was keen as mustard, and, as I have said, very young--just another infant. He had not long to wait, for hardly were the words out of his mouth when a sergeant came in.

"Captain's compliments, sir, and will you fire two rounds at G. 10 C. 5 4?"

Rapidly and without confusion the men did their appointed jobs; the great stalk slithered down the gun, the bomb--big as a football--filled with high explosive was fixed with a detonator, the lanyard to fire the charge was adjusted. Then every one cleared out of the emplacement, while the Sapper took his stand in the trench outside.

"Let her rip." The lanyard was pulled, and with a m.u.f.fled crack the huge cannon-ball rose into the air, its steel stalk swaying behind it.

Plainly visible, it reached its highest point, and still wobbling drunkenly went swishing down on to G. 10 C. 54--or thereabouts. A roar and a great column of black smoke rose from the German lines.

Almost before the report had died away, the gun was sponged out, and another inebriated monster departed on its mission. But the Sapper was already some way up the Haymarket. It was not his first view of a trench-mortar firing.

A vicious crack from a rifle now and then broke the stillness, and proclaimed that the sun was clearing away the morning mist, and that rest-time was nearly over; while the sudden rattle of a machine gun close by him, indulging in a little indirect fire at a well-known Hun gathering place a thousand yards or so behind their lines, disturbed a covey of partridges, which rose with an angry whirring of wings. Then came four of those unmistakable faint m.u.f.fled bursts from high above his head, which betokened an aeroplane's morning gallop; and even as he automatically jerked his head skywards, with a swishing noise something buried itself in the earth not far away. It is well to remember that even Archibald's offspring obey the laws of gravity, and sh.e.l.ls from an anti-aircraft gun, burst they never so high, descend sooner or later in the shape of jagged fragments--somewhere. And if the somewhere is your face, upturned to see the fun . . . !

The Sapper, with the remembrance fresh in his mind of a pal looking up in just such a way a week before, quickly presented the top of his tin hat to the skies, and all that might descend from them. There had been that same swishing all round them as they stood watching some close shooting at one of our own planes. He recalled the moment when he cried suddenly--"Jove! they've got him!" He had turned as he spoke to see the officer with him, slipping sideways, knees crumpling, body sagging.

"Good G.o.d! old man, what is it?" The question was involuntary, for as he caught the limp figure--he knew.

The plane was all right: the German sh.e.l.ls had not got it; but a piece of shrapnel, the size of a match-box, had pa.s.sed through that officer's eye, and entered his brain. He had laid him on the firing-step, and covered his head--or what was left of it. . . .

He reached Pall Mall, to be once again confronted with a large white notice board. To the right were Boyaux 93 and 94--to the left, 91 and 90. Straight on to the front, 92 led to the firing line. With his ultimate destination Vesuvius crater and the rum jar in view, he turned to the right, and walked along the support trench. It was much the same as Piccadilly: only being one degree nearer the front, it was one degree more warlike. Boxes of bombs everywhere; stands for rifles on the firing-step, which held them rigidly when they fired rifle grenades; and every now and then a row of grey-painted rockets with a red top, which in case of emergency send up the coloured flares that give the S.O.S.

signals to those behind. Also men: men who slept and ate and shaved and wrote and got bored. A poor show is trench warfare!

"Look out, sir. They've knocked it in just round the corner last night with trench mortars." A sergeant of the South Loamshires was speaking.

"Having a go at Laburnum Cottage, I'm thinking."

"What, that sniper's post? Have you been using it?"

"One of our men in there now, sir. He saw an Allemand go to ground in his dug-out half an hour ago through the mist, and he reckons he ought to finish breakfast soon, and come out again."

The Sapper crawled on his stomach over the _debris_ that blocked the trench, and stopped at the entrance to Laburnum Cottage, officially known as Sniper's Post No. 4. In a little recess pushed out to the front of the trench, covered in with corrugated iron and surrounded by sandbags, sprawled the motionless figure of a Lance-Corporal. With his eye glued to his telescopic sight and his finger on the trigger of his rifle, he seemed hardly to be breathing. Suddenly he gave a slight grunt, and the next instant, with a sharp crack, the rifle fired.

"Get him?" asked the Sapper.

"Dunno, sir," answered the sniper, his eye still fixed to the telescope.