The Red Horizon Part 8

On the whole the members of our section, divergent as the poles in civil life, agree very well. But the same does not hold good in the whole regiment; the public school clique and the board school clique live each in a separate world, and the line of demarcation between them is sharply drawn. We all live in similar dug-outs, but we bring a new atmosphere into them. In one, full of the odour of Turkish cigarettes, the spoken English is above suspicion; in another, stinking of regimental s.h.a.g, slang plays skittles with our language.

Only in No. 3 is there two worlds blent in one; our platoon officer says that we are a most remarkable section, consisting of literary men and babies.

"Stand-to!" (p. 095)

I rose to my feet, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and promptly hit my head a resounding blow on the roof. The impact caused me to take a pace forward, and my boot rested on Stoner's face.

"Get out of it, you clumsy Irish beggar!" he yelled, jumping up and stumbling over Mervin, who was presently afoot and marching over another prostrate form.

"Stand-to! Stand-to!"

We shuffled out into the open, and took up our posts on the banquette, each in fighting array, equipped with 150 rounds of ball cartridge and entrenching tool handle on hip. In the trenches we always sleep in our equipment, by day we wear our bayonets in scabbard, at night the bayonets are always fixed.

"Where's Z----?" asked Stoner, as we stood to our rifles.

"In the dug-out," I told him, "he's asleep."

"'E is, is 'e?" yelled Bill, rushing to the door. "Come out of it lazybones," he called. "Show a leg at once, and grease to your gun.

The Germans are on the top of us. Come out and get shot in the open."

Z---- stumbled from his bed and blinked at us as he came out. (p. 096)

"Is it true, Bill, are they 'ere?" he asked.

"If they were 'ere you'd be a lot of good, you would," said Bill. "Get on with the work."

In the dusk and dawning we stand-to in the trenches ready to receive the enemy if he attempt to charge. Probably on the other side he waits for our coming. Each stand-to lasts for an hour, but once in a fog we stood for half a day.

The dawn crept slowly up the sky, the firing on the left redoubled in intensity, but we could not now see the flashes from the rifles. The last star-rocket rose from the enemy's trench, hung bright in mid-air for a s.p.a.ce, and faded away. The stretch of ground between the trenches opened up to our eyes. The ruined cottage, cold and shattered, standing mid-way, looked lonely and forbidding. Here and there on the field I could see grey, inert objects sinking down, as it were, on the gra.s.s.

"I suppose that's the dead, the things lying on the ground," said Stoner. "They must be cold poor devils, I almost feel sorry for them."

The birds were singing, a blackbird hopped on to the parapet, looked enquiringly in, his yellow bill moving from side to side, and (p. 097) fluttered away; a lark rose into the heavens warbling for some minutes, a black little spot on the grey clouds; he sang, then sank to earth again, finding a resting place amongst the dead. We could see the German trenches distinctly now, and could almost count the sandbags on the parapet. Presently on my right a rifle spoke. Bill was firing again.

"Nark the doin's, Bill, nark it," Goliath shouted, mimicking the c.o.c.kney accent. "You'll annoy those good people across the way."

"An if I do!"

"They may fire at you!" said monumental Goliath with fine irony.

"Then 'ere's another," Bill replied, and fired again.

"Don't expose yourself over the parapet," said our officer, going his rounds. "Fire through the loop-holes if you see anything to fire at, but don't waste ammunition."

The loop-holes, drilled in steel plates wedged in the sandbags, opened on the enemy's lines; a hundred yards of this front was covered by each rifle; we had one loop-hole in every six yards, and by day every sixth man was posted as sentry.

Stoner, diligent worker that he is, set about preparing breakfast (p. 098) when stand-to was over. In an open s.p.a.ce at the rear of the dug-out he fixed his brazier, chopped some wood, and soon had the regimental issue of c.o.ke ablaze.

"I'll cut the bacon," I said, producing the meat which I had carried with me.

"Put the stuff down here," said Stoner, "and clear out of it."

Stoner, busy on a job, brooks no argument, he always wants to do the work himself. I stood aside and watched. Suddenly an object, about the size of a fat sausage, spun like a big, lazy bee through the air, and fifty paces to rear, behind a little knoll, it dropped quietly, as if selecting a spot to rest on.

"It's a bird," said Stoner, "one without wings."

It exploded with terrific force, and blew the top of the knoll into the air; a shower of dust swept over our heads, and part of it dropped into Stoner's fire.

"That's done it," he exclaimed, "what the devil was it?"

No explanation was forthcoming, but later we discovered that it was a bomb, one of the morning greetings that now and again come to us (p. 099) from the German trench mortars. This was the first we had seen; some of our fellows have since been killed by them; and the blue-eyed Jersey youth who was my friend at St. Albans, and who has been often spoken of in my little volume _The Amateur Army_, came face to face with one in the trenches one afternoon. It had just been flung in, and, accompanied by a mate, my friend rounded a traverse in a deserted trench and saw it lying peacefully on the floor.

"What is it?" he asked, coming to a halt.

"I don't know, it looks like a bomb!" was the sudden answering yell.

"Run."

A dug-out was near, and both shoved in, the Jersey boy last. But the bomb was too quick for him. Half an hour later the stretcher-bearers carried him out, wounded in seventeen places.

Stoner's breakfast was a grand success. The tea was admirable and the bacon, fried in the mess-tin lids, was done to a turn. In the matter of food we generally fare well, for our boys get a great amount of eatables from home, also they have money to spend, and buy most of their food whenever that is possible.

In the forenoon Pryor and I took up two earthen jars, a number of which are supplied to the trenches, and went out with the intention of (p. 100) getting water. We had a long distance to go, and part of the way we had to move through the trenches, then we had to take the road branching off to the rear. The journey was by no means a cheery one; added to the sense of suffocation, which I find peculiar to the narrow trench, were the eternal soldiers' graves. At every turn where the parados opened to the rear they stared you in the face, the damp, clammy, black mounds of clay with white crosses over them. Always the story was the same; the rude inscription told of the same tragedy: a soldier had been killed in action on a certain date. He might have been an officer, otherwise he was a private, a being with a name and number; now lying cold and silent by the trench in which he died fighting. His mates had placed little bunches of flowers on his grave.

Then his regiment moved off and the flowers faded. In some cases the man's cap was left on the black earth, where the little blades of kindly gra.s.s were now covering it up.

Most of the trench-dwellers were up and about, a few were cooking late breakfasts, and some were washing. Contrary to orders, they had stripped to the waist as they bent over their little mess-tins of soapy (p. 101) water; all the boys seemed familiar with trench routine. They were deep in argument at the door of one dug-out, and almost came to blows. The row was about rations. A light-limbed youth, with sloping shoulders, had thrown a loaf away when coming up to the trenches. He said his pack was heavy enough without the bread. His mates were very angry with him.

"Throwin' the grub away!" one of them said. "Blimey, to do a thing like that! Get out, Spud 'Iggles!"

"Why didn't yer carry the rooty yourself?"

"Would one of us not carry it?"

"Would yer! Why didn't ye take it then?"

"Why didn't ye give it to us?"

"Blimey, listen to yer jor!" said Spud Higgles, the youth with the sloping shoulders. "Clear out of it, nuff said, ye brainless twisters!"

"I've more brains than you have," said one of the accusers who, stripped to the waist, was washing himself.

"'Ave yer? so 'ave I," was the answer of the boy who lost the loaf, as he raised a mess tin of tea from the brazier.

"Leave down that mess-tin for a minute and I'll show yer who has (p. 102) the most brains," said the man who was washing, sweeping the soapsuds from his eyes and bouncing into an aggressive att.i.tude, with clenched fists before him, in true fighting manner.

"Leave down my mess-tin then!" was the answer. "Catch me! I've lost things that way before, I'ave."

Spud Higgles came off victor through his apt sarcasm. The sarcastic remark tickled the listeners, and they laughed the aggressive soldier into silence.

A number of men were asleep, the dug-outs were crowded, and a few lay on the banquette, their legs stretched out on the sandbag platforms, their arms hanging loosely over the side, and their heads shrouded in Balaclava helmets. At every loop-hole a sentry stood in silent watch, his eyes rivetted on the sandbags ahead. Now and again a shot was fired, and sometimes, a soldier enthusiastic in a novel position, fired several rounds rapid across Noman's land into the enemy's lines, but much to the man's discomfiture no reply came from the other side.