The pacifist may inveigh against war's hideousness, leagues and societies may condemn it in vigorous resolutions and solemnly declare that “there must be no more war,” yet the fact remains that, terrifying as they sometimes, and uncomfortable as they often were, the war years will stand out in the memories of vast numbers of those who fought as the happiest period of their lives. And the clue to this perhaps astonishing fact is that though the war may have let loose the worst it also brought out the finest qualities in men.
In spite of all differences in rank, we were comrades, brothers, dwelling together in unity. We were privileged to see in each other that inner, ennobled self which in the grim, commercial struggle of peace-time is all too frequently atrophied for lack of opportunity of expression. We could note the intense affection of soldiers for certain officers, their absolute trust in them. We saw the love passing the love of women of one “pal” for his “half-section.” We saw in his letters home which came to us for censoring, the filial devotion of the “toughest,” drunkenest private for his aged mother back in the slums by the Tyne at North Shields. We saw the indomitable kindliness of the British character expressing itself towards the French children, the wretched mangy French dogs, and, yes, even to the German wounded and prisoners ! The English soldier could not hate his enemies for long. Only a few days previously during the attack on Zenith Trench, when, with a third of the battalion killed or wounded, the shivering remainder stayed two days on the scene of the action, in rudimentary water-logged trenches under incessant rain and steady shell-fire: rations could not be got up, yet, wet, famished, and miserable as they were, the men insisted on sharing their infrequent mugs of tea with a wounded German, who, hit in the side, lay under a sopping oilskin in the trench. “Here's a drop of tea for Fritz,” the men would say, as they propped up the captive and fed him as a nurse would feed a patient.
We were privileged, in short, to see a reign of goodwill among men, which the piping times of peace, with all their organised charity, their free meals, free hospitals, and Sunday sermons have never equalled. Despite all the propaganda for Christian fellowship and international peace, there is more animosity, uncharitableness, and lack of fellowship in one business office now than in a brigade of infantry in France then. Otherwise, we could never have stood the strain.
But this is to digress !
Before leaving, the Brigadier had some very encouraging things to say about the way we had organised our little sector, and from the Colonel we learnt that despite the weight of metal which had been hurled at them during the night, C and D Companies also had escaped without casualties, which was a striking exemplification of the enormous number of projectiles necessary to destroy one human life, and of the utterly incomprehensible manner in which a trench could be hammered and blown out of all recognition by shell-fire without a man in it being hit. Conversation delayed their departure so long that the mist had begun to clear before the General, the Colonel, and their orderlies had scrambled over the parados and started with as much haste as was consonant with dignity to get across the danger zone between us and the Sunken Road. By the time I had plodded back to Company Headquarters the sun had broken through with the welcome assurance of another fine day.
There are those who deny that breakfast is, as its name implies, the most important meal of the day, but in the trenches no one could question it for a moment. No matter how violent, sulphurous, or bloody the night, no matter how tense the grim ceremonial of “stand-to” which ushered in the day, the command “stand-down” was almost invariably followed by a lull along the whole front. Hostilities were temporarily suspended by mutual, if mute, consent, and for what reason except that after the strained hours of darkness English and German alike turned with relaxation to break their fast ? For anything from an hour to two hours the most vicious noise to be heard in the trench was the sizzling of frying bacon. Then some machine-gunner, cheerful from his meal, would break the spell with the “Pop-pop-op-pop-pop !” call on his Vickers, which never failed to evoke the slower “pop-pop” from some heavy machine-gun within the German lines.
There was something very refreshing about this breakfast truce. Above all, is it associated in my mind with a brief triumph of the kindly smells of Nature over those more sinister ones of man's making. For a few minutes the sun and dew distilled a faint fragrance even from the freshly turned earth or the coarse weeds bruised by the night's shelling, before the moisture evaporated and allowed the normal odours of trench life to assert themselves. Even then the all-pervading reek of chlorate of lime would be overcome for a while by the homely acrid smell of the cook's wood fire, and—oh, most welcome !—of bacon.
But as I reached my headquarters my nose registered none of these things. No. 7 platoon were starting the day as each man, except the sentry on the high fire-step, thought best. Some were asleep, others busy with their breakfast. What miserable breakfasts we were compelled to during those four days ! Bread, whiskery with strands of sand-bag, butter, and a dollop of cold “Maconochie” or bully beef, washed down, if we were lucky, with a halfcupful of neat rum. Tea was even harder to go without than bacon, but it was impossible to light a fire during daylight without giving the enemy gunners a fresh target. Lunch, tea, and dinner were repetitions of breakfast, except that at nightfall the old-soldier's ingenuity triumphed over circumstances. “Buggy” Robinson contrived a kind of oven in the side of the trench, covering the hole with a ground-sheet pegged into the earth with rifle cartridges. Inside he put his stove, made of a tin of whale-oil—“trench feet, for the prevention of,” to use the language of the period—soaked in which was a piece of “four-by-two” rifle rag. The heat given out was not very intense, but was enough to warm up one tin mug of liquid at a time, without any light showing in the trench. During the day Robinson improved his patent, and dug into the trench one of the salved German machine-gun belt boxes, which, with a lid that could be propped open, was most effective.
There was a good deal of laughter at breakfast over our various beards. Normally, officers and men alike shaved every day in the trenches—a regulation which the Colonel was very strict to have observed—but here it was quite impossible, with the result that some of us already sported very fair growths. Robinson had sprouted red, Parkin had a patchy fringe of grizzled stubble, but by common consent I won the prize with a really fearsome blackness which covered my entire face.
After every meal a wave of somnolence stole over me, which could only be thrown off by prompt action. Up I got, therefore, and trudged up to the front line for a chat. After a few minutes with No. 8 platoon in the T-head out of the communication trench, I moved on to Fall Trench. Mac was asleep, but George Hall was on duty and very angry with the brigade machine-gunners (the Machine-Gun Corps had not then been formed) because they would not fire. Together we interviewed the Corporal in charge of the section. His point was, quite rightly, that his gun was an extra defence to the trench system. If he fired it, he would risk giving away its position. Those were his orders. He should have to see his officer, etc. It was easy to see that George had rubbed him up the wrong way, but after a few jokes about the shells the Boches were sending over (I raised a hearty laugh by christening them “flying-commodes !” How easy it was to make the men laugh if one was only sufficiently apposite and vulgar !) he was ready to fall in with any arrangements. Of course, there was actually little for him to fire at, but George's Lewis-gun team, who had been told off to keep an eye on Cemetery Circle, reported that they had again observed movement, and by peering cautiously over the top we could see that more fresh earth had been turned up. So both the Vickers and the Lewis gun were “laid” on the suspected area, and ordered to fire occasional bursts during the night. Anything to make life unbearable for Brother Boche !
I noticed as I passed along that the trenches were not only beginning to look more efficient as defences, but more lived in, more “homely.” German bayonets stuck in the walls served as pegs for bandoliers of cartridges, water bottles, and
other parts of his complex harness which Mr. Atkins was accustomed to take off in the trenches. Here and there hung a gas-gong in the shape of a brass shell-case. The men could now not only stretch themselves on clean fire-steps for their sleep, a haversack or bag of Lewis-gun drums for pillow, but had begun to improvise all sorts of burrows and cubby-holes. Several, including Mac, had scooped a long, shallow grave into the front wall of the trench in which they could retire and lie full length like the recumbent effigy of some crusader in a church at home. In these niches they could rest undisturbed by people moving along the trench, and one or two men had secured greater privacy by hanging a ground-sheet over the hole. There was still no cookhouse, of course, but our conscientious sanitary N.C.O., Lance-Corporal Rumbold, had contrived two or three latrines as effective as they appeared hygienic.
Time slid by until lunch-time. You will observe that our periods were bounded by our meals. In this, as in many other things, there was a similarity between life in the line and on board ship. In both, one's area of action is restricted; in both, one is cooped up for days together with the same people; in both, there is little to keep mind and body interested except the prospect of the next meal. There were, it is true, certain dangers and annoyances in the trenches which are not tolerated on a pleasure cruise, but for all that the analogy is closer than at first appears.
After my midday meal the effect of the night's exertions could no longer be withstood, and rolling myself in a German ground-sheet, another piece of salvage of the morning, I laid myself down on the narrow floor of the trench for the second spell of sleep I had had since leaving camp. For two hours I slept dreamlessly and undisturbed until wakened by the cold which, striking upwards, had started aches and pains in my back and legs. It took me several minutes to thaw properly. This process was greatly assisted by a cup of “gun-fire” tea, that very brown, very sticky, but very stimulating beverage, brewed in Robinson's oven. If any one drink can be said to have won the war, the honour falls to “gun-fire” tea, technically teetotal though poisonous with tannin. Yet the apostles of temperance are so busy denying the value of alcohol and condemning the part it played in keeping us “alive and kicking,” that they have not enscrolled a banner with the legend “Tea—1914—1918” and flaunted it as they should before a forgetful nation's eyes !
One cup of that tea and a cigarette—a Woodbine for choice, procurable always from Parkin, who smoked nothing else—were guaranteed to put life into the weariest, and I was ready to sally forth again as the gathering dusk reminded me it was time for “stand-to.”
Telling Robinson to stand his platoon to, I set off by way of A Company for a change, only to find that the support trench held the worst mud of all. The absence of rain seemed to have made it more viscous than ever, and I was hot and peevish by the time I had run Cropper to earth in the front line.
Cropper had been in the reserve battalion with me at Whitley Bay, where he had joined from Sandhurst in the autumn of 1915. We had come out together with the same draft to the 2nd Battalion, and together had suffered the miseries of Etaples and the Bull Ring. In a month's time he was to become my assistant adjutant, and afterwards succeed me in the adjutancy, only to be killed on the Somme in March 1918, not far from where we were that November night in 1916.
I found him, as I always picture him, completely unruffled. It was his first experience of command, but he tackled the job with the air of cheerful superiority which, springing from an inherent self-confidence surprising in one so young (he was then not more than twenty), stamped him as an exceptional leader.
The day had been quite uneventful so far as his company were concerned. “Hope it keeps quiet to-night,” he added. It certainly was still. The artillery duel up north, in the direction of the Ancre, had subsided, and except for the lumbering of heavy shells passing high overhead from time to time like distant express trains, the only warlike sound was the occasional angry chorus of French 7 5's down by Sailly Saillisel.
We agreed that A Company's night's work should be to continue improving the sap and fire trench. B Company would do the same, while Mac took a patrol out to make a proper reconnaissance into the valley in front, so as to make sure it was clear of enemy residents, other than dead ones.
The men were standing-to as I walked down towards B Company. If this period of compulsory alertness for one hour at dusk and at dawn usually served no other useful purpose, it brought every one “on parade,” as it were. It therefore afforded a good opportunity for officers to have an informal chat with this man and that, so that it took me some time to reach Mac. As I did so, a short burst of machine-gun fire sounded farther down the trench. “Listen !” said Mac, with a grin. “We've got the offensive spirit to-night all right !” following which he told me that he only wanted to take out one man with him on patrol—Sergeant Priestley, who had roamed a good many miles in No-Man's-Land with him before.
Corporal Robinson's first request to me on my return to headquarters was to be allowed to go out and resume the treasure hunt which had been so rudely interrupted the night previously. My reply was the same as before—that I would not see him go, and that he had to bring in the pay-books or other valuables of any British dead he might stumble across. With a very brisk, “Very good, sir ! Thank you, sir !” he scrambled out of the trench and disappeared into the murk.
The ration party arrived with the Company Quartermaster-Sergeant. It was the event of the day. Here was touch with the outside world again; material, in the shape of food, drink, letters, and parcels from home; spiritual, in that there was some one fresh to talk to, who could pass on to us “military moles” the gossip which transport lines had gleaned from the whispering gallery of the back areas. Company Quartermaster-Sergeants were notoriously well-informed people. C.Q.M.S. Carlton was no exception. We were going to be relieved to-morrow night. Yes, we already knew that. Who were coming in ? The 1st Worcesters of our 24th Brigade. Was the division going to Italy ? Nothing known on this point, though it was said that we were to be withdrawn for a month's rest. Our visitor could only stay a few minutes, so my questions were fired at him, but he volunteered one interesting piece of information, that the night previously a German staff officer and his orderly had walked right through our lines, eventually fetching up at a ration dump where an enterprising Quartermaster made them prisoners before they could recover from their surprise. This incident shows at once the extraordinary disintegration of the front, and the ease with which one could get completely lost in that land made barren by artillery.
IV
RELIEF
OUR relief by the 1st Battalion of the Worcester Regiment was confirmed in Battalion orders, and this piece of news, welcome in itself, was followed by a paragraph to the effect that the Brigadier had been much impressed with his visit to our front and wished to congratulate A and B Companies upon the work they had done, and “on the spirit displayed by all ranks.” Secretly swelling with self-gratification, I read this out to No. 7 platoon, who received the news with a few very non-committal grunts, as if to say that the comments of visiting “brass-hats,” whether congratulatory or censorious, left them cold. Undeterred, I sent off a runner to pass on the glad tidings to the other platoons, which I have no doubt were equally uninterested. Still, I convinced myself that as the credit ultimately belonged to the men, they ought to know that their good work had been noticed by those on Olympus.
The same runner who had brought the routine orders had also handed me a separate envelope, marked “Secret and Urgent,” for which he required my signature as proof of receipt. I opened this to find that at 5.45 a.m. to-morrow (November 13) a large scale “Chinese attack” would take place on our front. In other words, our artillery were to open a heavy creeping barrage in order to delude the enemy into thinking that we were attacking, and thus to mask the real thrust which was to be made farther north. The barrage would commence one hundred and fifty yards in front of our lines. After two minutes it would creep forward at the rate of thirty yards per
minute until the line of the distant Moon Trench was reached. It would continue on this line for twenty minutes and then die down.
The Colonel's orders went on: “This is in conjunction with operations by the 5th Army on the left. I have carefully checked the utmost eastern limits of our advanced posts and informed the artillery. Even allowing for progress to-night there is a margin of one hundred and fifty yards.” In retaliation, the enemy might “barrage the valley about Dewdrop and Winter Trenches, and accordingly the G.O.C. wishes every available man put into Autumn and other trenches and posts in front.” This meant that C and D Companies were to move up into the front line system as from 5 a.m. until such time as the commotion caused by our bluff had subsided. Details followed as to arrangements for keeping up observation during the barrage and reporting any movement, and instructions that Lewis guns should be held ready as far forward as possible so as immediately to engage any enemy seen. The real motive for moving the support companies was probably based on a fairly reasonable suspicion that the enemy gunners had got Dewdrop Trench “registered” to a nicety, but we read into it a further, if implied, compliment to the efficiency of the trenches we had dug, and rejoiced accordingly.
The night wore on as quietly as it had begun. Not a shell disturbed the double company front though the usual steady stream slid or whizzed, according to their calibre, over us to come to earth somewhere on that featureless desert behind us. About midnight Robinson reappeared, looking like some vendor of cheap jewellery at a fair. He was garlanded with watch-chains, and his pockets and haversack bulged with the haul of his gruesome search. He reported his return to me and added, “You know that shell-hole with two dead Jerries in it where I had to shelter last night, sir ? Well, there aren't two. It's the same Jerry, sir, only his head has been blown across the other side of the hole !”
Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 Page 7