Chapter 6
‘What a game it is!’
15 February–6 March 1916
15th February ’16
Bray again after ten days of utter, unalloyed happiness – ten perfect days of leave, with you, my own, and our darling Babe for my companions.
It has been ten days of such sweetness that I cannot express how much it meant to me. I loved every moment of it. Yet it was over so soon. It was over like a dream. And today has been strangest of all. Only last night I was in London, where life is as usual, where pretty girls laugh happily and men go about their business in peace and unconcernedly, and yet by five this afternoon I was walking down the road to this war-battered town, watching the shells burst fiercely in the valley below me. It was so strange, so unreal that I had difficulty in adjusting my mind to a due sense of proportion. That only twelve hours off should be our England still full of men who but dimly realise what this war is, seems quite impossible. In mental outlook they are as far removed from us as the Southern Pole, in fact a distance far greater than that separates us. It is strange. Yet perhaps it is as well. Because we here like our London to remain as we know and love it. I am sure it would greatly distress our leave men to find on returning home their England as chastened as the France they have left.
The battalion is still in the trenches, but comes out tomorrow night. I have orders from the CO to remain here and get billets prepared for the reception of the men when they come out. They will be done I am afraid.i
The weather conditions are bad and the state of some of the communication trenches atrocious. The shelling has been heavy, very heavy occasionally, but the casualties have mercifully up to now, been light. The belief that Fritz means to attack us here has gathered force since I left until it may now almost be regarded as a conviction.
The Brigade bombers have taken pity on me tonight and have fed and are sleeping me in their billet by the church. It is kind of them. D.S. Murray is now with them as 2nd-in-Command and bids fair to make a success of the job.
The house they occupy has a shell hole in its top right corner, the house across the road has a shell hole clean through it, yet are we comfy and warm and quite happy, almost as at ease as though we sat in our London, the London that is only twelve hours off, where there is no mud and where sweethearts and wives and sweet babes smile or chuckle or anon turn sad awhile when they think of us out here. Thank God for my leave! And now to bed.
16th February ’16
Except the preparation of the billets, food etc. for the battalion when it comes out tonight, I have done nothing today. And accordingly I feel a slacker – though by no means a repentant one. The easy day has been too welcome for that. It has meant a gentle breaking-in for which I am grateful.
It has rained heavily today and I can only imagine what the trenches are now like. It is always impossible to realise their real state unless one is actually in them – and then, strangely enough unless one is very tired, they never seem so bad as they do when contemplated from a distance.
Cotton has just come out. He is the first man down. I do not expect the rest till after midnight. Cotton is better again and has done this tour in the trenches. I am very glad. He is a good man, one whom we could ill afford to lose. Royle,ii he tells me, has been evacuated to England, having gone stone-deaf. I do not know the reason of his trouble. I do not think he will be sorry. Since he lost the transport he has not been happy at all.
Fritz has shelled the village again a little today. He now seems to include it in his daily programme. All I trust is that he will have the decency to leave us alone at night. Being shelled whilst in bed is always most uncomfortable. I am told that we now have the Saxons opposite us, and I hope it is true. They are the cleanest fighters among the tribes of Fritz and are generally quite a sporting crowd.
17th February ’16
Except for the ever-present, draining, fatigue parties, the battn has rested today. It has rained more or less continuously and I earnestly hope it will clear up before tomorrow and give the poor beggars in the trenches a chance. Fritz hasn’t strafed the town today. I take it he is as wet and flooded-out as we are and with little heart left for strafing anything bar the elements.
The Corps Commander was coming to inspect us today but evidently the weather put him off. At any rate he didn’t roll up after all.
I did a strange thing this evening. That is I started to write a story. I trust I am not going light in the head. It struck me as rather an entertaining thing to do. I will send it to you when I have finished it so that you may judge of my sanity.
How I have dwelt on my leave this night. It has been with me awfully strongly, till I have felt quite humpy and fed up. It is such a painful contrast being here after all the glorious cleanliness and comfort of last week. Oh, my heart, how I wish this bally war could be won and finished with, so that we might be free once more to renew our old life and happy companionship.
18th February ’16
The Divisional General came today. It still rained but he turned up all right in spite of it and talked cheerily to the men. He was very good with them and is a quick, alert, human soldier. He carries confidence and efficiency in his manner and one feels glad to be in his Division.
Our new Brigadier also holds a big reputation and everyone speaks most highly of him. I have not seen him yet but I hope to soon.
This blessed rain is most insistent. We hear parts of the trenches are now waist deep in water. No pumps can keep pace with a fall of this rate. I am afraid our next tour in will be a thing to be remembered. However, one must take it as it comes and we can all work up a smile even at our very pitiableness.
Cowaniii told me today of a certain CO who suddenly turned up in the trenches on just such a night. The good man was filled with a chronic desire for efficiency. He chose an unfortunate time for it. Everyone was more or less water-logged, particularly fed up and dense. At last he met a depressed officer. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘do you realise that my battalion is in such a parlous state that the German could come over and take these trenches at any moment?’ ‘No, I hadn’t noticed it, sir,’ was the amazing reply, ‘But, so far as I am concerned, he is certainly heartily welcome to them.’ And the zealous colonel was so nonplussed that he almost forgot to strafe the apt-tongued subaltern.
I had a truly sweet letter from you tonight – the first since my return and written the night after I left. It is so full of love and longing that my heart has ached in response to it. My darling, what a love is ours. I glory in it and can almost find it in my heart to feel thankful to this parting for causing, as it certainly has, us more clearly to realise how much we are to one another.
19th February ’16
More rain today, in spasms of varying intensity. I never took such interest in the weather before. It is strange how having to live in a thing alters your degree of regard for it.
In the morning Worthington, Bland and I rode up to the battalion’s battle station to have a look at it. All I hope is that there’s no battle whilst we’re here. The sides of the trenches had fallen in, traverses were down through whole sectors and the rest was knee deep in water. Personally I should like the fighting kept for fine weather. A sunny day must make an awful difference to one’s interest in a battle.
I have just the reason for so much odd ‘pooping off’, as we call it, over the parapet at night. The sentries, ingenious men, endeavour to pass their time by transfixing a piece of ration cheese on their bayonet. They then lay the rifle on the parapet and stay quite still. Presently Brer Rat comes out in answer to a tickled nostril, finds the cheese and commences to nibble. The sentry then gently pulls the trigger – and another life pays forfeit to Mars.
Shelmerdine hit on an apt remark tonight at mess. Our table, be it whispered, in place of linen is spread with leaves of ancient Daily Mails. Shelmerdine said, ‘You are requested not to read the tablecloth whilst taking meals.’
20th February ’16
In the old trenches, again,
back amongst dirt and dug-outs. Yet it is really not half as bad as I had expected. It has been fine today and the 21st must have worked hard to clear the worst out. The water is still fairly deep in one or two trenches but for the most part the passages are passable.
It was some tour getting in, the back communication trenches being in really a parlous state, but we managed it in the end. Fritz is quiet tonight and I trust will remain so, but over Fricourt way and also down towards the Somme there are sounds of more or less continuous heavy strafing. I trust it is Fritz who is getting it.
We have just had word that Zepps are expected over somewhere tonight.iv Where they are off to no one apparently knows but, except as an item of interest, they worry us little here. It would be great however if one of our Archibaldsv could dot ’em one in passing.
21st February ’16
A day of sucking pumps and squelching feet. We have pumped and scooped and shovelled the clock round and at length look forward to the moment when the last of the water has been gulped out over the parados.vi
It was a cold night and snowed a little but the trenches were mostly full of interest. Bowly took out a working party at 6.30 and nearly lost the lot. Fritz put up a light as they scrambled over the parapet, saw them and opened fire all round. They were got in again with no one hit but that was a mercy and I was thankful to have them in the fire step once more.
We strafed Fritz later with machine gun and rifle grenades, one of the latter falling right in one of his sap-headsvii where I trust he keeps a sentry group.
Burchill went out about 1 a.m. for a tour in No Man’s Land. He had two men with him and they came across a dead Bosche sniper. They got his rifles, shoulder straps etc. and returned safely with these. Quite a creditable little piece of work.viii
22nd February ’16
I think I said two days ago that Fritz was very quiet. He has made up for it today. Early this afternoon he started with trench mortars on the immediate right support street [trench]. His third shot blew it in. I met Bull,ix my runner, coming down and he told me this but reckoning that two shells never drop in the same place I carried on. There came a most appalling crash and I found myself on hands and knees in the trench bottom, smothered in mud, slightly dazed and with a nasty headache. Close acquaintance with trench mortars is not recommended. I do not like trench mortars at all.
Afterwards I got the artillery on for retaliation. This stirred Fritz up and he put H.E. shrapnel over us. Our heavies then had a fling at him and so things gradually worked up till a real ding-dong battle was in progress. And away on the left by Fricourt it reached a very high intensity, the evening sky was lit blood red by the bursting of shells in the town and the noise of it pulsed and pounded over the whole countryside. Later the rattle and roar of rifles and machine guns ripped out and a regular ding-dong scrap went on. We all ‘stood-to’ and hoped for a look in, but nothing came our way more than the magnificence of the spectacle.
Later we heard that Fritz had essayed an attack from Fricourt but had been badly mauled for his enterprise. Judging from what we saw of it I should think he’d had as thin a time as a fellow could want.
The trench mortar landed another hit on [trench] 62 Street this evening, half burying a working party and putting two of the men down temporarily with shock. I had to take them off and close the trench until 1 a.m., in the hope that Fritz will have gone to bed by then.
Tomorrow we must get all available artillery on it and try and smash up his machine.
23rd February ’16
Today was to have been a day of artillery strafing but, alas for human plans, just as the first two shots went over it commenced to snow and has so continued up till now. The gunners could not see and so had to cry off, and we have been therefore left to carry on with a few rifle grenades pooped over the parapet.
Fritz is very persistent with his mortar. He has blown 62 in again today with it. We change over tonight, back into the support lines. It really means a change from sentry duty to fatigues. The men would much rather be in the fire trenches, but I am glad we are going back because of the better shelters we get there. It is pretty raw work for the men here with the trench inches deep in slushy snow water. Over the parapet all looks peaceful as a Christmas card. No sign of either Fritz or ourselves, the pure white fall covering everything.
The CO has been round this morning strafing the men like blazes. He talks to them as though they were so many mongrel curs instead of, for the most part, a lot of decent, stout fellows quietly doing their little bit. If he wasn’t such a silly ass he would annoy me very much, almost as much I believe as he does everyone else.
24th February ’16
I have been all round our sector today on a little tour with Prince. It is a strange line, full of bad bends and corners and enfiladed slopes. The old trench mortar has been at it again today. He blew 62 Street in more and has now dropped a ‘dud’ clean in the trench. We have all been to look at it but none of us will touch it. We know nothing about it and 100lbs of high explosive is a thing one gets a very high respect for here. No doubt the RE [Royal Engineers] will remove it and take it away and cut holes in it and pull out its inside and smell it and taste and burn it and do generally all those sort of hair-raising things which the truly scientific delight in. We are neither truly scientific nor in any danger of becoming so when it comes to touching 100lbs of high explosive.
We have been relieved now by the 21st, leaving them to a bright, starlit night and hard-frozen footways. We were sorry to quit, for we would sooner do the six days in and get the six days out than fob about every fourth day.
I walked down into Bray with Worthy and very pleasant it was in spite of our tired feet. He has stuck it well has Worthy. He has had a terrible cold and been far from well but has refused to leave the trenches, even though so advised. Rather a contrast to Merriman, who seems rather glad of any excuse to keep out of them.x
The new brigadier was round this morning and I was introduced to him. He is a topping chap, a soldier both in appearance and being and one feels glad to have him in command at very first sight. C Company tell a tale about him which even though malicious joy is apparent in the telling, is nevertheless quite true. I should hesitate to say that the CO has wind up. Certainly however he is extremely cautious. At [trench] 69 Street, which is sniped occasionally, he said to the general, ‘I do not think I should go down there, sir. It is dangerous.’ ‘Oh,’ said the general, ‘Well there is no need for us all to go. You stay here if you will but I want to go and see the men.’
Bow-wow! Some gentle snub!
25th February ’16
Wake up this morning after a joyful night of sleep to find the snow pelting down and covering the ground fully five inches deep. Also it was freezing hard. Br-r-r-ah! What a life! ‘What did you go to Ashton for? Why did you join the Army?’ as the regimental song asks.xi And one really does wonder why when one looks out of the window on such a morning as was today.
Cotton came in to breakfast with us. He brought the little bible which Burchill had taken from the body of the dead German on the night of his patrol exploit. I had a look at it. It was a kind of children’s testament, filled with gaudy prints and the story told more in the nature of a series of short tales. On the fly-leaf was the name Hermann Stampa, I think, and over this in a child’s hand-writing the word ‘Dada’. War is very sad. Poor devil, I suppose he had a wife and kiddie somewhere filled with pride for the daddy who was a soldier and now stricken down with grief for the daddy who is ‘missing’.
It brings things home to one to come upon a little human touch like that. It makes one feel that it would be well if Kaisers and ambitious, place-seeking politicians and other such who make wars could be stricken down and peaceful, home-loving, ordinary men be left to live their lives in peace and in the sunshine of the love of wife and children. Perhaps the man may have been quite a blackguard or just a hateful, bullying, swaggering Prussian and, as such, something to loathe and detest. I do not know. All
I am conscious of is that somewhere in his Fatherland there is a little child who called him ‘Dada’. I have a little baby too.
A regular topping parcel came today from you, full of all sorts of scrumptious things. It was received with whoops of joy and I doubt not will be but a happy memory before the week is out. Which reminds me that in my letter thanking you I included a tale from Prince which I must record here. He told it me last Sunday when we went in. He was up to his knees in mud at the time and with plenty more to come. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I had a letter from my aunt two days ago in which she asked, “Whatever do you find to do with yourself on a Sunday?”’ It made us laugh, the very ridiculousness of it. It is scarcely believable. Yet it is quite true. How little people in England understand even now what war means. How modestly should everyone there go down on their knees each night and thank God for the Channel and that our home is the ‘tight little island’.
26th February ’16
Surprises await us all, and add savour to life, or, mayhap, the other thing. Judge of our mixed feelings therefore when of 12 noon today we were suddenly informed that we would relieve the 21st this evening. The snow still continuing, the Brigade have decided on 48 hour spells in. It is rather boring, the slog up to the line being such a labour for all concerned. I have no doubt, however, but that the restricted trench duty is quite wise during this inclement weather. So here we are once more back in our old fuggy dug-outs and slopping about trench-bottoms running with snow water.
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