The Trenches

by Jim Eldridge

A sinking feeling came into my stomach. This was it. After all our time in the reserve trenches, now we were being pushed forward for this major assault. We were going over the top. This should have been my moment of glory, the one I’d dreamed about when I was back in Carlisle, but now, with all I’d seen of this war, so many dead and just stalemate after stalemate, it didn’t seem so glorious after all.

  0500 hours on 12 October found me and Charlie, each loaded down with rolls of cable and our tools, crouched in the darkness in a trench along with the men from the 74th Brigade of Guards.

  Each Guardsman had his rifle ready, bayonet fixed. The Lieutenant in charge seemed a decent sort of bloke. He was young, but he didn’t throw his weight about. He spoke quietly and his air of confidence passed around our group.

  The rum ration appeared and was passed along the line, each man taking a swig.

  “Deadens the pain if you get hit,” winked one Guardsman to me.

  “Only if you drink a whole bottle,” cracked another.

  At 0515 hours our big guns opened up, pouring shells down on the German lines just yards away from us.

  The Germans retaliated with their own barrage, and soon the early-morning sky above our heads was filled with tracers of fire, and the earth both behind and ahead of us rocked with the sounds of explosions. Mud hurled up and came down on top of us in showers.

  The Lieutenant came over to Charlie and me. “There’s a German pillbox about a hundred yards ahead,” he told us. “You Engineers come over with the third wave. We should have cleaned the pillbox out by the time you get there. That’s where I want you to set up the first communication point.”

  “Right, sir,” I said.

  The Lieutenant headed back down the line, checking his watch.

  0520. 0525. As the hands of my watch moved to 0530, we saw the Lieutenant put his whistle to his lips … and then he blew, the shrill blast barely heard beneath the sounds of the artillery barrage, but the movement of the soldiers around us told us it was time. The attack was on.

  The first wave of Guards went up the scaling ladders and over the top, crouching low, firing their rifles as they went. I noticed that the Lieutenant had been the first one over. The second wave soon followed. I could hear the chatter chatter chatter of machine-guns from the German lines, and the sound of our boys’ rifles.

  “OK, third wave!” said a voice.

  Charlie and I looked at each other, then shook hands.

  “Good luck, mate,” said Charlie.

  With that I grabbed the slippery rungs of the scaling ladder, and climbed up to the top of the trench, weighed down by the length of cable trailing behind me. This was surely hell on earth. Thick smoke hung over the mud. Dead and dying men were sprawled on the ground, some half in the mud, and the red lines of tracer fire kept coming. The distance we had to cover looked vast, even though it was only 100 yards or so. Already, many of the soldiers I had talked with in the trench lay on the ground, dead or dying.

  “Come on!” yelled Charlie, and he began to run.

  I joined him, moving as fast as I could with the mud dragging at my boots. Bullets smacked into the mud around me. It’s amazing how fast you can move when your life is at stake. Now and then I felt myself stepping on a dead body and a couple of times I nearly lost my balance in the mud, but I put my head down, gritted my teeth and kept going.

  As the Germans kept up their fire from their defensive positions I saw more soldiers around me stumble and then go down.

  I neared the German lines and, through the smoke, saw the pillbox the Lieutenant had told us about, a concrete structure just visible sticking up from the mud. As I watched, one of our soldiers lobbed a grenade into the pillbox through one of the narrow openings, and then ducked away. There was the sound of a muffled explosion, and then smoke poured out from it, followed by the sound of screams as the Germans in the pillbox took the blast of the grenade. Then a couple of our soldiers dropped down into the German trench and I heard the sound of rifle fire.

  Charlie and I reached the German trench and threw ourselves down into it. We were just in time. The spot where I’d been standing a second before erupted into a mass of flying wet clay as a German machine-gun poured its bullets into it.

  Charlie and I dropped our rolls of cable and stood there, panting hard, trying to get our breath.

  “Hurry up and get that line connected!” the Lieutenant shouted, then he charged forward, firing his pistol towards the German lines.

  Charlie and I hurried inside the concrete pillbox. The three German soldiers inside were dead, their bodies lying twisted, their eyes still open.

  “Better get them out first,” I shouted.

  We dragged the dead German soldiers out, and then set to work, hauling the cable in and setting up a telegraph point inside the pillbox. The Guards had moved on and were already attacking the next line of German defence, but the sound of rifle fire was so close we could tell that they were meeting very stiff opposition.

  The Lieutenant appeared in the entrance to the pillbox just as we finished making the connections to the wire. “Are we in contact yet?” he demanded.

  “Nearly, sir,” said Charlie. “Just a minute more.”

  “Good man,” said the Lieutenant. And with that he went out again to see how the forward troops were getting on.

  In fact, that 100 yards was as far as we managed to advance that day. Or the next, come to that. The Germans poured everything they had down on to us, heavy shells, machine-guns, tracers, gas, but we just bunkered down and stayed where we were.

  Charlie and I took it in turns to operate the telegraph-receiving key, while the other secured the line. On my stint at the key I started to get reports through from the other divisions on how they’d fared in the Big Attack, and I learnt that the Guards Division that Charlie and I were with had done well to get this far. Other units hadn’t done so well. The main assault on what remained of the village of Poelcapelle on the Passchendaele Ridge by a joint force of British and Australians had been a disaster. The 2nd Australian and the British 49th and 66th Divisions had been all but wiped out in the attack.

  The same story was repeated all along the line. Unit after unit had been wiped out, and only about 100 yards of ground gained in a few places, like ours.

  Reports also came in about our tank offensives. Those great lumbering heavy machines had been unleashed, intended to force their way through the wire and right through the German lines. But tank after tank had got stuck in the mud, sinking so deep that their tracks couldn’t haul them out. Bogged down like that, they’d been sitting targets for the German heavy guns.

  It looked like the attempt to take Passchendaele had stalled.

  The next day, the Germans launched a counter-offensive against our position. The machine-guns along our new trench top kept up a steady stream of fire, a constant barrage of noise that made it difficult for me to listen to the messages coming through the wires properly. All the time the German artillery kept up their attack on our positions – and still the rain came down.

  November–December 1917

  During the weeks that followed, we maintained our front-line position. The attacks from both sides kept on and the rain kept coming down. Men died and lay where they fell, or were wounded and were stretchered back to the dressing camps. The badly wounded got a “Blighty Ticket”, which meant they would be sent back home.

  Whatever High Command said about this war being over by Christmas and the Germans being defeated, in our trenches our belief that this war would ever be over began to fade.

  And then, on 6 November, the news came over the telegraph wires that the Canadians had broken through the German lines and taken Passchendaele itself. The Germans were in retreat! The War was over!

  Over the next week, I listened as the reports came in over the wires. The Canadian Corps had been the victors at Passchendaele, but had lost 16,500 men in the battle. Elsewhere along the line, our forces had pushed forward. There was now a new front line, just
a few hundred yards further forward from the old front line. The Germans had moved back, but they were still there, just 100 yards or so away from our lines. The War was far from over – we were back at stalemate.

  December finally came. The rain poured down as heavy as ever. The heavy guns kept up their barrage on both sides. The shooting from rifles and machine-guns continued from every infantry trench.

  And then, one morning as dawn was coming up, Charlie and I came out of our pillbox and just stood there, listening, unable to believe our ears.

  Silence.

  Nothing. Not from our guns, nor the German guns. Not from any guns anywhere along the lines. Everything was quiet and still. It had even stopped raining at last!

  “Maybe the War’s over,” I whispered, afraid to speak too loudly in case I disturbed the silence.

  “No,” said Charlie, also whispering, in awe at the stillness. “Do you know what day it is? It’s Christmas Day.”

  We looked at one another as it sunk in. Charlie was right. Christmas Day.

  “Happy Christmas,” said Charlie. Then he looked around us, at the trench, the mud, and laughed. “We’d better get our Christmas dinner prepared,” he grinned. “What’ll it be? Roast turkey? Duck? Chicken? Christmas pud with custard?”

  “No,” I chuckled. “Let’s have something really special today. Let’s have tinned bully beef and biscuits.”

  And we both laughed.

  A call from further along the trenches caught our attention. It was a Guardsman from the forward front trench.

  “Hey, lads!” he called. “You should come along and hear what’s happening up the Front!”

  Intrigued, Charlie and me splashed our way through the mud along the reserve trench, and then made our way through the communication trench to the front line.

  Some soldiers had climbed to the top and their heads were above the top of the trench, and they were straining their ears to listen to something. In the eerie silence, we could hear voices calling to us from the German trenches, drifting across the mud and barbed wire of No Man’s Land.

  “Hey, Tommy!” called a German voice. “Happy Christmas!”

  The soldier at the top of the ladder nearest to us looked down at us, grinned, and said in surprise, “What d’you know? They’re sending us Christmas greetings!”

  “Well don’t be a sourpuss, Jim!” said another soldier. “Send ’em back.”

  “Right,” said Jim. He hauled himself higher up the ladder.

  “Careful,” warned another of the soldiers. “It might be a trick. Stick your head too far over the top and they might shoot it off.”

  “If they do you can stick some holly in it and put it on the table like a Christmas pudding,” joked Jim. Then he called towards the German lines: “Hey, Fritz! Can you hear me?”

  There was a pause, then the German soldier shouted back: “I hear you, Tommy!”

  “Good!” shouted Jim. “Merry Christmas from all of us here!”

  There was a pause, and then we heard more voices calling from the German lines: “Merry Christmas to you!”

  “Ask ’em what they’re having for Christmas dinner,” said another soldier.

  “You ask ’em, Jack,” said Jim. “I don’t see why I should be doing all the shouting.”

  Jack climbed up another of the scaling ladders until he, too, had his head well above the top of the trench.

  “Hey, Fritz!” he called. “What are you having for Christmas dinner?”

  “We are having rat!” called back the German.

  “Rat?” echoed Jack. “Is that all?”

  “Ja, Tommy,” came the German’s reply. “But it is a very big fat rat. Lots of meat on it! What are you having?”

  “Oh, the usual!” called Jack. “Roast beef. Roast potatoes. Gravy. Brussels sprouts.” Then he laughed and added, “That’s providing my butler gets here with it in time in my car!”

  All us lads in the trench laughed, and we heard the Germans laugh too.

  Suddenly we heard the noise of something coming through the air towards us from the German trenches.

  “They’re chucking something!” called Jim.

  “Grenades!” yelled one soldier, and we all ducked.

  Instead, something hit the top of the trench and lay there. Jack picked it up and showed it to us.

  It was a small rock. Tied to it was a packet of German cigarettes.

  “Happy Christmas, Tommy!” called the voice. “A present from us to you!”

  We watched as Jack untied the packet of cigarettes. He took one, and then passed the packet down. “Here you are mates,” he said. “A Christmas present from Kaiser Bill’s men. Pass them around.”

  “We got to give them something back,” said Charlie. “We can’t just take them and leave it like that.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “But what?”

  “I’m not giving them my tobacco,” said one soldier firmly.

  “Me, neither,” said another.

  There was much nodding of heads at this in general agreement.

  “Come on, mates, we don’t want to be seen to be mean,” said Jim.

  “How about chucking over a tin of bully beef?” suggested another soldier.

  “What, and poison ’em for Christmas?” I said, and the others laughed.

  “I’ve got a flask with some rum in it,” said one soldier. “I’ve been saving up my rations. It’s only a little flask.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jack. “OK, Shorty, hand it up and I’ll chuck it over.”

  Shorty rummaged around in his kit and produced a battered metal flask. He handed it up the ladder to Jack. “Here you are,” he said. “But make sure you throw it right the way over. I don’t want it ending up in the middle of No Man’s Land and going to waste.”

  Jack held the flask in his hand, and then looked towards the German lines. I saw the look of doubt on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Throwing a rock is one thing. It’s hard to judge the weight of this, with the rum sloshing around inside it like that.”

  “I’ll throw it,” I offered.

  Charlie gave me a doubtful look. “You reckon you can get it over there?” he asked.

  “If a Hun can throw a rock, I can throw that the same distance,” I said.

  Jack came down the ladder and handed me the metal flask.

  “OK,” he said. “Over to you.”

  I climbed up the ladder. Although there was still no shooting, I couldn’t stop myself from hesitating before I put my head over the top of the trench, it had become such a force of habit.

  Then I hauled myself over the top and stood there, looking out over the expanse of clayey, potholed, bomb-shelled ground, strewn with barbed wire. Everyone and everything else was below ground level.

  I looked towards the German lines. “Where are you, Fritz?” I called. “We’ve got a Christmas present for you!”

  A head with a German helmet poked up from behind the lines, about 70 yards away. “Here, Tommy!” he called. And he waved his arm.

  I held the flask in my hand and measured the distance to the German lines in my mind.

  I pulled my arm back, crouched, and then shouted: “Merry Christmas, Fritz! Have a drink on us!”

  And then I let fly, swinging my arm round as hard as I could and putting as much force as I could into my throw.

  The metal flask sailed up into the air, glinting as it caught the light from the sun’s early rays. Then it came down … down … and disappeared into the German trench.

  We heard a loud cheer go up from the German lines, and then the German’s head popped back into view again. He was holding the flask and he waved it at me.

  “Thank you, Tommy!” he shouted. “We will drink your health today!”

  I clambered down the ladder from the top of the trench, and the soldiers in the trench grinned broadly at me and clapped.

  “With a throw like that, you ought to be playing cricket for England, lad,” said Jim.

  Just
then a young lieutenant appeared from the reserve trench, accompanied by a sergeant. “What’s all this noise going on!” he demanded.

  “Just exchanging Christmas presents with Fritz, sir!” said Jack. “A packet of cigs for a flask of rum.”

  The Lieutenant didn’t seem impressed.

  He looked along the line at each of us, unsmiling, and then he said in clipped tones: “Fraternizing with the enemy is an offence liable to court martial. I’d stop it if you don’t want to find yourself in serious trouble. Don’t forget, tomorrow you’ll be killing them again. And they’ll be killing you.”

  With that he turned and headed back to the reserve trench. The Sergeant gave us a look that seemed to say “Sorry, blokes, nothing I can do about it.” Then the Sergeant went after the Lieutenant.

  Shorty looked down at the packet of German cigarettes that were now in his hand. There was one left in the packet. He took it out and put it to his lips.

  “It’s a present and it’s Christmas,” he said. “It’s more than I got from any general in this army, so I’m keeping it.”

  And then, strangest of all, we heard the sound of singing coming from the German trenches.

  “It’s a carol,” said Charlie. “They’re singing ‘Silent Night’ in German.”

  It seemed so strange, being here in this place surrounded by so much death and destruction and misery, and hearing that beautiful sound carrying on the air, a song I’d known and sung ever since I was a child. I remembered Rob and me singing it when we were at junior school, every Christmas. I couldn’t help it, but I found myself singing along with them, but in English. And Charlie joined in, and then Jack, and then we were all of us singing, English voices and German voices mixed together singing the same tune.

  If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that special Christmas Day. No presents, no special dinner, nothing but men on opposing sides in a war joining together to sing just one carol.

  Then it was over.

  The rest of that day was strange. Still no bombs, no shooting, just me and my mates being kind of quiet together and thinking about our families back home. We wondered how they were, and if they were thinking of us out here. It struck me that I hadn’t written a letter home for ages, not since I’d been at Base HQ. Mum would kill me when I got back home for not writing.