Part 1 — "IN THE LINE"

We are beginning now to regard ourselves as old stagers. We have been in action for nearly three months and in that period our education, in all the essential things, has advanced at a most surprising pace. Our most cherished illusions—culled from the newspapers for the most part—have been dissipated and replaced by the realities of this life. How often, I wonder, have we read that this is a war of attrition, or of artillery, or of finance, or of petrol! It is none of these things—at least not from our limited perspective. It is rather, to us, a war of mud, of paper (so many reams of it that the battery clerk's head buzzes and he cannot sleep at night for thinking of the various "returns" that he must render to headquarters by 9 a.m. on the following day), of routine, and, above all, of marauding.

Wherefore we have adapted ourselves to circumstances. We have learnt that mud in itself is harmless and, since it is impossible to avoid, not worth noticing at any time; that unpunctuality in the submitting of any report or return demanded (however senseless) leads to far more unpleasantness from high quarters than any other sin one may commit; that routine is an irksome fetish of the Powers, but that it makes each day so like its predecessor that the weeks slip by and one forgets the date and almost the month. Lastly, we have learnt that the way to get things is to find them lying about; that while it is possible to indent for material, it is also possible to collect it if one takes the trouble. Timber, for instance, is required for building gun-pits, so are steel girders and brick rubble and brushwood. Well, do not the winds that shriek across this flat country blow down trees sometimes? Is there not a derelict railway station less than a mile away, and are not piles of rubble placed along the roadsides for mending purposes? It is pleasant, too, to have a real door to one's dug-out instead of a hanging corn sack: there is more than one partially ruined cottage near at hand. We are beyond the borderland of civilisation here; We have left our scruples behind us, for we know that if we refrain from taking those rails, those doors and window frames, those stout oak beams, some one else will have them shortly.

Circumstances, too, have brought it home to us that this war is not so "stationary" as we imagined. The relative positions of the two opposing armies remain the same, weary month after weary month. But the positions of the units composing them do not. We, for example, soon after our arrival in the country were sent up to be attached for instruction to a battery which was in action. It was explained to us that we would eventually "take over" from that battery when its division went out to rest. We were at pains, therefore, to acquire all the knowledge we could in the time. The subalterns learnt the "zone" which they would have to watch and fire over—every yard of it. The sergeants mastered the particular system of angles, "registrations," etc., in use; the signallers knew the run of their wires and understood the working of the circuit; the gun detachments, as a result of many hours of patient sand-bag filling and building, had begun to regard the place as their future home which it was meet to make as strong and (afterwards only) as comfortable as possible. And I, as the battery commander, besides being fairly confident of being able to "carry on," had noted, with satisfaction, it being then midwinter, that there was a fireplace in what would be my room.

But did we "take over" this position? Not we! Three days before the relief was due to take place we were sent off to another battery about which we knew nothing whatever and took over from it in a hurry and a muddle. Which strange procedure may be accounted for in one of two ways—as having been done expressly with a view to training us in dealing with an unexpected situation or, more simply, as merely "Dam bad staff work." We will leave it at that.

We occupied this new position, which, by the way, was a good one with a quite comfortable billet close at hand, for just three weeks. At the end of this time we had thoroughly settled down: we had done a great deal of constructive work—strengthening gun-pits, improving dug-outs, fixing voice-tubes for the passing of orders from the telephone-hut to the guns; we had laid out an extra wire to the O.P. and relabelled all our circuit: we had cleaned up the wagon-line, rebricked the worst parts of the horse-standings and laid down brushwood so that the vehicles were clear of the all-pervading mud. We had arranged a bathroom for the men as well as a recreation room: we had built an oven (nothing acquires merit more simply in the eyes of the Powers than a well-devised oven—"Your horse-management is a scandal, Captain ——!" "Yes, sir: but have you seen our oven?" Wrath easily deflected and the Great One departs to make a flattering report). We had visualised at least twenty various "stunts" that would make things safer, or more comfortable or more showy. We had reached a moment, in fact, when we were secretly rubbing our hands and saying "the place is not only habitable but good: and we are about to enjoy the fruits of our labours thereon." Which was a foolish attitude to adopt and one which, now that we are a more experienced (and therefore a more cynical) unit, would not be conceivable.

This time they moved the whole division, telling us (or the infantry rather) that the order should be regarded as a compliment in that the division had done so well that it was to be entrusted with a more difficult—which is a euphemism for a more dangerous—portion of the line.

Resignedly we packed up everything that we possessed, "handed over" to the incoming battery, and, after failing to persuade the mess cat to accompany us, trekked off in a howling gale to the new place. This latter was not without merits, but had the great disadvantage that the only house available for a mess was nearly a quarter of a mile from the gun position.

The gun-pits, with the exception of one which had been partially reconstructed on sound principles, were bad. They had been built in the summer when every one was saying, "No use wasting material—we won't be here next winter." But here we are all the same, regarding rather gloomily the defects which it will take weeks of hard work to remedy.

I overheard one gunner expressing his opinion thus to a friend of his—

"Well now, Dai,[6] I don't know what battery was here before us now just, but they weren't great workers, see! Our pit couldn't keep the rain out last night—what'll it do if a shell comes along?"

So I indented on the Royal Engineers (who own vast storehouses called in the vernacular "Dumps") for rails and bricks and cement and sandbags, and I sent marauding parties out at night to collect anything that might be useful.

The men with a good-will which was beyond all praise, seeing that this was their third position within the month, started the arduous task of dismantling the old pits and dug-outs and building them anew—guessing by this time that in all probability they would be moved on elsewhere before their labours were finished. For that is one very definite aspect of this war....

Our mess is a cottage which we share with a French family. Monsieur works in a mine close by, the numerous children play in the yard or are sent on errands, Madame in her spare moments does our washing for us. In the evening they all assemble in the kitchen and try to teach French to our servants. It amazes me to watch the sangfroid with which they go about their daily occupations regardless of the never-ceasing sound of guns and shells, regardless of the fact that the German line, as the crow flies, is less than two miles away. At 8 p.m. to the moment, whilst we are at dinner, they troop through into their own room to bed, each with a charming "Bon soir, messieurs." And on each occasion they make me personally feel that we are rather brutal to be occupying two-thirds of their house and spending our days making the most appalling havoc of their country. But I console myself by remembering that these people once had Uhlans in the neighbourhood and are therefore prepared to disregard minor nuisances such as ourselves.

Seven to seven-thirty p.m. is generally rather a busy time. Official correspondence, usually marked "secret" and nearly always "urgent," is apt to arrive, and it is at this time that the intricate report on the day's shooting has to be made out and despatched to Group Headquarters. I am in the midst of this, working against time, with an orderly waiting in the kitchen, when the door is flung open and the Child enters with a cheery "Good evening, Master."

The Child calls me Master sometimes because I am always threatening to send his parents a half-term report on his progress and general conduct, or to put him back into Eton collars! He has now just returned from forty-eight hours' duty at the O.P. and presents an appearance such that his own mother would hardly recognise him. He wears a cap of a particularly floppy kind which he refers to as "my gorblimy hat," an imperfectly cured goatskin coat of varied hues which smells abominably, fur gauntlets, brown breeches, and indiarubber thigh boots. Round his person are slung field glasses, a prismatic compass, an empty haversack, and a gas helmet. Moreover, he is caked with mud from head to foot and flushed with his two-mile walk against the cold wind. For this is still March, and we have had frost and snow and thaw alternately this last week.

"Anything happen after I left?" I ask. I had been up at the O.P. in the morning, and we'd "done a little shoot" together.

"Nothing much. The Hun got a bit busy with rifle grenades about lunch time and started to put some small 'minnies'[7] into our second line. So I retaliated on three different targets, which stopped him p.d.q. Later on he put a few pip-squeaks round our O.P. and one four-two into the church. That's about all, 'cept that I had to dodge a blasted machine-gun when I was leaving at dusk—one of those 250-rounds-a-minute stunts, you know—and I had to nip across that open bit, in between his bursts of fire. The trenches are in Hell's own mess after this thaw—I went down to the front line with an infantry officer to look at a sniper's post he's located; we might get the 'hows'[8] on to it. Any letters for me?"

I push them across to him, but forbid him to remain in the room with that smelly coat on.

"Righto," he grins; "I'm off to have a bath and a shave before dinner."

"But, my dear Child," I say, "you shaved last week! Surely——"

He grins again and saunters gracefully out. The Child is always graceful even when wearing a goatskin coat and ungainly thigh boots. But he's tired—I can see it in his eyes. His last two days have been spent as follows: At seven p.m. the night before last he arrived, in the capacity of liaison officer, at the headquarters of the battalion that we are supporting. He dined there and slept, in his clothes of course and always at the menace of a telephone, in a draughty hovel next door. Before dawn the next morning he was groping his way along three-quarters of a mile of muddy communication trench to the O.P. Arrived there it is his business to make certain that the telephonists below in the dank cellar are "through" on every line. Then he ascends the ladder of the observation tower and stares through the loophole at the mists which swathe the trenches in front of him. And there, alternately with the subaltern of the other battery which uses this particular O.P., he must remain until it is again too dark to shoot.

There are diversions, of course, which help to pass the long hours. One is "shooting the battery." The F.O.O., as the subaltern on duty at the O.P. is called, is allowed, within fairly wide limits, to shoot when and at what he likes provided always that he has a reasonable objective. The principles laid down for him are simple enough: whilst never wasting a round if he can help it, he must also never miss an opportunity. That is to say that he must keep ceaseless watch for signs of movement or of new work being carried out by the enemy, for the flashes of hostile batteries, for suspected O.P.'s, for machine-gun emplacements and snipers' posts—for almost everything in fact. And when he sees, he must shoot—at a rapid rate and for a few moments only. For it is useless to "plaster" the same spot for any length of time: the enemy will not be there—he must be caught unawares or not at all.

Another diversion is noting down the action of the hostile artillery, of which a report has to be rendered every evening. This is easy enough when he happens to be shelling at a convenient distance from you: it is not so easy, however, to count the number of "pip-squeaks" that burst within a few yards of the house in which you are, or of "minnies" that arrive in silence and explode with a terrific report apparently just at the foot of your tower, filling your observation room with acrid fumes.

Visitors appear at all hours—generals, staff officers, infantry colonels, trench-mortar or sniping officers. Each wants to examine some portion of the line from the vantage point of the tower, and each expects to be told unhesitatingly everything he wants to know. But to return to the Child and his tour of duty. After dusk he goes back to infantry headquarters to feed and sleep. Then follows another long day in the tower, at the end of which he is relieved by the "next for duty" and returns to the battery with the privilege of breakfasting at any hour he likes on the following morning. The Child, I may here remark, has been known to eat poached eggs and marmalade at 12.30, and unblushingly sit down to sausages and mashed potatoes at 1.15.

But those two days at the O.P. are a strain. No hot meals, long hours, disturbed nights, shells for ever passing overhead, "mutual exchanges of rifle grenades," snipers' bullets which have missed their mark in our front line trenches flattening themselves against the outer wall of the house—there are pleasanter ways of living than this. And two things are always possible: one that the enemy may decide that this ruined house that he has watched for so long really is an O.P., and therefore well worth razing to the ground with heavy shell; the other that an attack (either with or without gas) may suddenly be launched against our line. In the first case the cellar may be a safe place, in the second there will be what the Child calls "Hell's own job," requiring a quick brain, keen vision, and the battery roaring in answer to sharp, curt orders. But if the two occur at once, as is more than probable, why, then the cellar is out of the question, for at no matter what cost the guns—always ready, always hungry—must be effectively controlled, the long-suffering, hard-pressed infantry must be supported. But at present these are dull days. Neither side is trying to do more than annoy the other.

"9.44 a.m. Working party seen at ——, fired on, dispersed."

"2.10 p.m. Fired 10 rounds at suspected O.P. at ——. One direct hit with H.E. Drew quick retaliation on ——."

Thus is the daily report compiled. Is it worth all the trouble, the science, the skill, the organisation? It is, for everything, every little detail, every little effort helps to bring nearer the day when our guns will be pulled out on to the roads again, to be used for their legitimate purpose—the "quick thing," the fight in the open, "the moving show."...

Our colonel is "some man"—which phrase, being expanded, means an individual whose keen eye misses absolutely nothing from the too-sharp rowel of a driver's spur to the exact levelling of a concrete gun-platform; whose brain is for ever evolving schemes for the undoing of the wily Boche; whose energy enables him to walk and ride fifteen to twenty miles a day, deal with all his official correspondence and yet find time to talk about hunting at odd moments. Periodically he holds conferences of battery commanders at his Group Headquarters. After seeing that every one is provided for, he produces a large scale map with all the "zones" marked on it, sticks out his chin in a manner peculiar to him, and says—

"The Hun is becoming uppish again and must be suppressed. Now, what I propose to do is this"—and he proceeds to detail something entirely original in the way of a bombardment. But he is seldom content to use his own batteries by themselves: nearly always he manages to borrow a few "heavies" and some trench mortars of various sizes. With these at his disposal he feels that he can "put up a good show," as he says, and it must be acknowledged that he generally does.

In addition to these definitely organised bombardments he is constantly ordering small "joy strafes" to be carried out. For instance, he will study the map and decide that two roads in a given area are in all probability used by the enemy at night. He will forbid any one to shoot on the northern one (say) and order two batteries to put salvoes on to the southern one every night until further orders, "just to impress the Hun," as he puts it, "with the idea that the southern road is a distinctly unhealthy spot. Then he'll have double traffic on the northern one. We'll wait till we know for certain that it's his relief night and then we'll fairly plaster that road."

This thoughtful scheme was duly carried out about a week ago—with what results, of course, it is impossible to say: but from the way the hostile batteries woke up and retaliated, we gathered that something had been accomplished.

And so the days and weeks pass by—quickly on the whole, so quickly that we are already beginning to badger the adjutant with queries as to when we are likely to get leave. There are rumours, too, that the division is shortly going out "to rest." The infantry deserve it, for theirs is the hard part: daily I admire them more, every man of them from the humblest private who digs in the slushy trenches or stands on guard in a sap thirty yards or less from the enemy and quite possibly on top of a mine to their brigadier who conceals his V.C. and D.S.O. ribbons beneath a rubber suit and spends more of his time in the front line trenches than out of them.

But for us gunners it is different. We live in comfort and in perfect safety (unless our actual position is spotted and "strafed," in which case we merely withdraw our men until the enemy's allowance of ammunition is expended). Except possibly for our hard-worked telephonists we need no rest. Moreover, it would be heartbreaking to leave the position that we have made so cosy, so inconspicuous, and, we all believe, so strong.

We happen to be close to a main avenue of traffic. All sorts of people pass by—"brass hats" going up to inspect the line, R.E. wagons laden with every conceivable kind of trench store, mining officers caked in yellow clay returning after a strenuous tour of duty underground, a constant succession of small parties of infantry who are either "going in" or "coming out," ration carts, handcarts filled with things that look like iron plum-puddings but are really trench-mortar bombs and, occasionally, an ambulance. Infantry officers or men who happen to halt close by are generally invited to have a look at the gun-pits. More often than not some one of them recognises a friend or a relation in the battery: it must be remembered that we are a homogeneous division. If by chance we are firing when a party of infantry (unaccompanied by an officer) is passing, it invariably halts and watches the performances with huge interest and quite often with a shout or two of encouragement.

"Go it, boys, give 'em a bit more marmalade," I heard one ribald private yell out, when to his joy he heard the order, "Two rounds battery fire one second." When the guns had flashed and roared in their sequence, and the shells had gone rumbling away towards the distant lines, he picked up his burden, hitched his rifle more comfortably across his shoulders, and went upon his way, remarking, with a pleasant admixture of oaths—

"That'll give 'em something to think about for a while."

This, on a minor scale, is an example of the great principle of infantry and artillery co-operation. I can picture that same private rejoining his platoon in the trenches and saying to his "batty"—[9]

"Look you, Trevor, as I was coming up the road now just, I see a battery of our fellows givin' them —— Hell."

And his friend would answer perhaps—

"Well, 'tis fine to hear our shells come singing over. What about them fags, Tom? Did you get 'em?"

Neither of these men would know whether the rounds had been well or badly placed, but each would be left with the impression that the artillery exists for the purpose of helping him and his fellows when in difficulties and of preparing the way when the time comes. A small point, perhaps, but nevertheless a vital one....

It is fortunate that amid all the horror and the misery and the waste that this war entails it is still possible to see the humorous side of things sometimes. Here is an example. A major on his way up to the front line saw a man hunting about amongst some ruins for "souvenirs"—and this in a place which was in view of the Germans and only about 350 yards from their trenches. The major was justly annoyed: firstly, the man was evidently wasting his time; secondly, there was every prospect that hostile fire would be drawn to the spot. So he drew his revolver and put a round into the brickwork about six feet to one side of the man.

The effect was wonderful. The souvenir hunter, convinced that he had escaped a sniper's bullet by a mere inch, made a wild dive into a handy shell-hole and lay low. Twenty minutes later he emerged, crawling on hands and knees through deep slime and eagerly watched by a working party who had seen the incident. He arrived, panting and prepared to give an account of his thrilling experience—only to be asked his name and unit and placed in arrest on a charge of loitering unnecessarily in a dangerous place thereby tending to draw fire.

Another incident, not devoid of humour (though I cannot say that I thought so at the moment), occurred a week after we had arrived at our present position. W——, the captain of the "regular" battery which we had replaced, came over to inquire about a telescopic sight and a clinometer belonging to his unit which had somehow got mislaid during the muddle of "handing over."

"They must be somewhere here," W—— suggested politely, "and we must have them because we are going back into action to-morrow."

I assured him that to the best of my belief I had only my own, "but," I added confidently, "we'll go round and ask at each gun to make certain."

The sergeant of No. 1 was quite positive. The corporal of No. 2 was apparently equally so, but I noticed the suspicion of a smile at the corners of his lips.

"Are you certain," I repeated, "that you've only got your own telescope and sight clinometer?"

The corporal's answer was positively brutal in its honesty. He winked—an unmistakable wink—and said—

"Well, sir, o' course I've got those what I pinched off t' batt'ry that was here before!"

If the mud had then and there engulfed me I should have been grateful. As it was I could only weakly murmur, "Fetch them at once," and then glance round to see the expression on W——'s face. But he, good soul, was walking quietly away, though whether with the idea of relieving his own feelings or of allowing me to vent mine upon the corporal, I never dared to ask.

On the following day the corporal, who by the way is our professional comedian from Lancashire, saw fit to apologise. He did so thus—

"Sir," he said, as I was walking past his gun-pit. I turned and regarded him sternly, for I was still rather angry.

"I'm sorry about what happened yesterday," he observed contritely. "I didn't mean to make a fool of you!"

The charm of the remark lies in the fact that, while disregarding the enormity of his offence in "pinching" essential gun-stores from another battery, he was genuinely upset at having made me look ridiculous. Which being the case I could do nothing but accept his apology in the spirit in which it was offered.