Chapter 7
These trains never hurry: always twist and turn and double back half-a-dozen times in journeyings from one point to another. Jolting and jarring is unnoticed--you are past noticing anything after the first hour!
Officers have usually the luxury of railway carriages, but the private--
Privates: Individuals who form the large proportion of a Battalion. Their salient duties embrace shining buttons, carrying up officers' rations, dodging parades, scrubbing out sergeants' and officers' mess, squad drill, guards, and C.B., picking up paper near the billets, grousing and growing thin on short rations--during spare moments they are used for fighting.
Detraining at Brandhoek, the Ten Hundred marched to Brake Camp, a rambling collection of huts built in a wood near the main road running between Poperinghe and Ypres, within a short distance of Vlamertynghe.
It was "Pop!" Unchanged, grim and grey, visited day and night by bomb and shell with the ceaseless activity of that Belgian area. A battalion of Worcesters, whom the Normans were relieving, painted a merry picture of the sodden sector.
"Fritz ain't 'alf playin' 'ell wi' the front line. Washed out two blasted regiments in less than a week...."
"No bloomm' trenches up there. Only shell 'oles an' hundreds of bodies. Ration parties can't get up wi' the grub...."
"Jerry shells like 'ell orl night an' sends over gas in shells and cloud orl day. Three 'undred casualties last week an' I 'eard that alf of 'em kicked the bucket...."
"Old Jerry 'as a million troops from Russia waitin' to come over next month for his offensive...."
"Yus, Sir Daggie 'Aig sez 'e must sacrifice 'is First Lines. An', wots more, yer up to the neck in water...."
The Normans slept that night haunted by nightmare visitations created by minds pervaded with strong "wind-upity." Stumpy succumbed to a. fit of depression from which nothing could rouse him. Evans (a Stafford) gave him a fag.
"Cheer up," he said.
"Can't? Bloomin' water up to yer neck an' they don't issue lifebelts an' I can't swim."
"Garn. That's only wot they SEZ."
"Gas an' shells an' troops."
"Only bloomin' rumours."
"An' no ration parties can got up--oh gawd!"
"Wot about it?"
"No ration parties means no grub an' NO rum. Wot a pore Tommy 'as got ter put up with."
The following day marching through Ypres they moved further up the Line to a camp situated near St. Jean and from whence they would make their final preparations and march towards the duckboard (a series of boards resembling actual duck-boards and raised to a height above the ground varying in accordance to the depth of water) track winding up the wasted shell-torn soil to the communication trenches.
The "atmosphere" of the place was painfully reminiscent to the survivors from the previous September of the nerve-wrecking task that had been their unfortunate lot during that Baptism of Fire. The grim devastation of the flat, water-covered countryside enforced upon the spirits something of its own desolation. Everywhere the gaunt, shell-shattered trees, through which o' nights the incessant red glow eastward penetrated just as it had four months before. Day and night the perpetual roar of artillery, the heavy shock of falling bombs, the familiar KR-UMP!
And the knowledge that the brief security of life had passed. Again, already, none knew who might not glimpse the dawn; again the hell-hot shrapnel and the writhing human flesh. To-morrow that arm may be a shattered, jagged hanging "thing" ... how firm, fine, and white it looks: smooth, strong....
You look curiously along the line of adjacent faces. Can ALL come through--impossible. Who will go under first ... will it be YOU? Wonder what it is like to die? Men had often fallen limply near by, a small round hole in the forehead and a trickle of blood. They seemed calm enough ... wonder where they went ... did they KNOW they were dead? Do you feel the bullet whistling through your brain ... do you have one last lightning thought cut short, "This is Death!"...?
Anyhow, what of it ... others have done it. If they could, you could!
Before going up into the icy-cold of water-logged semi-trenches the feet were treated with special attention to counteract the action of continual wet and frost upon the flesh. If the utmost care is not taken, and the dreaded "trench feet" fastens its fierce grip upon the victim, there lies before him many weeks of agony in hospital, haunted daily by a chance of losing one or both feet. All this without the glad consolation of a WOUND!
Washed in warm water, the feet are greased and powdered and new socks placed carefully over before setting out on the trudge Linewards.
Trench equipment is issued, two days' rations served out, and a start is made in the night. Stumpy lost his "grub" by misadventure, but found somebody else's, withstood a fierce argument for ten minutes and finally pacified his opponent by "finding" still another issue.
Hoarse orders sent men probing about for their rifles and assortment of equipment.
The Ten Hundred filed out.
XII
PASSCHENDAELE SECTOR
Eyes gazing eastward at the rising and falling Verey Lights in Jerry's lines, the Ten Hundred trudged wearily along a sodden plank "road" winding into a stretch of muddy track strewn on all sides with the gruesome conglomeration of war's jetsam.
The way had to be carefully chosen past shell-holes full of water, with here and there a slowly twirling body, a white face shining hideously in the damp night air. To the south a wavering mass of searchlights flitted over the sky. Archie guns were raising a fierce distant clamour, the white puffs from their bursting shrapnel showing like gigantic snowballs in the glare, but no trace of the Fritz airmen was visible. A series of violent concussions and the faint high-up throb of aero engines were the only indications of his gambols.
Then silent filing along a poor system of filthy trenches ... the other battalion was relieving. Posting of men, reliefs....
To stand there in the night, suffering acutely from the cold, unmoving, staring fascinated across the little stretch of desolation between the lines and to watch fanciful shadows until the mind falls prey to apprehensive imagination construing the posts and wiring into great fantastic grey-cloaked figures. Then at the turn of the head--WHAT is that? In one frenzied movement the rifle is levelled across the parapet, first pressure of the trigger taken and the shadowy bulk watched. Five long minutes of intense scrutiny--it MOVED, or was it mere fancy? There again--crack!! And the figure has not fallen ... so through the darkness, until day reveals a shrivelled form tangled up on the wire where it died days ago.
Parts of the area were simply connected shell-holes, outposts, the occupants of which might for hours at a stretch be completely isolated from the remainder of their battalion, and, receiving no visit from anyone, have not the merest inkling of what was going on outside of what lies before their own limited vision.
The failure of water supply reaching these outposts increased an already severe existence. Someone would go "over the top," crawl to and fill water-bottles up at the nearest shell-hole. A body or limb might be at the bottom--who cares! The water is rank, putrid, evil-smelling; but the fierce, mad craving for drink is not to be denied.
A shell found one of the small advanced posts, killed a few outright and gashed a long tear into the abdomen of the one survivor. He languished there alone with the dead for eight hours--they had been "lost." He was found, removed, died before reaching a Casualty Clearing Station. Inexorable law of Chance.
Fritz sent over gas shells night and day, hampering rationing parties, and enforcing prolonged agony inside the hot respirators. Gas, heavier than air, hangs low over the ground, follows inundations up and down, and slinks across water: hanging for days over damp soil, and permeating water with a sickly colour--an obvious danger to troops drinking this liquid.
Where the country was flooded duck-boards were raised to a height sufficient to stand above the water and presented at night (all movements are generally done at nightfall) an alluring task of maintaining balance on a narrow planking (couple of feat or so) adorned with no handrails or supports and invisible five feet away. When Fritz sends over gas and respirators have to be donned during the intricate negotiation of this "pathway"----!
Clarke and Bennet, moving gingerly beneath two heavy ration issues, paused abruptly to duck to a whining shell. The latter slipped, fell off into the miniature ocean, clambered out.
"Oh, 'ell, bloomin' bread too--LOOK OUT!"
"That's the second dud."
"Yes, must be gas." Respirators on they were unable to peer a foot either way, sat down uncomfortably on the boards and waited for the attack to move away. But when they did stand up and gazed about them ... WHICH WAY WAS WHICH?
The absence in places of any line or wiring (posts would not stand up in the watery soil) permitted men o' nights to wander unawares towards the Fritz trenches. A crack, a fall--for weeks the body would lie outside the enemy lines until it rotted and fell apart. And someone was posted "Missing."
Trench feet began to find its victims among the young Staffords--they trekked away in agony, but withal glad to get out of it. With the puzzling rapidity of trench casualties the daily roll increased without anyone quite grasping how or when this or that man went. He would be with you this morning, to-morrow you would miss him; inquire and learn that he had stopped a Blighty.
Evans, an adherent of the occult, vowed that he had been visited by some eternal being of the spirit world. Stumpy was profoundly interested.
"Wot'd 'e say?"
"Nothing much. Only that somethin' would portend for me to-morrow."
"Oh, did 'e want a drink?"
"Course not."
"If 'e 'ad asked you for your rum ration, would you," anxiously, "'ave given it to 'im."
"Couldn't: 'adn't any left."
"Wot woz 'e like?"
"Tall, shadowy."
"An' you really believes it?"
"Yus. I 'ave proof--"
"I see. I, I s'pose 'e could give you anything you asked 'im for?"
"Within reason."
"Then," whispered ironically, "ask 'im next time to give me a soft Blighty an' a drop of toddy, an', oh, some bloomin' fags."
"Can't be done, for something will 'appen to me to-morrow."
He was wrong; decided that the spook had altered for his own good reasons the daily course of his life and eagerly awaited a visit that never materialised. Stumpy was disgusted.
"All me eye. I know it wasn't a bloomin' spook when I 'eard 'e 'adn't asked for a drink. Wot on earth would anyone visit these yere bloomin' trenches for unless he smelt rum?"
"You don't understand."
"No, an' bloomin' well don't want to. A spook wot rejoins 'is ole friends on earth an' don't even offer 'em a drink is unnatural--that's wot I say."
The large, dry and roomy dug-out beloved by the armchair artist, very, very rarely offers its cosy hospitality to the warrior dwelling in the Front Line--even if there is anything bearing a faint resemblance to such an elaboration it is immediately seized by Company Headquarters. The inter-connecting series of holes occupied by the Normans and flattered with the term "trenches" had cut here and there into the wet soil a number of side excavations of smart proportions that served the purpose of shelter from the elements and shells alike--a heavy barrage from a pea-shooter would have blown in the muddy roofs of these water-logged death traps.
To reach the rear lines movement could only be made ON THE TOP and fully exposed to enemy snipers, who, suffering badly from forced inactivity and ennui, delighted to exercise their shooting powers by a few minutes' pleasant concentration upon your helpless figure.
Mud and water, upon which floated an interesting conglomeration of filthy rubbish, flowed saucily around your ankles, sometimes your knees, and when you fell off a high duckboard, your neck.
The humour of it--afterwards! The acute misery and suffering of those long, long nights standing in water; cold, hungry and weary. Body aching from the fierce winter's blast and the fingers gone stiff, immovable, almost unfeeling ... with no hope for the future, but always the ceaseless watch and wait until the great Peace of Death overtakes the tired body and a troubled soul leaves its burden to be carried on by those who follow after.
Rain lashed stinging into the face, dripping in rivulets from off the steel helmet and forcing its way into the neck ... the shrieking of an unnerving wind ... the blast of mighty shell ... the gas ... death was NOT the worst alternative.
Fritz played heavily on the back areas; we returned shell for shell, but no infantry action took place on either side during the eight days of Norman occupation. The enemy was concentrating his man-power for a Push with the opening of finer days, and we did not have an excess of men to waste after the heavy toll of the Cambrai stunt.
The Ten Hundred were relieved for a brief rest.
XIII
PASSCHENDAELE SECTOR
POPERINGHE--STEENVOORDE--BRANDHOEK
The Ten Hundred had revelled in the luxury of a hot bath. "Casey," who had found and hurriedly slipped into his trouser pocket a full packet of "fags" inadvertently left behind by some individual with an unbalanced mind, portrayed his bare arm for general admiration of the four small scars thereon.
"Waccinated," he said, "by good ole Kinnersley." (Dr.--Captain Kinnersley, undoubtedly the one man who held the softest corner in the hearts of all the old Normans, and whose friendly hand-shakes as from man to man were never forgotten by the "boys" of the original 1st Battalion).
"Wots the good?" Le Page demanded.
"Good--wot a question. Why, it stops fever, an' smallpox, an' almost everythin'."
"Any good fer toothache?" The crowd chuckled noisily.
"Would it stop a clock?"
"Any good for a bloomin' non-stop thirst?"
"P'raps it might stop the war?"
"Ever tried it on yer ole woman's tongue, Casey?--but it wouldn't stop that!"
They were interrupted by a command from the Company Officer to "get a move on." Company Officer controls a Company. Main functions to dole out pay (when he's not stopping it), C.B., and rum.
C.B. (Confined to Barracks) and similar punishments are usually granted you by the genial administrator as an adequate reward for such crimes as too little razor, too much beer, too weak a polish, or too strong a language, late on fatigue or early OFF it....
Some men are always in trouble, but provided with a programme of glib excuses and prepared at a moment's notice to call witnesses (false), always escape punishment. Some do not care if punished or not and who boast that they had full value for their "two days C.B." Heaume had a cute dodge of replying to an officer's angry expostulation that he (Heaume) had already been "up" twenty times with: "No, sir,--only sixteen so far."
Seven or eight days at Brake Camp were followed by a week at English Camp, from whence working parties daily moved up the Line by rail to the vicinity of Merrythought Station. The Ten Hundred were put through the mill as never before. "Out fer a rest," a Stafford summed up, "be 'anged fer a yarn ... called the last place Brake ... breaking us in fer this."
Poperinghe made up for it. A week without one Jerry aeroplane dropping an experimental bomb or two, without the unpleasant company of Jerry shells and free from apprehensive hours of uncertainty following a gas alarm from forward areas in an unfavourable wind.
To be able to purchase from the inhabitants almost every conceivable necessity dear to the heart of the soldier, to mingle freely with "civies," to walk on hard, firm roads, theatres, cinemas, and to mingle nightly with other regiments compensated somewhat for what had passed.
They were shyly proud of their Cambrai record, said little of their deeds before other men, but withal treasured up every meagre speech of candid appreciation emanating spontaneously from those who had heard of, but hitherto had not met the 1st Royal Guernsey. Stumpy, assisted by his diminutive Middlesex pal, unofficially appointed himself an authority on Normans and their place in European history.
"It was like this yere," he informed a crowd of Essex in the Church Army Canteen one quiet evening, "we 'elped to make a 'ell of a mess of England an' the chap wot we fought for made us, us----"
"Granted you democratic self-government."
"Eh, yes, wot you said."
"But you don't play games--football, cricket--in Guernsey."
"Why don't we?'
"You 'aven't any room ... you'd kick the ball over the side into the sea." The Englishmen grinned.
"Wot do they wear--clothes or just a belt?"
"Don't s'pose they eat each other?"
"Wonder if any of 'em's black?"
"Wot do they live in--wigwams or caves?"
Stumpy, conscious of somehow saying the wrong thing and hurt by the shower of friendly sarcasm, shrugged his shoulders.
"Orl right," he said, "take the bloomin' advantage of the tiny isle--any'ow we 'ad the guts to come out yere."
"That's right, kid," someone offered him a fag, "you were a democracy, a free country, long before England was ENGLAND at all, before the British Empire was dreamed of. You were the first elements of that Empire...."
"'Ere," said Stumpy, grinning with delight, "'ave a bloomin' drink."
"Your Battalion saved a whole Division at Cambrai--."
"Ave a bloomin' nother!"
Even during this "rest" in Pop., working parties were daily sent up on missions varying in detail but never in hardship or risk. They groused and growled, maintained that their physical condition was becoming worn down by the excess of work, insisted angrily that a rest should be a REST and not a camouflaged existence of heavy fatigues, pointed out that if Jerry came over he would find them too utterly washed out to jab a bayonet into an ounce of butter, much less a man, and finally demanded in disgust "if they were the only available Battalion in the Army and whether they had to clean up the whole bloomin' Front?"
Once within the hospitable walls of Talbot House (can any Tommy ever look back upon that oasis in war's grim desert without pangs of pleasant memories) and ensconced deep down in armchairs they forget working parties and fatigues.
From there they penned their difficult missives home-bound, there they read and re-read what few lines of intimate information could be eagerly cleaned from those brief treasured letters from home over the waters to them.
There was something almost tragic in the downcast look of those who turned their day's mail aimlessly over with anxious hands and at last shamefacedly requested some sunny-natured fellow to read out what was writ thereon. The awful reaping of ignorance, the great void of their apathetic existence!
What pregnant apprehension of drawing blank pervaded the mind as the eye expectantly watched the fast dwindling mail in the hands of the N.C.O. bawling out each name. The exhilarating thrill of glad delight with which you realised YOUR name and number had been called almost at the end of the file ... the sense of lonely desolation when there has been nothing for two days ... back to that torn copy of a magazine that has been read, re-read, and re-read again and again. But you can't settle down. They have forgotten you. You don't mind the hell of existence out here, but their letter was due yesterday and now----"Bah!" bitterly, "let them bloomin' well forget."
The Ten Hundred moved into Steenvoorde and found themselves entangled in the intricacies of rehearsals for, and then later actual parade of Ceremonial Reviews. Here also they had the opportunity of indulging in that salient portion of training that appealed to them as nothing else--"firing." Undamaged by shell, cosy, they would have appreciated a lengthy spell with little to do, but rumours of an avalanche of troops that were manoeuvring behind the enemy lines became the predominant topic of discussion and lead to preparations for further movements.
All material (by ceaseless working parties) had been withdrawn from forward areas. Troops moving out to rest were maintained at points within a few miles of the Line, and could be rushed up without appreciable delay into any gap that Jerry might by pure weight of numbers force in the British lines--nothing was left to chance.
It was pointed out that he would never attempt Flanders mud after the British experience in the Passchendaele-Poelcapelle stunts of September-October, 1917. This was countered by that pivot of sentimental strategy--Ypres. He wanted it--therefore....
He would not GET IT, anyhow!
In the midst of all these conflicting rumours and views the Normans marched to Godewaersvelde and entrained there for a return to Brandhoek. At Red Rose Camp they prepared for another lengthy period in the Line, about the second week in March moved up to another camp in a shelled area.
Jerry's offensive was expected at any moment; everybody was nervy: and each Battalion as it came out of the Line thanked its lucky stars that they had escaped the first onslaught. To even the ignorant strategist it was patent that either side could, by a preconceived attack, penetrate a mile or so into any chosen sector of a few miles frontage: but such a salient had little absolute value in a scheme of operations having the turning or breaking of a portion of front as objectives. A break had to be made of twenty or thirty miles and ten or twelve deep, at a stroke, otherwise with the wonderful elasticity of modern warfare the smashed-in line would reform, the gap be lost temporarily and by slight withdrawal of flanks the entire front straighten out and become once more a concrete whole.
Jerry knew it--and we knew he knew it.
XIV
MARCH-APRIL, 1918
IN THE LINE
California Camp, the Normans' jumping off point for their IN and OUT occupation of the trenches and working parties when not in the former, was composed of a collection of tiny huts constructed on similar lines to the Nissen. The attractions peculiar to this obnoxious assortment of pygmy habitations were two: could not lie down straight in them, absolutely impossible to stand up. Circular of roof, mode of entrance was an enforced elegant attitude on hands and knees wherein a decided advantage could be derived by going in lobster-wise--backwards, for there was NOT an ample space in which to turn about.
Jerry artillery had fitful moods of strafing. Days of wild "searching" with a disgusting series of violent heavies bursting in all directions, blowing out candles with the concussion and in the darkness bringing about language-provoking situations that culminated in clumsy searches for matches ... light would reveal your watery rice careering smugly about in a boot and half a dozen fags floating sadly in the remnant of your mess tin of tea!
Bitter cold of night increased. Boots, however soft and pliable when taken off, however well oiled, would be frozen hard and stiff in the morning as if cut in steel. To force these essential protections on called for painful, struggling efforts.... The only remedy was to sleep with the boots next the body. Placing beneath a pillow was fatuously inadequate.
They went into the line on a frontage beyond the actual Passchendaele village and on the far side of the ridge looking down on Jerry trenches. Watery mud again everywhere ... a further protection of sandbags around the legs was not a success; trench feet became more and more prevalent and the germs of trench fever placed Martel, Robin and a long roll on the casualty list.