Part 22 (1/2)
Picture if you can a flight of twenty-four steps leading into the darkness of the underground. At the foot of this a room, if room it can be called, some thirteen feet by ten by seven high, the walls of tree trunks and railway sleepers, the roof of corrugated iron resting on railway lines; from this hang stalact.i.tes of rust, and large and loathsome insects creep about; above lives a colony of rats: such is our living-room, damp with a dampness that reaches one's bones and makes all things clammy to the touch. A couple of tables, a chair, and some boxes, such is our dining-room suite. From this a long, narrow, low pa.s.sage leads to the kitchen, signalers' and 'phone room, officers'
bunks and office. By day and night one stumbles among sleeping soldiers off duty, tired enough to find sleep on the boarded floor. My bed,--a couple of boards and some sand-bags,--is four feet from the ground, too narrow for safety, and yet I sleep. Men who previously grumbled at an eight-hour day, now do eighteen hours for seven days a week--such is war, and such is the spirit in which they take it.
Outside--or rather up above--a cold drizzle adds to the general discomfort, ”pineapples” drop promiscuously about, but one can hear them coming, save when barrages are about, and the roar of gun and bursting sh.e.l.l drowns all else. One nearly got me this morning. I just ducked in time as it burst on the parapet behind where I was standing--a splinter caught my tin hat, but bounded off. In spite of all, this has been a cheery day. One learns to laugh at Fritz's efforts to kill one, and at the appalling waste of money he spends in misplaced sh.e.l.ls; one laughs still more when they fall in his own lines from his own guns, and frantic cries of distress and protest, in the form of colored rockets, fill the air. LIFE, even with all its letters capitals, has its humors. Dire rumors of the postponement of our longed-for rest--but what is rumor, after all?
Half of another weary night has pa.s.sed. I took a morning in bed (five hours, only disturbed twice) and so raised my sleep average to nearly four hours a day.
How unreal it seems to be writing with a loaded revolver by one's paper, and a respirator on one's chest. I bet the Huns are sorry that they ever invented gas. You make too much of what I did on Monday, it was nothing wonderful, and had I had time to think, I should probably have funked it. Instinct and training and the excitement of the moment--that is all, just my duty. I did see a brave act that morning, and one that required real pluck, not excitement. I must see a specialist about the injury as soon as I can get an appointment. Still smiling.
A long wooden box five feet by three feet ”in the cold, dark underground.” Here we move and sleep and have our being, under one of the famous battlefields of Europe, a captured German dugout, with German sh.e.l.ls b.u.mping on the roof from time to time. Had I but the ability I could paint you a word-picture that might bring to you the wonder of last night's events in their grandeur and their grimness. As it is I must do what little I can.
A long straying column along a road as darkness fell; turning westward one saw the splendor of a blood-red sunset where the crimson melted to gold, the gold to green, so often called blue. Against this the silhouetted outlines of slag-heaps and pits and houses, now ruined, now whole. By the roadside little huts some three feet square built by their owners, who gathered around little blazing fires now that their day's work was done. The low drone of homing planes filled the air as one by one they swooped down to earth, or rose on some perilous mission, while bursting shrapnel added golden b.a.l.l.s of fire to the firmament of heaven, now a deep, deep blue. To north, to east, to south, yellow-green flashes of guns stabbed the darkness, and the redder glare of bursting sh.e.l.ls came ever and anon. Across an open heath, along a road pitted with sh.e.l.l-holes to the skeleton of a sh.e.l.l-smashed town like some ghostly sentinel to the gates of war.
Here the sweet smell of a September evening was every now and then rendered hideous by pungent odors through the dead town, where the smell of gas still clung to houses and issued up from cellars. Now trenches lay along the road, and the golden harvest moon turned to silver and flooded the scene, casting long, strange shadows on the ground. A deepening roar, followed by the whizzing scream of sh.e.l.ls as hidden batteries poured death into the German lines. A whistle, a roar, a thud, a sudden check, and on as a couple of sh.e.l.ls spattered the road ahead. ”Halt, off-load the limbers”--on to a crater where our guides awaited us. Here the chalk molds and craters of the shattered German lines along which we walked looked like miniature snow-clad mountains in the moonlight. Destruction everywhere, but a destruction that was grand while it was dreadful. And so to dug-outs, and the night-time ”hate” and gas--a doze, and the wonderful dawn of a perfect daybreak. Exploration of trenches, broken by pauses to look at aerial combats far up in the blue, where planes looked like bits of silver dust whirled about by the breeze. Interest covered and crushed every other emotion, and though many of the things that lie about seem loathsome in cold-blooded language, I found nothing of loathing there.
Now a human skull with matted ginger hair, but with the top bashed in, now a hand or arm sticking up from some badly-buried body or sh.e.l.l-smashed grave, and everywhere the appalling waste of war--spades, shovels, German clothes, armor, ammunition scattered in a chaos beyond words.
Cras.h.!.+ bang! boom! and like rabbits to earth once more; we have been spotted, and whiz-bangs fall--a dozen wasted German sh.e.l.ls.
Packed like sardines we lie and try to s.n.a.t.c.h some moments' sleep.
With revolvers by our sides, and respirators on our chests, we live in the perpetual night of underground, coming to the surface to work or see a little of G.o.d's suns.h.i.+ne or explore, as sh.e.l.ls permit and the spirit moves us. Time as a measure has ceased to be and our watches serve just as checks on our movements. I love life, and oh, how I hate it too!
G. B. MANWARING.
A CAROL FROM FLANDERS
1914
In Flanders on the Christmas morn The trenched foemen lay, The German and the Briton born-- And it was Christmas Day.
The red sun rose on fields accurst, The gray fog fled away; But neither cared to fire the first, For it was Christmas Day.
They called from each to each across The hideous disarray (For terrible had been their loss): ”O, this is Christmas Day!”
Their rifles all they set aside, One impulse to obey; 'Twas just the men on either side, Just men--and Christmas Day.
They dug the graves for all their dead And over them did pray; And Englishman and German said: ”How strange a Christmas Day!”
Between the trenches then they met, Shook hands, and e'en did play At games on which their hearts are set On happy Christmas Day.
Not all the Emperors and Kings, Financiers, and they Who rule us could prevent these things For it was Christmas Day.
O ye who read this truthful rime From Flanders, kneel and say: _G.o.d speed the time when every day Shall be as Christmas Day_.
FREDERICK NIVEN.
THE MINER AND THE TIGER
On an October day in 1866, David Lloyd George, then a little lad of three years, came with his mother and younger brother to live with his uncle, Richard Lloyd, for his father had died leaving the family penniless. His uncle, a shoemaker and preacher, was educated though poor. In the picturesque little village of Llanystumdwy on the coast of Wales, Lloyd George grew up,--a leader among his mates, not only in his studies but in mischief as well. He was a good thinker and liked to debate with his uncle, and to be in his uncle's shop in the evening when the men of the village gathered to talk over questions of business and politics. As he grew older, he took part in their conversation and was acknowledged by them to have a good mind.