Part 22 (1/2)

They searched their trench maps for good spots where another ”small operation” might be organized. There was a compet.i.tion among the corps and divisional generals as to the highest number of raids, mine explosions, trench-grabbings undertaken by their men.

”My corps,” one old general told me over a cup of tea in his headquarters mess, ”beats the record for raids.” His casualties also beat the record, and many of his officers and men called him, just bluntly and simply, ”Our old murderer.” They disliked the necessity of dying so that he might add one more raid to his heroic compet.i.tion with the corps commander of the sector on the left. When they waited for the explosion of a mine which afterward they had to ”rush” in a race with the German bombing-parties, some of them saw no sense in the proceeding, but only the likelihood of having legs and arms torn off by German stick-bombs or sh.e.l.ls. ”What's the good of it?” they asked, and could find no answer except the satisfaction of an old man listening to the distant roar of the new tumult by which he had ”raised h.e.l.l” again.

II

The autumn of 1915 was wet in Flanders and Artois, where our men settled down-knee-deep where the trenches were worst-for the winter campaign. On rainy days, as I remember, a high wind hurtled over the Flemish fields, but it was moist, and swept gusts of rain into the faces of men marching through mud to the fighting-lines and of other men doing sentry on the fire-steps of trenches into which water came trickling down the slimy parapets.

When the wind dropped at dusk or dawn a whitish fog crept out of the ground, so that rifles were clammy to the touch and a blanket of moisture settled on every stick in the dugouts, and nothing could be seen through the veil of vapor to the enemy's lines, where he stayed invisible.

He was not likely to attack on a big scale while the battlefields were in that quagmire state. An advancing wave of men would have been clogged in the mud after the first jump over the slimy sand-bags, and to advance artillery was sheer impossibility. Nothing would be done on either side but stick-in-the-mud warfare and those trench-raids and minings which had no object except ”to keep up the spirit of the men.” There was always work to do in the trenches-draining them, strengthening their parapets, making their walls, tiling or boarding their floorways, timbering the dugouts, and after it was done another rainstorm or snowstorm undid most of it, and the parapets slid down, the water poured in, and s.p.a.ces were opened for German machine-gun fire, and there was less head cover against shrapnel bullets which mixed with the raindrops, and high explosives which smashed through the mud. The working parties had a bad time and a wet one, in spite of waders and gum boots which were served out to lucky ones. Some of them wore a new kind of hat, seen for the first time, and greeted with guffaws-the ”tin” hat which later became the headgear of all fighting-men. It saved many head wounds, but did not save body wounds, and every day the casualty lists grew longer in the routine of a warfare in which there was ”Nothing to report.”

Our men were never dry. They were wet in their trenches and wet in their dugouts. They slept in soaking clothes, with boots full of water, and they drank rain with their tea, and ate mud with their ”bully,” and endured it all with the philosophy of ”grin and bear it!” and laughter, as I heard them laughing in those places between explosive curses.

On the other side of the barbed wire the Germans were more miserable, not because their plight was worse, but because I think they lacked the English sense of humor. In some places they had the advantage of our men in better trenches, with better drains and dugouts-due to an industry with which ours could never compete. Here and there, as in the ground to the north of Hooge, they were in a worse state, with such rivers in their trenches that they went to enormous trouble to drain the Bellewarde Lake which used to slop over in the rainy season. Those field-gray men had to wade through a Slough of Despond to get to their line, and at night by Hooge where the lines were close together-only a few yards apart-our men could hear their boots squelching in the mud with sucking, gurgling noises.

”They're drinking soup again!” said our humorists.

There, at Hooge, Germans and English talked to one another, out of their common misery.

”How deep is it with you?” shouted a German soldier.

His voice came from behind a pile of sand-bags which divided the enemy and ourselves in a communication trench between the main lines.

”Up to our blooming knees,” said an English corporal, who was trying to keep his bombs dry under a tarpaulin.

”So?... You are lucky fellows. We are up to our belts in it.”

It was so bad in parts of the line during November storms that whole sections of trench collapsed into a chaos of slime and ooze. It was the frost as well as the rain which caused this ruin, making the earthworks sink under their weight of sand-bags. German and English soldiers were exposed to one another like ants upturned from their nests by a minor landslide. They ignored one another. They pretended that the other fellows were not there. They had not been properly introduced. In another place, reckless because of their discomfort, the Germans crawled upon their slimy parapets and sat on top to dry their legs, and shouted: ”Don't shoot! Don't shoot!”

Our men did not shoot. They, too, sat on the parapets drying their legs, and grinning at the gray ants yonder, until these incidents were reported back to G. H. Q.-where good fires were burning under dry roofs-and stringent orders came against ”fraternization.” Every German who showed himself was to be shot. Of course any Englishman who showed himself-owing to a parapet falling in-would be shot, too. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, as always, in this trench warfare, but the dignity of G. H. Q. would not be outraged by the thought of such indecent spectacles as British and Germans refusing to kill each other on sight. Some of the men obeyed orders, and when a German sat up and said, ”Don't shoot!” plugged him through the head. Others were extremely short-sighted... Now and again Germans crawled over to our trenches and asked meekly to be taken prisoner. I met a few of these men and spoke with them.

”There is no sense in this war,” said one of them. ”It is misery on both sides. There is no use in it.”

That thought of war's futility inspired an episode which was narrated throughout the army in that winter of '15, and led to curious conversations in dugouts and billets. Above a German front-line trench appeared a plank on which, in big letters, was scrawled these words

”The English are fools.”

”Not such b.l.o.o.d.y fools as all that!” said a sergeant, and in a few minutes the plank was smashed to splinters by rifle-fire.

Another plank appeared, with other words:

”The French are fools.”

Loyalty to our allies caused the destruction of that board.