Part 27 (2/2)

XVIII

THE FRONT OF THE FRONT

We took over these trenches a few days ago; and as the Germans are barely two hundred yards away, this chapter seems to justify its t.i.tle.

For reasons foreshadowed last month, we find that we are committed to an indefinite period of trench life, like every one else.

Certainly we are starting at the bottom of the ladder. These trenches are badly sited, badly constructed, difficult of access from the rear, and swarming with large, fat, unpleasant flies, of the bluebottle variety. They go to sleep, chiefly upon the ceiling of one's dug-out, during the short hours of darkness, but for twenty hours out of twenty-four they are very busy indeed. They divide their attentions between stray carrion--there is a good deal hereabout--and our rations. If you sit still for five minutes they also settle upon _you_, like pins in a pin-cus.h.i.+on. Then, when face, hands, and knees can endure no more, and the inevitable convulsive wriggle occurs, they rise in a vociferous swarm, only to settle again when the victim becomes quiescent. To these, high-explosives are a welcome relief.

The trenches themselves are no garden city, like those at Armentieres.

They were sited and dug in the dark, not many weeks ago, to secure two hundred yards of French territory recovered from the Bosche by bomb and bayonet. (The captured trench lies behind us now, and serves as our second line.) They are muddy--you come to water at three feet--and at one end, owing to their concave formation, are open to enfilade.

The parapet in many places is too low. If you make it higher with sandbags you offer the enemy a comfortable target: if you deepen the trench you turn it into a running stream. Therefore long-legged subalterns crawl painfully past these danger-spots on all-fours, envying Little Tich.

Then there is Zacchaeus. We call him by this name because he lives up a tree. There is a row of pollarded willows standing parallel to our front, a hundred and fifty yards away. Up, or in, one of these lives Zacchaeus. We have never seen him, but we know he is there; because if you look over the top of the parapet he shoots you through the head.

We do not even know which of the trees he lives in. There are nine of them, and every morning we comb them out, one by one, with a machine-gun. But all in vain. Zacchaeus merely crawls away into the standing corn behind his trees, and waits till we have finished. Then he comes back and tries to shoot the machine-gun officer. He has not succeeded yet, but he sticks to his task with gentle persistence. He is evidently of a persevering rather than vindictive disposition.

Then there is Unter den Linden. This celebrated thoroughfare is an old communication-trench. It runs, half-ruined, from the old German trench in our rear, right through our own front line, to the present German trenches. It const.i.tutes such a bogey as the Channel Tunnel scheme once was: each side sits jealously at its own end, antic.i.p.ating hostile enterprises from the other. It is also the residence of ”Minnie.” But we will return to Minnie later.

The artillery of both sides, too, contributes its mite. There is a dull roar far in the rear of the German trenches, followed by a whirring squeak overhead. Then comes an earth-shaking crash a mile behind us. We whip round, and there, in the failing evening light, against the sunset, there springs up the silhouette of a mighty tree in full foliage. Presently the silhouette disperses, drifts away, and--

”The coals is hame, right enough!” comments Private Tosh.

Instantly our guns reply, and we become the humble spectators of an artillery duel. Of course, if the enemy gets tired of ”searching”

the countryside for our guns and takes to ”searching” our trenches instead, we lose all interest in the proceedings, and retire to our dug-outs, hoping that no direct hits will come our way.

But guns are notoriously erratic in their time-tables, and fickle in their attentions. It is upon Zacchaeus and Unter den Linden--including Minnie--that we mainly rely for excitement.

As already recorded, we took over these trenches a few days ago, in the small hours of the morning. In the ordinary course of events, relieving parties are usually able to march up under cover of darkness to the reserve trench, half a mile in rear of the firing line, and so proceed to their appointed place. But on this occasion the German artillery happened to be ”distributing coal” among the billets behind.

This made it necessary to approach our new home by tortuous ways, and to take to subterranean courses at a very early stage of the journey.

For more than two hours we toiled along a trench just wide enough to permit a man to wear his equipment, sometimes bent double to avoid the bullets of snipers, sometimes knee-deep in glutinous mud.

Ayling, leading a machine-gun section who were burdened with their weapons and seven thousand rounds of ammunition, mopped his steaming brow and inquired of his guide how much farther there was to go.

”Abart two miles, sir,” replied the youth with gloomy satisfaction.

He was a private of the c.o.c.kney regiment whom we were relieving; and after the manner of his kind, would infinitely have preferred to conduct us down half a mile of a sh.e.l.l-swept road, leading straight to the heart of things, than waste time upon an uninteresting but safe _detour_.

At this Ayling's Number One, who was carrying a machine-gun tripod weighing forty-eight pounds, said something--something distressingly audible--and groaned deeply.

”If we'd come the way I wanted,” continued the guide, much pleased with the effect of his words upon his audience, ”we'd a' been there be now. But the Adjutant, 'e says to me--”

”If we had come the way you wanted,” interrupted Ayling brutally, ”we should probably have been in Kingdom Come by now. Hurry up!” Ayling, in common with the rest of those present, was not in the best of tempers, and the loquacity of the guide had been jarring upon him for some time.

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