Part 10 (1/2)
I claim the honoured position of the world's worst sailor. I have covered several thousand miles on the sea, ”brooked the briny” as far as India and Canada. I have been hurtled about on the largest Atlantic waves; yet I am, and always will remain, absolutely impossible at sea.
Looking at the docks out of the hotel window nearly sends me to bed; there's something about a s.h.i.+p that takes the stuffing out of me completely. Whether it's that horrible pale varnished woodwork, mingled with the smell of stuffy upholstery, or whether it's that nauseating whiff from the open hatch of the engine-room, I don't know; but once on a s.h.i.+p I am as naught ... not nautical.
Of course the Channel was going to be rough. I could see that at a glance. I know exactly what to do about the sea now. I go straight to a bunk, and hope for the best; if no bunk--bribe the steward until there is one.
I got a bunk, deserted my friend in a cheerless way, and retired till the crossing was over. It _was_ very rough....
In the cold grey hours we glided into Dover or Folkestone (I was too anaemic to care which) and fastened up alongside the wharf. I had a dim recollection of getting my pal to hold my pack as we left Boulogne, and now I could see neither him nor the pack. Fearful crush struggling up the gangway. I had to scramble for a seat in the London train, so couldn't waste time looking for my friend. I had my haversack--he had my pack.
The train moved off, and now here we all were back in clean, fresh, luxurious England, gliding along in an English train towards London.
It's worth doing months and months of trenches to get that buoyant, electrical sensation of pa.s.sing along through English country on one's way to London on leave.
I spent the train journey thinking over what I should do during my seven days. Time after time I mentally conjured up the forthcoming performance of catching the train at Paddington and gliding out of the shadows of the huge station into the sunlit country beyond--the rapid express journey down home, the drive out from the station, back in my own land again!
We got into London in pretty quick time, and I rapidly converted my dreams into facts.
Still in the same old trench clothes, with a goodly quant.i.ty of Flanders mud attached, I walked into Paddington station, and collared a seat in the train on Number 1 platform. Then, collecting a quant.i.ty of papers and magazines from the bookstalls, I prepared myself for enjoying to the full the two hours' journey down home.
I spent a gorgeous week in Warwicks.h.i.+re, during which time my friend came along down to stay a couple of days with me, bringing my missing pack along with him. He had had the joy of carrying it laden with sh.e.l.l cases across London, and taking it down with him to somewhere near Aldershot, and finally bringing it to me without having kept any of the contents ... Such is a true friend.
As this book deals with my wanderings in France I will not go into details of my happy seven days' leave. I now resume at the point where I was due to return to France. In spite of the joys of England as opposed to life in Flanders, yet a curious phenomenon presented itself at the end of my leave. I was anxious to get back. Strange, but true. Somehow one felt that slogging away out in the dismal fields of war was the real thing to do. If some one had offered me a nice, safe, comfortable job in England, I wouldn't have taken it. I claim no credit for this feeling of mine. I know every one has the same. That buccaneering, rough and tumble life out there has its attractions. The spirit of adventure is in most people, and the desire and will to biff the Boches is in every one, so there you are.
I drifted back via London, Dover and Boulogne, and thence up the same old stagnant line to Creme de Menthe. Once more back in the land of mud, bullets, billets, and star sh.e.l.ls.
It was the greyest of grey days when I arrived at my one-horse terminus.
I got out at the ”station,” and had a solitary walk along the empty, muddy lanes, back to the Transport Farm.
Plodding along in the thin rain that was falling I thought of home, London, England, and then of the job before me. Another three months at least before any further chance of leave could come my way again.
Evening was coming on. Across the flat, sombre country I could see the tall, swaying poplar trees standing near the farm. Beyond lay the rough and rugged road which led to the Douve trenches.
How nice that leave had been! To-morrow night I should be going along back to the trenches before Wulverghem.
CHAPTER XXI
BACK FROM LEAVE--THAT ”BLINKIN' MOON”
--JOHNSON 'OLES--TOMMY AND ”FRIGHTFULNESS”
--EXPLORING EXPEDITION
As I had expected, the battalion were just finis.h.i.+ng their last days out in rest billets, and were going ”in” the following night.
Reaction from leave set in for me with unprecedented violence. It was horrible weather, pouring with rain all the time, which made one's depression worse.
Leave over; rain, rain, rain; trenches again, and the future looked like being perpetually the same, or perhaps worse. Yet, somehow or other, in these times of deep depression which come to every one now and again, I cannot help smiling. It has always struck me as an amusing thing that the world, and all the human beings thereon, do get themselves into such curious and painful predicaments, and then spend the rest of the time wis.h.i.+ng they could get out.
My reflections invariably brought me to the same conclusion, that here I was, caught up in the cogs of this immense, uncontrollable war machine, and like every one else, had to, and meant to stick it out to the end.
The next night we went through all the approved formula for going into the trenches. Started at dusk, and got into our respective mud cavities a few hours later. I went all round the trenches again, looking to see that things were the same as when I left them, and, on the Colonel's instructions, started a series of alterations in several gun positions.