The Red Horizon Part 25

"Me and Stoner 'as got 'ardly nuffink," Bill said.

"How much have you got?" asked the officer.

"You could 'ardly see it, it's so small," said Bill. "But now it's all gone."

"Gone?"

"A fly flew away with my portion, and Stoner's 'as fallen through the neck of 'is waterbottle," said Bill. The officer ordered both men (p. 239) to be served out with a second portion.

We left the village in the morning and marched for the best part of the day. We were going to hold a trench five kilometres north of Souchez and the Hills of Lorette. The trenches to which we were going had recently been held by the French but now that portion of the line is British; our soldiers fight side by side with the French on the Hills of Lorette at present.

The day was exceedingly hot, a day when men sweat and grumble as they march, when they fall down like dead things on the roadside at every halt and when they rise again they wonder how under Heaven they are going to drag their limbs and burdens along for the next forty minutes. We pa.s.sed Les Brebes, like men in a dream, pursued a tortuous path across a wide field, in the middle of which are several sh.e.l.l-shattered huts and some acres of sh.e.l.l-scooped ground. The place was once held by a French battery and a spy gave the position away to the enemy. Early one morning the sh.e.l.ls began to sweep in, carrying the message of death from guns miles away. Never have I seen such a memento of splendid gunnery, as that written large in sh.e.l.l-holes on that field. The bomb-proof shelters are on a level with the (p. 240) ground, the vicinity is pitted as if with smallpox, but two hundred yards out on any side there is not a trace of a sh.e.l.l, every shot went true to the mark. A man with a rifle two hundred yards away could not be much more certain than the German gunners of a target as large. But their work went for nothing: the battery had changed its position the night previous to the attack. Had it remained there neither man nor gun would have escaped.

The communication trench we found to be one of the widest we had ever seen; a handbarrow could have been wheeled along the floor. At several points the trench was roofed with heavy pit-props and sandbags proof against any shrapnel fire. It was an easy trench to march in, and we needed all the ease possible. The sweat poured from every pore, down our faces, our arms and legs, our packs seemed filled with lead, our haversacks rubbing against our hips felt like sand paper; the whole march was a nightmare. The water we carried got hot in our bottles and became almost undrinkable. In the reserve trench we got some tea, a G.o.dsend to us all.

We had just stepped into a long, dark, pit-prop-roofed tunnel and (p. 241) the light of the outer world made us blind. I shuffled up against a man who was sitting on one side, righted myself and stumbled against the knees of another who sat on a seat opposite.

"Will ye have a wee drop of tay, my man?" a voice asked, an Irish voice, a voice that breathed of the North of Ireland. I tried to see things, but could not. I rubbed my eyes and had a vision of an arm stretching towards me; a hand and a mess tin. I drank the tea greedily.

"There's a lot of you ones comin' up," the voice said. "You ones!" How often have I said "You ones," how often do I say it still when I'm too excited to be grammatical. "Ye had a' must to be too late for tay!"

the voice said from the darkness.

"What does he say?" asked Pryor who was just ahead of me.

"He says that we were almost too late for tea," I replied and stared hard into the darkness on my left. Figures of men in khaki took form in the gloom, a bayonet sparkled; some one was putting a lid on a mess-tin and I could see the man doing it....

"Inniskillings?" I asked.

"That's us." (p. 242)

"Quiet?" I asked, alluding to their life in the trench.

"Not bad at all," was the answer. "A sh.e.l.l came this road an hour agone, and two of us got hit."

"Killed?"

"Boys, oh! boys, aye," was the answer; "and seven got wounded. Nine of the best, man, nine of the best. Have another drop of tay?"

At the exit of the tunnel the floor was covered with blood and the flies were buzzing over it; the sated insects rose lazily as we came up, settled down in front, rose again and flew back over our heads.

What a feast they were having on the blood of men!

The trenches into which we had come were not so clean as many we had been in before; although the dug-outs were much better constructed than those in the British lines, they smelt vilely of something sickening and nauseous.

A week pa.s.sed away and we were still in the trenches. Sometimes it rained, but for the most part the sky was clear and the sun very hot.

The trenches were dug out of the chalk, the world in which we lived was a world of white and green, white parapet and parados with a (p. 243) fringe of gra.s.s on the superior slope of each. The place was very quiet, not more than two dozen sh.e.l.ls came our way daily, and it was there that I saw a sh.e.l.l in air, the only sh.e.l.l in flight I have ever seen. It was dropping to earth behind the parados and I had a distinct view of the missile before ducking to avoid the splinters flung out by the explosion. Hundreds of sh.e.l.ls have pa.s.sed through the sky near me every day, I could almost see them by their sound and felt I could trace the line made by them in their flight, but this was the only time I ever saw one.

The hill land of Lorette stood up sullen on our right; in a basin scooped out on its face, a hollow not more than five hundred yards square we could see, night and day, an eternal artillery conflict in progress, in the daylight by the smoke and in the dark by the flashes of bursting sh.e.l.ls. It was an awe-inspiring and wonderful picture this t.i.tanic struggle; when I looked on it, I felt that it was not good to see--it was the face of a G.o.d. The mortal who gazed on it must die.

But by night and day I spent most of my spare time in watching the smoke of bursting sh.e.l.ls and the flash of innumerable explosions.

One morning, after six days in the trenches, I was seated on the (p. 244) parados blowing up an air pillow which had been sent to me by an English friend and watching the fight up at Souchez when Bill came up to me.

"Wot's that yer've got?" he asked.

"An air pillow," I answered.

"'Ow much were yer rushed for it?"

"Somebody sent it to me," I said.

"To rest yer weary 'ead on?"

I nodded.

"I like a fresh piller every night," said Bill.

"A fresh what?"

"A fresh brick."

"How do you like these trenches?" I asked after a short silence.

"Not much," he answered. "They're all blurry flies and chalk." He gazed ruefully at the white sandbags and an army ration of cheese rolled up in a paper on which blow-flies were congregating. Chalk was all over the place, the dug-outs were dug out of chalk, the sandbags were filled with chalk, every bullet, bomb and sh.e.l.l whirled showers of fine powdery chalk into the air, chalk frittered away from the parapets fell down into our mess-tins as we drank our tea, the rain-wet chalk melted to milk and whitened the barrels and actions (p. 245) of our rifles where they stood on the banquette, bayonets up to the sky.

Looking northward when one dared to raise his head over the parapet for a moment, could be seen white lines of chalk winding across a sea of green meadows splashed with daisies and scarlet poppies.

b.u.t.terflies flitted from flower to flower and sometimes found their way into our trench where they rested for a moment on the chalk bags, only to rise again and vanish over the fringes of green that verged the limits of our world. Three miles away rising lonely over the beaten zone of emerald stood a red brick village, conspicuous by the spire of its church and an impudent chimney, with part of its side blown away, that stood stiff in the air. A miracle that it had not fallen to pieces. Over the latrine at the back the flies were busy, their buzzing reminded me of the sound made by sh.e.l.l splinters whizzing through the air.

The s.p.a.ce between the trenches looked like a beautiful garden, green leaves hid all shrapnel scars on the s.h.i.+vered trees, thistles with magnificent blooms rose in line along the parapet, gra.s.ses hung over the sandbags of the parapet and seemed to be peering in at us asking if we would allow them to enter. The garden of death was a riot (p. 246) of colour, green, crimson, heliotrope and poppy-red. Even from amidst the chalk bags, a daring little flower could be seen showing its face; and a primrose came to blossom under the eaves of our dug-out. Nature was hard at work blotting out the disfigurement caused by man to the face of the country.

At noon I sat in the dug-out where Bill was busy repairing a defect in his mouth organ. The sun blazed overhead, and it was almost impossible to write, eat or even to sleep.

The dug-out was close and suffocating; the air stank of something putrid, of decaying flesh, of wasting bodies of French soldiers who had fallen in a charge and were now rotting in the midst of the fair poppy flowers. They lay as they fell, stricken headlong in the great frenzy of battle, their fingers wasted to the bone, still clasping their rifles or clenching the earth which they pulled from the ground in the mad agony of violent death. Now and again, mingled with the stench of death and decay, the breeze wafted into our dug-out an odour of flowers.

The order came like a bomb flung into the trench and woke us up like an electric thrill. True we did not believe it at first, there (p. 247) are so many practical jokers in our ranks. Such an insane order! Had the head of affairs gone suddenly mad that such an order was issued.

"All men get ready for a bath. Towels and soap are to be carried!!!"

"Where are we going to bathe?" I asked the platoon sergeant.

"In the village at the rear," he answered.

"There's n.o.body there, nothing but battered houses," I answered. "And the place gets sh.e.l.led daily."

"That doesn't matter," said the platoon sergeant. "There's going to be a bath and a jolly good one for all. Hot water."

We went out to the village at the rear, the Village of Shattered Homes, which were bunched together under the wall of a rather pretentious villa that had so far suffered very little from the effects of the German artillery. As yet the roof and windows were all that were damaged, the roof was blown in and the window gla.s.s was smashed to pieces.

We got a good bath, a cold spray whizzed from the nozzle of a serpentine hose, and a share of underclothing. The last we needed badly for the chalk trenches were very verminous. We went back (p. 248) clean and wholesome, the bath put new life into us.

That same evening, what time the star-sh.e.l.ls began to flare and the flashes of the guns could be seen on the hills of Lorette, two of our men got done to death in their dug-out. A sh.e.l.l hit the roof and smashed the pit-props down on top of the two soldiers. Death was instantaneous in both cases.