The Red Horizon Part 5

"They think that we've ammunition stored there," said the engineer, "and they always keep potting at the place."

"But have we?"

"I dunno."

"We wouldn't do it," said Kore, who was of a rather religious turn of mind. "But they, the bounders, would do anything. Are they the brutes the papers make them out to be? Do they use dum-dum bullets?"

"This is war, and men do things that they'd not do in the ordinary way," was the noncommittal answer of the Engineer.

"Have you seen many killed?" asked Mervin.

"Killed!" said the man on the parapet. "I think I have! You don't go through this and not see sights. I never even saw a dead man before this war. Now!" he paused. "That what we saw just now," he (p. 068) continued, alluding to the death of the two soldiers in the trench, "never moves me. _You'll_ feel it a bit being just new out, but when you're a while in the trenches you'll get used to it."

In front a concussion sh.e.l.l blew in a part of the trench, filling it up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" our men called it. Slept in cellars and cooked our food, our bully stew, our potatoes, and tea in the open. Sh.e.l.ls came our way continually, but for four days we followed up our work and none of our battalion "stopped a packet."

CHAPTER VI (p. 069)

IN THE TRENCHES

Up for days in the trenches, Working and working away; Eight days up in the trenches And back again to-day.

Working with pick and shovel, On traverse, banquette, and slope, And now we are back and working With tooth-brush, razor, and soap.

We had been at work since five o'clock in the morning, digging away at the new communication trench. It was nearly noon now, and rations had not come; the cook's waggons were delayed on the road.

Stoner, brisk as a bell all the morning, suddenly flung down his shovel.

"I'm as hungry as ninety-seven pigs," he said, and pulled a biscuit from his haversack.

"Now I've got 'dog,' who has 'maggot'?"

"Dog and maggot" means biscuit and cheese, but none of us had the latter; cheese was generally flung into the incinerator, where it wasted away in smoke and smell. This happened of course when we were new to the grind of war.

"I've found out something," said Mervin, rubbing the sweat from (p. 070) his forehead and looking over the parapet towards the firing line. A sh.e.l.l whizzed by, and he ducked quickly. We all laughed, the trenches have got a humour peculiarly their own.

"There's a house in front," said Mervin, "where they sell _cafe noir_ and _pain et beurre_."

"Git," muttered Bill. "Blimey, there's no one 'ere but fools like ourselves."

"I've just been in the house," said Mervin, who had really been absent for quite half an hour previously. "There are two women there, a mother and daughter. A good-looking girl, Bill." The eyes of the c.o.c.kney brightened.

"Twopence a cup for black coffee, and the same for bread and b.u.t.ter."

"No civilians are allowed here," Pryor remarked.

"It's their own home," said Mervin. "They've never left the place, and the roof is broken and half the walls blown away."

"I'm for coffee," Stoner cried, jumping over the parapet and stopping a shower of muck which a bursting sh.e.l.l flung in his face. We were with him immediately, and presently found ourselves at the door (p. 071) of a red brick cottage with all the windows smashed, roof riddled with shot, and walls broken, just as Mervin had described.

A number of our men were already inside feeding. An elderly, well-dressed woman, with close-set eyes, rather thick lips, and a short nose, was grinding coffee near a flaming stove, on which an urn of boiling water was bubbling merrily. A young girl, not at all good-looking but very sweet in manner, said "Bonjour, messieurs," as we entered, and approached each of us in turn to enquire into our needs. Mervin knew the language, and we placed the business in his hands, and sat down on the floor paved with red bricks; the few chairs in the house were already occupied.

The house was more or less in a state of disorder; the few pictures on the wall, the portrait of the woman herself, _The Holy Family Journeying to Egypt_, a print of Millet's _Angelus_, and a rude etching of a dog hung anyhow, the frames smashed and the gla.s.s broken.

A Dutch clock, with figures of nymphs on the face, and the timing piece of a sh.e.l.l dangling from the weights, looked idly down, its pendulum gone and the gla.s.s broken.

Bill, naughty rascal that he is, wanted a kiss with his coffee, (p. 072) and finding that Mervin refused to explain this to the girl, he undertook the matter himself.

"Madham mosselle," he said, lingering over every syllable, "I get no milk with cawfee, compree?" The girl shook her head, but seemed to be amused.

"Not compree," he continued, "and me learnin' the lingo. I don't like French, you spell it one way and speak it the other. Nark (confound) it, I say, Mad-ham-moss-elle, voo (what's "give," Mervin?) dunno, that's it. Voo dunno me a kiss with the cawfee, compree, it's better'n milk."

"Don't be a pig, Bill," Stoner cut in. "It's not fair to carry on like that."

"Nark you, Stoner!" Bill answered. "It mayn't be fair, but it'd be nice if I got one."

"Kiss a face like yours," muttered Mervin, "she'd have a taste for queer things if she did."

"There's no accountin' for tastes, you know," said Bill. "Oh, Blimey, that's done it," he cried, stooping low as a sh.e.l.l exploded overhead, and drove a number of bullets into the roof. The old woman raised her head for a moment and crossed herself, then she continued her (p. 073) work; the daughter looked at Bill, laughed, and punched him on the shoulder. In the action there was a certain contempt, and Bill forthwith relapsed into silence and troubled the girl no further. When we got out to our work again he spoke.

"She was a fine hefty wench," he said, "I'm tip over toes in love with her."

"She's not one that I'd fancy," said Stoner.

"Her finger nails are so blunt," mumbled Pryor, "I never could stand a woman with blunt finger nails."

"What is your ideal of a perfect woman, Pryor?" I asked.

"There is no perfect woman," was his answer, "none that comes up to my ideal of beauty. Has she a fair brow? It's merely a s.p.a.ce for wrinkles. Are her eyes bright? What years of horror when you watch them grow watery and weak with age. Are her teeth pearly white? The toothache grips them and wears them down to black and yellow stumps.

Is her body graceful, her waist slender, her figure upright. She becomes a mother, and every line of her person is distorted, she becomes a nightmare to you. Ah, perfect woman! They could not (p. 074) fas.h.i.+on you in Eden! When I think of a woman was.h.i.+ng herself! Ugh!

Your divinity washes the dust from her hair and particles of boiled beef from between her teeth! Think of it, Horatio!"

"Nark it, you fool," said Bill, lifting a f.a.g end from the bottom of the trench and lighting it at mine. "Blimey, you're balmy as nineteen maggots!"

It was a few days after this incident that, in the course of a talk with Stoner, the subject of trenches cropped up.

"There are trenches and trenches," he remarked, as we were cutting poppies from the parapet and flinging the flowers to the superior slope. "There are some as I almost like, some as I don't like, and some so bad that I almost ran away from them."

For myself I dislike the narrow trench, the one in which the left side keeps fraying the cloth of your sleeve, and the right side strives to open furrows in your hand. You get a surfeit of damp, earthy smell in your nostrils, a choking sensation in your throat, for the place is suffocating. The narrow trench is the safest, and most of the English communication trenches are narrow--so narrow, indeed, that a man with a pack often gets held, and sticks there until his comrades pull (p. 075) him clear.

The communication trenches serve, however, for more purposes than for the pa.s.sage of troops; during an attack the reserves wait there, packed tight as sardines in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the risk of being blown to eternity by a sh.e.l.l. Rifles, packs, haversacks, bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking back at the aggressor. They lie in wait, helpless, unable to move backward or forward, ears greedy for the latest rumours from the active front, and hearts p.r.o.ne to feelings of depression and despair.

The man who is seized with cramp groans feebly, but no one can help him. To rise is to court death, as well as to displace a dozen grumbling mates who have inevitably become part of the human carpet that covers the floor of the trench. A leg moved disturbs the whole pattern; the sufferer can merely groan, suffer, and wait. When an (p. 076) attack is on the communication trenches are persistently sh.e.l.led by the enemy with a view to stop the advance of reinforcements. Once our company lay in a trench as reserves for fourteen hours, and during that time upwards of two thousand sh.e.l.ls were hurled in our direction, our trench being half filled with rubble and clay. Two mates, one on my right and one on my left, were wounded. I did not receive a scratch, and Stoner slept for eight whole hours during the cannonade; but this is another story.

Before coming out here I formed an imaginary picture of the trenches, ours and the enemy's, running parallel from the Vosges in the South to the sea in the North. But what a difference I find in the reality.

Where I write the trenches run in a strange, eccentric manner. At one point the lines are barely eighty yards apart; the ground there is under water in the wet season; the trench is built of sandbags; all rifle fire is done from loop-holes, for to look over the parapet is to court certain death. A mountain of coal-slack lies between the lines a little further along, which are in "dead" ground that cannot be covered by rifle fire, and are 1,200 yards apart. It is here that the sniper plies his trade. He hides somewhere in the slack, and pots (p. 077) at our men from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. He knows the range of every yard of our communication trenches. As we come in we find a warning board stuck up where the parapet is crumbling away. "Stoop low, sniper," and we crouch along head bent until the danger zone is past.

Little mercy is shown to a captured sniper; a short shrift and swift shot is considered meet penalty for the man who coolly and coldly singles out men for destruction day by day. There was one, however, who was saved by Irish hospitality. An Irish Guardsman, cleaning his telescopic-rifle as he sat on the trench banquette, and smoking one of my cigarettes told me the story.