War's Dark Frame/The Day's Work of Life and Death at the Front
CHAPTER XIII
THE DAY'S WORK OF LIFE AND DEATH AT THE FRONT
FREQUENT traverses, of the same construction as the parapet, stretched at right angles to protect the men as far as possible from shell and grenade fragments and from the enfilading fire of machine guns. We were to learn the wisdom of that precaution before long.
A trench officer strolled around the end of a traverse He wore a uniform of the same quality as his men's, for the hard facts have been realised here, too, and officers no longer expose themselves contemptuously or in bursts of foolhardy bravery. The German sniper has a little difficulty now in distinguishing officers from men. This fellow with his round helmet had an oriental appearance. He came up, greeting us gratefully. We evidently broke the monotony of his watch. In his eyes was something of the universal strain, but he spoke easily, asking the question that had spoiled our walk and troubled us all.
What were the Huns strafing back there?"
The fact that we couldn't tell him pointed the vagueness that surrounds everything for the individual in this war. Out here men even die with a certain vagueness.
"How are things with you?" Williams asked. Fairly quiet," the newcomer answered, "just now."
He glanced quickly around as if expectant of something. We walked on with him, subdued by the gun roar and the constant sight of those armed figures, braced against the parapet, peering through loop-holes, quite motionless, yet expectant, too.
Openings to dug-outs made black patches against the sorrel earth at the base of the parapet. The men at the parapet were sentinels. The larger part of the command must lurk in these holes. I entered one. Three forms, quite the colour of the earth on which they lay, crowded a tiny cave. Their log-like sleep suggested the cultivation of a log-like mental attitude or the deliberate encouragement of a fatigue beyond the dispute of nerves.
" What about the rats? some one asked the trench officer as I emerged. "See any rats down there? At home they say the rats are so bad they actually eat the soldiers' faces."
The trench officer spread his hands.
"I can only speak for my own men," he said. "Most of them, when the rats begin to eat them alive, wake up and say, Shoo."
There has, perhaps, been as much written about vermin as bullets. Momentarily the subject clung—probably because it kept us from looking too far ahead. It is impossible to exaggerate the bullets. We began to suspect that imagination had played with the other, for these men were fairly clean. While their uniforms were marked with last night's mud and whitened with this morning's dust, they required no more radical antidote than a brisk brushing. Trenches are dirty and uncomfortable, but I couldn't see here such disorder of body and clothing as is observable among any gang of labourers engaged in excavation work.
Conditions," the trench officer said, are naturally better than during the winter and early spring, but experience as well as the weather has got something to do with it."
“What about the activities of certain unpleasant small life?"
He paused. Across the plaza we saw a few groups under non-commissioned officers, twining those deadly globes of barbed wire, invented by the French, for the blocking of communication trenches. Others worked with trowel and cement at machine gun emplacements. Some made repairs where an ugly lack of uniformity in the parapet recorded the entrance of a recent shell.
" Those chaps don't look particularly fidgety, do they?" he asked. "If our little companions have largely left us it's because shorter periods in the trenches, compulsory baths, and a complete change of clothing once a week have made us less enticing for them, and a lot fonder of ourselves."
A harder burst of firing directed his glance towards the parapet. We crowded at his heels in the direction of a periscope.
Their sausage is keeping them busy this morning," he said over his shoulder. "By the way, any of you fellows heard news of Blank?”
The freckled face of the brigade officer darkened. Williams wanted to know what about Blank.
“Went up in one of our balloons yesterday," the trench officer answered. “A lucky shrapnel shot cut the cord and we could see him from here drifting over the trenches while the Huns shot their heads off."
"I heard this morning," the brigade officer said, " that somebody had seen him cut loose his parachute."
"Not much chance that way," Williams mused. “The anti-air guns would get him sure. He'd have dropped in their lines anyway."
"Nice chap, Blank," the brigade officer muttered. "We've been hoping for news all morning."
The trench officer put his eye to the periscope.
"I wondered," he said.
After a time he looked up.
Perhaps you'd like to see the Hun trenches. If you raised your head above the parapet you'd make good practice for one of their snipers. Try this."
In the glass at the base of the periscope appeared a forest of posts rising from a jungle of grass and barbed wire. Beyond, very close at hand, lines of yellow dirt and sand bags zig-zagged across the landscape, curving towards us to the right and left. A trifle puzzled, I glanced back at the British trench walls and saw that to either side they fell away before these sudden swoops of the enemy's lines. We were, it appeared, in the apex of a small triangle, and subject consequently to attack from three sides. Phrases skimmed in the official reports Aashed back with a new eloquence. I understood quite thoroughly now the meaning of, "We straightened a small salient to-day." The trench officer grinned. "That's our line," he said, "great salients and small ones. Little fellows like this breed local trouble. Only comfort is, it's as bad for the Huns as it is for us."
He drew from his pocket a narrow cylinder, not unlike a small telescope.
"It's a hand periscope," he explained," rather useful thing—magnifies a bit. Want to try it? Put the end over the parapet and squint in the eye hole. That's the notion."
The ugly yellow ridges seemed closer. The waving grass was more distinct and larger. There was no use looking too carefully because of the sinister souvenirs of night attacks and patrol work the grass in No-Man's Land nearly always harbours.
But the ridges fascinated. They were like furrows ploughed by a drunken giant. They offered no evidence of the multitude of men they sheltered; yet, if it hadn't been for the gun rear, we might have called across to them without raising our voices particularly. We could picture a routine within their hollows similar to our own. But at any moment a trivial variation over there might send death stalking close to us—
“How far are they?" I asked.
“Something less than a hundred yards, I should say, from here to their front line." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
You know, they're not bad at potting periscopes."
At that distance they could recognise this mahogany cylinder for an officer's periscope. Just then a machine gun jibed at the heavier roar. Rat-tat-tat-tat—spraying death as a garden hose sprays water. I glanced up at the top of the periscope to see if it trembled.
"I say, that thing was a Christmas present. Move it about a bit."
He seemed relieved to have it back again. The machine gun subsided.
“Might give them some of that back," he said, pointing to a group squatting on heels about a sergeant.
“The hornets seem stirred up enough this morning," one of the others offered.
We joined the group and found in the midst of it a machine gun whose mysteries the sergeant explained with the deportment of an old-fashioned schoolmaster. He was glad to have fresh scholars. He opened and closed the breach. He inserted a belt of cartridges. He commenced to run it through. The trench officer stooped.
"Throw that safety block back! "
The sergeant obeyed with an aggrieved air, while mutely we thanked the officer for preventing his drawing any unusual attention to that particular traverse.
In place of a practical demonstration, then, the sergeant pressed with both thumbs on a steel plate. The cartridges swirled through, flashed into the breach, and out through the escapement.
"As long as I keeps pressin' down on this plate," he said," she keeps spittin', and somebody don't like it. The water in the jacket boils when she's spittin' hard. You have to watch out for that."
Evidently we showed a little distaste for the brutal perfection of the thing. He was a trifle offended, I think, at our haste to leave his class. Around the next traverse we ran into another scholarly group.
A flimsy tripod stood on the trench floor. One of the Japanese, who had observed without saying much, was aroused to a question.
"It will interest you," the officer said “It's one of the things with which we make ourselves most scandalously miserable in the trenches."
Behind his banter was a wistful seriousness which you understood as he went on.
“It's for throwing rifle grenades.
He picked up a black, pear-shaped object which differed from the ordinary hand grenade in just one particular. A long slender steel rod protruded from one end.
The hand grenade, it was explained, was satisfactory enough when the trenches were within throwing distance, or for a swift dash across No-Man's Land and a retreat through the night, but there were many hours of daylight in a place like this when it wasn't wise to let the other fellow feel too much at ease.
He passed the grenade around, cautioning us not to release the safety pin.
"The usual pattern," he said with a reminiscent frown. "When you draw the pin the spring flies back and fires the fuse. If you don't throw it then there's general hades. Maybe you've heard. A couple days ago in a bombing school a new man was standing by the instruction officer who was showing him how to release the spring and throw. The soldier had drawn the pin, and, as new men do now and then, got a sudden touch of panic.
The instructor shouted at him:
"Throw that thing away, man! For God's sake, throw it away!!
"Poor devil! You see in his anxiety about the other he'd quite forgotten he'd drawn the pin in his own grenade."
He ended with an exclamatory gesture. Wil liams stroked the corrugated surface of the grenade.
"Not so large, yet one of these things will do in a score of men."
The trench officer took it from him and slipped the end of the rod through the apex of the tripod. A soldier, whose bent attitude was suggestive of worship of the toy-like affair, placed a blank cart- ridge in a tube at the base. The officer lowered the rod against the cartridge. The soldier stooped closer, manipulating a graded quadrant. Range is correct, sir, to drop it straight into their trench."
Williams started to speak. The brigade officer laughed.
No, thank you.
Our friends over there are jumpy this morning. They'd send a few back in our direction."
What happened then had the blind irony of chance. It was, indeed, that slight variation of which I had thought a few minutes before. From a point not far ahead came a sharp crack, barely audible and lost at once in the general uproar. Williams seemed inclined to hold us back, but we went on after a few minutes. As we turned the corner of a traverse we saw a quiet form out- stretched.
Already some one had flung a blanket over face and shoulders. Five minutes ago that form must have been alert at sentinel duty on the parapet. Now some one had taken his place, and he lay, exactly the colour of the clay, except for his boots. They were too black, too heavy, the stillest things you have ever seen. Feet held so ought to twitch occasionally. There was an appeal about the multitude of studs on the soles, designed to keep that man, who would never do anything again, from slipping.
We knew why he lay there. A grenade had come in from just such a machine as we had been inspecting. He lay there in order that the other fellow shouldn't feel too much at ease. And how many more lay like him the length of the trenches that morning with studded boots outstretched in a sickening stolidity!
We walked neither slower nor faster. We didn't vary our talk about the catapult we had just seen, about the further clever tricks of trench war. fare designed to keep the other fellow from feeling too much at ease. I remember Williams mentioned the whiz-bang— too jocular a name for a shell that drops in and performs multiple explosions and the trench mortar which tumbles a huge and awkward ball on the opposite parapet, where it either kills directly or buries men alive because of the blasting explosive it carries. Two thousand casualties, they told me, in this division since December, while the enemy opposite had suffered probably a good deal more, and all from this process of keeping the other fellow from feeling too much at ease.
"I can remember," Williams said as we walked along," when the sight of a dead man stirred me up most unhappily. Now I don't pay much attention. You can't. Understand? You simply can't."
You can't and keep on at war. That explained, too, probably, the astonishing ease with which one learns to like or dislike men at the front. You can form a thorough-going friendship in a day. That's because a man realises his opportunities may be limited.
Other officers greeted us and walked a little with our party, chatting above the noise of guns. In London I had seen soldiers leave Charing Cross with the trench stains still on their uniforms. They had seemed a little mythical. Out here at their daily task they were quite human, as if the whole world were like this, as if it had never been cleaner or kinder, as if it could never change. So we strolled on, answering to that expectancy which lurked in every one's eyes, not sure that beyond each traverse some sudden and monstrous surprise wasn't waiting for us. I was glad to see a new man smile as he pointed to the entrance of an officer's dug-out.
"Like a peep at the palace?"
The pride behind his smile was perplexing. We followed him down half a dozen steps into a small chamber of an uncommon neatness. The walls were boarded and adorned with racy pictures torn from a French weekly. There was, moreover, a cot bed, a deal table, and a stove.
Foreseeing at least a general, we searched for him in the dusk of the corners. Two young subalterns, however, alone greeted us, and we recalled that generals don't go to the trenches if their staffs can keep them out. Some one congratulated the subalterns on their stove.
One of the youths patted it as if it had been a pet.
"It is a comfort on a cold morning, and it's often quite cold even this time of year."
He, too, let slip a little of that prideful air. We chorused a demand for its source. The man who had brought us in waved his hand.
“You see, when he was on this front, this was the home for several nights of the Prince of Wales."
In a mournful tone a hope was expressed that during those days the racy pictures of scantily draped femininity had not decorated the walls. One of the subalterns with a meek air accepted the responsibility. We went out, smiling but more convinced than before of the dynamic democracy of this struggle, for there was nothing of the palace about that dug-out. It was not, as we define such things, even comfortable. It was, we found, almost next door to a kitchen. I ventured in there, on my hands and knees, because of the meagre opening. A soldier, bent double as I was, in the shallow, smothering chamber, grinned a welcome. He brushed the perspiration from his face and lifted the covers from three camp kettles beneath which coals glowed. Bully beef steamed appetizingly. Low shelves were filled with such bread and jams and tins as I had seen at the convalescent camp. The cook waited, quite apparently for some congratulatory comment.
"This looks pretty good. And it smells good."
The wet, grinning face broadened.
"I hear mighty little grumbling."
The usual culinary pride in a place like this! If we could have carried it from the firing line that meal wouldn't have offended any of us.
As I backed out I caught the brigade officer's cheery voice.
"Maybe you'd like to see one of the few men out here who doesn't worry much about his dinner.
We nodded, a trifle mystified; so, cautioning us not to raise our voices, he led us into a protruding section of the trench and beckoned a corporal who was clumsily sewing a rent in his uniform. We waited in front of a dirty brown canvas curtain which veiled a portion of the face of the parapet perhaps six feet wide and three high.
“It's a sniper's post," Williams whispered. The corporal knew what we wanted. Without words he slowly lifted the dirty canvas, disclosing a nest in the parapet cased with steel plates.
A stout young soldier crouched in the heat and the darkness of that place. He swung around as if grateful for the light and the air. His face was wetter than the cook's, but he turned back, replacing his eye at a small loop-hole in the front wall.
"Wait a minute, Owen," the corporal muttered.
The round, young face studied us again.
“What's your bag this week?" the corporal went on
The sniper's lips opened, showing teeth. The grin coloured his tone.
"My bag? Ten periscopes and five Huns."
Death is such an impersonal thing nowadays. His pleasure seemed scarcely more out of keeping than if he had spoken of rabbits.
"Pass out the boy that did it," the corporal said.
The grin failed. The rifle was offered reluctantly. While we glanced through the telescopic sights the sniper remained crouched, as if ready to spring upon us if we took any liberties with his treasure.
He didn't relax until he had his gun in his hands again. Then he dragged it in front of him and turned away. He was exactly like a child whose favourite toy seems threatened by the incomprehensible curiosity of a grown-up. He uncovered a hole large enough for the sighting of a rifle.
"Not so fast," the corporal warned. And to us he apologised.
"The Huns are pretty sharp at this game, too. With the curtain up they might put a lucky shot through that hole into one of you.'
He dropped the dirty canvas and rubbed his hands. He was as proud of Owen as Owen had been of his rifle. Why not? Five Huns! First and last I have heard a good deal of argument as to the value of this sniping. That did seem a good bag for one man. As a rule, however, some of the French argue such work makes the Germans too wary. It is more profitable,
they think, to encourage carelessness, to foster a sense of security until men gather in gossiping groups. Then a shell from a seventy-five at close range bags more in a second than a week of sniping will drop. The Germans too, I understand, are divided as to which method produces the better result. Either way it also is designed to keep the other fellow from feeling too much at his ease.