At one o’clock, lunch is brought up from the kitchens, which are in a basement in Monchy, in large containers that were once milk churns and jam boilers. The food is of martial monot-onousness, but plentiful enough, provided the ration parties don’t ‘evaporate’ it on the way, and leave half of it on the ground. After lunch, we nap or read. Gradually the two hours approach that are set aside for the trench duty by day. They pass more quickly than their nocturnal counterparts. We observe the front line opposite through binoculars or periscopes, and often manage to get in a head shot or two through a sniper’s rifle. But careful, because the British also have sharp eyes and useful binoculars.
A sentry collapses, streaming blood. Shot in the head. His comrades rip the bandage roll out of his tunic and get him bandaged up. ‘There’s no point, Bill.’
‘Come on, he’s still breathing, isn’t he?’ Then the stretcher-bearers come along, to carry him to the dressing-station. The stretcher poles collide with the corners of the fire-bays. No sooner has the man disappeared than everything is back to the way it was before. Someone spreads a few shovelfuls of earth over the red puddle, and everyone goes back to whatever he was doing before. Only a new recruit maybe leans against the revetment, looking a little green about the gills. He is endeavouring to put it all together. Such an incredibly brutal assault, so sudden, with no warning given. It can’t be possible, can’t be real. Poor fellow, if only you knew what was in store for you.
Or again, it’s perfectly pleasant. A few apply themselves with sportsmanlike enthusiasm. With connoisseurial expressions, they follow the bursts of our artillery in the enemy trench. ‘Bull’s-eye!’
‘Wow, did you see the dirt go up after that one! Poor old Tommy! There’s mud in your eye!’ They like lobbing rifle-grenades and light mortar-bombs across, to the disapproval of more timorous souls. ‘Come on, stop that nonsense, we’re getting enough of a pounding as it is!’ But that doesn’t keep them from pondering incessantly about how best to propel grenades with handmade catapults or some other hellish contraptions to imperil the ground in front of the trench. Now, they might clear a small passage in the wire in front of their sentry post, so that the easy access might lure some unsuspecting scout in front of their sights; another time, they creep across and tie a bell to the wire on the other side, and pull on it with a long string to drive the British sentries crazy. They get kicks out of fighting.
At teatime, things can get quite cosy. The ensign is often required to provide company for one or other of the senior officers. Things are done with formality and some style; a couple of china cups on a Hessian tablecloth. Afterwards, the officer’s batman will leave a bottle and glasses out on the wobbly table. Conversation becomes more personal. It’s a curious thing that even here other people remain the most popular subject of conversation. Trench gossip flourishes in these afternoon sessions, almost as in a small town garrison. Superiors, comrades and inferiors may all be subjected to vigorous criticism, and a fresh rumour makes its way through all six commanders’ dugouts along the line in no time at all, it seems. The observation officers, spying on the regimental position with field glasses and sketch pad, are not without some of the responsibility. In any case, the position is not hermetically sealed; there’s a perpetual coming and going. During the quiet morning hours, staff officers come round and make work, much to the fury of the poor grunt, who has just lain down following his last watch, only to hear the calclass="underline" ‘The divisional commander is present in the trench!’ and plunges out of his dugout looking fairly impeccable once more. Then, after that, there’s the pioneer and the trench-construction and the drainage officer – all of them carrying on as if the trench existed only for their particular specialism. The artillery observer gets a frosty reception a little later, as he seeks to hold a trial barrage, because no sooner has he gone, taking his periscope with him – having stuck it up out of the trench at various points, like an insect its antennae – than the British artillery will start up, and the infantry are always the ones who catch it. And then the commanders of the advance party and the entrenching detachments put in an appearance as well. They sit in the platoon commander’s dugout until it’s completely dark, drinking grog and smoking and playing Polish lotto, until they’ve cleaned up as thoroughly as a band of rats. Then, at some ungodly hour, a little chappie comes ghosting down the trench, creeps up behind the sentry, shouts ‘Gas attack!’ in his ear, and counts how many seconds it takes the fellow to get into his mask. He, obviously, is the gas-attack protection officer. In the middle of the night, there’s one more knock on the plank door of the dugout: ‘What’s going on here? You asleep already? Here, will you sign receipt of twenty knife-rests and half a dozen dugout frames?’
The carrying-party is there. So, on quiet days anyway, there’s a continual coming and going, enough finally to induce the poor inhabitant of the dugout to sigh: ‘Oh, if only there’d be a bit of bombardment so we could get some peace!’
It’s true too: a couple of heavy bombs only contribute to th overall feeling of cosiness: we’re left to ourselves, and the tedious pen-pushing stops.
‘Lieutenant, permission to take my leave, sir, I’m going on duty in half an hour!’
Outside, the clay walls of the parados are gleaming in the dying rays of the sun, and the trench itself is completely in shadow by now. Soon the first flares will go up, and the night sentries will begin their back and forth. The new day for the trench warrior begins.
Daily Life in the Trenches
And so our days passed in strenuous monotony, interspersed with short rest periods in Douchy. But even in the front line, there were some good times to be had. Often I would sit with a feeling of cosy seclusion at the table in my little dugout, whose unplaned gun-hung plank walls had for me something of the Wild West about them, drinking a cup of tea, smoking and reading, while my orderly busied himself at the tiny stove, and the aroma of toasting bread gradually filled the air. What trench warrior has not experienced the sensation? Outside, along the fire-bays, came the heavy rhythmic tramp of feet, and a rough shout when sentry met sentry in the trench. My desensitized hearing no longer took in the incessant rifle fire, the smart impacts of bullets thudding into cover, or the flares expiring with a slow hiss beside the opening of my air-shaft outside. Then I would take my notebook out of my map pocket, and jot down the salient events of the day.
And so there came about, as part of my diary, a conscientious account of life in C Sector, the small zigzag part of the long front where we were at home, where we knew every overgrown bit of trench and every ramshackle dugout. Round about us in the mounds of earth rested the bodies of dead comrades, every foot of ground had witnessed some sort of drama, behind every traverse lurked catastrophe, ready day and night to pluck its next chance victim. And yet we all felt a strong bond to our sector, as though we had grown together with it. We had seen it when it was a black ribbon winding through the snowy landscape, when the florid thickets round about flooded it with narcotic scents at noontide, and when pallid moonbeams wove webs round its dark corners, while squeaking clusters of rats went about their ghastly business. We sat on long summer evenings cheerfully on its clay ramparts, while the balmy air wafted the sounds of our busy hammering and banging and our native songs in the direction of the enemy; we plunged over beams and chopped wire while Death with his steel club assaulted our trenches and slothful smoke slunk out of our shattered clay ramparts. Many times, the colonel wanted to transfer us out to a quieter section of the regimental line, but each time the company begged him as one man to let us remain in C Sector. There now follows a selection from my diary entries taken down at the time, from those nights at Monchy.