Part 13

Away to the east, along this ridge of hills, somebody is firing machine-guns and artillery, but as I can only see the smoke of the shrapnel away up in the sky above the hilltops, I don't know whether they are our guns or Johnny Turk's. If they are his we shall soon have some over us here, as he has picked up the Hun's habit of having at least one daily "hate." Another shell has burst--nearer us this time. Yes, Johnny is out for blood, so I have moved the Huggins bundle and settled myself on the hard, cold floor of the Palace Huggins, where the shrapnel bullets will have more difficulty in finding me.

The system the gunners go on is to send an officer up a hill to a place where he can see the countryside. He observes through the 'scope where the places are that the enemy troops mostly use, paths, wells, dugouts, etc., and marks them on his map, probably numbering them points 1, 2, 3, and so on. He also has an accurate rangefinder and a telephone connecting him with the battery of guns. If he sees a party of men at a certain spot, he wires down: "Give 'em socks at point 17," or words to that effect, and we get a few shells along, while the observing officer scores the hits. Other days I rather suspect he puts all the numbers into a hat and shakes them up. Then he picks one out, and with luck the shell falls two miles away from anyone and wipes out an ant-hill with great slaughter.

He's a peculiar gentleman, old man Turk. One night when I was going my rounds in the trenches I noticed a general rush at a point where generally some of our liveliest boys want suppressing, so I listened, as everyone else seemed to be doing, and away from behind the Turks' trenches came a sound of a band, playing some real racy oriental music. We had quite a promenade concert. Coming from over the rugged top of a rocky hill and through the quiet starlit night it was quite weird, in a way, but we all enjoyed it. In France the Germans often have a bit of a concert before any big attack, but although we thought Johnny Turk might be going to do the same, no attack came off that night. We did have a mild attack once--see enclosed account[13]--but the enemy never got within very exciting distance of the section of the trench I was responsible for. Anyway, you can show this printed account round, and tell everyone that your son helped General Maxwell to hold the Turks back. What! What!

II--WHEN THE GENERAL VISITS THE BOYS

Talking about generals: we all came out of the trenches feeling very sorry for ourselves when we were relieved a week ago. Certainly we were dog-tired and inexpressibly dirty. The day following our Divisional General elected to inspect us. Thought we to ourselves: "This means that he is going to see what is left of us, just to see if we are even good enough to go as a garrison to, say, Malta." Someone even whispered "India." Certainly no one would for one moment have suggested the possibility of our being of the _least_ use as a fighting unit ever again. As a matter of fact, in numbers, health, and morale we were pretty weak. The General looked on the brighter side, however, and our dreams of Bombay were shattered pretty quickly. The General made a speech. He said that probably not since the days of the Peninsular War had troops such a hard time as we had during the past month. (We sighed solemn approval.) We had come through well. He told us that our hardships had apparently left us little the worse. (At this point a private fell forward in a faint--for which piece of acting I firmly believe he had been subsidised by his fellow-men! The body having been ostentatiously removed, the General continued.) There were other hard times ahead for us, he said (exit dream of India), but for several days yet we should continue to rest. ("Fall in, those fifty men with picks and shovels!" came the voice of a sergeant-major some distance away.) "And here y'are," concluded the General, looking round at the circle of faces ingrained with brown dust and looking swarthy in consequence, "here y'are all looking as fit as can be!" He ended by saying that when he had got our reinforcements out from home he felt sure we should be as good a fighting force as ever--which I suppose we _shall_ be. All the same, we shall have earned a rest soon, I hope.

The ridge of hills we're on is very much the shape (and nearly the height) of the Maiden Moor and Catbells ridge. First comes a place like Eel Crags, all covered with dugouts on the Newlands side and occupied by hundreds of troops. Then you come on, still on the same side, by a footpath to about the middle of Maiden Moor. Here you will find _us_, only instead of our homes looking down into the valley, they look down on to the sea-shore and away out to sea, where we can see one or two rocky islands and far away the coast of the mainland of Turkey, a bit of Bulgaria, and a bit of Greece. Over on the other side we can see right away down the Peninsula and pick out all the positions you read about in the papers. Following on the ridge, you come to a dip before reaching the hill corresponding to Catbells, and here is our trench, running over the saddle of the hill. Beyond, on the slope, is the Turkish trench, and somewhere about where that old "skeleton" is that we used to see from the lake as we rowed to Keswick, the Turks have their guns. They also have one beyond the end of the ridge, about where Crossthwaite is. Well, that gives you the general situation of our part of the line, without saying too much.

The trouble at present is that they can't locate the exact position of the Turks' big gun, which is very cleverly hidden. The Navy, the artillery, and the airmen have all been hunting for weeks, but so far none of them have put it out of action, and "Striking Jimmy," as we call him, goes on calmly dropping nine-inch high explosives about the hills. Fortunately he doesn't often hit anything really important (touch wood!--he's just sent a shell in our direction).

I met Owen quite unexpectedly on the beach the other day. His section is stationed some miles from here, so I sha'n't be likely to run across him again. It was very lucky seeing him at all. He was very busy making pumping arrangements for the water supply, and I (as usual, in charge of a fatigue-party) was asleep under one of his water-tanks, when he began to curse me for being on prohibited premises. It was quite funny! Then he recognized me, and we had a whole afternoon together. He's had some pretty rough times and narrow escapes, just as I have, but we've both got so far and quite hope to finish all safe now.

Don't ask me how things are going here. You, who see the newspapers, know far more than we do.

III--"WHISTLING WILLIE"--AND THE HUMAN GUNS

When you have lived for ten days in a region where they wander whistling overhead, where they somersault eccentrically in circles, where they drop bits of themselves with the buzz of a drunken bumblebee, where, in fact, they do everything but burst, you come to know the projectile family fairly intimately. In fact, some poetically constructed Bulldog has christened the various members of the family.

First, there is Whistling Willie, a bustling soul, who does his journey, between the boom of leaving his front door and the moment when he sneezes up a cloud of dust in front of our parapet, in about four and a half seconds. You can almost hear him saying to the Turkish gunners: "Now then, you chaps, come on, buck up, look alive! That's it, off we go, _booooom!_ _zizzzzz!_ Here we are--tishoo!" Yes, he's a brisk, pushing lad, is Willie, but rather superficial really. There's more swagger and dust about him than the result justifies--although it's only fair to say that he once threw up a stone large enough to upset the Adjutant's tea. Probably the war will end (if ever) with that deed of questionable military significance to his credit, and no more.

Willie's cousin, Whispering Walter, also of Ottoman origin, is a fellow of infinitely more worth and solidity. Though he takes longer over his trip from the muzzle to the mark he makes up for lost time when he gets there. It is rather as though he gave his gunners instructions to push him off slowly so as to give him time to pick a good place to drop. "Very good," they say to him, "off yer goes!" _Booooom!_ A pause. Then Walter comes into our area--"_Whizzlizzlizzle_," he whispers to himself confidentially, as much as to say, "Now _where_, down below, is a good fat Brigadier, or a mountain battery, or a pile of stores (dash it, I must hurry up and spot _something_; I'm nearly exhausted)--oh, a girls' school, a cabbage-patch--anything!" And down he comes--_whang!_--as often as not half a mile from anything he could damage. There is a lesson on the futility of procrastination in Walter's methods.

Walter has two brothers, Clanking Claud and Stumer Steve. Claud always sets out, like his elder brother, in a meditative mood. Having traveled a sufficient distance and found nothing worthy of his mettle, he decides, apparently, to show his independence by never coming down from his airy height to earth at all. So "_Kerlank!_" he says, and disappears ostentatiously in a cloud of white smoke some fifty yards above us. True, he showers a lot of little leaden marbles, but that merely shows his spiteful nature.

And then there is poor Stumer Steve. "If ye have tears, prepare to shed them now," for Stephen is both blind and dumb. Though he sets out full as his brothers of resolution, though, like Walter, he whispers promises of daring deeds, like Claud, passes with discriminating deliberation over the ground below, yet his final descent is a hollow and meaningless affair, though pathetic withal, "_Plunk!_" In a word the requiem of Steve. A young and apparently vigorous life robbed of its final destiny, a career despoiled of its rightful goal. Often we find he is filled with--sawdust! Sawdust! Like any sixpence-halfpenny doll! Sometimes he is empty altogether. Poor Steven, the best that can be said of him, even when in desperation he lands upon a stone and goes hurtling away in spiral somersaults, is--"stumer," and even _that's_ an American word!

Quite another kettle of fish is Greasy Gregory. There is a solemnity, a grandeur, and a determination about Greg that inspires respect. Also he is just about twice the size of his fellows and takes quite twice as long in making his way to earth. The mysterious and rather awe-inspiring feature of his performance is that you never hear him start! Possibly you are sitting over a slice of bacon or a savoury, bully stew when he makes his advent known. Just a greasy flutter overhead and then "_Crash!_" Gregory has come.

Everything gets up and changes places in a cloud of yellow dust and smoke. The atmosphere being thick, things that have no sort of right there get into intimate and inconvenient places (tea-pots, tunic pockets, etc.), and I have spent as much as twenty minutes in a time of famine separating Gallipoli Peninsula from raspberry-jam after one of Gregory's little jokes.

Last, and least, comes the clown of the party--Airy Archibald. His specialty is aeroplanes, and his efforts are acknowledged to be purely humorous by both sides. His methods are something like this. On some still, cloudless afternoon a distant buzzing sound is heard, heralding the approach of an aeroplane. Instantly Archibald springs into life. _Whoop-pop!_

Somewhere (it generally takes a good deal of finding) a tiny puff of smoke appears against the blue. Never by any chance is it in the same quarter of the sky as the aircraft. _Whoop-pop!_ _Whoop-pop!_ One after another they leap up to have a look. The airman never takes the smallest notice, but sails serenely on, and never yet have I seen Archibald get within a thousand yards of his object. Once, so rumor has it, he _did_ get nearer, so near, in fact, that two of his bullets hit a wing of the machine. But the shock of success was too great, and Archie's empty shell falling to earth put two of his own gunners out of action! This story I cannot vouch for, but this I know, that after a monoplane has actually disappeared over the horizon I have seen Archibald jump viciously at him four times and every time miss him by quite three miles! Well, here's to you, my comic friend. You add a humor to life, and I wish the others could follow your lead, and, taking life less seriously, give us as wide a miss.

* * * * *

(Four weeks later, the writer of this narrative fell in the trenches a victim of these Turkish guns.)

FOOTNOTES:

[12] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the original sources.

[13] A sudden attack was made on the right of the 11th Division and upon the extreme left of the 29th Division about 2 o'clock on the night of the 1st instant. It commenced with shell, machine gun, and rifle fire on Jephson's post and along Keretch Tepe Sirt ridge. Brigadier-General Maxwell was holding the right section of the 11th Division when a body of the enemy attempted a bomb and bayonet assault under cover of their bombardment. There was no heart, however, in the attack, and it was easily repulsed with loss to the enemy.

The Navy, as usual on such occasions, were prompt with their assistance, and the flanking torpedo-boat destroyer with her searchlight lit up the northern slopes of Keretch Tepe and effectively stopped the enemy from pressing in along the coast.

"IN THE FIELD"--THE STORIES OF THE FRENCH CHASSEURS

_Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry_

_Told by Lieut. Marcel Dupont, of the French Chasseurs_

This officer of the Light Cavalry tells a straightforward story of the charges on the battlefields of the War: "Days of misery, days of joy, days of battle--what volumes we might write if we were to follow our squadrons day by day. I have merely tried to make a written record of some of the hours I have lived through. If I should come out of the deathly struggle safe and sound, it would be a pleasure to me some day to read over these notes of battle and bivouac. I shall rejoice if I have been able to revise some phases of the tragedy in which we were the actors if my brothers-in-arms read the simple tales of a lieutenant of Chasseurs, an unschooled effort of a soldier more apt with the sword than with the pen." M. Dupont tells: "How I Went to the Front," "The First Charge," "Sister Gabriel," and "Christmas Night." Some of these stories are here told by permission of his publishers from his book, "In the Field."--_J. B. Lippincott Company._

[14] I--NIGHT IN THE HOUSE OF A PEASANT

One morning in the middle of September, 1914, as we raised our heads at about six o'clock from the straw on which we had slept, I and my friend F. had a very disagreeable surprise: we heard in the darkness the gentle, monotonous noise of water falling drop by drop from the pent-house onto the road.

Arriving at Pévy the evening before, just before midnight, we had found refuge in a house belonging to a peasant. The hostess, a good old soul of eighty, had placed at our disposal a small bare room paved with tiles, in which our orderlies had prepared a sumptuous bed of trusses of straw. The night had been delightful, and we should have awaked in good spirits had it not been for the distressing fact noticed by my friend.

"It is raining," said F.

I could not but agree with him. Those who have been soldiers, and especially cavalrymen, know to the full how dispiriting is the sound of those few words: "It is raining."

"It is raining" means your clothes will be saturated; your cloak will be drenched, and weigh at least forty pounds; the water will drip from your shako along your neck and down your back; above all, your high boots will be transformed into two little pools in which your feet paddle woefully. It means broken roads, mud splashing you up to the eyes, horses slipping, reins stiffened, your saddle transformed into a hip-bath. It means that the little clean linen you have brought with you--that precious treasure--in your saddlebags, will be changed into a wet bundle on which large and indelible yellow stains have been made by the soaked leather.

But it was no use to think of all this. The orders ran: "Horses to be saddled, and squadron ready to mount, at 6.30." And they had to be carried out.

It was still dark. I went out into the yard, after pulling down my campaigning cap over my ears. Well, after all, the evil was less than I had feared. It was not raining, but drizzling. The air was mild, and there was not a breath of wind. When once our cloaks were on it would take some hours for the wet to reach our shirts. At the farther end of the yard some men were moving about round a small fire. Their shadows passed to and fro in front of the ruddy light. They were making coffee--_jus_, as they call it--that indispensable ration in which they soak bread and make a feast without which they think a man cannot be a good soldier.

I ran to my troop through muddy alleys, skipping from side to side to avoid the puddles. Daylight appeared, pale and dismal. A faint smell rose from the sodden ground.

"Nothing new, _mon Lieutenant_," were the words that greeted me from the sergeant, who then made his report. I had every confidence in him; he had been some years in the service, and knew his business. Small and lean, and tightly buttoned into his tunic, in spite of all our trials he was still the typical smart light cavalry non-commissioned officer. I knew he had already gone round the stables, which he did with a candle in his hand, patting the horses' haunches and looking with a watchful eye to see whether some limb had not been hurt by a kick or entangled in its tether.

In the large yard of the abandoned and pillaged farm, where the men had been billeted they were hurrying to fasten the last buckles and take their places in the ranks. I quickly swallowed my portion of insipid lukewarm coffee, brought me by my orderly; then I went to get my orders from the Captain, who was lodged in the market-square. No word had yet been received from the Colonel, who was quartered at the farm of Vadiville, two kilometres off. Patience! We had been used to these long waits since the army had been pulled up before the formidable line of trenches which the Germans had dug north of Rheims. They were certainly most disheartening; but it could not be helped, and it was of no use to complain. I turned and went slowly up the steep footpath that led to my billet.

II--"I OPENED THE HEAVY DOOR--AND ENTERED THE CHURCH"

Pévy is a poor little village, clinging to the last slopes of a line of heights that runs parallel to the road from Rheims to Paris. Its houses are huddled together, and seem to be grouped at the foot of the ridges for protection from the north wind. The few alleys which intersect the village climb steeply up the side of the hill. We were obliged to tramp about in the sticky mud of the main road waiting for our orders.

Passing the church, it occurred to me to go and look inside. Since the war had begun we had hardly had any opportunity of going into the village churches we had passed. Some of them were closed because the parish priests had left for the army, or because the village had been abandoned to the enemy. Others had served as marks for the artillery, and now stood in the middle of the villages, ruins loftier and more pitiable than the rest.

The church of Pévy seemed to be clinging to the side of the hill, and was approached by a narrow stairway of greyish stone, climbing up between moss-grown walls. I first passed through the modest little churchyard, with its humble tombs half hidden in the grass, and read some of the simple inscriptions:

"Here lies ... Here lies ... Pray for him...."

The narrow pathway leading to the porch was almost hidden in the turf, and as I walked up it my boots brushed the drops from the grass. The damp seemed to be getting into my bones, for it was still drizzling--a fine persistent drizzle. Behind me the village was in mist; the roofs and the maze of chimney tops were hardly distinguishable.

Passing through a low, dark porch, I opened the heavy door studded with iron nails, and entered the church, and at once experienced a feeling of relaxation, of comfort and repose. How touching the little sanctuary of Pévy seemed to me in its humble simplicity!

Imagine a kind of hall with bare walls, the vault supported by two rows of thick pillars. The narrow Gothic windows hardly allowed the grey light to enter. There were no horrible cheap modern stained windows, but a multitude of small white rectangular leaded panes. All this was simple and worn; but to me it seemed to breathe a noble and touching poetry. And what charmed me above all was that the pale light did not reveal walls covered with the horrible colour-wash we are accustomed to see in most of our village churches.

This church was an old one, a very old one. Its style was not very well defined, for it had no doubt been built, damaged, destroyed, rebuilt and repaired by many different generations. But those who preserved it to the present day had avoided the lamentable plastering which disfigures so many others. The walls were built with fine large stones, on which time had left its melancholy impress. There was no grotesque painting on them to mar their quiet beauty, and the dim light that filtered through at that early hour gave them a vague soft glow.

No pictures or ornaments disfigured the walls. The "Stations of the Cross" were the only adornment, and they were so simple and childish in their execution that they were no doubt the work of some rustic artist. And even this added a touching note to a harmonious whole.

III--"I KNELT--THE PRIEST WAS SAYING MASS"