Chapter III: Part 3

Here's an odd coincidence. The second sentence in your letter that reached me last night (with our rations of candles and coke) says: "Do tell me just what a dug-out is like." You are always asking me what something or other is "like," which forces upon me the sad conclusion that my letters are not in the least descriptive. But, "Do not shoot the pianist: he is doing his best," and if I had the pen of a readier writer you may be sure I'd use it. Yet the odd thing is, with regard to this particular command for information, I have the pen of a readier writer. You know Taffy Morgan--Billy--of our Company? Well, it seems he's quite a bit of a writer, and occasionally sends things home to his father who, is trying to keep a consecutive narrative of the doings of the Battalion. Now last night, within an hour of getting your letter, I read a thing Taffy showed me that he was sending home, all about a Company Headquarters dug-out in the line: much more decent than my scribbles. So I've asked him to let me copy some of it, and here it is pat, in answer to your question:

"'Dug-out' is the only word for it. I don't know who did the christening, but it is, like so many words and phrases adopted without question by Tommy at the front, the one proper, exact, and adequate name for the places we inhabit in the trenches. The particular dug-out I have in mind is a Company Headquarters, situated, like a good many others, in a loop trench, perhaps seventy to a hundred yards long, which curves round at a distance of twenty or thirty yards in rear of the fire-trench. The average depth of this little back-water of a trench is, say, seven feet. It was made by the French before we took over, and is very wide at the top. It has no made parapet, but is just a gaping ditch, its ragged, receding top edges eight or ten feet apart, the lower part, in which one walks, being two to three feet wide. The bottom of this ditch is duck-walked: that is to say, it has wooden gratings six feet long and eighteen inches wide laid along it. Each length of duck-walk is supported at either end by a trestle driven deep down into the mud.

"Here and there at a bend in the trench there will be a gap of several inches between duck-walks. Again one finds a place where one or two slats have been broken. These are cheerless pitfalls on a dark night, in which it is easy to sink one leg in mud or water over the knee. In places a duck-walk has canted over by losing its bearings on the trestle at one corner, giving the whole a treacherous list to one side or the other, simple enough to negotiate by day, but unpleasant for anyone hurrying along at night. Still, the trench is 'ducked' and, so far, luxurious, and a vast improvement on the sort of trench (common over the way among the Boches, I believe) in which men lose their boots, and have to be dug out themselves.

"It happens that my picture of this Company Headquarters dug-out is a three o'clock in the morning picture: moonless, and the deadest hour of the night, when Brother Boche is pretty generally silent, save for a mechanical sort of dropping rifle fire: a fire which one knows somehow, from its sound, means nothing, unless perhaps it means a certain number of German sentries sleepily proving to themselves that they are awake. In the same desultory fashion, Boche, nearly two hundred yards away across the wire entanglements and the centre strip of No Man's Land, sends up a flare of parachute light every few minutes, which, for half a minute, fills our black ditch with a queer, ghostly sort of radiance, making its dank and jagged sides to gleam again, and drawing curses from anyone feeling his way along it, even as motor lights in a country lane at home make a pedestrian curse on a dark night.

"As one gropes along this ditch one comes to narrow gaps here and there in the side farthest from the enemy. These lead to all kinds of odd necessary places: the homes of signallers, runners, and others, refuse pits, bomb and trench stores, and so on. Presently a thin streak of light shows like a white string in the blackness. This is one of the gaps, about four feet high and eighteen inches wide. A dripping waterproof sheet hangs as a curtain over this gap: the white string is the light from within escaping down one side of the sheet. Lift the sheet to one side, take two steps down and forward--the sheet dripping on your neck the while--and you are in the Company Headquarters dug-out: a hole dug out of the back of the ditch, its floor two feet below the level of the duck-boards outside, its internal dimensions ten feet by eight by six.

"At the back of this little cave, facing you as you enter--and unless you go warily you are apt to enter with a rush, landing on the earthen floor in a sitting position, what with the wet slime on your gum boots and the steps--are two bunks, one above the other, each two feet wide and made of wire netting stretched on rough stakes fastened to stout poles and covered more or less by a few empty sand-bags. One of these is the bunk of the O.C. Company, used alternatively by one of his subalterns. In the other, a Platoon Commander lies now asleep, one gum-booted leg, mud-caked well above the knee, dangling over the front edge, a goatskin coat over his shoulders, his cap jammed hard down over his eyes to shut out the light of the candle which, stayed firmly to the newspaper tablecloth by a small island of its own grease, burns as cheerily as it can in this rather draughty spot, sheltered a little from the entrance by a screen consisting of a few tins half full of condensed milk, butter, sugar, and the like. The officer in the bunk is sleeping as though dead, and the candle-light catching the mud-flecked stubble on his chin suggests that his turn in the trenches should be at least half over. Another few days should bring him to billets and shaving water."

(Here, then, in addition to the description of a dug-out, you have a portrait of your "Temporary Gentleman," rather unmercifully touched in, I thought!)

"The table--say, 30 inches by 20 inches--was made from a packing-case, and is perched on rough stake legs against the earthen side of the dug-out, with a shelf over it which was formerly a case holding two jars of rum. On the shelf are foodstuffs, Very lights, a couple of rockets, a knobkerrie, a copy of _Punch_, a shortbread tin full of candles, a map, an automatic pistol, and, most curiously, a dust-encrusted French cookery-book, which has taken on the qualities of an antique, and become a kind of landlord's fixture among 'trench stores' in the eyes of the ever-changing succession of company commanders who have 'taken over,' week in and week out, since the French occupation in '14.

"Hung about the sides of the dug-out are half-empty canvas packs or valises, field-glasses, a couple of periscopes, a Very pistol, two sticks caked all over with dry mud, an oilskin coat or two similarly varnished over with the all-pervading mud of the trench, a steel helmet, a couple of pairs of field boots and half a dozen pictures from illustrated papers, including one clever drawing of a grinning cat, having under it the legend, 'Smile, damn you!' The field boots are there, and not in use, because the weather is of the prevalent sort, wet, and the tenants of the place are living in what the returns call 'boots, trench, gum, thigh.' Overhead is stretched across the low roof tarred felt. Above that are rough-hewn logs, then galvanised iron and stones and earth: not shell-proof, really, but bullet- and splinter-proof, and for the most part weather-proof--at least as much so as the average coat sold under that description.

"The trench outside is very still just now, but inside the dug-out there is plenty of movement. All round about it, and above and below, the place is honeycombed by rats--brown rats with whitish bellies, big as young cats, heavy with good living; blundering, happy-go-lucky, fearless brutes, who do not bother to hunt the infinitely nimbler mice who at this moment are delicately investigating the tins of foodstuffs within a few inches of the head of the O.C. Company. The rats are variously occupied: as to a couple of them, matrons, in opposite corners of the roof, very obviously in suckling their young, who feed with awful zest; as to half a dozen others, in courting, during which process they keep up a curious kind of crooning, chirruping song wearisome to human ears; and as to the numerous remainder, in conducting a cross-country steeplechase of sorts, to and fro and round and round on the top side of the roofing felt, which their heavy bodies cause to bulge and sag till one fancies it must give way.

"There is a rough rickety stool beside the table. On this is seated the O.C. Company, his arms outspread on the little ledge of a table, his head on his arms, his face resting on the pages of an open Army Book 153, in which, half an hour ago, he wrote his morning situation report, in order that his signallers might inform Battalion Headquarters, nearly a mile away down the communication trench to the rear, with sundry details, that there was nothing doing beyond the normal intermittent strafing of a quiet night. The O.C. Company is asleep. A mouse is clearing its whiskers of condensed milk within two inches of his left ear, and the candle is guttering within two inches of his cap-peak. During the past few days he has had four or five such sleeps as this, half an hour or so at a time, and no more, for there has been work toward in the line, involving exposure for men on the parapet and so forth, of a sort which does not make for restfulness among O.C. Companies.

"There comes a quiet sound of footfalls on the greasy duck-boards outside. Two mice on the table sit bolt upright to listen. The cross-country meeting overhead is temporarily suspended. The O.C. Company's oilskin-covered shoulders twitch nervously. The mother rats continue noisily suckling their young, though one warily pokes its sharp nose out over the edge of the felt, sniffing, inquiringly. Then the waterproof sheet is drawn aside, and the O.C. Company sits up with a jerk. A signaller on whose leather jerkin the raindrops glisten in the flickering candle-light thrusts head and shoulders into the dug-out.

"'Message from the Adjutant, sir!'

"The O.C. reads the two-line message, initials the top copy for return to the signaller, spikes the carbon copy on a nail overhead, where many others hang, glances at his wrist-watch, and says wearily:

"'Well, what are the signallers strafing about, anyhow? It's ten minutes before time now. Here you are!'

"He tears two written pages from the Army message book which was his pillow, signs them, and hands them up to the signaller.

"'Call the Sergeant-Major on your way back, and tell him I've gone down to the sap-head. He can bring the wiring party along right away. It's nearly three o'clock. Send a runner to tell the officer on duty I'm going out myself with this party. You might just remind the Sergeant-Major I want two stretcher-bearers at the sap-head. Tell 'em to keep out of sight till the others are out over the parapet. Right! Messages will go to Mr. ----, of course, while I'm out.'

"Brother Boche may remain quiet. Three o'clock is a good quiet time. And there is no moon. But, Brother Boche being dead quiet just now, may conceivably have patrols out there in No Man's Land. They may carry valuable information quickly to his line, and two or three machine-guns may presently open up on the O.C. Company and his wiring party, who, again, may be exposed by means of flare lights from the other side. One hopes not. Meanwhile, after a glance round, the O.C. picks up his mud-caked leather mitts, settles the revolver pouch on his belt, blows out the guttering candle, feels his way out past the dripping waterproof sheet into the black trench, and leaves the dug-out to his sleeping brother officer (who was on deck from 10 to 1, and will be out again an hour before dawn) and the rats.

"Theoretically, this O.C. Company may be himself as much in need of sleep as anyone in the trench. Actually, however, apart from his needs, he is personally responsible for whatever may happen in quite a long stretch of dark, mysterious trench: of trench which in one moment may be converted by the ingenious Boche into a raging hell of paralysing gas and smoke, of lurid flame and rending explosion. German officers seated in artillery dug-outs a mile or so away across the far side of No Man's Land may bring about that transformation in one moment. They did it less than a week ago, though, by reason of unceasing watchfulness on this side, it availed them nothing. They may be just about to do it now, and, unlike the average of German O.C. Companies, our officers never ask their men to face any kind of danger which they themselves do not face with them. And so, for this particular O.C. Company, the interior of that queer little dug-out (where the men's rum stands in jars under the lower bunk, and letters from home are scanned, maps pored over, and reports and returns made out) does not exactly bring unmixed repose. But the rats love it."

So there you are! By the judicious picking of Taffy's brains I have been enabled to present you with a much better picture of a dug-out than my own unaided pen could give. Reading over, there seems something melancholy and sombre about it; I don't know why. It's a jolly little dug-out, and Taffy's a thundering fine officer; nothing in the least melancholy about him. Then why--? Oh, well, I guess it's his Celtic blood. Maybe he's got a temperament. I must tell him so. By the way, that wiring job he mentions came off all right; a nasty exposed place, but "the Peacemaker" got his party through without a single casualty, or, as the men always say, "Casu_al_ity."

Taffy writes a much better letter, doesn't he? than your

"_Temporary Gentleman_."

A BOMBING SHOW

Very many thanks for the parcel with the horse-hide mitts and the torch refills, both of which will be greatly appreciated. The mitts are the best things of the kind I've seen for trench work, and as for electric torches, I don't know what we should do without them.

I've come below for a sleep, really. Taffy Morgan was very much off colour yesterday, and is far from fit to-day. I had to take his duty as well as my own last night, so came off pretty short in the matter of rest. But I must stop to tell you about the lark we had last night; the jolliest thing that's happened since we came in, and no end of a score for "A" Company. My batman tells me "B" are mad as hatters about it.

Our signalling officer happened to be along the front yesterday afternoon with a brand-new telescope that someone had sent the C.O., a very fine instrument. Signals wasn't interested in our bit of line, as it happens, but was dead nuts on some new Boche machine-gun emplacement or other away on "B's" left. When he was coming back through our line I got him to lend me the new glass while he had some tea and wrote reports in our dug-out. Perhaps you think there's not much need of a telescope when the Boche line is less than a couple of hundred yards away. Well, now you'd hardly believe how difficult it is to make things out. At this time of the year the whole of this place is full of mist, for one thing. And then, you see, the ground in front is studded all over with barbed wire, stakes, long rank grass, things thrown out: here and there an old log, and, here and there, of course, a dead body. One has to look along the ground level, since to look from a higher level would mean exposure, and I can assure you it's surprisingly easy to miss things. I've wasted a good many rounds myself, firing at old rags or bits of wood, or an old cape in the grass among the Boche wire, feeling sure I'd got a sniper. The ground is pretty much torn up, too, you understand, by shells and stuff, and that makes it more difficult.

Well, I was looking out from a little sheltered spot alongside the entrance to what we call Stinking Sap. It has rather a rottener smell than most trenches, I think. And all of a sudden I twigged something that waked me right up. It was nothing much: just a shovel sticking up against a little mound. But it led to other things. A yard away from where this shovel lay the C.O.'s fine glass enabled me to make out a gap in the wet, misty grass. You may be sure I stared jolly hard, and presently the whole thing became clear to me. The Boches had run out a new sap to fully sixty yards from their fire trench, which at this particular point is rather far from ours: over 250 yards, I suppose. It was right opposite our own Stinking Sap, and I suppose the head of it was not more than 100 yards from the head of Stinking Sap. There was no Boche working there then; not a sign of any movement. I made sure of that. Then I got my compass and trench map, and took a very careful bearing. And then I toddled round to Company Headquarters and got hold of "the Peacemaker," without letting Signals know anything about it. If the O.C. liked to let Battalion Headquarters know, that was his business.

Of course, "the Peacemaker" was delighted. "It's perfectly clear they must have cut it last night," he said. "And as sure as God made little apples, they'll be going on with it to-night. Let's see, the moon rises about 9.45. Splendid! They'll get to work as soon as it's dark."

He was awfully decent about it, and agreed to let me go, since I'd had the luck to spot it. As a matter of fact, he did the more important spotting himself. He twigged what I'd overlooked: a whacking big shell-hole, shallow but wide, about fifteen or twenty feet to one side of their sap-head; an absolutely ideal spot for cover, and no more than a hundred yards from the head of Stinking Sap. I decided to take Corporal Slade with me, because he's such a fine bomber, besides being as cool as a cucumber and an all-round good chap. You remember he was with me that time in Master Boche's trench. Somehow, the thing got round before tea-time, and the competition among the men was something awful. When Slade gave it out that I was taking all the men I wanted from No. 1 Platoon, there was actually a fight between one of my lot and a fellow named Ramsay, of No. 3 Platoon; a draper, I'll trouble you, and a pillar of his chapel at home. Then a deputation of the other Platoon Sergeants waited on "the Peacemaker," and in the end, to save bloodshed, I agreed to take Corporal Slade and one man from my own Platoon, and one man from each of the other three Platoons. To call for volunteers for work over the parapet with our lot is perfectly hopeless. You must detail your men, or the whole blessed Company would swarm out over the sticks every time, especially if there's the slightest hint of raiding or bombing.

"The Peacemaker's" idea was that we must reach that shell-hole from the end of Stinking Sap, if possible, before the Boche started work in his new sap, because once he started he'd be sure to have a particularly sharp look-out kept, and might very well have a covering party outside as well. Before it was dark my fellows were champing their bits in Stinking Sap, fretting to be off. If one gave the beggars half a chance they'd be out in the open in broad daylight. But, of course, I kept 'em back. There was no reason why Boche should be in a violent hurry to start work, and I was most anxious he shouldn't suspect that we suspected anything.

As it turned out, we were all lying in that shell-hole close to his new sap for three-quarters of an hour before a single Boche made a move. There was a fine rain all the time, and it was pitch dark. The only thing we didn't like was the fact that all the flares and parachute lights ever made seemed to be being sent up from the Boche line, right alongside this new sap. However, we lay perfectly still and flat, hands covered and faces down, and as long as you do that all the flares in the world won't give you away much, in ground as full of oddments and unevenness as that is.

By and by Slade gave a little tug at my jerkin. I listened hard, and just made out footsteps, probably in the Boche fire trench itself, near the entrance to their new sap. Two or three minutes later we began really to enjoy ourselves. As far as we could make out Fritz hadn't a notion that we were on to his game. Six or eight of 'em came shuffling along the sap, carrying picks and shovels, and jabbering and growling away nineteen to the dozen. We could hear every sound. One fellow, anyhow, was smoking. We got the whiff of that. We could hear 'em spit, and, very nearly, we could hear them breathe. I did wish I knew a little more German than "Donnerwetter" and "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

I could feel the man on my left (the draper from No. 3) quivering like a coursing greyhound in a leash, and had to whisper to him to wait for the word. But Corporal Slade on my right might have been on the barrack square. I saw him use a match to pick his teeth while he listened. I'd rehearsed my fellows letter perfect in our own trench before we started, and when the Boches were fairly under way digging, I gave the signal with my left hand. There was a bomb in my right. Waiting for it as I was, I could distinctly hear the safety-pins come out of our six bombs, and could even hear the breathed murmur of the pugnacious draper at my shoulder:

"A hundred an' one, a hundred an' two, a hundred an' three!" (He was timing the fuse of his bomb, exactly as I'd told 'em.)

And then we tore a big hole in the night. Our six bombs landed, one on the edge and the other five plumb in the sap-head before us, right in the middle of the six or eight Boches digging there. Two seconds after they left our hands they did their job. It was less than two seconds really. And when the rending row was done we heard only one Boche moaning, so I knew that at least six or seven were "gone West" for keeps, and would strafe no more Englishmen.

Now the idea had been that directly our job was done we should bolt for the head of Stinking Sap. But, while we'd been lying there, it had occurred to me that the Boches, knowing all about what distance bombs could be thrown, and that we must be lying in the open near their sap-head, ought to be able to sweep that ground with machine-gun fire before we could get to Stinking Sap, and that, having done that, they would surely send a whole lot more men down their new sap, to tackle what was left of us that way. Therefore I'd made each of my fellows carry four bombs in his pockets: twenty-four among the lot of us. And we'd only used six. Quite enough, too, for the Boches in that sap. Therefore, again, we now lay absolutely still, and just as close as wax, while Fritz rained parachute lights, stars, flares, and every kind of firework in the sky, and, just as I had fancied, swept his sap-head with at least a thousand rounds of machine-gun bullets, not one of which so much as grazed us, where we lay spread-eagled in the mud of that shell-hole.

And then--dead silence.

"Get your bombs ready, lads," I told my fellows. In another few seconds we heard the Boches streaming along their narrow new sap. They took it for granted we had cleared back to our line, and they made no attempt to disguise their coming. In fact, from the rate at which they rushed along that narrow ditch I could almost swear that some came without rifles or anything. We waited till the near end of the sap was full, and then: "A hundred and one," etc. We gave 'em our second volley, and immediately on top of it our third. It must have been a regular shambles. Slade and I, by previous arrangement, lobbed ours over as far as ever we could to the left, landing quite near the beginning of the sap, and so getting the Boches who were only just leaving their own fire trench. Then I laid my hand on the draper to prevent his throwing, and Slade and the other three gave their last volley, and bolted full pelt for Stinking Sap.

There was no bucking at all in the part of the sap near us. The Boches there wouldn't trouble anyone any more, I fancy. But a few seconds after Slade disappeared, we heard a fresh lot start on their way down the sap from their fire trench. We gave 'em up to about "A hundred and three" and a half, and then we let 'em have our last two bombs, well to the left, and ourselves made tracks like greased lightning for Stinking Sap. The luck held perfectly, and Slade was hauling the draper in over the parapet of Stinking Sap before a sound came from the Boches' machine-guns. And then, by Gad! they opened on us. They holed my oilskin coat for me, as I slid in after Ramsay, and spoiled it. I've jotted it down against 'em and in due course they shall pay. But not one of my crowd got a scratch, and we reckon to have accounted for at the very least twenty Boches, maybe double that--a most splendid lark.

What makes "B" Company rather mad is that, strictly speaking, this new Boche sap is a shade nearer their line than ours. The C.O. came up to look at it this morning, on the strength of our O.C.'s morning situation report, and was most awfully nice to me about it. He said we did well to wait for the Boches' coming down from their line after our first scoop, and that plans must be made to fit circumstances, and not held to be ends in themselves, and all that kind of thing--initiative, you know, and so on--very nice indeed he was. And the best of it is our artillery has registered on that sap this morning, and this afternoon is just about going to blow it across the Rhine. So altogether "A" Company is feeling pretty good, if you please, and has its tail well up. So has your

"_Temporary Gentleman_."

OVER THE PARAPET

We are back again in billets, but so close to the line this time that it's more like being in support trenches. That is to say, one hears all the firing, and knows just what is happening in the line all the time. Also, we do carrying fatigues in the trenches at night. Still, it's billets, and not bad. One can get a bath, and one can sleep dry. I must tell you about billets sometime. At the moment the letter from you lying in front of me contains clear orders. I am to tell you what patrolling is--quite a big order.

Well, there are many different kinds of patrols, you know, but so far as we are concerned, here in trenches, they boil down to two sorts: observation patrols and fighting patrols, such as bombing and raiding parties. It's all night work, of course, since one cannot do anything over the parapet by day without getting shot; anything, that is, except a regular attack preceded by bombardment of the Boche lines. On the whole, I think it's about the most interesting part of our work, and I think it's safe to say it's a part in which our fellows can run rings round the Boches. In masses (well primed with rum; ether and oxygen, too, they say) the Boche can do great things. He will advance, as it were blindly, in the face of any kind of fire you like; even the kind that accounts for sixty or seventy per cent. of him in a hundred yards. But when he comes to act as an individual, or in little groups, as in patrolling--well, we don't think much of him. We think our worst is better than his best in all that sort of work. I'm perfectly certain that, man for man, the British and French troops are more formidable, harder to beat, better men all round, than the Boche.

The first kind of patrol I mentioned--observation--is part and parcel of our everyday routine in the firing line. This kind goes out every night, and often several times during the night, from every Company. Its main objective is observation: to get any information it can about the doings of the Hun, and to guard our line against surprise moves of any sort. But, though that's its main object, it does not go unarmed, of course, and, naturally, will not refuse a scrap if the chance comes. But it differs from a bombing or raiding patrol in that it does not go out for the purpose of fighting, and as a rule is not strong, numerically; usually not more than about half a dozen in the party. In some Companies observation patrols are often sent out under a good N.C.O. and no officer. We make a point of sending an officer always; not that we can't trust our N.C.O.'s; they're all right; but we talked it over, and decided we would rather one of us always went. As I said, it's interesting work, and work with possibilities of distinction in it, and we're all pretty keen on it. Every Company in the Battalion is. (Boche patrols, one gathers, hardly ever include an officer.)

With us, it is decided during the afternoon just what we are going to do that night in the patrol line, and the officer whose turn it is chooses his own men and N.C.O.'s. And within limits, you know, "the Peacemaker" lets us work out our own plans pretty much as we like, providing there's no special thing he wants done. It often happens, you see, that during daylight the sentries or the officer on duty have been able to make out with glasses some signs of work being done at night by the Boche, in his front line, or in a sap or a communication trench. Then that night it will be the job of the patrols to investigate that part of the opposite line very carefully. Perhaps half a dozen Boches will be found working somewhere where our patrol can wipe 'em out by lobbing a few bombs among 'em. That's a bit of real jam for the patrol. Or, again, they may observe something quite big: fifty to a hundred Boches carrying material and building an emplacement, or something of that kind. Then it will be worth while to get back quickly, having got an exact bearing on the spot, and warn the O.C. Company. He may choose to turn a couple of machine-guns loose suddenly on that spot, or he may find it better to telephone to Battalion Headquarters and let them know about it, so that, if they like, they can get our "heavies" turned on, and liven the Boche job up with a good shower of H.E., to smash the work, after a few rounds of shrap. to lay out the workers.

Then, again, if you all keep your eyes jolly well skinned, there's a sporting chance of getting another kind of luck. You may spot a Boche patrol while you're crawling about in No Man's Land. "B" Company had the luck to do that three nights ago, and our fellows are so envious now they all want to be patrolling at once; it's as much as one can do to keep them in the trench. They're simply aching to catch a Boche patrol out, and put the wind up "B." You see "B" lost two out of a Boche patrol of six; killing three and taking one prisoner. "A" can't say anything about it, of course, because we've not had the luck yet to see a Boche patrol. But God help its members when we do, for I assure you our fellows would rather die half a dozen times over than fail to wipe "B's" eye. It's the way they happen to be built. They don't wish the Boche any particular harm, but if they can get within sight of a Boche patrol, that patrol has just got to be scuppered without any possible chance of a couple getting clear. The performance of "B" has just got to be beaten, and soon.

Honestly, it isn't easy to hold these chaps back. The observation patrol I was out with the night before we came out of the trenches really needed holding. There were no Boche patrols for them to scupper, and just to humour the beggars I kept 'em out nearly an hour longer than I had any right to; and then, if you'll believe me, they were so disappointed at having to head back with nothing in the bag, so to say, that the Corporal was deputed to beg my permission for a little raid on the Huns' front trench. And there were just five of us, all told; our only weapons knobkerries and two bombs each, and my revolver and dagger.

By the way, the survivor of the Hun patrol that "B" rounded up was not the first prisoner taken by the Battalion. No; we had that honour nearly a week ago. A queer episode that, on our second night in. There was a bit of line on our extreme right which was neither for use nor ornament; a horrible place. It had been all blown in by trench mortars and oil-cans, and hardly had a strand of unbroken wire in front of it. (You may be sure it's in different shape now. We worked at it for two nights in succession, and made a good job of it.) Well, it was so bad for fifty yards or so that sentries could not occupy it properly; no fire-step left, and no cover worth speaking of. Taffy Morgan was nosing about in front of this bit just after dark, out beyond where the wire had been, marking places for new entanglements, when he spotted a big Boche patrol making slowly up that way from their front. They were fifteen or twenty strong.

Taffy lay very low, and crawled back into our line without being seen. Then he raced down the trench for his pet machine-gun--a Lewis, you know--and got it along there with a Corporal and a couple of machine-gunners in rather less than no time. By then the messenger he had sent off had got back with "the Peacemaker" and myself and the Sergeant-Major. We all kept as quiet as mice till we were able to make out the movement of the Boche patrol. We let them get fairly close--thirty or forty yards--and then let blaze at 'em, firing just as low as we could.

I suppose we gave 'em about four hundred rounds. We heard a bit of moaning after "the Peacemaker" gave the word to cease fire, and then, to our amazement, a Hun talking, apparently to another Boche, telling him to come on, and calling him some kind of a bad hat. I tell you, it was queer to listen to. The Boche who was doing the talking appeared to have worked a good bit down to the left of the bunch we had fired at, and had evidently got into our wire. We could hear him floundering among the tin cans.

"Don't fire," said "the Peacemaker." "We'll maybe get this chap alive." And, sure enough, the Boche began singing out to us now, asking first of all whether we were Prussian, and then trying a few phrases in French, including a continuously repeated: "Je suis fatigué!"

Most extraordinary it was. "The Peacemaker" couldn't tell him we were Prussian, but he kept inviting the fellow to come in, and telling him we wouldn't hurt him. Finally I took a man out and lugged the chap in out of the wire myself. We got tired of his floundering, and I guess he must have been tired of it too, for he was pretty badly cut by it. He had no rifle; nothing but a dagger; and the moment I got him into our trench he began catting all over the place; most deadly sick he was.

We led him off down the trench to the S.M.'s dug-out and gave him a drink of tea, and washed the wire cuts on his face and hands. He was a poor starveling-looking kind of a chap; a bank clerk from Heidelberg, as it turned out afterwards, and a Corporal. He told us he'd had nothing but rum, but we thought him under the influence of some drug; some more potent form of Dutch courage, such as the Huns use before leaving their trenches. Our M.O. told us afterwards he was very poorly nourished. We blindfolded him and took him down to Battalion Headquarters, and from there he would be sent on to the Brigade. We never knew if they got any useful information out of him; but he was the Battalion's first prisoner. The other Boches we got in that night were dead. That burst of M.G. fire had laid them out pretty thoroughly, nine of 'em; and a small patrol we kept out there wounded three or four more who came much later--I suppose to look for their own wounded.

There's a creepy kind of excitement about patrol work which makes it fascinating. If there's any light at all, you never know who's drawing a bead on you. If there's no light, you never know what you're going to bump into at the next step. It's very largely hands-and-knees' work, and our chaps just revel in it. My first, as you know, landed me in the Boche trenches; and that's by no means a very uncommon thing either, though it ought never to happen if you have a good luminous-faced compass and the sense to refer to it often enough. My second patrol was a bit more successful. I'll tell you about that next time. Meanwhile, I hope what I've said will make you fancy you know roughly what patrol work is, though, to be sure, I feel I haven't given you the real thing the way Taffy could if he set out to write about it. He could write it almost better perhaps than he could do it. He's a wee bit too jerky and impulsive, too much strung up rather, for patrol work. My thick-headed sort of plodding is all right on patrol; suits the men first-rate. I suppose it kind of checks the excitement and keeps it within bounds. But you mark my words, our fellows will get a Boche patrol before long, and when they do I'll wager they won't lose any of 'em.

We're going to play a team of "B" Company at football to-morrow afternoon, if the Boche doesn't happen to be running an artillery strafe. We play alongside the cemetery, and for some unknown reason the Boche gunners seem to be everlastingly ranging on it, as though they wanted to keep our dead from resting. We're all as fit and jolly as can be, especially your

"_Temporary Gentleman_."

THE NIGHT PATROL

Here in billets the amount of letter-writing the men do is something appalling--for the officers who have to censor their letters. As you know, our training in England included some time in four different parts of the country, and our fellows have sweethearts in each place. And they seem to get parcels from most of 'em, too. Then there are the home letters. They all describe their writers as being "in the pink," and getting on "champion," as, I believe, I told you before.

My billet--or, rather, our billet, for all "A" Company officers are under the one roof here--is in the church house, and there's a candlestick three feet high in the bedroom I share with Taffy. There's no glass in the windows, and the roof at one end has had a shell through it, and so the room gets a bit swampy. Otherwise, the place is all right. Our own batteries near by shake it up at times, and the shell-holes, in the road outside show it's had some very narrow squeaks; but neither it nor the church has suffered very much, though they stand well up on a hill, less than half a mile from our support line of trenches, which the Battalion billeted here mans in event of alarm--gas attack, you know, or anything of that sort. So while we're here we sleep fully equipped at night. But in our next week out, at the village farther back, we are more luxurious, and undress of a night.

But I promised to tell you about that second patrol of mine. We were greatly interested in some kind of an erection we could see just behind the Boche front line on our left. All we could see was sand-bags; but, somehow, it looked too big and massive for a mere machine-gun emplacement, and we were all most anxious to find out what it could be. So "the Peacemaker" agreed that I should take a patrol that night and try to investigate. This was the first patrol we sent out as a Company in the line on our own. My first was when we were in with another Company for instruction, you know, and they apparently had not noticed this sand-bag structure. At all events, they made no report to "the Peacemaker" about it when we took over.

The moon was not due to rise till about eleven that night, so I decided to go out at nine. The Company Sergeant-Major asked if he could come, so I arranged to take him and one Platoon scout from each Platoon. They had none of them been out as yet, and we wanted them to have practice. Getting out into No Man's Land marks a distinct epoch in a man's training for trench warfare, you know. If it happens that he has some considerable time in trenches without ever going over the parapet, he's apt to be jumpy when he does get out. I fancy that must be one reason why the Boches make such a poor show in the matter of individual effort of an aggressive sort. They're so trench-bound that their men seem no use out of trenches, except in massed formation.

Don't make any mistake about it; there's some excuse for a man being jumpy over the parapet when he's never had a chance of getting accustomed to it. That's why I think our O.C. is very wise in the way he tries to give all the men a turn at work over the parapet, wiring, patrolling, improving saps, and what not: because it's a pretty eerie business until you get used to it. Behind our line you have graves and crosses, and comparatively friendly things of all kinds--rubbish, you know, and oddments discarded by fellow humans no longer ago than a matter of hours. But out in No Man's Land, of course, the dominant factor is the swift, death-dealing bullet, and the endless mass of barbed-wire entanglements which divides Boches from Britons and Frenchmen for so many hundreds of miles. There are plenty of dead things out there, but, barring the rats, when you get any other movement in No Man's Land you may reckon it's enemy movement: creeping men with bombs and daggers, who may have been stalking you or may not have seen you. But it wouldn't do to reckon much on anyone's not having seen you, because if there's one place in the world in which every man's ears and eyes are apt to be jolly well open it's out there in the slimy darkness of No Man's Land.

You may very well chance to stick your hand in the upturned face of a far-gone corpse, as I did my first time out; but if you do so you mustn't shiver--far less grunt--because shivering may make your oilskin coat or something else rustle, and draw fire on you and your party. So a man needs to have his wits about him when he's over the parapet, and the cooler he keeps and the more deliberate are his movements the better for all concerned. One needn't loaf, but, on the other hand, it's rather fatal to hurry, and quite fatal to flurry, especially when you're crawling among wire with loose strands of it and "giant gooseberries" of the prickly stuff lying round in all directions on the ground to catch your hands and knees and hold you up. If you lose your head or do anything to attract attention, your number's pretty well up. But, on the other hand, if you keep perfectly cool and steady, making no sound whatever happens, and lying perfectly flat and still while Boche flares are up or their machine-guns are trying to locate you, it's surprising how very difficult it is for the Hun to get you, and what an excellent chance you have of returning to your own line with a whole skin.

I had an exact compass bearing on the spot we wanted to investigate, taken from the sap on our left from which we were starting. "The Peacemaker" ran his own hands over the men of the party before we climbed out, to make sure everyone had remembered to leave all papers and things of that sort behind. (One goes pretty well stripped for these jobs, to avoid anything useful falling perchance into Boche hands.) We each carried a couple of bombs, the men had knobkerries, and I had revolver and dagger, to be on the safe side. But we were out for information, not scrapping.

It was beautifully dark, and, starting from a sap-head, clear of our own wire, we crossed the open very quickly, hardly so much as stooping, till we were close to the Boche wire, when a burst of machine-gun fire from them sent us to ground. The Companies on each flank in our line had been warned we were out. This is always done to prevent our own men firing at us. Such little fire as was coming from our line was high, and destined for the Boche support lines and communications; nothing to hurt us.

Now, when we began crawling through the Boche wire I made the sort of mistake one does make until experience teaches. I occupied myself far too much with what was under my nose, and too little with what lay ahead--and too little with my compass. To be sure, there's a good deal in the Boche wire which rather forces itself upon the attention of a man creeping through it on hands and knees. The gooseberries and loose strands are the devil. Still, it is essential to keep an eye on the compass, and to look ahead, as well as on the ground under one's nose, lest you over-shoot your mark or drop off diagonally to one side or the other of it. I know a good deal better now. But one has no business to make even one mistake, if one's a "Temporary Officer and Gentleman," because one's men have been taught to follow and trust one absolutely, and it's hardly ever only one's own safety that's at stake.

Suddenly I ran my face against the side of a "giant gooseberry" with peculiarly virulent prongs, and in that moment a bullet whizzed low over my head, and--here's the point--the bolt of the rifle from which that bullet came was pulled back and jammed home for the next shot--as it seemed right in my ear. We all lay perfectly flat and still. I could feel the Sergeant-Major's elbow just touching my left hip. Very slowly and quietly I raised my head enough to look round the side of that "giant gooseberry," and instinct made me look over my right shoulder.

We were less than ten paces from the Boche parapet. The great, jagged black parados, like a mountain range on a theatre drop scene, hung right over my shoulder against a sky which seemed now to have a most deadly amount of light in it. I was lying almost in a line with it, instead of at right angles to it. Just then, the sentry who had fired gave a little cough to clear his throat. It seemed he was actually with us. Then he fired again. I wondered if he had a bead on the back of my head. He was not directly opposite us, but a dozen paces or so along the line.

Now, by the queer twisty feeling that went down my spine when my eyes first lighted on that grim black line of parados just over my shoulder, I guessed how my men might be feeling. "Little blame to them if they show some panic," thinks I. I turned my face left, so as to look down at the Sergeant-Major's over my left shoulder. He'd seen that towering parados against the sky, and heard that sentry's cough and the jamming home of his rifle bolt. By twisting my head I brought my face close to the S.M.'s, and could see that he fancied himself looking right into his own end. I had to think quick. I know that man's mind like the palm of my hand, and I now know his splendid type: the English ex-N.C.O. of Marines, with later service in the Metropolitan Police--a magnificent blend. I also know the wonderful strength of his influence over the men, to whom he is experienced military professionalism, expertness incarnate. At present he felt we had come upon disaster.

"My Gawd, sir!" he breathed at me. "Why, we're on top of 'em!"

That was where I thought quick, and did a broad grin as I whispered to him: "Pretty good for a start--a damn fine place, Sergeant-Major. But we'll manage to get a bit nearer before we leave 'em, won't we?"

It worked like a charm, and I thanked God for the fine type he represents. It was as though his mind was all lighted up, and I could see the thoughts at work in it. "Oh, come! so it's all right, after all. My officer's quite pleased. He knew all about it and it's just what he wanted; so that's all right." These were the thoughts. And from that moment the S.M. began to regard the whole thing as a rather creditable lark, though the pit of his stomach had felt queer, as well it might, for a moment. And the wonderful thing was--there must be something in telepathy, you know--that this change seemed to communicate itself almost instantly to the men--bless their simple souls!--crouched round about behind. I'd no time to think of the grimness of it, after that. A kind of heat seemed to spread all over me from inside, and I had been cold. I think a mother must feel like that when danger threatens her kiddies. The thought in my mind was: "I've brought these fellows here in carelessness. I'll get 'em back with whole skins or I'll die at it."

I never had any Hymn of Hate feeling in my life, but I think I'd have torn half a dozen Boches in pieces with my hands before I'd have let 'em get at any of those chaps of mine that night.