Chapter II: Part 2

We’re having a beastly time as compared with the Belgian refugees and the German prisoners in England. We’re beginning to wonder if we are ever going to the front. There is now some talk of billeting us in Bristol. We’ve been under arms nearly five months and should be good fighting material by now. With a similar number of men the Germans would have done something by this time.

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All the last week the selected few of us have been working separately on a course of work to qualify us for commissions. We have had to study hard every spare minute when not drilling each other.

Several dogs have attached themselves to us; sometimes they find themselves on a piece of string, the other end being in a man’s hand. One of these, a big bull terrier, sleeps in the canteen. The beer is quite safe with him there, but two nights ago the canteen tent, after a great struggle, tore itself off the tent-poles and went fifteen feet up in the air like a balloon, then collapsed. The dog, I regret to say, did not stay at his post, so a quantity of beer will have to be marked down as lost. This same bull has a pal, a white bull terrier, who came out with the officers’ class the other morning. We had not been drilling more than fifteen minutes when he came back with a large rabbit. We stewed it at night. It certainly was good.

One of the mechanics has forged an Iron Cross which has been presented to the dog in recognition of his services.

I doubt if I shall ever be able to sit up to a table again regularly. I would much sooner sleep on the floor, and I have found, when on leave, that I preferred sitting on a hearthrug to a chair. Even while writing this I am lying on my blankets. My pipe is burnt down on one side from lighting it from my candle.

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To-day being Sunday and as there were only two of us left in the tent, the others being on leave, we gave it a thorough spring cleaning. It needed it! By some oversight the sun came out to-day, so that helped. We also washed up all our canteens and pannikins with disinfectant.

The infantry are bayonet-fighting and practicing charges every day. If you want a thrill, see them coming over the top at you with a yell; the bayonets catch the light and flash in a decidedly menacing fashion. They practice on dummies, and are so enthusiastic that they need new dummies almost every lesson.

Every man, on becoming a soldier, becomes a man with a number and an identification disk. My number is 45555 and my “cold meat ticket,” a tag made of red fiber, is hanging round my neck on a piece of string.

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We’re packing up and expect to go away next week. Of course, it may be another bluff, but somehow I think we really are going now, as we have been fitted out with a “field service-dressing,” a packet containing two bandages and safety pins, which we have to sew into the right-hand bottom corner of our tunics. We have also been given our active service pay book, a little account book in which we have our pay entered. We don’t get paid much in the field. We carry this book instead.

It seems always cold and wet. We are very hardened. We look tough and feel that way. I haven’t had a bath for a month. Since I have been soldiering I have done every dirty job that there is in the army, and there are many. Often when a job seemed to be too dirty and too heavy for anybody else, they looked around for Keene and Pat.

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“On guard.” Writing this in the guard tent, when we are not actually on sentry. We keep all our equipment on, as we are liable to be called out at any minute. We sleep with our belts and revolvers in place.

A quarter guard is three men and a noncom. The men do two hours on and four off. When it comes to a man’s turn he has to be on his beat no matter what the weather is like during the day or night. The cold is pretty bad and occasionally it snows. Some units have sentry boxes, but we haven’t. We use a bell tent. I was called this morning at five o’clock to do my sentry from five to seven. The small oil stove which serves to heat the guard tents had evidently been smoking for an hour, and over everything was a thick film of lamp-black. Everybody thought it a great joke until they looked at themselves in the mirror and caught sight of their own equipment. We must come off guard as clean as we go on. I got out quickly and left them swearing and cleaning up.

From five to seven is the most interesting relief. I had first to wake the cooks at five o’clock and then I watched the gradual waking up of the camp. At six o’clock I had to wake the orderly sergeants and then far away in the distance the first bugle sounded reveille, then it was taken up all around and gradually the camps all over the Plains woke up. Men came out of the tents, the calls for the “fall in” sounded, and the rolls were called and the usual business of the day commenced. The change from the deadness of the night with its absolute stillness all takes place in a very short time. To a person with any imagination it seems rather wonderful. You must remember that we can see for miles, and in every direction there are hundreds of tents. Each battalion is separate, and they have great spaces between them; still wherever you look you can see tents.

I wonder if I told you that aeroplanes are all the time flying over our camp. With characteristic British frankness they always have two huge Union Jacks painted on the undersides of the wings. We have become so used to them that we scarcely trouble to look up unless they are doing stunts.

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The frost makes a fine grip for the cars; when the ground freezes over we can take the cars anywhere, but unfortunately it thaws again too quickly. As we are a motor battery we are of course a mile from the road, and sometimes it takes an hour and a half to get on to it.

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It is a howling night, wind and rain galore. I’m wondering how long the tent will last. I have been out three times already to look at the tent pegs. How often it has been so since we first came on to these plains. If you are living in tents you notice the changes in weather more than under ordinary circumstances, and every rain-storm has meant wet feet for us. But now we have been given new black boots, magnificent things, huge, heavy “ammunition boots,” and the wonderful thing is they don’t let water in. They are very big and look like punts, but it’s dry feet now. I can tell you I am as pleased with them as if some one had given me a present of cold cash. At first they felt something like the Dutch sabots. They seemed absolutely unbendable and so we soaked them with castor-oil. Once they become moulded to the feet they are fine. Of course they are not pretty, but they keep the wet out.

We have had new tunics issued to us of the regular English pattern, much more comfortable than our other original ones, and then instead of the hard cap we now have a soft one, something like a big golf cap with the flap on to pull down over the ears. These are much more comfortable. They have one great advantage over the old kind—we can sleep in them. We can now lie down in our complete outfits even to our hats. Once I considered it a hardship to sleep in my clothes. Now to go to bed we don’t undress; we put on clothes.

I managed to get a pass to Salisbury on Saturday and went to the local vaudeville show. In the row in front of me were several young officers of the British Army, and it was striking what a clean-cut lot they were. England is certainly giving of her best. They were not very much different from any others, but at the same time they are the type of Englishmen who have done things in the past and will do things again. They are all Kitchener’s Army. Thousands of men who have never been in the army before threw up everything to go in the ranks. You see side by side professors, laborers, lawyers, doctors, stevedores, carters, all classes, rich and poor, a great democratic army, drilling to fight so that this may be a decent world to live in.

At present it is almost impossible to use each man in his own profession as they do in Germany, but sometimes the non-commissioned officers work it out in this way.

Sergeant to squad of recruits:—

“Henybody ’ere know anythink abart cars?”

“Yes; I do. I own a Rolls Royce.”

“Olright; fall out and clean the major’s motor bike.”

One patriotic mother who had a son who was a butcher did her best to get him to join the Royal Army Medical Corps, because he was proficient at cutting up meat and would feel quite at home assisting at amputations.

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Now that we are approaching the time for our departure to France we are hearing that favorite farewell to all men going to the front, “Good-bye, I’ll look every day for your name in the casualty list.”

The “Princess Pats” have already been in action. They had a hard fight and many of them have been put out of business. We envied them when they went away and still do, although it only seems yesterday that we were lying together here and now a number of them are lying “somewhere in France.”

The jam-making firm of Tickler was awarded a huge contract for the supply of “Tommy’s” daily four ounces of jam; either plum and apple were the cheapest combination or else the crop of these two fruits must have been enormous, because every single tin of jam that went to the training camps, France, Dardanelles, or Mesopotamia, was of this mixture.

We became so tired of it that we used the unopened tins to make borders of flower-beds, or we used them to make stepping-stones across puddles. Eventually the world’s supply of plums and apples having been used up, the manufacturers were forced to use strawberries.

In the army all food is handled by the Army Service Corps, and as soon as they found real jam coming through they took it for their own and still forwarded on to us their reserve “plum and apple.” The news got around amongst the fighting units: result—the Army Service Corps is now known as the “Strawberry Jam Pinchers.”

Reviewed by King George V, and it was indeed a very impressive sight. Although there were only twenty thousand troops, they seemed endless. During the time that the King was on the parade ground in company with Lord Kitchener, two aeroplanes kept guard in the sky. Our K. of K. is a big, fine man who looks the part. An inspection by the King is always a sure sign of a unit’s impending departure. He traveled down on the new railway which had just been built by the defaulters of the Canadian Contingent.

At the last minute I managed to get weekend leave and went to London. No Canadians there! I caught sight of a military picket, sergeant and twelve men, looking for stray ones, though. Another picket held me up and made me button my greatcoat. I did! It isn’t clever to argue with pickets at any time!

The train was three hours late. Troops’ trains were occupying the lines. From Bulford we walked home in a hail-storm. Got in about five o’clock just as the reveille was blowing in the other lines. They were just leaving for the front, and had made great fires where they were burning up rubbish and stuff they couldn’t take with them. Tons of it! Chairs, mattresses, and tables. When we move, everything except equipment has to be discarded. We can’t do anything with extras. We have to cut our own stuff down to the very smallest dimensions. I walked through the lines afterward of other battalions who had left, and I saw fold-up bedsteads, uniforms, equipment, books, buckets, washing-bowls, cartridges and stoves of every conceivable kind and shape; hundreds, from the single “Beatrice” to the big tiled heaters. Some tents were half full of blankets thrown in, others with harness. All the government stuff is collected, but private stuff is burnt.

In the army you soon realize that you have to make yourself comfortable your own way. I don’t hesitate to take anything. If I have on a pair of puttees which are a bit worn and I find a new pair,—well, I just calmly yet cautiously annex them and discard the old ones. We found a barrel of beer had been left by one of the other units, so we carefully carried the prize to our lines and then tapped it. Zowie! It was a beer barrel all right, only it was filled with linseed oil.

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Thank the Lord!! Under a roof, sitting on a real chair; tablecloth, plates; and I’m dry. We have come to Wilton (of carpet fame) and I’m in a billet. I have a real bed to sleep in. Last night I lay on the floor of a mildewed tent; couldn’t sleep on account of the cold. To-night I sleep between sheets, and the wonderful thing is that I’m not on leave.

We drove our cars down here, each of us hoping that we would never again see Bustard Camp, Salisbury Plain, as long as we lived; it had been our home for five months. Yesterday we felt like mutiny; to-day every one is smiling. As soon as we were “told off” Pat and I went to our billet, a nice clean little house close to the center of the town. The owner is a baker. I felt kind of uncomfortable with my boots and clothes plastered up with mud, but the good lady said, “Don’t ’e mind, come in, bless you; I’ve ’ad soldiers afore. The last one ’e said as ’ow he couldn’t sleep it were so quiet ’ere.”

I had a wash (this is Friday night), the first since Wednesday morning. The idea of having as much water as you want, without having to go a half mile over a swamp, pleased me so much that I used about six basinsful in the scullery.

When the lady of the house asked us _what_ we would _like_ to eat, we both fainted. I’m afraid we’re going to get spoiled here. Couldn’t sleep at first. Cold sheets and having all my clothes off—too great a strain! Had breakfast and then drove our cars to the canal, where we scrubbed and washed them down inside and out.

This afternoon I’ve been into every shop I could find, chiefly to talk to people who are not soldiers. Even went into the church to look around and listened to the parrotlike description of the place by the sexton.

Everybody is happy, and although it has rained ever since we have been here, we haven’t noticed it yet. I may say there are four or five kids, and the whole house could be packed into our front room. Still, “gimme a billet any time.”

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I have just received the news that I have been given a Second Lieutenancy in the Motor Machine Gun Service, Royal Field Artillery, and I go into camp at Bisley at once. I am very glad that before being an officer I have been a private, because I now have the latter’s point of view. I am going to try hard to be a good officer; promotion always means more work and responsibility,—so here goes.

I have been very busy lately training my new section, and we are now part of the 12th Battery, Motor Machine Guns, 17th Division British Expeditionary Force, leaving to-day for the “Great Adventure.”

Somewhere in France. At last we are here. We landed at a place the name of which I am not allowed to mention, and were then taken by a guide to a “Rest Camp” about two miles from the docks. If they had called it a garbage dump I shouldn’t have been surprised. You would be very much surprised with the France of to-day. Everybody speaks English; smart khaki soldiers in thousands everywhere.

Already I have seen men who have been gassed and the hospitals here are full of wounded. Our troops are arriving all day and night and marching away. English money is taken here, but French is more satisfactory as you are likely to get done on the change. The officers have a mess here just as in England. Actually we are farther away from the firing line than we were in camp at Bisley; but we leave to-day on our machines going direct to it. There was a transport torpedoed just outside; they managed to beach her just in time. The upper decks and masts are sticking up above water.

Since I last wrote anything in this diary we have ridden over one hundred and ten miles by road towards the firing line. All day yesterday it poured. The country was beautiful, ripening corn everywhere, the villages are full of old half-timbered houses, the roads are all national roads built for war purposes by Napoleon, and run straight; on either side are tall, poplar shade trees, so that the roads run through endless avenues.

At night we stayed in a quaint village inn. The men all slept in a loft over their machines. Our soaked clothes were put in the kitchen to dry, but owing to the number of them, they just warmed up by the morning. One officer has to follow in the rear of every unit to pick up the stragglers. I had to bring up the rear of the column to-day—result: I didn’t get in until early in the morning, only to find the other subalterns “sawing wood.”

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Yesterday was the French National Day. We were cheered as we rode along, and women and children smothered us with flowers. In the morning a funeral of two small children passed us. Our battery commander called the battery to attention and officers saluted. The priest was two days overdue with his shave—soldiers notice things like that, you know.

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To-day we continued our ride; the weather was much better—dried our clothes by wearing them. Strange to run through Normandy villages and suddenly come across British Tommies—many of them speaking French. A Royal Navy car has just passed us; our navy seems omnipresent. I saw an old woman reading a letter by the side of an old farmhouse to some old people, evidently from a soldier, probably their son. It reminded me a great deal of one of Millet’s pictures. Every one thinks of the war here and nothing but the war; it’s not “Business as Usual.”

We stay here one night and move away to-morrow. We can hear the guns faintly.

The three section officers, myself and two others, are sleeping in a hut together. It is one of these new collapsible kind, very convenient. We are now all in bed. Outside the only sound we can hear is the sentries challenging and the mosquitoes singing.

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All males are soldiers in France, even the old men. They look very fine in their blue uniforms, but I have a prejudice for our khaki Tommies. We get good food as we travel, but pay war prices for it. Cherries are now in season; we don’t pay for them, however.

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Rode another sixty miles to-day. A car smashed into the curb, cannoned off and ran over me, busting my machine up. The front wheel went over my leg. My revolver and leather holster saved me from a fracture, but I got badly bruised up. I was very scared that I should not be able to go “up” with the Battery. It would be almost a disgrace to go back broken up by a car without even getting a whack at the Boche. Had to ride later on another machine twenty-five miles through the night without lights, in a blinding rain.

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Everything interesting. Should like to have a camera with me. I had to post mine back. So many things are done in the British Army by putting a man on his honor. They just ask you to do things. They don’t order you to do it. It was that way with me; they merely “asked” me to post my camera back.

Great powerful cars rush by here all day and all night, regardless of speed limits. Every hour or so you see a convoy of twenty or thirty motor lorries in line bringing up ammunition or supplies, or coming back empty. Every point bristles with sentries who demand passes. If you are not able to answer satisfactorily, they just shoot. The French soldiers have magnificent uniforms; the predominating color is a sort of cobalt blue. To see sentries, French and British together, they make quite a nice color scheme.

Officers censor all letters. I censor sometimes fifty letters a day. One man put in a letter to-day, “I can’t write anything endearing in this, as my section officer will read it.” Another, “I enclose ten shillings. Very likely you will not receive this, as my officer has to censor this letter.” Of course we don’t have time to read all the letters through. We look for names of places and numbers of divisions, brigades, etc., but I couldn’t help noticing that one of my men, whom I have long suspected of being a Don Juan, had by one mail written exactly the same letter to five different girls in England, altering only the addresses and the affectionate beginnings.

The village in which I am now was visited last September by twelve German officers who came through in motor cars; the villagers cried, “Vivent les Anglais,” for not having seen an English soldier they took it for granted that the “Tommy” had come.

Everybody goes armed to the teeth. I have my belt, a regular Christmas tree for hanging things on, with revolver and cartridges on even while I’m writing this. We carry a lot, but we soon get used to it.

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The corn is being cut now. Through the window opposite I can see it standing in newly-stacked sheaves. These places are the favorite sketching grounds of artists in normal times, and I often wonder if they ever will be again.

We return salutes with all the French and Belgian officers. It is difficult sometimes to distinguish them. I got fooled by a Belgian postman, and then went to work and cut a French general.

The nearer we get to the firing line the finer the type of soldier. They are the magnificent Britishers of Kitchener’s First Army. It makes you proud to see them marching by, dirty and wet with sweat. I watched two battalions come through; they had marched twenty miles through the sun with new issue boots; a few of them had fallen out, and other men and officers were carrying their equipment and rifles; many of the officers carried two rifles.

I am now well within sound of the guns. A German Taube was shelled as it came over our firing line yesterday. One man was lying on his back asleep with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the “Archies” hit him in the stomach—result: one blasphemous, indignant casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at any time now.

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I have been over into Belgium to-day: crossed the frontier on my motor bike; the roads are terrible, all this beastly “pavé” cobblestones; awful stuff to ride over on a motor cycle. Shell holes on both sides of the road, and I saw three graves in the corner of a hop garden. All along the road there were dozens and dozens of old London motor buses, taking men to the trenches. They still have the advertisements on them and are driven by the bus-drivers themselves. Three hundred came over with their own machines. They are now soldiers. The observation balloon I mentioned yesterday was shelled down to-day.

I am writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I’m sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have been filled in, all the wreckage cleared, and they have a new mayor.

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It is not yet 7 A.M. I am an orderly officer and have to take the men out for a run at six. I came back and bought a London “Daily Mail” of yesterday from a country-woman. We are at least three miles from the town, but they are enterprising enough to bring papers to us at this time in the morning. A “Daily Mail” costs four cents.

Since I last wrote I have been up to the front line. Everything is different from what you imagine. The German trenches are easily distinguished through glasses; their sand-bags are multi-colored. Shrapnel was bursting over ruins of an old town in their lines. When you look through a periscope at the wilderness, it is difficult to imagine that thousands of soldiers on both sides have burrowed themselves into the earth. The evidence of their alertness is shown by their snipers, who are always busy whenever the target is up.

A battery of eight-inch howitzers was opening fire. Our battery commander, hearing this, sent us up. The guns, big fellows, were well concealed. They were painted in protective colors and covered with screens of branches to prevent aerial observation. In the grounds all over the place were dug-outs, deep rabbit burrows, ten or twelve feet down, into which everybody went immediately. The Germans started their “hate.” The firing is done by hand cord; other big guns are fired electrically. An enormous flash, an ear-splitting crash, a great sheet of flame from the muzzle, and two hundred pounds of steel is sent tearing through the air to the “Kultur” exponents. The whole gun lifts off the ground and runs back on its oil-compression springs. These guns are moved by their own caterpillar tractors which are kept somewhere close by. In three quarters of an hour they can get them started on the road. The ground for these emplacements was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few minutes. At a few yards’ distance I couldn’t see the guns myself. The “Hows” were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to “dust” the neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who are with the guns don’t see the effects. Apparently they fire straight away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer in the fire trenches who corrects them by ’phone.

After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been drilled. It hadn’t smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room, which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen. Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion occurred in the garden. “Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate,” said an artillery sub. We left! We had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.

To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman’s undergarments. A grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great stew. In some of the villages a few of the inhabitants had stayed and traded with the soldiers. They lived in cellars usually and suffered terribly. British military police direct the traffic when there is any, and are stationed at crossroads with regular beats like a city policeman.

While traveling to another part of the line we had an opportunity of seeing the “Archies” (anti-aircraft guns) working. They were mounted on lorries and fire quite good-sized shells. They fired about fifty shots at one Taube, but didn’t register a bull. Later in the evening from a trench we had the satisfaction of seeing another aeroplane set on fire, burn, and drop into the German lines like a shot partridge. Aeroplanes are as common as birds. Yesterday a “Pfeil” (arrow) biplane came right over our lines and was chased off by our own machines. The enemy’s aeroplanes have their iron cross painted on the underside of their wings and are more hawkish-looking than ours. They are more often used for reconnoitering and taking photographs than for dropping bombs.

We are being moved up closer to the firing line. I have been made billeting officer. I went to headquarters; a staff colonel showed me a subdivision on a map. “Go there and select a place for your unit.” The place was a wretched village of about six houses, all of which are more or less smashed about, windows repaired with sacking and pieces of wood. All of the inhabitants have moved except those who are too poor. Every square inch is utilized. I managed to get a cow-shed for the officers. It looks comfortable. On the door I could just decipher, written in chalk, by some previous billeting officer,—

2 Staff Officers
6 Officers
2 Horses

Billeting chalk marks are on almost all the shops and houses up from the coast to the front.

The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller who lived in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn’t speak English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells, very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man’s Land. The enemy has a very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.

Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are working hard, it is miserable here,—wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes, smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a poor, wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium, where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.

Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened shell-riddled town and knocked up an _estaminet_; we got a much finer meal than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. “Oh, no! I sleep upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at night. Then I go into the cellar.” This woman was a very pleasant, intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally leave the danger zone.

Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over their clothes was a veneer of plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way sang—

“Left—Left—Left
We—are—the tough Guys!”

Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a few beats they commenced again—

“Left—Left—Left—”

They looked exactly what they said they were.

Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in the same way.

I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers said quietly to him, “Be British.” He immediately straightened himself out and asked for a “fag.” He died that night.

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We had a terrific bombardment last night; the ground shook all night and the sky was lit up for miles. The Boches used liquid fire on some new troops and we lost ground.

I found this piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall, and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place passes as “Dead Cow Farm” on all official maps.

I’ve traveled many journeys in my one score years and ten,”
And oft enjoyed the company of jovial fellow men,
But of all the happy journeys none can compare to me
With the Red-Cross special night express from the trenches to the
sea.

“It’s Bailleul, Boulogne, Blighty, that’s the burden of the song,
Oh, speed the train along.
If you’ve only half a stomach and you haven’t got a knee,
You’ll choke your groans and try to shout the chorus after me.

Bailleul, Boulogne, and Blighty, dear old Blighty “cross the sea.”

“Now some of us are mighty bad and some are wounded slight,
And some will see their threescore years and some won’t last the
night,
But the Red Cross train takes up the strain all in a minor key
And sings Boulogne and Blighty as she rumbles to the sea.

“Oh, it’s better than the trenches and it’s better than the rain,
It’s better than the mud and stink; we’re going home again,
Though most of us have left some of us on the wrong side of the
sea.
We are a lot of blooming cripples, but—downhearted? No, siree.

“There’s a holy speed about this train for each of us can see
That we will cross the shining channel that lies ’twixt her and me
To the one and only Blighty, our Blighty, ’cross the sea,’
Where the blooming Huns can never come, ’twixt her and home and
me.”

“Blighty” is the wound which sends a man home to England; it’s a war word which came originally from the Indians, but now universally adopted in the new trench language.

I was walking along a trench when a man, who was sitting on a firestep looking up into a little trench mirror (which is used by putting the end of the bayonet between the glass and the frame), just crumpled up, shot through the heart. He didn’t say a word. The trench had thinned out and the bullet had come through, nearly four feet down from the top of the parapet.

Bad shell fire this afternoon. Saw shells churning things up seventy-five yards away; many passed overhead; had a ride on my motor cycle with the other officers to reconnoiter the roads leading down to the part of the trenches we have taken over; road was shelled as we came along. Two “coal boxes” hit the road and smashed up a cottage in front of us; we picked up pieces of the shell too hot to hold.

Our billet now is another large farm, with the pump in the center of the manure heap as usual; our machines are parked all round a field close to the hedges to make a smaller target and also to prevent aerial observation.

I went through a town this morning which has been on everybody’s lips for months—I have never seen such devastation in my life; it baffles description. The San Francisco earthquake was a joke to this. Thousands and thousands of shells have pummeled and smashed until very little remains besides wreckage. Most of the shelling has been done to deliberately destroy the objects of architectural value.

My quarters are in a loft amongst rags, old agricultural implements, sacks, and the accumulation of years of dirt; flies wake me up at daylight.

This morning I went for a drink in the _estaminet_ I have mentioned already. Two shells have been through the sides of the house since we were last there, but they both came through at the usual scheduled time.

This poor country is pockmarked with shell craters like a great country with a skin disease. Trees have been splintered worse than any storm could do. Nothing has been spared. The mineral rights of this territory should be very valuable some day. When we have all finished salting the earth with nickel, lead, steel, copper, and aluminum, old-metal dealers will probably set up offices in No Man’s Land.

Belgium will have to be rebuilt entirely, or left as it is, a monument to “Kultur.”

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My section has been ordered up to a divisional area on the south of the salient. In accordance with instructions I went up to Ypres this morning to find a place to park the machines.

Contrary to the popular belief, we do not fight our guns from the motor cycles themselves. We use our machines to get about on, and the guns are taken up as near as possible to the position we are to occupy, which is usually behind Brigade Headquarters. Brigadiers have a great aversion to any kind of motor vehicle being driven past their headquarters, owing to the movement and noise, which they believe attracts attention to themselves, and as a rule the sentries posted outside will see that no machines go by. We get up as far as we can, because after we part from our machines, everything must be carried up through the trenches by hand.

Bringing Up A Motor Machine Gun

I arrived at the town early and reported to the major who is in charge of the town and of the troops quartered there. He was living in the prison, a substantial brick and stone building, which has been smashed about a bit, but which is still a fairly good structure. The major is a fine, gruff old gentleman who was a master of fox hounds in the North of England. He came over with a detachment of cavalry. He is past the age limit, and it was decided that although he was a fine soldier, perhaps his age would be a deterrent and his job ought to be something lighter, so they gave him one of the fiercest jobs in the world—O. C. Ypres!

I was sent in, and when he heard my errand he said, “You want to park your machines in Ypres? Why don’t you take them up in the German front lines? You’ll be safer there than here. Listen to the shelling now.” I knew this, but I was doing just exactly what I was told. He continued: “I have now thousands of troops here and my daily casualties are enormous, so naturally I don’t want any more men. The best plan for you will be to go down the Lille road and pick a house below ‘Shrapnel Corner.’ ”

I went on through the town, under the Lille gate, across the tram lines, past the famous cross-roads known as “Shrapnel Corner” and chummed up with some artillery officers. They told me that I could have any of the houses I wanted. I picked a couple which looked to me to be more complete than the rest and chalked them up. This whole place was alive with batteries. While I was there I heard a shout and suddenly a hidden battery of guns, sunk behind the road with the muzzles almost resting on it, started firing across in the direction of the part of Belgium occupied by Fritz. I had passed within two feet of these guns and yet had not seen them, they were so well “camouflaged.” On my way back I saw the “Big Berthas” bursting in the town, and I was surprised that so little damage had been actually done to the Lille gate itself. Shells had visited everywhere in the neighborhood, but had not smashed this old structure.

I went home, collected my men together, and told them the importance of the work we were to undertake. I have found it always a good thing to make the men think the job that they are doing is of great importance. Better results are obtained that way.

We went to an “engineer dump” on the way up just after the enemy had landed a shell on a wagon loading building material, and wounded were being carried off and the mangled horses had been dragged on one side. As the wounded came by I called my section to attention, the compliment due to wounded men paid by units drawn up.

We drew our sandbags in the usual way by requisitioning for five thousand and getting one thousand. Always ask for more than you expect to get.

As we came into Ypres, a military policeman on duty told me it was unhealthy to go the usual way through the Market Square, because the shelling was bad in that part of the town, so I spread the machines out and started on down a side street. We were getting on finely and I was congratulating myself on getting through, when two houses, hit from the back, collapsed across the street in front of my machine. Without any ceremony I turned my machine back along the street which we had come and went through the Market Square down the Lille road, under the gate, being followed by my section. About four hundred yards down I stopped; holding my solo motor cycle between my legs, standing up, I looked back. I counted my machines as they came up. If it hadn’t been so scary, it really would have been funny, to see these machines coming down the road through shell holes and over piles of bricks, as fast as the drivers could make them go. The men were hanging on for dear life and the machines rocked from side to side, but they were all there.

Down the road we went to the houses; there we parked the machines and unpacked. A guard was placed over them and the rest of us marched down to the trenches.

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An officer has to buy all his own equipment and is allowed two hundred and fifty dollars by the Government towards the cost. An officer carries a revolver, but all junior officers as soon as possible acquire a rifle. The men of a “salvage company” were collecting all the rifles, bayonets, and parts of equipment near where I was to-day and I managed to get a Lee-Enfield (British rifle) in good shape. I felt that I would like to have a rifle and bayonet handy. I found a good-looking bayonet sticking in the side of a sandbag wall. It looked lonely. The scabbard I am using was resting in a loft of a deserted brewery. I am now complete with rifle, bayonet, and scabbard.

"Wipers"

Sometimes you see a man smashed about in a terrible way, such a mess that you think he is a goner; he may recover. Another man may have just a small wound and will die. A bullet hitting a man in the head will smash it as effectually as a sledge-hammer. Once a man leaves your unit, wounded, you don’t see him again. You get a fresh draft.

No one thinks of peace here. Germany must be put in a similar state to Belgium first.

We never travel anywhere without our smoke helmets; they come right over our heads and are tucked into our shirts; they have two glass eye-pieces. When we have them on we look like the old Spanish gentleman who ran the “Star Chamber.” Helmets must always be ready to put on instantly. Gas is a matter of seconds in coming over. The helmets are better than respirators, but have to be constantly inspected. A small hole, or if one is allowed to dry, means a casualty.

Storm brewing. Flies bad, driven in by the wind. Nature goes on just the same. I suppose that this farm would be just as fly-ridden in an ordinary summer. During the bombarding yesterday I noticed swallows flying about quite unconcerned. Corn, mostly self-planted, grows right up to the trenches. Cabbages grow wild. Communicating trenches run right through fields of crops; flowers grow in profusion between the lines, big red poppies and field daisies, and there are often hundreds of little frogs in the bottom of the trenches.

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A trip to No Man’s Land is an excursion which you never forget. It varies in width and horrors. My impression was similar to what I should feel being on Broadway without any clothes—a naked feeling. Forty-seven and one half inches of earth are necessary to stop a bullet, and it’s nice to have that amount of dirt between you and the enemy’s bullets. The dead lie out in between the lines or hang up on the wire; they don’t look pretty after they have been out some time. It’s a pleasant job to have to get their identification disks, and we have to search the bodies of the enemy dead for papers and even buttons so that we can know what unit is in front of us. Flowers grow in between, butterflies play together, and birds nest in the wire. When the grass becomes too high it has to be cut, because otherwise it would prevent good observation. In some places grass doesn’t have a chance to even take root, let alone grow. The shells take care of that.

I managed to get a translation of a diary kept by a German soldier who fell on the field. Below is an exact translation and gives the point of view of a man in the trenches on the other side of the line. He was writing his diary at the same time I was writing mine, and we were both fighting around the salient at Ypres, Hooge being on the point of the salient farthest east. This part, which was once a place of beauty which people came long distances to see, is now like a great muddy Saragossa Sea which at the height of its fury has suddenly become frozen with the tortured limbs of trees and men, and wreckage and reeking smells, until it can again lash itself in wild fury into whirlpools. It is in all respects Purgatory, but of greater horror than Dante ever dreamt of.

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_Diary of F---- P---- of the 6th Company, 3d Battalion, 132d Regiment. Killed at Hooge on August 9th, 1915._

On May 10, we were told to prepare for the journey to the front. Each man received his service ammunition and two days’ rations, and we then started with heavy packs on our backs and our water-bottles full of coffee. After a long march we reached our reserve position, where we were put into rest billets for two days in wooden huts hidden in a wood. We could hear from here the noise of the shells coming through the air.

On May 13, we moved into the trenches, in the night. We were a whole hour moving along a communication trench one and one-half metres deep, right up to the front line some fifty metres from the enemy. This was to be our post. We had hardly got in before the bullets came flying over our heads. Look out for the English! They know how to shoot! I need hardly say we did not wait to return the compliment. We answered each one of their greetings and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.

At length early on the 15th, at four o’clock, came our first attack. After a preliminary smoking-out with gas, our artillery got to work, and about ten o’clock we climbed out of the trenches and advanced fifty metres in the hail of bullets. Here I got my first shot through the coat. Three comrades were killed at the outset of the assault, and some twenty slightly or severely wounded, but we had obtained our object. The trench was ours, although the English twice attempted to turn us out of it.

The fight went on till eleven o’clock that evening. We were then relieved by the 10th Company, and made our way back along the communication trenches to our old positions. Here we remained until the third day, standing by at night and passing two days without sleep. We were hardly able to get our meals. From every side firing was going on, and shots came plugging two metres deep into the ground. This was my baptism of fire. It cannot be described as it really is—something like an earthquake, when the big shells come at one and make holes in the ground large enough to hold forty or fifty men comfortably. How easy and comfortable seemed our road back to the huts.

We remained in the huts for three days, resting before we went up again to “Hell Fire,” as they call the first line trenches in front of Ypres.

Then suddenly in the middle of the night an alarm. Our neighbors had allowed themselves to be driven out of our hard-won position, and the 6th Company, with the 8th and 5th, had to make good the lost ground. A hasty march through the communication trenches up to the front, the night lit up far and wide with searchlights and flares and ourselves in a long chain lying on our bellies. Towards two in the morning the Englishmen came on, 1500 men strong. The battle may be imagined. About 200 returned to the line they started from. Over 1300 dead and wounded lay on the ground. Six machine guns and a quantity of rifles and equipment were taken back by us, the 132d Regiment, and the old position was once more in our possession. What our neighbors lost the 132d regained. There was free beer that evening and a concert! At 11 P.M. once more we withdrew to the rear, our 2d, 4th and 10th Companies relieving us. We slept a whole day and night like the dead.