Chapter III: Part 3

On June 15th, we again went back to rest billets, but towards midday we were once more sent up to the front line to reinforce our right wing, which was attacked by French and English. Just as we got to our trenches we were greeted by a heavy shell fire, the shells falling in front of our parapets, making the sandbags totter. Seeing this, I sprang to the spot and held the whole thing together till the others hurried up to my assistance. Just as I was about to let go, I must have got my head too high above the parapet, as I got shot in the scalp. In the excitement I did not at once realize that I was wounded, until Gubbert said—“Hullo, Musch! Why, you’re bleeding!” The stretcher-bearer tied me up, and I had to go back to the dressing-station to be examined. Happily it was nothing more than a mere scalp wound, and I was only obliged to remain on the sick-list four days, having the place attended to.

June 24th. All quiet in the West, except for sniping. The weather is such that no offensive can take place. The English will never have a better excuse for inactivity than this—“It is raining.” Thank God for that! Less dust to swallow to-day! Odd that here in Belgium we are delighted with the rain, while in Germany they are watching it with anxiety.

To-day we shall probably be relieved. Then we go to Menin to rest. Ten days without coming under fire. It is Paradise!

Sunday, June 27th. At nine o’clock clean up. At eleven roll-call. At three o’clock went to the Cinema—very fine pictures. In the afternoon all the men danced till seven, but we had to take each other for partners—no girls.

July 2d. 11 P.M. Alarm. Three persons have been arrested who refused to make sandbags. They were pulled out of bed and carried off. Eight o’clock marched to drill. This lasts till 11. Then 1 to 4 rest. Six, physical drill and games. I went to the Cinema in the evening.

July 6th. Inspection till eleven. Three hours standing in the sun—enough to drive me silly. Twenty-three men fell out. Three horses also affected by the heat. Eleven to one Parade march—in the sun. Thirty-six more men reported sick. I was very nearly one of them.

July 9th. Preparation for departure. From seven to ten pack up kits. Eleven, roll-call. One-thirty, march to light railway. At seven reached firing trench. The English are firing intermittently over our heads; otherwise, all is quiet. We are now on the celebrated, much-bewritten-about “Hill 60.” Night passes without incident.

July 12th. At three in the morning the enemy makes a gas attack. We put on respirators. Rifle in hand we leap from the trenches and assault. In front of Hill 60 the enemy breaks, and we come into possession of a trench. Rapid digging. Counter-attack repulsed. At nine o’clock all is quiet, only the artillery still popping. This evening we are to be relieved. The 132d Regiment is much beloved by the English! In a dugout we found two labels. One of them had the following writing on it: “God strafe the 132d Regiment (not ‘God strafe England’ this time). Sergeant Scott (?) Remington, Sewster Wall (?).” On the other was, “I wish the Devil would take you, you pigs.”

At 7.20 Hill 60 is bombarded by artillery, and shakes thirty to fifty metres, as if from an earthquake. Two English companies blown into the air—a terrible picture. Dug-outs, arms, equipment—all blown to bits.

July 17th. Marched to new quarters. We have got a new captain. He wants to see the company, so at 8 A.M. drill in pouring rain. Four times we have to lie on our belly, and get wet through and through. All the men grumbling and cursing. At eleven we are dismissed. I, with a bad cold and a headache. I wish this soldiering were all over.

July 19th. At seven sharp we marched off to our position. Heavy bombardment. At nine we were buried by a shell. I know no more. At eleven I found myself lying in the Field Hospital. I have pains inside me over my lungs; and headache, and burning in the joints.

July 20th. The M.O. has had a look at me. He says my stomach and left lung are suffering from the pressure which was put on them. The principal remedy is rest.

July 21st. Thirty-nine degrees of fever (temp. 100° Fahr.). Stay in bed and sleep, and oh! how tired I am!

July 22d. I slept all day. Had milk and white bread to eat.

July 26th. Returned to duty with three days’ exemption, i.e., we do not have any outdoor work.

July 28th and 29th. Still on exemption. Nothing to do but sleep and think of home and of my dear wife and daughter. But dreaming does not bring peace any sooner. How I would love an hour or two back home.

July 31st. In rest. Baths going. Duke of Württemberg passed through our camp.

August 1st. Up to the trenches. Shrapnel flying like flies. A heavy bombardment; bombardment of Hooge. Second Battalion, 132d Regiment, sent up to reinforce 126th Regiment, which has already lost half its men.

August 4th. Heavy artillery fire the whole night. The English are concentrating 50,000 Indians on our front to attack Hooge and Hill 60. Just let them come, we shall stand firm. At three marched off to the front. Watch beginning again. Five o’clock marched off to the Witches’ Cauldron, Hooge. A terrible night again. H.E. and shrapnel without number. Oh, thrice-cursed Hooge! In one hour eleven killed and twenty-three wounded and the fire unceasing. It is enough to drive one mad, and we have to spend three days and three nights more. It is worse than an earthquake, and any one who has not experienced it can have no idea what it is like. The English fired a mine, a hole fifteen metres deep and fifty to sixty broad, and this “cauldron” has to be occupied at night. At present it isn’t too badly shelled. At every shot the dug-outs sway to and fro like a weather-cock. This life we have to stick to for months. One needs nerves of steel and iron. Now I must crawl into our hole, as trunks and branches of trees fly in our trench like spray.

August 6th. To-night moved to the crater again, half running and half crawling. At seven a sudden burst of fire from the whole of the artillery. From about eleven yesterday fires as if possessed. This morning at four we fall back. We find the 126th have no communication with the rear, as the communication trenches have been completely blown in. The smoke and thirst are enough to drive one mad. Our cooker doesn’t come up. The 126th gives us bread and coffee from the little they have. If only it would stop! We get direct hits one after another and lie in a sort of dead end, cut off from all communication. If only it were night. What a feeling to be thinking every second when I shall get it! ---- has just fallen, the third man in our platoon. Since eight the fire has been unceasing; the earth shakes and we with it. Will God ever bring us out of this fire? I have said the Lord’s Prayer and am resigned.

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To-day I saw the “Mound of Death” at Saint-Eloi; it has been mined a number of times, and thousands of shells have beaten it into a disorderly heap of earth; the trenches are twenty-five yards apart; all the grass and vegetation has been blown away and never has had time to grow up again.

It’s all arranged for you, if there’s a bit of shell or a bullet with your name on it you’ll get it, so you’ve nothing to worry about. You are a soldier—then be one. This is the philosophy of the trenches.

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What’s The Use?

War is a great ager. Young men grow old quickly here. It can be seen in their faces; they have lost all the irresponsibility of youth. I have met many men who have been here since Mons; they all look weary and worn out by the strain. Now new troops are coming forward and it is hoped that they will be able to send some back for a rest.

Several days ago the adjutant of the Tenth Battalion Sherwood Foresters came to me with this message which was sent through our lines:—

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Arrest Officer Royal Engineers with orderly. Former, six feet, black moustache, web equipment, revolver. Latter, short, carries rifle, canvas bandolier. Please warn transports and all concerned.

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Everybody kept a good lookout for these spies. One sentry surprised a real R.E. officer named Perkins who was working out a drainage scheme. Seeming to answer the above description, he stalked him,—“Come ’ere, you ---- ----, you’re the ---- I’ve been looking for.” The officer, nonplussed, commenced to stutter. “Sergeant, I’ve got ’im and he can’t speak a word of English.” The sergeant collected him in and guarded him until another engineer officer, known to the guard, came along. As soon as Perkins saw him, he said, “F-r-r-ed, t-t-tell this d-d-damn fool wh-ho I am.” “Who the hell are you calling Fred? I don’t know him; hold him, sergeant, he’s a desperate one.” Scarcely able to contain his joy, Fred went back to the Engineers’ Camp to tell the great news and Perkins spent three hours in the sandbag dugout listening to a description of what the sergeant and his guard would do to him if they only had their way.

The real spies, who did a great deal of damage, were finally rounded up and shot in a listening post trying to regain their own lines.

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Enemy snipers give us a great deal of trouble. It is very difficult to locate them. One of our men tried out an original scheme. He put an empty biscuit tin on the parapet. Immediately the sniper put a bullet through it. Now thought the Genius, “If I look through the two holes it will give me my direction,”—so getting up on the firestep he looked through, only to roll over with the top of his head smashed off by a bullet. The sniper was shooting his initials on the tin.

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We are all used to dead bodies or pieces of men, so much so that we are not troubled by the sight of them. There was a right hand sticking out of the trench in the position of a man trying to shake hands with you, and as the men filed out they would often grip it and say, “So long, old top, we’ll be back again soon.” One man had the misfortune to be buried in such a way that the bald part of the head showed. It had been there a long time and was sun-dried. Tommy used him to strike his matches on. A corpse in a trench is quite a feature, and is looked for when the men come back again to the same trench.

We live mostly on bully beef and hard tack. The first is corned beef and the second is a kind of dog biscuit. We always wondered why they were so particular about a man’s teeth in the army. Now I know. It’s on account of these biscuits. The chief ingredient is, I think, cement, and they taste that way too. To break them it is necessary to use the handle of your entrenching tool or a stone. We have fried, baked, mashed, boiled, toasted, roasted, poached, hashed, devilled them alone and together with bully beef, and we have still to find a way of making them into interesting food.

However, the Boche likes our beef. He prefers the brand canned in Chicago to his own, and will almost sit up and beg if we throw some over to him. The method is as follows: Throw one over ... sounds of shuffling and getting out of the way are heard in the enemy trench. Fritz thinks it’s going to go off. Pause, and throw another. Fritz not so suspicious this time. Keep on throwing until happy voices from enemy trenches shout, “More! Give us more!” Then lob over as many hand grenades as you can pile into that part of the trench and tell them to share those too.

It takes some time to distinguish whether shells are arrivals or departures, but after a while you get into the way of telling their direction and size by sound. Roads are constantly shelled, searching for troops or supply columns. I was coming home to-day, up a road which ran approximately at right angles to main fire trenches. At one place the road was exposed for a matter of thirty or forty feet, and again farther up it was necessary to go over the brow of a small hill. This was about three hundred yards farther on and was exposed to the enemy’s view. Thinking they wouldn’t bother about a single rider on a motor cycle, I went up past the first exposed position. My carburetor was giving me some trouble and I thought I would see if any rain had got into it, so I turned off the road down a cross-road and dismounted when _crash_! a shell landed right in the middle of the road as far up the exposed place as I was round the corner. Then five more followed the first shell. Had I gone on I could not possibly have missed collecting most of the fragments. The German gunners had spotted me in the first position and decided that a lone man on a motor cycle must be either an officer or despatch rider. So they tried to get him. The shells were shrapnel and the time was calculated splendidly. They had taken into consideration the speed of my motor cycle. Cross-roads are particularly attended to, for there is a double chance of hitting something, and in consequence it is always unhealthy to linger on a crossroad.

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Dugouts are often made very comfortable with windows, tiled floors and furniture taken from neighboring shattered chateaux. I have even seen them with flowers growing in window-boxes over the entrance. They all have names. Some I saw yesterday were called “Anti-Krupp Cottage,” “Pleasant View,” and “Little Grey Home in the West.” There was one very homey site, well equipped and fitted, which had been dubbed the “Nut,”—the colonel lived there.

My old corps brought an aeroplane down with a machine gun last night. They were in a shell hole between the main and support trenches.

For the last few days I have been “up” looking for gun positions.

The lice are getting to be a torment. You have no idea how bad they are. Everybody up here is infested with them. I have tried smearing myself with kerosene, but that does not seem to trouble them at all. Silk underwear is supposed to keep them down. I suppose their feet slip on the shiny surface.

The food lately has taken on a wonderful flavor and I now know how dissolved German tastes. The cook, instead of sending back two miles for water to cook with, has been using water from the moat in which a Boche had been slowly disintegrating.

To-day I was able to see what a German seventeen-inch shell could do; one had made a crater fifty feet across and twenty feet deep in the middle of the road. The top of the road was paved—think it over—and pieces kill at a thousand yards. Thirty horses were buried in another hole.

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I have been given a special job by the general to enfilade a wood over the Mound. I have my section now in the second-line trenches waiting till it is dark before making a move. We have to make a machine-gun emplacement in a piece of ground which is decidedly unhealthy to visit during daylight. I have been there in daylight, but I had to creep out of it. On the map it is called a farm, but the highest wall is only three feet six inches high.

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Arrived home about two o’clock this morning. We crawled to the place we have to take up, and I put some men filling sandbags in the ruins and others even digging a dugout. The enemy had “the wind up” and were using a great number of star shells. When one goes up we all “freeze,” remain motionless, or lie still. They send them up to see across their front, and if they locate a working party, then they start playing a tune with their machine guns. Bullets and shells whistled through the trees all the time. They seemed to come from all directions. The men didn’t like it at all. I wasn’t altogether comfortable myself, but an officer must keep going. I walked about and joked and laughed with them. The range-taker said, “Some of us are getting the didley-i-dums, Sir.” I don’t know what that is, but I had a feeling that I had them too.

Of course, to start with, everybody thinks every single shell and bullet is coming straight for him. Then you find out how much space there is around you. One man came to tell me that two men were firing at him with his own rifle from the ruins of the alleged farmhouse, ten yards away from the dugout we are making. Just then a field mouse squeaked, and he jumped up in the air and said, “There’s another.” I told the men to fill sandbags from the ruins; they all crowded behind this three-foot-six wall for protection; they dug up a French needle bayonet—that was all right, but they afterwards dug up a rifle and I noticed a suspicious smell, so I moved them.

We came home very tired. We are attacking Hooge, a counter-attack, to take back trenches lost in the liquid fire attack—you will hear what we did from the papers, probably in three months’ time.

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I’m writing this in a new home, this time a splinter-proof dugout. The Huns are again strafing us—last shell burst fifty yards away a few minutes ago. Several times since I started writing I have had to shake off the dust and debris thrown by shell bursts on to these pages. I was again sniped at with shrapnel this morning on my machine while reconnoitering the roads—they all missed, but they’re not nice. I’m filthy, alive, and covered with huge mosquito bites; you get sort of used to the incessant din in time. Even the forty-two centimeter shells, which make a row like freight trains with loose couplings going through the air, are not so terrible now.

Through a hole in my dugout I can see the Huns’ shells Kulturing a chateau. It was once a very beautiful place with a moat, bridges, and splendid gardens. Now it’s useless except that the timber and the furniture come in useful for our dugouts and the making of “duck walks,” the grated walks which line the bottom of the trenches.

Last night I was sitting in the Medical Officer’s dugout when a man I knew came in. He was an officer in the Second Gordons. “I feel pretty bad, doc.” He explained his symptoms. “Trench fever; you go down the line.” “No, fix me up for tonight and maybe I won’t need anything else.” He didn’t! All that is left of him is being buried now, less than a hundred yards from where I write this.

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Before I came here I had to go to another part of the line, in which the “Princess Pats” distinguished themselves. We have been hanging on ever since, and a mighty stiff proposition it is. The O.C. to-day told me that he had not slept for fifty-six hours. The Germans in one place are only twenty-five yards away—so close that conversation is carried on in a whisper.

In one place they had stuck up a board with “Warsaw Captured” on it.

My section worked until two o’clock and then the sandbags gave out, so we had to come home. This was a disappointment to me. I wanted to get the job finished. My men went on filling sandbags from the same place last night and discovered the remains of the late owner of the sword bayonet. He has now been decently buried, with a little wooden cross marked—

TO AN UNKNOWN FRENCH SOLDIER
R.I.P.

When you read in the newspapers, that a trench was lost or taken, just think what it means. Think what happens to the men in the trenches; that’s the part of it we see. Stretchers pass by all day. Since I have been here the cemetery has grown—a new mound—a simple wooden cross. Nobody talks about it, but everybody wonders who’s next. The men here are splendid, the best in the world, and the officers are gentlemen.

A French Soldier.

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We have moved to the famous Langhof Chateau on the Lille road. This is supposed to have belonged to Hennessey of “Three Star” fame, but the Germans had been through the wine cellars. We looked very, very carefully, but only found empties. My batman has made me comfortable. I’m writing this on a washstand; in front of me I have a bunch of roses in a broken vase. My trench coat is hanging on a nail from a coat-hanger. A large piece of broken wardrobe mirror has been nailed up to a beam for my use. One of the men just came in to ask if a trousers press would be of any use. We have a fine little bureau cupboard of carved oak; we use this for the rations. A pump, repaired with the leather from a German helmet, has been persuaded to work and has been busy ever since. The roof of my cellar is arched brick and has a few tons of fallen debris on the floor upstairs. That strengthens it. It is shored up from inside with rafters. This makes the roof shell-proof, except for big shells, and the enemy always use big shells. The cellar floors are concrete.

It is very strange the lightness with which serious things are taken by men here, and it took me some time to understand it. I met a young captain of the Royal Marine Artillery who was in charge of a battery of trench mortars. He was telling me of how one of his mortars and the crew were wiped out by a direct hit. He referred to it as though he had just missed his train.

Two days later I went up with the Machine-Gun Officer of the Second Gordons to look at a piece of ground. To get there we had to crawl on our hands and knees. In one part of our journey we came to a sunken road. The day was fine, so we lay there. He asked me about Canada. He wanted to know something about the settler’s grant. He said: “Of course you know after a chap has been out here in the open, it will be impossible to go back again to office life.” I boosted Canada and suddenly the irony of the situation occurred to me. Here we were lying down in a road quite close to the German lines, so close that it would be suicide to even stand up, and yet here we were calmly discussing the merits of Canadian emigration. I commented on this and he replied: “My dear fellow, when you have been out as long as I have, you will come to realize that being at the front is a period of intense boredom punctuated by periods of intense fear, and that if you allow yourself to be carried away by depression it will be your finish.” He had been out since just after Mons.

I remembered this and I found that the nonchalant and care-free attitude of the average British officer was really a mask and simulated to keep his mind off the whole beastly business: this great big dirty job which white people must do.

I was sitting one afternoon by the side of the canal bank about two hundred yards in front of my chateau having tea with the officers of the East Yorks when suddenly the chateau-smashing started again. To go back was dangerous and useless. My men were under cover, resting, so that they would be ready for the night work. The shelling was intermittent. One shell went over and presently I heard _crack_,—_crack_,—_boom_, _crack_, _crack_,—_crack_; my heart was in my boots and I was unable to move.

The colonel listened for a few seconds, then said: “Keene, do you know what that is?” I lied: “No, sir.” I thought it was the explosion of my machine-gun bullets in their web belts and I dreaded to go up to see my section. I had worked with them and tried hard to be a good officer and the feeling that I should probably only find their mangled remains sickened me. The colonel said: “That’s the ‘Archie’ in Bedford House. I think the last ‘crump’ got it. You two”—indicating myself and another officer—“go up and see if we can do anything. See if they want a working party and let me know.”

We started to run. On the way up I looked into the cellars to see the men whom I, the minute previously, had mourned for, and found two asleep, three hunting through their shirts, and the rest breaking the army orders by “shooting craps.” From Bedford House a long trail of smoke was rising and the explosions became louder. We suddenly discovered the “Archie” in flames. It was in the courtyard and for camouflage had been covered with branches. It was mounted on an armored Pierce-Arrow truck. The “crump” had hit it, and gasoline, paint, branches, and hubs were supplying the fuel which was cooking out the ammunition, the _crack_, _crack_, being the report of single shells, whereas one loud _boom_ signified the explosion of an entire box. These shells were going off in all directions and it became dangerous to stay too near.

The flames on the car were of pretty colors. It is surprising the amount of inflammable material there is on a car. The late owner of the car, a lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery, was cursing in a low, but emphatic, marine manner, and several other officers from nearby batteries were attracted by the noise and the pyrotechnic display. I spoke to the lieutenant and sympathized with him, and he retorted: “Gott strafe Germany. Why they should hit the ‘bus’ when I have a brand-new pair of trench boots that I had never worn, I dunno.” Just then and there the case cooked out and a piece of shell cut between us and buried itself deep in the support of a dugout, so we got under cover.

“Whiz-Bangs.”

In the group was a splendid type of army chaplain. He came over almost at the start of the war and had seen a great deal of the open warfare at the commencement of hostilities. He said: “My friend Fritz is not through; he’ll try to do some more yet.” As the smoke died down and the cracking stopped, the enemy decided that an attempt would be made either to carry out salvage of whatever they had hit or else we would try to get the wounded away. So without any preliminary warning the whole area was covered by a battery fire of _whiz bangs_, and the shrapnel bullets came down like rain, several men being hit. The fire eventually died down and the wreck was allowed to cool off. The “Archies” are used so much to keep the aeroplanes up, and next to the loss of his boots the officer in charge was worried by the fact that the enemy would send an aeroplane over to see what they had hit. It was very necessary to keep the planes away, because at this time there were one hundred and fourteen batteries of artillery in the neighborhood.

Later on the battery commander came down, and as he looked at the red-hot armor plates he said: “Five thousand pounds gone up in smoke. Sorry I missed the fireworks.” The Divisional general called him up at the dugout and gave him areas for the distribution of the four anti-aircraft guns and cars comprising his battery. After he was through the commander replied: “Very good, sir, that will be done with all the guns except the third gun.” The voice over the wire became very dignified, a preliminary to becoming sulphuric. “What do you mean, all but the third gun?” “Because, sir, the enemy has just ‘crumped’ the third gun and all that remains of it is scrap iron.”

One of the battalions has a fine victrola in the officers’ mess dugout with a good selection of records. I have heard Caruso accompanied on the outside by an orchestra of guns. It was a wonderful mixture. Speaking of canned music reminds me we have a small portable trench machine, which closes up like a valise, easily handled and carried about. One man near had a box full of needles distributed in his back by a bomb; he considers himself disgraced; he says it will be kind of foolish in years to come to show his grandchildren twenty-five or thirty needles and tell them that they were the cause of his wounds.

The Tommies play mouth organs a great deal and it is much easier to march to the sound of one, even

’Ere we are; ’ere we are,
’Ere we are agin.
We beat ’em on the Marne,
We beat ’em on the Aisne,
We gave ’em ’ELL at Neuve Chapelle,
And ’ere we are agin—

sounds well with the addition of a little music.

Anything is used for trench work; often if we waited for the proper materials we should be uncomfortable, so it is one of the qualifications of a good soldier to find things. Sometimes we steal material belonging to other units, then stick around until the owners come back and help them look for them; however, it is always advisable to steal materials from juniors in rank; if they find it out, and are senior, then you are in for a one-sided strafe.

One of the other battery subalterns found a deserted carpenter’s shop and he let his men loose to dismantle it. They took the parts of steel machines and used them for the construction of a dugout. One man said, “It’s like coming home drunk and smashing up the grand piano with an axe.” They must have attracted the attention of the ever-alert Boche, for no sooner had they moved out than the place was shelled to the ground. Everything I now look at with an eye to its value for trench construction; thus, telegraph poles, doors, iron girders, and rails are more valuable to us out here than a Rolls Royce.

The “Crump.”

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Slang or trench language is used universally. My own general talks about “Wipers,” the Tommy’s pronunciation of Ypres, and I have seen a reference to “Granny” (the fifteen-inch howitzer) in orders “mother” is the name given to the twelve-inch howitzer. The trench language is changing so quickly that I think the staff in the rear are unable to keep up to date, because they have recently issued an order to the effect that slang must not be used in official correspondence. Now instead of reporting that a “dud Minnie” arrived over back of “mud lane,” it is necessary to put, “I have the honor to report that a projectile from a German Minnenwerfer landed in rear of Trench F 26 and failed to explode.”

Sometimes names of shells go through several changes. For example, high explosives in the early part of the war were called “black Marias,” that being the slang name for the English police patrol wagon. Then they were called “Jack Johnsons,” then “coal boxes,” and finally they were christened “crumps” on account of the sound they make, a sort of _cru-ump!_ noise as they explode. “Rum jar” is the trench mortar. “Sausage” is the slow-going aerial torpedo, a beastly thing about six feet long with fins like a torpedo. It has two hundred and ten pounds of high explosive and makes a terrible hole. “Whiz bang” is shrapnel.

Shelling is continuous. We have thousands of pieces of shells and fuse caps about the premises. I have in front of me a fragment of a shell about fourteen inches long and about four and one-half inches across, which came from a German gun. The edges are so sharp that it cuts your hand to hold it. I use it as a paper-weight.

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This morning I experienced a wonderful surprise. I had gone up to one of the North Stafford Batteries to borrow a clinometer. The major, while he was getting the instrument for me, casually remarked: “There’s yesterday’s ‘Times’ on the bench if you care to look at it.” I turned first to the casualty list and later to the “London Gazette” for the promotions, and wholly by accident perused carefully the Motor Machine Gun Service list and there noted the announcement, “Keene, Louis, 2d Lieut., to be 1st Lieut.,” and for a fact this was the “official” intimation that I had been promoted. I had a couple of spare “pips”, rank stars, in my pocket-book, so I got my corporal to sew them on right away.

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We are all very happy at times, very dirty, and covered with stings and bites; have no idea how long we are to remain up. Getting used to the shell fire, and can sleep through it if it’s not too close. When it comes near it makes you very thoughtful. Still working at night and resting during the day. Made another emplacement for one of my machine guns last night; had twenty men digging; surprising how fast men dig when the bullets are flying.

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It’s about 2 A.M. We have just come in. My new emplacement is splendid; we’ve made it shell-proof and have it ready for firing. I was coming home this afternoon after having been to the fire trenches when I heard a shout: “Keene!” I looked up on the canal bank and I saw the general with one of his A.D.C.’s sitting watching an aeroplane duel. “I’ve come up to see your gun position, Keene.” I saluted, waited for him, and took him to it. It is below the level of the ground under tons of bricks in the ruins of a farmhouse. He was standing on the roof of it and said, “Well, where’s the emplacement?” “You’re standing on it, sir.” “Tut, tut, ’pon my word, that’s good.” He was delighted and congratulated me on it. My preliminary work under the eyes of the general has gone off quite well. I start firing to-night.

Intimacy between generals and lieutenants is unusual, but it looks as if mine had taken an interest in me, because when he noticed my insect-bitten face, he sent me down some dope he had used with good effect in India. I expect the mosquitoes in India were the ordinary kind, but, believe me, trench “skeeters” are constructed differently and are proof against the general’s pet concoction.

I have several miners in my section who take a personal pride in the digging and shoring up of dugouts. So far the other two sections of the Battery are always behind in this work but they may look better on parade.

The canal has one big lock suitable for swimming; a lot of “jocks” were bathing there to-day. I ordered a bathing parade for my section. Later I found that the swimming had livened three Germans, long submerged—the bathing parade is off.

A Belgian battery commander has just wakened up and his shells are rattling overhead. From the fire trenches an incessant rattle of rifles is heard; all the bullets seem to come over here; constantly the whine of a musical ricochet bullet is heard. Otherwise things are dead quiet. It’s getting on for three, so I’m going to bed in my blankets on one of the late chateau owner’s splendid spring mattresses and carved oak bedstead. Oh! how nice it would be to sleep without lice. From an adjoining cellar my section are snoring, and I’m going to add to the chorus. Good-night, everybody.

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We have been having Sunday “hate.” Eight-inch crumps are once more busting “up” the chateau. How they must detest this place. My tea and bully beef are covered with dust of the last shell. You have no idea how terrible the shell-fire is. First you hear the whistle and then a terrific burst which shakes the ground for a hundred yards around; when it clears away you find a hole ten feet across and six feet deep. At least fifteen have dropped around us in the last half hour.

This place isn’t somewhere in France, it’s somewhere in Hell! It has been the scene of a great many encounters; decayed French uniforms, old rifles, ammunition and leather equipment and bundles of mildewed tobacco leaves are strewn all over the place. I found the chin-strap of a German “Pickelhaube” in the grounds, the helmet of a French cuirassier, and the red pants of a Zouave, close together. When digging in the trenches or anywhere near the firing line you have to be careful: corpses, dead horses, and cattle are buried everywhere. I’m building a trench to my emplacement and we have a stinking cow in the direct line; this will have to be buried before we can cut through.

Everybody is cheerful and going strong. Yesterday some of my men went swimming in the moat of the chateau; a shell dropped in the water near them, and threw up a lot of fish on to the bank. That kind of discouraged the Tommies swimming, so they cooked the fish and decided that safety comes before cleanliness out here.

It’s hot and sticky, and when you have to wear thick clothes and equipment it makes you very uncomfortable, but it’s all in the game.

All through the night we fired single shots from a machine gun; my orders were to fire between half-past eight at night and four o’clock in the morning. We have a number of guns doing this. It harasses the enemy and keeps them from sleeping; anything that will wear a man down is practiced here.

I’ve constructed a fire emplacement amongst the ruins underground; to get to it you have to travel through a tunnel eighteen feet long; inside it’s very damp. I was working with my corporal, crouched up; we were both wet and cold, and so to cheer things up every now and again we let off a few rounds and warmed our hands on the barrel. Outside it poured with rain, and mosquitoes sought refuge inside and mealed off me. The corporal was immune. I had a water bottle full of whiskey and water. We used it to keep out the cold, but it wasn’t strong enough. In a case like that you need wood alcohol. I would like to have had some Prohibitionists with me here. We had no light except the flash of the gun and the enemy star shells.

At daybreak I came home dead beat. I got into my cellar, was so tired that I threw myself down on the bed and wrapped myself up in my blankets, boots, mud, lice and all. I hadn’t been asleep long before the Huns started “hating” the chateau. They have put over twenty-five large calibre shells into my place, the grounds and the house. They are still at it. Every time a shell bursts it makes a hole big enough to bury five horses, and it shakes the foundations all round. The shells are bigger than usual. The smoke and earth are blown up fifty or sixty feet in the air. The effect is a moral disruption. _Why can’t they keep that cotton out of Germany?_

I have divided my section up into two teams, one in the cellars and one in the gun-pits. I relieve them every twenty-four hours, and I practically have to be in both places at once, but I have got a telephone in between the two places. I have it by my bed so that I can constantly know how things are going. However, the wire is cut two or three times a day by bullets and shell splinters, my linesman has a constant job.

Fired all night; came back at six o’clock this morning, very tired. Had a telegram from the general to fire two thousand rounds in twenty-four hours; this is quite hard work. Actually we could fire the lot in five minutes, but it would attract too much attention. The enemy use whole batteries of artillery to blot out machine guns which attract attention, so we have to fire single shots.

We have for neighbors four dead cows and an unexploded six-inch shell, liable to go off any time, all in a radius of one hundred yards. We have smashed holes through five walls so that we can go through the ruins unobserved. In one place we pass over a dead cow, and in another we wade through several tons of rotten potatoes, and I believe we have a corpse handy; and part of our trench goes through another heap of rotten mangles. I’m an authority on smells. I can almost tell the nationality of a corpse now by the smell. It will soon be necessary to wear our smoke-helmets to go into the emplacement. I don’t think that I have told you that I cross the Yser canal about six times a day. I’d been up a week before I knew what it was. Now it only has a few feet of water in it, the rest being held in the German locks. The part I cross over is full of bulrushes, and is the home of moor-hens, water rats, mosquitoes and frogs.

On one side of the canal is a bank which is in great demand by the machine gunners, who are able to get a certain amount of height and observation of their fire. The general has ordered a field gun to take up a position on this bank. He refers to it as his “Sniping eighteen-pounder.” It is firing at seven hundred yards right at the German line and smashes up their parapet in a style that is pretty to watch. The machine gunners are in a great state, because the enemy will soon be “searching” with his artillery for the eighteen-pounder and the lairs of the smaller hidden guns will suffer.

The men are hunting for lice in their underwear. This is the kind of conversation that is coming through from the next cellars: “I’ve got you beat—that’s forty-seven.” “Wait a minute”—a sound of tearing cloth—“but look at this lot, mother and young.” “With my forty and these you’ll have to find some more.” They were betting on the number they could find. I peel off my shirt myself and burn them off with a candle. I glory in the little pop they make when the heat gets to them. All the insect powder in the world has been tried out on them and they’ve won.

All sentries here are doubled; one thing it’s safer, and another it’s company; even when things are quiet, rats and mice scamper about and it sets your nerves on end. Things which are inanimate during the day become alive at night. Trees seem to walk about. I wonder what it tastes like to have a real meal in which tinned food does not figure; fancy a tablecloth; my tablecloth is a double sheet of newspaper, and even then I can’t have a new one every day.

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Had a good night’s rest; came in about twelve o’clock and slept until eight-thirty this morning. One eye is completely closed up by a sting.

A German aeroplane has been hovering over our positions looking for my gun, so we have stopped firing and all movement. I know just how the chicken feels when the hawk hovers over it. Few people realize how much aeroplanes figure in this war, for war would be much different without them. They do the work of Cavalry only in the sky. Whenever they come over, the sentries blow three blasts on their whistles and everybody runs for cover or freezes; guns stop firing and are covered up with branches made on frames. If men are caught in the open they stand perfectly still and do not look up, for on the aeroplane photographs faces at certain heights show light; dugouts are covered over with trees, straw or grass. We use aeroplane photographs a great deal; they show trenches distinctly and look very like the canals on Mars.

The Huns have been “hating” the road one quarter of a mile away all the morning. That doesn’t worry us a bit as long as they don’t come any closer. I’m willing always to share up on the shelling.

This order has just been issued. It speaks for itself:—

All ranks are warned that bombs and grenades must not be used for
fishing and killing game.

I went over another farm to-day. It is one of the well-ventilated kind, punched full of holes. In the kitchen, stables and outhouses there was a most wonderful collection of junk: ammunition, British and French bandoliers, old sheepskin coats abandoned by the British troops from last winter, smashed rifles, bayonets, meat tins, parts of broken equipment, sandbags, stacks of rotten potatoes and three dead cows. The fruit trees are laden with fruit, and vines are growing up the houses with their bunches of green grapes.

In the garden several lonely graves are piled high with old boots, straw, American agricultural implements, rotting sacks and rubbish of every description, pieces of shells, barrels, and in one room the rusty remains of a perambulator and sewing machine; rats are the only inhabitants now. In the garret (the staircase leading up to it gone long ago) I found a British rifle, bayonet fixed, ten rounds in the magazine, and the bolt partly drawn out. Evidently the owner was in the act of reloading his chamber when something happened. The graves were dated second and third months of this year. The poor wooden crosses were made of pieces of ration cases and the names written with an indelible pencil. The wretchedness of this farm, which was flourishing only a short time ago, is very pathetic.

We have adopted an old Belgian mother cat with her family of three kittens in the dugout. Now we find that three more little wild kittens are living in the bricks which we have piled around the windows to protect us against shells. They are all encouraged to live with us in the cellars. I like cats, and they will help to keep the rats down. Although some of the rats are nearly the size of cats.

It has been raining again and the trenches are filling up with slush. We carry a big trench stick, a thick sapling about four feet long with a ferrule made from a cartridge of a “very-light” (star shell), to help ourselves in walking; our feet are beginning to get wet and cold as a regular thing now, and we are revetting our trenches firm and solid for the winter. Eleven P.M. A mine under the Boche line has just been exploded. The fighting has just started for the crater.

I took a German Uhlan helmet from a gentleman who had no further use for it. It was pretty badly knocked about; still, if I can get it home it’s a trophy.

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Mr. Tommy Atkins.

It’s about eight o’clock Sunday evening. All day long shells have been coming over like locomotives. Every five seconds one goes over into the old town; every five seconds for the last two hours. The chateau has been shelled again with “crumps”; they are such rotten shots; if only they would put in two good ones in the center it would blow it to bits and then they might leave us alone. The whole of the ground is pitted because they can’t hit it squarely.

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My work lies behind the front line and in front of the support, firing over the heads of the men in the main trenches. The emplacement was shelled to-day; one shell hit the roof, burst and knocked over one of my men, cutting his head open. He is not very badly hurt, but has gone to the hospital. The shelling has been terrible to-day.

The Germans have been very quiet lately, and working parties are out all along their front lines at night—something’s up. Dirty work can be expected at any time now. We have steel helmets to protect us from spent bullets and splinters. They look like the old Tudor steel helmets and they are fine to wash in.

You have no idea what a big part food plays in our life. Yesterday morning I went with the machine-gun officer of another outfit to crawl about looking for positions. We were in an orchard. I happened to look up and saw ripe plums! Terrified lest he should see them and forestall me, I said, “Let’s beat it, this is too unhealthy,” so we crawled back. Last night in the light of a big moon such as coons always steal watermelons by, a section officer and his cook crawled to the plum tree. The section officer, being large, stood underneath while the cook climbed the tree and dropped them into a sandbag held open by the S.O. They got about ten pounds. They go well stewed, believe me. The fact that bullets whistled through the trees most of the time made them taste better to-day. Sat the rest of the night in a hedge firing at the Boches with a Lewis gun. I struck for bed just as dawn broke.

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To-day the guns are again “hating” the chateau, and they have put sixty shells in the neighborhood. Still, “there’s no cloud without a silver lining.” I’ve got a new way home. Instead of going right around the kennels, stables, and through the yards, I go “through” the greenhouse direct, thereby saving a lot of time. The Huns’ calendar is wrong. They have always shelled me Sunday and Wednesday. To-day’s Tuesday!

We use up the window frames and doorways for kindling, and consequently the doors have gone long ago. I have been smashing up mouldings this morning with an axe. We prefer the dry wood which is built into the walls; it burns better and doesn’t cause smoke. As soon as smoke is seen rising, the enemy’s range-finders get busy and then we suffer.

Another mine went up yesterday; nobody seems to know where. I think it came south from the French lines; it rocked the whole neighborhood for miles. The ground here is a kind of quicksand for a few feet down, and shock is easily transmitted, the whole ground being honeycombed with mines, old trenches, shafts, saps made by French, Belgians, Germans and our own people.

The use for timber of any description is manifold; every little bit is used up. Our chief source of supply of dry wood is from the smashed-up chateaux. Langhof, my home, has been punished almost every day, and after the bombardment lets up men from the neighborhood come to collect the wood torn up by the shelling. The men of the Tenth East Yorks came up this morning and climbed to the remains of the second story, ripping up the floor boards. The enemy evidently saw them, for the shelling soon started. We have been shelled often here before, but it was nothing compared to this. The shells were carefully placed and came over with disgusting regularity. The buildings rocked and the whole neighborhood shook. Fountains of bricks, mortar, and dirt were spewed up into the air. Trees were torn to shreds, a wall in front of me was hit—and disappeared, a lead statue of Apollo in the garden was hurled through the air and landed fifty yards away crumpled up against the balustrade of the moat.

We were in our cellars, and gradually the shelling crept up towards us. Slowly a solemn dread which soon moulded into a sordid fear took possession of my being. In a flash I began to devise a philosophy of death for my chances were fading with every crash. I took out my pocketbook, containing some letters from my mother and some personal things, and put them on one of the beams, so that, being in another part of the building, they might perhaps be found some day. The shelling continued and shells dropped completely round the cellars, demolishing nearly everything in sight. The enemy evidently wanted to obliterate the whole place. The smell of the smoke and the dirt from the debris was choking, and every minute we expected to be our last. Suddenly it stopped. Philosophy and fear disappeared simultaneously as I sputtered out a choking laugh of relief. Then Hawkins, my servant, in a scared voice started, and the others joined in, singing the old marching refrain of the Training Camps:—