Chapter TWELVE: Chasing Monotony

At present the authorities are engaged in impressing upon us the truth of the maxim which says that you must not run before you can walk. Our immediate duty is to show that we can stand the test of ordinary trench warfare.

First, such every-day nuisances as the German sniper. And here we have a pleasant little success to record.

When we took over these trenches, snipers were numerous and vigilant. If you raised your head above the parapet, one of two things happened. Either you heard a sound like the crack of a whip-lash close to your ear; or you did not. If you did, you were lucky. If you did not, you were buried at dusk.

There is one piece of slightly rising ground in the enemy’s line which commands an oblique view of a stretch of our front trenches. For a week we have been pestered by a sniper concealed somewhere along this eminence, about three hundred yards away, on our right front. We have scrutinized its whole expanse with periscopes and through loopholes, but there is no sign of trench or emplacement where the sniper might be concealed.

Yesterday that untutored but resourceful fire-eater, Eddie Gillette, turned his attention to the matter, the urgency of which had been impressed upon him by the fact that a sniper’s bullet, travelling sidewise down the trench, had chipped a groove in Eddie’s own “tin derby” that very morning, Eddie’s head being inside at the time.

“We got to locate that lobster,” he observed. And he did.

In a field behind the support line there grows, or rather, rots, a crop of derelict and much-bombarded turnips. Last night Eddie, after a conference with his officer, Boone Cruttenden, and the top machine-gun sergeant, disappeared for an hour into the _hinterland_, and brought back with him an armful of selected esculents. The largest of these he proceeded this morning to spear upon a flat lath of wood. Upon the top of this eminence he perched his own steel helmet, at a jaunty angle. Attended by a respectfully interested cohort of disciples, or rubbernecks, he next selected a suitable spot in the front-line trench, and with the help of a length of rope and a little ingenuity succeeded in lashing the turnip-laden lath to the revetment of the parapet in such a fashion as to make it possible to slide the lath up and down.

It was a still, sunny, September morning, and the whole line was quiet, except for an occasional rifle-shot, and the intermittent boom of artillery beyond the next hill-crest to the south. Eddie’s preliminary adjustments were barely completed when Boone Cruttenden arrived, carrying a periscope and attended by the machine-gun sergeant.

“Got everything fixed, Gillette?” enquired Boone.

“Yes, _sir_,” replied Eddie, ignoring the cynical smiles of Joe McCarthy, who was present in the capacity of dramatic critic.

“Right,” said Boone. “Go to it!”

The inventor cautiously slid the lath up in its groove, until the helmet-crowned turnip stood some six inches above the parapet, offering a goodly mark against the sky. Then crouching down, he waited. The spectators, with remarkable unanimity, followed his example.

_Crack!_

A bullet shaved the top sandbag and buried itself with a vicious thud in the back wall of the trench.

“Missed!” announced Gillette calmly. “We better let him try again.”

“Lower the turnip a couple of minutes first,” advised Boone. “A real man wouldn’t keep his head up there all the time—unless it was a bone one!”

Gillette complied, and waited.

“What’s the big idea, Ed?” enquired Al Thompson respectfully.

“The big idea,” replied Eddie, “is first of all to let that Dutchman over there drill a hole in this turnip. Then, if we peek through the hole, we shall be looking along the track of the bullet—at this range it would travel on a pretty-nigh flat line—and we shall see the exact place the bullet started from, which is what we are after. In case we don’t get the exact location, we will put up another turnip some other place in the trench, and get a cross-bearing from that. That’s the big idea, boys!”

“And who,” enquired the grating voice of Mr. Joe McCarthy, “is the poor fish who’s gonna put his bean up above the parapet and peek through the hole?”

Eddie Gillette forbore to reply, but resumed his operations with added dignity, sliding his turnip-head once more into the enemy’s view. There was another crack, and the steel helmet oscillated sharply.

“Right through the nose!” announced Eddie, with ghoulish satisfaction. “Now, Captain—quick!”

Already Boone Cruttenden, crouching low, was applying his periscope to the hole in the back of the turnip. The machine-gun sergeant, stationed at a tiny observation loophole in a steel plate close by, waited eagerly for instructions.

Boone, with his magnifying periscope, took a rapid observation of the constricted field of view afforded by the narrow tunnel through the turnip; then another, over the open parapet this time; then another, through the turnip again. He spoke rapidly.

“Sergeant, do you see two stunted willows on the sky-line, half-right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Below them, a single small bush?”

“Yes, sir. I got it.”

“Well, lay a machine gun to cover the ground about five yards to the right of that. Call the range three-fifty. I guess he is somewhere around there. I can’t see any loophole or anything, but maybe he is lying right out in the open, covered in grass, or—”

_Crack!_ The conscientious artist over the way was growing restive at his own want of success. This time he chipped the top of the steel helmet.

“That will do,” said Boone. “Lower away that turnip, Gillette, and we’ll take a second bearing farther along.”

Mr. Gillette collected his paraphernalia with the solemn dignity of an acolyte taking part in a mystery. But he unbent to human level for a moment.

“You see,” he observed caustically, “we don’t require no poor fish here, Joe McCarthy!”

In due course a second turnip was hoisted and perforated, a second bearing taken, and another machine gun laid. The machine-gun teams took station; the first cartridges were fed into the chambers.

“Let ’em go the moment he snipes again,” was Boone’s order.

A third spot was selected, and a third turnip exposed. This time it wagged itself provokingly, and the sniper responded at once. It was a beautiful shot, but it was his last. Next moment two converging streams of machine-gun bullets were spattering his lair. What happened we shall never know, but we were never again troubled from that particular locality.

“We certainly got to hand it to you, Ed,” announced Joe McCarthy, in an unusual fit of self-abasement.

Next, artillery fire. The Boche bombards our trenches twice a day, and searches the back areas with shrapnel at night. He is not very persistent, and a little sharp retaliation from our gunners usually brings his performance to a conclusion. Still, it is unpleasant while it lasts.

To be shelled for the first time must fairly rank with the first cigarette, the first shave, and the first kiss as one of the unforgettable experiences of life. Opinions vary as to the best place to be during a bombardment—assuming that one has to be anywhere at all. Jim Nichols considers a shell-hole a good place.

“It is well known,” he points out, “that no two bullets ever hit the same spot. Nelson, or some other historical gink, once said that the safest place for a man to put his head during a sea-fight was a hole made in a ship’s side by a cannon-ball. Me for a shell-hole, every time!”

Boone Cruttenden thinks an ordinary trench dugout would be best. Else what are dugouts for?

“It depends on who made them,” replies the veteran Major Powers. “The German officer’s idea is all right. He turns on a squad of men, and they construct for him a combined club and restaurant somewhere near the centre of the earth. But even that is liable to have its exits blocked. Personally, if I were under bombardment, I should stay out in the trench. I am more likely to be hit, but less likely to be buried; and I don’t intend to go putting the cart before the horse at _my_ funeral!”

All had an opportunity to test their theories—and their nerve—the first afternoon after taking over the trenches. Boone and Jim shared a dugout in the front line, sunk below the forward parapet, under the sandbags. Having contracted the British habit of afternoon tea, they were occupied towards five o’clock in brewing that beverage in a mess-tin, when suddenly, with a whizz and a rush, a German shell passed over the trench and burst amid a cloud of flying clods fifty yards beyond it.

“This is the afternoon bombardment that we were warned about,” said Jim, pouring out two cups of tea. “Now we shall know whether we are shell-shy or not!”

Boone took his aluminum teacup in his hand, and held it to his lips. Simultaneously another shell landed outside—fifty yards short of the parapet this time. The earth shook. Fragments of dirt and grit fell from the sandbag ceiling into the tea. Boone regarded the hand which was holding the teacup. He noted with secret satisfaction that though his heart was bumping slightly, the hand was as steady as a rock.

“That is what is known as ‘bracketing,’ I guess,” said Nichols. “The next shell will strike an average between the ranges of the first two and get this happy home of ours just where the cork got the bottle.”

He was right—or nearly. Next moment, with a triumphant shriek, a shell landed fairly in the trench, fifteen yards to their right. They felt little concussion, for the trench was provided with stout earthen traverses, which limited the radius of the explosion and blanketed its force.

“The question before the House,” said Boone, “is whether we stay where we are or go away from here. Hallo, what’s that?”

A hoarse cry was passing down the trench from mouth to mouth—a cry which never fails to tug at a soldier’s heart, for he knows not what comrade may be involved:

“Stretcher-bearers!”

Both officers scrambled out of their shelter. Three men, crouching inside the entrance to a neighbouring dugout, had been hit by fragments of shell—all in the legs. In due course the stretchers arrived, and the trio—our first actual casualties—were borne off upon that long and tortuous journey which starts in a communication-trench and ends possibly at Home. They were followed by the mingled chorus of sympathy and congratulation always accorded in these days to those who are taken, by those who are left.

More German shells arrived. The parapet was hit in two places, and burst sandbags flew in the air. But it was not “heavy stuff”—so the artillery officer remarked, busy in his forward observing-station with periscope and telephone—and the actual damage was slight.

“I am calling for retaliation now,” he explained to Boone and Jim. He gabbled a formula to the telephone orderly, who repeated it into a portable instrument before him. Presently the man looked up.

“Battery fired!” he announced. And a few moments later—

_Whish!_ _Whish!_ _Whish!_ _Whish!_

Four hissing streaks of sound passed over the trench from the rear. Next moment four heavy detonations shook the earth. A hundred pairs of eager eyes, peeping cautiously over the parapet, observed four fountains of earth and smoke spring up in No Man’s Land.

“Short!” muttered the gunner officer, and issued a corrective order.

So the duel went on. It was a typical artillery fight, in that each side endeavoured to dissuade its opponent from further participation by bombarding, not one another, but one another’s friends in the trenches. The German fire did not slacken; if anything it increased. Probably Brother Boche was well aware that a fresh division had taken over the line, and desired to make a good first impression. But there were no more casualties.

“I’m tired of this. What about finishing our tea?” enquired Boone Cruttenden of Jim Nichols.

“Sure thing,” said Jim. “Come on!”

* * * * *

But no. As they rounded the traverse leading into their own particular bay, there came a roar and a bang—and their home was not. When the smoke cleared away they saw, instead of a rugged and workmanlike parapet, a jumbled heap of disintegrated sandbags and twisted timber-work.

Jim Nichols turned to his companion, with his slow smile.

“There!” he said. “Do you still hold that the best place during a bombardment is a dugout?”

“I’m stung, I admit,” said Boone. “But now you can test _your_ theory. You can sit in the middle of that mess that the shell has made. It’s in full view of the enemy, but of course you’ll be safe!”

The rival theorist smiled again.

“I confess I have died on that proposition,” he said.