Bullets Billets | Page 6

in packing up things they were

taking to the trenches than in anything else.
And now the time came to start off. I found the machine-gun section in
charge of a sergeant, a most excellent fellow, who had looked after the
section since the officer (whose place I had come to fill) had been
wounded. I took over from him, and, as the battalion moved off along
the road, fell in behind with my latest acquisition--a machine-gun
section, with machine guns to match. It was quite dusk now, and as we
neared the great Bois de Ploegstert, known all over the world as
"Plugstreet Wood," it was nearly night. The road was getting rougher,
and the houses, dotted about in dark silhouettes against the sky-line,
had a curiously deserted and worn appearance. Everything was looking
dark, damp and drear.
On we went down the road through the wood, stumbling along in the
darkness over the shell-pitted track. Weird noises occasionally floated
through the trees; the faint "crack" of a rifle, or the rumble of limber
wheels. A distant light flickered momentarily in the air, cutting out in
bold relief the ruins of the shattered chateau on our left. On we went
through this scene of dark and humid desolation, past the occasional
mounds of former habitations, on into the trenches before Plugstreet
Wood.
CHAPTER III
THOSE PLUGSTREET TRENCHES--MUD AND RAIN--FLOODED
OUT--A HOPELESS DAWN
An extraordinary sensation--the first time of going into trenches. The
first idea that struck me about them was their haphazard design. There
was, no doubt, some very excellent reason for someone or other making
those trenches as they were; but they really did strike me as curious
when I first saw them.
A trench will, perhaps, run diagonally across a field, will then go along
a hedge at right angles, suddenly give it up and start again fifty yards to
the left, in such a position that it is bound to cross the kitchen-garden of
a shattered chateau, go through the greenhouse and out into the road.

On getting there it henceforth rivals the ditch at the side in the amount
of water it can run off into a row of dug-outs in the next field. There is,
apparently, no necessity for a trench to be in any way parallel to the
line of your enemy; as long as he can't shoot you from immediately
behind, that's all you ask.
It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trenches.
Everything was strange, and wet and horrid. First of all I had to go and
fix up my machine guns at various points, and find places for the
gunners to sleep in. This was no easy matter, as many of the dug-outs
had fallen in and floated off down stream.
In this, and subsequent descriptions of the trenches, I may lay myself
open to the charge of exaggeration. But it must be remembered that I
am describing trench life in the early days of 1914, and I feel sure that
those who had experience of them will acquit me of any such charge.
To give a recipe for getting a rough idea, in case you want to, I
recommend the following procedure. Select a flat ten-acre ploughed
field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country
drains into it. Now cut a zig-zag slot about four feet deep and three feet
wide diagonally across, dam off as much water as you can so as to
leave about a hundred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one
side of the slot, then endeavour to live there for a month on bully beef
and damp biscuits, whilst a friend has instructions to fire at you with
his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface.
Well, here I was, anyway, and the next thing was to make the best of it.
As I have before said, these were the days of the earliest trenches in this
war: days when we had none of those desirable "props," such as
corrugated iron, floorboards, and sand bags ad lib.
[Illustration: "ullo! 'Arry"]
When you made a dug-out in those days you made it out of anything
you could find, and generally had to make it yourself. That first night I
was "in" I discovered, after a humid hour or so, that our battalion
wouldn't fit into the spaces left by the last one, and as regards dug-outs,

the truth of that mathematical axiom, "Two's into one, won't go,"
suddenly dawned on me with painful clearness. I was faced with
making a dug-out, and it was raining, of course. (Note.--Whenever I
don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.") After sloshing about
in several primitive trenches in the vicinity of the spot where we