Bullets Billets | Page 7

had
fixed our best machine-gun position, my sergeant and I discovered a
sort of covered passage in a ditch in front of a communication trench. It
was a sort of emergency exit back from a row of ramshackle,
water-logged hovels in the ditch to the communication trench. We
decided to make use of this passage, and arranged things in such a way
that by scooping out the clay walls we made two caves, one behind the
other. The front one was about five yards from the machine gun, and
you reached the back cave by going through the outer one. It now being
about 11 p.m., and having been for the last five hours perpetually on
the scramble, through trenches of all sorts, I drew myself into the inner
cave to go to sleep.
This little place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I
got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fishing out a
candle-end from my pocket, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a cigarette. I
now lay down and tried to size up the situation and life in general.
Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles
and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud. This
was the first day; and, so far as I could see, the future contained nothing
but repetitions of the same thing, or worse.
[Illustration: rucksacks]
Nothing was to be heard except the occasional crack of the sniper's shot,
the dripping of the rain, and the low murmur of voices from the outer
cave.
In the narrow space beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a
sodden packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark;
candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or
the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life,
and then--swish, bang--back to the reality that the damp clay wall is

only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am--that the Boche is
just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the
slightest chance of leaving except in an ambulance.
My machine-gun section for the gun near by lay in the front cave, a
couple of feet from me; their spasmodic talking gradually died away as,
one by one, they dropped off to sleep. One more indignant, hopeless
glare at the flickering candle-end, then I pinched the wick, curled up,
and went to sleep.
* * * * *
A sudden cold sort of peppermint sensation assailed me; I awoke and
sat up. My head cannoned off the clay ceiling, so I partially had to lie
down again.
I attempted to strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and
sodden. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer
cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours:
"We're bein' flooded out, sir; there's water a foot deep in this place of
ours."
That explains it. I feel all round the back of my greatcoat and find I
have been sleeping in a pool of water.
I crawled out of my inner chamber, and the whole lot of us dived
through the rapidly rising water into the ditch outside. I scrambled up
on to the top of the bank, and tried to focus the situation.
From inquiries and personal observation I found that the cause of the
tide rising was the fact that the Engineers had been draining the trench,
in the course of which process they had apparently struck a spring of
water.
We accepted the cause of the disaster philosophically, and immediately
discussed what was the best thing to be done. Action of some sort was
urgently necessary, as at present we were all sitting on the top of the

mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being
occasionally illuminated by a German star shell--more like a family
sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else.
We decided to make a dam. Having found an empty ration box and half
a bag of coke, we started on the job of trying to fence off the water
from our cave. After about an hour's struggle with the elements we at
last succeeded, with the aid of the ration box, the sack of coke and a
few tins of bully, in reducing the water level inside to six inches.
Here we were, now wetter than ever, cold as Polar bears, sitting in this
hygroscopic catacomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was
decided on. We had a fire bucket--it had started life as a biscuit tin--a
few bits of damp wood, but no coke. "We had some coke,