Bullets Billets | Page 8

I'm sure!
Why, of course--we built it into the dam!" Down came the dam, out
came the coke, and in came the water. However, we preferred the water
to the cold; so, finally, after many exasperating efforts, we got a fire
going in the bucket. Five minutes' bliss followed by disaster. The fire
bucket proceeded to emit such dense volumes of sulphurous smoke that
in a few moments we couldn't see a lighted match.
We stuck it a short time longer, then one by one dived into the water
and out into the air, shooting out of our mud hovel to the surface like
snakes when you pour water down their holes.
Time now 3 a.m. No sleep; rain, water, plus smoke. A board meeting
held immediately decides to give up sleep and dug-outs for that night.
A motion to try and construct a chimney with an entrenching tool is
defeated by five votes to one ... dawn is breaking--my first night in
trenches comes to an end.
CHAPTER IV
MORE MUD--RAIN AND BULLETS--A BIT OF CAKE--"WIND
UP"--NIGHT ROUNDS
The rose-pink sky fades off above to blue, The morning star alone
proclaims the dawn. The empty tins and barbed wire bathed in dew

Emerge, and then another day is born.
I wrote that "poem" in those--trenches, so you can see the sort of state
to which I was reduced.
Well, my first trench night was over; the dawn had broken--everything
else left to break had been seen to by the artillery, which started off
generally at about eight. And what a fearful long day it seemed, that
first one! As soon as it was light I began scrambling about, and having
a good look at the general lie of things. In front was a large expanse of
root field, at the further side of which a long irregular parapet marked
the German trenches. Behind those again was more root field, dented
here and there with shell holes filled with water, beyond which stood a
few isolated remnants which had once been cottages. I stood at a
projection in one of our trenches, from where I could see the general
shape of our line, and could glimpse a good view of the German
arrangements. Not a soul could be seen anywhere. Here and there a
wisp of smoke indicated a fire bucket. Behind our trenches, behind the
shattered houses at the top of a wooded rise in the ground, stood what
once must have been a fine chateau. As I looked, a shrieking hollow
whistle overhead, a momentary pause, then--"Crumph!" showed clearly
what was the matter with the chateau. It was being shelled. The
Germans seemed to have a rooted objection to that chateau. Every
morning, as we crouched in our mud kennels, we heard those
"Crumphs," and soon got to be very good judges of form. We knew
they were shelling the chateau. When they didn't shell the chateau, we
got it in the trenches; so we looked on that dear old mangled wreck
with a friendly eye--that tapering, twisted, perforated spire, which they
never could knock down, was an everlasting bait to the Boche, and a
perfect fairy godmother to us.
Oh, those days in that trench of ours! Each day seemed about a week
long. I shared a dug-out with a platoon commander after that first night.
The machine-gun section found a suitable place and made a dug-out for
themselves.
Day after day, night after night, my companion and I lay and listened to
the daily explosions, read, and talked, and sloshed about that trench

together.
The greatest interest one had in the daytime was sitting on the damp
straw in our clay vault, scraping the mud off one's saturated boots and
clothes. The event to which one looked forward with the greatest
interest was the arrival of letters in the evening.
Now and again we got out of our dug-out and sloshed down the trench
to scheme out some improvement or other, or to furtively look out
across the water-logged turnip field at the Boche trenches opposite.
Occasionally, in the silent, still, foggy mornings, a voice from
somewhere in the alluvial depths of a miserable trench, would suddenly
burst into a scrap of song, such as--
Old soldiers never die, They simply fade away.
--a voice full of "fed-upness," steeped in determination.
Then all would be silence for the next couple of hours, and so the day
passed.
[Illustration: The Knave of Spades.]
At dusk, my job was to emerge from this horrible drain and go round
the various machine-gun positions. What a job! I generally went alone,
and in the darkness struck out across the sodden field, tripping,
stumbling, and sometimes falling into various shell holes on the way.
One does a little calling at this time of