Kitchener's Mob: I. 'Nothing to Report'

I

‘KITCHENER’S MOB’ they were called in the early days of 1914, when the London hoardings were clamorous with the first calls for volunteers. The seasoned regulars of the first British expeditionary force said it patronizingly, the great British public, hopefully, the world at large, doubtfully. It was ‘Kitchener’s Mob’ when there was but a scant sixty thousand under arms, with millions yet to come. ‘Kitchener’s Mob ’ it remains to-day, fighting in hundreds of thousands in France, Belgium, Africa, Turkey, Serbia — where not? And to-morrow, when the war is ended, who will come marching home again, old campaigners, war-worn remnants of once mighty armies? Kitchener’s Mob.

It was on the 18th of August, 1914, that the mob-spirit gained its mastery over me. I joined an old-line London regiment, composed of men from all parts of the United Kingdom. There were North Countrymen, a few Welshmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen, men from the Midlands and from the South of England, with more than enough Cockneys to identify and localize us. We were recruited from what is known in England as ‘the lower middle classes.’ In civilian life we had been tradesmen, shop assistants, railway and city employees, clerks, common laborers. Most of us, used to indoor life, needed months of the most rigorous kind of training before we could become physically fit, able to endure the hardships of active service. During a period of nine months, a government, paternalistic in its solicitude for our welfare, schooled our bodies and trained our minds, whether we would or no. We were eager, impatient to be at the front. But we knew the one test to be met: efficiency. Therefore we worked with a will, and at last, to our joy, we were ordered to proceed on active service.

The machinery for moving troops in England works without the slightest friction. The men, transport, horses, commissariat, medical stores and supplies of a battalion are entrained in Jess than half an hour. Everything is timed to the minute. Battalion after battalion and train after train, our division moved out of Aldershot at half-hour intervals. Each train arrived at the port of embarkation on schedule time and pulled up on the docks by the side of a troop transport, great slate-colored liners taken out of the merchant service. Not a moment was lost. The last man was aboard, and the last wagon on the crane swinging up over the ship’s side, as the next train came in.

Ship by ship we moved down the harbor in the twilight, the boys crowding the rail on both sides, taking their farewell look at England — home. It was the last farewell for hundreds of them. But there was no martial music, no waving of flags, there were no tearful good-byes. Our departure was as prosaic as our long period of training had been. We were each an infinitesimal part of a tremendous business organization which works without ostentation, without the display considered so essential in the old days. We left England without a cheer. There was not so much as a wave of the hand from the wharf; for there was no one on the wharf to wave, excepting the dock laborers, and they had seen too many soldiers off to the wars to be sentimental about it. It was a tense moment for the men. But trust Tommy to relieve a tense situation. As we were passing a barge laden to the water’s edge with coal, some one started singing our favorite ballad, ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning,’ to those smutty-faced coalheavers. Everyone joined heartily, forgetting the solemnity of the occasion until we were well out of sight of land.

During the cross-channel trip the men stretched out on the decks or gathered in the great bare cabin, putting the finishing touches to their French accent.

‘ Alf, ’ow’s this: “ Madamaselly, avay vus any bread?”’

‘Wot do you say for “gimme a tuppenny packet o’ Nosegay”?’

‘Bonjoor, Monseer. That ain’t so dusty, Freddie, wot?’

‘Let’s try that Marselase again.’

‘You start it, ’Arry. You know the sounds better’n wot I do.’

‘Wite till I find it in me book. All right now — ’

Such bits of conversation may be of little interest. But they have the merit of being genuine. All of them, and the ones which follow, were jotted down in my book when I heard them.

The following day we crowded into the typical troop train of the French army, 8 chevaux or 40 hommes to a car, and started on a leisurely journey to the firing line. We traveled all day at eight or ten miles an hour, through Normandy. And it was apple-blossom time. We passed through neat little towns and villages, lying silent in the afternoon sunshine, and, seemingly, almost deserted. Now and then children would wave to us from a cottage window. And in the fields, old men and women and girls leaned silently on their rakes or their hoes and watched us pass. Occasionally an old reservist, guarding the railway line, would lift his cap and shout, ‘Vive l’Angleterre! ’ but more often he would lean on his rifle and smile, nodding courteously to our salutations. Tommy, for all his dogged, stolid cheeriness, realized the loneliness, the tragedy of France. When we asked about the men we received always the same quiet, courteous reply: ‘ ÀA la guerre, monsieur.’

The boys soon learned the meaning of that phrase, ‘à la guerre.’ It became a slogan, a warcry; it was shouted back and forth from car to car and from train to train. You can imagine how eager we all were, how we strained our ears, whenever the train stopped, for the sound of the guns. But not until the following morning, when we reached the little village at the end of the railway journey, did we hear them, a low muttering, like the sound of thunder far beyond the horizon. How we cheered at the first faint sound which was to become so deafening, so terrible to us later! For we were like the others who had gone that way. We were boys. We knew nothing of war; we thought it must be something adventurous and fine, something to make the blood leap and the heart sing. We marched through the quiet village and down the poplar-lined road, surprised, almost disappointed, to see the wellkept houses, and the pleasant level fields, green with spring crops. We had really hoped to see everything in ruins. At this stage of the journey, however, we were still some twenty-five miles from the firing line.

We advanced by easy stages, bivouacking at night in the open fields, or sleeping in the lofts of great rambling farm buildings. As we moved up, the sound of the guns grew in intensity from a faint rumbling to a subdued roar, until one evening, sitting in the open window of a stable-loft, we saw, for the first time, the reflection of the light from bursting shells. We saw the trench rockets soaring skyward; and we heard bursts of rifle and machinegun fire, very faintly, like the sound of chestnuts popping in an oven.

Coming into the trenches for the first time when the deadlock on the western front had become, seemingly, unbreakable, we had the benefit of the experience of the gallant little remnant of the first British expeditionary force. After the retreat from Mons, they had dug themselves in, and were holding on tenaciously, awaiting the long-heralded arrival of Kitchener’s Mob. We were among the first to arrive, and went immediately into the front-line trenches for twenty-four hours’ instruction in trench fighting, with a battalion of regulars. We were to remain with them for a night and a day, during which time we were to learn all that we could of the business of trench warfare. Afterward, all our knowledge would have to be gained by experience. This oneday course in the ‘peripatetic school,’ as the facetious subalterns called it, is given to all new units before they are fitted into their own particular sectors in the front. Months later, we ourselves became members of the faculty; but then we were undergraduates, sitting at the feet of the Gloucesters.

The night march up to the firing line is, in itself, quite an event, the first time. We fell in by platoons, outside our billets, loaded our rifles with ball ammunition, — five rounds in the magazine, under the cut-off, — and marched off, silently, and in single file, entering the communication trench in the centre of a little thicket about a mile back of the first-line trenches. We passed through what appeared, in the darkness, to be a hopeless labyrinth of earthworks. There were scores of cross streets and alleys, leading off in every direction. All along the way we had glimpses of dug-outs, lighted by candles, the doorways carefully concealed with pieces of old sacking. In comfortable nooks and corners groups of Tommies were boiling tea and frying bacon over little stoves made of old iron buckets or biscuit tins. I marveled at the skill of our trench guide, who went confidently along in the darkness with scarcely a pause. After a long, zigzag journey, we arrived at our trench, where we met the Gloucesters.

There is not one of us who has not a warm spot in his heart for the Gloucesters. They welcomed us so heartily, and initiated us so kindly into all the mysteries of trench etiquette and trench tradition. We were, at best, but amateur Tommies. In them we recognized the lineal descendants of the line of Atkins; men whose grandfathers had fought in the Crimea, whose fathers had fought in Indian mutinies. They were the fighting sons of fighting sires, and in twenty-four hours they taught us more of the actual business of trench fighting than we had learned in nine months’ training in England. One of them probably saved the life of an infantryman friend of mine before we had been in the trenches five minutes. Naturally, our first question was, ‘How far is it to the German lines?’ And in his eagerness and his ignorance, my fellow Tommy stood up on the firing bench for a look, with a lighted cigarette in his mouth. He was pulled down into the trench just as a bullet went zing-g-g from the parapet precisely where he had been standing. Then the Gloucester gave him a friendly little lecture that none of us ever forgot.

‘Now look ’ere, son. Never get up for a squint with a fag on. Fritz ’as got every sand-bag along this parapet numbered, same as we’ve got ’is. ’Is snipers is a layin’ fer us same as ours is a layin’ fer ’im. Now then, we ain’t a arskin’ you for a burial party; but if any of you blokes wants to be the stiff, stand up w’ere this guy lit the gas.’

There were n’t any takers, and a moment later, another bullet struck a sand-bag in the same spot.

‘See? ’E spotted you. He’ll pot away at that place for an hour, ’opin’ to catch you lookin’ over again. Less see if we can find ’im. Give us that biscuit tin, ’Enery.’

Then we learned the biscuit-tin-finder trick for locating snipers. It’s only approximate of course, but it gives a pretty good hint at the direction from which the bullets come. It does n’t work in the daytime, for a sniper is too wise to fire at it. But a biscuit tin, set on the parapet at night, in a badly sniped position, is almost certain to be hit. The angle from which the shots come is shown by the jagged edges of tin around the bullet holes. Then, as the Gloucester said, ‘Just give ’im a nice April shower out o’ yer machine gun. You may fetch ’im; but if you don’t, ’e won’t bother you for a hour or two.’

We learned, too, how orders are passed down the line, from sentry to sentry, quietly, and with the speed of a man running. We learned how the sentries are posted, their hours and their duties. We saw the intricate mazes of telephone wires, and learned how communication is kept between the battalions in the firing line and those in the reserve trenches; how messages are sent from them to brigade, divisional, army corps, and general headquarters, and from the infantry in the trenches to the artillery, miles away to the rear. We learned how to ‘sleep’ five men in a four-by-six dugout, and when there are no dug-outs, how to hunch up on the firing benches, with our waterproof sheets over our heads, and doze, with our knees for a pillow.

We saw the listening patrols go out at night, through the underground tunnel which leads from the trenches to the far side of the barbed-wire entanglements. From there they creep far out between the opposing lines of trenches, to keep watch on the movements of the enemy and to report the presence of their working parties or patrols. This is dangerous, nerve-trying work, for the men sent out are exposed, not only to the fire of the enemy, but to the wild shots of their own comrades as well. I saw a patrol come in just before dawn. One man brought with him a piece of barbed wire, clipped from the German entanglements two hundred and fifty yards away.

‘Taffy, ’ave a look at this ’ere: threeply stuff, wot you can ’ardly get yer nippers through. ’Ad to saw an’ saw, an’ w’en I all but ’ad it, lummy! if they did n’t send up a rocket wot bleedin’ near ’it me in the ’ead!’

‘Tike it to Captain Stevens. I ’eard ’im sy ’e’s wantin’ a bit for one of the artill’ry blokes. ’E ’s got a bet on with ’im that it’s three-ply wire. Now don’t forget, Bobby, touch ’im for a couple o’ packets o’ fags.’

I was tremendously interested. At that time it seemed incredible to me that men crawled over to the German lines in this manner and clipped bits of barbed wire for souvenirs.

‘Did you hear anything?’ I asked him.

‘ ’Eard a flute one of ’em was a playin’ of. An’ you ought to ’ave ’eard ’em a-singin’! Doleful as ’ell.’

Several men were killed and wounded during the night. One of them was a sentry with whom I had been talking only a few moments before. He was standing on the firing bench, peering out into the gloom, when suddenly he fell back into the trench without a cry. It was a terrible wound. I would not have believed that a bullet could so horribly disfigure one. He was given first aid by the light of a candle; but it was useless. Silently his comrades wrapped him in a blanket. ‘Poor old Walt! ’ they said. An hour later he was buried in a shell-hole.

One thing that we learned during our first night in the trenches was of the very first importance. And that was, respect for our enemies. We came from England full of absurd newspaper tales of the German soldier’s inferiority as a fighting man. We had read that he was a wretched marksman; that he fired his rifle blindly; that he would not stand up to the bayonet; and that when opportunity offered, he crept over and gave himself up. We thought him almost beneath contempt. We were convinced in a night that we had greatly underestimated his abilities as a marksman. And as for his allround inferiority as a fighting man, one of the Gloucesters put it pretty well.

‘ ’Ere! If the Germans is so bloomin’ rotten, ’ow is it we ain’t a-fightin’ ’em sommers along the Rhine or in AustryHungry? No, they ain’t a-firin’ wild, I give you my word. Not around this part o’ France, they ain’t. Wot do you sy, Jerry?’

Jerry made a most illuminating contribution to the discussion of Fritz as a fighting man.

‘I’ll tell you wot. If ever I ’ave the luck to get ’ome again — if I gets through this ’ere war with me eyesight, I’ll never feel sife w’en I sees a Fritzie unless I’m a lookin’ at ’im through me periscope from be’int a bit o’ cover.’

How am I to give a really vivid picture of trench life as I saw it for the first time? How make it live for others, when I remember that the many descriptive accounts I had read in England, many of them the letters of soldiers, did not in the least visualize it for me? I watched the flares rising from the German lines, watched them burst into points of light over the desolate country called No-Man’s-Land, and drift slowly down. And I watched the shadows rush back again like the very wind of darkness. I wished that Joseph Pennell might see something of this fascinating night-life. It seemed to me that he would be able to catch the beauty of it with his blacks and whites, make it real for the world which will never see it as I did, against the dark background which was my own first glimmering realization of the tremendous sadness, the awful futility of war.

II

Three nights later we marched up to the trenches again, this time at a different part of the line, where we were to take over from a territorial battalion an integral part of the thin khaki line which barred the way to any German attempt to reach the Channel coast. We were to be left in full possession, and we were immensely proud of this new and really great responsibility. We could scarcely wait until the battalion which we had relieved marched down the communication trench, leaving us to take care of any disturbances which Fritzie might start.

As luck would have it, Fritzie was more than a handful. Every yard of our parapet was sniped. Several of our comrades were killed within an hour. Most of our periscopes were shattered by bullets before we had been in the trenches twenty-four hours. I’ve often thought that the Germans knew we were novices at the war game, and that we had just come in; for there were but few occasions, afterward, when we were annoyed by so persistent and so deadly a hail of lead. Our own snipers were at a loss at first, although they soon learned all the points of the game. We machine gunners tried the biscuittin-finder trick, only to discover that the shots were coming from all directions. We had not been told the method of procedure for an emergency of this nature. But we decided that if a ‘nice little April shower out o’ yer machine gun’ would drive one sniper to cover, a steady downpour over a larger area from four guns might be effective where there were many more of them. Therefore we took ranges to every evidence of cover within the zone of rifle fire, which might be concealing a German sniper; and at dusk, we crept out behind our trenches with all of our guns. There, with the aid of our nightfiring lamps, we poured out hails of lead at irregular intervals during the night, along hedges, parapets, over the ruined walls of houses, and into the trees and tall grass back of the German lines. The sniping decreased perceptibly, and we thought we had discovered a great fundamental truth, namely, that snipers are afraid of machine gunners. We had, in fact, discovered it, for ourselves. And so, doubtless, had innumerable machine gunners before us. As the months passed, we discovered many other truths in the same fashion. Some of them we paid dearly for in human lives. Nearly all of them were bought at great risk. But we prized them the more because of this.

During our first summer in the trenches, there were days, sometimes weeks, at a time, when, in the language of the official bulletins, there was ‘nothing to report,’ or, ‘calm’ prevailed ‘along our entire front.’ From the point of view of the War Office, these statements were, doubtless, true enough. There were no great battles, there was no wholesale slaughtering of soldiers. But from Tommy Atkins’s point of view, ‘calm’ was putting it somewhat mildly. Life in the trenches, even on the quietest of days, is a long battle of British resourcefulness versus German ingenuity. Snipers, machine gunners, artillerymen, airmen, engineers, signalmen of the opposing sides, vie with each other in daring and skill, in order to secure that coveted advantage, the morale. Tommy calls it the more-ale, but he jolly well knows when he has it and when he has n’t.

I remember many nights of official calm, when we machine gunners crept out with our guns to positions prepared beforehand. With the aid of our largescale maps and our instruments we played streams of lead along the roads back of the German lines; roads which we knew were used by enemy troops, marching to and from the trenches. We waited for messages from our listening patrols, who immediately sent back word when they discovered enemy working parties, building up parapets or mending their barbed-wire entanglements. Then we would lay our guns according to instructions and blaze away, each gun firing at the rate of 300 to 500 rounds per minute.

The German machine gunners were by no means inactive. They too profited by their knowledge of soldier nature, their knowledge of night-life in the fire zone. They knew, as did we, that the roads back of the firing line are filled at night with troops, transport wagons, fatigue parties. They knew also that men become so utterly weary of living in ditches, living in holes, like rats, that they are willing to take big risks, when moving in or out of the trenches, for the pure joy of getting out on top of the ground. Many a night, when we were moving up for our week in the first-line trenches, or back for our week in reserve, we heard the far-off rattle of machine guns, and in an instant the bullets would be zip-zipping all around us. There was no need for the quick word of command. If there was a communication trench, we all made a dive for it at once. If there was no friendly cover at hand, we fell face down, in ditches, in shell-holes, in any place which offered a little protection from that terrible hail of lead. Many of our men were killed and wounded nightly by machine-gun fire, usually because they were too utterly weary to be cautious. And doubtless, we did as much damage with our own guns. It seemed to me horrible, something like murder, that advantage must be taken of these opportunities. But it was war, and fortunately, we rarely knew, nor did the German gunners, what damage was done during those summer nights of ‘calm along the entire front.’

The artillerymen, both British and German, helped us to endure the boredom of ‘nothing to report’ days. There were desultory bombardments at daybreak, when every infantryman is at his post, rifle in hand, bayonet fixed, on the alert for signs of a surprise attack. It is easy to understand why this is a favorite amusement of the field artillery. They watch the effect of their fire through field-glasses, from nicely concealed positions two or three miles in the rear. Tommy, the infantryman, does n’t care for it. He does n’t enjoy being a ‘bloomin’ human ninepin.’ He crouches close to the front wall of the trench, and while waiting for the game to end, covered with dirt, sometimes half buried in fallen trench, he wagers his next week’s tobacco rations that the London papers will print the same old story: ‘Along the western front there is nothing to report.’ And usually he wins.

Trench-mortaring was more to our liking. That is an infantryman’s game, and while extremely hazardous, the men in the trenches have a sporting chance. Everyone forgot breakfast when word was passed down the line that we were going to ‘mortarfy ’ Fritzie. Our projectiles were immense balls of hollow steel, filled with high explosive. Eagerly, expectantly, the boys gathered in the first-line trenches to watch the fun. First a dull boom from the reserve trench in rear where the mortar was operated.

‘ There she is! ’ ‘ See ’er ? ’ ’Goin’ true as a die!’ All of the boys would be shouting at once.

Up it goes, turning over and over, rising to a height of several hundred feet. Then, if well aimed, it reaches the end of its upward journey directly over the enemy’s line, and falls straight into his trench. There is a moment of silence, followed by a terrific explosion which throws dirt and débris high in the air. By this time, the Tommies all along the line are standing on the firing benches, head and shoulders above the parapet, forgetting their danger in their excitement, and shouting at the top of their voices.

“Ow’s that one, Fritzie boy?’

‘Guten morgen, you Proosian sausage wallopers!’

‘ Tyke a bit o’ that there ’ome to yer missus!’

But Fritzie kept up his end of the game, always. He gave us just as good as we sent, and often he added something for good measure. His surprise packages were sausage-shaped missiles which came wobbling toward us, slowly, almost awkwardly; but they dropped with lightning speed. The explosion was terrible, and alas, for any poor Tommy who misjudged the place of its fall! However, every one had a chance. Trench-mortar projectiles are so large, and they describe so leisurely an arc before they fall, that men have time to run.

I ’ve always admired Tommy Atkins for his sense of fair play. He loved giving Fritz ‘a little bit of alright,’ but he never resented it when Fritz had his own fun at our expense. I used to believe, in the far-off days of peace, that men had lost their old primal love for dangerous sport, their naïve ignorance of fear. But on those trench-mortaring days, when I watched boys playing with death with right good zest, heard them shouting and laughing as they tumbled over one another in their eagerness to escape being killed, I was convinced that I was wrong. Daily I saw men going through the test of fire triumphantly, and at the last, what a fearful test it was, and how splendidly they met it! During six months, continuously in the firing line, I met less than a dozen natural-born cowards; and my experience was largely among clerks, barbers, plumbers, shop-keepers, men who had no fighting traditions to back them up, to make them heroic in spite of themselves.

The better I knew Tommy, the better I liked him. He has n’t a shred of sentimentality in his make-up. There is plenty of sentiment, sincere feeling, but it is very well concealed. I had been a soldier of the King for many months before I realized that the men with whom I was living, sharing rations and hardships, were anything other than the healthy animals they looked. They seemed to live for their food. They talked of it, anticipated it with the zest of men who were experiencing for the first time the joy of being genuinely hungry. They watched their muscles harden with the satisfaction known to every normal man when he is becoming physically fit for the first time. But they said nothing about patriotism, or the duty of Englishmen in wartime. And if I tried to start a conversation on that line, they walked right over me with their boots on.

This was a great disappointment at first. I would never have known, from anything that was said, that a man of them was stirred at the thought of fighting for old England. England was all right, but, ‘I ain’t a-goin’ balmy about the old flag and all that stuff.’ Many of them insisted that they were in the army for personal and selfish reasons alone. They went out of their way to ridicule any and every indication of sentiment.

There was the matter of talk about mothers, for example. I can’t imagine this being the case in a volunteer army of American boys; but never, during sixteen months of British army life, did I hear a discussion of mothers. When the weekly parcels from England arrived, and the boys were sharing their cake and chocolate and tobacco, one of them would say, ‘Good old mum. She ain’t a bad sort’; to be answered with reluctant, mouth-filled grunts, or grudging nods of approval. As for fathers, I often thought to myself, ‘This is certainly a tremendous army of posthumous sons!’ Months before, I should have been astonished at this reticence. But I had learned to understand Tommy. His silences were as eloquent as any splendid outbursts or glowing tributes could have been. It was a matter of constant wonder to me that men living in the daily and hourly presence of death could so control and conceal their feelings. Their talk was of anything but home; and yet I knew that they thought of little else.

One of our boys was killed, and there was a letter to be written to his parents. Three Tommies who knew him best were to attempt this. They made innumerable beginnings. Each of them was afraid of blundering, of causing unnecessary pain by an indelicate revelation of the facts. There was a feminine fineness about their concern which was beautiful to see. The final draft of the letter was a little masterpiece, not of English, but of insight: such a letter as any one of us would have liked his own parents to receive under similar circumstances. Nothing was forgotten which could make the news, in the slightest degree, more endurable. Every trifling personal belonging was carefully saved and packed in a little box to follow the letter. All of this was done amid much boisterous jesting; and there was hilarious singing to the wheezing accompaniment of an old mouth-organ. But of reference to home, or mothers, or comradeship, not a word.

Rarely a night passed without its burial parties. ’Digging in the garden,’ Tommy calls the grave-making. The bodies, wrapped in blankets or waterproof ground-sheets, are lifted over the parados and carried back a convenient twenty yards or more. The desolation of that garden was indescribable. It was strewn with wreckage, gaping with shell-holes, billowing with numberless nameless graves, a waste land speechlessly pathetic. The poplars and willow hedges had been blasted and splintered by shell-fire. Tommy calls these ‘Kaiser Bill’s flowers.’ Coming from England, he feels more deeply than he would care to admit the crimes done to trees in the name of war.

Our chaplain was a devout man, but prudent to a fault. He never visited us in the trenches; therefore our burial parties proceeded without the rites of the church. This arrangement was highly satisfactory to Tommy. He liked to ‘get the planting done’ with the least possible delay or fuss. His whispered conversations, while the graves were being scooped, were, to say the least, quite out of the spirit of the occasion. Once we were burying two boys with whom we had been having supper a few hours before. There was an artillery duel in progress, the shells whistling high over our heads and bursting in great splotches of white fire, far in rear of the opposing lines of trenches. The grave-making went speedily on while the diggers argued in whispers as to the calibre of the guns. Some said they were 6-inch, while others thought 9-inch. Discussion was momentarily suspended when trenchrockets went soaring up from the enemy’s line. We crouched motionless until the welcome darkness spread again. And then, in loud whispers, —

‘’Ere! If they was 9-inch they would ’ave more screetch.’

And one from the other school of opinion would reply,—

‘Don’t talk so bloomin’ silly! Ain’t I a-tellin’ you you can’t always size ’em by the screetch?’

Not a prayer. Not a word of either censure or praise for the boys who had gone. Not an expression of opinion as to the meaning of the great change which had come to them and which might come as suddenly to any or all of us. And yet I knew that every man was thinking of these things.

There were days when the front was really quiet. The thin trickle of riflefire only accentuated the stillness of an early summer morning. Far down the line many a Tommy could be heard singing to himself as he sat in the door of his dug-out, cleaning his rifle. There would be the pleasant crackle of burning pine sticks, the sizzle of frying bacon, the lazy buzzing of swarms of bluebottle flies. Occasionally, across a pool of noonday silence, we heard the birds singing; for they did n’t desert us. When we gave them a hearing, they did their cheery little best to assure us that everything would come right in the end. Once we heard a skylark, an English skylark, and for a little while, it made the world beautiful again. It was a fine thing to watch the faces of those English lads as they listened. I was deeply touched when one of them said, ‘Ain’t ’e a plucky little chap, singin’ right in front o’ Fritzie’s trenches fer us English blokes?’

It was a sincere and beautiful tribute.

Along the part of the British front which we held during the summer, the opposing lines of trenches were from less than a hundred to four hundred and fifty or five hundred yards away. When we were neighborly as regards distance, we were also neighborly as regards social intercourse. In the early mornings, when the heavy night-mists concealed the lines, the boys would stand, head and shoulders above the parapet, and shout, — ‘Hi, Fritzie!’ And the greeting would be returned: ‘Hi, Tommy!’

Then we would converse. Very few of us knew German, but it was surprising how many Germans could speak English. Frequently they would shout, ‘Got any Woodbines, Tommy?’ Woodbines are the British soldier’s favorite cigarettes. And Tommy would reply, ‘Sure! Shall I bring ’em over or will you come and fetch ’em?’ This was often the ice-breaker, the beginning of a conversation which varied considerably in other details.

‘Who are you?’ Fritzie would shout.

And Tommy,— ‘We’re the King’s Own ’ymn of ’aters,’ or some such subtle repartee. ‘Wot’s your mob?’

‘We’re a battalion of Irish rifles.’

The Germans liked to provoke Tommy by pretending that the Irish were disloyal to England. Sometimes they shouted, —

‘Any of you from London?’

‘Not ’arf! Wot was you a-doin’ of in London? W’itin’ table at Sam Isaac’s fish-shop?’

The rising of the mists put an end to these conversations. Sometimes they were concluded earlier with bursts of rifleand machine-gun fire. ‘All right to be friendly,’ Tommy would say, ‘but we got to let ’em know this ain’t no love feast.’

During the long stalemate on the western front, British military organization has been perfected until, in times of quiet, it works with the monotonous smoothness of a machine. Even during periods of prolonged and heavy fighting there is but little confusion. Only twice in six months of campaigning did we fail to receive our daily post of parcels and letters from England. Rations were certain to be awaiting the ration parties sent back for them at night. We had always an abundance of food. Corned beef, familiarly known as ‘bully,’ bread, bacon, cheese, army biscuits, tea, and sugar, were our staples, and so generously provided that we had great quantities for the women and children who still clung to their ruined homes in the fire zone. While Tommy often sang with great spirit, —

he appreciated the fact that he was a well-fed soldier and complained little.

And so during three memorable months we adapted ourselves to the changing conditions of trench-life and trench-warfare, with a readiness which surprised and gratified us. Our very practical training in England had prepared us, in a measure, for simple and primitive living. But even with such preparation we had constantly to revise our standards downward. We lived without comforts which formerly we had regarded as absolutely essential. Personal cleanliness was impossible; sleep, a luxury to be indulged in sparingly. We lived a life so crude and rough that our army experiences in England seemed utopian by comparison. But we throve splendidly. We were buoyantly, radiantly healthy. Although there were sad gaps in our ranks, many new faces, these changes had come to us gradually. We had undergone a graded schooling in trench-fighting, and had been given time to forget that we had ever known the comfort and security of civilian life. During all of these weeks, however, we felt that we had an even chance of seeing home again. We were soon to experience the indescribable horrors of modern warfare at its worst; to be living from morning till evening, and from dusk to dawn, looking upon a new day with a feeling of wonder that we had survived so long. There came sudden orders to move. Within twenty-four hours, the roads were filled with the incoming troops of a new division. We made a rapid march to a rail-head, entrained, and were soon moving southward by an indirect route; southward, toward the sound of the guns, to take part in the battle at Loos.

[Mr. Hall’s narrative will be continued.]