At last the phosphorescent figures of your watch show that two hours have gone by. So you wake your relief without delay and get back to the dugout. Perhaps the ration party has brought letters or a parcel or a newspaper. It is a quite remarkable feeling to read the news from home and all its peaceful concerns while the shadow of the flickering candle flits to and fro across the low, rough timbering overhead. After I have scraped the worst of the mud from my boots with a bit of wood and given them a finishing touch on one of the legs of the primitive table, I lie down on the plank bed and pull my blanket over my head to enjoy four hours of sleep. Outside, the shots strike the parapet in wearisome iteration. A mouse flits over my face and hands without disturbing my sleep. I am left in peace even by smaller beasts, for the dugout was thoroughly disinfected only a few days ago.
I am torn from sleep twice more to take my turn of duty. During the last spell a light streak behind us in the eastern sky heralds the new day. The contours of the trench show up more sharply, and the impression made by the dawning light is one of unspeakable desolation.
A lark soars up. I feel that its trills underline the situation too obtrusively, and I am annoyed. Leaning on the parapet, I stare at the strip of ground in front bounded by our wire in a mood of utter disenchantment. Surely these last twenty minutes might come to an end! At last there is a rattle of the dixies as the party sent for the coffee comes back along the communication trench. It is seven o’clock and the round of night guards is ended.
I go into the dugout and drink some coffee and have a wash in a Bismarck herring-tin. I am so cheered up that the wish to lie down again has deserted me. And at nine I have to allot my section its tasks and set it to work. We are regular Jacks-of-all-trades, and every day the care of the trench makes its thousand claims on us. We sink deep shafts, construct dugouts and concreted posts, get wire entanglements ready, lay out drainage schemes, revet, prop, level, heighten, chamfer, and fill in latrines. In short, out of our resources we apply ourselves to every trade. And why not? What one can’t do, another can. Not long since a miner took the pick from my hand as I was at work on our platoon dugout and said: “Keep getting it out below, sir. It’ll fall down of itself from on top!”
Fancy not having known such a simple thing as that all this while! But here, planted down in the middle of the empty waste where there’s the sudden and unanswerable compulsion of seeking shelter from shot and shell and wind and weather, of carpentering beds and tables, of building hearths and stairs, a man soon learns to use his hands. He sees the value of the handicrafts.
At one o’clock dinner is brought up the line in large vessels that once were milk-cans and jam-drums, from the kitchen in a cellar at Monchy. After dinner … a little sleep or reading while gradually the two hours’ daily trench duty draws nearer. They pass a great deal more quickly than those of the night. One observes the well-known enemy position through field-glasses or periscope, and often gets a shot at a head target with the help of the latter. But caution is necessary, for the English too have sharp eyes and good glasses.
One of a post suddenly collapses in a stream of blood, shot in the head. His fellows tear the field-dressing from his tunic and bind him up.
“There’s no use in doing that now, Wilhelm.”
“He’s still breathing, man.”
Then the stretcher-bearers come and take him to the dressing-station. The stretcher bumps heavily against the comers of the fire-bays. Scarce gone … and all is as it was before. Somebody throws a shovelful of soil over the red patch and everyone goes about his business. One has got callous. Only a new recruit leans, whitefaced, against the revetting of the trench. He is trying to see the hang of it all. It had been so sudden, such a terrible surprise, such a brutal and unspeakable assault. It can’t be possible, can’t be real. Poor fellow, there’s something quite different in store for you. …
Often, too, it is quite jolly. Many of us take quite a sporting interest in the job. With a malicious satisfaction we observe the hits of our shells on the enemy trenches. “There’s a hit, my boy!” “God! See it go up!” “Poor Tommy!” They delight in shooting off rifle-grenades or sending light mortar bombs over, very much to the disgust of frailer spirits. “Leave off that nonsense, man. We get stink enough without that.” But nevertheless these hotheads are forever puzzling out the best possible ways of slinging over bombs with homemade catapults or of making the ground in front of the trench murderous with explosive machines. Perhaps they cut a narrow passage through the wire in front of their posts in order to entice an enemy patrol, by this bait of an easy way through, straight up to their rifles. Another time they creep out over the top and tie a bell on to the wire and to this a long string which can be pulled in order to excite the English posts. Even the war is a joke to
