On the evening of the same day came the moment we had so long desired, when, heavily laden, we set out for the line. Our way led through Betricourt, whose ruins stood up fantastically in the dusk, to a lonely ranger’s lodge concealed in pine woods, known as the Fasanerie. This was battalion reserve, and the 9th Company was in reserve till that night. The officer commanding was Lieutenant R. Brahms.
We reported and were detailed to our platoons, and soon found ourselves surrounded by bearded, mud-caked companions, who greeted us with a certain ironical good-humour. They asked us how things were going in Hanover and whether the war was going to end soon. Then the talk fell to laconic remarks about trenches, cookers, shellfire, and other matters of trench warfare.
After a while there was a shout to “turn out” at the entrance of our hut-like shelter. We fell in with our sections, and at the command “Laden und sichern” we put a clip of live cartridges into the magazine with secret joy.
Then in silence and in single file we went across country through the night, in a landscape studded with clumps of woodland. Now and then a single shot rang out, or a rocket fizzed up and after a brief and ghastly illumination left the darkness blacker than before. The dull clink of rifles and entrenching tools was varied by the warning cry, “Look out: wire!”
Then suddenly a rattle and a crash, and a curse: “Can’t you open your mouth when there’s a shell-hole coming?”
The corporal takes up the tale. “Shut up, blast you! Do you think the French have mud in their ears?” We get on quicker. The dark of night, the glimmer of a Verey light, the slow flicker of rifle-fire, induce a tremulous, alert state of the nerves; occasionally a chance bullet sings by, cool and thin, overhead and is lost in the distance. How often since then have I gone up the line in a mood half of excitement and half of melancholy through scenes of utter desolation!
Finally we were lost to sight in one of those trenches that wind like white serpents through the night to the front line. Once there, I woke to find myself alone and shivering. I was staring intently over the parapet at a row of firs in front of the trench, among which my fancy conjured up shadowy figures on every side, while now and then a stray bullet crashed through the branches. The only change during these almost endless hours was that an older hand took me by a long, narrow sap to a post in front of the line, and there we occupied ourselves, as I had done before, in keeping a lookout. For two hours after that I was allowed to sleep the sleep of exhaustion in a bare hole in the chalk. By dawn I was as white and chalky as the rest. I felt as though I had lived this mole’s life for months.
The regiment’s front was opposite the village of Le Gauda in the chalk hills of Champagne. On the right was the destroyed Garnet wood; then the line zigzagged through large fields of sugar-beet, among which the red trousers of those who had fallen in the previous attacks were conspicuous, and ended in low ground where touch with the 74th had to be maintained by means of night patrols. The beck flowed over the weir of a destroyed mill, surrounded by gloomy trees. It was an eerie spot to be in when the moon threw shifting shadows between rifts of cloud and when strange sounds seemed to be mingled with the murmur of the water and the whisper of the reeds.
Trench life here was as exhausting as it well could be. The day began before dawn, when every man had to be standing-to. From ten p.m. to six a.m. only two men from each section might be sleeping, which worked out at two hours sleep per man, and even this, owing to being wakened earlier or having straw to fetch and one thing or another to attend to, was often illusory.
Either we were on guard in the trench or else we went out to one of the numerous posts which were connected with the front line by long saps. These posts were intended to add security to the front line, but as trench warfare developed they were found too exposed and were given up.
This endless and terribly exhausting round of night guards was endurable in fine weather and even in frost. They were a positive torture when it rained, as it usually does in January. When the wet penetrated first the ground sheet pulled over your head, then coat and tunic, and then trickled, hour after hour, down your skin, there resulted a state of depression that was impervious even to the cheering sounds of the relief wading along towards you. The first light of dawn shone on exhausted chalk-smeared figures that, with chattering teeth and white faces, threw
