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Page 36
A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly,
where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor
again, with Captain ---- sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks
us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us
from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first
to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at
the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes
to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can."
On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain ---- and D.
following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were
within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember
giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were
all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of
motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with
food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road;
a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go
actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of
ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses,
motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the
little _place_ gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent
fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their
ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks
(by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the
little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin'
for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"
He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved
away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had
done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The
General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?"
It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the
group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.
We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time.
We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a
shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember
that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of
men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road,
with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for
the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was
further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we
come back."
At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the
road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He
was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a
shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was
making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed
over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we
brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid
fight."
Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village
from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The
shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact
still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish
artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a
comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping
through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed
that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.
There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and
northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten
high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is
put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers
in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock--not so
violent as I had expected--and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has
sped on its way to the German trenches--with what result to human flesh
and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that--till afterwards.
At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group
of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped.
In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy
trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the
officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.
Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away
behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look
at that group of trees to your left--beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said
our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the
wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war.
"Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in
front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It
was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the
entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter,
and Captain ---- was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back.
Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write
something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"--and that was
the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt
whether anything more--anything, at least, that was possible--could have
deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman--even
a nurse--has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English
line, and the cup of impressions was full.
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