In The Trenches 1915

 Gassed near Hill 60

Lance-Corporal R. G. Simmins, 8th Battalion Canadian Infantry, 90th Winnipeg Rifles.

 

We had gone into the trenches after marching through Ypres, where the chimney-pots were tumbling about our ears, and we were expecting very hot times; but the hogback prevented us from seeing the Germans, and of course kept us out of their sight. But there were German snipers everywhere, and they took good care to harass us.

I had charge of a section of bomb-throwers, and we did our best to hurl these strange but quite legitimate weapons at the enemy. At first the bombs were homely contrivances, made of jam-tins filled with explosives; but later they were made under War Office control, and were far superior to the primitive articles which we manufactured ourselves.

In such a war and in such a place it is not easy to tell of what was done by individuals, because so many splendid acts are unobserved; but I call to mind the coolness and resource of my own platoon officer, Lieutenant McLeod. He was dashing all over the place, encouraging his men at every point, and doing things all round in fine style. I was talking to him quite a lot in the thick of things, and was specially struck by his calmness and the wonderful effect his example had upon the men.

One outstanding performance of his was to run, in broad daylight, from battalion headquarters to the trenches—a pretty brave achievement, when you bear in mind that a running man presents an almost certain target to snipers.

In this connection, I call to mind the case of a section commander who was in a trench. He wished that a certain thing should be done, and by way of indicating his desire he held up his hand, with palm extended. That must have been a small enough target, in all conscience, but it was no sooner in the air than it was pierced by five German bullets. If a hand can be so effectively fired at, what chance to escape has the body of a man?

This trench warfare was uncommonly exhausting. You never knew what was going to happen, or what you would be called upon to do; but it was astonishing to find how soon you could adapt yourself to circumstances.

I recall an occasion when we had been forced to retire at one point and get into a communication trench; we were taken aback by the discovery that it was not deep enough. We had to dig ourselves in. That was not a hard matter for the boys who had their entrenching-tools, but I had lost mine, and the only thing left to do was to try rabbit tactics. So I began to dig myself in with my fingers, and I have a distinct recollection of tearing and scooping at the ground like an animal scuttling for shelter. Luckily the ground was soft and yielding, or I should not have had a chance with such poor tools. As it was, my fingers were torn and bleeding long before the digging-in process was completed.

I have given you a general understanding of the task that fell to the Canadian Contingent to accomplish; but as I have said, it is not the actual fighting that dwells in one’s memory.

An Australian at Messines Ridge

In his book “WITH OUR SOLDIERS IN FRANCE” - Sherwood Eddy paints some brief sketches of his impression of the work of the war.

Here reflecting on the battle of Messines Ridge in 1917 he recalls an account of a simple Australian boy in the front trench:


"Fritz had a machine gun to nearly every ten yards. I don't know what became of my friends Hugh and Bill. They were just beside me, but when I looked around both were gone. A shell landed just at the side of me, and I think Hugh and Bill were blown to pieces. I got my wound in the chest and the fragment came out through my back. I thought my last day had come. I dropped into a hole, and no sooner had I got in, than Mack got it through the face. He was able to go back, but I was simply helpless, as my legs refused to move. Anyhow, I pulled the shovel off my back and dug a little ridge in the side of the trench. No sooner had I done this than Fritz started to bombard. One shell fell in the hole in which I was, but exploded in the opposite direction. Then another came and landed just above my head, but it failed to go off. Had it gone off I never would have been here now. I had prayed hard to my God to deliver me from my enemies and when those things happened I felt my prayer was heard and that I was going to come through. I was there in that hole all day and the next night before anyone came near me. At last one of the 19th Battalion chaps came along and went for a stretcher for me."

On a Quiet November Evening

This moving article comes from the book On the King's Service Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms by Innes Logan.

Innes Logan was Chaplin to the Forces from September 1914 to May 1916.

Here he reflects the words of a famous hymn as it drifts on a gentle wind that carried with it the noise of a heavy gun firing a round.


“One November evening I was picking my way cautiously through the mud camp near Reninghelst, and hearing the tune of a famous hymn, drew near to listen, for Jock sometimes sings to hymn tunes words that certainly never appeared in any hymn-book, and I wanted to make sure that it was the greatest hymn in the English language which was being sung. It was a quiet night. Now and again a heavy gun fired a round, and infrequently, on a gentle wind blowing from the trenches, was borne the rattle of a machine-gun. From all the camp arose the subdued confused noise of an army settling to rest for the night. Some tents were in darkness, in others a candle burned, and here and there braziers still glowed redly.

It was from one of the lighted tents that the singing came, each part being taken, and a sweet clear tenor voice leading. The tune was old 'Communion,' and they had just come to this verse:

'Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ, my God:
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.'

How often have we sung that, perhaps thoughtlessly, in comfort at home, but these lads had in truth sacrificed the 'vain things.' With a lump in my throat I waited for the last verse:

'Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my life, my soul, my all.'

Water from Wells where Abraham Drank.

This excellent article comes from 'the War Illustrated', 6th July, 1918 and is entitled
'Watering the Regiment' in the Middle East.


Across the open desert a small column of mules is flinging a brisk trail of dust up to the brassy sky. They are in strings of three, and a native drabie is hanging on to the lead rope of . each string. Each mule has a squat tin tank hooked on either side of his pack Caddie. Two of these pakhals, as these rope-netted tanks are called, will fill the water-bottles of a platoon.

At intervals along the column a British soldier strides along, bare-armed and bare-kneed, his shirt open over his brown chest, one sun-blackened arm through the sling of his loaded rifle. A big curved cover of green-lined khaki hangs from the back of his pith helmet, and a broad quilted band of the same material drapes his spine from neck to waist in protection from the blazing sun that swings directly overhead. He carries no pack, but his entrenching tool and water-bottle hang from his equipment, and two hundred rounds of ammunition fill his pouches. He wears a stocked haversack, too, for one must always be ready for emergencies in the desert, and slung from his bayonet scabbard flaps a grey canvas bag, shaped something like the hot-water bag of civilisation.

Trudging along the hot earth with the mules and their escort arc a number of native camp followers, bearers and syces chattering in cheery monotones, and tarrying canvas buckets, water-bottles, chargals — the grey canvas bags. These are voluntary members of the party who wouldn't walk a yard in the ordinary course of life if they could help it.

Back to Camp

A mounted sergeant completes the party. His saddle has four chargals suspended from it, and a water-bottle is slung across his shoulders. From beneath his dust-laden brows his eyes stare keenly ahead as the column smokes along. There is nothing visible in the dead flat levels from horizon to horizon to tell you whence the column has come or whither it is heading.
Presently the sergeant's horse whinnies loudly, and the mule strings begin to crowd and jostle forward. In the distance the shimmering haze falls away and discloses a long line of tents, the divisional watering-place, and the river. When its bank is reached, it needs all the strength of drabie and Atkins to keep the mules out of the water at the place where the pakhals are unloaded. But the unloading is completed, and then the mules are led down-stream to drink. In the meantime, pakhals and chargals and water-bottles are filled ready for reloading. Half an hour later the regimental watering-party fades away again into the desert spaces where twelve miles away from the watering-place the regiment is dug into the left flank of the army that is pushing the Turk back into his own country.

This from my diary:
We have just pushed the Turk out of the------position. It is about 5 p.m., and the thermometer is somewhere near 120 in the shade. We have been on the move since 3 a.m., and are now bivouacked in a nullah near the river. Through unavoidable causes connected with the surprise nature of the operation, our water-bottles were only half full when we commenced, and our pakhals were practically empty. Upon the track of our advance field hospitals are being erected to deal with the big casualties of the march.

It has been a hot-weather day; the ground too hot to lay the bare hand upon ; a rifle barrel untouchable. The sky is a lid of burning brass, and the sun a low-hung blast furnace. All the day we have been the target for hundreds of "dust devils” pirouetting from one rim of the lid to the other, silting our eyes and ears and nostrils with finely-powdered earth that stings and scorches as though it had come from a red-hot crucible.

Scarcely a shot was fired by the Turk in his evacuation, but the rigours of the blazing, waterless march have more than decimated the hardest of units. More than half my regiment have been knocked out, and the survivors just managed to reach the objective. Water must be got immediately. A water-party has just come in, dead beat, to say there is a section of Turks on the opposite bank with a Maxim, and there's no chance of getting water before nightfall. They have just managed to fill two pakhals.

We divide one of these between a party of picked men and a few drabies, rinse the mouths of half a dozen mules, and set out for another try. The nullah runs down to the river edge. Up-stream of the nullah I spotted a belt of reeds on the river bank, and observed that they could be approached most of the way by a fold in the ground.

We unhooked all the pakhals in the nullah, as near as we could get to the water without being observed. Leaving most of the watering-party behind under a sergeant, the mules and the rest of us began another trek back along the nullah to where it crossed the fold of ground. Along this the party proceeded towards the reed bed. We had almost got into the reeds before the Turk spotted our water mules, and got his machine-gun aligned on the new target. He opened fire for about fifty rounds. The result being unsatisfactory, he ceased fire, and shifted the position of his gun. We could track his course by the movement of the reeds in the belt on the opposite bank where lie was concealed.

Reducing risk as far. as possible, we made great play with the mules and our reeds and ourselves, and successfully counterfeited the movements of a watering-party. We carried on for about a quarter of an hour, and at intervals replied to his fire with bursts of "rapid" from our rifles.

We had just lost a mule when a volley of musketry broke from the nullah where we had left the real watering-party. This was the signal that our simple strategem had succeeded, and that the pakhals had been filled under cover of our demonstration. The diversion caused by this new fire attack upon the concealed machine-gun enabled the "camouflage" party to withdraw without further casualties. The mules were taken back to the pakhals.

The water was being consumed by the exhausted survivors and sick of the battalion before night fell.

Victory in the Water-Bottle

We are occupying one Turkish position while we prepare to eject the enemy from the line upon which he has retired. It is the middle of the hot weather — and the middle of the desert — and every man and beast is getting as much water as is required. I have a bath each evening. In the centre of our perimeter a big wide pit has been dug and lined with tarpaulin. Every morning and evening this is retired from three wells, which are shared by the brigade. In addition, when the wells fall dry, our water-party goes to the divisional storage tanks, and can draw enough daily from this source for the cooking and drinking needs of the whole regiment.

The divisional tanks are walls of sand-bags supporting tarpaulins, which rest on the ground. The water is carried up from the river about fourteen miles away. It comes by convoy, and is carried in ordinary A.T. carts, lined with-tarpaulin, and in pakhals stacked inside big motor-lorries.
That is how we safeguard our water requirements when we "sit down" for a while.

Here, in Mesopotamia, water is life. It is more. It is a thing for which the straightest man in the regiment would cheerfully break all the Commandments. When a soldier's body is watered he can march and fight and win. But when lie is without water the sap of life is from him. He is like the perished tree, the branch of which breaks in the hand. He is Nothing. His rifle is lumber. His big guns are Mockery. A well-filled water-bottle is a won battle. So water is the first article of war, and as we water the regiment do we sweep the Euphrates-Tigris plains and push the Turk towards Aleppo.

Wildlife in the Trenches

Carrying on from yesterday this article is also from ‘The Great War in a Differnet Light’ and was originally published in the 'From All the Fronts' by Donald Mackenzie (1917).


Wildlife in the Trenches

Life in the trenches has brought many men into close touch with Nature, and made them take a great interest in birds and other wild animals whose haunts had been rudely disturbed by the clamour and ravages of war. Flocks of migrating swallows have been seen, at times, in France and Italy, scattering in confusion through the drifting smoke of the big guns, but still they have continued to migrate southward and northward in season as of old without changing their routes in flight. Airmen tell that they sometimes meet in France with swarms of birds soaring high above the clouds. In February, 1917, one flying man saw great flocks of migrating plovers at a height of about 6ooo feet.

Among the lovely Vosges mountains herds of wild pigs have been driven from their lairs by bursting shells. Some have scampered into camps, where they were promptly hunted down to provide a change of diet for the fighting men. One day a wild boar charged down a trench, and wounded two French soldiers before it was laid low by a well-directed bullet.

Sometimes swarms of hares and rabbits have scrambled amidst the network of trenches, seeking refuge from shrapnel and bullets, only to be seized by ready hands and sent to the cook house.

Rats showed no signs of alarm. They clung to the new haunts of men, made themselves at home, and increased in numbers. In trenches and dug-outs they found numerous scraps of food and fared well. But they proved a great nuisance to the soldiers, especially at night, by running over their bodies as they lay asleep in their dug-outs, and nibbling and scraping in every corner in the darkness.

In France singing birds became accustomed to gun-fire, and after a bombardment lasting several hours, could be heard chirping among the branches of trees which concealed the guns. They even made friends with the British gunners, who threw crumbs to them.

One early spring morning, while a little company of blackbirds, thrushes, robins, and sparrows were feeding on scraps that were laid for them on the frosty ground, a big scared -looking cat came creeping stealthily from the ruins of a village near by. The birds rose fluttering and chirping excitedly, but pussy scarcely glanced at them. It had caught a glimpse of an artillery officer peering out of his dug-out, and ran towards him. "Pussy, pussy!" he called softly. The ruffled animal rubbed itself against his leg, and, when it had been stroked gently, began to purr with delight.

It had been somebody's pet, and seemed glad to be among human friends again. Some condensed milk was poured into a pannikin, and the hungry cat licked it up greedily, pausing now and again to look with solemn tender eyes at its new friend, who kept repeating: "Poor old pussy; poor old girl; get on with your breakfast."

The cat finished the milk, licking the pannikin quite dry. Then it lay down to smooth out its coat, evidently feeling quite at home.

On a branch of an apple tree which hung over the entrance to the dug-out a little red-breasted robin watched the cat intently. It seemed to be greatly annoyed at pussy's presence, and kept hopping to right and to left, bunching out its feathers and chirping excitedly, as if telling the other birds what was happening. The officer watched all that was going on as he ate his breakfast at the door of the dug-out. The cat, having finished its toilet, crept between the officer's legs, and began to take a keen interest in the robin, who chirped louder and faster, as if calling out, "Here he comes! he's actually staring at me. 'Mr. Impudence' - that's what I call him." He was joined by two other robins and a sparrow, while a couple of wrens began to scamper up and down the trunk of the tree. All the birds chirped together as if trying to scare the intruder. Pussy bent his legs, fluffed his tail, and showed his teeth as it crept forward, ready to pounce on a bird bold enough to come within reach.

A gun team close at hand was preparing for the morning bombardment, while an officer shouted commands through a megaphone. Then suddenly a gun bellowed with a deafening crash. Pussy sprang into the air with alarm, and bounding back into the dug-out, crept under some clothing and lay still. But the birds never moved. They were accustomed to gun-fire, and knew it didn't hurt. What seemed of more interest to them was the fact that the cat had disappeared. Then the robin who had given the alarm began to think about its rights, and drove the other robins off its branch.
When fighting on the Gallipoli Peninsula our soldiers could not help becoming amateur naturalists. The district was teeming with wild life, and seemed just like a natural zoo. Hyenas prowled through the scrub, and growled and showed their sharp white teeth when soldiers suddenly roused them from their hiding - places. Being cowardly animals, they usually took flight at once. One day a big Highlander was crawling through a clump of bushes to spy on the Turkish lines, when he roused a hyena. It sprang up, with its back against a ridge of rock which jutted out of the soil, and snarled at him like an angry dog. He did not wish to fire, because he knew there were Turkish snipers not far distant, and it seemed to him as if the hyena knew this too. So he could do nothing else but stare at the fierce brute, which looked as if it were about to spring at him.

By and by it quailed before his steady gaze, and began to edge round the rock. Remembering he had read somewhere that wild animals can-not resist the power of the human eye, he followed its movements, staring as fiercely as he could, and not moving a muscle of his face or making any sound. The hyena grew more and more uncomfortable, and began to blink like one who comes out of the darkness into a brightly-lit room. Then it suddenly turned tail and fled. The Turkish snipers caught sight of it a few minutes later, and a shower of bullets spattered all round the soldier; who crept forward to take shelter behind the rock. He lay very still. Some time afterwards, when he moved forward again, he caught a glimpse of the hyena's body lying in the long grass. The snipers had caught it in their fire, thinking, no doubt, they had disposed of a British soldier.

During lulls in the fighting the British and Turkish fighting men held what might be called sporting competitions. In the month of September large numbers of pelican migrated from the shores of the Aegean Sea towards Egypt. They flew over the peninsula in V-shaped flocks, and as soon as a flock appeared in the sky, fire was opened on them with rifles and machine-guns.

One afternoon a flock, which seemed to have come a long distance, began to wheel round in the air as if preparing to settle down on the Salt Lake marsh in Suvla Bay. Suddenly a British machine-gun sent a rippling stream of bullets towards the birds. Not a single pelican was struck, but the whole flock at once became greatly agitated. Then the onlookers noticed that they were under the command of a leader, who made them behave like well-trained soldiers under fire. Shrill screams, like words of command, came through the air, and the birds rose up in extended formation until they were far beyond range and quite safe from attack. Then they continued their flight towards Egypt. As they passed over the Turkish lines, several v9lleys from machine-guns were fired at them; but the clamour only made them fly faster, and ere long they vanished from sight.

After this the British "Tommies" and "Jocks", and the "Johnny Turks", as our soldiers called their enemies, crouched low in their trenches again, waiting for the next flock of pelican. Sometimes, as the birds flew overhead, one was brought down, but it was hardly worth the ammunition wasted upon it. The men on both sides, however, seemed to find the sport exciting, and cheers broke from the trenches when a shot "got home", and a long-necked pelican came tumbling down through the air from what our soldiers called "the flying regiments".

Lots of tortoises crawled about the Gallipoli trenches, and some of our men tried to make pets of those they laid hands on. But a tortoise is never in a hurry to make friends. It is never in a hurry to do anything. A corporal, who kept one tied to a post for a week, coaxed it at length to feed out of his hand, and when he thought it had grown quite tame allowed it to go free. As soon as evening came on it vanished and was never seen again. "You should try and tame a scorpion next," a friend advised the "tortoise tamer", as he called the corporal. " No, thanks!" was the prompt reply. All the soldiers hated the scorpions with their bright-red armour plates, crab-like toes, and uncanny sting-tipped tails, and killed them at sight. Snakes were also dreaded. They came creeping into the dug-outs, and caused many a soldier to jump up with a shout of alarm. One morning, soon after dawn, a big Yorkshire-man woke up to find a snake coiled up on his blanket. He flung the blanket and snake right out of the dug-out, and then, seizing a trench spade, struck at the squirming reptile with such force that he not only cut it in two, but made great rents in the blanket also. It was the first live snake he had ever seen, and he thought the sergeant who told him that it was a non-poisonous one was only making fun of him. "Snakes are snakes all the same," he declared. "Do you expect a man to wait and see if he's going to be stung before he strikes at one?" There are, of course, poisonous as well as non-poisonous snakes on the peninsula.

Then there were the flies, which were even more troublesome than the scorpions or the snakes!

It seemed as if Gallipoli was always suffering from a plague of flies, and our men remembered the Bible story of fly plague in ancient Egypt,. in which Moses repeats to Pharaoh the Divine message: "I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are. . . . And the Lord did so.

The land was corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies."

Black clouds of flies came through the air as soon as our men had settled down in their Gallipoli trenches; the insects crawled over the ground, they blackened the dug-outs, they covered men's bodies; they attacked the mules and made them kick and snort and lash themselves with their tufted tails; they crawled over food, and crept into pots and kettles, and were drowned in hundreds when these were filled with water. The flies were a constant nuisance. Men were always brushing them from their faces, out of the corners of their eyes, out of their ears, off their bare arms. And how they buzzed when they were disturbed! Sometimes when the cooks were busy at their work the buzzing of the flies about them was so loud that they had to shout to one another when only a few yards apart. "One morning," a cook has declared, "the humming of myriads of flies reminded me of the noise of a cotton mill in a Manchester street."

When a soldier lay down to sleep during the daytime the flies settled on him in hundreds. Each time he moved and disturbed his tormentors a loud buzzing broke out. If he covered his face with a handkerchief they went crawling over it in such great numbers that it became as heavy as a bit of blanket, and he had to throw it off When, at length, he fell asleep the flies began to take liberties. They ran over his hair, into his ears, and across his face. If his jaw dropped they crept into his mouth. "It was a common thing," a soldier tells, "to see a sleeper who had been on duty during the night sitting bolt upright, half awakened, and beginning to cough and splutter while flies darted out of his mouth. Occasionally a few were swallowed, much to the poor chap's disgust."

At meal-times hundreds of flies "mobbed" every soldier. If one should spread jam on a slice of bread the flies dropped on it at once, and, as a victim once wrote home, "made it look like a slice of currant cake". Another has described how the men took jam with their bread. "First of all," he wrote, "you make a little hole in your jam tin, and keep a thumb on it. You eat the bread dry, and when you want jam you suck it out of the tin, and then press your thumb on the hole again. The flies swarm round your thumb and over your hand, as if trying to make you let go so that they may get a chance of creeping into the tin. You ask me if I have been in a battle yet. I am always in the battle of flies. The flies are harder fighters than Johnny Turk."

Besides the flies there were other insects "too numerous to mention", wrote a Welsh soldier. "There are hundreds of different kinds of grotesque insects, big and small, that crawl about or fly through the air. New arrivals get many shocks. I have seen men who were more afraid of a swarm of insects than a battalion of Turks." He then went on to relate an amusing experience he and others had. "A fresh regiment was having its troubles with the insects one evening when a gale began to blow. It sprang up as suddenly as a bird from the scrub, and came in fierce and rapid gusts that took one's breath away. A great long belt of sun-dried thistles stretched across No-Man's-Land, and the wind cut through the prickly mass like a scythe, shearing off the tops and brittle leaves and severing the stalks, which came whirling in clouds towards our trenches in the evening dusk. A private, who was greatly worried about the strange insects and reptiles he saw prowling about, was cleaning his rifle when a bit of prickly thistle darted past his cheek like a living creature. He sprung back, gasping, 'What is that?' Then another bit scratched his hand as it skimmed down the trench.

A yell broke from his lips. 'I've been stung!' he declared. Hundreds of prickly stalks and leaves then came whirling and darting about the men's ears. Those who thought they were being attacked by swarms of horrible insects of a~ sizes and shapes began to dart into dug-outs; but soon the cries of alarm were changed to shouts of laughter, for word was passed along that the supposed winged furies were simply bits of Gallipoli thistles. As the wind increased in fury the thistle plague grew gradually worse. Heaps of dry prickly stalks and leaves collected in the trenches, and the men were kept busy shovelling them out. Some parts of the trenches were filled to the top. The wind fell before dawn, and when the sun rose you could see piles of thistles all along the line of trenches. It looked as if these prickly heaps would prove troublesome again later on, but in the forenoon another gale sprang up and scattered them across the Salt Lake marsh. As the men watched them they were not surprised that the 'green hands' had been alarmed on the previous evening. The broken thistles skimmed through the air like locusts, and bumped and darted on the ground like giant grasshoppers."

The Gallipoli ants were a source of great interest to the fighting men. They continued diligently working in and about the trenches as if nothing unusual was taking place. "I have watched them for hours on end," a Londoner wrote to his friends, "and wondered at their intelligence. As I write a little fellow is trying to carry a crumb of bread to the nest. He has stuck. The load is too heavy. What will he do now? He is signalling for help, I declare. Here comes a friend to give him a hand! The new arrival has got behind the crumb and is pushing it, while the other hauls again. Now they are making progress. . . . They have halted suddenly. It looks as if they are out of breath. Here comes another helper, I declare! He gets behind the crumb also and they haul and push all together. Up they climb to the door of the ant house. They are going to get the crumb for themselves, sure enough. Well done! They have hauled it inside, and are now, I suppose, packing it into the larder. What wonderful little fellows they are!

Dogs in the Trenches

This article is from ‘The Great War in a Differnet Light’ and was originally published in the 'From All the Fronts' by Donald Mackenzie (1917).

'Dogs in the Trenches'

The dog has long been called "the friend of man", and in this great war it has proved itself to be a friend indeed. Many stories are told of dogs leaving home and tracking their masters to the trenches, and of their wonderful courage under fire. But it is not as a pet alone that the dog has proved itself a "friend", but also as a worker, whether doing red-cross work, sentinel duty, or hauling sledges with supplies over snow - clad hills.

One of the famous French army dogs is "Marquis", which did splendid service carrying dispatches. This faithful animal showed great intelligence, and ran and crept through bullet-swept zones carrying important messages when no human being could venture to do so. More than once Marquis helped whole companies to get out of tight spots by bringing them warnings in time, and it also kept officers in touch with their superiors, when heavy bombardments cut telephone wires, by scampering from point to point with messages.

One morning Marquis was sent out on his last journey with a dispatch in his mouth. The Prussians were attacking heavily at the time. Shell-fire burst above and behind the French trenches, and it was impossible for a soldier to attempt to leave cover. Marquis ran off - going briskly so long as it was under cover. Then he had to cross an open track of country where the bullets pattered down like hailstones. He crept low, and made short rushes from bush to bush, while anxious eyes followed its movements. For a time all went well. Then, when it seemed as if the dog would succeed, it was struck by a bullet and fell on the ground. An officer, who had been watching through his field-glasses, uttered a cry of regret, and began to sorrow for poor Marquis. For a time the dog lay very still. Then he began to come back. Slowly he crept on, suffering pain and very weak from loss of blood. At length, after a great effort, Marquis returned to his master, and, dropping the blood-stained dispatch at his feet, fell over and died. That evening the French soldiers, with bared heads and heavy hearts, buried the faithful dispatch dog, and set up a little monument to mark his grave.

Another famous dog was named Lutz. It won its reputation near Verdun. One dark night a force of Germans were stealing towards a French position all unknown to the sentinels. Lutz, however, scented them and began to growl. "Hush! lie down!" a sentinel said in a low voice, but Lutz only grew more restless and excited. The attention of an officer was drawn to the dog's behaviour, and a warning was issued. The French soldiers were roused from sleep and stood ready to deal with any unexpected danger. Ere long they became aware of the near presence of Germans, and a withering fire broke out from the French trenches. The German surprise attack failed completely because of the warning given by Lutz. A large number of this raiding force were killed at point-blank range, and most of the survivors were taken prisoners.

Dogs like Lutz are trained to act as helpers of sentries. They do not all growl and bark when danger is near, however. Some simply "point" like "pointer dogs" used by sportsmen on the moors. When these wise animals scent the enemy, they thrust their noses forward, stiffen out their backs, and signal with their tails, keeping perfectly silent. One dark night a pointer, named Paul, stood beside a sentry. Suddenly the dog began to sniff and grow restless. Then he pointed stiffly towards a point where he had scented the enemy. An officer was informed that the dog was "pointing". He shrugged his shoulders and said, "The dog can't be trusted." Paul was taken down a trench and led to another sentry post. There he sniffed again and "pointed" in the same direction as formerly. "Now, Paul," the officer said, "we shall put you to the test." He ordered rockets to be sent up. Flares of vivid light cut through the darkness, and three Germans on "listening post" duty were seen crouching on the ground less than twenty yards distant.

Their duty was to spy on the French position and find out whether any preparations were being made for a night attack. This they could do by listening to hear words of command and the movements of soldiers getting ready to creep out in the darkness. If such preparations were being made, it was their duty to creep back and give the alarm. Having been pointed at by Paul, this particular "listening post" party was rounded up by the French, the three men being brought in as prisoners. The officer patted Paul, and calling him "a treasure", said: "I shall see, good dog, that you are mentioned in dispatches."

The dogs that do ambulance work have saved many lives by going out in the darkness over "No-Man's- Land", after an attack had taken place, finding wounded soldiers, and carrying food and stimulants to them. The intelligent way in which these animals behave is very wonderful. When a red-cross dog finds a stricken soldier, it runs back and leads a party towards him. On the outbreak of war the French had only a few dogs trained for ambulance work, but these proved to be so useful that their numbers were speedily added to. In less than two years' time there were nearly 3000 dogs at work, and it is estimated that owing to their help about 10,000 lives have been saved.

Among the Vosges mountains large numbers of dogs from Labrador and Alaska have been used to pull sleighs loaded with food or ammunition over trackless wastes, and also to drag small trucks on narrow lines of railway. When snow lies heavily on the ground, and a crust is formed on it by the hard frosts, the dogs can scamper up and down the mountain slopes at great speed. Long teams are yoked to the sledges, and the drivers have exciting enough spins. Sometimes it takes them all their time to keep the animals under control. Running in packs, they often become greatly excited, and scamper at such a rate that there is always the danger of an accident taking place. More than one sledge has been overturned during a wild rush down a steep snowy slope. The dogs follow a leader, who picks out a track by instinct, and occasionally swerves this way and that to avoid a danger spot, such. as a piece of jutting rock, or a deep hollow over which the snow lies thinly. But the bounding animals never swerve if there should happen to be men or mules in front of them. One day a company of French soldiers were crossing a little valley, when a team of carrier dogs swept down the long sloping hill-side and ran pell-mell towards them.

In another minute three or four soldiers found themselves struggling in the snow with foaming and excited dogs tumbling over them. The sledge was overturned, and the driver thrown a dozen yards into a heavy snow-wreath, from which he came out shouting protests, and shaking himself like his dogs to get rid of the sheets of snow that clung about his shoulders and neck. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. When the sleigh was righted again, and the dogs were got in hand, the driver set his team scampering merrily down the valley. Much more trouble is caused if the dogs should happen to run into a group of pack mules. The mule is never, as a rule, too good-tempered, and if he is tripped up, he bites and kicks so much that it is dangerous to go near him. One evening, just as the sun was setting in a blaze of red over the snow-clad hills, a mule, which was thrown over by a scampering dog team, kicked out so fiercely as it sprawled in the snow that it killed three dogs and injured another half-dozen. The sleigh was loaded with ammunition, but by good luck ran down a sloping bank clear of the animal's hoofs. The dogs' traces had to be cut, and three of them escaped, and scampered away out of sight in a few minutes, but they were found next day to have returned to the camp from which they had set out.

As a rule, these sleigh dogs are somewhat wild. They are greatly given to fighting among them-selves, and if one of them should happen to escape from a kennel, they bark and howl at a great rate, and cannot be silenced until the comrade who has won freedom is caught and taken back again. It takes a skilled driver to deal with them when they grow fierce and excited.

They are, however, very obedient to, and even quite gentle with, those who feed them readily, and, being most intelligent, answer readily to their names. But for these dogs, the problem of sending supplies of food and ammunition through the passes of the Vosges during winter would have been a very difficult one. Often when the light railways were buried in snow and rendered quite useless, and teams of pack mules were hardly able to make their way through the wreaths, the northern dogs scampered along, hauling the sleighs and keeping the soldiers well supplied with all they required.

The Battalion Moves Out

This excellent chapter comes from the book "The Amateur Army" by Patrick MacGill.

After many weeks of waiting his Battalion was finally given orders to go to France, here he vividly describes the process and the excitement of the moment.

READY TO GO--THE BATTALION MOVES


Rumour had been busy for days; the whole division was about to move, so every one stated, except our officers, and official information was not forthcoming.

"You are going between midnight and five o'clock to-morrow morning," announced my landlord positively. He is a coal-merchant by trade.

"How do you know?" I inquired.

"Because I can't get any coal to-morrow--line's bunged up for the troops."

"No, he'll be going on Tuesday," said his wife, whose kindliness and splendid cooking I should miss greatly.

"Is that so?" I asked, feigning an interest which I did not feel. A sore toe eclipsed all other matters for the time being.

"The ration men have served out enough for two days, and it doesn't stand to reason that they're going to waste anything," the little lady continued with sarcastic emphasis on the last two words.

Parades went on as usual; the usual rations were doled out to billets and the usual grumbling went on in the ranks. We were weary of false alarms, waiting orders, and eternal parades. Some of us had been training for fully six months, others had joined the Army when war broke out, and we were still secure in England. "Why have we joined?" the men asked. "Is it to line the streets when the troops come home? We are a balmy regiment."

One evening, Thursday to be exact, the battalion orders were interesting. One item ran as follows: "All fees due to billets will be paid up to Friday night. If any other billet expenses are incurred by battalion the same will be paid on application to the War Office."

Friday evening found more explicit expression of our future movements in orders. The following items appeared: "Mess tin covers will be issued to-morrow. No white handkerchiefs are to be taken by the battalion overseas. All deficiencies in kit must be reported to-morrow morning. Bayonets will be sharpened. Any soldiers who have not yet received a copy of the New Testament can have same on application at the Town Hall 6 p.m. on Saturday.

"Where are we going?" we asked one another. Some answered saying that we were to help in the sack of Constantinople, others suggested Egypt, but all felt that we were going off to France at no very distant date. Was not this feeling plausible when we took into account a boot parade of the day before and how we were ordered to wear two pairs of socks when trying on the boots? Two pairs of socks suggested the trenches and cold, certainly not the sun-dried gutters of Constantinople, or the burning sands of Egypt.

Saturday saw an excited battalion mustered in front of the quartermaster's stores drawing out boots, mess-tin covers, blankets, ground-sheets, entrenching tools, identity discs, new belts,
water-bottles, pack-straps, trousers, tunics and the hundred and one other things required by the soldier on active service. In addition to the usual requisites, every unit received a cholera belt (they are more particular over this article of attire than over any other), two pairs of pants, a singlet and a cake of soap. The latter looked tallowy and nobody took it further than the billet; the pants were woollen, very warm and made in Canada. This reminds me of an amusing episode which took place last general inspection. While standing easy, before the brigadier-general made his appearance, the men compared razors and found that eighty per cent. of them had been made in Germany. But these were bought by the soldiers before war started. At least all affirmed that this was so.

Saturday was a long parade; some soldiers were drawing necessaries at midnight, and no ten-o'-clock-to-billets order was enforced that night. I drew my boots at eleven o'clock, and then the streets were crowded with our men, and merry and sad with sightseers and friends. Wives and sweethearts had come to take a last farewell of husbands and lovers, and were making the most of the last lingering moments in good wishes and tears.

Sunday.--No church parade; and all men stood under arms in the streets. The officers had taken off all the trumpery of war, the swords which they never learned to use, the sparkling hat-badges and the dainty wrist-watches. They now appeared in web equipment, similar to that worn by the men, and carried rifles. Dressed thus an officer will not make a special target for the sniper and is not conspicuous by his uniform.

Our captain made the announcement in a quiet voice, the announcement which had been waited for so long. "To-morrow we proceed overseas," he said. "On behalf of the colonel I've to thank you all for the way in which you have done your work up to the present, and I am certain
that when we get out yonder," he raised his arm and his gesture might indicate any point of the compass, "you'll all do your work with the spirit and determination which you have shown up till now."

This was the announcement. The men received it gleefully and a hubbub of conversation broke out in the ranks. "We're going at last"; "I thought when I joined that I'd be off next morning"; "What price a free journey to Berlin!"; "It'll be some great sport!" Such were the remarks that were bandied to and fro. But some were silent, feeling, no doubt, that the serious work ahead was not the subject for idle chatter.

A little leaflet entitled "Rules for the Preservation of Health on Field Service," was given to each man, and I am at liberty to give a few quotations.

"Remember that disease attacks you from outside; it is your duty to keep it outside."

"Don't drink unboiled water if you can get boiled water."

"Never start on a march with an empty stomach."

"Remember that a dirty foot is an unsound foot. See that feet are washed if no other part of the body is. Socks should be taken off at the end of the march, be flattened out and well shaken. Put on a clean pair if possible, if not, put the left sock on the right foot, and vice versa."

"Remember, on arrival in camp, _food before fatigues_."

"Always rig up some kind of shelter at night for the head, if for no other part of the body."

At twelve noon on Monday the whistles blew at the bottom of the street and we all turned out in full marching order with packs, haversacks, rifles and swords. I heard the transport wagons clattering on the pavement, the merry laughter of the drivers, the noise of men falling into place and above all the voice of the sergeant-major issuing orders.

Yet this, like other days, was a "wash-out." All day we waited for orders to move, twice we paraded in full marching kit, eager for the command to entrain; but it was not forthcoming. Another day had to be spent in billets under strict instructions not to move from our quarters. The orders were posted up as usual at all street corners, a plan which is adopted for the convenience of units billeted a great distance from headquarters, and the typewritten orders had an air of momentous finality:

The battalion moves to-morrow.

Parade will be at 4.30 a.m.

Entraining and detraining and embarking must be done in absolute silence.

I rose from bed at three and set about to prepare breakfast, while my cot-mate busied himself with our equipment, putting everything into shape, buckling belts and flaps, burnishing bayonets and oiling the bolts of the rifles. Twenty-four hours' rations were stored away in our haversacks all ready, the good landlady had been at work stewing and frying meat and cooking dainty scones up to twelve o'clock the night before.

When breakfast, a good hearty meal of tea, buttered toast, fried bacon and tomatoes, was over, we went out to our places. The morning was chilly, a cold wind splashed with hail swept along the streets and whirled round the corners, causing the tails of our great coats to beat sharply against our legs. It was still very dark, only a few street-lamps were lighted and these glimmered doubtfully as if ashamed of being noticed. Men in full marching order stamped out from every billet, took their way to the main street, where the transport wagons, wheels against kerbstones, horses in shafts, and drivers at reins, stood in mathematical order, and from there on to the parade ground where sergeants, with book in one hand and electric torch in the other, were preparing to call the roll.

Ammunition was served out, one hundred and twenty rounds to each man, and this was placed in the cartridge pouches, rifles were inspected and identity discs examined by torch-light. This finished, we were allowed to stand easy and use ground-sheets for a shelter from the biting hail. Our blankets were already gone. The transport wagons had disappeared and with them our field-bags. I suppose they will await us in ---- but I anticipate, and at present all we know is that our regiment is bound for some destination unknown where, when we arrive, we shall have to wear two pairs of socks at our work.

We stood by till eight o'clock. The day had cleared and the sun was shining brightly when we marched off to the station, through streets lined with people, thoughtful men who seemed to be very sad, women who wept and children who chattered and sang "Tipperary."

Three trains stood in the sidings by the station. Places were allotted to the men, eight occupied each compartment, non-commissioned officers occupied a special carriage, the officers travelled first-class.

Soon we were hurrying through England to a place unknown. Most of my comrades were merry and a little sentimental; they sang music-hall songs that told of home. There were seven with me in my compartment, the Jersey youth, whom I saw kissing a weeping sweetheart in the cold
hours of the early day; Mervin, my cot-mate, who always cleaned the rifles while I cooked breakfast in the morning; Bill, the Cockney youth who never is so happy as when getting the best of an argument in the coffee-shop of which I have already spoken, and the Oxford man. The other three were almost complete strangers to me, they have just been drafted into our regiment; one was very fat and reminded me of a Dickens character in _Pickwick Papers_; another who soon fell asleep, his head warm in a Balaclava helmet, was a tall, strapping youth with large muscular hands, which betoken manual labour, and the last was a slightly-built boy with a budding moustache which seemed to have been waxed at one end. We noticed this, and the fat soldier said that the wax had melted from the few lonely hairs on the other side of the lip.

Stations whirled by, Mervin leant out of the window to read their names, but was never successful. Cigarettes were smoked, the carriage was full of tobacco fumes and the floor littered with "fag-ends." Rifles were lying on the racks, four in each side, and caps, papers and equipment piled on top of them. The Jersey youth made a remark:

"Where are we going to?" he asked. "France I suppose, isn't it?"

"Maybe Egypt," someone answered.

"With two pairs of socks to one boot!" Mervin muttered in sarcastic tones; and almost immediately fell asleep. He had been a great traveller and knows many countries. His age is about forty, but he owns to twenty-seven, and in his youth he was educated for the church.
"But the job was not one for me," he says, "and I threw it up." He looks forward to the life of a soldier in the field.

Our train journey neared the end. Bill was at the window and said that we were in sight of our destination. All were up and fumbling with their equipment; and one, the University man, hoped that the night would be a good one for sailing to France.

If we are bound for France we shall be there to-morrow.

Jam-tins on the wire.

I’ve never read of this before until I came across in R. Hugh Knyvett excellent book: "Over There with the Australians.”

There must have been plenty of used jam-tins and the noise of the tins on the wire would have been very unusal.

“There was another use made of empty jam-tins: they were tied to our barbed wire so that if any Turk tried to get through he would make a noise like the cowbells at milking-time. Talking about barbed wire, Johnny Turk played a huge joke on us on one occasion. As the staking down of wire was too risky, we prepared some "knife-rests" (hedges of wire shaped like a knife rest) and rolled them over our parapet, but opened our eyes in amazement to find in the morning that they had only stopped a few feet from the Turkish trenches. The Turks had sneaked out and tied ropes to them and hauled them over to protect themselves. Thereafter we took care to let Abdul do his own wiring.”

The Cootie

This article about the perils and torture of the common louse comes from the book ‘A Yankee in the Trenches’ by R. Derby Holmes

The Cootie was the name given to the too common, ‘body louse’. As Holmes put it ‘Everybody has 'em.’

“Back in billets the very first thing that comes off is the big clean-up. Uniforms are brushed up, and equipment put in order. Then comes the bath, the most thorough possible under the conditions. After that comes the "cootie carnival", better known as the "shirt hunt." The cootie is the soldier's worst enemy. He's worse than the Hun. You can't get rid of him wherever you are, in the trenches or in billets, and he sticks closer than a brother. The cootie is a good deal of an acrobat. His policy of attack is to hang on to the shirt and to nibble at the occupant. Pull off the shirt and he comes with it. Hence the shirt hunt. Tommy gets out in the open somewhere so as not to shed his little companions indoors—there's always enough there anyhow—and he peels.

Then he systematically runs down each seam—the cootie's favorite hiding place—catches the game, and ends his career by cracking him between the thumb nails.

For some obscure psychological reason, Tommy seems to like company on one of these hunts. Perhaps it is because misery loves company, or it may be that he likes to compare notes on the catch. Anyhow, it is a common thing to see from a dozen to twenty soldiers with their shirts off, hunting cooties.

"Hi sye, 'Arry," you'll hear some one sing out. "Look 'ere. Strike me bloomin' well pink but this one 'ere's got a black stripe along 'is back."

Or, "If this don't look like the one I showed ye 'fore we went into the blinkin' line. 'Ow'd 'e git loose?"

And then, as likely as not, a little farther away, behind the officers' quarters, you'll hear one say:
"I say, old chap, it's deucedly peculiar I should have so many of the beastly things after putting on the Harrisons mothaw sent in the lawst parcel."

The cootie isn't at all fastidious. He will bite the British aristocrat as soon as anybody else. He finds his way into all branches of the service, and I have even seen a dignified colonel wiggle his shoulders anxiously.

Some of the cootie stories have become classical, like this one which was told from the North Sea to the Swiss border. It might have happened at that.

A soldier was going over the top when one of his cootie friends bit him on the calf. The soldier reached down and captured the biter. Just as he stooped, a shell whizzed over where his head would have been if he had not gone after the cootie. Holding the captive between thumb and finger, he said:

"Old feller, I cawn't give yer the Victoria Cross—but I can put yer back."

And he did.

The worst thing about the cootie is that there is no remedy for him. The shirt hunt is the only effective way for the soldier to get rid of his bosom friends. The various dopes and patent preparations guaranteed as "good for cooties" are just that. They give 'em an appetite. “

The Ration Fatigue.

This excellent little article comes from the great book “Bullets & Billets" By Bruce Bairnsfather.

Here he describes the trenches in Belgium and at the undesirable job of being on a ‘Ration Party’.

THAT RATION FATIGUE

They seemed to me long, dark, dismal days, those days spent in the Douve trenches; longer, darker and more dismal than the Plugstreet ones. Night after night I crossed the dreary mud flat, passed the same old wretched farms, and went on with the same old trench routine. We all considered the trenches a pretty rotten outfit; but every one was fully prepared to accept far rottener things than that. There was never the least sign of flagging determination in any man there, and I am sure you could say the same of the whole front.

And, really, some jobs on some nights wanted a lot of beating for undesirability. Take the ration party's job, for instance. Think of the rottenest, wettest, windiest winter's night you can remember, and add to it this bleak, muddy, war-worn plain with its ruined farms and shell-torn lonely road. Then think of men, leaving the trenches at dusk, going back about a mile and a half, and bringing sundry large and heavy boxes up to the trenches, pausing now and again for a rest, and ignoring the intermittent crackling of rifle fire in the darkness, and the sharp "phit" of bullets hitting the mud all around. Think of that as your portion each night and every night. When you have finished this job, the rest you get consists of coiling yourself up in a damp dug-out. Night after night, week after week, month after month, this job is done by thousands.

As one sits in a brilliantly illuminated, comfortable, warm theatre, having just come from a cosy and luxurious restaurant, just think of some poor devil half-way along those corduroy boards struggling with a crate of biscuits; the ration "dump" behind, the trenches on in front. When he has finished he will step down into the muddy slush of a trench, and take his place with the rest, who, if need be, will go on doing that job for another ten years, without thinking of an alternative. The Germans made a vast mistake when they thought they had gauged the English temperament.

Jam, Cheese and Tea.

Here’s an article from the Times dated 15th October 1917 about supplying the Army with the essentials of Jam, Cheese and Tea.

The amounts that are quoted are gigantic but these reports did keep the public informed what was required whilst they felt the ‘tight belt’ of rationing.

The jam supplied was not always welcomed, as the Australian poet Edward Dyson so well portrayed in his humorous poem “Jam (A Hymn of Hate).”


“FEEDING THE ARMY

THE SOLDIER’S JAM, CHEESE AND TEA.

Although at present housekeepers at home are finding some difficulty in getting supplies of such articles of food as bacon. Butter, margarine, sugar and tea, they will have no other feeling but one of pleasure that our soldiers at the front have never fared better that they are doing to-day.

From an authoritative source we learn that the soldier’s rations made up of about two dozen articles of food. Meat and bread are the chief items but the are supplemented by cheese, bacon, jam and many other things not leaving out rum, the value of which as an antidote to damp and cold, first learned by our experience in the Crimea, has been confirmed by three winters in France and Flanders.

In supplying the Armies with food whole industries have had to reorganised, business methods drastically revised, and the resources of the Empire mobilized in a remarkable manner. In the case of jam the manufactures, who are working in cooperation, are supplied by sugar by the Government and the Government also pays the actual cost of packing and delivery to and from the works and of the fruit. The fruit id bought by the manufactures jointly after mutual agreement as to the prices offered. The manufacturer realizes his profit on a fixed rate paid per 100lb.

TWO MILLION POUNDS OF JAM A WEEK.

Packing has been a difficulty. At first tins were used, but tin is scare and the jam is now packed in ‘papier mache’ containers. Nearly two million ponds of jam are sent to France every week and in April this year the contacts department of the War Office had ordered 260,000,000 lb. Twelve kinds are issued, among which strawberry now preponderates.

A daily cheese ration of 3 oz. had meant, up to the beginning of this year, the purchase of 167,000,000 and between one and two million pounds of chesses are being sent every week to the Army in France alone. With the exception of Dutch cheese, this is chiefly obtained from the Board of Trade’s purchases in Canada and New Zealand.

The supply of the soldier’s tea, of which the daily ration is just over half an ounce, is remarkable for the extent to which the army has been called on to take the business of the tea merchant into its own hands. Originally the Contracts branch bought tea blended and packed ready for issue to the troops. At a later stage the tea was brought where it lay, collected by Army transport and blended under a centralized system. This arrangement prevailed until recently, when a further rise in freights induced the War Office to import their own tea, placing orders directly with the growers in India and Ceylon and arranging for transport with the Admiralty. In this way the War Office has assumed the whole of the function of the tea-merchant. More than half a million pounds of tea are sent weekly to the Army in France. Before the War Office became its own tea merchant, single orders for a million pounds were no uncommon thing. The demand has grown with the growth of the Armies and the War Office has modified or change4d its methods as developments required.”

The first night in a Plugstreet trench

The book Bullets & Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather, gives a fantastic account of Bruce’s first night in a real trench in Belgium. This was a trench of 1914 and describes how uncomfortable and awful it must have been in those early days on the Western Front.


THOSE PLUGSTREET TRENCHES

“An extraordinary sensation—the first time of going into trenches. The first idea that struck me about them was their haphazard design. There was, no doubt, some very excellent reason for someone or other making those trenches as they were; but they really did strike me as curious when I first saw them.

A trench will, perhaps, run diagonally across a field, will then go along a hedge at right angles, suddenly give it up and start again fifty yards to the left, in such a position that it is bound to cross the kitchen-garden of a shattered chateau, go through the greenhouse and out into the road. On getting there it henceforth rivals the ditch at the side in the amount of water it can run off into a row of dug-outs in the next field. There is, apparently, no necessity for a trench to be in any way parallel to the line of your enemy; as long as he can't shoot you from immediately behind, that's all you ask.

It was a long and weary night, that first one of mine in the trenches. Everything was strange, and wet and horrid. First of all I had to go and fix up my machine guns at various points, and find places for the gunners to sleep in. This was no easy matter, as many of the dug-outs had fallen in and floated off down stream.

In this, and subsequent descriptions of the trenches, I may lay myself open to the charge of exaggeration. But it must be remembered that I am describing trench life in the early days of 1914, and I feel sure that those who had experience of them will acquit me of any such charge.

To give a recipe for getting a rough idea, in case you want to, I recommend the following procedure. Select a flat ten-acre ploughed field, so sited that all the surface water of the surrounding country drains into it. Now cut a zig-zag slot about four feet deep and three feet wide diagonally across, dam off as much water as you can so as to leave about a hundred yards of squelchy mud; delve out a hole at one side of the slot, then endeavour to live there for a month on bully beef and damp biscuits, whilst a friend has instructions to fire at you with his Winchester every time you put your head above the surface.

Well, here I was, anyway, and the next thing was to make the best of it. As I have before said, these were the days of the earliest trenches in this war: days when we had none of those desirable "props," such as corrugated iron, floorboards, and sand bags ad lib.

When you made a dug-out in those days you made it out of anything you could find, and generally had to make it yourself. That first night I was "in" I discovered, after a humid hour or so, that our battalion wouldn't fit into the spaces left by the last one, and as regards dug-outs, the truth of that mathematical axiom, "Two's into one, won't go," suddenly dawned on me with painful clearness. I was faced with making a dug-out, and it was raining, of course. (Note.—Whenever I don't state the climatic conditions, read "raining.") After sloshing about in several primitive trenches in the vicinity of the spot where we had fixed our best machine-gun position, my sergeant and I discovered a sort of covered passage in a ditch in front of a communication trench. It was a sort of emergency exit back from a row of ramshackle, water-logged hovels in the ditch to the communication trench. We decided to make use of this passage, and arranged things in such a way that by scooping out the clay walls we made two caves, one behind the other. The front one was about five yards from the machine gun, and you reached the back cave by going through the outer one. It now being about 11 p.m., and having been for the last five hours perpetually on the scramble, through trenches of all sorts, I drew myself into the inner cave to go to sleep.

This little place was about 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet wide. I got out my knife, took a scoop out of the clay wall, and fishing out a candle-end from my pocket, stuck it in the niche, lit it and a cigarette. I now lay down and tried to size up the situation and life in general.

Here I was, in this horrible clay cavity, somewhere in Belgium, miles and miles from home. Cold, wet through and covered with mud. This was the first day; and, so far as I could see, the future contained nothing but repetitions of the same thing, or worse.

Nothing was to be heard except the occasional crack of the sniper's shot, the dripping of the rain, and the low murmur of voices from the outer cave.

In the narrow space beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a sodden packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life, and then—swish, bang—back to the reality that the damp clay wall is only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am—that the Boche is just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving except in an ambulance.

My machine-gun section for the gun near by lay in the front cave, a couple of feet from me; their spasmodic talking gradually died away as, one by one, they dropped off to sleep. One more indignant, hopeless glare at the flickering candle-end, then I pinched the wick, curled up, and went to sleep.

A sudden cold sort of peppermint sensation assailed me; I awoke and sat up. My head cannoned off the clay ceiling, so I partially had to lie down again.

I attempted to strike a match, but found the whole box was damp and sodden. I heard a muttering of voices and a curse or two in the outer cavern, and presently the sergeant entered my sanctum on all fours:

"We're bein' flooded out, sir; there's water a foot deep in this place of ours."

That explains it. I feel all round the back of my greatcoat and find I have been sleeping in a pool of water.

I crawled out of my inner chamber, and the whole lot of us dived through the rapidly rising water into the ditch outside. I scrambled up on to the top of the bank, and tried to focus the situation.

From inquiries and personal observation I found that the cause of the tide rising was the fact that the Engineers had been draining the trench, in the course of which process they had apparently struck a spring of water.

We accepted the cause of the disaster philosophically, and immediately discussed what was the best thing to be done. Action of some sort was urgently necessary, as at present we were all sitting on the top of the mud bank of the ditch in the silent, steady rain, the whole party being occasionally illuminated by a German star shell—more like a family sitting for a flashlight photograph than anything else.

We decided to make a dam. Having found an empty ration box and half a bag of coke, we started on the job of trying to fence off the water from our cave. After about an hour's struggle with the elements we at last succeeded, with the aid of the ration box, the sack of coke and a few tins of bully, in reducing the water level inside to six inches.

Here we were, now wetter than ever, cold as Polar bears, sitting in this hygroscopic catacomb at about 2 a.m. We longed for a fire; a fire was decided on. We had a fire bucket—it had started life as a biscuit tin—a few bits of damp wood, but no coke. "We had some coke, 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."

Dug-Out Life in 1916

This article originates from The Great War in a Different Light. It was first published in ‘The Sphere’ in February 1916 and gives the readers at home an idea of what life was like in a front line dug-out and trench.

It all rather ‘nice’ and doesn’t convey any of the horror of the war to those at home, but it is still an interesting piece.

"'Life in Dug-Out and Trench' within the British Lines

All the Comforts of Home

In the course of a letter which accompanied the above sketch the writer says: "Here is our gun emplacement! This is the place in which we live, sleep, and operate against the enemy. I wonder if the picture explains itself? It was drawn under difficulties with ordinary lead pencil and the common paper of my writing pad. On the left are our sleeping apartments. Here we lie when asleep with our feet projecting, so that when the gunner, sitting in front of those ammunition boxes to the rear of the hut, requires to wake someone up he can just reach our feet and kick. The little round bag hanging outside the 'Tamboo,' as the sleeping apartment is called, is our tea bag, which comes in for much hard use, and is then put up out of the way. The sandbags are numerous, so that we are fairly well protected. You will have spotted the gun in the background. We call this part 'the Kinema,' and, of course, our belt of bullets represents a kinema film. The front of the 'Tamboo' faces the German trenches. The table is one I knocked together. I am going to put another up opposite shortly. The bottle (no, it is not what you might think) contains the solution for our respirators. We have regular duties, and someone has always to be in readiness. Just before we came here we were sitting in our garden at Mt. Neverest when a shell dropped about 15 yards in front and to the left. It threw up about 20 ft. of corduroy road quite 15 ft. in the air, knocking branches off trees and leaving a fair hole in the ground. Thank goodness it wasn't shrapnel or I fancy we should have got it. I forgot to tell you the sketches we've put up in the hut are to be increased in number from the three you can see. We intend shortly having a picture gallery!"

An officer at the front, who is familiar with the caves of the Mendip country, sends us the following interesting account of life in a dug-out in France. He writes: " During all these months of strenuous trench warfare I have often vividly remembered our cave-work miles away in old Mendip. Sometimes when wandering around at night I have dropped into one of the dug-outs to smoke a cigarette with the infantry officer in charge. It is then that I have obtained an impression of the interior, just a little earth passage or chamber where our party stopped for a meal or to smoke; at times, in fact, it almost seems as if we were back to the old cave life.

"The accompanying sketch will give you some idea of a typical trench dug-out; every trench is, of course, in telephonic communication with battalion headquarters a little behind, and with brigade headquarters right to the rear of the lines.

"The wires are frequently cut by shell fire during the day and have to be repaired at night. Here the telegraphist is seen handing to the officer a message which has just been received, perhaps to ask if all is well or to say that a relief or ration party is on its way up. The little recesses cut in the side of the trench hold his belongings and the lighted candle; the wires also can be seen, one going to the earth the other out at the roof. With the receiver strapped to his head he receives every message; there is usually a buzzer as well, which he has by his side.

Another officer is making a brew of cocoa in his mess tin over a little spirit stove. On many cold and rainy nights I have been invited to have a cup, and have found it very good.

" With a waterproof sheet on the ground and a blanket round him he can make himself very comfortable, and even get a good sleep, whilst off duty. He always has a Very pistol handy in case of emergency. This is a fat brass instrument used for shooting up flares which are intended to illuminate the ground between one's own trenches and the enemy's. (A Very pistol might be very well used in some of the larger chambers or high rifts of Mendip.)

“In the trenches one often sees newspapers only three or four days old, and even novels too; these help to pass the time until a relief comes along.

"The far side is revetted with sandbags, which make a strong and secure wall, easily repaired if knocked about by shell-fire. The roof is supported by boughs from a neighboring wood, and is usually made of boards, brushwood, and even old timber or doors from a ruined village — if there is one near by — all covered with from 6 in. to 1 ft. of earth. If a shell comes right into your dug-out nothing, of course, will stop it, but this protection is sufficient to stop shrapnel bullets or splinters of high-explosive shells.

"Dug-outs such as these are for men to rest in whilst off duty, i.e., when not posted as look-outs, or to take shelter in during heavy firing. Sometimes the colonel has rather a luxurious dug-out in the rear, quite large enough to stand up in, with a table, chairs, bunks, even a gramophone, perhaps.

"At this stage, when one is always near the enemy's lines, all the work of the Engineers, such as putting up barbed wire; digging trenches, or building dug-outs, has to be carried out during darkness, so that for some time past we have been like night birds — coming out at dusk and returning to rest in the early morning." "

Rats in Flanders

This article comes from the excellent 1st Australian Mining Corps website ‘Tunnellers’ and is a letter from the famous pre-war author Albert Dorrington to the N.Q. Register dated 21st August 1916.

I previously posted a letter from Private Wenham of 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment and his experience of Rats. It is interesting how the soldiers looked to rats for an early warning of a gas attack.


"RATS IN FLANDERS

A soldier writes me from Flanders anent rats in trenches. While admitting that there are thousands running about, he has not heard of one live man who has been bitten by them. It is quite the thing to put a piece of cheese on the end of a bayonet and put rifles over the trench tops, and when through the periscope a rat is seen eating the cheese, to pull the trigger of Mr Rat. But it has been discovered that the rat could smell gas long before the men could, so to-day, as soon as the men in the trenches see the rats getting uneasy, they know, that the gas is coming and on to the helmets. Also rats eat up all decay matter, and have cut down smells to a minimum."


The 1st Australian Tunnelling Company Memorial is located on the Western Front at Hill 60 in Belgium.

The Trenches by Frederic Manning.

I love this poem by the Australian Frederic Manning. It gives a real sense of what it must have been like on a cold frosty night on the Western Front:-


Endless lanes sunken in the clay,
Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage,
Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms;
And the sky, seen as from a well,
Brilliant with frosty stars.
We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duckboards,
Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath,
A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear,
Implacable and monotonous.

Here a shaft, slanting, and below
A dusty and flickering light from one feeble candle
And prone figures sleeping uneasily,
Murmuring,
And men who cannot sleep,
With faces impassive as masks,
Bright, feverish eyes, and drawn lips,
Sad, pitiless, terrible faces,
Each an incarnate curse.

Here in a bay, a helmeted sentry
Silent and motionless, watching while two sleep,
And he sees before him
With indifferent eyes the blasted and torn land
Peopled with stiff prone forms, stupidly rigid,
As tho' they had not been men.

Dead are the lips where love laughed or sang,
The hands of youth eager to lay hold of life,
Eyes that have laughed to eyes,
And these were begotten,
O love, and lived lightly, and burnt
With the lust of a man's first strength: ere they were rent,
Almost at unawares, savagely; and strewn
In bloody fragments, to be the carrion
Of rats and crows.

And the sentry moves not, searching
Night for menace with weary eyes.


(Frederic Manning was born in Sydney Australia in 1882. He attended Sydney Grammar School and at the age of 14 he went to England. During the First World War he served as a private in the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry Regiment and fought on the Somme and Ancre. After the war he spent most of his time studying and writing. He died in 1935.)

For more information please see: Frederic Manning at Wikipedia &

Frederic Manning at the Australian War Memorial.

A view of the trenches.

This is an excellent extract from the book “ Kitchener's Mob, The Adventures of an American in the British Army” By James Norman Hall, which can be found at Gutenberg.org

It gives a great description of trench life on the Western Front. I especially like the final paragraphs on rations, flies and rats.

“All of the dugouts for privates and N.C.O.s were of equal size and built on the same model, the reason being that the walls and floors, which were made of wood, and the roofs, which were of corrugated iron, were put together in sections at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers, who superintended all the work of trench construction. The material was brought up at night ready to be fitted into excavations. Furthermore, with thousands of men to house within a very limited area, space was a most important consideration. There was no room for indulging individual tastes in dugout architecture. The roofs were covered with from three to four feet of earth, which made them proof against shrapnel or shell splinters. In case of a heavy bombardment with high explosives, the men took shelter in deep and narrow "slip trenches." These were blind alleyways leading off from the traveling trench, with room for from ten to fifteen men in each. At this part of the line there were none of the very deep shell-proof shelters, from fifteen to twenty feet below the surface of the ground, of which I had read. Most of the men seemed to be glad of this. They preferred taking their chances in an open trench during heavy shell fire.

Realists and Romanticists lived side by side in the traveling trench. "My Little Gray Home in the West" was the modest legend over one apartment. The "Ritz Carlton" was next door to "The Rats' Retreat," with "Vermin Villa" next door but one. "The Suicide Club" was the suburban residence of some members of the bombing squad. I remarked that the bombers seemed to take rather a pessimistic view of their profession, whereupon Shorty told me that if there were any men slated for the Order of the Wooden Cross, the bombers were those unfortunate ones. In an assault they were first at the enemy's position. They had dangerous work to do even on the quietest of days. But theirs was a post of honor, and no one of them but was proud of his membership in the Suicide Club.

The officers' quarters were on a much more generous and elaborate scale than those of the men. This I gathered from Shorty's description of them, for I saw only the exteriors as we passed along the trench. Those for platoon and company commanders were built along the traveling trench. The colonel, major, and adjutant lived in a luxurious palace, about fifty yards down a communication trench. Near it was the officers' mess, a café de luxe with glass panels in the door, a cooking stove, a long wooden table, chairs,—everything, in fact, but hot and cold running water.


"You know," said Shorty, "the officers thinks they 'as to rough it, but they got it soft, I'm tellin' you! Wooden bunks to sleep in, batmen to bring 'em 'ot water fer shavin' in the mornin', all the fags they wants,—Blimy, I wonder wot they calls livin' 'igh?"

I agreed that in so far as living quarters are concerned, they were roughing it under very pleasant circumstances. However, they were not always so fortunate, as later experience proved. Here there had been little serious fighting for months and the trenches were at their best. Elsewhere the officers' dugouts were often but little better than those of the men.

The first-line trenches were connected with two lines of support or reserve trenches built in precisely the same fashion, and each heavily wired. The communication trenches which joined them were from seven to eight feet deep and wide enough to permit the convenient passage of incoming and outgoing troops, and the transport of the wounded back to the field dressing stations. From the last reserve line they wound on backward through the fields until troops might leave them well out of range of rifle fire. Under Shorty's guidance I saw the field dressing stations, the dugouts for the reserve ammunition supply and the stores of bombs and hand grenades, battalion and brigade trench headquarters. We wandered from one part of the line to another through trenches, all of which were kept amazingly neat and clean. The walls were stayed with fine-mesh wire to hold the earth in place. The floors were covered with board walks carefully laid over the drains, which ran along the center of the trench and emptied into deep wells, built in recesses in the walls. I felt very much encouraged when I saw the careful provisions for sanitation and drainage. On a fine June morning it seemed probable that living in ditches was not to be so unpleasant as I had imagined it. Shorty listened to my comments with a smile.

"Don't pat yerself on the back yet a w'ile, mate," he said. "They looks right enough now, but wite till you've seen 'em arter a 'eavy rain."

I had this opportunity many times during the summer and autumn. A more wretched existence than that of soldiering in wet weather could hardly be imagined. The walls of the trenches caved in in great masses. The drains filled to overflowing, and the trench walks were covered deep in mud. After a few hours of rain, dry and comfortable trenches became a quagmire, and we were kept busy for days afterward repairing the damage.

As a machine gunner I was particularly interested in the construction of the machine-gun emplacements. The covered battle positions were very solidly built. The roofs were supported with immense logs or steel girders covered over with many layers of sandbags. There were two carefully concealed loopholes looking out to a flank, but none for frontal fire, as this dangerous little weapon best enjoys catching troops in enfilade owing to the rapidity and the narrow cone of its fire. Its own front is protected by the guns on its right and left. At each emplacement there was a range chart giving the ranges to all parts of the enemy's trenches, and to every prominent object both in front of and behind them, within its field of fire. When not in use the gun was kept mounted and ready for action in the battle position.

"But remember this," said Shorty, "you never fires from your battle position except in case of attack. W'en you goes out at night to 'ave a little go at Fritzie, you always tykes yer gun sommers else. If you don't, you'll 'ave Minnie an' Busy Bertha an' all the rest o' the Krupp childern comin' over to see w'ere you live."

This was a wise precaution, as we were soon to learn from experience. Machine guns are objects of special interest to the artillery, and the locality from which they are fired becomes very unhealthy for some little time thereafter.

We stopped for a moment at "The Mud Larks' Hairdressing Parlor," a very important institution if one might judge by its patronage. It was housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to the sky. There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts. The victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers. But instead of making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the forehead. The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for laughing. It was a lame one, I fear, for Shorty looked at me warningly. When we had gone on a little way he said:—
"Ain't it a proper beauty parlor? But you got to be careful about larfin'. Some o' the blokes thinks that 'edge-row is a regular ornament."

I had supposed that a daily shave was out of the question on the firing-line; but the British Tommy is nothing if not resourceful. Although water is scarce and fuel even more so, the self-respecting soldier easily surmounts difficulties, and the Gloucesters were all nice in matters pertaining to the toilet. Instead of draining their canteens of tea, they saved a few drops for shaving purposes.

"It's a bit sticky," said Shorty, "but it's 'ot, an' not 'arf bad w'en you gets used to it. Now, another thing you don't want to ferget is this: W'en yer movin' up fer yer week in the first line, always bring a bundle o' firewood with you. They ain't so much as a match-stick left in the trenches. Then you wants to be savin' of it. Don't go an' use it all the first d'y or you'll 'ave to do without yer tea the rest o' the week."

I remembered his emphasis upon this point afterward when I saw men risking their lives in order to procure firewood. Without his tea Tommy was a wretched being. I do not remember a day, no matter how serious the fighting, when he did not find both the time and the means for making it.

Shorty was a Ph.D. in every subject in the curriculum, including domestic science. In preparing breakfast he gave me a practical demonstration of the art of conserving a limited resource of fuel, bringing our two canteens to a boil with a very meager handful of sticks; and while doing so he delivered an oral thesis on the best methods of food preparation. For example, there was the item of corned beef—familiarly called "bully." It was the pièce de résistance at every meal with the possible exception of breakfast, when there was usually a strip of bacon. Now, one's appetite for "bully" becomes jaded in the course of a few weeks or months. To use the German expression one doesn't eat it gern. But it is not a question of liking it. One must eat it or go hungry. Therefore, said Shorty, save carefully all of your bacon grease, and instead of eating your "bully" cold out of the tin, mix it with bread crumbs and grated cheese and fry it in the grease. He prepared some in this way, and I thought it a most delectable dish. Another way of stimulating the palate was to boil the beef in a solution of bacon grease and water, and then, while eating it, "kid yerself that it's Irish stew." This second method of taking away the curse did not appeal to me very strongly, and Shorty admitted that he practiced such self-deception with very indifferent success; for after all "bully" was "bully" in whatever form you ate it.

In addition to this staple, the daily rations consisted of bacon, bread, cheese, jam, army biscuits, tea, and sugar. Sometimes they received a tinned meat and vegetable ration, already cooked, and at welcome intervals fresh meat and potatoes were substituted for corned beef. Each man had a very generous allowance of food, a great deal more, I thought, than he could possibly eat. Shorty explained this by saying that allowance was made for the amount which would be consumed by the rats and the blue-bottle flies.

There were, in fact, millions of flies. They settled in great swarms along the walls of the trenches, which were filled to the brim with warm light as soon as the sun had climbed a little way up the sky. Empty tin-lined ammunition boxes were used as cupboards for food. But of what avail were cupboards to a jam-loving and jam-fed British army living in open ditches in the summer time? Flytraps made of empty jam tins were set along the top of the parapet. As soon as one was filled, another was set in its place. But it was an unequal war against an expeditionary force of countless numbers.

"They ain't nothin' you can do," said Shorty. "They steal the jam right off yer bread."

As for the rats, speaking in the light of later experience, I can say that an army corps of pied pipers would not have sufficed to entice away the hordes of them that infested the trenches, living like house pets on our rations. They were great lazy animals, almost as large as cats, and so gorged with food that they could hardly move. They ran over us in the dugouts at night, and filched cheese and crackers right through the heavy waterproofed covering of our haversacks. They squealed and fought among themselves at all hours. I think it possible that they were carrion eaters, but never, to my knowledge, did they attack living men. While they were unpleasant bedfellows, we became so accustomed to them that we were not greatly concerned about our very intimate associations.”

The Front Line and Rats

Life in the trenches was a world away from drill halls and every day life. Rats were one of the Front line's most unpleasant guests.

The 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment crossed to France via Southampton on 5th/6th March 1916, landing at Havre.

This letter from Private Wenham of the 11th appeared in the Eastbourne Gazette on 14th June 1916 and gave the people back in Eastbourne a taste of what was happening.

“Lowthers Lambs” and the Rats

'Mr and Mrs H. Wenham, of Meads Street Eastbourne, have received a letter from their son (Private F.P. Wenham) in which he says,

“We are doing another four days in the trenches, but as we have already done two we shall soon be out again. Then we shall go back a little way for eight days rest.

We are like the rats which infest this place – we only get active at night! When in the front line we have a fine game with the rats. When the rifles are placed on the parapet we stick a piece of toasted cheese on the bayonet, then when ‘Nibs’ comes along, pull trigger, and exit rat! The advantage of this means of execution is that there is always a chance of the bullet finding its way into the German trench and making Fritz nervous. You can take it from me, there is no need to worry on my behalf. The grub is pretty good, I am absolutely fit, and Fritz is far too busy to make a bullet with my number on it.”'


Private Frederick Peter Wenham served in the 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment (1st Southdowns). Service number SD/261.

He was subsequently transferred to the 9th Battalion. He died on 30th July 1917, aged 21 and is buried in LIJSSENTHOEK MILITARY CEMETERY, Belgium.