Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (14 page)

With the improving weather and the warm, balmy evenings, life in the trenches could be not only tolerable but almost enjoyable. The sound of artillery fire could be just a distant and sporadic rumble, rifle and machine-gun fire infrequent, and so a sense of peace and tranquillity pervaded the trenches.

Anonymous cpl, 9th Highland Light Infantry

There are good times in the trenches, especially in the summer. Plenty of grub, ripping weather, a decent dugout for two, and sentry duty for only one hour in seventeen. We loafed about visiting our friends in other dugouts, reading or writing our letters with nothing to worry us, and when the afternoon sun became too hot we got into the shady dugout and lay there watching the moles and lizards crawling about the empty trench. Yes, that was a fine spell.

And then there were our bivouacs, little lodgings rigged up by branches tied together with the waterproof sheets, which every soldier carries, stretched over and pegged down at the sides. We spread straw and grass to keep the damp from rising. Outside the bivouacs was our camp fire with the dixie on for tea, and we ourselves, stretched out on the grass near the fire, yarning [and] smoking to keep mosquitoes from getting busy. There
is
romance in our life out here. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

Pte Norman Edwards, 1/6th Gloucestershire Rgt

I remember one afternoon lying down on the grass feeling the earth’s firmness, breathing the pure air, inhaling the exquisite colour and sweetness of the blue heaven and forgetting the petty circumstances and annoyances of existence. In the mellow sunlight, the bronze, yellow and flaming reds of nature blended into a sort of beauty infinitely soothing to the spirit. Great restful clouds warmed with colour from the dying sun, breasted the rim of the hills in fleecy manes like celestial Alps. A long way off, a band was playing, so far that only occasionally a strain of music drifted across the quiet air, but the boom of the drum outcarried the music rising and falling in rhythmic throbs like a tom-tom – conveying news across the jungle. Other faraway sounds, the barking of a dog, faint bursts of cheering from a football match, and desultory rumbles of gunfire, stole gently on my hearing, but none were of sufficient sharpness to obtrude on the quietness that enveloped me. Myriads of insects were busy, frantically busy knowing that the vital warmth would soon depart from the sunbeams and that earth would no longer respond to their touch. From an ivy that flowered on an old wall nearby, a hum of activity arose as countless flies flitted from flower to flower, and the drone of a passing bee seemed loud in comparison with the countless small sounds that in the aggregate made up an exquisite undertone of nature so faint that it trembled on the edge of hearing. Yet my senses were acutely aware of them, and I was thankful that no aeroplane came over to break the contact. As the light faded, the woods took on a purple hue, and a column of gnats danced unceasingly over the gun. Then twilight, mist in the valley and the plod back to the little barn with a companion, yawning after a good afternoon’s sleep. I did not envy him for I too had been resting. Not only my body but my mind and spirit felt strangely cleaned and refreshed.

2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

The weather is still perfect; our trenches and breastworks are brown and bare and dusty, and the sandbags are getting bleached in the sun, but everything else is green. The meadow behind is yellow with buttercups and dandelions; there’s a large patch of yellow mustard out between the lines, and a forest of leeks and cabbages. Even the walnut trees, which seem to be the last of all, are beginning to give a little shade, and the broken stumps of poplars are doing their best to repair the damage of the shells.

I spent part of the morning skittling in the stream for where an old trench crossed it; some hopeful idiot last autumn had built a dam of bricks, as if that were likely to keep the water out. The remains were still blocking the current and making a stagnant pool, so I cleared them out, to the great disgust of the water beetles and other tenants who had been living there so long. There was a pleasant smell of warm mint and waterweeds . . . Swallows and house martins are very busy, but it will puzzle them this year to find a house left with eaves within a mile of the trenches on either side. Certainly there are none about here, and few walls as high as a second storey. My hedge sparrows are nearly ready to fly, but I found another nest with young birds, in a pollard willow, a common sparrow’s, I think; but there were three bullet holes scored on the bark within a foot of it, so that I did not care to climb up and look inside. The birds don’t care, and I often see them crossing between the lines; in fact, there are just too many pigeons crossing, and I wish I had a shotgun to stop some of them. There was a tit’s nest too, as usual in a hole too small for my hand, and too deep for my fingers, so that I must watch for the bird to see what kind it is . . . The war must have come upon these farms very quickly, for almost all the cattle have been killed, and they still trouble us. But a gunner who was here then described to me how he had seen men dash out from their trenches, in spite of the snipers, and run along to cut a steak from the buttocks, and back again. For in those days rations were not so plentiful as they are now, and fresh meat even scarcer.

Lt Denis Barnett, 2nd Prince of Wales’ Leinster Rgt

There is a cow here that walks about in the day, and by night is put away carefully in a dugout, in the hope that one day she’ll give some milk. So far there’s nothing doing, and I’m afraid she’ll be hit before she gets a sufficiently peaceful day to begin to think of what she can do for other people.

We spend a lot of time here strafing flies. There’s rather a lot about, though our trench is as clean as a new sewer, really very nice. We seem to have made a difference to them already, and the majority seem to belong to Ersatz and Landwehr formations, the bluebottles of the first line having all been accounted for . . . By Jove, I picked up a shrapnel bullet and threw it at a bluebottle sitting on the parapet about five yards off and got him pop! He never smiled again. That’s one of the best shots I’ve ever done.

Pte Norman Edwards, 1/6th Gloucestershire Rgt

It became unbearably hot and steamy. The trenches stank, the old French latrine nearby sent forth a pestilential odour, and our dugout added its quota to the general foulness until I unearthed and buried a lump of stinking meat that had been left under the straw. I made a trip to the pioneers’ dugout, lifted a can of creosote, and by a generous distribution of this over the main sources of contamination, made the air a little purer. Flies swarmed everywhere, including those horrible brown horseflies that drew blood when they bit, and very fittingly, on this reeking sweaty day, amidst the horrible filth, we found ourselves lousy for the first time.

2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

I never saw a billet like this for flies; they hang in great black clusters on the walls like swarming bees; flypapers get covered two or three deep in half an hour; we are trying poison too, but however many we strafe there are just as many left.

Flies were not only bothersome but also spread disease and so the work of sanitary officers was critical in staving off illness in the line. They were nicknamed ‘OC Stinks’, and they were not always listened to and their advice was often ignored. When Lieutenant McQueen discovered that a number of the lidded toilet seats he had seen incorporated in a trench were cut up and used for firewood, he had a right to be annoyed. Sadly, he never really stopped feeling that he was considered as just as much a nuisance as a help.

Lt James McQueen, Sanitary Officer, 51st Div.

At the end of ten to twelve hours of bright sunshine, you lift up one of the latrine lids which have served some hundreds of men, and you find that one fly escapes. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘first of all, how many contacts would you have had in this latrine had it been a shallow one, dependent upon some careful soldier to cover with earth? In the course of ten hours you might have thousands of contacts of flies with the excreta, and just as many contacts of excreta-contaminated flies with jam, sugar, butter and other articles of a soldier’s diet that are not subjected to sterilisation by heat. At the end of ten or twelve hours you see one fly emerge, and it is a very doubtful proposition as to whether that fly has ever been near the excreta at the bottom of the 9ft pit.’ Whereupon the major demanded abruptly, ‘How do you know that, McQueen?’ I said, ‘Because a fly does not fly into the dark; it buzzes round in the light. The bottom of a deep latrine is too dark for a fly.’

McQueen had disagreements with a number of officers who could see only extra, and to their minds unnecessary, work for their men to do to maintain hygiene. Yet McQueen’s advice was not only practical but sound. Flies had been estimated to cover between 300 yards and one mile in any direction in a twenty-four-hour period, laying their eggs in anything from rotten meat to rotting straw, from decaying vegetables to horse manure. A single fly could deposit 500–800 eggs in a summer, and the development of the egg to the perfect fly could take as little as ten days. The new generation of flies could lay eggs within a further ten days and, although the fly’s life cycle was short, the damage they could do to men’s health was serious. Unfortunately for the men in the front line, they were not the only pest.

2/Lt Alexander Gillespie, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

This has been a very hot sultry day, as I know to my cost, for I spent the morning with my platoon digging a new trench about half a mile behind the firing line. We were well screened from view, even from the captive balloon which was hanging in the air over the German lines as usual, like a great caterpillar; so that we could work by daylight which is always more satisfactory. The men were working practically naked, and the only disadvantage was a very poisonous wasps’ nest close beside the trench. I got stung twice on the knee, but either it is a very long time since I was stung, or these French wasps are not so venomous, for their stings don’t bother you after five minutes. Some of the men were stung too, and were much more alarmed by the wasps in pursuit than by some shrapnel which the Germans put over just in front of us.

Occasionally the ubiquitous presence of trench insects and vermin could, with a little ingenuity, be turned to the soldier’s advantage.

Lt Graham Reid, 59th Field Coy, RE

The French were marvellous in the art of camouflage. In one place there was a body hanging on the wire just in front of the French lines. Observation just here was difficult. The French made a papier mâché model of the body, tunnelled out to the wire, replaced the body with the imitation. By standing up at the end of the tunnel, an observer could get a good view by looking through a hole in the ‘dead man’s’ stomach. This was in July or August. To give a realistic touch, the man responsible for this chef d’oeuvre spread honey over the papier mâché dummy to attract the flies.

Lt Bernard Adams, 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers

Some tea was on the table, and bully and bread and butter; there was no sugar, however. Richards [an officer’s servant] smiled and said the rats had eaten it all. Whenever anything was missing, these rats had eaten it, just as they were responsible for men’s equipment and packs getting torn, and their emergency rations lost. In many cases the excuse was quite a just one; but when it came to rats running off with canteen lids, our sympathy for the rat-ridden Tommy was not always very strong.

Today, a new reason was found for the loss of three teaspoons.

‘Lost in the scuffle, sir, the night of the raid,’ was the answer given to the demand for an explanation . . .

I remembered there had been some confusion and noise behind when the Germans raided on the left; apparently all the knives and forks had fallen to the ground and several had snapped under the martial trampling of feet when our retainers stood to arms. For many days afterwards when anything was lost, one’s anger was appeased by ‘Lost in the scuffle, sir’. At last it got too much of a good thing.

‘Why this new teapot, Davies?’ I said a few days later.

‘The old one was lost in the scuffle, sir.’

‘Look here,’ I said, ‘we had the old one yesterday, and this morning I saw it broken on Madame’s manure heap. Here endeth “Lost in the scuffle”. See? Go back to the rats.’

‘Very good, sir.’

As most work was carried out at night, daytime was used for rest and a chance to write a letter home to a loved one. In writing to a young son or daughter, or to a favourite niece, there was a limit to the number of things a man could sensibly write about. He could talk about home, but then he might not have seen home for months; he could talk about war in a gung-ho,
Boy’s Own
fashion, but such talk would last only for so long. Easier, perhaps, to resort to descriptions of life in the line, the nice, reassuring stories that a child would understand. Second Lieutenants Foulis, writing to his daughter Nancy, and Andrew Buxton, to his niece Rachael, epitomised the letters of many when they talked about nature.