Everything interesting. Should like to have a camera with me. I had to post mine back. So many things are done in the British Army by putting a man on his honor. They just ask you to do things. They don't order you to do it. It was that way with me; they merely “asked” me to post my camera back.
Great powerful cars rush by here all day and all night, regardless of speed limits. Every hour or so you see a convoy of twenty or thirty motor lorries in line bringing up ammunition or supplies, or coming back empty. Every point bristles with sentries who demand passes. If you are not able to answer satisfactorily, they just shoot. The French soldiers have magnificent uniforms; the predominating color is a sort of cobalt blue. To see sentries, French and British [pg 072] together, they make quite a nice color scheme.
Officers censor all letters. I censor sometimes fifty letters a day. One man put in a letter to-day, “I can't write anything endearing in this, as my section officer will read it.” Another, “I enclose ten shillings. Very likely you will not receive this, as my officer has to censor this letter.” Of course we don't have time to read all the letters through. We look for names of places and numbers of divisions, brigades, etc., but I couldn't help noticing that one of my men, whom I have long suspected of being a Don Juan, had by one mail written exactly the same letter to five different girls in England, altering only the addresses and the affectionate beginnings.
The village in which I am now was visited last September by twelve German officers who came through in motor cars; the villagers cried, “Vivent les Anglais,” for not having seen an English soldier they took it for granted that the “Tommy” had come.
[pg 073]Everybody goes armed to the teeth. I have my belt, a regular Christmas tree for hanging things on, with revolver and cartridges on even while I'm writing this. We carry a lot, but we soon get used to it.
The corn is being cut now. Through the window opposite I can see it standing in newly-stacked sheaves. These places are the favorite sketching grounds of artists in normal times, and I often wonder if they ever will be again.
We return salutes with all the French and Belgian officers. It is difficult sometimes to distinguish them. I got fooled by a Belgian postman, and then went to work and cut a French general.
The nearer we get to the firing line the finer the type of soldier. They are the magnificent Britishers of Kitchener's First Army. It makes you proud to see them marching by, dirty and wet with sweat. I watched two battalions come through; they had marched twenty miles through the sun with new issue [pg 074] boots; a few of them had fallen out, and other men and officers were carrying their equipment and rifles; many of the officers carried two rifles.
I am now well within sound of the guns. A German Taube was shelled as it came over our firing line yesterday. One man was lying on his back asleep with his hat over his eyes, when a piece of shrapnel from one of the “Archies” hit him in the stomach—result: one blasphemous, indignant casualty. From the road I can see one of the observation balloons, a queer sausage-shaped airship. We may be moved up into the thick of it at any time now.
I have been over into Belgium to-day: crossed the frontier on my motor bike; the roads are terrible, all this beastly “pavé” cobblestones; awful stuff to ride over on a motor cycle. Shell holes on both sides of the road, and I saw three graves in the corner of a hop garden. All along the road there were dozens and dozens of old [pg 075] London motor buses, taking men to the trenches. They still have the advertisements on them and are driven by the bus-drivers themselves. Three hundred came over with their own machines. They are now soldiers. The observation balloon I mentioned yesterday was shelled down to-day.
I am writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. They tied the mayor of the town to a tree and shot him. The trenches have been filled in, all the wreckage cleared, and they have a new mayor.
It is not yet 7 a.m. I am an orderly officer and have to take the men out for a run at six. I came back and bought a London “Daily Mail” of yesterday from a country-woman. We are at least three miles from the town, [pg 076] but they are enterprising enough to bring papers to us at this time in the morning. A “Daily Mail” costs four cents.
Since I last wrote I have been up to the front line. Everything is different from what you imagine. The German trenches are easily distinguished through glasses; their sand-bags are multi-colored. Shrapnel was bursting over ruins of an old town in their lines. When you look through a periscope at the wilderness, it is difficult to imagine that thousands of soldiers on both sides have burrowed themselves into the earth. The evidence of their alertness is shown by their snipers, who are always busy whenever the target is up.
A battery of eight-inch howitzers was opening fire. Our battery commander, hearing this, sent us up. The guns, big fellows, were well concealed. They were painted in protective colors and covered with screens of branches to prevent aerial observation. In the grounds all over the place were dug-outs, deep rabbit burrows, ten or twelve feet down, [pg 077] into which everybody went immediately. The Germans started their “hate.” The firing is done by hand cord; other big guns are fired electrically. An enormous flash, an ear-splitting crash, a great sheet of flame from the muzzle, and two hundred pounds of steel is sent tearing through the air to the “Kultur” exponents. The whole gun lifts off the ground and runs back on its oil-compression springs. These guns are moved by their own caterpillar tractors which are kept somewhere close by. In three quarters of an hour they can get them started on the road. The ground for these emplacements was the orchard of a chateau. While we were there a whistle blew three times, an order shouted; immediately the guns were covered up and the men took cover. The enemy had sent an aeroplane to locate them. If they could once find them, hundreds of shells would rain on this spot in a few minutes. At a few yards' distance I couldn't see the guns myself. The “Hows” were firing at a house in the German lines which had been giving [pg 078] trouble. In three rounds they got it and then started in to “dust” the neighborhood. Of course, the firing is indirect. The officers and men who are with the guns don't see the effects. Apparently they fire straight away in the air. The observation is done by the forward observing officer in the fire trenches who corrects them by 'phone.
After the appointed number of rounds had been fired, we adjourned to the chateau, a fine house, marble mantelpiece, plaster ceilings, gilt mirror panels, etc. It has still a few pieces of furniture left, no carpets, most of the windows are smashed; shells have visited it, but chiefly in splinters. I saw one picture on the wall with a hole drilled in by a shrapnel bullet which had gone clean through as though it had been drilled. It hadn't smashed the glass otherwise. From a window of the room, which the officers use as a mess, a neat row of graves is to be seen. Outside there are great shell holes, most of them big enough to bury a horse. Suddenly a shriek and a deafening explosion [pg 079] occurred in the garden. “Sixty-pound shrapnel! Evening hate,” said an artillery sub. We left! We had been sent up to see the guns fire and not to be fired at.
To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great stew. In some of the villages a few of the inhabitants had stayed [pg 080] and traded with the soldiers. They lived in cellars usually and suffered terribly. British military police direct the traffic when there is any, and are stationed at crossroads with regular beats like a city policeman.
While traveling to another part of the line we had an opportunity of seeing the “Archies” (anti-aircraft guns) working. They were mounted on lorries and fire quite good-sized shells. They fired about fifty shots at one Taube, but didn't register a bull. Later in the evening from a trench we had the satisfaction of seeing another aeroplane set on fire, burn, and drop into the German lines like a shot partridge. Aeroplanes are as common as birds. Yesterday a “Pfeil” (arrow) biplane came right over our lines and was chased off by our own machines. The enemy's aeroplanes have their iron cross painted on the underside of their wings and are more hawkish-looking than ours. They are more often used for reconnoitering and taking photographs than for dropping bombs.
[pg 081]We are being moved up closer to the firing line. I have been made billeting officer. I went to headquarters; a staff colonel showed me a subdivision on a map. “Go there and select a place for your unit.” The place was a wretched village of about six houses, all of which are more or less smashed about, windows repaired with sacking and pieces of wood. All of the inhabitants have moved except those who are too poor. Every square inch is utilized. I managed to get a cow-shed for the officers. It looks comfortable. On the door I could just decipher, written in chalk, by some previous billeting officer,—
Billeting chalk marks are on almost all the shops and houses up from the coast to the front.
The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller who lived [pg 082] in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn't speak English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells, very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man's Land. The enemy has a very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.
Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are working hard, it is miserable here,—wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes, smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a [pg 083] poor, wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium, where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.
Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened shell-riddled town and knocked up an estaminet; we got a much finer meal than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. “Oh, no! I sleep upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at night. Then I go into the cellar.” This woman was a very pleasant, intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally leave the danger zone.
Marching through the sloughed-up mud, through shell holes filled with putrid water, amongst most depressing conditions, I saw a working party returning to their billets. They were wet through and wrapped up with scarves, wool helmets, and gloves. Over [pg 084] their clothes was a veneer of plastered mud. They marched along at a slow swing and in a mournful way sang—
Apparently there are no more words to this song because after a pause of a few beats they commenced again—
They looked exactly what they said they were.
Windmills, of which there are a good many, are only allowed to work under observation. It was found that they were often giving the enemy information, using the position of the sails to spell out codes in the same way as in semaphore; clock-hands on church towers are also used in the same way.
I saw a pathetic sight to-day. A stretcher came by with a man painfully wounded; he was inclined to whimper; one of the stretcher-bearers [pg 085] said quietly to him, “Be British.” He immediately straightened himself out and asked for a “fag.” He died that night.
We had a terrific bombardment last night; the ground shook all night and the sky was lit up for miles. The Boches used liquid fire on some new troops and we lost ground.
I found this piece of poetry on the wall of a smashed-up chateau, and I have copied it exactly as I found it. The writing was on a darkened wall, and while I copied it my guide held a torchlight up to it. The place passes as “Dead Cow Farm” on all official maps.
“Blighty” is the wound which sends a man home to England; it's a war word which came originally from the Indians, but now universally adopted in the new trench language.
I was walking along a trench when a man, who was sitting on a firestep looking up into a little trench mirror (which is used by putting the end of the bayonet between the glass and the frame), just crumpled up, shot through the heart. He didn't say a word. The trench had thinned out and the bullet had come through, nearly four feet down from the top of the parapet.
Bad shell fire this afternoon. Saw shells churning things up seventy-five yards away; many passed overhead; had a ride on my motor cycle with the other officers to reconnoiter the roads leading down to the part of the trenches we have taken over; road was shelled as we came along. Two “coal boxes” hit the road and smashed up a cottage in front of us; we picked up pieces of the shell too hot to hold.
[pg 088]Our billet now is another large farm, with the pump in the center of the manure heap as usual; our machines are parked all round a field close to the hedges to make a smaller target and also to prevent aerial observation.
I went through a town this morning which has been on everybody's lips for months—I have never seen such devastation in my life; it baffles description. The San Francisco earthquake was a joke to this. Thousands and thousands of shells have pummeled and smashed until very little remains besides wreckage. Most of the shelling has been done to deliberately destroy the objects of architectural value.
My quarters are in a loft amongst rags, old agricultural implements, sacks, and the accumulation of years of dirt; flies wake me up at daylight.
This morning I went for a drink in the estaminet I have mentioned already. Two shells have been through the sides of the house since we were last there, but they both came through at the usual scheduled time.
[pg 089]This poor country is pockmarked with shell craters like a great country with a skin disease. Trees have been splintered worse than any storm could do. Nothing has been spared. The mineral rights of this territory should be very valuable some day. When we have all finished salting the earth with nickel, lead, steel, copper, and aluminum, old-metal dealers will probably set up offices in No Man's Land.
Belgium will have to be rebuilt entirely, or left as it is, a monument to “Kultur.”
My section has been ordered up to a divisional area on the south of the salient. In accordance with instructions I went up to Ypres this morning to find a place to park the machines.
Contrary to the popular belief, we do not fight our guns from the motor cycles themselves. We use our machines to get about on, and the guns are taken up as near as possible to the position we are to occupy, which is usually behind Brigade Headquarters. [pg 090] Brigadiers have a great aversion to any kind of motor vehicle being driven past their headquarters, owing to the movement and noise, which they believe attracts attention to themselves, and as a rule the sentries posted outside will see that no machines go by. We get up as far as we can, because after we part from our machines, everything must be carried up through the trenches by hand.
I arrived at the town early and reported to the major who is in charge of the town and of the troops quartered there. He was living in the prison, a substantial brick and stone building, which has been smashed about a bit, but which is still a fairly good structure. The major is a fine, gruff old gentleman who was a master of fox hounds in the North of England. He came over with a detachment of cavalry. He is past the age limit, and it was decided that although he was a fine soldier, perhaps his age would be a deterrent and his job ought to be something lighter, so they gave him one of the fiercest jobs in the world—O. C. Ypres!
[pg 091]I was sent in, and when he heard my errand he said, “You want to park your machines in Ypres? Why don't you take them up in the German front lines? You'll be safer there than here. Listen to the shelling now.” I knew this, but I was doing just exactly what I was told. He continued: “I have now thousands of troops here and my daily casualties are enormous, so naturally I don't want any more men. The best plan for you will be to go down the Lille road and pick a house below ‘Shrapnel Corner.’ ”
I went on through the town, under the Lille gate, across the tram lines, past the famous cross-roads known as “Shrapnel Corner” and chummed up with some artillery officers. They told me that I could have any of the houses I wanted. I picked a couple which looked to me to be more complete than the rest and chalked them up. This whole place was alive with batteries. While I was there I heard a shout and suddenly a hidden battery of guns, sunk behind the road with the muzzles almost resting on [pg 092] it, started firing across in the direction of the part of Belgium occupied by Fritz. I had passed within two feet of these guns and yet had not seen them, they were so well “camouflaged.” On my way back I saw the “Big Berthas” bursting in the town, and I was surprised that so little damage had been actually done to the Lille gate itself. Shells had visited everywhere in the neighborhood, but had not smashed this old structure.
I went home, collected my men together, and told them the importance of the work we were to undertake. I have found it always a good thing to make the men think the job that they are doing is of great importance. Better results are obtained that way.
We went to an “engineer dump” on the way up just after the enemy had landed a shell on a wagon loading building material, and wounded were being carried off and the mangled horses had been dragged on one side. As the wounded came by I called my section to attention, the compliment due to wounded men paid by units drawn up.
[pg 093]We drew our sandbags in the usual way by requisitioning for five thousand and getting one thousand. Always ask for more than you expect to get.
As we came into Ypres, a military policeman on duty told me it was unhealthy to go the usual way through the Market Square, because the shelling was bad in that part of the town, so I spread the machines out and started on down a side street. We were getting on finely and I was congratulating myself on getting through, when two houses, hit from the back, collapsed across the street in front of my machine. Without any ceremony I turned my machine back along the street which we had come and went through the Market Square down the Lille road, under the gate, being followed by my section. About four hundred yards down I stopped; holding my solo motor cycle between my legs, standing up, I looked back. I counted my machines as they came up. If it hadn't been so scary, it really would have been funny, to see these machines [pg 094] coming down the road through shell holes and over piles of bricks, as fast as the drivers could make them go. The men were hanging on for dear life and the machines rocked from side to side, but they were all there.
Down the road we went to the houses; there we parked the machines and unpacked. A guard was placed over them and the rest of us marched down to the trenches.
An officer has to buy all his own equipment and is allowed two hundred and fifty dollars by the Government towards the cost. An officer carries a revolver, but all junior officers as soon as possible acquire a rifle. The men of a “salvage company” were collecting all the rifles, bayonets, and parts of equipment near where I was to-day and I managed to get a Lee-Enfield (British rifle) in good shape. I felt that I would like to have a rifle and bayonet handy. I found a good-looking bayonet sticking in the side of a sandbag wall. It looked lonely. [pg 095] The scabbard I am using was resting in a loft of a deserted brewery. I am now complete with rifle, bayonet, and scabbard.
Sometimes you see a man smashed about in a terrible way, such a mess that you think he is a goner; he may recover. Another man may have just a small wound and will die. A bullet hitting a man in the head will smash it as effectually as a sledge-hammer. Once a man leaves your unit, wounded, you don't see him again. You get a fresh draft.
No one thinks of peace here. Germany must be put in a similar state to Belgium first.
We never travel anywhere without our smoke helmets; they come right over our heads and are tucked into our shirts; they have two glass eye-pieces. When we have them on we look like the old Spanish gentleman who ran the “Star Chamber.” Helmets must always be ready to put on instantly. Gas is a matter of seconds in coming over. The helmets are better than respirators, but have to be constantly inspected. [pg 096] A small hole, or if one is allowed to dry, means a casualty.
Storm brewing. Flies bad, driven in by the wind. Nature goes on just the same. I suppose that this farm would be just as fly-ridden in an ordinary summer. During the bombarding yesterday I noticed swallows flying about quite unconcerned. Corn, mostly self-planted, grows right up to the trenches. Cabbages grow wild. Communicating trenches run right through fields of crops; flowers grow in profusion between the lines, big red poppies and field daisies, and there are often hundreds of little frogs in the bottom of the trenches.
A trip to No Man's Land is an excursion which you never forget. It varies in width and horrors. My impression was similar to what I should feel being on Broadway without any clothes—a naked feeling. Forty-seven and one half inches of earth are necessary to stop a bullet, and it's nice to have that amount of dirt between you and the enemy's [pg 097] bullets. The dead lie out in between the lines or hang up on the wire; they don't look pretty after they have been out some time. It's a pleasant job to have to get their identification disks, and we have to search the bodies of the enemy dead for papers and even buttons so that we can know what unit is in front of us. Flowers grow in between, butterflies play together, and birds nest in the wire. When the grass becomes too high it has to be cut, because otherwise it would prevent good observation. In some places grass doesn't have a chance to even take root, let alone grow. The shells take care of that.
I managed to get a translation of a diary kept by a German soldier who fell on the field. Below is an exact translation and gives the point of view of a man in the trenches on the other side of the line. He was writing his diary at the same time I was writing mine, and we were both fighting around the salient at Ypres, Hooge being on the point of the salient farthest east. This part, which was [pg 098] once a place of beauty which people came long distances to see, is now like a great muddy Saragossa Sea which at the height of its fury has suddenly become frozen with the tortured limbs of trees and men, and wreckage and reeking smells, until it can again lash itself in wild fury into whirlpools. It is in all respects Purgatory, but of greater horror than Dante ever dreamt of.
Diary of F---- P---- of the 6th Company, 3d Battalion, 132d Regiment. Killed at Hooge on August 9th, 1915.
On May 10, we were told to prepare for the journey to the front. Each man received his service ammunition and two days' rations, and we then started with heavy packs on our backs and our water-bottles full of coffee. After a long march we reached our reserve position, where we were put into rest billets for two days in wooden huts hidden in a wood. We could hear from here the noise of the shells coming through the air.
On May 13, we moved into the trenches, in the night. We were a whole hour moving along a communication trench one and one-half metres deep, right up to the front line some fifty metres [pg 099] from the enemy. This was to be our post. We had hardly got in before the bullets came flying over our heads. Look out for the English! They know how to shoot! I need hardly say we did not wait to return the compliment. We answered each one of their greetings and always with success, inasmuch as we stood to our loopholes for twenty-four hours with two-hour reliefs.
At length early on the 15th, at four o'clock, came our first attack. After a preliminary smoking-out with gas, our artillery got to work, and about ten o'clock we climbed out of the trenches and advanced fifty metres in the hail of bullets. Here I got my first shot through the coat. Three comrades were killed at the outset of the assault, and some twenty slightly or severely wounded, but we had obtained our object. The trench was ours, although the English twice attempted to turn us out of it.
The fight went on till eleven o'clock that evening. We were then relieved by the 10th Company, and made our way back along the communication trenches to our old positions. Here we remained until the third day, standing by at night and passing two days without sleep. We were hardly able to get our meals. From every side firing was going on, and shots came plugging two metres deep into the ground. This was my baptism of fire. It cannot be described as it really is—something like an earthquake, when [pg 100] the big shells come at one and make holes in the ground large enough to hold forty or fifty men comfortably. How easy and comfortable seemed our road back to the huts.
We remained in the huts for three days, resting before we went up again to “Hell Fire,” as they call the first line trenches in front of Ypres.
Then suddenly in the middle of the night an alarm. Our neighbors had allowed themselves to be driven out of our hard-won position, and the 6th Company, with the 8th and 5th, had to make good the lost ground. A hasty march through the communication trenches up to the front, the night lit up far and wide with searchlights and flares and ourselves in a long chain lying on our bellies. Towards two in the morning the Englishmen came on, 1500 men strong. The battle may be imagined. About 200 returned to the line they started from. Over 1300 dead and wounded lay on the ground. Six machine guns and a quantity of rifles and equipment were taken back by us, the 132d Regiment, and the old position was once more in our possession. What our neighbors lost the 132d regained. There was free beer that evening and a concert! At 11 p.m. once more we withdrew to the rear, our 2d, 4th and 10th Companies relieving us. We slept a whole day and night like the dead.
On June 15th, we again went back to rest billets, but towards midday we were once more sent [pg 101] up to the front line to reinforce our right wing, which was attacked by French and English. Just as we got to our trenches we were greeted by a heavy shell fire, the shells falling in front of our parapets, making the sandbags totter. Seeing this, I sprang to the spot and held the whole thing together till the others hurried up to my assistance. Just as I was about to let go, I must have got my head too high above the parapet, as I got shot in the scalp. In the excitement I did not at once realize that I was wounded, until Gubbert said—“Hullo, Musch! Why, you're bleeding!” The stretcher-bearer tied me up, and I had to go back to the dressing-station to be examined. Happily it was nothing more than a mere scalp wound, and I was only obliged to remain on the sick-list four days, having the place attended to.
June 24th. All quiet in the West, except for sniping. The weather is such that no offensive can take place. The English will never have a better excuse for inactivity than this—“It is raining.” Thank God for that! Less dust to swallow to-day! Odd that here in Belgium we are delighted with the rain, while in Germany they are watching it with anxiety.
To-day we shall probably be relieved. Then we go to Menin to rest. Ten days without coming under fire. It is Paradise!
Sunday, June 27th. At nine o'clock clean up. [pg 102] At eleven roll-call. At three o'clock went to the Cinema—very fine pictures. In the afternoon all the men danced till seven, but we had to take each other for partners—no girls.
July 2d. 11 p.m. Alarm. Three persons have been arrested who refused to make sandbags. They were pulled out of bed and carried off. Eight o'clock marched to drill. This lasts till 11. Then 1 to 4 rest. Six, physical drill and games. I went to the Cinema in the evening.
July 6th. Inspection till eleven. Three hours standing in the sun—enough to drive me silly. Twenty-three men fell out. Three horses also affected by the heat. Eleven to one Parade march—in the sun. Thirty-six more men reported sick. I was very nearly one of them.
July 9th. Preparation for departure. From seven to ten pack up kits. Eleven, roll-call. One-thirty, march to light railway. At seven reached firing trench. The English are firing intermittently over our heads; otherwise, all is quiet. We are now on the celebrated, much-bewritten-about “Hill 60.” Night passes without incident.
July 12th. At three in the morning the enemy makes a gas attack. We put on respirators. Rifle in hand we leap from the trenches and assault. In front of Hill 60 the enemy breaks, and we come into possession of a trench. Rapid digging. Counter-attack repulsed. At nine o'clock [pg 103] all is quiet, only the artillery still popping. This evening we are to be relieved. The 132d Regiment is much beloved by the English! In a dugout we found two labels. One of them had the following writing on it: “God strafe the 132d Regiment (not ‘God strafe England’ this time). Sergeant Scott (?) Remington, Sewster Wall (?).” On the other was, “I wish the Devil would take you, you pigs.”
At 7.20 Hill 60 is bombarded by artillery, and shakes thirty to fifty metres, as if from an earthquake. Two English companies blown into the air—a terrible picture. Dug-outs, arms, equipment—all blown to bits.
July 17th. Marched to new quarters. We have got a new captain. He wants to see the company, so at 8 a.m. drill in pouring rain. Four times we have to lie on our belly, and get wet through and through. All the men grumbling and cursing. At eleven we are dismissed. I, with a bad cold and a headache. I wish this soldiering were all over.
July 19th. At seven sharp we marched off to our position. Heavy bombardment. At nine we were buried by a shell. I know no more. At eleven I found myself lying in the Field Hospital. I have pains inside me over my lungs; and headache, and burning in the joints.
July 20th. The M.O. has had a look at me. He says my stomach and left lung are suffering [pg 104] from the pressure which was put on them. The principal remedy is rest.
July 21st. Thirty-nine degrees of fever (temp. 100° Fahr.). Stay in bed and sleep, and oh! how tired I am!
July 22d. I slept all day. Had milk and white bread to eat.
July 26th. Returned to duty with three days' exemption, i.e., we do not have any outdoor work.
July 28th and 29th. Still on exemption. Nothing to do but sleep and think of home and of my dear wife and daughter. But dreaming does not bring peace any sooner. How I would love an hour or two back home.
July 31st. In rest. Baths going. Duke of Württemberg passed through our camp.
August 1st. Up to the trenches. Shrapnel flying like flies. A heavy bombardment; bombardment of Hooge. Second Battalion, 132d Regiment, sent up to reinforce 126th Regiment, which has already lost half its men.
August 4th. Heavy artillery fire the whole night. The English are concentrating 50,000 Indians on our front to attack Hooge and Hill 60. Just let them come, we shall stand firm. At three marched off to the front. Watch beginning again. Five o'clock marched off to the Witches' Cauldron, Hooge. A terrible night again. H.E. and shrapnel without number. Oh, [pg 105] thrice-cursed Hooge! In one hour eleven killed and twenty-three wounded and the fire unceasing. It is enough to drive one mad, and we have to spend three days and three nights more. It is worse than an earthquake, and any one who has not experienced it can have no idea what it is like. The English fired a mine, a hole fifteen metres deep and fifty to sixty broad, and this “cauldron” has to be occupied at night. At present it isn't too badly shelled. At every shot the dug-outs sway to and fro like a weather-cock. This life we have to stick to for months. One needs nerves of steel and iron. Now I must crawl into our hole, as trunks and branches of trees fly in our trench like spray.
August 6th. To-night moved to the crater again, half running and half crawling. At seven a sudden burst of fire from the whole of the artillery. From about eleven yesterday fires as if possessed. This morning at four we fall back. We find the 126th have no communication with the rear, as the communication trenches have been completely blown in. The smoke and thirst are enough to drive one mad. Our cooker doesn't come up. The 126th gives us bread and coffee from the little they have. If only it would stop! We get direct hits one after another and lie in a sort of dead end, cut off from all communication. If only it were night. What a feeling to be thinking every second when I shall get it! ---- has [pg 106] just fallen, the third man in our platoon. Since eight the fire has been unceasing; the earth shakes and we with it. Will God ever bring us out of this fire? I have said the Lord's Prayer and am resigned.