War's Dark Frame/Between the Lines
CHAPTER IX
BETWEEN THE LINES
WE descended, wondering what the officer had meant. It had not occurred to me that I could go beyond the front line, nor was I quite sure I wished such a privilege to develop.
We slipped from covered communication into a chalky wet space between the parapet and a shell-gouged railroad embankment. In the lee of the embankment blue-clothed soldiers shivered, seeking what shelter there was. Our little party broke the monotony for them. They straightened, and, smiling, spoke to each other with voices that were never audible to us. They were like a party of men playing a game of hide-and-seek, exuding a breathless excitement at the imminence of discovery.
A line captain consulted with our staff officer. His desire to be hospitable shone in his round and pleasant face. The staff man came forward.
“The captain," he said, “wants to do something for you."
We were appreciative and curious. “He says," the staff man went on," that it is a very quiet day because of the constant rain."
Coming in, as I have said, I had noticed that no moment went by without shell explosions. As we talked we could hear the whining of shells overhead, and at intervals a number would shriek too close for comfort. You saw heads duck automatically. On such a quiet day we didn't want the captain to put himself out too much to do something for us. We asked what his plan was.
"He suggests," the staff man said, "that it might be possible to take you to a listening post in No-Man's Land—if you are not afraid. You are not afraid?"
To that formula which had grown well-worn we gave the customary reply. Moreover, it was an opportunity permitted to few civilians. So in a solemn file we followed him and the line captain past a dug-out, labelled, after the fashion of a summer cottage, “Villa de Venus." We climbed a flight of steps to the platform against the parapet where the sentinels stood.
"Of course," the staff man said, "if you go we can't promise there won't be a shell or a hand grenade."
We made indifferent gestures. We looked at each other suspiciously. There were no signals of retreat. The famous neutral novelist had large and dreamy eyes. More than once I had questioned if he fully understood the conditions arid which he walked. He wore a long black cloak, buttoned to the throat. It had been warm work coming through the communication line, and now at the top of the steps he unbuttoned his cloak, throwing the flaps over his shoulders. A group of soldiers near by scattered, laughing silently. Our conductors started, gave the familiar renunciatory shrug, then continued with an air of hesitation. The flaps of the famous novelist's cloak were lined with vividest scarlet.
It was convenient to let him trudge ahead with the hospitable captain. As we passed, sentinels snickered behind their hands and edged away.
"Why don't you tell him to take it off?" I asked the staff man.
"He's too distinguished," the officer replied. "I'll guarantee the captain will make him walk low through the sap."
We watched the captain motion to the novelist, then stoop and disappear. As we came up we saw the opening of a narrow sap that led at right angles from the main trench into No-Man's Land. Ahead the scarlet cloak led the way. We followed at a discreet distance.
Soldiers have written and talked a good deal about listening posts, yet like nearly everything else at the front the actual thing was unlike one's preconceived notion. The shallow, unfinished appearance of the sap advertised it as a temporary work that could be abandoned at any time the German fire should make it wise. Crouched as I was, strands of the overlapping barbed wire caught at my hat, and the weeds, evidently encouraged to mask the narrow ditch, brushed against my face. The cut debouched into a small square pocket where a solitary figure rested, motionless and sombre. His rifle barrel protruded through the grass. A box of cartridges lay on a dirt shelf to his left, and, convenient to his right hand on another shelf, was a wicker basket such as old women use for their knitting. It was filled with corrugated black objects, the shape and the size of pears. They were hand grenades.
This further proof that we were actually between the lines and within hand grenade throwing distance of the Germans warned us to take our places one by one in the pocket with our guide and the sentinel as stealthily as if we were afraid of awaking a light sleeper. And we looked with all our eyes, for we knew we were seeing one of the riskiest and most unpleasant details of trench work. Here a man watches alone, listening for enemy miners, alert for the first sign of activity from the opposite trench, not many yards away. As every one knows, it isn't simple to be brave when one is alone. At the front you conceive a thorough admiration for the men who assume the strain and the solitude of such assignments.
Our guide was still inclined to hospitality. He produced a map of the enemy trenches made from air photographs. Each trench was labelled. There was, I remember, the "Boyau Unter den Linden," the "Boyau Bethmann-Hollweg," the “Boyau Bismarck," and many others according to the play of French humour. I was instructed to peer through openings in the grass and the wire at the nearby mounds of white, wet earth that marked the German trenches.
“That communication coming up is the Boyau Unter den Linden. Can you see it?”
Thoughtlessly I answered:
"I am not quite sure. No. I don't see it."
The hospitable captain made a gesture of disappointment, a peculiar clicking sound with his tongue.
“You should see," he said. "It is very interesting. What can I do? Ah, yes. There is another listening post a little nearer the Boches to which it might be possible to penetrate. You would see better there. You are not afraid?" 
© Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
A Listening Post
So I followed him back to the main trench and crouched along another sap to a pocket whose occupant clearly disapproved of our presence.
Through the grass and wire the confusion of trenches appeared much the same, but when the captain asked me if I could now see the Boyau Unter den Linden I replied without hesitation:
"Perfectly. It is surprisingly distinct."
Nor did I keep him in suspense about the other objects he pointed out. I recognised all the boyaus with a miraculous ease. So eventually we stole back to healthier regions, both very much pleased. We were all glad enough to thank our host, and commence the return journey.
That was halted almost at the start while we studied a picture that at the time seemed better than anything I saw at the French front to symbolise the waste and the distortion of war.
For background there was the main street of a ruined village almost directly behind the first line trenches. The street made a slight arc between walls which for the most part gave only a sketchy illusion of habitation. Many of them were unsupported, offering views through eyeless windows of emptiness and desolation. Here and there a building maintained a semblance of completeness. Its doors might have gone, its windows have dis appeared save for jagged pieces of glass, its roof have been pierced by shells, but by very contrast it was serviceable. From one such survival slipped with a sickly stealth the odour of ether. It was a first aid post whose attendants worked under risks nearly as great as those of the men in the front line. The cold and brutal agony it housed reflected itself in the scarred brick wall and the tile roof from which the rain dripped with a suggestion of inexhaustible mourning. It was good to turn to another structure from which a savoury scent emerged joyously.
At the end of the curving street a tower arose. Even above the debris of the town it presented an abhorrent spectacle. That was because it was the skeleton of a church. Like a mutilated sentry it seemed engaged in the pitiful occupation of guarding that which was no longer worth the trouble. Shells shrieked overhead, and through the heavy air the gross petulance of the guns continued uninterrupted.
Poilus strolled against that background. They were a little wraith-like in their damp blue uniforms. They carried out of the cook house tin pails from which fragrant steam arose, or beneath their arms they hugged great round loaves of bread, As they went they laughed or talked silently. One by one they disappeared back of the shattered walls or into burrows beneath the earth.
The commander of that sector stood in the middle of the street with a number of his officers. He glanced at the picture which must have become too familiar to him.
"There was hand to hand fighting in each of these houses," he said, “but it was worth it, for it brought one more village back to France."
He pointed to the devastation. He sighed.
"The last village."
And how," an officer asked, "would they like villages like this in America? Is it possible there is a country which isn't full of villages like this? In such a country they can't understand. They can't understand."
The clouds grew a little thicker. The light faded. It seemed as if the whole world must be like this. These men appeared to know in the past or the future no mode of life beyond this. Stern-faced, physically contented, unafraid, they had an air of guaranteeing the redemption of those familiar fields ahead which reluctantly sheltered the invader beneath a sullen sky.
The officer was right. Even now it is hard to understand such things in America.