War's Dark Frame/The Appalling Mines
CHAPTER XIV
THE APPALLING MINES
WE walked on, discussing this and forgetting the most Gargantuan and terrible practice of all. A serious-faced subaltern, standing with his elbow braced against the corner of a traverse reminded us. At a distance he had an unusual appearance.
As we came up we saw it was because of the degraded state of his uniform—worse than any private's we had seen. Yet it wasn't the familiar yellow mud that stained the brown cloth, that had dried on his checks and hands. This man was nearly blue from head to foot.
“Where is there blue mud around here?" we asked. Something of the subaltern's haggard expression was reflected in Williams' eyes.
"Blue mud?" he repeated. “There!"
We could see now, behind the stained man, a heap of bluish, shiny soil from which water still oozed, running blue and shallow across the floor of the trench. Blue mud! Blue water!
Williams introduced the subaltern to us. He made a wry face and tried to rub the muck from his fingers before shaking hands. He glanced doubtfully at Williams, who drew him aside, speaking quietly. He nodded.
"If you wish," he said.
With a stealth greater than we had exercised at the sniper's post we followed him along a narrow gully whose walls were heaped with the blue stuff, whose floor was a stream.
“Walk carefully," he said.
It was really difficult, because of the slimy footing, to remain upright. We constantly caught our balance against the yielding soil. Therefore we didn't see at first the grotesque and uncouth figure that crawled from an opening similar to the entrance of a dug-out. You paused, startled by the fancy of a prehistoric creature leaving his lair and sizing you up for defence or attack. From head to foot he was blue and dripping. The mud was in his ears and thick through his matted hair. Before he could rise the officer spoke to him, and he remained squatted in the opening
"How deep are you?”
You scarcely expected intelligible words to issue from such a creature, but he mentioned an astonishing figure, and went on with rough goodnature: "I'll climb down with a candle so you can see."
In that narrow hole there was room for only one at a time, and it was necessary to enter as he had started to emerge, on hands and knees.
"Don't slip," he grunted.
In a moment eyes grew a little accustomed to the light. A wooden platform, burdened with pipes, overhung a pit, apparently bottomless.
“The pipes are for to carry off the water," the creature said. “We have to pump almost from the first spadeful, and it's pump, pump, pump, every foot we go down, and, when we get down, every foot we go out.'
He struck a match and applied it to a stump of a candle. He swung over the brink, fumbling with his feet for ladder rungs. I heard him scrape down, holding the candle in one hand. His face was no longer visible. His candle was a mere speck. When he called up his voice was muffled and far away.
"We strike out from here."
Yet no sound of tools came up. In almost complete silence that sap was creeping towards the German trenches a hundred yards away. That it might go at all this uncouth creature and many like him were daily accomplishing a task compared with which ordinary ore mining is pure recrea tion. He came puffing up the ladder. The sun and the outside air were pleasant.
“How fast do you go?" I asked the subaltern.
It varied, he answered. Sometimes two yards a day. Sometimes more.
It depends on the soil and the size of the sap. Usually there is room only to work and in baskets the excavated soil."
That, we saw, was raised to the surface and used to strengthen old parapets or to construct pass back new.
We looked at this officer, who was scarcely more than a boy, with unqualified admiration. The fact that all along the line from the sea to the Vosges other men were performing identical tasks, made no difference. His reminder that the Germans were pushing similar saps in our direction, that one might explode beneath our feet at any moment, was rather depressing. But he encouraged us with a smile that cracked the mud on his cheeks.
"I think we have a better system of listening than the Huns. We like to think we can detect their saps here before they get too close."
His easy talk called up a whole gallery of unhappy pictures—men crouched in listening posts, or creeping towards the German trenches at night, from time to time pausing to lie with an ear to the ground, in constant fear of a star shell which might point them out to a sniper or a waiting machine gun crew. But more compelling was the recollection of that crouched and filthy creature. It was possible to see him stretched in the narrow tunnel, digging away as stealthily as possible the soil in front of him, quite at the mercy of the German listeners, perhaps breaking through into a rival sap-head and fighting murderously in a narrow hole. When a mischance occurs during mine work a burial isn't often necessary or possible.
We walked on after that with some thought for what might be going on beneath our feet. Certainly mining alone is enough to keep the other fellow from feeling too much at his ease. Fancy trying to protect yourself day after day from all the enemy's noisy devices of death, knowing as well that each moment mines are creeping towards you, wondering each moment if your particular section has been chosen, anticipating each moment the crumbling of the earth beneath your feet, a roar, a disintegration as important for you as the end of the world.
It is necessary to visit the front to put life into the dry-as-dust phrases of the official reports. "We exploded a mind and consolidated the crater"—That line carries more horror than the blackest tragedy ever written. We were glad to follow the brigade officer up a path marked "Sniper's Avenue," which proved to be a communication trench and led us out of the reach of mines. I wonder if we hadn't all counted the hours in the front line. We had, I know, glanced at our watches more frequently than one does at home. I wonder if every soldier who is condemned to the trenches for days doesn't count the hours, the minutes, until he can walk along a communication trench away from the things that keep him from fecling too much at case.
At a turning where the wall had been broken down a little by a shell we were greeted by two sharp reports like the snapping of a whip. We had an uncomfortable feeling of having been shot at, but surely the noise had been too close.
"Those were probably our snipers," the foreign office man said.
The brigade officer shook his head.
Huns, I think," he answered shortly. His freckled face lost its good humour. The puzzle concerned us all, but he would say nothing more.
We climbed a little reluctantly from the communication trench to a shell-torn road, but Williams looked over his shoulder.
They've pulled their sausage down."
The brigade officer glanced at his wrist watch, saying in a matter-of-fact tone: "About time they knocked off for luncheon." He laughed as he read the surprise and distaste in our faces.
“Friend Boche is methodical if anything. He usually has his hour for a comfy feed."
It was evident that the fire from the other side had diminished. In desperation some of us took the insufferably hot helmets from our heads.
Trusting to our guide's perfect faith in the German schedule, we followed him across a field and were disturbed by nothing more than an occasional shriek from the sky.
"I told the driver," he said to Williams, to have the cars at Snipers' House."
If ever a name suggested a dramatic incident of stealthy warfare that one did, but, in common with most of the soldiers' christening of landmarks, its origin was clouded; nor, when we had come to it, did it offer any evidence of its own. It was the familiar roofless quadrangle of shell-shattered walls. Whatever its romantic past it was a prosaic rendezvous now for members of the transport service, Near by, a narrow tramway descended to a communication trench and ambled to the front line.
We scurried from the shelter of Snipers' House along the devastated roads to brigade headquarters. "With their sausage down," the brigade officer said by way of farewell, "you ought to find the road to division headquarters comfortable enough."
We did, but we took it in a rush.
The general welcomed us for luncheon in his château. He drew, there's no question, in every one's memory a firm and impressive portrait. Tall, powerful, yet with an easy manner of movement and speech, it was only his iron grey hair that hinted at his real age—about sixty, some one confided. Although he had retired from active service some years before, he had enlisted this entire division, trained it, and commanded it during six months at the front.
He was sorry that a corps conference had prevented his seeing us that morning
That quiet hour, granted us by the German routine, was happily out of key with the rest of the day. Those of the staff who weren't on duty sat with us around an oval table, skilfully laid and served.
Any news about Blank?"
The general shook his head.
“His balloon fell in our lines," a captain said.
“It was riddled."
"Splendid chap," some one added softly. Luncheon commenced. There was tactful talk of America, our position in the submarine controversy, our political conventions, the possibility of our entering the war. There was—as always at such gatherings—an undercurrent of wonder, never quite reaching the surface, that we should have found it to our best interests to have held aloof.
I gathered, not particularly from this conversation, rather everywhere in England and France, that a belief had grown since the beginning of the war in our lack of homogeneity. We were, it was suspected, incapable of direct and concerted action, In those days the men who were actually treading the exhausting mill frequently placed upon us—whether justly, who can tell?—the taint of many races, the incoherence of too vast a variety of creeds and desires and antipathies.
The general called my attention to the officer on my other side. He wore the facings of a major. He was small and of a scholarly type, so that it appeared unlikely any extraordinary experiences lurked behind those quiet eyes. A moment later it seemed a miracle he should sit with us at all. Because he had landed with the first expeditionary force under General French, had fought at Mons, had survived that nightmare retreat which had ended with the officers' corps cut to pieces. He spoke of it quietly, yet with no false hesitation, no careless clouding of the facts. With the rest of them he had learned out here to face facts for what they were worth. He wasn't surprised at our interest.
He wasn't bored by our questions.
"Individually we didn't know much except that we were going back, turning and fighting Huns without end, and slipping out of the net when it got too tight. The men were mad through and through mad, because it's harder to fight and die on the run than any other way. At night, black and fagged out as we were, we lost rest asking when we were going to turn. After an eternity one evening the word came. The French commander had visited ours. The next morning the stand was to be made, the great battle fought. Tired as we were, we didn't sleep much that night for the relief and the joy of it. And when day dawned the word came to fall back again, and we went with heads down, sullen and ashamed. It lasted for two days more. You can't know. Then the definite stand was made and the push to the Marne and beyond. It was what we had craved, because we were like people caught in a fog."
Another inevitable question:
How, with the German artillery on the hills, and the bridges down, did you ever cross the Aisne at Soissons?"
The major smiled. His scholarly face was very pleasant when he smiled.
"I rather fancy they set a trap for us there they never had the strength to spring. Probably we were intended to cross to the other side where they expected to fall on us and finish us off. It's obvious, isn't it, when the men crossed in small boats or walked across stringers of which the Huns must have had the exact range?
"I paddled over," he went on, "with a squad in a row boat.
You know, the tiny tub had Titanic painted across its bow. Really gave me a start. It seemed an omen—a properly bad one. But, thank heavens, the omen didn't work. That Titanic made a safe crossing—didn't get a shell near enough to make us jump."
He poured thick cream over a fruit compote. He ate the mixture with a visible appreciation. Later he smoked a cigarette with the same air of a sybarite. Clearly, like so many out here, he had learned to draw from each moment its maximum gift.
After luncheon the general led us to a rear verandah overlooking a formal garden in whose shrubbery portable huts nestled for the housing of his staff. But we were chiefly interested in the fac-simile on a square table of the entire countryside occupied by his division. Each hill was there, each road, each house, each line of sheltering trees, every slightest branch of the German trench system. Even with modern air scouting such minute knowledge of the enemy's position drew exclamations of admiration. He showed us how it was obtained, summoning one of his staff who brought handfuls of aeroplane photographs which he fitted together end to end, side by side, diagonally, with the minute dificulty of a jig-saw puzzle, until it was possible to foresee a complete photograph of the war-scarred countryside. When the officer hesitated too long or put into his puzzle a piece that didn't fit, the general rebuked him gently with the manner of an employer in a business house or a factory. Men are killed and money is made with precisely the same discipline.
"Of course," the general said, “ the Huns know just as much about us as we do about them."
He had that hospitable willingness of all the officers I met to answer questions. He even promised to take us later in the afternoon to inspect some of his hidden artillery.