War's Dark Frame/Under Fire in a Flat Land
CHAPTER XII
UNDER FIRE IN A FLAT LAND
АFTER an early breakfast we started for a point of the line already sufficiently historical, but not to be mentioned here. We glanced regretfully at the château as the cars scurried up the avenue. Williams was with me, and, following his advice, I examined the workings of my gas mask. It was designed to cover the head completely and to be buttoned into one's coat collar. In the brown cloth goggles were fastened. Beneath them a wooden tube with an clastic band was to be taken between the lips for outbreathing. Through the chemical soaked meshes of the cloth itself sufficient air filtered for breathing in. It was an unlovely, uncomfortable, and odorous contrivance. We were careful to keep ours slung over our shoulders as Williams carried his, as every officer and man near the fighting line carried one. The necessity for such a precaution revolted your sense of decency, aroused a sort of anger.
We hurried through the dew-soaked morning, still a trifle misty, and always there were signifcant pointers to measure our progress towards the front. Beside the grey lines of old churches modern automobile trucks were drawn up, out of place, grotesque, nearly laughable. We passed many on the road, forging ahead beneath giant loads with a noisy stubbornness. In one village, side by side with a crowded, loquacious native market, stood a travelling motor repair shop. Inside a huge truck machinery whirred and grimy men busied themselves making whole the parts of many smaller trucks clustering around like a lot of patient animals. We had had trouble with our ignition, so we paused and asked for a new spark plug. The uniformed mechanic waited only to know the model of our car. A moment later he was back with what we wanted.
We dashed on towards the trenches with a breathless haste. We had to reduce our speed to pass a long line of lancers, trotting beneath the trees, raising the dust higher than their waving pennons. Everywhere was evidence of the approach of a great squeeze,
“Then they'll use cavalry again!" some one exulted.
The appearance of the villages altered. In each one now khaki clad forms swarmed. Bronzed faces looked at us interestedly. Beside the entrance of each house and yard a sign had been painted. It might be: "Billets for fifteen men," or "Officers' billets," or "Stabling for ten horses." Restful legends for troops fresh from the trenches. And we didn't have to be told that those men were not of the class in training. The lines of their faces, their air of confidence and pride, marked them for veterans. We were getting very close.
It is a curious fact that always on approaching the front line you experience a sense of reluctance mixed with a desire to accomplish just that from which you shrink. It is possible at one moment to resent each turning of the wheels, and the next to wonder at your good-fortune in travelling in such a direction at all. But long before you reach your goal you are aware of that strain which makes it wise to send men back to billets, and all that day the strain grows and colours the days ahead less alluringly.
Our nearness was apparent when, beneath a bland sun which had routed the mist, we swung into a road along a poplar-bordered canal. A sullen roar, exactly like the distant explosion of a giant cracker on the Fourth of July, disturbed the peace of water and shrubbery. For a moment it deadened the songs of birds. It made it seem natural we should sweep past barges, painted white and stained with huge red crosses. It rendered quite superfluous Williams' explanation that the wounded who suffer too harshly for ambulance or train are carried in these craft smoothly to the sea and the hospital ship for England. Its repetition, its constant recurrence now, sketched a morbid picture, blurred with smoke—a sort of hell to which men go before they die.
We entered a large village and drew up before the headquarters of a division general. With the stopping of the engines the cannon chorus grew throatier, as if warning us back in a titanic fury. Williams got out.
"I'm going in to report," he said, "and to find out, if I can, what the Huns are up to. I don't want to get you fellows strafed if I can help.
We sat in the cars, listening to the ugly roar while we studied this nerve centre of the fighting system.
The headquarters was a large brick château, set across a wide and pleasant yard. On the high verendah a group of officers lounged, smoking and with puzzled faces appearing to listen, too. Sentries paced swiftly up and down before the steps. From a wooden shack at one side a brass horn, like an automobile signal, seemed perpetually ready to scream. Any doubt as to its pur pose was resolved by a large sign on a house across the street.
"Gas Post."
Our driver exposed a friendly intelligence.
"Men caught in the street by an alarm go to one of these posts and await instructions. We don't take any chances with gas. A few days ago there was a high wind, and people in villages ten miles back of the line were slightly affected."
Williams came out, looking rather sober. A bright young officer from the headquarters followed him. They climbed in and we twisted out of the village on to a road that crossed open fields. One guessed that it was in view of the German artillery, but we hurried along it towards a hamlet above which a shattered church tower was like a storm-swept beacon. The roar of great guns, no longer mufled by trees and houses, was tinglingly louder.
“What does it mean? some one asked.
Williams didn't answer. The division officer, whose face also was a trifle perplexed, said:
Just a little hymn of hate."
Suddenly he pointed.
"I say! The Huns have got a sausage up."
Above the tree-divided fields, seemingly quite close, an observation balloon, the shape of a sausage, indeed, floated at an angle. Two or thrce aeroplanes, with the appearance of gigantic, butterflies, drifted lazily about in the sunlight.
"That means business," the division officer said.
You experienced a shutting off of all the wider future. You were merely grateful get off that naked road and among the trees of the village. When the engines were stopped again at brigade headquarters the roar of the guns was perpetual and close, and torn now and then by heavier explosions. Clearly there was something ahead more exciting than Champagne or Lorraine had offered.
A brigade officer, a charming fellow with red hair and freckles, came out, shook hands, and announced that he was to be our guide for the trenches. He shared the general seriousness.
"I see you have your gas masks," he said to me, "but you'll want helmets."
He waited as if for a reply. It was necessary to say something.
“Yes, thanks. It would add a little to the romance."
No matter what impression you make on other people at the front you have no illusions about yourself.
At a word from him an orderly brought a cluster of round, flat steel hats. "They're good for protection against small shell fragments," our guide offered.
He grinned.
“They wouldn't stop a forty-two, you know. You've been to the French front? What do you think of their helmets. Both types are good, I guess."
It served. Under fire any trivial topic, once started, is worn threadbare.
It seemed strange that this town, which the Germans must have known as a feeding place for the trenches, sn't under constant bombardment. As we drove off the brigade oficer shifted from steel hats.
"They've a town like this just beyond their lines. If they throw a shell in here we retaliate, and vice versa. So for the most part it's hands off. Since they knocked the church tower about they've been pretty good, but, of course, it's likely to come at any moment."
That contingency ceased to interest, for already we were among the fields again, not immune like the town, and on this side, nearer the enemy, ruined farm houses and ragged trees scarred the landscape.
Suddenly the officer bent towards the driver and whispered. With a startled locking of wheels the car stopped, then turned around, while the driver with jerky motions signalled the other car back. All at once there was a noticeable tenseness about the uniformed men with us. For some distance we scurried the way we had come. We took a turn around a smashed farm house in the direction of the trenches. Beyond such signs of wreckage, beyond the rising clamour of the guns, there was something about that flat country, basking in the sun, that mcant danger. We were in the hcart of a vast army, yet, except for ourselves, there was no human being to be seen. It occurred to you then—an interminable uproar in an empty place! The ground scemed to writhe beneath it.
The devastated landscape had an earthquake appearance at which the bland sun mocked. I shouted, asking why we had made that startled turn, why we had chosen this new road. Because," the brigade officer answered, "the Huns are strafing the road I had planned to take. I thought when we started their sausage looked a little close. This seemed safer."
But was it? It was obvious that the observers in the balloon, if they looked our way, could see us crossing the level fields. But our dash was brief. We drew up at a crossroads, marked by the unsual blasted house. An officer and a soldier sprang from behind the ruin, their gas masks striking against their hips as they hurried towards 
In the Towns Under Bombardment
us. The officer's face, beneath his steel helmet, was troubled and disapproving. He hit at an automobile tire with his cane.
"Get those cars away from here," he commanded shortly. "This crossroads is a nice place for shells this morning."
Several craters near by were sufficient testimony, so we clambered out, and, at Williams' direction, threw our hats in the cars, put on the steel helmets, and made sure that our gas masks were safe. We followed our guide around the ruin while the cars with an air of flight dashed away.
The brigade officer led me down a lane which offered scarcely more cover than the road. The others followed in a straggling line. My guide glanced back, nodding approvingly.
“We're a less tempting target that way," he said.
I looked ahead. Fully a mile away, at the end of the lane, arose another ruined wall—the nearest shelter from the eyes in that distorted balloon. It assumed the remoteness and the desirability of an explorer's goal. Then more than the confusing roar of gun fire pointed its distance. Overhead shells commenced to scream, and as we walked on, that evil sound came oftener and grew louder, until it, too, was near and perpetual. Sometimes it was only a querulous whine. Some- times it was like the hurtling of a great sky-rocket. Now and then, because of calibre and proximity, it reminded one of a racing automobile with all its exhausts open, streaking past within a few feet, yet unseen because of some obstruction.
And you looked up, expecting to see the source of that hideous sound. Each steel scream, from its whining commencement, through its crashing climax to a series of receding ululations, was a matter of seconds. Something must be outlined up there against the sun. But always there was nothing, and you walked on, wondering how men could dwell perpetually in such a racket, and you were taught immediately that there are irritants for a soldier's nerves infinitely harder to bear.
Rat-tat-tat-tat.
It cut, apparently close at hand, under the curtain roar of cannon fire. Rat-tat-tat-tat for long periods, a momentary cessation, then a recommencement. It suggested a woodpecker, gigantic and restless. It is the sulkiest and the most abominable sound of this war—a perpetual reminder that machine guns can spray more death and wounds than shell fire. You can't be sure of the source or direction of machine gun fire. It may be after a number of targets, including your self. The red-headed brigade officer, experienced in such estimates, walked a little faster and hesitated before answering my question.
"I daresay they've seen a couple of our men coming up with a water cart."
You felt a swift sympathy for those men, a desire to know if the soldiers for whom they had started would have to wait for water, but sharp fire begets selfishness, and just then shells began to drop in the field to our right. The sound of a number of screams did not diminish. They ended instead in fat, puffy explosions, and in the cloud- less sky, clouds, snow white and beautiful, were born, "Shrapnel!” the officer muttered. “What are they after?"
From the rear came Williams' voice.
"What do the Huns think they're strafing out here?"
And above the roar another anxious query:
"Can they see us from their sausage?"
Before any one could answer four roars at intervals of less than a second heralded four formidable detonations, and not far in the field four sable strains belched apparently from the grass and were drawn by the wind into ugly and impenetrable curtains. The fancy of an earthquake landscape was strengthened, for about these sudden eruptions was the monstrous fortuitousness of nature.
A map that the officer had commenced to unfold was for the moment forgotten. Strangely it was possible to express curiosity, as if these things passed on a cinema screen.
“I suppose they're high explosives."
The ruddy head nodded.
Four more shells hurtled into the field, but only three volcanoes joined the black pall against the sky.
"Hello!
A dud!"
The cause of his satisfaction, the meaning of that word, were apparent. Somewhere in the field lay a shell, from the supposedly perfect German ammunition factories, which had failed to explode.
Others came too close for a civilian's comfort. We glanced at each jetty curtain. We studied the innumerable craters on the road. Doubtless, we all wondered if another would be formed too near at hand.
One experienced, even if one made no visible concession to the strain, a reluctance of the mind to grasp or hold details. One recalled with difficulty incidents only a few minutes past. In short, it had become necessary to drive the memory to its task. From officers and men I have learned that this closing of the mind to everything except the immediate future is nearly universal. For it they express a rather pitiful gratitude.
So we walked on, and nothing came too close. We reached the goal of the shattered wall and took breath for a moment behind it. A straight highway receded between turn trees. On a split sign-board a name was decipherable, familiar to any one who has motored through Belgium and northern France. There were shell craters in every direction. The machine guns had resumed their hateful petulance. We knew that the communication trench must be near. No one asked. It was easier for the moment not to talk.
The brigade officer folded his map and thrust it in his pocket. He led us around the wall and into a screen of bushes from which a narrow passage sloped downwards. We descended only a little way, to find the walls artificially raised.
"That's the worst of trench digging in this blessed bog," the officer said. “Go down two feet and you strike water. Trench walls have to be raised like these. They're a lot easier knocked over by shell fire, too."
We had no criticism to offer of the communication line. To be sure, its close sides admitted none of the pleasant breeze, and those steel helmets were demanding the price of their pro tection. They bound one's temples. Constantly perspiration rolled from beneath the brim into But I had never dreamed what a one's eyes. friendly place a communication trench could be. It was good to touch the yellow walls, supported by rattan work, to know that a shell would have to make a direct hit to limit our progress now. Here and there, as a matter of fact, there were breaches in the walls, but for a little while the crying in the sky was mournful rather than angry, and the explosions were muffled and farther away.
We circled a number of the usual traverses and machine gun emplacements, but the trench was surprisingly short. It scarcely gave us time to smile at Tommy's fancy, expressed on neat signboards at the junctions. These had, it appeared, the official stamp, for our guide spoke of such thoroughfares as Oxford Street, Kingsway, and the Strand, as if he had been conducting us through the peaceful racket of London. The Strand went straight to our destination, and we emerged from it into a wide plaza, terminated opposite by a parapet of interlaced logs and sand bags. A few silent figures, with rifles through loopholes, braced themselves there. We walked with an air of stealth. When we spoke our voices were lower. We were in the front line.