ALARMS AND DIVERSIONS

FLUELLEN: Tell you the duke, it is not so good to come to the mines, for, look you, the mines is not according to the disciplines of the war: the concavities of it is not sufficient; for, look you, th' athversary, you may discuss unto the duke, look you, is digt himself four yard under the countermines, by Cheshu, I think a' will plow up all, if there is not better directions. King Henry V, iii, 2.

EARLY in June we went back to the front line, to the sector we knew so well. A warm and sunny day had dwindled to a quiet evening when we paraded on the roadside, a day of little work and much lounging. Many letters had been written and censored, the barns had been tidied, and the last of the stray tins was now in the incinerator; while the men stood gossiping in the ranks, the Company Sergeant-Major and I tramped silently in and out of the barns and the farm buildings on our final tour of inspection. We could find no sign of damage in our tenancy, but our hostess would follow with keener eye, and there would doubtless be a claim for some petty deterioration of an all butderelict farm. There was little need to talk, for there was nothing new to say. Twilight came, and the dusk, bringing with them a minor third into the key of our mood, while the tramp of feet on the road rang like the ticking of a clock to mark the slipping away of wasted time, hours that might have added to the true wealth of life, sunk instead into a morass of futile slavery. Every stride took us away from the simple pleasures of our local peace, of our temporary escape from the degradations of mud: the faint glow in the sky and the brooding stillness of the green earth conspired to sharpen the ache in each man's heart.

Our line strung out as we broke into sections, then into file, until we found our feet shuffling over the duckboards of the communication trench. It was dark, but the occasional firing of a Very light threw its unreal and harsh glare over the pitted landscape. We reached the line, and were greeted eagerly by the tired men who were waiting for us, waiting to return to the very barns we had left. There was little warmth in our answer. I had walked ahead of my company, and I pushed past the small groups in the fire-bays until I came to the dug-out where the officers sat, fully dressed and ready to cut to the shortest of words and time the formalities of handing over the command of the sector.

'I'm leaving you this candle, Gruff, and there's some rum in this bottle.' -

'Thanks for the candle, but why didn't you get rid of your own rum! You know what a nuisance and a responsibility it is to have so much of it about. .Good-night! I hope we have as quiet a time as you did. How's the Duck's Bill crater?'

'Just as it was-quiet enough.... Good luck to you! . .

We began badly. One of my subalterns took out a patrol to scour the slopes of the crater, to make sure that the enemy had not secured a hiding place on its Eastern face. The message was passed along the line: 'Patrol going out to the Duck's Bìll from one o'clock till two,' and all was quiet save the stammer of a Lewis Gun firing at the enemy's rear lines to conceal our lack of activity. Soon we heard a bomb bursting in No Man's Land, then many more in quick succession: the enemy did not fire, neither did we, lest the wrong men be hit. All was darkness, for the same reason. The flashes showed that the tussle was pitched near the crater, but after a dozen bombs were thrown, silence came again. There was nothing to do but wait until our patrol returned: ten minutes, twenty known German sentry who had fired a 'light' pistol at the very moment of my crossing a miniature hill-top, but my words were hurled at my subaltern. I damned all craters and all the devices of mining, drank half a cupful of rum, and stretched my legs on the floor of the dug-out for my two hours of sleep.

If the enemy digs a mine, we must dig another, and if we can dig below him and blow up our mine before he is ready to spring his, we have done well. if we can delay our springing until his is charged with explosive, our victory will become a triumph. A miner, though he works unseen, cannot conceal his work. The spoil that he carries from his mine has a clayey blueness easily distinguishable from the mud of the surface, and the sound of his pick travels through the ground into the tunnel where his rival is listening, and is magnified by a geophone-a kind of stethoscope-into clear audibility. The entrance to our mine stood at the end of my company's sector, just outside its boundary. An Australian Tunnelling Company was responsible for this enterprise, easy prey to bantering queries from our men as to how their mothers were getting on down below, and when theywere coming back from leave. Its commanding officer frequently walked along my sector On his way to the communication trench, and I learned from him, with much relief, that there was no suspicion of any mining in my territory, and with equal relief, that it would be some time before our mine would be ready for springing. I had suffered from mines at Givenchy, and I wished them all to the devil that prompted such inhuman and murderous devices.

On our second day in the line, a keen-eared sergeant reported that he had heard suspicious sounds in a certain fire-bay midway along our sector; he was a South Wales miner, and he was convinced that the sound was that of a pick at work underground. The adjutant decided to join us in our investigation, so we went to the threatened fire-bay to sit down and listen. I could hear nothing, but the adjutant thought that he could, so we listened again with our ears on the duckboards. There was a faint recurring sound. I went to the adjoining sector to look for the expert, and when I returned with the Australian subaltern, he also thought that there was a suspicious sound.

This was a disturbing business: we had no mine near this spot, and before we could countermine, the enemy could blow us up at his own choosing. I was ordered to move all the men out of this fire-bay and the bays on either side, to post a Lewis Gun team on each side of the threatened area, and to occupy a half-derelict trench some thirty yards to the rear with a garrison strong enough to repel any attack when the front line had been blown up. We spent a dismal night waiting, and I admit that I hurried through this deserted part of our front line during my patrolling of our sector. The time most favoured for touching off a mine was at stand-to in the early dawn, when the whole garrison was under arms and filling the bays, and this cargo of clay could take with it to destruction the greatest number of lives. Dawn broke slowly this morning, but the day came at last, and we saw in a thin column of smoke rising from the German trenches a sign of safety. He was cooking his breakfast; if he could start the day in normal fashion, so could we, and we turned to our ordinary tasks, relieved for another twenty-four hours from this wearying burden of anxiety.

In the afternoon I met the commander of the tunnelling company, and we sat down on the duckboards in the fire-bay, listening carefully. There was undoubtedly a faint noise, not unlike the echo of a distant tapping, somewhat hollow, and irregular in rhythm. He listened with his geophone, tapping the walls, and the floor of the trench, and the fire-step, in his endeavour to localize the origin of this mysterious sound. The instrument did not seem to magnify the noise. We were all confounded, and there was much discussion of technical matters beyond my comprehension.

I walked about, thinking. if the geophone did not magnify this throbbing, the sound must have an origin above ground. But there were no wires, nothing to make an Æolian harp; besides, the sound was low in pitch. I stood in one corner of the bay, leaning against the sandbagged wall of the trench, pondering idly while the tunnellers were investigating. Below my left hand, resting on the fire-step, there was an empty rum jar. Suddenly a thought flashed through my mind with all the vividness of an inspiration.

'Can you hear the noise now?' I asked.

'Yes, faintly, but quite definitely.'

'So can I,' I answered.

I changed my position slightly, and in an inconspicuous and apparently aimless way, I put the palm of my hand on the mouth of the rum jar, stopping the orifice.

'Can you hear it now?' said I

'No, I don't think so-keep still a few moments while we listen. . . . No, I can hear nothing.'

I agreed-I could hear nothing. I took my hand away, and the noise recurred. On some pretext or another I caused the experiment to be repeated, until I was satisfied.

'Here is your mine,' I said, pointing to the rum jar. They looked at me in astonishment, frankly incredulous. We all bent our heads and listened carefully, crowding round the rum jar:a faint and hollow booming was clearly heard, but when I put my hand on the mouth of the jar, it stopped abruptly. I placed my lips near the mouth and blew across it; the faint and hollow sound grew into a recurrent booming, and as I blew more strongly, gave place to the deep note of the jar. I picked up the jar and placed it in the next fire-bay, in the same position. There was silence in our bay, but a faint sound in the next. The wind, as it came round the corner, blew across the mouth of the jar, and the gusts made the sound recur.

We went away laughing, our anxiety dissolved into ridicule, and the 'rum jar mine' became a regimental joke. All that remained to be done was to cancel our elaborate precautions for the defence of the sector, and in an hour the fire-bays were once more inhabited; the empty jar was broken and buried with mock solemnity in a shell hole. This 'mine' at any rate, was not 'according to the disciplines of the war'.

Delivett carried with him, even into the crowded warren of the trenches, a silence that made him seem a stranger. He had served with the battalion from the start, but he was little given to any conversation beyond the need of the moment. He had no tales to tell in billet or in dug-out. No one knew his age, no one knew whether Delivett was his real name. In spite of the figure standing opposite his name and regimental number, describing him as thirty-four in 1914 it was obvious that he had forgotten his first fifteen years when he gave that answer to the Recruiting Officer. He said that he had not served in the Army prior to the War, but there were times when his carriage brought a doubt to the mind.

Short in stature, and stockily built, with a smile weaving in and out of the lines of his face, never actually smiling, but always on the point of giving way; even when he slept there was a curious curving of the corners of his mouth, as if he were struggling not to laugh. I have forgotten what occupation he claimed in civil life, but it was so impossible to reconcile with his bearing that no one cared to question him about it. He wrote no letters that came to the officers to be censored; he may have found a Field Service Postcard with 'I am well', an ample link between him and his kin. Perhaps the occasional issue of a green envelope for uncensored letters, too rare an issue for most men, was frequent enough to satisfy him. He strutted along the duckboards, pipe in mouth, head in the air, hailed by everybody as he passed, and slowly removing his pipe to spit before he threw over his shoulder some quiet monosyllabic reply.

Towards the end of May, a dozen recruits joined the company, young reinforcements, boyish and slight. Early one morning the enemy began to shell the trench with whizz-bangs; it was a sudden angry storm, too fierce and too localized to last long. I had just passed the fire-bay in which Delivett was frying a rasher of bacon, with five of these lads watching him and waiting their turn to cook. I stopped in the next bay to reassure the others. Suddenly a pale and frightened youth came round the corner, halting indecisively when he saw me, turning again, but finally going back reluctantly to his fire-bay in despair of finding any escape from his trap. Between the crashes of the bursting shells a high-pitched sing-song soared up.

'You'll 'ev 'em all over,' . . . Crash. . . .'All the milky wuns.' . . . Crash. . . . 'All the milky coconuts. . . .' ' . . . You'll 'ev 'em all over. . All the milky wuns.' . . . Crash. . . . 'Ther-ree shies a penny. . . . All the milky coconuts. . You'll 'ev 'em all over.' . . . Crash-and then silence, for the morning hate ended as suddenly as it began.

I walked to find Delivett still frying bacon, and the five youths smiling nervously, crouched below the firestep. I sent them away on some improvized errand and faced Delivett.

'That's a fine thing you did then, Delivett,' I said. He looked up, mess-tin lid in his hand, saying nothing, but the lines round his mouth moved a little.

'You saved those lads from panic-they were frightened out of their wits,' I added.

'Yes sir, they was real scared,' he replied. 'Delivett, you've spent a lot of time on Hampstead Heath.'

'Yes sir.... I ran a coconut shy there once. ..' With these words a man and an environment fused into a unity, satisfying and complete in itself here at last was a credible occupation for this quiet stranger.

'I'm going to tell the Colonel all about this,' I said. Delivett thought hard for several seconds, and put his bacon back on the fire.

'Well, sir,' he said, diffidently, 'if it's all the same to you, I'd much rather you made me Sanitary man.'

'Do you mean that you'd really like to go round with a bucket of chloride of lime, picking up tins and . . .'

'Yes, sir, I'd like that job.'

'You shall have it here and now. You are made Sanitary man for valour in the field, this very moment.'

In half an hour Delivett was walking round with a bucket, his head a little higher in the air, spitting a little more deliberately than before, as his new dignity demanded. He had found a vocation.

The signallers were always with the company, but never of it. They did no fatigues, they carried nothing but their leather-cased instruments and odd lengths of wire, they dug no trenches. They spent most of their time sitting down in dug-outs, buzzing their telephones, disappearing occasionally down a trench with one finger on a wire, following that wire round corners, across ditches and over fields. They were a clan within our tribe. Their dug-outs were, as a rule, close to the company headquarters, and day and night, when not actually telephoning, testing or signalling messages, they talked, they sang, and they whistled. At three o'clock in the morning, or just after standing down at dawn, when all the world was quiet, and an officer relieved from trench duty was trying to concentrate twelve hours sleep into the brief two hours allotted to him, a voice from the next dug-out rasped in a whining drawl:

'You left ba-hind a bro-ken do-oil.' …..'Beer emmer, beer emmer, beer emmer . . . 's that you, Bill?'

'I say, you remember that estaminet just beyond the cross-roads, well, I asked Madame...'

This was too much. I yelled out to them.

'Look here, you signallers, why can't you keep quiet? There are no messages coming through, are there?'

'No sir, we were only testing,' they replied. 'Well, shut up then, and let me go to sleep while the Boche is quiet.'

'Yes, sir.'

There was a dead silence for ten minutes, and then a whispered conversation rising with the energy of contradictions into a full-flavoured argument about the price of coffee in that estarninet. I got up to attend to this.

'Why the hell can't you fellows keep quiet? Of all the damned chattering magpies I've ever come across, you are the worst.' I was angry, and much profanity followed, real hard cursing, of a sharp-edged variety that rises so easily to the lips in the early morning. I had lost an eighth part of my sleep, and nearly all my temper.

As I turned away from the door of their dug-out and went back to mine, I heard a cheery and unabashed voice saying quietly:

'Old Gruff can't 'alf curse, can't he?'

After that there was silence.

We left the trenches and marched back to our billets at Riez Bailleul late on a summer night. There were many rumours, all of untraceable origin, that this was to be our last spell in the trenches for some time. Circumstantial evidence was freely put forward to prove each conflicting theory, quartermasters and post-corporals were fathered with definite statements of our ultimate destination that, had they been true, would have indicated a remarkable acquaintance with the minds of our commanders. We were content to know that we were going back to our quiet farmhouse in Riez Bailleul, and from the wild variety of forecasts we found enough material to justify the belief that the Division was to be relieved by another division in the same Corps.

The customary number of days in reserve went by with no sign of another visit to the trenches. Rumours sprang up again-we were going to Ypres, we were to join the Belgian Army, the French Army, the British forces near Arras, the Division was to be disbanded and remade into battalions of miners and tunnellers, into Engineers, into Pioneers, we were to go South to be trained for open warfare. Of all these tales, the truth was in the last surmise, and we were warned that the battalion would start On a long march to the South.

On our last evening in Riez Bailleul, the Sergeant-Major came to the Company Headquarters to say that the men were anxious to give a concert. A piano had been found, and for a small fee the owner was willing to allow us to take it to the orchard for the evening, provided we kept a tarpaulin over it to 'keep out the damp'. Would the officers come, and would I persuade the Adjutant to play the piano?

A man of undoubted administrative ability, with a knowledge of one half of the world of the day that made backwoodsmen of us all, added to a large acquaintance with its more prominent citizens, he had sauntered through many occupations before attaining a large measure of success as a journalist. Through all his varying moods there ran one thread that gave a continuity to his changeful personality, and that was his love of music. He was an attractive pianist, not of the highest order of technique, but endowed with a capacity to máke others share in his own delight in playing. Yes, he would play, and he would accompany the songs.

We assembled in the orchard in the dusk, a hundred and fifty men lying about on the trodden grass, talking and smoking. A thin haze of tobacco smoke hung as a pale blue shadow against the darkening sky, and two candles in the piano sconces gave a round blur of yellow light. The air was still, and in the distance a rumble of far-off shell fire served as an echo to the thunder of a limbered wagon passing along the road. We sang a chorus or two to unstiffen the minds of all, to weld us into a unity of mood.

Some forms had been lashed together to make a precarious platform, and on this the Sergeant-Major, by virtue of his office, president and prime mover of such an enterprise, stood to announce that Corporal Jackson 'would oblige', following the time-honoured formula, by singing a song.

Corporal Jackson was greeted enthusiastically by all as he stepped up. At some time or another he had been on the stage, according to the best informed of the company - 'made a lot of money in 'is day, 'e 'as, an' 'e carn't 'arf dance'. He walked across to the ~: piano.

'Music?' said the Adjutant, with a smile.

'No sir, got no music.'

'What are you going to sing?'

"Don't Stop Me", sir.'

'I don't know it-what's the tune?'

Jackson bent down and hummed into the Adjutant's ear.

'Right you are, Corporal. . . . Carry on.'

'Will you play a few bars of introduction first, sir, and then play the tune for the dance after each chorus?'

Corporal Jackson walked to the centre of the stage and gave an expert shuffle with his feet to test its stability. 'Mind them boots, Corporal, the Quarter's looking,' shouted some irrepressible member of the company.

It was a third-rate song, sung by a fourth-rate singer, followed by a second-rate clog dance, but in the remoteness of that green orchard in Flanders, far from any standard of comparison, it claimed and held approval for its own sake. The words of the chorus still remain, wedded to a jerky tune, both trailing an air of days long passed away:

Don't stop me, don't stop me,
I've got a little job to go to, '
Twas advertised in ninety-eight,
If I'm not there I'll be too late.

Another corporal, fat and tenorish, sang 'Thora', hanging precariously on its sentimental slopes, curving his mouth into a wonderful vowel fantasy over the:

Noightin-gales in the brenches,
Stawrs in the mej-jic skoy.

A good hard-working Corporal, though his belt was a perpetual worry to him in his convexity.

But the evening grew to its grand climax when the stern-faced Sergeant-Major stood grimly on the stage, thin-lipped and hawk-eyed, to sing a ballad of Northern Lands. Every line in his face, and every contour in his spare body, gave the lie to his opening words:

Oh, Oh, Oh, I'm an Eskimo,
And I live in the Land of Snow.

The rest of the song has faded, but that sense of contradiction is still vivid. He had to sing it twice because he could remember no other.

Private Walton hunched his shoulders and adjusted the weight of his body carefully from one leg to another until he found a position of stable equilibrium, mental as well as physical. From his pocket he pulled out a mouth-organ,

wiped it carefully on the under-side of his sleeve, shook it and tapped it gently against his palm, presumably to remove any crumbs of tobacco or biscuit, and suddenly burst into a wild harmonic frenzy. From the welter of common chord and seventh there rose a recognizable tune, emphasized by the tapping of his foot, and he stimulated the whole company to song. When the audience had gathered sufficient momentum, he stopped to wipe his mouth-organ.

The next performer was Signaller Downs, who roused the community to a long-drawn-out sequence of 'Nev-vah Mind' in Gertie Gitana's undying song, a song that declined in speed as it grew in sentiment. The moon rose in the blue-grey sky, mellowing the darkness and deepening the shadows under the trees, turning the orchard into a fine setting for a nobler stirring of the spirit. Over the subdued chatter of many voices and the noise of an occasional lighting of a match came the silvery spray of notes from the piano. The Adjutant was playing quietly to himself, meditating in music. The talking ceased, and men turned away from their comrades to listen, until there was dead silence under the trees to make a background for the ripple of the piano.

The silence broke in upon the player and he removed his hands from the keyboard for an instant. The world seemed to plunge into a deep pool of silence, rising again to hear a supple cascade of showering notes as he played one of Debussy's Arabesques. When he finished there was a second or two of silence before the applause began, enough of a gap to show that his listeners had been travelling with him into another land. He played it again, and as he turned away from the piano he whispered to me, 'I told you that they could appreciate good music if they got the chance.' A summer night in an orchard, with a moon low in the sky, and in the heart of each man a longing-if music could not speak in such a setting it were not music.