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We have sampled all the trenches; we have studied the ruins of Ypres with an archaeologist's eye; we know the names of the estaminets of the villages, from "The Good Farmer" to "The Harvester's Rest" and "The Good Cousin," not to mention "The Omnibus Stop" on the Cassel Hill.
It was brought out and presented with a flourish. "It is frightful, this life in the trenches!" said the young officer who passed it about. Shortly afterward the party was increased. An orderly came in and announced that an Englishwoman, whose automobile had broken down, was standing on the bridge over the canal and asked to be admitted.
This, too, told the story of the difference between repulse and victory. As the fight went for each man in the fray, so the battle went to his conception. The spectator going here and there could hear accounts at one headquarters of battalions that were beyond the first-line trenches and at another of battalions whose survivors were back in their own trenches.
It was often difficult to believe that this quiet backwater was within an hour or two of the trenches. G.H.Q. was indeed situated well back behind "the Front," which, however precise the maps in the newspapers may affect to make it, is, like the Equator of our school-books, a more or less "imaginary line drawn across the earth's surface."
The hostile trenches were only a few hundred yards in front of them, but the German batteries all masked, or placed in pits, were much further away. The French cannon were stationed in like fashion behind their own trenches. John and his comrades, for the allotted hour, hugged the side of the trench nearest to the Germans. The shells from the heavy guns came at regular intervals.
The hour of the attack was not known, he explained. Since the whole Helles line was moving, the final order must come from G.H.Q. But everybody was to be armed and ready in the trenches by dawn.... And ... well, good evening, Ray. It was about dusk. I returned to the dug-out, and by candle-light wrote out my company orders. Then Doe and I decided that we ought to put together a few letters.
She seemed to brush away the disagreeable thought, as if it were a fly. Then she added, the smile coming back into her eyes: "It will be much better for him, he can rest. I am easier about him there, than when he was in the trenches...." And then, her mind springing back to her world's wonder: "Won't he be glad when he sees the treasure the good God has sent me?"...
I have heard narratives of the trenches and of the bridges these engineers, French and English, have indeed 'played the game' which no man can hear unmoved; how the columns went down again and again to the blazing death of the valley, and how men worked, building and girding in a very inferno worked with the furious speed of those whose time of work is short.
Her Tommies go over the top humming music-hall ditties. The Hun is still "jolly old Fritz." The slaughter is still "a nice little war." Death is still "the early door." The mud-soaked "old Bills" of the trenches, cheerfully ignoring vermin, rain and shell fire, continue to wind up their epistles with, "Hoping this finds you in the pink, as it leaves me at present."
The heavy cannon, after a short experiment to the left of the great breach, had shifted their fire to the right of it, and had succeeded in knocking a practicable hole in it before dusk. But either this change of plan had not been reported to the trenches, or the officer directing the assault inexplicably failed to adapt his dispositions to it.
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