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At nightfall the windows of the theatre were screened with blankets and no lights were allowed to show in the wards or on the duckboards. If only the trains would halt somewhere else at night-time! One day a number of Flemish peasants began to collect hop-refuse in the surrounding fields. They made three great heaps of it and set fire to them.
He was sitting by a flickering candle in moody silence. I asked him to come with me to the village. He put on his great-coat and we walked along the duckboards on to the road. It was intensely dark and we were conscious of the silent fall of snow. "What sort of a day did you have?" I asked. "Undiluted misery.
The men raced along the duckboards or splashed through the mud in a frantic attempt to get served first, pulling their mess-tins and plates out of their haversacks as they ran. It was growing dark and a few snowflakes were floating about in the air. The sky was a murky leaden colour. As I stood waiting in the dinner queue I had an imaginary fight with our Commanding Officer.
The duckboards came to an end although the ablution benches were another seventy or eighty yards away. Our Commanding Officer was a keen sportsman and he had stopped the laying of duckboards so that all energy could be devoted to the construction of a boxing-ring. My feet were so cold that the pain was almost unbearable.
I emptied the basin and left the shed, glad to think that this one unpleasant duty had been performed. My face was burning. It was still snowing and the wind was blowing hard. I trudged through the mud and soon felt frozen through and through again. Several dark figures went by on their way to the shed. I could now just distinguish the duckboards and I quickly reached my tent.
"When the first'n drops I lays down flat on the duckboards and one bursts just aside o' me an' smothers me with earth. Then another'n bursts an' I 'ears a man 'oller out krikey, 'e didn't 'alf scream. I gets up and another'n bursts, so I flops down agin, but it didn't come so near that time. I waits a bit an' then I gets up an' goes to see what they done.
He flopped down and lay flat on the ground, but I rushed away into the fields with a lot of others. When it was all over we went back and heard the wounded crying out in a way that was dreadful to hear. This fellow was still lying on the ground by the duckboards, trembling all over and paralysed with fear.
Dusk was awaited in a much war-worn trench in front of Wieltje. As daylight fades we file away, each man with his own thoughts. Whose turn is it to be this journey? Along the tortuous track of tipsy duckboards we go for a mile, until acrid fumes tell that the German barrage line is being passed. This is a moment to press on! To get the Company safely across this hundred yards is worth many a fall.
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