1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [326]
Even in the best of weather it was not an inspiring spot and wrapped in the dank mist of early winter it was positively eerie. The mist hung above the low plateau of the redoubt and hung in wisps round the unlovely slag-heaps where two battered cranes still sat drunkenly askew on the flat top of Fosse 8. The leaden November skies added to the gloom and the ground between the lines bore miserable witness to the fearsome efforts that had been made to capture it. Among the battered trenches, the splintered stakes that still supported remnants of rusting wire, the dead were lying in rows, just as they had been cut down – as neatly and tidily as if some ghostly sergeant-major had drilled them in their dying as he had once drilled them on the parade-ground. There was no possibility of bringing in the bodies and as they decomposed, the smell of death and decay hung thick about the trenches.
But the dead soldiers were still doing duty of a sort for soldiers creeping close to the enemy lines on listening patrols could lie low among the dead and get away with it. It was not a job for the squeamish.
Pte. C. Stewart.
My first listening party there I’ll never forget. We were out there in No Man’s Land, crawling out among the dead boys, because the idea was that if we lay close to the dead boys you would think we were dead. We spaced ourselves out, so you would be on your own among these corpses and we had to be quiet, no noise, no speaking. After a while, if we couldn’t see or hear anything and it was time to come in, the NCO in charge would crawl round and give your foot a kick. That was the only way he could see if you was one of the Loos dead or one of his listening party. If you responded to his kick he gave you the sign to come into the trench again and if there was no response then he knew it was one of the poor boys killed at Loos.
The officer in charge of the listening party was a very fine chap. We just called him ‘Algy’, because he always wore a monocle. He was a great guy, always for his men and a real good sport when we were out of the trenches. After we got back into our own trench we found that our officer ‘Algy’ was missing and they called for volunteers to go out again into No Man’s Land to get him in. Everyone wanted to go. I wasn’t chosen for the rescue party, but the boys did get ‘Algy’ in and he was very badly wounded. We sent him down the line a bit, and maybe he got the length of the big hospital at Etaples, but I am so sorry to say he died. At least he would get a burial. There was nothing you could do for the boys lying out in front at Loos. They were a terrible sight. We used to talk about it afterwards – and even long afterwards, for the rest of war, we would say that something or somebody was ‘as quiet as the Loos dead’. It was quite an expression with us.
Trpr. W. Clarke.
It was impossible to bury them all. They lay in the trenches where they’d fallen or had been slung and earth had just been put on top of them and when the rain came it washed most of the earth away. You’d go along the trenches and you’d see a boot and puttee sticking out, or an arm or a hand, sometimes faces. Not only would you see, but you’d be walking on them, slipping and sliding. The stench was terrible because of all that rotting flesh. When you think of all the bits and pieces you saw! But if you ever had to write home about a particular mate you’d always say that he got it cleanly and quickly with a bullet and he didn’t know what had happened.
Looking over the top through the periscope we could see old Jerry’s line about fifty yards in front. So I thought, ‘Blimey, that’s within bombing range, isn’t it?’ We kept our eye on him all night – and by the way, we had no wire in front of our trenches, it was all open! – and me being the left-hand man there was no one at the side of me, so I had to traverse