1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [329]
Many thanks also for the big tin of milk, the chocolate, the candles (very scarce just now!) and the handkerchiefs.
Love to Helen and the boys
Your affectionate brother
R. A. Scott McFie
In the trenches there was danger, there were frequent alarms and there were many casualties but it was difficult to decide what was the worst enemy – the Germans, the weather, or sheer boredom.
Trpr. W. Clarke.
When it was quiet, it was so boring. Awake all night. Stand-to just before dawn, which meant that you got up on the fire platform, ready for old Jerry in case he would make a surprise attack, and then at dawn stand-down, hoping you’d get a mug of tea or something to eat, which as often as not we didn’t get because being so close to the German lines we couldn’t make fires to brew tea. We had to rely on the boys at the back making tea down in the deep quarry and bringing it up. It got very boring during stand-down too if nothing was doing. Funny that, you were bored if there was no danger. Well, there really wasn’t anything to do except read, that is, if you were lucky enough to have something. You could write letters if you felt like it, or sometimes you dozed.
At night there was always the fear of the unknown, the threatening shadows in No Man’s Land, the rustling of the wind, the occasional crack of a twig or some other unidentifiable sound magnified in the darkness. The small night noises heard behind nervous bursts of fire might be the movement of some animal, for the rats were busy at night, or might just be a band of enemy raiders poised to descend. The first night of a Battalion’s stint in the front-line trenches was always the worst. After days of relaxation nerves were on edge and even soldiers with no immediate duties, stretched out on the fire-step or dozing restlessly in funk-holes burrowed into the clammy wall of the trench, slept with one ear cocked in case of danger. It was marginally more comfortable for the officers, but their job was no sinecure.
Lt. R. E. Smith, 7th Bn., Royal Scots Fusiliers, 45 Brig., 15 Div.
We had three officers in the Company at the time, which meant three hours on duty and six off. Ill take the day as starting at 12 midnight, and I’ll suppose that I go on duty at 2 a.m. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. you have been making desperate efforts to get to sleep. You are sitting in a dug-out, which our fellows have captured. In it there are a couple of chairs, from goodness knows where, and a kind of table, and there are two compartments leading out of it. In one are the company signallers with all their telephone apparatus and the other is used by the gunners as an artillery observation station and is provided with special observation loop-holes. The whole place leaks like hell and you have to keep your oilskins on all the time, but the main things that strikes you about the place is its smell which is reminiscent of a pantry, a stable loft, a coal cellar and the hold of a ship. However there is a brazier and it is warm. All the light is from a pair of candles, stuck in bottles.
At two o’clock very punctually, the man you are to relieve comes in and kicks you out of a sort of doze, you get up, swear, and put on some extra wraps, your revolver, electric torch, gas-helmet. The other man, who is now wriggling into your late place on the floor, gives you his report which is something of this sort: ‘All quiet. We’ve got a working party repairing the parapet in Bay 6, and another pumping all along the main trench from Bay 5 to Bay 9. One sentry in Bay 4 is complaining of frostbite, but I think he’s skrimshanking. Good luck. It’s a hell of a night.’ You walk out into the trench. The air is refreshing after the dug-out, but it’s beastly cold and there’s a bit of a drizzle.
Your duties are to visit all sentries, generally inspect all work that is being done, and you are responsible for meeting any emergency until some superior person comes along. The men’s job is to do sentry and to go on working-parties, etc. As you come up to