June 26, 1915. 
ij/V 1> J-» 
SEEN AT THE FRONT. 
I.-NIGHT ON THE HILL. 
By a Sub. 
IT was time to start. Nor had I ever so reluctently left 
a squalid place. How warmly the firelight flickered 
on tlie walls and beams of that wayside farm-kitchen in 
Picardy ! How comfortable even the filthy farmyard 
looked amid its enclosing lofts and byres ! And the 
two mis-shapen rooms where we had billeted four days. Dirty 
they were and difficult and cavernous, yet tonight bo enticing. 
Outside there had sprung up a little chilly evening wind. But 
yesterday I should have sat by the window, reading. And 
now there lies before us the three-mile walk to the trenches, a 
long night's watching, four days and four nights in the firing 
line. 
We march off. , 
Into a wintry sunset. For it is the season of early 
upring. The road is yet muddy after recent rains. The dank 
fields lie cold and uninviting on either hand. Approaching 
the cross-roads, we quicken step, for are not they marked by 
the Gei-mau artillery ? , j iv i. 
And of all the dreary places in all the dreary lands that 
I have seen I picture this group of wayside houses as the 
saddest. Always— except when the working parties hurry by 
—an unnatural stillness reigns. Roofless skeletons of houses 
and houses broken in a score of places; people creeping in 
and out, French peasants who cling pitifully to the relics of 
their homes; children peering out of the windows and door- 
ways, too scared to play; heaps of ruins, and everywhere a 
great lonely emptiness. . . 
We turn off into the fields. Yet the sunset is sUll in 
the sky, and it is too light to cross the open lands. We must 
wait. Tlie men smoke cigarettes and fall to talking after their 
inconsequent fashion about the prospects of the night, also of 
professional football, and-their suppers. Now darkn^s 
creeps up and the sun dips beyond the grey nm of the 
Flanders plain. It is twilight. We move on across tho 
ploughed field. Not a sound, not a murmur of war. Uiti^ "^ 
a sudden we are in the road again, a road congested with 
troops. Battalion headquarters are here, and many transport 
wagons unloading by the wayside. Long files of men m hoods 
and caps and heavy equipment, the rifle slung over the 
shoulder, move slowly along towards the trenches There 
are orderlies on horseback, sitting their horses like statues 
Bilhouetted against the evening sky. 
We crawl forward presently at snail's pace until clear 
of the congested trench parties, then turn off to the left 
down a path, following a light ^'^'"""'tio^ "-ailway On the 
one hand are overhanging trees, on the other ghastly wrecks 
of houses. Soon we come to the little cemetery where our 
comrades lie, H. T., with the unfailing laugh and C. O., who 
Sll in action on the night of December 19 winning his 
D S O He was only eighteen. And many others, bearing 
humbler names-thej reft there amid the ^hell-pi^ and the 
ruined houses, under white wooden crosses. Nor can I pa^s 
by that spot, melancholy as it is, without recalhng the com- 
pany sergeant-major's sly humour. Never would he bring 
[he ^nervous newl -joined subaltern down that way but he 
showed him with unction, with emphasis-and a twinkle in 
tis eye— that little cemetery of name ess graves. 
The occasional bullet " ping-ing " across our path tells us 
how near we are to the trenches. Some desultory nfle-fire m 
Front gfves additional warning. Soon we are in the machine^ 
gun zone and, stooping low we hurry -l-gthedi^h beside 
fJie white strip of road, then across an open bit of plough 
SiaTdsIhe shelter of a parapet. Suddenly a machme-gun 
Sins We fall flat, and the bullets whistle overhead as the 
Ssh thing sweeps round. Then we creep along behind 
the parapet which leads rather steeply to a ruined barn^ Here 
thJ troops in reserve are crouching over the fires they have 
SndJed cooking their supper. The fire casts a strange glare 
fround It iB a place of shadows and passages and creeping 
armed men The^ompany whom we are to relieve files out 
^^ ^\^ pt:; m; ::iZ^\ W down my pack and equipment 
• *i,t Aua out Carrying only my revolver, I walk along the 
ZTiZ^LZll notin/ Je an impr-nie-i. there a 
J f ^ riimbinp the rear face of a little bill, i. sii; 
fow? beW Smachine-gun emplacement which is safe 
anla vantage-point. From there towards the enemy I can 
look across the plain^ shadowy country. The moon is rising 
out of the cLm night. A little wind whines and whispers 
among the sandbags. I see dimly a land of poplars and small 
trees (dwarf oaks), orchards, and plentiful willows. I see 
flat fields and ditches and stagnant water, and red farma 
whose roofs are gone, stark skeletons in the moonlight. I 
see broad flat spaces and then a ridge— the ridge of Aubers. 
Only the German lines are liidden from sight. 
No sign of life. Silence and desolation reign. But here 
and there the faint glimmer of a fire indicates the presence 
of the enemy. Afar off, rockets, red and green and white, 
shoot up to the sky, star shells bursting above our trenches 
cast their baleful light around. Strange twisted figures of 
trees stand out against the horizon. There is no sound bub 
an occasional home-like mating-call of partridges in the fields 
and the peculiar laughing cry of the little speckled owl which 
here, as in England, dwells amongst the orchards. 
How many nights have I watched that scene from my 
post on the hill ! And suddenly out of the long silence there 
have come the obscure reminders, the swift stirrings of war. 
The faint clink of spades away down in the trench, stertorous 
masculine breathing, a muttered exclamation. Sometimes a 
stray bullet whistled out of the darkness and went singing 
on its way; sometimes a party of soldiers, heavily burdened, 
tramped by, crouching low. Often— about the middle of the . 
night-a machine-gun spoke with its metallic " clack-clack 
or tlie sharp crack of a rifle came from near at hand or some- . 
where afar off a great gun boomed sullenly. Then silence, and 
I would listen intently. Only the " clink-clink, clink-clmk- 
clink,' of our own picks and shovels at work and eighty 
yards away the answering "thud-thud" of the German 
wiring parties driving in their stakes. 
Then I would rise, and, creeping to the parapet of the 
fort peer over, my head and body partly concealed by the 
machine-gun. The ground sloped sharply away to the con- 
fused region of moonlight and shadows. At first the eyes 
could not probe this dusky space. Yet after a few momenta 
one found them out— flitting here and there, fetching, carry- . 
ing, digging, working like little demons of men, bent figure* 
silhouetted in the moonlight. And occasionally the non-com^ 
missioned officers could be heard cursing those grey soldiers ol 
the Empire. There was a partial truce between us. By nigh* 
we all worked at that part of the line; by day we fought 
desultorily. , , ., - 
And night by night, as I watched, the strange silenf 
mystery of it all overwhelmed me. Now and again a riff< 
cracked and at intervals there came to the ear the infernal 
"clack-clack" of the machine-gun, than which there is n« 
cound more terrible in war. It was on such a clear moonlit 
night, when a fresh wind blew to the nostrils the first scents 
of spring, that a man working in the midst of his fellows fell 
silently to the ground— dripping blood— nor ever spoke agam^ 
And thereafter I could not rest alone on the hill but the 
horror of such things crept over me. The interminable Unes 
of watcliing men stretching away into the dim distance 
towards the battlefield of Ypres, where the guns boomed and 
the crackle of rifle-fire went on all night long— the intermin- 
able lines of watching men awaiting their chance to kill, to 
wound— for why ? None knew, none cared. The same blood, 
the same God, the same humanity, the same mentahty, the 
same love of life, the same dread of death— I did not hate 
then, but I pitied. , , „ ,, .r. 
And sometimes, as I watched, there would come on the 
wings of the night a weird low sound of singing. Strangely 
it rose and fell and trembled on the wind, then died away-, 
The solemn cadences of " The Watch on the Rhine," the 
triumphal psean of the Austrian National Hymn, and often 
strains of wild windy music, like the soughing of pine forests 
—such songs as the Southern Germans love— these floated 
across when all else was still. And often there came the 
sound of a mouth-organ, cheap and bizarre, to remind me of 
a cafe chantant in Paris, or— why, I know not-of the ho<j 
midday in some London street. 
Then would I make a tour of my posts and see the working 
parties home to bed. And time and time again, as I crossed 
the moonlit patches or the little plank-bridge near by, a nfla 
cracked close at hand and a playful bullet whistled past my 
head They saw me, they waited for me; one day they woul«t 
eet me FinaUy the dawn broke across that dreary plain 
more fresh, more beautiful than a woman's face. The nigh* 
wind sank, the moonbeams and the shadows fled away. And, 
creeping into my little den, I fell asleep. 
U« 
