14 
LAND & WATER 
In the Salient 
By An Officer 
April 19, 391; 
THROUGH a dreamy, hot Sunday afternoon in sum- 
mer, officers and men laZed among the leafy sur- 
roundings of a chateau about a couple of miles behind 
the front Hnc. Some slept, some bathed in the 
artificial lake ; and some read Ixioks or wrote letters, half 
lying, half-sitting in the shade of the trees. It was a modern 
chateau sucli as the bourgeois love, tiirreted. jerry-built, 
and doll's-housc-likc, but luxurious withal in its greenery 
ahd silence. 
Sa\'e for the constant buzzing of aeroplanes overhead, 
few soimds were borne on the light westerly breeze which blew 
towards the trenches. But all afternoon reports kept coming 
in from the front line ; the trenches were being pounded to no- 
lliing. nobody finite krnnv what to expect. Last night there 
had been a raid and now the Bosches were retaliating. To- 
night there was to be a relief. None looked forward to it, and 
the ceaseless " roo-coo-roo-coo-coo " of woodpigeons in their 
leafy fastnesses made one long for the infinite peace of an 
English summer. 
Then evening came, aiid an hour beforq dusk the men 
paraded for the trenches in the grass-grown farmyard. By 
small parties, a platoon at a time, they marched away, some to 
follow cross country tracks towards the canal, others going by 
the direct road. It was a calm and lovely aftermath, the sun 
setting in a golden haze, blue mists creeping up all around ; 
the heat of the day was succeeded by a delightful freshness. 
Nevertheless clouds of dust rose from the road for, as dusk 
fell, the great evening tide of traffic set towards the trenches. 
Ration parties, reheving parties, fatigue parties allmo\'ingin 
file ; motor-lorries, ambulances, motor-cyclists, officers on 
horseback, orderlies on bicycles, quarter-masters and quarter- 
master-sergeants driving mess-carts — all these formed part 
of a steady stream that flowed through the first battered 
village. At the cross-roads . the main stream ceased, the 
reliefs turned to the left heading straight for the Canal bank, 
and once more you could hear the pit-a-patter, pit-a-patter of 
trench boots. " Queer Chinese figures the men looked in their 
round " tin hats " heavy-laden with kit as they were, the 
rifle slung on the shoulder. 
The Hour of Relief 
Now the nervous work began, for often at this, the hour 
of the relief, the road would be sprayed with shrapnel. 
Everybody much preferred to travel by the grass tracks had 
there been room for all. However, the twilight is still and 
breathless, not a sound but the distant rattle of traffic and 
the pit-a-patter of the men's feet on the road. An occasional 
star-light rising and falling in the direction of the trenches, 
a low rumble far to the southward, and a passing flicker on 
the horizon which might be the reflection of German guns 
firing beyond the ridge or merely the playing of summer' 
lightning, are almost the only signs of war. Presently, you 
pass the stark shell of a ruined hoase, guardian of a rusty 
railway-line, overgrown with vegetation, and then come to 
tlie engineer's dump where all traffic ceases. A congestion 
of troojjs in single file is waiting to cross the bridges. One 
seems to hesitate liere on the threshold of Fate. 
A Bosche machine-gun is train(*d on the wooden bridge which 
30 or 40 yards ahead spans the Canal. It may sweep round at 
any moment, but so accustomed are the men to travelling this 
way that they do not increase their pace by a hair's breadth. 
Kather are they inclined to pause in wonderment at that most 
weird and wonderful of pictures : the Canal by night. 
Does it remind you most of a quiet backwater in Venice 
or of a scene from the Earl's court Exhibition, or of the 
imagined Styx where Charon ever ferries people from shore 
to shore ; this old waterway with its countless httle lights 
blinking against high mysterious banks and its sullen 
stagnant lapping water which reflects the lights, the stars, 
ancT sailing above, the cold moon. It looks seductive, exotic, 
}X)pulous, compared to the bleak, perilous world outside. 
The high banks are honej'-combed with dug-outs. All 
around is , the busy human hum, shuffling, scuffling, 
mysterious. 
The Canal is the clear-cut border-line between humanity 
and the shadowy nether-world of Ypres. Now the clack- 
clack-clack of the machine-guns is heard, a stray bullet or 
two whistles high over the road, and the star-lights seem 
much closer. An occasional rifle shot punctures intervening 
silences. It is night, and with night in the Salient there 
comes a sense of loneliness and neighbouring death. 
All scenes close behind the trenches are much the same, 
and this one is as others — void, barren, desolate. It is possible 
to travel all the way to the front hne by communication- 
trench, but per\'ersely the men prefer to walk as far as they 
are allowed to along the road. Well, the road is quicker even 
if a stray bullet or two docs come that way. But beyond 
trench-headquarters, a jumbled collection of more or less 
spacious dug-outs, it would be sheer madness to walk on the 
top of the ground. Machine-guns are constantly playing across 
it, and at times the bullets flip through tlve air hkea flight of 
birds. A number of troops are congregated here, but as long 
as they keep down they are fairly safe. Here, too, is the field 
dressing station, and a row of canvas-shrouded- figures 
lying on stretchers and looking exactly like mummies, be- 
speaks the daily harvest of tlie trenches. They are waiting 
to be taken down to the Canal bank — and then carried away 
to the ce'meterics. 
Awful Work 
It is awful work pushing and shoving along the communica- 
tion trench towards the front line, since with full bulk of 
equipment there is barely room for two to pass at a time. 
Hence long halts when everybody shouts, " Make way ! 
Make way ! " The men coming down from tlie trenches look 
jaded and worn-out. They have had a nerve-racking day 
and night, heavy shelling and many casualties. " It is 
bloody Hell up there," they mutter ; "" the trenches 
are blown to bits." So they ai-e, and far more than the 
greatest pessimist amongst us di-eamed. 
The first sign of it is when one comes to an immense hole 
right on the line of the communication trench itself, utterly 
blotting it out. Tliis hole would easily contain the founda- 
tions of a fair-sized cottage, and one has to work round and 
beyond it to discover where the trench begins again. Some- 
body grunts " Minnie-wafer " and somebody else says, 
" No, it's a big trench-mortar." Then one remembers that 
this sector has a sir4i>ter reputation for the most terrible 
engines of war ; not ithe trench-mortar, which is to be expected, 
but the minenwerfer, that super-mortar which is one of the 
most frightful weapons the fiendish ingenuitv of man has 
produced. 
Beyond the crater there is a chain of brand new 5'9 holes, 
and beyond these two more craters, one running into the 
other, after which the trench is virtually at an end. Here and 
there you may come upon a short length of sandbag breast- 
work still standing and a machine-gun post remains practically 
intact. A shining moon reveals the ghostly naked walls of 
certain farm buildings which in days gone by clustered 
round a courtyard, and these now are theonly key" to distance 
and direction.. Constantly, too, you meet stray parties of men 
just relieved stumbhng thankfully to the rear. By mistake 
as it were, you find yourself in a short remaining section of 
front line trench. The rest — parapets, parados, dug-outs, 
sand-bags, communication-trenches — are utterly wiped out. 
One shell-hole succeeds another, clustering round some 
enormous crater in monotonous confusion ; and were it not 
for the moonlight kindling the pools of w-ater at the bottom, 
falls and involuntary wettings would be frequent. 
The sentries and Lewis guns are at last rcheved. There 
is no time to lose. Parties are immediately told off to go 
back for the rations and if possible to gain flank communi- 
cation. The rest of the men sink dow-n in one of the saps 
utterly wearied by ' their long walk. Everybody dreads 
stumbling by mistake into the German "lines m the 
mysterious half-light. Fortunately all so far is quiet, but 
something sombre and foreboding seems to haunt the 
imusual stillness. An old soldier remarks half -humorously, 
" The night is yet young, boys ! " 
The battles now being waged by the British Armies in France 
will give new zest to the reading of Mr. Bovd Cable's newest 
work Grapes of Wrath (Smith Elder, 5s. net)' The title is, of 
course, taken from the famous American Battle Hymn bv Julia 
Ward Howe. The scheme of the book is — to use the author's 
own words — to disclose " what a Big Push is like from the point 
of view of an ordinary average infantry private, of showing how 
much he sees and knows and suffers in a great battle, of giving 
a ghmpse of the spirit that animates the New Armies." Mr. 
Boyd Cable has succeeded wonderfully. The impression left on 
the lay reader is the eternity of endurance that a day of battle 
w ith its varying fortunes means for most of the men who take 
part in it. It is a book for all to read who would realize what 
our fighting men are going through at the present time. And 
it gains a curious distinction at the moment in that one of the 
four protagonists whom the author has chosen happens to be an 
American. If it be true that Mr. Boyd Cable once gav& oflfence 
by a sketch of an American in the trenches, he more than makes 
good in this volume by his fine portraiture of Kentuek — a most 
mteresting study of a modem knight errant 
