Fortunately, the rain held off until the evening of the Loamshires’ departure. Even two hours had sufficed to transform the trenches into slimy morasses, with equipment and personal belongings fast sinking into the mud. Utterly forlorn these ‘homes’ seemed in their inundation, and, with nowhere to sit in comfort, men were the less sorry to leave them. Two days and nights saw them back again, so exhausted after their march that it was easy enough to fall asleep in the rain, often with nothing but a wet ground-sheet between the sleeper and a puddle. This time they occupied other trenches behind the wood, wider and less exasperatingly crowded. Here it was necessary to carve shelters in the sides of the trenches, using rubber sheets and blankets as the outer trenchward wall. Coiled up in these lairs, you could at least avoid the rain, and by sharing your bivouac it was even possible to lie warm. (To neutralize this luxury, the lice were the more active in snugger quarters.)
For several days their time was passed chiefly in salvage-fatigues. These involved the tiresome quartering of long acres of ground, and the collection and sorting into a variegated dump of all the litter of the battlefield. Not far from Trones Wood a blown-in trench held thousands of Mills bombs. These ingenious weapons are rendered harmless by a steel safety-pin, which rusts with damp. So long as they are undisturbed they are innocuous, but they have been known to lie forgotten and unheeded for weeks only to explode with fatal results at an inadvertent kick. Thus it was delicate work disinterring them from the earth and debris in which they were nearly buried; but by a fluke of good fortune none had rusted sufficiently to fracture the pins, and there were no casualties.
In fine weather they were almost happy, and, dog-tired always, sound sleep came as a gift in the most cramped quarters. In the freshness of the morning the breakfasts of fragrant bacon were glorious indeed. The hot strong tea, and white bread far better than they were getting at home, were wolfed with eager appetite, and always there was a rush to the sooty dixie for the sake of the bacon-fat and greasy crackling that afford so tasty a dish when bread is used to sop them. Often porridge was added, so thick that it was possible to invert the dixie and no harm done. Unaffectedly living to eat, meals and mails were the only landmarks in monotonous days. For dinner came potatoes boiled in their skins and nondescript watery stew. On gala days roast beef appeared, and sometimes duff took the place of nauseous rice.
Apart from fatigues, drill consisted only in the inspection of rifles, but excuse for a full-dress parade was found in a message from the Brigadier. To hear his sacred words the battalion was drawn up in mass behind the wood, where a prying aeroplane might have stirred the enemy’s artillery to serious activity. (But obviously risks must be run to hear a General’s voice.) It seemed that that great man loved his men like a father, and that his children were to be praised for their prowess. They had done splendidly, and the high standard attained was never to be lowered. To the old hands the General expressed his thanks; to the new he said approximately ‘Go thou and do likewise’. All and sundry were bidden ‘never to forget the traditions of their battalion and brigade’, and it was obvious that storms were to be expected. The proceedings terminated with the distribution of ‘Divisional Cards’, for all the world like prizes at a Sunday-school Treat, and the shame of the recipients was only equalled by the ribaldry of the audience. For these cards certified that the holder had distinguished himself in action at such a time and such a place, and even bore the signature of Olympus. The theory was that by this means a spirit of emulation was aroused, and it was reckoned that three of these cards meant a military medal in the rations. ‘The Tommies are such children!’ Such was life in Reserve.
Stratis Myrivilis
THE BEAUTY OF THE BATTLEFIELD
In his novel Life in the Tomb (1924), the Greek writer Stratis Myrivilis gives a harshly realistic yet reflective account of the trench warfare at the Macedonian front in 1917–18, where the Greek army fought Bulgarian and German forces. While observing an artillery duel, the narrator becomes fascinated by the visual beauty of the lights and the magnificent spectacle of the falling bombs. He recognizes that the bombardment is not just cruel and inhuman but also ‘divinely majestic’: ‘Man becomes Titan who makes Earth howl beneath his blows.’
ONE GETS USED to anything sooner or later. I have noticed that human beings possess an inexhaustible inner reserve of adaptive capability which rescues them from great misfortunes and especially from madness. Here, for example, our way of life has already become a stable condition. Sometimes it occurs to me that if the stories about eternal torments in hell were accurate, each of the damned would have all the time in the world to grow used to his tortures through and through, and consequently could puff his cigarette to his heart’s content inside the cauldron of brimstone, lighting it from the very flames that were harrowing him.
We either sleep during the day, lying on our backs in the darkness, or talk and play cards, our candles burning. The latter we do less and less frequently, however, because no one has the slightest appetite for idle prating. When we open our mouths it is only to pronounce the barest minimum of words necessary for our duties, or to indulge in smut, or to hurl curses at each other. Soon enough, in any case, we are overcome by sleep as though by some disease, a sleep full of exhaustion, nightmares, and wet dreams. The men awake soaked in sweat and semen.
But as soon as darkness falls, this whole world comes to life and emerges from its caverns in order to fight: to wage war. Under the cover of darkness, hordes of implement-laden soldiers peek over the rim of the trench and leap across the top in successive ranks, then proceed slouchingly, and with sluggish movements, towards no man’s land. Deprived of cigarettes, with an absolute minimum of noise, they advance in this robot-like manner in order to dig, or set up entanglements, or keep their ears cocked at a listening post, or lie in ambush. Sometimes they return depleted, in which case the Order of the Day strikes certain names off the company rolls and Balafaras obtains certain home addresses so that he may dispatch his ‘lovely letters’, neatly typewritten.
The pyramidal ridge of Peristeri – the ‘Dove’ – looms blacker and fiercer than ever in the darkness. It is swaddled in mystery, and its tip touches the sky. The oppressive silence which this fortified mountain exudes is more frightening than a thousand-mouthed cannonade.
Suddenly a slender red line burgeons from one of the flanks and ascends. The men fall flat on their faces then, no matter where they happen to be, because the top of this luminous, fading stem will blossom before long into a brilliant flower of light, a miniature sun. A flare like this ignites high above us in the atmosphere and hovers there, swaying in balance, as it shines down upon us with unbearable brilliance. Then it flounders in mid-air and sails off attentively into the void. It is the Dove’s lightly sleeping eye, an eye whose lid lifts suspiciously in the night so that this powerful lantern may search gruffly to see where we are and what we are doing. An area of many square kilometres is illuminated as though in daylight. The lantern advances with such slow-moving deliberation that you would think some invisible giant were holding it in his enormous hand as he strolled from place to place, urgently looking for something on the ground. Eventually it descends ever so slowly and goes out, or else disappears behind some hill. No one budges during this interval; no one breathes. Soon another flare ignites, and then another and another; they follow each other in close succession, coming from both sides now. If a person ignorant of the war observed all this outpouring of light as it bathed the mountains, he would mistake it for a celebration of joy and kindness. The other evening an illuminating rocket like this fell on Magarevo, a deserted hamlet which sits between the Bulgarians and us. It landed on a rooftop and started a conflagration which destroyed three houses, after which the fire subsided of its own accord. (No one went to extinguish it!) The empty village was illuminated funereally all the while, its casements swinging open, the house-interiors filled with darkness. Ignited flares have also fallen into patches of dry grass or amidst the wheat which
ripened in vain for the absent reapers who will never again come with their scythes and merry songs. The fields burn and burn, until they grow tired of burning. Occasionally an attack, reconnoitring mission, or coup de main occurs in a nearby sector. At such times the spectacle is unimaginably grand. Igniting beside the white flares are chromatic ones – green, red, yellow, maroon – which promenade across the sky like multicoloured caterpillars or drag their bodies laboriously between the stars as though they were fiery but wounded dragons all coiled in upon themselves. A cherry-dark stalk germinates with a whistle and explodes at its tip, whereupon varicoloured stars gush upward in a veritable geyser above our heads, then drip down in clusters, fading as they descend. All this is an agreed-upon signal for artillery barrages and other types of fire.
The cannonade begins close on the rockets’ heels. It comes from the Dove, or from us, or sometimes from both at once. The batteries seek mutual annihilation. This is known as an ‘artillery duel’. What happens at such times is terrible but also beautiful. Alas, I cannot escape calling it ‘beautiful’ since it is the most majestic spectacle a man can ever hope to experience. When the action falls outside our sector I creep into the trench, glue my chin to the soil of the parapet, and become nothing but two eyes and a pair of ears diffused into this strange universe, a being who throbs with pride as well as wretchedness.
Diamond necklaces string themselves along the base of the mountains; the gems sparkle each in turn in the darkness, then fade. These are the salvos, discharged in regular succession. Next, the valleys start to roar. They weep, reverberate with imploring moans, shriek, howl protractedly, and bellow. Absolute silence metamorphoses instantaneously into pandemonium. The atmosphere smacks its lips; it whistles fervidly with its fingers inserted into a thousand mouths. Whole masses of air shift position with violent movements; the sky rips from end to end like muslin. Invisible arrows pass across the void. Angry vipers lunge this way and that. On all sides are lashes incising the air and pitilessly thrashing the weeping hills, which huddle and curl into balls as though wishing to be swallowed into the bowels of the earth, in order to escape. The caves moan and sob in woeful groans. A thousand titans yawp in consternation, chew their fingers with obstinate despair, and holler. The atmosphere vibrates then like a bowstring and men’s hearts quake like aspen leaves in a storm.
The passing shells cannot be seen; you sense them, however, with your entire body – their location at every instant, how fast they are travelling, where they will land. Some of them remind you of an object breaking the surface of a lake; they make a refreshing noise, a kind of lapping, as though they were speeding along on peaceful waters. Others create a fearful racket. Imagine colossal iron bridges erected in the darkness between the Dove and us, and rickety wagons passing over them with full loads of clattering metal tools. That is how they sound. Still others whistle almost gleefully at a standard pitch. These have been christened ‘nightingales’ by the men, and in truth they actually do resemble birds that have flown the coop and soared unrestrainedly into the empyrean, whistling the song of freedom.
Audible amid all these frenzied night-cries, amid this entire chaos of sound, are the amazing wails of exploding shells. A shell, when it bursts, howls with vengeful wrath. It is a blind monster, all snout and nothing else, which charges the earth and rips it to shreds with its iron fangs. Millions of men have packed their hatreds into the ample belly of this mechanized brute, have stamped their enmity tightly in, and sent the beast out to bite. When a shell explodes, all of these hatreds lurking there by the thousands, all of these satanic embryos imprisoned in the steel womb, are released like a pack of rabid dogs which then race to the attack yelping their own disparate cries that are so mournful and strange.
When I find myself near a bursting shell I invariably have this feeling that human voices are inside it, voices which shriek with unappeasable passion. Inside a shell, I insist, are howling people foaming at the mouth and grinding their jaws together. You can hear the hysterical screech of the murderer as he nails his dagger into warm flesh; you can recognize the victory-cry of the man who drives his weapon into the breast of a hated foe, then, clutching the hilt in his palm, twists the knife in the wound, voluptuously bellowing his satiated passion and drinking down in a daze the agony of the other, who writhes beneath his powerful knee and thrashes about on the ground, spewing his life out through his throat, along with the blood.
Whenever the shells begin to rake our own trench along with the others, we worm into our dugouts and await orders. No one remains in the trench itself except the sentries, and they are relieved more frequently at such times.
A bombardment is the most supremely powerful sensation that a man can experience. You lie flat on your face at the bottom of the trench or in an underground shelter. Your mouth tastes like plaster of Paris; your soul is held in thrall by profound grief and pulsating terror, by a preoccupation which shrinks you, makes you roll up into yourself and take refuge in the kernel of your existence – a kernel which you desire to be tiny as a cherry-pit and hard and impenetrable as a diamond. Your soul is on its knees. Filled with wonder and sacred awe, it prays fervidly of its own accord. You neither understand nor recognize the words it uses (this is the first time in your life you have heard them), and it directs its supplications to a God whose existence you had never even suspected. Your soul is a tiny lamp-flame, a sickly wavering flicker which totters this way and that in an effort to separate from its wick and be sucked gently upward by the famished void.
A bombardment is extraordinarily cruel and inhuman. It is horrible, but also divinely majestic. Man becomes a Titan who makes Earth howl beneath his blows. He becomes Enceladus and Typhon, raises up mountains, juggles lightning bolts playfully in his hands, and causes indomitable natural forces to mewl like whipped cats.
Is it not man ‘who looketh on the earth, and it trembleth; who toucheth the mountains, and they smoke’?
Ernest Hemingway
GOING BACK
In A Farewell to Arms (1929) Ernest Hemingway tells the story of an American volunteer in the ambulance service at the Italian front. Recovering from his wounds in hospital, the narrator falls in love with Catherine, an English nurse. In this extract Hemingway brings a characteristically clear-eyed quality to a familiar moment in a young soldier’s life.
THE NIGHT I was to return to the front I sent the porter down to hold a seat for me on the train when it came from Turin. The train was to leave at midnight. It was made up at Turin and reached Milan about half-past ten at night and lay in the station until time to leave. You had to be there when it came in, to get a seat. The porter took a friend with him, a machine-gunner on leave who worked in a tailor shop, and was sure that between them they could hold a place. I gave them money for platform tickets and had them take my baggage. There was a big rucksack and two musettes.
I said good-bye at the hospital at about five o’clock and went out. The porter had my baggage in his lodge and I told him I would be at the station a little before midnight. His wife called me ‘Signorino’ and cried. She wiped her eyes and shook hands and then cried again. I patted her on the back and she cried once more. She had done my mending and was a very short dumpy, happy-faced woman with white hair. When she cried her whole face went to pieces. I went down to the corner where there was a wine shop and waited inside looking out the window. It was dark outside and cold and misty. I paid for my coffee and grappa and I watched the people going by in the light from the window. I saw Catherine and knocked on the window. She looked, saw me and smiled, and I went out to meet her. She was wearing a dark blue cape and a soft felt hat. We walked along together, along the sidewalk past the wine shops, then across the market square and up the street and through the archway to the cathedral square. There were streetcar tracks and beyond them was the cathedral. It was white and wet in the mist. We crossed the tram tracks. On our left were the shops, their windows lighted, and the entrance to the galleria. There was a fog in the square and when we c
ame close to the front of the cathedral it was very big and the stone was wet.
‘Would you like to go in?’
‘No,’ Catherine said. We walked along. There was a soldier standing with his girl in the shadow of one of the stone buttresses ahead of us and we passed them. They were standing tight up against the stone and he had put his cape around her.
‘They’re like us,’ I said.
‘Nobody is like us,’ Catherine said. She did not mean it happily.
‘I wish they had some place to go.’
‘It mightn’t do them any good.’
‘I don’t know. Everybody ought to have some place to go.’
‘They have the cathedral,’ Catherine said. We were past it now. We crossed the far end of the square and looked back at the cathedral. It was fine in the mist. We were standing in front of the leather goods shop. There were riding boots, a rucksack and ski boots in the window. Each article was set apart as an exhibit; the rucksack in the centre, the riding boots on one side and the ski boots on the other. The leather was dark and oiled smooth as a used saddle. The electric light made high lights on the dull oiled leather.