THE NIGHTMARE PARAPET.

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2645, 20 October 1919, Page 7

THE NIGHTMARE PARAPET.

A GRIMLY REALISTIC PICTURE OF THE WAR. Going over the top, being shelled to blazes in a trench—these are not the memories that haunt me most as I lie here, though I’ve had a fullsized share of both, and am not greedy for more. A smell and a stream. They are the two things I find it most difficult to forget. We were in the line. The trench sides, disintegrated by days of ruin, were continually falling in. The trench itself was almost knee-deep in liquid mud. Behind, there was a disreputable crop of little wooden crosses, leaning drnnkenly in all directions, many of them splintered, that reached stragglingly almost to the parados. In front there was a tangled mass of rusty wire, with things hanging on to it like a devil’s ghastly mockery of a washing-day. Beyond that, ten yards of shellchurned, offensive mud ; then a stagnant, green-scummed canal, on the further bank of which the blonde beast had built a kind of parapet that was surely the outcome of a nightmare.' It was built of the dead —German dead.

The second memory belongs to the end one of a little row of cellars. There had been a row of houses there —once. Forty-eight hours before, German troops had been there. Just behind there was a German burialground, which, now and again, German shells were ploughing up. We bad been marching for thirteen hours. The cellars were to be onr billets for a few hours more. We threw ourselves on the floor, and tried to sleep, but could not. There was a stench in the place that made ns wish to get out. There was a pile of earth near the doorway over which we had to walk when we entered. We kept eyeing this. At length a batman got a spade, and the first thing he brought to light was a yard long tress of hair. Beneath the earth was the body of a girl. What hellish deed had been committed in the cellar we could only guess. We started oS to our new line down a hillside, the whole of which was pocked with shell-craters, each crater a bog. It was pitch dark. First one man would slip, and stick, and his high boots would have to be sacrificed before he could be extricated ; then another, and another, until in one company nineteen were) picking their floundering way along in their stockinged feet, and the slush under foot was a compound of melted snow and mud. Fatal to strike a light, to speak above a whisper.

We reached our trench. Trench ? just the shallow bed of a stream, the water still running. Not many yards away, on the slope of the hill on the other side, was the enemy line. When day came every man had to crouch down, thigh deep in water and mud. Bent double, else he would offer a fair target, until his back ached excruciatingly, though his legs seemed dead. Then trench-mortar shells and bombs began to come over to us, and men began to roll over and bite their lips lest a cry carry the news to the Alleman. And there, head and shoulders propped up so that they would not drown, they had to stay until darkness came again. Certain death to attempt succour in the light of day, save the little first-aid that we could render. Our doctor, who had been left behind, tried to make his way across the open to us. W r e buried him that night. Time seemed to have feet of lead. My watch was stopped. I asked a corporal the time. The question was passed along in whispers until it reached a man who possessed a timekeeper. “Nine o’clock,” Only two hours bad passed since daybreak ! It seemed two weeks ! Another ten hours before a man could stand upright ! Mortar shells and bombs continued to fall. It was impossible to hit back. Night came at last. A fresh company came to relieve us. Those of us who were unwounded began the task of getting the wounded and the dead across the bogs and up the hill. I shall never forget the stream. It was Hades—a bitterly cold Hades, a terribly wet Hades, but a real Hades for all that.

As an illustration of great devo- ' tion to truth, a would-be M.P. told [his auditors that he “underwent a 1 severe thrashing when a hoy for tell--1 ing the truth.” Imagine the sickly feeling which ! came over him when a gruff voice j called out from the centre of the audience : “1 guess it’s cured yer, 1 guv’nor !”