A PEN PICTURE

Grey River Argus, 23 December 1916, Page 3

A PEN PICTURE

LIFE AT THE FRONT.

OFFICER'S INTERESTING fs . LONDON, November 20

A young officer who lias now unhappily, "gone west" has sent to his people at home a , charming pen picture of Avhat life at the front is like. "We are still in this charming little village." he writes, "tucked away in the valley through which a little river rvns. It has 500 inhabitants^ a little church with a pure white spire, a cure, a maire, one shop and twenty farms. It is very peaceful and very still and the fields are golden with, their crops of corn. Old men and women work on them all day, swishing down the slender stalks with small hand-scythes, binding up the sheaves and, loading which, drawn bj huge cream white them on to ramshackle old waggons horses, jolt, and rattle along to the barns. Gradually the fields are becoming empty and tho fowls arc becoming fewer, the wind gets colder at nights and the sky is black with rainclouds, till in a few r week's time the village will go to sleep and hibernate until the spring. But a short hundred paces from this vale of peace 5 things ■ greatly. We are on the main road then, the road that leads to and British headquarters. Here is a steady stream of traffic,' A.S.C. trains with food and ammunition for the firing line. French and British staff Qffiecrs pass swiftly by in cars, great, lorries with munitions shake the houses a dispatch rider yips by and is soon ;a speck on the road, ambulance wagjgc^hs with the sick and wounded, a bat {tery of artillery a Yorkshire battalion 'ov a route march, a squadron of cavaliiy, anoth3r dispatch rider— and so on, I never ceasing — a stream of life' and : animation, amongst the faint pulse of cxisfance that maintains around it. j "Madame Valey's isn't affected. by ju (my old lady, you know). She (knows there is a war on because we are here. Why should we be hero if 'there wasn't a war ? But she doesn't know how things are progressing she ; never buys a paper, she believes the noise of the guns to be thunder, and she doesn't know that the Germans were once very near her home. She is quite happy in her innocence. She goes to '-La Messe' in the morning and she prays at night, and when,n daddy-long-legs comes in through the window she seizes it in her long boney f.oshless fingers, laughs whimsically • when the legs come out, and hobbling to the oak-log fire puts it in. The fire :]>lace, like the house is a hundred years old, it's only a blackened wall with a hole that, runs through the roof, and ther's a' sootblack cauldron that ti ins and swings on a chain. Out company headquarters are at. tho farm of M. Drincqbiere, perhaps the most .wc-althy farmer in the village. He is a .i°Ny good-natured fellow with a speed talk of about ten words a second He'll give you a lift when he passes you in his cart, is only too pleased to explain the points of his new colt will show you how t6 milk cows and to tin ash corn, and has altogether shown that his rough exterior is no criterion of his interior. The Maire is_a captain in the French army and is eonse(juently very little at home just at present. He runs a silk mill with tho aid of the river, and lives in a very pretty house just beside it. He came home on leave yesterday. The Cure is the Rood old typt of round-headed friar. He buried an old lady yesterday. The procession from the house to the church was peculiar. A mourner carried a cross, another a banner, six acolytes in red and white trod reverently beside the cure f who gave vent to lamentations and prayers in Latin about every thirty yards. The coffin wrapped in brown blankets was carried by four farmers on a bier very much like an army stretcher. Many mourners completed the procession. Madame Valaeys went to mass again that day, but said nothing. "It is 8.30 a.m. on a lovely Sunday morning and I am sitting on a box outside my dugout soliloquising and enjoyh.is life immensely. The Germans line is about 400 yards in front — a strong breastwork of sandbags like our own All is quiet just now. It is breakfast' time and by a kind of mutual telepathic agreement hostilities are in abeyance for the while. Let us pay a visit to the fire trench while my servant cooks breakfast. What do we see ? A wall of sandbags, men cleaning rifles shaving and eating. Sentries looking through periscopes — not much else. I take .a .mirror from my pocket, put it on a stick ) and turning. my back to the parapet slowly push it up till the glass projects over the top. The shiny surface catches the' sun's rays and immediately a shot rings out. A German sniper, but he's missed. I look into the mirror and see what A meadow fleld about four hundred yards long, grass for the most part dead, a few stunted bushes and many black patches At. the end of the' field a seeming long, line of clay,. like Catford Hill with the drains up.Behind the clay a village, but in what a state? More, like a rubbish heap than anything else — piles and piles of bricks a few walls with holes in .them, a crumbling roof, yellowed and blackened with lyddite and much snuke. Let's have -a look with the glasses. You can f ocus a periscope image quite will with 'binoculars. The bank looks different, now enlarged there are little holes dotted along the ; front. Yes, loopholes, and at the foot ! there are yards of barbed wire twisted i different ways most cunningly. It's" I nine o'clock now, time for breakfast, j* so we enter, the. dining-rooniT— a spacious dug-out furnished with chairs and tables, where a good breakfast of bacon, bread butter, jam, tea and milk awaits us. Then comes a hasty look i round the trenches to see that the sen- | tries are doing their duty, that all j crumbs and remains of breakfast are cleared away t and "%at every man is washed and shaved. '* "The trenches still r^-^^^ very quiet, snioing continues^ 'ou both, sides ; we smL^^^Httedly.

A messenger hands me a message. 'The artillery will bombard the enemy lines at ten o 'clock, again this afternoon, and again this evening. Please take action.' 'Action.' simply consists in letting the platoon know what to expect and satisfying oneself that .hoy know to which dugout they are !<• go, for it 's quite -within the bounds of possibility that a shell may fall short, and more than possible that the Huns will reply. I hastened to get this done and awaited events, a periscope in my hand for observation. Bang ! With a shriek a shell flew* over my head. Another lou.d explosion and through my periscope I saw a column of earth thrown iiigh into the air. Tbe black acrid smoke gradually cleared away and I noticed that a portion of the enemy's parapet had been blown in. . After fhat the artillery steadily poured shell after shell into their trenches for two hours. They came at the rate of ten to fifteen to the minute and the whisti ijig and shrieking turned up into a long-drawn-out wail, which intermittently rose into a shriek then dic\ away in a groan. We gave them hell Large holes were blown into the parapet j and the air was rendered pun gens with lyddite fumes. After half an hour they brought up a battery and started shelling in reply and now we are going it hell for leather. A shell lms gone through Hampton's" bed. Leakey his just brought in a piece of lead about six inches long and half an inch thick, which fell a few feet from him, and things are getting a litle too unpleasant for me to continue just at present. "7 p.m. The bomTjcrrtment is over. We have knocked the "German line about a great deal and evidently made them nervy for they are shooting rrpidly and erratically, sending up flares tho while. ■ They expect an attack. Now it is dark we have got to work. We have slept during the day and now is the time for «ctivity. There are parapets to be mended, barbed wire to be put up in No Man 's Land^' and the enemy's parapet to be swept to prevent them doing the same thing. Things "on the whole are pretty .warm, and the bullets whistle by quickly. The most nervy jobs are, of course the mending of the wire in 'No Mail's Land' and the replacing of detached sandbags on the parapet. One or two little incidents arc thariicteristic of the general atmosphere prevailing hero. Through the glasses one of our snipers spotted a German sniper aijfl fired at him. The German immeliatcly signalled a washout. Our man fired again and gradully both parties entered into the spirit of the thing. The. Germans put up spades, .brushes' and hats on sticks, waved .them frantically when we scored a hit and cheered ironically."