"Death will give us all a clean sheet."—Dudley Pryor.
We, the London Irish Rifles, know Les Brebis well, know every café and estaminet, every street and corner, every house, broken or sound, every washerwoman, wine-shop matron, handy cook, and pretty girl. Time after time we have returned from the trenches1 to our old billet to find the good housewife up and waiting for us. She was a lank3 woman, made and clothed anyhow. Her garments looked as if they had been put on with a pitchfork. Her eyes protruded4 from their sockets5, and one felt that if her tightly strained eyelids6 relaxed their grip for a moment the eyes would roll out on the floor. Her upper teeth protruded, and the point of her receding7 chin had lost itself somewhere in the hollow of her neck. Her pendant breasts hung flabbily, and it was a miracle how her youngest child, Gustave, a tot of seven months, could find any[40] sustenance8 there. She had three children, who prattled9 all through the peaceful hours of the day. When the enemy shelled Les Brebis the children were bundled down into the cellar, and the mother went out to pick percussion11 caps from the streets. These she sold to officers going home on leave. The value of the percussion cap was fixed12 by the damage which the shell had done. A shell which fell on Les Brebis school and killed many men was picked up by this good woman, and at the present moment it is in my possession. We nicknamed this woman "Joan of Arc."
We had a delightful13 billet in this woman's house. We came in from war to find a big fire in the stove and basins of hot, steaming café-au-lait on the table. If we returned from duty dripping wet through the rain, lines were hung across from wall to wall, and we knew that morning would find our muddy clothes warm and dry. The woman would count our number as we entered. One less than when we left! The missing man wore spectacles. She remembered him and all his mannerisms. He used to nurse her little baby boy, Gustave, and play games with the mite's toes. What had happened to him? He was killed by a shell, we told her. On the road to the trenches he was hit. Then a mist gathered in the woman's[41] eyes, and two tears rolled down her cheeks. We drank our café-au-lait.
"Combien, madam?"
"Souvenir," was the reply through sobs14, and we thanked her for the kindness. Upstairs we bundled into our room, and threw our equipment down on the clean wooden floor, lit a candle and undressed. All wet clothes were flung downstairs, where the woman would hang them up to dry. Everything was the same here as when we left; save where the last regiment15 had, in a moment of inspiration, chronicled its deeds in verse on the wall. Pryor, the lance-corporal, read the poem aloud to us:
"Gentlemen, the Guards,
When the brick fields they took
The Germans took the hook
And left the Gentlemen in charge."
The soldiers who came and went voiced their griefs on this wall, but in latrine language and Rabelaisian humour. Here were three proverbs written in a shaky hand:
"The Army pays good money, but little of it."
"In the Army you are sertin to receive what you get."
"The wages of sin and a soldir is death."
Under these was a couplet written by a fatalist:
"I don't care if the Germans come,
If I have an extra tot of rum."
[42]
Names of men were scrawled17 everywhere on the wall, from roof to floor. Why have some men this desire to scrawl16 their names on every white surface they see, I often wonder? One of my mates, who wondered as I did, finally found expression in verse, which glared forth18 accusingly from the midst of the riot of names in the room:
"A man's ambition must be small
Who writes his name upon this wall,
And well he does deserve his pay
A measly, mucky bob a day."
The woman never seemed to mind this scribbling19 on the wall; in Les Brebis they have to put up with worse than this. The house of which I speak is the nearest inhabited one to the firing line. Half the houses in the street are blown down, and every ruin has its tragedy. The natives are gradually getting thinned out by the weapons of war. The people refuse to quit their homes. This woman has a sister in Nouex-les-Mines, a town five kilometres further away from the firing line, but she refused to go there. "The people of Nouex-les-Mines are no good," she told us. "I would not be where they are. Nobody can trust them."
The history of Les Brebis must, if written, be written in blood. The washerwoman who washed our shirts could tell stories of adventure that would eclipse tales of romance[43] as the sun eclipses a brazier. Honesty and fortitude20 are the predominant traits of the Frenchwoman.
Once I gave the washerwoman my cardigan jacket to wash, and immediately afterwards we were ordered off to the trenches. When we left the firing line we went back to Nouex-les-Mines. A month passed before the regiment got to Les Brebis again. The washerwoman called at my billet and brought back the cardigan jacket, also a franc piece which she had found in the pocket. On the day following the woman was washing her baby at a pump in the street and a shell blew her head off. Pieces of the child were picked up a hundred yards away. The washerwoman's second husband (she had been married twice) was away at the war; all that remained in the household now was a daughter whom Pryor, with his nicknaming craze, dubbed21 "Mercédès."
But here in Les Brebis, amidst death and desolation, wont22 and use held their sway. The cataclysm23 of a continent had not changed the ways and manners of the villagers, they took things phlegmatically24, with fatalistic calm. The children played in the gutters25 of the streets, lovers met beneath the stars and told the story of ancient passion, the miser26 hoarded27 his money, the preacher spoke28 to his Sunday congregation, and the plate[44] was handed round for the worshippers' sous, men and women died natural deaths, children were born, females chattered29 at the street pumps and circulated rumours31 about their neighbours.... All this when wagons32 of shells passed through the streets all day and big guns travelled up nearer the lines every night. Never had Les Brebis known such traffic. Horses, limbers and guns, guns, limbers and horses going and coming from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. From their emplacements in every spinney and every hollow in the fields the guns spoke earnestly and continuously. Never had guns voiced such a threat before. They were everywhere; could there be room for another in all the spaces of Les Brebis and our front line? It was impossible to believe it, but still they came up, monsters with a mysterious air of detachment perched on limbers with caterpillar33 wheels, little field guns that flashed metallic34 glints to the café lamps, squat35 trench2 howitzers on steel platforms impassive as toads36....
The coming and passing was a grand poem, and the poem found expression in clanging and rattle10 in the streets of Les Brebis through the days and nights of August and September, 1915. For us, we worked in our little ways, dug advanced trenches under shell fire in a field where four thousand dead Frenchmen[45] were wasting to clay. These men had charged last winter and fell to maxim37 and rifle fire; over their bodies we were to charge presently and take Loos and the trenches behind. The London Irish were to cross the top in the first line of attack, so the rumour30 said.
One evening, when dusk was settling in the streets, when ruined houses assumed fantastic shapes, and spirits seemed to be lurking38 in the shattered piles, we went up the streets of Les Brebis on our way to the trenches. Over by the church of Les Brebis, the spire39 of which was sharply defined in the clear air, the shells were bursting and the smoke of the explosions curled above the red roofs of the houses. The enemy was bombarding the road ahead, and the wounded were being carried back to the dressing40 stations. We met many stretchers on the road. The church of Bully-Grenay had been hit, and a barn near the church had been blown in on top of a platoon of soldiers which occupied it. We had to pass the church. The whole battalion41 seemed to be very nervous, and a presentiment42 of something evil seemed to fill the minds of the men. The mood was not of common occurrence, but this unaccountable depression permeates43 whole bodies of men at times.
We marched in silence, hardly daring to breathe. Ahead, under a hurricane of shell,[46] Bully-Grenay was withering44 to earth. The night itself was dark and subdued45, not a breeze stirred in the poplars which lined the long, straight road. Now and again, when a star-shell flamed over the firing line, we caught a glimpse of Bully-Grenay, huddled46 and helpless, its houses battered47, its church riven, its chimneys fractured and lacerated. We dreaded48 passing the church; the cobbles on the roadway there were red with the blood of men.
We got into the village, which was deserted49 even by the soldiery; the civil population had left the place weeks ago. We reached the church, and there, arm in arm, we encountered a French soldier and a young girl. They took very little notice of us, they were deep in sweet confidences which only the young can exchange. The maiden50 was "Mercédès." The sight was good; it was as a tonic51 to us. A load seemed to have been lifted off our shoulders, and we experienced a light and airy sensation of heart. We reached the trenches without mishap52, and set about our work. The enemy spotted53 us digging a new sap, and he began to shell with more than usual vigour54. We were rather unlucky, for four of our men were killed and nine or ten got wounded.
Night after night we went up to the trenches and performed our various duties.[47] Keeps and redoubts were strengthened and four machine guns were placed where only one stood before. Always while we worked the artillery55 on both sides conducted a loud-voiced argument; concussion56 shells played havoc57 with masonry58, and shrapnel shells flung their deadly freight on roads where the transports hurried, and where the long-eared mules59 sweated in the traces of the limbers of war. We spoke of the big work ahead, but up till the evening preceding Saturday, September 25th, we were not aware of the part which we had to play in the forthcoming event. An hour before dusk our officer read instructions, and outlined the plan of the main attack, which would start at dawn on the following day, September 25th, 1915.
In co-operation with an offensive movement by the 10th French Army on our right, the 1st and 4th Army Corps60 were to attack the enemy from a point opposite Bully-Grenay on the south to the La Bassée Canal on the north. We had dug the assembly trenches on our right opposite Bully-Grenay; that was to be the starting point for the 4th Corps—our Corps. Our Division, the 47th London, would lead the attack of the 4th Army Corps, and the London Irish would be the first in the fight. Our objective was the second German trench which lay[48] just in front of Loos village and a mile away from our own first line trench. Every movement of the operations had been carefully planned, and nothing was left to chance. Never had we as many guns as now, and these guns had been bombarding the enemy's positions almost incessantly61 for ten days. Smoke bombs would be used. The thick fumes62 resulting from their explosion between the lines would cover our advance. At five o'clock all our guns, great and small, would open up a heavy fire. Our aircraft had located most of the enemy's batteries, and our heavy guns would be trained on these until they put them out of action. Five minutes past six our guns would lengthen63 their range and shell the enemy's reserves, and at the same moment our regiment would get clear of the trenches and advance in four lines in extended order with a second's interval64 between the lines. The advance must be made in silence at a steady pace.
Stretcher-bearers had to cross with their companies; none of the attacking party must deal with the men who fell out on the way across. A party would be detailed65 out to attend to the wounded who fell near the assembly trenches.... The attack had been planned with such intelligent foresight66 that our casualties would be very few. The job before us was quite easy and simple.
[49]
"What do you think of it?" I asked my mate, Bill Teake. "I think a bottle of champagne67 would be very nice."
"Just what I thought myself," said Bill. "I see Dudley Pryor is off to the café already. I've no money. I'm pore as a mummy."
"You got paid yesterday," I said with a laugh. "You get poor very quickly."
An embarrassed smile fluttered around his lips.
"A man gets pore 'cordin' to no rule," he replied. "Leastways, I do."
"Well, I've got a lot of francs," I said. "We may as well spend it."
"You're damned right," he answered. "Maybe, we'll not 'ave a chance to——"
"It doesn't matter a damn whether——"
"The officer says it will be an easy job. I don't know the——"
He paused. We understood things half spoken.
"Champagne?" I hinted.
"Nothing like champagne," said Bill.
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1
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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3
lank
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| adj.瘦削的；稀疏的 | |
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protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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7
receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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8
sustenance
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| n.食物，粮食；生活资料；生计 | |
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9
prattled
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| v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话( prattle的过去式和过去分词 )；发出连续而无意义的声音；闲扯；东拉西扯 | |
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10
rattle
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| v.飞奔，碰响；激怒；n.碰撞声；拨浪鼓 | |
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11
percussion
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| n.打击乐器；冲突，撞击；震动，音响 | |
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12
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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13
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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14
sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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15
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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16
scrawl
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| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
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17
scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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18
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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19
scribbling
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| n.乱涂[写]胡[乱]写的文章[作品]v.潦草的书写( scribble的现在分词 )；乱画；草草地写；匆匆记下 | |
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20
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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21
dubbed
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| v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制 | |
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22
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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23
cataclysm
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| n.洪水，剧变，大灾难 | |
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24
phlegmatically
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25
gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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26
miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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hoarded
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| v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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29
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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30
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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32
wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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33
caterpillar
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| n.毛虫，蝴蝶的幼虫 | |
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34
metallic
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| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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35
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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36
toads
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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38
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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40
dressing
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| n.(食物)调料；包扎伤口的用品，敷料 | |
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41
battalion
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| n.营；部队；大队(的人) | |
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42
presentiment
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| n.预感，预觉 | |
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43
permeates
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| 弥漫( permeate的第三人称单数 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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44
withering
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| 使人畏缩的，使人害羞的，使人难堪的 | |
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45
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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46
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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47
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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48
dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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49
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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50
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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51
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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52
mishap
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| n.不幸的事，不幸；灾祸 | |
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53
spotted
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| adj.有斑点的，斑纹的，弄污了的 | |
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54
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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55
artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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56
concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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57
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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58
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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59
mules
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| 骡( mule的名词复数 )； 拖鞋； 顽固的人； 越境运毒者 | |
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60
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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61
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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62
fumes
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| n.(强烈而刺激的)气味，气体 | |
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63
lengthen
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| vt.使伸长，延长 | |
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64
interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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65
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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66
foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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67
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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