We walked just behind the trenches in the moonlight
for a mile. No one said anything. The wind
was icy. Across the railroad embankment it chopped
the inundation into small crested waves. Only
by putting one’s head down was it possible to
battle ahead. From Dixmude came the intermittent
red flashes of guns. But the trenches beside us
were entirely silent.
At the end of a mile we stopped. The road turned
abruptly to the right and crossed the railroad embankment,
and at this crossing was the ruin of what had been
the House of the Barrier, where in peaceful times the
crossing tender lived.
It had been almost destroyed. The side toward
the German lines was indeed a ruin, but one room was
fairly whole. However, the door had been shot
away. To enter, it was necessary to lift away
an extemporised one of planks roughly nailed together,
which leaned against the aperture.
The moving of the door showed more firelight, and
a very small, shaded and smoky lamp on a stand.
There were officers here again. The little house
is slightly in front of the advanced trenches, and
once inside it was possible to realise its exposed
position. Standing as it does on the elevation
of the railroad, it is constantly under fire.
It is surrounded by barbed wire and flanked by trenches
in which are mitrailleuses.
The walls were full of shell holes, stuffed with sacks
of straw or boarded over. What had been windows
were now jagged openings, similarly closed. The
wind came through steadily, smoking the chimney of
the lamp and making the flame flicker.
There was one chair.
I wish I could go farther. I wish I could say
that shells were bursting overhead, and that I sat
calmly in the one chair and made notes. I sat,
true enough, but I sat because I was tired and my feet
were wet. And instead of making notes I examined
my new six-guinea silk rubber rain cape for barbed-wire
tears. Not a shell came near. The German
battery across had ceased firing at dusk that evening,
and was playing pinochle four hundred yards away across
the inundation. The snipers were writing letters
home.
It is true that any time an artilleryman might lose
a game and go out and fire a gun to vent his spleen
or to keep his hand in. And the snipers might
begin to notice that the rain was over, and that there
was suspicious activity at the House of the Barrier.
And, to take away the impression of perfect peace,
big guns were busy just north and south of us.
Also, just where we were the Germans had made a terrific
charge three nights before to capture an outpost.
But the fact remains that I brought away not even
a bullet hole through the crown of my soft felt hat.
NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES
When I had been thawed out they took me into the trenches.
Because of the inundation directly in front, they
are rather shallow, and at this point were built against
the railroad embankment with earth, boards, and here
and there a steel rail from the track. Some of
them were covered, too, but not with bombproof material.
The tops were merely shelters from the rain and biting
wind.
