History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0468/04688.txt

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$Unique_ID{how04688}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{True Stories Of The Great War
Kitchener's Mob - Adventures Of An American With The British Army}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hall, James Norman}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{trench
trenches
shorty
fire
em
feet
first
ave
yer
ain't}
$Date{1916}
$Log{}
Title:       True Stories Of The Great War
Book:        Kitchener's Mob - Adventures Of An American With The British Army
Author:      Hall, James Norman
Date:        1916
Translation: Benington, Arthur

Kitchener's Mob - Adventures Of An American With The British Army

I - Story Of A Yankee In The Trenches

Uncensored Account of a Young Volunteer

     Told by James Norman Hall, of the First Expeditionary Force

[This is a glimpse of life in a battalion of one of Lord Kitchener's first
armies.  It gives an intimate view of the men who are so gallantly laying down
their lives for England.  Kitchener's Mob has become the greatest volunteer
army in the history of the world - for more than three million of disciplined
fighting men are united under one flag in this magnificent military
organization.  Their fighting has become an epic of heroism in France,
Belgium, Africa and the Balkans.  Some of them have seen service in India,
Egypt and South Africa; they might have stepped out of any of the
"Barrack-Room Ballads." The name which they bear was fastened upon them by
themselves - thereby hangs a tale.  Stories of their adventures have been
gathered into a volume under title of "Kitchener's Mob."]

[Footnote *: All numerals relate to stories herein told - not to chapters
from original sources.]

     With Kitchener's mob we wandered through the trenches listening to
the learned discourse of the genial professors of the Parapet-etic School,
storing up much useful information for future reference.  I made a serious
blunder when I asked one of them a question about Ypres, for I pronounced
the name French fashion, which put me under suspicion as a "swanker."

     "Don't try to come it, son," he said.  "S'y 'Wipers.' That's wot we
calls it."

     Henceforth it was "Wipers" for me, although I learned that "Eeps" and
"Yipps" are sanctioned by some trench authorities.  I made no further
mistakes of this nature, and by keeping silent about the names of the
towns and villages along our front, I soon learned the accepted
pronunciation of all of them.  Armentieres is called "Armenteers";
Balleul, "Ballyall"; Hazebrouck, "Hazy-Brook"; and what more natural than
"Plug-Street," Atkinsese for Ploegsteert?

     As was the case wherever I went, my accent betrayed my American
birth; and again, as an American Expeditionary Force of one, I was shown
many favors.  Private Shorty Holloway, upon learning that I was a "Yank,"
offered to tell me "every bloomin' thing about the trenches that a bloke
needs to know." I was only too glad to place myself under his instruction.

     "Right you are!" said Shorty; "now, sit down 'ere w'ile I'm going
over me shirt, an' arsk me anything yer a mind to." I began immediately by
asking him what he meant by "going over" his shirt.

     "Blimy!  You are new to this game, mate!  You mean to s'y you ain't
got any graybacks?"

     I confessed shamefacedly that I had not.  He stripped to the waist,
turned his shirt wrong side out, and laid it upon his knee.

     "'Ave a look," he said proudly.

     The less said about my discoveries the better for the fastidiously
minded.  Suffice it to say that I made my first acquaintance with members
of a British Expeditionary Force which is not mentioned in official
communiques.

     "Trench pets," said Shorty.  Then he told me that they were not all
graybacks.  There is a great variety of species, but they all belong to
the same parasitical family, and wage a non-discriminating warfare upon
the soldiery on both sides of No-man's-Land.  Germans, British, French,
Belgians alike were their victims.

     "You'll soon 'ave plenty," he said reassuringly; "I give you about a
week to get covered with 'em.  Now, wot you want to do is this: always
'ave an extra shirt in yer pack.  Don't be a bloomin' ass an' sell it fer
a packet o' fags like I did!  An' the next time you writes to England, get
some one to send you out some Keatings" - he displayed a box of
grayish-colored powder.  "It won't kill 'em, mind you!  They ain't nothin'
but fire that'll kill 'em.  But Keatings tykes all the ginger out o' 'em.
They ain't near so lively arter you strafe 'em with this 'ere powder."

     I remembered Shorty's advice later when I became a reluctant host to
a prolific colony of graybacks.  For nearly six months I was never without
a box of Keatings, and I was never without the need for it.

II - In The Barbed-Wire "Man-Traps"

     Barbed wire had a new and terrible significance for me from the first
day which we spent in the trenches.  I could more readily understand why
there had been so long a deadlock on the western front.  The entanglements
in front of the first line of trenches were from fifteen to twenty yards
wide, the wires being twisted from post to post in such a hopeless jumble
that no man could possibly get through them under fire.  The posts were
set firmly in the ground, but there were movable segments, every fifty or
sixty yards, which could be put to one side in case an attack was to be
launched against the German lines.

     At certain positions there were what appeared to be openings through
the wire, but these were nothing less than man-traps which have been found
serviceable in case of an enemy attack.  In an assault men follow the line
of least resistance when they reach the barbed wire.  These apparent
openings are V-shaped with the open end toward the enemy.  The attacking
troops think they see a clear passage-way.  They rush into the trap and
when it is filled with struggling men machine guns are turned upon them,
and, as Shorty said, "You got 'em cold."

     That, at least, was the presumption.  Practically, mantraps were not
always a success.  The intensive bombardments which precede infantry
attacks play havoc with entanglements, but there is always a chance of the
destruction being incomplete, as upon one occasion farther north, where,
Shorty told me, a man-trap caught a whole platoon of Germans "dead to
rights."

     "But this is wot gives you the pip," he said.  "'Ere we got three
lines of trenches, all of 'em wired up so that a rat couldn't get through
without scratchin' hisself to death.  Fritzie's got better wire than wot
we 'ave, an' more of it.  An' 'e's got more machine guns, more artill'ry,
more shells.  They ain't any little old man-killer ever invented wot they
'aven't got more of than we 'ave.  An' at 'ome they're a-s'yin, 'W'y don't
they get on with it?  W'y don't they smash through?' Let some of 'em come
out 'ere an' 'ave a try!  That's all I got to s'y."

     I didn't tell Shorty that I had been, not exactly an armchair critic,
but at least a barrack-room critic in England.  I had wondered why British
and French troops had failed to smash through.  A few weeks in the
trenches gave me a new viewpoint.  I could only wonder at the magnificent
fighting qualities of soldiers who had held their own so effectively
against armies equipped and armed and munitioned as the Germans were.

     After he had finished drugging his trench pets, Shorty and I made a
tour of the trenches.  I was much surprised at seeing how clean and
comfortable they can be kept in pleasant summer weather.  Men were busily
at work sweeping up the walks, collecting the rubbish, which was put into
sandbags hung on pegs at intervals along the fire trench.  At night the
refuse was taken back of the trenches and buried.  Most of this work
devolved upon the pioneers whose business it was to keep the trenches
sanitary.

     The fire trench was built in much the same way as those which we had
made during our training in England.  In pattern it was something like a
tesselated border.  For the space of five yards it ran straight, then it
turned at right angles around a traverse of solid earth six feet square,
then straight again for another five yards, then around another traverse,
and so throughout the length of the line.  Each five-yard segment, which
is called a "bay," offered firing room for five men.  The traverses, of
course, were for the purpose of preventing enfilade fire.  They also
limited the execution which might be done by one shell.  Even so they were
not an unmixed blessing, for they were always in the way when you wanted
to get anywhere in a hurry.

     "An' you are in a 'urry w'en you sees a Minnie [Minnenwerfer] comin'
your w'y.  But you gets trench legs arter a w'ile.  It'll be a funny sight
to see blokes walkin' along the street in Lunnon w'en the war's over.
They'll be so used to dogin' in an' out o' traverses they won't be able to
go in a straight line."

III - Stories Of Shorty Holloway - "Professor Of Trenches"

     As we walked through the firing-line trenches, I could quite
understand the possibility of one's acquiring trench legs.  Five paces
forward, two to the right, two to the left, two to the left again, then
five to the right, and so on to Switzerland.  Shorty was of the opinion
that one could enter the trenches on the Channel coast and walk through to
the Alps without once coming out on top of the ground.  I am not in a
position either to affirm or to question this statement.  My own
experience was confined to that part of the British front which lies
between Messines in Belgium and Loos in France.  There, certainly, one
could walk for miles, through an intricate maze of continuous underground
passages.

     But the firing-line trench was neither a traffic route nor a
promenade.  The great bulk of inter-trench business passed through the
travelling trench, about fifteen yards in rear of the fire trench and
running parallel to it.  The two were connected by many passageways, the
chief difference between them being that the fire trench was the business
district, while the traveling trench was primarily residential.  Along the
latter were built most of the dugouts, lavatories, and trench kitchens.
The sleeping quarters for the men were not very elaborate.  Recesses were
made in the wall of the trench about two feet above the floor.  They were
not more than three feet high, so that one had to crawl in head first when
going to bed.  They were partitioned in the middle, and were supposed to
offer accommodations for four men, two on each side.  But, as Shorty said,
everything depended on the ration allowance.  Two men who had eaten to
repletion could not hope to occupy the same apartment.  One had a choice
of going to bed hungry or of eating heartily and sleeping outside on the
firing-bench.

     "'Ere's a funny thing," he said.  "W'y do you suppose they makes the
dugouts open at one end?"

     I had no explanation to offer.

     "Crawl inside an' I'll show you."

     I stood my rifle against the side of the trench and crept in.

     "Now, yer supposed to be asleep," said Shorty, and with that he gave
me a whack on the soles of my boots with his entrenching tool handle.  I
can still feel the pain of the blow.

     "Stand to!  Wyke up 'ere!  Stand to!" he shouted, and gave me another
resounding wallop.

     I backed out in all haste.

     "Get the idea?  That's 'ow they wykes you up at stand-to, or w'en
your turn comes fer sentry.  Not bad, wot?"

     I said that it all depended on whether one was doing the waking or
the sleeping, and that, for my part, when sleeping, I would lie with my
head out.

     "You wouldn't if you belonged to our lot.  They'd give it to you on
the napper just as quick as 'it you on the feet.  You ain't on to the
game, that's all.  Let me show you suthin'."

     He crept inside and drew his knees up to his chest so that his feet
were well out of reach.  At his suggestion I tried to use the active
service alarm clock on him, but there was not room enough in which to
wield it.  My feet were tingling from the effect of his blows, and I felt
that the reputation for resourcefulness of Kitchener's Mob was at stake.
In a moment of inspiration I seized my rifle, gave him a dig in the shins
with the butt, and shouted, "Stand to, Shorty!" He came out rubbing his
leg ruefully.

     "You got the idea, mate," he said.  "That's just wot they does w'en
you tries to double-cross 'em by pullin' yer feet in.  I ain't sure w'ere
I likes it best, on the shins or on the feet."

     This explanation of the reason for building three-sided dugouts,
while not, of course, the true one, was none the less interesting.  And
certainly, the task of arousing sleeping men for sentry duty was greatly
facilitated with rows of protruding boot soles "simply arskin' to be 'it,"
as Shorty put it.

     All of the dugouts for privates and N.C.O.s were of equal size and
built on the same model, the reason being that the walls and floors, which
were made of wood, and the roofs, which were of corrugated iron, were put
together in sections at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers, who
superintended all the work of trench construction.  The material was
brought up at night ready to be fitted into excavations.  Furthermore,
with thousands of men to house within a very limited area, space was a
most important consideration.  There was no room for indulging individual
tastes in dugout architecture.  The roofs were covered with from three to
four feet of earth, which made them proof against shrapnel or shell
splinters.  In case of a heavy bombardment with high explosives, the men
took shelter in deep and narrow "slip trenches." These were blind
alley-ways leading off from the traveling trench, with room for from ten
to fifteen men in each.  At this part of the line there were none of the
very deep shell-proof shelters, from fifteen to twenty feet below the
surface of the ground, of which I had read.  Most of the men seemed to be
glad of this.  They preferred taking their chances in an open trench
during heavy shell fire.

IV - The "Suicide Club" - A Bombing Squad

     Realists and Romanticists lived side by side in the traveling trench.
"My Little Gray Home in the West" was the modest legend over one
apartment.  The "Ritz Carlton" was next door to "The Rat's Retreat," with
"Vermin Villa" next door but one.  "The Suicide Club" was the suburban
residence of some members of the bombing squad.  I remarked that the
bombers seemed to take rather a pessimistic view of their profession,
whereupon Shorty told me that if there were any men slated for the Order
of the Wooden Cross, the bombers were those unfortunate ones.  In an
assault they were first at the enemy's position.  They had dangerous work
to do even on the quietest of days.  But theirs was a post of honor, and
no one of them but was proud of his membership in the Suicide Club.

     The officers' quarters were on a much more generous and elaborate
scale than those of the men.  This I gathered from Shorty's description of
them, for I saw only the exteriors as we passed along the trench.  Those
for platoon and company commanders were built along the traveling trench.
The colonel, major, and adjutant lived in a luxurious palace, about fifty
yards down a communication trench.  Near it was the officers' mess, a cafe
de luxe with glass panels in the door, a cooking stove, a long wooden
table, chairs, - everything, in fact, but hot and cold running water.

     "You know," said Shorty, "the officers thinks they 'as to rough it,
but they got it soft, I'm tellin' you!  Wooden bunks to sleep in, batmen
to bring 'em 'ot water fer shavin' in the mornin', all the fags they
wants, - Blimy, I wonder wot they calls livin' 'igh?"

     I agreed that in so far as living quarters are concerned, they were
roughing it under very pleasant circumstances.  However, they were not
always so fortunate, as later experience proved.  Here there had been
little serious fighting for months and the trenches were at their best.
Elsewhere the officers' dugouts were often but little better than those of
the men.

     The first-line trenches were connected with two lines of support or
reserve trenches built in precisely the same fashion, and each heavily
wired.  The communication trenches which joined them were from seven to
eight feet deep and wide enough to permit the convenient passage of
incoming and outgoing troops, and the transport of the wounded back to the
field dressing stations.  From the last reserve line they wound on
backward through the fields until troops might leave them well out of
range of rifle fire.  Under Shorty's guidance I saw the field dressing
stations, the dugouts for the reserve ammunition supply and the stores of
bombs and hand grenades battalion and brigade trench headquarters.  We
wandered from one part of the line to another through trenches, all of
which were kept amazingly neat and clean.  The walls were stayed with
fine-mesh wire to hold the earth in place.  The floors were covered with
board walks carefully laid over the drains, which ran along the center of
the trench and emptied into deep wells, built in recesses in the walls.  I
felt very much encouraged when I saw the careful provision for sanitation
and drainage.  On a fine June morning it seemed probable that living in
ditches was not to be so unpleasant as I had imagined it.  Shorty listened
to my comments with a smile.

     "Don't pat yourself on the back yet a w'ile, mate," he said.  "They
looks right enough now, but wite till you've seen 'em arter a 'eavy rain."

     I had this opportunity many times during the summer and autumn.  A
more wretched existence than that of soldiering in wet weather could
hardly be imagined.  The walls of the trenches caved in in great masses.
The drains filled to overflowing, and the trench walks were covered deep
in mud.  After a few hours of rain, dry and comfortable trenches became a
quagmire, and we were kept busy for days afterward repairing the damage.

     As a machine gunner I was particularly interested in the construction
of the machine-gun emplacements.  The covered battle positions were very
solidly built.  The roofs were supported with immense logs or steel
girders covered over with many layers of sandbags.  There were two
carefully concealed loopholes looking out to a flank, but none for frontal
fire, as this dangerous little weapon best enjoys catching troops in
enfilade owing to the rapidity and the narrow cone of its fire.  Its own
front is protected by the guns on its right and left.  At each emplacement
there was a range chart giving the ranges to all parts of the enemy's
trenches, and to every prominent object both in front of and behind them,
within its field of fire.  When not in use the gun was kept mounted and
ready for action in the battle position.

     "But remember this," said Shorty, "you never fires from your battle
position except in case of attack.  W'en you goes out at night to 'ave a
little go at Fritzie, you always tykes yer gun sommers else.  If you don't
you'll 'ave Minnie an' Busy Bertha an' all the rest o' the Krupp childern
comin' over to see w'ere you live."

     This was a wise precaution, as we were soon to learn from experience.
Machine guns are objects of special interest to the artillery, and the
locality from which they are fired becomes very unhealthy for some little
time thereafter.

V - At The "Mud Larks' " Beauty Shop

     We stopped for a moment at "The Mud Larks' Hairdressing Parlor," a
very important institution if one might judge by its patronage.  It was
housed in a recess in the wall of the traveling trench, and was open to
the sky.  There I saw the latest fashion in "oversea" hair cuts.  The
victims sat on a ration box while the barber mowed great swaths through
tangled thatch with a pair of close-cutting clippers.  But instead of
making a complete job of it, a thick fringe of hair which resembled a
misplaced scalping tuft was left for decorative purposes, just above the
forehead.  The effect was so grotesque that I had to invent an excuse for
laughing.  It was a lame one, I fear, for Shorty looked at me warningly.
When we had gone on a little way he said: -

     "Ain't it a proper beauty parlor?  But you got to be careful about
larfin'.  Some o' the blokes thinks that 'edge-row is a regular ornament."

     I had supposed that a daily shave was out of the question on the
firing-line; but the British Tommy is nothing if not resourceful.
Although water is scarce and fuel even more so, the self-respecting
soldier easily surmounts difficulties, and the Gloucesters were all nice
in matters pertaining to the toilet.  Instead of draining their canteens
of tea, they saved a few drops for shaving purposes.

     "It's a bit sticky," said Shorty, "but it's 'ot, an' not 'arf bad
w'en you gets used to it.  Now, another thing you don't want to ferget is
this: W'en yer movin' up fer yer week in the first line, always bring a
bundle o' firewood with you.  They ain't so much as a match-stick left in
the trenches.  Then you wants to be savin' of it.  Don't go an 'use it all
the first d'y or you'll 'ave to do without yer tea the rest o' the week."

     I remember his emphasis upon this point afterward when I saw men
risking their lives in order to procure firewood.  Without his tea Tommy
was a wretched being.  I do not remember a day, no matter how serious the
fighting, when he did not find both the time and the means for making it.

VI - Flies - Rats - And Domestic Science

     Shorty was a Ph.D. in every subject in the curriculum, including
domestic science.  In preparing breakfast he gave me a practical
demonstration of the art of conserving a limited resource of fuel,
bringing our two canteens to a boil with a very meager handful of sticks;
and while doing so he delivered an oral thesis on the best methods of food
preparation.  For example, there was the item of corned beef - familiarly
called "bully." It was the piece de resistance at every meal with the
possible exception of breakfast, when there was usually a strip of bacon.
Now, one's appetite for "bully" becomes jaded in the course of a few weeks
or months.  To use the German expression one doesn't eat it gern.  But it
is not a question of liking it.  One must eat it or go hungry.  Therefore,
said Shorty, save carefully all of your bacon grease, and instead of
eating your "bully" cold out of the tin, mix it with bread crumbs and
grated cheese and fry it in the grease.  He prepared some in this way, and
I thought it a most delectable dish.  Another way of stimulating the
palate was to boil the beef in a solution of bacon grease and water, and
then, while eating it, "kid yerself that it's Irish stew." This second
method of taking away the curse did not appeal to me very strongly, and
Shorty admitted that he practiced such self-deception with very
indifferent success; for after all "bully" was "bully" in whatever form
you ate it.

     In addition to this staple, the daily rations consisted of bacon,
bread, cheese, jam, army biscuits, tea, and sugar.  Sometimes they
received a tinned meat and vegetable ration, already cooked, and at
welcome intervals fresh meat and potatoes were substituted for corned
beef.  Each man had a very generous allowance of food, a great deal more,
I thought, than he could possibly eat.  Shorty explained this by saying
that allowance was made for the amount which would be consumed by the rats
and the blue-bottle flies.

     There were, in fact, millions of flies.  They settled in great swarms
along the walls of the trenches, which were filled to the brim with warm
light as soon as the sun had climbed a little way up the sky.  Empty
tin-lined ammunition boxes were used as cupboards for food.  But of what
avail were cupboards to a jam-loving and jam-fed British army living in
open ditches in the summer time?  Flytraps made of empty jam tins were set
along the top of the parapet.  As soon as one was filled, another was set
in its place.  But it was an unequal war against an expeditionary force of
countless numbers.

     "They ain't nothin' you can do," said Shorty.  "They steal the jam
right off yer bread."

     As for the rats, speaking in the light of later experience, I can say
that an army corps of Pied Pipers would not have sufficed to entice away
the hordes of them that infested the trenches, living like house pets on
our rations.  They were great lazy animals, almost as large as cats, and
so gorged with food that they could hardly move.  They ran over us in the
dugouts at night, and filched cheese and crackers right through the heavy
water-proofed coverings of our haversacks.  They squealed and fought among
themselves at all hours.  I think it possible that they were carrion
eaters, but never, to my knowledge, did they attack living men.  While
they were unpleasant bedfellows, we became so accustomed to them that we
were not greatly concerned about our very intimate associations.

     Our course of instruction at the Parapet-etic School was brought to a
close late in the evening when we shouldered our packs, bade good-bye to
our friends the Gloucesters, and marched back in the moonlight to our
billets.  I had gained an entirely new conception of trench life, of the
difficulties involved in trench building, and the immense amount of
material and labor needed for the work.

     Americans who are interested in learning of these things at first
hand will do well to make the grand tour of the trenches when the war is
finished.  Perhaps the thrifty continentals will seek to commercialize
such advantage as misfortune as brought them, in providing favorable
opportunities.  Perhaps the Touring Club of France will lay out a new
route, following the windings of the firing line from the Channel coast
across the level fields of Flanders, over the Vosges Mountains to the
borders of Switzerland.  Pedestrians may wish to make the journey on foot,
cooking their supper over Tommy's rusty biscuit-tin stoves, sleeping at
night in the dugouts where he lay shivering with cold during the winter
nights of 1914 and 1915.  If there are enthusiasts who will be satisfied
with only the most intimate personal view of the trenches, if there are
those who would try to understand the hardships and discomforts of trench
life by living it during a summer vacation, I would suggest that they
remember Private Shorty Holloway's parting injunction to me: -

     "Now, don't ferget, Jamie!" he said as we shook hands, "always 'ave a
box o' Keatings 'andy, an' 'ang on to yer extra shirt!"

     (Private Hall, of Kitchener's Mob, describes the scenes when the army
was being organized for the first British expeditionary force.  He tells
about "The Rookies"; "The Mob in Training"; "Ordered Abroad." He describes
their fights; their life under cover; their lodgings, billets and
experiences in the trenches, "sitting tight." It is "men of this stamp,"
he says, "who have the fortunes of England in their keeping.  And they are
called 'The Boys of the Bulldog Breed.'")