At The Front

Lieutenant Alec Johnston

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781782894872
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

THE purpose of this little volume is to preserve, for his friends and the many others who cared for his writings, a record of the work which Alec Johnston contributed to Punch during the War. Written under all sorts of impossible conditions, they never pretended to be more than the gay and cynical banter of one who brought to the hardships and perils of life at the Front an incurable habit of humour. For several years Alec Johnston had been associated with Punch as an occasional contributor of light verse and prose. After leaving Oxford where, as at St. Paul's School, he had given promise of a brilliant career, he became a schoolmaster, but his inclinations lay elsewhere and he would probably have followed the profession of letters but for the outbreak of war. Within two days he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles-he was then twenty-five years old-and went out with their first draft in October, 1914. In February of the next year he received a commission in the 1st King's Shropshire Light Infantry, and was with them first at Armentières, and then upon the Ypres salient till his death. He was promoted Lieutenant in September, 1915.

II — AT THE FRONT

I

WEEKS and weeks ago a German battery got the range of a slab of railway from which our armoured train had been grieving them; and but for the fact that the train had moved off about half-an-hour earlier it might quite easily have been hit. The German battery was so pleased at this victory that they now make a hobby of this bit of the line, dusting it up daily from 5 to 7.30 P.M.; and I should think it would be very dangerous for anyone who was actually present at that hour. But, as nobody ever is, our casualties at this point are negligible. In the meantime the noise is horrid; and our billet has already thought out several polite notes to the battery commander, pointing out that we like to make up lost sleep between tea and dinner. The only difficulty is in the matter of delivery.

There was a time when the trenches were as restful as billets; such halcyon days are gone. An offensive attitude is demanded. We must, it is felt, prove to the Bosch our activity, our confidence in ourselves, our contempt of him, and, in short, our höchste Gefechtbereitschaft (all rights still reserved). To achieve this without actually attacking takes a bit of doing. A specimen of demonstrative operations ordered during twenty-four hours may, without giving too much away, be briefly sketched :

4 A.m. Alternate platoons will sing God save the King, Tipperary and The Rosary until 4.15, and alternate sections will fire one round rapid. Should the Bosch disregard this.

6 A.M. Swedish drill will take place on the parapet. This having failed to draw fire or other sign of hostile attention.

10 A.M. The regimental mouth-organist section will play the Wacht am Rhein flatly, timelessly, tunelessly, but still recognisably.

When both sides have recovered.

5 P.M. Two companies will fire salutes at the setting sun, while the remaining two will play Association football in front of the barbed wire.

By some such policy of frightfulness we daunt the Bosch from day to day, and we have small doubt that on that afternoon when we go “over the top” to take tea with him he will meet us halfway with raised arms and a happy smile of relief at the ending of his suspense.

II

THERE is a delusion current that this war out here is stationary when it does not move. It is true that there was once a rumour that certain lines of trenches came to understandings with certain other lines, by which blue and red flags were waved before the occupants on either side fired off rifles, or committed similar dangerous acts which might otherwise have been interpreted as unfriendly. In the meantime they completed the tessellation of their pavements and installed geysers and electric light. Everyone has heard the rumour, but no one you meet was actually there; so the only conclusion we can come to is that both sides dug and dug until they got completely lost underground, and were either incapable of return, or so happy, comfortable and well found that they stayed there, thus ingeniously leaving the war without leaving their posts, which is, after all, the ultimate ideal of troglodytic patriotism.

However that may have been, the war elsewhere is in a state of steady evolution. You can never count on it. You get into a beautiful quiet trench, the sun shines and the birds sing, and you plant primroses on the parapet, and arrange garden parties, and write home and ask the sister of your friend to come out and have tea in the trench on Friday. And then on Friday just as you’re getting the tea-things out, and sorting the tinned cucumber sandwiches, and shifting the truffles out of the pâté, the wind blows from the north, and the rain rains, and the birds shut up, and an 8-inch shell comes crump on the primrose bed, and stray splinters carry away the teapot and the provision box and the cook; and on the whole you’re not sorry Leonore couldn’t come after all.

Not long ago it seemed good to the état majeur that no officer should be in possession of the means of supplying the pictorial daily with pictorial war. Every company in every battalion duly rendered a certificate that it was without cameras. Now there was a certain battalion much given to photographic studies. And when the day came that the certificate should be signed and rendered, the commander of A company bethought him of his old-time friendship with the commander of B company; and in token of his sincere esteem sent to him as a gift the three cameras which his officers had no further use for. This done, he forwarded his certificate. B company, though delighted at the gift and the spirit in which it was offered, had already four cameras in possession of its officers. Moreover, the time for B company to render its certificate was at hand. And seeing that there was much friendship subsisting between B and C companies the O.C. B company remembered that the O.C. C company was a keen photographer, and one likely to welcome a gift of seven cameras. Having despatched them, he signed and certified for B company. C company, whose gratitude cannot easily be described, was nevertheless in an obvious predicament. So, when C company certified, D company was in possession of thirteen cameras; and finding that A company had now no cameras at all rendered unto it the very large stock with which it was reluctantly obliged to part, and unto the C.O. a certificate that D company was cameraless; and the C.O. certified in accordance with company notifications.

That evening company commanders dined together, and latest advices advise that the wicked battalion still spends its spare time in photographing approaching shells, devastated churches and Tommy at his ablutions.

III

EVER since I gave up working and became a soldier I have longed to be in charge of an outpost. Then at last I felt I should get clear about the relations of its curious component parts. Can you, for instance, I have wondered, draw on your fatigue men for sentries over reconnoitring patrols? If you can’t, you have twenty idle men and fifty vacant jobs; if you can, you have twenty men far too busy doing the fifty jobs. It didn’t seem quite satisfactory either way. I felt it must be one of those arrangements that are right enough in practice but break down when you come to theory. I wanted the thing to play with a little by myself.

Not until three days ago, however, was I ever in charge of any such thing; then to my great joy, instead of going back to the enervating influence of our billets, I was sent to look after twenty men and one outpost.

Frankly I am disappointed. I don’t believe it is an outpost. I don’t believe it ever was an outpost. The twenty men are there all right. True, I’m always losing one or two in the straw, but they turn up again at rifle inspection. I don’t really complain of the men; it’s the apparatus that’s all wrong. The post—I won’t call it “out” anymore; if I qualified it at all I should call it an inpost—consists of a stable, two cupboards, and a cellar. There used to be a house, too, facing towards Germany, but I can’t find it anywhere now.

So much for the actual post. Now for us. We never reconnoitre, we never patrol, we never picket and we hardly ever fatigue. One sentry, and he by night only, watches over the entire proposition. If you were to enter suddenly you would fancy you had stumbled upon a homoeopathic hospital for the treatment of sleeping sickness—in short, non outpost sed bedpost.

The reasons for this scandalous state of affairs are twain. In the first place we have a whole firing line some hundreds of yards in front of us. So the chances against the Bosch arriving unbeknownstlike (as the corporal puts it) are less large than might appear if I were to swank to you that we were really an outpost. In the second place the disintegration of the house that used to face Germany, and a considerable accumulation of sizeable craters round about, suggest that it would be unwise for us to advertise our presence. We are, in fact, a sort of ambush. The men are first-class at ambushing, so far as we have gone at present.

To leave the post by day you must crawl out through a hole in the wall, and carry on through fourteen other holes in walls to a point some hundred yards in rear. You may then walk about and pretend to be a reconnoitring patrol or a picket as much as you like. We usually reconnoitre after leeks and lettuce, but there are carrots still surviving and strawberries to come, if, as seems to be the general opinion, we are here for three years or duration of war.

My cupboard is simply but tastefully furnished, with one chair, six boxes small-arm ammunition, one incomplete escritoire and four bricks (loot). When helped out with lilac, soldiers’ buttons, hyacinths and pansies, it hardly knows itself, and the Major, dropping in unexpectedly the other day, mistook it for a room.

We have our moments of excitement even here. Now and then my appetite is broken by sudden messages, always arriving as I sit down to my lettuce. Then I parade the garrison and speak to them as follows:—

“Englishmen—(pause; electrical effect; two men drop their rifles)—Englishmen, your time of trial has come. Since we cannot go to the war the war is to come to us. The Adjutant has arranged for us to be heavily shelled (by the enemy) shortly after 3 A.M. to-morrow. Englishmen, I rely on you to behave as such; I am persuaded that you will. After dusk we will fare forth and put three more layers of sand-bags over the cellar. We will sleep there to-night and spend to-morrow there. Englishmen, dis—miss!”

They are a mutinous crowd, I am afraid. They finished the job just as our guns started; then they all went to the front of the building and looked on. The enemy were mutinous too; they didn’t shell us at all the whole morning. I told our Adjutant, and I expect he’ll do something pretty severe about it.

IV

IT is hard for the most insensible of men to look on at this war unmoved for long. We have looked on at it for months and months and months from a haunt of ancient peace known for some obscure antiquarian reason as a firing line; and now we are to be moved; to-morrow, or the next day, or, to sum up all the possibilities in the word of the historic despatch, “shortly.” Indeed, the Sergeant-Major even now approaching with his indestructible smile may bear the details that we are to follow. The Sergeant-Major is a great man for a detail. Nothing escapes him. Three weeks ago measles stole into our midst like thieves in the night. The S.-M. had them before you could say “Bosch.”

Pending the push-off, we anti-asphyxiate ourselves. There used to be some doubt, among N.C.O.’s supervising, as to whether the impedimenta supplied for that end were inspirators or perspirators. Eventually they compromised on “gas-bags.” Only nine patterns have so far been issued, but the more cautious of us wear all these simultaneously, so if Nos. 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 fail, 2, 4, 6 and 8 may prove efficacious.

Preparations for the trek are in train. Each Platoon Commander—in view of the fact that men who have lived nine months in ditches may have mislaid the use of their feet—has written out slips permitting No. 000 Private Blank to fall out and report at Dash with all possible expedition. Now our Mr. Mactavish is a very thorough officer, and he was determined that no one was going to catch him out through his having too few of these backsliding permits. But when I found him engaged on the sixty-fourth, the strength of his platoon being forty-seven, I felt compelled to demand some explanation. He seems to have assumed that some men might fall out twice. To me, the assumption that men whose feet have given way will pick up a taxi somewhere and overhaul you just for the pleasure of falling out again, appeared rash.

Since the foregoing was indelibled, we have walked a great walk—seven leagues, no less. At intervals, we bivouac in odd bits of Europe that happen to be unoccupied when we stumble on them. Some are crowded with horrible dangers. Never shall I forget seeing Private Packer wake up from his afternoon sleep to find himself practically in the act of being bitten...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• EDITOR’S PREFACE
• I - AT THE BACK OF THE FRONT
• II - AT THE FRONT