‘Tonight I crawled out onto No Man’s Land,’ he told Pips, ‘and had a look at our wire entanglements – nothing can be more illustrative of present warfare. No Man’s Land…is a mass of shapeless shell-holes – in one is a battered steel helmet, in another a broken rifle and everywhere crumpled up wire entanglements in which you get wound up and fall over and expect a sniper to hear you…I went out with a corporal to see how thick the wire was, but I spent most of the time wondering if anyone was going to see us.’
A photo of No Man’s Land, taken from Memories of Active Service, facing page 141. By Permission of the Surrey History Centre.
He had been telling Pips about the routine of a nighttime tour of duty, and how it was his job to make sure none of the sentries were dozing – although this was unlikely, since his presence was usually announced by ‘an army of rats which have been routed out by the noise,[which] run along in front of you trying to find holes to get in.’ The sentries were often nervy, and the officers got nervy too, although they had to try not to show it.
The importance of looking calm for the men was something he emphasised to his mother as well: ‘through all the little tragedies that happen each day in men being killed and wounded you have to try and show to the men that you are taking it all calmly and you must be so careful not to show any weakness.’ He told her that he did not fear death – ‘it is only a natural thing and everything natural is good [a philosophy he undoubtedly picked up from reading Marcus Aurelius] – but that what he hated was ‘the suspense of waiting for these shells [the ‘Minnies’] to come and when they are up in the air the excitement of running along to judge their fall takes away fear for the minute – it is after the explosion that you feel cold and frightened all over – and then is the time you have got to smile to reassure the men.’ He told Pips about them, too, noting that he spent his daytime tours of duty scanning the horizon: ‘Can you imagine what it is like to stand in a narrow trench and watch great things 2 feet long and about a foot round shoot up in the air, looking like a little piece of pencil the height is so great to which it goes – it then turns and shoots down towards earth whilst we all run along in different directions and screw up into a corner and wait for the bang and then a shower of dirt about 5 seconds after. It is just like judging a high skyer in a cricket match except that you have to get as far from it as possible instead of under it.’
There had been a lot of them that very morning, and one of his men had been killed. He barely mentioned it to Pips (and only tangentially to his mother), but his later memoir shows that he was deeply affected by it. Maybe that lay behind his suggest to Pips that they should not seek to annoy the Germans by shelling: ‘the Germans are usually content to be left alone if we do not annoy them – but I suppose we have to show we are their enemies, though goodness knows none of us want to fight them and I am sure they don’t want to fight us.’
[Next letter: 15 October]