XXIX

THE FRONT ONCE MORE

A witty subaltern once described the present war as a period of long boredom punctuated by moments of intense fear.  All men would emphasise the boredom, and most men would admit the fear.  The only soldiers I ever met who affected to know nothing of the fear were Afridis, and the Afridi is notoriously a ravisher of truth.  But the predominant feeling—­in the winter months at any rate—­was the boredom.  There was a time when some units, owing to the lack of reserves, were only relieved once every three weeks, and time hung heavy on their hands.  Under these circumstances they began to take something more than a professional interest in their neighbours opposite.  The curiosity was reciprocated.  Items of news, more or less mendacious, were exchanged when the trenches were near enough to permit of vocal intercourse.  Curious conventions grew up, and at certain hours of the day and, less commonly, of the night, there was a kind of informal armistice.  In one section the hour of 8 to 9 A.M. was regarded as consecrated to “private business,” and certain places indicated by a flag were regarded as out of bounds by the snipers on both sides.  On many occasions working parties toiled with pick and shovel within talking distance of one another, and, although it was, of course, never safe to presume upon immunity, they usually forbore to interfere with one another.  The Bedfords and the South Staffords worked in broad daylight with their bodies half exposed above the trenches, raising the parapet as the water rose.  About 200 yards away the Germans were doing the same.  Neither side interfered with the navvy-work of the other, and for the simplest of all reasons:  both were engaged in fighting a common foe—­the underground springs.  When two parties are both in danger of being drowned they haven’t time to fight.  To speak of drowning is no hyperbole; the mud of Flanders in winter is in some places like a quicksand, and men have been sucked under beyond redemption.  A common misery begat a mutual forbearance.

It was under such circumstances that the following exchange of pleasantries took place.  The men of a certain British regiment heard at intervals a monologue going on in the trenches opposite, and every time the speaker stopped his discourse shouts of guttural laughter arose, accompanied by cries of “Bravo, Mueller!” “Sehr komisch!” “Noch einmal, Mueller!” Our men listened intently, and an acquaintance with German, so imperfect as to be almost negligible, could not long disguise from them the fact that their Saxon neighbours possessed a funny man whose name was Mueller.  Their interest in Mueller, always audible but never visible, grew almost painful.  At last they could restrain it no longer.  At a given signal they began chanting, like the gallery in a London theatre, except that their voices came from the pit: 

     We—­want—­Mueller!  We—­want—­Mueller!  We—­want—­Mueller!