Stories from the Trenches: Humorous and Lively Doings of Our 'Boys Over There'. Case Carleton Britton
whiteness of chalk. From somewhere behind us a howitzer is throwing shells over our heads, shells that come on and pass with the rush of a train pitching itself recklessly out of control. We listen to the clamor as it goes on – a couple of miles or so – separating itself from the ill assortment of snarling and smashing and breaking and grunting that rises from the battlefield.
As they climbed the ridge the guns seemed to be muffled until they got beyond the shelter of Notre Dame de Lorette. Then, says the writer:
We suddenly appeared to tumble into a welter of sound. And the higher we climbed Vimy, the louder the tumult became. “Aunty,” throwing over heavy stuff, had but a few moments before been the only near thing in the battle. Now the contrast was such as if we had been suddenly pushed into the middle of the battle. The air was full of strange, harsh noises and crackings and cries. And the earth before us was alive with subdued flame flashes and growing bushes of smoke.
Five miles away, Lens, its church spires adrift in eddies of smoke, appeared very unconscious of it all. Just showing on the horizon was Douai, and I wondered what forests of death lay waiting between those Lens churches and the Douai outlines where the ground was sunken and mysterious under the haze.
Here, then, was the panorama of battle. Never a man in sight, but the entire earth goaded by some vast invisible force. Clots of smoke of varying colors arrived from nowhere, died away, or were smudged out by other clots. A big black pall hung over Givenchy like the sounding-board over a cathedral pulpit. A little farther on the village of Angres seemed palisaded with points of flame. Away to the right the long, straight road from Lens to Arras showed clear and strong without a speck of life upon it.
No life anywhere, no human thing moving. And yet one believed that under a thin crust of earth the whole forces of Europe were struggling and throwing up sound.
Among all the combatants there is a desire for peace, says Mr. Flower, who found a striking example of the sentiment of the Boche in what had been the crypt of the Bapaume cathedral. He writes:
I saw scores of skulls of those who were dead many decades before the war rolled over Europe, and on the skull of one I saw scribbled in indelible pencil:
“Dass der Friede kommen mag”
(“Hurry up, Peace.”) —Otto Trübner.
Now, Otto Trübner may be a very average representative of his type. And maybe Otto Trübner’s head now bears a passing likeness to the skull he scribbled on in vandal fashion before he evacuated Bapaume. But whether or no, he is, metaphorically speaking, a straw which shows the play of the wind.
Sergeant (drilling awkward squad) – “Company! Attention company, lift up your left leg and hold it straight out in front of you!”
One of the squad held up his right leg by mistake. This brought his right-hand companion’s left leg and his own right leg close together. The officer, seeing this, exclaimed angrily:
“And who is that blooming galoot over there holding up both legs?”
Tommy I – “That’s a top-hole pipe, Jerry. Where d’ye get it?”
Tommy II – “One of them German Huns tried to take me prisoner an’ I in’erited it from ’im.”
WHEN “ACE” LUFBERY BAGGED NO. 13
LIEUT. GERVAIS RAOUL LUFBERY, an “Ace” of the Lafayette Escadrille, has brought down his thirteenth enemy airplane. The German machine was first seen by Lufbery – who was scouting – several hundred yards above him. By making a wide detour and climbing at a sharp angle he maneuvered into a position above the enemy plane at an altitude of five thousand yards and directly over the trenches. The German pilot was killed by Lufbery’s first shot and the machine started to fall. The gunner in the German plane quickly returned the fire, even as he was falling to his death. One of his bullets punctured the radiator and lodged in the carburetor of Lufbery’s plane, and he was forced to descend.
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