WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS.
138
The Ypres Times.
Many accounts have been given, official and otherwise, of the many great and small
battles which from time to time took place in the Ypres Salient but besides these con
tests between rival infantrymen, gunners, etc., many small incidents took place, which,
while having no direct effect on the duration of the War, at least had the effect of rousing
a man from the dull monotony of trench life, which, in spite of the nightly excitement,
did become monotonous, and in doing so, prevented many a man from becoming a mere
automaton and losing that desire to kill, which is the be-all and end-all of a soldier's life
in war.
One such small incident occurred to me at a time when I was in that dangerous state
of being, as the Army vocabulary put it, fed up and far from home," or words to that
effect, and served to jog up my thoughts and make me look upon the humorous side of
war, if one might call it such.
In one of the innumerable shelters near that salubrious village of Dickebusch, I
was spending the evening stretched out on a bed of wire netting inwardly cursing war
and all its discomforts and occasionally listening in to the other four members of our
Lewis Gun team discussing various problems from theology down to the acrobatic qualities
of the Dickebusch rat. Of the latter subject 1 had not so far seen any commendable
exhibition, but our ration bag was hung from the centre of the roof by a piece of string
about a couple of feet long in due appreciation of his powers. As I lay gazing up, I saw
one of our old friends approaching along the beam and he did full justice to the size,
which made Dickebusch famous he must have been a thought reader, and intended prov
ing to my doubting mind the prowess of his clan. Bit by bit he traversed that two feet
of string, a quarter of an inch thick, until he got a grip of the canvas side of the ration bag,
and there he clung in an endeavour to chew his way to what a motherly "Q" provided
for the sustenance of a soldier, until his weight being evidently too much for him, he
dropped with a thud to the earth and ambled away and I, half satisfied with his clever
ness, dropped off to sleep with my haversack as a pillow.
As is usual in such circumstances, I dreamed a dream. I imagined myself back in the
old estaminet behind the line, with a beer in front of me and a mademoiselle beside me
conducting herself in the usual entertaining way. I would lift my beer, but always her
hair would brush my face ere the beer could touch my lips and then, unfortunately, my
dream faded and I awoke. Lazily throwing my legs over the side of my Queen Anne
bedstead, I picked up my haversack and there, on the front of it, was a hole as large as
the palm of my hand, stretching to a point just below where my nose had been it had
been my disappointed friend of the ration bag attempting to get his nourishment from
the iron rations in my haversack, or perhaps he wished to convince me of his capabilities
I was positive her hair had been realbut then comparisons are odious, and in all prob
ability mademoiselle would have felt the comparison more odious.
I will not divulge the remarks of the sergeant at the first parade on coming out of
the line, as to the appearance of such a haversack in the ranks of the oldest regiment in
the British Army they were terse and to the pointbut I refitted myself at the earliest
opportunity in the felonious manner known in the Army. But the slating was worth
it, as I took a special interest thereafter in those rodents, and many a weary hour was
passed joyfully in their company but I should have liked to meet, that fellow who
taught me never to be a sceptic, and to have shaken him by the paw, but then, on
the other handhe may have been a she.
WANGLER.
