236
THE YPRES TIMES
the bombers to the stretcher-bearers just before this, and a note in my diary, under
January 20th, 1918, reads: I came up as an S.B. and have had a very cushy time
so far, though two of us came out with the stretcher to-day. One casualty so far
a thumb cut with barbed wire!"
I suppose a guard was put on, but as a stretcher-bearer I slept peacefully at
night, and under a proper roof. The veterans began to wax sarcastic again and
talked of the good old days when soldiering was a man's job and not a children's
picnic. For the first two or three nights of our first turn in the Italian front line
we were contentedly amused. We made ridiculous comparisons: we compared
this front line with the one from which we had crept so thankfully when the Welsh
came to relieve us at Passchendaele, or even when we were on No. 7 Post in front
of Ecoust when Jerry came over, andbut comparisons were foolish! After all,
this was the way they ought to run a war, and then we could send home for our
wives and families. As a hobby, trench-digging would amuse the youngsters
Afterwards we always said that the British artillery spoiled that war as we first
found it on the Piave. We had seen the gunners away back, digging their pits
and hauling their guns and piling up fancy work with tree-branches with the idea
of deceiving any airman into the belief that it was just a little bird-shelter, and we
had said Hullo, chumin passing, as friend to friend. And then, just as we
were settling down and beginning to talk of the possibility of pleasant walks
towards a romantic-looking monastery not far away, those wretched gunners began
to bang away!
It came as a surprise' to us; we had the feeling that someone had blundered.
One felt that it might so easily annoy the Austrians over the way, if there were
any. They might be tempted to shoot back, and, in that event, the Piave would no
longer be a quiet holiday resort.
Those guns and gunners did all that we feared. The whistle had blown, so
to speak, and the game began again. On the following day we had five casualties
two of them bad stretcher cases. Before the time came for us to leave the front
line, the Austrians had blown that romantic-looking monastery to little bits. We
watched it fall, bit by bit, one bright afternoon. Judging by the row they made,
the British guns were blowing several places to bits, and were trying to settle
down to a twelve-hour day and twelve-hour night existence.
Thereafter strong comparison ceases and becomes merely a matter of degree.
It was not too bad in the beginning, but it grew gradually more and more like
France, culminating in the crossing of the Piave and the rout of the Austrians in
October, 1918.
All of which the historian has now faithfully recorded, giving due praise where
it was merited. I have written merely as an ordinary private, trying to recall the
greatest contrast some of us experienced in the warthe tortured days and nights
in the Salient, with its everlasting mud and ceaseless booming of the guns, and
then, the next time in the line, on the banks of the Piave, with its peaceful calm
and pleasant sunshine during the day and never so much as a rifle-shot to disturb
the quiet of the night.
Doubtless the gunners were right to put an end to that sort of warfare. But
if anyone is thinking of starting another war, and would like me to join in, may I
just mention that I would much prefer the sort of war we found on the Piave, if
nobody else minds? Big guns are so noisy.
