The first two weeks at the Aisne were one continual downpour,
and the foundation of that ground is chalk. On the sides of the
plateau of Craonne, after two weeks' rain, the chalky mud seemed
bottomless. "It filled the ears and eyes and throats of our men,"
wrote John Buchan, "it plastered their clothing and mingled generously
with their diet. Their grandfathers, who had been at Sebastopol,
could have told them something about mud; but even after India and
South Africa, the mire of the Aisne seemed a grievous affliction."
The fighting was constant, the nervous strain exhausting, and the
cold and wet were even harder to bear. There had as yet been no
time to build trenches with all conveniences, such as the Germans
possessed on the crest of the ridge, and the trenches of the Allies
were a chilled inferno of woe.
A stretch of waste ground lay between the trenches, and often for
days at a time the fire was too heavy to rescue the wounded or
bring in the dead. The men in the trenches, on either side, were
compelled to hear the groans of the wounded, lying in the open day
after day, until exhaustion, cold and pain brought them a merciful
release. In letters more than one soldier declared that the hardest
thing to bear was to hear a fellow comrade shrieking or groaning
in agony a few steps away for hours--even days at a time--and to
be able to do nothing to help. The stench from the unburied bodies
was so great that officially all the tobacco for the whole battle
front was commandeered and sent to the trenches under the plateau
of Craonne and on the hill to the westward, where the British First
Army Corps was placed.
Pages:
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220