131 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
131 lines
4.8 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2014-10-22T19:58:07.000Z'
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title: A Soldier Explains What It Was Like in the World War I Trenches (1916)
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url: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119933/interview-wounded-world-war-i-soldier-bulgaria
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author: diodorus
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points: 133
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 41
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1414007887
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_diodorus
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- story_8494778
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objectID: '8494778'
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---
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“Say it,” I begged him.
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He smiled.
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“What kind of clothes did you have?”
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“Our Dardanelles suit.”
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So it was true; it had been almost impossible to believe.
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“We was up in the mountains with the same stuff we wore down in
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Gallipoli in summer,” he went on, in his unimpassioned way: “The
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trenches only came up to your knees, and no protection at all; and then
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there was no food.”
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“No food?”
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“Well, a biscuit, a bit of jam and some tea, maybe.”
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“How many times a day?”
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“Twice a day some, three times a day some, mostly once; when they could
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get it to us. Just enough to keep the life in you.”
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“What did you do all that time?”
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“We had to be looking out always; you had to be on your knees, too, for
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that. No sleep—o’ course you dozed a bit now and then, but mostly you
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had to be watchin’.”
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Impossible to go forwards or backwards, impossible to believed;
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stupefied with the bitter icy waiting. I was told later the German
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officers had maintained that nine days’ delay. The Bulgarians would
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never have held the comitadjis back so long.
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“And how did the boys feel?”
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“Oh—“ he stopped, puzzled. Fortunately he was no psychologist or he
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would have told me how the boys felt, and I should not have learned that
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there are times when you do not feel.
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“The last two days—“ he began, and stopped again, puzzled. “Well,
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we—didn’t feel good,” he finished lamely.
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“What do you mean?—You sort of woke up, and felt—?”
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“We felt something coming,” he said, tersely; and just for an instant I
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felt what those men, a yard apart in the knee-high trenches that were no
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protection at all, had felt.
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“We knew they were getting ready for something,” he said, with another
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stop, in that elliptical fashion of his.
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“Artillery?” I asked.
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“Yes,” he said, “artillery.”
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“What about your own?”
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“Oh, the English guns were no good at all,” he said, decidedly. “The
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French was all right. The Bulgarians worked theirs fine.”
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At the foreign office they had told me the English and French artillery
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worked much better than the Bulgarian, but Jimmie had been out there
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nine days and nights, in Balkan mountain wind and tropical clothing, and
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at the end the Bulgars had come “with the knife.” I do not imagine you
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can remember much difference between shrapnel and bayonets sometimes.
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Moreover, it is true that the effect of only the enemy’s shrapnel was
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apparent to Jimmie; but it is equally true that the Bulgarians are so
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inordinately proud of their prowess with the “knife” that they gladly
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belittle any other excellence of the army merely to enhance the glory of
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their bayonets. “Ein dummer Pat\!” Herbst of the Intelligence Office
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said impatiently, when I repeated to him what Jimmie had said of the
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Bulgarian artillery.
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“Yes,” Jimmie said again, in his even tone, “ours was all mismanaged—bad
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handlin’—I think it was the Colonel’s fault.”
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“Then the Bulgarians came?” I prompted. “Did you check them at all?”
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“We was fagged—no life in us left. And then they were three to one, and
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we each of us a yard apart.” He bent down and stroked over his wound
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again.
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That was all. January first, took the King’s shilling, and later took
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four months of the Dardenelles; after that he marched “fine o’ heart”
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with a tropically clothed division the majority of whose members had
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never seen service into an early Macedonian winter to meet the
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Bulgarians, was rippled with a bayonet through the left thigh and now
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lay comfortable and quite content in the Red Cross Hospital in Sofia
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where he received every care the Bulgarians themselves received.
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“The only trouble is—they don’t understand you,” he said, not by way of
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complaint, but to explain.
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One year this bit of flesh and blood and bone had played the game with
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steel, and he was one of those who had come through, even survived the
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errors of his officers. I looked at the mild amiable man, with his large
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girl’s eyes and face with no indication of energy or personal assertion.
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This Irishman, who in the normal course of events might never have gone
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from Dublin to London, here in Sofia. For all the purposeless pain of
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the situation it was shriekingly comic.
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“Who fights the point?” I asked, rather pointlessly.
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He smiled at the stupidity of the question.
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“Oh, the Bulgarians,” he said, with the nearest approach to emphasis I
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had heard from him, bending down over the discomfort of his wound again.
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