Louis de Bernières - The Dust That Falls From Dreams

29th. Water bottle frozen. 1200 approx. Fritz began shelling with lyddite five yards from trench! Again at 1500. Read almost all of Quo Vadis today. No good getting panicky. If they get you they get you, and much safer in a trench than not. Came back across fields as moon was too bright for usual way. Kemmel shelled. Killed twelve.

Can’t help thinking about how nice it is when resting behind the lines. No stench except when the wind turns in the wrong direction.

And you can sleep. Slept for twelve hours once, all my webbing and equipment on, and my boots. The sergeant didn’t have the heart to disturb me.

30th. Did not do anything but waited to be called as raid expected. Mother sent me Vest Pocket Kodak. Not supposed to have it but lots do, and nobody gets charged. Took picture of Hutch, with the stray dog we adopted when it was dug out of a ruin. Call it Fartillery because of productive guts.

Comradeship. Nothing like it in civvy street. Rises up out of your heart because so relieved to be still alive and temporarily safe. Sergeant from the South Lancashire Regiment turned up, when we were completely done in, with a huge jug of beer in his hands. Gave it to us, and went. Didn’t have to do it, could have given it to his own boys.

31st. Fatigues cleaning up shelled houses for fresh billets. Shells certainly wreak havoc. So sad to see these homes empty and think that a few months ago this village prosperous and happy. At night did headquarters quad at chateau. Beautiful night, and imagined I was at home, i.e. bath then dinner with Mother, after dinner, study, and then bed. Boche interrupted with shells.

Hands need time to heal. Always blistered/cracked/bleeding so much labour, exposure frost and water. Delicious to ease boots off and waggle toes and just expose flesh to air. As usually on fifteen minutes’ notice to depart, we’re expected to sleep with boots on, but hardly ever do. The WOs don’t want to sleep in theirs either, so conspire in pretence.

1st of Feb. Quite tired. Feet hurting for first time. Think it’s rheumatism. Slept well in school. Rosie’s packet arrived, and scarf from Mrs Beale. Dreamed of Mother, that she was out here with me.

Keeping us fit and busy marching us round the countryside. Choreographed tourism, get to see troops from all over the place, pleasant little ruined villages. We go to tiny place of Albertine and Emma, two fat/cheerful sisters who’ll cook anything we bring. They make omelettes, and a kind of soup that ain’t soup at all, milk with crumbled bread, and there’s horrible vinegary wine, coffee, local beer (not bad at all). Always a scuffle to get near stove, blazes away like billy-o. Plenty of fuel in ruined houses. Five francs on pay day, enough for omelettes at Emma and Albertine’s. Hardly understand a word they say. Make do with patois.

2nd. Warm today. Raining. Made hurdles all afternoon with sticks and string. Dreamed last night of Baltimore. Far away and long ago.

Re. lice: all been bedded down in church, and Catholic lice got into this poor Protestant’s clothes, and poor Protestant clothes of brothers’. Quite enjoyed seeing Catholic services. Sort of barbaric magnificence.

Difficult to wash at best of times. Have to find an intact cottage and pay for bucket of hot water, then strip off in front of them and wash, because they want to guard their bucket. Aren’t bothered by sight of naked soldiers, certainly do roaring trade.

Spent much time picking lice out of each other’s hair, like monkeys, but then shaved heads completely. Seem to be different kinds of lice. Head kind, bedding and clothing kind, and the private parts kind, obtainable from naughty girls. Not got that kind, because well behaved, but plenty of boys say that you didn’t need to be having fun to pick them up somehow. Then you get scepticism from MO.

Told not to scratch bites because diseases get in. Louse shit in the wounds. Skin comes up in weals and scars.

Instructed to soften nits with vinegar, then comb hair over and over with nit comb, then burn the nits. Else soak rag in paraffin, sleep with that on head, held in place with bathing cap. Before use of bathing cap again cook it in oven, if can find one. Total absence of bathing caps, paraffin and handy oven, however, so shave heads and make smelly bonfire of hair. Odour just like farrier shoeing horse.

Body lice little blighters survive washing pot unless most extremely hot. Don’t actually live on you. Live in seams of clothes and visit just exactly when about to relax/feel a bit happy/composed. Then bite under armpits and round waist, fury of itching/scratching/swearing. Were told to soak clothes in Lysol and rub selves all over with paraffin and eucalyptus, and sprinkle inside uniforms with sulphur.

Hutch said, ‘But, sir, we don’t have any of those things,’ and MO replied, ‘Very true, Private Hutchinson, but I have been telling you what you ought to do, and not what you actually can do.’

Best thing to shave every single hair body, so nowhere to attach eggs, and then spend hours going through seams of uniforms picking out the lice/cracking them with thumbnail.

Think that lice good for morale. Companionable occupation when nothing happening, can sit on pediments naked/shivering, cracking lice/cracking jokes without thought of shells/shrapnel. Sometimes keep a tally. If male louse, call out ‘Dog!’ and if female, call out ‘Bitch!’ Boys scratch score on side of trench with bayonet. Always on mission break all known records.

If a purplish red one, means recently feasted, your own blood explodes over your fingers. Enjoy killing those ones most of all.

If infestation very severe, scrape them off with knife. Heard that in the hospitals they have lice infesting stumps of limbs.

THE 4TH OF February 1915 was beautiful, serene and sunny, and Rosie felt much happier, in case Ashbridge was also having a good day. She wrote two letters to him, one telling him that the garden was full of aconites, and mentioning in the other that Bouncer had cut his paw on a piece of broken glass.

On the 5th she and her sisters went to an exhibition of Modern Portrait Painters. Rosie was not impressed, but Christabel thought that some of them were very fine. Ottilie said how strange it was that civilisation just managed to carry on, even in wartime. Sophie said it seemed very anonymous, which puzzled the others until they realised that she meant anomalous.

That night was wild and wet, the wind lowing like a cow in the eves of the house.

On the 6th Rosie wrote a poem for Ashbridge, and then went to St John’s to pray for him. She noticed for the first time the plaque on the wall commemorating the two Pitt brothers who had died in the Boer War. She wondered at herself, that she had been going there all these years and never noticed it before. The carving was wonderful, particularly of the drapery. It put her in mind of Archie and Daniel Pitt. She knew that Archie was in India on the North-West Frontier, trying to control the Afghans, and that Daniel had been there too, but now he was in France in the Royal Flying Corps. Rosie knew that his chances of lasting at all long were very poor indeed. She felt the same kind of lurch in her stomach as she did when she thought of Ashbridge being killed. It would be such a sadness, because he had been great fun as a boy and probably still was. How nice it would be to see him again, she thought, and smiled at the memory of him vaulting over the wall, and wondered if he still looked the same. He had very bright blue eyes, she remembered, and long legs and narrow shoulders.

Rosie did nothing on the 7th, because she was suffering from a deep lassitude born of helplessness, but on the 8th she went to the Cottage Hospital to see if she could be of any help there, and came back feeling not at all well. She blamed the fumes of Lysol, which made you feel quite drunk and heady.