Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 by Sidney Rogerson

Author:Sidney Rogerson [Rogerson, Sidney]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War I, Somme, Formations, Campaigns, Battles
ISBN: 9781848325340
Google: Mx2oPgAACAAJ
Amazon: B00CLEAPD0
Goodreads: 9913940
Publisher: Greenhill Books
Published: 1933-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

V

THE WAY BACK

BY the Colonel's dispensation, we rose at a very unregimental hour next morning, and it was after 9 a.m. when Briggs undid the tent-flap and brought in a mug of hot water for shaving. Here was luxury indeed ! Not for five days had I washed, shaved, or looked at myself in a glass. Now when, still too drowsily comfortable to get up, I sat up in my flea-bag and saw what I looked like, I burst out laughing. “Bearded like the pard” does an injustice to that noble animal. The beard which covered my face could better be likened to some charred gorse-bush. And Mac said as much. What joy it was to lather and feel the razor shearing off this unwelcome growth ! How different, how much fresher I felt when the somewhat painful operation was complete. Then and not till then, I got up, stretched, put my head in the canvas bucket of water outside the tent, and washed. The transformation was magical. Spiritually and in appearance I was a different being. Youth has a surprising resilience, and memories of the dirt, discomforts, and dangers of the past four days were sloughed off with the soap and water and the application of a razor.

We were ready for breakfast, a real breakfast once more, with bacon and fried bread and hot tea. This we devoured seated on our flea-bags, interrupted only by a Headquarters' runner to say that the Colonel was holding orderly room at 11 a.m.

We were so late in finishing breakfast that we were forced to scramble down to the Company lines in some haste to satisfy ourselves that there were no defaulters, before I had to repair to Battalion Orderly Room. Here were many cheery reunions as officers and warrant officers assembled, especially with Palmes and others who had been left out of the line. Pym's disappearance was the topic of the hour. The fact that he was only a few yards from Fall Trench when he had vanished; the fact that he had ordered his men back when the enemy machine-gun had opened fire, suggesting that he had not himself been hit; the fact that he had never answered our calls to him nor had any trace of him been found—these were agreed by all to present a mysterious picture. What had happened to him ? We were busy with conjecture when the Colonel arrived with the Brigadier, who announced himself as very pleased with the work the Battalion had done while in the front line. He also complimented the Colonel on the smoothness and rapidity with which the relief had been carried out, and so far away already was the memory of that age-long march of a few hours previously that no one saw anything in his remark to smile at. We were all standing round him, I right in front of him, when he turned to ask the Colonel where I was. Amid general laughter it transpired that having only seen me in my unshorn and mud-plastered state he did not recognise me.

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