Will Bird - from Ghosts Have Warm Hands

I just noticed that Will R. Bird has never been mentioned here. Of the highest interest will be his war memoir, And We Go On, as it holds some similarity to Junger's memoir. Graphic in its detail, and written based on his notes, it is unapologetic and in parts coldly removed from the events, although perhaps more as a peasant character or in the literary tradition of the fool rather than the nobility of Junger. It is also very Canadian, so there are some notable differences, Bird had little education, he was of a simple farming background, he lost his father when he was young and his brother in the war, and he was a simple soldier of common rank. He had to fight just to join the war. Like Junger, he lost one of his own sons in WWII.

Much of the Canadian character is revealed in the struggles with the brass, involving vengeance or pranks of some kind. There is a rough and democratised sense of authority, which is of interest for its contrast and the specific character that Junger saw in the forming of the new world. And from the perspective of a non-drinker the scenes of celebration are quite amusing while also showing the great care Bird had for his fellow soldiers, having to get them out of trouble with the brass or even save their lives. Despite his recurring struggles with the brass there was no resentment, he would remind those with mutinous voices that officers came in all types, just like the common soldiers.

There is a supernatural undercurrent, a common belief among soldiers at the time, in relation to his brother. Although it is not discussed in depth it is significant to the story, enough so that it serves as an alternative title for some editions: Ghosts Have Warm Hands. And even with the brutality and recurrence of death there is no sense of the anti-war politics that became popular in much of the democratised literature.

"It was a wonderful experience, in the sense that life in the trenches forced men to know each other in a manner that is impossible in civilian life. One got to realize that courage is a quality which comes to the fore unexpectedly and is often greatest where least expected."

I'll include some quotes from the Passchendaele chapter.

"An hour later our platoon was called to form up on the duckwalk. We were led back to a "dump" where each man was told to take up and carry a section of new-made bath mats. All around the giant horseshoe of the Salient there were red flashes and winking glows, and the misty light of flares. The man in charge of the dump told us not to linger on the way but to make good time, as the German shelled the duckwalks with considerable accuracy. We were not to worry, he said, as only a direct hit would maim or kill. A shell could go in the mud just twenty feet from where you stood and do no damage, save spattering you with mud. He said mud had saved at least ten thousand lives in the Salient and was saving more every day.

We moved up toward the front line, past water-logged trenches, in a nightmare of scummy holes, an indescribable desolation, and our burdens, plus occasional gaps in the duckwalk made by shelling, made our going slow. The sky became illumined by a thousand strange flickering lights, the reflection of a thousand gun flashes, and quivered with the passage of shells. As we neared the end of our duckwalk flares soared up ahead of us, alarmingly near. Their fitful gleams made strange moving shadows over the swamp. A machine-gun fired nervously, and its bullets buried themselves with vicious thuds in jagged tree stubs close by. We hurried, then met the leading carriers returning. Each man, as he came to the end of the bath mats we trod, threw down the one he was carrying, butting it to the one on which he stood. Thus the path grew with amazing speed. But the boards were new and their light colour was detected. Suddenly a hurricane of shell fire was all about us. Fortunately it happened just as I got clear of my load. I ran back where men were hustling, jostling and cursing. In a moment all was confusion. High explosive rained all around us - stunning, terrifying, but not a shell actually hit the duckboards. The shell eruptions sent mud and slime in all directions and roused new smells of old gas and mud and blood.

Some of the men had simply got clear of their bath mats where they were as the shells came, but no officer was with us and the sergeant did not shout any orders. We were about one hundred yards away from the scene when suddenly the Hun began sending salvos ahead of us. Some sharp mind in his artillery staff had calculated our actions. But we were not in a panic. Without an order being shouted, every man stood where he was and there we waited, until after a few minutes the salvos ceased. At midnight we were back in our shelters and everyone made tea. We were away from all water tanks but there was plenty of rain water in shell holes, and if the water were boiled a time, we were told, it was all right to use. No one debated the point. We simply boiled and drank. "

----

"I was sick again and vomited severely. Brown and Mickey stayed with me. There was a comparative quiet now in our sector, but heavy firing to both our right and left. Machine-gun bullets whined about so that we had to crawl, and we were back a distance we found the Professor lying on the road bank, riddled with bullets. He was plastered with mud and had lost his glasses and steel helmet. Evidently he had got lost in the darkness and there he lay, after years of study and culture, a smashed cog of the war machine, with not a hope of burial save by a chance shell.

Ten yards on we came into a light vapour rising with the chill of the night. Over on the high bank of the road, we saw Stewart stooped over someone. We called to him softly and told him to get down in the ditch. He did not answer and went on bandaging someone who was lying perfectly still. There was the report of a German rifle. Stewart pitched head-first across the man he was bandaging, so that his kilt fell over his back, and lay there, dead, while the sniper shot again and again, as if venting a crazy hate. The wounded man was still. I had lost a bomb and we had none, but we wormed back to a spot on the roadbank and from there all three of us fired at the rifle flashes. They stopped instantly. We started back. Mickey was at the limit of his endurance. He was not rugged and we had to rest him now and then, so it was an hour before we were back in the trenches. And there I suddenly lost consciousness again.

When I came awake it was late in the morning. I was lying in a corner of the trench, plastered with mud, and Mickey was beside me. Brown was curled like a dog in another corner. Mickey told me I had been violently sick twice and then had lain as if in a coma. He said there had been a heavy shelling of the area. I became aware of the acrid reek of explosives. None of the other survivors were near us. Not a runner had appeared. We huddled there until noon, then I roused up and peered over the side of our refuge. A few yards away there were three green-scummed pools. White chalky hands reached out of one, and from the farther one a knee stuck up above the filthy water. In another bit of old trench, where the parados had disappeared, a soldier stood rigidly, feet braced apart. He had been killed by concussion, and his body was split as if sliced by a great knife. Some German bodies were lying on a bank and one, bareheaded, looked as if he were reclining on one elbow.

A shell came as I looked and erupted almost beneath the body, and the dead man stood up a heartbeat, as if saluting, then tumbled down on the other side. I lay down again and saw that neither Brown nor Mickey were moving. They were huddled side by side, mud-splattered, sleeping."

----

"We met incoming men and there was considerable shelling. I had Hughes by the arm and fairly dragged him through the mire. Then we came to a ruin where a man sat on a fragment of wall. I went to him and asked if he could spare a drink of water. He did not answer. He was not wounded, but absolutely everything in his mind was dead. I took his water bottle from his equipment, took it to Mickey and Hughes in turn, then took it back and replaced it. We went on down the road and there came a salvo of "whizz-bangs." As the last soul-tearing smash crashed in my ears I saw Mickey spin and fall. I let go of Hughes and jumped to him. He had been hit in several places and could not live ten minutes.

"Mickey-Mickey!" I called his name and raised him up and he nestled to me like a child.

"I'm through, " he said. "I don't want to kill people anyway. Tell my mother...."

His voice was so low I could not hear, but his lips still moved. Little white-faced Mickey. I held him in my arms until he stiffened, then laid him by the roadside and took his pay book from his pocket. Hughes stood where I had left him, as if unable to comprehend, and I suddenly knew he was in a worse condition than I had thought.

We reached the long duckwalk. All around us were flashes and glows. We were in the great Salient's maw, with shells whining overhead or exploding in the sea of mud. There were red and yellow flashes, flares that looped high and floated in ghostly fashion before falling. On the duckwalk we were just a pair on a straggling line of steel helmets and hunched shoulders, outgoing units of bone-weary, shell-dazed men who had reached the walk after an exhausting struggle with the Ypres mud, treading on old dead and new dead, slipping in the foulness of slimy ditches."