the rapid bullets of the Austrian machine-guns. The wind that blew
over the glacier, ruffling the loose surface snow on to his face, was
intensely cold. He felt himself a heavy leaden thing, frozen stiff.
Over to his right front the savage noises of the contest, weird and
awe-inspiring on this summit of the world that seemed so uncannily near
to the flashing stars, swelled hideously cacophonous. Livid bursts of
flame flickered and were reflected redly on snow surfaces, on black
jagged spires of rock. All along the trench the blindingly white flares
leaped upward, another soaring as its predecessor circled down in a
parabola that illumined the unearthly confusion of the glacier surface.
He seemed a mortal for ever severed from his fellow-men, set down in
a world that was primitive Arctic chaos, a paralysed spectator of a
contest of fierce mountain spirits fighting over spectral issues,
remote from the interests of humanity. A part of his mind harked back
to the warm summer, the green fields, the somnolent little town of
the valley he had left that morning, and it seemed that those things
belonged to another existence. Yet all the time he gazed fixedly to the
point whence the next rocket should shoot up. He awaited it as he would
await the breaking of a spell.
At last! The trailing spark of fire shot upwards, burst into hanging
globes of red light, the snow rosy beneath them. On the instant the
company was erect, rushing forward. Leaping, soaring flares from the
trench revealed them--white moving figures casting black shadows on the
white glacier. Spurts of livid flame, loud quick detonations darted
from the white ridge in front. "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia! Italia!_"
shouted the commander. "_Italia! Italia! Savoia!_" came the fierce
antistrophe from the rushing men flinging aside their alpenstocks,
brandishing their bayoneted rifles.
They were fighting their way through the deep loose snow, the wreck
of the wire entanglements. The staff-captain floundered in a white
shell-crater pitilessly illumined by an overhanging flare. The loose
ends of the barbed wire tore at his clothes, clutched round his legs
like tentacles that would hold him for death to strike. In front the
spurts of flame sprang from a wall of darkness above the white, high
up. Near him was the company commander, extricating himself from the
shell-hole, the last of the wire safely passed. He had a sense of
tensely struggling figures all around him. He, too, got clear of the
wire. He saw the company commander throw up his hands, roll sideways
over the snow, still shouting "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia!_"
He passed him, took up the cry: "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia! La più grande
Italia!_" leading the company that yelled behind him like a pack of
mountain wolves. He topped the snow parapet, saw a fierce face glaring
up at him in a strange light, a rifle-barrel levelled. His revolver
seemed to go off of itself, a sharp autonomous detonation. The face
opened a black mouth, sank out of vision.
He sprang into the trench, shouting like a madman. Behind him came
the Italians, tumbling down in fierce onslaught. One of them struck
him violently on the back as he slid down, knocked him face forward
into the snow. As he went he heard a sudden heavy crash, saw a flare
of lurid light. A bomb! He picked himself up, only half realising his
escape, fired at once into a dark body that wrestled with a white-clad
soldier. There was a confusion of blows, of shots, of ear-splitting
detonations--shouts, cries, shrieks. At one moment he was in close
contact with a panting man, warm breath upon his face, eyes flashing
momentarily in the reflection of a rifle-shot, looking into his--the
next the man was gone, there was space about him. The confusion
cleared--there were bodies underfoot--white-clad men about him shouting
unintelligibly. Further along the trench another flare went up.
The staff-captain turned to his right along the trench.
"_Avanti! Avanti! A destra! Italia! Italia!_"
Behind him followed a rush of fiercely yelling soldiery.
"_Italia! Italia!_"
They were held up by a traverse of snow-covered rock. A shower of bombs
came over it. From a communication trench a mass of dark figures rushed
at them, shouting with guttural voices. There was bitter conflict--an
ebb and flow in the surge of men.
Then another fierce shout: "_Italia! Italia! Savoia!_" It was the third
company flinging itself in the trench to support the attack.
In the midst of the tumult could be distinguished the scream of Italian
shells passing overhead to burst dully on the Austrian avenues of
approach.
Suddenly the angry dominant note of the babel of voices changed.
Accents of supplication rang out amid the jarring reports: "_Kamerad!
Kamerad!_"
The staff-captain made his way along the deep dark gully in the snow
where motionless figures stood with arms stretched up above their
heads, rifles at their feet. Ghostly white figures who had retained
their weapons joked at them in rough _patois_. He met the commander
of the company which had attacked upon the flank. The trench was
completely captured.
There followed a period of fierce toil in the trench. Under the
twinkling stars in the black sky, men delved at the snow of the
parados, cutting fire-steps, building it up into a breastwork. Behind
them little parties of prisoners, stretcher-bearers and slightly
wounded men, stumbled across the broken surface of the glacier. The
toiling men gave no thought to them as they laboured to prepare for
the storm which would surely burst.
It came. An ugly hissing rush heralded the first Austrian shell.
It exploded with re-echoing violence and a great fount of up-flung
snow right on the newly-strengthened breastwork. Another and another
followed in a methodical bombardment directed by calmly judicial
gunners ensconced in little huts far back in the mountains. Amid the
nerve-harrying rush of ever new arrivals, constant explosions, the men
toiled frenziedly. Reserves of ammunition were brought up. Machine-guns
were put in position. Telephone wires were laid. The fourth company
took up a post on the glacier whence it could rush into the trench in a
counter-attack if needed.
Suddenly the bombardment ceased. The Alpini crouched behind the
parapet, fingering their rifles with gloved hands, peered out into the
indistinctness of the snow.
There was a rush of dimly-seen figures from the obscurity, a blaze of
fire from the trench. Near the staff-captain the colonel sat speaking
into the mouth-piece of a telephone. Rush after rush of hurrying shells
passed overhead. Out there on the slope where an Austrian battalion was
surging to the attack, shrapnel after shrapnel lit fierce sudden flares
in the dark sky. There was again a tumult of voices, a re-echoing chaos
of men at strife. It persisted, swelled, died down.
The silence of an Alpine night rested once more over the battleground,
was broken only by the roar of a distant avalanche.
In the twilight of approaching morn an officer made his tour of the
outposts on what had been Austria.
"_Chi va là?_" rang the sharp challenge of a white-garbed sentry almost
indistinguishable against the snow.
"_Italia!_" came the proud response.
The first rays of the sun gilded the surrounding summits in the glory
of a new dawn.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: "For Greater Italy!"--the theme of d'Annunzio's discourses
in the doubtful days preceding Italy's intervention.]
PANZERKRAFTWAGEN!
Hauptmann von Waldhofer, Batteriechef of the --th Battery
Fussartillerie, stood, helmeted and with buttoned coat, hastily sipping
a cup of steaming hot coffee in his dug-out. The electric light, fed
from the power-station at Cambrai, miles back, illumined a cosy little
apartment. Portraits of the Kaiser and Hindenburg looked stiffly from
the matchboard walls in the incongruous company of a medley of coloured
pages from _Simplicissimus_, _Jugend_, and, quaintly enough, the _Vie
Parisienne_. One side was fully occupied by an enormous large-scale
map of the Somme area, divided into numbered squares, heavily scored
with blue pencil here and there, across which ran a great curve of red
lines massed in intricate pattern--the enemy trenches, and radiating
pin-supported coloured threads from a point slightly E.S.E. of Flers
fan wise far across the opposing line. The battery-made bed, wiremesh
stretched over a wooden frame, sloping slightly from the head downwards
towards the foot, on which lay blankets in the disarray of recent use,
bulked largely in the apartment. But there was still room for a little
table, on which books and writing material were neatly arranged, and
two comfortable plush-covered armchairs, besides the camp washstand
in which the water yet steamed. A carpet, mudstained but thick and
soft to the tread, covered the floor. In the corner remote from the
bed was a stove whose long pipe bent at right angles below the roof
and followed it until it ascended the steep stairway at the entrance.
The deliberate comfort of the dug-out indicated long residence and
the expectation of an indefinite stay. Only the pick and shovel in
readiness by the door gave a hint of possible cataclysm.
An orderly stood stiffly at attention while his master finished his
coffee. The captain put down the cup.
"What time is it?" he asked sharply.
"A quarter to seven,[3] Herr Hauptmann."
"What sort of morning?"
"Clear, Herr Hauptmann, but very cold."
"Any aeroplanes?"
"None over the battery, Herr Hauptmann."
The captain gave a final glance at himself in the French wall-mirror
which hung over the table, touched lightly with his finger-tips the
black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross upon his breast, as though
flickering away a speck of dust, and turned to go. As he went the
hanging calendar caught his eye. He tore off the top leaf. The date
revealed was September 15th, 1916.
He climbed, with the heavy step of an oldish man, the narrow steep
thirty-tread stairway, and emerged into the blue sky of a clear dawn.
Around him was bare rolling downlike country. About half a mile
directly in front of him the village of Flers huddled itself among thin
trees, its skeletal roofs silhouetted against the blue. Between him
and it, but close at hand in a slight depression of the ground, the
four 105[4] mm. guns of his battery stood spaced and silent under veils
of a gauzelike material tufted with green and brown that blended well
with the terrain. Inconspicuous even to a side view, thus covered they
were invisible from above. Near them were stacks of ammunition also
shrouded. Save for a sentry the guns were deserted. The personnel of
the battery was lined up in two queues, where the smoke of a couple of
field kitchens betokened breakfast.
The battery dug-outs were excavated in the breast of a slight swelling
of the downs, their exits looking N.W., on the flank of the gun
positions. The battery commander stood for a moment surveying his
little community banded for the service of the four veiled idols lying
unhuman and aloof from the domestic needs of men. Then, following
his morning habit, he turned and climbed the little rise of ground.
On his accustomed view-point he stopped and gazed westward. Before
him, clear in the cold early light, the undulating downs gathered
themselves into a long, fairly regular ridge, some two miles distant
at the summit. A maze of communication and support trenches, just
visible, criss-crossed their white lines in the chalk of the hither
slope. On the skyline of the ridge directly west a large clump of bare,
shell-sharpened tree-stumps broke its emptiness. It was the Bois de
Foureaux. Further south a similar group of stumps spiked up into the
sky--the Bois de Delville.[5] That clean-swept landscape mounting to
the desolate skyline was the great dominant fact in his existence. Ever
concrete in his mind, it claimed his first waking vision even as the
weather horizon claims the first heed of the sailor, or Vesuvius the
morning glance of the Neapolitan. This morning it lay cloudless--save
for the towering smoke of an occasional shell-burst in the vicinity
of the Bois de Foureaux--and strangely quiet. The whole wide stretch
would have seemed untenanted by man had it not been for the occasional
primrose twinkle of a field-gun's flash. The reports of such guns came
in isolated slams at varying intervals. To his right an English shell
hurried with a long-drawn whine to burst heavily in Flers. Far back
several enemy aeroplanes, tiny specks in the cold blue sky yellowing
to the dawn, were dodging like midges among a smother of little brown
shell puffs. From overhead came the drone of a German machine. But, by
contrast with the frequent uproar which welled out of this region to
translate itself into long thick smoke along the ridge, the scene was
curiously clear and silent.
Satisfied with his scrutiny, the Captain turned and descended again
to the battery position. He passed along the line of dug-outs in
the flank of the rise until he reached one whose entrance bore the
notice "Fernsprecher und Befehls Unterstand"[6] neatly painted on a
board. The Oberfeldwebel standing at the doorway sprang to a precise,
heel-clicking salute. The officer acknowledged it curtly and dived into
the dug-out.
Here yellow electric light replaced the cool grey dawn and tobacco
smoke floated in long wreaths about the bulb. A young lieutenant,
seated at the telephone instrument on the table, took the pipe out of
his mouth and rose smartly as his superior entered.
"Good morning, Eberstein," said the captain. "Anything fresh?"
"Nothing, Herr Hauptmann," replied the lieutenant respectfully.
"Nothing of this rumoured attack?"
"Nothing."
The captain seated himself heavily at the table and the lieutenant was
at liberty to resume his chair.
"And that frightful bombardment all last night, Eberstein, what do you
make of it?" he asked as he lit himself a cigarette.
The mouth under the fair moustache of the young lieutenant twisted into
a contemptuous smile.
"Bah! the Englanders want to make us nervous or to persuade themselves
that their wonderful 'great push' is not played out."
The captain blew out a long puff of smoke and nodded his head in
dubious thought.
"And you think it is?"
Von Waldhofer, a man of somewhat deliberate mental processes, was never
unwilling to discuss general topics with his subordinate. Eberstein's
cheering, if crude, optimism was a welcome stimulus to him.
"Of course it is," said the lieutenant. "Since the first rush they have
been practically fought to a standstill. Here it is two and a half
months since the offensive began and where are they? Now in one week on
the Donajetz we----"
"Yes, I know, Eberstein," his superior interrupted him. "You did
wonders. But it is the Somme and not the Donajetz that interests us
now." He removed his helmet and passed his hand wearily over a high
semi-bald brow. "I wish I could be as certain as you. These Englanders
do not know when they are beaten----" He stopped, then broke out
again with the over-emphasis of a man wearied with long brooding over
a problem. "The colonel was so positive last night! And he had just
come from the General Staff. At dawn, he said, we might expect it. I
can't make it out. All night that frightful bombardment, obviously
preparation. Then this quiet! I feel something is coming." He shook his
head. "We are much too near in this position."
"If they come, so much the better!" cried Eberstein. "We will
annihilate them. But I do not for a moment believe----"
He was stopped by a heavy distant roar that commenced with the
suddenness of a thunderclap and continued in one never-ending roll.
"There we are!" exclaimed von Waldhofer. He looked at his watch. It
marked 7 o'clock precisely.[7]
A moment later the telephone bell rang in an excavated offshoot of the
main dug-out. The orderly on duty there answered the call. "Message
from the observation officer!" he announced in a loud voice. Eberstein
picked up the receiver lying on the table in front of him.
"Yes?"
"Intense artillery fire all calibres upon entire sector. Whole front
being heavily bombarded. Infantry attack expected momentarily."
Eberstein repeated the message, and ere he had finished the battery
commander had sprung to the door of the dug-out, shouting his orders.
He heard them megaphoned on by the sergeant-major above. Out there in
the first rays of the sun the four squat idols had shaken aside their
veils, lay surrounded by tensely waiting acolytes. The moment for their
dread speech was at hand.
In the electric-lit dug-out the two officers sat silently listening
to the distant storm. It rolled in one unnerving continuous thunder.
Not their duty was it to reply. They were detailed for barrage upon a
particular sector. But near at hand the heavy detonations of guns told
off for counter-battery work followed one another ever more quickly.
Near at hand, too, came the long whine and crash of the English
counter-battery shells hurled in reply.
Again the bell rang and again the telephone orderly called out. "Speak
to battalion commander,[8] please!"
This time von Waldhofer picked up the receiver himself.
"_Ja, ja!_ We are all ready!" he said. "Yes. It is coming this time.
No. No further message. Oh, yes, we are in communication. No? Have
you heard anything definite? No. I wonder if there's any truth in it?
Good-bye." He put down the receiver and turned to Eberstein, stopping
for a moment to listen to the roll of the hostile bombardment.
"That old story again![9] You remember we heard it before the first of
July? Some wonderful invention the Englanders are supposed to have for
annihilating us all. I wonder if there's anything in it?"
The lieutenant laughed mockingly.
"The Englanders invent anything? Not they! Besides, I don't believe
in the possibility of any new invention that can revolutionise war.
Just think! Here have all the nations of the world been fighting for
two years, and what new inventions have we seen? None! There have been
perfections and the rediscovery of old methods--that's all. What is the
Zeppelin but a perfected Montgolfier? It is neither the first nor the
only dirigible even! Poison gas and liquid fire--what are they but the
stinkpots and Greek fire of the middle ages, rediscovered and brought
up to date? There is nothing, can be nothing really new!"
Von Waldhofer shook his head.
"You are very positive in all your ideas, Eberstein. I don't know. The
English do get hold of new things sometimes--it is true that generally
they leave it to us to make use of them. But these rumours are so
persistent! They are vague, I admit. Yet where there is so much smoke
there is generally a fire. We are very close here. Just listen to that
bombardment!"
For a moment or two both officers sat silent again, listening to the
roll of awful menace. Then von Waldhofer shouted an order to the
telephonist.
"Get through to the observation officer!"
Almost immediately the orderly called out:
"Speaking, Herr Hauptmann!"
Von Waldhofer picked up the receiver.
"What is happening?"
"The bombardment is continuing," came the reply. "Much damage is being
done to the trenches. Some sectors are almost obliterated. My wire has
already been cut twice."
"No infantry attack?"
"Not yet. This is evidently preparatory."
"Keep me informed," said von Waldhofer, and put down the receiver. He
turned to Eberstein. "Well, we shall soon see."
"There will be nothing," replied the lieutenant with his contemptuous
laugh. "I should like to bet on it. If there were a patent way of
breaking down trench lines, it would not be the Englanders who invented
it. It would be we Germans!----"
"Hush!" said von Waldhofer. "Listen!"
The roll of the hostile artillery ceased as though controlled by a
single volition, remained silent for a few seconds and then, with one
thunder-surge of sound, recommenced.
"The barrage has lifted!" cried von Waldhofer. He raised his voice to
be heard by the Oberfeldwebel who waited megaphone in hand, his legs
visible halfway down the dug-out steps. "All ready, sergeant-major?"
"All ready, Herr Hauptmann," replied the tranquil voice of the N.C.O.
The telephone bell rang again in the dug-out.
"Message from observation officer!" proclaimed the orderly.
Von Waldhofer snatched up the instrument.
"Yes?"
"_Barrage!_"
"Fire!" shouted von Waldhofer to the Oberfeldwebel.
Eberstein looked at his watch. The hour was 7.20.
As though the commanding officer had pressed an electric firing-button,
the four heavy crashes of his guns followed, merging into each other,
renewed in a never-ending chain of detonations as fast as the crews
could load, relay and fire. A constant stream of 4.2" shells was
rushing from the battery to fall in a narrow area at the predetermined
range. But loud as were the violent concussions of the guns close at
hand, they were but one element in the chaos of frenzied sound that had
leaped from the whole countryside at the moment of their first report.
Every German battery was firing at its maximum intensity. On the
background of the dull continuance of the English guns danced the rapid
reports of the quick-firers at full pressure of urgency, and surged
ponderously the gruff double-roar of the howitzers, and the sharper,
louder crash of the heavies, blended without a moment's interval into
one unceasing peal. The rifle-fire from the trenches was inaudible,
swallowed up.
Von Waldhofer sat with one telephone receiver pressed to his ear.
Eberstein picked up the other. They heard the observation officer's
voice, faintly.
"What?" shouted von Waldhofer into the instrument.
"Something is coming--something strange--I cannot see well,
there is so much smoke--something--slow and crawling--a
machine--firing--more--_schreckliche_----!" The voice ceased abruptly.
Von Waldhofer and his lieutenant looked at one another.
"The wire has gone!" cried Eberstein. He had to shout to be heard in
the din.
"Let us hope it is only that," replied his chief. Both strove
deliberately to ignore the fear in the forefront of their minds. Von
Waldhofer shouted loudly into the telephone: "Kurt! Kurt! Are you
there?"
There was no answer.
Outside the dug-out the battery was still firing furiously, would
continue to do so until it received fresh orders. The general uproar
had abated not at all, had if anything intensified. Into the welter of
sound came a familiar, heart-stopping, hissing rush followed by a loud
crash. Another and another and another swooped down on the heels of
the first. An English 60 pr. battery was searching for their position.
But the two officers, fascinated by the mysterious distant menace that
was crawling into their world, did not hear and gave no thought to
the shells. Once more von Waldhofer shouted into the telephone "Kurt!
Kurt!" Still there came no answer. The eyes of the two men met.
"What can it be?" demanded Eberstein impatiently. "Is he dreaming?"
"Perhaps the wire has been cut close here," said his chief, resolute
like a good soldier to allow no disturbing speculations in this battle
crisis. He shouted an order to the Oberfeldwebel.
The telephone bell rang sharply.
"Order from the battalion commander," announced the telephonist.
Von Waldhofer was already listening.
"Yes?"
"_Feindliche Panzerkraftwagen[10] übersteigen die Schützengräben Punkt
C 32 d 4.1. Sofort Feuer dagegen mit aller Kraft eröffnen!_" ("Enemy
armoured motor-cars are crossing the trenches at point C 32 d 4.1. Open
heaviest possible fire upon them immediately!")
The battery commander sprang to a little table, outspread with a
large-scale map upon which lay protractor and dividers. A second or
two of hasty calculation and he shouted his orders to the Oberfeldwebel.
"Cease fire! All guns 20 degrees more right! With percussion! Left half
at 3150 metres! Right half at 3100 metres! Forty rounds battery fire!"
He heard them repeated in stentorian tones through the Oberfeldwebel's
megaphone. The rapid detonations of the guns ceased. There was a pause,
a few seconds only. Then the voice of the sergeant-major announced.
"All ready!"
"Fire!"
Again the fury of the guns burst forth.
"_Panzerkraftwagen!_" said Eberstein. "But surely armoured cars cannot
cross wire entanglements and trenches! There is a mistake somewhere."
"There is no mistake that something has gone wrong and that we are
without observation," returned von Waldhofer irritably, indisposed to
abstract argument just then. The orderly had once more failed to elicit
any response from the observation officer. "Take a couple of men and
a new instrument, follow the wire along as far as possible, get into
a good position for observing, and open up communication with the
battery. No, wait a moment!" The telephone bell was ringing again.
"Message from battalion commander," said the orderly.