now. No. I am without observation. Five minutes ago. Really? What
are they? Not ordinary cars? Something quite new? Herr Gott, this is
serious! Yes. Yes. I quite understand. I am not to retreat while I
have ammunition. Good. You may rely on us. We shall stand to the last
man. _Für Gott und Kaiser! Lebewohl!_" He put down the receiver and
stood for a moment in deep thought, his hand pressed to his high bald
brow. Then he shook himself alert. He turned to Eberstein. "Hurry!" he
said irritably. "Everything is at stake!" The lieutenant sprang up the
stairway and vanished.
Von Waldhofer put on his helmet and gave a last order to the
telephonist before he followed his subaltern.
"Ring up Captain Pforzheim. Tell him to send up every available round
as quickly as possible. Urgently required!"
Then he also ran up the narrow stairway into the bright morning light.
"Two telephonists, all necessary instruments, with me into flank
observing station at once!" he shouted to the sergeant-major.
He went swiftly towards the battery. The last gun had just finished
its allotted ten rounds. They lay now in their wide-spaced row, smoke
upcurling from their muzzles. Their attendant crews stood, coatless,
mopping the sweat on their brows. Far and near the thunderous uproar
of the battle swelled; it seemed louder than ever now that he had
come from the dug-out into the open air. The English batteries had
lengthened their range. As he walked he glanced at Flers. It was
whelmed in fumes. Explosion upon explosion leaped up among the huddled
houses in the trees, fragments, timbers, earth-clods momentarily poised
upon a dome of dark smoke. White shrapnel puffs sprang incessantly into
existence above the roofs. He heard the hissing rush of an approaching
shell without faltering in his pace, so preoccupied was he with the
urgency of the moment. He saw the quick upspout of smoke; the heavy
metallic crash came to his ears. He noted only that it was well behind
the battery. His eyes were fixed on the officer with the guns.
"Oberleutnant Schwarz!" he called, stopping suddenly some twenty yards
from the battery.
The long-coated, helmeted lieutenant stiffened as though galvanised,
walked smartly up to him, saluted, and waited rigidly for his orders.
Oberleutnant Schwarz, a young freckled-face fellow, set the pattern
for discipline in that battery. The commander noted the punctilious
attitude without his wonted inward smile. The occasion had found the
man.
"Schwarz, communication with the forward officer is interrupted.
Eberstein has gone to re-establish it if possible. I am going into
the flank observing station. Orders will come from there. Put the
Einjähriger into the telephone dug-out. The situation is critical.
Something has gone wrong. A new kind of armoured car has broken through
the trench-line. They must be stopped at all costs. The orders from the
battalion commander are formal. The battery will not retire while it
has ammunition. I have ordered up every available round. The battery
will maintain its position, _whatever happens_, while it has a man and
a shell. Is that clear?"
Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted in precise parade-ground fashion.
"Quite, Herr Hauptmann," he replied unemotionally.
"If I become a casualty the command devolves upon you," continued von
Waldhofer. "Remember these armoured cars are your target, wherever
they can be fired on. Use direct laying if you get the opportunity." A
flight of shells burst in a succession of heavy crashes on the swelling
ground to his right. He glanced at them. "Keep a couple of groundmen
going over the wire to the flank observing station. Here, two of you!"
he shouted suddenly to some mounted N.C.O.'s who at that moment trotted
up to the battery with a string of ammunition limbers. Upon his sign
one of them dismounted. The captain swung himself into the vacated
saddle. Oberleutnant Schwarz saluted once more. Accompanied by the
other N.C.O. the battery commander set off at a hard gallop, up the
rising ground into the welter of dark smoke from the just-burst shells.
The flank observing station was a splinter-proof dug-out on a little
knoll some 500 yards away to the left flank of the battery. It had
been constructed in prevision of the unexpected. Von Waldhofer spurred
towards it now at the top pace of his horse. Despite many shell-bursts,
on the ground and in the air, he reached it safely. Leaping to earth,
he threw the reins to his follower and sent both horses back. Then he
dived into the dug-out.
Both telephonists were there awaiting him. The large-scale map was
pinned out on a board, instruments upon it. The range-finder stood by
the observation-slit. One of the orderlies was testing the telephone
communication to the battery. Von Waldhofer pulled his glasses out of
their case, pressed himself against the observation-slit and looked out.
Directly in front of him the bare ground with many minor undulations
rose steadily to the shattered silhouette of the Bois de Foureaux on
the skyline. But no longer was the view clear as when he last had gazed
on it. Over all lay a haze which the early morning sun was powerless to
penetrate. In the foreground and wide to right and left in the middle
distance spurted and twinkled the primrose flashes of the guns, more
rapidly multiplied than any eye could count. On the ridge the smoke
lay thick, bellying in dark masses over the tree-stumps of the wood,
poised on the horizon in tall, heavy-headed columns like elm trees in
full foliage. In the air long bands of white shrapnel smoke reached out
and clung to each other in a lazy drift, while among them the large
dead-black bursts of heavy high-explosive shrapnel appeared suddenly,
darted a head from the round nucleus and then unfolded themselves
slowly and snakily earthward. Between him and the ridge the whole wide
amphitheatre was being thickly sown with English shells. Near and far
the smoke-columns shot incessantly into the air. Over the road from
Flers to the Bois de Delville, which crossed his view at right angles,
the white shrapnel puffs clustered in ever-renewed groups. Over all,
English aeroplanes in scores flitted to and fro, daringly low yet
apparently unchallenged. No longer did this arena appear untenanted. In
every part there was movement and confusion of Lilliputian figures. Far
away three tiny ammunition wagons raced towards a battery. Closer at
hand, grey-clad infantry dashed in sections along the shell-swept road
from Flers. They tugged low bomb-carts on long hand-ropes. He knew,
subconsciously, that they were going to reinforce the great trench-line
that stretched east and west from Martinpuich to Lesboeufs. Further
afield other bands of grey midgets, scarcely visible, were rushing
forward. Everywhere from the rim of battle-pressure grey figures were
filtering in ragged streams down towards the lower ground. A long way
off, on that rim, his glasses revealed a nodal point of confusion. He
focussed on it. There were tiny grey figures grouped, in quick movement
to and fro. Little smoke-dots were all round them. Then the confusion
cleared. He saw darker figures, running forward, the twinkle of sun on
a distant bayonet. For a moment he held them under view anxiously. Then
with an impatient movement he swept his glasses round. Not there was
the target that he sought.
Suddenly he arrested his sweep. To his left, much closer to him than
he had been looking, a field battery topped a little rise, retiring at
full gallop among a welter of shell-smoke. It passed down below his
vision. His glasses remained steadily focussed on the rise over which
it had come, fascinated by the abnormality, expectant of the cause.
It appeared. Slightly to the right of the course of the retreating
battery, something emerged over the crest--something slow, ponderous,
shapeless--drawing itself up. The silhouette of a gun projecting from
its flank barred the sky. Swiftly he replaced his glasses by the
range-finder. As he twisted the thumbscrews that brought the inverted
vision into juxtaposition with the normal, he saw a group of grey
soldiers surround the monster, hurl little puffs of smoke at it. He saw
the gun slue, spit, saw soldiers who waved white rags tripping over
those already fallen. The double visions met, he read the range. The
thing drew itself up, turned slightly, creeping on its belly, snout
in the air, like an uncouth saurian from the prehistoric slime. It
was moving more quickly than he at first realised. In another instant
he had taken the angle to the aiming post, plotted another, and was
shouting orders to the telephonist.
"All guns 28·3 degrees left! Right half-section No. 1 gun 980 metres,
No. 2 gun 960 metres! With percussion! one round! Fire!"
Through the range-finder he saw the burst of the two shells at the same
moment that the detonations of the guns came to his ears. One fell
full in the midst of the group of grey soldiery, whelmed them in black
smoke. The other burst beyond. The thing paused not nor hurried. At an
even pace it drew its low bulk along, dipped now for the descent.
"Right half-section 970 metres! Left half-section 960 metres! With
percussion! Twenty rounds battery fire! Fire!"
Spout upon spout of black smoke heralded the rapid explosions of
the guns. The monster was blotted out. Feeling like one engaged in a
struggle with a creature born not in our time and space, of another
world, von Waldhofer prayed for a direct hit. The smoke cleared. He
looked for what should be its ripped and stationary bulk. It was not
there. Only the grey bodies of the dead lay under the drifting fumes.
The thing had passed onward, dipped into the hollow, out of sight.
He was suddenly aware that the enemy shell-fire, always heavy, had
increased in intensity. The smoke-spouts shot up more numerously,
grouped themselves more densely. Gradually they extended to new areas,
abandoned those already covered. He realised in a flash that the
monster was moving behind its special barrage, aeroplane directed from
above. He shouted fresh orders, altering the range. Blindly he hurled
his shells into the hollow behind the screen of smoke.
If only he had direct observation! He shouted to the telephonist.
"Ask if communication has been made with Leutnant Eberstein?"
The reply came: "Nothing has been heard of Leutnant Eberstein. Six men
have just been killed in the battery."
Von Waldhofer's exclamation expressed annoyance rather than grief
at the loss of his subordinate. He turned again to look through the
observation slit. There was a blinding crash----
When he came to, he found himself gazing at the blue sky. The deep
breath he drew half-choked him with the fumes of burnt explosive.
Shaking in every limb he struggled to his feet. Before him lay his two
orderlies, dead. The dug-out was wrecked and roofless. The telephone
instrument was strewn in fragments on the floor. He himself was
unwounded.
He listened, with a sudden anxiety, for the detonations of his guns.
The general uproar had diminished not at all, but the familiar crashes
were wanting in the din. How long had he lain there? A wild fear seized
him. Scrambling out of the ruined dug-out he ran breathlessly towards
the battery.
The enemy fire was as intense as ever. The air was filled with the
whine and scream of arriving shells and the heavy crashes of their
explosion. From somewhere behind came the rattle of rifles and
machine-guns and the dull thud of bombs. Grey-clad men in swarms
were running across the open ground athwart his path. He heard them
shouting, saw officers gesticulating, realised as in a dream that they
were running from the battle. But their fear touched him not. He was
enveloped in concern for his beloved battery.
He arrived on the lip of the depression where it lay. In a surge of joy
he saw the four guns lying in the familiar places, saw them strangely
naked, their protective veils ripped and hurled aside, saw barely
sufficient crews standing at their posts, saw the position gashed with
shell-holes and littered with prone grey bodies, shattered limbers and
dead horses. Even as he looked a salvo of shrapnel burst with deafening
cracks above them, and white fleecy clouds floated over the battery.
On the near flank, in the position of command, stood Oberleutnant
Schwarz, rigid and precise as on the parade-ground.
Von Waldhofer ran down the slope towards him.
"Schwarz! Schwarz!" he called.
The Oberleutnant advanced to meet him, and, looking calmly at his chief
as though his smoke-blackened face and torn clothing were in no way out
of the normal, saluted with perfect gravity.
"What has been happening?"
"We have been under heavy fire, Herr Hauptmann. All the wires are
cut in many places. The telephone dug-out has been blown in. We are
absolutely without communications. The battery has fired whenever there
was a chance of a target. Your orders have been obeyed. The battery has
stood its ground. We have only three rounds per gun left. I am waiting
now for an opportunity to fire."
Listening to the cool report of his subordinate, von Waldhofer
recovered his soldierly poise.
"Excellent. You have done well, Schwarz. And the casualties?"
"I regret are heavy." He waved a gloved hand towards the bare dozen
standing by the guns. "All that are left."
There was the loud, hissing, nerve-paralysing rush of a shell at
arrival. Simultaneously with the shattering crash that leaped from
the fountain of black smoke, Oberleutnant Schwarz put his hand to his
breast, performed a sharp half-turn and fell--dead.
The reverberation yet rang when a second rush and crash followed
the first. A third and fourth shook the air almost too quickly for
distinction. The battery commander's brain worked with the timeless
speed of a great crisis or a dream. In an incomputable fraction of a
second he saw the heavy barrage which preceded the slowly crawling
monster, was conscious of an aeroplane overhead, saw his opportunity
and his plan. He ran towards the guns, shouting: "Lie down! Lie down!"
The crews obeyed. Standing among the strewn corpses the guns seemed
manned only by the dead. He flung himself prone on the flank of the
battery.
Shell after shell swooped and burst on the stretch of ground in
front of him. Fed by the constantly spouting black geysers, an
ever-thickening dark mist drifted across, blotted out the distance.
Through it he saw the freshly thrown edges, brown and white, of
unfamiliar shell-craters pocking the undulating ground. The worn,
smooth greensward that he had known was being churned into loose clay
and chalk, mingled haphazard in their fall from the fierce upward
gush. The reiterated crash upon crash of near explosions all but
obliterated the far-flung din of the general battle, but through them
he caught waves of an appalling uproar welling out of Flers. Slowly,
riving, crashing, upspouting its black fountains of smoke and earth,
the barrage marched onward, passing across the battery front. Now?
Through the mist he saw the directing aeroplane sweep down in front of
him, absurdly low, rattling its machine-gun. A group of grey figures
sprang up beneath it, both arms high above the head, tumbling among
the shell-holes as they ran. A temptation flitted across his mind. One
round gun-fire and that aeroplane was blown to fragments. His lips
tightened. He did not move. The battery seemed abandoned by all its
dead.
Age-long seconds passed as he watched, peering through the thinning
mist. Save for one little group of hasty, self-obliterating men, his
immediate front was a deserted waste of churned earth, sloping gently
upwards away from him. Once, over the low near skyline seen from his
prone position, he thought he saw the spurt of a bomb. But he could
not be sure. And a bomb did not necessarily betoken the presence of
the--Thing. Yes! What was that?
Something was lifting itself, slowly and with jerks, beyond that near
skyline. Ponderously, with the efforts of a limbless living thing, it
drew its bulk up, seemed to stop--nosing the air with its blind snout.
Now? Not yet! He had only one chance--certainty. The monster moved on
again, downward now, lurching and wallowing among the shell-holes like
a ship in a heavy sea. He saw the gun swinging in the side-turret as
it rolled, the bright-splashed colouring of its flank. It was passing
diagonally across his front. It must climb to escape. _Now!_
He sprang to his feet, shouting with all his lungs.
"To the guns!" The crews leaped up, resuscitated. "Point blank! At the
devil! With percussion! All guns! Fire!"
But quick as he and his men had been, the monster was quicker. At
his first movement, with a mighty jerk it had slued itself nose-on
to the battery. Ere a hand could clutch a firing lever, a storm of
small violently exploding shells burst right in among the guns, a
hail of whip-cracking machine-gun bullets smote on men and metal. Von
Waldhofer looked towards the monster lurching heavily towards him,
keyed to a frenzy of suspense. To his horror he heard--not four--but
one detonation. The Thing dipped. He saw the shell burst--_over_! He
glanced towards the guns in speechless agony. The last gunner was in
the act of falling lifeless across the trail.
High-nosed, seeming to smell its enemies rather than see them, like
an uncouth blind monster of the rudimentary past, the Thing crept on,
its speed as surprising as a reptile's. Viciously, with unallayed
suspicions, it spat its missiles at the dead battery. Von Waldhofer
stood alone, erect, praying that one might strike him.
Suddenly its fire ceased. He heard the loud clatter of its machinery as
it approached, saw the rolling bands on which it moved. He felt that it
was coming to mark its triumph over his beloved guns, felt its disdain
for him their helpless master. An insane hatred for it gushed up in
him, swept away his conscious self. He whipped out his pistol, ran like
a madman towards it. He fired again and again, desperately seeking the
eye, the brain, like a hunter at bay with a crocodile. But eyeless,
featureless, the great snout slanted upwards above him, impenetrable
steel plates, on which his bullets flattened.
Blindly the Thing rolled on, ponderous, invulnerable. It bulked huge
above him. He heard a shriek. It was his own.
In the bright sunshine of a September morning the strange new monsters
crawled over that bare countryside racked with noise and tortured with
the leaping, eddying smoke of countless explosions. Behind them crowds
of khaki-clad men, hatted with inverted bowls like Samurai, followed
cheering and laughing like boys behind a circus-car. They waved
newspaper posters, obtained Heaven knows whence, that proclaimed in fat
bold type: "Great British Victory!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: 6.45 German Summer Time, 5.45 English Summer Time, 4.45
Greenwich Time. The Summer Time was used in all the Armies.]
[Footnote 4: The well-known 4·2" gun.]
[Footnote 5: Known to the British Army as High Wood and Devil's Wood
respectively.]
[Footnote 6: Telephone and Command Dug-out.]
[Footnote 7: 6 a.m. English summer time.]
[Footnote 8: German Heavy Artillery is organised in "Bataillons" of
four batteries.]
[Footnote 9: The Germans had apparently heard rumours of the coming of
the "Tanks." It was asserted in the Army on the 16th September, that a
motor-cyclist carrying a definite warning had been killed by one of our
shells in the early morning of the 15th, on his way from H.Q. to the
front line.]
[Footnote 10: Panzerkraftwagen, lit. "armoured power wagons," was and
is the official German designation of the "Tanks." The word is also
applied to armoured cars.]
NACH VERDUN!
In the long luxuriously furnished saloon car of the special train an
officer clad in the field-service uniform of a South-Eastern Power
sat in conversation with a colonel of the German General Staff. The
deference shown to him made it immediately obvious that he was a
distinguished personage representing a neutral whose friendliness was
important. His dark, clever eyes rested thoughtfully upon the groups
of officers with whom the car was overcrowded. All round was a buzz of
talk, of suppressed excitement. The air was thick with cigar smoke.
"_Ja, Excellenz_," said the German colonel, podgy little fingers
drumming the table between them. "The secret is out. You have rightly
guessed our objective." His eyes were those of a rather clumsy and not
too scrupulous diplomat. His smile was deliberate flattery. "Allow
me to congratulate you upon your good fortune. You will see the
machinery of our _Kriegswirtschaftlichkeit_,"[11] he throated the word
impressively, "at the moment when it works at its highest power to
shape for Germany her final victory."
The distinguished neutral smiled also, perfectly courteous. He spoke
with a faint Austrian accent.
"I can understand your desire for the final," he underlined the word
ever so lightly, "victory, Herr Oberst."
The German stared at him, suspicious of the nimbler brain.
"Who would not desire it, Excellenz? This awful slaughter," he waved a
deprecating hand. "It is terrible that our adversaries do not recognise
they are already beaten."
The neutral nodded.
"Bar-le-Duc and the Upper Marne, I suppose--Paris!"
The German colonel's eyes went dead.
"Excellenz, I believe the supreme command reserves to itself the honour
of enlightening you on its plans."
The conversation languished. The train rolled on, heavily comfortable.
The staff officers talked earnestly among themselves, the word
"Majestät" oft repeated. Orderlies, garbed as soldiers but obviously
royal _Kammerdiener_, stole noiselessly in and out of the car, went
frequently into the car beyond. On those occasions the distinguished
neutral had a glimpse of a world-familiar figure, upturned moustaches
on a tired face, a uniform of grey hung with many decorations.
The train rolled into a station, stopped. The blare of a military
band started on the precise instant of its arrival. The platform was
thronged with officers, bright with the red of the General Staff.
The distinguished neutral took little interest in the ceremony outside.
He busied himself with collecting the small articles of his kit.
Through the large windows he glimpsed the salutes of the rigidly-erect
officers. Above the noise of the band he heard the repeated "_Hoch!
Hoch! Hoch!_" of soldiers who cheered as they drilled, exactly
synchronous.
He stepped on to the platform, followed by the Colonel appointed to be
his conductor. "Majestät" had already departed. Officers were thronging
to the exit, laughing and talking, much excited, revealing, despite
the grey and red of the staff uniform, the essential childishness of
the crowd-mind. "_Nach Verdun!_" said one of them, very close to the
distinguished neutral, nudging another in the ribs. "_Nach Verdun!_"
He repeated the just given watchword of victory as a schoolboy repeats
the latest smart expression. The officers around him laughed. The crowd
buzzed with high spirits.
Outside the station the roadway was choked with waiting motor-cars,
lined with soldiers readjusting their helmets after tumultuous
"_Hochs!_" Some cars--those containing the highest personages--had
already departed. One after the other those remaining were filled,
swerved out and sped away. The distinguished neutral and his companion
found a vehicle reserved for them. The colonel led him to it with an
air that suggested: "See how the smallest details are thought out!"
They, too, sped away through the walls of infantry.
Behind the soldiers were a few listless French inhabitants; from the
windows of that French town hung German flags, but no French faces
looked out. The shops were open but their owners stood not at the
doors. The neutral noted these things. The complete apathy of the
population was in contrast to stories his companion had related in
the train. In many of the side-streets long convoys of ammunition
and ration wagons were halted to allow them passage. On one of those
foremost wagons was scrawled in big chalk letters: "Nach Verdun!"