Under Fire
Asked what it feels like to be under fire, a soldier replied: "It makes
you sweat waiting for the shock of getting hit. It is the suspense that
tries. The first few weeks at the war are awful. You awaken in your
sleep and think you are being fired at. Not that the German infantry
are good marksmen (the artillery are). Why, the other day I noticed a
chap who had been aiming in my direction for several minutes, and none
of ours had been touched. I stood up and said to a chum: 'Watch that
chap. I bet you he won't hit me.' And he didn't, for I heard the bullet
whistle by several inches wide."
The feeling of waiting to go under fire is thus described: "We were
to hold the trenches at all costs, and things began to take a serious
turn. It was then that I and my chum took photographs we had with us
from our pockets and looked long into the faces of those we had left at
home. Then we took out our small books and made our wills, and then
waited."
A private of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment wrote: "There were many
field artillery drivers with spare horses behind a shed, and one was
asleep in front of me on a truss of hay. A shell from a 'Black Maria'
came over the corner of the shed and dropped not more than 8 feet from
me. It killed the poor driver and blew one horse up and the other
horses into a heap. It seemed to me as if I had been suddenly thrown
into a white hot furnace, and a big metallic door slammed on me. I was
dazed for five minutes and shaky all day, but the feeling soon wore
off. It is wonderful how soon you get over these things. These 'Black
Maria' shells make a screaming noise, followed by a terrific explosion,
but the effect is purely local, except for splinters flying. Next day
we came under rifle fire as well as big gun fire. Then we knew it. It
was not a pleasant sight to see men falling around you screaming. I
remember saying to a chap alongside of me, 'I wouldn't give twopence
for my chance.'"
"It's a curious sort of feeling," another man wrote, "to be under fire.
It's--well you feel that war is a really dangerous thing."
Much of course depends upon the soldier's temperament. An officer had
the moral courage to write in a letter, "I have been under fire a few
times now, and like it less every time."
An Indian soldier gave the impression of himself and of his fellows:
"The shell fire was a bit troublesome at first, because it was far
worse than anything we had ever experienced in frontier fighting, and
few of us had had any experience of being under fire. We soon got used
to it, and it didn't trouble us more than thunder. The rifle fire
wasn't so bad, for the Germans aren't very good shots. Still, it was
annoying to us to have to lie still under it when we like to be getting
to close grips."
An officer described a retreat under fire as follows: "My platoon
(fifty men) was some 200 yards behind the firing line to start with.
I was soon ordered to bring them up, which was not a too comfortable
job, as shells were bursting by now just in front of us. However, I
shouted to the men, telling them to go on, and saying that they would
be safer further up the hill. Then the battery doing most of the firing
on us stopped for a moment to reload and resight, and I got the men
on a hundred yards, and then the shells began bursting like hail just
where we had come from. Then they kept altering their range from time
to time, and you could sometimes hear the shot and shell come down only
a few yards off, and of course you could always hear the shell singing
through the air, and sometimes felt the breath of them. Around me the
men behaved splendidly. (The whole regiment has been congratulated on
its having done well.) We lay there in the potato crop like partridges.
I think we were all too petrified to move; but where we were we lay
just below the crest of a ridge waiting to crawl up to see to fire
if any German infantry came along. We lay under that shell fire for
three hours, and I think that none of us will ever forget the feeling
of thinking that the next moment we might be dead--perhaps blown to
atoms. I kept wondering what it was going to feel like to be dead,
and all sorts of little things that I had done, and places I had been
to years ago and had quite forgotten, kept passing through my mind. I
have often heard of this happening to a drowning man, but have never
experienced it before, and don't want to again! I think you get so
strung up that your nerves get into an abnormal condition. My brain
seemed extraordinarily cool and collected, which I was proud of and am
still; but I looked at my hands and saw them moving and twisting in an
extraordinary way, as if they didn't belong to me, and when I tried to
use my field-glasses to spy at the Germans, it was as much as I could
do with the greatest effort to get them up to my eyes, and then I could
scarcely see. When the order to retire came our company got it late.
I told my platoon--those who were left--to double back and assemble
behind a house in a road behind us. I stopped behind to collect
stragglers and to carry a couple of wounded into the house, where the
doctor was seeing to them; and I believe I was the last to leave. By
this time the bullets had begun to sing all round us, and the German
infantry were getting close, so it was high time to clear out. I and a
last party of five climbed up a pear tree and over a garden wall, and
so, creeping along with the bullets now flying all round, we got over
another wall and so up a path exposed for a short way. We ran along
this, and I remember, as an instance of the stupid things one does in
moments of excitement, my little hair-brush jumped out suddenly from my
haversack, and I ran back five or six yards to pick it up, and risked a
life for a hair-brush! I found subsequently two holes in my haversack
where a bullet had passed through, just grazing my clothes, and it may
have been then that it went through."
I did not myself know Mr. Geoffrey Pearson, Lord Cowdray's son, but a
friend of his told me so much about him that it was with sorrow that
I read the dramatic story of his death. He and a sergeant-major were
acting as motor-cyclists with the motor transport, and what happened
is thus told by the sergeant-major: "We were going along a straight
piece of road, with open country on either side, and were letting
our machines out for all they were worth. We were alone. Suddenly,
without the least warning, we seemed to ride into a perfect hailstorm
of bullets which came over from somewhere on our left. Ahead of us the
road ran into a little wood. 'Come on, we'll ride for it,' I said,
and we dashed through in safety. Hardly had we entered the wood belt,
however, than we rode into a group of German cavalry--about fifty of
them--scattered about on either side of the road. They immediately
fired at us. We saw the game was up, as there was no getting away
from them at all, so we tumbled off our bikes, put up our hands, and
surrendered. The Germans treated us shamefully. They gave us nothing
to eat, and taunted and jeered at us at every opportunity. That night
we spent in the open, lying on the roadside between two men. We had no
overcoats, and it was most bitterly cold. I think I have never been so
cold in my life as I was that night. The Germans took us on with them
on their advance against the French. They made us go into the trenches
with them. We were thrust in the line with the rest under a terrific
fire from the French guns and infantry. We decided to make a dash for
it. The Germans were all very busy with the fight, and we were able to
crawl away unperceived out of the trenches and through the long grass.
Moreover, when we were about 200 or 300 yards away the Germans saw us,
and a number of them immediately opened fire. Pearson was shot through
the head. We were under fire with a vengeance."
Speaking of a particularly fierce fight a Gordon Highlander said that
it might have been a sham one the way the Gordons took it. In the
thick of it they sang Harry Lauder's latest. Those who could not sing
whistled, and those who could not whistle talked about football, and
joked with each other.
One of the West Kent Regiment speaking of the German artillery fire
said that the din seems to hit you. You feel as if your ears would
burst, and the teeth fall out of your head. He thought little, however,
of the enemy's infantry. "If we fired as badly as they do we would be
put in jail."
A Dublin Fusilier said that while the shells shrieked blue murder over
their heads they smoked cigarettes, sang about the girls, and were as
cool as Liffy water. "If I should arrive home safe I think I shall get
a job as doorkeeper at an oyster shop, as I am having a course of shell
dodging."
Corporal F. Leeming, R.F.A., wrote to his wife: "I am all right, but
still have to keep ducking every time a 'messenger from the Kaiser'
comes whistling round. It is not exactly like throwing eggs about
when their shells burst. They make a hole in the ground about 20 feet
across, and the noise is terrible and nerve-racking. You feel pretty
shaky at first."
According to Private Thomas Mulholland, Highland Light Infantry, shells
were not as much appreciated at a dance as ladies would have been: "In
the trenches last week we held a dance, for want of something better
to do. Of course, the only partners were fellow-soldiers; but still
it was a change from the monotony of shell fire. Not that the shells
were absent, for just when we had settled down to enjoy the jigging the
enemy began to worry us with shrapnel. The shells burst all around,
and one burst in the middle of a little group of men giving a Gaelic
four-hand reel. Every man was killed. After that we thought it best to
stop."
Afternoon tea under fire was like this: "The mugs were passed round
with the biscuits and the 'bully' as best they could by the mess
orderlies, but it was hard work messing without getting more than we
wanted. My next-door neighbour, so to speak, got a shrapnel bullet
in his tin, and another two doors off had his biscuit shot out of
his hand. Private Plant had a cigarette shot out of his mouth, and a
comrade got a bullet into his tin of bully beef. 'It saves the trouble
of opening it,' was his remark."
One day a shell smashed a breakfast porridge pot, and another scattered
a dinner of stew. "We cursed more about that stew than if we had been
hit ourselves."
"It beats Banagher," said a jocular private in the Royal Irish, "how
these Germans always disturb us at meal times. I suppose it's just the
smell of the bacon that they're after. They seem to look for a blooming
Ritz Hotel in the firing line."
Men can even sleep when under fire. "It is a most extraordinary thing,"
said an officer to _The Daily Telegraph_ special correspondent, "to
see soldiers lying on their straw soundly asleep when German shells
are bursting all round them. Men keep on snoring even after a shell
has burst within 5 or 6 yards over their heads and half filled their
trenches with fresh earth. One gets so used to the firing, that, though
it may sound incredible, it soon becomes far less noticeable than city
traffic, for instance."