His First Time Under Fire
Over the edge leapt Hawke and his companion, and Hawke shortened his
bayonet as he saw his idol's brother clutching the Saxon in tight
embrace.
"Stand clear, sir!" he shouted, but the German's hands went up above his
head, and in a quavering voice he cried, "Kamerad! Mercy, officer! I am
married with two little ones, and this hateful war is not my fault!"
Harry Hawke's bayonet was only half its length from the man's ribs when
Dennis put it aside.
"Strewth, Tiddler! I can't see no difference myself between one Boche
and another," grumbled Hawke. "It's one more prisoner to feed, and Lloyd
George talks about economy."
"I will tell you," said the Saxon, crouching down as half a dozen shells
in quick succession hummed overhead. "We were sent out to reconnoitre
your trench. You passed us just now, and we hid ourselves here. There is
going to be an attack in a few minutes, only you gave the alarm a little
sooner."
"Do you hear that, Dan?" said Dennis. "We must let them know somehow."
"Hum! If we'd nine lives apiece like a cat there might be some sense in
risking eight of them," said the Australian corporal. "But it's no good
stirring out of this hole just yet. Look at that!"
A perfect hurricane of shells was going over now, and the air was filled
with a succession of explosions.
"They're firing shrapnel!" shouted Tiddler in Dennis's ear. "You can
tell by the white burst and the sound of the flying balls, but we're
safe enough in here for the present."
He dropped into a sitting position as he spoke, and instantly sprang up
again with a yell.
"Are you hit?" said Dennis, feeling himself turn pale.
"No, I ain't hit, sir, but I'm 'urt. You don't do your jobs 'arf
properly, 'Arry!" And he exhibited the piece of barbed wire on which,
forgetting all about it, Tiddler had sat down heavily.
Hawke's uproarious laughter as he disengaged the offending thing sounded
oddly to Dennis in the midst of that fearful din that shook the ground
and brought the chalk rattling down into the hollow, but it was the
first time he had been under fire, and he was yet to learn the absolute
disregard of danger which the best and worst alike learn in the
trenches.
"What's the strength of the attack?" said Dan Dunn to their prisoner,
while the two privates went through the pockets of the men he had shot.
"Three battalions of us, and we were told the Brandenburgers were to be
brought up in reserve," replied the Saxon. "Look! they are beginning
now. That is a smoke shell that has just burst to cover our advance, and
the other guns have ceased."
A dense white cloud rolled along the ground in front of the crump-hole,
and Hawke and Tiddler instantly faced round, gripping their rifles as
they looked up the jagged slope behind them.
"Don't say no this time, sir," said the Cockney private, "or there'll be
a rare shermozzle darn 'ere if some of the blighters come on top of us
in the dark."
"You can do as you like, Hawke," replied Dennis abstractedly. "But, I
say, Dan, I can't stick this any longer. I wonder if our chaps would
hear us if we shouted together?"
"Don't shout!" said the Saxon, pulling his sleeve. "See, they are going
past now."
Looking up, Dennis made out a bunch of men against the smoke cloud
passing on either side of their hole, and his impulse was to scramble up
out of it and empty his revolver into their midst.
"What's the northernmost limit of the attack just here?" he said to the
Saxon, speaking in such excellent German that the man was obviously
surprised.
"Ten yards this side of the machine-gun, Herr Officer, and they will
keep well within it," he added. "They are Prussians on that gun, and
they don't care who they kill as long as they hit somebody."
"Look here, Dan, you can stay where you are if you like," said Dennis.
"I'm off!"
"Wait a moment--don't be an ass," expostulated his cousin. "What's your
plan? I'm with you if there's an earthly chance of doing anything."
"It's this," replied Dennis, slipping his revolver back into its case.
"The top of our parapet is a couple of feet higher than that
machine-gun emplacement. I noticed that yesterday. I'm going to crawl
out under the line of their fire, and I'll bet you I'm back in our
trench in ten minutes."
"It's risky," said his cousin. "But not as bad as Lone Pine. What about
the prisoner?"
"If I am alive and we have not carried your trench," said the Saxon very
earnestly, "I shall report myself to your people before daybreak."
"All right, that's a promise," said Dennis, and he climbed cautiously up
to the lip of the hole and peeped over.
A wave of the enemy had just passed on, swallowed up in the dense vapour
of the smoke-bombs, and as the two cousins flung themselves on their
faces they heard the Lee-Enfields opening from their own trench.
So long as the smoke lasted they were safe from detection, but the whole
air seemed alive with singing bullets, and Dennis felt a jar all along
his right side as one of our own shots carried off the heel of his boot.
"Keep your direction, for Heaven's sake!" he called over his shoulder.
"We've a hundred yards to go in a straight line," and then no one spoke,
as the quartet wormed themselves on their stomachs as fast as they could
crawl, parallel with the two trench lines which bordered that strip of
No Man's Land.
Tiddler's bayonet was wrenched from the muzzle of his rifle, and a
bullet chipped the brim of Hawke's steel helmet.
"Now look out for yourselves," called Dennis. "We're level with the
gun," and, trying to squeeze themselves flatter, if such a performance
had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of
them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few feet
above their heads.
"That's better," said Dan Dunn when they had left it behind them. "Where
shall we turn off, old chap?"
"Not yet," replied Dennis through his clenched teeth. "A bit farther,
and then we shall have to face the music of our own men. That's why I'd
rather have come on this job alone."
"Are you playing up for the V.C.?" he heard his cousin say, but he made
no answer, and at the end of another couple of minutes he paused to take
breath.
"Talk abart a bloomin' obstacle race--I got fust prize at Aldershot at
the regimental sports--but this 'ere takes the cake," said Harry Hawke,
as he and Tiddler overtook them.
"Hawke!" said Dennis sharply, "we're going to turn here and make for our
own trench. Do you know any signal or any call that would prevent our
platoon blazing at us?"
"Let's get a bit nearer fust," replied Harry Hawke. "Then I'll tip 'em a
whistle. Wust of it is, the Boches are so bloomin' ikey--they 'aven't
'arf played us up before--but we'll try it on," and he said something to
his companion.
Still on their faces, but swinging round at right angles now, the little
party groped its perilous way towards their own sandbags, hearing the
roar of the fight apparently limited in their direction by the spot on
which the German machine-gun was working.
In front of them all was quiet.
The whole air trembled with the roar of firing, but perhaps the most
trying thing to the nerves was the sudden transition from brilliant
glare to black darkness in the momentary intervals between the
extinguishing of one star-shell and the bursting of the next. For an
instant they would see the line of their trench standing out as clear as
at noonday, with the glint of bayonets above the sandbags, and then it
would be blotted out, to be lit up again the next moment.
When they had crawled to within fifty yards of it, Harry Hawke thrust
two fingers into his gash of a mouth and let loose a piercing whistle.
"Now, Tiddler, pipe up!" he shouted, and their two voices rose in a
discordant rendering of a popular trench song, their rifles waving
wildly the while.
At any other time Dennis would have been constrained to laugh at the
incongruity of their choice, but Harry Hawke knew what he was doing, and
that no German could have imitated the Cockney twang in which they
brayed their chant at the top of their strident voices.
"There's a silver linin'--froo the dyark clard shinin',
Turn the dyark clard inside art till the boys come 'ome!"
they howled, and as a fresh star-shell lit up the trench they saw a man
in khaki thrust his head and shoulders over the topmost bag and look
under his hand in their direction.
"Cut it out, 'Arry--there's Ginger Bill, and 'e's 'eard!" cried
Tiddler, jumping to his feet. "Run for all you're worth, sir!"
His companions needed no second bidding, and in another minute they were
clambering up the outer face of the parapet and falling in a heap on to
the fire step inside.
"Well, I'm blowed!" said Ginger Bill, as they picked themselves up.
"And you ain't the only one," panted Harry Hawke. "Where's the other
chaps?"
And then he saw that Ginger Bill was bleeding badly.
"Ordered over there at the double--ain't none of you got any ears?" said
Ginger Bill, pointing to the hand-to-hand scrimmage which seemed to end
in front of the Dashwoods' dug-out.
Harry Hawke, very excusably overstepping the deference due to
commissioned rank, clutched the skirt of Dennis's tunic and nearly
pulled him backwards.
"We four ain't no good, sir, in that scrum, but there's a shell-proof
bomb store not a minute's run down this 'ere traverse. We could give 'em
socks then!"
"Bravo, Hawke!" shouted Dennis. "Come on, Dan; he's right!" And they
tore along the traverse like men possessed.
Back they came, Hawke and Tiddler girdled with a belt of racket bombs,
Dennis and Dan Dunn each laden with two bags of that deadly variety so
handy to the arm of the bowler.
Ginger Bill gave them a cheer as they went past him, but they heard
nothing and saw nothing but that solid mass of grey German uniforms,
wedged like herrings in a barrel where they had no right to be--in a
British trench!
Without a moment's hesitation Dennis sprang on to the parados, and
hurled bomb after bomb with perfect aim into the grey mass, which
instantly began to yell and squirm as panic seized it. Nothing human
could withstand that terrific shower that rained upon the victorious
Saxons, who had been recovering their second wind; and as a lucky shell
from one of our 18-pounders put the Prussian machine-gun out of action,
Dan Dunn mounted the parapet, leaving the trench clear for Hawke and
Tiddler.
The four advanced steadily, bombing as they went.
"Hold on!" sang a voice as Dennis reached the mouth of the next
traverse. And, looking down, he saw that it was Bob who spoke, and
behind him thirty or forty men of the platoon, who had been forced to
take refuge there from the overwhelming rush of the enemy.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" cried the captain, darting out, revolver in hand.
"Come on, boys! The bombers have got a move on them; it's our turn now!"
And as Dennis launched a long ball, the men of the platoon poured out
into the trench again and clambered over the hideous carpet of dead and
dying.
Without hesitation Dennis leapt across the traverse, and was soon at the
head of the bayonet party, Dan Dunn keeping neck and neck with him on
the parapet, and only when he groped to the bottom of his second bag and
found it empty did he jump down and flatten himself against the side of
the trench.
"Here, what's wrong?" he shouted, as his own men came pouring back.
"Order's come to retire, sir; we've got to fall back on the next
trench!" cried a panting private.
"Oh, hang it! I thought we'd got the beggars out!" exclaimed the lad,
almost overthrown by the jostling crowd with packs and rifles that
streamed past him. "I wonder what's become of Bob?"
Tiddler and Harry Hawke were nowhere to be seen, and Bob was equally
invisible; but there could be no doubt about the order, for a
staff-captain, his uniform stained with the white chalk, came running
along the trench, crying: "Retire! Hurry up, there! Here come the
Bavarians!"
"But I say, sir," expostulated Dennis, "isn't this all wrong? We've
piled the Saxons up six deep behind us yonder, and surely we can hold on
here?"
"The order has been given by the Brigade Commander. Who the deuce are
you, young man, to dispute it?" thundered the staff-captain furiously.
Dan Dunn saw his cousin's eyes suddenly blaze and his clear-cut face
turn crimson as he whipped out his revolver and covered the speaker!
The Australian's first impression was that in the excitement of it all
his cousin had gone stark staring mad--he had seen such things happen in
Anzac.
"Great Scott, Den! Do you know what you're doing?" he yelled, flinging
his powerful arms round him.
But he was too late. The barrel of the revolver gleamed blue in the
lurid glare of a big H.E. which burst behind them, and Dennis had
already pressed the trigger!