In the Enemy Trenches
By great good fortune, when they reached the crumpled ruins of the
cottage, they found two stretcher-bearers kneeling among the nettles, on
the look-out for casualties. They had seen them coming, and the
stretcher was already unrolled, and as they laid him upon it the wounded
man motioned with his hand.
"Stand round me," he said in a husky whisper, speaking with difficulty.
"Do not let them see who it is that is hit."
One of the brancardiers placed a pad under the commandant's ear, and
passed a bandage round his neck.
"Tighter, tighter!" motioned the sufferer. "How is it going? For me, I
do not mind if you pull my head off, provided we take the trench."
Dennis peeped through a crack in the wall and bent over him.
"The attack has been completely successful," he said. "The supports are
swarming in now."
"_Vive la patrie!_" cried the wounded man, whose grey-blue tunic was
stained crimson with his own blood. "I thank you from the bottom of my
heart, lieutenant. Again you heap the coals of fire upon me."
Then he fainted.
"Come along, Alphonse," said one of the stretcher-bearers to his
companion. "We must get him to the surgeon at once."
"And we," said the Alsatian corporal, touching Dennis on the arm. "Shall
we return up yonder?"
The commandant's revolver lay among the nettles, Dennis picked it up,
and the pair raced side by side again up the trampled slope.
Lithe and active as Dennis was, his new friend, loaded with his pack and
hung about with bulging wallets and strings of racket bombs, was over
the parapet before him, and the boy's after-recollection of the ten
minutes that followed was a chaotic jumble of mad slaughter.
The French infantry were in terrible earnest, and out to kill. They had
old scores to wipe off, and at the outset nothing could stay them.
Figures in blue grey and figures in greeny grey wrestled and fought in
the drifting smoke, and what with the hideous gas helmets and their huge
goggles, and the mediaeval-looking trench helmets, Dennis seemed to have
suddenly found himself in the company of weird demons from some other
world.
Men stabbed and hewed and hacked at each other. Others, gripped in tight
embrace, were seen revolving in a species of grim waltz, until a chance
bullet or a piece of shell ended the dance of death.
The wounded squeezed themselves against the boarded sides, the dead lay
where they fell, and the living took no notice of either. If there was
any shouting the guns drowned it, and the lust of slaughter was in every
face.
"I do not think there will be any poison gas," shouted the Alsatian
corporal, whose name was Aristide Puzzeau. "The wind is in the wrong
quarter, but you never know what these Boches are up to."
He handed him a gas helmet, which he took from a dead comrade, and
without waiting for any thanks, Corporal Puzzeau pursued his way.
Dug-out after dug-out he bombed, and when his supply was exhausted he
unslung his rifle with its long, thin bayonet, Dennis following upon his
heels.
The barrage fire, playing a couple of hundred yards in rear of the
German parados, effectually kept the enemy's supports in check, and
Dennis wisely possessed himself of a steel helmet, for the shrapnel had
a habit of raining down on friend and foe alike, but after they had gone
some distance in a northerly direction, they found that the enemy had
recovered from the first surprise, and a strong counter-attack was
forcing a company of poilus back.
At first it was difficult to find where the enemy sprang from, until
Puzzeau located the mouth of a subterranean dug-out from which they
poured in rushes, and, crouching down, he waited at one side of the
opening like a terrier at a rat-hole, Dennis standing beside him with a
revolver in his hand.
"Wait, do you hear that?" said Puzzeau. "There are plenty more of them
inside," and they waited.
"Good morning, my pig!" said Puzzeau, lunging forward, and the sergeant
reeled against the trench boards.
Almost before he could recover his weapon the opening was filled with a
surge of men, and Dennis emptied a revolver into the middle of them.
"That is the style!" grunted the corporal approvingly, as a dull shout
boomed from the dug-out and those behind paused. "If there were only
half a dozen of us here now, or, better still, a bomb-thrower," and,
lifting up his powerful voice, he bellowed to a man he knew: "Rabot,
surely there are some bombs left?"
"That is all very well," replied Rabot. "I have been sent myself for
reinforcements. Do you know every officer of our company is down, and
the men are falling back?"
"There is something yonder that will serve our purpose," cried Dennis,
pointing to an ugly grey muzzle behind an iron loophole on the parados.
It was almost opposite to the door of the dug-out, and before the
Alsatian knew what he was doing, Dennis had scrambled up to the
machine-gun emplacement and vanished. The next moment his head appeared
round one side of it.
"Stand clear!" he yelled, waving with his arm, and vanished again.
"Who is that?" inquired Rabot. "He looks English and speaks French like
Monsieur le President."
"You will hear him speak German out of that gun in a moment," laughed
the corporal. "_Voila!_ there she goes. And to think we were going to
shoot that boy less than an hour ago!"
Dennis, who had qualified as a machine-gun officer, had indeed lighted
upon a piece of great good fortune, for under the gun he found three
Germans recently bayoneted and the cartridge-jacket in position. He had
only to depress the muzzle to send a stream of bullets straight into the
mouth of the dug-out.
The stream ceased in a moment, and they saw him beckoning to them.
"Look yonder!" he cried, as the corporal and Rabot joined him. "The
rabbits will not bolt again if we can leave someone here, but the
company is in difficulties, and we are wanted. Can you take charge, _mon
garcon_? See, the mechanism is quite simple; it works like this," and he
loosed half a dozen rounds by way of illustration.
"Stay here and do as the lieutenant has shown you if they show their
noses again," said the corporal, and Rabot took his post at the
machine-gun.
The French soldier is intelligent because he has imagination, and Rabot
understood. Corporal Puzzeau understood also, and his eyes danced as
Dennis bounded along the top of the parados towards the retreating
company.
They were bunched up in the trench, and some of them were even
scrambling out over the other side, when that slim brown figure in the
uniform of their British Allies with one of their own helmets on his
head, and the corporal behind him, appeared above them.
"Comrades of the 400th of the Line!" cried Dennis. "You are surely not
going back to Paris? Berlin lies in this direction. Follow me, and I
will show you the way."
"_Vive la patrie!_" bellowed Corporal Puzzeau, and the men who had
recoiled, took up the shout and scaled the wall of the parados again.
A furious rat-tat-tat sounded a little way off, and Dennis heard Puzzeau
laugh.
"It is only Rabot," he said. "He has learnt the trick already."
In a few minutes the ground behind the German trench was strewn with
bodies in field grey, and it was with some difficulty that Dennis and
the corporal could check the victorious company from penetrating into
the zone of their own artillery barrage fire. As it was, a good many of
the helmets were dented, and not a few of the poilus paid the toll of
their own eagerness.
"Mon lieutenant, if I return to our own lines," said the Alsatian
corporal, "the general shall hear of this thing you have done. In the
name of my country I thank you," and he held out his hand.
Dennis shook it, and laughed. "There is nothing to make a fuss about,
corporal," he said. "We've taken the trench, anyhow; and as I see our
right brigade yonder, who seem to have been lucky also, I think I'll get
along now and join them."
He was gone before Aristide Puzzeau could say any more, and after a
quick sprint he came up with an English Fusilier battalion consolidating
the position they had just secured.
"Hallo, Dashwood!" hailed a voice, as a very young officer with a very
large eyeglass turned round and stared at him. "You look as though
you've had a rough night of it. Where on earth have you sprung from?"
"I've been with the French for a spell," said Dennis, looking down
ruefully at his tattered uniform. "Where shall I find my crush?"
"Good heavens! they're miles away," said his interrogator, who had been
with Dennis in the same training corps. "Pretty good raid, what? What
price Romford after this? Bet you a lemon squash your C.O. will
reprimand you for appearing on parade improperly dressed."
"I'll chance that, Jimmy. So long, old man," and he threaded his way
past the rear of the brigade, not without some good-humoured banter at
his dishevelled appearance.
It was twelve o'clock in the day when, rather leg weary, he struck the
nearest battalion of his own brigade, and arrived in time to find
himself once more in the very thick of it.
During the fighting on their right General Dashwood's command had lain
doggo, but word had just come that they, too, were now to make a
surprise attack on the enemy's first line trench, and smoke bombs were
already preparing the way for them.
"By Jove! Den. The governor's been tearing his hair about you!" was
Bob's greeting as they met on the fire-step. "You look pretty well
knocked. Better turn in, old man, for a spell."
"Turn in be hanged!" cried Dennis. "Here, Hawke, you've no business with
three bags of bombs. Give one of them to me. I'm going to be in this."
He had scarcely fitted the leather strap to his shoulder when his
brother, who had been looking at his watch for the last minute said:
"Ready, boys! Get over!" And the Reedshires cleared the parapet with a
low glad murmur.
Dennis had lost all count of time, and only knew that he had crossed
the strip of "No Man's Land" with his platoon, somehow, and was bursting
bombs mechanically along the German trench.
Turning round as he came to a narrow door on his left, he was surprised
for the moment to find the French corporal no longer at his elbow, and
his laugh of amusement as he entered alone sounded odd and hollow.
With abrupt suddenness he ran down a flight of thirty wooden steps
leading from the end of a short passage into a large hall, lit by
electric light.
The huge underground dug-out was empty, save for some wounded Germans in
bunks, and with a glance at the pictures on the walls, and the piano on
a platform, he ran towards another door at the far end.
"Great Scott! they've got a regular town here!" he exclaimed aloud,
gazing at the floor of the inner dug-out, which was quite thirty feet
below the level on which he stood. "More electric light, and cases of
ammunition enough for an army corps!"
"Perhaps you would like to count them, Dashwood?" said a mocking voice
behind him.
But before he could turn round a coward's blow flung him forward into
space. The electric lights went out, and while he was still falling he
heard the heavy slam of the shell-proof door boom out of the darkness
above him.