With the Lewis Gun--and After!
In the old Elizabethan days, before scene-painting was invented, they
used to hang a placard on a black cloth behind the actors with such
inscriptions as "This is the seashore," "This is a wood." And such a
description would have well passed for the spot through which they now
threaded their way.
It _had_ been a wood--a wood of tall, straight trees in full summer
leaf, with bramble bushes and pleasant undergrowth before the British
batteries had flung their devastating hail into it; but now it resembled
an old toothbrush more than anything else, with bristles long and short,
and sticking out at every angle.
Hundreds of fallen saplings barred their way. Here and there a beech had
been uprooted, and a great shell crater yawned where it had stood, and
the scarred trunks and bare poles were stained orange and yellow and
vivid metallic green by the explosive agents.
A line of Tennyson occurred to Dennis, as odd things will occur at the
oddest of moments.
"'I hate the little hollow behind the dreadful wood,'" he murmured, as
he made an enforced circuit round a larger crater than usual; and Hawke,
who was just ahead of him, stopped short and shrank back with a shout
of "Mind your eye, sir!"
Something had crashed among the stumps in front of them, and a German
60-pound shell burst with a deafening roar.
For an instant everything was obscured by a volume of dense black smoke,
and a rain of splinters and broken branches fell about them as the smoke
curled away.
"That was a near thing," said Dennis. "Another minute, and there would
have been three vacancies in the company."
"I'm not sure there ain't some already, sir," said Hawke in a curious,
hushed voice. "What's that yonder?"
They hurried forward, for they had all seen a writhing figure in khaki a
few yards ahead, and a sickening chill passed over Dennis as he
recognised his brother subaltern, young Delavoy-Bagotte, lying on his
back with a tree-trunk across his legs. Over the same trunk was another
figure, which did not move, and face downwards a yard away lay a third
man with his back broken.
Half buried in the chalky soil was the Lewis gun they had been carrying
forward when the shell fell.
"By Jove, Bagotte, old man, this is rotten luck!" exclaimed Dennis. "I'm
afraid you've got it badly."
The boy--he was only eighteen, but the ribbon of the Military Cross was
on the breast of his tunic--set his teeth hard and nodded as they
removed the body of the other man and lifted the tree-trunk away from
his legs by main force.
"Yes, pretty badly, Dashwood. My thighs are smashed to a jelly," he
said. "But don't worry about me. I believe the Lewis is all right. Get
along with it. The stretcher bearers will be up presently. Are my mates
dead?"
"Yes," said Dennis--it was no good mincing matters--"but I can't leave
you like this."
"Don't be an ass," said Delavoy-Bagotte. "You can do no good by staying,
and you will only worry me. Look to the gun, I tell you. Your company
would never have crossed that stream behind yonder if I hadn't got on to
the beggars' flank with it."
"That's a fact, old man," assented Dennis. "And it won't be forgotten
when Bob makes his report." And while he was speaking he picked up that
most marvellous of modern weapons, the Lewis gun, and found it unharmed.
"She's all right," he said. "Do you really mean me to go on?"
"Yes, confound you! I shall have to howl in another minute, and I want
to do it alone," said the plucky boy between his teeth.
He was suffering untold agonies and they knew it; but they knew also
that he was right; and Dennis made a sign to Hawke and Tiddler, who
saluted the young lieutenant as they left him.
Keeping just within the fringe of the wood, Dennis shouldering the gun,
while Hawke and Tiddler carried the field mount and the spare magazines,
the adventurous three soon reached the angle in front of the ridge.
The stump of a well-grown beech stood up there, towering above the
ground twenty feet or more. Its crest had been carried away by a shell,
but one stout branch jutted out like the arm of a gallows; and Harry
Hawke had a brain wave.
"'Arf a mo, sir," he said, laying his wallet down. And the next moment
he was clambering up the tree until he reached the bough, where he
supported himself for a minute or two on his elbows, taking stock of the
enemy.
When he came sliding down again his eyes were dancing, and his voice was
husky.
"If we could only get the gun up there, sir," he whispered excitedly,
"the rest's as easy as kiss your hand. You can see the trench and the
head of the bloke what's working that tac-tac of theirs. Have a look for
yourself, sir." And Dennis made the climb, finding it as Hawke had said.
He saw something else, too--C Company now creeping through the wood, and
taking possession of the cover along its northern edge, which told him
that the battalion had arrived.
When he descended, after a careful reconnaissance, he found that Hawke
and Tiddler had already anticipated his decision, and were buckling
their straps together.
"Ain't it a little bit of all right?" grinned Hawke. "That there bough
might have been made for it, and foothold on that other branch
underneath. She weighs twenty-five pounds; but if you think the strap of
your map-case will hold, sir, it's as good as done."
Dennis slipped the map from his shoulder, and, buckling the strap end
round the muzzle of the Lewis, Tiddler held the weapon up to the full
extent of his arms while Dennis, taking the other end of the improvised
line in his hand, climbed up the beech again.
The straps held, to their great joy, and the pair below watched the
thing dangling in mid-air above their heads as Dennis hauled it slowly
upwards.
The men of C Company also watched the manoeuvre with keen interest;
and Hawke, with a couple of charged magazines in his hand, climbed up
and clung within arm's reach of his officer.
The Germans were flinging a terrific barrage fire upon the village in
our rear, and our own barrage was pulverising the ground beyond the
enemy ridge, almost drowning the sound of the two machine-guns which
were checking the British advance at that spot.
Dennis could see the gunner behind his sandbags, sweeping the front of
the wood, and, laying the gun, he pressed the trigger.
The detachable magazine of a Lewis holds forty-seven cartridges in two
layers; and, loosing a couple of trial shots, both of which drew a spurt
of earth from the sandbags, he kept his pull on the trigger, and emptied
the rest in a continuous stream.
He saw the gunner drop, and several heads peer anxiously round as
another man took his place. They were trying to locate the whereabouts
of this unseen enemy, but they fell back out of sight before they could
place it, and a third and a fourth gunner likewise.
The machine-gun was silenced before Dennis passed his hand down to the
delighted Hawke.
"Now's your time!" he yelled to the waiting line beneath, as he fixed
the deadly disc in position. And as he heard the whistles shrilling, he
almost lost his balance in the wild excitement that seized him.
"Charge, boys, charge!" was the cry, as the Reedshires sprang over the
tree-trunks and rushed up the slope, and a row of forage caps popped up
above the parapet.
They made a splendid mark for the lad; and it was a very broken volley
that met the khaki rush as Dennis played his weapon along the Bavarian
trench.
"Get down, Hawke!" he shouted; "we must be in this." And, leaving the
gun where it was, he clambered down, to find Hawke and Tiddler waiting
for him.
Before they were clear of the wood, the rearmost files of the Reedshires
were in the trench; and when they reached the crest the trench floor was
covered with dead and wounded, and the victorious battalion was bombing
its way along the sinuous windings which curved off northward.
Far away to the east a tremendous fusillade told where the division on
their right was attacking Montauban; but Dennis's anxiety was to pick up
A Company again, and that was a difficult matter.
"Seen anything of Captain Dashwood?" he cried to a wounded Reedshire on
the fire-step, who was trying to staunch an ugly wound.
"No, sir. They went over on the left there with the Highlanders."
In the distance across the shell-torn ground behind the trench they saw
clumps of brown dots growing smaller and smaller, as our successful rush
carried us far into the enemy's lines, and there was nothing for it but
a long sprint to overtake them.
Even Dennis, fit as he was, and Hawke and Tiddler, both hard as nails,
were puffed and blown before they had run very far; and so confusing was
the maze of craters and battered trench-lines that Dennis suddenly
realised that he was alone.
The sing of bullets passed his ears, and the spurting up of the ground
in his immediate vicinity told him that the spot was "unhealthy"; and,
seeing an empty communication trench a few yards on the left, he jumped
down into it, reloaded his revolver, and went forward cautiously.
The trench, which had somehow escaped our bombardment, had been hastily
evacuated when we carried the third line; but, finding that it curved in
the direction where he had last seen those running figures, he followed
it until a clamour of voices ahead of him made him shrink behind the
angle of a bay as a mob of Germans came running towards him.
Dennis felt in his bomb sack and found he had three of those deadly
missiles left, and a grim smile twitched the corners of his compressed
lips.
"If they're bolting it means that our chaps are behind them," he thought
to himself. "If it's a counter-attack, a friendly dug-out wouldn't be a
bad place. But here goes, anyhow!" And, jumping on to the fire-step of
the bay, he lobbed a bomb into the trench about fifteen yards higher up,
where it burst with a loud report.
Then he sprang down, and, shouting loudly as though he had a whole
party at his back, he pitched another bomb, which burst as it touched
the ground.
His last bomb struck the side of the trench, dislodging the sandbags;
but, covering the terrified mob with his revolver, he stalked boldly
forward, calling to them to surrender.
They were big fellows, and they were Prussians; but their unexpected
reception had demoralised them, and their hands went up in the air with
a shout of "Mercy, Kamerad!"
There must have been twenty at least that had survived the explosions.
How many he had killed he never knew; but he realised that he must carry
matters with a very high hand, and give them no time to think.
"Come on, then--you are my prisoners," he said in German. "File along
the trench; my men will escort you to the rear." And, stepping back a
few paces to the angle of the bay, he stood aside to let them go by.
There was terror in their faces, and the sight of the revolver held
threateningly in the officer's hand sent them past at a shambling trot.
Dennis had counted seventeen, and there were still four more to pass
him, when, from the head of the drove, there came a loud laugh, and a
guttural voice shouted back: "Sergeant, the Englishman is alone!"
Dennis saw the speaker jump on to the side of the parados with his hand
to his mouth, and he raised his revolver; but the shot was never fired,
for the butt of a rifle descended on his trench helmet from behind, and
Dennis dropped with a groan.
When he opened his eyes he was lying on his back and it was dark. The
action of turning his head caused a terrible spasm of pain, and made him
lie quite still again for some moments.
Low cries and a distressing moaning mingled with a voice that spoke in
German; and, opening his eyes again, he saw by the light of a lantern
three figures bending over a prostrate man, who had been stripped to the
shirt. His tunic lay on the ground, so close to Dennis that he could
have reached out and touched it, and one of the figures was just rising
from his knee.
"You have wasted my time for nothing," he was saying. "The man is dead
as a herring. Himmel! That makes eighty-seven I have examined to-night,
and not one of them will see the Fatherland again."
He picked up his case of instruments, and, followed by two hospital
orderlies, passed by Dennis and out through a doorway.
"Great Scott!" murmured the lad, "I must be a prisoner in a German
dressing-station. What's happened?"
He had to piece it all together, until he reached the point in the day's
happenings when the Prussians filed past him in the empty trench; then
he remembered, and wondered if he were much hurt.
His head felt three times its normal size; but he could move his arms
and legs, and presently sat up, holding his head in both hands, for the
pulsation within it was so terrific that it seemed the next throb must
split it in two.
Guns were still firing in the distance, and as his eyes grew accustomed
to the darkness he saw that he was in an unroofed barn.
"I must get out of this at once," he thought. And, remembering the torn
tunic which had belonged to the dead man beside him, he reached
carefully for it, slipped his arms into the sleeves, and was buttoning
it up when two stretcher bearers entered and dumped their burden down on
the other side of him.
"That's two of those English pig officers we've brought in to-night,"
said the lantern bearer who accompanied them. "This one may think
himself lucky if he gets attended to before daylight." And Dennis, who
had thrown himself backwards, felt his heart stand still as the orderly
flashed his lantern on the new-comer's face.
It was only a glimpse he caught, but he knew that the crumpled figure
was his brother Bob!