The Exciting Adventures of "Carl Heft"
The strain of lying there hour after hour had become unbearable. The
idea had also struck him that now was his opportunity to glean some
information, if possible, about the lie of the land. There would be warm
work, he knew, and that before long, for the French "75's" were barking
in the distance, and shells were falling about Biaches and upon the hill
away to the left.
Field wagons from Peronne had clattered past his hiding-place, carrying
reels of barbed wire, and if he were fortunate he might be able to slip
through the advanced German trench before it was hedged in by that
difficult barricade. Bodies were lying thickly strewn among the brick
heaps, and one little alley down which he tried to pass was piled up six
deep with corpses.
"I wish I could get on a listening post," he thought to himself. "That
would give me a fine chance." And just then he collided with somebody,
who shook him by the shoulder and swore lustily; and he recognised the
voice of the good-natured sergeant.
"You should look where you are going, Kamerad," said the man. "And, by
the way, where _are_ you going?"
"To the front trench, sergeant," replied Dennis, speaking at a venture.
"I have just secured a fresh supply of racket bombs."
"What, you are Carl Heft, surely! Good lad, I did not see you in the
melee, but I have no doubt you acquitted yourself well. I also am going
to the front trench, to our company's sector. We will go together."
Dennis clenched his teeth, but he knew that he must put a good face on
the matter.
"With pleasure, sergeant," he made answer. And the pair walked along
side by side. "Have we lost many?" he inquired.
"Yes, a good few, and I believe it was their own fault. To tell you the
truth, Heft, the battalion is not in a good state; they were left too
long over there in the front line without being relieved. Our company in
particular is very homesick, and can you wonder when you look at the
captain they have?"
"True, he is a great brute. You will let me say that to you, sergeant?"
replied Dennis, anxious to draw the man out.
"Have no fear; I shall not report you," said his companion, with a
friendly squeeze of the arm. "He is not only a great brute, but he is an
arrant coward into the bargain. The men do not mind being cuffed and
bullied, because they are used to it; but when they see their officer
never expose himself, and always shouting from the rear 'Get on, you
pigs!' they don't like it. But, Himmel!"--and he chuckled--"our
engineers have surpassed themselves to-night. I have never seen wire so
strong during the war. Our whole front is covered with it; not so much
as a rat could get through."
"That is good," assented his listener, mentally feeling how bad it was
for himself, and that, short of a miracle, he must stay where he was
until daylight.
"I have just been making a report to Colonel Schlutz," went on the
sergeant. "Now you and I will go to a snug little dug-out I have taken
possession of. I have a nice piece of sausage which we will share, and
what do you think?--four bottles of lager beer! What do you think of
that?"
"I say that you are a good comrade, sergeant--the best I have met for
many a long day," said Dennis, with a warmth he really felt. This man
was evidently a good fellow at heart, an exception to the general run of
German non-commissioned officers. And yet it might come about that he
would have to kill him, in spite of that nice piece of sausage and those
four bottles!
The sergeant had called it a snug little dug-out, that square hole in
the chalk, with earth piled on a piece of corrugated iron by way of
roof, and great rats peering at them as they sat with their knees
touching by the light of a piece of candle.
But to Dennis it was a palace, hiding him, as it did, from inquisitive
eyes.
"Surely it is written that I shall win through," he thought to himself.
"Everything seems to point to it."
A shell burst close to them and rattled the corrugated iron, bringing a
shower of earth down in front of the dug-out door.
"I will go and see if that has done any damage," said the sergeant. "You
may stay here until the alarm is given. Your post will be in that bay in
front of us. Why don't you go to sleep? I should if I were not an
_Unteroffizier_."
He came back again in a few minutes, to find that Dennis had taken him
at his word, and was watching the rats fearlessly searching for crumbs
between his very feet.
"A corporal and five men," said the sergeant laconically. "And a
splinter has broken the Herr Captain's glasses. Oh, he is in a rare
fury!"
Another shell burst farther away behind the dug-out, and Dennis wondered
whether the French gunners were lengthening their fuses preparatory to
the counter-attack.
Mist still hung about the ground, and the moon gave it a very ghostly
effect.
Peeping through the door from the dark dug-out--for a rat had suddenly
pounced upon the lighted candle and made off with it--he saw the
look-out motionless and alert behind the sandbagged parapet, and,
sitting on the fire-step, the men of No. 6 Company huddled up. Some of
them were asleep with their heads on their comrades' shoulders. The man
who had been five times wounded bent forward, grasping one wrist with
the other hand, and staring into vacancy; perhaps he was thinking of his
dead wife!
Without warning a terrific fire suddenly opened on the village; and
Dennis, used as he was to the British bombardment, sat dazed in his
cubby-hole as shell after shell burst in such quick succession that the
explosions seemed like the continuous fire of some giant machine-gun. He
put his hands to his ears and crouched there, bowed, like one awaiting
inevitable doom, wondering how it fared with the company outside in the
trench and with the rest of the battalion.
For a quarter of an hour the inferno continued, and then ceased as
suddenly as it had begun; and in the lull that followed he rose to his
feet, knowing that the dug-out would not be a safe place in which to
await the counter-attack which would come on the heels of that terrible
devastation.
In the doorway he stumbled over something soft, and recognised the
upturned face of the good-natured sergeant! The lower part of him from
the waist downwards had been blown away; and, stooping down, Dennis
gently disengaged the Iron Cross from the breast of his tunic.
"Poor chap!" he muttered. "This will be something for dear little
Billy." And then he looked round.
The trench existed no longer as a trench, and terrified, trembling men
crawled from among the tumbled sandbags, and out of nooks and corners
where they had lain.
The barbed wire looked like a parrot's cage that had been run over by a
motor-car, and everyone saw that the position was untenable.
So No. 6 Company, or all that was left of it, hurried towards a wood
between Biaches and the hill of La Maisonette, and no sooner had they
cleared the broken trench than the first wave of the French poured over
it.
The ferret-faced German captain had made his way back to headquarters
just before the bombardment began. He had a cousin on the staff, from
whom he hoped to borrow a spare pair of spectacles to replace his own.
He secured the glasses, and found that he could not have arrived at a
better moment, for a message had just been received from the Divisional
General!
"You are the very man we want," said Colonel Schlutz. "There is a spy in
No. 6 Company masquerading under the name of Carl Heft. It is very
serious and altogether extraordinary. The real Carl Heft was wounded by
a shell splinter, and has turned up again over there. The spy actually
took down the general's order for our move, and he must be discovered at
once. He is young, and he wears brown boots."
"Himmel! I know the fellow!" exclaimed the captain. "He shall be
arrested within the next twenty minutes!"
But the French fire began, and it was impossible to move; and they
cowered in their temporary shelter, expecting death.
"Where is the company?" demanded its captain when the 75's ceased, and
he encountered a wounded man dragging himself to the rear.
"The survivors have retired into yonder wood, Herr Captain. May I beg a
draught of water from your bottle?"
"You will get some farther back; I have no time now," was the brutal
response. And, grinning with secret satisfaction, he ran in the
direction of the tree-tops, hugely elated as every stride carried him
farther away from the ruined village, against which he knew the
counter-attack would be delivered.
As soon as he judged himself to be out of danger he skulked among the
trees for more than an hour. He was in no hurry to find his men;
besides, the sky was lightening, and he preferred to wait until
daylight.
During that hour the fury of combat raged among the brick heaps of
Biaches and upon the hill of La Maisonette, and when morning came the
French had recovered both positions.
He could hear them cheering, and was hoping that all was over, when the
crackle of rifle fire commenced from the western edge of the wood, and
he knew that he could delay no longer. His smile gave place to the
blustering frown that No. 6 Company knew so well, and, striding forward,
he became aware from the hoarse roar of voices that something serious
was taking place.
The growing daylight had revealed to the French that the enemy was
holding the wood in some strength; and Dennis, who had spied a long line
of blue-painted helmets in the distance, was stealthily working his way
forward from tree to tree, intent on making a bolt towards them, when
that same roar fell upon his ear.
Looking round, he saw a double company of the battalion that had
entrained with them forming up for an advance with the bayonet. In sixty
seconds they would go charging across the open strip of ground which he
had decided upon as his own line of escape, and their right flank would
pass within a dozen yards of a white-walled cottage that had been
unroofed by a French shell.
He looked at the solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling
French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve
came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command
"Vorwaerts!"
Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of
racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them
one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans.
Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of
the explosions.
Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb
attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation
and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees.
But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think!
Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the
hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting
for his life for the shelter of a big shell crater, where he meant to
strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer
act as a passport to the rapidly advancing French.
As he reached the lip of the huge hole his laugh of triumph died away,
for before he could check himself he had slid down among the remnants of
No. 6 Company, huddled together, leaderless, demoralised.
At the same moment a shell burst on the other side of the crater,
flinging an iron rain into the already terrified mob, and half burying
a man who had been descending into the pit.
It was the ferret-faced captain who picked himself up, white as a sheet
of paper, and then gave a guttural cry of surprise. Drawing his revolver
he strode forward and stopped in front of Dennis, covering him with the
weapon.
"I am looking for you, Carl Heft," he laughed hoarsely. "Possibly you
know why they want you at headquarters!"
No one knew exactly how it came about, but there was a sharp report, the
captain staggered back and fell, shot through the heart; and "Carl Heft"
stood like some avenging spirit, looking down at him, with the smoking
Webley in his hand.
"Kamerads!" he cried to the throng, "there lies the cause of half our
troubles! That beast would have driven us on again while he slunk in the
rear. Look at this!" And he pointed to the man who had already been
wounded five times. A fragment of the shell had just carried away his
right hand. "The game is up; we have the right to choose whether we die
like sheep, or live to rejoin our families. You can do as you like, but
I am going to surrender. I have had enough!"
Very erect, he swung round and began to walk up the side of the crater
in the direction of the French, and fifty voices cried: "He is right; we
have all had enough!" And they sprang forward in his wake, every man
with his hands raised above his head.
Dennis had planted one foot on the firm ground when a skewer-like
bayonet passed within an inch of his ear; and with a disappointed roar
its owner flung a pair of terrible arms about him, and the two rolled
backwards into the hole again.
"Now you had better say your prayers, Boche!" growled his assailant, as
a hairy hand closed on his throat; "I am going to kill you!"