the Squadron’s word for it, he went past that and was an utter crank on
machine-guns and everything connected with them. They admitted all the
benefits of this enthusiasm, the excellent state in which their guns
were always to be found, the fact that in air fighting they probably
had fewer stoppages and gun troubles than any other Squadron at the
Front; but on the other hand they protested that there was a time and
place for everything, and that you could always have too much of a
good thing. It was bad enough to have “Guns” himself cranky on the
subject, but when he infected the Recording Officer with his craze, it
was time to kick. “Guns” usually had some of the mechanism of his pets
in his pockets, and he and the R.O. could be seen in the ante-room
fingering these over, gloating over them or discussing some technical
points. They had to be made to sit apart at mess because the gun-talk
never ceased so long as they were together, and the two at the same
table were enough to bring any real game of Bridge or Whist to utter
confusion. As one of their partners said, “I never know whether Guns
is declaring No Trumps or tracer bullets or Hearts or ring sights. If
you ask what the score is, he starts in to reel off the figures of the
Squadron’s last shooting test; he’ll fidget to finish the most exciting
rubber you ever met and get away to his beastly armoury to pull the
innards out of some inoffensive Lewis. He’s hopeless.”
Guns and the R.O. between them apparently came to a conclusion that
we were chucking the war away because we didn’t concentrate enough on
machine-gun frightfulness. They’d have washed out the whole artillery
probably, Archies included, if they’d been asked, and given every man
a machine-gun on his shoulder and a machine-pistol in his hip-pocket.
They wasted a morning and an appalling number of rounds satisfying
themselves that machine-guns would cut away barbed-wire entanglements,
stealing a roll of wire from some unsuspecting Engineers’ dump,
erecting a sample entanglement in the quarry, and pelting it with
bullets. And they called the C.O. “narrow-minded” when he made a fuss
about the number of rounds they’d used, and reminded them barbed wire
didn’t figure in air fighting. They tramped miles across country, one
carrying a Vickers and the other a Lewis, to settle some argument about
how far or how fast a man could hump the guns; they invented fakements
enough to keep a private branch of the Patents Office working overtime
logging them up.
It sounds crazy, but then, as the Squadron protested, they, Guns
especially, were crazy, and that’s all there was to it.
But with these notions of theirs about the infallibility of
machine-guns, and the range of their usefulness, you will understand
how their minds leaped to machine-gun tactics when the Hun night-fliers
began to come over and bomb around the ’drome. The first night they
came Guns nearly broke his neck by falling into a deep hole in his
mad rush to get to the anti-aircraft machine-guns on the ‘drome near
the sheds, and he alternated between moping and cursing for three
days because the Huns had gone before he could get a crack at them.
He cheered up a lot when they came the next time and he and the R.O.
shot away a few-million rounds, more or less. But as he didn’t fetch a
feather out of them, and as the Huns dropped their eggs horribly close
to the hangars, the two were not properly satisfied, and began to work
out all sorts of protective schemes and sit up as long as the moon was
shining in hopes of a bit of shooting.
Their hopes were fully satisfied, or anyhow the Squadron’s more than
were, because the Huns made a regular mark of the ’drome and strafed
it night after night. And for all the rounds they shot, neither Guns
nor the R.O. ever got a single bird, although they swore more than once
that they were positive they had winged one. As none came down on our
side of the lines, this claim was a washout, and the two got quite
worried about it and had to stand an unmerciful amount of chaff from
the others on the dud shooting.
After a bit they evolved a new plan. Careful investigation and inquiry
of different pilots in the Squadron gave them the groundwork for the
plan. In answer to questions, some of the pilots said that if they were
in the place of the Huns and wanted to find the ‘drome in the dark,
they would steer for the unusual-shaped clump of wood which lay behind
the ’drome. Some said they would follow the canal, others the road,
others various guides, but all agreed that the wood was the object the
Huns would steer for. This found, all the pilots again agreed it was
a simple matter to coast along the edge of the wood, which would show
up a black blot on the ground in the moonlight, find the tongue or
spur of trees that ran straight out towards the ’drome, and, keeping
that line, must fly exactly over the hangars. One or two nights’
careful listening to the direction of the approaching and departing Hun
engines confirmed the belief that the Huns were working on the lines
indicated, and after this was sure the plan progressed rapidly.
The two machine-guns on the ’drome were trained and aimed in daylight
to shower bullets exactly over the tip of the tongue of wood. A patent
gadget invented by Guns allowed the gun-muzzles a certain amount of
play up and down, play which careful calculation showed would pour a
couple of streams of bullets across the end of the wood up and down
a height extending to about a thousand feet, that is, 500 above and
500 below the level at which it was estimated the Huns usually flew
on these night raids. It simply meant that as soon as the sound was
judged to be near enough the two guns only had to open fire, to keep
pouring out bullets to make sure that the Huns had to fly through the
stream and “stop one” or more. It was, in fact, a simple air barrage of
machine-gun bullets.
With the plan perfected, the two enthusiasts waited quite impatiently
for the next strafe. Fortunately the moon was up fairly early, so that
now there was no need to sit up late for the shoot, and the second
night after the preparations were complete, to the joy of Guns and the
R.O. (and the discomfort of the others), there was a beautiful, still,
moonlight night with every inducement for the Huns to come along.
The two ate a hurried dinner with ears cocked for the first note of
the warning which would sound when the distant noise of engines was
first heard. Sure enough they had just reached the sweets when the
signal went, and the two were up and off before the lights could be
extinguished. They arrived panting at their stations to find the
gun-crews all ready and waiting, made a last hasty examination to see
everything was in order, and stood straining their ears for the moment
when they reckoned the Huns would be approaching the barrage area, and
when they judged the moment had arrived opened a long steady stream
of fire. The drone of the first engine grew louder, passed through
the barrage, and boomed on over the ’drome without missing a beat.
There came the old familiar “Phe-e-e-w—BANG! ... e-e-e-ew—BANG!” of
a couple of falling bombs, and the first engine droned on and away.
Two minutes later another was heard, and Guns and the R.O., no degree
disheartened or discouraged by their first failure, let go another
stream of lead, keeping the gun-muzzles twitching up and down as
rapidly as they could. The second Hun repeated the performance of the
first; and a third did likewise. After it was all over Guns and the
R.O. held a council and devised fresh and more comprehensive plans,
which included the use of some extra guns taken from the machines. For
the moment we may leave them, merely mentioning that up to now and
even in their newer plans they entirely neglected any consideration of
rather an important item in their performance, namely, the ultimate
billet of their numerous bullets.
From the point of view of the defence it is an important and unpleasant
fact that an air barrage eventually returns to the ground. Guns and
the R.O. had been pumping out bullets at a rate of some hundreds per
minute each, and all those bullets after missing their target had to
arrive somewhere on the earth. The gunners’ interest in them passed for
the moment as soon as the bullets had failed to hit their mark, and
afterwards they came to remember with amazement that ever they could
have been so idiotically unconsidering.
Some distance from the ’drome, and in a line beyond the tip of the
wood, there stood a number of Nissen huts which housed a Divisional
Staff, and the inevitable consequence was that those up-and-down
twitching gun-muzzles sprayed showers of lead in gusts across and
across the hutments. The General Commanding the Division was in the
middle of his dinner with about five staff officers round the table
when the first “aeroplane over” warning went on this particular
night of the new air barrage. The lights in the Mess hut were not
extinguished, because full precautions had been taken some nights
before to have the small window-space fully and closely screened
against the possibility of leakage of a single ray of light. One or
two remarks were made quite casually about the nasty raiding habits of
the Huns, but since no bombs had come near in the earlier raids, and
the conclusion was therefore reasonable that the Divisional H.Q. had
not been located, nobody there worried much over the matter, and dinner
proceeded.
They all heard the drone of the Hun engine, and, because it was a
very still night, they heard it rather louder than usual. Someone had
just remarked that they seemed to be coming closer to-night, when the
further remarks were violently interrupted by a clashing and clattering
_B-bang_ ... _br-r-rip-rap_, _ba-bang-bang_, the splintering, ripping
sound of smashed wood, the crash, clash tinkle of a bottle burst into a
thousand fragments on the table under their startled eyes. The barrage
bullets had returned to earth.
The group at the table had time for no more than a pause of
astonishment, a few exclamations, a hasty pushing back of chairs, when
_rip-rap-bang-bang-bang_ down came the second spray of bullets from
those jerking muzzles over on the ’drome. Now a bullet hitting any
solid object makes a nasty and most disconcerting sort of noise; but
when it hits the tin roof of a Nissen hut, tears through it and the
wood lining inside, passes out again or comes to rest in the hut, the
noises become involved and resemble all sorts of queer sounds from
kicking a tea-tray to treading on an empty match-box. The huts were
solidly sand-bagged up their outside walls to a height of some feet,
but had no overhead cover whatever. The third burst from Guns and the
R.O. arrived on the hut at exactly the same moment as the General
and his Staff arrived on the floor as close as they could get to the
wall and the protecting sandbags. They stayed there for some exciting
minutes while Guns shot numerous holes in the roof, splintered the
furniture, and shot the dinner piecemeal off the table.
The shooting and the hum of the enemy engine ceased together, and
the General and his Staff gathered themselves off the floor and
surveyed the wreckage about them. “I just moved in time,” said the
Brigade-Major, and pointed to a ragged hole in the seat of his chair.
“D’you suppose it was a fluke, or have they got this place spotted?”
asked the Captain. “Nasty mess of the roof,” said someone else. The
General confined himself to less coherent but much more pungent remarks
on all Huns in general, and night-raiders in particular. They seated
themselves, and the waiter was just beginning to mop up the smashed
bottle of red wine, when the distant hum of another engine was heard.
This time the barraged ones reached the floor just a shade ahead of
the first tearing burst from Guns and the R.O., and again they held
their breath and cowered while the bullets clashed and banged on the
tin roof, smacked and cracked on the ground outside, beat another noisy
banging tattoo across the next-door huts. The group stayed prone rather
longer after the ceasing of fire and engine hum, and had little more
than risen to their feet when the third outbreak sent them flinging
down into cover again.
After another and very much longer pause they very gingerly resumed
their places at the table, sitting with chairs turned to positions
which would allow evacuation with the least possible delay. The
conversation for the rest of the dinner was conducted in hushed
whispers and with six pair of ears on the alert for the first suspicion
of the sound of an approaching engine. It was agreed by all that the
Hun must have them spotted, and the only matter for surprise was that
some of the bombs heard exploding in the distance had not been dropped
on them. It was also agreed very unanimously, not to say emphatically,
that the first job for a party in the morning was the digging of a
solidly constructed dug-out. “Sand-bags on the roof might be good
enough for bullets,” said the General, “but we’ve got to allow for
bombs next time, and there’s nothing for that but a good dug-out.”
Someone suggested moving the H.Q., but this was rejected since they
were busy at the time, and it would mean a good deal of time lost and
work dislocated. The General decided to hang on for a bit and see what
turned up.
Next morning dug-outs were started and thickish weather the next night
prevented further raids and allowed satisfactory progress to be made on
the shelters. The following night was clear again, but dinner passed
without any alarm, and everyone, except the Brigade-Major, who had some
urgent work to keep him up, turned in early.
At about 11.30 p.m. the first Hun came over, and at the ’drome the
waiting and expectant Guns and R.O. set up their new and improved
barrage, with four machine-guns all carefully trained and set to sweep
over the same end of the same wood.
The General was awakened by the first tea-tray bang-banging on adjacent
tin roofs, and, without pausing to think, rolled out of bed and bumped
on to the floor just as a couple of strays from the outside edge of
the barrage banged, ripped, and cracked through his roof and walls. He
crawled at top pace to the wall, cursing his hardest, groped round in
the dark and found a pair of boots and a British Warm, struggled into
these, sitting on the cold floor in his pyjamas, while a tornado of
bullets hailed and clashed and banged across the Nissen hut roofs of
the camp. He took a quick chance offered by a lull in the firing, flung
the door open, and set off at a floundering run for the dug-out. As he
doubled along the duckboards he heard the droning roar of an engine
coming closer and closer, made a desperate spurt, expecting every
moment to hear the ominous whistle and resounding crash of a falling
and bursting bomb, reached the dug-out entrance, hurled himself through
it, and fell in a heap on top of the Brigade-Major cautiously feeling
his way down the dark steps. They reached the bottom in a tumbled heap
and with a bump, their language rising in a mingled and turgid flow to
the delighted ears of a Staff-Lieutenant, shivering at the top of the
stairs in his pyjamas with his breeches under his arm and his tunic
thrown round his chilly shoulders. But his grins cut off short, and he,
too, hurtled down the steps as a bomb burst a few hundred yards off
with a resounding and earth-shaking crash.
Sitting there in the dark for the next hour the General meditated many
things, including the mysterious ways of air Huns who so accurately
machine-gunned his camp, and yet dropped nine out of ten of their bombs
at various distances up to a full mile away from it.
This mystery led him next day to diverge from his way and ride across
the fields to the ‘drome to make a few inquiries into the ways of
night-fliers. Guns was busy making some adjustments to his barrage guns
with renewed determination to bring a Hun down some night. The General
saw him, and rode over and asked a few questions, and listened with a
growing suspicion darkening his brow to Guns’ enthusiastic description
of the barrage plan. He cut Guns short with an abrupt question, “Where
do your bullets come down?”
Guns paused in bewilderment, and stared vacantly a moment at the empty
sky. Somehow now in daylight it seemed so very obvious the bullets must
come down; whereas shooting up into the dark it had never occurred. The
General pulled his horse round and rode straight over to the Squadron
office. There he found the Major and a map, had the exact position
of the barrage guns pointed out to him, and in turn pointed out where
the H.Q. camp lay. The R.O., who was working in the outer office, sat
shivering at the wrathful remarks that boiled out of the next room
and ended with a demand for the presence of the Gunnery Officer. The
R.O. himself departed hurriedly to send him, and then took refuge in
the hangar farthest removed from the office. A sense of fair play and
sharing the blame drove him reluctantly back to the office in time to
hear the effective close of the General’s remarks.
“Barrage, sir!—barrage! Splashing thousands of bullets all over a
country scattered with camps. Are you mad, sir? Air barrage! Go’
bless your eyes, man, d’you think you’re in London that you must go
filling the sky with barrages and bullets and waking me and every
other man within miles with your cursed row. Suppose you had shot
someone—suppose you _have_ shot someone. Blank blank your air barrage.
You’d better go back to England, where you’ll be in the fashion with
your air barrages and anti-aircraft. Am I to be driven from my bed on a
filthy cold night to ...” he spluttered explosively and stopped short.
If the Division heard the details of his share in the incident, had
the chance to picture him racing for the dug-out, sitting shivering in
scanty night attire, and add to the picture as they’d certainly do, the
joke would easily outlive the war and him. “That will do, sir,” he said
after a brief pause, “I’ll have a word with your Major and leave him to
deal with you.”
Guns came out with his head hanging, to join the pale-cheeked R.O. and
escape with him.
Ten minutes after a message came to him that the General wanted him in
the C.O.’s office, and Guns groaned and went back to hear his sentence,
estimating it at anything between “shot at dawn” and cashiered, broke,
and sent out of the Service.
Now, what the C.O. had said in those ten minutes nobody ever knew, but
Guns found a totally different kind of General awaiting him.
“Come in,” he said, and after a pause a twinkle came in his eye as he
looked at the dejected, hangdog air of the culprit. “H-m-m! You can
thank your C.O. and the excellent character he gives you, sir, for my
agreeing to drop this matter. I think you realise your offence and
won’t repeat it. Zeal and keenness is always commendable; but please
temper it with discretion. I am glad to know of any officer keen on
his work as I hear you are; but I cannot allow the matter to pass
entirely without punishment....” (Guns braced himself with a mental
“Now for it.”) “... So I order you to parade at my Headquarters at 7.30
to-night, and have dinner with me.” He paused, said, “That’ll do, sir,”
very abruptly, and Guns emerged in a somewhat dazed frame of mind.
He said, after the dinner, that the punishment was much worse than it
sounded. “Roasting! I never had such a dose of chaffing in my life.
Those red-tabbed blighters ... and they were all so _infernally_ polite
with it ... it was just beastly—all except the General. My Lord, he’s
a man, a proper white man, a real brick. And he was as keen to know
all about machine-guns as I am myself.”
“Well, you taught him something about them—especially about barrages
and the result of indirect fire,” said the Mess, and, “Are you going to
barrage the next Huns?”
But on his next barrage plans, Guns in the first place—the very first
and preliminary place—used a map, many diagrams, and endless pages of
notebooks in calculations on where his bullets would come down.
VIII
NIGHTMARE
JAKE HARDING from early childhood had suffered from a horribly
imaginative mind in the night hours, and had endured untold tortures
from dreams and nightmares. One of his most frequent night terrors was
to find himself fleeing over a dreary waste, struggling desperately
to get along quickly and escape Something, while his feet and legs
were clogged with dragging weights, and dreadful demons and bogies
and bunyips howled in pursuit. This was an odd dream, because having
been born and brought up in the bush he had never seen such a dreary
waste as he dreamed of, and had never walked on anything worse than
dry, springy turf or good firm road. There was one night he remembered
for long years when he had a specially intensified edition of the same
nightmare. It was when he was laid up as a child with a broken arm, and
a touch of fever on top of it, and he went through all the usual items
of dreary waste, clogged feet trying to run, howling demons in pursuit,
and a raging, consuming throat-drying fear. He woke screaming just as
he was on the point of being seized and hurled into a yawning furnace
filled with flaming red fire, saw a dim light burning by his bedside,
felt a cool hand on his brow, heard a soothing voice murmur, “H-sh-sh!
There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re quite safe here. Go to sleep
again.”
“I’m glad, Nursie,” said Jake, “I’m glad I’ve waked up; I’ve had a
drefful dream.”
All that is a long way back, but it serves to explain, perhaps,
why Long Jake, 6 ft. 3 in. in height, thin as a lath, but muscled
apparently with whipcord and wire rope, known throughout the regiment
as a “hard case,” felt a curious and unaccountable jerk back to
childhood in his memory as he lay on the edge of a wet shell-hole
peering out into the growing grey light. “I’ve never been up here
before,” he thought wonderingly, “and I’ve never seen any bit of
front like it. Yet I seem to know it by heart.” He knew afterwards,
though not then, that it was the “dreary waste” of past dreams—a wide
spreading welter of flat ground, broken and tumbled and torn and shiny
wet, seen dimly through a misty haze, with nothing in sight but a few
splintered bare poles of trees.
But Long Jake did not get much time to cudgel his memory. It was almost
time for the battalion to “go over the top,” although here to be sure
there was no top, and the going over merely meant their climbing out
of the chain of wet shell-craters they occupied, and advancing across
the flat and up the long slope. Both sides were shelling heavily, but
the British, as Jake could judge, by far the heavier of the two. The
noise was deafening. The thunder of the guns rose roaring and bellowing
without an instant’s break. Overhead the shells howled and yelled and
shrieked and whistled and rumbled in every conceivable tone and accent
from the slow, lumbering moan and roll of a passing electric tram to
the sharp rush of a great bird’s wings. The ground quaked to the roll
of the guns like jelly in a shaken mould; out in front of them the
barrage was dropping into regular line, spouting in vivid flame that
rent the twisting smoke veil quick instant after instant, flinging
fountains of water and mud and smoke into the air.
Jake heard no order given, did not even hear any whistle blown, but was
suddenly aware that dim figures were rising out of the shell-holes to
either side, and moving slowly forward. He scrambled out of his crater
and moved forward in line with the rest. They went close up to the line
of our bursting shells, so close that they could see the leaden hail
splashing and whipping up the wet ground before them, so close that
Jake more than once ducked instinctively at the vicious crack above his
head of one of our own shells bursting and flinging its tearing bullets
forward and down. But the line pressed on, and Jake kept level with it;
and then, just when it seemed that they must come into that belt of
leaping, splashing bullets, the barrage lifted forward, dropped again
twenty or thirty yards ahead in another wall of springing smokeclouds
and spurting flame.