every step in the soft, wet ground. It was hard, too, to keep straight
on, because the whole surface was pitted and cratered with holes that
ran from anything the size of a foot-bath to a chasm big enough to
swallow a fair-sized house. Jake skirted the edges of the larger holes,
and plunged in and struggled up out of the smaller ones. The going was
so heavy, and it was so hard to keep direction, that for a long time
he thought of nothing else. Then a man who had been advancing beside
him turned to him and yelled something Jake could not hear, and next
instant lurched staggering against him. Jake just caught a glimpse of
the wild terror in the staring eyes, of the hand clutched about the
throat, and the blood spurting and welling out between the clenched
fingers, and then the man slid down in a heap at his feet. Jake stooped
an instant with wild thoughts racing through his mind. What was he
to do for the man? How did one handle—couldn’t stop bleeding by a
tourniquet or even a tight bandage—choke the man that way—why’n
blazes hadn’t the ambulance classes told them how to handle a man with
a bullet in his throat? (The answer to that last, perhaps, if Jake had
only known, being that usually the man is past handling or helping.)
Then before Jake could attempt anything he knew the man was dead. Jake
went on, and now he was conscious of vicious little hisses and whutts
and sharp slaps and smacks in the wet ground about him, and knew these
for bullets passing or striking close.
The barrage lifted again, this time before they were well up on it,
and the line ploughed on in pursuit of it. That was the third lift.
Jake tried to recall how many times the pretended barrage had lifted in
the practice attacks behind the lines, how many yards there were there
from their own marked position to the taped-out lines representing the
German positions.
Then through the bellowing of the guns, the unceasing howl of the
shells, the running crashes of their bursts Jake heard a sharp
tat-tat-tat, another like an echo joining it, another and another until
the whole blended in a hurrying clatter and swift running rattle.
“Machine-guns,” he gasped. “Now we’re for it,” but plunged on doggedly.
He could see something dimly grey looming through the smoke haze, with
red jets of fire sparkling and spitting from it ... more spurting jets
... and still more, both these last lots seen before he could make
out the loom of the block-house shelters that covered them. Jake knew
where he was now. These were the concrete redoubts, emplacements,
“pill-boxes.” But they were none of his business. Everyone had been
carefully drilled in their own jobs; there were the proper parties told
off to deal with the pill-boxes; his business was to push straight on
past them, clearing any Germans out of the shell-hole they might be
holding, then stop and help dig some sort of linked-up line of holes,
and stand by to beat off any counter-attack. So Jake went steadily on,
looking sharply about him for any Germans. A rifle flamed suddenly
from a couple of yards ahead of him, and he felt the wind of the bullet
by his face, thought for a moment he was blinded by the flash. But as
he staggered back a bomber thrust past him and threw straight and hard
into the shell-hole where the rifle had flashed. Jake saw a jumping
sheet of flame, heard the crash of the bomb, felt the shower of dirt
and wet flung from off the crater lip in his face, steadied himself,
and plunged off after the hurrying bomber.
The next bit was rather involved, and Jake was never sure exactly what
happened. There were some grey figures in front of him, scurrying to
and fro confusedly, some with long coats flapping about their ankles,
others with only half bodies or shoulders showing above the shell-hole
edges. He thought some were holding their hands up; but others—this
was too clear to doubt—were shooting rapidly at him and the rest of
the line, the red tongues of flame licking out from the rifles straight
at them. Jake dived to a shell hole and began firing back, felt
somebody slide and scramble down beside him, turned to find the bomber
picking himself up and shaking a blood-dripping left hand. “Come on,
Jake,” yelled the bomber. “Rush ’em’s the game,” and went scrambling
and floundering out of the hole with Jake close at his heels. There
was a minute’s wild shooting and bombing, and the rest of the Germans
either ran, or fell, or came crouching forward towards them with their
empty hands high and waving over their heads.
An officer appeared suddenly from somewhere. “Come along. Push on!” he
was shouting. “Bit further before we make a line to hold. Push on,”
and he led the way forward at a staggering trot. Jake and the others
followed.
They reached the wide flattened crest of the slope they were attacking
and were pushing on over it when a rapid stutter of machine-gun fire
broke out on their left flank, and a stream of bullets came sheeting
and whipping along the top of the slope. The line was fairly caught
in the bullet-storm, and suffered heavily in the next minute. There
was some shooting from shell holes in front, too, but that was nothing
to the galling fire that poured on them from the flank. Jake heard
suddenly the long, insistent scream of a whistle, looked round and
saw an officer signalling to take cover. He dropped promptly into a
shell crater, and, hearing presently the bang of rifles round him,
peered out over the edge for a mark to shoot at. Out to his left he
caught sight of a sparkle of fire, and heard the rapid clatter of
the machine-guns. He could just make out the rounded top of a buried
concrete emplacement, and the black slit that marked the embrasure, and
began to aim and fire steadily and carefully at it. The emplacement
held its fire more now, but every now and then delivered a flickering
string of flashes and a venomous _rat-at-at-at_. Jake kept on firing
at it, glancing round every little while to be sure that the others
were not moving on without him. The noisy banging raps of close-by
machine-gunning broke out suddenly, and on Jake looking round from his
shell hole he found a gun in action not more than a dozen yards away;
and while he looked another one began to fire steadily from another
shell crater fifty or sixty yards farther along. Jake crawled out of
his hole, slithered over the rough ground and down into the crater
where the nearest machine-gun banged rapidly. A sergeant was with the
team, and Jake bawled in his ear, “If you’ll keep pottin’ at him every
time he opens fire, I’ll try’n sneak over an’ out him with a bomb in
the letter-box.”
“Please yerself,” returned the sergeant. “My job’s to keep pumpin’ ’em
down ’is throat every time ’e opens ’is mouth.”
“Watch you don’t plug me in mistake when I get there,” said Jake, and
crawled out of the hole. He ducked hastily into another as he heard the
enemy bullets spatter about him, shift and begin to smack and splash
about the gun he had just left. That gun ceased fire suddenly, but the
one fifty yards farther round kept on furiously. “Got him in the neck,
I s’pose,” said Jake, “worse luck.”
He had a couple of Mills’ bombs in his pockets, but added to his stock
from a half-empty bucket he found lying by a dead bomber in a crater.
He advanced cautiously, wriggling hurriedly over the dividing ground
between craters, keeping down under cover as much as possible, working
out and then sidling in towards the red flashes that kept spurting
out at intervals from the emplacement. Once it seemed that the enemy
gunners had spotted him as he crawled and wriggled from one hole to
another, and a gust of bullets came suddenly ripping and whipping
about him as he hurled himself forward and plunged head foremost into
a crater with his left side tingling and blood trickling from his left
arm. He fingered the rent in his tunic and satisfied himself that the
side wound was no more than a graze, the arm one a clean perforation
which did not appear to have touched the bone. Twice after that he
heard the bullets’ _swish-ish-ish_ sweeping over his head, or dropping
to spatter the dirt flying from the edge of a hole he had reached.
But he worked steadily on all the same, passed the line of the front
and side embrasures, and was pondering his next move, when a sudden
rapid outburst of fire made him lift his head and peer out. A dozen men
had appeared suddenly within twenty yards of the emplacement and were
making as rapid a dash for it as the ground allowed. The machine-guns
were hailing bullets at them as hard as they could fire, and man after
man plunged and fell and rolled and squirmed into holes or lay still in
the open.
Jake did not wait to see the result of the dash. He was up and out
of his cover and running in himself as fast as the wet ground would
allow him. He was almost on the emplacement when a gun slewed round
and banged a short burst at him. He felt the rush of bullets past his
face, a pluck at his sleeve and shoulder strap, a blow on his shrapnel
helmet, made a last desperate plunge forward, and scrambled on to the
low roof. Hurriedly he pulled a bomb from his pocket and jerked the
pin out, when a couple of rifles banged close behind them, a bullet
whipped past overhead, and another smacked and ricochetted screaming
from the concrete. Jake twisted, saw the head and shoulders of two men
with rifles levelled over a hole, and quick as a flash hurled his bomb.
The men ducked, and Jake drew the pin from another bomb and lobbed
it carefully over just as the first bomb burst. The other followed,
exploding fairly in the hole and evidently deep down since the report
was low and muffled. Jake pulled another pin, and was leaning over to
locate an embrasure when the gun flamed out from it. Jake released the
spring, counted carefully “One and two and three and——” leaned over
and slammed the bomb fairly into the slit. He had another bomb out as
it burst—well inside by the sound of it—and this time leaned over and
deliberately thrust it in through the opening. He had barely snatched
his hand out when it went off with a muffled crash. Jake heard screams
inside, and then an instant later loud calls behind him. He jerked
round to see half a dozen arms waving from the hole where he had flung
the first bomb. This, as he found after, was the underground stair down
and up again into the emplacement, and the waving arms were in token
of the garrison’s surrender.
Jake stood on the roof and waved his arm, while keeping a cautious eye
on the surrenderers, saw the mud-daubed khaki figures rise from their
holes and come scrambling forward, and sat down suddenly, feeling
unpleasantly faint and sickish.
His officer’s voice recalled him. “Well done, lad, well done. This
cursed thing was fairly holding us up till you scuppered it. We’ve got
our objective line now.”
Jake staggered to his feet.
“You’re wounded,” went on the officer. “Get back out of this, and give
a message to anyone that’ll take it, that we’ve got our third objective
line, and want supports and ammunition quick as possible. Go on, off
with you, now.”
“Right, sir!” said Jake with an effort, and started off back across the
shell-torn ground again.
He felt a bit dizzy still—side hurt a heap—arm getting numb,
too—must keep going and get that message through——
A high-explosive shrapnel burst directly overhead, and Jake heard
several small pieces whip-down and one heavy bit splash thudding into
the ground a yard from his feet. And this was only the first shell
of many. The Germans had seen that their ground was lost, and were
beginning to barrage it. Jake staggered blindly across the broken
ground, in and out and round the craters, over sodden mounds that
caught at his feet and crumbled wetly under his tread. Huge clods of
wet earth clung to his feet and legs and made every step an effort.
The shell fire was growing more and more intense, thundering and
crashing and hurling cascades of mud and splinters in every direction,
passing overhead in long-drawn howls and moans and yellings, or the
short savage screams and rush of the nearer passing. The ground was
veiled in smoke and drifting haze, and stretched as far as he could
see in a dreary perspective of shiny wet earth and ragged holes. He
felt that he’d never cover it, never get clear of these cursed—what
were they—shells, bogies, demons screaming and howling for his life.
He plunged into a patch of low-lying ground, sticky swamp that sank
him knee deep at every step, that clutched and clung about his feet
and held each foot gripped as he dragged it sucking out and swung
it forward. He wanted to run—run—run—but his legs were lead—and
the bogies were very close—and now there were dead men amongst
his feet—horribly mud-bedaubed dead, half-buried in the ooze—and
helmets, and scattered packs, and haversacks. A festering stench rose
from the slime he waded through. He tried again to run, but could
only stagger slowly, dragging one foot clear after the other. Once
he trod on something he thought a lump of drier mud, and it squirmed
weakly under his foot, and a white face twisted round and up, mouthing
feeble curses at him. There were other things, horrible things he
turned his eyes from as he tried to hurry past—and red stains on the
frothy green scum. He reeled on, stupid and dazed, with the thunderous
crashes of a world shattering and dissolving about him, deafened by the
demon screeches and howlings. There were other people with him, some
wandering aimlessly, others going direct the one way, meeting still
others going the opposite, but all dragging clogged, weighted feet.
Some fell and did not rise. Jake knew they had been caught. He saw two
men who were carrying something, a stretcher, stop and look up, and
lower the stretcher hastily and drop, one flat on his face, the other
crouched low and still looking up. A spurt of red flame flung a rolling
cloud of black smoke about them, and seconds after a flattened steel
helmet whistled down out of the sky and thudded in the mud by Jake.
When he came to where they had been there was only a hole with blue and
grey reek curling slowly up its black calcined sides. Jake knew the
three had been caught, too—as he would be caught, if he didn’t hurry.
He struggled, panting.
They were still yelling and howling, looking for him. Demons,
bogymen—and here was the loudest, and fiercest, the worst of them
all—louder and louder to a tremendous chorus of all the noises
devils ever made. He was flinging himself down to escape the demon
clutch (thereby probably saving his life, since the great shell burst
a bare score yards away) when he heard the thunderous clash of the
furnace-doors flung back, caught a searing glimpse of the leaping red
flames, and was hurled headlong.
As he fell he tried to scream. He did scream, but—although he
knew nothing of the gap, and thought it was on the instant of his
falling—it was days later—a queer choking, strangled cry that brought
a cool hand on his hot forehead, a quiet voice hushing and soothing him
and saying he was “all right now.”
He opened his eyes and closed them again with a sigh of relief and
content. A low light was burning by his bed, the shadowy figure of a
woman bent over him, and between the opening and closing of his eyes,
his mind flicked back to full fifteen years.
“I’m glad I waked, Nursie,” he said weakly. “I’ve had a drefful dream;
the very dreffulest I’ve ever had.”
IX
THE GILDED STAFF
A TALE OF THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES
BROADLY speaking, the average regimental officer and man of the
fighting units is firmly convinced beyond all argument that a “Staff
job” is an absolutely safe and completely _cushy_[2] one, that the
Staff-wallah always has the best of food and drink, a good roof over
him, and a soft bed to lie on, nothing to do except maybe sign his name
to a few papers when he feels so inclined, and perhaps in a casual
and comfortable chat after a good dinner decide on a tactical move, a
strafe of some sort, issue the orders in a sort of brief “Take Hill
999” or “retire by Dead Cow Corner to Two Tree Trench” style, and leave
the regiments concerned to carry on. Briefly, the opinion of the firing
line might be summed up in a short Credo:
“I believe the Staff is No Good.
“I believe the Staff has the cushiest of cushy jobs.
“I believe the Staff never hears a bullet whistle or sees a shell burst
except through a telescope.
“I believe the Staff exists solely to find soft jobs for the wealthy
and useless portion of the aristocracy.
“I believe the Staff does nothing except wear a supercilious manner and
red tabs and trimmings.
“I believe the Staff is No Good.”
As to the average of correctness in this Credo I say nothing, but I can
at least show that these things are not always thus.
The Staff had been having what the General’s youthful and irrepressibly
cheerful aide-de-camp called “a hectic three days.” The Headquarters
signallers had been going hard night and day until one of them was
driven to remark bitterly as he straightened his bent back from over
his instrument and waggled his stiffened fingers that had been tapping
the “buzzer” for hours on end, “I’m developin’ a permanent hump on my
back like a dog scrapin’ a pot, an’ if my fingers isn’t to be wore off
by inches I’ll have to get the farrier to put a set of shoes on ’em.”
But the signallers had some advantages that the Staff hadn’t, and one
was that they could arrange spells of duty and at least have a certain
time off for rest and sleep. The Staff Captain would have given a good
deal for that privilege by about the third night. The worst of his job
was that he had no time when he could be sure of a clear ten minutes’
rest. He had messages brought to him as he devoured scratch meals;
he was roused from such short sleeps as he could snatch lying fully
dressed on a camp bed, by telephone and telegraph messages, or, still
worse, by horrible scrawls badly written in faint pencillings that his
weary eyes could barely decipher as he sat up on his bed with a pocket
electric glaring on the paper; once he even had to abandon an attempt
to shave, wipe the lather from his face, and hustle to impart some
information to a waiting General. A very hot fight was raging along
that portion of front, and almost every report from the firing line
contained many map references which necessitated so many huntings of
obscure points on the maps that the mere reading and understanding of a
message might take a full five or ten minutes; and in the same way the
finding of regiments’ positions for the General’s information or the
sending of orders added ten-fold to the map-hunting.
The third day was about the most “hectic” of all. For the Captain it
began before daybreak with a call to the telephone which came just two
hours after he had shuffled and shaken together the papers he had been
working on without a break through the night, pulled off his boots,
blown out his lamp, and dropped with a sigh of relief on his bed in a
corner of the room. It was an urgent and personal call, and the first
dozen words effectually drove the lingering sleep from the Captain’s
eyes and brain. “Yes, yes, ‘heavily attacked,’ I got that; go on ...
no, I don’t think I need to refer to the map; I very nearly know the
beastly thing by heart now ... yes ... yes ... Who? ... killed outright
... that’s bad.... Who’s in command now then ... right. The Dee and Don
Trenches—wait a minute, which are they? Oh yes, I remember, south from
the Pigsty and across to Stink Farm ... right. I’ll pass it on at once
and let you know in five minutes ... just repeat map references so I
can make a note ... yes ... yes ... yes ... right ... ’Bye.”
The urgency of the message, which told of a heavy and partially
successful attack on the Divisional Front, wiped out any hope the
Captain might have had of a return to his broken sleep. For the next
two hours his mind was kept at full stretch reducing to elaborated
details the comprehensive commands of the General, locating reserves
and supports and Battalion H.Q.s, exchanging long messages with
the Artillery, collecting figures of ammunition states, available
strengths, casualty returns, collating and sifting them out,
reshuffling them and offering them up to the Brigade Major or the
General, absorbing or distributing messages from and to concrete
personalities or nebulous authorities known widely if vaguely as the
D.A.A.G., D.A.Q.M.G., D.A.D.O.S., A.D.M.S., C.D.S., and T., and other
strings of jumbled initials.
He washed in the sparing dimensions of a canvas wash-stand, Field
Service, x Pattern, deliberately taking off his coat and rolling up
his shirt-sleeves, and firmly turning a deaf and soap-filled ear to
the orderly who placed a ruled telephone message form on his table and
announced it urgent. Afterwards he attended to the message, and talked
into the telephone while his servant cleared one side of his table and
served plentiful bacon, and eggs of an unknown period. Immediately
after this a concentrated bombardment suddenly developed on a ruined
château some three or four hundred yards from the H.Q. farm. To the
youthful aide-de-camp who had arrived from the outer dampness dripping
water from every angle of a streaming mackintosh he remarked wrathfully
on the prospect of having to move once again in the middle of such
beastly waterfall weather. The aide stood at the brown-paper patched
window, chuckling and watching the shells rewreck the already wrecked
château. “Looks as if their spies had sold ’em a pup this time,” he
said gleefully. “I believe they must have been told we were in that old
ruin instead of here. Or they were told this place and mistook it on
the map for the château. Rather a lark—what!”
“Confound the larks,” said the Captain bitterly, “especially if they
come any nearer this way. This place is quite leaky and draughty enough
now without it getting any more shrap or splinter holes punched in it.”
Here the Captain had a short break from his inside job, leaving another
officer to look after that and accompanying the General on horseback
to a conference with various Brigadiers, Colonels, and Commanding
Officers. The ride was too wet to be pleasant, and at no time could a
better pace than a jog trot be made because on the road there was too
much horse, foot, and wheeled traffic, and off the road in the swimming
fields it took the horses all their time to keep their feet.
The conference was held under the remaining quarter-roof of a
shell-smashed farm, and the Captain listened and made notes in a damp
book, afterwards accompanying the General on a ride round to where
something could be seen of the position, and back to H.Q. Here, under
the General’s direction in consultation with the Brigade Major, he
elaborated and extended his notes, drafted detailed directions for
a number of minor moves next day, and translated them into terms of
map-reference language, and a multitude of details of roads to be
followed by different units, billeting areas, rationing, and refilling
points, and so on.
He made a hasty, tinned lunch, and at the General’s request set out to
find one of the Battalion Headquarters and there meet some C.O.s and
make clear to them certain points of the dispositions arranged. He went
in a motor, sped on his way by the cheerful information of the aide
that the town through which he must pass had been under “a deuce of
a hot fire” all day, had its streets full of Jack Johnson holes, and
was in a continual state of blowing up, falling down, or being burnt
out. “I was through there this morning,” said the aide, “and I tell
you it was warmish. Sentry outside on the road wanted to stop me at
first; said he’d orders to warn everybody it wasn’t safe. Wasn’t safe,”
repeated the youth, chuckling, “Lord, after I’d been through there I’d
have given that sentry any sort of a certificate of truthfulness. It
was _not_ safe.”