the greasy road. The guns were rumbling and banging up in front, and
as the car bumped and slithered nearer to the town the Captain could
hear the long yelling whistle and the deep rolling crashes of heavy
shells falling somewhere in it. He too was stopped at the outskirts by
a sentry who held up his hand to the driver, and then came and parleyed
with the Captain through the window. The Captain impatiently cut his
warning short. There was no other road that would take him near the
point he desired to reach; he must go through the town; he must ride
since he could not spare time to walk. He climbed out and mounted
beside the driver, with some instinctive and vaguely formed ideas in
his mind that if the driver were hit he might have to take the wheel,
that the car might be upset and pin him underneath, that he might be
able to assist in picking a course through rubbish and shell-holes, to
jump out and clear any slight obstruction from in front of the wheels.
The car ran on slowly into the town. Decidedly the aide had been right,
except that “warmish” was a mild word for the state of affairs. The
Germans were flinging shells into the town as if they meant to destroy
it utterly. The main street through was littered with bricks and tiles
and broken furniture; dead horses were sprawled in it, some limp and
new killed with the blood still running from their wounds, others with
their four legs sticking out post-stiff in the air; in several places
there were broken-down carts, in one place a regular mass of them
piled up and locked in a confused tangle of broken wheels, splintered
shafts, cut harness, and smashed woodwork, their contents spilled out
anyhow and mixed up inextricably with the wreckage.
There was not much traffic in the main street, and such as was there
was evidently, like the Captain himself, only there because no other
road offered. There were half a dozen artillery ammunition waggons,
a few infantry transport carts, several Army Service Corps vehicles.
All of them were moving at a trot, the waggons rumbling and lumbering
heavily and noisily over the cobblestones, the drivers stooped forward
and peering out anxiously to pick a way between the obstacles in their
path. The shells were coming over continuously, moaning and howling
and yelling, falling with tearing crashes amongst the houses, blowing
them wall from wall, slicing corners off or cutting a complete top or
end away, breaking them down in rattling cascades of tiles and bricks,
bursting them open and flinging them high and far upwards and outwards
in flying fragments. As the car crawled cautiously through the debris
that littered the street, pieces of brick and mortar, whole or broken
slates, chips of wood and stone, pattered and rapped constantly down
about and on the car; the wheels crunched and ground on splintered
glass from the gaping windows. A shell roared down on the street ahead
of them, burst thunderously in a vivid sheet of flame and spurting
black cloud of smoke, an appalling crash that rolled and reverberated
loud and long up and down the narrow street. “Go easy,” cautioned the
Captain as the black blinding reek came swirling down to meet them,
“or you’ll run into the hole that fellow made.” The driver’s face was
set and white, and his hands gripped tight on the wheel; the Captain
had a sudden compunction that he had brought him, that he had not left
the car outside the town and walked through. They edged carefully past
the yawning shell-crater with the smoke still clinging and curling
up from its edges, and, free of the smoke again, saw a fairly clear
stretch ahead of them. The Captain heard the thin but rising whistle
of another heavy shell approaching, and “Open her out,” he said
quickly, “and let her rip.” The driver, he noticed, for all his white
face had his nerves well under control, and steadily caught the change
of gear on the proper instant, speeded up sharply but quite smoothly.
The car swooped down the clear stretch, the roar of the shell growing
louder and closer, and just as they reached and crammed the brakes on
to take the corner, they heard the shell crash down behind them. The
Captain leaned out and looked back, and had a momentary glimpse of a
house on the street spouting black smoke, dissolving and cascading
down and out across the road in a torrent of bricks and wreckage. In
another two minutes they shot out clear of the town. A mile farther on
a soldier warned them that the cross-roads were practically impassable,
the roadway being broken and churned up by the heavy shells that all
afternoon had been and were still at intervals falling upon it. So the
Captain left the car and went on a-foot. He was nearly caught at the
cross-roads, a shell fragment ripping a huge rent in his mackintosh
just over his ribs. Before he reached the communication trenches too
he had a highly uncomfortable minute with light high-explosive shells
bursting round him while he crouched low in a muddy shell-crater. He
reached the meeting-place at last, and spent an hour talking over
plans and movements, and by the time he was ready to start back it was
rapidly growing dark. It was completely dark before he found his way
back to the road again, stumbling over the shell-holed ground, slipping
and floundering through the mud, tripping once and falling heavily
over some strands of barbed wire. When he found the car again he was
so dirty and draggled and dishevelled and ragged—the barbed wire had
taken the cap from his head and dropped it in a mud puddle, and left
another tear or two in his mackintosh—so smeared and plastered with
mud, that his driver at first failed to recognise him. In the town he
found parties of the Sappers filling up the worst of the shell-holes
and clearing away the debris that blocked the road where he had seen
the house blown down, while the shells still screamed up and burst
clattering over and amongst the houses, and bullets and splinters
whistled and sang overhead, clashed and rattled on the causeway.
He slept snatchily through the rest of the journey, waking many times
as the car bumped badly, and once, when it dropped heavily into a
shell-hole and bounced out again, flinging him bodily upwards until his
head and shoulder banged solidly against the roof, taking half a minute
to regain his scattered wits and dissipate a wild dream that the car
had been fairly hit by a shell.
And when at last he reached H.Q., crawled wearily out of the car, and
staggered, half asleep and utterly worn out, into his room, he found
there the other officer he had left to handle his work and the youthful
aide humped over the table copying out reports.
“Hullo,” said the senior, “you’re late. I say, you do look tucked up.”
The Captain grunted. “Not more’n I feel,” he said, blinking at the
light. “Thank the Lord my job’s over and everything fixed and ready so
far’s this end goes.”
“You’ve heard, I suppose!” said the other. “No? Baddish news. Our left
has cracked and the Germ has a slice of their trenches. It upsets all
our plans, and we’ve got ’em all to make over again.”
The Captain stared blankly at him. “All to make ... that means all
to-day’s work to begin and go through again. All to-day’s work—well,
I’m ...”
The aide had been eyeing the mud-bedaubed figure with water dripping
from the torn coat, the sopping cap dangling in the dirty hand, the
blue unshaven chin and red-rimmed eyes. He giggled suddenly. “I say,
you know what the troops call the Staff?” He spluttered laughter.
“The Gilded Staff,” he said, pointing at the Captain. “Behold—oh, my
aunt—behold the _Gilded Staff_.”
X
A RAID
FOR several days our artillery had been bombarding stretches of the
front German trenches and cutting the wire entanglements out in front
of them preparatory to a big attack. The point actually selected for
the raid was treated exactly the same as a score of other points up
and down the line. By day the guns poured a torrent of shrapnel on
the barbed wire, tearing it to pieces, uprooting the stakes, cutting
wide swathes through it. Because the opposing lines were fairly close
together, our shells, in order to burst accurately amongst and close
over the wire, had to skim close over our own parapet, and all day
long the Forward Officers crouched in the front trench, observing
and correcting the fall of their shells that shrieked close over
them with an appalling rush of savage sound. And while they busied
themselves on the wire, the howitzers and heavier guns methodically
pounded the front-line trench, the support and communication trenches,
and the ground behind them. At night the tempest might slacken at
intervals, but it never actually ceased. The guns, carefully laid on
“registered” lines and ranges during the day, continued to shoot with
absolute accuracy during the darkness—although perhaps “darkness”
is a misleading term where the No Man’s Land glowed with light and
flickered with dancing shadows from the stream of flares that tossed
constantly into the air, soaring and floating, sinking and falling in
balls of vivid light. If no lights were flung up for a period from
the German line, our front line fired Verey pistol lights, swept the
opposing trench and wire with gusts of shrapnel and a spattering hail
of machine-gun bullets to prevent any attempt on the enemy’s part to
creep out and repair their shattered defences.
Our bombardment had not been carried out unmolested. The German gunners
“crumped” the front and support lines steadily and systematically,
searched the ground behind, and sought to silence the destroying guns
by careful “counter-battery” work. But all their efforts could not give
pause to our artillery, much less silence it, and the bombardment raged
on by day and night for miles up and down the line. It was necessary
to spread the damage, because only by doing so, only by threatening a
score of points, was it possible to mislead the enemy and prevent them
calculating where the actual raid was to be made.
The hour chosen for the raid was just about dusk. There was no
extra-special preparation immediately before it. The guns continued
to pour in their fire, speeding it up a little, perhaps, but no more
than they had done a score of times in the past twenty-four hours.
The infantry clambered out of their trench and filed out through the
narrow openings in their own wire entanglements, with the shells
rushing and crashing over them so close that instinctively they
crouched low to give them clearance. Out in front, and a hundred yards
away, the ground was hidden and indistinct under the pall of smoke
that curled and eddied from the bursting shrapnel, only lit by sharp,
quick-vanishing glare after glare as the shells burst. In the trench
the infantry had just left, a Forward Officer peered out over the
parapet, fingered his trench telephone, glanced at the watch on his
wrist, spoke an occasional word to his battery checking the flying
seconds, and timing the exact moment to “lift.”
Out in front a faint whistle cut across the roar of fire. “They’re
off,” said the Forward Officer into his ’phone, and a moment later a
distinct change in the note of sound of the overhead shells told that
the fire had lifted, that the shells were passing higher above his
head, to fall farther back in the enemy trenches and leave clear the
stretch into which the infantry would soon be pushing.
For a minute or two there was no change in the sound of battle. The
thunder of the guns continued steadily, a burst of rifle or machine-gun
fire crackled spasmodically. Over the open No Man’s Land the infantry
pressed rapidly as the broken ground would allow, pressed on in
silence, crouching and dodging over and amongst the shell-holes and
craters. Four German “crumps” roared down and past, bursting with
shattering roars behind them. A group of light “Whizz-bang” shells
rushed and smashed overhead, and somewhere out on the flank an enemy
machine-gun burst into a rapid stutter of fire, and its bullets
sang whistling and whipping about the advancing line. Men gulped in
their throats or drew long breaths of apprehension that this was the
beginning of discovery of their presence in the open, the first of the
storm they knew would quickly follow. But there were no more shells
for the moment, and the rattle of machine-gun fire diminished and the
bullets piped thinner and more distant as the gun muzzle swept round.
The infantry hurried on, thankful for every yard made in safety,
knowing that every such yard improved their chance of reaching the
opposing trench, of the raid being successfully accomplished.
Now they were half-way across, and still they were undiscovered. But
of a sudden a rifle spat fire through the curling smoke; a machine-gun
whirred, stopped, broke out again in rapid and prolonged fire. From
somewhere close behind the German line a rocket soared high and burst
in a shower of sparks. There was a pause while the advancing men
hurried on, stumbling forward in silence. Another rocket leaped, and
before its sparks broke downward the German guns burst into a deluge
of fire. They swept not only the open ground and trenches where the
raiders were attacking, but far up and down the line. Rocket after
rocket whizzed up, and to right and left the guns answered with a fire
barrage on the British front trench and open ground.
But at the attacking point the infantry were almost across when the
storm burst, and the shells for the most part struck down harmlessly
behind them. The men were into the fragments of broken wire, and the
shattered parapet loomed up under their hands a minute after the first
shell burst. Up to this they had advanced in silence, but now they
gave tongue and with wild yells leaped at the low parapet, scrambled
over and down into the trench. Behind them a few forms twisted and
sprawled on the broken ground, but they were no sooner down than
running stretcher-bearers pounced on them, lifted and bore them back
to the shelter of their own lines. The men with the stretchers paid no
more heed to the pattering shrapnel, the rush and crack of the shells,
the hiss and whistle of bullets, than if these things had been merely a
summer shower of rain.
In the German trench the raiders worked and fought at desperate speed,
but smoothly and on what was clearly a settled and rehearsed plan.
There were few Germans to be seen and most of these crouched dazed
and helpless, with hands over their heads. They were promptly seized,
bundled over the parapet, and told by word or gesture to be off. They
waited for no second bidding, but ran with heads stooped and hands
above their heads straight to the British line, one or two men doubling
after them as guards. Some of the prisoners were struck down by their
own guns’ shell-fire, and these were just as promptly grabbed by the
stretcher-bearers and hurried in under cover. Where any Germans clung
to their weapons and attempted to resist the raiders, they were shot
down or rushed with the bayonet. Little parties of British sought the
communication ways leading back to the support trenches, forced a way
down, hurling grenades over as they advanced, halted at suitable spots,
and, pulling down sandbags or anything available to block the way, took
their stand and beat back with showers of bombs any appearance of a
rush to oust them.
Up and down the selected area of front-line trench the raiders spread
rapidly. There were several dug-outs under the parapet, and from some
of these grey-coated figures crawled with their hands up on the first
summons to surrender. These too were bundled over the parapet. If a
shot came from the black mouth of the dug-out in answer to the call
to surrender, it was promptly bombed. At either end of the area of
front line marked out as the limits of the raid, strong parties made
a block and beat off the feeble attacks that were made on them. There
was little rifle or bayonet work. Bombs played the principal part, and
the trench shook to their rapid re-echoing clashes, flamed and flared
to their bursts of fire, while overhead the British shells still rushed
and dropped a roaring barrage of fire beyond the raided area.
In five minutes all sign of resistance had been stamped out, except at
one of the communication-way entrances and at one end of the blocked
front line. At both of these points the counter-attack was growing
stronger and more pressing. At the communication trench it was beaten
back by sheer weight of bombing, but at the trench end, where heavy
shells had smashed in the walls, and so rendered the fighting less
confined to a direct attack, the defenders of the point were assailed
from the German second line, man after man fell fighting fiercely,
and there looked to be a danger of the whole trench being flooded by
the counter-attack. The prompt action of a young officer saved the
situation. It had been no plan of the raid to touch the support or
second trench, but, ignoring this understanding, the officer gathered
a handful of men, climbed from the front trench, and dashed across the
open to the second one. His party pelted the counter-attackers massing
there with as many bombs as they could fling in a few seconds, turned
and scrambled back to the front line, and fell into the scuffle raging
there in a vigorous butt-and-bayonet onslaught.
But now it was time to go. The object of the raid had been carried out,
and it was risking all for nothing to wait a moment longer. The word
was passed, and half the men climbed out and ran for their own line. A
minute later the remainder followed them, carrying the last of their
wounded. An officer and two or three men left last, after touching off
the fuses connected up with charges placed in the first instance in
their duly selected places.
A moment later, with a muffled report, a broad sheet of fire flamed
upward from the trench. Three other explosions followed on the heels
of the first, and a shower of earth and stones fell rattling about
the ground and on the shrapnel-helmets of the retiring raiders, and
the earth shuddered under their feet. The German gunners slackened
and ceased their fire, probably waiting to hear from the front what
this new development meant, or merely checking instinctively at the
sight and sound. For a moment the shells ceased to crash over the open
ground, the raiders took advantage of the pause, and with a rush were
back and over their own parapet again.
Over their heads the British shells still poured shrieking and crashing
without pause as they had done throughout.
In military phraseology the raid had been entirely successful, a score
of prisoners being taken, a stretch of trench completely destroyed, and
few casualties sustained. The raiders themselves summed it up in words
more terse but meaning the same—“a good bag, and cheap at the price.”
XI
A ROARING TRADE
THE “O.C. Dump,” a young Second Lieutenant of Artillery, thumped the
receiver down disgustedly on the telephone and made a few brief but
pungent remarks on railways and all connected therewith.
“What’s the trouble, Vickers?” said a voice at the door, and the
Lieutenant wheeled to find the Colonel commanding the Ammunition Column
and the dump standing just inside.
“I was just going to look for you, sir,” said Vickers. “They’ve cut
our line again—put two or three heavy shells into that bit of an
embankment a mile or so from here, and blown it to glory evidently.”
“I don’t suppose the Engineers will take long to repair that,” said the
Colonel. “They can slap down the metals and sleepers quick enough if
the embankment isn’t smashed.”
“But it is, sir,” said Vickers. “I was just talking to Division, and
they say the trains won’t run in to-night, and that supplies will come
up by lorry. And we’ve some heavy lots due in to-night,” he concluded
despairingly.
“Let’s see,” said the Colonel, and for five minutes listened and
scribbled figures while Vickers turned over notes and indents and
‘phone messages and read them out.
“Yes,” said the Colonel reflectively, when they had finished. “It’ll
be a pretty heavy job. But you can put it through all right, Vickers,”
he went on cheerfully. “It won’t be as bad as that bit you pulled off
the first week on the Somme. I’ll leave it to you, but I’ll be round
somewhere if you should want me. When will the first of the lorries
come along?”
They talked a few minutes longer, and then the Colonel moved to the
door. The “office” was a square shanty built of empty ammunition boxes,
with a tarpaulin spread over for a roof. It was furnished with a
roughly-built deal table, littered with papers held in clips, stuck on
files, or piled in heaps, seats made of 18-pounder boxes, a truckle-bed
and blankets in one corner, a telephone on a shelf beside the table.
Light and ventilation were provided by the leaving-out of odd boxes
here and there in the building up of the walls, and by a wide doorway
without a door to it. The whole thing was light and airy enough, but,
because it was one of the hot spells of summer, it was warm enough
inside to be uncomfortable. Everything in the place—table, papers,
bed, seats—was gritty to the touch and thick with dust.
The two men stood in the doorway a minute, looking out on the depleted
stacks of ammunition boxes piled in a long curving row beside the
roadway that ran in off the main road, swung round, and out on to
it again. A few men were working amongst the boxes, their coats off
and their grey shirt sleeves rolled up, and a stream of traffic ran
steadily past on the main road.
“Pretty quiet here now,” said the Colonel. “But, by the sound of
it, things are moving brisk enough up there. You’ll get your turn
presently, I expect.”
“I expect so, sir,” said the Lieutenant; “especially if the yarn is
true that we push ’em again at daybreak to-morrow.”
“Come over and get your tea before the lorries come in, if you’ve
time,” said the Colonel, and moved off.
The Lieutenant stood a moment longer listening to the steady roll and
vibrating rumble of the guns up in the line, and then, at a sharp
birr-r-r from the telephone, turned sharply into the office.
The lorries began to arrive just after sunset, rumbling up the main
road and swinging off in batches as there was room for them in the
curved crescent of track that ran through the dump and back to the main
road. As quickly as they were brought into position the dump working
party jerked off the tail-boards and fell to hauling the boxes of
shell out and piling them in neat stacks along a low platform which
ran by the edge of the dump track. The dump was a distributing centre
mainly for field artillery, so that the shells were 18-pounder and 4·5
howitzer, in boxes just comfortably large enough for a man to lift and
heave about. As the light failed and the darkness crept down, candle
lamps began to appear, flitting about amongst the piled boxes, dodging
in and out between the lorries, swinging down the track to guide the
drivers and show them the way in one by one. Vickers and the Army
Service Corps officer in charge of the M.T. lorries stood on a stack
of boxes mid-way round the curve, or moved about amongst the workers
directing and hastening the work.
But about an hour after dark there came some hasteners a good deal
more urgent and effective than the officers. All afternoon and early
evening a number of shells had been coming over and falling somewhere
out from the dump, but the faintness of their whistle and sigh, and
the dull thump of their burst, told that they were far enough off not
to be worth worrying about. But now there came the ominous shriek,
rising into a louder but a fuller and deeper note, that told of a shell
dropping dangerously near the listeners. As the shriek rose to a
bellowing, vibrating roar, the workers amongst the boxes ducked and ran
in to crouch beside or under the lorries, or flatten themselves close
up against the piles of ammunition. At the last second, when every man
was holding his breath, and it seemed that the shell was on the point
of falling fairly on top of them, they heard the deafening roar change
and diminish ever so slightly, and next instant the shell fell with
an earth-shaking crash just beyond the dump and the main road. Some
of the splinters sang and hummed overhead, and the workers were just
straightening from their crouched positions and turning to remark to
one another, when again there came to them the same rising whistle and
shriek of an approaching shell. But this time, before they could duck
back, the voice of the “O.C. Dump,” magnified grotesquely through a
megaphone, bellowed at them, “Gas masks at alert position every man.
Sharp now.”
A good many of the men had stripped off gas masks and coats, because
the masks swinging and bobbing about them were awkward to work in, and
the night was close and heavy enough to call for as little hampering
clothing as possible in the job of heaving and hauling heavy boxes
about.
A word from Vickers to the A.S.C. officer explained his shout. “If one
of those shells splashes down on top of that stack of gas-shells of
ours, this won’t be a healthy locality without a mask on.” The men must
have understood or remembered the possibility, because, heedless of the
roar of the approaching shell, they grabbed hastily for their masks
and hitched them close and high on their chests, or ran to where they
had hung them with their discarded tunics, and slung them hastily over
shoulder, and ready.