and following shrieks of flying splinters. Close after it came the
voice of Vickers through his megaphone shouting at the workers to get
a move on, get on with the job. And partly because of his order, and
partly, perhaps, because they could see him in the faint light of the
lantern he carried standing man-high and exposed on top of the highest
stack of boxes, and so absorbed some of that mysterious confidence
which passes from the apparent ease of an officer to his men in time of
danger, they fell to work again energetically, hauling out and stacking
the boxes. Another half-dozen shells fell at regular intervals, and
although all were uncomfortably close, none actually touched the dump.
One man, an A.S.C. motor-driver, was wounded by a flying splinter, and
was half-led, half-carried out from the dump streaming with blood.
“Ain’t you glad, Bill,” said another A.S.C. driver, as the group passed
his lorry, “that we’re in this Army Safety Corps?”[3]
“Not ’arf,” said Bill. “There’s sich a fat lot o’ safety about it. Hark
at that.... Here she comes again.”
This time the shell found its mark. The crash of its fall was blended
with and followed by the rending and splintering of wood, a scream and
a yell, and a turmoil of shouting voices. The dump officer bent down
and shouted to the A.S.C. officer below him: “In the road ... amongst
your lorries, I fancy. You’d better go’n look to it. I’ll keep ’em
moving here.”
The A.S.C. man went off at the double without a word. He found that the
shell had fallen just beside one of the loaded lorries which waited
their turn to pull in to the dump, splitting and splintering it to
pieces, lifting and hurling it almost clear of the road. Some of the
ammunition boxes had been flung off. The officer collected some of
his M.T. drivers and a few spare men, emptied the smashed lorry, and
picked up the scattered boxes and slung them aboard other lorries; and
then, without giving the men time to pause, set them at work heaving
and hauling and levering the broken lorry clear of the road, and down a
little six-foot sloping bank at the roadside. Another shell came down
while they worked, but at their instinctive check the officer sprang
to help, shouting at them, and urging them on. “Get to it. Come along.
D’you want to be here all night? We have to off-load all this lot
before we pull out. I don’t want to wait here having my lorries smashed
up, if you do. Come along now—all together.” The men laughed a little
amongst themselves, and came “all together,” and laughed again and gave
little ironical cheers as the wrecked lorry slid and swayed and rolled
lurching over the bank and clear of the road. The officer was running
back to the dump when he heard the officer there bellowing for another
six lorries to pull in. He climbed to the step of one as it rolled in,
dropped off as it halted, and hurried over to the officer in charge.
“Hark at ’em,” said Vickers, as another shell howled over, and burst
noisily a hundred yards clear. “They’re laying for us all right this
trip. Pray the Lord they don’t lob one into this pile—the gas-shells
especially. That would fairly hang up the job; and there are Heaven
knows how many batteries waiting to send in their waggons for the stuff
now.”
“They got my lorry,” said the A.S.C. man. “Wrecked it and killed the
driver.”
“Hard luck,” said Vickers. “Hasn’t blocked the road, I hope?”
“No; spilt the shells all over the place, but didn’t explode any. We
cleared the road.”
“Don’t forget,” said Vickers anxiously, “to tell me if there’s any
of the load missing. It’ll tie me up in my figures abominably if you
deliver any short.” He broke off to shout at the men below, “Get along
there. Move out those empty ones. Come along, another six. Pass the
word for another six, there.”
The shelling eased off for a couple of hours after that, and by then
the last of the lorries had gone, and their place in the road outside
and along the dump track had been taken by long lines of ammunition
waggons from the batteries and the Divisional Ammunition Column. Every
officer or N.C.O. who came in charge of a batch brought in the same
imperative orders—to waste no minute, to load up, and to get to the
gun line at the earliest possible moment, that action was brisk, and
the rounds were wanted urgently. There was no need to report that
action was brisk, because the dump was quite near enough to the line
for the steady, unbroken roar of gun-fire, to tell its own tale. The
sound of the field guns in the advanced positions came beating back in
the long, throbbing roll of drum-fire, and closer to the dump, to both
sides of it, in front and rear of it, the sharp, ear-splitting reports
of the heavies crashed at quick intervals. The dump was the centre of a
whirlwind of activity. The ammunition waggons came rumbling and bumping
in round the curved track, the drivers steering in their six-horse
teams neatly and cleverly, swinging and halting them so that the tail
of each waggon was turned partly in to the piled boxes, and the teams
edged slanting out across the road. The moment one halted the drivers
jumped down from the saddles, the lead driver standing to his horses’
heads, the centre and wheel running to help with the work of wrenching
open the ammunition boxes and cramming the shells into the pigeon-hole
compartments of the waggons. The instant a waggon was filled the
drivers mounted and the team pulled out to make way for another.
The lanterns perched on vantage points on the piles of boxes or
swinging to and fro amongst the teams revealed dimly and patchily a
scene of apparent confusion, of jerking and swaying shadows, quick
glints of light on metal helmets and harness buckles and wheel tyres,
the tossing, bobbing heads of animals, the rounded, shadowy bulk of
their bodies, the hurriedly moving figures of the men stooping over the
boxes, snatching out the gleaming brass and grey steel shells, tossing
empty boxes aside, hauling down fresh ones from the pile. Here and
there a wet, sweating face or a pair of bared arms caught the light
of a lantern, stood out vividly for a moment, and vanished again into
the shadowed obscurity, or a pair or two of legs were outlined black
against the light, and cast distorted wheeling shadows on the circle
of lamp-lit ground. A dim, shifting veil of dust hung over everything,
billowing up into thick clouds under the churning hoofs and wheels as
the teams moved in and out, settling slowly and hanging heavily as they
halted and stood.
The dim white pile of boxes that were walled round the curve was
diminishing rapidly under the strenuous labour of the drivers and
working party; the string of teams and waggons in the road outside
kept moving up steadily, passing into the dump, loading up, moving
out again, and away. Vickers, the officer in charge, was here, there,
and everywhere, clambering on the boxes to watch the work, shouting
directions and orders, down again, and hurrying into the office shanty
to grab the telephone and talk hurriedly into it, turning to consult
requisition “chits” for different kinds of shells, making hurried
calculations and scribbling figures, out again to push in amongst the
workers, and urge them to hurry, hurry, hurry.
Once he ran back to the office to find the Colonel standing there.
“Hullo, Vickers,” he said cheerfully. “Doing a roaring trade to-night,
aren’t you?”
“I just am, sir,” said Vickers, wiping his wet forehead. “I’ll be out
of Beer-Ex[4] presently if they keep on rushing me for it at this rate.”
“Noisy brute of a gun that,” said the Colonel, as a heavy piece behind
them crashed sharply, and the shell roared away overhead in diminishing
howls and moans.
“And here’s one coming the wrong way,” said Vickers hurriedly. “Hope
they’re not going to start pitching ’em in here again.”
But his hopes were disappointed. The German gun or guns commenced
another regular bombardment of and round the dump. Shell after shell
whooped over, and dropped with heavy rolling c-r-r-umps on the ground,
dangerously near to the piled boxes. Then one fell fairly on top of
a pile of shells with an appalling crash and rending, splintering
clatter, a spouting gush of evil-smelling black smoke, and clouds
of blinding dust. The pile hit was flung helter-skelter, the boxes
crashing and shattering as they fell and struck heavily on the ground,
the loose shells whirling up and out from the explosion, and thumping
and thudding on the other piles or in the dust.
At first sound of the burst, or, in fact, a second or so before it,
the dump officer was yelling at the pitch of his voice, over and
over again, “Gas masks on—gas masks on”; and before the ripping and
splintering crashes had well finished he was running hard to the
spot where the shell had fallen. He freed his own mask as he ran,
and slipped it over his face, but even before he had pushed into the
drifting reek of the burst he had snatched it off, and was turning
back, when he found the Colonel on his heels.
“I was afraid of those gas-shells of ours, sir,” he said hurriedly.
“Pretty near ’em, but they’re all right, and nothing’s afire,
evidently.”
“Good enough,” said the Colonel quietly. “Better hurry the men at the
job again.”
“Masks off,” shouted Vickers. “All right here. Masks off, and get on
with it, men.”
The working party and the drivers snatched their masks off, and before
the dust of the explosion had settled were hard at work again. But
the shells began to fall with alarming regularity and in dangerous
proximity to the dump and road outside. The Colonel moved over to the
office, and found Vickers there gripping a notebook, a handful of
papers under his arm, and talking into the telephone. He broke off his
talk at sight of the Colonel.
“One moment. Here he is now. Hold the wire.” He held the receiver out.
“Will you speak to Divisional H.Q., sir? They’re asking about the
shelling here.”
The Colonel took the ’phone and spoke quietly into it. Another shell
dropped with a rending crash somewhere outside, and Vickers jumped for
the door and vanished. The piled boxes of the “office” walls shivered
and rocked, and dust rained down on the paper-strewn table. But the
Colonel went on talking, telling what the shelling was like and how
heavy it was, the number of waggons waiting, and so on.
He was putting the ’phone down as Vickers entered hurriedly and
reported, “Just outside in the road, sir. Did in a waggon and team and
two drivers.”
“We’ve got to carry on as long as we can, Vickers,” said the Colonel.
“The stuff is urgently wanted up there, and we’d lose a lot of time to
clear the teams out and bring them back.”
“Very good, sir,” said Vickers, and vanished again.
The shelling continued. Most of the shells fell close to, but clear of,
the dump, but another hit a pile of shells, exploding none, but setting
a few splintered boxes on fire. The fire, fortunately, was smothered in
a moment. Another burst just at the entrance to the curved road through
the dump, smashing an ammunition waggon to a wreck of splintered
woodwork and twisted iron, blowing two teams to pieces, and killing and
wounding half a dozen men. There was a moment’s confusion, a swirl of
plunging horses, a squealing of braked wheels, a shouting and calling
and cursing. But as the smoke and dust cleared the confusion died away,
and in five minutes the wrecked waggon and dead animals were dragged
clear, and the work was in full swing again. Vickers, moving amongst
the teams, heard two drivers arguing noisily. “What did I tell you?”
one was shouting. “What did I tell you! Didn’t I say mules would stand
shell-fire good as any hosses? Here’s my pair never winked an eye.”
“Winked a eye!” said the other scornfully. “They tried to do a obstacle
race over my waggon. An’ they kicked sufferin’ Saul outer your centres
an’ each other. Yer off-lead’s near kicked the hin’ leg off’n his mate,
anyway.”
“Kicked?” said the first, and then stopped as his eye caught the red
gleam of flowing blood. “Strewth, he’s wounded. My bloomin’ donkey’s
casualtied. Whoa, Neddy; stan’ till I see what’s wrong. You’ll get a
bloomin’ wound stripe to wear for this, Neddy. Whoa, you——”
Vickers, remembering the snatch of talk, was able to tell the Colonel a
moment later, “No, sir; the men don’t seem rattled a mite; and they’re
working like good ’uns.”
The shelling continued, but so did the work. The waggons continued to
roll in, to fill up, and pull out again; the pile of ammunition boxes
to dwindle, the heap of empty boxes to grow. Vickers scurried round,
keeping an eye on smooth working, trying at intervals to press some of
his stock of gas-shells on any battery that would take them. “I’ve fair
got wind up about them,” he confided to one waggon-line officer. “If a
shell hits them it will stop the whole blessed dump working. Then where
will your guns be for shell?”
The shelling continued, and caught some more casualties. Vickers
superintended their removal, wiped his hands on his breeches, and went
back to his office and his “returns” and the worry of trying to account
for the shells scattered by the enemy shell in his dump. The men worked
on doggedly. The gun-line wanted shells, and the gun-line would get
them—unless or until the dump blew up.
The shelling continued—although, to be sure, it eased off at
intervals—until dawn; but by that time the last loaded waggon had
departed and the dump was almost empty of shells. The German gunners
were beaten and the dump had won. Presently the German line would feel
the weight of the dump’s work.
Three hours later, after a final struggle with his “returns,” Vickers,
dirty and dusty, grimed with smoke and ash, a stubble of beard on
his chin and tired rings under his eyes, trudged to the mess dug-out
for breakfast and tea—tea, hot tea, especially. He met the Colonel,
and recounted briefly the various thousands of assorted shells—high
explosive, shrapnel, lyddite, and so on—he had sent up to the gun-line
during the night. He also recounted sorrowfully the night’s casualties
amongst his dump party, and spoke with a little catch in his voice of
his dead sergeant, “the best N.C.O. he’d ever known.”
“A good night’s work well done, Vickers,” said the Colonel quietly.
“A roaring trade, sir, as you said,” answered Vickers, with a thin
smile. “And hark at ’em up there now,” and he nodded his head towards
the distant gun-line. They stood a moment in the sunshine at the top
of the dug-out steps. Round them the heavies still thundered and
crashed and cracked savagely, and from the gun line where the field
guns worked the roar of sound came rolling and throbbing fiercely and
continuously.
“They’ll pay back for what you got last night,” said the Colonel, “and
some of them wouldn’t be able to do it but for your work last night.”
The ground under them trembled to the blast of a near-by heavy battery,
the air vibrated again to the furious drumming fire that thundered back
from the front lines.
“That’s some consolation,” said Vickers, “for my sergeant. Small profit
and quick returns to their shells; the right sort of motto, that, for a
roaring trade.”
The fire of the gun-line, rising to a fresh spasm of fury, fairly
drowned the last of his words. “A proper roaring trade,” he repeated
loudly, and nodded his head again in the direction of the sound.
XII
HOME
IF anybody had told Lieutenant “Lollie” Dutford, Lieutenant and
Adjutant of the Stolidshire Buffs, that he would come one day to be
glad to get back to the battalion and the front, Lollie would have
called that prophet an unqualified idiot. And, yet, he would later have
been convicted out of his own mouth.
Lollie was a hardened veteran campaigner, twenty-two years of age, and
full two years’ trench-age—which means a lot more—and he started
to return from his latest leave with a pleasing consciousness of his
own knowledge of the ropes, and a comforting belief that he would
be able to make his return journey in comparative ease. Certainly,
the start from Victoria Station at seven o’clock on a drizzling wet
morning, which had necessitated his being up at 5.30 a.m., had not
been pleasant, but even the oldest soldier has to put up with these
things, and be assured that no “old soldiering” can dodge them. It
annoyed him a good deal to find when they reached Folkestone that the
boat would not start until well on in the afternoon, and that he had
been dragged out of bed at cock-crow for no other purpose than to loaf
disconsolately half a day round a dead-and-alive pleasure resort. He
was irritated again when he went to have lunch in a certain hotel, to
have the price of his meal demanded from him before he was allowed into
the dining-room. “It’s not only buying a pig in a poke,” as he told his
chance table companion, “but it’s the beastly insinuation that we’re
not to be trusted to pay for our lunch after we’ve had it that I don’t
like.” He also didn’t like, and said so very forcibly, the discovery
that there is a rule in force which prohibits any officer proceeding
overseas from having any intoxicating liquor with his meal, although
any other not for overseas that day could have what he liked. “If
that’s not inviting a fellow to lie and say he is staying this side I
dunno what is,” said Lollie disgustedly. “But why should I be induced
to tell lies for the sake of a pint of bitter. And if I’m trusted not
to lie, why can’t I be trusted not to drink too much. However, it’s one
more of their mysterious ways this side, I s’pose.” He evaporated a
good deal of his remaining good temper over the lunch. “Not much wonder
they want their cash first,” he said; “I haven’t had enough to feed a
hungry sparrow.”
Old-soldier experience took him straight to a good place on the boat,
and room to lie down on a cushioned settee before it was filled up,
and he spent the passage in making up some of his early morning lost
sleep. On arrival at the other side he found that his train was not
due to start for up-country until after midnight—“not late enough to
be worth going to bed before, and too late to sit up with comfort,”
as he declared. He had a good dinner at the Officers’ Club, after
rather a long wait for a vacant seat, but after it could find no place
to sit down in the crowded smoke-room or reading-rooms. However, he
knew enough to take him round to a popular hotel bar, where he spent a
couple of joyful hours meeting a string of old friends passing to or
from all parts of “the line,” and swapping news and gossip of mutually
known places and people up front. Lollie had brought along with him a
young fellow he had met in the club. Bullivant was returning from his
first leave, and so was rather ignorant of “the ropes,” and had begged
Lollie to put him wise to any wrinkles he knew for passing the time and
smoothing the journey up. “’Pon my word,” Lollie confided to him after
the departure of another couple of old friends, “it’s almost worth
coming back to meet so many pals and chin over old times and places.”
“I don’t like this fool notion of no whisky allowed,” said Bullivant.
“Now, you’re an old bird; don’t you know any place we can get a real
drink?”
“Plenty,” said Lollie. “If you don’t mind paying steep for ’em and
meeting a crowd of people and girls I’ve no use for myself.”
“I’m on,” replied Bullivant. “Lead me to it. But don’t let’s forget
that twelve-something train.”
They spent half an hour in the “place,” where Lollie drank some
exceedingly bad champagne, and spent every minute of the time in a
joyful reunion with an old school chum he hadn’t seen for years. Then
he searched Bullivant out and they departed for the hotel to pick up
their kits and move to the station. At the hotel the barman told him in
confidence that the midnight train was cancelled, and that he’d have
to wait till next day. “He’s right, of course,” Lollie told Bullivant.
“He always gets these things right. He has stacks more information
about everything than all the Intelligence crowd together. If you
want to know where your unit is in the line or when a train arrives
or a boat leaves, come along and ask Henri, and be sure you’ll get it
right—if he knows you well enough; but all the same we must go to the
station and get it officially that our train’s a washout to-night.”
They went there and got it officially, with the added information that
they would go to-morrow night, same time, but to report to R.T.O.
(Railway Transport Officer) at noon. There were no beds at the club
(“Never are after about tea-time,” Lollie told Bullivant), and, to
save tramping in a vain search around hotels, they returned to their
barman-information-bureau, and learned from him that all the leading
hotels were full up to the last limits of settees, made-up beds, and
billiard rooms. Lollie’s knowledge saved them further wanderings
by taking them direct to another “place,” where they obtained a
not-too-clean bedroom. “Not as bad as plenty we’ve slept in up the
line,” said Lollie philosophically; “only I’d advise you to sleep in
your clothes; it leaves so much the less front open to attack.”
They reported at the station at noon next day, and were told their
train would leave at 1 p.m., and “change at St. Oswear.” They rushed to
a near hotel and swallowed lunch, hurried back to the train, and sat in
it for a solid two hours before it started. It was long after dark when
they reached St. Oswear, where they bundled out onto the platform and
sought information as to the connection. They were told it was due in
any minute, would depart immediately after arrival, and that anyone who
had to catch it must not leave the station. “Same old gag,” said Lollie
when they had left the R.T.O. “But you don’t catch me sitting on a cold
platform half the night. I’ve had some, thanks.” For the sum of one
franc down and a further franc on completion of engagement he bought
the services of a French boy, and led Bullivant to a café just outside.
They had a leisurely and excellent dinner there of soup, omelette, and
coffee, and then spent another hour in comfortable arm-chairs until
their train arrived. Lollie’s boy scout reported twice the arrival of
trains for up the line, but investigation found these to be the wrong
trains, and the two friends returned to their arm-chairs and another
coffee. Their right train was also duly reported, and Lollie paid off
his scout, and they found themselves seats on board.
“I’m mighty glad I struck you,” said Bullivant gratefully. “I’d sure
have worn my soul and my feet out tramping this platform all these
hours if you hadn’t been running the deal.”
“I’m getting up to all these little dodges,” said Lollie modestly. “I
know the way things run this side now a heap better’n I do in England.”
But all his knowledge did not save them a horribly uncomfortable night
in an overcrowded compartment, and even when Bullivant dropped off
at his station two others got in. Lollie reached his station only to
be told his Division had moved, that to find them he must go back by
train thirty kilometres, change, and proceed to another railhead and
inquire there. He was finally dumped off at his railhead in the shivery
dawn—“always seems to be an appalling lot of daybreak work about these
stunts somehow,” as he remarked disgustedly—and had a subsequent
series of slow-dragging adventures in his final stages of the journey
to the battalion by way of a lift from the supply officer’s car and
a motor lorry to Refilling Point, a sleep there on some hay bales, a
further jolty ride on the ration waggons towards the trenches, and
a last tramp up with the ration party. The battalion had just moved
in to rather a quiet part of the line, and were occupying the support
trenches, and Lollie found the H.Q. mess established in a commodious
dug-out, very comfortably furnished.
“Yes, sir,” he said, in answer to a question from the C.O., “and I tell
you I’m real glad to be home again. I’ve been kicking round the country
like a lost dog for days, and I feel more unwashed and disgruntled than
if I’d just come out of a push.”
The door-curtain of sacking pushed aside, and the Padre came in. “Ha,
Lollie. Glad to have you back again,” he said, shaking hands warmly.
“Mess has been quite missing you. Sorry for your own sake you’re here,
of course, but——”
“You needn’t be, Padre,” said Lollie cheerfully. “I was just saying I’m
glad to be back. And ’pon my word it’s true. It’s quite good to be home
here again.”