drivers and gunners were hardly conscious. Their whole minds were so
concentrated on the effort of holding and guiding and urging on their
horses round or over the obstacle of the moment, a deeper and more
sticky patch than usual, an extra large hole, a shattered tree stump, a
dead horse, the wreck of a broken-down waggon, that they had no thought
for anything outside these. The gunners were constantly employed
manning the wheels and heaving on them with cracking muscles, hooking
on drag-ropes to one gun and hauling it clear of a hole, unhooking and
going floundering back to hook on to another and drag it in turn out of
its difficulty.
The Battery Commander met them at a bad dip where the track degenerated
frankly into a mud bath—and how he found or kept the track or ever
discovered them in that aching wilderness is one of the mysteries of
war and the ways of Battery Commanders. It took another two hours, two
mud-soaked nightmare hours, to come through that next hundred yards.
It was not only that the mud was deep and holding, but the slough was
so soft at bottom that the horses had no foothold, could get no grip
to haul on, could little more than drag their own weight through, much
less pull the guns. The teams were doubled, the double team taking one
gun or waggon through, and then going back for the other. The waggons
were emptied of their shell and filled again on the other side of the
slough; and this you will remember meant the gunners carrying the
rounds across a couple at a time, wading and floundering through mud
over their knee-boot tops, replacing the shells in the vehicle, and
wading back for another couple. In addition to this they had to haul
guns and waggons through practically speaking by man-power, because the
teams, almost exhausted by the work and with little more than strength
to get themselves through, gave bare assistance to the pull. The
wheels, axle deep in the soft mud, were hauled round spoke by spoke,
heaved and yo-hoed forward inches at a time.
When at last all were over, the teams had to be allowed a brief
rest—brief because the guns must be in position and under cover before
daylight came—and stood dejectedly with hanging ears, heaving flanks,
and trembling legs. The gunners dropped prone or squatted almost at the
point of exhaustion in the mud. But they struggled up, and the teams
strained forward into the breast collars again when the word was given,
and the weary procession trailed on at a jerky snail’s pace once more.
As they at last approached the new position the gun flashes on the
horizon were turning from orange to primrose, and although there was no
visible lightening of the eastern sky, the drivers were sensible of a
faintly recovering use of their eyes, could see the dim shapes of the
riders just ahead of them, the black shadows of the holes, and the wet
shine of the mud under their horses’ feet.
The hint of dawn set the guns on both sides to work with trebled
energy. The new position was one of many others so closely set that
the blazing flames from the gun muzzles seemed to run out to right and
left in a spouting wall of fire that leaped and vanished, leaped and
vanished without ceasing, while the loud ear-splitting claps from the
nearer guns merged and ran out to the flanks in a deep drum roll of
echoing thunder. The noise was so great and continuous that it drowned
even the roar of the German shells passing overhead, the smash and
_crump_ of their fall and burst.
But the line of flashes sparkling up and down across the front beyond
the line of our own guns told a plain enough tale of the German guns’
work. The Sergeant-Major, plodding along beside the Battery Commander,
grunted an exclamation.
“Boche is getting busy,” said the Battery Commander.
“Putting a pretty solid barrage down, isn’t he, sir?” said the
Sergeant-Major. “Can we get the teams through that?”
“Not much hope,” said the Battery Commander, “but, thank Heaven, we
don’t have to try, if he keeps barraging there. It is beyond our
position. There are the gun-pits just off to the left.”
But, although the barrage was out in front of the position, there were
a good many long-ranged shells coming beyond it to fall spouting fire
and smoke and earth-clods on and behind the line of guns. The teams
were flogged and lifted and spurred into a last desperate effort,
wrenched the guns forward the last hundred yards and halted. Instantly
they were unhooked, turned round, and started stumbling wearily back
towards the rear; the gunners, reinforced by others scarcely less
dead-beat than themselves by their night of digging in heavy wet soil,
seized the guns and waggons, flung their last ounce of strength and
energy into man-handling them up and into the pits. Two unlucky shells
at that moment added heavily to the night’s casualty list, one falling
beside the retiring teams and knocking out half a dozen horses and two
men, another dropping within a score of yards of the gun-pits, killing
three and wounding four gunners. Later, at intervals, two more gunners
were wounded by flying splinters from chance shells that continued to
drop near the pits as the guns were laboriously dragged through the
quagmire into their positions. But none of the casualties, none of
the falls and screamings of the high-explosive shells, interrupted
or delayed the work, and without rest or pause the men struggled and
toiled on until the last gun was safely housed in its pit.
Then the battery cooks served out warm tea, and the men drank greedily,
and after, too worn out to be hungry or to eat the biscuit and cheese
ration issued, flung themselves down in the pits under and round their
guns and slept there in the trampled mud.
The Sergeant-Major was the last to lie down. Only after everyone else
had ceased work, and he had visited each gun in turn and satisfied
himself that all was correct, and made his report to the Battery
Commander, did he seek his own rest. Then he crawled into one of the
pits, and before he slept had a few words with the “Number One” there,
his old friend Duncan. The Sergeant-Major, feeling in his pockets
for a match to light a cigarette, found the note which the Battery
Commander had sent back and which had been passed on to him. He turned
his torchlight on it and read it through to Duncan—“Bring up the guns
and firing battery waggons ...” and then chuckled a little. “Bring up
the guns.... Remember that picture we saw before we joined, Duncan? And
we fancied then we’d be bringing ’em up same fashion. And, good Lord,
think of to-night.”
“Yes,” grunted Duncan, “sad slump from our anticipations. There was
some fun in that picture style of doing the job—some sort of dash and
honour and glory. No honour and glory about ‘Bring up the guns’ these
days. Napoo in it to-night anyway.”
The Sergeant-Major, sleepily sucking his damp cigarette, wrapped in his
sopping British Warm, curling up in a corner on the wet cold earth,
utterly spent with the night’s work, cordially agreed.
Perhaps, and anyhow one hopes, some people will think they were wrong.
XIV
OUR BATTERY’S PRISONER
IT was in the very small hours of a misty grey morning that the
Lieutenant was relieved at the Forward Observing Position in the
extreme front line established after the advance, and set out with his
Signaller to return to the Battery. His way took him over the captured
ground and the maze of captured trenches and dug-outs more or less
destroyed by bombardment, and because there were still a number of
German shells coming over the two kept as nearly as possible to a route
which led them along or close to the old trenches, and so under or near
some sort of cover.
The two were tired after a strenuous day, which had commenced the
previous dawn in the Battery O.P.,[5] and finished in the ruined
building in the new front line, and a couple of hours’ sleep in a very
cold and wet cellar. The Lieutenant, plodding over the wet ground, went
out of his way to walk along a part of trench where his Battery had
been wire-cutting, and noted with a natural professional interest and
curiosity the nature and extent of the damage done to the old enemy
trenches and wire, when his eye suddenly caught the quick movement of
a shadowy grey figure, which whisked instantly out of sight somewhere
along the trench they were in.
The Lieutenant halted abruptly. “Did you see anyone move?” he asked the
Signaller, who, of course, being behind the officer in the trench, had
seen nothing, and said so. They pushed along the trench, and, coming to
the spot where the figure had vanished, found the opening to a dug-out
with a long set of stairs vanishing down into the darkness. Memories
stirred in the officer’s mind of tales about Germans who had “lain
doggo” in ground occupied by us, and had, over a buried wire, kept
in touch with their batteries and directed their fire on to our new
positions, and this, with some vague instinct of the chase, prompted
the decision he announced to his Signaller that he was “going down to
have a look.”
“Better be careful, sir,” said the Signaller. “You don’t know if the
gas has cleared out of a deep place like that.” This was true, because
a good deal of gas had been sent over in the attack of the day before,
and the officer began to wonder if he’d be a fool to go down. But,
on the other hand, if a German was there he would know there was no
gas, and, anyhow, it was a full day since the gas cloud went over. He
decided to chance it.
“You want to look out for any Boshies down there, sir,” went on the
Signaller. “With all these yarns they’re fed with, about us killin’
prisoners, you never know how they’re goin’ to take it, and whether
they’ll kamerad or make a fight for it.”
This also was true, and since a man crawling down a steep and narrow
stair made a target impossible for anyone shooting up the tunnel
to miss, the Lieutenant began to wish himself out of the job. But
something, partly obstinacy, perhaps partly an unwillingness to back
down after saying he would go, made him carry on. But before he started
he took the precaution to push a sandbag off where it lay on the top
step, to roll bumping and flopping down the stairs. If the Boche had
any mind to shoot, he argued to himself, he’d almost certainly shoot at
the sound, since it was too dark to see. The sandbag bumped down into
silence, while the two stood straining their ears for any sound. There
was none.
“You wait here,” said the Lieutenant, and, with his cocked pistol in
his hand, began to creep cautiously down the stairs. The passage was
narrow, and so low that he almost filled it, even although he was bent
nearly double, and as he went slowly down, the discomforting thought
again presented itself with renewed clearness, how impossible it would
be for a shot up the steps to miss him, and again he very heartily
wished himself well out of the job.
It was a long stair, fully twenty-five to thirty feet underground he
reckoned by the time he reached the foot, but he found himself there
and on roughly levelled ground with a good deal of relief. Evidently
the Boche did not mean to show fight, at any rate, until he knew he
was discovered. The Lieutenant knew no German, but made a try with one
word, putting as demanding a tone into it as he could—“Kamerad!” He
had his finger on the trigger and his pistol ready for action as he
spoke, in case a pot-shot came in the direction of the sound of his
voice.
There was a dead, a very dead and creepy silence after his word had
echoed and whispered away to stillness. He advanced a step or two,
feeling carefully foot after foot, with his left hand outstretched and
the pistol in his right still ready. The next thing was to try a light.
This would certainly settle it one way or the other, because if anyone
was there who meant to shoot, he’d certainly loose off at the light.
The Lieutenant took out his torch and held it out from his body at full
arm’s length, to give an extra chance of the bullet missing him if it
were shot at the light. He took a long breath, flicked the light on
in one quick flashing sweep round, and snapped it out again. There
was no shot, no sound, no movement, nothing but that eerie stillness.
The light had given him a glimpse of a long chamber vanishing into
dimness. He advanced very cautiously a few steps, switched the light on
again, and threw the beam quickly round the walls. There was no sign of
anyone, but he could see now that the long chamber curved round and out
of sight.
He switched the light off, stepped back to the stair foot, and called
the Signaller down, hearing the clumping sound of the descending
footsteps and the man’s voice with a childish relief and sense of
companionship. He explained the position, threw the light boldly on,
and pushed along to where the room ran round the corner. Here again he
found no sign of life, but on exploring right to the end of the room
found the apparent explanation of his failure to discover the man he
had been so sure of finding down there. The chamber was a long, narrow
one, curved almost to an S-shape, and at the far end was another steep
stair leading up to the trench. The man evidently had escaped that way.
The dug-out was a large one, capable of holding, the Lieutenant
reckoned, quarters for some thirty to forty men. It was hung all round
with greatcoats swinging against the wall, and piled on shelves and
hanging from hooks along wall and roof were packs, haversacks, belts,
water-bottles, bayonets, and all sorts of equipment. There were dozens
of the old leather “pickelhaube” helmets, and at sight of these the
Lieutenant remembered an old compact made with the others in Mess that
if one of them got a chance to pick up any helmets he should bring them
in and divide up.
“I’m going to take half a dozen of those helmets,” he said, uncocking
his pistol and pushing it into the holster.
“Right, sir,” said the Signaller. “I’d like one, too, and we might pick
up some good sooveneers here.”
“Just as well, now we are here, to see what’s worth having,” said the
Lieutenant. “I’d rather like to find a decent pair of field-glasses,
or a Mauser pistol.”
He held the light while the Signaller hauled down kits, shook out
packs, and rummaged round. For some queer reason they still spoke in
subdued tones and made little noise, and suddenly the Lieutenant’s
ears caught a sound that made him snap his torch off and stand, as he
confesses, with his skin pringling and his hair standing on end.
“Did you hear anything?” he whispered. The Signaller had stiffened to
stock stillness at his first instinctive start and the switching off of
the light, and after a long pause whispered back, “No, sir; but mebbe
you heard a rat.”
“Hold your breath and listen,” whispered the Lieutenant. “I thought I
heard a sort of choky cough.”
He heard the indrawn breath and then dead silence, and then again—once
more the hair stirred on his scalp—plain and unmistakable, a sound
of deep, slow breathing. “Hear it?” he said very softly. “Sound of
breathing,” and “Yes, believe I do now,” answered the Signaller,
after a pause. They stood there in the darkness for a long minute, the
Lieutenant in his own heart cursing himself for a fool not to have
thoroughly searched the place, to have made sure they would not be
trapped.
Especially he was a fool not to have looked behind those great coats
which practically lined the walls and hung almost to the floor. There
might be a dozen men hidden behind them; there might be a door leading
out into another dug-out; there might be rifles or pistols covering
them both at that second, fingers pressing on the triggers. He was, to
put it bluntly, “scared stiff,” as he says himself, but the low voice
of the Signaller brought him to the need of some action. “I can’t hear
it now, sir.”
“I’m going to turn the light on again,” he said. “Have a quick look
round, especially for any men’s feet showing under the coats round
the wall.” He switched his torch on again, ran it round the walls,
once, swiftly, and then, seeing no feet under the coats, slowly and
deliberately yard by yard.
“I’ll swear I heard a man breathe,” he said positively, still peering
round. “We’ll search the place properly.”
In one corner near the stair foot lay a heap of clothing of some sort,
with a great-coat spread wide over it. It caught the Lieutenant’s eye
and suspicions. Why should coats be heaped there—smooth—at full
length?
Without moving his eyes from the pile, he slid his automatic pistol
out again, and slipped off the safety catch. “Keep the light on those
coats,” he said, softly, and tip-toed over to the pile, the pistol
pointed, his finger close and tight on the trigger. His heart was
thumping uncomfortably, and his nerves tight as fiddle-strings. He felt
sure somehow that here was one man at least; and if he or any others
in the dug-out meant fight on discovery, now, at any second, the first
shot must come.
He stooped over the coats and thrust the pistol forward. If a man was
there, had a rifle or pistol ready pointed even, at least he, the
Lieutenant, ought to get off a shot with equal, or a shade greater
quickness. With his left hand he picked up the coat corner, turned it
back, and jerked the pistol forward and fairly under the nose of the
head his movement had disclosed. “Lie still,” he said, not knowing or
caring whether the man understood or not, and for long seconds stood
staring down on the white face and into the frightened eyes that looked
unblinking up at him.
“Kamerad,” whispered the man, still as death under the threat of that
pistol muzzle and the finger curled about the trigger. “Right,” said
the Lieutenant. “Kamerad. Now, very gently, hands up,” and again,
slowly and clearly, “Hands up.” The man understood, and the Lieutenant,
watching like a hawk for a suspicious movement, for sign of a weapon
appearing, waited while the hands came slowly creeping up and out from
under the coat. His nerves were still on a raw edge—perhaps because
long days of observing in the front lines or with the battery while the
guns are going their hardest in a heavy night-and-day bombardment are
not conducive to steadiness of nerves—but, satisfied at last that the
man meant to play no tricks, he flung the coat back off him, made him
stand with his hands up, and ran his left hand over breast and pockets
for feel of any weapon. That done, he stepped back with a sigh of
relief. “Phew! I believe I was just about as cold scared as he was,” he
said. “D’you speak English? No. Well, I suppose you’ll never know how
close to death you’ve been the last minute.”
“I was a bit jumpy, too, sir,” said the Signaller. “You never know, and
it doesn’t do to take chances wi’ these chaps.”
“I wasn’t,” said the Lieutenant. “I believe, if I’d seen a glint of
metal as his hands came up, I’d have blown the top of his blessed head
off. Pity he can’t speak English.”
“Mans,” said the prisoner, nodding his head towards the other end of
the dug-out. “Oder mans.”
The Lieutenant whipped round with a startled exclamation. “What, more
of ’em. G’ Lord! I’ve had about enough of this. But we’d better make
all safe. Come on, Fritz; lead us to ’em. No monkey tricks, now,” and
he pushed his pistol close to the German’s flinching head. “Oder mans,
kamerad, eh? Savvy?”
“Ge-wounded,” said the prisoner, making signs to help his meaning.
Under his guidance and with the pistol close to his ear all the time,
they pulled aside some of the coats and found a man lying in a bunk
hidden behind them. His head was tied up in a soaking bandage, the
rough pillow was wet with blood, and by all the signs he was pretty
badly hit. The Lieutenant needed no more than a glance to see the man
was past being dangerous, so, after making the prisoner give him a
drink from a water-bottle, they went round the walls, and found it
recessed all the way round with empty bunks.
“What a blazing ass I was not to hunt round,” said the Lieutenant,
puffing another sigh of relief as they finished the jumpy business of
pulling aside coat after coat, and never knowing whether the movement
of any one of them was going to bring a muzzle-close shot from the
blackness behind. “We must get out of this, though. It’s growing late,
and the Battery will be wondering and thinking we’ve got pipped on the
way back.”
“What about these things, sir?” said the Signaller, pointing to the
helmets and equipment they had hauled down.
“Right,” said the Lieutenant; “I’m certainly not going without
a souvenir of this entertainment. And I don’t see why Brother
Fritz oughtn’t to make himself useful. Here, spread that big
ground-sheet———”
So it came about that an hour after a procession tramped back through
the lines of the infantry and on to the gun lines—one German, with a
huge ground-sheet, gathered at the corners and bulging with souvenirs,
slung over his shoulder, the Lieutenant close behind him with an
automatic at the ready, and the Signaller, wearing a huge grin, and
with a few spare helmets slung to his haversack strap.
“I thought I’d fetch him right along,” the Lieutenant explained a
little later to the O.C. Battery. “Seeing the Battery’s never had
a prisoner to its own cheek, I thought one might please ’em. And,
besides, I wanted him to lug the loot along. I’ve got full outfits for
the mess this time, helmets and rifles and bayonets and all sorts.”
The Battery _were_ pleased. The Gunners don’t often have the chance to
take prisoners, and this one enjoyed all the popularity of a complete
novelty. He was taken to the men’s dug-out, and fed with a full
assignment of rations, from bacon and tea to jam and cheese, while the
men in turn cross-questioned him by the aid of an English-French-German
phrase-book unearthed by some studious gunner.
And when he departed under escort to be handed over and join the other
prisoners, the Battery watched him go with complete regret.
“To tell the truth, sir,” the Sergeant-Major remarked to the
Lieutenant, “the men would like to have kept him as a sort of Battery
Souvenir—kind of a cross between a mascot and a maid-of-all-work.
Y’see, it’s not often—in fact, I don’t know that we’re not the first
Field Battery in this war to bring in a prisoner wi’ arms, kit, and
equipment complete.”
“The first battery,” said the Lieutenant fervently, “and when I think
of that minute down a deep hole in pitch dark, hearing someone breathe,
and not knowing—well, we may be the first battery, and, as far as I’m
concerned, we’ll jolly well be the last.”
XV
OUR TURN
NO. II platoon had had a bad mauling in their advance, and when
they reached their “final objective line” there were left out of
the ninety-odd men who had started, one sergeant, one corporal,
and fourteen men. But, with the rest of the line, they at once set
to work to consolidate, to dig in, to fill the sandbags each man
carried, and to line the lip of a shell crater with them. Every man
there knew that a counter-attack on their position was practically a
certainty. They had not a great many bombs or very much ammunition
left; they had been struggling through a wilderness of sticky mud and
shell-churned mire all day, moving for all the world like flies across
a half-dry fly-paper; they had been without food since dawn, when they
had consumed the bully and biscuit of their iron “ration”; they were
plastered with a casing of chilly mud from head to foot; they were wet
to the skin; brain, body, and bone weary.
But they went about the task of consolidating with the greatest vigour
they could bring their tired muscles to yield. They worried not at all
about the shortage of bombs and ammunition, or lack of food, because
they were all by now veterans of the new “planned” warfare, knew that
every detail of re-supplying them with all they required had been fully
and carefully arranged, that these things were probably even now on the
way to them, that reinforcements and working parties would be pushed
up to the new line as soon as it was established. So the Sergeant was
quite willing to leave all that to work out in its proper sequence,
knew that his simple job was to hold the ground they had taken, and,
therefore, bent all his mind to that work.
But it suddenly appeared that the ground was not as completely taken as
he had supposed. A machine-gun close at hand began to bang out a string
of running reports; a stream of bullets hissed and whipped and smacked
the ground about him and his party. A spasmodic crackle of rifle-fire
started again farther along the line at the same time. The Sergeant
paid no heed to that. He and his men had flung down into cover, and
dropped spades and trenching tools and sandbags, and whipped up their
rifles to return the fire, at the first sound of the machine-gun.