in German. “Contact,” said Walk Jones, and swung the propeller his
hardest. He heard the whirr of the starter as Reddie twirled it
rapidly. “Off,” called Jones as he saw the engine was not giving sign
of life, and “Off” answered Reddie, cutting off the starting current.
Another shout came, and with it this time what sounded like an
imperative command. Reddie cursed his lack of knowledge of German. He
could have held them in play a minute if—— “Contact,” came Walk’s
voice again. “Contact,” he answered, and whirled the starter madly
again. There was still no movement, no spark of life from the engine.
Reddie groaned, and Walk Jones, sweating despite the cold over his
exertions on the propeller, wound it back again and swung it forward
with all his weight. His thick leather coat hampered him. He tore it
off and flung it to the ground, and tried again.
So they tried and failed, tried and failed, time and again, while all
the time the shouts were coming louder and from different points,
as if a party had split up and was searching the field. A couple of
electric torches threw dancing patches of light on the ground, lifted
occasionally and flashed round. One was coming straight towards them,
and Reddie with set teeth waited the shout of discovery he knew must
come presently, and cursed Walk’s slowness at the “prop.”
Again on the word he whirled the starter, and this time
“Whur-r-r-rum,” answered the engine, suddenly leaping to life;
“Whur-_r_-_r_-ROO-OO-OO-OOM-_ur_-_r_-r-umph,” as Reddie eased and
opened the throttle. He heard a babel of shouts and yells, and saw
the light-patches come dancing on the run towards them. A sudden
recollection of the only two German words he knew came to him. “Ja
wohl,” he yelled at the pitch of his voice, “Ja wohl”; then in lower
hurried tones, “Swing her, Walk; quick, swing her,” and opened the
engine out again. The running lights stopped for a minute at his yell,
and Walk Jones jumped to the wing-tip, shouted “Right!” and hung on
while Reddie started to taxi the machine forward. His weight and
leverage brought her lumbering round, the roar of engine and propeller
rising and sinking as Reddie manipulated the throttle, and Reddie
yelling his “Ja wohl,” every time the noise died down.
“Get in, Walk; get aboard,” he shouted, when the nose was round and
pointing back over the short stretch they had taxied on landing, and
which he therefore knew was clear running for at least a start. He
heard another order screamed in German, and next instant the _bang_ of
a rifle, not more apparently than a score of yards away. He kept the
machine lumbering forward, restraining himself from opening his engine
out, waiting in an agony of apprehension for Walk’s shout. He felt the
machine lurch and sway, and the kicking scramble his observer made to
board her, heard next instant his yelling “Right-oh!” and opened the
throttle full as another couple of rifles bang-banged.
The rifles had little terror either for him or the observer, because
both knew there were bigger and deadlier risks to run in the next
few seconds. There were still desperately long odds against their
attempt succeeding. In the routine method of starting a machine,
chocks are placed in front of the wheels and the engine is given a
short full-power run and a longer easier one to warm the engine and
be sure all is well; then the chocks are pulled away and she rolls
off, gathering speed as she goes, until she has enough for her pilot
to lift her into the air. Here, their engine was stone cold, they
knew nothing of what lay in front of them, might crash into something
before they left the ground, might rise, and even then catch some
house or tree-top, and travelling at the speed they would by then have
attained—well, the Lord help them!
Reddie had to chance everything, and yet throw away no shadow of a
chance. He opened the throttle wide, felt the machine gather speed,
bumping and jolting horribly over the rough field, tried to peer down
at the ground to see how fast they moved, could see nothing, utterly
black nothing, almost panicked for one heart-stilling instant as he
looked ahead again and thought he saw the blacker shadow of something
solid in front of him, clenched his teeth and held straight on until
he felt by the rush of wind on his face he had way enough, and pulled
the joy-stick in to him. With a sigh of relief he felt the jolting
change to a smooth swift rush, held his breath, and with a pull on the
stick zoomed her up, levelled her out again (should clear anything
but a tall tree now), zoomed her up again. He felt a hand thumping on
his shoulder, heard Walk’s wild exultant yell—“‘Ra-a-ay!” and, still
lifting her steadily, swung his machine’s nose for the jumping lights
that marked the trenches.
They landed safe on their own ’drome ground half an hour after.
The officer whose duty it was for the night to look after the
landing-ground and light the flares in answer to the returning pilots’
signals, walked over to them as they came to rest.
“Hullo, you two,” he said. “Where th’ blazes you been till this time!
We’d just about put you down as missing.”
Reddie and Walk had stood up in their cock-pits and, without a spoken
word, were solemnly shaking hands.
Reddie looked overboard at the officer on the ground. “You may believe
it, Johnny, or you may not,” he said, “but we’ve been down into
Hunland.”
“Down into hell!” said Johnny. “Quit jokin’. What kept you so late?”
“You’ve said it, Johnny,” said Reddie soberly. “Down into hell—and out
again.”
They shook hands again, solemnly.
XVIII
THE FINAL OBJECTIVE
IT was all apt to be desperately confusing—the smoke, the shapeless
shell-cratered ground, the deafening unceasing tempest of noise—but
out of all this confusion and the turmoil of their attack there were
one or two things that remained clear in the mind of Corporal; and
after all they were the things that counted. One was that he was in
charge for the moment of the remains of the company, that when their
last officer was knocked out he, Corporal Ackroyd, had taken the
officer’s wrist watch and brief instructions to “Carry on—you know
what to do”; and the other that they had, just before the officer was
casualtied, reached the “pink-line objective.”
* * * * *
Without going too closely into the detailed methods of the attack—the
normal methods of this particular period—it is enough to say that
three objective lines had been marked up on the maps of the ground to
be taken, a pink, a purple, and a “final objective” blue-black line.
Between the moment of occupying the pink line and the move to attack
the purple there were some twelve minutes allowed to bring supports
into position, to pour further destructive artillery fire on the next
objective, and so on. Corporal Ackroyd, in common with the rest of
the battalion, had been very fully instructed in the map position,
and rehearsed over carefully-measured-out ground in practice attack,
and knew fairly well the time-table laid down. Before the officer was
carried back by the bearers he gave one or two further simple guiding
rules. “Send back a runner to report. If nobody comes up to take over
in ten minutes, push on to the purple line. It’s the sunk road; you
can’t mistake it. Keep close on the barrage, and you can’t go wrong”;
and finally, “Take my watch; it’s synchronised time.”
Ackroyd sent back his runner, and was moving to a position where he
could best keep control of the remains of the company, when there came
an interruption.
“Some blighter out there flappin’ a white flag, Corporal,” reported a
look-out, and pointed to where an arm and hand waved from a shell-hole
a hundred yards to their front. The Corporal was wary. He had seen too
much of the “white-flag trick” to give himself or his men away, but at
the same time was keenly sensible of the advantage of getting a bunch
of Germans on their immediate front to surrender, rather than have to
advance in face of their fire. There was not much time to spare before
the laid-down moment for the advance.
He half rose from his cover and waved an answer. Promptly a figure rose
from the shell-hole and with hands well over his head came running and
stumbling over the rough ground towards him. Three-quarter way over he
dropped into another shell-hole, and from there waved again. At another
reassuring wave from Ackroyd he rose, ran in and flung himself down
into the shell-hole where the Corporal waited. The Corporal met him
with his bayoneted rifle at the ready and his finger on the trigger,
and the German rose to his knees shooting both hands up into the air
with a quick “Kamerad.”
“Right-oh,” said Ackroyd. “But where is your chums? Ain’t any more
coming?”
The German answered in guttural but clear enough English, “Mine
comrades sended me, wherefore—because I speak English. They wish to
kamerad, to become prisoner if you promise behave them well. You no
shoot if they come.”
“Right,” said Ackroyd with another glance at his watch. “But you’ll
’ave to ’urry them up. We’re goin’ to advance in about seven minutes,
and I’ll promise nothin’ after that. Signal ’em in quick.”
“If I to them wave they will come,” answered the German. “But mine
officer come first and make proper kamerad.”
“He’ll make a proper bloomin’ sieve if he don’t come quick,” retorted
Ackroyd. “The barrage is due to drop in less’n seven minutes. Signal
’im along quick,” he repeated impatiently, as he saw the other failed
to understand. The German turned and made signals, and at once another
figure came running and crouching to where they waited. “Mine officer,”
said the first German, “he no speak English, so I interpret.”
“Tell ’im,” said Ackroyd, “the shellin’ will begin again in five or six
minutes, an’ the line will advance. If he fetches ’is men in quick,
they’ll be all right, but I’ll promise nothing if they’re not in before
then.”
He waited, fidgeting anxiously, while this was interpreted, and the
officer returned an answer.
“He say why needs you advance until all his men have surrender?” said
the German.
“Why?” exploded Ackroyd. “Why? Does ’e think I’m the bloomin’
Commander-in-Chief an’ that I’m runnin’ this show? Look ‘ere”—he
paused a moment to find words to put the position clearly and quickly.
He saw the urgency of the matter. In another few minutes the barrage
would drop, and the line would begin to push on. If by then these
Germans had not surrendered, they would conclude that the officer had
not made terms and they would remain in cover and fight—which meant
more casualties to their already unusually heavy list. If he could
get the surrender completed before the moment for advance, the next
strip of ground to the “purple objective line” would be taken quickly,
easily, and cheaply.
“Now look ’ere,” he said rapidly. “You must fix this quick. This show,
this push, advance, attack, is runnin’ to a set time-table. Comprenny?
At quarter-past—see, quarter-past”—and he thrust out the watch
marking eleven minutes past—“the barrage, the shellin’, begins, an’ we
start on for the next objective——”
“Start what?” interjected the interpreter.
“Objective,” yelled Ackroyd angrily. “Don’t you know what a blazing
objective is? The sunk road is our nex’ objective line. D’you know the
sunk road?”
“Ja, ja, I knows the road,” agreed the German. Then the officer
interrupted, and the interpreter turned to explain matters to him. “I
cannot it explain this objective,” he said. “Mine officer what is it
asks?”
Ackroyd swore lustily and full-bloodedly, but bit short his oaths.
There was no time for spare language now. “See here, tell ’im this
quick. A objective is the line we’re told to take, an’ goes an’ takes.
The Commander-in-Chief, ‘Aig hisself, says where the objective is, an’
he marks up a line on the map to show where we goes to an’ where we
stops. There’s a final objective where we finishes each push. D’you
savvy that? Every bit o’ the move is made at the time laid down in
attack orders. You can’t alter that, an’ I can’t, nor nobody else
can’t. Old ’Aig ’e just draws ‘is blue-black line on the map and ses,
‘There’s your final objective’; an’ we just goes an’ takes it. Now ’ave
you got all that?”
The two Germans spoke rapidly for a moment, but the Corporal
interrupted as he noted the rising sound of the gun-fire and the
rapidly-increasing rush of our shells overhead. “Here, ’nuff o’ this!”
he shouted. “There’s no time—there’s the barrage droppin’ again. Call
your men in if your goin’ to; or push off back an’ we’ll go ’n fetch
’em ourselves. You must get back the both o’ you. We’re movin’ on.”
And he made a significant motion with the bayonet.
As they rose crouching the roar of gun-fire rose to a pitch of greater
and more savage intensity; above their heads rushed and shrieked a
whirlwind of passing shells; out over the open beyond them the puffing
shell-bursts steadied down to a shifting rolling wall of smoke. And out
of this smoke wall there came running, first in ones and twos, and then
in droves, a crowd of grey-clad figures, all with hands well over their
heads, some with jerking and waving dirty white rags.
At the same moment supports came struggling in to our line, and the
Corporal made haste to hand over to their officer. The prisoners were
being hastily collected for removal to the rear, and our line rising to
advance, when the interpreter caught at the Corporal. “Mine officer he
say,” he shouted, “where is it this fine ol’ objective?”
The Corporal was in rather happy mood over the surrender and the
prospect of advancing without opposition. “Where is it?” he retorted.
“Like ’is bloomin’ cheek askin’. You tell ’im that _’is_ final
objective is Donington ‘All—an’ I wish ours was ’alf as pleasant. Ours
ain’t far this time, but we’re off now to take it accordin’ to attack
orders an’ time-table, like we always does. An’ we’ll do it just the
same fashion—’cos ’e knows us an’ we knows ’im, an’ knows ’e don’t
ask wot we can’t do—when the day comes that good old ’Aig draws ’is
blue-black line beyond its back doors an’ tells us the final objective
is Berlin.”
XIX
ARTILLERY PREPARATION
IT was the sixth day of the “artillery preparation” for the attack.
During the past six days the dispatches on both sides had remarked
vaguely that there was “artillery activity,” or “intense fire,” or
“occasional increase to drum fire.” These phrases may not convey much
to the average dispatch reader, and indeed it is only the Gunners, and
especially the Field Batteries in the front gun-line, who understand
their meaning to the full.
They had here no picked “battery positions,” because they had been
pushed up on to captured ground which they themselves in a previous
attack had helped churn to a muddy shell-wrecked wilderness, had
blasted bare of any semblance of cover or protection. The batteries
were simply planted down in a long line in the open, or at best had
the guns sunk a foot or two in shallow pits made by spading out the
connecting rims of a group of shell-holes. The gunners, whether serving
at the guns or taking their turn of rest, were just as open and exposed
as the guns. The gun shields gave a little protection from forward fire
of bullets, shrapnel, or splinters, but none from the downward, side,
or backward blast of high-explosive shells.
There was no cover or protection for guns or men simply because there
had been no time or men to spare for “digging in.” The field guns had
been pushed up to their present position just as quickly as the soft
ground would allow after the last advance, and since then had been
kept going night and day, bringing up and stacking piles of shells and
still keeping up a heavy fire. The return fire from the Germans was
spasmodic, and not to be compared in volume to ours, and yet against
ranks and rows of guns in the bare open it could not fail to be
damaging, and a good few of the batteries lost guns smashed and many
men and officers killed and wounded.
But the guns, and as far as possible the men, were replaced, and the
weight of fire kept up. The men worked in shifts, half of them keeping
the guns going while the others ate and rested, and slept the sleep
of utter exhaustion in shell-holes near the guns, which continued to
bang in running bursts of “battery fire,” or crash out in ear-splitting
and ground-shaking four-gun salvos within a dozen or two yards of the
sleepers’ heads. The sheer physical labour was cruelly exhausting—the
carrying and handling of the shells, the effort to improvise sandbag
and broken timber “platforms” under the gun wheels to keep them from
sinking in the soft ground, even the mere walking or moving about
ankle deep in the sea of sticky mud that surrounded the guns and clung
in heavy clogging lumps to feet and legs. But the mental strain must
have been even worse in the past six days and nights of constant heavy
firing, and of suffering under fire.
Now on this, the sixth and last day of the preparation, the rate of
fire along the whole line was worked up to an appalling pitch of
violence. The line of the advanced field positions ran in a narrow and
irregular belt, at few points more than a couple of thousand yards from
the enemy line; the batteries were so closely placed that the left
flank gun of one was bare yards from the right flank gun of the next,
and in some groups were ranged in double and triple tiers. Up and down
this line for miles the guns poured out shells as hard as they could
go. Every now and again the enemy artillery would attempt a reply, and
a squall of shells would shriek and whistle and crash down on some part
or other of our guns’ line, catching a few men here, killing a handful
there, smashing or overturning a gun elsewhere—but never stopping or
even slacking the tornado of fire poured out by the British line.
Each battery had a set rate of fire to maintain, a fixed number of
rounds to place on detailed targets; and badly or lightly mauled or
untouched, as might be, each one performed its appointed task. In any
battery which had lost many officers and men only a constant tremendous
effort kept the guns going. The men relieved from their turn at the
guns crawled to the craters, where they had slung a ground sheet or two
for shelter from the rain, or had scooped a shallow niche in the side,
ate their bully and biscuit, stretched their cramped muscles, crept
into their wet lairs, wrapped themselves in wet blankets or coats,
curled up and slept themselves into a fresh set of cramps. They were
lucky if they had their spell off in undisturbed sleep; most times they
were turned out, once, twice, or thrice, to help unload the pack mules
which brought up fresh supplies of shells, and man-handle the rounds
up from the nearest points the mules could approach over the welter of
muddy ground so pitted and cratered that even a mule could not pass
over it.
When their relief finished they crawled out again and took their places
on the guns, and carried on. By nightfall every man of them was stiff
with tiredness, deafened and numb with the noise and shock of the
piece’s jarring recoil, weary-eyed and mind-sick with the unceasing
twiddling and adjusting of tiny marks to minute scratches and strokes
on shell fuses, sights, and range-drums. The deepening dusk was hardly
noticed, because the running bursts of flame and light kept the dusk at
bay. And dark night brought no rest, no slackening of the fierce rate
of fire, or the labour that maintained it.
The whole gun-line came to be revealed only as a quivering belt of
living fire. As a gun fired there flamed out in front of the battery a
blinding sheet of light that threw up every detail of men and guns and
patch of wet ground in glaring hot light or hard black silhouette. On
the instant, the light vanished and darkness clapped down on the tired
eyes, to lift and leap again on the following instant from the next
gun’s spurt of vivid sheeting flame. For solid miles the whole line
throbbed and pulsed in the same leaping and vanishing gusts of fire and
light; and from either side, from front, and rear, and overhead, came
the long and unbroken roaring and crashing and banging and bellowing of
the guns’ reports, the passing and the burst of the shells.
So it went on all night, and so it went on into the grey hours of the
dawn. As the “zero hour” fixed for the attack approached, the rate
of fire worked up and up to a point that appeared to be mere blind
ravening fury. But there was nothing blind about it. For all the speed
of the work each gun was accurately laid for every round, each fuse was
set to its proper tiny mark, each shell roared down on its appointed
target. The guns grew hot to the touch, the breeches so hot that oil
sluiced into them at intervals hissed and bubbled and smoked like fat
in a frying pan, as it touched the metal.
One battery ceased fire for a few minutes to allow some infantry
supports to pass through the line and clear of the blast of the guns’
fire, and the gunners took the respite thankfully, and listened to the
shaking thunder of the other guns, the rumble and wail and roar of the
shells that passed streaming over their heads, sounds that up to now
had been drowned out in the nearer bang and crash of their own guns.
As the infantry picked their way out between the guns the “Number One”
of the nearest detachment exchanged a few shouted remarks with one of
the infantry sergeants.
“Near time to begin,” said the sergeant, glancing at his watch. “Busy
time goin’ to be runnin’ this next day or two. You’ll be hard at it,
too, I s’pose.”
“Busy time! beginning!” retorted the artilleryman. “I’m about fed up o’
busy times. This battery hasn’t been out of the line or out of action
for over three months, an’ been more or less under fire all that time.
We haven’t stopped shootin’ night or day for a week, and this last 24
hours we been at it full stretch, hammer an’ tongs. Beginnin’—Good
Lord! I’m that hoarse, I can hardly croak, an’ every man here is deaf,
dumb, and paralysed. I’m gettin’ to hate this job, an’ I never want to
hear another gun or see another shell in my blanky life.”
The infantryman laughed, and hitched his rifle up to move. “I s’pose
so,” he said. “An’ I shouldn’t wonder if them Fritzes in the line
you’ve been strafin’ are feelin’ same way as you about guns an’
shells—only more so.”
“That’s so,” agreed the Number One, and turned to the fuse-setters,
urging them hoarsely to get a stack of rounds ready for the barrage.
“We’re just goin’ to begin,” he said, “an’ if this blanky gun don’t
hump herself in the next hour or two....”
XX
STRETCHER-BEARERS
LIEUTENANT DREW was wounded within four or five hundred yards of the
line from which his battalion started to attack. He caught three
bullets in as many seconds—one in the arm, one in the shoulder, and
one in the side—and went down under them as if he had been pole-axed.
The shock stunned him for a little, and he came to hazily to find a
couple of the battalion stretcher-bearers trying to lift him from the
soft mud in which he was half sunk.
Drew was rather annoyed with them for wanting to disturb him. He was
quite comfortable, he told them, and all he wanted was to be left alone
there. The bearers refused to listen to this, and insisted in the first
place in slicing away some of his clothing—which still further annoyed
Drew because the weather was too cold to dispense with clothes—and
putting some sort of first field dressing on the wounds.
“D’you think he can walk, Bill?” one asked the other. “No,” said Bill.
“I fancy he’s got one packet through the lung, an’ if he walks he’ll
wash out. It’s a carryin’ job.”
“Come on, then,” said the first. “Sooner we start the sooner we’re
there.”
Quite disregarding Drew’s confused grumbles, they lifted and laid him
on a stretcher and started to carry him back to the aid post.