BEES, HONEY AND HELL
On Tuesday, August 29, 1916, my battery pulled into Martinsaart, in the
Somme district, which lies three miles immediately west of Thiepval. The
Battle of the Somme had been raging since July 1. We took up our
position in a beautiful orchard, its trees laden down with apples, and
along the hedge on one side of the orchard were ten beehives, humming
and throbbing with busy bee life. Underneath some large apple trees we
placed our guns and the thickly woven hedge right in front of us gave us
a splendidly concealed nook; through the hedge we cut a hole for our
beauty's nozzle.
At 5:15 in the afternoon we started registering our "love letters," in
preparation for another phase of the big bombardment which had been more
or less continuously in operation since the commencement of the battle,
and after accomplishing our purpose we got a "stand down." The apples
clustering on the trees looked as tempting to us as did the apple of
our first father and before we started registering, every man in the
battery had mentally made his tree selection as the one he would climb
as soon as he got a minute to himself. It was unnecessary to climb,
however; with the advent of the explosion of our guns, the concussion
shook the trees as with a strong wind and the luscious fruit showered
upon our heads in abundance.
Then we cleaned up our guns, munching the red apples, and the enemy
planes were humming like bees over our heads, darting here and there
like bats, trying to find our place of concealment, but we were too well
hidden. When night fell, McLean and I started for the rear, passing the
hives on our way. "By, Golly, Grant, here's a chance for a mouthful; I
know how to handle this proposition," and he made for the hives. He
lifted off the top, with the bees flying all around, and handed me the
top to hold while he inserted his hand and took out a comb, which he
passed over to me, saying, "Take this till I get another, the damned
bees are stinging me." Thousands were around him. I took it and started
on the dead run for my billet, about 400 yards away, and in a minute or
two Mac followed with another comb. The fellows greeted us with
exclamations of delight and surprise; many of us had been two years in
the battle line without ever having seen, let alone tasted, such a
delicious morsel. Every man in the billet fell to, munching the honey
with expressions of sheer joy; every fellow in the bunch had his face
and hands littered with the sticky joy like so many kids munching taffy.
In the midst of our feasting, visitors called; the robbed bees came
flying into the room after their treasure. McLean, by this time, had
been stung about twenty times, and I had about a dozen nips on my hands
and face, and in the very heat of our argument with our visitors, "Stand
to!" was sounded, and honey, bees and everything else was dropped as we
raced for the guns. But the bees did not drop us; they chased us every
bit of the way; they attacked our hands, our mouths, our
necks,--wherever there was a particle of our anatomy exposed we were
stung.
On our way to the guns McLean brought a comb with him, leaving the other
alongside his bed. We had to pass the Major on our way, whose dugout was
close to the hives, and by that time he had an inkling of what was
going on and he yelled, "Grant, throw that honey down; you too, McLean."
As he yelled his orders I was passing the telephonist's hut and I threw
it in to him,--"Here, Graham, here's some honey for you, it's great,"
and continued my run down to the guns, the bees still following us up.
McLean laid his comb on a pile of shells beside the gun, and the heat of
the August day caused the honey to trickle over the shells. I commenced
pointing the gun while Mac worked the range drum; the angles were passed
to us and inside of a minute we were firing, and inside of another
minute we had the sternest kind of a battle on our hands, for thicker
than ever the bees came swarming around the gun.
"Who in hell broke into those hives?" yelled the Major.
No reply; we were busily working and "hadn't time" to answer. The honey
on our hands, coupled with the dust, made a grit that in opening and
closing the breech caused the mechanism to stick, and the honey clinging
to the shells caused the breech chamber to stick, making the shell cases
jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a
sharp pick the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge. All
during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men,
whoever they were, that brought the bees into the business.
It was my duty to set the sight, and as I did so, each time, the bees
would attack my hands and head, and in trying to attend to the sight and
wipe the bees off at the same time, my work was harder than can well be
imagined; but poor Billy's case was even harder, he had to keep a steady
hold of his range drum with both hands and he couldn't budge to brush
off his attackers, as it was absolutely necessary to hold dead steady to
enable us to do our shooting accurately.
"Grant, for God's sake knock this bee off my neck," he pleaded; "it's
stinging hell out of me"; but every time I made a move to help him, the
Major roared, "Get that angle on, Grant; get your range on, McLean." And
we had to take our medicine. Parker, who was passing shells, was in the
same plight as the rest of us; his hands were covered with the sugary
fluid that had settled between the copper splinters of the driving bands
on the shells and the slivers were slitting his hands. This is a
necessary accompaniment that the men passing the shells into the gun
have to contend with, and ordinarily it is a sore and painful piece of
business, but in conjunction with the swarm of the bees it was simply
hellish.
A change of angle was momentarily expected from the observer; we had
been looking for it for some minutes, and the Major was beginning to
rave and rant, very much like a theater manager when the star has not
yet put in her appearance and the impatient audience on the outside are
giving vent to catcalls. He could stand it no longer and ran as fast as
his legs would carry him over to the telephonist's hut; there he found
Graham crouching alongside of his telephone in the folds of a blanket
over his head and face. It was the usual field telephone that we used,
in conjunction with a telegraph buzzer, and Graham was endeavoring to
deliver his messages and fight off the bees at the same time, while
bringing to his aid the smoke of a fag that he was endeavoring to puff
into the faces of his antagonists in the hope that it would help some.
The Major bellowed, "You damned jackass! take off that blanket. What do
you mean?" Graham threw off the blanket and started working his buzzer,
but the bees had as little regard for the rank of the Major as they did
for that of Sergeant Graham, and three or four of them kept pinging away
at him, but as long as the Major was there his splendid discipline
enabled him to do his work. He got into communication at once with the
trenches, gave us our new targets and we kept on with our work until
darkness prevented further registering that night, although the twilight
still prevailed.
"Stand down!" came the order. "Clean up guns and lay on S.O.S. lines for
the night," meaning to load the gun with a fuse shell timed for a
certain range, or to burst on percussion, just as the target requires,
safety catch down, sight set, range on range drum and the gun laid on a
predetermined point to be covered, in both cases being the front line
trench, although it might be a machine-gun emplacement, barbed-wire,
bombing post, crossroads or observation station. For a front-line trench
and an attack started by the enemy, the S.O.S. signal is passed from the
trench, either through the telephonist in the trenches, or by means of
colored star shells. Immediately upon receipt of this signal by our
S.O.S. sentry or the telephonist at the battery, we get the order
"S.O.S. stand to the battery," and in the space of four seconds from
the time we receive that order, our first shell must be exploded in the
German lines under pain of the severest penalty. If a man were taking a
wash, he would have to jump out of the water and get to the guns as
quickly as God and nature would permit him.
Before retiring for our billets, Mac and I decided that we might as well
get some more honey, as we felt that the bees had done about all that
they could to us and we were deserving of a little further reward for
what we had endured, and arming ourselves with smoke helmets, we made a
further sortie on the camp of our winged enemies. As fast as if I were
ramming home a shell, I lifted off the hive while Mac pulled out a
couple of combs swarming with bees. We thought we were making a good job
of it this time and getting away scot free, when suddenly I felt a stab
under my coat sleeve and almost at the same moment Mac had the same
experience and we broke into a run for the billet. By the time we got
there we were being stung frightfully on our bodies, as the bees had
made their way up under our shirt sleeves and we ripped off our coats
and shirts, fighting the common enemy at the same time. The boys in the
billet beat it outside while we "carried on."
After a vigorous battle we seemed to have the foe beaten into submission
and the fellows returned; then we had a feed of honey, hung up the
remainder on the wall and retired for the night. Mac retired to his bunk
first and had scarcely settled down when he emitted another snort, then
a yell; the bees had settled in between the blankets of his bed and were
renewing their onslaught on his helpless body.
Everybody started laughing at McLean's plight, but no sooner were the
rest of us settled down till we too had a battle on our hands; and in
the middle of the fray, Fritz started shelling our billets with gas
shells, one of the missiles going clean through the tile roof and
knocking the tiles down on our heads. Then came a salvo--six
shells--followed by several others. "S.O.S." was signaled and "Stand
to," and out we raced for the guns, sans shirt, sans everything, bumping
into the trees on our way and falling in shell holes in the orchard.
The gas they were putting over at this time was more dangerous than any
I had yet experienced, it having a more direct effect on the lungs than
any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was
black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great
difficulty we exploded our shells; but most of our work in that
discharge was guesswork.
It soon cooled down and we again sought our billets after laying the
guns on "S.O.S." and even the pain from the stings of the bees did not
prevent us getting into dreamland in short order.
At 3:30 in the morning I went out to visit the last guard shift, as was
my duty. Then, dawn breaking over the land, I went out to see what
damage the shells had done, and on the way I stumbled into a crop of the
most delicious mushrooms. Off came my helmet and I filled it to the brim
and hastened to the cookhouse with them; he had just got his fire
started and I asked him if he would oblige me by cooking them for me, as
I wanted them for my gun crew, and he gladly complied with my request.
Then cookhouse was called and the crew came to breakfast and when each
man got his portion of the mushrooms served him, his astonishment was as
great as when he got the honey. So that between the honey and the dewy
dainties I had gathered, together with a couple of jars of pickled pork
and two small jars of rolled butter found in one of the vacated cellars
by an industrious member of our crew, you can imagine the excited
condition of our minds that morning at breakfast.
During the course of the feasting the Sergeant-Major arrived on the
scene. "Well, for Heaven's sake! Who was the guy that got the
mushrooms?" He was informed that I was the lucky individual and he asked
me if I would show him the way, and I was just directing him when "Stand
to the battery!" intervened, and we bolted for the guns and opened up.
"Fifty rounds gunfire" was ordered; then "Second fire ten seconds," then
"Second fire five seconds," then "Gunfire steady"; next, "Independent
fire ten seconds"; then came the order for a sweeping fire to enable our
infantry to dig in in a trench they had just taken, and to prevent Fritz
getting it back. Our work was accomplished and "Stand down and lay on
day lines!" was ordered and I was cleaning the sight of my gun and
wiping off the effects of the gas fumes when the Sergeant-Major came
along and asked me to indicate where I had gathered the mushrooms; I
pointed the spot out to him, and he made a bee line. In a couple of
minutes I heard him calling and I looked up, "Here's a beauty you
missed, Grant; you must have been blind," and he held up a mushroom as
large as a breakfast plate. I laughed and replied, "Yes, you are lucky,
Sergeant-Major." Then Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and Fritz started getting
busy again as an airplane hovered about, and the pace getting too
deucedly hot, we started for the trenches; it was a ditch-trench half
full of water which came to our waists, and in it we paddled our way
until we got to a fairly good trench, and on the journey down
imprecations of all kinds were hurled on the head of the offending
Sergeant-Major. "Where is that damned fool of a Sergeant-Major?" asked
one; "It was his gathering those mushrooms in the open that started
Fritz." Just at that moment down the ditch came the Sergeant-Major
limping; he had been slightly wounded in the leg by a bit of shrapnel,
but he was hanging onto his mushrooms.
"'Ere, Grant, take this, will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me
the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking
through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and
he held them up admiringly.
"It was a bit dangerous, doncher know, but, blow me tight, if I wouldn't
do it again to get a beauty like that," holding up the large one he had
shown me when he was gathering them.
"You bleedin' idiot," I said, "don't you know a mushroom when you see
it? That's a toadstool! I passed it up."