GRAPES OF WRATH
GRAPES OF
WRATH
BY
BOYD CABLE
AUTHOR OF
“BETWEEN THE LINES,” “ACTION FRONT,”
AND “DOING THEIR BIT”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & CO.
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1917,
BY
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
_TO
ALL RANKS OF THE NEW ARMIES_
_Men of the Old Country, Men of the Overseas, and those good men
among the Neutrals who put all else aside to join up and help us to
Victory, this book is dedicated with pride and admiration by_
_THE AUTHOR_
_In the Field,
20th January, 1917_
THE AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Acknowledgments are due to the Editors of _The Cornhill Magazine_,
_Land and Water_, and _Pearson’s Magazine_ for permission to reprint
such portions of this book as have appeared in their pages.
[Illustration]
BOYD CABLE--A PREFATORY NOTE
The readers of Boyd Cable’s “Between the Lines,” “Action Front,” and
“Doing Their Bit,” have very naturally had their curiosity excited
as to an author who, previously unheard of, has suddenly become the
foremost word-painter of active fighting at the present day, and the
greatest “literary discovery” of the War.
Boyd Cable is primarily a man of action; and for half of his not very
long life he has been doing things instead of writing them. At the
age of twenty he joined a corps of Scouts in the Boer War, and saw
plenty of fighting in South Africa. After the close of that war, his
life consisted largely of traveling in Great Britain and the principal
countries of Europe and the Mediterranean, his choice always leading
him from the beaten track. He also spent some time in Australia
and in New Zealand, not only in the cities, but in the outposts of
civilization, on the edge of the wilderness, both there and in the
Philippines, Java, and other islands of the Pacific.
When he travels, Mr. Cable does not merely take a steamer-berth or
a railway-ticket and write up his notes from an observation car or
a saloon deck. He looks out after a job, and puts plenty of energy
into it while he is at it; in fact, so many different things has he
done, that he says himself that it is easier to mention the things he
has not done than the ones he has. He has been an ordinary seaman,
typewriter agent, a steamer-fireman, office-manager, hobo, farmhand,
gold prospector, coach-driver, navvy, engine-driver, and many other
things. And strangely enough, though he knows so much from practical
experience, he has, until recently, never thought of writing down what
he has seen.
Before this present War, he was on the staff of a London advertising
agency. At the outbreak of hostilities, he offered his services and was
accepted in 1914, being one of the first men not in the regular army to
get a commission and be sent to the front.
It was his experience as “Forward Officer” (or observation officer
in the artillery) that gave him the material which he began to use in
“Between the Lines.”
In this dangerous and responsible position, his daily life of literally
“hairbreadth” escapes afforded him experiences as thrilling as any he
has described in his books. On one occasion, for instance, when his
position had been “spotted” by enemy sharp-shooters, he got a bullet
through his cap, one through his shoulder-strap, one through the inside
of his sleeve close to his heart, and fifty-three others near enough
for him to hear them pass--all in less than an hour.
After eighteen months of this death-defying work, without even a
wound, Mr. Boyd Cable was naturally disgusted at being invalided home
on account of stomach trouble; but it was only this enforced leisure
that gave him really time to take up writing seriously. As may be
remembered, the British Government selected him officially to make the
rounds of the munition factories and write an account of what was being
done in them, with the purpose of circulating it among the men at the
front, to let them see that the workers at home were “doing their bit.”
The following letter has just been received from Mr. Boyd Cable by
the publishers, and they venture to include it here, entirely without
the writer’s consent (since that would be impossible to get within the
necessary time), and fully realizing that the letter was not written
with a view to publication. They feel that it will give the reader
an intimate view of the author, such as no amount of description or
explanation could do.
“... Many thanks for all the trouble you have taken trying to place
my stories in magazines. It certainly is odd that British in U. S.
A. are not more interested in the war. I only hope the States won’t
have one of its own to be interested in, but honestly I expect it
within very few years.
I am very glad you like “Grapes of Wrath” and hope the further
chapters (which Smith, Elder & Company tell me they have sent
you) will equally please. I may not tell you where I am or what
I’m doing since the Censor forbids, but may just say that since I
came out again I’ve seen plenty of the Somme “Push” and have been
able to make “Grapes of Wrath” the more accurate and up to date in
details.
Now we’re all awaiting the Spring with full anticipations of going
in for the last round and the knock-out to Germany. We’re all very
confident she can’t stand the pace we’ve set for next year.
We’re having some bitter weather--fierce cold and wet and snow, but
we’re putting up with it, more or less cheered by the assurance
that the Huns are feeling it every bit as bad as we are and
probably a bit worse.
With all regards and every good wish for the coming year....”
It only remains to add that the importance of Mr. Boyd Cable’s work may
be judged by the fact that of “Between the Lines” considerably over a
hundred thousand copies have been printed in Great Britain alone.
THE PUBLISHERS.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. TOWARDS THE PUSH 15
II. THE OVERTURE OF THE GUNS 26
III. THE EDGE OF BATTLE 37
IV. ACROSS THE OPEN 50
V. ON CAPTURED GROUND 69
VI. TAKING PUNISHMENT 79
VII. BLIND MAN’S BUFF 98
VIII. OVER THE TOP 112
IX. A SIDE SHOW 134
X. THE COUNTER ATTACK 152
XI. FORWARD OBSERVING 179
XII. A VILLAGE AND A HELMET 201
XIII. WITH THE TANKS 229
XIV. THE BATTLE HYMN 244
XV. CASUALTIES 253
XVI. PLAY OUT THE GAME 275
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
_Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on._
_I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps:
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on._
_I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel!
Since God is marching on!_
_He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on._
_In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born, across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on._
_He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave;
He is wisdom to the mighty, He is succor to the brave;
So the world shall be His footstool and the soul of time His slave:
Our God is marching on._
JULIA WARD HOWE.
AUTHOR’S FOREWORD
It is possible that this book may be taken for an actual account of
the Somme battle, but I warn readers that although it is in the bulk
based on the fighting there and is no doubt colored by the fact that
the greater part of it was written in the Somme area or between visits
to it, I make no claim for it as history or as an historical account.
My ambition was the much lesser one of describing as well as I could
what a Big Push is like from the point of view of an ordinary average
infantry private, of showing how much he sees and knows and suffers in
a great battle, of giving a glimpse perhaps of the spirit that animates
the New Armies, the endurance that has made them more than a match for
the Germans, the acceptance of appalling and impossible horrors as the
work-a-day business and routine of battle, the discipline and training
that has fused such a mixture of material into tempered fighting metal.
For the tale itself, I have tried to put into words merely the sort
of story that might and could be told by thousands of our men to-day.
I hope, in fact, I have so “told the tale” that such men as I have
written of may be able to put this book in your hands and say: “This
chapter just describes our crossing the open,” or “That is how we were
shelled,” or “I felt the same about my Blighty one.”
It may be that before this book is complete in print another, a
greater, a longer and bloodier, and a last battle may be begun, and I
wish this book may indicate the kind of men who will be fighting it,
the stout hearts they will bring to the fight, the manner of faith and
assurance they will feel in Victory, complete and final to the gaining
of such Peace terms as we may demand.
THE AUTHOR.
In the Field
20th January, 1917.
GRAPES OF WRATH
CHAPTER I
TOWARDS THE PUSH
The rank and file of the 5/6 Service Battalion of the Stonewalls
knew that “there was another push on,” and that they were moving up
somewhere into the push; but beyond that and the usual crop of wild and
loose-running rumors they knew nothing. Some of the men had it on the
most exact and positive authority that they were for the front line
and “first over the parapet”; others on equally positive grounds knew
that they were to be in reserve and not in the attack at all; that they
were to be in support and follow the first line; that there was to be
nothing more than an artillery demonstration and no infantry attack at
all; that the French were taking over our line for the attack; that
we were taking over the French line. The worst of it was that there
were so many tales nobody could believe any of them, but, strangely
enough, that did not lessen the eager interest with which each in turn
was heard and discussed, or prevent each in turn securing a number of
supporters and believers.
But all the rumors appeared to be agreed that up to now the push had
not begun, so far as the infantry were concerned, and also that, as
Larry Arundel put it, “judging by the row the guns are making it’s
going to be some push when it does come.”
The Stonewalls had been marching up towards the front by easy stages
for three days past, and each day as they marched, and, in fact,
each hour of this last day, the uproar of artillery fire had grown
steadily greater and greater, until now the air trembled to the violent
concussions of the guns, the shriek and rumble of the shells, and
occasionally to the more thrilling and heart-shaking shriek of an enemy
shell, and the crash of its burst in our lines.
It was almost sunset when the Stonewalls swung off the road and halted
in and about a little orchard. The lines of an encampment--which
was intended for no more than a night’s bivouac--were laid out,
and the men unbuckled their straps, laid off their packs, and sank
thankfully to easeful positions of rest on the long grass, waiting
until the traveling cookers, which on their journey along the road had
been preparing the evening meal, were brought up and discharged of
their savory contents. But before the meal was served there came an
unpleasant interruption, which boded ill for the safety of the night’s
camp. A heavy shell rushed overhead, dropped in the field about four
hundred yards beyond the camp, burst with a crash and a gush of evil
black smoke, a flying torrent of splinters and up-flung earth.
While the men were still watching the slow dispersal of the shell
smoke, and passing comments upon how near to them was the line it had
taken, another and another shell whooped over them in a prolonged line
on the fields beyond. “We seem,” said Larry Arundel, “to have chosen a
mighty unhealthy position for to-night’s rest.”
“If the C.O. has any sense,” retorted his mate, Billy Simson, “he’ll
up and off it somewheres out to the flank. We’re in the direct line of
those crumps, and if one drops short, it is going to knock the stuffin’
out of a whole heap of us.”
While they were talking an artillery subaltern was seen crossing the
road and hurrying towards them. “Where is your C.O.?” he asked, when
he came to the nearest group.
“Over in the orchard, sir,” said Billy Simson. “I’ll show you if you
like.”
The officer accepted his pilotage, urging him to hurry, and the two
hastened to the orchard, and to a broken-down building in the corner of
it, where the officers of the battalion were installing a more or less
open-air mess.
Billy Simson lingered long enough to hear the Subaltern introduce
himself as from a battery in a position across the road amongst some
farm buildings, and to say that his Major had sent him over to warn
the infantry that the field they were occupying was in a direct line
“regularly strafed” by a heavy German battery every few hours.
“My Major said I was to tell you,” went on the Subaltern, “that there
are one or two old barns and outbuildings on the farm where we have the
battery, and that you might find some sort of shelter for a good few of
your men in them; and that we can find room to give you and some of the
officers a place to shake down for the night.”
Simson heard no more than this, but he soon had evidence that the
invitation had been accepted. The battalion was warned to “stand
by” for a move across the road, and the Colonel and Adjutant, with
the Sergeant-Major and a couple of Sergeants, left the orchard and
disappeared among the farm buildings, in the company of the gunner
Subaltern.
Billy Simson repeated to his particular chums the conversation he
had overheard; and the resulting high expectations of a move from
the unhealthy locality under the German guns’ line of fire, and of
a roof over their heads for the night, were presently fulfilled by
an order for the battalion to move company by company. “C” Company
presently found itself installed in a commodious barn, with ventilation
plentifully provided by a huge hole, obviously broken out by a shell
burst, in the one corner, and a roof with tiles liberally smashed and
perforated by shrapnel fire. But on the whole the men were well content
with the change, partly perhaps because being come of a long generation
of house-dwellers they had never become accustomed to the real pleasure
of sleeping in the open air, and partly because of that curious and
instinctive and wholly misplaced confidence inspired by four walls and
a roof as a protection against shell fire.
Somewhere outside and very close to them a field battery was in
action, and for a whole hour before darkness fell the air pulsed and
the crazy buildings about them shook to an unceasing thump and bang
from the firing guns, while the intervals were filled with the slightly
more distant but equally constant thud and boom of other batteries’
fire.
While they were waiting for the evening meal to be served some of the
men wandered out and took up a position where they could view closely
the guns and gunners at their work. The guns were planted at intervals
along a high hedge; the muzzles poked through the leafy screen, and a
shelter of leaves and boughs was rigged over each, so as to screen the
battery from air observation.
Billy Simson and his three particular chums were amongst the interested
spectators. The four men, who were drawn from classes that in pre-war
days would have made any idea of friendship or even intercourse most
unlikely, if not impossible, had, after a fashion so common in our
democratic New Armies, become fast friends and intimates.
Larry Arundel, aged twenty, was a man of good family, who in civilian
days had occupied a seat in his father’s office in London, with the
certain prospect before him of a partnership in the firm. Billy Simson
was a year or two older, had been educated in a provincial board
school, and from the age of fourteen had served successively as errand
boy and counter hand in a little suburban “emporium.” The third man,
Ben Sneath, age unknown, but probably somewhere about twenty-one to
twenty-five, was frankly of the “lower orders”; had picked up a living
from the time he was able to walk, in the thousand and one ways that a
London street boy finds to his hand. On the roll of “C” Company he was
Private Sneath, B, but to the whole of the company--and, in fact, to
the whole of the battalion--he was known briefly, but descriptively,
as “Pug.” Jefferson Lee, the fourth of the quartette, was an unusual
and somewhat singular figure in a British battalion, because, always
openly proud of his birthplace, he was seldom called by anything but
it--“Kentucky,” or “Kentuck.” His speech, even in the wild jumble of
accents and dialects common throughout a mixed battalion, was striking
and noticeable for its peculiar softness and slurring intonations,
its smooth gentleness, its quiet, drawling level. Being an American,
born of many generations of Americans, with no single tie or known
relation outside America, he was, in his stained khaki and his place
in the fighting ranks of a British regiment, a personal violation of
the neutrality of the United States. But the reasons that had brought
him from Kentucky to England, with the clear and expressed purpose of
enlisting for the war, were very simply explained by him.
“Some of us,” he said gently, “never really agreed with the sinking of
liners and the murder of women and children. Some of us were a trifle
ashamed to be standing out of this squabble, and when the President
told the world that we were ‘too proud to fight,’ I just simply had to
prove that it was a statement which did not agree with the traditions
of an old Kentucky family. So I came over and enlisted in your army.”
The attitude of the four men now as they watched the gunners at
work was almost characteristic of each. Larry, who had relatives or
friends in most branches of the Service, was able to tell the others
something of the methods of modern artillery, and delivered almost a
lecturette upon the subject. Billy Simson was frankly bored by this
side of the subject, but intensely interested in the noise and the
spectacular blinding flash that appeared to leap forth in a twenty-foot
wall of flame on the discharge of each gun. Pug found a subject for
mirth and quick, bantering jests in the attitudes of the gunners and
their movements about the gun, and the stentorian shoutings through a
megaphone of the Sergeant-Major from the entrance to a dug-out in the
rear of the guns. Lee sat down, leisurely rolled and lit a cigarette,
watched the proceedings with interest, and made only a very occasional
soft drawled reply to the remarks of the others.
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Pug incredulously, breaking in on
Arundel’s lecture, “that them fellows is shootin’ off all them shells
without ever seein’ what they’re firin’ at? If that is true, I calls it
bloomin’ waste.”
“They do not see their target,” said Arundel, “but they are hitting it
every time. You see they aim at something else, and they’re told how
much to the right or left of it to shoot, and the range they are to
shoot at--it is a bit too complicated to explain properly, but it gets
the target all right.”
“Wot’s the bloke with the tin trumpet whisperin’ about?” asked
Pug. “Looks to me as if he was goin’ to be a casualty with a broke
blood-vessel.”
“Passing orders and corrections of fire to the guns,” explained
Arundel. “There’s a telephone wire from that dug-out up to somewhere
in front, where somebody can see the shells falling, and ’phone back to
tell them whether they are over or short, right or left.”
“It’s pretty near as good as a Brock’s benefit night,” said Billy
Simson; “but I’d want cotton wool plugs in my ears, if I was takin’ up
lodgin’s in this street.”
The light was beginning to fade by now, but the guns continued to fire
in swift rotation, from one end of the battery to the other. They could
hear the sharp orders, “One, fire; Two, fire; Three, fire,” could see
the gunner on his seat beside each piece jerk back the lever. Instantly
the gun flamed a sheet of vivid fire, the piece recoiled violently to
the rear between the gunners seated to each side of it, and as the
breech moved smoothly back to its position, the hand of one gunner
swooped rapidly in after it, grabbed the handle and wrenched open the
breech, flinging out the shining brass cartridge case, to fall with a
clash and jangle on to the trail of the gun and the other empty cases
lying round it. The instant the breech was back in place, another man
shot in a fresh shell, the breech swung shut with a sharp, metallic
clang, the layer, with his eye pressed close to his sight, juggled for
a moment with his hands on shiny brass wheels, lifted one hand to drop
it again on the lever, shouted “Ready,” and sat waiting the order to
fire. The motions and the action at one gun were exactly and in detail
the motions of all. From end to end of the line the flaming wall leaped
in turn from each muzzle, the piece jarred backwards, the empty brass
case jerked out and fell tinkling; and before it ceased to roll another
shell was in place, the breech clanged home, and the gun was ready
again.
Billy Simson spoke to a gunner who was moving past them towards the
billets.
“What are you fellows shooting at?” he asked.
“Wire cutting,” said the gunner briefly. “We’ve been at it now without
stopping this past four days,” and he moved on and left them.
“Wire cutting,” said Arundel, “sweeping away the barbed wire
entanglements in front of the Boche trench. That’s clearing the track
we’re going to take to-morrow or the next day.”
“I hopes they makes a clean job of it,” said Pug; “and I hopes they
sweep away some of them blasted machine guns at the same time.”
“Amen, to that,” said Kentucky.