ON CAPTURED GROUND
“I wonder what the next move is?” said Larry. “I don’t fancy they will
leave us waiting here much longer.”
“Don’t you suppose,” asked Kentucky, “we’ll wait here until the other
companies get across?”
“Lord knows,” said Larry; “and, come to think of it, Kentuck, has it
struck you how beastly little we do know about anything? We’ve pushed
their line in a bit, evidently, but how far we’ve not an idea. We don’t
know even if their first line is captured on a front of half a mile, or
half a hundred miles; we don’t know what casualties we’ve got in our
own battalion, or even in our own company, much less whether they have
been heavy or light in the whole attack.”
“That’s so,” said Kentucky; “although I confess none of these things
is worrying me much. I’m much more concerned about poor old Pug being
knocked out than I’d be about our losing fifty per cent. of half a
dozen regiments.”
Billy Simson had taken the cork from his water-bottle, and, after
shaking it lightly, reluctantly replaced the cork, and swore violently.
“I’ve hardly a mouthful left,” he said. “I’m as dry as a bone now,
and the Lord only knows when we’ll get a chance of filling our
water-bottles again.”
“Here you are,” said Larry; “you can have a mouthful of mine; I’ve
hardly touched it yet.”
Orders came down presently to close in to the right, and in obedience
the three picked up their rifles and crept along the trench. It was not
a pleasant journey. The trench had been very badly knocked about by the
British bombardment; its sides were broken in, half or wholly filling
the trench; in parts it was obliterated and lost in a jumble of shell
craters; ground or trench was littered with burst sandbags, splintered
planks and broken fascines, and every now and again the three had to
step over or past bodies of dead men lying huddled alone or in groups
of anything up to half a dozen. There were a few khaki forms amongst
these dead, but most were in the German gray, and most had been killed
very obviously and horribly by shell or bomb or grenade.
“They don’t seem to have had many men holding this front line,”
remarked Larry, “or a good few must have bolted or surrendered. Doesn’t
seem as if the little lot here could have done much to hold the trench.”
“Few men and a lot of machine guns, as usual, I expect,” said Kentucky.
“And if this is all the trench held they claimed a good bunch of ours
for every one of theirs, if you judge by the crowd of our lot lying out
there in the open.”
The three were curiously unmoved by the sight of these dead--and dead,
be it noted, who have been killed by shell fire or bomb explosions
might as a rule be expected to be a sight upsetting to the strongest
nerves. They were all slightly and somewhat casually interested in
noting the mode and manner of death of the different men, and the
suspicion of professional jealousy evinced by a remark of Billy
Simson’s was no doubt more or less felt by all, and all were a little
disappointed that there was not more evidence of the bayonet having
done its share. “The bloomin’ guns seem to have mopped most o’ this
lot,” said Billy. “An’ them fellers that charged didn’t find many to
get their own back on.” They were all interested, too, in the amount
of damage done by the shells to the trench, in the methods of trench
construction, in the positions and state of the dug-outs. And yet all
these interests were to a great extent of quite a secondary nature, and
the main theme of their thoughts was the bullets whistling over them,
the rush and crump and crash of the shells still falling out on the
open, the singing and whirring of their splinters above the trench.
They moved with heads stooped and bodies half-crouched, they hurried
over the earth heaps that blocked the trench, and in crossings where
they were more exposed, halted and crouched still lower under cover
when the louder and rising roar of a shell’s approach gave warning that
it was falling near.
When they had moved up enough to be in close touch with the rest of the
company and halted there, they found themselves in a portion of trench
with a dug-out entrance in it. The entrance was almost closed by a fall
of earth, brought down apparently by a bursting shell, and when they
arrived they found some of the other men of the company busy clearing
the entrance. “Might be some soo-veniers down ’ere,” one of the men
explained. “An’, any’ow, we’d be better down below an’ safer out o’
reach o’ any shell that flops in while we’re ’ere,” said another.
“Suppose there’s some bloomin’ ’Uns still there, lyin’ doggo,”
suggested Billy Simson. “They might plunk a shot at yer when you goes
down.”
“Shouldn’t think that’s likely,” said Larry. “They would know that if
they did they’d get wiped out pretty quick after.”
“I dunno,” said one of the men. “They say their officers an’ their
noospapers ’as ’em stuffed so full o’ fairy tales about us killing all
prisoners that they thinks they’re goin’ to get done in anyhow, an’
might as well make a last kick for it. I vote we chuck a couple o’
bombs down first, just to make sure.”
Everybody appeared to think this a most natural precaution to take,
and a proposal in no way cruel or brutal; although, on the other hand,
when Larry, with some feeling that it was an unsporting arrangement,
suggested that they call down first and give any German there a chance
to surrender, everybody quite willingly accepted the suggestion. So
work was stopped, and all waited and listened while Larry stuck his
head into the dark opening and shouted with as inquiring a note as he
could put into his voice the only intelligible German he knew, “Hi,
Allemands, kamerad?” There was no answer, and he withdrew his head. “I
don’t hear anything,” he said; “but perhaps they wouldn’t understand
what I meant. I’ll just try them again in French and English.” He
poked his head in again, and shouted down first in French and then in
English, asking if there was anybody there, and did they surrender. He
wound up with a repetition of his inquiring, “Kamerad, eh? kamerad?”
but this time withdrew his head hurriedly, as an unmistakable answer
came up to him, a muffled, faraway sounding “Kamerad.” “There’s some
of them there, after all,” he said, excitedly, “and they’re shouting
’Kamerad,’ so I suppose they want to surrender all right. Let’s clear
away enough of this to get them out. We’ll make ’em come one at a time
with their hands well up.”
There was great excitement in the trench, and this rather increased
when a man pushed round the traverse from the next section with the
news that some Germans had been found in another dugout there. “They’re
singin’ out that they want to kamerad,” he said; “but we can’t persuade
’em to come out, an’ nobody is very keen on goin’ down the ’ole after
’em. We’ve passed the word along for an officer to come an’ see what ’e
can do with ’em.”
“Let’s hurry up and get our gang out,” said Larry enthusiastically,
“before the officer comes”; and the men set to work with a will to
clear the dugout entrance. “It’s rather a score for the Stonewalls
to bring in a bunch of prisoners,” said one of the men. “We ought to
search all these dugouts. If there’s some in a couple of these holes
it’s a fair bet that there’s more in the others. Wonder how they
haven’t been found by the lot that took the trench?”
“Didn’t have time to look through all the dugouts, I suppose,” said
Larry. “And these chaps would lie low, thinking the trench might be
retaken. I think that hole is about big enough for them to crawl out.
Listen! They’re shouting ‘Kamerad’ again. Can’t you hear ’em?”
He looked down the dark stairway of the entrance and shouted “Kamerad”
again, and listened for the reply. “I wonder if the door is blocked
further down,” he said. “I can hear them shout, but the sound seems to
be blocked as if there was something between us and them still. Listen
again.”
This time they all heard a faint shout, “Kamerad. Hier kom. Kamerad.”
“Hier kom--that means come here, I fancy,” said Larry. “But why don’t
they hier kom to us? Perhaps it is that they’re buried in somehow and
want us to get them out. Look here, I’m going to crawl down these steps
and find out what’s up.”
He proceeded to creep cautiously down the low and narrow passage of the
stair, when suddenly he saw at the stair foot the wandering flash of
an electric torch and heard voices calling plainly in English to “Come
out, Bochie. Kamerad.”
The truth flashed on Larry, and he turned and scuttled back up the
stair gurgling laughter. “It’s some of our own lot down there,” he
chuckled to the others. “This dug-out must have another entrance in the
next traverse, and we and the fellows round there have been shouting
down the two entrances at each other. Hold on now and listen and hear
them scatter.” He leaned in at the entrance again, and shouted loudly.
“As you won’t come out and surrender, Boche, we’re going to throw some
bombs down on you.” He picked up a heavy stone from the trench bottom
and flung it down the steps. There was a moment of petrified silence,
then a yell and a scuffling rush of footsteps from the darkness below,
while Larry and the others sat and rocked with laughter above. They
pushed round the traverse just as a couple of badly scared and wholly
amazed Stonewalls scrambled up from the dug-out, and commenced a
voluble explanation that “the blighters is chuckin’ bombs, ... told us
in English, good plain English, too, they was goin’ to ’cos we wouldn’t
surrender.”
Just then an officer pushed his way along to them, and the joke was
explained with great glee by Larry and the men from the other part of
the trench. Every one thought it a huge joke, and laughed and cracked
jests, and chuckled over the episode. Kentucky listened to them with
some wonder. He had thought that in the past months of peace and war
he had come to know and understand these comrades of his fairly well.
And yet here was a new side in their many-sided characters that once
more amazed him. A couple of dead Germans sprawled in the bottom of the
trench a yard or two from them; their own dead lay crowded thick on the
flat above; the bullets and shells continued to moan and howl overhead,
to rush and crash down close by, the bullets to pipe and whistle and
hiss past and over; while only a few hundred yards away the enemy still
fought desperately to hold their lines against our attacks, and all the
din of battle rolled and reverberated unceasingly. And yet the men
in that trench laughed and joked. They knew not the moment when one
of those shells falling so close outside might smash into the trench
amongst them, knew that all of those there would presently be deep in
the heart of the battle and slaughter that raged so close to them,
knew for a certainty that some of them would never come out of it; and
yet--they laughed. Is it any wonder that Kentucky was amazed?
And they continued to chuckle and poke fun at the two who had been the
butt of the jest and had run from the flung stone, continued even as
they began to move slowly along the ruined trench that led towards the
din of the fighting front lines.