A SIDE SHOW
Although Pug and Kentucky were not allowed to go and look for their
lost chum, and in fact did not know for long enough what had happened
to him, the tale of that happening, I think, fits best in here. It
is perhaps all the more worth the telling because it is a sample of
scores of incidents that may never be heard of outside the few who
participated in them, but are characteristic of one of the most amazing
features of the New Armies--and that, mark you, is rather a big word,
remembering we are speaking of something which itself is nothing but
one huge amazing feature--the readiness and smoothness with which it
has fallen into professional soldiering ways and the instinct for
fighting which over and over again it has been proved to possess.
And by fighting instinct I do not mean so much that animal instinct
which every man has hidden somewhere in his make-up to look out for
himself and kill the fellow who is trying to kill him, but rather that
peculiar instinct which picks a certain corner of a trench as a key to
a local position, which knows that if a certain bit of ground can be
taken or held it will show much more than its face value, which senses
the proper time to hang on and the right moment to risk a rush.
These, of course, are the instincts of leadership, and these are the
instincts which the New Army has shown it possesses, not only in its
officers and non-coms., but time and again--in innumerable little-known
or unknown incidents of battle that have been lost in the bigger
issues--in the rank and file, in privates who never were taught or
expected to know anything about leadership, in men brought up to every
possible trade, profession and occupation except war. One can only
suppose it is an instinct deep rooted in the race that has lain dormant
for generations, and only come to life again in the reviving heat of
war.
It will be remembered that Larry became separated from his two friends
in their rush on the German line, and just as they reached the remains
of the barbed wire before the German trench. For the greater part the
wire had been uprooted and swept away by the storm of British shells
and mortar bombs, but here and there it still remained sufficiently
intact to make a difficult and unpleasant obstacle.
Larry and Pug, deflected from their course by one or two yawning shell
craters, ran into one of these undestroyed patches of wire, and while
Pug turned to the left, Larry turned right and ran skirting along its
edge in search of a place through. Several other men did the same, and
by the time they had found an opening there were about a score of them
to go streaming through the gap and plunging at the broken parapet.
Half of them were shot down in that last dozen yards, and as they
opened out and went clawing and scrambling at the parapet with rifles
banging almost in their faces, hand grenades lobbed over to roll down
amongst their feet and explode in showers of flying splinters. The few
who for the moment escaped these dangers, knowing that every instant
they remained in the open outside the trench carried almost a certainty
of sudden death, flung desperately at its parapet, over and down into
it among the German bayonets, without stopping to count or heed what
the hand-to-hand odds might be.
Larry Arundel, at the lip of the trench, suddenly finding himself
poised above a group of some four or five men, checked his downward
leap from a first instinctive and absurd fear of hurting the men he
would jump down upon, recovered himself, and swung his rifle forward
and thrust and again thrust savagely down at the gray coats and helmets
below him, saw the bright steel strike and pierce a full half its
length with no other feeling than a faint surprise that he should sense
so little check to its smooth swing, shortened the grip on his rifle,
and, thrusting again as he jumped, leaped down into the space his
bayonet had cleared. The last man he had stabbed at evaded the thrust,
and like a flash stabbed back as Larry landed in the trench. But the
two were too close for the point to be effective, and Larry’s hip
and elbow turned the weapon aside. He found himself almost breast to
breast with his enemy, and partly because there was no room to swing a
bayonet, partly because that undefended face and point of the jaw awoke
the boxer’s instinct, his clenched fist jerked in a fierce uppercut
hard and true to its mark, and the German grunted once and dropped as
if pole-axed.
But there Larry’s career would probably have cut short, because there
were still a couple of men within arm’s length of him, and both
were on the point of attacking, when another little batch of belated
attackers arrived at the trench. Several of them struck in at the
point where Larry was engaged with his opponents, and that particular
scrimmage terminated with some abruptness.
Larry was a little dazed with the speed at which events of the past
minute had happened and also to some extent by the rather stunning
report of a rifle fired just past his ear by a somewhat hasty rescuer
in settlement of the account of his nearest opponent.
“Wh-what’s happened?” he asked. “Have we got this trench all right?”
“Looks like it,” said one of the others. “But blest if I know how much
of it. There didn’t seem to be much of our line get in along to the
right there to take their bit of front.”
“Let’s have a look,” said Larry, and scrambled up the broken side
of the trench. He stood there a minute until half a dozen bullets
whistling and zipping close past sent him ducking fast to cover.
“They’ve got the trench to our right safe enough,” he said, “and they
seem to be advancing beyond it. I suppose we ought to go on, too.”
“Wot’s this fakement?” asked one of the men who had been poking round
amongst the débris of the shattered trench. He held out a two-armed
affair with glasses at the ends.
“That,” said Larry quickly, taking it and raising it above the edge of
the trench--“that’s some sort of a periscope.” He looked out through
it a moment and added: “And a dash good one it is, too.... I say, that
line of ours advancing on the right is getting it in the neck....
Machine-gun fire it looks like.... They’ve stopped.... Most of ’em are
down, and the rest running back to the trench.”
He was interrupted by an exclamation from one of the other men who had
climbed up to look over the edge.
“Look out,” he said hurriedly. “Bomb over,” and he dropped back quickly
into the trench.
A German stick grenade sailed over, fell on the trench parapet above
them, rolled a little, and lay still, and in another second or two
went off with a crash, half deafening and blinding them with the noise
and smoke, but hurting no one. Some of the men swore, and one demanded
angrily where the thing had come from, and “Who frew dat brick?” quoted
another.
But there was little room for jests. One, two, three grenades came
over in quick succession; one going over and missing the trench,
another falling in it at the toe of a man who promptly and neatly
kicked it clear round the corner of the traverse, where it exploded
harmlessly; but the third falling fairly in the trench, where it burst,
just as a man grabbed for it to throw it out, killing him instantly and
slightly wounding one or two others.
“Who’s got those Mills?” said Larry hurriedly. “You, Harvey--chuck a
couple over the traverse to the right. Must be some of them in there.”
Harvey drew the pins out of a couple of Mills’ grenades and tossed them
over, but even as they burst another couple of German grenades came
over, one bursting in the air and the other failing to explode.
“I’ve spotted them,” suddenly said Larry, who had been watching out
through the periscope. “There’s some sort of trench running into this
about a dozen yards along. They’re in there; I saw the grenades come
over out of it.”
Some of the men with him had moved back out of section of trench under
bombardment, and as more grenades began to lob over there was a mild
stampede of the others round the traverse. Larry went with them, but
pulled up at the corner and spoke sharply.
“See here, it’s no good letting them chase us out like this. They’ll
only follow up and bomb us out traverse by traverse till there’s none
of us left to bomb out. Let’s have some of those grenades, Harvey, and
we’ll rush them out of it.”
Some of the men hesitated, and others demurred, muttering that there
weren’t enough of them, didn’t know how many Germs there were, ought to
find an officer and let him know.
It was just here that Larry took hold and saved what might have been an
ugly situation. He saw instinctively what their temporary or partial
retirement might mean. The advance on the right had been held up, had
evidently secured that portion of the trench, but could only be holding
it weakly. The trench from which the grenades had come was evidently a
communicating trench. If the Germans were free to push down it in force
they might re-secure a footing in the captured main trench, and there
would be no knowing at what cost of time and men it would have to be
retaken from them.
All this he saw, and he also saw the need for prompt action. No
officer, no non-commissioned officer even, was with them, and by the
time they had sent back word of the position the Germans might have
secured their footing. Apparently there was no one else there willing
or able to take command, so Larry took it.
He had never given a real order in his life--even his orders to the
office boy or typist at home had always been in the form of “Will you
please?” or “Do you mind?” He had no actual authority now to give
commands, was the junior in years and in service to several there. But
give orders he did, and, moreover, he gave them so clear and clean-cut,
and with such an apparent conviction that they would be obeyed, that
actually they were obeyed just as unhesitatingly and willingly as if he
had been Colonel of the regiment.
In three minutes his dispositions were made and his directions given,
in four minutes his little attack had been launched, in five minutes
or little more it had succeeded, and he was “in possession of the
objective.” He had about half a score of men with him and a very
limited supply of grenades, obviously not sufficient strength to
attempt a deliberate bombing fight along the trench. So at the greater
risk perhaps, but with a greater neck-or-nothing chance of success, he
decided to lead his little party with a rush out of the trench across
the angle of the ground to where he had seen the branching trench
running into theirs.
Two men were told off to jump out on the side they had entered, to
run along under cover of the parapet and shoot at any one who emerged
or showed in the entrance to the communication trench; two more to
fling over a couple of grenades into the trench section into which
the communication-way entered and follow it up with their bayonets
ready, one to push on along the trench and bring any assistance he
could raise, the other to be joined by the two men above, and, if the
main attack succeeded, to push up along the communication-way and join
Larry’s party.
This left Larry with half-a-dozen men to lead in his rush over the
open. The whole of his little plans worked out neatly, exactly, and
rapidly. He waited for the crash of the two grenades his bombers flung,
then at his word “Go!” the two men told off heaved themselves over
the rear parapet, and in a few seconds were pelting bullets down the
communication trench entrance; the bombers scuffled along the trench
without meeting any resistance.
Larry and his men swarmed up and out from their cover, charged across
the short, open space, and in a moment were running along the edge
of the communication trench, shooting and stabbing and tossing down
grenades into it on top of the surprised Germans there. There were
about a score of these clustered mainly near the juncture with the
other trench, and in half a minute this little spot was converted into
a reeking shambles under the bursting grenades and the bullets that
poured into it from the two enfilading rifles.
Every man in that portion of trench was killed--one might almost say
butchered--without a chance of resistance. Another string of Germans
apparently being hurried along the trench as re-enforcements, were
evidently stampeded by the uproar of crashing bombs and banging rifles,
the yells and shouts of the attackers.
They turned and bolted back along their trench, Larry’s men in the
open above them pursuing and slaughtering them without mercy, until
suddenly, somewhere across the open, some rifles and a machine gun
began to sweep the open, and a storm of bullets to hail and patter
about the little party of Stonewalls.
Larry promptly ordered them down into the trench, and they leaped
in, and, under cover from the bullets above, continued to push the
retreating Germans for another hundred yards along the trench.
Here the enemy made a determined stand, and Larry instantly realized
that, with his weak force, he had pushed his attack to the limit of
safety. He left a couple of men there to keep the enemy in clay for a
few minutes with a show of pressing the attack with persistent bombing,
and hurried the others back to a point that offered the best chance of
making a stand.
He chose a short, straight stretch of trench running into a wide and
deep pit blown out by one of our heavy shells. Round the edge of this
shell-crater pit ran a ready-made parapet thrown up by the explosion,
and forming a barricade across the two points where the trench ran in
and out of it.
Man by man, Larry pointed out to his little force the spot each was
to occupy, and bade him dig in for his life to make cover against the
bombing that would assuredly be their portion very soon. He himself
crawled up on to the open to some uprooted barbed wire he had noticed,
was dragging together all the tangled strands and stakes he could
move, when he noticed a rusty reel of wire, half unwound, grabbed that,
and shuffled back into the trench.
A shrill whistle brought his two outposts hurrying and hobbling in,
one of them wounded in the leg by a grenade fragment, the other with a
clean bullet wound through his forearm.
The barbed wire was hastily unreeled and piled in loose coils and loops
and tangles in the straight bit of trench through which the Germans
must come at the pit, while from the pit barricade one man tossed a
grenade at intervals over the heads of the workers into the section of
trench beyond them. But the wiring job had to be left incomplete when
the arrival of two or three grenades gave warning of the coming attack,
and Larry and the others scrambled hurriedly over the barricade parapet
into the pit.
For the next ten minutes a hot fight--small in point of the numbers
engaged and space covered, but savage in its intensity and speed--raged
round the pit. The Germans tried first to force their way through by
sheer weight of bombing. But the Stonewalls had made full use of their
trenching tools and any scattered sandbags they could pick up, and had
made very good cover for themselves. Each man was dug into a niche
round the inside of the parapet from which he could look out either
over the open ground or back into the pit.
The Germans showered grenades over into the wired trench and the pit,
and followed their explosions with a rush for the barricade. Larry,
with one man to either side of him, behind the pit rim where it blocked
the trench, stopped the rush with half-a-dozen well-placed Mills’
grenades.
Almost at once the enemy copied the Stonewalls’ first plan of attack,
and, climbing suddenly from their trench, made to run along the top and
in on the defense. But their plan failed where Larry’s had succeeded,
simply because Larry had provided its counter by placing a man to keep
a lookout, and others where they could open a prompt rifle-fire from
the cover of the pit’s parapet. The attack broke under the rapid fire
that met them, and the uninjured Germans scuttled back into their
trench.
A fresh bombing rush was tried, and this time pushed home, in spite of
the grenades that met it and filled the trench bottom with a grewsome
débris of mangled men, fallen earth, and torn wire. At the end the
rush was only stopped at the very parapet by Larry and his two fellows
standing up and emptying their rifle magazines into the men who still
crowded into the shambles trench, tearing a way through the wire and
treading their own dead under foot.
More of the Stonewalls were wounded by fragments of the grenades which
each man of the attackers carried and threw over into the pit before
him, and one man was killed outright at the parapet by Larry’s side. He
was left with only four effective fighting men, and, what was worse,
his stock of grenades was almost exhausted.
The end looked very near, but it was staved off a little longer by the
return of one of the severely wounded men that Larry had sent back in
search of help, dragging a heavy box of German stick-grenades. Nobody
knew how to use these. Each grenade had a head about the size and shape
of a 1-lb. jam tin attached to a wooden handle a foot long. There was
no sign of any pin to pull out or any means of detonating the grenade,
but Larry noticed that the end of the handle was metal-tipped and
finished off with a disc with notched edges.
A quick trial showed that this unscrewed and revealed a cavity in the
handle and a short, looped length of string coiled inside. Some rapid
and rather risky experiments proved that a pull on the string exploded
some sort of cap and started a fuse, which in turn detonated the
grenade in a few seconds.
“Neat,” said Harvey, the bomber. “Bloomin’ neat; though I don’t say as
it beats the old Mills’. But, anyhow, we’re dash lucky to have ’em.
’Ere they come again, Larry!”
“Sock it in,” said Larry briefly. “There’s more bombs than we’ll have
time to use, I fancy, so don’t try’n save them up.” He shouted orders
for any of the wounded that could move themselves to clear out, and
set himself to tossing over the grenades as fast as he could pull the
detonating-strings.
Then his last man on the lookout on the pit rim yelled a warning and
opened rapid fire, and Larry knew that another rush was coming over the
open. That, he knew, was the finish, because now he had no men left
to keep up a fire heavy enough to stop the rush above ground, and, if
Harvey and he went to help, the ceasing of their grenade-throwing would
leave the attack to come at him along the shattered trench.
He and Harvey looked once at each other, and went on grimly throwing
grenades. Then Harvey dropped without a word, and Larry, looking up,
saw a few Germans shooting over the pit rim. They disappeared suddenly
as he looked, cut down--although he did not know that--by a heavy
rifle-fire that had been opened by the British-owned trench behind him.
He yelled hoarsely at the one man left still firing from his niche up
on the parapet, grabbed the box with the remaining grenades, and made
a bolt across the pit for the other side and the trench opening from
it. The rifleman did the same, but he fell half-way across, and Larry,
reaching cover, glanced round and saw the other struggling to his
knees, turned and dashed back, and half dragged, half carried the man
across, up the crumbling edge of the pit, and heaved him over into the
trench mouth. Then he took up his position behind the breastwork and
made ready to hold it to the last possible minute.
In that last minute assistance arrived--and arrived clearly only just
in time. Headed by an officer, a strong detachment of the Stonewalls,
hurrying along the trench, found Larry standing waist-high above the
barricade jerking the detonating-strings and hurling the last of his
grenades as fast as he could throw them into the pit, from which arose
a pandemonium of crashing explosions, yells and shrieks, guttural
curses and the banging reports of rifles.
The Stonewalls swarmed, cheering, over the barricade and down into the
hole beyond like terriers into a rat-pit. Most of the Germans there
threw down their rifles and threw up their hands. The rest were killed
swiftly, and the Stonewalls, with hardly a check, charged across the
pit into the trench beyond, swept it clear of the enemy for a full two
hundred yards, and then firmly established themselves in and across it
with swiftly-built barricades and plentiful stores of bombs. Larry’s
share ended there, and Larry himself exited from the scene of his first
command quite inconspicuously on a stretcher.