WITH THE TANKS
Soon after Kentucky rejoined them the Stonewalls were moved forward a
little clear of the village they had helped to take, just as one or two
heavy shells whooped over from the German guns and dropped crashing on
the ground that had been theirs. The men were spread out along shell
holes and told to dig in for better cover because a bit of a redoubt on
the left flank hadn’t been taken and bullets were falling in enfilade
from it.
“Dig, you cripples,” said the sergeant, “dig in. Can’t you see that
if they counter-attack from the front now you’ll get shot in the back
while you’re lining the front edge of those shell holes. Get to it
there, you Pug.”
“Shot in the back, linin’ the front,” said Pug as the sergeant passed
on. “Is it a conundrum, Kentuck?”
“Sounds sort of mixed,” admitted Kentucky. “But it’s tainted some with
the truth. That redoubt is half rear to us. If another lot comes at us
in front and we get up on the front edge of this shell hole, there’s
nothing to stop the redoubt bullets hitting us in the back. Look at
that,” he concluded, nodding upward to where a bullet had smacked
noisily into the mud above their heads as they squatted in the hole.
The two commenced wearily to cut out with their trenching tools a
couple of niches in the sides of the crater which would give them
protection from the flank and rear bullets. They made reasonably
secure cover and then stayed to watch a hurricane bombardment that was
developing on the redoubt. “_Goo_ on the guns,” said Pug joyfully.
“That’s the talk; smack ’em about.”
The gunners “smacked ’em about” with fifteen savage minutes’ deluge
of light and heavy shells, blotting out the redoubt in a whirlwind of
fire-flashes, belching smoke clouds and dust haze. Then suddenly the
tempest ceased to play there, lifted and shifted and fell roaring in a
wall of fire and steel beyond the low slope which the redoubt crowned.
With past knowledge of what the lift and the further barrage meant the
two men in the shell-pit turned and craned their necks and looked out
along the line.
“There they go,” said Pug suddenly, and “Attacking round a
half-circle,” said Kentucky. The British line was curved in a
horse-shoe shape about the redoubt and the two being out near one
of the points could look back and watch clearly the infantry attack
launching from the center and half-way round the sides of the
horse-shoe. They saw the khaki figures running heavily, scrambling
round and through the scattered shell holes, and presently, as a
crackle of rifle fire rose and rose and swelled to a sullen roar with
the quick, rhythmic clatter of machine guns beating through it, they
saw also the figures stumbling and falling, the line thinning and
shredding out and wasting away under the withering fire.
The sergeant dodged along the pit-edge above them. “Covering fire,” he
shouted, “at four hundred--slam it in,” and disappeared. The two opened
fire, aiming at the crest of the slope and beyond the tangle of barbed
wire which alone indicated the position of the redoubt.
They only ceased to fire when they saw the advanced fringe of the line,
of a line by now woefully thinned and weakened, come to the edge of
the barbed wire and try to force a way through it.
“They’re beat,” gasped Pug. “They’re done in ...” and cursed long and
bitterly, fingering nervously at his rifle the while. “Time we rung
in again,” said Kentucky. “Aim steady and pitch ’em well clear of the
wire.” The two opened careful fire again while the broken remnants of
the attacking line ran and hobbled and crawled back or into the cover
of shell holes. A second wave flooded out in a new assault, but by now
the German artillery joining in helped it and the new line was cut
down, broken and beaten back before it had covered half the distance to
the entanglements. Kentucky and Pug and others of the Stonewalls near
them could only curse helplessly as they watched the tragedy and plied
their rifles in a slender hope of some of their bullets finding those
unseen loopholes and embrasures.
“An’ wot’s the next item o’ the program, I wonder?” said Pug half an
hour after the last attack had failed, half an hour filled with a
little shooting, a good deal of listening to the pipe and whistle of
overhead bullets and the rolling thunder of the guns, a watching of the
shells falling and spouting earth and smoke on the defiant redoubt.
“Reinforcements and another butt-in at it, I expect,” surmised
Kentucky. “Don’t see anything else for it. Looks like this
pimple-on-the-map of a redoubt was holdin’ up any advance on this
front. Anyhow I’m not hankering to go pushin’ on with that redoubt
bunch shootin’ holes in my back, which they’d surely do.”
“Wot’s all the buzz about be’ind us?” said Pug suddenly, raising
himself for a quick look over the covering edge of earth behind him,
and in the act of dropping again stopped and stared with raised
eyebrows and gaping mouth.
“What is it?” said Kentucky quickly, and also rose, and also stayed
risen and staring in amazement. Towards them, lumbering and rolling,
dipping heavily into the shell holes, heaving clumsily out of them,
moving with a motion something between that of a half-sunken ship and a
hamstrung toad, striped and banded and splashed from head to foot, or,
if you prefer it, from fo’c’sl-head to cutwater, with splashes of lurid
color, came His Majesty’s Land Ship “Here We Are.”
“Gor-_strewth_!” ejaculated Pug. “Wha-what is it?”
Kentucky only gasped.
“’Ere,” said Pug hurriedly, “let’s gerrout o’ this. It’s comin’ over
atop of us,” and he commenced to scramble clear.
But a light of understanding was dawning on Kentucky’s face and a wide
grin growing on his lips. “It’s one of the Tanks,” he said, and giggled
aloud as the Here We Are dipped her nose and slid head first into a
huge shell crater in ludicrous likeness to a squat bull-pup sitting
back on its haunches and dragged into a hole: “I’ve heard lots about
’em, but the seein’ beats all the hearin’ by whole streets,” and he and
Pug laughed aloud together as the Here We Are’s face and gun-port eyes
and bent-elbow driving gear appeared above the crater rim in still more
ridiculous resemblance to an amazed toad emerging from a rain-barrel.
The creature lumbered past them, taking in its stride the narrow trench
dug to link up the shell holes, and the laughter on Kentucky’s lips
died to thoughtfully serious lines as his eye caught the glint of fat,
vicious-looking gun muzzles peering from their ports.
“Haw haw haw,” guffawed Pug as the monster lurched drunkenly, checked
and steadied itself with one foot poised over a deep hole, halted and
backed away, and edged nervously round the rim of the hole. “See them
machine guns pokin’ out, Kentucky,” he continued delightedly. “They
won’t ’arf pepper them Huns when they gets near enough.”
Fifty yards in the wake of the Here We Are a line of men followed
up until an officer halted them along the front line where Pug and
Kentucky were posted.
“You blokes just takin’ ’im out for an airin’?” Pug asked one of the
newcomers. “Oughtn’t you to ’ave ’im on a leadin’ string?”
“Here we are, Here we are again,” chanted the other and giggled
spasmodically. “An’ ain’t he just hot stuff! But wait till you see ’im
get to work with his sprinklers.”
“Does ’e bite?” asked Pug, grinning joyously. “Oughtn’t you to ’ave ’is
muzzle on?”
“Bite,” retorted another. “He’s a bloomin’ Hun-eater. Jes’ gulps ’em
whole, coal-scuttle ’ats an’ all.”
“He’s a taed,” said another. “A lollopin, flat-nosed, splay-fittit,
ugly puddock, wi’s hin’ legs stuck oot whaur his front should be.”
“Look at ’im, oh look at ’im ... he’s alive, lad, nobbut alive.” ...
“Does every bloomin’ thing but talk.” ... “Skatin’ he is now, skatin’
on ’is off hind leg,” came a chorus of delighted comment.
“Is he goin’ to waltz in and take that redoubt on his ownsum?” asked
Kentucky. “No,” some one told him. “We give him ten minutes’ start and
then follow on and pick up the pieces, and the prisoners.”
They lay there laughing and joking and watching the uncouth antics of
the monster waddling across the shell-riddled, ground, cheering when
it appeared to trip and recover itself, cheering when it floundered
sideways into a hole and crawled out again, cheering most wildly of
all when it reached the barbed-wire entanglements, waddled through,
bursting them apart and trailing them in long tangles behind it, or
trampling them calmly under its churning caterpillar-wheel-bands. It
was little wonder they cheered and less wonder they laughed. The Here
We Are’s motions were so weirdly alive and life-like, so playfully
ponderous, so massively ridiculous, that it belonged by nature to
nothing outside a Drury Lane Panto. At one moment it looked exactly
like a squat tug-boat in a heavy cross sea or an ugly tide-rip,
lurching, dipping, rolling rail and rail, plunging wildly bows under,
tossing its nose up and squattering again stern-rail deep, pitching
and heaving and diving and staggering, but always pushing forward.
Next minute it was a monster out of Prehistoric Peeps, or a new patent
fire-breathing dragon from the pages of a very Grimm Fairy Tale, nosing
its way blindly over the Fairy Prince’s pitfalls; next it was a big
broad-buttocked sow nuzzling and rooting as it went; next it was a
drunk man reeling and staggering, rolling and falling, scrabbling and
crawling; next it was--was anything on or in, or underneath the earth,
anything at all except a deadly, grim, purposeful murdering product of
modern war.
The infantry pushed out after it when it reached the barbed wire,
and although they took little heed to keep cover--being much more
concerned not to miss any of the grave and comic antics of their giant
joke than to shelter from flying bullets--the line went on almost
without casualties. “Mighty few bullets about this time,” remarked
Kentucky, who with Pug had moved out along with the others “to see the
fun.” “That’s ’cos they’re too busy with the old Pepper-pots, an’ the
Pepper-pots is too busy wi’ them to leave much time for shootin’ at
us,” said Pug gayly. It was true too. The Pepper-pots--a second one
had lumbered into sight from the center of the horseshoe curve--were
drawing a tearing hurricane of machine-gun bullets that beat and
rattled on their armored sides like hail on a window-pane. They waddled
indifferently through the storm and Here We Are, crawling carefully
across a trench, halted half-way over and sprinkled bullets up and
down its length to port and starboard for a minute, hitched itself
over, steered straight for a fire-streaming machine-gun embrasure. It
squirted a jet of lead into the loophole, walked on, butted at the
emplacement once or twice, got a grip of it under the upward sloped
caterpillar band, climbed jerkily till it stood reared up on end like
a frightened colt, ground its driving bands round and round, and--fell
forward on its face with a cloud of dust belching up and out from the
collapsed dug-out. Then it crawled out of the wreckage, crunching over
splintered beams and broken concrete, wheeled and cruised casually
down the length of a crooked trench, halting every now and then to
spray bullets on any German who showed or to hail a stream of them
down the black entrance to a dug-out, straying aside to nose over any
suspicions cranny, swinging round again to plod up the slope in search
of more trenches.
The infantry followed up, cheering and laughing like children at a
fair, rounding up batches of prisoners who crawled white-faced and with
scared eyes from dug-out doors and trench corners, shouting jests and
comments at the lumbering Pepper-pots.
A yell went up as the Here We Are, edging along a trench, lurched
suddenly, staggered, sideslipped, and half disappeared in a fog of
dust. The infantry raced up and found it with its starboard driving
gear grinding and churning full power and speed of revolution above
ground and the whole port side and gear down somewhere in the depths of
the collapsed trench, grating and squealing and flinging out clods of
earth as big as clothes-baskets. Then the engines eased, slowed, and
stopped, and after a little and in answer to the encouraging yells of
the men outside, a scuttle jerked open and a grimy figure crawled out.
“Blimey,” said Pug rapturously, “’ere’s Jonah ’isself. Ol’ Pepper-pot’s
spewed ’im out.”
But “Jonah” addressed himself pointedly and at some length to the
laughing spectators, and they, urged on by a stream of objurgation and
invective, fell to work with trenching-tools, with spades retrieved
from the trench, with bare hands and busy fingers, to break down the
trench-side under Here We Are’s starboard driver, and pile it down
into the trench and under the uplifted end of her port one. The second
Pepper-pot cruised up and brought to adjacent to the operations with
a watchful eye on the horizon. It was well she did, for suddenly a
crowd of Germans seeing or sensing that one of the monsters was out of
action, swarmed out of cover on the crest and came storming down on
the party. Here We Are could do nothing; but the sister ship could,
and did, do quite a lot to those Germans. It sidled round so as to
bring both bow guns and all its broadside to bear and let loose a
close-quarter tornado of bullets that cut the attackers to rags. The
men who had ceased digging to grab their rifles had not time to fire
a shot before the affair was over and “Jonah” was again urging them
to their spade-work. Then when he thought the way ready, Here We Are
at his orders steamed ahead again, its lower port side scraping and
jarring along the trench wall, the drivers biting and gripping at the
soft ground. Jerkily, a foot at a time, it scuffled its way along the
trench till it came to a sharp angle of it where a big shell hole had
broken down the wall. But just as the starboard driver was reaching
out over the shell hole and the easy job of plunging into it, gaining
a level keel and climbing out the other side, the trench wall on the
right gave way and the Here We Are sank its starboard side level to and
then below the port one. She had fallen bodily into a German dug-out,
but after a pause to regain its shaken breath--or the crew’s--it began
once more to revolve its drivers slowly, and to churn out behind them,
first a cloud of dust and clots of earth, then, as the starboard
driver bit deeper into the dug-out, a mangled débris of clothing and
trench-made furniture. On the ground above the infantry stood shrieking
with laughter, while the frantic skipper raved unheard-of oaths and the
Here We Are pawed out and hoofed behind, or caught on its driving band
and hoisted in turn into the naked light of day, a splintered bedstead,
a chewed up blanket or two, separately and severally the legs, back,
and seat of a red velvet arm-chair, a torn gray coat and a forlorn and
muddy pair of pink pajama trousers tangled up in one officer’s field
boot. And when the drivers got their grip again and the Here We Are
rolled majestically forward and up the further sloping side of the
shell crater and halted to take the skipper aboard again, Pug dragged
a long branch from the fascines in the trench débris, slid it up one
leg and down the other of the pink pajamas, tied the boot by its laces
to the tip and jammed the root into a convenient crevice in the Tank’s
stern. And so beflagged she rolled her triumphant way up over the
captured redoubt and down the other side, with the boot-tip bobbing
and swaying and jerking at the end of her pink tail. The sequel to
her story may be told here, although it only came back to the men who
decorated her after filtering round the firing line, up and down the
communication lines, round half the hospitals and most of the messes at
or behind the Front.
And many as came to be the Tales of the Tanks, this of the Pink-Tailed
’un, as Pug called her, belonged unmistakably to her and, being so, was
joyfully recognized and acclaimed by her decorators. She came in due
time across the redoubt, says the story, and bore down on the British
line at the other extreme of the horseshoe to where a certain infantry
C.O., famed in past days for a somewhat speedy and hectic career,
glared in amazement at the apparition lurching and bobbing and bowing
and crawling toad-like towards him.
“I knew,” he is reported to have afterwards admitted, “I knew it
couldn’t be that I’d got ’em again. But in the old days I always had
one infallible sign. Crimson rats and purple snakes I might get over;
but if they had pink tails, I knew I was in for it certain. And I
tell you it gave me quite a turn to see this blighter waddling up and
wagging the old pink tail.”
But this end of the story only came to the Stonewalls long enough
after--just as it is said to have come in time to the ears of the Here
We Are’s skipper, and, mightily pleasing him and his crew, set him
chuckling delightedly and swearing he meant to apply and in due and
formal course obtain permission to change his land-ship’s name, and
having regretfully parted with the pink tail, immortalize it in the
name of H.M.L.S. _The D.T.’s_.