OVER THE TOP
When a man has gone over the top of a
front line trench in an attack on the
enemy, he has reached the stage in his career
as a soldier at which the title, "veteran," may
honorably be applied to him.
For, to climb out of your burrow where you
have been living like an earthworm into God's
clear daylight in plain view of enemy snipers,
machine-gunners, and artillerymen, and,
under the same conditions, to start across No
Man's Land toward the Hun in his well-protected
and fortified trenches, is indeed to earn
that distinction.
Many there are who have courted death in
this form, again and again, and "got away
with it." But it is a good deal like trying your
luck at Rouge et Noir in the Casino at Monte
Carlo. The odds are against you, and if you
keep at it long enough you are almost
mathematically certain to lose out in the end.
The boys know this as well as you and I. In
spite of that knowledge, over the top they go
again and again, by day and by night, with a
smile on their lips, blood in their eyes, and joy
in their hearts at the thought of revenging
themselves upon the despicable Hun for his
breaking of all the laws of civilization, for his
utter disregard of the principle that "between
nation and nation, as between man and man,
lives the one great law of right."
Attacks in which the men go over the top
are of various kinds and on different scales.
The commonest are simply raids in which a
small sector of enemy lines is the object. By
them we endeavor to obtain prisoners for
purposes of identification of the troops opposing
us, while at the same time we depress the
morale of the enemy.
Then there are the immense attacks, called
pushes, in which we mean to push back the
enemy, take possession of his lines, consolidate
and hold them, killing, taking prisoners,
and putting hors de combat as
many as we can in the process. These pushes
are always on a greater scale and require
thorough organization and preparation to be
successful. If they should fail, our last
condition is worse than our first. We have not only
wasted all our immense preparations but we
have lowered the spirits of our own men, and
raised and encouraged the fighting spirit of the
enemy.
The man who is sitting comfortably in his
library five or six thousand miles from the
scene of battle notes on the map on his wall
that it is only five inches from the firing line
of the Allies to the Rhine. He may decide
that it should be an easy matter to bring up
a few million troops, break through the
enemy lines, push a million men through the gap,
cut the communications of the opposing forces,
hurl the enemy back into the Rhine, and make
him sue for peace.
On paper, and with the aid of a vivid
imagination, this may look easy. In reality the
preparations for a great advance are enormous.
For weeks before the push, even for months,
the staffs of battalion, brigade, division, corps,
and army are planning it.
Dummy trenches are laid out from aerial
photographs, taken by aviators, and dummy
advances are practiced with all the details as in
real advances. Our information must be so
complete that we know even where certain
dugouts are in the enemy lines, and who
occupies them. This knowledge comes from
prisoners and deserters. Raids are put on to know
what troops are opposing us by the identification
of prisoners. Medical arrangements have
to be completed so as to handle the hundreds
or thousands of casualties that must occur.
Immense guns must be brought up, and
millions of shells must be piled along the roads
and stored in dumps ready for use during
battle. Water arrangements have to be made to
supply pure water to the troops when they
cross into enemy territory, for the enemy may
have destroyed or poisoned the water supplies
as they retired. Extra food rations and
equipment must be supplied the men. Places of
confinement for the hoped-for prisoners must
be built. And, finally, thousands of extra
troops must be brought up and trained for
the attack.
The above are only a few of the preparations
that must be made, for the details are
multitudinous. The most difficult thing is that
these preparations must be carried out so far
as possible without the enemy's knowledge.
For he also has his aeroplane scouts taking
photographs and looking about for information,
his observation balloons and his spies, his
raids and his prisoners. It is even possible
that we might have a deserter who betrayed
us to him, though one feels that this must be
exceedingly rare.
If the armchair critic has read the above
he will perhaps realize a little more vividly
than he has done before how difficult advances
are and why it is more easy to talk of getting
the enemy on the run than to actually do it.
Once he has started to retreat and you to
advance, your difficulties multiply and go on
increasing in direct proportion to the distance
that you get from your base of supplies. Your
munitions, food and water must be transported
from the rear over strange roads pulverized
by shell fire, while your enemy is backing into
greater supplies hourly.
One of the most difficult propositions is to
keep the different parts of your immense
organization in communication with battalion,
brigade, and divisional headquarters. Many
different methods are used.
Perhaps the most reliable is by runner, or
courier, on foot. The runner has an arduous,
dangerous, and often thankless, task, which he
performs as a rule patiently, bravely and
tirelessly. The telephone, telegraph, and power
buzzer--the latter being sometimes used without
wires, at a distance as great as 4000 yards--are
commonly employed, though they have
many disadvantages. The first of these is the
difficulty in installing them in the face of heavy
shelling and counter attacks by the enemy.
Secondly, they are likely to be put out of
commission, their wires being destroyed by shells.
Finally, their messages are often picked up
through the earth by your opponents with
some apparatus invented for the purpose.
There are the semaphore and flashlight methods
of signaling, and signaling by flares, all
naturally very limited in variety of use, the
latter particularly so. But flares are of great
service when a hurried artillery retaliation is
desired, S.O.S. flares then being sent up.
The wireless apparatus on aeroplanes and the
throwing of flares by aviators are also used
to good account. But there are times when all
these different methods are found wanting.
Through force of circumstance a battalion or
company may be completely isolated, and then
it is that the last and least employed method,
that of carrier pigeons, is resorted to. In each
battalion are a couple or more specially trained
carrier pigeons, and to speak of the "O.C. Pigeons"
is a standing joke. The pigeons are
rarely employed. It may be almost forgotten
that they are with a unit, as was practically
the case of one battalion at the Somme of which
the following story is told:
The commanding officer had waited in vain
for hours for some message as to the success
or failure of a show one company was putting
on. He was impatiently striding up and down
when a poor little carrier pigeon fluttered into
his presence. He hurriedly caught it, and
untied from its leg the following message:
"I am bally well fed up carrying this damned
bird about. You take it for a while."
After all this preparatory stage is completed,
when transport, artillery preparation,
communication, maps, training, dummy advances,
extra rations, water, medical supplies
and equipment, are in order, the next move
is to get all troops taking part in the
advance into the most advantageous positions,
unknown to the Germans. The men are well
fed, given extra water bottles, "iron rations"
are in their kits--that is, bully beef and
biscuit--they are equipped only in fighting dress.
By night they are marched into the trenches
from which they are to go over the top, and
after a few hours of rest, broken by shell fire,
the zero hour, or hour of attack, arrives.
Just before the great advance in which the
Canadians took Vimy Ridge, that hill
consecrated by the graves of thousands of French,
British, and Canadian soldiers, our brigade
had made all these arrangements. We were to
march into the line on Easter Saturday and
go over the top the following morning at
daybreak. But at the last moment we were
delayed by a brigade order, due to information
obtained from a German deserter, information
that said that the Huns knew that we were to
attack on Easter Sunday.
While sitting in my tent I was visited by
officers on various missions, some to get
dressings to carry in their pocket, dressings that
they neglected getting till the very last
moment; others to tell me that such and such a
man was afflicted with that grievous malady,
"cold feet," and if he should visit me on
pretension of illness, to bear this fact in mind;
and again others with no object but a pleasant word.
Among those who always had a humorous
word and a smile, and whose honest
eyes always looked at one fearlessly through
his gold-rimmed spectacles, was Lieutenant
Henderson--"Old Pop," as the younger officers
always called him. After his usual courteous
and kindly greeting we joked about the
possibility, or rather the probability, of some
of us not coming back from the great
advance. No doubt he voiced the opinion of most
of us when he said with a hearty laugh--
"You know, Doc, the main objection I have
to death is that it is so d---- permanent."
The following day "Old Pop" was no more.
His jolly laugh and his voice with its
pleasant burr were to be heard no longer in our
ranks. He had met death while bravely
leading his men across No Man's Land like the
gallant Scotch gentleman that he was.
Something which struck me then, and which
still impresses me as extraordinary in looking
back at it, was the buoyant, cheerful, optimistic
spirit in which our army of citizen-soldiers
looked forward to the day when we were to
take part in one of the greatest battles in
history. We knew it was to be a fearful and
magnificent trial of strength out of which many
of us would never return to the people and
the lands we loved. And yet all awaited it
with a gay, hopeful, undaunted optimism,
asking naught but the opportunity, anticipating
nothing but victory. It is unbelievable that
the blind obedience of a militaristic kaiserism
can ever subdue a soldiery who so freely offer
their all on the altar of liberty.