"_During the night, only patrol and reconnoitering engagements of small
consequence are reported."_--EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.
"Straff the Germans and all their works, particularly their mine
works!" said Lieutenant Ainsley disgustedly.
"Seeing that's exactly what you're told off to do," said the other
occupant of the dug-out, "why grouse about it?"
Lieutenant Ainsley laughed. "That's true enough," he admitted;
"although I fancy going out on patrol in this weather and on this part
of the line would be enough to make Mark Tapley himself grouse.
However, it's all in the course of a lifetime, I suppose."
He completed the fastening of his mackintosh, felt that the revolver on
his belt moved freely from its holster, and that the wire nippers were
in place, pulled his soft cap well down on his head, grunted a
"Good-night," and dropped on his hands and knees to crawl out of the
dug-out.
He made his way along the forward firing trench to where his little
patrol party awaited his coming, and having seen that they were
properly equipped and fully laden with bombs, and securing a number of
these for his own use, he issued careful instructions to the men to
crawl over the parapet one at a time, being cautious to do so only in
the intervals of darkness between the flaring lights.
He was a little ahead of the appointed time; and because the trench
generally had been warned not to fire at anyone moving out in front at
a certain hour, it was necessary to wait until then exactly. He told
the men to wait, and spent the interval in smoking a cigarette. As he
lit it the thought came to him that perhaps it was the last cigarette
he would ever smoke. He tried to dismiss the thought, but it persisted
uncomfortably. He argued with himself and told himself that he mustn't
get jumpy, that the surest way to get shot was to be nervous about
being shot, that the job was bad enough but was only made worse by
worrying about it. As a relief and distraction to his own thoughts, he
listened to catch the low remarks that were passing between the men of
his party.
"When I get home after this job's done," one of them was saying, "I'm
going to look for a billet as stoker in the gas works, or sign on in
one o' them factories that roll red-hot steel plates and you 'ave to
wear an asbestos sack to keep yourself from firing. After this I want
something as hot and as dry as I can find it."
"I think," said another, "my job's going to be barman in a nice snug
little public with a fire in the bar parlor and red blinds on the
window."
"Why don't you pick a job that'll be easy to get?" said the third, with
deep sarcasm--"say Prime Minister, or King of England. You've about as
much chance of getting them as the other."
Lieutenant Ainsley grinned to himself in the darkness. At least, he
thought, these men have no doubts about their coming back in safety
from this patrol; but then of course it was easier for them because
they did not know the full detail of the risk they ran. But it was no
use thinking of that again, he told himself.
He took his place in readiness, waited until one flare had burned out
and there was no immediate sign of another being thrown up, slipped
over the parapet and dropped flat in the mud on the other side. One by
one the men crawled over and dropped beside him, and then slowly and
cautiously, with the officer leading, they began to wend their way out
under their own entanglements.
There may be some who will wonder that an officer should feel such
qualms as Ainsley had over the simple job of a night patrol over the
open ground in front of the German trench; but, then, there are patrols
and patrols, or as the inattentive recruit at the gunnery class said
when he was asked to describe the varieties of shells he had been told
of: "There are some sorts of one kind, and some of another."
There are plenty of parts on the Western Front where affairs at
intervals settled down into such a peaceful state that there was
nothing more than a fair sporting risk attaching to the performance of
a patrol which leaves the shelter of our own lines at night to crawl
out amongst the barbed wire entanglements in the darkness. There have
been times when you might listen at night by the hour together and
hardly hear a rifle-shot, and when the burst of artillery fire was a
thing to be commented on. But at other times, and in some parts of the
line especially, business was run on very different lines. Then every
man in the forward firing-trench had a certain number of rounds to fire
each night, even although he had no definite target to fire at.
Magnesium flares and pistol lights were kept going almost without
ceasing, while the artillery made a regular practice of loosing off a
stated number of rounds per night. The Germans worked on fairly similar
lines, and as a result it can easily be imagined that any patrol or
reconnoitering work between the lines was apt to be exceedingly
unhealthy. Actually there were parts on the line where no feet had
pressed the ground of No Man's Land for weeks on end, unless in open
attack or counter-attack, and of these feet there were a good many that
never returned to the trench, and a good many others that did return
only to walk straight to the nearest aid-post and hospital.
The neutral ground at this period of Ainsley's patrol was a sea of mud,
broken by heaped earth and yawning shell-craters; strung about with
barbed wire entanglements, littered with equipments and with packs
which had been cut from or slipped from the shoulders of the wounded;
dotted more or less thickly with the bodies of British or German who
had fallen there and could not be reached alive by any stretcher-bearer
parties. Unpleasant as was the coming in contact with these bodies,
Ainsley knew that their being there was of considerable service to him.
He and his men crawled in a scattered line, and whenever the upward
trail of sparks showed that a flare was about to burst into light, the
whole party dropped and lay still until the light had burned itself
out. Any Germans looking out could only see their huddled forms lying
as still as the thickly scattered dead; could not know but what the
party was of their number.
It was necessary to move with the most extreme caution, because the
slightest motion might eaten the attention of a look-out, and would
certainly draw the fire of a score of rifles and probably of a
machine-gun. The first part of the journey was the worst, because they
had to cover a perfectly open piece of ground on their way to the
slight depression which Ainsley knew ran curling across the neutral
ground. Wide and shallow at the end nearest the British trench, this
depression narrowed and deepened as it ran slantingly towards the
German; halfway across, it turned abruptly and continued towards the
German side on another slant, and at a point about halfway between the
elbow and the German trench, came very close to an exploded
mine-crater, which was the objective of this night's patrol.
It was supposed, or at least suspected, that the mine-crater was being
made the starting-point of a tunnel to run under the British trench,
and Ainsley had been told off to find out if possible whether this
suspicion was correct, and if so to do what damage he could to the mine
entrance and the miners by bombing.
When his party reached the shallow depression, they moved cautiously
along it, and to Ainsley's relief reached the elbow in safety. Here
they were a good deal more protected from the German fire than they
could be at any point, because from here the depression was fully a
couple of feet deep and had its highest bank next the German trench.
Ainsley led his men at a fairly rapid crawl along the ditch, until he
had passed the point nearest to the mine-crater. Here he halted his
men, and with infinite caution crawled out to reconnoiter. The men, who
had been carefully instructed in the part they were to play, waited
huddling in silence under the bank for his return, or for the fusillade
of fire that would tell he was discovered. Immediately in front of the
crater was a patch of open ground without a single body lying in it;
and Ainsley knew that if he were seen lying there where no body had
been a minute before, the German who saw him would unhesitatingly place
a bullet in him. A bank of earth several feet high had been thrown up
by the mine explosion in a ring round the crater, and although this
covered him from the observation of the trench immediately behind the
mine, he knew that he could be seen from very little distance out on
the flank, and decided to abandon his crawling progress for once and
risk a quick dash across the open. For long he waited what seemed a
favorable moment, watched carefully in an endeavor to locate the nearer
positions in the German trench from which lights were being thrown up,
and to time the periods between them.
At last three lights were thrown and burned almost simultaneously
within the area over which he calculated the illumination would expose
him. The instant the last flicker of the third light died out, he
leaped to his feet, and made a rush. The lights had shown him a scanty
few rows of barbed wire between him and the crater; he had reckoned
roughly the number of steps to it and counted as he ran, then more
cautiously pushed on, feeling for the wire, found it, threw himself
down, and began to wriggle desperately underneath. When he thought he
was through the last, he rose; but he had miscalculated, and the first
step brought his thighs in scratching contact with another wire. His
heart was in his mouth, for some seconds had passed since the last
light had died and he knew that another one must flare up at any
instant. Sweeping his arm downward and forward, he could feel no wire
higher than the one-which had pricked his legs. There was no time now
to fiddle about avoiding tears and scratches. He swung over the wire,
first one leg, then another, felt his mackintosh catch, dragged it free
with a screech of ripping cloth that brought his heart to his mouth,
turned and rushed again for the crater. As he ran, first one light,
then another, soared upwards and broke out into balls of vivid white
light that showed the crater within a dozen steps. It was no time for
caution, and everything depended on the blind luck of whether a German
lookout had his eyes on that spot at that moment. Without hesitation,
he continued his rush to the foot of the mound on the crater's edge,
hurled himself down on it and lay panting and straining his ears for
the sounds of shots and whistling bullets that would tell him he was
discovered. But the lights flared and burned out, leaped afresh and
died out again, and there was no sign that he had been seen. For the
moment he felt reasonably secure. The earth on the crater's rim was
broken and irregular, the surface an eye-deceiving patchwork of broken
light and black heavy shadow under the glare of the flying lights. The
mackintosh he wore was caked and plastered with mud, and blended well
with the background on which he lay. He took care to keep his arms in,
to sink his head well into his rounded shoulders, to curl his feet and
legs up under the skirt of his mackintosh, knowing well from his own
experience that where the outline of a body is vague and easily escapes
notice, a head or an arm, or especially and particularly a booted foot
and leg, will stand out glaringly distinct. As he lay, he placed his
ear to the muddy ground, but could hear no sound of mining operations
beneath him. Foot by foot he hitched himself upward to the rim of the
crater's edge, and again lay and listened for thrilling long-drawn
minute after minute.
Suddenly his heart jumped and his flesh went cold. Unmistakingly he
heard the scuffle and swish of footsteps on the wet ground, the murmur
of voices apparently within a yard or two of his head. There were men
in the mine-crater, and, from the sound of their movements, they were
creeping out on a patrol similar to his own, perhaps, and, as near as
he could judge, on a line that would bring them directly on top of him.
The scuffing passed slowly in front of him and for a few yards along
the inside of the crater. The sound of the murmuring voices passed
suddenly from confused dullness to a sharp clearer-edged speech,
telling Ainsley, as plainly as if he could see, that the speaker had
risen from behind the sound-deadening ridge of earth and was looking
clear over its top, Ainsley lay as still as one of the clods of earth
about him, lay scarcely daring to breathe, and with his skin pringling.
There was a pause that may have been seconds, but that felt like hours.
He did not dare move his head to look; he could only wait in an agony
of apprehension with his flesh shrinking from the blow of a bullet that
he knew would be the first announcement of his discovery. But the
stillness was unbroken, and presently, to his infinite relief, he heard
again the guttural voices and the sliding footsteps pass back across
his front, and gradually diminish. But he would not let his impatience
risk the success of his enterprise; he lay without moving a muscle for
many long and nervous minutes. At last he began to hitch himself
slowly, an inch at a time, along the edge of the crater away from the
point to which the German lookout had moved. He halted and lay still
again when his ear caught a fresh murmur of guttural voices, the
trampling of many footsteps, and once or twice the low but clear clink
of an iron tool in the crater beneath him.
It seemed fairly certain that the Germans were occupying the crater,
were either making it the starting-point of a mine tunnel, or were
fortifying it as a defensive point. But it was not enough to surmise
these things; he must make sure, and, if possible, bomb the working
party or the entrance to the mine tunnel. He continued to work his way
along the rim of the crater's edge. Arrived at a position where he
expected to be able to see the likeliest point of the crater for a mine
working to commence, he took the final and greatest chance. Moving only
in the intervals of darkness between the lights, he dragged the
mackintosh up on his shoulders until the edge of its deep collar came
above the top of his head, opened the throat and spread it wide to
disguise any outline of his head and neck, found a suitable hollow on
the edge of the ridge, and boldly thrust his head over to look
downwards into the hole.
When the next light flared, he found that he could see the opposite
wall and perhaps a third of the bottom of the hole, with the head and
shoulders of two or three men moving about it. When the light died, he
hitched forward and again lay still. This time the light showed him
what he had come to seek: the black opening of a tunnel mouth in the
wall of the crater nearest the British line, a dozen men busily engaged
dragging sacks-full of earth from the opening, and emptying them
outside the shaft. He waited while several lights burned, marking as
carefully as possible the outline of the ridge immediately above the
mine shaft, endeavoring to pick a mark that would locate its position
from above it. It had begun to rain in a thin drizzling mist, and
although this obscured the outline of the crater to some extent, its
edge stood out well against the glow of such lights as were thrown up
from the British side.
It was now well after midnight, and the firing on both sides had
slackened considerably, although there was still an irregular rattle of
rifle fire, the distant boom of a gun and the scream of its shell
passing overhead. A good deal emboldened by his freedom from discovery
and by the misty rain, Ainsley slid backwards, moved round the crater,
crept back to the barbed wire and under it, ran across the opening on
the other side and dropped into the hole where he had left his men. He
found them waiting patiently, stretched full length in the wet
discomfort of the soaking ground, but enduring it philosophically and
concerned, apparently, only for his welfare.
His sergeant puffed a huge sigh of relief at his return. "I was just
about beginning to think you had 'gone west,' sir," he said, "and
wondering whether I oughtn't to come and 'ave a look for you."
Ainsley explained what had happened and what he had seen. "I'm going
back, and I want you all to come with me," he said. "I'm going to shove
every bomb we've got down that mine shaft. If we meet with any luck, we
should wreck it up pretty well."
"I suppose, sir," said the sergeant, "if we can plant a bomb or two in
the right spot, it will bottle up any Germans working inside?"
"Sure to!" said Ainsley. "It will cave in the entrance completely; and
then as soon as we get back, we'll give the gunners the tip, and leave
them to keep on lobbing some shells in and breaking up any attempt to
reopen the shaft and dig out the mining party."
"Billy!" said one of the men, in an audible aside, "don't you wish you
was a merry little German down that blinkin' tunnel, to-night!"
"Imphim," answered Billy, "I don't think!"
Ainsley explained his plan of campaign, saw that everything was in
readiness, and led his party out. The misty rain was still falling,
and, counting on this to hide them sufficiently from observation if
they lay still while any lights were burning, they crawled rapidly
across the open, wriggled underneath the wires, cut one or two of
them--especially any which were low enough to interfere with free
movement under them--and crawled along to the crater.
Ainsley left the party sprawling flat at the foot of the rim, while he
crept up to locate the position over the mine shaft. Each man had
brought about a dozen small bombs and one large one packed with high
explosive. Before leaving the ditch, on Ainsley's directions, each man
tied his own lot in one bundle, bringing the ends of the fuses together
and tying them securely with their ends as nearly as possible level, so
that they could be lit at the same time. Each man had with him one of
those tinder pipe-lighters which are ignited by the sparks of a little
twirled wheel. When Ainsley had placed the men on the edge of the
crater, he gave the word, and each man lit his tinder, holding it so as
to be sheltered from sight from the German trench, behind the flap of
his mackintosh. Then each took a separate piece of fuse about a foot
long, and, at a whispered word from Ainsley, pressed the end into the
glowing tinder. Almost at the same instant the four fuses began to
burn, throwing out a fizzing jet of sparks. Each man knew that, shelter
them as they would from observation, the sparks were almost certain to
betray them; but although some rifles began at once to crack
spasmodically and the bullets to whistle overhead, each man went on
with the allotted program steadily, without haste and without fluster,
devoting all their attention to the proper igniting of the bomb-fuses,
and leaving what might follow to take care of itself. As his length of
fuse caught, each man said "Ready" in a low tone; Ainsley immediately
said "Light!" and each instantly directed the jet of sparks as from a
tiny hose into the tied bundle of the bomb-fuses' ends. The instant
each man saw his own bundle well ignited, he reported "Lit!" and thrust
the fuse ends well into the soft mud. Being so waterproofed as to burn
if necessary completely under water, this made no difference to the
fuses, except that it smothered the sparks and showed only a curling
smoke-wreath. But the first sparks had evidently been seen, for the
bomb party heard shoutings and a rapidly increasing fire from the
German lines. A light flamed upward near the mine-crater. Ainsley said,
"Now!--, and take good aim." The men scrambled to their knees and,
leaning well over until they could see the black entrance of the mine
shaft, tossed their bundles of bombs as nearly as they could into and
around it. In the pit below, Ainsley had a momentary glimpse of half a
dozen faces, gleaming white in the strong light, upturned, and staring
at him; from somewhere down there a pistol snapped twice, and the
bullets hissed past over their heads. The party ducked back below the
ridge of earth, and as a rattle of rifle fire commenced to break out
along the whole length of the German line, they lit from their tinder
the fuses of a couple of bombs specially reserved for the purpose, and
tossed them as nearly as they could into the German trench, a score of
paces away. Their fuses being cut much shorter than the others, the
bombs exploded almost instantly, and Ainsley and his party leapt down
to the level ground and raced across to the wire.
By now the whole line had caught the alarm; the rifle fire had swelled
to a crackling roar, the bullets were whistling and storming across the
open. In desperate haste they threw themselves down and wriggled under
the wire, and as they did so they felt the earth beneath them jar and
quiver, heard a double and triple roar from behind them, saw the wet
ground in front of them and the wires overhead glow for an instant with
rosy light as the fire of the explosion flamed upwards from the crater.
At the crashing blast of the discharge, the rifle fire was hushed for a
moment; Ainsley saw the chance and shouted to his men, and, as they
scrambled clear of the wire, they jumped to their feet, rushed back
over the flat, and dropped panting in the shelter of the ditch. The
rifle fire opened again more heavily than ever, and the bullets were
hailing and splashing and thudding into the wet earth around them, but
the bank protected them well, and they took the fullest advantage of
its cover. Because the depression they were in shallowed and afforded
less cover as it ran towards the British lines, it was safer for the
party to stay where they were until the fire slackened enough to give
them a fair sporting chance of crawling back in safety.
They lay there for fully two hours before Ainsley considered it safe
enough to move. They were, of course, long since wet through, and by
now were chilled and numbed to the bone. Two of the men had been
wounded, but only very slightly in clean flesh wounds: one through the
arm and one in the flesh over the upper ribs. Ainsley himself bandaged
both men as well as he could in the darkness and the cramped position
necessary to keep below the level of the flying ballets, and both men,
when he had finished, assured him that they were quite comfortable and
entirely free from pain. Ainsley doubted this, and because of it was
the more impatient to get back to their own lines; but he restrained
his impatience, lest it should result in any of his party suffering
another and more serious wound. At last the rifle fire had died down to
about the normal night rate, had indeed dropped at the finish so
rapidly in the space of two or three minutes that Ainsley concluded
fresh orders for the slower rate must have been passed along the German
lines. He gave the word, and they began to creep slowly back, moving
again only when no lights were burning.
There were some gaspings and groanings as the men commenced to move
their stiffened limbs.
"I never knew," gasped one, "as I'd so many joints in my backbone, and
that each one of them could hold so many aches."
"Same like!" said another. "If you'll listen, you can hear my knees and
hips creaking like the rusty hinges of an old barn-door."
Although the men spoke in low tones, Ainsley whispered a stern command
for silence.
"We're not so far away," he said, "but that a voice might carry; and
you can bet they're jumpy enough for the rest of the night to shoot at
the shadow of a whisper. Now come along, and keep low, and drop the
instant a light flares."
They crawled back a score or so of yards that brought them to the
elbow-turn of the depression. The bank of the turn was practically the
last cover they could count upon, because here the ditch shallowed and
widened and was, in addition, more or less open to enfilading fire from
the German side.
Ainsley halted the men and whispered to them that as soon as they
cleared the ditch they were to crawl out into open order, starting as
soon as darkness fell after the next light. Next moment they commenced
to move, and as they did so Ainsley fancied he heard a stealthy
rustling in the grass immediately in front of him. It occurred to him
that their long delay might have led to the sending out of a search
party, and he was on the point of whispering an order back to the men
to halt, while he investigated, when a couple of pistol lights flared
upwards, lighting the ground immediately about them. To his
surprise--surprise was his only feeling for the moment--he found
himself staring into a bearded face not six feet from his own, and
above the face was the little round flat cap that marked the man a
German.
Both he and the German saw each other at the same instant; but because
the same imminent peril was over each, each instinctively dropped flat
to the wet ground. Ainsley had just time to glimpse the movement of
other three or four gray-coated figures as they also fell flat. Next
instant, he heard his sergeant's voice, hurried and sharp with warning,
but still low toned.
"Look out, sir! There's a big Boche just in front of you."
Ainsley "sh-sh-shed" him to silence, and at the same time was a little
amused and a great deal relieved to hear the German in front of him
similarly hush down the few low exclamations of his party. The flare
was still burning, and Ainsley, twisting his head, was able to look
across the muddy grass at the German eyes staring anxiously into his
own.
"Do not move!" said Ainsley, wondering to himself if the man understood
English, and fumbling in vain in his mind for the German phrase that
would express his meaning.
"Kamarade--eh?" grunted the German, with a note of interrogation that
left no doubt as to his meaning.
"Nein, nein!" answered Ainsley. "You kamarade--sie kamarade."
The other, in somewhat voluble gutturals, insisted that Ainsley must
"kamarade," otherwise surrender. He spoke too fast for Ainsley's very
limited knowledge of German to follow, but at least, to Ainsley's
relief, there was for the moment no motion towards hostilities on
either side. The Germans recognized, no doubt as he did, that the first
sign of a shot, the first wink of a rifle flash out there in the open,
would bring upon them a blaze of light and a storm of rifle and maxim
bullets. Even although his party had slightly the advantage of position
in the scanty cover of the ditch, he was not at all inclined to bring
about another burst of firing, particularly as he was not sure that
some excitable individuals in his own trench would not forget about his
party being in the open and hail indiscriminate bullets in the
direction of a rifle flash, or even the sound of indiscreetly loud
talking.
Painfully, in very broken German, and a word or two at a time, he tried
to make his enemy understand that it was his, the German party, that
must surrender, pointing out as an argument that they were nearer to
the British than to the German lines. The German, however, discounted
this argument by stating that he had one more man in his party than
Ainsley had, and must therefore claim the privilege of being captor.
The voice of his own sergeant close behind him spoke in a hoarse
undertone: "Shall I blow a blinkin' 'ole in 'im, sir? I could do 'im in
acrost your shoulder, as easy as kiss my 'and."
"No, no!" said Ainsley hurriedly; "a shot here would raise the
mischief."
At the same time he heard some of the other Germans speak to the man in
front of him and discovered that they were addressing him as
"Sergeant."
"Sie ein sergeant?" he questioned, and on the German admitting that he
was a sergeant, Ainsley, with more fumbling after German words and
phrases, explained that he was an officer, and that therefore his, an
officer's patrol, took precedence over that of a mere sergeant. He had
a good deal of difficulty in making this clear to the German--either
because the sergeant was particularly thick-witted or possibly because
Ainsley's German was particularly bad. Ainsley inclined to put it down
to the German's stupidity, and he began to grow exceedingly wroth over
the business. Naturally it never occurred to him that he should
surrender to the German, but it annoyed him exceedingly that the German
should have any similar feelings about surrendering to him. Once more
he bent his persuasive powers and indifferent German to the task of
over-persuading the sergeant, and in return had to wait and slowly
unravel some meaning from the odd words he could catch here and there
in the sergeant's endeavor to over-persuade him.
He began to think at last that there was no way out of it but that
suggested by his own sergeant--namely, to "blow a blinkin' 'ole in
'im," and his sergeant spoke again with the rattle of his chattering
teeth playing a castanet accompaniment to his words.
"If you don't mind, sir, we'd all like to fight it out and make a run
for it. We're all about froze stiff."
"I'm just about fed up with this fool, too," said Ainsley disgustedly.
"Look here, all of you! Watch me when the next light goes up. If you
see me grab my pistol, pick your man and shoot."