PUNISHMENTS AND MACHINE-GUN STUNTS
Soon after my arrival in France, in fact from my enlistment, I had
found that in the British Army discipline is very strict. One has to
be very careful in order to stay on the narrow path of government
virtue.
There are about seven million ways of breaking the King's Regulations;
to keep one you have to break another.
The worst punishment is death by a firing squad or "up against the
wall" as Tommy calls it.
This is for desertion, cowardice, mutiny, giving information to the
enemy, destroying or willfully wasting ammunition, looting, rape,
robbing the dead, forcing a safeguard, striking a superior, etc.
Then comes the punishment of sixty-four days in the front-line trench
without relief. During this time you have to engage in all raids,
working parties in No Man's Land, and every hazardous undertaking that
comes along. If you live through the sixty-four days you are indeed
lucky.
This punishment is awarded where there is a doubt as to the willful
guilt of a man who has committed an offence punishable by death.
Then comes the famous Field Punishment No. I. Tommy has nicknamed it
"crucifixion." It means that a man is spread eagled on a limber wheel,
two hours a day for twenty-one days. During this time he only gets
water, bully beef, and biscuits for his chow. You get "crucified" for
repeated minor offences.
Next in order is Field Punishment No. 2.
This is confinement in the "Clink," without blankets, getting water,
bully beef, and biscuits for rations and doing all the dirty work that
can be found. This may be for twenty-four hours or twenty days,
according to the gravity of the offence.
Then comes "Pack Drill" or Defaulters' Parade. This consists of
drilling, mostly at the double, for two hours with full equipment.
Tommy hates this, because it is hard work. Sometimes he fills his pack
with straw to lighten it, and sometimes he gets caught. If he gets
caught, he grouses at everything in general for twenty-one days, from
the vantage point of a limber wheel.
Next comes "C. B." meaning "Confined to Barracks." This consists of
staying in billets or barracks for twenty-four hours to seven days.
You also get an occasional Defaulters' Parade and dirty jobs around
the quarters.
The Sergeant-Major keeps what is known as the Crime Sheet. When a man
commits an offence, he is "Crimed," that is, his name, number, and
offence is entered on the Crime Sheet. Next day at 9 A.M. he goes to
the "Orderly Room" before the Captain, who either punishes him with
"C.B." or sends him before the O. C. (Officer Commanding Battalion).
The Captain of the Company can only award "C. B."
Tommy many a time has thanked the King for making that provision in
his regulations.
To gain the title of a "smart soldier," Tommy has to keep clear of the
Crime Sheet, and you have to be darned smart to do it.
I have been on it a few times, mostly for "Yankee impudence."
During our stay of two weeks in rest billets our Captain put us
through a course of machine-gun drills, trying out new stunts and
theories.
After parades were over, our guns' crews got together and also tried
out some theories of their own in reference to handling guns. These
courses had nothing to do with the advancement of the war, consisted
mostly of causing tricky jams in the gun, and then the rest of the
crew would endeavor to locate as quickly as possible the cause of the
stoppage. This amused them for a few days and then things came to a
standstill.
One of the boys on my gun claimed that he could play a tune while the
gun was actually firing, and demonstrated this fact one day on the
target range. We were very enthusiastic and decided to become
musicians.
After constant practice I became quite expert in the tune entitled ALL
CONDUCTORS HAVE BIG FEET.
When I had mastered this tune, our two weeks' rest came to an end, and
once again we went up the line and took over the sector in front of
G---Wood.
At this point the German trenches ran around the base of a hill, on
the top of which was a dense wood. This wood was infested with machine
guns, which used to traverse our lines at will, and sweep the streets
of a little village, where we were billeted while in reserve.
There was one gun in particular which used to get our goats, it had
the exact range of our "elephant" dugout entrance, and every evening,
about the time rations were being brought up, its bullets would knock
up the dust on the road; more than one Tommy went West or to Blighty
by running into them.
This gun got our nerves on edge, and Fritz seemed to know it, because
he never gave us an hour's rest. Our reputation as machine gunners was
at stake; we tried various ruses to locate and put this gun out of
action, but each one proved to be a failure, and Fritz became a worse
nuisance than ever. He was getting fresher and more careless every
day, took all kinds of liberties, with us,--thought he was
invincible.
Then one of our crew got a brilliant idea and we were all enthusiastic
to put it to the test.
Here was his scheme:
When firing my gun, I was to play my tune, and Fritz, no doubt, would
fall for it, try to imitate me as an added insult. This gunner and two
others would try, by the sound, to locate Fritz and his gun. After
having got the location, they would mount two machine guns in trees,
in a little dump of woods, to the left of our cemetery, and while
Fritz was in the middle of his lesson, would open up and trust to
luck. By our calculations, it would take at least a week to pull off
the stunt.
If Fritz refused to swallow our bait, it would be impossible to locate
his special gun, and that's the one we were after, because they all
sound alike, a slow pup-pup-pup.
Our prestige was hanging by a thread. In the battalion we had to
endure all kinds of insults and fresh remarks as to our ability in
silencing Fritz. Even to the battalion that German gun was a sore
spot.
Next day, Fritz opened up as usual. I let him fire away for a while
and then butted in with my "pup-pup-pup-pup-pup-pup." I kept this up
quite a while, used two belts of ammunition. Fritz had stopped firing
to listen. Then he started in; sure enough, he had fallen for our
game, his gun was trying to imitate mine, but, at first he made a
horrible mess of that tune. Again I butted in with a few bars and
stopped. Then he tried to copy what I had played. He was a good sport
all right, because his bullets were going away over our heads, must
have been firing into the air. I commenced to feel friendly toward
him.
This duet went on for five days. Fritz was a good pupil and learned
rapidly, in fact, got better than his teacher. I commenced to feel
jealous. When he had completely mastered the tune, he started sweeping
the road again and we clicked it worse than ever. But he signed his
death warrant by doing so, because my friendship turned to hate. Every
time he fired he played that tune and we danced.
The boys in the battalion gave us the "Ha! Ha!" They weren't in on our
little frame-up.
The originator of the ruse and the other two gunners had Fritz's
location taped to the minute; they mounted their two guns, and also
gave me the range. The next afternoon was set for the grand finale.
Our three guns, with different elevations, had their fire so arranged,
that, opening up together, their bullets would suddenly drop on Fritz
like a hailstorm.
About three the next day, Fritz started "pup--pupping" that tune. I
blew a sharp blast on a whistle, it was the signal agreed upon; we
turned loose and Fritz's gun suddenly stopped in the middle of a bar.
We had cooked his goose, and our ruse had worked. After firing two
belts each, to make sure of our job, we hurriedly dismounted our guns
and took cover in the dugout. We knew what to expect soon. We didn't
have to wait long, three salvos of "whizz-bangs" came over from
Fritz's artillery, a further confirmation that we had sent that
musical machine-gunner on his westward bound journey.
That gun never bothered us again. We were the heroes of the battalion,
our Captain congratulated us, said it was a neat piece of work, and,
consequently, we were all puffed up over the stunt.
There are several ways Tommy uses to disguise the location of his
machine gun and get his range. Some of the most commonly used stunts
are as follows:
At night, when he mounts his gun over the top of his trench and wants
to get the range of Fritz's trench he adopts the method of what he
terms "getting the sparks." This consists of firing bursts from his
gun until the bullets hit the German barbed wire. He can tell when
they are cutting the wire, because a bullet when it hits a wire throws
out a blue electric spark. Machine-gun fire is very damaging to wire
and causes many a wiring party to go out at night when it is quiet to
repair the damage.
To disguise the flare of his gun at night when firing. Tommy uses what
is called a flare protector.
This is a stove-pipe arrangement which fits over the barrel casing of
the gun and screens the sparks from the right and left, but not from
the front. So Tommy, always resourceful, adopts this scheme. About
three feet or less in front of the gun he drives two stakes into the
ground, about five feet apart. Across these stakes he stretches a
curtain made out of empty sandbags ripped open. He soaks this curtain
in water and fires through it. The water prevents it catching fire and
effectively screens the flare of the firing gun from the enemy.
Sound is a valuable asset in locating a machine gun, but Tommy
surmounts this obstacle by placing two machine guns about one hundred
to one hundred fifty yards apart. The gun on the right to cover with
its fire the sector of the left gun and the gun on the left to cover
that of the right gun. This makes their fire cross; they are fired
simultaneously.
{Illustration: Diagram}
By this method it sounds like one gun firing and gives the Germans the
impression that the gun is firing from a point midway between the guns
which are actually firing, and they accordingly shell that particular
spot. The machine gunners chuckle and say, "Fritz is a brainy boy, not
'alf he ain't."
But the men in our lines at the spot being shelled curse Fritz for his
ignorance and pass a few pert remarks down the line in reference to
the machine gunners being "windy" and afraid to take their medicine.