THE COVERING PARTY
Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind,
With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind;
And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn,
The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?
The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines
was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze
scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing
something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my
hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the spacious
construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags,
which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were
apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon
sergeant stopped me at the door.
"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.
"If I'm lucky," I answered.
"Your luck's dead out," said the sergeant. "You're to be one of a (p. 250)
covering party for the Engineers. They're out to-night repairing the
wire entanglements."
"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.
"Bill's on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the
vivacious Cockney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its
dullest mood, explode with laughter.
Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other
riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came
to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten
to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The
German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to
our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and
most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire
entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of
the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the
damage only to start the game of demolition over again.
The line of entanglements does not run parallel with the trench (p. 251)
it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem
always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags.
But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are
laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing towards our trench.
The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a
charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and
rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of
death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the
parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become
creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to
get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up
to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and
thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the
enemy's direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a
man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and
the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the
vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the
V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252)
are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the
concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow
part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers
tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone,
mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The
tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion
shell and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into
immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
We passed through the lane made by the shell and flopped flat to earth
on the other side when a German star-shell came across to inspect us.
The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires
stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of
dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that passed
through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark
had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the
threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild
fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout (p. 253)
across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the
shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that
intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a
violent hand; this in full view of the enemy's trench in a light that
illumined the place like a sun.
"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoarsely.
"Well, blimey, that's a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What 'ave
I done, splunk on a dead 'un I flopped, a stinking corpse. 'E was
'uggin' me, kissin' me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff 'un," said Bill,
addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes,
striped with red and deep in the grass. "Talk about rotten eggs
burstin' on your jor; they're not in it."
The light of the star-shell waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to
Bill.
"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you're giving the whole damned
show away," the Corporal said. "If you're spotted it's all up with
us."
We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat
on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months
before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and got (p. 254)
about half way across the field. There they stopped, mown down by
rifle and machine gun fire and they lie there still, little bundles of
wasting flesh in the midst of the poppies. When the star-shells went
up I could see a face near me, a young face clean-shaven and very pale
under a wealth of curly hair. It was the face of a mere boy, the eyes
were closed as if the youth were only asleep. It looked as if the
effacing finger of decay had forborne from working its will on the
helpless thing. His hand still gripped the rifle, and the long bayonet
on the standard shone when the light played upon it. It seemed as if
he fell quietly to the ground, dead. Others, I could see, had died a
death of agony; they lay there in distorted postures, some with faces
battered out of recognition, others with their hands full of grass and
clay as if they had torn up the earth in their mad, final frenzy. Not
a nice bed to lie in during a night out on listening patrol.[4]
[Footnote 4: The London Irish charged over this
ground later, and entered Loos on Saturday, 25th
September, 1915.]
The Engineers were now at work just behind us, I could see their dark
forms flitting amongst the posts, straightening the old ones, (p. 255)
driving in fresh supports and pulling the wires taut. They worked as
quietly as possible, but to our ears, tensely strained, the noise of
labour came like the rumble of artillery. The enemy must surely hear
the sound. Doubtless he did, but probably his own working parties were
busy just as ours were. In front when one of our star-shells went
across I fancied that I could see dark forms standing motionless by
the German trench. Perhaps my eyes played me false, the objects might
be tree-trunks trimmed down by shell fire....
The message came out from our trench and the Corporal passed it along
his party. "On the right a party of the --th London are working." This
was to prevent us mistaking them for Germans. All night long
operations are carried on between the lines, if daylight suddenly shot
out about one in the morning what a scene would unfold itself in No
Man's Land; listening patrols marching along, Engineers busy with the
wires, sanitary squads burying the dead and covering parties keeping
watch over all the workers.
"Halt! who goes there?"
The order loud and distinct came from the vicinity of the German (p. 256)
trench, then followed a mumbled reply and afterwards a scuffle, a
sound as of steel clashing in steel, and then subdued laughter. What
had happened? Next day we heard that a sergeant and three men of the
--th were out on patrol and went too near the enemy's lines. Suddenly
they were confronted by several dark forms with fixed bayonets and the
usual sentry's challenge was yelled out in English. Believing that he
had fallen across one of his own outposts, the unsuspecting sergeant
gave the password for the night, approached those who challenged him
and was immediately made prisoner. Two others met with the same fate,
but one who had been lagging at the rear got away and managed to get
back to his own lines. Many strange things happen between the lines at
night; working parties have no love for the place and hundreds get
killed there.
The slightest tinge of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back
over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the
conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin
at dawn.
We go out often as working parties or listening patrols.
From Souchez to Ypres the firing line runs through a land of (p. 257)
stinking drains, level fields, and shattered villages. We know those
villages, we have lived in them, we have been sniped at in their
streets and shelled in the houses. We have had men killed in them,
blown to atoms or buried in masonry, done to death by some damnable
instrument of war.
In our trenches near Souchez you can see the eternal artillery
fighting on the hills of Lorette, up there men are flicked out of
existence like flies in a hailstorm. The big straight road out of a
village runs through our lines into the German trenches and beyond.
The road is lined with poplars and green with grass; by day you can
see the German sandbags from our trenches, by night you can hear the
wind in the trees that bend towards one another as if in conversation.
There is no whole house in the place; chimneys have been blown down
and roofs are battered by shrapnel. But few of the people have gone
away, they have become schooled in the process of accommodation, and
accommodate themselves to a woeful change. They live with one foot on
the top step of the cellar stairs, a shell sends them scampering down;
they sleep there, they eat there, in their underground home they (p. 258)
wait for the war to end. The men who are too old to fight labour in a
neighbouring mine, which still does some work although its chimney is
shattered and its coal waggons are scraps of wood and iron on broken
rails. There are many graves by the church, graves of our boys,
civilians' graves, children's graves, all victims of war. Children are
there still, merry little kids with red lips and laughing eyes.
One day, when staying in the village, I met one, a dainty little dot,
with golden hair and laughing eyes, a pink ribbon round a tress that
hung roguishly over her left cheek. She smiled at me as she passed
where I sat on the roadside under the poplars, her face was an angel's
set in a disarray of gold. In her hand she carried an empty jug,
almost as big as herself and she was going to her home, one of the
inhabited houses nearest the fighting line. The day had been a very
quiet one and the village took an opportunity to bask in the sun. I
watched her go up the road tripping lightly on the grass, swinging her
big jug. Life was a garland of flowers for her, it was good to watch
her to see her trip along; the sight made me happy. What caused the
German gunner, a simple woodman and a father himself perhaps, (p. 259)
to fire at that moment? What demon guided the shell? Who can say? The
shell dropped on the roadway just where the child was; I saw the
explosion and dropped flat to avoid the splinters, when I looked again
there was no child, no jug, where she had been was a heap of stones on
the grass and dark curls of smoke rising up from it. I hastened
indoors; the enemy were shelling the village again.
Our billet is a village with shell-scarred trees lining its streets,
and grass peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing
and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French
by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets
saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the
village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the
cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking
up over the bricks; the grass has been busy in its endeavour to cloak
up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages
of war.
In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have
seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260)
the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning
after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for
halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a
dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette,
salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of _café au lait_ for fifteen
sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum
of ten francs on pay day.
In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a
cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
That night the roof of the house was blown in by a shell. In the same
place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young
Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a
shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with
us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of
comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door
and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in
the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy
connected with it.
In some places the enemy's bullets search the main street by night (p. 261)
and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the
open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our
boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety
in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely
trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your
keeping.
No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman
there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the
colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the
pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church
was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The
woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None
of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that
she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.
We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a
cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the
great mother, was busy; the butterflies flitted over the soldiers' (p. 262)
graves, the grass grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to be
sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom
which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the
whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the
morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a
jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs,
holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog
dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones
showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if
the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our
laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and
sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by
the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:--
Here lies a dog as dead as dead,
A Sniper's bullet through its head,
Untroubled now by shots and shells,
It rots and can do nothing else.
The village where I write this is shelled daily, yesterday three men,
two women and two children, all civilians, were killed. The (p. 263)
natives have become almost indifferent to shell-fire.
In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange
things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.