[4] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters from
original sources.
"GRAPES OF WRATH"--WITH THE "BIG PUSH" ON THE SOMME
_Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Private Soldier_
_Told by Boyd Cable, an English Author in the British Army_
Boyd Cable has suddenly become one of the foremost word painters
of active fighting--"the greatest literary discovery of the War."
He is primarily a man of action. At the age of twenty, he joined a
corps of Scouts in the Boer War and fought in South Africa. He then
became a traveler and spent some time in Australia and New Zealand,
in the Philippines, Java and the Islands of the Pacific. He is a
"knight of adventure"--he has been an ordinary seaman, a typewriter
agent, a steamer fireman, office manager, hobo, gold prospector,
coach driver, navvy. He was one of the first men not in the Regular
Army to get a commission and be sent to the front in 1914. As an
observation officer in the artillery, he was "spotted" by the enemy
sharpshooters, got a bullet through his cap, one through the inside
of his sleeve close to his heart, and fifty-three others near
enough for him to hear them pass--all in less than an hour. After
eighteen months of this death-defying work without even a wound,
he was invalided home on account of stomach trouble and then began
to write of his adventures. His books, "Behind the Line," "Action
Front," and "Doing Their Bit," are acknowledged to be the most
vivid and stimulating pictures of the War as seen by the men in the
trenches. We here record his story of the tanks from his volume of
tales entitled "Grapes of Wrath," by permission of his publishers,
_E. P. Dutton and Company_: Copyright 1917.
[5] I--STORY OF "KENTUCKY"--AN AMERICAN IN THE BRITISH TRENCHES
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 horseshoe
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 horseshoe. 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.