I
It is just one year to-day since we "came oot." A year plays havoc
with the "establishment" of a battalion in these days of civilised
warfare. Of the original band of stout-hearted but inexperienced
Crusaders who crossed the Channel in the van of The First Hundred
Thousand, in May, 1915,--a regiment close on a thousand strong, with
twenty-eight officers,--barely two hundred remain, and most of these
are Headquarters or Transport men. Of officers there are five--Colonel
Kemp, Major Wagstaffe, Master Cockerell, Bobby Little, and Mr.
Waddell, who, by the way, is now Captain Waddell, having succeeded to
the command of his old Company.
Of the rest, our old Colonel is in Scotland, essaying ambitious
pedestrian and equestrian feats upon his new leg. Others have been
drafted to the command of newer units, for every member of "K(1)" is
a Nestor now. Others are home, in various stages of convalescence.
Others, alas! will never go home again. But the gaps have all been
filled up, and once more we are at full strength, comfortably
conscious that whereas a year ago we were fighting to hold a line, and
play for time, and find our feet, while the people at home behind us
were making good, now we are fighting for one thing and one thing
only; and that is, to administer the knock-out blow to Brother Boche.
Our last casualty was Ayling, who left us under somewhat unusual
circumstances.
Towards the end of our last occupancy of trenches the local Olympus
decided that what both sides required, in order to awaken them from
their winter lethargy, or spring lassitude (or whatever it is that
Olympus considers that we in the firing-line are suffering from for
the moment), was a tonic. Accordingly orders were issued for a Flying
Matinée, or trench raid. Each battalion in the Division was to submit
a scheme, and the battalion whose scheme was adjudged the best was
to be accorded the honour--so said the Practical Joke Department--of
carrying out the scheme in person. To the modified rapture of the
Seventh Hairy Jocks their plan was awarded first prize. Headquarters,
after a little excusable recrimination on the subject of unnecessary
zeal and misguided ambition, set to work to arrange rehearsals of our
highly unpopular production.
Brother Boche has grown "wise" to Flying Matinées nowadays, and
to score a real success you have to present him with something
comparatively novel and unexpected. However, our scheme had been
carefully thought out; and, given sufficient preparation, and an
adequate cast, there seemed no reason to doubt that the piece would
have a highly successful run of one night.
At one point in the enemy's trenches opposite to us his barbed-wire
defences had worn very thin, and steps were taken by means of
systematic machine-gun fire to prevent him repairing them. This spot
was selected for the raid. A party of twenty-five was detailed. It was
to be led by Angus M'Lachlan, and was to slip over the parapet on a
given moonless night, crawl across No Man's Land to within striking
distance of the German trench, and wait. At a given moment the signal
for attack would be given, and the wire demolished by a means which
need not be specified here. Thereupon the raiding party were to dash
forward and--to quote the Sergeant-Major--"mix themselves up in it."
Two elements are indispensable in a successful trench-raid--surprise
and despatch. That is to say, you must deliver your raid when and
where it is least expected, and then get home to bed before your
victims have had time to set the machinery of retaliation in motion.
Steps were therefore taken, firstly, to divert the enemy's attention
as far as possible from the true objective of the raid, by a sudden
and furious bombardment of a sector of trenches three hundred yards
away; and secondly, to ensure as far as possible, that the raid,
having commenced at 2 A.M., should conclude at 2.12, sharp.
In order to cover the retirement of the excursionists, Ayling was
ordered to arrange for machine-gun fire, which should sweep the
enemy's parapet for some hundreds of yards upon either flank, and so
encourage the enemy to keep his head down and mind his own business.
The raid itself was a brilliant success. Dug-outs were bombed,
emplacements destroyed, and a respectable bag of captives brought
over. But the element of surprise, upon which so much insistence was
laid above, was visited upon both attackers and attacked. To the
former the contribution came from that well-meaning but somewhat
addlepated warrior, Private Nigg, who formed one of the raiding party.
Nigg's allotted task upon this occasion was to "comb out" certain
German dug-outs. (It may be mentioned that each man had a specific
duty to perform, and a specific portion of the trench opposite to
perform it in; for the raid had been rehearsed several times in a
dummy trench behind the lines constructed exactly to scale from an
aeroplane photograph.) For this purpose he was provided with bombs.
Shortly before two o'clock in the morning the party, headed by Angus
M'Lachlan, crawled over the parapet during a brief lull in the
activities of the Verey lights, and crept steadily, on hands and
knees, across No Man's Land. Fifty yards from the enemy's wire was a
collection of shell-holes, relics of a burst of misdirected energy on
the part of a six-inch battery. Here the raiders disposed themselves,
and waited for the signal.
Now, it is an undoubted fact, that if you curl yourself up, with two
or three preliminary twirls, after the fashion of a dog going to bed,
in a perfectly circular shell-hole, on a night as black as the inside
of the dog in question, you are extremely likely to lose your sense of
direction. This is what happened to Private Nigg. He and his infernal
machines lay uneasily in their appointed shell-hole for some ten
minutes, surrounded by Verey lights which shot suddenly into the sky
with a disconcerting _plop_, described a graceful parabola, burst into
dazzling flame, and fluttered sizzling down. One or two of these fell
quite near Nigg's party, and continued to burn upon the ground, but
the raiders sank closer into their shell-holes, and no alarm resulted.
Once or twice a machine-gun had a scolding fit, and bullets whispered
overhead. But, on the whole, the night was quiet.
Then suddenly, with a shattering roar, the feint-artillery bombardment
broke forth. Simultaneously word was passed along the raiding line to
stand by. Next moment Angus M'Lachlan and his followers rose to their
feet in the black darkness, scrambled out of their nests, and dashed
forward to the accomplishment of their mission.
When Nigg, who had paused a moment to collect his bombs, sprang out of
his shell-hole, not a colleague was in sight. At least, Nigg could
see no one. However, want of courage was not one of his failings. He
bounded blindly forward by himself.
Try as he would he could not overtake the raiding party. However, this
mattered little, for suddenly a parapet loomed before him. In
this same parapet, low down, Nigg beheld a black and gaping
aperture--plainly a loophole of some kind.
Without a moment's hesitation, Nigg hurled a Mills grenade straight
through the loophole, and then with one wild screech of "Come away,
boys!" took a flying leap over the parapet--and landed in his own
trench, in the arms of Corporal Mucklewame.
As already noted, it is difficult, when lying curled up in a circular
shell-hole in the dark, to maintain a true sense of direction.
So the first-fruits of the raid was Captain Ayling, of the _Emma
Gees_. He had stationed himself in a concrete emplacement in the front
line, the better to "observe" the fire of his guns when it should
be required. Unfortunately this was the destination selected by the
misguided Niggs for his first (and as it proved, last) bomb. The
raiders came safely back in due course, but by that time Ayling,
liberally (but by a miracle not dangerously) ballasted with assorted
scrap-iron, was on his way to the First Aid Post.