I
An Observation Post--or "O Pip," in the mysterious _patois_ of the
Buzzers--is not exactly the spot that one would select either for
spaciousness or accessibility. It may be situated up a chimney or up a
tree, or down a tunnel bored through a hill. But it certainly enables
you to see something of your enemy; and that, in modern warfare, is a
very rare and valuable privilege.
Of late the scene-painter's art--technically known as
_camouflage_--has raised the concealment of batteries and their
observation posts to the realm of the uncanny. According to Major
Wagstaffe, you can now disguise anybody as anything. For instance, you
can make up a battery of six-inch guns to look like a flock of sheep,
and herd them into action browsing. Or you can despatch a scouting
party across No Man's Land dressed up as pillar-boxes, so that the
deluded Hun, instead of opening fire with a machine-gun, will merely
post letters in them--valuable letters, containing military secrets.
Lastly, and more important still, you can disguise yourself to look
like nothing at all, and in these days of intensified artillery fire
it is very seldom that nothing at all is hit.
The particular O Pip with which we are concerned at present, however,
is a German post--or was a fortnight ago, before the opening of the
Battle of the Somme.
For nearly two years the British Armies on the Western Front have been
playing for time. They have been sticking their toes in and holding
their ground, with numerically inferior forces and inadequate
artillery support, against a nation in arms which has set out, with
forty years of preparation at its back, to sweep the earth. We have
held them, and now _der Tag_ has come for us. The deal has passed
into our hand at last. A fortnight ago, ready for the first time to
undertake the offensive on a grand and prolonged scale,--Loos was a
mere reconnaissance compared with this,--the New British Army went
over the parapet shoulder to shoulder with the most heroic Army in the
world--the Army of France--and attacked over a sixteen-mile front in
the Valley of the Somme.
It was a critical day for the Allies: certainly it was a most critical
day in the history of the British Army. For on that day an answer
had to be given to a very big question indeed. Hitherto we had been
fighting on the defensive--unready, uphill, against odds. It would
have been no particular discredit to us had we failed to hold our
line. But we had held it, and more. Now, at last, we were ready--as
ready as we were ever likely to be. We had the men, the guns, and the
munitions. We were in a position to engage the enemy on equal, and
more than equal, terms. And the question that the British Empire had
to answer in that day, the First of July 1916, was this: "Are these
new amateur armies of ours, raised, trained, and equipped in less than
two years, with nothing in the way of military tradition to uphold
them--nothing but the steady courage of their race: are they a match
for, and more than a match for, that grim machine-made, iron-bound
host that lies waiting for them along that line of Picardy hills?
Because if they are _not_, we cannot win this war. We can only make a
stalemate of it."
We, looking back now over a space of twelve months, know how our boys
answered that question. In the greatest and longest battle that the
world had yet seen, that Army of city clerks, Midland farm-lads,
Lancashire mill-hands, Scottish miners, and Irish corner-boys, side
by side with their great-hearted brethren from Overseas, stormed
positions which had been held impregnable for two years, captured
seventy thousand prisoners, reclaimed several hundred square miles
of the sacred soil of France, and smashed once and for all the
German-fostered fable of the invincibility of the German Army. It was
good to have lived and suffered during those early and lean years, if
only to be present at their fulfilment.
But at this moment the battle was only beginning, and the bulk of
their astounding achievement was still to come. Nevertheless, in the
cautious and modest estimate of their Commander-in-Chief, they had
already done something.
_After ten days and nights of continuous fighting_, said the first
official report, _our troops have completed the methodical capture
of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of
fourteen thousand yards. This system of defence consisted of numerous
and continuous lines of fire trenches, extending to depths of from two
thousand to four thousand yards, and included five strongly fortified
villages, numerous heavily entrenched woods, and a large number of
immensely strong redoubts. The capture of each of these trenches
represented an operation of some importance, and the whole of them are
now in our hands_.
Quite so. One feels, somehow, that Berlin would have got more out of
such a theme.
* * * * *
Now let us get back to our O Pip. If you peep over the shoulder of
Captain Leslie, the gunner observing officer, as he directs the fire
of his battery, situated some thousands of yards in rear, through
the medium of map, field-glass, and telephone, you will obtain an
excellent view of to-morrow's field of battle. Present in the O Pip
are Colonel Kemp, Wagstaffe, Bobby Little, and Angus M'Lachlan. The
latter had been included in the party because, to quote his Commanding
Officer, "he would have burst into tears if he had been left out."
Overhead roared British shells of every kind and degree of
unpleasantness, for the ground in front was being "prepared" for the
coming assault. The undulating landscape, running up to a low ridge
on the skyline four miles away, was spouting smoke in all
directions--sometimes black, sometimes green, and sometimes, where
bursting shell and brick-dust intermingled, blood-red. Beyond the
ridge all-conquering British aeroplanes occupied the firmament,
observing for "mother" and "granny" and signalling encouragement or
reproof to these ponderous but sprightly relatives as their shells hit
or missed the target.
"Yes, sir," replied Leslie to Colonel Kemp's question, "that is
Longueval, on the slope opposite, with the road running through on the
way to Flers, over the skyline. That is Delville Wood on its right. As
you see, the guns are concentrating on both places. That is Waterlot
Farm, on this side of the wood--a sugar refinery. Regular nest of
machine-guns there, I'm told."
"No doubt we shall be able to confirm the rumour to-morrow," said
Colonel Kemp drily. "That is Bernafay Wood on our right, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir. We hold the whole of that. The pear-shaped wood out beyond
it--it looks as if it were joined on, but the two are quite separate
really--is Trones Wood. It has changed hands several times. Just at
present I don't think we hold more than the near end. Further away,
half-right, you can see Guillemont."
"In that case," remarked Wagstaffe, "our right flank would appear to
be strongly supported by the enemy."
"Yes. We are in a sort of right-angled salient here. We have the enemy
on our front and our right. In fact, we form the extreme right of the
attacking front. Our left is perfectly secure, as we now hold Mametz
Wood and Contalmaison. There they are." He waved his glass to the
northwest. "When the attack takes place, I understand that our Division
will go straight ahead, for Longueval and Delville Wood, while the next
Division makes a lateral thrust out to the right, to push the Boche out
of Trones Wood and cover our flank."
"I believe that is so," said the Colonel. "Bobby, take a good look
at the approaches to Longueval. That is the scene of to-morrow's
constitutional."
Bobby and Angus obediently scanned the village through their glasses.
Probably they did not learn much. One bombarded French village is
very like another bombarded French village. A cowering assemblage
of battered little houses; a pitiful little main street, with its
eviscerated shops and _estaminets_; a shattered church-spire. Beyond
that, an enclosure of splintered stumps that was once an orchard.
Below all, cellars, reinforced with props and sandbags, and filled
with machine-guns. _Voilà tout_!
Presently the Gunner Captain passed word down to the telephone
operator to order the battery to cease fire.
"Knocking off?" inquired Wagstaffe.
"For the present, yes. We are only registering this morning. Not all
our batteries are going at once, either. We don't want Brother Boche
to know our strength until we tune up for the final chorus. We
calculate that--"
"There is a comfortable sense of decency and order about the way we
fight nowadays," said Colonel Kemp. "It is like working out a problem
in electrical resistance by a nice convenient algebraical formula.
Very different from the state of things last year, when we stuck it
out by employing rule of thumb and hanging on by our eyebrows."
"The only problem we can't quite formulate is the machine-gun," said
Leslie. The Boche's dug-outs here are thirty feet deep. When
crumped by our artillery he withdraws his infantry and leaves his
machine-gunners behind, safe underground. Then, when our guns lift
and the attack comes over, his machine-gunners appear on the surface,
hoist their guns after them with a sort of tackle arrangement, and get
to work on a prearranged band of fire. The infantry can't do them in
until No Man's Land is crossed, and--well, they don't all get across,
that's all! However, _I have_ heard rumours--"
"So have we all," said Colonel Kemp.
"I forgot to tell you, Colonel," interposed Wagstaffe, "that I met
young Osborne at Divisional Headquarters last night. You remember, he
left us some time ago to join the Hush! Hush! Brigade."
"I remember," said the Colonel.
By this time the party, including the Gunner Captain, were filing
along a communication trench, lately the property of some German
gentlemen, on their way back to headquarters.
"Did he tell you anything, Wagstaffe?" continued Colonel Kemp.
"Not much. Apparently the time of the H.H.B. is not yet. But he made
an appointment with me for this evening--in the gloaming, so to speak.
He is sending a car. If all he says is true, the Boche _Emma Gee_ is
booked for an eye-opener in a few weeks' time."