Out of the monotonous narratives of trench-warfare, stories more
horrible than the nightmare phantasies of Edgar Allan Poe, stories
of men buried alive by sapping and mining, and of men torn to bits by
a subterranean explosion which leaves one man alive amidst the litter
of his comrades' limbs so that he goes mad and laughs at the frightful
humour of death, come now and then to reveal the meaning of this modern
warfare which is hidden by censors behind decent veils. It is a French
lieutenant who tells this story, which is heroic as well as horrid:
"We were about to tidy up a captured trench. At the barrier of sand
bags which closed up one end of it, two sentinels kept a sharp lookout
so that we could work in peace of mind. Suddenly from a tunnel, hidden
by a fold in the ground, an avalanche of bombs was hurled over our
heads, and before we could collect our wits ten of our men had fallen
dead and wounded, all hugger-mugger. I opened my mouth to shout a
word of command when a pebble, knocked by a piece of shell, struck
me on the head, and I fell, quite dazed. But my unconsciousness only
lasted a second or two. A bursting shell tore off my left hand and I
was awakened by the pain of it. When I opened my eyes and groaned, I
saw the Germans jump across the sand-bags and invade the trench. There
were twenty of them. They had no rifles, but each man carried a sort
of wicker basket filled with bombs. I looked round to the left. All
our men had fled except those who were lying in their blood. And the
Germans were coming on. Another slip or two and they would have been on
the top of me. At that moment one of my men, wounded in the forehead,
wounded in the chin, and with his face all in a pulp of blood, sat up,
snatched at a bag of hand grenades, and shouted out:
"'Arise, ye dead!'
"He got on his knees, and began to fling his bombs into the crowd of
Germans. At his call, the other wounded men struggled up. Two with
broken legs grasped their rifles and opened fire. The hero with his
left arm hanging limp, grabbed a bayonet. When I stood up, with all
my senses about me now, some of the Germans were wounded and others
were scrambling out of the trench in a panic. But with his back to
the sand-bags stayed a German _Unteroffizier_, enormous, sweating,
apoplectic with rage, who fired two revolver shots in our direction.
The man who had first organized the defense of the trench--the hero of
that 'Arise, ye dead!'--received a shot full in the throat and fell.
But the man who held the bayonet and who had dragged himself from
corpse to corpse, staggered up at four feet from the sand-bags, missed
death from two shots, and plunged his weapon into the German's throat.
The position was saved, and it was as though the dead had really risen."