'_Near Blank, on the Dash-Dot front, a section of advanced trench
changed hands several times, finally remaining in our possession._'
For perhaps the twentieth time in half an hour the look-out man in the
advanced trench raised his head cautiously over the parapet and peered
out into the darkness. A drizzling rain made it almost impossible to
see beyond a few yards ahead, but then the German trench was not more
than fifty yards off and the space between was criss-crossed and
interlaced and a-bristle with the tangle of barb-wire defences erected
by both sides. For the twentieth time the look-out peered and twisted
his head sideways to listen, and for the twentieth time he was just
lowering his head beneath the sheltering parapet when he stopped and
stiffened into rigidity. There was no sound apart from the sharp
cracks of the rifles near at hand and running diminuendo along the
trenches into a rising and falling stutter of reports, the frequent
whine and whistle of the more distant bullets, and the quick hiss and
'zipp' of the nearer ones, all sounds so constant and normal that the
look-out paid no heed to them, put them, as it were, out of the focus
of his hearing, and strained to catch the fainter but far more
significant sound of a footstep squelching in the mud, the 'snip' of a
wire-cutter at work, the low 'tang' of a jarred wire.
A few hundred yards down the line, a dazzling light sprang out, hung
suspended, and slowly floated down, glowing nebulous in the misty rain,
and throwing a soft radiance and dusky shadows and gleaming lines of
silver along the parapets and wire entanglements.
Intent, the look-out stared to his front for a moment, flung muzzle
over the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at one
of the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire.
The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped out
the catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast as
fingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of the
discharge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, set
teeth, and scowling eyes. There was a pause and stillness for the
space of a couple of quick-drawn breaths, and then--pandemonium!
The forward trench flamed and blazed with spouts of rifle-fire, its
slightly curved length clearly defined from end to end by the spitting
flashes. Verey lights and magnesium flares turned the darkness to
ghastly vivid light, the fierce red and orange of bursting bombs and
grenades threw splashes of angry colour on the glistening wet parapets,
the flat khaki caps of the British, the dark overcoats of the Germans
struggling and hacking in the barb-wires. The eye was confused with
the medley of leaping lights and shadows; the ear was dazed with the
clamour and uproar of cracking rifles, screaming bullets, and
shattering bombs, the oaths and yells, the shouted orders, the groans
and outcries of the wounded. Then from overhead came a savage rush and
shriek, a flash of light that showed vivid even amidst the confusion of
light, a harder, more vicious crash than all the other crashing
reports, and the shrapnel ripped down along the line of the German
trench that erupted struggling, hurrying knots of men.
A call from the trench telephone, or the sound of the burst of bomb and
rifle fire, had brought the gunners on the jump for their loaded
pieces, and once more the guns were taking a hand. Shell after shell
roared up overhead and lashed the ground with shrapnel, and for a
moment the attack flinched and hung back and swayed uncertainly under
the cruel hail. For a moment only, and then it surged on again,
seethed and eddied in agitated whirlpools amongst the stakes and
strands of the torturing wires, came on again, and with a roar of hate
and frenzied triumph leaped at the low parapet. The parapet flamed and
roared again in gusts of rapid fire, and the front ranks of the
attackers withered and went down in struggling heaps before it. But
the ranks behind came on fiercely and poured in over the trench; the
lights flickered and danced on plunging bayonets and polished butts;
the savage voices of the killing machines were drowned in the more
savage clamour of the human fighter, and then . . . comparative silence
fell on the trench.
The attack had succeeded, the Germans were in and, save for one little
knot of men who had escaped at the last minute, the defenders were
killed, wounded, or taken prisoners. The captured trench was shaped
like the curve of a tall, thin capital D, a short communication trench
leading in to either end from the main firing trench that formed the
back of the D and a prolongation outwards from it. The curve was in
German hands, but no sooner was this certain than the main trench
sprang to angry life. The Germans in the captured curve worked in a
desperation of haste, pulling sandbags from what had been the face of
the trench and heaving them into place to make a breastwork on the new
front, while reinforcements rushed across from the German side and
opened fire at the main British trench a score of yards away.
Then, before the gasping takers of the trench could clear the dead and
wounded from under their feet, before they could refill their emptied
magazines, or settle themselves to new footholds and elbow-rests, the
British counter-attack was launched. It was ushered in by a shattering
burst of shrapnel. The word had passed to the gunners, careful and
minute adjustments had been made, the muzzles had swung round a
fraction, and then, suddenly and quick as the men could fling in a
round, slam the breech and pull the firing lever, shell after shell had
leapt roaring on their way to sweep the trench that had been British,
but now was enemy. For ten or fifteen seconds the shrapnel hailed
fiercely on the cowering trench; then, at another word down the
telephone, the fire shut off abruptly, to re-open almost immediately
further forward over the main German trenches.
From the main British trench an officer leaped, another and another
heaved themselves over the parapet, and in an instant the long, level
edge of the trench was crowded with scrambling, struggling men. With a
hoarse yell they flung themselves forward, and the lost trench spouted
a whirlwind of fire and lead to meet their rush. But the German
defenders had no fair chance of resistance. Their new parapet was not
half formed and offered no protection to the stream of bullets that
sleeted in on them from rifles and maxims on their flanks. The
charging British infantry carried hand grenades and bombs and flung
them ahead of them as they ran, and, finally, there was no thicket of
barb-wire to check the swing and impetus of the rush. The trench was
reached, and again the clamour of voices raised in fear and pain, the
hoarse rancour of hate, the shrill agony of death, rose high on the
sounds of battle. The rush swept up on the trench, engulfed it as a
wave engulfs the cleft on a rock beach, boiled and eddied about it, and
then . . . and then . . . swept roaring over it, and on. The
counter-attack had succeeded, and the victors were pushing their
advantage home in an attack on the main German trench. The remnants of
the German defenders were swept back, fighting hopelessly but none the
less fiercely. Supports poured out to their assistance, and for a full
five minutes the fight raged and swayed in the open between the
trenches and among the wire entanglements. The men who fell were
trampled, squirming, underfoot in the bloody mire and mud; the fighters
stabbed and hacked and struck at short arm-length, fell even to using
fists and fingers when the press was too close for weapon play and
swing.
But the attack died out at last without the German entanglements being
passed or their earthwork being reached. Here and there an odd man had
scrambled and torn a way through the wire, only to fall on or before
the parapet. Others hung limp or writhing feebly to free themselves
from the clutching hooks of the wire. Both sides withdrew, panting and
nursing their dripping wounds, to the shelter of their trenches, and
both left their dead sprawled in the trampled ooze or stayed to help
their wounded crawling painfully back to cover. Immediately the
British set about rebuilding their shattered trench and parapet; but
before they had well begun the spades had to be flung down again and
the rifles snatched to repel another fierce assault. This time a storm
of bombs, hand grenades, rifle grenades, and every other fiendish
device of high-explosives, preceded the attack. The trench was racked
and rent and torn, sections were solidly blown in, and other sections
were flung out bodily in yawning crevasses and craters. From end to
end the line was wrapped in billowing clouds of reeking smoke, and
starred with bursts of fire. The defenders flattened themselves close
against the forward parapet that shook and trembled beneath them like a
live thing under the rending blasts. The rifles still cracked up and
down the line; but, in the main, the soaking, clay-smeared men held
still and hung on, grimly waiting and saving their full magazines for
the rush they knew would follow. It came at last, and the men breathed
a sigh of relief at the escape it meant from the rain of
high-explosives. It was their turn now, and the roar of their
rifle-fire rang out and the bomb-throwers raised themselves to hurl
their carefully-saved missiles on the advancing mass. The mass reeled
and split and melted under the fire, but fresh troops were behind and
pushing it on, and once more it flooded in on the trench. . . .
Again the British trench had become German, although here and there
throughout its length knots of men still fought on, unheeding how the
fight had gone elsewhere in the line, and intent solely on their own
little circle of slaughter.
But this time the German success was hardly made before it was blotted
out. The British supports had been pushed up to the disputed point,
and as the remnants of the last defenders straggled back they met the
fierce rush of the new and fresh force.
This time it was quicker work. The trench by now was shattered and
wrecked out of all real semblance to a defensive work. The edge of the
new attack swirled up to it, lipped over and fell bodily into it. For
a bare minute the defence fought, but it was overborne and wiped out in
that time. The British flung in on top of the defenders like terriers
into a rat-pit, and the fighters snarled and worried and scuffled and
clutched and tore at each other more like savage brutes than men. The
defence was not broken or driven out--it was killed out; and lunging
bayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried to
struggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. Hard on the
heels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running and
staggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders. As
the front of the attack passed on over the wrecked trench and pressed
the Germans back across the open, the sandbags were flung down and
heaped scientifically in the criss-cross of a fresh breastwork. Other
men, laden with coils of wire and stakes and hammers, ran out in front
and fell to work erecting a fresh entanglement. In five minutes or
ten--for minutes are hard to count and tally at such a time and in such
work--the new defence was complete, and the fighters in the open ran
back and leapt over into cover.
Once more a steady crackle of rifle-fire ran quivering up and down the
line, and from their own trenches the Germans could see, in the light
of the flares, a new breastwork facing them, a new entanglement waiting
to trap them, a steady stream of fire spitting and sparkling along the
line. They could see, too, the heaped dead between the lines, and in
their own thinned ranks make some reckoning of the cost of their
attempt.
The attempt was over. There were a few score dead lying in ones and
twos and little clumped heaps in the black mud; the disputed trench was
a reeking shambles of dead and wounded; the turn of the
stretcher-bearers and the Red Cross workers had come. There would be
another column to add to the Casualty Lists presently, and another
bundle of telegrams to be despatched to the 'Next of Kin.'
And to-morrow the official despatch would mention the matter coldly and
tersely; and the papers would repeat it; and a million eyes would read
with little understanding . . . 'changed hands several times, finally
remaining in our possession.'