The Canadians were not the only men to go out raiding. It became part
of the routine of war, that quick killing in the night, for English and
Scottish and Irish and Welsh troops, and some had luck with it, and some
men liked it, and to others it was a horror which they had to do,
and always it was a fluky, nervy job, when any accident might lead to
tragedy.
I remember one such raid by the 12th West Yorks in January of '15, which
was typical of many others, before raids developed into minor battles,
with all the guns at work.
There were four lieutenants who drew up the plan and called for
volunteers, and it was one of these who went out first and alone to
reconnoiter the ground and to find the best way through the German
barbed wire. He just slipped out over the parapet and disappeared into
the darkness. When he came back he had a wound in the wrist--it was just
the bad luck of a chance bullet--but brought in valuable knowledge. He
had found a gap in the enemy's wire which would give an open door to
the party of visitors. He had also tested the wire farther along, and
thought it could be cut without much bother.
“Good enough!” was the verdict, and a detachment started out for No
Man's Land, divided into two parties.
The enemy trenches were about one hundred yards away, which seems a
mile in the darkness and the loneliness of the dead ground. At regular
intervals the German rockets flared up so that the hedges and wire
and parapets along their line were cut out ink-black against the white
illumination, and the two patrols of Yorkshiremen who had been crawling
forward stopped and crouched lower and felt themselves revealed, and
then when darkness hid them again went on.
The party on the left were now close to the German wire and under the
shelter of a hedge. They felt their way along until the two subalterns
who were leading came to the gap which had been reported by the first
explorer. They listened intently and heard the German sentry stamping
his feet and pacing up and down. Presently he began to whistle softly,
utterly unconscious of the men so close to him--so close now that any
stumble, any clatter of arms, any word spoken, would betray them.
The two lieutenants had their revolvers ready and crept forward to the
parapet. The men had to act according to instinct now, for no order
could be given, and one of them found his instinct led him to clamber
right into the German trench a few yards away from the sentry, but on
the other side of the traverse. He had not been there long, holding his
breath and crouching like a wolf, before footsteps came toward him and
he saw the glint of a cigarette.
It was a German officer going his round. The Yorkshire boy sprang on to
the parapet again, and lay across it with his head toward our lines
and his legs dangling in the German trench. The German officer's cloak
brushed his heels, but the boy twisted round a little and stared at him
as he passed. But he passed, and presently the sentry began to whistle
again, some old German tune which cheered him in his loneliness. He
knew nothing of the eyes watching him through the darkness nor of his
nearness to death.
It was the first lieutenant who tried to shoot him. But the revolver was
muddy and would not fire. Perhaps a click disturbed the sentry. Anyhow,
the moment had come for quick work. It was the sergeant who sprang upon
him, down from the parapet with one pounce. A frightful shriek, with the
shrill agony of a boy's voice, wailed through the silence. The sergeant
had his hand about the German boy's throat and tried to strangle him and
to stop another dreadful cry.
The second officer made haste. He thrust his revolver close to the
struggling sentry and shot him dead, through the neck, just as he was
falling limp from a blow on the head given by the butt-end of the weapon
which had failed to fire. The bullet did its work, though it passed
through the sergeant's hand, which had still held the man by the throat.
The alarm had been raised and German soldiers were running to the
rescue.
“Quick!” said one of the officers.
There was a wild scramble over the parapet, a drop into the wet ditch,
and a race for home over No Man's Land, which was white under the German
flares and noisy with the waspish note of bullets.
The other party were longer away and had greater trouble to find a way
through, but they, too, got home, with one officer badly wounded, and
wonderful luck to escape so lightly. The enemy suffered from “the jumps”
for several nights afterward, and threw bombs into their own barbed
wire, as though the English were out there again. And at the sound of
those bombs the West Yorks laughed all along their trenches.