UNDER COVER
I. UNSEEN FORCES
"We come acrost the Channel
For to wallop Germany;
But they 'aven't got no soldiers--
Not that any one can see.
They plug us with their rifles
An' they let their shrapnel fly,
But they never takes a pot at us
Exceptin' on the sly.
_Chorus_
"Fritzie w'en you comin' out?
This wot you calls a fight?
You won't never get to Calais
Always keepin' out o' sight.
"We're a goin' back to Blightey--
Wot's the use a-witin' 'ere
Like a lot o' bloomin' mud-larks
Fer old Fritzie to appear?
'E never puts 'is napper up
Above the parapet.
We been in France fer seven months
An' 'aven't seen 'im yet!"
So sang Tommy, the incorrigible parodist, during the long summer days and
nights of 1915, when he was impatiently waiting for something to turn up.
For three months and more we were face to face with an enemy whom we
rarely saw. It was a weird experience. Rifles cracked, bullets zip-zipped
along the top of the parapet, great shells whistled over our heads or
tore immense holes in the trenches, trench-mortar projectiles and
hand-grenades were hurled at us, and yet there was not a living soul to
be seen across the narrow strip of No-Man's-Land, whence all this
murderous rain of steel and lead was coming. Daily we kept careful and
continuous watch, searching the long, curving line of German trenches and
the ground behind them with our periscopes and field-glasses, and nearly
always with the same barren result. We saw only the thin wreaths of smoke
rising, morning and evening, from trench fires; the shattered trees, the
forlorn and silent ruins, the long grass waving in the wind.
Although we were often within two hundred yards of thousands of German
soldiers, rarely farther than four hundred yards away, I did not see one
of them until we had been in the trenches for more than six weeks, and
then only for the interval of a second or two. My German was building up
a piece of damaged parapet. I watched the earth being thrown over the top
of the trench, when suddenly a head appeared, only to be immediately
withdrawn. One of our snipers had evidently been watching, too. A rifle
cracked and I saw a cloud of dust arise where the bullet clipped the top
of the parapet. The German waved his spade defiantly in the air and
continued digging; but he remained discreetly under cover thereafter.
This marked an epoch in my experience in a war of unseen forces. I had
actually beheld a German, although Tommy insisted that it was only the
old caretaker, "the bloke wot keeps the trenches tidy." This mythical
personage, a creature of Tommy's own fancy, assumed a very real
importance during the summer when the attractions at the Western Theater
of War were only mildly interesting. "Carl the caretaker" was supposed to
be a methodical old man whom the Emperor had left in charge of his
trenches on the western front during the absence of the German armies in
Russia. Many were the stories told about him at different parts of the
line. Sometimes he was endowed with a family. His "missus" and his "three
little nippers" were with him, and together they were blocking the way to
Berlin of the entire British Army. Sometimes he was "Hans the Grenadier,"
owing to his fondness for nightly bombing parties. Sometimes he was
"Minnie's husband," Minnie being that redoubtable lady known in polite
military circles as a "Minnenwerfer." As already explained, she was
sausage-like in shape, and frightfully demonstrative. When she went
visiting at the behest of her husband, Tommy usually contrived to be "not
at home," whereupon Minnie wrecked the house and disappeared in a cloud
of dense black smoke.
One imagines all sorts of monstrous things about an unseen enemy. The
strain of constantly watching and seeing nothing became almost unbearable
at times. We were often too far apart to have our early morning
interchange of courtesies, and then the constant _phtt-phtt_ of bullets
annoyed and exasperated us. I for one welcomed any evidence that our
opponents were fathers and husbands and brothers just as we were. I
remember my delight, one fine summer morning, at seeing three great kites
soaring above the German line. There is much to be said for men who enjoy
flying kites. Once they mounted a dummy figure of a man on their parapet.
Tommy had great sport shooting at it, the Germans jiggling its arms and
legs in a most laughable manner whenever a hit was registered. In their
eagerness to "get a good bead" on the figure, the men threw caution to
the winds, and stood on the firing-benches, shooting over the top of the
parapet. Fritz and Hans were true sportsmen while the fun was on, and did
not once fire at us. Then the dummy was taken down, and we returned to
the more serious game of war with the old deadly earnestness. I recall
such incidents with joy as I remember certain happy events in childhood.
We needed these trivial occurrences to keep us sane and human. There were
not many of them, but such as there were, we talked of for days and weeks
afterward.
As for the matter of keeping out of sight, there was a good deal to be
said on both sides. Although Tommy was impatient with his prudent enemy
and sang songs, twitting him about always keeping under cover, he did not
usually forget, in the daytime at least, to make his own observations of
the German line with caution. Telescopic sights have made the business of
sniping an exact science. They magnify the object aimed at many
diameters, and if it remains in view long enough to permit the pulling of
a trigger, the chances of a hit are almost one hundred per cent.
II. "THE BUTT-NOTCHER"
Snipers have a roving commission. They move from one part of the line to
another, sometimes firing from carefully concealed loopholes in the
parapet, sometimes from snipers' nests in trees or hedges. Often they
creep out into the tall grass of No-Man's-Land. There, with a plentiful
supply of food and ammunition, they remain for a day or two at a time,
lying in wait for victims. It was a cold-blooded business, and hateful to
some of the men. With others, the passion for it grew. They kept tally of
their victims by cutting notches on the butts of their rifles.
I well remember the pleasant June day when I first met a "butt-notcher."
I was going for water, to an old farmhouse about half a mile from our
sector of trench. It was a day of bright sunshine. Poppies and buttercups
had taken root in the banks of earth heaped up on either side of the
communication trench. They were nodding their heads as gayly in the
breeze as of old did Wordsworth's daffodils in the quiet countryside at
Rydal Mount. It was a joy to see them there, reminding one that God was
still in his heaven, whatever might be wrong with the world. It was a joy
to be alive, a joy which one could share unselfishly with friend and
enemy alike. The colossal stupidity of war was never more apparent to me
than upon that day. I hated my job, and if I hated any man, it was the
one who had invented the murderous little weapon known as a machine gun.
I longed to get out on top of the ground. I wanted to lie at full length
in the grass; for it was June, and Nature has a way of making one feel
the call of June, even from the bottom of a communication trench seven
feet deep. Flowers and grass peep down at one, and white clouds sail
placidly across
"The strip of blue we prisoners call the sky."
I felt that I must see all of the sky and see it at once. Therefore I set
down my water-cans, one on top of the other, stepped up on them, and was
soon over the top of the trench, crawling through the tall grass toward a
clump of willows about fifty yards away. I passed two lonely graves with
their wooden crosses hidden in depths of shimmering, waving green, and
found an old rifle, its stock weather-warped and the barrel eaten away
with rust. The ground was covered with tin cans, fragments of shell-casing,
and rubbish of all sorts; but it was hidden from view. Men had been
laying waste the earth during the long winter, and now June was healing
the wounds with flowers and cool green grasses.
I was sorry that I went to the willows, for it was there that I found the
sniper. He had a wonderfully concealed position, which was made
bullet-proof with steel plates and sandbags, all covered so naturally
with growing grass and willow bushes that it would have been impossible
to detect it at a distance of ten yards. In fact, I would not have
discovered it had it not been for the loud crack of a rifle sounding so
close at hand. I crept on to investigate and found the sniper looking
quite disappointed.
"Missed the blighter!" he said. Then he told me that it wasn't a good
place for a sniper's nest at all. For one thing, it was too far back,
nearly a half-mile from the German trenches. Furthermore, it was a
mistake to plant a nest in a solitary clump of willows such as this: a
clump of trees offers too good an aiming mark for artillery: much better
to make a position right out in the open. However, so far he had not been
annoyed by shell fire. A machine gun had searched for him, but he had
adequate cover from machine-gun fire.
"But, blimy! You ought to 'a' 'eard the row w'en the bullets was
a-smackin' against the sandbags! Somebody was a-knockin' at the door, I
give you _my_ word!"
However, it wasn't such a "dusty little coop," and he had a good field of
fire. He had registered four hits during the day, and he proudly
displayed four new notches on a badly notched butt in proof of the fact.
"There's a big 'ole w'ere the artill'ry pushed in their parapet larst
night. That's w'ere I caught me larst one, 'bout a 'arf-hour ago. A bloke
goes by every little w'ile an' fergets to duck 'is napper. Tyke yer
field-glasses an' watch me clip the next one. Quarter left it is, this
side the old 'ouse with the 'ole in the wall."
I focused my glasses and waited. Presently he said, in a very cool,
matter-of-fact voice:--
"There's one comin'. See 'im? 'E's carryin' a plank. You can see it
stickin' up above the parapet. 'E's a-go'n' to get a nasty one if 'e
don't duck w'en he comes to that 'ole."
I found the moving plank and followed it along the trench as it
approached nearer and nearer to the opening; and I was guilty of the most
unprofessional conduct, for I kept thinking, as hard as I could, "Duck,
Fritzie! Whatever you do, duck when you come to that hole!" And surely
enough, he did. The plank was lowered into the trench just before the
opening was reached, and the top of it reappeared again, a moment later,
on the other side of the opening. The sniper was greatly disappointed.
"Now, wouldn't that give you the camel's 'ump?" he said. "I believe
you're a Joner to me, matey."
Presently another man carrying a plank went along the trench and he
ducked, too.
"Grease off, Jerry!" said the butt-notcher. "Yer bringin' me bad luck.
'Owever, they prob'ly got that place taped. They lost one man there an'
they won't lose another, not if they knows it."
I talked with many snipers at different parts of the line. It was
interesting to get their points of view, to learn what their reaction was
to their work. The butt-notchers were very few. Although snipers
invariably took pride in their work, it was the sportsman's pride in good
marksmanship rather than the love of killing for its own sake. The
general attitude was that of a corporal whom I knew. He never fired
hastily, but when he did pull the trigger, his bullet went true to the
mark.
"You can't 'elp feelin' sorry for the poor blighters," he would say, "but
it's us or them, an' every one you knocks over means one of our blokes
saved."
I have no doubt that the Germans felt the same way about us. At any rate,
they thoroughly believed in the policy of attrition, and in carrying it
out they often wasted thousands of rounds in sniping every yard of our
parapet. The sound was deafening at times, particularly when there were
ruined walls of houses or a row of trees just back of our trenches. The
ear-splitting reports were hurled against them and seemed to be shattered
into thousands of fragments, the sound rattling and tumbling on until it
died away far in the distance.
III. NIGHT ROUTINE
Meanwhile, like furtive inhabitants of an infamous underworld, we
remained hidden in our lairs in the daytime, waiting for night when we
could creep out of our holes and go about our business under cover of
darkness. Sleep is a luxury indulged in but rarely in the first-line
trenches. When not on sentry duty at night, the men were organized into
working parties, and sent out in front of the trenches to mend the
barbed-wire entanglements which are being constantly destroyed by
artillery fire; or, in summer, to cut the tall grass and the weeds which
would otherwise offer concealment to enemy listening patrols or bombing
parties. Ration fatigues of twenty or thirty men per company went back to
meet the battalion transport wagons at some point several miles in rear
of the firing-line. There were trench supplies and stores to be brought
up as well, and the never-finished business of mending and improving the
trenches kept many off-duty men employed during the hours of darkness.
The men on duty in front of the trenches were always in very great
danger. They worked swiftly and silently, but they were often discovered,
in which case the only warning they received was a sudden burst of
machine-gun fire. Then would come urgent calls for "Stretcher bearers!"
and soon the wreckage was brought in over the parapet. The stretchers
were set down in the bottom of the trench and hasty examinations made by
the light of a flash lamp.
"W'ere's 'e caught it?"
"'Ere it is, through the leg. Tyke 'is puttee off, one of you!"
"Easy, now! It's smashed the bone! Stick it, matey! We'll soon 'ave you
as right as rain!"
"Fer Gawd's sake, boys, go easy! It's givin' me 'ell! Let up! Let up just
a minute!"
Many a conversation of this sort did we hear at night when the
field-dressings were being put on. But even in his suffering Tommy never
forgot to be unrighteously indignant if he had been wounded when on a
working party. What could he say to the women of England who would bring
him fruit and flowers in hospital, call him a "poor brave fellow," and
ask how he was wounded? He had enlisted as a soldier, and as a reward for
his patriotism the Government had given him a shovel, "an' 'ere I am,
workin' like a bloomin' navvy, fillin' sandbags full o' France, w'en I up
an' gets plugged!" The men who most bitterly resented the pick-and-shovel
phase of army life were given a great deal of it to do for that very
reason. One of my comrades was shot in the leg while digging a refuse
pit. The wound was a bad one and he suffered much pain, but the
humiliation was even harder to bear. What could he tell them at home?
"Do you think I'm a go'n' to s'y I was a-carryin' a sandbag full of old
jam tins back to the refuse pit w'en Fritzie gave me this 'ere one in the
leg? Not so bloomin' likely! I was afraid I'd get one like this! Ain't it
a rotten bit o' luck!"
If he had to be a casualty Tommy wanted to be an interesting one. He
wanted to fall in the heat of battle, not in the heat of inglorious
fatigue duty.
But there was more heroic work to be done: going out on listening patrol,
for example. One patrol, consisting of a sergeant or a corporal and four
or five privates, was sent out from each company. It was the duty of
these men to cover the area immediately in front of the company line of
trench, to see and hear without being discovered, and to report
immediately any activity of the enemy, above or below ground, of which
they might learn. They were on duty for from three to five hours, and
might use a wide discretion in their prowlings, provided they kept within
the limits of frontage allotted to their own company, and returned to the
meeting-place where the change of reliefs was made. These requirements
were not easily complied with, unless there were trees or other prominent
landmarks standing out against the sky by means of which a patrol could
keep its direction.
The work required, above everything else, cool heads and stout hearts.
There was the ever-present danger of meeting an enemy patrol or bombing
party, in which case, if they could not be avoided, there would be a
hand-to-hand encounter with bayonets, or a noisy exchange of
hand-grenades. There was danger, too, of a false alarm started by a
nervous sentry. It needs but a moment for such an alarm to become
general, so great is the nervous tension at which men live on the
firing-line. Terrific fusillades from both sides followed while the
listening patrols flattened themselves out on the ground, and listened,
in no pleasant frame of mind, to the bullets whistling over their heads.
But at night, and under the stress of great excitement, men fire high.
Strange as it may seem, one is comparatively safe even in the open, when
lying flat on the ground.
Bombing affairs were of almost nightly occurrence. Tommy enjoyed these
extremely hazardous adventures which he called "Carryin' a 'app'orth o'
'ate to Fritzie," a halfpenny worth of hate, consisting of six or a dozen
hand-grenades which he hurled into the German trenches from the far side
of their entanglements. The more hardy spirits often worked their way
through the barbed wire and, from a position close under the parapet,
they waited for the sound of voices. When they had located the position
of the sentries, they tossed their bombs over with deadly effect. The
sound of the explosions called forth an immediate and heavy fire from
sentries near and far; but lying close under the very muzzles of the
German rifles, the bombers were in no danger unless a party were sent out
in search of them. This, of course, constituted the chief element of
risk. The strain of waiting for developments was a severe one. I have
seen men come in from a "bombing stunt" worn out and trembling from
nervous fatigue. And yet many of them enjoyed it, and were sent out night
after night. The excitement of the thing worked into their blood.
* * * * * *
Throughout the summer there was a great deal more digging to do than
fighting, for it was not until the arrival on active service of
Kitchener's armies that the construction of the double line of reserve or
support trenches was undertaken. From June until September this work was
pushed rapidly forward. There were also trenches to be made in advance of
the original firing-line, for the purpose of connecting up advanced
points and removing dangerous salients. At such times there was no
loafing until we had reached a depth sufficient to protect us both from
view and from fire. We picked and shoveled with might and main, working
in absolute silence, throwing ourselves flat on the ground whenever a
trench rocket was sent up from the German lines. Casualties were
frequent, but this was inevitable, working, as we did, in the open,
exposed to every chance shot of an enemy sentry. The stretcher-bearers
lay in the tall grass close at hand awaiting the whispered word,
"Stretcher-bearers this way!" and they were kept busy during much of the
time we were at work, carrying the wounded to the rear.
It was surprising how quickly the men became accustomed to the
nerve-trying duties in the firing-line. Fortunately for Tommy, the longer
he is in the army, the greater becomes his indifference to danger. His
philosophy is fatalistic. "What is to be will be" is his only comment
when one of his comrades is killed. A bullet or a shell works with such
lightning speed that danger is passed before one realizes that it is at
hand. Therefore, men work doggedly, carelessly, and in the background of
consciousness there is always that comforting belief, common to all
soldiers, that "others may be killed, but somehow, I shall escape."
The most important in-trench duty, as well as the most wearisome one for
the men, is their period on "sentry-go." Eight hours in twenty-four--four
two-hour shifts--each man stands at his post on the firing-bench, rifle
in hand, keeping a sharp lookout over the "front yard." At night he
observes as well as he can over the top of the parapet; in the daytime by
means of his periscope. Most of our large periscopes were shattered by
keen-sighted German snipers. We used a very good substitute, one of the
simplest kind, a piece of broken pocket mirror placed on the end of a
split stick, and set at an angle on top of the parados. During the two
hours of sentry duty we had nothing to do other than to keep watch and
keep awake. The latter was by far the more difficult business at night.
"'Ere, sergeant!" Tommy would say, as the platoon sergeant felt his way
along the trench in the darkness, "w'en is the next relief comin' on? Yer
watch needs a good blacksmith. I been on sentry three hours if I been a
minute!"
"Never you mind about my watch, son! You got another forty-five minutes
to do."
"Will you listen to that, you blokes! S'y! I could myke a better
timepiece out of an old bully tin! I'm tellin' you straight, I'll be
asleep w'en you come 'round again!"
But he isn't. Although the temptation may be great, Tommy isn't longing
for a court-martial. When the platoon officer or the company commander
makes his hourly rounds, flashing his electric pocket lamp before him, he
is ready with a cheery "Post all correct, sir!" He whistles or sings to
himself until, at last, he hears the platoon sergeant waking the next
relief by whacking the soles of their boots with his rifle butt.
"Wake up 'ere! Come along, my lads! Your sentry-go!"