intelligently, far more so than to teach them the mere technical
details of its construction. Because the thing appears to talk, very
few people can resist the impulse to treat it as a sentient being,
intentionally perverse for the express purpose of annoyance. Ring up
your best friend in peace time on a slightly defective instrument
and observe how he or she treats the irresponsive toy. If a man, he
will grow purple in the face and swear, he may even end by casting
the offending thing on the ground and trampling upon it in his fury,
if a woman she will grow tearful and excessively petulant, and will
certainly pour the vials of her wrath upon you, as being the proximate
cause of the trouble. Even so in time of war it is the tendency of
the trained telephonist to use harsh words and report the instrument
out of action instead of sitting down quietly and finding the cause
of the trouble, which he knows perfectly well how to do. Even the
best of them can never refrain from shaking the receiver viciously by
way of punctuating every sentence, they having been rashly taught by
their instructor that a gentle tap on the speaking end of the concern
is often useful if speech is faint. And even when this tendency to
violence, apparently a component of human nature, is eradicated, there
comes the surpassing difficulty of inducing men to speak clearly and
distinctly. Of course men of clear speech must be selected in the first
place, the uncouth dialects of certain parts of the United Kingdom
being not susceptible to the gentlest treatment. For instance, two
telephonists, one hailing from Glasgow and the other from the wilds of
Glamorgan, will utterly fail to make themselves intelligible to one
another. On one occasion a certain dour Scotch subaltern was told to
select from his section the six men with the clearest voice and purest
accent for training as telephonists. He did so, and they were duly
tested--they all spoke a strange tongue which proved upon investigation
to be the broadest Scotch! To this day that subaltern cannot understand
why they were rejected and he himself loaded with opprobrious epithets.
At one time we were in a position where the French wireless bulletin
was transmitted to us in the original over the telephone. The state
in which it reached us frequently defied translation, as may well
be imagined. I once overheard a reference to the Hartmansweilerkopf
coming through. "Are man's wily coughs _wot_? 'Ere, is this a patent
medicine advertisement, or wot? Hullo, hullo! Goin' to spell it, are
yer? Yes, haitch for 'energy, eye for what? Oh, eye for hass, r for
rum, toc, emma, eye for hass, n for Nellie, esses, w for water--'ere,
hullo, hullo! What the 'ell are yer gettin' at?" After that they took
to sending it by Morse code on the buzzer, and things went along more
smoothly, but even then it was a mutilated word that eventually reached
me. From which it may be inferred that telephone messages do not always
find the recipient in the same form in which they started, especially
if they have to be repeated more than once during transmission. The
story of the Loos refugees is a case in point.
In addition to the complexities introduced by human failings, the
telephone in the field suffers from aberrations of technical origin.
Owing to the fact that the earth is used as the path for the return
current in nearly every case, an instrument, if sufficiently sensitive,
will pick up scraps of conversation between two stations speaking to
one another, if the line joining them crosses or approaches to the line
joining its own stations. In the case of the territory occupied by a
modern army, wherein the chief means of communication is the telephone,
extraordinary results are sometimes obtained. I have frequently
slept with the receiver of a telephone close to my ear, and in the
silence of the night have heard it whispering all sorts of fragmentary
messages--"Hullo, hullo, brigade, are you brigade? brigade!--yes, and
the old man was awfully fed up about it--brigade, brigade, hullo, can
you hear me?--lengthen a hundred, fuse forty-two and a half!" and so
on, _pianissimo_, throughout the night. Both sides have frequently
obtained valuable information by putting specially sensitive telephones
as near as possible to the opposing trenches and listening to the
messages they picked up. It is believed that the apparently miraculous
knowledge that the Germans at some parts of the line possessed as to
the regiments opposed to them--they would often call out, "Hullo,
Rutlandshires, are you in yet?" when a totally fresh battalion took
over a section of trenches--was obtained by this method. Nor is this
earth leakage the only way in which conversations are overheard. If
two or more lines run together for any considerable distance, as in
practice they often must, owing to an electrical phenomenon known as
induction, a conversation taking place along one line is audible in the
receivers attached to the remainder. Further, it frequently happens
that owing to a shell burst or to carelessness on the part of some line
layer, a pole or other support to which a large number of lines are
fixed is brought down, and in its fall all the lines are broken. It
may often be very difficult to discover, amongst all the ends, which
belongs to which, and an inexperienced man, actuated by a sincere and
laudable desire to put matters right, is very apt to connect them up by
the light of nature. The consequent confusion that arises must provoke
to demoniac laughter the denizens of hell. One observation officer
finds himself in direct and clear communication with the officer in
charge of supplies and transport, another with an advanced dressing
station. Infantry headquarters hold long and heated converse with
the wagon line of a field battery, the G.$1.$2. Divisional Artillery
threatens to place the quartermaster of a territorial battalion under
arrest because he steadfastly refuses to open fire immediately on
target Z. And a considerable time elapses before all these various
people are again connected to the proper quarter.
The very form of the telephonic message lends itself to
misinterpretation and misunderstanding. There is a story of an officer
named Close, who as forward observation officer for his battery laid
out a line to an observation post of his own choosing, and whose
linesmen by some accident contrived to get their wire touching one
belonging to a different system. His major, wishing to speak to him,
called him up, and hearing a "Hullo!" in reply, began "Are you Close?"
To his astonishment and delight a strange voice replied, "No, you dam!
fool, I'm five thousand yards away!" This same crossing of wires is
another common cause of mixed conversations, they chafe one another
until the insulation is worn away and a good connection established,
when the two sets of instruments respond to one another's calls. This
very trouble was the cause of my once being awakened from sleep by
the urgent summons of the buzzer. I jumped for the instrument--"Yes,
hullo?" And then distinctly came the amazing query "Are you St.
Paul?" I think the terms of my reply, in which I convinced my
unknown questioner of my utter inability to follow that gentleman's
advice about suffering fools gladly, satisfied him that I was not. I
found out afterwards that a neighbouring battery had two observing
stations, which they had christened Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's
respectively. An error in transcription, whereby the singular became
substituted for the plural, was probably the cause of my receiving a
written message, warning me that certain experiments were to be tried
that evening, and beginning in the emphatic terms, "At 6 p.m. some
rocket will be fired."
Of the whole complex system of lines, that between headquarters (which
in our case is the group commander, batteries being usually organized
in groups under a senior officer) and the battery commander is by far
the most fertile in trouble. It is not so much the line itself that is
to blame, as a sort of nervous feeling that it connects one with one's
superior officer, a feeling that in a wholly indefinable way pervades
everybody who comes in contact with it. If, as frequently occurs,
wire is saved by leading the various battery lines to an exchange,
whence a single line runs back to headquarters, the possibility of
complication is enormously increased. The process of getting a message
through is then a nerve-racking one. I was once assisting the battery
commander in the observation post, observing a series that was of
some considerable importance--it was during the fighting round Hill
70. In the middle of the transmission of orders to the battery, an
interruption comes through from them. "Headquarters want to speak to
the major, sir!" "Never mind headquarters, you take my message." Three
minutes elapse, during which we get off a few more rounds. Then the
battery calls through again, "Headquarters say it's urgent, sir!" "All
right, stop firing, switch them through." A long pause, during which
the receiver echoes, "Hullo, hullo, exchange! Hullo, can you hear
me? I want headquarters. Hullo! Speaking to another battery are they?
Hullo, is that headquarters? I'm 320th Siege--here you are, sir." Then
a still small voice, "Am I speaking to the major?" "I'm taking the
message for him; go on." "Message from G.O.C. Corps Artillery, begins.
Please report by noon on 30th instant number of Army Forms XY 9999 in
your possession, ends. For your information and compliance please."
Fortunately Job was a hasty and impetuous individual compared with the
major, or his remarks on having wasted a quarter of an hour of rapidly
failing light to receive such a message might have been unthinkable.
I remember also on that same line another regrettable incident. We had
to render a certain report daily at a certain hour, and one day the
headquarters line suddenly went out of action a few minutes before this
time. The report was sent off by hand, and the linesman started on his
weary journey of investigation. He reached the exchange eventually,
testing every inch as he went, and found at last that the wire was not
properly connected to the switchboard in the exchange itself. Now all
this took some considerable time, and it was not till some hours later
that a scared-looking telephonist found me in the battery and asked
me to come to the telephone, as there was somebody at headquarters
"a-carrying-on something hawful." So I went and found an infuriated
and temporary officer demanding that I should immediately put all the
telephonists under arrest and myself into the bargain--I think all the
officers were included. Explaining that there might be difficulties in
working the battery if those instructions were faithfully carried out,
I asked what our crime had been. It then appeared that our messenger
had arrived five minutes late with the report. I explained how this
happened, pointed out that his own people at the exchange were to
blame, and offered, should he consider mere arrest to be too trivial
a punishment for men who had delayed the receipt of a purely routine
report--it consisted of one word, nil!--by five minutes, to send him
down a firing party at once. We never had any further trouble on that
particular score.
As an alternative to the telephone, it is sometimes possible to arrange
relays of signallers with visual means of communication, such as lamps
or signalling discs, a method very much more freely employed by the
Germans than by ourselves.
We established a chain of this nature along a line of a total length
of about a mile and a half, as an emergency measure in case the wires
should be cut, and on the occasion of a very critical moment when this
disaster actually occurred, we found the system to work admirably. For
general use, however, it is too slow and requires too many trained
signallers. The telephone, in spite of all its peculiar idiosyncrasies,
is the only method in practice it is possible to employ.
It will be gathered from the above that a battery requires a very
large number of instruments and apparatus of all descriptions, and the
strain upon the manufacturers to supply them fast enough to equip new
formations was at one time very great. In our own case, some of these
stores only reached us on the quay of the port of embarkation an hour
before the transport sailed. We had been toiling since early morning on
one of the hottest days of the year, with no possible opportunity for
refreshment. A car dashed up and unloaded a box of instruments, which
we proceeded to unpack for the purpose of checking. The first thing to
be produced was a large aneroid barometer, of which the hand pointed
significantly to the words "Very dry." A sagacious instrument was that.
XI
BEHIND THE LINE
"Upon the Western Front there is nothing to report." So runs the
official news from day to day; it is a period of comparative quiet in
which neither army finds it expedient to make a move, but each lies
watching and waiting for the next sign of activity on the part of the
other. It is not inactivity, the perpetual crack of rifles and the
occasional bursts of artillery fire that rise suddenly by day and night
are the surest guarantees of that, but merely the temporary abandonment
of offensive tactics on either side. Modern trench warfare has
strengthened the defence at the expense of the offence to so great an
extent that such periods must be the natural state of things. There is
no such thing as a flank attack, for the flanks of the opposing forces
rest upon positions that cannot be turned, in one case the sea, in the
other a neutral country. Many years ago, long before such an extended
double defensive was contemplated, an extremely clever parody upon the
art of war as laid down in the text-books was produced, in which the
author sets forth three possible means of collision, first when two
armies meet, both of which are in motion, second when two armies meet,
one of which is in motion and the other is stationary, and third when
two armies meet both of which are stationary. The latter situation,
ridiculous as it appears and as the author intended it to appear, is
the best definition of the state of things which actually occurs daily
along all the gigantic fronts. "Nothing doing," says the gunner; "we
fired a few rounds yesterday at a place where somebody said the Bosches
had a battery, but that's all." "Haven't seen a bullet or a shell for
days," says the infantryman. "Believe there's nobody but the caretaker
and his wife opposite." In the battery we have meals at regular hours,
we discuss the war instead of our own infinitesimal contribution to it,
the more enterprising amongst us hint at the glorious possibilities
of having a hot bath. Life, in short, begins to slip into a groove of
routine.
Yet we are in a state of constant readiness, and the appearance of
inactivity is wholly misleading. Eyes are perpetually on the watch
in the observation station, a telephonist sits with the head receiver
of the instrument fixed on his head, the detachments on duty sit in
the gun-pits or in the dug-outs close at hand, busy upon some work,
improving the head cover, polishing the fittings of the gun, or else
writing letters to their friends that tell strange tales of battle,
murder and sudden death. In the control room by the telephone dug-out
sits an officer, studying the map, recording the results of a previous
day's fire, or entering particulars of targets and ranges in his
notebook. Perhaps the wind is blowing towards the firing line, carrying
away from the battery all sounds of war, so that nothing can be heard
but the strains of an amateur band (of mouth-organs, concertinas and
a triangle) from one of the gun-pits, and the monotonous call of
the crier in that strange game of "House" that pervades the British
Army--"nineteen, forty-one, number three, sixty-four," and a sudden
excited voice "'ouse!"
But suddenly the buzzer in the telephone room wakes into life. Dash dot
dot dash, dash dot dot, dash dash dot--X D G, it calls imperiously.
That is our call, and the telephonist throws away the novel he was
reading and seizes pencil and paper. "320th Siege! Yes, go on,
yes--fire six rounds at once on Puits thirty-seven. R.D." The message
reaches the officer in the control room, who dashes out of the door
with a megaphone through which he roars one word, "Action!" Instantly
the detachments vanish into the pits, from which a sound of urgent
preparation rises, the band stops abruptly upon an excruciating chord,
the players of "House" scatter to their respective stations. Then comes
the regular sequence of orders, and in something less than a minute
from the receipt of the message the first gun roars into pulsing life
again.
Sudden calls such as these are only incidents that disturb the quiet
of the daily life of the battery, which pursues the even tenor of
its way as soon as the number of rounds ordered has been fired. And
even when the word "Action!" sounds, it only affects the officers
and men actually on duty. The remainder are free to follow their own
vocations until it is their turn to be ready to answer the summons.
There is usually plenty of work for officers off duty to do, in the
battery itself, but still several opportunities occur for exploration
of the neighbouring country, of which the most interesting form is
reconnaissance of the ground from the front line trenches in one's own
neighbourhood. I have had many most interesting excursions to places
from whence a different view of the country could be obtained from that
presented from our own observation stations, and a different angle
of view often clears up many doubtful points. It is a most difficult
matter to recognize every feature on the ground by the aid of a map
from one point alone, but if angles can be taken to a doubtful object
from two or more points, its position can be fixed and identified upon
the map with comparative ease. And the interest of an expedition taken
with this primary object in view lies in the unexpected discoveries
that one often makes, of objects and incidents that would otherwise
be unknown to one. In the southern sector the village of Loos was a
favourite object for a walk. The enemy kept the place continuously
under fire after his repulse from it, to such an extent that the
establishment there of a permanent observation station was sternly
discouraged by the higher artillery command. It is useless to risk the
lives of telephonists and linesmen in a place that is under fire night
and day, and where, even if one's observation station is spared, one's
lines are certain to be repeatedly cut, unless the objects to be gained
by so doing are of counterbalancing importance. We were lucky enough
to possess other and safer observation posts, so that we only used the
village in cases of necessity. And we were by no means sorry, for, to
use the deathless expression of Monsieur le Commandant, the place was
"not sanitary," not only from the effects of the enemy's fire, but from
the fact that for many weeks after the operations of September 25 the
streets were still encumbered with dead horses and other odoriferous
objects. Even as late as the third week in October the dead lay thickly
strewn outside the cover afforded by the houses, and on a still day the
stench in the particular building that we used as a watch-tower was
utterly insupportable unless one smoked without intermission. It used
to be said that it was possible to find one's way about the place in
the dark purely by the use of one's nose alone.
During another of these journeys of exploration, one of our officers
was in the front line trenches, which had recently been slightly
pushed forward, engaged in marking them in on his map. The trenches
were newly dug and not yet finished, and the enemy, knowing this,
kept up a slow but fairly steady rain of shrapnel upon them. As my
friend was making his way along the trench, he saw a brigadier and
his entourage advancing in the opposite direction towards him. Having
an instinctive mistrust of "brass-hats" and of the inane questions
that they are so fond of asking, he stopped where he was, hoping that
they would pass by without noticing him. But the fates were against
him. When not more than twenty yards separated him from the splendid
company, a shell burst fairly in the trench not a couple of yards
from the brigadier himself, damaging neither him nor his staff, but
unfortunately killing one of the defenders. Almost at the same moment
one of the lynx-eyed suite discovered my friend's presence and also
the fact that he was an artillery officer. "Just the man we want!
Order your battery to open fire at once on the gun that fired that
shot." To the average staff officer politeness is a sign of weakness,
nothing but a peremptory order is possible from one of such high mental
attainments. My friend explained with some asperity that he was not in
communication with his battery, being merely on a reconnaissance for
the purpose of discovering information that the Staff had neglected to
render, information that was of vital importance, namely the position
of our own trenches. But that if he would be good enough to inform him
of the exact position of the offending battery, he would walk back
and open fire upon it. Then all the members of the entourage--the
brigadier himself maintained an amused silence throughout--pointed in
different directions, each swearing that they had seen the flash of
the gun in the place he indicated, some of them displaying a happy
ignorance by selecting places well within our own lines. My friend
was to take a compass bearing of the direction, he was to stand where
the shell fell and wait for the next flash (not a bad idea that),
they themselves would get into touch with the artillery group through
their own telephone system. Finally they drifted on, still, like the
heathen, furiously raging together. My friend forgot all about them in
the course of investigating more important matters, until he arrived
that evening at the office of his group commander to report upon his
observations. He was greeted with the words, "Hullo, what have you been
up to?" "Nothing particularly heinous, I hope, sir." "What did you
tell that parcel of lunatics to ring me up and request me to open fire
on nothing for?" "I didn't, sir," and then the whole story came out,
much to the amusement of the group commander. Nor did this close the
incident by any means. Somebody having decided that the battery that
had the presumption to fire upon a brigadier and his staff was probably
situated in a certain wood, on the morrow of the affair at a given
hour every battery within range was ordered to fire a certain number
of rounds into the said wood. The result must have saved the enemy the
trouble of cutting firewood for the rest of the winter.
When not engaged upon reconnaissance, there is always plenty of
interest in the battery itself, of which a large proportion is provided
by the aeroplanes of both sides. However carefully the battery itself
may be concealed, this precaution is useless unless the _personnel_
keep out of sight when hostile aeroplanes are about. Men do not
stand about in groups for the fun of the thing, there must be some
military reason for it, or, everything else failing, it is probably
an indication of a billeting area. At all events, it is worth trying
a few rounds at for luck, or so the German gunners seem to think.
An aeroplane sentry armed with a pair of glasses and a whistle is
consequently perpetually on duty, and the blast of his whistle is the
signal for everybody to get under cover at once. It becomes very trying
to get into the habit of leaving whatever one is doing and take shelter
under the nearest tree several times in the hour, and if, for instance,
one is digging gun-pits against time the annoyance is maddening. But
neglect of this precaution is sure sooner or later to have fatal
results. On one occasion the men of a French battery in a field close
to us treated a reconnoitring Taube with the most profound contempt,
they were building shelters and refused to stop work for so trivial a
cause. We, more cautious, bolted for cover and stayed there while the
hostile aeroplane, having evidently noticed something, circled round
once or twice, and then, when directly over the French battery, dropped
some tinsel substance that sparkled in the sun, as an indication to
the artillery of the whereabouts of its quarry. And sure enough next
morning we were treated to a really magnificent display of accurate
shooting. A German battery opened fire without warning, leaving just
sufficient time for the men to rush into their dug-outs before the
second shell burst fairly in the centre of the battery. They fired
very few rounds, but a lucky shell burst in a hay-stack behind which
were hidden the battery ammunition wagons, setting it on fire. The
result was very interesting. For an hour or more the air was thick with
cartridge cases and fragments of shell, as the ammunition in the wagons
slowly caught fire. There was no sudden explosion, and beyond the utter
destruction of the wagons very little damage was done, but regarded as
a pyrotechnic display the scene in that field was very hard to beat.