HIKING TO VIMY RIDGE
We left Petite-Saens about nine o'clock Friday night and commenced
our march for what we were told would be a short hike. It was
pretty warm and muggy. There was a thin, low-lying mist over
everything, but clear enough above, and there was a kind of poor
moonlight. There was a good deal of delay in getting away, and we
had begun to sweat before we started, as we were equipped as usual
with about eighty pounds' weight on the back and shoulders. That
eighty pounds is theoretical weight.
As a matter of practice the pack nearly always runs ten and even
twenty pounds over the official equipment, as Tommy is a great
little accumulator of junk. I had acquired the souvenir craze early
in the game, and was toting excess baggage in the form of a Boche
helmet, a mess of shell noses, and a smashed German automatic. All
this ran to weight.
I carried a lot of this kind of stuff all the time I was in the
service, and was constantly thinning out my collection or adding to
it.
When you consider that a soldier has to carry everything he owns on
his person, you'd say that he would want to fly light; but he
doesn't. And that reminds me, before I forget it, I want to say
something about sending boxes over there.
It is the policy of the British, and, I suppose, will be of the
Americans, to move the troops about a good deal. This is done so
that no one unit will become too much at home in any one line of
trenches and so get careless. This moving about involves a good
deal of hiking.
Now if some chap happens to get a twenty-pound box of good things
just before he is shifted, he's going to be in an embarrassing
position. He'll have to give it away or leave it. So--send the
boxes two or three pounds at a time, and often.
But to get back to Petite-Saens. We commenced our hike as it is was
getting dark. As we swung out along the once good but now badly
furrowed French road, we could see the Very lights beginning to go
up far off to the left, showing where the lines were. We could
distinguish between our own star lights and the German by the
intensity of the flare, theirs being much superior to ours, so much
so that they send them up from the second-line trenches.
The sound of the guns became more distant as we swung away to the
south and louder again as the road twisted back toward the front.
We began to sing the usual songs of the march and I noticed that
the American ragtime was more popular among the boys than their own
music. "Dixie" frequently figured in these songs.
It is always a good deal easier to march when the men sing, as it
helps to keep time and puts pep into a column and makes the packs
seem lighter. The officers see to it that the mouth organs get
tuned up the minute a hike begins.
At the end of each hour we came to a halt for the regulation ten
minutes' rest. Troops in heavy marching order move very slowly,
even with the music--and the hours drag. The ten minutes' rest
though goes like a flash. The men keep an eye on the watches and
"wangle" for the last second.
We passed through two ruined villages with the battered walls
sticking up like broken teeth and the gray moonlight shining
through empty holes that had been windows. The people were gone
from these places, but a dog howled over yonder. Several times we
passed batteries of French artillery, and jokes and laughter came
out of the half darkness.
Topping a little rise, the moon came out bright, and away ahead the
silver ribbon of the Souchez gleamed for an instant; the bare poles
that once had been Bouvigny Wood were behind us, and to the right,
to the left, a pulverized ruin where houses had stood. Blofeld told
me this was what was left of the village of Abalaine, which had
been demolished some time before when the French held the sector.
At this point guides came out and met us to conduct us to the
trenches. The order went down the line to fall in, single file,
keeping touch, no smoking and no talking, and I supposed we were
about to enter a communication trench. But no. We swung on to a
"duck walk." This is a slatted wooden walk built to prevent as much
as possible sinking into the mud. The ground was very soft here.
I never did know why there was no communication trench unless it
was because the ground was so full of moisture. But whatever the
reason, there was none, and we were right out in the open on the
duck walk. The order for no talk seemed silly as we clattered along
the boards, making a noise like a four-horse team on a covered
bridge.
I immediately wondered whether we were near enough for the Boches
to hear. I wasn't in doubt long, for they began to send over the
"Berthas" in flocks. The "Bertha" is an uncommonly ugly breed of
nine-inch shell loaded with H.E. It comes sailing over with a
querulous "squeeeeeee", and explodes with an ear-splitting crash
and a burst of murky, dull-red flame.
If it hits you fair, you disappear. At a little distance you are
ripped to fragments, and a little farther off you get a case of
shell-shock. Just at the edge of the destructive area the wind of
the explosion whistles by your ears, and then sucks back more
slowly.
The Boches had the range of that duck walk, and we began to run.
Every now and then they would drop one near the walk, and from four
to ten casualties would go down. There was no stopping for the
wounded. They lay where they fell. We kept on the run, sometimes on
the duck walk, sometimes in the mud, for three miles. I had reached
the limit of my endurance when we came to a halt and rested for a
little while at the foot of a slight incline. This was the
"Pimple", so called on account of its rounded crest.
The Pimple forms a part of the well-known Vimy Ridge--is a
semi-detached extension of it--and lies between it and the Souchez
sector. After a rest here we got into the trenches skirting the
Pimple and soon came out on the Quarries. This was a bowl-like
depression formed by an old quarry. The place gave a natural
protection and all around the edge were dug-outs which had been
built by the French, running back into the hill, some of them more
than a hundred feet.
In the darkness we could see braziers glowing softly red at the
mouth of each burrow. There was a cheerful, mouth-watering smell of
cookery on the air, a garlicky smell, with now and then a whiff of
spicy wood smoke.
We were hungry and thirsty, as well as tired, and shed our packs at
the dug-outs assigned us and went at the grub and the char offered
us by the men we were relieving, the Northumberland Fusiliers.
The dug-outs here in the Quarries were the worst I saw in France.
They were reasonably dry and roomy, but they had no ventilation
except the tunnel entrance, and going back so far the air inside
became simply stifling in a very short time.
I took one inhale of the interior atmosphere and decided right
there that I would bivouac in the open. It was just getting down to
"kip" when a sentry came up and said I would have to get inside. It
seemed that Fritz had the range of the Quarries to an inch and was
in the habit of sending over "minnies" at intervals just to let us
know he wasn't asleep.
I had got settled down comfortably and was dozing off when there
came a call for C company. I got the men from my platoon out as
quickly as possible, and in half an hour we were in the trenches.
Number 10 platoon was assigned to the center sector, Number 11 to
the left sector, and Number 12 to the right sector. Number 9
remained behind in supports in the Quarries.
Now when I speak of these various sectors, I mean that at this
point there was no continuous line of front trenches, only isolated
stretches of trench separated by intervals of from two hundred to
three hundred yards of open ground. There were no dug-outs. It was
impossible to leave these trenches except under cover of
darkness--or to get to them or to get up rations. They were awful
holes. Any raid by the Germans in large numbers at this time would
have wiped us out, as there was no means of retreating or getting
up reinforcements.
The Tommies called the trenches Grouse Spots. It was a good name.
We got into them in the dense darkness of just before dawn. The
division we relieved gave us hardly any instruction, but beat it on
the hot foot, glad to get away and anxious to go before sun-up. As
we settled down in our cosey danger spots I heard Rolfie, the
frog-voiced baritone, humming one of his favorite coster songs:
Oh, why did I leave my little back room in old Bloomsbury?
Where I could live for a pound a week in luxury.
I wanted to live higher
So I married Marier,
Out of the frying pan into the bloomin' fire.
And he meant every word of it.
In our new positions in the Grouse Spots the orders were to patrol
the open ground between at least four times a night. That first
night there was one more patrol necessary before daylight. Tired as
I was, I volunteered for it. I had had one patrol before, opposite
Bully-Grenay, and thought I liked the game.
I went over with one man, a fellow named Bellinger. We got out and
started to crawl. All we knew was that the left sector was two
hundred yards away. Machine-gun bullets were squealing and
snapping overhead pretty continuously, and we had to hug the dirt.
It is surprising to see how flat a man can keep and still get along
at a good rate of speed. We kept straight away to the left and
presently got into wire. And then we heard German voices. Ow! I
went cold all over.
Then some "Very" lights went up and I saw the Boche parapet not
twenty feet away. Worst of all there was a little lane through
their wire at that point, and there would be, no doubt, a sap head
or a listening post near. I tried to lie still and burrow into the
dirt at the same time. Nothing happened. Presently the lights died,
and Bellinger gave me a poke in the ribs. We started to crawfish.
Why we weren't seen I don't know, but we had gone all of one
hundred feet before they spotted us. Fortunately we were on the
edge of a shallow shell hole when the sentry caught our movements
and Fritz cut loose with the "typewriters." We rolled in. A perfect
torrent of bullets ripped up the dirt and cascaded us with gravel
and mud. The noise of the bullets "crackling" a yard above us was
deafening.
The fusillade stopped after a bit. I was all for getting out and
away immediately. Bellinger wanted to wait a while. We argued for
as much as five minutes, I should think, and then the lights having
gone out, I took matters in my own hands and we went away from
there. Another piece of luck!
We weren't more than a minute on our way when a pair of bombs went
off about over the shell hole. Evidently some bold Heinie had
chucked them over to make sure of the job in case the machines
hadn't. It was a close pinch--two close pinches. I was in places
afterwards where there was more action and more danger, but,
looking back, I don't think I was ever sicker or scareder. I would
have been easy meat if they had rushed us.
We made our way back slowly, and eventually caught the gleam of
steel helmets. They were British. We had stumbled upon our left
sector. We found out then that the line curved and that instead of
the left sector being directly to the left of ours--the center--it
was to the left and to the rear. Also there was a telephone wire
running from one to the other. We reported and made our way back to
the center in about five minutes by feeling along the wire. That
was our method afterwards, and the patrol was cushy for us.