wheat with your ears cocked like a pointer dog’s. Besides, he had other
duties, exacting duties laid down by the colonel as the result of
trench experience in his responsibility for the command of a company of
men.
It happened, as we crawled back into the trench, that a fury of shots
broke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yards away;
sharp, vicious shots on the still night air, stabbing, merciless death
in their sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France; unrelenting, shrewd,
tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere and the hornets swarmed.
* * * * *
It was two A. M. From the dugouts came unmistakable sounds of slumber.
Men off duty were not kept awake by cold and moisture in summer. They
had fashioned for themselves comfortable dormitories in the hard earth
walls. A cot in an officer’s bed chamber was indicated as mine. The
walls had been hung with cuts from illustrated papers and bagging
spread on the floor to make it “home-like.” He lay down on the floor
because he was nearer the door in case he had to respond to an alarm;
besides, he said I would soon appreciate that I was not the object of
any favouritism. So I did. It was a trench-made cot, fashioned by some
private of engineers, I fancy, who had Germans rather than the American
cousin in mind.
“The wall side of the rib that runs down the middle is the comfortable
side, I have found,” said my host. “It may not appear so at first, but
you will find that it works out that way.”
Nevertheless, one slept, his last recollection that of sniping
shots, to be awakened with the first streaks of day by the sound of
a fusillade--the “morning hate” or the “morning strafe,” as it was
called. After the vigil of darkness it breaks the monotony to salute
the dawn with a burst of rifle-shots. Eyes strained through the mist
over the wheat-field watching for some one of the enemy who may be
exposing himself, unconscious that it is light enough for him to be
visible. Objects which are not men but look as if they might be in the
hazy distance, called for attention on the chance. For ten minutes,
perhaps, the serenade lasted, and then things settled down to the
normal. The men were yawning and stirring from their dugouts. After the
muster they would take the places of those who had been “on the bridge”
through the night.
“It’s a case of how little water you can wash with, isn’t it?” I said
to the cook, who appreciated my thoughtfulness when I made shift with a
dipperful, as I had done on desert journeys. We were in a trench that
was inundated with water in winter, and not more than two miles from
a town which had a water system. But bringing a water supply in pails
along narrow trenches is a poor pastime, though better than bringing
it up under the rifle-sights of snipers across the fields back of the
trenches.
“Don’t expect much for breakfast,” said the _strafer_ of the chicken.
But it was eggs and bacon, the British stand-by in all weathers, at
home and abroad.
J---- was going to turn in and sleep. These youngsters could sleep at
any time; for one hour, or two hours, or five, or ten, if they had a
chance. A sudden burst of rifle-fire was the alarm clock which always
promptly awakened them. The recollection of cheery hospitality and
their fine, buoyant spirit is even clearer now than when I left the
trench.
XXI
A SCHOOL IN BOMBING
War specialism--A school on a French farm--A lesson--“Bombing
them out”--Fighting in zigzag traverses--Cold steel--The bomb
storehouse--All shapes and sizes--Revivals of Roman legionary
days--A home-made product--A fool-proof, up to the minute and
popular (except with the “Boches”) variety.
It was at a bombing school on a French farm, where chosen soldiers
brought back from the trenches were being trained in the use of the
anarchists’ weapon, which has now become as respectable as the rifle.
The war has steadily developed specialism. M.B. degrees for Master
Bombers are not beyond the range of possibilities.
Present was the chief instructor, a young Scotch subaltern with blue
eyes, a pleasant smile, and a Cock o’ the North spirit. He might have
been twenty years old, though he did not look it. On his breast was the
purple and white ribbon of the new order of the Military Cross, which
you get for doing something in this war which would have won you a
Victoria Cross in one of the other wars.
Also present was the assistant instructor, a sergeant of regulars--
and very much of a regular--who had three ribbons which he had won in
previous campaigns. He, too, had blue eyes, bland blue eyes. These two
understood each other.
“If you don’t drop it, why, it’s all right!” said the sergeant. “Of
course, if you do--”
I did not drop it.
“And when you throw it, sir, you must look out and not hit the man
behind and knock the bomb out of your hand. That has happened before to
an absent-minded fellow who was about to toss one at the _Boches_, and
it doesn’t do to be absent-minded when you throw bombs.”
“They say that you sometimes pick up the German bombs and chuck them
back before they explode,” it was suggested.
“Yes, sir, I’ve read things like that in some of the accounts of the
reporters who write from Somewhere in France. You don’t happen to know
where that is, sir? All I can say is that if you are going to do it you
must be quick about it. I shouldn’t advise delaying your decision, sir,
or perhaps when you reached down to pick it up, neither your hand nor
the bomb would be there. They’d have gone off together, sir.”
“Have you ever been hurt in your handling of bombs?” I asked.
Surprise in the bland blue eyes.
“Oh, no, sir! Bombs are well behaved if you treat them right. It’s all
in being thoughtful and considerate of them!” Meanwhile, he was jerking
at some kind of a patent fuse set in a shell of high explosive. “This
is a poor kind, sir. It’s been discarded, but I thought that you might
like to see it. Never did like it. Always making trouble!”
More distance between the audience and the performer.
“Now I’ve got it, sir--get down, sir!”
The audience carried out instructions to the letter, as army
regulations require. It got behind the protection of one of the
practice-trench traverses. He threw the discard beyond another wall of
earth. There was a sharp report, a burst of smoke, and some fragments
of earth were tossed into the air.
In a small affair of two hundred yards of trench a week before, it was
estimated that the British and the Germans together threw about five
thousand bombs in this fashion. It was enough to sadden any Minister of
Munitions. However, the British kept the trench.
“Do the men like to become bombers?” I asked the subaltern.
“I should say so! It puts them up in front. It gives them a chance to
throw something, and they don’t get much cricket in France, you see. We
had a pupil here last week, who broke the throwing record for distance.
He was as pleased as Punch with himself. A first-class bombing
detachment has a lot of pride of corps.”
To bomb soon became as common a verb with the army as to bayonet. “We
bombed them out” meant a section of trench taken. As you know, a trench
is dug and built with sandbags in zigzag traverses. In following the
course of a trench it is as if you followed the sides of the squares
of a checkerboard up and down and across on the same tier of squares.
The square itself is a bank of earth, with the cut on either side and
in front of it. When a bombing party bombs their way into possession
of a section of German trench, there are Germans under cover of the
traverses on either side. They are waiting around the corner to shoot
the first British head that shows itself.
“It is important that you and not the _Boches_ chuck the bombs over
first,” explained the subaltern. “Also, that you get them into the
right traverse, or they may be as troublesome to you as to the enemy.”
With bombs bursting in their faces, the Germans who are not put out of
action are blinded and stunned. In the moment when they are thus off
guard, the aggressors leap around the corner.
“And then?”
“Stick ’em, sir!” said the matter-of-fact sergeant. “Yes, the cold
steel is best. And do it first! As Mr. MacPherson said, it’s very
important to do it first.”
It has been found that something short is handy for this kind of work.
In such cramped quarters--a ditch six feet deep and from two to three
feet broad--the rifle is an awkward length to permit of prompt and
skilful use of the bayonet.
“Yes, sir, you can mix it up better with something handy--to think
that British soldiers would come to fighting like assassins!” said
the sergeant. “You must be spry on such occasions. It’s no time for
wool-gathering.”
Not a smile from him or the subaltern all the time. They were the kind
you would like to have along in a tight corner, whether you had to
fight with knives, fists, or seventeen-inch howitzers.
The sergeant took us into the storehouse where he kept his supply of
bombs.
“What if a German shell should strike your storehouse?” I asked.
“Then, sir, I expect that most of the bombs would be exploded. Bombs
are very peculiar in their habits. What do you think, sir?”
It was no trouble to show stock, as clerks at the stores say. He
brought forth all the different kinds of bombs that British ingenuity
has invented--but no, not all invented. These would mount into the
thousands. Every British inventor who knows anything about explosives
has tried his hand at a new kind of bomb. One means all the kinds
which the British War Office has considered worth a practice test. The
spectator was allowed to handle each one as much as he pleased. There
had been occasions, that boyish Scotch subaltern told me, when the
men who were examining the products of British ingenuity--well, the
subaltern had sandy hair, too, which heightened the effect of his blue
eye.
There were yellow and green and blue and black and striped bombs;
egg-shaped, barrel-shaped, conical, and concave bombs; bombs that were
exploded by pulling a string and by pressing a button--all these to be
thrown by hand, without mentioning grenades and other larger varieties
to be thrown by mechanical means, which would have made a Chinese
warrior of Confucius’ time or a Roman legionary feel at home.
“This was the first-born,” the subaltern explained, “the first thing we
could lay our hands on when the close quarters’ trench warfare began.”
It was as out of date as grandfather’s smooth-bore, the tin-pot bomb
that both sides used early in the winter. A wick was attached to the
high explosive, wrapped in cloth and stuck in an ordinary army jam can.
“Quite home-made, as you see, sir,” remarked the sergeant. “Used to
fix them up ourselves in the trenches in odd hours--saved burying
the refuse jam tins according to medical corps directions--and you
threw them at the _Boches_. Had to use a match to light it. Very
old-fashioned, sir. I wonder if that old fuse has got damp. No, it’s
going all right”--and he threw the jam pot, which made a good
explosion. Later, when he began hammering the end of another, he looked
up in mild surprise at the dignified back-stepping of the spectators.
“Is that fuse out?” some one asked.
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” he replied. “It’s safer. But here is the
best; we’re discarding the others,” he went on, as he picked up a bomb.
It was a pleasure to throw this crowning achievement of experiments. It
fitted your hand nicely; it threw easily; it did the business; it was
fool-proof against a man in love or a war-poet.
“We saw as soon as this style came out,” said the sergeant, “that it
was bound to be popular. Everybody asks for it--except the _Boches_,
sir.”
XXII
MY BEST DAY AT THE FRONT
Planning at headquarters--Trench maps--A “hot corner” north of
Ypres--The English in possession--Preparation for a gas
attack--Farming behind the lines--Reaching the tornado belt--
“Policing the district”--Man the most precious machine--A
general’s dugout headquarters--First aid to the wounded--Cave
men at home--The scream of a great shell--A close call--
Galleries to the front--The philosophy of shell-fire--The
flitting planes--An arc of shell fire--Lace work of puffs
from shrapnel bursts--“Artillery preparation for an infantry
attack”--Under a tornado of steel hail.
It was the best day because one ran the gamut of the mechanics and
emotions of modern war within a single experience--and oh, the twinkle
in that staff officer’s eye!
It was on a Monday that I first met him in the ballroom of a large
château. Here another officer was talking over a telephone in an
explicit, businesslike fashion about “sending up more bombs,” while we
looked at maps spread out on narrow, improvised tables, such as are
used for a buffet at a reception. Those maps showed all the British
trenches and all the German trenches--spider-web like lines that
cunning human spiders had spun with spades--in that region; and where
our batteries were and where some of the German batteries were, if our
aeroplane observations were correct.
To the layman they were simply blue prints, such as he sees in the
office of an engineer or an architect, or elaborate printed maps with
many blue and red pencillings. To the general in command they were
alive with rifle-power and gun-power and other powers mysterious to us;
the sword with which he thrust and feinted and guarded in the ceaseless
fencing of trench warfare, while higher authorities than he kept their
secrets as he kept his and bided their day.
That morning one of the battalions which had its pencilled place on the
map had taken a section of trench from the Germans about the length
of two city blocks. It got into the official bulletins of both sides
several times, this two hundred yards at Pilken in the everlastingly
“hot corner” north of Ypres. So it was of some importance, though not
on account of its length.
To take two hundred yards of trench because it is two hundred yards of
trench is not good war, tacticians agree. Good war is to have millions
of shells and vast reserves ready and to go in over a broad area and
keep on going night and day, with a Niagara of artillery, as fresh
battalions are fed into the conflict.
But the Germans had command of some rising ground in front of the
British line at this point. They could fire down into our trench and
crosswise of it. It was as if we were in the alley and they were in
a first-floor window. This meant many casualties. It was man-economy
and fire-economy to take that two hundred yards. A section of trench
may always be taken if worth while. Reduce it to dust with shells and
then dash into the breach and drive the enemy back from zigzag traverse
to traverse with bombs. But such a small action requires as careful
planning as a big operation of other days. We had taken the two hundred
yards. The thing was to hold them. That is always the difficulty; for
the enemy will concentrate his guns to give you the same dose that
you gave him. In an hour after they were in, the British soldiers,
who knew exactly what they had to do and how to do it after months of
experience, had turned the wreck of the German trenches into a British
trench which faced toward Berlin, rather than Calais.
In their official bulletin the Germans said that they had recovered the
trench. They did recover part of it for a few hours. It was then that
the commander on the German side must have sent in his report to catch
the late evening editions. Commanders do not like to confess the loss
of trenches. It is the sort of thing that makes Headquarters ask: “What
is the matter with you over there, anyway?” There was a time when the
German bulletins about the Western front seemed rather truthful; but of
late they have been getting into bad habits.
The British general knew what was coming; he knew that he would start
the German hornets out of their nest when he took the trench; he knew,
too, that he could rely upon his men to hold till they were told to
retire or there were none left to retire. The British are a home-loving
people, who do not like to be changing their habitations. In succeeding
days the question up and down the lines was, “Have we still got that
trench?” Only two hundred yards of ditch on the continent of Europe!
But was it still ours? Had the Germans succeeded in “strafing” us out
of it yet? They had shelled all the trenches in the region of the lost
trench and had made three determined and unsuccessful counter-attacks
when, on the fifth day, we returned to the château to ask if it were
practicable to visit the new trench.
“At your own risk!” said the staff officer. If we preferred we could
sit on the veranda where there were easy chairs, on a pleasant summer
day. Very peaceful the sweep of the well-kept grounds and the shade of
the stately trees of that sequestered world of landscape. Who was at
war? Why was any one at war? Two staff automobiles awaiting orders on
the drive and a dust-laden despatch rider with messages, who went past
toward the rear of the house, were the only visual evidence of war.
The staff officer served the three of us with helmets for protection in
case we got into a gas attack. He said that we might enter our front
trenches at a certain point and then work our way as near the new part
as we could; division headquarters, four or five miles distant, would
show us the way. It was then that the twinkle in the staff officer’s
eye as it looked straight into yours became manifest. You can never
tell, I have learned, just what a twinkle in a British staff officer’s
eye may portend. These fellows who are promoted up from the trenches
to join the “brain-trust” in the château, know a great deal more about
what is going on than you can learn by standing in the road far from
the front and listening to the sound of the guns. We encountered a
twinkle in another eye at division headquarters, which may have been
telephoned ahead along with the instructions, “At their own risk.”
There are British staff officers who would not mind pulling a
correspondent’s leg on a summer day; though, perhaps, it was really
the Germans who pulled ours, in this instance. Somebody did remark at
some headquarters, I recall, that, “You never know!” which shows that
staff officers do not know everything. The Germans possess half the
knowledge--and they are at great pains not to part with their half.
We proceeded in our car along country roads, quiet, normal country
roads, off the main highway. It has been written again and again, and
it cannot be written too many times, that life is going on as usual in
the rear of the army. Nothing could be more wonderful and yet nothing
more natural. All the men of fighting age were absent. White-capped
grandmothers, too old to join the rest of the family in the fields, sat
in doorways sewing. Everybody was at work and the crops were growing.
One never tires of remarking the fact. It brings you back from the
destructive orgy of war to the simple, constructive things of life. An
industrious people go on cultivating the land and the land keeps on
producing. It is pleasant to think that the crops of Northern France
were good in 1915. That is cheering news from home for the soldiers of
France at the front.
At an indicated point we left the car to go forward on foot, and the
chauffeur was told to wait for us at another point. If the car went any
farther it might draw shell-fire. Army authorities know how far they
may take cars with reasonable safety as well as a pilot knows the rocks
and shoals at a harbour entrance.
There was an end of white-capped grandmothers in doorways; an end of
people working in the fields. Rents in the roofless walls of unoccupied
houses stared at the passerby. We were in a dead land. One of two
soldiers whom we met coming from the opposite direction pointed at what
looked like a small miner’s cabin half covered with earth, screened by
a tree, as the next headquarters which we were seeking in our progress.
It was not for sightseers to take the time of the general, who received
us at the door of his dugout. The German guns had concentrated on a
section of his trenches in a way that indicated that another attack
was coming. One company already had suffered heavy losses. It was
an hour of responsibility for the general, isolated in the midst of
silent fields and houses, waiting for news from a region hidden from
his view by trees and hedges in that flat country. He might not move
from headquarters, for then he would be out of communication with his
command. His men were being pounded by shells and the inexorable law of
organisation kept him at the rear. Up in the trench he might have been
one helpless human being in a havoc of shells which had cut the wires.
His place was where he could be in touch with his subordinates and his
superiors.
True, we wanted to go to the trench that the Germans had lost and his
section was the short cut. Modesty was not the only reason for not
taking it. As we started along a road parallel to the front, the head
of a soldier popped out of the earth and told us that orders were to
walk in the ditch. One judged that he was less concerned with our fate
than with the likelihood of our drawing fire, which he and the others
in a concealed trench would suffer after we had passed on.
There were three of us, two correspondents, L---- and myself, and R----,
an officer, which is quite enough for an expedition of this kind.
Now we were finding our own way, with the help of the large scale
army map which had every house, every farm, and every group of trees
marked. The farms had been given such names as Joffre, Kitchener,
French, Botha, and others which the Germans would not like. One cut
across fields with the same confidence that, following a diagram of
city streets in a guidebook, he turns to the left for the public
library and to the right for the museum.
Our own guns were speaking here and there from their hiding-places;
and overhead an occasional German shrapnel burst. This seemed a waste
of the Kaiser’s munitions, as there was no one in sight. Yet there was
purpose in the desultory scattering of bullets from on high. They were
policing the district; they were warning the hated British in reserve
not to play cricket in those fields or march along those deserted roads.
The more bother in taking cover that the Germans can make the British,
the better they like it; and the British return the compliment in kind.
Everything that harasses your enemy is counted to the good. If every
shell fired had killed a man in this war, there would be no soldiers
left to fight on either side; yet never have shells been so important
in war before. They can reach the burrowing human beings in shelters
which are bullet-proof; they are the omnipresent threat of death. The
firing of shells from batteries securely hidden and emplaced represents
no cost of life to your side, only cost of material; which ridicules
the foolish conclusion that machinery and not men count. It is
because man is still the most precious machine--a machine that money
cannot reproduce--that gun machinery is so much in favour, and every
commander wants to use shells as freely as you use city water when you
don’t pay for it by metre.
Now another headquarters and another general, also isolated in a
dugout, holding the reins of his wires over a section of line adjoining
that of the one we had just left. Before we proceeded we must look
over his shelter from shell-storms. The only time that these British
generals become boastful is over their dugouts. They take all the pride
in them of the man who has bought a plot of land and built himself
a home; and like him, they keep on making improvements and calling
attention to them.
I must say that this was one of the best shelters I have seen anywhere
in the tornado belt; and whatever I am not, I am certainly an expert in
dugouts. Of course, this general, too, said, “At your own risk!” He was
good enough to send a young officer with us up to the trenches; then
we should not make any mistakes about direction if we wanted to reach
the neighbourhood of the two hundred yards which we had taken from the
Germans. When we thanked him and said “Good-bye!” he remarked:
“We never say good-bye up here. It does not sound pleasant. Make it _au
revoir_” And he, too, had a twinkle in his eye.
By this time one leg ought to have been so much longer than the other
that one would have walked in a circle if he had not had a guide.