The staggering surprise of the British attack completely shattered the morale of what German elements were holding the sector. They surrendered in twenties to the oncoming tanks and rapidly advancing lines of infantry. Hun artillery started into frenzied action by this phenomenal development commenced to hastily lob over an erratic series of sh.e.l.ls.
The Normans, crossing a sunken road in column, fell again into correct formation on the higher ground, progressed a few hundred yards beyond what had an hour before const.i.tuted the Fritz front line, and halted.
Four light sh.e.l.ls burst around and about the reserve Company; no one stopped anything. One piece of iron crashed into a boulder near Le Page"s foot. He sprang a yard into the air and nearly put two men out of mess with his bayonet. In the hot argument that ensued they almost forgot that there was a war on and that the advance was moving on without them.
A lad with half a leg hanging and placed by two bearers on a stretcher, rose from a lying posture as the Royal Guernseys pa.s.sed.
""Ere, Guernseys," he hailed, "I was with you at Canterbury--Buffs. Jus"
got in the way of a Blighty. Anybody got a f.a.g?" It was supplied and the party moved on. About to descend into the sunken road the bearers ducked to that fatal sh.e.l.l whine ... too late. Three blood-soaked figures were visible through the lifting-smoke stretched inert on the ground.
"If only "e "adn"t stopped," muttered several hoa.r.s.ely. Life is chance!
The first great onslaught of artillery fire slackened towards mid-day, sharper crack of rifles and wicked splutter of machine guns becoming for the first time noticeable. Enemy sh.e.l.ls became fewer and fewer, his power of resistance--weak from the opening--deteriorated to little more than a rout. The prisoners were swelling an already long roll ... nine or ten thousand on the nine-mile front.
Ribecourt, on the Normans" front, had fallen after a brief skirmish, the German last line of defence reached and artillery support was still far to the rear when the Ten Hundred, pa.s.sing through the Division ahead, took upon their own shoulders the responsibility to carry the Push through its last two miles and to force the capitulation of Nine Wood, now plainly visible at the top of the next long incline.
They went for it, h.e.l.l for leather, in a long line of skirmishers. Their rifles cracked with the rapidity that tells the marksmen--and they COULD shoot. But Fritz would not have any. They did not like (those who had time to look back on their record sprint) the nasty gleam of those Norman bayonets. It was a soft thing; they moved onwards unchecked even as during the rehearsal. Tanks ahead reached the hill-crest and stood black and ugly against the sky; further to the right one was burning with high leaping flames. The Normans panted up the slope, poured into the two quarries in one bloodthirsty rush to find "nothing doing,"
scrambled out again, and reaching the Wood"s edge calmly pushed their way through with all the phlegm of veterans to their objective some thirty yards beyond the last row of trees and commenced to dig in.
Someone spotted a sniper post, coolly stretched himself out on the ground, muttered: "Three hundred yards," and squinted along the sights.
Ping, ping ... two bodies fell limp from a platform--up a leafy tree.
The Private slowly cut two notches on his rifle-b.u.t.t.
Two black, charred figures grinned hideously from out of the smouldering remains of a British aeroplane as the two Guernsey Brigade Scouts hastened back to their Headquarters, to report the objective carried with ONLY TEN CASUALTIES. Away by the narrow bridge above Marcoing one living and three dead machine gunners were lying in a mangled heap.
Still further back a shattered lad, unable to move, stretched out right in the track of an oncoming tank, shrieked frenziedly for succour ...
then abrupt silence as of a whistle shut off even while the eyes were rivetted fascinated on the inexorable crushing machine. A ghastly heap of tangled, mutilated bodies, unrecognisable as such except by the grey German uniform, were lying beneath a tank blown in by a sh.e.l.l--the crew huddled inside in a gruesome ma.s.s.
At the bottom of a hollow a grey-cloaked figure was bunched in that strange posture bearing the hall-mark of fast approaching death. His dull eyes filled with terror at the sound of my footsteps ... strange ingrained knowledge of the Hunnish method of dealing with similar cases pervaded his mind.
"It is--finish," he whispered pitifully in bad English.
"Where are you hit?" He shook his head slowly.
"It is finish," he reiterated weakly.
"Want anything--any water?"
"No." A battery of artillery rumbled noisily down the adjacent roadway.
His eyes brightened.
"You never win," he muttered, defiance strong in his tone. But one glance took in those stoic mounted Britishers, five miles deep in the enemy lines, yet unexcited, unmoved. Thus would they fall back thirty leagues if need be, phlegmatic and unconcerned--knowing not when defeated and therefore never beaten.
"I think we will if--"; but life had pa.s.sed from out the other"s tired body. A rush of pity surged over one on looking into the pale boyish face: eighteen, perhaps nineteen. Little grey, bloodstained German warrior in the first flush of Youth: honour to you for the life you gave your Fatherland; for the staunch patriotism so high in your breast. May the Dawn into which you were ushered while a foe watched your pa.s.sing have great compensation.
Near the unscarred Crucifix a diminutive khaki figure, an inch or so shorter than his rifle with bayonet fixed, stood peering haughtily from beneath a steel helmet, several sizes too large, balanced on his ears.
""Allo, Guernsey," he greeted, "what price my tame outangs?" indicating a dozen grubby prisoners, "this one yere swallowed "is false teeth wiv fright an" this porker yere "as got "is knees out of joint wiv shaking."
"Why are they holding up their----?"
"Oh, becos I cut the braces. Even a prisoner won"t run away if his trousers are COMING DOWN. Nar then, Jerry--march. No comprene? Pushey alongay roadie pour tootsie--see?" He, f.a.g-end in mouth, helmet far on the back of his head, rifle slung and hands in pocket, swaggered along behind his "outangs" on their journey to the cages.
In Marcoing we of Brigade established comfortable Quarters with the plentiful material Fritz had good naturedly (?) left behind for the purpose. His blankets when you have none of your own are a decided advantage. His jam, b.u.t.ter and potatoes were excellent eating, his spring beds utilised especially for two German Staff Officers--made a delightful sofa for two dirty, unshaven and grinning Tommies.
But his BREAD! Ye saints, the nightmare of that one rancid mouthful, not three times the customary ration of rum could rinse out the flavour: Martin, however, was of the opinion that another pint would do much to save his life, and on being refused sadly observed that he could not believe anyone could be so heartless....
Drizzle, light during the afternoon, increased to a moderate downpour as the Normans were digging, not the elaborate sandbagged trenches so very familiar at home (and but little elsewhere), but mere shallow excavations providing just sufficient cover for the body. An interesting operation provided with a little mild excitement in the form of enemy snipers, who, however, greatly a.s.sisted in the rapid and hurried completion of the work. (N.B.--This undertaking in training required half a morning!) Stumpy crawled up and down the line for a yard or two in the vague hope that someone might have made a hole too large; nothing doing, he started on one himself, grumbling audibly.
"That"s it ... poor Tommy. Making a "ole," pessimistically, "diggin" a grave for his bloomin" self."
Normans gaze westward where the vague grey earth meets the overcast sky.
Five miles deep in less than twelve hours. The thrill of it--and what you have you will HOLD.
With the coming of the night came the reaction. Wild excitement and vim of victorious advance gave way for calm reflection and with it the certain knowledge of counter-attack. They realised abruptly that they were physically and mentally worn, the body clamoured madly for food and drink, the mind for rest and sleep. Rain trickled incessantly down each man"s face and glistened in dusty beads upon foreheads, clothing at last gave way to complete saturation, and water, collecting in pools until over ankle deep, oozed slushily in and out of the eyelet holes.
Cold rapidly fastened its grip; dull agony pervaded the entire being until nothing more than a mechanical row of figures staring tiredly out upon No Man"s Land, grasping rust-flaked rifles in numb, stiff hands.
Thinking not, caring not, moving not--only that uncertain stare into the void. And over all the night, the wild shrieking of lost spirits in the trees, the sharp crack of an occasional rifle or fitful bursts from the poorly-timed enemy shrapnel.
Patrols were sent out into No Man"s Land, groped blindly to and fro for two hours and returned in the very last stage of complete exhaustion to report "All Clear." Simple, is it not, to go on patrol from a line you cannot see towards another line you also cannot see ... sometimes you lost touch with the others and gazed round into the blackness with that primordial fear of the unknown inspired by the night. Lost! G.o.d, it nearly unmans you. With fast-thumping heart you hear the approach of guttural Hun voices ... DOWN and QUIET. At last calm thinking points out that yon burning house is in your own lines. Make for it and all is well. Aye. Scouts, does the pulse quicken even now?
What is the thin veneer of a mere nine hundred years semi-civilisation?
Two thousand years before the Conquest the fierce warrior Northmen lived by the might of the halbert, fighters one and all from the days when the war-inspired mother croned of the battle-axe to her babe. And in the Normans was that Norse spirit dormant; but one night of such hardship as yet undreamt of had sufficed for an awakening.
In the dawn they looked out with nearly bloodshot eyes towards the German front. He would counter-attack, would he? Let him come!
He came! They poured one long volley into the long-coated line. It wavered, broke, thinned. At the junction with the Middles.e.x an Englishman gazed in unfeigned astonishment at the ugly, set features of his Norman companion.
"But," he said, "they might have wanted to be prisoners."
"Oh." Ozanne grunted, "don"t want none," and squinting down the sights let loose another trio. "This," he added, "is the Great Undertaking."
"Yes, well?"
"I am the undertaker. For my job ... must "ave bodies ... and I,"
grimly, "I"m getting "em."
The other shuddered slightly. War is war, but these wild unkempt men of a strange tongue were something he could not quite grasp. Anyhow, they knew how to fight. That is all that matters.
Duggie Le Page went into No-Man"s Land and pluckily brought in a wounded N.C.O. from one of the mounted regiments, but too late to save a life fast nearing its ebb.
A weakly sun crept up from amid thick grey clouds and shone wanly on the mud-spattered creatures lying each in his own water-logged trough. Hour followed hour without further sign of hostile movement from the enemy--nothing could be seen of him, and had the cavalry got through the attack could have been continued and Cambrai taken.
Casualties (the supreme sacrifice in two instances) began to trickle away from the Norman ranks, the majority from the attention of a sniper in the long gra.s.s who held on alone with plucky audacity. Unfortunately for his own welfare he was over-confident, exposed himself too long; and ten rifles cracked spitefully--all who fired hotly claiming the right to a notch.
Before mid-day it became apparent that Fritz had neither the heart nor the troops for launching a counter-attack on a scale large enough to make a definite impression on the newly-won area. His "strafing" was fitful, poorly sighted, and of small calibre. Here and there he still had the use of a machine gun or two and had concentrated a number of men at Noyelles. This village was attacked by a company of the Royal Fusiliers; fought for desperately in one brief, mad melee, during which blood ran freely, but remaining in the hands of the British, formed the nearest point in the Line to Cambrai.
At Nine Wood all was quiet--except for the unearthly sounds emanating from the nostrils of one Tich sleeping in the reserve troughs with one side of his features buried in an inch of brown mud. Desultory conversation came down from the wide trough "Old man Casey" had dug and had adorned with an empty whisky bottle found in the gra.s.s. He was looking at it lovingly where it stood mouth downwards: for the obvious reason, he observed, that its spirits were like his own--all run out.