CHAPTER XVIII (p. 249)
THE COVERING PARTY
Along the road in the evening the brown battalions wind, With the trenches threat of death before, the peaceful homes behind; And luck is with you or luck is not, as the ticket of fate is drawn, The boys go up to the trench at dusk, but who will come back at dawn?
The darkness clung close to the ground, the spinney between our lines was a bulk of shadow thinning out near the stars. A light breeze scampered along the floor of the trench and seemed to be chasing something. The night was raw and making for rain; at midnight when my hour of guard came to an end I went to my dug-out, the s.p.a.cious construction, roofed with long wooden beams heaped with sandbags, which was built by the French in the winter season, what time men were apt to erect substantial shelters, and know their worth. The platoon sergeant stopped me at the door.
"Going to have a kip, Pat?" he asked.
"If I"m lucky," I answered.
"Your luck"s dead out," said the sergeant. "You"re to be one of a (p. 250) covering party for the Engineers. They"re out to-night repairing the wire entanglements."
"Any more of the Section going out?" I asked.
"Bill"s on the job," I was told. The sergeant alluded to my mate, the vivacious c.o.c.kney, the spark who so often makes Section 3 in its dullest mood, explode with laughter.
Ten minutes later Bill and I, accompanied by a corporal and four other riflemen, clambered over the parapet out on to the open field. We came to the wire entanglements which ran along in front of the trench ten to fifteen yards away from the reverse slope of the parapet. The German artillery had played havoc with the wires some days prior to our occupation of the trench, the stakes had been battered down and most of the defence had been smashed to smithereens. Bombarding wire entanglements seems to be an artillery pastime; when we smash those of the Germans they reply by smashing ours, then both sides repair the damage only to start the game of demolition over again.
The line of entanglements does not run parallel with the trench (p. 251) it covers, although when seen from the parapet its inner stakes seem always to be about the same distance away from the nearest sandbags.
But taken in relation to the trench opposite the entanglements are laid with occasional V-shaped openings narrowing towards our trench.
The enemy plan an attack. At dusk or dawn their infantry will make a charge over the open ground, raked with machine gun, howitzer, and rifle fire. Between the trenches is the beaten zone, the field of death. The moment the attacking party pull down the sandbags from the parapet, its sole aim is to get to the other side. The men become creatures of instinct, mad animals with only one desire, that is to get to the other side where there is comparative safety. They dash up to a jumble of trip wires scattered broadcast over the field and thinning out to a point, the nearest point which they reach in the enemy"s direction. Trip wires are the quicksands of the beaten zone, a man floundering amidst them gets lost. The attackers realize this and the instinct which tells them of a certain amount of safety in the vicinity of an unfriendly trench urges them pell mell into the V-shaped recess that narrows towards our lines. Here the attackers (p. 252) are heaped up, a target of wriggling humanity; ready prey for the concentrated fire of the rifles from the British trench. The narrow part of the V becomes a welter of concentrated horror, the attackers tear at the wires with their hands and get ripped flesh from bone, mutilated on the barbs in the frensied efforts to get through. The tragedy of an advance is painted red on the barbed wire entanglements.
In one point our wires had been cut clean through by a concussion sh.e.l.l and the entanglement looked as if it had been frozen into immobility in the midst of a riot of broken wires and shattered posts.
We pa.s.sed through the lane made by the sh.e.l.l and flopped flat to earth on the other side when a German star-sh.e.l.l came across to inspect us.
The world between the trenches was lit up for a moment. The wires stood out clear in one glittering distortion, the spinney, full of dark racing shadows, wailed mournfully to the breeze that pa.s.sed through its shrapnel-scarred branches, white as bone where their bark had been peeled away. In the mysteries of light and shade, in the threat that hangs forever over men in the trenches there was a wild fascination. I was for a moment tempted to rise up and shout (p. 253) across to the German trenches, I am here! No defiance would be in the shout. It was merely a momentary impulse born of adventure that intoxicates. Bill sprung to his feet suddenly, rubbing his face with a violent hand; this in full view of the enemy"s trench in a light that illumined the place like a sun.
"Bill, Bill!" we muttered hoa.r.s.ely.
"Well, blimey, that"s a go," he said coughing and spitting. "What "ave I done, splunk on a dead "un I flopped, a stinking corpse. "E was "uggin" me, kissin" me. Oh! nark the game, ole stiff "un," said Bill, addressing the ground where I could perceive a bundle of dark clothes, striped with red and deep in the gra.s.s. "Talk about rotten eggs burstin" on your jor; they"re not in it."
The light of the star-sh.e.l.l waned and died away; the Corporal spoke to Bill.
"Next time a light goes up you be flat; you"re giving the whole d.a.m.ned show away," the Corporal said. "If you"re spotted it"s all up with us."
We fixed swords clamping them into the bayonet standards and lay flat on the ground in the midst of dead bodies of French soldiers. Months before the French endeavoured to take the German trenches and got (p. 254) about half way across the field. There they stopped, mown down by rifle and machine gun fire and they lie there still, little bundles of wasting flesh in the midst of the poppies. When the star-sh.e.l.ls went up I could see a face near me, a young face clean-shaven and very pale under a wealth of curly hair. It was the face of a mere boy, the eyes were closed as if the youth were only asleep. It looked as if the effacing finger of decay had forborne from working its will on the helpless thing. His hand still gripped the rifle, and the long bayonet on the standard shone when the light played upon it. It seemed as if he fell quietly to the ground, dead. Others, I could see, had died a death of agony; they lay there in distorted postures, some with faces battered out of recognition, others with their hands full of gra.s.s and clay as if they had torn up the earth in their mad, final frenzy. Not a nice bed to lie in during a night out on listening patrol.[4]
[Footnote 4: The London Irish charged over this ground later, and entered Loos on Sat.u.r.day, 25th September, 1915.]
The Engineers were now at work just behind us, I could see their dark forms flitting amongst the posts, straightening the old ones, (p. 255) driving in fresh supports and pulling the wires taut. They worked as quietly as possible, but to our ears, tensely strained, the noise of labour came like the rumble of artillery. The enemy must surely hear the sound. Doubtless he did, but probably his own working parties were busy just as ours were. In front when one of our star-sh.e.l.ls went across I fancied that I could see dark forms standing motionless by the German trench. Perhaps my eyes played me false, the objects might be tree-trunks trimmed down by sh.e.l.l fire....
The message came out from our trench and the Corporal pa.s.sed it along his party. "On the right a party of the --th London are working." This was to prevent us mistaking them for Germans. All night long operations are carried on between the lines, if daylight suddenly shot out about one in the morning what a scene would unfold itself in No Man"s Land; listening patrols marching along, Engineers busy with the wires, sanitary squads burying the dead and covering parties keeping watch over all the workers.
"Halt! who goes there?"
The order loud and distinct came from the vicinity of the German (p. 256) trench, then followed a mumbled reply and afterwards a scuffle, a sound as of steel clashing in steel, and then subdued laughter. What had happened? Next day we heard that a sergeant and three men of the --th were out on patrol and went too near the enemy"s lines. Suddenly they were confronted by several dark forms with fixed bayonets and the usual sentry"s challenge was yelled out in English. Believing that he had fallen across one of his own outposts, the unsuspecting sergeant gave the pa.s.sword for the night, approached those who challenged him and was immediately made prisoner. Two others met with the same fate, but one who had been lagging at the rear got away and managed to get back to his own lines. Many strange things happen between the lines at night; working parties have no love for the place and hundreds get killed there.
The slightest tinge of dawn was in the sky when our party slipped back over the parapet and stood to arms on the banquette and yawned out the conventional hour when soldiers await the attacks which so often begin at dawn.
We go out often as working parties or listening patrols.
From Souchez to Ypres the firing line runs through a land of (p. 257) stinking drains, level fields, and shattered villages. We know those villages, we have lived in them, we have been sniped at in their streets and sh.e.l.led in the houses. We have had men killed in them, blown to atoms or buried in masonry, done to death by some d.a.m.nable instrument of war.
In our trenches near Souchez you can see the eternal artillery fighting on the hills of Lorette, up there men are flicked out of existence like flies in a hailstorm. The big straight road out of a village runs through our lines into the German trenches and beyond.
The road is lined with poplars and green with gra.s.s; by day you can see the German sandbags from our trenches, by night you can hear the wind in the trees that bend towards one another as if in conversation.
There is no whole house in the place; chimneys have been blown down and roofs are battered by shrapnel. But few of the people have gone away, they have become schooled in the process of accommodation, and accommodate themselves to a woeful change. They live with one foot on the top step of the cellar stairs, a sh.e.l.l sends them scampering down; they sleep there, they eat there, in their underground home they (p. 258) wait for the war to end. The men who are too old to fight labour in a neighbouring mine, which still does some work although its chimney is shattered and its coal waggons are sc.r.a.ps of wood and iron on broken rails. There are many graves by the church, graves of our boys, civilians" graves, children"s graves, all victims of war. Children are there still, merry little kids with red lips and laughing eyes.
One day, when staying in the village, I met one, a dainty little dot, with golden hair and laughing eyes, a pink ribbon round a tress that hung roguishly over her left cheek. She smiled at me as she pa.s.sed where I sat on the roadside under the poplars, her face was an angel"s set in a disarray of gold. In her hand she carried an empty jug, almost as big as herself and she was going to her home, one of the inhabited houses nearest the fighting line. The day had been a very quiet one and the village took an opportunity to bask in the sun. I watched her go up the road tripping lightly on the gra.s.s, swinging her big jug. Life was a garland of flowers for her, it was good to watch her to see her trip along; the sight made me happy. What caused the German gunner, a simple woodman and a father himself perhaps, (p. 259) to fire at that moment? What demon guided the sh.e.l.l? Who can say? The sh.e.l.l dropped on the roadway just where the child was; I saw the explosion and dropped flat to avoid the splinters, when I looked again there was no child, no jug, where she had been was a heap of stones on the gra.s.s and dark curls of smoke rising up from it. I hastened indoors; the enemy were sh.e.l.ling the village again.
Our billet is a village with sh.e.l.l-scarred trees lining its streets, and gra.s.s peeping over its fallen masonry, a few inn signs still swing and look like corpses hanging; at night they creak as if in agony.
This place was taken from the Germans by the French, from the French by the Germans and changed hands several times afterwards. The streets saw many desperate hand to hand encounters; they are clean now but the village stinks, men were buried there by cannon, they lie in the cellars with the wine barrels, bones, skulls, fleshless hands sticking up over the bricks; the gra.s.s has been busy in its endeavour to cloak up the horror, but it will take nature many years to hide the ravages of war.
In another small village three kilometres from the firing line I have seen the street so thick with flies that it was impossible to see (p. 260) the cobbles underneath. There we could get English papers the morning after publication: for penny papers we paid three halfpence, for halfpenny papers twopence! In a restaurant in the place we got a dinner consisting of vegetable soup, fried potatoes, and egg omelette, salad, bread, beer, a sweet and a cup of _cafe au lait_ for fifteen sous per man. There too on a memorable occasion we were paid the sum of ten francs on pay day.
In a third village not far off six of us soldiers slept one night in a cellar with a man, his wife and seven children, one a sucking babe.
That night the roof of the house was blown in by a sh.e.l.l. In the same place my mate and I went out to a restaurant for dinner, and a young Frenchman, a gunner, sat at our table. He came from the south, a shepherd boy from the foot hills of the Pyrenees. He shook hands with us, giving the left hand, the one next the heart, as a proof of comradeship when leaving. A shrapnel bullet caught him inside the door and he fell dead on the pavement. Every stone standing or fallen in the villages by the firing line has got a history, and a tragedy connected with it.
In some places the enemy"s bullets search the main street by night (p. 261) and day; a journey from the rear to the trenches is made across the open, and the eternal German bullet never leaves off searching for our boys coming in to the firing line. You can rely on sandbagged safety in the villages, but on the way from there to the trenches you merely trust your luck; for the moment your life has gone out of your keeping.
No civilian is allowed to enter one place, but I have seen a woman there. We were coming in, a working party, from the trenches when the colour of dawn was in the sky. We met her on the street opposite the pile of bricks that once was a little church: the spire of the church was blown off months ago and it sticks point downwards in a grave. The woman was taken prisoner. Who was she? Where did she come from? None of us knew, but we concluded she was a spy. Afterwards we heard that she was a native who had returned to have a look at her home.
We were billeted at the rear of the village on the ground floor of a cottage. Behind our billet was the open country where Nature, the great mother, was busy; the b.u.t.terflies flitted over the soldiers" (p. 262) graves, the gra.s.s grew over unburied dead men, who seemed to be sinking into the ground, apple trees threw out a wealth of blossom which the breezes flung broadcast to earth like young lives in the whirlwind of war. We first came to the place at midnight; in the morning when we got up we found outside our door, in the midst of a jumble of broken pump handles and biscuit tins, fragments of chairs, holy pictures, crucifixes and barbed wire entanglements, a dead dog dwindling to dust, the hair falling from its skin and the white bones showing. As we looked on the thing it moved, its belly heaved as if the animal had gulped in a mouthful of air. We stared aghast and our laughter was not hearty when a rat scurried out of the carcase and sought safety in a hole of the adjoining wall. The dog was buried by the Section 3. Four simple lines serve as its epitaph:--
Here lies a dog as dead as dead, A Sniper"s bullet through its head, Untroubled now by shots and sh.e.l.ls, It rots and can do nothing else.
The village where I write this is sh.e.l.led daily, yesterday three men, two women and two children, all civilians, were killed. The (p. 263) natives have become almost indifferent to sh.e.l.l-fire.
In the villages in the line of war between Souchez and Ypres strange things happen and wonderful sights can be seen.
CHAPTER XIX (p. 264)
SOUVENIR HUNTERS
I have a big French rifle, its stock is riddled clean, And shrapnel smashed its barrel, likewise its magazine; I"ve carried it from A to X and back to A again, I"ve found it on the battlefield amidst the soldiers slain.
A souvenir for blighty away across the foam, That"s if the French authorities will let me take it home.
Most people are souvenir hunters, but the craze for souvenirs has never affected me until now; at present I have a decent collection of curios, consisting amongst other things of a French rifle, which I took from the hands of a dead soldier on the field near Souchez; a little nickel boot, which was taken from the pack of a Breton piou-piou who was found dead by a trench in Vermelles--one of our men who obtained this relic carried it about with him for many weeks until he was killed by a sh.e.l.l and then the boot fell into my hands. I have two percussion caps, one from a sh.e.l.l that came through the roof of a dug-out and killed two of our boys, the other was gotten beside a dead lieutenant in a deserted house in Festubert. In addition to these (p. 265) I have many sh.e.l.l splinters that fell into the trench and landed at my feet, rings made from aluminium timing-pieces of sh.e.l.ls and several other odds and ends picked up from the field of battle. Once I found a splendid English revolver--but that is a story.
We were billeted in a model mining-village of red brick houses and terra cotta tiles, where every door is just like the one next to it and the whole place gives the impression of monotonous sameness relieved here and there by a sh.e.l.l-shattered roof, a symbol of sorrow and wanton destruction. In this place of an evening children may be seen out of doors listening for the coming of the German sh.e.l.ls and counting the number that fall in the village. From our billets we went out to the trenches by Vermelles daily, and cut the gra.s.s from the trenches with reaping hooks. In the morning a white mist lay on the meadows and dry dung and dust rose from the roadway as we marched out to our labour.