Action Front Part 21

Light after light commenced to toss in an unbroken stream from their parapet in the direction of the working party, and a score of bullets, obviously aimed at them, hissed close overhead.

"Glory be!" said Rifleman McRory, flattening himself to the ground.

"It's a good foot and a half I have of head-cover, and I'm thinking it's soon we will be needing it, and all the rest we can get."

The flaring lights ceased again for a moment, and the men plied their tools in feverish haste to strengthen their scanty shelter against the storm they knew must soon fall upon them.

It came within a couple of minutes; again the lights streamed upward, and flares burst and floated down in dazzling b.a.l.l.s of fierce white light, while the rifle-fire from the German parapet grew heavier and heavier. Concealment was no longer possible, and the word was pa.s.sed to get along with the work in light or dark; and so, still lying flat upon their faces, and with the bullets hissing and whistling above them, slapping into the low parapet and into the bare ground beside them, the working party scooped and buried and sc.r.a.ped, knowing that every inch they could sink themselves or heighten their parapet added to their chance of life.

The work they had done gave them a certain amount of cover, at least for the vital parts of head and shoulders, but in the next half-hour there were many casualties, and man after man worked on with blood oozing through the hastily-applied bandage of a first field-dressing or crawled in under the scanty parapet and crouched there helplessly.

It was little use at that stage trying to bring in the wounded. To do so only meant exposing them to almost a certainty of another wound and of further casualties amongst the stretcher-bearers. One or two men were killed.

Lieutenant Riley, dragging himself along the line, found Rifleman McRory hard at work behind the shelter of a body rolled up on top of his parapet.

"It's killed he is," said McRory in answer to a question--"killed to the bone. He won't be feeling any more bullets that hit him, and it's himself would be the one to have said to use him this way."

Riley admitted the force of the argument and crept on. Work moved faster now that there was no need to wait for the periods between the lights; but the German fire also grew faster, and a machine gun began to pelt its bullets up and down the length of the growing parapet.

By now, fortunately, the separate chain of pits dug by each man were practically all connected up into a long, twisting, shallow trench.

Down this trench the wounded were pa.s.sed, and a fresh working party relieved the cramped and tired batch who had commenced the work.

In the main trench men had been hard at work filling sand-bags, and now these were pa.s.sed out, dragged along from man to man, and piled up on the parapet, doubling the security of the workers and allowing them the greater freedom of rising to their knees to dig.

The rifles and maxims of the Tearaways had from the main trench kept up a steady volume of fire on the German parapet, in an endeavor to keep down its fire. They shot from the main trench in comparative safety, because the German fire was directed almost exclusively on the new trench.

Now that the new parapet had been heightened and strengthened, the casualties behind it had almost ceased, and the Tearaways were quite reasonably flattering themselves on the worst of the work being done and the worst of the dangers over. It appeared to them that the trench now provided quite sufficient shelter to fulfill both its ostensible object of allowing relief parties to move to and from the listening-post, and also their own private undertaking of attaining the dead General; but the O.C. and company commanders did not look on it in that light.

The order was to construct a firing trench, and that meant a good deal more work than had been done, so reliefs were kept going and the work progressed steadily all night, a good deal of impetus being given to it by some light German field-guns which commenced to scatter high-explosive shrapnel over the open ground.

The shooting, fortunately, was not very accurate, no doubt because, by the light of the flares, it was difficult for the German observers to direct their fire. But the hint was enough for the Tearaways, and they knew that daybreak would bring more accurate and more constant artillery fire upon the new position.

The British gunners had been warned not to open fire unless called upon, because a working party was in the open; but now the batteries were telephoned to with a request for shrapnel on the German parapets to keep down some of the heavy rifle fire.

Since the gunners had already registered the target of the German trench, their fire was just as accurate by night as it would be by day, and sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l burst over the German parapet, sweeping their trench with showers of shrapnel.

While all this was going on the men at the listening-post had tackled the job of driving their sap out to the German General. This work was done in a different fashion from the digging of the new trench.

The listening-post was merely a pit in the ground, originally a large sh.e.l.l crater, and deepened and widened until it was sufficiently large to hold half-a-dozen men. At one side of the pit the men commenced with pick and spade to hack out an opening like a very narrow doorway.

As the earth was broken down and shoveled back, the doorway gradually grew to be a pa.s.sage. In this two men at a time worked in turn, the one on the right-hand side making a narrow cut that barely gave him shoulder-play, the second man on the left working a few paces in the rear and widening the pa.s.sage.

Necessarily it was slow work, because only these two men could reach the face of the cut, and because it had to be of sufficient depth to allow a man to work upright without his head showing above the ground.

But because they worked in short reliefs and put every ounce of energy into their task, they made surprising and unusual progress.

Lieutenant Riley, who was in command of the listening-post for that night, left the workers to themselves, both because it was necessary for him to keep a sharp look-out in order to give warning of any attempt to rush the working party, and because officially he was not supposed to know anything of any sap to an officially unrecognized dead German General.

When he was relieved after daybreak, Riley told the joke and explained the position to the subaltern who took over from him, and that subaltern in turn looked with a merely unofficial eye on the work of the sapping party. As the day and the work went on, it was quite obvious that a good many more men were working on the new trench than had been told off to it.

In the sap several fresh men were constantly awaiting their turn at the face with pick and shovel. The diggers did no more than five minutes'

work, hacking and spading at top speed, yielding their tools to the next comer and retiring, panting and blowing and mopping their streaming brows.

A fairly constant fire was maintained by the artillery on both sides, the sh.e.l.ls splashing and crashing on the open ground about the new trench and the German parapet. There was little wind, and as a result the smoke of the sh.e.l.l-bursts hung heavily and trailed slowly over the open s.p.a.ce between the trenches, veiling to some extent the sapping operations and the new trench. On the latter a tendency was quickly displayed to slacken work and to treat the job as being sufficiently complete, but when it came to Lieutenant Riley's turn to take charge of a fresh relief of workers on the new trench, he very quickly succeeded in brisking up operations.

Arrived at the listening-post, he found Sergeant Clancy and spoke a few words to him.

"Clancy," he said gently, "the work along that new trench is going a great deal too slow."

"'Tis hard work, sorr," replied Clancy excusingly, "and you'll be remembering the boys have been at it all night."

"Quite so, Clancy," said Riley smoothly, "and since it has to be dug a good six foot deep, I am just thinking the best thing to do will be to take this other party off the sap and turn 'em along to help on the trench. I'm not denying, Clancy, that I've a notion what the sap is for, although I'm supposed to know nothing of it; but I don't care if the sap is made, and I do care that the trench is. Now do you think I had better stop them on the sap, or can the party in the trench put a bit more ginger into it?"

"I'll just step along the trench again, sorr," said Clancy anxiously, "and I don't think you'll be having need to grumble again."

He stepped along the trench, and he left an extraordinary increase of energy behind him as he went.

"And what use might it be to make it any deeper?" grumbled McRory.

"Sure it's deep enough for all we need it."

"May be," said Sergeant Clancy, with bitter sarcasm, "it's yourself that'll just be stepping up to the Colonel and saying friendly like to him: 'p.r.i.c.kles, me lad, it's deep enough we've dug to lave us get out to our German Gineral. 'Tisn't for you we're digging this trench,'

you'll be saying, ''tis for our own pleasure entirely.' You might just let me know what the Colonel says to that."

"There's some talk," he said, a little further down the line, "of our being relieved from here to-morrow afternoon. I've told you what the Little Lad was saying about turning the sap party in to help here. It's pretty you'd look clearing out to-morrow and leaving another battalion to come in to take over your new trench and your new sap and your German Gineral and the gold in his britches pocket together." And with that parting shaft he moved on.

For the rest of that day and all that night work moved at speed, and when the O.C. made his tour of inspection the following morning he was as delighted as he was amazed at the work done--and that, as he told the Adjutant, was saying something. Up to now he had known nothing of the sap, merely expressing satisfaction--again mingled with amazement--when he saw the entrance to the sap, lightly roofed in with boards for a couple of yards and shut off beyond that by a curtain of sacking, and was told that the men were amusing themselves making a bomb-proof dug-out.

But on this last morning, when the sap had approached to within twenty or thirty feet of the white head which was its objective, the Colonel's attention was directed to the matter somewhat forcibly. He heard the roar of exploding heavy sh.e.l.ls, and as the "_crump, crump,_" continued steadily, he telephoned from the headquarters dug-out in rear of the support line to ask the forward trenches what was happening.

While he waited an answer, a message came from the Brigade saying that the artillery had reported heavy German sh.e.l.ling on a sap-head, and demanding to know what, where, and why was the sap-head referred to.

While the Colonel was puzzling over this mysterious message and vainly trying to recall any sap-head within his sector of line, the regimental Padre came into the dug-out.

"I've just come from the dressing station," he said, "and there's a boy there, McRory, that has me fair bewildered with his ravings. He's wounded in the head with a shrapnel splinter, and, although he seems sane and sensible enough in other ways, he's been begging me and the doctor not to send him back to the hospital. Did ever ye hear the like, and him with a lump as big as the palm of my hand cut from his head to the bare bone, and bleeding like a stuck pig in an apoplexy?"

The Colonel looked at him vacantly, his mind between this and the other problem of the Brigade's message.

"And that's not all that's in it," went on the Padre. "The doctor was telling me that there's been a round dozen of the past two days'

casualties begging that same thing--not to be sent away till we come out of the trenches. And to beat all, McRory, when he was told he was going just the minute the ambulance came, had a confab with the stretcher bearers, and I heard him arguing with them about 'his share,'

and 'when they got the Gineral,' and 'my bit o' the fifty thousand francs.' It has me beat completely."

By now the Colonel was completely bewildered, and he began to wonder whether he or his battalion were hopelessly mad. It was extraordinary enough that the men should have dug so willingly and well, and without a grumble being heard or a complaint made.

It was still more extraordinary that more or less severely wounded men should not be ardently desirous of the safety and comfort and feeding of the hospitals; and on the top of all was this mysterious message of a sap apparently being made by his men voluntarily and without any sanction, much less the usual required pressure.

A message came from Captain Conroy, in the forward trench, to say that Riley was coming up to headquarters and would explain matters.

Riley and the explanation duly arrived. "Ould p.r.i.c.kles," inclined at first to be mightily wroth at the unauthorized digging of the sap, caught a twinkle in the Padre's eye; and a modest hint from the Little Lad reminding him of the speed and excellence of the new trenches, construction turned the scale. He burst into a roar of laughter, and the Padre joined him heartily, while the Little Lad stood beaming and chuckling complacently.

"I must tell the Brigadier this," gasped the O.C. at last. "He might have had a cross word or two to say about a sap being dug without orders, but, thank heaven, he's an Irishman, and a poorer joke would excuse a worse crime with him. But I'm wondering what's going to happen when they reach their General and find no francs, and no watch, and not even a General; and mind you, Riley, the sap must be stopped at once. I can't be having good men casualtied on an unofficial job. Will you see to that right away?"