My Year of the War Part 26

So it was, he agreed. That was the exasperating thing. Always hard to believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came; until after nineteen harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watching enemy the figure of a man above the wheat, when a crackling chorus of bullets would suddenly break the silence of night by concentrating on a target. Keeping cover from German flares is a part of the minute, painstaking economy of war.

We crawled on slowly, taking care to make no noise, till we brought up behind two soldiers hugging the earth, rifles in hand ready to fire instantly. It was their business not only to see the enemy first, but to shoot first, and to capture or kill any German patrol. The officer spoke to them and they answered. It was unnecessary for them to say that they had seen nothing. If they had we should have known it. He was out there less to scout himself than to make sure that they were on the job; that they knew how to watch. The visit was part of his routine.

We did not even whisper. Preferably, all whispering would be done by any German patrol out to have a look at our barbed wire and overheard by us.

Silence and the starlight and the damp wheat; but, yes, there was war. You heard gun-fire half a mile, perhaps a mile, away; and raising your head you saw auroras from bursting sh.e.l.ls. We heard at our backs faintly s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk from our trenches and faintly in front the talk from theirs. It sounded rather inviting and friendly from both sides, like that around some camp-fire on the plains.

It seemed quite within the bounds of possibility that you might have crawled on up to the Germans and said, "Howdy!" But by the time you reached the edge of their barbed wire and before you could present your visiting-card, if not sooner, you would have been full of holes. That was just the kind of diversion from trench monotony for which the Germans were looking. "Well, shall we go back?" asked the officer. There seemed no particular purpose in spending the night p.r.o.ne in the wheat with your ears c.o.c.ked 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 dug-outs 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 bedchamber was indicated as mine. The walls had been hung with cuts from ill.u.s.trated 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 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 it works out that way."

Nevertheless, I slept, my 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 is 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 wheatfield 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 dug-outs. 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 water laid on. 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.

XX A School In Bombing

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 Scottish subaltern with blue eyes, a pleasant smile, and a c.o.c.k-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 a.s.sistant 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 you 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," I 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 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 sh.e.l.l 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 behind 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-cla.s.s 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 by throwing bombs. 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 checker board 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 its 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 that moment when they are 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 a.s.sa.s.sins!" 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 sh.e.l.l 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 had 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 Scottish 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 eyes.

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 b.u.t.ton--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 tin.

"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?" someone 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.