My Year of the War Part 28

The Germans were generous that afternoon. Another scream seemed aimed at my head. L------ disagreed with me; he said that it was aimed at his. We did not argue the matter to the point of a personal quarrel, for it might have got both our heads. It burst back of the trench about as far away as the other sh.e.l.l. After all, a trench is a pretty narrow ribbon, even on a gunner's large scale map, to hit. It is wonderful how, firing at such long range, he is able to hit a trench at all.

This was all of the nine-inch variety for the time being. We got some fours and fives as we walked along. Three bursting as near together as the ticks of a clock made almost no smoke, as they brought some tree limbs down and tore away a section of a trunk. Then the thunderstorm moved on to another part of the line. Only, unlike the thunderstorms of nature, this, which is man-made and controlled as a fireman controls the nozzle of his hose, may sweep back again and yet again over its path. All depends upon the decision of a German artillery officer, just as whether or not a flower-bed shall get another sprinkle depends upon the will of the gardener.

We were glad to turn out of the support trench into a communication trench leading toward the front trench; into another gallery cut deep in the fields, with scattered sh.e.l.l-pits on either side. Still more soldiers, leaning against the walls or seated with their legs stretched out across the bottom of the ditch; more waiting soldiers, only strung out in a line and as used to the pa.s.sing of sh.e.l.ls as people living along the elevated railroad line to the pa.s.sing of trains. They did not look up at the screams boring the air any more than one who lives under the trains looks up every time that one pa.s.ses. Theirs was the pa.s.sivity of a queue waiting in line before the entrance to a theatre or a ball- grounds.

A senator or a lawyer, used to coolness in debate, or to presiding over great meetings, or to facing crowds, who happened to visit the trenches could have got rea.s.surance from the faces of any one of these private soldiers, who had been trained not to worry about death till death came. Harrowing every one of these screams, taken by itself. Instinctively, unnecessarily, you dodged at those which were low--unnecessarily, because they were from British guns. No danger from them unless there was a short fuse. To the soldiers, the low screams brought the delight of having blows struck from their side at the enemy, whom they themselves could not strike from their reserve position.

For we were under the curving sweep of both the British and the German sh.e.l.ls, as they pa.s.sed in the air on the way to their targets. It was like standing between two railway tracks with trains going in opposite directions. You came to differentiate between the mult.i.tudinous screams. "Ours!" you exclaimed, with the same delight as when you see that your side has the ball. The spirit of battle contest rose in you. There was an end of philosophy. These soldiers in the trenches were your partisans. Every British sh.e.l.l was working for them and for you, giving blow for blow.

The score of the contest of battle is in men down; in killed and wounded. For every man down on your side you want two men down on the enemy's. Sport ceases. It is the fight against a burglar with a revolver in his hand and a knife between his teeth; and a wounded man brought along the trench, a visible, intimate proof of a hit by the enemy, calls for more and harder blows.

Looking over the parapet of the communication trench you saw fields, lifeless except for the singing birds in the wheat, who had also the spirit of battle. The more sh.e.l.ls, the more they warble. It was always so on summer days. Between the screams you hear their full-pitched chorus, striving to make itself heard in compet.i.tion with the song of German invasion and British resistance. Mostly, the birds seemed to take cover like mankind; but I saw one sweep up from the golden sea of ripening grain toward the men-brothers with their wings of cloth.

Was this real, or was it extravaganza? Painted airships and a painted summer sky? The audacity of those British airmen! Two of them were spotting the work of British guns by their sh.e.l.l-bursts and watching for gun-flashes which would reveal concealed German battery-positions, and whispering results by wireless to their own batteries.

It is a great game. Seven or eight thousand feet high, directly over the British planes, is a single Taube cruising for the same purpose. It looks like a beetle with gossamer wings suspended from a light cloud.

The British aviators are so low that the bull's-eye identification marks are distinctly visible to the naked eye. They are playing in and out, like the short stop and second baseman around second, there in the very arc of the pa.s.sing sh.e.l.ls from both sides fired at other targets. But scores of other sh.e.l.ls are most decidedly meant for them. In the midst of a lacework of puffs of shrapnel-bursts, which slowly spread in the still air, from the German anti-aircraft guns, they dip and rise and turn in skilful dodging. At length, one retires for good; probably his plane-cloth has become too much like a sieve from shrapnel- fragments to remain aloft longer.

Come down, Herr Taube, come down where we can have a shot at you I Get in the game! You can see better at the alt.i.tude of the British airmen! But Herr Taube always stays high--the Br'er Fox of the air. Of course, it was not so exciting as the pictures that artists draw, but it was real.

Every kind of sh.e.l.l was being fired, low and high velocity, small and large calibre. One-two-three-four in as quick succession as the roll of a drum, four German sh.e.l.ls burst in line up in the region where we have made ourselves masters of the German trench. British sh.e.l.ls responded.

"Ours again!"

But I had already ducked before I spoke, as you might if a pellet of steel weighing a couple of hundred pounds, going at the rate of a thousand yards a second or more, pa.s.sed within a few yards of your head--ducked to find myself looking into the face of a soldier who was smiling. The smile was not scornful, but it was at least amused at the expense of the sightseer who had dodged one of our own sh.e.l.ls. In addition to the respirators in case of a possible gas attack, supplied by that staff officer with a twinkle in his eye, we needed a steel rod fastened to the back of our necks and running down our spinal columns in order to preserve our dignity.

We were witnessing what is called the "artillery preparation for an infantry attack," which was to try to recover that two hundred yards of trench from the British. Only the Germans did not limit their attention to the lost trench. It was hottest there around the bend of our line, from our view-point; for there they must maul the trench into formless debris and cut the barbed wire in front of it before the charge was made.

"They touch up all the trenches in the neighbourhood to keep us guessing," said the officer, "before they make their final concentration. So it's pretty thick around this part."

"Which might include the communication trench?"

"Certainly. This makes a good line shot. No doubt they will spare us a few when they think it is our turn. We do the same thing. So it goes."

From the variety of screams of big sh.e.l.ls and little sh.e.l.ls and screams harrowingly close and rea.s.suringly high, which were indicated as ours, one was warranted in suggesting that the British were doing considerable artillery preparation themselves.

"We must give them as good as they send--and better."

Better seemed correct.

"Those close ones you hear are doubtless meant for the front German trench, which accounts for their low trajectory; the others for their support trenches or any battery-positions that our planes have located." We could not see where the British sh.e.l.ls were striking. We could judge only of the accuracy of some of the German fire.

Considering the storm being visited on the support trench which we had just left, we were more than ever glad to be out of it. Artillery is the war burglar's jemmy; but it has to batter the house into ruins and blow up the safe and kill most of the family before the burglar can enter. Clouds of dust rose from the explosions; limbs of trees were lopped off by tornadoes of steel hail.

"There! Look at that tree!"

In front of a portion of the British support trench a few of a line of stately shade trees were still standing. A German sh.e.l.l, about an eight-inch, one judged, struck fairly in the trunk of one about the same height from the ground as the lumberman sinks his axe in the bark. The shimmer of hot gas spread out from the point of explosion.

Through it as through an aureole one saw that twelve inches of green wood had been cut in two as neatly as a thistle-stem is severed by a sharp blow from a walking-stick. The body of the tree was carried across the splintered stump with crushing impact from the power of its flight, plus the power of the burst of the explosive charge which broke the sh.e.l.l-jacket into slashing fragments; and the towering column of limbs, branches, and foliage laid its length on the ground with a majestic dignity. Which shows what one sh.e.l.l can do, one of three which burst not far away at the same time. In time, the sh.e.l.ls would get all the trees; make them into chips and splinters and toothpicks.

"I'd rather that it would hit a tree-trunk than my trunk," said L------.

"But you would not have got it as badly as the tree," said the officer rea.s.suringly. "The substance would have been too soft for sufficient impact for a burst. It would have gone right through!"

XXII More Best Day

At battalion headquarters in the front trenches the battalion surgeon had just amputated an arm which had been mauled by a sh.e.l.l.

"Without any anaesthetic," he explained. "No chance if we sent him back to the hospital. He would die on the way. Stood it very well.

Already chirking up."

A family pract.i.tioner at home, the doctor, when the war began, had left his practice to go with his Territorial battalion. He retains the family pract.i.tioner's cheery, a.s.suring manner. He is the kind of man who makes you feel better immediately he comes into the sick-room; who has already made you forget yourself when he puts his finger on your pulse.

"The same thing that we might have done in the Crimea," he continued, "only we have antiseptics now. It's wonderful how little you can work with and how excellent the results. Strong, healthy men, these, with great recuperative power and discipline and resolution-- very different patients from those we usually operate on."

Tea was served inside the battalion commander's dugout. Tea is as essential every afternoon to the British as ice to the average American in summer. They do not think of getting on without it if they can possibly have it, and it is part of the rations. As well take cigarettes away from those who smoke as tea from the British soldier.

It was very much like tea outside the trenches, so far as any signs of perturbation about sh.e.l.ls and casualties were concerned. In that the battalion commander had to answer telegrams, it had the aspect of a busy man's sandwich at his desk for luncheon. Good news to cheer the function had just come over the network of wires which connects up the whole army, from trenches to headquarters--good news in the midst of the sh.e.l.ls.

German West Africa had fallen. Botha, who was fighting against the British fifteen years ago, had taken it fighting for the British. A suggestive thought that. It is British character that brings enemies like Botha into the fold; the old, good-natured, sportsmanlike live-and-let- live idea, which has something to do with keeping the United States intact. A board with the news on it in German was put up over the British trenches. Naturally, the board was shot full of holes; for it is clear that the Germans are not yet ready to come into the British Empire.

"Hans and Jacob we have named them," said the colonel, referring to two Germans who were buried back of his dug-out. "It's dull up here when the Boches are not sh.e.l.ling, so we let our imaginations play.

We hold conversations with Hans and Jacob in our long watches.

Hans is fat and cheerful and trusting. He believes every thing that the Kaiser tells him and has a cheerful disposition. But Jacob is a professor and a fearful 'strafer.' It seems a little gruesome, doesn't it, but not after you have been in the trenches for a while."

A little gruesome--true! Not in the trenches--true, too! Where all is satire, no incongruity seems out of place. Life plays in and out with death; they intermingle; they look each other in the face and say: "I know you. We dwell together. Let us smile when we may, at what we may, to hide the character of our comradeship; for to-morrow------"

Only half an hour before one of the officers had been shot through the head by a sniper. He was a popular officer. The others had messed with him and marched with him and known him in the fullness of affection of comradeship in arms and dangers shared. A heartbreak for some home in England. No one dwelt on the incident.

What was there to say? The trembling lip, trembling in spite of itself, was the only outward sign of the depth of feeling that words could not reflect, at tea in the dug-out. The subject was changed to something about the living. One must carry on cheerfully; one must be on the alert; one must play his part serenely, unflinchingly, for the sake of the nerves around him and for his own sake. Such fort.i.tude becomes automatic, it would seem. Please, I must not hesitate about having a slice of cake. They managed cake without any difficulty up there in the trenches. And who if not men in the trenches was ent.i.tled to cake, I should like to know? "It was here that he was. .h.i.t," another officer said, as we moved on in the trench. "He was saying that the sandbags were a little weak and a bullet might go through and catch a man who thought himself safely under cover as he walked along.

He had started to fix the sandbags himself when he got it. The bullet came right through the top of one of the bags in front of him."

A bullet makes the merciful wound; and a bullet through the head is a simple way of going. The bad wounds come mostly from sh.e.l.ls; but there is something about seeing anyone hit by a sniper which is more horrible. It is a cold-blooded kind of killing, more suggestive of murder, this single shot from a sharpshooter waiting as patiently as a cat for a mouse, aimed definitely to take the life of a man.

Again we move on in that narrow cut of earth with its waiting soldiers, which the world knows so well from reading tours of the trenches. No one not on watch might show his head on an afternoon like this. The men were prisoners between those walls of earth; not even spectators of what the guns were doing; simply moles. They took it all as a part of the day's work, with that singular, redoubtable combination of British phlegm and cheerfulness.

Of course, some of them were eating bread and marmalade and making tea. Where all the marmalade goes which Mr. Atkins uses for his personal munition in fighting the Germans puzzles the Army Service Corps, whose business it is to see that he is never without it.

How could he sit so calmly under sh.e.l.l-fire without marmalade?

Never! He would get fidgety and forget his lesson, I am sure, like the boy who had the b.u.t.ton which he was used to fingering removed before he went to recite.

Any minute a sh.e.l.l may come. Mr. Atkins does not think of that. Time enough to think after it has arrived. Then perhaps the burial party will be doing your thinking for you; or if not, the doctors and the nurses who look after you will.

I noted certain acts of fellowship of comrades who are all in the same boat and have learned unselfishness. When they got up to let you pa.s.s and you smiled your thanks, you received a much pleasanter smile in return than you will from many a well-fed gentleman who has to stand aside to let you enter a restaurant. The manners of the trenches are good, better than in some places where good manners are a cult.