My Year of the War Part 31

The Germans had located the points in the P.P.s' trench occupied by machine-guns. At least, they could put these hornets' nests out of business if not all the individual riflemen. So they concentrated high explosive sh.e.l.ls on the guns. This did the trick; it buried them. But a buried machine-gun may be dug out and fired again. It may be dug out two or three times and keep on firing as long as it will work and there is anyone to man it.

While the machine-guns were being exhumed every man in one sector of the trench was killed. Then the left half of the right fire trench had three or four sh.e.l.ls, one after another, bang into it. There was no trench left; only macerated earth and mangled men. Those emerging alive were told to retreat to the communication trench.

Next, the right end of the left fire trench was blown in. When the survivors fell back to the communication trench that also was blown in their face.

"Oh, but we were having a merry party!" as Lieutenant Vandenberg put it.

Niven and his lieutenants were moving here and there to the point of each new explosion to ascertain the amount of damage and to decide what was to be done as the result. One soldier described Niven's eyes as sparks emitted from two holes in his dust-caked face.

Pappineau tells how a tree outside the trench was cut in two by a sh.e.l.l and its trunk laid across the breach of the trench caused by another sh.e.l.l; and lying over the trunk, limp and lifeless where he had fallen, was a man killed by still another sh.e.l.l.

"I remember how he looked because I had to step around him and over the trunk," said Pappineau.

Unless you did have to step around a dead or a wounded man there was no time to observe his appearance; for by noon there were as many dead and wounded in the P.P.s' trench as there were men fit for action.

Those unhurt did not have to be steadied by their superiors. Knocked down by a concussion they sprang up with the promptness of disgust of one thrown off a horse or tripped by a wire. When told to move from one part of the trench to another where there was desperate need, a word was sufficient. They understood what was wanted of them, these veterans. They went. They seized every lull to drop the rifle for the spade and repair the breaches. When they were not shooting they were digging. The officers had only to keep reminding them not to expose themselves in the breaches. For in the thick of it, and the thicker the more so, they must try to keep some dirt between all of their bodies except the head and arm which had to be up in order to fire.

At 1.30 p.m. a cheer rose from that trench. It was in greeting of a platoon of the King's Royal Rifles which had come as a reinforcement.

Oh, but this band of Tommies did look good to the P.P.s! And the little prize package that the very reliable Mr. Atkins had with him --the machine-gun! You can always count on Mr. Atkins to remain "among those present" to the last on such occasions.

Now Niven got word by messenger to go to the nearest point where the telephone was working and tell the brigade commander the complete details of the situation. The brigade commander asked him if he could stick, and he said, "Yes, sir!" which is what Colonel "f.a.n.n.y" Farquhar would have said. This trip was hardly what would be called peaceful. The orderly whom Niven had with him both going and coming was. .h.i.t by high explosive sh.e.l.ls. Niven is so small that it is difficult to hit him. He is about up to Major Gault's shoulder.

He had been worrying about his supply of rifle-cartridges. There were not enough to take care of another German infantry charge, which was surely coming. After repelling two charges, think of failing to repel the third for want of ammunition! Think of Corporal Christy, the bear- hunter, with the Germans thick in front of him and no bullets for his rifle! But appeared again Mr. Thomas Atkins, another platoon of him, with twenty boxes of cartridges, which was rather a risky burden to bring through sh.e.l.l-fire. The relief as these were distributed was that of having something at your throat which threatens to strangle you removed.

Making another tour of his trenches a little later in the afternoon, Niven found that there was a gap of fifty yards between his left and the right of the adjoining regiment. Fifty yards is the inch on the end of a man's nose in trench-warfare on such an occasion. He was able to place eight men in the gap. At least, they could keep a look out and tell him what was going on.

It was not cheering news to learn that the regiments on his left had withdrawn to trenches about three hundred yards to the rear--a long distance in trench warfare. But the P.P.s had no time to retire. They could have gone only in the panic of men who think of nothing in their demoralization except to flee from the danger in front, regardless of more danger to the rear. They were held where they were under what cover they had by the renewed blasts of sh.e.l.ls, putting the machine- guns out of action.

Now the Germans were coming on again in their supreme effort. It was as a nightmare, in which only the objective of effort is recalled and all else is a vague struggle of every ounce of strength which one can exert against smothering odds. No use to ask these men what they thought. What do you think when you are climbing up a rope whose strands are breaking over the edge of a precipice? You climb; that is all.

The P.P.s shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a day among their dead and wounded, after torrents of sh.e.l.l-fire, after breathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state of exaltation entirely oblivious of danger, of their surroundings, mindless of what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trained to do, even as a man pulls with all his might in the crucial test of a tug of war. Old Corporal Christy, bear-hunter of the North-West, who could "shoot the eye off an ant," as Niven said, leaned out over the parapet, or what was left of it, because he could take better aim lying down and the Germans were so thick that he could not afford any misses.

Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine-gun at last.

Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after an explosion and set it up again. The explosion which destroyed the gun finally crushed his leg and arm. He crawled out of the debris toward the support trench which had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a bullet.

The Germans got possession of a section of the P.P.s' trench where, it is believed, no Canadians were left. But the German effort died there. It could get no farther. This was as near to Ypres as the Germans were to go in this direction. When the day's work was done, there, in sight of the field scattered with German dead, the P.P.s counted their numbers. Of the six hundred and thirty-five men who had begun the fight at daybreak, one hundred and fifty men and four officers, Niven, Pappineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit for duty.

Vandenberg is a Hollander, but mostly he is Vandenberg. To him the call of youth is the call to arms. He knows the roads of Europe and the roads of Chihuahua. He was at home fighting with Villa at Zacetecas and at home fighting with the P.P.s in front of Ypres.

Darkness found all the survivors among the P.P.s in the support and communication trenches. The fire trench had become an untenable dust-heap. They crept out only to bring in any wounded unable to help themselves; and wounded and rescuers were more than once hit in the process. It was too dangerous to attempt to bury the dead who were in the fire-trench. Most of them had already been buried by sh.e.l.ls. For them and for the dead in the support trenches interred by their living comrades, Niven recited such portions as he could recall of the Church of England service for the dead--recited them with a tight throat. Then the P.P.s, unbeaten, marched out, leaving the position to their relief, a battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps.

Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, had his "luck with him." He had not even a scratch.

Such is the story of a hard fight by one battalion in the kind of warfare waged in Europe these days, a story only partially told; a story to make a book. All the praise that the P.P.s, millionaire or labourer, scapegrace or respectable pillar of society, ask is that they are worthy of fighting side by side with Mr. Thomas Atkins, regular. At best, one poor, little, finite mind only observes through a rift in the black smoke and yellow smoke of high explosives and the clouds of dust and military secrecy something of what has happened many times in a small section of that long line from Switzerland to the North Sea.

Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-room of the French chateau were the P.P.s colours. Major Niven took off the wrapper in order that I might see the flag with the initials of the battalion which Princess Patricia embroidered with her own hands. There is room, one repeats, for a little sentiment and a little emotion, too, between Halifax and Vancouver.

"Of course we could not take our colours into action," said Niven.

"They would have been torn into tatters or buried in a sh.e.l.l-crater. But we've always kept them up at battalion headquarters. I believe we are the only battalion that has. We promised the Princess that we would."

In her honour, an old custom has been renewed in France: knights are fighting in the name of a fair lady.

XXV Many Pictures

A single incident, an impression photographic in its swiftness, a chance remark, may be more illuminating than a day's experiences.

One does not need to go to the front for them. Sometimes they come to the gateway of our chateau. They are pages at random out of a library of overwhelming information.

One of the aviation grounds is not far away. Look skyward at almost any hour of the day and you will see a plane, its propeller a roar or a hum according to its alt.i.tude. Sometimes it is circling in practice; again, it is off to the front. At break of day the planes appear; in the gloaming they return to roost.

If an aviator has leave for two or three days in summer he starts in the late afternoon, flashing over that streak of Channel in half an hour, and may be at home for dinner without getting any dust on his clothes or having to bother with military red tape at steamer gangways or customs houses.

The airmen are a type which one a.s.sociates with certain marked characteristics. No nervous man is wanted, and it is time for an aviator to take a rest at the first sign of nerves. They seem rather shy, men given to observation rather than to talking; accustomed to using their eyes and hands. It is difficult to realize that some quiet, young fellow who is pointed out has had so many hairbreadth escapes.

What tales, worthy of Arabian Nights' heroes who are borne away-on magic carpets, they bring home, relating them as matter-of-factly as if they had broken a shoelace.

Up in their seat, a whir of the motor, and they are off on another adventure. They have all the spirit of corps of the oldest regiments, and, besides, a spirit peculiar to the newest branch in the service of war. Anonymity is absolute. Everything is done by the corps for the corps. Possibly because it is so young, because it started with chosen men, the British Aviation Corps is unsurpa.s.sed; but partly it is because of the British temperament, with that combination of coolness and innate love of risk which the British manner sometimes belies. Something of the old spirit of knighthood characterizes air service. It is individual work; its numbers are relatively few.

Some mornings ago I saw several young soldiers with notebooks going about our village street. They were from the cadet school where privates, from the trenches, take a course and return with chocolate drops on their, sleeve-bands as commissioned officers.

This was a course in billeting. For ours is not an army in tents, but one living in French houses and barns. The pupils were learning how to carry out this delicate task; for delicate it is. A stranger speaking another language becomes the guest of the host for whom he is fighting. Mr. Atkins receives only shelter; he supplies his own meals.

His excess of marmalade one sees yellowing the cheeks of the children in the family where he is at home. Madame objects only to his efforts to cook in her kitchen; woman-like, she would rather handle the pots and pans herself.

Tommy is thoroughly instructed in his duty as guest and under a discipline that is merciless so far as conduct toward the population goes; so the two get on better than French and English military authorities feared that they might. Time has taught them to understand each other and to see that difference in race does not mean absence of human qualities in common, though differently expressed. Many armies I have seen, but never one better behaved than the British army in France and Flanders in its respect for property and the rights of the population.

And while the fledgling officers are going on with their billeting, we hear the t-r-r-t of a machine-gun at a machine-gun school about a mile distant, where picked men also from the trenches receive instruction in the use of an arm new to them. There are other schools within sound of the guns teaching the art of war to an expanding army in the midst of war, with the teachers bringing their experience from the battle-line.

"Their shops and their houses all have fronts of gla.s.s," wrote a Sikh soldier home, "and even the poor are rich in this bountiful land."

Sikhs and Ghurkas and Rajputs and Pathans and Gharwalis, the brown-skinned tribesmen in India, have been on a strange Odyssey, bringing picturesqueness to the khaki tone of modern war.

Aeroplanes interested them less than a trotting dog in a wheel for drawing water. They would watch that for hours.

Still fresh in mind is a scene when the air seemed a moist sponge and all above the earth was dripping and all under foot a mire. I was homesick for the flash on the windows of the New York skysc.r.a.pers or the gleam on the Hudson of that bright sunlight in a drier air, that is the secret of the American's nervous energy. It seemed to me that it was enough to have to exist in Northern France at that season of the year, let alone fighting Germans.

Out of the drizzly, misty rain along a muddy road and turning past us came the Indian cavalry, which, like the British cavalry, had fought on foot in the trenches, while their horses led the leisurely life of true equine gentry. Erect in their saddles, their martial spirit defiant of weather, their black eyes flashing as they looked toward the reviewing officers, troop after troop of these sons of the East pa.s.sed by, everyone seeming as fit for review as if he had cleaned his uniform and equipment in his home barracks instead of in French barns.

You asked who had trained them; who had fashioned the brown clay into resolute and loyal obedience which stood the test of a Flanders winter? What was the force which could win them to cross the seas to fight for England? Among the brown faces topped with turbans appeared occasional white faces. These were the men; these the force.

The marvel was not that the Indians were able to fight as well as they did in that climate, but that they fought at all. What welcome summer brought from their gleaming black eyes! July or August could not be too hot for them. On a plateau one afternoon I saw them in a gymkhana. It was a treat for the King of the Belgians, who has had few holidays, indeed, this last year, and for the French peasants who came from the neighbourhood. Yelling, wild as they were in tribal days before the British brought order and peace to India, the hors.e.m.e.n galloped across the open s.p.a.ce, picking up handkerchiefs from the ground and impaling tent pegs on their lances. The French peasants clapped their hands and the British Indian officers said, "Good!" when the performer succeeded, or, "Too bad!" when he failed.

If you asked the officers for the secret of the Indian Empire they said: "We try to be fair to the natives!" which means that they are just and even-tempered. An enormous, loose-jointed machine the British Empire, which seems sometimes to creak a bit, yet holds together for that very reason. Imperial weight may have interfered with British adaptability to the kind of warfare which was the one kind that the Germans had to train for; but certainly some Englishmen must know how to rule.

That church bell across the street from our chateau begins its clangor at dawn, summoning the French women and children and the old men to the fields in harvest time. But its peal carrying across the farmlands is softened by distance and sweet to the tired workers in the evening. In the morning it tells them that the day is long and they have much to do before dark. After that thought I never complained because it robbed me of my sleep. I felt ashamed not to be up and doing myself, and worked with a better spirit.

"Will they do it?"