S.O.S. Stand to! Part 9

"'Ere, you lobsters! You, Grant, who has done this?"

"I don't know; how should I know?"

"Hi bet you do know!"

"Aw, what the h.e.l.l are you getting at? Don't try any of that on me or I'll have you up for office," I threatened.

He didn't seem to be getting anywhere in his efforts to find out the guilty ones, so he did the next best thing.

"Sergeant Grant, take six of your men and put that 'ouse back." There was nothing for it but to obey, but I made a mental resolve he would never sleep in that shack that night at least. We took hold all together and lifted it up, and on the way over I purposely stumbled in such a way that the mansion of Hambone fell on one corner and with the fall it came tumbling to pieces.

Our arch-enemy composed himself to sleep that night in the guard room, as none of us would give him room in our quarters, and it so happened that Gunboat Stevens was in the clink at the time for having called him "Hambone." They occupied the same room, his bed immediately opposite the First Sergeant's, with just a foot or two of s.p.a.ce between the bottom of each bed. As may be imagined, no kindly good nights pa.s.sed between the two.

Now Davis had just been over from England but a short time and was comparatively clean in his person, while Stevens was lousy, and to complete the diabolism of the revenge, Gunboat, instead of throwing his shirt on the floor as he usually did, watched his opportunity and when he heard a snore from Hambone that had no camouflage in it, he slipped his shirt in at the head of the bed where our official tormentor reposed.

Our glee was positively fiendish next day when watching Hambone wriggling uneasily in his clothes at parade. Gunboat had sent us an underground message telling us what he did, and we did not fail to recognize the symptoms at once; every moment he got a chance he was scratching himself; and as soon as he had the opportunity he made for the nearest tree and, rubbing his back violently against it, almost wore a hole in his coat. Miserable were his moments throughout that day. "'Ow in 'ell can a man fight an' scratch at the same time!" he would snort.

There was no let up to his officiousness, however; his d.a.m.nable orders were as numerous as before; so we concluded to hatch a scheme that would most effectively put him on the blink, and the opportunity occurred the very next night. Hambone was detailed to proceed to the guns, to relieve the Sergeant-Major there, and it was his duty to take charge of the supply wagon that carried the supplies for the men there, and by chance there was among the rations this time a jar of rum. Accompanying Hambone were Snow and Reynolds of our section, they sitting in the back end of the wagon. They had barely started when Snow discovered the rum jar, and he and Reynolds at once got their wits working as to how they could get away with it. When about half-way there, Hambone, to stretch his legs, got off the wagon and walked alongside, and Snow instantly whispered to Reynolds, "get off and walk with him and tell him you hear a sh.e.l.l coming." Reynolds did as directed and Hambone ducked for cover and the wagon stood stock still. No sooner was the First Sergeant's back turned than Reynolds threw the jar into the ditch.

A minute or two elapsed and no explosion taking place, Hambone rejoined the wagon and the party proceeded. Then Snow slipped off the back and went back for the jar, but instead of going up the road, he took the railroad track, beating the wagon by some minutes and hiding his jar of joy in my gun pit, immediately got back and was standing beside the wagon when it arrived. Hambone seeing him there hadn't the remotest idea that he had hopped off at any time, and supposed that he had ridden the entire way with them. Snow gave Reynolds the wink and he knew the prize was safe.

The first thing Hambone did was to go to the back of the wagon for the jar. It was gone! He searched wildly about for a moment, asking first one and then the other what had become of it, and Snow volunteered the opinion that probably it had dropped off when the wagon lurched that time he thought the sh.e.l.l was coming. There was nothing for it but to report his loss, and the only excuse he could give was that the rum had probably rolled off when they trotted at a coming sh.e.l.l, and what the officer didn't say to Hambone for trotting, which was a violation of orders, would not be worth repeating. He bellowed at him to go and search for it, and with wicked delight we watched the duffer going back over the route, peering from side to side of the road in his vain search.

The journey was a nine-mile trot and he covered more than half the distance, endeavoring to find the precious container, and when he came back in a couple of hours without it, the poor devil thought he was going to be licked, such was the anger of the men at missing their rum rations, because they sorely needed it; none but those who have been there can and do appreciate how sorely it is needed in that region of the world.

I make no apology or attempt to excuse myself as an accessory after the fact. It is an unwritten law among the men that the only crime involved in stealing liquor is--using an Irishism--not to steal it.

The only men in the section that night who had a ration of the treasured fluid were d.i.c.k Snow, Reynolds and myself, and in the midst of our conviviality we prophesied that if Hambone survived this disaster, he was immortal.

Toasting the health of the King, the army, the navy and our loved ones at home, we retired in blissful consciousness of a good job well done.

Next morning, black looks and cursing threats in low voices greeted Hambone on all sides, and his work that day was so fidgety, and he made so many mistakes in getting the ranges on the sights, that the Major performed the _coup d'etat_ for which we were all anxiously waiting by transmitting as quickly as he could to headquarters his recommendation that he be retired, and Hambone, to our immense relief, was shipped back to England.

CHAPTER X

BEES, HONEY AND h.e.l.l

On Tuesday, August 29, 1916, my battery pulled into Martinsaart, in the Somme district, which lies three miles immediately west of Thiepval. The Battle of the Somme had been raging since July 1. We took up our position in a beautiful orchard, its trees laden down with apples, and along the hedge on one side of the orchard were ten beehives, humming and throbbing with busy bee life. Underneath some large apple trees we placed our guns and the thickly woven hedge right in front of us gave us a splendidly concealed nook; through the hedge we cut a hole for our beauty's nozzle.

At 5:15 in the afternoon we started registering our "love letters," in preparation for another phase of the big bombardment which had been more or less continuously in operation since the commencement of the battle, and after accomplishing our purpose we got a "stand down." The apples cl.u.s.tering on the trees looked as tempting to us as did the apple of our first father and before we started registering, every man in the battery had mentally made his tree selection as the one he would climb as soon as he got a minute to himself. It was unnecessary to climb, however; with the advent of the explosion of our guns, the concussion shook the trees as with a strong wind and the luscious fruit showered upon our heads in abundance.

Then we cleaned up our guns, munching the red apples, and the enemy planes were humming like bees over our heads, darting here and there like bats, trying to find our place of concealment, but we were too well hidden. When night fell, McLean and I started for the rear, pa.s.sing the hives on our way. "By, Golly, Grant, here's a chance for a mouthful; I know how to handle this proposition," and he made for the hives. He lifted off the top, with the bees flying all around, and handed me the top to hold while he inserted his hand and took out a comb, which he pa.s.sed over to me, saying, "Take this till I get another, the d.a.m.ned bees are stinging me." Thousands were around him. I took it and started on the dead run for my billet, about 400 yards away, and in a minute or two Mac followed with another comb. The fellows greeted us with exclamations of delight and surprise; many of us had been two years in the battle line without ever having seen, let alone tasted, such a delicious morsel. Every man in the billet fell to, munching the honey with expressions of sheer joy; every fellow in the bunch had his face and hands littered with the sticky joy like so many kids munching taffy.

In the midst of our feasting, visitors called; the robbed bees came flying into the room after their treasure. McLean, by this time, had been stung about twenty times, and I had about a dozen nips on my hands and face, and in the very heat of our argument with our visitors, "Stand to!" was sounded, and honey, bees and everything else was dropped as we raced for the guns. But the bees did not drop us; they chased us every bit of the way; they attacked our hands, our mouths, our necks,--wherever there was a particle of our anatomy exposed we were stung.

On our way to the guns McLean brought a comb with him, leaving the other alongside his bed. We had to pa.s.s the Major on our way, whose dugout was close to the hives, and by that time he had an inkling of what was going on and he yelled, "Grant, throw that honey down; you too, McLean."

As he yelled his orders I was pa.s.sing the telephonist's hut and I threw it in to him,--"Here, Graham, here's some honey for you, it's great,"

and continued my run down to the guns, the bees still following us up.

McLean laid his comb on a pile of sh.e.l.ls beside the gun, and the heat of the August day caused the honey to trickle over the sh.e.l.ls. I commenced pointing the gun while Mac worked the range drum; the angles were pa.s.sed to us and inside of a minute we were firing, and inside of another minute we had the sternest kind of a battle on our hands, for thicker than ever the bees came swarming around the gun.

"Who in h.e.l.l broke into those hives?" yelled the Major.

No reply; we were busily working and "hadn't time" to answer. The honey on our hands, coupled with the dust, made a grit that in opening and closing the breech caused the mechanism to stick, and the honey clinging to the sh.e.l.ls caused the breech chamber to stick, making the sh.e.l.l cases jam in the gun after being discharged, forcing us to pry open with a sharp pick the breech each time to extract the empty cartridge. All during the operation the Major was cursing like a madman at the men, whoever they were, that brought the bees into the business.

It was my duty to set the sight, and as I did so, each time, the bees would attack my hands and head, and in trying to attend to the sight and wipe the bees off at the same time, my work was harder than can well be imagined; but poor Billy's case was even harder, he had to keep a steady hold of his range drum with both hands and he couldn't budge to brush off his attackers, as it was absolutely necessary to hold dead steady to enable us to do our shooting accurately.

"Grant, for G.o.d's sake knock this bee off my neck," he pleaded; "it's stinging h.e.l.l out of me"; but every time I made a move to help him, the Major roared, "Get that angle on, Grant; get your range on, McLean." And we had to take our medicine. Parker, who was pa.s.sing sh.e.l.ls, was in the same plight as the rest of us; his hands were covered with the sugary fluid that had settled between the copper splinters of the driving bands on the sh.e.l.ls and the slivers were slitting his hands. This is a necessary accompaniment that the men pa.s.sing the sh.e.l.ls into the gun have to contend with, and ordinarily it is a sore and painful piece of business, but in conjunction with the swarm of the bees it was simply h.e.l.lish.

A change of angle was momentarily expected from the observer; we had been looking for it for some minutes, and the Major was beginning to rave and rant, very much like a theater manager when the star has not yet put in her appearance and the impatient audience on the outside are giving vent to catcalls. He could stand it no longer and ran as fast as his legs would carry him over to the telephonist's hut; there he found Graham crouching alongside of his telephone in the folds of a blanket over his head and face. It was the usual field telephone that we used, in conjunction with a telegraph buzzer, and Graham was endeavoring to deliver his messages and fight off the bees at the same time, while bringing to his aid the smoke of a f.a.g that he was endeavoring to puff into the faces of his antagonists in the hope that it would help some.

The Major bellowed, "You d.a.m.ned jacka.s.s! take off that blanket. What do you mean?" Graham threw off the blanket and started working his buzzer, but the bees had as little regard for the rank of the Major as they did for that of Sergeant Graham, and three or four of them kept pinging away at him, but as long as the Major was there his splendid discipline enabled him to do his work. He got into communication at once with the trenches, gave us our new targets and we kept on with our work until darkness prevented further registering that night, although the twilight still prevailed.

"Stand down!" came the order. "Clean up guns and lay on S.O.S. lines for the night," meaning to load the gun with a fuse sh.e.l.l timed for a certain range, or to burst on percussion, just as the target requires, safety catch down, sight set, range on range drum and the gun laid on a predetermined point to be covered, in both cases being the front line trench, although it might be a machine-gun emplacement, barbed-wire, bombing post, crossroads or observation station. For a front-line trench and an attack started by the enemy, the S.O.S. signal is pa.s.sed from the trench, either through the telephonist in the trenches, or by means of colored star sh.e.l.ls. Immediately upon receipt of this signal by our S.O.S. sentry or the telephonist at the battery, we get the order "S.O.S. stand to the battery," and in the s.p.a.ce of four seconds from the time we receive that order, our first sh.e.l.l must be exploded in the German lines under pain of the severest penalty. If a man were taking a wash, he would have to jump out of the water and get to the guns as quickly as G.o.d and nature would permit him.

Before retiring for our billets, Mac and I decided that we might as well get some more honey, as we felt that the bees had done about all that they could to us and we were deserving of a little further reward for what we had endured, and arming ourselves with smoke helmets, we made a further sortie on the camp of our winged enemies. As fast as if I were ramming home a sh.e.l.l, I lifted off the hive while Mac pulled out a couple of combs swarming with bees. We thought we were making a good job of it this time and getting away scot free, when suddenly I felt a stab under my coat sleeve and almost at the same moment Mac had the same experience and we broke into a run for the billet. By the time we got there we were being stung frightfully on our bodies, as the bees had made their way up under our shirt sleeves and we ripped off our coats and shirts, fighting the common enemy at the same time. The boys in the billet beat it outside while we "carried on."

After a vigorous battle we seemed to have the foe beaten into submission and the fellows returned; then we had a feed of honey, hung up the remainder on the wall and retired for the night. Mac retired to his bunk first and had scarcely settled down when he emitted another snort, then a yell; the bees had settled in between the blankets of his bed and were renewing their onslaught on his helpless body.

Everybody started laughing at McLean's plight, but no sooner were the rest of us settled down till we too had a battle on our hands; and in the middle of the fray, Fritz started sh.e.l.ling our billets with gas sh.e.l.ls, one of the missiles going clean through the tile roof and knocking the tiles down on our heads. Then came a salvo--six sh.e.l.ls--followed by several others. "S.O.S." was signaled and "Stand to," and out we raced for the guns, sans shirt, sans everything, b.u.mping into the trees on our way and falling in sh.e.l.l holes in the orchard.

The gas they were putting over at this time was more dangerous than any I had yet experienced, it having a more direct effect on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great difficulty we exploded our sh.e.l.ls; but most of our work in that discharge was guesswork.

It soon cooled down and we again sought our billets after laying the guns on "S.O.S." and even the pain from the stings of the bees did not prevent us getting into dreamland in short order.

At 3:30 in the morning I went out to visit the last guard shift, as was my duty. Then, dawn breaking over the land, I went out to see what damage the sh.e.l.ls had done, and on the way I stumbled into a crop of the most delicious mushrooms. Off came my helmet and I filled it to the brim and hastened to the cookhouse with them; he had just got his fire started and I asked him if he would oblige me by cooking them for me, as I wanted them for my gun crew, and he gladly complied with my request.

Then cookhouse was called and the crew came to breakfast and when each man got his portion of the mushrooms served him, his astonishment was as great as when he got the honey. So that between the honey and the dewy dainties I had gathered, together with a couple of jars of pickled pork and two small jars of rolled b.u.t.ter found in one of the vacated cellars by an industrious member of our crew, you can imagine the excited condition of our minds that morning at breakfast.

During the course of the feasting the Sergeant-Major arrived on the scene. "Well, for Heaven's sake! Who was the guy that got the mushrooms?" He was informed that I was the lucky individual and he asked me if I would show him the way, and I was just directing him when "Stand to the battery!" intervened, and we bolted for the guns and opened up.

"Fifty rounds gunfire" was ordered; then "Second fire ten seconds," then "Second fire five seconds," then "Gunfire steady"; next, "Independent fire ten seconds"; then came the order for a sweeping fire to enable our infantry to dig in in a trench they had just taken, and to prevent Fritz getting it back. Our work was accomplished and "Stand down and lay on day lines!" was ordered and I was cleaning the sight of my gun and wiping off the effects of the gas fumes when the Sergeant-Major came along and asked me to indicate where I had gathered the mushrooms; I pointed the spot out to him, and he made a bee line. In a couple of minutes I heard him calling and I looked up, "Here's a beauty you missed, Grant; you must have been blind," and he held up a mushroom as large as a breakfast plate. I laughed and replied, "Yes, you are lucky, Sergeant-Major." Then Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! and Fritz started getting busy again as an airplane hovered about, and the pace getting too deucedly hot, we started for the trenches; it was a ditch-trench half full of water which came to our waists, and in it we paddled our way until we got to a fairly good trench, and on the journey down imprecations of all kinds were hurled on the head of the offending Sergeant-Major. "Where is that d.a.m.ned fool of a Sergeant-Major?" asked one; "It was his gathering those mushrooms in the open that started Fritz." Just at that moment down the ditch came the Sergeant-Major limping; he had been slightly wounded in the leg by a bit of shrapnel, but he was hanging onto his mushrooms.

"'Ere, Grant, take this, will you, till I fix me leg," and he handed me the mushrooms and started undoing his puttee where the blood was soaking through. When he had bound up his wound I handed him his dainties and he held them up admiringly.

"It was a bit dangerous, doncher know, but, blow me tight, if I wouldn't do it again to get a beauty like that," holding up the large one he had shown me when he was gathering them.

"You bleedin' idiot," I said, "don't you know a mushroom when you see it? That's a toadstool! I pa.s.sed it up."

CHAPTER XI

SCOTTY COMES BACK AT THE SOMME