The Black Watch Part 6

I told the company officer of the suspicious-looking machinery in the factory. He sent us back there with a subaltern of the engineers. The three of us approached the building by different routes. Suddenly, from a narrow window in the tower of the structure, a rifle cracked, and I saw the subaltern duck behind a bush. Hunter and I each began to run toward the factory. Zip! A bullet whistled past my ear, and a few seconds later Hunter was fired at.

We all reached the place together. As the firing had been from the tower, we hurried to the upper storeys, but the subaltern saw at a glance that the machinery I had noticed was a wireless plant. Afterward we found that the numerous "lightning rods" on the factory were in reality wireless antennae. We went to the top of the tower without finding a single soul, but in a little room in the cupola, there were a few bread crumbs scattered over the floor. A corner of the linoleum covering on the floor of this room looked a little uneven. The subaltern posted each of us in a different corner with orders to fire three rapid rounds from our rifles into different points of the floor. He himself was to discharge his revolver in a like manner. At his signal we all opened fire, splintering the floor in several places. Then we heard a groan.

"Come up here!" called the subaltern, in English. There was no answer. He repeated the command in German. Very slowly the linoleum in the corner of the room where it was uneven began to hump up. We all stood ready to fire.

A trap door was lifting. Presently the corner of the floor covering was pushed back completely and a man's face appeared. It was a very white, drawn face, and, as the shoulders rose above the floor level, we saw that the man had been struck by at least one of our bullets. His left arm hung limp by his side. We patched him up.

The officer told Hunter and myself to cut all wires, which, after some search, we found had been laid at the bottom of the walls and cunningly concealed by the gra.s.s. Then we took our prisoner back to our lines. An hour later our howitzers had demolished the factory. Up to this time, the boche artillery had been planting one sh.e.l.l after another on our positions, no matter how often we shifted. After the factory was destroyed we made one more move and no sh.e.l.ls found us.

We dug ourselves into the ground, and the almost continual rain made mud holes out of the trenches. Our force was not large enough in those days to allow of the elaborate system of supports and reserves that exists to-day.

The men in the firing trenches had to stay there, and there was no going back into bomb-proofs for a rest. At night we lay down all in our muddy clothes with a waterproof sheet beneath us and our greatcoats around us.

The sheet didn't do much good, because after lying in it for a while, it got pressed down into the mud and slime, which came all over the edges.

Every one had a cold, and many of the men suffered from rheumatism, but no complaints were heard. It is only when things are going smoothly and "f.a.gs" are lacking that the British Tommy kicks.

Owing to the lack of supplies, the issues of cigarettes were so few and far between that the dry tea that was sent up as part rations was used to make "f.a.gs." Tommies would roll the tea in paper in the form of cigarettes and smoke it. As much as five francs would be offered for one "Woodbine"

when our supplies were exhausted. A "f.a.g" was a most precious thing, and guarded jealously. A fellow would get into a corner, take a couple of puffs, "nip" it, then hide it away in a safe place on his person for fear of thieves in the night! In one instance, I watched a scene that would have brought forth laughter as well as pity from a civilian. One Tommy was observed in a corner finishing a half-inch b.u.t.t, holding it by a pin which was stuck through it. Three others immediately pounced upon him and his treasure. After a short argument they formed a truce in the following manner: each man in rotation was to take one puff. A c.o.c.kney with a Walrus moustache was last on the line, and with great sadness on his face and a sob in his voice said: "Bli' me! w'ere the 'ell do _I_ come in?"

Out in front of our trenches the mud was full of the bodies of the dead--mostly Germans, but a few of our men. At night, we went out to bury them, but the enemy fired on us, so we had to leave them there. The wind was blowing our way, and they knew the odours of the battlefield were as hard for us to bear as was their artillery or rifle fire. This scheme they had learned from the Russians, who practised it during their war with j.a.pan.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Our trenches were pretty effective against rifle fire, but we had not yet learned to make them deep and narrow enough in proportion to protect us against shrapnel, which is not of much use against troops in the present-day trench. Our defence lay in leaning up close against the front wall of the trench, which caused most of the force of the shrapnel burst to go over our heads. One morning I was hugging the wall of the trench as close as I could stick, when a "coal box" burst near by. It tore down a long section of trench wall, killing a number of men. I saw the explosion and the next thing I knew I heard some one saying:

"Ah'll bet ye' Joe's snuffed it noo', puir lad."

I stuck my head up out of what seemed to me to be a ton or two of rock and dirt and yelled: "No; not this time!"

You should have seen their faces. Some looked frightened and others relieved. In a second they began to laugh. Two or three of them helped me to my feet, and then the laughing became more boisterous.

"It isn't so d---- funny as you think," I said, getting a little peeved.

They turned me round and one of them held up the front part of my kilt in such a way that I could see the whole rear of the garment had been torn off. Certain portions of my anatomy were as guiltless of clothes as when I was born. A splinter of the sh.e.l.l, about fourteen pounds in weight, had given me a close crop. Then I had to laugh too, though I was somewhat battered and sore, but that night it wasn't so funny. I was almost frozen while on sentry go, and the next day it was just as bad.

As I have already told you, the transports were scarce, and we had little to eat, and absolutely nothing in the way of new equipment. It was all we could do to get ammunition. After shivering all day, I determined to have some clothes. Right in front of our position, about twenty-five yards from the trench, lay a dead member of _H_ company whose name was Jock Drummond. Under cover of darkness, I sneaked out, and was almost beside the body, when a flare rocket went up. All of No Man's Land was lit up like day and I had to lie among the dead as if I had been one of them. It almost turned my stomach, but I did not dare to move. The Germans were searching the muddy ground and the least motion on my part would have brought a dozen or so bullets my way.

Presently the light from the flare bombs died away, and I wriggled closer to what had been Drummond. I got my arm under the shoulders of the body, and started to crawl back to the trench. Twice a rocket went up, and I had to lie still for minutes with my ghastly companion. The second time, a German must have seen us move. Three bullets spattered against the ground a few inches from me, and one struck Drummond. I suppose I was twelve or fifteen minutes crawling back to the trench. It seemed fifteen years--an interminable time. I was not yet thoroughly hardened to war, and it went against my whole nature; but--I had to have clothes. We took the kilt from Drummond's body, and I wore it for weeks. Drummond, at least, got a decent burial, and a letter we found in his pocket we mailed to his mother, to whom it was addressed; so perhaps the deed done with a selfish purpose bore some good fruits after all. I may add that the stench of the dead lingered with me for a good many days.

The night after I got Drummond's kilt, the Germans attacked us. We had erected barbed-wire entanglements in front of our position. We had empty jam and bully-beef tins, also empty sh.e.l.l cases from field guns, strung on the wire in such a way that the least touch would attract attention.

In this manner we were notified that the Germans were in the act of striking at us. Now they were coming--hundreds of them. There was a thin edge of humanity first, like the sheeting of water which precedes a breaker up a gently sloping beach. Behind it came units--more closely bunched, and, still farther back, was a ma.s.s of soldiery almost like a battalion on parade.

It was murder to fire into that wall of misty grey--but the men who made it were bent on murdering us. I was firing as fast as I could. On my right was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the Black Watch--a detachment sent to replace our losses.

"Pray G.o.d they may not pa.s.s the wire," he half sobbed with every breath.

He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first battle. The recruit's face was drawn and white--his lips a thin, pressed line--but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet the "spirit of the bayonet," and he dreaded that they should pa.s.s the wire.

The first of the thin line was at the entanglement. Most of them dropped before they touched a wire, but others cut a single strand before a bullet found its berth. They died; but they had succeeded in their mission. A thread of life cut to sever a strand of wire!

The wave had risen and was breaking over the entanglement. They were beginning to get through. Here and there a man lumbered up the gentle slope toward our trenches only to fall before he reached them. The ma.s.s of them was worming through the wire now.

A shrill whistle blew. From our trenches came a sound like the beating of a hundred pneumatic hammers. It was the music of h.e.l.l. The machine guns and artillery were making it, and they were spitting out death in streams to the accompaniment of their devilish music. G.o.d was answering the prayer of the little lad. The Germans were dropping at the wire; they would not pa.s.s.

The wee death engines were playing just a foot or so above the bottom of the wire, and they were literally cutting the legs from under the ma.s.s of grey-clad men. The back wash from the wave which broke against the wire was thinner than the wash that had preceded it.

"Thank G.o.d!" gasped the boy; "I did not have to use my bayonet."

"It's guid steel wasted," growled a ginger-whiskered old-timer on my left, as he wiped the dampness from the blade with his sleeve and dropped the bayonet back into its scabbard.

[To-day such an attack on the British lines would invariably be followed by a counter attack to show the Germans that the initiative lies--always must lie--with the Allies; but, in those days, we had not the men. Our lines were often so thin that, had they been pierced at a single point, we would have been crumpled up like paper.]

After this fight, we were relieved by an East Yorkshire regiment and told that we would go to billets about three miles in the rear, but we had scarcely left the trenches when we received orders to get to billets and hold ourselves in readiness to occupy a new position in the line. The Black Watch at that time was again brought up to strength by the addition of a re-enforcement of five hundred men.

A party of us was sent to guard a bridge that our engineers were repairing, it having been blown up the previous day by big sh.e.l.l fire. I had just got off duty and was sitting before the log fire in the block-house with a few other fellows, when in popped a little Algerian, as black as the ace of spades. On recognizing that we were Scots, he held out his hand and said:

"My name's MacPherson; what's yours?"

He made himself right at home, and we shared our bully beef and biscuit with him. We had just been warming it. Our black "Scotsman" insisted on staying with us, and so we adopted him as a sort of mascot.

Shortly after we took up our new position in the line, a German sniper began to annoy us, and continued to do so almost ceaselessly. Every time anything showed so much as an inch above the crest, it drew fire, and a number of our men were shot pa.s.sing traverses. There was a wood near our position, and we were pretty sure the fire was coming from there although we could not locate it. The Algerian was a crack shot, and wanted to prove it, so he went to our lieutenant and said:

"Me get sniper, if you like."

"Go ahead," said the lieutenant, half jokingly.

It seemed ridiculous to think of "MacPherson"--with his tiny body and his face of a black angel "getting" anybody.

The little Algerian disappeared. At the end of three hours, after we had all given him up as lost or strayed, he returned, clutching a small untidy package rolled in a French newspaper.

"Well, then, he didn't eat you up, did he?" some one asked.

The little Algerian understood English poorly, but he generally got the gist of things. This time he evidently thought he had been asked whether he had eaten up the sniper.

"Ugh!" he exclaimed; "me no _eat_ sniper, but _git_ him. Look here."

Very gingerly he unrolled his sheet of newspaper and, as evidence that he had landed his man, exposed to view a human ear. He wanted to present the ear to the lieutenant, but the officer declined the honour.[1]

There was much night-patrol work to do on the Aisne. Often we ran into German reconnaissance patrols. One night I was scouting with another man.

Five or six hundred yards from our lines, we came upon a boche sentry. He was a big, heavy fellow, and I remember thinking that he looked as if the hard army life had not yet worked the surfeit of beer out of his system.

He was leaning on the parapet, and appeared to be asleep. We wanted to get beyond, as he was on the German advance listening post, but, as a reconnaissance patrol must conceal from the enemy all evidence of its proximity, we dared not shoot him. So we crawled to one side of him, and my partner, who was slightly ahead, gave him a thud on the side of the neck, which only, as we thought, made him sleep the more soundly. He dropped into the trench. The next moment a head bobbed up and the dose was repeated with the result that the boche (whom we had mistaken for the first man) slid back again. We looked over to see whether the second blow had done its work; there were two forms instead of one. My partner took a helmet as a souvenir. He kept it for one day and then abandoned it as inconvenient to carry. He found that a souvenir the size of a boche's helmet could not be put between the leaves of his St. John's Gospel.

Being about the only Black Watch scout left of those that had first landed in France, I had been almost constantly on duty during the fighting at the Aisne. You can imagine then how happy I was when we were relieved from the trenches and billeted a short distance in the rear in hay lofts, cottages, and stables.

On our way to billets we were looking forward to a "cushy" time, a good rest, a decent meal, and a wash, and hoping that the next section of trench we took over would be much quieter. It did not seem, however, as if I had had much more than the proverbial "forty winks" when we were sent back to support the Cameron Highlanders.