With Haig on the Somme Part 11

The French infantry were in terrible earnest, and out to kill. They had old scores to wipe off, and at the outset nothing could stay them.

Figures in blue grey and figures in greeny grey wrestled and fought in the drifting smoke, and what with the hideous gas helmets and their huge goggles, and the mediaeval-looking trench helmets, Dennis seemed to have suddenly found himself in the company of weird demons from some other world.

Men stabbed and hewed and hacked at each other. Others, gripped in tight embrace, were seen revolving in a species of grim waltz, until a chance bullet or a piece of sh.e.l.l ended the dance of death.

The wounded squeezed themselves against the boarded sides, the dead lay where they fell, and the living took no notice of either. If there was any shouting the guns drowned it, and the l.u.s.t of slaughter was in every face.

"I do not think there will be any poison gas," shouted the Alsatian corporal, whose name was Aristide Puzzeau. "The wind is in the wrong quarter, but you never know what these Boches are up to."

He handed him a gas helmet, which he took from a dead comrade, and without waiting for any thanks, Corporal Puzzeau pursued his way.

Dug-out after dug-out he bombed, and when his supply was exhausted he unslung his rifle with its long, thin bayonet, Dennis following upon his heels.

The barrage fire, playing a couple of hundred yards in rear of the German parados, effectually kept the enemy's supports in check, and Dennis wisely possessed himself of a steel helmet, for the shrapnel had a habit of raining down on friend and foe alike, but after they had gone some distance in a northerly direction, they found that the enemy had recovered from the first surprise, and a strong counter-attack was forcing a company of poilus back.

At first it was difficult to find where the enemy sprang from, until Puzzeau located the mouth of a subterranean dug-out from which they poured in rushes, and, crouching down, he waited at one side of the opening like a terrier at a rat-hole, Dennis standing beside him with a revolver in his hand.

"Wait, do you hear that?" said Puzzeau. "There are plenty more of them inside," and they waited.

"Good morning, my pig!" said Puzzeau, lunging forward, and the sergeant reeled against the trench boards.

Almost before he could recover his weapon the opening was filled with a surge of men, and Dennis emptied a revolver into the middle of them.

"That is the style!" grunted the corporal approvingly, as a dull shout boomed from the dug-out and those behind paused. "If there were only half a dozen of us here now, or, better still, a bomb-thrower," and, lifting up his powerful voice, he bellowed to a man he knew: "Rabot, surely there are some bombs left?"

"That is all very well," replied Rabot. "I have been sent myself for reinforcements. Do you know every officer of our company is down, and the men are falling back?"

"There is something yonder that will serve our purpose," cried Dennis, pointing to an ugly grey muzzle behind an iron loophole on the parados.

It was almost opposite to the door of the dug-out, and before the Alsatian knew what he was doing, Dennis had scrambled up to the machine-gun emplacement and vanished. The next moment his head appeared round one side of it.

"Stand clear!" he yelled, waving with his arm, and vanished again.

"Who is that?" inquired Rabot. "He looks English and speaks French like Monsieur le President."

"You will hear him speak German out of that gun in a moment," laughed the corporal. "_Voila!_ there she goes. And to think we were going to shoot that boy less than an hour ago!"

Dennis, who had qualified as a machine-gun officer, had indeed lighted upon a piece of great good fortune, for under the gun he found three Germans recently bayoneted and the cartridge-jacket in position. He had only to depress the muzzle to send a stream of bullets straight into the mouth of the dug-out.

The stream ceased in a moment, and they saw him beckoning to them.

"Look yonder!" he cried, as the corporal and Rabot joined him. "The rabbits will not bolt again if we can leave someone here, but the company is in difficulties, and we are wanted. Can you take charge, _mon garcon_? See, the mechanism is quite simple; it works like this," and he loosed half a dozen rounds by way of ill.u.s.tration.

"Stay here and do as the lieutenant has shown you if they show their noses again," said the corporal, and Rabot took his post at the machine-gun.

The French soldier is intelligent because he has imagination, and Rabot understood. Corporal Puzzeau understood also, and his eyes danced as Dennis bounded along the top of the parados towards the retreating company.

They were bunched up in the trench, and some of them were even scrambling out over the other side, when that slim brown figure in the uniform of their British Allies with one of their own helmets on his head, and the corporal behind him, appeared above them.

"Comrades of the 400th of the Line!" cried Dennis. "You are surely not going back to Paris? Berlin lies in this direction. Follow me, and I will show you the way."

"_Vive la patrie!_" bellowed Corporal Puzzeau, and the men who had recoiled, took up the shout and scaled the wall of the parados again.

A furious rat-tat-tat sounded a little way off, and Dennis heard Puzzeau laugh.

"It is only Rabot," he said. "He has learnt the trick already."

In a few minutes the ground behind the German trench was strewn with bodies in field grey, and it was with some difficulty that Dennis and the corporal could check the victorious company from penetrating into the zone of their own artillery barrage fire. As it was, a good many of the helmets were dented, and not a few of the poilus paid the toll of their own eagerness.

"Mon lieutenant, if I return to our own lines," said the Alsatian corporal, "the general shall hear of this thing you have done. In the name of my country I thank you," and he held out his hand.

Dennis shook it, and laughed. "There is nothing to make a fuss about, corporal," he said. "We've taken the trench, anyhow; and as I see our right brigade yonder, who seem to have been lucky also, I think I'll get along now and join them."

He was gone before Aristide Puzzeau could say any more, and after a quick sprint he came up with an English Fusilier battalion consolidating the position they had just secured.

"Hallo, Dashwood!" hailed a voice, as a very young officer with a very large eyegla.s.s turned round and stared at him. "You look as though you've had a rough night of it. Where on earth have you sprung from?"

"I've been with the French for a spell," said Dennis, looking down ruefully at his tattered uniform. "Where shall I find my crush?"

"Good heavens! they're miles away," said his interrogator, who had been with Dennis in the same training corps. "Pretty good raid, what? What price Romford after this? Bet you a lemon squash your C.O. will reprimand you for appearing on parade improperly dressed."

"I'll chance that, Jimmy. So long, old man," and he threaded his way past the rear of the brigade, not without some good-humoured banter at his dishevelled appearance.

It was twelve o'clock in the day when, rather leg weary, he struck the nearest battalion of his own brigade, and arrived in time to find himself once more in the very thick of it.

During the fighting on their right General Dashwood's command had lain doggo, but word had just come that they, too, were now to make a surprise attack on the enemy's first line trench, and smoke bombs were already preparing the way for them.

"By Jove! Den. The governor's been tearing his hair about you!" was Bob's greeting as they met on the fire-step. "You look pretty well knocked. Better turn in, old man, for a spell."

"Turn in be hanged!" cried Dennis. "Here, Hawke, you've no business with three bags of bombs. Give one of them to me. I'm going to be in this."

He had scarcely fitted the leather strap to his shoulder when his brother, who had been looking at his watch for the last minute said: "Ready, boys! Get over!" And the Reedshires cleared the parapet with a low glad murmur.

Dennis had lost all count of time, and only knew that he had crossed the strip of "No Man's Land" with his platoon, somehow, and was bursting bombs mechanically along the German trench.

Turning round as he came to a narrow door on his left, he was surprised for the moment to find the French corporal no longer at his elbow, and his laugh of amus.e.m.e.nt as he entered alone sounded odd and hollow.

With abrupt suddenness he ran down a flight of thirty wooden steps leading from the end of a short pa.s.sage into a large hall, lit by electric light.

The huge underground dug-out was empty, save for some wounded Germans in bunks, and with a glance at the pictures on the walls, and the piano on a platform, he ran towards another door at the far end.

"Great Scott! they've got a regular town here!" he exclaimed aloud, gazing at the floor of the inner dug-out, which was quite thirty feet below the level on which he stood. "More electric light, and cases of ammunition enough for an army corps!"

"Perhaps you would like to count them, Dashwood?" said a mocking voice behind him.

But before he could turn round a coward's blow flung him forward into s.p.a.ce. The electric lights went out, and while he was still falling he heard the heavy slam of the sh.e.l.l-proof door boom out of the darkness above him.