Authors: Will R. Bird
I made small openings among the thickest weeds so that I could watch all sides. The signaller remained squatted at the bottom of the hole and did his talking in a low tone. Suddenly a head shot up in the trench just in front of me, a broad face with a very blunt nose. The German stared beyond my hiding place and then scrambled over the bags and through the wire. I slipped the safety off my revolver and told the signaller to be prepared to beat it. But the German had not seen us. He crawled out to the dead man, a 49th soldier, and took his boots and puttees, even his socks, and then went back.
It got lighter and soon we could see the Germans coming from Avion. A brick wall was over on our left and we saw that it concealed the entrance to a dugout. Many of their wounded had crawled out on the ground between their first and second trenches and in order to get them in, the stretcher bearers would be fully exposed. An officer came from the dugout and after many harsh words, which we could hear, he made an elderly-looking Hun tie a white flag to a pole and climb out of the trench. None of our fellows shot at him, and soon the stretcher bearers were following. They only had three stretchers and the rest were carried in in ground
sheets, doubled like jack-knives, bumped along the rough ground so that they groaned piteously.
All that day we stayed there and watched the Germans. There were two officers in charge and we picked out the three different ways by which they came from Avion; saw where two more dugouts were placed; estimated the number of dead they carried away and the strength of the trench garrison. Then, at night, we stole back to our lines, and as we went found an old shallow trench, with a place in it that the Germans possibly used for a listening post.
The “new men” did not get on well with the “old men.” All the veterans seemed to resent our intrusion. They held aloof from us and would not talk with us at all, with the exception of McLeod and a chap called Farmer. It did not bother me in the least, but Jimmy was hot-headed and often relieved his mind within their hearing. The last afternoon we were in the line I went out in daylight to have a look at the shallow trench. Tommy and Mickey were together on post and let me use it as a sally port. The old sap was reached without much exposure and I went down it till I found an enlarged space with a trip wire around it. Undoubtedly the place had once been used, but weeds were growing in it. As I crouched there I saw a slight movement in the tall grass farther along the trench and then glimpsed a red-and-grey pillbox cap. In a second I had hidden back of the old post, and lay watching.
Very quietly a head was raised, and then the shoulders of a German officer. He was a young man with firm even features and a brown mustache. His eyes were blue and he had a very friendly look. After a moment's watching he crawled along and came into the post, worming under the trip wire. I lay perfectly still and released the safety of my rifle. It only needed the pressure of my finger to kill the fellow, for his head was in line with the muzzle of my Lee-Enfield.
The German lay still a long time, listening, and I knew by the way he acted that he was alone. He had a Luger in his hand, but placed it on the ground as he removed some old wire from under his knees, and when he crawled on he forgot his pistol. He came on the length of himself before he remembered it, and then, as he turned to reach for it, I raised up so that he could see me.
I'll never forget the look that was on his face. He was so surprised that he seemed paralyzed. A long minute passed, and then another. Neither of
us moved. I had my finger crooked, ready, and he saw that I had. He whitened, turned red, paled again, his eyes watching mine, and then he smiled!
I had fully intended taking him prisoner, or shooting him, and yet, as he backed away, smiling at me, I did not do a thing. Back he went, foot by foot, watching me closely, and smiling. He passed the Luger and never looked at it. Back, back, he went, and I crawled forward. I did not know what I was going to do, I wanted to stop him, and yet that smile of his had me hypnotized. I kept on until I had picked up his pistol and he slipped back under the wire and to where I had first seen him. If he had picked up a bomb, or hurried, or done anything but what he did, the spell would have been broken, but he backed and smiled his way down the sap until he reached a bend, and there he stopped â and saluted me!
When he was gone I hurried back. I was bewildered at myself, called myself names, and yet I did not say a thing to Tommy or show him the Luger. All that night I thought of that German and alternately was sorry or thankful that I had let him go. I said nothing to Cave about it, or to anyone, and we were relieved by the 58th Battalion.
We went back to the line on the 2nd of July and found the front trench in Avion. The scouts were established in a cellar and as we looked about in the morning we spotted a lovely bunch of roses just in front of the German wire. Some of the platoon were in splendid dugouts, places with carpets on wooden floors, real beds, and clocks and stoves and mirrors, furnishings looted from French homes. Sedgewick and some of the others watched a house that was well over toward the German lines, and talked about using it as an observation post.
We had no orders, however, and when it was dark I got out of the trench and crawled through several gardens until I reached the roses. It was a longer crawl than I had expected and when I reached them a voice startled me so that I almost jumped and ran. Three Germans were just inside their wire and apparently they were considering a venture into no man's land. I lay within ten feet of them and saw them point and gesture, their huge helmets silhouetted against the distant glimmer of a flare. They talked there at least ten minutes before they got down and I could get my roses.
When I reached our dugout again, a royal row was in progress. The “oldtimers,” after a long and careful reconnaissance, had reached the
house they wished to use. In it, they had listened a time, and then had been badly scared by having Jimmy's voice, a few feet away, ask them if they thought it was all right. He was seated by a window watching the Hun lines, and had gone there as soon as it was dark. Sedgewick and his mate claimed that the Germans must have heard Jimmy, there had been considerable machine-gun fire soon afterward, and he derided them for taking so long to get to a place. McLeod made both parties keep quiet, but there was hostility in the air. And Jimmy and I wore roses.
An hour after, the Germans began pitching “Minnies” into our lines. Our cellar opened on to a street through which one could walk in safety from machine bullets and as I went on a message to a company headquarters I saw the red trail of a “Minnie” in the sky. I stopped and looked. Two men were coming along the street behind me. I watched the big shell and decided that it would go back of the house, so dodged in front of it then changed. My last decision was correct. The Minnie dropped in front of the building, falling on the cobbles, and there was a tremendous explosion. Stones and bricks flew everywhere, crashing among the ruins. I ran around to where the two men had been, for I had seen them standing as if undecided. They were both lying on the street, two officers of the Princess Pats. One, Major Molson, was dead, the other a captain, had his leg blown off. I ran for help and we got him on a stretcher after binding the stump, and, strangely, he never lost consciousness and actually seemed calmer than those helping him.
Next day Cave sent Wilson and I over to the right in front of a company headquarters to where an old ruin extended into no man's land. He told us to get into it, if possible, and observe. We found the place rather exposed but reached it and found we could get to the upstairs part without showing ourselves. It was a badly shattered ruin but enough room remained to give us hiding. Beside where we lay was an opening large enough to allow a man to step outside. We were not there five minutes until we knew we had the finest observation post in that sector. In that time we had counted over forty Germans in view. We watched a carrying party going across a field, sheltered by an embankment, and a party of twenty were working busily, building what we supposed was a “Minnie” emplacement. They were mixing concrete and carrying timbers, a big non-com directing the whole. By using our glasses carefully we could see
even his expression, and the screwed-up look on the face of a fat fellow who was trying to light a clay pipe.
I wriggled out through the grass again and reported our find and within the hour had an artillery officer up in the house with us. He had brought a phone with him. Wilson and I were tingling with excitement, but I had apprehensions as to what might happen. The workers were busy as ants around their construction when the first shell dropped among them. It was the nicest aiming I ever saw. The officer had had his battery fire a first shell far over into a field, then a second to the right, a third a little nearer, and had then made his calculations, and he scored a direct hit. When the smoke cleared four men were lying inert where they had worked and two wounded ones were just crawling from view. No others were in sight. The officer had that one gun remain registered, and then began sniping at other targets. He sent the carrying party, then on its second trip, diving into a dugout entrance we had not noticed, and he made two more kills, one a chance hit on a lone messenger, blowing the fellow into the air, the other on a party of three that had emerged from the embankment and were staring our way.
Two Germans showed their heads near the emplacement, and both had binoculars. We knew that they were getting suspicious and the officer kept his guns from shooting. Then came bold steps up the stairs behind us, a quick voice. Izzy, an impetuous officer of “A” Company, wanted to know what luck we were having, and before we could stop him he had stepped full-length into the opening beside us and stood calmly surveying the German lines. One scoop gathered our glasses and tunics which we had lain on the floor. Wilson and I made it a dead heat until we reached the company houses and the artillery officer was not far behind. He never bothered with his phone. Izzy stared at us, then started down, no doubt bewildered by our conduct. Crash! A shell went through the top of the ruin, blasting out the entire corner where we had been and covering Izzy with a deluge of debris. It was a miracle that he was not killed. We saw him come into the open and dash blindly toward the company headquarters, and we kept on, far along the side of an old railway track until we were back to our cellar. The Hun smashed that ruin to powdered brick and he kept right on and levelled all the houses where the company officers were, they remaining in the cellars, unable to get away. We heard that Izzy
received the colonel's compliments. The battalion was relieved and we went back to Chateau de la Haie.
No sooner were we in billets than I went to see the boys in the company, and was astounded to learn that Ira had got into trouble. During the heavy shelling of “D” company's trench at Avion he and others had been ordered to dugouts. They had stayed there for some time when a shell blew in part of the entrance and showered chalky earth on Ira who had been halfway up the stairs. Probably he was shocked by concussion. At any rate, so Tommy told me, he had been shaky for some time, brooding on the fate of Herman, who had been his friend, and thinking of Freddy's prophecy. When, later, an officer came and ordered them back to their posts Ira would not go. He told the officer that he could not do so, and he was crimed. They sent him to join the road-making gang for twenty-one days.
There was a queer old chap in the company, one of the last draft, a short, bow-legged fellow, Bunty. He had made himself a bivvy under the parados â because it was easier digging âand so constructed it that he had to sit in it like a Hindoo. He was a heavy sleeper, and very scared of shells. Tommy found him asleep there one morning, sitting cross-legged, and took a dud shell to the place. He made a cleft in the parapet directly in front, then scooped out the earth between Bunty's knees, without waking him. He pushed the dud into the hole, and then threw a Mills bomb into the grass just back of Bunty's parados. The explosion, of course, wakened the little man, but there was no outcry, not a sound. Tommy hiding around the traverse, was obliged to go to see what happened. Bunty was there, rigid, sweat streaming down his face, unable to move or speak. Fright had almost paralyzed him. Tommy removed the shell and never let Bunty know it was all a joke. Melville also had got into trouble. A German airman had the habit of coming each morning, just as it was light, and flying very low above our trench, shooting at the men. On the third morning Melville was ready for him. He had two rifles beside him and he pumped lead like a machine gun, causing the airman to swerve from his route. The boys all claimed that Melville hit him, at any rate the flyer never returned, but an officer who had seen the shooting had Melville on the carpet. The orders were that no man must even look up while an enemy airman was overhead, and never shoot at them.
During our stay at Chateau de la Haie the private war between the “old”
and “new” scouts waged merrily, though I had little to do with it. At every opportunity Tommy and I went to other units, visiting them, and I talked with all the interesting strangers I met, making notes of all unusual stories that I heard. One evening we went to the old crater line at Vimy and I looked over from Vernon post to where the German front had been. It seemed incredible that we could have remained so close to the enemy, for one could almost have thrown a bomb from one post to the other. Then we went and looked down over the plain. The moon had risen, casting its spell over all the hillside, blotting out harsh lines, tinging all with an eerie sort of beauty that held us, unspeaking, a long, long time. I thought of some rare moments there, quiets at midnight when we talked of home and things near the heart, fugitive minutes, never to be forgotten. As we went back Tommy pointed out French graves near Souchez, with “Mort Pour la patrie,” on the crosses, others with but an inverted bottle holding all the particulars, and told me that he and another had found a dreadful spot, a little area of unburied dead, mostly Sengalese, rotting, rat-picked bones, with fezzes, faded red sashes, and brass-studded belts among the skeletons.