And We Go On (23 page)

We saw one carrying party crossing overland behind the trench and asked them who they were. “The King's Own 'Ymn of 'Aters,” came the retort. “Wot's your mob?”

The German advance on the Somme had continued and there were many conflicting rumours. Nevertheless we sensed that the situation down there was critical and that we might be attacked at any time. Everyone was on his toes and we began to see more of the officers than at any time since I had joined the battalion. I was sent out with another man to go along the top of the railway embankment as far as possible and there keep watch on the German front and listen for sounds of a patrol. We kept between rails on the track and worked well over toward the enemy, then lay still. It was not very dark and we were in a very exposed position. I had found a place that had been hollowed slightly and gave cover, and after being there an hour was touched on the shoulder. “What is it?” I asked without looking around.

“What?” whispered the fellow. “I never said anything.”

“Didn't you touch me?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I never moved.”

In an instant I was crawling away. It had been months since I had felt a like touch but remembrance of it had never left me. Day and night I was keyed for messages from Steve; not for a single hour had I forgotten him. The man followed me in a startled way, and we went ahead several yards. No sooner were we settled again than a battery near Lieven fired, our own whizz bangs, and a salvo of shells passed just over the track – all but one. That one shell had not enough elevation. It struck the steel rail and detonated exactly where we had lain.

The man with me crouched lower. I could see him licking his lips, trembling. “Gosh,” he breathed. “It was lucky you thought you heard something.”

The weather had turned warm and in the morning we could hear the skylarks flooding the air with melody as they winged high and then dropped to earth again. Danedelions dotted every little patch of sod that remained in our area and the hard places grew dusty. The enemy tried to raid trenches over near Hill 70 and we saw our S.O.S. go up. The response of the artillery was magnificent and heartened us. It did not seem an instant until a barrage was falling on the German trenches and there was a defiant roar to the guns that made us tingle.

Sambro had a narrow escape while on post. One of the big ones came sailing over, the kind usually sent to back areas, and descended in front of him. Sambro was dazed when we reached him, and staring at a baby volcano just in front of his post. “I heard it coming and I couldn't move a step,” he said. “There's something the matter with me.”

He had not missed a turn in the line since coming to France and his health was not good. Our stay in the line without hot meals, and the lack of a bath, had its effects. He developed some skin disease and was covered with sores. The medical officer sent him down the line and we did not see him again for months. Others had the same trouble but many light cases were treated in the trenches, and that Queen of the Movies, the good old number nine, was often prominent. The need of a bath and change of clothes was, however, not ignored. and small parties were rushed back by light railway to the nearest soap-and-water establishment and there given an hour for ablutions. One place was a mine bath and French girls were
the attendants. They were not embarrassed by our presence and hot suds took our attention.

We moved back to supports and a party was sent up to do wiring in a corner too difficult to approach on ordinary nights. But it was dark and raining and seemed the opportunity. We carried our stakes and wire with us and by the time we had navigated Cow Trench and reached our objective we were soaked and chilled. There the officer whispered hoarse instructions and found it necessary to stay very close to the trench exit. Three of us were detailed as covering party and we wandered out and out until we were sure we would soon step into the German trench. But the pouring, slashing rain made us indifferent. There was not the slightest shelter and it was one of those downpours that France often endured. We stood there together, rain running off our tin hats, down our necks, our legs, even our elbows. It was cold, too, and we did not want to move. Behind us the workers had an excellent chance to hurry for the deluge covered all small sounds. Tommy was beside me and I felt him stir slightly, and raised my head a trifle.

We did not move more than that, and we were shoulder to shoulder, leaning on our rifles. Two dim figures, Germans, passed in front of us so close that we could touch them, their feet squelching with water. They were panting as if they had come quickly and never noticed us. We did not start or move as they passed, but every moment seemed an eternity until one of the wiring party came and said that they had finished. Then we went to the trench and I kept close behind the third man until I could find out who he was. He had been pressed tight to Tommy on the other side. It was Sparky, a quiet, dark-eyed new man, one of the MacLean draft – and he had not flinched or spoken. They were good soldiers.

Next day he mentioned the matter to me and seemed very proud that he had seen a German. His talk made me think. So many men had come to France and had endured all weathers, all hardships, worked and died, without ever seeing an enemy or hearing one speak. Tommy had often referred to it, and I realized that many of the soldiers were curiously eager to see a live Hun. Some of them seemed to think they were likely to meet monsters like the characters in
Pilgrim's Progress
.

The sergeant-major came to our cellar and asked for volunteers for a raid. Tommy started up at once, then sank back as the murmur of voices increased. There were many questions and several of them jumped at the
chance. We had many good men and the platoon was at full strength. Earle and Williams, Lockerbie and a Russian we called “Waterbottle,” were all big men, cool-headed, active and courageous, a quartette ready for anything. Barron was also a good man, and Murray, a stocky 73rd lad, was his mate.

The raid was to be at the embankment and a fiery officer was to be in charge. He had not seen much action but seemed anxious to meet the Hun. I said nothing. The old bitterness I had brought to France had never left me entirely. Most “oldtimers” galled me. There was not one in the platoon who had seen as much continuous service as I had, had been on half the patrols, had seen as much of no man's land, and yet they swanked as the “old hands,” and we were “umpty-umps,” delayed in reaching France by the imbecility of those in authority, officials who were then scheming to force across the water those they had refused the opportunity. In addition, I had a queer temperament. I never talked about what I had seen or done, always kept in the background, and if asked questions by officers or non-coms some inexplicable contrariness of nature made me non-communicative, and I generally gave the impression that I was sullen and not ambitious. I knew that if I told an officer all the adventures I had had he would place me as an imaginative liar, and so I held to the other extreme and said nothing.

On the other hand we had several, chief among them the Newfoundlander, young Russell, who shouted out all they had seen or done, who made a great show of being hardy, Hun-eating lions, ready to bite bullets. Russell WAS a good soldier, had done a man's share all the time, and the others who talked and made a like show were also good, but the quartette I mentioned, and Sambro and Tommy and Barron and Murray were all their peers in any adventure “across the bags.” The needed men were chosen and were sent back to the rear to rehearse their raid. They were to get a bath and have good meals for a few days. In a way I envied them; in another way I did not.

I would liked to have shared their change from the line, we had now been in the trenches over a month, and to show Davies and Grafftey that I was not such an indifferent soldier, but I did not envy them their rushing into the German lines with a new officer at their head. I liked patrol work, loved crawling near the Hun wire, was not nervous when with good men, but I dreaded mob fighting, a dozen men against a score, with bayonets
and trench knives the main weapons. In the dark of no man's land you had all the elements of surprise in your favour, it was your wits against the other fellow's, your cunning against his; in a raid it was a mad chance unless all things worked as planned, which was very seldom.

There had been several raids since we entered the line and none of them were a success. After the officer swam to the embankment a party was selected from fifteen and sixteen platoons and a raft was used to cross the water. A rope was attached to it and a number of men were ready to pull it back on our side as soon as the German post was raided. Something went wrong, I never knew what, and the raft was drawn back before they reached the other side. Another attempt was made near the embankment, but old Fritz was ready and inviting and the would-be raiders did not venture far. An “original” had come back to the company, they were rare specimens now, and he was credited with having unusual courage. He was to be one of the leading men in the attack.

Tommy and I went back to Lieven. There had been another rain and we were in search of a cellar or any cavity that had collected enough water to permit us to have a bath. We chose a part that seemed the most isolated from soldiers' paths, and the hollow reverberating sounds of our footsteps were caught up and echoed by the ruins. The street was blocked with debris and every living thing was absent with the exception of two black cats that stole about the wreckage as wild-eyed as evil spirits. In a small garden we found rambler roses in bloom and Tommy made a garland for his steel hat. We entered a very shaky ruin. Its walls still supported the roof and tiles clung crazily to it, but the interior was badly damaged. A shell or bomb explosion within a room had blown away partitions and a great hole gaped in the floor, revealing a cellar lined with bunks. We had candles with us and found that the place had been occupied by the Germans. Equipment and clothing were scattered about. Pockets had been turned inside out and a few letters were molding on the floor, thick paper covered with a Teutonic scrawl, discarded by hurried souvenir-hunters. A ghostly exhalation, that peculiar German odour, still lurked about the place.

We got back to the wrecked floor. It was dusk and the timbers creaked eerily beneath our tread. We hurried and they made more noise, as if the old house were a pallid ruin of imprisoned hopes, jibing the timorous and chuckling hideously as they fled. From a shell hole in a nearby wall came a glow of red as the sky behind was lit by gun flashes, and a sharp strafing
began. The glows played on the walls of another ruin with a fascinating bizarre effect. The batteries were not a great distance behind us and we stayed a time and watched the light flicker, dance, vanish and whiten again. For over fifteen minutes the shelling kept on and then it quieted, and it seemed as if a waiting silence were over everything.

We went back to our cellar and Tommy and I were sent to company headquarters. It seemed that an attack was expected and we were to carry messages. There had been considerable shelling of the front line and the enemy seemed active. We were told to remain in an outer room of the cellar where the runners and a few signallers were gathered. A game of banker was in progress and Tommy, after watching it a time, asked me for a loan of five francs. I gave it to him and he lost it, and I gave him a second five. It was a lucky note. The play turned his way and did not change. Outside we could hear shells tearing all along Cow Trench, down by the cook's quarters, all along the sector, a general strafe. Our ears were attuned to every explosion, but we sat there in the candle light, looking at each other whenever a heavy one came especially near, and the play went on. When word came that we were to go out with the captain and see what damage had been done Tommy had over one hundred francs in his pocket.

We found trench sides smashed down, debris piled in different places, but no serious harm done, and the German guns had calmed. Sparky had had a narrow escape as a shell fragment had knocked his helmet from his head, but he was smiling steadily. He informed me that he had been on duty when it was not his turn, but that he had gone without complaint, hoping that his action would be afterward commended. Tommy grinned at me. Helping the other fellow, doing him a good turn, with the expectation that in the end you yourself will benefit the most, has been the cynosure of many faiths.

The days grew monotonous. It seemed years since we had even been back as far as the transport lines. Food grew tasteless and we could not eat. We had turned night into day so long that I could not sleep regular hours at all. When off duty in the daytime I would often wander around the trenches, watching the aeroplanes in combat or in acrobatic stunts as they dodged the shelling of the “Archies.”

There was nothing we could do when not on working parties or on post. We had nothing to read but our letters and I had read French History until I loathed it, even Tommy knew my little guide book by heart. All
the rumours that circulated were treated as plants needing careful nurture and none lost strength in their passage through our cellars. The MacLeans were told all the army yarns until the five favorites were common property. There was the one about the Ghurka and the German sentry. There had been the dark man's sudden appearance on the parapet, a lightning slash with his trusty blade, which must never be unsheathed without drawing blood. “Ah-ha,” grunted the Heinie. “You're so smart you missed me.”

“You shake your head,” said the Ghurka laconically. Fritz did so, and it dropped to the trench floor.

Then there was the one about the prisoner. “Me no fighting man, me Minnieman.” And the “dead men made into soap” story, and the “‘forty-foot revolving' periscopes on the Hindenburg line.” Then when the crowd was right, in the dead hours of the night, the story of the “angel of Mons” would go the rounds, and be believed, many times, by both teller and hearer.