Chapter XVII: “But, by the Mass! our hearts are in the trim!”--Henry V

The noonday sun was high overhead. The long hand of the watch was passing the half-hour mark after noon. The first wave of Guards was waiting for the whistle-blast that would launch them to the attack, rifle and bayonet in their hands, helmets strapped on tight, and one foot in the little steps they had cut in the forward wall of the trench. The men of the second wave stood, likewise ready, leaning with their backs to the parados, to let the first wave get clear.

Peter and our Ensign were in the middle of the trench, girt about with revolvers and lamps and compasses, helmets back to front so as to hide their regimental crest that would proclaim them as officers, coat collars turned up, and rifles by their sides. Peter was on the fire-step, for he was to lead the first wave: a spin of the coin had decided it: our Ensign leant against the back of the trench, and both had their eyes glued to their left wrists, watching the long hand of their watches crawling forward to the appointed hour.

“Now!” cried Peter.

“Now!” echoed the other, and even as the first wave scrambled out, the roar of the guns increased to whirlwind intensity, and all the stretch of No Man’s Land in front of them began to seethe yet more madly with the bursting shells.

Away the solid brown line goes, a zig-zagging line of figures, diminishing to right and left into mere dots, slowly, slowly, for they must not walk into that creeping hurricane which is sweeping the ground as they go forward. The noise is terrific, a vast cascade of reverberating crashes blending with the swift, incessant, wingèd scream of heavy metal hurtling through space, the only ingredient sound distinguishable, the high-pitched whinny and spit of bullets in the air.

No whistle could be heard in such a din, and with the drill-book signal for “Advance”--the right arm stretched forward and dropped--our Ensign got his second wave out of the trench into the screaming, vibrating atmosphere of No Man’s Land.

How the men responded to that signal! Never a laggard was there. Out they scrambled and staggered and hopped,--it is no easy thing for a big man, heavily laden, to get out of a narrow trench,--eager and willing and determined, one helping the other, spreading out to the proper extended distance, and dressing by the right as calmly as if they were out on a company training day at home. Out they came with a will, thankful to exchange their narrow quarters in the trench for the freedom of the advance.

Over the top! Has any man’s life ever offered such a thrill, such a sensation of freedom, such a bursting from incarceration into liberty, from darkness into light, as that inspiriting leap into the open? Gone the uneasiness, the doubtings of the eve--only the great moral uplifting, which the din of battle brings, remains.

Slowly the line surged forward across the broken ground towards the long ragged fringe of red-rusted wire running in front of the German trench. The second wave soon caught up with and merged in the first, and the whole line went on together, Peter and our Ensign and the Company Sergeant-Major darting to and fro to restrain the eagerness of the men, and prevent them from plunging into that maelstrom of fire that crept forward yard by yard in front of them.

The advance was so leisurely that our Ensign had plenty of time to look about him. He saw with some surprise--so slow is the mind to take in the reality of death--how here a man and there a man would suddenly stop and throw himself down with a deliberation that would have excited the ire of a stage manager rehearsing a death scene. He gazed with astonishment on the secrets which that serene and silent stretch of ground, as viewed from their trench, now abruptly revealed,--waxen and sorrowful corpses in clean field-grey overcoats sprawling in shell-holes, the victims of that morning’s bombardment; wounded Guardsmen waiting, with that dumb apathy which is such a fine characteristic of our British wounded, for the stolid and dauntless stretcher-bearers.

A brace of partridge suddenly whirred up from the broken and splintered festoons of wire at their very feet. Our Ensign watched them fly off to the left, and noted that they came unscathed through the torrent of fire. The men laughed uproariously at the appearance of the birds,--it takes but very little to set men laughing in battle.

Now they were at the wire which reached to the very lip of the German trench, all battered and pounded. Already frightened faces appeared, mouthing from under the ugly German coal-scuttle helmets their cry of “Kamerad! Kamerad!” The whole line burst into a wild “whoroo”: the yell echoed up and down the line, and even rang out above the din of the fight. Then, like a torrent, the khaki flood poured into the trench.

From the top of the trench our Ensign surveyed its length. Germans scuttled out of dug-outs, running this way and that uncertainly, like trapped rats--then seeing the khaki surging down upon them, flung away their rifles and threw up their hands, bleating “Kamerad! Kamerad!”

What a sight that trench was! The dead were lying everywhere--stamped or blown into the soft mud bottom, sprawling at the mouths of the dug-outs, prone upon the parapet; and amongst the flaccid forms others yet alive, with ghastly wounds, shuddering, gibbering, slavering, groaning, whimpering for mercy, for food, for water. There, in a tiny unfinished shelter, cowered a youth with a shattered jaw, slobbering blood; here, in the bottom of the trench, lay another field-grey with one foot blown clean away--mud-stained, unshaven, filthy--sobbing in a sing-song voice, “_Ach, bitte! ach, bitte!_” and all around the shells screamed through the air or crashed with hideous reverberation and clouds of dust and stifling reek into the crumbling ground.

Our Ensign took his orderly and a couple of men and pushed along to the right into a bare and apparently unoccupied stretch of trench. He wanted to link up with the Guards attacking on their right, so as to form an unbroken front. The German barrage had begun, and the shells were bursting freely about the newly captured position. Behind them they could see the supports swarming out across the ground over which they had just advanced. Our Ensign caught a glimpse of a gross German, fat and unwieldy, sprawling dead on the parapet, his face to the ground. Our young man found himself wondering fearfully if a shell would come and hideously dissipate that mass of flesh. With a shudder he hurried on.

They joined hands with the Guards on their right, and heard from the hot and grimy men a hurried tale of uncut wire and heavy losses. Our Ensign was told the story of the heroic death of a friend, an officer, who had adventured forth alone to cut the wire that barred their progress, and had met his death with his face to the enemy, the cutters in his hand. Then a man came up to our Ensign,--there was a German officer in a dug-out who demanded to speak to “th’ officer.”

Our Ensign followed the private, who led him back along the trench to a dug-out, at the entrance of which an officer stood facing a ring of Guardsmen. He was the old type of Prussian officer--none of your upstart, counter-jumper, pot-bellied, bespectacled, “I-surrender-and-let’s-call-it-a-draw” sort of special reservist, such as we have all met on the Somme, but a tall well-groomed figure, reticent and coldly hostile. He was wearing a Prussian military cap and a well-fitting grey overcoat. In his hand he held his shrapnel helmet. He introduced himself in good German fashion, with a little bow and click of heels, as a Lieutenant of the 240th Infantry Regiment. He came from the Rhine, where our Ensign had learnt his language.

“There are none but wounded men here with me,” he said in German, “and we shall make no further resistance.”

“You’d better not,” observed the British officer.

“I myself am also wounded,” the German went on, protruding his leg and showing his trouser ripped up to the thigh, which was wrapped in blood-stained bandages, “and I will give you my word of honour that there shall be no act of aggression on our part. Will you be good enough to see that there is no killing?”

He used the German expression “_Totmachen_,” infinitely grimmer, our Ensign thought, than the English equivalent.

“Nobody is going to touch you if you don’t get up to any tricks,” our Ensign answered. In exchange for the German’s blunt expression he gave him a blunter. “_Nur keine Schweinerei Ihrerseits!_” were the words he used. A German best understands plain speaking. But our young man felt himself strangely moved at the spectacle of this Prussian, who walked surrounded by a halo in his own country, pleading so humbly for his life and that of his men’s, with his besotted German conviction that as they had done, so they would be done by.

Thus the pourparlers of surrender were conducted in a circle of big and gentle British soldiers. The conditions were that all the wounded who were able to walk should come out of the dug-out and be sent down to the rear under escort, and that the rest should remain where they were under guard until they could be removed by the stretcher-bearers. Our Ensign posted a couple of sentries at the dug-out with instructions to shoot anybody who tried to come out. He carefully explained these orders to the officer.

“You’d better go too,” our Ensign added, “for this trench is going to be very unhealthy presently, and you’ll be sorry you stayed!”

But the officer protested that he could not walk, so he stayed where he was under guard. He offered our Ensign his helmet, but our young man declined it.

“We’re too busy to go collecting souvenirs!” he said, and went off to help his company commander get the men to work on the consolidation of the position.

Presently, while the shells spouted on in front of them in a steady stream, and German shells screamed back barraging all the slope behind, the advance went forward again, the supports coming up to hold the newly-won trench, and the attacking waves going forward to the next objective, a sunken road skirting the village. Here they found a rudimentary fire-position with several deep dug-outs and massively constructed shelters, into which they dropped a few bombs to make all safe within. But there was no living sign of the enemy.

A few hundred yards across to the right lay the centre of the village, a wild wreck of crumbling ruins, bathed in the mellow afternoon sunshine which gilded the smoke-clouds drifting in and out of the gaunt roofs. The din of battle raged unabated, for in addition to the crash of the mighty projectiles exploding in the village, German shells burst noisily from time to time about their position on the road. But the shooting was poor. The enemy, deprived of the high ground and driven from the air, was shooting by the map and he was guessing badly.

It was very hot. The officers got the men strung out along the road until they were in touch with both flanks. The men lay down and wiped the sweat from their eyes and foreheads and drained their water-bottles, and chatted eagerly about their experiences of the day. Peter and our Ensign sat on a fallen tree-trunk and discussed the exact location of their next objective, a slope on the far side of the village, and debated the possibility of trouble in the forthcoming assault on the village, which was known to be very strongly fortified.

All this time the hamlet showed no sign of life. Scan it as they would, their glasses showed them nothing more than the scatter of splintered roof-trees, the litter of red tiles, the torn white masonry of the houses,--of the enemy no trace. The next advance would take the Battalion right through the extreme left of the village--first through the orchards behind some houses lining a road leading into the main street; then across the road, through the houses on the other side and through more orchards to a sunken road, and across that to the slope beyond. Certainly the place had had an exemplary pounding from the artillery; but German machine-guns have a way of surviving the most ruthless artillery bombardment--especially in these villages of the Somme, which are honeycombed with old quarries and subterranean passages. It was quite on the cards, therefore, that the Battalion might be blown off the map before it reached its final objective.

But they did not bother their heads much about that. The men were in the best of spirits. The old hands were delighted with the stout bearing of the young recruits, while the new-comers, if a trifle more sober, were well buoyed up by the excitement of the advance. The Company Sergeant-Major gave our Ensign a Gold Flake cigarette, and our Ensign offered in return his water-bottle, which had again been filled with the famous tea-and-brandy mixture.

It was time to move on again. The officers ran up and down the line getting the men up. They needed no encouragement: they were frantic to get on. So the line swept forward into the village.

They plunged into a tangle of long grass and shell-holes and broken stumps of gnarled apple-trees, and through a great farmyard surrounded by big barns and outhouses smashed and torn by the shells, showing lines of bunks and blankets tossed aside as though the place had been forsaken in a hurry. Somewhere on the right the loud tack-tack of machine-guns resounded, and the swish of bullets brushed along their front. The officers checked the line a moment. On the right they saw a string of Guardsmen doubling into a house which spat fire from the first storey and basement windows. Abruptly the swish of bullets ceased, and the stream of figures tumbled out of the house again and followed in the wake of the advance.

In its day the village must have been a charming spot, its comfortable white houses with their red roofs embowered in ancient trees: in the spring, when the fruit-trees, clustering so thickly round every farmstead, were in blossom, it must have been rarely beautiful. Our Ensign had seen it in its prime, for on September 15 he had taken a compass-bearing on its yellow church tower, now battered to a blunt and crumbling stump by the British bombardment.

They pressed on through the tangle of ruins, clambering over palings and jumping ditches like a party of boys out for a day in the country, past the ravaged houses and the broken trees, with the smell of singeing cloth and charred beams in their nostrils. They burst from the last orchard into the sunken road with a vision before their eyes of field-grey figures darting away across the fields. Then the men yelled their battle-cry and rifles rang out, and they all poured into the road and up the bank on the other side, and so out upon a wide grassy slope commanding a great green plain, where the British shells were bursting in a long, white, fleecy line.

Our Ensign looked at his watch. It was a quarter to three in the afternoon, and already the day was won. But he knew the hardest part was coming. Now they had to hold what they had gained.

Men are always inclined to rest on their laurels, to sit down in the final objective and light their fags and stretch their legs and talk over their experiences with their pals. But Peter, radiating his satisfaction at their success, chased up and down the line, setting every man to dig the new trench.

They dug in on the fringe of a potato field. The men turned up potatoes by the score, and laid them carefully on one side, saying they would do for supper. The sun burnt down hotly upon them out of a clear blue sky as they dug and burrowed and scraped. The German shells screamed noisily over their heads, but none fell near the diggers. The British barrage still seethed and danced all over the plain in front of them.

That steady rain of shells was too much for the Huns, who had fled from the village to take refuge in shell-holes in the open. By twos or threes, and by larger packets, they kept bursting into view, running like men possessed, their hands above their heads, while the Guards, looking up from their digging, cheered derisively. Several parties thus broke cover and rushed hell-for-leather into the midst of our Ensign’s Battalion, where they meekly, almost gratefully, submitted to be searched, and were marched off at a good round pace to the rear through the raging German barrage.

But now the Germans seemed to have located the new line. Their guns shortened their range, and whizz-bangs and 5·9 shells began bursting about the digging Guardsmen. The officers went to and fro encouraging the men, sometimes lending a hand with pick or spade to give a good example. The shell fire was getting hotter every minute, and there was absolutely no cover save such as the shallow shell-holes afforded. There were casualties, and the cry of “Stretcher-bearER!” echoed up and down the line.

El Capitan sat on a corn-stook writing his report for the Commanding Officer; Peter was in conference with the Company Sergeant-Major. The men had buckled to their work with a will and were digging feverishly, the sweat pouring down their faces. A British aeroplane soared, shrilly tooting, above their heads.

Lord, how hot it was! Our Ensign doffed his heavy helmet and wiped his brow. His rifle, which he had carried round with him all day, was planted, bayonet downwards, in the ground beside him. In a shell-hole, a few yards away, sat a brother officer whom he had not seen since the previous evening. The latter called out to him to come over and sit down. Our Ensign walked across and dropped on to the edge of the shell-hole, at the bottom of which a man was scraping with his entrenching tool.

He filled his pipe and got out his match-box to light it. Then, from behind, something struck him a tremendous blow and lifted him high in the air with a mighty force, against which he struggled in vain with mind and body, desperately fighting to remain on the ground, striving to retain the mastery over himself....

* * * * *

It was during his convalescence that this narrative came to be written.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Obvious typos corrected. Periods printed after abbreviations (e.g. Dubs., Coy., and notably gym.) have been left as-is.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.