Chapter VI: Part 6

While on land we saw something of the Turkish sniper. He is a sharpshooter, painted green from head to foot, as he is usually hidden among the leaves of the trees. His cartridges are in a box fastened to a branch above his head, and on his rifle is the famous telescopic sight, an Austrian invention by means of which a child could hardly miss the mark. When their hiding place was discovered and they were shot, we let them hang from the branches as a warning to others. If the sniper sees that he cannot escape, he destroys his telescopic sight. No more than six of these wonderful inventions had been found up to that date. I picked up one in the Turkish trench and had it in my hand for a few minutes, but was obliged to turn it over to my superior officer of the division to be sent to the Government arsenal for examination.

... Shortly after our arrival in the Dardanelles one of the mine sweepers was sunk and the body of a boy seaman floated by our ship. One of the survivors of the sunken _Irresistible_ jumped overboard and found the boy was not dead, though unconscious. We threw a rope and hauled them in. A marine stepped forward and took the boy from the arms of his rescuer. As he was carrying him to shelter a small shell from the enemy's gun blew off the marine's head. A sailor snatched the boy away from him. For half a minute the headless man, having his lungs still full of air, threw up his arms, and dashed madly about the deck. This was the only casualty on our ship during my service.

V--CAPTURED ON BELGIAN COAST

On May 23 we left the Dardanelles to have our guns refitted. May 27 we were fifteen miles off the Belgian coast and there we heard heavy bombardment. The following day H.M.S. _Drake_ asked for a loan of fifty men from our ship. I was one of the fifty.

The _Drake_ was trying to locate a heavy German battery, and a lucky shot killed the gun crew but did not damage the guns. We fifty from the _Queen Elizabeth_ were sent ashore to destroy the guns by blowing them up. We reached them under the heavy fire of the enemy, took off the breeches and destroyed the mechanism. As we were setting the dynamite to blow up these guns, a party of about three hundred Germans surrounded us. Our rifles were stacked up about thirty feet away and in running to reach them several of us were wounded. I received slight flesh wounds in the arm and leg. After being searched and relieved of all weapons, we were marched to a barbed wire stockade, about a mile and a half inland, and were told that we were to be sent to Germany the next day. There was another stockade with British, French and Belgian prisoners near by, and over the barbed wire they threw us a football to amuse ourselves. We played football until dusk.

A German soldier was sent with a spade to dig a hole for another post in support of the barbed wire gate. We played football all around the field and managed to get the German soldier in our midst. We bound and gagged him, seized his weapons and took his spade. It was getting dark and no one suspected but that we were still playing football.

We took turns in digging under the barbed wire fence a tunnel for escape. While we were at work we had a genuine surprise. A German sentry on his rounds, trod on a weak spot over our tunnel and fell in, face downward. He could make no outcry as his mouth was filled with grass and dirt. We immediately bound and gagged him, took his weapons and left him there.

We all escaped through this tunnel and beat it for the coast as fast as our legs could carry us. The searchlights of our ship were in action and were playing all over the coast looking for us. One of our number was a signal man. He ripped off his jumper and, tearing it in two pieces, waved them over his head. The signal was seen--we knew it because the guns of the ship were brought to bear over us, to protect us from an attack in the rear, and recapture. We received a flash light signal to lie down, and soon we heard the sound of two engines. It was the ship's picket boats, mounted with machine guns on stern and bow. We were conveyed in short order to the _Drake_.

All ships have a master of arms and a ship's corporal; they are the ship's police, and they are always looking for trouble. As soon as we were on the deck we were placed under arrest and taken before the captain. The charges against us were: over-staying shore leave fourteen hours, disobeying orders and general untidiness. We did, in fact, look like a bunch of Hooligans. Several of us had no caps and the faces of all of us were covered with blood and muck. Our new uniforms were so torn that a rag man would not have given us two cents for the lot.

The following are some of the captain's questions, and our answers:

"Where were you men?"

"Ashore, sir."

"Why were you not back in time?"

"The Germans would not let us come back, sir."

"Where are your rifles? And did you destroy the enemy's guns? What happened to your uniforms?"

"We destroyed the guns, sir, but were captured. We tried to escape, but were caught between liquid fire and poisonous gas. We lost part of our uniforms trying to climb over the barbed wire fence, sir."

"You pack of fools!"

"Yes, sir."

Then the captain, smiling, congratulated us and ordered the steward to supply us with new uniforms and send us back to our ship as soon as possible. We went back next day, June 2.

VI--BACK TO TURKEY--THEN TO AMERICA

The _Queen Elizabeth_ was ordered back to the Dardanelles and remained there until July 26. Through the telescope we saw many demolished Turkish forts and big black holes where clusters of houses and groves had been.

On July 26 we sailed for Gibraltar. We left there on August 1 and sailed for the North Sea and went in harbor to give the ship a thorough overhauling. From August 10 to Sept. 5 we were cruising around the North Sea and North Atlantic Ocean in search of the German fleet. This sort of life, after the excitement of battle grew wearisome to every one on board. Thoughts of home and family came to me. There had been no chance to write or to have our letters mailed. The only mail boat leaving the _Queen Elizabeth_ was sunk. I told the officer in charge that I was an American.

After hearing my story he sent a message to the Admiralty and they ordered my discharge. I was sent to Portsmouth Naval Branch to receive my final papers. On obtaining these I thought I was free; but I was arrested for having failed to register as an alien when I first landed in Liverpool.

I was brought before a magistrate and remanded for a week. Acting on advice I wrote to the American Consul at London. The Consul replied that he had been looking for me since June, and he requested the magistrate to release me so that I could be sent back to the United States. The letter to the magistrate took fifteen minutes to read in court. It stated that the whole army had been looking for me, at the instigation of my parents, through the Secretary of State at Washington.

The magistrate discharged me at once, regretting my imprisonment for a week and stating that it was no disgrace. I left Portsmouth the next day, Sept. 25, for Liverpool but had to stop over in London for several hours, awaiting the fast mail train. It was shortly after the last Zeppelin raid and, being in uniform, I was allowed to pass the lines, to look at the effects of the bombs. Many houses were wrecked, streets torn up and soldiers were searching the ruins for the missing. Now and then they recovered a body, usually that of a woman or a child. The official death list reported 150 killed. I saw a cartoon reprinted from a German paper, picturing the people of London kneeling in prayer in their cellars during and after a Zeppelin raid. But the fact is that the London police had their hands full keeping the people from rushing out of their houses to get a glimpse of the raider.

I reached Liverpool that night and the day following I signed for my passage on the steamship _Minian_, sailing for Boston Oct. 9. While in Liverpool I was offered a position in a munition factory as a gun tester at a salary of four pounds per week, but I refused the offer because I had secured my discharge from the British Navy for the purpose of going home.

"BIG-BANG"--STORY OF AN AMERICAN ADVENTURER

_A Tale of the Great Trench Mortars_

_Told by C. P. Thompson_

"Big-Bang" was Tommy's name for one of our pioneer trench mortars,
invented and operated by a man named X----. The author met X---- in
a café not far from the front, and heard from him the details of
the story that is here set down. "So far as I am aware," he writes,
"the tale is perfectly true. I had it confirmed by the men of the
R. E. company to which X---- was attached." Recorded in the _Wide
World_.

I--THE SOLDIERS IN THE CAFE SALOME

It was at Noeux-les-Mines, in the Café Salome, at the bottom of the old slag-heap by the station. After tea, there being no further parade until the working party assembled at ten o'clock that night, I had repaired thither to drink wine and smoke until closing time. As always, the _café_ was crowded with the men of half-a-dozen London regiments, with Scotsmen in stained and muddy kilts, and French artillerymen from the South. Later in the evening they would begin to sing in unison--great roaring choruses swung and tossed from _café_ to _café_ and taken up by the crowded-out groups in the street.

I had managed to secure a chair at a little table in the corner, and for companion saw before me a small, grizzled man, about fifty, whose blue eyes, despite the dark rings underneath them, were yet singularly intelligent, keen, and clear. We exchanged a few remarks whilst taking each other's measure, and then, apropos of my description of a terrible bombardment by the German _minenwerfers_ which we had recently endured, he began to talk, and gave me a rambling impression of his strange and original career, and especially of his adventures in connection with his masterpiece, "Big-Bang"--a device now extinct.

I will call him X----. Before his connection with the British Army I gathered he had wandered widely in an up-and-down, rolling-stone sort of fashion. The Klondike had known his store during the gold rush. He was one of those men who did undefined but profitable things in the Western States before the days of their organized exploitation; made thousands of dollars and spent every cent of them, roving here and there, never staying anywhere for long, as is the way with these pioneers of the human race.

II--THE AMERICAN ADVENTURER TELLS HIS TALE

When the war broke out he was in the West, the manager of an opera company touring the coast towns, and immediately he determined to take a hand. At first he experienced considerable perplexity as to how he was to get "mixed up" in the war. Apart from his nationality, his small stature, a finger missing from his right hand, and a pronounced limp--both legacies from the Spanish-American war in the Philippines--seemed destined to preclude him from serving in the army of any country in any capacity. He was even refused by a party of Americans forming a Red Cross contingent for duty with any of the belligerents willing to accept their service.

However, he remembered an old friend, a major of Engineers in charge of a company at a China station, and he immediately hurried from San Francisco across the Pacific to Hong-Kong, where he found the --th Siege Company, R.E., under orders to move, and cursing destiny, in the shape of the British War Office, which refused to allow them to be in at the fall of Tsing-tau. Forthwith he attached himself to them. His sole qualification consisted of an erratic but handy knowledge of mechanics, picked up here and there--as chauffeur to a Vancouver millionaire, as a greaser, ganger, and a stoker, but principally during eighteen months of desultory employment in the machine-shops of Pittsburg. After much argument concerning the King's Regulations with regard to recruits and the position of a man in the ranks, the major had taken him on the strength as mechanic for the three motor-cycles owned by his command. In September, 1914, he left the Western theatre of war--quietly exultant, as I imagine.

He was curiously frank as to his attitude towards the war.

"I have always liked big things, and I had to get into this somehow," he said, finishing a large _cassis_. "This war is the biggest thing that ever happened to this old world, and if I were left out of it I should go mad--I should, or commit suicide. That's how I feel about it. Looking on is no good to me; I have to be right in it. But I've illusions. Neither your cause nor the Germans' nor the newspaper gas of both parties interest me. If the Allies hadn't adopted me I should have squeezed somehow into one of the armies of the Central Powers. Of course, the party I joined, that party I stick to; you can count on me to the last drop of my blood. But you take me--I've no patriotism, as you understand these things."

They landed in France early in October, and within forty-eight hours were with a corps at a point where the British forces lay resting after the Marne and the Aisne. With those battles the operations passed the mobile phase and began to settle down to the stagnation of the trenches.

The novel conditions of warfare in the earth demanded new methods and ingenious adaptations, and soon the Engineers found themselves overwhelmed with orders from corps headquarters and harassed by perplexed divisions and brigades. Bombs and explosive missiles of all sorts were in great demand, but materials other than Tickler's jam-pots were not to be procured. And pumps were wanted; emplacements, redoubts, trenches, field works of all descriptions required overseers from the Engineers to superintend the working-parties, composed of uninitiated infantry.

III--CATAPULT THAT HURLS BOMBS

One day while he was busy upon a patent catapult the major came to X---- and showed him a message from the corps, who, introduced suddenly and unexpectedly to that formidable engine of destruction, the _minenwerfer_, desired urgently some improvised machine or gun wherewith to retaliate until supplies of the new weapon arrived from home arsenals. Nor were the elaborate specifications peculiar to all staff instructions lacking. The proposed machine must be capable of hurling a heavy bomb a distance of not less than two hundred yards; but at the same time, if a gun, it must not require a powerful propelling charge. It must be portable and sufficiently compact to allow of its introduction into a front-line trench; its working must not demand intricate mechanical knowledge, nor must more than four men be needed for its crew, and so on and so forth. X----, if I recollect his narrative aright, remarked, "Jehoshaphat!" and went away to a nearby _café_ to ponder out this problem in mechanics. By the next morning he had planned and partly constructed the first of his famous simplified mortars.

It was, so far as I remember the constructional details, merely a large tube, about three feet long and with a diameter of six inches, made of very thick sheet-iron and closed at one end by a block of wrought iron, pinned and welded on. The barrel mounted on a cradle, the bed weighed under half a hundredweight, and was secured to the ground by long iron pins like glorified tent-pegs. The ammunition consisted of huge canisters packed with gun-cotton and exploded by a time fuse or a simple percussion detonator. And if one did not look what he was doing, the bomb might easily be slipped into the mortar detonator first--to the dire confusion of the gun-crew. Gunpowder, rammed and wadded and ignited through a touch-hole, discharged the canister upon its travel. This creation was dispatched with precise instructions as to its use and probable eccentricities, and all hoped it would "make good."

Two days later came the report that at the first discharge the mortar had burst. It was requested that a stronger one be made, and, further, that the engineer-constructor should accompany his engine into the trenches, there to superintend its working. Thus one day X---- descended upon the lines with a new and larger mortar of more solid construction, one dubious artilleryman as assistant gunner, canister, a bag of powder, and a ramrod.

I can imagine the breathless interest with which the garrison in the trenches observed the loading of the mortar, the swift retirement from its vicinity, and the stunned confusion following the first shot. It went off with a stupendous roar, belching forth smoke and flame. The canister, turning over and over in the air, was seen to describe a mighty arc and fall upon a ruined house behind the German lines and there explode mightily, demolishing the place as completely and spectacularly as if a mine had been sprung beneath it. A great cheer burst forth. The delighted soldiers promptly poured in "fifteen rounds rapid," and a machine-gun rattled through a belt in honour of the occasion and to follow up the bomb. The new weapon was voted a huge success.

It was fired five times in all, two bombs failing to explode, one excavating a ton or so of earth from the centre of No Man's Land, whilst the fifth fell plump into the German fire-trench, levelling it for half-a-dozen yards in either direction and sending high into the air a vast shower of earth, rent sandbags, timber, and human fragments.

Then, just as a sixth projectile was being loaded, the German artillery got to work. A storm of "whizz-bang" shells hurtled over, exploding everywhere--in the air, on the ground, and sometimes against the high parapet, which was sent flying. Two batteries of heavy howitzers concentrated a slow, deliberate fire, dropping 5.2 and 9-inch shells in the zone of the mortar, which was buried under tons of earth. At length the bombardment ceased, and rescue parties came to dig out those men whose dug-outs had fallen in upon them or who had been buried in the ruins of the trench. X---- had remained by his mortar and was rescued unconscious.

Yet, with the tenaciousness of his breed, he came back again--having spent a week at the field ambulance's barn hospital and a few days at his company's quarters--armed with a third and more powerful mortar. This time he had taken the precaution to provide himself with smokeless powder. The German artillery observers, however, were on the look-out for him, and although there was no longer a mountain of smoke to serve as a target, the position of the mortar was disclosed by the enormous roar of its discharge, which could be heard four miles away. Not five minutes elapsed before half-a-dozen batteries, informed by telephone, opened a tremendous fire and speedily rendered the vicinity untenable. Casualties were high, and X---- and his weapon lost favour with the neighbouring infantry.

IV--"BIG-BANG" HIS ONLY FRIEND

Then this intrepid man mounted "Big-Bang" upon a base to which were affixed four small wheels with broad treads. Having fired the mortar, he would trundle it away down the trench as fast as he could go, invariably getting clear of the fatal area before the shells began to fall. Then he would stop and fire another shot and again make off, dragging his mortar at the end of a rope. His ammunition he placed in recess here and there along the line. The enraged infantry took to heaving the canisters over the parapet until one so thrown exploded, blowing in the trench, upon which they left them severely alone. But whenever the maker of those canisters appeared with his mortar round the corner of the traverse they cursed him heartily.

In this way X---- became the best-hated man from Richebourg to the sea. Refused admittance to dug-outs, he was obliged to sleep on firing-platforms, on the floors of side trenches, or in saps where night working-parties trod on him. No one spoke to him except to utter oaths. Men said upon seeing him:--

"Here comes the Kaiser's best friend!"

Sarcastic remarks were also passed on his mortar; and, strangely enough, these hurt him more than personal abuse. He had come almost to love his creation. Hatred of it he could tolerate, but anything savouring of contempt; anything derogatory uttered against its power as a destroyer, touched him to the quick; and I fancy singularly biting language was heard in those winter trenches of 1914 and 1915.

So he dragged on his solitary existence--desolate, hated, yet feared because of his power of avenging himself by firing his weapon from any spot he pleased, and thus dooming it to a tremendous "strafing" by the enemy. He wanted someone to own him, and tried to attach himself to the artillery, but they refused to have anything to do with him. The thing his peculiar nature found it hardest to endure was the knowledge, gradually forced upon him, that he was "out of it," a mere independent unit belonging actually to neither side, a man whose decease many of the British, equally with the Huns, would have hailed with much glee.

This must have weighed upon him. Possibly he brooded. And all the time, with an invincible obstinacy that was almost heroic, he fired and fled and fled and fired, retreating sometimes up, sometimes down the trenches, dodging the shells all day and sometimes at night. And then he broke down.

"It was one of those illnesses your Army doesn't recognize officially," he told me. "It began with a sort of tired, discouraged feeling, and I used to have queer dreams. The noise of 'Big-Bang' going off made me jump like a marionette. I'd sweat and grow dizzy and my knees trembled and my stomach rose. I fell down one day and they came and took me away to the field ambulance, and after a bit they sent me down to Boulogne. I don't quite know what happened there during the first weeks. But when I got better they gave me a pretty good time--made quite a fuss of me, in fact. The colonel wanted to send me to England, but I told him how great I am on seeing this war through, and he grunted and said he'd see what he could do. When I came out I found this staff job waiting for me. It's not what I'd like exactly, but I suppose I'm getting old now. Still, we're close to the guns and I have a pretty free hand here, and can make trips to the trenches to say 'How-do' to the boys and see how things are getting along. Oh, yes; it's not so bad. But I was sorry to leave old 'Big-Bang.' I made her and I worked her, and I guess she did her bit."

For a space he meditated, puffing clouds of smoke from a ten-sou cigar. Then with a start he returned to life.

"Will you have a _vin blanc_, old chap? Hi, papa, _deux vins blancs_!"

As he pushed back his soft cap I saw that "Big-Bang" had set its mark upon him. The hair about his temples was white as snow.

"WITH OUR ARMY IN FLANDERS"--FIGHTING WITH TOMMY ATKINS

_Where Men Hold Rendezvous with Death_

_Told by G. Valentine Williams, with the British Army_

Written in the field and under the eye of the censor, G. Valentine
Williams presents in "With Our Army in Flanders" (Edward Arnold,
London) a series of vivid war chapters differing in many respects
from the current conventional accounts from the battle fronts. Mr.
Williams is the _London Daily Mail_ correspondent. He tells about
the babel of tongues where men gather in khaki, strange meetings at
the front of long separated friends and brothers, the hunger of the
big guns.

I--WHERE ALL DIALECTS MEET AT BATTLE

One of the most fascinating things to me about our army in France are the variations of speech. I have sometimes closed my eyes when a battalion has been marching past me on the road and tried to guess, often with some measure of success, at the recruiting area of the regiment from the men's accents or from their tricks of speech.

Take the Scottish regiments, for instance. I have little acquaintance with the dialects of Scotland, but my ear has told me that the speech of almost every Scottish regiment, save such regiments as the Gordons and the Black Watch, that attract men from all over the United Kingdom, differs.

I spent a most fascinating half hour one morning with a handful of Glasgow newsboys serving in a famous Scottish regiment that wears the trews. Their speech was unmistakably the speech of the Glasgow streets, and their wits were as sharp as their bayonets. I told them they were newsboys and newsboys they were, or of the same class, vanboys and the like.

I visited the Cameron Highlanders--what was left of their Territorial battalion--after the second battle of Ypres and heard, in the speech of Inverness-shire, their story of the battle. Many of them speak Gaelic. One of their officers confided to me that during the battle, requiring two men to go down to the rear, the wires being cut, to ascertain the whereabouts of the brigade headquarters, he selected two notorious deer poachers as likely to have their wits about them.

It is a gratifying task, this identification of dialects. I have heard two sappers "fra' Wigan" engaged in a lively argument with two privates (from Cork) of the Leinster Regiment, in whose trench the two gentlemen "fra' Wigan" were operating. A London cockney, say, from one of the innumerable battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, would have understood less of that conversation if it had been carried on in German, but only a little less.

During the Battle of Ypres two privates of the Monmouthshire Regiment, who were talking Welsh, were pounced upon by two prowling Southerners from one of the home counties and carried off to brigade headquarters as German spies. What with Welsh miners talking Welsh and Cameron Highlanders Gaelic, the broad speech of the Yorkshire Geordines, the homely burr of the Third Hussars and other regiments recruited in the West Country, the familiar twang of the cockneys, the rich brogue of the Irish regiments, the strong American intonation of the Canadians, a man out here begins to realize of what composite layers our race is formed.

II--OLD FRIENDS AT THE FRONT

Everybody who is anything is at the front. Never was there such a place for meeting as at Flanders. The Strand is not in it. My own experience is that of everybody else. One finds at the front men one has lost sight of for years, old friends who have dropped away in the hurry of existence, chance acquaintances of a Riviera train de luxe, men one has met in business, men who have measured one for clothes.

Often I have heard my name sung out from the center of a column of marching troops, and a figure has stepped out to the roadside who, after my mind has shredded it of the unfamiliar uniform, the deep brown sunburn, the set expression, has revealed itself as old Tubby Somebody whom one had known at school, or Brown with whom one had played golf on those little links behind the Casino at Monte Carlo, or the manager of Messrs. Blank in the city.

I wanted to find a relation of mine, a sergeant in a famous London regiment, and wrote to his people to get the number of his battalion and his company. When the reply came I discovered that the man I wanted was billetted not a hundred yards from me in the village, in which the War Correspondents' Headquarters were situated, where he had come with the shattered remnant of his battalion to rest, after the terrible "gruelling" they sustained in the second battle of Ypres.

At the front one constantly witnesses joyous reunions, brother meeting brother in the happy, hazardous encounter of two battalions on the road or in the trenches. The very first man I met on coming out to the front was a motor-car driver, whose father had particularly asked me to look out for his boy. I discovered that he was the man appointed to drive me!

Humor is probably the largest component part of the spirit of the British soldier, a paradoxical, phlegmatic sense of humor that comes out strongest when the danger is the most threatening. A Jack Johnson bursts close beside a British soldier who is lighting his pipe with one of those odious French sulphur matches. The shell blows a foul whiff of chemicals right across the man's face. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he exclaimed with a perfectly genuine sigh, "these 'ere French matches will be the death o' me!"

A reply which is equally characteristic of the state of mind of the British soldier who goes forth to war is that given by the irate driver of a staff car to a sentry in the early days of the war. The sentry in the dead of night had levelled his rifle at the chauffeur because the car had not stopped instantly on challenge. The driver backed his car toward where the sentry was standing. "I'll 'ave a word with you, young feller," he said. "Allow me to inform you that this car can't be stopped in less than twenty yards. If you go shoving that rifle of yours in people's faces some one will get shot before this war's over!"

There is a great strain of tenderness in the British soldier, a great readiness to serve. Hear him on a wet night in the trenches, begrimed, red-eyed with fatigue, chilled to the bone, just about to lie down for a rest, offer to make his officer, tired as he is, "a drop of 'ot tea!" Watch him with German prisoners! His attitude is paternal, patronizing, rather that of a friendly London policeman guiding homeward the errant footsteps of a drunkard.

III--DEEP IN A SOLDIER'S HEART

Under influence of nameless German atrocities of all descriptions, the attitude of the British soldier in the fighting line is becoming fierce and embittered. Nothing will induce him, however, to vent his spite on prisoners, though few Germans understand anything else but force as the expression of power. They look upon our men as miserable mercenaries whose friendliness is simply an attempt to curry favor with the noble German krieger; our men regard them as misguided individuals who don't know any better....

The German phrase, "_Stellungskrieg_," is a very accurate description of the great stalemate on the western front which we, more vaguely, term "trench warfare." It is, indeed, a constant manoeuvering for positions, a kind of great game of chess, in which the Germans, generally speaking, are seeking to gain the advantage for the purposes of their defensive, whilst the Allies' aim is to obtain the best positions for an offensive when the moment for this is ripe.

The ground is under ceaseless survey. A move by the enemy calls for a counter-move on our part. A new trench dug by him may be found to enfilade our trenches from a certain angle, and while by the construction of new traverses or the heightening of parapet and parados the trench may be rendered immune from sniping, a fresh trench will be dug at a new angle or a machine gun brought up to make life sour for the occupants of the new German position, and force them in their turn to counter-measures.

Any one who saw the trenches at Mons or even, much later, the trenches on the Aisne, would scarcely recognize them in the deep, elaborate earthworks of Flanders, with the construction of which our army is now so familiar.

High explosive shells in unlimited quantities are necessary to keep the hammer pounding away at one given spot. To break a path for our infantry through the weakly held German trenches around Neuve Chapelle we had many scores of guns pouring in a concentrated fire on a front of 1,400 yards for a period of thirty-five minutes. In the operations around Arras the French are said to have fired nearly 800,000 shells in one day.

Even this colossal figure was surpassed by the expenditure of high-explosive shells by the German and Austrian armies in their successful thrust against Przemysl. Our bombardment of Neuve Chapelle was, in the main, effective, though barbed-wire entanglements in front of part of the German trenches were not cut, and heavy casualties were thus caused to the infantry when they advanced.

For the most part, however, we found the German trenches obliterated, the little village a smoking heap of ruins, and those Germans who survived, dazed and frightened, amid piles of torn corpses. If this enormous concentration of guns was required to blast a path of 1,400 yards with a thirty-five-minute bombardment, what a gigantic concentration of artillery, what a colossal expenditure of ammunition, will be required to drive a wedge several miles deep through positions which the Germans have spent three seasons in strengthening and consolidating!

IV--IN THE BOWELS OF THE EARTH

I went down one of our mines one night. I was spending the night in our trenches and the captain in command of this particular section asked me if I would care to see "our mine." Considerations of the censorship impel me to abridge what follows up to the moment when I found myself in a square, greasy gallery, with clay walls propped up by timber balks leading straight out in the direction of the German trenches. Guttering candles stuck on the balks at intervals faintly lit up as strange a scene as I have witnessed in this war.

Deep in the bowels of the earth a thick, square-set man in khaki trousers and trench boots, a ragged vest displaying a tremendous torso all glistening with sweat, was tipping clay out of a trolley and gently chaffing in a quite unprintable English of the region of Lancashire a hoarse but invisible person somewhere down the shaft.

I crawled round the quizzer, slipping on the greasy planks awash with muddy water on the floor of the gallery, and found myself confronted by another of the troglodytes, a man who was so coated with clay that he appeared to be dyed khaki (like the horses of the Scots Greys) from top to toe. I asked him whence he came, so different was he, in speech and appearance, from the black-haired, low-browed Irishmen watching at the parapet of the trench far above us. "A coom fra' Wigan!" he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a grimy hand, and, thus saying, he turned round and made off swiftly, bent double as he was, down the low gallery.

I followed, the water swishing ankle-deep round my field boots. The air was dank and foul; the stooping position became almost unbearable after a few paces; one slipped and slithered at every step.

At intervals side-galleries ran out from the main gap, unlit, dark and forbidding--listening posts. After a hundred paces or so a trolley blocked the way. Behind it two men were working, my taciturn acquaintance and another. The latter was hacking at the virgin earth with a pick; the former was shoveling the clay into the trolley.

I had not been out of that mine for more than a minute when an electric lamp flashed in my eyes, and an excitable young man, who held an automatic pistol uncomfortably near my person, accosted me thus: "I beg your pardon, sir"--it occurred to me that the pistol accorded ill with this polite form of address--"but may I ask what you were doing down my mine?" My friend, the Captain, rushed forward with an explanation and an introduction, the pistol was put away, and the sapper subaltern was easily persuaded to come along to the dugout and have a drop of grog before turning in.

One story of the mines which made everybody laugh was that of the subaltern fresh out from home, a keen young officer, who came one night to the dug-out of the sapper officer supervising the digging of a mine.

"You must go up at once," he whispered in his ear in a voice hoarse with excitement, "it is very important. Lose no time." The sapper had gone to his dug-out worn out after several sleepless nights, and was very loath to sally forth into the cold and frosty air. "It is a mine, a German mine," said the subaltern fresh out from home; "you can see them working through the glasses." The sapper was out in a brace of shakes, and hurriedly followed the subaltern along the interminable windings of the trenches.

In great excitement the subaltern led him to where a telescope rested on the parapet. "Look!" he said dramatically. The sapper applied his eye to the glass. There was a bright moon, and by its rays he saw, sure enough, figures working feverishly about a shaft. There was something familiar about it, though; then he realized that he was looking down his own mine. The wretched youth who had dragged him from his slumbers had forgotten the windings of the trench.

V--INVENTIVE GENIUS OF THE SOLDIERS

"Bombing" is one form of trench warfare particularly annoying to the enemy. The revival of bombing began when a British soldier, to while away an idle moment, put some high explosive and a lighted fuse in a discarded bully-beef tin, and pitched it into the German trench opposite him.

In his way the British soldier is as handy as the bluejacket, and the long days of the winter monotony produced all kinds of inventions in the way of mortars and bombs, which led to the scientific development of this mode of warfare. A Territorial officer was discovered making all manner of ingenious bombs and trench appliances in his spare time. He was taken out of the trenches and installed in an empty school, and when last I heard of him had a regular factory turning out bombs for the firing line.

Bombing is very tricky work. Your bomb must be safe as long as it is in your possession. Nor must it be liable to explosion if dropped after the safety-catch has been removed. That is why bombs are provided with time fuses. Some nicety of judgment is required to hurl them so that they will explode on impact or immediately afterward.

If the time fuse has still a second or so to burn when the bomb falls in the enemy trench, a resolute man will pick it up and fling it back, with disastrous consequences to the bomber. Therefore bombers must be trained. The training is extremely simple, but it is essential, and I look forward to the time when every soldier who comes out to France from home will have gone through a course of bombing just as he has gone through a course of musketry.

Just as the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 introduced the needle-gun, and the Franco-Prussian War the chassepot rifle, and the South African War was the war of the magazine rifle, so the present war will be known as the war of the automatic gun. When the German General Staff sits down to write its official history of the great war it will be able to attribute the greater part of the success that German arms may have achieved to its foresight in accumulating an immense stock of machine-guns, and in studying the whole theory and tactics of this comparatively new weapon before any other army in the world became alive to its paramount importance.

The only factor that furnishes anything like a certain basis for calculation as to the date of the conclusion of the war is the number of fighting men available for each of the different belligerents. Of all the supplies required for making war, the supply of men is limited. The Germans recognized this sooner than any of their opponents. In the machine-gun they had a machine that does the work of many men.

The machine-gun is the multiplication of the rifle. The Vickers gun fires up to 500 shots a minute. This is also the average performance of the German gun. To silence this multiplication of fire you must outbid it, you must beat it down with an even greater multiplication. This is where the difficulty comes in for an attacking force.

The machine-gun, with its mounting and ammunition and spare parts, is neither light in weight nor inconspicuous to carry. When the infantry has rushed a trench after the preliminary bombardment the machine-guns have to be carried bodily forward over a shell and bullet swept area, where the machine-gun detachment is a familiar and unexpected target for the German marksmen. This is where the automatic rifle is destined to play a part--a part so decisive, in my opinion, as may win the war for us.

The automatic rifle is a light machine-gun. In appearance it resembles an ordinary service rifle, with rather a complicated and swollen-looking magazine. It is not water-cooled like the machine-gun, but air-cooled, and is therefore not absolutely reliable for long usage, as it inevitably becomes heated after much firing. It will fire, however, up to 300-odd shots a minute, and can be regarded as the ideal weapon for beating down German machine-gun fire and checking the advance of bombers while the heavier but more reliable machine-guns are coming up.

COMEDIES OF THE GREAT WAR

_Tales of Humor on the Fighting Lines_

_Told by W. F. Martindale_

In the Great War, as in everything else, comedy treads hard on
the heels of tragedy, and all sorts of quaint and comical things
happen. Here are some little stories, from a variety of reliable
sources, which will serve to show that our fighting-men, both
ashore and afloat, are still able to preserve a sense of humor.
Narrated in the _Wide World_.

I--STORIES TOLD "ON THE SOLDIERS"

Human nature is whetted to a keep edge under the stress of warfare; that is why every war is rich in anecdote.

Character is the basis of all comedy, and the conditions of military life, whether on active service or not, are such that "character will out." In barracks, in camp, or in the field, soldiering applies a test which no man can evade. Ranker, non-com., or officer, he is bound soon or late (generally soon) to be "found out."

There is a pretty little comedy of character which concerns a young subaltern, fresh from an English public school, who found himself attached, through one of the unexpected chances of war, to a battalion of Colonial infantry. The subaltern was youthful--and looked it. His cheek was smooth and innocent of hair, the accents of his voice cultured and refined, his manner languid to the point of seeming boredom. He was slight of stature, and he wore a monocle permanently fixed in one eye. In short, he was a complete antithesis to the brawny brood of Anak which constituted his platoon, amongst whom his advent aroused no enthusiasm whatever. He was not popular.

There is little risk of offence at this time of day in observing that some of the Overseas troops are not remarkable for the strictness of their discipline. It is a little idiosyncrasy at which no one, with memories of Ypres and Anzac still fresh, will be disposed to cavil. This is not to say that they cannot be handled; on the contrary, there is ample evidence of their instant response to leadership of the sort which they understand. But one would hardly look for that particular sort from a beardless youth with an eye permanently glazed, and a refined taste in language and clothes. A manner which might be acceptable to the Guards is as little suited to Colonials as Colonial methods to the Household Brigade. There is a custom and usage in these matters.

So it came to pass that the platoon took counsel with itself and darkly determined to take its young subaltern down a peg or two. Is it necessary to observe that the prime offences of the latter, in the eyes of these critics, were his monocle and his accent--those traditional marks and insignia of the "dude"? It is strange that so often the dandy (whom history has shown to be invariably a man of spirit and courage) should be mistaken for the dude.

II--THE OFFICER WITH THE MONOCLE

On a certain morning, therefore, behold the platoon drawn up on parade, accoutred with meticulous care, aligned in the most precise formation--each man wearing his "identity disc" in his eye! For the benefit of any reader who has never seen an identity disc, it may be mentioned that the latter is the small plate of metal on which is stamped certain information concerning the wearer which enable his body, if necessary, to be identified. Being of the same shape, and about the same size, as an eyeglass, and, moreover, suspended from a cord worn round the neck, it can be made to form an admirable travesty of a monocle.

Not a twitch of a single muscle in the face of the young subaltern, not a flicker of his unmonocled eye, betrayed that he was aware of anything unusual in the appearance of his men. He took the situation in coolly, and when, in answer to routine questions, the sergeants answered smartly and respectfully but with a pointed imitation of his own "haw-haw" accent, he ignored the studied insult with equal nonchalance.

It was a good start, for an attempt at sarcasm when quietly ignored falls flatter even than when it is wholly unperceived. In the present case there was no possibility of an insult having been missed, and the platoon began to feel that things were not going quite as had been anticipated. Each man kept his identity disc firmly screwed in one eye, however, and stared fixedly out of the other in expectation of the officer's present discomfort. The latter could never afford to dismiss the parade without taking cognizance of what had occurred, and the platoon awaited the crux with interest.

But the moment of dismissal arrived and nothing had been said. Some of the men were covertly smiling.

As he gave the order, the subaltern let the monocle drop from his eye, and while the command was being obeyed, swung the glass round and round, with the cord between finger and thumb, in a rapid circle. Scanning the line narrowly and noting every glance upon him, he jerked the twirling glass suddenly into the air and with the neatness of a juggler caught it in his eye as it fell. Then he glared fiercely through it.

"See if you can do _that_!" he observed. "Dis-MISS!"

Thereafter no officer ever had men under him more ready to do whatever he asked them. And it was by a sure instinct that the latter "gave him best." As one of them remarked, "I've seen men take risks in my time, but that beat everything. _Suppose he'd missed catchin' that glass?_"

If wit is a Gallic prerogative, humor belongs to the British, and not a few comedies of the war pivot on that uniquely humorous character Thomas Atkins. Humor is an elusive and baffling quantity, as the wit discovered who mixed up all the boots in an hotel corridor one evening and learned the next morning that his friend (a humorist) had sorted them out again as soon as his back was turned. The humorist can sometimes understand the wit, but the compliment is seldom, if ever, returned; which is the reason why Mr. Atkins and his idiosyncrasies remain an inscrutable enigma to our French allies.

And if the British soldier appears incomprehensible to the nimble-minded French, one can readily perceive that to the slow and methodically-thinking German he must seem merely mad. The French marvel that he is never "serious"; the Boche is perplexed to find that Hymns of Hate and other laborious insults afford him the keenest possible enjoyment. The secret lies in Mr. Atkins's sense of humor, which is another way of saying his sense of proportion. He may be guilty of little aberrations such as dribbling a football in front of him as he advances with cold steel to the charge, but _au fond_ he has a pretty just sense of values.

III--THE GERMANS WHO SANG "RULE BRITTANIA"

At all events, his humor has the dry quality which connotes an even mind and temper, as the following incident will show. In the earlier days of the war, before the opposing armies in the West had burrowed into the soil and some freedom of movement was still possible, a patrol of three British soldiers under a sergeant were prowling abroad one night. Within disputed territory they espied a lighted window in a lonely farmhouse which they knew had been deserted by its owners. They approached it stealthily. The house was surrounded without challenge, and having posted his men at points which commanded the exits the sergeant crept forward to reconnoitre. Music and sounds of revelry were audible within, and the sergeant had no difficulty in discovering the presence of four German soldiers in the farmer's best sitting-room. The cellar had been looted, the piano commandeered, and four Teutonic voices were upraised in melody.

The sergeant beckoned to the waiting figures outside, and four large but softly-treading men tiptoed delicately to the scene of the carousal. At a given signal the door was flung open and four rifles were levelled.

"Hands up!"

A chorus of "_Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles_" was interrupted a shade abruptly, and four pairs of arms shot up into the air. The Boche does not shine in an emergency.

With a gesture the sergeant marshalled the captives against the wall, where they stood in a row, blinking and crestfallen. Their weapons having been collected and removed, they were allowed to put their hands down, and their captors regarded them quizzically.

"Any of you blokes speak English?" queried the sergeant, genially.

A smile of modest pride momentarily illumined one of the four wooden faces.

"_Ja_, I spik leedle English," ventured its owner.

"In-_deed_!" was the rejoinder; "and where did _you_ learn it--in the Tottenham Court Road?"

The linguist simpered deprecatingly, with evident gratification over the good impression which he appeared to be making. It takes a lot to upset the complacence of the Boche.

"Been havin' a sing-song?" continued the sergeant, encouragingly.

The other nodded. "Der Shermans vas always der beoble of singing," he observed, in faintly patronizing tones.

"Ho, _are_ they?" said the sergeant. "Then suppose you start in and sing us 'Rule Britannia' for a bit. Give us a tune, Bill."

Bill propped his rifle against the wall, and sat himself solemnly at the open piano. He was not a great performer, but rose to the occasion and produced a rendering of the familiar tune which was at least recognizable.

"Now, then," said the sergeant, warming to his work, "not bein' a blinkin' German I don't 'appen to be no singer, but just you listen, and if you don't know the words, say 'em after me. '_When Brit-ain fir-ir-ir-ir-irst at----_'"

The musical evening was a great success, said the member of the party from whom the present writer had the story. "We kept 'em there for four hours, and by the time we'd finished with 'em they could sing it a fair treat. And we didn't spare 'em the encores neither. Course, they wasn't singin' _all_ the time, 'cos we spent some of it in moppin' up the liquor and the food and the cigars they hadn't finished. But I reckon they did all the singin' they wanted. Then we fell 'em into line and drove 'em home as prisoners. They _asked_ for it, you see!"

IV--STORY OF A FISHERMAN AND A MINE

The chief officer of a steamer under charter to the Admiralty tells a very amusing story concerning an encounter with a mine, though he candidly admits that he didn't see the humor of it until some time after the incident occurred.