Chapter 12
The particular O Pip with which we are concerned at present, however, is a German post--or was a fortnight ago, before the opening of the Battle of the Somme.
For nearly two years the British Armies on the Western Front have been playing for time. They have been sticking their toes in and holding their ground, with numerically inferior forces and inadequate artillery support, against a nation in arms which has set out, with forty years of preparation at its back, to sweep the earth. We have held them, and now _der Tag_ has come for us. The deal has passed into our hand at last. A fortnight ago, ready for the first time to undertake the offensive on a grand and prolonged scale,--Loos was a mere reconnaissance compared with this,--the New British Army went over the parapet shoulder to shoulder with the most heroic Army in the world--the Army of France--and attacked over a sixteen-mile front in the Valley of the Somme.
It was a critical day for the Allies: certainly it was a most critical day in the history of the British Army. For on that day an answer had to be given to a very big question indeed. Hitherto we had been fighting on the defensive--unready, uphill, against odds. It would have been no particular discredit to us had we failed to hold our line. But we had held it, and more. Now, at last, we were ready--as ready as we were ever likely to be. We had the men, the guns, and the munitions. We were in a position to engage the enemy on equal, and more than equal, terms. And the question that the British Empire had to answer in that day, the First of July 1916, was this: "Are these new amateur armies of ours, raised, trained, and equipped in less than two years, with nothing in the way of military tradition to uphold them--nothing but the steady courage of their race: are they a match for, and more than a match for, that grim machine-made, iron-bound host that lies waiting for them along that line of Picardy hills? Because if they are _not_, we cannot win this war. We can only make a stalemate of it."
We, looking back now over a space of twelve months, know how our boys answered that question. In the greatest and longest battle that the world had yet seen, that Army of city clerks, Midland farm-lads, Lancashire mill-hands, Scottish miners, and Irish corner-boys, side by side with their great-hearted brethren from Overseas, stormed positions which had been held impregnable for two years, captured seventy thousand prisoners, reclaimed several hundred square miles of the sacred soil of France, and smashed once and for all the German-fostered fable of the invincibility of the German Army. It was good to have lived and suffered during those early and lean years, if only to be present at their fulfilment.
But at this moment the battle was only beginning, and the bulk of their astounding achievement was still to come. Nevertheless, in the cautious and modest estimate of their Commander-in-Chief, they had already done something.
_After ten days and nights of continuous fighting_, said the first official report, _our troops have completed the methodical capture of the whole of the enemy's first system of defence on a front of fourteen thousand yards. This system of defence consisted of numerous and continuous lines of fire trenches, extending to depths of from two thousand to four thousand yards, and included five strongly fortified villages, numerous heavily entrenched woods, and a large number of immensely strong redoubts. The capture of each of these trenches represented an operation of some importance, and the whole of them are now in our hands_.
Quite so. One feels, somehow, that Berlin would have got more out of such a theme.
* * * * *
Now let us get back to our O Pip. If you peep over the shoulder of Captain Leslie, the gunner observing officer, as he directs the fire of his battery, situated some thousands of yards in rear, through the medium of map, field-glass, and telephone, you will obtain an excellent view of to-morrow's field of battle. Present in the O Pip are Colonel Kemp, Wagstaffe, Bobby Little, and Angus M'Lachlan. The latter had been included in the party because, to quote his Commanding Officer, "he would have burst into tears if he had been left out."
Overhead roared British shells of every kind and degree of unpleasantness, for the ground in front was being "prepared" for the coming assault. The undulating landscape, running up to a low ridge on the skyline four miles away, was spouting smoke in all directions--sometimes black, sometimes green, and sometimes, where bursting shell and brick-dust intermingled, blood-red. Beyond the ridge all-conquering British aeroplanes occupied the firmament, observing for "mother" and "granny" and signalling encouragement or reproof to these ponderous but sprightly relatives as their shells hit or missed the target.
"Yes, sir," replied Leslie to Colonel Kemp's question, "that is Longueval, on the slope opposite, with the road running through on the way to Flers, over the skyline. That is Delville Wood on its right. As you see, the guns are concentrating on both places. That is Waterlot Farm, on this side of the wood--a sugar refinery. Regular nest of machine-guns there, I'm told."
"No doubt we shall be able to confirm the rumour to-morrow," said Colonel Kemp drily. "That is Bernafay Wood on our right, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir. We hold the whole of that. The pear-shaped wood out beyond it--it looks as if it were joined on, but the two are quite separate really--is Trones Wood. It has changed hands several times. Just at present I don't think we hold more than the near end. Further away, half-right, you can see Guillemont."
"In that case," remarked Wagstaffe, "our right flank would appear to be strongly supported by the enemy."
"Yes. We are in a sort of right-angled salient here. We have the enemy on our front and our right. In fact, we form the extreme right of the attacking front. Our left is perfectly secure, as we now hold Mametz Wood and Contalmaison. There they are." He waved his glass to the northwest. "When the attack takes place, I understand that our Division will go straight ahead, for Longueval and Delville Wood, while the next Division makes a lateral thrust out to the right, to push the Boche out of Trones Wood and cover our flank."
"I believe that is so," said the Colonel. "Bobby, take a good look at the approaches to Longueval. That is the scene of to-morrow's constitutional."
Bobby and Angus obediently scanned the village through their glasses. Probably they did not learn much. One bombarded French village is very like another bombarded French village. A cowering assemblage of battered little houses; a pitiful little main street, with its eviscerated shops and _estaminets_; a shattered church-spire. Beyond that, an enclosure of splintered stumps that was once an orchard. Below all, cellars, reinforced with props and sandbags, and filled with machine-guns. _Voilà tout_!
Presently the Gunner Captain passed word down to the telephone operator to order the battery to cease fire.
"Knocking off?" inquired Wagstaffe.
"For the present, yes. We are only registering this morning. Not all our batteries are going at once, either. We don't want Brother Boche to know our strength until we tune up for the final chorus. We calculate that--"
"There is a comfortable sense of decency and order about the way we fight nowadays," said Colonel Kemp. "It is like working out a problem in electrical resistance by a nice convenient algebraical formula. Very different from the state of things last year, when we stuck it out by employing rule of thumb and hanging on by our eyebrows."
"The only problem we can't quite formulate is the machine-gun," said Leslie. The Boche's dug-outs here are thirty feet deep. When crumped by our artillery he withdraws his infantry and leaves his machine-gunners behind, safe underground. Then, when our guns lift and the attack comes over, his machine-gunners appear on the surface, hoist their guns after them with a sort of tackle arrangement, and get to work on a prearranged band of fire. The infantry can't do them in until No Man's Land is crossed, and--well, they don't all get across, that's all! However, _I have_ heard rumours--"
"So have we all," said Colonel Kemp.
"I forgot to tell you, Colonel," interposed Wagstaffe, "that I met young Osborne at Divisional Headquarters last night. You remember, he left us some time ago to join the Hush! Hush! Brigade."
"I remember," said the Colonel.
By this time the party, including the Gunner Captain, were filing along a communication trench, lately the property of some German gentlemen, on their way back to headquarters.
"Did he tell you anything, Wagstaffe?" continued Colonel Kemp.
"Not much. Apparently the time of the H.H.B. is not yet. But he made an appointment with me for this evening--in the gloaming, so to speak. He is sending a car. If all he says is true, the Boche _Emma Gee_ is booked for an eye-opener in a few weeks' time."
II
That evening a select party of sight-seers were driven to a secluded spot behind the battle line. Here they were met by Master Osborne, obviously inflated with some important matter.
"I've got leave from my C.O. to show you the sights, sir," he announced to Colonel Kemp. "If you will all stand here and watch that wood on the opposite side of this clearing, you may see something. We don't show ourselves much except in late evening, so this is our parade hour."
The little group took up its appointed stand and waited in the gathering dusk. In the east the sky was already twinkling with intermittent Verey lights. All around the British guns were thundering forth their hymns of hate--full-throated now, for the hour for the next great assault was approaching.
Wagstaffe's thoughts went back to a certain soft September night last year, when he and Blaikie had stood on the eastern outskirts of Béthune listening to a similar overture--the prelude to the Battle of Loos. But this overture was ten times more awful, and, from a material British point of view, ten times more inspiring. It would have thrilled old Blaikie's fighting spirit, thought Wagstaffe. But Loos had taken his friend from him, and he, Wagstaffe, only was left. What did fate hold in store for him to-morrow? he wondered. And Bobby? They had both escaped marvellously so far. Well, better men had gone before them. Perhaps--
Fingers of steel bit into his biceps muscle, and the excited whinny of Angus M'Lachlan besought him to look!
_Down in the forest something stirred_. But it was not the note of a bird, as the song would have us believe. From the depths of the wood opposite came a crackling, crunching sound, as of some prehistoric beast forcing its way through tropical undergrowth. And then, suddenly, out from the thinning edge there loomed a monster--a monstrosity. It did not glide, it did not walk. It wallowed. It lurched, with now and then a laborious heave of its shoulders. It fumbled its way over a low bank matted with scrub. It crossed a ditch, by the simple expedient of rolling the ditch out flat, and waddled forward. In its path stood a young tree. The monster arrived at the tree and laid its chin lovingly against the stem. The tree leaned back, crackled, and assumed a horizontal position. In the middle of the clearing, twenty yards farther on, gaped an enormous shell-crater, a present from the Kaiser. Into this the creature plunged blindly, to emerge, panting and puffing, on the farther side. Then it stopped. A magic opening appeared in its stomach, from which emerged, grinning, a British subaltern and his grimy associates.
And that was our friends' first encounter with a "Tank." The secret--unlike most secrets in this publicity-ridden war--had been faithfully kept; so far the Hush! Hush! Brigade had been little more than a legend even to the men high up. Certainly the omniscient Hun received the surprise of his life when, in the early mist of a September morning some weeks later, a line of these selfsame tanks burst for the first time upon his incredulous vision, waddling grotesquely up the hill to the ridge which had defied the British infantry so long and so bloodily--there to squat complacently down on the top of the enemy's machine-guns, or spout destruction from her own up and down beautiful trenches which had never been intended for capture. In fact, Brother Boche was quite plaintive about the matter. He described the employment of such engines as wicked and brutal, and opposed to the recognised usages of warfare. When one of these low-comedy vehicles (named the _Crême-de-Menthe_) ambled down the main street of the hitherto impregnable village of Flers, with hysterical British Tommies slapping her on the back, he appealed to the civilised world to step in and forbid the combination of vulgarism and barbarity.
"Let us at least fight like gentlemen," said the Hun, with simple dignity. "Let us stick to legitimate military devices--the murder of women and children, and the emission of chlorine gas. But Tanks--no! One must draw the line somewhere!"
But the ill-bred _Crême-de-Menthe_ took no notice. None whatever. She simply went waddling on--towards Berlin.
"An experiment, of course," commented Colonel Kemp, as they returned to headquarters--"a fantastic experiment. But I wish they were ready now. I would give something to see one of them leading the way into action to-morrow. It might mean saving the lives of a good many of my boys."
XI
THE LAST SOLO
It was dawn on Saturday morning, and the second phase of the Battle of the Somme was more than twenty-four hours old. The programme had opened with a night attack, always the most difficult and uncertain of enterprises, especially for soldiers who were civilians less than two years ago. But no undertaking is too audacious for men in whose veins the wine of success is beginning to throb. And this undertaking, this hazardous gamble, had succeeded all along the line. During the past day and night, more than three miles of the German second system of defences, from Bazentin le Petit to the edge of Delville Wood, had received their new tenants; and already long streams of not altogether reluctant Hun prisoners were being escorted to the rear by perspiring but cheerful gentlemen with fixed bayonets.
Meanwhile--in case such of the late occupants of the line as were still at large should take a fancy to revisit their previous haunts, working-parties of infantry, pioneers, and sappers were toiling at full pressure to reverse the parapets, run out barbed wire, and bestow machine-guns in such a manner as to produce a continuous lattice-work of fire along the front of the captured position.
All through the night the work had continued. As a result, positions were now tolerably secure, the intrepid "Buzzers" had included the newly grafted territory in the nervous system of the British Expeditionary Force, and Battalion Headquarters and Supply Dépôts had moved up to their new positions.
To Colonel Kemp and his Adjutant Cockerell, ensconced in a dug-out thirty feet deep, furnished with a real bed, electric-light fittings, and ornaments obviously made in Germany, entered Major Wagstaffe, encrusted with mud, but as imperturbable as ever. He saluted.
"Good-morning, sir. You seem to have struck a cushie little home time."
"Yes. The Boche officer harbours no false modesty about acknowledging his desire for creature comforts. That is where he scores off people like you and me, who pretend we like sleeping in mud. Have you been round the advanced positions?"
"Yes. There is some pretty hard fighting going on in the village itself--the Boche still holds the north-west corner--and in the wood on the right. 'A' Company are holding a line of broken-down cottages on our right front, but they can't make any further move until they get more bombs. The Boche is occupying various buildings opposite, but in no great strength at present. However, he seems to have plenty of machine-guns."
"I have sent up more bombs," said the Colonel. "What about 'B' Company?"
"'B' have reached their objective, and consolidated. 'C' and 'D' are lying close up, ready to go forward in support when required. I think 'A' could do with a little assistance."
"I don't want to send up 'C' and 'D'," replied the Colonel, "until the Divisional Reserve arrives. The Brigade has just telephoned through that reinforcements are on the way. When they get here, we can afford to stuff in the whole battalion. Are 'A' Company capable of handling the situation at present?"
"Yes, I think so. Little is directing his platoons from a convenient cellar. He was in touch with them all when I left. But it is possible that the Boche may make a rush when it grows a bit lighter. At present he is too demoralised to attempt anything beyond intermittent machine-gun fire."
Colonel Kemp turned to Cockerell.
"Get Captain Little on the telephone," he said, "and tell him, if the enemy displays any disposition to counter-attack, to let me know at once." Then he turned to Wagstaffe, and asked the question which always lurks furtively on the tongue of a commanding officer.
"Many--casualties?"
"'A' Company have caught it rather badly crossing the open. 'B' got off lightly. Glen is commanding them now: Waddell was killed leading his men in the rush to the final objective."
Colonel Kemp sighed.
"Another good boy gone--veteran, rather. I must write to his wife. Fairly newly married, I fancy?"
"Four months," said Wagstaffe briefly.
"What was his Christian name, do you know?"
"Walter, I think, sir," said Cockerell.
Colonel Kemp, amid the stress of battle, found time to enter a note in his pocket-diary to that effect.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, up in the line, 'A' Company were holding on grimly to what are usually described as "certain advanced elements" of the village.
Village fighting is a confused and untidy business, but it possesses certain redeeming features. The combatants are usually so inextricably mixed up that the artillery are compelled to refrain from participation. That comes later, when you have cleared the village of the enemy, and his guns are preparing the ground for the inevitable counter-attack.
So far 'A' Company had done nobly. From the moment when they had lined up before Montauban in the gross darkness preceding yesterday's dawn until the moment when Bobby Little led them in one victorious rush into the outskirts of the village, they had never encountered a setback. By sunset they had penetrated some way farther; now creeping stealthily forward under the shelter of a broken wall to hurl bombs into the windows of an occupied cottage; now climbing precariously to some commanding position in order to open fire with a Lewis gun; now making a sudden dash across an open space. Such work offered peculiar opportunities to small and well-handled parties--opportunities of which Bobby Little's veterans availed themselves right readily.
Angus M'Lachlan, for instance, accompanied by a small following of seasoned experts, had twice rounded up parties of the enemy in cellars, and had despatched the same back to Headquarters with his compliments and a promise of more. Mucklewame and four men had bombed their way along a communication trench leading to one of the side streets of the village--a likely avenue for a counter-attack--and having reached the end of the trench, had built up a sandbag barricade, and had held the same against the assaults of hostile bombers until a Vickers machine-gun had arrived in charge of an energetic subaltern of that youthful but thriving organisation, the Suicide Club, or Machine-Gun Corps, and closed the street to further Teutonic traffic.
During the night there had been periods of quiescence, devoted to consolidation, and here and there to snatches of uneasy slumber. Angus M'Lachlan, fairly in his element, had trailed his enormous length in and out of the back-yards and brick-heaps of the village, visiting every point in his irregular line, testing defences; bestowing praise; and ensuring that every man had his share of food and rest. Unutterably grimy but inexpressibly cheerful, he reported progress to Major Wagstaffe when that nocturnal rambler visited him in the small hours.
"Well, Angus, how goes it?" inquired Wagstaffe.
"We have won the match, sir," replied Angus with simple seriousness. "We are just playing the bye now!"
And with that he crawled away, with the unnecessary stealth of a small boy playing robbers, to encourage his dour paladins to further efforts.
"We shall probably be relieved this evening," he explained to them, "and we must make everything secure. It would never do to leave our new positions untenable by other troops. They might not be so reliable"--with a paternal smile--"as you! Now, our right flank is not safe yet. We can improve the position very much if we can secure that _estaminet_, standing up like an island among those ruined houses on our right front. You see the sign, _Aux Bons Fermiers_, over the door. The trouble is that a German machine-gun is sweeping the intervening space--and we cannot see the gun! There it goes again. See the brick-dust fly! Keep down! They are firing mainly across our front, but a stray bullet may come this way."
The platoon crouched low behind their improvised rampart of brick rubble, while machine-gun bullets swept low, with misleading _claquement_, along the space in front of them, from some hidden position on their right. Presently the firing stopped. Brother Boche was merely "loosing off a belt," as a precautionary measure, at commendably regular intervals.
"I cannot locate that gun," said Angus impatiently. "Can you, Corporal M'Snape?"
"It is not in the estamint itself, sirr," replied M'Snape. ("Estamint" is as near as our rank and file ever get to _estaminet_.) "It seems to be mounted some place higher up the street. I doubt they cannot see us themselves--only the ground in front of us."
"If we could reach the _estaminet_ itself," said Angus thoughtfully, "we could get a more extended view. Sergeant Mucklewame, select ten men, including three bombers, and follow me. I am going to find a jumping-off place. The Lewis gun too."
Presently the little party were crouching round their officer in a sheltered position on the right of the line--which for the moment appeared to be "in the air." Except for the intermittent streams of machine-gun fire, and an occasional shrapnel-burst overhead, all was quiet. The enemy's counter-attack was not yet ready.
"Now listen carefully," said Angus, who had just finished scribbling a despatch. "First of all, you, Bogle, take this message to the telephone, and get it sent to Company Headquarters. Now you others. We will wait till that machine-gun has fired another belt. Then, the moment it has finished, while they are getting out the next belt, I will dash across to the _estaminet_ over there. M'Snape, you will come with me, but no one else--yet. If the _estaminet_ seems capable of being held, I will signal to you, Sergeant Mucklewame, and you will send your party across, in driblets, not forgetting the Lewis gun. By that time I may have located the German machine-gun, so we should be able to knock it out with the Lewis."
Further speech was cut short by a punctual fantasia from the gun in question. Angus and M'Snape crouched behind the shattered wall, awaiting their chance. The firing ceased.
"_Now!_" whispered Angus.
Next moment officer and corporal were flying across the open, and before the mechanical Boche gunner could jerk the new belt into position, both had found sanctuary within the open doorway of the half-ruined _estaminet_.