Part 12

There was a general murmur of assent. The staff-captain requested permission to advance with the second company, the one that was attacking straight ahead. He received it.

The conference was at an end. Officers went out to give final instructions to their subalterns, came in again, beating powdered snow from their huge fur coats. One and all looked like Polar explorers.

Presently orderlies entered, put a steaming hot meal upon the table. Crowded closely together in the confined space, the officers ate--talking and laughing in high confidence, though in all was the tension which precedes the moment of action. Occasionally during the meal they heard the dull thud of an Austrian shell's arrival. They sat over coffee and smoked.

At last the colonel looked at his watch, stood up.

"It is time to go to your companies, gentlemen. I rely upon all of you as upon myself. I have promised the general that the trench shall be taken--and held. _Per la più grande Italia!_ And good luck to all of you!"

Some time later the staff-captain found himself by the side of the company commander in the deep trench hewn through the snow. It was night and in the faint reflected radiance of the white walls he could just dimly discern the figures of a long line of men, all garbed in white like himself. Only when their heads moved did they detach themselves from their surroundings. Overhead, above the crisp line of the parapet, the sky was a black background for an immense multitude of strangely brilliant stars. A wind raised little whirls of powdered snow upon the lip of the parapet, blew down into the trench in chill gusts that penetrated the clothing. Not a sound broke the intense silence. It seemed almost that one could hear the crackle of the sparkling vivid stars. The artillery bombardment had long since ceased. There was nothing to suggest that a death-dealing enemy was hidden only eight hundred metres away across the glacier. No sound came from the company that had already advanced. Along the trench was a murmur of conversation, stifled laughter. The company commander stood gazing at the luminous dial of his watch.

9.15! He turned his head, gave a command in a low voice.

"_Avanti!_"

It was repeated in a low murmur to right and left.

In an instant the company commander, the staff-captain at his side, had sprung up on to the parapet. A bitter wind smote upon them from the darkness, chilling to the bone. The commander glanced back, saw his men like a line of ghosts faint in the dim light, already over the parapet. Then the company commenced to thread its way through the openings previously cut in their own wire.

Stealthily, with the utmost precautions to avoid any unnecessary sound, the company stole across the uneven, heaped and riven snow and ice of the glacier. Under that black night of stars it stretched away white to a near indistinctness. The black masses of the mountains occulting the stars near the horizon were too indefinite to indicate direction. Compass in hand, the commander counted his paces over the snow, his only means of judging distance. For greater accuracy the staff-captain counted also. They spoke not a word. From the obscurity came the whispers of the men as they preserved a rough alignment.

Sliding, stumbling over the inequalities of the frozen surface, they pressed onwards. Somewhere over to their right, higher on the glacier in front of them, the other company was advancing also. There was neither sound nor sign of it. In that dim desolation the staff-captain might with difficulty see his immediate companions. The remainder of the company was swallowed up, was noiseless. It seemed that they were stumbling on alone--on and on, an interminable distance--a few lost figures struggling through an Arctic night.

Suddenly from the blackness straight ahead a beam of intensely white light shot out horizontal with the ground, sweeping it. At its first birth-splutter they flung themselves upon the snow, lay motionless. The searchlight--a wall of milky radiance to one side of them, suffusing the snow with a pale reflection--then, as it shone full on them, a lane of intolerable light from a blindingly violent source, casting long pitch-black shadows from every hump and hummock of the ice--swept questingly over the glacier, rested doubtfully here and there for a moment, passed on again. The Austrians were on the alert. Cautiously, still repeating to himself the number of paces they had marched when they dropped, the staff-captain glimpsed to right and left of him, looking for the company. The nearer figures he saw, immobile, their white humped backs looking like inequalities of the snow. Those more distant were utterly indistinguishable. The searchlight ceased abruptly. The world was annihilated in a profound blackness where the stars reigned alone.

The two officers rose to their feet, marched onward, resumed their count of the paces. To right and left of them rose ghostly figures, stumbling forward. On and on they went, bruising themselves on sudden obstacles in the black night, the dim uniform whiteness of the snow a bewilderment to the vision. Far away in the mountains of the Austrian position a livid flash leaped to the sky. The reverberation of a gun's discharge rolled heavily and ominously to their ears, the long hurrying whine of a shell approached them. There was an instant of suspense. Were they after all discovered? The shell passed overhead to burst far behind, inaudible. The trench in front was invisible in the darkness--not a flare, not a rifle-spurt marked its position.

"Seven hundred!" Both officers murmured the number at the same moment.

"_Alt!_" The whispered order was passed to right and left. The line of ghostly figures sank down, was merged in the ice and snow under the twinkling stars. "_Baionett' cann!_" There was a faint rustling, a just audible click and clink of bayonets being fixed. Then again silence. The company might have ceased to exist.

The company commander and the staff-captain gazed earnestly to their right front, towards the point where the other company should be attacking. At any moment now! Their comrades had a quarter of an hour's start, had a rather longer, more difficult stretch to traverse. But they should have reached their objective. At this moment stealthy white-clad figures should be crawling among the stakes of the entanglements, snipping at the wire. The two officers stared in the fateful direction--in suspense for the up-flung flare, the shouts and stabs of flame. They stared at complete obscurity.

The searchlight on the trench in front leaped out again to the night, its origin startlingly close. This time as it swept over them, it illumined the short heads of the stakes of the wire entanglement that cast black shadows on the snow which all but submerged them. They were very near. In the intense light the white craters of the shell-holes produced by the afternoon's bombardment, hung with broken wire from supports all askew, gleamed like craters of the moon seen in uncanny proximity. Once more the light swept the glacier, searched doubtfully and was extinguished.

A sudden shot, off to the right front--a swift succession of loud reports--woke wild echoes from unseen cliffs. High up on the glacier, to the left of the Austrian position, flare after flare was flung into the sky, eerily illuminant, plucking strange rock-forms into grotesque relief. There was a fierce shout that rolled in repeated reverberation, a wild tumult of voices in a crisis of human lives, confused shots, isolated and in irregular volleys, the dull thudding explosions of bombs. The first company was attacking.

The two officers lying in the snow gazed with fixed intensity towards the distant fight whose tumult swelled louder and louder with every moment. The wild flares continued to soar into the night, but as yet no rocket--neither red nor green--had leaped up to tell them of its fortunes. The searchlight in front shot out again, swept quickly from side to side. It illumined only the apparently empty, tumbled desolation of the glacier. But it continued to blaze out into the night. Both officers cursed it under their breath. From the trenches they had left, far behind, rifle-shots rang out, the rapid hammering of a machine-gun. The reserve company was indulging in a little tricky target-practice at the searchlight. It was successful. The beam of light vanished.

At the same moment a little spark of trailing fire went rushing skywards from the tumult of the flank attack. It was watched with suspended breath--green or red? The rocket burst into an effulgence of uncanny green light. The cheer which came from under it was like a ghostly utterance of the cheer repressed on the lips of the men lying prone and motionless on the glacier. The colonel's forecast was sound.

But now the uproar on the flank increased to a wild intensity. Incessant were the sharp detonations of the rifles, the dull thuds of the bombs, mingling with a clamour of voices, shrieks and yells. No more flares went up from the point of conflict, but from all along the trench they soared into the air, symptomatic of the nervousness of the unseen defenders. Machine-guns began to rap out their streams of bullets in blind hazard across the glacier.

The staff-captain pressed himself close to the snow, overhead cracked the rapid bullets of the Austrian machine-guns. The wind that blew over the glacier, ruffling the loose surface snow on to his face, was intensely cold. He felt himself a heavy leaden thing, frozen stiff. Over to his right front the savage noises of the contest, weird and awe-inspiring on this summit of the world that seemed so uncannily near to the flashing stars, swelled hideously cacophonous. Livid bursts of flame flickered and were reflected redly on snow surfaces, on black jagged spires of rock. All along the trench the blindingly white flares leaped upward, another soaring as its predecessor circled down in a parabola that illumined the unearthly confusion of the glacier surface. He seemed a mortal for ever severed from his fellow-men, set down in a world that was primitive Arctic chaos, a paralysed spectator of a contest of fierce mountain spirits fighting over spectral issues, remote from the interests of humanity. A part of his mind harked back to the warm summer, the green fields, the somnolent little town of the valley he had left that morning, and it seemed that those things belonged to another existence. Yet all the time he gazed fixedly to the point whence the next rocket should shoot up. He awaited it as he would await the breaking of a spell.

At last! The trailing spark of fire shot upwards, burst into hanging globes of red light, the snow rosy beneath them. On the instant the company was erect, rushing forward. Leaping, soaring flares from the trench revealed them--white moving figures casting black shadows on the white glacier. Spurts of livid flame, loud quick detonations darted from the white ridge in front. "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia! Italia!_" shouted the commander. "_Italia! Italia! Savoia!_" came the fierce antistrophe from the rushing men flinging aside their alpenstocks, brandishing their bayoneted rifles.

They were fighting their way through the deep loose snow, the wreck of the wire entanglements. The staff-captain floundered in a white shell-crater pitilessly illumined by an overhanging flare. The loose ends of the barbed wire tore at his clothes, clutched round his legs like tentacles that would hold him for death to strike. In front the spurts of flame sprang from a wall of darkness above the white, high up. Near him was the company commander, extricating himself from the shell-hole, the last of the wire safely passed. He had a sense of tensely struggling figures all around him. He, too, got clear of the wire. He saw the company commander throw up his hands, roll sideways over the snow, still shouting "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia!_"

He passed him, took up the cry: "_Avanti! Avanti! Italia! La più grande Italia!_" leading the company that yelled behind him like a pack of mountain wolves. He topped the snow parapet, saw a fierce face glaring up at him in a strange light, a rifle-barrel levelled. His revolver seemed to go off of itself, a sharp autonomous detonation. The face opened a black mouth, sank out of vision.

He sprang into the trench, shouting like a madman. Behind him came the Italians, tumbling down in fierce onslaught. One of them struck him violently on the back as he slid down, knocked him face forward into the snow. As he went he heard a sudden heavy crash, saw a flare of lurid light. A bomb! He picked himself up, only half realising his escape, fired at once into a dark body that wrestled with a white-clad soldier. There was a confusion of blows, of shots, of ear-splitting detonations--shouts, cries, shrieks. At one moment he was in close contact with a panting man, warm breath upon his face, eyes flashing momentarily in the reflection of a rifle-shot, looking into his--the next the man was gone, there was space about him. The confusion cleared--there were bodies underfoot--white-clad men about him shouting unintelligibly. Further along the trench another flare went up.

The staff-captain turned to his right along the trench.

"_Avanti! Avanti! A destra! Italia! Italia!_"

Behind him followed a rush of fiercely yelling soldiery.

"_Italia! Italia!_"

They were held up by a traverse of snow-covered rock. A shower of bombs came over it. From a communication trench a mass of dark figures rushed at them, shouting with guttural voices. There was bitter conflict--an ebb and flow in the surge of men.

Then another fierce shout: "_Italia! Italia! Savoia!_" It was the third company flinging itself in the trench to support the attack.

In the midst of the tumult could be distinguished the scream of Italian shells passing overhead to burst dully on the Austrian avenues of approach.

Suddenly the angry dominant note of the babel of voices changed. Accents of supplication rang out amid the jarring reports: "_Kamerad! Kamerad!_"

The staff-captain made his way along the deep dark gully in the snow where motionless figures stood with arms stretched up above their heads, rifles at their feet. Ghostly white figures who had retained their weapons joked at them in rough _patois_. He met the commander of the company which had attacked upon the flank. The trench was completely captured.

There followed a period of fierce toil in the trench. Under the twinkling stars in the black sky, men delved at the snow of the parados, cutting fire-steps, building it up into a breastwork. Behind them little parties of prisoners, stretcher-bearers and slightly wounded men, stumbled across the broken surface of the glacier. The toiling men gave no thought to them as they laboured to prepare for the storm which would surely burst.

It came. An ugly hissing rush heralded the first Austrian shell. It exploded with re-echoing violence and a great fount of up-flung snow right on the newly-strengthened breastwork. Another and another followed in a methodical bombardment directed by calmly judicial gunners ensconced in little huts far back in the mountains. Amid the nerve-harrying rush of ever new arrivals, constant explosions, the men toiled frenziedly. Reserves of ammunition were brought up. Machine-guns were put in position. Telephone wires were laid. The fourth company took up a post on the glacier whence it could rush into the trench in a counter-attack if needed.

Suddenly the bombardment ceased. The Alpini crouched behind the parapet, fingering their rifles with gloved hands, peered out into the indistinctness of the snow.

There was a rush of dimly-seen figures from the obscurity, a blaze of fire from the trench. Near the staff-captain the colonel sat speaking into the mouth-piece of a telephone. Rush after rush of hurrying shells passed overhead. Out there on the slope where an Austrian battalion was surging to the attack, shrapnel after shrapnel lit fierce sudden flares in the dark sky. There was again a tumult of voices, a re-echoing chaos of men at strife. It persisted, swelled, died down.

The silence of an Alpine night rested once more over the battleground, was broken only by the roar of a distant avalanche.

In the twilight of approaching morn an officer made his tour of the outposts on what had been Austria.

"_Chi va là?_" rang the sharp challenge of a white-garbed sentry almost indistinguishable against the snow.

"_Italia!_" came the proud response.

The first rays of the sun gilded the surrounding summits in the glory of a new dawn.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: "For Greater Italy!"--the theme of d'Annunzio's discourses in the doubtful days preceding Italy's intervention.]

PANZERKRAFTWAGEN!

Hauptmann von Waldhofer, Batteriechef of the --th Battery Fussartillerie, stood, helmeted and with buttoned coat, hastily sipping a cup of steaming hot coffee in his dug-out. The electric light, fed from the power-station at Cambrai, miles back, illumined a cosy little apartment. Portraits of the Kaiser and Hindenburg looked stiffly from the matchboard walls in the incongruous company of a medley of coloured pages from _Simplicissimus_, _Jugend_, and, quaintly enough, the _Vie Parisienne_. One side was fully occupied by an enormous large-scale map of the Somme area, divided into numbered squares, heavily scored with blue pencil here and there, across which ran a great curve of red lines massed in intricate pattern--the enemy trenches, and radiating pin-supported coloured threads from a point slightly E.S.E. of Flers fan wise far across the opposing line. The battery-made bed, wiremesh stretched over a wooden frame, sloping slightly from the head downwards towards the foot, on which lay blankets in the disarray of recent use, bulked largely in the apartment. But there was still room for a little table, on which books and writing material were neatly arranged, and two comfortable plush-covered armchairs, besides the camp washstand in which the water yet steamed. A carpet, mudstained but thick and soft to the tread, covered the floor. In the corner remote from the bed was a stove whose long pipe bent at right angles below the roof and followed it until it ascended the steep stairway at the entrance. The deliberate comfort of the dug-out indicated long residence and the expectation of an indefinite stay. Only the pick and shovel in readiness by the door gave a hint of possible cataclysm.

An orderly stood stiffly at attention while his master finished his coffee. The captain put down the cup.

"What time is it?" he asked sharply.

"A quarter to seven,[3] Herr Hauptmann."

"What sort of morning?"

"Clear, Herr Hauptmann, but very cold."

"Any aeroplanes?"

"None over the battery, Herr Hauptmann."

The captain gave a final glance at himself in the French wall-mirror which hung over the table, touched lightly with his finger-tips the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross upon his breast, as though flickering away a speck of dust, and turned to go. As he went the hanging calendar caught his eye. He tore off the top leaf. The date revealed was September 15th, 1916.

He climbed, with the heavy step of an oldish man, the narrow steep thirty-tread stairway, and emerged into the blue sky of a clear dawn. Around him was bare rolling downlike country. About half a mile directly in front of him the village of Flers huddled itself among thin trees, its skeletal roofs silhouetted against the blue. Between him and it, but close at hand in a slight depression of the ground, the four 105[4] mm. guns of his battery stood spaced and silent under veils of a gauzelike material tufted with green and brown that blended well with the terrain. Inconspicuous even to a side view, thus covered they were invisible from above. Near them were stacks of ammunition also shrouded. Save for a sentry the guns were deserted. The personnel of the battery was lined up in two queues, where the smoke of a couple of field kitchens betokened breakfast.

The battery dug-outs were excavated in the breast of a slight swelling of the downs, their exits looking N.W., on the flank of the gun positions. The battery commander stood for a moment surveying his little community banded for the service of the four veiled idols lying unhuman and aloof from the domestic needs of men. Then, following his morning habit, he turned and climbed the little rise of ground. On his accustomed view-point he stopped and gazed westward. Before him, clear in the cold early light, the undulating downs gathered themselves into a long, fairly regular ridge, some two miles distant at the summit. A maze of communication and support trenches, just visible, criss-crossed their white lines in the chalk of the hither slope. On the skyline of the ridge directly west a large clump of bare, shell-sharpened tree-stumps broke its emptiness. It was the Bois de Foureaux. Further south a similar group of stumps spiked up into the sky--the Bois de Delville.[5] That clean-swept landscape mounting to the desolate skyline was the great dominant fact in his existence. Ever concrete in his mind, it claimed his first waking vision even as the weather horizon claims the first heed of the sailor, or Vesuvius the morning glance of the Neapolitan. This morning it lay cloudless--save for the towering smoke of an occasional shell-burst in the vicinity of the Bois de Foureaux--and strangely quiet. The whole wide stretch would have seemed untenanted by man had it not been for the occasional primrose twinkle of a field-gun's flash. The reports of such guns came in isolated slams at varying intervals. To his right an English shell hurried with a long-drawn whine to burst heavily in Flers. Far back several enemy aeroplanes, tiny specks in the cold blue sky yellowing to the dawn, were dodging like midges among a smother of little brown shell puffs. From overhead came the drone of a German machine. But, by contrast with the frequent uproar which welled out of this region to translate itself into long thick smoke along the ridge, the scene was curiously clear and silent.

Satisfied with his scrutiny, the Captain turned and descended again to the battery position. He passed along the line of dug-outs in the flank of the rise until he reached one whose entrance bore the notice "Fernsprecher und Befehls Unterstand"[6] neatly painted on a board. The Oberfeldwebel standing at the doorway sprang to a precise, heel-clicking salute. The officer acknowledged it curtly and dived into the dug-out.

Here yellow electric light replaced the cool grey dawn and tobacco smoke floated in long wreaths about the bulb. A young lieutenant, seated at the telephone instrument on the table, took the pipe out of his mouth and rose smartly as his superior entered.

"Good morning, Eberstein," said the captain. "Anything fresh?"

"Nothing, Herr Hauptmann," replied the lieutenant respectfully.

"Nothing of this rumoured attack?"

"Nothing."

The captain seated himself heavily at the table and the lieutenant was at liberty to resume his chair.

"And that frightful bombardment all last night, Eberstein, what do you make of it?" he asked as he lit himself a cigarette.

The mouth under the fair moustache of the young lieutenant twisted into a contemptuous smile.

"Bah! the Englanders want to make us nervous or to persuade themselves that their wonderful 'great push' is not played out."

The captain blew out a long puff of smoke and nodded his head in dubious thought.

"And you think it is?"

Von Waldhofer, a man of somewhat deliberate mental processes, was never unwilling to discuss general topics with his subordinate. Eberstein's cheering, if crude, optimism was a welcome stimulus to him.