Chapter 2

The telephonist opened his case and lifted out his instrument, groped along the trench wall a few yards and found his wire, joined up to his instruments, dashed off a series of dots and dashes on the 'buzzer,' and spoke into his mouthpiece. No. 2 Platoon watched in fascinated silence and again gave all their attention to listening as the Artillery officer took the receiver.

'. . . That you, Major? . . . Yes, this is Arbuthnot. . . . In the forward firing trench. . . . Yes, pretty lively . . . big stuff they're flinging mostly, and some fourteen-pounder shrap. . . . No, no signs of a move in their trenches. . . . All right, sir, I'll take care. I can't see very well from here, so I'm going to move along a bit. . . . Very well, sir, I'll tap in again higher up. . . . Good-bye.' He handed back the instrument to the telephonist. 'Pack up again,' he said, 'and come along.'

When he had gone No. 2 Platoon turned eagerly on the telephonist, and he ran a gauntlet of anxious questions as he followed the Forward Officer. Nine out of ten of the questions were to the same purpose, and the gunner answered them with some sharpness. He turned angrily at last on one man who put the query in broad Scots accent.

'No,' he said tartly, 'we ain't tryin' to silence their guns. An' if you partickler wants to know why we ain't--well, p'raps them Glasgow townies o' yours can tell you.'

He went on and No. 2 Platoon sank to grim silence. The meaning of the gunner's words were plain enough to all, for had not the papers spoken for weeks back of the Clyde strikes and the shortage of munitions? And the thoughts of all were pithily put in the one sentence by a private of No. 2 Platoon.

'I'd stop cheerful in this blanky 'ell for a week,' he said slowly, 'if so be I 'ad them strikers 'ere alongside me gettin' the same dose.'

All this time there had been a constant although not a heavy rifle fire on the trenches. It had not done much damage, because the Royal Blanks were exposing themselves as little as possible and keeping low down in their narrow trenches. But now the German rifles began to speak faster, and the fire rose to a dull roar. The machine-guns joined in, their sharp rat-tat-tat sounding hard and distinct above the rifles. As the volume of rifle fire increased, so, for a minute, did the shell fire, until the whole line of the Royal Blanks' trenches was vibrating to the crash of the shells and humming with rifle bullets which whizzed overhead or smacked with loud whip-crack reports into the parapet.

The officer of No. 2 Platoon hitched himself higher on the parapet and hoisted a periscope over it. Almost instantly a bullet struck it, shattering the glass to fragments. He lowered it and hastily fitted a new glass, pausing every few moments to bob his head up over the parapet and glance hastily across at the German trench. A second time he raised his instrument to position and in less than a minute it was shot away for a second time.

The Artillery officer came hurrying and stumbling back along the trench, his telephonist labouring behind him. They stopped at the place where they had tapped in before and the telephonist busied himself connecting up his instrument. The Artillery officer flung himself down beside the Platoon commander. 'My confounded wire cut again,' he panted, 'just when I want it too. Sounds as if they meant a rush, eh?' The infantryman nodded. 'Will they stop shelling before they rush?' he shouted.

'Not till their men are well out in front. Their guns can keep going over their heads for a bit. Are you through, Jackson? Tell the Battery to "eyes front." It looks like an attack.'

The telephonist repeated the message, listened a moment and commenced, 'The Major says, sir----' when his officer interrupted sharply, 'Three rounds gun-fire--quick.'

'Three rounds gun-fire--quick, sir,' bellowed the telephonist into his mouthpiece.

'Here they come, lads. Let 'em have it,' yelled the Platoon commander, and commenced himself to fire through a loophole.

At the same moment there came from the rear the quick thudding reports of the British guns, the rush of their shells overhead, and the sharp crash of their shells over the German parapets.

'All fired, sir,' called the telephonist.

'Battery fire one second,' the Observing Officer shouted without turning his head from his watch over the parapet.

'Number one fired--two fired--three fired,' the signaller called rapidly, and the Observing Officer watched narrowly the white cotton-wool clouds of the bursting shrapnel of his guns.

'Number three, ten minutes more right--all guns, drop twenty-five--repeat,' he ordered, and in swift obedience the guns began to drop their shrapnel showers, sweeping along the ground in front of the German trench.

But the expected rush of Germans hung fire. A line of bobbing heads and shoulders had showed above their parapet and only a few scattered groups had clambered over its top.

'They're beat,' shouted the infantry officer, exultingly. 'They're dodging back. Give it to 'em, boys--give it--_ow_!' He broke off and ducked down with a hand clapped to his cheek where a bullet had scored its way.

'Get down! get down! Make your men get down,' said the gunner officer rapidly. 'It's all . . .'

Again there came the swishing rush of the light shells, a series of quick-following bangs, and a hail of shrapnel tearing across the trench, before the men had time to duck.

'All a false alarm--just a dodge to get your men's heads up within reach of their Fizz-Bangs' shrapnel,' said the artilleryman, and called to the signaller. 'All guns raise twenty-five. Section fire five seconds. . . . Hullo--hit?' he continued to the Platoon officer, as he noticed him wiping a smear of blood from his cheek.

'Just a nice little scratch,' said the lad, grinning. 'Enough to let me swank about being wounded and show off a pretty scar to my best girl when the war's over.'

'Afraid that last shrapnel burst gave some of your fellows more'n a pretty scar,' said the gunner. 'But I suppose I'd better slow my guns up again. . . . Jackson, tell them the attack's evidently stopped--section fire ten seconds.'

'Can't you keep on belting 'em for a bit?' asked the Platoon officer. 'Might make 'em ease up on us.'

The gunner shook his head regretfully.

'I'd ask nothing better,' he said. 'I could just give those trenches beans. But our orders are strict, and we daren't waste a round on anything but an attack. I'll bet that's my Major wanting to know if he can't slack off a bit more,' he continued, as the signaller called something about 'Wanted to speak here, sir.'

He went to the instrument and held a short conversation. 'Told you so,' he said, when he returned to the infantry officer. 'No attack--no shells. We're stopping again.'

'Doesn't seem to be too much stop about the Germs,' grumbled the infantryman, as another series of crackling shells shook the ground close behind them. He moved down the line speaking a few words here and there to the crouching men of his platoon.

'This is getting serious,' he said when he came back to his place. 'There's more than the half of my lot hit, and the most of them pretty badly. These shrapnel bullets and shell splinters make a shocking mess of a wound, y'know.'

'Yes,' said the gunner grimly, 'I know.'

'A perfectly brutal mess,' the subaltern repeated. 'A bullet now is more or less decent, but those shells of theirs, they don't give a man a chance to pull through.'

'Ours are as bad, if that's any satisfaction to you,' said the gunner.

'I s'pose so,' agreed the subaltern. 'Ghastly sort of game altogether, isn't it? Those poor fellows of mine now--the killed, I mean. Think of their fathers and mothers and wives or sweethearts----'

'I'd rather not,' said the gunner. 'And I shouldn't advise you to. Better not to think of these things.'

'I wish they'd come again,' said the Platoon commander. 'It would stop the shells for a bit perhaps. They're getting on my nerves. One's so helpless against them, sticking here waiting to know where the next will drop. And they don't even give a fellow the ordinary four to one chance of a casualty being a wound only. They make such a cruel messy smash of a fellow. . . . Are you going?'

'Must find that break in my wire,' said the gunner, and presently he and the telephonist ploughed off along the trench.

The bombardment continued with varying intensity throughout the day. There was no grand finale, no spectacular rush or charge, no crashing assault, no heroic hand-to-hand combats--no anything but the long-drawn agony of lying still and being hammered by the crashing shells. This was no 'artillery preparation for the assault,' although the Royal Blanks did not know that and so dare not stir from the danger zone of the forward trench. They were not even to have the satisfaction of giving back some of the punishment they had endured, or the glory--a glory carefully concealed from their friends at home, and mostly lost by the disguising or veiling of their identity in the newspapers, but still a glory--of taking a trench or making a successful attack or counter-attack. It was merely another 'heavy artillery bombardment,' lived through and endured all unknown, as so many have been endured.

The Royal Blanks were relieved at nightfall when the fire had died down. The Artillery Observing Officer was just outside the communication trench at the relief hour and saw the casualties being helped or carried out. A stretcher passed and the figure on it had a muddy and dark-stained blanket spread over, and an officer's cap and binoculars on top.

'An officer?' asked the gunner. 'Who is it?' 'Mr. Grant, sir,' said one of the stretcher-bearers dully. 'No. 2 Platoon.'

The gunner noted the empty sag of the blanket where the head and shoulders should have been outlined and checked the half-formed question of 'Badly hit?' to 'How was it?'

'Shell, sir. A Fizz-Bang hit the parapet just where 'e was lyin'. Caught 'im fair.'

The bearers moved on, leaving the gunner groping in his memory for a sentence in the youngster's last talk he had heard. "Ghastly business . . . cruel messy smash,' he murmured.

'Beg pardon, sir?' said the telephonist.

The Forward Officer made no answer but continued to stare after the disappearing stretcher-bearers. The signaller shuffled his feet in the mud and hitched up the strap of the instrument on his shoulder.

'I suppose it's all over now, sir,' he said.

'Yes, all over--except for his father, or mother, or sweetheart,' said the officer absently.

The signaller stared. 'I meant the shellin', sir.'

'Oh--ah, yes; the shelling, Jackson. Yes, I dare say that's over for to-night, since they seem to have stopped now.'

'P'raps we might see about some food, sir,' said the signaller.

'Food--to be sure,' said the officer briskly. 'Eat, drink, and be merry, Jackson, for--I'm hungry too, now I think of it. And, oh Lord, I'm tired.'

No. 2 Platoon were tired too, as they filed wearily out by the communication trench, tired and worn out mentally and physically--and yet not too tired or too broken for a light word or a jest. From the darkness behind them a German flare soared up and burst, throwing up bushes and shattered buildings, sandbag parapets, broken tree-stumps, sticks and stones in luminous-edged silhouette. A machine-gun burst into a stutter of fire, the reports sounding faint at first and louder and louder as the muzzle swept round in its arc. 'Ssh-sh-sh-sh,' the bullets swept overhead, and No. 2 Platoon halted and crouched low in the shallow communication trench.

'Oh, shut it, blast ye,' growled one of the men disgustedly. 'Ain't we 'ad enough for one day?'

'It's only 'im singin' 'is little evenin' hymn as usual,' said another.

'Just sayin' 'is good-bye an' sendin' a few partin' sooveniers'; and another sang 'Say aw rev-wore, but not good-bye.'

'Stop that howling there,' a sergeant called down the line, 'and stop smoking those cigarettes and talking.'

'Certainly, sergeant,' a voice came back. 'An' please sergeant, will you allow us to keep on breathin'?'

The light died, and the line rose and moved on, squelching softly in the mud. A man clapped a hand to his pocket, half halted and exclaimed in annoyance. 'Blest if I 'aven't left my mouth-organ back there,' he said. 'Hutt!' said his next file. 'Be glad ye've a mouth left, or a head to have a mouth. It might be worse, an' ye might be left back there yerself decoratin' about ten square yards of trench.'

'Tut-tut-tut-tut' went the maxim behind them again.

'Tutt-tutt yourself, you stammer-an'-spit blighter,' said the disconsolate mouth-organ loser, and 'D'you think we can chance a smoke yet?' as the platoon moved out on the road and behind the shelter of some ruined house-walls.

Platoon by platoon the company filed out and formed up roughly behind the houses. The order to move came at last and the ranked fours swung off, tramping slowly and stolidly in silence until some one struck up a song--

'_Crump, crump, crump, says the big bustin' shells----_

A chorus of protest and a 'Give the shells a rest' stopped the song on the first line, and it was to the old regimental tune, the canteen and sing-song favourite, 'The Sergeant's Return,' that the Royal Blanks settled itself into its pack shoulder-straps and tramped on.

I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know-- Oh! Oh! you know you used to know-- An' it's years since we parted way down on Plymouth Hoe-- Oh! Oh! So many years ago. I've roamed around the world, but I've come back to you, For my 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true. [Prolonged and noisy imitation of a kiss.] _Ain't_ that got the taste you always used to know?

The colonel was talking to the adjutant in the road as the companies moved past, and he noted with some concern the ragged ranks and listless movement of the first lot to pass.

'They're looking badly tucked up,' he said.

'They've had a cruel day,' said the adjutant.

'Yes, the worst kind,' agreed the O.C. 'And I doubt if they can stand that sort of thing so well now. The old regiment is not what it used to be. We're so filled up with recruits now--youngsters too. . . . Here's B company--about the rawest of the lot and caught the worst of it to-day. How d'you think they stand it?'

But it was B company that answered the question for itself and the old regiment, singing the answer softly to itself and the O.C. as it trudged past--

I'm the same ol' feller that you always used to know-- Oh! Oh! you know you used to know. . . .

'Gad, Malcolm,' said the O.C. straightening his own shoulders, 'they'll do, they'll do.'

. . . My 'eart 'as never altered, my 'eart is ever true,

the remnant of No. 2 Platoon sang past him.

'They haven't shaken us yet,' said the O.C. proudly.

'Tutt, tutt!' grumbled the maxim faintly. 'Tutt, tutt!'

THE MINE

'_. . . a mine was successfully exploded under a section of the enemy's trench. . . ._'--ACTUAL EXTRACT FROM AN OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

Work on the sap-head had been commenced on what the Captain of the Sappers called 'a beautiful night,' and what anyone else outside a lunatic asylum would have described with the strongest adjectives available in exactly the opposite sense. A piercing wind was blowing in gusts of driving sleet and rain, it was pitch dark--'black as the inside of a cow,' as the Corporal put it--and it was bitterly cold. But, since all these conditions are exactly those most calculated to make difficult the work of an enemy's sentries and look-outs, and the first work of sinking a shaft is one which it is highly desirable should be unobserved by an enemy, the Sapper Captain's satisfaction may be understood.

The sap-head was situated amongst the ruins of a cottage a few yards behind the forward firing trench, and by the time a wet daylight had dawned the Sappers had dug themselves well underground, had securely planked up the walls of the shaft, and had cut a connecting gallery from the ruins to the communication trench. All this meant that their work was fairly free from observation, and the workers reasonably safe from bombs and bullets, so that the officer in charge had good cause for the satisfaction with which he made his first report.

His first part of the work had been a matter of plans and maps, of compass and level, of observing the ground--incidentally dodging the bullets of the German snipers who caught glimpses of his crawling form--by day, and of intricate and exact figuring and calculating by night, in the grimy cellar of another ruined house by the light of a candle, stuck in an empty bottle.

Thereafter he spent all his waking hours (and many of his sleeping ones as well) in a thick suit of clayey mud; he lived like a mole in his mine gallery or his underground cellar, saw the light only when he emerged to pass from his work to his sleep or meals, and back to his work, and generally gave himself, his whole body and brain and being, to the correct driving of a shallow burrow straight to the selected point under the enemy trench a hundred and odd yards away. He was a youngish man, and this was the first job of any importance that had been wholly and solely entrusted to him. It was not only his anxiety to make a creditable showing, but he was keen on the work for the work's own sake, and he revelled in the creative sense of the true artist. The mine was his. He had first suggested it, he had surveyed it, and plotted it, and measured and planned and worked it out on paper; and now, when it came to the actual pick-and-shovel work, he supervised and directed and watched each hour of work, and each yard of progress.

It was tricky work, too, and troublesome. At first the ground was good stiff clay that the spades bit out in clean mouthfuls, and that left a fair firm wall behind. But that streak ran out in the second day's working, and the mine burrowed into some horrible soft crumbly soil that had to be held up and back by roof and wall of planking. The Subaltern took a party himself and looted the wrecks of houses--there was no lack of these in the village just behind the lines--of roof-beams and flooring, and measured and marked them for sawing into lengths, and would have taken a saw with pleasure himself.

Then he dived cheerfully into the oozing wet burrow and superintended the shoring up, and re-started the men to digging, and emerged a moment to see more planking passed down. He came in fact dangerously near to making a nuisance of himself, and some of his men who had been sapping and mining for wet and weary months past were inclined to resent quite so much fussing round and superintendence. But the Corporal put that right. He was an elderly man with a nasty turn of temper that had got him into almost as many troubles in his service as his knowledge, experience, and aptitude for hard work and responsibility had got him out of.

'Leave the lad be,' he had said when some of the party had passed grumbling remarks about 'too bloomin' much fuss an' feathers over a straight simple bloomin' job.' The Corporal had promptly squashed that opinion. 'Leave the lad be,' he said. 'He's young to the job, mebbe, but he's not such a simple fool as some that take this for a simple job. It's not goin' to be all that simple, as you'll find before you're done.'

He was right, too. The crumbling soil was one little difficulty promptly and easily met. The next was more troublesome. The soil grew wetter and more wet until at last the men were working ankle deep in water. The further the mine went the wetter it became. The men worked on, taking their turn at the narrow face, shovelling out the wet muck and dragging it back to the shaft and up and out and away by the communication trench. They squeezed aside in silence when the Subaltern pushed in to inspect the working, and waited with side winks to one another to see what he would do to overcome the water difficulty. 'Pumps' would of course have been the simple answer, but the men knew as well as the Subaltern knew that pumps were not to be had at that particular time and place for love or money, and that all the filling of all the 'indents' in the R.E. would not produce one single efficient pump from store.

The Subaltern did not trouble with indent forms or stores. He had had something of a fight to get a grudging permission for his mine, and he felt it in his bones that if he worried the big chiefs too much with requisitions he would be told to abandon the mine. He shut his teeth tight at the thought. It was his mine and he was going to see it through, if he had to bale the water out with a tea-cup.

He made a quick cast through the shell-wrecked village, drew blank, sat for fifteen minutes on the curb of a rubble-choked well and thought hard, jumped up and called the Corporal to provide him with four men and some odd tools, and struck back across muddy and shell-cratered fields to the nearest farm. The farmer, who had remained in possession despite the daily proximity of bursting shells, a shrapnel-smashed tile roof, and a gaping hole where one house-corner should have been, made some objection to the commandeering of his old-fashioned farm pump. He was at first supported in this by the officer in charge of the men billeted in the barn and sheds, but the Sapper explained the urgency of his need and cunningly clinched the argument by reminding the Infantry officer that probably he and his men would soon be installed in the trenches from which the mine ran, and that he--the Sapper--although he was not supposed to mention it, might just hint that his mine was only hurrying to forestall an enemy mine which was judged to be approaching the trench the Infantry officer would presently occupy. This last was a sheer invention of the moment, but it served excellently, and the Sapper and his party bore off their pump in triumph. It was later erected in the mine shaft, and the difficulty of providing sufficient piping to run from the pump to the waterlogged part of the mine was met by a midnight visit to the house where Headquarters abode and the wholesale removal of gutters and rain-pipes. As Headquarters had its principal residence in a commodious and cobwebby cellar, the absence of the gutters fortunately passed without remark, and the sentry who watched the looting and the sergeant to whom he reported it were quite satisfied by the presence of an Engineer officer and his calm assurance that it was 'all right--orders--an Engineers' job.'

The pump did its work excellently, and a steady stream of muddy water gushed from its nozzle and flowed down the Headquarters gutter-pipes to a selected spot well behind the trenches. Unfortunately the pump, being old-fashioned, was somewhat noisy, and all the packing and oiling and tinkering failed to silence its clank-clink, clank-clink, as its arm rose and fell.