Chapter 5
Then, quite suddenly, a tempest of high-explosive shell rained down on the battery, in front of, behind, over, and amongst the guns. Instinctively the men hesitated in their work, but the next instant the voices of the Section Commanders brought them to themselves. There were shelter-pits and dug-outs close by, and, without urgent need of their fire, the guns might be left while the gunners took cover till the storm was over. But there could be no thought of that now, while the picture was in everyone's mind of the infantry out there being hard pressed and overborne by the weight of the assault. So the gunners stayed by their guns and loaded, laid, and fired as fast as they could serve their pieces. The gun shields give little or no protection from high-explosive shells, because these burst overhead and fling their fragments straight down, burst in rear, and hurl jagged splinters outwards in every direction. The men were as open and unprotected to them as bare flesh is to bullet or cold steel; but they knelt or sat in their places, and pushed their work into a speed that was only limited by the need for absolute accuracy.
A shell burst close in rear of Number One gun, and the whirlwind of splinters and bullets struck down half the detachment at a blow. The fallen men were lifted clear, the remaining gunners took up their appointed share of the lost men's duties, a shell was slung in, the breech slammed shut, the firing-lever jerked--and Number One gun was in action again and firing almost as fast as before. The sergeant in charge of another gun was killed instantaneously by a shrapnel bullet in the head. His place was taken by the next senior before the last convulsive tremors had passed through the dead man's muscles; and the gun kept on without missing a round.
The shell-fire grew more and more intense. The air was thick and choking with smoke and chemical fumes, and vibrant with the rush and shriek, of the shells, the hum of bullets, and the ugly whirr of splinters, the crash of impacting shells, and ear-splitting crack of the guns' discharge, the 'r-r-rupp' of shrapnel on the wet ground, the metallic clang of bullets and steel fragments on the gun-shields and mountings. But through all the inferno the gunners worked on, swiftly but methodically. After each shot the layers glared anxiously into the eye-piece of their sights and made minute movements of elevating and traversing wheels, the men at the range-drums examined them carefully and readjusted them exactly, the fuse-setters twisted the rings marking the fuse's time of burning until they were correct literally to a hair-line; every man working as if the gun were shooting for a prize-competition cup. Their care, as well as their speed, was needed; for, more than any cup, good men's lives were at stake and hanging on their close and accurate shooting. For if the sights were a shade to right or left of their 'aiming point,' if the range were shortened by a fractional turn of the drum, if a fuse was wrongly set to one of the scores of tiny marks on its ring, that shell might fall on the British line, take toll of the lives of friend instead of foe, go to break down the hard-pressed British resistance instead of upholding it.
Man after man was hit by shell splinter or bullet, but no man left his place unless he was too badly injured to carry on. The seriously wounded dragged themselves clear as best they could and crawled to any cover from the bursting shells; the dead lay where they fell. The detachments were reduced to skeleton crews. One Section Commander laid and fired a gun; another, with a smashed thigh, sat and set fuses until he fainted from loss of blood and from pain. The Battery Commander took the telephone himself and sent the telephonist to help the guns; and when a bursting shell tore out one side of the sandbags of the dug-out the Battery Commander rescued himself and the instrument from the wreckage, mended the broken wire, and sat in the open, alternately listening at the receiver and yelling exhortation and advice to the gunners through the Sergeant-Major's megaphone. The Sergeant-Major had gone on the run to round up every available man, and brought back at the double the Battery cooks, officers' grooms, mess orderlies and servants. The slackening fire of the Battery spurted again and ran up to something like its own rate. And the Major cheered the men on to a last effort, shouting the Forward Officer's message that the attack was failing, was breaking, was being wiped out mainly by the Battery's fire.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the tornado of shell-fire about them ceased, shifted its storm-centre, and fell roaring and crashing and hammering on an empty hedge and ditch a full three hundred yards away.
And at the same moment the Major shouted exultingly. 'They're done!' he bellowed down the megaphone; 'they're beat! The attack--and he fell back on the Forward Officer's own words--'the attack is blotted out.'
Whereat the panting gunners cheered faintly and short-windedly, and took contentedly the following string of orders to lengthen the range and slacken the rate of fire. And the Battery made shift to move its dead from amongst the gun and wagon wheels, to bandage and tie up its wounded with 'first field dressings,' to shuffle and sort the detachments and redistribute the remaining men in fair proportion amongst the remaining guns, to telephone the Brigade Headquarters to ask for stretcher-bearers and ambulance, and more shells--doing it all, as it were, with one hand while the other kept the guns going, and the shells pounding down their appointed paths.
For the doing of two or more things at once, and doing them rapidly, exactly, and efficiently, the while in addition highly unpleasant things are being done to them, is all a part of the Gunners' game of 'close and accurate artillery support.'
'NOTHING TO REPORT'
'_On the Western Front there is nothing to report. All remains quiet._'--OFFICIAL DESPATCH.
The 7th (Territorial) King's Own Asterisks had 'taken over' their allotted portion of the trenches and were settling themselves in for the night. When the two facts are taken in conjunction that it was an extremely unpleasant night, cold, wet and bleak, and the 7th were thoroughly happy and would not have exchanged places with any other battalion in Flanders, it will be very plain to those who know their Front that the 7th K.O.A. were exceedingly new to the game. They were: and actually this was their first spell of duty in the forward firing trenches.
They had been out for some weeks, weary weeks, filled with the digging of communication trenches well behind the firing trenches, with drills and with various 'fatigues' of what they considered a navvying rather than a military nature. But every task piled upon their reluctant shoulders had been performed promptly and efficiently, and now at last they were enjoying the reward of their zeal--a turn in the forward trenches.
The men were unfeignedly pleased with themselves, with the British Army, and with the whole world. The non-coms, were anxious and desperately keen to see everything in apple-pie order. The Company officers were inclined to be fidgety, and the O.C. was worried and concerned to the verge of nerves. He pored over the trench maps that had been handed to him, he imagined assaults delivered on this point and that, hurried, at the point of the pencil, his supports along various blue and red lines to the threatened angles of the wriggly line that represented the forward trench, drew lines from his machine-gun emplacements to the red-inked crosses of the German wire entanglements, frowned and cogitated over the pencil crosses placed by the O.C. of the relieved battalion where the lurking-places of German maxims were suspected. Afterwards he made a long and exhaustive tour of the muddy trenches, concealing his anxiety from the junior officers, and speaking lightly and cheerfully to them--following therein truly and instinctively the first principle of all good commanders to show the greater confidence as they feel it the less. He returned to the Battalion Headquarters, situated in a very grimy cellar of a shell-wrecked house behind the support trenches, and partook of a belated dinner of tinned food flavoured with grit and plaster dust.
The signallers were established with their telephones at the foot of the stone stair outside the cellar door, and into this cramped 'exchange' ran the telephone wires from the companies in the trenches and from the Brigade Headquarters a mile or two back. Every word that the signallers spoke was plainly heard in the cellar, and every time the Colonel heard 'Hello! Yes, this is H.Q.,' he sat motionless waiting to hear what message was coming through. When his meal was finished he resisted an impulse to 'phone' all the forward trenches, asking how things were, unlaced his boots, paused, and laced them up again, lay down on a very gritty mattress in a corner of the cellar, and tried to sleep. For the first hour every rattle of rifle fire, every thud of a gun, every call on the telephone brought him up on his pillow, his ears straining to catch any further sound. After about the tenth alarm he reasoned the matter out with himself something after this fashion:--
'The battalion is occupying a position that has not been attacked for weeks, and it is disposed as other Regular battalions have been, and no more and no less effectually than they. There isn't an officer or man in the forward trenches who cannot be fully trusted to keep a look-out and to resist an attack to the last breath. There is no need to worry or keep awake, and to do so is practically admitting a distrust of the 7th K.O.A. I trust them fully, and therefore I ought to go to sleep.'
Whereupon the Colonel sat up, took off his wet boots, lay down again, resolutely closed his eyes--and remained wide awake for the rest of the night.
But if there be any who feel inclined to smile at the nervousness of an elderly, stoutish, and constitutionally easy-going Colonel of Territorials, I would remind them of a few facts. The Colonel had implicit faith in the stout-heartedness, the spirit, the fighting quality of his battalion. He had had the handling and the training of them ever since mobilisation, and he knew every single man of them as well as they knew themselves. They had done everything asked of them and borne light-heartedly rough quarters, bad weather, hard duties. But--and one must admit it a big and serious 'but'--to-night might be their real and their first testing in the flame and fire of War.
Even as no man knows how he will feel and behave under fire, until he has been under fire, so no regiment or battalion knows. The men were razor-keen for action, but that very keenness might lead them into a rashness, a foolhardiness, which would precipitate action. The Colonel believed they would stand and fight to the last gasp and die to the last man rather than yield a yard of their trench. He believed that of them even as he believed it of himself--but he did not know it of them any more than he knew it of himself. Men, apparently every bit as good as him, had before now developed some 'white streak,' some folly, some stupidity, in the stress and strain of action. Other regiments, apparently as sound as his, had in the records of history failed or broken in a crisis. He and his were new and untried, and military commanders for innumerable ages had doubted and mistrusted new and untried troops.
Well . . . he had done his best, and at least the next twenty-four hours should show him how good or how bad that best had been. But meantime let no one blame him for his anxiety or nervousness.
And meantime the 7th Asterisks, serenely unaware of their Commanding Officer's worry and doubt--and to be fair to them and to him it must be stated that they would have flouted scornfully any suggestion that he had held them--joyfully set about the impossible task of making themselves comfortable, and the congenial one of making the enemy extremely uncomfortable. The sentries were duly posted, and spent an entirely unnecessary proportion of their time peering over the parapet.
There were more Verey pistol lights burnt during the night than would have sufficed a trench-hardened battalion for a month, and the Germans opposite, having in hand a little job of adding to their barbed-wire defences, were puzzled and rather annoyed by the unwonted display of fireworks. They foolishly vented their annoyance by letting off a few rounds of rapid fire at the opposition, and the 7th Asterisks eagerly accepted the challenge, manned their parapets and proceeded to pour a perfect hurricane of fire back to the challengers. The Germans, with the exception of about a dozen picked sharp-shooting snipers, ceased to fire and took careful cover.
The snipers, daring the Asterisks' three minutes of activity, succeeded in scoring seven hits, and the Asterisks found themselves in possession of a casualty list of one killed and six wounded before the Company and platoon commanders had managed to stop the shooting and get the men down under cover.
When the shooting had ceased and the casualties had been cleared out on their way to the dressing station, the Asterisks recharged their rifle-magazines and spent a good hour discussing the incident, those men who had been beside the casualties finding themselves and their narratives of how it happened in great demand.
And one of the casualties, having insisted, when his slight wound was dressed, on returning to the trench, had to deliver a series of lecturettes on what it felt like, what the Medical said, how the other fellows were, how the dressing station was worked, and similar subjects, with pantomimic illustrations of how he was holding his rifle when the bullet came through the loophole, and how he was still fully capable of continuing to hold it.
A heavy shower dispersed the audiences, those of the men who were free to do so returning to muddy and leaky dug-outs, and the remainder taking up their positions at the parapet. There was as much chance of these latter standing on their heads as there was of their going to sleep, but the officers made so many visiting rounds to be certain of their sentries' wakefulness, and spent so long on each round and on the fascinating peeps over into 'the neutral ground,' that the end of one round was hardly completed before it was time to begin the next.
Occasionally the Germans sent up a flare, and every man and officer of the K.O.A. who was awake stared out through the loopholes in expectation of they knew not what. They also fired off a good many 'pistol lights,' and it was nearly 4 A.M. before the Germans ventured to send out their working-party over the parapet. Once over, they followed the usual routine, throwing themselves flat in the mud and rank grass when a light flared up and remaining motionless until it died out, springing to silent and nervous activity the instant darkness fell, working mostly by sense of touch, and keeping one eye always on the British parapet for the first hint of a soaring light.
The 'neutral ground' between the trenches was fairly thickly scattered over with dead, the majority of them German, and it was easy enough for an extra score or so of men, lying prone and motionless as the dead themselves, to be overlooked in the shifting light. The work was proceeding satisfactorily and was almost completed when a mischance led to the exposure of the party.
One of the workers was in the very act of crawling over the parapet when a British light flared. Half-way over he hesitated one moment whether to leap back or forward, then hurriedly leapt down in front of the parapet and flung himself flat on his face. He was just too late. The lights revealed him exactly as he leapt, and a wildly excited King's Own Asterisk pulled back the cut-off of his magazine and opened rapid fire, yelling frenziedly at the same time that they were coming--were coming--were attacking--were charging--look out!
Every K.O.A. on his feet lost no time in joining in the 'mad minute' and every K.O.A. who had been asleep or lying down was up in a twinkling and blazing over the parapet before his eyes were properly opened. The machine-gun detachment were more circumspect if no less eager. The screen before the wide loophole was jerked away and the fat barrel of the maxim peered out and swung smoothly from side to side, looking for a fair mark.
It had not long to wait. The German working-party 'stuck it out' for a couple of minutes, but with light after light flaming into the sky and exposing them pitilessly, with the British trench crackling and spitting fire from end to end, with the bullets hissing and whistling over them, and hailing thick amongst them, their nerves gave and broke; in a frantic desire for life and safety they flung away the last chance of life and safety their prone and motionless position gave them.
They scrambled to their feet, a score of long-cloaked, crouching figures, glaringly plain and distinct in the vivid light, and turned to run for their trench. The sheeting bullets caught half a dozen and dropped them before they had well stood up, stumbled another two or three over before they could stir a couple of paces, went on cutting down the remainder swiftly and mercilessly. The remainder ran, stumbling and tripping and staggering, their legs hampered by their long coats, their feet clogged and slipping in the wet, greasy mud. The eye glaring behind the swinging sights of the maxim caught that clear target of running figures, the muzzle began to jet forth a stream of fire and hissing bullets, the cartridge belt to click, racing through the breach.
The bullets cut a path of flying mud-splashes across the bare ground to the runners, played a moment about their feet, then lifted and swept across and across--once, twice, thrice. On the first sweep the thudding bullets found their targets, on the second they still caught some of them, on the third they sang clear across and into the parapet, for no figures were left to check their flight. The working party was wiped out.
It took the excited riflemen another minute or two to realise that there was nothing left to shoot at except an empty parapet and some heaps of huddled forms; but the pause to refill the empty magazines steadied them, and then the fire died away.
The whole thing was over so quickly that the rifle fire had practically ceased before the Artillery behind had time to get to work, and by the time they had flung a few shells to burst in thunder and lightning roar and flash over the German parapet, the storm of rifle fire had slackened and passed. Hearing it die away, the gunners also stopped, reloaded, and laid their pieces, waited the reports of their Forward Officers, and on receiving them turned into their dug-outs and their blankets again.
But the batteries covering the front held by the Asterisks remained by their guns and continued to throw occasional rounds into the German trenches. Their Forward Officers had passed on the word received from the Asterisks of a sharp attack quickly beaten back--that being the natural conclusion drawn from that leaping figure on the parapet and the presence of Germans in the open--and the guns kept up a slow rate of fire more with the idea of showing the enemy that the defence was awake and waiting for them than of breaking up another possible attack. The battalions of Regulars to either side of the Asterisks had more correctly diagnosed the situation as 'false alarm' or 'ten rounds rapid on working parties,' and their supporting Artillery did no more than carry on their usual night firing.
The result of it all was that the Asterisks throughout the night enjoyed the spectacle of some very pretty artillery fire in the dark on and over the trenches facing them, and also the much less pleasing one of German shells bursting in the British trenches, and especially in those of the K.O.A. They had the heaviest share on the simple and usual principle of retaliation, whereby if our Section A of trenches is shelled we shell the German section facing it, and _vice versa_.
The fire was by no means heavy as artillery fire goes these days, and at first the Asterisks were not greatly disturbed by it. But even a rate of three or four shells every ten or fifteen minutes is galling, and necessitates the keeping of close cover or the loss of a fair number of men. It took half a dozen casualties to impress firmly on the Asterisks the need of keeping cover. Shell casualties have an extremely ugly look, and some of the Asterisks felt decidedly squeamish at sight of theirs--especially of one where the casualty had to be collected piece by piece, and removed in a sack.
For an hour before dawn the battalion 'stood to,' lining the trench with loaded rifles ready after the usual and accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom of the guns.
That hour is perhaps always the worst of the twenty-four. The rousing from sleep, the turning out from warm or even from wet blankets, the standing still in a water-logged trench, with everything--fingers and clothes and rifle and trench-sides--cold and wet and clammy to the touch, and smeared with sticky mud and clay, all combine to make the morning 'stand to arms' an experience that no amount of repetition ever accustoms one to or makes more bearable.
Even the Asterisks, fresh and keen and enthusiastic as they were, with all the interest that novelty gave to the proceedings, found the hour long-drawn and trying; and it was with intense relief that they saw the frequently consulted watches mark the finish of the time, and received the word to break off from their vigil.
They set about lighting fires and boiling water for tea, and frying a meagre bacon ration in their mess-tin lids, preparing and eating their breakfast. The meal over, they began on their ordinary routine work of daily trench life.
Picked men were told off as snipers to worry and harass the enemy. They were posted at loopholes and in various positions that commanded a good outlook, and they fired carefully and deliberately at loopholes in the enemy parapet, at doors and windows of more or less wrecked buildings in rear of the German lines, at any and every head or hand that showed above the German parapet. In the intervals of firing they searched through their glasses every foot of parapet, every yard of ground, every tree or bush, hayrick or broken building that looked a likely spot to make cover for a sniper on the other side. If their eye caught the flash of a rifle, the instantly vanishing spurt of haze or hot air--too thin and filmy to be called smoke--that spot was marked down, long and careful search made for the hidden sniper, and a sort of Bisley 'disappearing target' shoot commenced, until the opponent was either hit or driven to abandon his position.
The enemy's snipers were, of course, playing exactly the same game, and either because they were more adept at it, or because the Asterisks' snipers were more reluctant to give up a position after it was 'spotted' and hung on gamely, determined to fight it out, a slow but steady tally was added to the Asterisks' casualty list.