Part 9

Here we remained for some weeks, until again disturbed by the order to change position. Again everything has to be done by night, the guns hauled out of the pits, the thousand and one small stores necessary to the interior economy of the battery packed each in its proper place, the heavy platforms raised and loaded into the lorries. The ease with which any particular article can be mislaid under those circumstances is incredible. Relative weight or importance seems to have no bearing on the matter at all, one is just as likely, upon arriving at dawn in some unknown land, to discover that one has left behind a spare wheel or a handcart or even a battery quartermaster-sergeant, as one is to find a small screwdriver missing. After a while the whole business becomes a nightmare in which one is condemned eternally to spend one's time counting handspikes and lorries and men, and to make the total utterly different every time. And then the line of march! A procession of heavy lorries, some drawing the guns, the rest laden with men, stores and ammunition, looking for all the world like some huge travelling circus, sets off upon a dark foggy night, carrying of course no lights, over roads already laden to their utmost capacity with troops and supply columns, and plentifully besprinkled with shell holes. At the head of the procession rides a group of officers in a car, one of whom has possibly been over the road once by daylight, and about the length of the convoy are scattered here and there men wrestling with recalcitrant motor-bicycles, which they vainly try to restrict to the speed of the column, perhaps four or five miles an hour. Much can happen under these circumstances. Perhaps the rearmost lorry has to stop for adjustment, and by the time the word has passed along the line the car at the head is far away, and the column strung out over a mile or so of road. Or the foremost lorry commences to boil frantically and slows down, whereupon the remainder tread upon one another's heels, until it stops altogether, when the column forms a compact mass that nothing can attempt to pass. Or the geographical instinct of the leader of the expedition fails at a cross-roads, and recourse has to be had to the sentry who stands there. One of two things then happens. Either the man does not know the way and says so, or he does not know the way and with the utmost positiveness declares the route to be by the first road that strikes his fancy. Those to whom the former of these certainties happens are by far the most fortunate, for the attempt to turn a column of lorries on a narrow road, especially if it consists, as it usually does, of a central strip of pavé bordered by fathomless mud, is certain to be fraught with disaster. A fully-loaded ammunition lorry stuck in a ditch is a most heartbreaking sight, particularly (if the bull may be forgiven) if the night is so dark that one cannot see it. It must be unloaded, dragged out by the help of another lorry, which sometimes slides into the ditch itself in the process, and then loaded up again, usually to the accompaniment of uncomplimentary observations from the traffic that it is holding up.

Certainly the accidents that may happen to mechanical transport are many and various, but there are some to which it is not liable. One of the first messages that we received upon our arrival in a certain new position ran as follows, "Report at once all cases of glanders occurring amongst your transport." One has trouble enough without infectious disease to contend with. A motor lorry is a capital thing on a road, even if that road is in a very bad state, but, once take it on to soft or slippery ground, and its imperfections become manifest. First of all its wheels start to slip, and chains are fixed round the felloes to give them a grip. This answers for a while, but suddenly the wheels begin to revolve at a terrific speed, and the chains fly hurtling through the air to the obvious disadvantage of any one who gets in their way. A few men with lamps are sent to look for these, whilst the rest endeavour to give the lorry a start by pushing behind. Start she does, with a sudden leap, and, before she can be stopped, finds the softest part of the whole field and sinks gently but firmly into it until supported on her axles. By this time the search party, having taken all the lanterns with them, is far away, and you feel the lorry sinking without a possibility of doing anything by the light of the one match that the battery possesses. The only thing left to do is to dig her out, support her wheels on planks, and haul her on to the road again with ropes.

But the march ends at last, usually at about two o'clock in the morning, and one arrives tired, cold and very sleepy, in the unknown land. This village is the place we were told to stop at, and the men's billets are said to be somewhere over there. Glad of a walk, I set out to find them, and find in succession a row of tents knee-deep in mud, apparently completely surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, a barn without a roof, and a shed tenanted by two inquisitive and particularly skittish cows. I return to the lorries and find the men drawn up at the side of the road. Having explained the situation, I call for volunteers to spend the night with the cows. The country-bred members of the battery fall out and are marched off to deal with the fierce beasts as best they can. The remainder are carefully shepherded into the roofless barn and the bottomless tents. Judging by the language that arises, this latter party are foiled in their first attack by the wire. But the gunner is an adaptable person, and all contrive to settle themselves as comfortably as possible in a wonderfully short time, leaving me free to find the officer's billet, which turns out to be the drawing-room of a small miller's house. The only corner left is under the grand piano, and there I lay out my valise and am soon fast asleep. Let the troubles of the morning care for themselves!

X

TELEPHONES

The Field Telephone system, that is to say a series of portable telephone instruments connected by a wire laid as required, forms the nervous system of every battery, without which it is useless, or at all events so heavily handicapped that it might as well be out of action. The observing officer depends upon it to transmit his orders to the guns, the group or brigade commander transmits his instructions to his battery commander by its means, and in the battery itself it is used for intercommunication between the control station, the section commanders, billets and other points. All these various lines must be laid as soon as the battery comes into position, and once laid they must be kept under constant supervision. The test of the efficiency of any battery is first the accuracy of its shooting, and second its ability to bring fire to bear upon any point in its area immediately it is ordered to do so. And experience shows that failure in either of these respects can be traced in nearly every case to some factor connected with the telephone system, an instrument or line being out of order at the critical moment, or an inattentive or careless telephonist. It is easy to realize, therefore, the importance of the part played by this instrument in modern artillery practice, and some account of its habits may not be out of place as throwing light upon a particularly interesting phase of life in the zone of war.

The line between the battery and the observation post is the most important of the whole system, for, without it, properly directed fire is impossible. It is also, from the fact that the observation post is usually close to the front line, the most exposed, and therefore most liable to accident. To lay a wire between two given points may seem to be the simplest thing in the world, as indeed it is, but so to lay that wire that it will not constantly be cut is a fine art. There are two ways of laying it, overhead amongst trees and other supports, or underground, digging a narrow trench in which to bury it. The first method is the quickest, and if a line is required for use immediately, the best plan is to lay it overhead, and bury it subsequently if required. But many perils lie in wait for an overhead line. Lay it by any route you will, some wandering shrapnel will burst near by, and one of the bullets, singling out the wire as though it were its especial target, will cut it neatly through, for preference at its most inaccessible point. But the enemy is by no means its greatest danger. There are roads to cross, along which come heavy lorries laden high with stores of all kinds. Put the line up as high as you think absolutely safe, and sooner or later an extra tall load brings it down. Or natural support, such as trees or houses, fails, and at considerable pains you plant a row of light posts. The next party of wire layers that comes along, finding these convenient to their purpose, lay their own line on them in addition. So the process continues, until the light posts, that you designed to carry one wire only, collapse under the strain, and down comes the whole tangle. Worst of all are the unpardonable crimes of some miscreants, who, running short of wire, cut off as much from your line as they require, leaving the cable with a yawning gulf in the middle, or, as a variation, tap their own instruments on to the wire, when the unfortunate observation officer is left to play a maddening game of cross questions and crooked answers with some strange unknown battery. If, on the other hand, the wire is laid underground, a high-explosive shell is sure to find it and make a neat crater in the middle of it, or else the infantry dig a communication trench across it, or its insulation breaks down late one evening and the ensuing night is spent digging it up and looking for the fault.

The best method of ensuring unbroken communication between two points is, of course, to lay more than one line, but wire is usually scarce, and this course is not always possible. Even if this is done, there must be places where the lines run close together, and these are just the places where the shells are sure to drop. During the Four Days' bombardment we had three lines between the battery and our observation post, and on two separate occasions all three were cut at the same time by shell-fire. The quiet deeds of heroism performed by artillery telephonists that are never heard of would fill a volume by themselves. There is very little of the excitement and emulation that makes many a man in the midst of his comrades the hero of a glorious moment, none of the intoxication of battle that banishes all thought of personal safety, in the experiences of a man who goes out to repair a wire under fire. He has plenty of time to think of the dangers he is running, to anticipate the fall of every shell without being able to get out of its way, to wonder what it feels like to lie in agony on the ground, torn by a splinter. Slowly and alone he must follow the track of the wire until he finds the break, and having found it he must set to work to repair it where it lies, a proceeding that may often take a very considerable time. And it is more than probable that nobody but himself and his chum ever knows anything about it. Yet there is never the least hesitation on his part to go out; on one of the occasions mentioned when our lines were cut, the linesman picked up his tools and started along the line as a matter of course, although the determined nature of the hostile shelling was plainly visible, and some of the projectiles were charged with gas. He finished his job and came back to us full of his adventures, which seemed to afford him immense amusement; indeed, I think he was one of those who have learnt that the surest safeguard against fear is a sense of humour, and that danger, if treated as a huge joke, ceases to have any terrors.

And quite apart from actual danger, the linesman's life is a troubled one. As one never knows when the lines may not be required in a hurry, telephonists and linesmen relieve one another day and night. Every few minutes the stations ring one another up, and if no reply can be obtained, the linesman at the calling station starts along the line to find the fault and repair it. It may be that the wire has been cut by shell-fire, or by accidents inherent to its nature, or by the sinful practices of others. Or again, it may sometimes happen that the linesman proceeds on his way, testing as he goes, and finding all correct, until at last he reaches the other station, to discover that the operator there has for some reason disconnected his instrument and forgotten to connect it up again, in which case a lurid and fiery scene takes place, consisting of picturesque recrimination on the part of the outraged linesman, and no less picturesque expostulation on the part of the telephonist, to the effect that it was somebody else's fault. The acrimony displayed varies directly as the temper of the disputants and the distance between the two stations.

It is extremely difficult to train men to use a telephone intelligently, far more so than to teach them the mere technical details of its construction. Because the thing appears to talk, very few people can resist the impulse to treat it as a sentient being, intentionally perverse for the express purpose of annoyance. Ring up your best friend in peace time on a slightly defective instrument and observe how he or she treats the irresponsive toy. If a man, he will grow purple in the face and swear, he may even end by casting the offending thing on the ground and trampling upon it in his fury, if a woman she will grow tearful and excessively petulant, and will certainly pour the vials of her wrath upon you, as being the proximate cause of the trouble. Even so in time of war it is the tendency of the trained telephonist to use harsh words and report the instrument out of action instead of sitting down quietly and finding the cause of the trouble, which he knows perfectly well how to do. Even the best of them can never refrain from shaking the receiver viciously by way of punctuating every sentence, they having been rashly taught by their instructor that a gentle tap on the speaking end of the concern is often useful if speech is faint. And even when this tendency to violence, apparently a component of human nature, is eradicated, there comes the surpassing difficulty of inducing men to speak clearly and distinctly. Of course men of clear speech must be selected in the first place, the uncouth dialects of certain parts of the United Kingdom being not susceptible to the gentlest treatment. For instance, two telephonists, one hailing from Glasgow and the other from the wilds of Glamorgan, will utterly fail to make themselves intelligible to one another. On one occasion a certain dour Scotch subaltern was told to select from his section the six men with the clearest voice and purest accent for training as telephonists. He did so, and they were duly tested--they all spoke a strange tongue which proved upon investigation to be the broadest Scotch! To this day that subaltern cannot understand why they were rejected and he himself loaded with opprobrious epithets.

At one time we were in a position where the French wireless bulletin was transmitted to us in the original over the telephone. The state in which it reached us frequently defied translation, as may well be imagined. I once overheard a reference to the Hartmansweilerkopf coming through. "Are man's wily coughs _wot_? 'Ere, is this a patent medicine advertisement, or wot? Hullo, hullo! Goin' to spell it, are yer? Yes, haitch for 'energy, eye for what? Oh, eye for hass, r for rum, toc, emma, eye for hass, n for Nellie, esses, w for water--'ere, hullo, hullo! What the 'ell are yer gettin' at?" After that they took to sending it by Morse code on the buzzer, and things went along more smoothly, but even then it was a mutilated word that eventually reached me. From which it may be inferred that telephone messages do not always find the recipient in the same form in which they started, especially if they have to be repeated more than once during transmission. The story of the Loos refugees is a case in point.

In addition to the complexities introduced by human failings, the telephone in the field suffers from aberrations of technical origin. Owing to the fact that the earth is used as the path for the return current in nearly every case, an instrument, if sufficiently sensitive, will pick up scraps of conversation between two stations speaking to one another, if the line joining them crosses or approaches to the line joining its own stations. In the case of the territory occupied by a modern army, wherein the chief means of communication is the telephone, extraordinary results are sometimes obtained. I have frequently slept with the receiver of a telephone close to my ear, and in the silence of the night have heard it whispering all sorts of fragmentary messages--"Hullo, hullo, brigade, are you brigade? brigade!--yes, and the old man was awfully fed up about it--brigade, brigade, hullo, can you hear me?--lengthen a hundred, fuse forty-two and a half!" and so on, _pianissimo_, throughout the night. Both sides have frequently obtained valuable information by putting specially sensitive telephones as near as possible to the opposing trenches and listening to the messages they picked up. It is believed that the apparently miraculous knowledge that the Germans at some parts of the line possessed as to the regiments opposed to them--they would often call out, "Hullo, Rutlandshires, are you in yet?" when a totally fresh battalion took over a section of trenches--was obtained by this method. Nor is this earth leakage the only way in which conversations are overheard. If two or more lines run together for any considerable distance, as in practice they often must, owing to an electrical phenomenon known as induction, a conversation taking place along one line is audible in the receivers attached to the remainder. Further, it frequently happens that owing to a shell burst or to carelessness on the part of some line layer, a pole or other support to which a large number of lines are fixed is brought down, and in its fall all the lines are broken. It may often be very difficult to discover, amongst all the ends, which belongs to which, and an inexperienced man, actuated by a sincere and laudable desire to put matters right, is very apt to connect them up by the light of nature. The consequent confusion that arises must provoke to demoniac laughter the denizens of hell. One observation officer finds himself in direct and clear communication with the officer in charge of supplies and transport, another with an advanced dressing station. Infantry headquarters hold long and heated converse with the wagon line of a field battery, the G.$1.$2. Divisional Artillery threatens to place the quartermaster of a territorial battalion under arrest because he steadfastly refuses to open fire immediately on target Z. And a considerable time elapses before all these various people are again connected to the proper quarter.

The very form of the telephonic message lends itself to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. There is a story of an officer named Close, who as forward observation officer for his battery laid out a line to an observation post of his own choosing, and whose linesmen by some accident contrived to get their wire touching one belonging to a different system. His major, wishing to speak to him, called him up, and hearing a "Hullo!" in reply, began "Are you Close?" To his astonishment and delight a strange voice replied, "No, you dam! fool, I'm five thousand yards away!" This same crossing of wires is another common cause of mixed conversations, they chafe one another until the insulation is worn away and a good connection established, when the two sets of instruments respond to one another's calls. This very trouble was the cause of my once being awakened from sleep by the urgent summons of the buzzer. I jumped for the instrument--"Yes, hullo?" And then distinctly came the amazing query "Are you St. Paul?" I think the terms of my reply, in which I convinced my unknown questioner of my utter inability to follow that gentleman's advice about suffering fools gladly, satisfied him that I was not. I found out afterwards that a neighbouring battery had two observing stations, which they had christened Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's respectively. An error in transcription, whereby the singular became substituted for the plural, was probably the cause of my receiving a written message, warning me that certain experiments were to be tried that evening, and beginning in the emphatic terms, "At 6 p.m. some rocket will be fired."

Of the whole complex system of lines, that between headquarters (which in our case is the group commander, batteries being usually organized in groups under a senior officer) and the battery commander is by far the most fertile in trouble. It is not so much the line itself that is to blame, as a sort of nervous feeling that it connects one with one's superior officer, a feeling that in a wholly indefinable way pervades everybody who comes in contact with it. If, as frequently occurs, wire is saved by leading the various battery lines to an exchange, whence a single line runs back to headquarters, the possibility of complication is enormously increased. The process of getting a message through is then a nerve-racking one. I was once assisting the battery commander in the observation post, observing a series that was of some considerable importance--it was during the fighting round Hill 70. In the middle of the transmission of orders to the battery, an interruption comes through from them. "Headquarters want to speak to the major, sir!" "Never mind headquarters, you take my message." Three minutes elapse, during which we get off a few more rounds. Then the battery calls through again, "Headquarters say it's urgent, sir!" "All right, stop firing, switch them through." A long pause, during which the receiver echoes, "Hullo, hullo, exchange! Hullo, can you hear me? I want headquarters. Hullo! Speaking to another battery are they? Hullo, is that headquarters? I'm 320th Siege--here you are, sir." Then a still small voice, "Am I speaking to the major?" "I'm taking the message for him; go on." "Message from G.O.C. Corps Artillery, begins. Please report by noon on 30th instant number of Army Forms XY 9999 in your possession, ends. For your information and compliance please." Fortunately Job was a hasty and impetuous individual compared with the major, or his remarks on having wasted a quarter of an hour of rapidly failing light to receive such a message might have been unthinkable.