Part 26 (1/2)
So it was, he agreed. That was the exasperating thing. Always hard to believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came; until after nineteen harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watching enemy the figure of a man above the wheat, when a crackling chorus of bullets would suddenly break the silence of night by concentrating on a target. Keeping cover from German flares is a part of the minute, painstaking economy of war.
We crawled on slowly, taking care to make no noise, till we brought up behind two soldiers hugging the earth, rifles in hand ready to fire instantly. It was their business not only to see the enemy first, but to shoot first, and to capture or kill any German patrol. The officer spoke to them and they answered. It was unnecessary for them to say that they had seen nothing. If they had we should have known it. He was out there less to scout himself than to make sure that they were on the job; that they knew how to watch. The visit was part of his routine.
We did not even whisper. Preferably, all whispering would be done by any German patrol out to have a look at our barbed wire and overheard by us.
Silence and the starlight and the damp wheat; but, yes, there was war. You heard gun-fire half a mile, perhaps a mile, away; and raising your head you saw auroras from bursting sh.e.l.ls. We heard at our backs faintly s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk from our trenches and faintly in front the talk from theirs. It sounded rather inviting and friendly from both sides, like that around some camp-fire on the plains.
It seemed quite within the bounds of possibility that you might have crawled on up to the Germans and said, ”Howdy!” But by the time you reached the edge of their barbed wire and before you could present your visiting-card, if not sooner, you would have been full of holes. That was just the kind of diversion from trench monotony for which the Germans were looking. ”Well, shall we go back?” asked the officer. There seemed no particular purpose in spending the night p.r.o.ne in the wheat with your ears c.o.c.ked like a pointer-dog's.
Besides, he had other duties, exacting duties laid down by the colonel as the result of trench experience in his responsibility for the command of a company of men.
It happened as we crawled back into the trench, that a fury of shots broke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yards away; sharp, vicious shots on the still night air, stabbing, merciless death in their sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France; unrelenting, shrewd, tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere and the hornets swarmed.
It was two a.m. From the dug-outs came unmistakable sounds of slumber. Men off duty were not kept awake by cold and moisture in summer. They had fas.h.i.+oned for themselves comfortable dormitories in the hard earth walls. A cot in an officer's bedchamber was indicated as mine. The walls had been hung with cuts from ill.u.s.trated papers and bagging spread on the floor to make it ”home-like.” He lay down on the floor because he was nearer the door in case he had to respond to an alarm; besides, he said I would soon appreciate that I was not the object of favouritism. So I did. It was a trench-made cot, fas.h.i.+oned by some private of engineers, I fancy, who had Germans rather than the American cousin in mind.
”The wall side of the rib that runs down the middle is the comfortable side, I have found,” said my host. ”It may not appear so at first, but you will find it works out that way.”
Nevertheless, I slept, my last recollection that of sniping shots, to be awakened with the first streaks of day by the sound of a fusillade--the ”morning hate” or the ”morning strafe” as it is called. After the vigil of darkness it breaks the monotony to salute the dawn with a burst of rifle-shots. Eyes strained through the mist over the wheatfield watching for some one of the enemy who may be exposing himself, unconscious that it is light enough for him to be visible. Objects which are not men but look as if they might be in the hazy distance, called for attention on the chance. For ten minutes, perhaps, the serenade lasted, and then things settled down to the normal. The men were yawning and stirring from their dug-outs. After the muster they would take the places of those who had been ”on the bridge” through the night.
”It's a case of how little water you can wash with, isn't it?” I said to the cook, who appreciated my thoughtfulness when I made s.h.i.+ft with a dipperful, as I had done on desert journeys. We were in a trench that was inundated with water in winter, and not more than two miles from a town which had water laid on. But bringing a water supply in pails along narrow trenches is a poor pastime, though better than bringing it up under the rifle-sights of snipers across the fields back of the trenches.
”Don't expect much for breakfast,” said the strafer of the chicken. But it was eggs and bacon, the British stand-by in all weathers, at home and abroad.
J------was going to turn in and sleep. These youngsters could sleep at any time; for one hour, or two hours, or five, or ten, if they had a chance. A sudden burst of rifle-fire was the alarm clock which always promptly awakened them. The recollection of cheery hospitality and their fine, buoyant spirit is even clearer now than when I left the trench.
XX A School In Bombing
It was at a bombing school on a French farm, where chosen soldiers brought back from the trenches were being trained in the use of the anarchists' weapon, which has now become as respectable as the rifle. The war has steadily developed specialism. M.B. degrees for Master Bombers are not beyond the range of possibilities.
Present was the chief instructor, a Scottish subaltern with blue eyes, a pleasant smile, and a c.o.c.k-o'-the-North spirit. He might have been twenty years old, though he did not look it. On his breast was the purple and white ribbon of the new order of the Military Cross, which you get for doing something in this war which would have won you a Victoria Cross in one of the other wars.
Also present was the a.s.sistant instructor, a sergeant of regulars--and very much of a regular--who had three ribbons which he had won in previous campaigns. He, too, had blue eyes, bland blue eyes. These two understood each other.
”If you don't drop it, why, it's all right!” said the sergeant. ”Of course, if you do------”
I did not drop it.
”And when you throw it, sir, you must look out and not hit the man behind you and knock the bomb out of your hand. That has happened before to an absent-minded fellow who was about to toss one at the Boches, and it doesn't do to be absent-minded when you throw bombs.”
”They say that you sometimes pick up the German bombs and chuck them back before they explode,” I suggested.
”Yes, sir, I've read things like that in some of the accounts of the reporters who write from Somewhere in France. You don't happen to know where that is, sir? All I can say is that if you are going to do it you must be quick about it. I shouldn't advise delaying decision, sir, or perhaps when you reached down to pick it up, neither your hand nor the bomb would be there. They'd have gone off together, sir.”
”Have you ever been hurt in your handling of bombs?” I asked.
Surprise in the bland blue eyes. ”Oh, no, sir! Bombs are well behaved if you treat them right. It's all in being thoughtful and considerate of them!” Meanwhile, he was jerking at some kind of a patent fuse set in a sh.e.l.l of high explosive. ”This is a poor kind, sir. It's been discarded, but I thought that you might like to see it. Never did like it. Always making trouble!”
More distance between the audience and the performer. ”Now I've got it, sir--get down, sir!” The audience carried out instructions to the letter, as army regulations require. It got behind the protection of one of the practice-trench traverses. He threw the discard behind another wall of earth. There was a sharp report, a burst of smoke, and some fragments of earth were tossed into the air.