Part 4 (1/2)
The staggering surprise of the British attack completely shattered the morale of what German elements were holding the sector. They surrendered in twenties to the oncoming tanks and rapidly advancing lines of infantry. Hun artillery started into frenzied action by this phenomenal development commenced to hastily lob over an erratic series of sh.e.l.ls.
The Normans, crossing a sunken road in column, fell again into correct formation on the higher ground, progressed a few hundred yards beyond what had an hour before const.i.tuted the Fritz front line, and halted.
Four light sh.e.l.ls burst around and about the reserve Company; no one stopped anything. One piece of iron crashed into a boulder near Le Page's foot. He sprang a yard into the air and nearly put two men out of mess with his bayonet. In the hot argument that ensued they almost forgot that there was a war on and that the advance was moving on without them.
A lad with half a leg hanging and placed by two bearers on a stretcher, rose from a lying posture as the Royal Guernseys pa.s.sed.
”'Ere, Guernseys,” he hailed, ”I was with you at Canterbury--Buffs. Jus'
got in the way of a Blighty. Anybody got a f.a.g?” It was supplied and the party moved on. About to descend into the sunken road the bearers ducked to that fatal sh.e.l.l whine ... too late. Three blood-soaked figures were visible through the lifting-smoke stretched inert on the ground.
”If only 'e 'adn't stopped,” muttered several hoa.r.s.ely. Life is chance!
The first great onslaught of artillery fire slackened towards mid-day, sharper crack of rifles and wicked splutter of machine guns becoming for the first time noticeable. Enemy sh.e.l.ls became fewer and fewer, his power of resistance--weak from the opening--deteriorated to little more than a rout. The prisoners were swelling an already long roll ... nine or ten thousand on the nine-mile front.
Ribecourt, on the Normans' front, had fallen after a brief skirmish, the German last line of defence reached and artillery support was still far to the rear when the Ten Hundred, pa.s.sing through the Division ahead, took upon their own shoulders the responsibility to carry the Push through its last two miles and to force the capitulation of Nine Wood, now plainly visible at the top of the next long incline.
They went for it, h.e.l.l for leather, in a long line of skirmishers. Their rifles cracked with the rapidity that tells the marksmen--and they COULD shoot. But Fritz would not have any. They did not like (those who had time to look back on their record sprint) the nasty gleam of those Norman bayonets. It was a soft thing; they moved onwards unchecked even as during the rehearsal. Tanks ahead reached the hill-crest and stood black and ugly against the sky; further to the right one was burning with high leaping flames. The Normans panted up the slope, poured into the two quarries in one bloodthirsty rush to find ”nothing doing,”
scrambled out again, and reaching the Wood's edge calmly pushed their way through with all the phlegm of veterans to their objective some thirty yards beyond the last row of trees and commenced to dig in.
Someone spotted a sniper post, coolly stretched himself out on the ground, muttered: ”Three hundred yards,” and squinted along the sights.
Ping, ping ... two bodies fell limp from a platform--up a leafy tree.
The Private slowly cut two notches on his rifle-b.u.t.t.
Two black, charred figures grinned hideously from out of the smouldering remains of a British aeroplane as the two Guernsey Brigade Scouts hastened back to their Headquarters, to report the objective carried with ONLY TEN CASUALTIES. Away by the narrow bridge above Marcoing one living and three dead machine gunners were lying in a mangled heap.
Still further back a shattered lad, unable to move, stretched out right in the track of an oncoming tank, shrieked frenziedly for succour ...
then abrupt silence as of a whistle shut off even while the eyes were rivetted fascinated on the inexorable crus.h.i.+ng machine. A ghastly heap of tangled, mutilated bodies, unrecognisable as such except by the grey German uniform, were lying beneath a tank blown in by a sh.e.l.l--the crew huddled inside in a gruesome ma.s.s.
At the bottom of a hollow a grey-cloaked figure was bunched in that strange posture bearing the hall-mark of fast approaching death. His dull eyes filled with terror at the sound of my footsteps ... strange ingrained knowledge of the Hunnish method of dealing with similar cases pervaded his mind.
”It is--finish,” he whispered pitifully in bad English.
”Where are you hit?” He shook his head slowly.
”It is finish,” he reiterated weakly.
”Want anything--any water?”
”No.” A battery of artillery rumbled noisily down the adjacent roadway.
His eyes brightened.
”You never win,” he muttered, defiance strong in his tone. But one glance took in those stoic mounted Britishers, five miles deep in the enemy lines, yet unexcited, unmoved. Thus would they fall back thirty leagues if need be, phlegmatic and unconcerned--knowing not when defeated and therefore never beaten.
”I think we will if--”; but life had pa.s.sed from out the other's tired body. A rush of pity surged over one on looking into the pale boyish face: eighteen, perhaps nineteen. Little grey, bloodstained German warrior in the first flush of Youth: honour to you for the life you gave your Fatherland; for the staunch patriotism so high in your breast. May the Dawn into which you were ushered while a foe watched your pa.s.sing have great compensation.
Near the unscarred Crucifix a diminutive khaki figure, an inch or so shorter than his rifle with bayonet fixed, stood peering haughtily from beneath a steel helmet, several sizes too large, balanced on his ears.
”'Allo, Guernsey,” he greeted, ”what price my tame outangs?” indicating a dozen grubby prisoners, ”this one yere swallowed 'is false teeth wiv fright an' this porker yere 'as got 'is knees out of joint wiv shaking.”