Grapes of wrath
“You’ll see some broken-down houses over there,” he said; “steer for them; the trench runs across this side of them, and you can’t miss it. It’s the first trench you meet; drop into it, and, remember, turn down to the left. Now – no, wait a minute.”
They waited until another dropping shell had burst, and then at the quick command of the officer jumped out and ran hard in the direction of the broken walls they could just see. Most of the men ran straight without looking left or right, but Kentucky as he went glanced repeatedly to his left, towards where the German lines were. He was surprised to find that they were evidently a good way off, very much further off, in fact, than he had expected. He had thought the last communication trench up which they moved must have been bringing them very close to our forward line, but here from where he ran he could see for a clear two or three hundred yards to the first break of a trench parapet; knew that this must be in British hands, and that the German trench must lie beyond it again. He concluded that the line of captured ground must have curved forward from that part behind which they had spent the night, figured to himself that the cottages towards which they ran must be in our hands, and that the progress of the attack along there had pushed further home than they had known or expected.
He thought out all these things with a sort of secondary mind and consciousness. Certainly his first thoughts were very keenly on the path he had to pick over the wet ground past the honeycomb of old and new shell holes, over and through some fragments of rusty barbed wire that still clung to their broken or uptorn stakes, and his eye looked anxiously for the trench toward which they were running, and in which they would find shelter from the bullets that hissed and whisked past, or smacked noisily into the wet ground.
There was very little parapet to the trench, and the runners were upon it almost before they saw it. Billy Simson and Larry reached it first, with Pug and Kentucky close upon their heels. They wasted no time in leaping to cover, for just as they did so there came the rapid rush-rush, bang-bang of a couple of Pip-Squeak shells. The four tumbled into the trench on the instant the shells burst, but quick as they were, the shells were quicker. They heard the whistle and thump of flying fragments about them, and Billy Simson yelped as he fell, rolled over, and sat up with his hand reaching over and clutching at the back of his shoulder, his face contorted by pain.
“What is it, Billy?” said Larry quickly.
“Did it get you, son?” said Kentucky.
“They’ve got me,” gasped Billy. “My Christ, it do ’urt.”
“Lemme look,” said Pug quickly. “Let’s ’ave a field-dressin’, one o’ yer.”
Simson’s shoulder was already crimsoning, and the blood ran and dripped fast from it. Pug slipped out a knife, and with a couple of slashes split the torn jacket and shirt down and across.
“I don’t think it’s a bad ’un,” he said. “Don’t seem to go deep, and it’s well up on the shoulder anyway.”
“It’s bad enough,” said Billy, “by the way it ’urts.”
Kentucky also examined the wound closely.
“I’m sure Pug’s right,” he said. “It isn’t anyways dangerous, Billy.”
Billy looked up suddenly. “It’s a Blighty one, isn’t it?” he said anxiously.
“Oh, yes,” said Kentucky; “a Blighty one, sure.”
“Good enough,” said Billy Simson. “If it’s a Blighty one I’ve got plenty. I’m not like you, Pug; I’m not thirstin’ enough for Germ ’elmets to go lookin’ any further for ’em.”
One of the sergeants came pushing along the trench, urging the men to get a move on and clear out before the next lot ran across the open for the shelter.
“Man wounded,” he said, when they told him of Billy Simson. “You, Simson! Well, you must wait ’ere, and I’ll send a stretcher-bearer back, if ye’re not able to foot it on your own.”
“I don’t feel much up to footin’ it,” said Billy Simson. “I think I’ll stick here until somebody comes to give me a hand.”
So the matter was decided, and the rest pushed along the narrow trench, leaving Simson squatted in one of the bays cut out of the wall. The others moved slowly along to where their trench opened into another running across it, turned down this, and went wandering along its twisting, curving loops until they had completely lost all sense of direction.
The guns on both sides were maintaining a constant cannonade, and the air overhead shook continually to the rumble and wail and howl of the passing shells. But although it was difficult to keep a sense of direction, there was one thing always which told them how they moved – the rattle of rifle fire, the rapid rat-tat-tatting of the machine guns and sharp explosions of bombs and grenades. These sounds, as they all well knew, came from the fighting front, from the most advanced line where our men still strove to push forward, and the enemy stood to stay them, or to press them back.
The sound kept growing ominously louder and nearer the further the Stonewalls pushed on along their narrow trench, and now they could hear, even above the uproar of the guns and of the firing lines, the sharp hiss and zipp of the bullets passing close above the trench, the hard smacks and cracks with which they struck the parapet or the ground about it. The trench in which they moved was narrow, deep, and steep-sided. It was therefore safe from everything except the direct overhead burst of high-explosive shrapnel, and of these there were, for the moment, few or none; so that when the men were halted and kept waiting for half an hour they could see nothing except the narrow strip of sky above the lips of the trench, but could at least congratulate themselves that they were out of the inferno in which they had spent the night and the early part of the morning. It was still raining, a thin, cold, drizzling rain, which collected in the trench bottom and turned the path into gluey mud, trickled down the walls and saturated them to a sticky clay which daubed the shoulders, the elbows, the hips, and haversacks of the men as they pushed along, coated them with a layer of clinging, slimy wetness, clammy to the touch, and striking them through and through with shivering chills. When they halted most of the men squatted down in the bottom of the trench, sitting on their heels and leaning their backs against the walls, and waited there, listening to the near-by uproar of the conflict, speculating on how little or how long a time it would be before they were into it actively; discussing and guessing at the progress the attack had made, and what ground had been taken, and held or lost. Here and there a man spoke of this point or that which the attack had reached, of some village or hill, or trench, which he heard had been taken. Usually the information had been gleaned from wounded men, from the stretcher-bearers and ammunition carriers with whom the Stonewalls had spoken, as they crossed and recrossed their trench early that morning.
In the trench they now occupied they gleaned no further news, because none of these wayfarers to and from the firing-line passed their way.
“Our front line can’t be getting pushed very hard,” suggested Larry; “because if they were, they’d have shoved us in support before now.”
“It looks to me,” said Kentucky, “that they have slid us off quite a piece to the right of where we were meant to go. What lot of ours do you suppose is in these trenches in front of us now?” But of that nobody had any definite opinion, although several made guesses, based on the vaguest rumors, and knowledge of this regiment or that which had gone up ahead of them.
“’Ark at the Archies,” said Pug suddenly. “They’re ’avin’ a busy season on somebody. D’yer think they’re ours, or the ’Uns’?”
“I don’t know,” said Kentucky, “but I fancy I hear the ’planes they’re shooting at.”
He was right, and presently they all heard the faint but penetrating whirr of an aeroplane’s engines, even above the louder and deeper note of the cannonade and rifle fire.
“There she is,” said Larry. “Can you see the marks on her?”
“It’s ours,” said Kentucky. “I see the rings plain enough.”
Although the aeroplane was at a good height, there were several who could distinguish the bull’s-eye target pattern of the red, white and blue circles painted on the wings and marking the aeroplane as British. For some time it pursued a course roughly parallel to the line of the trench, so that the Stonewalls, craning their heads back, could follow its progress along the sky, and the trailing wake of puffing smoke from the shrapnel that followed it. They lost sight of it presently until it curved back into the range of their vision, and came sailing swiftly over them again. Then another ’plane shot into view above them, steering straight for the first, and with a buzz of excited comment the Stonewalls proclaimed it a Hun and speculated keenly on the chances of a “scrap.”
There was a “scrap,” and in its opening phases the Stonewalls had an excellent view of the two machines circling, swooping, soaring, and diving in graceful, bird-like curves. The “Archies” ceased on both sides to fling their shrapnel at the airy opponents, because with their swift dartings to and fro, and still more because of their proximity to one another, the Archie gunners were just as liable to wing their own ’plane and bring it down, as they were to hit the enemy one. For two or three minutes the Stonewalls watched with the wildest excitement and keenest interest the maneuvering of the two machines. Half a dozen times a gasp or a groan, or a chorus of comment “He’s hit,” and “He’s downed,” and “He’s got him,” followed some movement, some daring plunge or nose dive of one or other of the machines; but always before the exclamations had finished the supposed injured one had righted itself, swooped and soared upward again, and swung circling into its opponent.
Once or twice the watchers thought they could catch the faint far-off rattle of the aeroplanes’ machine guns, although amongst the other sounds of battle it was difficult to say with any certainty that these shots were fired in the air; but just when the interest and excitement were at their highest, a sharp order was passed along the trench for every man to keep his face down, on no account to look upwards out of the trench, and officers and sergeants, very reluctantly setting the good example by stooping their own heads, pushed along the trench to see that the men also obeyed the order.
“Blinkin’ sell, I calls it,” exclaimed Pug disgustedly. “The fust decent scrap between two ’planes I’ve ever ’ad a chance to see, and ’ere I’m not allowed to look at it.”
“You wait until you get ’ome, and see it on the pictures,” said the Sergeant, who stood near them. “It’ll be a sight safer there. If you don’t know you ought to, that a trench full of white faces lookin’ up at a ’plane, is as good as sending a postcard to their spotter upstairs sayin’ the trench is occupied in force; and I don’t suppose,” he concluded, “you’re any more anxious than I am for that ’Un to be sendin’ a wireless to his guns, and ’avin’ this trench strafed like the last one was.”
“From what I can see of it,” said Pug, “that ’Un up there was ’avin’ ’is ’ands too full to worrit about wot was goin’ on down ’ere.”
“Well, anyhow,” said the Sergeant, “you needn’t keep yer eyes down lookin’ for sixpences any longer. Both the ’planes is out of sight.”
“Well, I’m blowed,” said Pug, “if that’s not a sickener. ’Ere we ’as a fust-class fight, and us in the front seats for seein’ it, and they goes and shifts off so we don’t even know which side won.”
And they never did. A minute later the anti-aircraft guns broke out into fire again, their peculiar singing reports easily distinguishable from the other gun fire, even as the distant reports of their shrapnel bursts in the air were distinguishable from the other sounds of many bursting shells near the ground. But which of the “Archibalds” were firing they did not know. They could only guess that one of the machines had been shot down, and that the anti-aircraft guns of the opposing side were endeavoring to bring down the victor – but which was the victor, and whether he escaped or not, was never known to the Stonewalls.
“Bloomin’ Blind-Man’s-Buff, I calls it,” grumbled Pug. “Gropin’ round after ’Uns you can’t see, an’ gettin’ poked in the ribs without seein’ one – like Billy was.”
CHAPTER VIII
OVER THE TOP
The long-delayed and long-expected crisis in the affairs of the Stonewalls came at last about midday, and they were moved up into the front line, into the battered trench held by the remains of another battalion.
This line ran curving and zigzagging some fifty to a hundred yards beyond the shattered and shell-smitten fragments of a group of houses which stood on the grass-and weed-grown remains of a road. What was now the British front line of trench had been at one time a German communication trench in part of its length, and apparently some sort of support trench in another part. But throughout its whole length it had been so battered and wrecked, rent and riven asunder by shell fire, by light and heavy bombs of every sort and description, that it was all of much the same pattern – a comparatively wide ditch, filled up and choked to half its depth in some places by fallen walls and scattered sandbags, in other parts no more than a line of big and little shell-craters linked up by a shallow ditch, with a tangle of barbed wire flung out in coils and loops in front of the trench, with here and there a few strands run out and staked down during the night.
The face of the trench was no longer a perpendicular wall with a proper fire step, as all regularly constructed trenches are made when possible; the walls had crumbled down under the explosions of shell and bomb, and although some attempt had been made to improve the defenses, actually these improvements had been of the slightest description, and in many cases were destroyed again as fast as they were made; so for the most part the men of the battalion holding the trench picked little angles and corners individually for themselves, did their best to pile sandbags for head cover, lay sprawling on or against the sloping trench wall, and fired over the parapet.
At the point occupied by the Stonewalls the opposing lines were too far apart for the throwing of hand grenades, but the line was still suffering a fairly heavy and uncomfortably accurate artillery bombardment. The trench was strewn along its length with a débris of torn sandbags, of packs and equipments stripped from the wounded, of rifles and bayonets, mess-tins, and trenching tools, and caps and boots and water-bottles. Collected here and there in odd corners were many dead, because scattered along the whole length of line there were still many wounded, and until these had been safely removed there could, of course, be no time or consideration spared for attention to the dead.
The Stonewalls passed in single file along the broken trench behind the men who still held the position and lay and fired over their parapet. There were many remarks from these men, caustic inquiries as to where the Stonewalls had been, and why they had taken so long to come up; expressions of relief that they had come; inquiries as to whether there was to be another attack, or whether they were to be relieved by the Stonewalls, and allowed to go back. The Stonewalls, of course, could give no information as to what would happen, because of that they themselves had not the faintest idea. They were pushed along the trench and halted in a much closer and stronger line than the widely spaced men of the defending force which had held it.
Larry remarked on this to Pug and Kentucky, when at last the little group of which they were a part was told by their Sergeant to halt.
“I suppose,” said Kentucky, “we’re thicker along this line because there’s more of us. Whether the same reason will hold good by this time to-morrow is another proposition.”
“I’m goin’ to ’ave a peep out,” said Pug, and scrambled up the sloping face of the trench to beside a man lying there.
“Hello, chum!” said this man, turning his head to look at Pug. “Welcome to our ’ome, as the text says, and you’ll be a bloomin’ sight more welcome if you’re takin’ over, and lettin’ us go back. I’ve ’ad quite enough of this picnic for one turn.”
“’As it bin pretty ’ot here?” asked Pug.
The man slid his rifle-barrel over a sandbag, raised his head and took hasty aim, fired, and ducked quickly down again. “’Ot!” he repeated. “I tell yer ’ell’s a bloomin’ ice cream barrow compared to wot this trench ’as been since we come in it. ’Ot? My blanky oath!”
Pug raised his head cautiously, and peered out over the parapet.
“I s’pose that’s their trench acrost there,” he said doubtfully, “but it’s a rummy lookin’ mix up. Wot range are yer shootin’ at?”
“Pretty well point blank,” said the private. “It’s about 200 to 250 they tell me.”
“’Oo’s trench is that along there to the left?” asked Pug. “It seems to run both ways.”
“I’m not sure,” said the other man, “but I expect it’s an old communication trench. This bit opposite us they reckon is a kind of redoubt; you’ll notice it sticks out to a point that their trenches slope back from on both sides.”
“I notice there’s a ’eap of wire all round it,” said Pug, and bobbed his head down hastily at the whizz of a couple of bullets. “And that’s blinkin’ well enough to notice,” he continued, “until I ’as to look out an’ notice some more whether I likes it or not.”
He slipped down again into the trench bottom, and described such of the situation as he had seen, as well as he could. He found the others discussing a new rumor, which had just arrived by way of the Sergeant. The tale ran that they were to attack the trenches opposite; that there was to be an intense artillery bombardment first, that the assault was to be launched after an hour or two of this.
“I ’ear there’s a battalion of the Jocks joined up to our left in this trench,” said the Sergeant, “and there’s some Fusilier crowd packin’ in on our right.”
“That looks like business,” said Larry; “but is it true, do you think, Sergeant? Where did you get it from?”
“There’s a ’tillery forward officer a little piece along the trench there, and I was ’avin’ a chat with ’is signaler. They told me about the attack, and told me their Battery was goin’ to cut the wire out in front of us.”
Kentucky, who was always full of curiosity and interest in unusual proceedings, decided to go along and see the Forward Officer at work. He told the others he would be back in a few minutes, and, scrambling along the trench, found the Artillery Subaltern and two signalers. The signalers had a portable telephone connected up with the trailing wire, and over this the Subaltern was talking when Kentucky arrived. He handed the receiver to one of his signalers, and crossing the trench took up a position where by raising his head he could see over the parapet.
“Number One gun, fire,” he said, and the signaler repeated the words over the telephone, and a moment later called sharply: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky waited expectantly with his eye on the Forward Officer, waited so many long seconds for any sound of the arriving shell or any sign of the Officer’s movement that he was beginning to think he had misunderstood the method by which the game was played; but at that moment he heard a sudden and savage rush of air close overhead, saw the Forward Officer straighten up and stare anxiously out over the parapet, heard the sharp crash of the bursting shell out in front. The Officer stooped his head again and called something about dropping twenty-five and repeating. The signaler gave his message word for word over the ’phone, and a minute later reported again: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky, not knowing the technicalities of gunners’ lingo, was unable to follow the meaning of the orders as they were passed back from the officer to the signaler, from the signaler to the Battery. There was talk of adding and dropping, of so many minutes right or left, of lengthening and shortening, and of “correctors”; but although he could not understand all this, the message was clear enough when the officer remarked briefly:
“Target No. 1; register that,” and proceeded to call for No. 2 gun, and to repeat the complicated directions of ranges and deflection. Presently No. 2 found its target also, and the Forward Officer went on with three and the remaining guns in turn. For the first few shots from each he stood up to look over the parapet, but after that viewed the proceedings through a periscope.
Kentucky, establishing himself near the signaler, who was for the moment disengaged, talked with him, and acquired some of the simpler mysteries of registering a target, and of wire cutting. “He stands up at first,” explained the signaler, in answer to an inquiry, “because he pitches the first shell well over to be on the safe side. He has to catch the burst as soon as it goes, and he mightn’t have his periscope aimed at the right spot. After he corrects the lay, and knows just where the round is going to land, he can keep his periscope looking there and waiting for it. It’s not such a risky game then, but we gets a heap of F.O.O.’s casualtied doing those first peeps over the parapet.”
After the Forward Officer had got all his guns correctly laid, the Battery opened a rapid and sustained fire, and the shells, pouring in a rushing stream so close over the trench that the wind of their passing could be felt, burst in a running series of reports out in front.
Kentucky made his way back to his own portion of the trench, and borrowing a pocket looking-glass periscope, clipped it to his bayonet and watched for some time with absorbed interest the tongues of flame that licked out from the bursting shells, and the puffing clouds of smoke that rolled along the ground in front of the German parapet. The destruction of the wire was plain to see, and easy to watch. The shells burst one after another over and amongst it, and against the background of smoke that drifted over the ground the tangle of wire stood up clearly, and could be seen dissolving and vanishing under the streams of shrapnel bullets. As time passed the thick hedge of wire that had been there at first was broken down and torn away; the stakes that held it were knocked down or splintered to pieces or torn up and flung whirling from the shell bursts. Other batteries had come into play along the same stretch of front, and were hard at work destroying in the same fashion the obstacle to the advance of the infantry. The meaning of the wire cutting must have been perfectly plain to the Germans; clearly it signified an attack; clearly that signified the forward trenches being filled with a strong attacking force; and clearly again that meant a good target for the German guns, a target upon which they proceeded to play with savage intensity.
The forward and support lines were subjected to a tornado of high explosive and shrapnel fire, and again the Stonewalls were driven to crouching in their trench while the big shells pounded down, round, and over and amongst them. They were all very sick of these repeated series of hammerings from the German guns, and Pug voiced the idea of a good many, when at the end of a couple of hours the message came along that they were to attack with the bayonet in fifteen minutes.
“I don’t s’pose the attack will be any picnic,” he said, “but blow me if I wouldn’t rather be up there with a chance of gettin’ my own back, than stickin’ in this stinkin’ trench and gettin’ blown to sausage meat without a chance of crookin’ my finger to save myself.”
For two hours past the British guns had been giving as good as they were getting, and a little bit better to boot; but now for the fifteen minutes previous to the assault their fire worked up to a rate and intensity that must have been positively appalling to the German defenders of the ground opposite, and especially of the point which was supposed to be a redoubt. The air shook to the rumble and yell and roar of the heavy shells, vibrated to the quicker and closer rush of the field guns’ shrapnel. The artillery fire for the time being dominated the field, and brought the rifle fire from the opposing trenches practically to silence, so that it was possible with some degree of safety for the Stonewalls to look over their parapet and watch with a mixture of awe and delight the spectacle of leaping whirlwinds of fire and billowing smoke, the spouting débris that splashed upwards, through them; to listen to the deep rolling detonations and shattering boom of the heavy shells that poured without ceasing on the trenches in front of them.
