Kitabı oku: «Front Lines», sayfa 10

XIII
BRING UP THE GUNS

When Jack Duncan and Hugh Morrison suddenly had it brought home to them that they ought to join the New Armies, they lost little time in doing so. Since they were chums of long standing in a City office, it went without saying that they decided to join and “go through it” together, but it was much more open to argument what branch of the Service or regiment they should join.

They discussed the question in all its bearings, but being as ignorant of the Army and its ways as the average young Englishman was in the early days of the war, they had little evidence except varied and contradictory hearsay to act upon. Both being about twenty-five they were old enough and business-like enough to consider the matter in a business-like way, and yet both were young enough to be influenced by the flavour of romance they found in a picture they came across at the time. It was entitled “Bring up the Guns,” and it showed a horsed battery in the wild whirl of advancing into action, the horses straining and stretching in front of the bounding guns, the drivers crouched forward or sitting up plying whip and spur, the officers galloping and waving the men on, dust swirling from leaping hoofs and wheels, whip-thongs streaming, heads tossing, reins flying loose, altogether a blood-stirring picture of energy and action, speed and power.

“I’ve always had a notion,” said Duncan reflectively, “that I’d like to have a good whack at riding. One doesn’t get much chance of it in city life, and this looks like a good chance.”

“And I’ve heard it said,” agreed Morrison, “that a fellow with any education stands about the best chance in artillery work. We might as well plump for something where we can use the bit of brains we’ve got.”

“That applies to the Engineers too, doesn’t it?” said Duncan. “And the pottering about we did for a time with electricity might help there.”

“Um-m,” Morrison agreed doubtfully, still with an appreciative eye on the picture of the flying guns. “Rather slow work though – digging and telegraph and pontoon and that sort of thing.”

“Right-oh,” said Duncan with sudden decision. “Let’s try for the Artillery.”

“Yes. We’ll call that settled,” said Morrison; and both stood a few minutes looking with a new interest at the picture, already with a dawning sense that they “belonged,” that these gallant gunners and leaping teams were “Ours,” looking forward with a little quickening of the pulse to the day when they, too, would go whirling into action in like desperate and heart-stirring fashion.

“Come on,” said Morrison. “Let’s get it over. To the recruiting-office – quick march.”

And so came two more gunners into the Royal Regiment.

·····

When the long, the heart-breakingly long period of training and waiting for their guns, and more training and slow collecting of their horses, and more training was at last over, and the battery sailed for France, Morrison and Duncan were both sergeants and “Numbers One” in charge of their respective guns; and before the battery had been in France three months Morrison had been promoted to Battery Sergeant-Major.

The battery went through the routine of trench warfare and dug its guns into deep pits, and sent its horses miles away back, and sat in the same position for months at a time, had slack spells and busy spells, shelled and was shelled, and at last moved up to play its part in The Push.

Of that part I don’t propose to tell more than the one incident – an incident of machine-pattern sameness to the lot of many batteries.

The infantry had gone forward again and the ebb-tide of battle was leaving the battery with many others almost beyond high-water mark of effective range. Preparations were made for an advance. The Battery Commander went forward and reconnoitred the new position the battery was to move into, everything was packed up and made ready, while the guns still continued to pump out long-range fire. The Battery Commander came in again and explained everything to his officers and gave the necessary detailed orders to the Sergeant-Major, and presently received orders of date and hour to move.

This was in the stages of The Push when rain was the most prominent and uncomfortable feature of the weather. The guns were in pits built over with strong walls and roofing of sandbags and beams which were weather-tight enough, but because the floors of the pits were lower than the surface of the ground, it was only by a constant struggle that the water was held back from draining in and forming a miniature lake in each pit. Round and between the guns was a mere churned-up sea of sticky mud. As soon as the new battery position was selected a party went forward to it to dig and prepare places for the guns. The Battery Commander went off to select a suitable point for observation of his fire, and in the battery the remaining gunners busied themselves in preparation for the move. The digging party were away all the afternoon, all night, and on through the next day. Their troubles and tribulations don’t come into this story, but from all they had to say afterwards they were real and plentiful enough.

Towards dusk a scribbled note came back from the Battery Commander at the new position to the officer left in charge with the guns, and the officer sent the orderly straight on down with it to the Sergeant-Major with a message to send word back for the teams to move up.

“All ready here,” said the Battery Commander’s note. “Bring up the guns and firing battery waggons as soon as you can. I’ll meet you on the way.”

The Sergeant-Major glanced through the note and shouted for the Numbers One, the sergeants in charge of each gun. He had already arranged with the officer exactly what was to be done when the order came, and now he merely repeated his orders rapidly to the sergeants and told them to “get on with it.” When the Lieutenant came along five minutes after, muffled to the ears in a wet mackintosh, he found the gunners hard at work.

“I started in to pull the sandbags clear, sir,” reported the Sergeant-Major. “Right you are,” said the Lieutenant. “Then you’d better put the double detachments on to pull one gun out and then the other. We must man-handle ’em back clear of the trench ready for the teams to hook in when they come along.”

For the next hour every man, from the Lieutenant and Sergeant-Major down, sweated and hauled and slid and floundered in slippery mud and water, dragging gun after gun out of its pit and back a half-dozen yards clear. It was quite dark when they were ready, and the teams splashed up and swung round their guns. A fairly heavy bombardment was carrying steadily on along the line, the sky winked and blinked and flamed in distant and near flashes of gun fire, and the air trembled to the vibrating roar and sudden thunder-claps of their discharge, the whine and moan and shriek of the flying shells. No shells had fallen near the battery position for some little time, but, unfortunately, just after the teams had arrived, a German battery chose to put over a series of five-point-nines unpleasantly close. The drivers sat, motionless blotches of shadow against the flickering sky, while the gunners strained and heaved on wheels and drag-ropes to bring the trails close enough to slip on the hooks. A shell dropped with a crash about fifty yards short of the battery and the pieces flew whining and whistling over the heads of the men and horses. Two more swooped down out of the sky with a rising wail-rush-roar of sound that appeared to be bringing the shells straight down on top of the workers’ heads. Some ducked and crouched close to earth, and both shells passed just over and fell in leaping gusts of flame and ground-shaking crashes beyond the teams. Again the fragments hissed and whistled past and lumps of earth and mud fell spattering and splashing and thumping over men and guns and teams. A driver yelped suddenly, the horses in another team snorted and plunged, and then out of the thick darkness that seemed to shut down after the searing light of the shell-burst flames came sounds of more plunging hoofs, a driver’s voice cursing angrily, thrashings and splashings and stamping. “Horse down here … bring a light … whoa, steady, boy … where’s that light?”

Three minutes later: “Horse killed, driver wounded in the arm, sir,” reported the Sergeant-Major. “Riding leader Number Two gun, and centre driver of its waggon.”

“Those spare horses near?” said the Lieutenant quickly. “Right. Call up a pair; put ’em in lead; put the odd driver waggon centre.”

Before the change was completed and the dead horse dragged clear, the first gun was reported hooked on and ready to move, and was given the order to “Walk march” and pull out on the wrecked remnant of a road that ran behind the position. Another group of five-nines came over before the others were ready, and still the drivers and teams waited motionless for the clash that told of the trail-eye dropping on the hook.

“Get to it, gunners,” urged the Sergeant-Major, as he saw some of the men instinctively stop and crouch to the yell of the approaching shell. “Time we were out of this.”

“Hear, bloomin’ hear,” drawled one of the shadowy drivers. “An’ if you wants to go to bed, Lanky” – to one of the crouching gunners – “just lemme get this gun away fust, an’ then you can curl up in that blanky shell-’ole.”

There were no more casualties getting out, but one gun stuck in a shell-hole and took the united efforts of the team and as many gunners as could crowd on to the wheels and drag-ropes to get it moving and out on to the road. Then slowly, one by one, with a gunner walking and swinging a lighted lamp at the head of each team, the guns moved off along the pitted road. It was no road really, merely a wheel-rutted track that wound in and out the biggest shell-holes. The smaller ones were ignored, simply because there were too many of them to steer clear of, and into them the limber and gun wheels dropped bumping, and were hauled out by sheer team and man power.

It took four solid hours to cover less than half a mile of sodden, spongy, pulpy, wet ground, riddled with shell-holes, swimming in greasy mud and water. The ground they covered was peopled thick with all sorts of men who passed or crossed their way singly, in little groups, in large parties – wounded, hobbling wearily or being carried back, parties stumbling and fumbling a way up to some vague point ahead with rations and ammunition on pack animals and pack-men, the remnants of a battalion coming out crusted from head to foot in slimy wet mud, bowed under the weight of their packs and kits and arms; empty ammunition waggons and limbers lurching and bumping back from the gun-line, the horses staggering and slipping, the drivers struggling to hold them on their feet, to guide the wheels clear of the worst holes; a string of pack-mules filing past, their drivers dismounted and leading, and men and mules ploughing anything up to knee depth in the mud, flat pannier-pouches swinging and jerking on the animals’ sides, the brass tops of the 18-pounder shell-cases winking and gleaming faintly in the flickering lights of the gun flashes.

But of all these fellow wayfarers over the battle-field the battery drivers and gunners were hardly conscious. Their whole minds were so concentrated on the effort of holding and guiding and urging on their horses round or over the obstacle of the moment, a deeper and more sticky patch than usual, an extra large hole, a shattered tree stump, a dead horse, the wreck of a broken-down waggon, that they had no thought for anything outside these. The gunners were constantly employed manning the wheels and heaving on them with cracking muscles, hooking on drag-ropes to one gun and hauling it clear of a hole, unhooking and going floundering back to hook on to another and drag it in turn out of its difficulty.

The Battery Commander met them at a bad dip where the track degenerated frankly into a mud bath – and how he found or kept the track or ever discovered them in that aching wilderness is one of the mysteries of war and the ways of Battery Commanders. It took another two hours, two mud-soaked nightmare hours, to come through that next hundred yards. It was not only that the mud was deep and holding, but the slough was so soft at bottom that the horses had no foothold, could get no grip to haul on, could little more than drag their own weight through, much less pull the guns. The teams were doubled, the double team taking one gun or waggon through, and then going back for the other. The waggons were emptied of their shell and filled again on the other side of the slough; and this you will remember meant the gunners carrying the rounds across a couple at a time, wading and floundering through mud over their knee-boot tops, replacing the shells in the vehicle, and wading back for another couple. In addition to this they had to haul guns and waggons through practically speaking by man-power, because the teams, almost exhausted by the work and with little more than strength to get themselves through, gave bare assistance to the pull. The wheels, axle deep in the soft mud, were hauled round spoke by spoke, heaved and yo-hoed forward inches at a time.

When at last all were over, the teams had to be allowed a brief rest – brief because the guns must be in position and under cover before daylight came – and stood dejectedly with hanging ears, heaving flanks, and trembling legs. The gunners dropped prone or squatted almost at the point of exhaustion in the mud. But they struggled up, and the teams strained forward into the breast collars again when the word was given, and the weary procession trailed on at a jerky snail’s pace once more.

As they at last approached the new position the gun flashes on the horizon were turning from orange to primrose, and although there was no visible lightening of the eastern sky, the drivers were sensible of a faintly recovering use of their eyes, could see the dim shapes of the riders just ahead of them, the black shadows of the holes, and the wet shine of the mud under their horses’ feet.

The hint of dawn set the guns on both sides to work with trebled energy. The new position was one of many others so closely set that the blazing flames from the gun muzzles seemed to run out to right and left in a spouting wall of fire that leaped and vanished, leaped and vanished without ceasing, while the loud ear-splitting claps from the nearer guns merged and ran out to the flanks in a deep drum roll of echoing thunder. The noise was so great and continuous that it drowned even the roar of the German shells passing overhead, the smash and crump of their fall and burst.

But the line of flashes sparkling up and down across the front beyond the line of our own guns told a plain enough tale of the German guns’ work. The Sergeant-Major, plodding along beside the Battery Commander, grunted an exclamation.

“Boche is getting busy,” said the Battery Commander.

“Putting a pretty solid barrage down, isn’t he, sir?” said the Sergeant-Major. “Can we get the teams through that?”

“Not much hope,” said the Battery Commander, “but, thank Heaven, we don’t have to try, if he keeps barraging there. It is beyond our position. There are the gun-pits just off to the left.”

But, although the barrage was out in front of the position, there were a good many long-ranged shells coming beyond it to fall spouting fire and smoke and earth-clods on and behind the line of guns. The teams were flogged and lifted and spurred into a last desperate effort, wrenched the guns forward the last hundred yards and halted. Instantly they were unhooked, turned round, and started stumbling wearily back towards the rear; the gunners, reinforced by others scarcely less dead-beat than themselves by their night of digging in heavy wet soil, seized the guns and waggons, flung their last ounce of strength and energy into man-handling them up and into the pits. Two unlucky shells at that moment added heavily to the night’s casualty list, one falling beside the retiring teams and knocking out half a dozen horses and two men, another dropping within a score of yards of the gun-pits, killing three and wounding four gunners. Later, at intervals, two more gunners were wounded by flying splinters from chance shells that continued to drop near the pits as the guns were laboriously dragged through the quagmire into their positions. But none of the casualties, none of the falls and screamings of the high-explosive shells, interrupted or delayed the work, and without rest or pause the men struggled and toiled on until the last gun was safely housed in its pit.

Then the battery cooks served out warm tea, and the men drank greedily, and after, too worn out to be hungry or to eat the biscuit and cheese ration issued, flung themselves down in the pits under and round their guns and slept there in the trampled mud.

The Sergeant-Major was the last to lie down. Only after everyone else had ceased work, and he had visited each gun in turn and satisfied himself that all was correct, and made his report to the Battery Commander, did he seek his own rest. Then he crawled into one of the pits, and before he slept had a few words with the “Number One” there, his old friend Duncan. The Sergeant-Major, feeling in his pockets for a match to light a cigarette, found the note which the Battery Commander had sent back and which had been passed on to him. He turned his torchlight on it and read it through to Duncan – “Bring up the guns and firing battery waggons …” and then chuckled a little. “Bring up the guns… Remember that picture we saw before we joined, Duncan? And we fancied then we’d be bringing ’em up same fashion. And, good Lord, think of to-night.”

“Yes,” grunted Duncan, “sad slump from our anticipations. There was some fun in that picture style of doing the job – some sort of dash and honour and glory. No honour and glory about ‘Bring up the guns’ these days. Napoo in it to-night anyway.”

The Sergeant-Major, sleepily sucking his damp cigarette, wrapped in his sopping British Warm, curling up in a corner on the wet cold earth, utterly spent with the night’s work, cordially agreed.

Perhaps, and anyhow one hopes, some people will think they were wrong.

XIV
OUR BATTERY’S PRISONER

It was in the very small hours of a misty grey morning that the Lieutenant was relieved at the Forward Observing Position in the extreme front line established after the advance, and set out with his Signaller to return to the Battery. His way took him over the captured ground and the maze of captured trenches and dug-outs more or less destroyed by bombardment, and because there were still a number of German shells coming over the two kept as nearly as possible to a route which led them along or close to the old trenches, and so under or near some sort of cover.

The two were tired after a strenuous day, which had commenced the previous dawn in the Battery O.P.,⁵ and finished in the ruined building in the new front line, and a couple of hours’ sleep in a very cold and wet cellar. The Lieutenant, plodding over the wet ground, went out of his way to walk along a part of trench where his Battery had been wire-cutting, and noted with a natural professional interest and curiosity the nature and extent of the damage done to the old enemy trenches and wire, when his eye suddenly caught the quick movement of a shadowy grey figure, which whisked instantly out of sight somewhere along the trench they were in.

The Lieutenant halted abruptly. “Did you see anyone move?” he asked the Signaller, who, of course, being behind the officer in the trench, had seen nothing, and said so. They pushed along the trench, and, coming to the spot where the figure had vanished, found the opening to a dug-out with a long set of stairs vanishing down into the darkness. Memories stirred in the officer’s mind of tales about Germans who had “lain doggo” in ground occupied by us, and had, over a buried wire, kept in touch with their batteries and directed their fire on to our new positions, and this, with some vague instinct of the chase, prompted the decision he announced to his Signaller that he was “going down to have a look.”

“Better be careful, sir,” said the Signaller. “You don’t know if the gas has cleared out of a deep place like that.” This was true, because a good deal of gas had been sent over in the attack of the day before, and the officer began to wonder if he’d be a fool to go down. But, on the other hand, if a German was there he would know there was no gas, and, anyhow, it was a full day since the gas cloud went over. He decided to chance it.

“You want to look out for any Boshies down there, sir,” went on the Signaller. “With all these yarns they’re fed with, about us killin’ prisoners, you never know how they’re goin’ to take it, and whether they’ll kamerad or make a fight for it.”

This also was true, and since a man crawling down a steep and narrow stair made a target impossible for anyone shooting up the tunnel to miss, the Lieutenant began to wish himself out of the job. But something, partly obstinacy, perhaps partly an unwillingness to back down after saying he would go, made him carry on. But before he started he took the precaution to push a sandbag off where it lay on the top step, to roll bumping and flopping down the stairs. If the Boche had any mind to shoot, he argued to himself, he’d almost certainly shoot at the sound, since it was too dark to see. The sandbag bumped down into silence, while the two stood straining their ears for any sound. There was none.

“You wait here,” said the Lieutenant, and, with his cocked pistol in his hand, began to creep cautiously down the stairs. The passage was narrow, and so low that he almost filled it, even although he was bent nearly double, and as he went slowly down, the discomforting thought again presented itself with renewed clearness, how impossible it would be for a shot up the steps to miss him, and again he very heartily wished himself well out of the job.

It was a long stair, fully twenty-five to thirty feet underground he reckoned by the time he reached the foot, but he found himself there and on roughly levelled ground with a good deal of relief. Evidently the Boche did not mean to show fight, at any rate, until he knew he was discovered. The Lieutenant knew no German, but made a try with one word, putting as demanding a tone into it as he could – “Kamerad!” He had his finger on the trigger and his pistol ready for action as he spoke, in case a pot-shot came in the direction of the sound of his voice.

There was a dead, a very dead and creepy silence after his word had echoed and whispered away to stillness. He advanced a step or two, feeling carefully foot after foot, with his left hand outstretched and the pistol in his right still ready. The next thing was to try a light. This would certainly settle it one way or the other, because if anyone was there who meant to shoot, he’d certainly loose off at the light.

The Lieutenant took out his torch and held it out from his body at full arm’s length, to give an extra chance of the bullet missing him if it were shot at the light. He took a long breath, flicked the light on in one quick flashing sweep round, and snapped it out again. There was no shot, no sound, no movement, nothing but that eerie stillness. The light had given him a glimpse of a long chamber vanishing into dimness. He advanced very cautiously a few steps, switched the light on again, and threw the beam quickly round the walls. There was no sign of anyone, but he could see now that the long chamber curved round and out of sight.

He switched the light off, stepped back to the stair foot, and called the Signaller down, hearing the clumping sound of the descending footsteps and the man’s voice with a childish relief and sense of companionship. He explained the position, threw the light boldly on, and pushed along to where the room ran round the corner. Here again he found no sign of life, but on exploring right to the end of the room found the apparent explanation of his failure to discover the man he had been so sure of finding down there. The chamber was a long, narrow one, curved almost to an S-shape, and at the far end was another steep stair leading up to the trench. The man evidently had escaped that way.

The dug-out was a large one, capable of holding, the Lieutenant reckoned, quarters for some thirty to forty men. It was hung all round with greatcoats swinging against the wall, and piled on shelves and hanging from hooks along wall and roof were packs, haversacks, belts, water-bottles, bayonets, and all sorts of equipment. There were dozens of the old leather “pickelhaube” helmets, and at sight of these the Lieutenant remembered an old compact made with the others in Mess that if one of them got a chance to pick up any helmets he should bring them in and divide up.

“I’m going to take half a dozen of those helmets,” he said, uncocking his pistol and pushing it into the holster.

“Right, sir,” said the Signaller. “I’d like one, too, and we might pick up some good sooveneers here.”

“Just as well, now we are here, to see what’s worth having,” said the Lieutenant. “I’d rather like to find a decent pair of field-glasses, or a Mauser pistol.”

He held the light while the Signaller hauled down kits, shook out packs, and rummaged round. For some queer reason they still spoke in subdued tones and made little noise, and suddenly the Lieutenant’s ears caught a sound that made him snap his torch off and stand, as he confesses, with his skin pringling and his hair standing on end.

“Did you hear anything?” he whispered. The Signaller had stiffened to stock stillness at his first instinctive start and the switching off of the light, and after a long pause whispered back, “No, sir; but mebbe you heard a rat.”

“Hold your breath and listen,” whispered the Lieutenant. “I thought I heard a sort of choky cough.”

He heard the indrawn breath and then dead silence, and then again – once more the hair stirred on his scalp – plain and unmistakable, a sound of deep, slow breathing. “Hear it?” he said very softly. “Sound of breathing,” and “Yes, believe I do now,” answered the Signaller, after a pause. They stood there in the darkness for a long minute, the Lieutenant in his own heart cursing himself for a fool not to have thoroughly searched the place, to have made sure they would not be trapped.

Especially he was a fool not to have looked behind those great coats which practically lined the walls and hung almost to the floor. There might be a dozen men hidden behind them; there might be a door leading out into another dug-out; there might be rifles or pistols covering them both at that second, fingers pressing on the triggers. He was, to put it bluntly, “scared stiff,” as he says himself, but the low voice of the Signaller brought him to the need of some action. “I can’t hear it now, sir.”

“I’m going to turn the light on again,” he said. “Have a quick look round, especially for any men’s feet showing under the coats round the wall.” He switched his torch on again, ran it round the walls, once, swiftly, and then, seeing no feet under the coats, slowly and deliberately yard by yard.

“I’ll swear I heard a man breathe,” he said positively, still peering round. “We’ll search the place properly.”

In one corner near the stair foot lay a heap of clothing of some sort, with a great-coat spread wide over it. It caught the Lieutenant’s eye and suspicions. Why should coats be heaped there – smooth – at full length?

Without moving his eyes from the pile, he slid his automatic pistol out again, and slipped off the safety catch. “Keep the light on those coats,” he said, softly, and tip-toed over to the pile, the pistol pointed, his finger close and tight on the trigger. His heart was thumping uncomfortably, and his nerves tight as fiddle-strings. He felt sure somehow that here was one man at least; and if he or any others in the dug-out meant fight on discovery, now, at any second, the first shot must come.

He stooped over the coats and thrust the pistol forward. If a man was there, had a rifle or pistol ready pointed even, at least he, the Lieutenant, ought to get off a shot with equal, or a shade greater quickness. With his left hand he picked up the coat corner, turned it back, and jerked the pistol forward and fairly under the nose of the head his movement had disclosed. “Lie still,” he said, not knowing or caring whether the man understood or not, and for long seconds stood staring down on the white face and into the frightened eyes that looked unblinking up at him.

“Kamerad,” whispered the man, still as death under the threat of that pistol muzzle and the finger curled about the trigger. “Right,” said the Lieutenant. “Kamerad. Now, very gently, hands up,” and again, slowly and clearly, “Hands up.” The man understood, and the Lieutenant, watching like a hawk for a suspicious movement, for sign of a weapon appearing, waited while the hands came slowly creeping up and out from under the coat. His nerves were still on a raw edge – perhaps because long days of observing in the front lines or with the battery while the guns are going their hardest in a heavy night-and-day bombardment are not conducive to steadiness of nerves – but, satisfied at last that the man meant to play no tricks, he flung the coat back off him, made him stand with his hands up, and ran his left hand over breast and pockets for feel of any weapon. That done, he stepped back with a sigh of relief. “Phew! I believe I was just about as cold scared as he was,” he said. “D’you speak English? No. Well, I suppose you’ll never know how close to death you’ve been the last minute.”

“I was a bit jumpy, too, sir,” said the Signaller. “You never know, and it doesn’t do to take chances wi’ these chaps.”

“I wasn’t,” said the Lieutenant. “I believe, if I’d seen a glint of metal as his hands came up, I’d have blown the top of his blessed head off. Pity he can’t speak English.”