by Will R Bird
They were in rifle pits and there were many more we had not seen at first. They had been killed by overhead shrapnel and were so wedged in the mud that few had fallen over. We floundered all around them and did not find a live German, though we fancied we saw a working party in the gloom, and then made our way back to the trench. I was covered with foul mud, sickened with smells and my kilt had worn my legs raw. Melville had tea ready for me but he was strangely quiet. Ira was with him, and beyond them, seated on the firestep, was Mickey.
Gradually it grew light. Rumour had come that we would be relieved at night and many of the men were glad. “Old Bill” and Bunty had had a fearful time in the mud, up that horrible road where one tracked the highway by dead men strewed like spilled bundles. Sambro wanted some tea. He had been on a message to company headquarters in a pillbox, and he was wet and cold. I crawled out to the water hole again, and as I dipped it was light enough to see. Just below my mess-tin, in the water, was a huge dead rat. Every other pool near it was discoloured with worse than rats, so I said nothing but boiled the tea an extra time.
All day we huddled, dozing, waiting for relief, and then came word than an attack was to be made that night. We were to try to capture a strong point, a Farm ruin, called “Graf House.” Mcintyre came when it was dark and gave orders. There were to be seven parties used and he was taking twenty-five men with him. We were to work up a road as quietly as possible as it was to be a stealth attack at two pip emma, without a barrage. The Stokes gunners would lend assistance once we were started. Melville shook hands with me as soon as Mcintyre finished talking, but he did not say a word. Then Ira came and whispered that he was glad we were on our way.
The men chosen went to the pillbox headquarters and there we were given a rum ration, those who wished it. There seemed to be plenty of the liquor and breaths were reeking as we crept out and into the beginning of the road. I followed Mcintyre and was to take back messages as soon as our objective was reached. Behind me was Luggar and next him was Hale. As we crawled I took particular notice of each object in the gloom, and as I peered over the bank on our left I saw a German raise his head, not twenty yards from us. I seized Mcintyre’s foot to signal him, and he yanked it from me and spoke out loud. The German fired instantly and the bullet grooved the top of Luggar’s head slicing the scalp, and causing him to be temporarily insane. He threshed about and Hale and I held him down as a perfect stream of bullets was passing over us from the left. Other hands helped us and we passed him back to the rear to be bandaged there. I tossed a Mills bomb in the direction of the Hun and after it had exploded I crept ahead a few feet and raised carefully to look over the bank. Crack! A rifle was thrust up and fired only inches from Hale’s head. The bullet split his scalp and the concussion broke his ear drums. Blood streamed over his face, blinding him, and I helped him get started back to Stewart. Then I pitched a second bomb, close in. Meanwhile Mcintyre had not halted. He had rushed on and Sambro and I half-raised as we hurried after him. A machine gun blazed at us from a spot on the right and we dove into the mud. Crash – slam. The Stokes gun was at work but its shells dropped short, falling almost in our path. We rose again as the Maxim stopped firing, then – a flaming white-hot instant – oblivion.
When I recovered consciousness my head was splitting with pain and a terrible nausea had seized my stomach. The Stokes shell had dropped beside me, throwing me bodily into the mud, and Sambro was stunned as well. He was lying in the slime, and feeling his limbs, certain that he was wounded. All around us was frightful clamour of guns and bombs and rifle shots. I heard Mcintyre’s voice shouting “Five rounds rapid,” then it stopped, but my nose was bleeding and I was too dizzy to stand. We crawled towards the sound, then halted. There was a great plunging in the murk, and two dim figures came towards us, puffing and blowing, tugging at something. They were Germans, big men, and had a machine gun and tripod. They placed it just in front of us and one man yanked at a long cartridge belt. I pulled the pin from my last bomb and heaved the missile at a count of two. It burst just beneath the tripod. One man went down like a huge tree, the other struggled a moment before he stilled.
We went by them, making sure the gun was ruined, and in a new-made crater found a man of “A” Company with his wrist almost severed. We bandaged him hurriedly and sent him back, and were rising to go on when Clark came stumbling through the mud, and yelled at us. “Come on, give them …” His shout was cut off. He pitched, dead, in front of us.
A man scurried by with a stretcher as we went over to the bank where we could see men moving. It was a Lewis gunner, and he said Mcintyre had been shot through the stomach and was dying. They got him on the stretcher, but we went on to the short bank in front and found “Old Bill,” Mickey, and Johnson crouched there, shooting at a German gun that streaked sparks not more than thirty yards away. Sambro had bombs with him and he and I hurled them. The bursts seemed right on the gun and it was silenced. I stared at the other men on the bank. They were all dead. Melville and Ira and Jennings, lying there together, rifle in hand, all shot through the head by one sweep of the German gun. “Old Bill” had seen it, and stayed there after, trying to pot the gunner himself. The fourth dead man was poor old sour Sam, at rest at last.
We looked around and found that all the rest of the party had gone, but another fit of sickness seized me and I could not move for a time. Sambro stayed with me. When we did go back we had to crawl a distance to avoid machine gun fire, but the main fighting had shifted over on the left. A light vapour was stealing over the ground making it harder to see and I stumbled over a body as we found the road bank. It was the Professor, riddled with bullets, dead. He was covered with mud, had lost his steel helmet, had evidently got lost in the darkness, and there he lay, after years of study and culture, with glassy eyes and face upturned to the sky, a smashed cog of the war machine, with not a hope of burial excepting by a chance shell, and the mist thickened and rolled sullenly over him. A few paces beyond we saw some person on the bank itself, stooping over something. It was Stewart, the stretcher bearer, and we called to him softly, telling him to get down into the ditch. He was in plain view of any Huns left along the low ground. He did not answer but went on bandaging a wounded man, and not a second later came a sharp, heavy report. Stewart pitched across the man he was binding, headfirst, so that his kilt fell over his back and there he lay, dead, while the Germans shot again and again, a fusilade of bullets, as if venting their hate, and the man beneath Stewart stilled. We had not a bomb left but we wormed to the bank at a spot farther along and fired at the rifle flashes until the shooting stopped. Then we crawled on until at last we came to old trenches near company headquarters and there I suddenly lost consciousness.
When I woke it was late in the morning. I was lying in the corner of a remnant of trench and Mickey and Sambro were with me. I had been sick again and then had lain as if in a stupor. There had been a terrific shelling all about us and the acrid reek of explosives stung my nostrils. None of the other survivors were near us, not a runner had come into view. We huddled there together and listened to the thunder of the guns until it was noon. Then I roused and peered from our refuge. A few yards away were three green-scummed pools. White, chalky hands reached out of one – hands that were spattered with lumps of clay, and from the farther one a knee stuck up above the filthy water. In another bit of trench, where the parados had disappeared, a soldier stood rigidly, feet braced apart. He was dead, had been killed by concussion, and his body was split as if sliced by a great knife. Looking back I could make out the bank of the road and there distinguished Stewart’s body still humped over the man he was trying to assist. Some dead Germans were over on the flank and one, bareheaded, was lying as if reclining on his elbow. A shell came as I looked up and erupted almost under the body, and the dead man stood straight up a moment, as if saluting, then tumbled down on the other side. I lay down again and saw that neither Sambro nor Mickey had moved. They were asleep as they hunched there side by side, mud-spla
ttered, wan as ghosts.
Night found us still crouched in our cover and I got up and went around the shell holes until I found “Old Bill” and Johnson. They told me that a relief was due and that there had been no orders. Sergeant Oron had been wounded and Hughes was not with us, having gone on leave from St. Jean. We did not know who would have the platoon. As we talked there was suddenly a small barrage of fish tails. They whirred from the sky and several fell near the standing dead man and toppled him over. Then a corporal from another platoon came and called to us to follow him. We were to go back to Ypres, the 16th Battalion was relieving us. We went and met the incoming men by our old trench, were joined by the remainder of the company and heard that big Glenn had been killed, that Izzy had died gloriously in the fighting at the “Graf House.”
All that long drag back was a hideous nightmare. The track was worse than when we had come in and the shelling was incessant. We moved with infinite slowness, every step a struggle, a tearing physical effort, and a vast noise was over all, a thundering, rolling clamour that dulled our thinking, mercifully smothering some of our agonized impressions of the night before.
We went back to the Watou area and there lay about and were given trousers to replace our soaked and muddied kilts. A big draft came and refilled our ranks and then came the dread word that we were to go back to Passchendale again. The November rains were chilling us, freezing us, our feet were always soggy and we were almost despondent. All that time we had been out we had talked but little. Each man seemed busy with his own thoughts, disinclined to speak to another. There had been too many of our friends killed, the men we had been with for months. I found that McLeod and Farmer had died in the mud, that Egglestone had been wounded and placed on a stretcher and then he and his bearers were all blown to fragments by a big shell. And poor old Flynn had been killed. We seemed to move in a daze, to do things as if we were automatoms. One of the draft, Upham, a lad who had been out before, made friends with me and stayed by me. Sambro was with Barron, and Mickey and Tommy were together. Jerry was missing.
Once more we went to California Trench and hated it intensely as we all remembered the gory death of the inspecting officer. We went on the next night through a fearful shelling up to an abomination of desolation, finding curled tangles of wire in absurd places, men squatted in the muck, silent, staring, stiff-moving men, who muttered as they got up and vanished in the gloom like mud-swathed phantoms. It was daylight before we could find where we were to dig in and Captain Grafftey came among us, the first officer we had seen up there with the exception of Mcintyre. He told us to dig for shelter, but no more, as we might move at any time. Orr and Hayward had been wounded on the way up and one man killed.
As we worked the Hun began to shell our position with whizz bangs and some of the men grew panicky. The captain climbed through the mud, from shelter to shelter, speaking to the fellows. Tommy and I watched him come near us. Just a few feet from us, in the next shelter, Dykes was working. He straightened to speak and at the next instant a shell cut the top of his head away, leaving but the jaw and neck. The body rocked a moment as if in a wind and then toppled backward. The captain saluted as he passed.
When it grew dark we moved again and formed a new line. The Hun spotted us and started shelling while machine gun fire raked the ground. Upham and I were together and as we started digging I saw a body just in front of us, a big man with his equipment over his greatcoat. “Catch hold of that stiff,” I said to Upham. “Pull him back here and we’ll use him for part of our parapet.”
He stared at me. “Don’t,” he yelled. “Don’t touch him.”
I seized the corpse myself, rolling it over and into place, and Upham sprang from where he had been spading and commenced a new hole over to the right. A salvo of shells came and exploded. Whizzing fragments were all around me but I was not touched. Upham fell and was dead when I reached him. There was a strange cry further on. It was the sergeant-major who should have gone to the Depot, the old original. He had insisted in coming for one more trip and his jaw had been carried away by shrapnel. He died before morning. Two other men were down, Johnson and Barron, both wounded. The shelling continued all that night and the next day. We had dug deep V-shaped pits, connecting some of them, and there we crouched, gray faces under muddy helmets, red-rimmed eyes, staring, dazed, wondering, our brains numbed beyond thinking by the incessant explosions. One of the new men pitched down between our shelter and the next one. He was pierced in a dozen places and one arm had been sheared from his body by shrapnel. Mickey sat beside me shuddering, half-stunned, staring unseeing, his limbs twitching convulsively at each concussion.
A shell flung equipment in the air. A steel helmet struck into the parados. Then a haversack came hurtling into our trench and fell apart. We gazed stupidly at the contents, a pair of sox, a towel, a toothbrush, a razor and a tin of bully. Another new man came sprawling into our shelter. His helmet was gone and he had lost his rifle. He shook as with ague and crouched in the mud, grovelling and making almost animal noises. He had been literally blown out of his pit and his chum was killed. Then Davies came from the other direction, stepping on the armless body in his path. I shouted at him, asking some questions about the battalion, but he never answered. He sat down close beside me and I was wedged there between him and Mickey. There were continuous explosions just behind us. Mud showered down on our legs, buried our Lee-Enfields, but we stayed in our huddle. Then came a tremendous shock and the narrow through which Davies had come was blocked by an upheaval and the dead man slid toward us, slithered down until his one arm was out-stretched beside our boots. There was a watch on his hairy wrist and, strangely, it was going. I looked at the time. One o’clock. Each hour had grown to be a grim possession, something held precariously.
The new man recovered enough to huddle on the other side of Mickey. Fear had relaxed the muscles of his face and it had become like dough; his mouth dribbled; I could not look at him. All that afternoon we sat there and, oddly, it seemed but a short time. Nothing was clear to me. Explosion succeeded explosion, a concentrated clamour, slamming and pounding, until the noise beat on the brain itself, and when the firing lulled to solitary shells it became the torture of dripping water. I stirred, and found that my arm had been around Mickey all the while and that Davies and I had gripped hands. We got up, freed our rifles from the mud, shook ourselves and Davies went to find Grafftey. We hoped that we would soon be relieved. A message came for me. The Hun had been driven back on the left and we were to move our line forward as soon as it was dark. I was to go with an officer in advance and help stretch a tape where the company was to dig in.
CHAPTER V
Thou Shalt Not Kill
The shelling abated somewhat as we ventured into the no man’s land that lay beyond our battered line. The officer was nervous and plunged through the mud so blindly that he lost his direction and it took me some time to get him convinced of his mistake. Then we swung and went forward and whizz bangs began dropping quite near. The officer jumped at each explosion, and yelled something at me. I paid no attention for I had just located the old stub we were to use as a guide. As I made the tape fast to it I looked up and saw my man racing away like a wild thing. Fear had mastered him. He had hurled the tape from him and was gone before I could do anything, leaving me there alone in the dark and the shelling, and with the company moving up in a few minutes. I snatched up my rifle and fired at him, forgetting in my rage that I might shoot some of my own fellows, forgetting everything, but before I could press the trigger a second time a quiet voice spoke to me so clearly that I could hear it above the din. I jumped around and there was the captain.
He had come out there alone and he calmly helped me with the tape as though it were his usual work. We had it in place as the men arrived and he did not threaten me nor reprimand me for what I had done. We dug in as swiftly as we could but there were wild cries in the dark and I rushed out with Tommy to find Christensen over a wounded man trying to bind his hurt
s. The fellow had become frenzied and would not lie still and we had to hold him by force until he was bandaged, then tie him on the stretcher. All the while Christensen never hurried or ducked as bullets snapped by. I never saw him flinch from a shell. He was the only real fatalist I knew. “When my time comes I’ll go,” was his creed, and he lived up to it. He had been shipwrecked twice and almost drowned, and several times he had had narrow escapes from shells. But he never showed fear. I have seen sergeants order him to stay in the trench as he passed to another part of the sector, and several times he had walked overland. He never ducked or hurried in exposed places, claiming that it was of no use. “My time is set,” he would say. “When it comes I’ll get mine wherever I am, and until that time I won’t be hit.”
A runner came through the murk and said we were to go with the battalion beside us in an attack on a pillbox. Corporal Hughes was at a place farther along and when I found him he knew nothing of such orders. Then we saw men advancing near us. There was no time to look further for verification and so Tommy and Mickey, Gordon and Sambro and I scrambled out of our trench and followed them. Three more men came after us. The rest did not come. We had heard names mentioned, Virtue Farm and Vocation, but did not know our front at all and so simply followed the others. All at once the strong point loomed through the murk and a Lewis gun hammered its rat-tat-tat-tat. Others joined in and cries of “kamerad” were shrill above the noise.
