A Rifleman Went to War

by Herbert W. McBride

  We had devices of this character, some of them quite elaborate in that they were well constructed with steel frames and well anchored with sand-bags; some of them carrying as many as six rifles. Some man was detailed to make the rounds each night and pull the triggers at certain intervals. Later, after we had perfected our machine gun strafing, we abandoned this procedure and would fire just one or two shots at a time with the machine guns and I suppose we got about the same results.

  Now, a friend who has read the foregoing and the following pages has voiced the complaint that there is not enough about actual rifle shooting.

  Well, I’ll tell you how it is. I did not make that war, so cannot be blamed if a lot of other things happened and that there were so many soldiers engaged in various other diversions, such as bombing, artillery firing, machine gunning and so on. The truth is that the poor rifleman sometimes had to go for days and weeks – yes, even months – without having a chance to shoot at anything. I have tried to describe, to the best of my limited ability, the actual happenings as they came along. Naturally, had I been arranging things, I would have limited the armament of all the contending forces to the rifle; but, as it was, we had to take it as we found it. Plenty of preachers went to war and never had a chance to do any preaching and the same applies to men of all the other vocations – riflemen included. A thoroughly trained soldier is probably the most versatile man in the world. He knows how to do everything – and has to do it.

  So, if any of our dyed-in-the-wool riflemen are disappointed at finding that there is too little on their own favorite subject and too much about other things, I can only hope that they will be able to take consolation from the fact that a lot of us had to do the same thing – and under far more arduous conditions. Some of these departures we found quite diverting. Hunting in the dark, for instance, when the other side was hunting in the dark, also, and in the same territory, provided good entertainment for the riflemen on those evenings when the theater was a forgotten thing belonging to a past life. I shall touch upon this in the next chapter.

  Chapter 7. Scouting and Patrolling

  THE rifleman, being a hunter, naturally always has an eye, and an ear, for game. The great game movement along the front took place at night. That in the back-areas, of course, could only be deduced, from daytime observation, and at night became the business of the artillery and machine guns. But no-man’s-land, in quiet times, was the scene of an almost purely nocturnal life. The sniper was lucky if, during the day, he spotted a couple of Germans; but if he really cared for hunting he might have a dozen pass within as many feet of him at night. He can well afford to abandon his rifle for this – if he can still find time to get the necessary sleep. There is nothing just like it for making one feel at home in the trench areas. To spend the night in a funky dugout or musty cellar, whether in the front line, supports or reserves, is like closing the tent-fly at nightfall as soon as you have made camp on the mountainside overlooking a pleasant – and unknown – valley. Much better to get outside and see what’s happening.

  And since scouting was a necessary and regular part of intelligence work, he could always tie up with our patrols and make himself useful in the general scheme, and at the same time further his first-hand knowledge and gratify his curiosity. Incidentally, he could get into a scrap about as often as he liked; and it was my contention that patrols should do as much as possible of this – after their real work was done. Of course, there were patrols whose real work was fighting; but most of them had other duties, and took up fighting only as a sideline – or of necessity. Their regular business was to exercise control over the permanent battlefield that was a feature of this war. Condition of the wire, on both sides; enemy outposts and front-line positions; establishing listening posts, and daytime observation posts at times; checking on all enemy activity, patrols, etc., and various special investigations – all were matters for patrols and scouts. Generally, fighting was optional; but since this is the particular business of the soldier, it is my notion that he shouldn’t miss an opportunity.

  This scouting work developed haphazardly, like a good many other things. Primarily intelligence work, it was finally grouped along with Sniping and Observation, and the organization became the S.O.S. of the British Army in charge of a battalion intelligence officer under the intelligence officer of brigade. It was not definitely established until after I left the front; so I got most of my experience without it. Quite aside from the matter of information, I think it had an important value in trench warfare, a value which I didn’t fully appreciate until during my last weeks, when at various times and on various business, I had opportunities to observe. This was in the winter, at the beginning of 1917. For a spell I was attached to another battalion. Then I was helping to train the Canadians for the coming attack at Vimy Ridge. (At one time I even led a pack-train for a spell, and at another I was sort of directing traffic – this is the sort of work that a rifleman may be called upon to do).

  Well, anyway, I found time and occasion to look things over and see what trench warfare was beginning to look like. It is difficult for anyone who has not lived in a trench and had no-man’s-land as a front yard for weeks on end to understand the conditions under which patrols worked. It is not difficult to picture a shell-torn, wire-strewn stretch of land, and one may well accept the word of numbers who have done it that it was not much of a problem to move about in this area in comparative safety. But this leaves us with a fairly fixed picture that is not at all representative, and the difficulties I am talking about are not of movement only, but of moving effectively – of securing results. It is necessary to remember that this area stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland, across the level muddy fields of northern Belgium, winding over the semi-circle of hills that bound Ypres from Kemmel to Passchendaele, to low land from Ploegsteert to Neuve Chappelle, rising a trifle around La Bassee, thence to the higher land at Loos, from which place it continued high and uneven. It ran through almost every sort of terrain which western Europe had to offer and included within its boundaries hills, valleys, hedges, orchards, forests, rivers and canals. It wavered back and forth (this is where the war was fought, you know) to cut off and desolate at one time and place a solitary cabaret, at another an isolated farmhouse, and at another an entire village – and the village may be shelled to powder or standing up reasonably like a group of human habitations.

  In this game, both sides, of course, attempted to hold dominant positions; for trench “warfare” consisted largely of dominating enemy territory without occupying it. This, at its best, was to keep him in the mud where life was miserable and strong defenses impossible while we occupied high land from which we could see every move and reduce to mud every effort at fortification. Struggles for such advantage of position accounted for the bloody fighting, sometimes back and forth for days, at such places as Passchendaele Ridge, St. Eloi, Vimy, Hill 60, Telegraph Hill, and countless lesser mounds, woods, slag-heaps, strong points, sugar-mills, etc. which seldom made the headlines. Usually before the two lines could settle down to the stalemate of the trenches the positions were nearly equal so far as topography was concerned. Then, domination took the form of extending our knowledge of enemy territory and activities, less with a view to immediate action than to anticipating and defending his point of attack or to launching one of our own.

  I risk this resume of the obvious because I find that it is frequently lost sight of, and also to emphasize the importance of patrols and observation from the ground.

  This preparatory domination was primarily the business of the Intelligence System, of which spies and aerial observers were concerned largely with the back areas; with the plans of the High Command and with the movement, concentrations and positions of men, guns and supplies. Aeroplane photographs, of course, supplied an exact layout of the trench system and revealed changes from time to time; but they could not be relied upon to disclose many vital details, such as sniping, observation and machine-gun positions. For these, the map w
as supplemented by endless painstaking observation and study from the ground, in which work patrols played only a secondary part. The particular – and vital – concern of patrols was activity in no-man’s-land. They, and the listening-posts established through them, were almost the only protection against saps, tunnels and mines. They were not – as they had been in the old open warfare – primarily interested in locating the enemy. We were always in contact with him, and it became the business of patrols to see that this contact was not disastrous. Disaster came from the direction of no-man’s-land, and this, at night, belonged to patrols. Anything beyond this area was generally the concern of observers by daylight. In many cases patrols could learn how strongly the front trench was held; and they often located machine-gun positions there. This of itself is of vast importance. It may be decisive; a single machine-gun advantageously placed and unsuspected until lines of infantry are abreast of it on either flank means disaster until it is dealt with; and confusion and loss, right at the outset, may result in total failure. Such a gun, in an advanced position, escapes the destructive barrage, and is ready and undisturbed when the opportunity comes for it to get in its work. But even in a good position close behind the trench, unless this position is exactly known, it may escape shell-fire; and one of the most pitiable spectacles in modern warfare is that of men caught in the wire by crossfire from such guns.

  The idea is to remember that no-man’s-land was the battleground. When it disappeared the war was over. You were always “in touch with the enemy.” There were no wide-ranging patrols, skirmishing parties and advanced guards trying to locate the opposing army and determine its movements; and no forced marches to intercept it and fall upon its rear or flank or cut it in two before it could get itself in shape on its chosen battleground. There was none of this ranging all over central Europe, clashing in one place today, withdrawing during the night to come together again a week or month later at some point fifty miles away. What I am getting at is that the battle was joined from the outset of the war and remained joined until the end, and we would gain every day a little of the ultimate victory, not only by extending our knowledge of the enemy positions, but by claiming a toll of his men.

  This trench warfare was the only sort I had known by actual experience. I had gone into it, as had everyone else, not knowing what it was to be like, but having my notions more or less colored by history, by what I had read and heard of the great battles and wars of the past. Then this one began to take shape in my experience; I began to see what it was like; and I would find myself, every now and then, toying with the thought of what would happen if every man in our trenches should constantly stir himself and make it his business to get a German soldier.

  I intend elsewhere to outline the usual method of carrying out trench raids, and to say something of the one or two in which I took part, and also of trench-raiding in general. I don’t believe that I can sufficiently emphasize this sort of warfare. Its importance is not merely in getting prisoners for purposes of information; it is in thinning out the enemy’s ranks and putting the fear of God into them; and this can often be nicely done by a patrol. At one time and another during the course of the war the wise ones told us what was wrong and how the conflict might be brought to a speedy and successful end. Sometimes particular wise ones changed their views, as is the way of a certain sort of them who are always ready with the answer reinforced by recent example. Others stuck to their own hobby through thick and thin, and were ominous or confident of victory according to the nature of the recent example and the use or neglect of their particular hobby. At one time it was guns; we were confidently told that when we had superiority of artillery fire at all times we would soon see the end of things. This camp arose in full chorus at the fall of Antwerp. And they were right; but only in so far as those who had insisted that artillery was noisy but harmless had been so absurdly wrong. Artillery wasn’t the whole of success. After Verdun even the most prejudiced and partial of them were forced to a clearer recognition of the truth of the matter. They each saw their particular pet for the vital part it played – in strict cooperation with and with full support from all the others. But the significant thing that emerged from this coordinated effort, the concrete and definite and lasting result of this achievement, was the ghastly casualty list of the other side. The one indispensible adjunct to the war machine is men. I imagine that the most outspoken advocate of this or that arm of defense or attack would have conceded at any time during the war, that once the Germans did not have enough men to stretch across the continent of Europe, in the various lines of defense and to serve the drawn-out and diverging lines of communication and supply, they would have to give in.

  If the two or three or half-dozen taken in a raid, or the “missing” enemy patrol, seem ridiculously negligible in proportion to the vast army from which they come, it should be remembered that this resulted from an operation involving only a hundred yards or so of front. Put this in terms of the hundreds of miles of the Western Front and multiply this again by the days and days of a long, inactive winter and you have a casualty list which, though it may not dwarf that of a major battle, is significant beyond its mere numbers.

  The numbers are only half of the effect. Of the other half, one part consists likewise in weakening the enemy; the other is in strengthening our own position, not only relatively but absolutely. As to the first, a thousand casualties inflicted in this way are worse than twice that number in a battle lasting one day. The patrol that never comes back (with often no sound to give any inkling as to its fate), the raiding party that went amiss, the wiring party that was wiped out with machine guns after being quietly spotted by a couple of scouts, are missed, with no excitement to divert the men from realizing that they are missed. In a battle they are not so much thought of; there is excitement, and a natural expectation of paying the price, and the satisfaction of knowing that something was being done to the other side. This is not true in the trenches. The life is abominable anyway and the untidy mess left by a grenade in a sleepy dugout doesn’t help it. Despondency follows easily upon misery and discomfort, and with a man disappearing here and there night after night and others falling to snipers’ fire by day, the darkness of no-man’s-land soon comes to hold something a good deal worse than the sword of Damocles, and men begin to wonder if God is really on their side after all.

  For the other half of this effect which doesn’t appear in the casualty-list we look to our own side. The best way to keep a machine in perfect running condition is, with proper care, to run it often. When this machine is composed of men, this is the only way. Even the stoutest and gruffest old drill-sergeant – who is sometimes accused of knowing but one thing – knows this. It is generally the accepted method in the billeting areas and training camps. It is even more important in the trenches. Not only does the machine get out of fix; but its individual parts become sluggish, dull and apathetic, and the entire battalion is worth about as much as a wide-awake company. The blanket terms are morale and esprit de corps, and when these are up to scratch, troops are invincible; when they are down, they are well-nigh worthless.

  And along with this moral effect you get almost the only actual and practical training it is possible to get as preparation for the big battles. Men get into the spirit of the game, gain confidence in themselves and see what they can do. It is a part of that strange process through which men unconsciously go which enables them to kill men without being murderers. When this reaches its perfection, soldiers become men of the chase. They take delight in battle and kill without hatred. This primitive man didn’t have much of a chance to emerge from his civilized veneer under the terrific shell-fire of the hotly contested sectors where both sides clung to the strongly entrenched positions and were shelled out, back and forth, night and day, for a week or more, generally in the rain, with men disemboweled and torn to bits while the others could do nothing but cower in the mud and wait their turn. This was simply inhuman, and certainly not any less appalling to the primi
tive man than to the civilized one. But when they got together and really had a chance to fight, there was remarkably little of hatred or revengefulness. Hatred is a slow, calculating, cold-blooded business. There was no time for it in battle. You often hear of it, to explain the soldier’s feeling; I have used it myself. But it disappears in battle.

  I have elsewhere explained how I came to do my first real sniping after I had watched the Germans shoot down our stretcher-bearers, and Charlie Wendt and others. I had nothing to do but think about it; but even then I didn’t hate them as much as I liked to think I did. My hatred had been measured by the intensity of a lot of other emotions which had been aroused by this inhuman murder. But I assure you that when I was behind the rifle, the principal feeling was one of keen satisfaction and excitement of the same kind that the hunter always knows. That’s the spirit. That’s what makes good riflemen and good soldiers.

  And that’s the spirit that work in no-man’s-land fostered. (By work, I don’t mean hard labor, such as digging to push the front line out over the brow of an inconvenient hill; I mean the business of carrying on the war. As for this other stuff, I think it’s about time that some bright boy got busy and invented a portable, non-collapsible, always-disinfected, water-tight trench-system.)

  Even the men who were disposed to let well enough alone and let somebody else do the running around liked scouting, patrols and trench-raiding, once they had tried them. And I know that during my last weeks in France I was a little disappointed because I couldn’t always be up in front of the front where there was first-hand contact with the other of the two sides necessary to make a war. I managed to get up once or twice on each new stretch of front and see exactly how matters stood. And matters always stood best when I got up there just before stand-to in the morning and found everybody wide-awake and I knew that there was some sort of excitement somewhere, though I may have heard nothing and seen only a few Very lights since leaving my dug-out. The sentries had forgot that they were damn tired of standing there looking at nothing, and glad to be relieved of the temptation to go to sleep.