A Rifleman Went to War

by Herbert W. McBride

  Wherever it was, trench warfare was best when it was warfare. I always felt better – and I believe that everybody else did – when there was excitement somewhere in the air. Many men were glad to go on patrols. It was not that they were foolhardy or reckless, but simply that they preferred action to acute and unrelenting discomfort. Patrols were, of course, the specific duty of the Intelligence Section and when the particular business of the patrol was to supplement the work of observation, it was necessary to use men from this Section. At other times it was advisable – often necessary – to use men from the platoon. These men needed to know, at first hand, the land before them, and it was the best sort of training to fit them for raids. The wise intelligence officer knew the men in the front line and checked with the platoon commander on the men who proved most useful and apt on duties of any sort in no-man’s-land. Then he was able, at the last moment, to turn his own little information-seeking party into one that went out looking for the unexpected and rather hoping that it would happen. And he could feel confident thereafter in leaving the unexpected in the hands of the platoon sergeant during those hours when no-man’s-land was not covered by his own regular scouts.

  I think some such arrangement as this was responsible for a good deal of that “Silent Death” business for which the Canadians had something of a reputation. There is no reason in the world why a patrol that is out to look over the wire or to protect against a surprise raid shouldn’t surprise an enemy patrol, if it could be done neatly.

  This is the sort of stuff that the sentry in the front line welcomed. When a raid was on, everybody, of course, was alert; but regular raids were few, and scouting parties went and came frequently without his knowing it, further than that he was warned that there was one out. It may be gone for hours and he dismissed it from his mind, except to remember to look twice and listen for the pass-word before shooting up that little disturbance in the wire. This is monotonous business when nothing ever happens; and there is a constant temptation to rest grimy eyelids. But when a certain spirit has taken possession of the platoon; the right sergeant has returned from leave; Smith, who was out with a crippled foot last time, is back on the job, and the old combination is working; things may be expected to pick up, and the madman’s land before him is worth looking at. It is the more exciting because it is often just on the borderland of exceeding authority. A patrol that is charged with the particular duty of reporting on the movement of a previously observed enemy party, to see if it is a nightly routine, might just as well return one night to report an unavoidable encounter – for which it was quite well prepared, even to selecting the battleground.

  I was interested in this sort of work from the start, but we quite often had our hands full without it, then. It became really necessary (the fighting part of it) during the next winter, when the war had definitely settled down to the dull business of the trenches. I was back of the lines most of the time, but I got up as often as possible – sometimes on business – and I began to appreciate the tonic properties in a little excitement at night. The only mornings worth remembering are those on which something was happening, or had happened. It was a treat to go into a trench where there was excitement in the air – to sense, in the first sentry I came to, a sort of question mark in the dark, as I did one morning. He wanted to know what all the noise was about, and anyone passing along at that hour was a possible source of information. (The soldier always looks to the rear to know what is happening, anyway, and is better informed in billets than in the trenches.) Usually, two sentries work together, taking turns at the parapet. The free one dozes on the firing step or shifts miserably about in the bay in an effort to keep circulation up. He welcomes almost anything that moves, or which can be seen or heard. Listening for something which never comes and looking when it is so dark you can’t see, become tiresome. So the sound of a rat scurrying along the duck-boards is likely to be followed with interest. But a pistol-shot in no-man’s-land, or the crash of a grenade, or a muffled confusion of thumpings, oaths and exclamations, like the sound of a pleasant brawl in an alley, brings him to the parapet beside his fellow. They have a ringside seat from which they cannot see. They can only speculate; and it is significant of the attitude of our troops that these speculations were always agreeable; they never doubted the outcome or feared for the safety of our patrols. After a minute or two, quiet is restored and they can only wait to know the outcome – perhaps at stand-to in the morning.

  It was at this stage that I came along, turning from the communication trench to encounter a man at the corner of the first traverse.

  “Can you tell us what all the noise is about, sir?”

  I couldn’t. I had noticed nothing in particular since leaving the quarters of a gun crew just back of the support trench, where I had stopped for fifteen minutes or so.

  “Well, I guess we’ll know in a minute, sir, if they come back the same way. They went out right there along that little gully under the wire.

  I can’t imagine what they did. First, there was a Mills or two, close together; then something that sounded about like a crump, but it wasn’t a shell. We haven’t heard anything since the big explosion, though it wasn’t more than a hundred and twenty-five yards away.”

  We moved up into the bay, near the sentry. I asked if their intelligence officer was out, and was told that he wasn’t. It was the platoon sergeant and three men.

  “Hush,” said the man at the parapet, largely to himself. The other man got quickly to the firing-step, keeping his eyes low in an effort to make near objects stand out against what there was of skylight. The usual ground-fog blurred everything. A man making no sound and keeping flat could have come within fifteen feet of us. I thought that I heard a faint creak of wire and slight rustle or two, but could not have sworn to it thirty seconds afterward. But two minutes later we heard the sounds of movement. Rifles were quietly brought to bear in that direction, and in a voice that was firm enough, but no louder than was thought necessary to reach them, the sentry demanded assurances. I was interested in observing again what I had often noticed in this business of challenging in the front line, where danger is the probability and not mere fiction as it generally is out of the active area. First, there is a reluctance to resort to the formality of challenge and pass-word. Second, there is a tendency on the part of the sentry to wait until he can see well enough to do something about it in case the answer is unsatisfactory. A man doesn’t like to give himself away or look foolish by challenging a noise. He wants to challenge something which he can shoot the next instant. In the present case, the challenge should have come from a sentry on our right. The disturbance was nearer there, though bearing in our direction. I can imagine the man at that point waiting until he could see a lump into which he could put a bullet. This is fine, for quick and definite results; but it is not the way to warn all hands in time and to keep enemy grenades – and a raiding party – out of the trench. A Very light will show things up; but their use is bad policy – Heinie’s policy – particularly when you know one of your own patrols is out. It may bring a burst of machine-gun fire.

  The answer to our challenge was: “Aw, dry up, Robinson; I’ve got a souvenir for you.” And there were moving blurs in the darkness as four men hurried toward the trench. The first one dropped something into the bay as he slid over the parapet.

  “There you are,” he said.

  Now, I have forgotten whether the man’s name was Robinson or not. What I do remember is that the second sentry picked up the object, and we examined – largely by feeling of it – a new version of the old mace, which I hadn’t thought about in this war of hidden enemies and long-range rifles. It looked like a deadly sort of thing for close-up work, but it was not to my liking. I understand they were first found in possession of certain Austrian troops (though these were Germans before us), and that they became fairly numerous later.

  The last man to enter the trench reached for the curiosity.

  “Let’s see that damned thing
a minute,” he said.

  He was the sergeant. I noticed on the lower part of his sleeve the small chevrons which indicated that he had been out from the first. He hefted the mace judicially, then handed it back. As I took it, he looked up at me, doubtless guessing, from the sleeve of my trenchcoat, that I was an officer.

  “What do you think of it, sir?”

  “Pretty crude,” I said.

  “Too damned slow and uncertain in the dark, sir? I’ll keep my Colt; and if I’m too close for that, the knife’s the thing.” Then, turning to the others, he said, “Well, fight it out, fellows; but don’t keep so much noise the sentry can’t hear. Don’t forget your business, Robinson.” He disappeared into the communication trench along which I had come. (He returned presently, accompanied by the platoon commander, rum ration and the order to stand to.)

  The others meanwhile, had been producing other spoils of battle, including several Lugers. Then they remembered there had been a fight. The sentry wanted an explanation of that peculiar explosion; and this added another novel touch, not less interesting than the mace.

  “What the hell were you fellows doing out there?” the sentry asked. “I didn’t know you took any artillery out with you?”

  “Wasn’t that a hell of a noise?” one of them said. “Did you ever hear of potato-mashers going off in a bunch?” he continued addressing any and all of us, seriously. “I don’t know what happened, but it sounded like a whole case of ’em exploded at once. We threw four Mills and the whole damned place blew up.”

  “They must have heard the click of our firing-pins,” said another, who had been excitedly relating disjointed fragments of the battle for some time: “We weren’t twenty feet apart. They walked right under our nose. They didn’t even know what happened.”

  I gathered that he was a comparatively new man. He had been on patrols before, but this was the first time that he had had the experience of fighting in the dark. It was easy to see that trench warfare had suddenly developed a new and very decided interest for him. He was still overcharged with excitement.

  “I don’t know about that,” said the first speaker. “It may be that they saw us and were holding theirs a bit, so we couldn’t throw ’em back. But I didn’t think they saw us. Anyway, they never threw ’em. And they’ll never be able to tell you now; the place was a wreck.”

  “Aw, dammit,” Robinson said, “what happened – if anything?”

  This is, substantially, the manner in which the story was related. Before we go back and get the first of it, we might as well say a word about the plausibility of the theory accounting for the explosion. If you have never seen a potato-masher grenade, I can tell you they are quite a bit like a potato-masher – in general appearance. The whole thing is about sixteen inches long. The business end is a metal shell of thin stuff, about four inches long, filled with T.N.T. A Mills grenade, landing directly on a pile of them and exploding, might well set off the lot. A party such as this German one turned out to be might, naturally enough, place several grenades together while they rested – unaware of any danger – in a shell-hole. A man well loaded with them could, quite possibly, find some of them uncomfortable when he sat down or reclined against the side of a shell-hole, because they are carried hooked to the belt, swinging about the hips like the tails of fur-bearing animals affected by certain savages in their more formal dress. If some were detached, placed together in a clear spot free of wire and water, ready to be picked up again in the dark, we have a mine all fixed. That is about the situation that appeared as the story came out, between one and another of the men, substantially as follows:

  “Well, they sat down in a shell-hole right under our noses for a pow-wow. We couldn’t move; so we had to bomb ’em out if we wanted to get back home by sunrise. I don’t know whether they were waiting for the rest of the army, or just framing a yarn about running into enemy patrols which prevented them from doing their dirty work.”

  “How did you come to let ’em hold a pow-wow under the end of your nose?”

  “That’s what we were there for – to get information,” the wit of the party said. But Robinson was not to be outdone: “I suppose you sent ’em an invitation to come out and talk things over.”

  “Aw, we had been along inside their wire, inspected their sentries and so on, and had come out and were waiting to see what we could see when this troop of squareheads come along. We were in a shell-hole right beside that long gully. They got into this and come along a piece until they were right off against us. Then they stopped and put their heads together. We could see the potato-mashers hanging to their belts. They didn’t seem to know what it was all about. They had come from towards our lines, up on the right, and they couldn’t make up their minds about something. In a minute, the caretaker over the way woke up and sent up a flare, and we could see they needed a shave. When it burned out, they all got into a shell-hole, the one right next to ours. We waited a while. It looked like there was plenty of time. There were eight of ’em. We counted ’em when they were standing up. We had their range exactly. We held our grenades until they were ready to go off in our hands. Then we tossed them over and this mine blew up and we went in and got their pistols. We never would have found them if Heinie hadn’t got busy and sent up that bunch of flares. You needn’t worry about any wounded.”

  That, to my notion, is a fine way for a patrol to perform.

  Before we go too far along with this patrolling, and get too busy with the real fighting, I suppose I better tell you about that flag business I was mixed up in; although there was, really, not very much to it at the time. Anyhow, I’ll go back a bit with my story and tell how it happened.

  Opposite our line (near the right end of our sector, and just to the left of the Voormezeele Road) the Germans had planted some sort of a flag. Its history dated back to the early days of the war; seems like they had taken it from someone else, who, in turn had stolen it from the other fellow in the first place. It was a sort of mix-up, just where the thing did originate, but the idea was – “Here it is, come and get it if you can.” It was a dark blue affair with some sort of diamond-shaped device in the center, and had already resulted in two or three bitter daytime fights. From our Sniper’s Bam position we could see it very plainly, and I had often idly conjectured whether it was worth going after.

  One night, it was the ninth of November, 1915, I had made up my mind to go over by myself and try to locate a new machine-gun emplacement which we were sure Heinie was building right opposite our right flank. From our observations, we were satisfied that he was building something of the kind as we had seen men carrying timbers and other material to that point. It was a dark, dismal, rainy night, like the one when George Paudash stuck his head into the dug-out and announced, “War’s postponed, account of rain.”

  I was not drinking at that time, or, rather I had not been, but I felt the need of a little “Dutch courage,” so, to fortify my nerves a little, I persuaded Sergeant Harvey to give me a couple of good hookers of rum – now maybe it was three – and then slipped over the parapet. It was only about seventy yards across at this point to where I wanted to go. Getting through our wire was easy enough, as we had certain little alleyways left for that purpose, so I soon got through there and then crawled along the side of an old road where a shallow ditch gave quite a bit of concealment. At one point in this ditch there was lying the body of a soldier, and in trying to roll it out of the way, I twisted off one of the feet – that extra shot of rum was very much appreciated right then and there.

  I crawled around that dead man after that and slowly worked my way over to the German wire, but it took a long time and much crawling up and down the wire before I could find, a gap through which I could wriggle. Finally got through though and up to the parapet. Everything was quiet; apparently the Germans were also satisfied to postpone the war until we had better weather. I finally managed to locate their new machine-gun emplacement and in order to mark it clearly, used a page from the old Arms and th
e Man, our old shooting paper which later became The American Rifleman. They had been sending me this magazine right along and I had a copy folded up in my tunic. So after pinning this sheet of paper directly below the loophole where it would be in plain sight from our lines, I started to work my way back.

  It was only then that I thought of that flag. It was about a hundred yards down the German trench from where I then was. “So long as I am inside their wire,” I said to myself, “why not go get the damn thing and take it back?” Our Machine Gun Officer, Lieutenant White, and the Scout Officer had just discussed, in my presence, the matter of going over and getting that flag and whatever compunctions I may have had about spoiling their fun were effectively dispelled by the action of those slugs of rum. So in the end I decided it would be right and proper to slip down there and get it.

  It was simply a matter of moving quietly and cautiously down the outside of the German embankment. There were a lot of tin cans and rubbish to be avoided but in a short time I came up to their flag; it was planted right in the midst of an area of what we called “trip wire;” that is, wire strung on stakes which were driven in almost to the ground, the wire (barbed, of course) sticking up about ankle high. Nasty stuff to get through all right. The flagstaff was firmly embedded in the ground and was further braced by several guy-wires which were anchored in the ground. I managed to unfasten these guy-wires and then pulled the staff out of the ground. Guess I must have overlooked something – some wire connected with an alarm in their trench, or possibly a “set” rifle or two. At any rate, a couple of rifle shots rang out and the bullets came uncomfortably close. I think one of them hit the stick on which the flag was fastened, and I had two pretty severe cuts in my hand which were suspiciously like bullet marks. Some one in the German trench sent up a flare and a machine gun chattered for a while, but I lay still, and, in a few minutes the excitement died down and I started for home. Up to that time I had not really noticed the rum which I had taken before starting out; but, about then, it began to get in its work. “Hell,” says I to myself, “what’s the use fooling around; why not just get up and walk back?” Which I proceeded to do. Believe it or not, as Ripley says, I walked back to our wire as casually as one would walk down the street today. Arriving at the wire, however, I found that I had missed the alley through which I had gone out, so proceeded to bawl out everybody in general for having locked me out. (That rum sure had authority). It was but a few moments until someone slipped over our parapet and showed me the way home. I think it was Lieutenant Bowerbank. I made a perfect ass of myself; I know that; but they were very lenient with me and I went down to where Lieutenant White had his dug-out and gave him the flag with the request that he turn it over to the Colonel. That is the whole story. They even gave me a medal for it later on.