It got so that it was considered a point of honor for each battalion to put on a show and get a prisoner or two during every tour of duty in the front line. Usually these were small affairs – perhaps a platoon doing the work – and many a young subaltern earned his Military Cross by leading such a venture.
This is what made trench warfare really war – in between the bigger scraps. I could better appreciate the worth of it during my last few weeks, when I was back a bit with my special duties, and could sort of look on things from the outside. I recall another incident in this same sector that happened just before the big raid which netted the 101 prisoners for the Fourth Brigade. This sector was just to the left of that front and the raid was a small one, such as I have described elsewhere and, though every raid was different and had interesting features of its own, I don’t suppose I should go on relating them indefinitely just because they happened to interest me. So I will only mention this one to record the appearance of another gadget of Heinie’s. This was a small pencil-flashlight to be attached to the rifle barrel, evidently designed to enable Fritz to get his man in the dark. He tried it on one of our raiding party, but like many innovations, had not gotten thoroughly acquainted with it and was too slow with the trigger. Our man simply sat down in the bottom of the trench, and from that position used his Colt – and brought back the flashlighted rifle to show us.
There was not much the German could do to protect himself against our raids. We got the upper hand and kept it. In war, as in most other things, nothing succeeds like success. Our fellows were confident while the Germans just got into the habit of expecting to be taken, which made taking them a comparatively easy matter.
And it didn’t get Heinie anything when he attempted to take the offensive in the matter. Along with his box-barrage affairs he tried some of our methods, amongst which was that one of silent raids, where no advance shooting is indulged in, but the raiding party merely crawls over stealthily until against the parapet, heaves over his grenades and then tries to follow up in the confusion; bombing the dugouts and grabbing off what sentries and men he can. I never knew anyone to fall a victim to these raids; but one of them took place with the battalion I was working with just before leaving the front. There then happened a most interesting occurrence, so I suppose you will have to suffer the old man’s wandering about on a new topic until I tell all about this incident.
This German raiding party comprised but eight Heinies and they got almost through our wire before being discovered by the sentry. That is the main defense against trench raids of this sort, just have sentries which keep awake and on their feet, doing what they should be doing – watching. This sentry immediately spread the alarm. Other sentries looked about sharp and promptly vacated the bays where the potato-mashers started falling. Some of them mounted the parapet just as soon as the Germans got into the trench, and went running along toward what seemed to be the center of the excitement. This center was a deep dugout, the exact position of which the Germans probably knew quite well, since it had been built some months before.
The men in that main dugout heard the alarm and were already on their way out by the time those Germans got into that bay. It happened that the company sergeant-major (first sergeant) was in that dugout at the time, having come up to see the platoon sergeant about something, and he was the first man out and into the main trench, where he ran head-on into three Heinies coming along pulling the strings and heaving their potato-mashers.
Now, often since the war, I have been with folks who were examining one of those Very pistols and invariably somebody in the crowd commences to wonder what the result would be if you shot a man with one of those hand cannons. Well, I can tell them, because I saw a German who was shot with one and it happened during this very incident I am now describing. The sergeant-major had a Very pistol stuck in his belt when the alarm was sounded, so he drew it as he came out of the dugout and promptly shot the first Heinie in the face with it at a range of about three feet. The slug, or canister, or whatever is in one of those shells, caught this first man in the temple, knocked him off his feet, and then from the bottom of the trench provided a fine light which made good shooting for the men up on top the parapet. They promptly shot down both the other two Germans, killing one and wounding the other. The remaining five of the raiding party never got out of the bay they landed in, three being killed there and the other two captured. That Dutchman who caught the Very shell had the entire side of his head taken off.
And such was about the usual outcome of the affair when Heinie tried to emulate our tactics in this trench raiding business. The best defense against such small raids is to keep alert, give the alarm promptly and then everyone get out of the dugouts and front trench and go for the raiders. The open is really the safest place of any, because the enemy will not be able to shoot up the exact spot being raided for fear of killing his own men. So much for defense against such trench raids.
Chapter 9. Sighting Shots
THAT winter of 1915-1916 was a wet one. It rained almost every day and seldom got cold enough to freeze, although the nights were always cool enough to cause keen discomfort. We had thin ice a few times and a couple of light snowstorms. The water and liquid mud in our trenches was anywhere from ankle deep to waist deep. We lived like muskrats. Looking at it from this range, I don’t see how any human beings could have survived it, but the amazing fact is that we not only did survive but that there was very little illness of any character and, so far as my personal knowledge goes, not a single case of either rheumatism or pneumonia.
How did the others take it? Well, I suppose about the same as I did. They were intensely patriotic: those Canadians. Much more so than the average man I found in the United States Army later on. The Americans did not seem to have the feeling that they were fighting, literally, for the homeland. It was more of a gesture of recognition of the assistance given us in the Revolutionary War by the French, and, with the volunteer soldiers, was taken more as a lark and in the spirit of adventure than as a patriotic duty. But WE, the Canadians (I emphasize that we, because, as long as I was in the Canadian service, I was, heart and soul, a Canadian, myself) realized that it was for Britain we were fighting – the Motherland. We took the game seriously, realizing, generally, that mud was a part of it, and not chargeable to red tape or the Brass Hats, who had done about the best they could by providing suitable clothing. Further, we felt that they were actually concerned as to our welfare.
All this time, we were learning more about war and were rapidly becoming what might be called “real soldiers”. You know, it takes a long time to learn that game. Of course, a great many of those best qualified, physically and mentally, never do learn it. As things go in modem warfare, many a man is killed before he ever gets within miles of the enemy. What with shells ranging over all the country for ten miles or so behind the lines, especially on the roads, a lot of them never get into it at all – just like the ambulance and transport drivers and the artillery and some of the staff officers. They get bumped off and, I suppose they are entitled to all the honor we can render them, but it does seem a pity that they never even had a chance to see what it is all about. That is something that can only be learned at the front. Now, I know, a lot of mighty good men and good soldiers will rear up on their hind legs and take exception to that remark. They, as well as the artillery, will claim that they were “at the front”. Well; all I got to say is, “there is only one actual front in war and that is when there is not another damn man between you and the enemy.” The F.O.Os (forward observing officers) of the artillery and their accompanying signallers see it from time to time and it has been recorded that some staff officers have, during quiet times, made the rounds of the front lines but, for the most part, their duties keep them farther back. Right here, I want to mention one staff officer who appeared to take delight in coming up and he is no other than H.R.H. The Prince of Wales – or Captain Windsor, as he was then known. That boy sure wanted to see it all.
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bsp; Now, this will probably sound like a fool statement but I am willing to abide the consequences. “No soldier is really fit to go into a battle until after he has been through one.” Figure it out for yourself.
During peace times soldiers can be trained for war. To the layman and, even the inexperienced soldier himself, this may be considered all that is necessary to fit him for battle. But, I hope to show you, such is not the case at all. The training for war; which is the training which all soldiers receive, is to instruct them in personal hygiene, (so that they may keep in good physical condition); close and open order drills; the use of and care for the weapons with which they are armed, and discipline, which, in its broadest sense, covers all the other requirements.
All these things they can learn in any training camp. But the experience necessary to make them fit for battle is of a much more serious nature. As can readily be realized, this can come only in battle itself. It is out of the question to take men through a barrage of artillery and machine gun fire (which is sure to kill and wound some of them) in any instruction camp. The writer, fresh from nearly two years of actual combat and while in command of a Battalion of Machine Gunners of the Thirty-eighth Division, at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, suggested this thing to the General in command of the Division, in 1917, and was, thereafter called crazy. “Well,” says I “a lot of them are due to get theirs anyway, the minute they get into action, so why not let the rest learn something about the game before they get in so deep that the stretcher-bearers won’t find them for two or three days.”
But as I said, the idea was promptly vetoed, so all I could do was to try and tell the thousand or so men under me that they could expect such and so and let it go at that.
The training for battle might be called a post graduate course and no man can claim a diploma in this course until he has actually participated, as a combatant, in at least one major engagement. Nothing that can be written or spoken – no words – can express or bring a realization of the actual experience. The usual training for war is but the foundation – the real game must be learned by playing it.
A man may know all the text-books by heart and be able to repeat them forward and backward, may be an expert rifleman and all that, but it is only in actual combat that he can really find himself. In the old days, when men marched into battle shoulder to shoulder and won or lost by virtue of mass formations, this was not so essential, but in this Year of our Lord, after the show starts, it is pretty much an individual and personal matter, with each soldier working out his own salvation as best he can, for the good of the cause and the preservation of his own hide.
The rifleman finds a very different state of affairs than that to which he was accustomed on the range. Tramping, creeping or crawling over the hellish desolation which is a modern battlefield, amid the crash of bursting shells and the wild screams of the ricochetting fragments, the crack and whistle of bullets, amid smoke and dust – yes, it is different. Here he must learn to take advantage of all available cover while, at the same time, keeping up with the advance; he must learn to seek out individual targets and deliberately fire at them and not just shoot in the general direction of the enemy. The machine guns and automatic rifles will be doing plenty of that. If the rifleman is to be retained, at all, in the composition of the armies of the future, it will be only by virtue of the fact that he can and will, conscientiously and ably deliver an accurate and effective fire upon single, individual targets.
It is too much to expect that any human being, when first exposed to such an ordeal, can properly control himself and settle down to anything approaching clear-headed, logical thinking. When a man has to crawl over the top of a parapet where the bullets are ripping the tops of the sandbags and the whiz-bang shells are zipping past his head and bursting all around, he is apt to forget a lot of things he learned in the training camp. His only thought is that he is bound to get his the minute he sticks his head over the top. After a few such performances, if he survives, he knows quite well that there is quite a lot of space between the bullets and shells and he has at least an even chance to miss them.
When that time comes, he is eligible to the designation of a “trained” soldier – a Veteran. (It is my humble contention that no soldier deserves the honorable title of Veteran unless he has, personally, gone through at least one real fight as an actual combatant.)
The day before Christmas 1915, just after noon, I was lounging in our gun position at S-P-7 (Strong Point No. 7). It was one of the redoubts of our support line. Only about four hundred yards behind our front line and less than five hundred from the enemy line, it was established on a small eminence under cover of the trees at the edge of the Bois Carré. From there, screened by the overhanging branches of the trees, I could see, not only a large portion of our own line, but a lot of the enemy territory. Directly in front of my position was a road which ran from Ypres to Wyschaette. At the point where this road crossed our front line, we had a machine gun station which now – we being in support – was occupied by the Twentieth Battalion M.G. Section. To my right front was a field of chicory, through which one of our communication trenches ran. In this field, about one hundred yards behind our line, one of our trench-mortar batteries had just completed a pit in which they had established one of their mortars. Evidently the enemy had located this emplacement, for they were now engaged in dropping howitzer shells of about five-inch calibre all around it and I was idly watching and wondering when they would make a direct hit. There were no men there as they only used the weapon at night. Now, the path of these shells took them right over the machine gun emplacement in the front line and the gun crew there were just having their noon meal when one of the shells fell short and dropped among them, killing and wounding several when it burst.
One of the wounded was in such a serious state that it was imperative that he be taken back to a dressing station at once if his life were to be saved. Chicory trench was impassable, being nearly filled with mud. An officer called for volunteers to carry the wounded man out, down the road, which would expose them to the plain view of the enemy. We had had several men killed on that road and knew that there was a good sniper hidden in the woods over yonder but the officer reasoned that, as it was Christmas eve, it was hardly likely that any person would fire upon unarmed stretcher-bearers. But he reckoned without understanding the cold-blooded and utterly inhuman instincts of that German. When they came down the road, two men carrying the stretcher and the officer accompanying them (he would not ask men to take a chance he was not willing to share with them), I watched them carefully, dreading the very thing that actually happened. They had no sooner entered the exposed stretch of road when a bullet struck one of the bearers and, before the others could take cover, the second one was down. A third shot struck the officer, who was trying to assist the wounded man.
From my position, I could see each bullet strike in the water alongside the road and thus get a very accurate line on the position of the sniper. From the sharp angle of fall – the bullets striking within fifty feet of the men, after passing through their bodies, it was a certainty that the sniper was up in one of the trees just behind the enemy front line. I had been trying for a month, to locate that fellow, and, by tracing back the line from the strike of some of his bullets, had him spotted within a very limited area. Now I was sure of it. A certain thickly limbed tree, the top of which had been severed by a shell and, in falling, had lodged in such a manner as to form a dense mass of tangled branches some twenty-five or thirty feet up. That was the place, without a doubt.
Now this S-P-7 redoubt was a secret place. Concealed, as it was, by the trees, it had never been discovered by the enemy – or, at least, we had reason to think so, as it had never been shelled. In addition to the machine-gun crew, a platoon of infantry and a signallers’ station were located there, all comfortably housed in real dugouts in the reverse side of the hill. Very strict orders had been issued that there was to be no firing whatever from that position excepting in case of
an attack. Of course I knew all about that – but that wasn’t the first time I had disobeyed orders, nor the last, for that matter.
Without hesitation, I swung the gun around and commenced to pepper that tree-top, at the same time sending one of my men to call our battery (the 16th) to get busy. Down at the front line, the Emma Gees of the Twentieth seemed to get the idea, for they promptly opened up with all their guns and when, within a very few minutes, the artillery joined in, well, it sounded like a real battle – a one sided one, however, as there was no return fire. One of our men, watching with glasses, said he saw a man fall from the tree. I cannot vouch for that but I do know that, from that day on, we had no further trouble with that particular sniper and I have always fondly cherished the hope that we did actually get him.
That night I accepted the invitation of the Forward Observing Officer of one of our batteries to have Christmas Dinner with him back at the Cafe de Dickebusch Etang. There were a few places, close behind our lines and well within the shelling area where native civilians still held on and catered to the appetites of the soldiers. One such was this place – on the shore of Dickebusch lake. It had evidently been a prominent as well as exclusive road-house before the war. Now, it was literally surrounded by artillery emplacements, probably half-a-dozen batteries having taken advantage of the concealment offered by Ridgewood immediately in front, to establish their guns there and many of the artillery officers were quartered in the cafe itself.
We slipped out of the front line soon after dark and, within an hour, were at the rendezvous. His battery, it seemed, had arranged for a big feed. Beside myself, there were several other guests, officers of the different units along that immediate front. I was the only enlisted man (a sergeant) but the captains and majors treated me like an equal – and the lieutenants had, perforce, to do the same. That is one thing about front line work, rank don’t mean a thing – if you play the game and show a little initiative.
A Rifleman Went to War Page 15