A Rifleman Went to War

by Herbert W. McBride

  That night we saw the Yorkshiremen sewing squares of white cloth on the backs of their tunics. It was the first time we had seen any such thing as “battle-colors.” Thereafter, they were universally used – but sewn on the sleeve, at the shoulder. The same practice was followed by the U.S. troops, when they came in – that is, the divisional insignia. With the Canadians, the system was such that you could tell, at a glance, not only the division, but the battalion to which the soldier belonged.

  It seems a pity that the expression: “Over the Top” has been so cheapened – yes, desecrated – by thoughtless or ignorant civilians. To the soldier it is an event of the most tremendous meaning: the very apotheosis of war. To endure the tense hour of waiting the “zero” and then, in the gray dawn and amid the thunderbolts of steel and the sleet of bullets, to climb up and advance – well, it requires something more than the willingness to buy a Liberty bond or subscribe to a Community Chest fund.

  The battle opened with the exploding of the six great mines simultaneously. It was a magnificent spectacle for those of us who were in position to view it. To the enemy it must have been something beyond any descriptive effort, as the mines were laid in a line that cut off a large comer or salient of their line and took in their first and second lines for a distance of some six hundred yards. Whatever force they had in those trenches was simply annihilated.

  The Fusiliers and Yorks promptly advanced to a point beyond the craters and started vigorously to work to consolidate the position by reversing parts of the German third line trench and connecting it up with our original front line. They made a brave effort but were unable to complete the work under the overwhelming concentration of artillery. All during that day and for many succeeding days, attacks and counterattacks followed one another, continuously.

  Any attempt to relate, chronologically, the progress of the battle, would be futile. It was the same thing, over and over with first one side and then the other holding the dominating positions.

  I was in charge of a number of machine guns which had been brought up to support the advance. Our job was to lay a barrage which would harass and impede the progress of reinforcements which the enemy would send up, and in order to do this effectively it was necessary to mount the guns on the parapet with little or no protection, as all our regular, permanent, gun emplacements were designed for defense only, and commanded nothing beyond the no-man’s-land between the opposing front line trenches. It was all indirect fire, of course, but I had worked out the firing data the previous night, and we, later, had the testimony of prisoners to the effect that the machine gun barrage was decidedly efficient – far worse, they said, than that of our artillery.

  This is not difficult to understand – that is, if one has a general knowledge of the methods of artillery fire. When a barrage starts, if it does not get you right then, you can nearly always tell just what sort of an operation they are intending. All artillery work, just the same as other tactical operations, has been very carefully figured out beforehand. A certain area of enemy territory is to be swept by each battery. The rate of fire has been calculated, so as to insure an adequate ammunition supply. They, necessarily, work on a very rigid schedule and the first few moves of the game give the enemy at least an inkling as to the particular “gambit” they are working on.

  The very thoroughness and perfection of an artillery barrage often defeats itself. That was one thing in which the Germans were exceptionally good. They were so methodical that we could, and often did, take large bodies of men through their barrages with small loss. In a way, it supports the theory, long ago propounded by one of our, (U.S.), military experts, that it is better to have a force of more or less inexpert shooters than to have them all “Expert Riflemen”. The idea, of course, being that there would be such a wide dispersion of fire that a certain number of the enemy would be hit by the wide shots.

  A machine gun barrage is different, in a way. While the field and rate of fire is just as carefully calculated, the guns fire so rapidly and, if properly coordinated, so continuously, on every yard of enemy line that there is no chance to “jump through a hole,” as we used to say.

  Many additional trench mortars had been brought up, ranging all the way from Stokes guns to one that fired a “drumstick” affair with a sixty-pound round shell on its business end. The firing of the mines was our signal to open up; also for our artillery, and for several minutes all the noise was either on or from our side. But only for a few minutes. The rapidity with which the enemy got into action indicated that he was expecting something to happen and the devilish accuracy of his fire was a distinct revelation to us. His shells swept the tops of our parapets like a broom. Two guns were dismounted almost at the first fire. Men were killed all about us. I made a short trip of some fifty yards or so, to get a spare barrel, and was knocked down, time after time, and partially buried by shells that just did miss me. This lasted for about an hour, by which time the enemy had found out just where the main attack was directed and concentrated most of their fire on that area, so we had a chance to get reorganized. Of course, we were still subjected to a continuous shelling, but not so severe as at first. We lost guns and men every day from that time on, but managed to keep up a pretty effective fire at that.

  Soon after daylight, while standing beside one of my guns which was temporarily out of action, I saw a column of enemy infantry hurrying across an open space behind their lines, and, taking a rifle, opened up on them. They were less than two hundred yards away but the noise was so deafening that they never did discover where the bullets were coming from. For a long time, possibly thirty minutes, I had the pleasure of directing deliberate, aimed fire at those fellows. I used several rifles – men in the trench loading and passing them up to me. Many times during the next few weeks, I had chances to get in a few shots in the same manner and others of our crowd had the same experience. They were all keen riflemen and never overlooked such opportunities.

  Days and nights merged, one into another. All track of time was lost. For fourteen days I was never out of that inferno, but I never knew how long it was until I got out and checked up on the calendar. In the meantime, the Northumbrian Division had been relieved by a Scottish Division. Well do I remember when they came in.

  It was “hell to tell the Captain,” that morning. For many days we had endured such a hurricane of shells as should, theoretically, have annihilated any force. Our parapets were blown down and dead and wounded were lying all around. The Border Regiment and the Durham Light Infantry, who were on our right and not subjected to the heavy shelling, had sent in many volunteer stretcher-bearers and they worked heroically, but the casualties mounted so fast that, even with their help, it was impossible to evacuate all the wounded. As to the dead, it was out of the question to even think of moving them, so we did the best we could – laid them up, out of the way, on firing step or parados – anywhere so we did not have to step on them. Hell? Yes, Ma’am: it was all that and then some.

  The Fusiliers and the Yorks had taken their dose and were whittled down to a point where lieutenants were commanding battalions and sergeants commanding companies. To relieve them these Scots were sent in. They were Gordons and Royal Scots, mostly new, replacement men who had never before been under fire and here they sent them into one of the nastiest and bitterest fights ever waged on the Western Front. They were “braw laddies,” lank and lean but tall and strong; fresh from the heather of their native land, uncertain but willing, they were going to meet death half-way – and they knew it.

  We had been in the fight so long that it was no longer a novelty, but to those youngsters, it must have seemed like something worse than Dante ever dreamed about. But, they came in; and, wonder of wonders, their pipers came with them. That was the first time I ever heard the bagpipes in battle. We had a pipe-band in our battalion and a good one, too, but, during the time we were simply holding the line, the pipers and all the other bandsmen served as stretcher-bearers and first-aid men – getting the wounded
out and back to the dressing stations which were anywhere from a mile to three miles in the rear. But now we learned (we saw the same thing several times thereafter), that when the Scots go into battle, or over the top, in an offensive, their pipers go along, or, at least the Pipe Major and perhaps, another one or two, to “play them in.”

  Man! Man! if you have never seen it, you can never get the thrill. Marching along as though on parade, never missing a note or a step, skirling those wild, heartrending airs that date back to the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie, they march into battle as though no such things as bullets or shells existed.

  Well, here they came, Gordons ahead – a few old timers with ribbons that dated back to Kandahar – and the youngsters following. They had come through a tough barrage and lost quite a lot of men and the recruits were looking pretty white. I happened to be at the mouth of the communication trench when they arrived, and stood by to watch them. Six generations have passed since my ancestors came from Scotland but I take no shame in telling you that, as I watched those boys walk into that fight, scared though they were, with their chins up and their rifles ready – and the pipers playing “The Cock o’ the North,” which was our own Regimental air, I cried like a baby; aye, cried; while, all the time I was calling out to them, “Go to it, lads, it’s a good fight; go in and do your best.” The old timers gave me a wave of the hand and the younkers seemed to perk up a bit. I followed along, as we had some half-dozen machine guns up where they were going and I was due there, anyway. The pipers changed to “The March of Gordon’s Own” but it was all the same to me. I was ready and eager, right then, to march to hell and beyond, behind that music. (?) Is it music, or just a noise? You will never prove it by me, but I do know that whenever I hear it I want to go out and kill somebody.

  They did not last long, those Scots. No one lasted very long in that inferno, excepting a few ornery Emma Gees who were too tough to die just yet. But they performed gloriously during the time they were there. I saw a company of them one day engage in hand-to-hand combat with a greatly superior (numerically) force of Germans. It was a bayonet fight, pure and simple, and when it was ended, there was not a living German on the field, and no prisoners were taken. Strong, agile, long-legged – the slower, calculating Boche had no chance against them. As I watched, from my vantage point on the parapet, unable to fire because of the way they were mixed up in the melee, I could not but think of the stories I had read of Bannockburn, Culloden and many other bloody battles that figure largely in Scottish history. I imagined the claymore in place of the modern bayonet; and, though I could hear nothing amid the continuous crash of shells, I fancied that they were shouting the old Gaelic battle cries.

  But the shells got them eventually, as they got everybody who stayed too long in one place. They melted away. That six-hundred-yard bit of ground claimed more than ten thousand lives during that week, but, as the French were wont to say: “Que voulez vou? c’est le guerre.”

  After the Scots had had their innings, the debatable ground was turned over to the Second Canadian Division and from that time on we had our own private war. Alternating by brigades, we took and re-took the various craters and lost them. We could get in all right, but could not stay there long enough to consolidate the positions effectively against the heavy enemy artillery fire. Soon the whole terrain where the front lines had been and for nearly a half-mile behind them became a desolate waste. No trenches, no roads, no trees – nothing but a barren stretch of muddy ground, so thickly pock-marked with shell-holes that they were interlocked over the whole area. Our “line” was merely an irregular series of detached posts, established in shell holes. From these points, every night some detachments would advance and gain a foothold in or near some one of the craters. Determined bombing attacks more than once secured possession of all of them but the ensuing artillery fire could not be withstood by flesh and blood and eventually we were forced to rebuild our front line in approximately the same location it had occupied before the commencement of the fight.

  Just to try and give you an idea of the game as we played it during that time, I’ll tell you a little story. It might be entitled “All in the day’s Work,” for that was what it was.

  Six of us, sitting in a shell-hole one night waiting for something to happen. Heinie was plastering us, pretty regularly, with crumps and whiz-bangs, so we dug in as deep as the water would permit and hoped he would not drop one right on top of us. The mud was so deep that even a five-point-nine H.E. could burst within twenty feet without doing any more damage than to add a little more to our coating of the nasty, stinking soil of Flanders.

  It was the usual machine-gun crew, with the difference that, instead of being commanded by a “lance-jack,” as was customary, we had a sergeant with us. Either due to the importance of the position or, perhaps, just because he wanted a little action, the sergeant had come along. As we had lost one man earlier in the day, and had had no chance to get a replacement, the unit remained at its normal strength. All hands had been through considerable fighting and had settled down to the game with the fatalistic assurance of veterans.

  No one was saying much, but pretty soon the sergeant sat up and listened, then said, “you fellows notice anything?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he continued, “a little while ago all those shells were dropping right around here and now they are going back to about where our front line used to be. You know what that means. Better dig yourselves out of that muck and get ready for business. If Fritz don’t pay us a call right soon, I’ll buy the beer for the crowd – if we ever get where there is any beer.”

  All hands knew exactly what to expect, so no more words were necessary. We quickly pulled the protecting sand-bags and rubber sheet off the gun and the Kid gave her a couple of flips, just to make sure she was working all right, and Dan got up where he could see over the edge of the hole. He hadn’t been there long when he saw something moving, out in front, so he pulled the sergeant up and pointed. He (the sergeant) just took one look, then: “Holy Moses, here comes the whole German Army. Get that damn gun up here, where we can do something.” And then he grabbed the gun and yanked it up onto a level spot, the others helping by steadying the legs of the tripod and the ammunition box. By that time, we could see a lot of men coming out over the parapet of the crater, not more than fifty yards away. They were outlined against the sky and were in some sort of column formation – probably to get through a gap in the tangled wire. It was a sure thing they did not know we were there, as we had come out since dark. It was impossible to see the sights of the gun, but the sergeant just leveled her up, loosened the traversing gear and cut loose with a burst of fifteen or twenty shots and then kept up a steady gait, burst – pause – burst – pause – swinging back and forth all the time, so as not to slight anyone.

  For a spell, maybe half a minute nothing happened. Then a few hand grenades burst just in front – too short to reach us. “Get in on this, you fellows”, shouted the sergeant, “hand ’em back a few of Mr. Mills’ specials.” So, we heaved over one or two apiece and that held ’em. Just then, someone on our side sent up a flare which sailed over our heads and dropped smack in the crater. That was sure a sign of bad luck for the Dutchmen as it showed us every foot of their parapet, like a silhouette cut out of black paper. “Now, your rifles, boys and see if you can pick ’em off as they try to go home,” sang out the sergeant, all the time searching out the dark shadows at the foot of the embankment with M.G. bullets.

  Well, we got most of them, one way and another. Of course, you can’t see to do much aiming at night but, if a man is thoroughly familiar with the feel of his rifle, as we were, it is possible to do considerable execution, even in the dark. Some of them may have got back, but most of them stayed – for keeps. Then there was nothing for us to do but wait for the next move.

  We did not have very long to wait, at that. First thing we knew, here came the whiz-bangs, popping and flashing all around us, like a bunch of fire-crackers. Simpson and Black Dan
both got splinters that made them swear and I guess we all had a few scratches.

  What to do? What to do? That was what all hands were wondering, but it was the sergeant, as usual and proper, who took charge and decided the matter. “Come on, boys,” he says and, taking the gun off the tripod, started straight toward Germany; and we all followed, carrying and dragging the rest of the paraphernalia.

  We walked, crawled and stumbled, right up under the lee of the parapet of the crater. A lot of Germans were scattered around there, some dead and some wounded. One of the latter let out a yell and started to crawl up the bank but someone jumped up and cracked him over the head with a gun barrel and he rolled back again. None of the others appeared to be able to do any damage, so we left them alone for the time.

  Well, there were we, safe enough for the moment, but the sergeant was doing some heavy thinking. It was something like this; “If we just stay here and wait, it won’t be long until Fritz brings up a bunch of supports and bombs hell out of us. On the other hand, the chances are that those fellows in the crater are pretty much demoralized right now and it ought to be easy to stampede them clean out of the place. Yep, that’s the dope.” Turning to the bunch and getting their heads close enough so that his words could be understood above the din of the bombardment, he shouted, “It’s up to us to get into that crater. How many grenades you fellows got left in your pockets?” A canvass revealed six, in all. “Hum, not enough, better get a few off those Dutchmen.” So we searched around and found quite a lot of the potato-mashers. We all knew how they worked, having used them on previous occasions. We got about a dozen of them, altogether. By this time Simpson was pretty groggy from a bad cut on the head (that was before we had tin hats) and Dan McGuire was having a lot of trouble, stopping the bleeding from a nasty, slashing cut in his side, made by a splinter of shell. Otherwise we were unhurt and those two said they could carry on for a while longer.