Fighting with French: A Tale of the New Army

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER VII

  IN THE ENEMY'S LINES

  It was during their next spell in the trenches that the Rutlands hadtheir first taste of artillery fire. They were not systematicallybombarded: there was no indication of infantry attack; but at irregularintervals shells from field guns burst over or behind the trenches,doing very little damage, but making the men nervous and irritable.When the ominous tearing sound was heard as a shell flew through theair, the men winced and cowered, and at the explosion they lookedfearfully around, sometimes through a shower of earth, wondering to findthemselves still alive.

  "You'll get used to it by and by," said Captain Adams to the men of hiscompany. "The bark is worse than the bite at present. It's really verykind of the Bosches to let you get accustomed to them gradually."

  After a day or two the bombardment became heavier and more persistent.Two or three batteries were located, either by officers in observationposts or by British airmen, and the British gunners replied to them, notwithout success. But presently the trenches were shelled at night byheavier guns which it seemed impossible to place. The position of theguns appeared to vary. Sometimes the reports came from the south-east,sometimes from the east, sometimes from the north-east; and in generalthey were louder than those of the guns which had been definitelylocated, though this fact, in the opinion of some of the men, was due tothe stillness of the night air. They began to suspect that the Germanswere bringing up more guns to various parts of their line, with the ideaof discouraging any attempt to break through at this point.

  All this made the Rutlands eager to come to grips with the enemy, andthe prolonged inaction tried them sorely. To amuse them during the longweary evenings in the trenches the colonel sent for a number of mouthorgans, and some of the officers read to them in the dug-outs by candlelight. One evening the men of Kennedy's platoon pricked up their earswhen they heard the plaintive notes of a flute from a short distance ontheir left.

  "Who's playing?" they asked.

  Word was passed along the trench that it was Stoneway, who had bought aflute in the village.

  "There's a chap for you!" said Ginger. "All the months we were trainingthe beggar never did a thing, playing or singing. Seems to me he canplay, too. But he didn't ought to play 'Home, sweet Home.' Gives you alump in your throat. Pass the word along for 'Dolly Grey,' will you,mates?"

  Stoneway's unsuspected musical accomplishments raised him in theestimation of his comrades. Every night there were calls for him. Heknew a great number of their favourite tunes, and was always ready toplay them. He would usually begin by running up and down the scale, andpractising tuneless exercises; and sometimes, when these preliminaryflourishes were rather prolonged, the men called to him to "cut it" andcome to the real thing.

  As time went on, the shelling became more frequent. It soon becameclear that the Germans were working from definite knowledge of what wasgoing on behind the British lines. The bombardment often took placewhen parties were relieving one another in the trenches, though this wasalways done in darkness. And one day, when the general commanding thedivision came to the village to inspect the battalion, a particularlybrisk shelling caused a stampede of the people, who had come to regardthemselves as safe. Several cottages were damaged, several civilians aswell as soldiers were killed or wounded, and a heavy shell excavated adeep hole in the garden of Monsieur Obernai's house.

  One morning the trenches were subjected for the first time to the fireof a heavy howitzer. A peculiar low drone, rapidly increasing inloudness, was heard.

  "'Ware Jack Johnson!" cried Captain Adams, and the men crouched in thetrenches, holding their breath.

  The first shell fell some distance behind the lines. They heard aterrific crash, and saw a column of thick smoke. The second shell,about a minute after the first, fell far too short, plunging into theground just in front of the German trenches, and bespattering them withearth. The third exploded in the pond between the lines, and sent awave into the German trench at the side. During the next half hour theground in front of the pond between the opposing forces was pitted withholes made by the heavy shells.

  "There's something wrong with the range-finding or the charges,"remarked Harry.

  "Lucky for us," said Kenneth, brushing from his coat some dust cast upby one of the shells. "The smell is bad enough."

  After half an hour the shelling ceased, and the men wondered whatpurpose the Germans could have had in such an apparently motivelessbombardment. Captain Adams suspected that something was going on in theGerman lines, and remembering the success of Kenneth and Ginger indiscovering the sniper, he decided to send them out that night as alistening patrol. Harry begged to be allowed to go with them.

  "Very well," said the captain. "If you're successful we'll try a wholesection another time. It's a ticklish job, you understand. You'llcrawl over to the German trenches, and listen. You know German, Amory,I believe. You'll do the listening, then; you others keep on the watch.Don't lose your way. I'll take care that the men here don't fire on youas you come back; but if you stray too far to right or left you may findyourselves in hot water."

  "You've no special instructions, sir?" asked Kenneth.

  "No: you must work out the details yourselves. You're not puppets onthe end of a string."

  "Nor yet monkeys on a stick," Ginger murmured when the captain had gone."What did Capting mean by that?"

  "He meant that we're not machine made, as the Germans are, by allaccounts," replied Harry. "I say, I'm jolly glad he let me go too: I'mgetting quite fat with doing nothing."

  They talked over their plans together. Obviously the safest direction inwhich to approach the enemy was towards the large pond. This was anirregular oval in shape, and the Germans had not closely followed itscurve in cutting their trenches, for, if they had done so, it would haveexposed them to enfilading fire from the British. They had carriedtheir advanced trench close up to the border of the pond on each side,then run communicating trenches at right angles from front to rear, andthere dug a straight trench along the breadth of the pond, about ahundred yards in the rear of their first alignment. The wireentanglements in front of the pond, facing the British, were not soelaborate as on the rest of their line, from which the inference wasthat the water was too deep to be waded.

  Just before midnight the three men crept stealthily out of their trench,armed only with their bayonets, crawled under the barbed wire, andwriggled forward towards the pond. It was slow and tiring work, for theground was much cut up by shell fire, and littered with fragments ofshells, empty tins, and other rubbish. There was a certain advantage inthe unevenness, in that it gave cover; but it also contained an elementof danger, because there was a risk of their displacing something asthey proceeded, and they knew that the slightest noise would provoke afusillade from the enemy.

  The moon was not up, but the sky was spangled with stars, by whosefeeble light they were able to distinguish objects on the ground withinten or a dozen paces. They heard the Germans talking and laughing intheir trenches, and here and there a slight radiance marked the placeswhere they had candles or lamps. Foot by foot they crawled on, Kennethleading the way towards the angle of the trenches on the left.

  At last he came to a stop within a few feet of the parapet. The threemen lay flat on the ground. For some moments Kenneth was not able todistinguish anything from the general murmur, but presently he realisedthat one man was reading aloud to the rest from a German newspaper."The blockade of England. Great German success in the North Sea. AnEnglish merchantman of 245 tons laden with bricks was torpedoed in theNorth Sea yesterday, and seriously damaged. The starvation of Englandproceeds satisfactorily."

  "What, do the English eat bricks?" asked one simple soul.

  There was a laugh.

  "They have good teeth! Look at this picture," said another.

  "If the English bricks are harder than our war bread I pity them," saida third. "We ne
edn't cry 'God punish England' any more."

  "Is there any news of sinking a grain ship?" asked a voice.

  "No," replied the reader. "Grain comes in big vessels; I expect theAmericans won't let their ships sail. We shall have America on our sidesoon."

  "Anything to shorten the war," said a man. "I'm tired of it. I want toget home to Anna and the children. The General said it would be allover by Christmas."

  "So it will, by next Christmas. I want to get back to the Savoy: I madeL10 there the Christmas before last."

  "You won't make it again. The English won't have any money after this."

  Signing to the others to remain where they were, Kenneth crept stillfarther forward until he came below the parapet. From the direction ofthe voices he guessed that the trench was unoccupied at the angle; themen who should be there were gathered around the man who had the paper.Cautiously raising himself, he peeped first through a loophole, thenover the crown of the parapet. Here he was able to look along both themain trench and the communicating trench at right angles to it. In theformer, about a dozen yards away, he saw a group of men at the entranceof a dug-out, from which a glow shone forth. It was here, evidently,that the man was reading. He discovered the reason why, apart from theattraction of the newspaper, this part of the trench was empty. Thestars were reflected in water that lay along the bottom. There wasevidently a considerable leakage from the pond. On the right hand thecommunication trench was quite dark. Apparently it was not manned atall.

  Kenneth dropped down again, and remained for a short time listening.The conversation had changed: instead of discussing the war, the Germanswere talking of domestic matters; the ex-waiter of the Savoy Hoteldescribed his little house and garden at Peckham, and told how he hadhappened to meet in London a girl from his own village in Wurtemburg,who was now his wife. Luckily he had saved enough money to keep her andhis children for a year or two.

  Finding that he was not likely to gain any important information,Kenneth crawled back to his companions, and they made their wrigglingway to their trench without being discovered. Captain Adams was alittle disappointed at the meagre result of their reconnaissance. Theonly valuable piece of news was that the communication trench was emptyand the angle flooded.

  Shortly after their return the mysterious gun again opened fire.Several men were wounded by splinters of shells, one so seriously that,in spite of the risk, he had to be carried at once to the rear.

  Next day Kenneth said to Harry:

  "Look here, last night's business has whetted my appetite. Whyshouldn't we get behind the German lines and see if we can locate thatgun? Every day we lose a man or two without being able to retaliate,and it's quite time to put a stop to it."

  "Will the captain let us?"

  "Adams wouldn't object, I think; but I'm afraid we should have to getthe colonel's leave for this. I'll take the first opportunity ofspeaking to the captain. It would be a pity not to make some use of thelittle information we were able to pick up."

  Captain Adams, when the proposal was put to him, at once said, asKenneth had expected, that he must ask the colonel's permission.

  "It's a good deal more dangerous than last night's affair, you see.You'll be shot out of hand if you're caught."

  "But it's worth trying, sir, if we can find that gun. Apart from ourlosses, it's making the men jumpy."

  "That's all very well, but I don't want to lose two useful men. Still,I'll see what the colonel says."

  Later in the day he sent for them.

  "I've seen the colonel," he said. "He was at first dead against it, butI did my best for you. He agrees, provided you come back at once if youfind things too unhealthy: that is to say, you are not to go on if youcome up against any considerable body of the enemy. And keep the matterto yourselves. You'll be supposed to be going out again as a listeningpatrol. I shall tell only Mr. Kennedy and your sergeant. No one elseis to know what has become of you, and they will be on the look-out foryour return."

  He gave them a large-scale map of the district behind the German lines,and recommended them to study it carefully during the day. The railwayseemed likely to be their best landmark. It ran almost due north-east.About four miles away it passed over a canal running north and south.With these two fixed lines and a pocket luminous compass they should notwander far afield in ignorance of their general position. Much nearerto the British trenches, and almost directly in their front, was aruined church, the spire of which, used by the Germans as an observationpost, had been shot away some time before the Rutlands arrived at thefront.

  Their diligence in conning the map aroused the curiosity of theircomrades, but they laughed off enquiries, and gave the map back to thecaptain.

  They decided to start, carrying revolvers, soon after dark, at the timewhen the Germans might be supposed to be taking their evening meal.With some difficulty they managed to slip away unnoticed by the othermen. Moving with even more caution than on the previous night, theycrawled over the ground until they reached the angle of the trenchesabutting on the pond. It was quite dark; the moon, in its thirdquarter, was, as they had learnt from the almanac, not due to rise forsome hours.

  Peering down into the firing trench, they neither saw nor heard any signof occupants in the space immediately below them; but they heard voicesfrom a traverse a few yards away. Then Harry caught sight of three orfour men coming down the communication trench, and from their gaitconcluded that they were bringing food. The two dropped down below theparapet and lay motionless: it was clear that they had started a littletoo early.

  They waited until they heard the men pass back along the communicationtrench; then, after a short interval, rose to carry out the planpreviously agreed upon for descending into the trench. The principaldanger was a fall of loose earth from the parapet or a splash in thewater at the bottom. Kenneth cautiously clambered up the earthwork, layflat on top of the parapet, then backed until his legs hung over inside.To avoid slipping he held Harry's hands, and so lowered himself until hestood on the banquette, which was an inch or two under water. Pressinghimself close against the earthen wall, he steadied Harry in hisdescent: both stood in the trench. They were panting with excitement.

  From their left came the sounds of conversation; the speakers wereinvisible. They were just about to start down the communication trenchwhen they heard footsteps approaching from the farther end. Flatteningthemselves into the angle they waited breathlessly. The corner was sodark that they hoped to escape detection; but their hearts leapt totheir mouths when they saw the flash of an electric torch some distanceaway in the communication trench. Escape was impossible. If the lightwas shown as the men approached the corner discovery was certain.

  "Don't waste the light," Kenneth heard one of the men say. "We arerunning short of batteries. You can see the turn by looking up. Watchthe stars."

  The light was switched off. Holding their breath the Englishmen waited.Two Germans drew nearer, splashed through the water, and turned into thefiring trench. As soon as they had disappeared, Kenneth and Harrystarted to go down the communication trench, stepping very slowlythrough the water, and halting every now and again to listen. Presentlythey were startled by hearing voices behind them. The Germansapparently were returning. To retreat now was impossible. Whateverdanger might lie ahead, they must go on.

  By this time they had quitted the water. Seemingly they had passedbeyond the pond. But the bottom of the trench was sticky with mud;walking was difficult. And the men behind were gaining on them.Suddenly they came to a trench at right angles--no doubt the trench atthe rear of the pond. Scarcely daring to look along it, they wentstraight on.

  "Anything doing?" asked a voice close by.

  "All's quiet," replied Kenneth in German.

  Another hundred yards brought them to a third trench. It appeared to beunoccupied. After listening intently for a few moments they decided totrust their luck down this trench rather than continue along thecommunication trench, in which th
ey could still hear the footsteps andvoices of the men following them. Others might be coming towards them.Striking to the left, they went along the trench for a few yards; then,coming upon another communication trench at right angles, they stoppedto consult in murmurs. They decided that the trenches were moredangerous than the open ground. Retracing their steps for some littledistance, they waited a moment or two. All was silent. Cautiously theyclambered up and lay, breathing hard, upon the grass.

  A little ahead of them was the ruined church standing black and gaunt inthe starlight.

  "We go past that," whispered Kenneth, "then strike off to thenorth-east. We'll try that direction first, at any rate. Most of theshots appear to come from there."

  "About how far away?"

  "Two or three miles, I think."

  "I say----"

  "Well?"

  "Oh nothing!--only I feel sort of empty inside."