by Will R Bird
Mcintyre took it all in good part. Then turned us about and offered five francs to anyone who could keep up with him on the way back. I had done considerable running in Canada, it was in the family, Steve having a cup for the eighteen-and-under hundred-yard championship of the Maritimes, and I trimmed the officer without trying extra hard. Barron also got in ahead of him, and Mcintyre did not know what to say. In a day or so the before-breakfast foolishness was eliminated. It was announced that a prize would be given for the best-drilled platoon in the brigade, and at once Mcintyre set to work. He took sole charge and in a short time we were like a well-oiled machine, and really took a pleasure in the work. Any soldier must like to belong to a smart unit. We met the other platoons and defeated them easily, one by one, until we came to the finals for the battalion championship. Tommy heard a rumour that morning to the effect that some were getting a day’s leave, and that the rest of the company was being taken to a good show in Auchel. That decided the issue. When we took the field we purposely made a few mistakes, and lost our chance. Mcintyre, we expected, would be raging. Instead he stood and gazed at us, then grinned. “You blighters let me down,” he said. “You could beat those others without trying, but, I’m glad you did. I want to have a good time myself.”
No officer ever met a difficult situation more diplomatically, whether he was sincere or not.
Melville got acquainted with the madame next door and often milked her cow and did other chores. He was like a big kid, always carrying on. One night Hale went to help him and as they teased madame, Johnson thought they were going too far. He was rather odd, a quiet lad, very fair-skinned, and resented anything said about the French. There were words, then blows. He and Hale were in a wild scrap, and Hale knocked him out. Madame explained volubly that the men were not doing any harm, but really helping her.
Two more “originals” came to the company – Captain Grafftey, who took command, and Clark, a sergeant. Davies was now sergeant-major, though the original S.M. was still with us. He had the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the Military Medal, and was to go to the Depot as an instructor. We marched to Cite St. Pierre and did a short trip in at Hill 70. There had been hard fighting there by the Canadians but our share was nil. Beyond enduring the terrible stench from unburied bodies in August heat, and considerable shelling, there was little to record. A second trip at Fosse 10 was but a routine tour. That sector was a zigzag warren of old trenches and enormous slag heaps, rusting wire and rotting sandbags, The slag heaps dominated, grim, shell-pounded hillocks, sombre sentries in sombre landscape.
CHAPTER IV
Passchendale
We went to the trenches in front of Mericourt and there “A” Company captured two German patrols in a few hours. The battalion put out a party in front to cover the relief of posts. It was in charge of Izzy, and his Lewis gunner was one of our old draft, Leslie, a big six-footer, whose helper was Jackson, another of our men and just as big. They saw the Germans coming toward them, a small patrol, and lay low until they were close, when Leslie rose with his gun ready. There was no fighting, the Huns surrendered. When they got the prisoners to the trench they questioned them and found that a second patrol was expected. Izzy took his men out again and bagged the second lot, led by a lance-corporal. For such good work Izzy received the Military Cross and Leslie and Jackson got the Military Medal.
Mcintyre told me that I was to go with him on a patrol and we went far over toward the German lines, remaining out three hours. I think he wanted to get a little glory for himself, and we certainly tried to find a few goose-steppers. Melville was always with me. He was a splendid scout, cool as ice, ready for anything, and could move like a great cat. War was a game wherein those trained were often the most like novices. We had a newcomer who had specialized on scouting and could read a compass like a sailor, yet he was useless, bewildered in no man’s land, while Melville could go anywhere with an uncanny sense of direction.
We went out a second night and I got acquainted with “the Professor.” He was a quiet-voiced man, sandy-haired, unnoticed in the platoon, but had held an important position in a college. We crawled out slowly, then separated in three parties of four each. There had been a magnificent sunset, a flood of exquisite colouring, opals, pinks and crimsons, and I had remarked about it in the Professor’s hearing. He crawled beside me as we took up a position where we were to remain for an hour, hoping to trap a patrol, and shivered each time the flares went up. The Hun was having a little fun all by himself, sending up red and green lights as a change from the regular white ones. The red glows made some small pools of water look like big blots of blood, and the green lights gave everything a ghastly, corpse-like sheen. At one spot we disturbed a bunch of rats, and they rustled through the grass and over old rubbish, their snaky tails dragging after them. Their little eyes were malevolent as they watched us and one shuddered when he remembered what they were seeking.
“Are you nervous?” I whispered to the Professor, and as we lay in our position he seemed glad to talk.
“I’m really so frightened that I could jump up and bolt like a wild thing,” he said. “How on earth do you chaps stand it?” Melville and Tommy were on the other side of him.
I tried to convince him that it was only the nervousness of the first night that gripped him, but he argued against me, and, to my surprise, Tommy agreed with him. For the first time I heard my closest friend admit that his heart was in his mouth as he crawled into the region between the wires. “Bird’s like a bloody machine,” he said. “I’ve been beside him for ten months out here and when there’s been chaps killed near him, and I’ve never seen him act shaky. He hasn’t got nerves like the rest of us.”
I changed the subject then and talked of other things in order to soothe the new man, and was surprised to find him so well-educated; he should never have been a private in the ranks. He, in turn, told me that he had been surprised. He had been in a rather rough Ontario battalion, and its members had made a specialty of carousals while they were in England, the canteens being their main entertainment. He had expected things as bad or worse in France, and had found our company as fine a group of men as he had ever met. During all that summer I had not seen a dozen drunks in our billets, but the fact had not impressed me before. The Professor then talked about the sunset and asked, rather curiously, how I could be interested in such things, and at the same time intent on killing my fellow men. He spoke of the beauty that belongs to sunsets and dawns and high mountains and still waters and moonlight, and pointed out the incongruity of a star gleam in a stagnant pool beside us. Everything about us, he said, should be horrible distorted repulsive.
No Germans were abroad in our territory and after a long time Melville and I wormed ahead through the grass, on and on, until we were so close to the enemy trench that we could see its wire barriers and the cruel length of the barbs. Then we went back, and long after I was in my bivvy listening to the heavy hammer strokes of a battery back of Canada Trench, I thought of the Professor’s words. It was easy to misjudge character. Men whom no one credited with heroic qualities, revealed them. Others failed pitiably to live up to expectations. There was, I was sure, a strength or weakness in men apart from their real selves, for which they were in no way responsible. And who could know the Professor’s calibre? Snobbishness died miserably in the trenches. No artificial imposition could survive in the ranks where inherent value automatically found its level; all shams of superiority fled before such an existence of essentials; but a man’s endurance under that which he most dreads was something we could not gauge.
The Professor was a dreamer, which made it harder for him. His imagination led him twice through every danger, tried him cruelly. For every medal earned by the martinet type of soldier, a dozen were deserved by the dreamers. But when I tried to measure myself I failed. It was not physical courage that carried me, far from it, but a state of mind that words will never describe. Each night when I slept I dreamt of Steve, saw him clearly, and when awake,
in the trenches at night, out on listening posts, FELT him near. In some indefinable way I depended on him. Ever since he had guided me in from that foggy unknown stretch at the back of Vimy I would go anywhere in no man’s land. I knew, with a – fanatical, if you like – faith, that a similar touch would lead me straight where I should go. In the trenches, on posts, in any place, I was always watching for him, waiting for him, trying to sense him near me, and in the doing I missed the tensity of dragging hours, and easy fears that seized the unoccupied mind.
I liked the keen damp air of the mornings of September. At stand-to each man would have a glowing cigarette, each have his collar turned to his chin, his shoulders hunched, and would be pacing the hard-packed trench floor. When he stopped and gazed over the bags he would doze a second – start guiltily, and doze again. The east would shoot with crimson. Birds would twitter. Then like magic the sun would glitter on the dew-covered weeds and wet wire. There would be mists in the hollows, often extensive, so that the distant slag heaps would appear dark islands in a woolly sea. Gradually the sun would gain strength, and the vapors would dissolve. Then we went back to our shelters and odours of tea and bacon made each man happy.
On the third night our patrol was divided into two parties. Mcintyre was not with us, and the officer we had was “windy.” We did not go out nearly as far as usual, and when I took him to a spot near three trees where there was a short sap with German greatcoat in it, he was alarmed. He led us over to the right and left Melville and I to “guard” his flank. There was a length of low ground, almost ravine-like, through which an enemy patrol might pass and he told us to stay on its banks. We lay there in the grass. It was quiet and we were tired. It was our third successive night of crawling, and so Melville took a length of fine wire he always carried and made a neat trip string at the head of the long pocket. Then we relaxed, relaxed thoroughly and slept.
Fortunately I woke just before the officer and his men reached us. They were hurrying and the lieutenant was panting with excitement. “Where was the German patrol?” We sat up and grinned at them. There had been no patrol. “Yes, there was,” hissed the officer, “and it came right into this hollow. Where is it?” We argued earnestly then and had a difficult time. They assured us that six Germans had filed by them and that only a lucky move had kept them hidden. At last the controversy ceased, with honours even, and we went in, but not before Melville slyly inspected his trip-wire – and found it broken. We talked afterward about that Heinie patrol. How could they pass us without seeing us?
We made a second trip into the same front and I got to know no man’s land like a back yard. Mcintyre was more nervous as the lines were much closer than where we had held before. He had several listening posts out and constant patrols. The only change in work I had was a covering party to protect engineers who examined a road that crossed our trenches. Word came that we were to be relieved by the 22nd Battalion and I was sent out as guide. With me were Hickey and Egglestone, two men of the 73rd, both good soldiers. They were to take in the other platoons. We had a long wait for the “Van Doos” and there at the top of the Ridge talked and smoked, and as we watched the ten mile arc of Very Lights glimmer and sink before us, we saw a German attack on the battalion to our left. The flashing of bursting shells along our lines was a winking chaos of crimson, and then we saw our flares looping, our S.O.S. soaring aloft. Within a minute red flashes marked the German front, a fury of explosions that lasted twenty minutes. Meanwhile the din of bursting shells and machine guns came clearly to us and we could even see the bursting of Mills bombs. At last everything regained its normal appearance, and our men arrived. The attempted German raid, we heard afterwards, did not reach our trench.
The French-Canadians would not be hurried and their officers humoured them like children. They were a great battalion, carried a fine reputation, and seemed conscious of it, which was natural. Slowly, and with long halts every half mile, we wended our way down the Ridge and out on the plain. The “Van Doos” smoked in spite of all cautions about being spotted and I was very thankful when at last we arrived at our trench. Our lads moved away with amusing alacrity – the veterans had recalled another time at the crater line – and soon the trench was handed over. No patrols covered the relief and to Mcintyre’s amazement all his listening posts were ignored. No more sentries were posted than we used in daytime, and the only remark the officer made was, “If he wants to come over – let heem come.”
It was now October and we moved away to Magnicourt. Rumours had come that we were going to the Salient, that graveyard swamp of mud and slime, to the long agony of Passchendale, and the men were restless. For the first time some of them began to look on the “vin” when it was “rouge” and one man, Giger, had to be carried to his billet. His like was not elsewhere in the Corps. His appearance was a reminder of what Mother Nature could do when she was in an angry mood; he had scarcely any forehead and could neither read nor write. He had come in a late draft and had been sick for several days, giving up everything but his oath of allegiance. We laughed to weakness the night when at a barn billet a calf got its head through an opening and licked his face. Poor Giger howled with fright.
Our billet was a coal shed. Around the wall ran a brick ledge and around the ledge ran mice and rats, three generations of them, so that we moved our quarters to the loft of a barn and slept on the straw. In the night I heard men marching and went down. Many times when out at billet I had risen quietly and slipped outside, drinking in the moist air, looking at the moon-bathed fields and hedges, picturing the same night across the water. It was dark and uncanny when I left the barn. One heard nothing but the steady tramp, tramp, tramp on the road as the shadowy files marched past in a cloud of dust like river mist, silent and half asleep. They were, like us, headed Ypres-way. Bulky ghosts loomed alongside the column, the non-coms, watching for stragglers, but there were no shouted orders. The only sounds were the thudding shuffle of feet, the dull creak of equipment, a muttered curse as someone trod on another’s heels. All at once the men halted, and slumped down on the roadside without waiting for the “fall out” order. Mostly the men sprawled, motionless, on their packs, but here and there a match flared as a cigarette was lighted and there were glimpses of tired, sharp-lined faces.
After the battalion had gone I wandered along the road. It was warm but a shower threatened. A dozing sentry of the guard leaned on his rifle. Back from him, under two big trees, several soldiers were sleeping on the ground. I walked away down the road and to my surprise met Mcintyre. He had probably been visiting officers in another battalion – there were many moving our way – and he was feeling talkative. He asked me sharply what I was doing, and then gave definite hours that I should rest. I mentioned the Salient and he swore and cursed it, and then broke forth about his gallant boys, his splendid men. He knew every man, his faults and weaknesses, and was kind to them all. At times he seemed strict, but never without reason and there that night he almost broke down as he talked about us, and I sensed that he that afternoon had had to censor the company letters, perhaps more poignantly inarticulate than usual. It began to rain as I left him and I went back in the mysterious silence, listening to the steady beating on the cobbles. The bent still figure of the sentry had not moved, but under the trees the sleepers were stirring and muttering as drops from the branches fell on their unprotected faces.
The next day we moved on and seemed to leave the main route for we stopped at a little village prettier than any I had seen. Trees shaded all the little homes and a brook flashed and gurgled its way among them, crossing under a quaint old stone bridge that must have been hundreds of years old. The company seemed changed, the men more restless. At the estaminet they found one of those crazy penny-in-the-slot pianos and there made merry, singing too boisterously for harmony. Giger got drunk again and semaphored to a mademoiselle until he became incapable of motion. I watched the men as they got their evening meal, and they were all flushed, unnatural. Even little Mickey was shrill, a
nd I looked at the boy. He had changed, was different, and I feared for him. His nerve was leaving him. On our last trip in a whizz bang had made bloody work of two gunners and an arm had been left lying in the trench. His post was nearby and I saw him walk by the place hurriedly and then, with a sudden cry, seize the arm and hurl it over the parapet. Afterward he had given me a glance of dog-like entreaty and I had stayed and talked with him for more than an hour. He smoked continually, those army gaspers, Red Hussars and Bees-wings, and his hands were not steady.
That night was the wildest of any I had seen in billets. Half the men had had more liquor than they could carry and all were shouting ribald songs and indulging in horse play. It was all fun, and their delight seemed in making the Professor cringe. They had got to know him and it was rumoured that he was such a granny that he even considered a knowledge of French immoral. They shouted about the three kinds of “cases” there were, walking, “sandbag,” and “stretcher,” and asked each other grisly questions concerning “religion” and “next-of-kin.” There were pledges about “V.C.’s” or “wooden ones,” and more of like kind. All of it was but a reflex of their own inner thoughts.
The Professor and Tommy and I helped many of them make their beds that night, and then I went out in the village to the old bridge and sat there listening to the water. The moonlight fell flat on things and gilded them, and there was the night’s faint moist smell of trees and grass and brookside. I thought of that long ago when we had come to France, those first nights filling sandbags with Vimy slime, Freddy’s white set look, his premonitions; Arthur sitting in the mud, dazed, stricken, five minutes before the bullet was to hit him; Charley at my water-logged bivvy in Dumbell Camp, pleading for something to change his convictions; poor ape-like Slim and his pal, Joe, always together, in trench or billet, and together in death. What waited us up in the Salient?