And We Go On

by Will R Bird

  We plunged through the mud excitedly and found that a relief was on. The first attackers had reached the spot just as all the old garrison was outside their concrete fort, and before the new garrison could get in. Both garrisons were laden with full packs and practically helpless, and in five minutes those not killed had surrendered and we were in possession. The new Germans had thermos bottles filled with hot coffee and never did a warm drink taste as good as it. Tommy and I each got a bottle. No one seemed to know where we were to go and so we went back to our trench. Tommy and I were flanked on one side by a tall lad called Murray and his chum, Babson; on the other side were Bunty and Mickey. Farther to the right was a Lewis gun post, and Hughes and Gordon were beyond it. Then there was a stretch of twenty yards without a person in it, a short trench with men of another platoon, Sambro with them, and a small ruin with a roof over one end. On the left there was no one for fifty yards, and then another Lewis gun post. Barney, a big man, was in charge and his crew were “Red,” who was red-haired; McPhee, a cheerful, always-grinning lad and an eighteen-year-old Newfoundland boy named Russell. On the other side of them was another gap in the line, then a battalion of Camerons.

  At daylight a thick, clinging mist obscured everything. Not an officer had come near us and we had no orders. The only sergeant in the trench did not know any more than we did, and we had had no rations and were ravenous. I peered around and made out a hillocky sea of mud in the rear, and crawled out among the mounds and hollows, finding a number of dead South Wales Borderers in full pack. I looked into their mess-tins until I found a tin of MacConachie rations, a tin of jam, and, in a pack, a loaf of bread. It was green with mold but we cut away the outside and ate the centre. We had “tommy cookers” with us and boiled tea and heated the meat rations. While we did so Babson saw, in front of the trench, a dead officer who had on high boots of splendid workmanship. He went out to get them and Bunty begged him not to, saying that robbing the dead would bring disaster. Babson went and tugged the corpse about in the mud until the boots were released; then he calmly stripped his own feet and put them on.

  When our meal was ready Murray and Babson and I sat together on the firestep I had made. We were just finishing our tea when I heard the unmistakable report of a high velocity gun. An instant later the world seemed to come to an end. There had not been a sound of shell but I was hurled against the back of the trench and buried under an avalanche of mud and debris. In that heartbeat all sound of gunfire was deadened and all I could sense was a vague thumping. Then I heard voices. I had been pitched so that my head was beside our rifles, which had been together leaning against the trench wall. They formed a sort of vent up through the piled earth and I could get air. I heard Bunty’s voice, high-pitched, telling the sergeant that he had to help get me out, and I wondered why he did not mention Babson or Murray.

  Then came sounds of digging, spades thrust frantically, and I suffered an agony of apprehension, fearful that a shovel would slice my jugular as my head was twisted around. Fortunately for him, Murray was buried least of any, and he was soon uncovered. He was shell-shocked by the concussion and was sent down the line, never to return. While getting him out they saw my legs and unearthed me without doing damage. I had been buried four feet deep but was not hurt beyond a severe shaking-up. When they reached Babson it was too late. He was buried deepest of any. Bunty looked at the long boots on his legs and shook his head. “Just what I told him,” he croaked.

  Another of those high velocity shells came and wiped out the Lewis gun crew to the right, and also shattered the gun. The mist cleared and showed us how thinly our line was held. Gordon saw the ruin and declared he was going to have a sleep in it. Water had seeped in where he had dug so that he had no place to lie down or even sit. Tommy and Hughes took the machine gun post, pulling the dead men to one side, and Bunty and Mickey and I remained in the centre of our trench. More shells came, and more of our trench was blown in. A wounded man on the right, blinded by blood and crazed by his hurts, got out of his place into the open and German snipers began shooting at him. Tommy and Hughes squirmed overland to get him, but were forced to take cover and the fellow was shot in the head.

  Gordon had got in the ruin and possibly had lain down when there came another of the high velocity missiles. It exploded inside the wrecked building. Gordon would never know what happened. All the rest of day we sat there with the dead men beside us, the dead officer in front of us, and dead men lying in the mud at the rear. In my head was a queer little singing noise that the din of the shelling augmented. But I minded most the stench that dominated everything. It seemed to penetrate one’s inmost being, that awful stench of death, a foul thing, a filthy thing, its reek was sickening. Mickey became ill and we persuaded him to work his way to the right and to try and reach some shelter where he could sleep.

  As the dark came, early and foreboding, only Bunty and I remained in that bit of line that fourteen platoon had held. All at once I roused. I had seen something moving directly in front of where we were. We watched and made out a German patrol of ten or twelve men. They would remain a considerable time in one place and when they moved seemed uncertain of direction. We examined our rifles, and they were clogged with mud so that we could not use them. Every bomb had been buried. We could depend only on our bayonets.

  For an hour Bunty and I watched them and then as they crawled far over on the left Barney’s Lewis gun chattered and they came back our way. I looked about, standing up in the wrecked part, and could not see any of our men, then spotted a file of blurred figures coming in from behind us, over the boggy ground where the dead Welshmen were sprawled. They came directly to us and the officer in the lead was a young fellow. I told him of the Germans crawling towards us and he gave quick order to his men, telling them to get into the trench. Bunty dragged himself away towards the right. He was too all in to want to linger.

  The officer told me he belonged to the Black Watch and that they were to relieve the Camerons. I pointed the way he should go but he asked me to go with him and help rout the Germans. It was a weird mix-up. The Huns seemed bewildered, apparently thinking that we were their own men for they did not start up until we were almost beside them. Then they fought sullenly. The mud was deep and the Scots could not rush them very well, though four or five men seemed very anxious to get at them with bayonets. The officer shouted to the Germans, telling them to surrender, and he shot their leader with his revolver. Two bombs changed the situation, though only one German fell, and then I made my first and only kill with cold steel.

  It had been all like a bad dream to me. I was too sick of the mud and dead men and lack of sleep hardly to realize what I was doing, and I had kept with the officer. He, seemingly, expected the Germans to put up their hands when he spoke, and when one lunged for him he was taken off guard and only escaped the thrust by falling to one side. Between his assailant and myself was the body of the feld-webel killed by the pistol shot, and as, half-dazed by the bomb explosions, I flourished my bayonet, intending only to bluff the German into surrender – for I had always a dread of such fighting – the fellow drove headlong at me. He tripped over his comrade as he came, but I seemed paralyzed. I could not move to avoid him. I tried to ward his weapon and then instead of tearing steel in my own flesh I felt my bayonet steady as if guided, and was jolted as it brought up on solid bone. My grip tightened as my rifle was twisted by a sudden squirming, as if I had speared a huge fish. Then I tugged it free and saw that the other men had killed two more Germans and the rest had surrendered.

  I was weak with the shock of excitement, and could hardly answer the officer as he asked me questions. I had pointed out to him the gap that would exist if we left and he told me he would look after it, but wanted my name and regimental number. He seemed to think that I had saved his life and said that he would recommend me for a D.C.M. It meant nothing to me then, I was so utterly weary that I only wanted to get away. I had not meant to kill the German, had not wanted to do anything, and I was
glad when I got over on the company front and saw that our relieving battalion was arriving.

  I did not stop there as all the rest were leaving, but went with Mickey and Hughes, whom I found back of the ruin. Mickey was ghastly white, and the corporal was tired. We floundered through mud to a pillbox that served as a dressing station, and I saw Bunty there, sitting on two dead men covered with a rubber sheet. He told me that he was not going to hurry and that he wanted a shot of rum before he went on. Out on the road we met incoming men going to other points, and as we stumbled and waded past each other there came a deluge of shell fire. In an instant all was confusion. Men blundered into each other, knocked each other down. There were stunning, smashing explosions, gusts of concussion, terrible cries. Wounded men fell in the mud and were tramped down to join the old dead. The others in their panic stepped on them, did anything but stop. It was death to do so.

  I had Hughes by the arm and fairly dragged him through the mire. Twice I slipped on dead bodies, and then came to a ruin where a man sat a fragment of wall. I went to him and asked if he had water. Both Mickey and Hughes were begging for a drink. The man did not answer. He was not dead, or even wounded, but so absolutely all in that he did not nod or speak, and I took his water bottle from his equipment, took it to Mickey and Hughes in turn, and brought it back and replaced it. I thanked the fellow then, and still he never changed expression. We went on down the road and there came another salvo. As the last of the crashing, soul-tearing smashes rang in my ears I saw Mickey spin and fall. I let go of Hughes and jumped to him. He had been hit in several places and could not possibly live.

  “Mickey – Mickey!” I called his name and raised him up and he nestled to me like a child, his white face upturned to mine.

  “At last,” he murmured, “I’m through.” Then his whisper was shrill and harsh. “I never had a white tunic or a red one,” he said. “I didn’t want – to kill people. I hate war – and everything. Why did they do it – why – did – they?”

  He seemed delirious and I tried to soothe him, but he would not listen. He talked about what we had read in my little guide book, the way boys trained for fighting, the soldiers killed in France and Belgium, the other wars that had been fought, the futility of the endless repetition. “And we just go on and on,” he finished. “Doing things because – because – ”

  His voice sank so low I could not hear but his lips still moved. Little white-faced Mickey! I held him there, held him tight, and tried to comfort him as he grew weaker and weaker. Then he twisted, strained in my arms, “… and we go on – on – on – on,” he shrilled, and stiffened.

  I laid him there by the roadside with his rifle upright at his head, and took his belongings from his pockets. Hughes stood all the time, wavering, watching, yet never stepping from where I had left him and I suddenly knew he was in a worse condition than I had supposed, for he had thought the world of Mickey. “Come on,” I said roughly, and led him away and he never spoke.

  We reached the long duckwalk and all around us were flashes and glows of fire, the great Salient’s maw, a huge death-trap, with shells whining and rushing through the air. There were red and yellow flashes, and streaking sparks of fire, and flares, ghostly, looping, falling, unreal, now and then silhouetting a straggling line of steel helmets and hunched shoulders; bewildered men in the dark, bone-weary, shell-dazed, treading on old dead and new dead, and slipping in the foulness of slimy ditches.

  Somehow I kept going. Hughes had become querulous, resisting. He hung back, whispered that he wanted to sit down. I had taken his rifle and equipment, and I urged him on, knowing the fate of so many exhausted men who had stopped to rest in that ghoulish area. I took out my entrenching tool handle and menaced him with it as one would a child, making him go on and on and on, until at long last, in that blurry darkness just before dawn we reached tents that were to shelter us. The quartermaster was there to meet us. He took Hughes from me, led him away to give him hot drink and put him to bed. I staggered on, headed for the nearest tent – and pitched head foremost into a crater filled with stagnant water. Both rifles I carried were embedded in the clay and I left them and Hughes’ equipment under the water. I was shaking with cold, shaking so that I could hardly speak, drenched, blinded with filth. Tommy came – he had got in ahead, and led me into a tent. There I stripped naked and lay on a pile of blankets while he heaped others over me, a dozen of them. We had plenty of room, plenty of blankets – so many did not need them – and the quartermaster came with his rum and gave me a great mug-full. When I woke it was the next afternoon.

  We went in buses to Bourecq and there we were billeted in a barn. The entire company did not muster the strength of a platoon and we sat around, unshaved, unwashed, staring at nothing. At night I sat up and looked around. I was bathed in perspiration, though the night was cold, for I had been feeling again live flesh sliding over my bayonet, seeing again Mickey’s white face close to mine, while his blood seeped from him and warmed my knees.

  The men were muttering in their sleep, turning, twisting, straining. Tommy lay with his hands gripped, huddled, whimpering, all the terrors that he had fought back during consciousness flooding over his soul when the barrier of his will was lowered. Courage, in the heat of battle, is an animal instinct. There’s a certain gregariousness in it, the instinct of the herd, the eyes of the other fellow on you; but the courage that kept a man in his place in those terrible late November days at Passchendale was the straining of the soul, the last limit of human pluck. Twice I woke and found a man on his hands and knees, gazing about him, wakened by the horrors of his own mind, unable to comprehend that at last the Salient stench had left his nostrils.

  The first few days in Bourecq were easy ones. The captain was kind to us. He came on the ground as we formed up the first time, our pitiful ranks, and gazed at us without speaking, and I saw in his eyes things of which no man speaks – the things that words would kill. We had little drill, but rested, and slept and had good food and finally were more like human beings than we had been, but every man who had endured Passchendale would never be the same again, was more or less a stranger to himself.

  A draft arrived and Earle was in it. I was glad to see him, more glad than I could say, for there were few of the old boys with us, only Christensen and Tommy and Sambro and Eddie: Earle had heard in England that I had been killed, and the rumour reached Canada. Those with me the first night, when I had been knocked out with the Stokes, had reported me killed, and again when I had been buried the story had gone. We went for a feed together. When we were returning we heard high voices in an estaminet and went in. Red was there confronting one of the “originals.” “Red” had been with the 73rd, and was a good man in the line. The “original” had been on jobs back in safe areas but had got in wrong with authorities and had been sent back to the battalion. He had had a few drinks and now was declaring that Passchendale was nothing, that all the real fighting had taken place before the blasted “umpty-umps” came over. “Red” grinned at him, and said he was not trying to belittle those mighty warriors, the “originals,” and dodged a swing at his chin. Plunk! The “original” went down for a long count, and when he recovered his friends took him outside.

  There were few new men in the draft. Almost all had been wounded at Vimy or the Somme and had belonged to the 73rd or 42nd. I made friends with many of them. Sykes, a dark-haired fellow who read books whenever he could and who could make good rissoles of bully, onion and hardtack; Boland, a neat-built boy; Thornton, slightly deaf, always humming songs; Lockerbie, a tall, well-built man; Williams, another of fine physique. We had a new officer, a man new to France, and he had difficulties. We numbered in French the first morning he paraded us, and he flushed and scolded in a manner that delighted the mischievous. Battalion orders carried the information that the 42nd were now privileged to wear the red hackle; it seemed to be some sort of battle honour. Tommy snorted. “Red Hackles,” he said. “What are they to us! What about Mickey and the Professor
and Melville and all the boys? Red hackles, bah!”

  I said nothing to him. Everyone’s nerves carried too fine an edge to permit argument. A team of the rifle grenadiers was organized and entered in the divisional shoot for the Lipsett shield, and no one seemed surprised when it came to us. Suddenly my leave came through. Leave! I had not thought of it in the last hectic weeks, though “Old Bill” and a few others had mercifully escaped the second trip to Passchendale by having theirs come due.

  Leave – I could see Phyilis! I caught a lorry and went to Boulogne and saw the leave boat in the harbour. It had left five minutes before. Those with me swore furiously but I had a stroll around the streets and, after looking up the history of the place, was quite entertained. Then I ran foul of one of those creatures I had always avoided, one of the peacock variety of nincompoops in shiny Sam Browne and cream-coloured breeches.

  I had been reading that Mark Twain said France had neither summer nor winter nor morals, that Napoleon’s monument outside of Boulogne had been erected to celebrate his triumphant invasion of England, and was walking slowly as I read. My lordship was walking by several feet from where I stood and I never saw him until his rasping voice requested me to “Drop that damn book and salute an officer.”

  The book was thrust into my tunic pocket and I gave my snappiest salute. It was not good enough. There had been an appreciative twitter from the blonde charmer at his elbow.

  “As you were,” came the rasping voice. “Three paces backward, march. Now then, try again. What regiment? Oh, the Black Watch, quite a lad aren’t you? As you were, three paces backward, march. Try again, cut your hand away, my man, don’t let it fall beside you.”