by Will R Bird
At dark we were called to do a ration party. It was raining and we tried a short cut coming back. It led us into a mud hole that was knee deep and we were sorry figures when we returned. The stove was red-hot in a short time. We made our beds and stripped all our wet clothing and hung it on wires we had strung. Shortly everything was steaming. The door opened and in came our officer. “Men,” he squeaked, “the orders are that no man is to take off his boots, and have your rifle and equipment where you can get it at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, sir,” we chorused. He had looked at us through the steam from wet socks and trousers and he nodded and went away.
The 87th Battalion relieved us and we went back to Fosse 10. Tommy and I had not gone in our tunnel again and we left the sector without telling anyone of our discovery. From Fosse 10 we went to Noulles mines and were billeted in the town. The Hun shelled it the next day and killed a few of the civilians, one a little girl from the house where we were staying. I helped the mother pick her from the street. Her eyes were open, looking up, her hair thrown back from frightened, pinched features, a frail little elf, who had smiled at me and shyly called me “Canada.”
That evening I was ordered to go with Eddie to Ferfay and report to the school there. Eddie had been a corporal and Davies told me that I would have to take a stripe. I warned him that I did not want one and told him about what had happened in Canada. The boys chaffed me as I took my pack and left them, but I had the last laugh on them. I found that there were other 42nd men at the school, men from the other battalions of the brigade, and we had a good time together, despite the fact that we were coralled by a 116th sergeant, who unfolded to our weary ears the mysteries of sighting, aiming, rapid fire, and triangles of errors. I chummed with Siddall, from one of our other companies, and Turner, a big South African who was with the 49th.
It was just before we finished our Course that I had the laugh on the boys. They had not been back to the front line, a fact which Tommy mourned, as he had wanted to kill a Hun, he said, on the Kaiser’s birthday, and had had considerable drilling, and now “D” Company came to Ferfay. They were shined and cleaned so that I hardly recognized them and they drilled on the School parade ground in a way that made me proud that I belonged to them; they were shown as a model company. Our scouts went to Pernes and in competition there carried off all honours in sniping and observing. The 85th came to Rainbert, nearby, and I at once went to see them, for my brother had come to France. He had just arrived that night, had no rations, and was not issued any at the battalion.
I brought him back to Ferfay with me and took my blankets to madame next door to our billet and she gave us a regular banquet of eggs and chips and coffee and French bread; also an extra loaf for my brother. It was easy to draw more blankets from the stores. “How long,” asked my brother, “does a battalion do in the front lines?”
“About six days,” I said. “Sometimes more, sometimes less, never more than seven or eight.”
On March 6th we relieved the 116 Battalion, taking over a part of the line on the left of Avion, near the embankment. Part of no man’s “land” was under water, flooded by the Hun, and wire had been thrown near the shore so that anyone trying to wade across would get entangled. On the left flank the line ran out to a listening post. Its garrison stayed in a cellar there, a squalid little hole with a makeshift roof, and could not show itself in daylight as the place was in plain view of the big slag heap on the German side. Six of us were posted out there. Two men were in a shallow crater blasted in the chalky rim of the bank near where a bridge had existed. It had been blown up by explosives and no one could cross to the other side.
Opposite us, continuing our line, was an imperial battalion. They had no post at the canal bank, but used a flying patrol that came once every two hours during the night. A heavy wire had been thrown to the other bank and it was used as a signalling line. The Imperials tugged on it. If all was quiet we tugged twice in reply, if we had heard or seen the Germans near their part we pulled the wire three times. Barron had come back to us and he and I were the first two on post. Sambro and Tommy were to relieve us. We lay and gazed toward the Hun lines. It was not a cold night and spring was in the air. On the way up we had smelled buds and green things and had hated the front line again. It was hard to force to the background all fear of death at that most hopeful season of the year when men care most for life.
Suddenly we heard the “flying patrol” coming. They were making plenty of noise and when they reached the bank they gave the signal wire a tug that almost jerked Barron from our crater. “0-ky, Canada?” shrilled a cockney voice. “I sye, o-ky.”
“Shut your trap and get out of that or I’ll ‘o-ky’ you,” flared Barron, so fiercely that the patrol did not come again that night.
It was dreadful in the daytime. The weather continued balmy and we were cooped in a small space. The cellar was foul with slime from the canal and stank dreadfully as the days got warmer. Big blue flies buzzed about. We were lousy and the air made our heads ache. The water in our bottles got stale and unfit to drink. We had no warm food, only bread and cheese and the tea we boiled at night. It took all of the corporal’s cautioning to keep us under cover during the day.
During the third night we heard a German patrol. They came to the other side of the canal and we were able to make out two of them, but the corporal, Hoskins would not let us shoot as it would give away our position. The Huns came within feet of our signal wire and every moment we expected to hear the Imperials coming, but they did not until the enemy had gone to their own line. Six awful days we endured in that cellar, and six nights we enjoyed the cool air, every man going outside as soon as it was dark. Then we moved back to support. Hoskins had a few lines he used to recite about that post.
When the war is o’er
And I’m home once more
To the land I love the most,
When the sewers stink
I’ll always think
Of the Isolation Post.
I cursed my luck
When that place I struck,
And I cursed the Kaiser’s host
As I waded through
That bloody glue
To the Isolation Post.
I sat by the cesspool of disease
While the sun my back did roast,
With your cover the sky
And a wall three feet high,
The Isolation Post.
If ever I get the drop on Bill
I’ll make him drink a toast
From a dead man’s shoes,
Filled with slimy ooze
From the Isolation Post.
To one who’s been and smelt and seen
This will seem no idle boast.
I’ve been to hell
For a six days’ spell
At the Isolation Post.
The La Coulette brewery was the support quarters. It was a large place covered with sod reinforced by concrete. The Hun was supposed to be contemplating a big attack and orders came for us to hold ourselves in readiness for anything. Each man tensed accordingly and when there came an alarm we were outside in jig time. We lined a fire trench and waited there a long time, but nothing happened. Tempers were once more finely drawn. Then the Germans shelled the brewery and our batteries replied. The clamour throbbed and beat down to our underground retreat and quaking told of the near ones. Next day there was a shelling of the area just in our rear. We watched it for a long time. Every now and then there would come a great rushing noise followed by the roar of explosions, and from the dead, brick-strewn slopes there would shoot up a cloud of black and yellow fumes.
Instead of going back to billets we moved into the front line again, and the men groused wholeheartedly. An officer swam across the water to the German side and located one of their posts, returning unseen. The Hun shelled us spasmodically, as if he, too, had his wind up, and everyone was more or less jumpy. I was sent in daytime with a message to our support line and took a ramble around t
he brewery route before returning. Some impish impulse urged me to do so, and had I been questioned I would have had an awkward time, but it seemed as if it were fated that I should go as I did. A long-disused German gun pit drew my attention. An old sap had led to it and one could easily mistake his way and wander there.
As I went in to the emplacement I met an officer, and one glance told me that once more I had met with the peacock of Boulogne. He was different now, however, looked less than ever like a soldier, for fear was written large on his sallow visage. There had been a few salvos quite near where we were, but only the usual strafing. “Ah – my good fellow,” he blurted. “Just where – what part of the line is this?”
It was easy to see that he was lost, completely bewildered and craven, and something seemed to give way within me, some control snapped. I was suddenly seeing as red as I had in Boulogne. “How about some snappy saluting?” I said sharply. “Isn’t this as good a place as Boulogne?”
He stared at me, and mopped his face with a dainty handerkerchief. “Come – come, fellow,” he said, trying to bluff, though his eyes were furtive. “I’m an officer and I want you to tell me where I am.”
“You’re almost up to where the soldiers are,” I said, “and where none of your blasted monkey tricks will work. You were fine with a lovely lady hanging on your arm, how do you feel now?”
He drew back hastily and muttered that he would have me court-martialled and then snatched at his revolver. I had it from him in an instant, and I hurled it far over the trench side, then thrust him back into the emplacement. “If you were half a man I would give you what’s due you,” I raved on and then recovered myself. The head-splitting hours in that foul cellar, the tense atmosphere about the trenches, the heat, all had combined to make me forget what I was doing and I knew that I had made myself liable to serious accusation. I stopped my silly blustering, but talked very grimly and cooly for five minutes, telling him just what his kind were doing to hurt the army, and just what would happen to him at the front.
Instead of regaining his composure he seemed to get more frightened, staring at me in an odd manner, and when I showed him a trench to the rear he almost ran away. He had never asked my name or number and as I had on shorts I hoped that he had not noticed my badges. For several days I expected a summons, but none came. It was a most absurd thing for me to do, and I never saw a more spineless creature than that shaking, fear-stricken lieutenant. Tommy was the only one I told about him.
The men were savage when we did not leave the trenches when relieved, but stayed in reserve. Each night we worked, cleaning trenches and strengthening defenses, and then one morning there came sounds of a terrific bombardment on the Somme area. Rumours began to circulate and soon we forgot our grievances. The Hun was attacking, had broken through. We went about with questions on our lips, waiting orders, expecting almost any move. But nothing happened. We were told that the Canadians were to defend the Ridge at all costs, and we got to know that we were stretched across an immense frontage. Every available unit was being hurried to stem the German advance and reports came of reserve lines being constructed on Vimy and of Chinese labour battalions digging trenches farther in the rear. The air was tense with excitement and expectancy.
CHAPTER VI
The Longest Trip
There were constant patrols. Headquarters wanted information about the movements of the enemy and twice I was over to the German wire. The first time Tommy was with me and I had to keep close to him. Someone in our trench unthinkingly shot up a flare just as we got into no man’s land, and for a moment we feared we might be discovered. We could see the black wall of the parapet we had left, the wire like frayed ribbons, two white faces under mushroom hats – the sentries – and then the darkness was more intense as the light went out. Tommy pushed against me and he was trembling. “I’m scared,” he whispered.
“I feel shaky myself,” I said, “but it’s just the first feeling. Once we get out a few yards we’ll be all right and there’s plenty of cover for us.”
We moved slowly and were an hour going the hundred yards, but he never halted, and when we returned to the trench told me that he had got hold of himself again, was glad he had gone. Anything unusual that night, a sudden strafing, or a failure to go on, and I believe he would have lost his nerve.
The next night I was out with a patrol from another platoon and we found a dead German several yards from the enemy wire. Apparently he had been on a lone reconnaisance and had been killed by a burst of machine gun fire. He had a machine pistol strapped to his chest, an unusual weapon, with a barrel about fifteen inches long. It fired over fifteen shots with one loading and would be as deadly as a maxim at close quarters.
New men came to the company, a splendid draft, from the MacLean Highlanders. The first men I got acquainted with were Thompson and Tulloch, two inseparables who came into our cellar and calmly took possession of the best corner – until gently shown the error of their ways. Tulloch was a cheerful chap and his main topic was his hope that he would soon get a “decent blighty.” He assured us that the MacLean Kilties had been the finest bunch of men in khaki.
I was on one more patrol in that sector and the sergeant in charge had a very close call. It was still and warm and very dark, an ideal night for prowlers. We escaped treading into a pile of empty tins through the sergeant feeling one with his hand as he stooped to fasten a puttee, and as I had been out in the same spot the previous night and had not felt them nor disturbed them, I had suspicions. We got a stick and attached a wire to it, then went over to a shell hole and lay in it while we tugged the wire. The tins clattered together and instantly there came a perfect spray of machine bullets, thudding the ground, striking against the ruins behind us. The Hun, no doubt, thought he had made a fine killing. We lay still for over an hour and then heard men crawling towards the tins from the Hun side. I pitched a bomb in that direction and it burst just as it touched the ground. There was an awful scream, a death yell, and in a moment a shower of stick bombs came our way, but we escaped damage. If the sergeant had not felt the first tin with his hand both of us would have been riddled with bullets.
Over on one flank there was more line that was usually covered by a flying patrol. One of the officers and a private were crossing that way when they were seized by a party of Germans who had crept into our territory and lain in hiding. They were lifted bodily out of the trench and rushed toward the Hun lines, with revolvers to their heads to ensure quietness. In spite of this threat the officer managed to wrench free from his captors and to escape them altogether, getting back to his own lines. Thereafter we redoubled our caution in that part.
We were back again at the brewery and kept taut by occasional heavy shelling. After a working party just before dawn, during which we got soaked by sudden rain, rum was issued, and the sergeant in charge passed by “Old Bill” who had not gone out. “Old Bill” resented such an omission and said so with heat, such heat that caused him being brought before the captain for discipline. We were all too highly strung and there was more excuse for the veteran. He had Giger as his assistant and must have had his temper tried severely. After a prolonged session with red and white wines Giger had endeavored to show a kindly member of the military police that he should really be inflicted with an inferiority complex, and the net result had been clink as a counter-irritant to such an erroneous Idea. After he emerged he was given in charge of “Old Bill,” and faithfully performed his duties as long as he was under observation.
Tommy was interested in Giger’s mentality and often talked with him, asking him curious questions. He discovered that the fellow’s greatest fear was of being one of a trio to take “lights” from the same match. One of the three, he was certain, would be gathered unto his fathers without further preliminaries. Giger’s pet saying while he was under the influence of the vin sisters was that he came from a tough land, where even the canary birds sang bass, and Tommy claimed that he heard him arguing with a beery A.S.C. driver abou
t the Germans, declaring that the Junkers were those who demolished French houses.
From the brewery we went to the left front, the Lens area, and relieved a battalion of the Staffords. Many of them we talked with were the Londoners, cheery compounds of optimism and tenacity that made them incomparable front line holders. They chatted with us and informed us that “old Jerry” had invaded their trench and captured several prisoners, that he had not done it “on the level” but caught them when they were exhausted after a hard night’s work. A party pressed by us carrying a blanket-covered form. “Who’s that?” asked one “A new bloke wot forgot to duck his napper,” came the quick answer. “Wouldn’t it give you the camel’s ’ump?”
We saw one carrying party crossing overland behind the trench and asked them who they were. “The King’s Own ’Ymn of ’Aters,” came the retort. “Wot’s your mob?”
The German advance on the Somme had continued and there were many conflicting rumours. Nevertheless we sensed that the situation down there was critical and that we might be attacked at any time. Everyone was on his toes and we began to see more of the officers than at any time since I had joined the battalion. I was sent out with another man to go along the top of the railway embankment as far as possible and there keep watch on the German front and listen for sounds of a patrol. We kept between rails on the track and worked well over toward the enemy, then lay still. It was not very dark and we were in a very exposed position. I had found a place that had been hollowed slightly and gave cover, and after being there an hour was touched on the shoulder. “What is it?” I asked without looking around.