And We Go On

by Will R Bird

  We rushed on again. Lofty caught up to us while we were handing over the prisoners to an escort. He saw my bag of souvenirs, and growled his displeasure, then asked me for the pistols I displayed. I told him that there were lots more souvenirs ahead and those who went first would get them, but he did not seem anxious to lead the way. It had been rumoured around the platoon that I had sold my lot I got at Parvillers for two hundred francs, and I had, to airmen who seemed so anxious to buy that I regretted I had not raised my price.

  All at once the fighting in the Wood seemed to quieten and we hurried as fast as possible over the field back of the emplacement. We could just see, in the distance, that two lines of trenches crossed our way. Suddenly a machine gun fired at us. Two men, one a lance-corporal, from sixteen platoon, suddenly went down, shot through the legs. We did not stop but kept on, hoping to have the Huns surrender as the others had done. I looked around and saw most of those who had caught up with us slowing down. The sight of our easy capture had incited them to join us, but machine gun bullets made the proposition look different. A fat Lewis gunner went down, shot through the leg, and then a fourth man dropped, wounded the same way. We kept on. Not a man had been killed.

  Sykes had got a revolver and had it in his hand. He was running alongside of me, and Jones and Mills were close behind us. Just back of them, in a straggling line, were Tulloch and Thompson and Sambro. As we neared the first trench the machine gun stopped shooting at us and we saw the gunners getting their weapon back to the second defenses. Away on the left another Maxim was shooting from a mound, a built-up emplacement, but the bullets did not come our way. An officer jumped up from the trench and shot at us with his pistol, emptied it and never touched us. We shot back at him as we ran, but apparently he was not hit and he ran toward the second trench. Just before he reached it Jones fired. He pitched headlong to earth and we supposed him dead.

  We got into the trench, a long shallow affair with numerous low-roofed shelters. I dived into the one where the officer had been and found his kit, taking from it an Iron Cross and his “housewife,” coloured thread and needles and folding scissors, as well as a dictionary of German and English. We moved along the trench to the left, Jones had taken the lead and was after the machine gunner who was still shooting at our lads near the Wood. Sykes and Tommy and I were looking in all the shelters for souvenirs. In every place there were packs and gas masks and greatcoats and blankets. Suddenly the Germans began sniping at us from the second trench, which was about one hundred yards away. We shot back at them but it got to be dangerous to show our heads. Jones worked over to the left and got in position to snipe at the gunners in their emplacement. One man left it and ran almost to the second trench before he fell. The other chap started out and ducked back again. The rest of the company were rushing in during the lull and Thompson was wounded as he looked over the trench bank. Hansen, the Lewis gunner, and Lofty came tumbling in. Meanwhile a few men were coming from the Wood and it was necessary to prevent the machine gun from getting into action. Jones rushed along the trench and although the snipers shot at him they missed him. We saw the gunner bolt and then Sykes and Mills and I hurried after Jones. We came to a covered-in part and both Mills and I went under it on our hands and knees. Sykes waited a moment, then leaped outside and ran around and jumped in the trench again on the far side of the covered part. I had just emerged there and he fell at my feet. I heard a queer, bubbling sound and dropped beside him. His jugular had been cut by a sniper’s bullet. He was dead before Mills got through the tunnel.

  With the machine gun out of action, men came with a rush. One big shelter in the centre of the trench was a sort of headquarters, and there Geordie and Flighty rested. Tulloch went into it with another man just as a barrage opened. The Hun strafed us with whizz bangs and there were many bursts very near the trench. We spread out as much as possible and Sambro and I occupied one bivvy. There came a cry for stretcher-bearers and word came that Lofty had been wounded badly in the stomach. Shortly after we saw his stretcher being pushed out at the back and then he was carried away. I could see that “Old Bill” was one of his carriers.

  Wham! There came a very sharp explosion, very close. We saw smoke and dust in a cloud. The big shelter had been blown in, a shell exploding on its roof. We rushed to the wreckage and found one man dead; Tulloch with a leg shredded; Flighty wounded and Geordie with his third Blighty, a very painful wound. We got him on a stretcher and Sambro and I helped lift him out. Then came a call for me and I was ordered to take a man with me and go back to meet our relieving battalion and guide a company to our position.

  Sambro offered to go with me, and as men were needed in the trench we helped carry Geordie as we went. A new man was teamed at one end with Sambro and I had a German prisoner as my partner. It was a long journey back over the field we had covered in the afternoon and had got dark. We reached the trench we had left in the morning and went through a part the R.C.R.’s had captured. There we stopped to rest and I saw several dead Canadians nearby. Something urged me to go over and look at them, and there lay old Peter, his rifle still gripped in his hands, his body smashed by shrapnel. Near him were two men I knew well from my home town.

  We went on and Geordie suffered much pain. At length we reached battalion headquarters and there found a party of prisoners squatted about a dugout entrance. Tulloch arrived on a stretcher just as we left to meet our relieving company.

  It was almost dawn by the time we had gone back once more over the same route and completed the relief. Again we walked down the slope and into the hollow where Batten lay in his crater. On again by old Peter, killed in fighting out in front, as he wished. Then we reached the big dugout again. Flighty was lying there on a stretcher and Geordie was still there. I went to see Tulloch – and he was dead! Sambro and I had given him a cigarette and talked with him as we had left on the way up, and he was talking about his “jake blighty.” He didn’t mind losing one leg, he said.

  Morning came and we kept on down toward Arras. It seemed a long, long way and the men began falling out. Sambro sat down to rest but I kept on and on and at last staggered into the barracks we were to use, almost asleep on my feet. Ab was there to meet the stragglers and he grinned at me sheepishly. I had never been left out of any scrap but I knew I would hate to wait there and meet the survivors.

  We slept all the rest of that day and all that night. Next morning I went out to the “Y” canteen and sold one pistol and a pair of field glasses, getting one hundred and fifty francs. I now felt rich and as the rations were poor and we had not had parcels for a time, resolved that I would get a good feed for all our crew. I fell in line in a queue and when I reached the counter asked for a dozen tins of cherries and the same of peaches. The clerk looked at me pityingly. “Don’t you know,” he said, “that you can only have one of anything.”

  “But why?” I asked. There seemed to be an endless supply on the shelves and in piled cases at the rear.

  “Because we never know how much the officers will want,” he said irritably.

  I got “one of each” and went outside. Tommy was waiting for me and I told him my luck. He went wild, would have charged the counter. “Officers!” he raved. “The ratters feed on the best in the land, double what we get, and all prepared for them, and rum to go with it, and not doing one quarter the work we do. Bah – batmen to wait on them, keeping that many less to do the work in the trenches, meaning we’ve got to take that many more chances, do more hours on duty. And now we’ve got money we can’t buy anything because the dears might want a little extra to entertain guests or French Janes. Officers only – I’ll …”

  It was difficult to quiet him. Tommy was getting worn and tired. It seemed years since we had come to France and he had seen so many of our lads maimed and broken or left on the fields and in trenches. As I got him to go away without trying to do damage we saw a batman come from the rear of the building. He was carrying a case of tinned cherries. I knew him and at once stopped him and a
sked questions. He grinned at us and seemed glad to show just how clever he and his kind were. “Sure, I can get all I want,” he said. “This lot’s for a feed a bunch of us are having. We just get an order signed, tell our officer we need the stuff, then go and get it. We’ll use half the lot ourselves.”

  I looked at the blank chits he carried, and when we went back we got paper and made up a few. Then we watched the canteen until the clerk was relieved by another and went to him with an order for a case of tinned fruit. We got it without a question being asked, and went again for biscuits and chocolate, even getting a box of Marguerite cigars, a kind that were “Old Bill’s” favorites. Back at the barracks that night we had a glorious time, and then I was told to go and look at battalion orders. They stated that I had been made a lance-corporal. Davies had never asked me what I wished regarding the matter, had simply put the promotion through. Three times I had refused it, and I intended to do so again, but Tommy argued that if I did not take the “dog’s leg” some of the new men might get it, and make things rotten for the few of the old gang that remained.

  The bombing planes were busy and the Hun also shelled the city. We went to the station and looked about it. The next day we were moved just outside to a cemetery area. Sambro and I had a bed together in a grassy hollow, not bothering to dig in and make a shelter, and in the night several big shells fell very close to us. We did not leave our place, however, and in the morning saw several graves that had been torn wide, leaving shattered caskets and skeletons in the glare of the morning sun. Near us was a man with a long black beard and with some decoration on his black frock coat. He looked as if he had not been buried more than a week and was in a sitting-up position, thrown that way by a shell explosion.

  Again we moved up front, a long hike, Sambro and Tommy and I together, chatting about those we had left behind; Tulloch with his blighty talk; Sykes with his books; poor Corporal Hughes, killed in a cellar accidentally, after all he had survived; and then were silent as we wondered who were the next to go, what we would face next time. War seemed a different thing now, no six days in and six days out of the trenches, no six-hour shifts on posts, but “over the top” work, charging Hun machine guns, killing around trench bays with bomb and bayonet, and we had got so accustomed to German prisoners and wounded that they no longer seemed something alien and apart. I had seen Sambro and a dark-haired Heinie sitting together on a trench bank, smoking, had seen Tommy give the last water in his bottle to a wounded man in gray. And I was conscious of a change in myself. I felt old, indescribably weary at times, dull, listless; indifferent to anything but thoughts of Steve.

  Cave returned to the battalion. I seldom visited headquarters, but I knew he had been away a long time and now he wore a Sam Browne and was an officer. He greeted me as kindly as ever. I saw Naufts. Sedgewick was with him but he did not recognize me. Seeing him made me think of Jimmy and I looked him up. He was taciturn, gloomy, smoking by himself; did not care what the battalion did or where they went.

  We went into the cellar of a Chateau and from there did several carrying parties. I was sent on patrols and worked along ground where the only line I was sure of was our own posts. There were no trenches fenced with wire to guide one, and sunken roads gave cover to both friend and foe. We were in good quarters and the building over us had not been damaged to any extent. Back a distance there was a pond and the wreckage of a German training school. Beyond it lay a one-street village, badly battered by shell fire. Tommy and I decided to visit it.

  We made our way over in the mist of a showery morning and reached the place without difficulty. We had no blankets and had slept cold for a few nights, as it was September and a chill was in the air. The first few houses were so wrecked that there was nothing to get. The Huns had entered with axes and smashed every stick of furniture, even to the pictures on the walls, had driven their tools into the walls, crashed doors from hinges, broken all the windows. It was simply a scene of wanton, hellish destruction.

  The priest’s house was not so badly wrecked, and an inner chamber was almost intact. We stripped the bed of fine sheets and pillows and a beautiful eiderdown puff. I went into the cellar and found nothing, but as I turned to come up noticed a cupboard stood in one corner. It did not seem to belong to the cellar and we examined it thoroughly but it was empty. Then Tommy tugged it away from the wall to look behind – and there was a square opening in the masonry!

  We lighted a candle and peered in. It was a small circular place, with shelves ringed around it, and on the shelves were hundreds of bottles. We took them to the light and discovered that they were the finest wines that France produced, and some of them were quite aged. We gathered a dozen of them into our sheets and stole from the place. Not half an hour later the Hun dropped shells all along the street we had travelled.

  Back in the cellar we slept warmly and comfortable but our bottled treat was misused. Several of the boys got so jovial over the wine that we had to take the rest from them, and the sergeant-major was a perplexed man. He could not figure the source of supply.

  CHAPTER X

  The Student

  The last night I was on patrol we had an exchange of shots with the Germans who were some distance from us in the dark. There was considerable shelling and gas was used, several of our men getting caught before they suspected it. Before morning we had fifteen cases lying around the building, being cared for by a medical officer.

  When we moved back I was again used as a guide and we had to move sharply as the Hun dropped a few salvos near the chateau grounds. After a long, hard march we reached a huge cave near Vis en Artois and went down steps in the dark. Away down in the bowels of the earth we saw the big passages and chambers, seemingly endless. It was a damp and depressing place but we slept soundly. I was wakened by a runner and told that I was to go with a working party to repair roads – and go at once.

  It was not seven o’clock in the morning and we had not reached the cave until just before midnight. A working party! I got up, and as I pulled on my boots was somewhat startled to see a place in the chalk where an explosive had been placed. It was not connected by wiring. The men were all grousing and swearing. There had been no hot tea for them and they were hungry. We saw engineers about, looking at the many places where explosives had been placed, and they told us that a lighting plant was in seemingly perfect order. One man had been on the point of starting it when it was discovered that a single revolution of the engine would detonate explosives that would wreck the cave. Besides that trap they found that one of the rail ropes down the stairway was connected with a mine that would blow up the passage. Had any man grasped the rope as we went down we would have been blown to atoms.

  We got outside in the chilly air. No one was about and the cooks were not in sight. We were paraded by a very neat and trim officer, just over from Blighty, and marched away to a road near the village. There we found picks and shovels left by a party of engineers and were told to fill in holes and fix up the road. It was not in a bad condition, had not been wrecked and there was no traffic on it at all. To make matters worse, we saw a labour battalion encamped a short distance from us and as we went to work their reveille was blown. They tumbled out of their tents and went to their cook wagon where they were served a breakfast we had not known in a month, plenty of bacon, and porridge and big slices of bread with jam and cheese.

  Tommy hurled his pick to the bank. “Arrest me or anything you like,” he snorted. “There’s a labour mob just turning out now, after quitting at five yesterday. We’ve marched half the night in a rain, are still wet and cold, have had no hot tea or breakfast-and look at them blighters. We’re worse than dogs. Anybody in the army is used better than the men who do the fighting. I’ll not do another stroke this morning.”

  I walked away and left him and at the end of the party found the officer industriously showing a man how to fill a six-inch hole. Then I looked over the bank and saw a “Y” marquee. I went back to Tommy and his crowd and told them to go
and get some tea or cocoa and biscuits or anything they wished, and gave them a sheaf of francs. They went instantly. I walked back the other way and saw the officer hurry by in search of the missing ones. He had not spoken to me except to snap some order. I told the crowd he had made work where the rest had gone and they soon vanished. I looked around and saw the officer running in circles, and followed the men to the big tent.

  It was well-stocked and soon we were seated around enjoying ourselves. We had a clear twenty minutes before the Sam Browne found us. He was raging and ordered us all outside “instantly.” We wandered out and he led us back to the road. He was dancing and fuming. Over the way the labour battalion was enjoying its breakfast with a leisure we had seldom witnessed. “Corporal,” he barked at me. “We’ll get into serious trouble if we don’t get on with this work.”

  “I think, sir,” I returned, “that you’re more likely to get into trouble if you try to do it.”

  The men had filed to their picks and shovels, but a filling of hot tea and biscuits and tinned fruit and sardines did not help them be lively. They were sleepy, too sleepy to move. One by one they sank on the grassy road bank and relaxed into slumber. The officer roused them, yelled at them, but more were sleeping than at work. He ran to me and ordered me to take their names. He was going to crime the entire party. Tommy was especially defiant and had told him to go “chase his tail.”