by Will R Bird
* * *
Ghost Bayonets
Will R. Bird
This page formatted 2011 Blackmask Online.
http://www.blackmask.com
War Stories, August 1930
NO MAN'S LAND—Night and the Boche grimly guarded the dread mystery of Graveyard Corner, death-place of the fighting Yanks . . .
THERE was a sergeant got lost in there in the dark and he was stepping on graves and dead men. He kicked something like a hard ball and it was a head, and then somebody took hold of his arm, and led him out of there. It was a ghost, a big, tall Frenchman, dressed in a black suit, top hat and all, with his eyes out and his face as white as plaster. He took the sergeant back to the trench and said, 'If you come in here again you're a goner,' or something like that. The other chaps laughed at the sergeant when he told them that, but one night he got mixed again and went in there— and tripped over a wire and broke his neck—”
“Cut that damn tripe.” The thin, nervous voice in the dark was cut off by a savage growl. “You got the 'Canary' so scared now that he's shakin'. Cut it out, and no lights or smokin', for we're going' in to Graveyard Corner right now.”
The sergeant of Ten Platoon got up from the bank where they had been resting and stepped down into the black void of a communication trench.
“Where's this we're going?” asked the sixth man in the file behind him. “That chap behind us has been talking about ghosts ever since we started. He's trying to start something.”
“Search me, Jimmy,” came a soft response from the man in front of him. “This bunch has been lookin' like they're goin' to their own funeral ever since we got word to fall in at billets.”
“You bet,” said a husky voice in the dark. “You'll wish you was back in the States before we're through this trip. The Corner's a bloody trap of a place, and it's haunted.”
“Haunted?” queried Jimmy. “How—”
“Stop that talkin' when I say to.” The sergeant's command was as sibilant as a snake's hiss, and the slow-moving file felt its way up the trench without further parleying.
Presently a wan moon peered through the clouds and gave enough light for the in-going platoon to pick out its surroundings as it spread into the front line. They had marched in from Cité Saint Pierre and were taking over a sector between Lens and Hill 70, a frontal area with a reputation that wrung curses from the old hands and blanched the faces of the superstitious.
Jimmy wondered, as he plodded, what sort of a place the Corner was. All day he had heard the old-timers muttering, cursing and talking among themselves. All the front was bad enough, he gleaned, but the Corner had a category of its own. It was a place where each day was a grim possession, something held precariously. Then he grinned, and tried to get a look at Pete. Probably these old hands had been trying to bluff them, put their wind up before they saw the front, and so help the sergeant to win his bet.
Jimmy Blake and his pal, Pete Conner, had just joined the “Pig Stickers,” one of the best battalions in the Canadian Second Division, an outfit that prided itself on being the best bayonet fighters on the Western Front, and the hardest to frighten. The sergeant of their platoon was an iron-jawed, bull-voiced, thick-skinned giant, who made scornful remarks about all Americans, and especially about Jimmy and Pete, who could not conceal the fact that they were rather young in years.
New men roused little interest, for there were new men after every hard trip, but Jimmy and Pete were Yanks, and that was different.
“What the hell made you kids come and join our mob?” the hardboiled sergeant had asked. “Don't you know that we're the Pig Stickers?”
“Yeah, but that don't sink so deep,” Jimmy had retorted. He was twenty and as big as the average. “Pete and me's always lookin' for excitement and so we thought we'd come over and play tag with Fritz until we got acquainted. Then when Pershing comes with his gang, he'll make us generals on account of us knowin' so much more'n the rest.”
“Is that so?” the hardboiled one had sneered. “I'll bet fifty francs you ain't got spunk enough to stick a man, and that you'll puke the first time you smell a dead one.”
“Take your fifty,” said Jimmy. “Put up your money. I never tried my bayonet on a live Fritz and I've never been in the trenches, but my cash says that I can go anywhere you do.”
The rest of the platoon had not said anything at the time, but afterward, when they met Jimmy alone, they told him that he had been foolhardy.
“That sarge is a bearcat,” they told him. “He's not afraid of anything on foot, and he's been here so long that he knows all there is to know.” Jimmy thought of that now as he moved into the front trench and peered curiously about him.
The platoon they relieved made record time in departing, and their actions spoke louder than words. There was no doubt as to their personal regard of Graveyard Corner.
An enemy machine gun swept the parapet in front of Jimmy and he ducked low as bullets whistled and snapped above him. He was stationed on a firestep beside one of the old hands and had been receiving instructions.
“Don't move when a flare goes up,” cautioned the veteran. “And rest your eyes now and then when you're lookin' over. Stumps and things will look like they're movin' if you don't.”
A corporal came along the trench. “Keep a sharp lookout,” he ordered. “This here's the worst place on this front. You can see by watchin' the flares that we're in a sort of salient, and the ground's so flat ahead that we can't put out patrols. Heinie would just murder them with a crossfire. The only cover there is, and the only chance for patrols, is over on the right, where there's a dry ditch along a French road that runs into his lines. You look over that way and you'll see the stubs of the trees alongside it. Of course Heinie's in as bad a fix about patrols as we are, and he uses that ditch, too.”
SEVERAL machine guns began firing and the Boche began strafing. The skyline was illumined by flickering lights and the air quivered with the passing of shells. They could hear the resulting explosions back near Cité Saint Pierre and Jimmy was conscious of queer tremors as he listened to the strafe. He wished he had not spoken so bombastically to the sergeant.
“Keep lookin' over,” ordered the corporal, speaking loud above the din. “There's been three posts cleaned out on this trench inside of a month. Every man was killed or captured, and nobody knew that Fritz was near till afterward.”
Jimmy stared into the gloom. He had been able to distinguish the contours of the shell-torn ground in front of him, and to the right he could see the line of stumps that marked the road. The moon was appearing again and as he looked he saw, nearer at hand, other short stumps that he had not noticed the first time.
“Does the road turn this way, corp?” he asked. “The stumps come right along this wire.”
“I told you you'd be seein' things,” grunted the veteran sentry. “There's no stumps near the wire.” He got up on the firestep. “Where do you see them?” he asked.
Jimmy, crowded over for the moment, got back in his place and pointed, then lowered his hand hastily.
“By gosh, that's got me beat,” he said. “I'd have taken my oath I saw stumps out there.”
“Just what I thought,” rumbled the veteran. “You new guys are all like that.”
Jimmy rubbed his eyes and stared again. He was certain that he had seen the stumps, and yet it was an impossibility. Stumps could not move themselves. The corporal brought shovels and told Jimmy and his mate to work at widening the trench as they waited their turn on the firestep! “We want plenty of room at the corners,” he said, “so when the alarm's given all the spare men can rush to the spot.”
The night seemed endless to Jimmy. The fitful light of the flares cast strange, moving shadows over the flat, shell-scarred area i
n front and bullets buried themselves with vicious thuds in the tortured sentinel stubs that bordered the old roadway. Behind the front trench a war-shocked cemetery crowned an acre of higher ground and a reflection of the flares was sent back from the shattered tombstones and the debris of a wrecked shrine. Waspy bullets traversed the graveyard continually and the veteran, when he mentioned the place, spoke with awe.
“That there burying ground is haunted,” he whispered. “In the daytime you can see dead men sprawled all around it. Fritz had this place once, took it from the Imperials, and they did a lot of killin' among them graves. And it's been shelled so much since then, that the stiffs are pitched around every way and some of the Frenchmen has been knocked out of their coffins. Don't ever go near there, for it's sure bad luck. One outfit had a chap that was scared when it come his turn to do listenin' post. He slipped back there and hid at a grave. A tall Frenchman in a black rig come to him and led him back and warned him not to come there again. Well, the guy got his wind up again and beat it there. He hid in another corner. They found him there, dead, black in the face, just as if he'd been drowned or choked.” The veteran shuddered as he spoke.
Jimmy shivered. He hated this talk about haunted places. Despite his assumed indifference he had a dread of anything concerned with the supernatural.
There was a sudden, nerve-shattering report, a lurid tongue of flame. The sentry pitched backward. Then a bomb burst in the trench and the explosion felled Jimmy and left him half-stunned. Dark figures surged on the trench wall. Another needle of flame stabbed the dark and the corporal sank to the trench floor, clutching at his throat with his hands. His heels drummed on the duck walk.
It had all happened in one split second and Jimmy was just jumping to his feet as the first Boche jumped into the trench. Sock! Jimmy lunged desperately with his bayonet, drove it instinctively—in—out—on guard. The instructor at the base had told him how it was done, and, his pulses pounding, he made the thrusts as if on practice, but as he felt live flesh run over the steel, he was filled with an odd exhilaration.
Bombs burst to the left and right. Pistol shots! Bullets snapped about his ears. Dark forms all about him, rushing back and forth in search of opponents who were not there. Jimmy, trapped on both sides, fought like a madman, discarding every caution, insane with one desire—to fight his way clear.
He leaped, dodged, slashed, stabbed, struck and butt-ended, until he slipped as he finally drove his bayonet into a second body, and a blow on the head stretched him senseless. He roused a moment later as men from the next post came rushing in. Four Germans, the corporal, and the veteran sentry lay dead. The rest of the invaders had vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared.
The platoon officer appeared, and he asked countless questions. Jimmy explained that he had been knocked down by the first bomb, and how he had met the first of the raiders while he was still too dizzy to duck back from him.
“You're lucky,” said the lieutenant. “That's what saved your life. They expected you were dead when you fell, and you staying right with them and using your bayonet upset their plans so that they beat it. But how in the devil did they get so close without somebody seeing them?”
No one answered him. It seemed impossible, and all knew that the veteran sentry was a good man. A double sentry watch was kept. Jimmy's head ached and he was feverish with excitement. He had had contact with the enemy; he had used his bayonet. How he wished he could see Pete.
At last it lightened and the sun appeared like a gigantic orange ball glinting through the white ground mist. Stand-down was given and Jimmy hurried to the dugout and joined Pete, who had been out most of the night on a carrying party. He told him of the surprise attack and how all the others had been killed, and how he had used his bayonet.
“Gee,” said Pete. “I wish they'd put me on a post.” He was a tall youth, almost as big as the hardboiled sergeant. “We've got that nervous guy they call the Canary with us, and he's enough to set a man crazy. He's scared to death of the Graveyard and we have to go by it every trip. He bellyaches about it all the time and that lousy three-striper has threatened to break his neck. I wish I was with you.”
They talked a while longer before Pete slept. Jimmy lay awake a long time. He could not help wondering about the stumps he had seen, and how the Germans had appeared so suddenly.
IT WAS stand-to again and the night was very dark. Jimmy hurried to his post, fearing that he was a little late. He had gone with Pete to have a look at the haunted Graveyard. It was a more weird scene of wreckage than he had imagined. Dead bodies were flung in all positions, grotesque, unreal, horribly fantastic. From one shell crater a headless body protruded. Three grinning skulls were rolled together, upside down. A black foot and leg, stripped naked, was thrust through a pile of rotting equipment. “How's that for a nest of ghosts?” asked Pete, who seemed impervious to any spectacle. “Heinie sprays the place all the time with his machine guns so that there's no chance to bury them stiffs, and you can't get any souvenirs without you crawl in there on your knees. I was out there and I heard a noise like whisperin'. My hair went up till my tin hat nearly tipped off, then a bunch of rats run out of a hole. It's a grand feeding place for them and I'll bet they're the ghosts that the Imperials tell about.”
Jimmy had drawn back then. He hated the idea of rats among the dead.
“Don't go up there again, Pete,” he begged. “I hate the place. It gets me creepy.”
The sergeant and the platoon officer were at Jimmy's post when he reached it.
“Say, you,” said the sergeant. “Where was it you thought you seen them stumps?”
Jimmy rose up and pointed, then stared. It was not quite dark and he could see the wire. A lane had been cut through it!
“But—was them Heinies that I saw?” he stammered.
“They was,” said the sergeant grimly, “and they was cuttin' the wire when you spotted them.”
“But how—why couldn't we see them before that, or afterwards?”
“That,” said the officer, “is the mystery, and this Corner is full of them. However, you showed good nerve last night, so you come out with me now. We'll crawl out and have a look along the wire and over at the ditch.”
Jimmy was tongue-tied. He wanted to object, to tell them that he had not had training in scout work, but his dread of appearing cowardly before the sergeant held him dumb, and before he realized it, he was crawling over the parapet after the lieutenant, equipped with a revolver and a quartet of bombs. The officer dragged a white tape after him and they left it strung out through the sally gap as a guide for them when they returned. In the gloom it looked to Jimmy like a slender pathway for ghosts, and he shivered as he crawled.
A heavy dew had fallen and wet weeds brushed his face like dead fingers, startling him so that he almost sprang up, The officer moved slowly, and they examined the wire where it had been cut. A short investigation was all that was necessary. As they could easily see, the wire had been cut from the inside, judging by the way the ends were turned. It had been made ready for the quick getaway the raiders had made.
At their discovery the officer swore vitriolically, and then they crawled the length of the platoon front, watching for the entrance gap the Germans had used. To their amazement they could not find one, and after an hour of useless crawling the baffled lieutenant announced that they would go up the ditch.
“Maybe we'll catch one of them squareheads and I'll make him tell how they did it,” muttered the officer as he told Jimmy to follow him.
Very lights, with their wavering silent whiteness, held them close to the tree stumps, and then the Boche began to signal. He put up red flares that made a shallow pool beside them shine like a lake of blood; then green lights went up and gave all the area a ghastly, corpse-like sheen. The officer touched Jimmy.
“Keep a sharp lookout,” he whispered. Those signals mean that he has a patrol out.”
They were another hour getting near enough to distinguish the Ger
man lines. Once something rustled through the grass and Jimmy held his breath until he saw that it was only a rat, its eyes gleaming malevolently as it crossed an old plant in front of him, its snaky long tail dragging after it in a manner that made his flesh creep. Nausea stirred his stomach.
Overhead a flare looped high and shed a white glow over everything. Jimmy hugged the earth and stared at the German wire. The darkness was blinding as the flare flickered out and it was a long time before they ventured to move. Then, all at once, somewhere up the cobbled road on the other side of the stump, a boot scraped on the stones. Jimmy felt a tingling sensation, a tightening of his scalp. He could scarcely keep from shaking. When the Germans had jumped down on him in the trench it had happened so quickly that he had not had time to get frightened. He had hardly known what he was doing as he had not recovered from the concussion and everything had been a nightmare. Now, as he waited, listening, his heart pounded and his pulses throbbed; his lips were dry and thickened.
The lieutenant lay his length ahead, perfectly still. They watched the bank and after a time three indistinct blurs appeared. It was a German patrol that had been on the other side of the road, on its way home. Some brigade gunner far back of the first trenches chose that moment to warm his gun and bullets zipped among the stumps. The three crouched blurs shot back for the cover of the ditch and it was pure chance that they dove for the exact spot the officer occupied.
The lieutenant shot the leader so that he tumbled down beside him, and he fired twice at the others before their Lugers barked at him. Jimmy, bathed in sudden perspiration, pitched one of his bombs at the Germans, but did it so hastily that his throw was short. The grenade burst so close that a piece of metal screamed through the rim of his helmet and a million bells rang in his ears. He was dazed, and choked by acrid fumes. He groped to find his revolver, which he had lost. But there was no need of it. When the smoke cleared, no dark form menaced him. One of the Germans lay so near that he could touch his boots, and he could see the third man some yards away, as if he had tried to escape before he fell. Both lay sprawled, inert—dead.