Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  No bloomin’ good are we.

  But when we get to Berlin

  The Kaiser he will roar:

  Ach, ach! mein Gott! what a bloody fine lot

  Are the Umteenth Cyclist Corps!

  We rode along the shady tow-path by the river and turned north through Bray to one of the little valleys among the slopes beyond the village. Here in the side of a hill a long line of elaborately designed dug-outs had been constructed for the use of Corps Headquarters when the advance should necessitate their moving forward. On the opposite slope a kind of large cattle-pen of barbed wire ten feet high was in course of erection for the accommodation of prisoners; in the blue sky above hung an observation balloon, yellow and glistening, like a bloated caterpillar on the hook of some heavenly fisherman; and the valley itself was filled with horse lines and transport; shelters of every kind, tents, tarpaulins, bivouacs, Stevenson huts, Nissen huts, huts of ammunition boxes and of galvanized iron cumbering every foot of ground.

  Here we left our cycles, transport, and the C.Q.M.S., whose job it would be to send up rations and form a link with Battalion Headquarters. Then we marched out up the slope, on through the long communicating trench to a row of little tin-pot shelters in Carnoy, where we had a foretaste of the plastering we were to have on our nightly job of digging trench-mortar pits in rear of the fire trench. The men had just been detailed to their dug-outs, and the orderlies were coming up the trench with the dixies of tea when the hurtling roar of a “crump” descended out of the blue. The orderlies dropped the dixies and lay flat. The earth shook; twenty yards away a great black cloud bellied out above the trench and a gigantic sack of coals, it seemed, was tipped down a chute.

  Gurney took his pipe from his mouth, and made a grimace. “Five-nine,” he remarked.

  The orderlies had risen unscathed and were picking lumps of earth out of the tea. From the dug-out next door rose the ironical chorus of the men:

  I want to go home. I want to go home.

  Whizz-bangs and sausages make such a noise,

  I want to go home and be one of the bhoys.

  Take me over the sea

  Where the Alleman can’t get at me.

  Oh my, I don’t want to die; I want to go home.

  G. B. grinned and threw his tin hat on to his valise. “They will have more to say when they taste that tea,” he remarked.

  III

  All this time, preparations for the great advance were being pushed forward. Villages behind the lines were crowded with troops. Over all the Somme uplands campa were springing up, and the cheerful sound of drum and fife or the skirl of pipes was heard as battalion after battalion came marching in. Farther back, the villagers were awakened from sleep by the clank of caterpillar tractors, and drew aside their curtains to see the great steel mountings and villainous squat barrels of nine-point-twos passing through. At night the roads to the trenches were blocked with transport; for, in addition to the usual ration parties, vast quantities of field-gun ammunition were going forward, to be buried till the guns should overtake it. By night, the little valley of Carnoy was like a beehive: men digging gun-pits, long chains of men passing shells from hand to hand, endless files of men staggering under the weight of toffee-apples—those bars of steel tipped with great iron balls that were the projectiles of the heavy trench-mortars—men half-naked, heaving and hauling and sweating in the darkness.

  New batteries were springing up everywhere like mushrooms in a night, and every few yards along the front of the once-peaceful Billon Wood, the lean barrels of eighteen-pounders crouched among the undergrowth. Just off the road, a long-range gun had been installed, and periodically its great full-throated bang was heard and the shuffling hum of the shell on its ten-mile journey to Péronne. The French also were there in their horizon blue to relieve the monotony of the drab khaki, and the staccato bark of the famous soixante-quinze was added to the more dignified roll of our eighteen-pounders.

  And night by night the quiet intervals became fewer and of shorter duration. Suddenly the hollows of the hills would be lit by the flash of guns as the great orchestra tuned up. And then up would soar the signal rockets, red, blue, green, white, and all hell break loose; across the devastated valleys sounded the dreary drumming of gas gongs, and men struggled into their respirators, and sentries peered anxiously over the parapets.

  And through it all the ant-like activity went on: endless streams of men coming and going; staggering under heavy loads; half-naked and sweating, man-handling guns into pits; digging marching, falling into shell-holes, cursing, laughing, singing softly to the orchestra of the guns.

  Six days before the hour of the attack, our bombardment opened. Day and night it went on ceaselessly, day and night that continuous rumble punctuated by the deep individual bur-r-rump of the heavies as a separate shout is heard above the roar of a mob. For six days and nights the earth trembled as when a division of cavalry gallons by. One was in a factory filled day and night with the thud and vibration of machinery. Far back behind the line, it sounded like the roar of a distant furnace; and farther back, out of earshot, the steady rattling of the window-frames told that it was still going on. The pulsation and vibration of that bombardment worked into one’s body and brain, but one grew accustomed to it as one grows accustomed to the engines of a ship. It was as if the machinery that spun the earth upon its axis had become audible.

  IV

  The attack was timed for seven-thirty, and the sun rose in splendour that fateful morning, dispersing the thin mist and flooding the torn and pounded Picardy hills with its cheerful light. With the passing of dawn the bombardment relaxed, as if to whisper to the anxious German staff, “It is not to-day”; but, as the hand of the clock moved slowly through the arc between seven and half past, it worked up again and rose to a pitch of fury.

  The German trenches were hidden behind a wall of spouting earth and flame, like a heavy sea breaking on a rocky coast. And then, as an orchestra is silenced by the wave of the conductor’s baton, it ceased, whilst the gunners lengthened range for the first lift, to break out again a moment later in undiminished fury. By the jagged scars in the earth that marked our trenches, the figure of a man appeared and stood for a second, the only living thing visible in all that flayed and pounded country; then other figures were beside him, and a long, irregular line rose out of the earth and moved slowly across the battered ribbon of no-man’s-land. Behind them another line had risen from the earth—the second wave. Two mines went up with a sky-shattering roar and mountainous uprearing of earth and flame; the orchestra of the guns rose in crescendo, and the machine guns began their insane stuttering. In England, people were sitting down to coffee and bacon, and here, above the Somme, the biggest battle the world had yet seen had begun.

  V

  Our rôle for the moment was standing by, to go through when the enemy’s line was broken. But the hoped-for break did not come. Day after day fresh battalions with rattle of drums or skirl of pipes swung up to the line; and day after day their battered remnants marched back for a brief respite. And the thunder of the guns went on.

  Our turn came at last; our objective the crest of a low hill that gave an extended view over the country beyond.

  “We are for it, young fellow my lad,” said G. B., as he brought in the orders. “We’re in the next attack—sandwiched between two battalions of the old division. Headquarters want information, and we are to supply it. From our objective, we ought to be able to see something of what is going on; though if old Fritz doesn’t blow us off the top of it, it won’t be his fault.”

  That night, in our quarters in the German old front line, we had a final look over the map and repetition of orders.

  “All clear?” asked G. B. at the end of it.

  “Quite,” we all agreed.

  “Right-oh, then,” said G. B. And he folded up the map and put it in his case.

  Gurney and Dodd took up their tin hats and went out to their platoons, which were falling in outside. G. B.
lighted a last pipe and looked at me across the top of it as he flung away the match.

  “Wind up, Dicky?” he asked.

  “A little,” I confessed. “Have you?”

  “Not personally. It’s more like waiting for the gun in the Mays at Cambridge: you know—ten, nine, eight, seven, six…”

  I nodded.

  “Just a wee bit afraid of catching a crab,” he added.

  “You!” I exclaimed. “Stroke is all right; he won’t catch any crabs.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But, you see, this is the first big show the battalion has been in.”

  “Well, it is up to A Company,” I said.

  He nodded and took up his unfinished mug of whisky. “Well, it’s over the bags and the best of luck,” he answered.

  VI

  Some hours later, we stood in what had been a German reserve-line trench. The air rocked and trembled with concussion; the earth shook beneath our feet; hard, high-pitched detonations smote our aching ear-drums; the acrid smell of high explosive poisoned our nostrils. From horizon to horizon, across the front, great spouts of orange-coloured flame and flying earth leapt ceaselessly towards the drifting smoke—snow-white, green, and venomous-looking, black, woolly, and impenetrable.

  My sergeant made a trumpet of his hands and bellowed, “That’s the stuff to give ’em, sir!”

  I nodded and glanced along the trench at the crouching steel-hatted figures. Every other second came detonations, ear-splitting, brain-numbing, close at hand. Earth stung the face, penetrated the nose and ears; helmets rang to blows of stones and twisted metal; figures sagged foolishly and collapsed.

  G. B. had his eyes fixed upon his wrist-watch. I saw him raise the whistle to his lips and scramble out of the trench. The tornado of sound continued; figures scrambled up ladders and stood on the parapet, silhouetted against the dawn. A voice cried, “All aboard for Dixie!” and with a flicker of cold light on steel points, we went over.

  Overhead was the drone of a million birds in flight. The hillside ahead erupted flame. Noise, noise, noise; the world was full of noise. The air was filled with droning, whining sounds; the earth resounded to patter, patter, smack; and incessantly there came the staccato tap-tap-tapping of machine guns.

  Brown figures lay huddled on the bare chalky ground and among the black tangled wire that stretched like a foul cobweb across the rank grass.

  Suddenly, at our feet yawned a shallow ditch scratched in the chalk, shapeless, unrecognizable as a trench; a litter of burst sandbags, scraps of equipment and humanity pounded into the chalky ooze by the belching guns, but revealing dark, half-blocked holes in the earth from which issued grey, dirt-stained figures with earth-matted hair, grimy, bloodless faces, and glaring, crazed eyes. Then came a flicker of bayonets, the gasping breathing of panting, striving men; grunts, groans, sobs, screams, and the crack of bursting bombs: and the wave passed on, leaving behind the foul, soggy, unspeakable ditch and the silly, lolling, grotesque, grinning figures.

  Noise, noise everywhere: thudding, crashing in the earth; screaming, whirring, whistling in the air—noise that maddened the brain; and incessantly the insane tap-tap-tapping of machine guns. A fury of noise; a madness of sound. Men mad, shouting, cursing, praying; men with bloodshot eyes and ted-tipped bayonets tripping over wire, splashing through foul water, and stumbling into holes.

  Then we halted on the far side of a low rise, and I realized that we had reached our objective. A battered half-filled trench ran diagonally across our front, and behind us a fragment of the angle of a wall, some ten feet high, was all that remained of the Sucrerie that had once stood there. Away to the left, a heavy barrage was beating upon the crest of a hill, but, except for an occasional shell that screamed over our heads and detonated in the ruined Sucrerie behind us, we ourselves received no attention. That, I realized, would come later when the Bosche gunners understood the situation.

  Meanwhile, G. B. made us work like slaves, deepening the old trench and throwing up new protection. We had got into touch with the troops on our left, and Signals had laid a telephone wire up behind us.

  The barrage was still pounding away on our left, and presently we understood the meaning of it, for grey figures could be seen moving across the flayed and broken ground, and the rattle of musketry and the crack of bursting bombs came from that direction. We poured in an enfilade fire, but the storm-centre moved steadily rearwards, and it became evident that this counter-attack had driven a deep wedge in on our left.

  And then our turn came. The old Sucrerie began to spout flame and earth and brick-dust. We crouched in our shallow trench whilst the earth shook and broke around us and the results of our hard digging were destroyed in a few minutes. The hot sun beat down pitilessly upon our steel helmets. Our losses became heavier and heavier; and the pounding still went on. Twice in twenty minutes our telephone line was cut, and we lost men repairing it.

  My senses became numbed by the concussion; I lay on my face, expecting every second to be blown to atoms, but I was too dazed to be afraid. In this inferno it was courting death to raise oneself, yet G. B. moved up and down his line and was ever on the watch.

  Time passed on leaden feet; the air rocked with concussion and sang with flying fragments of iron. Suddenly I realized that it had stopped. G. B. shouted “Here they come!” and I saw him stand upright and his right arm whirl above his head as he flung a bomb.

  The events of the next few minutes have left no clear impression upon my mind. I heard the sudden crack of rifles around me, the click of bolts working furiously, the crack of bombs. Men were growling and muttering on either side of me, and I myself was shouting. Grey figures in goblin-like helmets were streaming toward us. One of them lurched across the sights of my rifle, and I saw the wings of the foresight silhouetted against the faded grey cloth. I felt the kick of the butt against my shoulder without knowing that I had squeezed the trigger, and then the sights ran unimpeded to the opposite hill-slope.

  How long it all lasted I do not know, but quite suddenly, it seemed, the battered ground was bare of movement again. We wiped the sweat from our faces and took a long breath. Then great concussions shook the air again, and great fountains of earth reared themselves among us. We crouched back into our shallow holes.

  Thrice was this performance repeated; and during the long periods that we cowered under that titanic hammering I grew to long for the time when the grey figures would stream upon us and rid us of this paralysing pounding. I told myself that we could not stand it much longer; no human beings could. G. B. must give the order to retire. Flesh and blood could not stand it. But no such order came from G. B., and we hung on.

  I saw… his right arm whirl above his head.

  The telephone wire had been cut in a dozen places, and we had given up attempting to mend it. Runners had been sent back, but none of them had returned, and it was not difficult to guess what had become of them. Way behind us, against the skyline I could see the line of trees upon the road that ran behind our old front line, and it seemed incredible that there a man could stand upright and walk upon his feet.

  Darkness descended upon us, darkness lit by the flash of guns and the sudden glow of shell-bursts. The pitiless shelling slackened, and we stirred like a squad stood at ease. G. B. seized the opportunity to get the wounded back and to send runners to Headquarters. All night long we toiled at repairing our battered defences. A little before midnight, the rain came down in torrents and turned our shallow trench into a running brook, but it lessened the probability of a night attack.

  VII

  With the first glimpse of dawn, the Bosche came over again and without any preliminary shelling. I awoke from my first short snatch of sleep to find my platoon firing rapid into the grey dawn. But the attacking waves melted away and ceased, and then for an hour or more we were left in peace and hardly a shell came near us.

  Some ammunition and rations had come up to us during the night, and our runner had returned with a basket of pigeons from
the corps pigeon-loft to replace our cut telephone wire. With him came Harding, our cheery medical officer. He surveyed us now in the early morning light as we sat in a muddy hole, munching bully beef and ration biscuit.

  “It is a good thing you are not a lady’s man, G. B.,” he said.

  G. B. asked why.

  “Well, you will not be worrying about your appearance,” grinned Harding.

  In truth, G. B., with his sodden and mud-stained tunic, stubbly chin, and haggard, grimy face, with runnels of dried sweat, was anything but a Beau Brummel, and the long gash across his cheek made by a flying stone, gave him a terrifying appearance.

  “We should all of us be the better for a wash and brush-up,” answered G. B. “To tell you the truth, Harding, we haven’t had much time for titivating.”

  “This is the first chance I have had to think sanely since we went over yesterday morning,” I said.

  “Yes, you have arrived in the first real lull we have had,” said G. B. “And if you take my advice, you will get back while it lasts.”

  “Not me,” replied Harding. “I am staying right here. I am the Battalion M.O., and I cannot be with all three companies when they are detached, but, judging by the indentations on the ground that are spread so profusely about us, and presooming that there are more where they came from, A Company seems likely to need the services of the M.O. I strolled into the mess last night and found your runner looking pretty done up, being dosed with whisky, and I asked the Major what was the news of A Company. ‘They’re being pounded to Hell and counter-attacked every half-hour,’ he answered. ‘But they’re hanging on, and G. B. is fighting like fourteen devils.’ That’s the place for me, I thought. And up I came, and here I stay. I’ve found an old Bosche shelter back of the Sucrerie there, and I’m going to use it as an aid-post.”