Boyd Cable

“ When a light flamed, every man dropped flat in the mud and lay still as the dead beside them till the light died. In the brief intervals of darkness they drove the stakes with muffled hammers, and ran the lengths of barbed wire between them. Heart in mouth they worked, one eye on the dimly seen hammer and stake-head, the other on the German trench, watching for the first upward trailing sparks of the flare. Plenty of men were hit of course, because, light or dark, the bullets were kept flying, but there was no pause in the work, not even to help the wounded in. ”

“ Before the echoes of the explosion had died away, before the last fragments and debris had fallen, there came the sound of another roar, the bellowing thunder of the British guns throwing a storm of shell and shrapnel between the German supports and the ruined trench. That, and another sound, told the Subaltern that the full fruits of his work were to be fully reaped—the sound of the guns and of the full, deep-chested, roaring cheers of the British infantry as they swarmed from their trenches and rushed to occupy the crater of the explosion. ”

“ If the guns up in the firing line had to shift position it has meant no more to the teams than a break of the monotony for a day or two, a night or two's marching, and a return to the rear.
It is afternoon now, and the regiment is drawing near to the trenches. The slanting sun begins to throw long shadows from the poplars. The open fields are covered with tall grass and hay that moves in long, slow, undulating waves under the gentle breeze that is rising. The sloping light falling on them gives the waves an extraordinary resemblance to the lazy swell on a summer sea. ”

“ They have seen and heard the red wrath of war, not in the pictures of the illustrated papers, not in the cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth tales of chance men who have been in it; but at first-hand, with their own eyes and ears, in the leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing white clouds of the shrapnel, the black spouting smoke of the high-explosive, in the deafening thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the crash of falling walls, the groans of wounded men, the screams of frightened children. ”

“ Close to the German parapet are a few black, huddled heaps—dead Germans, shot down while out in a working party on the wire at night, and left there to rot, and some killed in their own trench, and tumbled out over the parapet by their own comrades. The drowsy silence is broken at long intervals by a rifle shot; a lark pours out a stream of joyful thrilling song. ”

“ Simply they must give body and mind to the job in hand, and dig and dig and keep on digging. There had been many brave deeds done by the fighting men on that day: there had been bold leading and bold following in the first rush across the open against a tornado of fire; there had been forlorn-hope dashes for ammunition or to pick up wounded; there had been dogged and desperate courage in clinging all day to the battered trench under an earth-shaking tempest of high-explosive shells, bombs, and bullets. ”

“ The rousing from sleep, the turning out from warm or even from wet blankets, the standing still in a water-logged trench, with everything—fingers and clothes and rifle and trench-sides—cold and wet and clammy to the touch, and smeared with sticky mud and clay, all combine to make the morning 'stand to arms' an experience that no amount of repetition ever accustoms one to or makes more bearable. ”

“ Even the trapping of war, the fighting machine itself, wears a holiday or—at most—an Easter-peace-manoeuvre appearance. A heavy battery has its guns so carefully concealed, so bowered in green, that it is only the presence of the lounging gunners and close, searching looks that reveal a few inches of muzzle peering out towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns, covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are the dwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs,' with no visible sign of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. ”

“ The German working-party 'stuck it out' for a couple of minutes, but with light after light flaming into the sky and exposing them pitilessly, with the British trench crackling and spitting fire from end to end, with the bullets hissing and whistling over them, and hailing thick amongst them, their nerves gave and broke; in a frantic desire for life and safety they flung away the last chance of life and safety their prone and motionless position gave them. ”

“ For them the promise of spring is a grim and a sinister thing; to them the springy green turf carpet on the fields means ground fit to bear the weight of teams and guns, dry enough to give firm foothold to the ranks of infantry charging across the death-trap of the neutral ground, where clogging, wet, slippery mud adds to the minutes under the hail of fire and every minute there in the open means hundreds of lives lost. The hard, dry road underfoot means merely that roads are passable for heavy guns and transport. ”

“ Through all the whirlwind of noise the doctors worked steadily. Unheeding the noise, the dust, the heat, the trembling of the crazy building, they worked from dawn to noon, and from noon on again to dusk, only pausing for a few minutes at mid-day to swallow beef-tea and a biscuit, and in the afternoon to drink tepid tea. Early in the afternoon a light shell struck a corner of the roof, making a clean hole on entry and blowing out the other side in a clattering gust of flame and smoke, broken tiles and splintering wood. ”

“ The British flung in on top of the defenders like terriers into a rat-pit, and the fighters snarled and worried and scuffled and clutched and tore at each other more like savage brutes than men. The defence was not broken or driven out—it was killed out; and lunging bayonet or smashing butt caught and finished the few that tried to struggle and claw a way out up the slippery trench-sides. ”

“ Out of the darkness, or looming big against the misty light, figures came and went stumbling and slipping in the mud—stretcher-bearers carrying or supporting the wounded, a ration party staggering under boxes balanced on shoulders, a strung-out line of supports stooped and trying to move quietly, men in double files linked together by swinging ammunition boxes. All these things Sapper Duffy saw out of the tail of his eye, and without stopping or slacking the pace of his digging. ”

“ Hard on the heels of the victorious attackers came a swarm of men running and staggering to the trench with filled sandbags over their shoulders. As the front of the attack passed on over the wrecked trench and pressed the Germans back across the open, the sandbags were flung down and heaped scientifically in the criss-cross of a fresh breastwork. Other men, laden with coils of wire and stakes and hammers, ran out in front and fell to work erecting a fresh entanglement. ”

“ With a hoarse yell they flung themselves forward, and the lost trench spouted a whirlwind of fire and lead to meet their rush. But the German defenders had no fair chance of resistance. Their new parapet was not half formed and offered no protection to the stream of bullets that sleeted in on them from rifles and maxims on their flanks. The charging British infantry carried hand grenades and bombs and flung them ahead of them as they ran, and, finally, there was no thicket of barb-wire to check the swing and impetus of the rush. ”

“ Sapper Duffy had learned all this by full experience, and now the number of 'whutts' he heard gave him a very clear understanding of the dangers of this particular job. He was the farthest out man of the line. On his left hand he could just distinguish the dim figure of another digger, stooping and straightening, stooping and straightening, with the rhythm and regularity of a machine. On his right hand was empty darkness, lit up every now and then by the glow of a flare-light showing indistinctly through the drizzling rain. ”

“ At midnight every road and track leading to the forward trenches had been brimming with men, with regiments tramping slowly or squatting stolidly by the roadside, smoking much and talking little, had been crawling with transport, with ammunition carts, and ambulances and stretcher-parties, and sappers heavily laden with sandbags and rolls of barbed wire. The trenches—support, communication, and firing—had trickled with creeping rivulets of khaki caps and been a-bristle with bobbing rifle-barrels. ”

“ Even the roofed-in dug-outs gave no security. A bomb that fell just outside the entrance of one dug-out, riddled one man lying inside, and blew another who was crouching in the entrance outwards bodily across the trench, stunning him with the shock and injuring him in a score of places. Plenty of the bombs fell short of the trench, but too many fell fairly in it. When one did so there was only one thing to do—to throw oneself violently down in the mud of the trench bottom, and wait, heart in mouth, for the crash of the explosion. ”

“ The shell-fire grew more and more intense. The air was thick and choking with smoke and chemical fumes, and vibrant with the rush and shriek, of the shells, the hum of bullets, and the ugly whirr of splinters, the crash of impacting shells, and ear-splitting crack of the guns' discharge, the 'r-r-rupp' of shrapnel on the wet ground, the metallic clang of bullets and steel fragments on the gun-shields and mountings. ”

“ The rifle fire slackened and almost died, and the last survivors of the charge had such chance as was left by the enemy's shells to reach the shelter of their trench. Groups of stretcher-bearers leaped out over the parapet and ran to pick up the wounded, and hard on their heels another line of infantry swarmed out and formed up for another attack. As they went forward at a run the roar of rifles and machine-guns swelled again, and the hail of bullets began to sweep across to meet them. ”

“ More cold-bloodedly unpleasant work it would be hard to imagine. The men had none of the thrill and heat of combat to help them; they had not the hope that a man has in a charge across the open—that a minute or two gets the worst of it over; they had not even the chance the fighting man has where at least his hand may save his head. Their business was to stand in the one spot, open and unprotected, and without hope of cover or protection for a good hour or more on end. They must pay no heed to the singing bullets, to the crash of a bursting shell, to the rising and falling glow of the flares. ”

“ The whole regiment looks fresh and well set-up and clean-cut, satisfied with the day and not bothering about the morrow, magnificently strong and healthy, carelessly content and happy, not anxious to go out of its way to find a fight, but impossible to move aside from its way by the fight that does find it—all of which is to say it looks exactly what it is, a British regiment of the regular Line, war-hardened by eight or nine months' fighting, moving up from a four days' rest back into the firing line. ”

“ The thoughts of the dead man so close beside him disturbed him vaguely, although he had never given a thought to the scores of dead he had seen behind the trench and that he knew were scattered thick over the 'neutral' ground where they had fallen in the first charge. But this man had been one of his own company and his own section—it was different about him somehow. Yet of course Sapper Duffy knew that the dead must at times lie where they fall, because the living must always come before the dead, especially while there are many more wounded than there are stretchers or stretcher-bearers. ”

“ A support trench about shoulder deep with a low parapet along its front was so damaged by shell fire that the men for the most part had to move along it bent almost double to keep out of sight and bullet reach. Every here and there—where a shell had lobbed fairly in—there was a huge crater, its sides sealing up the trench with a mass of tumbled earth over which the men scrambled crouching. ”

“ Instantly the parapet opposite began to crackle with rifle fire and to beat out a steady tattoo from the hammering machine-guns. The bullets hissed and spat across the open and hailed upon the opposite parapet. Scores, hundreds of men fell before they could clear the entanglements to form up in the open, dropped as they climbed the parapet, or even as they stood up and raised a head above it. ”

“ The men eat mightily, then light their pipes and cigarettes and loll at their ease. The trees are masses of clustering pink and white blossom, the grass is carpeted thick with the white of fallen petals and splashed with sunlight and shade. A few slow-moving clouds drift lazily across the blue sky, the big, fat bees drone their sleepy song amongst the blossoms, the birds rustle and twitter amongst the leaves and flit from bough to bough. It would be hard to find a more peaceful picture in any country steeped in the most profound peace. ”