Reginald Grant

“ I kept repeating to myself, for my own nerves were at the jumping-off point and I thought the veins in my head would burst if I had to endure those explosion-roars another minute. Happily they ceased as suddenly as they began.
There is no kind of suffering endured in the battle front that has such a horror for the men as the gas; it is that fighting for breath that takes the life out of a fellow, and, God! how it chokes. Out of that bunch of 56 gassed men, only six came out whole. ”

“ The necessity of every man's looking out for his own life gave him but little time to think of much else, unless, indeed, killing the Huns. Next to saving our own lives that is the heartfelt desire of each man—get Fritz. And yet, although the first thought of everyone is, naturally, for his own life, there is no history in this war that can be written that can recount the number of occasions when the seeming first thought of men was to do for their pals, utterly regardless of their own safety. ”

“ HAMBONE DAVIS
One evening we were sitting outside of our bivouac watching some German balloons being downed by one of our airplanes; our flier had good luck that evening, accounting for three of the floating sausages; and as we were awaiting the finish of the last sausage, and speculating on how long it would take our air bird to get it, or whether he would get it at all, the gambling spirit ran rife, and fast and furiously the bets were placed.
Open-mouthed and eager we watched and, while watching, a strange-looking figure of a soldier ambled, or shuffled, up the path toward our place. ”

“ Getting through the gas barrage, I came to a camouflage hedge, used to screen and protect the traffic on the road, which sheltered me for four or five hundred yards further, and then I emerged again into the open, and again I was spotted. At this point a set of new dressing stations had been established, and they were as busy as bees looking after wounded men, and every moment of the time they were engaged in their work the machine guns of the enemy planes were hammering the stretcher bearers and the wounded men as industriously as though they were attacking fighting men. ”

“ I looked in the direction of the sound and presently there hove in sight a colossal something of behemoth proportions;—something the like of which I had never seen or heard of in all my life, and I was stricken dumb with amazement. A monstrous monstrosity climbed its way without let or hindrance, up, over, along and across every obstacle in its path. Presently it reached the top of Pozières Ridge; every man who could see had his eyes glued on it. It came down the ridge at about five miles an hour with two small guns peering out of each side. ”

“ The apples clustering on the trees looked as tempting to us as did the apple of our first father and before we started registering, every man in the battery had mentally made his tree selection as the one he would climb as soon as he got a minute to himself. It was unnecessary to climb, however; with the advent of the explosion of our guns, the concussion shook the trees as with a strong wind and the luscious fruit showered upon our heads in abundance. ”

“ The fire gradually slackened, our spirits began to revive, nature commenced to reassert herself, and we made our way to the cookhouse. We got our mess-tins filled with bread, cheese and jam, puddled our way to the dugout and fell to with the relish of healthy, hungry, tired men who had fasted several hours. We gathered in the dugout occupied by Billy and myself. ”

“ On Tuesday, August 29, 1916, my battery pulled into Martinsaart, in the Somme district, which lies three miles immediately west of Thiepval. The Battle of the Somme had been raging since July 1. We took up our position in a beautiful orchard, its trees laden down with apples, and along the hedge on one side of the orchard were ten beehives, humming and throbbing with busy bee life. Underneath some large apple trees we placed our guns and the thickly woven hedge right in front of us gave us a splendidly concealed nook; through the hedge we cut a hole for our beauty's nozzle. ”

“ Two guns were ordered into the wood as a sacrifice battery, and my usual luck attached me to one of them. We were located in a dry ditch, 300 yards back from the front line. Our orders, as usual in the case of the sacrifice battery, were to wait until the Germans, when they broke through, if they did, were almost in line with our guns.
The morning of the 2nd was a beautiful summer's day; nature was in perfect repose; the birds sang gayly, the humming of bees and fragrance of flowers filled the air. ”

“ The moon was brightly shining in a clear sky, but the star shells shooting in the air and exploding with a constantly increasing rapidity, the blaze of artificial light quickly obtained ascendency over the mistress of the night; and the shrapnel shells, throwing their contents of danger in all directions, together with the hissing and roaring of all the other exploding missiles of death, formed a diapason of sound that makes one of those wonder-moments that come so seldom in a lifetime. ”

“ As before, the tanks blazed the way, one of them passing about 30 feet to my right just before I went over the top. As I lay in the trench, the darling old titan passed me, leveling the wire in front, and I had then an even keener realization of what it meant for Fritz to have these monsters piling over and smashing him under foot just about as a man would tread on a worm and mash it. And if there ever was one time during my entire three years of campaigning, when I felt an atom of sympathy for the gray-clad devils, it was at that moment.
But how can sympathy obtain for devils in human form? ”

“ Following orders, under the friendly shelter of night's curtain, I was leading my squad to our gun positions in the front line, about three miles distant, and in slipping and sliding over the muddy ground, pitted with holes in such a manner as to suggest to one's mind that the earth's surface had been scourged with an attack of elephantine smallpox, we could not help chuckling, in spite of the discomforts of our journey, at the ejaculation of a Cockney Tommy: "Strike me pink, Sergeant, but Fritz would think we was his pals if he only saw this goose-step work." ”

“ My experience in watching and timing shell fire now stood me in good stead. I was able by the action of the shells to instantly determine whether the German guns were jumping, rendering their aim uncertain, and, also, to know when the next burst would come, where it would strike, and about how it would operate,—whether gas, shrapnel, or what not. Men were clinging to the walls, trying to take shelter, and it was clearly impossible to get through with the horse. ”

“ We were busily engaged making our morning ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had experienced up to that time, lasting twenty minutes, missiles of every kind raining down on us on all sides. "Stand to!"—and we waited.
At the end of twenty minutes our men started jumping out of their trenches ahead of us and charging across. They were met by the enemy in mass formation and overwhelmed. They died to a man. ”

“ One of the funniest sights a man can see was the way my chums of the ammunition wagons defied the explicit and peremptory order, "No smoking on the road at or around Ypres." There is something in the rise and fall of the lighted cigarette when being smoked that attracts the attention at long distances and many a man has had to pay the penalty, which was most severe,—28 days field punishment, which means 28 days without pay and breaking your back at fatigue duty around the camp, the cookhouse and the wagon lines, in addition to four hours extra drill each day. ”

“ A spirit of wonderful fervor filled me as I saw that our behemoth was not disturbed in the slightest by the fact that he had gone into a crater; he continued to waddle all around the huge hole, his machine guns playing on the balance of the men that were jumping this way and that, and swarming like ants up, over and on top of it, to escape and save their lives in some manner. ”

“ This was an allusion to the fashion we had to employ in picking our steps on the lookout for holes. In this region the fair face of nature is distorted in every conceivable way with holes and ditches, some of the holes big enough to engulf a house, and it is no mere desire to avoid the water in these holes that compels us to pick our steps in this hell-swept part of the world; it is the first law of nature, self preservation, for many a poor lad has been done to death in them by drowning. ”

“ The purpose pursued by the sacrifice gun is to surprise the enemy when in full view and exposed, killing as many of them as possible, blasting gaps through their line and enabling our men to dig in in the position to which they have retired, we knowing all the while that there is not one chance in a thousand that the men connected with the sacrifice gun will escape either death or capture. Our orders were under no circumstances to leave the gun as long as a shell remained and a man lived. ”

“ Let me repeat, if I have not already made it entirely clear, that when this most imperative order is sounded, there is only one thought in the mind of every man of the battery, to get our message off as quickly as human power can send it; and throughout every stage of the world's work that we are doing over there, there is no time when the bodies of men are entirely free of bruises received in collision with one another in the absorbing endeavor of every man to respond. ”

“ A notable instance of the spirit controlling our ideas of warfare was splendidly illustrated in this particular sector. Among the captured French mines that the Germans were working was one in close proximity to a church, of whose existence they took particular pains to let us know; and the church, in addition to being used as a protection for the mine, was also used as a camouflage for one of their batteries, the guns being placed immediately in front of it. It is repugnant to the very soul of a British soldier to level his gun at a church, so Fritz was able to get away with his camouflage. ”

“ We commenced firing, and I had the satisfaction of seeing gaps blown in their ranks and many of them biting the dust. Our poor little battery, however, feazed them but little.
And I want to say right at this time that the idea that seems to be prevalent in the minds of many that the German is not a good fighting man is a lamentable mistake; he is a good fighter. He has not perhaps the initiative of the British, or the avalanche-like ardor in a charge of the French soldier, but with his officers pressing him behind and in mass formation, he is as formidable a foe as can be imagined. ”

“ Again I went to the French battery and told the officer commanding of my suspicions about the windmill. A smile of intelligence and gratefulness lighted up his fine face. "Monsieur, we shall see what we shall see," and he ordered a shell into the heart of the structure, bringing it down in splinters. Then we made for the ruins and found the body of a man dressed in an Algerian uniform; I looked him over carefully; he was the artist I had met in the farmhouse at our former station.
There remained still the case of the old man in whose house we had discovered the heliograph and the pigeons. ”

“ We ran across an open field that had been converted into a graveyard after the French drove the Germans over on to Vimy Ridge, but there was no thought of sacrilege in our minds as we raced pell-mell over the grave-filled land; there never is but one thought in our minds; we are, every man of us, souls with but a single thought when "Stand to!" sounds. We reached the guns practically in the nude, and fastening the sights and scratching my hide at the same time kept me fairly busy.
We worked the guns for an hour; then "Ammunition up!" ”

“ No need now was there to hide our work in and around the coal mines, the precious element being taken out of the bowels of bountiful nature in as large abundance as was required; our hungry guns can now be supplied with all the grub they require in any hour of the twenty-four; our wagon lines moved forward behind the Ridge to a place of perfect security; several army corps were released for service in other parts of the lines, and the city of Lens, honeycombed with German soldiers, is practically bottled up, they not daring to retreat, and it being impossible for them to advance. ”

“ Her mission of observation had been accomplished, but when she got through the wires she floated to the wagon line, and the result of her arrival here was disastrous in the extreme, as the German shells followed the bag as assiduously as any bunch of schoolboys snowballing a foe, and hundreds of splendid horses were mangled to a jelly by the explosion amongst them. ”

“ Downey began to be overcome by the fumes and I took over sentry; the warning gas horns were booming up and down the line like a deep-throated buzzing,—a most unearthly and weird sound.
The gas shells were now dropping plenteously round about and one of my pals, Dory, was instructed to assist me in relighting our lamps, as they were growing dim; these are our feed lamps that are lit every night with candles and placed, one for each gun, about 50 feet in front, and on these lights the sights are trained, so that it is vital to keep them burning all night long. ”

“ Next morning Munsey and I were in the cookhouse, trying to moisten a couple of hardtack biscuits with what juice we could extract from a piece of bacon rind, when an airplane hummed overhead and the attention of one of our anti-aircraft guns was immediately diverted to the bird. The cookhouse had formerly been a French dressing station, dismantled by the fire of those devils that know no law of God or man, composed of three huts in a row made of half-inch board. ”

“ Immediately after breakfast, at daybreak, the concert opened up afresh, and for full seven days, June 2, to June 9, no man got a full hour's sleep at a time. When not being shelled by the German batteries, the machine gun bullets were raining around; if neither of these agencies of hell were busy, airplanes were flying, many times so low that they seemed to be even with the tops of the trees and singing us their humming hymn of hate. ”

“ I had scarcely gone 10 yards when an ear-splitting roar came hurtling through the air and an explosion followed that made the very earth tremble. I knew it was somewhere in the neighborhood of our selected spot and I anxiously hastened my steps. I got there to find every man of my gun crew with one exception blown to atoms, the exception being Scotty, but he too had paid the supreme price. With the help of another soldier, we carried him to the rear of the cookhouse and covered him with a blanket. ”

“ For the space of a month prior to the drive, every hour of the darkness was used to get guns, ammunition and supplies into place; all night long the traffic on the roads was so congested that going faster than a walk with any conveyance, over any part of the channels of communication, was simply out of the question; but when day broke it was imperative that not a single conveyance of any kind be in sight on any road.
Do not imagine, however, that we were free to work as long as the shelter of night lasted; in the artificial light furnished by the flares, Fritz did a lot of damage. ”

“ When we got to the line, Fritz was retaliating on the Ridge and a heavy bombardment was in progress; our guns were vigorously answering, and over we ran to the gun pit, getting into the game with both feet. After an hour's hard drubbing, I took occasion to step over and see a man whose friendship I had never ceased to curry—the cook, and I was just swallowing the first mouthful of the fruits of my friendship when my joy was rudely interrupted by an orderly.—"The Major wants to see you, Grant." ”

“ While eating, one of our own shells, a shrapnel, that had been sent up at a German stork and did not explode, dropped squarely into the middle of the cookhouse, frightened the cook out of his wits and hit the dixies, scattering them around our feet. "Stand to!" and we made our way carefully, keeping out of sight as much as possible from the watching bird overhead.
When I got to the gun the shell fire was commencing to get dangerously close. "By God, there must be somebody giving our battery away," said Munsey. ”