“Halt! Who goes there?” shouted the sentry.
“Freunden,” said a voice in reply.
With that they were almost on the barbed-wire, and we greeted them in the way such “friends” should be greeted. There was a tremendous turmoil. All but two fell into our hands. To be exact, fifteen were captured and three killed. Three of the captives were officers.
One of the officers, when searched, was found to have in his possession a novelty mirror with the photograph of a girl on the back. He made no fuss about giving up anything but the mirror. This, however, he insisted upon having back. Finally the examining officer, Major Lord George Stewart Murray, became suspicious and decided that the Boche’s sentiment was not on the level. He stripped the photograph off the back. Under it he found a thin sort of skin and, underneath that, pasted to the back of it, a paper covered with writing. He returned the mirror to the German officer, but he retained the paper; and the writing gave the staff much satisfaction.
All night long we were troubled by similar parties of Uhlans. They were evidently feeling out for an attack, but, not being able to gauge our strength, they never made it. Some of our boys crawled out from the trenches to rescue a trooper with a broken leg, and they said that only a few paces away they could not distinguish the trench or tell how many men were there. If the Uhlans had only known the facts they could have swarmed over us. In the morning we collected souvenirs from the field. One of the fellows picked up a lance with two bullet holes clean through the steel tubing shaft.
Our next stop was at Neslês. We drew up alongside a field of beets just before going into the village, and most of the men fell out of ranks and lay down alongside the road. Some were in the ploughed earth between the rows of beets. The artillery had been firing at us most of the day, but they hadn’t found the range. There were some heavy guns hammering at us, as we could tell from the explosions of the shells.
As usual, when it came time for a rest, the Germans began to locate us. One of the heaviest shells I had yet seen exploded in the field and scattered beets all over the surrounding country. A member of our company right near me was stunned for a few seconds.
Before any one had recovered himself enough to go to his aid, he sat up unsteadily, his head wobbling, his face a mass of red. A few yards behind him was his forage cap. He put his shaking hand up to his head; withdrew it, then looked at his fingers which were dripping red.
“Ah weel, lads, Ah’ve got it noo!” he lamented. “Ah’m sair-r-r-tainly din fur ’cause Ah dinna feel a theng. Ah on’y wesh Ah could ’a got ane o’ the deevils tae me credit afore this!”
By this time two or three of us had run forward and were wiping his head and face. There was no evidence of a wound. Then suddenly some one roared with laughter. The man was covered with the red juice of beets and was entirely unhurt. He had only been stunned. This is the way Mars jests. His humour is always mixed with grimness.
We learned that we were to stop at Neslës overnight, and this, coupled with the fact that we had commenced advancing, put new enthusiasm into us.
Before we arrived there were large vineyards at each side of the road leading up a hill overlooking a beautiful little town, on the south bank of the Petit Morin River. We had a few minutes’ halt within reach of the lovely French grapes, which hung most temptingly in clusters, so it was quite natural that some of the boys who were extremely thirsty and warm from the scorching sun, should partake of this inviting fruit.
Discipline in the British army is second to none; and we were commanded to observe it strictly while on the retreat. One of our orders was “not to pluck fruit,” as it came under the category of “Looting.” Very soon the few fellows who had disobeyed that order were rolling on the ground, holding their stomachs. Later we were told that the grapes on both sides of the road had been poisoned by the Germans. This was punishment enough for those who had eaten the fruit, and a lesson that every one of us “took home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
As we—the other scouts and I—advanced, firing details, which had been left behind under close cover by the Germans, did a good deal of execution amongst us. The hay-stacks, particularly, gave us a great deal of trouble. More than once, one of them would be disrupted as though by some sort of explosion from the inside, and machine guns would begin spraying our skirmishing lines. So it became an important part of our scouting operations to search all hay-stacks and farm houses. And continually we were under what, ordinarily, would be termed heavy fire.
The ground over which we were passing had been the scene of sharp fighting, earlier. We came across scores of dead Germans and a few French. In the midst of a field dotted with a particularly large number of hay-stacks was a farm house. When we were about thirty or forty yards from it and on opposite sides, we leaped up and dashed toward it as hard as we could run. It is a fact that this is the safest way for patrols to approach a house. If any of the enemy are inside, they become excited when they see men rushing toward them and are likely to open fire—instead of waiting until the scouts get inside and then killing them noiselessly. Their aim is also more uncertain at a running man than it is at one sneaking along slowly, and, most important of all, whether the scouts are killed or not, the noise of the rifle fire alarms the main body and the party in the house is detected.
Troolan (my scout partner) and I arrived at this particular farm house on a dead run without having drawn any fire or detected the least sign of life. We tried all the doors; they were locked. The windows, too, were bolted from the inside. Troolan smashed one in, got inside, and opened the door for me. We searched the building rather hurriedly and discovered no sign of any one having been there. Just as we were going out, I had a premonition that I ought to look further.
“Wait outside and watch,” I said to Troolan, “and I will take another look around.”
He posted himself outside. Very cautiously I stepped down the cellar stairs. The boards seemed to squeak and groan like a lumbering farm wagon. It was dark as pitch, but I did not dare to make a light. It would have been fatal if any one really was lurking there. Something scurried across the floor. I felt the hot blood surge under my scalp. For a second I expected to see a red flash in the utter darkness and feel a bullet smash into my body. Then I discovered that it was only a rat.
I thought I heard breathing. I stood stock still, and strained my eyes on every side till they ached as if they would burst from their sockets. I was trying to catch the reflection of some stray beam of light from the eyes of a man or the barrel of an automatic, but I do not believe that so much as a pin point of light was diffused in that whole black pit. Suddenly I almost laughed aloud, although I knew that to do so might mean instant death. The breathing that I heard was my own. Cautiously I thrust out my foot to descend another step.
There was a shout outside.
“Run to the door quickly,” Troolan was yelling.
I leaped up the stairway regardless of what might be behind me and dashed toward the kitchen door to get outside the house. Just as I did so, I saw a shadow flit along the ground past the kitchen window. Guessing where the man must be who cast it, I fired through the wooden wall of the kitchen at about the height of the average man’s breast. Then in a couple of bounds I was outside. There stood Troolan looking very much surprised and grieved when he saw me. His rifle was half drawn up to his shoulder, and he was in the attitude of getting ready to fire.
Perspiration broke out on my forehead. I realised that the shadow had been Troolan’s and from the look of him I had come very nigh to killing him.
“What the h—— was that for, ye muckle galoot?” he threw at me.
“I saw a shadow,” I said, “and let drive.”
“Ye’re an auld wife, that’s what ye’ are,” said Troolan disgustedly, “a’firin’ after shadows.”
“Never mind now,” I said, “what did you see?”
“I saw a big boche,” said my scouting partner, “or, at least, I thocht I did. Maybe I’ve been takin’ you fur him the same as you did me.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but the best plan is for you to watch this house while I go and report.”
“All right,” said Troolan. I started away. I had not gone a dozen paces when I heard scuffling behind me. I turned round and started to run back at the same instant. What I saw lent speed to my feet. The helmet of a German officer was just coming through a window. Troolan, who had evidently been concealed from the German’s view, was aiming a blow at his head with the butt of his rifle.
As usual, Troolan had lacked finesse. He had rushed so clumsily to the attack that both the officer and I had heard him. The German dodged just in time to evade the blow, and Troolan’s rifle banged the window sill.
How the boche did it, I do not know, but it seemed as though he was propelled by strong steel springs under his feet. He fairly shot out of the window like a dart from a catapult and landed on Troolan’s neck. Both men went down. I dared not fire. They were rolling over and over one another, kicking and striking with their fists. The boche was fouling Troolan in a way that would be prohibited in wrestling. I jumped into the fray and tried to find the German’s throat, but the men were so entwined that it was hard to get a hold on him. Suddenly a heavy boot struck me in the pit of the stomach, and I rolled over and over to find myself gasping for breath a dozen feet away.
Painfully I got up and staggered toward the struggling men, but I was too late to be of any use. After a particularly frantic struggle Troolan managed to get on top of his adversary, with his right arm free. His mighty fist came smashing down full in the other’s face. The German staggered to his feet, but Troolan leaped clear of him, seized his rifle, and, this time, brought the butt down with a thud on the other’s skull. Then Troolan burst into some of the most profane Scotch it has been my doubtful privilege to hear.
“What are you cursing about?” I asked him.
“I want to mak shair that Deevil’s deed!” he said.
Later that day we were relieved by other scouts.
Toward nightfall troops began to arrive on either side of us in great numbers, and dispatch riders with various insignia continually dashed up on their speedy motorcycles to our brigade headquarters. Everyone realized that we must be approaching something big, for previous to this we had been fighting, for the most part, isolated engagements. As a matter of fact, it developed that we were preparing for the Battle of the Marne.
We remained at this spot all night. At dawn, orders were given that we were to take the high ground the Germans were occupying a few miles ahead of us. Our brigade marched in skirmishing order, followed by the cavalry and artillery. We passed scores of dead—some French but the majority German. Dead horses were intermingled with the bodies of men.
We were under heavy shell fire until we descended into the shelter of a gully. Here we met a few of the French Chasseurs. Four or five farms were clustered together, and the sights we encountered in the yards and on the roads were the worst we had yet seen. Pools of congealed blood; bodies of dead soldiers partly covered with sacks and straw; the barns so filled that the feet of dead men were protruding. The Chasseurs appeared very pale and silent.
The ridge was densely covered with hazel-wood. We got the command to fix bayonets and extend into skirmishing formation. The Black Watch with the Camerons were to take the ridge, while the Coldstreams and Scots Guards were to be in reserve.
An incident occurred during the ascent of the ridge which illustrated the reckless, devil-may-care spirit of the men in our battalion in a way which impressed even me. The front-line men came upon a lot of blackberry bushes. They began plucking and eating the berries, shouting gleefully to one another to signal the discovery of an especially well-laden bush. Until the officers sternly warned them of the peril they invited by such noise and incaution, you would have thought they were schoolboys on a lark.
I was one of the scouts sent up the ridge to try to locate the position and number of the enemy and report at once. Wriggling along on my belly like a snake, I made my way foot by foot. I could hear our fellows shouting, and it rather disconcerted me as I felt they would attract the enemy’s attention, but I continued on my way nevertheless.
I never knew that so many sharp stones could be scattered in so short a distance. It seemed as though some of them were forcing themselves clean in between my ribs.
Presently I came to a hastily constructed barbed-wire entanglement at the edge of a thicket. Ahead of me was a clear rising space of about fifty yards which did not show from below. Beyond this was a plateau. Before advancing farther I peered through the thicket and scanned the crest.
Suddenly I heard a familiar, unmistakable rattling. It was the opening and closing of rifle bolts. My skin prickled all over. I knew that it meant troops getting ready to fire and I had no doubt the Germans had discovered me and were preparing to shoot. I wriggled backward a few feet into the thicket, expecting every second to hear the crash of a volley and to pass into oblivion. But the crash did not come. Evidently they had not seen me.
Under cover of the underbrush I crept forward again until I could see the helmets of German troops in the woods atop of the ridge. They outnumbered our troops. I crawled to the left until I came to a point where I could command a view of the crest, where they were in waiting, but apparently unaware of our near approach. I crawled back until I was out of sight. Then I leaped to my feet and ran as if I were once more on a cinder track in the old barrack days. Brambles tore my hands and face and lacerated my bare knees, but I did not heed them.
I had seen enough, and the sooner we could make the attack the better. Besides, they might even yet see me, and I preferred the scratching of brambles to the bite of a steel bullet.
In safety I got back to our lines. The boys could see from my excitement that something was up.
“Did you find them, Joe?” they shouted.
“Where is the adjutant?” I demanded. Somebody told me, and I hurried to him.
“How many of them are there?” he asked when I told what I had seen.
“All I can say, sir, is that they outnumber us and are waiting,” I answered.
Orders were given for an immediate attack.
I went forward again, but this time in my own place in the company, with men either side of me, and with real business ahead. We made our way in silence through the woods toward the terrace. Still the Germans did not fire. We wondered whether they were really unaware of our approach, or, just holding their fire for close range? This was the first time we had been in a big attack of this kind and we knew that bayonet work would be the end of it.
The answer to our questioning soon came. It was in the form of a burst of fire from the ridge above us. Twigs fell all around us and here and there a man dropped too.
We could not do much in the way of returning the fire, for we had not yet reached the open. The blood was pounding through my arteries. I felt much as I used to before the start of an important race. The second platoon to my right went forward, while our fire covered their advance. Crouching low, the men dashed on at full speed. Here and there one of them toppled backward. Then the platoon nearest to us advanced. It would be our turn next. We ceased firing and prepared to rush. Our lieutenant looked at the commander, whose whistle had just blown a shrill blast. He signalled for us to go forward.
Like one man, we leaped to our feet. The thin line swept out onto the open terrace. Each man had but one friend then, his rifle with the bayonet fixed.
We had arrived at the point where I had previously encountered the barbed wire. Throwing ourselves flat on the ground, we returned the enemy’s fire. After cutting the barbed-wire, we awaited orders. The word came to charge. With one mighty shout, we made for the crest. When one goes out with the bayonet he goes to kill or to be killed, but with the former in mind.
The German fire thundered out as though it had been tripled. The trees and bushes were cut as by scythes, but they were only shooting in a direction—they could not see us clearly. Up, up we went. Loose stones rattled under our feet, and went tumbling down the slope, but we picked ourselves up and pushed always forward and upward. At last we saw the Germans who were firing at us over their trenches. Our men were yelling like demons.
Then the German fire stopped as though every man had, on the instant, been struck dead. An instant later, they leaped out of their trenches, with bayonets fixed, and dashed toward us. Every man among them looked a giant. One of our boys was ahead of all the others. He was a bow-legged little fellow, and, even at that moment, he looked ludicrous with his bare knees and kilts. A big German was over him. The little fellow seemed to drop his rifle. He had caught it in both hands, close under the handle of the bayonet. He straightened up, heaving his shoulders, brought up his forearms with a jerk, and the steel blade drove through the soft spot in the German’s throat—just under the chin. The Prussian’s last cry was drowned by the fierce yell of the little bow-legged man. It was the spirit of the bayonet which made him yell like a savage.
There was no time to see what was going on around me any more. We were fighting knee to knee. I can but faintly recall the actual close fighting, but I seemed to make good use of my bayonet. Sometimes I was knocked off my feet, but the next instant I was up again. I was not thinking of what might happen to me. It was fight, fight, and keep on fighting. One seemed imbued with a superhuman strength.
One of our boys seized a German’s rifle, and wrested it from him by a trick which seemed to break his arm. A little farther away two Germans were rushing upon one man. Mechanically, I leaped into action. The butt of my rifle felled the nearest boche. Somebody knocked the rifle out of my hands. Somehow I ducked a thrust made at me and ran in on the German who made it, and smashed my fist on the point of his jaw.
They began to waver now. They did not seem to care for our company with our kilts and our steel—we whom they later learned to call the “Ladies of Hell.” (Because of our kilts.) At last they broke and ran. We were after them. A machine gun rattled away at the head of a path down which some of our boys were dashing. It almost wiped out B company before we could silence it.
Just over the crest of the ridge we came upon their combat wagons and a field gun. Three men and an officer were trying to save the gun. The men who were hitching the horses to it broke and ran. The officer did not hesitate a second to shoot them in the backs. Then he fell with one of our bullets through his head. We captured the gun.
By this time I was regaining my proper senses. A feeling of exhaustion seemed to envelop me; my legs wobbled. Then I dropped to the ground. Every bone, muscle, and nerve ached, and I felt as though I had just been through a tough wrestling match.
When we had counted up, we found that two company officers, Captain Drummond and Captain Dalgleish, had been killed. We picked up about fifty German rifles and broke them over the trunks of trees. Our casualties were one hundred and fifty killed and only God knows how many wounded.
Our prisoners amounted to about one hundred and forty. Among them was a man who had worked in London as a watchmaker. In very broken English, he asked if he could get his job back if he were sent to London. We told him that he would get a job all right, but that somebody else would see to the watchmaking.
After capturing the crest, upon looking from the far side, we could see great numbers of German cavalry and infantry in retreat. The plateau was strewn with I should judge about five hundred dead bodies of the enemy. Their horses that had been wounded were left behind—left to die. We let go a few volleys of long-range fire to hurry the boches on their way.
CHAPTER SIX
We had very little rest after the fight I have just described. We were getting down to the real business of war. It was fighting, and not the incessant retreating, which had been sapping the life out of us for weeks. You must remember, also, the weight that each man carried during all those long wearisome retreats. Each of us had his heavily plaited kilt; his pack containing great coat, flannel shirt, two pairs of socks, waterproof sheet, extra shoes, and towel; his canteen, rifle, entrenching tool, bayonet, and ammunition—the whole totalling ninety pounds weight.
Immediately after the fight, in shallow, narrow trenches, we began to bury our dead. Before the work was finished, a detachment of Uhlans fired on us, but one of our companies drove them across a rivulet and over the crest of the next ridge.
One of our pipers—Dougall McLeod was his name—had lost his chum in the fight. McLeod was a sentimental sort of chap, with little heart for the work of killing. He was sitting on the ground fastening together a couple of strips of wood to make a little cross for his chum’s grave—or rather his chum’s share of the one long grave. The tears were trickling down his grimy, bloody cheeks, and he wasn’t ashamed of them, nor of the furrows they cut in the caked dirt. It was just before he finished his work that the Uhlans opened fire. McLeod threw the loose pieces of the cross to the ground, and sprang to his place in the firing line. I had never seen the passion of hate in his eyes before. All that the Germans had made him suffer had never aroused him, but now that they interrupted him in the work of making a homely mark for his friend’s grave, he was fired by the will to kill. I was only a few paces from him in the firing line, and, with the tears still streaming down his face, I could hear him mutter every time his rifle crashed:
“Damn you! You will, will you?”
We again took to the road. All that day we marched under occasional shell fire. Along the sides of the roads, we passed the wrecks of scores of German combat wagons and supply trains. Sometimes there was a field piece amid the débris. Toward evening we heard terrific firing on our right, but we were not called to enter the engagement. Later we learned that a French division had been pretty badly cut up in running the boches out of a strong position.
Their wounded passed us on the road. You cannot imagine a more pitiful or a more noble sight. Limping along, supported by their comrades, came scores of men, whose every step was costing them agony but who smiled at us as we cheered them. Straggling down the road, as we swung along, came groups of wounded, each supporting the other as best he could. In one case in particular, a man who had been badly maimed and was using his rifle as a crutch, was also supported by a comrade who had been blinded. If there had ever been doubt in our minds as to the mettle of our allies, it was dispelled now, as the lame and the blind hour after hour filed past us.
We billeted that night at a place, the name of which sounded like Villers. I remember that a detachment of French were there before us, and a peasant pointed out to me a row of trees where they had hung fifteen Germans captured there, because, when the Uhlans had taken the town fifteen of them had brutally assaulted and outraged a farmer’s wife and his daughter, twelve years of age. The ropes were still dangling from the trees.
Volunteers were asked for, to go down and get the mail. Practically every one offered his services. To get mail from home gave the same sensation as scoring a victory, and we were all eager to do our bit. This was about 10.30 P.M. and the rain was coming down in torrents. About two miles behind us lay the mail strewn around the road. The ambulance carrying it had been struck by a shell. Our volunteer mail carriers gathered the letters up, and, needless to say, there was much excitement among us on their arrival. Nothing else was thought of for the moment except the news from home.
The next few days were uneventful. Toward evening on the thirteenth of September, I was scouting on our left flank. The German heavy guns had been keeping up a steady searching fire all day, but little damage had been done.
I had got so accustomed to the roar of the explosions that they did not bother me very much. After a while a man gets so used to the sound of a shrieking shell in the air that he can tell by instinct when one is coming his way in time to throw himself flat on the ground. I had not yet reached this stage of proficiency. A shell did come my way. How close it came I will never know, because all of a sudden I felt as though my head were bursting. I seemed to be tumbling end over end and being torn to pieces. My ear drums rang and pained excruciatingly. I thought to myself “I am dying,” and I wondered how I kept feeling a sort of consciousness although I must be already torn to bits.
Then I found myself sitting up on the ground with a man from my patrol supporting my head.
Now, this is the strange thing. I was instantly and absolutely oblivious when the shell exploded. All the sensations I have described came when I was recovering consciousness. Surgeons have told me since then that they were exactly what the shell caused when it exploded, but that my brain did not register them until my senses returned. My clothes were scorched and even my hair was singed. I do not know why I was not killed, but in a few hours I was ready for duty once more. The man who picked me up said that the shell had burst some little distance overhead. If it had struck the ground close to me, it would doubtless have sent me “west.”
The game had now been turned about. We were the pursuers. Most of the fighting was between the enemy’s rear guard and our contact patrols—until we reached the Aisne. The Huns crossed the river, but they blew up the bridges behind them. The last of the retreating troops were scarcely across before the detonators were set off.
We were held up for a while on the Aisne while our engineers constructed pontoon bridges. The Germans had the range, and they almost wiped out our entire battalion of engineers before our troops could cross.
I saw a working raft swing out into the river with about twelve men on it. A single burst of shrapnel exploded in their midst and there wasn’t a man left standing. One of them crawled to the stern and began pushing the raft toward shore with a pole but he was so weak that the current kept swinging him down a stream. A sniper got him.
The raft was drifting away. Nobody expected to see the men on it again, but, in the face of shrapnel and a nasty fire from snipers, three men, stark naked, jumped into the stream and struck out for the raft. The water around them was whipped by bullets, but our boys located the snipers and got the range and quieted them. The first man reached the raft. His hands were over the edge. He had just pushed his head and shoulders over the side when a rifle snapped and he slipped back into the water; then I saw the German who had fired at him topple out of a tree. A dozen shots must have struck him. The two other swimmers were alongside the raft now and climbed upon it. I could see that one was bleeding at the shoulder. Our men pulled the wounded man upon the raft, and brought it to shore. Their heroism saved the lives of five men who otherwise would have drifted away and probably died.
Soon our own artillery began to locate the German guns, whose fire diminished. Then our infantry began to cross the river at a dozen points. On the opposite bank was a village by the name of Bourg. Up and down hills we worked our way, forcing the enemy off the ridges. The details of the operations would not be of interest. We wanted to close with the bayonets, but the boches weren’t ready for that, and they dropped back foot by foot, keeping up a hot fire.
On this side of the river were numerous stone quarries, and in these we found tons and tons of ammunition for the heavy German guns. The type and manufacturers’ marks showed that some of it was made as far back as the Franco-Prussian war. It had been lying in caches in the quarries for years, the Prussians having bought titles to some of the land through spies who posed as Frenchmen. They had been making use of this ammunition against us. It shows how long ago the war was planned and by whom. In some of the quarries we uncovered re-enforced concrete fortification and emplacements for cannon.
Our commander, Colonel Grant Duff, was in the thickest of the fighting. I saw him distributing bandoliers of ammunition along the firing line. His men tried to make him go to the rear, but we were having a tough time to keep fire superiority, and we needed every man in the line. Suddenly Colonel Duff staggered and slouched forward on his hands and knees. The bandoliers he was carrying, scattered. Several men rushed to him but he got to his feet himself and ordered them back to their posts. An ugly red stain was spreading over his tartan riding breeches and leggings, but he staggered onward with the ammunition. He had not gone a dozen steps when both his arms flew up into the air and he fell backward. This time he did not move. He had been shot straight through the heart, and another commander of the Black Watch had gone to join the long line of heroes who had so often led this regiment to victory.
Many of our company commanders were picked off by the enemy because of their distinctive dress, their celluloid map cases affording excellent targets.
My memory of this fight is somewhat fragmentary. There are phases which are all but blanks to me. Others stand out with startling clarity.
We were advancing in skirmishing order through a wood. A pal of my old athletic days, Ned McD——, fighting a few yards from me in our scattered line, fell with a bullet through both thighs. I made him as comfortable as I could in a nook about twenty paces back from where our men, lying on their stomachs, were keeping up a steady rifle fire through the underbrush. I had hardly returned to the line when the whistle of our platoon commander sounded shrilly, and we were ordered to retire to the farther edge of the plateau, where our men could have better protection from the enemy fire. I hurriedly placed McD—— under the edge of a bank, where, at least, he would not be trampled on by men or horses.
“Don’t attempt to leave the spot, Ned,” I said. “I’ll get back to you to-night if there’s an opportunity.” The chance did come, but when I reached the spot he had disappeared. Our subsequent meeting—the story of which I shall tell—is one of my few agreeable recollections in the train of the tragedy of our campaign.
But to go back to the fight.
Soon after leaving the spot where McD—— lay, I joined in a charge on a line of hidden trenches. We were upon them, and it was steel and teeth again. I saw an officer run in under a bayonet thrust, and jab his thumbs into a German’s eyes. The boche rolled upon the ground, screaming. How long we fought, I do not know. When it was over we began to pick up the wounded. It was night. The Prussian guns were still hammering at us, and some of the shells set fire to a number of haystacks in the field where we had crossed the open. It was Hell. In the red glare of the fire the stretcher bearers hurried here and there with the dying, while others who had been placed behind the hay-stacks for shelter burned to death when the stalks caught fire. The few who could, crawled away from the fire. Those of us who were able to do so, pulled others to safety, and many a man had his hands and face badly burned, rescuing a helpless comrade.
The next morning we went at them again. In the first rush, I felt a sudden slap against my thigh. It did not feel like anything more than a blow from an open palm. I thought nothing more of it until after the fight, when some one told me I was bleeding. A bullet had struck the flesh of my thigh. The slight wound was dressed at the regimental station, and I was ready for duty again.
That night I was assigned to outpost duty between the lines. The German artillery had so covered the roads and the bridge, that for two days the supply wagons had been unable to come up. I was almost starved. My stomach ached incessantly from sheer hunger and I was weak from the bleeding of my wound. It seems terrible, looking back at it, but, during the night, while my partner watched, I crawled out and searched the dead for rations. I found none. Fifty paces from our post lay a dead artillery horse. We had to eat—or drop. What could we do? Wriggling on my belly like a snake, I drew myself toward the smelling carcass, cut off enough with my jackknife to do the section, brought it back, and we ate it.
There followed days of lying in the trenches. Every time one of us showed a head above the surface of the earth a single shot would ring out, and more than once it accomplished its mission. Two or three times I almost caught it myself. At last I made up my mind that the sniper must be in a sugar factory building which showed clearly above a ridge on the right front of our position. Jock Hunter and I volunteered to go there and investigate. Working our way under cover of a wooded patch, we reached the factory yard where we encountered an old Frenchman who seemed to be the owner of the place.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Have you seen a sniper anywhere about here?” I asked.
“No,” he answered in a surly manner, “and you get out of here.”
“We’ll get out,” I retorted, “and you’ll get with us.”
I searched the factory building from cellar to roof but wasn’t able to discover anything incriminating. I didn’t know much about sugar factories, but there was a lot of machinery in the place that didn’t look to me as if it had anything to do with sugar.
Back to our lines we went, with the supposed Frenchman making a lot of noise, but walking about two inches in front of the points of our bayonets. When he was searched we found notes to the value of fifteen thousand francs sewed in his clothes, but most important of all, there were papers upon his person which showed that he was a German spy left there by the Prussians in 1871. He held title to many acres of land, including some of the quarries where shells had been hidden.
I told the company officer of the suspicious-looking machinery in the factory. He sent us back there with a subaltern of the engineers. The three of us approached the building by different routes. Suddenly, from a narrow window in the tower of the structure, a rifle cracked, and I saw the subaltern duck behind a bush. Hunter and I each began to run toward the factory. Zip! A bullet whistled past my ear, and a few seconds later Hunter was fired at.
We all reached the place together. As the firing had been from the tower, we hurried to the upper storeys, but the subaltern saw at a glance that the machinery I had noticed was a wireless plant. Afterward we found that the numerous “lightning rods” on the factory were in reality wireless antennæ. We went to the top of the tower without finding a single soul, but in a little room in the cupola, there were a few bread crumbs scattered over the floor. A corner of the linoleum covering on the floor of this room looked a little uneven. The subaltern posted each of us in a different corner with orders to fire three rapid rounds from our rifles into different points of the floor. He himself was to discharge his revolver in a like manner. At his signal we all opened fire, splintering the floor in several places. Then we heard a groan.
“Come up here!” called the subaltern, in English. There was no answer. He repeated the command in German. Very slowly the linoleum in the corner of the room where it was uneven began to hump up. We all stood ready to fire. A trap door was lifting. Presently the corner of the floor covering was pushed back completely and a man’s face appeared. It was a very white, drawn face, and, as the shoulders rose above the floor level, we saw that the man had been struck by at least one of our bullets. His left arm hung limp by his side. We patched him up.
The officer told Hunter and myself to cut all wires, which, after some search, we found had been laid at the bottom of the walls and cunningly concealed by the grass. Then we took our prisoner back to our lines. An hour later our howitzers had demolished the factory. Up to this time, the boche artillery had been planting one shell after another on our positions, no matter how often we shifted. After the factory was destroyed we made one more move and no shells found us.
We dug ourselves into the ground, and the almost continual rain made mud holes out of the trenches. Our force was not large enough in those days to allow of the elaborate system of supports and reserves that exists to-day. The men in the firing trenches had to stay there, and there was no going back into bomb-proofs for a rest. At night we lay down all in our muddy clothes with a waterproof sheet beneath us and our greatcoats around us. The sheet didn’t do much good, because after lying in it for a while, it got pressed down into the mud and slime, which came all over the edges. Every one had a cold, and many of the men suffered from rheumatism, but no complaints were heard. It is only when things are going smoothly and “fags” are lacking that the British Tommy kicks.
Owing to the lack of supplies, the issues of cigarettes were so few and far between that the dry tea that was sent up as part rations was used to make “fags.” Tommies would roll the tea in paper in the form of cigarettes and smoke it. As much as five francs would be offered for one “Woodbine” when our supplies were exhausted. A “fag” was a most precious thing, and guarded jealously. A fellow would get into a corner, take a couple of puffs, “nip” it, then hide it away in a safe place on his person for fear of thieves in the night! In one instance, I watched a scene that would have brought forth laughter as well as pity from a civilian. One Tommy was observed in a corner finishing a half-inch butt, holding it by a pin which was stuck through it. Three others immediately pounced upon him and his treasure. After a short argument they formed a truce in the following manner: each man in rotation was to take one puff. A cockney with a Walrus moustache was last on the line, and with great sadness on his face and a sob in his voice said: “Bli’ me! w’ere the ’ell do I come in?”
Out in front of our trenches the mud was full of the bodies of the dead—mostly Germans, but a few of our men. At night, we went out to bury them, but the enemy fired on us, so we had to leave them there. The wind was blowing our way, and they knew the odours of the battlefield were as hard for us to bear as was their artillery or rifle fire. This scheme they had learned from the Russians, who practised it during their war with Japan.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Our trenches were pretty effective against rifle fire, but we had not yet learned to make them deep and narrow enough in proportion to protect us against shrapnel, which is not of much use against troops in the present-day trench. Our defence lay in leaning up close against the front wall of the trench, which caused most of the force of the shrapnel burst to go over our heads. One morning I was hugging the wall of the trench as close as I could stick, when a “coal box” burst near by. It tore down a long section of trench wall, killing a number of men. I saw the explosion and the next thing I knew I heard some one saying:
“Ah’ll bet ye’ Joe’s snuffed it noo’, puir lad.”
I stuck my head up out of what seemed to me to be a ton or two of rock and dirt and yelled: “No; not this time!”
You should have seen their faces. Some looked frightened and others relieved. In a second they began to laugh. Two or three of them helped me to my feet, and then the laughing became more boisterous.
“It isn’t so d—— funny as you think,” I said, getting a little peeved.
They turned me round and one of them held up the front part of my kilt in such a way that I could see the whole rear of the garment had been torn off. Certain portions of my anatomy were as guiltless of clothes as when I was born. A splinter of the shell, about fourteen pounds in weight, had given me a close crop. Then I had to laugh too, though I was somewhat battered and sore, but that night it wasn’t so funny. I was almost frozen while on sentry go, and the next day it was just as bad.
As I have already told you, the transports were scarce, and we had little to eat, and absolutely nothing in the way of new equipment. It was all we could do to get ammunition. After shivering all day, I determined to have some clothes. Right in front of our position, about twenty-five yards from the trench, lay a dead member of H company whose name was Jock Drummond. Under cover of darkness, I sneaked out, and was almost beside the body, when a flare rocket went up. All of No Man’s Land was lit up like day and I had to lie among the dead as if I had been one of them. It almost turned my stomach, but I did not dare to move. The Germans were searching the muddy ground and the least motion on my part would have brought a dozen or so bullets my way.
Presently the light from the flare bombs died away, and I wriggled closer to what had been Drummond. I got my arm under the shoulders of the body, and started to crawl back to the trench. Twice a rocket went up, and I had to lie still for minutes with my ghastly companion. The second time, a German must have seen us move. Three bullets spattered against the ground a few inches from me, and one struck Drummond. I suppose I was twelve or fifteen minutes crawling back to the trench. It seemed fifteen years—an interminable time. I was not yet thoroughly hardened to war, and it went against my whole nature; but—I had to have clothes. We took the kilt from Drummond’s body, and I wore it for weeks. Drummond, at least, got a decent burial, and a letter we found in his pocket we mailed to his mother, to whom it was addressed; so perhaps the deed done with a selfish purpose bore some good fruits after all. I may add that the stench of the dead lingered with me for a good many days.
The night after I got Drummond’s kilt, the Germans attacked us. We had erected barbed-wire entanglements in front of our position. We had empty jam and bully-beef tins, also empty shell cases from field guns, strung on the wire in such a way that the least touch would attract attention.
In this manner we were notified that the Germans were in the act of striking at us. Now they were coming—hundreds of them. There was a thin edge of humanity first, like the sheeting of water which precedes a breaker up a gently sloping beach. Behind it came units—more closely bunched, and, still farther back, was a mass of soldiery almost like a battalion on parade.
It was murder to fire into that wall of misty grey—but the men who made it were bent on murdering us. I was firing as fast as I could. On my right was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the Black Watch—a detachment sent to replace our losses.
“Pray God they may not pass the wire,” he half sobbed with every breath. He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first battle. The recruit’s face was drawn and white—his lips a thin, pressed line—but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet the “spirit of the bayonet,” and he dreaded that they should pass the wire.
The first of the thin line was at the entanglement. Most of them dropped before they touched a wire, but others cut a single strand before a bullet found its berth. They died; but they had succeeded in their mission. A thread of life cut to sever a strand of wire!
The wave had risen and was breaking over the entanglement. They were beginning to get through. Here and there a man lumbered up the gentle slope toward our trenches only to fall before he reached them. The mass of them was worming through the wire now.
A shrill whistle blew. From our trenches came a sound like the beating of a hundred pneumatic hammers. It was the music of Hell. The machine guns and artillery were making it, and they were spitting out death in streams to the accompaniment of their devilish music. God was answering the prayer of the little lad. The Germans were dropping at the wire; they would not pass.
The wee death engines were playing just a foot or so above the bottom of the wire, and they were literally cutting the legs from under the mass of grey-clad men. The back wash from the wave which broke against the wire was thinner than the wash that had preceded it.
“Thank God!” gasped the boy; “I did not have to use my bayonet.”
“It’s guid steel wasted,” growled a ginger-whiskered old-timer on my left, as he wiped the dampness from the blade with his sleeve and dropped the bayonet back into its scabbard.
[To-day such an attack on the British lines would invariably be followed by a counter attack to show the Germans that the initiative lies—always must lie—with the Allies; but, in those days, we had not the men. Our lines were often so thin that, had they been pierced at a single point, we would have been crumpled up like paper.]
After this fight, we were relieved by an East Yorkshire regiment and told that we would go to billets about three miles in the rear, but we had scarcely left the trenches when we received orders to get to billets and hold ourselves in readiness to occupy a new position in the line. The Black Watch at that time was again brought up to strength by the addition of a re-enforcement of five hundred men.
A party of us was sent to guard a bridge that our engineers were repairing, it having been blown up the previous day by big shell fire. I had just got off duty and was sitting before the log fire in the block-house with a few other fellows, when in popped a little Algerian, as black as the ace of spades. On recognizing that we were Scots, he held out his hand and said:
“My name’s MacPherson; what’s yours?”
He made himself right at home, and we shared our bully beef and biscuit with him. We had just been warming it. Our black “Scotsman” insisted on staying with us, and so we adopted him as a sort of mascot.
Shortly after we took up our new position in the line, a German sniper began to annoy us, and continued to do so almost ceaselessly. Every time anything showed so much as an inch above the crest, it drew fire, and a number of our men were shot passing traverses. There was a wood near our position, and we were pretty sure the fire was coming from there although we could not locate it. The Algerian was a crack shot, and wanted to prove it, so he went to our lieutenant and said:
“Me get sniper, if you like.”
“Go ahead,” said the lieutenant, half jokingly.
It seemed ridiculous to think of “MacPherson”—with his tiny body and his face of a black angel “getting” anybody.
The little Algerian disappeared. At the end of three hours, after we had all given him up as lost or strayed, he returned, clutching a small untidy package rolled in a French newspaper.
“Well, then, he didn’t eat you up, did he?” some one asked.
The little Algerian understood English poorly, but he generally got the gist of things. This time he evidently thought he had been asked whether he had eaten up the sniper.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed; “me no eat sniper, but git him. Look here.”
Very gingerly he unrolled his sheet of newspaper and, as evidence that he had landed his man, exposed to view a human ear. He wanted to present the ear to the lieutenant, but the officer declined the honour.[1]
There was much night-patrol work to do on the Aisne. Often we ran into German reconnaissance patrols. One night I was scouting with another man. Five or six hundred yards from our lines, we came upon a boche sentry. He was a big, heavy fellow, and I remember thinking that he looked as if the hard army life had not yet worked the surfeit of beer out of his system. He was leaning on the parapet, and appeared to be asleep. We wanted to get beyond, as he was on the German advance listening post, but, as a reconnaissance patrol must conceal from the enemy all evidence of its proximity, we dared not shoot him. So we crawled to one side of him, and my partner, who was slightly ahead, gave him a thud on the side of the neck, which only, as we thought, made him sleep the more soundly. He dropped into the trench. The next moment a head bobbed up and the dose was repeated with the result that the boche (whom we had mistaken for the first man) slid back again. We looked over to see whether the second blow had done its work; there were two forms instead of one. My partner took a helmet as a souvenir. He kept it for one day and then abandoned it as inconvenient to carry. He found that a souvenir the size of a boche’s helmet could not be put between the leaves of his St. John’s Gospel.
Being about the only Black Watch scout left of those that had first landed in France, I had been almost constantly on duty during the fighting at the Aisne. You can imagine then how happy I was when we were relieved from the trenches and billeted a short distance in the rear in hay lofts, cottages, and stables.
On our way to billets we were looking forward to a “cushy” time, a good rest, a decent meal, and a wash, and hoping that the next section of trench we took over would be much quieter. It did not seem, however, as if I had had much more than the proverbial “forty winks” when we were sent back to support the Cameron Highlanders.
It was the Camerons who had just relieved us and their headquarters were in a quarry where ours had been. A few “coal boxes” had landed in the quarry, and reduced it to a mass of débris. Only one officer and bugler had survived. It was here that Sergeant-Major Burt, of my native town, was killed. He was reputed to have the “best word of command” in the British army. We reached the scene in time to help the Scots Guards dig out some of them. It was a gruesome job. Some of the men had been pinned under heavy rocks for hours without losing consciousness.
There was, in particular, one instance of an officer [I cannot recall his name] whose legs were crushed and pinned down. His head had been cut by a shell splinter. When we tried to dig him out, he ordered us to attend first to a private, a few feet away, whose ribs had been smashed in and who was bleeding from the nose and mouth.
In all, about thirty officers and men lost their lives here.
We were called from this scene of carnage to defend a trench line against the Prussian Guards who were threatening to break through. The machine-gun and shrapnel fire was terrific, and for a time we were glad to squeeze ourselves close against the parapet. Then suddenly everything seemed uncomfortably quiet. Wounded were screaming and groaning all about us; men, who had not been struck, were muttering to themselves—driven half mad by the bombardment; but, the instant the roar of the guns and shell explosions ceased, all seemed still. The Prussians were undoubtedly preparing to charge us, but they must have been slow in getting started. We got hurried orders to get ready to go over the top and surprise them.
I thought of but one thing as I ran forward; that was—“Blighty.” On going to billets it had been my intention to write to the folks at home the next day after getting a rest, but our stay had been so short that to do so had been impossible. And now my thought was: “Perhaps I sha’n’t return.”
The Prussians seemed surprised by our quick attack, and the offensive was wrested from them. We became the assaulters. How I got through the entanglement I cannot tell. All I know is that I left part of my kilt dangling amid the wires. However, before we reached their trench line, the Prussians had scrambled over their parapet to meet us. In the general mix-up I found myself locked in the arms of a bear-like Prussian Guardsman who evidently had lost his rifle and bayonet. His knee was at my knee—his chest pressed against my chest. Our faces touched.
I slid my hands up along the barrel of my rifle until they were almost under the hilt of the bayonet. Very slowly I shoved the butt back of me and to the side. Lower and lower I dropped it. The keen blade was between us. All the Hun seemed to know about wrestling was to hug. He dared not let go. Had he known a few tricks of the game, I should not be writing this to-day.
Instinctively I felt that the point of my bayonet was in line with his throat. With every ounce of strength in my body, I wrenched my shoulders upward and straightened my knees. The action broke his hold, and my bayonet was driven into his greasy throat. His arms relaxed; I was drenched with blood, but it was not my own. I staggered away from him, wrenching my rifle free as he fell.
The thrust I had used has come to be known as the “jab point”; they are teaching it to the American army to-day. It developed naturally from just such situations as I have described.
It was an awful mêlée. There were men swinging rifles overhead; others, kicking, punching, and tearing at their adversaries; while others again, wrestling, had fallen to the ground, struggling one to master the other. One Highlander, who had been struck by a bullet just before reaching the enemy parapet, grasped his rifle, and crawled as best he could the intervening distance, waiting his chance to get his man. At last it came. His bayonet found its mark, before the bulky Hun could ward off the unexpected stroke from the wounded lad. In a moment they were both lying prone on the earth. The Highlander, I am sure, died content—content that he had got his quota at least.
It was the wildest confusion, but its impressions were absolutely photographic. I can see it all, again, this moment.
The Prussians were finally obliged to retire to their reserve trenches. We took their firing trench, but had to vacate it because it was subject to an enfilading fire from the enemy. As we retreated in company squads, we kept up a steady fire.
While making for our trenches, I shouted to one of the fellows on my left to keep down as we were drawing the enemy’s fire. The sentence was hardly completed, when something hot struck me on the left jaw. It seemed as if I had been hit with a sledge hammer. I spun round, stumbled, and fell to the ground. I realized that it was a bullet and tried to swear at the boches, but all I could do was to spit and cough, for the blood was almost choking me. The bullet, entering my cheek and shattering some of my teeth in passing, made its exit by way of my mouth. My warning, however, had saved the life of the lad I had shouted to. He flopped to the ground just in time to avoid a sweep of machine-gun fire, and managed to crawl to our trench, which was a very short distance off.
I was sent to the regimental dressing station. There were scores there more seriously wounded than I, and they were, of course, attended to first. By the time it was my turn, my face was so completely smeared with congealed blood that the orderly couldn’t locate the wound. He wiped my face with a bunch of grass and applied a dressing. I was relieved to hear that it was a clean wound.
In the dressing station, suffering as I was, I noticed two men forcibly controlling a wounded comrade. After a moment I recognized him as the little recruit who had prayed that the Germans might not pass the wire and come to bayonet fighting with us. His features were so changed that he seemed aged a dozen years and—believe it or not, as you will—his hair, which had been sleek and black, was entirely white. He had been only slightly wounded but the heavy bombardment had driven him entirely mad. He was continually crying for his mother. I afterward learned that he and his mother, who was blind, had lived together and had been warmly devoted to each other, but at the outbreak of the war, his mother felt it her duty to send him to fight. The boy recovered his mental faculties a month or two after being sent home.