The long-delayed and long-expected crisis in the affairs of the Stonewalls came at last about midday, and they were moved up into the front line, into the battered trench held by the remains of another battalion.
This line ran curving and zigzagging some fifty to a hundred yards beyond the shattered and shell-smitten fragments of a group of houses which stood on the grass-and weed-grown remains of a road. What was now the British front line of trench had been at one time a German communication trench in part of its length, and apparently some sort of support trench in another part. But throughout its whole length it had been so battered and wrecked, rent and riven asunder by shell fire, by light and heavy bombs of every sort and description, that it was all of much the same pattern—a comparatively wide ditch, filled up and choked to half its depth in some places by fallen wallsand scattered sandbags, in other parts no more than a line of big and little shell-craters linked up by a shallow ditch, with a tangle of barbed wire flung out in coils and loops in front of the trench, with here and there a few strands run out and staked down during the night.
The face of the trench was no longer a perpendicular wall with a proper fire step, as all regularly constructed trenches are made when possible; the walls had crumbled down under the explosions of shell and bomb, and although some attempt had been made to improve the defenses, actually these improvements had been of the slightest description, and in many cases were destroyed again as fast as they were made; so for the most part the men of the battalion holding the trench picked little angles and corners individually for themselves, did their best to pile sandbags for head cover, lay sprawling on or against the sloping trench wall, and fired over the parapet.
At the point occupied by the Stonewalls the opposing lines were too far apart for the throwing of hand grenades, but the line was still suffering a fairly heavy and uncomfortably accurate artillery bombardment. The trench was strewn along its length with a débris of torn sandbags, of packsand equipments stripped from the wounded, of rifles and bayonets, mess-tins, and trenching tools, and caps and boots and water-bottles. Collected here and there in odd corners were many dead, because scattered along the whole length of line there were still many wounded, and until these had been safely removed there could, of course, be no time or consideration spared for attention to the dead.
The Stonewalls passed in single file along the broken trench behind the men who still held the position and lay and fired over their parapet. There were many remarks from these men, caustic inquiries as to where the Stonewalls had been, and why they had taken so long to come up; expressions of relief that they had come; inquiries as to whether there was to be another attack, or whether they were to be relieved by the Stonewalls, and allowed to go back. The Stonewalls, of course, could give no information as to what would happen, because of that they themselves had not the faintest idea. They were pushed along the trench and halted in a much closer and stronger line than the widely spaced men of the defending force which had held it.
Larry remarked on this to Pug and Kentucky,when at last the little group of which they were a part was told by their Sergeant to halt.
“I suppose,” said Kentucky, “we’re thicker along this line because there’s more of us. Whether the same reason will hold good by this time to-morrow is another proposition.”
“I’m goin’ to ’ave a peep out,” said Pug, and scrambled up the sloping face of the trench to beside a man lying there.
“Hello, chum!” said this man, turning his head to look at Pug. “Welcome to our ’ome, as the text says, and you’ll be a bloomin’ sight more welcome if you’re takin’ over, and lettin’ us go back. I’ve ’ad quite enough of this picnic for one turn.”
“’As it bin pretty ’ot here?” asked Pug.
The man slid his rifle-barrel over a sandbag, raised his head and took hasty aim, fired, and ducked quickly down again. “’Ot!” he repeated. “I tell yer ’ell’s a bloomin’ ice cream barrow compared to wot this trench ’as been since we come in it. ’Ot? My blanky oath!”
Pug raised his head cautiously, and peered out over the parapet.
“I s’pose that’s their trench acrost there,” he said doubtfully, “but it’s a rummy lookin’ mix up. Wot range are yer shootin’ at?”
“Pretty well point blank,” said the private. “It’s about 200 to 250 they tell me.”
“’Oo’s trench is that along there to the left?” asked Pug. “It seems to run both ways.”
“I’m not sure,” said the other man, “but I expect it’s an old communication trench. This bit opposite us they reckon is a kind of redoubt; you’ll notice it sticks out to a point that their trenches slope back from on both sides.”
“I notice there’s a ’eap of wire all round it,” said Pug, and bobbed his head down hastily at the whizz of a couple of bullets. “And that’s blinkin’ well enough to notice,” he continued, “until I ’as to look out an’ notice some more whether I likes it or not.”
He slipped down again into the trench bottom, and described such of the situation as he had seen, as well as he could. He found the others discussing a new rumor, which had just arrived by way of the Sergeant. The tale ran that they were to attack the trenches opposite; that there was to be an intense artillery bombardment first, that the assault was to be launched after an hour or two of this.
“I ’ear there’s a battalion of the Jocks joined up to our left in this trench,” said the Sergeant,“and there’s some Fusilier crowd packin’ in on our right.”
“That looks like business,” said Larry; “but is it true, do you think, Sergeant? Where did you get it from?”
“There’s a ’tillery forward officer a little piece along the trench there, and I was ’avin’ a chat with ’is signaler. They told me about the attack, and told me their Battery was goin’ to cut the wire out in front of us.”
Kentucky, who was always full of curiosity and interest in unusual proceedings, decided to go along and see the Forward Officer at work. He told the others he would be back in a few minutes, and, scrambling along the trench, found the Artillery Subaltern and two signalers. The signalers had a portable telephone connected up with the trailing wire, and over this the Subaltern was talking when Kentucky arrived. He handed the receiver to one of his signalers, and crossing the trench took up a position where by raising his head he could see over the parapet.
“Number One gun, fire,” he said, and the signaler repeated the words over the telephone, and a moment later called sharply: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky waited expectantly with his eye onthe Forward Officer, waited so many long seconds for any sound of the arriving shell or any sign of the Officer’s movement that he was beginning to think he had misunderstood the method by which the game was played; but at that moment he heard a sudden and savage rush of air close overhead, saw the Forward Officer straighten up and stare anxiously out over the parapet, heard the sharp crash of the bursting shell out in front. The Officer stooped his head again and called something about dropping twenty-five and repeating. The signaler gave his message word for word over the ’phone, and a minute later reported again: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky, not knowing the technicalities of gunners’ lingo, was unable to follow the meaning of the orders as they were passed back from the officer to the signaler, from the signaler to the Battery. There was talk of adding and dropping, of so many minutes right or left, of lengthening and shortening, and of “correctors”; but although he could not understand all this, the message was clear enough when the officer remarked briefly:
“Target No. 1; register that,” and proceeded to call for No. 2 gun, and to repeat the complicateddirections of ranges and deflection. Presently No. 2 found its target also, and the Forward Officer went on with three and the remaining guns in turn. For the first few shots from each he stood up to look over the parapet, but after that viewed the proceedings through a periscope.
Kentucky, establishing himself near the signaler, who was for the moment disengaged, talked with him, and acquired some of the simpler mysteries of registering a target, and of wire cutting. “He stands up at first,” explained the signaler, in answer to an inquiry, “because he pitches the first shell well over to be on the safe side. He has to catch the burst as soon as it goes, and he mightn’t have his periscope aimed at the right spot. After he corrects the lay, and knows just where the round is going to land, he can keep his periscope looking there and waiting for it. It’s not such a risky game then, but we gets a heap of F.O.O.’s casualtied doing those first peeps over the parapet.”
After the Forward Officer had got all his guns correctly laid, the Battery opened a rapid and sustained fire, and the shells, pouring in a rushing stream so close over the trench that the wind oftheir passing could be felt, burst in a running series of reports out in front.
Kentucky made his way back to his own portion of the trench, and borrowing a pocket looking-glass periscope, clipped it to his bayonet and watched for some time with absorbed interest the tongues of flame that licked out from the bursting shells, and the puffing clouds of smoke that rolled along the ground in front of the German parapet. The destruction of the wire was plain to see, and easy to watch. The shells burst one after another over and amongst it, and against the background of smoke that drifted over the ground the tangle of wire stood up clearly, and could be seen dissolving and vanishing under the streams of shrapnel bullets. As time passed the thick hedge of wire that had been there at first was broken down and torn away; the stakes that held it were knocked down or splintered to pieces or torn up and flung whirling from the shell bursts. Other batteries had come into play along the same stretch of front, and were hard at work destroying in the same fashion the obstacle to the advance of the infantry. The meaning of the wire cutting must have been perfectly plain to the Germans; clearly it signified an attack; clearly thatsignified the forward trenches being filled with a strong attacking force; and clearly again that meant a good target for the German guns, a target upon which they proceeded to play with savage intensity.
The forward and support lines were subjected to a tornado of high explosive and shrapnel fire, and again the Stonewalls were driven to crouching in their trench while the big shells pounded down, round, and over and amongst them. They were all very sick of these repeated series of hammerings from the German guns, and Pug voiced the idea of a good many, when at the end of a couple of hours the message came along that they were to attack with the bayonet in fifteen minutes.
“I don’t s’pose the attack will be any picnic,” he said, “but blow me if I wouldn’t rather be up there with a chance of gettin’ my own back, than stickin’ in this stinkin’ trench and gettin’ blown to sausage meat without a chance of crookin’ my finger to save myself.”
For two hours past the British guns had been giving as good as they were getting, and a little bit better to boot; but now for the fifteen minutes previous to the assault their fire worked upto a rate and intensity that must have been positively appalling to the German defenders of the ground opposite, and especially of the point which was supposed to be a redoubt. The air shook to the rumble and yell and roar of the heavy shells, vibrated to the quicker and closer rush of the field guns’ shrapnel. The artillery fire for the time being dominated the field, and brought the rifle fire from the opposing trenches practically to silence, so that it was possible with some degree of safety for the Stonewalls to look over their parapet and watch with a mixture of awe and delight the spectacle of leaping whirlwinds of fire and billowing smoke, the spouting débris that splashed upwards, through them; to listen to the deep rolling detonations and shattering boom of the heavy shells that poured without ceasing on the trenches in front of them.
“If there’s any bloomin’ Germans left on that ground,” said Pug cheerfully, “I’d like to know ’ow they do it. Seems to me a perishin’ black-beetle in a ’ole could not ’ave come through that shell fire if ’e ’ad as many lives as a cat.”
It almost looked as if he was right, and that the defense had been obliterated by the artillery preparation, for when the order came along andthe British Infantry began to scramble hurriedly over the parapet, to make their way out through the wire, and to form up quickly and roughly on the open ground beyond it, hardly a shot was fired at them, and there was no sound or sign of life in the German trenches except the whirling smoke clouds starred with quick flashes of fire from the shells that still streamed overhead and battered and hammered down on the opposite lines.
The infantry lay down in the wet grass and mud for another two or three minutes, and then, suddenly and simultaneously, as if all the guns had worked together on the pulling of a string, the shells, without ceasing for an instant to roar past overhead, ceased to flame and crash on the forward lines, but began to pound down in a belt of smoke and fire some hundreds of yards beyond. Along the length of the British line whistle after whistle trilled and shrieked; a few figures could be seen leaping to their feet and beginning to run forward; and then with a heave and a jumble of bobbing heads and shoulders the whole line rose and swung forward in a long, uneven, but almost solid wave. At the same instant the German trenches came to life, a ragged volley of rifle fire crackled out, grew closer and quicker,swelled into one tumultuous roll with the machine guns hammering and rapping and clattering sharply and distinctly through the uproar. About the ears of the running infantry could be heard the sharp hiss and zipp and whistle and whine of passing bullets; from the ground amongst their feet came the cracking and snapping of bullets striking and the spurts of mud thrown up by them. At first these sounds were insignificant, and hardly noticed in the greater and more terrifying clamor of the guns’ reports, the shriek and whoop of the passing shells, the crashing bursts of their explosions. But the meaning and significance of the hissing bullet sounds were made swiftly plain as the rifle and machine-gun fire grew, and the riflemen and machine gunners steadied to their aim and task. The bullet storm swept down on the charging line, and the line withered and melted and shredded away under it. It still advanced steadily, but the ground behind it was dotted thicker and closer and more and more quickly with the bodies of men who fell and lay still, or crawled back towards their parapet or to the shelter of the nearest shell crater. The line went on, but half-way across the open ground it began to show ragged and uneven withgreat gaps sliced out of it at intervals. The wet ground was heavy going, and the fierceness of the fire and the numbers struck down by it began to make it look a doubtful question whether a sufficient weight of men could reach their goal to carry the charge home with any effect. From one cause or another the pace slowed sensibly, although the men themselves were probably unaware of the slowing.
Kentucky, Larry, and Pug kept throughout within arm’s length of one another. They had set out under the same bargain to keep close and help one another if need arose; but Kentucky at least confesses that any thoughts of a bargain, any memory of an arranged program, had completely left him, and very probably his thoughts ran in much the same direction as three-fourths of the charging line. His whole mind, without any conscious effort of reasoning, was centered on getting over the open as quickly as possible, of coming to hand grips with the Germans, of getting down into their trench out of reach of the sleeting bullets that swept the open. He arrived at the conclusion that in the open he was no more than a mere helpless running target for shells and bullets; that once in the German trench he wouldbe out of reach of these; that if the trench were held and it came to hand-to-hand fighting, at least he would stand an equal chance, and at least his hand could guard his head. How many men he might have to meet, what odds would be against him, whether the attackers would be thinned out to a hopeless outnumbering, he hardly troubled to think. That need could be met as it arose, and in the meantime the first and more imperative need was to get across the open, to escape the bullets that pelted about them. He ran on quite unconscious of whether the rest of the line was still advancing, or whether it had been exterminated. Arrived at the wrecked entanglements of wire he did look round, to find Larry and Pug close beside him, and all three plunged into the remains of the entanglement almost side by side, and began to kick and tear a way over and through the remaining strands and the little chopped fragments that strewed the ground.
Kentucky was suddenly aware of a machine-gun embrasure almost in front of them, placed in an angle of the trench so as to sweep the open ground in enfilade. From the blackness of the embrasure mouth flashed a spitting stream of fire, and it came to him with a jerk that on the path he wastaking he would have to cross that stream, that the bullets pouring from it must inevitably cut down his two companions and himself. He turned and shouted hoarsely at them, swerved to one side, and slanted in to the trench so as to escape the streaming fire; but, looking round, he saw that the other two had not heard or heeded him, that they were still plowing straight on through the broken wires, that another few paces must bring them directly in the path of the bullets’ sweep. He yelled again hoarsely, but realized as he did so that his voice was lost and drowned in the clamor of the battle. But at that instant—and this was the first instant that he became aware of others beside the three of them having come so far—a man plunged past him, halted abruptly, and hurled something straight at the black hole of the embrasure. The bomb went true to its mark, the embrasure flamed out a broad gush of fire, a loud report boomed thunderously and hollowly from it—and the spitting fire stream stopped abruptly.
Kentucky ran on, leaped at the low parapet, scrambled on top of it, swung the point of his bayonet down, and poised himself for the leap. Below him he saw three faces staring upward,three rifle muzzles swing towards him and hang, as it seemed, for an eternity pointed straight at his face.
His mind was so full of that overpowering thought it had carried all the way across the open, the desperate desire to get down into the trench, that, confronted by the rifle muzzles and the urgent need to do something to escape them, he could not for the moment readjust his thoughts or rearrange his actions. The instant’s hesitation might easily have been fatal, and it is probable he owed his life to another man who at that moment leaped on the broken parapet and jostled him roughly just as two of the rifles below flamed and banged. As he half reeled aside from that jolting elbow he felt a puff of wind in his face, was conscious of a tremendous blow and violent upward leaping sensation somewhere about his head, a rush of cold air on his scalp. His first foolish thought was that the top of his head had been blown away, and he half dropped to his knees, clutching with one hand at his bare head, from which the shot had whirled his helmet. And as he dropped he saw beside him on the parapet the man who had jostled him, saw the swift downward fling of his hand as he hurled something intothe trench and instantly flung himself to ground. Kentucky realized what the bomber was doing just in time to duck backwards. A yell from the trench below was cut short by a crashing report, a spout of flame and smoke shot up, and the parapet trembled and shuddered. The bomber leaped to his feet and without a word to Kentucky leaped across the trench and ran along its further side, swinging another bomb by its stick-handle. He carried a lot more of these hanging and dangling about his body. They jerked as he ran, and it flashed across Kentucky’s mind to wonder if there was no possibility of two of them by some mischance striking and detonating one another, or the safety pins jolting out, when he saw the man crumple suddenly and fall sprawling and lie still where he fell. Reminded abruptly of his exposed position and of those significant whiskings and swishings through the air about him, Kentucky jumped to his feet, glanced over into the trench, and jumped down into it. At the moment he could see no other British soldier to either side of him, but in the trench bottom lay the three bodies of the men killed by the bomb. A sudden wild and nervous doubt shot into his mind—could he be the only man who had safely reached the trench? But onthe same instant he heard cries, the rush of feet, and two or three men leaped over and down into the trench beside him, and he caught a glimpse of others doing the same further along.
“Seen any of ’em?” gasped one of the newcomers, and without waiting an answer, “Come along, men; work along the trench and look out for dug-outs.”
Kentucky recognized them as men of another company of the Stonewalls, saw that they, too, were loaded with bombs, and because he was not at all sure what he ought to do himself, he followed them along the trench. The bombers stopped at the dark entrance to a dug-out, and the officer leading them halted and shouted down it. In reply a rifle banged and a bullet hissed out past the officer’s head. The men swore, stepped hurriedly aside, and one of them swung forward a bomb with long cloth streamers dangling from it. “Not that,” said the officer quickly. “It’ll explode on the stairs. Give ’em two or three Mills’ grenades.” The men pulled the pins from the grenades and flung them down the stairway and the rifle banged angrily again. “That’s about your last shot,” said one of the men grimly, and next instant a hollow triple report boomed outfrom deep below. “Roll another couple down to make sure,” said the officer, “and come along.”
Kentucky remembered the episode of the double entrance to the dug-out in the other trench. “There may be another stair entrance further along,” he said quickly. “Come on,” said the officer abruptly, “we’ll see. You’d better come with us and have your bayonet ready. I’ve lost my bayonet men.” He led the way himself with a long “trench dagger” in his hand—a murderous looking long knife with rings set along the haft for his fingers to thrust through and grip. Kentucky heard a shout of “C Company. Rally along here, C.”
“I’d better go, hadn’t I?” he asked. “I’m C, and they’re shouting for C.”
“All right,” said the officer, “push off. Pick up that rifle, one of you. It’s a German, but it’ll do for bayonet work if we need it.”
Kentucky had no idea where “C” Company was calling from, and down in the trench he could see nothing. For a moment he was half inclined to stay where he was with the others, but the shout came again, “C Company. Along here, C.” He scrambled up the broken rear wall of the trench, saw a group of men gathering along tothe right, heard another call from them, and climbed out to run stooping across and join them.
“Hello, Kentucky,” he heard, “where you bin? Thought you was a wash-out.”
“I’m all hunkadory, Pug,” he answered joyfully. “I missed you coming across just after that bomber slung one in on the machine gun. Lucky thing for you he did, too.”
“Hey?” said Pug vaguely, “wot bomber, an’ wot machine gun?”
“Well, I didn’t think you could have missed seeing that,” said Kentucky in astonishment. “You and Larry were running right across its muzzle. But where’s Larry?”
“Dunno,” said Pug anxiously. “I thought ’im an’ you would be together. He was with me not more’n a minute or two afore we got in. Hope ’e ’asn’t been an’ stopped one.”
“Do you remember where you got in?” said Kentucky. “I believe I could find where that machine gun was. If he was hit it must have been there or in the trench here. I think we ought to go and hunt for him.”
But their officer and sergeant had other and more imperative ideas as to their immediate program. “Pick up any of those picks and spadesyou see lying about,” ordered the sergeant, “and try’n get this trench into shape a bit. The rest of you get on to those sandbags and pile ’em up for a parapet. Sharp, now, every man there. You, Pug, get along with it, bear a hand. That arm of yours all right? If it isn’t you’d best shove along back to the rear.”
Although Pug and Kentucky were not allowed to go and look for their lost chum, and in fact did not know for long enough what had happened to him, the tale of that happening, I think, fits best in here. It is perhaps all the more worth the telling because it is a sample of scores of incidents that may never be heard of outside the few who participated in them, but are characteristic of one of the most amazing features of the New Armies—and that, mark you, is rather a big word, remembering we are speaking of something which itself is nothing but one huge amazing feature—the readiness and smoothness with which it has fallen into professional soldiering ways and the instinct for fighting which over and over again it has been proved to possess. And by fighting instinct I do not mean so much that animal instinct which every man has hidden somewhere in his make-up to look out for himself and kill thefellow who is trying to kill him, but rather that peculiar instinct which picks a certain corner of a trench as a key to a local position, which knows that if a certain bit of ground can be taken or held it will show much more than its face value, which senses the proper time to hang on and the right moment to risk a rush.
These, of course, are the instincts of leadership, and these are the instincts which the New Army has shown it possesses, not only in its officers and non-coms., but time and again—in innumerable little-known or unknown incidents of battle that have been lost in the bigger issues—in the rank and file, in privates who never were taught or expected to know anything about leadership, in men brought up to every possible trade, profession and occupation except war. One can only suppose it is an instinct deep rooted in the race that has lain dormant for generations, and only come to life again in the reviving heat of war.
It will be remembered that Larry became separated from his two friends in their rush on the German line, and just as they reached the remains of the barbed wire before the German trench. For the greater part the wire had been uprooted and swept away by the storm of British shells andmortar bombs, but here and there it still remained sufficiently intact to make a difficult and unpleasant obstacle.
Larry and Pug, deflected from their course by one or two yawning shell craters, ran into one of these undestroyed patches of wire, and while Pug turned to the left, Larry turned right and ran skirting along its edge in search of a place through. Several other men did the same, and by the time they had found an opening there were about a score of them to go streaming through the gap and plunging at the broken parapet. Half of them were shot down in that last dozen yards, and as they opened out and went clawing and scrambling at the parapet with rifles banging almost in their faces, hand grenades lobbed over to roll down amongst their feet and explode in showers of flying splinters. The few who for the moment escaped these dangers, knowing that every instant they remained in the open outside the trench carried almost a certainty of sudden death, flung desperately at its parapet, over and down into it among the German bayonets, without stopping to count or heed what the hand-to-hand odds might be.
Larry Arundel, at the lip of the trench, suddenlyfinding himself poised above a group of some four or five men, checked his downward leap from a first instinctive and absurd fear of hurting the men he would jump down upon, recovered himself, and swung his rifle forward and thrust and again thrust savagely down at the gray coats and helmets below him, saw the bright steel strike and pierce a full half its length with no other feeling than a faint surprise that he should sense so little check to its smooth swing, shortened the grip on his rifle, and, thrusting again as he jumped, leaped down into the space his bayonet had cleared. The last man he had stabbed at evaded the thrust, and like a flash stabbed back as Larry landed in the trench. But the two were too close for the point to be effective, and Larry’s hip and elbow turned the weapon aside. He found himself almost breast to breast with his enemy, and partly because there was no room to swing a bayonet, partly because that undefended face and point of the jaw awoke the boxer’s instinct, his clenched fist jerked in a fierce uppercut hard and true to its mark, and the German grunted once and dropped as if pole-axed.
But there Larry’s career would probably have cut short, because there were still a couple ofmen within arm’s length of him, and both were on the point of attacking, when another little batch of belated attackers arrived at the trench. Several of them struck in at the point where Larry was engaged with his opponents, and that particular scrimmage terminated with some abruptness.
Larry was a little dazed with the speed at which events of the past minute had happened and also to some extent by the rather stunning report of a rifle fired just past his ear by a somewhat hasty rescuer in settlement of the account of his nearest opponent.
“Wh-what’s happened?” he asked. “Have we got this trench all right?”
“Looks like it,” said one of the others. “But blest if I know how much of it. There didn’t seem to be much of our line get in along to the right there to take their bit of front.”
“Let’s have a look,” said Larry, and scrambled up the broken side of the trench. He stood there a minute until half a dozen bullets whistling and zipping close past sent him ducking fast to cover.
“They’ve got the trench to our right safe enough,” he said, “and they seem to be advancing beyond it. I suppose we ought to go on, too.”
“Wot’s this fakement?” asked one of the menwho had been poking round amongst the débris of the shattered trench. He held out a two-armed affair with glasses at the ends.
“That,” said Larry quickly, taking it and raising it above the edge of the trench—“that’s some sort of a periscope.” He looked out through it a moment and added: “And a dash good one it is, too.... I say, that line of ours advancing on the right is getting it in the neck.... Machine-gun fire it looks like.... They’ve stopped.... Most of ’em are down, and the rest running back to the trench.”
He was interrupted by an exclamation from one of the other men who had climbed up to look over the edge.
“Look out,” he said hurriedly. “Bomb over,” and he dropped back quickly into the trench.
A German stick grenade sailed over, fell on the trench parapet above them, rolled a little, and lay still, and in another second or two went off with a crash, half deafening and blinding them with the noise and smoke, but hurting no one. Some of the men swore, and one demanded angrily where the thing had come from, and “Who frew dat brick?” quoted another.
But there was little room for jests. One, two,three grenades came over in quick succession; one going over and missing the trench, another falling in it at the toe of a man who promptly and neatly kicked it clear round the corner of the traverse, where it exploded harmlessly; but the third falling fairly in the trench, where it burst, just as a man grabbed for it to throw it out, killing him instantly and slightly wounding one or two others.
“Who’s got those Mills?” said Larry hurriedly. “You, Harvey—chuck a couple over the traverse to the right. Must be some of them in there.”
Harvey drew the pins out of a couple of Mills’ grenades and tossed them over, but even as they burst another couple of German grenades came over, one bursting in the air and the other failing to explode.
“I’ve spotted them,” suddenly said Larry, who had been watching out through the periscope. “There’s some sort of trench running into this about a dozen yards along. They’re in there; I saw the grenades come over out of it.”
Some of the men with him had moved back out of section of trench under bombardment, and as more grenades began to lob over there was a mild stampede of the others round the traverse.Larry went with them, but pulled up at the corner and spoke sharply.
“See here, it’s no good letting them chase us out like this. They’ll only follow up and bomb us out traverse by traverse till there’s none of us left to bomb out. Let’s have some of those grenades, Harvey, and we’ll rush them out of it.”
Some of the men hesitated, and others demurred, muttering that there weren’t enough of them, didn’t know how many Germs there were, ought to find an officer and let him know.
It was just here that Larry took hold and saved what might have been an ugly situation. He saw instinctively what their temporary or partial retirement might mean. The advance on the right had been held up, had evidently secured that portion of the trench, but could only be holding it weakly. The trench from which the grenades had come was evidently a communicating trench. If the Germans were free to push down it in force they might re-secure a footing in the captured main trench, and there would be no knowing at what cost of time and men it would have to be retaken from them.
All this he saw, and he also saw the need for prompt action. No officer, no non-commissionedofficer even, was with them, and by the time they had sent back word of the position the Germans might have secured their footing. Apparently there was no one else there willing or able to take command, so Larry took it.
He had never given a real order in his life—even his orders to the office boy or typist at home had always been in the form of “Will you please?” or “Do you mind?” He had no actual authority now to give commands, was the junior in years and in service to several there. But give orders he did, and, moreover, he gave them so clear and clean-cut, and with such an apparent conviction that they would be obeyed, that actually they were obeyed just as unhesitatingly and willingly as if he had been Colonel of the regiment.
In three minutes his dispositions were made and his directions given, in four minutes his little attack had been launched, in five minutes or little more it had succeeded, and he was “in possession of the objective.” He had about half a score of men with him and a very limited supply of grenades, obviously not sufficient strength to attempt a deliberate bombing fight along the trench. So at the greater risk perhaps, but with a greaterneck-or-nothing chance of success, he decided to lead his little party with a rush out of the trench across the angle of the ground to where he had seen the branching trench running into theirs.
Two men were told off to jump out on the side they had entered, to run along under cover of the parapet and shoot at any one who emerged or showed in the entrance to the communication trench; two more to fling over a couple of grenades into the trench section into which the communication-way entered and follow it up with their bayonets ready, one to push on along the trench and bring any assistance he could raise, the other to be joined by the two men above, and, if the main attack succeeded, to push up along the communication-way and join Larry’s party.
This left Larry with half-a-dozen men to lead in his rush over the open. The whole of his little plans worked out neatly, exactly, and rapidly. He waited for the crash of the two grenades his bombers flung, then at his word “Go!” the two men told off heaved themselves over the rear parapet, and in a few seconds were pelting bullets down the communication trench entrance; the bombers scuffled along the trench without meeting any resistance.
Larry and his men swarmed up and out from their cover, charged across the short, open space, and in a moment were running along the edge of the communication trench, shooting and stabbing and tossing down grenades into it on top of the surprised Germans there. There were about a score of these clustered mainly near the juncture with the other trench, and in half a minute this little spot was converted into a reeking shambles under the bursting grenades and the bullets that poured into it from the two enfilading rifles.
Every man in that portion of trench was killed—one might almost say butchered—without a chance of resistance. Another string of Germans apparently being hurried along the trench as re-enforcements, were evidently stampeded by the uproar of crashing bombs and banging rifles, the yells and shouts of the attackers.
They turned and bolted back along their trench, Larry’s men in the open above them pursuing and slaughtering them without mercy, until suddenly, somewhere across the open, some rifles and a machine gun began to sweep the open, and a storm of bullets to hail and patter about the little party of Stonewalls.
Larry promptly ordered them down into thetrench, and they leaped in, and, under cover from the bullets above, continued to push the retreating Germans for another hundred yards along the trench.
Here the enemy made a determined stand, and Larry instantly realized that, with his weak force, he had pushed his attack to the limit of safety. He left a couple of men there to keep the enemy in clay for a few minutes with a show of pressing the attack with persistent bombing, and hurried the others back to a point that offered the best chance of making a stand.
He chose a short, straight stretch of trench running into a wide and deep pit blown out by one of our heavy shells. Round the edge of this shell-crater pit ran a ready-made parapet thrown up by the explosion, and forming a barricade across the two points where the trench ran in and out of it.
Man by man, Larry pointed out to his little force the spot each was to occupy, and bade him dig in for his life to make cover against the bombing that would assuredly be their portion very soon. He himself crawled up on to the open to some uprooted barbed wire he had noticed, was dragging together all the tangled strands andstakes he could move, when he noticed a rusty reel of wire, half unwound, grabbed that, and shuffled back into the trench.
A shrill whistle brought his two outposts hurrying and hobbling in, one of them wounded in the leg by a grenade fragment, the other with a clean bullet wound through his forearm.
The barbed wire was hastily unreeled and piled in loose coils and loops and tangles in the straight bit of trench through which the Germans must come at the pit, while from the pit barricade one man tossed a grenade at intervals over the heads of the workers into the section of trench beyond them. But the wiring job had to be left incomplete when the arrival of two or three grenades gave warning of the coming attack, and Larry and the others scrambled hurriedly over the barricade parapet into the pit.
For the next ten minutes a hot fight—small in point of the numbers engaged and space covered, but savage in its intensity and speed—raged round the pit. The Germans tried first to force their way through by sheer weight of bombing. But the Stonewalls had made full use of their trenching tools and any scattered sandbags they could pick up, and had made very good cover forthemselves. Each man was dug into a niche round the inside of the parapet from which he could look out either over the open ground or back into the pit.
The Germans showered grenades over into the wired trench and the pit, and followed their explosions with a rush for the barricade. Larry, with one man to either side of him, behind the pit rim where it blocked the trench, stopped the rush with half-a-dozen well-placed Mills’ grenades.
Almost at once the enemy copied the Stonewalls’ first plan of attack, and, climbing suddenly from their trench, made to run along the top and in on the defense. But their plan failed where Larry’s had succeeded, simply because Larry had provided its counter by placing a man to keep a lookout, and others where they could open a prompt rifle-fire from the cover of the pit’s parapet. The attack broke under the rapid fire that met them, and the uninjured Germans scuttled back into their trench.
A fresh bombing rush was tried, and this time pushed home, in spite of the grenades that met it and filled the trench bottom with a grewsome débris of mangled men, fallen earth, and torn wire.At the end the rush was only stopped at the very parapet by Larry and his two fellows standing up and emptying their rifle magazines into the men who still crowded into the shambles trench, tearing a way through the wire and treading their own dead under foot.
More of the Stonewalls were wounded by fragments of the grenades which each man of the attackers carried and threw over into the pit before him, and one man was killed outright at the parapet by Larry’s side. He was left with only four effective fighting men, and, what was worse, his stock of grenades was almost exhausted.
The end looked very near, but it was staved off a little longer by the return of one of the severely wounded men that Larry had sent back in search of help, dragging a heavy box of German stick-grenades. Nobody knew how to use these. Each grenade had a head about the size and shape of a 1-lb. jam tin attached to a wooden handle a foot long. There was no sign of any pin to pull out or any means of detonating the grenade, but Larry noticed that the end of the handle was metal-tipped and finished off with a disc with notched edges.
A quick trial showed that this unscrewed andrevealed a cavity in the handle and a short, looped length of string coiled inside. Some rapid and rather risky experiments proved that a pull on the string exploded some sort of cap and started a fuse, which in turn detonated the grenade in a few seconds.
“Neat,” said Harvey, the bomber. “Bloomin’ neat; though I don’t say as it beats the old Mills’. But, anyhow, we’re dash lucky to have ’em. ’Ere they come again, Larry!”
“Sock it in,” said Larry briefly. “There’s more bombs than we’ll have time to use, I fancy, so don’t try’n save them up.” He shouted orders for any of the wounded that could move themselves to clear out, and set himself to tossing over the grenades as fast as he could pull the detonating-strings.
Then his last man on the lookout on the pit rim yelled a warning and opened rapid fire, and Larry knew that another rush was coming over the open. That, he knew, was the finish, because now he had no men left to keep up a fire heavy enough to stop the rush above ground, and, if Harvey and he went to help, the ceasing of their grenade-throwing would leave the attack to come at him along the shattered trench.
He and Harvey looked once at each other, and went on grimly throwing grenades. Then Harvey dropped without a word, and Larry, looking up, saw a few Germans shooting over the pit rim. They disappeared suddenly as he looked, cut down—although he did not know that—by a heavy rifle-fire that had been opened by the British-owned trench behind him.
He yelled hoarsely at the one man left still firing from his niche up on the parapet, grabbed the box with the remaining grenades, and made a bolt across the pit for the other side and the trench opening from it. The rifleman did the same, but he fell half-way across, and Larry, reaching cover, glanced round and saw the other struggling to his knees, turned and dashed back, and half dragged, half carried the man across, up the crumbling edge of the pit, and heaved him over into the trench mouth. Then he took up his position behind the breastwork and made ready to hold it to the last possible minute.
In that last minute assistance arrived—and arrived clearly only just in time. Headed by an officer, a strong detachment of the Stonewalls, hurrying along the trench, found Larry standing waist-high above the barricade jerking the detonating-stringsand hurling the last of his grenades as fast as he could throw them into the pit, from which arose a pandemonium of crashing explosions, yells and shrieks, guttural curses and the banging reports of rifles.
The Stonewalls swarmed, cheering, over the barricade and down into the hole beyond like terriers into a rat-pit. Most of the Germans there threw down their rifles and threw up their hands. The rest were killed swiftly, and the Stonewalls, with hardly a check, charged across the pit into the trench beyond, swept it clear of the enemy for a full two hundred yards, and then firmly established themselves in and across it with swiftly-built barricades and plentiful stores of bombs. Larry’s share ended there, and Larry himself exited from the scene of his first command quite inconspicuously on a stretcher.
Kentucky and Pug and their fellow Stonewalls fell to work energetically, their movements hastened by a galling rifle or machine-gun fire that came pelting along their trench from somewhere far out on the flank, and reaching the trench almost in enfilade, and by the warning screech and crash of some shells bursting over them. The rain had ceased a few hours before, but the trench was still sopping wet and thick with sticky mud. It was badly battered and broken down, and was little more for the most part than an irregular and shallow ditch half filled with shattered timbers, fallen earth, full and burst sandbags. Here and there were stretches of comparatively uninjured trench, deep and strongly built, but even in these, sandbags had been burst or blown out of place by shell explosions, and the walls were crumbling and shaken and tottery. The Stonewalls put in a very strenuous hour digging, refillingsandbags, piling them up, putting the trench into some sort of shape to afford cover and protection against shell and rifle fire. There was no sun, but the air was close and heavy and stagnant, and the men dripped perspiration as they worked. Their efforts began to slacken despite the urgings of the officers and non-coms., but they speeded up again as a heavier squall of shell fire shrieked up and began to burst rapidly about and above the trench.
“I was beginnin’ to think this trench was good enough for anythin’, and that we’d done diggin’ enough,” panted Pug, heaving a half-split sandbag into place, flattening it down with the blows of a broken pick-handle, and halting a moment to lift his shrapnel helmet to the back of his head and wipe a dirty sleeve across his wet forehead. “But I can see that it might be made a heap safer yet.”
“There’s a plenty room for improvement,” agreed Kentucky, wrenching and hauling at a jumble of stakes and barbed wire that had been blown in and half buried in the trench bottom. When he had freed the tangle, he was commencing to thrust and throw it out over the back of the trench when an officer passing along stopped him. “Chuck it out in front, man alive,” he said. “Wedon’t want to check our side getting in here to help us, and it’s quite on the cards we may need it to help hold back the Boche presently. We’re expecting a counter-attack, you know.”
“Dowe know?” said Pug, disgustedly, when the officer had passed along. “Mebbe you do, but I’m blowed if I know anythink about it. All I know I could put in me eye an’ then not know it was there even.”
“I wish I knew where Larry is, or what’s happened to him,” said Kentucky. “I’m some worried about him.”
A string of light shells crashed overhead, another burst banging and crackling along the trench, and a procession of heavier high explosive began to drop ponderously in geyser-like spoutings of mud and earth and smoke. The Stonewalls crouched low in the trench bottom, while the ground shook under them, and the air above sang to the drone and whine of flying shell fragments and splinters. Our own guns took up the challenge, and started to pour a torrent of light and heavy shells over on to the German lines. For a time the opposing guns had matters all to themselves and their uproar completely dominated the battle. And in the brief intervalsof the nearer bangs and crashes the Stonewalls could hear the deep and constant roar of gun-fire throbbing and booming and rolling in full blast up and down along the line.
“I s’pose the papers ’ud call this an ar-tillery doo-el,” remarked Pug, “or re-noo-ed ar-tillery activity.”
“I always thought a duel was two lots fighting each other,” said a man hunkered down close in the trench bottom beside him; “but the gunners’ notion of dueling seems to be to let each other alone and each hammer the other lot’s infantry.”
“Seems like they’re passing a few packets back to each other though,” said Kentucky. “Hark at that fellow up there,” as a heavy shell rumbled and roared over high above them, and the noise of its passing dwindled and died away, and was drowned out in the steadily sustained uproar of the nearer reports and shell bursts.
“Stand to there!” came a shout along the trench. “Look out, there, C Company.... Wait the word, then let ’em have it.... Don’t waste a shot, though.”
“Wot’s comin’ now?” said Pug, scrambling to his feet. Kentucky was already up and settlinghimself into position against the front wall of the parapet.
“Looks like that counter-attack we heard of,” he said. “And—yes, by the Lord, some counter-attack too. Say, look at ’em, will you? Jes’ look and see ’em come a-boiling.”
Pug, snuggling down beside him, and pounding his elbow down on the soft earth to make a convenient elbow-rest, paused and peered out into the drifting haze of smoke that obscured the front. At first he could see nothing but the haze, starred with the quick fire flashes and thickened with the rolling clouds of our guns’ shrapnel bursts. Then in the filmy gray and dun-colored cloud he saw another, a more solid and deeper colored gray bank that rolled steadily towards them.
“Gaw’strewth,” he gasped. “Is that men? Is all that lump Germans? Blimey, it must be their ’ole bloomin’ army comin’ at us.”
“There sure is a big bunch of ’em,” said Kentucky. “Enough to roll us out flat if they can get in amongst us. This is where we get it in the neck if we can’t stop ’em before they step into this trench. It looks ugly, Pug. Wonder why they don’t give the order to fire.”
“I’ve never bayoneted a ’Un yet,” said Pug,“but mebbe I’ll get a chawnce this time.” He peered out into the smoke. “Can you see if they’ve got ’elmets on, Kentuck?” he said anxiously. “I’m fair set on one o’ them ’elmets.”
To Kentucky and Pug, and probably to most of the rest of the Stonewalls’ rank and file, the German counter-attack boiled down into a mere matter of the rapid firing of a very hot rifle into a dense bank of smoke and a dimly seen mass of men. Each man shot straight to his front, and took no concern with what might be happening to right or left of that front. In the beginning the word had been passed to set the sights at point blank and fire low, so that there was no need at any time to bother about altering ranges, and the men could devote the whole of their attention to rapid loading and firing. So each simply shot and shot and went on shooting at full speed, glancing over the sights and squeezing the trigger, jerking the bolt back and up, and pulling trigger again till the magazine was empty; then, throwing the butt down to cram a fresh clip of cartridges into the breech, swinging it up and in again to the shoulder, resuming the rapid shoot-and-load, shoot-and-load until the magazine was empty again. Each man was an automatic machine,pumping out so many bullets in so many seconds, and just because long drill and training had all gone to make the aiming and shooting mechanically correct and smooth and rapid it was mechanically deadly in its effect. And because the motions of shooting were so entirely mechanical they left the mind free to wander to other and, in many cases, ridiculously trivial things. Kentucky began to fear that his stock of cartridges would not last out, began vaguely to worry over the possibility of having to cease shooting even for a minute, until he could obtain a fresh supply. Pug was filled with an intense irritation over the behavior of his rifle, which in some mysterious fashion developed a defect in the loading of the last cartridge from each clip. The cartridge, for some reason, did not slide smoothly into the chamber, and the bolt had to be withdrawn an inch and slammed shut again each time the last cartridge came up. Probably the extra motion did not delay Pug’s shooting by one second in each clip, but he was as annoyed over it as if it had reduced his rate by half. He cursed his rifle and its parts, breech, bolt, and magazine severally and distinctly, the cartridges and the clips, the men and the machinery who had madeeach; but at no time did he check the speed of his shooting to curse. “What’s the matter?” shouted Kentucky at last. “Thisblastedrifle,” yelled Pug angrily, jerking at the bolt and slamming it home again, “keeps stickin’ all the time.” Kentucky had some half-formed idea of saying that it was no good trying to shoot with a sticking rifle, and suggesting that Pug should go look for another, handing over meantime any cartridges he had left to replenish his, Kentucky’s, diminishing store; but just then two men came pushing along the trench carrying a box of ammunition and throwing out a double handful of cartridges to each man. Kentucky grabbed. “Oh, good man,” he said joyfully; “but say, can’t you give us a few more?”
Pug glanced round at the heap flung at his elbow. “Wha’s th’ good o’ them?” he snapped. “F’r Gawd’ sake rather gimme a rifle that’ll shoot.”
“Rifle?” said one of the men; “there’s plenty spare rifles about”; and he stooped and picked one from the trench bottom, dropped it beside Pug, and pushed on. Pug emptied his magazine, dropped his rifle, snatched up the other one, and resumed shooting. But he was swearing againbefore he had fired off the one clip, and that done, flung the rifle from him and grabbed his own. “Rotten thing,” he growled. “It don’tfit, don’t set to a man’s shoulder; an’ it kicks like a crazy mule.”
Both he and Kentucky had jerked out their sentences between shots, delaying their shooting no fraction of a second. It was only, and even then reluctantly, when there was no longer a visible target before their sights that they slowed up and stopped. And then both stayed still, with rifles pointing over the parapet, peering into the smoke ahead. Kentucky drew a long breath. “They’ve quit; and small blame to them.”
“Got a bit more’n they bargained for, that time,” said Pug exultantly, and then “Ouch!” in a sharp exclamation of pain. “What’s the matter?” said Kentucky. “You feeling that arm?” “No, no,” said Pug hastily, “just my elbow feelin’ a bit cramped an’ stiffish wi’ leanin’ on it.”
The rifle fire was slackening and dying along the line, but the shells still whooped and rushed overhead and burst flaming and rolling out balls of white smoke over the ground in front. “Wish them guns’d knock orf a bit till we see what sorter damage we’ve done,” said Pug. But along to theright with a rolling crash the rifles burst out into full blast again. “Look out,” said Kentucky quickly, “here they come again,” and he tossed muzzle over the parapet and commenced to pump bullets at the gray bulk that had become visible looming through the smoke clouds again. He was filled with eagerness to make the most of each second, to get off the utmost possible number of rounds, to score the most possible hits. He had just the same feeling, only much more intensified, that a man has at the butts when the birds are coming over fast and free. Indeed, the feeling was so nearly akin to that, the whole thing was so like shooting into driven and helpless game, the idea was so strong that the Germans were there as a target to be shot at, and he there as a shooter, that it gave him a momentary shock of utter astonishment when a bullet hit the parapet close to him and threw a spurt of mud in his face, and almost at the same instant another hit glancing on the top of his helmet, jolting it back on his head and spinning it round until the chin-strap stopped it with an unpleasant jerk on his throat. He realized suddenly, what for the moment he had completely forgotten, that he was being shot at as well as shooting, that he was as liable to bekilled as one of those men out there he was pelting bullets into. Actually, of course, his risk was not one-tenth of the attackers’. He was in cover and the men advancing against the trench were doing little shooting as they came. They on the other hand were in the open, exposed full length and height, were in a solid mass through and into which the sleeting bullets drove and poured in a continuous stream. Machine-gun and rifle fire beat fiercely upon its face, while from above a deluge of high-explosive shells and tearing gusts of shrapnel fell upon it, rending and shattering and destroying. And in spite of the tempest of fire which smote it the mass still advanced. It was cut down almost as fast as it could come on, but yet not quite as fast, and the men in the trench could see the front line constantly breaking and melting away, with ragged, shifting gaps opening and closing quickly along its length, with huge mouthfuls torn out of it by the devouring shells, with whole slices and wedges cut away by the scything bullets, but still filling in the gaps, closing up the broken ranks, pressing doggedly and desperately on and in on their destroyers.
But at last the attack broke down. It had covered perhaps a hundred yards, at an appallingcost of lives, when it checked, gave slowly, and then broke and vanished. Most of the men left on their feet turned and ran heavily, but there were still some who walked, and still others who even then either refused to yield the ground they had taken or preferred the chance of shelter and safety a prone position offered rather than the heavy risk of being cut down by the bullets as they retreated. These men dropped into shell holes and craters, behind the heaps of dead, flat on the bare ground; and there some of them lay motionless, and a few, a very few, others thrust out their rifles and dared to shoot.
A heavy shell screamed over and burst just behind the Stonewalls’ trench. Another and another followed in quick succession, and then, as if this had been a signal to the German guns, a tornado of shells swept roaring down upon the British line. It was the heaviest and most destructive fire the Stonewalls had yet been called upon to face. The shells were of every weight and description. The coming of each of the huge high explosives was heralded by a most appalling and nerve-shaking, long-drawn, rising torrent of noise that for the moment drowned out all the other noises of battle, and was only exceeded inits terror-inspiring volume by the rending, bellowing crash of its burst; their lesser brethren, the 5-in. and 6-in. H.E., were small by comparison, but against that their numbers were far greater, and they fell in one long pitiless succession of hammer-blows up and down the whole length of trench, filling the air with dirty black foul-smelling smoke and the sinister, vicious, and ugly sounding drone andwhurrand whistle of flying splinters; and in still larger numbers the lighter shells, the shrapnel and H.E. of the field guns, the “Whizz-Bangs” and “Pip-Squeaks,” swept the trench with a regular fusillade of their savage “rush-crash” explosions. The air grew dense and choking with the billowing clouds of smoke that curled and drifted about the trench, thickened and darkened until the men could hardly see a dozen yards from them.
Pug, crouched low in the bottom of the trench beside Kentucky, coughed and spluttered, “Bad’s a real old Lunnon Partickler,” he said, and spat vigorously.
An officer, followed by three men, crawled along the trench towards them. “Here you are, Corporal,” said the officer, halting and looking over his shoulder; “this will do for you two. Get overhere and out about fifty yards. Come on, the other man. We’ll go over a bit further along,” and he crawled off, followed by the one man.
“Wot’s the game, Corp’ril?” asked Pug, as the two began to creep over the top of the parapet. “List’nin’ post,” said the Corporal briefly. “Goin’ to lie out there a bit, in case they makes a rush through the smoke,” and he and his companion vanished squirming over the shell-torn ground in front.
A few minutes later another couple of men crawled along and huddled down beside Pug. “Crump blew the trench in on some o’ us along there,” said one. “Buried a couple an’ sent Jim an’ me flyin’. Couldn’t get the other two out neither. Could we, Jim?” Jim only shook his head. He had a slight cut over one eye, from which at intervals he mechanically wiped the blood with a shaking hand.
“Trench along there is a fair wreck,” went on the other, then stopped and held his breath at the harsh rising roar that told of another heavy shell approaching. The four men flattened themselves to earth until the shell struck with a heavy jarring THUMP that set the ground quivering. “Dud,” said two or three of them simultaneously, and“Thank God,” said Kentucky, “the burst would have sure got us that time.”
“Wot’s that they’re shoutin’ along there?” said Pug anxiously. “Strewth!” and he gasped a deep breath and grabbed hurriedly for the bag slung at his side. “Gas ... ’Helmets on,’ they’re shoutin’.”
Through the acrid odors of the explosives’ fumes Kentucky caught a faint whiff of a heavy, sickly, sweet scent. Instantly he stopped breathing and, with the other three, hastily wrenched out the flannel helmet slung in its special bag by his side, pulled it over his head, and, clutching its folds tightly round his throat with one hand, tore open his jacket collar, stuffed the lower edge of the flannel inside his jacket and buttoned it up again. All four finished the oft-drilled operation at the same moment, lay perfectly quiet, inhaling the pungent odor of the impregnated flannel, and peering upward through the eye-pieces for any visible sign of the gas.
They waited there without moving for another five minutes, with the shells still pounding and crashing and hammering down all round them. Pug leaned over and put his muffled mouth close to Kentucky’s ear: “They got a dead set on ushere,” he shouted. “Looks like our number was up this time, an’s if they meant to blow this trench to blazes.”
Kentucky nodded his cowled head. It did look as if the German gunners were determined to completely obliterate that portion of the trench, but meantime—it was very ridiculous, of course, but there it was—his mind was completely filled with vague gropings in his memory to recall what perfume it was that the scent of the gas reminded him of. He puzzled over it, recalling scent after scent in vain, sure that he was perfectly familiar with it, and yet unable to place it. It was most intensely and stupidly irritating.
The shell fire worked up to a pitch of the most ferocious intensity. None actually hit the portion of trench the four were in, but several came dangerously close in front, behind, and to either side of them. The wall began to crumble and shake down in wet clods and crumblings, and at the burst of one shell close out in front, a large piece broke off the front edge and fell in, followed by a miniature landslide of falling earth. The trench appeared to be on the point of collapsing and falling in on them.
“We gotter move out o’ this!” shouted Pug, “else we’ll be buried alive.”
“What’s the good of ... don’t believe there’s any one left but us ... better get out of it,” said the man Jim. His voice was muffled and indistinct inside his helmet, but although the others only caught fragments of his sentences his meaning was plain enough. The four looked at each other, quite uselessly, for the cowl-like helmets masked all expression and the eyes behind the celluloid panes told nothing. But instinctively they looked from one to the other, poking and twisting their heads to bring one another within the vision range of the eye-pieces, so that they looked like some strange ghoulish prehistoric monsters half-blind and wholly horrible. Jim’s companion mumbled something the others could not hear, and nodded his shapeless head slightly. His vote was for retirement, for although it had not been spoken, retirement was the word in question in the minds of all. Kentucky said nothing. True, it appeared that to stay there meant destruction; it appeared, too, that the Stonewalls as a fighting force must already be destroyed ... and ... and ...violets! was it the scent of violets? No, not violets; but some flower....
Pug broke in. “There’s no orders to retire,” he said. “There’s no orders to retire,” and poked and turned his head, peering at one after the other of them. “We carn’t retire when there ain’t no orders,” waggling his pantomimic head triumphantly as if he had completely settled the matter. But their portion of trench continued to cave in alarmingly. A monster shell falling close out on their right front completed the destruction. The trench wall shivered, slid, caught and held, slid again, and its face crumbled and fell in. The four saw it giving and scrambled clear. They were almost on the upper ground level now, but the hurried glances they threw round showed nothing but the churned up ground, the drifting curling smoke-wreaths, tinted black and green and yellow and dirty white, torn whirling asunder every few moments by the fresh shell bursts which in turn poured out more billowing clouds. No man of the Stonewalls, no man at all, could be seen, and the four were smitten with a sudden sense of loneliness, of being left abandoned in this end-of-the-world inferno. Then the man Jim noticed something and pointed. Dimly through the smoke to their left they saw one man running half doubled up, another so stooped that he almostcrawled. Both wore kilts, and both moved forward. In an instant they disappeared, but the sight of them brought new life and vigor to the four.
“The Jocks that was on our left,” shouted Pug, “gettin’ outer the trench into shell-holes. Good enough, too. Come on.”
They did not have far to seek for a shell-hole. The ground was covered with them, the circle of one in many cases cutting the circle of the next. There were many nearer available, but Pug sheered to his left and ran for the place he had seen the two Highlanders disappear, and the others followed. There were plenty of bullets flying, but in the noise of shell-fire the sound of their passing was drowned, except the sharp, angry hiss of the nearer ones and the loud smacks of those that struck the ground about them.
They had less than a dozen yards to cover, but in that short space two of them went down. Jim’s companion was struck by a shell splinter and killed instantly. Pug, conscious only of a violent blow on the side, fell, rolling from the force of the stroke. But he was up and running on before Kentucky had well noticed him fall, and when they reached the shell-hole and tumbled into italmost on top of the two Highlanders there, Pug, cautiously feeling round his side, discovered his haversack slashed and torn, its contents broken and smashed flat. “Fust time I’ve been glad o’ a tin o’ bully,” he shouted, exhibiting a flattened tin of preserved meat. “But I s’pose it was the biscuits that was really the shell-proof bit.”