Wytschaete Map
Sometimes the original Flemish names were retained for the farms, châteaux and cross-roads, but more often they would be Anglicized by our map makers. Thus we had "Moated Grange," "Bus House," "Shelley Farm," "Beggar's Rest," "Dead Dog Farm," "Sniper's Barn," "Captain's Post," "Maple Copse," the "White Château" and the "Red Château," "Dead Horse Corner," "White Horse Cellars" and so on, indefinitely. "Scottish Wood" was so named for the London Scottish who made a famous charge there in the early part of the war. Hallebast Corner was changed by the soldier to "Hell-blast" Corner, just as Ypres became "Wipers" and Ploegstert was translated into "Plugstreet." As to the estaminets, (drinking places), while many retained their original names, such as "Pomme d'Or," "Repos aux Voyageurs" or "Herberg in der Kruisstraat," such names as "The Pig & Whistle" and "Cheshire Cheese" were not uncommon.
"ShrapnelCorners" and "Suicide Corners" were numerous and had merely a local significance. The names are self-explanatory. "Gordon Farm," where the Gordon Highlanders had stopped for a time, and "School Farm," where we had a bombing and machine-gun school, were other examples. "Hyde Park Corner," afterward changed to "Canada Corner," was an important junction point of the roads back of our lines. "Bedford House" was a name given to a château which the Bedfords once occupied. It would require a large book to enumerate them all.
Our line was at the exact spot where the Princess Pat's first went into action and several of them were buried in our trenches, together with many others, both French and English. In fact, it was difficult to dig anywhere for earth to fill sand-bags without uncovering bodies. The whole place was nothing more nor less than one continuous grave. There were a great many crosses, put up by comrades, giving name, date and organization, but hundreds had no mark other thanthe cross, sometimes inscribed "an unknown soldier," but more often unmarked. Here one of our sergeants found the grave of his brother, who had been serving in the King's Royal Rifles and I noticed another cross near by marked with the name of Meyers, Indianapolis, Indiana, said to have been the first man of the Princess Pat's killed in action. There was a maze of old French and English trenches, some in front of our line and some behind it and all more or less filled with bodies that had never been buried. Some of the Indian troops had fought here and had left many of their number behind. Whenever it was possible, we buried the bodies, but often they were in such positions that this was impossible and any attempt to do so would only have resulted in further losses. I nearly forgot to mention it; but there were plenty of Germans mixed up with the lot; in one small area, just in front of a farm building, some five hundred yards in our rear, I found eight of them. Inside the building was a dead French soldier who, as we figured it out, had accounted for the eight bochesbefore they got him. This place was called Sniper's Barn.
While our artillery had been considerably increased, it was still far below that of the enemy in number or size of guns, and the ammunition supply was so short that each gun was limited to a very few rounds a day. It was only during the following summer that the English caught up with the Germans in artillery. This, naturally, did not tend to cheer up the men. It was aggravating, to say the least, to have the other fellow sending over "crumps" without limit, and be able to send back nothing but six or eight "whizz-bangs." ("Crump" is the general name for high-explosive shells of from 4.1 up, but the commonest size is the 5.9 or 150 mm.)
Having been so successful at the strafing at Messines, our Colonel was anxious that we continue the game here and I was delegated to locate a good position and "go to it." After going over all the ground back of our lines, I decided to try the experiment of placing the gun in a small hedge which ran across the lower end of an old garden or orchard, in front of Sniper's Barn; thatis, on the side toward the enemy. It looked rather foolhardy, at first glance, for the place was in plain sight from the German lines and only about five hundred yards away at the nearest point; but I remembered our experience at our first strafing place and depended on Heinie to jump to the conclusion that we were in the farm buildings, and devote his attention to them. It worked; he "ran true to form," as a race horse man would say, and while we maintained a gun, and sometimes two, in that place for six months, and the boche shot up the barn regularly during all that time, there was never a shell, apparently, directed at our position, and except for an occasional "short," none burst near us.
From there we would shoot, day and night, often, at the first, having our targets where we could "see 'em fall," a very unusual occurrence for a machine gunner, save during a general engagement. Of course we would have to get into the position before daylight and remain until dark as the way to and from it was exposed to view from "across the way."
Here we worked out many of the constantly recurringproblems which confront the machine gunner in the field, and which are, as a rule, overlooked or neglected during the preliminary training. As our own soldiers will have to contend with the same conditions, I may mention some of them.
One of the first things we discovered was that while all the small-arms ammunition issued was made pursuant to uniform specifications, furnished by the War Office, a large percentage of it was manufactured in new, hastily equipped factories, by partially trained workmen, and while it was apparently near enough to the standard to pass the tests exacted by the inspectors, only an extremely small proportion would function properly in machine guns or other automatic arms. A few of the old standard brands, made in government arsenals or by the prominent, long-established private manufacturers, could be depended upon at all times, but, unfortunately, these brands were comparatively scarce and hard to get. At least seventy-five per cent. of what we received was the product of the small, newand ill-equipped factories, established under the press of war demands, and, while it appeared to work satisfactorily in the ordinary rifles, both Enfield and Ross, it was utterly useless for machine guns. The difference of a minute fraction of an inch in the thickness of the "rim" would break extractors as fast as they could be replaced, while various other irregularities, so small as to be undiscoverable without the most accurate measurements by delicate micrometers, would cause stoppages and the breaking of different small parts. And, at that time, spare parts were almost unknown, so it required the utmost ingenuity on the part of the gunners to improvise, with what materials could be found on the spot, and with the very few tools at hand, many of the small but all-important parts that go to make up the interior economy of the guns.
All automatically operated firearms are, of necessity, very delicately balanced mechanisms. Whether gas or recoil operated, there must be just sufficient power obtained from the firing of one shot to overcome the normal friction of the workingparts, eject the empty cartridge case, withdraw a new cartridge from the belt or magazine, load it properly in the chamber and fire it; continuing this action as long as the trigger, or other firing device, is kept pressed or until the belt or magazine is emptied. Ammunition which does not give the proper amount of pressure or cartridges which, through faulty manufacture, cause an undue amount of friction, either in seating them in the chamber, withdrawing them from the belt or in removing the fired case, will not operate the gun properly and will cause "jams." On the other hand, ammunition which develops too much pressure or creates too little friction, will cause breakages because of the excess jar and hammering of the moving parts.
We utilized parts of cream separators, sewing machines, baby carriages, bicycles and various agricultural implements, found in and around the old Belgian farms, and it soon became common talk that we could make every part of a machine gun excepting the barrel. We learned that there was a certain bolt, a part of the rifle carrier on the Frenchbicycle, which was an exact duplicate of an important part of our guns, so, whenever we found one of those old, broken and abandoned cycles, we would take time to remove this particular part and carry it along for emergencies. This is but one instance of many.
Then, there was the matter of concealing the flash, when firing at night. As the position we occupied was in plain view of the enemy lines, to have fired without some device to prevent the flash being seen would, inevitably, have resulted in a concentration of fire upon us which would have rendered the position untenable. We tried many schemes, from the crude "sand-bag" screen to the most elaborate devices made in the armorer's shops, while back in billets, and finally perfected one which was thoroughly satisfactory. I can not describe it here, as I hope to see it used by our soldiers in France, but I can say that, out of probably fifty different contrivances made for the same purpose, this was the only one that "filled the bill" from every standpoint.
As most of our firing was done at night, it was necessaryto improve the manner of mounting and "laying" the guns as we soon found that the methods taught at the training schools and the lamps and other mechanical devices furnished by the authorities were of no use under actual service conditions.
The various schemes and devices which we originated and elaborated are at the disposal of the proper military authorities in this country but, obviously, can not be described here.
The foreign officers, British and French, who are now in this country acting as instructors and advisers are doing everything in their power to impress upon our officers and men the necessity for keeping up to date in all the various and complicated departments of military training, even to the exclusion of many of the pet ideas of some of the most accomplished instructors in our service schools. The trouble with us is that we have not, and never have had, any machine gunners in the United States Army. By this I mean men skilled in machine gunnery as applied to present-day warfare. The evolution of machine-gun tactics is, perhaps,the most outstanding feature of the whole war. From being, as it was considered four years ago, merely an emergency weapon or, as the text-book writers were pleased to call it, "a weapon of opportunity," it has become the most important single weapon in use in any army, not even excepting the artillery. A properly directed machine-gun barrage is far more difficult to traverse than anything the artillery can put down and the combination of artillery and machine guns, working together, whether on the offensive or defensive, represents the highest point ever attained in the effective use of fire in battle.
Our instructors have been technical theorists of the very highest order, basing their theories and working out their problems on the experience furnished by previous wars and of course it is difficult for them to realize that nearly every hypothesis which they have assumed in working out their theories has been proved false. They can not believe that "fire control" of infantry, as taught in the school of fire, has no place in modern trench warfare. It will break the heartsof some of them to learn that the ability to read a map and use a prismatic compass is of far more value than knowledge of the "mil-scale" or "fire-control rule." They will probably be scandalized by the statement, which I make seriously and with full knowledge whereof I speak, that one common shovel and an armful of sand-bags are worth more than all the range-finders that have been or ever will be bought for the use of machine gunners.
Every foot of ground in France, Belgium and Germany has been so thoroughly and accurately mapped that there need be no such thing as estimating ranges. Youknowthe range; you do not have to depend on mental or mechanical estimates. And, as machine-gun fire is almost entirely indirect fire, the guns must be laid by using map, compass, protractor and clinometer (quadrant), in exactly the same manner as artillery fire is directed. The average machine gunner will probably go through the whole war without ever seeing a live enemy--excepting prisoners. The various methods of controlling indirectfire by resection, base lines and observation from two or more points are, like the use of an auxiliary aiming point, useless in trench warfare. They are fine in theory and afford much interesting diversion on the training ranges, but when you go to war, why, it can't be done, that's all.
Highlanders with a Maxim Gun
Highlanders with a Maxim Gun
This is a common, plain, hard-headed business proposition: where the only idea is to kill as many of the enemy as possible before he kills you, it has been found that the oldest, crudest and most primitive methods have, in many cases, proved the most effective for the attainment of this end.
Never before has it been of such vital importance to train the individual soldier, whether he be rifleman, bomber, machine gunner or any other specialist, so that he can "carry on" without the direction of an officer. The officer must plan everything in advance; he must look after the health and comfort of his men, see that they are properly equipped and supplied, must station them in their appointed positions, make frequent personalinspections and, finally, lead them in the advance. But in every engagement there comes a time when every man is "on his own," when it is impossible for the officer, if he be still living, to direct the action. The idea that an officer can exercise "fire control" as taught in our service schools, or can personally direct the fire of a number of machine guns, once the action has started, is ridiculous. The limits of one man's sphere of action, at such a time, are extremely small. If the men have been properly instructed, beforehand, and then given a good start, they will do the rest. It is just this ability to assimilate individual instruction that has made the Canadian superior to the native-born Briton. He is better educated, as a rule, has lived a freer and more varied life and, as a result, possesses that initiative and individual ingenuity which are so often necessary at the critical stages of a fight. We have every reason to expect that the American soldier, for these same reasons, will prove to be at least the equal of the Canadian--the finest type of fighting man yet developed by this war.
We soon fell into the routine of moving; from front line to support; from support to the front line and back to reserve. For some time these movements were uncertain but we finally settled down to a regular schedule, which was maintained, with few breaks, throughout the winter. When the time came to go into the reserve, the rest of the battalion would go back to LaClytte but the Emma Gees went only to the Vierstraat-Brasserie line before described. From there detachments would alternate in going back to the battalion billets for a bath and clean clothing. Some of us rigged up our own bath house in Captain's Post, so found it unnecessary to go any farther. Personally, there was only one day in three months when I was out of sight of the German lines. We had comfortable quarters where we were and the towns of Dickebusch and LaClytte had no attractions for me; and as to thebattalion billets, they were abominable. They consisted of so-called huts which were simply floors with roofs over them: no walls at all; just a sloping, tent-like roof on top of a rough board floor. Outside, they were partly banked up and plentifully smeared with mud, camouflaged, as it were. The British made it a practise at that time to keep their troops out of the inhabited towns that were within range of the enemy's guns, so as not to give any excuse for shelling them. LaClytte was a very small town of but a few hundred native inhabitants, but Dickebusch, situated about midway between the lines and LaClytte, was a city of several thousands. In both places were hundreds of refugees from the ruined towns to the eastward.
However, it seemed to make little difference to the boche; he shelled both towns, intermittently, killing a number of civilians but very rarely hitting a soldier. Later, in the spring of 1916, they started in to wipe out Dickebusch, and, for all practical purposes, they succeeded. I will speak of this in a later chapter.
Whereopposing lines are so close together, say less than one hundred yards apart, and the ground is level and star shells are going up almost continuously, it would seem to be nearly an impossibility for any man or number of men to venture out into No Man's Land without being seen and fired upon by the enemy. But with certain members of each organization it is merely a part of the daily routine. Every night they slip over the parapet and, in small groups, patrol up and down the line, constantly on the alert to prevent any surprise attack by the enemy. But this is not all. There are times, at all points, when it is necessary to put out new barbed wire or repair the old; when large parties of men must go out there and work for hours, within a stone's throw of a vigilant and merciless enemy. Occasionally they are discovered and have trouble, but in the great majority of cases the work is done and every one gets back unhurt.
How is it done? Simply a matter of training and careful preparation. Every man is rehearsed in his work until he can do it perfectly, quickly andwithout noise. Materials are carefully checked up and distributed and, each man having a certain specified task and no other, there is no confusion or blundering. They all know that, when a flare goes up near by, they must "freeze" in whatever position they may be. Movements of any kind would be sure to discover them to the enemy lookout, but lacking that movement it is a hundred-to-one shot they will be undetected.
There have been a good many instances where a flag has been planted by the enemy, on his parapets or inside his wire, with a challenge to any one to come over and get it. There was one such opposite our position. Many stories had been told about that flag: The Brandenburgers had it first, then the French got it and passed it along to the English, who relieved them; then the Prussians took it away from the British and had held it ever since; for about a year, in fact. We could see it, plainly enough; a dark blue affair with some sort of a device in yellow in the center. I often noticed it from our position back at Sniper's Barnand had some rather hazy ideas about going over after it.
One dark rainy night in November, a man in the section named Lucky announced that he was going over to Fritz's line to try to locate a new machine-gun emplacement which we had reason to believe had been recently constructed. He slipped over the parapet where a road ran through our lines and those of the enemy. It was only about seventy yards across at this point.
Working his way through our wire, he crawled along the side of the old disused road, there being a shallow ditch there which afforded a little concealment. The flares were going up frequently and progress was, of course, very slow. At one place the body of a soldier was lying in the ditch and, in trying to roll it out of the way, he pulled off one of the feet. By creeping along, inch by inch, he finally reached the enemy's wire and spent about an hour working through it. Then crawling along the outside of the parapet, stopping often to listen, he soon found the loophole of the new gun emplacement. Taking a sheet of paperwhich he had brought for the purpose, he fastened it directly below the loophole where it would be in plain sight from our lines but invisible to the occupants of the place. His work done, he was about to start back when he happened to think of that flag and concluded to have a try for it. It was probably a hundred yards or more down the trench from where he then was and it required the utmost care to avoid making a noise as the front of the parapet, as is always the case, was thickly strewn with tin cans and rubbish of all sorts. Lucky had been a big game hunter in Canada, however, and had even stalked the wily moose which is about the last word in "still hunting," so he managed to negotiate the distance without detection and finally reached the flag.
Carefully feeling up along the staff, he discovered that it was anchored with wires which ran into the ground and then he remembered the tales that had been told of how it was attached to a bomb or small mine which would be exploded if the flagstaff were disturbed. That was a commonGerman trick and not at all unlikely in this case, but, after thinking the matter over, he decided to make an attempt to unfasten the wires. This did not take long, after which all that remained was to pull out the staff and "beat it." Taking his pistol in his right hand, to be ready for emergencies, and reaching up with the left, he gave the pole a sharp jerk. Well, there must have been another wire, somewhere, connected up with two "fixed rifles," aimed directly at the stick for, when he pulled on it, two rifle reports rang out and two bullets hit the flagstaff, cutting it off just below his hand which was also slightly cut. Quickly rolling down into a slight depression he hugged the flag to him and lay quiet, while the Germans, aroused by the shots, immediately opened fire with rifles, which were soon joined by; a machine gun. They could not hit him where he was so he just lay still and waited. Suddenly, without warning, they fired a flare light directly over his head. He told me afterward that was the only time he was really scared. He thought it was a bomb. However that soon passed and the firing havingdied down, he made his way back to our lines with the flag which he gave to the Colonel the next morning. "And they gave him a medal for that."
On another occasion, one of our scouts made his way through the German line and having located a battery in the rear, started back, only to discover that the place where he had come over was now occupied by several soldiers, and, being unable to find another opening, was obliged to hide out and remain inside the enemy's lines all day. The next night he managed to slip back, none the worse for his adventure.
Such things are being done every night and some men consider it the greatest sport in the world to go out alone and spend hours under the lee of a German parapet listening to the Heinies talk. Soon after that, orders were issued in our brigade that no one was to go out alone so when we wanted to prowl around we had to start in pairs. As soon as we were over the parapet we would split and each go his way, to meet later at an appointed place. One man, alone, can get awaywith a lot of things that would be impossible for two, but we observed the letter, if not the spirit, of the order.
We had cleared out one of the compartments of the big barn at Captain's Post, carefully plugging up all the shell-holes with sand-bags and other materials so that no light could filter through, and there, at night, would build a great fire in the middle of the stone floor and proceed to enjoy ourselves. Usually one or two guns would do a little strafing every night: simply going out into the field in front of the building and setting up the gun in a convenient shell-hole. After a while, from our own observations and from information supplied by the artillery, we occasionally located an enemy battery within range of our guns. Then we would have a regular "strafing party." Laying all the guns so as to deliver a converging fire on the battery position, we would, as soon as it was dark, open up on them, knowing that they would be moving about in the open and exposed to fire. We could always tell when we had "stung" them, for they would invariably comeback at us with a tremendous fire, shooting wildly at everything within our lines in the vain endeavor to locate us. I'll bet we caused them to expend a hundred thousand rounds of perfectly good ammunition in this way, but we never had a man hit while at the game. The German is not much of a hand for night artillery work unless you stir him up, but we could always get a rise out of him, and often did it, just for amusement. This is what is called "getting his wind up." The same thing can be done in the front line by a few men opening up with five or ten rounds, rapid fire, directed just over Heinie's parapet. In nearly every case, he will commence shooting blindly toward our lines: the contagion will spread and, the first thing you know, he will have wasted about a million rounds.
A Light Vickers Gun in Action
A Light Vickers Gun in Action
Here, as in most parts of the line, except during an engagement, cooking was done right in the front trenches. The method is to use a brazier made from an old iron bucket, punched full of holes, in which charcoal or coke is burned. As we seldom had charcoal, it was necessary to startthe fire before daylight, using wood to ignite the coke which made no smoke but, with careful nursing, could be made to burn all day. The presence of smoke always drew the fire of rifle grenades, trench-mortar shells and even artillery. It was one of our favorite forms of amusement to locate a cook house and shoot it up; and when a shell made a direct hit, if, among the pots and pans flying through the air, we could distinguish a German cap or something that looked like a part of a boche, there was much rejoicing in our lines. Of course it was a game at which two could play and we were not immune by any means.
These little things helped to keep up the interest and break the monotony of the work. About this time the famous Lahore Battery, from the Indian city of that name, was added to the artillery behind our sector; and they appeared not to be restricted in the number of rounds per day which they were permitted to fire. I remember the first time they did any shooting over our heads. It was the day after they had "registered in"that a large working party was discovered on Piccadilly Farm, directly opposite our left. When the F. O. O. (forward observing officer) was informed of it, he had a good look through his periscope binoculars and then called up the Lahore Battery and, without any preliminary ranging shots, ordered "forty rounds per gun." As they had six guns, they poured in the shells at the rate of about one hundred a minute and they certainly did make things fly in and about that farm.
During October the casualties in the Machine Gun Section were only three wounded, McNab, Redpath and Jack Lee all getting hit on the same day. They were sent back to England. At that time it was not considered the proper thing for a man to go back if he could, by any means, "carry on" and these three were all bitterly disappointed when they found that they would have to leave the section. There came a time, all too soon, when a "Blighty" was the finest present a man could get; the loss of a few fingers or even a hand or foot being considered not too high a price to pay to get out of hell for a few months.
When the weather was very bad there was but little sniping-going on, so we often went in and out of the lines "overland" in broad daylight. Sunday, November fourteenth, was one such occasion. We had not been relieved untilnoon by the Twentieth Battalion who had taken a very roundabout way to get in, so I put it up to all my crowd to choose whether we should spend several hours going around or take a chance down the open road. They unanimously decided on the road, so I started out ahead, with instructions for them to follow at about fifty-yard intervals, and in this fashion we walked down at least four hundred yards of open road, every foot of which was in plain sight of the German lines, and got under cover of a small hill without a single shot being fired. From this point it was necessary to cross another small open space but, as it was partly screened by bushes and trees, we did not consider it dangerous.
We had a redoubt concealed in the small hill mentioned and I stopped to arrange about the relief of the gun crew stationed there. The remainder of the party, except Charlie Wendt, continued on their way and soon disappeared in the woods. Charlie stayed a few minutes and then said: "I'll go on ahead, Mac, and wait for you at the Eastern Redoubt." He started out acrossthe field and I continued my talk with Endersby, who was in charge of the local gun, when, all at once, I heard some one call out: "Oh, Mac," and looked to see Wendt on the ground about one hundred yards away waving his hand to me. Endersby immediately ran to him and I followed as soon as I could drop part of the heavy load I was carrying. On reaching him I found that he had been shot through the abdomen. Just then another bullet snapped beside us, so I told Endersby to get back to the redoubt and telephone for stretcher-bearers, while I bandaged the wound. Charlie remarked: "Well, they got me, but I hope you get about ten of them for me." I assured him that we would and told him to keep his nerve and he would come through all right. He was a very strong, clean-living young man and I really thought he had a chance. He did not think so, saying he was afraid the doctors would have some difficulty in patching up such a hole. He did not cry out nor make the slightest complaint but kept assuring me that "everything is all right."
Meantime,the sniper was keeping up a continuous fire, hitting everything in the neighborhood but me, at whom he was shooting. It was such a miserable exhibition of marksmanship--only about five hundred yards distant and a bright clear day--that I told Charlie I would be ashamed to have such a poor shot in our outfit. Any American soldier who could qualify as a marksman would scarcely miss such a target and a sharpshooter or expert rifleman would be forever disgraced if he made less than the highest possible score. However, I forgave that fellow; being a German he could not be expected to know how to shoot straight at any range beyond three hundred meters. The shot that hit Charlie was just a "luck shot," but that did not help much.
I tried to drag him along toward a slight depression, but it hurt him so I desisted and waited for the stretcher-bearers. When I saw them approaching I called a warning and had one of them crawl to us with the small trench stretcher, on which we managed to get Charlie into a sheltered place,where they shifted him to a long litter and started out with him. The last thing he said was: "It's all right, Mac; everything is all right; don't you worry."
They did all they could for him while I had to go back and get the machine gun that he had dropped. The fellow across the way showed perseverance, at any rate, and kept up his "schutzenfest" as long as I was in sight but without result.
Next day we learned that Charlie had died and was buried at Bailleul. He was not only one of the most popular men in the section, but was the first we had had killed and we all felt very much depressed. I got a permit to go to Bailleul to see whether or not he had been properly buried and there made my first acquaintance with the G. R. C. We had often seen those letters, followed by a number, on the crosses, in trenches, in cemeteries or along the roads, but none knew what they meant. At Bailleul I found the head office of the "Graves Registration Commission" and, within five minutes, knew where Wendt was buried and thenumber of his grave. This wonderful organization undertakes to furnish a complete record of the burial place of every soldier. Where suitable crosses have not been provided, they furnish one, bearing an aluminum plate showing the name, number, regiment and date of death wherever this information is available. Now they have gone even further and are compiling a photographic record of all known graves so that relatives, writing to the Commission, can secure not only a verbal description but an actual photograph of the loved one's grave.
I went back and began to plan ways and means of "getting" Charlie's ten boches, but a day or two later something happened to alter my scheme to a certain extent.
At that time, our ration parties were going out just before daylight, as we had no communication trench and had to cross the open and exposed ground behind our line. The two, who went from one of the guns, however, Dupuis and Lanning, were a little bit late, so that it was light when they started out. About fifty yards down the road wasa bend, afterward called the Devil's Elbow. From this point, they were in plain sight from the enemy line and, no sooner had they reached the Elbow than a sniper fired and got Lanning through the lungs. As he fell, Dupuis knelt down to assist, when he received a bullet through the head, killing him instantly. One of our detachment of stretcher-bearers (composed of the members of our pipe band) was located but a few yards away and, without hesitation, one of the "Scotties" dashed out to help the fallen men. He was instantly shot down, as were three others in succession, who attempted to get to the spot. By this time an officer arrived and prevented more of the men from running out. This officer, by crawling carefully down a shallow ditch alongside the road, managed with the assistance of a sergeant to recover all the bodies. Four were dead and two wounded, one of whom died a few hours later. These stretcher-bearers were unarmed and wore the broad white brassard with the red cross conspicuously displayed on their sleeves. The sniper was only about one hundred yards distantand could not possibly have failed to see this mark.
Then and there I registered a silent vow that these men, to paraphrase Kipling:
". . . should go to their God in state:With fifty file of Germans, to open them Heaven's gate."
Later, I was to see other and worse happenings along that same road, but, at that time, I considered this as about the limit.
The officer who had done such splendid work in recovering the wounded men was himself killed about an hour later, together with one of his sergeants and two men, by a shrapnel shell. He was the first officer we had lost in the battalion, Lieutenant Wilgress, and had been very popular, with officers and men alike.
It was a sad day for us, that twenty-seventh of November, 1915, and yet it was one of those days when "there is nothing to report from the Ypres salient."
Canadian Machine Gun Section Getting Their Guns Into Action
Canadian Machine Gun Section Getting Their Guns Into Action.
Next day I asked and received permission to go back a few miles to a sniper's school, where I gota specially targeted rifle, equipped with the finest kind of a telescopic sight. I only remained long enough to sight it in and get it "zeroed" and was back again in front that same night.
"Zeroing" a rifle is the process of testing it out on a range at known distances and setting the sights to suit one's individual peculiarities of aiming. Having once established the "zero" the marksman can always figure the necessary alterations for other ranges or changed conditions of wind and light.
From that time on, I "lived" in Sniper's Barn. It made no difference whether the battalion was in the front line or in billets, I was there for a purpose and I accomplished it. When the guns were in the front or in support, we had one mounted in the hedge and kept the rifle handy. Bouchard, with a large telescope, and I with my binoculars, scanned everything along the enemy's front and behind his lines. We knew the ranges, to an inch. If one or two men showed, I used the rifle; if a larger number, the machine gun.
Prior to this time, during all the very bad weather,we had ample opportunities to shoot individual Germans from our Sniper's Barn position but had refrained because our own men were also necessarily exposing themselves daily, and to have started a sniping campaign would have done us no particular good and would certainly have resulted in additional deaths on our side. It seems that the troops opposed to us up to this time had been Saxons who were quite well satisfied to leave us alone provided we would do the same by them. Of course we did shoot them occasionally when they became too careless and exposed themselves in groups, but that was perfectly legitimate machine-gun work and taught them a well-needed lesson. Now, however, a different breed of Huns had come in and they had started the dirty work. They were Bavarians alternating with Marines, and we soon learned that for genuine low-down cussedness the Marine had them all beaten, although the Bavarians and Prussians were pretty bad.
When we first began on them it was no unusual occurrence to have from ten to twenty good open shots a day. The ranges averaged about six hundredyards and as I was using a specially targeted Ross rifle, equipped with the latest Warner & Swazey sight, and as I had spent many years in learning the finer points of military rifle shooting, I am very much afraid that some of them got hurt. For about a month we kept it up, the "hunting" getting poorer every day until finally the few German snipers working along the front were safely ensconced in carefully prepared dug-outs. A boche cap above the parapet was a rare sight, but we had our hundred, all right; and then some; for, as Bouchard said: "We'd better get a little pay, in advance before they 'bumpusoff.'"
Several times in later days similar events occurred and in each case swift and terrible retribution was meted out to the criminal enemy. They shot down our stretcher-bearers, engaged in their noble work of trying to save the wounded, but we took bloody toll from them whenever this occurred, using unusual methods and taking desperate chances, sometimes, to drive the lesson home.
On one occasion our observers had reported alarge gathering of the enemy at a place called Hiele Farm, about eight hundred yards from our position and I had laid two guns on them when, through our telescope, I discovered that it was a burial party assembled in a little cemetery just behind the farm buildings and telephoned to the officer in charge that I did not intend to shoot up any funeral. Within a few minutes came word than an enemy sniper had shot and killed one of our most popular stretcher-bearers and had also fired several shots into the wounded man whom he was bringing in, killing him also. Then, without hesitation, I ordered both guns to open up and we maintained an intermittent fire on that place until long after dark. We could see numbers of Germans lying about on the ground. I have never regretted it.
Then, the day before Christmas, 1915, while the Twentieth Battalion was occupying the front line and we were back in the redoubts of the supporting line, I was up in the gun position at "S-P-7," the redoubt just in rear of the point where the slaughter of November twenty-seventh hadtaken place, when a boche shell dropped directly in the dug-out which was my home when in the front line. It killed two men, one I remember was named Galloway, and wounded several others. I was so close that I could see everything that happened. One of the wounded was in such bad shape that the only possible chance to save his life was to get him back to a dressing station without delay. The communication trenches were washed out and the only way was down that ill-fated Devil's Elbow road. The officer in command called for volunteers to carry the man out, remarking that, as it was Christmas Eve, he did not think even a German would shoot at a wounded man or unarmed stretcher-bearers. All hands offered to go and two were chosen. The officer went with them and they started down the road. The minute they reached the fatal bend, where they came in sight of the German lines, a shot rang out and down went the first man. Another shot and the second was down, while a third dropped the officer, who was trying to assist the fallen.I could see each shot strike in the water alongside the road and could tell just about the spot from whence they came so, although we had absolute orders never to fire from that position unless attacked, I immediately swung the gun around and commenced to "fan" that particular spot, at the same time calling to our signaler to get the Sixteenth Battery on the wire and call for S. O. S. fire. (Each yard of enemy line is covered by the guns of some one of our batteries which, when not firing, are kept "laid" on their particular section of parapet.) Within a few moments the battery opened up but not before at least a half dozen machine guns in our front line had been hoisted upon the parapets and were ripping Heinie's sand-bags across the way. During this proceeding the wounded men were recovered from the road, but, unfortunately, both the volunteer carriers and the man originally wounded had died. The officer, although painfully injured, recovered.
In retaliation for this trick, our heavy guns wiped out at least five hundred yards of German trench.It was the most artistic job of work I have ever seen. From a point approximately two hundred and fifty yards on either side of this murderer's nest we utterly destroyed every vestige of a parapet. How many of the assassins we killed will never be known, but our hearts were filled with unholy joy when we could distinguish bodies or parts of enemy's bodies among the debris thrown up by one of the big 9.2 shells.
"Say, kid, want to go sniping?" called out a lank individual as he came over the bridge at "S-P-7" one morning in December, 1915.
The person addressed, a swarthy little boy wearing the uniform and stripe of a lance-corporal of the Twenty-first Canadian Machine Gun Section, took a long careful look around the sky, hastily swallowed a strip of bacon he had in his fingers and as he darted into a little "rabbit-burrow" sort of tunnel, flung back the words; "Hell, yes; this looks like a fine day for a murder." In a few moments he reappeared with a water-bottle and a large chunk of bread. Hastily filling the former from a convenient petrol tin and cramming the latter into his pockets, he walked over to the older man and divested him of some of the paraphernalia with which he was festooned. He took a long case containing a telescope, anothercarrier holding the tripod, two bandoliers of ammunition and a large haversack.
"How we going in?"
"Straight across," said the sniper.
"Ver-re-well, young-fella-me-lad, if you can stand it I can," said the youngster, for he knew full well that to go from there to Sniper's Barn in broad daylight meant to expose himself to observation from "Germany," only about five hundred yards away, and with a fat chance of playing the part of "the sniper sniped."
Without another word they departed. The sentry on guard at the crossing of the creek volunteered the cheerful hope that they'd get pinked before they got across the field, upon which the boy assured him that he would be drinking real beer in London when the pessimistic sentry was "pushing up the daisies" in Flanders. Crossing the open field to a hedge, they slipped into a shallow remnant of an old French trench, just in time to escape a snapping bullet which was aimed about one second too late. From here they crawled carefully along the hedge, bullets cutting intermittentlythrough the bare branches above them and, at last, came to a small opening that gave entrance to a garden, about one hundred yards from a group of demolished farm buildings. Here they rested for a few minutes, while the bullets continued to "fan" the hedge up which they had come and which led to the buildings.
The boy--"Bou" the other called him--worked his way along the ground to an old cherry tree and was about to lift up a sort of trap-door at its roots when the other stopped him.
"Never mind the gun," he said, "we'll just wait here until they do their morning strafe and then go into the buildings. I want to try for a few of them over on Piccadilly to-day and you can't use a machine gun for that. You'll simply have to be the observer, that's all."
Bou came back, lit a cigarette which the other promptly extinguished and then subsided.
"What you think you're going to do; shoot from the farm?" Bou couldn't possibly keep quiet any longer.
"Sure, Mike; why not?"