Houses, especially old houses, absorbed the personality of the dwellers therein, and I fancy that our host is not unknown to me. Were I to meet him I would recognize him at once, for his spirit dwelt with us in his home, and my prayer is that when he returns he will not find that temple tainted by the spirit of any alien who occupied it in his absence.
The village church slumbered in the centre of the village, and was its sluggish heart. No discord or schism of sect or creed ever disturbed its atmosphere. Unquestioned was its hold on the faith of men, women, and children. Not more quietly did the dead rest beneath the stones of the churchyard than did the worshippers who knelt before the carved wooden images of the saints, trusting in their protection and receiving from their placid immobility a benediction of peace. The cure from a neighboring town only visited the village once a quarter, and the old lady who kept the key was very reluctant to let us in; but when the maire knew of our desire, he brought us the key that we might view it at our leisure. Its pews were thick with dust, the images were chipped and broken, some saints were minus nose or arm, the vestments in the open cupboard were moth-eaten and tawdry, dried flowers lay on tombs of the village great; but its atmosphere was one of peace, and it was not difficult to realize that many had carried therein their burden of grief and unrest and left it behind them, soothed on the bosom of Mother Church, like a fretting child.
But it is not the business of soldiers to sleep, and suddenly came the awakening with the sound of the hundreds of motor-buses that were to carry us into the noise and devastation of hell! We marched up to the rim of the village, and amid the smell of gasolene, the tooting of the horns, and the roar of the engines we boarded these, thirty to a bus, and rumbled on toward the greatest noise and flame and fire that has ever torn the atmosphere asunder, outdoing any earthquake, thunderstorm, or tornado that nature has ever visited upon humanity.
On this journey we saw more of the tremendous organization needed to equip and feed an army than we had been able to visualize before. For thirty miles we were a part of a stream of motor vehicles flowing in one direction passing a never-ending stream going the other way. Through the city of Amiens we went without stopping. With longing eyes we gazed from the buses which hours of bumping and rolling on poor roads had made to us torture-chambers. How gladly would we have strolled through its streets gazing on the pretty girls and gaping at the novelty of its quaint buildings and the unusual ware in its shop-windows.
Later on I was a week in the hospital here with a sprained ankle, and I had a chance to explore this lovely city of Picardy. Its cathedral was a never-ending source of interest, and not a day passed during my stay that I did not hobble on crutches through its dim aisles and worship the beauty of its statues. There is one statue called "The Weeping Angel" which is world-famous, and I have gazed at it for hours, feeling its beauty steal over me like a psalm. There was always music stealing gently through the air, but like a blow in the face were the walls of sandbags protecting the carving on the choir-stalls and the thousands of statues on the huge doors. The grotesque hideousness of the gargoyles gave a touch of humor that was not incongruous to religion, but these sand-bags were such an eye-sore against the beauty of the carved poems that suggested what an intrusion into God's fair world is the horror of war.
Several times while I was in Amiens the German aeroplanes came over and bombed the city. Opposite the hospital a three-story house collapsed like a pack of cards, burying seventeen people in its ruins. I saw a French airman bring down one boche by a clever feat. He evidently could not aim upward to his satisfaction, so he turned upside down, and while flying thus, brought down his opponent.
Through Amiens the buses carried us within a few miles of Albert, which was within range of the German artillery. It is in Albert that the remarkable "hanging Virgin" is to be seen. The cathedral and tower have been almost practically destroyed, but still on top of the tower remains uninjured the figure of the Virgin and Child. A shell has struck its base, and over the town at right angles to the tower leans the Virgin imploringly holding the babe outstretched as though she were supplicating its protection. The French people say that the statue will fall when the war ends, but some materialistic British engineers, fearing the danger to life in its fall, have shored and braced it up.
This is similar to the miracles of the crucifixes that are found standing unharmed amid scenes of desolation. I have seen several of them without a bullet mark upon them when every building in the vicinity has been laid in ruins. I know two cases in which there is not one stone remaining of the church, yet the crucifix that was inside stands in untouched security. There are always those who see in these things a supernatural agency as some saw "angels at Mons," and as for me I do not seek to explain them, knowing that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
I am reluctant to leave this chapter with its peaceful memories, for it is the antechamber of hell. There is little here that hints of the brimstone and fire just through the door. But our path lies that way and we must pass on.
The battle of the Somme lasted eight months, and never since the days of chaos and darkness has a portion of the earth been under the sway of such forces of destruction. Not even the Flood itself so completely destroyed the habitations of man. Flourishing towns were powdered into brick-dust, thousands of acres of forest were reduced to a few blackened stumps, and every foot of ground was blasted and churned and battered again, while every yard was sown thick with bullets more malignant than the seeds planted by Jason. To-day nature is busy trying to hide the evidence of the hate of man, and long grass and poppies cover the blackened soil and grow in the shell-holes, until only in the memory of the men who strove nakedly in its desolation and death will the knowledge of that area as it was for those eight long months remain. If he visits it again the poppies and the grass will fade, and it will appear to him once more as the ploughed land of demons, and grinning at him in every yard will be the skulls of the countless unburied that there lie. The other birds will shun it, for there are no trees, but the lark will still sing on, as this brave-hearted bird continues to do even when the guns are booming.
Australian blood has sanctified much of that soil, and Australian bravery has monopolized some of its names. As surely as Gallipoli will Pozières and Thiepval and Bapaume be associated with the name and achievement of Australians in the minds of readers of the history of the great war. These are places that will ever be names of honor and glory in the thought of the Australian people as will be Flers to New Zealand and Delville Wood to South Africa.
At Pozières the First and Second Divisions demonstrated that the abandon and tenacity against odds that secured a footing on the Gallipoli Peninsula was still the special prerogative of the care-free lads from these South Sea nations. Our own artillery was unable effectively to silence the fire of the German batteries, and wave after wave melted like snow in the sun, yet the unconquerable spirit drove the remainder on until the positions were taken and held. There were wounded men who dragged themselves, not back to their own lines for attention, but forward toward the enemy so that they might be able to strike at least one blow ere they died. There were others that had their wounds dressed and then returned to the fighting. No one left the line that day who could help it, or his name would have been remembered as an outstanding exception among the many who, wounded again and again, and faint from loss of blood, still fought on. This engagement carved a line in my own heart, for therein died three comrades who enlisted with me, and our souls were grappled together by many common dangers shared and mutual sacrifices cheerfully made. There is no life in the world that tries out friendship like a soldier's in active service, and when it has endured that, it is stronger than the love of twin for twin, like the love of David and Jonathan, of Damon and Pythias, a love that passeth knowledge.
The Germans had one ally on the Somme that wrought us more havoc than all his armament. How we cursed that mud! We cursed it sleeping, we cursed it waking, we cursed it riding, we cursed it walking. We ate it and cursed; we drank it and cursed; we swallowed it and spat it; we snuffed it and wept it; it filled our nails and our ears; it caked and lined our clothing; we wallowed in it, we waded through it, we swam in it, and splashed it about—it stuck our helmets to our hair, it plastered our wounds, and there were men drowned in it. Oh, mud, thou daughter of the devil, thou offspring of evil, back to your infernal regions, and invade the lowest circle of the inferno that you may make a fit abiding-place for the slacker and pacifist! I take back all I said about the sand of Egypt. It was a mere irritant compared with this mud. I am sorry for the times I have been out of temper with the mud back in Australia, when it clung to my boots in tons, when I have been bogged in a sulky in the "black soil" country. Australia, you have no mud, just a little surface stickiness that I will never growl at again as long as I live:
"It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud;
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns—
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD." [1]
Official reports of the later battles in 1918 tell us that the shell-fire on the Somme was a mere popgun show to these battles, but it is difficult for the imagination to grasp this fact, as it did not seem then that the air had any room for more shells. In fact, I have seen shells meet in the air, both exploding together. It seemed to us at times as if there was not a foot of air that did not have a shell in it. In one battle there were four thousand guns firing over a five hundred yards front, the heavies being seventeen and a half miles behind the lines, and the field-guns massed wheel to wheel a hundred and fifty to the five hundred yards, and row after row like infantry drawn up for review. Shells not merely whistled and screamed overhead, they leaped from the ground beneath one's feet with a flame that burned, a roar that deafened, and a displacement of air that swept one away. At artillery practice in peace times there is great excitement if one lone man happens to be in front of the gun, but on the Somme we walked about among them, over them, and round them, and we were never warned even when they fired but a couple of yards away. One day a red-hot shell from a gun about fifty yards away landed at my feet, but, fortunately, did not explode. For four months our artillery expended an average of half a million shells a day. The increase in artillery last year may be judged from the fact that in the last six months of 1917 one million tons of shells were used by the British on the western front. By day the drum-fire of the guns beat on one's ears like a devil's tattoo until one felt that in another week reason would be unseated. But at night was added the horror of flame that drove away the darkness with a ruddy glare. It seemed as if thousands of Bessemer furnaces were refining metal for the paving of hell. Into this caldron of man's making that outdid the fury of the elements young lads from farms and shops walked uprightly. Like ants impotent in their strife they swarmed, and to a watcher from another world they must have appeared like insects in the crater of Vesuvius in eruption. Yet the mind of man, so much greater than his body, had organized and planned this monstrous scene, and from his method it deviated not a hair's breadth.
We were encouraged and supported by the knowledge that the German was having a far worse time than we were, that the hell of flame and fire and smoke was for our protection and his annihilation. His shells came over blindly in most cases, and though we were so thick that they could not but get some of us, yet we knew that our shells were being directed by thousands of aeroplanes on top of the earth beneath which he huddled, with the sweat of fear pouring from him. There were many indications of the terror our shell-fire wrought and days when the prisoners could be counted in thousands, on one occasion sixteen men bringing back as many as four hundred. These men were imbeciles, crazed by the sound of the shells, and obsessed by one idea, the necessity of getting away. When we took their trenches we found that in most cases they were completely obliterated, and in some cases the entrances to the deep dugouts were blown in, smothering the men sheltering in them.
The wastage of man-power on the Somme was not a little due to the nervous strain. I think everybody's nerves were more or less on edge, and now and again a hurricane of fire would sweep the trenches because some man's nerve got past breaking-point. He would see an imaginary enemy bearing down upon his sentry-post and fire wildly, giving alarm to the whole line. A German sentry would reply to him, more of our men would fire back, more Germans join in, star-shells make the night as bright as day; then Fritz would "get the wind up" thoroughly and call for artillery support—our guns would blaze into reply and there would be many casualties just because one man lost his nerve and "saw things."
Nerves are queer things, for frequently the man of a nervous, highly strung temperament is the coolest in action. Some men, too, get shell-shock a hundred yards from a bursting shell, while others are knocked down and buried and never even tremble. Men have the power of speech taken from them for months and as suddenly have it restored. I know of one case in which a boy did not speak a word for twelve months, and when viewing the play "Under Fire" in Sydney suddenly found his speech return at the sound of a shot. Another man had just been pronounced by the medical officer as cured when the back-fire of a motor-car heard in the streets of Melbourne brought back all the symptoms of shell-shock again. Once a man has had shell-shock he is never of any use under shell-fire again, although he might be quite brave under any other fire and suffer no ill effects in civil life. Where there is so much shell-fire the observation of the German sentries is very poor and surprise raids are easily carried out. Fritz is very reluctant to put his head up and periscopes are always being smashed.
There was only one place in the Somme where drinking-water could be obtained, and this was in the ruins of the town of Piers. The Germans had been driven out of this place too quickly to give them time to poison the water, but they made it very difficult for us to get at it by shelling continually. They had the exact range, and it was only in the hour before dawn that one could get near the wells without meeting with certain death. It was amusing to see the scamper of the water-carriers out of the ruins as the first shell announced that the relief of Fritz's batteries had been completed and the "hate" had recommenced. They were severely handicapped running with a fifty-six pound can of water, but it was a point of honor not to leave this behind. Of course, there was plenty of other water filling every hole around, but this was not only thick with mud but had the germs of gas-gangrene, and one knows not how many other diseases besides.
When the line had advanced a few miles "going in" was as tiring a day's journey as though one had walked twenty miles. I will never forget having to chase after my brigade to Bécordel-Bécourt. I left Albert just at dark and had to trust to my instinct for direction in finding the place, for no one could tell me the way, and the old road on the map was non-existent. It was only about three miles, but seemed like thirty as I wound in and out of the traffic that jammed the new road, defying the passage of even a dog. When I arrived at the place where the town of Bécordel had once been I found there were about five hundred thousand troops camped about the area, and in the dark to find the whereabout of my own unit of five thousand was about as hopeless a task as I have ever attempted. I inquired of more than a score, but no one had seen anything of the Australians. I wandered about for hours and was hungry and thirsty and half dead when I stumbled on a Y. M. C. A. hut. They could not guide me in the right way, but they gave me a cup of hot tea, and no nectar of the gods could be as welcome. The Y. M. C. A. is welcome to all the boosting I can give, for they were my salvation that night, and at other times were a comfort and resting-place. When I found our camp at two o'clock in the morning I found the men in a worse plight than I was, for their transport had not arrived, and none had had anything to eat or drink.
In this huge camp which was within range of the German guns there were tens of thousands of camp-fires blazing in the open in utter contempt of Fritz and his works. We took the road again that same morning for our position in reserve at Montauban. I said we took the road—well, we were on it sometimes, whenever we could shove the horses toward the centre to enable us to squeeze past—otherwise we had to plough along above our knees in the soft mud. Even on the road the slush was up to our ankles, but it was metalled underneath. We discovered our transport in the jam of the traffic—they had taken twenty-four hours to go the four miles but our tongues blistered with the names we called them, and we threatened them with eternal damnation if they were not at the next camp with a hot meal when we arrived.
Where Montauban had once been we went into camp. We had no tents, but made ourselves comfortable in shell-holes, with a bitter-cold rain falling, by stretching tarpaulins over them. The engineers were putting up Nissen huts at the rate of twenty a day, but as soon as the last bolt was screwed home, forty shelterless men crowded each one to capacity. It was some days before our turn came and we waited lying half-covered with mud and slush. When we did get a hut allotted to us it was as if we had been transferred to a palace. These huts look like half of a round galvanized-iron tank, and were floored and lined. They were carried in numbered sections and could be put together in a few minutes. They were very comfortable. You could stand up in the centre, and there was plenty of room to sleep along the sides. I believe the inventor, Mr. Nissen, is an American and here's my hand to him as an ally who maybe saved me from rheumatism, and I am sure thousands of boys from the other side of the world bless his name continually.
The whole brigade was practically bogged when we came to move forward. The weight of our equipment sank us into the soft mud and the only way we got onto the road again was by hanging to the stirrups of the horses as they ploughed a way through. We also passed ropes back for the men to grasp and harnessed them to mules, and thus dragged them to firm ground. The road did not carry us far, and we soon had to struggle across the open toward the support trenches. This was not as bad as round the camp, not being churned up by the tramping about of men and horses. We could not use the communication-trenches as they were rivers of liquid mud, but had to wait till dark and go over the top in relieving the front line. On this occasion we took over from the Grenadier Guards, which numbers among its officers many of the English nobility. We "bushies" and "outbackers" from the Land of the Kangaroo stepped down into the mud-holes just vacated by an earl, several lords, and as noble and proud a regiment as ever won glory on a battle-field. The Prince of Wales was a staff-captain in the army of the Somme doing his bit in the mud and misery like the rest of us. There is no "sacred privilege that doth hedge about a king" in the British Empire, and King George is respected among us for his manliness, and we cheered him sincerely when he twice visited us in the trenches, for we do not believe to-day in the divine right of kings, neither do we believe in the divine right of majorities.
In another chapter that tells of my wounding I have pictured our days and weeks as lived in these trenches, so I will bring this chapter to a close by summarizing some of the things that the great push on the Somme accomplished.
(1) It relieved the pressure on Verdun.
(2) It accounted for several hundred thousand German casualties.
(3) It demonstrated our ability to break through.
(4) It led to the perfecting of barrage-fire where-by casualties were reduced in our infantry to an astonishing degree.
(5) It gave confidence to our troops by enabling them to get to hand-grips with the German, and discover that he was individually no fighter.
(6) It weakened the morale of the German army enormously, and convinced the German soldier that his cause was lost.
(7) It gave to us possession of the high ground.
(8) It definitely established our supremacy of the air, and was the turning-point of the whole war.
[1] Robt. W. Service.
The aeroplane has become so much a necessity to the army that it is difficult to imagine how wars were ever fought without them. I remember reading a statement by a military observer with the Japanese army that, if the Russians had had a single aeroplane, they could have annihilated the Japs more than once. Of the army's pair of eyes the airman is the sharper, but the old-time scout is not by any means superseded, though his methods have changed. Just as there is much behind the enemy lines that only the aeroplanes can see, there are some things that cannot be discovered except from the level of the ground along which the scout crawls. The airman makes the enemy's plans an open book, for he observes him as soon as he moves, but the airman travels on a different plane from the infantry soldier, and it is the infantry man who fights out the final phase of the battle. The ground has an altogether different aspect from the air, and aeroplane photographs sometimes mislead. The scout, however, goes ahead on the same ground that the infantry have to travel, and he can bring back news of exactly what is there. The airmen do not help us much in determining the condition of the enemy's barbed wire, and nothing is so fatal for an attack as being held up on the wire. "Streamer" wire cannot be seen a few yards away, and only by sending out advance scouting-parties can a commander know whether the wire has been sufficiently destroyed to allow an easy passage for his troops. As an attack is always planned to take two or three of the enemy's lines, these scouts have to find out the condition of the wire in front of the second or third line trenches as well.
Crawling in No Man's Land and behind the German lines is not as dangerous as it sounds. The greatest cause of casualties is shell-fire and the scout is safe from this, for, naturally, no enemy shells fall near him in enemy territory, and he has previously arranged with his own artillery to withhold fire from the sector in which he is working. He runs little risk even from machine-guns or rifles, for the ground is so honeycombed with shell-holes that he is nearly all the time in good cover. The only danger that he runs is that of discovery, and for a properly trained scout such is inexcusable.
The general idea the stay-at-home has of the trenches is that every yard contains a man who is watching out for signs of the enemy. But a trench is serrated with bays containing half a dozen men who are cut off from sight of their neighbors. Of these half-dozen men one or, at most, two are on the lookout while the others are sleeping, and a well-placed hand-grenade will put the whole six of them out of action. Experience has shown that where there has been much shell-fire the sentry's observation is very lax, as men will not stick their heads above the trenches any more than they can help and at night periscopes are not much use. I have repeatedly come back into our own trenches from a night's excursion without being seen by our own sentries, and on two occasions, in the daytime. There are some sectors that are only held by battle outposts with gaps of fifty and a hundred yards without them. Of course, it is an easy matter to get past in these places.
We have sometimes to get the artillery to make a way for us. We will have them bombard a hundred yards of German trench very heavily for about ten minutes while we lie within fifty yards waiting for the prearranged second when we will scuttle across; the enemy having been compelled to vacate that sector during the bombardment, it is some minutes before they realize that the shelling has ceased and return.
Once behind the German front trench, the work is easy, for they never look behind or imagine that any of their enemies could be in their rear, and there is no observation from the second or third line trenches. On other occasions we do without the help of the artillery, bombing a gap for ourselves. We arrange to have rifle-grenades fired along three hundred yards of trench except for fifty yards where is our gateway. Here we sneak up and carefully roll hand-grenades into two or three bays. The Germans on either side do not take any notice of these explosions as the same thing is happening all along the line, and the Germans in the bays are not in condition to take much notice either. We may have to administer the "coup-de-grace" with our hand-bayonets.
Getting back is fairly easy, for the sentry's back is toward us, and a scout should never have to strike twice. He may leave a Mills grenade with the pin out as a gift to the sleeping men in the bay. He only has a two or four-foot-wide trench to cross, and even if the alarm be given he is back among the million and two shell-holes of No Man's Land before any action can be taken: even though they bomb their front thoroughly the chances are in the scout's favor; though they make No Man's Land bright as day with star-shells and flares there are plenty of shell-holes deep enough to completely hide him from view.
There is other important information that only the scout can obtain as when we once found a dummy trench filled with barbed wire and controlled by machine-guns. Had our men gone forward in the attack without the knowledge of this they would have jumped down into it to be massacred like rats in a trap. Machine-gun positions are also generally indistinguishable to the airman's glass or camera. I used an instrument of my own construction which would give me the map reference of any object that I observed in relation to any other two objects the position of which I knew on the map. At night I would have the two known positions marked by distinguishing lights or have colored flares sent up from them at regular intervals.
The training of our scouts is very severe. For in this work men have to have complete confidence in their own superiority to the German soldier, and must be able to depend entirely on their own resources as they generally have to work singly or in pairs. It is necessary that they be picked men with unusual keenness of observation. They are trained for work in the dark by being made to go through the ordinary soldier's exercises blindfolded. In this way they get the extra sense that a blind man has. A blind man will not put his weight onto his foot until he has felt if it is on firm ground; and by habit he does this without hesitating. Our scouts are able after a while to walk along using their eyes for observation all the time not needing to watch where they are stepping. We also train them to have complete control over their muscles and among the final tests for first-class scouts are to remain an hour without showing any movement whatsoever and to take half an hour in getting from the prone or lying position to standing upright on their feet. These two last ideas were borrowed from the Zulu who has no equal in the world in escaping observation. They are also taught many methods for finding directions as a compass is unreliable where there is so much unidentified iron lying about.
We have abundantly demonstrated in several sectors on the western front that it is always possible for properly trained men to surprise the enemy. As a matter of fact the Germans have carried out surprise raids on us, and I am quite satisfied that it is never possible completely to guard against surprise. In one sector I had trip wires in No Man's Land connected with buzzers in our own trench so arranged that I would know if there were any one out there and to within fifty yards of where they were. But this was only possible on a quiet front where there was no actual offensive taking place, and not many shells falling in No Man's Land. I even placed buttons in the German wire so as to be sure that our patrols did not just go outside our own trench and lie in a shell-hole until it was time to return, for they had to signal by pressing these buttons at intervals. They had to repair any of these wires they found severed, and this somewhat elaborate scheme was the means of our capturing some German patrols and gave us entire control of No Man's Land.
We also took advantage of every possible means to make Fritz's sentries jumpy. We would have our snipers on certain days smash all their periscopes. I myself have shot down sixty in an afternoon when the sun was shining on them. This made them afraid that they would not have any left for emergencies and gave them a wholesome respect for our shooting so that they were very shy of exposing themselves. We would also set a rifle to fire exactly into a loophole so that when it opened we had only to pull the trigger to send a bullet through the brain of the man using it. There were other dodges that it is not wise to speak of just yet.
This may be a good place to describe the two kinds of raids. In a raid with artillery support the artillery cut out a sector of the enemy trench with a "box barrage" which means that they fire on three lines of a square leaving the open side for our troops to enter. They also put a barrage on this side until the prearranged moment when the attackers go forward. This leaves the raiders to deal with the troops within that box preventing any others coming in to support them. The weakness of this method is that it lets the whole German line know what we are doing, and the raiding-party frequently gets cut up badly by the enemy's artillery when they are returning across No Man's Land.
The most successful raid is always the silent one if you have dependable troops. The chief obstacle is the enemy wire, but beforehand the artillery can cut this in many places, and machine-guns can be ranged on these gaps to prevent their being repaired. The enemy does not know, even if he suspects a raid, exactly where it will come. It is even a good idea if you only have a small party to enter one of these gaps, crawl down fifty yards inside the wire before attacking, and, when finished, come out through another gap lower down, but every man of the party needs to scout over the ground beforehand so there will be no confusion during the attack. We have carried out successful raids in this manner when none but the Germans who were attacked knew anything of what was going on until we were back in our own trenches, and rarely were there any of these who could give evidence except by means of their dead bodies. I remember that one of our men, who was champion wood-chopper of Australia before the war, drove his bayonet through a German and six inches into a hardwood beam, and as he could not withdraw it had to unship it, leaving the German stuck up there as a souvenir of his visit. Probably not another man in the army could have done it, but it no doubt added to the reputation of the Australians, as these Fritzes must have thought us a race of Samsons.
There is a strong bond between us and the airmen, and the army's pair of eyes are focussed together, for the information from both sources is co-ordinated. Our trench maps are constructed chiefly from aeroplane photographs, and it was only occasionally that some object would be seen in the photograph that could not be identified; when we scouts would have to crawl over to it and find out its family-tree.
All our intelligence officers are given schooling in aerial observation, and I have been several times over the German lines with a pilot, and have a very high admiration for these birdmen who are not merely the bravest of the brave but princes of good fellows. I had some wonderful aeroplane photographs of some of our attacks wherein I could recognize the stages of our progress, and so expert has this work become that a German soldier can hardly even brush away a fly without a permanent record of it being obtained. Probably the greater number of our aeroplanes on the battle-front are engaged in ranging for the artillery, and in actual offensive warfare, but their greatest value is in reconnoissance, and so it will always be.
"Airman" and "scout"—one flies, the other crawls, yet both seek information from the enemy, and are the twin eyes of the army. There is a romance about the work of both that attracts adventurous youth, and neither is as dangerous as it appears to a layman. In the element of the airman he is a difficult target to hit, and it is estimated that it takes thirty thousand anti-aircraft shells to bring him down. And his machine is now so perfect that peace flying will be much safer than motoring.
In No Man's Land, the hunting-ground of the scout, shells only fall by accident, and he is camouflaged to defy detection. A black crawling suit is used at night, with hood and mask, but the most important thing is to break the outline of the head, so the hood has several peaks and corners. A human head on the sky-line cannot be mistaken for anything else, except maybe a pumpkin or melon, but in these hoods it appears like a large lump of dirt, and should the scout chance to move suddenly while in such a position, the likelihood is he would be dirt in a second or so.
"All day long when the shells sail over
I stand at the sand-bags and take my chance;
But at night, at night I'm a reckless rover,
And over the parapet gleams Romance." [1]
[1] Robert W. Service.
"How little I thought that my time was coming
Sudden and splendid, supreme and soon;
And here I am with the bullets humming
As I crawl and I curse the light of the moon.
Out alone, for adventure thirsting,
Out in mysterious No Man's Land;
Prone with the dead when a star-shell, bursting,
Flares on the horrors on every hand.
Yet oh, it's great to be here with danger,
Here in the weird, death-pregnant dark,
In the devil's pasture a stealthy ranger,
When the moon is decently hiding. Hark!
What was that? Was it just the shiver
Of an eerie wind or a clammy hand?
The rustle of grass, or the passing quiver
Of one of the ghosts of No Man's Land?" [1]
The first night "out there." The memory of it still quickens the pulse and makes the cheek grow pale. How my teeth chattered, my heart beat almost to suffocation, every splash of a rat was an enemy scout, and every blade of grass magnified itself into a post for their barbed wire. I had but gone a few yards when I expected the next instant to bump into the enemy trenches.
There are strange sounds in No Man's Land; not human sounds, for such carry far—the beat of a hammer on a post, the sharp twang of unrolling barbed wire as it catches, and then springs away—voices even come as through a megaphone in the eerie silence—but these are long-drawn sighs that penetrate the inner consciousness and hushed murmurs that fall on the ear of the soul. I have felt a touch on the shoulder as though one would speak to me when there has been no one by.
It is the grave of ten thousand unburied dead, but the grinning skulls and quivering jelly or the few rags that flutter in the wind are not the comrades that we knew. I think their spirits hover near, for they cannot go to their abiding-place till victory has been won. They are ever seeking to pierce the veil of sense so that they may add their strength to our arms, and these make for us of No Man's Land "no strange place," and give to our sentries encouragement until the land of No Man vanishes and our possession reaches to the barrier of the enemy barbed wire. My nights in No Man's Land if added together would total many months, and I grew to feel that it was one of the safest places on the whole front.
There was one night when I got a huge fright. I was crawling alongside a ridge—it had been an old irrigation farm, and this was a low levee running across—I heard on the other side a splash which I thought was made by one of the innumerable rats, but I put up my head and looked over—so did Fritz, not a yard away! We both stared blankly in each other's face for a long second and then both of us turned and bolted. This was excusable for a German, but I have no defense. When I went back to look for him, after a court martial by my own conscience, he was nowhere to be seen.
There was another night when Fritz got the better of me. In my explorations I came across a path through his barbed wire which was evidently the place where his patrols came out. I thought I would provide a surprise-party for him, so I planted some percussion bombs and put a small Union Jack in the centre. In the morning the Union Jack was gone and a German flag in its place. Everybody from the brigadier down rubbed it in that Fritz was too smart for me.
But after this the tide turned and came in in a flood of ill luck for Fritz. It was a pitch-black night and the occasional star-shells only served to make the black more intense when they faded. As we crawled out one behind the other each had to keep a hand on the foot ahead so as not to get separated. We made several ineffectual attempts to find the opening in our barbed wire and then cut a new one. Was this like the darkness after Calvary? The red signal-rockets ascending from the enemy's trenches gave no light, but only burnt for a second or two as a ruddy star. And the green lights turned the vaporous fog a sickly yellowish green as though it were some new poison-gas of the devils over there. I led the way straight across. It was too dark to pick a path and we committed no sacrilege as we trod on the bodies of forgotten comrades. It was impossible to repress a shudder as the hand met the clammy flesh, and the spilt light from a rocket exposed the marble eyeballs and whitened flesh of the cheek with the bared teeth gleaming yet more white. Our mission was to wait for a German patrol at the gap in their wire I had previously discovered. We were seeking identification of the regiments opposing us, and we desired to take at least one of them alive.
We waited drawn-out minutes while the dark smothered us and our thoughts haunted us. Minute piled on minute while we suffered the torture of the heretic who was fastened so that the falling drops of ice-water would follow each on the selfsame spot. Home and "Love of Life" sought to drag us back to the shelter of our trenches, but Duty like an iron stake pinned us there. But the stake was fast loosening in the soil of our resolution, when we heard the guttural gruntings that announced the approach of our quarry. We let them pass us and get well away from their trenches, then silently, like hunters stalking wild beasts, we followed them. When we were close enough to be almost overpowered by the smell of sauerkraut and sausage mingling with stale sweat, my voice rapped out, though muffled by the thick air: "Hands up!" There was no hesitation in obeying, although there were eight of them and only six of us. We pointed out the direction for them to go, and reminded them with our boots that there was no time to waste. We had only crossed a couple of shell-holes, however, when we came to a full stop. Presently I understood that they had discovered we were Australians and were terrified. Probably they had been fed up with tales about our savagery, that we tortured our prisoners. Anyway, they would not budge, and we could not carry eight hulking Germans and had no means of tying them together. Presently, the disturbance attracted notice from both trenches and there was only one thing to do. My sergeant called out: "Look out, sir! We'll be seen in a minute. What will we do?" The contest was short and sharp; they outnumbered us, but we went to it with a will. It was sheer butchery, but I had rather send a thousand of the swine down to the fatherland than lose one of my boys. And perhaps it was charity to some wife and daughter who would now be free from the brutality of her Teutonic lord and master.
There is nothing so easy as to be lost in No Man's Land. A compass is useless, for you may be lying on a fifteen-inch shell just covered with a few inches of earth, and the stars refuse to look down on its pain, and the sky is always thickly veiled. Turn round three times, and you don't know which trench to return to. It is an awkward predicament, and many a time I went blindly forward praying that it was in the right direction. The German's horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more, and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention, though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves. There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I saw him moving near our wire in the early dawn. I called to some men to draw a bead on him but he came toward us and at the last with a run jumped down into our trench. "Good morning!" I said to him, looking down my automatic, and you never saw such a crestfallen countenance in your life. It must have been some shock, expecting to join his own people and suddenly finding himself in the camp of his enemies. I found out afterward that he was a young cadet qualifying for his commission, and this was his first night in the trenches. He evidently was seeking an iron cross very early in his career. I spat question after question at him: "What's your regiment?" "How long have you been in the trenches?" etc., but in English he replied: "I won't tell you anything. You can't make me!" "All right, old chap, don't get excited! Come along with me." I took him to the dugout which I shared with the medical officer in the support-trenches and sent Pat, my batman, to get together the best meal he could. Pat was a genius as a provider. None of the other officers liked him, for they suspected he was the medium for the loss of some of their luxuries, and I always had a blind eye. On this occasion Pat got together a real slap-up feed—some tinned sausages, mashed potatoes, strawberry jam, preserved pears and cream, not forgetting a bottle of champagne. I sent for the doctor and we fell to with gusto, and never offered his nibs a bite, though the eyes were popping out of his head, and his mouth watering with hunger. Toward the end of the meal I said to him: "I can't compel you to tell me anything, but I am not compelled to feed you. But you know how to earn something to eat." He began to tell me something I knew was all rubbish and I swung at him with "You swine! If you tell me those lies I'll strip your badges off you and send you in as a private." I was surprised at the effect this threat had on him, though I knew that was the one thing that never failed in bringing a German officer to book. He trembled and paled and gave me a lot of information that I afterward proved to be correct.
Here's a good story of Pat, my old batman, who had been a shearer's cook in Australia, and looked after me like a father. He was really too old for the trenches, but this job just suited him. I was very surprised one day to see him with a German prisoner. He was never in a charge, and had no business having this man. Probably he had borrowed him from some other chap. I said to him; "Pat, what on earth are you doing with Fritz?" "To tell yer the truth, sorr-r, Oi haven't yet made up my moind!" "Let us have no humbug, take him back to the cage!" "Very well, sorr-r!" About ten minutes later I saw Pat without his prisoner. "Here, Pat, what on earth did you do with Fritz?" "Well, sorr-r, he kept beggin' and beggin' to be let go, so Oi just put a Mills in his pocket with the pin out, and tould him to run for his loife!" He would not get fifty yards before it went off!
The trained scout moves very cautiously in No Man's Land, with all his senses at high tension. After moving from one shell-hole to the next he lies and listens for a full minute. If there are any human beings near they will likely betray themselves by loud breathing, a muffled sneeze, or some rattle of equipment. If satisfied that the way is clear, he moves forward into another hole. Should he suddenly come into sight of the enemy, he is taught to freeze instantly, and the chances are he will not be noticed.
There was one night when I was making a way through the German wire, and had my hand up cutting a strand, when a sentry poked his head over the top and looked straight at me not three yards away. I froze instantly in that attitude but he fired a shot at me which, of course, went wide, being aimed in the dark. He then sent up a flare, but the firing of this dazzles a man for several seconds, and then so many shadows are thrown that I was no more distinct than previously. He went away, returning a minute or two later to have another look. By this time I was feeling quite stiff, but he was quite satisfied that no live man could be there. Had I jumped into a shell-hole, as fear prompted me to do, he would have roused the whole line, and a bomb would likely have got me. However, I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a look into the trench, for I reasoned that this sentry must be alone or some one else would have put up the flare while he fired the shot. Probably the rest of his regiment were on a working fatigue not far away. It was a breastwork trench and I climbed up the sand-bags, but tripped over a wire at the top and came down with a clatter. A red flare went up and I heard the feet of many soldiers running along the duck-boards. I only had time to roll into the ditch at the foot of the back of the parapet, where I was quite safe from observation, when they manned their trench to repel the "raid." After several minutes when about a hundred rifles, several machine-guns, and a trench-mortar were pouring their fire into No Man's Land, I began to recover my nerve and saw that it would be a good opportunity to mark the position of one of these machine-guns which was firing just above my head. In fact, I could, with ease, have had my hand drilled just by holding it up. I tore a page out of my note-book and placed it in a crevice between the sand-bags, just under the gun. Hours afterward when all was quiet I returned to our own trenches and fastened another piece of white paper to a bush half-way across No Man's Land that I noticed was in line with a dead tree close to our "sally-port," and my first piece of paper. In the morning the artillery observation officer could see these two pieces of paper quite plainly with his glasses, and that trench was levelled for fifty yards.
No Man's Land is a place of surprises where death plucks its victims without warning. There have been some strange deaths there when bodies lay with unbroken skin, having neither mark of bullet nor shell. Times when the spirit laid the body down, fair and unmarred human flesh, but other times when the flesh was rent to ribbons and the bones smashed to splinters by the force imprisoned in a shell.
Such was the death meted out by justice to six Germans in a listening post fifty yards in advance of their trench. This party was in the way of our raid. We could not enter their trench by surprise without first removing it, and the job fell on me. I prepared a mine of my own. I took two Stokes shells, changed the time-fuse for instantaneous, took out the safety-pins holding the lever down by means of an iron ring. I crept out with these shells just a little before dark so as to arrive at the position before the Germans. I then put the shells, one on either side, and connected them with a fine trip-wire tied to each ring. I hurried from the spot as though the pestilence were after me, and got back safely—to the surprise of my brother officers who very consolingly said that they all expected I would blow myself up. At half past eight, however, there was music in our ears of a loud explosion in the direction of my mine. Next morning, through the telescope, could be seen what remained of several Hun carcasses. Pat, my batman, who was always a Job's comforter, informed me that the Germans would lie in wait for me to revenge this outrage; but if I had taken any notice of him, I would never have been able to do my job. He would come to me some mornings and beg me not to go out in No Man's Land that night as he had dreamed that I was "kilt," when I generally consigned him to a place where the English cease from troubling, and the Irish are at rest.
The enemy did his share in surprises. There was one occasion when I received word from the Tommies on our right that a large German patrol had been out on their front all night. As they did not attack I was considerably worried as to what they were up to, knowing they would not be there for the benefit of their health. I was responsible that our portion of the line should be guarded from surprise, and fear of some unknown calamity that might spring upon us from the dark made me so concerned that I lay pretty nearly all day on top of the parapet covered with sand-bags searching every inch of No Man's Land for a sign of the cause of their nocturnal activity. The setting sun revealed something shining that looked like the barrel of a Lewis gun. I determined to go out and get it after dark. When I went out I found I could not get near the place, for a machine-gun was playing round it to discourage curiosity, which it very effectively did. I reported next morning that the only chance of seeing what it was was to go out in the daytime; and it was suspicious enough to justify the risk. I donned a green suit and with a snail's progress crawled through the long grass and discovered that the Germans had laid a five-inch pipe from their trenches to within fifty yards of an indentation in our own. They would be able to enfilade us with gas before we could don our masks. We looked on our dangerous wind being one that blew across No Man's Land, but with this pipe we would be gassed when the wind blew down the line from the Tommies to us. The engineer officer wanted to blow up the pipe, but I thought if we blocked it up the enemy might not discover it, and put through gas which would come back on himself. Some concrete dugouts were being constructed at this time, and I took out a bucket of concrete and dumped it over the end of the pipe in broad daylight without having a shot fired at me or being seen. Afterward I found crawling in the daylight in No Man's Land to be less dangerous than at night. On a quiet front there is very little rifle or machine-gun fire by day for fear of betraying machine-gun and sniper positions. Never once in two or three daylight excursions into No Man's Land was I seen by the enemy or our own sentries.
Darkness always holds fear for the human heart, and it is the unknown danger that makes the bravest quail, and not so many are cowards in the daylight. But who can tell which holds the more peril for the soldier? He faces the terror that cometh by night, the destruction that walketh by day, and the pestilence that wasteth at noonday. But night is often kindly—it brings the balm of sleep to our tired bodies and covers coarseness and filth with a softening veil. No Man's Land at night is more beautiful than by day, for we need not know of the horror we do not see, and it shuts us off from sight of our enemies, and lets us feel that the wall is thick and strong that stands between our homes and women kin, and the savagery and bestiality of the monster who ravaged the homes and raped the women of Belgium and France.
"But if there's horror, there's beauty, wonder;
The trench lights gleam and the rockets play.
That flood of magnificent orange yonder
Is a battery blazing miles away." [2]
[1] Robert W. Service.
[2] Robert W. Service.
Man is by instinct and tradition a hunter, and there is no sport so thrilling as man-hunting, especially if the hunted be a menace to society, and more especially if he be a spy that threatens the safety of yourself and comrades. There is also in this branch of intelligence service an appeal to the clash of wits that holds fascination for the keen mind. The German spy system is not more clever than our own, but has been more carefully organized and much longer in operation. He spies also on friend and neutral, while we only use this back-door method of gleaning information from an enemy. The word, too, has associations that are ugly, and I fancy that our spies do not boast of their service, but spy-hunting is a service that has no taint, and there is much satisfaction both to the conscience and intellect in routing out the underground worker who, for "filthy lucre," would sell the blood of his fellow man. The traitor and the spy have in all ages been rightly considered as foul beings who poison the air and whose touch contaminates. In Germany alone is the spy given honor which is fitting in a country which has substituted Expediency for Honor and Plausibility for Truth, on whose throne is a maniac, and where Conscience has been unseated by Pride, and Reason displaced by Method.
Germany's espionage of her neighbors has been in existence so long, and so much time and money have been expended on it that we must prepare for its reassertion after the war even in countries where it has been for a time suppressed. Its hands have been cut off, but the plotting brain and the murderous heart of the system still persist and will be used after the war to rehabilitate the trade of Germany under many disguises, and will also seek, through appeal to our pity for a fallen nation, to lull us into slumber, until the claws and fangs of militarism have grown again.
We are so new in the game that our methods in spy-hunting are clumsy, and we frequently give warning to the brains of the system to seek cover when we strike at its puppets. By arresting the agents of the German master spy we cut off his activity for a time but allow him to spread his ramifications in other directions, and the first knowledge we have that he has sprung to life again is by the destruction of property and loss of life that ensue. It would sometimes pay us to give these agents more and more rope, keeping them under observation until we can strike at the centre and heart of all this plotting. When we have enough evidence against one of these agents for a death penalty we should allow him to purchase his life by betraying his master, and as these agents only serve for hire and know not what loyalty is, they are always ready to turn king's evidence if the price offered be high enough. Of course, they should not be given their liberty again, but segregated like the carrier of a contagious disease.
It should always be remembered that a man who in war-time talks sedition and disloyalty in public is not a spy. He is too big a fool to be ever employed in a service that requires, above all things, secrecy and the ability to avert suspicion. The first thing a spy seeks to do is to find a suitable cloak to cover his designs, and also to place himself in a position where he will gain information. Among the first things he would do would be to seek to join the Red Cross, and he would be almost certain to enlist. In these days the man to be suspicious of is the one who is always protesting his loyalty and showing what he is doing "to help the cause." The true patriot knows that he has no need to proclaim his loyalty, and is shy of boasting of service that is really a "privilege and a duty."
Among the most useful equipments for a secret-service agent is lip-reading, and if he can signal with his eyelids in Morse so much the better. Dark goggles, one glass of which is a small mirror, are also very useful, as one can sit with one's back to a party in a cafe or train, and read what they are saying. Women are the most dangerous spies, and trade on the instinctive chivalry that men cannot help but extend to them. There are many officers whose deaths at the front have been suicides because they were betrayed by some woman who had sucked valuable information from them, and their chivalry would not let them deliver her over to justice. Men in high place in England and in France have betrayed the public trust through faith in a woman who was false and who sold their confidence to the enemy for a price that was so strong to their hearts as to be irresistible, more than love, honor, or country.
Even in the army there are mysterious happenings—shots from behind and strange disappearances. There was one Australian general whose death created many rumors, and other officers who were supposed to have been shot from within our lines.
Of course, in the war zone among a strange peasantry there are many spy scares, and maybe some of the things we were suspicious of were quite innocent; but it was strange that whenever a gray horse appeared near a battery that battery was shelled, and when they painted all the gray horses green their positions were not so frequently spotted. Sometimes the old Flemish farmers would certainly plough their fields in a strange fashion but, perhaps, zigzags and swastikas are common patterns in French fields. It may have been our alarmed ears that fancied the paper boy played a different tune on his horn every day, but pigeons did certainly rise from the middle of paddocks contrary to the habits of these birds.
One of the hardest things I ever did was to arrest a young Belgian girl nineteen years of age who undoubtedly was the means of the death of thousands of our boys. It was in this wise. One night I observed a light a good way behind our trenches go out then come again. I watched it very carefully, and found it was signalling by the Morse code with dashes ten seconds long and the dots five. If you were not watching it very carefully you would never have dreamt it was anything but a flicker of light. The letters I read were—NRUDTVEAUAOILN, which, when decoded, gave important information regarding the movement of troops. I took a line through some trees of the direction from which the light came and walked toward it. Just off an old drain I found an overturned wagon with a loophole cut through the backboard. There were footprints in the drain, and the grass was pressed down where a body had been lying. For five nights I lay in wait, my hopes keyed up to the highest point of expectation. At last to me was to fall the good fortune of capturing a spy—perhaps to end the leakage of information of our plans that we knew the Germans were getting. But on these five nights nothing happened. The day afterward, some boys of a battery whom I asked to watch this drain caught an old farmer in it. This farmer, however, who lived next door to our brigade headquarters had been carefully watched, and the information had come from outside the zone which he never left. Some one must have brought the information to him. Everybody using those roads had to have a passport issued by the French intelligence service, and countersigned by the intelligence officer of the area. Elimination narrowed suspicion to a paper girl who, it was found, sold out her papers round the batteries and billets at ten o'clock, and did not return until after three. The excuse she gave was that she was visiting her brother's grave, but on looking up her records we found that she had never had a brother. One day I kept her in sight on the road while I rode across the fields. After she entered the house where she was living at Estaires I followed and opened the door. As soon as she saw me she fainted. I blew my whistle, and on arrival of the picket we searched the house and found the German code with some maps and other incriminating documents. I never did a harder task in my life than hand that girl over to the French authorities for possible execution. She was a very pretty, happy little girl, red-haired and blue-eyed, and, although one could show no pity because the safety and life of thousands were at stake, yet it wrung the heart to think of the wastage of the young, bright life, the victim of German gold, and the treachery that is the handmaiden of war, and preys on the weakness of the moral nature.
There was another occasion when I unearthed a spy's burrow. One night a man in D Company stopped me on the road, and pointing out a lonely farmhouse, told me he had seen some blue sparks flashing from the chimney. We walked across and, entering the flagged kitchen, asked for "cafe au lait." Sitting at the white table worn with much scrubbing, and slowly sipping the coffee, we engaged the old man and woman in conversation. They were very bitter in their denunciation of "les boches," and spoke of their sacrifices as nothing. "Why, monsieur, it is for France! It is not for us to complain if she ask much from us." My companion spoke French very fluently (his name was Davies), and he acted as interpreter. I noticed that they seemed anxious to get rid of us, but we stayed for several hours getting the old lady to cook us eggs and chipped potatoes, and talking on almost every topic but the war. One suspicious circumstance that had caught my eye as soon as we entered the kitchen was the fact that the flue of the stove did not lead up the chimney, but out through a hole in the wall.
At last, when we rose to go the old man in an excess of hospitality accompanied us fifty yards on our way. We promised to bring some companions on another day. "But no, monsieur, that will not do—we cannot get more eggs, and my wife she is a little afraid of the soldat from Australie."
After he left us and returned to the farm we doubled back, and round to the other side. Soon we heard the crackle of wireless. Expecting that the door would be fast bolted, we smashed-in a window, almost knocking over the old woman as she barred our way. Looking up the chimney, I found there as neat a small set of wireless as was ever "made in Germany." The motor was in the cellar and well-muffled. The old chap hesitated to come down, but a shot that brought down some plaster hurried his decision. In spite of the old woman's pretended fear of Australians, she evidently did not think we were adamant to pity. On her knees with much weeping she begged us to let them go away, and shifted rapidly from one ground of appeal to another. She said her husband was crazy and his wires and things did no harm; he was trying to talk to "le Président," but no answer ever came. She would have him locked up. "You would not harm an old mother of France!" I told her she wasn't French, but German, of which I had had suspicions all along. She then spat at us and told us to do our worst, but the old man merely stood there and scowled, and as he stood upright, with folded arms, we judged he was not as old by twenty years as he appeared, though his make-up was perfect. We marched them through the village under the curious eyes of many of our own comrades, but the eager gesticulations of the French people, and the fierce blaze of rage in the eyes of the women showed us that they had no friends among the neighbors, and revealed to us the smouldering fires of hate that the French people have for the brutal invader. I fancy the dastardly pair were glad of our protection for all their looks of defiance. They knew that a spy would meet short shrift at the hands of these French women whose untamed spirit was the same as that of the Margots of the Parisian gutters in the Reign of Terror.
How many weeks I lay under the shadow of the church-tower of Bapaume I know not. But every morning as the mist lifted the church-tower would reappear through the trees, and now and again the flash of a glass would show that it was an observation-post of the enemy, and frequently well-placed shells on our trenches and dumps would show to what devilish uses our enemies were putting the house of God as they directed their shell-fire from a seat just under the cross on the tower.
This is a very old, historic town of France, and the sentiment of the French people would not have it shelled. So we lay these weeks within cooee of a nest of our enemies, who were permitted the safety and comfort of a peaceful home almost within our lines. There are other places along the line where we are under the same disadvantage. There is the city of Lille with its million or more of French inhabitants lying within five miles of our lines (such easy range), for over three years, and not a shell fired into it. How the Germans smile as their bases of operation lie in such security, for, of course, sentiment has been erased from the German character forever.
The French made the mistake again in regard to Bapaume of crediting the Germans with human feelings—they vainly hoped that the Germans would respect historic monuments when they gained no military advantage by destroying them. But every day that the war is prolonged is but adding to the evidence already so colossal that the German is a beast who wantonly destroys and takes sheer joy in slaying, burning, and smashing, destroying for destruction's sake, and killing for the sight of blood. When we drove the Germans from Bapaume they left it in ruins as utter as though we had bombarded it, but so much more systematic was their destruction! In the market square there is a hole large enough to hold a cathedral, made by the mine they exploded as they left, which was so senseless as almost to make it seem that, like children, they wanted to hear how big a bang they could make. But their devilish lack of humor is more plainly shown in the system with which they destroyed the orchards in the country further back. Every tree was cut at exactly the same height from the ground, and carefully laid in the selfsame way. Not one of them deviated a hair's breadth in its position on the ground from the angle made by its neighbor. They must have spent hours in obtaining such hellish regularity. Wed System to Lust, and you have an alliance of Satan with the hag Sycorax, and their offspring is the German Empire, the Caliban of nations.
The highest point of the church-tower, however, before the days of our advance, was its cross, and in our misery we could always see this symbol of hope and salvation; but it was a reminder too of pain and suffering endured that man's spirit might be free, and as we also were suffering and enduring in freedom's cause, we knew that our strife was religion and our accomplishment would be salvation.
And what we endured in that bitter cold has scarred our memories and added to our bodies the aging of years. In the chronic agony of cold the pain of wounds was an alleviation, and I have seen men who had just had their arms blown off wave the jagged stump and laugh as they called out—"Got a 'blighty' at last, sir!" We were standing up to our waists in liquid mud by day, into which we would freeze at night. I have gone along the trench and kicked and punched my boys into sensibility, and said: "Is there anything I can do for you, boys? Can't I get you anything?" "Oh, no sir. We're all right, but don't we envy old Nick and his imps to-night!" Who is there that is not abashed in the presence of a spirit like that? And had you been there and these your men, wouldn't you love them as I do? Never did the spirit of man rise more glorious to the demand of hard occasion, than when those boys of Australia laughed and joked in the tortures of hell. Eighty per cent of them had never known a temperature lower than thirty above zero, and here was a cold more biting than they had ever dreamed of and they were without protection, living in a filthy ditch, never dry, their clothing unable to keep out wet or cold. Back in camp every man had a complaint, where it is the province of the soldier to grumble. In those days the orderly officer would go round with his question of "Any complaints?" "Yes, look here, sir. What do you think of that?" "Why, dear me, man, it seems very good soup!" "Yes, sir, but it is supposed to be stew!" Why, if the Australian soldier did not complain, you might well suspect a mutiny brewing! Too much marmalade, and not enough plum! etc. I never thought there was as much marmalade in the world as I myself have consumed on active service! Those days when we were well off, and did not know it, with dry beds and a clean tent, with good warm food, and plenty to eat and drink, the boys were always "kicking" about something or other, but now when things were hellish bad under conditions when wounds were a luxury and death a release you never heard a complaint. There were days too when an enemy barrage cut off our supplies and prevented relief, and we were compelled to live on dry biscuits and cold water, taking our water from the shell-holes where the dead were rotting. I remember when I was wounded and being carried out of the trench my brother officers saying to me: "Oh, Knyvett, you lucky dog!" And I was lucky, and knew it, though I had twenty wounds and trench feet. Why, when I arrived at the hospital and lay in a real bed, with real sheets, and warm blankets, with a roof over my head that didn't leak, and a fire in the room, with the nurse now and again to come along and smile on me, I tell you heaven had no extra attractions to offer me. The man who got wounded in those days was a lucky dog, all right; in fact, he mostly is at all times, and about the silliest thing the War Office ever did was to issue an honor stripe for wounds. The man deserving of the greatest credit is not the man who gets wounded, but the man who stays on in the trenches week after week, and month after month enduring the nervous strain and unnatural conditions, living like a rat in a hole in the ground. There are none who have been there for any length of time who do not welcome the sharp pain of a wound as a relief.
The Germans opposite us in their trenches at Bapaume were, of course, in as bad a plight as we were. When I scouted down their trenches at night I found equipment and stores lying on top of the parapet. Evidently, the mud in the bottom of their trenches was as bad as in ours, and anything dropped had to be fished for. Perhaps there were no deep dugouts just there. We would not allow our men to use these deep dugouts as nothing so conduces to bad morale. Once men get deep down out of range of the shells they are very, very reluctant to leave their "funk-holes." A man has to be hardened to shell-fire before he is of any value as a fighter, and these deep dugouts take men out of reach of most of the shells, and when they come in the open again they have to be hardened anew.
It is not generally a wise plan to occupy the old German trench, as he has the range of it very accurately, and anyway it is in most cases so badly battered about after our artillery has done with it as not to be at all superior as a residence to the shell-holes in front of it, and it is mostly full of dead Germans which are unearthed by the shells as often as we bury them. God knows the smell of a live German is not a pleasant thing to live near, but as for dead ones! … Our method was to construct a new trench about fifty yards in advance by linking up a chain of shell-holes, and we felt the labor to be worth while when we saw the shells falling behind us, and it was not much harder than if we had had to clean out the old German trench.
On our right flank there was a gap of a hundred yards that we patrolled two or three times a night, and in our net we sometimes caught some Germans who were lost. On one occasion a German with a string of water-bottles round his neck, and a "grunt" that may have been a password, stepped down into our trench. He had evidently been out to get water for himself and comrades from their nearest supply, and taken the wrong turning! He made an attempt at a grin when he found where he was, and evidently thought the change could not be for the worse. He was so thick in the head, however—I have known cows with more intelligence—that I wonder any other German being fool enough to trust him with such a valuable article as a water-bottle.
We were planning to take a portion of the trench opposite to straighten our line, and I had scouted down a hundred yards of it from behind, and got a good idea of the strength with which it was held, taking bearings of its position. The next night, as the attack was to take place at daybreak, I thought I had better go over and make sure that I had made no mistakes. I crossed over the first trench without any difficulty. There did not seem to be any one on guard. I then went toward their support lines where there seemed to be more men, mostly working parties. I passed these and with unpardonable carelessness stood up to have a look round, thinking that it was too dark for me to be seen. But I got a shock to find there was a sentry almost beside me—though he was, if anything, more scared than myself. He pulled the trigger without taking aim and naturally missed me, but if he had been wide-awake he could with ease have punctured me with his bayonet. I did not stop to pass the time of day with him, for the place seemed suddenly alive with Huns as he called "Heinz, Heinz!"—probably the name of his corporal—but I dived into a shell-hole and flattened myself as much as possible. As I was lost to sight and to memory too dear to be allowed to escape they began to cover the ground with bombs. These all went well beyond me, and had it not been for "Butter-fingers" I might have escaped. But a bomb slipped from his hand, rolling into the hole in front of him. He jumped back into the safety of the trench, and did not know that the bomb had fallen on me as it exploded. But I knew it—my left leg was broken in three places, twelve wounds in my right, and others on my back, twenty that afterward had to be dressed, not counting some other scratches. Then they came out to look for me, my "friend" almost stepping on me, but after half an hour's fruitless search they gave up. About two hours later I started home on my long, painful crawl. It took me about twenty minutes to pass the sentry near where I was lying, but after that there was no danger of discovery—the front line still appearing almost unoccupied; but I was getting dizzy and not sure of my direction. I knew, however, where there was a derelict aeroplane in No Man's Land, and made toward it. When I sighted this I was overcome with relief, and laid my face in the mud for a while to recover. I had now crawled about six hundred yards dragging my useless legs. And my elbows were skinned through, being used as grapples that I dug in the ground ahead, in that way dragging myself a few inches at a time. I knew our trenches were still about two hundred yards away, and the sweat of fear broke out on me as I remembered the two machine-guns in front of me that would fire on anything seen moving out there, no one expecting me to return that way. So I crawled higher up the line, where it was safer to enter, and a few yards from our trenches gave our scouting call. Several of my boys came running out and tenderly picked me up. I was all in and could not move a muscle. My own boys would not allow the stretcher-bearers to touch me, but six of them put me on a stretcher and carried me over the top just as day was breaking. They would not go down into the communication-trench or shell-holes because they thought it would be too rough on me, and so carried me over the exposed ground; and when they got me to the dressing-station they said: "You will come back to us, sir, won't you?" I said: "Yes, boys, you bet I will!" And you may bet that I shall, as soon as ever I am passed as fit again.