Page images
PDF
EPUB

The action took place at dusk. Shortly before the hour set, the bombers, most of them boys in their early twenties, filed slowly along the trench, the pockets of their bombing-coats bulging with 'lemons' and 'cricket balls,' as the two most effective kinds of grenades are called. They went to their places with that spirit of dogged cheeriness which is the wonder and admiration of every one who knows Tommy Atkins intimately. Formerly, when I saw them in this mood, I thought, "They don't realize. Men don't go out to meet death like this.' I know better now. They talked in excited undertones as they moved down the trench.

line from hand to hand, and still the urgent call for 'More bombs!'

'Fritzie's a tough old bird. 'E's dyin' game. You got to give it to 'im.'

The wounded, some cruelly hurt, were coming back in constant procession. One lad, his eyes covered with a bloody bandage, was led by another with a shattered hand.

'Poor old Tich! She went off right in 'is face! But you did yer bit, Tich! You ought to 'a' seen 'im, you blokes! Was n't 'e a lettin' 'em 'ave it!'

Another man hobbled past on one foot supporting himself against the side of the trench.

'Got a blightey one!' he said cheer

'Are we downhearted? Not likely, ily. 'So long, you lads! I'll be with old son!'

''Ere! Tyke a feel o' this little puffball! Smack on old Fritzie's napper she goes!'

'I'm lookin' fer a nice blightey one. Four months in Brentford 'ospital an' me Christmas puddin' at 'ome.'

Then the barricades were blown up and the fight was on. A two-hundredpiece orchestra of blacksmiths, with sledge-hammers, beating kettle-drums the size of brewery vats, might have approximated, in quality and volume, the sound of the battle. The spectacular effect was quite different from that of a counter-attack across the open. We saw only lurid flashes of light issuing out of the ground as though a door to the infernal regions had been thrown jarringly open. The heavy cloud of smoke was shot through with red gleams. Men were running along the parapet hurling their bombs down into the trench. Now they were hidden by the smoke, now silhouetted against a glare of blinding light.

An hour passed and there was no change.

'More lemons! More cricket balls!' Box after box, each containing a dozen grenades, was passed along the

you arter the 'olid'ys.'

'More lemons! More cricket balls! We got 'em on the run!'

One lad, his nerve gone, pushed his way frantically down the trench. He had 'funked it.' He was hysterical with fright,—crying in a dry shaking voice,

'It's too 'orrible! I can't stand it! Blow you to bits, they do! Look at me! I'm slathered in blood! I can't stand it! They ain't no man can stand it!' An unsympathetic Tommy kicked him savagely.

'Go 'ide yerself, you bloody little coward!'

'More lemons! More cricket balls!' and at last victory! The Germans had been forced back and the Royal Engineers were building a new barricade at the farther end of the communication trench.

The work of the engineers, though less spectacular than that of the riflemen, was just as indispensable and quite as dangerous. They were a remarkably efficient corps. The moment a trench was captured they were on the spot with picks and shovels and sandbags, building up the battered parapets, clearing out the wreckage, remov

ing the dead, while the infantrymen waited for the launching of the first counter-attack. On the night of the grenade battle just mentioned, the segment of trench captured had been blown to pieces by the explosions of thousands of bombs. Many dead and dying men were lying in the bottom of it, half covered in loose earth. The engineers worked quietly and skillfully. Within an hour they had removed the bodies and had put the trench into defensible condition. They were only available for this work immediately after the capture of a trench. All the subsequent clearing and rebuilding was done by the infantrymen themselves.

To us, impatiently waiting, came rumors of all degrees of absurdity. The enemy were massing on our right, on our left, on our immediate front. The division was to attack at dawn under cover of a hundred bomb-dropping battle-planes. Units of the new armies to the number of five hundred thousand were concentrated behind the line from La Bassée to Arras, and another tremendous drive was to be made in conjunction with the French. (As a matter of fact, we knew less of what was actually happening than did people in England and America.) Most of these reports came from the officers' servants, who gathered up scraps of information at the officers' mess dug-out, patched them together, added something of their own invention, and then passed them out to their willingly deceived comrades.

"Ere! My bloke was a-talkin' to Major Bradley this mornin' w'ile I was a-makin' 'is tea, an' 'e says

Then followed the thrilling narrative a disclosure of official secrets, while groups of mud-incrusted Tommies listened with eager interest. 'Spreading the News' was a tragi-comedy enacted daily in the trenches.

However, we were not entirely in the

dark. The signs which preceded an engagement were unmistakable. Toward the middle of October we all agreed that an important action was about to take place. Fifteen or twenty aeroplanes had been patrolling our front for hours. Several battalions (including our own, which was in reserve at Vermelles) were placed on bomb-carrying fatigue. As we went up to the firing line with our first load, we found all the support trenches filled with troops in fighting order.

We reached the first line just as the preliminary bombardment started. Scores of guns of all calibres were concentrating their fire on the enemy's trenches to the right of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. It is useless to attempt to depict what lay before me as I stood on a firing bench looking over toward the German line. I remember the words of a wounded soldier with whom I once talked in England. I had asked him to tell me what a heavy bombardment was like.

'You might as well ask an ant to describe an earthquake,' he said.

The trenches were hidden from view in a cloud of smoke and dirt. The earth was like a muddy sea dashed high in spray against hidden rocks. The men who were to lead the attack were standing, rifle in hand, waiting for the sudden cessation of fire which would be the signal for them to climb over the parapet. Bombers and bayonet-men alternated in series of two. The bombers wore the mediæval-looking shrapnelproof helmets, and heavy canvas grenade coats with pockets for a dozen bombs. Their rifles were slung on their backs to give them the free use of their hands.

Every one was smoking-some calmly, some with short nervous puffs. It was interesting to watch the faces of the men. One could read almost to a certainty what was going on in their

minds. Some of them were thinking of all the terrible events so near at hand. They were imagining the horrors of the attack in detail. Others were unconcernedly intent upon adjusting a strap of their equipment, or rubbing their clips of ammunition with an oily rag. Several men were singing to a mouth-organ accompaniment. I saw their lips moving, but not a sound reached me above the din of the guns, although I was standing only a few yards distant. It was like an absurd pantomime.

As I watched them, the sense of the unreality of the whole thing swept over me more strongly than ever before. "This can't be true,' I thought, 'I have never been a soldier. There is n't any European War.' I had the curious feeling that my body and brain were functioning quite apart from me. I was only a slow-witted, incredulous spectator, looking on with a stupid animal wonder. I have since learned that this feeling is rather common. A part of the mind works normally, and another part which seems one's essential self, refuses to assimilate and classify experiences so unusual, so different from anything in the catalogue of memory.

For two hours and a half the roar of guns continued. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had commenced. An officer near me shouted, 'Now, men, follow me!' and clambered over the parapet. There was no hesitation. In a moment the trench was empty, save for the bomb-carrying parties and an artillery observation officer who was jumping up and down on the firing bench, excitedly waving his stick and shouting,

'Go it the Norfolks! Go it the Norfolks! My God! Isn't it fine! Is n't it splendid!'

[ocr errors][merged small]

one, and he says 'is n't,' not ‘ain't,' even under stress of the greatest excitement.

The German artillery, which had been reserving their fire, now poured forth a deluge of shrapnel. The sound of rifle-fire was scattered and ragged at first, but it increased steadily in volume. Then came 'the boiler factory chorus,' as Tommy calls it, the rattle of dozens of machine-guns. The bullets were flying over our heads like swarms of angry wasps. A ration-box board, which I held above the parapet, was struck by a bullet almost immediately. Fortunately for the artillery officer, a disrespectful N.C.O. pulled him down into the trench.

"There's no good o' throwin' yer life away, sir. You won't 'elp 'em over by barkin' at 'em.'

Within a few moments several lines of reserves filed into the front trench and went over the parapet in support of the first line, advancing with heads down like men bucking into the fury of a gale. We saw them only for an instant as they jumped to their feet outside the trench and rushed forward. Many were hit before they had passed through the gaps in our barbed wire. Those who were able crept back and were helped into the trench by comrades. I saw one man killed just as he was about to reach a place of safety. He lay on the parapet with his head and arms hanging down inside the trench. His face was that of a boy of twentyone or twenty-two. I carry the memory of it with me to-day as vividly as when I left the trenches in November. It is one of a series of terrible pictures of which I would gladly be rid.

The battle continued until evening, when we received orders to move up to the firing line. We started at five o'clock, and although we had less than three miles to go we did not reach our trenches until four the next morning,

owing to the long stream of wounded which blocked the communicationtrenches. We met small groups of prisoners under escort of proud and happy Tommies, who gave us greatly exaggerated accounts of the success of the attack. Some of them said that two more lines of German trenches had been captured; others declared that we had broken completely through and that the enemy were in full retreat. Upon arriving at our position we were convinced that at least one trench had been captured, but when we mounted our guns and peered cautiously over the parapet, the lights which we saw in the distance were the flashes of German rifles not the street lamps of Berlin.

By the end of the month we had seen more of death and awful suffering than it is good for men to see in a lifetime. There were attacks and counter-attacks; hand-to-hand fights in communication trenches with bombs and bayonets; incessant bombardments; nightly burial parties. Heavy fighting continued throughout October, and daily I saw Tommy Atkins at his splendid best. He looked like a beast; he acted like a god. His body was the color of the sticky Flanders clay in which he lived, but his soul was clean and fine. I saw him rescuing wounded comrades, tending them in the trenches, encouraging and heartening them when he himself was discouraged and sick at heart.

'You're a-goin' 'ome, 'Arry! Blimy, think o' that! Back to old Blightey, an' the rest of us blokes 'as got to stick it out 'ere. Don't I wish I was you! Not 'arf!'

'You ain't bad 'urt. Strike me pink! You'll be righter'n rain in a couple o' months. An' 'ere! Christmas in Blightey, son! S'y! I'll tyke yer busted shoulder if you'll give me the chanct!' "They ain't nothin' they can't do fer you back at the base 'ospital. 'Mem

[ocr errors]

ber 'ow they fixed old Ginger up? You ain't caught it 'arf as bad. Don't you worry, son!'

In England, before I knew Tommy for the man he is, I said to myself, 'How am I to endure living with him?' And now I am thinking, How am I to endure living without him; without the inspiration of his splendid courage; without the visible example of his cheery, unselfish devotion to his fellows? There were a few cowards and shirkers who failed wretchedly to live up to the standards set by their comrades. I remember the man of thirtyfive or forty who lay whimpering in the trench when there was unpleasant work to be done, while boys half his age kicked him in a vain attempt to waken him to a sense of duty; but instances of sheer cowardice were rare. There were not enough of them to serve as a foil to the shining deeds which were of daily and hourly occurrence.

Tommy is sick of the war, — dead sick of it. He is weary of the interminable procession of comfortless nights and days. He is weary of the sight of maimed and bleeding men - of the awful suspense of waiting for death. In the words of his pathetic little song, he does 'want to go 'ome.' But there is that within him which says, 'Hold on!' He is a compound of cheery optimism and grim tenacity which makes him an incomparable fighting man.

The intimate picture of him which lingers most willingly in my mind is that which I carried with me from the trenches on the dreary November evening shortly before I bade him good-bye. It had been raining, sleeting, and snowing for a week. The trenches were kneedeep in water, in some places waistdeep-for the ground was as level as a floor and there was no possibility of drainage. We were wet through, and our legs were numb with the cold.

Near our gun position there was a hole in the trench where water had gathered four feet deep. A bridge of boards had been built over one side of this, but in the darkness a passer-by slipped and fell into the icy water up to his armpits.

'Now then, matey!' said an exasperating voice, 'bathin' in our private pool without a license?'

And another,' 'Ere, son! This ain't a swimmin' bawth! That's our teawater yer a-standing' in!'

The Tommy in the water must have been nearly frozen, but for a moment he made no effort to get out.

'One o' you fetch me a bit o' soap, will you?' he said coaxingly. 'You ain't a-go'n' to talk about tea-water to a bloke wot ain't 'ad a bawth in seven weeks?'

It is men of this stamp who have the fortunes of England in their keeping. Given the leadership they deserve, I would add in their safe keeping.

(The End.)

WAR AND DEBT

BY W. S. ROSSITER

THE aggregate public indebtedness of the warring powers of Europe consists of two distinct classes of obligations. The first is the national debt which existed before the outbreak of hostilities, and which represented a century or more of accumulations; the second consists of war loans floated since the beginning of the present conflict. The interest charge upon the vast aggregate of these combined debts now forms a burden upon the nations concerned of two thousand three hundred millions of dollars each year. This is equivalent to an annual per-capita tax upon each inhabitant of about six dollars.

The debt which compels this crushing interest charge is thus a composite of old and new. If an Englishman, for example, could demand an itemized bill for his share of the interest on the British national debt, somewhat as we

Americans receive our tax-bills, by items for roads, schools, state, city, and so forth, he would find such items as these:

"To interest on remaining obligations incurred to suppress revolt of North American Colonies.

"To interest on debts contracted in the Continental Wars against the French and the Emperor Napoleon.'

And so on, through a score of smaller wars about the world, down to our own time and the present and greatest war of all.

Moreover, were the interest charge itemized for all the other nations, the unhappy tax-payer would be carried back in each instance to the days when wars were something more than trenchdwelling and asphyxiation — back at least as far in time as the charging hosts of Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Debts unpaid for more than a hun

« PreviousContinue »