And We Go On (29 page)

No sooner were we on the high ground than we met a party of Germans, prisoners coming back on the trot. There were over twenty of them and at the rear were three doctors who spoke English. One of them was in that helpless nightmare stupor that seems to fall on some of those taken prisoner, but his mates talked with us and seemed real decent fellows. They were more than willing to assist in looking after any wounded and assured us that we would now go far as there were no organized defenses for us to encounter. While Tommy and I talked with them the others had made a thorough search of the remaining prisoners and had acquired quite a haul of souvenirs in the shape of marks, two Iron Crosses, several watches, and fancy trinkets.

We went on over the slope until we were near Claude Wood and well beyond our objective. There was no fighting to mention but a shell dropped near and killed Cockburn and Christensen was hit in the arm by a piece of shrapnel. After he was bandaged I went over to him. “You see now that you were wrong,” I said. “You're away for Blighty.”

He simply grinned. “Bird,” he said in his slow way. “By night I'll be a corpse. Remember what I tell you.”

He went on over the hill out of sight and we went on toward the Wood and then extended and lay down on the soft grass. We could see Germans running everywhere on the horizon. Some were in the edge of the Wood hurriedly arranging machine guns, but the majority were fleeing on the other side, racing at top speed, without rifles or helmets. There was a village not far off, Beaucourt, and we could make out the Amiens-Roye Road. An aeroplane crashed down close beside us, startling every one as we had not heard its engine. The airman was a boy of twenty and both his legs had been almost severed with machine gun fire. We helped him to the
ground and bandaged him as best we could. He seemed calm and only asked for a cigarette.

All at once there was a shout and we turned from watching the Huns scuttle about the Wood to see one of the finest spectacles, if not the finest, of the whole war. It is certain that very few were privileged to occupy such ringside seats as we had that day, and yet not be forced to take part or suffer from the contact. Over the slope came the cavalry, the Royal Canadian Dragoons, the Fort Garry Horse, the Strathconas, riding like mad, sabres flashing, lances glittering, all in perfect formation. They swept by us with a thundering beat of hoofs and drove at the Wood. Some passed to right and some to left of it. Following them came the whippets, small tanks with remarkable speed and with guns mounted on the top.

The mounted men dashed into the Wood, directly at the waiting gunners. Killing began as if on signal from some master director. The Maxims opened fire and men and horses rolled among the shrubbery or fell in the open. I saw an officer rise in his stirrups and strike a Hun across the neck with his sabre, so that the German's head lolled oddly. I saw a lancer pierce another gunner so that the weapon stuck out behind his shoulders. A trio of Huns were beaten to earth under the horses' hoofs as the cavalry rode straight at them. It was whirlwind fighting, so fast and furious that the machine guns did not take half the toll we expected. One crew alone survived the charge and a tank bore straight for them. They fired frantically and we saw a man on the tank slither to the ground, but the tank went on, and right over gun and crew, making the thrust so quickly that not a man escaped. After it had passed, we saw a body rolled on the sod, glistening white, completely stripped of clothing.

Those who had gone toward the village appeared to be in difficulties and we got more thrills. More pounding horses came into view, a battery of heavy guns. They rushed by us and over on the wide plateau swung about and into action with astounding speed. We saw the shells striking in the village, sending up great clouds of smoke and dust, and soon the cavalry pressed on.

After noon a long column of men came in sight, battalions of the Fourth Division going through to carry on the attack. I saw the 85th Battalion and hurried over to see my brother but he had gone by. Suddenly the fighting seemed far away. No shells were falling near us and no Germans except prisoners and dead men were in sight. The tanks had gone
and the big ones were lumbering up, one laden with water and ammunition. We went on to Claude Wood and the dead Huns were searched for souvenirs. At dusk we had wandered far beyond and had found many things of interest. I had picked up a sabre, a long-bladed thing, that was very supple steel, and Tommy had got a very nice revolver, a German Luger.

We slept in the wood. Our cooks had come up and served a hot meal and the 49th had also come to the same area for the night. I saw Sergeant-major Davies and he told me that he had seen Eddie away back by the trees. Then he said. “Wasn't it funny about Christensen?”

“What?” I asked.

“He was alone, going through the same place, when a shell came and he was killed by shrapnel. He was away back there and one would have thought him safe for Blighty.”

Tommy and I looked at each other, and said nothing.

We moved to Folles Village and there saw many signs of hurried German flight. All kinds of equipment and clothing lay about. A dressing station was nearby. Two dead Germans lay under blankets ready for burial. Other cots were just as the patients had been taken from them. Outside, packs and rifles and helmets and gas masks, piled in a passage way, were eloquent of heavy casualties. The weather continued dry and sultry and at evening the western sky was lovely, opalescent, radiant, a riot of colour. There were streamers of rose and onyx, flecks of pearl, lights of crimson and gold. We hated the smell of the building and occupied unique resting-places – wooden coffins that were stood against the rear end of the building. They were dry and fairly comfortable.

The next day we went on and halted at night by a field near the quarters occupied by the transport section. Tommy and I had our bed on a grassy bank near the road and I went over to the cobbled yard of the farmhouse where the transport men were staying. I had our water bottles and filled them at the pump there. When I had done so I strolled over to talk to a chap I knew who was smoking by a gate. Someone touched me on the arm and I swung around. It was light enough to see plainly as a harvest moon was overhead, and no one was there!

I left the man in the middle of my sentence, for I had become very sensitive to such touches. In a moment I was away from the yard and hurrying back to Tommy. Suddenly I heard a zoom-zoom-zoom above
me – Boche bombing planes – and before I had taken another stride a gash of scarlet flame spurted from the very gate at which I had been standing. More bombs crashed, and several were the kind the boys called the “spring” variety. They seemed to explode above the ground a few feet and spread death in a wide circle. Many horses were killed before the raid was over, thirty-six, a soldier said as we went forward to inquire. The man to whom I had been talking was horribly mangled. Two others had been killed and ten wounded.

We went to Parvillers. As we marched into the village and saw the square with its church still intact we thought that the war had become a grand picnic, but inside the hour our thoughts had changed. Salvos of shells came in among the buildings with diabolical accuracy. We ran for shelter, hurried around corners and headed for the old trenches of that area. We were to relieve a Borderer regiment but when we met their guides they seemed bewildered. They said the Hun was established in strength and that they had lost nearly three-quarters their strength in trying to drive him back. We grew impatient as the companies huddled about, too closely grouped, and nothing was done. Shells were coming very near. One dropped beside the officers as they conversed. Our colonel was talking to the colonel of the Borderers, and while he was not hurt the Borderer had his arm blown off and died before morning.

At length Williams and “Waterbottle” and I were called to the front and asked to find the way we should go. We managed to get the platoons into position shortly before daylight. We were in old grassed trenches, with concrete emplacements quite plentiful, and as we scanned the sector in the breaking light and saw wide tangles of rusting barbed wire in every direction, and dead Borderers strewn everywhere, we knew that we were to meet a grim proposition.

We slept a short while and then were roused. Williams and I were called again. He was to go to sixteen platoon and I to fifteen. Why we were to do so we could not find out, and the only satisfaction we got was that we would probably be needed before night. It was very hot, stifling hot in the old trench. The attack was not to take place until three, some said, but no one seemed to know definitely.

The platoon I was with filed slowly into an old trench that branched off the one we had first entered. There was a network of them everywhere, in all directions, and each platoon was to go a different route and try to meet
as they got across the first area. We halted at a place where some of the dead Borderers were still lying, and waited there. There was not a breath of air. We sat, perspiring in the burning sun. It was still, uncannily still, except for the buzzing of flies about the corpses. They were turning black and there was a stench that made us want to get on with our work.

Then came word that there would not be any barrage. It seemed an odd thing to make a daylight attack without one but it was simply to be trench fighting, bombing and rushing. There would not be the usual deafening crescendo of drum fire to bewilder one, nor the whine and blast of five nines to unsettle the nerves.

To my surprise I was told to remain in the rear of the platoon. Geordie was there, acting as company sergeant-major. We simply moved up the trench. Suddenly there came the clatter of machine gun fire. Rat-tat-tat-tat. It was everywhere. Bullets snapped and crackled over our heads and it seemed as if the guns were shooting from ahead, both sides, and the rear. We could not tell where the enemy was making his stand, or whether he was shooting at our lads or other platoons.

Suddenly, I saw a dead man lying in the trench. We walked past him. It was Haldane, the big MacLean Kiltie, a fine-built man, and he had been shot just below the heart as he rushed in as bayonet man. The bombers were going first, and the bayonet men followed up the throwing of grenades, while our Lewis gunners were ready for an opening. Again we passed a dead Canadian, and still no German was seen. Then I saw, in a long stretch, the captain, up with the leaders. He was with the platoon and had been in charge of the attack, so far ahead that we were sure he would be spotted and killed. We came to where a trench branched left. It was a high-banked affair and no one was in it. Where did it lead? Did it cross the trenches taken by the others? We went by it and came to a second turn, again to the left. A halt was made and word came that I was to take a man with me and go to explore the first trench for some distance, then send back a report.

As I hurried up the trench I saw that no one had been on it. The earth was not hardpacked and footprints showed. But I came to more turnings, three saps leading from the trench I followed, and I did not know which way to go first. I told the chap with me to go about fifty yards along the first sap, and then come back to me, while I watched the main trench. He had barely gone before I heard German voices almost beside me. I could not see
a person but I sprang for cover. There was a V-shaped place that had evidently been an overland exit and I jumped into it and pulled a pin from a Mills bomb as I did so. The next instant three German officers appeared as if by magic. They came from the bowels of the earth, out of a dugout entrance I had not seen as it was almost obscured by overhanging weeds and grass. They were talking together, eagerly, excitedly, and never saw me as they started up the way I had been going. I released the lever, counted two, and tossed the bomb. It exploded shoulder-high behind them, and they went down like jackstraws. I was ready with my rifle but there was no need. No others popped out of the dugout and the three in the trench lay still. I examined them. Two were dead, one with part of his head blown away, but the third man was still breathing. He was wounded about the neck and the spine so that he could not possibly live. I ran back to the sap where my helper had gone but he was not in sight. I went up the trench a distance to meet him, but did not see him, then came back and peered into the dugout. The wounded man had recovered consciousness and he looked at me and spoke in good English. “You are Canadians,” he said.

I said “yes,” curtly, and asked him how many more were in the dugout. He answered that there was not one, and that it was an underground place with a second opening. They had used it as a passage. He groaned then and twisted in agony. I stooped over him and took his Luger and also removed the weapons from the dead men. These I hid in the grass down the trench a distance and stuck a stick in the old parapet to mark the place.

My man did not return and I did not know what to do, so ran back and reported to the captain. He at once called for the “original” with whom I had gone on patrol, and told him to go with me and others up the trench I had been in, and to find a way to reach the other platoons on our left. The “others” were Peoples, Coleman, a Lewis gunner and his crew of three. When we got back to where the German officers lay I told the “original” how I had thrown the bomb but he made no response. The wounded man looked up at me and asked me for a drink. I had no water left, none of us had, and the others did not want to wait. But the German had beckoned me to bend down and listen.

“In the dugout,” he said, weakly, “there is a spring of water that is very good. Go down the steps and turn to your left about sixteen paces. You will find it.”

He gasped the words out painfully and I told the men what he said. Coleman warned me that it was likely a trap. The “original” said nothing. He pushed on up the trench and the others followed slowly. I got a bomb ready and went through the hanging weeds and down the dugout stairs. I had no light, no candles, no matches, but I wanted to give that German a drink; I felt that killing from behind as I had done was a ghastly thing no matter what the rules of war.