And We Go On (30 page)

I found the steps as he had said, turned left and went sixteen paces, put down my hand and touched cold water. I had often seen seepage in dugouts, but it was the only time I found a spring in an underground passage. I filled my water bottle and hurried up, and gave the German a drink. He had brown hair and brown eyes. One of the gunners and I bandaged him as best we could, but hurriedly, then moved him to a shady corner at the sap end. But it was fearfully warm; the sun blistered one. My head ached with the heat, and our steel helmets burned our necks if they touched the skin. Even our rifles were hot. And all about the area machine guns were crackling and bullets whining. There was a great deal of old wire strewn along the trench banks and there were continual ricochets from it.

We followed the party down the trench. It was a narrow cutting, and too straight to be rushed. But we did not meet any Germans and finally reached a very deep and wide trench that crossed our way and made a sharp “T.” There we halted and the “original” seemed more nervous than the others. He asked Peeples and I to go to the left along the trench and explore for one hundred yards or so. He and the rest would cover our rear.

We went slowly. The trench sides were three feet higher than my head, and weeds and thistles and poppies grew on the banks. We could see webs of black, long-barbed wire beyond them. The trench floor was slimed in places and the wooden posts at corners were covered with moldy fringes. As we passed a third traverse I heard the sound of German voices and cautioned Peeples to keep ready while I climbed the trench side to see where the enemy was hiding. I had found a queer periscope resting on the firestep. Its frame was like ribs of an umbrella and it held an unusually large glass. I put it up and had just spotted a few pot helmets a considerable distance away when I heard an exclamation beside me. I turned and witnessed a tableau that is stored in my memory. Peeples was six feet three inches tall, and he had not shaved for several days. He held his bayonet
ready and his kilt was high hitched above his great, bony knees. In his hand, pressed against the rifle barrel, was a Mills bomb. The German facing him was a young, white-faced fellow. He had stopped as if paralyzed, open-mouthed, cringing, and he was not armed.

Crack! Peeples, after sixty long seconds of gazing, pulled the trigger. He declared that he had not meant to, but his finger simply tightened. The muzzle was not six feet from the Hun and pointed at his stomach, and the poor chap groaned frightfully as he collapsed. I never heard a worse sound. The unexpected report and the groan startled Peeples so that he jumped about, losing the bomb, and ran headlong down the trench. I fell from my perch on the trench side, dived at the bomb – but the pin had not been pulled. No other Germans were in sight but I could now hear them jabbering just around the corner so I got the grenade ready and made a lovely throw into their bay. Then I hustled after Peeples.

He was telling the “original” all about it when I got to the trench corner, and was so excited that he hardly knew what he was saying. It was his first battle and his first kill. The “original” now suggested that Coleman and I go to the right and find where the Germans were. We went about one hundred yards and stopped at a traverse as we heard voices, then advanced very slowly. Perspiration was running down our faces. We had our tunics opened and our shirts rolled back. The “seam squirrels” were very busy and Coleman caught a very fine specimen and held him up to admire, saying that I could not match him. He was a very cool lad. There we were, away from the others, with the firing and sniping all around us, and voices ahead – and matching lice as if out at billets. I searched for one and secured a champion and was just holding him up when a party of Huns appeared about twenty yards away, coming around a traverse. I always had my rifle in position and it saved us. The Huns had their rifles up and the leader, a big man was taking aim as I simply slashed the trigger. The bullet caught his coal bucket helmet and struck the earth bank behind him in such a way as to scatter dust all over him and into the eyes of his mates. The German shot but his bullet struck the trench wall ahead of us, and as Coleman fired in turn he brought the big man down. I shot a second time, an easy kill, bringing down a short, fat goose-stepper. Then my rifle jammed. Coleman shot at a third German as he was running back and winged him in the arm. The man dropped his rifle and clutched the wound with his other hand and yelled wildly.

We hurried back to our post and told the “original” what had happened. He decided that we had better go back up the trench a distance so the Huns could not come at us from both sides. It was a wise move. We had not got back fifty yards up the narrow trench before Peeples, using his height, saw pot helmets bobbing along the trench toward where we had been. At the same time he saw five Germans get up on the bank and start overland, so as to cut off the corner and rush us where we were. He was so excited that he climbed out of our trench to meet them and we, not knowing what was happening, followed him. The Lewis men jumped back in the trench as soon as they saw the five gray men, but Coleman and I stayed a moment with Peeples. We fired at the Germans and they shot at us. The range was not over seventy-five yards and yet the first exchange had no results. We tried a second time, just as the “original,” who had not left the trench, yelled for us to return, and both sides scored. Three of the Heinies “bit the dust,” and both Peeples and Coleman were hit. We jumped down and found that Coleman had a bullet through the arm and that Peeples had one eye shot out, a horrible wound. We tied him up and Coleman led him down the trench, as he had lost sight of his other eye. I had heard a queer snapping noise but did not notice anything until one of the gunners pointed at my steel hat. Its rim was punctured on both sides.

The Germans pressed us. They stayed in the big, deep trench but they hurled potato masher bombs without stint, a regular barrage of them, while they sniped at us from all sides. We retreated until we had a good place to build a block and there put the gun in position. Then the “original” sent a man back to report to the captain and to ask for help. The captain himself returned with a small party, then sent a runner, my old friend, “Doggy,” and I, to look up three saps and locate the man who had first come with me, and to find where the saps ended. We went up the first sap and found it ended at, and butted, a road. The man we were looking for was lying there, dead, his badges gone, his pockets ransacked. He had been shot by some sniper lying in wait as he looked over the road.

We went back and up the second sap and found a dugout entrance. Doggy had his pocket filled with bombs and he had a flashlight, so we went down to explore. There were several benches about the place, and an atmosphere that spoke of very recent occupation. It was a chamber of concrete walls and ceiling and very strongly built. In the centre was a table
and on it were a big map and telephone, one of those funny, European “paper weight” kind. “Doggy” picked up the ear-piece and then grinned at me. German voices, harsh and heated, were clashing so that the wire almost curled. At the first lull Doggy put his mouth close to the speaking-tube and said slowly, “Get off the wire, you blasted squareheads. You've got the wrong number!”

The silence that followed was more eloquent than any reply could have been. We rushed back up the stairs and ran along looking for another dugout, but found none and reached the same road that headed the other sap. Doggy jumped up on it and ran up it a distance. I shouted to him to keep low but he waved to me to come and pointed out the end of the third sap. We jumped down into it to search for more underground places – and bumped headlong into three Germans. They had telephones and equipment and were without rifles, though each man had stick bombs and the leader had a Luger. He shot at Doggy from about a ten-foot range and missed him. Then that shaggy-headed, big-footed tumbler coolly reached back and seized my rifle. I had sense enough to let him have it and we made an exchange with a speed long practice could not have exceeded, I getting his revolver. Doggy hated pistols worse than poison, could not shoot straight with them, he had seen another runner get a wrist shattered through accidentally slipping the safety release off a Colt. From the time the Hun shot first until Doggy lunged at him would not be three counted seconds and his bayonet point spoiled the German's second try. Then Doggy was in on him, in an awkward but effectual fashion. He did not thrust in the orthodox manner but made a queer, overhead drive and the steel struck the Hun in the cheek, tearing flesh to the bone and ripping one nostril open. The German staggered back and dropped his pistol, trying to surrender but pawing at the air in a mad way. Blood gushed over his face and he breathed with a hard snuffle.

Doggy did not drive at him but found the trigger and shot the man. “You tried to plug me,” he yelled, “there's yours.”

While this was happening I had been shooting. I aimed at the second Hun who had dropped his load at his feet and snatched at the stick bombs hanging to his belt. He had one unhooked as the wounded man stumbled back against the trench side and he threw it high in order to avoid him. It exploded on the bank beside us, showering us with dust and chalky bits. I fired again as he threw a second, and the other German started to run.
Once more the potato masher burst on the bank. I shot a third time and the man went down just as Doggy dropped his adversary.

Wham! The trench was going around in circles and there was a tremendous roaring in my ears. That third Hun had hurled a stick bomb from his vantage point beyond and it had exploded between Doggy and I. Though I was the nearest to it I recovered the quickest. Doggy was slumped as if wounded and luckily for us the German tried to get away, dropping two more bombs in the trench as he ran. I recovered sufficiently to send a shot after him and by good luck drilled him fairly. He went down like a baseball player sliding to home plate.

Doggy was not hurt, only stunned. He shook himself and presently the ringing in our ears stopped. We looked at the second German and found that I had hit him every time. He had three bullets through him and all near the heart, yet had thrown three bombs after being hit the first time. We pushed the paraphernalia they had been carrying to one side and went into the dugout they had left. The entrance was not twenty feet from where we met them and we were sure that we had heard one of them speaking in the place on the next sap. There was nothing in the dugout except rations on the table and a few bottles of soda water. We opened two of them at once and Doggy tried to eat some black bread, but failed. We sat there on a bench and listened to the staccato shooting all around us. My hands were trembling a little and my clothes stuck to me. We were grimy with the dust that had plastered us from the bomb bursts and a small gravel stone had cut Doggy's cheek enough to make it bleed. It was cool down there and we sat long enough to empty a second bottle of the stuff. It helped our thirst but seemed to bloat one.

When we went up to the trench again Doggy ran back to the road at the end and stepped up on it in order to look around. He ducked down in a moment and beckoned to me. I got up beside him and saw about a dozen Germans filing hastily overland away ahead on one flank. They seemed to be in a maze of wire so that we knew they were near the trenches. As we looked a Lewis gun rattled from some point and two of the Huns pitched down at the first burst. The others promptly took cover, and then we saw a man rise up near where we had left the “original” and captain. He had an enormous rifle, and a second man scrambled out of a trench and helped him carry it. It was an “anti-tank” gun, the first I had seen, and I
fired at the carriers until they dropped it and ran. Doggy declared I hit one man but I was not sure. As I watched to see them re-appear I felt a light tap on the shoulder. I wheeled instantly. No one was there! “Come,” I shouted, and jumped into the trench.

Doggy thought I had seen something and dived after me. As he did a Maxim opened fire from somewhere ahead and clipped weeds like a scythe in the very place where we had been crouched. We had been seen and would have been filled with bullets had I not had that touch in time.

When we reported there was not much shooting. It was nearly dusk and the firing had stopped, making the sector a weird place. Everyone was watching in all directions as we did not know where we were, where the other platoons were, or where the Germans might pop into view from some underground place. Two more dugouts had been found on the trench where I had killed the officers and they were connected by a passage.

Doggy and I were to go with the sergeant-major and captain and find how the rest of the company was established for the night. I saw a thirteen platoon man, big Dave, an ex-member of the Edinburgh police force, escorting nine Germans down a trench we reached on the left, and at once went up the way he had come. We found 42nd men in three different directions and all seemed well. There did not seem anything for me to do as Doggy was sent with a message and so I wandered up one trench until I met Tommy. He was seated on planks at a bashed-in dugout entrance binding up the hurts of a man from one of the other companies. Beside him were dried pools of blood and stained cotton wads and when I looked around the bay I saw a dead Hun lying there, a chap with both arms bandaged.

Tommy was excited. We were glad to see each other and after comparing notes I was sure that he had had the more hectic afternoon. He said that “Waterbottle” and Earle and Lockerbie and Barron had made the greatest team he had seen in action. They had got far in advance as they cleared the trenches and an officer of the 44th Battalion had followed along, cheering them, advising them.

“Old Waterbottle was worth four ordinary men,” said Tommy. “Him and Lockerbie rushed old Heinie so fast he couldn't get set anywhere. They kept right on his heels and Earle and Barron were there to take their turn. Waterbottle twice caught stick bombs, snatched them as they came at him, and threw them back. He hit a Heinie with a Mills bomb and
knocked him down. Potato mashers went off all around them. He and Lockerbie ran right at about half a dozen Germans who were slinging bombs as fast as they could pull the strings and neither man was hit. Once I saw a potato masher burst beside Waterbottle and he only jumped and yelled. He and Lockerbie were terrors with the bayonet and that's how Lockerbie got killed.”