And We Go On (32 page)

When we went back to the village a body was lying out near the end of the trenches. I raised the ground sheet that covered the face. It was Doggy – good old, big-footed Doggy – all through with fighting.

We billeted in rough quarters, some ruined buildings, but could have slept on spikes. An hour after we were laid down and enjoying slumber that even a bombing plane did not disturb, a new man, up with a new officer as batman, came plunging in where Tommy and I lay, shouting, “Germans – on the road!”

I woke, but not enough to realize what he was saying. In some vague way I knew I should move, but seemed incapable of action. Tommy was
the only hero. He had been sleeping soundly but he sprang up and seized his rifle and rushed out ready to do or die. He saw the Germans – a file of prisoners marching along in the moonlight. Wham! It was a cruel blow, and the batman went down heavily, but Tommy was highly-strung, had been wakened out of a sleep that was sorely needed. He settled down again, but the rest of the night was filled with sudden wakenings. We would start up, bathed in perspiration despite the slight chill of the air, again facing the Huns, again watching a potato masher come sailing for us. Each hour some man cried out and ground his teeth and muttered curses.

We moved next day to Hamon Wood. It was a glorious spot. Tommy and I had a bivvy on a slope that was shadowed by great trees. Sambro came back to the battalion and was beside us. We went to the River Luce and washed away all the sweat and grime of our fighting and marching and then lay around in the cool green wood, resting and sleeping. The new officer called me to his place and lectured me because I did not have a kilt. I wore shorts, my old trues cut off above the knees, my battered steel hat, a very ragged shirt and was brown as a berry. “You,” he said, “are a very poor specimen of a soldier.”

After I escaped him I saw him in conversation with the company quarter-master but no new kilt reached me. I heard that the 85th Battalion was over near Caix Wood and when the brigade signaller came and visited me that evening I asked him to go with me to see them. We walked nine kilometers to find them. My brother was there, in good spirits, had come through the fighting without a scratch. Stanley was there also, had got his wish – his passage back to France – and he was looking forward to another big scrap in which he might take part. We sat around and talked with the boys until ten o'clock then started on our way back. Half-way home we became very hungry. It had been a long hike and we had not had a hearty supper. A Y.M.C.A. tent loomed through the night, but evidently it had been closed for some time. We saw a lone soldier near and he told us that the “Y” had just moved there that day and had not been set up. As he left us we made the discovery that neither of us had any money.

We looked around, at the stars overhead. It was a long way back to camp, and if we only had some chocolate, a box of biscuit. “Are you game?” I asked, and he nodded. In a moment we had unfastened the tent flaps and were crawling inside.

I went to the left, feeling my way for the place was pocket-black. He went to the right. A moment we crawled, then there was a startled exclamation, a gasp, a struggle. It became furious, feet threshing the earth, striking boxes. I found a match and lighted it. The signaller and a “Y” man were entangled in deadly grips and rolling on the grassy floor. The “Y” man had been sleeping there just inside the tent, without covering, and had been awakened by the palm of a hand planted firmly in his face as the signals man crept forward. Instantly the sleeper had thrown up his arms and grappled with the intruder. Wakened out of a sound sleep, in a country where all had become change and route, he did not know who might be invading his tent.

When I could stop laughing long enough to light a candle and get them separated, the “Y” man took it all in good part. I told him frankly our intentions and he not only made us tea in his own private teapot but gave us a good feed and filled our pockets. He was a prince of a fellow and laughed heartily with us as we left, saying that he had had his biggest thrill since arriving in France.

The “big guns” came to see us but the inspections were easy. There was not much cry about polish and the speech that Clemenceau made was interesting. Generals were plentiful, Haig, Rawlinson and Lipsett, and we had a nice sing-song afterwards there among the cool trees. The weather continued wonderful, sunshiny and clear, with bombing planes at night. None reached our bivouac and we marched away towards Arras.

We marched nearly all one night, as I had seen the battalion going up to Ypres, drifting along with only the shuffle of heavy boots, the creak of equipment, our steps echoing as we went through sleeping villages. The moon was full and everything bathed in white light. It was calm and cool and far better than the heat of the day, but the hours had their influence; we thought of the boys that were not with us, Christensen, and Eddie, and Lockerbie, Boland, Cockburn, Thornton and Doggy, big Haldane and strange, slow-speaking Morris. I thought of Siddal wanting me to sit beside him until he “went to sleep,” of the touch I had had when sniping with Doggy. Sambro marched beside me and now and then asked questions about the boys. He was glad to be back and I was glad he had come.

We were in “Y” Camp at Duisans and there heard rumours of another great push. The Canadians were to attack Monchy and all that hilly, wooded country beyond. It was to be another big push, and there would be
more missing faces. New men joined us, a rather poor lot, and we were not as friendly with them as we should have been. Then we went to Arras, that fine old city where all French history has its ghosts. It was there that Julius Caesar had his headquarters for a time, where at the time of the Revolution the guillotine in the square lopped heads like turnips are cut in the fields at autumn, a city with underground caverns that would hold divisions, with its Grande Place full of barbed wire and grass growing between the cobbles. We went through the streets at night and stopped at ruins on the outskirts, taking refuge in connected cellars as a rather severe strafing crossed our path. It was about three in the morning when we arrived there, and the rumours said we were to go into action at half past four. We sat there in the cellar, talking, eating, smoking. Hughes sat in front of me, Murray alongside me, Hayward next him. Across from us were Earle and Harvey and two new men. It was only a small place and “Old Bill” was near Earle. They had purchased some tinned salmon and as the old fellow was going into the scrap with us they were planning to keep together.

All at once I looked up and Steve was standing beside me. He did not say a word but looked around the cellar, then at me, and nodded toward the stairway. I placed my mess-tin on the stone where I was sitting and followed him across the steps.

“Don't go up,” Hughes said. “There's a lot of stuff coming pretty close, and orders are to keep under cover.”

“I'll just be a minute,” I said, and never stopped. Steve was just ahead of me, as plain to my eyes as any of the others, and I was eager, keen. Would he speak to me?

As we stepped out of the entrance to the road a salvo of shells crashed into a field just in front and, like the smoke and mist that drifted away from them, Steve faded away from view. I stood peering, watching where I had seen him last and – crash! A terrific explosion in the cellar!

I plunged down. The place was pitch-dark. There were fumes of explosives, groans. I called out. No one answered. Then I struck a light, and stood, horrified.

The place was a shambles. Hughes was leaning against the wall where he sat, blood pouring from a great hole in his head. In the corner behind him Harvey was slumped, his head bowed low while another stream of blood poured from him. Two men lay on the floor. One had a gash on his forehead and was stunned. The other watched, moved, got up and bolted
like a singed cat. I never saw him again – he had been shell-shocked before he saw a trench.

Hayward staggered towards me and said his back was on fire. I tore off his clothing and found that from his shoulders down was bathed in blood. He was pitted with shrapnel. An entrance had been cut through to the cellar of the next house. I had not noticed it before but now there were voices and scared faces looked through at us. A number of stretcher bearers, Imperial chaps, and ambulance men were there. I called to them to come and lend a hand but they were shivering with fright. The shelling overhead, and the cellar explosion, had frightened them badly. We swathed Hayward in bandages and helped him away, and then I saw that “Old Bill” was busy with Earle. Earle was hit in both thighs, in the body, in one arm, and another piece had entered above one eye and destroyed it. He was terribly wounded. Murray was beside him, his arms and wrists covered with blood. A new man had been loading his rifle and had discharged it in some manner, the bullet striking a bag of bombs in the middle of the cellar.

After we got the wounded bandaged we called to the Imperials to remove Earle. But they hung back. He was a big man and the cellar passage was narrow – and the shelling outside continued. “Old Bill” and Tommy and I seized our rifles and we prodded those lads to action in a manner they had not encountered before. Up we went to the roadway, a queer procession, and we saw to it that they carried him to an ambulance before they stopped. He was conscious twice on the way down to the Base, just long enough to hear a doctor say he could not possibly live, woke the third time in England, and finally recovered. But he never came to France again.

We left the cellars. My mess-tin had been crumpled out of shape by a bomb end, and I took one of the others left by the casualties and we divided their rations. We went up into trenches on the slope and made our way slowly. It was half past four in the afternoon, instead of morning, before the battalion got into action, and then our Company remained in the rear, in reserve. We could hear machine guns and bombs ahead, but moved rapidly to our objective and the only evidence of fighting we had was the dead Germans and 42nd men we passed.

Just before dark we were in a trench on an open slope. No officer had been near us and we were told to remain where we were for the night. One of the new men in the platoon behind us started to clean his rifle. It was
discharged as he fumbled with it and the bullet shattered the leg of big Dave, the ex-policeman. He was carried away on a stretcher. The night was cool. About one in the morning I heard a low voice calling. “Otto – Otto.”

It came from grass and weeds a distance in front of our trench. I roused Tommy and he and I went out. We found a wounded German, a blonde chap, badly hurt. He had been bandaged and left there. We carried him to the trench and were kind to him. At first he had been very frightened and had mumbled pitifully. When he saw that we wanted to help him he smiled. We got Sykes to attend to him and had him carried away to the rear.

Just before dawn I got up from the trench where I was lying and looked around. We had no one in charge of our section. Poor Hughes was gone, and Ab had been left at the transports – the “originals” were never taken in twice in succession in the big scraps – and Geordie was acting sergeant-major. Only Lofty remained and he was with another platoon for the moment, it having lost its sergeant. As I looked I saw heads appear above the thick grass. They came toward our trench, a long row of them, and then I saw bayonets. For the moment I was bewildered. How had the Hun got to the rear?

They came nearer, much nearer, and still I stood looking at them, unable to comprehend their movements or not knowing what to do. The men about me were still sleeping. “Who are you?” I called. I had suddenly seen that the helmets were “washbasins” and not “coal hods.”

An officer in advance aimed a pistol at me. “Who are you?” he shot back.

“Forty-twas,” I said. “Are you practicing some stunt?”

He almost wilted. Just behind him his men were all ready to throw bombs. They were of another brigade in our division and were to carry on the attack. Somehow orders were mixed and wrong directions given and had I not yelled when I did we would have been attacked. They had spotted me and thought that I was a Heinie sentry.

After they had passed on, walking upright and swearing among themselves, I roused Tommy and told him what had happened. It was well that the front ranks had passed on. The idea of being killed by his own kind as he rested did not appeal to him. That night we moved along to the ninth brigade area and after some waiting and uncertainty relieved the 58th Battalion.
We were in trenches and there were rumours flying as thick as usual. It was said that the ninth brigade men had tried to take Jigsaw Wood and had been driven back after getting a foothold, and that we were to try to capture the place the next day. There is nothing worse than trying to oust a foe that has already repulsed an attack. They have the confidence while the attackers have not.

Towards morning Sparky came to me. His voice was unsteady. “Bill,” he said. “I've heard you chaps talk about fellows knowing when they're going to get it. How – what gives them the idea?”

“I don't know, Sparky,” I said. “I guess they fancy it themselves. I wouldn't put much stock in it.”

I spoke much bolder than I thought, but it was of no use. “I never had a dream or saw or heard anything, and nothing's happened to make me think the way I do,” he said. “But it's just slid into my mind that I'm going to be killed to-day.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “We might be relieved without leaving these trenches. You just push that stuff out of your mind and you'll be all right.”

“Don't think I'm scared,” he returned, as if I had not spoken. “That's the funny part. I've been scared bad most of the time, but now that I'm for it I don't mind near as much, and if I get a chance at all I'm going to do something worth while.”

Word came that we were to attack, and without a barrage; the lines were too complicated to allow artillery support. Some of the boys looked shaky but the most of them were cool. Here and there I saw lips moving, and I believe that more mothers' prayers were remembered in those jumping-off trenches than anywhere else on earth. I was not the least bit nervous myself. It was not that I had courage, but the fact that I could go over with a curious inexplicable feeling that my body was functioning quite apart from me. I saw myself doing strange things and seemed powerless to prevent or assist that which happened.