The detail of military work, though important, is not of itself interesting. While war is never without romance—as well as tragedy to which one never grows quite accustomed—the essence of that romance was still, with me, the night work. A patrol requires much detail to make it even in a small degree perfect, and for a while much of my time—apart from regimental duty—was given to perfecting my scouts in their essential detail. They had to be taught the value of simple speech, whether expressed by tongue or pen—what Kipling calls the ‘straight flung words and few’— which heard or read can have but one meaning. Clearness is doubly essential when the message has often to be expressed in cipher. There were a score of other things to study and to teach before, with the best will in the world, scouting could become useful and explicit.
In the beginning I had deliberately taken risks which were sometimes perhaps unnecessary, but behind it was the definite object of convincing my men that, in whatever sense I failed them, it would not be through funk. In this night work, where the leader was wholly his own trumpeter, I was at any rate free from the suspicion of being a decoration hunter, which is the surest way of winning the contempt of your command. With a clear footing established comes caution and a sense of responsibility in the duty one owes to those who trust him. Thus far only one of my scouts had been ‘crimed,’ and crime is a very elastic work in military usage, yet so fine was their esprit de corps that the others sent him to Coventry immediately, and he had to be transferred back to his company.
We moved next to Armentières, where we relieved the 7th Brigade, and in between classes of instruction I was able to continue reconnaissance of our own particular sector, sitting night after night in the German wires until every tussock and hollow of that land, which was no man’s in daylight and any man’s after dark, became familiar. Equally familiar were the silences, the soft voices of the night—though often a bird, startled from the shelter of a tussock, seemed to our strained ears to make a perfect crash of sound. With such experience our self-reliance ever increased, and the men thought it good sport. There was no monotony. With air photographs as a basis we, in a few nights, became familiar with every ditch and drain, so completed a large sketch map showing every detail of the ground. We learned that the Bosche was accustomed to post two patrols at eleven each night, one in their front wires, the other just across a little creek. On more than one occasion we were lying right alongside that creek party without our presence being discovered.
Then came the raid for which all the scouting was a preparation, carried out by a company of selected men from each of the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Battalions, with the 21st in support to protect our flanks, lest the enemy should work around behind. I had command of the scouts, who were out early. One of our finds was a party of about thirty Germans hard at work cutting the long grass upon their front with scythes, so as to give them a clear field of fire. We were quite close to the mowers, who were a tempting target for bombs, but to have wiped them out, as we might easily have done, meant spoiling the raid. The creek, though narrow, was fairly deep, and duck boards were brought down to the bank and screwed together to bridge it, yet not a sound of the preparation reached the Hun patrol on the opposite bank. Our chief anxiety, as the hour for the raid approached, was that the mowers might hear our men approaching before they could reach their position, just near enough to the Hun wire to be clear of the back blast from the barrage which, with the 60 lb bombs used on the wire, means about sixty yards. Fortunately at the last moment they worked in towards their own wires.
The raid was timed to coincide with the relief of the enemy standing patrols, so that we could catch them en masse, and with our 60-pounders beat down their wire entanglements, exceptionally strong at that point, as we had reason to know.
In a sudden rendering and tearing of the silence of the night our trench mortars blazed out upon their entanglements, as we confidently hoped, and shells from guns of many calibres fell upon them. Four minutes after zero, the scouts, according to arrangement, crept forward as close as possible to their entanglements, which, seen faintly through the dark, seemed to me, ominously erect. As the barrage was lifted beyond we rushed upon the wires, only to find that through some extraordinary error in the range, not a wire had been cut in that particular area. Here was sudden and unexpected calamity, for their flares were already illuminating the darkness; in a little while every one of our raiders would be as clearly exposed to their machine guns as if in broad daylight.
Some of the scouts were at work with wire-cutters, though the chance of cutting through eighty yards of wire was about as forlorn a hope as men ever faced. In that emergency all the time and patience devoted to night scouting was in a moment justified. I remembered two saps which curved outward in crescent form through their wires, and took the one chance that offered—the possibility of getting into the Hun trenches by their own communications. Instead of cutting straight ahead, we started pulling up the wires down their length to reach the communication trench. It may be the excitement of such a moment, but, tearing up the wire with bare hands, we seemed to feel the barbs less than if gingerly threading our way through it at leisure. I had the luck to lob a bomb fairly under the first Hun we encountered, so close that he was shattered to death before he knew what hurt him.
That sap was the ready way to victory. We bombed the enemy down it to his main trench, though several of our fellows were hit just as we entered their front line.Then came a short and fierce struggle, but once we were fairly amongst them the Huns soon threw in the sponge. In such a mêlée Bavarians always made a better show than any other German regiments—not excepting the puffed up Prussians. Our men, with hands and faces blackened, and mud on their bayonets so that no chance flare should show them up on their way across, were certainly a terrifying sight, their charge carried through with the impetuosity that ever marks an Australian rush. Most of the enemy got away in a hurry to their support trenches. Amongst those who were not quick enough to escape, hands went up on all sides, and the craven cry of ‘Kamerad!’ signified surrender.
The German is ever treacherous, and that night they paid the very limit the price of treachery. Three of them came from a dugout, holding up their hands, and as Sergeant Gordon Graham approached to take them prisoner, two of them suddenly dropped their arms, pulled out revolvers, and opened fire at the Sergeant at almost point blank range. One bullet passed through his ear, another through his left arm, a third went through his lungs and lodged within an inch of his heart. The Sergeant, as game a man as ever wore a uniform, quiet in speech as in manner, swore volubly for the first time in my hearing and brought down all three of the brutes with successive shots from his revolver as he collapsed. In that one act of treachery every German in the trench—in all about sixty men with two officers—pronounced his own death sentence. Not a man was spared. Fuming with just rage, every feeling of mercy in our fellows hardened in an instant to savage retribution. With bullet and club they sternly squared the account. Raiding parties carried at that time a heavy club—an iron cog-wheel attached to an entrenching tool handle—a silent, somewhat horrible weapon, not fit for a Briton to use in war, and rejected soon afterwards.
I had chased a German down the trench until, in a paroxysm of fear that could only invoke pity, he threw up his hands, trembling the while in terror. We had learned just sufficient German to assure a prisoner that if he surrendered no harm would come to him. To give him confidence I walked up and patted him on the shoulder, whereupon in fawning fear he stroked my face and wrung my hand, all the while chattering some inexplicable assurance. Docile as a child and still in deadly fear, he was handed over to one of my men to take back while I worked further down the trench. In the meantime the Graham incident had occurred, ‘No prisoners’ was the word, and the poor wretch died with the rest—our one satisfaction being that they were a Prussian regiment.7
All at once a wave of battle nausea, in the smell of blood, of death, of explosives and upturned earth, and the stale, foul odour of the trenches, surged over me, and in sheer dismay I thought, ‘Good God! What is this poor old earth coming to?’ However sadly you may have cause to reflect after battle, there’s not much time for introspection on the very edge of it.
There was great temptation to push a success to completion, and in the excitement of action, with battle lust burning redly, men are not easily called off. Every detail of a raid, including the retirement, is timed with the nicest accuracy; there must be no independent action and, especially with success, no departure from the programme. Unwillingly they were withdrawn to find the angry enemy at midnight sweeping no man’s land with unavailing fire. They had rushed back when the barrage lifted, were making most of the occasion in shouting ‘Hands up!’ to imaginary enemies who were then in their old rendezvous by the creek side, snug and safe. When they came in later a good many wore German helmets.8
Nothing connected with the events of the night gave me greater satisfaction than the fact that Sergeant Graham survived his wounds. Bad as they were, I had to ask him to get back to the lines, and then command him to do it—finally to have him carried back. It was a long carry for the Sergeant too, out of the trenches and battle front, and right back to the farm home in Australia which is dignified in the possession of a man whom all his intimates value as a stalwart fighter in war, their personal kinks and crudities all forgotten in love of the brave, strong hearts beating underneath. In war one doesn’t wear his heart upon his sleeve, but we all, I think, understood ‘To each a mate who knows his naked soul.’ You find him in all shapes and ranks—sometimes a brigadier, sometimes a batman.9
It was as batman and a scout that I got to know Private Jones, who, as a shearer in Australia, had roughed it over a great part of the continent. With him life was largely a bivouac. He had learned to make the best of every condition, however cheerless. One perishing cold night, when we held the line in an emergency without kit, I was stamping and jumping about trying to keep the circulation active, when Jones came out of his wombat-hole.
‘Can’t you sleep, Captain?’ he asked.
‘How can one sleep in this cold without blankets?’ I replied.
‘No blankets?’ he said in wonderment. ‘What sort of batman have you got? I’ll soon get you a pair of blankets.’
‘You won’t do anything of the kind—do you think I’m going to take yours?’
‘It’s all right, I can spare them. I’ve got five pairs.’
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Better not ask Sir.’
Later I did ask, but with a slightly different inflection, and Jones explained that he had carried down some imaginary wounded to the dressing station and borrowed blankets from the store to make them comfortable.
As fine a skirmisher as he was a scout, Jones became my batman on the earliest possible opportunity and in foraying or foraging was a pearl. A primus stove and cooking utensils came as if by jugglery. When there should have been only an iron ration, Jones produced eggs and bacon. As a purveyor he was one long, delightful surprise. He had the high Australian estimate of mateship. For the sake of it was prepared to beg, borrow or steal. After a night stunt there were always dry clothes waiting—very often a grilled beefsteak, which on one occasion I found he had gone four miles to obtain. He had a solid service record, and won the Military Medal. Only a few nights before I was taken prisoner I managed to get Jones a comfortable job with the quartermaster, and it was a satisfaction afterwards to know that he was out of the battle line.10