They used to say, in the 25th Battalion, that “Nervous” Johnson had the greatest imagination on the Western Front. Given a dark night and a slight wind he could make the noise of rustling dead grass the whispers of a Heinie patrol, put up a flare and could build whole platoons out of weed tops and shape old stakes into German officers. Most any new man, and plenty of old hands, could do this, but none so vividly as Johnson, for he would tell the colour of the officer’s eyes or how many of the platoon were bow-legged. One misty morning he looked over the top and actually saw a German scuttling to cover. The platoon was in the Lens area, where old wire and trenches and wrecked buildings made the landscape fit for any war picture, and straightway he made out a Hun working party busy with the construction of a Minniewefer emplacement.
The sergeant hopped up a minute later and stared himself cross-eyed and couldn’t see anything but a small, broken-topped bush and a wrecked French cart. Johnson stuck to his story, however, and described things so vividly that the officer heard of it and had him go down to company headquarters and tell his story.
It didn’t take the company commander long to find flaws in his fiction, but Johnson’s command of detail made a lasting impression on Sergeant Buck. Buck did most of the scouting for his company and led all patrols. He loved the work and could crawl over and among old craters and brick heaps without losing his sense of direction in a way that made his fellows declare he must be a full-blooded Indian. He had courage galore, was a good shot, enjoyed his work, but had one failing—he could not make good reports!
When he came in from a patrol that had simply thrilled with adventure he would get his pad and scribble: “Patrol of four men and Sergeant Buck from Piccadilly Post at Cow Trench into No Man’s Land at 11 P.M. Advanced forty yards. Saw enemy sap. Heard Germans working. Was out two hours. No enemy patrols.”
Major Squibbs, the company commander, would read this epistle to the Romans and shout for the sergeant. “Why the hell don’t you use your lead pencil more?” he would snort. “How did you advance forty yards? Walk? Crawl? Run? Swim? Where was this sap you found? Were the Huns in it? Was it a new one? What—where—blast it, man, wake up. Go write out a report of everything, something I can understand.”
And Sergeant Buck would spend the rest of the time till stand-to, sucking a stubby lead pencil and sighing, now and then making a jumbled disjointed statement.
“Johnson,” said Buck, after the interview at headquarters, “from now on you’re a company scout. You don’t do any gas guard or day sentry, and tonight you’ll go out with me to a big shell hole on the right. We’re going to try and locate a Heinie machine gun post and…”
“But Sergeant,” pleaded Johnson. “I’m—I’m not a scout, I—I—”
“Who said you was?” Buck demanded. “You’re just to be a reporter. I can’t make these blasted reports to suit the major, and you’re just the kid for that stuff. Now go pound your ear till I come for you.”
That night the sergeant and Johnson established themselves in the mentioned shell hole. It was about ten yards from the German wire and the sector was fairly quiet, but Buck had such difficulty in leading, driving and pushing his recruit to the hole that he was tempted to boot him back to trench duties. They lay in their hiding till two o’clock in the morning and then crawled in. Buck showed Johnson a report blank as soon as the fellow had stopped shaking and got control of himself.
“Now fill this in. Put in everything,” Buck said, “and bring it to me when you’re finished.”
The sergeant had hardly reached his own bunk and pitched his steel hat in a corner before Johnson was with him. Buck swore, then checked his language. The report was filled with fine writing. Getting close to the candle he read:
“Patrol consisting of Sergeant Buck and Private Oliver Wendell Johnson proceeded from Birmingham Post on Cow Trench to shell crater six yards from the enemy trench. The patrol passed through barricade wire, moved along trench frontage for seven yards, then twelve yards towards enemy, after which proceeded on south-easterly direction until crater was reached. The crater was nine feet in circumference and only a few inches in depth. It was in a foul condition.
“Enemy Trench. Hostile parties seemed continually on the move in the enemy trench. At least two companies of soldiers were there on sentry duty. Flare-light firers established at ten-yard intervals. Germans are of a large stature and believed to be special unit of Prussian Guards.
“Condition of Enemy Trench. Strongly wired, strongly constructed, strongly manned.
“Work on Enemy Trench. Several working parties at different points. Sounds of shovelling, of hammering, and sawing. Would estimate that a battery emplacement is being constructed for use in a surprise attack. Several noises like the installing of gas projectors. Would suggest that a special alertness for gas be maintained.
“Hostile Patrols. No hostile patrols were encountered, though several were heard passing in the rear of the shell crater occupied. Owing to shortage of men and ammunition your patrol did not take the offensive.
“Flares. Twenty-seven flares were shot up; four of these failed. Highest reached an elevation estimated at two hundred feet.
“Remarks. As the enemy has wired himself in great strength and is strongly entrenched as well as having superior numbers in forward positions, would suggest that any movement against him in this area would only meet with disaster. Would point out that patrols run great risks in advancing near the enemy wire, as cover is very slight. Maxim machine guns seem placed at every ten feet along trench and men were heard bringing minnenwefer shell to gun position.”
The sergeant reread the entire report and then, with his stubby pencil, did some crude editing. His corrections made sad work of the neatly written report, but Johnson did not seem to mind. He was back twenty minutes later with the revised edition. Buck passed it in to the sergeant-major and went to his blankets with a happy heart and dreamt through rat-haunted hours of his assistant, publishing an eight-page “Trench Daily” with flaring, four-inch headlines.
***
All went well for several tours. Sergeant Buck became the most successful patrol leader in the battalion. The reports he sent in were simply marvels. They were waited for as priceless treats and were passed along reverently from company to company. Other sergeants with like responsibilities tore their jerkins and swore that all was not according to Hoyle, that a dark-skinned gentleman was somewhere in the lumber dump. And then Buck was wounded. It happened during an evening strafe, just as he was to push out, with Johnson, toward an old cellar that had been reported as being used as a night post by the enemy.
Major Squibbs had bet C Company’s captain that it was not occupied, placing his francs on the strength of information Buck had brought in that the old cellar was entirely surrounded—on the Hun side—by an impassable barrier of wire. When he heard that his sergeant was wounded he was dumbfounded for the moment and then recalled that Private O.W. Johnson always accompanied Buck on his nightly expeditions. Forthwith he summoned the victim. “Johnson,” he said curtly, “you know the cellar you were to watch tonight. Take another man and carry on with this patrol the same as the sergeant would have done.”
“But—but, sir,” protested Johnson. “I—I’m—”
“That is all,” said Major Squibbs.
Johnson knew enough to go, and he chose Tommy Lark to go with him. Tommy was far from a husky fighter, but that was why Johnson chose him. Tommy was the only man he felt he could command during a crisis, and the only member of the platoon not imbued with foolhardy notions of what to do when close to the enemy.
They crawled through tangled grass and weeds, skirted old craters, crossed a slimy garden patch and circled a brick heap. Directly to their right a dark blur showed the position of the cellar. It was not far out from the Canadian Trench and had once been used as an outpost until Fritz developed an ugly trick of dropping fishtails into it. Wire, well tangled and massed, protected the front and both flanks. Johnson was puzzled as to the best position for him to take. He decided at last that the safest spot would be under the wire itself. There he would not be seen by any enemy patrol. He beckoned Tommy on.
They found it exceedingly difficult to get under the wire, which was long-barbed and sagged to the sod itself. Johnson led the way, and long practice lent him skill. He managed to wriggle under the thickest portion of the half-moon and lay, breathing deeply, listening. There was no sound of Tommy!
The little fellow had tried to do the worm stunt at three different openings and had retreated with slight wounds after each attempt. Johnson, disgusted, had crawled from view, hoping his disappearance would spur the youngster to a more strenuous attempt. But Tommy had vanished. Had he fled back to the trench? Johnson dare not call; he knew how voices seemed to carry out in that void between the wires.
Then, tramp, tramp, tramp; his ear to the ground, he heard the thud of heavy feet. At least three men were coming straight toward him, toward the wire, coming from the enemy side. He tried to shrink into the earth, conscious of chills chasing up and down his spine, and wondered where Tommy was. Then he heard a guttural grunt, hands fumbling at the wire, enemy hands, not ten feet from where he lay. What happened next happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that he could not move or cry out. The wire above him was simply swept back and away, leaving him naked to German eyes.
Johnson was frozen, paralyzed with fright. He lay rigid, unmoving, hardly breathing, and three big Huns tramped past him to jump down into the cellar. Then, with a slight rasping, grating noise, the ten-foot roll of wire was pushed back into place. It pricked Johnson severely, spearing him in a dozen tender places, caught at his tunic collar, hitched his equipment up on his shoulders, pulled his tunic up after it. Yet he did not gasp or cry out. Not until the Huns had their gun in place and were calming sweeping the Canadian parapet with bullets did he essay to move—and found out that he could not.
The Germans, cunning in all tricks of war, had cut the wire so as to have a movable section. This they manipulated by ropes that ran around set iron stakes, the ropes being hidden in the grass. As they approached they pulled the ropes and the wire rolled back over an entrance to the cellar.
Once in they snagged it back into place, and no patrol had discovered the trickery. Johnson wriggled slightly, tried to free himself, worked an arm free from barbs, got his collar tugged loose. Then he became still as if petrified. Perspiration ran down his hide. When coming out he had placed a Mills bomb in each pocket of his tunic, had carried one in his hand, and had thrust another in one of his hip pockets. The wire had dragged his tunic over his back. Then a long barb, with devilish luck, had hooked itself through the ring of the safety pin of the grenade in the hip pocket. If he moved forward or backward, in any way, the pin would be withdrawn and he, unable to make a getaway, would meet a sudden and gory end.
Johnson’s brain revolved like a squirrel on a trick bar. He sweat and chilled alternately. For, if he did not move, the wire would be moved when the Germans thought it time to retire, and results would be just as fatal. His only hope seemed to be to call out, but—the Germans could not understand him, and would yank the wire back. Such a position was never devised elsewhere on the Western Front. In his company the old hands all have different ideas of what Johnson thought and did during the three hours he lay imprisoned in his torture chamber. Some assert that he fainted continually and thus passed the time, others claim that he suffered a seizure of some sort—which was true to a barb—and the majority believe that he was conscious every second of the time and lived a lifetime in three hours. They point out the after effects, for Johnson was never the same man.
At any rate, he was very much alive to the situation when Fritz, Otto, and Hans decided to call it a night. They gave a healthy tug on the ropes and the wire rolled back, taking with it the bomb from Johnson’s pocket. As the roll turned over the weight of the grenade, or possibly the tug it had as it was loosed, freed the pin. If this was fiction I should write that the Mills packet wiped out the three Huns and Johnson carried in the Maxim as his trophy. The plain truth was that the bomb did not cause any sudden deaths. It probably gave the German trio the surprise of their career, and possibly one of the fragments—how many did instructors state there were in one grenade—embedded itself in Hunnish anatomy. One thing: they did not recover from surprise in time to prevent Johnson from getting to his feet and sprinting homeward, like a phantom of the night. He had one more right on the way. As he passed a crater Tommy shot up out of it and paced him to the Canadian wire. The little chap had heard the Huns coming and suddenly made a move on his own to a deep shell hole, there to await events.
After a stiff “issue” Johnson was led to his dugout to write his report. He commenced:
“Private Oliver Wendell Johnson and Private Lark proceeded on listening patrol at 10 P.M. They left trench at cross section of Bull Trench and Eggshell Sap, going forty yards before turning east. The patrol here separated, Private Lark retreating to safety of a large shell hole in rear.
“Private Oliver Wendell Johnson proceeded alone to within yards of German trench and then concealed himself under wire about old cellar suspected as German post. Shortly a patrol of ten large and determined Berlin Guardsmen advanced….”
They found him collapsed on the bench. He was sent to hospital, suffering from nervous attack. He never came back. A year or so after the war he was cook’s helper with a road construction crew, and at nights entertained the boys with the tale of the night he was surrounded by a desperate gang of German raiders, forty or fifty of them, at a cellar—with wire overhead.