I Shoot a German
The bombers were kind to me, and I found myself paired with Sammy Sedgewick, a real gentleman. He was a very fine, clean-living fellow and we got on well together. He told me all that was necessary about my work, which was to be chiefly patrolling the trenches. It was possible that we might be called to bomb a post or assist with some offensive scheme, but on the whole there was no intimation of anything unusual. We had good dug-outs and plenty of rations, and our hours were much easier than in the company, where a man did six hours on and six hours off with monotonous regularity all the time we were in the line.
One came down from his post, chilled, half-dazed from lack of sleep, and pushed his way into the crowded underground to his chicken-wire bunk. There he could lay on his elbows and eat his rations, and consider himself lucky if there were any luke warm tea to drink. The warmth of the men thawed the earthy walls enough to cause them to ooze water. Rats were everywhere, great, podgy brutes with fiendish, ghoulishly-gleaming eyes. They came at night on the parapets and startled one so that he thrust at them with his bayonet, or crawled over him as he lay under his blanket in his bunk trying to “shiver himself warm.” The bombers had it much better than the company men.
We patrolled the crater line, visiting all the trench posts and in the stretches between paused now and then and sent grenades into the German front. Then we would hurry along and so escape any possible retaliation. Such a procedure naturally roused the ire of the men doing sentry, who could not leave their stations, and we were soon unpopular. Sammy and I agreed not to play such a game, and not to shoot grenades unless we were certain of a target. We got them twice. One sentry called out to us and pointed out dark blurs that were working about the German wire. We sent two grenades among them and a Lewis gun helped complete the job. Later in the night another sentry told me that he had seen two Germans working at something just opposite his post. It was very frosty and still and we could hear a thumping sound as if they were hammering posts. I set my rifle carefully and fired. The elevation was exactly correct and the red flash of explosion was over the very spot aimed at. The sound of the report had not died away before a long-drawn yell sounded. The voice seemed that of a mere boy and his agonized screaming could be heard all along the crater line. I had the sound in my ears all the next day.
The enemy sent over “darts” in reply but none fell near us. It was as cold as ever the next night. Everything had frozen and no working parties moved anywhere. The ground was like rock. We moved constantly while on our rounds, as it kept us warm, but the sentries huddled in their corners and grew stupid from the cold. Several of them went to sleep on duty. This would have been a serious matter in some places, but our officers and non-coms made allowance for a man’s condition. We were well managed. There had been no asinine drilling in muddy fields while we were out of the line, only necessary parades concerning equippage and pay and baths. Our rifles had to be kept clean, and our feet rubbed with whale oil to prevent frost bite, but there was no shining of brass and buttons. At one point we found a Lewis gun crew asleep, every man, and for a joke removed the gun, hid it, and wakened them by throwing bits of chalk. I do not think they went to sleep again when on post.
I saw one of our draft asleep, and wanted to wake him, but the officer making his rounds reached him first. He shook the fellow and then talked with him in a low voice, telling him the usual penalty for such neglect of duty. That man never forgot his lesson, or the kindness of the officer.
The cold continued, it being the coldest winter France had experienced in years. During those hours we wandered from post to post I thought of many things. Something in the eeriness of the line, great tumbled heaps of chalk, and rifts that were trenches, made one feel that danger was always near. Away on the Somme and up at the other end of the Ridge there was always shelling, and here and there machine guns chattered, but often our part of the sector would be quiet for an hour at a time. Only the stamping of feet, coughing, or the pounding of arms told where the sentries were, and overhead uncanny wailings crossed each other under the stars as the “big ones” went seeking cross roads and other back area targets.
I thought of Canada and its people, sleeping snugly in their beds, with only vague ideas of what war really meant, of the French folk in their cottages, many within range of the German guns, trusting that no sudden death would be their lot before morning, that some day the Allies must be victorious, shrugging their shoulders and meeting every fresh calamity with their laconic expression the soldiers termed “See la gare.”
I thought repeatedly of Steve, and now understood more clearly many of the letters he had written while in Belgium. Sometimes I stopped at Mickey’s post, or Melville’s or Charley’s and talked with them of the home town.
The war had changed men, changed them mightily. Down in dugouts where there was hardly room to breathe, men who had come from comfortable homes moved without complaints to their fellows. All grousing was reserved for the higher-ups, the “brass-hats” and the “big bugs” responsible for everything. The men were unselfish among themselves, instinctively helping each other, knowing each other, each with a balance and discipline of his own. We endured much. The dugout reeked with odours of stale perspiration and the sour, saline smell of clothing. There was not enough water to permit frequent washing, and whenever we could get warm the lice tormented us.
The vermin were everywhere. We could wash and change our shirts as often as we liked; within a few hours we were lousy again. Men squatted in their bunks beside candles and picked the seams of their clothing, sought the crawlers, always fought them, but never, while we were in those dugouts at Vimy, conquered them.
I talked with Tommy each night, and his vigorous comment was refreshing. He said that we were as uncivilized as in the beginning, that we were nocturnal beasts, hunting each other in packs, with the same mercies and feelings as wolves. He talked about his fellows and said that it was curious to note the influence the front had on different men. Everyone was puzzled about himself, wondering, and yet an open book to his comrades. I did not agree with such a view. Fear, he said, was at the back of every brain, and our talk was but to camouflage it.
One afternoon I had to go on an errand that led me up a trench called La Salle Avenue. Another man was going ahead of me and as we hurried along I heard a “phew-phew-phew” in the air. The man ahead looked over his shoulder and yelled. Crash! I was hurled against the trench wall, slammed against it, and for a moment knew nothing. A million bells rang in my ears. Lights danced and sparkled and I could not get my breath. Hands tugged at me and I got up to stare at a gaping, smoking crater not ten feet from where I had fallen. A big “rum jar” had fallen between the other man and myself, and though he was much further away than I, he was seemingly shell-shocked. He was taken back to a dugout and never again did front line work.
I was sick for an hour and my head ached and throbbed, but otherwise I was not affected. That night was very quiet. At times there was no shelling on the flanks, and there would be oppressive silence as the Very lights dropped silently and intermittently, their eerie glow tracing queer moving shadows across the desolate waste of chalk and dirty snow. A solitary rifle shot was startling, and the heavies overhead rumbled like express trains. I went down the trench and talked with Fernley, a very quiet, easy-going fellow. He had stood his rifle against the side of the trench and was pacing up and down and beating his chest with his arms in an effort get warm. We chatted awhile and then moved on.
I was not ten yards from him when – ping – a dart burst on the parapet several feet from where he was standing. I had turned as I heard the missile and to my surprise Fernley sank to the trench floor like a wet sack. I hurried to him and spoke to him, but he never answered. He was dead.
There was not a mark on him. A dart must strike almost beside one before doing great damage, and I was completely puzzled. I got the sergeant and he examined Fernley, and was mystified. We carried the dead man to the dressing station and they began to strip him. I went back to the trench and looked around, looked until I noticed the rifle still standing there, and – part of its bayonet was gone. The mystery was soon solved. The dart had exploded beside the bayonet and had blown three inches of the steel toward Fernley. His arms were extended as he beat himself and the piece pierced an armpit and entered his heart. Not a drop of blood had issued from the wound.
We were in supports again, and then back to the front trench, and this time I was excited. I was to do a reconnaisance with one of the non-coms. We crawled out under our wire and moved by inches, worming between Durand and Duffield Craters. After each yard or so we listened for a time and it was an hour before we were in position to look at the enemy wire and judge its strength. When we got back to the trench the bombers told me that a raid was to be made from both our craters and from the Patricia posts. The next day the Stokes mortars pounded the German line.
The raid was on the 13th of February, and zero was at 9.15 a.m. Six bombers were taken to Patricia and there we were given sixty grenades and told to shoot them all in two minutes, beginning at 9.13. It was ticklish work. In our hurry it would be easy to make a mistake and cause a premature burst, but no accident occurred and we got our barrage away on time. Then we went down to a tunnel entrance and awaited the raiders’ return. Buglers were stationed in the crater posts to blow the recall. One officer and five men were wounded, the officer severely, and two prisoners were taken.
That night we were relieved by the “Van Doos.” I offered to guide their bombers in to our particular dugout and was given the task. It was the first I had seen of the 22nd since they were in Amherst, and my impressions were rather mixed. They lagged in the trench, talking loudly, making much noise, and one man even played a mouth organ. We hurried as fast as we could, getting out before the company, and shortly after the Germans gave our friends a house-warming in the shape of a “Minnie” bombardment. We heard afterward that there were many casualties before morning.
The next day we marched and marched and marched, going through several towns, of which I only noticed Houdain, and on to Divion. After the long session in the crater line, with little exercise, it was a hard grind. My legs grew woodenly stiff, my back was numbed and aching, and my shoulders were raw where the straps chafed. We staggered into billets and I was sent back to the company and told that the “battalion bombers” were no more. A re-organization was to take place, each platoon to have its own bombers and machine gunners, and I was not sorry. I wanted to be with the old crowd again.
When I woke in the morning I could barely move myself. The boys brought me my breakfast and I lay in my blankets until noon. Then the medical sergeant, a prince of a fellow, came and examined me, and asked about my experience with the “rum jar.” He said that I had undoubtedly suffered from concussion, and that I had better remain in billets for the day. The next morning I went on the sick parade and the medical officer, after a brief examination, gave me a paper and told me to report to a medical hut in Bruay. I went at once, for I was missing an inspection, a review by General Nivelle.
I was at the hut in Bruay for two hours before the orderly there took my paper. A dozen of us sat in a chilly room and waited for our turn. The man next to me had sore feet and I judged from my paper that my heart was to be examined. After waiting until one o’clock, four hours, a doctor came and snatched my paper and the one from the man with bad feet, then he yanked me into the room. Four officers were there. They ordered me to remove my boots. I started to protest and explain, and was told to keep quiet. They looked my feet over and told me to dress them again, then pushed me out by another door. I don’t know what happened to the man who needed my examination.
The medical sergeant told me to report again to the doctor, but he was a gruff man who had little use for the “other ranks” and I felt that I could carry on. At once I was notified for guard. We were marched to an old brick barn and reached our quarters overhead by a shaky ladder on the outside of the building. It was terribly cold and the barn had a hundred vents for the wind. We lay on bare boards and tried to keep warm but it was impossible. The sergeant went out and after a long time returned with a jug of rum. Earle was on the guard with me and neither of us, as a rule, took our ration, but we did that night. We were trembling with cold and the sergeant gave each of us a cigarette tin of the liquor. I felt as if I could not swallow it and after a time things seemed to move, but I was warmed. It came my turn to go down and stand sentry by the ladder but I found it a very difficult task to reach the ground. Once there I clung to the ladder and watched the estaminet nearby go wheeling around. Earle had as difficult a time when he came down, but when we were relieved each of us went to sleep and slept warm until morning.
Christensen, the Dane, got in wrong with the non coms on Sunday. He was told to prepare for church parade and would not do so, saying that he had no religion, that he was an infidel. They crimed him for it and ever afterward he was given sharp treatment. I was in a billet with Billy, the complainer, Earle, Laurie, Flynn, a quaint Irishman who had false teeth, and Theriault and Roy, two of the New Brunswick draft. We were in a house and slept fairly warm, but one night a rat stole Flynn’s teeth from where he had lain them by his head and went down between the walls with them. Flynn roused everyone, but never recovered his grinders. Theriault and Roy were comical chaps and we got on well together.
The sergeant-major called me to his billet one night and asked me if I cared to be promoted or not. Up to that hour I had been fairly content with my lot, but somehow – though I knew he meant it well – his words brought back all my old bitterness against the army. I refused to consider such a proposition, and he was far more courteous than I had expected. He told me that our draft was the finest bunch of men to join the battalion, though the 92nd had been considered an extra class, and that he wished to get some good N.C.O.’s from among us. I said nothing, but I knew that some of our men were of the very finest type, as well educated as any of the officers.
The weather continued cold and one of our draft became sick. He was in a barn lying on straw and had little attention other than that of his mates. He was a college graduate, from a splendid home, and he died in hospital after being moved, having been neglected too long. Several of the boys were highly roused over it, Tommy especially, and it was rumoured that Christensen, who had become stretcher bearer, wrote a letter to the lad’s parents, a letter which was not allowed to go through, and for which he was again crimed.
The new platoons were formed and we were shifted in our billets. I found myself moved to the other side of the village and teamed with a man named McDonald, an “original” 42nd man who had been in the transport section but had come to grief through some infraction of rules, and so was sent back to the company. He was a very likeable chap and we were soon good friends. Through him I got acquainted with several of the oldtimers: Westcott, a lance-corporal; Martin, a Lewis gunner, and Davies, our sergeant who was the finest non-com I met in France.
One very bitter morning as we went from our billets to the cook kitchen, a considerable distance away, we passed the house where our company commander lodged. As we went by his window we heard him complaining to his batman that his shaving water was too cold. Tommy, a chap named Jasper, Arthur and myself had had for several mornings to use snow as water, rubbing it on our faces in lieu of washing, and trying to force a lather with the same. Water was very scarce. Tommy stopped and gave voice to feelings that we all had, and we appeared for parade without being shaved. Our officer was one sent to the company as a supernumerary, and he took great delight in putting us “up” for company office. Our major asked us why we had not shaved. “My shaving water was too cold,” said Tommy, and Jasper, and Arthur and myself.
The major reddened furiously, he glared, then grinned, and looked severe again, and finally sentenced us to dig a much-needed latrine near our billets, and to do it after the usual parades. When the time came, a burly police escorted us to the garden of a French miner, and ordered us to go to work. In a short time the owner of the place appeared, and asked, in French, what we were doing. Arthur could speak French like a native, and he explained that we were going to plant some doubtful bombs there. They might explode and they might not, but it was not safe to have them in our billets. The Frenchman went wild. He rushed at us and tore the shovels from our hands and he almost clubbed our gallant escort, who finally bade us to stand by for further orders. We went back to our billets and, very strangely, were never recalled.
The 42nd had a fine football team and it defeated the R.C.R.’s, then the 49th, and we were marched to Marle les Mines to watch them play. They won the divisional championship and were presented with a silver bugle. Sir Robert Borden came and reviewed us, then General Lipsett and finally General Byng. All the old hands said that we were in for a bloody slaughter, after so many inspections, but we did not believe them – we had grown accustomed to “cook house” rumours. We knew, nevertheless, that we were to participate in a big battle, for we were training daily over tapes that represented the German trench system on the Ridge.
We had got to know Divion fairly well, and knew where to purchase eggs and chips and, occasionally, French bread. The rations were better than they had been in the line and we began to feel more like living. I often went to the kitchen of my billet to write letters or jot notes in my diary, and soon discovered that madame and her family were not the least disturbed by my presence. Mickey was with me one cold Saturday evening when the two bony daughters of the household calmly bathed beside the stove, and then the father came home and madame scrubbed from him the grime of the coal mines.
I had had just fatigue enough one day to clear me from parade and was going back to my billet when I met a man who, I often thought, came nearest of any to guessing my state of mind. He was Sergeant Cave of the scouts, a tall, shrewd-eyed man who knew his business. He was going then to arrange targets to shoot at and asked me if I cared to go along. I went, and found that the targets were simply tin cans stuck on a hillside, but I surprised the sergeant. In Canada I had made good scores with the Ross rifle, and I could shoot much better than the average soldier. My father, an officer of the old 93rd Regiment, had been an expert marksman.
We shot, five of his snipers and myself, at tin ends on the bank, a small target. In ten times I never missed, and then I punctured one at one hundred and fifty yards. The sergeant was excited and asked my name and my platoon. I talked with him a time and then went back to Tommy and the boys.
The battalion moved to Dumbell Camp, a miserable swamp in a wood near Villers Au Bois. We bagged slimy mud and made shelters, walls three feet high covered with corrugated iron, or rubber sheets, or anything we could salvage, and camouflaged the whole with branches. It rained and was very cold and the rations were very scarce. Never in France was I as hungry as then, and I would have eaten anything in the food line I could find in the muck.
From that mess we were rushed to the front line. The Germans had blown a mine north and adjoining Durrand Crater, and a party of them had been repulsed by our “A” Company which was in the line. Thirty yards of front line had been destroyed and it was important that a new trench be made, with saps leading to new posts. The Germans shelled the Quarry line and all the back area as we marched in, and the mud made the going hard. In addition, we had not had enough to eat and were almost sick from exposure to rains and mud. We had been almost drowned out of our shelters. More new men had joined us and among them was a pair, Slim and Joe, that no one wanted near them. “Slim” was a tall, thin, bony lad, not over seventeen, uneducated, who had been living like a gypsy until the war, and who did not know his parents. Joe, his mate, was a French-Canadian, who also was uneducated, and who had no dependents. They did not get any mail, were very slovenly in dress and drill, and would not wash or shave unless forced to do so.
As we entered the communication trench Slim fell in at my heels; Arthur was next to him and then Laurie. An officer named Stewart took charge of us, and we filed from the cover of the trench to open ground. Sharp orders were hissed. We had to dig in along tapes and we were in range of both snipers and machine guns. The mud was deep and we did not know our location. Each man worked frantically. A brigade wirer led the way and it so happened that I was first man out and farthest over. All around us there was a clamour of shell fire and machine guns were rattling. It was quite dark and flares were soaring in quick succession.
Slim stuck close to me and I had to thrust him back in his position. We dug and dug. I struck barbed wire in tangles, and the brigade man heard me and came with his cutters. As he left he groaned and sank to earth, shot through the body. Bullets were snapping all around us and Slim got down on his knees and huddled close to the earth, yet never slackened his shovelling. I did not draw a full breath until I had gotten below my wire, then I looked around. Arthur was sitting in the mud. I thrust past Slim and went to him and asked if he were sick. He looked at me and shook his head and would not speak. I insisted and he said, so low I could hardly hear him, “Freddy was right.”
“Are you hit?” I asked, and he shook his head, then got up and began to work. I went back to my place, puzzled. He had never acted queerly before.
Almost immediately there was a call for stretcher bearers and then came word that Lieutenant Stewart, a finely built man, had been shot through the stomach. He died that night. I worked on and Slim kept pace with me. We soon had our strip as deep as required, and at last came word for us to go back. We started and had not gone a dozen feet when Arthur pitched over on the bank, shot through the head. A chill crept over me, weakened me. How had he known?
It was daylight when we reached camp, but we sat about a time, cleaning mud from our legs, before we lay down to sleep, and we talked about Arthur. Freddy did not say a word; he had got so that he would not talk. Charley was deeply impressed, though he had not been one of the six. “None of us’ll ever see home again,” he said, as he crawled from sight. “We might as well go now as any time.”
That night we marched out again, tired as we were. Near me was a lad named Gilroy, a plucky little chap whose boots had almost crippled him. He took them off as we rested by a road and the flesh was worn raw and bleeding. He would not report to the sergeant. Once more we worked under machine gun fire, but were mostly deepening the trenches and making posts, and none of our lot was hit. We staggered and stumbled back to our Camp at daylight, and hardly knew what we were doing. We were moving automatically, trying to follow the man in front, shaking with cold, dull, heavy-eyed in the gray light, every muscle clamouring for rest, for the torpor of sleep. Starved as we were, we would not take more than a drink of tea that waited us before we wormed, mud and all, into our shelters.
A third night we went, forcing ourselves into action, and the Hun shelled more fiercely than before. In the Quarry Line we came in contact with a line of mules going up with rations and ammunition. As our party took the near side of the embankment, the sides of the sunken road, whizz bangs began to erupt all along, and we crouched to cover. Twice we had narrowly escaped a salvo, and then, just before our trench, more shells came. I jumped ahead and squeezed between a mule and the bank. The brute knew as well as I the safety of the earth wall and thrust solidly against me, so that its dirty hide was pressing my face.
Whizz bang! Whizz bang! Whizz bang! Three explosions so near that I felt the “lift” of concussion. Yells. “Stretcher bearer – stretcher bearer!” A man was down on the rails behind us, and those in front were racing for the trench mouth. I tried to push past my mule and the beast sagged on me so that Tommy had to help get me clear. As I did so the mule dropped dead, and I found that my legs were bathed in its blood.
Up in the trenches we just worked when forced to by the non-coms. Every man was dead beat and nervous under the shelling and machine gun fire. I asked who was hit in the Quarry line and told that it was a man named Cockburn, not one of our draft. Again we reached our camp, and once more I started to worm into shelter, then remembered that I had not seen Laurie. I went over to the stretcher bearer’s mud hole and uncovered him. “Was anyone beside Cockburn hit?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Laurie was hit, shrapnel near the spine, a place you could put your hand in. He’ll not live.”
Laurie and Baxter had been together since we had come to France, but Baxter had been sent to the Brigade Trench mortars. It seemed as if our little company was going fast, I went back to my place, and Charley was there. He looked at me, and he was an unhealthy colour. “Bill,” he said, “how would a man know he was for it?”
“He wouldn’t,” I said vehemently. “That stuff is all bosh. What’s the matter?”
“I saw something to-night,” he said. “Just as we left the trench I thought a big white light flashed around me and that I was picked up on something like a flak car and whizzed away from here altogether. It was the queerest feeling I ever had and – I – believe I’m for it.”
I argued savagely with him. Charley was not a thinker. He was one of the rough and ready type, rugged, used to fun and merriment. He went to his shelter, but I saw that I had not convinced him. McDonald asked me about him and when I told him of Charley’s obsession he jeered and said there was nothing in it. That night we marched in and took over the front line.
No sooner were we established than the sergeant came and told me that I was to go to the sniping section and to report to Cave – I had been transferred. I raged. Smaillie had just arranged that I be on his post, with MacMillan, and I had the next six hours off duty. All the while we had been dragging our souls out through the mud and sleeping in the mud, without proper food, the snipers had been in their warm dugout having it much easier than we.
In that mood I reported. Cave was very kind to me and told me that I would work with Harry, an English chap, who was a reliable sniper. In the next bunk were Sedgewick, a brother to Sammy, and Smoky, a cranky-sounding fellow. They did not offer to make friends with me, and I saw that Smoky was one of the men I had beaten at shooting. Harry, however, was kind and we had long conversations.
The dugout we were in was very long and roomy, and to my delight several of our company moved into the other end. As they sat cleaning their rifles someone discharged his, and the snipers sat up and yelled curses. No one had been hit, but they talked among themselves of those blasted “herring chokers” and “soup eaters,” and wondered why the battalion had not got “our own kind” of men. “Perhaps,” said a voice, “the squaws wouldn’t let them come.”
It was Tommy, or course, who had come to see me.
For a moment there was a challenging tensity in the air, but Tommy was not answered, and soon the matter passed. It was not the first time we had heard that outbreak. Many of the “oldtimers” resented us, for in all the company competitions our men were easily outstanding. The sharp-tongued sergeant had become outspoken on the matter, until one day at Divion he loosed his spite when only men of our draft were with him. Hughey promptly caught him up like a schoolboy and shook him till his teeth rattled. “You’re not enough man to hit,” he said, “but I’ll slap your pretty little face for you,” and he did. The sergeant was white with fury at first, but calmed when he heard all present tell him very plainly what he might expect if things went further. He reported Hughey, however, but gained small satisfaction. The men were the only witnesses and they stuck to the story that the sergeant had attacked Hughey.
Curiously, the “originals,” and they were very few, seemed to dislike us because we did not seem to care for hard liquor or the red lights of Bruay. Most of the lads played poker when in rest billets. Very few of them ever got drunk, or bothered with French women. Quite a few of us had books in our packs and read when we had an opportunity. The old “hard” men could not understand us.
That night the Germans bombarded our trenches but no one was hurt. “Rum jars” put our candles out and brought down showers of chalky earth, but the roof held. In the morning Harry and I went out, as soon as it was light, to a sniping post on the crater line. A steel plate was placed on a high point, and camouflaged on the enemy side with wire and rubbish. We swung back the small plate that covered our observing slit and watched for a victim.
It was interesting to lie there and scan the German lines through a glass that brought everything to you with startling clearness. I could see their coloured sandbags, spades lying on the parados, tiny curls of smoke from a dugout, and several times a big pot helmet bobbed along the trench, just high enough for us to get occasional glimpses. Keen to spot a Hun, I lay there until I was more cramped and chilled than I realized, and then went back to the dugout. What a change! We simply went, whenever we felt like it, and got a drink of hot tea and had something to eat. In the afternoon we went again and I studied a tangle of wire and stakes away over on the left, and had as my reward a momentary view of a gray figure flitting to cover.
Sedgewick and Smoky, I gathered, were scouts, and did their work at nights. I heard them reporting their prowl of the previous night, and thrilled as I listened. Scouting appealed to me more than anything else, and I talked a little with Cave about it after they were in their bunks. He eyed me sharply, as if doubtful of my ability, and explained that it was a grim game, requiring special qualities of character and training, nerve power, and instinct of hearing, and the sense of direction in darkness. Often a man was required to play a lone hand in a tight situation, and always he must be prepared for the unexpected. I simply replied that I was sure I could do as well as the others.
Harry and I went out a second day, and never had a shot. He was a cool-going fellow, and never seemed hurried or impatient. He told me that he had shot over eighteen Germans and expected to get many more. Then, on the third morning, I got my fill of such sport. We were in our usual position when I saw a German in full pack rise almost waist-high in a place in their trench. I was so amazed that it took me a moment to discover that during the night our guns had blown in the parapet. The German apparently was a new man to that sector, or else had grown careless of danger. He did not hurry and I tingled all over as I scored my first hit. It was not a great shot, the distance was not one hundred yards, and I had cross-hair sights, but at last I had really killed a Hun.
Harry was tickled. He rubbed his hands and noted down the facts in his book but had not finished when a second German, also in pack, rose in the same place. I shot him as soon as he appeared, as I was excited and taut on the trigger. Hardly had he fallen than a third man stepped on the piled earth, and stared all around. I shot him very carefully, aiming directly at his left breast, and through my telescopic sights could see his buttons. As he pitched down beside the others, two more Germans appeared, but they had thrown off their packs and big helmets and they flung themselves down by the broken parapet and peered toward me. One had an immense head, round, enormous, and he glared like a bull. His mate was very dark and his hair was close-cropped. They remained with their chins resting on the bags, as if watching me, and Harry gripped my shoulder, “Shoot, man,” he rasped in my ear, “you won’t get a chance like this again.”
A queer sensation had made me draw back. I handed him the rifle. “Go ahead yourself, if you want,” I said, “I’ve had enough of this bloody game.”
He seized the Ross and took quick aim and I saw the dark flush that spurted over the face of the bigheaded man. He sank from view, his fingers clawing and tearing at the bags as he went. His companion ducked slowly, just escaping Harry’s second shot. Then over on the left by the wire tangle, a German got up and walked overland and he carried a big dixie. It was a cook, and it clearly proved that a new battalion was in the line. Harry shot him with great satisfaction, and then potted a third man, an officer, who stepped up on the blown-in part and waved to a working party. When he fell he first stepped back, then ahead. No other Germans came in sight, though we could see their shovels as they cleared their trench. Harry shot at a helmet top several times, and twice a spade waved a miss. Then he led the way back to the dugout and told me that unless I explained myself to Cave he would have to report me.
The sergeant looked at me oddly as I told him I had had my fill of such butcher work, and he said he would see about it when I went out. He said that probably it was too big a kill for my first time, and that if I had just gotten one man in a day I would never have minded. Then he informed me that there was to be a raid the next day, April 1st, between Durrand and Duffield and that I would be with snipers who were to get on top and shoot any Germans who fled overland.
The raid was in the morning and a box barrage was laid down. We climbed out of the trench as soon as the raiding party went over. I had been hot and tired the day before and had not slept much that night. I could not eat and as I got out of the trench I was almost dizzy. The Stokes battery put over their part of the barrage and several of their shells fell short, dropping very near us. An officer shouted to me to watch out, but I did not care what happened. I could not understand my condition and knew I must be sick. Two Germans were captured, one a little short man, and they came hustling back our way. The rest of the enemy had gone into their dugouts as the barrage opened and our men threw bombs and Stokes down the stairways and killed them in their hiding places. The short German got excited as he ran. He had his hands up and was slipping and falling all the time. Getting out of one hole he changed direction and ran to our right. A new man was on post there and when he saw the German appear he shot him.
The other man got over all right and the raiders withdrew without a casualty. I was last man down from our position and an officer, the one who shouted at me, came and smelled my breath. “That man acted as if he were drunk,” he said.
I did not say anything to him, but sat on the firestep resting before I could follow the other snipers to the dugout. Several sentries were grouped near me and they were much excited over the raid, and the fact that the Germans had appeared so easily subdued. Martin got up at one post and said he would pot the first squarehead to show himself.
Crack! Martin slumped back, dead. A sniper had got him in the temple.
I watched them put a blanket over him and carry him away and then saw our medical officer going along the trench. As he passed me he stopped and stared, then felt under my ears. “Why don’t you report when you’re sick?” he bellowed. “Do you want to spread that stuff all around?”
I was dazed. “You’ve got the mumps, man,” he roared. “Come along.”
He took my rifle and laid it on the firestep, yanked off my equipment and slung it there, then took me by the arm and started me out to the Quarry Line. When I reached his post I was all in. The medical sergeant got me a hot drink and was very kind. He put me on a trolley that ran back to Mount St. Eloi and away I went. An ambulance took me to some clearing station and there, as soon as my tag was read, I was hustled to an outbuilding. It had been a stable or pen and had a strong door and foot-square windows. As I reeled into it the orderly snapped the door into place and fastened it securely. I was locked in.
For the moment I hardly knew where I was and then I found that I had company. A man with several day’s growth of beard on his face, and red-shot eyes, was on his hands and knees, going around and around in circles on the stone floor. He ignored me entirely and kept muttering to himself. In a split second I forgot my weakness. I got to the door, which had an open grating and yelled to a soldier who was by a cook wagon. He came over and I was cunning enough to tell him that I was very hungry. I showed him a five-franc note and told him he could have it for a mess-tin full of mulligan. When he brought it he released the door and extended his offering. I kicked as hard as I could, sending the hot food into his face, blinding him. He yelled and pawed at his eyes and I ran from the place without looking back. In the front an ambulance was just starting away. I piled into it and discovered it only had one man on board, and he seemed unconscious.
We swayed and rocked along the road and a snowstorm began. When the ambulance stopped I climbed out and walked to a tent where an orderly confronted me. He read my ticket and asked me who had sent me there. I made no definite answer and he said that Canadians were for some other hospital, but he led me to a marquee that served as a mumps ward. A dozen men were there, some of them huddled around a brazier. I was shown my “bed,” a stretcher resting on two high benches. Under it was at least an inch of water and drifting snow that had come in the tent door.
The blankets were made up so that one could only get into bed near the pillow and thrust feet first down into it. As the benches were easily tipped over this required careful work, and I was glad to get in safely. One of the men told me that an orderly would come for my khaki and put it through the “mill.” That meant a steaming plant, and that my tunic and trues would come back to me in a wrinkled mass that could never be straightened. So I folded them and thrust them under my blankets, next to the stretcher.
Shortly afterwards the orderly came, and I told him another man had taken my uniform. He went away and I went to sleep. I woke next morning, and snow had blown in on my bed and melted so that one shoulder was damp. Not a doctor or nurse had come near, and none did till nearly noon. Then the medical officer came and asked a few questions, said something to the nurse with him, and passed on. After he had gone the other patients told me that he would not likely be back for two days, and that I was in the most slip-shod hospital in France, an Imperial outfit at St. Pol.
Three of the men got up and dressed and brought us something to eat. These three had been well for over two weeks and had simply stayed in the marquee, slipping out whenever the doctor was making his rounds. No one bothered them and they had a good time. An orderly, an Englishman they called “Spike,” came and told me that I had better move into the next ward. He was a fine young fellow, had been two years at college, and was very bitter against all those in authority at the hospital.
I moved to a bigger tent and stayed there six days. The doctor never looked at me again; was only in the tent once in that time. The nurses came seldom, except one, a Canadian girl, from Ontario, who, when she found I was Canadian, used to come and talk with me. She was on night duty and would come with her flashlight, making the rounds. She told me that things were worse than I could realize and that her only hope was to get away from the place. I had had the worst of my sickness in the dugout and no complications set in. Easter morning we were surprised to see an officer and orderlies come into the ward and start laying oranges and cigarettes on the tables. The officer gave us strict orders not to touch them. “There is to be an inspection first,” he said. “After it is all over we will come and tell you and you can help yourselves.”
None of us had had enough to eat in the place, the food was very scarce, and no smokes could be obtained, so that we lay and feasted our eyes on the good things. Presently a retinue of red tape and bombasity passed through the ward, glancing at the exhibit. No sooner had they gone than in came the officer and orderlies again, with their same baskets, and before more than two or three of us had gotten our cigarettes and oranges they had seized our supposed treat and taken it, never giving a word of explanation. Spike came in and told us that they had pulled the same stunt in nearly every ward, and that the doctors and head nurses would have a big blow-out in their own quarters.
That evening I moved to a third tent. They were making ready for the casualties of the 9th, and were putting more patients in one ward. There were eight of us in a much smaller tent and I found myself next a man from the 7th battalion. He was a middle-aged fellow and well-educated, and we talked for hours at a time. The sniping business preyed on my mind so that some nights I could not sleep yet I could not mention it to him. I was much better, and as darkness came on we thought of the boys in the trenches up in the crater lines, waiting for the morrow.
I thought of Freddy, and wondered what he was doing; I felt that if he did not get sent back on some job or get wounded he would lose his reason, for he rarely spoke to any one. Big Herman tried to humour him, but the rest left him alone. I thought of Charley, and his premonitions, of little Mickey and his boyish face, of Earle and MacMillan and McDonald. How lucky I had been to get clear of the attack, and yet I wished with all my heart and soul that I was there. In spite of all the bitterness I had brought to France with me I had got to like the battalion, to be proud that I belonged to it, and I liked our sergeant, Smaillie, the sergeant-major and our company commander. They were all “white” men.
At midnight the ambulance brought in a soldier whose face was so swollen that he could not speak. He had crawled in mud from a listening post, unable to walk, and his hands were raw discoloured hooks. Spike put the man to bed and he lay very quiet after getting a hot drink. In the morning he was dead. He had died without making a sound, absolutely worn out with crawling in the mud, back and forth from post to trench, without enough to eat, and suffering all kinds of exposure. He seemed to be quietly resting when we looked at him, and one felt rather glad that the poor chap was through with all the mud, and rain, and snow, and rats, and lice, and discipline, and discomfort; he could rest a long, long time.
Towards morning I lay awake and listened for the barrage. I could picture the boys in the trench, tense waiting, staring over the parapet. Mud would be everywhere, plastering their clothing, gripping their feet. Our last trip in had been a nightmare journey and the deep trench in the dusk looked like the bed of some dirty river, suddenly gone dry. The barrage was like rolling thunder. Even where we were we could hear it so plainly that it awed us, kept us quiet. As it grew light I saw men go by the tent carrying something wrapped in a ground sheet, with muddy boots sticking stiffly out, eloquent of an ended journey. Spike came in and said the man had been brought down in the night, a scurvy case, and that they had not tried to put him in a bed.
No one brought us any breakfast and so I got up and dressed – I had managed to keep my khaki with me – and went among the tents until I found the kitchen. I gave the number of our ward. “How many?” barked the cook. “Twelve,” I said, and was given hot cocoa and bread and jam and margarine. scant enough rations for our eight, but the best meal we had had. Then I got in bed again and talked with the 7th battalion man, while out on the roads motor lorries droned and rattled without ceasing.
We talked of patriotism. He said it was not a password in his company, that loyalty was a word they sneered at; discipline, with the death penalty behind it, a canker we could not cure. Then he derided the caste of the nation and cursed the propaganda passed out by preachers, editors, staff officers and platform patriots of both sexes. He seemed emotional and told me that he was an original member of his battalion, and so I humoured him, though not condoning all his violence. We agreed that the war was, in some indefinable way, our duty, but that those “patriots” were to be detested as our handicaps. We were sure that had they been as sacrificial and sincere as the soldier the war would have been over, or would never have been begun.
I thought of the way some of those platform shouters had ranted about the Germans, and their “hate,” and how different it was in the battalion. All uttered hate was at the “higher-ups,” and outside of a certain derisive jesting at old “Heinie” the German was seldom mentioned in billets. Given a dirty night at the crossroads or an undue strafing in the trenches and there would be bitter vows of vengeance and Fritz and his methods would be luridly described. Twenty-four hours later the orator would give a prisoner a cigarette and grin at him.
We talked about discipline, the cruelty of cartwheel crucifixion, which I had seen on the parade grounds of the R.C.R.’s below Mount St. Eloi. Men, volunteers, spread-eagled to cart-wheels, tied there for hours in a biting, bone-chilling wind, all because the fellow had not shined a button or given some snobby officer a proper deference. I had seen men laden with their packs and rifles, overcoats and all, marched back and forth, twenty feet each way, to the barking of a bristled non-com, a sheer process of fatiguing the man until he was almost a wreck; and these men who had left good jobs and homes and had come, as the orators said, to fight for right and loved ones.
We were all, the 7th man said, at the mercy of authority-crazed, overfed, routine-bound staffs, old fogies with a tragic lack of imagination and a criminal ignorance of actual warfare. Spike came in and sat a long time on our beds, talking about religion. He was a thinker, and it was his theory that we took from this world our memories and affections, and he wondered what visions of the war we would carry. His ideas held me. If, I thought, the cosmic law is based on logical principle, then memory and affection ARE indestructible and personality persists beyond that which we call death.
The 7th battalion man proved even more of a thinker than Spike. Life, he said, was an uncreated thing, co-existent with Him who is life, and Time is not, never was and never will be. Memory and affection might be indestructible, and we are much greater than we know, component parts of that Spirit that is undying. He looked at me and said solemnly, “You’ll find, Jock, that the greatest moment here on earth is when you leave it.”
Privates in a dirty, wind-blown, rain-soaked tent, unshaven, strangers to each other, with sick men on either side, discussing topics that cause any man to sober. I think of Spike and that 7th man every time I read of the “sodden cattle” of the dugouts.
All that day I wondered about Steve and what it had been like at Hill 60. It must have been another region where mine craters grew and multiplied and sprouted machine gun posts and saps, but what had those first fighters thought of the war? Had there been rats up there, those obscene creatures with their glittering eyes, had they to endure the same post duties, six hours on, six off, in all weather, under all fires, all dangers, and with the wraiths of no man’s land peeping over the parapets in the lonely hours before dawn? And the more I thought of these first comers the more I wished I had been with them.
I woke next morning and heard strange guttural voices. Dressing hurriedly, I went into the next tent and found it filled with wounded Germans. They stared at me, some of them friendly, some indifferent. One chap with a turban-sized bandage on his head was sitting up, stolidly eating bully as though it were an occupation instead of a meal. A man beside me said something, repeated it, and I gathered that he wanted a drink. I got my mug and water bottle and he drank thirstily, then thanked me. Spike came in and asked me to give him a hand in feeding them, and I enjoyed it. The stolid man with the bully was the exact replica of a New Brunswicker with us, who only asked for plenty of hard tack and his rum ration. Given those, he was content, and a double issue seemed to make a feather bed of his chicken-wire bunk.
An officer came that night to see the Germans. He was one of those eyeglass youngsters, full of “pip-pip” and “tootle-oo” stuff, which fizzed from him as he talked to the nurse accompanying him. I did not know whether she was there out of curiosity or as his bodyguard, but they went away again without doing anything to help a sufferer, leaving only a trail of “right-os” and “cheerios.” Spike came afterwards and ground his teeth. So far as we knew he was the only person to attend those wounded Germans all that night.
I was just sixteen days at St. Pol, then coolly walked away from the place and got on board a train.
No one halted me or questioned me. I never had seen a doctor again, and for five days I drew rations for our ward, washed sick men’s faces, and fed many. I had a bath at the bath house and even drew a new tunic from the quartermaster I unearthed, and a badge. As I left, a Scot – a bandy-legged chap – who had been hanging around one ward six weeks, dodging doctors, looked at my balmoral and said seriously, anxiously, “Ye’ll no disgrace the tartan wull ye lad?” I looked him up and down and walked away.
By devious ways I reached Mount St. Eloi and there to my astonishment found Melville. He had been down the line with mumps the same as I, had taken French leave from his ward and was very anxious to get back to the boys. We went over the Ridge just at dusk and found it a jungle of old wire and powdered brick and muddy burrows and remnants of trenches. We went off the main track that was being used and sat in a big crater to rest. Melville spoke sharply and I looked. Three dead men were reclining in the place, lolled back to the muddy wall, gazing incuriously before them, their faces turned black. We rose and climbed away from the place and almost stumbled over another dead man crouched in a shell hole, his rifle in his hands, squatted as if he were ready to spring.
In the twilight, just before darkness, we stood and looked down over the Ridge on the enemy side. The first flares rose, in scattered places, and we could not distinguish the lines. The air was damp and chilling, an unearthly feeling predominated. The dead man, the solitary flares, the captured ground, gave me a sense of ghosts about, and one realized the tragedy of the stricken hill. Many, many men had died on that tortured, cratered slope.
We found the platoon, and hardly recognized it. The sergeant was there, and MacDonald, but the rest were strangers. They told me that the 73rd, of the Fourth Division, had been so cut up that they had been withdrawn and the 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders had taken their place. The remnant of the 73rd had been divided between us and the 13th. I got MacDonald to one side and asked questions. It was far worse than I thought. The 42nd had gone straight through to their objective despite the sleety snow and mud and confusion, had driven back all opposition and seized their objective. But on their left the Fourth Division had been held up, and a flanking fire had taken heavy toll.
Freddy was gone, he had predicted truly. A big shell had landed beside him, killing him and burying him. Charley had fallen in the first rush, riddled with bullets. Joe, the ex-policeman, had fought through to the objective, and had been killed by a sniper on the flank. One shell had wiped out Stevenson, Theriault and Roy, as they grouped by a captured gun. MacMillan had been shot in the stomach, and had died after waiting hours in a trench. Billy, the complainer, had fallen as he charged a machine gun, keeping on until he was almost within reach of the gunners. Little Gilroy had been killed, and Westcott, and Smaillie had been wounded. Hughie, and the sergeant he had defied, had been wounded at the same time, and had been taken away together. Big Herman was missing. They located his body a month later. That morning he had shaken hands with Freddy, said goodbye to him, and then when he had got going had run amuck. He was found almost at the bottom of the Ridge, near a battery position, with eight dead Germans about him, four of them killed by bayonet.
In the other platoons, besides Tommy, Slim and Joe had survived, and Ira and Sam, and big Glenn and Eddie, and Mickey and Jerry. They sat in the dugout that night, after a hard day of re-building roads, each man suffering from bodily fatigue, and crawling vermin, and the clammy chill of mud-caked clothing, their faces brooding, enigmatic, even Mickey’s curiously odd, only their eyes moving. They would not talk about the fighting and seemed utterly worn. Six months ago we had marched to Mount St. Eloi, eagerly, bravely, our tin hats askew and with a cheeky retort for every comment, hiding whatever secret apprehensions we had, not knowing the heavy ominous silence that follows the burst of big shells – and the cries of the wounded; not knowing what it is to scrape a hasty grave at night and there bury a man who has worked with you and slept with you since you enlisted.