With Haig on the Somme Part 22

There, in the full blaze of the sun, the bells still dangled from a huge transverse beam; but everything else had been carried away, and the floor presented an open platform exposed to the sky, with a screen of sandbags at its western edge, through which the Germans had worked a Nordenfeldt.

There were only two men, and the one who had emptied his revolver into Jim Rogerson held up his hands, crying in a terrified voice: "Mercy, Kamerad!"

"Yus!" hissed Tiddler, dropping the dead man and s.n.a.t.c.hing his rifle from Dennis's hand before he could interfere. "The mercy you showed to my mate!" And he ran him through.

As the grim khaki figures sprang out on to the platform, the other German clubbed his rifle and made a dart for the head of the stairs, but the man Hawke had shot lay between him and liberty; and, tripping up, he plunged over the edge into s.p.a.ce, clutched wildly at a broken beam that still spanned the ruined walls, and dropped with a sickening crash on to the floor below.

"Reckon he won't do that any more, sir," chuckled Harry Hawke; but Dennis had already jumped on to the sandbags, and was semaphoring wildly with both arms.

"Guns captured! Come on, you chaps!" he signalled. And as the message was seen and understood, a wild cheer rose from the other end of the street as the Highlanders and his own battalion jumped from their cover and tore forward at the double.

He would have liked to linger on that point of vantage, which afforded a fine view of the surrounding country; but their work was done, and he followed the others down the stair again, only pausing for a moment to secure poor Rogerson's identification disc as he pa.s.sed him.

He found Hawke waiting at the stair-foot with a happy smile on his snub-nosed visage, and the pair ran out into the little square to mingle with the platoon which was going by at the double.

"Lumme!" exclaimed Harry Hawke, as a fearful burst of high explosive shook the very ground; and, looking over their shoulders, they saw the ruined tower they had just left sink to the ground amid a huge column of dust!

Their eyes met, but before either of them could speak Bob Dashwood's voice was heard shouting: "Look out, A Company! Ten rounds rapid, and load up for your lives! Here's a whole Bavarian battalion on top of us!"

CHAPTER XVII

The Exploits of A Company

"Tomkins!" cried the Captain, "bunk back to the C.O. if you can find him, and tell him there's a strong counter-attack on. Say it's a matter of minutes if we're going to hold the village."

Fifty yards beyond the outer fringe of those crumbled heaps a little stream flowed, a shattered willow here and there marking its course, and from the opposite bank the ground rose to what had once been a thick wood.

In front of the wood a solid ma.s.s of German infantry had suddenly sprung into view as if by magic, and, forming up elbow to elbow, moved down the slope, breaking into a brisk run. The great grey wave overlapped A Company for a considerable distance on either flank.

A strip of ragged garden hedge on our side of the stream, a well-head, and the wooden ribs of a stable which had somehow survived the bombardment were the only available cover, if one excepted two large sh.e.l.l craters.

"Hadn't we better fall back, Bob?" said Dennis, as he arrived breathlessly at his brother's side. "The thin red line at Balaclava was a fool to this."

"Fall back be hanged!" cried the Captain. "If we give them an inch we shall let them in. No, there's a better stunt than that. Where on earth are our machine-guns I'd like to know?"

His words were almost lost as the company poured a terrific fusillade into the advancing enemy, and the target being too big and too near to miss, every bullet found its billet. Men in the front rank went down like ninepins, but the rest came on over their bodies, and everyone realised that they meant business.

For once the enemy had resolved to use the bayonet, and less than sixty yards now separated them from the Reeds.h.i.+res.

Bob Dashwood sprang on to a heap of bricks, and his words rang out even among the bang and clatter that filled the morning air:

"Platoons One and Two, line the edge of that crater on your front, and hold your fire until they reach the water. Three and Four, form up at the hedge here, and if a man of you touches a trigger until he gets the word I'll give him four days' field punishment." Then he added, "Go to your own platoon, Dennis, and keep your eye on me. As soon as the beggars have felt our fire we'll try the cold steel on them."

As Dennis reached his men the Bavarians were already entering the water, which took them to the waist, and the two platoons delivered a burst of rapid fire as Bob had ordered.

The result was appalling, and for an instant the Bavarians seemed to waver, but those behind urged the rest on, and they came splas.h.i.+ng through the brook, whose course was choked and reddened by at least a couple of hundred dead and wounded.

It seemed an age before the other platoons at the hedgerow fired, but the welcome crash of their volley suddenly rang out, followed by a shrill blast on Bob's whistle.

"That's 'Cease fire,'" said Hawke; "and there goes the 'Charge.'"

"A Company, make ready!--go!" yelled their Company Commander, and he might very well have said "Come," for he was the first off the mark, and with a yell of wild delight, out of the crater, through the hedge, and across the half-dozen strides that divided them from the determined enemy, went the eager lads after their leader.

Dennis was conscious of a feeling of uncertainty as he raced forward, for he had not seen two things that had caught his brother's eye.

One was a row of Kilmarnock bonnets bobbing up over a communication trench a hundred yards away on the left flank of the company, and the other, three little brown dots at the corner of a wrecked barn considerably in advance of their right--little brown dots very busy about a Lewis gun.

If A Company could only succeed in holding back the advancing line for eighty seconds, their leader knew what would happen, and it was worth the effort.

Bob Dashwood's speciality was bayonet fighting, and every man of his command was a past-master in the art.

Brother officers had smiled indulgently at the Captain's enthusiasm for inter-company contests in that war of trench and dug-out, but Bob Dashwood had persisted on every possible opportunity, and it would be hard now if he did not reap his reward.

With a clash, Lee-Enfield and Mauser met on the bank of the stream, and Bob Dashwood scored first blood with the cold steel.

Three Bavarians went down before him with lightning rapidity, and as a fourth fired at the Captain from the hip and missed him, the Company Sergeant-Major was on him like a knife.

"Let 'em have it, boys!" shouted Bob, and as a voice replied, "Look to yourself, sir, we're all right," the foremost rank of the enemy was hurled into the water, through which the khaki lads splashed to the opposite bank.

There was a scramble and a squeeze. One or two slipped back, and the weight of their accoutrements took them to the bottom, but the bulk of them gained foothold, and nothing "made in Germany" could stay the rush.

Then the Lewis gun barked from the barn end, and a tremendous yell from the opposite flank told that the Highlanders were coming.

For the life of him, when he came to think over it afterwards, Dennis could recall nothing of that mad minute but the crack of his own revolver as he emptied it into the closely packed ma.s.s before him, and then a sea of terrified faces, growing grey like the uniforms they wore, as the Bavarians broke and went back helter-skelter up the slope.

Somebody shouted "Keep 'em moving, boys!" and the next thing he knew was that the fugitives were flinging themselves into the trench on the hill-top, and that he and A Company were dropping in after them, regardless of all consequences.

Here and there a too eager man was spitted on a German bayonet; here and there also a pair of arms went up, and the hated word "Kamerad"

smote the ear with a false note. But the Reeds.h.i.+res were taking no prisoners that morning, and having reached the trench on the very heels of the foe, the Bavarians made no attempt to hold it, and went streaming away along the communication that led into the heart of the wood.

Dennis looked back for a moment as he came to the shattered trees, which lay about in all directions in the most extraordinary confusion, and saw that the C.O. and the rest of the battalion had already cleared the stream, and were coming up in support.

"Keep on, old chap!" cried a voice, as Bob ran up. "Are you all right so far?"

"Yes, I'm all right; but, by Jove, you look a pretty beauty!"

The once smart captain, who somehow or other even in the wet trenches had generally managed to appear spotless, like the officers of the French army, who always looked as though they had been turned out of a band-box, now presented a most disreputable appearance.

His helmet was gone, his Bedford cords were torn in seven or eight places, and his left sleeve hung in ribbons. Up to his waist-belt he was soaked by his pa.s.sage through the stream. Above that his tunic was covered with blood; on the whole, not a man you would have cared to sit next to in a railway carriage or anywhere else.

But he only smiled as Dennis pointed to him. "Yes, I know," he said; "but what's the odds? We've done a big thing, and the rest of the battalion's done a big thing, and we've got to keep the beggars on the go before they dig themselves in. Come on, dear old Den.; you'll hardly believe it, but I haven't got a scratch of my own. All this gore belongs to the enemy, and I don't think we've lost more than a couple of dozen of A Company."

They ran side by side, and soon came up with a khaki mob of their own men and the Highlanders streaming along each side of the German communication trench, up which the Bavarians were still flying. Every now and then they fired into it or threw bombs, but the older hands knew that the walk-over would not last for ever, and kept their eyes skinned.