A Yankee in the Trenches Part 7

When the darkness settled again, I got to my feet and jumped at him. He jumped at me--another marvel. Going into the clinch I missed him with the persuader and lost my grip on it, leaving the weapon dangling by the leather loop on my wrist. He had struck at me with his automatic, which I think he must have dropped, though I'm not sure of that. Anyway we fell into each other's arms and went at it barehanded. He was bigger than I. I got under the ribs and tried to squeeze the breath out of him, but he was too rugged.

At the same time I felt that he didn't relish the clinch. I slipped my elbow up and got under his chin, forcing his head back. His breath smelled of beer and onions. I was choking him when he brought his knee up and got me in the stomach and again on the instep when he brought his heel down.

It broke my hold, and I staggered back groping for the persuader.

He jumped back as far as I did. I felt somehow that he was glad. So was I. We stood for a minute, and I heard him gutter out something that sounded like "Verdamder swinehunt." Then we both backed away.

It seemed to me to be the nicest way out of the situation. No doubt he felt the same.

I seem to have wandered far from the Quarries and the Grouse Spots.

Let's go back.

We were two days in the Grouse Spots and were then relieved, going back to the Quarries and taking the place of Number 9 in support.

While lying there, I drew a patrol that was interesting because it was different.

The Souchez River flowed down from Abalaine and Souchez villages and through our lines to those of the Germans, and on to Lens.

Spies, either in the army itself or in the villages, had been placing messages in bottles and floating them down the river to the Germans.

Somebody found this out, and a net of chicken wire had been placed across the river in No Man's Land. Some one had to go down there and fish for bottles twice nightly. I took this patrol alone. The lines were rather far apart along the river, owing to the swampy nature of the ground, which made livable trenches impossible.

I slipped out and down the slight incline, and presently found myself in a little valley. The gra.s.s was rank and high, sometimes nearly up to my chin, and the ground was slimy and treacherous. I slipped into several sh.e.l.l holes and was almost over my head in the stagnant, smelly water.

I made the river all right, but there was no bridge or net in sight. The river was not over ten feet wide and there was supposed to be a footbridge of two planks where the net was.

I got back into the gra.s.s and made my way downstream. Sliding gently through the gra.s.s, I kept catching my feet in something hard that felt like roots; but there were no trees in the neighborhood.

I reached down and groped in the gra.s.s and brought up a human rib.

The place was full of them, and skulls. Stooping, I could see them, grinning up out of the dusk, hundreds of them. I learned afterwards that this was called the Valley of Death. Early in the war several thousand Zouaves had perished there, and no attempt had been made to bury them.

After getting out of the skeletons, I scouted along downstream and presently heard the low voices of Germans. Evidently they had found the net and planned to get the messages first. Creeping to the edge of the gra.s.s, I peeped out. I was opposite the bottle trap. I could dimly make out the forms of two men standing on the nearer end of the plank bridge. They were, I should judge, about ten yards away, and they hadn't heard me. I got out a Mills, pulled the pin, and pitched it. The bomb exploded, perhaps five feet this side of the men. One dropped, and the other ran.

After a short wait I ran over to the German. I searched him for papers, found none, and rolled him into the river.

After a few days in the Quarries we were moved to what was known as the Warren, so called because the works resembled a rabbit warren.

This was on the lower side and to the left end of Vimy Ridge, and was extra dangerous. It did seem as though each place was worse than the last. The Warren was a regular network of trenches, burrows, and funk holes, and we needed them all.

The position was downhill from the Huns, and they kept sending over and down a continuous stream of "pip-squeaks", "whiz-bangs", and "minnies." The "pip-squeak" is a sh.e.l.l that starts with a silly "pip", goes on with a sillier "squeeeeee", and goes off with a man's-size bang.

The "whiz-bang" starts with a rough whirr like a flus.h.i.+ng c.o.c.k partridge, and goes off on contact with a tremendous bang. It is not as dangerous as it sounds, but bad enough.

The "minnie" is about the size of a two-gallon kerosene can, and comes somersaulting over in a high arc and is concentrated death and destruction when it lands. It has one virtue--you can see it coming and dodge, and at night it most considerately leaves a trail of sparks.

The Boche served us full portions of all three of these man-killers in the Warren and kept us ducking in and out pretty much all the time, night and day.

I was lucky enough after the first day to be put on sappers' duty.

The Sappers, or Engineers, are the men whose duty it is to run mines under No Man's Land and plant huge quant.i.ties of explosives.

There was a great amount of mining going on all the time at Vimy Ridge from both sides.

Sometimes Fritz would run a sap out reasonably near the surface, and we would counter with one lower down. Then he'd go us one better and go still deeper. Some of the mines went down and under hundreds of feet. The result of all this was that on our side at least, the Sappers were under-manned and a good many infantry were drafted into that service.

I had charge of a gang and had to fill sandbags with the earth removed from the end of the sap and get it out and pile the bags on the parapets. We were well out toward the German lines and deep under the hill when we heard them digging below us. An engineer officer came in and listened for an hour and decided that they were getting in explosives and that it was up to us to beat them to it.

Digging stopped at once and we began rus.h.i.+ng in H.E. in fifty-pound boxes. I was ordered back into supports with my section.

Right here I began to have luck. Just see how this worked out.

First a rus.h.i.+ng party was organized whose duty it was to rush the crater made by the mine explosion and occupy it before the Germans got there. Sixty men were selected, a few from each company, and placed where they were supposedly safe, but where they could get up fast. This is the most dangerous duty an infantryman has to do, because both sides after a mine explosion shower in fifty-seven varieties of sudden death, including a perfect rain of machine-gun bullets. The chances of coming out of a rus.h.i.+ng party with a whole hide are about one in five.

Well, for a wonder, I didn't get drawn for this one, and I breathed one long, deep sigh of relief, put my hand inside my tunic and patted d.i.n.ky on the back. d.i.n.ky is my mascot. I'll tell you about him later.

On top of that another bit of luck came along, though it didn't seem like it at the moment. It was the custom for a ration party to go out each night and get up the grub. This party had to go over the duck walk and was under fire both going and coming. One of the corporals who had been out on rations two nights in succession began to "grouse."

Of course Sergeant Page spotted me and detailed me to the "w.a.n.gler's" duty. I "groused" too, like a good fellow, but had to go.

"Garn," says Wellsie. "Wot's the diff if yer gets it 'ere or there.

If ye clicks, I'll draw yer f.a.gs from Blighty and say a prayer for yer soul. On yer way."

Cheerful beggar, Wellsie. He was doing me a favor and didn't know it.

I did the three miles along the duck walk with the ration party, and there wasn't a sh.e.l.l came our way. Queer! Nor on the way back.

Queerer! When we were nearly back and were about five hundred yards from the base of the Pimple, a dead silence fell on the German side of the line. There wasn't a gun nor a mortar nor even a rifle in action for a mile in either direction. There was, too, a kind of sympathetic let-up on our side. There weren't any lights going up.

There was an electric tension in the very air. You could tell by the feel that something big was going to happen.

I halted the ration party at the end of the duck walk and waited.

But not for long. Suddenly the "Very" lights went up from the German side, literally in hundreds, illuminating the top of the ridge and the sky behind with a thin greenish white flare. Then came a deep rumble that shook the ground, and a dull boom. A spurt of blood-red flame squirted up from the near side of the hill, and a rolling column of gray smoke.

Then another rumble, and another, and then the whole side of the ridge seemed to open up and move slowly skyward with a world-wrecking, soul-paralyzing crash. A murky red glare lit up the smoke screen, and against it a ma.s.s of tossed-up debris, and for an instant I caught the black silhouette of a whole human body spread-eagled and spinning like a pin-wheel.

Most of our party, even at the distance, were knocked down by the gigantic impact of the explosion. A shower of earth and rock chunks, some as big as a barrel, fell around us.

Then we heard a far-away cheering, and in the light of the flares we saw a newly made hill and our men swarming up it to the crater.

Two mines had exploded, and the whole side of the Pimple had been torn away. Half of our rus.h.i.+ng party were killed and we had sixty casualties from shock and wounds among men who were supposed to be at a safe distance from the mining operation. But we took and held the new crater positions.

The corporal whose place I had taken on the ration party was killed by falling stones. Inasmuch as he was where I would have been, I considered that I had had a narrow escape from "going west!" More luck!

CHAPTER VIII

ON THE GO

Marching, marching, marching, Always ruddy well marching.

Marching all the morning, And marching all the night.

Marching, marching, marching, Always ruddy well marching, Roll on till my time is up And I shall march no more.

We sung it to the tune of "Holy, Holy, Holy", the whole blooming battalion. As we swung down the Boulevard Alsace-Lorraine in Amiens and pa.s.sed the great cathedral up there to the left, on its little rise of ground, the chant lifted and lilted and throbbed up from near a thousand throats, much as the unisoned devotions of the olden monks must have done in other days.

Ours was a holy cause, but despite the a.s.sociation of the tune the song was far from being a holy song. It was, rather, a chanted remonstrance against all hiking and against this one in particular.