The Black Watch Part 7

It was the Camerons who had just relieved us and their headquarters were in a quarry where ours had been. A few "coal boxes" had landed in the quarry, and reduced it to a ma.s.s of debris. Only one officer and bugler had survived. It was here that Sergeant-Major Burt, of my native town, was killed. He was reputed to have the "best word of command" in the British army. We reached the scene in time to help the Scots Guards dig out some of them. It was a gruesome job. Some of the men had been pinned under heavy rocks for hours without losing consciousness.

There was, in particular, one instance of an officer [I cannot recall his name] whose legs were crushed and pinned down. His head had been cut by a sh.e.l.l splinter. When we tried to dig him out, he ordered us to attend first to a private, a few feet away, whose ribs had been smashed in and who was bleeding from the nose and mouth.

In all, about thirty officers and men lost their lives here.

We were called from this scene of carnage to defend a trench line against the Prussian Guards who were threatening to break through. The machine-gun and shrapnel fire was terrific, and for a time we were glad to squeeze ourselves close against the parapet. Then suddenly everything seemed uncomfortably quiet. Wounded were screaming and groaning all about us; men, who had not been struck, were muttering to themselves--driven half mad by the bombardment; but, the instant the roar of the guns and sh.e.l.l explosions ceased, all seemed still. The Prussians were undoubtedly preparing to charge us, but they must have been slow in getting started.

We got hurried orders to get ready to go over the top and surprise them.

I thought of but one thing as I ran forward; that was--"Blighty." On going to billets it had been my intention to write to the folks at home the next day after getting a rest, but our stay had been so short that to do so had been impossible. And now my thought was: "Perhaps I sha'n't return."

The Prussians seemed surprised by our quick attack, and the offensive was wrested from them. We became the a.s.saulters. How I got through the entanglement I cannot tell. All I know is that I left part of my kilt dangling amid the wires. However, before we reached their trench line, the Prussians had scrambled over their parapet to meet us. In the general mix-up I found myself locked in the arms of a bear-like Prussian Guardsman who evidently had lost his rifle and bayonet. His knee was at my knee--his chest pressed against my chest. Our faces touched.

I slid my hands up along the barrel of my rifle until they were almost under the hilt of the bayonet. Very slowly I shoved the b.u.t.t back of me and to the side. Lower and lower I dropped it. The keen blade was between us. All the Hun seemed to know about wrestling was to hug. He dared not let go. Had he known a few tricks of the game, I should not be writing this to-day.

Instinctively I felt that the point of my bayonet was in line with his throat. With every ounce of strength in my body, I wrenched my shoulders upward and straightened my knees. The action broke his hold, and my bayonet was driven into his greasy throat. His arms relaxed; I was drenched with blood, but it was not my own. I staggered away from him, wrenching my rifle free as he fell.

The thrust I had used has come to be known as the "jab point"; they are teaching it to the American army to-day. It developed naturally from just such situations as I have described.

It was an awful _melee_. There were men swinging rifles overhead; others, kicking, punching, and tearing at their adversaries; while others again, wrestling, had fallen to the ground, struggling one to master the other.

One Highlander, who had been struck by a bullet just before reaching the enemy parapet, grasped his rifle, and crawled as best he could the intervening distance, waiting his chance to get his man. At last it came.

His bayonet found its mark, before the bulky Hun could ward off the unexpected stroke from the wounded lad. In a moment they were both lying p.r.o.ne on the earth. The Highlander, I am sure, died content--content that he had got his quota at least.

It was the wildest confusion, but its impressions were absolutely photographic. I can see it all, again, this moment.

The Prussians were finally obliged to retire to their reserve trenches. We took their firing trench, but had to vacate it because it was subject to an enfilading fire from the enemy. As we retreated in company squads, we kept up a steady fire.

While making for our trenches, I shouted to one of the fellows on my left to keep down as we were drawing the enemy's fire. The sentence was hardly completed, when something hot struck me on the left jaw. It seemed as if I had been hit with a sledge hammer. I spun round, stumbled, and fell to the ground. I realized that it was a bullet and tried to swear at the boches, but all I could do was to spit and cough, for the blood was almost choking me. The bullet, entering my cheek and shattering some of my teeth in pa.s.sing, made its exit by way of my mouth. My warning, however, had saved the life of the lad I had shouted to. He flopped to the ground just in time to avoid a sweep of machine-gun fire, and managed to crawl to our trench, which was a very short distance off.

I was sent to the regimental dressing station. There were scores there more seriously wounded than I, and they were, of course, attended to first. By the time it was my turn, my face was so completely smeared with congealed blood that the orderly couldn't locate the wound. He wiped my face with a bunch of gra.s.s and applied a dressing. I was relieved to hear that it was a clean wound.

In the dressing station, suffering as I was, I noticed two men forcibly controlling a wounded comrade. After a moment I recognized him as the little recruit who had prayed that the Germans might not pa.s.s the wire and come to bayonet fighting with us. His features were so changed that he seemed aged a dozen years and--believe it or not, as you will--his hair, which had been sleek and black, was entirely white. He had been only slightly wounded but the heavy bombardment had driven him entirely mad. He was continually crying for his mother. I afterward learned that he and his mother, who was blind, had lived together and had been warmly devoted to each other, but at the outbreak of the war, his mother felt it her duty to send him to fight. The boy recovered his mental faculties a month or two after being sent home.

CHAPTER EIGHT

After the first dressing of my wound, I was sent to our transport station, a short distance behind the lines, being told that in a few days I would be fit for duty again. There was a farm here. By the time I reached the farm house the pain of my wound was terrific. It was like a toothache all over my head and down into my neck and shoulders. Nevertheless, I threw myself onto a pile of straw in the barn and, after tossing about a while, managed to fall asleep.

When I awoke it was daylight again, the entire night having pa.s.sed.

Leaning over me was a little French girl--she must have been about eight years old--with a pitcher of milk, which she held out toward me. In spite of the condition of my mouth, I managed to swallow the milk. I was almost starved and very weak. I tried to persuade the little girl to accept a franc for the milk, but she shook her head, and skipped off. Following her out of the barn, I met her mother to whom, also, I offered payment; she, too, refused it.

We could hear the rumbling of big guns; sh.e.l.ls were exploding not far away; then came the noise of transport wagons approaching the farm. I turned back toward the barn and had not gone more than ten paces when there was a crash overhead. Splinters and shrapnel spattered into the farm yard. I ducked and hastened my pace. Then there was a thud behind me, as if a bag of potatoes had been dropped from a lorry. Almost simultaneously came a scream from the little girl.

I turned just in time to see the mother of the child fall, roll down out of the doorway in which the two were standing, and lie ominously still.

The little girl stood gazing in terror at the fallen woman. Her little hands were raised shoulder high before her and she shrieked--hysterically and helplessly. As I hastened toward them the child seemed to realize the awful thing that had happened and threw herself upon her mother's body, pressing her face against the dying woman's. I felt the tears trickling down my cheek and smarting in my wound as I heard the child's heartbroken exclamations--terms of endearment they seemed, and pitifully eloquent enough, though the tongue in which they were spoken was unknown to me.

A lad of ten, barefoot and in overalls, came running from the house. He knelt and stared into his mother's face, then he turned a dumb, questioning glance at me. I could not meet his eyes. As I got my arms under the shoulders of the fallen woman and started to drag her body into the house, I could hear the little fellow sobbing softly but he didn't speak. Hoping that it still might be of use, he helped with all his little strength to move his mother's body. Inside the house, we pushed the tumbled hair back from her face. A shrapnel bullet had entered her forehead. It was useless to ask if human aid could serve her. Death had been almost instantaneous. Then I saw a sight that spoke a volume on the cruelty of war and the heroism of the st.u.r.dy French blood could I but tell it.

The little lad gathered his sister in his protecting arms and sat--speaking, manfully, words of comfort to her--beside the dead body of their mother, sh.e.l.ls meanwhile bursting all about the home which had been their childhood haven of love and safety, and brick and plaster falling about them from its shattered roof. The children were in serious danger, but they steadfastly refused to leave their mother. I did not know enough French to reason with them, and it was not until some French muleteers sought shelter behind the building that I was able, through them, to persuade the boy and girl to go farther to the rear, with them.

After this experience, like one in a dream, I made my way back to the trenches, heedless of the sh.e.l.ls whizzing overhead. The sight I had seen haunted me.

Upon reaching my trench, I was brought back to my senses by some of my "muckin'-in" pals, who threw all sorts of questions at me in a jesting fas.h.i.+on, such as:

"h.e.l.lo, Reuter, been tae Blighty an' back? Ye're a better sprinter than Ah thocht"; "Hoo's aw wi' th' fokes at hame? Did ye remember the f.a.gs?"

It was some time before I was sufficiently myself again to be able to answer them in the proper strain. My head looked like a cotton-and-bandage demonstration, and I was a sorry looking sight altogether. I lived for the next few days on bully beef biscuits, softened, and oxo cubes dissolved in water.

In a few days we were relieved by French troops, and we force-marched north to stem the German thrust at Calais.

After some stiff marching, we entrained "somewhere." Our "camions" were coal trucks, which had been only partially unloaded. Some of my more hygienic mates who were under the impression that they did not have as much grime-caked mud sticking to them as the rest, suggested that our truck be cleaned out, but the general eagerness for a corner "doss" put this suggestion out of consideration at once. There was a scrambling match, and when our allotment got entirely in, the quartermaster was soundly "cussed." It seemed as if the whole regiment had been detailed to this car. Even in these circ.u.mstances, the whimsical philosophy of the private soldier a.s.serted itself. A little chap, jammed in a corner, said he wanted a place by the side door, so that he could "see the scenery"!

We travelled all night, and on the following morning drew up at a junction where a body of recruits joined us. They regarded us with staring eyes, and I suppose we did look like a lot of cave men, being unshaven, long-haired, grimy, and black as sweeps with the coal dust. We did not mind this half so much as the recruits. At the junction, we got a sandwich and a canteen of coffee which had a most exquisite flavour of rum. This was so p.r.o.nounced that some summoned their nerve sufficiently to go back for a "double attack," but were met with "Napoo."

Conditions have changed now, so that Tommy is able to keep himself shaved and personally neat, even in the mud of the trenches. It helps keep up our morale and shatter that of the boches. There is a distinct psychological effect on the enemy when clean-shaven, tidily-dressed men come up out of the earth and fall upon them.

Very soon we commenced our journey again. How long we were on the train I cannot recall, but finally we reached a large town where we got off. On our arrival we could hear the incessant rumbling of guns, and knew we were going to have another hot time of it. My face was better, but my beard! I had not had a shave since before Mons! While on the retreat, most of us, in order to lighten our loads, had thrown away the little items of our equipment that we did not urgently need. We kept only our greatcoats and such articles as we required for warmth.

We force-marched until early morning, when we halted for a rest, as the feet of many of our men were skinned and in bad shape. For myself, I was walking on my uppers, as the soles and heels of my shoes were completely worn out.

We resumed the march. We understood that we were in the vicinity of Ypres.

We force-marched for all we were worth, and late in the afternoon we came to a village. Here we were billeted on the side nearest us. After getting rations, we needed no coaxing to sleep.

It was still dark when we got orders to fall in and march at top speed.

The village was being sh.e.l.led.

This seemed to have been a spot for concentrating for we met with other regiments there--one of them the King's Royal Rifles. Beyond the far side of the village at a certain distance one could see trees scattered here and there, but farther on the country was flat. It was in this direction we marched.

Orders were whispered along the line that we were to maintain strict silence and no "f.a.gs" were to be lighted, as we were near the enemy, and were attempting to move without his knowledge. Our officers gave us the encouraging news that we were about to be up against some hard fighting--harder than we had so far experienced. Our commander, Major J.

T. C. Murray, expressed the hope that we would keep the name of the "Black Watch" where our predecessors had placed it--in the foremost rank. And so we advanced in darkness, with our minds on serious things.

We were in two lines of skirmis.h.i.+ng order, one pace apart. Our object was to reach the flat ground beyond the trees and dig ourselves in before dawn. We did this. The digging was an easy matter as the earth was marshy and our entrenching tools proved fit enough for the task. Sh.e.l.ls were flying overhead continually, making an awful humming noise, and some of them pa.s.sed so low that the air disturbances blew caps from off the heads of our men.

There was not a murmur or a word of complaint from our wearied and worn ranks. We had almost completed our shallow trenches when the boche opened fire at us with his field guns. It was hardly dawn. We kept on digging, crouching in all positions to keep under cover from the bombardment.

I suppose that every one under sh.e.l.l fire, at one time or another, in some manner, prays. I know that I often have done so, although not so ostentatiously as some of the men. I have seen them, when the sh.e.l.ls were rocking the earth and splinters were whistling past our ears, drop to their knees and swear to their Maker that, if they were spared, when they returned home they would go to church regularly and be kinder to their wives and children.

Some of our men ceased digging after reaching what they thought a safe depth, and crouched against the parapet for safety. Others of us started making what are known to-day as dug-outs. Jock Hunter and I made one to hold both of us. We dug away under the parapet so that we could crawl in with only our feet sticking out. This not only sheltered us from the unceasing shrapnel, but from the rain also. Some of the boys lying in the trenches had been killed and some wounded from the shrapnel bursting overhead, so the officers gave orders that we were all to make these dug-outs.

A man from each company had been detailed for look-out duty, at which we all took turn of an hour each. It was noon before we heard any response from our artillery, but then it checked the German fire considerably.

The rain came down heavily, flooding us out of our dug-outs, and we were obliged to stand in the trench like a lot of half-drowned rats, our greatcoats on and our waterproof sheets over them. At first we were standing on earth, but before long the muck had reached over our ankles.

There was at least one virtue in the rain--it softened our bully-beef biscuits, which we ate standing in the trenches, wet to the skin and with water dripping from our greatcoats and kilts.

Toward night the rain ceased. We had expected to be attacked at any minute that day, but for some reason or another we escaped it. We got a rum issue. Then volunteers were asked for, to go and fetch some hot "gunfire."

(It was hot when the ration party got it, but quite cold when it reached us.)