At Loos

    "The wages of sin and a soldier is death."—Trench Proverb.

For long I had looked on Loos from a distance, had seen the red-brick houses huddled together brooding under the shade of the massive Twin Towers, the giant sentinels of the German stronghold. Between me and the village lurked a thousand rifles and death-dealing maxims; out in the open no understanding could preserve a man from annihilation, luck alone could save him.

On September 25th I lived in the village. By night a ruined village has a certain character of its own, the demolition of war seems to give each broken wall a consciousness of dignity and worth; the moonlight ripples over the chimneys, and sheaves of shadow lurk in every nook and corner. But by day, with its broken, jerry-built houses, the village has no relieving features, it is merely a heap of broken bricks, rubble and mud. Some[104] day, when ivy and lichen grow up the walls and cover green the litter that was Loos, a quaint, historical air may be given to the scene, but now it showed nothing but a depressing sameness of latchless doors, hingeless shutters, destruction and decay. Gone was all the fascinating, pathetic melancholy of the night when we took possession, but such might be expected: the dead is out of keeping with the day.

I was deep in thought as I stood at the door of the dressing-station, the first in Loos, and at the moment, the only one. The second German trench, the trench that was the enemy's at dawn, ran across the bottom of the street, and our boys were busy there heaping sandbags on the parapet. A dozen men with loaded rifles stood in the dressing-station on guard, and watchful eyes scanned the streets, looking for the enemy who were still in hiding in the cellars or sniping from the upper stories of houses untouched by shell-fire. Down in our cellar the wounded and dying lay: by night, if they lived till then, we would carry them across the open to the dressing-station of Maroc. To venture across now, when the big guns chorused a fanfare of fury on the levels, would have been madness.

I went to the door and looked up the street; it was totally deserted; a dead mule[105] and several khaki-clad figures lay on the pavement, and vicious bullets kicked up showers of sparks on the cobblestones. I could not tell where they were fired from.... A voice called my name and I turned round to see a head peep over the trench where it crossed the road. My mate, Bill Teake, was speaking.

"Come 'ere!" he called. "There's some doin's goin' to take place."

I rushed across the open road where a machine gun from a hill on the right was sending its messages with shrewish persistence, and tumbled into the trench at my mate's side.

"What are the doings?" I asked.

"The word 'as been passed along that a German observation balloon is going up over Lens an' we're goin' to shell it," said Bill.

"I can't see the blurry thing nohow," he added.

I looked towards Lens, and saw the town pencilled reddish in the morning light with several defiant chimney stacks standing in air. One of these was smoking, which showed that the enemy was still working it.

I saw the balloon rise over the town. It was a massive banana-like construction with ends pointing downwards, and it climbed slowly up the heavens. At that moment[106] our gunners greeted it with a salvo of shrapnel and struck it, as far as I could judge.

It wriggled for a moment, like a big feather caught in a drift of air, then disappeared with startling suddenness.

"A neat shot," I said to Bill, who was now engaged on the task of looking for the snappy maxim shrew that tapped impatiently on the sandbagged parapet.

"I think it's up there," he said, pointing to the crest where three or four red-tiled houses snuggled in the cover of a spinney. "It's in one of them big 'ouses, bet yer. If I find it I'll get the artillery to blow the place to blazes!" he concluded, with an air of finality.

I went back to the dressing-station and found the men on guard in a state of tense excitement. They had seen a German cross the street two hundred yards up, and a red-haired youth, Ginger Turley, who had fired at the man, vowed that he had hit him.

"I saw 'im fall," said Ginger. "Then 'e crawled into a 'ouse on 'ands and knees."

"'E was only shammin'," said the corporal of the guard. "Nobody can be up to these 'ere Allemongs."

"I 'it 'im," said Ginger heatedly. "Couldn't miss a man at two 'undred and me gettin' proficiency pay for good shootin' at S'nalbans (St. Albans)."

[107]

A man at the door suddenly uttered a loud yell.

"Get yer 'ipes," he yelled. "Quick! Grease out of it and get into the scrap. There's 'undreds of 'em up the streets. Come on! Come out of it! We'll give the swine socks!"

He rushed into the street, raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired two rounds. Then he raced up the street shouting, with the guard following. I looked out.

The men in khaki were rushing on a mob of some fifty or sixty Germans who advanced to meet them with trembling arms raised over their heads, signifying in their manner that they wished to surrender. I had seen many Germans surrender that morning and always noticed that their uplifted arms shook as if stricken with palsy. I suppose they feared what might befall them when they fell into our hands.

With hands still in air and escorted by our boys they filed past the door of the dressing-station. All but one man, who was wounded in the jaw.

"This is a case for you, Pat," said the corporal of the guard, and beckoned to the wounded German to come indoors.

He was an ungainly man, and his clothes clung to his body like rags to a scarecrow. His tunic was ripped in several places, and[108] a mountain of Loos mud clung to his trousers. His face was an interesting one, his eyes, blue and frank, seemed full of preoccupation that put death out of reckoning.

"Sprechen Anglais?" I asked, floundering in the mud of Franco-Germaine interrogation. He shook his head; the bullet had blown away part of the man's jaw and he could not speak.

I dressed his wound in silence, an ugly, ghastly wound it looked, one that he would hardly recover from. As I worked with the bandages he brought out a little mirror, gazed for a moment at his face in the glass, and shook his head sadly. He put the mirror back in his pocket, but after a second he drew it out again and made a second inspection of his wound.

The dressing done, I inquired by signs if he wanted to sleep; there was still some room in the cellar. He pointed his finger at his tunic over the breast and I saw a hole there that looked as if made by a red-hot poker. I cut the clothes off the man with my scissors and discovered that the bullet which went through the man's jaw had also gone through his chest. He was bleeding freely at the back near the spine and in front over the heart.... The man brought out his mirror again, and, standing with his back to a shattered looking-glass that still[109] remained in the building, he examined his wound after the manner of a barber who shows his customer the back of his head by use of a mirror.... Again the German shook his head sadly. I felt sorry for the man. My stock of bandages had run short, and Ginger Turley, who had received a parcel of underclothing a few days before, brought out a new shirt from his haversack, and tearing it into strips, he handed me sufficient cloth for a bandage.

"Poor bloke!" muttered Turley, blushing a little as if ashamed of the kind action. "I suppose it was my shot, too. 'E must be the feller that went crawlin' into the buildin'."

"Not necessarily," I said, hoping to comfort Ginger.

"It was my shot that did it, sure enough," Ginger persisted. "I couldn't miss at two 'undred yards, not if I tried."

One of the men was looking at a little book, somewhat similar to the pay-book we carry on active service, which fell from the German's pocket.

"Bavarian!" read the man with the book, and fixed a look of interrogation on the wounded man, who nodded.

"Musician?" asked the man, who divined that certain German words stated that the Bavarian was a musician in civil life.

[110]

A sad look crept into the prisoner's eyes. He raised his hands and held them a little distance from his lips and moved his fingers rapidly; then he curved his left arm and drew his right slowly backward and forward across in front of his body.

We understood; he played the flute and violin. Ginger Turley loves ragtime and is a master of the mouth-organ; and now having met a brother artist in such a woeful plight, Ginger's feelings overcame him, and two tears gathered in his eyes.

"I wish I wasn't such a good shot," he muttered.

We wrapped the German up in a few rags, and since he wanted to follow his comrades, who left under escort, we allowed him to go. Ten minutes later, Bill Teake poked his little white potato of a nose round the door.

"I've found 'im out," he said, and his voice was full of enthusiasm.

"Who have you found out?" I asked.

"That bloomin' machine gun," Bill answered. "I saw a little puff of smoke at one of the winders of a 'ouse up in the spinney. I kept my eye on that 'ere winder. Ev'ry time I seed a puff of smoke, over comes a bullet. I told the officer, and he 'phones down to the artillery. There's goin' to be some doin's. Come on, Pat, and see the fun."

It was too good to miss. Both of us[111] scurried across the road and took up a position in the trench from which we could get a good view of the spinney.

"That 'ouse there," said Bill, pointing to the red-brick building bordering a slag-heap known as "The Double Crassier" which tailed to a thin point near the village of Maroc. "There! see at the winder on the left a puff of smoke."

A bullet hit the sandbag at my side. I looked at the house indicated by Bill and saw a wisp of pale smoke trail up from one of the lower windows towards the roof.

"The machine gun's there, sure enough," I said.

Then a bigger gun spoke; a shell whizzed through the air and raised a cloud of black dust from the rim of the slag-heap.

"More to the left, you bounders, more to the left!" yelled Bill.

He could not have been more intent on the work if he were the gunner engaged upon the task of demolition.

The second shot crept nearer and a shrub uprooted whirled in air.

"That's the ticket!" yelled Bill, clapping his hands. "Come, gunner, get the bounder next time!"

The gunner got him with the next shot which struck the building fair in the centre and smashed it to pieces.

[112]

"That was a damned good one," said Bill approvingly. "The bloomin' gun is out of action now for the duration of war. Have you seen that bloke?"

Bill Teake pointed at a dead German who lay on the crest of the parados, his hands doubled under him, and his jaw bound with a bloodstained dressing.

"He just got killed a minute ago," said Bill. "He jumped across the trench when the machine gun copped 'im and 'e went down flop!"

"I've just dressed his wounds," I said.

"He'll need no dressin' now," said Bill, and added compassionately, "Poor devil! S'pose 'e 's 'ad some one as cared for 'im."

I thought of home and hoped to send a letter along to Maroc with a wounded man presently. From there letters would be forwarded. I had a lead pencil in my pocket, but I had no envelope.

"I'll give you a half-franc for a green envelope," I said, and Bill Teake took from his pocket the green envelope, which needed no regimental censure, but was liable to examination at the Base.

"'Arf-franc and five fags," he said, speaking with the studied indiffere............