The long-delayed and long-expected crisis in the affairs of the Stonewalls came at last about midday, and they were moved up into the front line, into the battered trench held by the remains of another battalion.
This line ran curving and zigzagging some fifty to a hundred yards beyond the shattered and shell-smitten fragments of a group of houses which stood on the grass-and weed-grown remains of a road. What was now the British front line of trench had been at one time a German communication trench in part of its length, and apparently some sort of support trench in another part. But throughout its whole length it had been so battered and wrecked, rent and riven asunder by shell fire, by light and heavy bombs of every sort and description, that it was all of much the same pattern—a comparatively wide ditch, filled up and choked to half its depth in some places by fallen walls113 and scattered sandbags, in other parts no more than a line of big and little shell-craters linked up by a shallow ditch, with a tangle of barbed wire flung out in coils and loops in front of the trench, with here and there a few strands run out and staked down during the night.
The face of the trench was no longer a perpendicular wall with a proper fire step, as all regularly constructed trenches are made when possible; the walls had crumbled down under the explosions of shell and bomb, and although some attempt had been made to improve the defenses, actually these improvements had been of the slightest description, and in many cases were destroyed again as fast as they were made; so for the most part the men of the battalion holding the trench picked little angles and corners individually for themselves, did their best to pile sandbags for head cover, lay sprawling on or against the sloping trench wall, and fired over the parapet.
At the point occupied by the Stonewalls the opposing lines were too far apart for the throwing of hand grenades, but the line was still suffering a fairly heavy and uncomfortably accurate artillery bombardment. The trench was strewn along its length with a débris of torn sandbags, of packs114 and equipments stripped from the wounded, of rifles and bayonets, mess-tins, and trenching tools, and caps and boots and water-bottles. Collected here and there in odd corners were many dead, because scattered along the whole length of line there were still many wounded, and until these had been safely removed there could, of course, be no time or consideration spared for attention to the dead.
The Stonewalls passed in single file along the broken trench behind the men who still held the position and lay and fired over their parapet. There were many remarks from these men, caustic inquiries as to where the Stonewalls had been, and why they had taken so long to come up; expressions of relief that they had come; inquiries as to whether there was to be another attack, or whether they were to be relieved by the Stonewalls, and allowed to go back. The Stonewalls, of course, could give no information as to what would happen, because of that they themselves had not the faintest idea. They were pushed along the trench and halted in a much closer and stronger line than the widely spaced men of the defending force which had held it.
Larry remarked on this to Pug and Kentucky,115 when at last the little group of which they were a part was told by their Sergeant to halt.
“I suppose,” said Kentucky, “we’re thicker along this line because there’s more of us. Whether the same reason will hold good by this time to-morrow is another proposition.”
“I’m goin’ to ’ave a peep out,” said Pug, and scrambled up the sloping face of the trench to beside a man lying there.
“Hello, chum!” said this man, turning his head to look at Pug. “Welcome to our ’ome, as the text says, and you’ll be a bloomin’ sight more welcome if you’re takin’ over, and lettin’ us go back. I’ve ’ad quite enough of this picnic for one turn.”
“’As it bin pretty ’ot here?” asked Pug.
The man slid his rifle-barrel over a sandbag, raised his head and took hasty aim, fired, and ducked quickly down again. “’Ot!” he repeated. “I tell yer ’ell’s a bloomin’ ice cream barrow compared to wot this trench ’as been since we come in it. ’Ot? My blanky oath!”
Pug raised his head cautiously, and peered out over the parapet.
“I s’pose that’s their trench acrost there,” he said doubtfully, “but it’s a rummy lookin’ mix up. Wot range are yer shootin’ at?”
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“Pretty well point blank,” said the private. “It’s about 200 to 250 they tell me.”
“’Oo’s trench is that along there to the left?” asked Pug. “It seems to run both ways.”
“I’m not sure,” said the other man, “but I expect it’s an old communication trench. This bit opposite us they reckon is a kind of redoubt; you’ll notice it sticks out to a point that their trenches slope back from on both sides.”
“I notice there’s a ’eap of wire all round it,” said Pug, and bobbed his head down hastily at the whizz of a couple of bullets. “And that’s blinkin’ well enough to notice,” he continued, “until I ’as to look out an’ notice some more whether I likes it or not.”
He slipped down again into the trench bottom, and described such of the situation as he had seen, as well as he could. He found the others discussing a new rumor, which had just arrived by way of the Sergeant. The tale ran that they were to attack the trenches opposite; that there was to be an intense artillery bombardment first, that the assault was to be launched after an hour or two of this.
“I ’ear there’s a battalion of the Jocks joined up to our left in this trench,” said the Sergeant,117 “and there’s some Fusilier crowd packin’ in on our right.”
“That looks like business,” said Larry; “but is it true, do you think, Sergeant? Where did you get it from?”
“There’s a ’tillery forward officer a little piece along the trench there, and I was ’avin’ a chat with ’is signaler. They told me about the attack, and told me their Battery was goin’ to cut the wire out in front of us.”
Kentucky, who was always full of curiosity and interest in unusual proceedings, decided to go along and see the Forward Officer at work. He told the others he would be back in a few minutes, and, scrambling along the trench, found the Artillery Subaltern and two signalers. The signalers had a portable telephone connected up with the trailing wire, and over this the Subaltern was talking when Kentucky arrived. He handed the receiver to one of his signalers, and crossing the trench took up a position where by raising his head he could see over the parapet.
“Number One gun, fire,” he said, and the signaler repeated the words over the telephone, and a moment later called sharply: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky waited expectantly with his eye on118 the Forward Officer, waited so many long seconds for any sound of the arriving shell or any sign of the Officer’s movement that he was beginning to think he had misunderstood the method by which the game was played; but at that moment he heard a sudden and savage rush of air close overhead, saw the Forward Officer straighten up and stare anxiously out over the parapet, heard the sharp crash of the bursting shell out in front. The Officer stooped his head again and called something about dropping twenty-five and repeating. The signaler gave his message word for word over the ’phone, and a minute later reported again: “No. 1 fired, sir.”
Kentucky, not knowing the technicalities of gunners’ lingo, was unable to follow the meaning of the orders as they were passed back from the officer to the signaler, from the signaler to the Battery. There was talk of adding and dropping, of so many minutes right or left, of lengthening and shortening, and of “correctors”; but although he could not understand all this, the message was clear enough when the officer remarked briefly:
“Target No. 1; register that,” and proceeded to call for No. 2 gun, and to repeat the complicated119 directions of ranges and deflection. Presently No. 2 found its target also, and the Forward Officer went on with three and the remaining guns in turn. For the first few shots from each he stood up to look over the parapet, but after that viewed the proceedings through a periscope.
Kentucky, establishing himself near the signaler, who was for the moment disengaged, talked with him, and acquired some of the simpler mysteries of registering a target, and of wire cutting. “He stands up at first,” explained the signaler, in answer to an inquiry, “because he pitches the first shell well over to be on the safe side. He has to catch the burst as soon as it goes, and he mightn’t have his periscope aimed at the right spot. After he corrects the lay, and knows just where the round is going to land, he can keep his periscope looking there and waiting for it. It’s not such a risky game then, but we gets a heap of F.O.O.’s casualtied doing those first peeps over the parapet.”
After the Forward Officer had got all his guns correctly laid, the Battery opened a rapid and sustained fire, and the shells, pouring in a rushing stream so close over the trench that the wind of120 their passing could be felt, burst in a running series of reports out in front.
Kentucky made his way back to his own portion of the trench, and borrowing a pocket looking-glass periscope, clipped it to his bayonet and watched for some time with absorbed interest the tongues of flame that licked out from the bursting shells, and the puffing clouds of smoke that rolled along the ground in front of the German parapet. The destruction of the wire was plain to see, and easy to watch. The shells burst one after another over and amongst it, and against the background of smoke that drifted over the ground the tangle of wire stood up clearly, and could be seen dissolving and vanishing under the streams of shrapnel bullets. As time passed the thick hedge of wire that had been there at first was broken down and torn away; the stakes that held it were knocked down or splintered to pieces or torn up and flung whirling from the shell bursts. Other batteries had come into play along the same stretch of front, and were hard at work destroying in the same fashion the obstacle to the advance of the infantry. The meaning of the wire cutting must have been perfectly plain to the Germans; clearly it signified an attack; clearly that121 signified the forward trenches being filled with a strong attacking force; and clearly again that meant a good target for the German guns, a target upon which they proceeded to play with savage intensity.
The forward and support lines were subjected to a tornado of high explosive and shrapnel fire, and again the Stonewalls were driven to crouching in their trench while the big shells pounded down, round, and over and amongst them. They were all very sick of these repeated series of hammerings from the German guns, and Pug voiced the idea of a good many, when at the end of a couple of hours the message came along that they were to attack with the bayonet in fifteen minutes.
“I don’t s’pose the attack will be any picnic,” he said, “but blow me if I wouldn’t rather be up there with a chance of gettin’ my own back, than stickin’ in this stinkin’ trench and gettin’ blown to sausage meat without a chance of crookin’ my finger to save myself.”
For two hours past the British guns had been giving as good as they were getting, and a little bit better to boot; but now for the fifteen minutes previous to the assault their fire worked up122 to a rate and intensity that must have been positively appalling to the German defenders of the ground opposite, and especially of the point which was supposed to be a redoubt. The air shook to the rumble and yell and roar of the heavy shells, vibrated to the quicker and closer rush of the field guns’ shrapnel. The artillery fire for the time being dominated the field, and brought the rifle fire from the opposing trenches practically to silence, so that it was possible with some degree of safety for the Stonewalls to look over their parapet and watch with a mixture of awe and delight the spectacle of leaping whirlwinds of fire and billowing smoke, the spouting débris that splashed upwards, through them; to listen to the deep rolling detonations and shattering boom of the heavy shells that poured without ceasing on the trenches in front of them.
“If there’s any bloom............