Kentucky and Pug and their fellow Stonewalls fell to work energetically, their movements hastened by a galling rifle or machine-gun fire that came pelting along their trench from somewhere far out on the flank, and reaching the trench almost in enfilade, and by the warning screech and crash of some shells bursting over them. The rain had ceased a few hours before, but the trench was still sopping wet and thick with sticky mud. It was badly battered and broken down, and was little more for the most part than an irregular and shallow ditch half filled with shattered timbers, fallen earth, full and burst sandbags. Here and there were stretches of comparatively uninjured trench, deep and strongly built, but even in these, sandbags had been burst or blown out of place by shell explosions, and the walls were crumbling and shaken and tottery. The Stonewalls put in a very strenuous hour digging, refilling153 sandbags, piling them up, putting the trench into some sort of shape to afford cover and protection against shell and rifle fire. There was no sun, but the air was close and heavy and stagnant, and the men dripped perspiration as they worked. Their efforts began to slacken despite the urgings of the officers and non-coms., but they speeded up again as a heavier squall of shell fire shrieked up and began to burst rapidly about and above the trench.
“I was beginnin’ to think this trench was good enough for anythin’, and that we’d done diggin’ enough,” panted Pug, heaving a half-split sandbag into place, flattening it down with the blows of a broken pick-handle, and halting a moment to lift his shrapnel helmet to the back of his head and wipe a dirty sleeve across his wet forehead. “But I can see that it might be made a heap safer yet.”
“There’s a plenty room for improvement,” agreed Kentucky, wrenching and hauling at a jumble of stakes and barbed wire that had been blown in and half buried in the trench bottom. When he had freed the tangle, he was commencing to thrust and throw it out over the back of the trench when an officer passing along stopped him. “Chuck it out in front, man alive,” he said. “We154 don’t want to check our side getting in here to help us, and it’s quite on the cards we may need it to help hold back the Boche presently. We’re expecting a counter-attack, you know.”
“Do we know?” said Pug, disgustedly, when the officer had passed along. “Mebbe you do, but I’m blowed if I know anythink about it. All I know I could put in me eye an’ then not know it was there even.”
“I wish I knew where Larry is, or what’s happened to him,” said Kentucky. “I’m some worried about him.”
A string of light shells crashed overhead, another burst banging and crackling along the trench, and a procession of heavier high explosive began to drop ponderously in geyser-like spoutings of mud and earth and smoke. The Stonewalls crouched low in the trench bottom, while the ground shook under them, and the air above sang to the drone and whine of flying shell fragments and splinters. Our own guns took up the challenge, and started to pour a torrent of light and heavy shells over on to the German lines. For a time the opposing guns had matters all to themselves and their uproar completely dominated the battle. And in the brief intervals155 of the nearer bangs and crashes the Stonewalls could hear the deep and constant roar of gun-fire throbbing and booming and rolling in full blast up and down along the line.
“I s’pose the papers ’ud call this an ar-tillery doo-el,” remarked Pug, “or re-noo-ed ar-tillery activity.”
“I always thought a duel was two lots fighting each other,” said a man hunkered down close in the trench bottom beside him; “but the gunners’ notion of dueling seems to be to let each other alone and each hammer the other lot’s infantry.”
“Seems like they’re passing a few packets back to each other though,” said Kentucky. “Hark at that fellow up there,” as a heavy shell rumbled and roared over high above them, and the noise of its passing dwindled and died away, and was drowned out in the steadily sustained uproar of the nearer reports and shell bursts.
“Stand to there!” came a shout along the trench. “Look out, there, C Company.... Wait the word, then let ’em have it.... Don’t waste a shot, though.”
“Wot’s comin’ now?” said Pug, scrambling to his feet. Kentucky was already up and settling156 himself into position against the front wall of the parapet.
“Looks like that counter-attack we heard of,” he said. “And—yes, by the Lord, some counter-attack too. Say, look at ’em, will you? Jes’ look and see ’em come a-boiling.”
Pug, snuggling down beside him, and pounding his elbow down on the soft earth to make a convenient elbow-rest, paused and peered out into the drifting haze of smoke that obscured the front. At first he could see nothing but the haze, starred with the quick fire flashes and thickened with the rolling clouds of our guns’ shrapnel bursts. Then in the filmy gray and dun-colored cloud he saw another, a more solid and deeper colored gray bank that rolled steadily towards them.
“Gaw’strewth,” he gasped. “Is that men? Is all that lump Germans? Blimey, it must be their ’ole bloomin’ army comin’ at us.”
“There sure is a big bunch of ’em,” said Kentucky. “Enough to roll us out flat if they can get in amongst us. This is where we get it in the neck if we can’t stop ’em before they step into this trench. It looks ugly, Pug. Wonder why they don’t give the order to fire.”
“I’ve never bayoneted a ’Un yet,” said Pug,157 “but mebbe I’ll get a chawnce this time.” He peered out into the smoke. “Can you see if they’ve got ’elmets on, Kentuck?” he said anxiously. “I’m fair set on one o’ them ’elmets.”
To Kentucky and Pug, and probably to most of the rest of the Stonewalls’ rank and file, the German counter-attack boiled down into a mere matter of the rapid firing of a very hot rifle into a dense bank of smoke and a dimly seen mass of men. Each man shot straight to his front, and took no concern with what might be happening to right or left of that front. In the beginning the word had been passed to set the sights at point blank and fire low, so that there was no need at any time to bother about altering ranges, and the men could devote the whole of their attention to rapid loading and firing. So each simply shot and shot and went on shooting at full speed, glancing over the sights and squeezing the trigger, jerking the bolt back and up, and pulling trigger again till the magazine was empty; then, throwing the butt down to cram a fresh clip of cartridges into the breech, swinging it up and in again to the shoulder, resuming the rapid shoot-and-load, shoot-and-load until the magazine was empty again. Each man was an automatic machine,158 pumping out so many bullets in so many seconds, and just because long drill and training had all gone to make the aiming and shooting mechanically correct and smooth and rapid it was mechanically deadly in its effect. And because the motions of shooting were so entirely mechanical they left the mind free to wander to other and, in many cases, ridiculously trivial things. Kentucky began to fear that his stock of cartridges would not last out, began vaguely to worry over the possibility of having to cease shooting even for a minute, until he could obtain a fresh supply. Pug was filled with an intense irritation over the behavior of his rifle, which in some mysterious fashion developed a defect in the loading of the last cartridge from each clip. The cartridge, for some reason, did not slide smoothly into the chamber, and the bolt had to be withdrawn an inch and slammed shut again each time the last cartridge came up. Probably the extra motion did not delay Pug’s shooting by one second in each clip, but he was as annoyed over it as if it had reduced his rate by half. He cursed his rifle and its parts, breech, bolt, and magazine severally and distinctly, the cartridges and the clips, the men and the machinery who had made159 each; but at no time did he check the speed of his shooting to curse. “What’s the matter?” shouted Kentucky at last. “This blasted rifle,” yelled Pug angrily, jerking at the bolt and slamming it home again, “keeps stickin’ all the time.” Kentucky had some half-formed idea of saying that it was no good trying to shoot with a sticking rifle, and suggesting that Pug should go look for another, handing over meantime any cartridges he had left to replenish his, Kentucky’s, diminishing store; but just then two men came pushing along the trench carrying a box of ammunition and throwing out a double handful of cartridges to each man. Kentucky grabbed. “Oh, good man,” he said joyfully; “but say, can’t you give us a few more?”
Pug glanced round at the heap flung at his elbow. “Wha’s th’ good o’ them?” he snapped. “F’r Gawd’ sake rather gimme a rifle that’ll shoot.”
“Rifle?” said one of the men; “there’s plenty spare rifles about”; and he stooped and picked one from the trench bottom, dropped it beside Pug, and pushed on. Pug emptied his magazine, dropped his rifle, snatched up the other one, and resumed shooting. But he was swearing again160 before he had fired off the one clip, and that done, flung the rifle from him and grabbed his own. “Rotten thing,” he growled. “It don’t fit, don’t set to a man’s shoulder; an’ it kicks like a crazy mule.”
Both he and Kentucky had jerked out their sentences between shots, delaying their shooting no fraction of a second. It was only, and even then reluctantly, when there was no longer a visible target before their sights that they slowed up and stopped. And then both stayed still, with rifles pointing over the parapet, peering into the smoke ahead. Kentucky drew a long breath. “They’ve quit; and small blame to them.”
“Got a bit more’n they bargained for, that time,” said Pug exultantly, and then “Ouch!” in a sharp exclamation of pain. “What’s the matter?” said Kentucky. “You feeling that arm?” “No, no,” said Pug hastily, “just my elbow feelin’ a bit cramped an’ stiffish wi’ leanin’ on it.”
The rifle fire was slackening and dying along the line, but the shells still whooped and rushed overhead and burst flaming and rolling out balls of white smoke over the ground in front. “Wish them guns’d knock orf a bit till we see what sorter damage we’ve done,” said Pug. But along to the161 right with a rolling crash the rifles burst out into full blast again. “Look out,” said Kentucky quickly, “here they come again,” and he tossed muzzle over the parapet and commenced to pump bullets at the gray bulk that had become visible looming through the smoke clouds again. He was filled with eagerness to make the most of each second, to get off the utmost possible number of rounds, to score the most possible hits. He had just the same feeling, only much more intensified, that a man has at the butts when the birds are coming over fast and free. Indeed, the feeling was so nearly akin to that, the whole thing was so like shooting into driven and helpless game, the idea was so strong that the Germans were there as a target to be shot at, and he there as a shooter, that it gave him a momentary shock of utter astonishment when a bullet hit the parapet close to him and threw a spurt of mud in his face, and almost at the same instant another hit glancing on the top of his helmet, jolting it back on his head and spinning it round until the chin-strap stopped it with an unpleasant jerk on his throat. He realized suddenly, what for the moment he had completely forgotten, that he was being shot at as well as shooting, that he was as liable to be162 killed as one of those men out there he was pelting bullets into. Actually, of course, his risk was not one-tenth of the attackers’. He was in cover and the men advancing against the trench were doing little shooting as they came. They on the other hand were in the open, exposed full length and height, were in a solid mass through and into which the sleeting bullets drove and poured in a continuous stream. Machine-gun and rifle fire beat fiercely upon its face, while from above a deluge of high-explosive shells and tearing gusts of shrapnel fell upon it, rending and shattering and destroying. And in spite of the tempest of fire which smote it the mass still advanced. It was cut down almost as fast as it could come on, but yet not quite as fast, and the men in the trench could see the front line constantly breaking and melting away, with ragged, shifting gaps opening and closing quickly along its length, with huge mouthfuls torn out of it by the devouring shells, with whole slices and wedges cut away by the scything bullets, but still filling in the gaps, closing up the broken ranks, pressing doggedly and desperately on and in on their destroyers.
But at last the attack broke down. It had covered perhaps a hundred yards, at an appalling163 cost of lives, when it checked, gave slowly, and then broke and vanished. Most of the men left on their feet turned and ran heavily, but there were still some who walked, and still others who even then either refused to yield the ground they had taken or preferred the chance of shelter and safety a prone position offered rather than the heavy risk of being cut down by the bullets as they retreated. These men dropped into shell holes and craters, behind the heaps of dead, flat on the bare ground; and there some of them lay motionless, and a few, a very few, others thrust out their rifles and dared to shoot.
A heavy shell screamed over and burst just behind the Stonewalls’ trench. Another and another followed in quick succession, and then, as if this had been a signal to the German guns, a tornado of shells swept roaring down upon the British line. It was the heaviest and most destructive fire the Stonewalls had yet been called upon to face. The shells were of every weight and description. The coming of each of the huge high explosives was heralded by a most appalling and nerve-shaking, long-drawn, rising torrent of noise that for the moment drowned out all the other noises of battle, and was only exceeded in164 its terror-inspiring volume by the rending, bellowing crash of its burst; their lesser brethren, the 5-in. and 6-in. H.E., were small by comparison, but against that their numbers were far greater, and they fell in one long pitiless succession of hammer-blows up and down the whole length of trench, filling the air with dirty black foul-smelling smoke and the sinister, vicious, and ugly sounding drone and whurr and whistle of flying splinters; and in still larger numbers the lighter shells, the shrapnel and H.E. of the field guns, the “Whizz-Bangs” and “Pip-Squeaks,” swept the trench with a regular fusillade of their savage “rush-crash” explosions. The air grew dense and choking with the billowing clouds of smoke that curled and drifted about the trench, thickened and darkened until the men could hardly see a dozen yards from them.
Pug, crouched low in the bottom of the trench beside Kentucky, coughed and spluttered, “Bad’s a real old Lunnon Partickler,” he said, and spat vigorously.
An officer, followed by three men, crawled along the trench towards them. “Here you are, Corporal,” said the officer, halting and looking over his shoulder; “this will do for you two. Get over165 here and out about fifty yards. Come on, the other man. We’ll go over a bit further along,” and he crawled off, followed by the one man.
“Wot’s the game, Corp’ril?” asked Pug, as the two began to creep over the top of the parapet. “List’nin’ post,” said the Corporal briefly. “Goin’ to lie out there a bit, in case they makes a rush through the smoke,” and he and his companion vanished squirming over the shell-torn ground in front.
A few minutes later another couple of men crawled along and huddled down bes............