Among the stock situations of the melodrama, one of the most worked to death is that of the beleaguered garrison at the last gasp, and the thrilling arrival of the rescuing force at the critical moment. It is so old and threadbare now that probably no theater would dare stage it; but in the war the same situation has been played again and again in the swaying and straining lines of battle in every variety of large and small scale. What the theater has rejected as too theatrical, the artificial as too artificial, the real has accepted as so much a commonplace that it is hardly remarked. Actually the battle line is one long series of critical situations on one side or the other, the timely arrival, or failure to arrive, of assistance at the critical moment. The great difference is that in the theater the rescue never fails to arrive, in war it often does.
Certainly the Stonewalls were as near the last180 gasp as ever dramatist would dare bring his crisis; but when their rescue came they were too busy helping it, too busy pushing the Germans back into what they hoped would be a similar unpleasant situation (without the timely rescue) to bother about it being a “dramatic situation” at all.
The Scot and the three Stonewalls shooting from the shell crater a little in front of the thin and scattered line were close enough to the front groups of the advancing German line to distinguish the features of the men’s faces, when they were suddenly aware that the groups were going down: were vanishing from before their eyes, that the charging line came no nearer, that its front, if anything, receded. The front lines were being cut down now faster than they could advance, and the lines which fell dropped out of the low vision line of the defenders, and were hidden in the low-hanging smoke haze and in the welter of shell-pits, furrows, and heaps of earth over which the advance moved. The sound of the rifle fire swelled suddenly and heavily; the air grew vibrant with the hiss and zipp of bullets.
The four in the shell pit continued to give all their attention to rapid shooting until the sound181 of running footsteps and shouting voices made them turn. All along the line to right and left of them they could see figures running forward in short rushes, halting to fire, running on again, dropping into holes and opening a rapid fire from their cover. Into the pit beside the four tumbled three men one after another, panting and blowing, but shouting and laughing. “Cheer oh, mates,” called one. “Give us a bit o’ room on the front edge there, will you?” Each of the three carried some burden. They clustered closely together a moment, but with a delay of no more than seconds stood up and began to hoist into position on the pit’s edge a light machine gun. “Let ’er rip, Bill,” said one, who wore the tunic of an officer; and Bill, crouching behind his gun, started to “let ’er rip” in a stream of fire jets and clattering reports.
“You boys were pretty near the limit, eh?” said the officer. “Mighty near,” said Kentucky; “you just sat into the game in time to stop ’em scooping the pool, sir.”
“Hey, Chick, get a move on wi’ that loadin’ there,” said Bill; “you’re hardly keepin’ the ol’ coffee mill grindin’.”
“You’re Anzacs, ain’t you?” said Pug, noticing182 the shirt-tunic the officer wore. Bill was bare-headed; Chick wore a metal helmet crammed down on top of his slouch hat.
“That’s what,” said Chick, feverishly busy with his loading. “What crowd are you?”
“Fifth Sixth Stonewalls,” said Pug.
“You was damn near bein’ First ’n’ Last Stone-colds this trip,” said Chick. “Good job we buzzed in on you.”
A few yards away another machine gun, peering over the edge of a shell crater, broke out in frantic chattering reports.
“That’s Bennet’s gun, I expect,” said the officer; “I’ll just slide over and see how he goes. Keep her boiling here, and mind you don’t move out of this till you get the word.”
Chick nodded. “Right-oh!” he said, and the officer climbed out of the hole and ran off.
For another minute or two the machine gun continued to spit its stream of bullets. “They’re breaking again,” said Kentucky suddenly; “my Lord, look how the guns are smashing them.”
The attack broke and fell back rapidly, with the running figures stumbling and falling in clusters under the streaming bullets and hailing shrapnel. In less than half a minute the last running man183 had disappeared, the ground was bare of moving figures, but piled with dead and with those too badly wounded to crawl into cover.
“First round to us,” said Bill cheerfully, and cut off the fire of his gun. “An’ last move to a good many o’ them blokes out there,” said Chick; “they fairly got it in the neck that time. I haven’t seen such a bonzer target to strafe since we was in G’llipoli.”
“Is there many o’ you chaps here?” said Pug. “Dunno rightly,” said Chick, producing a packet of cigarettes. “’Bout time for a smoke-oh, ain’t it, Bill?”
“I’m too blame dry to smoke,” said Bill. “Wonder wot we’re waitin’ ’ere for now. D’you think the other battalions is up?”
“Have you heard anything about how the show is going?” said Kentucky.
“Good-oh, they tell us,” said Chick. “We saw a big bunch o’ prisoners back there a piece, an’ we hear there’s two or three villages taken. We came up here to take some other village just in front here. I s’pose they’ll loose us on it presently.”
There was a short lull in the gunfire, and the noisy passage of the shells overhead slowed down.184 A shout was heard: “Close in on your right, Stonewalls. Rally along to the right.”
“Hear that?” said Pug, “there is some Stonewalls left, then. Blimey, if I wasn’t beginnin’ to think we was the sole survivors.”
“We’d best move along,” said Kentucky, and the three made ready. “Well, so long, mates,” said Chick, and “See you in Berlin—or the nex’ world,” said Bill lightly.
“To your right, Stonewalls; close to your right,” came the shout again, and the three clambered out of their hole and doubled in across the torn ground to their right. There were other men doing the same, stooped low, and taking advantage of any cover they found, and gradually the remains of the battalion gathered loosely together, in and about the remains of the old trench. Pug and Kentucky anxiously questioned every man they met as to whether they had seen anything of Larry Arundel, but could get no tidings of him. The battalion was rapidly if roughly sorted out into its groups of companies, and when this was done and there were no signs of Larry, little could be concluded but that he had been killed or wounded. “He’d sure have been looking for us,” said Kentucky; “I’m afraid he’s a wash-out.185” “Looks like it,” said Pug sadly. “But mebbe he’s only wounded. Let’s hope it’s a cushy one.”
The guns were opening behind them again, and bombarding with the utmost violence a stretch of the ground some little distance in front. “It’s a village we’re to take,” one of the sergeants told them. “That was our objective when the German counter-attack stopped us. We were to attack, with the Anzacs in support. Suppose we’re going on with the original program; but we’re pretty weak to tackle the job now. Hope the Jocks on the left didn’t get it too bad.”
“Should think we was due for a bit of an ease-off,” said Pug. “It’s long past my usual desh-oo-nay time as it is.”
An officer moved along the line. “Now, boys, get ready,” he said, “the next bit’s the last. Our turn’s over when we take this village. Make a quick job of it.”
In front of them the ground was shrouded again with drifting smoke, and out beyond the broken ground and the remains of a shattered parapet they could see the flashing fires and belching smoke clouds of the shells that continued to pour over and down. In a minute or two the fire lifted back from the belt where it had been thundering,186 and at that the Stonewalls, with the Highlanders to one side and another regiment to the other, rose and began to advance. From their front there came little opposition, but from somewhere out on the flank a rain of machine-gun bullets swept driving down upon them. The Stonewalls pushed on doggedly. It was heavy going, for the ground was torn and plowed up in innumerable furrows and pits and holes and ridges, laced with clutching fragments of barbed-wire, greasy and slippery with thick mud. The Stonewalls went on slowly but surely, but on their right the other regiment, which had perhaps caught the heavier blast of fire, checked a little, struggled on again gamely, with men falling at every step, halted, and hastily sought cover amongst the shell holes. The Stonewalls persisted a little longer and went a little further, but the fire grew fiercer and faster, and presently they too, with the Highlanders on their left, flung down pantingly into such cover as they could find.
Kentucky and Pug had struggled along together, and sought shelter from the storming bullets in the same deep shell hole. Three minutes later an officer crawled over the edge and tumbled in after them. He was wounded, the blood187 streaming from a broken hand, a torn thigh, and a bullet wound in the neck.
“One of you will have to go back,” he said faintly; “I can’t go further. You, Lee,” and he nodded at Kentucky; “d’you think you can take a message through to the gunners?”
“Why, sure,” said Kentucky, promptly. “Leastways, I can try.”
So the officer crawled to the edge of the pit and pointed to where, amongst some scattered mounds of earth, they had located the nest of machine guns. Then he pointed the direction Kentucky must take to find the Forward Observing Officer of Artillery. “About a hundred yards behind that last trench we were in,” said the officer. “Look, you can see a broken bit of gray wall. Get back to there if you can, and tell the officer where these machine guns are. Tell him they’re holding us up and the C.O. wants him to turn every gun he can on there and smash them up. Take all the cover you can. You can see it’s urgent we get the message through, and I don’t know where any of the regular runners are.”
“Right, sir,” said Kentucky; “I’ll get it through.” He nodded to Pug, “S’long, Pug,” and Pug nodded back, “So long, Kentuck. Goo’188 luck.” Kentucky scrambled from the hole and went off, crouching and dodging and running. No other man was showing above ground, and as he ran he felt most horribly lonely and appallingly exposed. He took what cover he could, but had to show himself above ground most of the time, because he gained little in safety and lost much in time by jumping in and out of the shell holes. So he skirted the larger ones and ran on, and came presently to the line of Anzacs waiting to support. He hardly waited to answer the eager questions they threw him, but hurried on, crossed the ruined fragments of the old trench, found presently a twisted shallow gully that appeared to run in the direction he wanted, ducked into it, and pushed on till he came almost abreast of the gray wall. He had to cross the open again to come to it, and now, with a hazy idea that it would be a pity to fail now, took infinite precautions to crawl and squirm from hole to hole, and keep every scrap of cover he could. He reached the wall at last and crept round it, exulting in his success. He looked round for the officer—and saw no one. A shock of amazement, of dismay, struck him like a blow. He had struggled on with the one fixed idea so firmly in his mind, looking on the gray wall189 so definitely as his goal, measuring the distance to it, counting the chances of reaching it, thinking no further than it and the delivery of his message there, that for a moment he felt as lost, as helpless as if the sun had vanished at noon. He was just recovering enough to be beginning to curse his luck and wonder where he was to look for the lost officer when a loud voice made him jump. “Section fire ten seconds,” it said, and a moment later a hollow and muffled voice repeated tonelessly: “Section fire ten seconds.” Kentucky looked round him. A dead man sprawled over the edge of a shell hole, a boot and leg protruded from behind some broken rubble, but no living man was in sight, although the voices had sounded almost elbow close.
“Hullo,” said Kentucky loudly.............