Part 8

The answer to the question is obscured by another burst of shrapnel, which explodes a few yards short of a parapet, and showers bullets and fragments of shell into the trench. A third and a fourth follow. Then comes a pause. A message is passed down for the stretcher-bearers. Things are growing serious. Five minutes later Bobby, having despatched his wounded to the dressing-station, proceeds with all haste to Captain Blaikie's dugout.

"How many, Bobby?"

"Six wounded. Two of them won't last as far as the rear, I'm afraid, sir."

Captain Blaikie looks grave.

"Better ring up the Gunners, I think. Where are the shells coming from?"

"That wood on our left front, I think."

"That's P 27. Telephone orderly, there?"

A figure appears in the doorway.

"Yes, sirr."

"Ring up Major Cavanagh, and say that H 21 is being shelled from P 27. Retaliate!"

"Verra good, sirr."

The telephone orderly disappears, to return in five minutes.

"Major Cavanagh's compliments, sirr, and he is coming up himself for tae observe from the firing trench."

"Good egg!" observes Captain Blaikie. "Now we shall see some shooting, Bobby!"

Presently the Gunner major arrives, accompanied by an orderly, who pays out wire as he goes. The major adjusts his periscope, while the orderly thrusts a metal peg into the ground and fits a telephone receiver to his head.

"Number one gun!" chants the major, peering into his periscope; "three-five-one-nothing--lyddite--fourth charge!"

These mystic observations are repeated into the telephone by the Cockney orderly, in a confidential undertone.

"Report when ready!" continues the major.

"Report when ready!" echoes the orderly. Then--"Number one gun ready, sir!"

"Fire!"

"Fire!" Then, politely--"Number one has fired, sir."

The major stiffens to his periscope, and Bobby Little, deeply interested, wonders what has become of the report of the gun. He forgets that sound does not travel much faster than a thousand feet a second, and that the guns are a mile and a half back. Presently, however, there is a distant boom. Almost simultaneously the lyddite shell passes overhead with a scream. Bobby, having no periscope, cannot see the actual result of the shot, though he tempts Providence (and Zacchæus) by peering over the top of the parapet.

"Number one, two-nothing minutes more right," commands the major. "Same range and charge."

Once more the orderly goes through his ritual, and presently another shell screams overhead.

Again the major observes the result.

"Repeat!" he says. "Nothing-five seconds more right."

This time he is satisfied.

"Parallel lines on number one," he commands crisply. "One round battery fire--twenty seconds!"

For the last time the order is passed down the wire, and the major hands his periscope to the ever-grateful Bobby, who has hardly got his eyes to the glass when the round of battery fire commences. One--two--three--four--the avenging shells go shrieking on their way, at intervals of twenty seconds. There are four muffled thuds, and four great columns of earth and _débris_ spring up before the wood. Answer comes there none. The offending battery has prudently effaced itself.

"Cease fire!" says the major, "and register!" Then he turns to Captain Blaikie.

"That'll settle them for a bit," he observes. "By the way, had any more trouble with Minnie?"

"We had Hades from her yesterday," replies Blaikie, in answer to this extremely personal question. "She started at a quarter-past five in the morning, and went on till about ten."

IX--STORY OF "MINNIE--THE MOST UNPLEASANT OF HER SEX"

(Perhaps, at this point, it would be as well to introduce Minnie a little more formally. She is the most unpleasant of her sex, and her full name is _Minenwerfer_, or German trench-mortar. She resides, spasmodically, in Unter den Linden. Her extreme range is about two hundred yards, so she confines her attentions to front-line trenches. Her _modus operandi_ is to discharge a large cylindrical bomb into the air. The bomb, which is about fifteen inches long and some eight inches in diameter, describes a leisurely parabola, performing grotesque somersaults on the way, and finally falls with a soft thud into the trench or against the parapet. There, after an interval of ten seconds, Minnie's offspring explodes; and as she contains about thirty pounds of dynamite, no dugout or parapet can stand against her.)

"Did she do much damage?" inquires the Gunner.

"Killed two men and buried another. They were in a dugout."

The Gunner shakes his head.

"No good taking cover against Minnie," he says. "The only way is to come out into the open trench, and dodge her."

"So we found," replies Blaikie. "But they pulled our legs badly the first time. They started off with three 'whizz-bangs'"--a whizz-bang is a particularly offensive form of shell which bursts two or three times over, like a Chinese cracker--"so we all took cover and lay low. The consequence was that Minnie was able to send her little contribution along unobserved. The filthy thing fell short of the trench, and exploded just as we were all getting up again. It smashed up three or four yards of parapet, and scuppered the three poor chaps I mentioned."

"Have you located her?"

"Yes. Just behind that stunted willow, on our left front. I fancy they bring her along there to do her bit, and then trot her back to billets, out of harm's way. She is their two o'clock turn--two A.M. _and two_ P.M."

"Two o'clock turn--h'm!" says the Gunner major meditatively. "What about our chipping in with a one-fifty-five turn--half a dozen H E shells into Minnie's dressing-room--eh? I must think this over."

"Do!" said Blaikie cordially. "Minnie is Willie's Worst Werfer, and the sooner she is put out of action the better for all of us. To-day, for some reason, she failed to appear, but previous to that she has not failed for five mornings in succession to batter down the same bit of our parapet."

"Where's that?" asks the major, getting out a trench-map.

"P 7--a most unhealthy spot. Minnie pushes it over about two every morning. The result is that we have to mount guard over the breach all day. We build everything up again at night, and Minnie sits there as good as gold, and never dreams of interfering. You can almost hear her cooing over us. Then, as I say, at two o'clock, just as the working party comes in and gets under cover, she lets slip one of her disgusting bombs, and undoes the work of about four hours. It was a joke at first, but we are getting fed up now. That's the worst of the Boche. He starts by being playful; but if not suppressed at once, he gets rough; and that, of course, spoils all the harmony of the proceedings. So I cordially commend your idea of the one-fifty-five turn, sir."

"I'll see what can be done," says the major. "I think the best plan would be a couple of hours' solid frightfulness, from every battery we can switch on. To-morrow afternoon, perhaps, but I'll let you know. You'll have to clear out of this bit of trench altogether, as we shall shoot pretty low. So long!"

X--HOW HOURS PASS IN THE DUGOUT

It is six o'clock next evening, and peace reigns over our trench. This is the hour at which one usually shells aeroplanes--or rather, at which the Germans shell ours, for their own seldom venture out in broad daylight. But this evening, although two or three are up in the blue, buzzing inquisitively over the enemy's lines, their attendant escort of white shrapnel puffs is entirely lacking. Far away behind the German lines a house is burning fiercely.

"The Hun is a bit _piano_ to-night," observes Captain Blaikie, attacking his tea.

"The Hun has been rather firmly handled this afternoon," replies Captain Wagstaffe. "I think he has had an eye-opener. There are no flies on our Divisional Artillery."

Bobby Little heaved a contented sigh. For two hours that afternoon he had sat, half-deafened, while six-inch shells skimmed the parapet in both directions, a few feet above his head. The Gunner major had been as good as his word. Punctually at one-fifty-five "Minnie's" two o'clock turn had been anticipated by a round of high-explosive shells directed into her suspected place of residence. What the actual result had been nobody knew, but Minnie had made no attempt to raise her voice since. Thereafter the German front-line trenches had been "plastered" from end to end, while the trenches farther back were attended to with methodical thoroughness. The German guns had replied vigorously, but directing only a passing fire at the trenches, had devoted their efforts chiefly to the silencing of the British artillery. In this enterprise they had been remarkably unsuccessful.

"Any casualties?" asked Blaikie.

"None here," replied Wagstaffe. "There may be some back in the support trenches."

"We might telephone and inquire."

"No good at present. The wires are all cut to pieces. The signallers are repairing them now."

"_I_ was nearly a casualty," confessed Bobby modestly.

"How?"

"That first shell of ours nearly knocked my head off! I was standing up at the time, and it rather took me by surprise. It just cleared the parados. In fact, it kicked a lot of gravel into the back of my neck."

"Most people get it in the neck here, sooner or later," remarked Captain Blaikie sententiously. "Personally, I don't much mind being killed, but I do bar being buried alive. That is why I dislike Minnie so." He rose, and stretched himself. "Heigho! I suppose it's about time we detailed patrols and working parties for to-night. What a lovely sky! A truly peaceful atmosphere--what? It gives one a sort of Sunday-evening feeling, somehow."

"May I suggest an explanation?" said Wagstaffe.

"By all means."

"It _is_ Sunday evening!"

Captain Blaikie whistled gently, and said--

"By Jove, so it is." Then, after a pause: "This time last Sunday--"

XI--A SOLDIER'S SUNDAY AT THE FRONT

Last Sunday had been an off-day--a day of cloudless summer beauty. Tired men had slept; tidy men had washed their clothes; restless men had wandered at ease about the countryside, careless of the guns which grumbled everlastingly a few miles away. There had been impromptu Church Parades for each denomination, in the corner of a wood which was part of the demesne of a shell-torn château.

It is a sadly transformed wood. The open space before the château, once a smooth expanse of tennis-lawn, is now a dusty picketing-ground for transport mules, destitute of a single blade of grass. The ornamental lake is full of broken bottles and empty jam-tins. The pagoda-like summer house, so inevitable to French château gardens, is a quartermaster's store. Half the trees have been cut down for fuel. Still, the July sun streams very pleasantly through the remainder, and the Psalms of David float up from beneath their shade quite as sweetly as they usually do from the neighborhood of the precentor's desk in the kirk at home--perhaps sweeter.

The wood itself is a _point d'appui_, or fortified post. One has to take precautions, even two or three miles behind the main firing line. A series of trenches zigzags in and out among the trees, and barbed wire is interlaced with the undergrowth. In the farthermost corner lies an improvised cemetery. Some of the inscriptions on the little wooden crosses are only three days old. Merely to read a few of these touches the imagination and stirs the blood. Here you may see the names of English Tommies and Highland Jocks, side by side with their Canadian kith and kin. A little apart lie more graves, surmounted by epitaphs written in strange characters, such as few white men can read. These are the Indian troops. There they lie, side by side--the mute wastage of war, but a living testimony, even in their last sleep, to the breadth and unity of the British Empire. The great, machine-made Empire of Germany can show no such graves: when her soldiers die, they sleep alone.

The Church of England service had come last of all. Late in the afternoon a youthful and red-faced chaplain had arrived on a bicycle, to find a party of officers and men lying in the shade of a broad oak waiting for him. (They were a small party: naturally, the great majority of the regiment are what the identity-discs call "Pres" or "R.C.")

"Sorry to be late, sir," he said to the senior officer, saluting. "This is my sixth sh--service to-day, and I have come seven miles for it."

He mopped his brow cheerfully; and having produced innumerable hymn-books from a saddle-bag and set his congregation in array, read them the service, in a particularly pleasing and well-modulated voice. After that he preached a modest and manly little sermon, containing references which carried Bobby Little, for one, back across the Channel to other scenes and other company. After the sermon came a hymn, sung with great vigor. Tommy loves singing hymns--when he happens to know and like the tune.

"I know you chaps like hymns," said the padre, when they had finished. "Let's have another before you go. What do you want?"

A most unlikely-looking person suggested "Abide with Me." When it was over, and the party, standing as rigid as their own rifles, had sung "God Save the King," the preacher announced awkwardly--almost apologetically--

"If any of you would like to--er--communicate, I shall be very glad. May not have another opportunity for some time, you know. I think over there"--he indicated a quiet corner of the wood, not far from the little cemetery--"would be a good place."

He pronounced the benediction, and then, after further recurrence to his saddle-bag, retired to his improvised sanctuary. Here, with a ration-box for altar, and strands of barbed wire for choir-stalls, he made his simple preparations.

Half a dozen of the men, and all the officers, followed him. That was just a week ago.

* * * * *

Captain Wagstaffe broke the silence at last.

"It's a rotten business, war," he said pensively--"when you come to think of it. Hallo, there goes the first star-shell! Come along, Bobby!"

Dusk had fallen. From the German trenches a thin luminous thread stole up into the darkening sky, leaned over, drooped, and burst into dazzling brilliance over the British parapet. Simultaneously a desultory rifle fire crackled down the lines. The night's work had begun.

(Ian Hay relates innumerable stories, each filled with absorbing human emotions. Among them are: "The Conversion of Private M'Slattery;" "Shooting Straight;" "Deeds of Darkness;" "The Gathering of the Eagles;" "The Battle of the Slag-Heaps," all of which are the narratives of a trained novelist direct from the battlefield.)

FOOTNOTES:

[4] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in original sources.

SOME EXPERIENCES IN HUNGARY

_In the Palace of Prince and Princess K----_

_By Mina MacDonald, English Companion to the Two Daughters of a Hungarian Magnate_

These experiences of an English girl throw a new light on the character of the Hungarian noble families. At the outbreak of the War, she was companion to the two daughters of a Hungarian Prince who resided in the vicinity of Pressburg. This gave her an opportunity of gauging the sentiments of those connected with the House of Hapsburg. They discussed the War with frankness in her presence. The family treated her precisely as one of their own and at no time considered her as an "enemy alien." In the preface to her narrative, Miss MacDonald says: "If other British subjects in Austria proper were treated more rigorously, they must lay the blame on instructions received from Berlin. My own experiences in the Hungarian family during the throes of a World War may, perchance, induce British (and American) readers to think more highly of the gallant Magyar race." Selections from her narrative are here presented by courtesy of her publishers, _Longmans, Green and Company_.

[5] I--THE CASTLE IN THE CARPATHIANS

The village of K---- stands in a pleasant mountain valley among the White Carpathians on the borders of Moravia.... It cannot even lay claim to the various dissensions of its neighbouring town S---- where representatives of every race, religion, and political party to be found in Austria and Hungary, keep the town like a boiling pot. It is far otherwise in K---- which is solidly and frankly Clovak, Catholic, and anti-Austrian. The peasants who, with the exception of the priest, the schoolmaster and the inn-keeper, constitute the population of village, are all dirty, drunken, hard-working, and intelligent.

* * * * *

The Schloss is an old white building full of beauty and interest, built on the hill below the village, in the midst of a park where Maria Therese used to hunt.... The gardens which surround the Schloss are so beautifully laid out and so ornamented with fountains and statues that K---- is known to Hungarians as the Miniature Versailles; the head gardener being a person of such serious importance in K---- that even the Herrschaft at the Schloss speak of and treat him not as an ordinary gardener but as a Man of Art. Indoors, too, the house confirms its reputation of being a small Versailles, for the collection of pictures and antiquities, begun centuries ago, is pursued by the Prince of to-day with vigour, and carping guests have been heard to remark that though there wasn't a chair in the Schloss but had a history and a value that made ordinary mortals' hair stand on end, there also wasn't one that offered any ease or comfort except in the Prince's den where all was modern--but sacred to the Prince.

Life was always merry at the Schloss, and it was a very jolly party that Excellenz von R---- found gathered there when she arrived hot and cross from Vienna, on June 28, 1914, bringing her bad news. We were: the Prince and Princess--the best-natured and most happy-go-lucky of all hosts and hostesses; their daughters, Claire aged twenty-one, fair, blue-eyed and very beautiful, and Billy aged eighteen, large and dark and interested in all things pertaining to sport; General T----, round, white-haired, and explosive--once Commandant of a very famous Galician fortress, but now living in irksome retirement in Vienna; his son Walther, a lieutenant of Uhlans, known to us as "The Babe"; finally, myself, known to everybody as Jerry--a name which no circumstances could make beautiful, and which became heart-breaking when invariably pronounced there as "Sherry."

Everybody knew and liked Excellenz von R----, who was a very gay and enterprising old lady, and Claire, Billy, and I who had looked forward in pleasure to her coming, awaited her at the gates and clambered into the carriage from both sides as it passed--for Jan, the coachman who had driven Excellencies to and from the Schloss for the past twenty-five years, found it beneath his dignity to stop at the gates to take us in, so we tumbled in as best we could on and around Excellenz, whose face was long and tragic.

II--"THE ARCHDUKE AND SOPHIE WERE SHOT TO-DAY"

"Ach, my dear children, have mercy on old bones! And I bring you bad news! The Tronfolger and his wife were shot to-day in Sarajevo. Oh, poor Sophie!" and Excellenz, who was an intimate friend of the Duchess, burst into tears. "It's quite true too--official before I left Vienna this afternoon."

But Jan was before her at the house and called as he drove up, to the footman on the steps--

"Tronfolger mit Frau heute geschossen."

German, which he insisted on speaking, was not Jan's strong point. The footman, a Bohemian and anti-Austrian, sniffed at this lack of breeding, and answered very casually "So." Excellenz, though she was still weeping, was very angry and shook her fist at Jan, but she got her innings in the hall where the Princess was awaiting--in perplexity as she saw Excellenz's wrath and tears.

"What, Francesca, you arrive in tears at K----?"

"Yes, I should think I do--it's too awful," and Excellenz sobbed out her news.

"What nonsense!" said the Princess. "How can you believe these wild stories? Besides, who would shoot that pair?"

"But it's official."

"What is official?" asked the Prince appearing.

"The Archduke and Sophie were shot to-day in Sarajevo."

"Then what the devil made them go there? They might know beforehand that they wouldn't get out of there with whole skins," he replied, greeting his guest.

In the drawing-room I found the General, who in the excitement of the moment had been forgotten. He said as usual, "Pooh! that's not a funny joke, Sherry."

"That may be; but it's official, and you ought not to receive your 'officials' with 'pooh,' but perhaps it's your way here. Here is Excellenz von R---- in tears--she has brought the news from Vienna."

"Old wives' tales! I don't believe it."

Excellenz nevertheless persuaded him.

"Donnerwetter! Jesus Maria! And she tried to save him! Plucky woman--always was plucky. Skinflint though--a skinflint. Too fond of the Jesuits! This plot was arranged in Serbia, I'll stake my life--stake my life. Ach, those Serbs! The scum of creation--scum of creation! We must exterminate them one day. They have always been a trouble, but this will bring about their end at last. Ach, the poor Archduke and the poor Duchess! Ach! Pooh!"

"Personally," said the Prince, "I think you needn't be so angry with the Serbs. They've done us a good turn really. The Archduke--it's useless to pretend otherwise, General--was the best hated man in Austria, and the Duchess the best-hated woman. Both cared only for the Church. They won't really be regretted. The young Karl Franz Josef may be the saving of Austria at a critical moment."

III--GLIMPSES OF THE LIFE OF A PRINCESS

Excellenz von R---- during her stay in K---- remained sad over the murder of her friend, and no one spoke of anything but the political complications which might ensue. The plot, it seemed, had been known to the military and civil authorities in Sarajevo, and several arrests made even before the tragedy. The Archduke was very uneasy, and asked the Governor, General Potiorek, if it was safe to venture out to the reception in the town hall. "Absolutely safe," General Potiorek was unwise enough to reply, "I can stake my own life on your Highnesses' safety."

After Excellenz von R---- returned to Vienna the Bores arrived _en masse_ to spend the whole month of July in K----. They were the Princess's young brother Count R----, his wife, and children, Elizabeth and Stefan. It is not without reason that they are known as the Bores. The Count was the most bearable of them--but even he was trying to one's nerves in hot weather. He was gay and irresponsible--had squandered his own fortune, and as much of his wife's as she would allow him, at baccarat. His particular sin was his unfortunate habit of writing verse to each and all of us and singing it, to his own melodies, on every embarrassing occasion. His verse was clever--and usually true, consequently it annoyed. The countess was a politician, devoting her attentions to the General, who spent his days in trying to avoid her.

"Jesus Maria!" he would say when, red and panting, he had made good his escape. "In all my years in Bosnia and Galicia I never had anything like this--pooh!"

Elizabeth--usually called Bethi--was sixteen, and Stefan was twelve. Both were small but they overran the whole Schloss; no person or thing was sacred to them, and no room escaped invasion.... Bethi was being educated in the Convent of the Sacré Coeur in Budapest, where all disliking her, the nuns advised her mother to have the girl's education completed at home--an advice which we in Schloss K---- could so well understand and sympathise with!...