Part 21

Some of the coolest, bravest men taking part in desperate engagements have made similar statements. The thing in war is not a question of “to be scared or not to be scared,” but of unfailing obedience to orders in spite of colorless cheeks and tremblings of the flesh. That is an impression one gets from such accounts of war as that of Sergeant Alexander McClintock, a Kentucky boy, who felt the lure so keenly that in October, 1915, he hurried over to Canada and as soon thereafter as formalities permitted he joined the Canadian Grenadier Guards. In due course the Guards were sent across and were dropped into the front trenches in Belgium. From that time onward until he was invalided home wearing a Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous bravery young McClintock had adventures not a few, enough and varied to make fascinating the book he wrote, _Best o’ Luck_, which the George Doran Company published early in 1918. The Sergeant tells his story capitally, whether recounting experiences with those formidable and ghoulish beasts, the trench rats, or encounters with the not altogether admirable trench Hun. For a long time the life in the trenches was dull monotony, about the only relief in the way of amusement being found in shooting rats as they scurried along the parapet. He says:

A COMFORTING STAFF OFFICER

“At last came the night when we were to go ‘over the top,’ across No Man’s Land, and have a frolic with Fritz in his own bailiwick. I am endeavoring to be as accurate and truthful as possible in these stories of my soldiering, and I am therefore compelled to say that there wasn’t a man in the sixty who didn’t show the strain in his pallor and nervousness. Under orders, we discarded our trench-helmets and substituted knitted skull-caps or mess tin covers. Then we blackened our hands and faces with ashes from a camp-fire. After this they loaded us into motor-trucks and took us up to ‘Shrapnel Corner,’ from which point we went in on foot. Just before we left, a staff officer came along and gave us a little talk.

[Illustration:

_Photo, by Western Newspaper Union._

Lieutenant Benjamin E. Turner (Right) and His Brother, Private Robert I. Turner

A man in American uniform appeared among the United States troops in the Vesle sector, shouted that resistance was useless, and that American officers had advised everybody to surrender; but Lieut. Turner ordered his men to stand fast. The alarmist was later identified as a German spy.]

“‘This is the first time you men have been tested,’ he said. ‘You’re Canadians. I needn’t say anything more to you. They’re going to be popping them off at a great rate while you’re on your way across. Remember that you’d better not stand up straight, because our shells will be going over just six and a half feet from the ground—where it’s level. If you stand up straight you’re likely to be hit in the head, but don’t let that worry you, because if you do get hit in the head you won’t know it. So why in hell worry about it?’ That was his farewell. He jumped on his horse and rode off.

“The point we were to attack had been selected long before by our scouts. It was not, as you might suppose, the weakest point in the German line. It was, on the contrary, the strongest. It was considered that the moral effect of cleaning up a weak point would be comparatively small, whereas to break in at the strongest point would be something really worth while. And, if we were to take chances, it really wouldn’t pay to hesitate about degrees. The section we were to raid had a frontage of 150 yards and a depth of 200 yards. It had been explained to us that we were to be supported by a ‘box barrage,’ or curtain fire from our artillery, to last exactly twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six minutes from the time when we started ‘over the top,’ our artillery, several miles back, would drop a ‘curtain’ of shells all around the edges of that 150-yard by 200-yard section. We were to have fifteen minutes in which to do our work. Any man not out at the end of the fifteen minutes would necessarily be caught in our own fire, as our artillery would then change from a ‘box’ to pour a straight curtain fire, covering all of the spot of our operations.

THE AGONY OF WAITING

“Our officers set their watches very carefully with those of the artillery officers before we went forward to the front trenches. We reached the front at 11 p. m., and not until our arrival there were we informed of the ‘zero hour’—the time when the attack was to be made. The hour of 12:10 had been selected. The waiting from eleven o’clock until that time was simply an agony. Some of our men sat stupid and inert. Others kept talking constantly about the most inconsequential matters. One man undertook to tell a funny story. No one listened to it, and the laugh at the end was emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was driving us all into a state of funk. I could actually feel my nerve oozing out at my fingertips, and if we had had to wait fifteen minutes longer I shouldn’t have been able to climb out of the trench.”

Finally the moment for the attack arrived.

“We sneaked out, single file, making our way from shell-hole to shell-hole, nearly all the time on all-fours, crawling quickly over the flat places between the holes. The Germans had not sighted us, but they were squirting machine-gun bullets all over the place like a man watering a lawn with a garden-hose, and they were bound to get some of us. Behind me I heard cries of pain and groans, but this made little impression on my benumbed intelligence. From the mere fact that whatever had happened had happened to one of the other sections of ten and not to my own, it seemed, some way or other, no affair to concern me. Then a man in front of me doubled up suddenly and rolled into a shell-hole. That simply made me remember very clearly that I was not to stop on account of it. It was some one else’s business to pick that man up. Next, according to the queer psychology of battle, I began to lose my sensation of fear and nervousness. After I saw a second man go down, I gave my attention principally to a consideration of the irregularities of the German parapet ahead of us, picking out the spot where we were to enter the trench. It seems silly to say it, but I seemed to get some sort of satisfaction out of the realization that we had lost the percentage which we might be expected to lose going over. Now, it seemed, the rest of us were safe until we should reach the next phase of our undertaking.

ALMOST CALM

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Captain Thomas H. Fallow

When heavy machine-gun fire held up his advance, Capt. Fallow led his men in an attack on the woods in which the enemy was situated, captured many prisoners, cleared the woods, and inflicted severe losses.]

“I heard directions given and I gave some myself. My voice was firm, and I felt almost calm. Our artillery had so torn up the German barbed wire that it gave us no trouble at all. We walked through it with only a few scratches. When we reached the low, sandbag parapet of the enemy trench we tossed in a few bombs and followed them right over as soon as they had exploded. There wasn’t a German in sight. They were all in their dugouts. But we knew pretty well where every dugout was located, and we rushed for the entrances with our bombs. Everything seemed to be going just as we had expected it to go. Two Germans ran plump into me as I rounded a ditch angle, with a bomb in my hand. They had their hands up and each of them yelled:

“‘Mercy, _Kamerad_!’

“I passed them back to be sent to the rear, and the man who received them from me chuckled and told them to step lively. The German trenches were practically just as we had expected to find them, according to our sample. They were so nearly similar to the duplicate section in which we had practiced that we had no trouble finding our way in them. I was just thinking that really the only tough part of the job remaining would be getting back across No Man’s Land, when it seemed that the whole earth behind me rose in the air. For a moment I was stunned and half blinded by dirt blown into my face. When I was able to see, I discovered that all that lay back of me was a mass of upturned earth and rock, with here and there a man shaking himself or scrambling out of it, or lying still.

“The philosophy of the British Tommies and the Canadians and the Australians on the Somme was a remarkable reflection of their fine courage through all that hell. They go about their work, paying no attention to the flying death about them.

“‘If Fritz has a shell with your name and number on it,’ said a British Tommy to me one day, ‘you’re going to get it, whether you’re in the front line or seven miles back. If he hasn’t, you’re all right.’

“Fine fighters, all. And the Scotch kilties, lovingly called by the Germans ‘the women from hell,’ have the respect of all armies. We saw little of the _poilus_, except a few on leave. All the men were self-sacrificing to one another in that big melting-pot from which so few ever emerge whole. The only things it is legitimate to steal in the code of the trenches are rum and ‘fags’ (cigarettes). Every other possession is as safe as if it were under a Yale lock.”

FIRE CURTAINS

The method in which “curtains of fire” are laid down is very clearly described.

“While I was at the front I had opportunity to observe three distinct types of barrage-fire, the ‘box,’ the ‘jumping,’ and the ‘creeping.’ The ‘box,’ I have already described to you, as it is used in a raid. The ‘jumping’ plays on a certain line for a certain interval and then jumps to another line. The officers in command of the advance know the intervals of time and space and keep their lines close up to the barrage, moving with it on the very second. The ‘creeping’ barrage opens on a certain line and then creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate of speed, covering every inch of the ground to be taken. The men of the advance simply walk with it, keeping within about thirty yards of the line on which the shells were falling. Eight-inch shrapnel and high-explosive shells were used exclusively by the British when I was with them in maintaining barrage-fire. The French used their ‘seventy-fives,’ which are approximately of three-inch caliber. Of late, I believe, the British and French have both added gas-shells for this use when conditions make it possible. The Germans, in establishing a barrage, used their ‘whiz-bangs,’ slightly larger shells than ours, but they never seemed to have quite the same skill and certitude in barrage bombardment that our artillerymen had.

“To attempt to picture the scene of two barrage-fires, crossing, is quite beyond me. You see two walls of flame in front of you, one where your own barrage is playing, and one where the enemy guns are firing, and you see two more walls of flame behind you, one where the enemy barrage is playing, and one where your own guns are firing. And amid it all you are deafened by Titanic explosions which have merged into one roar of thunderous sound, while acrid fumes choke and blind you. To use a fitting if not original phrase, it’s just ‘Hell with the lid off.’”

The wound that ended McClintock’s career with the Canadian forces was received at the battle of the Somme. Major Lewis, in command of that section, sent for him:

“‘McClintock,’ said he, ‘I don’t wish to send you to any special hazard, and so far as that goes we’re all going to get more or less of a dusting. But I want to put that machine gun which has been giving us so much trouble out of action.’

[Illustration:

_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._

Lieutenant-Colonel John W. Stewart

He carried out special operations, for the infantry and heavy artillery. Practically all of his work was done under fire and he was many times mentioned in orders for his extraordinary efficiency.]

“I knew very well the machine gun he meant. It was in a concrete emplacement, walled and roofed, and the devils in charge of it seemed to be descendants of William Tell and the prophet Isaiah, They always knew what was coming and had their guns accurately trained on it before it came.

“‘If you are willing,’ said Major Lewis, ‘I wish you to select twenty-five men from the company and go after that gun the minute the order comes to advance. Use your own judgment about the men and the plan for taking the gun position. Will you go?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ I answered. ‘I’ll go and pick out the men right away. I think we can make those fellows shut up shop over there.’

“Good boy!’ he said. ‘You’ll try, all right.’

“I started away. He called me back.

“‘This is going to be a bit hot, McClintock,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘I wish you the best of luck, old fellow—you and the rest of them.’ In the trenches they always wish you the best of luck when they hand you a particularly tough job.

THE SAME TO YOU

“I thanked him and wished him the same. I never saw him again. He was killed in action within two hours after our conversation. Both he and my pal, Macfarlane, were shot down dead that morning.

“When they called for volunteers to go with me in discharge of Major Lewis’s order the entire company responded. I picked out twenty-five men, twelve bayonet men and thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan, which was to get within twenty-five yards of the gun emplacement before attacking, to place no dependence on rifle fire, but to bomb them out and take the position with the bayonet. We followed that plan and took the emplacement quicker than we had expected to do, but there were only two of us left when we got there—Private Godsall, No. 177,063, and myself. All the rest of the twenty-five were dead or down. The emplacement had been held by eleven Germans. Two only were left standing when we got in.

“When we saw that the gun had been silenced and the crew disabled, Godsall and I worked round to the right about ten yards from the shell-hole where we had sheltered ourselves while throwing bombs into the emplacement and scaled the German parapet. Then we rushed the gun position. The officer who had been in charge was standing with his back to us, firing with his revolver down the trench at our men who were coming over at another point. I reached him before Godsall and bayoneted him. The other German who had survived our bombing threw up his hands and mouthed the Teutonic slogan of surrender, ‘Mercy, _Kamerad_,’ My bayonet had broken off in the encounter with the German officer, and I remembered that I had been told always to pull the trigger after making a bayonet thrust, as that would usually jar the weapon loose. In this case I had forgotten instructions. I picked up a German rifle with bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on down the trench.

“The German who had surrendered stood with his hands held high above his head, waiting for us to tell him what to do. He never took his eyes off us, even to look at his officer, lying at his feet. As we moved down the trench he followed us, still holding his hands up and repeating, ‘Mercy, _Kamerad_!’ At the next trench angle we took five more prisoners, and as Godsall had been slightly wounded in the arm, I turned the captives over to him and ordered him to take them to the rear. Just then the men of our second wave came over the parapet like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes we had taken the rest of the Germans in the trench section prisoners, had reversed the fire steps, and had turned their own machine guns against those of their retreating companies that we could catch sight of.”

* * * * *

Badly wounded in the knee a little later, the sergeant took refuge in a shell-hole. Four German prisoners on their way to the rear were requisitioned as stretcher-bearers and carried him in on an improvised litter.

KNICKERBOCKER WAITER

“It was a trip which was not without incident. Every now and then we would hear the shriek of an approaching ‘coal-box,’ and then my prisoner stretcher-bearers and I would tumble in one indiscriminate heap into the nearest shell-hole. If we did that once, we did it a half-dozen times. After each dive, the four would patiently reorganize and arrange the improvised stretcher again, and we would proceed. Following every tumble, however, I would have to tighten my tourniquets, and despite all I could do the hemorrhage from my wound continued so profuse that I was beginning to feel very dizzy and weak. On the way in I sighted our regimental dressing station and signed to my four bearers to carry me toward it. The station was in an old German dugout. Major Gilday was at the door. He laughed when he saw me with my own special ambulance detail.

“‘Well, what do you want?’ he asked.

“‘Most of all,’ I said, ‘I think I want a drink of rum.’

“He produced it for me instantly.

“‘Now,’ said he, ‘my advice to you is to keep on traveling. You’ve got a fine special detail there to look after you. Make ’em carry you to Poizers. It’s only five miles, and you’ll make it all right. I’ve got this place loaded up full, no stretcher-bearers, no assistants, no adequate supply of bandages and medicines, and a lot of very bad cases. If you want to get out of here in a week, just keep right on going now.’

“As we continued toward the rear we were the targets for a number of humorous remarks from men coming up to go into the fight.

“‘Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky beggar,’ was the most frequent saying.

“‘Bli’ me,’ said one cockney Tommy, ‘there goes one o’ th’ Canadians with an escort from the Kaiser.’

“Another man stopped and asked about my wound.

“‘Good work,’ he said. ‘I’d like to have a nice clean one like that myself.’

“I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at some remark and asked him if he understood English. He hadn’t spoken to me, though he had shown the greatest readiness to help me.

“‘Certainly I understand English,’ he replied. ‘I used to be a waiter at the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York.’ That sounded like a voice from home, and I wanted to hug him. I didn’t. However, I can say for him he must have been a good waiter. He gave me good service.”

MISTRESS “RAZZLE DAZZLE”

A Rampageous, Self-Willed Old Thing Fondly Remembered by Her Non-Commander

Captain David Fallon is a young Irishman, but an old soldier. Before 1914 he had fought against the hillmen in India, and had won the Indian Field Medal. At the opening of the war he was physical instructor and bayonet drill master at the Royal Military College. So expert a teacher was he that the authorities decided to keep him at his post training new officers. Dave Fallon couldn’t “see it” that way. He remonstrated strenuously. There were other men—older men—professional soldiers, he insisted, just as capable of training men as he was. Anyway he couldn’t stay out of the “big fight.” He pointed to his long service record, his Frontier Medal. He would be more valuable at the front. The authorities finally gave in.

Fallon had no wild dreams of glory and distinction. “It is your amateur soldier,” he says, “who is most filled with such aspirations. Not that he hasn’t a right to entertain them, and try to act on them, for they have led many new-made soldiers into great and brave accomplishments. I don’t mean that such dreams are bad for a man. They are distinctly good. I only mean that with regulars soldiering is a cold, hard business and one isn’t given to enhancing it with romantic imaginings.”

Little did Fallon think when he was urging himself on the military authorities for active duty that when the war was over there would be few soldiers with adventures more thrilling and perilous than fell to his lot.

He went through the entire terrible campaign at Gallipoli. He was in numerous fierce trench battles. He served as an aerial observer, and fought enemy planes. On the road to Thiepval he had a shoulder smashed by shrapnel, but he remained in command of his men behind barricades made of the dead bodies around them in “No Man’s Land.” For twenty-two hours they kept the Germans off. Then reinforcements came. On scout duty he frequently penetrated German trenches and gun positions in the night. At last he was detected in the enemy trenches. A bomb duel ensued. He was frightfully injured but managed to escape.

[Illustration:

_Photo, by International Film Service_

Sergeant Clyde Graham

In company with an American officer he manned a tank and charged two towns under heavy German fire. The tank scattered a German battery and accumulated seventy prisoners. In peace time he is a college professor.]

These incidents and many others Captain Fallon relates in his book _The Big Fight_ (W. J. Watt & Company). One of his most interesting chapters is devoted to his experience in command of a tank. It was an amazing adventure.

The Captain has fond memories of that good, old tank. “The dear girl was named ‘Razzle Dazzle,’” he says.

“She was very young, having been in service only three months, but rather portly. She weighed something over thirty tons. And in no way could you call the dear little woman pretty. She was a pallid gray and mud splashed when I got her and there was no grace in the bulging curves of her steel shape; or of her conical top; or her ponderous wheels.

“She showed every aspect of being a bad, scrappy, old dearie. The minute I saw her in her lovely ugliness I knew she would like trouble and lots of it. She carried a six hundred horsepower motor. And out of her gray steel hoods protruded eight guns.

SHE GOES INTO ACTION