CHAPTER XX
HELL LET LOOSE
That night we relieved the Tenth Battalion and took over the front line. Right from the beginning casualties piled up; the shell fire was terrific. In the lulls of the bombardment we dug frantically to consolidate our flimsy defenses. Barbed wire we had none; we simply threw out in front any obstructions we could find.
One amusing incident occurred here; I laugh at it now, although I did not at the time. The little dark man, Libby, was the hero. Libby translated means "Coolness and indifference to danger." A volume could be written of the events in which this man figured that for sheer daring almost surpassed belief. Libby and I were working on a traverse, which, as every one knows, is a cross-section of trench, and we were exerting every effort to fill bags of dirt and pile them up on this cross-section.
Buried underneath our trench were dead men planted as thickly as they could be laid. Digging down I turned up a boot containing a foot. "Stick it in," said Libby.
"Do you think I'm going to touch that thing with my hand?"
"What's the odds," said he, "but if you don't want to, shove it on the shovel with your foot."
I did so and he placed it in the sack, I holding the sack open, and the grisly thing touched my hand in passing. I shuddered, almost fainted, but never a sign of perturbation from Libby. Again he dug, this time bringing up the other foot, with the leg bone still sticking.
"Shove her in," he said.
Sweating with horror, yet fearing his scorn, I again rolled the ghastly thing on the shovel and it was then transferred to the sack. Placing the sack on the corner of the traverse, the little man coolly slapped it out with his spade as if he were handling common dirt. He then called to me for another sack, but I was lying on the parados, sick with horror and vomiting my insides out. So for the time being he had to continue his ghoulish work alone.
Morning came, finding us still at work and almost dead with fatigue. The bombardment continued without intermission all through that day and afternoon, and our casualties were growing with deadly regularity. At nightfall it died down in our vicinity, but never ceased at our back.
The object of this will be easily seen. They kept hammering the roads and the whole country at the rear of the front line, in order to keep reserves and supplies from getting to us, and they did the job so thoroughly that no two transports could get within miles.
Good old Bill Skerry and a man named Bradley, braved this bombardment on purpose to be with their own battalion when the attack, which we all knew was bound to come, took place.
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[Illustration: THERE ARE LEISURE HOURS EVEN IN THE FRONT TRENCH. CLEANING-UP TIME.]
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They told us how the Germans had been using a horrible gas, that the French Algerian troops had evacuated their trenches, that the battalions in reserve at Ypres had been called out and had gallantly come up through that curtain of shell fire, taking up the French trenches and were holding on like limpets, although their losses were terrible.
The glorious charge of the Tenth and Sixteenth had taken place and is now eternal history for Canada. Just think of it, that thin line of men with no artillery to cover them, holding back the mass of the enemy ten times their number.
It now became an anxiety to us to know how they were faring, for if they were obliged to give way we would be entirely cut off. However, it was no use wasting time in idle questioning, so to work we went, frantically making our trenches as strong as possible.
Fritz again got busy with his weeping pill and our eyes were something to remember. The smart was terrible, while the awful odor got in our throats, making them raw and every breath a pain.
Still we worked steadily on, throwing over everything that might prove an obstacle in front of the trenches. Listening patrols were sent out and came back with the news that the Germans were unmistakably massing for an assault.
For myself, so nervous was I that I would have welcomed an attack to end the suspense. However, we were left in peace till daybreak, which came with a drizzling rain. This made conditions in the trench very bad indeed. But all we could do was to sit tight and wait.
When it was almost light the bombardment started again. It was one roaring, shrieking blast of destruction. Never can I describe the din, the awful rumble of the heavy-weight champions; the magnified thunderclap of their heavy shrapnel; the moaning of the Black Marias; the hiss and scream of their medium-size shells, and the hated whiz bangs, bursting over every section of the trench. And, remember, not a British gun to reply. Hell's gaping craters were open everywhere; now and again a shriek or an oath told that some lad had been stricken down; our parapets were crumbling like matchwood; but all we could do was to wait.
To the sorrow of every one of us, the gallant soul of Bill Skerry took its flight to his Maker about ten o'clock that morning. A small shell ricochetting from a stunted willow tree simply tore him to pieces, along with a little chap named Wellbelove, which was his family name, and a name he most aptly deserved.
Bill! one of our best beloved mates. We never had time to bury him, but, thank God, he didn't fall alive into the hands of those human devils. A curious effect of the shell burst was to lengthen out his body. When alive and well he was a man of six feet two, and when we examined him after his death, he easily measured seven feet. The sorrow of his little chum, Fitzpatrick, was overwhelming; nothing could comfort him for days.
It was here that I first felt real fear. Terror of course we all have, but that soul-gripping inaction took all manhood away from me as I crouched in the bottom of the trench, trying with might and main to appear unconcerned. I have never experienced quite the same sensation of fear in the front line at any time as I did that night; I felt deadly danger on every hand and my face and head were wet with cold sweat.
In curious contrast to my constitutional dread of the danger abounding on every hand was a man who happened to have possessed himself of a fairly dried dugout. With that torrent of shell hurtling everywhere, he calmly read chapter after chapter of a magazine, apparently as deeply interested as if he were sitting in his own room at home. How I envied him his nerves--or, rather, the absolute lack of them.