CHAPTER XXVIII
LEAVING YSER
Before we left the canal we had a really miraculous escape--I and the other members of my platoon. We were detailed on ration party and while waiting for our loads we straggled up the road, the boys being only a few yards apart from one another. Suddenly we heard the ever-increasing roar of a huge howitzer shell coming straight at us. Throwing ourselves flat we waited for what seemed an hour, although in reality only a second, and with a shrieking roar, like the crack of doom, it landed in our midst. I remember going up, but I never remembered coming down. When I came to my senses some sixteen hours later I was told what happened after the arrival of the German souvenir. Not one of our boys had been killed, nor even wounded, although several were sent home suffering from shell-shock, and very bad cases too. We had all been stunned and consequently put out of action for that night.
A second ration party took our place and the same thing was repeated, but this time with terrible results; forty-eight of our boys became casualties--killed, wounded or shocked.
The wonder is that any of us stayed on duty at all, and in my particular case the result was to make me a mass of irritated nerves, while my hands and limbs twitched for days. I believe if the M.O. had seen me I would have been sent for at least a week's rest, but I stayed it out.
It was midnight and as hot as Hades when we started from the banks of the Yser. Now we had been some twenty-two days constantly in action. I have not spoken of the numberless times we stood to, to be launched into the line to help our terribly hard-pressed French and British comrades. Every time a tornado of German artillery fire would open up, we would stand ready to advance across open ground to the front line. Also, in spite of our fun on the Yser's banks, we were often subjected to terrific bombardments from the Boche heavies. In short, our casualties on the Yser were fearfully many.
Judge then of our condition for a twenty-five mile march. The beginning of our march commenced by doubling us out between batteries of roaring seventy-fives and sixty-pounders. The awful din was the finishing touch and our nerves went snap. At last we were clear and we settled down to a steady hike. The Warwickshire Regiment, which took our place on the banks of the canal, was there about twenty minutes when a fearful bombardment burst upon it. Poor gallant Midland lads; God rest you where you lie! Next morning a few survivors still hung to their positions, but, alas, the gallant Warwicks were almost decimated.
Who was it first published the scurrilous lie that the British sacrifice their Colonial troops and save their own? No fouler slur on those quiet tenacious warriors of the Old Land was ever cast. If Tommy Atkins fails in taking or holding a position, no other nation on God's earth can take it or hold it.
On, on, we tramped! God! Would we never halt? One after the other, exhausted men would fall and sleep, sleep, sleep. On and ever on till legs moved mechanically, all sensation of movement having left them. Men dozed as they walked, fell as they dozed, lay where they fell.
True to my mighty vow that I would never fall out on a march, I lurched on, but, God! the effort. At last, as day was breaking, they took us into a field, and a hot drink of tea, some food and a rest of one hour revived us somewhat.
I noticed that one of the officers was carrying a puppy in his arms. It was only a few days old and I marveled at his wonderful heart in forgetting his own troubles and caring for the poor little helpless creature. Our curiosity was aroused and we asked him, "Why the pup?"
"Boys," said he, "that pup is worth a fortune. It was born at the time of the very heat of the bombardment." I never knew what eventually became of the poor little creature.
On again, all through the blazing heat of the day we hiked. Tommies would walk with us, easing our lot in their rough, kindly manner. They promised us Fritz should pay dearly for his dastardly gas attack before they were through. On, on, till we entered Bailleul. Thank God! Rest, we thought. But no, ever on.
And then the men, the limit of endurance reached and mad with disappointment, began to get in an ugly mood. Discipline was sorely strained, and we openly shouted our opinion of the officers to their faces.
And then we witnessed a thing which brings tears to my eyes every time I think of it. Those officers of ours--alas, some of them were not there; they sleep near Bill Skerry and the rest--were in no better shape than ourselves; in fact, owing to their responsibility, they were in worse plight. Instead of marking down the offenders for future punishment, they inflicted worse punishment on us by making us thoroughly ashamed of ourselves. Lining up across the road, they bade us halt for a space, telling us that they had a bet to decide, and it must be decided at once. They were going to run a race. Their effort was pitiful in the extreme. They started out bravely enough, but a few paces, and one after the other would stagger and fall; but they struggled to their feet and staggered away again. After such an exhibition of courage what could we do or say. Not only was it a lesson to us, but it is one of the grandest memories I have. To a civilian, perhaps, there does not seem a great deal in it, but it was a sight we soldiers never can forget. There were those battle-weary men, utterly worn out, their nerves on edge, scarcely able to walk, yet to encourage their men, and show them that they were game to the end, they went through the threefold agony of that race. Such an example of pluck, resourcefulness, knowledge of men, and chivalry, I shall never witness again.
All things must have an end, be they good or bad, and at last, what remained of us, stumbled into the yard of the big farmhouse owned by the lady who objected to the black soldiers of Canada. The sun was just setting when we were finally dismissed. Some of the boys never moved from the spot where they stood before they were dismissed. They simply sank down and slept! slept! slept! For myself I managed to climb to the second floor of a barn, and seeing some deep straw in one corner made for it. I had my fingers on the buckle of my belt, and when I awoke twenty-four hours later my fingers were still clutching the slide-buckle. When I had fallen down I had turned my head, and while I slept on my stomach, my head was turned sideways. On awakening I could not turn my head in its proper position, and for some hours, to the amusement of the boys, I was walking about with my chin resting on my left shoulder. A vigorous massaging at last gave me relief. Then taking off my clothes I bathed in a dyke, and, such was my physical training, I was on duty at headquarters next day.
A broiling hot day, and Libby, perspiring profusely, hailed me as I thoughtfully watched the progress of a hen to her laying place. We were not supposed to steal anything, but a hungry man is not over-scrupulous and that hen interested me. The little dark man, with his whimsical manly face, was the most cheery comrade I ever had.
"Coming for a bath, Bobbie?" "Lord! I haven't energy enough to smoke."
"Aw, come on."
"All right," said I, and away we started, singing at the top of our voices, and made our way to a huge sheet of water we could see in the distance. At last we arrived at its shores only to find that its greatest depth was about six inches. For the first time since I knew him I found that Libby sometimes did read his Bible. Gazing at the fraud with an air of resigned disgust he said thoughtfully, "Well, Bobbie, Simon Peter would not need a hell of a lot of faith to take a stroll on the waves of that blankety-blank lake."
We determined to bathe somewhere. There were lots of dykes, but they were either too shallow, too dirty, or too muddy to be swimable. Hailing a farmer, we inquired of him where we could find a dyke deep enough to swim in. Luckily he understood my execrable lingua franca, and he led the way to a corner of one of his fields; here a dyke had widened out to about thirty feet. The water, so said the farmer, was about ten feet deep. We did not doubt him, but the color scheme of the water was something even our seasoned tastes did not fancy.
Libby looked at the water, then at me, then at the farmer. "Hell!" said he, "I came out to have a swim and here goes."
Taking off his few clothes he dived straight into the green mess. He emerged, swam around for a minute, then climbed the bank. I howled with laughter. Libby, like Esau, was a very hairy man, and the green spawn clung to his hairy hide in long streamers, while from his head hung long green veils almost to his heels.
"Oh, look at the bride," came a voice over my shoulder, and a small party of our immediate crowd came up.
"Isn't she perfectly sweet?"
"Yes, but isn't it a pity she's bow-legged!"
"Congratulations." This to me. "You are some money saver, Bub, all you have to do when she wants a new dress is to pitch her into the bridal vat."
"Oh, come to me sticky embrace," said Batch.
"Sure," ejaculates Lib, and straightway leaps at Batch, encircling him lovingly with his spawn-covered arms. The party scattered to right and left, for they feared that the fickle bride would shortly transfer "her" affections to any one of them. Lib, with a yell of satisfaction, relinquished his hold on Batch, scurried to a shallow but clean patch of water farther down the dyke, and was soon rid of his nuptial garments. I had to be satisfied with a wash in the same place.
And now, great joy and satisfaction came to cheer the hearts of the Fifth. The Colonel was seen to sneak guiltily from the farmhouse. Stealing away to a spot, where he fondly imagined he was unobserved, he sat down and divested himself of his upper garments. Then with a furious wrench he tore off his shirt and, to the observers' unholy joy, he commenced to scratch! scratch! scratch! Having gone well over his bare hide, he turned his attention to his shirt. What joy! The Old Man was lousy.
Speaking of our clinging friends, the lice, it may be of interest to discuss the various methods of taking the offensive, when they have massed for an attack under your shirt. The old method of hunting, according to Morgan, was not really hunting, but strategy.
"Well, my black-whiskered evil genius," said I, "what is your wonderful system of beating them to it?"
"My poor, innocent child," said he, "I suppose I must pity your benighted ignorance and explain. You take off your shirt, pinch a quantity of salt well over it, lay it down flat on the ground; then get a pail of water and place it a few feet away. The stock will fall for the salt and will eat it. Naturally, they get thirsty, and then beat it for the pail. Now is your chance, grab your shirt and run."
"Chatting" was the professional term for hunting on the Western Front. It is simply searching for your gray-back foes, and dispatching them by the medium of one's nails. Another method, practiced by highly trained experts, is to take a lighted candle and run it up and down the seams of your clothes. None but the very expert can do this as it often results in burning holes in your clothes.
Church parade took place the Sunday before we left for further work with the Huns. The General was to look us over. It was a lovely morning when we lined up in the field awaiting our leader. The scene will live in my memory as long as I exist. Very few traces of war could be seen here. The field was carpeted with a thick growth of beautiful green grass, while the spring flowers were perfect in their beauty and fragrance. Tall poplars fringed three sides of the field, and the breeze bent them gracefully this way and that. The soft, sighing sound of this gentle wind, playing through the poplars, seemed to be a sweet requiem for the very gallant gentlemen of England and Canada who would parade with us no more.
And the men. God! the wonder and pathos of it. To see them standing easy, chatting and joking one with the other, one would have thought war was non-existent. But take a closer look. See those faded, patched uniforms, mud-stained and blood-stained, yet spotless as far as human effort could make them. And the look in their eyes; the look! that far-away, dreamy pathetic stare of men who have looked straight into the mouth of hell.
A strange contrast they made to the newly arrived reinforcements from England. The latter, with their clean uniforms and their fresh faces, looked very boyish and young against the boys who had been through the jaws of death at Ypres.
All familiar with the history of Canada's part in the great conflict, know the speech delivered to us by the General, and his words of confidence and advice for the future. His splendid talk inspired all of us with renewed faith in our fight.
After a reorganization, we soon were ready to interview the Fritzers again, and before long we were engaged in another scrap that in some respects surpassed even Ypres for its proportion of casualties on a narrow front.
Our work this time was to take over a section of the line that was in imminent danger of being broken; few people in these later days ever dream of the nearness of the Allies to absolute defeat in the first months of the war.
Now I have something to tell those people, who are forever lauding the deeds of Britain's Allies, and forever forgetting that Tommy Atkins, the British soldier, does a little fighting, too.
We hear of the tragedy of Belgium, and God forgive any man who fails to honor that noble little nation; we hear of the soul of France, the Anzacs, the Canadians, but very little is said of the men who quietly, without fuss or advertisement, lay down their lives in this great conflict, the Tommies of Great Britain--
"For he does not advertise, but he wins the day or dies."
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[Illustration: TWO TOMMIES TALKING IT OVER.]
No doubt the opinions of the soldiers would prove interesting reading. The cumbersome outfit, as shown, is hardly conducive to a pleasant frame of mind, but Tommy is nearly always cheerful.
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People who have never felt the breath of war, chat glibly of the nations engaged in the conflict. "Where are the British?" they ask. I'll answer them in a few words. The business of the British soldier is to down Fritz, and he is doing it so well that the newspaper men naturally have grown to expect great things from him, and consequently never mention what seems the perfectly natural thing for a British soldier to do.
It was to the aid of a sorely-tried remnant of British Tommies that we were sent. They had suffered, only God and themselves knew how much--but they were holding, and reinforcements were needed badly.
As usual, we fell in at dusk. The ordinary banter and repartee flashed backwards and forwards, but it seemed to me a trifle forced. I knew it was in my case, but I had to keep up the bluff that I was not afraid.
Male readers may smile at my cowardice, that is, those who have not seen men die in battle. But reason it out, O contemptuous ones. You, perhaps, may be brave. I am not, and in addition I have always had a repugnance for fighting. I am afraid in an ordinary fight, and can always, in imagination, feel the impact of a fist landing with a sickening crunch on my features. Before the war, I have often, only by sheer effort of will, kept myself from fainting at the killing of a hog.
Imagine then, after having had experience with the killing and maiming of strong men; after having seen young boys mangled and dying; heard the pitiful cry of lonely, wounded laddies from the blackness of No Man's Land at night, the gasp for "mother" from some expiring stalwart; the stench; the filth--ah God! how I sweated with horror at the thought of being sent into it again. Yet, thank God, I hold the respect of my surviving comrades, and those in Valhalla will welcome "Bobbie," when he joins them.
A letter from one of my officers that reached me in the hospital--just a short pencil-written message--is my greatest treasure on earth. Knowing to the full how fearful I always was in action, and how that constant dread was ever present, I show it to few. I am utterly undeserving of such a message from such a man.
Courage is no greater in one nation than in another. Among French, Italian, Russian, Canadian, Anzac or British, human self-sacrifice is about equal. Bravery is the monopoly of none, and bravery has so many different sides that it cannot be defined.
I have seen boys, brought up in refined homes, gentle sweet-faced laddies--the last people in the world one would associate with soldiers--rise to heights of the most superb self-sacrifice. Their very refinement has sent them into the jaws of hell with pale faces and horror-stricken eyes, but the mighty spirit has carried them through.
You, mothers or sisters, who fear for your boy, because he is timid, or because he has never left your side, cease troubling your hearts. This conflict demands more than the physical courage of the animal, and the timid man often turns out the very bravest in action.
But back to our campaigning. The order was given to the column to move off, and soon nothing was heard but the trudging of feet. Marching over rough cobbled roads, pock-marked with shell holes, is not conducive to conversation. We met small groups of Tommies on their way to rest. The wonder of it! Plastered with mud, scarcely able to walk from sheer fatigue, they joshed us unmercifully, telling us with grim humor what we were in for. Whole platoons from the regiments of these men lay out in No Man's Land, never to hear the word of command again, yet their comrades who survived had the stomach to crack jokes at our expense. And then came a bunch of the guards. Cut to ribbons at La Bassée, only a day or so before, yet here were the survivors, tired out as they must be, marching along to the music of a few mouth-organs, with that little swaggering swing of the shoulders--"a touch of the London swank."
Dear reader, when some skeptical anti-British friend asks why France should be called upon to do it all, please tell them that the British Guards Brigade has been remade no less than twenty-five times since the war began. Not reinforced, but _REMADE_--new men, new equipment, new everything.
How could we see all this, is asked, if it was dark. Out in France, near the firing line, flares and searchlights are continually lighting up the whole country side.
Ambulances with their moaning freight would roll past us. The sight of these again caused my heart to tighten, as though clutched by some big hand. Their number was appalling, and so near to the firing line were they, that we knew the fighting was terribly severe.
Still, I was not given much time to let my feelings of horror work on me. There was work to be done. No sooner had the last ambulance passed us than we began to click casualties. I was despatched with different messages up and down the column. Round the corner we swung. Wh-o-o-f! Crump! a big one landed just over the heads of the leading platoon. Woo-oo-oo! screamed a "coal box" (5.9 shell), landing and exploding with a mighty rumble only a few yards away from the major.
Fritz was getting ready to give the roads a thorough searching. To defeat his plans as much as possible, we deployed from the road into the fields on our left. The Boche, unfortunately for us, chose this moment to send up a series of flares. He evidently grew suspicious and had probably seen us moving. T-r-r-r-r-r-r said his magic (machine) guns. "God!" "Oh mother!" from here and there as some poor lad went over. We dived into shallow ditches and, crouching under this frail cover, tried to avoid the shower. We were successful in dodging the machine guns, but shelling was a different matter. However, both died down after awhile, and we began to stretch ourselves.
In utter darkness we moved off. We turned once I know, but it was not till day broke that we found we were behind a low parapet, built of nothing but earth covered with sods. As protection from fire, it, of course, was useless, but it served its purpose by affording cover from view. It was about a thousand yards from the second line, was hard to reach by machine gun fire, but an easy prey to artillerymen. While we occupied this flimsy defense, however, we were fortunate in getting off for several hours without casualties. The Colonel was agreeably surprised when I took the message from the major to him, stating that we had had no casualties that day.
Although it was our good fortune to escape that day, such was not the case with a battery of artillery that was parked some six hundred yards at the back of us. This battery about four o'clock in the afternoon opened up for a few rounds on the Fritz position. Probably the gunners were annoyed at the repeated efforts of the Germans to locate them. Big shells had landed uncomfortably close to the copse in which the British battery was hidden throughout the day, and it was evident the German gunners were searching for them. In all probability, some wandering German airman had seen the battery open fire, and of course directed the fire of his own guns. A huge shell dropped into the very center of the copse, to be followed almost instantly by another. Trees and "camouflage" of grass and boughs were blown to ribbons, while half the body (the head and forelegs) of a horse landed on the front side of our flimsy defenses. The battery of course was silenced, and presently the dazed, shell-shocked men were incoherently telling the story of what had happened to their guns.
As the sun went down a storm of strafing began, while up and down the line flares soared skyward, and an incessant stream of rapid fire told us that either one side or the other had attacked. The order came "Stand to." We were not to be launched into it, however, for the firing died down into an intermittent rifle exchange, but the Hun guns never ceased their hateful roaring till almost daylight.
The limit to which human endurance can go was practically reached one afternoon, when, throwing myself down for an hour's sleep, I was aroused and told to report to the major. He gave me a message and told me to get to headquarters with it as quick as my legs could carry me. Headquarters, as the crow flies, was about a mile away, and instead of the usual road, I thought I would go straight to it. That decision came very nearly preventing the writing of this record or the delivery of that message.
Just as I started out the Germans began a furious strafe and, at the same time, the French seventy-fives and our own few sixty-pounders raised their voices in a mighty chorus. Shells were bursting everywhere and the din simply stunned me. In addition I was continually falling over a wreck of barbed wire and trip wires, into shell holes and my face once coming in contact with that of a dead guardsman's almost caused me to lose my reason, then--blank. All I remember was reaching the road, sitting down and trying to remember what my name was, what I was there for, and where I was. Another runner happening to notice my plight, took me to headquarters himself. What happened I was not conscious of. It was told me later.
The Colonel, growing black in the face, trying to elicit what I was there for, was fast losing his temper. I tried to make him understand, but all I could do was to open my mouth and make a gasping sort of noise. My wind and senses had absolutely left me. A captain standing near guessed what the trouble was, took hold of me kindly, bathed my face and head in cold water and revived me sufficiently to enable me to deliver my message.