I
“The Colonel wants to speak to O.C. ‘B,’ sir.” It was midday.
“It’s about that wire,” said Edwards. “But we couldn’t get any more out without stakes.”
“Oh, I don’t expect it’s about the wire,” I said, as I hurried out of the Straw Palace. “The C.O. knows we can’t get the stakes.”
No, it was nothing to do with the wire.
“Just a minute, sir,” said the telephone orderly. “Hi! Headquarters. Is that you, George? O.C. ‘B’s’ here now. Just a minute, sir.”
A pause, followed by:
“Commanding Officer, sir,” and I was handed the receiver.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “This is Adams.”
“Oh! that you, Adams? Well, look here—about this mine going up to-night. Got your map there? Well, the mining officer is here now, and he says.... Look here, you’d better come down here now. Yes, come here now.”
“Very good, sir,” but the C.O. had rung off with a jerk, and only a singing remained in my ears.
“Got to go down and explain in person why the officer in charge of ‘B’ Company wirers did not get out twenty coils last night,” I said to Edwards as I hurried off down Old Kent Road. “The C.O.’s in an ‘I gave a distinct order’ mood. Cheero!”
On entering the Headquarters’ dug-out in Maple Redoubt, I found the C.O. engaged in conversation with an artillery officer: there had been another raid last night on the left, and our artillery had sent a lot of stuff over. This was the subject under discussion.
“I think you did d—d well,” said the C.O. as the officer left. “Well, Adams, I thought it would be easiest if you came down. Here’s our friend from the underworld, and he’ll explain exactly what he’s going to do”; and I saw the R.E. officer for the first time. He had been standing in the gloom of the further end of the dug-out.
“Look here,” began the Colonel, as he laid out the trench map on the table. “Here is where we blow to-night at 6.0” (and he made a pencil dot in the middle of the grass of No Man’s Land midway between the craters opposite the Loop and the Fort. See Map III). “And here, all round here” (he drew his pencil round and round in a blacker and yet blacker circle) “is roughly where the edge of the crater will come. Isn’t that right, Armstrong?”
“Yes,” was the reply, “the crater edge won’t come right up to the front trench, but I don’t want anyone in the front trench, as it will probably be squeezed up in one or two places.”
“Exactly,” said the Colonel. “Do you think this blow will completely connect up the two craters on either side?”
“Oh, certainly,” was the answer. “There’s no question of it. You see, we’ve put in” (here followed figures and explosives incomprehensible to the lay mind). “It’ll be the biggest mine we’ve ever blown in this sector.”
“A surface mine, I suppose?” I asked.
“Almost certainly,” said the R.E. officer. “You see, their gallery is only ten feet above ours, and they might blow any minute. But they’re still working. We wanted to get another twenty feet out before blowing, but it isn’t safe. Anyway, we are bound to smash up all their galleries there completely, though I doubt if we touch their parapet at all.” He spoke almost impatiently, as one who talks of things that have been his main interest for weeks, and tries to explain the whole thing in a few words. “But,” he added, “I don’t want any men in that trench.”
The mining officers always presumed that the infantry clung tenaciously like limpets to their trench, and had to be very carefully removed in case a mine was going up. As a matter of fact, the infantry always made a rule of clearing the trench half as far again as the mining officer enjoined, and were always inclined to want to depart from the abhorred spot long before the time decided upon!
“That’s clear enough,” said the Colonel. “Then from here to here (and he made pencil blobs where I have marked A and B on Map III) we will clear the trench. Get your Lewis guns placed at these two points (A and B), ready to open fire as soon as the mine has gone up. And get your bombers ready to seize the crater edge as soon as it’s dark enough. You’ll want to have some tools and sand-bags ready, and your wirers should have plenty of gooseberries and all the stakes we can get you. Right.”
As I went up 76 Street at half-past five, I realised that I had been rushing about too much, and had forgotten tea. So I sent Davies back and told him to bring up a mug of tea and something to eat. No sooner had he disappeared than I met a party of six R.E.’s, the two leading men carrying canaries in cages. They held them out in front, like you hold out a lantern on a muddy road, and they were covered from head to foot in white chalk-dust. They were doing a sort of half-run down the trench, known among the men as the “R.E. step.” It is always adopted by them if there is any “strafing” going on, or on such occasions as the present, when the charge has been laid, the match lit, and the mine-shaft and galleries, canaries and all, evacuated. (The canaries are used to detect gas fumes, not as pets.)
When I reached the Fort, I found No. 7 Platoon already filing out of the trench area that had been condemned as dangerous.
“You’re very early, Sergeant Hayman,” I said.
I looked at my watch.
“Oh, all right,” I added, “it’s twenty to six; very well. Have you got all the bomb boxes and S.A.A. out?”
“Yes, sir. Everything’s clear.”
“Very well, then. All those men not detailed as tool and sand-bag party can get in dug-outs, ready to come back as soon as I give orders. There will probably be a bit of ‘strafing.’”
“Very good, sir.”
The Lewis-gun team emerged from its dug-out twenty yards behind the Fort, in rather a snail-like fashion. I arranged where the N.C.O. and two men should stand, just at the corner of the Fort, but in the main trench (at B in map). The rest of the team I sent back to its burrow. Edwards had made all arrangements for the other team.
Ten to six. It was a warm evening early in April, and there was a deathly calm. These hushes are hateful and unnatural, especially at “stand to” in the evening. In the afternoon an after-dinner slumber is right and proper, but as dusk creeps down it is well known that everyone is alive and alert, and a certain visible expression is natural and welcome. This evening silence is like the pause between the lightning and the thunder; worst of all is the stillness after the enemy has blown a mine at “stand to,” for ten to one he is going to blow another at “stand down.”
The sun set in a blaze of red, and in the south the evening star glowed in a deepening blue. What will have happened by the time the day has returned with its full light and sense of security?
“Here you are, sir,” I heard suddenly at my elbow, and found my mug of tea, two large pieces of bread and butter and cake, presented by Davies on a box-lid salver.
“I don’t know if this is enough, sir. Lewis he wanted me to bring along a pot o’ jam, sir. But I said Mr. Adams he won’t have time for all that.”
“I should think not. Far too much as it is. Here, put the cake on the fire-step, and take hold of this notebook, will you?” And so, with the mug in one hand, and a piece of bread and butter in the other, Scott found me as he came along at that moment, looking, as he told me afterwards, exactly like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
“What’s the time?” I enquired, munching hard.
“I make it two minutes to six,” said Scott.
“Go up a shixo’-clock,” I said, taking a very big mouthful indeed.
“Who put the sugar in this tea?” I asked Davies a minute later.
“I did,” said Davies.
“Far too much. I shall never get you fellows to understand ...”
But the sentence was not finished. There was a faint “Bomp” from goodness knows where, and a horrid shudder. The earth shook and staggered, and I set my legs apart to keep my balance. It felt as if the whole ground were going to be tilted up. The tea splashed all over the fire-step as I hastily put it down. Then I looked up. There was nothing. What had happened? Was it a camouflet after all? Then, over the sandbags appeared a great green meadow, slowly, taking its time, not hurrying, a smooth curved dome of grass, heaving up, up, up, like a rising cake; then, like a cake, it cracked; cracked visibly with bursting brown seams; still the dome rose, towering ten, twenty feet up above the surrounding level; and then with a roar the black smoke hurtled into the air, followed by masses of pink flame creaming up into the sky, giving out a bonfire heat and lighting up the twilight with a lurid glare! Then we all ducked to avoid the shower of mud and dirt and chalk that pattered down like hail.
“Magnificent,” I said to Scott.
“Wonderful,” he answered.
“The mud’s all in your tea, sir,” said Davies.
“Dr—r-r-r-r-r,” rattled the Lewis guns. The Lewis gunners with me had been amazed rather than thrilled by the awful spectacle, but were now recovered from the shock, and emptying two or three drums into the twilight void. I was peering over into a vast chasm, where two minutes ago had been a smooth meadow full of buttercups and toadstools.
Suddenly I found Sergeant Hayman at my elbow.
“The trench is all fallen in, sir. You can’t get along at all.” And so the night’s work began.
At 1.0 a.m. I was lying flat down on soft spongy grass atop of a large crater-lip quite eight feet higher than the ground level. Beside me lay two bombers and a box of bombs: we were all peering out into a space that seemed enormous. Suddenly a German starlight rocketed up, and as it burst the great white bowl of the crater jumped into view. Then a few rifle-shots sang across the gulf. There followed a deeper darkness than before. Behind me was a wiring-party not quite finished; also the sound of earth being shovelled by tired men. A strong working-party of “A” Company had been engaged for four hours clearing the trench that had been squeezed up; all available men of “B” Company not on sentry had been digging a zigzag sap from the trench to the post on the crater-lip where I lay. Two other pairs of bombers lay out on the crater edge to right and left; behind me the wirers had run out a thin line of stakes and barbed wire behind the new crater; this wire passed over the sap, which would not be held by day. One wirer had had a bullet through the leg, but we had suffered no other casualties. Another hour, and I should be off duty. Altogether, a good show.