II
“Swis-s-sh—báng. Swis-s-sh—báng.”
“That settles it,” said I, as I scrambled hastily down into the trench, preceded by the sniper I had with me that day as orderly. I more or less pushed him along for ten yards—then halted; we faced each other both very much out of breath and “blowy.” The whole place was reeking with the smell of powder, and the air full of sand-bag fluff.
“That settles it,” I repeated: “I always thought that was a rotten post; and I object to being whizz-banged. ‘A sniper’s job is to see and not be seen.’ Isn’t that right, Morris?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Morris, adding with a sad lack of humour “They must have seen us, sir!”
“Exactly: they did. And they weren’t very far off hitting one of us into the bargain. As I say, that settles it. We’ll leave that post for ever and ever; and to-night we’ll build a new one that they won’t see.”
At ten o’clock that night we were well at work. Just on the one hundred metre contour line there was a small quarry, at the west end of which had been the too conspicuous post where the Boche had spotted us. Every loophole must by its very nature be “spottable”; but when the natural ground is so little disturbed that it looks exactly the same as it did before the post was made, then indeed this “spottability” is so much reduced that it verges on invisibility. So, leaving the old post exactly as before, we were building a new one about twenty yards to the west of it.
There was a disused support trench running west from the Quarry, and this suited my purpose admirably. It ran just along the crest of the hill, and commanded even a better view of Fricourt than the Quarry itself. Moreover, there was enough earth thrown up in front of the trench to enable us to fix in the steel-plate (at an angle of 45°: this increases its impenetrability) on ground level, without the top protruding above the top of the earth. The soil in front was not touched at all until the plate was fixed in, and then enough was carefully scooped away from the front of the actual loophole to secure a fair field of view. The earth in front of the loophole is then exactly like a castle wall, with a splay window. If you think of a Norman castle you will know exactly what I mean. The loophole represents the inch-wide aperture in the inner side of the splay. Similarly an embrasure is built behind the loophole, with room for one man to stand and fire, and the second man to sit by him. A rainproof shelter of corrugated iron is placed over this embrasure, and covered over with earth; this prevents it being spotted by aeroplane; also it makes the place habitable in the rain. Here is a section of a typical sniper’s post:
“Click, click click” went the pick into the chalk, cutting room for the embrasure; there was a tinny sound as some of the loose surface soil came away with a spurt, spilling on to the two sheets of corrugated iron waiting to go on to the roof. Added to this were the few quiet whispers, such as “Where’s that sand-bag?” or “Is this low enough, sir?”, and the heavy breathing of Private Evans as he returned from the Quarry after emptying his sand-bag. For all the chalk cut away had to be carried to the Quarry and emptied there; new earth on the top there would not give any clue to those gentlemen in Fricourt Wood who put the smell of powder in my nostrils a few hours back.
It was a darkish night, but not so dark but what you could see the top of the trench. There are very few nights when the sky does not show lighter than the trench-sides. There are a few, though, especially when it is raining; and they are bad, very bad. But that night I could just distinguish the outline of the big crater-top, half-right, and follow the near skyline along the German parapet down into Fricourt valley. I was gazing down into that silent blackness, when a machine-gun started popping; I could see the flashes very clearly from my position. Somewhere in Fricourt they must be.
Meanwhile the post was nearly finished; the corrugated iron was being fixed to the wooden upright, and Jones was on the parapet sprinkling earth over it. The others were deepening the trench from the Quarry to the post.
“That’s the machine-gun that goes every night, sir,” said Jones. “Enfilading, that’s what it is.”
“Pop—pop—pop,” answered the machine-gun.
“Look here, Jones,” said I. “You know No. 5 post, opposite Aeroplane Trench?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, go down there, and see if you can see the flashes from there; and if you can, mark it down. See?”
“Yes, sir!” and he had his equipment on in no time, and was starting off when I called him back.
“Be very careful to mark your own position,” I warned him. “You know what I mean.”
He knew, and I knew that he knew.
Meanwhile, I stuck an empty cartridge case in the parados behind my head and waited.
Five flashes spat out again, and “pop—pop—pop—pop—pop” came up out of the valley: and between me and them in the parapet I stuck a second cartridge case——
I looked at my watch. It was half-past twelve. The post was finished, and the trench deep enough to get along, crawling anyway.
“Cease work.”
The next day was so misty that you could see practically nothing over five hundred yards, and the new post was useless. The following day it had frozen again, and an inch of snow lay on the ground. It was a sunny morning, and from the new post all Fricourt lay in full view before me. How well I remember every detail of that city of the dead! In the centre stood the white ruin of the church, still higher than the houses around it, though a stubby stump compared to what it must have been before thousands of shells reduced it to its present state. All around were houses; roofless, wall-less skeletons all of them, save in a few cases, where a red roof still remained, or a house seemed by some magic to be still untouched. On the extreme right was Rose Cottage, a well-known artillery mark; just to its left were some large park-gates, with stone pillars, leading into Fricourt Wood; and just inside the wood was a small cottage—a lodge, I suppose. The extreme northern part of the village was invisible, as the ground fell away north of the church. I could see where the road disappeared from view; then beyond, clear of the houses, the road reappeared and ran straight up to the skyline, a mile further on. A communication trench crossed this road: (I remember we saw some men digging there one morning). With my glasses I could see every detail; beyond the communication trench were various small copses, and tracks running over the field; and on the skyline, about three thousand yards away, was a long row of bushes.
And just to the left of it all ran the two white lace-borders of chalk trenches, winding and wobbling along, up, up, up until they disappeared over the hill to La Boiselle. Sometimes they diverged as much as three hundred yards, but only to come in together again, so close that it was hard to see which was ours and which the German. Due west of Fricourt church they touched in a small crater chain.
It was a fascinating view. I could not realise that there lay a French village; I think we often forgot that we were on French soil, and not on a sort of unreal earth that would disappear when the war was over; especially was No Man’s Land a kind of neutral stage, whereon was played the great game. To a Frenchman, of course, Fricourt was as French as ever it had been. But I often forgot, when I watched the shells demolishing a few more houses, that these were not German houses deserving of their fate. Perhaps people will not understand this: it is true, anyway.
I was drawing a sketch of the village, when lo! and behold! coolly walking down the road into Fricourt came a solitary man. I had to think rapidly, and decide it must be a German, because the thing was so unexpected; I could not for the moment get out of my head the unreasonable idea that it might be one of our own men! However, I soon got over that.
“Sight your rifle at two thousand yards,” said I to Morgan, who was with me. “Now, give it to me.”
Carefully I took aim. I seemed to be holding the rifle up at an absurd angle. I squeezed, and squeezed——
The German jumped to one side, on to the grass at the side of the road, and doubled for all he was worth out of sight into Fricourt! Needless to say, I did not see him again to get another shot!
“They’ve been using that road last night, sir,” said 58 Morgan, while I was taking a careful bearing on my empty cartridge case. (A prismatic compass is invaluable for taking accurate cross-bearings.)
“Yes,” I said. “Why yes, of course, they must have used it last night. I never thought of that. Good. We’ll get the artillery on there to-night, and upset their ration-carts.”
This pleased the fancy of Sniper 58 Morgan, and a broad grin came over his face at the thought of the Boche losing his breakfast.
“Maybe, sir, we’ll see the sausages on the road to-morrow morning.”
For which thought I commended him not a little: a sense of humour is one of the attributes of a good sniper, just as rash conclusions are not.
I then went down to No. 5 Post, where Jones was awaiting me, according to arrangement. There I took a second bearing, and retired to my dug-out to work out the two angles on the map. “From map to compass add: from compass to map subtract” I repeated to myself, and disposed of the magnetic variation summarily. Then with the protractor I plotted out the angles. “Exactly. The small house with the grey roof standing out by itself on the left. So that’s where you live, my friend, is it?”
Once more I was up at the new post, scrutinising the grey-roofed house with the telescope. After a long gaze, I almost jumped. I gave the telescope to Morgan. He gazed intently for a moment.
Then, “Is that a hole, sir, over the door, in the shadow, like ...?”
“It is,” I answered
That night the machine-gun started popping as usual, when suddenly a salvo of whizz-bangs screamed over, and H.E.’s joined in the game. All round and about the little grey-roofed house flickered the flashes of bursting shells. Then the enemy retaliated, and for a quarter of an hour “a certain liveliness prevailed.” Then came peace. But there was no sound all night of a machine-gun popping from Fricourt village; on the other hand, our machine-guns had taken up the tune, with short bursts of overhead fire, searching for those Boche ration carts. And in the morning the grey-roofed cottage appeared with two tiles left on the right-hand bottom corner of the roof, and the front wall had a huge gap in it big enough to act as a mouth for fifty machine-guns. Only Morgan was disappointed: all marks of the sausages had been cleared away before dawn! After all, are not the Germans pre-eminently a tidy people?