CHAPTER XI On Convoy Duty
A moon, half risen and not yet full, lit up the surroundings as the supply column drew away from the village where Bill and his friends had their head-quarters. The road wound away from them pale and ghost-like, a ribbon of shimmering greenish-white, once shaded by trees, the stumps of which alone remained. Woods cropped their green heads up here and there, a stream tinkled in the immediate neighbourhood, and all around lay a blue-green waste over which moonbeams played gently.
"Pipes out!" came the order. "Young Bill, you'll come along with this French sergeant; you can call him any name you like, he'll answer to it. Do as he says all the time and you won't get into trouble. Larry, you come along with me; Jim's fixed with another Frenchman. I needn't tell you that no matches must be struck, and when we get a couple of miles nearer not one of you must speak above a whisper. If heavy shelling starts you'll carry on just the same until further orders."
Bill climbed to the seat beside the driver of the wagon to which the Sergeant had pointed, and found himself reared well above the column, able to look right along it. There for an hour he was jolted and jarred as the vehicles were pulled northward, and there he listened to the chatter of the men and to the clatter of the horses' hoofs as they trod the highway. Far away in the distance guns spoke; nearer at hand at times there were louder clashes as French guns answered. More than once the hum of an engine could be heard; far overhead and soaring upwards he caught a fleeting glimpse of an aeroplane hurrying to its destination. Once, too, a still period was of a sudden broken by the sharp tattoo of a machine-gun up in the trenches, followed by silence which was almost painful.
"Just a little 'do'," the Frenchman told him. "Oh yes, mon ami, I speaks the American well, but you—ah! Je me rappelle! you—you—speak French beautifully."
It was just the politeness of the Frenchman; indeed Bill was to find the friendly and gallant poilu a boon companion, and the few hours he spent with this soldier made him feel the warmest friendship for him.
"What's that?" he asked a little later, as the pale rays of the moon were put in the shade by a brilliant conflagration which lit up the sky ahead and made every horse, every vehicle, and every driver stand out boldly silhouetted against the ground.
"Very lights! Listen to the machine-gun again! Someone's restless up there; perhaps it's the Boche suffering from toothache and strolling out in 'No-Man's-Land'. My comrades of France always shoot when a Boche is in sight. They do not forget the invaded districts of France, my friend! They do not forget Belgium! Pardieu! They do not love the Boche! No, not at all, mon ami. Ah, it has died down! Now we shall push on, for we are within one and a half miles of the trenches."
They clattered on their way steadily; behind them came other columns, and presently they found themselves driving abreast with another which had emerged from a side road. Under those mysterious beams they pushed forward along the road, a collection of vehicles containing all that makes war possible to an army; bread and meat, and bacon and coffee, and wine, and such-like articles; trench stores, rifles, ammunition, barbed wire, and poison gas apparatus; shells for the soixante-quinze, the famous French quick-firer; shells for the howitzers; and in bigger and stronger vehicles, which were motor-propelled, shells for other guns, of larger calibre, which had been pushed up towards the trench-line. Then the column halted.
"Here we go straight on while the others branch off to various rendezvous," said the driver. "Do you find it a queer sensation, this driving at night with the trench-line in front, knowing that there are men there stretched on either hand for miles upon miles—yes, for four hundred miles—American, British, Portuguese, Belgian; and opposite them the Boche—the hated Boche? Do you realize, mon ami, that on every road along that four hundred miles at this very moment similar convoys are pushing up stores to be carried to the trenches, and that on the far side of 'no-man's-land' the same is going forward? For the Boche also must replenish the stomachs and the ammunition dumps of his soldiers. Poof, you will say, it is all wasted labour! That all this ammunition will be fired into the air, and that, being fired, it will cause more waste, for it will kill people! But is it waste? Mon Dieu! Non! It is spent for the freedom of all nations. This pouring out of shells and blood, though some of it is thrown to the winds in these days, will bring forth fruit in the future; for it will see the defeat of the Germans and the downfall of Prussian militarism, and will find France mightier than ever, Britain the Queen of Empires, and America—well, America refined by the fire through which she has passed, nobler than at the moment. The price, my friend? Well, it appears high—outrageously high—in our day; posterity will realize that it was not too high for the liberty it purchased.
"But there, I am romancing. I think in these night hours, I think of my country saddened by its losses, of yours, and of Britain and our other allies. I wish that this war had not been, but, being a philosopher, I see that it was inevitable. And the Boche, does he wish that it had never been? Bah! Ask him! It was a bad day for the Kaiser when he let loose his soldiers. An easy conquest was then promised. Does it look easy now? Will he achieve triumph? Never! Even if he were to do so it would be to discover a shattered, broken Germany. Ah, here we are at the rendezvous! Now we halt and feed our horses; presently the fatigue parties from the trenches will come down and then our stuff will be taken."
A little later a ghostly line of men appeared out of nothingness as it were; they were challenged by the officer commanding the convoy, and soon, laden with material for themselves and their comrades, went trudging off again under the moonbeams, making for the entrance to the communicating-trench which led to the front line.
"Heigh ho! a good job done!" said the poilu as he picked up his reins again. "Get along to the leaders, my friend, and help to turn them, for these roads are narrow for steering a cart of this sort round. Another half-hour and we shall be able to light pipes. My word, this night work costs the country something in tobacco!"
Not a shot, not a shell of any description, had come near the convoy so far, and in fact the front line, illuminated quite brilliantly a little while before, and stirred to some movement, as evidenced by the rattle of machine-guns, had now sunk as it were into blissful slumber. Even the Very lights failed to illuminate the sky. It looked as though the two armies had decided upon a truce until the morning. But not so! Some ten minutes later there came the boom of distant guns, and then a screech ending in a loud detonation.
"Hum!" thought Bill. "Heard that sort of thing before! Shrapnel—and not very far away either."
"Just ahead. You can hear the bullets dropping on the roadway," the poilu answered, pointing. "It's just a strafe; they know, as we know, that convoys occupy the roads at night, and every now and again they send over a feeler. If they have luck—poof! it is uncomfortable for some of us. But then, so also for the Boche; for if he shells, so do we also. Besides, there are the aeroplanes; they swoop down on the roads. A week ago the Boche had the impudence to attack us, but we hurried under some trees, and in the darkness he lost us. But, plague take the Boche, there are more shells! He is wakeful! It must be the man with the toothache again, for listen to the machine-guns. Bother the man! Why does he not go to the doctor?"
Bill could hear him chuckling. That the Frenchman was undisturbed by the shells now sailing over the country-side was quite evident. He did not even duck his head as one played over the convoy and ricochetted from the road perhaps a hundred yards in advance. If his features had been clearly visible, his eyebrows would have been seen to lift as if he were vastly astonished when another one spluttered shrapnel to the left of the convoy. He even laughed when one plunged into the ground not ten yards away.
"It's always so," he said quite quietly. "You've heard, my friend, that the bullet does not strike you which has not your number on it. It is a great joke, I tell you; my number—my regimental number—is so great that I doubt the bullet was never made that can hold it. But a shell. Ah! that is different—eh? We can smoke now—bien! That is a comfort."
Bill might have found it a comfort too if he had taken yet to smoking; instead, he sat perched up beside this cool Frenchman, listening to his words, turning his head round to watch the bursting shells, and listening to others which hurtled through the air at a distance.
"Uncanny, yes!" he told himself. "It makes one rather feel inclined to shiver, as if a jug of cold water were being poured slowly down one's back. But yes, it is something to be a philosopher, only difficult under such conditions. Somehow it's so different from what it was on the trawler; then everything was movement, hurry, rush, with fighting to be expected; here it's all so peaceful—er—except for the shells."
It was peaceful in its own way, though dangerous enough as many have already discovered; yet, to do him justice, Bill never flinched, and indeed rather enjoyed the whole experience.
"A man gets used to it," said the Sergeant, when they got back to their quarters, having in the meanwhile surreptitiously obtained a report on Bill and his two chums. "You three fellows were not, of course, expected to mind shelling after that trawler affair; but you can take my word for it, son, that shelling gets on a man's nerves even when he thinks he's used to it. You may go up to the trenches night after night; sometimes there's not a shot fired; then you come in for a burst of it and things are lively. If you don't, every odd gun that sounds in your ear may have a shell for you—you're listening for it, expecting it; it's almost as bad as a strafe same as I've been talkin' of. Now, young shaver, you turn in! Precious soon you may be takin' your own convoy up."
Less than a month had passed when Bill was actually driving one of the convoy carts, Larry and Jim being placed in similar responsible positions. Then each got a step in rank and became lance-corporal, and finally, when a few weeks had passed, were full sergeants. Just about then it happened they were transferred from the Franco-American unit to one of the new units working with the American army, which was now swelling visibly and increasing in numbers.
"We're off to the Somme area," Larry said. "Say now, ain't that the place where British chaps fought the Huns somewheres about 1916, when America wasn't yet in the war, and when the President was still tryin' to keep us out of it? Guess it would want a lot of keepin' us out of it now! What was it they said when we came in?—'in with both feet'—eh? Gee. It's more than our feet we're putting into this business."
They went by road to Amiens, where the famous Cathedral overshadows the ancient city, soon to be the objective of the Germans; then they turned due east and rode to Peronne, where, to their amazement, to Bill's huge delight and none the less to the satisfaction of Larry and Jim, they found themselves billeted next to British troops and their unit actually attached to a British division.
"It's getting a sorter mix-up, boys," a friend of theirs explained. "Way north there's Belgians and French and British sorter mixed up together; then there's Portuguese and British and French again sorter mixed up and jumbled lower down; there's us and more British and French, and then more Americans, all of 'em facin' the Hun and ready for him. Folks say as how he's about to start a big offensive. There's hundreds of thousands of German troops on t'other side of 'No Man's Land'. For that we've got to thank the Revolutionists in Russia—or rather, a chap should say, the Bolshevists—who, I reckon, are sorter super-Socialists, and are agin' the law and agin' everything as the Irish might say. Well, we're watching for Mr. Hun and his offensive."
"And meanwhile we go on learning our own particular job with motor transport," said Bill, for this part of the work entrusted to him and his friends interested him even more than that of the horsed transport. "You seem to be able to do so much more with motors; you can go so much faster and farther, and the loads you carry are so much heavier. Then, too, our job is to take up shells; and when you hear the guns shying them over at the Huns you somehow feel that you're doing better work than you were beforehand. An offensive—eh, Larry? Wonder where it'll start? I did hear that this front might be attacked."
"Guess the Hun wants to win back the line the British and French took from him in the Somme offensive," Jim said. "You see, he was lying then just east of Albert and pretty nigh within easy shot of Amiens; then he got pushed back right away past Fricourt and Pozières and other historical places, till his line was so broken and his defences so upset that he made a forced retirement after the battle was over, clearing out of Bapaume, Peronne, and Noyon to mention a few of the places. It must have shook him up a little that offensive of our allies, and if he's made up his mind to recapture the ground, well it ain't wonderful."
"Not when you come to remember the fact that the Russians are out of this business altogether," declared Larry with a curl of his lip; for somehow or other the downfall of the great Muscovite nation, the refusal of the soldiers there to fight, and the upheaval and revolution which had undermined the strength of the country, roused something like contempt. "There ain't no longer need for Germans in the east nor for Austrians either; a few battalions marching here and there are quite enough to occupy the country and to bully and overawe the people. Meanwhile the Kaiser is moving every man-jack he can find into France. Folks says that the railways are worn-out with transporting guns and men; and yonder, just over there"—and standing up the diminutive Larry stretched out a hand to the country beyond Peronne, where the German lines were—"somewhere yonder there are masses of the enemy, masses of guns too, I dare say, thousands of gas shells, trench mortars, bombs, and every sort of implement, all being stored and made ready for the day when the Germans will fling themselves upon Britons and French and Belgians and Americans, not to mention Portuguese and others who are fighting on the Western Front. It will be a terrific combat."
Yet days went by, settled weather arrived, and the end of March was already approaching. Those were days of beautiful sunlight, when men began to think of throwing off the hairy waistcoats with which the British soldier is provided, when greatcoats were discarded during the daytime, and when men sniffed at the breeze, scented the spring flowers, and thought of summer. But at night cold winds played over the ground, and the earth, in which so many thousands were living, dug deeply into it, struck chill and cold, and, as the early hours of morning came, condensed the moisture. Then the country-side was obscured in damp, wet fog, which hid the combatants from one another, hid, indeed, all but the sound of guns, which thundered here and there along the battle line.
For days past, indeed, gun-fire had been a feature along the front; it broke out here and there with violence; it subsided, perhaps, only to burst into double fury at an adjacent point; while for some hours now the enemy artillery had been thudding over a wide stretch, and the Allied guns had been answering shot for shot, so that there was pandemonium. Then, in the early hours of the 21st March, German masses were suddenly launched through the dense fog which still clad the country-side, and threw themselves with desperate fury upon the British Third and Fifth Armies.