CHAPTER NINE
For a day or two after this we had comparative quiet. Only bursts of shell fire threatened us, but these were so common as to be hardly noticed. The stench of the dead was terrible—worse than we had yet experienced. Men turned sick and were positively useless for hours, many being sent to the base hospital for treatment for their violent nausea. Others developed rheumatic fever from sleeping in the mud and water.
Shortly after this, during the night time, we were relieved by an English regiment, composed of men who had not yet seen the worst of the fighting. They were fresh and inclined to be jovial. They asked rather carelessly about conditions as we had found them; we told them plainly what they had to expect. That seemed to sober them somewhat but not greatly. So we extended to them the conventional wish for the “best o’ luck” and left them to find out for themselves that they were in a campaign which could only be called one of present desperation and ultimate sacrifice.
Upon passing through an unidentified village, we found it deserted and nothing but a heap of ruins. The surrounding country as far as the eye could see resembled the lid of a pepper box, being full of shell holes. Many an oath came from the fellows, in the dark, as they stumbled into the shell holes full of water.
At last we reached our billets. Here, at least, there were signs of life. Troops and transports were passing us continuously, but we knew nevertheless that we were near the firing line, for we could hear the bursting of shells and see the flashes. The country was a little more hilly here, as far as we could see in the semi-darkness. We were more than glad to get into a stable or barn; it meant a chance to get dry and to stretch our overworked limbs.
After a little while we lined up in the farm yard and got some hot bully-beef stew in our canteens, a two-pound loaf among eight of us, some jam (needless to say “apple and plum”), and a “daud” of cheese; also a quarter-pound tin of Golden Flake cigarettes between two, and, as a sort of dessert, we got the mail from Blighty! Happy? why the word doesn’t express it! We were simply elevated a million feet in the air—tired as we were.
We discussed and played the different football league games over and over again as they were described in the newspapers we had just received. We imagined ourselves once more among the spectators at a cup-tie match between the Celtic and Dundee at Ibrox Park.
For a time war was entirely forgotten; but only for a time! With a sudden “jerk” we would be brought back to our senses and our present whereabouts by the voice of the orderly corporal asking whether Private McNeil, or Lance-Corporal Watson, or perhaps Corporal McGregor had been seen down the line wounded; or was he dead? It was war, all right, and not football we were playing at!
Jock Hunter and I were still “muckin’-in” pals, sharing our rations and troubles alike. Very soon the party broke, each man making for his allotted place to rest. I can recall so vividly the feeling that came over me as I lay down on that straw. It was identical with that which I had felt after coming back from a charge that had been a touch struggle! I fell asleep sighing and wondering how soon it would be when my letters would find no claimant for them!
We passed the next day writing letters, scraping the mud off our clothes, and at rifle inspection. More men joined us. One of the new arrivals lent me his razor, and I performed, what was, to me, the awful task of shaving. It made me feel like a new man, and they said I looked it. We were told that we would no doubt have a few days’ rest, and then move to Dixmude or some town with a name like that. We were instructed not to leave our billets, and told that whenever we heard a boche plane overhead we should make for cover, or stand perfectly still with our backs to the walls of the farm houses, without stirring, until the machine was out of sight. That day we noticed a few of Fritz’s sausage balloons in the direction of the firing line.
That night our officer, Lieutenant McRae, came round fully equipped; one look at him was enough; we knew there was to be no more “dossing” in the soft straw for us.
“Fall in at the double, men! We have to take over a new section of trenches not far from here.” Such was the greeting he gave us. We got into “harness” all right, but how we grouched and “cussed”!
After lining up on the muddy road with the remainder of the battalion, the usual order was issued: “All fags out; no talking!”
We started off, wading through mud; with every now and then an occasional halt and more grouching in the ranks. With three hours of this to our credit, we found ourselves zigzagging round little hillocks along narrow muddy cart roads. We passed a concealed battery of small howitzers. Some of the English chaps noticed that we were “jocks” (the name the English give the kilties) and began cheering us up with:
“Down’t wish y’ enny ’arm—but ye’r gowin’ ta ’ave an ’ell of an ’ot tyme, you Jocks!”
We had ploughed our way through the mud only a few hundred yards beyond the battery when my nostrils sensed that there must have been some killing going on in the vicinity. A little farther on we came to an open section and turned to the right just before making a small incline. I could see a few wrecked transport wagons and dead horses. We remained behind a hillock and were told that we were near the enemy. We were about to enter trenches which lay quite close to the German lines our officer told us, adding that we could have reached this point from our billets in half an hour, but that it was necessary for us to make the exceedingly long détour. Most of us knew that this was the direction in which we had seen the sausage balloon, which brought back the memory of the heavy firing.
We got into the natural ditches, which served us as trenches. We did not relieve any troops at this place, and there were no signs of any having been here, but on both flanks at some distance off, there were regiments entrenched. The situation was not one in the least to be desired. We were practically on an open space.
We were just in the act of starting work with our entrenching tools when all at once—“s-c-ch-eew!”—and the sky was alight with a flare rocket. There was no necessity for orders to hug the earth; we just simply flopped on our faces. Then it seemed as if the whole of the German artillery opened fire. We did not dare even to look up for quite some time. However, it seemed that we were not the party at which the firing had been concentrated; one by one our boys ventured to peep over in the direction of the flashes. The whizzing and groaning of the shells overhead was terrific, but they passed high. During the flashes, I looked over the open space in front of us. We were occupying a sort of high ground with slight mounds. To our right flank the country seemed more regular.
So far none of us had been struck, and we prepared to dig in properly. We had hardly levelled out our parapet, when an infernal noise of machine-gun and rifle fire let loose on our right flank some hundreds of yards off. Some of our look-out sentries seemingly got a bit nervous and commenced firing too—at nothing. Then the whole line took it up. This racket kept up fully twenty minutes—and we had not seen as much as a shadow. Shortly after this, Major Murray, our acting Commanding Officer, came along the line and gave orders to strengthen our position as the Germans were expected to make a big charge along the whole front in the morning. I was then told to select a man from my company (D) and go out between the lines to secure all the information possible with regard to the distance of the German lines from ours. Particularly, I was instructed to locate the places where they could crawl up in our direction without being seen.
There was no use asking for a volunteer for no sane person longed for this risky job, so I approached a strapping young fellow by the name of Lawson and accosted him with:
“Lawson, coming with me?”
“I’m with you,” was his reply. Taking up his rifle, which had been leaning against the parapet, he added, as an afterthought: “But, whaur are ye bound fur?”
“We’re bound for the German lines, to get information,” I answered. I added that he had better hand over his keepsakes to a chum—the keepsakes that he’d want his mother or his lass to receive—as we might not come back again.
Dark as it was, I yet could see his chin fall and his face pale. With a very serious look and without another word he emptied his pockets. Very thoughtfully he took two packets of “Woodbine” cigarettes out of his haversack and handed them over to a chap sitting on the fire step with: “Here, Donald, ye ken what tae dae wi’ these if Ah’m not back afore mor-r-nin’.”
We crawled out for about fifty yards, then, as there were little mounds in front of and behind us, we got up to our feet.
We proceeded very cautiously, round the many little mounds, stumbling through shallow ditches, and crawling over the higher spots.
“Y’ seem tae hae th’ heng o’ thees,” said Lawson, as he stumbled and crawled behind me. “Ah’ll dae ma’ best tae follow your lead. It’s a braw new beesness tae me.”[He was referring to my method of keeping to natural cover.]
“I’ve been trained in scouting,” I replied. “Just do as I do, and with anything like luck we’ll come out all whole.”
Memory took me back to the days I had spent in scouting practice in India, under Major Bruce, the famous scoutmaster of the 2nd Battalion, Fifth Gurkhas—forty days, once, from Dunga-Gully up to the borders of Cashmere and back. Little did I think, in those days, that I’d ever find myself sneaking my way through the flats of Flanders, hiding from enemies in the air as well as on the earth.
Now and again we heard a rifle shot—at times quite a distance away; then again, quite close. Often we’d hear the “swish” until at last, the bullet found its mark, with a “click.”
We must have been out for over two hours, before we neared the German position. At last we could hear an occasional mumbling of hushed voices, and make out the dim outline of wire entanglements. The German position seemed to be on a little plateau.
While we were lying on our bellies, my partner could turn his face and look at me, but neither of us dared utter a word.
Fifteen minutes seemed like a century. I was more used to it than my partner, but even at that I must admit that I was as nervous as a man that is about to have a death sentence pronounced on him. It is the feeling that possesses every man that patrols “No Man’s Land.”
I motioned to Lawson, and we crawled away like worms that had been overlooked by a hungry crow. We reached our trenches quickly after getting into the broken ground; it was not until we had actually entered them that he opened his mouth. Then, approaching his friend, Donald, he demanded his fags. In a whisper, he triumphantly announced that we had been near enough to hear the Germans talking in their trenches.
I went to our officer and reported.
It was in the morning after “stand down,” when our rum issue had been passed, that we learned what the racket had been the previous night. The Germans had tried a night attack on the King’s Royal Rifles.
The morning was cold and misty. It was easy to see that we were about six hundred yards from Fritz’s trenches, and that his, like ours, were on slightly higher ground than that which lay between the lines. There was a farm house here and there, behind us.
I could see a line of trenches on either flank but the one on the right was most easily perceptible. There was an open space at the end of our battalion line on the right flank, and our left flank was bent back slightly. We also learned that we had moved into this position without the Huns knowing that we were near. I could see the boche balloons some distance behind the enemy lines.