CHAPTER SEVEN
Our trenches were pretty effective against rifle fire, but we had not yet learned to make them deep and narrow enough in proportion to protect us against shrapnel, which is not of much use against troops in the present-day trench. Our defence lay in leaning up close against the front wall of the trench, which caused most of the force of the shrapnel burst to go over our heads. One morning I was hugging the wall of the trench as close as I could stick, when a “coal box” burst near by. It tore down a long section of trench wall, killing a number of men. I saw the explosion and the next thing I knew I heard some one saying:
“Ah’ll bet ye’ Joe’s snuffed it noo’, puir lad.”
I stuck my head up out of what seemed to me to be a ton or two of rock and dirt and yelled: “No; not this time!”
You should have seen their faces. Some looked frightened and others relieved. In a second they began to laugh. Two or three of them helped me to my feet, and then the laughing became more boisterous.
“It isn’t so d—— funny as you think,” I said, getting a little peeved.
They turned me round and one of them held up the front part of my kilt in such a way that I could see the whole rear of the garment had been torn off. Certain portions of my anatomy were as guiltless of clothes as when I was born. A splinter of the shell, about fourteen pounds in weight, had given me a close crop. Then I had to laugh too, though I was somewhat battered and sore, but that night it wasn’t so funny. I was almost frozen while on sentry go, and the next day it was just as bad.
As I have already told you, the transports were scarce, and we had little to eat, and absolutely nothing in the way of new equipment. It was all we could do to get ammunition. After shivering all day, I determined to have some clothes. Right in front of our position, about twenty-five yards from the trench, lay a dead member of H company whose name was Jock Drummond. Under cover of darkness, I sneaked out, and was almost beside the body, when a flare rocket went up. All of No Man’s Land was lit up like day and I had to lie among the dead as if I had been one of them. It almost turned my stomach, but I did not dare to move. The Germans were searching the muddy ground and the least motion on my part would have brought a dozen or so bullets my way.
Presently the light from the flare bombs died away, and I wriggled closer to what had been Drummond. I got my arm under the shoulders of the body, and started to crawl back to the trench. Twice a rocket went up, and I had to lie still for minutes with my ghastly companion. The second time, a German must have seen us move. Three bullets spattered against the ground a few inches from me, and one struck Drummond. I suppose I was twelve or fifteen minutes crawling back to the trench. It seemed fifteen years—an interminable time. I was not yet thoroughly hardened to war, and it went against my whole nature; but—I had to have clothes. We took the kilt from Drummond’s body, and I wore it for weeks. Drummond, at least, got a decent burial, and a letter we found in his pocket we mailed to his mother, to whom it was addressed; so perhaps the deed done with a selfish purpose bore some good fruits after all. I may add that the stench of the dead lingered with me for a good many days.
The night after I got Drummond’s kilt, the Germans attacked us. We had erected barbed-wire entanglements in front of our position. We had empty jam and bully-beef tins, also empty shell cases from field guns, strung on the wire in such a way that the least touch would attract attention.
In this manner we were notified that the Germans were in the act of striking at us. Now they were coming—hundreds of them. There was a thin edge of humanity first, like the sheeting of water which precedes a breaker up a gently sloping beach. Behind it came units—more closely bunched, and, still farther back, was a mass of soldiery almost like a battalion on parade.
It was murder to fire into that wall of misty grey—but the men who made it were bent on murdering us. I was firing as fast as I could. On my right was a lad of nineteen, who was one of the 3rd battalion militia of the Black Watch—a detachment sent to replace our losses.
“Pray God they may not pass the wire,” he half sobbed with every breath. He was afraid, but he would not run. Every man is afraid in his first battle. The recruit’s face was drawn and white—his lips a thin, pressed line—but he fired calmly. He did not mind the bullets, but he had not yet the “spirit of the bayonet,” and he dreaded that they should pass the wire.
The first of the thin line was at the entanglement. Most of them dropped before they touched a wire, but others cut a single strand before a bullet found its berth. They died; but they had succeeded in their mission. A thread of life cut to sever a strand of wire!
The wave had risen and was breaking over the entanglement. They were beginning to get through. Here and there a man lumbered up the gentle slope toward our trenches only to fall before he reached them. The mass of them was worming through the wire now.
A shrill whistle blew. From our trenches came a sound like the beating of a hundred pneumatic hammers. It was the music of Hell. The machine guns and artillery were making it, and they were spitting out death in streams to the accompaniment of their devilish music. God was answering the prayer of the little lad. The Germans were dropping at the wire; they would not pass.
The wee death engines were playing just a foot or so above the bottom of the wire, and they were literally cutting the legs from under the mass of grey-clad men. The back wash from the wave which broke against the wire was thinner than the wash that had preceded it.
“Thank God!” gasped the boy; “I did not have to use my bayonet.”
“It’s guid steel wasted,” growled a ginger-whiskered old-timer on my left, as he wiped the dampness from the blade with his sleeve and dropped the bayonet back into its scabbard.
[To-day such an attack on the British lines would invariably be followed by a counter attack to show the Germans that the initiative lies—always must lie—with the Allies; but, in those days, we had not the men. Our lines were often so thin that, had they been pierced at a single point, we would have been crumpled up like paper.]
After this fight, we were relieved by an East Yorkshire regiment and told that we would go to billets about three miles in the rear, but we had scarcely left the trenches when we received orders to get to billets and hold ourselves in readiness to occupy a new position in the line. The Black Watch at that time was again brought up to strength by the addition of a re-enforcement of five hundred men.
A party of us was sent to guard a bridge that our engineers were repairing, it having been blown up the previous day by big shell fire. I had just got off duty and was sitting before the log fire in the block-house with a few other fellows, when in popped a little Algerian, as black as the ace of spades. On recognizing that we were Scots, he held out his hand and said:
“My name’s MacPherson; what’s yours?”
He made himself right at home, and we shared our bully beef and biscuit with him. We had just been warming it. Our black “Scotsman” insisted on staying with us, and so we adopted him as a sort of mascot.
Shortly after we took up our new position in the line, a German sniper began to annoy us, and continued to do so almost ceaselessly. Every time anything showed so much as an inch above the crest, it drew fire, and a number of our men were shot passing traverses. There was a wood near our position, and we were pretty sure the fire was coming from there although we could not locate it. The Algerian was a crack shot, and wanted to prove it, so he went to our lieutenant and said:
“Me get sniper, if you like.”
“Go ahead,” said the lieutenant, half jokingly.
It seemed ridiculous to think of “MacPherson”—with his tiny body and his face of a black angel “getting” anybody.
The little Algerian disappeared. At the end of three hours, after we had all given him up as lost or strayed, he returned, clutching a small untidy package rolled in a French newspaper.
“Well, then, he didn’t eat you up, did he?” some one asked.
The little Algerian understood English poorly, but he generally got the gist of things. This time he evidently thought he had been asked whether he had eaten up the sniper.
“Ugh!” he exclaimed; “me no eat sniper, but git him. Look here.”
Very gingerly he unrolled his sheet of newspaper and, as evidence that he had landed his man, exposed to view a human ear. He wanted to present the ear to the lieutenant, but the officer declined the honour.[1]
There was much night-patrol work to do on the Aisne. Often we ran into German reconnaissance patrols. One night I was scouting with another man. Five or six hundred yards from our lines, we came upon a boche sentry. He was a big, heavy fellow, and I remember thinking that he looked as if the hard army life had not yet worked the surfeit of beer out of his system. He was leaning on the parapet, and appeared to be asleep. We wanted to get beyond, as he was on the German advance listening post, but, as a reconnaissance patrol must conceal from the enemy all evidence of its proximity, we dared not shoot him. So we crawled to one side of him, and my partner, who was slightly ahead, gave him a thud on the side of the neck, which only, as we thought, made him sleep the more soundly. He dropped into the trench. The next moment a head bobbed up and the dose was repeated with the result that the boche (whom we had mistaken for the first man) slid back again. We looked over to see whether the second blow had done its work; there were two forms instead of one. My partner took a helmet as a souvenir. He kept it for one day and then abandoned it as inconvenient to carry. He found that a souvenir the size of a boche’s helmet could not be put between the leaves of his St. John’s Gospel.
Being about the only Black Watch scout left of those that had first landed in France, I had been almost constantly on duty during the fighting at the Aisne. You can imagine then how happy I was when we were relieved from the trenches and billeted a short distance in the rear in hay lofts, cottages, and stables.
On our way to billets we were looking forward to a “cushy” time, a good rest, a decent meal, and a wash, and hoping that the next section of trench we took over would be much quieter. It did not seem, however, as if I had had much more than the proverbial “forty winks” when we were sent back to support the Cameron Highlanders.
It was the Camerons who had just relieved us and their headquarters were in a quarry where ours had been. A few “coal boxes” had landed in the quarry, and reduced it to a mass of débris. Only one officer and bugler had survived. It was here that Sergeant-Major Burt, of my native town, was killed. He was reputed to have the “best word of command” in the British army. We reached the scene in time to help the Scots Guards dig out some of them. It was a gruesome job. Some of the men had been pinned under heavy rocks for hours without losing consciousness.
There was, in particular, one instance of an officer [I cannot recall his name] whose legs were crushed and pinned down. His head had been cut by a shell splinter. When we tried to dig him out, he ordered us to attend first to a private, a few feet away, whose ribs had been smashed in and who was bleeding from the nose and mouth.
In all, about thirty officers and men lost their lives here.
We were called from this scene of carnage to defend a trench line against the Prussian Guards who were threatening to break through. The machine-gun and shrapnel fire was terrific, and for a time we were glad to squeeze ourselves close against the parapet. Then suddenly everything seemed uncomfortably quiet. Wounded were screaming and groaning all about us; men, who had not been struck, were muttering to themselves—driven half mad by the bombardment; but, the instant the roar of the guns and shell explosions ceased, all seemed still. The Prussians were undoubtedly preparing to charge us, but they must have been slow in getting started. We got hurried orders to get ready to go over the top and surprise them.
I thought of but one thing as I ran forward; that was—“Blighty.” On going to billets it had been my intention to write to the folks at home the next day after getting a rest, but our stay had been so short that to do so had been impossible. And now my thought was: “Perhaps I sha’n’t return.”
The Prussians seemed surprised by our quick attack, and the offensive was wrested from them. We became the assaulters. How I got through the entanglement I cannot tell. All I know is that I left part of my kilt dangling amid the wires. However, before we reached their trench line, the Prussians had scrambled over their parapet to meet us. In the general mix-up I found myself locked in the arms of a bear-like Prussian Guardsman who evidently had lost his rifle and bayonet. His knee was at my knee—his chest pressed against my chest. Our faces touched.
I slid my hands up along the barrel of my rifle until they were almost under the hilt of the bayonet. Very slowly I shoved the butt back of me and to the side. Lower and lower I dropped it. The keen blade was between us. All the Hun seemed to know about wrestling was to hug. He dared not let go. Had he known a few tricks of the game, I should not be writing this to-day.
Instinctively I felt that the point of my bayonet was in line with his throat. With every ounce of strength in my body, I wrenched my shoulders upward and straightened my knees. The action broke his hold, and my bayonet was driven into his greasy throat. His arms relaxed; I was drenched with blood, but it was not my own. I staggered away from him, wrenching my rifle free as he fell.
The thrust I had used has come to be known as the “jab point”; they are teaching it to the American army to-day. It developed naturally from just such situations as I have described.
It was an awful mêlée. There were men swinging rifles overhead; others, kicking, punching, and tearing at their adversaries; while others again, wrestling, had fallen to the ground, struggling one to master the other. One Highlander, who had been struck by a bullet just before reaching the enemy parapet, grasped his rifle, and crawled as best he could the intervening distance, waiting his chance to get his man. At last it came. His bayonet found its mark, before the bulky Hun could ward off the unexpected stroke from the wounded lad. In a moment they were both lying prone on the earth. The Highlander, I am sure, died content—content that he had got his quota at least.
It was the wildest confusion, but its impressions were absolutely photographic. I can see it all, again, this moment.
The Prussians were finally obliged to retire to their reserve trenches. We took their firing trench, but had to vacate it because it was subject to an enfilading fire from the enemy. As we retreated in company squads, we kept up a steady fire.
While making for our trenches, I shouted to one of the fellows on my left to keep down as we were drawing the enemy’s fire. The sentence was hardly completed, when something hot struck me on the left jaw. It seemed as if I had been hit with a sledge hammer. I spun round, stumbled, and fell to the ground. I realized that it was a bullet and tried to swear at the boches, but all I could do was to spit and cough, for the blood was almost choking me. The bullet, entering my cheek and shattering some of my teeth in passing, made its exit by way of my mouth. My warning, however, had saved the life of the lad I had shouted to. He flopped to the ground just in time to avoid a sweep of machine-gun fire, and managed to crawl to our trench, which was a very short distance off.
I was sent to the regimental dressing station. There were scores there more seriously wounded than I, and they were, of course, attended to first. By the time it was my turn, my face was so completely smeared with congealed blood that the orderly couldn’t locate the wound. He wiped my face with a bunch of grass and applied a dressing. I was relieved to hear that it was a clean wound.
In the dressing station, suffering as I was, I noticed two men forcibly controlling a wounded comrade. After a moment I recognized him as the little recruit who had prayed that the Germans might not pass the wire and come to bayonet fighting with us. His features were so changed that he seemed aged a dozen years and—believe it or not, as you will—his hair, which had been sleek and black, was entirely white. He had been only slightly wounded but the heavy bombardment had driven him entirely mad. He was continually crying for his mother. I afterward learned that he and his mother, who was blind, had lived together and had been warmly devoted to each other, but at the outbreak of the war, his mother felt it her duty to send him to fight. The boy recovered his mental faculties a month or two after being sent home.