It would be absurd to say that we were not frightened. Thinking men could not help but be afraid. If we were pallid—which undoubtedly we were—the black upon our faces hid it, but our fear-struck voices were not disguised. They trembled and our teeth chattered.
We sneaked out, single file, making our way from shell-hole to shell-hole, nearly all the time on all fours, crawling quickly over the flat places between holes. The Germans had not sighted us, but they were squirting machine-gun bullets all over the place like a man watering a lawn with a garden hose, and they were bound to get some of us. Behind me, I heard cries of pain, and groans, but this made little impression on my benumbed intelligence. From the mere fact that whatever had happened had happened to one of the other sections of ten and not to my own, it seemed, some way or another, no affair to concern me. Then a man in front of me doubled up suddenly and rolled into a shell-hole. That simply made me remember very clearly that I was not to stop on account of it. It was some one else’s business to pick that man up. Next, according to the queer psychology of battle, I began to lose my sensation of fear and nervousness. After I saw a second man go down, I gave my attention principally to a consideration of the irregularities of the German parapet ahead of us, picking out the spot where we were to enter the trench. It seems silly to say it, but I seemed to get some sort of satisfaction out of the realization that we had lost the percentage which we might be expected to lose, going over. Now, it seemed, the rest of us were safe until we should reach the next phase of our undertaking. I heard directions given and I gave some myself. My voice was firm, and I felt almost calm. Our artillery had so torn up the German barbed wire that it gave us no trouble at all. We walked through it with only a few scratches. When we reached the low, sand-bag parapet of the enemy trench, we tossed in a few bombs and followed them right over as soon as they had exploded. There wasn’t a German in sight. They were all in their dug-outs. But we knew pretty well where every dug-out was located, and we rushed for the entrances with our bombs. Everything seemed to be going just as we had expected it to go. Two Germans ran plump into me as I round a ditch angle, with a bomb in my hand. They had their hands up and each of them yelled:
“Mercy, Kamarad!”
I passed them back to be sent to the rear, and the man who received them from me chuckled and told them to step lively. The German trenches were practically just as we had expected to find them, according to our sample. They were so nearly similar to the duplicate section in which we had practiced that we had no trouble finding our way in them. I was just thinking that really the only tough part of the job remaining would be getting back across “No Man’s Land,” when it seemed that the whole earth behind me, rose in the air. For a moment I was stunned, and half blinded by dirt blown into my face. When I was able to see, I discovered that all that lay back of me was a mass of upturned earth and rock, with here and there a man shaking himself or scrambling out of it or lying still.
Just two minutes after we went into their trench, the Germans had exploded a mine under their parapet. I have always believed that in some way or another they had learned which spot we were to raid, and had prepared for us. Whether that’s true or not, one thing is certain. That mine blew our organization, as we would say in Kentucky, “plumb to Hell.” And it killed or disabled more than half of our party.
There was much confusion among those of us who remained on our feet. Some one gave an order to retire and some one countermanded it. More Germans came out of their dug-outs, but, instead of surrendering as per our original schedule, they threw bombs amongst us. It became apparent that we should be killed or captured if we stuck there and that we shouldn’t get any more prisoners. I looked at my wrist watch and saw that there remained but five minutes more of the time which had been allotted for our stay in the trench, so I blew my whistle and started back. I had seen Private Green (No. 177,250) knocked down by a bomb in the next trench section, and I picked him up and carried him out over the wrecked parapet. I took shelter with him in the first shell-hole but found that he was dead and left him there. A few yards further back toward our line I found Lance Corporal Glass in a shell-hole, with part of his hip shot away. He said he thought he could get back if I helped him, and I started with him. Private Hunter, who had been in a neighboring shell-hole came to our assistance, and between us, Hunter and I got Glass to our front trench.
We found them lining up the survivors of our party for a roll call. That showed so many missing that Major John Lewis, our company commander, formerly managing-editor of the Montreal Star, called for volunteers to go out in “No Man’s Land” and try to find some of our men. Corporal Charleson, Private Saunders and I went out. We brought in two wounded, and we saw a number of dead, but, on account of their blackened faces, were unable to identify them. The scouts, later, brought in several bodies.
Of the sixty odd men who had started in our party, forty-three were found to be casualties—killed, wounded, or missing. The missing list was the longest. The names of these men were marked, “M. B. K.” (missing, believed killed) on our rolls. I have learned since that some few of them have been reported through Switzerland as prisoners of war in Germany, but most of them are now officially listed as dead.
All of the survivors of the raiding party were sent twenty miles to the rear at seven o’clock, and the non-commissioned officers were ordered to make reports in writing concerning the entire operation. We recorded, each in his own way, the ghastly failure of our first aggressive effort against the Germans, before we rolled into the hay in the same old barn where we had been quartered during the days of preparation for the raid. I was so dead tired that I soon fell asleep, but not for long. I never slept more than an hour at a time for several days and nights. I would doze off from sheer exhaustion, and then suddenly find myself sitting straight up, scared half to death, all over again.
There may be soldiers who don’t get scared when they know they are in danger or even when people are being killed right around them, but I’m not one of them. And I’ve never met any of them yet. I know a boy who won the Military Medal, in the battle of the Somme, and I saw him on his knees before his platoon commander, shamelessly crying that he was a coward and begging to be left behind, just when the order to advance was given.