Between the Lines

by Boyd Cable

ARTILLERY SUPPORT

'. . . supported by a close and accurate artillery fire . . .'—EXTRACT FROM OFFICIAL DESPATCH.

From his position in the 'Observation Post' the Artillery Forward Officer watched the fight raging along his front much as a spectator in the grand-stand watches a football match. Through his glasses he could see every detail and movement of the fighters, see even their facial expressions, the grip of hands about their weapons. Queerly enough, it was something like looking at the dumb show of a cinema film. He could see a rifle pointed and the spit of flame from the muzzle without hearing any report, could see an officer gesticulating and his mouth opening and closing in obvious stentorian shoutings without hearing the faintest sound of his voice, could even see the quick flash and puffing smoke of a grenade without catching the crash of its explosion. It was not that he was too far off to hear all these sounds, but simply because individually they were drowned in the continuous ear-filling roar of the battle.

The struggle was keenly interesting and desperately exciting, even from a spectator's point of view; and the interest and excitement were the greater to the Forward Officer, because he was playing a part, and an important part, in the great game spread before him. Beyond the line of a section of the British front white smoke-puffs were constantly bursting, over his head a succession of shells streamed rushing and shrieking; and the place where each of those puffs burst depended on him, each shell that roared overhead came in answer to his call. He was 'observing' for a six-gun battery concealed behind a gentle slope over a mile away to his right rear, and, since the gunners at the battery could see nothing of the fight, nothing of their target, not even the burst of a single one of their shells, they depended solely on their Forward Officer to correct their aim and direct their fire.

All along the front—or rather both the fronts, for the German batteries worked on exactly the same system—the batteries were pouring down their shells, and each battery was dependent for the accuracy of its fire on its own Observing Officer crouching somewhere up in front and overlooking his battery's 'zone.'

The fighting line surged forward or swayed back, checked and halted, moved again, now rapidly, now slowly and staggeringly, curved forward here and dinted in there, striving fiercely to hold its ground in this place, driving forward in that, or breaking, reeling back into the arms of the supports, swirling forward with them again. But no matter whether the lines moved forward or back, fast or slow, raggedly and unevenly, or in one long close-locked line, ever and always the shells soared over and burst beyond the line, just far enough barely to clear it if the fight were at close quarters; reaching out and on a hundred, two hundred, yards when the fighters drew apart for a moment; always clear of their own infantry, and as exactly as possible on the fighting line of the enemy, for such is the essence of 'close and accurate artillery support.'

The Forward Observing Officer, perched precariously in an angle of the walls of a ruined cottage, stared through his glasses at the confusion of the fight for hour after hour until his eyes ached and his vision swam. The Forward Officer had been there since daybreak, and because no shells obviously aimed at his station had bombarded him—plenty of chance ones had come very close, but of course they didn't count—he was satisfied that he was reasonably secure, and told his Major back at the Battery so over his telephone. The succession of attack and counter-attack had ceased for the time being, and the Forward Officer let his glasses drop and shut his aching eyes for a moment. But, almost immediately, he had to open them and lift his head carefully, to peer out over the top of the broken wall; for the sudden crash of reopening rifle fire warned him that another move was coming. From far out on his left, beyond the range of his vision, the fire began. It beat down, wave upon wave, towards his front, crossed it, and went rolling on beyond his right. The initiative came from the British side, and, taking it as the prelude of an attack, developing perhaps out of sight on his left, the Forward Officer called up his Battery and quickened the rate of its fire upon the German line. In a few minutes he caught a quick stir in the British line, a glimpse of the row of khaki figures clambering from their trench and the flickering flash of their bayonets—and in an instant the flat ground beyond the trench was covered with running figures. They made a fair target that the German gunners, rifles, and maxims were quick to leap upon. The German trench streamed fire, the German shells—shrapnel and high-explosive—blew gaping rents in the running line. The line staggered and flinched, halted, recovered, and went on again, leaving the ground behind it dotted with sprawling figures. The space covered by the Forward Officer's zone was flat and bare of cover clear to the German trench two hundred yards away. It was too deadly a stretch for that gallant line to cover; and before it was half-way across, it faltered again, hung irresolute, and flung itself prone to ground. The level edge of the German trench suddenly became serrated with bobbing heads, flickered with moving figures, and the next moment was hidden by the swarm of men that leaped from it and came charging across the open. This line too withered and wilted under the fire that smote it, but it gathered itself and hurled on again. The Forward Officer called down the shortening ranges to the guns, and the answering shrapnel fell fiercely on the German line and tore it to fragments—but the fragments still advanced. The remnant of the British line rose and flung forward to meet it, and as the two clashed the supports from either side poured out to help. As the dense mass of Germans emerged, and knitted into close formation, the Forward Officer reeled off swift orders to the telephone. The shrieking tempest of his shells fell upon the mass, struck and slew wholesale, struck and slew again. The mass shivered and broke; but although part of it vanished back under the cover of the trench, although another part lay piled in a wreckage of dead and wounded, a third part straggled forward and charged into the fight. The British line was overborne, and pushed struggling back until new supports brought it fresh life and turned the tide again. The Germans surviving the charge were killed, wounded, or taken prisoners, and the Forward Officer, lifting his fire and pouring it on the German trench, checked for the moment any further rush of reinforcements. The British line ran forward to a field track running parallel to the trenches and nearly midway between them, flung itself down to escape the bullets that stormed across and began, as rapidly as the men's cramped position would allow, to dig themselves in. To their right and left the field track sank a foot or two below the surface of the field, and this scanty but precious shelter had allowed the rest of the line to stop half-way across and hold on to get its breath and allow a constant spray of supports to dash across the open and reinforce it. Now, the centre, where the track ran bare and flat across the field, plied frantic shovels to heap up some sort of cover that would allow them also to hang on in conformation of the whole line and gather breath and reinforcements for the next rush.

The Germans saw plainly enough what was the plan, and took instant steps to upset it. Their first and best chance was to thrust hard at the weak and ill-protected centre, overwhelm it and then roll up the lines to right and left of it.

A tornado of shell fire ushered in the new assault. The shells burst in running crashes up and down the advanced line, and up and down the British trench behind it; driving squalls of shrapnel swept the ground between the two, and, in addition, a storm of rifle and machine-gun bullets rained along the scanty parapet, whistled and droned and hissed across the open. And then, suddenly, the assault was launched from all along the German line.

At the same instant a shell struck the wall of the Forward Officer's station, burst with a terrific crash, swept three parts of the remaining wall away in a cloud of shrieking splinters and swirling dust of brick and plaster, and threw the Forward Officer headlong half a dozen yards. By some miracle he was untouched. His first thought was for the telephone—the connecting link with his guns. He scrambled over the debris to the dug-out or shelter-pit behind his corner and found telephonist and telephone intact. He dropped on hands and knees and crawled over the rubble and out beyond the end of the wall, for the cloud of smoke and plaster and brick-dust still hung heavily about the ruin. Here, in the open as he was, the air sang like tense harp-strings to the passage of innumerable bullets, the ground about his feet danced to their drumming, flicked and spat little spurts of mud all over him.