Other men in the battery are telling similar stories. They have seen Big Dan, Standish and many of their fallen comrades. They ride on the limbers and the wagons; they plod persistently behind the guns. They do not seek to attract attention to themselves. They do not talk or inconvenience anybody. Having died in a foreign land, it seems normal and right that their spirits should still accompany us. At dawn they vanish. As regards Tubby Grain, since the first time I have never seen his face—only his plump little figure going at the trot through the darkness down the column.
And now our marches are, for the time being, at an end. Once again we have been flung in as the hammerhead of the attack. They say that Foch’s principle is to use up his storm-troops; he never relieves them when once an offensive has begun. We no longer guess—we know the task that lies before us. Last time it was the saving of Amiens; this time it is the breaking of the Hindenburg Line. Two nights ago we pulled into action across the bald chalky country that straddles the Cambrai-Arras road. To the north of us, rising out of the blackness of the Vimy Plain, we could see the ridge which was so long our home and which, because we were not allowed to die, we guarded with so much impatience. Ah, how impatient we were while the indignity of not dying was upon us! How little we valued the supreme gift of life! How we courted death in raid after raid throughout the summer! Had we known then how few sunny days remained for most of us, how much more gratefully we should have lived them. We have come back for what will probably be our severest test to very nearly the spot whence we started.
Nobody now garrisons what was once regarded as the Gibraltar of the Western Front. Our armies have swept forward like a tidal wave and are beating on the doors of the cities in the plain, which a month ago looked so distant and impregnable.
Our brigade has been pushed well up into the point of a narrow salient—a long thin cape of recaptured territory which projects far out into the enemy country. We are so far up that the Hun balloons are actually in rear of us and watch our every movement from either flank. Any time that they choose they can bring accurate fire to bear on us. We have been in some murder-holes before, but this is by long adds the worst. The Hun game is to obliterate us before we get started. All day and all night he bombards us without cessation. When high explosives have failed, he drenches us with gas.
Now that we are here there is no use in trying to disguise either our presence or our purpose. The old subterfuge of camouflage is of no avail. The country is too bare and too much overlooked for any precautions, however ingenious, to protect us. Our only chance is to hurry up and get the attack begun before we are all dead. There will be a percentage of safety when we begin to go forward; there is none in sitting still. That we may launch our offensive quickly, we are making every effort. No man’s life is precious. Guns and ammunition drive up in the broad daylight and are knocked out. No sooner are they knocked out than others are sent forward to take their places. The waste is stupendous. Direct hits are scored on ammunition-dumps; there is never an hour when explosives cannot be seen going up in flames—never an hour when horses and men cannot be seen rolling in their final agony. The spectacle is too ordinary to excite us. We are too much fatalists to be intimidated. With a misleading display of callousness, while the unlucky are dying, we who are whole carry on with our preparations for revenge, which the enemy watching from the sky does his utmost to prevent.
Our battery is in a narrow valley to the left of what was once a town. A sign-board, with the name painted on it, is its only means of identification: “This was a town.” It is the same with all the sites of former human habitation which lie behind us; if it were not for the sign-boards, they would be indistinguishable from the miles of shell-ploughed waste and mine-craters in which this abomination of desolation abounds. The country as far as eye can search, lies stark and evil as an alkali desert.
In our valley there is a stagnant malodorous swamp, close to which we have dragged in our guns so that their muzzles point out across it. It was once a river winding through a pleasant meadow, but gradually it has become choked by the refuse of dead things—dead men, dead horses, dead happiness. God knows what it hides. It has been kind to us, nevertheless, for it has saved us many casualties. All the enemy’s rounds which fall short of us plunge harmlessly into the liquid mud. We hear them coming with the roar of express engines. We make a bet where they are going to burst. Then a column of filth goes up from the swamp-and we know that this slough of despond has again preserved us.
If we have been lucky, others have been less fortunate. The valley being stiff with batteries, there are not enough good positions to go round. One watches the shells alight, then sees the men rushing for stretchers. In an endless chain the ammunition-wagons drive up, fling out their rounds and depart at the gallop. Let them move quickly and ever more quickly, there are always some of them that get caught. The place is rapidly becoming a shambles. No one’s life is worth a minute’s purchase. It would be interesting to know what premium we should have to pay if we wanted to insure ourselves.
The Major has just told me that the attack is to be launched tomorrow at dawn. It’s extraordinarily ambitious, for its third objective is fifteen thousand yards from where we are at present, and it’s ultimate goal is the capture, of Cambrai. Between ourselves and Cambrai stretches the most strongly fortified country of the entire German Front—a country naturally fortified by marshes and canals and made doubly impregnable by military cunning. The Hindenburg Line will have to be taken first before any general advance can be begun. After that certain sacrifice-tanks will go through and drown themselves in the canals to make a bridge over which the living tanks and cavalry may push forward to conquest.
We can stand any amount of pummelling now that we know the worst. “It’s going to be a top-hole show—Berlin or nothing;” those were the Major’s words. Judging by the pleased grins on the men’s faces, it won’t be nothing. We’re going to finish the job this time and be done with it forever. Since the men have heard the news, they’ve generated quite a “home for Christmas” air of jollity. There is only one man who looks sad—Captain Heming. He has received orders to start for Blighty at once to give evidence in the case of Mrs. Dragott.