We had to give those trenches up. The Germans’ big guns came after us within half an hour and our own artillery had nothing with which to reply. But we stayed there long enough to take the heads of our boys off the bayonets, their bodies down from the doors and to give them burial as best we might. Also under a demoniac fire, stretcher bearers took away a small, smashed soldier I had fallen over in a shell-hole at the close approach to the German trench the night before. When I fell over him he moved and I grabbed him by the throat, not knowing whether he was friend or enemy. However, there was no resistance and I instinctively felt that I had in my hands a weak and wounded man. I let go his throat and he gasped:
“Warwick!”
He was only a little chap, scarcely twenty, and was all broken up. He had a broken arm, both legs had been broken and several of his ribs. He had been caught in the fall of a great upheaval of earth and stone shot forth by one of the German two-hundred-pound shells, but had managed to crawl out into the air and wriggle his way to a shell-hole. In this shell-hole he had lain for nearly four days. His emergency ration had sustained him, but he was mad with thirst and pitifully unnerved. He threw his arms around my neck like a child and begged me not to leave him. I gave him drink. I had to lie to him, telling him that I was going back to send for an ambulance when in reality I had to “carry on” with my men. I left my emergency rations with him. And I was particular to make a mental picture of the location of the shell-hole in which the boy had found shelter and the following day was able to send him stretcher bearers. You get a particular interest in such cases and I am glad to be able to say this lad went safely to “Blighty” and lived.
CHAPTER X
Trapping Sappers
My first big adventure in No Man’s Land occurred at Plugstreat in the Flanders campaign. I was sent out on patrol duty with five men in my command. For the war front it was a very quiet night. Guns were silent. Star-shells were absent. The enemy evidently didn’t expect anything of us nor we of them.
But what might be happening in that streak between enemy trenches that constituted No Man’s Land was never a certainty to any commander on either side. They detailed me, therefore, to find out if the Germans were attempting to move in any way toward our position. I was to find out if there had been a movement or advance of any kind such as might be suggested by a line of trench newly thrown out.
In so far as the progress of my five men and myself were concerned it was easy going. We advanced well across the equator of No Man’s Land without detection and much further.
It was, as a matter of fact, all too quiet. We had gone too far without detection in so far as my judgment kept warning me. I was frankly afraid that we were walking into a trap. The Germans rarely left the dividing line of No Man’s Land unguarded. To be sure, I had worked my men from our own trenches and through a land of stubble and hillocks. Most cautiously we had hidden from time to time in our advance to note if anything moved ahead.