Waiting to “go over”
We went over the top at ten o’clock one night from our own elaborately constructed trenches. My regiment, the Oxfords and Bucks, had been living in “Fifth Avenue.” I had the hardest time keeping my own two platoons in leash. From eight o’clock that night they had known they were going over the top, and after the usual ceremonies of letter-writing to the dear ones at home, they got so restive I could hardly hold them in the trenches. They hadn’t been in action for nearly a month and this hadn’t pleased them. The very mildest-dispositioned of my men were actually blood-thirsty for a crack at the Germans. The recollection of the barbarities that had been visited on their comrades killed and injured in Flanders, their realization that the Germans had abandoned themselves to absolute mercilessness and brutality in warfare, had the opposite effect the German policy of “terrorism” hoped to achieve—that is, to break down the morale of our men. It made our men all the hotter and eager to meet the enemy and it nerved men who had an inherent abhorrence of man-killing not only to go through with the nasty work, but to go to it furiously. Finally the call came for the men to file before the sergeants and get their “tot” of rum and everyone, of course, knew what this solemn little ceremony of the trenches meant.
Armed with a revolver, a couple of bombs and my short-armed bayonet, I led my men over and we had a front position in the advance. Ahead of us our big guns poured a powerful barrage fire. But the enemy was sending back a tremendous reply. We had seven hundred yards or more to traverse to get to Hans and his guns swept us destructively every step of the way. The knowledge of our advance got to them quickly enough and the night fairly went aburst with light in a flood of star-shells. In their high, ghastly glare I saw scores in the ranks of our advancing men scattered and sent reeling by the bursting of the shells; I saw whole regiments caught by the accuracy of the German fire and battered frightfully. But there never was a pause in the advance. The lines would get together again, the advance would consolidate anew and we would “carry on.”
My own little group got along splendidly. There was but a single tragedy among us. It was sufficiently terrible, but almost miraculously it cost the life of only one man. He was a bomb-bearer. He was carrying a box of the explosives for use at close range when we actually came upon the German trenches. A piece of shrapnel struck the box. There was immediately a deafening roar which struck through the grand noise of the battle and the poor fellow was blown utterly to pieces. Fragments of his body were whipped into the faces of his comrades. The whole platoon halted and were shaken for an instant, but at a yell from me got their nerves back with admirable promptitude and threw themselves along in the advance.
Then our front lines walked into a drive of rifle-bullets and bombs and we made our first rush for the Germans. The star-shells suddenly disappeared. Out of the glare in which we had been advancing, in an instant we found ourselves fighting in inky darkness. Hans had no intention of illuminating his barbed-wire barriers to aid us in the irksome task of cutting them down and clearing them away. But our barrage fire, we were soon to know, had done some very good work in this direction. Most of the barbed-wire barricades had been obliterated by the rush of our heavy shells.
The work of routing the Boche out of that sky-line trench was very swiftly done. We gave them bombs a plenty and then smashed right down into the trench and its traverses after them with knife and pistol and more bombs. We cornered group after group of them in the “bays.” These all whined to us “Kamerad!” They had better fought. I knew too much of them after Flanders, the dirty deceptions they were capable of practicing. The murderous pretenses of surrender. My heart was rankling too bitterly in the memory of the ghastly cruelties I had known them to practice on the men of our commands who fell into their ruthless, barbarous hands. If the orders I gave in answer to these calls are to be regarded as merciless, the dishonorable Huns have only themselves to blame. Our answers to their calls of “Kamerad!” were bombs in their faces.
As I climbed across one of the trench parapets I nearly fell over a man’s leg. I leaned down to feel for a supposed enemy, grasped the leg, seeking to pull the man forward. To my horror I stood with a severed leg clutched in my hand.
And a tremulous voice came up, the tone indicating a mere boy:
“Norfolk, sir,” he said, “I’m terribly wounded. For God’s sake don’t leave me.”