“Nine inch, h. e.,” replied the expert. This was gratifying. It was the first time that I had been that near to a nine-inch shell explosion. Its “eat-’em-alive” frightfulness was depressing. But the experience was worth having. One wants all the experiences there are—but only “close.” A delightful word that word close, at the front!
But the Germans were generous that afternoon. Another big scream seemed aimed at my own head. L—— disagreed with me; he said that it was aimed at his. We did not argue the matter to the point of a personal quarrel, for it might have got both our heads. It burst back of the trench about as far away as the other shell. After all, a trench is a pretty narrow ribbon, even on a gunner’s large scale map, to hit. It is wonderful how, firing at such long ranges, he is able to hit the trench at all.
This was all of the nine-inch style, for the time being. We got some fours and fives in our neighbourhood, as we walked along. Three bursting as near together as the ticks of a clock, made almost no smoke as they brought some tree-limbs down and tore away a section of a trunk. Then the thunder storm moved on to another part of the line. Only, unlike the thunder storms of nature, this, which is man-made and controlled as a fireman controls the nozzle of his hose, may sweep back again and yet again over its path. All depends upon the decision of a German artillery officer, just as whether or not a flower bed shall get another sprinkle depends upon the will of the gardener.
We were glad to turn out of the support trench into a communication trench leading toward the front trench; into another gallery cut deep in the fields, with scattered shell-pits on either side. Still more soldiers, leaning against the walls or seated with their legs stretched out across the bottom of the ditch; more waiting soldiers, only strung out in a line and as used to the passing of shells as people living along the elevated railroad line to the passing of trains. They did not look up at the screams boring the air any more than one who lives under the trains looks up every time that one passes. Theirs was the passivity of a queue waiting in line before the entrance to a theatre or a ball-ground.
A senator or a lawyer, used to coolness in debate, or to presiding over great meetings, or to facing crowds, who happened to visit the trenches could have got reassurance from the faces of any one of these private soldiers, who had been trained not to worry about death till death came. Harrowing every one of these screams, taken by itself. Instinctively, unnecessarily, you dodged at those which were low—unnecessarily because they were from British guns. No danger from them unless there was a short fuse. To the soldiers, the low screams brought the delight of having blows struck from their side at the enemy, whom they themselves could not strike from their reserve position.
For we were under the curving sweep of both the British and the German shells, as they passed in the air on the way to their targets. It was like standing between two railroad tracks with trains going by in opposite directions. You came to differentiate between the multitudinous screams. “Ours!” you exclaimed, with the same delight as when you see that your side has the ball. The spirit of battle contest rose in you. There was an end of philosophy. These soldiers in the trenches were your partisans. Every British shell was working for them and for you, giving blow for blow.
The score of the contest of battle is in men down; in killed and wounded. For every man down on your side you want two men down on the enemy’s. Sport ceases. It is the fight between a burglar with a revolver in his hand and a knife between his teeth; and a wounded man brought along the trench, a visible, intimate proof of a hit by the enemy, calls for more and harder blows.
Looking over the parapet of the communication trench you saw fields, lifeless except for the singing birds in the wheat, who had also the spirit of battle. The more shells, the more they warble. It was always so on summer days. Between the screams you heard their full-pitched chorus, striving to make itself heard in competition with the song of German invasion and British resistance. Mostly, the birds seemed to take cover like mankind; but I saw one sweep up from the golden sea of ripening grain toward the men-brothers with their wings of cloth.
Was this real, or was it extravaganza? Painted airships and a painted summer sky? The audacity of those British airmen! Two of them were spotting the work of British guns by their shell-bursts and watching for gun-flashes which would reveal concealed German battery positions, and whispering results by wireless to their own batteries.
It is a great game. Seven or eight thousand feet high, directly over the British planes, is a single Taube cruising for the same purpose. It looks like a beetle with gossamer wings suspended from a light cloud. The British aviators are so low that the bull’s-eye identification marks are distinctly visible to the naked eye. They are playing in and out, like the short stop and second baseman around second, there in the very arc of the passing shells from both sides fired at other targets. But scores of other shells are most decidedly meant for them. In the midst of a lace-work of puffs of shrapnel bursts, which slowly spread in the still air, from the German anti-aircraft guns, they dip and rise and turn in skilful dodging. At length, one retires for good; probably his planecloth has become too much like a sieve from shrapnel fragments to remain aloft longer.