Fighting with French: A Tale of the New Army

by Herbert Strang

Ginger having been informed of what was intended, he and Kenneth stole from the trench, up the communication trench, and set off at a trot towards their billets. Two hours later they returned in a motor car, which halted at the eastern foot of the hill. They carried up a large rectangular object, and at a second journey a number of bolts and a heavy hammer. Soon the men in the trenches heard the clank of hammering, and Harry suggested that the lorry was being repaired.

His comrades were in fact at work on the lorry. The object which they had brought up consisted of several sheets of corrugated zinc which Ginger, a skilled mechanic, had bolted together in the village. This he was now fixing upright over the rear axle of the lorry, so that it overlapped the body of the vehicle on each side. With the assistance of Kenneth and the driver of the car he was turning the lorry into an armoured car, of unusual form, it is true, but likely, they thought, to serve its purpose. When the zinc was in position, they filled up the space between the sheets with sand, and so completed a bullet-proof screen about nine feet wide. Then, going into one of the half-ruined houses, they brought out a number of planks and carried them to the centre of the firing trench. There, over a space of about ten feet, the parapet was quickly demolished, and the planks were laid across side by side, forming a bridge. The men of the platoon had meanwhile been taken into their confidence, and when Captain Adams called for volunteers to cut the wire immediately in front, several men crawled out and did the work without being detected.

These preparations having been completed, half a dozen men quickly pushed the lorry over the crest of the hill to within a few yards of the trench. Favoured by pitch darkness, and moving with the utmost quietness, they had everything in readiness by three o'clock, without the knowledge of the Germans, and even of the more distant platoons of their own battalion.

The orders of the day were already known along the British line. They were to attack just before dawn. The hill was to be cleared of Germans. It was a task for rifles, bayonets, and hand grenades. They could expect no help from artillery, so narrow was the space dividing the lines.

At the appointed moment, twenty men of the 1st platoon formed up in file behind the lorry, each carrying a hand grenade in addition to his rifle. The word was given. They pushed the lorry off; on each side the other men scrambled out of the trenches; some crawled forward and cut the wire on either side. Then, without uttering a sound, they charged down the hill.

The lorry rumbled slowly over the plank bridge, on to the road, and gathered way as it bumped and jolted down towards the German trenches, the twenty men running behind it. When it had covered a dozen yards it was greeted with rapid rifle fire from the German sentries. There were shouts from below, but before the enemy realised the manoeuvre, a shower of hand grenades fell among them, the lorry crashed through the wire entanglement, broke through the parapet, and turned a somersault over the trench.

Then a yell burst from the throats of the Rutlands, and the air was rent by the crackle of rifles all along the line except at the spot where the lorry had fallen. There Kenneth and his companions sprang into the trench, and pushing along to right and left, cleared it with the bayonet, the panic-stricken Germans fleeing before them or flinging up their hands in token of surrender. Confusion spread along the whole line. The British arrangements had been thoroughly made. While the Rutlands charged down the main street, other regiments were sweeping through the streets and alleys on either side, raking them with fire from machine guns, flinging bombs into the occupied houses, chasing the Germans at the point of the bayonet. Here and there were furious hand to hand encounters; at one point a mass of the enemy's reserves surged forward and gained ground, only to be borne back in turn by the irresistible dash of British supports. In half an hour the streets were cleared, and while some of the British blocked up the captured trenches against counter-attack, others rushed the houses to which the enemy still clung, and stormed them one after another.

All this had happened in the grey chill dawn. By the time the sun's rim appeared over the distant horizon the position was completely won, at comparatively slight cost. More than two hundred prisoners remained in British hands, and among them Ginger, who had escaped with a few bruises, recognised the lieutenant to whom he had been indebted for a uniform.

When the roll was called, it was found that of the twenty men who had followed the lorry only one had been wounded.

"A capital idea of yours, Amory," said Captain Adams. "It's a pity we can't always be going down-hill behind screens. There's a fortune awaiting the man who invents a bullet-proof protection for infantry in the field."