Private Spud Tamson

by R. W. Campbell

"There's going to be trouble here, Bludgeon," remarked the colonel on the second day.

"Yes, sir, I expect anything from abduction to murder," answered the sergeant, handling his great stick in a sinister way. For once Bludgeon was wrong. When parades were done, the whole regiment swarmed [pg 224] into town, and soon were in the toils of women and wine. Even the wizened and bald-headed old veterans were rejuvenated. They sipped the champagne with gusto, and danced the gay Can-can like the belles of the Russian Ballet. Every café had its patrons. Tommies and "Frenchies" vied with each other in "Tipperary," "A Wee Deoch-an-Doris," and other popular airs. Never had the citizens seen such gay sports and fine soldiers. Yet all played the game to a man—no riotous drunkenness, no absentees. If all enjoyed themselves, they also remembered that they were at war, and in a few days would be 'midst the horrors of the same. When they parted there were many tears and lots of cheers, and, of course, all decided to return again. Alas! they little reckoned on the grim days ahead.

Their first job was burying the dead and clearing up the battlefields of the weeks before. Parties went out to gather up the stiffened corpses of all nations. In places, too, they found human bodies torn, shattered, and disfigured. It was a gruesome job, still the apprenticeship was sound. The more irresponsible at once realised the seriousness of the game; the older men [pg 225] perceived that this was different to the wars they had seen before. The dead occasionally found in heaps showed the cruel power of the modern shell; the great craters made in the ground also illustrated the disastrous impact of those huge missiles from the German guns. Blood-stained accoutrements, broken guns and rifles, dead and wounded horses, trenches which had become cemeteries, dug-outs transformed into catacombs, revealed what they were up against. It was the science of fifty years exploited by the most cruel, clever, and cunning disciples of Mars. And all the while there passed through their ranks the motor transport with loads of wounded and dying men. Prisoners, too, came in batches. Great strong men they were, some stricken with hunger and cruel hardships, others dumb with the sense of humiliation and despair. Over their heads the regiment frequently noted the airships of their own army and the enemy. A bomb occasionally fell in their ranks, forming a useful introduction to the game beyond. It taught them how to run, how to take cover, and how to hit the petrol-tank of such impudent offenders. They also acquired at first hand a knowledge of our Allied arms. [pg 226] Little Belgians, they realised, were poor at the pomp and flashwork of war, but sound at the game of killing and holding men. The French, they saw, had all the élan of their fathers, but less of their stomach and nerve. They needed victories to inspire them, and the sight of the khaki troops to remind them that war is only for the patient and the strong. These early days created a sense of comradeship with their Allies. The ever-generous heart of the French and Belgians inspired a mutual feeling of love and respect. This, they all felt, would hold them in the days to come.

Having served this apprenticeship, and learned that the men who wore red breeks were French, and those with porter's bonnets Belgians, they marched forward into the great battle-line in Flanders. What devastation! What ruthless savagery! Churches, hospitals, cottages, in ruins. Women and children homeless and fatherless, and cursing the barbarous Huns. And still more processions of prisoners, wounded and dying. Death on all sides, blood everywhere. Horror upon horror, allied with hardship, pain, and sorrow. Tough as this regiment was, the sights saddened and made them [pg 227] wise. This was war. And they were plunged into the midst of all in less than a day. It was their job to relieve a regiment of regulars, who had been fighting since Mons. This corps was stuck in trenches a hundred yards from the enemy's lines. Snipers had thinned the officers' ranks; repeated assaults had killed and worn out the N.C.O.'s and men. To relieve them was a problem, for the area behind their trenches was a shell-swept zone. But it had to be done. The safest time was at night, so when dusk had come they cautiously went forward. Sometimes they ran, at other points they had to creep and crawl. For a while all seemed well, but aerial scouts had told their tale. Just as the regiment reached the trenches, all were startled with the lurid flashing of great star-shells in the sky. This lit up the whole area and showed the lines of men advancing into the trenches.

Crack! went a Mauser rifle. This was a signal for hundreds more. More star-shells went up, and then the Maxim guns of the enemy opened a deadly fire.

"Double to the trenches!" roared a staff officer, who was the guide. In a few minutes the whole were jumping into the [pg 228] long water-logged fortresses. Many were left behind wounded and dying, but the danger ahead was too great to study these casualties. Volley after volley came across the narrow zone. The hits were now few, for sighting was impossible. To the crouching men, who had just been baptised, the affair was somewhat awe-inspiring. Many a man shivered, just as nearly all brave men shiver in their first fight. The moans of the wounded men who lay behind did not help matters. Worse, however, was yet to come. The Germans, somehow, feared a night attack. Determined to check this, they sallied out on a counter-assault. Across the hundred-yard zone they ran, cursed, yelled, and stumbled. It was an anxious moment, for the star-shells only lit the ground in a dim way. Colonel Corkleg, however, was equal to the hour.

"Out men and at them!" he roared from a point somewhere in the darkened region. There was a loud clatter as his gallants leapt out of their trenches. A second to fix their bayonets, then passing through the little avenues in the barbed wire they quickly formed and charged.

"Give them Hell, lads!" roared Coronet. [pg 229] And then there was a crash of bodies and of steel. The sickening plug of bayonets into flesh was heard all along the line. Still, these Bavarian men were game. They took their punishment and nobly tried to wrest the laurels of this night affair. But they were up against the toughest lot of men in the whole line. The impact was terrific, the onslaught fierce and frightful. They felt the backward push of those determined Militiamen. Their counter-assault was useless, so, with a yell, they turned and fled. The victors pursued them, routed them out of their own trenches, captured two Maxim guns and smashed them, and after denuding the knapsacks of their fleeing enemy, returned across the darkened zone into their own lines.

"Well done, colonel," whispered the staff officer to Corkleg. "Your men are the right stuff," he concluded, as he disappeared into the night en route for headquarters of the Brigade.

Next morning the regiment counted the cost and the gains. In front of their own lines lay a hundred Germans dead; side by side lay fifty of their own; while in the rear of the trenches more dead were found.