I had to stand watch that night. That meant two hours of pacing back and forth, fifteen feet, ready for the enemy's charge at any second. I couldn't believe that the fellows we were waiting for were so close up—there across that short patch of ground—but I realized it when a shell fell not five feet away from me and blew three of my pals to bits. By God! I knew it then!
I shall never forget it. I'd been listening to them talk in a little knot as I paced by, swapping smokes and trying to find a dry place to stand. One of them laughed. That was the last sound I heard before the crash of exploding shell. There wasn't one of them left.
We were four days waiting for the signal to charge. We were mad for it. It seemed as if the leaders could not hold us back another day. We wanted to get at those damned Huns who had killed our pals. We knew we could lick them, raw as we were. We had some full-blooded Indians from Ontario with us. They were the real thing in a fight. They did not know what fear meant. There just wasn't any such word in the language for them, and when they charged they forgot they were supposed to use rifles. They threw them away and drew their long knives—razor-sharp. That's how they went after the Huns—and butchered the swine good and proper.
On the fourth day the signal was passed along the trench for a charge. One hundred and fifty men were picked—every third man. I was lucky and was one of the number. Every man was keen to be first over the top. About nine of the Indians came along. None of my cousins made it, but the little Jap who had taught me bayoneting was beside me, grinning and fondling his rifle as a mother does her baby.
Our leaders sprang up on the sand bags and hurled us the order. How few of them came back from that charge on which they set out so fearlessly!
We climbed up. We heard our officers shouting to us and our comrades wishing us the best of luck, to give the Huns hell! We sprang forward and the Germans opened a rain of bullets from their machine guns full upon us and the men who followed. They swept our lines. Men reeled and fell to the left and right of me—just crumpled up like those little toys whose springs have snapped. Still we went on. We made the trench and I speared my first Boche. Got him, too! Brought back his iron cross as a trophy. The Germans were scampering to the next trench like rats caught in a trap. They sure do hate hand-to-hand fighting!
We held that trench six days. It was jumpy work. The Germans were driven back, but there was no telling when they would start with the hand-grenades. They didn't do that, but they did something worse—gas. It was pretty new to us then. We were fitted out with a sort of rubber mask that wasn't much good. We saw a fellow drop a way down the line. Then one of the brownish trench rats, a friendly little chap, who ate the scraps I shelled out to him, turned up his toes. We clapped on our masks, but the wind was with Fritz and the gas swept through our trench on the breeze.
It lasted about an hour and a half. I'd hate the job of being the first man ordered to take off his mask and test the air for the rest, but some one has to, and it often means lights out for him.
I had been slightly wounded—a sabre cut on my leg, but I managed to dress it myself. It was ten times better to be up, however rocky you felt, than lying around those damp trenches. I wondered where my cousins were. I worried about them. Somehow I wasn't afraid for myself, but I just wished it would soon be over and I could get home. You think about home an awful lot out there.
We were sent to some swamps next. There were cement trenches—German make—and they were considerably drier. We were pretty comfortable there except for an occasional shell blowing things to bits. I used to wonder how there was enough lead in the world to make all the shells the armies used. We always had plenty of ammunition. The Russians were the ones who got the raw deal. We passed a lot of them on our way out front. A regiment of them was holding a square. They were dull-eyed boys—hopeless looking. Do you blame them? One day they would be sent out with ammunition to burn. The next they wouldn't even be given a rifle. How did they protect themselves? Oh, rocks and stones, I suppose. But they were wiped out when they tried to charge empty-handed, that's sure.