He set out to prove, in a partially discovered world, that in the splendid saying of an earlier Englishman, Robert Thorne, ‘There is no land unhabitable, nor sea innavigable.’ That might be the motto of his book; while as to him and all the seamen he fathered and gloried in we may take the delightful words of Fuller and see them as ‘bound for no other harbour but the Port of Honour, though touching at the Port of Profit in passage thereunto.’
E. Hallam Moorhouse.
THE OLD CONTEMPTIBLES: FIGHTING STRENGTH.
BY BOYD CABLE.
The fighting strength of the three batteries of a Brigade of Field Artillery, at the time of the First Expeditionaries, totalled 18 guns, 18 officers, and about 650 non-commissioned officers and men. You might remember those figures, or when you have finished the reading of this tale just refer back to them.
The Brigade was posted before the action opened in a cornfield which lay on the banks of a canal, and the guns were ‘concealed’ behind some of the innocent-looking stooks of cut corn which were ranged in rows along the field. It was the Brigade’s first action, and every officer and man waited with expectant eagerness for the appearance of the enemy. On the other side of the canal there was a wide stretch of open ground, but to the gunners it appeared too good to be true that the enemy would advance across that open and give the guns a chance of sweeping them off the earth with shrapnel. At some points tongues and spurs of thick wood ran out towards the canal, and it was rather through and under cover of the trees that the artillerymen expected the enemy to try to press in on the front which ran roughly along the line of the canal. Such an advance would not give the guns so visible and open a target for so long a time; but, on the other hand, there was still an open space between the nearest parts of the woods and the canal bank, and if the attack were confined to the approaches through the woods it meant that the guns could concentrate on a much narrower front, and there was never a gunner of them there but believed his own battery alone, much less the whole Brigade, capable of smashing up any attempt to debouch from the woods and of obliterating any force that tried it. Nevertheless, all their training and teaching and manœuvres and field-days of peace times indicated the woods as the likeliest points of attack, because it had been an accepted rule laid down in peace—and there were plenty of men in the batteries who remembered the same and very much sterner rule laid down in the South African War—that infantry could not, across the open, attack entrenched positions held by infantry and covered by artillery.
On the whole, the Brigade were very well satisfied with the look of things, and having taken careful ranges to the different points of the probable targets, with special attention to the wood edges, uncapped a goodly number of fuzes, given a last look to the mechanism of guns and gear, put some finishing touches to the cunning arrangement of corn stooks, they lit pipes and cigarettes and settled down comfortably to wait developments.
The developments came rapidly, but being at first more or less after the expected routine as laid down in their teaching, the Brigade were not unduly disturbed. The first fire of the enemy artillery was, as far as the Brigade could see, not particularly well aimed, and although it made a great deal of noise and smoke appeared to be doing little harm to the infantry trenches, and none to the artillery behind them. Presently the men watched with great interest, but little realisation of its significance, a grey dove-winged shape that droned up out of the distance across the line, swung round and began a careful patrol along its length. But after that the shells commenced to find the infantry trenches with great accuracy, and to pour a tremendous fire upon them. The Brigade listened and watched frowningly at first, and with growing anger and fidgetings, the screaming and crashing of the German shells, the black and white clouds of smoke that sprang so quickly up and down the infantry lines before them. They were at last given orders to fire, and although at first they were firing at an invisible target, the gunners brisked up and went about their business with great cheerfulness. All along the line the other British batteries were opening with a most heartening uproar that for the time filled the ear and gave the impression that our guns were dominating the situation. That, unfortunately, did not last long. The German rate and weight of fire increased rapidly, until it reached the most awe-inspiring proportions, and it began to look as if the British infantry were to be smothered by shell-fire, were to be blown piecemeal out of their scanty trenches, without being given a chance to hit back.
The Artillery Brigade whose particular fortunes we are following had, up to now, escaped quite lightly with nothing more than a few slight casualties from chance splinters of high-explosive shells that had burst some distance from them.