"supporter" of the British Army in exactly the sense of being a
"supporter" or "follower" of Tottenham Hotspurs or Kent County. Any
thoughts that he might shoulder a rifle and fight Germans would at that
time, if it had entered his head, have seemed just as ridiculous as a
thought that he should play in the Final at the Crystal Palace or step
into the ring to fight Carpentier. It took a long time to move him from
this attitude of aloofness. Recruiting posters failed utterly to touch
him. He looked at them, criticized them, even discussed their
"goodness" or drawing power on recruits with complete detachment and
without the vaguest idea that they were addressed to him. He bought
Allies' flag-buttons, and subscribed with his fellow-employees to a Red
Cross Fund, and joined them again in sending some sixpences to a
newspaper Smokes Gift Fund; he always most scrupulously stood up and
uncovered to "God Save the King," and clapped and encored vociferously
any patriotic songs or sentiments from the stage. He thought he was
doing his full duty as a loyal Briton, and even--this was when he
promised a regular sixpence a week to the Smokes Fund--going perhaps a
little beyond it. First hints and suggestions that he should enlist he
treated as an excellent jest, and when at last they became too frequent
and pointed for that, and began to come from complete strangers, he
became justly indignant at such "impudence" and "interference," and
began long explainings to people he knew, that he wasn't the one to be
bullied into anything, that fighting wasn't "his line," that he "had no
liking for soldiering," that he would have gone like a shot, but had
his own good and adequate reasons for not doing so.

There is no need to tell of the stages by which he arrived at the
conclusion that he must enlist: from the first dawning wonder at such a
possibility, through qualms of doubt and fear and spasms of hope
and--almost--courage, to a dull apathy of resignation. No need to tell
either the particular circumstances that "conscripted" him at last,
because although his name is not real the man himself is, and one has
no wish to bring shame on him or his people. I have only described him
so closely to make it very clear that he was driven to enlistment, that
a less promising recruit never joined up, that he was a conscript in
every real sense of the word. We can pass over all his training, his
introduction to the life of the trenches, his feelings of terror under
conditions as little dangerous as the trenches could be. He managed,
more or less, to hide this terror, as many a worse and many a better
man has done before him, until one day----

The Germans had made a fierce attack, had overborne a section of the
defense and taken a good deal of trenched ground, had been
counter-attacked and partly driven back, had scourged the lost parts
with a fresh tempest of artillery fire and driven in again to close
quarters, to hot bomb and bayonet work; were again checked and for the
moment held.

Private Gerald Bunthrop's battalion had been hurried up to support the
broken and breaking line, was thrust into a badly wrecked trench with
crumbling sides and broken traverses, with many dead and wounded
cumbering the feet of the few defenders, with a reek of high-explosive
fumes catching their throats and nostrils. The open ground beyond the
trench was scattered thick with great heaps of German dead, a few more
sprawled on the broken parapet, another and lesser few were huddled in
the trench itself amongst the many khaki forms. The battalion holding
the trench had been almost annihilated in the task, had in fact at
first been driven out from part of the line and had only reoccupied it
with heavy losses. Bunthrop had with his battalion passed along some
smashed communication trenches and over the open ground this fighting
had covered, and the sights they saw in passing might easily have
shaken the stoutest hearts and nerves. They made the approach, too,
under a destructive fire with high-explosive shells screaming and
crashing over, around, and amongst them, with bullets whistling and
hissing about them and striking the ground with the sound of constantly
exploding Chinese crackers.

Bunthrop himself, to state the fact baldly, was in an agony of fear. He
might have been tempted to bolt, but was restrained by a complete lack
of any idea where to bolt to, by a lingering remnant of self-respect,
and by a firm conviction that he would be dealt with mercilessly if he
openly ran. But when he reached the comparative shelter of the broken
trench all these safeguards of his decent behavior vanished. He flung
himself into the trench, cowered in its deepest part, made not the
slightest attempt to look over the parapet, much less to use his rifle.
There is this much of excuse for him, that on the very instant that
they reached the cover of the trench a bursting high-explosive had
caught the four men next in line to him. The excuse may be insufficient
for those who have never witnessed at very close hand the instant and
terrible destruction of four companions with whom they have eaten and
slept and talked and moved and had their intimate being for many
months; but those who have known such happenings will understand.
Bunthrop's sergeant understood, and because he was a good sergeant and
had the instinct for the right handling of men--it must have been an
instinct, because, up to a year before, he had been ledger clerk in a
City office and had handled nothing more alive than columns of figures
in a book--he issued exactly the order that appealed exactly to
Bunthrop's terror and roused him from a shivering embodiment of fear to
a live thinking and order-obeying private. "Get up and sling some of
those sandbags back on the parapet, Bunthrop!" he said, "and see if you
can't make some decent cover for yourself. You've nothing there that
would stop a half-crippled Hun jumping in on top of you." When he came
back along the trench five minutes later he found Bunthrop feverishly
busy re-piling sandbags and strengthening the parapet, ducking hastily
and crouching low when a shell roared past overhead, but hurriedly
resuming work the instant it had passed. Then came the fresh German
attack, preceded by five minutes' intense artillery fire, concentrated
on the half-wrecked trench. The inferno of noise, the rush and roar of
the approaching shells, the crash and earth-shaking thunder of their
explosions, the ear-splitting cracks overhead of high-explosive
shrapnel, the drone and whirr and thump of their flying fragments--the
whole racking, roaring, deafening, sense-destroying tempest of noise
was too much for Bunthrop's nerve. He flung down and flattened himself
to the trench bottom again, squeezing himself close to the earth,
submerged and drowned in a sweeping wave of panic fear. He gave no heed
to the orders of his platoon commander, the shouting of his sergeant,
the stir that ran along the trench, the flat spitting reports of the
rifles that began to crack rapidly in a swiftly increasing volume of
fire. A huge fragment of shell came down and struck the trench bottom
with a suggestively violent thud a foot from his head. Half sick with
the instant thought, "If it had been a foot this way!..." half crazed
with the sense of openness to such a missile, Bunthrop rose to his
knees, pressing close to the forward parapet, and looking wildly about
him. His sergeant saw him. "You, Bunthrop," he shouted, "are you hit?
Get up, you fool, and shoot! If we can't stop 'em before they reach
here we're done in." Bunthrop hardly heeded him. Along the trench the
men were shooting at top speed over the parapet; a dozen paces away two
of the battalion machine-guns were clattering and racketing in rapid
gusts of fire; a little farther along a third one had jambed and was
being jerked and hammered at by a couple of sweating men and a wildly
cursing boy officer. So much Bunthrop saw, and then with a hideous
screeching roar a high explosive fell and burst in a shattering crash,
a spouting hurricane of noise and smoke and flung earth and fragments.
Bunthrop found himself half buried in a landslide of crumbling trench,
struggled desperately clear, gasping and choking in the black cloud of
smoke and fumes, saw presently, as the smoke thinned and dissolved, a
chaos of broken earth and sandbags where the machine-guns had stood;
saw one man and an officer dragging their gun from the débris, setting
it up again on the broken edge of the trench. Another man staggered up
the crumbling earth bank to help, and presently amongst them they got
the gun into action again. The officer left it and ran to where he saw
the other gun half buried in loose earth. He dragged it clear, found it
undamaged, looked round, shouted at Bunthrop crouching flat against the
trench wall; shouted again, came down the earth bank to him with a
rush. "Come and help!" he yelled, grabbing at Bunthrop's arm. Bunthrop
mumbled stupidly in reply. "What?" shouted the officer. "Come and help,
will you? Never mind if you are hurt," as he noticed a smear of blood
on the private's face. "You'll be hurt worse if they get into this
trench with the bayonet. Come on and help!" Bunthrop, hardly
understanding, obeyed the stronger will and followed him back to the
gun. "Can you load?" demanded the officer. "Can you fill the cartridges
into these drums while I shoot?" Bunthrop had had in a remote period of
his training some machine-gun instruction. He nodded and mumbled again.
"God!" said the officer. "Look at 'em! There's enough to eat us if they
get to bayonet distance! We _must_ stop 'em with the bullet. Hurry up,
man; hurry, if you don't want to be skewered like a stuck pig!" He
rattled off burst after burst of fire, clamoring at Bunthrop to hurry,
hurry, hurry. A wounded machine-gunner joined them, and then some
others, and the gun began to spit a steady string of bullets again. By
this time the full meaning of the officer's words--the meaning, too, of
remarks between the wounded helpers--had soaked into Bunthrop's brain.
Their only hope, his only hope of life, lay in stopping the attack
before it reached the trench; and the machine-guns were a main factor
in the stopping. He lost interest in everything except cramming the
cartridges into their place. When the officer was hit and rolled
backwards and lay groaning and swearing, Bunthrop's chief and agonizing
thought was that they--he--had lost the assistance and protection of
the gun. When one of the wounded gunners took the officer's place and
reopened fire, Bunthrop's only concern again was to keep pace with the
loading. The thoughts were repeated exactly when that gunner was hit
and collapsed and his place was taken by another man. And by now the
urgent need of keeping the gun going was so impressed on Bunthrop that
when the next gunner was struck down and the gun stood idle and
deserted it was Bunthrop who turned wildly urging the other loaders to
get up and keep the gun going; babbled excitedly about the only hope
being to stop the Germans before they "got in" with the bayonet,
repeated again and again at them the officer's phrase about "skewered
like stuck pigs." The others hung back. They had seen man after man
struck down at the gun, they could hear the _hiss_ and _whitt_ of the
bullets over their heads, the constant cracker-like smacks of others
that hit the parapet, and--they hung back. "Why th' 'ell don't you do
it yerself?" demanded one of them, angered by Bunthrop's goading and in
some degree, no doubt, by the disagreeable knowledge that they were
flinching from a duty.

And then Bunthrop, the "conscript," the man who had held back from war
to the last possible minute, who hated soldiering and shrank from
violence and all fighting, who was known to his fellows as "a funk,"
the source of much uneasiness to company and platoon commanders and
sergeants as "a weak spot," Bunthrop did what these others, these
average good men who had "joined up" freely, who had longed for the end
of home training and the transfer "out Front," dared not do. Bunthrop
scrambled up the broken bank, seized the gun, swung the sights full to
the broad gray target, and opened fire. He kept it going steadily, too,
with a sleet of bullets whistling and whipping past him, kept on after
a bullet snatched the cap from his head, and others in quick succession
cut away a shoulder strap, scored a red weal across his neck, stabbed
through the point of his shoulder. And when a shell-fragment smashed
the gun under his hands, he left it only to plunge hastily to the other
gun abandoned by all but dead and dying; pulled off a dead man who
sprawled across it and recommenced shooting. He stopped firing only
when his last cartridge was gone; squatted a moment longer staring over
the sights, and then raised his head and peered out into the trailing
film of smoke clouds from the bursting shells. Although it took him a
minute to be sure of it he saw plainly at last that the attack was
broken. Dimly he could see the heaped clusters of dead that lay out in
the open, the crawling and limping figures of the wounded who sought
safety back in the cover of their own trench, and more than that he
could see men running with their heads stooped and their gray coats
flapping about their ankles. It was this last that roused him again to
action. He scrambled hurriedly back down the broken parapet into the
trench. "Come on, you fellows," he shouted to two or three nearby men
who continued to fire their rifles over the parapet. "It's no use
waitin' here any longer." A heavy shell whooped roaring over them and
crashed thunderously close behind the parapet. Bunthrop paid no
slightest heed to it. His wide, staring eyes and white face, and blood
smeared from the trickling wound in his neck, his capless head and
tumbled hair, his clay and mud-caked and blood-stained uniform all gave
him a look of wildness, of desperation, of abandonment. His sergeant,
the man who had seen his fear and set him to pile the sandbags, caught
sight of him again now, heard some word of his shoutings, and pushed
hastily along the trench to where he fidgeted and called angrily to the
others to "chuck that silly shooting--I'm goin' anyhow ... what's the
use...."

The sergeant interrupted sharply.

"Here, you shut up, Bunthrop," he shouted. "Keep down in the trench.
You're wounded, aren't you? Well, you'll get back presently."

"That be damn," said Bunthrop. "You don't understand. They're runnin'
away, but we can't go out after 'em if these silly blighters here keep
shootin'. Come on now, or they'll all be gone." And Private Bunthrop,
the despised "conscript," slung his bayoneted rifle over his wounded
shoulder and commenced to scramble up out over the front of the broken
parapet. And what is more he was really and genuinely annoyed when the
sergeant catching him by the heel dragged him down again and ordered
him to stay there.

"Don't you understand?" he stuttered excitedly, and gesticulating
fiercely towards the front. "They're runnin', I tell you; the blighters
are runnin' away. Why can't we get out after 'em?"



SMASHING THE COUNTER-ATTACK


" ... _a violent counter-attack was delivered but was successfully
repulsed at every point with heavy losses to the enemy_."--EXTRACT FROM
OFFICIAL DESPATCH.


There appears to be some doubt as to who rightly claims to have been
the first to notice and report signs of the massing of heavy forces of
Germans for the counter-attack on our positions. The infantry say that
a scouting patrol fumbling about in the darkness in front of the
forward fire trench heard suspicious sounds--little clickings of
equipment and accouterments, stealthy rustlings, distant tramping--and
reported on their return to the trench. An artillery observing officer
is said to have seen flitting shadows of figures in the gray light of
the dawn mists, and, later, an odd glimpse of cautious movement amongst
the trees of a wood some little distance behind the German lines, and
an unbroken passing of gray-covered heads behind a portion of a
communication trench parapet. He also reported, and he may have been
responsible for the dozen or so of shrapnel that were flung tentatively
into and over the wood. An airman droning high over the lines, with
fleecy white puffs of shrapnel smoke breaking about him, also saw and
reported clearly "large force of Germans massing Map Square So-and-so."

But whoever was responsible for the first report matters little. The
great point is that the movement was detected in good time, apparently
before the preparations for attack were complete, so that the final
arraying and disposal of the force for the launching of the attack was
hampered and checked, and made perforce under a demoralizing artillery
fire.

What the results might have been if the full weight of the massed
attack could have been prepared without detection and flung on our
lines without warning is hard to say; but there is every chance that
our first line at least might have been broken into and swamped by the
sheer weight of numbers. That, clearly, is what the Germans had
intended, and from the number of men employed it is evident that they
meant to push to the full any chance our breaking line gave them to
reoccupy and hold fast a considerable portion of the ground they had
lost. It is said that three to four full divisions were used. If that
is correct, it is certain that the German army was minus three to four
effective divisions when the attack withdrew, that a good half of the
men in them would never fight again. The attack lost its first great
advantage in losing the element of surprise. The bulk of the troops
would have been moved into position in the hours of darkness. That
wood, in all probability, was filled with men by night. The only
daylight movement attempted would have been the cautious filling of the
trenches, the pouring in of the long gray-coated lines along the
communication trenches, all keeping well down and under cover. Under
the elaborate system of deep trenches, fire-, and support-,
communication- and approach-trenches running back for miles to emerge
only behind houses or hill or wood, it is surprising how large a mass
of men can be pushed into the forward trenches without any disclosure
of movement to the enemy. Scores of thousands of men may be packed away
waiting motionless for the word, more thousands may be pouring slowly
up the communication ways, and still more thousands standing ready a
mile or two behind the lines; and yet to any eye looking from the
enemy's side the country is empty and still, and bare of life as a
swept barn. Even the all-seeing airmen can be cheated, and see nothing
but the usual quiet countryside, the tangled crisscross of trenches,
looking from above like so many wriggling lines of thin white braid
with a black cord-center, the neat dolls' toy-houses and streets of the
villages, the straight, broad ribbon of the Route Nationale, all still
and lifeless, except for an odd cart or two on the high road, a few
dotted figures in the village streets. Below the flying-men the packed
thousands are crouched still to earth. At the sound of the engine's
drone, at sight of the wheeling shape, square miles of country stiffen
to immobility, men scurry under cover of wall or bush, the long, moving
lines in the trenches halt and sink down and hang their heads (next to
movement the light dots of upturned, staring faces are the quickest and
surest betrayal of the earth-men to the air-men), the open roads are
emptied of men into the ditches and under the trees. For civilized man,
in his latest art of war, has gone back to be taught one more simple
lesson by the beasts of the field and birds of the air; the armed hosts
are hushed and stilled by the passing air-machine, exactly as the
finches and field-mice of hedgerow and ditch and field are frozen to
stillness by the shadow of a hovering hawk, the beat of its passing
wing.

But this time some movement in the trenches, some delay in halting a
regiment, some neglect to keep men under cover, some transport too
suspiciously close-spaced on the roads, betrayed the movement. His
suspicions aroused, the airman would have risked the anti-aircraft guns
and dropped a few hundred feet and narrowly searched each hillside and
wood for the telltale gray against the green. Then the wireless would
commence to talk, or the 'plane swoop round and drive headlong for home
to report.

And then, picture the bustle at the different headquarters, the stir
amongst the signalers, the frantic pipings of the telephone "buzzers,"
the sharp calls. "Take a message. Ready? Brigade H.Q. to O.C.
Such-and-such Battery," or "to O.C. So-and-So Regiment"; imagine the
furtive scurry in the trenches to man the parapets, and prepare bombs,
and lay out more ammunition; the rush at the batteries, the quick
consulting of squared maps, the bellowed string of orders in a jargon
of angles of sight, correctors, ranges, figures and measures of degrees
and yards, the first scramble about the guns dropping to the smooth
work of ordered movement, the peering gun muzzles jerking and twitching
to their ordained angles, the click and slam of the closing
breech-blocks, the tense stillness as each gun reports "Ready!" and
waits the word to fire.

And all the while imagine the Germans out there, creeping through the
trees, crowding along the trenches, sifting out and settling down into
the old favorite formation, making all ready for one more desperate
trial of it, stacking the cards for yet another deep gambling plunge on
the great German game--the massed attack in solid lines at close
interval. The plan no doubt was the same old plan--a quick and
overwhelming torrent of shell fire, a sudden hurricane of high
explosive on the forward trench, and then, before the supports could be
hurried up and brought in any weight through the reeking, shaking
inferno of the shell-smitten communication trenches, the surge forward
of line upon line, wave upon wave, of close-locked infantry.

But the density of mass, the solid breadth, the depth, bulk, and weight
of men so irresistible at close-quarter work, is an invitation to utter
destruction if it is caught by the guns before it can move. And so this
time it was caught. Given their target, given the word "Go," the guns
wasted no moment. The first battery ready burst a quick couple of
ranging shots over the wood. A spray of torn leaves whirling from the
tree tops, the toss of a broken branch, showed the range correct; and
before the first rounds' solid white cotton-wooly balls of smoke had
thinned and disappeared, puff-puff-puff the shrapnel commenced to burst
in clouds over the wood. That was the beginning. Gun after gun, battery
after battery, picked up the range and poured shells over and into the
wood, went searching every hollow and hole, rending and destroying
trench and dug-out, parapet and parados. The trenches, clean white
streaks and zig-zags of chalk on a green slope, made perfect targets on
which the guns made perfect shooting; the wood was a mark that no gun
could miss, and surely no gun missed. What the scene in that wood must
have been is beyond imagining and beyond telling. It was quickly
shrouded in a pall of drifting smoke, and dimly through this the
observing officers directing the fire of their guns could see clouds of
leaves and twigs whirling and leaping under the lashing shrapnel, could
see branches and smashed tree-trunks and great clods of earth and stone
flying upward and outward from the blast of the lyddite shells. The
wood was slashed to ribbons, rent and riddled to tatters, deluged from
above with tearing blizzards of shrapnel bullets, scorched and riven
with high-explosive shells. In the trenches our men cowered at first,
listening in awe to the rushing whirlwinds of the shells' passage over
their heads, the roar of the cannonade behind them, the crash and boom
of the bursting shells in front, the shriek and whirr of flying
splinters, the splintering crash of the shattering trees.

The German artillery strove to pick up the plan of the attack, to beat
down the torrent of our batteries' fire, to smash in the forward
trenches, shake the defense, open the way for the massed attack. But
the contest was too unequal, the devastation amongst the crowded mass
of German infantry too awful to be allowed to continue. Plainly the
attack, ready or not ready, had to be launched at speed, or perish
where it stood.

And so it was that our New Armies had a glimpse of what the old
"Contemptible Little Army" has seen and faced so often, the huge gray
bulk looming through the drifting smoke, the packed mass of the old
German infantry attack. There were some of these "Old Contemptibles,"
as they proudly style themselves now, who said when it was all over,
and they had time to think of anything but loading and firing a red-hot
rifle, that this attack did not compare favorably with the German
attacks of the Mons-Marne days, that it lacked something of the
steadiness, the rolling majesty of power, the swinging stride of the
old attacks; that it did not come so far or so fast, that beaten back
it took longer to rally and come again, that coming again it was easier
than ever to bring to a stand. But against that these "Old
Contemptibles" admit that they never in the old days fought under such
favorable conditions, that here in this fight they were in better
constructed and deeper trenches, that they were far better provided
with machine-guns, and, above all, that they had never, never, never
had such a magnificent backing from our guns, such a tremendous stream
of shells helping to smash the attack.

And smashed, hopelessly and horribly smashed, the attack assuredly was.
The woods in and behind which the German hordes were massed lay from
three to four hundred yards from the muzzles of our rifles. Imagine it,
you men who were not there, you men of the New Armies still training at
home, you riflemen practicing and striving to work up the number of
aimed rounds fired in "the mad minute," you machine-gunners riddling
holes in a target or a row of posts. Imagine it, oh you Artillery,
imagine the target lavishly displayed in solid blocks in the open, with
a good four hundred yards of ground to go under your streaming
gun-muzzles. The gunners who were there that day will tell you how they
used that target, will tell you how they stretched themselves to the
call for "gun-fire" (which is an order for each gun to act
independently, to fire and keep on firing as fast as it can be served),
how the guns grew hotter and hotter, till the paint bubbled and
blistered and flaked off them in patches, till the breech burned the
incautious hand laid on it, till spurts of oil had to be sluiced into
the breech from a can between rounds and sizzled and boiled like fat in
a frying-pan as it fell on the hot steel, how the whole gun smoked and
reeked with heated oil, and how the gun-detachments were half-deaf for
days after.

It was such a target as gunners in their fondest dreams dare hardly
hope for; and such a target as war may never see again, for surely the
fate of such massed attacks will be a warning to all infantry
commanders for all time.

The guns took their toll, and where death from above missed, death from
the level came in an unbroken torrent of bullets sleeting across the
open from rifles and machine-guns. On our trenches shells were still
bursting, maxim and rifle bullets were still pelting from somewhere in
half enfilade at long range. But our men had no time to pay heed to
these. They hitched themselves well up on the parapet to get the fuller
view of their mark; their officers for the most part had no need to
bother about directing or controlling the fire--what need, indeed, to
direct with such a target bulking big before the sights? What need to
control when the only speed limit was a man's capacity to aim and fire?
So the officers, for the most part, took rifle themselves and helped
pelt lead into the slaughter-pit.

There are few, if any, who can give details of how or when the attack
perished. A thick haze of smoke from the bursting shells blurred the
picture. To the eyes of the defenders there was only a picture of that
smoke-fog, with a gray wall of men looming through it, moving, walking,
running towards them, falling and rolling, and looming up again and
coming on, melting away into tangled heaps that disappeared again
behind advancing men, who in turn became more falling and fallen piles.
It was like watching those chariot races in a theater where the horses
gallop on a stage revolving under their feet, and for all their fury of
motion always remain in the same place. So it was with the German
line--it was pressing furiously forward, but always appeared to remain
stationary or to advance so slowly that it gave no impression of
advancing, but merely of growing bigger. Once, or perhaps twice, the
advancing line disappeared altogether, melted away behind the drifting
smoke, leaving only the mass of dark blotches sprawled on the grass. At
these times the fire died away along a part of our front, and the men
paused to gulp a drink from a water-bottle, to look round and tilt
their caps back and wipe the sweat from their brows, to gasp joyful
remarks to one another about "gettin' a bit of our own back," and "this
pays for the ninth o' May," and then listen to the full, deep roar of
rifle-fire that rolled out from further down the line, and try to peer
through the shifting smoke to see how "the lot next door" was faring.
But these respites were short. A call and a crackle of fire at their
elbows brought them back to business, to the grim business of
purposeful and methodical killing, of wiping out that moving wall that
was coming steadily at them again through the smoke and flame of the
bursting shells. The great bulk of the line came no nearer than a
hundred yards from our line; part pressed in another twenty or thirty
yards, and odd bunches of the dead were found still closer. But none
came to grips--none, indeed, were found within forty yards of our
rifles' wall of fire. A scattered remnant of the attackers ran back,
some whole and some hurt, thousands crawled away wounded, to reach the
safe shelter of their support trenches, some to be struck down by the
shells that still kept pounding down upon the death-swept field. The
counter-attack was smashed--hopelessly and horribly smashed.



A GENERAL ACTION


"_At some points our lines have been slightly advanced and their
position improved_."--EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH


It has to be admitted by all who know him that the average British
soldier has a deep-rooted and emphatic objection to "fatigues," all
trench-digging and pick-and-shovel work being included under that
title. This applies to the New Armies as well as the Old, and when one
remembers the safety conferred by a good deep trench and the fact that
few men are anxious to be killed sooner than is strictly necessary, the
objection is regrettable and very surprising. Still there it is, and
any officer will tell you that his men look on trench-digging with
distaste, have to be constantly persuaded and chivvied into doing
anything like their best at it, and on the whole would apparently much
rather take their chance in a shallow or poorly-constructed trench than
be at the labor of making it deep and safe.

But one piece of trench-digging performed by the Tearaway Rifles must
come pretty near a record for speed.

When the Rifles moved in for their regular spell in the forward line,
their O.C. was instructed that his battalion had to construct a section
of new trench in ground in front of the forward trench.

It was particularly unfortunate that just about this time the winter
issue of a regular rum ration had ceased, and that, immediately before
they moved in, a number of the Tearaways had been put under stoppages
of pay for an escapade with which this story need have no concern.

Without pay the men, of course, were cut off from even the sour and
watery delights of the beer sold in the local estaminets, which abound
in the villages where the troops are billeted in reserve some miles
behind the firing line. As Sergeant Clancy feelingly remarked:

"They stopped the pay, and that stops the beer; and then they stopped
the rum. It's no pleasure in life they leave us at all, at all. They'll
be afther stopping the fighting next."

Of that last, however, there was comparatively little fear at the
moment. A brisk action had opened some days before the Tearaways were
brought up from the reserve, and the forward line which they were now
sent in to occupy had been a German trench less than a week before.

The main fighting had died down, but because the British were
suspicious of counter-attacks, and the Germans afraid of a continued
British movement, the opposing lines were very fully on the alert; the
artillery on both sides were indulging in constant dueling, and the
infantry were doing everything possible to prevent any sudden advantage
being snatched by the other side.

As soon as the Tearaways were established in the new position, the O.C.
and the adjutant made a tour of their lines, carefully reconnoitering
through their periscopes the open ground which had been pointed out to
them on the map as the line of the new trench which they were to
commence digging. At this point the forward trench was curved sharply
inward, and the new trench was designed to run across and outwards from
the ends of the curve, meeting in a wide angle at a point where a hole
had been dug and a listening-post established.

It was only possible to reach this listening-post by night, and the
half-dozen men in it had to remain there throughout the day, since it
was impossible to move across the open between the post and the
trenches by daylight. The right-hand portion of the new trench running
from the listening-post back to the forward trench had already been
sketched out with entrenching tools, but it formed no cover because it
was enfiladed by a portion of the German trench.

It was the day when the Tearaways moved into the new position, and the
O.C. had been instructed that he was expected to commence digging
operations as soon as it was dark that night, the method and manner of
digging being left entirely in his own hand. The Major, the Adjutant,
and a couple of Captains conferred gloomily over the prospective task.
That reputation of a dislike for digging stood in the way of a quick
job being made. The stoppage of the rum ration prevented even an
inducement in the shape of an "extra tot" being promised for extra good
work, and it was well known to all the officers that the stoppage of
pay had put the men in a sulky humor, which made them a little hard to
handle, and harder to drive than the proverbial pigs. It was decided
that nothing should be said to the men of the task ahead of them until
it was time to tell off the fatigue party and start them on the work.

"It's no good," said the Captain, "leaving them all the afternoon to
chew it over. They'd only be talking themselves into a state that is
first cousin to insubordination."

"I wish," said the other Captain, "they had asked us to go across and
take another slice of the German trench. The men would do it a lot
quicker and surer, and a lot more willing, than they'd dig a new one."

"The men," said the Colonel tartly, "are not going to be asked what
they'd like any more than I've been. I want you each to go down quietly
and have a look over at the new ground, tell the company commanders
what the job is, and have a talk with me after as to what you think is
the best way of setting about it."

That afternoon Lieutenant Riley and Lieutenant Brock took turns in
peering through a periscope at the line of the new trench, and
discussed the problem presented.

"It's all very fine," grumbled Riley, "for the O.C. to say the men must
dig because he says so. You can take a horse to the water where you
can't make it drink, and by the same token you can put a spade in a
man's hand where you can't make him dig, or if he does dig he'll only
do it as slow and gingerly as if it were his own grave and he was to be
buried in it as soon as it was ready."

"Don't talk about burying," retorted Brock. "It isn't a pleasant
subject with so many candidates for a funeral scattered around the
front door."

He sniffed the air, and made an exclamation of disgust:

"They haven't even been chloride-of-limed," he said. "A lot of lazy,
untidy brutes that battalion must have been we have just relieved."

Riley stared again into the periscope: "It's German the most of them
are, anyway," he said, "that's one consolation, although it's small
comfort to a sense of smell. I say, have a look at that man lying over
there, out to the left of the listening-post. His head is towards us,
and his hair is white as driven snow. They must be getting hard up for
men to be using up the grandfathers of that age."

Brock examined the white head carefully. "He's a pretty old stager," he
said, "unless he's a young 'un whose hair has turned white in a night
like they do in novels; or, maybe he's a General."

"A General!" said Riley, and stopped abruptly. "Man, now, wait a
minute. A General!" he continued musingly, and then suddenly burst into
chuckles, and nudged Brock in the ribs. "I have a great notion," he
said, "gr-r-reat notion, Brockie. What'll you bet I don't get the men
coming to us before night with a petition to be allowed to do some
digging?"

Brock stared at him. "You're out of your senses," he said. "I'd as soon
expect them to come with a petition to be allowed to sign the pledge."

"Well, now listen," said Riley, "and we'll try it, anyway."

He explained swiftly, while over Brock's face a gentle smile beamed and
widened into subdued chucklings.

"Here's Sergeant Clancy coming along the trench," said Riley. "You have
the notion now, so play up to me, and make sure Clancy hears every word
you say."

"I want to see that General of theirs the Bosche prisoner spoke about,"
said Riley, as Clancy came well within earshot. "An old man, the Bosche
said he was, with a head of hair as white and shining as a gull's
wing."

"I'm not so interested in his shining head," said Brock, "as I am in
the shining gold he carries on him. Doesn't it seem sinful waste for
all that good money to be lying out there?"

Out of the tail of his eye Riley saw the sergeant halt and stiffen into
an attitude of listening. He turned round.

"Was it me you wanted to see, Clancy?" he said.

"No, sorr--yes, sorr," said Clancy hurriedly, and then more slowly, in
neat adoption of the remarks he had just heard: "Leastways, sorr, I was
just afther wondering if you had heard anything of this tale of a
German Gineral lying out there on the ground beyanst."

"You mean the one that was shot last week?" said Riley.

"Him with the five thousand francs in his breeches pocket, and the
diamond-studded gold watch on his wrist?" said Brock.

"The same, sorr, the same!" said Clancy eagerly, and with his eyes
glistening. "And have you made out which of them he is, sorr?"

"No," said Riley shortly. "And remember, Sergeant, there are to be no
men going over the parapet this night without orders. The last
battalion in here lost a big handful of men trying to get hold of that
General, but the Germans were watching too close, and they've got a
machine-gun trained to cover him. See to it, Clancy! That's all now."

Sergeant Clancy moved off, but he went reluctantly.

"Why didn't you give him a bit more?" asked Brock.

"Because I know Clancy," said Riley, whispering. "If we had said more
now, he might have suspected a plant. As it is, he's got enough to
tickle his curiosity, and you can be sure it won't be long before a
gentle pumping performance is in operation."

Sergeant Clancy came in sight round the traverse again, moving briskly,
but obviously slowing down as he passed them, and very obviously
straining to hear anything they were saying. But they both kept silent,
and when he had disappeared round the next traverse, Riley grinned and
winked at his companion.

"He's hooked, Brockie," he said exultantly.

"Now you wait and--" He stopped as a rifle-man moved round the corner
and took up a position on the firing step near them.

"I'll bet," said Riley delightedly, "Clancy has put him there to listen
to anything he can catch us saying."

He turned to the man, who was clipping a tiny mirror on to his bayonet
and hoisting it to use as a periscope.

"Are you on the look-out?" he asked. "And who posted you there?"

"It was Sergeant Clancy, sir," answered the man. "He said I could hear
better--I mean, see better," he corrected himself, "from here."

Riley abruptly turned to their own periscope and apparently resumed the
conversation.

"I'm almost sure that's him with the white head," said Riley. "Out
there, about forty or fifty yards from the German parapet, and about a
hundred yards ten o'clock from our listening-post. Have a look."

He handed the periscope over to Brock, and at the same time noticed how
eagerly the sentry was also having a look into his own periscope.

"I've got him," said Brock. "Yes, I believe that's the man."

"What makes it more certain," said Riley, "is that hen's scratch of a
trench the other battalion started to dig out to the listening-post.
They couldn't crawl out in the open to get to the General, and it's my
belief they meant to drive a sap out to the listening-post, and then
out to the General, and yank him in, so they could go through his
pockets."

"It's a good bit of work to get at a dead man," said Brock