Читать книгу: «Front Lines», страница 13

XVIII
THE FINAL OBJECTIVE

It was all apt to be desperately confusing – the smoke, the shapeless shell-cratered ground, the deafening unceasing tempest of noise – but out of all this confusion and the turmoil of their attack there were one or two things that remained clear in the mind of Corporal; and after all they were the things that counted. One was that he was in charge for the moment of the remains of the company, that when their last officer was knocked out he, Corporal Ackroyd, had taken the officer’s wrist watch and brief instructions to “Carry on – you know what to do”; and the other that they had, just before the officer was casualtied, reached the “pink-line objective.”

·····

Without going too closely into the detailed methods of the attack – the normal methods of this particular period – it is enough to say that three objective lines had been marked up on the maps of the ground to be taken, a pink, a purple, and a “final objective” blue-black line. Between the moment of occupying the pink line and the move to attack the purple there were some twelve minutes allowed to bring supports into position, to pour further destructive artillery fire on the next objective, and so on. Corporal Ackroyd, in common with the rest of the battalion, had been very fully instructed in the map position, and rehearsed over carefully-measured-out ground in practice attack, and knew fairly well the time-table laid down. Before the officer was carried back by the bearers he gave one or two further simple guiding rules. “Send back a runner to report. If nobody comes up to take over in ten minutes, push on to the purple line. It’s the sunk road; you can’t mistake it. Keep close on the barrage, and you can’t go wrong”; and finally, “Take my watch; it’s synchronised time.”

Ackroyd sent back his runner, and was moving to a position where he could best keep control of the remains of the company, when there came an interruption.

“Some blighter out there flappin’ a white flag, Corporal,” reported a look-out, and pointed to where an arm and hand waved from a shell-hole a hundred yards to their front. The Corporal was wary. He had seen too much of the “white-flag trick” to give himself or his men away, but at the same time was keenly sensible of the advantage of getting a bunch of Germans on their immediate front to surrender, rather than have to advance in face of their fire. There was not much time to spare before the laid-down moment for the advance.

He half rose from his cover and waved an answer. Promptly a figure rose from the shell-hole and with hands well over his head came running and stumbling over the rough ground towards him. Three-quarter way over he dropped into another shell-hole, and from there waved again. At another reassuring wave from Ackroyd he rose, ran in and flung himself down into the shell-hole where the Corporal waited. The Corporal met him with his bayoneted rifle at the ready and his finger on the trigger, and the German rose to his knees shooting both hands up into the air with a quick “Kamerad.”

“Right-oh,” said Ackroyd. “But where is your chums? Ain’t any more coming?”

The German answered in guttural but clear enough English, “Mine comrades sended me, wherefore – because I speak English. They wish to kamerad, to become prisoner if you promise behave them well. You no shoot if they come.”

“Right,” said Ackroyd with another glance at his watch. “But you’ll ’ave to ’urry them up. We’re goin’ to advance in about seven minutes, and I’ll promise nothin’ after that. Signal ’em in quick.”

“If I to them wave they will come,” answered the German. “But mine officer come first and make proper kamerad.”

“He’ll make a proper bloomin’ sieve if he don’t come quick,” retorted Ackroyd. “The barrage is due to drop in less’n seven minutes. Signal ’im along quick,” he repeated impatiently, as he saw the other failed to understand. The German turned and made signals, and at once another figure came running and crouching to where they waited. “Mine officer,” said the first German, “he no speak English, so I interpret.”

“Tell ’im,” said Ackroyd, “the shellin’ will begin again in five or six minutes, an’ the line will advance. If he fetches ’is men in quick, they’ll be all right, but I’ll promise nothing if they’re not in before then.”

He waited, fidgeting anxiously, while this was interpreted, and the officer returned an answer.

“He say why needs you advance until all his men have surrender?” said the German.

“Why?” exploded Ackroyd. “Why? Does ’e think I’m the bloomin’ Commander-in-Chief an’ that I’m runnin’ this show? Look ‘ere” – he paused a moment to find words to put the position clearly and quickly. He saw the urgency of the matter. In another few minutes the barrage would drop, and the line would begin to push on. If by then these Germans had not surrendered, they would conclude that the officer had not made terms and they would remain in cover and fight – which meant more casualties to their already unusually heavy list. If he could get the surrender completed before the moment for advance, the next strip of ground to the “purple objective line” would be taken quickly, easily, and cheaply.

“Now look ’ere,” he said rapidly. “You must fix this quick. This show, this push, advance, attack, is runnin’ to a set time-table. Comprenny? At quarter-past – see, quarter-past” – and he thrust out the watch marking eleven minutes past – “the barrage, the shellin’, begins, an’ we start on for the next objective – ”

“Start what?” interjected the interpreter.

“Objective,” yelled Ackroyd angrily. “Don’t you know what a blazing objective is? The sunk road is our nex’ objective line. D’you know the sunk road?”

“Ja, ja, I knows the road,” agreed the German. Then the officer interrupted, and the interpreter turned to explain matters to him. “I cannot it explain this objective,” he said. “Mine officer what is it asks?”

Ackroyd swore lustily and full-bloodedly, but bit short his oaths. There was no time for spare language now. “See here, tell ’im this quick. A objective is the line we’re told to take, an’ goes an’ takes. The Commander-in-Chief, ‘Aig hisself, says where the objective is, an’ he marks up a line on the map to show where we goes to an’ where we stops. There’s a final objective where we finishes each push. D’you savvy that? Every bit o’ the move is made at the time laid down in attack orders. You can’t alter that, an’ I can’t, nor nobody else can’t. Old ’Aig ’e just draws ‘is blue-black line on the map and ses, ‘There’s your final objective’; an’ we just goes an’ takes it. Now ’ave you got all that?”

The two Germans spoke rapidly for a moment, but the Corporal interrupted as he noted the rising sound of the gun-fire and the rapidly-increasing rush of our shells overhead. “Here, ’nuff o’ this!” he shouted. “There’s no time – there’s the barrage droppin’ again. Call your men in if your goin’ to; or push off back an’ we’ll go ’n fetch ’em ourselves. You must get back the both o’ you. We’re movin’ on.” And he made a significant motion with the bayonet.

As they rose crouching the roar of gun-fire rose to a pitch of greater and more savage intensity; above their heads rushed and shrieked a whirlwind of passing shells; out over the open beyond them the puffing shell-bursts steadied down to a shifting rolling wall of smoke. And out of this smoke wall there came running, first in ones and twos, and then in droves, a crowd of grey-clad figures, all with hands well over their heads, some with jerking and waving dirty white rags.

At the same moment supports came struggling in to our line, and the Corporal made haste to hand over to their officer. The prisoners were being hastily collected for removal to the rear, and our line rising to advance, when the interpreter caught at the Corporal. “Mine officer he say,” he shouted, “where is it this fine ol’ objective?”

The Corporal was in rather happy mood over the surrender and the prospect of advancing without opposition. “Where is it?” he retorted. “Like ’is bloomin’ cheek askin’. You tell ’im that ’is final objective is Donington ‘All – an’ I wish ours was ’alf as pleasant. Ours ain’t far this time, but we’re off now to take it accordin’ to attack orders an’ time-table, like we always does. An’ we’ll do it just the same fashion – ’cos ’e knows us an’ we knows ’im, an’ knows ’e don’t ask wot we can’t do – when the day comes that good old ’Aig draws ’is blue-black line beyond its back doors an’ tells us the final objective is Berlin.”

XIX
ARTILLERY PREPARATION

It was the sixth day of the “artillery preparation” for the attack. During the past six days the dispatches on both sides had remarked vaguely that there was “artillery activity,” or “intense fire,” or “occasional increase to drum fire.” These phrases may not convey much to the average dispatch reader, and indeed it is only the Gunners, and especially the Field Batteries in the front gun-line, who understand their meaning to the full.

They had here no picked “battery positions,” because they had been pushed up on to captured ground which they themselves in a previous attack had helped churn to a muddy shell-wrecked wilderness, had blasted bare of any semblance of cover or protection. The batteries were simply planted down in a long line in the open, or at best had the guns sunk a foot or two in shallow pits made by spading out the connecting rims of a group of shell-holes. The gunners, whether serving at the guns or taking their turn of rest, were just as open and exposed as the guns. The gun shields gave a little protection from forward fire of bullets, shrapnel, or splinters, but none from the downward, side, or backward blast of high-explosive shells.

There was no cover or protection for guns or men simply because there had been no time or men to spare for “digging in.” The field guns had been pushed up to their present position just as quickly as the soft ground would allow after the last advance, and since then had been kept going night and day, bringing up and stacking piles of shells and still keeping up a heavy fire. The return fire from the Germans was spasmodic, and not to be compared in volume to ours, and yet against ranks and rows of guns in the bare open it could not fail to be damaging, and a good few of the batteries lost guns smashed and many men and officers killed and wounded.

But the guns, and as far as possible the men, were replaced, and the weight of fire kept up. The men worked in shifts, half of them keeping the guns going while the others ate and rested, and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion in shell-holes near the guns, which continued to bang in running bursts of “battery fire,” or crash out in ear-splitting and ground-shaking four-gun salvos within a dozen or two yards of the sleepers’ heads. The sheer physical labour was cruelly exhausting – the carrying and handling of the shells, the effort to improvise sandbag and broken timber “platforms” under the gun wheels to keep them from sinking in the soft ground, even the mere walking or moving about ankle deep in the sea of sticky mud that surrounded the guns and clung in heavy clogging lumps to feet and legs. But the mental strain must have been even worse in the past six days and nights of constant heavy firing, and of suffering under fire.

Now on this, the sixth and last day of the preparation, the rate of fire along the whole line was worked up to an appalling pitch of violence. The line of the advanced field positions ran in a narrow and irregular belt, at few points more than a couple of thousand yards from the enemy line; the batteries were so closely placed that the left flank gun of one was bare yards from the right flank gun of the next, and in some groups were ranged in double and triple tiers. Up and down this line for miles the guns poured out shells as hard as they could go. Every now and again the enemy artillery would attempt a reply, and a squall of shells would shriek and whistle and crash down on some part or other of our guns’ line, catching a few men here, killing a handful there, smashing or overturning a gun elsewhere – but never stopping or even slacking the tornado of fire poured out by the British line.

Each battery had a set rate of fire to maintain, a fixed number of rounds to place on detailed targets; and badly or lightly mauled or untouched, as might be, each one performed its appointed task. In any battery which had lost many officers and men only a constant tremendous effort kept the guns going. The men relieved from their turn at the guns crawled to the craters, where they had slung a ground sheet or two for shelter from the rain, or had scooped a shallow niche in the side, ate their bully and biscuit, stretched their cramped muscles, crept into their wet lairs, wrapped themselves in wet blankets or coats, curled up and slept themselves into a fresh set of cramps. They were lucky if they had their spell off in undisturbed sleep; most times they were turned out, once, twice, or thrice, to help unload the pack mules which brought up fresh supplies of shells, and man-handle the rounds up from the nearest points the mules could approach over the welter of muddy ground so pitted and cratered that even a mule could not pass over it.

When their relief finished they crawled out again and took their places on the guns, and carried on. By nightfall every man of them was stiff with tiredness, deafened and numb with the noise and shock of the piece’s jarring recoil, weary-eyed and mind-sick with the unceasing twiddling and adjusting of tiny marks to minute scratches and strokes on shell fuses, sights, and range-drums. The deepening dusk was hardly noticed, because the running bursts of flame and light kept the dusk at bay. And dark night brought no rest, no slackening of the fierce rate of fire, or the labour that maintained it.

The whole gun-line came to be revealed only as a quivering belt of living fire. As a gun fired there flamed out in front of the battery a blinding sheet of light that threw up every detail of men and guns and patch of wet ground in glaring hot light or hard black silhouette. On the instant, the light vanished and darkness clapped down on the tired eyes, to lift and leap again on the following instant from the next gun’s spurt of vivid sheeting flame. For solid miles the whole line throbbed and pulsed in the same leaping and vanishing gusts of fire and light; and from either side, from front, and rear, and overhead, came the long and unbroken roaring and crashing and banging and bellowing of the guns’ reports, the passing and the burst of the shells.

So it went on all night, and so it went on into the grey hours of the dawn. As the “zero hour” fixed for the attack approached, the rate of fire worked up and up to a point that appeared to be mere blind ravening fury. But there was nothing blind about it. For all the speed of the work each gun was accurately laid for every round, each fuse was set to its proper tiny mark, each shell roared down on its appointed target. The guns grew hot to the touch, the breeches so hot that oil sluiced into them at intervals hissed and bubbled and smoked like fat in a frying pan, as it touched the metal.

One battery ceased fire for a few minutes to allow some infantry supports to pass through the line and clear of the blast of the guns’ fire, and the gunners took the respite thankfully, and listened to the shaking thunder of the other guns, the rumble and wail and roar of the shells that passed streaming over their heads, sounds that up to now had been drowned out in the nearer bang and crash of their own guns.

As the infantry picked their way out between the guns the “Number One” of the nearest detachment exchanged a few shouted remarks with one of the infantry sergeants.

“Near time to begin,” said the sergeant, glancing at his watch. “Busy time goin’ to be runnin’ this next day or two. You’ll be hard at it, too, I s’pose.”

“Busy time! beginning!” retorted the artilleryman. “I’m about fed up o’ busy times. This battery hasn’t been out of the line or out of action for over three months, an’ been more or less under fire all that time. We haven’t stopped shootin’ night or day for a week, and this last 24 hours we been at it full stretch, hammer an’ tongs. Beginnin’ – Good Lord! I’m that hoarse, I can hardly croak, an’ every man here is deaf, dumb, and paralysed. I’m gettin’ to hate this job, an’ I never want to hear another gun or see another shell in my blanky life.”

The infantryman laughed, and hitched his rifle up to move. “I s’pose so,” he said. “An’ I shouldn’t wonder if them Fritzes in the line you’ve been strafin’ are feelin’ same way as you about guns an’ shells – only more so.”

“That’s so,” agreed the Number One, and turned to the fuse-setters, urging them hoarsely to get a stack of rounds ready for the barrage. “We’re just goin’ to begin,” he said, “an’ if this blanky gun don’t hump herself in the next hour or two…”

XX
STRETCHER-BEARERS

Lieutenant Drew was wounded within four or five hundred yards of the line from which his battalion started to attack. He caught three bullets in as many seconds – one in the arm, one in the shoulder, and one in the side – and went down under them as if he had been pole-axed. The shock stunned him for a little, and he came to hazily to find a couple of the battalion stretcher-bearers trying to lift him from the soft mud in which he was half sunk.

Drew was rather annoyed with them for wanting to disturb him. He was quite comfortable, he told them, and all he wanted was to be left alone there. The bearers refused to listen to this, and insisted in the first place in slicing away some of his clothing – which still further annoyed Drew because the weather was too cold to dispense with clothes – and putting some sort of first field dressing on the wounds.

“D’you think he can walk, Bill?” one asked the other. “No,” said Bill. “I fancy he’s got one packet through the lung, an’ if he walks he’ll wash out. It’s a carryin’ job.”

“Come on, then,” said the first. “Sooner we start the sooner we’re there.”

Quite disregarding Drew’s confused grumbles, they lifted and laid him on a stretcher and started to carry him back to the aid post.

If that last sentence conveys to you any picture of two men lifting a stretcher nicely and smoothly and walking off at a gentle and even walk, you must alter the picture in all its details. The ground where the lieutenant had fallen, the ground for many acres round him, was a half-liquefied mass of mud churned up into lumps and hummocks pitted and cratered with shell-holes intersected with rivulets and pools of water. When Drew was lifted on to the stretcher, it sank until the mud oozed out and up from either side and began to slop in over the edges. When the bearers had lifted him on, they moved each to his own end, and they moved one step at a time, floundering and splashing and dragging one foot clear after the other. When they took hold of the stretcher ends and lifted, both staggered to keep their balance on the slippery foothold; and to move forward each had to steady himself on one foot, wrench the other up out of the mud, plunge it forward and into the mud again, grope a minute for secure footing, balance, and proceed to repeat the performance with the other foot. The stretcher lurched and jolted and swayed side to side, backward and forward. The movement at first gave Drew severe stabs of pain, but after a little the pain dulled down into a steady throbbing ache.

The bearers had some 400 or 500 yards to go over the ground covered by the advance. After this they would find certain sketchy forms of duck-board walks – if the German shells had not wiped them out – and, farther back, still better and easier methods of progress to the aid post. But first there was this shell-ploughed wilderness to cross. Drew remembered vaguely what a struggle it had been to him to advance that distance on his own feet, and carrying nothing but his own weight and his equipment. It was little wonder the bearers found the same journey a desperate effort with his weight sagging and jolting between them and pressing them down in the mud.

In the first five yards the leading bearer slipped, failed to recover his balance, and fell, letting his end down with a jolt and a splash. He rose smothered in a fresh coat of wet mud, full of mingled curses on the mud and apologies to the wounded man. Drew slid off into a half-faint. He woke again slowly, as the bearers worked through a particularly soft patch. The mud was nearly thigh deep, and they were forced to take a step forward, half-lift, half-drag the stretcher on, lay it down while they struggled on another foot or two, turn and haul their load after them. It took them a full hour to move a fair 60 paces.

The work was not performed, either, without distractions other than the mud and its circumventing, and the trouble of picking the best course. An attack was in full progress, and streams of shells were screaming and howling overhead, with odd ones hurtling down and bursting on the ground they were traversing, flinging up gigantic geysers of spouting mud, clods of earth, and black smoke, erupting a whirlwind of shrieking splinters and fragments. Several times the bearers laid the stretcher down and crouched low in the mud from the warning roar of an approaching shell, waited the muffled crash of its burst, the passing of the flying fragments. From the nearer explosions a shower of dirt and clods rained down about them, splashing and thudding on the wet ground; from the farther ones an occasional piece of metal would drop whistling or droning angrily and “whutt” into the mud. Then the bearers lifted their burden and resumed their struggling advance. Fortunately the waves of attacking infantry had passed beyond them, and most of the German guns were busy flogging the front lines and trying to hold or destroy them; but there were still shells enough being flung back on the ground they had to cover to make matters unpleasantly risky. To add to the risk there was a constant whistle and whine of passing bullets, and every now and then a regular shower of them whipping and smacking into the mud about them, bullets not aimed at them, but probably just the chance showers aimed a little too high to catch the advancing attack, passing over and coming to earth a few hundred yards back.

The little party was not alone, although the ground was strangely empty and deserted to what it had been when the attack went over. There were odd wounded men, walking wounded struggling back alone, others more seriously hurt toiling through the mud with the assistance of a supporting arm, others lying waiting their turn to be carried in, placed for the time being in such cover as could be found, the cover usually of a deep shell-crater with soft, wet sides, and a deep pool at the bottom. There were odd bunches of men moving up, men carrying bombs, or ammunition, or supplies of some sort for the firing line, all ploughing slowly and heavily through the sticky mud.

Drew lost all count of time. He seemed to have been on that stretcher, to have been swaying and swinging, bumping down and heaving up, for half a lifetime – no, more, for all his life, because he had no thought for, no interest in anything that had happened in the world before this stretcher period, still less any interest in what might happen after it ended – if ever it did end. Several times he sank into stupor or semi-unconsciousness, through which he was still dimly sensible only of the motions of the stretcher, without any connected thought as to what they meant or how they were caused. Once he awoke from this state to find himself laid on the ground, one of his bearers lying in a huddled heap, the other stooping over him, lifting and hauling at him. Everything faded out again, and in the next conscious period he was moving on jerkily once more, this time with two men in the lead with a stretcher-arm apiece, and one man at the rear end. His first stretcher-bearer they left there, flat and still, sinking gradually in the soft ooze.

Again everything faded, and this time he only recovered as he was being lifted out of the stretcher and packed on a flat sideless truck affair with four upright corner posts. Somewhere near, a battery of field guns was banging out a running series of ear-splitting reports – and it was raining softly again – and he was sitting instead of lying. He groped painfully for understanding of it all.

“Where am I?” he asked faintly.

“You’re all right now, sir,” someone answered him. “You’ll have to sit up a bit, ‘cos we’ve a lot o’ men an’ not much room. But you’re on the light railway, an’ the truck’ll run you the half-mile to the Post in a matter o’ minutes.”

“What time is it?” asked Drew. “How’s the show going?”

“It’s near two o’clock, sir. An’ we hear all the objectives is taken.”

“Near two,” said Drew, and as the truck moved off, “Near two,” he kept repeating and struggling to understand what had happened to time – had started at six … and it was “near two” … “near two” … two o’clock, that was. He couldn’t piece it together, and he gave it up at last and devoted himself to fitting words and music to the rhythm of the grinding, murmuring truck wheels. Six o’clock … two o’clock.

It was little wonder he was puzzled. The attack had started at six. But it had taken the stretcher-bearers five hours to carry him some 400 yards.