Читать книгу: «Front Lines», страница 8

XI
A ROARING TRADE

The “O.C. Dump,” a young Second Lieutenant of Artillery, thumped the receiver down disgustedly on the telephone and made a few brief but pungent remarks on railways and all connected therewith.

“What’s the trouble, Vickers?” said a voice at the door, and the Lieutenant wheeled to find the Colonel commanding the Ammunition Column and the dump standing just inside.

“I was just going to look for you, sir,” said Vickers. “They’ve cut our line again – put two or three heavy shells into that bit of an embankment a mile or so from here, and blown it to glory evidently.”

“I don’t suppose the Engineers will take long to repair that,” said the Colonel. “They can slap down the metals and sleepers quick enough if the embankment isn’t smashed.”

“But it is, sir,” said Vickers. “I was just talking to Division, and they say the trains won’t run in to-night, and that supplies will come up by lorry. And we’ve some heavy lots due in to-night,” he concluded despairingly.

“Let’s see,” said the Colonel, and for five minutes listened and scribbled figures while Vickers turned over notes and indents and ‘phone messages and read them out.

“Yes,” said the Colonel reflectively, when they had finished. “It’ll be a pretty heavy job. But you can put it through all right, Vickers,” he went on cheerfully. “It won’t be as bad as that bit you pulled off the first week on the Somme. I’ll leave it to you, but I’ll be round somewhere if you should want me. When will the first of the lorries come along?”

They talked a few minutes longer, and then the Colonel moved to the door. The “office” was a square shanty built of empty ammunition boxes, with a tarpaulin spread over for a roof. It was furnished with a roughly-built deal table, littered with papers held in clips, stuck on files, or piled in heaps, seats made of 18-pounder boxes, a truckle-bed and blankets in one corner, a telephone on a shelf beside the table. Light and ventilation were provided by the leaving-out of odd boxes here and there in the building up of the walls, and by a wide doorway without a door to it. The whole thing was light and airy enough, but, because it was one of the hot spells of summer, it was warm enough inside to be uncomfortable. Everything in the place – table, papers, bed, seats – was gritty to the touch and thick with dust.

The two men stood in the doorway a minute, looking out on the depleted stacks of ammunition boxes piled in a long curving row beside the roadway that ran in off the main road, swung round, and out on to it again. A few men were working amongst the boxes, their coats off and their grey shirt sleeves rolled up, and a stream of traffic ran steadily past on the main road.

“Pretty quiet here now,” said the Colonel. “But, by the sound of it, things are moving brisk enough up there. You’ll get your turn presently, I expect.”

“I expect so, sir,” said the Lieutenant; “especially if the yarn is true that we push ’em again at daybreak to-morrow.”

“Come over and get your tea before the lorries come in, if you’ve time,” said the Colonel, and moved off.

The Lieutenant stood a moment longer listening to the steady roll and vibrating rumble of the guns up in the line, and then, at a sharp birr-r-r from the telephone, turned sharply into the office.

The lorries began to arrive just after sunset, rumbling up the main road and swinging off in batches as there was room for them in the curved crescent of track that ran through the dump and back to the main road. As quickly as they were brought into position the dump working party jerked off the tail-boards and fell to hauling the boxes of shell out and piling them in neat stacks along a low platform which ran by the edge of the dump track. The dump was a distributing centre mainly for field artillery, so that the shells were 18-pounder and 4·5 howitzer, in boxes just comfortably large enough for a man to lift and heave about. As the light failed and the darkness crept down, candle lamps began to appear, flitting about amongst the piled boxes, dodging in and out between the lorries, swinging down the track to guide the drivers and show them the way in one by one. Vickers and the Army Service Corps officer in charge of the M.T. lorries stood on a stack of boxes mid-way round the curve, or moved about amongst the workers directing and hastening the work.

But about an hour after dark there came some hasteners a good deal more urgent and effective than the officers. All afternoon and early evening a number of shells had been coming over and falling somewhere out from the dump, but the faintness of their whistle and sigh, and the dull thump of their burst, told that they were far enough off not to be worth worrying about. But now there came the ominous shriek, rising into a louder but a fuller and deeper note, that told of a shell dropping dangerously near the listeners. As the shriek rose to a bellowing, vibrating roar, the workers amongst the boxes ducked and ran in to crouch beside or under the lorries, or flatten themselves close up against the piles of ammunition. At the last second, when every man was holding his breath, and it seemed that the shell was on the point of falling fairly on top of them, they heard the deafening roar change and diminish ever so slightly, and next instant the shell fell with an earth-shaking crash just beyond the dump and the main road. Some of the splinters sang and hummed overhead, and the workers were just straightening from their crouched positions and turning to remark to one another, when again there came to them the same rising whistle and shriek of an approaching shell. But this time, before they could duck back, the voice of the “O.C. Dump,” magnified grotesquely through a megaphone, bellowed at them, “Gas masks at alert position every man. Sharp now.”

A good many of the men had stripped off gas masks and coats, because the masks swinging and bobbing about them were awkward to work in, and the night was close and heavy enough to call for as little hampering clothing as possible in the job of heaving and hauling heavy boxes about.

A word from Vickers to the A.S.C. officer explained his shout. “If one of those shells splashes down on top of that stack of gas-shells of ours, this won’t be a healthy locality without a mask on.” The men must have understood or remembered the possibility, because, heedless of the roar of the approaching shell, they grabbed hastily for their masks and hitched them close and high on their chests, or ran to where they had hung them with their discarded tunics, and slung them hastily over shoulder, and ready.

The second shell fell short of the dump with another thunderous bang and following shrieks of flying splinters. Close after it came the voice of Vickers through his megaphone shouting at the workers to get a move on, get on with the job. And partly because of his order, and partly, perhaps, because they could see him in the faint light of the lantern he carried standing man-high and exposed on top of the highest stack of boxes, and so absorbed some of that mysterious confidence which passes from the apparent ease of an officer to his men in time of danger, they fell to work again energetically, hauling out and stacking the boxes. Another half-dozen shells fell at regular intervals, and although all were uncomfortably close, none actually touched the dump. One man, an A.S.C. motor-driver, was wounded by a flying splinter, and was half-led, half-carried out from the dump streaming with blood.

“Ain’t you glad, Bill,” said another A.S.C. driver, as the group passed his lorry, “that we’re in this Army Safety Corps?”³

“Not ’arf,” said Bill. “There’s sich a fat lot o’ safety about it. Hark at that… Here she comes again.”

This time the shell found its mark. The crash of its fall was blended with and followed by the rending and splintering of wood, a scream and a yell, and a turmoil of shouting voices. The dump officer bent down and shouted to the A.S.C. officer below him: “In the road … amongst your lorries, I fancy. You’d better go’n look to it. I’ll keep ’em moving here.”

The A.S.C. man went off at the double without a word. He found that the shell had fallen just beside one of the loaded lorries which waited their turn to pull in to the dump, splitting and splintering it to pieces, lifting and hurling it almost clear of the road. Some of the ammunition boxes had been flung off. The officer collected some of his M.T. drivers and a few spare men, emptied the smashed lorry, and picked up the scattered boxes and slung them aboard other lorries; and then, without giving the men time to pause, set them at work heaving and hauling and levering the broken lorry clear of the road, and down a little six-foot sloping bank at the roadside. Another shell came down while they worked, but at their instinctive check the officer sprang to help, shouting at them, and urging them on. “Get to it. Come along. D’you want to be here all night? We have to off-load all this lot before we pull out. I don’t want to wait here having my lorries smashed up, if you do. Come along now – all together.” The men laughed a little amongst themselves, and came “all together,” and laughed again and gave little ironical cheers as the wrecked lorry slid and swayed and rolled lurching over the bank and clear of the road. The officer was running back to the dump when he heard the officer there bellowing for another six lorries to pull in. He climbed to the step of one as it rolled in, dropped off as it halted, and hurried over to the officer in charge.

“Hark at ’em,” said Vickers, as another shell howled over, and burst noisily a hundred yards clear. “They’re laying for us all right this trip. Pray the Lord they don’t lob one into this pile – the gas-shells especially. That would fairly hang up the job; and there are Heaven knows how many batteries waiting to send in their waggons for the stuff now.”

“They got my lorry,” said the A.S.C. man. “Wrecked it and killed the driver.”

“Hard luck,” said Vickers. “Hasn’t blocked the road, I hope?”

“No; spilt the shells all over the place, but didn’t explode any. We cleared the road.”

“Don’t forget,” said Vickers anxiously, “to tell me if there’s any of the load missing. It’ll tie me up in my figures abominably if you deliver any short.” He broke off to shout at the men below, “Get along there. Move out those empty ones. Come along, another six. Pass the word for another six, there.”

The shelling eased off for a couple of hours after that, and by then the last of the lorries had gone, and their place in the road outside and along the dump track had been taken by long lines of ammunition waggons from the batteries and the Divisional Ammunition Column. Every officer or N.C.O. who came in charge of a batch brought in the same imperative orders – to waste no minute, to load up, and to get to the gun line at the earliest possible moment, that action was brisk, and the rounds were wanted urgently. There was no need to report that action was brisk, because the dump was quite near enough to the line for the steady, unbroken roar of gun-fire, to tell its own tale. The sound of the field guns in the advanced positions came beating back in the long, throbbing roll of drum-fire, and closer to the dump, to both sides of it, in front and rear of it, the sharp, ear-splitting reports of the heavies crashed at quick intervals. The dump was the centre of a whirlwind of activity. The ammunition waggons came rumbling and bumping in round the curved track, the drivers steering in their six-horse teams neatly and cleverly, swinging and halting them so that the tail of each waggon was turned partly in to the piled boxes, and the teams edged slanting out across the road. The moment one halted the drivers jumped down from the saddles, the lead driver standing to his horses’ heads, the centre and wheel running to help with the work of wrenching open the ammunition boxes and cramming the shells into the pigeon-hole compartments of the waggons. The instant a waggon was filled the drivers mounted and the team pulled out to make way for another.

The lanterns perched on vantage points on the piles of boxes or swinging to and fro amongst the teams revealed dimly and patchily a scene of apparent confusion, of jerking and swaying shadows, quick glints of light on metal helmets and harness buckles and wheel tyres, the tossing, bobbing heads of animals, the rounded, shadowy bulk of their bodies, the hurriedly moving figures of the men stooping over the boxes, snatching out the gleaming brass and grey steel shells, tossing empty boxes aside, hauling down fresh ones from the pile. Here and there a wet, sweating face or a pair of bared arms caught the light of a lantern, stood out vividly for a moment, and vanished again into the shadowed obscurity, or a pair or two of legs were outlined black against the light, and cast distorted wheeling shadows on the circle of lamp-lit ground. A dim, shifting veil of dust hung over everything, billowing up into thick clouds under the churning hoofs and wheels as the teams moved in and out, settling slowly and hanging heavily as they halted and stood.

The dim white pile of boxes that were walled round the curve was diminishing rapidly under the strenuous labour of the drivers and working party; the string of teams and waggons in the road outside kept moving up steadily, passing into the dump, loading up, moving out again, and away. Vickers, the officer in charge, was here, there, and everywhere, clambering on the boxes to watch the work, shouting directions and orders, down again, and hurrying into the office shanty to grab the telephone and talk hurriedly into it, turning to consult requisition “chits” for different kinds of shells, making hurried calculations and scribbling figures, out again to push in amongst the workers, and urge them to hurry, hurry, hurry.

Once he ran back to the office to find the Colonel standing there. “Hullo, Vickers,” he said cheerfully. “Doing a roaring trade to-night, aren’t you?”

“I just am, sir,” said Vickers, wiping his wet forehead. “I’ll be out of Beer-Ex⁴ presently if they keep on rushing me for it at this rate.”

“Noisy brute of a gun that,” said the Colonel, as a heavy piece behind them crashed sharply, and the shell roared away overhead in diminishing howls and moans.

“And here’s one coming the wrong way,” said Vickers hurriedly. “Hope they’re not going to start pitching ’em in here again.”

But his hopes were disappointed. The German gun or guns commenced another regular bombardment of and round the dump. Shell after shell whooped over, and dropped with heavy rolling c-r-r-umps on the ground, dangerously near to the piled boxes. Then one fell fairly on top of a pile of shells with an appalling crash and rending, splintering clatter, a spouting gush of evil-smelling black smoke, and clouds of blinding dust. The pile hit was flung helter-skelter, the boxes crashing and shattering as they fell and struck heavily on the ground, the loose shells whirling up and out from the explosion, and thumping and thudding on the other piles or in the dust.

At first sound of the burst, or, in fact, a second or so before it, the dump officer was yelling at the pitch of his voice, over and over again, “Gas masks on – gas masks on”; and before the ripping and splintering crashes had well finished he was running hard to the spot where the shell had fallen. He freed his own mask as he ran, and slipped it over his face, but even before he had pushed into the drifting reek of the burst he had snatched it off, and was turning back, when he found the Colonel on his heels.

“I was afraid of those gas-shells of ours, sir,” he said hurriedly. “Pretty near ’em, but they’re all right, and nothing’s afire, evidently.”

“Good enough,” said the Colonel quietly. “Better hurry the men at the job again.”

“Masks off,” shouted Vickers. “All right here. Masks off, and get on with it, men.”

The working party and the drivers snatched their masks off, and before the dust of the explosion had settled were hard at work again. But the shells began to fall with alarming regularity and in dangerous proximity to the dump and road outside. The Colonel moved over to the office, and found Vickers there gripping a notebook, a handful of papers under his arm, and talking into the telephone. He broke off his talk at sight of the Colonel.

“One moment. Here he is now. Hold the wire.” He held the receiver out. “Will you speak to Divisional H.Q., sir? They’re asking about the shelling here.”

The Colonel took the ’phone and spoke quietly into it. Another shell dropped with a rending crash somewhere outside, and Vickers jumped for the door and vanished. The piled boxes of the “office” walls shivered and rocked, and dust rained down on the paper-strewn table. But the Colonel went on talking, telling what the shelling was like and how heavy it was, the number of waggons waiting, and so on.

He was putting the ’phone down as Vickers entered hurriedly and reported, “Just outside in the road, sir. Did in a waggon and team and two drivers.”

“We’ve got to carry on as long as we can, Vickers,” said the Colonel. “The stuff is urgently wanted up there, and we’d lose a lot of time to clear the teams out and bring them back.”

“Very good, sir,” said Vickers, and vanished again.

The shelling continued. Most of the shells fell close to, but clear of, the dump, but another hit a pile of shells, exploding none, but setting a few splintered boxes on fire. The fire, fortunately, was smothered in a moment. Another burst just at the entrance to the curved road through the dump, smashing an ammunition waggon to a wreck of splintered woodwork and twisted iron, blowing two teams to pieces, and killing and wounding half a dozen men. There was a moment’s confusion, a swirl of plunging horses, a squealing of braked wheels, a shouting and calling and cursing. But as the smoke and dust cleared the confusion died away, and in five minutes the wrecked waggon and dead animals were dragged clear, and the work was in full swing again. Vickers, moving amongst the teams, heard two drivers arguing noisily. “What did I tell you?” one was shouting. “What did I tell you! Didn’t I say mules would stand shell-fire good as any hosses? Here’s my pair never winked an eye.”

“Winked a eye!” said the other scornfully. “They tried to do a obstacle race over my waggon. An’ they kicked sufferin’ Saul outer your centres an’ each other. Yer off-lead’s near kicked the hin’ leg off’n his mate, anyway.”

“Kicked?” said the first, and then stopped as his eye caught the red gleam of flowing blood. “Strewth, he’s wounded. My bloomin’ donkey’s casualtied. Whoa, Neddy; stan’ till I see what’s wrong. You’ll get a bloomin’ wound stripe to wear for this, Neddy. Whoa, you – ”

Vickers, remembering the snatch of talk, was able to tell the Colonel a moment later, “No, sir; the men don’t seem rattled a mite; and they’re working like good ’uns.”

The shelling continued, but so did the work. The waggons continued to roll in, to fill up, and pull out again; the pile of ammunition boxes to dwindle, the heap of empty boxes to grow. Vickers scurried round, keeping an eye on smooth working, trying at intervals to press some of his stock of gas-shells on any battery that would take them. “I’ve fair got wind up about them,” he confided to one waggon-line officer. “If a shell hits them it will stop the whole blessed dump working. Then where will your guns be for shell?”

The shelling continued, and caught some more casualties. Vickers superintended their removal, wiped his hands on his breeches, and went back to his office and his “returns” and the worry of trying to account for the shells scattered by the enemy shell in his dump. The men worked on doggedly. The gun-line wanted shells, and the gun-line would get them – unless or until the dump blew up.

The shelling continued – although, to be sure, it eased off at intervals – until dawn; but by that time the last loaded waggon had departed and the dump was almost empty of shells. The German gunners were beaten and the dump had won. Presently the German line would feel the weight of the dump’s work.

Three hours later, after a final struggle with his “returns,” Vickers, dirty and dusty, grimed with smoke and ash, a stubble of beard on his chin and tired rings under his eyes, trudged to the mess dug-out for breakfast and tea – tea, hot tea, especially. He met the Colonel, and recounted briefly the various thousands of assorted shells – high explosive, shrapnel, lyddite, and so on – he had sent up to the gun-line during the night. He also recounted sorrowfully the night’s casualties amongst his dump party, and spoke with a little catch in his voice of his dead sergeant, “the best N.C.O. he’d ever known.”

“A good night’s work well done, Vickers,” said the Colonel quietly.

“A roaring trade, sir, as you said,” answered Vickers, with a thin smile. “And hark at ’em up there now,” and he nodded his head towards the distant gun-line. They stood a moment in the sunshine at the top of the dug-out steps. Round them the heavies still thundered and crashed and cracked savagely, and from the gun line where the field guns worked the roar of sound came rolling and throbbing fiercely and continuously.

“They’ll pay back for what you got last night,” said the Colonel, “and some of them wouldn’t be able to do it but for your work last night.”

The ground under them trembled to the blast of a near-by heavy battery, the air vibrated again to the furious drumming fire that thundered back from the front lines.

“That’s some consolation,” said Vickers, “for my sergeant. Small profit and quick returns to their shells; the right sort of motto, that, for a roaring trade.”

The fire of the gun-line, rising to a fresh spasm of fury, fairly drowned the last of his words. “A proper roaring trade,” he repeated loudly, and nodded his head again in the direction of the sound.