B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (27 page)

To be hit by something you could not see was not too bad, but to see something coming, sufficient to blow a crater of 15 feet diameter and not to know which way to go to avoid it, was enough to destroy the nerve of a suit of armour. You can imagine, therefore, how decidedly unpopular the trench mortar batteries became. The daily ‘strafe’ too, was far more intense than in my earlier days. I have already said that my bravado had been reduced, and this did not improve it. In various ways one was able to forget, but I nearly gave out.

It was in the early days of March. The Germans were raiding; we were counter-raiding. Each company had only three officers in the line, and it usually meant two patrols in No Man’s Land each night. In addition to this we were subjected to intermittent gun-fire and ‘Minnies’ during the day. Luckily, the colonel, who had returned by this time and who was one of the best men I have ever met, talked to me very severely and made me pull myself together. It was an effort, but, thank God! I succeeded.

About March 20th we were relieved from the line and started rest. I lost eighteen men the first day on a working party.

Next day came news of the great enemy attack. We received orders to dump all surplus kit and pack up to go south again. We started early in the morning, and reached a village towards evening. We were shown our billets and the cooks prepared a meal. Just as we were sitting down the ‘Fall in at the double’ was sounded. Good-bye dinner. Throughout the night we rode in lorries and chars-a-bancs, and towards noon we reached some deserted huts, had a short rest and a shave. Then we started to march on to a position between Bazentin-le-Grand and Bazentin-le-Petit. We never arrived. The Germans were first. From there we changed direction and retired through Pozières, where we managed to set fire to the place. It burned for three days and nights, so we did that job well. We eventually took up a position along the railway line in Aveluy Wood.

On the first night, the enemy marched through on the left of us in column of fours, blowing bugles and singing. He was beaten back and next afternoon we were attacked from the right flank, and the Germans were again behind us. Again we rallied beat them back and retook our position along the railway. We were attacked again that night, and next morning found ourselves very short of ammunition. The colonel wandered along the line carrying over 2,000 rounds in bandoliers round his shoulders.

That night we were relieved, but simply took up another position at dawn on the top of a hill. In the evening we were attacked again, and the colonel was wounded once more, making the seventh time.

We were relieved next day and got back to rest, a sadly depleted battalion. When we got back to rest I think every man slept the clock round. The men were falling asleep during the march back and after every halt it took us nearly ten minutes to wake them up.

During the time we were in the wood, five of our aeroplanes went over and were shot down in flames, making me begin to wish I had never applied for transfer. But after two days rest our transfer to the Flying Corps came through, and my chum and I promptly hurried back to England, arriving there the first week in April.

On July 21st I was back in France, this time with the Air Force, wherein life was great. One had only a nominal amount of work to do compared with the P.B.I. In fact, if you had to work more than four hours a day, you were decidedly unlucky.

After about six weeks with the squadron I was third senior observer. This rapid change of personnel was a serious drawback, but otherwise everything was much more comfortable.

One morning, taking off at dawn, we hit the top of a hangar in which were sleeping several mechanics. Their language was an education in itself. The machine was written off, but the flight commander and myself escaped with a shaking. We did no more work that day.

On another occasion, while taking a new pilot over the line, we were closely shelled. I smacked him on the head and told him to get back, as he appeared quite unconcerned. When we returned to the aerodrome, the bus badly riddled with shrapnel holes, which I pointed out to my pilot, he said he thought the shell bursts were small clouds. I thought of my first wiring party and said no more.

Our job was to do contact work in machines that were designed for artillery observation. Contact, of course, had to be kept with people working, on the ground, and, in the particular kind of machine we were using, was an unenviable task.

About this time we were beginning to win the War, and one night the Squadron Commander outlined our job in an advance for next day. It was very ambitious, and was met with some facetious remarks. From the squadron point of view, the first job was for all machines but one to go over and drop smoke bombs at dawn. The other machine, containing my pilot, aged seventeen and a half, and myself, had to take off about an hour and a half later and watch the Canal du Nord, which at this particular spot emerged from underground and was supposed to house large numbers of the enemy. Whether it did or not I never knew. We got over the line, flying just below 1,000 feet, to find that the usual late September ground mist and the effects of the squadron’s smoke bombs were such that the ground was obscured. We could not see the line but apparently could ourselves be seen, for a machine gun was firing at us and I, as observer, was firing in the direction of the sound, with my back to the pilot. Suddenly the nose of the machine went down and we started to spin. I turned round to ask what the – . Imagine my consternation at finding the pilot shot through the head and leaning forward on the joy-stick. I had no visions of my past life; I merely clutched at the straw. In other words, in a fraction of a second I had the spare stick out of its place on the fuselage and into its socket for dual control. With the other hand, I stopped the spin by hauling on to the rudder wire alongside my seat, then I pulled at the stick, and can dimly remember the nose of the plane rising.

The next thing I remember is being offered a drink by a German officer. This I refused, so he drank it himself and offered me another from the same bottle, I could only have been semi-conscious, for I again refused, Once more I lapsed into unconsciousness and returned to find somebody taking a souvenir in the shape of my wrist-watch. I was then told to sit at the foot of the steps of the dug-out, as our attack was expected. I was to call up that there was a British officer there. Having myself dropped bombs into dug-outs first and asked questions afterwards, I suggested going to the top of the steps. This did not meet with approval, so I was left below to nurse a cracked chin, a bleeding head and a very sore body, the only ill-effects to myself. Our attack was not successful, so I was not rescued, but was sent behind the German lines.

During my short stay in Germany, I was in many camps, the chief of which were at Karlsruhe, Kamstigall, near Munich, and Landshut, near Konigsberg, From Munich to Konigsberg we travelled through Berlin, where I bartered half a bar of Sunlight Soap for five shillings’ worth of cigarettes.

I arrived back in England before Christmas 1918, thus creating what appears to be a record of every Christmas at home during the War. In 1915 I was lucky in a ballot at Aldershot; 1916, being convalescent at Epsom, I was allowed out a certain amount and plead guilty to taking a little more without being found out; 1917, I was on draft leave; and 1918 I have just recounted.

C.J. Arthur enlisted in May 1915, after Whitsun week-end in camp with Boy Scouts, and within ten weeks was promoted to Sergeant. Went to France May 1916. Wounded September same year, and awarded M.M. In hospital until December, then convalescent until February 1917. Thence to depot until gazetted in November 1917. To France again, January 1st, 1918, until April 5th, when he was sent home for transfer to R.A.F. On July 21st again went to France and was shot down on September 29th, and taken prisoner, returning to England December 20th, 1918, and demobilized March 1919. Whilst in the infantry he served with the (Queen’s Own) Royal West Kent Regt., both in the ranks and when gazetted
.

August 4th, 1914, in a little country bank: ‘Broad’s gone with the Terriers: you’ll have to take charge.’

It was 1915 before wire-pulling brought a strange, lame man to the office. ‘I’ve come to let you get away,’ he said.

‘To let me go?’

It was as if a spring that had been wound up and up all these months was suddenly released. That made the bump against a brick wall all the more dumbfounding. To be rejected by the doctor, turned down as physically unfit after all manner of sports and specializing in gymnasium work it was staggering. But there was no doubt: ‘danger of rupture: operation and a month’s rest.’

The day did come at last to be sworn in. It wasn’t quite so thrilling as I’d expected because the last words before the Bible was passed round were words of advice from the captain:

‘I should advise some of you – I mention it now because after you have sworn I shall have to order, not advise – to get your hair cut rather more à la military; at present some of you have it decidedly not à la military.’

Still, we were soldiers, even if we weren’t soldierly enough in forming fours to please the corporal. And we took his word that it wasn’t any use thinking we were soldiers until we could jump to it better. No one argued that we shouldn’t be fighting the Germans from the formation of At the halt, facing left, form close column of – platoons!’

It wasn’t until months later, after a tenth successive two-hour wait on the same patch of snowy bog-holes for an attack the never came, that the frozen silence of dismissal was broken by Johnson’s acid comment – he was a schoolmaster from the north, so his critical faculty was not quite tame: ‘I may be obtuse, but I really can not see what earthly good anyone has got out of this night’s battalion training’ – and oh! the world of scorn in that word ‘training.’ ‘Learning to follow each other about in the dark? I’m afraid, Dickie, if you can think of that, you’ve got the making of a better soldier in you than I have.’

But there was still enthusiasm, even though only of the sticking-it order: we wouldn’t
let
it be damped quite out: keenness enough to bring stripes and their load of care, stripes that evoked cynical ribaldry from pals, hostility from the fed-up and, the jealous, and that lynx-like antagonistic vigilance that noncom and private mutually felt.

And then a commission and a new world to conquer. One would be able to do so much more.

Could one, though? When we asked about the men: ‘Are they old soldiers? Do they need much training?’ and got the answer: ‘Training? They’ve been getting all the training they want this last year and more,’ it became apparent that fed-upness was not confined to the ranks.

It wasn’t to be wondered at, really: a few Zep scares, a few entrainment orders that turned out to be only practice, did make us wonder whether the duration of the War was to be spent in English billets. Then, Easter 1916, at 2 a.m. came another entrainment order.

Half the battalion didn’t believe it: many a one had no razor in his kit when the next chance to shave came. For the trains that we really did entrain into sped off not south-westward for the Plain or France, but away and away up the ‘North Western,’ and it wasn’t until they disgorged us on Liverpool Docks that rumours could be swopped about ‘Sinn Fein gentry – broken bottles and shillelaghs.’

It was a baptism of fire all right, with flintlocks, shotguns, and elephant rifles, as well as more orthodox weapons. And 100 casualties in two days’ street fighting was a horrible loss to one battalion: the more so since my one friend from the ranks, commissioned same day, was shot through the head leading a rush on a fortified corner house; first day on active service, and it was my job to write and tell his mother, who thought him still safe in England.

A hateful task: so was another duty of one misty dawn soon after, when four young officers had to command four firing parties, and four rebel leaders stood in turn blindfold against a wall.

After that, more training – a repetition of the training so wearisome in England, till the Irish winter made even trench-digging impossible; but we could always have ‘Lecture by Company Officers on March Discipline.’

We did get to France at last, though; and into the trenches, too. The memory of that is mainly – mud. There was the ominous donning of ‘gum-boots, thigh’; the shell holes and slithery duckboards (dear old Johnson and his ‘following each other about in the dark’); the front line, where, by constant baling, liquid slime could just be kept from lipping over the dug-out door-sills. And there in that nightmare of mud and wire, by the deathly light of occasional star-shells from over the way, we learned the landmarks to guide us: ‘Left by the coil of wire, right by French legs.’ ‘French legs?’ ‘Yes, we took over from the French; the legs of one they buried in the side of the trench stick out a bit, you can’t miss it.’ It was rather startling, but didn’t seem to merit a second thought.

Sniping, shelling, and the Sisyphean labour of trench maintenance were endured until relief, and even that was nightmare, too. Climbing out of the river of sludge called ‘C.T.’ we trudged along the top, caring for nothing but those wicked ankle-high strands of wire across the track – oh! the concentrated loathing in that warning growl of ‘Woy-er’ from each man to his follower. And so we bundled on until the guide-poor lad, he’d only been up once before – confessed he’d lost his way, for the duckboard track we’d struck led up to the line again, to the sector on our right.

Despair? There was pale grey dawn behind us by the time compass bearings, verified by a periodic ‘ploomp ah’ from one of our own kindly howitzers, led to the double line of shattered tree stumps along the great straight Amiens road; and we held off utter exhaustion until dug-outs, black, boiling tea, and sleeping like logs, ended the first turn in the line.

Then suddenly, those trenches were abandoned: on we pushed for the Hindenburg Line. But though company after company was flung on a mass of wire with machine guns sweeping its face, the Hindenburg Line was proof against little local attacks like these; mortifying thought after hell let loose with rifle and machine gun, artillery and trench mortar, that the pandemonium whose only visible result was those corpses on the wire – men we had never known till a year ago and since then had known as brothers – was nothing but a demonstration to pin the enemy down, unworthy even of mention in the report of activity on the Western Front.