B00D2VJZ4G EBOK (25 page)

At 6 a.m., or perhaps a little later (for I remember the dawn coming shortly afterwards), we arrived in a sunken road near some old trenches, where we rested awhile. The rain increased, and after the sweating on the march, we were becoming clammy and cold.

Later in the morning we moved into an old trench, quite habitable, but within nice range for the enemy artillery. Still, he did not worry us overmuch. Our worst trouble was no water. There was a well down in the village on our right front, but not until dusk would we venture out. Rudge and I took several water bottles with us, as well as a couple of petrol tins. At the well we had to get on the end of a long queue of infantrymen. One of these wished to God he could get another ‘Blighty one,’ and he already wore three wound stripes!

The well was deep, and the windlass was not all that could be desired. A petrol tin served at the end of a wire rope – one of our canvas buckets would have served much better. Still, a couple of hours’ wait in France was neither here nor there.

Orders now came that we were to take over a part of the front line. Our headquarters were made in a sugar refinery by the side of the main Bapaume-Cambrai road, which was being pounded by heavy artillery fire. There was a putrid smell of dead horses and mules.

Leaving the road in sections at intervals, we entered a field where gas shells were dropping. (To the uninitiated they had a sound like ‘duds.’ I had learned my lesson earlier.) By keeping well to the right, we were quite safe, for a north-easterly breeze carried the gas away from us.

After reaching the line in safety, our men were deposited in pot-holes, there being no continuous trench. We appeared to be in a deep salient, for the enemy flares seemed to form a semicircle.

When our men had been posted, I returned to headquarters with Captain K. ‘Keep your eyes skinned,’ he said. ‘The Boche will be sure to have patrols out to-night.’

There was machine-gun fire and desultory rifle-fire. Dead men lay all round. Yet we managed to get back to the sugar refinery. ‘Get under your blanket for the night,’ said Captain K. I eagerly obeyed. In less than half an hour I was shaken by the shoulder. ‘Come on. Message for front line.’ I went along the road to a dug-out for orders. Letter for Lieutenant H. ‘Tell men to eat emergency ration. Use ammunition sparingly.’

I once more began a weary tramp to the line, with Bourlon Wood on my right front. I found Lieutenant H. and delivered my message. He gave me a drink from his flask and said, ‘I don’t suppose it will take you long to get back.’ ‘No, sir,’ I replied. ‘It ought not to take long.’ I retraced my steps, glad at the thought that I should now at long last be able to get some sleep. I had not had any worth speaking of for four days.

Trudging along with rifle slung over shoulder, I suddenly saw looming ahead of me five or six dim figures. Captain K.’s words flashed through my mind: ‘Keep your eyes skinned.’

A cold shudder chilled me to the bone. They were Germans!

Now, as I think of those moments, my heart beats harder. When faced with death, man’s mind instinctively escapes from the scene and dwells in other realms. For one brief moment I was home on leave from Cambrai. I saw my mother’s face. Then I was being stripped of rifle, bayonet, and ammunition. Soon I was in the German front-line trench. An officer was informed that a prisoner had been brought in. He came out from a covered-in shelf that was cut in the trench. In his hand he held what appeared to be a revolver, and was loading it. He was going to finish me? He fired. It was a Verey light pistol!

I was sent back with an escort, but not before being relieved of a precious packet of cigarettes.

The reserve trenches were well made, but the smell in the dug-out was horrid. The stink of flesh – sweating flesh of men who had not washed for weeks. Some snored on wire mattresses. Some sat up smoking. Others were killing lice.

I was taken, in fear and dread, to the officers’ quarters. At a rough table a typical German officer sat writing. For a few moments I awaited my fate. Suddenly the officer looked up and, to my amazement, flashed at me the greeting: ‘Good evening, Lloyd George.’ He smiled at my astonishment. I knew then. I was safe.

A close cross-examination followed. Finding this of little avail, he next examined my pay-book. But even this did not reveal a lot, except that I was acting as an infantryman.

Being sent farther back, I arrived with an escort – two youngsters about my own age – at divisional headquarters. I flopped down, dead beat, on a dug-out floor. The telephone operator would not let me sleep. He began eagerly to enlighten me as to his past. He had been a waiter in London for years, and he now greatly missed the English breakfasts – porridge, bacon and eggs, marmalade and rolls. ‘Yes, Tommy, English breakfasts good. Ach! this bloody war.’ Another escort arrived. I went on to Germany.

Private Chris Knight, joined 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers) September 3rd, 1914. Sent to 3rd Reserve Cavalry Regt. at Canterbury. After training, employed in remount depot. In 1915 sent to 2nd Reserve Cavalry Regt. at Aldershot. 1916, transferred to King’s Shropshire Light Infantry. Went to France. Passed through infantry training on Bull-Ring, but was transferred back to cavalry (2nd Dragoon Guards) as a specialist. Served on several parts of Western Front until taken prisoner at the Cambrai battle, November 1917. In Germany for thirteen months: Munster, Westphalia, Parchim, Mecklenberg, Springhirsch, Schleswig-Holstein. Returned home two months after Armistice
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We are marching up the line, 500 strong, trudging past the chalk mounds of the great mine crater at Trescault. Directly ahead the enemy gun flashes flare against the eastern night; our own guns answer without strength.

We pass a huge German howitzer, its heavy underframe incredibly twisted by a direct hit; beyond lies a derelict ambulance car. I am chiefly conscious of many feet squelching and splashing, of mud ruts and shell holes, the dark figures of the men in front, of wind-swept darkness and the quick red flashes of the German gun-fire. Shells drone over right and left and fall with heavy crashes, but they are well clear of our road.

We plough our dreary path onward at a steady pace. The water-laden petrol tin I am carrying pulls down my arm till the sinews ache. I change it frequently, but it drags like a lead weight. I wish fervently I could dump it.

We halt for a breather and squat on the low bank of this churned mud track. From the direction of the line we hear footsteps approaching – heavy labouring feet – and, as they splash slowly nearer, a man groaning at intervals marks their progress. The party of stretcher bearers looms level, shoulders bowed, we see four recumbent figures borne aloft, and against the flashes of the guns and the distant glow of the flares, I see a figure twisting and turning and the swaying, stumbling bearers striving to hold him still. We move on again. The road gradually slopes down between high banks. Here the darkness is acute; in the inky pit only the water and mud underfoot seem tangible, and we grope and slip and curse. Our eyes grow more accustomed to this denser gloom, the forward movement becomes faster, only to slow down in response to warning shouts from the front. ‘Keep to the left!’

The file closes in to the left bank, and I see that the centre of the road is blocked by a dark mass. A sickly reek pervades the air as we skirt a trail of wreckage, a couple of splintered limbers, the black rounded heaps that are dead mules, and some of the passing feet ring against a steel helmet half crushed in the mud. I am thankful for the merciful darkness.

Piles of stretchers, cheerful chinks of light, litters of discarded dressings trampled underfoot, and the sharp odour of iodine mark the advanced dressing station. Further on, a long stream of walking wounded splash by us, while the night resounds to the heavy crashes of the shells.

At last we move out of the ruts and soft mud on to the battered stony surface of a road that slopes easily upward. A dead pannier mule lies athwart our track; a few yards beyond a man is sprawled in the gutter, his head, a dark ball, lies two or three feet away.

Directly in front I see a trail of red sparks soar above the ridge, a radiant star appears, which sinks slowly out of sight and leaves in black silhouette the ragged sprawl of ruins on the crest. By the glow of the flares we avoid tripping over the stretcher with its officer occupant, a khaki handkerchief spread over his face held in position by his helmet, a grim note of refinement in contrast to the other forms we have passed. On through the flickering shadows of La Vacquerie, to plunge again into gloomy depths of a sunken road. It is deep with treacherous mud, water sodden; a foot-wide squelching track presses us to the left bank.

There is a block. We are crushed together in single file in pitch darkness. A man behind growls anxiously, ‘Get a move on in front.’

‘Shut up,’ is the retort. ‘A man is sunk in the mud here.’

‘Pull him out, or tread the blighter in then, but let’s get out of here.’

An officer is calling anxiously from the far bank, ‘Come along, men, don’t lose touch, for Heaven’s sake!’

The deeply bogged man is plucked out by two men heaving on an extended rifle. We escape from the foul pit and rush frantically over shell-churned ground to regain contact. A wide trench yawns darkly below our feet.

It is a deep trench, lately German – a trench in which the air is heavy with a peculiar odour, not only of earth or rotting sandbags, but a clinging sickly taint.

At irregular intervals in the deep shadow of the trench bottom lie the dead, some sitting with rigid legs sprawled out, some crouching into the trench wall, some huddled together in pairs. We step carefully, then, without warning, a series of fierce shrieks springs from the night, a mad tattoo of ringing crashes hammers about the trench top. The living crouch down with the dead, and showers of earth and stones rain upon us.

A handful of weary men start to edge by us, but another storm bursts along the parapet. Again we cower in dread companionship. Again and again the savage crashes drum viciously just above our heads.

One of the remnants of the company we have relieved mutters grimly, ‘You’ll have worse than that before morning, mates.’

Double sentries mount the fire-steps, and the night wears on to the constant hissing of the German flares, rising and falling, flooding the trench top with a cold white light. Occasionally a burst of machine-gun fire screams harshly along the parapet.

About four o’clock, stiff and weary, I rear up on the fire-step.

For some time the machine guns opposite have ceased fire, the flares have dwindled, until a heavy darkness broods over the sector, and I peer into a black void.

It is the cold lifeless hour before the dawn; the night presses solidly down. An uncanny quiet pervades the enemy trenches.

I hear footsteps in the trench below me, and the company officer’s voice: ‘Too quiet altogether, sergeant-major. Something brewing over there. Get the men roused out. ‘Stand to’ in twenty minutes, in any case.’

The men emerge from the shafts and corners, cold and cramped, and line along the trench, gradually sensing the mysterious stillness of the German front line.

Eastward a vague diffused greyness has appeared, spreading imperceptibly. My neighbour leans more comfortably on the parapet. ‘Roll on, daylight,’ he mutters. ‘It’s – What the hell’s that?’

Well along to our right a rifle cracks sharply, and immediately a couple of heavy crashes reverberate. Involuntarily I crouch. I hear a shout swiftly drowned in a roar of rifle-fire, the fierce stammer of a Lewis gun; above all the heavy crashing of bombs. The eastern sky is now a spread of dirty grey, in front the rusted tangle of wire is taking dim outline. We are crouching tensely, expecting to see a rush of grey figures loom up against the streaks of the pallid dawn.

On the right the rifle-fire swells into a furious roar, intermingled with prolonged Lewis-gun bursts, the deep crashes of ‘stick’ bombs, and the heavy ringing explosions of Mills grenades.

Suddenly the bomb explosions cease, though the rifles still crackle strongly. A short silence, another stinging spatter of fire that trails off into desultory cracks.

A minute or two later there comes the sound of footsteps stumbling down the trench, and a bloody-faced boy reels into view. ‘The aid post?’ he asks in a high hysterical voice. His forehead is gashed and blood is streaming into his eyes. Closely follows a stolid individual with a spreading stain on his shoulder, a wincing man whose hand drips a crimson trail. Others follow rapidly, and last an unconscious form sagging in a stretcher.

We waylay the returning stretcher bearers. They confirm our suspicion that the Germans occupy trenches to our flank, as well as in front. This trench is part of the Hindenburg system, and forms a small salient. The stretcher bearers are nervous. Saps and trenches, apparently heavily manned, hem in the right of our battalion.

In the early daylight the trench appears appallingly grim – high yellow walls, debris-littered floor, and everywhere, up and down, the dead lie in all postures, some squatting with heads resting on drawn-up knees, some face downwards, full length, a few stretched on the fire-step. I look at two men huddled below me, mud-encrusted, blood-soaked, brutally mutilated. My fear of shell-fire is acutely sharpened. The fire-step opposite bears another, sand-bag covered, but his tunic and leg are darkly saturated. His arm protrudes from the filthy covering and the muddy hand seems to clutch at passing men.

My comrade on the fire-step lights a cigarette and nods in the direction of the fallen. ‘Good job their wives or parents can’t see ’em, or ours see us, either.’

I escape from the presence of the dreadful dead; the stairs of the shafts are crowded with dozing men.

As the morning progresses the enemy activity increases; machine guns thrash the parapet, sudden whizz-bang storms lash the trench tops, so that we move in constant apprehension. Overhead heavy shells howl continuously, and quick blasts of gun-fire come from the east. The men are anxious; everything portends a storm.