Chapter 20: Days & Nights of Strafe

Our brigadier was very popular because of his personal bravery. One morning I was showing him the remains of some Germans I had blown up, and in his eagerness he stuck his head and shoulders, red tabs and all, over the trenches, when-ping !-a sniper's bullet struck the bag within an inch of his head and covered him with dirt. ' Pompey ' roared with laughter and was in good humour for the rest of the day. On one occasion in Egypt this same General issued orders that no men were to wear caps. 

He said he didn't care where we got hats from, but that we were all old enough soldiers to obtain one somehow. He would punish any soldier who appeared on parade next day without a hat, and the only one whose head was minus a hat next morning was the brigadier himself ! He laughed and said that the man who pinched his hat had better not get caught, that's all.

My chief business as intelligence officer was to keep an eye on Fritz and find out what he was up to. I had a squad of trained observers who were posted in certain vantage-points called 0. Pips (0.P.=Observation Post). These 0. Pips were mostly on top of tall trees or the top of some old ruined farmhouse. From these ' pozzies' (positions) a good deal of the country behind the enemy lines could be seen, and the observers, who were given frequent reliefs so that they would not become stale, had their eyes glued to it through a telescope. Every single thing that happened was written down, including the velocity and direction of the wind; the information from all these and other sources being summarised by myself into a daily report for G.H.Q.

There was one 0. Pip on top of a crazy ruin that was used for many months without the Germans suspecting. It really hardly looked as if it would support the weight of a sparrow. I used to wonder oftentimes how I was going to get up there, and then by force of habit would find myself lying alongside the observer sheltering behind two or three bricks. From this pozzie one of my boys saw a German Staff car pass Crucifix Corner. 

This was a stretch of a hundred yards of road which we could plainly see where a crucifix was standing, though the church that once covered it had been entirely destroyed. The car was judged to contain some officers of very high rank, both from the style of the car and the colours of the uniforms. When I got this information I prepared to make that road unhealthy in case they should return. 

I called up our sniping battery, and got them to range a shell to be sure they would not miss. At five o'clock in the afternoon my waiting was rewarded, and just by the pressing of a button eight shells landed on that car, and sent its occupants 'down to the fatherland.' We received news about that time that one of the Kaiser's sons was killed, and though it was denied later, in my dreams I often fancy that he might have been in that car.

There was a landmark behind the German lines in this sector known as ' the hole in the wall.' It was marked on all our maps used by the artillery for ranging, and was the object on which we set our zero lines to get bearings of other objects. One day ' the hole in the wall ' disappeared, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Did the Germans destroy it or was it the rats that undermined its foundations ? 

I fancy it was like the celebrated ' One Horse Shay' - every brick in the wall that surrounded the hole had been wearing away for years, and at the stroke of Fate all crumbled into dust. We were able to do without our old friend, as Fritz very kindly built up in the churchyard at Fromelles a large red earthwork that could be seen for miles, and which our big guns sought unsuccessfully to destroy but made the entrance to it very unhealthy.

We had some crack sharpshooters or snipers in trees and also on top of ruins, but took care never to have them near our observation posts lest they should draw fire. I had one man who was a King's prize-winner, and he must have accounted for well over a hundred of the enemy, some of whom may have thought themselves quite secure when they exposed but a portion of their body eight hundred or a thousand yards from our trenches. 

Through the wasting of skilled men in unsuitable work which is prevalent in all our armies, this man was sent forward in a bayonet charge and killed. In his own job he was worth a battalion, but in a charge of no more value than any other man. The snipers and observers make effective use of camouflage, and have uniforms and rifle-covers to blend with their background ----spotted for work among trees with foliage, a la Mr. Leopard - striped when in long grass or crops like Stripes of the jungle. We have suits resembling the bark of a tree, and some earth-coloured for ploughed ground, also one made from sandbags for the top of the parapet.

I could fill a volume with the happenings during our many months in these trenches.

There were one or two occasions in which Fritz broke the unwritten law that there should be an armistice during meal-times. We soon cured him of this, however, as we systematically for a week put out his cook's fires with rifle-grenades. Thereafter both sides were able to have their meals in peace, though we took care to change our hour from one to two instead of twelve to one.

Fritz's system now and again got on our nerves. It was deadly monotonous, always knowing when his severest shelling would start, and I have known the boys run races with the shells, driven to take foolish risks by sheer ennui. We always expected some shells on 'V.C. House' at 4 p.m., and were rarely disappointed. The men off duty would assemble in front of the old house and at the sound of the first shell race for the shelter of a dugout about a hundred yards away. 

Generally they would all tumble in together and in their excitement could not decide who won the race, and so would have it all over again. The officers were ordered to stop these ' races with death ' for there were some killed, but they would break out now and again when the last man who was killed had been forgotten.

The bombing officer had a good deal of sport with his rifle-grenades, and as I was hand in glove with him I enjoyed some of his fun. A favourite place for the firing of our rifle-grenades was at Devon Avenue, for most of Fritz's retaliation came to the Tommies whose flank joined ours at this point. One day their major came along to us in a great rage, and wanted to know why we were always stirring up trouble - couldn't we let well enough alone ? He complained in the end to our brigadier, but the answer he got was : ' What are you there for ? What's your business ? '

We also had an armoured train that we were very proud of. At least that is what we called it, but it was only a little truck, with six rifles fastened on it for firing grenades. We ran this along rails down the trench, and would fire a salvo from one place and then move to another by the time Fritz had waked up and was replying with pine-apples and flying-fish,' as his rifle-grenades were dubbed.

One day I was ordered to locate the enemy's minenwerfer positions, as his 'minnies' were getting on our nerves. These huge shells, although they very seldom caused casualties, for they are very inaccurate, would nevertheless make the ground tremble for miles as they buried themselves sometimes fifty feet deep in the soft ground before they exploded. When these were about our boys would watch for them, as they could plainly be seen in the air. 

We would watch their ascent, sometimes partly through a cloud, and, as the shell wobbled a good deal, we could not be exactly sure where it was going to land until it was on the downward curve, then we would scatter like sheep, and as it would generally be two or three seconds before it went off, we had time to reach a safe distance. The real trouble was that no one could sleep when they were coming over, as each of them had all the force of an earthquake. I have picked up pieces of the shell two feet long by a foot wide, jagged like a piece of galvanised iron that had been cut off with an axe.

Well, I had to locate the position of these mine throwers, and the easiest way to do it was to make them fire and have observers at different points to get bearings on the exact position from 'which the shells were thrown. They were easy to see, as they were accompanied for the first fifty yards with showers of sparks like sky-rockets. But Fritz can be very obstinate on occasions, and all our teasing with rifle-grenades failed to make him retaliate with anything larger than pineapples ' (light trench-mortars). 

In desperation, I sent to the brigade bombing officer for some smoke and gas-bombs. Even these failed to rouse his anger sufficiently when - Eureka ! -we discovered some ' lachrymose ' or ' tear' bombs. These did the trick, and over came a 'rum-jar,' as the 'minnie' shells are generally called. I had eight batteries on the wire, and we gave that 'minnie' position a pretty warm time. By the same methods I located nine of these German trench-mortars on that front. Later on we captured one of them, and I was surprised to see what a primitive affair it was. It consisted of a huge pipe made of wooden staves bound round and round with wire. 

The charge is in a can like an oil-drum and dropped in the pipe, and then the shell dropped in on top of it. A fuse is attached, burning several seconds so as to allow the crew to get well out of the way, as their risk is as great as those they fire it at. When I had seen the gun, I was not surprised that rarely did they know within a hundred yards of where the shell was going to land, only expecting to get it somewhere behind our lines.

While I am talking of trench-mortars, I must tell you about the ' blind pig.' This was a huge shelf with which we frequently got on Fritz's nerves. When it was first used there was some doubt about its accuracy, and the infantry were cleared out of the trenches in its immediate front before it was fired. The first shot landed on our support trenches, the next in No Man's Land, and the third on Fritz's front line. 

Each time it seemed as if a double-powered Vesuvius were in eruption, and when the artillery got to know its pranks there was no need for us to get out from under. The aeroplanes reported that when the ' blind pigs' went over, some Fritzes could be seen running half an hour afterward. Fritz does not like anything new ; for example, they appealed to the-world against our brutality in using 'tanks.' Christmas Day, 1916, one of our aviators, with total disregard of the rules of war, dropped a football on which was painted, 'A Merry Xmas ' into a French town infested by Germans. As it struck the street and bounced up higher than roofs they could be seen scuttling like rats. maybe, to-day, that airman is haunted by the ghosts of those who died of heart-failure as a result of his fiendishness.

This airman is a well-known character among the troops in Flanders, known to all as ' the mad major.' His evening recreation consists in flying but a few hundred feet above the enemy's trenches,
and raking them with his machine-gun to show his absolute contempt for their marksmanship. I
have seen them in impotent fury fire at him every missile they had, including ' pine-apples' and minnies, ' ; but he bears a charmed life, for, though he returned and repeated his performance
four times for our benefit, he did not receive a scratch. I went over the German lines with him
for instruction in aerial observation. 

He said to me : ' Do you see that battery down there ? ' I replied ' No !' His next remark was, ' I'll take you down ' and he shot down about five hundred feet nearer. We were getting pasted by ' archies' much more than was pleasant, so when he next shut off his engine, to speak to me, I did not wait for his question, but assured him that I could see the German battery quite plainly. I hope the recording angel will take into account the extenuating circumstances of that lie.

We had a 'spring gun' or 'catapult' that came very near preventing this book ever being written. On one occasion we placed a bomb in the cup, but instead of taking the spring and lever out, which was the correct way, we tried a new experiment of holding the lever down with two nails which would release the spring as soon as it was let off. Unfortunately, the bomb rolled off at our feet, and we had four seconds to get to a safe distance. 

Some of us got bad bruises on our foreheads as we dived for an open dug-out as though we ourselves had-been thrown from a catapult. On another occasion we used Mills grenades with a grooved base plug. To our alarm, the first one exploded with a beautiful shrapnel effect just above our heads. I am sure a piece passed through my hair, but I could not wear a gold braid for a wound because, not even with a candle, could the doctor find a mark.

Our tunnellers were always mining, and we would see them by day and night disappearing into mysterious holes in the ground, and it was only when - Messines Ridge disappeared in fine dust that we understood that their groping in underground passages was not in vain. They would sometimes tell us exciting tales of fights in the dark with picks against enemy miners and now and again we would be roused by explosions when one side blew in on the other and formed a new crater in No Man's Land. 

With their instruments our miners discovered that the head of one of the enemy galleries was under the headquarters dug-out of the English regiment on our right. I went along to inform them. With excitement in my voice I said to the officer in charge Do you know that there is a mine under here ? Bai Jove, how jolly interesting 1 Come and have a drink.'  I said : ', Not in here, thank you.' ' Why ? It won't go% off to-day,' he said. 'Any wav, we are being relieved to-morrow, won't worry us, but we'll be sure and leave word for the other blighters.'

There was a dug-out in our own sector in which were heard mysterious tappings, but though we had an experienced miner sleep in it he reported that the sounds were not those of mining operations. Maybe it was the rats, but we gave that dug-out a wide berth, as some one suggested that it was haunted, and even in the trenches, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.

We managed to have a good deal of comfort in these trenches, all things considered. We even rigged up hot baths in our second line. The men were able every second day to have a hot bath, get clean underclothing, and have a red-hot iron passed over their uniforms, which was the only effective method I have known of keeping us reasonably free from body-vermin. These baths turned us out like new men, as the Australian craves his daily shower. I doubt if there are any troops in the world who take such pains for cleanliness. 

Wherever we camp we rig up our shower-baths as a first essential, and in some of the French villages the natives would gather round these Hessian enclosed booths staring at the bare legs showing beneath, and jabbering excitedly about the madness of these people who were so dirty that they needed a bath every day.

Although this sector of trench was during eight months known as 'a quiet front,' as no actual offensive took place, yet there was never a day or night free from peril, and all the time our strength in numbers, was being sapped-men left us ' going west,' or said good-bye as they went to hospital, and sometimes would disappear in No Man's Land-gone, none knew where. We received reinforcements that did not keep pace with our losses, and during all the time were never once tip to half strength. Always we were on the watch to worst our enemy, and he was by no means napping.

Gas was often used and sentries were posted with gas alarm-signals, not only in the trenches but in the streets of the villages behind the lines. If by night or day the whitish vapour was seen ascending from the trenches opposite, then such a hullabaloo of noises would pass along the trenches and through the streets of the towns as to make the spirits of the bravest quail, and woe betide even the little child who at that signal did not instantly cover his face with the hideous gas-mask. These noises were made chiefly with klaxon horns, though an empty shell-case struck by iron was found to give out a ringing sound that could plainly be heard above even the screech and crump of the shells.

Our gas-masks are quite efficient protection, and I have been a whole day under gas without injury, by keeping the cloth in my mask damp all the time. Men sometimes lose their lives through lack of confidence in their masks. The chemical causes an irritation of the mucous membrane, and they fancy they are being gassed, and in desperation tear them off. It is the duty of an officer to decide when the danger has passed and test the air. 

I remember on one occasion I warned some men who were opening their coats that the danger had not passed, but when I returned I found they had removed their masks and three of them were very severely gassed. We are always on the look-out for gas, and when the wind is dangerous a ' gas-alert' signal is given, when every man wears his mask in a ready position so that it can be donned without a second's delay.

I was really sorry to leave those trenches. So many months was I there that they were something like a home to me, and who knew what was awaiting one in another and an unknown section ? I knew every shell-hole in No Man's Land, and constant observation of the enemy methods enabled me to anticipate his moves. I felt that nowhere else would I be so successful. I even parted with a rat that I had tamed in my dug-out with a feeling of regret, though on all his kin I waged a bitter war, spending many hours when I ought to have been sleeping in shooting them with my automatic as they came into the light of the dug-out doorway. 

It was there, too, that I experimented with the enemy grenades, and I remember once nearly scaring an Australian nigger white. He was the only coloured man in our brigade, and was just passing in front of the dug-out as I threw a detonator on to the hard metal of an old road a few yards away. Evidently he was surprised at being bombed when he thought he was among friends ! He, however, received nothing worse than the fright.