Action Front Part 17

Twice the signaler got a message, the second one being from the forward side of the old neutral ground in what had been the German front line trench; the report said also that fairly heavy fire was being maintained on the open ground. After that there was silence.

When the signaler had time to look about him, to light a cigarette and to listen to the uproar of battle that filtered down the cellar steps and through the closed door, he spoke to the sergeant about the noise, and the sergeant agreed with him that it was getting louder, which meant either that the fight was getting hotter or coming closer. The answer to their doubts came swiftly to their hands in the shape of a note from the O.C., with a message borne by the orderly that it was to be sent through anyhow or somehow, but at once.

Now the O.C., be it noted, had already had a report that the telephone wire was cut; but he still scribbled his note, sent his message, and thereafter put the matter out of his mind. He did not know how or in what fas.h.i.+on the message would be sent; but he did know the Signaling Company, and that was sufficient for him.

In this he was doing nothing out of the usual. There are many commanders who do the same thing, and this, if you read it aright, is a compliment to the signaling companies beyond all the praise of General Orders or the sweet flattery of the G.O.C. despatch--the men who sent the messages put them out of their mind as soon as they were written and handed to an orderly with a curt order, "Signaling company to send that."

You at home who slip a letter into the pillar box, consider it, allowing due time for its journey, as good as delivered at the other end; by so doing you pay an unconscious compliment to all manners and grades of men, from high salaried managers down to humble porters and postmen. But the somewhat similar compliment that is paid by the men who send messages across the battlefield is paid in the bulk to one little select circle; to the animal brawn and blood, the spiritual courage and devotion, the bodies and brains, the pluck and perseverance, the endurance, the grit and the determination of the signaling companies.

When the sergeant took his message and glanced through it, he pursed his lips in a low whistle and asked the signaler to copy while he went and roused three messengers. His quick glance through the note had told him, even without the O.C.'s message, that it was to the last degree urgent that the message should go back and be delivered at once and without fail; therefore he sent three messengers, simply because three men trebled the chances of the message getting through without delay.

If one man dropped, there were two to go on; if two fell, the third would still carry on; if he fell--well, after that the matter was beyond the sergeant's handling; he must leave it to the messenger to find another man or means to carry on the message.

The telephonist had scribbled a copy of the note to keep by him in case the wire was mended and the message could be sent through after the messengers started and before they reached the other end. The three received their instructions, drew their wet coats about their s.h.i.+vering shoulders, relieved their feelings in a few growled sentences about the dog's life a man led in that company, and departed into the wet night.

The sergeant came back, re-read the message and discussed it with the signaler. It said: "Heavy attack is developing and being pressed strongly on our center a-a-a.[Footnote: Three a's indicate a full stop.] Our losses have been heavy and line is considerably weakened a-a-a. Will hold on here to the last but urgently request that strong reinforcements be sent up if the line is to be maintained a-a-a.

Additional artillery support would be useful a-a-a."

"Sounds healthy, don't it?" said the sergeant reflectively. The signaler nodded gloomily and listened apprehensively to the growing sounds of battle. Now that his mind was free from first thoughts of telephonic worries, he had time to consider outside matters. For nearly ten minutes the two men listened, and talked in short sentences, and listened again. The rattle of rifle fire was sustained and unbroken, and punctuated liberally at short intervals by the boom of exploding grenades and bombs. Decidedly the whole action was heavier--or coming back closer to them.

The sergeant was moving across the door to open it and listen when a sh.e.l.l struck the house above them. The building shook violently, down to the very flags of the stone floor; from overhead, after the first crash, there came a rumble of falling masonry, the splintering cracks of breaking wood-work, the clatter and rattle of cascading bricks and tiles. A shower of plaster grit fell from the cellar roof and settled thick upon the papers littered over the table. The sergeant halted abruptly with his hand on the cellar door, three or four of the sleepers stirred restlessly, one woke for a minute sufficiently to grumble curses and ask "what the blank was that"; the rest slept on serene and undisturbed. The sergeant stood there until the last sounds of falling rubbish had ceased. "A sh.e.l.l," he said, and drew a deep breath. "Plunk into upstairs somewhere."

The signaler made no answer. He was quite busy at the moment rearranging his disturbed papers and blowing the dust and grit off them.

A telephonist at another table commenced to take and write down a message. It came from the forward trench on the left, and merely said briefly that the attack on the center was spreading to them and that they were holding it with some difficulty. The message was sent up to the O.C. "Whoever the O.C. may be," as the sergeant said softly. "If the Colonel was upstairs when that sh.e.l.l hit, there's another O.C. now, most like." But the Colonel had escaped that sh.e.l.l and sent a message back to the left trench to hang on, and that he had asked for reenforcements.

"He did ask," said the sergeant grimly, "but when he's going to get 'em is a different pair o' shoes. It'll take those messengers most of an hour to get there, even if they dodge all the lead on the way."

As the minutes pa.s.sed, it became more and more plain that the need for reenforcements was growing more and more urgent. The sergeant was standing now at the open door of the cellar, and the noise of the conflict swept down and clamored and beat about them.

"Think I'll just slip up and have a look round," said the sergeant. "I shan't be long."

When he had gone, the signaler rose and closed the door; it was cold enough, as he very sensibly argued, and his being able to hear the fighting better would do nothing to affect its issue. Just after came another call on his instrument, and the repair party told him they had crossed the neutral ground, had one man wounded in the arm, that he was going on with them, and they were still following up the wire. The message ceased, and the telephonist, leaning his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands, was almost asleep before he realized it. He wakened with a jerk, lit another cigarette, and stamped up and down the room trying to warm his numbed feet.

First one orderly and then another brought in messages to be sent to the other trenches, and the signaler held them a minute and gathered some more particulars as to how the fight was progressing up there. The particulars were not encouraging. We must have lost a lot of men, since the whole place was clotted up with casualties that kept coming in quicker than the stretcher-bearers could move them. The rifle-fire was hot, the bombing was still hotter, and the sh.e.l.ling was perhaps the hottest and most horrible of all. Of the last the signaler hardly required an account; the growling thumps of heavy sh.e.l.ls exploding, kept sending little s.h.i.+vers down the cellar walls, the s.h.i.+ver being, oddly enough, more emphatic when the wail of the falling sh.e.l.l ended in a m.u.f.fled thump that proclaimed the missile "blind" or "a dud." Another hurried messenger plunged down the steps with a note written by the adjutant to say the colonel was severely wounded and had sent for the second in command to take over. Ten more dragging minutes pa.s.sed, and now the separate little s.h.i.+vers and thrills that shook the cellar walls had merged and run together. The rolling crash of the falling sh.e.l.ls and the bursting of bombs came close and fast one upon another, and at intervals the terrific detonation of an aerial torpedo dwarfed for the moment all the other sounds.

By now the noise was so great that even the sleepers began to stir, and one or two of them to wake. One sat up and asked the telephonist, sitting idle over his instrument, what was happening. He was told briefly, and told also that the line was "disc." He expressed considerable annoyance at this, grumbling that he knew what it meant--more trips in the mud and under fire to take the messages the wire should have carried.

"Do you think there's any chance of them pus.h.i.+ng in the line and rus.h.i.+ng this house?" he asked. The telephonist didn't know. "Well,"

said the man and lay down again. "It's none o' my dashed business if they do anyway. I only hope we're tipped the wink in time to shunt out o' here; I've no particular fancy for sitting in a cellar with the Boche c.o.c.k-shying their bombs down the steps at me." Then he shut his eyes and went to sleep again.

The morsed key signal for his own company buzzed rapidly on the signaler's telephone and he caught the voice of the corporal who had taken out the repair party. They had found the break, the corporal said, and were mending it. He should be through--he was through--could he hear the other end? The signaler could hear the other end calling him and he promptly tapped off the answering signal and spoke into his instrument. He could hear the morse signals on the buzzer plain enough, but the voice was faint and indistinct. The signaler caught the corporal before he withdrew his tap-in and implored him to search along and find the leakage.

"It's bad enough," he said, "to get all these messages through by voice. I haven't a dog's chance of doing it if I have to buzz each one."

The rear station spoke again and informed him that he had several urgent messages waiting. The forward signaler replied that he also had several messages, and one in particular was urgent above all others.

"The blanky line is being pushed in," he said. "No, it isn't pushed in yet--I didn't say it--I said being pushed in--being--being, looks like it will be pushed in--got that? The O.C. has' stopped one' and the second has taken command. This message I want you to take is shrieking for reenforcements--what? I can't hear--no I didn't say anything about horses--I did _not_. Reenforcements I said; anyhow, take this message and get it through quick."

He was interrupted by another terrific crash, a fresh and louder outburst of the din outside; running footsteps clattered and leaped down the stairs, the door flung open and the sergeant rushed in slamming the door violently behind him. He ran straight across to the rec.u.mbent figures and began violently to shake and kick them into wakefulness.

"Up with ye!" he said, "every man. If you don't wake quick now, you'll maybe not have the chance to wake at all."

The men rolled over and sat and stood up blinking stupidly at him and listening in amazement to the noise outside.

"Rouse yourselves," he cried. "Get a move on. The Germans are almost on top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' help block up the door."

Through the din that followed, the telephonist fought to get his message through; he had to give up an attempt to speak it while a hatchet, a crowbar, and a pickaxe were noisily at work breaking out a fresh exit from the back of the cellar, and even after that work had been completed, it was difficult to make himself heard. He completed the urgent message for reenforcements at last, listened to some confused and confusing comments upon it, and then made ready to take some messages from the other end.

"You'll have to shout," he said, "no, shout--speak loud, because I can't 'ardly 'ear myself think--no, 'ear myself think. Oh, all sorts, but the sh.e.l.ling is the worst, and one o' them beastly airyale torpedoes. All right, go ahead."

The earpiece receiver strapped tightly over one ear, left his right hand free to use a pencil, and as he took the spoken message word by word, he wrote it on the pad of message forms under his hand. Under the circ.u.mstances it is hardly surprising that the message took a good deal longer than a normal time to send through, and while he was taking it, the signaler's mind was altogether too occupied to pay any attention to the progress of events above and around him. But now the sergeant came back and warned him that he had better get his things ready and put together as far as he could, in case they had to make a quick and sudden move.

"The game's up, I'm afraid," he said gloomily, and took a note that was brought down by another orderly. "I thought so," he commented, as he read it hastily and pa.s.sed it to the other signaler. "It's a message warning the right and left flanks that we can't hold the center any longer, and that they are to commence falling back to conform to our retirement at 3.20 _ac emma_, which is ten minutes from now."

Over their heads the signalers could hear tramping scurrying feet, the hammering out of loopholes, the dragging thump and flinging down of obstacles piled up as an additional defense to the rickety walls. Then there were more hurrying footsteps, and presently the jarring _rap-rap-rap_ of a machine gun immediately over their heads.

"That's done it!" said the sergeant. "We've got no orders to move, but I'm going to chance it and establish an alternative signaling station in one of the trenches somewhere behind here. This cellar roof is too thin to stop an ordinary Fizzbang, much less a good solid Crump, and that machine gun upstairs is a certain invitation to sudden death and the German gunners to down and out us."

He moved towards the new opening that had been made in the wall of the cellar, scrambled up it and disappeared. All the signalers lifted their attention from their instruments at the same moment and sat listening to the fresh note that ran through the renewed and louder clamor and racket. The signaler who was in touch with the rear station called them and began to tell them what was happening.

"We're about all in, I b'lieve," he said. "Five minutes ago we pa.s.sed word to the flanks to fall back in ten minutes. What? Yes, it's thick.

I don't know how many men we've lost hanging on, and I suppose we'll lose as many again taking back the trench we're to give up. What's that? No. I don't see how reenforcements could be here yet. How long ago you say you pa.s.sed orders for them to move up? An hour ago! That's wrong, because the messengers can't have been back--telephone message?

That's a lot less than an hour ago. I sent it myself no more than half an hour since. Oo-oo! did you get that b.u.mp? Dunno, couple o' big sh.e.l.ls or something dropped just outside. I can 'ardly 'ear you.

There's a most almighty row going on all round. They must be charging, I think, or our front line's fallen back, because the rifles is going nineteen to the dozen, a-a-ah! They're getting stronger too, and it sounds like a lot more bombs going; hold on, there's that blighting maxim again."

He stopped speaking while upstairs the maxim clattered off belt after belt of cartridges. The other signalers were shuffling their feet anxiously and looking about them.

"Are we going to stick it here?" said one. "Didn't the sergeant say something about 'opping it?"

"If he did," said the other, "he hasn't given any orders that I've heard. I suppose he'll come back and do that, and we've just got to carry on till then."

The men had to shout now to make themselves heard to each other above the constant clatter of the maxim and the roar of rifle fire. By now they could hear, too, shouts and cries and the trampling rush of many footsteps. The signaler spoke into his instrument again.

"I think the line's fallen back," he said. "I can hear a heap o' men running about there outside, and now I suppose us here is about due to get it in the neck."

There was a scuffle, a rush, and a plunge, and the sergeant shot down through the rear opening and out into the cellar.

"The flank trenches!" he shouted. "Quick! Get on to them--right and left flank--tell them they're to stand fast. Quick, now, give them that first. Stand fast; do not retire."

The signalers leaped to their instruments, buzzed off the call, and getting through, rattled their messages off.

"Ask them," said the sergeant anxiously. "Had they commenced to retire." He breathed a sigh of relief when the answers came. "No," that the message had just stopped them in time.

"Then," he said, "you can go ahead now and tell them the order to retire is cancelled, that the reenforcements have arrived, that they're up in our forward line, and we can hold it good--oh!"

He paused and wiped his wet forehead; "you," he said, turning to the other signaler, "tell them behind there the same thing."

"How in thunder did they manage it, sergeant?" said the perplexed signaler. "They haven't had time since they got my message through."