Letters from France Part 4

So the observer sent it back to his officer, and his officer sent it back to the brigade, and the brigade sent it on to the division. The division was a little sceptical. "That crowd is always making these wild discoveries," grunted the divisional Intelligence Officer, but he thought it worth while pa.s.sing it on to the Army Corps, who in their turn sent it to the Army; and so, in due course, it arrived in those awe-inspiring circles where lives the great German military brain.

"So that is where they have turned up," said a very big man with spectacles--a big man in more ways than one. And a note went down in red ink in a particular page of a huge index, to appear duly printed in the next edition of that portentous volume. Only, after the note, there was a query.

Far away at the front, Fritz told his mates over their evening coffee that the new regiment whose heads they had been noticing over the parapet opposite were Australians.

"Black swine dogs, one of them nearly had me as I was bringing the mail-bags," snorted a weedy youth scarcely out of his teens, looking over the top of his coffee pot. "I always said that was a dangerous gap where the communication trench crosses the ditch."

"You babies should keep your stupid heads down like your elders,"

retorted a grizzled reservist as he stuffed tobacco into the green china bowl of a real German pipe.

The talk gradually went along the front line for about the distance of one company's front on either side, that there had been a relief in the British trenches, and that there were Australians over there. One man had heard the sergeant saying so in the next bay of the trench; it meant exactly as much to them as it would to Australian troops to hear the corps opposite them was Bavarian or Saxon or Hanoverian. They knew the English and the French possessed some of these colonial corps. They had been opposite the Algerians in the Champagne before they came to this part of the line.

"They are ugly swine to meet in the dark," they thought. "These white and black colonial regiments."

Fritz lives very much in his dug-out--is very good at keeping his head below the parapet--and he thought very little more about it. His head was much fuller of the arrival of the weekly parcel of b.u.t.ter and cake from his hardworking wife at home, and of the coming days when his battalion would go out of the trenches into billets in the villages, when he might get a pa.s.s to go to a picture theatre in Lille--he had kept the old pa.s.s because a slight tear of the corner or a snick opposite the date would make it good for use on half a dozen occasions yet. He did not bother his head about what British division was holding the trenches opposite to him.

But that divisional Intelligence Officer did--he worried very much. He wanted to get a certain query removed from an index as soon as possible.

It is always best to get information for nothing. A good way to do this is to make the enemy talk; and you may be able to make him talk back if you send over a particular sort of talk to him. So a message was thrown over into our lines, "Take care"; and "You offal dogs must bleed for France."

This effort did not fetch any incriminating reply; and so, on a later night, a lantern was flashed over the parapet, "Australian, go home," it winked. "Go in the morning--you will be dead in the evening; we are good."

Later again appeared a notice-board, "Advance Australia fair--if you can."

Indeed, Fritz became quite talkative, and put up a notice-board, "English defeat at sea--seven cruisers sunk, one damaged, eleven other craft sunk. Hip! Hip! Hurrah!"

This did draw at last some of the men in the front line, and they slipped over the parapet a placard giving a British account of the losses in the North Sea fight. The putting up of notices is an irregular proceeding, and this placard had to be withdrawn at once, even before the Germans could properly read it. The result was an immediate message posted on the German trenches, "Once more would you let us see the message?" Still there was no sign from our trenches. So another plaintive request appeared on the German parapet, "We beg of you to show again the table of the fleet."

But they were Saxons. Clearly they did not believe all that their Prussian brother told them about his naval victory. Another day they hoisted a surrept.i.tious request, "Shoot high--peace will be declared June 15." They evidently had their gossip in the German trenches just as we have it in ours--and as we had it in Sydney and Melbourne--absurd rumours which run all round the line for a week, and which no amount of experience prevents some people from believing.

"After all, these 'furphies' make life worth living in the trenches," as one of our men said to me the other day. All the Germans, in a certain part of the line opposite, now firmly believe that the war is going to end on August 17th.

But this is merely the gossip of the German trenches telegraphed across No Man's Land. I do not know how far the divisional Staff Officer satisfied himself as the result of all his messages, but he did not satisfy the gentleman with the big index.

"There is one way to find out who is there," the Big Man said, "and that is always the same--to go there and bring some of them back."

And so twice in the next three weeks the German artillery fired about 30,000 worth of sh.e.l.ls, and a party of picked men stole across the open, and in spite of a certain loss on one occasion they took back a few prisoners. And the query went out of the index.

It would be quite easy to present to the German for a penny the facts which it cost him 60,000 and good men's lives to obtain. When you know this, you can understand why the casualties reported in the papers do not any longer state the units of the men who have suffered them.

CHAPTER XI

THE GREAT BATTLE BEGINS

_France, July 1st._

Below me, in the dimple beyond the hill on which I sit, is a small French town. Straight behind the town is the morning sun, only an hour risen. Between the sun and the town, and, therefore, only just to be made out through the haze of sunlight on the mists, are two lines--a nearer and a farther--of gently sloping hill-tops. On those hills is being fought one of the greatest battles in history. It is British troops who are fighting it, and French. The Canadians are in their lines in the salient. The Australians and New Zealanders--it has now been officially stated--are at Armentieres.

A few minutes ago, at half-past six by summer-time, the British bombardment, which has continued heavily for six days, suddenly came in with a crash, as an orchestra might enter on its grand finale. Last night, some of us who were out here watched the British sh.e.l.ls playing up and down the distant skyline, running over it from end to end as a player might run the fingers of one hand lightly over the piano keys.

There were three or four flashes every second, here or there in that horizon; night and day for six days that had continued. Within the last few minutes, starting with two or three big heart bangs from a battery near us, the noise suddenly expanded into a constant detonation. It was exactly as though the player began, on an instant, to use all the keys at once.

We now ought to be able to see, from where we sit with our telescopes, the bursts of our sh.e.l.ls on those distant ridges. But I cannot swear that I see a single one. The sound of the bombarding is like the sound of some t.i.tanic iron tank which a giant has set rolling rapidly down an endless hill. We can hear the soft whine of scores of sh.e.l.ls hurrying all together through the air. Every five minutes or so a certain howitzer, tucked into some hiding-place, vents its periodical growl, and we can hear the huge projectile climbing slowly, up his steep gradient with a hiss like that of water from a fire-hose. There is some other heavy sh.e.l.l which pa.s.ses us also, somewhere in the middle of his flight.

We cannot distinguish the report of the gun, and we do not hear the sh.e.l.l burst; but at regular intervals we can quite distinctly hear the monster making his way leisurely across our front.

We can distinguish in the uproar the occasional distant crash of a heavy sh.e.l.l-burst. But not one burst can I see. The sun upon the mist makes the distant hill crests just a vague blue screen against the sky.

There is one point on those hills where the two lines of trenches ought to be clearly visible to us. With a good gla.s.s on a clear day you should be able to distinguish anything as big as a man at that distance--much more a line of men. Within less than an hour, at half-past seven, the infantry will leave our trenches over twenty miles of front and launch a great attack. The country town below us is Albert--behind the centre of the British attack. One can see the tall, battered church tower rising against the mist, with the gilt figure of the Virgin hanging at right angles from the top like the arm of a bracket. On the hills beyond can just be made out the woods of Fricourt behind the German line. They are in the background behind Albert church tower. The white ruins of Fricourt may be the blur in the background south of them. We shall be attacking Fricourt to-day.

The Germans have not a single "sausage" in the air that I can see. The sausage is the very descriptive name for the observation balloon. We have twenty-one of them up, specking the sky as clearly as a bacteriologist's slide is specked with microbes.

The Germans used to have a whole fleet of them looking down over us. But a week ago our aeroplanes bombed all along the line, and eight of them, more or less, went down in flames within a single afternoon.

7.10 a.m.--Six of our aeroplanes are flying over, very high, in a wedge-shaped flight like that of birds. Single British aeroplanes have been coming and going since the bombardment started. I have not seen any German plane. The distant landscape is becoming fainter. The flashes of our guns can be seen at intervals all over the slopes immediately below us, and their blast is clearly shown by the film of smoke and dust which hurries into the air. The haze makes a complete screen between us and the battle.

7.15 a.m.--Our fire has become noticeably hotter. Some of us thought it had relaxed slightly after the first ten minutes. I doubt if it really did--probably we were growing accustomed to the sound. There is no doubt about its increase now. We can hear the _crump_, _crump, crump_ of heavy explosives almost incessantly. I fancy our heavy trench mortars must have joined in.

7.20 a.m.--Another sound has suddenly joined in the uproar. It is the rapid detonation of our lighter trench mortars.[1] I have never heard anything like this before--the detonation of these crowds of mortars is as rapid as if it were the rattle of musketry. Indeed, if it were not for the heavy detonation one would put it down for rifle fire. Only eight minutes now, and the infantry goes over the parapet along the whole line.

[1] Note.--What I took for the sound of trench mortars was almost certainly that of the British field guns. These heavy Somme bombardments were then a novelty, and the idea that field guns could be firing like musketry did not enter one's head. What I took for the sound of heavy trench mortars was also, certainly, that of German sh.e.l.ls.

7.27 a.m.--The heaviness of the bombardment has slightly decreased. A large number of guns must be altering range on to the German back lines in order to allow our infantry to make their attack. The hills are gradually becoming clearer as the sun gets higher, but the haze will be far too thick for us to see them go over.

7.29 a.m.--One minute to go. I have not seen a single German sh.e.l.l burst yet. They may be firing on our trenches; they are not on our batteries.

7.32 a.m.--Ever so distant, but quite distinctly, under the thunder of the bombardment I can hear the sound of far-off rifle firing.

So they are into it--and there are Germans still left in those trenches.

7.35 a.m.--Through the bombardment I can hear the chatter of a machine-gun. And there is a new thunder added, quite distinguishable from the previous sounds. It is only the last minute or so that one has noticed it--a low, ceaseless pulsation.

It is the drumming of the German artillery upon our charging infantry.

Behind that blue screen they must be in the thick of it. G.o.d be with our men!

CHAPTER XII

THE BRITISH--FRICOURT AND LA BOISELLE

_France, July 3rd._

Yesterday three of us walked out from near the town of Albert to a hill-side within a few hundred yards of Fricourt. And there all day, lying amongst the poppies and cornflowers, we watched the fight of the hour--the struggle around Fricourt Wood and the attack on the village of La Boiselle.