With Haig on the Somme Part 5

CHAPTER IV

His First Time Under Fire

Over the edge leapt Hawke and his companion, and Hawke shortened his bayonet as he saw his idol's brother clutching the Saxon in tight embrace.

"Stand clear, sir!" he shouted, but the German's hands went up above his head, and in a quavering voice he cried, "Kamerad! Mercy, officer! I am married with two little ones, and this hateful war is not my fault!"

Harry Hawke's bayonet was only half its length from the man's ribs when Dennis put it aside.

"Strewth, Tiddler! I can't see no difference myself between one Boche and another," grumbled Hawke. "It's one more prisoner to feed, and Lloyd George talks about economy."

"I will tell you," said the Saxon, crouching down as half a dozen sh.e.l.ls in quick succession hummed overhead. "We were sent out to reconnoitre your trench. You pa.s.sed us just now, and we hid ourselves here. There is going to be an attack in a few minutes, only you gave the alarm a little sooner."

"Do you hear that, Dan?" said Dennis. "We must let them know somehow."

"Hum! If we'd nine lives apiece like a cat there might be some sense in risking eight of them," said the Australian corporal. "But it's no good stirring out of this hole just yet. Look at that!"

A perfect hurricane of sh.e.l.ls was going over now, and the air was filled with a succession of explosions.

"They're firing shrapnel!" shouted Tiddler in Dennis's ear. "You can tell by the white burst and the sound of the flying b.a.l.l.s, but we're safe enough in here for the present."

He dropped into a sitting position as he spoke, and instantly sprang up again with a yell.

"Are you hit?" said Dennis, feeling himself turn pale.

"No, I ain't hit, sir, but I'm 'urt. You don't do your jobs 'arf properly, 'Arry!" And he exhibited the piece of barbed wire on which, forgetting all about it, Tiddler had sat down heavily.

Hawke's uproarious laughter as he disengaged the offending thing sounded oddly to Dennis in the midst of that fearful din that shook the ground and brought the chalk rattling down into the hollow, but it was the first time he had been under fire, and he was yet to learn the absolute disregard of danger which the best and worst alike learn in the trenches.

"What's the strength of the attack?" said Dan Dunn to their prisoner, while the two privates went through the pockets of the men he had shot.

"Three battalions of us, and we were told the Brandenburgers were to be brought up in reserve," replied the Saxon. "Look! they are beginning now. That is a smoke sh.e.l.l that has just burst to cover our advance, and the other guns have ceased."

A dense white cloud rolled along the ground in front of the crump-hole, and Hawke and Tiddler instantly faced round, gripping their rifles as they looked up the jagged slope behind them.

"Don't say no this time, sir," said the c.o.c.kney private, "or there'll be a rare shermozzle darn 'ere if some of the blighters come on top of us in the dark."

"You can do as you like, Hawke," replied Dennis abstractedly. "But, I say, Dan, I can't stick this any longer. I wonder if our chaps would hear us if we shouted together?"

"Don't shout!" said the Saxon, pulling his sleeve. "See, they are going past now."

Looking up, Dennis made out a bunch of men against the smoke cloud pa.s.sing on either side of their hole, and his impulse was to scramble up out of it and empty his revolver into their midst.

"What's the northernmost limit of the attack just here?" he said to the Saxon, speaking in such excellent German that the man was obviously surprised.

"Ten yards this side of the machine-gun, Herr Officer, and they will keep well within it," he added. "They are Prussians on that gun, and they don't care who they kill as long as they hit somebody."

"Look here, Dan, you can stay where you are if you like," said Dennis.

"I'm off!"

"Wait a moment--don't be an a.s.s," expostulated his cousin. "What's your plan? I'm with you if there's an earthly chance of doing anything."

"It's this," replied Dennis, slipping his revolver back into its case.

"The top of our parapet is a couple of feet higher than that machine-gun emplacement. I noticed that yesterday. I'm going to crawl out under the line of their fire, and I'll bet you I'm back in our trench in ten minutes."

"It's risky," said his cousin. "But not as bad as Lone Pine. What about the prisoner?"

"If I am alive and we have not carried your trench," said the Saxon very earnestly, "I shall report myself to your people before daybreak."

"All right, that's a promise," said Dennis, and he climbed cautiously up to the lip of the hole and peeped over.

A wave of the enemy had just pa.s.sed on, swallowed up in the dense vapour of the smoke-bombs, and as the two cousins flung themselves on their faces they heard the Lee-Enfields opening from their own trench.

So long as the smoke lasted they were safe from detection, but the whole air seemed alive with singing bullets, and Dennis felt a jar all along his right side as one of our own shots carried off the heel of his boot.

"Keep your direction, for Heaven's sake!" he called over his shoulder.

"We've a hundred yards to go in a straight line," and then no one spoke, as the quartet wormed themselves on their stomachs as fast as they could crawl, parallel with the two trench lines which bordered that strip of No Man's Land.

Tiddler's bayonet was wrenched from the muzzle of his rifle, and a bullet chipped the brim of Hawke's steel helmet.

"Now look out for yourselves," called Dennis. "We're level with the gun," and, trying to squeeze themselves flatter, if such a performance had been humanly possible, they heard the rhythmical tac-tac abreast of them and the weird whistle of the deadly stream of bullets a few feet above their heads.

"That's better," said Dan Dunn when they had left it behind them. "Where shall we turn off, old chap?"

"Not yet," replied Dennis through his clenched teeth. "A bit farther, and then we shall have to face the music of our own men. That's why I'd rather have come on this job alone."

"Are you playing up for the V.C.?" he heard his cousin say, but he made no answer, and at the end of another couple of minutes he paused to take breath.

"Talk abart a bloomin' obstacle race--I got fust prize at Aldershot at the regimental sports--but this 'ere takes the cake," said Harry Hawke, as he and Tiddler overtook them.

"Hawke!" said Dennis sharply, "we're going to turn here and make for our own trench. Do you know any signal or any call that would prevent our platoon blazing at us?"

"Let's get a bit nearer fust," replied Harry Hawke. "Then I'll tip 'em a whistle. Wust of it is, the Boches are so bloomin' ikey--they 'aven't 'arf played us up before--but we'll try it on," and he said something to his companion.

Still on their faces, but swinging round at right angles now, the little party groped its perilous way towards their own sandbags, hearing the roar of the fight apparently limited in their direction by the spot on which the German machine-gun was working.

In front of them all was quiet.

The whole air trembled with the roar of firing, but perhaps the most trying thing to the nerves was the sudden transition from brilliant glare to black darkness in the momentary intervals between the extinguis.h.i.+ng of one star-sh.e.l.l and the bursting of the next. For an instant they would see the line of their trench standing out as clear as at noonday, with the glint of bayonets above the sandbags, and then it would be blotted out, to be lit up again the next moment.

When they had crawled to within fifty yards of it, Harry Hawke thrust two fingers into his gash of a mouth and let loose a piercing whistle.

"Now, Tiddler, pipe up!" he shouted, and their two voices rose in a discordant rendering of a popular trench song, their rifles waving wildly the while.