From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade Part 12

We gazed sadly around, knowing it meant many nights of hard work to restore these, and mentally decided to join the artillery in the next war, as they alone had enjoyed the afternoon's work.

The German guns had certainly been kept busy, and it was some consolation to read in their report of the affair that "an attack using gas on a thirty-mile front had been repulsed with heavy losses to the enemy."

We had produced the desired effect.

Below La Ba.s.see the 46th Division had been equally successful and gained the Hohenzollern Redoubt, while on their right in the vicinity of Loos the 4th Corps were holding nearly twelve hundred yards of German front-line trench.

It had been a good day's work, but summer was now over and good weather could not be depended on, so no further offensive was made, though fighting of the most stubborn and desperate sort took place around the newly-gained ground, which was, however, successfully consolidated.

During the remainder of the month, except for the exploding of a mine and aerial activity, there was little that occurred on the Canadian front.

CHAPTER XX

MINE WARFARE

Among the other things we took over from the outgoing battalion when we first moved into this position was the care and continuance of a mine, and this mine was to form our chief worry as long as we held that line.

At first we were inclined to regard the mining officers--of which we had two--as a sort of nuisance like engineers, trench mortar men, and some others, who were always demanding men for carrying and working parties.

But we were not long in finding that they were, like ourselves, necessary evils, and they became welcome guests at our little mess when in the trench.

Whenever the trenches approach as close as they did at this point mine warfare becomes inevitable, and it is a game at which it is best to be first.

To defend a position against this method of attack one commences a counter-mine at a depth sufficient to take the gallery or tunnel underneath the enemy's one, which, once it is located, is blown in before they manage to get under the defenders' trench. The tunnel or gallery is barely large enough for a man to crawl along on his hands and knees, and must be boarded foot by foot as it progresses to prevent it from collapsing.

In this cramped position the sapper wields his pick, a peculiar affair not unlike a harpoon, and sc.r.a.pes the loosened earth back with a short grubber to another man who removes the earth in sandbags.

Progress under such circ.u.mstances must be slow, but it is made slower by the necessity of running galleries at right angles to the main tunnel from time to time in an effort to locate the enemy.

Here men are posted, while all work is for a time stopped, to listen for the first sounds of the enemy's sappers--the thud-thud of the picks or the "cough" of the man whose lungs seek this relief in the stuffy air of the cramped tunnel.

If the enemy is not found, progress is continued forward from both ends of the cross-gallery and the game goes merrily on.

About this stage the mining officer will, if you happen to be holding the trench under which he is grovelling, wax eloquent over a crumpled sheet of tracing linen that he presents to your view as a diagram of the workings. It looks like nothing so much as a drawing of the kith and kin of an old and prolific family; but you dare not tell him that, or he will be your enemy for life.

Instead you should say, "Ahem!" and "Oh, yes; how clever!"--then he will ask you for only ten instead of twelve men on the night's working party.

But once the enemy is located you begin to regard him more seriously, for on his skill depends the life of every man in the trench above, and a false change in direction may mean missing the enemy's tunnel altogether.

Sometimes, but not often, the mining is so quietly done that the first sign of the enemy is the sudden collapse of the wall of earth between the two galleries, leaving the rival workers face to face!

At other times, and this is a normal occurrence, the enemy are heard to one side or the other, and a small charge of powder is laid and his gallery is blown in, crus.h.i.+ng his workers to death, or perhaps merely burying them to perish miserably by suffocation.

To prevent this occurring men are kept in the ends of all the pa.s.sages listening for the tap-tap of the picks that spells danger!

If the picks are heard for a while and then stop, there are anxious moments, for it may mean that the enemy has located our workers and decided to blow first and wreck our galleries, or it may mean the explosive is already in place and ready for firing, or perhaps only a change in the direction of the enemy's tunnel.

The situation is not a pleasant one for either the men in the trench above or the sappers in the galleries below, and on the mining officer's decision much depends.

It was while we were breakfasting one morning that the corporal in charge of the underground sentries reported that the enemy could be heard working in No.--gallery.

This was the third time since taking over the mine that tapping had been reported, and both the preceding times had proved to be the result of overstrained imaginations. Captain H----, our skipper, had on both occasions descended to the bowels of the earth and listened patiently for half an hour, emerging again disgusted with things in general.

This time he motioned to the writer to accompany the corporal, and together we made our way to the mine, shedding our jackets and belts at the head of the shaft, and taking only our electric pocket lamps we crawled along the muddy galleries to No.--.

The noise had stopped, the listener whispered to us when we touched him gently on the leg, so we lay there all three listening for it to start again, the tick-ticking of our wrist-watches and the pulsing of our hearts sounding loud to our strained ears.

Three--five--seven minutes pa.s.sed by without a sound, and then suddenly there came a slight thud.

The man in front of me stiffened slightly like a well-trained setter and the corporal behind me pinched my leg in the height of his exultation.

The thud-thud continued (there was no mistaking it now), then a pause--and a voice, distinctly guttural, was heard, and a sound, easily distinguishable from the m.u.f.fled reports of the rifles some thirty feet overhead--the sc.r.a.ping of a shovel on the wooden floor of a gallery not more than eight feet away!

Pa.s.sing the sentry a revolver and torch, we blew out his candle and crept away as noiselessly as we had come.

On reaching the head of the shaft we met the mining officer, who crawled down and returned to confirm our judgment.

Then followed some mysterious telephoning to the "higher authority"

while a charge was hastily laid, and permission was at last secured to "blow" the mine.

No time was lost, and in half an hour all was ready, the mining officer returning from his final inspection with the news that the enemy was still digging blissfully away.

Remembering the mine at Givenchy, we cleared the trench in the danger zone and had this party "stand by to repel boarders" and, if necessary, man the crater.

At 2.30 the mine was fired.

A fountain of earth roared upwards from "No Man's Land," and, armed to the teeth with bombs, we rushed forward, losing a couple of men on the way who had been struck by the falling _debris_, and manned our trench while machine-guns raked the enemy's parapets.

However, he showed no inclination to man the crater--a yawning pit some forty feet in width half-way over to his trench--and contented himself with throwing a few bombs into it and covering it with machine-gun fire. In spite of which Begbie Lyte, having now risen to the dizzy height of senior subaltern in the company, took out a small party and filled it with barbed wire.

The affair was only briefly mentioned in the _communiques_: "On the 22nd a mine was exploded under a German gallery on our front. An enemy mining party is believed to have been blown up."

The mining officer was greatly pleased, however, as only some few yards of his own gallery had suffered.

CHAPTER XXI

MYTHS, FAIRIES, ETC.

In every position you take over there are a certain number of myths which when you go out you carefully repeat to the incoming battalion; and the tale seldom loses in the telling. These are handed down to posterity in naming new field-works; hence the frequency of "Suicide Alley," "Sniper's Cross-roads," "Dead Man's Corner," &c, &c.

Some of these myths are worth repeating--all are worth noting, for they are in most cases founded on possibilities.