All in It : K(1) Carries On Part 21

"Twenty," replied c.o.c.kerell. He was too tired to feel as ashamed as he usually did at having to confess to the tenderness of his years.

The Major nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes," he said; "I judged that would be about the figure. My son would have been twenty this month, only--he was at Neuve Chapelle. He was very like you in appearance--very. His mother would have been interested to meet you. You might as well take a nap for half an hour.

I have two more calls to make, and we shan't get home till nearly seven. Lean on me, old man. I'll see you don't tumble overboard ..."

So Lieutenant c.o.c.kerell, conqueror of the Kidney Bean, fell asleep, his head resting, with scandalous disregard for military etiquette, upon the shoulder of the stout Major.

V

An hour or two later, Number Nine Platoon, distended with concentrated nourishment and painfully straightening its cramped limbs, decanted itself from the lorry into a little _cul-de-sac_ opening off the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau in St. Gregoire. The name of the _cul-de-sac_ was the Rue Gambetta.

Their commander, awake and greatly refreshed, looked round him and realised, with a sudden sense of uneasiness, that he was in familiar surroundings. The lorry had stopped at the door of Number Five.

"I don't suppose your Battalion will get back for some time," said the Major. "Tell your Sergeant to put your men into the stable behind this house--there's plenty of straw there--and--"

"Their own billet is just round the corner, sir," replied c.o.c.kerell.

"They might as well go there, thank you."

"Very good. But come in with me yourself, and doss here for a few hours. You can report to your C.O. later in the day, when he arrives.

This is my _pied-a-terre_,"--rapping on the door. "You won't find many billets like it. As you see, it stands in this little backwater, and is not included in any of the regular billeting areas of the town. The Town Major has allotted it to me permanently. Pretty decent of him, wasn't it? And Madame Vinot is a dear. Here she is! _Bonjour, Madame Vinot! Avez-vous un feu_--er--_inflamme pour moi dans la chambre_?"

Evidently the Major's French was on a par with c.o.c.kerell's.

But Madame understood him, bless her!

"_Mais oui, M'sieur le Colonel_!" she exclaimed cheerfully--the rank of Major is not recognised by the French civilian population--and threw open the door of the sitting-room, with a glance of compa.s.sion upon the Major's mud-splashed companion, whom she failed to recognise.

A bright fire was burning in the open stove.

Immediately above, pinned to the mantelpiece and fluttering in the draught, hung c.o.c.kerell's manifesto upon the subject of non-combatants. He could recognise his own handwriting across the room. The Major saw it too.

"Hallo, what's that hanging up, I wonder?" he exclaimed. "A memorandum for me, I expect; probably from my old friend 'Dados.'[1] Let us get a little more light."

[Footnote 1: D.A.D.O.S. Deputy a.s.sistant Director of Ordnance Stores.]

He crossed to the window and drew up the blind. c.o.c.kerell moved too.

When the Major turned round, his guest was standing by the stove, his face scarlet through its grime.

"I'm awfully sorry, sir," said c.o.c.kerell, "but that notice--memorandum--of yours has dropped into the fire."

"If it came from Dados," replied the Major, "thank you very much!"

"I can't tell you, sir," added c.o.c.kerell humbly, "what a fool I feel."

But the apology referred to an entirely different matter.

IX

TUNING UP

I

It is just one year to-day since we "came oot." A year plays havoc with the "establishment" of a battalion in these days of civilised warfare. Of the original band of stout-hearted but inexperienced Crusaders who crossed the Channel in the van of The First Hundred Thousand, in May, 1915,--a regiment close on a thousand strong, with twenty-eight officers,--barely two hundred remain, and most of these are Headquarters or Transport men. Of officers there are five--Colonel Kemp, Major Wagstaffe, Master c.o.c.kerell, Bobby Little, and Mr.

Waddell, who, by the way, is now Captain Waddell, having succeeded to the command of his old Company.

Of the rest, our old Colonel is in Scotland, essaying ambitious pedestrian and equestrian feats upon his new leg. Others have been drafted to the command of newer units, for every member of "K(1)" is a Nestor now. Others are home, in various stages of convalescence.

Others, alas! will never go home again. But the gaps have all been filled up, and once more we are at full strength, comfortably conscious that whereas a year ago we were fighting to hold a line, and play for time, and find our feet, while the people at home behind us were making good, now we are fighting for one thing and one thing only; and that is, to administer the knock-out blow to Brother Boche.

Our last casualty was Ayling, who left us under somewhat unusual circ.u.mstances.

Towards the end of our last occupancy of trenches the local Olympus decided that what both sides required, in order to awaken them from their winter lethargy, or spring la.s.situde (or whatever it is that Olympus considers that we in the firing-line are suffering from for the moment), was a tonic. Accordingly orders were issued for a Flying Matinee, or trench raid. Each battalion in the Division was to submit a scheme, and the battalion whose scheme was adjudged the best was to be accorded the honour--so said the Practical Joke Department--of carrying out the scheme in person. To the modified rapture of the Seventh Hairy Jocks their plan was awarded first prize. Headquarters, after a little excusable recrimination on the subject of unnecessary zeal and misguided ambition, set to work to arrange rehearsals of our highly unpopular production.

Brother Boche has grown "wise" to Flying Matinees nowadays, and to score a real success you have to present him with something comparatively novel and unexpected. However, our scheme had been carefully thought out; and, given sufficient preparation, and an adequate cast, there seemed no reason to doubt that the piece would have a highly successful run of one night.

At one point in the enemy's trenches opposite to us his barbed-wire defences had worn very thin, and steps were taken by means of systematic machine-gun fire to prevent him repairing them. This spot was selected for the raid. A party of twenty-five was detailed. It was to be led by Angus M'Lachlan, and was to slip over the parapet on a given moonless night, crawl across No Man's Land to within striking distance of the German trench, and wait. At a given moment the signal for attack would be given, and the wire demolished by a means which need not be specified here. Thereupon the raiding party were to dash forward and--to quote the Sergeant-Major--"mix themselves up in it."

Two elements are indispensable in a successful trench-raid--surprise and despatch. That is to say, you must deliver your raid when and where it is least expected, and then get home to bed before your victims have had time to set the machinery of retaliation in motion.

Steps were therefore taken, firstly, to divert the enemy's attention as far as possible from the true objective of the raid, by a sudden and furious bombardment of a sector of trenches three hundred yards away; and secondly, to ensure as far as possible, that the raid, having commenced at 2 A.M., should conclude at 2.12, sharp.

In order to cover the retirement of the excursionists, Ayling was ordered to arrange for machine-gun fire, which should sweep the enemy's parapet for some hundreds of yards upon either flank, and so encourage the enemy to keep his head down and mind his own business.

The raid itself was a brilliant success. Dug-outs were bombed, emplacements destroyed, and a respectable bag of captives brought over. But the element of surprise, upon which so much insistence was laid above, was visited upon both attackers and attacked. To the former the contribution came from that well-meaning but somewhat addlepated warrior, Private Nigg, who formed one of the raiding party.

Nigg's allotted task upon this occasion was to "comb out" certain German dug-outs. (It may be mentioned that each man had a specific duty to perform, and a specific portion of the trench opposite to perform it in; for the raid had been rehea.r.s.ed several times in a dummy trench behind the lines constructed exactly to scale from an aeroplane photograph.) For this purpose he was provided with bombs.

Shortly before two o'clock in the morning the party, headed by Angus M'Lachlan, crawled over the parapet during a brief lull in the activities of the Verey lights, and crept steadily, on hands and knees, across No Man's Land. Fifty yards from the enemy's wire was a collection of sh.e.l.l-holes, relics of a burst of misdirected energy on the part of a six-inch battery. Here the raiders disposed themselves, and waited for the signal.

Now, it is an undoubted fact, that if you curl yourself up, with two or three preliminary twirls, after the fas.h.i.+on of a dog going to bed, in a perfectly circular sh.e.l.l-hole, on a night as black as the inside of the dog in question, you are extremely likely to lose your sense of direction. This is what happened to Private Nigg. He and his infernal machines lay uneasily in their appointed sh.e.l.l-hole for some ten minutes, surrounded by Verey lights which shot suddenly into the sky with a disconcerting _plop_, described a graceful parabola, burst into dazzling flame, and fluttered sizzling down. One or two of these fell quite near Nigg's party, and continued to burn upon the ground, but the raiders sank closer into their sh.e.l.l-holes, and no alarm resulted.

Once or twice a machine-gun had a scolding fit, and bullets whispered overhead. But, on the whole, the night was quiet.

Then suddenly, with a shattering roar, the feint-artillery bombardment broke forth. Simultaneously word was pa.s.sed along the raiding line to stand by. Next moment Angus M'Lachlan and his followers rose to their feet in the black darkness, scrambled out of their nests, and dashed forward to the accomplishment of their mission.

When Nigg, who had paused a moment to collect his bombs, sprang out of his sh.e.l.l-hole, not a colleague was in sight. At least, Nigg could see no one. However, want of courage was not one of his failings. He bounded blindly forward by himself.

Try as he would he could not overtake the raiding party. However, this mattered little, for suddenly a parapet loomed before him. In this same parapet, low down, Nigg beheld a black and gaping aperture--plainly a loophole of some kind.

Without a moment's hesitation, Nigg hurled a Mills grenade straight through the loophole, and then with one wild screech of "Come away, boys!" took a flying leap over the parapet--and landed in his own trench, in the arms of Corporal Mucklewame.

As already noted, it is difficult, when lying curled up in a circular sh.e.l.l-hole in the dark, to maintain a true sense of direction.

So the first-fruits of the raid was Captain Ayling, of the _Emma Gees_. He had stationed himself in a concrete emplacement in the front line, the better to "observe" the fire of his guns when it should be required. Unfortunately this was the destination selected by the misguided Niggs for his first (and as it proved, last) bomb. The raiders came safely back in due course, but by that time Ayling, liberally (but by a miracle not dangerously) ballasted with a.s.sorted sc.r.a.p-iron, was on his way to the First Aid Post.

II