Читать книгу In The Trenches 1914-1918 - Glenn Ph.D. Iriam - Страница 15

After finishing our term of schooling in trench routine we were shipped to Fleur Baix and took over a section of front line trench on our own at a place by the name of Labutillere just to the left of Neuve Chapelle.

Here the scouts got busy in real earnest, and we worked day and night during the eight-day terms that the battalion was in the front trench. When our battalion was out of the line in supports, we rode up on bicycles working day and night behind and in front of the other units of the 2nd Brigade.

I was put on sniping as soon as we went in, varying this with some observation work, panoramic sketching from points of vantage during daylight, and at night going out on patrols with the scouts between the opposing front lines in what was known as no mans land.

We were the only battalion scouts in the brigade at that time that is the reason we were used on the time and frontage of the other units. Some of the other battalions had what they called company scouts but they were under their respective company commanders and not in a position to get trained or organized in any effective way.

The ground here was low and wet making it impossible to dig trenches, so the front and support lines were built up with sand bags to about shoulder high. This breast’work or parapet had loop holes in it near the top for shooting through. We used to stuff an empty sack into the hole when it was not in use. This kept the light from showing movement behind.

We used crude methods in those early days. Some of the men who came out in 1917 and 1918 will no doubt laugh at some of them, but we did the best we knew how, making use of what was available for offense and defense, and that was not much, I can tell you.

We had a couple of batteries of thirteen pounders (horse artillery) in the hedge rows and willow clumps a few hundred yards behind the front. Further back there were just two sixty pounders that we had brought from Valcartier and one of them blew up quite early in the game. That was the sum total of our artillery support. For machine guns we had three colts guns to a battalion, and we later got hold of an old Vickers maxim and nursed it into service. Brigade M G Cox’s, Div, and M. G. Corps along with various other able supports were unheard of. For hand grenades, we had milk and jam tins filled with any kind of small scrap, loaded with a bursting charge, and with a fuse attachment that had to be lit with a match.

There was another elaborate sort of rig called the hair brush bomb, so called because it had a flat handle and a wee wooden box built on one side were the brush part would be in a long handled hair brush. This was lit the same way. There were generally some men behind in a dugout or shelter on fine days busy at the manufacture of these weapons.

The trenches were anywhere from 200 to 500 yards apart along this sector and the first few days I certainly took a very keen interest in bombarding anything that looked as though it would do for a target. I had a long Mk 3 Ross with an aperture sight on the receiver bridge and hooded front blade sight. It had a perfect barrel making for some wonderful shots and I enjoyed myself immensely.

As yet we took it all in good spirits and more in fun than otherwise. I remember how we used to laugh about it when Fritz occasionally spread a salvo of whiz bangs or 16 lb shells along our trench and made the sand bags fly.

I got a lesson quite early in the game that set me to thinking, leading me to temper my enthusiasm with the use of a little caution and better judgment. I had been doing a lot of target practice from one particular loophole. There was a stove pipe sticking up over the German parapet a foot or two, ordinary stove pipe. When Fritz fogged up the stove good to boil his kettle at meal time I used to slam a bullet through the pipe and Fritz would choke of the smoke right away. These sort of games went on for a couple of days until one day I had just fired two or three rounds from aforesaid favorite loop hole, got down to one side, a shade lower and was busy with the pull through cleaning my rifle –when–Crack-Snap -Crack- Snap-just like that. Two bullets came through the loophole and two came through the top of the breast’work right where my head would have been a minute before.

This was real shooting (by gum) and carried out by two real snipers working as a team. I began to watch for any well-aimed shots that came over and tried to dope out the spot they came from with the view to making a comeback that would count. We found out some months later that these snipers had all along been equipped with telescopic sights and powerful glasses for spotting us, and furthermore were organized into companies and relieved by sections in the line at regular periods. The relief coming in took over posts, information gathered and range cards of the ground on their front. The wonder is that we held our own so well and even at times got them cowed down so that some days there was scarcely a German bullet came over our lines.

Sniping was a deadly business the first two years of the war and the toll taken that way was heavy. There were a number of reasons for this. Communication trenches at that time were non-existent or at best in very poor repair and shallow. The men were comparatively new at the war game and took more foolish chances than necessary. They were often taking short cuts across open ground in daylight and in other ways exposing themselves. Three seconds exposure in daylight is time enough for a trained sniper to get in his shot. Then the new men were unnecessarily noisy when reliefs were on, careless about making smoke, showing movement and lights. All these things drew hostile fire and the sum total of loss from these causes over given periods was heavy.

This applied to both sides for there were few days that we did not have something to write into the sniping report that had to be sent in nightly. All shots were checked by an observer with a telescope that worked along side the sniper and verified hits and helped to locate targets.

Sergeant Knobel got busy as soon as we arrived on this front putting out night patrols between the opposing lines to gather information about the lay of the land, the enemy’s wire entanglements, position of their listening posts and activity of their moving patrols if any.

One night while up close to the German trench in a muddy flat piece of ground covered with Indian corn stumps or stubble our patrol must have been heard or dimly seen. Perhaps the sentries fancied they heard or saw something for they began to shoot up flare lights one after another and then started to sweep the ground with machine guns. We felt we could crawl into a rat hole if one was handy. The tearing ripping sweep of these guns would come roaring and snapping over us sometimes covering us with showers of wet mud, other times passing just over our backs to rip up the mud behind. There was a lad with us by the name of Johnston of fair complexion and medium height. He served on the Fire Department Team, at the Twin Cities at the head of the lakes before the war. A German flare light shot up in a high arc and came hissing down directly on top of him and they burn with a fierce white blinding light. Any movement on our part, even the slightest move while the light burned would have betrayed our position and sealed the fate of the whole patrol. He watched it come down coolly until it appeared certain to hit him on the legs. He spread-eagled his legs without another move until the light burned out and died between his feet. I suppose we were under this fire and shower of flares for upwards of five minutes though it seemed more like 45. Our teeth were loose in their sockets from setting them together and our nails nearly cut through the palms of our hands from gripping them. Not succeeding in their efforts to find us or failing to detect any signs of movement the Germans must have concluded there was nothing there for the flares and the m. g. fire ceased and we were able to make a safe get-away.

The lines were about 500 yards apart at this point and we had to cross a swamp creek fringed with polled willows before getting back to the vicinity of our own lines. Soon after crossing the creek we saw something moving back and forth in the vicinity of our own wire. Catching a glitter of light reflecting from something. We studied this and it turned out to be a lad from our battalion who had been sent out on listening post in front. Here he was with rifle at slope, bayonet fixed pacing up and down an improvised (tow path) as large as life. We sure had a good laugh at this exhibit. It was rare.

A. Currie was in command of the 2nd Brigade at that time and asked for a detailed map of the ground on our frontage. Sergeant Knobel ran a base line in daylight with a prismatic compass and tape among the old ruined houses and enclosures close behind our front. From this we worked forward and on into no-mans land traversing with luminous compass and tape at night. We had fixed the locations and got dimensions of all landmarks and physical features on the ground to be covered. What we could not get in this way was sketched in or located by intersection from three known points of observation in ruined houses. The position of these again was established by resection onto the original base line. We eventually turned in a map on a scale of 1 over 5000 (1/5000) and Currie got complimented for being well informed as to the ground on his part of the front line sector. This was supplemented by a series of panoramic sketches made by setting a telescope in a rest and sketching in all detail showing in its field of view. By swinging the scope the width of its field and repeating over a wide arc you could connect up with another arc sketched from the next O. P. to your flank. In this way we got a lot of detail of the German front lines that would not have otherwise been noted.

There was a patch of broad beans with high green stalks stretching from the German parapet outward toward our lines for some 75 yards. It looked like a place that might conceal a post for a m. g. a bombing post, or listening post at night. At any rate we needed it placed on our map, and I was sent out with compass and tape to locate and measure it. We worked across a creek with an old ladder used as a foot bridge, thence along a ditch marked by polled willows at intervals, till we came to the end of the last survey. A lad named Fred Barker was with me. It was too dark to see much, and there was a rise or roll in the ground in front that hid the German lines. Barker struck out on his own hook from here to try to locate the bean patch but came back unsuccessful in a short time.

The scout at this time was not equipped with a pistol, bomb or other convenient means of offence or defense in order to enable him to crawl easily and quietly through the mud, grass and pools of water. His sole companion was a long Ross with bayonet fixed. The breach and trigger mechanism soon became a solid ball of mud when worming along like an alligator through the soup. We used to squeeze a plaster of wet mud onto the bayonet in order to prevent its glitter from betraying us while in the enemy wire or in the vicinity of their flare lights. I now started off over the top of the rising ground in front, and was crawling down its far slope when a German flare showed me the outline of the bean patch across my path. I was now in dry stiff grass that seemed to make a very loud noise whenever I moved forward. Was there a post at the out end of it? I decided to listen for awhile and not hearing anything suspicious I went on to the edge of the patch lying in under the edge to listen again. I could hear someone crawling quite close. I flattened to the ground to catch the light filtering through from the far side of the patch. About 30 feet from me a German crawled past on his way to his own lines. I was uncertain as to how many more were at the point he crawled from, so I did mighty little moving and a lot of listening for a few minutes then went on to its end, took its width, and later its bearing with compass from the top of the rise in the ground I had passed on the outward trip. I often wondered if this was the first close contact of Canuck and German in the field. I know it was for the 1st Division but probably some of the Princess Pats had an earlier contact.

Fritz used to use search lights in those days to sweep our lines at night and the ground in front. These lights were mounted on an affair like an extension ladder used by city fire departments. This in turn was mounted on a small truck that ran on a narrow-gauge rail track following the course of his communication trenches. If a shell landed close to this outfit he could telescope the extension ladder affair and hurry the whole works by rail to a safer spot.

The night following my trip to the bean patch was wet with a fine drizzle of cold rain. Knobel planned to make a long patrol led by himself. Two nights before we had placed a ladder across the creek about 100 yards from our front. This had been used as a bridge for two nights. Some of us had suggested that it be removed each night after using it so that it, and the path across, would not show up to the aero planes in daytime and give away our line of travel, but this had not been done. Now on the third night we had just got nicely over and started along the old ditch when we heard a noise ahead. A large stone or lump of mud fell into the ditch with a splash and following this we could hear the clump, clump, and swish, swish in the grass as someone hurried away from there. Somebody was evidently watching our bridge for a purpose. We carefully crept forward a bit to where we could get the light showing over higher ground on each side and in front. On this work you hug the low places and any movement can be detected in the light at the skyline around you. We began to size things up. On either flank as far as you could see there was the usual amount of night rifle fire by the sentries and the usual amount of flare lights rising and falling. But in the section occupied by the cabbage patch or bean patch there was neither night firing or flares. Only silence, darkness and a thickening drizzle of rain. Then the search light started to sweep back and forth, away to the north back on the south, but it always paused for a space when it came to our sally port in the wire and our ladder bridge over the creek. We put two and two together deciding that the big German patrol that was in ambush for us that night could have the rain all to themselves and we went elsewhere that night.

Later on we lost one of our scouts by rifle fire while out on the left flank of our battalion on night patrol. Our left flank was in what they call a re-entrant or a deep concavity in our line and the unit next on our left had somewhat of an enfilade view of our left sector. I believe it was the 7th Battalion in there at that time. We had notified platoon commanders and sentry groups of the patrol but through some mistake the post of the 7th opened fire on us and W. Naylor one of our number, was hit in the groin by a rifle ball and due to the severity of the wound died a few hours later.

I got a taste of shellfire here one day at the time of the battle of Neuve Chapelle or the (Blunder of Neuve Chapelle). The Imperial troops at that point were to make a frontal attack on the German line and if successful in getting forward, we were also to follow it up and roll up the part of the line to the left of them on our front. During their attack we were busy putting over rapid rifle fire thickened up by our colt m. g. along with the 13 pounders and the lone 60 pounder. The attack at Neuve Chapelle fizzled out against great odds in artillery and other arms and we came in for reprisals from Fritz in the shape of shellfire from his field batteries. I was in the south end of a trench bay next to a traverse and in the opposite end of the bay was a man named Peacock. Both of us were plugging away at rapid fire as per instructions. Peacock was taking aim through a loop hole with his finger on the trigger when a shell took away the whole of the breast’work between us. I got a wallop on the back of the neck with a sandbag half full of hard-baked clay that could give points to Jack Dempsey. When I got the mud out of my eyes and things started to clear so I could see, there was Peacock’s rifle still in its place in the loophole but with the bolt full back open, only half of the loophole was there and none of the breast’work to the right of it. Peacock presently came running around the traverse on hands and knees at a good speed in a very dazed and shaken-up condition from concussion. There was a man about 15 feet behind us who had been stooped down to go into a small dugout entrance. A sandbag full of hard clay hit him in the stern and drove him in head-first nearly breaking his neck. We were beginning to get a light taste of what was in store for us over the next three years as a steady and daily diet. We had several casualties. I think the total was about 18 in this unit.

We will leave the night prowling now for a bit, and follow the doings of observers and snipers in the daylight hours. Our first eight days on the line completed we went back in billets in reserve for a few days at the town of Estaires, roughly about eight miles to the rear.

From here, we of the scouts took our lunch with us in the morning and mounting bicycles, rode back to our old sector in the front line to snipe and do observation work during the daylight hours. There was an old pinnacle, a fragment of a convent tower that had stood just behind where our front line now was and near the right flank. Into the chinks and mortar on the west side of this we drove spikes and to these attached ropes and hung a ladder up which one could climb to the top of the slab of wall. The part left standing was perhaps 10 or 12 feet wide and 35 to 40 feet high. On the top of this there lay some loose brick and these we arranged as a head cover to screen us from the enemy and form a rest for a telescope while taking observations. A long and lanky sandy-complexioned kind of guy by the name of Carson was detailed along with me to climb up and continue the work started on the telescopic panorama. There was a raw March wind, blowing quite hard, and the top of the old unsupported slab of wall wavered and trembled so that the quiver of the telescope lens made it hard to distinguish detail at all. My eyes ran water with the cold and ones hands got so numb in a few minutes it was impossible to control a pencil. We had no assurance that we could not be seen from distant points on the flanks due to the curvature in the front lines. We spent part of two days sketching from there and were not troubled by rifle or shell fire though we did a lot of moving up or down to relieve one another on account of the cold. Knobel went up there the next day and he was fired on so he decided not to use that o. p. for a little while at least. We had several other observation posts in ruined houses along our front. We used to snipe from the same places too. In one of these the upstairs floor had been blown out by shell explosions all accept a small section in the n-e corner up under the eaves. In this corner we had our o. p. and sniping post. The sills or girders of the top floor were still there and to one of these we attached a rope, which hung down to the entrance of the wine cellar in the basement. These old French and Belgian wine cellars were built strong, and deep, with arched or vaulted roofs, and were very seldom smashed in by shellfire from the lighter class of guns. At our roost under the eaves we would hold forth and snipe etc. Fritz got suspicious then whizz-bang!! Over he would send a couple or three shells. We would run across the floor girders, slide down the rope and into the cellar. Of course the first shells had done their worst long before we got to the cellar but we took pot luck on them out of necessity. From this point we located a couple of enemy m. g. emplacements, also a (strong point) or sort of redoubt that was being incorporated, and built into their front trench at a salient in their line and from this fortified emplacement they could bring enfilade fire to bear both right and left along no-mans-land.

These we located on the map by intersection of compass bearings and they were shelled by our artillery.

From the o. p. described on the last page we got some long range rifle shooting one morning. It was one of those still spring days without a breath of air stirring, no bright sunlight, an overcast sky but air very clear. An artillery observer would describe it as a high visibility day. A couple of observers had been studying the country behind the German line. About 1100 hundred yards from us we could see a house standing broadside with a road stretching away to the east beyond. This road passed by the south end or gable end of the house. In the side facing us were a door and two windows. They had noted some Germans going in or out of the door and standing around outside quite unconcerned. It was quite evident that this place had not been subject to either rifle fire or m. g. fire and Fritz was quite at home there. I think it must have been a quarter masters stores or its equivalent in German.

The observers sent for me and we decided to try a shot at Fritz. I picked out a spot in the middle of the tile roof that faced us for a target. We wanted to register and make sure we had the range perfectly before trying to snipe at that distance. My first shot broke a tile and with the telescope the observers saw the pieces slide down to the eaves dropping to the earth. We had the range to a hair and the lateral was perfect. If the Fritzes noted the shot at all, they probably took it for a stray bullet.

At the right corner of the house wall and about shoulder high there was a white patch as though somebody had cleaned a paint brush on the corner of the wall. I used this as an aiming mark, got the rifle bedded down comfortably in a sandbag rest and waited. Presently the observers said there was a man coming around the house from the back. He came toward us along the south gable. I waited until he was in line with the house corner and the white spot and fired. He staggered out to the right about 15 feet, fell and lay there. Another man came out and I shot him also. This one appeared to be dead but the first one still moved. In a little while a wagon came down the road at a gallop and swung in behind the house. Two men with a stretcher removed the first man shot. We did not fire any more shots then but after a while we decided to put some rapid fire through the door and windows, and along the roof about two feet above the eaves. We did this, but on after-thought, it was a foolish move for it told them that the shots were not strays or accidental and put them on their guard. Also it betrayed our sniping post badly. A cold-blooded recital of a typical incident exactly as it occurred (Confirming Sherman in his name for war).

We had another post off to the right flank and one day there were three of the boys aloft in it when Fritz put 12 shells into it, but the boys escaped with only scratches.

Estaires was a pretty little town, but it was destroyed by the Germans during their big drive in the spring of 1918. During the time we were billeted there he bombed it with an aero plane. There was a fat old cook who did the honors for the officer’s mess. He had his cook house in a shed or outbuilding. When the plane came over there was a transport wagon standing in the cook house. A bomb dropped there and the roof fell down on top of the transport wagon. The wagon being there saved the cook’s life.

We were not getting enough exercise so while we were here Knobel took us out through the country on forced marches to keep us in trim. We had to make a road report of each trip giving details of everything en route. That Knobel was a wonder. He could march at a fast clip through a town, and then sit down drawing a perfect map with the names of all the streets, principal buildings, squares etc. together with a hundred and one other details that we did not notice at all.

At La Saillee we met a troop of Bengal Lancers and I never expect to see finer looking mounted troops. They were a treat to see and a thing of beauty. These Bengalis were a part of the Army of India, some portion of which had been in the line to our right.

The Gurkhas or Gurcas a hill tribe, looking like Japanese only heavier built, had been next to us in the line for a short time. Their patrols were out next to us at night, and it was a creepy sensation when alone and expecting to encounter some of them. They were like tiger cats at that kind of work, and as, silent, swift and deadly. They went armed with a kuri (big knife) of different sizes and weights. The heaviest knife weighed seven lbs, and was close to two feet long with most of the weight well out toward the point. They could flatten themselves blending into the ground or shrubbery and snip off a man’s head so quick he wouldn’t know it unless he happened to shake his head. There were some tall stories going the rounds about doings at night along the front. In their case however truth was stranger than fiction. I know of an authentic case that occurred just to our right. The Gurkha scout had noted the head of a German sentry over the parapet at night. Like a jungle cat he slipped through, and under the wire and flattened himself against the sandbags of the enemy breast’work directly in front of that sentry. At intervals he would reach up with one hand and make a tap-tapping noise on the baked clay. After awhile the sentry got curious no doubt thinking of a rat or stoat and stretched forward to see what was making that peculiar noise–Zip. Away went his head and it was brought back as a trophy or souvenir. These were great troops in an attack. As long as they could see the enemy and had something definite to fight they were fearless fighters. The difficulty was to control them. They forgot all about schedules and time limits. They would keep on and on and then get all cut to pieces with their own barrage fire. At close quarters they would ditch their Enfield and bayonet and wade in with the big knife. They would seize the enemy’s bayonet with their left hand and slash off his head with the right. It became necessary to equip them with a heavy gauntlet glove for the left hand, as the dressing stations were full of them after a fight all wounded in that way.

On one of our route marches and road patrols we had an experience with a German spy. We, of the scout section in charge of Knobel were out on our own, marching south on a road running parallel to the front line system and about a mile to the rear of it. Here we met a tall man walking north. He was dressed up as though he had just stepped off one of the main boulevards of Paris. A spotless black suit and tall tile hat, gloves and walking stick, a regular fashion model. This looked a little peculiar to say the least for you never saw anyone dressed to that degree in country that close to the front lines. He walked with the stiff necked straightness of a military officer, and in his case, the clothes were a very thin disguise of the soldier underneath.

He had his mustache twisted out to two needle points as affected by some French gentry. He eyed us as we went by. Two of us sized him up then as worthy of investigation, but the sergeant said he did not want to make a foolish mistake and passed him up. He only got a short way down the road when some artillery men held him up and sure enough, he was an enemy officer spy. He had overdone the dressing part. I suppose he was going by pre-war standards and did not realize he was so conspicuous in his elaborate toilette and high tile.

There was another spy case while we were on this part of the front that seemed like a fairy tale so strange it was. At Labutillerie, as before stated, we had a couple of batteries of horse artillery concealed in the hedge rows a few hundred yards behind our front lines. Immediately in their vicinity there still lived an old farmer of Flemish or ex-German nationality. He still tilled his little fields enclosed by their thorn hedges. He was the owner of an old white horse, a white cow and also an aged wife. The batteries were concealed on the margins of his estate in willow clumps and hedgerows. Some of the gunners complained that the old man would take his white cow on fine days when the visibility was good and, leading it on a long rope would get directly in front of the gun position running his cow around in circles.

This they claimed was done in front of different gun positions and soon after that the guns were shelled by the enemy. He also pulled off something of the sort with the old white horse for variation I suppose. Not much attention was paid to these tales however. It was also reported that smoke signals or smoke puffs were sent up from his chimney after the manner used by the Red Indians and some of the Zulu tribes in Rhodesia. These they claimed were unmistakably signals and worked out in a code.

On account of all these rumors Sgt. Knobel was sent one day to interview the old couple. They told him they were terrified by the shell fire, and that they had been burning incense, offering up prayers for their safety and this accounted for the smoke. They succeeded in convincing Knobel that they were quite innocent and a harmless old couple he so stated.

There had been some men of our unit sniped and shot at behind our front lines. An officer of one of our units took it on himself to watch the old man one day as he was working up and down the east side of a thorn hedge with the old horse and a harrow. From concealment he saw the old man snatch a rifle from under a coat or blanket on top of the harrow and shot at somebody on the road winding away westward between the hedges. The officer shot the old man without further parley.

Then there was hustling around to find more evidence of the sniping business. I was one of the search party and climbed up to the garret loft of a barn that stood length wise of the road and had a round ventilator hole in the peak of the west gable. Standing on the attic floor behind this ventilator hole was a tall round topped stool such as you see in a restaurant at home at the quick lunch counters. On the floor at the bottom of this stool was a heap of empty rifle cartridge cases, some dozens in all. This sniping business must have been going on intermittently over quite a long period. The very unlikelihood of the thing was its screen that had enabled it to go on so long. I suppose the casualties were put down to stray bullets.