A Rifleman Went to War

time and place a solitary cabaret, at another an isolated farmhouse, and at another an entire village — and the village may be shelled to powder or standing up reasonably like a group of human habitations.

In this game, both sides, of course, attempted to hold dominant positions; for trench “warfare” consisted largely of dominating enemy territory without occupying it. This, at its best, was to keep him in the mud where life was miserable and strong defenses impossible while we occupied high land from which we could see every move and reduce to mud every effort at fortification. Struggles for such advantage of position accounted for the bloody fighting, sometimes back and forth for days, at such places as Passchendaele Ridge, St. Eloi, Vimy, Hill 60, Telegraph Hill, and countless lesser mounds, woods, slag-heaps, strong points, sugar-mills, etc. which seldom made the headlines. Usually before the two lines could settle down to the stalemate of the trenches the positions were nearly equal so far as topography was concerned. Then, domination took the form of extending our knowledge of enemy territory and activities, less with a view to immediate action than to anticipating and defending his point of attack or to launching one of our own.

I risk this resume of the obvious because I find that it is frequently lost sight of, and also to emphasize the importance of patrols and observation from the ground.

This preparatory domination was primarily the business of the Intelligence System, of which spies and aerial observers were concerned largely with the back areas; with the plans of the High Command and with the movement, concentrations and positions of men, guns and supplies. Aeroplane photographs, of course, supplied an exact layout of the trench system and revealed changes from time to time; but they could not be relied upon to disclose many vital details, such as sniping, observation and machine-gun positions. For these, the map was supplemented by endless painstaking observation and study from the ground, in which work patrols played only a secondary part. The particular — and vital — concern of patrols was activity in no-man’s-land. They, and the listening-posts established through them, were almost the only protection against saps, tunnels and mines. They were not — as they had been in the old open warfare — primarily interested in locating the enemy. We were always in contact with him, and it became the business of patrols to see that this contact was not disastrous. Disaster came from the direction of no-man’s-land, and this, at night, belonged to patrols. Anything beyond this area was generally the concern of observers by daylight. In many cases patrols could learn how strongly the front trench was held; and they often located machine-gun positions there. This of itself is of vast importance. It may be decisive; a single machine-gun advantageously placed and unsuspected until lines of infantry are abreast of it on either flank means disaster until it is dealt with; and confusion and loss, right at the outset, may result in total failure. Such a gun, in an advanced position, escapes the destructive barrage, and is ready and undisturbed when the opportunity comes for it to get in its work. But even in a good position close behind the trench, unless this position is exactly known, it may escape shell-fire; and one of the most pitiable spectacles in modern warfare is that of men caught in the wire by crossfire from such guns.

The idea is to remember that no-man’s-land was the battleground. When it disappeared the war was over. You were always “in touch with the enemy.” There were no wide-ranging patrols, skirmishing parties and advanced guards trying to locate the opposing army and determine its movements; and no forced marches to intercept it and fall upon its rear or flank or cut it in two before it could get itself in shape on its chosen battleground. There was none of this ranging all over central Europe, clashing in one place today, withdrawing during the night to come together again a week or month later at some point fifty miles away. What I am getting at is that the battle was joined from the outset of the war and remained joined until the end, and we would gain every day a little of the ultimate victory, not only by extending our knowledge of the enemy positions, but by claiming a toll of his men.

This trench warfare was the only sort I had known by actual experience. I had gone into it, as had everyone else, not knowing what it was to be like, but having my notions more or less colored by history, by what I had read and heard of the great battles and wars of the past. Then this one began to take shape in my experience; I began to see what it was like; and I would find myself, every now and then, toying with the thought of what would happen if every man in our trenches should constantly stir himself and make it his business to get a German soldier.

I intend elsewhere to outline the usual method of carrying out trench raids, and to say something of the one or two in which I took part, and also of trench-raiding in general. I don’t believe that I can sufficiently emphasize this sort of warfare. Its importance is not merely in getting prisoners for purposes of information; it is in thinning out the enemy’s ranks and putting the fear of God into them; and this can often be nicely done by a patrol. At one time and another during the course of the war the wise ones told us what was wrong and how the conflict might be brought to a speedy and successful end. Sometimes particular wise ones changed their views, as is the way of a certain sort of them who are always ready with the answer reinforced by recent example. Others stuck to their own hobby through thick and thin, and were ominous or confident of victory according to the nature of the recent example and the use or neglect of their particular hobby. At one time it was guns; we were confidently told that when we had superiority of artillery fire at all times we would soon see the end of things. This camp arose in full chorus at the fall of Antwerp. And they were right; but only in so far as those who had insisted that artillery was noisy but harmless had been so absurdly wrong. Artillery wasn’t the whole of success. After Verdun even the most prejudiced and partial of them were forced to a clearer recognition of the truth of the matter. They each saw their particular pet for the vital part it played — in strict cooperation with and with full support from all the others. But the significant thing that emerged from this coordinated effort, the concrete and definite and lasting result of this achievement, was the ghastly casualty list of the other side. The one indispensible adjunct to the war machine is men. I imagine that the most outspoken advocate of this or that arm of defense or attack would have conceded at any time during the war, that once the Germans did not have enough men to stretch across the continent of Europe, in the various lines of defense and to serve the drawn-out and diverging lines of communication and supply, they would have to give in.

If the two or three or half-dozen taken in a raid, or the “missing” enemy patrol, seem ridiculously negligible in proportion to the vast army from which they come, it should be remembered that this resulted from an operation involving only a hundred yards or so of front. Put this in terms of the hundreds of miles of the Western Front and multiply this again by the days and days of a long, inactive winter and you have a casualty list which, though it may not dwarf that of a major battle, is significant beyond its mere numbers.

The numbers are only half of the effect. Of the other half, one part consists likewise in weakening the enemy; the other is in strengthening our own position, not only relatively but absolutely. As to the first, a thousand casualties inflicted in this way are worse than twice that number in a battle lasting one day. The patrol that never comes back (with often no sound to give any inkling as to its fate), the raiding party that went amiss, the wiring party that was wiped out with machine guns after being quietly spotted by a couple of scouts, are missed, with no excitement to divert the men from realizing that they are missed. In a battle they are not so much thought of; there is excitement, and a natural expectation of paying the price, and the satisfaction of knowing that something was being done to the other side. This is not true in the trenches. The life is abominable anyway and the untidy mess left by a grenade in a sleepy dugout doesn’t help it. Despondency follows easily upon misery and discomfort, and with a man disappearing here and there night after night and others falling to snipers’ fire by day, the darkness of no-man’s-land soon comes to hold something a good deal worse than the sword of Damocles, and men begin to wonder if God is really on their side after all.

For the other half of this effect which doesn’t appear in the casualty-list we look to our own side. The best way to keep a machine in perfect running condition is, with proper care, to run it often. When this machine is composed of men, this is the only way. Even the stoutest and gruffest old drill- sergeant — who is sometimes accused of knowing but one thing — knows this. It is generally the accepted method in the billeting areas and training camps. It is even more important in the trenches. Not only does the machine get out of fix; but its individual parts become sluggish, dull and apathetic, and the entire battalion is worth about as much as a wide-awake company. The blanket terms are morale and esprit de corps, and when these are up to scratch, troops are invincible; when they are down, they are well- nigh worthless.

And along with this moral effect you get almost the only actual and practical training it is possible to get as preparation for the big battles. Men get into the spirit of the game, gain confidence in themselves and see what they can do. It is a part of that strange process through which men unconsciously go which enables them to kill men without being murderers. When this reaches its perfection, soldiers become men of the chase. They take delight in battle and kill without hatred. This primitive man didn’t have much of a chance to emerge from his civilized veneer under the terrific shell-fire of the hotly contested sectors where both sides clung to the strongly