A Rifleman Went to War

entrenched positions and were shelled out, back and forth, night and day, for a week or more, generally in the rain, with men disemboweled and torn to bits while the others could do nothing but cower in the mud and wait their turn. This was simply inhuman, and certainly not any less appalling to the primitive man than to the civilized one. But when they got together and really had a chance to fight, there was remarkably little of hatred or revengefulness. Hatred is a slow, calculating, cold-blooded business. There was no time for it in battle. You often hear of it, to explain the soldier’s feeling; I have used it myself. But it disappears in battle.

I have elsewhere explained how I came to do my first real sniping after I had watched the Germans shoot down our stretcher-bearers, and Charlie Wendt and others. I had nothing to do but think about it; but even then I didn’t hate them as much as I liked to think I did. My hatred had been measured by the intensity of a lot of other emotions which had been aroused by this inhuman murder. But I assure you that when I was behind the rifle, the principal feeling was one of keen satisfaction and excitement of the same kind that the hunter always knows. That’s the spirit. That’s what makes good riflemen and good soldiers.

And that’s the spirit that work in no-man’s-land fostered. (By work, I don’t mean hard labor, such as digging to push the front line out over the brow of an inconvenient hill; I mean the business of carrying on the war. As for this other stuff, I think it’s about time that some bright boy got busy and invented a portable, non-collapsible, always-disinfected, water-tight trench-system.)

Even the men who were disposed to let well enough alone and let somebody else do the running around liked scouting, patrols and trench-raiding, once they had tried them. And I know that during my last weeks in France I was a little disappointed because I couldn’t always be up in front of the front where there was first-hand contact with the other of the two sides necessary to make a war. I managed to get up once or twice on each new stretch of front and see exactly how matters stood. And matters always stood best when I got up there just before stand-to in the morning and found everybody wide-awake and I knew that there was some sort of excitement somewhere, though I may have heard nothing and seen only a few Very lights since leaving my dug-out. The sentries had forgot that they were damn tired of standing there looking at nothing, and glad to be relieved of the temptation to go to sleep.

Wherever it was, trench warfare was best when it was warfare. I always felt better — and I believe that everybody else did — when there was excitement somewhere in the air. Many men were glad to go on patrols. It was not that they were foolhardy or reckless, but simply that they preferred action to acute and unrelenting discomfort. Patrols were, of course, the specific duty of the Intelligence Section and when the particular business of the patrol was to supplement the work of observation, it was necessary to use men from this Section. At other times it was advisable — often necessary — to use men from the platoon. These men needed to know, at first hand, the land before them, and it was the best sort of training to fit them for raids. The wise intelligence officer knew the men in the front line and checked with the platoon commander on the men who proved most useful and apt on duties of any sort in no-man’s-land. Then he was able, at the last moment, to turn his own little information-seeking party into one that went out looking for the unexpected and rather hoping that it would happen. And he could feel confident thereafter in leaving the unexpected in the hands of the platoon sergeant during those hours when no-man’s-land was not covered by his own regular scouts.

I think some such arrangement as this was responsible for a good deal of that “Silent Death” business for which the Canadians had something of a reputation. There is no reason in the world why a patrol that is out to look over the wire or to protect against a surprise raid shouldn’t surprise an enemy patrol, if it could be done neatly.

This is the sort of stuff that the sentry in the front line welcomed. When a raid was on, everybody, of course, was alert; but regular raids were few, and scouting parties went and came frequently without his knowing it, further than that he was warned that there was one out. It may be gone for hours and he dismissed it from his mind, except to remember to look twice and listen for the pass-word before shooting up that little disturbance in the wire. This is monotonous business when nothing ever happens; and there is a constant temptation to rest grimy eyelids. But when a certain spirit has taken possession of the platoon; the right sergeant has returned from leave; Smith, who was out with a crippled foot last time, is back on the job, and the old combination is working; things may be expected to pick up, and the madman’s land before him is worth looking at. It is the more exciting because it is often just on the borderland of exceeding authority. A patrol that is charged with the particular duty of reporting on the movement of a previously observed enemy party, to see if it is a nightly routine, might just as well return one night to report an unavoidable encounter — for which it was quite well prepared, even to selecting the battleground.

I was interested in this sort of work from the start, but we quite often had our hands full without it, then. It became really necessary (the fighting part of it) during the next winter, when the war had definitely settled down to the dull business of the trenches. I was back of the lines most of the time, but I got up as often as possible — sometimes on business — and I began to appreciate the tonic properties in a little excitement at night. The only mornings worth remembering are those on which something was happening, or had happened. It was a treat to go into a trench where there was excitement in the air — to sense, in the first sentry I came to, a sort of question mark in the dark, as I did one morning. He wanted to know what all the noise was about, and anyone passing along at that hour was a possible source of information. (The soldier always looks to the rear to know what is happening, anyway, and is better informed in billets than in the trenches.) Usually, two sentries work together, taking turns at the parapet. The free one dozes on the firing step or shifts miserably about in the bay in an effort to keep circulation up. He welcomes almost anything that moves, or which can be seen or heard. Listening for something which never comes and looking when it is so dark you can’t see, become tiresome. So the sound of a rat scurrying along the duck-boards is likely to be followed with interest. But a pistol-shot in no-man’s-land, or the crash of a grenade, or a muffled confusion of thumpings, oaths and exclamations, like the sound of a pleasant brawl in an alley, brings him to the parapet beside his fellow. They have a ringside seat from which they cannot see. They can only speculate; and it is significant of the attitude of our troops that these speculations were always agreeable; they never doubted the outcome or feared for the safety of our patrols. After a minute or two, quiet is restored and they can only wait to know the outcome — perhaps at stand-to in the morning.

It was at this stage that I came along, turning from the communication trench to encounter a man at the corner of the first traverse.

“Can you tell us what all the noise is about, sir?”

I couldn’t. I had noticed nothing in particular since leaving the quarters of a gun crew just back of the support trench, where I had stopped for fifteen minutes or so.

“Well, I guess we’ll know in a minute, sir, if they come back the same way. They went out right there along that little gully under the wire.

I can’t imagine what they did. First, there was a Mills or two, close together; then something that sounded about like a crump, but it wasn’t a shell. We haven’t heard anything since the big explosion, though it wasn’t more than a hundred and twenty-five yards away.”

We moved up into the bay, near the sentry. I asked if their intelligence officer was out, and was told that he wasn’t. It was the platoon sergeant and three men.

“Hush,” said the man at the parapet, largely to himself. The other man got quickly to the firing-step, keeping his eyes low in an effort to make near objects stand out against what there was of skylight. The usual ground-fog blurred everything. A man making no sound and keeping flat could have come within fifteen feet of us. I thought that I heard a faint creak of wire and slight rustle or two, but could not have sworn to it thirty seconds afterward. But two minutes later we heard the sounds of movement. Rifles were quietly brought to bear in that direction, and in a voice that was firm enough, but no louder than was thought necessary to reach them, the sentry demanded assurances. I was interested in observing again what I had often noticed in this business of challenging in the front line, where danger is the probability and not mere fiction as it generally is out of the active area. First, there is a reluctance to resort to the formality of challenge and pass-word. Second, there is a tendency on the part of the sentry to wait until he can see well enough to do something about it in case the answer is unsatisfactory. A man doesn’t like to give himself away or look foolish by challenging a noise. He wants to challenge something which he can shoot the next instant. In the present case, the challenge should have come from a sentry on our right. The disturbance was nearer there, though bearing in our direction. I can imagine the man at that point waiting until he could see a lump into which he could put a bullet. This is fine, for quick and definite results; but it is not the way to warn all hands in time and to keep enemy grenades — and a raiding party — out of the trench. A Very light will show things up; but their use is bad policy — Heinie’s policy — particularly when you know one of your own patrols