A Rifleman Went to War

is out. It may bring a burst of machine-gun fire.

The answer to our challenge was: “Aw, dry up, Robinson; I’ve got a souvenir for you.” And there were moving blurs in the darkness as four men hurried toward the trench. The first one dropped something into the bay as he slid over the parapet.

“There you are,” he said.

Now, I have forgotten whether the man’s name was Robinson or not. What I do remember is that the second sentry picked up the object, and we examined — largely by feeling of it — a new version of the old mace, which I hadn’t thought about in this war of hidden enemies and long-range rifles. It looked like a deadly sort of thing for close-up work, but it was not to my liking. I understand they were first found in possession of certain Austrian troops (though these were Germans before us), and that they became fairly numerous later.

The last man to enter the trench reached for the curiosity.

“Let’s see that damned thing a minute,” he said.

He was the sergeant. I noticed on the lower part of his sleeve the small chevrons which indicated that he had been out from the first. He hefted the mace judicially, then handed it back. As I took it, he looked up at me, doubtless guessing, from the sleeve of my trenchcoat, that I was an officer.

“What do you think of it, sir?”

“Pretty crude,” I said.

“Too damned slow and uncertain in the dark, sir? I’ll keep my Colt; and if I’m too close for that, the knife’s the thing.” Then, turning to the others, he said, “Well, fight it out, fellows; but don’t keep so much noise the sentry can’t hear. Don’t forget your business, Robinson.” He disappeared into the communication trench along which I had come. (He returned presently, accompanied by the platoon commander, rum ration and the order to stand to.)

The others meanwhile, had been producing other spoils of battle, including several Lugers. Then they remembered there had been a fight. The sentry wanted an explanation of that peculiar explosion; and this added another novel touch, not less interesting than the mace.

“What the hell were you fellows doing out there?” the sentry asked. “I didn’t know you took any artillery out with you?”

“Wasn’t that a hell of a noise?” one of them said. “Did you ever hear of potato-mashers going off in a bunch?” he continued addressing any and all of us, seriously. “I don’t know what happened, but it sounded like a whole case of ’em exploded at once. We threw four Mills and the whole damned place blew up.”

“They must have heard the click of our firing-pins,” said another, who had been excitedly relating disjointed fragments of the battle for some time: “We weren’t twenty feet apart. They walked right under our nose. They didn’t even know what happened.”

I gathered that he was a comparatively new man. He had been on patrols before, but this was the first time that he had had the experience of fighting in the dark. It was easy to see that trench warfare had suddenly developed a new and very decided interest for him. He was still overcharged with excitement.

“I don’t know about that,” said the first speaker. “It may be that they saw us and were holding theirs a bit, so we couldn’t throw ’em back. But I didn’t think they saw us. Anyway, they never threw ’em. And they’ll never be able to tell you now; the place was a wreck.”

“Aw, dammit,” Robinson said, “what happened — if anything?”

This is, substantially, the manner in which the story was related. Before we go back and get the first of it, we might as well say a word about the plausibility of the theory accounting for the explosion. If you have never seen a potato-masher grenade, I can tell you they are quite a bit like a potato-masher — in general appearance. The whole thing is about sixteen inches long. The business end is a metal shell of thin stuff, about four inches long, filled with T.N.T. A Mills grenade, landing directly on a pile of them and exploding, might well set off the lot. A party such as this German one turned out to be might, naturally enough, place several grenades together while they rested — unaware of any danger — in a shell-hole. A man well loaded with them could, quite possibly, find some of them uncomfortable when he sat down or reclined against the side of a shell-hole, because they are carried hooked to the belt, swinging about the hips like the tails of fur-bearing animals affected by certain savages in their more formal dress. If some were detached, placed together in a clear spot free of wire and water, ready to be picked up again in the dark, we have a mine all fixed. That is about the situation that appeared as the story came out, between one and another of the men, substantially as follows:

“Well, they sat down in a shell-hole right under our noses for a pow-wow. We couldn’t move; so we had to bomb ’em out if we wanted to get back home by sunrise. I don’t know whether they were waiting for the rest of the army, or just framing a yarn about running into enemy patrols which prevented them from doing their dirty work.”

“How did you come to let ’em hold a pow-wow under the end of your nose?”

“That’s what we were there for — to get information,” the wit of the party said. But Robinson was not to be outdone: “I suppose you sent ’em an invitation to come out and talk things over.”

“Aw, we had been along inside their wire, inspected their sentries and so on, and had come out and were waiting to see what we could see when this troop of squareheads come along. We were in a shell-hole right beside that long gully. They got into this and come along a piece until they were right off against us. Then they stopped and put their heads together. We could see the potato-mashers hanging to their belts. They didn’t seem to know what it was all about. They had come from towards our lines, up on the right, and they couldn’t make up their minds about something. In a minute, the caretaker over the way woke up and sent up a flare, and we could see they needed a shave. When it burned out, they all got into a shell-hole, the one right next to ours. We waited a while. It looked like there was plenty of time. There were eight of ’em. We counted ’em when they were standing up. We had their range exactly. We held our grenades until they were ready to go off in our hands. Then we tossed them over and this mine blew up and we went in and got their pistols. We never would have found them if Heinie hadn’t got busy and sent up that bunch of flares. You needn’t worry about any wounded.”

That, to my notion, is a fine way for a patrol to perform.

Before we go too far along with this patrolling, and get too busy with the real fighting, I suppose I better tell you about that flag business I was mixed up in; although there was, really, not very much to it at the time. Anyhow, I’ll go back a bit with my story and tell how it happened.

Opposite our line (near the right end of our sector, and just to the left of the Voormezeele Road) the Germans had planted some sort of a flag. Its history dated back to the early days of the war; seems like they had taken it from someone else, who, in turn had stolen it from the other fellow in the first place. It was a sort of mix- up, just where the thing did originate, but the idea was — “Here it is, come and get it if you can.” It was a dark blue affair with some sort of diamond-shaped device in the center, and had already resulted in two or three bitter daytime fights. From our Sniper’s Bam position we could see it very plainly, and I had often idly conjectured whether it was worth going after.

One night, it was the ninth of November, 1915, I had made up my mind to go over by myself and try to locate a new machine-gun emplacement which we were sure Heinie was building right opposite our right flank. From our observations, we were satisfied that he was building something of the kind as we had seen men carrying timbers and other material to that point. It was a dark, dismal, rainy night, like the one when George Paudash stuck his head into the dug-out and announced, “War’s postponed, account of rain.”

I was not drinking at that time, or, rather I had not been, but I felt the need of a little “Dutch courage,” so, to fortify my nerves a little, I persuaded Sergeant Harvey to give me a couple of good hookers of rum — now maybe it was three — and then slipped over the parapet. It was only about seventy yards across at this point to where I wanted to go. Getting through our wire was easy enough, as we had certain little alleyways left for that purpose, so I soon got through there and then crawled along the side of an old road where a shallow ditch gave quite a bit of concealment. At one point in this ditch there was lying the body of a soldier, and in trying to roll it out of the way, I twisted off one of the feet — that extra shot of rum was very much appreciated right then and there.

I crawled around that dead man after that and slowly worked my way over to the German wire, but it took a long time and much crawling up and down the wire before I could find, a gap through which I could wriggle. Finally got through though and up to the parapet. Everything was quiet; apparently the Germans were also satisfied to postpone the war until we had better weather. I finally managed to locate their new machine-gun emplacement and in order to mark it clearly, used a page from the old Arms and the Man, our old shooting paper which later became The American Rifleman. They had been sending me this magazine right along and I had a copy folded up in my tunic. So after pinning this sheet of paper directly below the