A Rifleman Went to War

All these things they can learn in any training camp. But the experience necessary to make them fit for battle is of a much more serious nature. As can readily be realized, this can come only in battle itself. It is out of the question to take men through a barrage of artillery and machine gun fire (which is sure to kill and wound some of them) in any instruction camp. The writer, fresh from nearly two years of actual combat and while in command of a Battalion of Machine Gunners of the Thirty-eighth Division, at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, suggested this thing to the General in command of the Division, in 1917, and was, thereafter called crazy. “Well,” says I “a lot of them are due to get theirs anyway, the minute they get into action, so why not let the rest learn something about the game before they get in so deep that the stretcher-bearers won’t find them for two or three days.”

But as I said, the idea was promptly vetoed, so all I could do was to try and tell the thousand or so men under me that they could expect such and so and let it go at that.

The training for battle might be called a post graduate course and no man can claim a diploma in this course until he has actually participated, as a combatant, in at least one major engagement. Nothing that can be written or spoken — no words — can express or bring a realization of the actual experience. The usual training for war is but the foundation — the real game must be learned by playing it.

A man may know all the text-books by heart and be able to repeat them forward and backward, may be an expert rifleman and all that, but it is only in actual combat that he can really find himself. In the old days, when men marched into battle shoulder to shoulder and won or lost by virtue of mass formations, this was not so essential, but in this Year of our Lord, after the show starts, it is pretty much an individual and personal matter, with each soldier working out his own salvation as best he can, for the good of the cause and the preservation of his own hide.

The rifleman finds a very different state of affairs than that to which he was accustomed on the range. Tramping, creeping or crawling over the hellish desolation which is a modern battlefield, amid the crash of bursting shells and the wild screams of the ricochetting fragments, the crack and whistle of bullets, amid smoke and dust — yes, it is different. Here he must learn to take advantage of all available cover while, at the same time, keeping up with the advance; he must learn to seek out individual targets and deliberately fire at them and not just shoot in the general direction of the enemy. The machine guns and automatic rifles will be doing plenty of that. If the rifleman is to be retained, at all, in the composition of the armies of the future, it will be only by virtue of the fact that he can and will, conscientiously and ably deliver an accurate and effective fire upon single, individual targets.

It is too much to expect that any human being, when first exposed to such an ordeal, can properly control himself and settle down to anything approaching clear-headed, logical thinking. When a man has to crawl over the top of a parapet where the bullets are ripping the tops of the sandbags and the whiz-bang shells are zipping past his head and bursting all around, he is apt to forget a lot of things he learned in the training camp. His only thought is that he is bound to get his the minute he sticks his head over the top. After a few such performances, if he survives, he knows quite well that there is quite a lot of space between the bullets and shells and he has at least an even chance to miss them.

When that time comes, he is eligible to the designation of a “trained” soldier — a Veteran. (It is my humble contention that no soldier deserves the honorable title of Veteran unless he has, personally, gone through at least one real fight as an actual combatant.)

The day before Christmas 1915, just after noon, I was lounging in our gun position at S-P-7 (Strong Point No. 7). It was one of the redoubts of our support line. Only about four hundred yards behind our front line and less than five hundred from the enemy line, it was established on a small eminence under cover of the trees at the edge of the Bois Carre. From there, screened by the overhanging branches of the trees, I could see, not only a large portion of our own line, but a lot of the enemy territory. Directly in front of my position was a road which ran from Ypres to Wyschaette. At the point where this road crossed our front line, we had a machine gun station which now — we being in support — was occupied by the Twentieth Battalion M.G. Section. To my right front was a field of chicory, through which one of our communication trenches ran. In this field, about one hundred yards behind our line, one of our trench-mortar batteries had just completed a pit in which they had established one of their mortars. Evidently the enemy had located this emplacement, for they were now engaged in dropping howitzer shells of about five-inch calibre all around it and I was idly watching and wondering when they would make a direct hit. There were no men there as they only used the weapon at night. Now, the path of these shells took them right over the machine gun emplacement in the front line and the gun crew there were just having their noon meal when one of the shells fell short and dropped among them, killing and wounding several when it burst.

One of the wounded was in such a serious state that it was imperative that he be taken back to a dressing station at once if his life were to be saved. Chicory trench was impassable, being nearly filled with mud. An officer called for volunteers to carry the wounded man out, down the road, which would expose them to the plain view of the enemy. We had had several men killed on that road and knew that there was a good sniper hidden in the woods over yonder but the officer reasoned that, as it was Christmas eve, it was hardly likely that any person would fire upon unarmed stretcher-bearers. But he reckoned without understanding the cold-blooded and utterly inhuman instincts of that German. When they came down the road, two men carrying the stretcher and the officer accompanying them (he would not ask men to take a chance he was not willing to share with them), I watched them carefully, dreading the very thing that actually happened. They had no sooner entered the exposed stretch of road when a bullet struck one of the bearers and, before the others could take cover, the second one was down. A third shot struck the officer, who was trying to assist the wounded man.

From my position, I could see each bullet strike in the water alongside the road and thus get a very accurate line on the position of the sniper. From the sharp angle of fall — the bullets striking within fifty feet of the men, after passing through their bodies, it was a certainty that the sniper was up in one of the trees just behind the enemy front line. I had been trying for a month, to locate that fellow, and, by tracing back the line from the strike of some of his bullets, had him spotted within a very limited area. Now I was sure of it. A certain thickly limbed tree, the top of which had been severed by a shell and, in falling, had lodged in such a manner as to form a dense mass of tangled branches some twenty-five or thirty feet up. That was the place, without a doubt.

Now this S-P-7 redoubt was a secret place. Concealed, as it was, by the trees, it had never been discovered by the enemy — or, at least, we had reason to think so, as it had never been shelled. In addition to the machine- gun crew, a platoon of infantry and a signallers’ station were located there, all comfortably housed in real dugouts in the reverse side of the hill. Very strict orders had been issued that there was to be no firing whatever from that position excepting in case of an attack. Of course I knew all about that — but that wasn’t the first time I had disobeyed orders, nor the last, for that matter.

Without hesitation, I swung the gun around and commenced to pepper that tree-top, at the same time sending one of my men to call our battery (the 16th) to get busy. Down at the front line, the Emma Gees of the Twentieth seemed to get the idea, for they promptly opened up with all their guns and when, within a very few minutes, the artillery joined in, well, it sounded like a real battle — a one sided one, however, as there was no return fire. One of our men, watching with glasses, said he saw a man fall from the tree. I cannot vouch for that but I do know that, from that day on, we had no further trouble with that particular sniper and I have always fondly cherished the hope that we did actually get him.

That night I accepted the invitation of the Forward Observing Officer of one of our batteries to have Christmas Dinner with him back at the Cafe de Dickebusch Etang. There were a few places, close behind our lines and well within the shelling area where native civilians still held on and catered to the appetites of the soldiers. One such was this place — on the shore of Dickebusch lake. It had evidently been a prominent as well as exclusive road-house before the war. Now, it was literally surrounded by artillery emplacements, probably half-a-dozen batteries having taken advantage of the concealment offered by Ridgewood immediately in front, to establish their guns there and many of the artillery officers were quartered in the cafe itself.

We slipped out of the front line soon after dark and, within an hour, were at the rendezvous. His battery, it seemed, had arranged for a big feed. Beside myself, there were several other guests, officers of the different units along that immediate front. I was the only enlisted man (a sergeant) but the captains and majors treated me like an equal — and the lieutenants had, perforce, to do the same. That is one thing about front line work, rank don’t mean a thing — if you play the game and show a little initiative.

They had real turkey and, in addition to all the usual trimmings, plum pudding, of course. And drinks? Certainly. Anything you wanted was right there, waiting for you. We all got comfortably exhilarated, as a matter of