A Rifleman Went to War

could tell you how to reach any particular unit, because there were few recognizable fixed points, no established trails leading anywhere. Attracted by the sound of shovels or voices, you turned aside to inquire the way to a certain farmhouse or village which the map indicated as a point of reckoning for your further progress toward your destination. You might learn that you were even then in the village; but, get down as low as you liked, nothing resembling a village could be made to show against the dark sky. Everywhere were the same grotesque, blurred shapes, at indeterminate distances, like a mad scene in a fantastic nightmare. Farther on, having caught a glimpse of a faint bar of yellow light, you stopped again, hoping to be able to orient yourself. The light showed again, as somebody moved aside a screen-blanket, defining a cellar stairs and two or three timbers at odd angles about the entrance. “Yes, sir,” a brigade-signaller would tell you, “this is the best estaminet in town. You are on the right road. It is a little difficult to follow here because they have just finished filling in the shell holes made by the heavies. There is a working party down in the valley who can put you on to the hedge you are looking for.” Resuming your way, you were almost at once at sea, guided by instinct, striving to make a crazy pattern of shadows look like a group of trees which were to be a useful landmark. You soon learned to distrust your judgment as to distances traveled.

It was a chaotic world, but it offered some good instruction in another aspect of war. It is not always a soldier’s privilege to see much of war. And when he has the opportunity he doesn’t investigate very far. He takes things as they come, going in and out of the line on his own particular job, and soon becomes but little concerned about the other fellow’s job. He accepts the unexpected, both in surroundings and in new implements of warfare, without astonishment. Even the tanks caused little real astonishment, though they were a never-ending source of entertainment and gleeful satisfaction. The soldier, possibly had never thought of such a thing; but then he had never thought of such a grotesque place as the modern battlefield, and after a few weeks of this, taking it as it came, he was quite prepared for any monstrosity it might produce. He accepted them as quite natural developments.

I had much opportunity to observe this and a great many other things during the next few months. I was soon recalled from the packtrain work and again found myself with the Fourth Brigade, though no longer with the Twenty-first Battalion. We were established for the winter in the country north of Arras. Established is the word: war had become a business, not an adventure of a few months or a year; and we settled down to it in a business- like manner, rotating smoothly from Corps or Divisional reserves — in billets just back of the lines — through the reserve trenches, the supports, the front line and out again. We had good trenches, which were, as trenches go, fairly dry. This was in the mining and hill-country which begins in the vicinity of Loos, and, except in limited areas, drainage problems could be solved.

Moreover, I had now a more comprehensive view of the business, due not only to its having become, definitely, a business, but also to my larger field of action and responsibility. I was to have become Brigade Machine-Gun officer, but going on the casualty list had interfered with that. It remained, however, my particular interest and the field to which I might naturally expect to be called. The place of the machine guns had already been pretty definitely fixed; but Lewis guns were now displacing them for use with the infantry, there finally being two of these with each platoon. All the heavy guns were thus left free to be used in their own place in the scheme of offense or defense. In this work, the battalion frontage was too small, as machine-gun fire, whether from the front line or positions further back, is nearly always cross fire, enfilading wherever possible. The machine-gun officer, therefore, was directly interested in a mile or more of front, whereas the platoon officer was restricted to two or three hundred yards.

Familiarity with front-line conditions over a frontage covered by several battalions and a careful study of the topography of a large area were necessary to the effective locating and handling of these guns. It was interesting work. They constituted but one item in a deadly and fascinating scheme: the rifles and automatics up front, along with grenades and the light trench mortars; then the machine guns and heavier mortars, followed by the 18- pounders backed up by their bigger brothers right on down the line until you came to the big naval gun in a convenient copse somewhere miles back of the lines. There it was, all spread out in place, stocked up with ammunition — waiting, and, at the same time, working, improving positions, making new emplacements, providing for concentration of guns and men in an emergency. The machine guns and artillery entertained themselves, kept in practice and got in a bit of effective work by strafing and shelling vital points and positions in the enemy lines. Comparable activity on the part of the infantry took the form of trench raids. The regular duties of their positions consisted of strengthening the trench system, protecting certain points with outposts, establishing listening-posts and in maintaining constant surveillance of no-man’s-land through organized patrols. But for effective work that was satisfactorily like war, they had to put teeth into some of their patrols and stage a raid occasionally. This work has been covered, in a manner, in the chapters devoted to patrolling and trench-raiding.

Meanwhile, it was necessary to look forward to the time when the whole vast machine should again be unlimbered and got into action. For the northern part of the line the first step in this work was to take Vimy Ridge. This was the job to which the Canadians were assigned, and we set about systematic training and preparation for it, ending up by timing the whole assault, all obstacles to be overcome and the various lines of defense to be occupied and consolidated and the attack pushed on strictly according to schedule. The Germans, of course, learned a good deal about these plans. Vimy was, in any case, a point at which an attack was to be expected. They considered the position impregnable and had had a long time in which to make it so. At the time of the action its defenders outnumbered the attackers by about two to one.

When the Battle of Vimy Ridge occurred I was on my way to New York, and the training-ground again. The attack went through according to schedule. It was not exactly according to schedule that the tanks did not even get as far as the first line of defense. They had been counted upon, but the going was too much for them. This did not, however, upset the schedule. Their place was taken by men, more men. The going doesn’t get too bad for them, if they are properly trained. I was on my way to a new job instructing men in the business of war. In the idle days of the crossing I sometimes found myself taking stock of what I knew about it. Usually I didn’t get any farther than visualizing probable happenings along the Western front at the moment. Vimy would be in the hands of the Allies. Possession of this strong position was necessary before any general advance could be planned. Winter was over. It was the open season for soldiers. They would be expecting anything at anytime, whether in the way of offense or defense for a soldier simply waits for either one, knowing as little about the plans of one side as the other. Waiting is a little less apprehensive when there are signs that his side is preparing for offense. He will, at least, not be unexpectedly smothered by a barrage, against which he can do nothing save dig himself out and dig his guns out, while the hours pass, until, suddenly, it lifts, and he knows that all that he can certainly count on to protect him against whatever the gathering light brings is the rifle in his hand and the few men whom he can see in the smoke and fog on either hand. That’s all. If things go well, he discovers in a few minutes that there is more. But for the moment, there is only a man and a rifle, against everything that may come over the parapet within his reach.

On the offensive it is a little better. He will be on hand to receive the counter-barrage. But he has first heard the music of his own, and seen the signs of activity as he came up the night before: the concentration of guns, with their grim files of steel messages for delivery in the initial stages of the attack, ammunition in the bays up front, handy for the machine guns; signallers with their coils of wire, and stretcher-bearers waiting innocently beside stacks of stretchers. It is comforting to remember these things while waiting for his barrage to lift, and to know that the thing has been planned and must be carried through to the first objective, even though all communications are cut before the zero-hour. If it is raining, as it seems, usually, to be, and he has to wait for several hours, this knowledge may be rather cold comfort, but it is there just the same, and does a good deal to boost his confidence in himself.

This is the point that I was always coming back to in my meditations, miles away on the Atlantic. I had been a machine-gunner nearly all my time in France; but when I thought of battle I thought of the man with the rifle in the front trench. I was on my way to undertake the training of men for this job, and that’s the picture that my thoughts revolved around: the man in the front trench before the zero-hour. I hope something of my notions about the things which count then have gone into these chapters. The artillery is but to make a way for him, the machine guns but to aid and cover his advance, the tanks but to crush the traps laid for him; and not much can be done in the way of official control or command after the barrage lifts; the result, then, is largely in the hands of the man with the rifle. All that has been done and all that anybody can now do will be nothing if he fails. The wheel is to spin, the die is to be cast, which, when it comes to rest, will read either life or death, victory or defeat. This is the moment and this the man on which the value of all training and preparation depend.