Death of a Hero (39 page)

“Halt – password tonight's ‘Lantern'.” Winterbourne halted, and passed the message on. They waited. He was standing almost immediately behind a sentry, and got on the fire-step beside the man to take his first look at No Man's Land.

“ 'Oo are you?” asked the sentry in low tones.

“Pioneers.”

“Got a bit o' candle to give us, chum?”

“Awfully sorry, chum, I haven't.”

“Them fuckin' R.E.'s gets ‘em all.”

“I've got a packet of chocolate, if you'd like it.”

“Ah! Thanks, chum.”

The sentry broke a bit of chocolate and began to munch.

“Fuckin' cold up here, it is. Me feet's fair froze. Fuckin' dreary, too. I can ‘ear ole Fritz coughin' over there in 'is listenin' post – don't 'arf sound 'ollow. Listen.”

Winterbourne listened, and heard a dull, hollow sound of coughing.

“Fritz's sentry,” whispered the man. “Pore ole bugger – needs some liquorice.”

“Move on,” came the word from the man in front. Winterbourne jumped down from the fire-step and passed on the word.

“Good-night, chum,” said the sentry.

“Good-night, chum.”

Winterbourne was put on the party digging the sap out into No Man's Land. The officer stopped him as he was entering the sap.

“You're one of the new draft, aren't you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Very good, sir.”

The other men filed into the sap. The officer spoke in low tones:

“You can take sentry for the first hour. Come along, and don't stand up.”

The young crescent moon had risen and poured down cold, faint light. Every now and then a Verey light was fired from the German or English lines, brilliantly illuminating the desolate landscape of torn, irregular wire and jagged shell-holes. They climbed over the parapet and crawled over the broken ground past the end of the sap. The officer made for a shell-hole just inside the English wire, and Winterbourne followed him.

“Lie here,” whispered the officer, “and keep a sharp look-out for German patrols. Fire if you see them and give the alarm. There's a patrol of our own out on the right, so make sure before you fire. There's a couple of bombs somewhere in the shell-hole. You'll be relieved in an hour.”

“Very good, sir.”

The officer crawled away, and Winterbourne remained alone in No Man's Land, about twenty-five yards in front of the British line. He could hear the soft, dull thuds of picks and shovels from the men working the sap, and a very faint murmur as they talked in whispers. A Verey light hissed up from the English lines, and he strained his eyes for the possible enemy patrol. In the brief light he saw nothing but the irregular masses of German wire, the broken line of their parapet, shell-holes and debris, and the large stump of a dead tree. Just as the bright magnesium turned in its luminous parabola, a hidden machine-gun, not thirty yards from Winterbourne, went off with a loud crackle of bullets like the engine of a motor-bicycle. He started, and nearly pulled the trigger of his rifle. Then silence. A British sentry coughed with a deep hacking sound; then from the distance came the hollow coughing of a German sentry. Eerie sounds in the pallid moonlight. “Ping!” went a sniper's rifle. It was horribly cold. Winterbourne was shivering, partly from cold, partly from excitement.

Interminable minutes passed. He grew colder and colder. Occasionally a few shells from one side or the other went wailing overhead and crashed somewhere in the back areas. About four hundred yards away to his left began a series of loud, shattering detonations. He strained his eyes, and could just see the flash of the explosion and the
dark column of smoke and debris. These were German trench-mortars, the dreaded “minnies”, although he did not know it.

Nothing different happened until about three-quarters of an hour had passed. Winterbourne got colder and colder, felt he had been out there at least three hours, and thought he must have been forgotten. He shivered with cold. Suddenly he thought he saw something move to his right, just outside the wire. He gazed intently, all tense and alert. Yes, a dark something was moving. It stopped, and seemed to vanish. Then near it another dark figure moved, and then a third. It was a patrol, making for the gap in the wire in front of Winterbourne. Were they Germans or British? He pointed his rifle towards them, got the bombs ready, and waited. They came nearer and nearer. Just before they got to the wire, Winterbourne challenged in a loud whisper:

“Halt, who are you?”

All three figures instantly disappeared.

“Halt, who are you?”

“Friend,” came a low answer.

“Give the word or I fire.”

“Lantern.”

“All right.”

One of the men crawled through the wire to Winterbourne, followed by the other two. They wore balaclava helmets, and carried revolvers.

“Are you the patrol?” whispered Winterbourne.

“Who the fuckin' hell d'you think we are? Father Christmas? What are you doin' out here?”

“Pioneers digging a sap about fifteen yards behind.”

“Are you Pioneers?”

“Yes.”

“Got a bit o' candle, chum?”

“Sorry, I haven't; we don't get them issued.”

The patrol crawled off, and Winterbourne heard an alarmed challenge from the men working in the sap, and the word “Lantern”. A Verey light went up from the German lines just as the patrol were crawling over the parapet. A German sentry fired his rifle and a machine-gun started up. The patrol dropped hastily into the trench. The machine-gun bullets whistled cruelly past Winterbourne's head – zwiss, zwiss, zwiss. He crouched down in the hole. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss. Then silence. He lifted his head, and continued to watch. For two or three minutes
there was complete silence. The men in the sap seemed to have knocked off work, and made no sound. Winterbourne listened intently. No sound. It was the most ghostly, desolate, deathly silence he had ever experienced. He had never imagined that death could be so deathly. The feeling of annihilation, of the end of existence, of a dead planet of the dead arrested in a dead time and space, penetrated his flesh along with the cold. He shuddered. So frozen, so desolate, so dead a world – everything smashed and lying inertly broken. Then “crack – ping!” went a sniper's rifle, and a battery of field-guns opened out with salvoes about half a mile to his right. The machine-guns began again. The noise was a relief after that ghastly dead silence.

At last the N.C.O. came crawling out from the sap with another man to relieve him. A Verey light shot up from the German line in their direction, just as the two men reached him. All three crouched motionless, as the accurate German machine-gun fire swept the British trench parapet – zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, the flights of bullets went over them. Winterbourne saw a strand of wire just in front of him suddenly flip up in the air where a low bullet had struck it. Quite near enough – not six inches above his head.

They crawled back to the sap, and Winterbourne tumbled in. He found himself face to face with the platoon officer, Lieutenant Evans. Winterbourne was shivering uncontrollably; he felt utterly chilled. His whole body was numb, his hands stiff, his legs one ache of cold from the knees down. He realized the cogency of the Adjutant's farewell hint about looking after feet and decided to drop his indifference to goose grease and neat's-foot oil.

“Cold?” asked the officer.

“It's bitterly cold out there, sir,” said Winterbourne through chattering teeth.

“Here, take a drink of this,” and Evans held out a small flask.

Winterbourne took the flask in his cold-shaken hand. It chinked roughly against his teeth as he took a gulp of the terrifically-potent Army rum. The strong liquor half-choked him, burned his throat, and made his eyes water. Almost immediately he felt the deadly chill beginning to lessen. But he still shivered.

“Good Lord, man, you're frozen,” said Evans. “I thought it was colder than ever tonight. It's no weather for lying in No Man's Land. Corporal, you'll have to change that sentry every half-hour – an hour's too long in this frost.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Have some more rum?” asked Evans.

“No, thanks, sir,” replied Winterbourne; “I'm quite all right now. I can warm up with some digging.”

“No; get your rifle and come with me.”

Evans started off briskly down the trench to visit the other working parties. About a hundred yards from the sap he climbed out of the trench over the parados; Winterbourne scrambled after, more impeded by his chilled limbs, his rifle and heavier equipment. Evans gave him a hand up. They walked about another hundred yards over the top, and then reached the place where Several parties were digging trench-mortar emplacements.

The N.C.O. saw them coming and climbed out of one of the holes to meet them.

“Getting on all right, Sergeant?”

“Ground's very hard, sir.”

“I know, but – ”

Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, zwiss came a rush of bullets, following the rapid tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat of a machine-gun. The Sergeant ducked double. Evans remained calmly standing. Seeing his unconcern, Winterbourne also remained upright.

“I know the ground's hard,” said Evans, “but those emplacements are urgently needed. Headquarters were at us again today about them. I'll see how you're getting on.”

The Sergeant hastily scuttled into one of the deep emplacements, followed in a more leisurely way by the officer. Winterbourne remained standing on top, and listened to Evans as he urged the men to get a move on. Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss, very close this time. Winterbourne felt a slight creep in his spine; but since Evans had not moved before, he decided that the right thing was to stand still. Evans visited each of the four emplacements, and then made straight for the front line. He paused at the parados.

“We're pretty close to the Boche front line here. He's got a machine-gun post about a hundred and fifty yards over there.”

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Zwiss, zwiss, zwiss.

“Look! Over there.”

Winterbourne just caught a glimpse of the quick flashes.

“Damn !” said Evans. “I forgot to bring my prismatic compass tonight. We might have taken a bearing on them, and got the artillery to turf them out.”

He jumped carelessly into the trench, and Winterbourne dutifully followed. About fifty yards further on, he stopped.

“I see from your pay-book that you're an artist in civil life.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Paint pictures, and draw?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why don't you apply for a draughtsman's job at Division? They need them.”

“Well, sir, I don't particularly covet a hero's grave, but I feel very strongly I ought to take my chance in the line along with the rest.”

“Ah! Of course. Are you a pretty good walker?”

“I used to go on walking tours in peace time, sir.”

“Well, there's an order that every officer is to have a runner. Would you like the job of Platoon Runner? You'd have to accompany me, and you're supposed to take my last dying orders! You'd have to learn the lie of the trenches, so as to act as guide; take my orders to N.C.O.s know enough about what's going on to help them if I'm knocked out; and carry messages. It's perhaps a bit more dangerous than the ordinary work, and you may have to turn out at odd hours, but it'll get you off a certain amount of digging.”

“I'd like it very much, sir.

“All right, I'll speak to the Major about it.”

“It's very good of you, sir.”

“Can you find your way back to the sap? It's about two hundred yards along this trench.”

“I'm sure I can, sir.”

“All right. Go back and report to the Corporal, and carry on.”

“Very good, sir.

“You haven't forgotten the password?”

“No, sir – ‘Lantern'.”

About thirty yards along the trench, there was a rattle of equipment, and Winterbourne found a bayonet about two feet from his chest. It was a gas-sentry outside a Company H.Q. dug-out.

“Halt! Who are yer?”

“Lantern.”

The sentry languidly lowered his rifle.

“Fuckin' cold tonight, mate.”

“Bloody cold.”

“What are you – Bedfords or Essex?”

“No; Pioneers.”

“Got a bit of candle to give us, mate? it's fuckin' dark in them dug-outs.”

“Very sorry, chum, I haven't.”

Rather trying, this constant demand for candle-ends from the Pioneers, who were popularly supposed by the infantry to receive immense “issues” of candles. But without candles the dug-outs were merely black holes, even in the daytime, if they were any depth. They were deep on this front, since the line was a captured German trench reorganized. Hence the dug-outs faced the enemy, instead of being turned away from them.

“Oh, all right; good-night.”

“Good-night.”

Winterbourne returned to the sap, and did two more half-hour turns as sentry, and for the rest of the time picked, or shovelled the hard clods of earth into sandbags. The sandbags were then carried back to the front line and piled there to raise the parapet. It was a slow business. The sap itself was camouflaged to avoid observation. Winterbourne hadn't the slightest idea what its object was. He was very weary and sleepy when they finally knocked off work about one in the morning. An eight-hour shift, exclusive of time taken in getting to and from the work. The men filed wearily along the trench, rifles slung on the left shoulder, picks and shovels carried on the right. Winterbourne stumbled along half-asleep with the cold and the fatigue of unaccustomed labour. He felt he didn't mind how dangerous it was – if it was dangerous – to be a runner, provided he got some change from the dreariness of digging, and filling and carrying sandbags.