A Yankee in the Trenches - Robert Derby Holmes (best books to read in your 20s TXT) 📗

When I found my battalion, the battle of High Wood had pretty well quieted down. We had taken the position we went after, and the fighting was going on to the north and beyond the Wood. The Big Push progressed very rapidly as the summer drew to a close. Our men were holding one of the captured positions in the neighborhood of the Wood.

It must have been two days after we went over the top with the tanks that Captain Green had me up and told me that I was promoted. At least that was what he called it. I differed with him, but didn't say so.

The Captain said that as I had had a course in bombing, he thought he would put me in the Battalion Bombers.

I protested that the honor was too great and that I really didn't think I was good enough.

After that the Captain said that he didn't think I was going in the bombers. He knew it. I was elected!

I didn't take any joy whatever in the appointment, but orders are orders and they have to be obeyed. The bombers are called the "Suicide Club" and are well named. The mortality in this branch of the service is as great if not greater than in any other.

In spite of my feelings in the matter, I accepted the decision cheerfully—like a man being sentenced to be electrocuted—and managed to convey the impression to Captain Green that I was greatly elated and that I looked forward to future performances with large relish. After that I went back to my shelter and made a new will.

That very night I was called upon to take charge of a bombing party of twelve men. A lieutenant, Mr. May, one of the bravest men I ever knew, was to be of the party and in direct command. I was to have the selection of the men.

Captain Green had me up along with Lieutenant May early in the evening, and as nearly as I can remember these were his instructions:

"Just beyond High Wood and to the left there is a sap or small trench leading to the sunken road that lies between the towns of Albert and Bapaume. That position commands a military point that we find necessary to hold before we can make another attack. The Germans are in the trench. They have two machine guns and will raise the devil with us unless we get them out. It will cost a good many lives if we attempt to take the position by attack, but we are under the impression that a bombing party in the night on a surprise attack will be able to take it with little loss of life. Take your twelve men out there at ten o'clock and take that trench! You will take only bombs with you. You and Mr. May will have revolvers. After taking the trench, consolidate it, and before morning there will be relief sent out to you. The best of luck!'"

The whole thing sounded as simple as ABC. All we had to do was go over there and take the place. The captain didn't say how many Germans there would be nor what they would be doing while we were taking their comfortable little position. Indeed he seemed to quite carelessly leave the Boche out of the reckoning. I didn't. I knew that some of us, and quite probably most of us, would never come back.

I selected my men carefully, taking only the coolest and steadiest and the best bombers. Most of them were men who had been at Dover with me. I felt like an executioner when I notified them of their selection.

At nine-thirty we were ready, stripped to the lightest of necessary equipment. Each of the men was armed with a bucket of bombs. Some carried an extra supply in satchels, so we knew there would be no shortage of Millses.

Lieutenant May took us out over the top on schedule time, and we started for the position to be taken. We walked erect but in the strictest silence for about a thousand yards. At that time the distances were great on the Somme, as the Big Push was in full swing, and the advance had been fast. Trench systems had been demolished, and in many places there were only shell holes and isolated pieces of trench defended by machine guns. The whole movement had progressed so far that the lines were far apart and broken, so much so that in many cases the fighting had come back to the open work of early in the war.

Poking along out there, I had the feeling that we were an awfully long way from the comparative safety of our main body—too far away for comfort. We were. Any doubts on the matter disappeared before morning.

At the end of the thousand yards Lieutenant May gave the signal to lie down. We lay still half an hour or so and then crawled forward. Fortunately there was no barbed wire, as all entanglements had been destroyed by the terrific bombardment that had been going on for weeks. The Germans made no attempt to repair it nor did we.

We crawled along for about ten minutes, and the Lieutenant passed the word in whispers to get ready, as we were nearly on them. Each of us got out a bomb, pulled the pin with our teeth, and waited for the signal. It was fairly still. Away off to the rear, guns were going, but they seemed a long way off. Forward, and away off to the right beyond the Wood, there was a lot of rifle and machine-gun fire, and we could see the sharp little lavender stabs of flame like electric flashes. It was light enough so that we could see dimly.

Just ahead we could hear the murmur of the Huns as they chatted in the trench. They hadn't seen us. Evidently they didn't suspect and were more or less careless.

The Lieutenant waited until the sound of voices was a little louder than before, the Boches evidently being engaged in a fireside argument of some kind, and then he jumped to his feet shouting, "Now then, my lads. All together!"

We came up all standing and let 'em go. It was about fifteen yards to Fritz, and that is easy to a good bomber, as my men all were. A yell of surprise and fright went up from the trench, and they started to run. We spread out so as to get room, gave them another round of Millses, and rushed.

The trench wasn't really a trench at all. It was the remains of a perfectly good one, but had been bashed all to pieces, and was now only five or six shell craters connected by the ruined traverses. At no point was it more than waist high and in some places only knee high. We swarmed into what was left of the trench and after the Heinies. There must have been forty of them, and it didn't take them long to find out that we were only a dozen. Then they came back at us. We got into a crooked bit of traverse that was in relatively good shape and threw up a barricade of sandbags. There was any amount of them lying about.

The Germans gave us a bomb or two and considerable rifle fire, and we beat it around the corner of the bay. Then we had it back and forth, a regular seesaw game. We would chase them back from the barricade, and then they would rush us and back we would go. After we had lost three men and Lieutenant May had got a slight wound, we got desperate and got out of the trench and rushed them for further orders. We fairly showered them as we followed them up, regardless of danger to ourselves. All this scrap through they hadn't done anything with the machine guns. One was in our end of the trench, and we found that the other was out of commission. They must have been short of small-arm ammunition and bombs, because on that last strafing they cleared out and stayed.

After the row was over we counted noses and found four dead and three slightly wounded, including Lieutenant May. I detailed two men to take the wounded and the Lieutenant back. That left four of us to consolidate the position. The Lieutenant promised to return with relief, but as it turned out he was worse than he thought, and he didn't get back.

I turned to and inspected the position. It was pretty hopeless. There really wasn't much to consolidate. The whole works was knocked about and was only fit for a temporary defence. There were about a dozen German dead, and we searched them but found nothing of value. So we strengthened our cross-trench barricade and waited for the relief. It never came.

When it began to get light, the place looked even more discouraging. There was little or no cover. We knew that unless we got some sort of concealment, the airplanes would spot us, and that we would get a shell or two. So we got out the entrenching tools and dug into the side of the best part of the shallow traverse. We finally got a slight overhang scraped out. We didn't dare go very far under for fear that it would cave. We got some sandbags up on