The Diggers 6

The Diggers 6

THE FIELD

 

The sky shows cold where the roof has been,

But the stars of night are none the dimmer.

Where the home once stood are the ruins seen,

But the brazier glows with a cheery glimmer--

The old life goes, but the new life fills

The scene of many a peasant story,

And the bursting shells on the sentried hills

Whisper of death, but shout of glory!

 

Gutted and ripped the stricken earth

Where the bones of the restless dead are showing,

But the great earth breathes of life and birth

And ruin shrinks from the blossoms blowing.

The old life fails, but the new life comes

Over the ruins scarred and hoary,

Though the thunder of guns and the roll of drums

But make for death while they shout of glory.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER V

 

THE HINDENBURG TUNNEL

 

 

On the day following our visit to Peronne we motored out to

Bellicourt to see the Hindenburg tunnel, of which rumour and reading

tell us so much. This tunnel was built by Hindenburg, we are told,

and if ever the British troops crossed the German defences the enemy

soldiers would conceal themselves in thousands, come out when our

men had passed by, attack them in rear and cut them to pieces. The

Hindenburg trenches might be crossed, but the Hindenburg tunnel

would be the ruin of the Allies. This and that we were told, for war

quickening the ear for rumour we believe much that in days of peace

would pass by for idle tales.

 

The truth of the matter is that this tunnel was not built by

Hindenburg but by Louis XVI, at whose expense the work was begun,

the cost of the undertaking being about £4,000,000, and through it

runs the great canal of Picardy. This canal passing from St. Quentin

to Cambrai had to run through a country rising so much that it was

necessary to carry it under the earth for a considerable depth, and

this canal tunnel in places is hewn entirely from rock chalk. The

work was completed by Napoleon I in 1810 and a communication opened

thereby between the river Scheldt and the extreme eastern departments

of France and the Atlantic through the rivers Somme, Seine and Loire.

 

At Bellicourt we descended several steps covered with mud and

littered with the wreckage of war, strands of barbed wire, rusty

rifles, German equipments, ammunition boxes, trench helmets,

sandbags, etc., all the odds and ends flung away by the German army

in retreat.

 

Sticking through the arched entrance of the tunnel was the prow of

a flat-bottomed barge and built over this was a chamber. In here we

made our way, crawling up long, crooked stone stairs steeped in gloom

almost impenetrable. We entered an apartment dimly lit by an opening

which let in a pale ray of light. The officer conducting our party

lit a candle and we could see the room. Under our feet was a floor of

boards holed in many places; some of the holes were very large. To

come along the floor without a light was impossible, and one false

step and a man would drop through the aperture into the canal below.

On our left as we entered stood a large wheel which was at one time

worked by a hand windlass. This wheel was used in lifting the sluice

gates to let the freight barges through.

 

Further along were two large coppers filled with some thick fluid

which exhaled a putrid stench. One of these coppers is now known to

history, for rumour has it that when the British soldiers took the

place they found a German dead and naked in the boiler, that the

soldier had been dissected by a surgeon, that the oven was at that

time in use for cooking meat for the German soldiery, etc.

 

That Germans lived there and made the place their dwelling is true,

for even now in apartments leading off from the entrance chamber

can be seen many beds bedded with straw and still covered with

army blankets. Belts for machine gun bullets litter the floor,

and opposite an opening that looks out towards the north-west is

to be seen an emplacement on which a machine gun once stood. The

fact is that the apartment was used by a machine-gun crew who made

the chamber their home, who lived there, sleeping in the place and

cooking their food in the copper.

 

Up above the machine-gun emplacement is to be seen a hole slanting

obliquely through the outer wall and coming to an end in the roof

of the room. It is now held by some that a shell came through here,

dropped in the midst of the gunners, burst and blew one of the men

into the copper. Of the remainder a number were killed and two or

three wounded. On the wall of the apartment can be seen many holes

and dents made by flying fragments.

 

This is the opinion of some. Others say that soldiers attacked the

place, ascended the stairs, bombed the inmates of the keep, killing

many, and the force of an exploding bomb blew one into the copper.

 

Then there is a third party, which says that the Germans were going

to use the dead man for food. This being a most improbable story is

one of the most readily believed by the public.

 

On leaving the canal bank and clambering up the stairs we were able

to see on left and right the trench systems built by the Germans, the

massive parapets, the long communication trenches, the emplacements

for guns, the pill-boxes and the rows of barbed wire entanglement.

How this place was stormed and taken by the British soldiery is a

miracle. How they managed to lacerate the German sinews of defence,

to hack their way through and batter down the lines erected by

Hindenburg is one of the marvels of war.

 

The story can never be told. Historians will arise one day and

tell how the infantry advanced taking so many kilometres of ground

despite great opposition and formidable defence. At dawn they left

the village of A----, the historian will tell us, and at dusk they

captured the hamlet of B----. But that will never make the whole

story of the operations manifest to the eyes of men. Even knowing the

place on which the battle was fought, knowing it as it is now with

the trenches still remaining and the lines of wire entanglements

still standing, it is impossible to tell the story of the encounter.

Little details, incidents which meant life or death to one, two or

a dozen men, the taking of a dug-out, the capture of a machine-gun

emplacement, the scramble across the broken wire on the trail of a

tank, the hand-to-hand fight in a dark cellar are forgotten, even

by those who have taken part in them. Only the principal outlines

and outstanding features of the gigantic contest can be portrayed by

the historian. Little personal affairs, stories of squads and crews,

belong, as Napoleon once remarked, "rather to the biography of the

regiments than to the history of the Army." And the exploits of small

bodies of men, of infantry squads, of machine-gun crews will live for

a little while only when veterans of the war exchange confidences

over a backyard fence in days of peace and when they fight their

battles over again, tracing with their pipe shanks on their hands the

lines of trench taken and held, the redoubt lost, the ground on which

the hand-to-hand conflict took place and all other various little

doings which were part and parcel of the greater battle.

 

The historian will give the mere outlines of the struggle. In four

lines of cold print he shall tell how ---- Regiment left the village

of A---- at dawn and in face of almost insurmountable difficulties

took the hamlet of B---- at dusk. Here the regimental historian may

come in and add a little, telling how "B" company was held up by the

wires, how "A" company with reckless dash, came to the assistance

of their mates, how Sergeant ---- urged the men forward, how no one

faltered, how, with set teeth, they set themselves to the task of

getting through and how in the end victory was gained. But still

there is a lot more to be told, the pining and waiting of the women

left at home, the sleepless nights when letters from the loved ones

have not come to hand, the weary misery of mothers who have lost

their sons, of wives who have lost their husbands. In this story of

war there is laughter and tears, courage and timidity, weakness and

strength, sorrow and death. Even those who have fought know very

little of what took place, they have been mere atoms moving backward

and forward in the vast fluctuation, blinded in the obscurity of the

conflict. For them the battle has been a mirage having in it nothing

that is fixed or stable, a great hallucination.

 

The line was taken, but even those who took part in the operations

know not how the superhuman was accomplished, how the miracle was

performed.

 

"It was a tough nut to crack," said a Digger to whom I spoke, asking

him of the battle. "But we got through somehow."

 

"It was damned stiff," said another, shrugging his shoulders as if to

belittle the effort of men in the operations. "Damned stiff, but we

had the guns and the tanks."

 

"For God's sake don't put your hand on that!"

 

It was an officer with two rows of ribbons on his breast and the

gold stripe in triplicate on his sleeve who spoke. He was a veteran

soldier who had fought in many campaigns and who knew war as it is

waged on more than one continent. Now he was looking at one of our

party who had bent to lift a German helmet from the ground near the

mouth of the tunnel. The souvenir searcher held himself erect and

fixed a look of inquiry on the officer.

 

"It may be a booby trap," the officer explained.

 

"That, sir?" he said, in a voice of incredulity.

 

"Probably not," said the officer. "But one never knows. When we took

Peronne and the Diggers set about clearing the streets of dead, some

of our boys found a dead German lying on a stretcher. Two of them

bent down with the intention of lifting the man and carrying him to a

grave. And the stretcher and the dead man on it and the two Diggers

went sky high, for the contrivance was attached to a mine by a strand

of wire. On another occasion an officer friend of mine went into a

dug-out in the front line, recently captured from the Germans. Quite

snug and comfortable. He lived in it for three days, but at the end

of that time it went up, carrying him with it. It was all planned out

before the Germans left. Somewhere in the roof of the dug-out was a

certain acid, which fell drop by drop on a wire, eating it away. When

the wire was cut something which it held up fell, struck a spark and

an explosion took place. Again, a party of Americans found one of

their dead lying on the barbed wire entanglements in No Man's Land

the other day and they went forward to lift him off and bury him. An

engineer saved the men by rushing up and yelling to them to clear

off. Then when an examination was made it was found that the soldier

was tied to the entanglement with a wire and this wire was connected with an explosive."