The Diggers 7

The Diggers 7

"And that's how they wage war!" said the civilian. "The beasts!"

 

"It's the nature of the animal," said the officer with the air of a

man pronouncing a known truth. "When Peronne was taken it was placed

out of bounds for sixty days to the Australian troops, so that the

engineers could have time to go through the place and remove all

booby-traps. And it was filled with them. The first two Tommies who

entered the place were blown up. Doors were tried by the engineers,

for doors idly open or tightly shut were often death-traps. Lift

the latch and something goes bang! and you go bang with it. Shut a

door and hey! an explosion. 'Twas the same right through the place.

A spade thrown carelessly down, a clock ticking harmlessly, a rifle

flung away, a trench helmet lying on the street, each and any of

these might be traps. We have to move carefully after the retreating

Germans, and mopping up doesn't always consist of clearing the Huns

out of dug-outs but of clearing up the litter left on the field."

 

Of this and that the officer spoke, but now and again he came back

to the subject of booby traps. The man, although a brave soldier,

as the ribbons on his breast and the service stripes on his sleeve

testified, dreaded the booby traps. He spoke of trip wires on the

field, or wires in the cellars of captured villages, of wires by the

roadway, in the trench and on the parapet, all connected with land

mines and hidden explosives.

 

But the process of mopping up has humour of its own, and he spoke

with relish of suspicious objects lying in towns, villages, in

farmyards, and out on the open land between the lines. Men gazed at

these askance, moved them gingerly only to find that they were quite

harmless. Once he saw a stretcher lying in No-Man's Land, and fearing

to move it he tied a rope to one of the handles, came in to the

trench and got the men to pull the stretcher in. And they pulled and

brought it in, but nothing happened.

 

Again he spoke of an incident dealing with the capture of Peronne. A

colonel walking along a street stopped to peep inside a house which

had stood its beating well. This residence was apparently used by the

Germans as a battalion headquarters, for a number of papers littered

the floor and on the table was placed a box of cigars. But what

attracted the officer's eyes was a gold watch hanging by a copper

wire from the wall. His own wrist watch had got broken that morning

and the officer wanted a watch. But the wire roused his suspicions.

If he pulled it or tampered with it something of which he could never

give a report might happen.

 

He decided to work warily, and finding a string he tied it round the

watch, then paying out the string he walked into the open and made

himself snug in a shell-hole which yawned on the street. Once there

he gave the string a tug but nothing happened. He pulled again and

again and still the watch held firm. But on the seventh or eighth tug

the cord came away. He pulled it into the shell-hole to find nothing

in the loop. Getting to his feet he went into the house. But imagine

his surprise to find the wire hanging empty from the nail to which

it was attached. The watch was gone and it was a week later that he

was able to solve the mystery when he found a splendid gold watch in

the possession of one of his own men. This Digger happened to come

along when the Colonel was tugging at the supposed booby trap, took

the watch, put it in his pocket and made his exit by a back door.

 

 

REMEMBRANCE

 

Was it only yesterday

Lusty comrades marched away?

Now they're covered up with clay.

 

Seven glasses used to be

Filled for six good mates and me--

Now we only call for three.

 

Little crosses neat and white

Looking lonely every night,

Tell of comrades killed in fight.

 

Hearty fellows they have been

And no more will they be seen

Drinking wine in Nouex les Mines.

 

Lithe and supple lads were they,

Merrily they marched away--

Was it only yesterday?

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

THE DEAD VILLAGE

 

 

It was grey noon and we found ourselves on a flat-backed bluff that

rose from the marshes of the Somme. At the base of this bluff could

be seen many openings, telling of the Germans who had once dug into

the place, fashioning little homes in the wet clay. The German is a

burrowing animal and it is safe to say that for every shell left by

him in his flight across the Somme (and they are many) he has left

a corresponding dug-out. These carefully constructed shelters are

to be seen in all localities, in trench, gully, bank, by roadway,

churchyard and farm. His dug-outs are everywhere, heavily timbered,

strongly propped, snugly roofed. In the building of these habitations

of fear the German soldier has no equal. The Australian soldier may

have more dash and energy in fighting than the Boche, the English

soldier more pluck and resource, the Scot more stubbornness, but none

of them can fashion better dug-outs than the German. Whether the

building is to him an art, profession, or instinct, the fact remains

that his manifest ability in building is a thing of wonder.

 

Most of his dug-outs are furnished with due elegance, from the

carpeted and curtained abodes of officers, to the snug hutments of

the simple soldiers. The officers' chairs are covered with elegant

brocade, the officers' tables are of carved oak, and here and there

the officers' rooms are lined with rich tapestry. And all has been

taken from the homes of France, from the château, church and cottage.

 

Round the bluff on which I stood and as far away as the eye reached

could be seen innumerable brick red huddles, all that was left of the

villages which once stood on the Somme field, all that now remains

are stumps of walls, broken-down churches, smashed doors, paneless

windows, desolation and ruin. At points on the immense landscape

can be seen black blocks of enemy hutments which have in a measure

escaped the ravages of war. Gun positions can even be located,

the guns idle in their emplacements, howitzers knocked off their

mountings, gun carriages stuck in the mud, lines of the everlasting

wire entanglements stretching over miles and miles of fields. Here

and there is a signpost with German directions telling where such and

such a place can be found and where such and such a road is leading

to. The village of A---- lies some distance in front, the village of

B---- some distance to rear, and both heaps of ruins.

 

Each ruined village has an aspect peculiarly its own. Each seems to

view its evil hap in its own way and the traveller becomes conscious

of a distinct soul in each huddle of ruins.

 

Villers-Bretonneux with many walls standing and projecting beams

and girders rising over the rubbish seems to groan out: "Though I

am smashed and broken I am not yet beaten. They've tried to work

their will on me, but for all that here I stand battle-scarred but

indomitable. I have a soul that still remains my own."

 

Bray-sur-Somme, resting in a hollow, solitary and secluded, with

its church spire down, the Christ above the church door lacerated

with shrapnel splinters, and the green grass peeping covertly up

from the cracks in the pavement, wears the air of a hermit who has

cast himself off from the sin and temptation of the world. In it and

around it all is quiet. Not a sound, not a whisper. It seemed to me

as our party motored through there one day on our way to Chingnes,

that something personal stood above it, the Spirit of the village,

holding up its hand saying in a whisper: "Hush! Begone!" The village

detached and alone reminded me of a jungle animal in pain that creeps

into a dark corner to lick its sores. The life which disturbed the

repose of Bray-sur-Somme, if only for a moment, was to it a sinful

reproach; every movement, every voice and footfall seemed to throw it

back to brood on its own misery.

 

Again there is the village that has left nothing but a memory, a

village like Villars-Carbonnel, utterly dead, defaced off the world

as writing is wiped off a slate, as the snow is thawed from a garden

seat. Nothing remains of it, not a café sign, not a cobble or a butt

of wall. A sign that I have already spoken of stands there telling

that it marked the place where once stood Villars-Carbonnel, which

is now as dead as the people of yesteryear. Poor little village!

there are tears in its story, tears for the idle onlooker as well as

for the refugees who will some day return to know the fate of their

native place.

 

In a steep gully in Arey Wood, south of the village of Chingnes, we

were shown a monster gun, with a bore of fifteen inches and a barrel

fifty feet in length. The huge machinery of the mounting, its steel

platform embedded in concrete was sunk into a deep pit surrounded by

blackened and shivered trees. Three light railway lines ran up to the

emplacement, and dug-outs for the gun crew, partially completed, were

ranged round the base of the pit.

 

But the gun was smashed, broken at the breech, with the helpless

barrel lying in the mud and the gun carriage standing helpless on its

steel platform. Thus it was found by the men of the 1st Australian

Division when they came forward on the heels of the retreating

Germans in the early days of last August.

 

The shaping of this gun was certainly one of the most magnificent

struggles of man against the forces of Nature, the moulding of the

earth to his needs and the fashioning of it towards a desired end.

As you look at it, you can picture the men who went down into the

bowels of the earth, dug and scraped the iron ore which they sent

up from the blackness of eternal night to the light of day. Then

followed the moment when overburdened vehicles swept towards some

busy centre of labour, where the ore was shovelled into the smelting

pots. Men sweated and strained there, worked hard in overheated

chambers, hurrying on the job which they had set out to do.

 

And others, wise in their lore, pondered over plans relating to this

and that, elevation of the monster when in use, the trajectory of

the missiles which it was to vomit forth, the absorption of recoil

and the carriage of the weapon to its desired emplacement. And these

things were studied and made plain while the munition worker in the

hot suffocating atmosphere of the casting room laboured to make shells worthy of the gun.