To the Fore with the Tanks! Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  THE COMMUNICATION TRENCH

  FOR the next fifty yards Private Ralph Setley's range of vision wasbounded in front by the steel helmet, bulging pack and hunchedshoulders of the man preceding him. Right and left nothing but fieldslavishly pitted with shell holes. The only sounds, besides theever-thunderous roar of the guns, the quelching of the men's boots inthe mud.

  "Left incline."

  The platoon wriggled sideways like an enormous worm. The reason wassoon not only apparent to the eye but to the nostrils. A mule, struckdown by a shell, was lying half buried in the mud, its legs stickingup grotesquely in the air.

  Presently the man preceding Setley seemed to disappear from view. TheTommies in front were descending the steps leading to the longcommunication trench. For nearly a mile the only way of gaining thereserve and firing trenches was by means of the sunken gallery.

  Eight feet down Setley descended. His feet no longer sank to hisankles in mud. The nailed soles of his boots grated uponwire-netting, that, stretched across the seemingly endless line of"duck-boards," prevented the men slipping on the lively pieces ofboarding into the slime that formed the major portion of the floor ofthe trench.

  On either hand the stiff, slimy walls of clay, topped by rows ofsandbags, threatened to collapse and bury the users of the narrow andtortuous way, for in order to prevent the communicating trench beingenfiladed by hostile fire it was a continued succession of twists andturns.

  Still the rain poured down remorselessly upon the great-coatedTommies. Here and there portions of the parapet had slipped bodilyinto the trench, necessitating a tedious clamber over a heap of moistclay of the consistency of soft putty.

  Before a hundred yards of the narrow way had been traversed GeorgeAnderson, who was immediately in front of Setley, steppedincautiously upon the edge of one of the duck-boards. In a trice thesection of woodwork tilted, deporting the man up to his thighs in mudand water, while Ralph, stopping abruptly to avoid the tilted end ofthe board, was cannoned into by the man behind who happened to bePrivate Alderhame. The next instant both were sprawling on top of theluckless Anderson, driving his writhing body still deeper into themud.

  With difficulty Ralph and the ex-actor extricated themselves. Gingerwas in a worse predicament, for until his comrades gripped his armand dragged him out by main force he was unable to disengage himselffrom the clammy embrace of the tenacious clay.

  "I came out 'ere for sojering," remarked the aggrieved man. "Not togo in for mudlarkin'. I could get plenty of that at Gravesend."

  "Phit! phit!" Something, buzzing like an angry bee, slapped viciouslyinto the mud wall a few inches above Setley's head. Then another,glancing off the steel helmet of the still grumbling Anderson, sentthe man staggering into Ralph's arms.

  "Keep down as you pass this place," shouted a hoarse voice throughthe darkness. "The parapet's blown in."

  A gap nearly twenty yards in length confirmed the speaker's words.Through this exposed section rifle bullets were whizzing. Apparentlythe Huns had marked the spot during the hours of daylight and hadlashed some rifles to posts, so trained that at fifteen hundred yardsthey could command this part of the communication trench by night.

  The platoon obeyed smartly, yet resentfully. It was bad enough tohave to walk through mud. To crawl on one's hands and knees was aboutthe limit.

  "Way for the wounded!"

  The men, most of them still in a prone position, hugged the slipperyside of the trench, peering through the darkness at the as yetstrange sight.

  "Good luck, you blighters!" exclaimed the first of the woundedTommies, a tall cadaverous man, with his head roughly bandaged andhis arm in a sling. "You're going to a hot shop, s'welp me. Fifteenof our chaps copped it in ten minutes. Never mind; it's for Blighty Iam."

  The next casualty--a man with his left hand blown off at thewrist--was groaning and cursing as he passed, staggering like adrunken man and paying scant heed to the warning to keep well down.

  Then two more, borne on stretchers. The knuckles of the bearersrasped the equipment of the Wheatshires, so narrow was the space inwhich to pass, while in order to cross the "unhealthy" section of thetrench the men had to deposit the stretchers on the duck-boards anddrag them sleigh fashion.

  Three men, hobbling, using their rifles as crutches, completed thepageant of pain.

  "Copped it proper," explained one of the wounded. "Never 'ad as muchas a blinkin' chance to fire my blessed rifle."

  "Wouldn't 'ave been much use if you did, Tommy," rejoined his comradewith a laugh. "You knowed as 'ow you're the rottenest shot in thebattalion."

  "No need to rub that in afore a lot of strangers," retorted theother. "'Op it; I'll race you to the dressing-station. No more dashedfirst line trenches for us for a bit, thank 'eaven. Foot it, youblighter, afore your leg gets stiff."

  The twain vanished into the darkness, leaving the dank, reekingodours of dirt and sweat in the muggy air.

  Another hundred yards and a voice rang out:

  "Is that the ration party?"

  "No," replied the sergeant. "Reliefs for the Wheatshires."

  "Good luck to 'em, then!" rejoined the speaker. "But where the deuceare the rations? There's no barrage fire on now, an' we ain't seen nogrub for two whole days."

  "Keep your heads down, lads."

  The caution was hardly necessary. Each man was bent almost double.Over the parapet on the left a whiz-bang exploded, sending a showerof dirt upon the soldiers' steel helmets. Trench mortars were lobbingtheir deadly missiles into the British second-line trenches.

  "Here you are," explained the guide as the head of the platoonemerged into a short "bay" or section of the winding trench. "Two mento each dug-out, sir; t'other fellows will show 'em the ropes better.C.O.'s dug-out is fifty yards further on, sir."

  "Stick to me, Setley," whispered Alderhame.

  "Will if I can," replied Ralph. "They're telling us off in pairs."

  "You two in there," ordered a strange sergeant, indicating whatappeared to be a glorified rabbit-hole burrowed out of the side ofthe trench. "New chums, mates," he continued, calling to the as yetinvisible denizens of the subterranean dwelling.

  "Come in," said a youthful voice. "Mind your head. I thought it wasDixon with the grub. Don't keep the curtain held back longer thanusual. It isn't healthy, you know."

  Down nine steps cut into the slippery clay, each succeeding stepbeing a little more like liquid slime than the preceding one, Setleymade his way, the top edge of his pack rubbing against the crosstimbers of the roof of the obliquely sloping tunnel. His hand came incontact with a clammy ground-sheet, termed by courtesy a curtain.Pulling it aside he had his first vision of the interior of adug-out--his temporary abode during his "turn" in the trenches. Theexcavation measured roughly twelve feet by nine, its height beingbarely sufficient to allow a tall man to stand upright. At the endfurthest from the entrance was a stove fashioned out of an old tinbucket and provided with a decidedly inefficient chimney, since mostof the fumes wafted into the dug-out. On the stove a "billy" wasboiling. Stuck on the end of a flat piece of iron projecting from thewall was a guttering candle, the sole illumination, its yellow lightbeing hardly powerful enough to penetrate the smoky atmosphere.Against a horizontal slab of wood reposed six rifles, while onslightly raised benches against the side walls were bundles of dampstraw, rolled blankets and kit-bags.

  "That's right," continued the voice that had bidden the strangersenter. "Sling your gear on that bench, and please don't trouble towipe your boots. We didn't bother to polish the floor this morning."

  Ridding himself of his rifle and pack, an example that Alderhame wasquick to follow, Ralph turned his attention to his facetious newcomrade.

  By this time Setley had grown more accustomed to the dim light. Halflying, half sitting upon one of the benches was a mere lad of aboutnineteen or twenty, burly of figure, round-faced except for apronounced hollow in his cheeks, and with dark brown eyes in whichlurked a suspicion of constant men
tal strain. He had discarded histunic, revealing a Cardigan jacket. Otherwise he was fully dressed,even to his muddy boots, from which the warm vapour rose like steamfrom the back of an overworked horse on a cold day. Pulled well downover his head was a grey woollen cap, while wrapped loosely round hisneck was a khaki-coloured scarf.

  "In the absence of a mutual friend to introduce us," remarked therecumbent occupant of the sleeping-place, "I suppose we must do thehonours ourselves. My name's Penfold--No. 142857, which is jolly easyto remember if you know anything about recurring decimals. What'syours?"

  Setley told him, adding gratuitously that he was a bank clerk.

  "That so?" remarked Penfold. "I was in a shipping office. And yourchum?"

  "Alderhame is my name," replied the actor. "My profession? Well, Iused to tread the boards."

  "Strikes me you'll still tread the boards and feel jolly sick atdoing it before long," rejoined Penfold with a laugh. "Duck-boards Imean. We were to have been relieved at eight this evening. Anotherregiment is supposed to take our place, but they didn't turn up. Why,I don't know; there wasn't much of a barrage this evening--and nowthe infernal racket is starting again."

  Heavy shells exploding in front and behind the lines of trenchesshook the dug-out until the timbering seemed in imminent danger ofgiving way.

  For some moments there was silence in the underground refuge. Thecontinuous crash without was appalling.

  "Is this place shell-proof?" asked Alderhame.

  "Nothing is," replied Penfold nonchalantly. "A direct hit with a bigshell and it's 'Gone West' with the three of us. Hullo!"

  The waterproof-sheet was drawn aside and a red-faced sergeant, themoisture running in rivulets from his steel helmet, thrust his headinto the reeking dug-out.

  "Look slippy, you chaps!" he exclaimed. "Every man is wanted. There'sa massed attack developing."