The Raid that Failed.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1441, 6 December 1917, Page 10 (Supplement)

The Raid that Failed.

If the corporal had been wearing broadcloth, or sackcloth and ashes, or whatever may be the most unmilitary sort of garb, I fancy one still could have recognised in h‘m the man who had served at the front. There was that indefinable quality in his eyes, that stamp upon his face, that mysterious something about the man’s whole manner which is recognisable to most people who have served in the trenches as the stamp of Britain’s soldiers from overseas. But, as a matter of fact, he was in hospital blue, with a smart necktie, and he had two gold stripes above the cuff of the left sleeve of his overcoat. The sergeant with whom he was talking, on the other hand (a very trim, smart and soldierly figure, whose breeches and boots were not one could have sworn a Government “issue”), was quite certainly not a member of the Overseas Expeditionary Forces, not a trench service man, anyhow; probably an authority in some orderly room or headquarters office, I thought. The sergeant held a newspaper on his knees, and was expounding. “Queer thing,” he was saying; “but the German idea of reporting any of our movements out there seems to be to say that a raid or an attack, or whatever it may be, was attempted by the enemy at such and such a time, and was repulsed by our brave sauer-krauters; or just that it ‘failed.’ Must make quite encouraging reading for the simple sausage-eater across the Rhine, because these ‘failures’ seem to be the only kind of operation we ever tackle, according to the Boche reports.” “Yes, that’s so,” agreed the corporal, and proceeded meditatively to twist the cigarette he smoked from one side of It's mouth to the other. It seemed the matter was to end there, and I had almost decided to move on, when, suddenly, the sergeant began to speak, in his rather monotonous, sing-song fashion; and this, so far as I can remember his words, was what he said: “Ye see, the Boche can’t help lyin’. I s’pose it’s the way he’s bin brought up, as ye might say. His whole game rests on lyin’. You can see it in every blessed thing he does. And, as far as I can make out, the poor beggar’s fed on lies from start to finish in his own country, as a sort of a ration, as ye might say. I’d be sorry for the Boches, I would, if they weren’t such a mean, dirty lot o’ skunks; because it seems to me that if you’re a Boche you’re not hardly allowed to think, except by numbers, as ye might say; to order, you know, like a p’rade. Queer cattle, they are to be sure. But, talkin’ about raids that were failures reminds me. Eh? No, thanks; not just now. I smoke too many of ’em. “Well, as I was sayin’, first time we was in trenches was down there by the Onker, as they call it now, though I don’t think people over here ever heard of the river then. Tell you the truth I didn’t know the name of it meself at that time, though many a score o’ times I’ve washed me gum boots in it, an’ meself, too, if you come to that. We had some baths beside the Onker, down there at Avelwee. Bin an old mill or something, the place had, just below the Shatter, where brigade headquarters was, above Crucifix Corner. The R.E. dump was just above it, when the barrier was across the road. I can see it now. Many’s the carryin’ fatigue I’ve marched away from there at night, with shrap sputterin’ over the road across the river, too. You got into the communication trench just beside Crucifix Corner. We had our field cookers down there at first. But, bless ye, that’s all miles away behind our lines now. Crucifix Corner would be a sight safer’n Piccadilly Circus now; a sight safer for some of us; my word! H’m! I wonder if I’ll get out again, to see the finish of it. I’d like to be in at the finish.

“Well, as I was sayin’, the first bit o’ line we took over was pretty well the limit for mud; I never saw the beat of it, before or since. There’s men been drowned there; not to mention boots lost, an’ the like o’ that. We used to say it was more

a job for the Navy. You had to be a bit sub-phibian to stand it, I can tell you. And in our bit we had the worst of the worst of it; about sixty

or seventy yards it was, between us an’ ‘C’; we always called it ‘The Gap’; not but what it was a trench, right enough; but you abserlutely couldn’t get along it; no man could. We patrolled it overland at night. “But our O.C. , stocky little man he was, with grey hair, went West last July—he was one o’ those fellers, ye know, who won’t be beat. Twice he managed to get along that gap, though the first time he got stuck that bad he had to be hauled up with ropes over the parados, after dark. Deep! I s’pose the most of it was all of ten or twelve feet deep; fire-step all washed away long ago; parapet an’ parados all jagged peaks o’ skaling muck, like porridge somehow gone bad. Stink! Why the rats was frightened of it. if you ask

me. Our O.C. he meant to have a new trench out just behind it, so as to join up with ‘O.’ One day he saw a Boche airyplane sailin’ over ‘The Gap’ very low down; photygraphin’, he reckoned, till our Archibalds got after it. Next thing we knew our O.C. was havin’ all the barbwire in the bloomin’ districk brought up be night, an’ stowed along in rear o’ ‘The Gap.’ Sick an’ tired o’ carryin’ it we was; and makin’ giant gooseberries, an’ footstools, an’ prickly pillers, an that. “We had a bombin’ post beh nd the

middle of ‘The Gap,’ and a special look-out at each end of it; an’ we had a observation sap runnin’ well out from our end of it, too. One n’ght, pretty ear’y. our Mister he went out scoutin’ with a couple o’ men from the end o’ that sap, same’s he often did, just to see what Fritz might be up to in the sap he had right opposite. Well, this night, Mister came peltin’ back in no end of a hurry, an’ down the trench to where the O.C. was makin’ out his situation report. His news was that a small Boche patrol—only four or five men —was makin’ our way, an’ his theory was they was coming to reckernoitre ‘The Gap.’ I was sent off at the double, not as you’d suppose to start manning ‘The Gap,’ but to warn the bombin’ patrol, an’ the look-outs that they were to keep outer sight, an’ not to make a sign if any Boches should come spyin’ about; just to let ’em spy, an’ lie low. Then the O.C. went along behind ‘The Gap’ himself.

Bimeby those four Boches came crawlin’ along the front o’ ‘The Gap,’ where the wire was just as mortal

bad as the trench; bad for us, I mean and easy to get through. An’ while they crawled along the front, spyin’, our O.C. he crawled along behind the parados, spyin’ on them, till he saw them make off back to their own lines, satisfied that nobody was in ‘The Gap.’

“Then the O.C. he come back into the trench. ‘Now pull your socks up, Sergeant-Major!’ I heard him say. ‘I want everyone who isn’t on sentry out here behind ‘The Gap.’ We’re goin’ to have some fun to-night,’ says he. Well, I don’t know about

fun, but inside o’ five minutes we’d mostly had all the barbwire we wanted, I can tell you. D’ye know what we was doin’? We rolled every blessed bit o’ that barbwire over into the mud an’ muck o’ ‘The Gap’; fairly lined it we did, from end to end, with every possible kind of barbwire tangle you ever saw. An’ then, everyone of us that wasn’t gettin’ the bombs ready—officers, sergeants an’ all —we was pick an’ shovellin’ like mad behind the parados of ‘The Gap’ to get down a bit with the new trench the O.C. had marked out the day before.

“I don’t suppose we’d got down mor’n about a foot when the word came along to stop all work, an’ not to make a sound. Then we were all told in whispers what to expect, an’ you can bet there was some excitement. We was all new to trenches then, ye see; mighty few of us had ever set eyes on a Boche. We’d nearly the whole blessed company lyin’ out there in the new ditch behind the parados of ‘The Gap’; well, not that, but pretty near a hundred men, any how, with all the officers but one, an’ all the sergeants dotted down the line. We was nearly touchin’ each other, an’ every blessed one of us with two bombs ready, an’ breathin’ just as quiet as we knew how. Nobody was to make a move or a sound till the O.C.’s whistle went, an’ then we was to lob over our bombs, soft an’ easy’ countin’ a hundred an’ one, a hundred an’ two, a hundred an’ three, after pullin’ the pins. “It was a long wait, an’ everybody was mighty wet an’ stiff when the word came along: ‘They’re cornin’,’ an’ we all held our breath. I’d got opposite a little bit of a gap between two peaks of mud. I couldn’t see into ‘No Man’s Land,’ for the old parapet of ‘The Gap’ was too high and uneven; but I could make out the front edge of the trench all right; and I tell you it was a queer sort of a ticklin’ up my back when I saw Boche heads risin’ all along that front, and baynit tops an’ all. The old trench was terrible wide at the top; twelve feet at least, I reckon. I’ll give these Boches credit, they did come very quiet, no more noise than so many rats. And then they slid down into the trench —where all our barbwire was, in the water an’ the mud. An’ then the O.S.’s whistle went, an’ you heard the safety pins click, an’ our chaps countin’ under their breath. “I suppose there was seventy or eighty bombs went off altogether in ‘The Gap.' It was a regular Day o’ Judgment row, I can tell you. The Boches couldn’t have heard the safety pins or anything else, because by then they was floundering about in the water among the barbwire, splut-

terin’ an’ cursin’ an gruntin’ to beat the band. And inside of another six or seven seconds there was seventy or eighty more bombs went into ‘The Gap,’ while we lay flat again, to miss the back throw of splinters. There was maybe half a dozen Boches who hadn’t got down into the trench, and they started bolting back for their lives. Our O.C. picked off three with a rifle, I was told, but he reckoned some must have got back to their lines, and accordin’ we was ordered back to our trench at the double. Sure enough the Boches was plasterin’ ‘The Gap’ with whizz-bangs an’ pip-squeaks inside of a few minutes. They don’t seem to mind killin’ their own people. So if any of those Boches survived our bombs, which I don’t see how they could, they muster got it in the neck from their own a’tillery.

We buried the lot as we cut the new trench behind ‘The Gap,’ an’ I believe there was about sixty of ’em. I never saw nothin’ about it in the papers, but I reckon that raid was a failure all right. I wonder what Fritz called it!”